II-56 Eldritch

The eldritch are not necessarily evil, but they are all fundamentally alien.

It is like a person stepping on an anthill; he is not necessarily evil. Yet that comparison is not entirely accurate. The eldritch understand us. They comprehend us. In this sense, they are never unaware of what they are doing. They are, however, simply beyond us—at least, most of us.

They have their own interests, their fascinations, and their desires, but they are not human desires. They are greater, more expansive, and more complex than most can ever know.

But as I have said, when Pathbearers grow, they grow greater as well. They grow stronger. Eventually, if an ant is infused with enough power, if it undergoes enough metamorphoses, it does not stay a mere ant. Its former self becomes a memory, and what emerges along that long track to ascension might rival more than just a man.

It might challenge a god.

So take heart, seeker of mysteries. If you have embarked on this path, know that despair is only a flavor and madness is but a temporary ailment. We are not the ones that break.

If you are here, if you are reading this, know this: to descend into madness or to rise and comprehend enlightenment is a factor of power, a measure of how well you wield your own mind. And that is your responsibility, your mastery.

Embrace the strange. Face it. And do not be broken.

-Seekers of the Elder Mysteries

II-56

Eldritch

Shiv's eyes widened in horror and disbelief as he watched something shoot out from Uva's right eye. It pierced clean through the entity, spearing its hand-hand and wrapping around it like a serpent. A serpent that promptly ignited and burned the entity’s very body. 

The colors of the flame hurt Shiv’s sanity to behold, and he watched as the entity coiled all its retroactive rivers in on itself.

"No! No!" the entity cried out. "Why, why are you here? How can you be here?"

"I was always here," another voice spoke. This one held Uva's tone, Uva's tenor, Uva's pitch. But every syllable it spoke sounded jumbled, garbled, wrong. The strange colored flame lining the serpent consumed the entity, and something began to tear it apart.

A battle was unfolding before Shiv, and sections of the entity went missing. It died, it respawned, but then it died again, and immediately its focus scattered. Its rivers of retroactive time curled around its body, trying to ward off something unseen. One of the entity’s tendrils lashed out then and crashed down on Uva.

Shiv gave a hoarse cry of terror.

When the tendril rose, Shiv’s insides twisted in agony. She was flat. Pressed into the ground. Her armor was completely cracked open, and Shiv thought she was dead. But then he noticed a copious lack of blood, and how she resembled a deflated balloon rather than a gory smear. That, and his Biomancy could still sense her organs and body architecture. She was alive, just flat. And barely conscious.

"Uva," Shiv said, casting a thought at her. She let out a slight moan, confirming that she was truly alive, but her mind, he never felt her mind this jumbled and chaotic before.

"Shiv… I don’t—I…”

“I don’t know what you did, but I think you just saved all of us.”

An incoherent notice came from her. And then a tentacle crashed against her again. Shiv flinched. But as it rose, Uva’s armor was badly cracked while she was pasted against the floor. Still alive. Utterly unharmed.

Shiv blinked. I’m not even going to question it. Go shit yourself, system. But thank you for whatever Skill Evolution you gave her.

Shiv cast a Woundeater into himself, fixing his broken body as he shot back to his feet. Beside him, Adam was huddled on the ground, clutching his throat, shivering. "Adam, Adam, we need to go. Adam!"

The Young Lord gawked at Shiv, his eyes were wide, and he looked more shell shocked than ever.Shiv didn't have Uva's Psychomancy capabilities. He couldn't put Adam's broken thoughts back together, pull him out of a state of shock. But thankfully, he didn’t need to. 

The Young Lord clenched his jaw, and with what seemed like an impossible effort of will, he began to force himself to breathe, to stop hyperventilating. He stared Valor, and started gathering his scattered pieces. Shiv couldn’t tell if Valor was dead or not, but the ancient’s skull was badly cracked.

Just then, the entity went shrieking overhead, and the flames consuming it flickered, flashed, and finally burst into dust. Whatever it was fighting had just been slain, but the entity continued writhing in pain for a moment.

Shiv clenched his teeth, and he placed a hand on Adam’s shoulder. "The plan stays the same, but get the others out of here and jump from somewhere we can’t see! Somewhere the entity won’t be able to find. Go! Go now!

“Shiv,” Adam said, breathing hard. “I—We have to run! We all have to run!”

“We’re out of options, and I’m the only one that can keep this thing at bay.” He shook the Young Lord affectionately. “And you’re the one with the grander plans. See if you can come up with one. There’s nowhere to go. And we’re not leaving the survivors. And I’m not turning from a fight. Here. Take Uva.”

Shiv handed Uva to Adam, and the Young Lord's eyes blinked rapidly as he stared down at the Umbral, now a little more than a flat, thin sheet of flesh, tissue, and broken. "What… happened to her?"

Shiv didn't wait for Adam to respond. He burst up into the air, and he slammed into the entity's back before it could recover. With another hard yank on his field, he sent both of them tumbling toward the horizon. And this time, made some adjustments to how he fought. 

He punted the entity, sending it even further into the distance. As it tried to jump back in time using its retroactive rivers. Shiv briefly halted time as his temporal shell flared. He intercepted the entity as it skipped backward in time, appeared where it had been three seconds ago. As soon as it finished its transition, Shiv smashed into it again—and even faster this time with all the Momentum he had built up.

The entity shot across the sky as Shiv chucked with a loud shout. The moment the Chronomancy river connected to its body weren’t anywhere near him, Shiv released his temporal shell and let his Chronomancy recover. “"Hit and run," he said to himself. "Hit and run."

Strider of the Unbending Path > 103

Momentum Core > 92

The entity turned and regarded him, "Anomaly. Don't know how you contacted the Dreamtaker. Don't know how the vessel contracted the Umbral. We'll tear the information out from her mind. We'll take her eyes, replace eyes with my own. Replace them. My vessel, mine. Belongs to me. To the stranger."

Shiv growled as shot toward the entity again. And he watched how it reacted. His last engagement against it went bad because he fought too aggressive—stayed in too close. He only had ten seconds of near frozen time. Ten seconds and not a lot of maneuverability while time was frozen. New rules: if he was going to halt time, he was going to do it close. For other instances, he would just keep time drastically slowed and alternate that with Outside Context Problem.

The entity blasted toward Shiv. His temporal shell hardened but didn't completely solidify. Time slowed. The entity went from impossibly fast to being something Shiv could handle. He dove under two lashing Chronomantic rivers and pulled himself along a spearing tentacle. He slammed knee-first in the entity, scattering its proximal bubble of protective Chronomancy as he knocked it back.

Another of its tentacle stabbed at him from behind. He went outside of context. It passed through the space he existed and lost track of what happened. “What is this?”

Shiv formed two laceration spells and unleashed them on the entity. It came apart. Shiv emerged in a burst of white and red. The entity saw him again. He paused time. He drove an elbow into the entity’s chest and drained its vitality. His Momentum Core was almost full. He let time resume. 

Three seconds. Temporal shell barely damaged. It should recover faster this way.

Rivers of retroactively cascaded towards him. He went outside context again. The entity lost track of him. He passed through the entity. He fired another laceration into the back of its body. It split in half. He froze time again and pulled a bone dagger out of his cloak to replace his kukri. Then, Shiv discharged the entirety of his Momentum Core as he slashed the entity. It split in half and respawned. He slashed it again and again. He killed it four times before the first crack appeared on his temporal armor. 

Then he shifted out of context again.

With each blow, a battle rage built within Shiv. Images flashed through his head. Images of Valor’s crack skull, of Can Hu unresponsive, of Adam, neck broken, near dead, and Uva, her screams. Gods, her screams. I’m gonna… I gonna tear this thing apart! 

Something exploded inside Shiv as he let the anger take hold and guide him.

Skill Gained: Berserk (Adept)

Berserk > 1

A gate-shaking roar exploded out of Shiv as he clenched his fists as his body rippled with power. He dosed his Berserk skill with his incredible rage, and his muscle mass swelled twice over. Two retroactive rivers smashed against him. They broke against his Strider of the Unbending Path, chipping more of his Chronomantic protection away. But the entity was unprepared for the change Shiv just experienced. It launched a tendril at him, but he caught with a snarl. He yanked the entity into him, and headbutted it. It snapped back—but he seized it by the midriff and powerbombed it down through a bridge, into the molten river and bedrock of Gate Theborn in less than a second.

Gravitic Wrestler > 127

A massive explosion shook the world. Molten rivers were flung high into the air, but Shiv kept going. He drove the entity deeper into the ground, the floor beneath him cracked more and more. Shiv drove it deeper and deeper into the shattering ground as he raged. He poured more of his anger into Berserk, and his physical abilities climbed to impossible heights. Every elbow, knee, and slam he formed combusted the surrounding air and sent earthquakes through Gate Theborn. 

The entity died over and over, and just as it was about to smash into him with another retroactive river and break his temporal armor, Shiv’s mind cleared —he triggered his Outside Context Problem again and dashed out of the way. Leaving the entity confused.

He created some distance, pulling away despite every fiber of his being screaming for him to continue the fight.

It staggered in place, confused, lost, surging wind. Then the entity paused. It looked around and sent a few of its rivers sweeping through a nearby descending tower. Shiv watched some of its echoing bodies splashed into the building, utterly obliterating it. When the echoes emerged from the rubble, they clutched people in their hands. Slaves, residents, Umbrals, humans, automatons, it didn't matter. Then the entity’s chrono-echoes planted the people against their head-palms and absorbed them. The people vanished into the swirling darkness at the heart of the entity’s head-palms. The rivers comprising the entity’s unnatural Chronomancy expanded back to their prime conditions, as more echoes emerged with each life consumed.  

Shiv's eyes widened, and the chill that ran through him—and it wasn’t just his fading vitality.

Now he understood how the entity regenerated so fast, how it restored the echoes it lost. It was eating time. It was drinking time out of people. Shiv's Strider of the Unbending Path restored as he stayed in unaltered present. The entity couldn’t do that. Shiv guessed it didn’t even exist under the same rules of time as he did.

I need to kill this thing. No matter what. No matter what! If I don’t, it’s going to eat this gate clean. And what would happen if it left? What would happen if it went to Weave or somewhere else?

But still, Shiv heard Adam's imagined voice echoing in the back of his head. Precision. Focus. Don't just strike blind. 

Be effective. Strike where you need to. Only where you need to, Uva echoed right after. 

Even without them there, parts of their influence still remained. And Shiv was a greater warrior than he was before, even alone. He let out a breath. He let his rage build and prepared for his next instance of Berserk. There would be a time to unleash his fury. And he would choose when that time was. He would choose how he was going to act. And when he wanted to die. 

And he was going to die a lot against this thing. But it would be on his terms. To keep the damn bastard confused. Until he finally won—however long that took—-or until the others figured something out.

Just as the entity flew out to claim more prey, he barreled into its back and drove a blade through its gut while draining its vitality. Its rivers smashed inwards, trying to cage him. Shiv halted time. And soon his vitality was restored, and his Momentum Core was filled, Shiv poured every bit of anger he had into his Berserk Skill again as he recalled what this thing did to those precious to him. He reared back his fist and gritted his teeth. "You should have stayed hidden inside that sword!"

And then he hit it so hard, its body disintegrated. His Momentum Core exploded more than it discharged. A shockwave swept out for over eight kilometers as a massive crater formed on the floor of Gate Theborn.

Shiv’s Berserk died as he spent all his anger. And there was a good synergy between Feat and skill. With his Master of Rage Feat, Berserk was simply another magnifier for his already colossal physical skills that he could trigger at a whim without being consumed by lingering rage. 

His anger built. He spent it strategically. Effectively. Precisely.

Berserk > 3

As he prepared to continue his offensive, every single echo the entity had snapped a glare at him. They gazed as he froze time beyond him from their retroactive past. "I see now. You. You're not a person. Not person at all. Lies. Lies, deception. You. You are an agent. All of you agents of the Dreamtaker. Dreamtaker's agents. Sent here to bring down the gate to lure me out. All this. All this planned to spite the stranger. Won't let you succeed. Won't. The master must cross over. The master must arrive. This world is promised. Promised."

And then each of the echoes began to shudder. Shiv wasn't sure what this damn thing was doing, but by now it surprised him enough that he wasn't about to risk anything. 

He triggered Outside Context Problem again, and vanished. 

The entity lost track of him. But it didn’t stop what it was doing. A loud note of discordant confusion sang through the world, and it felt like someone was grinding a nail through Shiv's inner brain mass. His eyes rolled, and beside him, Rose screamed, wailing in agony as she tried to claw at her eyes. She was composed of his Vitae though, so nothing really happened. It was strange how much more affected Adam and Rose were compared to him. Uva and Valor were practically the only people to endure better than he did.

As he got some distance from the enemy, he let time resume and allowed his cracked temporal shell to heal. He took in a few quick breaths and observed his adversary, watched them to see what they were going to do. A second later, an entire river crashed back into the entity. Every echo within that river slotted over the entity's original form, superimposing again and again and again until they all vanished.

Just then, the entity bent inward, driving a hand into its palm-shaped head. And as its fingers descended the spiral lining the center of the palm, it extracted a gleaming blade that seemed to be an exact replica of Absence.

At the same time, the entity itself began to transform. Hands burst out from its tentacles, each one groping at the air, writhing and grasping for nothing in particular. Its body swelled, new eyes opened under along its ribs, eyes that blinked and glared; eyes that flared with golden brilliance. Behind, the original form the entity Shiv saw—the colossal creature made from fingers, eyes, and the large ten fingered hand briefly flickered and vanished. The other retroactive rivers were shortening now as well, actively being consumed by the entity to power this change. 

Uneasiness gripped Shiv. He approached it carefully, just as his body grew a little too cold, as he rematerialized back into the real world. He also finally remembered to reactivate his Silhouette active, and—

The entity blinked across time. It appeared beside him and slashed—but it slashed too wide.

Silhouette > 87

A colossal wave of force swept through the world, rushing forward across the entirety of the gate's underside as an invisible tide. Then, the entity blasted through him. It had become so fast, so impossibly strong, that Shiv could react to his own beheading.

Momentum Core > 94

Adamantine Adaption > 131

Woundeater > 79

Silhouette > 91

Gravitic Wrestler > 129

Strider of the Unbending Path > 108

Outside Context Problem > 58

He felt like a Pathless facing a Pathbearer. As his head toppled off his body, the entity reached out and crashed his skull after a few seconds struggle. Not even adaptive adamantine denied it for long. The new eye lining its body, snapped about, blinking, constantly blinking, always glaring. And after a moment, they narrowed in on Shiv and glared. “Found you…”

Shit.

He immediately froze time. But as he solidified his temporal shell and halted, the eyes remained on him. They channeled beams into his body. Beams of accelerated time blasted his temporal shell apart in an instant. Suddenly, time surged. Shiv felt displaced. He grew impossibly cold in an instant. Right then, he very well should have died. Should have died for good, if not for the entity misunderstanding what he was.

"Think you can deceive my perception? Can still see you! Sense you!" It swung its blade through him. The cut was so fast, a firestorm ignited around the entity, and unleashed a blade of wind that just kept traveling behind Shiv, slashing through the very earth beneath them, splitting the molten rivers until there was a chasm. 

Two kilometers long and growing and growing, Shiv reached out actively, draining the entity. It was still accelerating his passage of time, not allowing his Chronomancy mana a chance to regenerate. 

Instinctively, Shiv activated his Outside Context Problem just as he resurrected. Instead of taking several seconds, it was instant. The entity’s temporal accelerating eye-beams accelerated his vitality drain, accelerated his resurrection process, and it nearly accelerated him back to an early death as it cleaved out to kill him again.

Once more it was confused, but the eyes were looking around, blinking, searching, until somehow they faintly tracked where he generally was. They weren't gazing exactly at him, but it seemed, but they seemed to know where he generally was. "How the hell is it doing that now," Shiv thought. "I'm acausal right now. How is it doing that?"

"Feels, feels wrong, feels wrong," the entity cried out. Its voice was melodic, like a series of horns. Shiv thought it was a bit similar to the old jazz band that once played at the Swan-Eating Toad, especially the saxophone. The very notes it hit briefly shattered his focus.

In the second it took for him to grow colder, he studied the eyes and felt their flow. Earlier, they blew apart his armor. It was like a condensed beam of Chronomancy. 

It was accelerating me, Shiv realized, into the future unnaturally fast… Before the present was done. And then he understood something about Chronomancy and time. The present was the only natural time period. Anything but the present was unnatural. Anything but the present demanded mana. 

Shiv's Chronomancy Skill Evolution worked strange. He couldn’t quite project his Chronomancy like Sullain or this entity did, but he was shrouded in a perpetual present that insulated him from outside time. It allowed him to keep to his own temporal pacing, so long as his Strider of the Unbending Path remained intact. The entity, though, didn’t seem to be grounded in the present. No, it’s Chronomancy was rooted in several pasts.

If Shiv was a temporal fortress, this thing… He didn’t have words to describe what it was. It was a felling nightmare. It didn’t make sense. And now, it could accelerate him into the future with its new eyes. Godsdammit…

He emerged once more, a detonation of white, red, and forth as he tried to drive a fist into its face. It responded immediately—somehow predicting exactly where he was going to be. Once more, it beheaded him. Once more, he died.

Strider of the Unbending Path > 112

Adamantine Adaption > 134

Silhouette > 93

He reached out, he drained it. He exploited its time accelerating beams so that he could restore himself to vitality. As soon as he resurrected, he went Outside Context again. But this time he got very close to his adversary. 

It’s got some kind of precognition now too. I need to make this messier. He seized them with his field and he flung the entity downward. He managed to push them 10 meters before their tendrils spread out. It felt like they were clutching reality. The entity didn't so much fly as it swung. It clung to sections of nothing and launched itself. Slowly, it regarded him with his many eyes. "See you now."

Shiv cursed as he shifted back into his Vitae again. It cut out and sliced nothing. He cast two lacerations at the entity. He expected it to come apart and expend two of its echoes with each death. It didn't. His lacerations crashed against a shroud of Magical Resistance. Okay, what the fuck? Shiv thought. It didn't have that before. 

Shiv tried to freeze time, but its golden eyes swung around its body and glared into him. His temporal armor burst. The entity caught him by the throat and choke slammed him back up through the underside of an entire plaza. He swung at the entity. It jolted back in time as it swapped positions with one of his echoes. Then it did again and again until it was darting all around Shiv, moving too chaotically for him to track.

He prepared to shift out of context again. It let out a piercing note that drilled into his mind and tore his senses apart. Before Shiv could recover, it drove a tentacle into the back of his head. The world spun and danced in Shiv’s vision as he felt himself crash through wall after wall. As he blasted out through another building, body slick with blood and dust, he slide to a halt along a bridge, and the entity slammed down just a few meters away from him.

Shiv wheezed. His skull felt all sorts of swollen. Cracked. He entity walked right up to him, and he spat blood at the entity's foot. As he tried to rise, it reached down and clutched the back of his neck. He struck at its elbow, but it shrieked at him again, and pain exploded in Shiv’s skull. It wasn’t a natural psionic attack, but simply a noise that a human shouldn't hear—one they couldn't possibly take.

It took him by his limbs using its tendrils and Shiv cried out as it pulled him in four directions at once.

"I am sure you have died now. None of that, none of that is a trick of time. None of that is chronomancy, what your people call the alteration of time. You are not altering time. You are altering death. How? Impossible. How? How? How? No more to existence. Existing change after death. How are you still alive?"

Shiv spat at the entity. "Come and find out, asshole. Let’s play a game. I’ll kill myself and you kill yourself. See who comes back. Winner gets to shit on the loser’s corpse. Loser stays dead.”

The entity observed him for a while longer, nodded, and then drove its sword through his chest. Shiv howled. The sword began to sap at him, began to drink his very soul. But his soul wouldn't let go. It was lodged to his vitality. But it still felt like someone was flaying him from the inside. When Shiv thought crashing in the necromantic rift might have been the worst pain in his life, he was wrong. This was on another level suffering, and it was constant.

Every cut the blade inflicted on him tore at his skills and mana. But his soul just wouldn't let go. Shiv remembered Confriga dissolving Pathbearers with his blade. This wasn't a sword that looked like Absence. 

This was Absence.

 It was Absence without the entity hiding within. And now it was using the original blade on him.

Shiv tried to stop screaming, tried to keep his wailing under control, but the pain... But what about the pain? he thought internally. He slammed his jaw shut. He stopped, and he just glared at the entity as it cut him. He wrestled against it. He summoned his rage, and once more his Berserk activated. Shiv poured everything into berserk, channeling anger into the skill as he tore free from the entity’s grip. The blade got stuck in his flesh as his Toughness spiked. Booted the entity back and ripped Absence out of his body before casting it aside.

He tackled the entity through the floor and back down into the bottom of the gate again. A blast shook all of Gate Theborn. But the entity blasted him with its temporal accelerating gaze, and suddenly, Shiv found himself displaced—

Something crashed hard into his skull.

The world went white. Then, Shiv woke screaming as the entity drove its blade into him again. It sank its sword into his chest. He tried to fight it, but it wouldn’t stop singing that noise that clawed it his mind…

"Now. Now die. Die for good. Die!" It was like an owner chastising its dog, but Shiv simply spat on the blade, and then he spat on the entity. 

He could feel his lifeblood leaking out from him, but he simply managed a bloody sneer. "I'll be seeing you soon again, you piece of shi—”

Every single one of the entity's echoes screamed. Their eyes opened, and a loud noise, a noise that lashed at Shiv's very capability to think, consumed the gate. A spike of pain swept through Shiv, hammered down into the base of his skull. Something inside his memories shattered. His mind began to unravel.

“Ah. Weakness identified. Memetic resonance. Sound. Cannot process. Here. More.”

And it grew louder as Shiv experienced the first true seizure of his life. He gagged and twitched on the ground. His eyes rolled within his skull, and he tried to fight it off, but the noise. System… make it stop.

Then, briefly, it did. Shiv gasped. His mind was in tatters. That wasn’t like any kind of Psychomancy he experienced. This was breaking him on another level. Breaking everything. His bones were fracturing from the noise too…

“Stop—stop singing,” Shiv gasped. “It’s… singing’s so shit… it’s an… anti-skill.” He couldn’t help it. He had to shit talk the bastard a little.

The entity gripped him by his neck. Shiv struggled, but he had a hard time even remembering what his own name was. “Going to take some time taking you apart. Learning. Understanding. Cannot see Path. Cannot see history. Cannot see your fated death. Wrong. Wrong! WRONG!”

It bent down and clutched his face with its hand-head, and it began to suck him into the vortex at the palm's core. Shiv cried. The entity pulled harder and harder. He caught a glimpse of a place, a place filled with colors he couldn't describe, but a place with creatures that, the shapes, the mind couldn't process what those shapes looked like. Even looking at them made his sanity twitch and shiver. Shiv groaned. He gripped the fingers comprising the entity's face, and he pulled with all his strength. One cracked, the other barely twisted. The entity drove a fist into his stomach, and Shiv vomited into the vortex at the entity’s palm.

"Now, if body won't die, if you won't stay dead, then mind, mind will break. Will see you if you can become vessel instead. No insight. Hard mind. Regenerating mind. Regenerating soul. But can break over and over and over. Will break over and over. But won’t kill. Won’t stay dead. See now with future gazing. See. You are an abomination. Cannot let you endure. Cannot feed your nature.”

“F-fuck you,” Shiv grunted. He tried prying himself out from the entity, but it held him tighter. Then, something slipped out from inside the creature’s palm. Strands of unnatural radiance bled from its many eyes, and it splashed against Shiv’s face, burrowed into his wounds. Shiv struggled, but the song it sang got louder and louder, and blood vessels burst inside his head. Shiv’s eyes rolled. And then something clawed its way under his eyelids as well.

More things emerged from the entity and pushed their way into Shiv’s broke body, his broken mind.

"We will see now. See how long it takes for you to break, empty, shatter. Be worn!" And the entity's hand-shaped head made a twitching gesture, and the creatures that the entity deposited inside Shiv began to sing a torturous symphony from within his flesh.

And that day, everyone within Gate Theborn discovered just how loud the Deathless could scream.