II-46 Tome (I)

There are few powers more vaunted across integrated Earth, and indeed all integrated dimensions, than Chronomancy. Chronomancy allows someone to manipulate the flow of time, to twist and bend the very fabric of history, or so it would seem. 

Rather, most times Chronomancers simply do lighter adjustments to time, mostly affecting themselves, allowing them to transpose themselves back to a certain point in time that relates to space, or perhaps accelerating their movements while slowing others to a crawl. More commonly, they also skip ahead seconds in the future.

But Chronomancy is an immensely difficult power to wield, and even those with incredible amounts of power in multiple Skill Evolutions within Chronomancy find themselves exhausted, spent, and ultimately unable to reshape the past. 

Reaching back incurs the system's wrath, but it does not incur it directly. Rather, changing the past requires more mana than even the greatest god possesses.

Additionally, altering the past inevitably you to go against a dimension's Mana Stability Threshold. Because changing the past inevitably attacks the very foundations of the history that shapes a skill. The skills of countless people. Or the history that shapes a mana core or world… As such, to do such a thing requires a catastrophic collapse and inevitably destroys whatever you're trying to do.

Now, if the past or history are to be changed, they are to be changed in more subtle ways, such as the mass rewriting of culture and mind. This, by far, is the more effective way of altering history.

Maybe… maybe that’s my way home. Maybe if everyone forgot about me first, I can finally attempt another jump.

-[Notes of a Retconned Chronomancer]

II-46

Tome (I)

Shiv sealed away the left side of his body in a thin layer of bone. He coated his arm and leg, poured the malleable adamantine down along the hand he used to hold the Magebreaker, and finally made a mask to shield the left side of his face. By this point, it looked and felt like someone had spent the better part of a year cooking on one side of his body. 

Uva gave him a brief glance at what he looked like from her perspective, and it was bad enough to nauseate Shiv himself. “Well, now at least I don’t look like a half-melted plastic doll anymore.”

He did his best to hide how much pain he was in with the joke, but Uva bit her lip as she looked at him. He could feel how miserable she was at not being able to do enough. She blamed herself on some level for not being there at the end, for not being strong enough to spare him from performing that act of Necromantic self-mutilation. Shiv, comparatively, was pretty glad she and Adam weren’t there at all.

“Uva,” Shiv said, biting back a mental groan. He also gently prodded her with his weak Psychomancy, keeping her away from the deeper sections of his mind. He could feel her strands reaching for his pain. He didn’t want her to suffer anymore of that. “There was no chance we could have won that fight. It was good you and Adam got painted and taken. The blast was pretty big, and the only ones who needed to burn were me and whatever the hell is controlling the Educator. I don’t regret it. I’d do it again—I light my entire person on fire if it meant the damned Ascendant would burn.”

“And to save all of us again,” she said. She briefly reached out and squeezed his right hand. “You always give too much. There is no hiding your pain from me. I am in your mind. I can feel how much it hurts. So much pain…”

“I can take it,” Shiv said with a shrug. Because that was the true of it. Pain was just a feeling, but hurting a god—even a forgotten one—was the prize. And keeping Adam, Uva, and everyone else safe was his responsibility. He was Deathless. He would take the hits. He would bleed with the enemy so they didn’t have to.

That thought turned Uva’s insides to jelly. She looked at him with a primal and hungry expression on her face, and let out a shuddering breath. “I know.” Something smouldered inside her, then. It yearned to burn more and lose control, but she contained it for now. “I saw some other things as well. Things I—” She briefly eyed Adam as Valor pointed out various things in the tome he was holding. “Shiv, what happened during that fight? For entire stretches of time, I couldn’t remember you at all. It was like you were a blank in my mind. What was that.”

“A new bullshit skill,” Shiv muttered. He turned his attention inward, but felt Rose just sigh. Despair emanated from her every fiber.

She cannot notice me, Rose said. I am no longer a thing that lives in the true world. I am only a fragment that exists within you. And here, things are… entirely separated. Distorted. Lost.

True to Rose’s words, Uva didn’t even notice the woman’s presence. But she did notice Shiv was thinking about her. “This is… I’ve never been this confused looking into someone’s mind before, it’s like entire parts of you are blank.” Uva’s eyes flashed with a spark of mana, and her frown deepened. “I cannot see your skill statuses anymore either.”

“Yeah,” Shiv grunted. “Also a result of the new skill. I got a lot of things to tell all you guys. But we should wait for Valor to finish explaining what he just discovered firs—” A sudden jolt of searing pain nearly made him double over again. Uva caught him by the arm, and her presence was motivation enough for Shiv to stay upright. “It’s okay… I’m okay.” He noticed the rest of the group staring at him. Adam’s expression was positively wretched. “I’m okay. Just… keep talking Valor.”

The Young Lord licked his lips. “Shiv, maybe you should—”

“The Woundeaters don’t work. Not on these wounds. Nothing works on these wounds. They’ll get better. I just need to face it right now. But I’ll be fine. I’ll keep standing.” He reached out and slightly punched Adam in the shoulder with his left hand. Pain exploded through his body, but Shiv just gritted his teeth. He knew that was coming. He did it anyway. Shiv wasn’t going to change how he acted just because of a little pain. “And wipe that sad-puppy look off your face. It’s not your fault.”

“I should have been better,” Adam muttered. “I should have kept my hand on the rapier. I should have—”

“Adam.” Shiv said, gripping the man by his neck and shaking him playfully. “Shut up. No self-pity. And don’t pity me, either. Way I see it, I just lit a god on fire thanks to you.”

Adam just stared at Shiv for a long moment. His eyes were wide, and his hair—dammit, he looked so much like Rose from this angle. There wasn’t a single doubt about her being his mother. He wasn’t going to like what Shiv was going to tell her.

Adam… Rose said, her voice hoarse with sorrow. I love you. My son… My dear boy. I didn’t get long enough to… I wish you could hear me.

He will, Shiv thought. I’ll find a way to fix this. I’ll find a way to get you out. Or I’ll find someone that can fix this. He eyed Valor, who was now looking back at him with curiosity as well. The flames within the Pathbearer’s sockets were glowing intensely. And or maybe I just need to put someone else back together first.

“Are you well enough to listen?” Valor asked.

“Yeah,” Shiv said. “Keep going.”

Valor nodded. And that was all that needed to be exchanged between them. Something told Shiv that Valor had done more than just burn his own soul to attain victory in the past. You didn’t become a Legendary Pathbearer by fleeing from discomfort or pain.

“Very well,” Valor said. He held the book high and gestured to the illustrated page he was showing them earlier. The edges were badly burned and there were traces of corrosion at certain places, but Shiv found himself looking at a life-like recreation of twenty people standing before the Abyssal chasm, with one among the twenty being the Educator. Or at least someone dressed like her.

Then Shiv noticed another thing about the twenty: they were all chained to each other. The material of the bindings appeared to be mithril, and the surrounding ruins of Lost Angeles looked different. In fact, parts of the city looked rebuilt. But not anymore. Shiv delved the ruins of the old city, and he knew a good part of it by heart. It was a broken and dead place like no other. A place of echoes and old history—the ghost of who mankind was before the system’s arrival.

And this wasn’t that Lost Angeles. Not even close. What the illustration showed was a place slowly coming back to life.

“My memories are shattered with my soul,” Valor began as he traced a crystalline skeletal finger across the page. But rather than stopping at the Educator, Valor pointed to someone far to her right. Shiv couldn’t see any of their faces as the drawing’s perspective was back-facing, but the one Valor pointed at was clearly a man. And a man with a longbow slung around his chest. “But I recognize this one. I can recognize him anyway, in fact. I think I fought him at least once. And I believe we had a conversation at some point. The exact details escape me now, but I think this is the Starhawk.”

Adam’s eyes turned to saucers. “The Starhawk?” His Seer of Horizons flashed as he practically smashed his awareness into the page. “I—the church said that before his ascension, he had long and flowing hair. Like a curtain of midnight.” He hesitated. “I asked my father about him once, but he never described our patron god in detail. Only deed.”

“That is because he likely never knew the Ascendant as a mortal,” Valor replied. “But I have. Even if my recollections are scattered. This is him. And this book… It is likely something similar to Starhawk’s Perch. A sacred phylactery that is meant to serve as a stable outlet for their power and keep them bound to this dimension.”

The Young Lord’s expression only grew more severe. “Explain.”

“The Ascendants are not true gods. Not in the sense of the Composer or even The Challenger.” Valor deliberately looked at Shiv when he said that. The Deathless realized the Legendary Pathbearer likely knew about his Blessing. “Their Ascension came suddenly and with an announcement from the system. And the system rarely declares someone to be a god. The only times I remember this happen when I was travel other worlds. Words with far higher mana thresholds than ours, ruled by entities that can impose their power on the system itself to make decrees and changes for entire dimensions or worlds.”

“You are saying someone else made the Ascendants gods?” Adam asked.

“I outright suspect the Great One anointed your Ascendants with the status and power of divinity,” Valor replied with a dark chuckle.

“But how—that’s not what the church said.” Adam’s eyes darted about the room as he struggled to process what the Legendary Pathbearer was saying. “They said that the thirteen each proved themselves and ascended in a grand quest to save our world! To save Integrated Earth itself.”

Valor hummed. “And that might be a partial truth. There must be some pattern of consistency to follow for a faith, after all. But look at this page. Look at their number. Twenty. Twenty, rather than thirteen. With one among their number being the god that attacked us.”

“Yeah,” Shiv grunted, bracing himself to reveal some very uncomfortable details. “About that. I tried draining the Educator’s vitality and… well, she was hollow. She isn’t a real person. Frankly, she’s more of an animated illustration than anything. When I drained her, I ended up siphoning vitality from that massive, shrouded god. The one we briefly saw in the children’s painting.” He drew in a breath. “Uva. Can show everyone my memories from the fight.”

She nodded, but as she delved into him, she paused. “There are… pieces missing here as well. Like stretches where you do not exist.”

“Yeah,” Shiv sighed. “I kind of expected that. It has to do with my new skill.” There was nothing for it. Adam needed to know, and Shiv wasn’t the kind to keep hiding things from people if he could help it. “Adam. My Foreshadowing Skill came from your mother. I don’t know how, but the Educator said it was from her soul and ended up in me.”

The Young Lord looked like someone just slapped him across the face, but he nodded. “I heard what the Educator said, but I thought she was just trying to break my focus.”

“She was probably trying to do that too, but she also wasn’t lying. And she kept attacking me with visions.”

“That’s how she stunned you at the start?” Uva asked. She blinked rapidly. “I thought she was simply using a subtler form of Psychomancy than I could perceive.”

“No. But she did attack me with a Psychomancer who was of a race I couldn’t recognize. It was tall and thin. Maybe Master-Tier. Not nearly as powerful as you or the Jealousy. But it was an illustration as well. After you both were painted away, I was attacked by hundreds of illustrations. Most of them were other Educators, but there were dragons and orcs, and they all had their own skills.”

“That is likely a Legendary Skill. At the least.” Valor’s words came as a whisper. “To recreate another Pathbearer as a living painting is power beyond what most can fathom.”

“Yeah, but there were limits. She needed to finish the painting.” Shiv paused. “She also could designate boundaries to the world with strokes of a pencil. It was pretty damned strange. And real annoying.”

“How did you even survive long enough to cast yourself against my rift,” Adam murmured.

“That’s partially the Educator’s fault,” Shiv said. “She tried to make me develop Exposition by hitting me with so many visions at once. Foreshadowing leveled pretty quick, and I killed myself to try and break free. But when I did, and I reached the Skill Evolution, I failed to evolve Foreshadowing into Exposition.”

“What? Why?” Uva said. “You failed? I—failing a Skill Evolution… it’s practically unheard of.”

Valor let out a breath. “Because of Shiv’s soul… Your soul and vitality cannot be separated.” Seeing the confusion on the group’s faces, Valor continued. “This is a skill that accesses the collective history of an entire dimension with your own. It feeds you details from the deeds others have performed—and allows you to tap into it at will. But the shape of the skill leaves one’s soul with a jutting edge, so to speak. An edge that extends beyond their vitality and mana field. It must remain connected to the surrounding dimension to constantly receive more details. But you do not have a pure soul or vitality. Yours is Vitae, one fused to another.”

“Yeah, something like that.” Shiv grimaced as he remembered how bad it hurt when the skill hatched inside him. “It felt like my soul was breaking…”

“Like your insides were being remolded, and your bones were shifting and slicing you from deep within?” Valor asked.

“Yeah.”

“That is the feeling of a skill shattering,” Valor said.

“Well, it didn’t stay shattered,” Shiv replied. “It adjusted itself and ended up becoming Outside Context Problem.”

“What kind of skill is that?” Adam asked.

“I have… no idea,” Valor said. “I have never heard of such a skill before.”

“Me neither,” Uva muttered, but she was looking at Shiv with deeper concern now. “And this is skills is the reason behind those missing patches of time? Your lost memories.”

“They’re not lost to me,” Shiv said. “And the skill, it… uh…” He looked at Adam and grimaced. “I don’t know how to describe this without sounding insane or hurtful, but I think it ended up resurrecting part of your mother, Adam. Rose Van Erren is attached to the skill and trapped inside me.”

The room fell silent. Adam’s jaw fell open slightly as his face. Before the Young Lord could say anything, Shiv kept going.

“Before you ask me if this is a joke or if I’m just trying to mock you, no. That’s—-it’s what I have experienced. But none of you can see her because the skill is… it’s… it’s acausal. Like it makes me not exist for a while in the real world. I slip into my own Vitae and basically leave the context of reality—dammit, I’ll just show you.”

“Shiv, wait—” Uva began.

But Shiv didn’t. He shifted into his Vitae for a just a beat. The world went gray. Adam was still staring blankly, a stunned expression on his face that became one of absolute confusion as Shiv vanished. His expression spread to everyone else as they stared off into the space where Shiv used to be.

“What… what were we doing just now?” Adam asked.

Uva’s strands twitched in the air, and curved back to stare at her, as if she was lost. “I think I was just linked to someone.”

Valor said nothing.

Shiv felt a bit colder, and so he moved to return. But before he did, a cry came from behind him. “Wait!” 

Shiv paused as he turned to look at Rose Van Erren. It was unnerving how detailed she looked, despite being entirely shaped by his Vitae now. It was like the skill remembered how she dressed, the way she preferred her hair, it even managed to portrayal how she cried. But its colors were only white and red, and so her tears ran like blood instead of water. “Tell him that I read him Hark! Little Sparrow every night. Tell him that it was my favorite thing to say bark bark bark and make him correct me. Tell him he used to get so mad and that I love him and that I—I—”

“I’ll tell him,” Shiv promised. And just as it started getting too cold, he resurfaced into the real world.

Everyone flinched back at his reappearance. Off by the side, Siggy cried out in terror. Shiv felt a stone crack into the back of his head as Can Hu launched something at him. Uva pierced into his mind while Adam prepared an arrow—only to freeze as his eyes widened in recognition of who he was aiming at.

Outside Context Problem > 55

“Stop!” Valor cried out. “Stop! That’s—Shiv! Shiv? How did you… What did you do?”

“I left reality,” Shiv said, honestly. “I don’t really know how it works, but it does. It leaves me unaffected by things. It makes people forget I ever existed—-like how it’s all affecting you just now. But it also burns my vitality. It burns it bad. Right now, it’s taking me some focus to just stay upright.”

He finished, and he realized he was wheezing. Outside Context Problem was powerful. But damn did it come at a high cost. “I think I can kill myself for good if I overuse this skill. And I think… I think I can feel my vitality slowly coming back, but I need to drain something if I want to  recover faster.”

“And that’s how you avoided the god for so long,” Valor said. He sounded more excited than ever before. “That’s how you survived. You left the context of reality. You are capable of acausality. The Necrotech—no, any of the Five Faiths would kill to possess someone like you right now. I—if only my Animancy was better… I need to examine your very nature when I more restored. This…” Then, Valor trailed off. “I remember… I remember my son was trying to build something like this. A self-referential soul. Someone that could pull themselves out of the world while still moving within its confines.”

And there was something else Shiv needed to talk about. “Rose intercepted some of the god’s Exposition. She… The Educator mentioned your son by name. Udraal Thann. She’s working with him. She wanted to give you all to him for system knows what. And she wanted to remodify my soul directly for some purpose. Or something. She was trying to get me to develop Exposition for a reason.”

Now, it was Valor’s turn to react like someone just slapped him. And Shiv still wasn’t done. “Adam. Look at me.” The Young Lord did. With wide eyes, a shaken expression, and dilated pupils. “I don’t know why this happened. I don’t know how your mother ended inside my Vitae. But I’ll do everything I can to get her out if I can. When I shifted out of context, she said that she used to read you Hark! Little Sparrow every night and she would say—”

“Bark, bark, bark…” Adam swallowed. “I… I remember… it is one of the few things I remember.” His nostrils flared. He looked to Uva. “Did—did you ever—”

“No,” she responded summarily, firmly, but gently. “I told you. I would never reach into your mind like that against your will. And you are responding in a state of shock. I can feel it radiating from you. Shiv could not have learned this from me. I would not know where to look. And he does not have the skill to delve so deep. And so…”

“I’m not lying,” Shiv continued. “I wish I was, but I’m not. I’m sorry. She wants you to know that she loves you, and she wishes she could hold you.”

A single tear dropped from Adam’s left eye. He failed to catch it in time. “I need… I need…”

“Adam,” Shiv stepped forward, but he stopped as Adam’s face twisted into an expression of pure heartbreak and torment.

“Please, just… give me… some space… a moment…” Adam barely croaked out the words as he fled the teleportation anchor, stumbling along the way.

Shiv wanted to go after him. Rose screamed for him to go after Adam from the inside. But then Valor handed Shiv the tome. “Put this into your cloak for now. We will need to investigate it more thoroughly. I will make sure he does not do anything truly foolish in the meantime. For now, keep your distance. He will need some time to adjust to this truth. As will I, with the mention of my son’s name.”

“It’s ugly, but it’s the truth,” Shiv said. “I don’t think we have time to put this off. And you all deserved to know.”

Valor paused, looked at him and nodded. “Yes. And I approve of the honesty. But this is a wound his heart struggles to endure. Space. Time. Kindness. Give those things to him. He will come back when he has a moment to mend.”

Shiv thought to how Adam went out to hunt weeks back after their argument in the umbral wilderness. “Yeah. Okay. Just… keep him safe.”

Valor hummed and went off into the dark after the retreating Young Lord.

Shiv was about to say something else when he snarled as terrible pain flared across the left side of his body. “Shit. Okay. Come, Shiv. This is nothing. Just a little sting. Just a little…” But it wasn’t. He had to actively fight the hurt, because there was another special quality to this pain: It was constant. Unceasing. It only had two modes: searing or flaring, with things usually as searing.

I’m going to need to stay busy, Shiv thought. Distract myself from the hurt. Dammit, this is going to make casting spells hard. Can barely focus.

“Maybe I can help,” Uva said. Her mind slipped over his again, and he felt her reaching for the part of him that experienced pain. But he caught her Psychomancy with his, weak as his field was.

“No,” Shiv said. “Don’t. Don’t reach in. Don’t bind yourself to that. I don’t want to see you hurt.”

“Then the feeling is very much mutual,” she said. Her stare was hard and unflinching. She wasn’t going to bend on this. “Let me help. Let me in.”

Something inside Shiv melted at the look she was giving him. “It hurts pretty bad.”

“Pain is not something I fear,” she replied.

“I know,” Shiv breathed. “I, uh, didn’t really get to the part about getting a second Blessing before everything broke down. Maybe I should have started with that.”

“Second Blessing?” Uva’s brow furrowed.

“Yeah, the Challenger—the orc god… He might be the only reason I’m not dead. He let me drain him, gave me a Blessing, and said that he expects us to get bloody at some point.”

Uva just gave a slight disbelieving scoff. “Unbelievable. You… You really are favored. With the benefits and torments that entails.”

Shiv just shrugged. “He branded me with something called the Icon of the Paindrinker. It makes the damage and pain I experience worse, but everyone around me suffers the same effects too. I think he expects me to use it on him at some point. Godsdamned orcs. He’s probably watching us now. Just chuckling and laughing. See how much he does that when I eventually split his skull open.”

Uva’s mouth opened slightly. “Well. That’s… I suppose I should start versing myself in the psychology of an orcish mind.”

“What? Why?” Shiv asked.

“Because we’ll probably be fighting a great many orcs down the line.” She said. “I’m not letting you go to war against an orc god alone if that’s what’s in our future.”

We’ll. Our. The way she immediately said those words, casually accepting the binding of their fates… Something inside Shiv burned hot, and it wasn’t the searing pain eating at the left side of his body. Gods, I need her bad right now.

And his thoughts caused a chain reaction inside her. It drove her wild that she could provoke this in him, and they both went past a certain precipice of self-control just then. But while he was distracted, she reached into his mind and burrowed deeper. She tied part of herself to his pain, and immediately, it didn’t feel so bad anymore. But his Biomancy let him feel how Uva’s body tensed, how tightly she clenched her teeth. She was fighting to keep herself from screaming.

“Too much,” Shiv said, reaching out to take her hand. “Less. Pull back a bit more.” She met his gaze and he saw her reluctance. “We still need you. We’re not taking this gate without you. And you’re not going to be casting well while barely coherent from pain. It’s enough. The fact that you’re willing to reach in is enough…”

Slowly, reluctantly, she withdrew, and the bulk of the pain crashed back into him. There was just a bit that she siphoned off. He didn’t know how she did that, but she completely directed it into her, and it was still enough to make her shiver from the muscles strain. But still, she forced a cool, composed look and cocked her head. “I don’t know what you were complaining about earlier. You had worse. Six out of ten.”

Shiv laughed. And his want for her became unbearable. And across the link, he felt a similar raging desire inside her as well. They looked at each other. Uva’s gaze darkened. Shiv swallowed. “Can Hu. Me and Uva are gonna… We’re going to scout the building. Make sure that no one heard anything, and… yeah.”

Can Hu’s optical lenses flickered at Uva then Shiv. Something of a mechanical chuckle sounded from the Penitent. “Leave the tome here, Pathbearer. It will be most helpful if one of us reviewed its contents while the rest of us are recovering. I will watch our undefined prisoner of war-unwilling conspirator in the meantime as well.”

Siggy’s eyes were wide, and the goblin was beyond terrified at all that she had experienced. She was still shaking in the corner of the room.

Shiv took Uva by the wrist, and they departed the anchor too. Somehow, he managed to fight through his pain and shape a spell. He found a place in the levels above that lacked any bugs and rodents, and soon as he did, his patience shattered into use. He swept Uva off her feet and grunted as he ignored the exploding patches of torment rushing down his left arm. “Taking too long.”

She gasped but wrapped her arms around his neck as they accelerated along the excavated pathway leading to the hidden teleportation anchor. As they slipped out from Shiv’s tarp. He liquefied the bone coverings he used to coat his corroded flesh. Then, he tore away his mask and gave up on avoiding pain altogether. “The hells with this thing too.” It hurt worse than hell when he snaked his arm behind her back, but the pain could go eat shit. Feeling her lips against his was more than worth it.

“Shiv,” she rasped. “Your wounds…”

“Aren’t going to keep me from doing anything.” He blasted through a set of doors, and dust rose into the air in a swirling dance as they jolted around a corner with another pulse of his field. Soon, they found themselves in a dark, cool monitoring room overlooking stacks of rusted containers through a dirty, cracked window.

The setting was far from romantic. Frankly, it was even kind of creepy, but neither Uva nor Shiv cared. Her hands snaked under his shirt, nails raking down his back, her palm resting against his chest. He growled as he fumbled against her armor. He didn’t want to just tear it off of her—even though every fiber of his being screamed for him to hurry so he could feel her bare skin on his sooner. His frustrated growl turned into a hoarse cry of pain as his arm flared again. Uva briefly pulled away from him with concern in her eyes, and she looked at his injuries with a disturbed expression. “Your wounds…”

“They hurt. They hurt constantly. But they don’t hurt anywhere near bad enough compared to how much I want you.”

Silver Tongue > 18

Uva’s breath hitched, and her gaze turned ravenous. She helped him with the shedding of her armor. Whatever dominion pain held over Shiv’s mind was usurped by burning desire as he and Uva savored each other.

And between instances of intimate heat, gasping breaths, and sweet-nothings exchanged, a faint presence called out from inside Shiv, trying to get his attention. Trying to remind him that she was still there.

But he was too far gone. As was Uva. For a while, all they knew was each other. All they felt were each other. And if incredible, unceasing pain couldn’t distract them from their urges, what hope did the ghost of a long-dead Diviner have?