Path of the Deathless

364 Price to Pay

—Legend-Philosopher Melaia Kelhaus364

Price to Pay

The Challenger was delighted—even if his attempts to implant an Orcish Awareness Skill in the Paragon weren't going so well.

The words of the Deathless rang true. This was an actual struggle. Whatever the little Godling’s Domain was, it was certainly not merely Heroism, for the Challenger's power wouldn't take, was constantly being burned away by the flames that lingered within him. Though nascent and weak, they continued to lash at the Challenger's flesh in a most defiant manner. It was like suffering at a kitten's claws—a little predator that couldn't deliver anything worse than a few scratches, but the intent and the will mattered, especially to the Challenger.

He had truly misjudged Adam Arrow. He'd thought the boy was too soft, but inside him was such resonant purity, an overwhelming urge to do the right thing, no matter the consequences. The very thought of evil bothered him, burdened him, made him sick.

The Challenger barked a laugh of glee and withdrew his wrathful aura from the Town Lord and the Ascendant who empowered him. But he suspected his words were drowned out—mainly by Adam's screaming. And that was another thing the Challenger hadn't seen coming: Adam had quite the pair of lungs.

Yes, the Challenger could have been more gentle in his ministrations, but a little pleasure never hurt anyone. Well, it didn't hurt him. Adam Arrow was a different matter, and the emotional anguish he inflicted upon the Deathless came as a lesson, an important one. Though he admired the Bruiser for trying to broaden his horizons, the System and life had been too merciful with him recently—and so the Challenger sought to do him a kindness. All proper battles came with a price, and pain had wide varieties.

Said Deathless was tearing into the Challenger now, using Vitality Drain to his utmost, but still far from the skills’ true potential. The Challenger let him chip away; no reason to dishearten such a fine Insul further. Especially after his recent turn toward emotional intellectualism. On that note, he also decided to release his hold on the Seeker—amusing as making such a disciplined soul go rabid was, she was better left to flourish more before he decided anything.

There was potential with her in the future—if nothing else, she represented a gateway into a new theater of war. And besides, she would soon have a new patron to wrangle. One already festering with the Challenger’s touch. But while the Orcish Skill settled into the eldritch egg like it belonged, Adam continued to burn a stubborn little ember of defiance that refused to let any infection set in.

The Challenger was tempted to exert more pressure, but he knew how fragile a Godling this young was. Snuffing out a potential enemy before they could fully bloom was a horrific thought. What fights would he deprive himself of? What true wars of philosophy and concept?

Through it all, Adam screamed and screamed and screamed. By this point, he practically begged for the pain to end, however it might end.

But where the Paragon's flesh was soft and his will was frail, his true spirit was pristine, and it endured even as its vessel collapsed. If the Challenger wished to induce a sublime rage upon the Paragon, then he needed to get creative. A good thing his creativity was something he'd always prided himself on

Cupped in his hands, Adam became malleable like clay, and he twisted. His mouth was allowed to remain; it would be a waste to silence his screaming already. His eyes were wide and bloodshot, but both in the wrong place. Biomancy was too feeble an art to encapsulate all the Challenger was performing. Yet Adam’s physical mutilation paled in comparison to his spiritual savaging; but such was due a change—no matter how the Challenger tried, he just couldn't get his Orcish Skill to take.

Thus, he went about an alternate way to enforce the terms of this contest.

The orc god held up a hand, and from the heavens came a piercing lash of lightning, one comprised of flames and raining leeches, blood carried in their wake. Mists of red filled the insides of the devastated Court Leviathan, painting all in a layer of slick, sickly crimson.

But while a monsoon of gore rained down, an edged ring of metal, an ancient technology, took shape in the Challenger's hand. It was a crown from a darker time, an ancient time, a mechanism for torment, designed by people who didn't need magic to achieve the most vaunted heights of cruelty.

Even before the System came to Earth, humanity had been a monster indeed, a monster even the Challenger could admire. For they created such mechanisms and weapons that left him awestruck in his younger years and gave him inspiration even now. But more than taking inspiration, he raided their vaults and harvested their legacy. What he held was an instrument of black genius.

The was shaped to resemble a set of interwoven thorns, but it wasn't made from plant mass, despite its coloration and texture. Its matter was complicated and intelligent, each part capable of shifting between gas, liquid, and solid, allowing the crown to integrate with someone's neurology and meld with their brain mass. The crown also remained one of the few pieces of ancient technology the System allowed to retain all its properties and further blessed it with a series of foul enchantments. For the Crown of the Anti-Savior had its own bleak story, one the System seemed to respect or think fondly of, despite or perhaps because of its depraved irony: it held religious significance, for it had been created as a replica of an earlier crown.

Something ancient humanity used to torture their own savior.

When the Challenger had learned of that, he'd realized humanity, more than all the other beings across Integration, would always hold a special place in his heart.

A sonic blast shook the room. The Deathless launched himself at the Challenger, driving his tides against the god’s festering aura. He actually managed to move a centimeter; the Challenger hesitated, if only for a moment. The boy’s Shapeless Tides carried a tinge of something, a layer that pushed against the incandescence of the Challenger’s Divinity.

And then, for seemingly no reason at all, the Challenger forgot what he was doing. There was a sudden absence—someone was missing, but the God of Strife couldn’t recall whom. His power was congealed a few meters away; someone was trapped in a prison of buzzing flies and smoke. The Challenger frowned. The only person capable of slipping his Awareness was Valor, and the old Legend was an infested fragment of his former self. If not him—

A trail of pain flicked across the Challenger’s cheek. The edge of an unbreakable frying pan dragged a blurring streak of red mana along the orc god’s face. The slash was less than shallow—barely even scuffing the outer shell of the Challenger’s mana. But it still cut him. He still felt the sting, and that was testament enough of the power of the Deathless, returned to the Challenger’s memory. Yet, the boy’s might paled before that Unique Skill he'd just used—and it had to be a Unique Skill, as the Challenger existed across all known Integration. He did not forget a mortal—even when amnestics were deployed. Memory was one of his Domains as well.

He let Shiv hew into him three more times before he seized the Deathless again with his aura. This time, he breached the Bruiser’s under-invested Magical Resistance with a twinge of effort and anchored his soul in place.

“This wasn't what you fucking promised!” Shiv roared. He strained as hard as he could, his arms cracking, flesh weaker than his strength. “You said you'd give him an orc skill! This isn't that!!”

The Challenger laughed gleefully.

With a gentle caress, the Challenger restored Adam's flesh from a twisted parody. Sobs of purest misery escaped the Paragon, and it was such a sweet and enticing sound that it provoked the Challenger to fasten the crown around the young lord's brow before he had a moment of relief.

But despite everything the Paragon suffered, despite the absolute dread that seized him, he still opened his eyes. Those eyes, bloodshot but pure like the horizon, like the sunrise. They blazed with defiance above all else. “I… I am so tired… of hearing you talk.” Adam spat a mouthful of bloody mucus at the Challenger, but after all he endured, the globule didn't go far. It landed on his chest, and he sagged, succumbing to near unconsciousness. “Just get on with it… you sick piece of… of…”

Then, with the gentleness of a father, the Challenger placed the Crown of the Anti-Savior over Adam's brow, and it bit down into him, tightening in an instant as it shredded through his flesh and sank its barbed teeth into his brain matter. The Paragon bucked and writhed as he experienced an agony few would ever know. But he wasn't the only one who suffered. As he broke mentally, Shiv shattered emotionally, physically, and psychologically. His flesh began to fissure. Vitae poured out from his compromised body as regret engulfed him and helplessness took hold.

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“Take it out of him,” Shiv begged. "Take it out of him. If you have something like that, you can put it on me!"

A few stray Psychomancy threads struck the Challenger, but he ignored the girl altogether. She was a non-factor right now, even as her eldritch taint crept into him.

Adam's eyes rolled into the back of his head. His limbs went rigid. His muscles threatened to rip free from his bones. The Challenger didn't allow that. He wanted him to be robust in flesh and stay steady and stable, so he reinforced his musculature and further enhanced the state of his skeletal system. While he did this, the Starhawk now fell deeper into his madness of rage. His attacks were barely conveying their Divinity now. Everything he did caused ruptures in the world, but what flowed wasn't mana storms; rather, waves of carrion, vultures, and leeches. All things left over in the aftermath of a bloody battle.

As the God of Justice fell to the Challenger's influence, so too did his Avatar. Roland Arrow was a father utterly subsumed by grief and despair. That made him fight harder. That made his arrows become a sea of unending tides. Yet, despite his unique nature, despite his ability to shift his soulstuff at will, he remained a paltry thing—neutered by the weak god he'd devoted himself to, separated from his highest potential by a hive of grief that dwelt within.

At some point, his mind had snapped. He'd been shouting his son's name, and that was practically the only word he knew now, for everything else ceased to matter to Roland. His soul had already been worn from months of combat, and now he was overexerting, burning his being down to ashes.

The Challenger diverted a bit of his power there as well, for Roland, despite all his flaws, was a remarkable killer, and the Challenger wanted him to commit a few more atrocities before he fell.

It was always amusing when a good man brought such ruin to the world. The irony, tragedy, and self-loathing that followed always made for good entertainment.

As Adam was taken to a place beyond pain, the Challenger felt the Deathless try to exert his Unique Skill once more, but the insides of his soul had been bypassed. The Challenger held possession over the Deathless now. There was nothing he could do about it. His will was beneath the God of Strife—but still he refused to surrender. He struggled on, desperately, like the mad dog he had always been, even while he was an orphan on the streets.

The Challenger left the Paragon to his torment and turned his attention on his original prize, Udraal's finest creation—but perhaps the Challenger would usurp He Who Walks Beyond as Shiv's true and eventual master. Contrary to what the mortals believed, it was possible to tame a Tarrasque. The conditioning of an Endhound didn't come from pain, but pleasure. The Deathless was something that wouldn't stay broken, but he could be pleased. He could find himself twisted, and there was a greed inside him, a want, a lust for power, a desire to dominate, to destroy. And though the Deathless had a gift for the psychological and the social, he despised the Challenger. That loathing inside him made him ever so easy to tug and twist, indeed.

The Challenger used his divine presence to reel the Deathless in closer. He turned Shiv, made him stare at Adam, and his friend looked away, aghast and sickened by what the Challenger had sheathed into the Paragon’s skull. More of the Deathless cracked and broke; a constant stream of Vitae bled into the world, and brief flickers of gold presented the visage of Shiv's Harbinger, showing just how cracked it was from this trauma.

The Challenger all but giggled.

The Challenger sighed as he reached deeper into Shiv. He considered connecting him with Adam. That was what the Deathless requested, after all. He wanted to take the torment in his friend's stead. Of course, the Challenger wouldn't let him do that, but if they could both suffer, it might elevate their mutual angst to new heights. The Harbinger was potent, but before its Delve, it truly was a most fragile skill.

A hum escaped the Challenger. His mind turned away from the tortures he was inflicting to consider Shiv's pre-Legendary skill. The God of Strife understood the Harbinger better than most. It had more than a few secrets that even seasoned Legends failed to fully grasp. It didn't just allow someone to perform feats of enduring Chronomancy; it was effectively a strider of timestreams, unrivaled, as well as a weapon against the heart, the mind, and the flesh. All things existed in time, after all, and so it was entirely possible to strike someone and see the wound you inflicted upon them delayed until the time of your choosing.

But there were also stranger phenomena. Certain Pathbearers, especially powerful ones, could receive retro-causal messages from their future self.

As a whole, traveling back in time was completely impossible; however, traveling back along your personal timeline to send a message from your future to a few seconds in the past, a few hours, or maybe even a few years was something the System’s laws allowed.

Curiosity guided the Challenger's hand as a room full of raging Legends and mighty Pathbearers tried to strike him down, but did little more than fuel the gluttonous flame inside. He sank his godly aura into it and started pre-Delving Shiv's Harbinger, seeing to steal a glance at what might be in store for the Deathless down the line.

And so the Challenger pried Shiv's vulnerable skill open without the slightest gentleness. Twin screams deafened the room. Shiv’s was louder; his friend’s was purer. Both teetered on the brink.

The Seeker was howling at Hymn for aid—and indeed, he, more than any other Legend present, could hope to resist the Challenger to a degree. But the elf was the clever and cowardly kind. He had his vendetta against the Stranger, and he also owed the Challenger a debt from one of their prior engagements. Hymn remained a non-factor.

Bit by bit, the Challenger extended his godly will inside Shiv, and he cast his Awareness forth, in a torrent that flooded the Deathless’s cracking skill. the Harbinger screamed, flickering, reaching out for the Challenger.

With that, the Challenger slipped even further inside the skill, trying to find how deep it went. Trying to see if—

Something seized the Challenger.

Something had him in a grip so tight, the orc god winced in genuine pain.

The Harbinger blinked faster, its frequency increasing to a point where it was near solid and fully transformed. As always, it presented Shiv as an older Pathbearer, one sporting a slight beard, dressed in long-flowing chef's attire, and armed with a blade in one hand and his frying pan in another. That Shiv was dignified, refined, and actualized to some extent, but still not the true apex of his potential. Of that, the Challenger was certain—after all, the Deathless belonged on the battlefield. His reluctance to surrender his cooking was more of a liability and an amusement, nothing more.

But something new took his place. The golden mana that constituted the Harbinger expanded—and was further laced with a hint of vitality. Worse yet was the cutting aura that detonated out from this new being. Its every rippling pulse glided over the Challenger's form and left gashes in his Divinity. Gashes that carved the Challenger to the quick. The attacks came so naturally, like flowing water, that it took the Challenger off guard. His hands were shredded. His face was split down to the bone and deeper, until even his Domains were taught to scar.

The Challenger had reached into Shiv's Harbinger’s Chronomancy on a whim, and something had reached back.

A voice that was unmistakably Shiv's, but also far older, also something more, hammered against the Challenger, filled the orc god with a strange sensation, a coldness that coursed through him.

Was this fear? The Challenger had forgotten the taste.

For the first time in eons, the Challenger took a step back, but the radiant presence he drew out from Shiv only grew more calamitous. The Challenger tried to withdraw his divine aura, but the adversary had him clasped tight, like a handshake that one party refused to surrender. To the Challenger's disbelief, he wasn't strong enough to free himself, at least not in an instant.

The vision delivered a casual backhand. The System was split asunder. Reality screamed. The Outside screamed. Everything that existed along a certain axis screamed.

And suddenly, the Challenger didn't possess his right arm anymore.

The voice scoffed.

A crack formed inside the Challenger, a fissure that spread as infectious glass took hold. And then it was like a second of time had been torn out of the Challenger. A blow had been struck against him. A blow that hit him so hard, part of his body simply atomized, turned to vaporous powder that glittered in the air. And then another followed, and the Challenger's head snapped back. His jaw shattered, his tusks were sent flying, trailing blood in the air, and his Domain of Strength nearly crumbled from the impact.

The Challenger coughed, trying to ward off the oncoming assault, but there was no reprieve, no way he could avoid it. Every blow that came felt destined. There was no axis of defense, no spell or skill the Challenger possessed that could counter this.

A disappointed laugh followed.

With a final surge of effort, the Challenger tore his own Divinity asunder, leaving a fragment of himself inside Shiv before he fled the Tutorial, shooting back up into the sky as a crimson thunderbolt, echoing not with thunder, but with raging laughter.

He couldn't believe it. He'd been surprised again—again by the Deathless. And what a surprise this was. What a humiliating retreat he was forced to make.

And seemingly out of nowhere.

How could he have predicted this? For a moment, he even considered if the Deathless had planned this, had deliberately provoked the Challenger into reaching inside him, but no. The boy had good intuition, but he still wasn't that clever. This was simply the Challenger's greed getting the better of him. He was the one who'd reached too far. He was the one who drew something out. Something wonderful. Something terrible. A enemy, one that still stood beyond the Challenger.

He'd missed it, hunting monsters beyond himself.

As he shot beyond the threshold of the Tutorial to lick his wounds and mend his brutalized Domains, the Challenger wondered how long it might take for Shiv to become the golden presence that just pummeled him—if it was inevitable to come to fruition at all.

Looking back, the overwhelming flood of Chronomancy was already going dim, and in its absence, Shiv and Adam crashed down on the ground, both spasming, both dormant, neither within the Challenger's grip. With the God of Strife's retreat, the madness he inflicted upon those within the Court Leviathan abated as well. Soon, others were upon the two, checking them, trying to get them to wake.

But far, far away, dimensions beyond, and separated by two whole thresholds of mana, the Challenger staggered up the steps to his grand throne, and found himself still trailing blood, the wounds he'd been dealt unhealing, marred by fissures of Vitae.

And time.

Shiv’s voice vibrated softly from the Challenger’s injuries. The presence was growing fainter by the second, but he was still there, still all too close.

The Challenger collapsed heavily into his throne and began drawing from his realms, ripping away at the soulstuff of his orcs to plug up the wounds he'd sustained. It didn’t work. The temporal wounds endured—and felt like they were meant to be eternal.

the Challenger held up the bleeding stump that remained of his right hand, severed just beneath the elbow. He laughed giddily.

The presence just scoffed as he drifted toward silence—and receded into the future.

And with that word, the Challenger felt one of his Domains vitrify completely, and start to break.

The orc god then did something utterly uncharacteristic.

He screamed in highest pain.

And all his children screamed with him.