Most people do not truly understand their own flaws. It is easy to notice what weaknesses you have on a surface level, but past that, your problems are usually systemic and structural, majorly influenced by your environment and the context you face. This is where things get complicated; it is why many Pathbearers, even those who attain great power, are cut down in battle.
Oftentimes, we say someone is clumsy or inattentive. These things can be generally true. These might indeed be weaknesses, yet in an active war zone, they suffer from no issues. In fact, they seem to be tuned into the battle itself. This is because they are not clumsy or inattentive in the proper way. Their focus jumps fast, taking in stimuli, moving from one moment to the next. This allows them to process the battlescape around them, meaning that their so-called weakness was actually structural strength. Then, in the same circumstance, someone who is extremely attentive in their daily work is overwhelmed. There is too much detail for them to sift through, and they are cut down in a moment of hesitation.
This, then, is systemic weakness, and this is what many Pathbearers miss. They think simplistically, and there is a great benefit to doing so. If you make things that are complicated simple, you reduce the cognitive load you have to bear in combat and allow yourself to become more efficient. But this does not let you understand yourself, and you cannot afford to have a shallow comprehension of your own capabilities to the limits when you become a Legend. Before this point, everything else can be sustained by a single superior skill.
Overwhelming Physicality will allow you to get far, but there is a term for a Pathbearer that is Legendary in terms of Physicality and lacking everywhere else: a tragic corpse.
Because, despite the potential lingering in their immense strength, they will not be able to wield it properly, because one skill cannot be a pillar. No, it has turned into a post, and everything else has become a liability. The structure must be strong; the structure must be everything.
-Valor Thann
180 (I)
Trust [I]
The prison cell that the elf led them to looked no different from any other. Shiv stared down into its Orichalcum length and saw a moving spell pattern gliding along its cylindrical shape. He tried to make out differences in the spell shapes that comprised the patterns, but failed. Each of them resembled specific symbols, codified expressions of intent. Even as he used his Farsight skill, he couldn't tell anything wrong with them. And once more, Shiv experienced the problems that came with an incomplete education.
Most of what he knew about magic was instinctive. He'd picked up a few pointers from Adam, Uva, and Valor since his arrival in the Abyss. But past that, his formal education remained nonexistent. He had no idea why spells became specific patterns when one composed them. He had no idea how spell patterns were layered into a physical object beyond their caster.
He was about to internally vent about Roland Arrow again when his Psycho-Cartography Skill pulsed inside his mind. Instead of saying anything directly, it fed him a single feeling.
Don't.
A sour taste crawled over his tongue and stung his very mind. Shiv stopped himself from complaining. He understood what his evolved Psychology skill wanted from him. It wanted him to move on. He was allowed to feel things, but the more he fed its feelings, the more he would reinforce those feelings. Being angry at Roland Arrow forever would lead him nowhere. He wasn't any stronger for it, any wiser, and the problem wasn't anywhere near solved.
And where Shiv was lacking in education, he had more than enough experience working with anger. He could hate someone and still be useful while hating them. And that's why he decided to pay attention rather than sink deeper into his mental malaise.
"Are you sure it's here?" the elf asked. She kept a few meters of distance between herself and Shiv, and he noticed around three golden shadows lurking to his right and left. Bonk had alerted him to the Chronomantic constructs, and Shiv thought he was about to get ambushed again. Yet they kept their distance as well, and eventually Shiv understood that they were means of preemptive defense. The fear chain connecting him to the elf remained as hard as ever. She owed him his life, but he took from her respect and fear. He caught her looking at him then, and she ripped her gaze away, unwilling to face him for longer than a fraction of a second.
Psycho-Cartography: Georges once told us it was best to be feared and respected at the same time. Fear made you able to make someone do things for you. Respect made them want to do things for you willingly. We have the former. It feels good. But I think we should build toward the latter.
Psycho-Cartography 66 > 67
Five leaned over the cell door and grinned. "Yes," Five said, "this is the right place."
The Aviary agent waved a hand, and the automata heads on his back flared to life. All of their optics were flickering, and a rush of electricity and mana flooded through his limbs. The spell patterns gliding within the cell came alive with activity. Mana pulsed out from them. They began circulating faster and faster. Shiv watched, trying to understand what the wolf-man was doing. He felt a strange pull in the atmosphere. Five was clearly trying to rearrange something in the cell’s spell patterns, but he wasn't sure how or why.
A few glowing shapes intersected as some of the revolving spells twisted at an angle. They collided on a perpendicular axis, and when mana kissed mana, a few fragments and geometries were swapped. Shapes belonging to one spell pattern were inherited by another, and the insides of the spells pulsed. It was then that Shiv noticed the burst of Dimensionality spewing free from the top of the cell. It overflowed like water gushing out from a bottle, and it briefly crashed against Shiv’s ankles, but it couldn't push through, and instead it rebounded from his Shapeless Tides, countered entirely by his vector-shaped Magical Resistance.
"What are you doing, little wolf?" Urri asked.
Five didn't respond to the Vulteg. Instead, he continued waving his hands, pinching at the distant spells as if they were right in front of him. He moved a few more of the patterns, intersecting them, and then swiped, switching a few pieces over. As Shiv observed, he began to gain an intuitive understanding regarding the spell patterns. Intent could be exchanged between each chain of spells. They weren't swapping mana. Shiv knew that because he could see a few Biomancy spells acting below, and they didn't get any weaker. Instead, it was like the commands guiding the spells were being alternated.
"It's a bit like the prison, isn't it?" Bonk said. A wry grin painted the orc's face, and Shiv took a moment to realize what he was hinting at.
Yeah, it kind of is. Shiv thought about the cubes, how they slid beside each other, how they all swapped positions, as if pieces of a moving puzzle. The spells were the same. And something told Shiv that there was no coincidence. Magical Skills were designed to follow certain lores. Lores were shaped by people's understanding of the world; their beliefs. That was what Valor had said. Perhaps this spell that was being assembled had something to do with the very architecture of the Rubix Well. It made sense. They were probably going to teleport somewhere using the Dimensionality mana powering the spell.
With every passing second, Five's hands moved faster, and even Rebis seemed to be having a hard time following what the wolf-man was doing. Soon, the Dimensionality mana within the spell began erupting outward, spraying higher in bursts of static black. Shiv looked around briefly and felt his hair begin to stand inside his Voidmantid armor.The Avatars have been inactive for far too long, and there were no wardens here. He didn't believe that they were just being let go, so there were only a few other possibilities besides that.
The first was that the Avatars were busy, trying to handle the rest of the prison. Once they gained control, they would come back for him in force. The second was that they had other problems to deal with beyond the prison. That was just as likely. Shiv hadn't seen the Tarrasque Quest come to a close yet, so he knew the giant creature was still alive. There was every possibility that the Tarrasque had returned to the Republic's territory and that the Ascendants were busy trying to fight it off.
But something wriggled inside his flesh. Something uncomfortable. For the first time, he wondered if Adam was truly all right, or if something had happened to him by now. If the Ascendants had captured him, or if—
Shiv didn't finish that thought. He didn't want to finish that thought. He'd faced horrors beyond his ability to comprehend—and killed them anyway—but the idea of Adam being dead bothered him. It bothered him enough that he had to burn off some of his anger before his Berserk Skill triggered.
He channeled it into his Psycho-Cartography, and immediately the skill began talking to him, indeed at length.
Psycho-Cartography: Valor told you about this before. He called it the wound. The scarring. You're going to lose people in this life, Shiv. You know that.
Shiv tried not to lash out in denial. It was his own skill that was telling him this, after all. But something inside him just couldn't accept it.
Psycho-Cartography: You can't accept it because you're desperate to maintain some control over your own life. For most of your existence, you've lived under Roland Arrow's thumb. But he was too soft and weak to press. So you lived under the thumb of a reluctant tyrant. Everything you suffered was from indecision. Indecision is entropy. And you want something more than rot. You want control. You crave it. Anytime the System or the world tries to take something from you, it sinks its fingers into your wound. And you’re tired of being hurt.
I can get better. I can get stronger. I can make sure that nothing happens to anyone or anything that I care about.
Psycho-Cartography: You are growing stronger than most people can ever dream of, and it still won't be enough. You know this. I'm telling you this because this thing you face isn't logical. It's emotional. And I'm going to say something else that you're not going to want to hear. You don't want to deal with this right now. You're not going to beat it right now. You don't have the emotional bandwidth to process it right now. If I tell you the truth, you will push it aside, and it will hurt worse once you experience it. Hopefully, we won't suffer this with Adam, but it's coming. The blow is coming. If we live long enough, we will lose more people.
The System is not going to let us go, the skill whispered in the back of his mind.
Shiv wanted to continue arguing, but he didn't know what to say. A feeling of dread climbed up inside him, and it corresponded with a loud cackle that sounded from Five.
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"Oh, those tricky, tricky Ravens," the wolf-man hummed. He brought his hands together, and with a final click, the insides of the cell turned into a large whirlpool of Dimensionality. Swirling tides of static black began to churn, and soon they solidified into a dense shape. Shiv no longer saw the cell itself. Instead, there was a solid tunnel forming before, leading to another place. As Shiv looked across, he saw that red-gold texture of Orichalcum, but then it was drowned by Dimensionality once more. Whatever place he'd just seen, Shiv guessed, was still part of the prison. It wasn't just an easy escape.
And why would it be?
Shiv thought to himself. Nothing is ever that easy. Not in this life."I must go across first," Five declared. He regarded the Legendary prisoners and then Shiv thereafter. "There is a code in the spell. Morse. They wish for me to identify myself and confirm who I am. If I do not, they will not establish a proper connection, and we will not be able to find them. One of you should come with me, just so you feel a little more at ease. You wouldn't want me running off with my own people now, would we? And leaving you all lost and abandoned?"
Shiv frowned. “Are you trying to make us suspect you or something, Five?”
"It's what several of you are thinking. Why avoid it?" Five was studying Urri’s face. The large Vulteg just grunted with annoyance. And that's when the Deathless realized that a few of the prisoners were paranoid about a lot more than just Shiv. "I can't say I blame you," Five said. "However, I can give you a reason to trust me. Or at least a reason to think that I am a controllable variable."
Despite how thoughtful Five seemed, the way he operated made Shiv ever more wary. Bonk leaned down and whispered to the Deathless, "Be careful of this one. They are a clever operator. Spies often are."
Shiv wanted to volunteer himself, but stopped when he realized how that might look. He was in league with the wolf-man, at least from the other prisoners' perspectives. If he said that he would make sure the wolf-man wouldn't betray them, it just might cause a bit more of a problem.
Instead, he decided to extend his trust and mercy to the only Legendary prisoner he'd faced in battle so far.
"Elf," Shiv said. His tone was rough and direct. "Go with him."
The elven Legend’s head snapped around to stare at Shiv. Her mouth was slightly agape. "You would rather me go?"
"Yeah," Shiv said. "I got your measure, don't I? It’s why I trust you more than most anyone else. Besides, you have those Chronomantic clones. You can send them to scout for you for something. It's more effective than what I can do. If something goes wrong, just swap places with one of the clones like you did earlier."
She didn't know what to say for a moment, but slowly she nodded. “Very well.” Her gold eyes flashed once, and she let out a sigh. “I am called Kura the Omen. I have been placed in this prison due to a series of assassinations I performed within this Republic. I've killed a great many nobles for benefactors whom I cannot remember nor will I name, and today you have given me back my life. Despite my discomfort, despite my shame for failing to slay you, I acknowledge your mercy and your clemency. I will do as you say.”
"I, uh, okay," Shiv said, uncertain why she was stating all this out loud.
"I will serve your interests until you are satisfied. I see that you are of the honorable sort." The elf shuffled uncomfortably. "I might have misjudged you in my past, but I find myself at the mercy of you now. Whatever you desire, I will do my utmost to make manifest. Such is the debt I bear.”
One of the Legendary prisoners snorted. It was the man with blades growing out of himself. He scratched his chin. "Shit, you know, I get it. If you wanna fuck him right now, go ahead. I’ve been pent up in my own cage long enough that I wanna fuck him too, and I’m not into men. But since you’re willing, we could all use a show."
And then something cracked him across the back of the head. Shiv saw a golden shadow materialize and then fade in the same instant. The man turned. A few blades exploded out from his body, cleaving through the air. It struck the Orichalcum walls and left faint dents in the surface. Shiv blinked, barely reacting to what just happened, and the elf's expression didn't change. Most of the other prisoners responded the same way, and a few laughed.
The blade-covered man snarled and prepared to push his way free from the other prisoners. Kura tensed, ready for combat, but both of them flinched as Shiv yanked on their fear chains. The bladed man jerked to a halt, planting his foot hard against the ground and using a skill to root himself in place, stopping himself from being dragged forward. The elf, meanwhile, switched position with one of her shadows and got free of Shiv's grip.
Before Kura and the bladed man could continue their scuffle, the Deathless snarled. “Knock that shit off!” All eyes were on him now, but he just glared at the two troublemakers, unamused. "Alright, I'm gonna put this plainly too. If anyone has something funny to say about me, it had better be actually funny. And my metric for funny is making me laugh. I also would like to say that you'd better all start acting like fucking Pathbearers and not worthless thugs from some back alley. You're Legends. Felling act like it. If you’re going to act like children, then I’m going to beat you like you’re my stepchildren. We don’t have time for this shit. We can't be fighting amongst each other if we want to break out here. There's still Avatars and wardens waiting for us. Save it for them."
A tension entered the air, and the other prisoners watched as the bladed man began to twitch. He glared at Shiv, and the Deathless' Psycho-Cartography Skill realized why.
Psycho-Cartography:You've offended his sensibilities, and more, his ego. Threatening him makes him look pathetic. If you don’t adjust what you said, he might have to fight you just to prove that he is the greater Legend. Weakness is fatal in this place—and you have failed to give him any respect.
Shiv struggled not to sigh. So far, the Legends he'd run into in this prison, aside from the Avatars, had been uneven. Some were absolute monsters, while others are seemed like little more than overpowered children. The bladed man was closer to the overpowered child side—but Shiv really couldn't afford another messy fight right now.
“Consider it a favor to me," Shiv added, trying to soothe how the man was feeling. "I'm asking, not telling."
The blade-covered Pathbearer considered Shiv for a moment, and then he let out a scoff. "Asking. Fine. Sure, Deathless. Seems I can be merciful too. With the right people." He eyed the elf and spat on the ground. "Fucking bitch."
Kura was about to respond, but Shiv cut her off. "Don't talk to him, don't look at him, get in the portal after Five. We've wasted enough time."
She seemed like she wanted to resist, but then remembered that she'd just sworn a long oath of loyalty to Shiv. Finally, she let out a brief sigh and took her position behind the wolf-man. The wolf-man jumped down, and she followed thereafter. In her place, however, remained a golden shadow. It glistened in the air, and it lacked any detail, but Shiv could still feel the vitality seeping out from it. More importantly, he could see a faint trail of Chronomancy painting the world. He hadn't noticed that before, mainly because the trail was almost transparent with how thin it was.
As the wolf-man and Kura remained gone for a few moments, Shiv stared at the prisoners and tried to shrug off the awkwardness. "So, do you all know each other or what? Before the whole prison break thing, I mean?" He gestured at the group.
Several of the prisoners looked at each other, and Urri simply folded his arms. "We have laid eyes upon one another during our allotted activity time. But we were not allowed to socialize.”
“We are made to change cubes and cells every few months,” the glistening, column-shaped Pathbearer said. Shiv still had no idea what kind of creature it was or if it was simply someone who had evolved into being a crystal column. “It prevents us from establishing lasting connections. When freedom came, we burst out and found ourselves faced with a shared foe. That is why we are together. When this moment is done, we will be strangers to each other once more, but for now we are a horde."
"More like a gaggle of fools without any better options," the binaric crown-wearing automaton declared. "It is purely calculus that we are standing together. Alone, we might be able to overcome a few wardens, but they know our capabilities, and this prison was built to keep us inside." The automaton paused. "What you said earlier, that you have a Unique Skill that will allow you to trespass beyond the temporal loop, is that true?"
"Every word," Shiv said. "It's the same skill I showed you guys earlier. The one that kept making you forget where I was over and over again.”
"How does it work?" Urri asked. The Vulteg was trying to be slick. Too bad he had about as much social finesse as Shiv did during a blind rage.
"Don't know how it works," Shiv said, shrugging. "It just does. Do all of you understand every single one of your skills?"
A chorus of affirmative agreements greeted Shiv, and he tried not to wince. There was a faint hint of judgment in their eyes, and slowly, they were beginning to understand that Shiv might not be a conventional Legendary-Tier Pathbearer.
I don't know how to feel about most of these prisoners being more refined and well-learned than I am, Shiv thought. While also being barely more than emotional children at the same time. How the hells does that even work?
Psycho-Cartography: Settle for using that as motivational fuel when you begin making up for your lacking education.
"So I've got another question for you," the blade-covered Pathbearer said. Instead of staring at Shiv now, he was looking at Bonk. "How'd you get an orc bodyguard?"
"Bodyguard?" the gray-skinned brute said with a laugh. "I'm no bodyguard. I'm simply serving my Insul."
And a flash of comprehension passed across the bladed man's face. "The Vaketh-Insul. Shit. You actually did the ritual." The man threw his head back and began laughing. Slowly, his laughter climbed higher and higher until he finally shook his head and let out a breath. "You know, I'm beginning to regret not taking that myself. Might have led me down a different path. Hell, Lone Star might still be after me, but at least I would have someone fighting by my side instead of being a fugitive in this forsaken shithole."
"The Challenger offered you the deal too," Shiv said, surprised.
The man nodded. Several other prisoners muttered about getting certain offers as well, and suddenly Shiv didn't feel quite as special.
The Challenger is amused by your jealousy.
"And most of you didn't agree," Shiv confirmed. The Legendary prisoners scoffed or just shook their heads.
"Becoming the Insul is more venom than one,” the blade-covered Pathbearer said. “Mingling with orcs? Oh, that's an eventual death sentence. Besides, now that you're a Legend, you're going to probably draw the attention of the Culturist at some point. And let me tell you, that's not a bastard that you want to get to know.”
“Who the hells is that?" Shiv asked. "Never heard that name before." Or had he? He couldn't recall everything that was exchanged between him and his orcs. But then he noticed a look on Bonk's face. It wasn't the look that Bonk usually had. If Shiv had to describe it, it was as close to true awe as an orc could muster.
"The Culturist," Bonk breathed. "Insul, if you'd ever met a Legendary-Tier orc, you would understand that we contain even greater multitudes. Multitudes that sometimes leave us feeling…" Bonk trailed off as he tried to recompose his speech. "He is an aberration. I wish to kill him someday and be the reason he must reincarnate.”
"You sound like you admire this guy, in a fucked-up orc kind of way," Shiv said.
"I find him deviant. I find him incomprehensible. I find him terrifying." The orc drew in a long inhale. "And I find that intoxicating. Imagine one of your own kind, but you can't understand them. One of your own kind that has drifted so close to the races you face, to the peoples you hunt, that they have become almost like them in certain ways. He experiences true sympathy, true empathy. He learns their emotional baselines and briefly understands what it means to hate us, but then he returns to himself. He becomes the orc of orcs, and when he leads, we win. If he leads, that is.”
“If?" Shiv repeated, not understanding why the orc used that word.
“If,” Bonk confirmed. “Because sometimes, the Culturist turns on us. For that, he is also known by another name among our kind: Anzeth-Insul. It means Arch-Traitor.”
Bonk’s gaze turned distant, as if stuck in a fantasy or a memory. “Often, the Culturist learns how best to improve our species by betraying us first. He fights on the side of the enemy and learns how they approach our extermination. He teaches them how best to kill us if he deems them interesting, and then, when the balance is tipped, he will return to see if he can figure out how to let us win anyway. Like war vaccination.”
"And the Challenger is fine with that?" Shiv asked.
"The Challenger delights in it," Bonk replied. "The Challenger loves nothing more than to see us grow, and to grow in any way possible. The Culturist has taken the exo-school of thought to the extreme. In fact, he is the paragon of that entire clique: to steal from other cultures and races and adopt their virtues for our own. Why, it's someone like him that is half the reason we orcs have non-orc skills anyway."