499 All Breaks Down

Not enough people talk about how to run for your life. There is a skill to knowing how and how far to run and how much space you need to put between you and your enemy. Sometimes, that's all that's keeping you alive.

Don't get this twisted: Running away is not cowardice. Abandoning your people is cowardice. Leaving comrades in arms to die when you could help them is cowardice. Exposing your people to an enemy to escape, even if there's little hope of victory, is cowardice.

Running away is not. When there's nothing on the line, you can run away as much as you want. They accuse you of being a coward? Well, that's their problem, not yours.

You shouldn't fight someone just because they feel like you owe them something. You shouldn't do something for someone just because they have a feeling that you aren't up to their standards of bravery. The thing about standards of bravery is they only pop up when someone's losing badly and suddenly wants an excuse to even the scales.

But there are times when running is more than just natural. It's simply what you have to do if you stand any chance of surviving at all. It doesn't matter what your pride is; it doesn't matter what your Path is. If you don't run and if you don't help those around you escape, then you're all going to stop existing, and you're going to stop existing for nothing.

There is no great sacrifice in the face of an avalanche. There is no great sacrifice in the face of a monster raid. No one cares if you stood in front of a hurricane screaming your last, swinging your sword impotently against the wind, if everyone ends up dead. Your job is to survive more than anything, and before everything, your job is to help you and yours survive. You trade lives; you don't throw them away. To be a coward is to see the opportunity to protect someone and not take it. Running is not cowardice. Running is life. Running is necessity. Running is the only reason I can pass down my wisdom today.

Run. If you can. If it doesn't cost your soul, run.

—[Book Removed Under Direct Orders of the Auroral Council; Author Name Redacted by Inquisition]

499

All Breaks Down

“Futility,” the Great One repeated once more, staring at Shiv with her blank face while gently placing her teacup back on the small table before her couch. "Futility is the shape of the world, and it is what I feel when I speak to you children. Everything you are currently trying or will ever try has already been attempted by me, and fittingly, trying to impress this upon you is an exercise in futility much the same.”

“Holy felling shit, do you ever shut the fuck up?” Shiv snapped. His reprimand arrived with exasperation and nothing more, for how much anger could he possibly have left to muster about their present situation?

The meeting in Great London unfolded as he expected, to his disappointment nonetheless. They were all seated in a large hall within Birmingham Palace, which had once more greeted Shiv upon bounding legs and with open doors, additionally tipping a massive hat it had acquired for itself from somewhere. It was a peculiar hat, the shape of which tickled Shiv to think about: a long column of fuzzy, black stuff that seemed akin to part of a clown's ensemble. Right now, Shiv thought about that hat, as he needed a source of amusement to temper himself. He required something to cling to, as the conversation at present was both pointless and aggravating.

“One could almost call it futile,” the Harbinger joked.

A smirk twisted Shiv's face, but Adam cleared his throat, presenting himself as more intent on actually pursuing diplomacy. Though it was partly genuine, it was mainly a strategy the two had concocted, born of a simple fact: The Great One spent far more effort manipulating Shiv than she ever did Adam, and for good reason.

The entire conversation caused ripples of incandescent mana to spill into the luxurious chamber and lash out. The Sage was constantly on the verge of bursting free. It yearned to bring its palm down upon the palace and smite the Great One from existence. It yearned for destruction to take part in this meeting and spit a small aeon's worth of ire and judgment upon its former user, largely in the form of crude insults and curses.

But despite all its bravado and posturing, this was simply another layer of futility, for Adam held its leash tight. They knew how the Sage reacted, what it wanted, and what it would say. Nothing of use would come from that, not until the right moment—where the Tyrant of Peace could be wielded as a means of pressuring the final fragment of the Great One.

Until then, Shiv played his own role as spoiler and disgruntled envoy. He rose from his chair and loudly threw down another throatful of tea. It was pitch black and dense with flavor, probably the best tea he'd ever drunk, being honest. He still mustered a disgusted look, one directed at the Great One rather than the beverage itself, but he didn't need to be too clear about that.

Even as the beasts of the Ninth Circle nudged him, Shiv continued playing on, for life was theater. He'd learned that from Veronica, and the theater extended even now, especially now, for one must be an actor in a nation of spies. "We've been here before," Shiv said. "You wanna know the real bit of futility? You're telling us that we need to listen to you, to do your dance and all that. The last time I came over, you placed me on that throne, you burned me, and you used me to sink Avalon inside the Ninth Circle. Great. Worked out well for you. But if I remember correctly, there were some other things you talked about as well. You wanna tell Adam about those? You wanna enlighten him about the arrangement you tried to make?"

Shiv dragged out an uncomfortable truth, hinting at it yet not fully speaking it aloud. It would make the mission from the Great One carry more impact, but it would also cast her with a greater burden of guilt, if she was capable of feeling such a thing at all.

Instead of hesitating, she turned her head toward Adam's shrine and let out the softest of breaths. She sounded truly remorseful, and the very notion disgusted Shiv, for she was more than willing to sacrifice Adam before. No matter her behavior, the truth was that she wanted him dead, if only to prevent the Sage from rising once more.

"I wish for you to know, Paragon, that I mourn for you in advance. I tell you this now, not as a threat, but as a certitude. You have been elevated in part from my legend. This thing was not meant for you. Great and high in potential though you are, you are mortal through and through, and what you carry is anything but. The Sage is too much for you, and, to my admission and embarrassment, was too much for me as well.” The faceless remnant of the High God looked away, continuing her facade of shame. “These powers, these Heavens, they were not meant for us. My desperation and impatience left me undone. The System must be torn down through means within the System , not beyond it. For if a power cannot be controlled by you, then it is not your power at all.”

“And so you conspired to have me assassinated by my friend and battle-brother,” Adam replied dryly. "What a wonderful justification. You failed to use one Heaven well and found yourself cut down by it, and in your enduring throes of trauma, you fear the same happening at the hand of your other Heaven, that which I now I bear, and that despises you for all that you are and all that you fail to be.”

“Somewhat accurate," the Great One said flippantly. "The Sage is not a person, and even if it were to be regarded as such, would be a horrible specimen of one. It speaks as a tyrant, but functionally it acts as a bully, and an impotent one at that. Without a sufficiently strong-willed wielder, it will break them and push them to serve as a meat puppet for its own desires, either incapable of remembering or internalizing the fact that its own desires are what have left it broken and humiliated time and again.”

She scoffed with deep derision and fixed Adam with an eyeless stare. "I found the Sage of the Sundered Sky dormant on a dead world, expended in the aftermath of a tantrum alongside a million others. So many dead in an act of sacrifice grand and impressive, yet ultimately pointless. All the lives and significance it gained through that final, interstellar bloodletting simply left it stranded, incapable of independent action without faithful followers as it is. A more wasteful and asinine display of power I have not seen before or since.”

The mists within Adam crackled and raged. The cumulus beneath his shrine twisted. The Sage tried to break free, and Adam gasped as he wrestled against the Divinity within, but in the end, the wielder prevailed. As before, the decision to hold the Sage back continued to be one part stubbornness and two parts strategy.

The Great One looked on, and Shiv tried to gauge if she seemed impressed at all. He couldn't read anything from her. The facelessness and the lack of a coherent heart and mind left him in the dark, but something told him that Adam was being appraised again. It wasn't enough to see the Paragon spared a final death, perhaps, but the Great One was considering and thinking, and maybe that would eventually be enough.

“You're getting real hopeful in your desperation,” the Nihilist chimed in.

Hey, Nihilist?

“Hm?”

Shut the fuck up. Thank you.

“Regardless, you can tell my goodwill and truth by how direct and honest I am with this miserable reality. You and yours will not live to see the end of this tumultuous age. It will break you, and it will use you to destroy all you hold dear." The Great One stopped talking as she allowed Adam to digest the information. "If you do not unmake yourself, if you do not give yourself a righteous end, then instead you will crumble in on yourself, perhaps within days, perhaps within months, but whatever the case, soon there will be nothing of you left, and you will live as a husk, knowing only regret. And this sordid fate is not nearly something original. You will not be the first; you will not be the last. And because of this, I will not be its wielder again, not in any reality, not in any lifetime after my prior one.”

Shiv smiled wryly. “Great, perfect. Glad you developed some standards. But I’m going to be honest, even putting this out of the way, which we aren't, you’re still not making a good pitch for the ‘Valor needs to kill himself to revive a pre-ancient hyper-ubermensch System-worshipper who just so happens to be your disciple and closest ally’ thing.” He sniffled. “What's his deal, anyway? Does the Thief just suddenly appear behind everyone who knows about him, who has a bit of Valor's legend in their soul via the Ritual or whatever else? He just blinks into existence and stabs them like in the scary stories for children?”

The Great One stared at him, and he sensed an awkwardness come over the atmosphere. "Well, the mechanics are wrong, and you have downplayed his potency by a remarkable magnitude, but…”

A bleeding laugh bubbled out from Shiv. "You have to be shitting me! Really! Really, he's actually just like that: some kind of fairy tale bastard that jumps out of nowhere and starts carving into you because you dared to think about him.” Shiv grunted as his humor dulled. “But I guess it is a nasty enough trick, especially against the Forbidden Empire. The fuckers try to learn everything about everyone, so I guess the Thief becoming whole on the beaches of Africa might just become a home-delivered apocalyptic event for the—”

Something slammed into Shiv from behind—a single impact that was followed by a chain of thousands. Each one arrived with nary a millisecond between them, gliding over Shiv like rivers carrying the weight of mountains. The force behind the collision was heavy and brutal enough to send Shiv's Harbinger reeling, but it also felt like a shock wave—residual tides crashing out in response to a colossus' sea-turning movements.

He spun, expecting the attack to be situated within New Albion—but midway through his movement, he tasted a sliver of confusion from the Great One and realized that there was no grand time spell shaped to strike him down. The Thames remained where it flowed, and the Great One leaned forward, her befuddlement turning into actual worry.

“Not here! Back in the Gate!” Adam hissed telepathically.

In Piety, Shiv’s Awareness became wildfire, jumping through the air and combusting upon all organic tissue in a sea of flaming organs, glimmering upon skin, sinew, and biomass as a whole. Rigged to the metaphysics of Pathbearers and living beings, Shiv’s Multitasking became a burning storm, expanding his consciousness as information poured through him as if he were a widening funnel.

NovelPhoenix is the author's publication page for this chapter, and the copy shown here was made without consent.

But evolved, fused, and potent though his new skill was, Adam stood a Legend above him; he got a perfect overview of what was transpiring before Shiv even began crying. “It's Uva—Farnest—She's with Hymn—”

Then both of them were moving. Shiv's in-Gate true clone broke away from his patrols, abandoning Marikos, Bonk, Kura, and the others without any explanation. He tore through the air as his tides launched him across the horizon—his Reflexes transforming as he triggered his enhancement, ripping speed from the world below, from every bit of momentum he could touch. Across the Gate, countless individuals suddenly jolted to an unnatural halt, crying out as their bodies twisted, tendons and bones wrenching and pulling at awkward angles. Heat was sucked out of the air, and sheets of ice began to form in the sky above. The winds grew still and then nonexistent, and through it all, a single thread of blindingly fast crimson tore through the dimension, soon rivaling the pace of lightning.

Shiv swapped his true clone with his Severed Shadow to pass through a series of walls before switching back again as he made his way through Farnest's curving hallways. He struck people and surfaces, skipped across the ceiling and floor without inflicting any damage. Every kinetic impact was observed and spent as additional speed. Every bit of surrounding heat and velocity was stolen away, so he maintained his impossible pace even in the winding confines of the governmental oubliette. He caught sight of Ikki and the rest of Uva's squad for a fraction of a fraction of a second, but he didn't have any time to explain.

He knew Uva's vitality signature well, and furthermore, he could sense her biology again.

Having reached the point where collateral damage became less than an afterthought, he plunged straight down, blasting through layers of concrete and deforming metal. The entirety of Farnest groaned and buckled as debris and dust rained down through cracks left in his wake. Shiv traveled like a spear through flesh, burrowing through the architecture as what remained of his typical caution left him.

He heard his Harbinger calling out to him, or perhaps it was Kelhaus. Didn't matter now. Shiv was empty of thought, consumed by purpose, driven to move in a simple direction. He didn’t even think of how simple it would be to keep using his Severed Shadow rather than an actual body. A beast of instinct and anxiety had usurped the man for now, and until he arrived, such was how things would be.

[Lord-Maelstrom of Hungering Kinesis 455 > 459]

Bursting through the final ceiling, Shiv crashed down just behind Hymn and found him cradling Uva's head upon his lap. She was shaking and gasping, and there was a lingering trace of golden mana painted across her body. It looked like a sword wound, but it was apart from her, a full meter in distance between where the wound should have marked the point of her navel. Then, his attention turned to her mind, and he noticed a wound that somehow was and wasn’t at the same time. A chain of golden scars was struggling to form upon the fluid surface of her thoughts, and it was like reality couldn’t decide if she had actually been struck or had evaded an impossible blow.

Then, there was a resonance in the air. A synchronous peal of magical frequency called out to Shiv’s Chronomancy. His Harbinger trembled in turn, and he sensed the scars for what they were: traces leftover from supremely powerful Transposition spells.

“The likes of which are far beyond even a Myth, for the true wound has not been dealt to the girl, but upon the substance that constitutes time and history,” Kelhaus intoned within Shiv.

Instantly, he understood: Avalon.

This was an Excaliburization. But Uva had survived somehow—wasn’t reaped away into paradise. Yet, his mind branched into two warring questions: How could Avalon still deliver such a strike when it was lost in the Ninth Circle, and did Uva actually manage to dodge the trick at all, or had she been Excaliburized like the orcs—and allowed to return as a fragment to a greater scheme in this game of gods?

The worries churned in Shiv’s mind—so much that he missed when Adam arrived right beside him.

Shiv fell to one knee right next to Hymn. Already, an assortment of spells glided down Uva’s violently rattling form in a series of hoops. Her eyes were flickering about, but her soul was blindingly bright and volatile—her vitality spiking and burning. A shadow moved over her, and Shiv noted the Starhawk’s presence infusing Uva with a dose of divine power. But the fluctuations within her soul occurred on the inside.

“She’s Delving,” Hymn said. A sheen of cold sweat painted his already unhealthy pallor with a layer of dripping fever; the usual existential hopelessness that defined him was lost in place of a screaming terror that radiated out from his core as if an ocean of pestilence were spilling free. “There’s—there’s more than one! Avalon! There’s more than one of the damned things! It was waiting for us! The dome was a trap. Forbidden Africa is a distraction—it was all bait. For the Great One. For the Thief.”

Hymn’s words couldn’t be clearer, but Shiv still struggled to wrestle comprehension. A part of him refused to understand—fought to stay protected in ignorant disbelief. But cowardice held little purchase in Shiv, and what followed were pangs of aching horror as he reached down to cup Uva’s face. “Did she get hit? Did you?”

The Beast of the Ninth Circle rose—its six eyes burning bright and wide—leaning down as if to threaten Hymn into the truth.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I cannot be sure. I do not—the Recollector gave us a protective layer, and Harkness was still its central ego. She was struck, but Uva created a memory-bridge back to the Gate.” He licked his lips as his eyes went black and his thoughts folded inward. “She was insane for a moment—recovered when her Feat activated. And now she's Delving. But…” He trailed off as his gaze fell upon the temporal scar displaced from Uva. “I cannot be sure.”

“Okay,” Shiv said, crushing any possibility of panic within himself. “Okay. Hymn. We’re descending into her Delve. I…” He hardened himself for what needed to be done. “We’re going to ask her if she’s been Excaliburized. If she is, I—fuck, I have no idea what the Beast is going to do or what that might do to her soul, but… fucking godsdammit! FUCK!”

A small voice taunted him from the inside, questioning how he could have been so blissful, how he could have been so relaxed every time he had a moment to breathe and center himself. Strife followed—why would things be any different now? Crises chased him like omens and curses. He burned—everyone around him burned. He should have—

“Shiv! Stop! Focus! There is no use in a spiral!”

Shiv and his Harbinger tightened into one. His thoughts came to a stop as he deprived his crushing frustration of any voice. Kelhaus observed, but offered nothing in the way of comment or suggestion. At the same time, Adam fired a salvo of supplementary questions at Hymn, who answered all of them in rapid succession without fail. Valor appeared right behind Shiv—his shadow looming long and blending with the Starhawk’s presence. Shiv didn’t know how much he did or didn’t hear—decided to let someone else brief Valor if he wanted to catch up. For now, he readied himself to be drawn down alongside Hymn—

“What’s happening in your Gate?” The Great One’s question pierced through Shiv’s mind.

In Farnest, Shiv and Adam shared a look.

“We don’t tell her anything,” Shiv cast. “This is intelligence. This is to our advantage. We can use this.”

A startled look came over Adam as he read the posture of cold pragmatism Shiv enforced upon himself, but he responded with a nod. However, his divine passenger was not so disciplined. The Sage laughed aloud, its voice booming with cruel glee. “Yet another instance, former master of mine, of your mistake growing beyond you.”

The incandescent vapors seeping out from Adam’s shrine were drained back in as the Paragon hissed with strain. “Did I allow you to speak?” He exerted his Domain of Tyranny against its source, and his soul turned in on itself as Adam’s argument with the Sage turned internal.

“Avalon knew,” Valor whispered. Shiv turned to regard Valor from the corner of his left eye. Valor was at a complete loss—and there was even a mote of absurd amusement buried deep amongst the complicated torrent of emotions he suffered. “Avalon knew about the Thief. About the Faceless Queen. Forbidden Africa was but bait for the Great One to waste herself and her forces. Even if I assembled myself, abandoned myself to my original shape, it would have been for nothing. Less than nothing.”

“Seems like it,” Shiv said, finding something twisted in how these schemes and maneuvers made between High Gods were more like cruel jokes than actual strategies.

“How many?” Valor asked quietly. “Hymn. How many Avalons do we face?”

“Thousands?” Hymn shrugged. “It claimed… I don’t know if it was lying—I can’t—” He pressed his lips together as he began to ramble. “I have no idea what I was looking at or dealing with. The interception came without—it sensed it and struck. The blow followed our Recollector across time. A chain of temporal anchors manifested across Forbidden Africa. Only one Avalon spoke to us. I think.” He sighed. “It’s like I’m a novice Seeker again—there’s not enough context. But I don’t think the felling thing had any reason to lie. I think we’re truly dealing with thousands of Avalons.”

No one said anything after that. A few pieces of debris bounced off the top of Shiv’s head while shouts rang across the hall and the alarm enchantment finally activated. Footsteps and guards scrambled to converge where Uva lay, and the sheer chaos and building hopelessness of it all caused Shiv to giggle. “Not sure how we can get more fucked than we are right—”

The Faceless Queen’s arrival beside him was heralded by the Starhawk letting out a reverberating cry of—not so much pain as synthesis. As the High God’s shade appeared, she suddenly jolted a meter across space to overlap with the Starhawk. Her featureless, feminine mold superimposed itself over him, and the Ascendant of Justice jerked into a painful, unnatural pose as his arms snapped out to his sides, and the Great One repeated the gesture.

“Oh… Oh… That's how it is…” Her voice and the Starhawk’s sounded as one while sparking bursts of divine mana sprinkled down upon the room in showers.

Shiv pulled Uva into his embrace and shifted back. Patches of the Great One dissolved into the Starhawk while other portions of their merging personhood ruptured. While the Starhawk screamed in the background, the Great One swept her gaze across all those present. Her face came to a dead stop when studying Valor, who stood rooted in defiance. “Ah, I see… But the Throne… Why… didn’t it show…”

An annoyed rasp sounded from the Great One. She violently twisted her body and tore away from the Starhawk. The separation came with a display of ontological violence. A portion of her soul peeled away and remained stuck to the Starhawk, and the same damage was inflicted vice versa. The Ascendant of Justice never shrieked as he did then—so human, so vulnerable, so broken.

Not even when the Challenger ripped both his right arms off.

Shiv knew agony—had suffered more types and levels of pain than most Legends had across a thousand lifetimes. There was the upper end of bodily pain that usually ended with you blacking out as your nervous system was driven past the brink. And then there was the very edge of soul-damage—the kind of harm that came when bits of you suffered nigh-irrevocable destruction. The hurt there ran deeper than words and sensations could express; it just kept going and going until it was all the way through your core, until your totality was nothing but torment.

And then the loss that followed after made the hurt feel like a fond memory.

For Matthew Carter Thaen—now flickering in and out between his mortal silhouette and his godly guise—there was already so little left to lose. As he was entombed within the Great One’s skill, the presence of the skill’s true owner caused a merger—but the skill was already contaminated for both of them, and so just as a soul fusion had taken place, a mutual rejection was fated to follow, and now they were like two patches of flesh doing everything to part before the organ they composed saw both of them expelled at the same time.

“I see it now… I see it…” the Great One whispered, her understanding carrying notes of highest dread while her voice remained utterly divorced from the cacophony of suffering that was the Starhawk. They briefly jolted back together once more, and a chorus of mind-breaking screams poured through the halls. “K—kill me! Please kill me! Stop! Stop! I want to stay—I don’t want to—I want to be MYSELF!”

The eruption of divine anguish made Adam whimper—caused Valor to flicker and then outright collapse into a pile of bones. Hymn bent over and vomited. The Umbral and Weaveress responders dropped like puppets severed from their strings. Things cracked inside Shiv, but his resilience proved greater than any other as his Magical Resistance shuddered and held thanks to his Legendary Feat.

With a final, annoyed jerk of effort, the Great One tore herself away—and left the Starhawk flayed open in her wake, howling inhuman notes of ragged madness as he blinked in and out of existence over Uva.

Back at Birmingham Palace, the Great One shook herself off, like she'd just stepped out from an unwelcome rainfall. She seemed shaken to a minor extent, but the damage sustained had been fully shed from her body and left upon the Starhawk. “This is your fault, you know?” She sighed, reaching to refill her teacup. “And yes, this is the reason why I do not fully manifest in their proximity and let the parasites grow aware of me—I still hold greater claim over their Domains than they do, but they remain sealed inside my skills, and so the misery you witnessed becomes like a mutual cancer to both of us.”

She slipped down upon her sofa as if nothing was the matter. Meanwhile, back in Farnest, the Starhawk’s madness was turning into a chain of overwhelming blasts that were expanding up through the underground complex, causing hundreds to collapse. “And then there is the matter of the Avalons… Hiding that from me was also unwise, but it was calculated.” She scoffed. “Forcing my hand was not.”

In Farnest, the palm descended. The Sage fell. Adam cried out as he pinned the Starhawk in place—and sealed his overflowing insanity as well.

“But I still don’t understand,” the Great One said, staring up at the ceiling as she steepled her hands upon her stomach. “How could I have missed so much? Avalon couldn’t have had enough time to replicate itself a thousand times over before I was drawn back into the fold. It couldn’t. But it did. So how? How did it do such a thing? And when did it become aware of the Thie—ah, Deathless, you really should reconstitute the Starhawk’s vitality. I can feel bits of his ego still stuck to the insides of my mind and soul. He’s going to need some of your Vitae to see himself patched.”

Shiv, already beset by multiple problems on multiple fronts, moved to act as the Great One suggested. Diving into the incandescent mist caused his flesh to slough and flake as the Sage never missed an opportunity to torture him. Shiv couldn’t afford to care about that now; he drove his Vitae into the mist-trapped Starhawk and began cycling the overwhelming soul-damage sustained by a god.

He managed a whole second of that before the unmistakable shudder of a bomb going off somewhere shook the entire Gate like a high-magnitude earthquake. Shiv’s Rat King fed him scenes of carnage from above in an instant. A column of fire was spilling out from the middle of the Gate—bursting the Tutorial Bunker like a can and turning the surrounding area to slag.

Shiv’s stomach plunged into the Abyss. “No, no, FUCK!” Then, gaps formed in the rising tower of fire—a tower that was now raining extended Pyromancy spells upon Starhawk’s Perch and Peacehold surrounding it. And finally, from within the gaps emerged gray-skinned monsters that sang and cheered as they poured out in their Orchestras.

Shiv's mind went blank with horrified disbelief. The Challenger’s orcs were in the Gate—were pouring over into his home.

All the while, the Starhawk screamed.

All the while, Uva, Valor, and Hymn were down.

All while—

“Fuck, Shiv, incom—”

The girl who didn't exist didn't get to finish her warning before a shudder shook the waters of time and a gold-shelled form arrived to tackle Shiv out of the present and into the future.