II-53 Fall (II)

There are beings… dare I even call them gods beyond the purview of the system, existing only in the periphery of the Grand Integration. These beings have been touched by mana, but they have not fully been subsumed yet. For whatever reason, the system was never truly able to claim them. Perhaps their original nature was already too deviant. Or maybe our assumptions are incorrect, and this is a deliberate maneuver on the part of the system to create an entire separate category of rule twisting, skill-bending, soul-twisting creatures as…

Predators. Predators for Pathbearers.

Though many of these creatures are not of the same race or even functional nature, they all fall within the realm of utmost deviance and unnatural existence. As such, these beings have all been gifted the moniker of eldritch.

Eldritch beings are hard to describe, yet easy to identify. Due to the sheer variety of eldritch beings , all of them interface with the integrated multiverse in inimical ways, such as ripping through the fabric of space itself and damage it spatial magic itself. Contaminating mana and leaving it poisonous for a mage, or perhaps even becoming akin to a virus: a virus that turns an individual's skills against them and corrupts a soul from within.

These are the most dangerous of all eldritch beings, Soul Parasites that possesses one’s skills and turn them against you from within.

Whatever the case, should you encounter an eldritch being, the best thing to do is to avoid it, to flee at all costs. They can be slain, they can be beaten, but it's not worth it. It is never worth it, and no matter what you do, no matter what happens, do not let them notice you. 

Do not draw the eyes of their eldest gods.

And pray that you never gain the interest of the Stranger.

-Face of the Stranger: Eldritch Beings at the System’s Periphery

II-53

Fall (II)

"Good godsdamn shit, Adam. You weren't lying when you said the situation at the gateway was bad."

The winds ripped around Shiv as he flung himself closer to the Abyssal Gateway. Confriga's army was completely broken. The last of Confriga’s Master-Tiers lay dead or writhing atop mountains of corpses. Comparatively, Shiv could barely sort the remains of the rest of Confriga’s army out from the literal sea of dead Blood Horrors and vampires.

Being outnumbered was an ugly thing. 

Being unnecessarily outnumbered because the Gate Lord was too much of an arrogant asshole that wouldn’t stop butchering his own soldiers, didn’t request for support from his own homeworld, and generally did nothing but make bad choice after bad choice was just tragic.

Also true to Adam's words was how spent the First Blood was. The vampiric army filtered in through the gate as a trickle now, not even a river. More and more of the final remnants of the invasion force limped across—the true reserves. They lacked actual combat experience, judging from how hesitant they were about to enter the fray against Confriga.

And that was just the thing. Despite his army being dead, Confriga was still fighting—and fighting like a Vulteg possessed. That was one thing Shiv had to give Confriga: The Lesser Marshal was a shit and Shiv was going to enjoy killing him, but Confriga was a warrior to the bone; to the bitter end.

Biomancy spells and all sorts of other magic began to bombard Confriga, but the Lesser Marshal was still fighting, still killing his way through the vampires as much as he could. His burning, petal-like wings incinerated anyone weak. All the enemies who remained—at least the ones who dared approach him—were at least High Adept-Tier. 

He was fighting approximately fifty of them at once while being encircled. Some of them worked to pin him in place with spell after spell, hammering away at his Magical Resistance. Some attacked him physically. But between his armor, his extraordinary Toughness, and his extremely high Physicality, Confriga never stayed pinned for long. And everyone who came anywhere near him paid a brutal price.

Every time he struck a blow, dozens of vampires would asunder, and then ignite from the heat of his wings.

But that was just the thing. You could rip a vampire in half, and the bastard would still get up. You needed to crush their Lineage Core, and sometimes, vampires learned how to move their core pretty good too.

But that wasn't the only problem. With Confriga so occupied by the elite of the First Blood, the other vampires and Blood Horrors spilled around him. They sailed through the air, curving past the ruins that was the customs and processing building, planning to overwhelm the rest of Gate Theborn. 

Shiv realized if they did get in and sank their teeth in the vulnerable population, they would be dealing with more Blood Horrors, and an even larger, lesser vampire outbreak. There was no way they would be able to hold the gate after that anyway.

"Don't worry about the chaff," Adam said. "I'll deal with them. You go after the hard targets."

"Alright," Shiv said. 

"When we're finished setting up Guardshead Leu as the next Gate Lord, she'll come in with the mana core and unleash all its frost magic on Confriga. Then, we'll break him down with precision and focus. But we won't be able to do that if the entire gate falls."

"Yeah," Shiv growled. "I can't believe we're covering his ass."

"If only so we can stab it ourselves later," Adam replied, and that statement immediately brightened Shiv's mood.

Shiv blasted into the air, Silhouette active, with the winds cracking around him. 

As he accelerated, he smashed through the sound barrier and began to pound his fists together, his Momentum Core climbing. Then Adam's arrows descended—-hundreds of arrows, with hundreds more every passing half second. The Young Lord’s clones spread across the sky, their bodies left in shadow by the dormant mana core. The rapier, Adam’s Spellstring, his vambrace, and his new skills made him utterly overwhelming.

The insidious thing about the Veilpiercers was that they didn't truly travel through physical reality. No, they, like their name suggested, tore across dimensions, and Adam just didn’t miss—even before his Skill Evolution. The weaker Blood Horrors were blown apart immediately; their cores pierced through, their bodies detonating into thick, bloody mist.

Stronger enemies got buried with Necromancy arrows. They howled out, and that was only made worse as Adam unleashed a series of other magics using the power of the Spellspring. Mostly he struck at their minds, stunning them, and that quickly proved to be fatal. 

Shiv slammed in to the invaders from below. Anything that wasn't ready for him, simply disintegrated. He was moving too fast, and his gravitic field let him pulp whatever he touched. The Blood Horror burst against him like fleas splattering upon a swatter. Some vampires held a little longer, but these weren't Master-Tier, just Adepts sent in to take the rest of the gate while Confriga was pinned.

They were all considerably weaker than the vampires he faced within the teleportation anchor as well. But once again, they were vampires, and so without crushing the core or destroying them some other way, they could continue regenerating and fighting. So Shiv did something, both brutal and practical. 

He didn't go core hunting over and over again. He simply crushed their entire bodies into small chunks of mangled meat. The wet noise of pulping flesh followed, ending only when Shiv felt the pop of a Lineage Core.

Shiv conserved his Biomancy and let it recover some more. Can Hu joined in on the action as he unleashed blasts of small, pebble-sized steel balls that shredded the weaker of the Adepts. And soon they dropped as Adam left them utterly pulverized under another stream of arrows.

Through it all, not a single Veilpiercer even came close to glancing Shiv. It was a testament to the Young Lord's skill, but also an active relief. For most people, firing in the chaos meant risking hitting their own front-liner. For Adam, it was just a slight adjustment to his aim. 

The Deathless and the Archer pushed harder with each other’s momentum. Shiv smashed, shattered, and terrified, breaking the cohesion of the swarm. Adam pierced, slaughtered, and cold, blinding and crippling anyone who dared try to flee. In less than three minutes, about four hundred flanking Adepts and Blood Horrors were rendered unto pieces and splattered remains.

Harkness really was just playing with us, Shiv realized. He thought back to his fight against the owl in Passage and grimaced. We’re damn lucky she was the way she was. Of course, she came out of that harder and stronger than ever…

Then, another vampiric wave came, but that didn't matter. More were dying, dying under Adam's arrows, dying as Shiv charged into them. And for a brief moment in the heat of combat, Shiv felt a strange sense of discomfort.

 Not so long ago, he wouldn't have been able to contend with even one Blood Horror. They would have seemed too fast, impossibly strong, unkillable, without a substantial advantage or copious amounts of fire. Now it felt like he was stepping down on insects over and over again. And that made Shiv realize another thing about being a Pathbearer. It was inherently alienating from those weaker than you. You forgot what it was like to starve, to hurt truly, to be crippled and broken. You forgot a lot of things about weakness, until it was taught back to you by a stronger, more advanced adversary.

The slaughter of the flanking Blood Horrors and vampires proved to be a rehearsal. When they were all finally butchered, Shiv found himself standing atop the rubble that was the customs and processing building. He still wasn't sure how it got knocked over. And then he recalled that Uva slammed the Shoggoth into Confriga's army. 

Just when he thought he couldn't adore that woman more. He looked upon the Abyssal Gateway, and by this point, it wasn't even a trickle anymore. Just dots were coming through. Dots who were vampires, horrors, monsters, individual golems—anything they could throw at Confriga, anything. The two armies had worn each other down to the nubs.

Below, at the very bottom of the city, Shiv couldn't even see the molten rivers anymore. They had been completely covered by the dead. It was an endless carpet of red, rivulets of viscera ran from mountains of bodies, descending as waterfalls. Some smoldering mounds  of burning corpses added points of differentiation amidst all the slaughter, but made no difference. If Shiv had to guess, he thought that over a few thousand vampires were laying there.

"Four hundred and two thousand, more like," Adam muttered.

Shiv let out a breath. Killing enemies up close made sense but this many dead… It felt surreal. "So many dead and, what, just over an hour of fighting?" 

Uva interjected, then, her mind mostly occupied by other things. "The First Blood care little for their chaff. It is not uncommon for their dead to reach numbers well past fifty million, even in minor engagements."

"Minor engagements?" Adam cried. "Fifty million is... is..." Then he trailed off. "Come to think of it, I don't think I know the exact number of how large the Republic's military is. It can't be fifty million… can it? Blackedge is only barely fifty thousand in terms of population.”

"I'm beginning to feel like there's a reason for that," Shiv said. He had a growing hint of suspicion. That Roland Arrow did a lot of things for hidden reasons. Considering how dangerous the Abyss was, how powerful each of the Five Faiths were, and how Roland Arrow personally invaded the Abyss and managed to drive many of the Five Faiths back during his campaign, Shiv couldn't imagine the surface to be weak. It just wasn’t possible. In fact, he suspected the Republic was a lot stronger than he or Adam knew.

No, that was a facade, or at least a masquerade against its own people as well, and his thoughts flowed over to Adam, even though the Young Lord was more willing to give his father the benefit of the doubt.

A loud, deafening roar was followed by a massive shockwave. A torrent of force slammed into Shiv, and he pushed back with his gravitic field. Even so he had to exert a bit of effort to remain in place. 

As debris and ash flowed over him, the space cleared, and Shiv could see Lesser Marshal Confriga's petal-like wings spread wide. He was surrounded from all sides, and biomancy spells crashed against him over and over, but they didn't seem to stun Confriga at all, rather it just enraged him. 

He moved fast, almost too fast for Shiv to track. He struck one of the Master-Tier vampires, and a channel of force exploded through them. The top side of their body disintegrated, but before he could snatch the core, another Master-Tier vampire slammed into him, this one completely shifted into their combat form. The attacking Master-Tier vampire resembled a mass of lashing tendrils shaped from glistening tendons and mouths ridged with bloody fangs gripped down on the Lesser Marshal's armored body, biting over and over. 

Confriga tried punching this one as well, but rather than being splattered by the channel, they simply split their body apart and glided around Confriga's form. Suddenly, the vampire became as if a biological iron maiden. Even from so far away, Shiv could feel what the vampire was doing. It was creating ridges of bladed tissue within where Confriga was, trying to grind him apart. And as Confriga flexed, letting out another roar as a shockwave exploded out from him, the shapeshifting vampire simply spread wide, becoming as if a parachute and getting carried away, rather than suffering any true damage. 

But there was a strategy to this distraciton as well. The shapeshifter left just in time for another massive artillery barrage of Biomancy spells to crash over Confriga. This time, the gate lord did yell as a series of crimson explosions swelled wide, so wide that it swept even over Shiv, over a good tenth of the entire gate.

“They’re going to bombard Confriga until his Magical Resistance breaks, and then they’re going to pull him apart with casual effort,” Uva breathed.

And that was ultimately the problem of fighting an army. If they could pin you with their front line, it didn't matter if you were a hero or even a legend. After enough hits to your resistance, your soul would crack open, and it would allow someone else to reach into you. After that, well, magic was a treacherous foe. Tsunamis shaped from horrible cancerous tides crashed down upon the Confriga, and he split them in half with swiping cuts from Absence.

Confriga wielded the blade with ferocity and skill. But true to Uva's words, there was something about the long, thin weapon that made Shiv wary, that told Shiv something was hiding in its deeper darkness. His cuts seemed to make reality writhe in some way, made the world around its edge shake and quiver.

"Come then," Confriga roared, "come, I will show you how I earned my title as Lesser Marshal." His wings turned as he spun in place. Those massive petals, stretching hundreds of meters long, unleashed a fiery tornado. It seared some vampires nearby, but they were all Master-Tier. No one of inadequate Toughness survive in the vicinity of Confriga. 

Even so, they still ignited and they screamed, buying him a momentary opening, an opening that didn't last long enough for Confriga to do anything. Coiling surges of blood swept over his wings and then crystallized in an instant. A few hundred wound golems flew over head, and they immediately began extending their grotesque forms, developing new wounds as they cast spell after spell upon Confriga from above. The Gate Lord shouted as he was impacted over and over again, mana detonating against him.

And for the first time, Confriga fell to one knee. But only ever so briefly.

"Kind of enjoying the show, to be honest," Shiv said.

"Yes, well, as much as this miserable bastard deserves this, if he falls, we'll be the ones fighting all the damn vampires." So Adam let out a breath. He spent a few moments considering the task at hand. "Let's say we take a quick stroll out beyond the gate. We slaughter their backline. We cripple whoever they have left. I think Confriga still has some fight in him. He'll be able to stalemate these Master-Tiers for a while longer."

"I will keep an eye on him as well," Uva said, her strands slithering forth, moving carefully and slowly, trying to avoid being noticed. "I will strike at the Master-Tier vampires starting now. If they gain too much of an advantage, I will stun them, and I will give Confriga his opening. He should be able to kill quite a few of them, even if he does fall. And still," she paused, "there's something about his sword. I can hear something from inside it. Something."

"Is it like the book?" Shiv asked, wary about what was in his cloak.

"Yes. Exactly, even.”

“Uva, I'm still having doubts about that. The sword and the book feel wrong somehow."

She gave vague hum. "We don't have the luxury of not knowing what our enemy can do."

Shiv grunted in return. He didn't really have anything good to say about that, even if he felt Uva might be a little too blasé about all this. Besides, who was he to talk. He was learning most of his Biomancy from the mental imprint of a cruel, mad artist of a vampire lodged in a near-universally banned book.

"All right," Adam said, "here's what we're going to do. I'm going to fire an arrow into their backline mages to give Confriga a bit more breathing room. And then we're going to cross through. I took a peek with my Seer of Horizons. So far, it doesn't look like they have too much left to muster against the gate, perhaps a thousand forces or so. But I can't quite judge their Tiers. So we'll need to be cautious. Also, I'll see if I can find any traces of Ikki and the others."

"Thank you," Uva said, grateful that Adam was still thinking about her team.

"Don't worry, Uva," Adam replied. "I'm quite sure that Still Water and all the others would have probably retreated rather than stayed in this miserable mire of a situation. But there's still the matter of why they couldn't communicate with us…”

The Young Lord landed beside Shiv, his own wings going dim. He had a Veilpiercer nocked, and he looked to the Deathless. "You ready, monster? I’m going to open the way for you first.”

"Just fire your shot, hawk—Oh, wait, before that. Give me one second.”

Adam frowned as he let his bow go slack.

Shiv pulled a few things out of his cloak. He'd been thinking about this for a while, about improving his own strategies and enhancing his combat capabilities. He had power now, he had speed, he had concealment and durability. His magic still needed quite a bit of work, but the reason he prevailed against so many adversaries, and strange adversaries as that, was one thing: surprise, an instinctive cunning that had guided his hand so long, and once more he let it guide him. 

He was missing something for the mid-range when his Biomancy was spent. His Woundeaters had a limitation, and that was his magical field. And past a certain point, he wasn't so accurate with his bone drills either anymore. So he needed something that could extend, something he could cast out and keep extending forward onto the horizon, or reel back at any time he wanted. Something he could use as a weapon that didn’t constantly strain his mana.

And so, Between his Biomancy and his gravitic field, Shiv came up with a new and enticing idea. A new, enticing, and potentially flexible instrument.

"Shiv," Adam said, his eyes narrowing as the Deathless began to draw out his old bodies and extracted their spinal cords. "What are you bloody doing? Why are you mutilating your own corpses right now? Now is not the time."

"Now is the perfect time," Shiv said. And as he extracted the spinal cords, he drew sections of biomass along its length, lining the interior and the upper side of the extended cords with tendon.

Adam's jaw dropped a little at the casual violence.

"Shiv," Uva said, sounding confused. "What exactly are you doing?"

And then Shiv performed the part he was looking forward to. He gathered two of his reserve adamatine armors, along with other bits of hardened tissue at the very head of all the spines and tendons he was weaving together. And then he bade the biological material to regenerate, and regenerate it did. A clump of metallic cancers began to spread all along its length, and Shiv fashioned the edges to be jagged and blunt in random places for variety. 

Finally, he wrapped the end of the weapon around his left arm, he tested his new creation. 

He jerked it back, in a looping arc, and used his gravitic field to guide the mass of bone and cancers. As it sailed through the air, he used his Biomancy to further refine it, to adjust its shape and increase its aerodynamic nature. With his fields, he wielded the flail as if it was an extension of himself. He swung it backward, and since it bore the collective mass of several adamantine bodies, it came crashing down, approximately a hundred meters away, sending dirt and debris up into the air. 

Then with a casual tug, Shiv flicked the makeshift flail back toward himself as he wrapped both spine and tendon around his arm. He performed his final flourish, allowing it to vanish back into his cloak without even catching it. It disappeared into the dimensional opening, but part of it remained connected to Shiv's arm. This made it a concealable weapon as well.

The Deathless laughed. "Those bastards aren't going to see this one coming."

Both Uva and Adam were utterly speechless. "I... I..." Adam let out a moan of incredulity and disgust. "That's just grotesque, Shiv."

"But it's effective," Shiv said. "Also, it builds my Dread Aura."

"Is that going to be your excuse for all of this?"

"It's not an excuse. It's leveling."

"Sometimes, dear brute…" Uva said, though not nearly as severe as Adam. "I worry about you."

"Don't worry, Uva. This will just make me more effective."

"And that is the primary reason why I'm just not going to question it anymore. That, and well, it frankly isn't that much more cruel than my Psychomancy. I do jump into minds and make people murder their friends."

"I kind of like that, too," Shiv said.

"Thank you," Uva replied with a low growl to her voice.

Adam shook his head. "You two deserve each other."

"All right, Adam," Shiv said, tugging on his new weapon. "Open up the rift. Let's go say hi to these bastards. And show them my new cancer flail.”

“Please don’t call it that,” the Young Lord muttered, and he fired his arrow. It shot and tore through dimensions. And as it struck, Shiv saw the insides of a vampire mage burst open on the other side, and the impact was hard enough that several others aside from him were flung off their feet.

"Looks like it hit pretty hard," Shiv said, complimenting Adam before patting the Young Lord on the back.

Adam grunted from the impact, but didn't fall over. "Distance is damage," Adam repeated. "After you, you psychotic mess of a man. Go show them the nightmare you just made." And despite everything, there was a hint of mirth in Adam's voice as well.

Shiv chuckled. "I knew you would learn to like it."

"It's either that or learning to hate it."

Shiv shot across, and as he did, he spun in the air, launching the cancer flail out from his cloak and let it blast forward through the air. He realized it was going to be a little short, and then immediately started adding a bit more biomass to it—mainly tendons and other tissues for length. Another cool thing about the cancer flail—modularity. It didn’t need that much Biomancy to work, either. He could keep this up indefinitely.

The other vampires magi gathered and prepared to respond to the sudden attack. One of their members finally noticed the dimensional rift and pointed into it, calling out to the others, only to immediately get turned to bloody paste by Shiv's flail.

It impacted, and a second shockwave tore through the area. And it was then that the furrows in Shiv's brain activated again. You know what? I could cut the cancer flail and then use that as a teleportation anchor. Yeah, I'll do that some time. 

As he traveled along, he slammed his fists together, building up some of his momentum core. He emerged about a second after his flail, and a third shockwave shook the First Blood backline. With all of their Master-Tiers in the area occupying Confriga's focus, the magi were vulnerable and Shiv tore into them. He wasn't a hound in a henhouse, he was a wildfire spreading through a village made from nothing but wood. 

The vampiric magi tried to fight back, but his kukri slashed out, cutting them, Deepest Edge splitting them from neck to groin. His Conduit of Dawn flared, and he cut out from above, slicing heads and searing faces. Then Shiv pulled with his other arm. He swung hard and wide, and using his gravitic field to guide the path of his flail, it whipped hard and twisted at an unnatural arcing angle. 

Whips were not common weapons for most warriors. Shiv suspected that slavers probably developed whip proficiency more than anyone else. But when one had perfect tactile control over anything they held, an extended flail connected to an adamantine hard string could go a long, long way. 

The head of the cancer flail smashed and smeared several bodies, armor shattered before its accelerating mass, and the cord of tendon and spine connecting it to Shiv himself also did their work, becoming as if a long scythe against most of the vampires. They came apart, their bodies splitting, their organs burst out from their rupturing flesh, and Shiv laughed as he spun hard in place. 

He fed some more length of tendon and spine to his flail using his Biomancy, and his heart leapt with childlike joy. There was a purity to creating something. There was a purity to playing with your work. Shiv found that while true while cooking, it was true in war as well. He was still an aspiring Biomancer when it came to the technical details, but even a student could make a great many things, could make art from the clay they could muster. 

As he spun in several arcs, Shiv felt hundreds of magi die in the formation, and hundreds more get flung off their feet or badly maimed in the aftermath. Then at the end, as he saw another group nearby, positioned on the bridge, preparing to blast him with a series of spells, the flail halted unnaturally, seized by Shiv's gravity field, and it exploded straight down. Right into the middle of that formation.

Silhouette > 81

Deepest Edge > 62

Another shockwave consumed the world. Blood, gore, limb, and more flew everywhere. But Shiv still had his Silhouette active, and with all the chaos, the dust, and the viscera-soaked clouds splashing down, they lost track of him again. 

Shiv pulled his flail back into his cloak, and the trace of his presence became little more than just an outline. By this point, however, the Young Lord was in the fray as well. A small tide of Veilpiercers completely devastated some vampire magi backline, eliminating them before Shiv could smash another formation with a flail. 

Moreover, the bridge he was standing on, or the remnants of the bridge, were coming apart, as were the Biomancy organic extensions the vampire added to the structure. Shiv grunted and pulled his flail back. He caught it with his cloak again, and Adam materialized just beside him. Some of the Young Lord's clones were still firing in the air, and so the crawling, maimed, or crippled vampire magi were immediately burst apart, as were several golems under the same fire. A few seconds later, Adam's clones vanished, and the Young Lord looked around at the carnage they wrought.

"Bloody hells," Adam gagged. 

"I wasn't lying about the smell,” Shiv laughed.

And he stared into Shiv's cloak. He stared at the cord connected to Shiv's left arm, looked more disturbed than he was impressed. "Shiv, when we get back to Blackeedge, you cannot do this."

"What?" Shiv said. "Do what?”

“The whole weaponizing your body thing.”

"And it might be because we've been tearing apart terrible people this entire time, but if you do this around normal people, they will be deeply, truly traumatized. We're going to disguise that flail."

"No, we're not," Shiv said.

"We are," Adam insisted.

"We will. It won’t be bad. Maybe just wrap some flowers around it. Clump some earth to make it seem like a Geomancy Skill. Can Hu! Can you help?"

“Yes,” Can Hu said. “Though—”

"The cancer flail stays a cancer flail," Shiv said, adamant.

And just then, a series of vampires staggered through the portal, only to collapse dead in front of Shiv. Their bodies badly burned. It was then that he noticed Uva's mana strands sinking through the gateway, and the umbral chided them. "So. The gateway. Eliminating the vampiric backline. How is that going?”

"Sorry, Uva," Shiv said, as he patted Adam on the arm. "The Young Lord here got consumed by his urge to admire my large flail."

The umbral reacted with a note of disgust. "You two are such children sometimes."

"It's not, it's not that large," Adam muttered.

"True, Adam. The thing is, I can make it bigger. Can you make your Veilpiercers bigger?"

The Young Lord gritted his teeth, "Eat shit and die."

"There we go." Shiv patted Adam on the back. The Young Lord stuck a particular finger in his face.

Adam reached out with a hand and channeled his dimensionality. Shadowy mana crashed into the gate and he focused. "What are you doing?" Shiv asked.

"I'm making sure that it's accessible from this side and not the other anymore," Adam replied. "And then I can come back through. I'll be able to come back through. These vampires will be stuck out. Whatever their frequency they were using before was the same as the one we used before. I'm simply blowing out the easy access points, so to speak."

Shiv nodded. He didn't know much about spatial magic or dimensionality. And so he let Adam do his thing. Meanwhile, Shiv walked forward. "See you in a minute then. I’m going to go show some more people my new flail first.”

"Not too long at all," Adam said. "Have fun.”

"Fully intend to, Young Lord."

He emerged through the gateway and saw that the landscape was, as Adam described, disfigured and absolutely vile. A mass of downpour of blood and cancerous pieces of flesh were raining down. Enormous growths of misshapen tissue lined with eyes and jagged teeth rose over the horizon. They occupied the space where the guards used to. 

And speaking of the guards, a series of long pikes were arranged around the gateway. And on it were practically every wyvern rider the vampires could leave intact after their feeding frenzy. Well, mostly intact. Several of the wyvern riders were missing multiple limbs as well. And some had no heads, or had their heads dangling from their body, and various other delightful assortments. On Shiv's side, there was the tasteful creation of his cancer flail, which was purely meant to intimidate and to enhance his combat capabilities. And then there was this, a pointless grotesque display that was absolutely unnecessary.

As he stood there, he saw a few hundred Blood Horrors momentarily pause. They looked towards where he was at, and couldn't fully spot him. His Silhouette was active. And then the vampires felt him thereafter. But they were confused as well. For all they knew, there was a Master-Tier Biomancer among them, emerging from the gate. And more likely than not, that was one of theirs. 

Unfortunately for them, Shiv was the “than not” portion of probability. He counted enemies everywhere, his attention fell on a group of Jump Mages trying to create a massive spatial sphere. They were trying to teleport another formation right in front of the gate. Reinforcements. No. Can’t have that.

He targeted them first. He shot towards them, slamming his fists together over and over as his Momentum Core built. But as he did that, he thrust his flail out, twisting to his side, and using both hands to grip the spinal length. He brought the flail down like a meteor hammer, and it struck the Jump Mages with an absolutely colossal impact. What followed wasn't merely a shockwave, but an explosion of force. The spatial portal broke, popping without bringing anyone over. The Jump Mages were little more than bloodied smears or bits of tissue lodged in a deep crater. Some of them were still regenerating, thought. 

Damn vampires.

With a snarl, Shiv swung his cancer flail to the left, and then to the right again. He swatted multiple adversaries off their feet, and he sensed something coming down towards him, a wound golem reaching out. He fired three bone drills into its body, stunning it momentarily before he himself crashed into it. 

Another benefit of having Gravitic Wrestler: he could move everything he touched in the same direction. And so there was no awkward jerking with the flail. He simply guided its movement and had it enhance his vector. He obliterated the wound golem against his body, and he swung the flail down, using that to pull him along. As he did, he channeled Conduit of Dawn, slashing at everything he could see. And all the while, his silhouette climbed, and he gained a new skill during the carnage.

Skill Gained: Whip Proficiency (Initiate)

Whip Proficiency > 1

Silhouette > 83

He got a picture of what the scene looked like from the perspective of the vampires, as Uva filtered some of her memories over to him. She was piloting what was a particularly large and horrible--looking Blood Horror. She was staggering through the back line and jumping from body to body, compromising and mind-breaking their most powerful assets. 

As such, there was disarray unfolding through the vampire army. In fact, many of the commander vampires were twitching on the ground due to sudden mental breakdowns suffered because of unknown reasons.

But few noticed them, as they were trying to figure out what was attacking them. Shiv's movements were erratic, and all they could see was a strange length of cord followed by a massive clump of bone and cancerous tissue. Every time it landed, something exploded. People died. Then it snaked through the air, twisting unnaturally as if it was a living thing itself, and so the vampire started targeting the flail instead of Shiv, their confusion feeding into his Stealth. 

Could he even call it Stealth anymore? It was mostly just Concealment and confusion. They generally knew where he was, unfortunately generally wasn't exactly, and in combat you need to be exact. 

Across his mental link, he could hear her chuckling darkly. "They don't even know where you are. I can't believe it, it is genuinely effective."

And Shiv was on the verge of roaring with laughter himself. Then Adam was through, and he was through with a small army of clones. They took to the air, their wings burning hot, their bows singing as lightning, fire, ice, wind, and more accompanied their veil piercers. Then in certain cases, corrosion. A creeping barrage of dimensional arrows crashed along the land, and from behind Shiv came sweeping his flail from side to side, clearing the chaff with every sweep of his new weapon.

Then Can Hu called out, "Shiv behind, something has breached my—" 

Shiv swung his kukri back on instinct. A vampire emerged seemingly from thin air, the shadows breaking over its body as it came for Shiv. It caught a slash across its neck, but to Shiv's surprise, it wasn't beheaded, rather it merely staggered back, momentarily stunned. Master-Tier Toughness at least. Shiv drove a headbutt into its body, and he pulled his flail back toward him. It exploded across space, liquefying another dozen or so unfortunate foes that managed to survive the initial sweep. 

Shiv dodged his own flail, then, and that smashed into the chest of the vampire. Before they could go flying off to the distance, Shiv seized the vampire with his Gravitic Wrestler and powerbombed them into the ground, stabbed them twice, and then wrapped his flail cord around their neck. He swung them about with the cancer flail, bashing them against the air over and over.

Whip Proficiency > 4

Gravitic Wrestler > 121

But the vampire was Tough. He felt the hardiness of their body as they were stunned more than hurt, something comparable even to the scab armored vampire, Kraid. 

Instead of struggling against him, their limbs shifted into blood, and he felt their mana field twist into strange shapes around him.  He cast a laceration into their body, briefly stunning them as the spell exploded against their Magical Resistance. In response, their body remained half liquid shifted, and their transformation wasn’t complete. This gave Shiv another opening. He lashed out with his feeble Psychomancy and his kukri. The blade flared with light and it briefly blinded the vampire. It cried out, and Magical Resistance launched him out. Y

Yet before he could do anything else, a few hundred mana strands woven into spells speared through the vampire's mind, and it shattered before Shiv. They cried out as Uva bound herself to the vampire, wearing its body and finishing its transformation into a thing of flowing blood. It slipped out from his flail and drifted beside Shiv, full compliant—a new body for Uva.

"So how's that feel, wearing a vampire?"

"Like I'm wearing vermin," Uva replied with disgust in her voice. Faintly, he could hear the vampire screaming, and then she broke something in its mind. It offered little more than whimpers after that. 

There they were, standing before the battered remnants of the First Blood, but there were still a few hundred of them. And from between the Blood Horrors, he heard, "Assemble! Gather! Muster yourselves!." 

And then came a heavily armored vampire, covered in what seemed to be thick-layers of skin. Shiv narrowed his eyes. The armor resembled a great many flayed faces, and they were still moaning, still screaming. The vampire was joined by seven others, and Shiv had the feeling they were all Master-Tier at least.

Just then a whisper came from within. 

Rose muttered to him, an outside context problem triggered as a screen formed in his eyes.

Outside Context Problem: The Skinthief stands before us. He was a disciple of Ekkihurst, and he more than any other coveted glory planned for this operation. He cannot allow this to fail, for to return in defeat and disgrace after promising the ancient elders a gate of compact and a pathway to the surface toward even greater rewards would see him worse than dead, disgraced, shamed, stripped of the title of elder. 

He knows not that Kraid, his cousin, is dead. He knows not that things are going so poorly deep within the gate. He cannot believe it. He refused to hear the reports, but now as he stares at the bloodied mangle remnants of his rear line, he has to take point now himself, and an unease fills him.

The screen faded, and Shiv's spirit roused for the coming battle.

"Oh, look, Shiv," Adam said, landing beside the rest of his team, "another terrible, vile monster who stole from your fashion sense."

"Hey, the skin decoy was your idea, asshole. You encouraged me.”

Adam let out an uncomfortable snort. "Yes, well, you could have said no. And Uva should have rejected this."

"Me?" Uva replied. "Are you blaming this on me?"

Adam nodded without shame. "Yes, you're the sensible one."

She scoffed but said no more.

Shiv eyed the eight vampires and licked his lips. “Adam. Are you still interested in that wager?"

"What, who could kill more bastards?" The Young Lord nocked an arrow.

"Yes, these seem like proper prey, don't they?"

"Yeah," Adam said. "They do, don't they? I'm going for the big one. You two stay away from him."

"He’s mine," Uva said. 

“Mine first,” Shiv said.

“Both of you eat shit,” Adam snarled.

Before the Skinthief could start a dialogue, he immediately found himself struck by a cancerous flail, struck by dimensional arrows, and stabbed with Psychomancy strands.

Nothing was more bonding than competitive violence, Shiv laughed internally.