NOVEL NEXT 172 (II) Riot [I]
172 (II)
Riot [I]
He didn't spend any time questioning why a child was here. All he knew was that he was in grave danger, and he needed to leave now. He cast a telepathic command to his golem. "When the Ascendant gets close to you, touch the corrosive shard."
Shiv went out of context and stopped time. The world was cold. He didn't have that long before the last of his vitality was expended. But his Legendary Physicality flooded his Reflexes with more power than ever before, and Shiv found himself with plenty of time left before he dissolved down to nothing. He blasted toward a far wall, gathering ripples as he prepared to make an emergency exit. He considered directing his force vectors through his new blade, but realized that would likely just damage the enchantments.
Shiv was his own Magebreaker now, so he had to be careful with how he interacted with magic, but he could be far more aggressive when faced with enemy mages, and far more vicious when faced with any kind of spellwork.
Once more, he slammed his index finger against the Orichalcum, and a loud pop sounded as the red-gold metal was ruptured. White and red mana exploded off his body, and suddenly, a peculiar smell greeted him.
It was the smell of daisies and roses and strawberries mixed as one, and a burst of loud, childlike laughter filled the room. He looked over his shoulder, where he saw a human's silhouette burning through the dark of his Creeping Void as it strolled forward.
The figure resembled a young girl wearing what seemed to be a dress made of layered chainmail, and the way she moved was unnatural and quick. She was burning with divine power, so he couldn't get exact details from her, but the sight of her alone sent shivers down his spine. There was something deeply wrong about the girl, deeply wrong about the overflowing joy that escaped her in bursts of giggles.
"Oh, hello, Deathless," she said, as if a child greeting a personal playmate. She twirled a wicked-looking dagger between her fingers, one that was far larger than that Shiv carried right now. She pinched its tip between the index finger and thumb of her other hand as she skipped toward his Vitae golem. So far, she hadn't noticed him. He jammed the tip of his blade-wand against the hole he'd just made and projected his Beamcast out through the gap. He didn't want to find out what this Ascendant was capable of firsthand. Not just yet.
His golem had the same Vitae signature as he did, but even so, the masquerade didn't last long. His body pulsed, the notification marking him as the target of the hidden Quest flashing before his eyes once more.
Suddenly, the Ascendant was looking directly at him instead of his golem, and her eyes burned with violet mana.
"What's this?" she called out to Shiv. "Oh, are you trying to distract me with a clone? Very tricky, Shivy. Very, very tricky."
He channeled his Beamcast a bit longer, and the rest of his body was injected across the blade, flung into the crawlspace beyond. Just as he left, the insides of the guard station came ablaze with fire. Orichalcum was an interesting metal. True to Five's description, it hardened based on the willpower of the people connected to it. And it was then that Shiv remembered he'd left a group of wardens lying inside the teleportation anchor.
"Oh godsdammit!" Shiv growled at himself. "Fucking careless idiot!"
As he fully materialized in the crawlspace, a jetstream of soul flames slashed out toward him, and he dodged to his left. It still scored a hit on his helmet, ripping a clean gash through the outer chitin and bone-adamantine. Yet that stream of soulfire kept going. It sheared through the gears beside him, punching a hole into the next cube over.
A bright red hole was left through multiple layers of matter. It took a few seconds for the stream to punch a fist-sized gap into the Orichalcum of the next cube, and then the gears nearby started turning. A loud, screaming noise of straining metal filled the air, and the Deathless felt his inner ear begin to vibrate violently. That cube ground along the other side, but promptly dislodged as well as its gears were slashed in half by the persisting stream of soulfire.
As it derailed, another cube slammed into its side, or at least Shiv guessed that was what happened, considering the sheer force of the impact. More booms followed. The gears before him shattered and broke. One of the large mechanisms tumbled through the air, coming right at him. Shiv reached out with one hand and intercepted its kinetic energy. Pulsing vectors danced along his right arm, each rush of force spilling inside him as striped mana signatures.
A blossom of destruction erupted out of Shiv as he lost track of a few other overflow tides, and he cursed as he was suddenly launched to his left by the involuntary discharge. He crashed through an already damaged section of crawlspace before finally bouncing off a magically infused mithril pillar. As he recovered, he found most of the spell patterns lining the pillar fraying apart. Shiv's body had been like a falling axe head kissing a rope, and now only scant strands of mana clung together, unveiling the surface of the crystalline column.
The Creeping Void 114 > 115
"Whoa!" a voice came from Shiv's left. A small hand draped itself over his left shoulder, and the chubby face of a young, blond-haired girl leaned past him. "That was a pretty big gear you caught there with just one hand. And what was that trick you just pulled with that glowy clone thing of yours? You nearly cooked my skin." She rapidly breathed on a red patch splotching the top of her tiny hand.
The surrealism of the moment caught Shiv off guard, but he recovered with a sudden burst of force. He used his Shapeless Tides to pull himself away from the strange girl, and he laid eyes on her features for the first time. He knew her. Shiv had noticed her back when he was fighting for his life at Blackedge. She was one of the Avatars, appearing no older than eleven, hair styled in pigtails, and bearing a blade that had a strange darkness lining the length of the metal. She pouted at Shiv as he backed away from her.
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"Well, that was kind of rude. We just met, and you're treating me like I'm a leper." She placed both hands on her hips, ignoring how she was driving her blade into her own thigh. "Stormhalt said you were a piece of hard meat, but I guess I just had to see it for myself."
Shiv looked on wordlessly at the Avatar as he prepared for battle. But before he launched himself at the girl, he spent a moment thinking. She managed to sneak up on me without me noticing at all, he thought frantically, before he caught a glint of Divination mana lighting her eyes. I don't think that my Outside Context Problem is quite the edge it normally is. But if I break contact with her, I still think I can get away.
The girl, meanwhile, ripped the knife out of her leg, and she twirled it between her hands again. "Oh, I know that look. Are you going to go for it?" She stared at his knife. "It's not a very good blade for someone who just became a legend, and you have to be a Legend. I know that skill." She covered her mouth and giggled. "I remember seeing these mana vectors on those mean old Void Leviathans that battered one of Cripple's better Avatars into scrap."
The girl sighed. "Poor Vendo. He was pretty fun. He always said he was ready to die at any moment. But I'll tell you a secret. I held him as he broke apart. I held him as he shook, and as the spark went out inside him." She slowly shook her head, and a faintly haunted look came over her. "The truth about Vendo is, he didn't want to die. Not really. No one wants to die. No one. Except maybe for you. You come back, right? What does it feel like? Is it fun?"
By this point, Shiv was getting a terrible feeling about this girl, but something told him that he could use this moment to his advantage.
Psycho-Cartography: She's clearly interested in you, albeit she's interested in you the same way a cat is interested in batting a mouse to death. But keep her talking. Use your knife after you go out of context and cast yourself somewhere far away. We don't have much vitae left, but it should be sustainable if we dive in and out of our own soulstuff.
"So, you got a name?" Shiv started, keeping his posture defensive.
She threw her head back and laughed, and as she did, Shiv momentarily caught sight of her Ascendant. It was an ethereal figure looming tall over the knife-wielding child, and he felt his insides crawl as he saw the silhouette of the thing. The god had too many joints on their limbs, too many fingers to be natural, and their head was strangely deformed. Their body was overly thin, but still vaguely humanoid, and he found himself looking on and trying to figure out just what race the Ascendant used to be. It seemed like a mutated human or perhaps an extremely emaciated elf, but it was impossible to tell.
Then, the Ascendant faded, and the girl remained.
"I had a name," the girl finally answered, smiling. But only her lips curled. Her eyes remained cold and cruel, locked to him as if she was prepared to tear open his flesh at any moment. It made his skin crawl.
Psycho-Cartography: And that's not natural. You're being affected by an Intimidation Skill.
"I had a name," the girl repeated, and slowly her smile faded altogether. She frowned slightly. "You're not running away. You're no fun at all."
"You expect me to act like a rabbit?" Shiv asked. "Bounce off while you chase me?"
The girl nodded vigorously. "Yep. Can you do that for me?"
Despite everything, Shiv chuckled. "Yeah, no. Not much of a rabbit, and you're not much of a girl."
Once more, she pressed her lips together, and her expression turned inscrutable. "You know, it's very, very rude of you not to play along. You're a very rude boy, Shivy. Very rude." Slowly, she showed her teeth, and they reminded him of a shark's. They were the teeth of a carnivore. "I had a name, but most just call me the Waif these days. It's the only name I'll answer to. Just like you, Shiv."
Psycho-Cartography: She knows about your history and that you refuse to answer to Tanner Lowe. Don't let her throw you off.
"Kathereine wants me to bring you back intact. Stormhalt, well, I think he wants you a bit hurt. You wounded his pride a little when you humiliated him in front of Hawgrave."
Shiv thought of what the Waif was talking about, and he remembered Stormhalt punching him and hurting his hand. "That's his fault," Shiv said. "If he had better Physicality..."
"I know, right?" the Waif interrupted him, suddenly standing right beside him, having moved between blinks. Shiv let out a gasp as a cold length of metal slid between his ribs, injecting a building agony that circulated within his flesh.
"Is something happening out there?" Five called out.
The Waif's head snapped to Shiv's cape, and her mouth opened slightly. "Oh, you're hiding some stowaways?"
This time, Shiv didn't turn away from the girl. He reached out and clutched her head. His force vector slammed against her throat as he caught her tiny arm as well. She tried to push against him, trying to force her blade deeper, but Shiv caught a slight twitch in her left eye as she found herself being driven back by his overwhelming force. He used his overflow tides all at once, and the girl's body let out several cracking noises. Her flesh parted, and her bones shattered.
Yet, as she bled, a crawling stream of darkness seeped out from her insides instead of blood. And rather than open wounds, the injuries he inflicted opened wider and became jaws—jaws that held rows of needle-thin teeth. Teeth that bit down on his arm and body, ground against his Orichalcum pillar, and tore all the way through. Shiv let out a cry of pain as chunks of his flesh were gouged away.
Between his Shapeless Tides and Orichalcum Toughness, he could only focus on one, and he chose the former. He didn't intend to fight this Ascendant. He needed to—
The Waif burst apart as his vectors tore through her. A flood of tangible darkness exploded out from her maws and swallowed him. It wasn't like his Creeping Void, though. Instead of this being a miasma, it was a tar-like darkness. Something that had weight. Something that flowed over him. That clung to him. That clenched him tight and refused to let him surface, like a black, ravenous ocean.
Everything went dark around Shiv, and he lashed out with his vectors. He could hear the others in his cape calling out, could feel a building heaviness pulling at him. But with every pulse of force he unleashed, he drove the thick darkness a bit back, and—
A blade flicked through Shiv's neck.
The suddenness of his end took him off guard, and so did the following two strikes.
Coldness swelled inside Shiv as his Vitae was instantly sheared down to a single fiber. He didn't even see the strikes coming. He didn't know where the Waif was, and she taunted him, her giggles ringing out from all directions, sounding like cascading bells that drowned the world in cruel mirth. Then he saw her in the darkness before him, features painted by radiating vitality, her shark-toothed maw stretching from ear to ear in a mad grin.
"You're a Legend now!" she cried aloud, bringing her blade high. "And you probably thought that made you special! But you want to know the thing about Legends? They DIE! They die just like every other Pathbearer! They die, because that's the difference between you and a GOD! And now, die for me again! DIE!"