Path of the Deathless

351 Three Upon One [I]

—Captain Harry Irons, TacStrat 101, Phoenix Academy351

Three Upon One [I]

No orders needed to be given. Shiv launched himself at Longinus with a surge of Shapeless Tides, and his two companions followed his lead. Adam was already within Shiv, fueling him with Heroism. Uva tethered herself to his mind and wove a layer of protective Psychomancy over his consciousness. From there, they became an alloy, three as one.

Aside from their first foray into the Fairwoods, it had been months since the three of them had fought together like a proper team. Yet there was no loss to their harmony. They were three of a whole: mind, body, and soul moving in tandem.

Adam triggered Commander's Foresight. Time seemingly halted. The three of them spent a moment to convene just as they were about to strike Longinus. The wrathful god was mid-turn, his lance burning like a star was coming apart inside it, on the verge of a final nova before an eternal abyss was fated to follow.

Adam’s question was answered by an influx of memories. Words alone were inefficient to convey the sheer mass of information they needed to exchange as fast as possible. Uva filtered through Shiv's memories, willingly given, with ease, and then used her Psychomancy to assist Adam in processing everything Shiv had lived through. At the same time, she took the initiative to share Adam's memories and her own with Shiv. An exchange of understanding took place as all their stories came together.

Adam made the mental equivalent of a choking sound.

Uva said nothing, but the frustrated snort she cast into their minds was laden with all the scorn and jealousy she could infuse in the sound.

Shiv coughed apologetically. But then the Harbinger prompted him to say something else to assuage any ill emotions among the group. Even the slightest bit of discord was a threat to them, especially when they were fighting a foe so fierce.

Uva said, pushing past the gash his evolution left on her pride and marveling at what he'd managed with Evanescia.

A low chuckle escaped Shiv, and Adam let out a pained groan.

Uva finished, flicking the back of Shiv's head with a twitch of her Psychomancy.

Adam said, his mind burning through the details of the coming battle.

Shiv grunted.

Adam paused for a moment, compiling all they knew.

Uva interjected.

An idea exploded inside Adam.

The Harbinger offered its own advice.

the Culturist echoed. There was a hint of strain in the orc's voice that Shiv hadn't managed to detect before. He cleared his throat.

Shiv summarized his feelings.

the Culturist replied.

Adam gasped.

The Culturist chuckled.

Uva said, many layers of her consciousness working in tandem. Through the Harbinger, Shiv felt the mechanisms of her thoughts far more keenly than ever before. The substances of Uva’s mind and heart flowed slowly and smoothly, and though ideas didn't often come to her in sparks of explosive inspiration, they built to a rousing crescendo after all she gleaned from her environment and her companions. A growl of anger slipped out from her.

Shiv understood what she was getting at.

Adam muttered.

Uva interrupted. She chuckled darkly.

Adam breathed.

A note of defiance flared alive in Uva's mind.

Shiv added.

Uva said.

Shiv reminded her.

Uva said.

Adam’s pouting ended in a scoff.

Shiv said.

Adam retorted.

Shiv asked.

To that, Shiv had no words to offer, but everything to say, and too much to feel.

So much, in fact, that he broke in three parts. A cascade of pain rippled out from Shiv's core. His emotional resonance was out of alignment with his mind, and so a portion of his consciousness collapsed, and a stretch across his back turned to fragmented glass, leaking blood. His pain was shared with his companions, and while Shiv weathered it in silence, Uva let out a pained gasp while Adam's mind flinched with surprised agony.

Adam hissed.

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Shiv bit back a groan of frustration.

the skill whispered with sorrowful exhaustion.

Shiv grunted in agreement.

Adam added. The Paragon sighed.

Shiv replied.

Uva murmured, though her glumness was now muted as she saw the penalty of premature power.

***

Longinus struck first. Even surprised, even damaged after hours of skirmishing, he remained a god still, an Ascendant blessed with unmatched power. The Wanderer's reflexes were honed to even greater heights by the fires of his rage, and his soul began to shift, making him a better combatant, a faster rider.

Not even the bend of the world could outpace his charge. His lance could strike beyond continents, leave gaping wounds where landmasses once stood.

What hope did a mongrel mortal have against him, even if the mongrel mortal could come back from being dead?

Quite a bit of hope, apparently.

Longinus moved. His resplendent lance shot forth. The fortress walls surrounding the outside of his kitchen hall ceased to be; a cubic kilometer of space was simply unmade from existence, consumed by vacuum. Behind him, the atmosphere combusted. Hundreds would burn. Dimensionals not of the realm of fire would be consigned to incineration. The slaves that were unfortunate enough to be caught in the tide would be swept away as ash.

And this Deathless fuck would be exsanguinated on the end of Longinus' shaft.

Or at least he should have been.

The Wanderer's divine lance pierced through the Deathless but struck nothing, parted no flesh, broke no armor, split no bone. The vacuum that destroyed the fortress walls didn't touch the Deathless at all, for he faded in a mirage of gold.

the Wanderer bellowed. His expression twisted in demonic fury, and his instincts took hold. His Legendary Reflexes greeted his Physicality, and he stopped in place. The air around him shattered. The ground beneath him tore. Metal became as if clay, and he spun on a dime, whipping his lance in a horizontal slash. A blade of incandescent energy tore across the world, distorting the distance between him and everything beyond. The Boiling Toad groaned as the country-sized dimension was bent inward in its entirety. The distortion was more than gravity, more than a collapse of mere Dimensionality: It was the Domain of Exploration wielded as a weapon, a deletion of space itself, and everything caught in that zone.

Longinus expected the Deathless to come from behind. Expected to see him falling in pieces—left with only a head and feet. But for the second time in a row, Longinus was surprised. An attack did come, but it wasn't unleashed by the brat.

It couldn't have been, for it too was tinged with the familiar incandescence of divine mana, and though it paled in comparison to Longinus' glory, it defied Longinus’s slash. The azure arrow was a shard of purest flame. It sang forth soundless notes that plucked at something within Longinus, something that was buried deep and supposed to be long dead.

took hold of Longinus. He stiffened and froze. The Wanderer had faced rival gods in the Fairwoods, divine entities that were lesser or greater than him in power. The facilitator of this event, the one who summoned and dismissed him at a moment's whim, was the ruler of this place, and the one he suspected of sending this attack.

Psionic echoes battered Longinus from all directions. Memories he repressed came to him unbidden, tightening around his mind and body in chains of fiery shadow.

He recalled his uncountable attempts to escape from Evanescia. He recalled the humiliation he faced at her hand when he was cast down and tortured for his defeats. When he was embraced by gentle hands after the end of his torment, only to find out they were the same hands that had carved through his flesh.

The voice taunting him turned into his own. The chains became a shadow formed from himself. He was holding himself back. Here was his own doubt, his own trauma, made manifest as a nightmarish set of bonds.

His voice turned hysterical with anger at the betrayal and the fear of losing everything he'd gained for himself in his eternal prison.

The Wanderer's scream was cut off as the divine arrow struck him. The moment it did, he realized he'd been wrong. This wasn't an attack born of Evanescia. She did not wield the Domain of Heroism.

But this new enemy did. This new enemy drove a spike of shame, of purity, of virtue, of chivalric valor so deep into Longinus that it tore at the foundations of his existence. The strike was so agonizing that it unmoored Georges from the place he was anchored for a brief instant.

Longinus' divine visage flickered—but his willpower surged. He reacted, seizing his Avatar before the little man could tumble free, and breaking through the bonds of self-doubt in an explosive charge. The Wanderer reared his equine legs back, kicking at the air and slamming his hooves down upon the ground. Waves of tumbling fire spilled out from him, waves that battered the world, that melted his cooking district. They rose kilometers high and washed beyond the horizon, carrying with them the authority and wrath of a god who'd wandered worlds. The burning tsunami spared Longinus from any oncoming arrows, knocking them aside and dragging them off in rushing walls of mana.

But the damage was already done. It cut deep, piercing Longinus down to the bedrock.

***

Unbeknownst to the Wanderer, a slightest crack opened upon his soul. An incision was made, and, reaching out from the slightest of gaps, another awareness flickered into being—the shriveled seed of personhood, the source of the Ascendant Longinus eventually became.

A whisper left a Pathbearer who regretted nothing more than becoming a god. As the first arrow pierced ever deeper, that feeling of defiance, of an urge to reclaim his body and cast away this unrightful divinity that festered within Longinus, took hold.

And the splinter that remained of a long-forgotten man began clawing at the rubble piled onto him for the first time in lived eons, the barrier in his soul that blocked him from reaching his tainted Divinity.

***

As a quiet rebellion began within, a cacophonous war raged without. Longinus fought with nothing held back. He galloped upon blazing hooves, and the world blurred around him. He no longer allowed himself to be constrained by time or distance. With every stride, he cleared the horizon countless times over. He obliterated everything in his path. The world turned into an incoherent and deafening blender of destruction. He cared not for what was in his way. So long as he broke his enemy, he would gladly wipe everything he owned away and start over.

he roared, his voice rising over even the sound of the world coming apart.

He slammed into the other side of his kitchen realm with the force of a meteor, hundreds of leagues away from where he'd been moments prior, and he flattened everything in his wake. The dimension-caging wall there ballooned outward, the alloys that composed it deforming beneath Longinus's force. The sudden stop sobered the Ascendant's mind. Why was he charging blindly? Why was he behaving like a bull when he was the rider, the chaser, the steed? He drew upon his Divination, and the System itself whispered betrayal, offering him the position of his enemy. Flowing tendrils of violet mana guided his gaze, his awareness—right behind him.

A mere sixty meters away, that fucking cocksucker hovered in mid-air. His body was veiled in gold and... Wait, did he look less cracked than before? Yes, all those fragments that used to make up his outside were now sealed. They weren't fused completely together, but a glow of divine mana made the Deathless's Chronomancy field seem more stable than ever before, and surrounding his body were swarms of hovering glass shards.

Longinus snorted in derision.

Once more, the Wanderer rode. This time his lance was on line with his enemy, with no chance to miss. He galloped; existence bent to his will. The horizon rushed forward to meet him as the pitiful serf it was. But the horizon wasn't the only thing that came forth. The mess of floating fractals surrounding the Deathless exploded out in a cone and stung Longinus like a swarm of angry wasps. Lines of pain flared across the Wanderer's body, but Longinus didn't care. He blasted through the annoying fractals and—

The Deathless counterattacked from the right. He slammed knee-first into Longinus. With that blow came a reminder that Longinus was a god. A god was beyond mortals, but being hit by a Legend when your vessel was a mere Hero still came with a price in pain and damage. It wasn't just physical pain, either. It was emotional. It was mental. It was a blow that conveyed the full weight of the Deathless' hatred.

the Deathless telepathically spat through his knee strike. A burst of black flame, wrapped in Psychomancy, swelled out from his attack and swallowed Longinus, fanning the internal discord already raging within the god.

The Deathless’ spite brought forth a ruinous alchemy, one that even a divine adversary couldn't resist.

Longinus's midsection turned to glass and shattered. A pain deep and true exploded through him, and for a moment, Georges was revealed, exposed within the marrow of his incandescent core. But the Wanderer wasn't so easily undone. He shifted in the air. Plumes of fire so condensed they became beams that carved gashes into the ground propelled Longinus as he slammed into the Deathless. A duel followed. Legend tries to struggle against deity, but Longinus thrust an arm forward and wrapped his hand around the Deathless's throat. He clenched tight, and he felt parts of his glorious golden armor shatter, felt the rush of hot blood spill free, and knew the moment of his enemy's death was at hand.

And then Longinus started getting hit from everywhere all at once. Just as he was about to thrust his lance through the Deathless' skull, a mess of swirling fractals swept around his weapon, and geometry got very confusing indeed. Forward became up, and down became left. Every axis of movement was shifted with another, and Longinus found his arm twisting at the oddest of angles as he tried to work his way out from that conundrum.

Somehow, the fractals managed to get even more annoying. From within that swarm of flowing shards came tendrils that lashed and bit. They whipped at Longinus's mind, bouncing off his prodigious Magical Resistance, but they were merely a distraction. While Longinus ignored the pathetic Psychomantic attacks, he couldn't do the same with the shards of azure fire once again raining down on him. A rival Divinity struck at him once more, and for the second time, the Wanderer was shaken. Georges was unmoored from his person once more. To make matters worse, a bit of the enemy god managed to get into Longinus' Avatar, managed to stain the man with their fetid Domain.

Longinus' shrieks went apoplectic. The Deathless already had Longinus exploring new frontiers of anger, but this was another dimension of fury. Another god had dared to touch Longinus’s anchor—another god that Longinus now felt proper for the first time.

Longinus' mind halted. The voice was familiar. And recognition came to Longinus in a crushing instant. This was Roland Arrow’s voice! The burning shards earlier…

Longinus whimpered. This Divinity. This feeling of righteousness. It had to be the Starhawk, ? Thaen was a blood brother, a true friend! How could he do this? How could he side with Evanescia? How could he side with the Deathless?

Roland Arrow declared, denying Longinus. Roland fell silent, and to Longinus' disbelief, the man reached out—extended a bridge of his own Divinity, his own Domain, over to Longinus.

A softer, smaller, far more human voice slid underneath Longinus. And a memory came to him unbidden—no, more than a memory. A smaller portion of himself that had been hidden away for so long. The enemy god burning inside him became more like a candle flame, and lit something dormant inside Longinus. Something he hadn't been able to notice. Something that was sealed away.

But it wasn't enough. Whatever fire Roland bestowed was not enough. The voice was clenched away, and the hunger within the Wanderer took hold once more.

And with the flex of his divine might, Longinus cast his adversary out and regained control of himself once more.

Inside, a voice sobbed. Inside, a man sobbed and found himself helpless to what was to follow.

Longinus screeched.

Tears ran down Longinus' face, tears that burned like streams of magma, and they spread across his body, fracturing the surface of existence and starting another transformation within Longinus. He began losing his sense of coherence. He shifted his lance and rammed it into his own forehead. The divine weapon was absorbed into his body, fused with it, and his body went from that of a centaur to a creature that was purely equine.

It had been centuries since Longinus was driven to this point, where the ravenous beast took hold, and the man became more distant than a dream.

The world began moving Longinus, shifting him wherever he so desired. And in an instant, he was carried to where the rival god was hiding.

Longinus flickered and reappeared in place—with his horn pre-lodged inside the Deathless’ flesh.

The boy's eyes widened. His golden shell cracked. Blood poured out from between his lips, and Longinus thrust his horn in deeper.

Longinus breathed with a feral chuff of hate and pleasure. He saw the divine flame burning inside the Deathless, and he understood.

Then the Wanderer’s inhuman expression twisted into a sadistic sneer as he licked his lips.