“You don’t need to come. These orders have been placed by the Starhawk upon me alone.”
“Fuck you. I’m not letting your stupid ass wander down into the darkness alone. You’ll get lost.”
“I have Rose.”
“And you’ll both end up doing something stupid. Her because she’ll get pissed and lose all sense of rationality. You because you can’t go three days without getting into a fight with something way out of our league. How we’re still alive is a mystery, but I guess the System gives its funniest fights to its dumbest clowns. And the judge is out on whether that’s you or me.”
“This is different, Harlon. I can’t—I cannot tell you exactly what the Starhawk wants. But it is more than I can easily offer. The Ascendants think they’re marching to war against an Abyssal invasion, but that’s… I’ve said too much. I cannot tell you more. I can’t let you—I can’t protect you from what the Ascendants are doing.”
“And I can’t protect you if you wander off alone. Fuck off with the cryptic god-talk, Roland. I don’t care about politics. I don’t care about the Ascendants or the faith. You need me. You need Vera. And so we’re coming with you. End of story.”
“You won’t like some of the things we have to do.”
“I don’t like listening to you boss me around, but I let you do that for fifteen years.”
“Let me do that?”
“Yeah. I could have left. I could have joined any other team. Your ass is lucky to have me.”
“Harlon, sometimes your dourness makes me forget how arrogant you are. You know I mainly recruited you because I needed a Shadow like Vera, right?”
“And you got a Vanguard in the deal. Aren’t you a lucky, special boy.”
“I am. I have always been. I—Thanks for fighting with me. For all these years. I don’t know much about this world anymore. There is too little I can trust. The things I believe in diminish day by day. But I know you’re my brother. And that means more to me than I’m comfortable admitting.”
“Shut up, Roland. This soft talk is fucking up my mood. Now, get over here and give me a hug you godsdamned pussy.”
-Roland Arrow and Harlon Lowe
90 (I)
Prevail
The entities rose, and a sea of bleakest void crashed to greet them. The survivors of the gate shrieked and pointed in horror, their eyes falling on the incomprehensible darkness that was set to consume them. At the Surface Gateway, armed mercenaries, deserters, and other individuals of status and significance clamored to escape. Yet, they remained trapped, and the gateways remained under lockdown.
With Leu and Confriga both dead, the mana core colors turned ambient and dim. Its mana decay was already setting in, and with so much of Gate Theborn’s infrastructure devastated, the reduction of the gate’s mana levels was inevitable.
But before that point, Adam could still make use of it as a weapon and as a means of shifting the entity over to where he needed it to be.
A dimensional rift tore open above the survivors of Gate Theborn as a Veilpiercer chipped a piece off the top part of the gateway. Adam emerged thereafter, his burning wings flaring bright, his mind crowned by a mess of hair-thin mana strands. Uva reached out from within him, binding him to the masses gathered, seeding them with a new candidate for Gate Lord: Adam Arrow.
“Survivors of Gate Theborn!” Adam cried. His voice didn’t feel strong enough. There was a quiver in his tone. How the bloody hell did his father address people day after day without cringing in embarrassment? “Hear me! Hear me now!”
His sudden arrival struck a shocked pause in the final district. Thousands of people were packed tight across a cluster of bridges and plazas, jammed into the fifteen or so skyscrapers that remained. This place was mostly a residential district for surfacers. That was what Adam guessed from the architecture and how a good portion of the people here were dressed. But the largest group present was the slaves. They were a dense mass at the center of the plaza, and their number included all races and ages. On their faces were expressions of dread, terror, despair, and, for a select few, acceptance.
There was no chance anyone would let them get to the gateway first, and without proper combat skills, they were no threat to the mercenaries and deserters who claimed first departure rights.
Shiv’s Creeping Void splashed over Adam, so he descended, staying ahead of the billowing waves of absolute blackness pouring out from the Deathless. In the distance, Adam saw Shiv blast through one of the few intact bridges beyond the surfacer district. A series of thunderous impacts followed. Gate Theborn shook. The entities screamed their siren song of madness.
Adam swallowed. He needed to act fast. “I am going to open the gateway. If you are a surfacer, I advise that you flee. But it is unlikely that most can escape—” A clamor rose, but Adam flashed his wings again, silencing them with brightness instead of sound. The Creeping Void began to spill over him, but he kept talking. His radiant wings were the last thing many people ever saw of him, and he felt Uva keeping that moment in their minds. It was a good moment. It made him look rather noble. Far more noble and confident than he was feeling right now. “However! This need not be the end. Not for the gate. And not for you. I have a plan to kill the adversary that has brought ruin to this place. But I cannot do it alone. Not as a Pathbearer. And not without your recognition.”
His voice was beginning to distort within the Creeping Dark.
“I require the mana core. I need to become Gate Lord. You may not know me! You might not believe anything I say, but right now, I tell you this: I am here. I could have fled. I could have run. I know the way beyond the gateways. I have the power to open the paths. But here I am, still fighting. Fighting despite the very terror in my veins. So help me save you. However many of you remain. Help me claim the gate, and I will do whatever I can to bring this crisis to a close. Or I will die trying!”
His voice resonated loudly, and Uva stitched and plucked her way across mind after mind. The entire world around Adam was pitch black now. Even he had a hard time seeing things, but his Divination was still imbued within the entities, and he could see them twisting and moving. They were hunting for something. But a few had broken away already. A few were coming right for him at impossible speeds.
“It’s not going to be fast enough,” Adam panicked. “I need to—”
Uva untangled herself from his mind. He heard her summon and land upon her shield before there came a splash of colors in the supposedly impenetrable darkness. The colors were twisting, ever-changing, and they were beautiful and terrible at the same time. Adam heard Uva cry out as the colors grew brighter and brighter, crashing against the dense haze of absolute darkness.
“I will buy us more time!” she cried mentally.
And once more, the barrier to the outside was pierced. As she did that, Adam took advantage of the opportunity and continued his impromptu speech.
“We are not without recourse! We are not beaten! Gaze through the darkness and see the brightness! The System demands strife! So I will give it a fight! Whatever it takes! Whatever I must do! Let me make my stand here! Help me help you!”
“Did you… mean to rhyme?” Uva asked, a gasp of discomfort slipping across her mind.
Adam cringed. “It just bloody came out that way—give me a break, I’m under a lot of stress.”
“I thought it sounded quite—” And then she gave a cry as something moved through the air.
The Dreamtaker laughed using Uva’s voice. “Feed, New-Dreamt. Hate. Bleed. Strike-true across present-past. Wound the Stranger. Taint the hues of its offspring-kin-slave! And gaze hard, Seeker! Gaze deep! Gaze true!”
Whatever Uva just summoned flared pale white and gold. Once more, Adam briefly caught sight of the ringed eldritch beings, and they sailed through the darkness, fading from view thereafter.
“Just do as he says!” a high-pitched voice shrieked from below. Adam blinked. Was that Siggy? He'd honestly forgotten about her existence. “Just make the motherfucker a Gate Lord so we can get through! Just do it! WHAT ELSE DO WE GOT! DO IT! FUCKING—ADAM ARROW FOR GATE LORD! WOO! ARROW FOR GATE LORD! COME ON! GET THE CORE TO START SYNCING UP WITH HIM! DO YOU DUMB BASTARDS WANNA DIE HERE?!”
And suddenly, a pressure began to build within Adam as he felt a connection form. He thrust his wings out and shot high up into the air. As he broke through the topmost layer of Shiv’s Creeping Void, he saw the mana core as it began to pulse, radiating ripples of mana at an increasing frequency.
Then, in what might be the fastest mana core synchronization ever, a notification appeared before Adam’s eyes.
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Gate Mana Synchronization in Progress: Adam Arrow recognized as new Gate Lord Candidate…
Adam let out a breath. A breath that turned into a ragged cry as a catastrophic wave of force smashed into him and sent him twisting through the air. Adam’s head rattled as his vision spun and his ears rang. Something in his neck clicked. His helmet endured, but the whiplash rattled his brain so hard that unconsciousness took him immediately.
Down into an ocean of deepest shadows, Gate Lord Arrow fell, unaware of what had knocked him unconscious, unaware of just how hard Shiv was struggling to spare him from a worse fate.
Gate Mana Synchronization Complete: Adam Arrow recognized as new Gate Lord
***
2 minutes ago…
Shiv smashed through a bridge to build a final surge of momentum before the coming fight. His Creeping Void was contaminating the world fast. It was like there was an endless ocean of ink inside him, and the world was just a cup. It spread and thickened across the world in seconds, and only kept growing the longer he focused on the skill. However, his Creeping Dark didn’t last long. It only endured for about a minute without him pouring more out into the world, so as he shot past the mid-level of Gate Theborn, they rose up, freed from the void-black cloud he surprised them with earlier.
At once, fifteen of the eldritch titans broke off from the others to come rushing at him. The others went for the remaining survivors. Probably to feed on them and regain one of its pasts. However the hells that worked.
Even with his mind broken, Shiv understood the basic issues he needed to overcome to delay the Recollector long enough for their plan to work. Issues like the entity being much faster than him. Issues like it being much stronger than him. Issues related to the limits of his Chronomancy and how he wasn’t exactly sure how to even hurt this thing.
So, he hyper-accelerated his personal chronology to come up with a brief plan of his own. First, he threw out thirty of his old corpses. With any luck, these corpse-decoys would fool a few of the entities and give him a chance to intercept the others. He would also attack them mainly with his corpse flail to strike them at odd angles. That should add to the confusion. He would use his dagger and Biomancy in the meantime as his main tools for offense. Deepest Edge and his Woundeaters were going to be much more effective than him just slamming himself into the entities over and over.
Another part of his mind clicked back together, and Shiv grunted. Two seconds. I got eight left before my temporal field breaks. He looked behind himself and considered his flight path. As Shiv projected his Chronomancy mana, ten points across his recent past flickered alight. Each became as if a temporal anchor he could jump to, not too unlike how his kukri worked. But still, it wasn’t the same as his Chrono-Anchored Strike Enchantment. I have Chronomancy now. I should be able to replicate the Enchantment somehow. See if I can… anchor myself in time when attacking one of the entities or something.
Three seconds.
A slight crack formed along Shiv’s Chronomancy field. To his delight, the world around him was pitch-black as his Creeping Void continued to spread even while time was halted. A good twelve square kilometers of space were utterly drenched in unpierceable darkness. This is going to be useful too. I just have to keep moving. Between Outside Context Problem, Momentum Core, Strider, and my flail, I just need to keep moving and hitting them. Stay alive. Be a problem. Be confusing. And my Momentum Core is close to 100 too. Shit, I hope I suffered enough to get another evolution, because I really felling need it.”
Shiv let time resume. He blasted downward. He moved with certainty. The entities briefly jerked to a halt in confusion. Even so, they were still traveling fast enough to turn the air into plasma. Shiv felt the heat of their presence, and he gritted his teeth as he struggled to push through the air they displaced.
“HOW! HOW SHADOWS? WHERE DID THIS COME FROM? NO! TIME! TIME! WHEN DID IT COME! YOU! DRAGON-SKILLED ANOMALY! YOU COME? WE SING! HEAR US! WE WILL TEAR YOUR SHAPE FOR GOOD THIS TIME! TEAR YOU DEEP—AH!”
Before the entities could start singing, Shiv flung the first of his old bodies into the hand-face of the nearest entity. Hundreds of its eyes flared. Beams of all colors tore Shiv’s corpse asunder. It broke into fractals of gold before twisting into other colors that splashed across existence and melted away into a rupture in reality.
The Outside consumed the decoy corpse in less than a second. Shiv shuddered. He was lucky the damn thing only hit him earlier. That hurt like hell, but at least he was still here. New problem: Absolutely cannot afford to get hit by most of those beams.
He launched more of his bodies at the entities. Mostly at the ones going for the survivors. They responded the moment his corpses drew near. Some smashed into his bodies and chased after the ragdolling corpses. Others glared his decoys out of this existence and cast them into another. With his darkness taking away the Recollector’s sight, it relied on feeling and sound to react. The entities also began pulsing out temporal ripples as well. That was another advantage of having a compact Chronomancy field. It made you hard to detect until it was too late, and concealment was Shiv’s greatest advantage in this fight.
The Creeping Void 101 > 102
He shot between two of the entities as he swung his cancer flail. His weapon snaked out from his cloak. It moved like a limb, guided by his gravitic field. Shiv snarled as he strained to push through the sheer volume of air and force the entities were displacing. His cancer flail curved across a hundred meters and struck two adjacent entities on their sides. They turned on each other as a few hundred beams were exchanged between the entities.
Shiv hoped he could get it to damage itself. It didn’t work. Shiv frowned. Apparently, the rules of its existence allowed it to strike at him and the physical world, but phase through itself. This is godsdamned bullshit.
He halted time again and took in the scene. Most entities were deceived, surging to assist the others in crushing what they thought to be Shiv. Some were lost in the denseness of his Deepest Void, moving in the wrong direction: back down the way they came.
But two entities were still working their way up toward the survivors—toward Adam and Uva.
Shiv’s gut tightened. And then he realized they were going to intersect the same path he took down.
Shiv projected himself five seconds back in time, and his Chronomancy field snapped slightly as the spell completed. Shiv zipped back just beside one of the entities and clutched his dagger tightly. Intense heat consumed him. He was drenched in Chronomantically frozen plasma, and both his bone armor and body struggled to adapt. He guessed he had maybe four more seconds of active Chronomancy left in him before his field broke apart again. Strangely, his Chronomancy field didn’t strain so much as it shattered. Shiv wondered if that was something to do with his Skill Evolution or if it was just the way Chronomancy worked.
He blasted toward one of the entities and reeled his flail back into his cloak. His bone dagger gleamed adamantine bright as his left hand came aglow with a laceration spell. He cast his Woundeater at the second, more distant entity as he slashed his blade across the tower-sized index finger of the first. As he cut, he focused his Chronomancy and tried to chronologically anchor himself via the blow. I should be able to—
The shape of a new spell ignited around Shiv. His gravity-enhanced slash rushed through the entity’s entire body—and it cried out in surprise. As he completed an action, Shiv felt one of his nearest Chronomantic anchors crash into him and imprint itself blade-first upon the entity. The number of temporal echoes he could jump back in time to shrank down to nine. One had been spent. One echo was branded on the very body of the monster he sought to slay.
For the first time, Shiv felt true power rush through his Chronomancy. This was the way his Strider of the Unbending Path was meant to be used. It wasn’t just for manipulating his personal progress across time or jumping back to a previous point. The echoes weren’t echoes at all. They were spell-instances he could use to anchor himself at a specific point of time—A specific point of time, performing a specific action, against a specific object or entity.
A vicious thrill rushed through Shiv. A thrill that was slightly diluted by annoyance as he cursed the System for not giving him any time to experiment or learn about his new Magical Skill. Kiss my ass, System.
“CUT! CUT!” the entity he slashed cried out. But its body deformed and curved unnaturally as his cut inflicted no damage at all. It was like he slashed at a layer of jelly.
Shiv growled with frustration. Come the fuck—
“HURT! HURT!” the other entities cried as crimson mana exploded around it. Shiv turned as his temporal shell drew close to its breaking point. He saw the entity he cast his spell at come apart. Three of its fingers had been severed. Strange, midnight ichor seeped out from it and mixed into Shiv’s Creeping Void. Building-sized pieces of the eldritch fingers dissolved into tarnished, golden dust as Shiv looked on in confused triumph.
But how? How did— Then he recalled something. The sword. It doesn’t have Absence anymore. It doesn’t have any Magical Resistance without Absence!
And then his Chronomancy field started coming apart. Fragments burst off Shiv’s body. He cursed and flung himself back across time. He managed to reel himself another second back across time before his temporal shell exploded off his body.
Force smashed into him immediately. Shiv let out a ragged cry as waves of force and friction from the entity hammered into him. His armor shook. Parts of it cracked. But, ultimately, it held. Then came the noise. Shiv’s ragged cry became a howl of overwhelming pain as the entities’ eldritch melody gnawed at his consciousness.
Tides of Chronomancy mana splashed across his body thereafter.
“HEAR! YOU!”
“SENSE YOU!”
“COMING FOR YOU!”
Shiv didn’t know where he found the strength to discharge his Momentum Core, but he managed. Time stopped again. He aimed himself down—shaped more laceration spells as he prepared to descend, a concentration of the Recollector’s past selves. The horizon surged toward Shiv.
It didn’t surge fast enough.
Ten entities formed a line of charging hands. Somehow, they accelerated even faster. They didn’t know where Shiv was exactly, but they had a good guess, they had the numbers, and they had the speed.
Shiv made it eight meters before one of the Recollectors smashed into him. His bone armor cracked apart. But it endured just enough for his flesh beneath to adapt. Shiv hissed as his right arm and leg fractured. But he managed to shift out of context just in time to avoid being blasted by the nightmarish colors flooding out from the Recollector’s eyes. The colors passed through Shiv without inflicting any harm, but just seeing them broke something in his mind. He surfaced and was promptly pinned against the entity’s surging form—and the damned thing was going too fast for him to resist! He tried pushing himself off the Recollector’s pinky finger and barely managed to pry his upper body free.
The entities burst out from the apex of his Creeping Void and were in the open, clear air again. In the distance, Shiv saw the mana core pulse once—and saw a faint dot not far from it. The dot had burning wings and azure armor. And as Shiv noticed Adam, so did the Recollector.
“ARCHER! HURTS US! FIND HIM! KILL HIM! FIND HIM! KILL HIM! REMOVE! UNNECESSARY! TORTURE-HURT-BREAK!”
And then an anger hotter than even the plasma kissing Shiv’s body combusted inside him. “The godsdamned felling fuck you will! Stay away from him!”
Shiv’s Berserk activated. He injected all the anger he had into the Skill and barely managed to regain his ability to move. Even then, he still had to drain its momentum and discharge his core in the direction it was moving to avoid being flattened.
Adamantine Adaption 144 > 145
Momentum Core 98 > 100 (Skill Evolution Imminent)
Gravitic Wrestler 133 > 135