NOVEL NEXT 168 (I) Legend
There is a kind of peace one attains through self-murder. At the end of your Delve, the final enemy so often is a replica of yourself. A mirror image that stands before you, capable of all your skills, and unfettered by your ethical or mental burdens.
It takes more than martial mastery to slay oneself in combat. All you know will be given unto your replica as well. Every blow you strike will be known to them. There will be no technique you can create that is beyond them. There is no knowledge you hold that can be masked from their understanding.
And so when you first face yourself, you will fail. Because the Delve seeks to sharpen you. It seeks to place you at a severe disadvantage. Think of how skilled you are. Now think of facing your absolute equal while still having to protect someone else. What are your odds of victory?
Here is the finest lesson of becoming Legendary. It is the despair in facing an unburdened version of yourself. You must be flawless. You must remain unshaken, failure after failure. And you must adjust your skill until you reach a point where it is perfected for the Quest, and use it to overcome your replica.
This is where most fail. The battle against the mirror. The duel against a mockery of your being. Everything before is simulated from previous triumphs or defeats. But what retrospect can one truly wield against themselves? That is something you must answer.
And in seeking that answer, your true Legendary Skill will take form.
Or, your mind and spirit will break, and you will forever be trapped in the Delve, facing yourself for all eternity, suffering a purgatory worse than hell, knowing that the best of you was never enough. That you couldn't overcome your limitations. That you cannot defeat yourself.
Thus, I remind you again that death is not so severe. The deepest sleep inflicts no pain. But there is no medicine for one broken by the self.
For how will you flee from your own heart?
-Legend: Reforged from Ruin, Written by Semper Paragon Caine Hauser of the Descenders Union
168 (I)
Legend
Applying Partial Skill Evolution: Leviathan of the Shapeless Tides 500 (Legendary)
Shiv listened to his insides roar with a surge of building force as he fell through cloud after cloud. The next thing he noticed was how the wind and air friction traced waves of dense, vector-shaped mana across his body. Cascading tides of kinetic energy flowed across Shiv in the opposite direction of the forces acting on him. The pointed ripples were nested below his inertial sheath, but his Physicality and Reflexes affected each other in ways grander than the sum of their parts.
The sheath shuddered to life in seconds. It leeched off the sheer amount of power spilling out from Shiv's core. He felt heavier than ever, and the amount of kinetic energy flowing through his marrow only grew by the second. The force waves that crashed in from the outside were nowhere to be seen. Instead of being the eye of a collapsing maelstrom, Shiv felt like he was the heart of a bomb. A bomb that just kept detonating inside him without end.
"I guess I did ask for more control," Shiv said, observing his hands. The way his skill expressed itself was just strange. Pointed currents of force danced across him, crashing against each other. With every impact, Shiv felt another thunderclap go off inside him. Yet, the power was entirely contained. There were no waves of uncontrollable destruction overflowing from him. Nothing at all. "Alright. So you're subtle now. But how do I use you?"
He ignored how the cobblestone path leading up to the main entrance of Starhawk's Perch was fast approaching him. Falling wasn't going to kill him, and he didn't see anyone in the vicinity. Shiv was going to spend his time figuring out his new ability instead of wasting it on pointless worries. He pushed lightly on the dense bands of mana washing over his body. As soon as he did, a trickle of force manifested in the real world. Kinetic energy rushed along the pointed vector, and Shiv found himself dragged through the air at low speeds.
Okay. That's a lot more control over my movement already, Shiv thought. His previous Skill Evolution allowed him to constantly build his force, but the bone-grinding pressures that emanated out of him in a wide radius and the destructive shockwaves he left in his wake were still issues. Right now, it seemed like all the force circulating through him remained dormant until he deliberately drew upon the waves.
Just as Shiv was going to do something else, he promptly impacted the ground. To his surprise, he felt a rush of kinetic energy spike into him at the moment of landing. He circulated that flow of force across his body—and the ground didn't break. It didn't even crack. Not even the dust in the air was unsettled. Shiv's jaw dropped wide open as he just kept guiding the seized tide of kinetic energy around himself.
But it washed through him differently from the other ripples of force—the ripples that originated from his body. This foreign-origin ripple glided across him with striped lines, while the others remained solid. What's more, the moment he took his focus away from it, a thunderclap escaped him. The nearby grass rustled, and the ground shook beneath his feet. He regained control of the striped ripple once more and prevented the rest from leaving his body like a bomb.
By now, his Inertial Overdrive was humming. It made the solid tides wash through him faster and with higher frequency. Shiv ignored that for a beat and looked at his hands. He concentrated the force he stole from his rendezvous with the ground in his fists, at the tips of his fingers. Then, slowly, he released it. It left his hands as popping bursts that sounded like cannon fire.
Shiv blinked at his hands as his lips twitched. A smile soon spread across his face, and he nodded. "Alright. I constantly generate my own kinetic ripples and circulate outside forces within my body and reuse them. Not bad. Not felling bad at all."
Initiating Encounter (1/5)
His eyes squinted at the notification. A thick stream of Pyromancy sliced up into the clouds once more. The elemental golem was back, and it was about to become Shiv's first test subject for his new Skill Evolution. "Let's see how launching myself around feels like now." Shiv focused on the solid waves of dormant force circulating along his body. He noticed how the currents of force spread out from his chest and abdomen before they rolled along his limbs. A frown usurped his smile as he also realized the bursts of dormant force weren't being retained indefinitely. Every time the waves got to his fingers and toes, they would cease to be.
Shiv tried holding onto them. He flexed his muscles and focused on circulating the tides of force washing over him. To his delight, the dormant forces continued flowing, and Shiv felt his kinetic tides merge and build to new levels of power. However, the moment he started circulating his internal forces, they went from solid to striped in definition.
Screams sounded from the distance, but Shiv spent a while longer examining himself. "Okay. So, it's probably not an internal-external thing. There's probably a standard amount of force I generate with each series of dormant tides, and everything else is listed as excess. Which makes them striped."
That was his best guess as to his current system, and he soon found himself more mentally taxed by how many striped tides he was cycling through his body. The moment he lost track of a tide, it accelerated out of him in a spike of force along the direction it was pointed. That caused Shiv to be torn from his feet and speared through the walls of Starhawk's Perch. He then promptly slammed head-first into a slave child who was just staring at the wall.
Instead of the small boy turning to a bloody smear, Shiv pulled a new overflow-tide of force into himself. He went still in an instant. The slave child remained unharmed. The Deathless let out a tense breath as he pushed himself off the ground. "Shit. Could've ended up restarting the whole Quest right here."
The slave boy turned and smiled at Shiv. "Thanks for saving me, Pathbearer. I love your food."
Shiv just stared at the slave child, trying to figure out why he'd said those words.
Psycho-Cartography: Because they're the ones you want to hear. You want to matter. You want to feel strong after a lifetime of being little more than vermin in the eyes of most people. And you want to feel like more than a monster, so the cooking matters to you. Everything about his praise is pretty predictable. And so are you.
"Why do I get the feeling that you're judging me?" Shiv asked his Psychology Skill. When it didn't reply, he just let out a scoff. A loud boom sounded outside, and Shiv ruffled the slave boy's hair. "Alright. Find someplace safe to hide, fake kid who's actually dead because of me. I'm gonna go and shove this elemental golem's core up 811's ass."
"Thanks for saving me, Pathbearer. I love your food." The slave boy smiled. Burped as if he was full. And then smiled again.
Shiv tried not to shudder at how creepy the reaction was.
He left through the hole he'd made in the castle and used up some of his overflow-tides. He pointed their direction toward the sky just as he stepped outside, and he blasted off into the air. The world zoomed. He let out a grunt of surprise and realized he could convert some of the air currents dragging against him for more overflow-tides. As he did just that, he caught sight of the elemental golem as it rampaged down a narrow alley. Behind it were dozens of unmoving bodies. Some were burned, little more than blackened lumps of meat. Others were twitching and wet—deaths by electrocution. The real unfortunates were the ones that the golem pulverized with its body. They were pasted against the walls in ugly displays of gore.
The Deathless knew they weren't real, but something about their deaths bothered him. Probably the fact that he'd already failed them once.
Psycho-Cartography: Maybe it is because their ends were often even uglier. The people the golem pulped still looked better than the poor kid 811 killed. Or all the unlucky slaves that the Jealousy fell on.
Shiv was beginning to wonder if the Psychology Skill was faulty. It was pretty useful earlier when he needed to figure out how someone was thinking and what to say if he wanted to provoke them. Now, it seemed the skill was doing its best to turn all the discomfort on Shiv. "I need to find another target for you to focus on."
Psycho-Cartography: Evading discomfort doesn't solve it. It just makes you a pussy. This world hates pussies. You know that.
As Shiv descended on the elemental golem, he tried not to be annoyed by his Psychology Skill. "Are you deliberately trying to provoke me?"
Psycho-Cartography: You are, dumbshit. I am you. I am a part of you. Stop getting offended by yourself and realize that I am the closest thing to a semi-rational mind you have. If I didn't bother you would probably just ignore what I said and keep making the same mistakes.
"I—" Shiv wanted to reject that claim, but he couldn't. He knew the skill was right, but it was hard not to be bothered by it in some ways.
Psycho-Cartography: Yes. Being imperfect in an extremely hostile world that wants to felling kill you all the time should make you feel that way. You more than anyone else. The System hates us, and with every weakness I uncover in you, we realize that our odds of survival are worse than we assumed. Ignorance is a tasty nipple, but we've always been a motherless godsdamned outcast. Deal with it. Or don't. And suffer. Remember you're still going to need to fight yourself later. We can't afford weaknesses with evil you. Not even one.
A bitter taste crawled up the back of Shiv's throat as he spiked himself down. He used up all his overflow-tides and discovered another wonderful thing about his current skill: the force leaving his body would only flow in the direction he moved it. That meant no uncontrolled shockwaves exploding out from his person unless he allowed it. It also meant he had perfect force economy. Not a single bit of energy wasted.
Unfortunately, Shiv underestimated just how much kinetic energy he was cycling through himself. He struck the golem just as it prepared to unleash its Pyromancy at a group of Pathbearers cornered at the end of the alley. The golem wasn't just crushed by Shiv's stomp—it was outright disintegrated. But then Shiv kept going. He tunneled through the ground and ripped through a few kilometers of stone and mana-conducting crystal that constituted Blackedge's foundations.
"Shitshitshitshit!" Shiv snarled. Crashing waves of overflowing force rushed up toward his head as he continued burrowing through Blackedge. He seized these overflow-tides and went still in an instant. By this point, the lower half of his body was sticking out from the bottom of Blackedge. Looking up, Shiv's eyes widened as he realized he left a clean tunnel in his wake. "Broken Felling Moon… That was a bit more kick than I was expecting."
And so he discovered the first downside of his Legendary Skill. He needed to get good at judging how much force he was unleashing. The overflow-tides still thundered like the innate pulses of force Shiv generated, but he needed to focus on them for a moment to guess just how much dormant kinetic energy each ripple possessed.
But still, no shockwaves. No unstable explosions or fireballs destroying everything around him. Blackedge remained relatively unharmed.
"Legendary Skills are pretty godsdamned awesome," Shiv noted.
Encounter Complete (1/5)
Adjusting Legendary Skill…
When he launched himself back up the tunnel, he let out a hiss of pain. A few muscle tears radiated with searing heat from his lower back and hamstrings. Shiv fed those injuries to his Aegis of Assimilation and tried to figure out how he'd hurt himself. It didn't take long.
It's the sudden stopping. All that force is being converted into me, but I still have Inertial Overdrive active. Any bit of momentum that I don't manage to cycle through my body will end up hurting me. Shiv shook his head in disbelief. This damned skill is going to be straining my Awareness and Multi-Tasking too. That, or I need to start moving with the pillar active all the time. That should blunt some damage.
Shiv erupted out of the tunnel just in time for the next encounter. He grimaced as he realized his mistake: He didn't rip the golem's mana core out. Now what was he going to shove up 811's ass?
"His own mace will do," Shiv grunted in resignation.
But that didn't go well either. The following "battle" between Shiv and 811 happened in three parts. The orc took a swing at him. Shiv converted 811's attack into an overflow-tide before ripping the orc's mace out of his hand. Then, Shiv tried to position himself mace-to-ass and missed. The resulting hit turned the orc into a faint cloud of red. One that painted Shiv's body.
He glared blankly at the sky as he resolved to work more on his dexterity.
Then, it came time to face the Jealousy again, and Shiv did so with renewed vigor. Of all his foes, the Jealousy was the one Shiv looked forward to the most. It wasn't because it was fun or easy to fight the Greater Demon, but more that he wished to find out just how his current Legendary Skill would handle magic. So far, this skill seemed more Physicality than Magical Resistance, but considering how the force-tides expressed themselves as unattuned mana, Shiv knew his Magical Resistance was still there in some form.
The Jealousy materialized atop the spire, and Shiv rose through the air to greet it.
"Daring morsel!" The Jealousy cackled with glee. "Come. Offer mind. Easy feed. Good day!"
It pointed its large, purple eye at him. He could feel its mana field twisted around him, and to his astonishment, feel it dragging against his body. Shiv's vectors flared brighter. The unattuned mana turned translucent. Oh, fuck yeah! He tried to reach out and grab the field itself, but found it kind of like pinching firm skin. There wasn't much he could find purchase on.
But I can touch it! Shiv thought. I can physically feel the Psychomancy field.
A hundred-meter-long psionic spear burst free from the Jealousy's eye. It tore through the air and struck Shiv dead on. He didn't pause time. He didn't try to dodge. The innate tides of force washing over his body remained unattuned until he caught the spell with his bare hands. Then his tides all went translucent once more.
The shapes and spell patterns that constituted the spell felt concrete; something Shiv could hold on to and manipulate. Yet, he also felt no overflowing tide of force spill into him from the spell. Instead, it crashed against his innate tides in a cataclysmic clash. Shiv growled with exertion as he was physically pushed back through the air. He directed all the innate tides rippling out from his body toward the spell. With the first ripple, he stalemated the spell; after the second, he overpowered it entirely.
"What is this?" the Jealousy hissed in surprise. Just as the spell's lack of convertible force caught Shiv off guard, his ability to wrestle with its mana like it was a physical object left the Jealousy reeling.
But Shiv didn't let go of the spell or swat it aside. Instead, he growled as another series of waves swept through his body. He infused his tides into his arms and pulled them in opposite directions. Shiv's body was consumed by Psychomancy mana as he ripped the Jealousy's spell in half.
The Greater Demon wailed a note of deafening agony as its mana field was lacerated. "HURTS! PAIN! NO! NO! RUN! LET ME GO! PAIN—" Its thoughts turned to screams as Shiv flung himself into its eye.
Blood splattered around him. He didn't care. Whips of lashing Hydromanacy mana crashed against him. Shiv caught and snapped them with his hands as well. It took a bit less effort to break the Jealousy's Hydromancy compared to its Psychomancy, but it was still much more of a struggle than dealing with physical force.
But Shiv realized something—both his Magical Resistance and Physicality were intertwined. He could use the overflow-tides he cycled to overcome any kind of mana. Right now, he was operating at a baseline state, and that left him limited. He wasn't actually weaker in terms of Magical Resistance; he just didn't understand his skill well enough yet.
In fact, this was much better than having an adaptive mana field that absorbed mana damage but could do nothing else.
"PLEASE! NO! NOT PREY! VOID LEVIATHAN! KNOW YOUR SKILL! KNOW THIS POWER! MERCY!"
"Void Leviathan?" Shiv asked. But then his attention was stolen by another detail. As he sank his fingers into the Jealousy's mangled eye, his tides of force spilled out from him into the Jealousy as well, reminding him that this wasn't just a mix between his Physicality and Magical Resistance—it was a Legendary Grappling Skill too.
And that made him realize that he was still a bit too messy in terms of combat. He needed to stop hitting things all the time. With this skill, he could hold them, control them, and break them without smashing through anything or risking any collateral damage at all.
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Shiv tested his new grappling by pressing his hands together and compressing the Jealousy. The Greater Demon cried out. Shiv gritted his teeth as he found a cracking barrier he needed to break through before he finally started squeezing the Jealousy into pulp. He blinked as he guessed the barrier to be the Jealousy's Magical Resistance.
Right. That's something else I have to deal with now. My strength affects both matter and magic now.
The Jealousy tried to swing its massive, barbed tentacles at Shiv in a last-ditch effort at staying alive. He slammed his palms together inside its collapsing eye. The Jealousy gave a keening wail as wave after wave of force swirled through its body before they all rushed to its epicenter. The four-hundred-meter-wide Greater Demon turned to red paste as it was compressed down to a fifty-meter sphere of solid viscera and powdered bone.
Shiv let out a euphoric laugh at this overwhelming display of power and decided to celebrate by punting the Jealousy into the distance. That didn't go quite as expected, though, as Shiv found his foot buried inside the Jealousy flesh-ball instead.
The Deathless winced as the mangled remains slipped from his right foot and impaled itself atop the tip of Starhawk's Perch like a giant meatball. "Yeah, alright. I'm kind of just bending force unnaturally now, instead of directing gravity or something. I probably should've channeled a wave of force through the Jealousy instead of my foot if I wanted to kick it like that."
Physics 1 > 2
Encounter Complete (3/5)
Adjusting Legendary Skill…
Initiating Encounter (4/5)
And then it was time to face the Recollector again. Unlike the last few times, Shiv was looking forward to this showdown quite a bit. He knew he could reliably beat the Recollector now, thanks to his improved skills and Vitality Drain.
But the eldritch being was a dangerous foe, one that he couldn't let his guard down against, even now. If he gave it a single opening, one of its past selves could slam into Blackedge and cause enough damage for the Delve to be reset. So Shiv's strategy remained the same: he was going to intercept it, hold it in place, and drain it. But on top of that, he was going to find out just how much external force he could convert. He didn't suffer any strain cycling forces that had acted upon him previously, so he wondered if there was truly a limit. And if not, well, that would really make things interesting.
As the Recollector spawned in at the edge of town, Shiv met it head-on before the eldritch being could spew any nonsense statements or unleash that annoying scream. Shiv smashed his palm against one of its eyes and directed a wave of force through its body. A tide of kinetic energy slashed across the Recollector and suddenly twisted downward at an angle as Shiv unleashed its full might. One of the ten fingers extending from the Recollector's hand-shaped head snapped backward at the base. The eldritch being let out a cry of alarm more than pain. That cry made Shiv's vision spin.
"Hate your goddamn noises," he snarled under his breath. He recovered just in time to see every last one of the Recollector's eyes glaring at him.
Beams of magic smashed against his person. Concurrently, the Recollector launched itself forward, slashing channels of Chronomancy impacting Shiv. But he wrestled them aside with brute force. His muscles strained as he struggled to hold the golden mana back. But then the strain vanished altogether as the Recollector drove itself against him. Overflowing tides of striped force flooded Shiv. They turned gold as Shiv converted them for his own use. Instead of being a danger, the Recollector's own physical attacks became an additional resource Shiv could use to counter its magic, to deliver brutal blows against its body.
But Shiv did have a limit. The limit was his focus. Shiv was a generator and conduit for forces now. But that meant he needed to circulate every bit of kinetic energy and momentum that greeted him. And for the first time, his mind failed his body. A blast of force swept out across Shiv's torso, three ribs snapped as a chorus, and throbbing spots of pain tightened into knots within his abdomen.
Shiv ignored his injuries and retaliated against the Recollector before it could continue pressing its advantage. It was unleashing too much force against him, too much for his mind to accommodate all at once, so he decided to deliver everything it gifted him right back. All his overflowing force, along with a pulse of innate energy, was unleashed in the form of a closing hand.
Shiv's tides washed down from him, splashing over the Recollector. Its past selves tried to break apart, tried to flee, but Shiv's grip clutched its magic in a vice. The past selves of the Recollector screamed as the golden mana lining their form cracked underneath the pressure. Its present self writhed and struggled. More magic was unleashed through its eyes. Magic then hammered against Shiv, briefly driving him back.
He almost felt himself get launched forward into the future, but then another flood of innate force was generated, and he parried the Chronomancy spell, swatting it aside with the palm of his hand. Frictionless Vector triggered. It diffracted off at an angle, cleaving up into the sky, and then Shiv was on the Recollector again. It tried to escape. He wouldn't allow it.
He tore its flesh wide open, tore its magical fields open too. One after another, its past selves screamed as a wailing symphony, and though Shiv felt his mind suffer damage, he fought on using instinct alone.
He nested himself inside the Recollector, and he materialized his Pillar of Orichalcum. Afterward, he discharged his inertial sheath that had been building all this time. When the blast left him, Shiv felt an overwhelming series of force ripples crash against his body. Theoretically, he might be able to absorb his own inertial discharge as well, using that as more fuel for his strength, but for now, he let them go.
The insides of the Recollector splattered apart, but the inertial discharge was not enough to deal fatal damage. It was a brutal wound, but one that the eldritch creature could survive. What it couldn't survive was the Vitality Drain that followed thereafter, coupled with Shiv's unseen tides. He held it in a vice-like grip, but it struggled against him, and as it did, he turned its strength back on itself.
Shiv was beginning to notice something about Legendary Skills now. It was more than just the baseline application of the skill. At the start, his Physicality gave him more mass because that's what he needed to survive the golem, and then allowed him tactile control over gravity, because he needed that to wrestle and dominate beasts far larger than him.
The Heroic-Tier Physicality and Grappling Fusion Skill he would have gotten thereafter was about cultivating more strength and making it punishing for anyone to advance near him. It would have given him greater control against nearby enemies, and eventually, it would have allowed him to contend with threats he wouldn't be able to overpower with Gravitic Wrestler alone.
Now, at Legendary, it seemed that he wasn't manipulating force, but rather the very idea of force itself. Force became a resource for him, a resource that he could generate, a resource that he could reuse. With every skill evolution, he wasn't just getting more powerful; he was getting closer to the root of the skill, gaining more control over the fundamental idea of the skill itself. And now, he spent and wielded his strength in ways he couldn't imagine even a few minutes prior.
"This was something else," Shiv muttered to himself as the Recollector dissolved into faint streams of life force that gave a final cry, but died during its feeble lamentations as it settled inside Shiv like mist sinking into a swamp. This time, Blackedge remained totally undamaged. The ground wasn't cracked. Not even the clouds were disturbed. The Recollector was an overwhelmingly strong force. It had destroyed Gate Theborn in a short period during its battle against Shiv.
And despite everything, despite the agitation nested deep in his heart, despite his anxiety, his worry for Adam, for Uva, for everyone he was supposed to save, despite being trapped in a cage built specifically to hold something like him, and despite the problem of the Ascendants looming on the horizon, Shiv felt joy, true joy, true pleasure, at reaching Legendary. But it wasn't enough. He wasn't satisfied, and it wasn't enough. He'd come a long way. He'd learned a great many things, and he still had so much left to learn. He still had so much left to experience.
I need to evolve further, Shiv thought, but it wasn't a desperate want anymore. It wasn't a blind, gluttonous desire. There was a sublime beauty to be gained in overcoming struggles that once left you broken, and even more so to crushing them with casual ease. Shiv looked toward the sky and clenched his jaw.
He felt ready this time. Maybe he wouldn't win immediately. Maybe he would need a few more tries until he figured out how to overcome his own clone. But he had a plan, a fairly direct one at that.
Previously, his clone had too many options. He would attack or distract him using a golem. He would assault Blackedge from numerous different directions. Directions that Shiv simply couldn't prepare for. The space was too wide, too large for him to cover, and his clone was just as fast, just as strong, just as destructive as him. Shiv knew his clone would probably also have his Legendary Skill this time, but that just made this fight entirely even.
He needed to get his hands on his clone and just grapple with him; force this into a close-quarters duel and kill him by breaking his neck or something. As his own deaths counted as true deaths in the eyes of the System, he heavily doubted that the Delve wouldn't count his clone perishing once as a win on his part. If not, he would see about it when he got there.
Before his clone arrived, he began making his own Vitae Golem. This time, Shiv added something special to the Golem. He infused it with the Animancy skills he took from his most recent real-life victims. After that, he sent a simple command: "Disable the other Golem with whatever means you can." He didn't know how to use Animancy, and he didn't know what his Golem was going to do, but that was fine.
The skill infusion used the feats and stories stored within the skill itself, and so the golem would do as the Animancers might while they were alive. Shiv granted his golem Leviathan, Inertial Overdrive, Strider, and Pillar as well. Putting this all together took a considerable amount of vitality out of Shiv. He found himself weakened, but if his golem could prevail against his clone, then it wouldn't be just a one-on-one brawl; it would be a two-on-one. And Shiv really liked his odds in that case.
Initiating Encounter (5/5)
A final notification appeared in Shiv's eyes, and his clone descended. He sank down from the clouds, and Shiv studied his mirror self once more. Just as he thought, the clone had his Legendary Skill as well. Pointed ripples of unattuned mana spread out from the clone's core and circulated down the length of his limbs. The clone's Biomancy was also alive with anticipation. His twelve mana hydras were reared back, prepared to strike. Shiv cracked his neck and stretched his own Aegis out, accepting his other self's challenge.
"So, back here again," his clone called out. He didn't attack immediately this time, which made Shiv narrow his eyes. His clone had all his skills, and that meant that he had Psycho-Cartography as well.
"Yeah, I'm back again," Shiv said. "And I'll keep coming back unti—"
"You finally break me or some other bullshit," the clone said, rolling his eyes. "Holy hell, hearing myself talk makes me want to puke. You know what you sound like? You sound like one of those drunkards who used to start fights at the Swan-Eating Toad."
Shiv wanted to say he didn't, but a lot of his threats and his declarations of bravado were a bit like belligerent drunkards. "I don't really slur my words that much," Shiv shot back.
"You don't," his clone conceded with a slight nod, "but you're about as stupid. At least the way you act is."
Shiv just frowned at the clone. "You know that applies to you as well, right? If you're calling me an idiot…"
"I'm an idiot too," the clone said without any hesitation. "But whose fault is that? I'm not the one that's real here. I'm just a figment of this Delve. You're the fuck-up I'm based on."
"Fuck-up?" Shiv growled. Something inside his stomach tightened as his Psycho-Cartography skill warned him to focus to stay calm. The clone was obviously trying to provoke him. Unfortunately, calm wasn't something Shiv spent a lot of time being, especially not in recent days.
"Yeah, fuck-up," the clone said, gesturing broadly at the false Blackedge. "This place is based on your fuck-ups. Look at all the dead people down there. All those Pathbearers, those Umbrals, those slaves. How many of them do you think you killed? How many of them do you think died when you let off a discharge or when you smashed through a building, without thinking about what you were doing?"
"Most," Shiv said, swallowing his discomfort. "Maybe all. I know that. That's why I'm here. That's probably why this Delve Quest exists."
"Oh, yeah, that's why this Delve Quest exists," his clone agreed, but there was a hint of sarcasm in his voice. "It exists because you're sloppy. What was it you said again? Collateral damage is inevitable?"
The clone actually sounded disgusted by the sentence. "It's bullshit," he continued. "Or at least, collateral could have been massively reduced if we had just thought things through, if we had done more planning. And before you go on about not being trained, what would it have cost to do a little bit more thinking? You had time. You were in Weave for days upon days, but you spent it prancing around with Uva and Adam, 'trying to take your mind off things.' And then, when it came time to act, you ran right into the fire, instead of spending even a moment building out a better plan or relying on the expertise of people a thousand times more experienced than you. You just had to act. You just had to rely on yourself."
He gestured down at Blackedge once again, at the hundreds of people who'd died due to his negligence. The clone's voice was dripping with sarcasm by now. "But, I suppose none of that's your fault either. You just didn't know any better, right? The awful, awful people of Blackedge are the ones to blame for your behavior, for being oh so mean to you all your life."
Psycho-Cartography: It's best not to flinch at these accusations. The clone is not wrong, for the most part. That's why he is provoking your ire. Accept it. Deal with the frustration to move on.
"Yeah, you're right," Shiv said, even though saying those words made him want to slam his head into a wall. "But again, that's why we're here, isn't it? So I can finally get that lesson through my head. So I can finally learn."
"You're here because you want more power," the clone said with a sigh. "I'm sure you'll try to learn these lessons. You try to do everything. Trying is not your problem. Your problem is that you forget. Your problem is that the System wants to kill you. And because it does, because you're going to have the whole world hunting you, you can't even afford to be yourself. Because you're not enough. You were never enough."
Shiv almost began arguing, but the clone's final words brought him to silence. He waited for the clone to keep talking, to hear more of what this replica of him had to say.
"Look at us. Look at us, really. We came this far because of our Path. Yeah, what other qualities do we have? We're real focused when we do things. Our attention borders on obsession when we practice our trade. That's why we're such a reliable cook. That's why Georges wanted to give us the Path in the first place. I guess we're brave too, but maybe it's just recklessness. After all, what did we have to lose before?"
"Our lives," Shiv said.
"Our lives." The clone laughed. "What life? We were despised. We were barely more than a cockroach to the people in Blackedge. Yeah, I guess we wanted to live, but how badly did we really want to live?"
And that made Shiv a bit uncomfortable. But there was something wrong with the clone's logic. "I was trying to gain a Path because I didn't just want to be alive, I wanted to live," Shiv said. "I wanted to be a full person. I wanted to decide my own fate. I just thought that risking my life was a worthwhile trade. I never wanted to die."
And now the clone went silent. He acknowledged Shiv's point with an inclination of his head and didn't fight it further.
Psycho-Cartography: Yeah, he has a version of me too. He's not going to bother fighting this. This angle of attack is dead. Nice work.
And that might have been the first time his Psychology Skill complimented him.
"But it is not as if those are our only issues," the clone said. "We were devoted in the kitchen. We are fearless when it comes to battle. But look at the rest of us. We're untrained. We have no knowledge. I see your hands are shaking, probably because you want to ram your thumbs through my eyes and rip my head in half rather than talking."
Shiv directed his Farsight at his clone's hands and noticed that they were shaking just the same. "Well, how else is this Quest supposed to end?" Shiv asked, a little bit of annoyance leaking into his voice. "I need to kill you so that I can finally get this damn skill. So I can break out of prison and…"
"And what?" the clone interrupted again. He sounded pissed now. He pointed his finger at Shiv. "And what? You think that after getting a Legendary Skill, you're going to just casually break out? Hey, dumb shit. There are signs out there. Cripple is still watching us. You know? The Ascendant? We might have killed a few of his Animancers, but that just means that he's going to be on our ass every second of every day until the rest of them come back. And then, they'll probably decide whether they want to kill us or do something else to us."
"Yeah, well, I won't make it easy on them," Shiv said.
"Oh, you're not going to make it easy on them. How cute. Well, what's the plan? How are you going to escape? Let me guess, you're going to try to use your new skill to build up enough strength to finally break whatever bonds they have you in. You're going to surprise them by overpowering their magic using your new skill as well, and then you'll go outside context for a few moments to evade them. And after that, what? Do you know the layout of the prison? Do you have any idea how big it even is, or what kind of nightmarish protections they have in place?"
Shiv didn't answer.
"Okay, you don't know that. So, then we're going to do the usual thing, in which we kidnap someone and try to make them tell us. Or try to force them into being a guide. Except, you remember how Theborn went, right?"
"Yeah," Shiv said, trying to keep the bitterness out of his voice.
"You only succeeded at Theborn," the clone continued, "because Leu's goals miraculously aligned with yours and she intervened on your behalf. I'm not going to mock you for being a bad spy, and that was a clusterfuck to begin with. Frankly, your inability to spy is probably the least of your problems. But this isn't Theborn. You're not dealing with an emotional idiot like Confriga. You're not even dealing with a mentally compromised Legend like Sullain. The Ascendants are going to break you. They are going to keep you in your cage, like you're a good little pet."
A simmer of anger crept up from Shiv's stomach. He kept it repressed.
"But you know what? Maybe we won't die. Maybe they'll decide to make us an Avatar." The clone laughed. "Or at least a weapon they can wield. They'll finally manage to push through our Legendary skill. And after that, they'll keep their fingers buried deep within our minds." The clone licked his lips and looked into the distance, scowling at something that wasn't there. "You know, that Kathereine woman, you remember the way she looked at us?"
Shiv did, and he didn't want to go down that train of thought. But the clone did. "You know that's more than just professional interest. What do you think she wants from us? What do you think she's going to make us do?"
"She's not going to make me do anything," Shiv said quietly. "I won't let her."
"Oh, you think it's going to be up to you," the clone drawled. "Oh, she sings a fun song, messes up your mind. Remember, she's basically running a divine Social Skill torture session on you. And right now, all you have is Psychology and Intimidation. She's not afraid of you, and her Psychology is better than yours. You want to know what I think?" the clone asked. Shiv didn't respond. The clone didn't care. "I think she's going to sing a real pretty song. And maybe during that song you'll end up seeing her as, I don't know, Uva. And after that, wow, who knows what might happen."
At the mention of Uva, the tendons in Shiv's neck tightened. He tried not to snarl at his clone. And the clone noticed. The clone smirked. "Speaking of Uva," he continued. "You think she's still alive? Because I don't. I don't think Adam's alive either. Or Valor, or Dad, or anyone in Blackedge. After all, we haven't gotten the rewards for that Tarrasque Quest yet."
"They're alive," Shiv forced out. The words escaped him like a desperate plea more than a confident statement.
His clone lifted an eyebrow and snorted. "Oh, they're alive. How would you know? You're not there." The clone's words struck Shiv like a dagger across the abdomen.
"I'll get back to them!" Shiv snapped. "I need to get back."
"That's why you're going to try to rush through me. You're going to try to kill me as fast as possible. And then you're going to try to make a quick escape. And then you're going to try to quickly fly back to where Blackedge is." The clone's sneering mockery grew more sickening with every syllable. "Let's be honest with ourselves. Your friends were fried the moment you got teleported. And if the Tarrasque didn't get them, they're probably scattered across a few different Republic black sites. Now, Adam, Roland, and Rose might be kept alive for a while. The Ascendants are likely not in agreement about what to do with them, and neither are their Avatars, judging by how that Veronica woman just teleported you while Stormhalt kept trying to kill you."
Then this clone's face twisted in a cruel smile. "But what do you think they're going to do to dear Sister Uva?"
Shiv didn't think about that. He did everything he could to not think about that. An Umbral Psychomancer, a loyal daughter of Weave, a Seeker of the Eldritch, and now a temporary Avatar of their greatest enemy. "I don't think they'll kill her immediately, actually. I think they'll vivisect her, push their minds into hers, have their Animancers reach deeeep into her soul to discover just how her Outsider-infested skills really function."
Veins of red crept in from the corner of Shiv's vision. He forced them back. He controlled his breathing, but he could hear his heart thundering in the backdrop. Thundering along with each ripple of force his Legendary Skill generated.
"You remember how she screamed when the Recollector took her apart?" the Clone asked, and Shiv did. He would never forget her screams. He would never forget how Adam's head was forced in the wrong direction. How he gasped and struggled. "Yeah, you do," the clone said, leaning back against nothing and grinning happily. "Well, I'll tell you what, I think she's going to scream a lot worse than that when they slowly and methodically rip her apart. Adam too, probably, considering he has some Unique Skills. But, when thinking of how they'll scream, I have another thought tickling my mind."
Psycho-Cartography: Do not let him goad you! Burst your ears if you have to. Do not—
"I'm thinking," the Clone whispered, "that they might be calling out for you. And you won't be there for them, just like you weren't there for any of these strangers, and just like you're not there for your friends right now. I'm wondering how it might feel for them to die, being tortured to death by Republic Animancers, Biomancers, and Psychomancers, with their last words being your name on their lips, and your absence clawing at their hearts."
A haze of red consumed Shiv's vision. Every fiber of his being screamed for violence, screamed for him to throw himself at his clone. He barely managed to restrain himself. The clone tilted his head, and he nodded approvingly.
"Well, I guess you are maturing a bit, but let me give you the real clincher." The clone leaned in and sneered one more time, his lips trembling with glee, or perhaps something else. "I'm not going away. I'm not going down without a long and ugly fight, and I don't think you can beat me. I don't think you can ever stop me, because I'm not real, and I hate that fact. I hate the fact that I'm nothing more than a skill slave for you to overcome. So, I'm going to do to you what you intended to do to the Ascendants: be a pain in your ass. I'm going to delay you time and time and time again until you are certain that your friends are dead. Until you are certain that you weren't there in time, that they've perished alone, without you by their side. Because that's the only power I have over you. And I'm going to fucking enjoy it."
Something inside Shiv snapped.