III-42 Ritual (II)

Despite the chaotic nature and requirements of most rituals, they are not, in fact, randomized actions performed to amuse the predilections of certain gods. Rather, they influence the ambient mana of the world in specific ways, which then allows said god to reach across the system's thresholds ever so slightly and deliver the conditions of the ritual.

However, that is not the only kind of ritual in existence. There are non-divine rituals. These can be seen more like formulae. They usually come with even more esoteric requirements, even more stringent requirements as well.

However, understand that existence is an unfolding story, and everything that happens fuels and expands the world's mana in some fashion or another. More importantly, the aspects of the ritual fuel the great strife that feeds the system, for struggle and change are the primary progenitors from which mana is birthed…

-Gods and Rituals

III-42
Ritual (II)

Shiv plunged through the folds of dimensionality as he passed from the gate into Vulketh itself. A clench of pressure squeezed his body as he crossed between dimensions, and he found himself at the bottom of a molten ocean. The ocean of Vulketh was drenched in a thick layer of molten fluid. It bathed the horizon in a murky gleam, and molded around Shiv’s flesh. Despite its immense heat, it failed to affect his Adamantine Adaption. Yet, his Magebreaker rang. 

The molten metals here are magical too, Shiv realized. Never knew that. 

He also realized his blade no longer had billowing waves of gravity around it. That made Shiv’s enthusiasm plummet slightly. Seemed like easy Skill Fusions weren’t going to be a thing until he was back beneath the glow of the mana core.

He looked about, trying to get his bearings. There were strange shapes moving in the depths. Then, a mutilated torso fell past him. Shiv looked up. Broken bodies and severed limbs rained down from above, trailing spills of black and misting blood.

Shiv triggered his Creeping Void, Chameleon, and Minor Illusion abilities at once. A billowing miasma of blackness expanded from him, offering him a brief moment of cover. From on high came spells and projectiles. They fell like a chaotic rain, ripping through the molten ocean and leaving pockets of air in their wake.

Shiv froze time to get his bearings—-to locate his Vitae Golem. As he squinted in through the burning hot fluid, he noticed that there were hundreds of metal towers hanging in the ocean above. They looked like they were made from reinforced metal of some kind, and along their sides were ports. Some were open, and within, teams of Vultegs were in the process of jumping out. At the same time, a mere few meters atop Shiv, was a patch of faint blue. A faint blue that severed a long adamantine elevator shaft, and from it echoed a ringing scream. 

The Recollector's misery graced Shiv's senses, and he saw the faint outline of the massive eldritch entity writhing in that patch of blue, seared into the flesh of existence, howling in eternal agony.

An eternity of hell’s not long enough for you, you piece of shit, Shiv thought to himself.

As he spiked his field, he moved up into the molten water—only to feel something coming from him. Layered cascades of Chronomancy pulsed from each of the metal towers. These temporal wardings arrived as massive tides, greater than any Shiv faced before. He dashed back as an avalanche of countering time magic surged toward him. He briefly considered parrying them with his Magebreaker. But when more massive walls of time magic can rush forth, he winced.

Nope. Maybe I’ll manage to parry one or two before the Magebreaker pops. Not worth it. Need to be careful when I’m using my Chronomancy.

He spiked higher as he deactivated his temporal shell. Around him were the broken bodies of his Vultegs—a good hint as to location of his Vitae Golem. As he searched, even more metal towers plunged into the molten sea. From the open ports on their sides came a flood of reinforcements. Reinforcements bestowed with the task of securing the gate and murdering him and Adam to satisfy Lord Scorn.

Shiv watched as Vulteg’s used their head-tentacles to push through the waters, going straight for the gateway below without any doubt or hesitation.

They swam down in teams of five. None of them noticed him, so he continued his search. Inside, a building sense of urgency consumed him. They needed to set off his soul bomb—and fast. With all the towers and Vultegs spilling out from them, there was no way they could hold the gate for long.

Just how the hells did they even breach the gate in the first place? If they always could push through, they would have done it earlier… And where the hells is that golem?

The answer to that question greeted him suddenly as the Vitae Golem was smashed through his Creeping Void before slamming into the ocean bed. It crashed beside the Vulketh Gateway against a smooth expanse of hardened metal that served as the floor of this place. Against that smooth expanse of metal, the Vitae Golem lay. There was a large obsidian glaive driven through its torso, and the golem worked to pull the weapon free. A Vulteg materialized beside the glaive in a splash of Dimensionality. They wore armor made from glass glistening with motes of black static. They didn't notice Shiv, as they reached out to seize the glaive to finish the golem off.

This left them utterly undefended as Shiv spiked himself downward. He was on the Vulteg in a heartbeat, driving his Skysplitter into their spine.

He was utterly unprepared when he was instantaneously teleported somewhere else entirely just as his blade pierced the Vulteg’s armor.

A clench of spatial magic swallowed him, drawing him briefly across the length of existence. 

Again, Shiv lost track of where he was. The world around him spun, and when it stabilized, a series of spell patterns lit up along his surroundings. They circled fast, and Shiv narrowed his eyes as he regarded the walls. Titanium? Wait, I know this texture. This is—

The teleportation anchor he found himself inside flared bright. The Pyromancy spells infused upon it triggered the start of the purification process. Unpleasant memories returned to Shiv, and he immediately responded by slashing across the teleportation anchor's surface. It screamed, the metal protested. Several spells died as they were cleaved in half. The first rush of flame swallowed Shiv, growing hotter and hotter, but it failed to overcome his plague-boosted Adamantine Adaption.

Not the same guy who fried at Passage, Shiv chuckled to himself.

He seized the gravity field and tore his way out, only to find himself lost, trapped within an even larger structure.  Within the teleportation anchor, the spells sputtered and died, the last plumes of fire curled like closing fingers around Shiv as it spilled out into this new expanse. 

The larger space he found himself in resembled that of a narrow tower, and he was near the top. There were various bridges extending above and below him, but the spine of the tower seemed to be made from a chain of interconnected anchors. In a strange way, it was like looking at a rope threaded through a series of fans.

“Scorn’s loathing!” A Vulteg cried out nearby. They looked down from a bridge above.

That was the last thing they did as their cyclopean eye was pierced by a surging river of Vitae. Shiv drew the Vulteg close and drained them of what vitality they had left. At the same time, he continued observing the other teleportation anchors. His was the only one that seemed pitch black while all the others were pure white. More importantly, his seemed to have additional structural reinforcements, while the others looked thinner and less dense by far.

"The hells," Shiv muttered, and then all at once he felt a series of spatial pressures pulsing across all the other anchor in a chain. His own teleportation anchor tried to trigger another spell, but a gushing spray of dimensionality resulted in nothing but a few flecks of blackness washing over Shiv’s form.

A second thereafter, every single teleportation anchor above and below him opened, and a few thousand Vultegs emerged on the bridges. Shiv’s Biomancy counted four-hundred Vultegs in a two-hundred meter vicinity. Four hundred very confused Vultegs that were bathed in the Creeping Void.

"Did someone do something to the ambient light, huh?" one of the Vultegs called out.

Just then, the walls along the tower opened. A veil of mana shimmered over the new exits, preventing the molten metal outside from leaking in. Yet, it did little to prevent Shiv’s Creeping Void from leaking out. The Deathless saw the bridges connected the anchors to the openings leading outside. That’s how he discovered where he was: In one of those strange metallic towers descending into the depths.

Shiv stared out into the molten ocean that surrounded the Vulketh Gateway. A veil of mana was layered over the insides of the tower. This was how the Vultegs were delivered en masse to attack the gate. They were teleported first to these towers, and then they would exit before passing through.

But why are there—wait, more towers only arrived earlier. They didn’t amass forces for this attack. They’re literally just dropping in right now. Did Scorn not plan this at all?

He pushed that thought out of his head. There was not the time to figure out why this attack felt so sloppy. He needed to find his golem again—or make a new one. And it needed to be ready by the time Adam got through.

First, though, a goodbye gift for some of these assholes.

Shiv immediately lashed out with two streams of forking Vitae. It shot up and down, ripping through the weaker Vultegs while pinning the stronger ones against the bridge and draining them. At the same time, he froze time. His temporal shell formed over him—just as a ripping wall of Chronomancy crashed down from above. Shiv reacted. He slammed the back of his left hand into the collapsing wave. His Magebreaker shrieked as its frequency spiked. It was like trying to shoulder through a literal flood, even with his boosted physique. Shiv hissed and pushed harder. With a final bit of effort, the warding bent off at an angle. 

His Magebreaker rattled violently, but it held. And it gave him enough time to proceed. Shiv spiked his gravitic field sixty times in quick succession. His Inertial Overdrive hit a point where his skin was beginning to tear, where his muscles were ripping free. He discharged then. The world around him burst. His inner flesh expanded in a rupturing pop. A corona of fire and force spread out—but froze in the stilled grip of time.

Ow, Shiv winced.

Adamantine Adaption 166 > 167

Then he cast himself back in time, and shot out from the open port before the next wave of Chronomancy hit. As he went out, however, he flinched as another rush of Chronomancy—one he hadn't anticipated—slammed into him. Nearly all of Shiv’s Chronomancy field peeled free from his body. Thereafter, he noticed another tower frozen nearby, just a hundred meters away. At the top of the tower was a gleaming spike, a Chronomantically enchanted construct that constantly radiated broadcasts of counter-mana.

Shiv grimaced as he dismissed his Chronomancy once more, preserving it just before it broke. The insides of the tower he departed from exploded. Shiv was blasted outward, and he clenched his teeth as he felt something inside him twist to the wrong. A pocket of air formed a three hundred-meter radius around him. Then, Shiv found himself briefly falling through open air. 

The molten ocean had an open patch in its depths. He used that opportunity to accelerate ahead, trying to figure out where he was, to reach the gateway again, and secure his Vitae Golem so that Adam could shoot it and be done with this mess.

That being said, his act within the tower did more than a little damage. Just not nearly enough to see this done fast.

Ritual Conditions: Slay [1,211/50,000 Vultegs] to align the Dimensional frequency of the Vulketh Gateway to the Tutorial.

Shiv flung himself through the air. As the molten ocean came rushing back, he saw the form of a Jealous splashing down, displacing massive waves. As a wall of fluid came crashing toward him, the Deathless spiked himself forward and magnified his Skysplitter. He slashed vertically using his three-hundred meter long blade, and shot into the cleft he made in the water. Bifurcated waves slammed into him. He parried both halves and let his Frictionless Vector do its job.

Frictionless Vector 65 > 66

The Deathless passed into the water as an injection and slipped past the Jealousy. He shrank his blade again just as the Greater Demon looked up. Yet, it failed to follow the exact position of his body as his Creeping Void drenched it in a miasma of black.

“DARKNESS!” The Jealousy cried. “DON’T LIKE! HATE DARKNESS! WHERE DARKNESS COME FROM?”

The Jealousy fired a beam of Psychomancy through the darkness, but Shiv was already circling behind it, following the falling towers on the way down. The teleportation left him confused, but since all the Vultegs were heading to the gate, he let the falling towers be his guide. 

But some of the enemy grew aware of his presence. Spells slashed through the air, glistening fragments of steel detonated around Shiv, bursting into showers of screaming shrapnel. They bounced off his bone armor, and one even skipped away from his eye. Shiv didn't stay and fight. He just left a body behind just to confuse the Vultegs and kept spiking himself downward.

Deception 12 > 14

He followed a descending tower as it unleashed another ripple of counter-magic. More waves pulsed from the surrounding darkness. There were more towers sinking to the depths. Many more. And even if he couldn’t see any of them, he could count the Chronomantic ripples, and knew they probably had spatial wards as well.

Shit, that might make hitting the Vitae Golem hard anyway. Godsdamned system always rushing us. Never gives us any time to pl— Shiv cut off his own complaining. The system didn’t care. So he wouldn’t either. Shiv would figure something out. He always did.

Just then, a dead Volteg tumbled through the molten waters across from him. He noticed a very familiar arrow lodged in their singular eye. A dimensional rupture tore open. An arrow pierced the dead Vulteg. Adam blasted out from the pathway in an instant—barely in time as the dimensional pathway was squeezed shut behind him.

Shiv accelerated and gripped Adam by the shoulder. The Gate Lord’s armor was glowing bright, straining against the molten waters on his behalf. At the same time, his eyes were glowing with Divination mana—which explained how Adam found him so fast. Rather than Shiv dragging Adam along, however, it was the Gate Lord that accelerated them both through the water, navigating the molten expanse with ease. His vector-wings moved as fast in the ocean’s depths as they did through the open skies.

Shiv reached out using his Psychomancy and connected his mind to Adam’s. At the same time, he began creating a new Vitae Golem—accepting the last for lost. “So. I think this Vulteg invasion thing was kind of spontaneously thrown together.”

“It does appear that way—” Adam hissed as he pulled both of them down. They slipped by an accelerating tower and barely kept ahead of the molten waters it displaced. “There are more of these ships splashing down. They don’t have any formations set up—any proper force concentrations. It’s like they all just dropping in haphazardly and trying to figure out how to overwhelm our gate as they go.”

Shiv focused on infusing his Animated Skills into his new golem. With all that was happening around him, that was practically a feat unto itself.

Skill Gained: Multi-Tasking 1 (Common)

And the system agreed with Shiv.

“Okay,” Shiv said, composing a new Vitae Golem. “How far can you fire that arrow?”

“A hundred meters and a half-second,” Adam replied. He was navigating the depths through Shiv’s eyes and his Divination. Pairing that with Adam’s Heroic-Tier Awareness, and he navigated the depths with borderline prescience. “That’s how long I get before the spatial wards start hitting me.”

“Same thing with my Chronomancy,” Shiv replied. “Managed to parry one of the ripples, but another one nearly ripped my shell right off my body.”

A column of flame splashed down at them from above. Shiv widened his Skysplitter into a shield and parried the blast. Adam loosed a Hydromantically-charged Veilpiercer in the same moment. More spells came. More projectiles slashed through the depths. Most of the others missed.

The Creeping Void 112 > 113

“We’re going down. Let’s get close to the gate before I fire this bloody thing.” Adam’s wings flared brighter. They shot past a dozen of falling troop-towers—and came to a rough stop as Shiv saw a few thousand Vultegs blocking off the gateway. They were pouring through the other side like a swarm of insects performing a raid on a rival hive.

To Shiv and Adam’s benefit, the Vultegs rear was left wide open. They weren’t expecting Shiv or Adam to be coming back.

Shiv finished his last infusion and commanded his golem to move fifty meters away. “Adam. This shit’s gonna be tight. The moment you fire that shot—”

A blur of movement passed across the corner of his eye. Shiv shoved Adam aside as a glaive passed through the space between them. An obsidian glaive Shiv remembered seeing in the chest of his last Vitae Golem.

And just as he thought of his previous golem, it severed head tumbled past him. It dissolved in the molten depths, coming apart as motes of red and white. Shiv and Adam regarded the fading golem, and slowly they looked up. Hovering above them was that glass-armored Vulteg again, and behind them descended ten towers and four more Jealousies. More shadows emerged even higher up in the ocean, and that made Shiv all the more certain that this wasn’t a fight he was supposed to win directly.

“We’re being forced into using my Vitae as a bomb. But something’s missing here. The sudden breach, this sloppy attack… There’s something behind this. It feels more coherent and planned than the system’s bullshit.”

Adam formed another arrow as his Necromantic vambrace crackled with energy. “We can figure that out if we survive. Right now, we make this count and finish this. I’m going to fire my arrow twenty meters away from that glass-armored bastard. The moment I do, you stop time, move your golem in position, and get us out.”

Shiv looked back and frowned as he noticed the obsidian glaive shooting through the gateway. But he didn’t have time to warn Adam that the glass-armored Vulteg could teleport to his glaive. The Gate Lord fired his dimensional arrow. It ripped across reality. Shiv stopped time at the same instant and ordered his golem to move. “Get in front of that arrow!”

Waves of Chronomancy crashed down—and they were more layered than ever before. There was scarcely a gap between them now, and Shiv understood why Adam was in such a hurry. When enough of those towers landed, they wouldn’t be able to use their Chronomancy or Dimensionality at all.

The Vitae Golem spiked itself into position, but the descending wardings immediately shredded its temporal shell. Shiv grabbed Adam by his waist and spiked both of them as fast as he could. This would injure Adam, but staying meant death. Shiv held the Gate Lord close to his body and kept Adam protected from all surrounding harm. Such a feat was easy to accomplish when he was three-times Adam’s size. He crashed into the Vultegs rushing through the gateway just as the first of the wards brushed against his back.

Part of his temporal shell peeled away. The Vultegs choking the gateway before Shiv burst apart were knocked aside as he accelerated himself once more. He ripped through them just as a chain of other wards smashed into him. His temporal shell burst apart. Time resumed. A searing heat kissed Shiv’s back as the world behind him vanished into an expanse of all-consuming soul-fire. Vultegs around him ignited and screamed. Shiv gritted his teeth and pressed on as he heard Adam cry out. The Gate Lord’s arms and legs were folded the wrong way from the brutality of inertia.

Adam’s Heroic-Tier Reflexes were gentle. Shiv’s was anything but. The differences between them made itself known time and time again in the most brutal of ways.

A squeezing pressure clamped down around Shiv as he crossed through the gateway. He shot back up into the air, ripping a bloody path through the tightly packed Vultegs trying to pass through. At the same time, a rush of flame splashed against Shiv’s back, melting through his bone armor and burning soul-wounds into his flesh.

Shiv let out a hiss as he pulled his gravitic field at an angle. He and Adam crashed against, and then through, a dense layer of stone. As the battlements collapsed behind them, Shiv felt a series of spells sting and break against his body in quick succession until he called for someone to cease fire.

Pain consumed him. But Shiv was used to the hurt by now—didn’t let it distract him. He triggered his Song of the Vigilant as he cast a Woundeater into Adam. The Gate Lord’s arms snapped back in place as he gave a whimper of relief. Shiv pulled him back to his feet and the Deathless turned to face the scattered and broken Vultegs. 

Spells rained down on the invaders from all directions. Mortars splashed down, consuming parts of the gateway in molten slag. But a beam of blinding fire continued climbing higher into the air. It burned bright and hot, and it just kept going. As Shiv cast his Vitae into downed Vultegs and began transferring his soul-wounds onto them, his breath caught as a notification appeared before his eyes.

Ritual Conditions: Slay [2,871,446/50,000 Vultegs] to align the Dimensional frequency of the Vulketh Gateway to the Tutorial.

“Holy felling shit,” Shiv exhaled. His mind went blank. He expected Adam setting off his soul to do something. Some damage. Some harm. But this was something else entirely. This was another level of destruction and death. Shiv knew what it was like to kill an army of enemies. Everything below High-Adept felt like an insect to him now. They died when he moved—though some with esoteric skills still posed strange threats, especially if they engaged him together. Masters and Heroes were harder to kill, but almost three million people dead in an instant. Shiv gawked the beam of soul-flame erupting from the gate, cleaving a brilliant wound high up through the sky. His mind was numb. His body was still partially charred. Shiv couldn’t fathom any more than a few thousand dead. Millions were ridiculous. 

He crossed some threshold today. Something was going to come from this. Something severe.

I… I don’t know if I can cook this feeling out of me, Shiv thought.

Vitaemancy 62 > 67

Vitality Drain 55 > 59

Ritual Commenced!

Lord Scorn wants you to know that he is pissing and shitting himself in anger!

Lord Scorn has been prevented from reaching into and crushing the gate!

Lord Scorn has designated Adam Arrow as a new slur for the Vultegs!

Lord Scorn has sworn his eternal, undying hatred against Adam Arrow and the Corpse-Shedder.

Lord Scorn is going to torture Adam Arrow and the Corpse-Shedder for an entirety once he captures them.

Lord Scorn has promised aid and divine blessings to anyone that stands against Adam Arrow.

Adam staggered beside Shiv. Both stared into the rising pillar of soul-fire. The Deathless looked at the Gate Lord. Adam’s expression was blank. “How many people did we just kill.”

“Around three million,” Shiv breathed. A chuckle of disbelief escaped him. “Sullain wasn’t shitting about me, potentially lighting up the seaboard.” And that just made the idea of facing the Vicar even more daunting. “He managed to capture and reshape my soul-detonation, too. So. I have no idea how we’re going to kill him, Adam.”

The Gate Lord nodded. “Is… is it wrong that I don’t feel anything but exhaustion.”

“I think it might be normal,” Shiv replied. “Because I don’t know what I’m supposed to feel from this.”

Both of them kept staring into the column of white and red fire rising from the Vulketh Gateway for a beat. Stretches of corrosion danced along its length. Uva landed beside them a moment later, joining them in as they watched the afterglow of their destructive act.

“What did you two…” Uva swallowed. “Is that what it looks like. When you get hit by Necromancy.”

“Only a bit,” Shiv replied. “A blunted bit. I don’t know what’s happening on the other side. I don’t want to know.”

And slowly, the pillar of soul-fire began to shrink. It thinned with each passing second. As it did, Shiv could see the Dimensionality mana spreading out from the gateway clearer than ever before. Something landed beside them from above. It sank into the ground and split in half. It looked like the haft of a spear. A very melted obsidian spear. A moment thereafter, Uva pulled Adam out of the way as a smoking carcass crashed down where he stood.

All three looked at the body as smoke rose off of it. To Shiv’s surprise, the Vulteg groaned. Then, the Deathless noticed their glass armor and shook his head. “You poor bastard. You teleported straight to your glaive, didn’t you.”

Limbless, eyeless Vulteg turned in his direction, but let out a final squeak and went still.

There were other Vulteg around them. Most of them were burning, too. What few survivors remained threw down their arms in surrender as the gazed at Shiv. Several were on their knees, their gazes revealing naked terror. A few others even killed themselves outright, driving their blades through their bodies.

Dread Aura 96 > 100 (Skill Evolution Imminent)

Shiv started at pockets of surrendering Vultegs and sighed. “More prisoners.”

Adam shook his head. “We’re not keeping them here. We’re—”

His words were interrupted as the final thread of soul-fire vanished and a sky-shaking scream shook the gate.

“FUCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKK! FUCKKKKK! CUNNNNNNNNNTT! WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU FUCKS! DO YOU THINK IT’S FUNNY TO BOMB MY DIMENSION! DO YOU FUCKING THING ANIMANCY BOMBS ARE EASY TO FIX! YOU RAT FUCKING—OH, YOU’RE GOING TO FIND A WAY TO GIVE ME A DIVINE ANEURYSM. I’M GONNA SHIT MYSELF AGAIN! I’M GONNA DO IT! I GONNA SHIT MYSELF AND NAME THE FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT AN ADAM! I’M GOING TO MAKE IT COME TO LIFE AND HAVE IT TORTURED EVERY DAY OF ITS ETERNAL LIFEEEEE!”

Lord Scorn sounded more like a wheezing accountant than a terrible god. In fact, he was on the verge of degenerating into angry sobs at any moment.

“Why is he just blaming me?” Adam whispered, his expression offended. “You were part of this, too.”

“Yeah, but he doesn’t know who I am. He just called me the Corpse-Shedder.”

“Why the felling shit does he know who I am, then?” Adam snarled.

“Good question,” Shiv said. “Other good questions are: How did the gateway get breached. And who breached it.”

“Who?” Adam asked.

“Yeah,” Shiv nodded. The last lingering remnants of his mental numbness faded, and his mind began to churn. “Had to be. There was a breach in the metal as well. An opening. If the Vultegs could make that from the other side—the hells with that, if the Vultegs were the ones who did this, they would be more prepared.”

“What do you mean?” Uva asked.

“The attack was spontaneous. Rushed, even.” Adam shook his head at her as he looked down, trying to process all that just happened. “They didn’t even have proper formations set up on the other side. That’s why their forces entered so haphazardly.”

And just then, Shiv shuddered. A feeling of suspicion hardened inside him.

“Well. You’re quite the firecracker, aren’t you, Insul?” Whisper materialized just behind Shiv. The orc stared past the partially collapsed battlements into the glassed crater surrounding the gateway. The orc chuckled as he held out a hand. A rain of ash fell. The moans and cries of badly wounded Vultegs assailed the gate with a symphony of unceasing suffering. And slowly, Shiv could see the dimensionality of the gate shifting and changing, like a boiling cauldron of black bile on the verge of overflowing.

Lord Scorn’s screams were replaced by Challenger's booming laughter midway through. As the orc god bellowed his glee, anger exploded inside the Deathless—but he held it in check.

If only for a moment.

“Hey, Whisper,” Shiv said, turning to stare at the orc. Whisper greeted him with a smile. The other orcs stood atop a second set of distant walls set up just before the obsidian tower. “Got a question for you.”

“Yes, Insul?”

“Did the Challenger ask you to do it, or did you breach the gateway because it amused you? Because it would get me to do the ritual faster?”

Awareness 15 > 20

Deception 14 > 18

Psychology 15 > 24

The orc’s eyes widened in surprise, but Shiv read something from Whisper’s expression.

And the anger inside the Deathless exploded. But rather than let it consume him, Shiv spent the anger on a skill. He spent it on Awareness as he read every muscle on the orc’s face, as he watched Whisper’s surprise turned to respect and astonishment.

“I know it’s you,” Shiv said. “Because who else could it be? We thought we watched you well. But—”

“No,” Whisper shook his head. “Not me. But close.”

Shiv pressed his lips together, and suddenly, he considered the only other orc that could have done this without him noticing. Band waved at him from atop the walls, his face wild with glee. He clapped for Shiv, and the Deathless let out a breath.

“Did the Challenger tell you to do it?”

“Yes,” the Challenger’s voice rumbled from the shifting gateway. “Now, Insul—”

Shiv very calmly punched Whisper in the face before the orc god could say anything else.