271 (II)

  Liberation [I]

  "The future?" Adam asked.

  "Yeah, you know, like your future—how things were gonna go for you, what you wanted to do, who you wanted to be. If everything hadn't turned out like… this."

  Adam hummed as he considered that. "I suppose I did. Probably not as much as one would expect from the son of a national hero, though. I always mostly focused on my day-to-day. In the long term, well, I wanted to marry Isabella. Do… everything that comes with that." His voice grew quiet. “Now, I don't know if she'll even be alive by the time we get to Blackedge. My parents told me she's still enduring Sullain's sickness. Her Toughness is at Adept, so that might be worth something. It gives her better chances than most people in the town, anyway. But before all this, I simply wanted to serve Blackedge. Live up to my father's name." Adam paused. "Perhaps I wanted to surpass him? I wanted to make him proud, but I also didn't want to stand in his shadow. I wanted to… succeed him, maybe?"

  Yet Shiv sensed a 'but' there. "You didn't think you could?"

  Adam smiled and looked down. "It's a hard thing to imagine. Yes, everyone heaped praise upon me at home and at the Academy. I was supposedly a young genius for how fast I advanced in terms of levels and skills. But Father? He was on another caliber altogether. Oh, he always encouraged me. He always had the right amount of wisdom, the right lesson, the right insight to lead me down the proper path. And he told me that I was more of a natural talent than he was. But I always had doubts. I never truly saw him fight seriously, not until the siege, but his Awareness, his accuracy, his speed. He always made me feel like an insect. It wasn't even just a mountain that I had to surmount before I could be on his level. It was like I didn't even exist in the same world. It was like I was missing far too much. And I couldn't imagine it. I couldn't imagine what I needed to go through to get on his level."

  Yeah, Master my ass. Shiv didn't much like Roland, but if there was one thing he had to admit to himself, it was that Roland Arrow—even without the Starhawk—might be one of the most dangerous Pathbearers he would ever face. Shiv had been cut down almost immediately, hundreds of kilometers away from Blackedge, at Roland's hands. The arrows had come down from beyond the void. Shiv hadn't had any chance of surviving them, no chance of even reacting to them.

  And if they were to fight today, the Deathless had doubts too. He had a Legendary-Tier skill; his Magical Resistance was immense, and his Bifurcated Processing would allow him to drastically increase his Toughness. Even so, he couldn't reach Roland Arrow easily, and if he couldn't clear the distance, the Town Lord would be capable of overwhelming him with an onslaught of all kinds of arrows. Shiv didn't have a good counter to that. In fact, Shiv didn't even have a great counter against Adam, assuming he managed to escape his grasp.

  I have way too much invested in close-quarters combat, Shiv mused.

  "Yes, that's the exact feeling I had about him," Adam said. "Too many skills. Too much power. Too much capability. He knew too much, he possessed too much. And there was always more to him beneath the surface. And now that I've had a glimpse of what he can truly do, it feels strange. I'm supposed to be a Hero. I could splatter the me from two or three months ago with a flick of my wrist. Yet, why does it feel like there's still a world between us? And the worst thing, the Culturist made me feel the same way. He spots things I fail to notice. He's so much stronger than me, so much tougher. His magic is overwhelming, and his Animancy, the thing he's doing to my very soul... What chance do I have against that?"

  "I thought that once I reached Legendary-Tier, things were going to be easy,” Shiv said. “The System was going to let off. I was going to be able to shape my own fate. Now that I've gotten here, things are even worse, and it's like I'm only now surrounded by actual killers. Everyone we fought before just seems like a warm-up now. Confriga felt like a giant, but he's a felling gnat next to Jessica. It doesn't matter how high your Tier is, there'll always be someone stronger around the next corner.”

  Adam nodded in agreement. "To get back to your question, I suppose I had visions and assumptions, but they were vague. I was more concerned with overcoming what was in front of me. Then you had to get thrown down into the Abyss, and I had to be humbled by some Raven."

  "Oh yeah, that piece of shit," Shiv grunted in amusement. "How long do you think it'd take you to kill someone like him now?"

  Adam paused to consider that. "I don't know. I don't think I would even notice someone like him now. I'd cut him down, and he would just join one of the many thousands I've butchered thus far on our merry little journey to save Blackedge." The Gate Lord paused. "Gods, he beat me pretty badly at the start of all this, didn't he? I don't think we really managed to hurt him at all."

  "Not even a little," Shiv said. "I probably wouldn't have been able to kill him the second time if he weren't so injured by the Weaveresses who brought him in. Not even a week later, we were fighting Harkness. And after that, there was the bloody Jealousy, the damned Recollector. The Vicar. The Tarrasque. The lunatics and the guards in the prison. The felling Ascendants."

  And slowly, Adam's mood began to climb. With his Glimpse of Perspective, he watched as the way Adam saw himself changed as well. No longer was he just a burning feather. He was a wing ablaze, still being driven to the brink, still being withered and tested to the very limit. But he was burning bright. He wasn't just being used up. There was somewhere he could go. Instead of falling, the wing aflame rose.

  "We've come a long way, haven't we?" Adam said.

  "Incredibly long," Shiv agreed. "I don't think I could have imagined killing any of those things at the start of all this. Hells, I got eaten by a Cave Biter over and over again."

  "Worlds Beyond," Adam whispered. "Perhaps it still is worlds beyond, but I guess I already crossed a few worlds, didn't I?"

  "Yeah," Shiv agreed. "Yeah, you did, didn't you?"

  "Considering that, what's another? What's one more? What's a few more challenges? Seems great and insurmountable, but maybe… maybe I shouldn't think about this… maybe we should just deal with the pain and experience… try to overcome, improve bit by bit, or at least improve as long as I can and as long as I'm still alive."

  And then Adam let out a stunned breath. "Shiv, Shiv, I think I got it."

  "Got what?" Shiv asked.

  "A vision," Adam replied. "A vision of Blackedge restored. No, perhaps something more than Blackedge. A sanctuary for my family, for all our surviving people, and more. A place that the System can't touch. A place that the System can't destroy. That no one can destroy. An Enduring City."

  "Gate Piety," Shiv said. “The Gate Eternal. The Azure Gate. Give me a few minutes and I can come up with a dozen more catchy titles.”

  Adam smirked. "Now that sounds like a nice vacation destination. At least that can be our start. That can be our first attempt. I think we will fail. We'll be driven to the brink again and again. But we're here, aren't we? We're still here after everything. And I can still remember how hard it was during the process."

  "But we're still here," Shiv agreed. "So, let's go build something that the System can't tear down. Is that what you're saying?"

  "Yes, something beyond strife. Something that will rise and stay risen long past the ruins of every other nation."

  "Sounds hubristic," Shiv said, almost tauntingly.

  "I think we allow ourselves a little bit of arrogance after everything we've been through," Adam replied. "And if the System is determined to burn me, then I'm going to use the fire however I can. It might drive me to the brink, but I'll use that. I'll use that. I'll survive that until I can't, and I'll do everything I can to keep you alive. And if you ever get killed, I want to find a way to resurrect you."

  "Don't worry, Adam. I won't just be your granddaddy. I'm gonna be your daddy too."

  Adam gagged. "Please, never say that again! Actually, since you technically resurrected my mother by releasing her from your soul, doesn't that make you—oh, I guess 'hoebag' does apply!"

  Shiv shivered. "Shut up, man, that's not even funny!"

  Adam started laughing again.

  And for a while, because of all they'd survived, and despite everything still arrayed against them, the two sons of Blackedge found themselves genuinely happy amid the fires of strife.

  ***

  At the dawn of the second day, they had put together enough syllables from Kura's increasingly frustrated-looking time clones to know that the project was on track to be finished without issue.

  Apparently, she'd managed to destroy Maiden's dormant Avatar as well, rendering it a non-factor—or so she claimed.

  Though only one-and-a-half days had passed in the outside world, she and Concelhaunt had endured nine full days within the Temporal Gate. Rusty confirmed her math, stating that he had a schedule connected to the Gate.

  With that known, everyone began final preparations for the evacuation to come.

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  The orcs convened with each other, discussing battle plans and what they intended to do upon reaching Blackedge. Adam had provided them with sketches, and Whisper had added his own maps, drafted entirely from memory during his brief stay in the town when the Tarrasque was attacking, and impressively accurate as far as Adam could tell.

  If nothing else, the grayskins seemed excited, and that was more than what Shiv could say about their other allies.

  Gone mainly kept to herself, but got closer to Adam as the time approached. She asked him about specific details, where the back alleys or secret footpaths were within the town, and the Gate Lord spent some time elaborating on what she could take advantage of.

  When that was done, she managed to strike a deal with Merrielmel, and obtained a set of adamantine scale armor to wear for the upcoming battle. What she was meant to do in trade with the elven Enchanter Shiv didn't know, and he didn't ask. Gone seemed like the private type, and if nothing else, Shiv could respect that.

  Candles was not the private type. Candles had a hard time thinking without a significant infusion of fire or radiation. Candles also had no inside voice. The Pyromancer muttered to himself, madly, joyously, telling himself about all the things he would soon burn. He sounded like an addict trying to keep the drug at bay, trying to hold off just a while longer. Not because he wanted to get clean, but because the fast would make the high so much grander.

  Even so, Shiv had to restrain him at two points to stop him from burning their Hydra companion.

  Solzimort remained blissful and unaware of just how close he came to being set ablaze. The childlike monster with twelve heads hummed nursery rhymes to himself most days and explored the underground of the capital, though he was slightly saddened that he wouldn't be exploring any more funny “dead boxes.” He proved exceptionally easy to wrangle and more than a little obedient, so much so that Shiv didn't want to risk him in battle. It felt wrong, like flinging a child into the fray. Even if the child was hyper-powerful.

  Solzimort had done enough, and Shiv wasn’t going to be a bastard. If the Hydra was going to do anything, it would be logistics: they needed someone to move the extremely wounded and sick from Blackedge first anyway.

  Then there was the dispute between Five and the Educator. Maia rejected any and all requests from him to free the people she'd painted into her tome. This meant Threshold and Rebis remained trapped. Even though she allowed Adam to take back his equipment, she refused to relinquish control over the mutilated Rebis. For he had served as Enoch's Avatar, and she had a special plan for him all her own. Much as Shiv wanted to force the issue, he had bigger fights to handle, and promised Five they would deal with this when things calmed.

  Uncharacteristically, the wolf-man of Aviary simply huffed and walked off, seeming genuinely enraged, judging by the flame inside his core. "When do things ever calm with you, Deathless?"

  Shiv didn't even have anything to say in rebuttal of that. He was right. When were things calm with Shiv?

  Though Kura suffered from extreme time dilation, she continued unleashing more and more temporal clones until they were a veritable flood.

  What she was trying to do, Shiv couldn't figure out, and her words weren't coming fast enough for anyone else to decipher the meaning. But he knew she was doing something. Her clones were oscillating, giving off mana frequencies that pulsed with each other. At times, Shiv suspected a massive spell was being shaped. What it did? He didn't know. And he wasn't sure if he looked forward to finding out.

  And that brought the Deathless to the fae. Currently, he had two under his employ. Cullywier was more than happy to serve Shiv in any capacity other than direct combat. Shiv immediately told him about his intention to use Cullywier as another layer of defense for Uva and the people within Starhawk's Perch. Cullywier saw no issue with that but warned Shiv that he could only rebuff some of the weaker Fingerlings, that he was weaker than he ought to be, severed from his “Narrative Arc.”

  And that led Shiv to enlist Toasty once more.

  "You want to use me as a shield?" the Bread-Knight shrieked in outrage. "You want to use me as some kind of pathetic, disgusting, worthless blockade? Against those wretches? Those ugly, disgusting, vile—"

  "I don't want you to be a shield," Shiv recontextualized. "I want you to be a guard. You're a Knight, aren't you? Well... If I'm going to have to get you back to your home... I need you to do something for me first. I need you... to live up to your Knighthood. Princess Plum Blossom must have chosen you for something, right?"

  Sage of the Enkindled Heart 131 > 133

  Rhetoric 4 > 7

  Toasty immediately stood a little taller at that—even though a few crumbs fell off his body. "Don't think I am unaware of what you're doing, playing on my pride!"

  Shiv nodded. "Yeah! But it's justified! You're the only Knight among us! And no one else is strong enough, or important enough, to stop the Eldritch."

  "Oh, you vile human and your snake-tongued ways!" Toasty huffed. "Fie, it may be so. Use me, but do not ever forget. We have struck a bargain. I have done more for you than—"

  "Yeah, yeah, I know," Shiv said. "And honestly, I'm going to be very grateful. You do this for me, and I'll let you out of the cage for good."

  The Faebread tilted his head. "Truly, you would do that?"

  "Yeah, of course. We're going to be in it together now. And if this whole slipgate thing works, no one's going to want you back home faster than I do."

  "So mote it be," Toasty said with a rasp of laughter. "This is a service I can see delivered. Very well, I will protect the people you cannot, so long as you remember what you promised and understand that it is by my mercy, through my infinite generosity, that you have managed to strike this bargain."

  "And I thank you for it all the way," Shiv said.

  That led to the final person Shiv spoke to. A final individual trapped inside a frosted stone dagger. The Deathless said nothing at first. Instead, he reached his Vitae inside the dagger's soul and found Andra. She had been howling in the dark for some time, viciously furious at first, but now morose and slightly demoralized by the seclusion. He wondered if it was how Valor must have felt after being trapped.

  As soon as she felt Shiv's presence, she pleaded and threatened. Both at once. While he was almost impressed, he ignored her. Instead, he mended her Cryomancy skill and took an animated skill infusion from that. Thereafter, they enlisted Jessica's help, creating a secluded dimension using Rusty to hide what they were doing. Then, Shiv began making Vitae Golems. Golem after golem. And that was what Shiv ultimately spent most of his time doing. Practicing Golemancy. He had Adam find him a few more low-lives he could drain the vitality out of, so he could continuously top himself up using his Enchained Heart of Life-Giving. But most of that went to making more and more golems rather than animating bread or other foodstuff.

  Shiv made over 245 Golems in the two days he had. 245 infused with five skills each: Shapeless Tides, Inertial Overdrive, Pillar of Orichalcum, Vitality Drain, and ultimately Andra's Frost Skill. Because he wished for the Eldritch to taste a little bit of their own medicine.

  Golemancy 28 > 35

  Vitaemancy 127 > 130

  Jessica raised a sharp eyebrow. "Broken Moon, kid. That's a small army you built up there. No wonder you needed so many squatter thugs. What are you planning to do with them? Using them on me?"

  "No. But there is another Legend I have in mind. A gray-skinned one. Slight bit bigger than you. Maybe whoever shows up to interrupt our evacuation. There's always something that goes wrong at the last minute. Always something…”

  Shiv wanted to be prepared. And Jessica nodded in return, acknowledging his diligence. "Well, it's a good strategy. Frankly, I didn't know you could do this. You're showing me an awful lot of your cards, kid. Not something I would do."

  "Did you ever have to play balance of power between the Republic, some Abyssal Lord who ruined your life before it even began, the Eldritch, and a horde of orcs?"

  She rolled her eyes. "Alright, I get the point. I'm just saying, maybe you shouldn't trust me that much either."

  "Trust you more than I trust almost everyone else here. You're in it for yourself. You're in it for the most selfish, yet understandable desire around. You want your husband and daughter back. Just like I understand you're going to have to intervene in case the Culturist goes rogue and decides to do something weird."

  The Giantsbane smirked up at him and puffed her chest out. "Oh, you're confident I can beat him, huh?"

  "No, I'm confident that it'll take him a lot longer to kill you than me. I'm gonna be spending that precious time to figure out how I can free Adam from his metamorphosis."

  "You know, usually when someone has a plan to be a rat bastard, they don't announce it openly."

  "I'm not the kind to hide or lie. You'll get it straight from me, and I think I'm gonna get it the same way from you."

  Jessica just nodded.

  Despite all the violence that transpired between them, Shiv had a weird feeling, a feeling that he could just understand the Giantsbane. “And Jessica.”

  “Hm.”

  “When we save Blackedge, you keep your hands off Roland. I have something to settle with him first.”

  She sneered. “The fuck I will.”

  “Yeah. You will. Because I’ll get the Culturist to put you in time out.”

  “Oh, you little Chandler shit. I see how it is. You just love using people against each other, don’t you?”

  “Works a little too well. Just keep this in mind when you think about doing something funny.”

  Gardener of Doubt 65 > 67

  ***

  At exactly the 48th hour, Rusty began to gleam. A beam of gold expanded out from the dimensional blade, and the mana diffusers were turned into place, flashing into their original positions in ripples of Chronomancy. The obelisk came back a moment later, and the spatial and time mana receded back into the Awakened Sword. Concelhaunt and Kura, however, remained missing, though Shiv could see faint imprints of their bodies slowly emerging as if two forms surfacing from beneath a muddied pond.

  "It's ready," Merrielmel called out. He rushed into the room and came to a halt beneath the obelisk. Immediately, his drone spilled out from inside his tasseled robes and the Enchanter began casting spells, twisting the very flow of Dimensionality and guiding it up along the obelisk into the Gate looming above.

  "Alright, time to get Hymn," Adam breathed. He turned to face the gathered crowd. "Who's ready to finally finish rescuing my felling town?"

  Shiv and all the orcs who were there during the siege of Blackedge raised their hands and cheered loudly. The Culturist lifted a single finger coyly, wanting to be included.

  “Calibrating,” Merrielmel cried. He stood at the center of the chamber, and the nearby walls and floor spun slowly. Bits of mana jumped from panel to panel, and Rusty remained embedded beneath the grand obelisk, shrunken from its previous all-encompassing size. “C-calibrating.” The room began to tremble. Motes of static and darkness started raining from the pyramid-shaped diffusers, and the flowing mana danced to the movements of Merrielmel’s thin fingers. “I should be able to get this to stabilize. I usually have Concel with me here, but—but, doing this alone… I think I can… I can…”

  “Merrielmel,” Shiv called out. He pointedly breathed in and out deeply, and the Enchanter nodded nervously as he tried to mimic the reaction.

  “S-sorry. It’s just that we’re so close. So close. S—”

  “Get closer,” Hymn suddenly called out, walking past Shiv and striding toward Merrielmel. The Deathless did a double-take at the headmaster’s sudden appearance—and all the blood and viscera soaking his body.

  “Hymn? The hells happened to you?” Shiv asked.

  “Got an unfortunate visit earlier. A group of possessed Seekers trying to steal my flesh and hollow my eyes in the name of the Stranger. Typical stuff, really. Except for the fact that the Stranger has cornered Blackedge, and that this was the Stranger’s plan to perform a pincer attack to seize the slipgate and use me to ambush the town from within.” Hymn sneered, and his eyes blazed bright with mana and cold rage. “We’re all but out of time. And also, someone’s been telling the Stranger about our plans—about this little secret project here. So, before we go across, I want to have a brief conversation with our little rat.”

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