Path of the Deathless

365 Fault

—John Produrveral and Evanescia365

Fault

“It’s not fate,” Produrveral said. “It’s… it’s complicated.”

The Deathless lay propped up against a smiley-faced trunk of a Spring Court tree, his expression one of suffering. From within him came an endless flood of Chronomancy, far too much for a Legendary Pathbearer, too much even for a Low Myth. The mana imbued within his Harbinger had broken free and started turning counter-clockwise, rewinding the time within its holder as something of his future reached back into the present.

But this was more than the future reaching back in time. If it were only so simple. This was a convergence of paths, all flowing backward, upstream, because someone had pulled them together—incensed every possible Shiv in the future and drew them into a singular, synchronous being for a devastating instant.

To call the Challenger a titan would be an insult to the God of Strife. Titan didn't begin to describe his might, his power, his intellect, his reach. But that same titan had just lost his right arm; he had been flayed and shredded like a bag of meat thrown through a tornado of barbed wire. And it was all his fault. Shiv couldn't have done this alone; even hale, he could do nothing more than prick the Challenger.

The current version of him, anyway.

Reverted time continued to pour out from Shiv, but it parted around John and Evanescia. It flowed through the Fairwoods, drenching all in a vibrant, red-gold tint. But as suddenly as the Chronomancy came, it soon began to subside. As the mana dimmed, however, a shadow stared at him and Evanescia, flickering like a candle flame over the boy's physical body.

The shade was ill-defined, but John could still make out the outline of Shiv's face—especially that hammer of a jaw he had. The stench of spices spilled over from future to present, and the shadow was working on something over a counter, slicing and dicing, preparing to add something to a pot.

Evanescia’s questions were technically classified, but Produveral knew she wouldn't let this go, not with her curiosity nor her resources. Better to let her know now rather than risk unneeded destruction as she sought answers, as she stated herself, by whatever means necessary.

“The boy isn't, not right now, but it seems that in enough futures, he turns out pretty powerful—and all of them have an evolved Harbinger. In the present, his skill is always on the verge of shattering like glass. It's fragile, untempered. And frankly, it's leaking a lot more mana than it's actually channeling. But from what I saw…”

John cast his Awareness across dimensions, directly into the Challenger's innermost sanctuary. Enough blood to drown constellations spilled forth from the brutal injuries littering the orc god’s body. Each cut he suffered was a calamity. Each one sheared into his soul and took pieces out from the very nature of his existence. These wounds were myriad in multitude, for the edges of the fissures were lined in gold, like each blow was inevitable and an actual fixed point in time.

There was no avoiding these attacks for the Challenger, not unless he possessed a higher Domain of History.

But festering between the gaps, deep behind the spilling blood, was something else. It was the presence of a living concept of ruin incarnate. There was a garden growing inside the Challenger, a garden of devastation—that which followed in the aftermath of war: the graves, the ruins, the silence to come.

The Challenger's fascination with the Deathless didn't surprise John, but the orc god had really picked the wrong boy to put back together.

“Fuck me, the kid’s also a progenitor. I knew I felt something…” He sighed and realized Evanescia was still waiting for an explanation. “Look, the reason this happened is that the Challenger made a series of mistakes. He stabilized the boy's skill and then reached into his personal timeline, which caused all his possible futures to merge into one. Any other time, if Shiv tried to use his power like this, he would have just shattered himself. But the Challenger used his Divinity to hold the skill together, and then ended up getting his mana contaminated by the kid’s vitae, so... Yeah. Hoisted by his own petard is what the Ur-Sophs used to say.”

John brought his hand up to pinch his temple, but found his fingers blocked by his mask. “Jesus, what a goddamn mess. The after-action report is shaping up to be a year's worth of paperwork.”

Evanescia hummed. He sensed her dissatisfaction, and it throbbed within her chest like a growing ache.

“The Chronomancy?”

she specified.

“You're better off arguing with someone who actually has a Philosophy Skill. I'm just a guy they send to stalk people, fix problems, and shoot shit.”

John sighed aloud. “You know what? You got me there. I'm kind of lucky things turned out the way they did—getting suckered by that kid might have saved my life.”

The creature Evanescia continued to inhabit tilted its smooth, elongated head.

“I know I can't. Maybe if I'm fast enough and I know he's coming, I can escape on my own. But dragging the kid in tow? No, not a chance, especially since he has the Challenger's Blessing stuck inside him. Orc bastard would be on my ass in a minute, and I'm no good up close.”

And as quickly as it came, the flood of Chronomancy faded, and the shadow of Shiv's future went with it. But that didn't mean things were over. John gazed into the boy, into that inscrutable soul created by He Who Walks Beyond. Shiv was transforming again, merging with something. The Challenger's Divinity was being pushed out, if not entirely. It seemed like a portion of the Deathless was extending out from his being, becoming a bridge—no, an extension. It was like a limb was being formed in conjunction with his soul, but it was disembodied, connected to him through some kind of… conceptual alignment.

Evanescia asked.

John was too enchanted by the weirdness unfolding before him to reply. The soul was a complicated thing. He was as good an Animancer as anyone who got to Mythic-Tier, but there were still things that eluded him—things that only dedicated practitioners or true geniuses could grasp. He still remembered the basic rules of a soul and the general anatomy. A person viewed themselves a certain way, and the mind-body connection formed a spiritual mirror to the physical form. This was why people could bind weapons and armor to themselves—they were effectively tethering the material and the metaphysical together, creating a spiritual hard point for equipment.

This was also why certain races had major metaphysical advantages when it came to equipping items on themselves. Hydras, for instance, had twelve hard points. Their body counted as one, but they had twelve heads and serpentine necks. A wealthy enough Hydra could rig themselves up with enough metal to bankrupt a lesser world, and gain a breadth of skills they didn't naturally possess. Of course, they had to select their equipment carefully. Clashing magical attunements and contradicting skills could rip up someone's soul pretty good.

But all that was besides the point. Hydras had twelve heads. Humans had one head, two arms, two legs, and a body. So why was Shiv getting an extra disconnected arm?

Evanescia whispered in stunned disbelief.

“Fuck me,” Produveral groaned. “Chorus is going to shit itself.”

***

Feat Gained: [Error] - [Error] - [Error]

Warning: Feat requirements beyond ambient mana threshold.

Warning: Feat beyond current Tier.

Attention: Soulgraft in progress

Attention: The Garden of Wounds and Broken Things has assimilated the HAND OF THE RED RIDER.

Warning: Insufficient mana to control the HAND OF THE RED RIDER.

Blessing Evolution: Icon of the Paindrinker > Scion of Pain -

Unique Equipment Slot Unlocked: [HAND OF THE RED RIDER]

Tier: [N/A]

Condition: WAR IS WAR IS WAR IS WAR IS AND WILL ALWAYS BE

Composition: THE BLOOD TO COME, THE ASHES TO FALL, THE FLAMES TO FEED

Enchantments: [Destruction]

Garden of Wounds and Broken Things 115 > 122

Pillar of Orichalcum 461 > 470

Harbinger of Tripartite Ruin 284 > 303

This Severed Shadow of Blood and Bladed Soul 265 > 291

Shiv was drowning inside himself. The notifications kept coming. His levels kept rising, the System flooding him with more and more mana as a reward for surviving this ordeal. But Shiv didn't care about any of it. He wanted out. He wanted to surface. He wanted control over his own body, his own soul, so that he could help Adam, so that he could save everyone else. The Challenger had pushed him down underwater, and he just couldn't find the surface again. The Challenger had reached into the Harbinger, and he'd taken hold of Shiv.

The world was lost to him. He remained trapped in this void, even as the text of his triumphs spilled down before him like a waterfall. But this wasn't true nothingness. He wasn't rewarded with any bliss. Instead, he could still hear. Some of his senses were still working, and Adam was screaming, begging, pleading.

Shiv tried going Backstage, tried using any of his skills, the Unique ones, the Initiate ones, the Legendary ones, any of them, but nothing inside his soul responded. It was like he was trapped, like the Challenger had created specifically to cage him within himself. The cruel bastard had finally discovered a torment Shiv couldn't tolerate. Physical suffering was nothing. A broken mind needed only time to reset itself, and a damaged soul, well, that was practically an everyday affair. But deprivation and helplessness…

Adam wasn't the only one screaming. The only difference was that Shiv lacked a voice, and he desperately wanted to shriek.

A chorus of voices called out to him, a chorus of voices that all sounded like him. His mind went vacant. What was this? Another layer to the Challenger's hell?

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Shiv didn't understand.

An unmistakable scent came to Shiv. The taste of chives filled the air.

And with that, the darkness was parted in a wave of gold as a sudden swelling of force pulled Shiv up. Up through the darkness, up through the prison, back into his own body. His senses returned to him, slamming down upon his head like a ton of bricks. Suddenly, he could see, hear, smell, feel clearly. The Challenger was gone, but there was another presence weighing upon him, holding him down. A massive limb lay draped over his chest, a limb that burned raw red with vitality. Worst of all, Shiv could feel the limb—could sense the thundering violence that lay dormant inside it.

But something else festered within the limb as well. The Garden of Wounds and Broken Things had attached itself to the Challenger's severed lower arm. The damn thing was nearly two meters long and nearly as thick around Shiv's entire body. And it radiated with his lifeforce—was connected to him by a cord of vitality.

The notifications weren't an illusion. The words he had just heard weren't a hallucination. The Challenger did lose his arm, and now it belonged to Shiv.

“Holy… shit,” he croaked.

A keening sob from Adam made Shiv look away from his new arm. Less than a stride away, the Paragon lay upon the gore-soaked ground, clawing at his skull. He drove his fingers into the softness of his tissue and tore at meat, dug furrows into his bones. The sound made Shiv's stomach twist. A yawning chasm of horror expanded inside him as he beheld his best friend's self-mutilation.

But despite Adam's best efforts, his fingers couldn't find purchase on the Crown of the Anti-Savior. The damned thing had a mind of its own. Its briar-like design sawed and sank deeper, sinking through the bone and reforging the tissues it displaced in a coating laminate.

“No,” Shiv wheezed. He tried to move but barely slid an inch across the ground as his newly grafted arm left him pinned in place. The Hand of the…

a distracted part of Shiv's mind asked, but he tore away from the straight thought.

The limb felt like the heaviest thing in the world. Shiv tried to push on it, tried to shrug his way out from under it, but it weighed upon him like an anchor bearing the weight of entire worlds—worlds that had been slaughtered clean of life. Looking at the hand, Shiv could hear screams, could see fire and ruin and death, could feel war itself slumbering within.

And it was too much; it was too heavy. It was too great a burden for him to bear. Even as he spent what Shapeless Tides he had, he got no closer to pulling himself away—not until he tried moving the limb directly. The Hand of the Red Rider flared alight with vitality and rose into the air, dismembered but still bound to Shiv by a stream of crimson essence. Moving the hand demanded more than physical strength. Shiv found himself gasping as a counterpressure drove into his mind, crushed his emotions, and made his body creak with strain.

Centimeter by trembling centimeter, Shiv commanded the hand to rise before he rolled out from under it. With that, he was free. He threw himself at Adam, took him into his embrace, and tried to help him get the crown loose.

“Shiv! Shiv!” Adam's face was a mask of blood. The upper half of his skull looked like it had been scalped. A miserable grunt escaped Shiv as he looked away from the flesh flaps which remained of Adam’s hair, his slick visage blending well with the color of his mane. “Hurts… hurts so much…”

“Shit. Fuck. I… Wait, let me…” Shiv willed his hands to stop trembling, and he gently placed his fingertips against Adam's exposed bone. Shiv touched the Crown of the Anti-Savior. The moment he did, however, a blast of divine magic cleaved into him. Shiv's head snapped back as his vitality was nearly emptied.

The upper half of his face simply disintegrated and splattered apart. It took him all the life force he had left to reform.

“Fuck!” Shiv snarled.

Adam was sobbing like a child. The only clear parts on his face were two streams that ran down his cheeks. But his hands were wrapped around Shiv's neck. He pulled at his friend, but he also tried to strangle him. He made fists and struck Shiv across the throat and chest, but fought to keep himself under control. It was like an urge to do harm was overcoming him, was seizing him from the nervous system outward. And there was nothing he could do.

“Need to… need to…” Adam's breathing took on a guttural quality. His azure eyes were turning bloodshot, filling with festering darkness.

And Shiv didn't need to look at his friend's emotional core to feel the overwhelming hate, that miserable need to break, to kill, to dominate, to ruin, take hold inside him.

The Challenger hadn't lied: he did have an alternative means of enforcing an Orcish Skill. But this seemed so much worse than what Shiv went through. Because of course it had to be worse, because the Challenger had something especially cruel in reserve for Adam. The orc god knew that he was weakest psychologically—and Shiv knew it as well.

How could he have done this? How could he just go along with Adam's wish and damn him to this suffering? Of course Adam was going to pull a self-sacrificing maneuver. Shiv needed to be smarter. He needed to tell Adam no. He needed to find another way to convince—

Something inside the depths of his Tripartite cracked. Something inside his mind and heart tore. What little vitality he had left spilled out in a fleeting trickle, and Shiv came close, too close, to that final edge where oblivion held out its arms.

The Harbinger sounded more ragged than Shiv could ever recall, even after the Challenger had pieced it back together.

They were all on the verge of breaking. All of them.

Terror, true, pure terror, was taking hold inside Shiv. His words were meant for Adam, were meant for his Harbinger. Even with what was told to him, the guilt he felt was like an ocean—and once more, he was drowning. But the Crown of the Anti-Savior itself was an enigma, and Shiv had no idea how to even approach pulling it out of Adam's skull. It was constantly burrowing deeper, and the enchantments the Challenger had left upon it made it strike with devastating force against anyone who tried to remove it.

“If you can't get it out…” Adam swallowed, blinking as delirium took hold. The Paragon was no longer screaming, and that left Shiv consumed with dread. A look of fleeting clarity took hold in Adam. He blinked, and for the briefest of moments, it was himself again. He stared straight into Shiv's eyes, swallowed, and said, “If you can't get it out, I need you to kill me, Shiv. It . I can feel it eating my mind. Shiv… please.”

The sheer agony Adam endured bled over into Shiv. The Harbinger screamed as the strain of the mental imbalance drove the Legendary skill to its breaking point.

A microsecond longer, and the Harbinger would have shattered. Shiv would have shattered. The emotional anguish he endured would have been too much for his body, his mind, his heart, his existence.

There would have been no future for him. All those possibilities that spoke to him would have been nothing more than a final, fleeting, tragic mirage.

But Shiv wasn't alone, and neither was Adam. Tendrils of Psychomancy burrowed into him, and suddenly Shiv felt all his trauma get siphoned out. A nest of translucence rained down, splashing over Adam, burrowing into his mind the same way the crown did, but his suffering didn't subside. However, Shiv felt his senses clear—Uva created a layer of insulation between himself and the worst of his thoughts. She took over when the Harbinger could push on no longer and injected soothing spells into him.

She spoke to him both physically and mentally.

All the overflowing nervous energy made Shiv shake. A crushing numbness took hold—a numbness that kept growing and growing because Uva constantly drained away the toxic feelings that threatened to unravel him. He quickly learned what being catatonic felt like and decided that anhedonia was better than the caustic torture of regret.

Once more, Shiv became a passenger in his own body. He moved on autopilot, and the red right hand that was now bound to his soul hovered in the air, looming like a pillar on the verge of collapse but never truly falling.

Groans sounded all around him. The others were getting up, shaking off the Challenger's influence.

The first to join them was Valor. The ancient legend knelt down and helped Uva hold Adam steady as he thrashed like a rabid animal.

“Uva!” he snarled. “V-valor! Kill… kill you—me!”

“What… what is this? What did the Challenger put inside him?” Valor sounded shaken, terrified. Nothing like a Legendary Pathbearer, more like a lost old man.

“I don’t know,” Uva said. Her voice was calm, but her composure was also a facade. She was removing as much trauma from herself as she was from Shiv. It empowered her Psychomancy, but it seemed that the Crown of the Anti-Savior functioned just fine without magic. “I have access to his mind, but…” A gasp of discomfort escaped her. “I can't stay there. Not long. The pain… the urges… It’s…”

“Too much,” Adam breathed. “Please. Do it. I need…”

“No. No.” Valor knelt down and squeezed Adam’s hand tightly. “We will find a way. We will get it out. Be strong. Strong, like I know you can be. Can Hu! Can Hu!”

The Undying called for the Penitent, but there was no need. Can Hu was already in motion. And vaguely, Shiv realized its body had changed, its skeletal frame glowing bright with the same red-gold hue of Shiv's Pillar of Orichalcum, and it was far larger than before, sprouting more limbs and hovering drones behind him. Wings like a dragonfly's extended out in six different directions from Can Hu’s back, and they radiated with pulses of gravity rather than plumes of fire.

a distant voice breathed into Shiv's mind. The Challenger chuckled. But at the very end, Shiv caught a whisper of pain from the god.

Outside of the Court Leviathan, the wind was howling, but there were voices in the undercurrent. Voices of orcs screaming in agony.

When Shiv’s attention returned, he found Can Hu plucking at Adam’s head with dexterous, many-jointed fingers. “He has been implanted with old technology. From long before the Fall. The Crown of the Anti-Savior. A means of highest punishment devised during the War of Faiths to punish those who worshiped the canon of the One Faith.”

“How does it detach?” Uva asked, decidedly less interested in the lore.

“I…” Can Hu fell silent. Shiv couldn’t read the mind of the automaton, but he could see into its heart all the same. Hopelessness had found a home inside Can Hu. “It is a terminal implant. It is not to be removed. The construct is nanomolecular. It merges with the brain to take over the tissues and command the body and its various systems.”

“Then… then what about Technomancy?” Uva continued. “Wait! Where is Five? Bring him! Maybe he can interface with the Crown!”

Can Hu rose—though its mood never lifted. “I will find him.”

Yet, Shiv could see and feel the doubt inside the Penitent. Doubt that Can Hu kept to himself.

“Kid? Kid? You alright?” A hand was on Shiv’s shoulder, and he found Jessica looking down at him with genuine concern.

“I think I… made a mistake,” Shiv muttered, only half present. “I think we both made a mistake.”

The Giantsbane regarded Adam for a moment, then looked away—old traumas inside her welling. She dragged Shiv back to his feet. “Alright. Let’s get you out of here first. Fuck, let’s get out of this orcish hell pit in general. I knew this shit was going to happen at some point, but this—”

But any hope of Shiv leaving died as Roland finally rose to his feet a few meters away. “Adam!” His voice was pitched with misery. He barreled past Rose, all but drove Valor aside, and let out an anguished sob as he witnessed the state of his son—his pride, his joy, his blood; his only surviving son. “Oh, no, no, no. Starhawk! Thaen, I need you! Help me! Help him!”

The Starhawk, however, was absent.

No divine visage formed over Roland.

No hint of incandescent mana emerged.

“Starhawk!” Roland’s cry took on a mix of hurt and madness. “Thaen! I can feel you! I know you’re… Why? What do you mean there’s nothing we can do? You—you lie! You lie! There has to be something—something! Is it me? Am I not enough? Is it my soul?”

Shiv only realized Roland was speaking directly to the Starhawk after several exchanges.

Roland reached out and clutched Uva by the arm. “Hero Mettabon. I need you—my son needs you. I am spent—I’m worthless. Help my boy. You can do—” Roland swallowed as he heard something. Something spoken to him, and only him. “No… No. No.” Tears spilled down his face, and he turned his maddened gaze skyward. “No! If you cannot save him, then… then what is the point of you? What's the point of this? What am I fighting for? How much have I given, over and over and over! I will have nothing left without—I will have nothing! Please!”

But the sky remained sick with the smog of war, and the Starhawk kept his distance.

the Harbinger whispered, coughing.

“Father…” Adam whimpered. “Father?”

Roland’s head fell. He cradled Adam against him, brushing stray locks of hair out of his face, indifferent to the blood. “I’m here. Oh, Adam. Oh, my son.”

“It’s not… It’s… Hurts…” Adam whimpered.

“It’s alright,” Roland pleaded. “We’ll… Uva can help. She’ll make you well. She will.”

“No.” Adam shook his head. “It’s… it’s… it’s not his fault.”

“What?” Roland said, confused.

“Please… It hurts…” Adam clenched his teeth so hard his jaw creaked and clutched his own head between his blood-soaked fingers. But despite everything, despite all he suffered, Adam Arrow still had something to say—if a final thing to say before the madness took him. “It’s not Shiv’s fault… It never was…”

And with that declared, the Paragon lost himself to the hurt, and his coherence became a memory. The noises that left him belonged to a dying animal. Roland’s emotional core was being torn asunder; his eyes were wide with horror, but slowly, all too slowly, they rose and greeted Shiv.

When he saw the state of his blood-brother’s son, his heart nearly ripped itself in two.