III-23 Block

Let me tell you something, Sijik. I hate Roland Arrow. I hated him since the first time I laid eyes on him. I hated him when we were in the

Let me tell you something, Sijik. I hate Roland Arrow. I hated him since the first time I laid eyes on him. I hated him when we were in the same class. I hated him every time he humiliated me during sparring. He humiliated me during small group battles. He humiliated me during the mock war engagements we waged over and over again.

You cannot conceive of the depths of my hate. You cannot understand what it is like to hate someone so much that it builds up like sediment in your bones, like particulates in your blood. That you wake hating this person. That you sleep hating this person. That you eat with the weight of this person on your tongue.

Hate, hate, hate is what I feel for Roland Arrow. Hate… but I also understand him. I also respect his skill and the danger he poses as a Pathbearer. So no, we're not just going to walk up to Blackedge and simply demand that they drop the walls, that he drop his wards and let us in. We are not going to send 100,000 Pathbearers to their deaths against the single most dangerous man I've ever seen pick up a bow.

Do you know how brutally Roland Arrow humiliated our combat instructor? The man was a master. The man was a legend in his time. A legend in his own mind. And he resigned. He resigned before the semester was over. Roland made a mockery of him.

You were not there at the Battle of the Eclipse. At the battle above the chasm. But I was. For all my hatred, for what Roland represents, for the one he serves, for his arrogance, his hubris, for leading my wife, my brother into a slaughter in the depths that they never came back from, into a war that should have never taken place for an Ascendant that seeks to betray us all, I understand what he truly is. I understand the threat he poses. I understand that he is a Pathbearer beyond peers.

Never bring up this suggestion to me again, Inquisitor. You may not value the lives of these Pathbearers, but I do. 

I come intending to inflict righteous retribution on Roland Arrow. And I will give anything to see it done. I will give anything to see my daughter retrieved. I will give anything, anything. I will sacrifice myself, not them. Not meaninglessly. They are good men. Good women. Good bots. And you will not waste their lives this way. We do this strategically. Carefully. Properly.

I will give Roland Arrow nothing for free. Not another second of my time. And not the lives of the lowliest mercenary.

-City-Lord Havel Van Stormhalt to Inquisitor Sijik

III-23
Block

Gold-01 awoke with a scream. His flesh was frying, his legs felt like they were folded the wrong way, his tailbone felt like someone had been working on it all day with a chisel, and his insides—Great One—his insides felt like they were liquid. Searing pain flowed through his body, and he wished he was unconscious again, he wished. As his vision stopped spinning, he realized the insides of his capsule was glowing with heat. No wonder he was in so much pain; he was being cooked alive.

Veins of the Stormdiver 88 > 91

"Godsdamn it," Gold-01 growled. He drew upon his feeble Aeromancy, and he circulated a gust of wind around himself. It was moments like these that he wished he had Cryomancy, moments like these he wished he also devoted more time to improving his Toughness. He tried to unbuckle himself from the capsule, only to let out another bark of pure agony as his broken ribs sank into a prolapsed organ.

 "Great One," Gold-01 whimpered. His words slurred into incoherence. His mind reeled. How did he end up here? What just... and then his memories returned to him. It was a massive blast that smashed into him and his dragon, that tore him across the world, that drove his head high against the ceiling of his capsule, knocking him out.

He ripped off his flight mask and felt at his head.

Blood trickled down Gold-01's skull. Blood soaked his hair in the darkest red. Blood and pain. But that was how he knew he was still alive. Griting his teeth, Gold-01 fought through the pain and reached into the emergency compartment within his capsule. It was badly dented. The capsule was practically curved in on itself. The left side of the entire compartment was folded inward.

 Gold-01 simply stared in disbelief. He didn't know anything that could have done that to Adamantine. Frankly, he didn't believe it was possible. Adamantine was supposedly unbreakable for most Pathbearers. But he had been fighting a Hero. A Hero at the very least.

And then other memories returned to Gold-01. Torturous memories. Memories of his squadron being cut down. Other dragons taking cuts along their neck, blood gushing out from their eyes, from their jaws as they fell. Dragons caught in the immediate vicinity of the blast. He was sure that he saw one vanish altogether, flayed out of existence by the blast. The others were flung across the world, cast like insects caught in the grip of a hurricane. And his comrades, his fellow riders, he didn't know what their condition was. He needed to find them.

But first… Gold-01 bit back a snarl as he finally managed to open the compartment. He pulled the dented cover off, but the sudden motion made him double over, made him puke all over himself. Blood mingled with half-digested chunks of this morning's breakfast. He was bleeding internally. 

He needed the potion. He needed it now. He picked up the healing potion, and he found his hands were shaking too much. He controlled his movements. He bade his quivering fingers to slow. He remembered drinking potions before while badly injured during a prior mission, spilling half of them down his chin and chest, wasting precious resources. Gold-01 focused. Gold-01 carefully placed it against his lip and tipped it backward. 

The potion was foul tasting. It was like what one might think a slug would taste like if it had been ground up and laced with bitter acid. The healing potion crawled down his throat, making him choke for a moment just from how thick and viscous it was. But slowly, it worked through his body. It flowed through his veins, and his natural healing accelerated. That didn't do much for the pain, but he did feel parts of him knit back together inside.

Wounds closed, and there was a gradual itch that grew and grew, an itch he knew to be the mending of vessels, and the regeneration of his bones. The broken pieces that still remained inside of him would need to be extracted by a Biomancer later, as that was to take place alongside a cancer examination. No matter how badly wounded he was, he gave it good odds that he would probably develop more than a few tumors.

He laid back against his seat, then hissed as the heat returned. The moment without the Aeromancy circulating the air returned the temperature within his capsule to an unbearable level. He needed to get out. He wouldn't be able to rest inside here. He couldn't do anything. So, Gold-01 reached down. He found the latch meant to pop the top part of his capsule. He pulled. The latch was stuck. Gold-01 let out a whimper. He didn't know if he had the strength. 

But then he mustered himself. He mustered himself as he remembered what Master Irene said to him. If you don't have the strength, you will die. You will die alone. You will drown inside your capsule. You will be pulled under the water while riding in your harness. You will die and you will fail your squadron. Remember this. If you do die, die making a difference. Do not let the great adversary take you freely. Don't let your death become a cascade, an avalanche.

"It won't," Gold-01 said. He was replying to a woman long dead. A woman he killed. But he still had to tell someone. He still needed to talk to someone. Gods, he wished she was here. Drawing in a deep breath, his lungs ached. The hyperheated air burned his lungs and boiled his stomach, but he needed the oxygen for one last burst of strength. 

Gold-01 reached down with both hands. He pulled hard. The latch clicked and then something inside it broke. But just as hopelessness threatened to overtake him, the top part of the capsule burst off. The bolts holding it in place shot into the air. But with how deformed it was, it snapped off to the side and clipped Gold-01 along the left temple, opening a gash, and it slammed him face first against a piece of hyperheated metal. Gold-01 let out a shriek. He pulled his face back. But the damage was done. It seared clean through his flesh, parting skin, muscle, and touching bone. He let out another groan, a groan that almost became a sob until he mastered himself.

"Can't touch it," Gold-01 slurred. He slowly rose on shaking feet, and he clambered upon his seat as he stared out over the blasted horizon. Gold-01's eyes widened. "This... was this hell?" he whispered to himself, and it was a proper question, for the horizon of Old Santabar had been changed. 

Where there were rolling hills lined with patchy green bushes and mountains running across the land like frozen tidal waves, ranging for kilometers beyond, now Old Santabar resembled a glass crater. Ash rained down from above. A shroud of smog blocked the sky and the fragments of the Great One's former egg from Gold-01's gaze. Up to his right, he saw the landscape running downward in a gleaming slope, a slope that curved and rose again. He was in a crater. 

A crater.

Gold-01's mind spun. The blast the Heroic-Tier Pathbearer unleashed earlier had been massive. But could it have been this massive? Could they have had this much power within them? If they did, then what was the point of the chase? What was the point of any of it? If they were that powerful, why didn’t he just finish them all instantly? Why bother with the chase at all? Just who the fuck was he?

Gold-01 felt sick. Did the enemy Hero do all that just to toy with him? Toy with the riders who fought alongside Gold-01? What was this? What kind of monster did the system make Gold-01 face?

Gold-01 looked out across the desolate wasteland, and he cast his Psychomancy mana outward, a pulsing ripple spread out. "This is Gold-01," he stammered mentally. He watched as his translucent mana crawled across the land. It kept going, but he couldn't see anything for miles. He couldn't see. 

And then he did see something. He saw something he didn't want to see—he didn't want to accept. 

He saw the glistening golden scales of a dragon, but it was half-melted, half-fused to the ground. Its lower body was gone. Just gone. There were no remains. No blood. It just ended. Fused into the glassed ground, the dragon's eye sockets were hollow. There were small embers burning within, and smoke seeped out between its remaining scales as well. 

Its ribs were showing, and on its back was a capsule, or what remained of one. It was little more than melted funnel. Nothing but metal slag. If there had been anyone inside, there wasn't anymore.

"Hello?" Gold-01 called out. Psychomancy pulsed out from him. He strained his Master-Tier Psychomancy as hard as he could. "Hello? Anyone? Gold Primary? Anyone? Gold-02? Gold-7? Gold-03?"

He was calling out to dead comrades now. And Gold-01 felt himself on the verge of breaking. He prided himself on his focus and iron will. But the hell before him, the sudden isolation, it was getting to be too much, too much. And then as he turned, he saw something else, a jutting curve, a series of ribs folded over his capsule. And then Gold-01 remembered. He remembered that he had a dragon too. 

His dragon was gone. His dragon was... He found himself staring at three broken ribs, three broken ribs that were burned, scorched clean. Suddenly Gold-01 looked away, sinking fully into shell shock, doing everything he could not to consider his own dragon's death. His dragon, he had fought alongside his dragon for so long. His dragon’s name… His… 

Gold-01 crushed that chain of thought with his Psychomancy. A trail of drool dribbled down his chin as he took his first shaky step out of his capsule. As his foot greeted the ground, a series of cracks shuddered, traveling from his ankle up through his body. He could feel the broken bones left within him shaking, rattling. Gold-01 flinched at the sensation. He cast out another pulse of Psychomancy.

"Anyone, please, someone respond! Fucking someone, someone, somebody!" Gold-01 was screaming at the end. He wasn't just calling out with his mind. He was calling out with his voice, his hoarse, burned voice. "Central! Gold-02! Anyone! Anyone!" 

He fell to his knees and the glass was burning hot as well. It seared his flesh even through the enchanted leathers he was wearing. It was supposed to modulate his thermal temperature to suit any environment. This was an environment that no one could survive in. Gold-01 held himself. He hugged himself as he swept his gaze across the land. He hugged himself as he strained his Awareness, trying—hoping that there was another survivor, as he looked, as he searched for any sign of life, any sign of life at all. 

But there was nothing, nothing but him, nothing but a half-melted dragon four hundred meters away. Nothing. And it was all because one Pathbearer, that hero, that cruel monster that toyed with him and butchered two of his fellow riders.

Gold-01 slowly lifted his head. His sorrow was overwhelming, but deep in the waters of his misery came another emotion, came a dark and building sensation. Gold-01 didn't know hate before this moment. Gold-01 didn't know the urge to commit himself completely to a personal quest, to give everything he had to murder one other man, one other Pathbearer, one that took so much from him—

Gold-01 cried out as he felt his vitality get ripped out from his body.

The world around him blurred and went gray, and the remnants of his strength whistled out of him like air from a balloon.

***

"Godsdamn, I got lucky," Shiv thought to himself as he drained the only surviving rider he could find. "And Godsdamn, is this poor bastard unlucky." As the rider spasmed, Shiv genuinely felt bad for him. 

Judging from the few dragon bones remaining nearby, this guy likely survived because his dragon crashed back-first into the ground, pinning his capsule in place, while the dragon took the brunt of the blast.

Adamantine Adaption 157 > 163

Woundeater 85 > 86

Strider of the Unbending Path 124 > 128

Inertial Overdrive 107 > 111

And what a hell of a damn blast that was. Shiv barely felt any pain when he died earlier. His Adamantine Adaption responded to the first two hits, but all the ones that followed, there were immediately too much, more of him broke apart, and he felt himself combust internally and then dissolve entirely. He had no chance of surviving that, not a single damn bit. 

That was probably why he gained so much of a massive leap in terms of Adamantine Adaption. But why did he get a leap for Strider as well? For Inertial Overdrive?

Shiv's paranoia was at an all-time high as the rider groaned and began to seizure. The Deathless kept his gaze high, staring at the skies above, waiting for another salvo to descend to obliterate the land once more. 

If that attack came from Vicar Sullain or his Necrotechs, Shiv didn't know what to say. Their dragons were here, their observation posts were here. If they had that kind of an attack, why didn't they just use it on Blackedge? Why were they wasting it on him? Was he that much of a threat? Did they really have that powerful and potent of an arsenal that they could just casually expend? 

Parts of him wanted to say no, but after what he'd just experienced… 

Shiv felt a shudder run through his body. The Abyss had been portrayed as a place of deep mystery, of nightmarish danger. Shiv believed that for most of his life, believed the fact that few Pathbearers had managed to venture a few kilometers deeper than the chasm. 

But after less than ten minutes on the surface, he'd encountered an observation post, was ambushed by ten time-jumping dragons and their riders, and then was immediately killed as a series of arrows infused with what felt like the power of small exploding stars. Arrows that turned his body from a matter of biology into a function of physics.

A shadowy cocoon formed over Shiv, as the last trickles of vitality were siphoned out from the unfortunate rider. The rider wheezed a final breath and crashed down face first against the glass.

Yeah, sorry about that, Shiv thought. The rider went limp. He crashed down against the glassed surface of the ground that used to be rolling hills, soil, dirt, nature, and all that. Now, now it's just a blasted wasteland. Shiv made some decimated wastelands in his own time, but this was on another level.

If Inertial Overdrive was heroic, then was this the power of a Legendary Pathbearer? Shiv thought to himself. The revelation was as terrifying as it was inspiring. If this was what lay ahead, well, he couldn't wait to be able to break things on this magnitude. 

But then Shiv paused as he considered that. Inertial Overdrive came with its own consequences. He remembered one of those consequences when he overspiked himself right beside the rider he kidnapped. Shiv just wanted to move faster, but the poor High Adept—if he was even that—dissolved into nothing but bloody mist and burning meat.

Should have shoved the felling bastard into my cape. Still, Shiv thought, this was awesome display of destruction. I just hope I don't experience it myself again. I still need to get to the city. How the hell am I going to do that? He looked up at the sky and he frowned. Maybe I should just keep traveling underground, just keep going slowly for a long while. Maybe…

And just then, a Veilpiercer slammed down on the ground next to him. A dimensional rift opened and Adam came accelerating through. He came to a sudden halt immediately beside Shiv and saw the Deathless fusing a new set of armor around himself.

"Adam," Shiv breathed. He gestured at the surrounding devastation and winced. "This wasn't me. I didn’t get hit by Necromancy I was trying to—"

"I know," Adam called out. "I know. That was my father."

Shiv's eyes widened. "What?"

"That was my father," Adam repeated, his heart pounding fast. "I saw the same blast—the same skill—that pillar of rising light that devastated the land in the Educator’s tome. I saw..." Adam stammered. “This was done by my father. I was—I barely managed to avoid it by dashing back into my rift. But this was—”

His eyes widened. He looked past Shiv, and the Deathless turned as well. There came a flash of color from the dense blanket of ash and smog above them. There came a blinding pulse. Just then, a brilliant needle tore through the clouds. It was followed by a few hundred other needles. No, not needles, arrows. The zipped across space in a blinding instant. Shiv activated his temporal shell.

Time froze. Most of the arrows stopped.

Some of the kept going. The arrows that hunted him still were golden, and they tore across frozen time at twice the speed Shiv could move. He only managed ten spikes before they reappeared around him. The arrows collapsed around his person, and they came within centimeter from striking when they stopped—

Stopped because they lost track of Shiv’s existence.

Outside Context Problem 60 > 61

“Fucking Roland,” Shiv snarled. “I knew he was planning to do this shit.”

“Roland—” Rose breathed. “Oh, my love.”

Shiv shot her an annoyed glare, but then noticed how one of the arrows turned and faced Adam.

***

Roland’s traumatic trance broke. He took a moment to focus—to truly observe the other Pathbearer and…

Roland stumbled back. His captain of the guard caught him before he could fall.

That armor… That face… My son… I almost killed my own son… Why is he there? Why is he here? And why is he with the Omenborn?

An ill-feeling fell over Roland, but just then, a massive shape twisted over them, its mouth opening thousand times over as it descended to swallow Blackedge. It crashed down against the town’s wards, and some of the spell patterns flickered out.

Roland saw some of the town’s Dynamancers collapse as they struggled against the eldritch beast’s weight. They stood on the edge of Blackedge, and they strained themselves to the limit. They needed him. He couldn’t afford to be distracted. Not now.

Roland hissed and took more levels out of his Toughness, Navigation, and Memory Skills, dedicating them to his Parallel Thinking.

Parallel Thinking 81 > 201 (Skill Evolution Imminent)

Skill Evolution: Parallel Thinking (Adept) > Stacked Consciousness (Heroic)

Suddenly, he could focus on multiple things at the same time. And nearly dropped dead as his organs started failing from overstrain.

“Biomancers,” Roland gasped. “Attend me.”

***

Shiv let time resume as the arrows pulled away from him. Adam stared at them for a moment, and he swallowed.

“Father?” Adam said.

One of the arrows shivered in the air, and then nodded.

The Young Lord bit his lip. And Shiv started getting cold again. He immediately positioned himself behind Adam, drew in a steadying breath, and glared at Rose.

“If he shoots me and kills Adam, you be my witness. It didn’t want him to do it.”

Rose frowned at him. “Roland would never harm our boy.”

“Yeah, well, I’m here right now, so we can see if he wants Adam alive more than he wants me dead.”

Shiv re-emerged into existence. The arrows around him flinched by in a surprisingly human way.

“Shiv?” Adam breathed. He did a double-take just as he remembered Shiv’s existence. “What are you—”

***

“What?” Roland spat. He must’ve been going insane. A dying shriek came from the massive eldritch titan as a flood of brilliant arrows tore it apart from the inside. But he while he handled the monster, the Omenborn… How did he lose track of the Omenborn?

For a second it was like… Like he didn’t exist at all… And then he just reappeared behind Adam…

***

Shiv got behind him with his hands high. “Don’t godsdamned shoot me, Roland. Or you might cook your precious boy, too.”

Adam noticed Shiv maneuvering behind, and he scowled at the Deathless. "Really?" he breathed.

"Yeah, really," Shiv growled. As he looked at the many arrows, Shiv held up a finger, one in particular.

"Shiv," Adam hissed.

"What?" Shiv growled. "Your dad felling smote me from existence using the power of an exploding star. I'm allowed to be a little bit pissed off." One of the arrows drew a little closer to Shiv, and he immediately ducked behind Adam.

"Shiv, there’s no point to this—”

"If he wants to blow me up again, I'm going to have to rely on your Legendary armor of unbreakable nepotism. I’m not taking that shit to the face again.”

"I thought you enjoyed dying."

"Yeah, when I have someone to drain. Who was I going to drain if I didn't come upon unlucky asshole over here?" Shiv said, pointing at the dead rider.

"Me, you idiot," Adam breathed. Shiv paused. Adam folded his arms. And he looked slightly embarrassed. "Me? I wouldn't have just let you vanish from existence after that. That’s the entire reason I came. I rushed over because I knew there weren’t any survivors. I wouldn’t just let you die.”

Shiv stared at Adam for a moment. Then he grunted awkwardly. "Yeah. Uh. Yeah, I guess. I guess that's right. So, uh, what the hells do we do now?"

"Now?" Adam stared at his father's arrows. "Now we..." And then the arrows receded. They shot back into the sky, and moved so fast that Shiv could barely keep track of them. Barely. But as an experiment, he spiked his field more than a few times. Adam let out a cry as the force swept over him, the force displaced from Shiv's inertial shroud. Shiv went faster, faster. He spiked himself over sixty times. 

His body was on the verge of breaking apart in an instant. His heart burst open and Shiv cast himself back in time a second. He undid all his spikes of gravity. He returned to an unmoving state. His wounds were gone as well. 

The arrows were still more than a little faster than he was while he was near death.

What the hell kind of monster are you, Roland? Shiv thought to himself. As he considered that question, he clenched his fists and his fingers tapped on his blade. Whatever kind of monster you are, though, I'm still coming for your ass.

One of the arrows slipped back through the clouds as if threatening Shiv, and he ducked behind Adam again. The arrow retreated once more.

“Yeah, that’s right, piss off asshole,” Shiv growled.

"My father is not being an asshole," Adam snarled. His eyebrows were furrowed, small patchy arcs of red hair climbing towards his forehead. "He clearly had a good reason to shoot at you, and… and…”

"What kind of reason was that?" Shiv spat. "I was trying to get away from the dragon cavalry—I did manage to get away from the dragons. I avoided all those beams of Necromancy just for him to obliterate me and an entire section of the landscape. Actually, if he could do that, no wonder he's been holding off Sullain so long. No wonder he's been able to defend Blackedge for two weeks on his own. He doesn't need us. Let's go back to the gate. Let's close the gate and just wait for him to win on his own."

Adam took a step toward Shiv and his eyes simmered with unbridled rage at even the suggestion. "We are not doing that," the Gate Lord snarled. He was genuinely on the edge of anger now. 

Shiv frowned at Adam, but then he let out a sigh. "Godsdamn it, all right, fine. So what now?"

"Now we keep going," Adam said. "The observation posts here… they're either completely destroyed or they're buried beneath a little tide of glass. We have an opening." And Adam held out a hand. "I managed to capture one of their dimensional ships earlier.”

"Dimensional ships?" Shiv blinked. "Is that a thing?"

"I don't know exactly what it is. It's a ship that has a dimensional gate. I boarded it. I managed to capture the people aboard it. And then I piloted it back over to our gateway." Adam briefly looked at his current dimensional pathway. It was slowly closing. "What happened just now between you and my father. might have been a misunderstanding. Were you wearing your armor?"

"I'm always wearing my armor," Shiv said.

"Were you wearing your helmet?"

"Yeah," Shiv paused. "Well, no, my helmet fell apart in the last fight."

"So there's the explanation," Adam said. "He probably thought you were a Necrotech warrior. You look like the Necrotech. Why don't you just change the design of your armor, huh?"

"What do you mean, change the design of my armor?" Shiv folded his arms. "So I'm going to have to change my design, because they happen to look like me."

"They looked like that first."

"Well, how was I supposed to know that?" Shiv replied. “

"It doesn't matter anymore," Adam waved him off. "He knows now. It won’t happen again. Just get moving. We have an opening, and my father's watching you. And since he hasn't struck you again..."

"Yet," Shiv said.

"Yet," Adam begrudgingly agreed, "you can continue on. You can fly. You can reach Blackedge, and you can finish your scouting run. But the fact he can reach us this far is…” Adam narrowed his eyes. “Far beyond Master-Tier.”

“Yeah,” Shiv shook his head. “Like Legend. Your father’s a damned monster. And Adam.”

“What?”

“I’m still going to kick his ass down the line. For this and everything else. I’m stating it plainly for you. I’m not letting this shit go.”

The Gate Lord just stared. “Do you think you even can?”

“I’ll just have to keep dying and find out.”

Adam scoffed, but he clearly didn’t like what Shiv just said. “Go. Go, now. Finish the scouting run.”

Shiv let out a sigh. "Fine." But he briefly looked around him. "I'm going to probably take an alternative route instead of going straight over. I expect the Vicar's people to come investigating real soon.”

"Probably a good expectation," Adam nodded, agreeing. "Alright. Well..." Adam awkwardly finished, looked down, and licked his lips, before his expression softened. He  promptly patted Shiv on the shoulder. "Glad you're not dead for good."

Shiv chuckled. "Yeah, sure thing. Thanks for… coming to get me. I appreciate it.”

"I'll keep watching you," Adam said. Then he looked up as well. "More than just me will be watching you now, I think." Adam's expression, however, was wistful, hopeful, even joyful. That wasn't anything Shiv felt towards Roland Arrow.

They parted then. Adam vanished back into his dimensional pathway before it closed entirely, and Shiv launched himself into the air. He pulled his gravitic field, and he flung himself forward, sailing high into the sky. 

Trailing particulates of ash washed over his body. But as he accelerated, they burst apart, and as he climbed his Inertial Overdrive, he thundered with energy. Soon the horizon blurred towards Shiv, his bones fractured. But he needed to get out of here, he needed to get beyond this space, as building anxiety stretched inside of him. It grew more and more painful, more and more tight. 

He waited for Roland to strike him down now that Adam was gone. He waited for another of the arrows to descend from above. He waited, and Shiv prepared to spike himself more than ever. He tried to trigger one of the plagues he had stored in his body, but then he realized that piece was lodged in his old corpse. 

Shit, Shiv thought to himself, I really need to figure out how to give myself diseases without using the Court Leviathan as a flesh donor..

And as he burst through a layer of blackened clouds, a cocoon of searing heat and breaking ash peeled away from him like surface tension. Once more, the naked night sky greeted him. The glistening shards of the moon danced above, and in the distance, brilliant gems flashed and dimmed. Perhaps they were true stars, perhaps they were more of Roland's arrows. With how many scintillating constellations there were blanketing the sky above him, a sky pockmarked with clouds, Shiv couldn't be sure.

"Hey, Roland," he cried out, "if you listen to me, asshole, I'm not here to kill you or anything. The Omenborn curse died the day I did on Blackedge. You're welcome for that, by the way. You're also welcome for me actually helping your son out while you were fighting the things you call cows. I guess you couldn't spare a few arrows for your own boy, though."

A part of Shiv knew he was being petulant, foolish, even, for taunting someone so powerful. But he couldn’t let it go. The bastard blew him to pieces. Shiv didn't even have a chance to defend himself. 

Master Roland Arrow, Shiv sighed. He imagined himself having a chance in a fight against just another Master-Tier. Shiv thought he was going to show Roland the what-for when he got his Momentum Core. But now… 

Shiv couldn't help but laugh. He had been delusional, and Roland Arrow was bullshit. If he tried fighting Roland Arrow now, he would get killed in an instant.

But I'm still coming for your ass, Shiv thought to himself. I am going to punch you in the face, Roland. I am going to beat your ass someday. We’re going to have it out.

And then Shiv detonated his inertial sheath for the first time as he sped toward the Tidewall, toward Lost Angeles, toward a fast approaching horizon.

***

Back at Blackedge, atop Starhawk's Perch, Roland Arrow was shaking. The bulk of his minds fought on. The bulk of his minds were still dedicated to defense, to bombarding the literal tide of eldritch entities Vicar Sullain had summoned today. They were new creatures on the field—Strange, sinuous nightmares that consumed pockets of space.

And from those pockets leaked more of the Outside. More of the Outside that spontaneously died as Chronomancy arrows exploded into existence and lit up the night.

The system allowed the eldritch in right for some reason. The system wanted the vicar to have this power. Most mages—even Heroic Dimensionalists—couldn't reach the Outside so easily. 

Something was happening. The world was scheming for a grander were. Just like it always was.

But a part of Roland, that very foundation of who he was, that small bit of him that was utterly human, knelt within his personal chamber shaking. Knelt as his Psychomancer tried to fix whatever was broken inside of him, as his Biomancers gave what little bit of magic they had left to keep his heart from stopping.

"It's not you," Roland whispered, "it's not you, it's not me, it's not..."

"My lord, my lord," Chris, his personal Psychomancer, breathed. "What's wrong? What's happened? What have you seen?"

He stared at her. His mouth opened and closed several times, but even as he stared at her, he wasn't staring at her. He was staring at another scene. He was staring at his son standing next to the Omenborn…

Harlon Lowe's son… Vera Lowe's son.

Shiv. Shiv was beside Adam. And they looked…

They looked just like Harlon and Roland so many years ago. It was like a taunt inflicted across history.

And Roland couldn’t take it. He shouldn’t remember their faces. He shouldn’t remember—

"Chris," Roland whispered, "the memory blocks you put in me, they broke. I remember his face again, I remember her face again… I remember…”

Chris paled. “My lord, forgive me, I—”

Roland clenched his jaw and let out a breath. "My son is coming home to aid us, and I think our doom might be coming with him." He closed his eyes and looked up. Starhawk, is this the aid you promised me? Why… Why him…