Path of the Deathless (Book 2 Completed)

173 (II)

Riot [II]

Shiv exploded free from his Outside Context state. The new Waif flinched back in surprise. Shiv responded by halting time so he would end up facing the Ascendant instead. Once more, their disfigured form materialized over the girl in a splash of golden mana. They let out a scream of displeasure at the sight of Shiv and blurred out of sight in an instant. Shiv tried to follow where they were going, but he also had to continue projecting his Bladewand's teleportation, leaving him stuck in place. "Godsdammit—"

"Here I am!" a cheerful voice rang out from behind. There was a flick of motion under his chin, and the Deathless gurgled as his neck was opened. Another cut bit into his vertebrae, but he went out of context before it could sink all the way in. His Bladewand flickered as his teleportation was interrupted. Darkness crept along the corners of his vision, but Shiv managed to have his Biomancy absorb his wounds first.

He surfaced a second later in a two-pronged attack. His Biomancy crashed hard against the Ascendant's Magical Resistance—and while they shrugged that off, he palmed their head and channeled every vector he had. He felt a satisfying crack pulse through their body, and inside their translucent form, the new Waif writhed in the Ascendant's stead.

"It hurts! Hurts so bad!" she screamed.

Shiv's stomach did a flip. Hurting the Ascendant was fine, but if he couldn't attack them directly even with time frozen—

Blind luck saved Shiv from another death. One of his overflow vectors was washing up along his head, and it crashed against a blade that descended on his crown. A spike of agony exploded atop his skull. The Deathless cried out in pain and horror as cold and slimy fingers curled around his face. He didn't know who was attacking him—how they got to him—but he felt a length of unnatural metal dig a deep groove along the curve of his skull.

A horrific rattling noise filled the insides of Shiv's head. His teeth clacked together in his mouth. He turned, trying to knock the girl aside, but his right arm stopped moving. Then he felt something wrong with his left leg as well. A half second thereafter, he realized a problem. Both his right arm and left leg had been taken from him, clean slices severing them free of his body. But that wasn't the worst of it.

While there was one Ascendant standing in the air before him, grinning happily, two others had joined her. Two others that looked exactly like them, wielding the same knives. And they were holding on to Shiv's limbs now, clutching them tight to their misshapen bodies as if they were trophies. And then they started chewing on his severed limbs, feasting on the blood with ravenous delight.

"What the fuck?" Shiv groaned. He was more disturbed by the cannibalism than bothered by the pain.

"Cute trick, little bull," the Daughter before him said. She pointed to her dagger, and Shiv noticed that a section of it was chipped. "Guess it serves me right to underestimate a Legend, even a baby Legend." She blew a raspberry at him.

Shiv tried to activate Outside Context Problem again, but an unseen blow took him under the ribs. He managed to convert some of it, but the bulk of the force punctured one of his lungs and sent him slamming against an Orichalcum wall.

Shiv fought to recover. Another lashing strike to the temple brought an end to that. Whatever attack he couldn't perceive also ignored his defenses entirely. His vision doubled. A rush of bile climbed up his throat as he tried to keep his nausea down. He lashed out with two cuts of his own, but remembered he was missing the requisite limb.

He managed to sink into his Vitae again at the last minute. And it was barely enough to save his life. The Ascendant's dagger punched through where he was and left a deep hole in the Orichalcum wall behind him.

Shit. Not good. Not good at all. As he fed his mana hydras and restored his limbs, he saw a small army of Daughters with Waifs lodged inside them darting from place to place. Most flickered in and out of sight. They vanished behind mithril columns and failed to reappear. Shiv counted twenty of them at least, and they were faintly tied together by a shared chain of vitality.

He had no idea how Daughter functioned, but his odds against one were messy. Twenty? He was going to get massacred. He looked around, trying to find that soulfire-induced opening on the Orichalcum surface he lay against, but he found himself utterly lost. He was running out of Vitae fast too.

When he re-entered Integration again, he was probably going to die. And fast. After that—

Ideas. I need… I need…

Something exploded out from the Orichalcum five meters beside Shiv. It was around five meters in size and resembled a large, incredibly muscular humanoid with dozens of tentacles sticking out from its head. Shiv did a double-take. Is that a giant felling Vulteg?

"NO ONE CAN HOLD HIGH MARSHAL URRI TATTALO!" the Vulteg bellowed.

Around ten wardens clung to the large Vulteg's body as he smashed through a mithril pillar. The wardens screamed out to each other, and a few were still shaping spells, trying to stop the octopus-headed brute from getting free.

"Hold him!"

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"Prepare the net! Animancers on the ready!"

"Psychomancers on standby!"

Just then, Shiv noticed a dense weave of Animancy mana pulsing along Urri's body. It was interesting seeing a faint blueness seep into the Vulteg, but Shiv decided to take this chance and escape through the massive rupture the Vulteg had made. Shiv promptly dropped a temporal anchor as well, not sure what was being prepared. His instincts screamed at him to give himself an out or an easy option to reposition later.

Okay, Shiv, breathe. New plan, new plan. What the hells is our new plan?

His thoughts were racing. He was almost out of vitality and being pursued by a multi-bodied cannibalistic Ascendant that used children as Avatars and meat-shields while prison went to hell around them.

In a strange way, Shiv was flattered. Back when he was Pathless, he would have been impressed if he managed to overcome a small group of lesser vampires in direct combat. Now it took the Avatar of a false god to send him on the run. That aside, Shiv was in some deep shit. He needed to figure out how to shake the Ascendant fast, because he didn't think he had many lucky breaks left. Shapeless Tides and Outside Context Problem were the only skills he had of use against her.

Maybe Vitality Drain as well, but he doubted she would make the same mistake again. Alright, think Shiv. What can we do? What do we got?

He considered calling for aid, but he didn't think Bonk would be particularly useful in this fight. But what about Rebis? He's a lot faster than me, and his cutting aura might be able to keep Daughter at bay. Still have no idea how her skills actually work, or how many bodies she even has, though.

He'd counted twenty of her earlier, and he wasn't even sure if those were her actual bodies. He'd broken her Avatars a few times, and all that did was leave him drowning in a dense, tar-black substance. So he couldn't attack her directly, and he couldn't evade her for long. Maybe Rebis could give him some help, but even with all that, the only means of attack he had left was draining her vitality, and that meant getting close over and over again.

Wait. Shiv blinked. Vitality Drain? I don't need to drain her. I just need to make things more chaotic down here. A mana storm might make it hard for her to track us at all. I can keep the magic at bay with my Legendary Skill.

And so he emerged from his Outside Context Problem state and called out to Rebis. "Rebis, come out. Need a hand here. We got an Ascendant on our ass."

And in an instant, the amalgamated Pathbearer was right beside him. He trembled. His wings were expanded wide. And for a moment, judging from the fury on his face, Shiv was worried that Rebis might cut him down first. But he maintained his self-control.

"Ascendant! Where?" Rebis choked out.

"Watch the gap," Shiv pointed behind at the opening they'd just slipped through. They were at the very top of a prison valley. Below, there were hundreds of wardens trying to contain dozens of prisoners, and things were going badly. Shiv could see a maelstrom of fire, one that reminded him of the Pyromancy Skill Confriga had possessed, tearing through the narrow channel below. Several wardens disintegrated outright.

There's no frying pan in this place at all. It's all fire by this point. Well. Time to add to it.

Shiv started draining from reality. If he couldn't lose the Ascendant in the crawlspace and the cube was a trap, then he needed to create his own chaos. Make things even more murky. Make things even more confusing. Shiv was about to order Rebis to do something, but then the Pathbearer burst into motion.

A loud ring of clashing metal sounded, and Daughter cried out in frustrated surprise. One of her bodies tumbled past, split into many parts. Blackness trailed out from her, but the blackness itself was severed, shredded with that radiant mana that infused Rebis's form.

"NO! Why! Why is he here?"

"He can't be! Must be returned! You cannot be allowed to escape! You are Enoch's toy!"

The Daughter screeched at Rebis from beyond the gap, and more copies of the Ascendant flooded in. Rebis was moving faster than Shiv could perceive, and a clash between blurring light and impossibly fast shadows began.

"Right, you got this," Shiv said, slightly awestruck by Rebis's Awareness and Speed. He continued draining, focusing all his power on ripping the veil of existence wide open.

The last time he'd sundered reality badly, a Legendary-Tier phoenix had slipped through, and something like that might just be what Shiv needed right now. With its radiating presence, it might be able to fight off Daughter, and with his own Shapeless Tides, he could keep himself alive in the meantime. However, he would settle for a mana storm if nothing else. He could dive into that and potentially lose contact with Daughter in the carnage.

A hiss of something made Shiv flinch to his right. A ringing clash of metal on metal deafened his ears. As he turned, he saw Rebis facing two Daughters. The amalgamated Pathbearer's wings were extended, and both Ascendants were impaled. Yet, they bled away into black tar, and embedded on the edges of Rebis's wings were dying children.

Shiv looked at the faces of the Waifs—at the fear and the tears.

He turned away and tried to keep his Berserk under control. What the Daughter did to these Avatars, how they used the children, was beyond what Shiv could accept. We'll deal with that later. We have to—

The wall beside Shiv exploded again. The massive Vulteg returned. "NO ONE STOPS URRI! NO ONE!"

Shiv's eyes widened as he stopped draining from the world's vitality and intercepted Urri with two outstretched hands. A rush of vectors passed through Shiv as he did, in fact, briefly stop Urri by draining all the Vulteg's strength. However, the Vulteg just kept crashing forward, and with each passing second, more kinetic energy flooded into Shiv. One influx of striped overflow tides became five, and soon, Shiv found himself on the verge of losing control.

He was promptly sent over that verge as a cold length of metal was plunged deep into his heart. Shiv gave a choked gasp as all the overflow tides he was juggling discharged at once. His body was violently pulled in several directions, and his Orichalcum pillar crumbled. Shiv's uncontrolled Legendary Skill ripped his body apart.

He unlatched from his falling corpse and—

Teleported himself back outside the cube before he could be cut down fully. Shiv blinked back to where he'd placed his temporal anchor.

Only to find himself faced with another problem: Cripple's broken Avatar accelerating toward him. Oh, come the fuck on, just give me a moment to—

The automaton Avatar manifested an incandescent fist. But rather than pointing it at Shiv, he lifted it high, and a wall of burning fists crashed over the Orichalcum surface of the cube Shiv was within in a thunderous clash, sealing it tight.

"Deathless," Cripple said, speaking through his broken Avatar. "I wish to have proper words with you. You, and Young Lord Arrow as well."