Path of the Deathless (Book 2 Completed)

Alright. So. You've been captured. First thing about getting captured—tell no one you were a pupil of mine so I can be spared the shame, at least. There are Pathbearers that say getting captured is an inevitability if you live and fight long enough. They are full of shit.

Getting captured means one of a few things. The most likely thing it means is that you surrendered to the enemy, which is not ideal. If you're high-Tier, they might sell you back to your people or just kill you, depending on how existential the conflict is, so there is some room for negotiation.

Not so high-Tier? Well, things are going to get very ugly, and you probably want to think about escape or the other thing.

What do you mean, "what other thing", Harrison? What other thing could I be talking about? Yeah. I know no one wants to die, but if I give you a choice to finish yourself off or be kept alive by a group of psychotic Biomancers while they make leather coats from your skin, which will you pick?

It sounds ugly, but I'm going to put it plainly to you kids: Self-resolution is always an option. It's just a relatively unappealing one.

Now. Escape. If your enemy knows what they're doing, and you're high value, this is not likely. I'm sorry to disappoint you, but if I'm holding a Hero, I'm going to have my Biomancer disable their spine or other motor functions and then have a Psychomancer keep them trapped in a dream or something. If they're valuable enough to sell, they have good odds of being a nightmare to contain. Continued pacification is the way here.

If you're weaker, though, you might have a bit of a better shot. The main reason is that they'll probably not waste so much effort trying to keep you sedated. Most times, the reason a weaker Pathbearer is still alive is slavery. The Integration is a savage place, and if you got High Physicality, you make a good mule. Magic? Great. You're going to be made into a tutor or some kind of mana battery.

It's going to be hell, but it also gives you openings and opportunities. There is no perfect way to keep someone in bondage without dedicating a continuous amount of resources to the process. And in my experience, sooner or later, all systems tend to break down. Keep your eyes open and observe. Watch. Find the points of failure and use them to your advantage. I won't say your odds of getting out are good in these circumstances, but they aren't nothing.

Chaos opens a lot of doors. And chaos, you can always count on. The System loves it. And the System loves a good rebellion when one gets going. Just don't assume that this rebellion is guaranteed to end with you alive.

-Captain Harry Irons, TacStrat 101, Phoenix Academy

172 (I)

Riot [I]

Shiv was going to do terrible things to City Lord Stormhalt's orifices with a knife. He wasn't sure how he intended to bring down the Avatar, but he would. He would find a way, and when he did, he would bring Stormhalt to the precipice of pain, and continue going until the Ascendants themselves came to beg on Stormhalt's behalf.

"Godsdamned felling false god—bastards, pieces of shit," Shiv growled as he slid his left arm deeper into his Voidmantid armor and tightened its unfolded architecture around himself.

The Voidmantid was still badly damaged. Parts of the midsection had yet to fully regenerate, and portions of its mycelial network were missing. As such, it wasn't as reactive as it was before, and Shiv felt like he was lugging a bit of weight. However, a few kilos were nothing to him now, since he was Legendary-Tier in terms of Physicality. The prismatic armor he stole from the wardens lay on the ground in crumpled pieces.

After a brief but violent stress release session that involved him crumpling the set of adamantine armor he wore into small balls, he found himself more capable of focusing in the aftermath. And now he moved on to the harder part, figuring out a way to extract Adam from wherever he was, while not getting recaptured by the Ascendants in the process.

"Need a new plan…" Shiv muttered. He strode up to the mana interface that Five was using earlier, and began swiping through the magical representation of the Rubix Well. The prison glittered before Shiv, and he located his cube once more. However, he frowned as he saw several other cubes closing in on them on the magically generated map. They were going to have company soon.

Frankly, Shiv expected an Ascendant to teleport in at any moment. He and the others couldn't stay. They needed a new direction—a place to go and regroup.

"New plan," Shiv repeated. He regarded Five and the Rebis. "I can help you get out. What I'm going to do is bring you in my cape, and then I'll take you beyond the boundary of the loop. I can probably drop you off somewhere safe, maybe in the lower security sections of this prison. After that, you should have an easier time breaking out, especially with me drawing the Ascendants' attention."

The wolfman tilted his head at Shiv and didn't say anything for a moment. "You would do that for us?" he finally asked. "I find that rather sweet, my good Pathbearer, but I think I'm going to have to decline."

That caught Shiv off guard. "What do you mean? It's the best I can do for you. I'm not leaving this place without Adam, and I don't think I can take you all the way out and get back before..."

Five held up a hand, cutting him off. "No, you misunderstand. I wish to follow through on this, just like you. I think Rebis would agree as well."

Slowly, Shiv began to understand what the wolf-man was implying. "You want to help me?" he said. He was more flabbergasted than touched. "But why? I'm practically going to commit suicide here. Well, maybe suicide for someone else. They want to recapture me for whatever felling twisted-shit experiments they have planned." Or maybe they'll eventually just mind-wipe or kill me to make a Legendary Avatar.

"Oh, I agree. It's terribly irrational," Five said, rubbing two of his claws together. "However, irrational is the very definition of being a Pathbearer. If we were rational, we would be scholars or stuffy magi hiding away in our fortresses, libraries, and towers. No, we left our homes. We left safety and ease, and we pursued our Paths. We are here for good or ill, and now I think it's time to make this our good and their ill."

"Here," Rebis said. His voice was a mix between a human snarl and a mechanical drone. "Here because, because Ascendants! We need to kill. We need to kill. Just kill and kill and kill." His wings were twitching. The air around him vibrated with that faint, white power, and Shiv was close enough that he tasted Rebis's capability for the first time.

Trails of sharpness flicked across Shiv as an oscillation of mana pulsed out from Rebis. The Deathless let out a grunt as his skin was opened and blood began to well. Instead of reacting violently, he was simply surprised. He hadn't been focusing on his Pillar of Orichalcum, but still, he was far tougher than he used to be. And Rebis had cut him open without even laying a wing on him. Just being near the amalgamated Pathbearer proved to be dangerous.

"Rebis, Rebis," Five said, trying to get him to calm down. "Compose yourself." He chastised the cybernetic Pathbearer and pointed a finger at him. The automaton skulls lining Five's back lit up, and a pulse of electricity jumped from the point of Five's digit into Rebis's skull. Just then, Rebis let out a crackle of discomfort, and he clutched his head. His automaton side was sparking and spasming, while his human parts twitched violently. His organic eye and his face expressed a moment of lucidity as his gaze cleared and his features softened.

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"I, I'm sorry, I briefly..." he held out a shaking hand and stared into his palm.

"It's all right now, Rebis," Five said. "I know that they mutilated your mind, but I told you before, it's not impossible to control. The machine is bound to you, and you're bound to it. The more you fight its patterns, the more it will punish your brain chemistry. You need to try and maintain general alignment."

"It's hard," Rebis breathed, "very hard."

In that moment, Shiv saw Rebis for what he was. A man caged in his own body. An automaton caged by a man, but a man also caged by the machine-half he never asked for.

"It's hard," the automaton section of Rebis echoed. "We were once apart. We were never meant to be together. We made a mistake. We want to be apart again. We want to be apart again. We want to be apart again." And by the time Rebis repeated the third sentence, both the automaton and the man were speaking in unison, and the separation was lost once more. "Ascendants!" Rebis growled. "Need to kill… Need to split them. They did this… They did this…"

He stared straight at Shiv's face this time, and the Deathless looked back at him. But something told Shiv that it was the right thing to do. Though Rebis flinched, he studied Shiv and searched for something. Perhaps judgment, perhaps pity, perhaps any hint of emotion whatsoever. But underneath that helmet, Shiv stared on impassively. Life wounded everyone. Only Shiv emerged from death stronger. Everyone else paid a price. And whatever happened to the Pathbearers that made up Rebis was practically a half-death for each of them, coming together to make a full demise. "Ascendants. They must pay for this. They must pay for what they did to us, to all of us."

"Yeah," Shiv said, nodding at Rebis, "we all got a score to settle here." He shot Five a look, and the wolf-man's gaze was dangerous and predatory. He already knew that Five had spent a near-century in this place, languishing in that narrow cell when Shiv first arrived. Doubtless, the wolf-man desired his own retribution, and that made three of them.

Finally, there was Bonk, who really didn't want to be left out. "Since we're planning a new suicide mission, how about I volunteer to play the Vanguard?" the orc said cheerfully. "I think I need a new nemesis. With Sullain resolved, maybe a proper god will do. Yes, I do think that's superior to a Legend. Wouldn't you agree, Insul?"

"Makes sense to me," Shiv replied, "but I think we need a strategy or a plan. Just throwing ourselves at them probably won't go so well. I want to know where they're holding Adam…"

He trailed off as he tried to compile all the details that might be helpful for him. Planning an operation on the go was unwise, but he had Five of Spades, he had Bonk, and… Well, Rebis was likely not that useful in terms of the planning department, especially since he could barely control his own thoughts sometimes. But he was impossibly fast, and his glow-slashy skill might prove to be lethal against an unprepared Ascendant as well.

"Okay, let me lay out the things we might need, and you guys can add to it. I'll just be honest with you, I'm not the best at planning yet. Usually come up with a simple idea and go with my gut. If you got something better, just spit it out."

"Oh, don't worry, we will tear your worst laid plans apart," Five said, "and then we'll make them better."

Shiv offered the wolf man a nod. "So here's what we do know. We know that…" he paused. "Okay, we don't even know if Adam, my friend, by the way, is really here. Cripple said the same thing, but it said a lot of other shit as well. The Ascendants might just be lying to me, trying to lure me out so that I'll just surrender without offering any resistance." The Deathless sighed. "We need a way to make sure that Adam actually got transported into this place. Some kind of proof."

The wolf-man narrowed his eyes and tapped a claw against his snout. "I might have a suggestion there. We kidnap one of the wardens. They are tapped into the same psionic network. I tried to listen in, using the spell patterns flowing through the mithril earlier, but there was too much to sift through. Psychomancy is not my expertise."

"And automata are easier for you?" Shiv asked, trying to figure out Five's skills. "You got Biniaric Sovereign or something?"

The wolf-man gave Shiv a surprise look. "You're aware of it?"

"Yeah," Shiv said, thinking of Can Hu. "I have a friend that has that skill too."

"Interesting. And your friend is a specialized automaton built to compromise those of its same kind?"

"Kind of," Shiv replied. "But I'm wondering how you got the skill. My friend also told me only automata can get it, or at least its prior evolution."

The wolf-man gave a simple shrug. "When you dabble with machinery and get to fusing your internal biomatter with certain mechanical transplants, the System sometimes takes note and lets you proceed down an unusual set of evolutions."

Shiv didn't have time right now, but he wanted to ask Five how he'd managed to fuse his flesh with metal. Meat and foreign materials don't go together very well a lot of the time. Not without incurring some pretty nasty infections.

"Alright, some other things I need," Shiv continued. "If Adam's equipment is here, I might have a use for it. Mainly his Necromancy vambrace because I need—oh, shit, I can make a bomb!" At that thought, he began constructing a Vitae Golem. The white and red mana of his Unique magical skill began to swirl around him, and Five took a step back. Comparatively, Rebis leaned in closer, his human expression going from pained to fascinated in a scant second.

"Can I come out now, Insul?" Bonk said. "It's very awkward for me to be participating in this mock war cabinet while being hidden inside your cape. It also feels demeaning."

"Just a second," Shiv said. He took infusions from his Leviathan of the Shapeless Tides skill and then added Chronomancy, Vitality Drain, Inertial Overdrive, and Pillar of Orichalcum as well. With the final flourish, he detached the Vitae forged clone of himself and fought to keep his legs from shaking as a rush of weakness crawled through his body.

"What was that?" Five said. He stared upon the Vitae Golem and studied it with a rapt fascination, much as Rebis did. "The mana here, the composition of this clone of yours, I've never quite seen it."

"Yeah, there's a reason for that," Shiv said, but he didn't elaborate. "I have a surprise planned for whatever Ascendant comes to get us. Do you have a Necromancy Skill?" Shiv looked at Five first. The wolf-man shook his head, but he pointed toward Rebis, and just then, a flash of corrosive energy filled the air. The automaton half of the amalgamated Pathbearer came aglow with that decaying taint, and a spirit-tipped piece of its mechanical wings detached. A rush of green mana danced along the other wing, mutilating the propulsion with festering hues rather than bright white emissions. The fragment of Necromancy danced beside the amalgamated Pathbearer and trembled in the air, building up kinetic energy.

"Alright," Shiv said, holding his hand up slightly as he winced. "Don't release it yet, but if you can potentially prime it somehow or just keep it pinned to something—keep the Necromancy active inside of it—I'll have the golem slam into it when an Ascendant or some reinforcements arrive."

"What will that do?" Five asked.

"Make a pretty nasty bang. The kind that sets your soul on fire."

Five blinked. "You're jesting."

"Nope," Shiv replied with a vicious chuckle. "Orichalcum should be able to contain the explosion, or at least I hope it can."

"Only if there are people making contact with the soul-bronze," Five replied. "Orichalcum feeds off of willpower. Without it, it's scarcely harder than adamantine, and when given to someone with a weak will, often brittle."

"Good thing that one of the Ascendants will be standing in this room. Or several of them," Shiv said. It was a guess, but probably a good one. He couldn't see the Ascendants wasting wardens on him. Not unless they particularly liked killing their own soldiers. But by this point, who knew? They were already willing to do twisted experiments with Rebis and run what was effectively a nightmare prison. Wherever the hell this place was. He hoped it was at the bottom of an ocean rather than out in the void. The latter might prove a bigger issue.

I guess I really didn't know my own Republic at all, Shiv thought to himself. But that gave him another thought. He couldn't blame Roland for this, either. Roland probably had a better understanding of the Republic and the Ascendants than most Pathbearers or citizens. But Tran wouldn't have believed this, neither would Heather, nor most of the people at Blackedge, if he'd told them.

No, Shiv was firmly in the "knows too much about the Republic" category now. It didn't make him feel much better.

Just then, another warning klaxon sounded. "Unauthorized teleportation detected." Shiv saw motes of Dimensionality spilling out from the teleportation anchor, and a surge of incandescent mana followed.

And they're already here. Fuck.

"Shit. Figure the rest out later. Everyone inside my cape, now."

Rebis responded immediately, vanishing from sight. Shiv had assumed he was in the cape, but the floating shard of Necromancy remained in place, hovering where it was. By the time he turned to his Vitae Golem, Five dove into his cape as well. Bonk let out a loud cry of greetings, and Shiv had briefly heard Five call out to Rebis, telling him not to kill the orc. Shiv had ignored all that chaos for now. He activated Creeping Void to flood the room with darkness, just as an incandescent presence entered the room. The jingling of chains sounded aloud, and rather than Havel's reverberating basso, the gleeful laughter of a young girl greeted Shiv's hearing.