275 (II)

  Liberation [V]

  His vector wings flashed bright as he surged toward the corner of the room. To his relief, he could feel his father's heart beating, could feel the thump-thump-thump provide him with the faintest tremors of hope. His mother lived as well. And over the din and carnage, Adam could also hear the Starhawk's voice, muted though it was.

  The sheer force of his acceleration scattered the broken bits of sodden furniture that drifted along the edges of the room beside his parents. Up close, he could see what had happened to them. They were also shrouded in that stilling Chronomancy inflicted by the Hatchling, trapped within a cage of time.

  Adam's mind went blank at the sight of both of them. He reached down reflexively, not even thinking, and his hands fused to them, as if they too were frozen, bound to a specific point in time. The Gate Lord grimaced, tried to pull away, but couldn't. Once more, he was locked there, locked with only his Shattered Star providing any resistance against the eldritch Chronomancy.

  "Let me."

  Gone was suddenly beside him, and her body was aglow with crackling power. The electricity which flowed across her form proved to be a potent solution against a time-stilling frost. After a few seconds of continued struggle, the ice broke, shattering into flakes and shards, and finally, his parents tumbled free. They could move again. Their hearts beat faster, their lungs filled with air as if they had been suffocating for far too long.

  Rose was the first one to rouse. She coughed violently, turning on her side, trying to regain her bearings. "Motherfucker!" she snarled between clenched teeth. "Uva, what is your—Adam?”

  She turned and saw her son, and he reached down. His mind was still reeling. Too much had happened too fast. There was still so much to do, but he didn't let the moment go. He took her slight form into his arms and embraced her tightly, even as the Perch shook violently, even as the town itself threatened to come asunder.

  "Adam." The Starhawk's form manifested, looming over the still-downed Roland Arrow, awesome and ethereal. "You're here… Wait, Uva!”

  "I know," Adam replied. "She's gone. The Hatchling. It has her. It dove into one of the bodies, one of the Indexes, I think.” He used his Seer of Horizons, but there was too much happening outside—he didn’t know where she went, how much time they had left before she—“Godsdammit!”

  A shared rumble of pure frustration escaped the Ascendant. "The Hatchling. It severed my connection to the Dreamtaker, left me unmoored. By the time I returned, she had frozen Roland just as I reached him."

  "It's okay," Adam said, voice cold. "I'll get her back. It's not your fault. It's not." He reached out and tried to clasp his patron god’s hand, but found his hand slipping clean through the Starhawk's ethereal form. "Thank you, Starhawk. Thank you for keeping all of them safe so far. Thank you."

  "Thank me after we manage to save your friend."

  "'Your friend' sounds better than 'second favorite Avatar'," Adam replied.

  Despite everything, that earned a laugh from the Starhawk. And also a chuckle from the Culturist.

  Adam regarded the orc from the corner of his eye, but the Culturist was facing the shadow of the Ascendant instead. “Ah, Starhawk the Just. The righteous Ascendant. All this for your machinations?” He gestured at their ruined surroundings. “Such high ideals. Such grave costs—paid by everyone but you.”

  "Culturist," the Starhawk said, recognizing the orc in an instant. "Do not pretend to care for what I have lost. But… what are you doing here?”

  The Culturist laughed softly. "What do you think? I was drawn into the System's whims once more. It demands my attention. Now, where is he? Where is Valor Thann? Show me his vessel. I wish to see a debt between us settled.”

  In an explosive instant, Roland snapped back to his feet. He drew his arm back and had an arrow nocked before the Culturist could say a word, aimed directly at the orc's throat.

  "You will not," Roland swallowed, barely able to stand, "touch him. He is not yours to claim. He is not yours to have. He has done much for this town. I care nor whatever petty vendetta you have. I will not let you—"

  "Peace, Roland Arrow." The Culturist held out both hands, keeping them open and putting on an air of pacifism. "I am not here to indulge in old grudges, at least not yet. I am here to repay old debts instead. I am here to see Valor Thann returned. To his truest glory. Or at least as close as is within my ability. Such is why I come bearing his torso, the fragment of his infused with the first and greatest of his Legendary Skills."

  Roland's eyes grew wide, but his paranoia remained. It wasn't surprising that he distrusted the Culturist. An orc was what it was: a beast that sought to prey on you using whatever means it had. Letting the Culturist do as he wanted was courting more than certain death; it was looking down a deep and winding tunnel of torment at the worst.

  "He's telling the truth," Adam said, defending the Culturist begrudgingly. "Where is Valor, Father? We need him. We need him now. The Hatchling has taken Uva. It jumped into the minds of one of the Indexes that were fused around the town. We need everyone we can get to save her. But before that, I need to see you evacuated."

  Nothing more needed to be said. Roland burst into motion. He tore across the room, and he sent the debris littering the ground flying toward the walls with a flourish of his arms. There, in the opposite corner of the room, a small pile of time-frozen parts lay: a time-frozen skull, a stone dagger, and the bones of two long, human arms.

  Gone immediately blurred toward the pieces and dug her claws into the eldritch Chronomancy. The frosted layer of tarnished gold broke free from Valor's bones, and the illusory silhouette showing the contours of his face and body manifested once again. The Legend rose from the ground, and he took in the gathered crowd for but a second before his eyes fell on one figure in particular.

  "Culturist." Valor's voice was neither terrified nor surprised. "Have you come to seek an end to our rivalry? To strike me down when I am scattered?"

  The Culturist guffawed loudly. If he was offended by the accusation, he didn't show it. "Quite the contrary, Valor. I am here for a different reason. I seek to remake you, to rebuild you to your highest peak and push you yet beyond, so that I might, in my hubris, strike you down when you are a titan rather than a cripple."

  And with that, the orc parted his feathered cloak, reaching back and unlatching the armor from his torso. Bits of bone slid free until a core of otherworldly metal was revealed—a ribcage, a complete spinal column, a pelvis, and all the other parts of a torso, fused together in one shimmering piece. A ghostly flicker of the man that they used to be and who he might become again manifested one final time, briefly meeting Valor's gaze, before fading entirely.

  "My torso," Valor breathed. "Where? How did you find it? Compact—”

  The Culturist scoffed. "They had it. They lost it. Poor fools. But what a blessing it was for me. Though it took a massacre to get this. Several massacres, in fact. And the damnation of an entire people. Never say that I don't care for you, oh, my Nemesis. Compact was most careless, losing such a treasure and letting it fall into my hands. I do not doubt that some unfortunate peon will be getting executed for his superior's mistake in the near future, if it has not happened already."

  With a loud click, the bones fully unlatched from the Culturist's form. Beneath was still a shroud of pure white, made from owl feathers and infused with enchantments Adam couldn't even guess at. That made him wary all over, but so far, the Culturist had proved himself to be something worse than most orcs. Honest, direct, and genuinely interested in a true battle against Valor.

  Adam was growing to realize he wasn't the important one here. That he was simply a means to an end, a curiosity, a pawn to use and play between two ancient Pathbearers who have been at war with each other, perhaps before the Yellowstone Republic was even established.

  Gods, that makes me feel small, Adam thought with a wince.

  Valor stared at the Culturist. "Do you understand what you offer me, orc? If you give this back to me, your easiest means to victory, to dominance, will be forever beyond your grasp."

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  The Culturist bared his teeth in a wide and delighted smile. "And nothing would make me happier. If I am to die over and over again because I prove your inferior, then so be it! I would rather suffer pain, death, and humiliation at the hands of your returned and perfected form for a million years than betray myself by decimating the shadow that you currently are."

  "From your mouth to the System's ear," Valor mused.

  He hovered through the air, gliding toward his torso, more pieces in one than he currently possessed. And for a moment, he just stared. He didn't fuse together with them, not yet. Instead, he studied them as the Culturist held the body still for him, studied the gem socketed at the center of his sternum, and let out a deep sigh. Without turning around, he said, "Adam, before I regain this piece of myself, this bit of wholeness, I want you to know that I was… glad to have known you."

  "What do you mean?" Adam asked, confused. "Shouldn't this empower you? Return you to who you were? You're talking as if you might forget me."

  "No, Adam. I will not forget you. But I might remember who I was. And that might be different than who I am right now. Much of me is missing. And now a considerable portion will be returned. It is as the Culturist said: I am but a shadow of myself. And the man I was before is not someone I fully remember, someone I do not fully recognize. I just hope that no matter what happens, or whoever I might become, and despite all my shortcomings, you found our time together at least somewhat worthwhile."

  Adam struggled to find the right words for Valor, but time was of the essence, and they had little to spare. So the Gate Lord did something uncharacteristic. He went with his gut. He faced his discomfort. "I am glad to have met you, Legend Valor, and I hope to keep knowing you."

  Valor’s jaw closed. A flickering flame glanced at Adam from the corner of its socket. "Well said, Hero. Well said."

  The Perch rumbled. A shadow spilled in from the outside. For a beat, Adam expected the Index to have come back, for the Hatchling to try and finish them all off. But when he looked out, he realized it was the Court Leviathan drawing nearer. More orcs flooded into the castle, coming with intentions of whetting their Skills in steel upon eldritch blood.

  What they beheld was a rechristening. The Culturist held out Valor's body as if it were a scepter or a crown, and the ghostly figure before him a king waiting to accept. Valor rose, no longer facing the gem socketed within the torso's chest, and turned. He swiveled until his head rested just above the top of the spinal column. And then he descended.

  His skull connected to the spine with a loud, reverberating chime, the sound not akin to bone striking bone at all, and a second thereafter, his dagger heart turned and pierced through the gem socketed in his sternum, shattering it entirely and then usurping its place. As it sank deep and fused into the sternum itself, Valor's ghostly manifestation of flesh disappeared, and his physical form began to change. Rippling wavelengths of mana flashed into being and danced around the gleaming pieces of a material from somewhere far away. At the same time, Valor's right and left arm slotted into the sockets at his shoulders and melded with it, connecting all pieces together with a blinding flash of energy.

  And then, all at once, the mana faded. Valor went dormant, folding in on himself. He nearly fell over, but Adam rushed to keep him upright, to stop him from toppling. There wasn't a need.

  With a roar of surging mana, the illusion shaping Valor's flesh appeared to come back into being, but this time, it was not merely a ghostly outline; instead, a near-physical mass of mana fused together, and Valor fell to a single knee, the mana-formed limb where his legs were still missing meeting the ground like solid matter.

  A mere second later, he rose to a stand, his full height utterly dwarfing Adam, and he rolled his shoulders and neck, like a man waking up from a long slumber. Snaps and pops sounded, and his eyes flared bright with the colors of Necromancy as mana continued surging across his body. Corrosive mana danced and concentrated itself within his changing core. The dagger at his heart had been absorbed into his sternum after absorbing the gem, and in its place was a gaping wound, a gaping wound that now held a true, pounding heart, one formed from Necromantic energies. It was a construct that emulated a human organ in every way, and it circulated the powers of undeath through Valor's very being. With every pulsation, a ghostly effigy of who Valor was, of the man that he used to be before he was shattered and scattered into separate vessels, materialized itself and commingled with his mana-forged form. The ghost of Valor fused with his rejoined vessel, and its vague, ethereal nature faded.

  The Necromantic infusion reconstructed Valor's original face. Corrosion bled out from his outline, distorting the air around him and shaping something akin to a Necromantic cloak covering his form. And He Who Halts Eternity was near-whole once more. Perhaps he wasn't made of flesh, but the almost life-like, only slightly unreal illusion of the man he used to be before he was banished into separate pieces of bone stood before Adam. A gaunt, dark face greeted the Gate Lord, along with eyes glistened with untold power and unmatched focus. He breathed in deeply, his broad chest expanding, and then he let out a slow, cold exhalation.

  "Too long," Valor said, his voice clear and crisper than before, reverberating with a near-physical weight. "Too long have I been scattered." He looked down at his right hand, stared at the Necromancy coursing through him, and turned his open palm into a fist. "Udraal." The Legend’s voice was heavy with regret and anger, and he appeared to briefly lose himself in his thoughts. "What have I let you do? And what have you done to me?"

  "Valor," Adam breathed. "Are you… alright?"

  The former Necrotech Legend paused, and then he released a scornful laugh. "No, I am far from… alright. But I understand your question, Adam." He turned his head upward and smiled at Adam—a true, genuine smile, but also one that belonged to a killer, one that sent a shiver dancing down Adam's spine. "I am still myself, just more. Just restored. Not fully quite yet, but it will suffice for now. It is a pleasure to continue knowing you, Gate Lord Arrow. I remember so much now. And yet, there are still pieces missing. Pieces that..." He trailed off as he noticed the Educator. "Maia. You… I remember you as well… I remember you came to me first after your shattering…” Valor tilted his head, muscles of pure Necromantic energy rolling under his skin. “Wait… I was the one that freed you, was I not?”

  The Educator didn’t say anything. Instead, she pressed her lips together tightly and turned her gaze downward, as if unwilling to face the fact of Valor’s existence.

  “Is my son here with us?" Valor asked.

  "One never knows with him," Maia replied cryptically.

  But Valor simply swept the room once with his eyes, scanning his surroundings once before shaking his head. "No, he is not. I will have words with him soon. But for now, I have a friend I need to save. Culturist, Educator, with me. We have a Hatchling to hunt and an Elder God to spite.”

  And immediately, a change took hold in Valor. No longer was his focus scattered at times. No longer was he slow. No longer did he self-recriminate from weakness or despair. He seized authority. He strode with purpose. He walked toward the exit wound where orcs were spilling in, his Necromantic cloak fluttering. They regarded him with awestruck eyes and delighted expressions, like a horde of giant children greeting a celebrity.

  Maia narrowed her eyes at Valor. "You presume to command me?"

  Valor paused and tilted his head slightly, just enough to show the right side of his face to the Forgotten Ascendant. "I would politely request that you fight along my side. As I am now, I will still need every bit of help I can get. Would the word please soothe your aching ego?"

  The Educator's face looked like she couldn't decide if she was accepting of that answer or if she wanted to cling to outrage.

  "Please," Valor said, without any hint of mockery.

  And that pushed the Educator over the edge. "So be it," she muttered, falling in behind him.

  The Culturist laughed.

  Maia shot him a sneer. "Keep your mouth silent, orc. This is an act of cooperation, not submission."

  "There is no shame in either. He is Valor Thann. He is restored."

  "Not entirely," Valor corrected. As Adam moved to follow, Valor held up a hand. "You stay here, along with the others. You make sure that Blackedge gets across. That the survivors here are delivered to safety. You may return to the fray only when that is done."

  "What?" Adam hissed. "But—"

  "You are torn between two choices: your people and your battle sister. If you face her in such a state, you will be cut down, and I refuse to lose you. If it is to ever happen, it will not be here. Not to these creatures. Not now. You have come too far, Adam Arrow." Valor spun on his heels, and Adam felt the full weight of the resurrected Legend's authority. "Hear me now. I speak to you no longer as friend, but Master to Disciple. You will do as I said, for your sake and mine."

  Valor cleared the space between them in an instant, and he squeezed Adam's shoulder reassuringly. It was then that the Gate Lord realized truly how tall Valor was. He towered over him. He was even a good bit taller than Shiv. And that was bloody saying something.

  "Be with your father and mother right now. They need you. Your people need you. Help them make sure they're safe, and put down the burden inside your heart. When you are unchained, find me. Only then find me."

  And though Adam was torn, though he wanted to leave Blackedge to his allies and go after the Hatchling himself, a greater part of him knew he had to stay. That he had to protect those who remained until they were absolutely safe. And so he did as Valor asked. He stared at his father, who looked weaker than Adam could ever remember. He stared at his mother, whose eyes were torn between hope and despair, who also seemed like she wanted to throw herself out of the window to go after Uva, but was powerless to do so.

  "And now you see the insult duty inflicts upon us," Valor whispered. "You see what it forces us to choose, what it forces us to suffer. But you do not need to suffer. Not now. Now I am here, and the master should bear more of the burden than his disciple."

  Adam bit his lip and felt torn. Valor gave his shoulder a final squeeze and turned away. As soon as he did, Adam tried calling out to him—but by then, Valor was already missing. As were the Culturist and the Educator.

  The place where they stood was empty.

  Like they never existed at all.

  Moreover, Adam detected no trace of their departure, no sound, no flicker of movement… Nothing. Even the Starhawk seemed slightly taken aback.

  “What the fuck?” Rose breathed. “Did they just teleport?”

  Roland stared at where the three had stood and swallowed. “No,” he rasped. “I think they're still here. And I think it's simply that if Valor Thann doesn’t want to be found, he won't be. Not by me. Not by the Stranger. Maybe not even by the System itself.”

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