Path of the Deathless (Book 2 Completed)

212 (III)

Pacify

***

"Prophetess of the Dead Realms!"

Adam heard the Jotun's cry echo within his mind, and he clenched his teeth. He felt tendrils of Divination coiling around him. He wasn't truly studied in this art, not like his mother, but he did have a Master-Tier Divination Skill given to him by the System. As such, he could feel, and if he could feel, he could guess, and he could deduce. She was coming for him somehow, and Adam prepared accordingly. He summoned his own Divination mana, and his eyes came alight with the same violet glow that the Jotun possessed.

Instead of focusing on her, however, he let his instincts guide him. He stared upon her javelin and saw trickles of Divination spill into the weapon, and felt it connect to him as well. It was like a cord bleeding directly to his body, damning him to inevitable fate.

For a bit, Adam looked on with utter disbelief. He couldn't believe it, if she was actually going to—and then, as a veil of ice formed around her, as Candles and Shiv went and leaped out to strike her low, she flung her javelin and passed it into the narrative of the world itself.

Adam couldn't describe it. He felt it move. He felt it cross over. The power she wielded over the nature of causality and stories was staggering. But he wasn't without Awareness, and he wasn't without options.

The Gate Lord focused. He ignored everyone going in and out of his pathways nearby, ignored the crafters crying out an alarm, fleeing from this section of the maze they described as a nigh-impenetrable testing ground. He even ignored how the ground at his feet was freezing over and cracking with bits of blackened ice. He focused, and he followed that trail of Divination leading to his throat. Andra had thrown the javelin. She was going to strike him dead on, and he couldn't intercept her, not really, not until it finally surfaced into reality.

But it would take a second, and when you gave Adam Arrow a second, he would make the most of it. He fired his arrows. One tore a patch into existence before him, and as it ruptured free from the space at his side, he fired three more arrows—before the javelin finally arrived, and a cataclysmic clash took place.

She struck the center of his armor, but her impact barely lasted a second. Adam shifted and took the hit on his chest. At the same time, every single Veilpiercer he fired slammed into its needle-thin side and sent it tumbling astray.

It left a scratch along his armor.

Adam flinched with surprise. It was superficial damage; the armor itself wasn't ruined. But still, after so long, for something to scratch his Legendary armor was disconcerting.

Veilpiercer 184 > 190

Vectors of the Eternal Ascent 171 > 176

The javelin struck the wall, and it burst apart into shards, but from those shards expanded patches of all-consuming ice, and the Gate Lord let out a hiss. He would need Candles back in a while. Either him or Shiv. Only they seemed to have the skills capable of suppressing Andra's Cryomancy.

"Prophetess you may be, but a good shot you are not," Adam quipped as he drew back another arrow.

***

"Candles," Shiv called, "melt it all."

"Oh, I love the sound of that!" the burning Pathbearer cried. He threw his head back and laughed, and as he did, a spew of flame erupted from his jaws, and jets of blazing heat carved out from his every digit. The insides of the teleportation anchor became an elemental war.

Fire and ice formed explosive steam, and even without Shiv's Creeping Void active, everything was obscured and chaotic. Shiv, however, didn't care. He had his own task to perform. He slammed a fist down on the ground and began channeling his Shapeless Tides into the ice itself, letting them circulate around the room. He tried to focus, tried to cultivate as many tides as he could, so that he could seize control of the anchor and crush it inward.

He was going to break the ice. Candles was going to melt it. This was effectively a two-on-one fight—and then a blow struck him in the back of the head again. This time, he felt something in his lower neck break. As he went tumbling forward, he got up just in time to wrench his Shapeless Tides in the opposite direction and intercept a lashing kick from Urri.

The Vulteg's eye was covered in a swarm of stinging bugs, and a small army of temporal clones clung to his arms and legs. They stabbed away, chipping at him, but he continued raging on.

Shiv drove a fist into his chest, but then the Vulteg vanished and rematerialized behind Shiv. He swung wide and hit nothing because he didn't know where Shiv was. The earlier hit he achieved was blind luck alone. Quite literally, he punched in the opposite direction where Shiv stood, and the Deathless moved on instinct, letting his Legendary-Tier Grappling guide him.

He rolled and coiled his limbs around the Vulteg's lower legs. Before Urri could vanish, Shiv seized control of his lower left leg and locked his feet around his knee as well. Then, with a wrench of his body and a burst of vectors, he tried to cripple the Vulteg with a kneebar. A brief pop was heard. Urri let out a yelp, but then vanished once more. Shiv guessed that he might have achieved a partial tear at most, and that was a terrifying thing considering he spent a good portion of his overflow tides, what little he had left after trying to seize the anchor.

"What the hells is he made of?" Shiv muttered under his breath.

As Urri reappeared once more, a Veilpiercer slammed into the side of his head, and he went stumbling. The moment the Veilpiercer ruptured, however, another attack followed. It was the roar of a cannon, the impact of an artillery shell. A massive blast filled the room, and Urri went flying against the wall. Another few explosions struck, and Shiv stood his ground as rippling waves of force expanded through the insides of the anchor. He pinned himself down and cultivated his toughness.

A Pillar of Orichalcum began to form around him, and just then, the battered body of the Aeromancer slammed into him as well. As she made contact with him, he felt her biology with his mana and realized she was still alive, and quite healthy, in fact. There were several patches of her that were frozen, and nasty contusions everywhere, but she was very much alive. Her internal organs weren't harmed, and it seemed the same case with the Dimensional Automaton, as Shiv saw a fragment of the bot prisoner smack into him as well.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

As it bounced down, the Automaton let out an "Ow," and then was kicked aside by a passing orc. It was moments like these that struck Shiv with awe-struck delight. It had been one battle after another, and through it all, he just didn't appreciate how tough he'd gotten. He and practically every other Pathbearer who got to the point of Master. The things they were surviving were absurd. Their skills were absurd. A Pathless, well, never mind that, an Adept would have been liquefied if they were caught inside this teleportation anchor. And here everyone was, shrugging off each other's attacks in one way or another.

A loud yelp came from his side, and Shiv saw Candles pinned to the ground now, the blazing Pathbearer prying at a long, thin javelin sticking out from his chest. The javelin was melting, but from the ceiling, Andra reappeared, and she plunged down with another spear-like weapon in her hand.

"The hells you don't," Shiv snarled. He launched his mana hydra into the Jotun's side. He knew it would freeze some of his Biomancy, but it was faster than trying to attack her physically. As his mana hydra hit, a burst of red filled the air as her Magical Resistance endured. And soon, as he expected, creeping frost formed along the outside of his Biomancy field. But then Shiv was upon her. He slammed into her midsection and dropped her against the ground in a piledriver. Something in her neck fractured again, and she hissed. She swept her blade up, and he dodged back, albeit barely. She took a piece of his pinky away, and Shiv used his Biomancy field to sever half of his hand so that he didn't need to deal with the spreading ice.

Inertial Overdrive 177 > 179

He grabbed her by the ankle and swung her head-first into the frozen walls of her anchor. She fused with it, becoming ice herself, but Shiv was still holding onto her. His vectors crawled along her body, and so long as he held her tight, freedom was beyond her grasp. Shiv pulled. A section of the wall came free, and Andra tumbled out with it. He drove a knee into her chin, and her head snapped back with a satisfying spray of blood.

He hooked his arm around her head, and then they tumbled. His vectors spiraled around his body, turning fast, and they were as if an alligator and its prey, doing death rolls in the water. Andra used her Cryomancy, but he battered her with fist and pan. He rolled over atop her body and wrapped an arm around her neck. Slowly, he tightened. His Overflow Vectors crashed along the curve of her neck like countless war wagons sieging the walls of a fortress. She grunted and choked. He tightened his grip, and soon Kura joined in as well.

Her time clones stabbed down upon the Jotun, and her blades pierced her skull and shredded her sides. Andra choked and coughed. She still kept struggling, and the faint glow of violet mana spilled out of her eyes. That glow faded as Gone struck again. A blur of cuts rained down, and the front end of Andra's face simply ceased to be, along with both of her eyeballs.

"Just go to sleep," Shiv hissed next to her ear. "Just pass the hells out! I didn't want to do this shit; I wasn't trying to—"

And then she activated her Divination regardless. It seemed she didn't need her eyes for the skill. Her fingers thrust forward, and Shiv hissed as something punched through his lower ribs. A spread of ice clawed along his abdomen. Hissing, he seized Andra's neck and began to twist to the side. He started draining her vitality as well, and just as he felt something inside her about to give, a massive boot struck him in the back of the head for the third time.

Shiv was sent stumbling off of Andra's body, and Urri tripped over him as well. Holding onto Urri's back was Whisper, stabbing down with blade after blade. As Shiv looked to his left, he saw Tequila partially caked to the wall. The orc was still alive and laughing, but he was clearly in pain, and Helix was trying to reconstruct the orc Chronomancer's lower body.

Just then, a hand hooked under Shiv's armpit, and the temporal form of Adam wrenched him back to his feet. "Finish this!" Adam cried aloud.

"Will do," Shiv growled. He flung himself on Andra with renewed vigor, but she turned, fusing into the ground right before he slammed down. Unfortunately, she still wasn't fast enough to avoid his Shapeless Tides. They circulated out. The vector struck something that wasn't dead, that had a soul, and Shiv pulled. With a roar of effort, he wrenched her free from her cover and flung her against the ceiling.

Her head impacted the corner of the anchor, and part of her horn snapped. She kicked off of it, however, doing a backflip and slashing Shiv's right cheek open in a startling counterattack. She moved so fast that he barely reacted, and she stabbed him a series of times before his eyes could even follow. He had no idea where the speed came from, why she was so fast all of a sudden.

He clamped both hands around a rising javelin just as it sank into his chin. A spread of ice began to spread, but he held her in place. She lifted him off the ground. He slammed himself back down using some of his vectors. He snapped her ice, and he elbowed her in the throat. Andra gagged. He swept her legs out from under her, but then she rolled. She caught herself and then came up with a sweeping strike. It was intercepted by one of Kura's clones, and then she promptly disintegrated, as well as the temporal wards ripped through the room.

Then, Candles entered the fray again. He clung to Andra's face and began channeling flames directly into her ear canals. She roared with pain, and that turned into a pitched shriek as he drove the bladed edge of his frying pan up between her legs. It cut through her armor. Her eyes, now regrown, widened as she snarled and somehow laughed with disbelief. "Agh! You utter wight!"

And then she did something unexpected. She reached out with her left hand and slammed it into her own chest. A welter of blood erupted, and she ripped her sternum free from her torso entirely

As it came loose, Shiv froze. His nerves screamed with terror. He flung himself back a second using his Chronomancy, and that was perhaps all that spared him and all his allies from a certain end.

For what spilled out from Andra's very core was a wave of vile energy. Her heart was not human; it wasn't even an organ. Instead, at the center of the Jotun's chest, he beheld a shroud of crackling, sickly-green mana coiling around a dagger.

Candles let out a yelp as the corrosive mana flung him aside. His Magical Resistance held, but he still found himself launched as if a dart flung by a titan. As he hit the far end of the room, Andra grasped the dagger, and it became a long curved glaive as she pulled it free. It crackled with verdant energy, and a series of Chronomantic clones manifested behind her, but they were outlined with Necromancy, even if their insides were portals to an endless expanse of howling Blizzards.

"You've fought well, Deathless," she said, "but now I grow tired, and now I will show you how I have earned my name. If the Ascendants are to slay me, then so be it, but I will not strike an accord with someone who uses the forked tongue, and I will never bend or let myself be taken again, not after my shame."

The Deathless got back to his feet and sighed. He held up his hand and tried to think of a way to bring her down. Maybe his Shapeless Tides could hold the Necromancy at bay, but if she surprised him just once, then everyone within this anchor, and probably a good portion of the capital, were going to be destined for an ugly end. And Shiv didn't want that, not even a little.

"Look… Listen," Shiv hissed. "I don't want to kill you. I don't give a shit about—"

"No more talk!" she spat. She held her glaive high. "We finish this. Witness the harrowing cold! Witness the Prophetess that will claim this world for the eternal winter."

"I can still get you out of this mess!" Shiv snarled. "Why are you so fucking determined to die? What the hells is wrong with you?"

Everyone was giving Andra a wide berth now, and the Deathless's mind raced. Adam's Veilpiercers tore into existence from all angles, but they shattered around Andra like glass.

Shiv had a very, very bad feeling about this. The anchor wasn't going to sustain this, and with the sheer amount of power spilling out from them, this was probably going to be a massive blip on the Ascendants' awareness, so to speak. His mind spun—then settled on a name.

He called out the only name that connected him to the Dragon Brokers, because if he couldn't convince Andra, then maybe throwing one of their operatives at her would do the trick.

It was his last shot at solving this peacefully and avoiding a genocidal event in the capital. "Cullywier!"

But the moment Shiv summoned the fairy, Andra cut down, and every bit of ice within the anchor came alive with the foul touch of Necromancy, lashing out at all those trapped within.