Path of the Deathless (Book 2 Completed)

"Pull that crossbow away from your neck. You're not going to shoot yourself. Stop pretending."

"Leave me alone. You won. You fucking won. Let me have what's left of my honor."

"What's left of your honor? Don't be absurd, boy. There's no honor in this. You failed. Failure is humiliation. Failure is disgrace. Even if you kill yourself right now, you're not going to redeem yourself in any way. How could you?"

"..."

"Your goal was to overthrow the royal council, wasn't it? To establish your own free and liberated district within the capital. I let you have that. I allowed you to claim legitimacy. I even recognized your little state.

"And then you choked us!"

"No, I simply overcharged you, and since you lacked a proper military, there was no way for you to compel me to adjust my prices otherwise. I warned you before. I told you that you had powerful Pathbearers among your organization. I admitted to you that I was reluctant to take a forceful approach for a simple reason: because it would cost me the lives of my citizens, and I have spent a great deal of effort trying to establish a state of enduring peace in this capital."

"Peace? You call what you did to us peace?"

"Yes, because I didn't shed your blood. No, your organization imploded on itself, as do many revolutionary organizations. It's the inevitable consequence of being a revolutionary."

"Fuck you! You don't know anything. You don't know anything! It would have worked if it just..."

"If it just what? If everyone in your governing council would have listened to you? If your attempt at absolute democracy didn't degenerate into chaotic anarchy due to the inherent vice, lust, wrath, and avaricious nature of man and enlightened machine alike? Yes, I suppose it would have functioned perfectly if you were perfect people. But that's the problem with your like: you're not perfect. You're flawed, and you were made so through the trauma inflicted upon you by the state. As Kull Masalov said: 'To reign is to delude oneself that they are a wise master, when in actuality, it is an exercise in resisting the urge to enslave and dominate; such is the inevitable urge of all yearning hearts.'"

"What… You…"

"Oh, don't look so surprised. You're not the first Pathbearer to play at revolution or to read the old literature, to dream of true equality and harbor noble ideals in your heart. I was in your place some a century and a half ago. I got further, since my goals were more pragmatic, and I was simply seeking recognition for my faction within the purview of the royal council, but ultimately, inevitably, and tragically, it collapsed. It always does. Those I regarded to be my brothers and sisters, kindred in arms, turned on each other and me, because though critiquing a system is easy and finding its flaws is obvious, fixing them is where the problem begins."

"..."

"What I found noble and beautiful was offensive and repulsive to some of my comrades. Hence, my lover tried to slit my throat after drugging me during intercourse. Hurting her was very traumatic, but she was always a bit of a fool. The dosage was too low."

"..."

"Now, shut your mouth, lift your head, and come with me. You're still alive for a reason, and that reason is that I have use for you."

"Why would I do anything… anything that you ask?"

"Because, alternatively, you will have to swallow this bitter failure eternally. This will be the defining moment of your life: to have failed, to have led your glorious revolution to destruction. But, if you want to do some good—and a bitter, narrower, far more deserved good though it might be—I have a position on my cabinet, and it's suited for someone who cares greatly about the small and helpless. So, wipe those tears away, hold on to this moment as a lesson, and develop. Think of it this way: I let you do this so it could be an educational exercise. You are educated now. The exercise is over. Now, the actual work begins."

-Veronica Chandler and Uriah Townsend, Master-Brother of the Union of Dawn Revolutionaries

212 (I)

Pacify

Non-Sequitur 104 > 106

Inertial Overdrive 170 > 173

Pillar of Orichalcum 225 > 228

Farsight 74 > 78

For a moment, Shiv thought his social offensive had been going well. Then, he was beheaded from behind, struck down so fast and so brutally that not even his Shapeless Tides spared him from death.

In retrospect, Shiv started getting suspicious when the air behind him grew colder and colder. He had been paranoid from the start. Thanks to his Last Morsel, he managed to turn himself into a shadow. And between that and Non-Sequitur, he slipped into the teleportation anchor while evading the giantess's Divination Skill.

He'd thought he had her pacified. He buried the business end of his pan against her lower back and seized her vertebrae. But that was a stupid assumption. He was a Legendary Pathbearer as well, and it would take more than that to put him down; they stood at the apex of Earth's power, unless one received divine reinforcement.

That'll teach me to feel self-assured, he cursed himself.

He exploded into motion as his Vitae sprawled free from his beheaded body. Just like the Jotun surprised him, he surprised her once more.

He buried the fanged rim of his last morsel in her skull using a web of tendrils. The frying pan struck the giantess's head like a morning star. A sickening crack filled the air as orichalcum teeth chipped through impossibly hard bone. The wet squelch of brain matter told him he struck home.

And as she spasmed and went down, he saw the front side of her face burst open in a spray of blood as well. But he was done underestimating her. He wrenched his frying pan free and struck her three more times. Each cut going deeper, shattering her skull, leaving her brain matter a chasm of weltering gore.

Not the only one who underestimated the other. Not the only one with other tricks. Not the only one with shit awareness. These three thoughts went off inside Shiv's head like a cluster bomb.

And then he was in the fray once more, launching himself at Urri and the scattered automaton that looked like a massive mechanical snake of some kind.

Urri's single eye was wide with surprise. He hadn't seen Shiv go down before. Hadn't seen him resurrect. Didn't really know what Vitae was. That bought the Deathless almost half a second to act freely.

A flood of static spilled out from the automaton as the spell pattern powering the teleportation anchor flared to life. It went dim a second later as Shiv drove a lashing blow down on the automaton's head. The bot gave a mechanical shriek. Its exterior was hard, Low Heroic perhaps, but it was ripped wide open as a surge of Shapeless Tides cleaved into it.

The rest of Shiv slammed into and wrapped around the Vulteg. Urri was tough. And the more one hit him, the more durable and powerful he got. Shiv remembered that from their prior scuffle. So instead of trying to beat Urri down with brute force, he was just going to drain the Vulteg until there was nothing left of his vitality.

A trail of cuts glided over Shiv's Vitae. Pieces of him were ripped free, but the damage he sustained was minimal. Bladed currents glided through the air, and a scream of battle fury filled the insides of the teleportation anchor. A spread of vitality drifted along the fast-flowing winds, and it painted the form of a young woman with a long, trailing ponytail, hidden by the gales. Shiv ignored her for now. She might be able to leave some cuts on his body, but so far, she was the least of his problems.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"What is this strange—Nyah!" Urri let out a roar. He wrapped his massive hands around Shiv's Vitae and pulled. But Shiv wrecked his overflow tides against the Vulteg. A clash of striped vectors pushed Urri back.

And then the coiling mess of Vitae twisted brutally. Urri was still strong, but he was wrestling against Legendary Physicality and Grappling. And though he defied Shiv for a moment, eventually his arms were pinned against the wall, and threads of red-white mana were wound over and over around his neck.

Urri gagged, but he didn't stop fighting. He never stopped struggling. "Nothing can stop Urri! NOTHING!" he roared. The veins of blood trailing along the corner of his eyeball widened as if fracturing. His muscles bulged. His body grew larger. He had activated a Berserk Skill. He took a step forward and Shiv expected to struggle a bit more, but he had plenty of tides. He would hold the Vulteg down and—

Urri vanished and then reappeared right next to Shiv. The transition was so sudden and jarring that the Deathless reeled. He reeled even more as Urri struck him with a closed fist. The blow was a natural two. Instead of being a straight punch or a hook of some kind, he blinked. One second, he was a meter away from Shiv. The next, he exploded against him like a bomb going off.

Another portion of Shiv's Vitae cracked, and coldness climbed deeper into his core. Despite this, Shiv converted the latter half of the blow into Overflow Tides, and he sent that back against Urri, launching the massive Vulteg back.

"I am fury unleashed! I am my senses unchained!" Urri declared. It was a reverberating resonance in his voice, and it felt like there were several other people speaking from inside him as well.

Just then, another splash of Dimensionality came out from the automaton. This time, instead of being a focused spell meant to activate the teleportation anchor, it took the shape of a slithering serpent, and it reared down to swallow Shiv. This anchor wasn't that large; it only had 20 meters of width to work with.

The snake took up all of that.

"Alright, time for you to go to the trash kingdom," the automaton slurred weakly. At the same time, Urri blinked, and he appeared right behind Shiv, but then he vanished again, and this time appeared after Shiv was struck. Another portion of the Deathless broke. He failed to convert any Shapeless Tides this time. What remained of Shiv spilled down on the ground, as the broken parts of his being turned to hissing streams of vapor.

Just then, the serpent crashed down on him, and he felt a crushing pressure begin to wrench at his very being. It was trying to pull him into the serpent, to pull him away from the world and hide him somewhere else. The automaton Dimensionalist was strong, but unfortunately, it wasn't Legendary. Shiv swung his pan upward as flowing vectors swirled across his dense knot of Vitae. He resembled a rope lined with fast-moving saw blades surging along its length.

With every second, his vectors grew faster, and the color of their mana turned black and static to match the dimensional spell being unleashed upon him. The serpent bit down—and was cleaved in half from skull to tail. A spill of sparkling midnight filled the inside of the anchor, and the automaton gave an agonized wail at the ruination of its mana field.

Urri blinked. Shiv halted time. He was promptly struck by two walls of counter-Chronomancy. The first was unleashed by the university, and it crashed down upon him like a tsunami coming out of nowhere. If that wasn't enough, a wall of golden mana expanded free from the Vulteg's body as well. And more than that, Urri was flickering, as if he was blinking in and out of existence while his Berserk state was active. Shiv only got a glimpse of the Vulteg's skill before his temporal shell shattered, and then another portion of his body did. He only had 30 percent of his Vitae left, and the cold tongue of oblivion was quickly licking its way to his very core.

Stride of the Unbending Path 161 > 163

Motherfucker! Shiv screamed internally. He needed to adapt. He needed to—

"And the Zephyrs will never yield!" the winds around him roared. All the slashing currents converged together, and it became a silvery gash that was carried down from the air. A whirlwind slammed into Shiv, but he intercepted it with his curling strands. The insides of the anchor groaned. This cut was stronger than all the ones that came before, but it had a weakness.

It was a single cut, and Shiv was pretty good at stopping singular attacks by this point.

Just like with the automaton, he wielded his Shapeless Tides against the unseen Aeromancer. Her vitality imprint betrayed how much she was struggling. She was holding on to the silver crescent as if it were some kind of greatsword. But though she twitched with exertion, she too was a Hero wrestling against a Legend, and the outcome of attempting to leap across such a gulf was inevitable.

Shiv gathered another buildup of Overflow Tides as he coiled strands around the cut. He even ignored Urri ripping another section of his body away as the Vulteg suddenly reappeared. He had a new target now, and he was going to eliminate her and the automaton as soon as possible.

Process of elimination, Shiv thought to himself, from the weakest to the strongest.

The Overflow Tides he'd harnessed went down as he pulled his leftmost strands. At the same time, his innate tides carried his right limb aloft. All of a sudden, the air went still. The winds sputtered, and the gales died.

"No, how?" That was as far as the Aeromancer got before Shiv snapped the cut in half. A burst of uncontrollable wind erupted at the center of the room, and even that wasn't loud enough to drown out the Aeromancer's shriek.

She plunged down as a veil of air ripped free from her body. Her arms and legs were bare. They were lined with colorful whorls, especially around her hands and soles. Her torso, however, caught Shiv's attention. It was caged in a strange set of bronze vestments. He couldn't even call it armor from how odd its mechanisms were. Thick, jutting ribs extended out the sides of her apparel, and between them were coppery wires alive with humming electricity.

Shiv noticed how her head was encased in a transparent bowl as well, flowing stormstuff partially obscuring her features. But her eyes were the color of dark clouds split by lightning, and her face and skin were the same kind of blue that characterized Adam's aesthetic.

As Shiv wrapped his Vitae around the downed Aeromancer, he curled his mana hydra over her body as well. Before the onslaught of two Magical Skills, one being Legendary, her resistance shattered with a burst of mana, and that worked in Shiv's favor. The repulsive force spreading out from her stunned Urri just as he reappeared.

His body vibrated in place, and he clutched his head, letting out a pained bellow.

Shiv didn't have time to capitalize on that, however. Instead, he began draining from the downed Aeromancer. Her incessant screams turned into a gurgling cry as the Deathless ripped the vitality free from her body. A flood of life force washed into him and crashed upon the flesh of reality. The air around them shimmered with crimson majesty, and in an instant, Shiv was reborn, hatching free from red-white vapors.

Urri struck him again, driving a curving hook into the Shiv's midsection. He didn't lose any Vitae this time, but he did hiss as one of his ribs was fractured.

"Getting tired of that shit." Shiv swung the back of his hand and struck nothing. A second later, Urri manifested, knee-first against the side of Shiv's temple. A burst of whiteness spread out from behind Shiv's right eye. A section of his helmet and skull were shattered as he stumbled, and the moment he did, Urri swept his legs out from under him before bringing an elbow down on the same rib that was fractured earlier.

Shiv activated Non-Sequitur before the Vulteg could do anything else.

He snapped free from his body and watched as Urri shattered his vitality. He heard Urri snap the vitality decoy over his knee as a burst of vaporous Vitae filled the air. Shiv went from Non-Sequitur back to the outside context state, and Urri briefly stumbled, confused as to what just happened.

Shiv took that opportunity to be a bit of a bastard. If the prisoners wanted to be a pain in the ass, so would he. His mana hydra tore out across the room, and they assimilated his recent remains. A chain of microspells manifested along the length of his Biomancy field, and Shiv swung it against the Vulteg's head. A look of utter confusion lingered on Urri's face just as the crimson hydra struck him.

But Shiv wasn't attempting to break the Vulteg's Magical Resistance. The bastard was a juggernaut in more ways than one. Instead, he projected some of the biomass he'd assimilated, and he sculpted it around Urri's face. Shiv watched a dangling arm materialize in a flash of redness. It was connected to a section of Shiv's lower back, one ass cheek, the heel of his foot, and part of his face. That monstrosity was promptly molded into a loop and then fastened upon the Vulteg's face.

Urri gave a muffled cry as Shiv returned to context. But instead of trying to attack Shiv, Urri reached up, fighting desperately to rip the flesh cocoon away. Once more, his lacking Physicality worked against him. Urri was only Heroic in terms of strength, and Shiv's corpse inherited the qualities of orichalcum as well, though not the full potential of ever-escalating Toughness.

A groan came from the Aeromancer. She tried to rise, but let out a violent wheeze as Shiv pinched the major arteries in her throat. He used his mana hydra to do that for maximum control. She kicked and clawed against the ground briefly before her eyes blinked, and her gaze went distant.

"That's right," Shiv said, "go to sleep."

Nearby, he heard the automaton let out a mechanical cough. "Ow," Divider said. Shiv moved to disable the second-weakest threat of the group, but then something bit into the back of his neck. He tried to move forward, but his legs wouldn't listen. His body wouldn't obey, and—and then he was free again, detached from another corpse.

A snarl of frustration bubbled up inside; his head struck the ground first, his body following a second thereafter. But Shiv didn't have any time to vent his anger. A bleed of frost crashed into his Vitae, and he felt that infectious slowness gallop through his soul, course through the marrow of red-white mana that comprised his alloyed being.

Shiv pushed back against the magic, but he lacked the Overflow Tides to fully overpower his ambusher. A second later, he found himself pinned against the wall. Urri slammed into the anchor's walls beside him, leaving a gash in the rusted metal. Bits of Shiv's corpse wrapper were coming free from the Vulteg's head, and he would be back in the fight before long. But he was the secondary priority.

Non-Sequitur 106 > 110

Vitaemancy 116 > 121

Inertial Overdrive 173 > 177

Pillar of Orichalcum 228 > 230

Farsight 78 > 81

Once more, across from Shiv stood a sight he didn't expect.

Shiv gasped with disbelief.

A series of cracks sounded through the room, and each of them was as loud as an explosion. Andra was standing again, and she wasn't alone. She was being propped up by a Cryomantic clone, one radiating with that stilling coldness. And to Shiv's utter incredulity, it also carried a spark of vitality. There was a thin tendril of redness lining the space between Andra and her ice clone. And Shiv was at an utter loss for words. What the hells?

The Jotun's many tattoos were glowing now, flaring with the power of Biomancy, and her flesh began to rapidly reconstruct itself.