Path of the Deathless 365 Fault

“Okay, what the fuck? That’s just… I don’t have an excuse anymore, I really need to bring this kid in—he just went Self-Retrocausal.”

“Ah. I don't like it.”

“What?”

“The reverted Chronomancy. I dislike the idea of fate.”

—John Produrveral and Evanescia

365

Fault

“It’s not fate,” Produrveral said. “It’s… it’s complicated.”

The Deathless lay propped up against a smiley-faced trunk of a Spring Court tree, his expression one of suffering. From within him ca an endless flood of Chronomancy, far too much for a Legendary Pathbearer, too much even for a Low Myth. The mana imbued within his Harbinger had broken free and started turning counter-clockwise, rewinding the ti within its holder as sothing of his future reached back into the present.

But this was more than the future reaching back in ti. If it were only so simple. This was a convergence of paths, all flowing backward, upstream, because soone had pulled them together—incensed every possible Shiv in the future and drew them into a singular, synchronous being for a devastating instant.

To call the Challenger a titan would be an insult to the God of Strife. Titan didn't begin to describe his might, his power, his intellect, his reach. But that sa titan had just lost his right arm; he had been flayed and shredded like a bag of at thrown through a tornado of barbed wire. And it was all his fault. Shiv couldn't have done this alone; even hale, he could do nothing more than prick the Challenger.

The current version of him, anyway.

Reverted ti continued to pour out from Shiv, but it parted around John and Evanescia. It flowed through the Fairwoods, drenching all in a vibrant, red-gold tint. But as suddenly as the Chronomancy ca, it soon began to subside. As the mana dimd, however, a shadow stared at him and Evanescia, flickering like a candle fla over the boy's physical body.

The shade was ill-defined, but John could still make out the outline of Shiv's face—especially that hamr of a jaw he had. The stench of spices spilled over from future to present, and the shadow was working on sothing over a counter, slicing and dicing, preparing to add sothing to a pot.

“Can you see it? I've never encountered sothing like this. I've never felt the future turn back. Is he truly so powerful?” Evanescia’s questions were technically classified, but Produveral knew she wouldn't let this go, not with her curiosity nor her resources. Better to let her know now rather than risk unneeded destruction as she sought answers, as she stated herself, by whatever ans necessary.

“The boy isn't, not right now, but it seems that in enough futures, he turns out pretty powerful—and all of them have an evolved Harbinger. In the present, his skill is always on the verge of shattering like glass. It's fragile, untempered. And frankly, it's leaking a lot more mana than it's actually channeling. But from what I saw…”

John cast his Awareness across dinsions, directly into the Challenger's innermost sanctuary. Enough blood to drown constellations spilled forth from the brutal injuries littering the orc god’s body. Each cut he suffered was a calamity. Each one sheared into his soul and took pieces out from the very nature of his existence. These wounds were myriad in multitude, for the edges of the fissures were lined in gold, like each blow was inevitable and an actual fixed point in ti.

There was no avoiding these attacks for the Challenger, not unless he possessed a higher Domain of History.

But festering between the gaps, deep behind the spilling blood, was sothing else. It was the presence of a living concept of ruin incarnate. There was a garden growing inside the Challenger, a garden of devastation—that which followed in the aftermath of war: the graves, the ruins, the silence to co.

The Challenger's fascination with the Deathless didn't surprise John, but the orc god had really picked the wrong boy to put back together.

“Fuck , the kid’s also a progenitor. I knew I felt sothing…” He sighed and realized Evanescia was still waiting for an explanation. “Look, the reason this happened is that the Challenger made a series of mistakes. He stabilized the boy's skill and then reached into his personal tiline, which caused all his possible futures to rge into one. Any other ti, if Shiv tried to use his power like this, he would have just shattered himself. But the Challenger used his Divinity to hold the skill together, and then ended up getting his mana contaminated by the kid’s vitae, so... Yeah. Hoisted by his own petard is what the Ur-Sophs used to say.”

John brought his hand up to pinch his temple, but found his fingers blocked by his mask. “Jesus, what a goddamn ss. The after-action report is shaping up to be a year's worth of paperwork.”

Evanescia humd. He sensed her dissatisfaction, and it throbbed within her chest like a growing ache. “I still don't like it.”

“The Chronomancy?”

“The fact that the future can reach back into the past,” she specified. “It makes things feel so final, like they are set in stone. Even if sothing is truly inevitable, I wish for it to at least remain unknown. What is the point of the journey if the destination has already been reached? The future acting as a prologue—it diminishes the value of struggle, wouldn't you agree?”

“You're better off arguing with soone who actually has a Philosophy Skill. I'm just a guy they send to stalk people, fix problems, and shoot shit.”

“But does this not fall under the purview of the problem at hand?”

John sighed aloud. “You know what? You got there. I'm kind of lucky things turned out the way they did—getting suckered by that kid might have saved my life.”

The creature Evanescia continued to inhabit tilted its smooth, elongated head. “Oh, you do not think you can ward off the Challenger?”

“I know I can't. Maybe if I'm fast enough and I know he's coming, I can escape on my own. But dragging the kid in tow? No, not a chance, especially since he has the Challenger's Blessing stuck inside him. Orc bastard would be on my ass in a minute, and I'm no good up close.”

And as quickly as it ca, the flood of Chronomancy faded, and the shadow of Shiv's future went with it. But that didn't an things were over. John gazed into the boy, into that inscrutable soul created by He Who Walks Beyond. Shiv was transforming again, rging with sothing. The Challenger's Divinity was being pushed out, if not entirely. It seed like a portion of the Deathless was extending out from his being, becoming a bridge—no, an extension. It was like a limb was being ford in conjunction with his soul, but it was disembodied, connected to him through so kind of… conceptual alignnt.

“Do you see that?” Evanescia asked. “Is sothing growing out of my antagonist?”

John was too enchanted by the weirdness unfolding before him to reply. The soul was a complicated thing. He was as good an Animancer as anyone who got to Mythic-Tier, but there were still things that eluded him—things that only dedicated practitioners or true geniuses could grasp. He still rembered the basic rules of a soul and the general anatomy. A person viewed themselves a certain way, and the mind-body connection ford a spiritual mirror to the physical form. This was why people could bind weapons and armor to themselves—they were effectively tethering the material and the taphysical together, creating a spiritual hard point for equipnt.

This was also why certain races had major taphysical advantages when it ca to equipping items on themselves. Hydras, for instance, had twelve hard points. Their body counted as one, but they had twelve heads and serpentine necks. A wealthy enough Hydra could rig themselves up with enough tal to bankrupt a lesser world, and gain a breadth of skills they didn't naturally possess. Of course, they had to select their equipnt carefully. Clashing magical attunents and contradicting skills could rip up soone's soul pretty good.

But all that was besides the point. Hydras had twelve heads. Humans had one head, two arms, two legs, and a body. So why was Shiv getting an extra disconnected arm?

“I think he’s assimilating the Challenger’s arm,” Evanescia whispered in stunned disbelief.

“Fuck ,” Produveral groaned. “Chorus is going to shit itself.”

***

Feat Gained: [Error] - [Error] - [Error]

Warning: Feat requirents beyond ambient mana threshold.

Warning: Feat beyond current Tier.

Attention: Soulgraft in progress

Attention: The Garden of Wounds and Broken Things has assimilated the HAND OF THE RED RIDER.

Warning: Insufficient mana to control the HAND OF THE RED RIDER.

Blessing Evolution: Icon of the Paindrinker > Scion of Pain - I will co to know your highest potential, Deathless. And when the ti cos, I will bleed you as you have bled —or find a blissful end in the process. I grant you this boon as I have bequeathed you my forr arm. Beco the heart of agony; beco the nexus of destruction. Live up to your inevitable promise.

Unique Equipnt Slot Unlocked: [HAND OF THE RED RIDER]

Tier: [N/A]

Condition: WAR IS WAR IS WAR IS WAR IS AND WILL ALWAYS BE

Composition: THE BLOOD TO CO, THE ASHES TO FALL, THE FLAS TO FEED

Enchantnts: [Destruction]

Garden of Wounds and Broken Things 115 > 122

Pillar of Orichalcum 461 > 470

Harbinger of Tripartite Ruin 284 > 303

This Severed Shadow of Blood and Bladed Soul 265 > 291

Shiv was drowning inside himself. The notifications kept coming. His levels kept rising, the System flooding him with more and more mana as a reward for surviving this ordeal. But Shiv didn't care about any of it. He wanted out. He wanted to surface. He wanted control over his own body, his own soul, so that he could help Adam, so that he could save everyone else. The Challenger had pushed him down underwater, and he just couldn't find the surface again. The Challenger had reached into the Harbinger, and he'd taken hold of Shiv.

The world was lost to him. He remained trapped in this void, even as the text of his triumphs spilled down before him like a waterfall. But this wasn't true nothingness. He wasn't rewarded with any bliss. Instead, he could still hear. So of his senses were still working, and Adam was screaming, begging, pleading.

“Make it stop. Make it stop. It's too much. I can't… I can’t… it hurts… make it stop!”

Shiv tried going Backstage, tried using any of his skills, the Unique ones, the Initiate ones, the Legendary ones, any of them, but nothing inside his soul responded. It was like he was trapped, like the Challenger had created specifically to cage him within himself. The cruel bastard had finally discovered a tornt Shiv couldn't tolerate. Physical suffering was nothing. A broken mind needed only ti to reset itself, and a damaged soul, well, that was practically an everyday affair. But deprivation and helplessness…

Adam wasn't the only one screaming. The only difference was that Shiv lacked a voice, and he desperately wanted to shriek.

“Stop.”

A chorus of voices called out to him, a chorus of voices that all sounded like him. His mind went vacant. What was this? Another layer to the Challenger's hell?

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“No, but he did make this possible. He did bring all of us together.”

Shiv didn't understand. All of us? What are you talking about? Why do you sound like ? Who are you? What is this?

“Stop talking and just listen. We are the ones you beco. We are your future possibilities. We are the vast paths that await you: the roads you are to walk, destinations that await. You will co to be, and we were aligned into one, because the Challenger can't keep his hands off a good victim. He's gone now. He reached too far, and he paid for it. But we're going away too. We don't have long before we separate into the infinite possibilities waiting for you, so we’ll make this quick: none of this is your fault.There was nothing you could do to change the great ga played by gods and monsters. You don't have the power. Not yet. You're far too young, and you're far too inexperienced. But you'll survive, you'll learn, and you'll grow. But, even if this isn't your fault, it's still your responsibility, Shiv. You were made to be a weapon. You were forged from the stuff of nightmares—but you can choose to be sothing more. You can choose to be soone more, and you have to! You have to master yourself and the world around you before the System pulls you under.”

An unmistakable scent ca to Shiv. The taste of chives filled the air.

“And here is a piece of advice: You've been on the battlefield for too long. You are unbalanced in the extre. If you want to be a true warrior, then you're going to need to learn to be a better chef. Ti to use that frying pan. Ti to make a ho for yourself. Ti to live up to that promise you made back in the old world ruins. Now, get up, Shiv. Adam’s going to need you. They’re all going to need you. But don’t forget to do right by yourself. Turning your pain inward isn't strength. It's just another kind of weakness. And with the life you're almost certain to lead, you can't afford any weaknesses.”

And with that, the darkness was parted in a wave of gold as a sudden swelling of force pulled Shiv up. Up through the darkness, up through the prison, back into his own body. His senses returned to him, slamming down upon his head like a ton of bricks. Suddenly, he could see, hear, sll, feel clearly. The Challenger was gone, but there was another presence weighing upon him, holding him down. A massive limb lay draped over his chest, a limb that burned raw red with vitality. Worst of all, Shiv could feel the limb—could sense the thundering violence that lay dormant inside it.

But sothing else festered within the limb as well. The Garden of Wounds and Broken Things had attached itself to the Challenger's severed lower arm. The damn thing was nearly two ters long and nearly as thick around Shiv's entire body. And it radiated with his lifeforce—was connected to him by a cord of vitality.

The notifications weren't an illusion. The words he had just heard weren't a hallucination. The Challenger did lose his arm, and now it belonged to Shiv.

“Holy… shit,” he croaked.

A keening sob from Adam made Shiv look away from his new arm. Less than a stride away, the Paragon lay upon the gore-soaked ground, clawing at his skull. He drove his fingers into the softness of his tissue and tore at at, dug furrows into his bones. The sound made Shiv's stomach twist. A yawning chasm of horror expanded inside him as he beheld his best friend's self-mutilation.

But despite Adam's best efforts, his fingers couldn't find purchase on the Crown of the Anti-Savior. The damned thing had a mind of its own. Its briar-like design sawed and sank deeper, sinking through the bone and reforging the tissues it displaced in a coating laminate.

“No,” Shiv wheezed. He tried to move but barely slid an inch across the ground as his newly grafted arm left him pinned in place. The Hand of the…

Red Rider? Why does the System call the Challenger that? a distracted part of Shiv's mind asked, but he tore away from the straight thought.

The limb felt like the heaviest thing in the world. Shiv tried to push on it, tried to shrug his way out from under it, but it weighed upon him like an anchor bearing the weight of entire worlds—worlds that had been slaughtered clean of life. Looking at the hand, Shiv could hear screams, could see fire and ruin and death, could feel war itself slumbering within.

And it was too much; it was too heavy. It was too great a burden for him to bear. Even as he spent what Shapeless Tides he had, he got no closer to pulling himself away—not until he tried moving the limb directly. The Hand of the Red Rider flared alight with vitality and rose into the air, dismbered but still bound to Shiv by a stream of crimson essence. Moving the hand demanded more than physical strength. Shiv found himself gasping as a counterpressure drove into his mind, crushed his emotions, and made his body creak with strain.

Centiter by trembling centiter, Shiv commanded the hand to rise before he rolled out from under it. With that, he was free. He threw himself at Adam, took him into his embrace, and tried to help him get the crown loose.

“Shiv! Shiv!” Adam's face was a mask of blood. The upper half of his skull looked like it had been scalped. A miserable grunt escaped Shiv as he looked away from the flesh flaps which remained of Adam’s hair, his slick visage blending well with the color of his mane. “Hurts… hurts so much…”

“Shit. Fuck. I… Wait, let …” Shiv willed his hands to stop trembling, and he gently placed his fingertips against Adam's exposed bone. Shiv touched the Crown of the Anti-Savior. The mont he did, however, a blast of divine magic cleaved into him. Shiv's head snapped back as his vitality was nearly emptied.

The upper half of his face simply disintegrated and splattered apart. It took him all the life force he had left to reform.

“Fuck!” Shiv snarled.

Adam was sobbing like a child. The only clear parts on his face were two streams that ran down his cheeks. But his hands were wrapped around Shiv's neck. He pulled at his friend, but he also tried to strangle him. He made fists and struck Shiv across the throat and chest, but fought to keep himself under control. It was like an urge to do harm was overcoming him, was seizing him from the nervous system outward. And there was nothing he could do.

“Need to… need to…” Adam's breathing took on a guttural quality. His azure eyes were turning bloodshot, filling with festering darkness.

And Shiv didn't need to look at his friend's emotional core to feel the overwhelming hate, that miserable need to break, to kill, to dominate, to ruin, take hold inside him.

The Challenger hadn't lied: he did have an alternative ans of enforcing an Orcish Skill. But this seed so much worse than what Shiv went through. Because of course it had to be worse, because of course the Challenger had sothing especially cruel in reserve for Adam. The orc god knew that he was weakest psychologically—and Shiv knew it as well.

What the fuck was I thinking? How could he have done this? How could he just go along with Adam's wish and damn him to this suffering? Of course Adam was going to pull a self-sacrificing maneuver. Shiv needed to be smarter. He needed to tell Adam no. He needed to find another way to convince—

Sothing inside the depths of his Tripartite cracked. Sothing inside his mind and heart tore. What little vitality he had left spilled out in a fleeting trickle, and Shiv ca close, too close, to that final edge where oblivion held out its arms.

"Shiv! Stop! You must stop! I can't process this guilt. This self-loathing is fatal to us! You need to stop. This is not about you. This is him. We must do the right thing for him. What happened happened. What's done is done. Focus on getting that crown out of him." The Harbinger sounded more ragged than Shiv could ever recall, even after the Challenger had pieced it back together.

They were all on the verge of breaking. All of them.

"I don't know how! I don't know what to do." Terror, true, pure terror, was taking hold inside Shiv. His words were ant for Adam, were ant for his Harbinger. Even with what was told to him, the guilt he felt was like an ocean—and once more, he was drowning. But the Crown of the Anti-Savior itself was an enigma, and Shiv had no idea how to even approach pulling it out of Adam's skull. It was constantly burrowing deeper, and the enchantnts the Challenger had left upon it made it strike with devastating force against anyone who tried to remove it.

“If you can't get it out…” Adam swallowed, blinking as delirium took hold. The Paragon was no longer screaming, and that left Shiv consud with dread. A look of fleeting clarity took hold in Adam. He blinked, and for the briefest of monts, it was himself again. He stared straight into Shiv's eyes, swallowed, and said, “If you can't get it out, I need you to kill , Shiv. It hurts. I can feel it eating my mind. Shiv… please.”

The sheer agony Adam endured bled over into Shiv. The Harbinger scread as the strain of the ntal imbalance drove the Legendary skill to its breaking point.

A microsecond longer, and the Harbinger would have shattered. Shiv would have shattered. The emotional anguish he endured would have been too much for his body, his mind, his heart, his existence.

There would have been no future for him. All those possibilities that spoke to him would have been nothing more than a final, fleeting, tragic mirage.

But Shiv wasn't alone, and neither was Adam. Tendrils of Psychomancy burrowed into him, and suddenly Shiv felt all his trauma get siphoned out. A nest of translucence rained down, splashing over Adam, burrowing into his mind the sa way the crown did, but his suffering didn't subside. However, Shiv felt his senses clear—Uva created a layer of insulation between himself and the worst of his thoughts. She took over when the Harbinger could push on no longer and injected soothing spells into him.

"It's alright. It's alright." She spoke to him both physically and ntally. "It's all right, I have him. Take a mont. Let handle this. Just take a mont, and steady yourself."

All the overflowing nervous energy made Shiv shake. A crushing numbness took hold—a numbness that kept growing and growing because Uva constantly drained away the toxic feelings that threatened to unravel him. He quickly learned what being catatonic felt like and decided that anhedonia was better than the caustic torture of regret.

Once more, Shiv beca a passenger in his own body. He moved on autopilot, and the red right hand that was now bound to his soul hovered in the air, looming like a pillar on the verge of collapse but never truly falling.

Groans sounded all around him. The others were getting up, shaking off the Challenger's influence.

The first to join them was Valor. The ancient legend knelt down and helped Uva hold Adam steady as he thrashed like a rabid animal.

“Uva!” he snarled. “V-valor! Kill… kill you—!”

“What… what is this? What did the Challenger put inside him?” Valor sounded shaken, terrified. Nothing like a Legendary Pathbearer, more like a lost old man.

“I don’t know,” Uva said. Her voice was calm, but her composure was also a facade. She was removing as much trauma from herself as she was from Shiv. It empowered her Psychomancy, but it seed that the Crown of the Anti-Savior functioned just fine without magic. “I have access to his mind, but…” A gasp of discomfort escaped her. “I can't stay there. Not long. The pain… the urges… It’s…”

“Too much,” Adam breathed. “Please. Do it. I need…”

“No. No.” Valor knelt down and squeezed Adam’s hand tightly. “We will find a way. We will get it out. Be strong. Strong, like I know you can be. Can Hu! Can Hu!”

The Undying called for the Penitent, but there was no need. Can Hu was already in motion. And vaguely, Shiv realized its body had changed, its skeletal fra glowing bright with the sa red-gold hue of Shiv's Pillar of Orichalcum, and it was far larger than before, sprouting more limbs and hovering drones behind him. Wings like a dragonfly's extended out in six different directions from Can Hu’s back, and they radiated with pulses of gravity rather than plus of fire.

“Let it never be said that I don't keep my promises,” a distant voice breathed into Shiv's mind. The Challenger chuckled. But at the very end, Shiv caught a whisper of pain from the god. “Enjoy this struggle, children. As I have enjoyed what you inflicted upon .”

Outside of the Court Leviathan, the wind was howling, but there were voices in the undercurrent. Voices of orcs screaming in agony.

When Shiv’s attention returned, he found Can Hu plucking at Adam’s head with dexterous, many-jointed fingers. “He has been implanted with old technology. From long before the Fall. The Crown of the Anti-Savior. A ans of highest punishnt devised during the War of Faiths to punish those who worshiped the canon of the One Faith.”

“How does it detach?” Uva asked, decidedly less interested in the lore.

“I…” Can Hu fell silent. Shiv couldn’t read the mind of the automaton, but he could see into its heart all the sa. Hopelessness had found a ho inside Can Hu. “It is a terminal implant. It is not ant to be removed. The construct is nanomolecular. It rges with the brain to take over the tissues and command the body and its various systems.”

“Then… then what about Technomancy?” Uva continued. “Wait! Where is Five? Bring him! Maybe he can interface with the Crown!”

Can Hu rose—though its mood never lifted. “I will find him.”

Yet, Shiv could see and feel the doubt inside the Penitent. Doubt that Can Hu kept to himself.

“Kid? Kid? You alright?” A hand was on Shiv’s shoulder, and he found Jessica looking down at him with genuine concern.

“I think I… made a mistake,” Shiv muttered, only half present. “I think we both made a mistake.”

The Giantsbane regarded Adam for a mont, then looked away—old traumas inside her welling. She dragged Shiv back to his feet. “Alright. Let’s get you out of here first. Fuck, let’s get out of this orcish hell pit in general. I knew this shit was going to happen at so point, but this—”

But any hope of Shiv leaving died as Roland finally rose to his feet a few ters away. “Adam!” His voice was pitched with misery. He barreled past Rose, all but drove Valor aside, and let out an anguished sob as he witnessed the state of his son—his pride, his joy, his blood; his only surviving son. “Oh, no, no, no. Starhawk! Thaen, I need you! Help ! Help him!”

The Starhawk, however, was absent.

No divine visage ford over Roland.

No hint of incandescent mana erged.

“Starhawk!” Roland’s cry took on a mix of hurt and madness. “Thaen! I can feel you! I know you’re… Why? What do you an there’s nothing we can do? You—you lie! You lie! There has to be sothing—sothing! Is it ? Am I not enough? Is it my soul?”

Shiv only realized Roland was speaking directly to the Starhawk after several exchanges.

Roland reached out and clutched Uva by the arm. “Hero ttabon. I need you—my son needs you. I am spent—I’m worthless. Help my boy. You can do—” Roland swallowed as he heard sothing. Sothing spoken to him, and only him. “No… No. No.” Tears spilled down his face, and he turned his maddened gaze skyward. “No! If you cannot save him, then… then what is the point of you? What's the point of this? What am I fighting for? How much have I given, over and over and over! I will have nothing left without—I will have nothing! Please!”

But the sky remained sick with the smog of war, and the Starhawk kept his distance.

"The Starhawk is shaken," the Harbinger whispered, coughing. "He is as brutalized as Roland. He is dented and shaken. The Challenger has scarred us all."

“Father…” Adam whimpered. “Father?”

Roland’s head fell. He cradled Adam against him, brushing stray locks of hair out of his face, indifferent to the blood. “I’m here. Oh, Adam. Oh, my son.”

“It’s not… It’s… Hurts…” Adam whimpered.

“It’s alright,” Roland pleaded. “We’ll… Uva can help. She’ll make you well. She will.”

“No.” Adam shook his head. “It’s… it’s… it’s not his fault.”

“What?” Roland said, confused.

“Please… It hurts…” Adam clenched his teeth so hard his jaw creaked and clutched his own head between his blood-soaked fingers. But despite everything, despite all he suffered, Adam Arrow still had sothing to say—if a final thing to say before the madness took him. “It’s not Shiv’s fault… It never was…”

And with that declared, the Paragon lost himself to the hurt, and his coherence beca a mory. The noises that left him belonged to a dying animal. Roland’s emotional core was being torn asunder; his eyes were wide with horror, but slowly, all too slowly, they rose and greeted Shiv.

When he saw the state of his blood-brother’s son, his heart nearly ripped itself in two.