II-57 Companions (I)

There's going to be a time when you want to kneel. There's going to be a time when you're so badly beaten and shaken you want nothing more than just to give up. You'll be so tired that you'll do anything to take a final gasp of breath. You'll lift your visor and take an arrow to the eye just to get a lung full of air. There will be a time when every muscle fiber in your body is spent, when you have nothing left, when your magic is completely strained.

There will be a time, and in these times, you're going to look at the people beside you. You're going to see the same expression on their faces, and they'll see it on yours, and in that moment something special will happen. The special thing is that you're either going to turn—you're gonna face the enemy, you're gonna die doing it because you can't let them down. You can't let your war-kin down. Or you're going to all break. You're gonna break together, and that'll be it.

But I don't see people who break in this course. I've been hard on you. I've tried to treat you like soldiers, like real field soldiers, but it's not something that can easily teach. It's not something you just become through some practice and mock battles. But I'll tell you this much, over the course of the year, I've seen you grow. Some of you from incompetence to decent Pathbearers, some of you from reckless to focused and disciplined, some of you take from ignorant to well-rounded and aware. Growth, growth and the willingness to learn from each other, that's why you're gonna fight.

I won't bullshit you, it's going to hurt. When this moment comes, when that breaking point comes, it's gonna hurt. But I've seen you at the breaking point over and over again. If you didn't fold here, I don't think you're gonna fold later. But hold on to this. Hold on to the feeling, hold on to the expression on the comrade's face and know that you are fighting for more than yourself, always.

You’re all good kids. I can’t promise how long you’ll all live. But I can promise you won’t go to the grave hating yourselves, thinking that you ran.

-Captain Harry Irons, TacStrat 101, Phoenix Academy

II-57

Companions (I)

Uva woke from the grip of a torturous nightmare with a cry of terror. She couldn’t remember what she was dreaming about. Her mind felt raw and ravaged. Her body felt loose and limp and—

It was then Uva realized she was flat and thin as a silk bedsheet. The Umbral Psychomancer’s mind reeled. Memories hammered back into her. Of the entity, of Shiv, and of the voice that whispered to her in their moment of absolute desperation. A voice that she could still hear murmuring inside her eyes, with its power nested within her very flesh. But there was another noise as well: ragged gasps. Someone was trying to stop sobbing. Adam! Adam was trying to stop sobbing.

Uva’s insides twisted as she forced herself to inflate. For a beat, she didn’t know if she could, but her body responded to her, remembering the exact shape and dimensions she used to have. As she returned to her original state, Uva felt the uncanny changes brought upon her by her Master-Tier Physicality Skill Evolution. It felt like she had a strange level of control over ever part of her body, and that she could twist and reshape herself at a whim. She tried doing that on instinct, and managed to overinflate her head to an absurd degree. The damaged remnants of the armor around her neck felt tight, but it didn’t impede her breathing either.

What in the Composer’s infinite majesty did I just get.

Non-Euclidean Morphology > 101

With a brief effort, Uva returned to her original state and pinched her flesh. Her skin and body felt the same as before. Yet, with a flex of her new “muscles,” she managed to fold her head backward unnaturally—even sink it into her body. The control she had over her shape now was uncanny. She could bend and deform in ways that would cripple or kill most other people without any difficulty.

Uva stared down at herself. Her arms and legs were exposed in places. Her chestplate was cracked and her Arachnae Order uniform was exposed between the gaps. She looked around and found herself inside the teleportation anchor they used as their base of operations.

Leu, Uva winced. She saw the Guardshead die. It was so sudden, brutal, and unnatural that none of them could have done anything. And that filled her with a cold dread. Shiv…. Shiv is still fighting the—

And then she heard him. Shiv was screaming. There was so much pain in his cries that she choked. Her body tensed with trauma and discomfort, and she clamped her emotions down using a mana strand before it could compromise her rational thinking. They couldn’t afford that right now—she didn’t have time to be traumatized, she needed to get back into the fight. They all needed to get back in the fight. Shiv was buying time for them. Now, they needed to make it worth it.

“Stop—stopstop, please, I can’t—just stop please…” Uva turned and found Adam clutching his head, whimpering to himself. He was openly sobbing, and his mind—Composer, his mind was in a wretched state. She cast one of her Psychomancy threads into him and let out a moan of sympathetic pain. If she was traumatized, Adam was near the point of insanity. The entity tore his mind to pieces—Uva rescued slaves who endured unspeakable tortures at the hands of the First Blood, and most of them weren’t nearly as psychologically wounded as Adam.

A roar sounded from Shiv. Followed by a heavy impact. But the screaming didn’t stop. Uva sealed away another portion of her mind. She didn’t want to know what the entity was doing to him—she refused to know. Uva would do everything she could to mend his mind after. If they won this fight. They needed to win this fight.

Valor lay scattered across the ground beside Can Hu. Both of them were unresponsive. Overhead, the Graven Cage containing the Animancy Core crackled quietly in the dim ambiance. The Aviary owl, meanwhile, was listening. She immediately made the spy go to sleep before she did anything else.

“Adam,” Uva said, as she worked on his memories. The damage he sustained was severe, but the good thing was she knew the source. She sealed away a good portion of his near term memories—every glimpse and gaze he laid on the entity. It horrified her to realize that his Magical Resistance didn’t protect him at all, but then again, this entity wasn’t exactly magic. It was… wrong.

“What is magic?” A being spoke to Uva using her own voice, its presence lurking within Uva’s very gaze. “Your magic is given by the system. A reshaping of what is. Synthesis. Regeneration of patterns. And no more. You have not perceived the true novelties and creations. We are beyond the pattern. We are above it. And so it hurts you to behold us.”

“Dreamtaker,” Uva said, with clenched teeth. She used her Psychomancy to replace her utter terror with cold fury as best she could. “That is your name? Why did you aid me? What do you want?”

“To see you flourish, Seeker of Eldest Mysteries. You are… So enduring sane. So much control and understanding of how to maintain your own mental architecture. Mind is laced with cold focus. Cold focus hiding warmth and loss and want and so much more. There are so many things we can show each other. So much love to exchange.”

Despite everything, Uva was still Uva. She scoffed silently. “Love? I am unavailable. I am courting someone else right now, and have little interest to expand my desires.”

“Yes… The unbreaking one… No. Wrong. He breaks. But he restores. He returns. He mends and endures. Does not stay broken. Self-bearing pillar. I considered him when he touched my book. An unyielding vessel would have been useful, but he is rigid. Brutal. Defiant. Not an architect. Not a mind-dancer with the precision of a seamstress.”

“U-Uva?” Adam gasped as Uva quarantined the last of the malignant memories. She knelt down beside him, and examined his face. “I thought—I thought you were…” He slammed into her, holding her in a desperate embrace as he shuddered.

Uva reciprocated, and tightened her hold as another deafening bellow sounded from above. 

She wouldn’t think about what the entity was doing to Shiv. She wouldn’t.

After a moment of comfort, she broke the hug, pushing Adam back and making him look at her. His expression remained wretched. Shame and self-loathing burned inside his mind, and he couldn’t meet her gaze.

“This one… so sweet. So broken. He couldn’t do at all. A pity. But perhaps a fine outcome. I feel the touch of the Starhawk radiating from his soul. To claim him would have demanded much.”

Uva ignored the Dreamtaker as Adam whispered. “I… I ran. I left him. I left him behind with that… thing.”

“Adam,” Uva said, her voice firm but gentle. “I need you to focus. Shiv told us what he was planning. Now, we make use of the time he bought for us. We find a way to kill that thing and help Shiv.”

“Kill that thing?” Adam hissed. “Can it even be killed? It—I don’t even know what it did—how it did. There was nothing we could do! Nothing!” He clutched his throat and swallowed. “I still—I can still feel it pulling at my head. My bones—Shiv saved me… And I just left him with that thing.”

“Adam!” Uva snapped. She jolted his mind with a surge of Psychomancy and drew his focus to her. “I know. I know. The feelings you have are not wrong. But you are not wielding them right. I need you to focus. I need you to stand with me and come up with a strategy.”

“I don’t know—” Adam’s face contorted in pain. “I don’t… I don’t know if I can face it again. I don’t know. I’ll—I’ll need to use Seer of Horizons to study and…. I looked at it and my mind—”

“I can keep your mind together. I will.” Uva swallowed back her own discomfort. “It will be painful. But I will not let you go mad. Do you trust me?”

Adam hesitated, and he looked at her. For a long hard moment, he just studied her. “Yes. More than I trust even myself right now.”

“And I feel the same,” Uva said. “I cannot do what you do. I cannot watch the entity from afar, and I don’t—I don’t know what to do either. But together maybe—” Another guttural roar of anguish, Uva closed her eyes and forced herself not to think about the torture being inflicted on Shiv. “Together we can do this. We have to. He needs us. He gave himself for us. Again. Again. Please. I cannot save him alone.”

***

Uva’s eyes were a kaleidoscope of color. Colors mesmerizing. Colors strange. Colors Adam couldn’t comprehend. But as a single tear rolled down her right eye, Adam fought his way through the terror that gripped him.

The entity… Even with its appearance and the things it did to him repressed by Uva, just thinking about it made Adam want to break and run. To renounce ever being a Pathbearer and retreat into seclusion. How could such a thing exist? And how could he be so helpless, so hopeless against it? How could he call himself a Pathbearer now that he abandoned his brother-in-arms.

And through it all, the system was mocking him. It was mocking all of them. It made Shiv the only one capable of confronting the entity head-on by granting him Chronomancy. But he couldn’t beat it alone. It gave Uva the only one among with the psychological capacity to resist the entity’s aberrant nature, but she still couldn’t reach or affect its Chronomancy-guarded mind. And Adam… He felt useless. He felt hopeless. And a searing rage boiled inside his gut as he finally regained enough coherence to look at his newest notifications.

Select a Skill to Evolve to Master-Tier

Bowslinger > 96

Wings of the Starhawk > 98

Seer of Horizons > 115

Veilpiercer  > 109

Tactical Overseer > 81

Skill Gained: Divination 1 (Adept)

Skill Gained: Necromancy 1 (Adept)

He remembered when he got the skill. The skill he always wanted so bad. He was trying to get the thing to stop hitting Shiv. Adam strained his Awareness as hard as he could, guessing where the entity might be as he pulled at his bow over and over, his vambrace crackling like never before—but all of his fucking arrows vanished from existence. And then something was tearing him apart again. He remembered… He remembered the cold touch of death again. For a few moments, he drifted close to the edge. That place of no return.

Uva’s magic tightened around his mind and stopped him from collapsing into a panic attack, but Adam still dry heaved.

And now, every few seconds, the entity was hurting Shiv. Gods, the screams. Make it stop. Make… Adam managed to control his himself before he began another despair spiral. I have to make it stop. I need to go back for him. There’s no one else but me and Uva. Valor… Can Hu… I don’t even know if they’re still alive.

The ancient Pathbearer’s skull was cracked and leaking some kind of magic. Can Hu’s body constantly whined from the damage it sustained.

It was just him and Uva.

He stared at his skills notifications and drew in a long, ragged breath. “It’s just a bastard.”

“What?” Uva said.

“The system. Do you think it enjoys this? Enjoys our pain and misery?” She didn’t have an answer. Adam continued. “Divination. I have the Divination Skill. Right now. All my life, I wanted… It was something that my mother had. I wanted to be something like her. And now. It gives this to me now.” Adam laughed bitterly. “It’s like being thrown a knife after torture. It’s sculpting us. Or hoping that we die. And the Necromancy. Why…”

But Adam knew why. The system rarely did something without reason. Everything was to facilitate more struggle, more death and toil. Slowly, he turned to regard the Graven Cage drifting above him, and he remembered alternative plans they were discussing. Including the potential to cast the cage through the third gateway and detonate it within Vulketh if they were truly desperate. Or if Confriga tried to get reinforcements.

There were risks with the act, but it probably would have worked without fully destabilizing the gate, as the blast would be contained within another dimension. And with that thought, the beginnings of a desperate plan began to form in Adam’s mind. “The Animancy Core,” he gasped. He was still raw of mind and broken of spirit, but there was a direction now. A fragile strand of hope against the uncanny creature they were fighting. “If… We need to get the core across into Vulketh, then the entity at the same time. And then we detonated it. I find a way to destabilize a cage. Somehow. I… Godsdamn the system, this is why it gave me Necromancy. So I can do this. So I can examine how to do this without Valor.”

Uva went quiet as she stared at the core. He could feel her plucking at his memories, studying his thoughts.

“I don’t know if it can work,” Adam admitted. “I don’t know if anything can kill this thing. I barely understand anything about the entity, but it is the only thing I can think of. Nothing we do has even affected it. Shiv is the only one that managed to hurt it, and now—”

Shiv howled out again, and the pain carried by his voice was particular severe, this time. 

Adam clamped his hands against his ears as Shiv grew silent again, but Uva’s expression nearly sent him into another spiral. She was right. There was no more time for this self-loathing misery bullshit. They needed to come up with something, and right now.

Maybe Shiv could endure the torture, but Adam wasn’t going to be able to stay sane if he kept hearing those screams.

“We—shit!” Adam snarled. “I have Shiv drop the obsidian tower on the third gateway. It’s blocked. We’ll need to get that opened again. I—we need to make sure the cage is in position. The other side is nothing but a sea of molten metal—aside from the extended elevator shaft. I’ll need to see if we can hide the cage there. But we need to get the entity there somehow. We still need Shiv. He is the only one that can pin it—who can physically contend with its strength and Chronomancy long enough. We need to save him from this bloody thing first, but… but how?”

And then, a voice sounded out from Uva—but she wasn’t speaking.

***

“The bomb will not be enough,” the Dreamtaker whispered within Uva. “The Recollector is a creature born from a distended, mutilated coupling between the Stranger and the concept of time. It must be slain until a single instance remains. Or it must attacked by something like it. Something that exists across time as well…”

Uva noticed Adam’s confusion, and she shifted her recent memories over to him. He reacted as if he had just been punched. “There’s… there’s another one of those things inside you?”

“Across,” the Dreamtaker clarified. “To see is to experience is to be a pathway. And Uva, the Seeker of Eldest Mysteries, has gazed far. Gazed deep. Gazed and danced in the mind of a ‘lesser eldritch.’ If that is the noise-name you bestow on us.”

Adam paled. “What—what do you—”

“I am here to help you. I want to help you. I want you all to flourish and grow and continue to dance. To continue seeing out from the Seeker. A novel moment is transpiring here. A true moment unlike anything ever before. It feeds me. Feeds my dreams. I am made more with these tastes. And I can offer many things in return. Power. Blessings. Knowledge. Colors beyond imagining.”

None of that meant anything to Uva right then. She only wanted one thing. “The entity. This Recollector. You can help us kill it.”

“I can give you the means. I can show you things. But it must die by your hands. Reached through you earlier. Can do much more than that, but you are still building yourself, Seeker. Too much and you will crack for good, before you learn to weave the madness into enlightenment. The tragedy of losing a good mind-dancer will make those bound to me sorrow-weep. But I can give you something that is enough. Something you can tap into. Bridge that unknown and strike at the Recollectors mind. Strike across the past. I can teach you where to stare. What to see, how to thing to call them close to your gaze.”

“Them?” Uva asked, her expression grim. Her heart was trembling inside her chest, and she feared what might be asked of her. “I am to serve as your gateway again?”

“No. We are already here. But the veil is too thick and hard often. Needs someone with true insight and history-legend-magic infused inside them to breach the fabric. To bridge the pattern with the Great and Colorful Outside so long as they can maintain their mind—and serve as Beholder.”

“Me,” she breathed.

“Yes. Already have the gaze. Had the insight. I just reached back. I fed you a color and gifted you a place—a pattern place in the wonderful chaos. Felt your potential when you didn’t break. Now, your eyes reside in my nearness. And there are many of mine new-dreamt creations that will seek to feed on one of the Stranger’s offspring. To feed on a thing trapped in moments before. They linger close to you. And they wait. Stare. Focus your insight like before. Look into what is. And then look beyond it. Look… See us…”

Uva’s eyes flared with colors beyond her expression. Beautiful colors. Incredible colors. Colors that lashed and mended a mind all at once.

“Uva,” Adam breathed, “I’m not sure about—”

The lights grew brighter—became more than just light. It became a channel, and she went being an observer to seeing through the fabric of existence, and she saw them—so many of them lurking beyond. Lurk between. There was so much the system barely touched. All of Integrated Existence was a roiling island of burning discord, surrounded by a miasmic ocean of wonder and madness.

Something slipped into Uva’s gaze. Something crawled up through her skull, prying her irises wide and dashing through. The creature was large—should have been too large to emerge from Uva’s skull. It was five meters long and resembled multiple resolving rings. Rings that railed with grains of sand that formed what looked to be biting mouths. Rings that bore the texture and pulsed like hearts.

“What in the Ascendants…” Adam gasped as he stumbled back.

Uva’s head deformed and stretched to impossible proportions. Yet, the entity managed to crawl through. And as it did, it immediately started dissolving. It let out a pained shriek as it cried. “FEED! TIME! FEED! RECOLLECTOR! Past false! Present IS!”

And then it shot out from their teleportation anchor, rushing down the excavated tunnel to seek its quarry.

“Must warn you,” the Dreamtaker whispered. “The New-Dreamt are non-logics. They do. They act. But there is no control. They will seek the Recollector because it is of their flavor, because I have lured them. But there are a great many other things that lurk in the Great and Colorful Outside. Remember that when you open your gaze. Remember that anything can slip through. That you cry out in a wilderness. Even my knowing-eye-ear-senses can cover only so much. Be prepared. Only minor entities now. But with power comes danger and risk and more. But danger and risk and more is what you need. So gaze. Gaze! Gaze!”

And Uva cried out as she peered even deep through the fabric of all that was. 

More of those entities blasted out from her, squeezing out from her eyes. Her skull felt like jelly, and she tightened her mana strands around her mind like a fortress. Her Psychomancy rattled and strained as several of the eldritch creatures slashed at her, tried to get in. But she redirected the building madness, and turned it back on them using her few unoccupied strands.

Uva stared until the madness grew too much, until her Psychomancy strands were on the verge of straining, and only when she could endure no more did she stop. As she closed her eyes, gripping her skull, she felt Adam stabilize her, and slowly she pulled her hand away from her face. Inside, the Dreamtaker laughed with greater pleasure. “Wonderful, Seeker. Wonderful. What a flexible, malleable mind. What a clever and cold focus. So good. Your system-dead-mind-soul-tyrant-magic-plague has achieved use! Connecting your potentiality with the beyond… It wants us to fight. To fight is all it wants. To struggle. To change. We like it…”

Puppeteer of the Formless Strings > 109

Dreamtaker’s Gaze > 5

Non-Euclidean Morphology > 103

Ahead, a small army of the strange, ringed creatures squeezed down the excavator tunnel.

“You…” Adam swallowed. “That was one hundred and eight of them. Uva…”

“I’m fine,” Uva said. Frankly, she felt better than fine. She felt… excited. Alive. Powerful unlike ever before. And she felt a frigid anger building as she heard Shiv’s anguished roar again. “I will be fine. Once I break the Recollector’s mind.” She called her shield close to her, and ignored the awakened item’s whimpering. “We will follow your plan. Get the Animancy Core in position. I will see if I can distract the entity and get to Shiv. I will stay connected to you and keep your mind stable. Gazing upon it will not break you like last time. I promise.”

She flung her Psychomancy threads out and connected her to the alien army she just summoned. Their minds were fractured things—things of broken time that smashed hard against her sanity. It was like they were small singularities of past, present, and future—and she only had the capacity to exist in the present. So, she reduced the number of entities she was connected to and barricaded her ego from the parts she couldn’t comprehend.

Cherished Sister Uva Mettabon knew how to pick her battles. More importantly, she knew how to make someone else fight her battles for her.

***

Adam looked down at his Spellstring and his expression hardened. He was more terrified than he ever had been in his life. But he wasn’t terrified alone. And the thing was, Adam could fight pretty well terrified. “Right. Let’s… let’s see what I can do about hitting the damn entity too.”

Uva blinked as Adam chose his Master-Tier Skill.

Divination didn’t feel like anything at the first level. At least, Adam didn’t notice anything different. But the moment he selected that as it Master-Tier Skill, an enormous sphere of pale violet expanded out from Adam, pushing out through the teleportation anchor, and going further and further beyond. Within the Divination sphere, he noticed strange distances rippling around a great many things. Things, and people. Can Hu, Uva, Valor, and even his own armor were giving off ripples. And then there were the near-transparent violet chains that connected one thing to another.

As he focused on them, the world began to speak to him. The ripples expanded and revealed to him a flood of shapes and details. Sometimes, he saw the forms of people. Other times, a burst of notifications spread across his eyes as details he had no business knowing emerged. But the information was always partial, and even actively changed at times.

Adam’s jaw dropped. He knew Divination was a complicated lore of magic. He took on a good few extra courses at the academy in the vain hope he might attune himself to the power, to become more like his mother. But strangely, this skill evolution allowed him to move the field around. To full imbue it into something.

As he tested that on the Graven Cage, and massive flood of details, histories, images, and more crashed against Adam. He flinched back and cried out as his mind strained. Something inside him would have broken if not for Uva bracing his mind and helping him sift through the overload. But as Divination mana resided within the cage, he saw Valor light up—and far beyond the gate, he saw a few hundred other entities light up as well.

Skill Evolution: Divination (Adept) > Mark of the Seeking Clairvoyant (Master)

Mark of the Seeking Clairvoyant > 101

He knew exactly where they were. He could feel them. He could tell their present state and the vagaries of what they did in relation to the Graven Cage. They were all participants in the ritual to create the cage—Necromancers from Weave. But as he tried to learn more, the sheer complexity of divination forced him to stop.

Foreshadowing was simple. The existence just whispered things to you. It warned you. This wasn’t that. This was getting into the casual patterns that made up everything, and trying to sift through the general details. Adam was woefully unprepared for that. Just like he was utterly unprepared for this fight. But there was one thing he could do now. He could infuse his Divination into the entity. And he could track the bastard where it emerged. Or so he hoped.

“That… is a lot… But I think… It has to be enough.” Adam said. “I have to be enough.”

“We will be,” Uva corrected. “Whatever it takes.”

He met her now ominously brilliant eyes and let out a breath. “Right. Let’s… This damned thing traumatized us. Now. Let’s go traumatize it back. Let’s go save our bloody monster.”

***

Pain.

Pain was a constant acquaintance to Shiv. Acquaintance because he didn’t think much of pain. Sometimes, shit hurt, but he dealt with it. That was a function of his mind and his natural resilience. It was why Shiv didn’t scream that much.

Now, with his mind drifting in broken fragments, he could hear himself screaming. He felt like a passenger in his own body as the things the entity dumped inside him disfigured and broke things inside him. But they just wouldn’t stop. Every time his mind healed a bit more, they broke him again. Another tore at his soul, and that was worse. But it often overfed, and the entity had to pull it out from his flesh before replacing it with a new one.

Right now was one such moment. As the entity reached down, the tattered remains of Shiv’s consciousness responded the only way he remembered. Aggression. Hate this asshole. Kill—

Another wave of soul-tearing pain crossed through him. Shiv blacked out. This was the best part of the torture. He got to pass out for a few moments. He knew nothing. The world was a peaceful place. But eventually, the pain would wake him back up again. Again. Over and over.

But with his building madness came something else. An indescribable rage that accumulated within Shiv like a bomb that wasn’t allowed to go off. There was so much inside him that all his skills were practically rattling. 

Something assumed control of his thoughts and he healed himself again. A well-fed serpent thing was drifting along his arm. He cast that serpent thing. It ate his wounds. Shiv blinked. He didn’t realize when he regained consciousness. He was losing track of time. Hard to tell anything when everything was just pain.

The entity hung above him. Its tentacles were splayed out. Its many eyes glared at him in outrage. It clenched Absence with its right hand and balled its other into a fist. “Why… Keeps coming back together. Broke you over and over and over for an hour’s span. Why won’t you go empty? Why not stay broken? How?”

Shiv clenched his teeth. He tried to get up. Then, pain exploded inside him again as the creatures hiding with his mind, soul, and flesh started ripping him apart again.

“Break!” the entity screamed down at him. Shiv somehow managed to trigger his gravitic field, and he slammed his fist into it. It stumbled back and then struck him in return. Shiv slammed back down. The entity stood over him, stomping on his head over and over. He barely noticed that. The true hell was inside him. The true hell—

He heard the entity cry out in alarm. He felt it depart—felt its presence shoot beyond the reach of his Biomancy field. But he just kept screaming. Screaming, until he felt someone new push into his mind. Her mind felt horrified, sorrowful, focus, and beyond furious at the same time. 

The entities inside him responded to the intruder’s presence with confusion. 

The intruder spoke, her every syllable filled with cold, seething hatred. “This… is not how you break someone’s mind. Let me show you.”

And for once, the creatures inside Shiv started screaming in anguish—writhing inside his very being as colorful lights consumed him. Lights and colors he couldn’t describe. Shiv pain faded briefly, as he felt the intruder desperately reaching out, gripping his broken consciousness, he tasted something from her.

Pain. Her pain. For what had been done to him. For how badly he suffered. And even broken, even he was just an insane shadow of himself, Shiv tasted the first flavors of what he understood to be genuine love.

It was a sweet pain to give oneself for those they cared it about. It was sweeter yet to be saved, and protected for in turn.