Path of the Deathless

12 (II) Misconception

12 (II)Misconception

Shiv left the river behind. He filled some of his pouches with all the shrimp he killed, and also noted he still had some jerky. He could eat those on the way in a few hours.

The valley he walked ran long and had a slope to it. There were mushrooms of all colors growing everywhere, and Shiv collected some of them too, including some mendules. He noted the walls of the valley were veined with nightglass, and he caught glimpses of his own reflection. The man who stared back him was ragged and wild-looking. His chef’s outfit was hanging from his body in tatters, revealing a physique that put even his considerable build from a day ago to shame. He was about as muscular as Adam Arrow now, if he were to compare it to anything.

“I would need chems and potions to achieve this as a Pathless,” he muttered.

Valor asked.

“Yeah. Everything comes easier to the Pathbearers, doesn’t it?”

“See what done?”

Something in the dagger’s words ignited a new fear in Shiv. He wanted to see who he would eventually become. “Yeah. That won’t be me. I’ll either have to be cut down on the way, or I’ll make it to the top.”

That was a long time. Shiv wondered if he would be well past Master by then. However strong Roland Arrow was right now, Shiv wanted to be stronger by a magnitude. And someday—maybe even someday soon—he was going to do something Roland couldn’t, and then he was going to rub it in the man’s face.

And this desire crystallized itself inside Shiv. He pushed on harder, with the wind washing over his back and the compass pointing forward. Whatever new dangers lurked beyond his sight, whatever challenges, he would embrace them. He would die facing them. He would rise again and again to prove himself more than worthy. Until they were challenges to him no longer, and then he would move on to the next mountain to climb.

With this, Shiv’s journey settled into a routine. Over the course of the next few days, he ventured downward, emerging from the valley to find himself in a dense marsh. With Valor’s help, he managed to avoid the worst of the sizzleblooms that sprayed acid at those who came too close. Shiv was curious if the acid could still melt through him, but he decided not to risk his equipment. The spear still had more than a little life left in it.

Crossing through the marsh, Shiv was almost ambushed by a strange monkey-looking creature that had lashing tendrils where its head should have been. After disabling it with his Biomancy, he inspected its body with clinical focus—and sought out Valor’s guidance to help him learn what he could. He almost managed to close the wounds he made on the strange monkey too—but as with his previous attempts, things ended with cancer.

The shrimp tasted rather good with some of the new mushrooms he got, too. That was another highlight.

Cooking > 21

By what felt like the third day, Shiv encountered a large group of lesser vampires clawing through an area thick with bioluminescent bushes. He sensed them with his Biomancy, but they remained unaware of him. What followed was another kind of training—the sort he did over the past three years when he was trying to earn a Path the hard way. Shiv stalked the lesser vampires through the foliage, hunting them with his spear and new daggers. With his expanding mana field, he kept track of exactly where they were—and also was prepared to kill them with it at any moment.

Ultimately, that wasn’t necessary. His increased awareness of their movement patterns did help him advance his stealth as he slew them though, and quite substantially as well.

Stealth > 21

Knife Proficiency > 19

Spear Proficiency > 4

Valor asked as Shiv cleaned the tip of his spear. At his feet lay the last lesser vampire, heart pierced precisely from behind. Another benefit of Biomancy—it let him track exactly where his enemies’ organs were.

“Yeah,” Shiv said, grinning slightly at all the monsters he just killed. That was a good feeling: becoming so powerful that old obstacles ceased to be obstacles. He wanted to feel the same way about high vampires someday. “There’s a lot of them here.”

“Does it got something to do with breeding?”

“Something Nomos threatened me with when I spoke to her.”

“I just don’t know why that’s a bad thing.”

Valor paused.

Shiv stopped cleaning his knife. “They… they put the eggs in me? The spiders?”

“Oh. Broken Moon, that’s gross.”

“Yeah. Uh, funny story there: a surfacer is the reason I’m down here. I kind of got thrown.”

Shiv took a chance and pressed for more information. “I don’t think it’s them. The surfacer said something about an attack—something to do with the Necrotech Legions invading the surface again.” A long silence followed. Shiv could hear his heart pump—could feel it in vivid detail. “Valor?

“I think he wasn’t lying. I—I saw that giant serpent—Vicar Sullain—rise up toward the chasm myself. There were others following him.”

Valor’s tone turned severe.

Shiv’s mind was reeling. Excommunicated priest? “The vicar isn’t a member of the legions?”

“There’s a ? Between the Republic and the ? What, but—”

The Deathless went quiet as he cursed himself for letting too much slip. There was just too much that was surprising to him. All his life, he knew the Abyss as a place where the monsters were spawned from, where the legions hid, with their armies preparing to butcher and enslave those on the land. There were tales of Slayers getting lost in the dark and facing indescribable horrors. He was supposed to be in a realm of absolute nightmares, but… it really wasn’t.

It was incredibly lethal and harsh, but it was more like venturing through an extremely hostile wilderness rather than a land meant to break the human spirit.

“Blackedge,” Shiv muttered. The lie was broken. He couldn’t keep it up anymore. No sense in trying. Time to rip the knife out and see the damage.

Valor paused for a beat.

“Yeah. That one. I’m… The Umbrals weren’t very happy to see me, and well, all I know about the Abyss is that there are monsters down here. Or there were supposed to be just monsters. I don’t know anything about the Five Faiths or all this other stuff. I thought it was just the Necrotechs and their armies of undead slaves.”

“It is?”

“But… the un—the … How does that—”

“They’re like… skeletons,” Shiv muttered.

“Death?” Shiv blinked.

“I… You sound really passionate about them.”

“I was starting to feel that way when the high vampire started talking to me,” Shiv mused to himself. He grimaced. “Listen. I’m sorry I lied—”

“They… do that.”

Shiv’s head was starting to swell. First he learned that everything he knew was probably a lie, and now there was all this about New Albion. From what little he heard about New Albion on the surface, they seemed to just be some kind of merchant empire that was beneath Yellowstone’s notice.

“Valor. I think I’m going to need to take an early break today.”

“I’ve been—” Shiv caught himself before he could give away his final secret—about his Path. “Attacked several times. I’m pretty aware of how much danger I’m in.”

For some reason, Shiv thought about the raven-helmed stranger. He was likely the only one aside from Adam Arrow and Georges who knew of Shiv’s abilities right now. And he didn’t seem like he was from the Abyss… Something about him—his mannerisms—was just… It didn’t fit.

Shiv groaned. “Taint me. I—”

The world trembled. The sound of a massive explosion boomed in the distance as a gust of heavy wind rustled the surrounding vegetation. Shiv paused as the tremoring continued, and a faint light spilled through the cannopy, dappling shadows over him like the rays of a rising sun.

“Yeah,” Shiv swallowed. “Me too. I think—”

Then the real hit him. The weight of a mountain smashed into his body at the speed of a tsunami, and the air itself combusted. Shiv felt his body dissolve into ash in an instant, along with most of his equipment. Only his kitchen knife and Valor’s stone dagger endured, and the former was rapidly turning white-hot.

Shiv had no words for what he just experienced. That explosion was absolutely apocalyptic and came out of nowhere. There was nothing he could have done to anticipate or survive that. Faintly, he could hear Valor shouting his name as he looked around. The lesser vampires were gone. The vegetation was gone. The ground itself was turning into glass. Then suddenly, the flames inverted, rushing back across the land to a single point at the edge of the horizon.

There, high in the air, hovered an enormous beast. Shiv thought it was the size of a small mountain, and it extended four stone-colored wings as an impossible amount of fire converged into a single sphere that drew in all light hovering above its outstretched, clawed hand. Its neck was long, and its features were lizard-like. Most fascinating of all were its eyes—they gleamed like massive gems in the dark. After a while, as the darkness faded, Shiv realized the dragon might actually be wearing a dense layer of rock as armor, and draped over their shoulder was a wicked greataxe that seemed to be made from bone.

With powerful wing beats, it hovered before a wound it made within a mountain. There, Shiv saw a large, pulsating doorway that resembled a gap left on the surface of reality, composed of spiderwebs.

And then, impossibly, the massive dragon began to sob.

Shiv looked on, barely noticing how he was getting colder or how Valor was crying out for him. But he did notice one other thing: His Skill Evolution had finally arrived—and it came with another skill besides.

Skill Evolution: Toughness (Initiate) > Diamond Shell (Adept)

Diamond Shell > 53

New Skill Gained: Foreshadowing 1 (Adept)