Path of the Deathless

334 Sympathy as a Dagger [II]

—Recovered memory stored within a focus crystal found inside one of Udraal Thann’s abandoned laboratories334

Sympathy as a Dagger [II]

Uva despised logistics. She despised them as a Sister in training. She despised them as a Sister in the field. She despised them now as a Heroic-Tier Pathbearer who had to arrange hundreds of wounded, malnourished, and traumatized prisoners while also managing the now sympathy-stricken guards to ensure there would be no clashes among the two groups. Her solution came in the form of a simple rearrangement. All the prisoners went inside the Bell-Hold, and the ones who needed food were directed toward the pantry while those among them who possessed Medical Skills were tasked with healing the feeble. Their former jailers were placed outside, manning the walls, cleaning the bodies, separated from their victims by the hold itself.

The entire process took two hours, and a cascade of casualties followed. Thanks to Uva's brilliant suggestions, a fourth of the prisoners were now afflicted with some plague or disease, and the filth that caked their forms brought forth infections aplenty. The guards suffered their own ailments, mostly mental. The survivors, faced with too many dead comrades and unable to endure the wrongness of their deeds, flung themselves from the walls or drove blades into their carotids. The suicides numbered fourteen; Uva was unable to save any of them. The deaths came too fast. Too sudden. Too unannounced. Such was a crippling limitation of her sympathetic Psychomancy—when you controlled someone's mind in its entirety, you decided what they did. When you brought certain buried feelings to the forefront and forced them to examine themselves, then you left them with the initiative, even though you changed their hearts. That came with brutal consequences. Some people couldn't live with who they were in the light, and so they chose that final oblivion to escape the burning bright.

The self-resolved dead joined their comrades in the moat. The festering rivers of snaking centipedes fed well, tearing through armor and burrowing into flesh before hollowing bodies from the inside out. That brought forth even more trauma. Trauma Uva made sure to eat and convert to power to eliminate more unnecessary attrition.

She had need of all of them: all the guards and all the prisoners were necessary if she wanted to bring down the Gnomish Council.

Harkness wanted to scoff but held herself back. She scorned Uva in most cases, but now she simply pitied the girl. That pity leaked over into Uva's mind, taunting her directly.

The psionic effigy sneered.

Uva scoffed.

Harkness interrupted her.

Uva guessed, wondering where Harkness was going with this.

As this conversation took place in her mind palace, the other instances of her consciousness cringed as they realized there wasn't enough food to feed all the prisoners inside the Bell-Hold for even a week. Furthermore, they didn't have nearly enough medical supplies to treat all their sicknesses either. This was, after all, just a fortress outpost in the subterranean depths, a checkpoint that was meant to deliver a batch of goods onto the Deepdiver, not a long-term living facility. Not for so many, anyhow. Another logistical issue she had to deal with.

Harkness couldn't hide the scorn rife in her voice, but she still managed to finish her assessment regardless.

Uva couldn't help but be suspicious. Even though this version of Harkness was just a telepathic effigy, the woman was an experienced spy, and spies were creatures of deception above all else. Uva didn't think it was possible for her own mind to betray her, but she had gone through enough strangeness that such an outcome wasn’t beyond expectation.

Harkness's spite was a two-headed snake: one pointed toward Uva, the other toward Evanescia.

Harkness snarled.

Uva hummed.

Harkness sneered.

There was an undeniable flavor of salt in the former Owl’s being. And Uva quite liked the taste of salt.

Loath though she was to admit it, Uva saw the wisdom in Harkness' suggestion. Before gaining the System's favor and undergoing her Eldritch transformation, Uva was dedicated to counter-psionics. She was a hunter of her own kind and protector of Weave’s security. Harkness occupied the exact opposite of the spectrum. She was someone that collapsed a system from the inside.

Harkness continued.

This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

Uva concluded.

This made sense to Uva as well. After all, though some of the guards were undone when pierced by the humanity of their prisoners, some of their more callous comrades remained impregnable to the daggers of sympathy and had to be eliminated directly.

Uva’s musing earned a rare huff of affirmation from Harkness. She chuckled.

As Uva drew herself up and out of her mindscape, she gave Harkness’ projection a smile.

Her stacked consciousness began working through the guards. If Uva wanted to mantle a Psychomancer, then there were only two options, both gnomes. They were an odd folk, very small in stature compared to humans and Umbrals, if still twice as tall as the average goblin, but much thinner than the green-skinned and noseless species that had migrated to Integrated Earth following a lost Incursion on their part. The gnomes’ skin color was more similar to Adam's than her own, and their overly large eyes came in pretty much every color and shade there was. Both sexes of the race commonly grew facial hair, with most of the men sporting long and braided beards while the women kept mustaches of different styles, as well as having longer eyelashes than their male counterparts.

The first of the two that were now in Uva's sight was an Adept gnome Quartermaster with a paltry Initiate Psychomancy Skill. The second was the Bell-Hold’s Telediviner—a Master-Tier Pathbearer possessing a Divination and Psychomancy Skill Fusion who was burdened with the duties of mentally soothing the centipedes filling the moat and projecting thoughts to the Telediviners in other Bell-Holds as part of a communication network.

The former came with reduced scrutiny. The latter came with more options. Thanks to her Skill, Uva could choose both. But instead of forcing her way into their minds, she directed a tendril of her mental magic to greet each of them.

she asked directly.

Both gnomes shot to attention, shaken by the telepathic voice that greeted them. The Quartermaster currently had his bald head stuck out over the drawbridge. He was heaving nothing but sour spit after watching several of his friends be cast into the pit and devoured. The Telediviner was a white-haired woman with a thin, twirled mustache of the same color and ice-blue eyes that clung tight to a turret atop the parapets, having done nothing but cleaning the bolt loader over and over again to distract herself from misery since being appointed to her post there.

“Who… Who's there?” the Quartermaster breathed, verbalizing his terror rather than responding using Psychomancy.

The Telediviner's response was entirely different; her thoughts as sharp as her voice as they greeted Uva. In a single encounter, she'd deduced all that had happened.

Uva said honestly.

The words she spoke to both were the same. Though their initial responses were different, they both flinched the same way, undone by shame, cowed by a greater power.

“What do you want from me?” the Quartermaster cried out into the darkness. The ogre and gnome guards also puking nearby were startled by his outburst.

the Telediviner asked. A part of her feared what was to come, but another welcomed the most deserved fate. She had been keeping more than laments buried inside her chest. There was a self-loathing there as well. She had been meant for more, or so she believed, but for the past ten years that she could remember, she was little more than a slaver, working these miserable operations, a practitioner of the skin trade with no greater glory under her belt, just faces she scrubbed from her mind and screams she tried to banish.

Uva hummed.

“It’s not my fault!” the Quartermaster shouted. By now, the ogres and gnomes around him were making distance, assuming he'd lost his mind and was close to a dangerous outburst. “I was… I had to! I would have been one of them if I wasn’t useful!”

the Telediviner spat. A seething hatred shrieked out of her mind, like steam from a kettle.

Uva declared.

With her final cryptic statement, both gnomes widened their eyes, wondering what she was implying. Uva half-expected the Usurper-Narrator to intervene and turn a page back, telling her she couldn't drop such a large spoiler. But when that moment didn't follow, she pushed her luck a bit further. The Seeker showed both gnomes a flicker of Evanescia, and a hint at the true nature of this world. A rush of memories flowed over. The Quartermaster folded once more and heaved harder. The Telediviner mirrored her counterpart, but she actually had vomit to release—all over the turret she'd been cleaning. Philosophically, emotionally, and existentially shaken, both gnomish Psychomancers were briefly indisposed and unable to give their response.

As Uva waited, she directed a healthy prisoner to the top of the hold so they might ring the great bell and call upon the titanic beast that carried the greater remnants of the gnomish race from place to place, forever fleeing the wrath of the Courts. Uva was like a dragonfly skimming the surface of a pond. Both of the gnomes’ minds housed a great many memories, a long chain of history planted by Evanescia to give this story she was supposed to survive credence.

And so, as the slaves gorged themselves on what little food there was, as wounds were sutured and, in worse cases, cauterized, as the prison guards became guardians of those they once walked in chains, a series of chiming bells echoed. The noise was so sweet that even the surrounding stone couldn't hold it in abeyance. It passed through the matter, trembling far, vibrating deeper and deeper down the cavernous black gorge that loomed behind the Bell-Hold like an empty sea.

First, there was silence, only the quieting echoes of the Great Bell. But after a few moments, there came a violent, ominous rumble that made the earth itself tremble.

Both Psychomancers whom Uva interfaced with turned. They knew what was to come, and so did she.

And now, Uva wished she were a bit more like Shiv. Her habit of ripping into someone's mind and bending their will left her persuasiveness wanting, and her Psychology Skill was comparatively feeble, since she could simply peek behind the curtain of someone's consciousness. But she knew they were emotionally fragile, and—

“I can’t,” the Quartermaster whimpered. “Please don’t. I don’t want this… I just want to be done. It’s too much…”

the Telediviner asked.

The two gnomes surprised her. They split tracks once more. The weaker Psychomancer was also weaker in spirit. He was crumbling. He no longer had the taste for any of this. She had made a mistake in showing him too much. That glimpse of Evanescia, of the true shape of this dimension, had broken something deep inside of him. Not only was he a slaver to a miserable exiled kingdom that existed beneath the heel of the cruel Courts, not only was he ostracized from the other Fae; he was effectively a character in a story. How would one face the fact that their history and existence were altogether manufactured? Perhaps a sense of self remained, but what happened when the pages flipped back? Were they still the same? Or would they simply be replaced by another iteration of themselves?

Uva wondered.

The spike of existential dread that followed the thought was compounded by the low rumble of the approaching Deepdiver. The caverns shook. Debris fell from on high, and dust climbed, bathing the entire space in a swirl of haze, but from that vast chasm behind the Bell-Hold came spearing lances of light that parted the dark. With every second, the lances grew brighter, and there came a reverberating warble that shook the air and rattled everyone's ears with the chiming of millions of bells that filled the canyon. Yet, though it announced its arrival with calamitous noise, the Deepdiver itself was a gentle, dextrous being. Its gargantuan size was belied by speed and smoothness, and it slid through the cavern without breaking any more of the surrounding earth. This tunnel had been dug long ago to maintain maximum velocity.

Silence was the Deepdiver's nature. Its body was ridged with stone-like scales, and only the veins of crystalline light between them allowed it to be distinguished from the surrounding walls. The veins led to beady eyes, hundreds of them, all glinting like studs of onyx along the beast's sides. Shrouded by dust and wrapped in the gloom of the depths, the Deepdiver was an unclear thing, even for the prisoner standing at the top of the Bell-Hold. But Uva had seen it before. At least a section of its body.

It wasn't truly insectoid, nor was it anything like a serpent or even an eel. A dense, rock-like matter crusting its exterior was closer to a cordyceps, and ultimately, its mind vibrated with such ambient awareness that Uva was almost certain it was an awakened creature, at worst a little dull, yet far too alien for her to casually comprehend. Pair that with its Legendary-Tier Magical Resistance, and piercing through its barrier to seize control of its consciousness was a tall order.

Once more, it warbled; the air itself shook. As the dust settled, the prisoners clutched each other and remained still within the hold. Some of them whimpered; others prepared themselves for what was to come. The guards knew. They stared on, and there was an ominous feeling among them all, like they were uncertain what was about to happen next. It was a fitting feeling. Uva wasn't fully sure either. In every loop prior, she simply boarded the Deepdiver along with the other prisoners, got familiar with this branch of its body, and began a campaign of sabotage.

As a few crystalline veins began rippling with black static, a pulsating chasm of Dimensionality opened, and a path revealed itself, leading into the Deepdiver as it did in the loops before. A small contingent of heavily armed ogres emerged. They marched across the back of the Bell-Hold, each one bearing a long-barreled weapon that had an axe spouting out from beneath the gun heads. Their armor was also forged of adamantium, a rare material in the Fairwoods.

There were twelve members in the Ogre Elite Guard. They formed a hexagonal perimeter around the single gnome who stood at their center, and he trembled with magic: a Heroic-Tier Biomancer, Pyromancer, and Geomancer all at the same time.

The Telediviner veered on the verge of insanity, much like her fellow, torn between madness, despair, and a strange feeling of liberty.

Harkness sighed with disappointment.

Uva said to the gnome woman, ignoring Harkness. She sent a pulse of honest empathy across their link.

The Telediviner’s hesitation lasted but a second. Mind-to-mind, Uva's honesty was like summer's breath, and that warmth settled upon her counterpart, a welcome change to her cold life serving cold masters in the cold, grim ground.

And as she spoke that, Uva felt the Telediviner’s defensively pointed Psychomancy field grow thin with reluctance. Uva slipped in without further preamble and settled around her new vessel's mind as she bound herself tight. Bit by bit, Uva's physical form faded into translucent strings as she deposited herself in another.

she asked.

A pulse of surprise came from her new carrier.

A heartbeat followed. A loud, imperious voice echoed from afar, further cast but from every stone, every bit of matter in the area.

The voice rang afar, and his elite ogres marched forward, preparing to secure the hold. They didn't know what was staring at them from on high: Uva's Aberrant Fractals, the threads slithering behind the walls in the soil all around them.

the Telediviner said.

Mara muttered.

Uva grunted, She paused.

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