There are three kinds of people in the world: The ones you have to fuck over, the ones you can fuck over, and the ones you must absolute never fuck over because they’ll rip your bits off and shove ‘em up your asshole.
Now, you might be wondering how to differentiate these types of people, if it’s just about them being weaker, equal to, or stronger than you and all that.
You'd be wrong. There are plenty of absolute fucking monsters that you can stab the in ass over and over without them ever noticing—or will end up nice and dead because you betrayed them to an even bigger monster. Stronger than you is a complicated thing, ‘Bearer. There are plenty of people who are more powerful than I am, but most of them are dead while I’m still here, because I know the game—and the game is the game.
Let me put this into perspective: You lead some asshole overlord to sack a defenseless world in exchange for not being enslaved. But instead of taking them to a defenseless world, you take them to a literal hellpit run by an even bigger asshole; and you cut and run in the chaos. Legendary-Tier asshole overlord dies fighting the Jormangand Collective or one of Pop-Queen Karna’s crazy fanworlds. Problem solved.
And it has to be solved, because the overlord’s a “might is the only thing that matters” kind of cunt. He will enslave you anyway, because why not? There’s nothing to reason with when you’re dealing with a metaphysical asshole.
But. However.
There's also the kinds of assholes who you absolutely don't want to try to fuck over, the kind that knows the game is the game too, who will survive whatever shit you try to pull on them, and who'll remember your face for thousands of years, waiting, planning to get back at you.
One of these assholes is the Challenger. And fuck dealing with that.
Get this through your head: It’s not just power, it’s about where the shitbag you’re dealing with stands on the player-pawn spectrum.
—The Realmrunner
VIII-19
Closer (I)
Something kept brushing against Shiv's Continuity Error. The moments of contact were brief, mere seconds each, and then nothing at all. He never reached back, refused to delve deeper into the nightmarish briars of conspiracy that surrounded him and everyone else on Integrated Earth.
There was Avalon, and if the Forbidden Empire was to be believed, the Faceless Queen and her throne were the foremost of its bullets—needles at the ends of threads.
Said needles were also the very things that had brought down the Great One, shattering their being and casting them down into the darkness. Accepting this, then the state of the moon was Avalon's doing as well.
“If everything we have learned is true, then other questions arise: Why has the Faceless Queen only arisen in the near present? Why isn’t New Albion the undisputed power of this world?” Valor's words hung in the air and found no answers from the members of the emergency council.
Present beside Shiv were Uva, Still Water, Adam, and Veronica—to the consternation of the others. Her enchanted mirror was placed at the opposite end of the table, and even with all the distance, her presence was like an oppressive weight pushing upon them, her gaze alone inflicting a charismatic gravity that couldn’t be ignored. As contentious as Yellowstone's relationship was with Gate Piety, she still wanted the Favored Three alive, and at most wanted to secure the Gate rather than see its complete annihilation. The same couldn't quite be said for the Faceless Queen anymore, and the Forbidden Empire remained an unknown entity driven by opposition against New Albion alone.
As such, a fragile pyramid formed between Yellowstone, New Albion, and the Old Ones who dwelled in Forbidden Africa. This wasn't even a devil-you-know situation anymore. It was simply the devil Shiv could contend with. If nothing else, he could attempt to beat Veronica to death by shattering her with his Harbinger. He could wound and brutalize the Ascendants without question. That, somehow, in a twisted way, made them the most reliable allies he could have at present, not counting his actual allies.
What made things more sickening was how they felt the same way. They needed him to understand their enemy, to prepare for the incursion ahead. Whatever Avalon was, the fate of the Yellowstone Republic was also in the balance. Nothing could stop an enemy that could fire beyond dimensions and shatter even gods. If the Great One could be eliminated, then what hope would a shadow of their power?
Can’t believe I’m saying this, but our biggest hope might be the Educator right now, Shiv thought. Felling Udraal’s still missing even now; she’s off trying to hunt him down again, but there doesn’t seem to be much hope on her end either.
Meanwhile, the rest of them were sequestered in a sealed-off dimensional meeting to figure out how to prevail against an enemy that had the power to assassinate a High God.
“Perhaps the Stolen Throne and the Faceless Queen were displaced across time?” Adam's guess was just that: a shot in the dark, but it was something to go off of. “Or maybe we simply didn't notice? Maybe they were setting everything up for all these centuries. You're still incomplete, Valor. You might lack the memories required to have a complete picture of the past.”
“No,” Valor rebuffed in an instant. “In other circumstances, I would agree, Adam, but not now. Not for this. I have faced the Faceless Queen countless times. My memories of her are well and truly intact. There are pieces of my past missing, but I can remember my childhood. I can remember the worst of my struggles, my darkest moments, my most depraved acts, my greatest triumphs. But for the Queen herself to have built a masquerade over so much of my history? It's too much. It beggars belief. If she has achieved that, then we have already lost. I would have already acted against you. Think on this: If I am so utterly contaminated by her will, why would you ever be allowed to discover the Forbidden Empire, Shiv? Why would I not silence them? Why would I not silence all of you? And why would this Avalon not know of Shiv's Continuity Error skill? It fired on a whim. That is not a demonstration of understanding, but a reactive attempt to eliminate an incomprehensible foe.”
Valor looked toward Shiv, and he stressed that final point: “You are unknowable to it, Shiv. It asked you what you are. It spoke to you using the System itself. From what you described, it too was consumed by disbelief, not comprehension or preparation. Not even outrage.”
Shiv nodded—but couldn’t shake the memory of the blossoming strands of metal twisting and warping around an enslaved star. “Not even outrage,” he echoed. “But it reached Backstage. That shot—Valor, I've never felt a stronger attack. The amount of mana I absorbed from that strike… It's enough to keep the Backstage burning for months, maybe a year, or more. The power was obscene.”
“And it didn't destabilize the ambient mana threshold?” Veronica asked for the sixth time.
Rather than being annoyed, Shiv just shook his head. “No, not even a little. It was fast. The gap it poked through reality was like a half-centimeter in diameter. Wasn't that far from me either. Maybe it didn't stay long enough to collapse everything or—”
“That's not how the threshold works," Veronica insisted. "Even if a Mythic-Tier Pathbearer descends for a microsecond, it will, at the very least, cause a localized mana collapse. Effectively, they will suffuse the environment with so much overwhelming power that the world becomes an exploding storm that cascades into a catastrophic collapse that is as likely to be fatal to the Myth in question as everyone else. From what you described, our enemy is Myth at the very least, and more likely something above that.”
Uva, who had been quiet through most of the emergency meeting, spoke then: “We've been in desperate circumstances before. Every time we reach a new threshold of power, we are faced with an adversary far beyond our depth. This journey began with us facing Harkness at Passage. Then, there was the Recollector.” Uva glared at Veronica. “The Ascendants. The Usurper-Narrator. Longinus. Even the Tarrasque was meant to be such a challenge—until it was contaminated by Shiv.”
“What do you mean ‘contaminated’?” Shiv frowned. “Make me sound like I'm some kind of plague or something.”
“But you are a plague,” Uva replied rather sweetly. “And it is a statement of fact. The matter with the Tarrasque happy outcome, albeit still an unexpected one. But even so, this fits the pattern. It's just another spike in our path. The System is preparing to throw everything it has at us. It makes sense to use an outlier to eliminate another outlier.”
“The difference to before is that we have a threshold to our world,” Veronica countered. “When we finish with this Incursion, we step beyond Legendary-Tier and merge with the rest of greater Integration. That means we are exposed to even more adversaries that are within the same dimension, who do not need to trespass beyond distant boundaries, and who are already established in their power. There are powers that will not hesitate to strike against us at our weakest, at our most vulnerable. This is where vassalization takes place. This is the opportune moment of colonization.” Veronica paused. “Or annihilation.”
Her brief silence spread. Everyone sank into their own thoughts as a dread spread through the chamber, staining the atmosphere with building darkness.
“We could ship ourselves over to Chorus,” Shiv suggested, trying to find his way out of this quagmire. “But with how Produveral is affected by Avalon as well, I think it can fire at us even within Chorus. If he can't even notice whatever it did to his mind and all the other Farwalkers are affected as well, then I don't think we can rely on them. Shit, I think we're on our own for this. We don't have any countering Myths that we can call upon.”
“Evanescia?” Uva suggested.
The very mention of her made Adam cringe. “She's… an option, and the Fairwoods are a final refuge, as we've discussed, but it's more like trading one hell for another. Everyone here would be drawn into her endless seasons. Narratives recycled upon narratives. How many lifetimes of other peoples' lives and schemes and plots do you want to live—can you live before you go utterly insane? And while she has the power, does she have the will or interest to shield us?”
“She fucking doesn’t,” Shiv snarled. “She's treating this shit as entertainment as well. She wants me and this Avalon, along with the Faceless Queen, to have some kind of spy thriller showdown thing. No, we can't rely on her. At least I can't rely on her. Adam most definitely can't rely on her because the moment he crosses over, she's going to grab him and shove his ass into her Watchtower. That'll probably fix it, which may result in the Fairwoods expanding and swallowing us and uncountable other dimensions, ending with us doing dance routines for the next trillion years. I can't do it. I can't fucking do it. I can't do it. I can't do it.”
Shiv shook as he suffered the sounds of that cartoonish jingle stuck in his head. “I don't know what a Saturday morning cartoon is, but if I hear that fucking theme song one more time, I'm gonna kill myself for real. Lifetimes of that. Lifetimes. I've been there for two months with one body, and I can't take it anymore! I don't want to be there! I don’t!”
“Shiv, Shiv, Shiv. I know, I know.” Uva elongated her hand, wrapping it around his thigh and patting him like a snake coiled around a tree trunk.
“I thought they were going to have me doing cool war shit, Adam. I thought the First Son of Summer was going to draft me into his army and help me make me fight his wars. Instead, he's playing dress-up with me every day. I had to wear a thing called kilt the other day—the thing was ugly as shit, not my style at all! I hate the Summer Court! The place is a shithole. I hate it! It’s full of dickheads, and I hate the fucking place.”
Shiv forced himself to calm as golden cracks spread across his body, and hissing, pitch-black fire spilled out from within, like he was a fractured, burning furnace. “Sorry, I get this way when I don't finish my cooking on time. Terrence and I have to perform an interpretive dance as an apology to Princess Plum Blossom. She makes us do this thing where we're spinning around each other and I have to carry his oversized ass across the table and back for hours! Then they expect us to get the same amount of cooking done in the meantime. It's ridiculous!” It was then that he noticed everyone staring at him. “What?”
“On the point of Terrence,” Uva began, though hesitant, “what if we unleash him on this Avalon?”
For all the love for her in his heart, Shiv couldn't stop himself from facepalming. “Yeah, well, there's only a lot of problems with that: I've got no idea where this Avalon is. He’s just a Tarrasque, and the Great One broke all the moons across every dimension or whatever when Avalon shot them. Finally, good luck getting Terrence to do literally anything that isn't cooking. Motherfucker doesn't listen! He doesn't even listen to me while we're trying to cook! He thinks he's in charge half the time! He's not even an Adept! Trying to use him is like trying to… trying to…”
Shiv trailed off halfway through as a flickering ember from one of Uva's statements ignited inside of him. A new idea took shape. A great and terrible idea. Perhaps the only chance they might have of surviving the coming Incursion. He leaned forward and steepled his hands. “Alright. Hear me out here. I'm not saying we have to do this or that it's even a good idea, but the Great One, right? They’re not actually dead. They're just kind of asleep, no?”
The entire room exploded into uproarious protests. Veronica, Uva, Valor, and even Adam were all adamantly against the idea for vastly different reasons.
“Absolutely not, Shiv!” Valor hissed. “Banish the idea from your mind immediately!”
“This idea might be closer to civilizational suicide than even sacrilege, though it is definitely both," Uva uttered, squinting at him. “But even if we do commit and embark on this path of heresy… where to even begin? The Ascendants occupy the Great One's skills; even should that be rectified, there is still no guarantee the Great One will reawaken. The vastness of their power and legend poses a mystery of sheer scale and depth.”
“And we're ignoring the greatest problem,” Veronica interjected. “We have no means of compelling the Great One to serve our benefit. Furthermore, if this Avalon did indeed strike it down the first time, what might change during a hypothetical second encounter?”
“Look, it's just a thought," Shiv said, lifting his hands in a halfway surrender. "If you guys have better ideas, I'd like to hear them now, because other than this, unless I figure out how to crack this Avalon by hurting its feelings and punching it…”
“There might be a way of hiding our world,” Veronica said, her gaze falling as she delved through her memory.
But Adam burst her hopes with a single statement. “The Avalon followed Shiv Backstage.”
“There's not going to be any easy means of escape,” Shiv agreed. “There are too many people on Integrated Earth, and even if we all decide to run, we're ascending to a new level of Integration soon. We're going to be mixed in with the greater mass of other dimensions. All of us, among the uncountable Myths and Transcendents. The Challenger himself is going to be able to come for us at that time too.”
As he finished that sentence, an idea came to mind. He gritted his teeth. "Adam, I know you're gonna hate this idea, but maybe, just maybe, we might be able to use the Challenger against this Avalon. You have a Holy War going against him. If we get cut down by whatever this thing is before the war can actually kick off, before you or I can reach our full potential, then what kind of story is that going to be for the Challenger?”
“I absolutely despise that idea,” Adam said with a near growl. “Fortunately, I was thinking along the same lines.” He drew in a breath. “Maybe. Maybe it can be done. Maybe we can manipulate him—he might even willingly allow us to manipulate him. But right now, we are fighting a war against one another. He’s planning to invade our Gate. How are we…” Adam paused as he realized Shiv was grinning at him. “You want to go into the Tutorial, don't you?”
“Might help us kill a few birds with the same stone. Said stone being me. Albion's cuckoo is there, and if the Faceless Queen is fucking with us somehow, I might as well take her off the board. We don't need to keep dealing with someone who's an active threat to us. At the same time, I'll see if I can talk the Challenger into doing us a favor. Shit, even if he won't do anything, I think I might be able to get some information out of him.”
Uva cocked her head. “It might work. But we can rely on more than just the Challenger. The Stranger might have something. The Dreamtaker still has memories of her past. I’ll need to consult with Hymn.”
“I’ll see his schedule made open,” Veronica said.
“I do not need your permission for this matter,” Uva shot back.
The Seeker and the Councilwoman shared a mutual glare. They'd barely interacted in the past. Yet sometimes there was truth between people. For some, it was a beautiful, pure love that blossomed at first sight. Uva and Veronica certainly didn't have such an emotion for the other. Instead, they experienced the anathema. It was the purity of undistilled hatred—a kind of loathing that needed but a look and no supplementary words.
“Is impudence common amongst your people, Legend Mettabon?” Veronica asked.
“Impudence?” Uva asked, her tone suddenly professional. “No. It is beneath my training and dignity to demean an elder Pathbearer possessed of virtue and respect.”
As always, it was what Uva left unsaid that cut the deepest. But not deep enough. In the end, Veronica rolled her eyes, disregarding the Umbral as if an old woman shrugging off an insult from a child. She gave Shiv a look that said, “Must it be this one for you?” before moving on.
“There is another matter,” Valor interrupted. “The final piece of me. We must reclaim it. Immediately. We have been patient and delicate with my former people, but this luxury is no longer something we can afford. Our adversaries seek to feast on our ignorance and slice into our weakness; I wish to indulge in the same habit, and instruct them on their mistakes.”
Shiv mimed firing a gun at Valor. “Don’t worry, old man. I’ll get you your bits back.”
“Shiv,” Adam rasped, somehow already aware of his best friend’s plan. “Do you intend to threaten the Necrotechs by repeatedly exposing yourself to their magics in a tension game of unspoken blackmail?”
“Yep,” Shiv grunted. “Be a real shame if the Necrotechs refuse or offend the great Deathless after he comes seeking hospitality.” He waited for Adam to raise his voice in protest, but his expression quivered, and he failed to suppress a smile.
“I rather want to be there with you. As an additional eyewitness to this offense. That, and I believe my Omniscience requires more training, and a new and secretive territory might serve as the altar of my redemption.”
“The Faceless Queen made mention that she knew where the last piece of Valor was,” Uva added.
“Can’t trust her,” Shiv replied instantly.
“It’s not about trust, it’s that she is working toward something, and so far, she has offered us actionable information—to her own, greater ends, perhaps—but still, she likely intends for Valor to serve her interests in some capacity.”
Shiv breathed out. “Suppose we can ask her when she appears again.”
“That may not take long,” Veronica mused, calling twin dimensional lenses over her eyes. “The Forbidden Empire has halted their bombing run. New Albion intercepted most of the munitions—minimal losses when viewed from the surface, but as with all actions conducted by the Forbidden Empire, the damage inflicted upon non-tangible infrastructure is in question. I have a demand, Shiv: When the Faceless Queen returns, you reveal nothing about what the Forbidden Empire informed you of, and you uncover what she knows—if she knows anything at all. Her following actions might give us a map of truth and falsehoods making up this grand conspiracy.”
“A good decision in general,” the Harbinger said. “Even if she is an extension of the gun, we need to understand how much she knows in relation to it—and if Avalon is determined to remove us from the board, then we can expect another shot to come using her as a means of triangulation.”
A shudder of power rang within Shiv. One of his skills delighted in this idea—and drew closer to the absolute precipice of evolution.
Scheming Bastard 48 > 50 (Skill Evolution Imminent)
“Alright, but we go on guard the moment the Faceless Queen shows up again, because if things go really poorly, I expect more threads coming for us all. Uva, stick close to Adam. Not sure if his hand can stop this thing, but it’s saved us from everything else, so…” Shiv shrugged. “We work with what we got.”
“As we always do,” Uva agreed. “I will delve deeper into my tomes in the meantime. There are Outsiders rooted in the concepts of secrets and identity. However this Excaliburization process works, it seems to connect the idea of altering and transforming someone. The fractals might be offshoots of your original self, and the opportunities offered to your Garden and the Hand are also clearly bestowals of personal consciousness.”
“You think the Dreamtaker has a way of working against that?” Shiv asked.
Uva grimaced. “Perhaps before, but not right now. Her state after usurping Longinus’ legend has been as awkward for her as it has been for seemingly everyone else.”
“Replace awkward with 'mass psychosis-inducing' and I will find agreement with your words,” Veronica chimed. “But on this matter we are all aligned, which is why I will move Field Army Woe of the Vanquished to establish an encampment near Lost Angeles—or rather, where it used to be. Their orders will instruct them to move toward Fortress-City Diego as a response to southern hostilities, but they will be ready to respond at any point.”
“And we are to just let them enter the Gate should a conflict arise, are we?” Uva asked, borderline sneering at Veronica. “A mutual enemy does not make us fools, Councilwoman. Is there something about your culture that denies the intellect of another?”
“You already have my Poly-Magi reinforcing your gate,” Veronica answered smoothly. “You would doubt my intentions now?”
“I doubt everyone’s intentions, always. A single formation of Republic magi is but a smear to wipe away; a Field Army is an infestation, and all the storms in the world might not be enough to fully cleanse the earth of termites.”
Shiv’s stare snapped between his mirror-holding grandmother on one side of the room, and his lover, with eldritch spiders slowly slipping out from her physical contours on the other. He cleared his throat loudly. “Great. Glad we’re all having a good time. Anyway. I’m gonna go on a suicide run now; inform you guys how it goes in real time. Valor—excursion toward your home after I get back?”
“Training,” Valor said. “I will depart toward my homeland in the Abyss; you will endeavor to find me along the way using your Awareness. I will not use my skill.”
Shiv grinned. “Alright, if that’s how you want to play it. I gotta warn you, I’ve been getting pretty good at—”
“And should you press your fellow Disciple Arrow to cheat on your behalf, he will inform me, and I will see your malfeasance corrected,” Valor finished.
“What? That’s not—I would never do—come on, me, cheat?” Shiv’s grin grew wider, but it failed to convince anyone in the room of his moral character. On this, even Uva and Veronica were aligned. “Felling, everyone doubting me here. Giving me a bad atmosphere: I’m gonna go vent my feelings on the orcs.” Shiv shot up with as much faux outrage as he could muster and set on to do whatever he could to resolve the situation.
“Don’t get sidetracked by your feud,” Adam added.
“Feud? What feud? I don’t have feuds.”
“The Gourmet.”
Shiv instinctively pushed his chest out. “That’s not a feud, Adam. That’s justice. You should know that by now. There’s no world where I accept that worm-toothed shitbag as the better chef, and if I have to murder him to make that true, I’m going to do it. Because sometimes, justice needs great sacrifice. With other people doing the sacrificing.”
“Your Heroism is shrinking, Shiv.” Adam squinted with his remaining eye. “I can see it shriveling up before my gaze.”
“It’ll open up to birth the greatest bit of Heroism you've ever seen once I get this done. Trust me.”
“Don’t sink in too deep,” Uva stressed.
“I know,” Shiv said. “If things go wrong, I’ll just die and try again. Besides: I think we’re due a peek at how the orcs have been handling the aftermath of their fast. Been two months; I expect some of the bastards to be more than a little miserable.”
Adam didn’t seem so sure. “Just be careful.”
“Yeah. I got it. Hey, speaking of: Where’s the Culturist? I expected him to be here for something like this. Haven’t seen him in a bit.”
“Ah. Remember when I had you make that dimensional-shadow-time-stealth-hydro cake with your pan a day ago?” Adam said.
“Yeah?” Shiv answered. Then, he paused. “Oh, that was for him. What’s he doing?”
The Paragon made a series of gestures, covering his mouth, ears, and eyes in quick succession. Veronica frowned, but Shiv understood immediately. Something to do with the Faceless Queen, then. Adam could communicate with the Culturist via his Awareness Skill, so they were keeping a set of separate schemes in play that the rest didn’t know about.
“Well, I hope he liked the taste and that it’s letting him have all the fun he wants.”
“I’m not sure about fun, but he’s proving somewhat elusive—even considering where he is right now,” Adam answered.
“He’s in New Albion,” the Harbinger guessed. “He was in love with an agent of Aviary once. Wait. Does that mean—”
No, Shiv cut the Harbinger off. If the Culturist was compromised, most of us would be dead or captured rather than spinning our minds against the constant paranoia.
“But there is still something to consider. What if he does not know? What if the cuckoos go further than even the Faceless Queen claims?”
Then we figure that out when it comes to it. Right now, we handle what we can understand, and we get a larger picture whenever we can. And once again, that starts with everyone we can affect, and everyone we already know. The Challenger was a monster, but he was a monster Shiv understood and could predict to some capacity. Horrific as he was, at least he was emotionally invested in the struggle—not so unlike Evanescia.
Unfortunately for Shiv, every conversation with the bastard came with a bit of torture.
Well. Pain’s a bit like breathing for me anyway. Let’s see what we can get out of—
***
Things went weird the moment Shiv stepped out from the gateway. He had Merrielmel assemble and prepare the Slipgate using a random Primal Gate out on the surface to prevent the orcs from conducting a sudden raid on Gate Piety the moment the dimensional frequencies came alive again. With that, the worst-case scenario was just the loss of a lesser gateway over near Vermind—barely a loss at all in the grand scheme of things. If the orcs decided to come sallying forth, Stormhalt would bomb them using the city’s turrets, the Poly-Magi, and then stomp on them using Halsur’s power.
Pretty simple plan.
But as he returned to the Tutorial, rather than a massed charge of grayskins, another ambush awaited Shiv—an ambush conducted not by an orc, but the aforementioned cuckoo near and dear to the Faceless Queen’s interests. When crossed the gateway, Legend-Assassin Maria Corcusa stood in wait only five meters away, with her arms folded behind her back and an absurdly muscular orc wearing a suit of adamantine armor styled to look like a bigger orc right beside her, his arms crossed in front of his chest as if a mirror to Corcusa.
Shiv froze with his rear leg still in the gateway’s portal. He blinked at the orc—who was scowling at him with such intensity it slowly got comical—and then the Field Commander of the Invader’s Alliance, who regarded him with a glare of unnerving calculus. “What—what the hells is this? How long were you two assholes waiting here to jump me?”
“Legend Deathless,” Corcusa said, greeting Shiv in person for the first time. “It is a fine thing to finally lay eyes on you. The Challenger has been expecting yo—”
“Yeah, yeah, but for real, how long were you two just standing here, outside this particular gateway, waiting for me?” Shiv asked again.
The orc rammed a finger against Shiv’s forehead. A shockwave sent the air around them rippling out as a small typhoon; the burly gray fuck was fast. “Fifteen hours—yeah! And I would've waited days more to get these hands on you!” The orc stepped right up to Shiv, his muscles bulging so much that Shiv felt like the toddler in a match of physiques for the first time in a while. He leaned down and breathed his surprisingly minty-fresh breath into Shiv’s nostrils. “I’ve been waiting for this moment—yeah! Been waiting to see you eye-to-eye and get your scent.”
The orc then vigorously sniffed Shiv, and let out a ragged moan that bordered on the indecent. “Yeeeaaah. That’s the right, prime fighting smell! We’re gonna get bloody, brother! We’re gonna get bloody, real—”
Shiv slowly, casually, wearily pushed the orc aside so he could talk to someone that didn’t make his skin crawl. “If you’re going to attack me, please start, because I’ve been through some shit, and I’m really not in the right kind of mood for this type of nonsense.”
A massive, gauntleted hand promptly wrapped around Shiv’s head from behind and picked him up off the ground like a bag of groceries. “Well, get in the mood!” the annoying orc shouted. “BECAUSE THIS SMACKDOWN IS COMING AT YOUR CANDY ASS RAW!”
“Forgot how much I hated this place,” Shiv mumbled through the hand smothering his face. His Shapeless Tides tore across his body like a school of swordfish. They crashed and stacked themselves against the orc’s hand and—
“Breaker,” the Challenger’s voice suddenly sounded from above. Then, the God of Strife let out an uncharacteristic sigh. “What did I tell you earlier? Please let the Deathless go. It’s very impolite to attack an esteemed enemy on a diplomatic mission. It ruins the flavor of things to come.”
Shiv paused. He shifted his head until his eyes were peeking out between the orc’s fingers. “You’re the Breaker?”
“The Breaker’s my calling—my shape—my creed. Right now, you’re speaking to the orc-of-orcs—yeah! The Jingoist's got you in his grip, brother! And there’s no way out! No way out!” The Breaker blasted a spray of spittle into Shiv’s face with every syllable, who took it without moving a muscle.
“Let’s see if his grand ego has grand insecurities,” the Harbinger muttered, similarly unamused.
Shiv snorted. “Yeah. The gimmick’s kind of cute and all, but you’re all just fighting for second place after the Culturist, aren’t you?”
From out of nowhere, there came a crackle of resounding static as an unseen narrator joined the fray. “BY THE CHALLENGER! THAT WAS A DIRECT, EMOTIONAL ATTACK BY THE DEATHLESS! COLD-BLOODED! COLD-BLOODED! THERE'S NO FOREPLAY AT ALL WITH THE GATE PIETY DICK-RIPPER!”