Path of the Deathless (Book 2 Completed)

155 (II)

Tarrasque

The Deathless sighed. "That was absolutely godsdamn bullshi—"

The Tarrasque tore across existence in a blink of violence. Roland's arrows cut through the space the Legendary monster once occupied and struck nothing at all. The Tarrasque reappeared beside Blackedge and swung something into his skull.

Everything went black.

But Shiv didn't pass out. Instead, he felt something grind its way through his skull, carving down through his forehead, gouging his eyes clean. The Deathless gripped something with his remaining arm, and he felt it rip through his armored hand as well. His fingers were severed as the Tarrasque slashed at him, and suddenly there came a surge of heat at the center of his skull. Shiv felt his brain matter start cooking inside his skull, felt his inner tissues combust.

He kicked his legs. He tried to pull away using his gravitic field, but a stronger force held him in place as the Tarrasque channeled a beam of Pyromancy through his skull, killing him in an instant.

Adamantine Adaption 178 > 184

Gravitic Wrestler 152 > 155

Strider of the Unbending Path 144 > 146

Golemancy 7 > 9

Vitaemancy 71 > 73

Pyromancy 12 > 15

Hydromancy 2 > 6

Psychomancy 16 > 19

Striking Proficiency 41 > 45

Shiv respawned as a swirling mass of Vitae and immediately found himself struggling against the oscillating waves of red and white mana pulsing out from the Tarrasque. The behemoth tried to drain him, but despite everything, his Vitaemancy field prevented its power from seeping into his being.

At the same time, a bright blue arrow curved down from the sky above. It painted a trail in its wake, and it came for the Tarrasque, hidden among the swarm of other arrows. However, the Tarrasque's tendrils swept up through the world, and it channeled a storm of magic in response, blasting all of Roland's projectiles aside. But through the flame came the Animancy Arrow, and it nearly struck the Tarrasque—until it teleported itself and Shiv with another wink of its eye.

Skill Gained: Portomancy 1 (Initiate)

Shiv felt his Vitae break apart from the sheer amount of pressure pressing down on his being. Pieces of his existence fractured away, and he felt colder and colder, until finally he found himself drifting next to his bastard spawn in an expanse of black.

Where the hells am I now?

The Tarrasque wrapped a tendril around him. Shiv started draining from it, and for the first time, the Tarrasque let out a slight gasp of discomfort. And there it was: his one true edge against the Tarrasque. It couldn't manipulate Vitae, not like he could. Vitae wasn't a type of magic for it to wield; it was just a source of its power. He drained as much vitality as he could from the enormous beast, and it let him do so with a smile.

"Struggle then, boy," the Tarrasque said. "Break your heart and mind defying me. But this can all end should you simply supplicate."

As soon as Shiv resurrected, the Tarrasque seized him once more. It pulled his limbs in different directions to restrain him and, using its tentacles, held him high before its mountain-sized head. Shiv tried to breathe in, but he couldn't. Everything around him was impossibly cold, and there was no wind.

He saw strange, stick-thin creatures dancing in the distance. Their illusory bodies glowed with ethereal light, and their eyes left contrails of glittering stardust as they spun and twirled. They seemed to be moving west, fleeing from the rising glare of the sun in the east. Shiv briefly found himself blinded by its unfiltered light, and he turned away to take in everything besides it. But as he looked, he found that for long stretches beside, there was nothing else.

There was nothing at all.

Shiv blinked. This was the void.

The Tarrasque somehow teleported them all the way up beyond the atmosphere.

An exasperated breath escaped the Deathless. This wasn't good. Not even a little.

And then, some of Roland's arrows shot out from nowhere. They impacted the Tarrasque, pummeling its body with blasts that could glass entire sections of Lost Angeles. The Tarrasque barely noticed. Shiv saw parts of its crystalline shell crack, but it healed in a near instant. And for the first time, suspended in space, Shiv felt the creeping tendrils of despair crawl through his heart.

How the fuck are we gonna kill this thing?

"I suppose your determination should be applauded," the Vicar said, speaking into his mind. "But this must come to an end now. You wish to be the prodigal son returning to protect your town. Fine, then. Return. And be the hammer that shatters it."

And the Tarrasque's body shuddered. It pulsed with a gravitational power that dwarfed Shiv's by orders of magnitude. But rather than simply being a field, it started drawing the world into its own flesh. Shiv's joints were immediately dislocated as he felt his body get pulled toward it. But still the Tarrasque's tentacles held him still, refusing to let him be drawn into the building singularity forming at the heart of the Tarrasque.

Wells of collapsing gravity cascaded toward the immense beast. The light from the sun was pulled away from the world and swirled around the Tarrasque like an accretion. Shiv felt his organs prolapse, felt them get torn out of his orifices. He tried to use Outside Context Problem, but the Tarrasque detonated its Magical Resistance once more. His mind went blank with pain.

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It didn't last.

Shiv gagged violently as a rush of healing energy passed through him. He saw a new tentacle drifting before him, spraying Biomantic mana into his form from its eye. He healed, even after several organs had already been torn free from his flesh. They were drawn toward the Tarrasque as well, tumbling as they left flecks of blood in their wake.

The Tarrasque was trembling. It had built up a colossal amount of gravitational force, and with a smile, it angled itself down, placing itself above Shiv.

Shiv looked behind, and he realized he was staring at continents and oceans. Colossal, twisting storms danced along the vast expanses of blue that stretched across the immense planet. Shiv was stunned as he took in the sheer size of Integrated Earth. He'd never thought it was so big. He couldn't pinpoint where Blackedge was at all.

But that wasn't going to be necessary. He knew the Tarrasque was about to help him.

No! Shiv snarled. He kicked. He struggled. He twisted. As he tried to break out of the Tarrasque's grasp, its uncanny smile grew only wider. No! Shiv cried even louder. Let go, let go!

But the beast wouldn't. Yet, just as it prepared to lurch forward, a shape emerged from behind Shiv. The shape of a man with an arrow nocked, burning with a light of blue and white that seemed to rival the sun itself.

Shiv saw the Tarrasque's eyes widen. He saw Adam with his vector wings blazing bright. The Gate Lord fired his arrow, not at the Tarrasque itself, but right into one of the tentacles holding onto Shiv.

It impacted. An incandescent blast consumed the Tarrasque's entire form. Its body spasmed. It twitched violently, and a massive gravitational wave detonated out from it.

As soon as the Tarrasque's tentacles went slack, Shiv threw himself in front of Adam and braced himself. An enormous blast struck him. He tried parrying it with his Skysplitter, but his blade shattered immediately.

Skysplitter

Condition: Destroyed

Husk of the Adamantine Voidmantid

Condition: Mortally Wounded (Regenerating)

Shiv spiked himself against the blast, hoping against hope to deflect even a small part of this city-obliterating attack and spare Adam's life. He barely lasted half a second, but half a second was all Adam needed to dive back into Shiv's cape.

The last thing Shiv did was shift the Forest of Alloy away so that the resulting inferno wouldn't fry everyone inside.

A gravitational wave that would have gone from one edge of the horizon to the other and beyond back down on Earth eviscerated the Deathless. He died once more, and as he reemerged as a mess of Vitae, he watched the gravitational waves continue sweeping forth. It split the clouds beneath him, leaving a massive cleft in the atmosphere. His insides plunged in disbelief.

The sheer amount of power this thing had… If it really started fighting, would the continents below even survive?

Adamantine Adaption 184 > 191

Gravitic Wrestler 155 > 160

Vitaemancy 73 > 76

The wave of devastation breached the atmosphere and turned into a blade of flames that stretched on for kilometers upon kilometers. Shiv didn't have the words to describe just how powerful the Tarrasque was. This was beyond anything he'd faced. He felt like a wasp trying to wrestle a god into submission.

And then something inside him hardened.

Fine. Let's see how many stings it takes to kill a god, then.

Philosophy 13 > 14

And speaking of god killing. Something moved nearby. He turned his gaze upon the Tarrrasque and watched as its body twitched. The power imparted upon it by Adam's arrow finally faded into glittering motes. Shiv stared at the unmoving beast as it drifted there. It was a titan twirling lifelessly in space, but never once did he think it was dead.

For if it were dead, then his Vitae should have stopped rippling from its form, whipping out in curving coronas. Instead, Shiv watched as the Vitae powering it grew brighter, yet brighter, and brighter still. He accelerated forward and sank his Vitae streams into its body. He started draining from it, trying to stop it from coming back. But the Vitae crashed back into its being regardless, and when the light faded thereafter, its eyes came alight with white and red once more.

Its Vitae aura was barely any softer than before.

Shiv had no idea how Vicar Sullain managed to move so much vitality earlier, but Shiv needed something close to that trick to affect this monster at all. Right now, he was a gnat trying to drink away a sea of Vitae.

The Tarrasque stared at Shiv as he resurrected, and its expression turned furious. Shiv's armor hung from his body in broken strands of tissue, leaving him even less protected than before. It lashed out not for him, but for his cape. Shiv felt his insides go cold with absolute terror. He shifted the cape out of the way, and he wrapped himself around one of its tentacles. He began trying to rip more of its vitality out without absorbing—

The Tarrasque punched him with its fist.

The world vanished into a white-point of spreading fire. Death came for Shiv again…

Adamantine Adaption 191 > 195

And the coldness of final oblivion followed right after as it cleaved through his Vitae with a swing from its blade. A coruscating wave of light tore past Shiv and left a scar of light across the void. It was bright. So bright that the sun's rays were dim by comparison. It swung on Shiv again—but then an arrow hit the edge of its blade.

The cut of the colossal knife went wide, barely missing him by a meter. Then, an arrow infused with vitality detonated against him right after. Shiv resurrected in an instant, and before the Tarrasque could do anything else, another arrow hit the Deathless, this one detonating in a spread of Dimensionality that wrenched him out of the void.

Shiv felt himself get drawn across space once more. As he twisted and tumbled through the chaos, oxygen filled his lungs again, and he choked. Light began to approach him, and he saw what looked to be a war-shaken room filled with broken glass and debris come into shape at the end of a blurred tunnel. As he finally emerged, he almost smashed into the ground, but he felt several arms catch him.

They weren't enough. The small group of Pathbearers trying to catch Shiv toppled over and fell to the ground with him. He grunted a slurred apology as he tried to get back on his feet. He stumbled, and someone caught him.

"Easy there," a hoarse-sounding Pathbearer said. "You've been teleported from quite a distance away."

Shiv looked up and found himself staring at a bald and unfamiliar man. He looked aged, and his armor was chipped and stained with dried blood. "What… Where…"

Shiv blinked. He knew this place. He had been here nearly a month ago during the Festival of the Eclipse. This was the uppermost floor of Starhawk's Perch. Roland Arrow's personal abode. And there, slumped over in a chair, utterly emaciated, looking like more than half a corpse, was the Town Lord. His golden hair was matted to his face. His eyes were bloodshot, and streaks of red were leaking from his every orifice. A group of Biomancers continued pouring their power into his body, and beside him, a petite Psychomancer worked her magic as a thin man kept wiping the blood off his face.

Silence filled the room as Roland and Shiv traded stares. But it was broken by Adam emerging from his cape.

"Father!" Adam cried out, gasping violently as he tried to suck in more air. Behind him, Can Hu emerged as well, its body smoking and damaged. He was followed by a bloodied Rose Van Erren and Valor right after.

Roland gave a surprised blink before a radiant smile lit up his face. "Adam. I—"

Then, his gaze fell on Rose.