II-58 Companions (II)

The world is hard. The system is a bastard. Things can get real bad. They’ve gotten bad for me. And if you’re going to be a Pathbearer of any worth, they’ll get bad for you.

And eventually, it will be too much for you. Most Pathbearers end up dead one way or another before they are driven to the breaking point, but the ones who make it past Adept… You’ll do it at least once. It’s why there are so many one-skill Master-Tiers in the world. It’s why most choose to stop pushing so hard after a certain point.

Because the struggle sometimes is too much. Because sometimes, the system takes more than it gives by far.

I’ve met people I would have described as iron. Iron-willed. Iron-skinned. Iron-hearted. But even iron has a breaking point. And I watched the ones I admire die over and over. Most campaigning Pathbearers have maybe a decade or two of heavy fighting in them. After that, better find a good Psychomancer, because the trauma builds up, the people you lose build up, and the system never lets up.

No matter how strong you are, it will find a way to beat you to your knees and shatter you. But the second part to this is that you don’t need to stay shattered. And you don’t need to be the only one fighting for you.

The first time me and her realized we loved each other was when we wandered off into the same glade. Why the same glade? Because it looked peaceful. And because after a pretty nightmarish campaign against the godsdamned orcs—after they snuck into our camp, captured our friends, and just… The screams. I’ll never forget the screams. I’ll never forget the bodies…

…

Me and my wife… We were in that glade because neither of us could sleep. I told her about my nightmares. And she told me about hers. And the pain didn’t get any better immediately—that’s not how it works. But you do get a bit stronger when you realize that someone else needs you not to break. And that you desperately need her not to break, either. Because if one of you falls, the other might follow.

Sometimes, broken pieces fit right together, and can stop a true collapse from happening.

-Memoirs of a Master-Tier War Mage

II-58

Companions (II)

Skill Gained: Berserk (Adept)

Berserk > 1

Dedicated mages usually don’t get the Berserk Skill. Some frontline Dynamancers or physical-enhancement Biomancers, perhaps, but they’re more mixed-role combatants. Psychomancers, however, practically never gain the Berserk Skill. Practically never because something broke inside Uva as she laid eyes on the broken, mutilated form of Shiv.

The sounds he made while the entity tortured him were inhuman—were bad enough that she had to silence a part of her own mind to stay focused. But as she commanded the Dreamtaker’s eldritch spawn to swarm and tear the Recollector apart, she saw Shiv clearly for the first time, and it felt as if someone shoved a burning blade into her heart.

She knew it was going to be bad. Uva thought she was ready to face anything. She was wrong.

Shiv resembled a large sack of bloody, screaming meat more than he did a person. His body was twisted and warped in so many unnatural ways that it took all she had to not puke all over her shield. 

“And so you see the inevitability of rigidity. You would have borne a similar mis-shape to his without your Physicality-power-change.” The Dreamtaker’s words glided across Uva’s mind while dozens of the ring-shaped eldritch entities she directed vanished from her awareness, diving into the past to strike at the temporal echoes of the Recollector. She commanded a core group of ten to stay close to her—to cover her and delay the Recollector if it noticed what she was doing. She couldn’t fully dive into any of their minds due to their temporal non-linearity, but she could still communicate with them while they remained in the present. And there were parts of them, like the Shoggoth, that did align with her.

Hate for one. Absolute, all consuming hatred for the Recollector.

She used that hate to guide them. And she felt that hate overcome her self-control as she drifted over the massive crater Shiv lay in.

“AWAY! AWAY! PAST IS MINE! STOP! STOP CONSUMING MY PAST!” the Recollector roared, as it spasmed and twitched in the air. Its tentacles lashed about, and it began to blink across time and space. Without Chronomancy, Uva had no ability to perceive the battle that was actually happening. But Shiv could.

But Shiv—

Uva groaned as she covered her mouth. Her horror and misery was contagious, as all the ten New-Dreamt she had guarding her began to let out vaguely human cries of anguish. Worse, there were things still inside Shiv. Things that twitched and writhed and pushed under his skin—struggling to deform his adamantine flesh. And there were other things in his mind—she could sense the mangled remains of his ego, and the vermin who constantly feasted on his mind, on his very being.

A storm of cold rage consumed Uva as Berserk took hold. She lost all sense of self-control as she dove into his mind without hesitation. She found the entities ripping at his sense of self. His mind was constantly mending, but the damage they inflicted… There would have been nothing left of anyone else.

These entities were without true physical form. Instead, they were contained within a series of discordant notes that crashed against her mind, that tried to inflict psychosis on her, so they could slip into her cracks as well. Unfortunately for them, Uva’s sense of self was nothing but violent, unstoppable rage, and every single strand of her Psychomancy flared with hateful intent.

And through it all, there was still a cold, calculated hand directing Uva on her offensive. Still just a sliver of rationality remaining. “This… is not how you break someone’s mind. Let me show you.”

They sang at her. She drove her strands directly into them, and flooded their minds with her hate, her rage. The entities grew louder from the anger she poured into them. But then they kept swelling, and the entities shrieked and wailed and ruptured into deflating notes as she overloaded them. But she didn’t only use her Psychomancy. Her single thread of rationality made her breach the threshold to the Outside again. She used her psychosis as a shield against madness, and unleashed the full power of her gaze. A torrent of brilliant changing colors flashed inside Shiv, and as she cast her light on the remaining entities in his body, they screamed, they tried to flee, but she drove them back to the Outside—to the Dreamtaker’s domain.

There, she witnessed as they were mauled and devoured by other entities of even greater strangeness. Strangeness Uva couldn’t yet comprehend. She didn’t care. She continued burning them with her glare, unleashing more and more color until her rage finally ran dry and the quiet voice within commanded her to stop.

Puppeteer of the Formless Strings > 112

Berserk > 3

Dreamtaker’s Gaze > 7

Shiv’s body stopped glowing. He wasn’t screaming anymore, either. But his mind… “Oh, Composer. Shiv, your mind… There’s no time… How am I supposed to fix you in time?”

He barely looked human from all the damage he sustained on the outside. Inside, it was even worse. But already, she could feel his mind starting to mend. The many broken pieces and badly mangled memories glided back toward each other of their own volition. A rush of hope passed into Uva. His mind regenerated. For whatever reason, his sanity and mental state always returned to a strong, stable baseline. Today, she was all too thankful for that. She moved the pieces back together as fast as she could.

Faintly, she realized two of her guards shot off to engage the Recollector—to draw its attention away and give her a chance to mend Shiv’s broken consciousness.

“Work fast, Seeker,” the Dreamtaker whispered. “The Recollector is cutting away pieces of itself. Surrendering singular pasts to preserve the other-many-wholes. It will tear-banish-strike at the New-Dreamt. Their colors are not bright enough to delay it forever. Get the enduring one together. He will fight. It is written into him. He will fight even if there is nothing else left.”

As Uva connected and wove the many fragments of Shiv back in place, she felt something from him. A reactive, intuitive warmth. A heavy, crushing happiness. The feelings drenched her Psychomancy, and she couldn’t help but laugh to herself in disbelief. “You impossible brute of a man…”

Two of her New-Dreamt crossed over from present to past. A moment before they did, she felt an impact as they intercepted some of the Recollector’s temporal echoes in a brutal collision.

“SEEKER! I CAN SEE YOU! SEE YOUR ECHOING TRAILS IN THE PAST CAN TASTE THE DREAMTAKER’S STENCH DEEP IN YOU! WILL NOT LET THE GLUTTON-THIEF OF THOUGHTS AND HUES HAVE YOU! MINE! FOR THE STRANGER! YOU ARE A VESSEL FOR THE STRANGER!”

Hearing the damned entity’s voice was like someone running a blade along the bone of her skull. Uva shuddered, but rallied as she continued her task. She reached out and pulled the largest pieces of Shiv back in place as all her remaining guardians broke away from her mana strands. They were all across time now, restraining the Recollector’s Chronomantic attacks by attacking its very past. 

To Uva’s relief—and astonishment—the fragments of Shiv’s mind started melting together and regenerating. It was unnatural; it was bullshit; it also wasn’t nearly fast enough for him to reach full coherence in time before the Recollector was on them. She watched the Recollector through Shiv’s eyes as it vanished and reappeared, skipping kilometers of distance at a time. She caught it ripping one of the New-Dreamt apart, pulling the lesser eldritch entities’ revolving rings from their bodies.

“I—hurts… Everything hurts…” Shiv groaned internally.

She winced as she felt his pain, his confusion. But there was something else there: Rage. A massive, enormous silo of rage that had been building in the depths of his being, magnified by all the torture he just endured. “I know. I’m sorry. I came—I should have come sooner. But I need you to listen and act. Alright? The one that hurt you is coming back for us. And I need you to stand and fight. Stand and—”

“Fight!” Shiv’s mind reacted instinctively—almost joyously. “Can’t remember… thing… Asshole! Hurt me! Fucker!” And without any prompting from Uva, Shiv exploded off the ground as his own Berserk triggered. His casual and sudden decision to charge the Recollector after all the trauma he sustained baffled her and caught her entirely off-guard.

It caught the entity off guard too, as he slammed into it hard enough to create another explosion of force and flame. The world shook. Even tethered to Shiv’s mind, Uva could barely keep up with what was happening. She was still Adept-Tier in Reflexes, boasting only a Flow of the Viperess Skill Evolution. A Master-Tier was usually a blur to her. With Berserk and Momentum Core, Shiv was moving beyond most Master-Tiers.

And then the Chronomancy came in, and she found herself unable to follow the resulting battle at all.

Best commit to fixing his mind first, she thought. Then, a discordant sound crashed against Shiv’s consciousness, and the parts that were healing started to fracture again. Uva responded immediately, binding and fixing what she could. “That, and stopping the Recollector from driving him deeper into madness.”

***

Berserk > 9

Adamantine Adaption > 138

Shiv didn’t know his own name. He couldn’t remember his own life. All he knew was that the ugly thing with a bunch of tentacles and eyes left him broken—but the dumb piece of shit forgot to finish the job for good.

Rage consumed Shiv. Absolute rage. All-gripping rage. But with rage came joy, for now there was an absence of pain and a comforting presence in his mind. He wasn’t alone. He knew that. Shiv just didn’t know who he was with—but he felt like he really liked them. And them being here just spiked his rage into new heights as he faintly remembered a woman screaming, remembered her dismemberment.

The air around him ignited a millisecond before he struck the entity dead on. Through it all, he sapped momentum instinctively, his speed spiking with every passing instant. Shiv struck the with a headbutt. The rest of Shiv’s body was still deformed and broken from the torture. He felt a misshapen sack of meat. He didn’t care. It didn’t matter. He would beat this thing to death using himself as a blunt instrument, and he was going to enjoy doing it.

He crashed into the entity while it was struggling with some kind of creature made up with rings. It spattered apart as Shiv’s face sheared clean through its body. Intense pain exploded through Shiv as he felt part of his jaw fracture from the sheer force of the impact. An explosion washed out over the world. A tide of force flung fire ahead of itself, deepening the crater at the very base of the gate.

Something cried out inside him to stay hidden—to use his Silhouette. Shiv reactive went transparent.

But the entity didn’t stay dead. Instead, an echo of it crossed over from a golden river. From… a retroactive river of time. It respawned, and swung a blade at Shiv. It cut fast. Faster than even Shiv while Berserk was active.

And missed. The blade went over his head. Shiv headbutted the entity again in its ugly palm-face. Several fingers snapped. The entity reeled back. Shiv felt a thundering pressure hit peak capacity inside him as he blasted through the creature, going so fast, he carried with him a tide of devastating force.

Silhouette > 96

Momentum Core > 96

For the second time, the entity disintegrated. But Shiv kept going. He tore the entirety of Gate Theborn, and flames clung to his body as a hurricane followed in his wake. The ground beneath cracked asunder, parting as a spreading fracture, unzipped from his speed. As Shiv’s Momentum Core finally went empty, pulled his gravitic field and launched him back toward the fight as he started slamming his fists together.

“HOW?” the entity screamed. From afar, Shiv could see the entity trying to move, but its echoes were pinned in place by a series of ring-shaped creatures—like the one the entity ripped apart earlier. Dozens of the entity’s temporal clones were clenched tight within the ring-shaped creatures, and more importantly, its retroactive rivers were also anchored in position as well. The entity began shifting its trapped echoes over to its main body as it killed the ring-monsters over and over, trying to free its own past. “BROKE YOU! OVER AND OVER! BROKE YOUR MIND! BROKE YOUR BODY! ONLY SOUL ENDURED! HOW ARE YOU STILL FIGHTING! ANOMALY! ABOMINATION! MONSTER!”

The entity’s wails echoed across the entirety of Gate Theborn, and Shiv realized he could hear a bit of Confriga in its voice. Confriga? Why did he remember that name? Why did he hate that name? It didn't matter. Nothing but hurting and killing the entity mattered. That was why he was here. That was what he was going to do.

Then, there came another voice inside him, begging him to heal and arm himself now that he had a moment to breathe. “Shiv—get yourself ready. We have a plan, but we need you to keep the entity contested and distracted.”

“Gonna kill it!” Shiv growled, bloodlust overtaking his thoughts. And that was the downside to Berserk: You didn’t get to keep your rationality while it was active, and Shiv was very, very pissed about all the pain the entity put him through.

“Shiv! No! Listen to me!”

Part of him tried. Tried as hard as that little broken piece of his consciousness could. But the battle-madness gripped Shiv deep. Bloodlust and muscle memory guided his intuition. “Rip! Rip! Cut! Dice! I am the chef! You are the food! Eat you! Eat you for benefits! Punch you with my wounds! Punch!”

A feeling of absolute incredulity exploded inside him. And a second voice joined the first. Shiv was too busy shouting at the entity to properly hear the new speaker, though.

“Oh, Composer, how am I—yes! Yes, Adam, I’m trying! What do you mean, try harder! He’s been driven mad! Stop coaching me on my task! Focus on yours—is the tower cleared? No? Then focus on your duty and leave me to mine!”

“Punch!” Shiv growled. Faintly, he recalled hitting people with his injuries. He could feel his injuries… Feel his body. He just needed to focus on moving his injuries into— A small wyrm splashed into existence with a flare of crimson mana from Shiv’s intent. It burrowed into him, consuming the many injuries deforming his body. Parts of Shiv snapped back into place. Most of his pain vanished between bites, but the left side of him still hurt constantly. The wyrm glowed around his person as the fattened length of its body gleamed with crystalline chunks. It was nearly a full meter longer than him now, but he could still feel it. He was going to smash the entity with it.

He wanted to say something, but lost track of his own words and just started howling incoherently instead.

Shiv smashed into the entity for a second time, just as it drove a blade through another of those ring-things. It let out a mind-splitting shriek of annoyance as Shiv flung his massive wyrm into its back. A mana explosion consumed them both—and Shiv took the opportunity to seize his enemy’s sword arm in an elbow lock.

It tried to move its retroactive rivers, to use its Chronomancy mana against him directly. It couldn’t. Not with all twenty-four of its remaining rivers locked in place by the ring-monsters holding its echoes in place. It tried whipping at Shiv but missed more than it hit as he started headbutting.

“STOP! INSOLENT! WRONG-NATURED! MONSTER! ABOMINATION! WILL BREAK YOUR SOUL THIS TIME! BREAK YOU FOR—”

And then the entity let out an agonized wail of torment that sounded like music to Shiv’s ears. He barely noticed the near-transparent Psychomancy threads buried inside the entity’s mind, injecting it with something. He started hitting the entity as hard as he could, and somewhere between his second and tenth headbutt, just as his Momentum Core was on the verge of fullness, another piece of his broken mind slipped back into place.

Time.

Shiv could wrestle with time as well.

A golden layer of armor manifested over Shiv as time slowed—then stopped altogether as he pulled on the entity’s right arm with all his strength. His gravitic field exploded. The entity’s arm was shredded and dismembered. Shiv batted it aside and drove his head into the entity’s hand-face again. His Momentum Core rumbled inside him. Shiv unleashed every bit of force he built up right into the body with a charging knee.

Moving through frozen time was a struggle. Shiv still impacted with enough force to obliterate the entity. The beginnings of a massive shockwave pulsed out around the being but didn’t move any further than that. It respawned—but this time it shot over to one of its non-trapped echoes a kilometer away.

“DREAMTAKER!” The entity screamed, clutching its head. “AWAY! GET AWAY! MINE! NOT YOURS! FOR THE STRANGER! NOT YOUR COLORS! KEEP YOUR COLORS AWAY!”

A low, rumbling laugh sounded from inside Shiv’s skull. “No. Go on, unbreaking one. Indulge yourself. Have fun.”

Shiv allowed time to move at a trickle. His armor softened just as the first cracks formed. The fractures continued crawling across his temporal shell, but the damage occurred far slower than Shiv expected. It was also far easier to surge across the world when he allowed time to progress at a slight pace. It was the distance between sprinting through mud rather than solid stone.

He closed on the entity in seconds. In that time, his armor grew ever more brittle, but Shiv didn’t care. He didn’t care that there were still many more echoes he had to kill before the entity stayed dead, or that it was shooting beams of accelerated time at him from its chest-eyes that he had to avoid. Shiv was moving. It was pinned and slow. Soon, he was going to get his hands on it. Soon, he was going to be bloody, angry, and joyous all at the same time.

Even in pain and madness, life was glorious.

Won’t have this… any other way…

The entity sang. A spike of pain crashed into Shiv’s mind and something broke inside him. Shiv’s violent psychosis spiraled into delusion as he believed himself to be invincible.

Shiv slammed into the entity with a final spike of his gravitic field. Parts of his golden armor shattered free from his body, but he would hold time at a trickle for as long as he could. It tried to center its beams on him, but Shiv spiked upward and then back down, mangling the large hand it had in place of a head. If Shiv was running through mud, the entity was submerged in it. Shiv blasted from point to point, slamming into the entity from above and behind. Its body folded and ruptured. It let out a howling song that tore at Shiv’s sanity, but he locked it in place from behind and began to drive brutal knees into its sides, filling his core again.

Strider of the Unbending Path > 113

Striking Proficiency > 41

Just as he felt his temporal shell shatter, he triggered his Momentum Core again as he grappled the entity—driving it straight down into the air in a plunging suplex. He drove its hand-head into the ground as the air combusted around them again. The sound barrier broke. The entity cut at Shiv and missed. It slashed at him wildly with its tentacles and missed. Shiv drilled the entity into the ground and left a tunnel two kilometers deep into the bedrock of Gate Theborn. As his Momentum Core finally emptied, Shiv started beating the again, elbowing and stomping its badly brutalized body, hammering it deeper and deeper into the earth—

And then it caught his right elbow and squeezed hard. Shiv’s Adamantine Adaption was beyond hardened to physical trauma by this point. It failed to break anything with sheer force, but still pushed him back, even as he continued battering it with his free limbs. Then, its curled tentacles slashed back. They cracked against his back but didn’t do any harm. Then, they started wrapping around his body, and where Shiv’s durability prevailed, his strength proved insufficient against the entity.

That didn’t stop him biting one of the tentacles before it could claim his left arm. A good thing too, because the entity awkwardly thrust out with Absence, seeking to pierce his chest just then. The blade moved. It sank finger’s length into Shiv and got stuck. He howled and caught it with his Magebreaker.

Shiv gauntlet rattled and cracked. The sword responded the same way.

The brief magical struggle ended as the entity hit Shiv jaw with its free-hand.

Shiv’s head snapped back. The world spun and shook, but Shiv managed to stay conscious. He did, however, get punched out of the tunnel he made, out from the collapsing underside of Gate Theborn, sailing through the air until his back finally crashed against the top of a building. Shiv pulled hard with his gravitic field before he traveled any further. The bottom section of the descending tower he slammed into burst apart, but the rest of the building was preserved. As were any of the living inside.

Then the entity came blasting toward him out from the deep pit they left in the ground, its many tendrils lashing wide. In the brief time Shiv was stunned, the entity managed to slay most of the ringed-monsters holding its rivers in place. Shiv could see twenty freely moving rivers now. Rivers of retroactive time that could be used against him again. Rivers it commanded to spiral around its body, ensuring that he would have to clash with its Chronomancy should his Strider ever get the chance to regenerate.

Didn’t matter. Shiv snarled like a wild animal as he shot toward his adversary. He accelerated, slamming his fists together, building up momentum. It shot toward him, its eyes glaring with abject loathing and frustration. It sang that mind-tearing song again, but unlike when time was frozen, Shiv felt something harden over his consciousness just as something inside him began to tear.

Two voices called out to Shiv. He didn’t listen. His Berserk was still running hot—and it ran hot until another section of his ego fused back in place. Anger. Anger was a resource he could use. He could spend all his anger right now to empower his Berserk! Make his rage absolutely unstoppable for an explosive instant.

More damage! More hurt! Shiv screamed internally.

Shiv triggered his Master of Rage Feat. He fed Berserk his anger. His physical capabilities exploded beyond measure. For a single instant, he went beyond Master-Tier in terms of Physicality, Reflexes, and Toughness.

The entity tried striking him with its retroactive rivers. It tried lashing him with its tentacles. Most missed because his Silhouette. The rest weren’t fast enough. Shiv manifested his mostly-shattered time-armor just before he collided with the entity. He threw a colossal left uppercut. It got its sword in place to block.

Three things broke at once.

His Magebreaker struck the Absence and split apart on Shiv’s hand. The sword screamed—and then snapped in half as he punched through it—punched through the entity itself. Then, Shiv’s temporal shell burst apart again. The entity died. And respawned ten meters away. Shiv’s anger ran empty. His Berserk ended. He managed a single confused blink before it smashed into him.

They exploded through the plaza, and as they climbed higher, Shiv saw an entire district of Gate Theborn crumble and plunge down to the utterly ruined bedrock below. He dropped an elbow on the entity’s face, but it caught his limbs with its tentacles and pulled him close before slamming a palm into his chest.

Silhouette > 95

A shockwave rattled Shiv. Three of his ribs fractured. He spat at the entity and blasted down using his field, pulling the entity along. Yet, it clutched him tight and held him in place even as he spiked his field in all random directions, trying to get free. It drew itself closer to him, looming over him as he cried out with effort. Once more, it clutched his face and sang—sang its mind-breaking song as loud as it could.

But Shiv’s thoughts were still hardened somehow, and he only felt mildly disoriented instead. “Godsdamn,” he cursed. “Is there… a skill for Shit-Singing?”

It hit him. Over and over. The world shook. Things inside Shiv broke. Every time it struck the left side of his body, he howled with misery. Then, after an eternity of descending blows, the entity broke one of its fingers punching him and let out a melodic croon of pain. It flinched back, clutching its hand. Shiv laughed but gurgled and vomited blood at all over the entity. It took practically everything he had to keep his head up after. Glaring was still easy though. “Funny… I can’t… I can’t remember much… But you… Did you always hit this soft?”

Adamantine Adaption > 139

“Enough! DONE WITH YOU! DONE! GOING TO HOLLOW YOU PROPERLY THIS TIME! NO MORE STRUGGLE! AND NO MORE SEEKER INSIDE!”

It reached a hand around Shiv’s head. And then a feeling hit him—instinct took hold again and he dodged.

He dodged inside himself somehow.

The world went gray. A shroud of white and red consumed Shiv. Someone fell out from inside him with a cry. Then there was a woman sobbing beside him, her expression manic—her mind badly wounded. To top it all off, Shiv felt colder with every passing instant, and a brightness lit up within the entity—and the woman that just dropped out from inside him.

A woman that entity caught by the neck with an outstretched hand.

Primal panic consumed Shiv. He shot down and slammed into the entity. Only for it to turn—the golden eyes lining its chest burning bright. He struck it—and then found himself cast back in time while it continued moving through the present with the woman still in its hands. It drove another blow into Shiv’s leftmost rib and caught him before he could sail off from the force with its tentacles.

Then, time resumed. The woman beside him gasped. Anger swelled inside Shiv, and he fed it into his Gravitic Wrestler, smashing himself into the entity and knocking Absence out of its hand—but then it sang. It sang, and he screamed as his mind started to unravel. The gate’s mana core shone right beside them, and the pain made Shiv’s perception tear until even light stopped making sense to him.

“Ah. Soft. Pliable. Thought-tissues vulnerable without Seeker too—”

And then the singing stopped as the woman let out a piercing cry and unleashed a blast of colors into the entity from her eyes.

***

Parallel Thinking > 64

Flow of the Viperess > 72

Puppeteer of the Formless Strings > 111

Dreamtaker’s Gaze > 9

Uva gave up trying to figure out what was happening while Shiv fought and just reacted. She couldn’t keep up with a Berserking Master-Tier bruiser with Momentum Core constantly filled; she couldn’t keep up with the even faster Recollector; and there was no hope of her figuring out what was happening when either of them wielded their Chronomancy against each other.

Entire sections of time were missing from her awareness. At several points, she was trying to put Shiv back together, only to discover that the part she just shoved back in place was damaged again, and that he was smashing the Recollector deeper and deeper into the earth. Then, they were back up in the sky, and suddenly, she was falling out of Shiv after briefly weaving her mana strands through his mind, helping him maintain his mental structure against the entity’s unraveling song.

Now, after another patch of missing time, she found herself clutched in the Recollector’s hand while Shiv growled, held tight by all ten of the eldritch being’s tentacles. It started to sing just then, and Shiv’s growl turned to screams. But its attention was away from her, and the Dreamtaker took the opportunity to whisper to her.

“Show it your gaze. It cannot escape the colors. And it cannot escape my touch.”

And so Uva did. She let out a cry as she pierced the veil with her sight, opening a wound to the Outside. A blast of brilliant colors surged out from her eyes and crashed into the entity like a rush of current during a flood. It flinched. And then it screamed as a swarm of enormous, feathered tongues punched through its body. The Recollector ignited with prismatic flame as the tongues incinerated themselves. While it was stunned, Uva cast every last mana strand she had into its mind.

She expected to bounce off a hardened layer of Magical Resistance, but instead sank deep into its alien, byzantine consciousness with ease. Before she could cast herself into its mind, she felt its hand close tight around her skull. Uva gasped as she was squeezed—and then kept getting squeezed as her head was compressed across several new dimensional vectors that most people simply couldn’t access. Her face curved inward. Her hair and forehead elongated into a long, flapping strip as more of her head was displaced. She accidentally whipped the tip of her forehead into Shiv’s eye and heard him grunt in surprise. The entity closed its fist entirely—but it was still only affecting three dimensions of space.

That was the limitations of using Confriga’s body as a vessel. It needed to apply pressure across at least two more dimensions before it could actually crush Uva.

But by then it was too late. She cast herself into its mind and tore at whatever she could reach. She gasped as the sheer strangeness of its non-linear thoughts crashed into her. It screamed because even non-linear thoughts and memories could be torn to pieces. Then, within its mind, she opened her gaze again, and the Dreamtaker laughed as more of its New-Dreamt ripped into the Recollector from the inside.

Uva would have gone longer—but then a patch of time went missing from her mind as she toppled out from the entity into open air. She fell from the sky for a full second as she noticed a corrosive rift open in the space above her.

Adam! She realized. Adam had just hit the entity somehow. But where was—

And then two impossible strong arms wrapped around her, and her fall stopped. She looked up at Shiv, and he looked like a bloody, confused mess. But still, he was better than he was… however long ago.

Chronomancy is bullshit, Uva complained internally.

“We know each other, don’t we?” Shiv muttered, sounding lost.

Right. His mind was still mostly ruined. He probably would have stayed broken for far longer if she hadn’t moved the pieces back together.

“Yes,” she breathed, summoning her shield to give her something to stand on in the air. “Quite well. But we need to—”

A shape blinked into existence just beside her. And then it vanished as a corrosive smashed into it. The Recollector shrieked and vanished as a Necromantically charged Veilpiercer punched through its chest just as its blade came an inch from Shiv's neck. It appeared again—but then so did an arrow. And this continued all across Gate Theborn. 

Everywhere the Recollector manifested across time, it found one of Adam’s arrows waiting for it.

“What’s happening?” Shiv asked.

“I’m… not entirely sure,” Uva replied. But then, she caught sight of a shape high in the air, and his wings burned with fiery glory. His arms were ten, and each blow he fired was tinged with the decay of Necromancy, and tore across paths unseen.

The entity screamed. A few times it blinked out to strike at Adam. Never once did it manage to get close.

It was faster than the Young Lord by far, but it seemed as if his arrows always arrived ahead of time.

She reached out to him with a mana strand, and he responded with a gasp of absolute terror. It didn’t in his posture due to his sheer focus. He was always firing, but inside, he was being torn apart by the very sight of the entity. “Uva! Uva! My mind—breaking! I can feel—”

She stitched the tears inside him back together and bound each of them to each other as a telepathic network was re-established for their team. Shiv shivered. “Who… who’s that…”

“Whose that?” Adam cried. Two more of its arrows passed through beside Uva and Shiv, striking the entity at two different intervals of time. She could feel how much strain his mind was under trying to guess the Recollector’s next location… But he was doing it. He was divining the exact position of his enemy every time. “Did he just say who’s that? Bloody hells, how bad is his mind?”

And just then, a loud shriek sounded as the entity reappeared over the remaining districts of Gate Theborn. Shiv’s breath caught as he saw something she couldn’t. A flicker of faint gold shivered around him. Chronomancy. She was starting to hate Chronomancy.

“TIRED! TIRED OF THIS! TIRED OF YOU! KILLED ENOUGH OF MY PAST! KILLED ENOUGH OF WHAT IS!” Several of Adam’s corrosive arrows smashed into it, but it didn’t dodge this time. The foul, green energies of Necromancy exploded over the entity’s body, but it didn’t scream. Instead, she heard Confriga wailing its stead. “Damage this vessel. Break it! DON’T CARE ANYMORE! LESSER PRIZE! LOWER PRIZE! YOU!” It pointed at Shiv. “UNBREAKING VESSEL! AND SEEKER BESIDES! WILL GIFT YOU TO STRANGER! WILL GIFT YOU AND KILL THE ARCHER!”

“EAT SHIT AND DIE!” The Young Lord shouted from afar, the heat in his voice masking just how terrified he was.

Dozens of Necromancy tipped Veilpiercer’s blasted into the entity’s body. Cracks formed over him. Cracks formed as the body spasmed.

“NO!” Confriga cried out. “YOU PROMISED! I WAS TO GET ETERNAL—”

An arrow crashed into the entity’s head, but Confriga burst apart into an outline of festering decay as he plunged down. But from his soul-withered husk hatched a new shape. A colossal shape of so many limbs, so many eyes, and a titanic ten-fingered head that stared at Uva with baleful hate.

“U-Uva,” Shiv muttered. Another piece of his mind snapped back in place. “Your name is… And—” His expression hardened, but she could see the unease in his eyes. “Cast yourself into Adam’s mind. Do it. Now!”

She wanted to hesitate. She didn’t. She cast herself across and—

And both she and Adam lost another patch of time as the true form of the Recollector and Shiv slammed into one another.