84 (III)
Fall [III]
For the first ti, she truly snarled, and it sounded like sothing was trying to claw its way out of her. But impossibly, Guardshead Leu wrestled herself back under control. "I... I have dread of this mont for so long. For so long, I have plotted and sched and prayed. And I have done everything I could, everything to prepare myself. But there was no preparing myself," Leu began to laugh, "for how sweet this is. For how miserable you look. For how broken you are."
Gate Lord Confriga stared at Leu as understanding dawned in his expression. "You… How long? All this for revenge? Centuries of your life... Your service, your exemplary behavior... All just to take revenge on ?" He sounded like he couldn't understand the concept, couldn't understand giving so much of oneself just to hurt him.
"Yes!" Leu said, a hint of madness entering her voice. "And it was worth it. Every second. Every mont dedicated to hating you was worth it. And now: scream." The mana core flared, bringing down a concentrated beam of cold upon Confriga. As he tried to stop the surging mana, Valor cut his other leg, severing the limb with a single blow and cracking parts of the Lesser Marshal’s soul. Confriga roared in absolute agony. He crashed down, landing in a puddle of his own blood. Shiv felt his Magical Resistance co asunder, and several other things broke inside him as well.
But just then, a shudder ran through Shiv. No! Nononono! Desperation! A point of true desperation! The bindings are coming undone! The bargain cos due! It sees us! It sees !
"Rose? Rose, what's wrong?" Shiv said aloud.
Adam looked at him. "What do you an? Rose? What's happening to my mother?"
"I don't know," Shiv replied, tension spiking inside him.
Through it all, the beam of pure frost continued to build, continued to torture the howling Confriga. Valor looked down with disdain as Leu cackled with mad laughter.
The Gate Lord is broken! Confriga has given up hope! He's passed that final point of true despair! He's passed it! He's going to make it! His final, absolute offering!
Outside Context Problem: The Lesser Marshal’s end draws near. And the shackles on Absence break at last.
Today will be a feast to rember. Today, living history and animated legends will wet the Recollector’s eyes…
Shiv made his decision imdiately. Whatever Rose was terrified about, it had to do with Confriga and the sword. No more risks, just like Adam said. He fired multiple bone drills into Confriga, punching through his skull, hamring length after length into the Lesser Marshal’s open wounds. Even so, Confriga tried to act.
He seized his blade with both hands and let out a cry that turned into a shriek of pain as Shiv reached out with his Biomancy and liquefied Confriga. The Vulteg turned to blood—but the gore that sprayed free from Confriga froze in place.
And then Absence rose into the air.
Shiv felt sothing coming. Uva felt it too. She saw sothing in the sword, sothing that made her gasp. "Shiv, the sword! Destroy the sword!"
Shiv did. He swung his corpse flail out, launching it against the edge of Absence as hard as he could. He impacted the blade, and—
And the mirage that shrouded the blade this entire ti faded. Its edge glowed, and it beca a crescent-shaped iris, as the true shape hidden by the blade and Confriga’s existence erged.
Suddenly, a tide of gold smashed into everyone. Chronomancy. Shiv parried the spell with his Magebreaker, and, with an extre effort, forced the spell aside. Uva was saved due to being inside his mind, and Adam, thanks to his rapier's Temporal Warding Enchantnt, endured as well. But Valor found himself frozen in place. As did everyone else—everything else within sight. The ones affected were coated in motes of gold, falling like grains of sand from their body.
Then, there was a colossal shape looming over the splatter where Confriga was. It just appeared. No movent. No magic. One second it wasn’t. And then it was. It dwarfed the Jealousy by perhaps five tis over, and looking at it hurt Shiv’s eyes. It had so many limbs, lined with so many eyes. The best he could describe its general form was a carpet of black, oily limbs and tentacles clustered together. But where its head was supposed to be was a massive, ten-fingered hand lined with blinking eyes that twisted downwards in a spiral. The eyes kept going across the entire hand until they finally vanished into a maw that descended into the depths of the palm, and the eyes were constantly moving, like they were small buoys on an ocean.
Shiv's mind recoiled as he struggled to process the true shape of what he was viewing. Nausea swept through him and a deep ache gripped his mind, but with a snarl of rage, he fought through the discomfort.
Adam failed to.
The Young Lord bent over and emptied the contents of his stomach. His eyes rolled, and he clutched his head. Shiv caught Adam. He called out the Young Lord's na, but Adam was unresponsive, babbling incoherently, just like Rose and even Uva.
Once more, Shiv turned his head and stared at the horrid creature. It was now staring down at him with all its eyes. Shiv launched his cancer flail imdiately. It impacted the large palm the creature had for a head, and—
Shiv’s flail faded to nothing.
One second it was there. The next it was gone. Shiv couldn’t rember—it did sothing, but—
"Confriga… You have finally died. I weep. I sing. I co to collect your legends… The stories that make you… you."
The being’s voice was beautiful, even srizing. Adam began to weep violently beside him, and Uva and Rose did the sa within. Shiv felt sick, and it felt like… sothing terrible was constantly happening—sothing was constantly being done to him and the others, but he couldn’t rember what.
Shiv let out a cry of effort as he shifted out of context.
Uva fell out of him. The world went gray. He charged the monster and drove his kukri into one of its—
Shiv’s senses returned to him as he vomited blood all over himself. It… it was like he suddenly lost track of ti. There was sothing that just happened, but he couldn’t rember what. He just—there were pieces missing from his mory. It was then that he noticed that Uva, Adam, and Valor were leaning over him, trying to drag him away. Every last one of his ribs were broken. He was bleeding internally. Shiv growled and used a Woundeater on himself. His wounds filled the wyrm, and he let Uva and Adam pull him up.
Before him, the nightmarish entity cupped the gore-splatter that had been Confriga with its tentacles, and it ford a Chronomancy spell around it. Slowly, it turned the spell in place, and a small shroud appeared. Within, ti turnedbackward, and in an instant, Confriga reford to the state just before his death.
“What—” Adam gasped. “What in the Broken Moon… Shiv. I can’t—I can’t rember what just happened.”
“Yeah,” Shiv breathed as he clenched his kukri tight and prepared to fight. “ neither. But this thing needs to die.”
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Just as he prepared to charge the monster again, it extended a limb, and a wave of Chronomancy crashed into him and all the others. This ti, Shiv froze in place—just like when he was falling from Blackedge and encountered Sullain. He tried to move, did everything he could to resist, but he was pinned.
Adam’s rapier flared white-hot as it tried to resist the spell with its Temporal Warding. The weapon shatteredinto pieces as the monster’s magic overca it after a second. Adam froze too, just as he manifested an Arrow.
"How odd." The entity blinked right in front of Shiv, taking up his entire field of view. One of its many limbs pointed at him, and he felt sothing inside his body quiver. "This one managed to hit in my other past. How resilient. Not quite human, not quite System, not quite full Pathbearer. Not the sa. No end, no point. Where is the point of death? Can't find… Strange. Will need to investigate. Drink your ti deep."
The creature was suddenly beside Confriga again. "Do you see? See why you're in this position now, Confriga? The Stranger blessed you with for a reason. To save both of us. To give both of us new aning. The Necromancy we bestowed upon you was never going to be enough. The certitude of your death… Inevitable. I promised this would happen when you accepted my bargain. So many histories where this happens. You didn't believe , despite your worries. Now. It is ti for the final and complete bargain. Give your ti. Give your legend. Give your history. Bear as your child, and birth yourself through . Or die. Or die. OR DIE!"
Confriga pulled away from the verge of death, moaning. "I... I will give you... everything. All I have left. I give you this body. I give you my life. I give you…" Confriga drew in a harsh breath and sobbed. "I give you my history. All that I have been, all that I could be. Just… kill them. Avenge . Avenge , and you will have your true existence in the material world, beyond the periphery. A real body in this place, one that will not dissolve with the passage of ti. Is that not what you wanted? Is that—"
All of a sudden, the massive creature blurred forward. It didn't travel through space; it simply existed in one place, and then it started existing in another, its original form fading. It seized Confriga, and it poured its imnse mass into him.
Suddenly, the ti spell broke. Everyone could move again. They all responded imdiately, launching spells of Necromancy, Biomancy, Psychomancy, arrows, bone drills, and icicles. But every attack simply vanished just as it got close to hitting Confriga. Like there were never any attacks to begin with.
Then, Confriga suddenly burst apart into a splatter of gore again. Shiv's eyes widened as he saw what remained in his place. It was a large, golden egg, and oily shadows were slowly creeping across its surface.
Runrunrunrunr— Rose howled inside Shiv.
He didn’t. He shifted out of context and shot toward the egg with his kukri. Shiv drove his weapon into the egg as he erged, and—
Ti shifted. Confriga caught Shiv’s kukri by the edge with an open hand. But it wasn’t Confriga anymore. Those black-crescent eyes lined every inch of his body. Black oil seeped out from his very being like an aura, and reaching hands and festering tentacles replaced the wings he'd lost. And where his onyx eye once gazed, now the hand of the strange monster that had erged from Absence took its place.
“Ah,” the transford Confriga sighed. “This is… so tight… Ti flowing over and not dissolving. Not taking away. I can feel it now. Passage of ti. Progression. Strange.”
And then Shiv noticed his companions were frozen behind him. As was he.
Again, it was like he was missing an entire section of—
The entity made a gesture. Guardshead Leu blinked into its twisted hand. Suddenly, fractals of gold burst around her as she drew breath, her eye widening. “I—”
The entity closed its fingers. Leu’s head ca apart.
Shiv tried to scream. He couldn't. Shiv tried to rage. He couldn't. Shiv tried to shift out of context. He just couldn’t.
Gate Mana Desynchronized: Guardshead Leu no longer recognized as Gate Lord.
“Strange entity. Struck twice. Forced to sever two pasts from myself. Not sure how. No matter. No need for separate pasts anymore. Have future. Have past. Have present. And you…” Its eyes rolled to face Shiv. “...have none.”
With a casual twist, the monster that wore Confriga shattered Shiv’s kukri into glittering fragnts.
Equipnt Lost: [Remberer of Wounds]
Shiv’s heart plunged, and, frozen in ti without any chance to resist, the entity turned him around, forcing him to face his companions as it wrapped its fingers around his face. Chronomancy fractals broke off Uva, Valor, and Adam’s heads. Can Hu’s half-skull dangled behind Shiv, removed before the whole nightmare began.
“Shiv!” Uva cried, sounding more terrified than he'd ever heard her. Her eyes were locked on the thing that Confriga beca as it laughed.
“Let him go, you godsdamned bastard!” Adam struggled. But he was pinned by ti, and there was no hope of escape.
Shiv tried to use his magic. It didn’t work. So he tried Outside Context Problem again. It didn’t work. He couldn’t do anything while frozen in ti.
“I taste your past,” the thing whispered into his ear. “You are odd. You have no end. Not like all the others. Even your soul is deviant. Tampered with. History is wrong around you. Part of you is dislocated from ti—from everything. Will not suffer this. Will take you away from history. But the mind-dancer…” It looked at Uva, and Shiv’s heart flared with anger and fear. “She can see more. She has moved through one of mine and erged unchanged. This offends . She will not be unchanged when I finish with her.”
Shiv tried to shift again and again. He tried everything. He tried—
The thing that was Confriga slowly drove its fingers into his eyes. It released the magic holding his head still as it blinded him. Shiv guessed it wanted to hear him scream as his sight was taken. He just spat on its hands instead, even as he felt its fingers sink deep into his sockets.
“No screams?” it asked.
“Not a godsdamned one, you piece of shit,” Shiv snarled, gritting his teeth against the pain. He tried shifting—and still nothing. He needed his entire body to—
It twisted his neck violently. His head snapped backward, sothing cracking inside his body. And it twisted his head again for good asure. Uva spat curses of hate and venom at the monster as it took Shiv apart. Adam gagged and called out to Shiv. Through it all, Valor was silent. As was Shiv.
This thing… It was… He thought about what it could do as his life slipped from him—about all the missing monts he experienced just now. What happened was far too jarring for re amnesia. This was Chronomancy like he'd never experienced before. But how was he going to—
The creature pulled back and tore his head clean off.
A mont later, Shiv respawned as a Revenant beside his body. An emptiness filled his right hand as his Remberer lay in pieces on the ground. Shit!
The entity slowly advanced on Uva, Adam, and Valor.
“Co, then!” Uva called out to it first, taunting it. “Let show you how a Daughter of the Order dies!”
“No, ignore her!” Adam cried. “I’m Roland Arrow’s son! I planned all this! She—she was just a rcenary hired. Leave her alone!”
“Adam,” Valor said. “It does not understand. Nor does it care. It is not from here.”
“What?” Adam asked, his eyes snapping between Valor and the enemy.
“It is a creature from the Far Periphery,” Valor said. “Are you not?”
The thing wearing Confriga laughed, the sound layered and wrong. “And you are Valor Thann. The Stranger rembers you… and the scar you left on them.” It looked between Uva and Adam. “Hm. Don’t need the boy. The girl will be a good vessel for another.”
No! Shiv charged the creature. But every ti he got closer to the creature, he would suddenly jolt back to where he started a few seconds ago. Damned ti magic! How the hells am I—
Then, his death notifications loaded, appearing just as the last thought passed through his mind.
Adamantine Adaption > 127
Gravitic Wrestler > 125
Skill Gained: Chronomancy (Adept)
Chronomancy > 1
Quest Complete: Repel the vampiric invasion and eliminate all infiltrating Aviary assets in Gate Theborn before they overco the defenses and slay Gate Lord Confriga first.
Select a Skill to Evolve to Master-Tier
And suddenly, Shiv’s near-desperate terror hardened into burning rage. System… You MOTHERFUCKER!
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