178 (II)
Terrify [II]
A sudden rush of brilliant red life force exploded through the valley of the prison. All the other Legendary-Tier prisoners turned into fading shadows under that awesome display of light. The Deathless resurrected in an instant. He emerged from his pulsating mass of Vitae as he continued ripping the essence free from the golden shadow. It arched its back and writhed. As did all the other shadows.
Then, without warning, they all vanished at once.
He looked toward the elf as she collapsed to her knees, gasping. Her eyes were sunken. Her features were gaunt. It looked like she'd aged approximately 20 years in an instant, though Shiv knew that elves didn't quite grow old like humans did. Before any of the other prisoners could act, he went out of context and rushed through them. Shiv wrapped his hand around the elf's neck, and as she fell, as she fell to her knees, he wrenched her neck off at an angle, and a satisfying crack filled the chamber. The elf gave a vicious cry.
Despite Shiv's Legendary-Tier Physicality, her head wasn't torn free from her body; rather, a few tendons snapped first, then a bone shattered. She tried to fight back, but Shiv ripped some more of her vitality out from her, and a burst of red expanded free from his form, briefly shrouding him once more. The other prisoners didn't know how to respond, or were more than willing to let Shiv finish this brawl.
Suspect it’s probably the latter…
He drove the elf against the wall, and a loud crash sounded. She kicked and clawed at him. She was strong, a High Hero at the very least. Her fingers felt like metal hooks as they dug bloody furrows into his skin, yet she couldn't tear fully through his flesh as every vector he channeled slammed into her, sawing against her Magical Resistance while cracking her bones. A series of overflow tides glided across his arm, and they slammed into her fingers at an angle. The fingers broke, and the elf screamed.
Shiv drove his elbow into her throat and lifted her high up along the wall. As he did this, his powers grew, his body got larger, his bones lengthened, his muscles grew dense, and his mana fields thundered with growing power. Shape of Monstrosity took hold, and Shiv saw the elf's eyes widen. He tried to crush her skull. Over a dozen tides collapsed inward, painted vectors lined with mana, crashed against her face, and pressed hard upon her flesh. The Magical Resistance lining her body gave first, bursting as if an armored egg beneath a stubborn heel, finally revealing the tantalizing yolk within.
Before he could fully take her life, a burst of gold came, and a golden shadow replaced her. A blade was driven through Shiv’s throat instead. He gagged on his own blood. But before it could sever his vertebrae, he seized it with both hands, and he slammed his palm up along the underside of that golden arm. Shiv directed his anger into his Legendary Skill and then activated the Icon of the Paindrinker to magnify the damage.
The arm cracked and shattered.
A resounding shriek followed.
Shiv ripped the blade free from his gored throat and wrenched the golden shadow to the ground. He held its broken arm with all his might, keeping it close to his chest, and he used his tides to snap it further, wrenching it in a circle until it dangled limp and useless. The golden shadow tried to rise. Shiv gripped it by the back of its head and drove it down against the ground in a brutal piledriver.
Once more, a loud impact followed. The sound of a nose cracking popped in the air. Shiv tasted the sweet iron of bitter blood, but he didn't heal himself. The battle haze was on him, and he needed to break his foe. There was going to be a lesson to learn about trying to kill the Deathless.
He got the golden shadow by the other arm, and just then it vanished as well. It vanished and was replaced by two others. Their arms were broken as well, but they drove their working limbs through Shiv's torso. The first passed, cleaning through his pelvis, and he lost all feeling below his right knee. Another went for his chest, but Shiv saw that coming. He twisted out of the way and threw himself against both golden shadows.
They tried to shred him apart, but he knew where they were now, and every sloppy blow they delivered on his back or neck was converted into overflow vectors. Overflow tides that he did nothing to maintain. They exploded out from him, launching him at odd angles as the vectors activated, turning him into tides of rushing kinetic force.
As he crashed into the orichalcum walls, the golden shadows went with him. Rather than continuing with the wrestling match, Shiv drained their vitality once more, and they predictably disappeared.
As they vanished, Shiv tried to stand, yet nearly slipped in his own blood. A small river was leaking out from his gouged throat. He absorbed those injuries using his Biomancy and turned to face the other prisoners. The moment he saw their expressions, he gained an intuitive understanding of what was happening.
Psycho-Cartography: Look at them. Look at the light in their eyes. They're enjoying this, but they're also using this opportunity to study how you work, how you fight. None of the others joined in, probably because of what you said earlier. If someone tried to strike you down from behind, someone else needed to beat them to you, or to stop them. Because if anyone killed you for good, they'd be the single strongest creature here, maybe even in the prison, including all the Avatars as well. And for a group of imprisoned Legends, that's just not an acceptable risk.
Psycho-Cartography 63 > 66
Shiv stared the prisoners down. He spat thick clumps of blood out of his throat and shook his head in disgust as he saw chunks of flesh resting in the glistening viscera. The golden shadows would have gotten him good if his tides had flowed just a little bit slower; if he was just a bit unluckier, his head would have been taken again.
"Where is she?" Shiv growled. His eyes jumped from prisoner to prisoner. He watched as the Thresholder stiffened and slowly backed away from him. He watched as fear chains solidified, but only slightly. These were Legends, and they did not shake easily. But the fear chains allowed him to do something else. Find the elf without anyone telling him, for only one chain was nearly entirely solid, and only one chain was moving. Shiv seized that chain with his hand. Immediately, a Shapeless Tide surged along its length, and he followed it upward.
Farsight 56 > 57
The elf was bleeding. She was about a hundred meters in the air, clawing her way along the Orichalcum walls, slashing the red-gold alloy over and over again, trying to cut her way out. Blood spilled out from one of her arms. It was broken. He could see the bone jutting free from parted skin. He also saw her face. It was a mess. She didn't have much of a nose anymore. Instead, it was more like a red crater buried at the center of her face.
"Back down you come!" Shiv pulled hard on the fear chain, just as the first vector splashed against the elf's body. Shiv let out a cry as she suddenly plummeted downward. Her Reflexes were high, but before she could do anything, before she could change places with one of her golden shadows or summon more time constructs, her Magical Resistance broke entirely, and she gave a pained howl. That pain howl turned into a loud groan as she slid face-first along the sides of the wall, a long smear of red painting her trajectory.
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As she was about to land, Shiv stuck his knee out, causing the left to land forehead-first against his protruding limb. Blood erupted from her already compromised face. Pieces of teeth flew out from her mouth like shrapnel. The elf bounced off, groaning in pain, but Shiv seized her by the throat and held her up as if showing the other prisoners his prize.
"You could have stopped," Shiv said calmly, even though that wasn't what he felt. Inside, he was screaming with steaming-hot rage. "You could have just let it go. The first time you cut me, I ignored it. Guess that was you being jumpy. Second time, fine. Test the waters. But you kept going, though. You got greedy."
The elf all tried to say something, but all that came out of her was a wet cough. Shiv held her up with a single arm and looked to the other Legendary prisoners. "I'm happy that the rest of you were wise enough to stay out of this. Let’s see if we can get this lesson through her thick skull, huh?” As he studied them, he realized his joke didn't land. “Because I’ve been beating on her?”
Psycho-Cartography: Don't do that again. Also, don't speak without thinking. Your adrenaline is too high. Observe. Think once, think twice, and then speak. If you rush, you will betray yourself.
The prisoners were silent. They watched as he considered what to do with the elf. His first instinct was to kill her, to put her down as an example for the others. It seemed like the logical thing, and it would be a statement of strength. But he took Psycho-Cartography’s advice for decision-making as well. He thought once about killing the elf, then he thought again, and by the third thought, he guessed. He suspected that there might be something else he could do with her.
Offering mercy to someone who just tried to kill you didn't seem wise to Shiv. Just because she failed this time didn't mean she would fail the next. She was a Legendary Chronomancer. Maybe Legendary in terms of cutting too, though he doubted it. Something about her cuts hinted she was a Low Hero or a High Master instead.
"Why, why, why?" the elf muttered, the word whistling out from her mangled face, with wet rasps. "Why can't I heal?" He saw a shudder of gold pass across her body. "Why am I not healing?"
He realized she was trying to cast herself back in time, or use Chronomancy to avert her wounds somehow. Shiv just chuckled. "Causal Scargiver," he said. She turned slowly, and the fear chain between them became almost adamantine-hard. "It's a Unique Feat, something you get after you hurt someone from the Outside."
“No. You… you couldn’t have…”
“Oh, but I could. And I do hate eldritch bullshit. Your gimmick is pretty simple in comparison.”
Slowly, Shiv's expression turned calculated. The anger remained there, but instead of being hot, inflamed anger, it turned cold and patient. His first instinct was wrong. Just killing her wouldn't be punishment. It would simply be the status quo between Pathbearers. Shiv didn't need to adhere to the status quo. He could go beyond it. He could defy it. Shiv could teach them just what they had to lose.
Tendrils of Vitae crawled out from Shiv's hands and burrowed under the elf's flesh. She kicked and writhed, her swollen eyes trying to widen. "No, no, what are you doing?" she cried aloud.
Shiv ignored her. He dove through the depths of her soul, and as he found her Chronomancy, he pressed against it. "I'm considering cracking your skill," Shiv said. The elf went entirely rigid. The fear chain between them was so hard that it felt unbreakable. And then, for the first time, Shiv began using his new Dread-Tainted Feat. He infused fear with every action and watched as the expressions of the prisoners changed.
It was subtle at first, nothing more than slight frowns or half steps, but his Shape of Monstrosity was growing at an alarming pace. The dread taint radiated out from him like a festering rot. Images of Daughter flickered over each of the prisoners, especially the elf Shiv was in the process of breaking, and the terror they offered him as tribute gradually began to build. In the case of the elf, it soared.
Shape of Monstrosity 119 > 121
"No, stop, don't, don't!" Her pleas went unanswered as Shiv pressed his Vitae against her Chronomancy skill. As soon as he dipped into its core and infused himself with a new animated skill, he considered shattering her right then and there, but something halted him.
Psycho-Cartography: There are a few paths ahead of us. If we break her and we cripple her for good, we will give her back to the other Legendary-Tier prisoners, but she will be a liability then, and judging from how they act, it's likely she will be killed. Her life isn't what matters here, though. It's her use. She's a dangerous Pathbearer, and with what her golden shadows can do, she would be an immense help scouting through hostile zones.
"Please, please don't, please," the elf whimpered. "Don't break the skill. I'm sorry. Great, Great Legend. Great legend! Deathless! Do not break my skill. Do not unmake me!"
Her cries were hysterical, unbefitting of a Legend, yet entirely understandable. Shiv remembered Valor, how depressed the former Legend seemed now that he was but a shadow of himself. He remembered Can Hu, who yearned for nothing more than to return to what it was at its apex.
It was one thing to die, to be cast from this mortal existence into the great uncertainty that lie beyond, but it was another to be broken while you were still alive, to be rendered less than you could, less than you were, and less than you could ever be, to see your future cut down before your eyes and be forced to live it regardless. There was a great trove of fear down that path, but that was also a path where Shiv lost out on other opportunities.
He hesitated, and then he leaned down.
"Why shouldn't I break your skill?" Shiv asked.
The elf drew in a ragged breath, and she gripped his arm with her working hand. "Because, because, I'll give you anything, anything, if you would simply spare me." She let out her ragged hiss. “Or just kill me! Kill me! Don't do this! Anything but this! Anything at all."
Shiv wondered how he might react if someone threatened one of his skills. He'd like to think he would have more dignity, but he really wasn't sure. It had taken death and sacrifice for him to become a Legend. And if someone else threatened to take it away, to reduce him back to being nothing more than a Pathless? The very thought inspired spiking dread inside Shiv himself. And he developed an unwanted burst of sympathy toward the elf.
Ugh, I really don't like this thinking twice thing. It makes me feel shit I don't like, Shiv thought.
Psycho-Cartography: That's part of being alive. That's part of being mature. You want to be more than a brute; deal with it. Deal with the discomfort. The ones who do make the best choices.
Shiv gritted his teeth as he considered the elf once more. He was two steps away from his initial choice now. Originally, he was just planning on killing her. Then he wanted to make her a crippled example. But slowly, he was moving toward a new thought. A thought that he wasn't entirely sure about.
"Listen," Shiv whispered, licking his lips. "I have planted a magical bomb inside your skill." The elf shuddered and let out a pained moan. Shiv kept talking. "The bomb will only go off when I want it to. So I'm going to ask you to do a few things for me."
Deception 25 > 27
"I'll do anything," the elf repeated. Her head was bowed. She refused to look him in the eyes. Shiv wiped her wounds away using his Aegis, and as her crystallized injuries glistened around him, she shuddered and lifted her head. "How did you—"
"Causal Scargiver’s a fun Feat," Shiv said. "It wounds things that don't adhere to the natural flow of time or the natural patterns of the world. Or at least that's how I think it works. Doesn't stop me from healing you the conventional way. I want you to understand something right now. This isn't mercy. I'm not giving you mercy. I'm not letting you go with a slap on your wrist. I have you. I have you by the fucking balls, uh..." Shiv cut himself off as he realized he was talking to a female elf. "I have you by the…”
“Cunt!” one of the prisoners shouted.
"Thanks, random asshole who'll probably try to kill me later," Shiv muttered.
"You're welcome, Deathless. Keep going. I'm kind of enjoying this. Uppity bitch stole my grub once.”