Path of the Deathless 356 (II) Cocoon [II]

356 (II)

Cocoon [II]

When Uva unleashed the colors of the Outside through her eyes, instead of simply drenching her enemies and bathing them with the Dreamtaker's power, she painted sothing over the world. A sea of shifting colors erupted from her fractured presence. The world was stained, and where it was stained, everything changed. The architecture of reality was usurped as the laws of distance and matter ca second to cognition and awareness. Those who possessed the strongest Awareness Skill occupied large sections in this new over-reality.

They still resembled themselves, but there was also a place dedicated to them, a section of the world not consud by a dense weave of fractured webbing, sothing that Uva knew belonged to her. This place was her subconscious, or at least a mirror of it, and she'd just unleashed it forth upon the world, shrouding everything in a dense web that even she could barely navigate.

Her fractured spiderlings moved freely between the webs, and the eldritch creatures spawned from the Dreamtaker's mind swam through the threads like they didn't exist at all. The sa couldn't be said for the Fae, aside from their Psychomancers, who possessed the magical might to force paths open and push deeper into her space. Most beings were simply trapped within the expanse allotted by their Awareness.

Everyone got a small clearing in this revision of existence. The clearing moved with them, and the fortunate fairy guards managed to overlap with each other, rejoining their units. However, the formations were spread out, and so, though a few of the Fae found each other, most of them were lost, desperately trying to navigate an eldritch landscape that had erged without any warning and rejoin the rest of their forces.

And though the fairy Psychomancers could tear through her dense web and punch a gap into this new eldritch dinsion she'd manifested, that ant interfacing with her magic. That ant further allowing themselves to be infested. That ant they went from enemy to carrier.

“What is this? What is this? They're coming out at ! Why are they coming out at ? I can't stop this!”

“Pain! It hurts! It hurts! Oh, no! This is like the ti I enraged the Lady of Morning Songs! Dawn's Light, save us!”

“Rupture your mana fields! Tear away anything that is cracking! That's the only way to stop it from spreading! Peel away all your attuned mana as best you can! If anyone can hear , follow my orders!”

She wasn't inflicting any true harm upon the Fae. Most of them were too sturdy in terms of Toughness, but they were alard and panicked, and the chaos brought havoc upon their morale and coordination, leaving them fighting individually—crippling their mages, especially.

Even so, the Legendary mages tore gaps in her dinsion, and a few of their casual spells nearly swatted her from existence. Blind luck beca the only reason she was spared an untily death as missiles born of Fae magic tore gashes through this altered section of reality. Uva projected her gaze, replacing what had been destroyed, but as she patched the missing sections of her anomalous zone, an agonizing feeling ca over her, the feeling that she was expending her consciousness to maintain this environnt.

The stacked instances of herself began winking out. There were nurous Uvas that comprised her totality, but so of them went gray. She didn't have an infinite subconscious after all, so she couldn't simply keep spinning out more of this… this Unclaid Paracosm without end. It also left her strained to the extre. Just thinking ca with ebbing waves of pain, like her mind was about to be wrenched free from its foundations.

An invasive, nostalgic mory ca to her then—one of her earliest mories. She recalled picking up her mother's short sword as a toddler, trying to swing it as she saw her mother do so many tis during practice, but the blade was too heavy for her arm and stature. She managed a partial strike, but the weight and montum ripped her from her feet and nearly dislocated her right shoulder.

What she felt now was the sa thing. It was too great of a skill for her Tier, and she likely lacked the requisite support skills for her to use this properly.

“Damnation,” Uva hissed.

A series of loud cracks stole her attention. Using her fractured spiders, she saw fast-moving projectiles coming right at her. Sohow, that three-headed dragon wielding four different guns knew exactly where she was and had fired a salvo of bullets.

They passed through her web, crashing into and then slipping between the fabric as the projectiles themselves shifted mana types, going from Chronomancy to Psychomancy. They cracked and fissured, but they weren't being corrupted fast enough. Even as eldritch creatures spilled out from the bullets' trajectories, they remained in motion and were on track to strike her.

Uva called so of her spiderlings back and had them form a phalanx. Then, guided by her intuition alone, she ford a layer of ti-stealing frost over herself.

She was rewarded for her paranoia.

The bullets fired by the gun-slinging dragon transitioned once more—turning gold again as they accelerated past Uva's spiderlings. Everything around the bullets was slowed, and they curved unnaturally, losing neither montum nor sense of direction as they all crashed into Uva at once.

The bullets fragnted and flattened against her protections. Her Cryo-Chrono armor served its purpose in sparing her life, but she felt her mana field crack and break. Another hit like that and she wouldn't be casting anything using her fused magical skill for a while.

Way out. I still need a way out. I still need—

The three-headed dragon spun the guns in his hands and fired again. Uva made her decision. She went straight down toward the badly damaged grill top that made up the front section of the Boiling Toad. She called all her fractured spiderlings back as well. All twelve of them.

Three seconds of ti had elapsed since she'd first shattered. She drained trauma from thousands of minds to spawn forth thousands of spiderlings, and that was all the ti they'd bought. Her gaze had run its course as well—to use it again ant rendering herself hollow, and the thought of burning her consciousness dry frightened Uva. She didn't think she could return from that, not like Shiv could.

The only way out was down. She would need to make her own path through the steel, create a tunnel past the convection plates and—

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Convection plates! Uva realized sothing else. The Boiling Toad was a glutton for mana. The amount of Pyromancy it took to fry mountains worth of at and prepare dish after dish, day after day, without fail, to feed a titanic princess would be imnse—and attuned to mana ripe for her infection.

She wasn't just the bane of mages; she was the bane of magical devices now. Suddenly, she wasn't quite without options after all.

But she needed to evade the bullets long enough for that to happen.

Twenty-four mana-infused projectiles chased her. She dispatched a few of her spiders and coated them in what remained of her frost magic to act as interceptors; the bullets curved around them easily.

Uva had anticipated that.

She wasn't faster than the bullets, and her consciousness and reflexes were diminished by the use of her gaze. However, her sense of timing had always been pretty good, and so she waited until the bullets drew close. Suddenly, she shrank herself, pulling everything she held onto in tight. Her constellation collapsed, and she shrank down to her natural, or at least original, size.

Her sudden shift caused all the bullets to miss. They passed through the dense webbing that shrouded the world that she swam through without difficulty. At that mont, she caught sight of the first bullet, re ters away from her. It wasn't just a thing of tal. The damn bullet had a face. It had an angry face scribbled onto it, and as it caught Uva in the corner of its eye, it turned, swiveling to a screeching halt.

“Hey, hey, hey, wait a minute, you idiots. She's that a-way!” the bullet shouted, glimring with an aura of fracturing gold as cartoonish serpents coiled around its shape. More Newdreamt were prying at the cartoonish fairies that once again aid at her, but they wouldn't slow them down fast enough.

A defeated exhalation left Uva as they all ca at her at once. They passed through the webbing that shrouded the world as if it didn't exist for them either, as if they were partially eldritch too. As they drew closer, she sensed sothing within them, a series of eyes lining their sides, eyes that reminded her of the Stranger.

Uva's sigh beca a choked rasp of disbelief. These bullets weren't just Fae. They were blessed with the Stranger's power, of all things. Just who exactly was this three-headed dragon gunslinger?

Before the barrage of bullets could perforate her, however, sothing zipped past her, followed by a thunderclap of force that spiked her down against the ground. With her Toughness skill damaged, she was in no shape for a fast landing. Thankfully, Shiv cushioned her blow. Not so thankfully for him, however, as he began coughing blood all over her face and chest.

“Fuck…” Shiv groaned.

“It's okay. It's okay. I'm sorry. We're going to get out. We're going to get out.” Uva apologetically brushed Shiv's face, and she saw how his eyes were fluttering. He clung barely to the borderlines of consciousness, but he wasn't going to be any help in this fight. He wasn't going to be able to summon any skill. It was still up to her.

The Culturist landed behind her. Then Adam followed as well, bouncing off his body. The Legendary orc still had a serene expression on his face, as if he was experiencing so manner of higher enlightennt.

anwhile, she was out here fighting for their lives.

She still had a few fractured spiders left, and to her delight, they worked as the Aberrant Fractals they once were, cleaving into matter and parting it without difficulty. The steel surface that comprised the grill district was flayed wide open, and the spiders crept down, connected to Uva by threads of outsider essence.

She jumped in after them, carrying with her the Culturist and Adam. It was at this point that she rembered the bullets. They should have co after her. That shockwave might have flung her down onto the ground, but the bullets were barely ten ters away. She shouldn't have been fast enough to dodge that. The blast shouldn't have propelled her nearly quickly enough to avoid any harm.

She stole a glance via one of her rear spiderlings at what was happening behind her and realized all the bullets were missing.

In their place was a long envelope of Dinsionality. A massive cleft of static mana began bleeding into her Unclaid Paracosm, splitting even her overlapping dinsion. The bullets could be heard from the inside of that dinsional wound, calling out to each other, confused about how they missed and where this doorway ca from.

Uva most definitely did not create that dinsional wound. Adam was still down. Was this Evanescia's doing? Had the Usurper-Narrator intervened on their behalf?

The group had bested Longinus after all. Maybe this was her way of showing her favor.

Uva didn't bother spending too much ti considering that. Instead, she kept descending, and finally, her spiderlings hit a point where they brushed the convection plate that spewed forth a wall of densest Pyromancy. The heat was miserable, and without her Toughness, Uva would have been practically boiled alive. But she pushed on, her natural physiology granting her the power to endure temperatures that would have once seen her fried.

The mont her spiderling touched the convection plate, her taint began to spread. The heat sputtered montarily as fissures connecting Integration to the Outside expanded. It was like seeing the beginnings of a festering rot crawl across a body. The gleaming, bright orange mana of Pyromancy was split asunder like skin peeling from the outside, revealing the raw red below. Except instead of deeper layers of subdermis, she beheld unnatural creatures that belonged elsewhere.

A flood of feathered beasts, mounted riders that bore characteristics of Longinus and Uva, spiders, and centaurs shot past her, squeezing by her body and traveling up the tunnel behind her to rejoin the battle above. With each passing second, more of them ca forth. More and more and more, as all the mana that once powered the Boiling Toad was usurped for a new purpose.

This was as far as her planning went, however. Unleashing more Outsiders upon the Fae guards would buy her a bit more ti, but she needed to find a way out. The convection plates needed to be connected to sothing. Maybe she could follow her traveling taint and discover an exit to the keep. Maybe—

There was a sudden clench of pressure behind her.

Uva reacted.

She swung her arm, and suddenly the shape of her limb reconstructed itself into a series of flensing fractals.

Her blade cut through nothing but open air, and as she finished her turn, she found herself staring through a dinsional gateway shrouding the carved path she'd just descended. The tunnel had been cut off, but on the other end of that dinsional portal was not an onrush of Fae.

Instead, she found herself faced with a shrouded figure, only made visible by two piercing, glowing eyes. Eyes that looked like the optics of an automaton.

“Cross over,” the stranger called with a masculine voice, waving for her to pass into his portal.

Uva glared at him and prepared herself for another battle. “Who are you?”

“Probably your only way out. But you made it a lot further than I expected you to. Nasty skill you evolved there.” Artificial chanisms within the man's eyes visibly shifted. “Hm. Unique Feat. Unique Skills. Nasty. Absolutely nasty. Yeah, the Deathless’ fire is all over you too.” His attention turned to the groaning Shiv. “Jesus H. Christ. What happened to—Never mind that shit, get over here. If I wanted you to die, I wouldn't have intercepted all those bullets for you earlier.”

Uva really, really didn’t much trust mysterious strangers, but desperate tis and acts of trust pushed her toward unwise risks. Crossing into his portal put her at his rcy. But staying here damned her to the Fae. “Composer guard .”

“Yeah, probably going to be the other way instead.”

“What?”

“Just get over here. Weave’s in danger, you’re in danger, the Deathless is a literal goddamn danger, and I’m not equipped to fight off an army of angry Sumr Court guards.”

Tightening her fists, Uva made her decision.

Not like there was any real choice in the end.