II-44 Burn

Once there were twenty, but then the story changed, and the faith changed, and history changed, and so there were seventeen. 

But then two more of our members disagreed about something major, something the others refused to abandon, and then there was fifteen. And finally, as the years dragged on, two more were weary. One settled their own affairs, and another simply disappeared. And finally there were thirteen.

Except not.

Except I have always been here. I have held a thin sliver… just a strand of the power that once made us divine, and no one else thinks I'm still here. My statue in the church is gone. It has vanished. My power, driven by fate, shaped by history, has gotten cold.

But even so, even so, across the empire I have cults, and I have my agents, and I have my “characters.” And my former comrades turned fellow divines… they linger, they squabble and bicker, and they fight over this paltry power they call godhood. They fight, but they don't see, and they don't realize, and they don't understand. They don't grow, and they don't change.

They are like a stale portrait. Yes, a pretty portrait. Pretty every time you look at it. But it's the same portrait. And the portrait taunts you because it is of a landscape. There is a horizon there, and they just refuse to seek it.

I am tired of this power. I am tired of it hanging on my neck like a shackle. I want to become something truly great, and something truly great all of my own.

I want to be my own work.

My greatest regret of all isn't this power. Isn't what I had to do to maintain it. No. My greatest regret of all is that it's not mine.

The Starhawk is a blind, noble fool, but in this, he is right—we are not gods. We’re just slaves of faith and legend.

-Tome of a Forgotten Artist

II-44

Burn

"Adam, stay close to me," Shiv growled. He dashed right in front of the Young Lord just as the Educator moved her brush. A wave of paint came forth—and Shiv threw one of his stored corpses at it. Colors of consuming red and white and pink and more swallowed the body and faded from the world. A cold weight hardened inside Shiv. This wasn’t like any foe he ever fought before. "Stay close to me. She can travel across our perception. We cover each other. I have the speed. I’ll give you an opening."

"Right," Adam said, breathing hard. There was still a linger trace of terror. “We need to hit her with a Necromancy arrow. There will be—”

“To hell with the risk, we’re getting Can Hu and Valor back from her. Whatever she is.” Shiv regarded the educator. She was connected to something that Rose kept calling a god-born-of-borrowed-myth. She kept muttering those words from inside his Vitae—his merging of soul and vitality.

“What is that brush?” Uva said with a mental shudder. “Every time she strikes my mana with it, I suffer a near-seizure.”

“I don’t know what the hells she is,” Shiv said. He triggered the Song of the Vigilant just then, and the world came alive with a resonant web. A web that couldn’t detect the presence of the colossal being that was watching them, however. The world around the Educator was still, but she filled her other hand with what looked like a pencil. Great. Probably some new bullshit he had to deal with. “I barely know what’s happening with my new Skill Evolution.”

Adam paused, and his head slowly swiveled to Shiv. “Skill… Evolution…”

“She kept hitting me with Foreshadowing and drowning me in visions earlier. She was trying to get me to gain an Exposition Skill or something. Ended up—” Shiv didn’t finish that part. He refrained from sending Adam the memories of Rose and his Outside Context Problem Skill, but he did share them with Uva.

“I… what?” the Umbral reacted, at an absolute loss. “How is this possible? His mother is dead. How does a portion of someone return from a skill.” That and a million other questions burned in her mind, but they all had more pressing problems.

“Don’t know,” Shiv said. He glared at Educator as she just stood there for a beat, tracing something in the air with her pencil. “I think we’re all going to need to have a long conversation after we kill her. Adam. Uva. I’m going in. Stay fluid. Stay close.”

Adam shaped four more arms and prepared five Veilpiercer at once as a response.

Uva simply reared back her strands, preparing to strike.

Shiv blasted toward the Educator and cleaved the ground with his blade. He was on the enemy in a moment, and she flicked her brush at him—only for him to blink back to where he just was and smashed into her. His almost filled Momentum Core kept him at peak speed, but he wasn’t going to discharge anytime soon. Shiv needed the speed to keep Adam guarded.

The Educator slid back on the ground as he hooked his free hand under her left arm and controlled both her wrists. His blade turned into a blur of slashes and cuts. Conduit of Dawn activated. His physical slashes were amplified by a beam of searing heat. Slight scratches and cuts lined the Educator’s body, but she showed no pain—even as every single one of Uva’s strands stabbed into her.

Then, the Educator fixed him with a hard glare as he felt something splash into his Vitae.

She is trying to reach your soul, Rose whispered from within. But she cannot find it. She cannot separate it from the rest of your being. She is lost in here. This is not her domain. Within you, she cannot be any kind of god at all. Even a shadow of one. Listen… Listen to what words her souls speaks.

Exposition: I have no idea how he’s resisting my Soulsculpting. It’s like there’s nothing solid for me to carve. I can’t touch any of his skills anymore. I can still sense that fragment of Foreshadowing—that piece of Rose Van Erren—but it has changed as well. Something must be wrong with his soul. An Animancy must’ve reached into this boy at some point. Give me something, Exposition. Give me a glimpse of something—anything.

“Here’s a glimpse,” Shiv snarled. He slashed his blade across the Educator’s eyes as he held her in place. Adam called out for Shiv to lower his head. The Deathless did just that. A corrosive arrow almost impacted the Educator, but she promptly burst into nothing but paint and color. The Necromancy-tinged Veilpiercer blasted across the land, shredding and withering a long stretch of the pastel horizon. Some crudely drawn trees began to melt, and the sun above adopted a frown.

“It is rude to deface someone else’s art. Poorly drawn though it might be.” The Educator’s voice came from all around them as Adam landed near Shiv.

“We need to stop her from just turning into paint,” the Young Lord gasped. He looked around, spreading his Awareness wide. His Seer of Horizons surged through the world, and he cursed. “And it’s just… it’s all just bloody painting here. We stuck in a painting against someone who paints.”

“Yeah,” Shiv said. “Real surrealist nightmare. Did the academy offer you a class on this?”

“What? Fighting in a bloody painting dimension? No. Absolutely not.”

Adam reached for something, and growl. “I think she knocked the damn rapier off my hip earlier. I really need a something to keep that thing on me. Damned spatial-temporal wardings affecting binding enchatments…”

Uva, however, noticed something. “Shiv. There’s an inconsistency in the art piece we’re in. It’s not an amateur piece, but a master playing at a child’s drawing.” She pointed a strand at a nearby tree, and he saw what she was indicating. Adam did too.

“That trunk is… rather vivid,” Adam said. “Let’s see if we drop its quality to resemble the rest of the page.” He fired a Necromancy arrow at the truck. It struck. And the entire world around them curled and dissolved. The effects of his arrow was like casting a canvas to an open flame. Better yet, the Educator herself cried out, and with it, Shiv felt her try to reach into his soul once more.

Exposition: Ah, damnation, I forgot how much Necromancy stings. It’s going to take some time rebuilding that skill. A good lesson, though. I got carried away with that tree. I should spend more time on review rather than composition. I would have noticed otherwise. Now. Back to the problems at hand—I need to remove the Young Lord first, then the Psychomancer. As for the Lowe boy… I’ll need to take my time with him. I’ve never heard of a Deathless Path, and now I can’t even see anything about him. 

Best that I release a mind mage from one of my pages to incapacitate him after I deal with the Umbral—and now I can’t even see her details either. And there was such an engaging story regarding the murder of her mother I was looking into.

For now, let us make this quick. They cost me enough illustrations already. I will reshape the Lowe boy slowly when I can. The others…

Udraal might be able to find some use in them. He will be pleased that I managed to find his father’s wandering pieces as well.

Udraal? Shiv blinked

Udraal Thann, Rose said, shuddering. The very mention of the name Why—we slew him… How is he still alive?

And then the horizon flipped over them like the turning of a page, and they were back in the ruins Lost Angeles. But then Educator was right there among them. She swiped a brush at Adam, but Shiv reacted in time. The edge of his kukri slammed into the brush. A parry followed. Frictionless Vector activated. Her brush unleashed a tidal wave of color into a building. As the colors settled, the building was gone, and in its place was now a stretch of a roaring, blue ocean that was juxtaposed on both sides by the ruins of a once great city.

Frictionless Vector > 56

Corrosion spread from Adam’s vambrace into his new arrow. As he prepared to release the shot into the Educator, however, another version of her appeared right next to him.

This time, Shiv didn’t react in time. A splash of paint crashed into Adam—but not before he released his arrow. The shot tore across the world, but it went wide. Two eerie, crackling green rifts opened at the point where Adam shot his arrow and right where the first Educator was. She almost dodged out of the way—but Shiv booted her back into the arrow. A blast of corrosive energy followed as the Educator cried out again.

Exposition: This would be bloody over if I was who I was before—I would have just drawn a few Heroic-Tier illustrations and been done with this farce instead of dropping Master after Master. Well. At least the Young Lord’s dealt with.

“Adam!” Shiv shouted. He caught sight of the terror in Adam’s eyes as a rush of sky-blue paint consumed the Young Lord. “No!”

Rage exploded inside Shiv—but it paled before how much hatred was pouring forth from Rose. My son! Give him back! GIVE HIM BACK TO ME!

Shiv poured everything into Momentum Core. The other Educator was practically unmoving as Shiv smashed into her. He slashed and tore and cut. Multiple hues sprayed out of her body in place of blood. She struck back with a brush, but he hooked her arm around her elbow, snapped the limb and headbutted her in the face. He tried flinging her into the Necromantic rift, but she dissolved into paint again.

And just then, Rose screamed in his mind.

She is coming! More of her! All she can muster at once! Dive deep!

Shiv dove back into his own Vitae and out of the world’s context. The coldness hit him. And the coldness only grew as he saw Uva snap free from his mind. The Umbral cried out in alarm, and Shiv immediately reached back into reality after her.

No, stop! She’s—

But Shiv wasn’t listening to Rose anymore. He burst back out of his Vitae in nearly the same moment he went in. She couldn’t leave context with him—of course she could. She didn’t have his soul. Uva’s shield broke into pieces just in time. Twenty Educators splashed down around them in bursts of color and paint. Uva’s Mind-Shattered Sentiel cried out as the enemy painted it away in brush strokes—and through the gap and pencil was cast through.

A line was drawn between Shiv and Uva. He slammed into the line, but found himself unable to move anymore.

What the hells is this? Shiv said, struggling.

Exposition: Ah. He cannot interact with my Border Sketching. Well. Now I feel like a fool. I could have started the fight this way. Alas, I wanted to recruit them intact and reshape him with minimal difficulty. Laziness always brings about more labor in the end.

Shiv looked on, helpless, as the Educators swung their brushes, unleashing tides of paint over Uva. Her strands reached back for him, but they couldn’t pass through the Border Sketch outlined by her pencil. The fragments of her shield dissolved first, then the colors crashed over her. Fear flickered in Uva’s eyes for but a moment—then her courage solidified again, and acceptance followed. She looked at Shiv and called out. “Shiv. I—”

The colors swallowed her. The paint crashed over her body in a tide, and it melded her into the backdrop of the world. A second later, it was like Uva never existed.

Both are lost to the pages, Rose moaned. Retreat. Hide. Please…

But Shiv wasn’t listening. The scene he just witnessed was seared into his mind. He saw Uva looking at him, her expression; Adam’s terror. Shiv shot beyond anger into a state of absolute hate-fueled serenity.

All around him were more Educators rushing in. He felt their brushes cleave into his back, stroke pain and hurt into his body. But unlike Uva and Adam, Shiv didn’t fade. He just bled. He just got hurt. The pain couldn’t take him, it could only wound his body.

And Shiv’s magic was fueled by his wounds.

His Woundeater exploded out from him as he fed his Biomancy with his constant, enduring rage. It cracked against one of the Educators in a massive crimson explosion. It barely affected her. What did affect her was Shiv slamming into her at sound-breaking speeds. The Educators staggered back as the Deathless became a monster of absolute violence. He everything he touched, he broke, he cut. He targeted the Educators’ wrists and fingers. He ripped brushes from hands and shattered bones.

Deepest Edge > 61

They painted him. More and more Educators spawned in to bring him down, but Shiv didn’t care. He didn’t give a damn about defense—he just wanted to hurt his enemy. He didn’t care if they were a forgotten god or an Ascendant or anything. He would die and suffer as many times as it took to get his companions back.

A brush stroke went wide in the chaos, crashing over nothing. By this point, Shiv’s Silhouette was doing more in his defense than he was.

Silhouette > 71

Then, something crashed into his mind as he ripped one of the Educators off by her feet, using her as a flail against the others. Shiv cried out as he swung his Magebreaker in the direction of the attack. A spell broke. A person cried out. Shiv spotted an impossibly tall and thin creature striding amongst the Educators. Its eyes were bright and pure white, and its ears were so long that it went beyond merely elven ears. It looked at him with a mouth filled with sharp teeth, and it launched another Psychomancy skill. One Shiv parried into an Educator.

It became the last parry he performed as several jets of paint took the arm away from him. Just then, another splash of color crashed down behind him, and Shiv turned—only to catch a heavy uppercut under his jaw. His head spun. Stars flashed through his eyes. He found himself launched skyward, only for the new illustration to follow him up into the air. What chased him was an orc. An orc sprouting wings with a Dynamancy-infused right fist. The large green-skinned monster frowned as it surged toward him—but Shiv the orc back down to earth as he discharged his Momentum Core right into its chest.

A trail of devastation followed. A new chasm opened behind Shiv as he obliterated entire portions of the already destroyed city, using the orc as a prow. As he crashed through a dozen buildings, paint splattered over him. Paint from the orc. Shiv drove his kukri into its eye and the orc just sighed.

“Just… stop,” the Educator’s voice came from the orcs lips. “This is pointless. I have the others—they’re not—”

Shiv caught the orc by the jaw and drove his blade up under its chin before he channeled Conduit of Dawn out inside its eye. The illustrations every orifice lit up as burning radiance cooked the orc’s skull from the inside, and Shiv crushed the beast’s skull before he launched himself back at the Educators.

There were hundreds of them now. Standing on buildings. Staring at him with the same annoyed expressions on their faces. A few even had arms folded.

Exposition: What a waste of good paint. Oh, well. When I include him among my illustrations, I’ll have something to replace the orc. I spent months illustrating that one.

We cannot win this battle, Rose whispered. Despair consumed her. We are trapped. There is no way out—

“Shut up and fight,” Shiv growled. He didn’t care if the woman was Adam’s mother. If she wanted to break, that was up to her. Shiv intended to stain every page in this incomprehensible dimension using his own blood if that’s what victory demanded.

And there was something else beyond that. Despite Shiv’s all-consuming rage, despite the Educator taking his people from him, Shiv wanted to be here. Through everything, he wanted this fight. He wanted to fight. Always. Forever. Eternally. Hopeless struggle or not, Shiv wasn’t going to stop being himself.

He fell toward the city like a meteor—and then the Educator’s started vanishing. He growled as he realized they were jumping into his perception. Just then, the tall creature that attacked his mind earlier appeared as well. It launched a spell at him—but caught a bone drill in the throat. It went down in a spray of paint just as ten Educators emerged to strike at Shiv.

He shifted out of context. They struck nothing—and remaining Educators hiding within his awareness were knocked free as he sank into his own Vitae. The very flames of his exist sputtered once more, but Shiv took a moment to consider his actions. He observed his enemies, observed the terrain, and he thought about what to do next—if only for a second.

The Educators just kept coming. Whatever the god-like entity was, it seemed more than capable of spawning mass quantities of the Educators. And more than that, it had other Pathbearers it could summon as well. Illustrations, it called them. What Rose conveyed to him was disturbing enough. He had no idea what kind of magic he was dealing with, but not even the Composer could just paint people into being.

What’s the limit?

And then there was his ability. When he shifted out of context, the world remained, and he could still interact with it, but he couldn’t be affected in turn.

“Your self-existing nature is acausal in the eyes of the system,” Rose breathed. She was weeping. Crying. Blood ran down from her pale, gleaming eyes. “Monster. Abomination. I am caged within an abomination.”

Shiv ignored her for now—even if she was starting to get on his nerves. Then, just as he found himself on the verge of performing a desperate ambush, he noticed something.

Adam’s corrosive rift was still open. The Necromancy infusing the insides were still active. A terrible plan developed in his mind. It might literally be suicidal, but he wouldn’t know for sure until he tried. And frankly, it was his best means to inflict as much damage as possible in as wide an area as possible.

Exposition: Why… why am I still here? Who was I fighting? Why did I unleash 122 pages of active illustrations here? And why does my exposition skill feel so… lost?

Shiv released himself from his armor and shot past the Educators falling from the air. He wanted Can Hu away from the blast radius, and he needed to direct clash against the Necromancy for this to work. Confusion was shown on all of their faces. And it was that very confusion that Shiv exploited a final time as he made a mad, instinctive gambit.

He exploded back across into reality in a blast of Vitae. He hatched out from a veil of crimson and white as he barreled into an unprepared Educator and accelerated down toward the Necromantic rift. He drained the Educator’s vitality as he shot toward the rift. The others immediately chased after him, flicking strokes of paint and—

Shiv suddenly stopped dead in the air for seemingly no reason at all. Even as he accelerated, he couldn’t go any further.

Then, he noticed on the ground below—a lone, thin pencil stroke marking a Border. Paint struck Shiv from every side as pain tore through his body. Without his armor, he was still adamantine, but there was no outer layering protecting him from the all consuming pain. He immediately started losing sections of flesh, then muscle, then bone. Everything the paint touched, it assimilated.

Shiv tried feeding Adamantine Adaption with rage, but it didn’t work. Another spray of color barely hit his head—and Silhouette kept him from an early death again.

Silhouette > 72

He tried going around—only to be struck from above by a massive blow. Shiv grunted but held himself in place using his gravitic field, he twisted and catch the limb that struck him. He found clutching the claw of a dragon. Unlike the dragon-knights, however, this one moved animalistically and operated without the aid of armor or equipment. It tried to channel a blast of flame into Shiv, but he twisted its neck at an angle and used it to burn some of the Educators nearby.

A surging jet of paint blasted through the side of his hip and disintegrated most of his groin as well. Shiv vomited from the torturous pain, but he kept fighting—even as he felt both his legs fall off. He swung the dragon against the Border Sketch, but it went nowhere either. With a roar of frustration, he blasted forward and shifted out of context again. 

This time, he did pass through, but at significant cost. He didn’t manage to drain enough vitality earlier, and so he found himself spent of vitality almost immediately. He cried out as he strained himself, but this wasn’t a thing of effort, it was just a thing of quantity.

The skill burned his vitality and left his soul hollow. Right now, he was fast approaching the point of having no vitality to burn.

As Shiv surfaced back into the world, he reached for the slowly closing corrosive rifts where Adam and Uva once were. Darkness crept in around the corners of his eyes. He felt more exhausted than he ever had in his entire life. But he made himself continue. He had to continue, if out of battle-want and spite alone.

Momentum Core > 85

Gravitic Wrestler > 118

No more, Rose whimpered in the back of his mind. Should you dive again, should you burn our life force once more, there will be nothing left of either of us!

He ignored her. Pulling on his gravity field one last time, he blasted toward the rift, wondering if he was absolute mad for planning this, or if it would actually turn out well.

Adam, Uva, Valor, Can Hu, and Siggy were gone. Captured and painted out of… wherever this place was. He didn’t know how this dimension worked, what kind of enemy he was facing, or how he was going to exactly stop them. All he had was previous experience to draw upon. The experience of how his very being detonated when Confriga struck him with the whip.

The reaction of a Necromancy clashing against his soul was enough to trigger a massive blast. It burned Confriga. It burned a Heroic-Tier enemy. Maybe it could burn a god too. Or at least disrupt this place.

It was either that or die, resurrect, and hope the enemy didn’t spawn enough mind mages to obliterate his consciousness.

Just then, Rose called out. Another is riding your awareness! I can hear her—

An Educator appeared in the corner of Shiv’s vision. He seized her with gravitic field and drained her vitality. But not before she slashed his upper chest with a pencil. She lurched to a violent halt as a loud crack sounded from inside him. Something split within his flesh. He tried to breathe, but the damn Border Sketch had parted him from half his longs.

Then the paint crashed into Shiv. It hurt bad, but after his beating at the hands of the dragons, this bad was only so-so. Still, he felt his lower body dissolve into blood as the paint ate at him. The Educator that halted him with a pencil moved to take his head with a brush stroke. Rose called for Shiv to shift out of context. But he wanted as much vitality inside him as he could when he struck the rift.

So he did something else. He shaped a quick Biomancy and tore his head off his body. His tendons, tissues, bones, and blood vessels came asunder at his command, and with a final surge of effort, he zipped through the air toward the rift, tumbling with his left cheek forward.

This is going to hurt bad, Shiv winced.

Behind him, the Educator stared at his headless body with flabbergasted disbelief.

Exposition: What in the damnation is—

Rose couldn’t whisper the rest of the exposition to Shiv. He crashed face-first against the corrosive rift, a second before his consciousness would have faded. And then the resulting pain was unlike anything he ever felt. His Vitae recoiled at the Necromancy. The corrosive mana splashed into the waters of his soul-vitality fusion. It felt like he was being melted apart in a place far deeper than his flesh, but though the corrosive gnawed at the shape of his soul, it couldn’t deform him. Rather, Shiv’s infused vitality began pushing back, started growing brighter and getting more volatile.

A considerable part of Shiv’s soul ruptured open, but from that rupture came a flood of uncontrolled Vitae unlike ever before. A pulse of red swept through the painted city of Lost Angeles, and for a moment the dimension broke. Buildings began to leak paint and the sky crumbled like a piece of paper.

The Educators and other illustrations took a step back—

And then started shrieking as a flash of white spread across the land, igniting everything.

It was like a new star was being born. All colors faded into that devouring white tinged with red. Shiv howled silently through it all, and Rose screamed with him. The left side of her face burned and melted as if someone had poured acid over her as they received a wound upon life and soul. Her left arm and hand developed the very same wounds as well.

But as Shiv staggered away from his charred head as a Revenant delirious from soul-scarring pain, he caught sight of the immense entity connected to the Educators—bound to them by channels of vitality—and he saw that they were burning as well. The world broke into discordant colors and burning paper. The dimension began to wilt and blacken. The horizon rushed over the city of Lost Angeles as he found himself in another illustration—a gentle farmland flanked by pristine rivers and grazing animals. But this page began to burn as well. The flames unleashed by Shiv’s combusting soul had spread. They had spread to the unseen god, and they spread across whatever this place was as well.

More pages passed by, and Shiv saw settings and drawings of all styles and kinds. And he also saw them—the Educators. Drawn on page after page. And between them were other being as well. Dragons. Orcs. Elves. The strange tall creature he faced earlier. And more things he couldn’t name. Most looked unfinished, and they remained still as they burned, but the ones completed screamed with the voice of the Educator as they writhed and burned.

And when they burned, they didn’t melt down to paint, but were charred of flesh. Shiv had hurt his enemy. He had wounded them. He had wounded an unseen god.

Through though-rending pain, Shiv began to laugh, and Rose reacted to him like he was utterly mad.

I got you… bastard

Vitality Drain > 45

Revenant > 39

Outside Context Problem > 54

Momentum Core > 87

Exposition: BURNS! I’M BURNING! WHISPERER OF DUST AND ASH, I’M BURNING! WHY AM I BURNING, I NEED—I NEED—I RELEASE THIS TOME! I REVOKE MY BLESSING! I WITH DRAW MY POWER! I SEVER THIS SACRED PHYLACTERY—AGGHH!

And then something snapped around Shiv. It was like all the power in the world crashing inward, and through the haze, chaos, and his own anguish. And as Shiv lost all sense of coherence, a chill washed through him. A chill that came when the flames within drew closer and closer to a final end.