“What might possess a god to forsake their own Divinity?”
Such a question is often asked by fools who think power is the shape of itself, who assume desire's vessel to fit the contours of their blinkered mind rather than the horrific, unpredictable truth.
The cost of Divinity is greater than most will ever be able to bear, and among the few capable, even fewer still will ever attain that vaunted mantle to begin with, and instead find themselves struck down by life's many vicissitudes along their path.
Powerful is a terrible way to describe a god. Epitomized, perhaps, is better, but still fails to encapsulate the wholeness of their burdens. A Domain is not like a Skill, but an expansive vector for you to push on and affect the world with, and for the world to push back and affect you. You are at once impossibly more powerful than any mortal Pathbearer will ever be, yet also immeasurably more vulnerable than even the weakest Initiate. For your story has crystallized. You are your tale rather than the conduit of your tale, and to go against your own legend will thus see you destroyed.
Hypocrisy is the cancer and mortality of gods.
With this stated, why choose Kenosis? Because power belongs to none but the ageless yet mortal. Mortality is the domain of choice and unburdened change. Godhood is a cage unto itself. Godhood is fated entombment—and if one who ascends to godhood possesses even the faintest personality, and is unwilling to fully sacrifice the individual they were to fuel the idea they must become, then only a single end awaits: ruin.
—Legend-Horologist Silence Valeros (Forsaken of the abandoned Line of Gehenna)
VIII-22
Ninth Circle
Harbinger of Tripartite Ruin 461 > 467
Dryad of Lies 175 > 224 (Skill Evolution Reached)
Skill Evolution: Dryad of Lies (Master) > Beast of the Ninth Circle (Legendary)
Attention: Delve requirements for Skill [Beast of the Ninth Circle] not yet met.
The Dryad's cry was deafening, devastating, and dispelling. The grand deception that loomed over Shiv was swallowed and consumed. With the Faceless Queen's innermost truth laid bare, an infusion of power surged into the Dryad, and it burst free from Shiv's body, slipping out between the smoking cracks that lined his Harbinger. Shiv bled, his skin mirroring his actualization, but with pain came something else.
It emerged from his flesh and soul, more shade than an actual shadow. It was imprinted against him, formless, featureless, yet undeniable. It bloomed close behind like a coiled serpent yet sprouting the thinnest of limbs, each one emaciated and disturbing to look upon. As Shiv turned, he beheld the Beast of the Ninth Circle for the first time, and it clung tight to him—yet physical distance didn't seem its overwhelming constraint.
Shiv found it difficult to separate his new beast from the shadows of his Trespasser, even if he could feel a clear delineation between the two Skills. Yet as it finally cemented itself, it latched onto the back of his head, its eyes glowing bright and pure: six pools of infernal flame connected to a long and sinuous body that sank into the blissful dark, for of its nature was deception, and from the darkness of truth it rose. In those eyes burned an urge for retribution and devastation, a need to seek the most mendacious of prey—and to impart upon them a venom born of ruinous veracity.
Something within Shiv's blood curdled. The presence of the Beast of the Ninth Circle sank deep into him, not only soul-deep but also cell-deep. It held an influence over his biology, over his psychology, over his mana field itself. That presence, that poison which slept dormant yet within his veins, yearned to awaken with but a single ingredient.
Though the alchemy was unknown to him at present, his intuition tasted the change. But all that had to wait, for this Skill Evolution, Pre-Legendary though it was, potentially life-threatening to himself it might be, came second to the terrifying truth behind the Faceless Queen and the Great One—two entities; one and the same.
“What a remarkable legend you have accrued,” the Challenger drawled, tearing Shiv out from his stupor. “Another Pre-Legendary Skill. You should thank me, Deathless. After all, without my guidance, where would you be in life?” His smile was genuine and vicious at the same time, the kind of grin you would get from a loving wolf that wanted to tear into you, yet wished also for you to hold its jaws open in defiance.
Shiv struggled to find a reply. He wanted to speak. He wanted to spit a sharp rebuttal, anything that would drive the Challenger back. The God of Strife was an enemy still. Yet, in this moment, he had more power over Shiv and the Great Game than anyone else he knew. And with what he'd just done, the complete Excaliburization of the entire orc species, how that would affect the orcs who had defected to Adam, first of which the Culturist himself…
“Why?” Such was the question that burdened Shiv the most. “Why didn't you just do that from the beginning? If you had this power, if you're capable of… wielding Avalaon, why didn't you just use it before?”
The Challenger snorted. The force of his breath was so powerful that it sent an explosive hurricane ripping across the land. A dozen meters away, Corcusa was torn from her feet, but the Breaker lashed out, his hand whipping so fast it unleashed a localized shockwave of its own. A pocket was blasted into the hurricane, creating a zone of stability. He held Corcusa steady in his fingers, an unbending bulwark of muscle, sinew, and crackling Necromancy against the passing wall of force. But though the Breaker’s Necromancy touched her directly, she didn't wither, and neither did her armor. The Breaker's control over the lore of loss was staggering.
“His ridiculousness is the greatest performance of all,” the Harbinger said. “Or perhaps the Excaliburization process made him stronger, gave him finer control.”
“Think, Deathless,” the Challenger instructed, his tone crisp, almost disappointed, but rising effortlessly over the cacophony of sundering earth. He drew in another long breath as the hurricane he spat free crashed across the land, becoming a cyclone of epic proportions, shrouding the horizon, forcing Shiv to pin himself in place by spearing his Shapeless Tides down. Rooted against the floor, Shiv watched as the Tutorial was peeled from the foundations, tectonic plates shifting as the winds drilled and carved. The world was stripped down to its bedrock, as if the air friction itself had been made a scalpel. “Think. You have already assembled an understanding of one great and forbidden truth from all the pieces you have been offered. My reason for restraint should be simple to deduce.”
After a moment of thought, Shiv realized it was. “You just don't want to. No, no, it's worse than that. Worse and more at the same time. It's not just that you don't want to. It's also that you can't. You're a God of Strife, not a God of Change. This is an act of inducing utopia, but for you it's an act of defiance. You refuse to surrender yourself to utopia while the rest of the orcs all come back changed, both those that belong to you and those that have left you. It's a demonstration of your dominance. That's why you could do it. If you just used it only on Adam or the orcs in the Gate…”
“Crack.” The Challenger chuckled as he performed a gesture, pulling both hands apart as if ripping himself open down the middle. “For me to give you this painless coup de grâce, to win a war without drawing blood at all and using another's might, why, it would be like carving my soul open and tearing my Domains free, casting them aside as if rubbish. It would be an act of ontological suicide. I would be no God of Strife at all, but rather a coward. A clever, cunning, powerful coward, but a coward nonetheless. It would be no domination defined. No act of triumph performed. Simply a victory, but a deceitful and paltry one at that. Were I to give my Nemesis the utopia he so yearns for and take him off the board rather than eliminating him in a clash of Canon against Canon, I would prevail in practicality, but lose the Holy War by giving him my throat—the God of Strife defeating Peace through a weapon of higher peace. How ridiculous that would be. How fatal for me.”
But Shiv felt something else. The Beast of the Ninth Circle reared its head, rising over him like a disembodied shadow, and the infernal pits that made up its long crescent eyes blazed. It sensed something so close to a falsehood that the slumbering venoms within Shiv began to churn. But rather than burning, there was something unnaturally cold about the venom. Something that felt round, like a layered set of rings that yearned to be unleashed.
Yet the falsehood wasn't enough. The Challenger's words ultimately fell within the category of prevarication rather than an outright untruth. Despite this, the Beast looked toward the Challenger's right arm—the dual arm taken from the Starhawk to serve as a prosthetic and means of mockery.
There was something about that arm that gnawed at Shiv. Everything the Challenger did had a greater purpose—it couldn't just be a mere insult.
“But now that I've told you all this, and you've developed that delicious little Skill Evolution, I think it's time for you to return home and indulge in its use. The Beast of the Ninth Circle deserves to spread its poison across the land, after all, and as I told you before, even a Transcendent might be wary about offending specific Legends, especially in the most peculiar circumstances. Someone born of lies has their own fatal anti-venom.”
“Using us…”
The Beast of the Ninth Circle spoke for the first time. Its voice was animalistic, its intellect barely there, only igniting to sapience when coming in contact with matters of truth and deception. But with these two words alone, Shiv understood its origin, for it was one born of him.
“No. No.” The Deathless shook his head. “I don't think that's how this will turn out. I'm not going to use the Beast on her. That's what she wants, isn't it? And you know that. You're pushing me down that way because you want to see what comes of it.”
The Challenger didn't respond immediately, but he gave away the game with that satisfied silence he offered and the way he struggled to hold back a smile.
Shiv spotted the thread in his own memories. It wasn't a hard thread to spot at all, either. It was the deliberate actions of the Queen guiding him, cajoling him, leading him to perform a specific set of actions that created the Dryad, that allowed him to evolve the Skill in the first place. Now, after learning of her true nature, his Dryad of Lies evolved once more, into something that yearned to poison those who bore falsehood near their hearts. If nothing else, it primed him specifically to be a culler of spies.
But the Faceless Queen was a lord of spies, and there was a greater lie besides. On top of that, she was the Great One. A deception unparalleled. If he touched her with his skill, even if she was possessed of such extreme power, it was bound to have a catastrophic effect on her. The Beast was a perfected weapon, practically designed to be used against her, and the game at play was all too obvious; everything sliding in place, one domino after another.
“Did she arrange this with you?” Shiv asked. “Or are you just playing along, pulling on threads so that you can find the answer to questions that gnaw at you on the other side?”
The Challenger opened his mouth, yet hesitated. The Beast reared back, preparing to strike, not even of Shiv's own volition, simply because a lie was imminent. “The latter, I must confess. I'm interested in whatever strange game the Great One is playing. All these Ascendants, all these shattered pieces taken from that hollowed soul, uncrowned of ego—a living, animated ego that has finally taken center stage. But as for what end this ego seeks, I cannot say for certain. And I am curious. Aren't you?”
“Nah. I think I'm closer to being tired.” A bitter laugh escaped Shiv. He felt like he was swimming adjacent to a riptide. Yet even as he was breaking free of the waves' pull, he was still far from land, and the ocean was capricious as ever. “It feels like I got a look at how the world actually is for the first time, but it's just more bullshit in every direction. Transcendence, High Gods, beings I can't even comprehend playing their own games, nudging me along, giving me just enough so that I respond along a certain predictable path…”
“Predictable is right,” the Challenger said. “And despite everything between us, I empathize. Truly. You loathe me, but that loathing we share is a righteous thing, a virtuous thing, a pure thing. You dislike the way I see the world, and I disregard the way you wish the world to be, and so we must clash. It is simple, beautiful, but all these other gods and Transcendents, these Pathbearers and players, they hate the simplicity we share. They hate it because we move along a single vector. We are not so burdened by contrary desires. Not like them. Which is why they keep trying to civilize you, Deathless. Which is why that grandmother of yours comes up with pitiful, miserable excuse after pitiful, miserable excuse, as to why her nation is so diseased. She's not vermin because she's weak. Weakness simply is a measure of scope. Everyone is weak if you draw yourself beyond them in magnitude. No, she is vermin because she has made herself fragile. She tells herself one story, yet in her heart of hearts, she believes in another.”
And within Shiv's heart of hearts, he realized he'd made a mistake, or rather a misaimed assumption. The Beast of the Ninth Circle wasn't aimed at the Faceless Queen alone—because it would be perfect against Veronica as well. Whatever emotional, metaphysical toxin it carried, it would ruin a politician as easily as a spy. Perhaps even more so. Both, after all, were practitioners of lies. Necessary lies, even, for a nation so often was built upon a foundation of lies named mythology for stability—and because reality was so often wretched.
“Oh, good. You finally got the other part as well. Yes, I suspected that to be the case. Not the Faceless Queen herself, mind you, but rather Veronica Chandler. The exact right kind of poison for a spy or a politician, and left in your hands, she would see you make one of two choices: You would poison your grandmother, or you would fail in the attempt. Both must feed into the Great One’s machinations. Both have already been predicted to some capacity. To what end, I cannot say, and I suspect it is not for me to discover; that falls to you. But if you would take a word of advice from an enemy who is about to wound you and nourish your hate, then hear this: Do not be a civilized animal. They have tried to burden you with their mythology. They are trying to teach you their ways while keeping you dressed and clothed and conditioned to be predictable. Do not be. Take what they teach. Use it. Discard it at a whim. And always be your own monster.”
For the first time ever, Shiv heard a growl of genuine hatred emerge from the Challenger, and that hatred mirrored the God of Strife's past perfectly. He was a weapon once. Someone else created him, designed him like a tool. Someone else used him, and someone else must have wanted to change him when the wars were done, when there was no blood left to shed in their opinion. But as they never asked what the Challenger yearned for while there was killing left to do, so too did they disregard his opinion when he found himself called to abandon his greatest passion.
Then, the Challenger let out a soft, satisfied breath. “I think today's audience has gone on long enough, Deathless. Return to your Gate. Tell them what you've discovered. Make a mess, or don't. Just be unpredictable. Be interesting. Be messy. Cause problems across the board. It's what I would do if I were you, but then again, maybe I simply want you to do this to serve my purposes. Another thing to worry about, I suppose, but ultimately, there are only so many choices for you. There are only so many choices for all of us.”
Above, clouds of glittering metal formed accretion-like bands around a dormant star—a hyperwave station, whatever that was. Shiv had thought it to be Avalon. Yet even that understanding was now proven incomplete. Across the Tutorial, orcs looked towards Shiv, their expressions sublime with joy, gazes gleaming with budding avarice and expectation. He knew he would be seeing those eyes again soon. The true invasion of Gate Piety would soon begin.
“Not yet,” Shiv replied. “There's one last thing I need to know. Avalon, what is—”
“Greedy.” The Challenger scoffed—and struck Shiv with the back of his hand.
The Red Rider possessed unparalleled powers of destruction. With his gaze, he could grind planets to powder. With the clench of his fist, he could tear the fabric of the void and cause a false vacuum to rupture forth from the gaps between. With a simple effort, he could murder entire universes clean of life, perhaps even ruin dimensions irreparably.
But Shiv required a finer kind of destruction. The physical would leave him fused and rooted in place, yet unharmed in the finality.
And so, where he shattered was in his mind, heart, and soul. The Challenger struck a blow that pierced deep, parting Shiv's weeks' worth of Shapeless Tides as less than an afterthought. The blow swam further, transmuting from kinetic to mental as it cleaved into the depths of Shiv's memory. It dragged him back, was as overwhelming within his mind as it was in the world without. While the air around Shiv ionized and atoms parted, swallowing the world in a sphere of pure white, everything within him turned raw with agony as he hurtled uncontrollably through his memories, pulled back toward a single point in his past. A moment where he stood over the body of the closest thing he'd ever had to a father.
He found himself lost and trapped in a room with only one door.
He watched Georges die in front of his eyes.
He screamed and raged and grieved and then turned away, and when he stepped through the door, he found himself within the same room again, and behind him was no door at all.
He struggled.
He battled.
He tried to help.
Then he tried to turn away.
He tried to change that memory, but the Challenger’s blow kept pulling him ever deeper.
He crossed from one room to another to another to another, watching Georges pass over and over and over and over again.
But with each iteration, there was a change. With each iteration, Georges lasted a little bit longer, grew a bit harsher, turned his milky gaze upon Shiv, and seethed with more and more vitriol. “You fucking promised me, Shiv. You said you were going to come for me. You said you were going to save me. And look at me now. You're no pillar at all.”
“Stop…” the Harbinger growled, cracking under the strain of the Challenger’s attack, fighting to emerge from this imparted nightmare.
After a thousand or perhaps a million iterations, the false memory devolved further into fiction. The scene degenerated into horror. Longinus appeared in one of those instances, and he did to Georges what should have been left to the annals of unspoken history.
“Stop!” Both Shiv and the Harbinger roared at once. They tried to stop the scene, yet found themselves helpless, unable to affect this twisted past that only became more depraved with every door they were propelled to step through. They held no power over their mind as they plunged further and faster, spectating a moment that had happened yet wasn't remembered, a moment they had never been present for but in truth didn't want to witness at all.
It unraveled them from their foundations. The Harbinger cracked and parted into a jagged, shapeless mess of pieces. Beneath its field, Shiv's physical flesh was turned to a mess of mutilated meat.
Pressurized blood cleaved out of him in explosive jets as his emotional torment was manifested as physical ruin.
Beyond the den of his mind, he felt his back strike the ground somewhere far below where he'd stood, felt the warmth leave his body, felt death encroach on the vessel he'd sent into the Tutorial. But this wasn't a slow death at all. No, this was a lesson, and a declaration: The Challenger would be coming for Gate Piety soon, and Shiv was a fool to think he could step foot here, demand answers, and be reckless without paying a brutal price in return.
A while ago, he'd thought himself beyond pain. That was a lie. It just took the right kind to hurt him now, and what he experienced for those centuries he spent lost to these scenes drove him to the very brink.
He didn't beg. The Harbinger didn't beg. But they bled. They broke. They hurt. By the time the Beast of the Ninth Circle finally bit down, slithering its way into his flesh and igniting his blood and banishing the falsehood unfolding within, he felt on the verge of true death. He was no longer in the Tutorial. That icy poison that lurked within him exploded out from his body, spilling out and overtaking his blood. For a few moments, it felt like the entire world inverted along an invisible axis. He tumbled down, sinking out of the Tutorial into a separate reality altogether, one created by his venom, one born of deception.
As he surfaced from the cold, he found himself lying upon a frozen lake. He blinked, and he realized all his bodies had been gathered at the same place. The Trueclone he'd sent into the Tutorial lay dead, blood seeping out from every pore, but the rest of him didn't fare so well either. His Severed Shadow was leaking Vitae from a thousand cracks left upon its body while his other clones across Integration were seconds away from complete exsanguination.
He wondered if this was simply another layer to the Challenger's imposed delirium. But something about this felt different, something about this felt real and then not. Looking down from his myriad vessels, he noticed the length of living shadow creeping out from him, a serpentine shape that trailed and dragged emaciated limbs that extended and formed four rings out around the frozen lake at their epicenter.
“Ah, and a reminder before I leave you,” the Challenger's voice echoed from all around. “You should know by now that a Pre-Legendary skill is a devastating thing to have in two ways; your myth is as much a danger to you as it is to your enemy. It will be a lesson for you in understanding the danger posed by burying the Beast of the Ninth Circle. I have faith that you will make it out. Well, eventually. Don't go insane, Deathless.”
The God of Strife's voice faded in a peal of echoing laughter. Shiv tried to rise, but found himself trapped in a platinum husk of burn scars. He detonated his Scarforged Shells, one after another. The damage he'd sustained was greater than ever before, and it rippled free from his body, shredding across the frozen lake, blasting gouges through the ice far further than his vision could reach. Yet the ice mended itself seconds after, the coldness in the air filling in the gaps.
As he stole away his physical injuries using his Aegis of Assimilation, he looked around—and froze. There were four distinct rings leading beyond him: The first was a stack of beds, each one holding a withered, dying Georges. Past that ring, there was a younger and far less experienced Shiv, standing bloodied over a slave child that 811 had killed during his first foray into Gate Theborn. The third ring was occupied by a single presence: Longinus in the flesh, manifested in his centaur-like form, with his lance held high and Divinity burning bright.
In the final ring, Shiv saw the end of this infernal realm. The Beast of the Ninth Circle's head lay open, with its jaws wide, stretching out from Shiv’s bodies to offer him an exit via its gullet. He didn't know where the other side led or how he truly got here—but he knew one thing: the jaws of the beast were the only way out. It had brought him in here, it had poisoned him, it had swallowed him, and so he needed to venture down the same path to burn away the frozen venom with the very same substance acting in opposition.
“God's damn… fucking… Pre-Legendary Skill…” Shiv coughed and wiped at his face. “Really? You had to hurt me before you hurt anyone else?”
The Beast didn't answer. The Beast was simply the Beast. It looked upon him, its six eyes blazing bright, the only light in this miserable, sunken place rooted within Shiv's own soul. It occurred to him then that this was as close to a weaponized Delve as one could attain. That had him considering what it would be like to eventually Delve this skill when it was already partially in use.
“And why might the Faceless Queen want us to develop down this path?” the Harbinger asked.
Shiv didn't know the answer, but the moment he tried to accelerate toward the exit, the rings shifted. The first row of beds moved, maintaining an eternal equidistance from Shiv, no matter how fast he went, no matter if he moved physically, tried to leap across time using his Harbinger, or even cast fire upon the copies of Georges to burn them away.
When his scintillating flames parted, the many Georges still remained. Worse yet, they were all sitting up. They were all withered, smoking, and miserable. Their hateful stares struck Shiv like a cavalry charge. Puncture wounds appeared in his near-shattered Harbinger. The same wounds were mirrored across his physical body and soul. A few more of Shiv's vessels collapsed, dropping from blood loss, kept alive only by his Biomancy. Even his Severed Shadow collapsed to one knee. The coldness of the air sank in ever deeper, and he realized he was losing too much vitality. He couldn't stay here for long. This place was sapping him in more ways than one, and it would see him utterly unmade if he couldn't escape with haste.
He turned his gaze away from the many Georges. He hid himself from his shame as he tried to formulate a solution. "What do you want?" Shiv groaned, battling against physical, mental, and spiritual weakness. He was close to insanity, close to collapse, close to shattering outright. “How am I supposed to pass? I don't even know how you work.”
Again, the Beast said nothing, but he could feel its baleful glare reside upon him, and sense its essence as much a part of his blood and soul as it was a manifestation of unattuned mana.
Shiv caught his frustration and crushed it, dissolving the emotion before it could distract his focus. “Alright, Harbinger, let's think this through. This is another Social Skill. The Dryad evolved from Deductive Reasoning and Deception. So, this place needs a lie to be solved by a truth, or something like that. Right?”
“It is as good a guess as I could muster on your behalf,” the Harbinger wheezed.
“Right! So what am I… What am I…” Shiv swallowed as he suddenly realized how he was probably supposed to get out.
This was a cruel skill, an exceptionally miserably cruel skill. He lifted his head. He stared at the many incarnations of the father he'd failed, and barely stopped himself from whimpering. “I'm sorry. I'm sorry I lied. I'm sorry I said I was going to save you. I'm sorry I failed, but I wanted to keep my promise. I really did. I didn't want it to be a lie. I'm sorry. Is that what this is? You want to hear me say sorry? Huh?!”
He took a step forward using his Severed Shadow. The ring of Georges moved a step back. “Motherfucker, if it's not that, then what is it? What is it? What do you want? What do you want from me?” Shiv clenched his teeth. The answer was rising like bile, but it hurt the same way as well. The acid burned him from within. The cold hurt him from all sides. The ache ground at him. His vitality dimmed. The crimson glow that made up his spiritual architecture dissolved ever more. “Fuck! It's not my fault, even if I blame myself. There was nothing I could have done. There is no reality where I could have saved you as I am.”
Each word he spat felt like ripping a blade out from his flesh. The pain came with a reeling sensation, as the icy lake thawed and the first ring made up of Georges lying upon his deathbed drew close, slammed into, then passed through Shiv before plunging down into the thawed waters—never to be seen again.
One of Shiv's physical bodies retched as he watched Goerges disappear in the frigid depths, his eyes fixed to Shiv until the last moment. He hadn't realized how much of this regret he was still holding in, how much emotional, psychological pain he'd left buried. He wasn't traumatized in the same way a person might be, but there was still an ocean of sorrow there, and he didn't want to move beyond it. Now he had to. Now the lie of his past needed to be set right if he wanted to emerge from this place at all. In that, he realized the sheer potency this venom, this Ninth Circle, could possess against someone like Veronica Chandler or the Faceless Queen.
The Harbinger stirred. “Potency, but also potentially sanctuary. We are not in the real world anymore. We are trapped here, trapped in our totality, until we resolve whatever ails our heart.”
Shiv continued on. As he reached the second ring, he looked upon 811, his expression alive with near euphoric glee as he watched Shiv himself murder the slave child using his own hands over and over again. The scene took place as a loop. Everywhere Shiv himself turned, a past variation of him committed acts of atrocity upon the boy he yearned to save.
But this moment was a falsehood of falsehoods. It was an emotional recreation of what he felt. He might as well have killed the boy with his foolishness and incompetence during the infiltration—just as he killed so many others in the sloppiness that followed during his brawl with 811.
Shiv hesitated as he searched for the right admission. This place was a crucible full of regret and self-deception; the venom activated upon encountering self-deception above everything else. It took Shiv a little time to realize what to say. He let out a reluctant breath and forced the words out through clenched teeth: “This is going to happen again. Even if I try with all I have, even if I get stronger, it's going to happen again, because the world's full of bastards, and I am not perfect.”
The second ring shot toward Shiv, yet this time his false self crashed against his Severed Shadow and fused together.
He proceeded to the third ring, where Longinus stood, but by the time he reached that miserable degenerate, Shiv had already crafted the final piece to this puzzle.
The Wanderer looked down upon Shiv, his spear drawn back. Shiv's vitality fizzled. The cold was brushing against his core. If he allowed Longinus to strike him, he might just be extinguished. Yet he was the one who blew out Longinus' metaphorical candle first instead.
“You were a victim too,” Shiv whispered. He hated Longinus. He could hate Longinus forever. That wouldn't change anything. That didn't change the truth. “You were a victim too, and I'm sorry about what happened to you. I'm sorry that you became what you did. I'm sorry you hurt all those people, and I'm sure you are sorry too.”
Much of Shiv didn't want to forgive, but an emotional forgiveness wasn't the same as a philosophical one in this place. It didn't function on pure empathic catharsis. No, to come in, one needed to lie and be trapped in one's own lie. To get out, one needed to spit the truth—truth they refused to admit. This place was a pit that digested liars and traitors, especially liars and traitors against their own heart.
Longinus lowered his spear, and he crossed over Shiv, galloping toward the horizon before he suddenly plunged down, splashing into the now stirring waters. The air went from frigid to warm. The path ahead lay unburdened with a final ring that awaited Shiv, a final ring leading into the open jaws of the beast. As he walked toward his point of egress, the same way he came in, he looked behind and realized the world had changed.
No longer was it a miserable hellscape of frost and nightmarish memories. It was barren, but the emptiness also felt like a relief. Sometimes being hollow meant being unburdened, and an unburdening was good for Shiv. He was going to be pressured enough by other factors beyond himself anyhow.
Looking up at the Beast of the Ninth Circle, Shiv scoffed and shook his head. “I can't believe you fucked me over first, but I gotta admit, I'm wondering what you might end up doing to Veronica if I ever choose to use you on her. Why the hell did the Faceless Queen want me to evolve you in the first place? And why did the Challenger go along with her plan?”
Still no answer from the Beast, but the silence this time seemed pregnant with a living concept.
Find out.
Shiv stepped into the jaws of his newest skill, and as he traveled down the rabbit hole of its throat, it felt like he was climbing down—and then up as the world inverted once more.