Fear the virtuous monsters. Fear those cruel and brutal, who act in service of evil, yet temper their behaviors with discipline and virtue. Corrupt monsters driven by lust, wrath, and thirst, by the baser instincts that reign over a being are easily betrayed, lured out of position, and slain at the behest of a wiser foe.
But a virtuous monster will not be met with the same fate. For they hold their own leash, they govern themselves, and for all the darkness spread by their actions, there is a light within themselves, a light contrasted against the dark. For their minds are high, their hearts are true, and though they might enact things beyond all considerations of ethics, something deeper yet guides them. A code, perhaps not to the decency of the world or those around them, but a code toward mastery and horizons higher.
For even the most vicious of demons can take pride in a well-constructed hell shaped by their own hands…
—Legend-Philosopher Melaia Kelhaus
VIII-4
Virtuous Monsters
Their Necromancy spell was pre-shaped to be a concentrated blast. The outer layer of corpses marked the boundary of the explosion, preventing it from expanding wider. This aspect of the spell wasn’t added to contain the collateral damage, but rather to condense the effects on the specified targets.
There was little more to be said about the Deathless' resilience. A targeted Necromancy detonation, even this extreme, would leave his soul scalded, but do little more than that. Such was the assessment provided by Maria’s elite Necromancers, and the mercenaries she'd hired from the Necrotechs concurred. With how Gate Piety used the Deathless as a bomb themselves, striking him with their own Necromantic spells to devastate Compact in their preemptive assault, it was indication enough of what to expect.
As such, the true target was the auxiliaries, and the user of the Dreaming Storm—Legend Uva Mettabon, the other half of the equation guarding Gate Piety. If they could remove her, even incapacitate her for a time, then the offense could push all the way to the Gate itself, and the battles would become pitched, rather than an even struggle in the field. The logistical and shaping capabilities of Gate Piety could not be underestimated, and it was more than the Deathless that tilted things in their favor.
Furthermore, there was the Demigod himself, Paragon Adam Arrow—the object of Lord Scorn's ire. If he could be resolved, then the invaders might be able to regain their Awareness and intelligence advantage. So long as his glaring star loomed overhead, everything and everyone below was at risk of being branded by his treacherous senses.
Maria watched through the projection of the Diviner’s table in front of her as the corrosive blast climbed high, consuming Gate Piety’s defenders in a screen of sickly green mana. The same glow settled over her marble-pale skin, her white wisps of hair flowing through the air like a gossamer shawl. A pregnant tension built within the combat intelligence center of Vulketh as Pathbearers commanding the invasion force waited to witness their triumph.
A low laugh slipped out from Belalu as he looked on with his gleaming bright eyes. His body was like a mess of glass shards intermingling, the geometries making up his person fracturing and parting with every passing intersection. He was more jigsaw puzzle than person, but in this moment he maintained a consistent form, anchoring himself in this dimension to savor the moment he thought his fifth son avenged.
Maria wasn’t quite so optimistic.
“I have to admit, Legend Corcusa, I wondered to myself what would make a Bloodline Progenitor of the First Blood embrace and christen some Umbral slave as her desired disciple. A few other Lords of Law judge your ascent as a mistake of lust, but I know Grandmother Ophereus, and she has no taste for girls, not physically. But your mind... You have all my compliments today, dear. Your mind is a devious fucking little thing.” Lord Belalu’s voice was like a thousand nails sliding down the face of a chalkboard, projected into your brainstem. Anyone beneath Master-Tier in Toughness in his presence deaf in an instant, and he enjoyed inflicting such harm.
Maria didn't respond, didn't even make eye contact. She saw no point in feeding this glutton of depravity. As far as she was concerned, Lord Belalu of Compact was a non-factor, because his armies were not here. His elite Pathbearers fled and broke at the first sign of trouble, choosing to let others die in their stead. In the end, he was a banker playing at being a warrior and strategist, and was simply present to avenge a personal slight.
A live projection of the battle was cast over dimensions to them from the perspective of a Scout, and Belalu, Scorn, Maria and a number of Vultegs studied the unfolding scenes from their densely veiled bunker deep under the mana-infused sea of liquid metal making up Vulketh’s oceans. Shadows and Dimensionality shrouded Maria's person, but she wouldn't go undetected for long. Sooner or later, the Gate Lord would spread his Awareness wide, and everything would be revealed. No secrets would hide beneath the light, but by that point she would either be engaging once more or evacuated, depending on the outcome.
“Fourteen fucking million of my Fingerlings dead,” Lord Scorn spat with derision. “Let's hope your little sacrifice play worked, bloodsucker, because fourteen million dead fucking Vultegs is a pretty hefty fee for one cocksucking Demigod.” His visage wasn't manifested, but the waves of his mind and divine aura seeped into the dark ambiance of the intelligence center via his Avatar. Maria didn't bother learning the name of this Vulteg. She was a tall specimen, her head tentacles ridged with Chronomancy-infused jewelry. Likely a time mage of some kind, but soon to be spent and wasted, just like all the others.
Scorn was only marginally better than Compact's Lords of Law when it came to strategy or personality, but his manpower was ample, and the magic he wielded was immense. His understanding of Biomancy, Pyromancy, Geomancy, and Dimensionality was practically unparalleled. The resources he provided toward this conflict left Maria with no complaints. For all the bio-forged horrors the First Blood could craft, there were thrice their number in Vultegs who yearned to die for their god.
But above even all this, Scorn's true worth resided within his Divinity and his Domain of Isolation.
With it, no one could breach his personal dimension unless he willed it, and for this conflict he specially did so, seeking to return the wounds Adam Arrow and the thieves who stole Gate Theborn had dealt to his ego ten times over. It was thanks to this Domain that the invasion could continue on at all. For every High-Tier Pathbearer who survived from the first two offensives was deemed unusable, their souls burned and turned traitor by Adam’s immolating Awareness.
But every boon he brought came with a drawback in the form of Lord Scorn himself. The god wasn't just miserable to be around—he was an active detriment to any situation that didn't relate to magic, wards, or hiding away and soaking in the dark. His only advice on the battlefield, and the main reason why the Vultegs lost the second offensive altogether, was because he liked to perform a strategy called "charge, charge, and charge some more!" His idea of tactics and planning was simply to amass more people and throw them at the enemy.
It wasn't that Maria didn't understand why he thought like this. How could he not develop such bad habits after creating a world like Vulketh, a world that now hid the High-Tier, commanding Pathbearers leading the offensive? The Vultegs were expendable, down to the last one. There were untold billions of them, constantly hatching from the rivers of burning magic circulating across their planet. They fought and butchered one another for the favor of their patron god. Despite their full sapience, they were more resource than people, as they were volunteered to outside forces like Compact, the First Blood, and Outer Dimensions Beyond in exchange for favors and protections, with everything gained flowing upward toward Lord Scorn himself.
Those same flaws existed within the culture and society he created. The Vultegs refused to respect or heed anyone who wasn't Lord Scorn or a direct commanding officer of his legions. Every last one of the tentacle-faced creatures needed to be bullied into compliance and refused to listen to reason. Worse yet, the peer commanders Maria had to work alongside barely regarded her as sapient in return. Most of them jockeyed for position with each other, abandoning their own forces on the battlefield if only to disgrace a hated rival, even at the cost of ruining an entire operation.
The First Blood had its problems. Maria knew them better than anyone else on Integrated Earth, but even considering them, your standard vampire was practically a generous, communal, and selfless saint compared to the average Vulteg soldier.
Maria kept to her silence and observed the fading Necromancy spell. She didn't speak when there was nothing of substance to provide. Silence was also her weapon against the two fools she was subservient to, and it was subservience that defined her position. Though she was named Field Marshal to the alliance, that was subject to change at any given time depending on the whims and fancies of Scorn and Belalu.
Furthermore, there were two reasons why the First Blood volunteered her to begin with: the stated reason was her intellect and strategic acumen. The unstated part related to her expendability and alienation. Maria Corcusa should have never been embraced. It was done on a whim because of the appreciation of a madwoman. That madwoman was considerably powerful and stood as the single greatest Social expert in all the Abyss, but she was a single woman nonetheless; one Legend against many was an insurmountable problem of arithmetic when it came to politics.
All that placed Maria in a precarious position, but that was the tale of her life. She shouldn't be here. She shouldn't have survived. She shouldn't have been embraced. She shouldn't have made it to Legend. Yet still, she persevered. And she would continue to persevere against the Deathless, the Paragon, the Seeker, and the rest of Gate Piety. She would seize and claim that vaunted, Unique mana core for the glory of her people. With that, and a few favors from Scorn and Belalu, she might just be capable of challenging one of the First-Generation Elders and finally assuming and securing an unassailable place amongst the Eldest.
And after that happened, she would see certain reforms put into action, and certain Bloodlines severed at their source.
“Spell ending: Mana Concentration—Wait, there's something happening!” The scout's telepathic message carried with it a note of alarm.
“The fuck’s this?” Scorn snarled, his voice shaking the room.
Belalu leaned in, his previous prideful expression lost, and the cohesive nature of his body thrown into disarray. He was a mess of sliding shrapnel once more, a mess of shards piercing and passing through one another. Maria remained stone in expression, in emotion, in focus.
Before her, the psionically projected screen of corrosion cleared over the Diviner’s table—and then began to swirl like a hurricane as it turned and twisted, revealing glimpses of a colossal palm born of incandescent clouds at its core…
***
Shiv didn't dive Backstage. Instead, he sent out a telepathic call through the Dreaming Storm before the blast engulfed them. Adam didn't need any further information.
He already knew what needed to follow. He activated Mind Shaped by Total War, and just as with Commander's Foresight, time was brought to a standstill in the perception of those connected to Adam. Everything froze: the rising swell of corrosive mana, the gliding fortress forged of psionic lightning and eldritch imbuements, the writhing bodies of the reawakened dead, and the four Vultegs who sacrificed themselves to serve as a synchronous spark for the spell.
That moment of stasis granted them the time to take stock of the situation and gauge just how fucked they were.
Necromancy was the lore of what was lost more than death, and on the battlefield, there was a whole lot to be lost. The dead, for one, were entire lifetimes that could have been and were no more. It didn't matter if someone was a human, an automaton, an elf, a goblin, or a Bloodhorror. Everyone had a history, short or long as they might've been. Everyone had a future, cut short, potential lost. That was the biggest thing. It was a weaponized narrative, anti-tension turned to a bomb. And with a few million dead scattered all around, Gate Piety's defenders were practically standing on one hell of a bomb waiting to go off.
One hell of a bomb about to set off another exponential explosion when lost potential greeted a vessel of ever-escalating strife in the form of the Deathless.
“Well, Valor warned me that this might happen.” Adam's tone was dry and annoyed, but utterly devoid of fear otherwise. His mind was a particular variety of sour: an emotional flavoring one adopted when faced with an inconvenient problem rather than an inscrutable puzzle. “Oh, and good job not tearing yourself out of context, Shiv.”
“Don't mention it.” A haunting return for the Deathless, the face of an umbral mage vanishing into a puff of blood. A mistake never to be made again, engraved in a life lost forever. Loss. The power of necromancy. “So what's the call on this? Because I’m about a quarter second away from being the bigger bang that follows the first.”
His focus ran hard as he spoke. He surveyed the battlefield through Adam’s perspective, zoomed in on the four offending sacrifices. Four lengths of necromantic steel, imbued with the same corrosion that was now spreading across the body, spilling and carpeting the ground. Each blade shared a similar hilt, but also a symmetrical spell. A cylindrical pattern snaked its way out from the end of the blade to its very tip, and they moved in tandem with one another. This was more than synchronicity. This was four spells twinned to act as one, and each of the sacrifices held a corner that marked a boundary line. The blast was to be concentrated inside them.
Shiv's magical theory was not so advanced that he could deduce anything beyond that, but he knew enough to separate directional shapings from the rest. Mana was a living thing, spawned from stories, and because it was alive, it could be guided, commanded, imposed upon. Just so, the opposite could be true as well. A rebuttal existed for every spell, a break—an asymmetry to breach the pattern.
Such was why it was called a spell, because you spelled things out for the magic. It worked upon the fulfillment of specific conditions.
Friction turned to flame, heat drawn out from a body, giving in to the cold. Entropy manifested as a crushing ice, depriving one of speed, of passion, of all things that burned.
Yet there was a benefit to unfocused casting as well. This was the magic Shiv was familiar with. The rawness of an untuned mana channeled forth as a fist. Complexity came with higher design, but also fragility. That was the cost of spells. Rules, when broken, caused a catastrophic collapse, and unexpressed magic was just that: unexpressed frequency of flashing color fading into the backdrop of reality. Such was also why Magi favored knowledge above power, because an idiot with an overwhelming supply of mana was just a walking bomb for a weak but clever mage to set off.
Case in point: Shiv himself.
“Any chance you can counter the spell?” Shiv asked. Adam regarded the battlefield from a bird's-eye perspective. He was running numbers now, calculating the time it would take for everyone to be engulfed in the corrosion. Uva would suffer severe burns, possibly even the destruction of her Legendary Skill, though that was uncertain. That being said, she wasn't going to soak the damage directly. That would be a Deathless thing to do.
A major benefit to the Dreaming Storm was flexibility. The fortress she manifested, with its massive columns and portcullises, its battlements, its moving walls and trenches, could be stuffed into a single room, trapped in a series of memories, pulled back into the tree flashing above, and then into her mind thereafter. All that mass and material were bridged from one place to another by a single Psychomancer in a fraction of a second.
The question was how fast could she react? There was a penalty at play here. She had more than just herself to worry about. The terrorspawn could be expended, but the Polymagi, Tallowine, and the other Pathbearers manning her walls? All of them had a mass that weighed upon her memory if she drew them in. Yes, she could create a pathway, but they wouldn't be able to react in time, not nearly fast enough. The high-tiers had the reflexes, but armies weren't made up of Heroes and Legends.
And Gate Piety didn't waste lives. They weren't vampires. They weren't Vultegs, and they most certainly weren't Compact.
“I can shift the architecture of my fortress. Press everyone together.” Uva's suggestion was helpful, but more a delaying action than the full solution. “I might be able to survive a powerful blast if it's held at bay.”
“Yeah, but then you'll be crippled until I can heal you,” Shiv rejected. “If you lose your Psychomancy, they might as well march straight over to our gateway, because there's no way we're going to be able to hold the wilderness without you. My guess is they planned this. My guess is this blast is as much for you as it is for me. They might miss me, but if they burn you, then everyone they teleported away will be coming back around for a second offensive. That's gonna be a pitched battle right at our front door.”
“Yes,” Adam agreed, his mind and voice distracted as he toyed with possibilities and solutions. His mind was a roaring sea of information, but it expressed itself in neat lines, rushing forward in torrents of ordered detail. Shiv's mind was far different: he was a sea—primal, undistilled, with moments of genius manifesting like sudden storms on the horizon, but also vulnerable to foolish mistakes, as a ship might capsize against the very same storm.
The two of them were expressions of magic: one a complex spell with countless pieces and detailed shapings meant to create a delicate outcome. The other was simple and intuitive, but even a hammer could be used with dexterity.
“The spell is beyond my ability to counter,” Adam declared.
“Beyond mine as well,” the Culturist added. “We have little time and no true Necromancers of our own in the field. With Valor's absence, I dare say we lack any means of countermanding this magic directly.”
Adam hummed. “But we're not without options…” His attention slashed away from the budding Necromancy, away from the bodies charged with corrosive mana, over to the scintillating flame that had singed so many of them, casting them into the jaws of death. Shiv's Unique Pyromancy was a special power, one that could burn almost anything and make food from solid matter and magical light. The same effect it inflicted upon other mana fields could be replicated against Necromancy. But though the nihilistic flame was an ocean of mana in its own right, it was still a smaller body of metaphorical water compared to the losses fueling the impending eruption.
That didn't mean the Nihilist was useless. It just meant it couldn't hold back the greater tide all on its own. Again, another delaying action, but stack one delay in front of another and you had time. With time, you had options.
“Uva, when we resume real-time, I need you to shrink your Dreaming Storm as much as you can, as small as you can without hurting anyone. Pack them in tight if you have to.” Adam hesitated for a second as Uva helped him crunch the numbers—maybe a half second of time bought. “Shiv, I need you to use your flame on the necromancy. Burn away what you can, delay as long as you can, and—your Red Rider's hand, could it potentially let you parry the necromancy?”
Shiv laughed. “Hell yeah, it can. But if I'm reading the spell right—and I might not be—the blast is going to be coming from everywhere. Every single body is gonna go off like a bomb, projecting all that corrosive essence upward. This means that they're all going to be feeding off each other, magnifying each other, magnetized to each other, but also separate from each other. Right?”
“You're right,” Adam confirmed. “You won't be able to parry everything. It's impossible, and we might have to risk your Shapeless Tides. Your Magical Resistance should be able to hold the necromancy back for a few seconds, but after that…”
“Boom,” Shiv grunted. “Great big flash of light and maybe not much after for a lot of us. Too risky.”
A low chuckle escaped Adam. Shiv recognized that laugh. It was the one Adam let out when he reveled in his own genius. “Some risk, but maybe not as much as you think. If we do this right, we have well over a second of time. That's going to be enough for me to manifest my Domain. We run this defense in layers: the nihilist serving as the first to blunt. Shiv and his Magical Resistance underneath Uva's Dreaming Storm—the Dreaming Storm itself, for as short a time as possible, before my palm manifests and prevents any and all violence from transpiring.”
“And you’re certain the Domain can hold back the Necromancy?”
“Nothing has been held back. Destruction and violence are simply rendered impossible.” Though the power sounded awesome, there was a haunting quality to its truth as Adam spoke these words into existence. The Domain was a divine power, but it seemed greater than even that sometimes. An absolute effect imprinted over the world, in defiance of the System's will, even in defiance of Adam's own nature. It seemed he was but a conduit, a bridge for something far, far older. Something boundless in hate as much as in hunger and desire, something so far beyond and above humanity that simply rigging it to a mortal form was akin to embedding an insect in the long-dead brain matter of a man to serve as a final, desperate pilot. “It will work. Of this I have no doubt. No doubt…”
Both Uva and Shiv shared a haunted thought, and Adam pretended to be deaf, blind, dumb, and careless. They all worried, but what else was there to do? When surrounded by a sea of enemies, what right warrior could abandon the most potent of their tools?
“I can help apply my own means of persuasion as well.” The Culturist slid into the conversation like a blade sinking into a sheath. “There should be some number of necromancers among the rest of the renegades. None as remarkable as Valor, but all sufficient to aid in this stalling action.”
“Alright, so we've got a ghost of a plan in place. Anyone else have any better ideas that might set me off to go bomb? Anyone?” Shiv's message went unaddressed; the Dreaming Storm synchronized his thoughts with the rest of the force, but the problem remained: without Valor's presence, they had no dedicated Necromancers. “Alright, desperate, risky maneuver it is.”
“It won't be desperate or risky if we just do this thing right,” Adam shot back.
A snort hissed out from Shiv. “How often do we do things just right, Adam? Shit always goes off the rails by the end, you know that.”
“Well, let yourself be motivated by everyone else's survival, because if you do this wrong, they won't live long enough to regret my choice. But you will.”
“The fuck, man? How are you dumping all this pressure on me? I'm not the one who came up with this plan.”
“No, but you are the one I'm ordering to play the role of a big spoon. Don’t let me down, Shiv.”
“You know something, Adam? You're turning into more of a god every day. You decide to shit, and someone else has to wipe.” But past the jests, there was nothing else for it: time to see if they could pull this off. “Let’s hope this one’s dry.”
“We believe in you, Insul!” Tequila cheered across the storm. “Don’t explode and kill us.”
“Do my best,” Shiv grunted. The blasé nature of his own reply took him out of the situation for an instant. A few months ago, the weight of so many lives would have flooded his insides with pressure. Now, it was like the sensation of wind passing over his skin—there, but disregarded.
“Does a fish always notice the waters it dwells within?” the Harbinger asked.
The skill’s question was rhetorical, but Shiv didn’t just skip past. “This isn’t water, though. It’s consequence. We are what we experience. We are what we do. If that’s the truth, what are we going to become if mass death and warfare is just another breath that leaves us?”
“Eventually? An apex predator.” The Harbinger’s answer was chambered like a bullet in anticipation of this question. One couldn’t outflank the personification of their own instincts and intellect. “You cannot unmake an environment you do not completely dominate.”
“So it goes,” Shiv conceded. “Alright. On three?”
“Three,” Uva began.
“Two,” Adam followed.
“Go,” Shiv signaled.
The stasis came to an end. Time resumed its oppressive march. Chains of spreading necromancy coursed through the bodies scattered across the battlefield like an arterial network; such a thing was no mistake—the System hungered for symbolism and significance, and the lore of loss expressing itself as a living system was a vulgar statement unto itself.
But Shiv didn’t have the time to consider the philosophical implications or savor the moment. His nihilistic flames plunged down, spreading wide and flat until it became a curved shield against the impending blast. The scintillating pyromancy carpeted itself over as many bodies as it could, but its spark came from a fuel of thousands in struggle against millions dead.
The Nihilist: It doesn’t matter. Do what you can. Or don’t. The outcome is inevitable for most of them; you’re just delaying their final fate.
“Shut up and fry,” Shiv snapped back. His Harbinger reached into its reservoir of time and drew forth spark after spark as a sequence of scintillating detonations engulfed the world. His pyromancy raged. Flame greeted flame in a defiant frenzy against the withering end.
Thin slices of Necromancy sizzled and peeled away as a unique conflagration ate away at the attunement of loss. A tenth of a second passed. Uva and Adam were in motion. The Dreaming Storm shrank behind Shiv’s strike team—the psionic fortress burst apart as branches of lightning were retracted into the kaleidoscopic tree looming like a frozen meteor in the air. Only a single tower remained—tens of thousands of essential Pathbearers condensed within a hundred-meter edifice that exchanged breadth for height as its creator scrambled to create an exit from the battlefield using thought and memory in place of brick or mortar.
A Shard of Exalted Flame splashed down behind Shiv. Adam combusted into shape thereafter.
Not fast enough.
The scintillation of the Nihilist burned bright, but not long. It masked its inevitable defeat down to the last instant as the corrosion tore through the parting embers of pyromancy—only to crash into the second line of defense: Shiv himself. The Deathless tensed and prayed as his smasher cupped the bottom of the dreaming fortress with his Garden of Wounds and Broken Things. The Red Rider’s Hand was pointed straight down like a pike braced against incoming cavalry.
It responded with a roar of pleasure.
The right hand of strife drank in the potential ruin and corrosion the Necromancy was to inflict and rippled with crushing power. Shiv’s vectors frayed and dissolved as it gloved the hand—his Leviathan of the Shapeless Tides turned shredded with soul damage as a result.
But despite the pain and the depth of harm, his Magical Resistance held, and he parried every beam of Necromancy bursting up from the proximal corpses like a chain of geysers. A few million dead contended against the severed limb of the Challenger. In the end, it wasn’t even a struggle.
Return to Sender activated. The Necromancy spiked up, crashed into the fist, and was driven straight back down. It wasn't just flattened. Instead, the mana itself dissipated, bursting apart into volatile smears of corrosion. The single remaining tower bounced as it was buffeted by the impact, but otherwise remained unharmed before the calamity.
But more ruin was set to come. Shiv's deflection only affected the corpses beneath the tower—and there were far more dead all around. Though the mana beneath the tower was suppressed, it still drew the other beams of necromancy in like a gravity well. A confluence of bending streams crisscrossed around the tower—only to splash apart against Shiv’s expanding Garden. Its shape went from a bowl to a cage, folding around the Dreaming Storm’s localized constructs.
Shiv’s other bodies and skill-armors injected their own tides into the Garden to deny the corrosion just a moment longer.
Inertial Overdrive 433 > 436
Two seconds into the havoc, the Paragon finally finished materializing. He must’ve gone far—fired himself across the distance in an attempt to do something to the enemy backline. A gush of vapors exploded out of him; the Lord of Gate Piety reached high and pulled with trembling hands—
Calling a piece of a primordial heaven down upon them. The Zone of Absolute Dominion struck and scalded Shiv. Its essence was absolute in Heroism and Tyranny. The former nourished him, while the latter loathed his very existence, for he was a vessel of ever-growing struggle, and hence stood anathema to Peace. The Red Rider’s Hand spasmed and peeled apart; Shiv’s flesh and soul tore and bled, painting the air with crimson bright vitality. Even so, it was better than getting set off by Necromancy.
Sometimes, the only choice one could make was between two wounds. If that was the case, being a sacrifice upon peace’s altar in spite of the System made pain a pittance of a price to bear.
The misted palm expressed by Adam’s divine will swallowed Shiv’s garden and Uva’s last tower at once. The layered defenses overlapped and shifted as a higher power seized them—but also spared them of force and harm. The erosive caress of the necromancy was not only denied, but rebuffed; the power of loss retreated away from the zone in vast pockets of emptiness as the threads of sickening green changed into a whirlpool around the palm, the rules of its spell clashing against the usurpation of existential laws.
Time limped on in staggered increments. Shiv watched as the lore of the lost was denied—indifferent to his own suffering. His skin and flesh came sloughing off his body, and his skills rattled and cracked deep within. Any other Pathbearer would have shot past the precipice of madness.
Shiv failed to notice, for pain had long since fallen beneath his regard.
Before the Favored Three of Gate Piety, a trap capable of devouring an entire army of Heroes and lesser Legends became just that as well: a nuisance to solve, and then to place beneath notice.
The invaders set their pieces up, took their swing, and were found wanting. Even with a scheme in place, so many lives were wasted, and so many more were left to spend.
“Any casualties?”
“Ranger Munny lost his hat,” Mortar declared. “Terribly tragic, really.”
“Eighty percent losses amongst Terrorspawn; all essential personnel preserved,” Uva sighed. “I suggest we shift to a more aggressive offensive once they begin their second charge; we don’t have the numbers to hold territory anymore. We should strike and move to avoid the same entrapment.”
“You think they’re going to come in for a second charge?” Shiv asked.
“They preserved their Burned Ones and teleported their backline elites away for a reason,” Adam answered. “There’s going to be a second push. Shiv? Your status?”
Shiv felt his faces melting off his skull. “Eh. Some moderate skill damage across the board. Leviathan’s cracked the most. Your Divinity is ruining my skincare too. All that moisturizing for nothing. Just give me a chance to snatch and drain a couple of vamps and I’ll be all better.”
“You know, sometimes it’s hard to think of us as the good guys with everything the Deathless does to people—and then I remember our enemies are literal monsters and demons who enslave children and drink blood. Or was that the other way around?” Hero-Diviner Captain-Magi Jane Ircanos of the “Idiot” 14th Poly-Magi Regiment snickered at her own words. “Round two it is, friends. Idiots! Shape spells! Support and enchant the Deathless. Let’s give them something to really run from.”
***
“FUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUUUCK!”
Blood poured down Maria's right ear as Scorn howled curse after curse like a spoiled Fourth Elder cut off from another sip. Her expression stayed stone; she hadn't expected this, but then again, she never expected anything. She did the best she could and took things as they came.
The same quality did not exist within Lord Scorn, who seemed a centimeter away from the mother of all mental breakdowns. “FUCKING CUNT FUCKER BITCH FUCK CUNT BITCHFUCKCUNTCUNTCUNTCUNT FUCK BITCH! WHAT WAS THE POINT OF ALL THAT IF IT DIDN’T DO ANYTHING!?”
“But… how?” Belalu asked, more flabbergasted than enraged. “What is that?”
He was talking about the misty hand that had manifested to guard the Dreaming Storm and the Deathless—the often-rumored manifestation of the Gate Lord’s Domain.
“Another uncovered problem we need to solve,” Maria answered. “I suspect we’re facing a Domain of Protection. And it works on Necromancy as well.” The information was useful, but the issues it presented were troublesome. Each of the Favored Three was monstrous individually, but together, as a single force? “We don’t have the numbers nor force required to take this gate right now.”
Her acknowledgement was so casual Belalu nodded reactively—before he froze and turned his face of trembling glass shards toward her. “I must have misheard, Legend-Assassin.”
She ignored him and sent a psionic command to the commanders of the third offensive. “This is Field Marshall Maria Corcusa. All forces: Retreat and hold action at field-base three. Skirmishers and saboteurs as well. Execute.”
“YOU’RE FUCKING SURRENDERING? TO—TO THAT FUCK! THAT BOW-FUCKING CUNT!” Scorn’s shout hit Maria so hard her nose broke and left her eye burst. Still, she refused to betray herself—not to fear, not to pain.
“No,” she replied, her injuries regenerating in moments—bones clicking back into shape piece by piece and a new eyeball sprouting like a budding flower. “Not surrendering, but we require a recalibration of strategy. Direct assaults are not enough; we haven’t even breached the gateway yet. The mana core itself will be another problem once we get inside. But they have weaknesses—they lack the manpower to fully guard against us, and the conditions within the Gate itself are as volatile as any battlefield according to our sources. We surprised them here today—we need to surprise, escalate, and collapse them internally before the next offensive.”
Maria took a gamble and turned away from Scorn’s Avatar and Belalu. She didn’t mean any insult, but not feeding and comforting the egos of powerful Pathbearers was often misunderstood as an offense all the same. But if she engaged with them and allowed them to push blame and stew in their own misery, her fate would be sealed regardless. “Lord Scorn—I beg your allowance to depart from your dimension. It is time I seek out a potential solution for our problem and create better conditions for our next attempt.”
“Potentially—don’t fucking show me your back, you corpse-sucking whore! Stop and explain yourself! What fucking solution? What next attempt? What are you trying to pull here?”
The air around her went black. A fist formed of mystical gravity clenched her tight and drove the breath out of her body. She didn’t gasp or tense; predators and abusers fed off feedback. She was a stone. Just a stone. Until the moment it was time to see things done. As she was made to face the higher powers in the room, she regarded Belalu and Scorn with a brief nod. “Apologies. I forgot to explain myself in my haste. The orcs, my Lords. The orcs are the solution. The Challenger is the wedge I drive into the Gate Lord’s defense.”
Belalu’s shattered form shivered for a moment before he burst out laughing, the noise wretched enough to almost break Maria's facade. “You—no, this is… The orcs aren’t any kind of solution, Field Marshall. They’re just bad business. I don’t know what new madness was born in the back of your mind, but mixing grayskins in with our troops—who need to be reconstituted again—is just going to end with a massacre. The orcs can’t be trusted, especially with so many of them in league with Adam Arrow. I don’t know what kind of Holy War the Challenger is running, but if one of mine is spotted on the side of the enemy—”
“You are right. The orcs are not to be trusted, but they can be used. And I don’t intend to mix them in with our forces. Instead, I wish to share what we learned about Gate Piety’s behavior in the field and potential weaknesses with the Challenger to see if they can help us solve our problem without any more lives lost on our part.”
Both Scorn and Belalu went silent—and the silence was a sign she had them.
“We can muster even more resources,” she began. “More lives. More High-Tier Pathbearers. Drown them with our own Legends. Scour their lands with Pyromancy and plagues. Eventually, we will be able to overwhelm them. But that does not solve our problem. The Favored Three will gain levels from those battles—the Deathless himself almost certainly will not be defeated permanently, and if we seek to continue this grinding struggle of attrition, they will collapse the mana core and flee into the embrace of the Yellowstone Empire. And we have already spent far too much on this endeavor for the returns to be worthwhile. Even if we take the Quest rewards into account.”
“ADAM FUCKING ARROW IS NOT BETTER THAN ME!” Scorn roared, and his Chronomancer Avatar burst apart into a splatter of gore—even her Legendary-Tier body unable to sustain his wrath.
A furious flame was kindled in the pit of Maria’s stomach. Waste. So much fucking waste. Another Legend lost—thrown away with nothing gained. How did you ever become a god, Scorn? How could the System ever think you worthy of such a privilege?
A smear of shapeless flesh remained where the Vulteg once stood, but more offensive was how Scorn’s presence never faded. He didn’t even need to waste her at all; he was fully capable of manifesting as himself in his own realm. But no. He hid in his tower; he refused to face the light or even his own people in person.
He wasn’t even a proper tyrant in the end, just a coward with a crown.
“He is not,” Maria lied through her teeth. “And he is not worth any more of your anger and effort. I will see this done. We have done enough here today. There is another side to this equation, and I will see them applied. Personally. As an act of redemption for failing to bring us victory. I will seek out the Challenger alone. I will see the orcs unleashed between the cracks and gaps we discovered. And I will see the scales balanced in the end.”
And both of you cut out of the glory as I turn the orcs on you in turn, she added in the confines of her mind.
Belalu and Scorn hesitated once more—but the atmosphere was broken as the former began to laugh. “Why not? Why bloody not? Let the girl try. If she dies, well… The First Blood can’t possibly shame itself in this affair anymore than it already has, yes? But if she succeeds—”
“I will,” Maria said through her teeth.
Belalu began to come into shape for the first time, and she saw him for the man he was rather than the enchanted mess of glass that hid his appearance. Like a pane of glass shattering in reverse, the gleaming pieces came together and promptly transmutated into flesh, revealing a towering elf with a sunlit mane of hair and an alloyed griffon fused into his flesh as a set of living armor. “If she succeeds, then we’ll have our rewards regardless. Let her take another swing, Scorn. What’s the loss? Not ours, right?”
“Yeah,” Scorn grumbled after a second. “Not fucking ours.”
Maria was stone—but it took so much effort not to smirk back at them. Little do you know. Little do you fools know.
***
But what Lords Scorn and Belalu missed, Valor saw. He saw Legend-Assassin Maria Corcusa for what she was. He saw, and knew what needed to be done.
Just a few meters away, hidden in the darkness, in the depths of Vulketh without the knowledge of its Dimension Lord or highest Legends, He Who Stills Eternity stalked the enemy leadership and stole knowledge where Adam’s gaze couldn’t reliably reach—at least not until the bombs were primed and he was prepared to leave.
But before he made to depart, he added a final assignment for himself: kill Maria Corcusa, for the sentiment she held toward his disciples was a sentiment shared. She needed to be resolved as soon as possible so that Scorn and Belalu could go back to wasting lives and killing their own empires, and to deprive the Challenger of any and all capable allies.
The worst part was, Valor could taste the potential in her: a Vaketh-Insul. Not quite like Shiv, but she shared an emptiness with the Deathless—a will to claw at power in spite of their environment or adversity.
And one didn’t let a monster like that live. Because sooner or later, they would go from being a monster to something far, far greater—and far, far worse.