234 (II)

  Coping

  He felt like a kind of dichotomous soul, then, both supremely rational and unparalleled in self-control, but also a cauldron of unstoppable rage. Rage that demanded he break the world; rage that needed to be wielded and vented upon another. He spent his anguish with his Master of Rage Feat, feeding it into his Leviathan of The Shapeless Tides. His Physicality reached new heights, and Shiv casually picked the Anointed One, squeezing the knight’s head tight as he carried him across the room.

  "Cease! Cease! Stop!" the Anointed One cried aloud. Shiv decided to release him, just as the bread tumors began to finally spread across his body and mana fields. But despite this, there was a part of Shiv that remained unaffected: the fear chain. And that was what Shiv gripped right after. He swung the Knight of the Summer Court like a morning star against the corner of the room. The dense cocoon of yeast and mold there practically exploded, and the Anointed One's screams drowned out even the roar of wind as the sound barrier broke, and the knight’s body folded backward on impact.

  If he had been a normal human, he would have snapped in half altogether. Ultimately, though, he was a fae of the Summer Court, and Shiv still remained an interloper in this grand story—someone who wasn't deemed a proper adversary. The System outright refused to let him kill Princess Plum Blossom’s Anointed Knight.

  But even so, he couldn’t properly resist, not with Shiv’s rage burning an emotional wound inside him, and so he writhed and kicked, flailing as Shiv dashed him against the hidden pastry station over and over again.

  Yeast broke away, revealing the hidden station and the cold iron cage surrounding it. Bones of shining metal slipped through the rupturing mold, and Shiv saw that it wasn’t anything special. Just ordinary iron—iron that glowed bright as the Anointed One struck it.

  The knight let out a blood-curdling scream as his flesh was burned by the bars of the cage. He clutched his chest as if suffering from a heart attack, and the chefs nested inside his body howled and screamed as well. They vomited from dizziness, and Shiv winced in pity. He didn’t have an easy way to get them out. He needed to force the Anointed One to surrender them.

  The first impact shook the entire chamber. The bread coating the walls burst apart and rained down like invasive snowfall. Shiv felt more of fae magic coiling through his being, trying to twist him into a thing of bread. He triggered his Non-Sequitur skill then and launched himself free from his body. As he slipped out of his Vitae decoy, he ripped compromised pieces of his soul and mana free in the process. Flaring spots of agony spread through him. He ignored it.

  His rage was so great in the matter, and his mind was so sharp that he moved with calculated precision, not letting the agony impede him. He returned to existence and continued his brutal onslaught, dashing the Anointed Knight against the bars.

  Don’t even need to waste my golem on this.

  His Shapeless Tides circulated along his fear chain, preventing the shockwaves rippling out from the Anointed One from smashing into Adam. But the Gate Lord was no fool. He had already dived back into his own shadow, hiding from the devastation that Shiv wrought.

  Once, twice, thrice, then ten more times, Shiv slammed the Anointed One against the cold iron cage. Where Shiv's attacks themselves inflicted no proper harm, the cage proved to be a brand that seared the Anointed Knight's body. The fae screamed every time he came into contact with the cage, and lines of metal left pitch-black scars upon his toast-plate armor and plant flesh face.

  "Please, Deathless One! No more! Mercy, please!" the Anointed One howled. The pain of the cold iron kissing his body, paired with the overwhelming tides of fury that boiled and gnawed at his very being, proved to be far, far too much for him to endure.

  He twisted and writhed like a dying insect. He screamed and pleaded for Shiv to stop, but he didn't. Not because he was uncontrolled in his anger, but simply because he wasn't tired yet.

  There was still more fear and dread he could scar into the bread man's psyche—and he needed to tire himself out a bit. Otherwise, he risked venting his rage on something else. Or someone else.

  Sucks to be invincible sometimes, huh? he sneered.

  Whip Proficiency 13 > 15

  Shape of Monstrosity 145 > 147

  Sage of the Enkindled Heart: Use all your tides fast. Keep every blow contained to him. We’re hitting him hard enough to turn a small mountain to dust, so be careful not to let the devastation slip out. And while you’re this mad, focus on controlling every movement, and stay aware of the things around you. Your Multi-Tasking is close to the edge as well. Don’t waste this rampage. We’re ruined as a chef—for now. But we can be more. We can decide how we throw this tantrum.

  Shiv heeded the wisdom of his skill and began spiking the bread knight down upon the cold iron bars over and over again. The bars didn't seem like anything special. It was far weaker than titanium, nothing compared to adamantine, and not even in the same realm of existence as Orichalcum.

  However, there was a strange coldness that emanated from it. A kind of coldness that honored its name. Mana didn't flow right around it, and there seemed to be an absence within the metal itself. An absence that guarded against magic, against mana, against the System's invasive touch. It reminded him of the nuclear reactor of the Capitol Rubix Well. Every time the iron bars kissed the Anointed One's body, they scarred him, mutilated him. The sheer amount of fear and suffering inflicted upon the fairy was too much. His mind was on the verge of breaking, and Shiv knew that, but he wasn't tired yet.

  Sage of the Enkindled Heart: Stop. Give him a moment. He might be unkillable, but he can still be broken in other ways, and we have other uses for him. There are things we demand of him. Like releasing the chefs. In the meantime, deal with the pawns now that he’s downed.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Shiv's attention deviated for a second, turning away from the Anointed One as he released the fear chain. The bread knight crashed down on the ground, and the first sobs crawled their way free from his wounded throat, his voice hoarse from screaming. "Enough, enough! Please, for the love of the Summer Court—for the love of the Radiance, for the love of Princess Plum Blossom, enough!"

  The Anointed One curled in on himself, barely coherent from his torment. He lay before the cage shaking, and he couldn’t meet Shiv’s fiery glare without whimpering in terror. The cold iron wasn't dented at all. It seemed pristine, unharmed. In fact, its gleaming metal shone ever brighter where the fae had struck it, and within its grip was a spill of doughy sludge and melted smears of plant matter.

  The Faebread had orchestrated their breakout from within this place. But now they were going to suffer. They were going to be broken upon an anvil of pain that served as their prison.

  Darkness spilled out from Shiv. Darkness that he further fueled with his anger. He barely felt his fury lessen. So much was inside him that he didn't think he would ever run out by this point. So he took full advantage of that. He used it all on his Creeping Void, and, as the room was drowned in shadow, the gingerbread soldiers and lesser pawns of the Anointed Knight were devoured in an overwhelming instant.

  The Creeping Void 126 > 128

  Shiv took in the fading forms of the Gingerbread-Knights, the baguettes, and the molding yeast wrapped around the walls. He saw Adam poke his head out from the shadows, shooting Shiv a look of concern.

  "Don’t start. I'm not well, Adam," Shiv admitted honestly, "but I'm dealing with it so we don't have a problem later. Just give me a few more moments to work through this. I’m getting my shit together.”

  “Shiv, you’re scaring the bloody hells out of me. Why are you acting so normal?”

  “Don't worry, not insane. Yet. Just… a Skill Evolution. Give me a bit. Please.”

  Adam didn't seem convinced, but he was kind enough to let Shiv continue. Kind enough to let Shiv...

  "Look out!" Adam cried. Shiv heard something ripping through the air behind him. He didn't spend any time questioning how he'd missed the attack. He just reacted. Time went still. Shiv's temporal shell formed over his body. He turned, and he saw the edge of something close by: the Anointed One's halberd, a mere centimeter away from his head. A humorless chuckle escaped Shiv as he stepped past the weapon’s trajectory and approached his foe once more.

  Inertial Overdrive 185 > 186

  The Anointed One was on his knees. A dense shroud of Chronomancy coated him—protected him from harm. Shiv couldn’t even move the fae while he was in such a state. It seemed they had a unique relationship with time—one that rendered them immutable in certain ways.

  "You know, it's kind of a rat-bastard thing to do, trying to stab someone from behind," Shiv said. The Anointed Knight couldn't move, couldn't even glare at Shiv.

  But the Deathless could feel all the anger flowing out from the knight, and he heard the Anointed One's mind echo, "I curse you. I curse you, you and your foul Skill Evolution. What evil do you have nested inside you? Brute. Fiend. Honorless monster! You have no right to wound me like this, to abuse me. I am a Knight of the Summer Court, I am—”

  "You are what I will make of you," Shiv declared coldly. "I am very, very, very fucking pissed. And if this goes poorly—and it is going poorly—I'm going to use that cage to torture you until there is nothing left of your mind. Normally, I'm not like this. It's a real orc thing to do, but the anger has got its hooks in me, and even rationally, I want it to have its hooks in me. I want my hate and rage to be someone else's problem, I want the fact that I can't properly cook anymore to hurt someone as badly as it hurt me."

  Shiv paused as he processed his thoughts. "It hurts me. It's hurting me now. I feel like less of a person since I can’t cook right, and because of that, I want to make you less of a fae."

  Sage of the Enkindled Heart: Right. Continue. Deal with your problems now. Not later. Now.

  A sigh escaped from Shiv, and suddenly, the winds of violence pulling at his proverbial sails went quiet.

  "Yeah," he muttered to himself, "I wanna hurt you because I got hurt. I wanna hurt you because that's the only bit of control I have. It's not really mature, is it? It's a very animal thing to do. Well, I feel like quite the animal, right? I won't apologize to you, but..." Shiv looked at the frozen faces nested within the Anointed One's chest: chefs that were tortured, that were mutilated, that were forced to behold atrocities committed by the fairies. "You have it coming. Maybe they do too, but you could have chosen better. I know you have a will of your own. Whatever you are, whatever the rules that bind you, you could have chosen, just like I'm choosing right now."

  Another second passed. The Anointed One said nothing. Shiv's lip curled. "And now… I'm choosing to stop. I'm choosing to say that enough is enough, that I don't want to hurt you no more. That's it. I'm done. You let the chefs free, and I’ll just put you in the cage and send you home. No more brutality. I’ll let you taste some mercy.”

  And he let time resume. He watched as the fae knight crashed down to his hands and knees. The flung halberd shot across the room and embedded itself in the wall behind Shiv with an impact that shook the entire throne room.

  But it promptly came back.

  Shiv felt a shiver in the air. He tilted his body to dodge—not even using his Chronomancy this time—and the blade slipped by him, missing him by a whisker’s width. The halberd, guided by the fae’s unseen hand, struck the edge of the cold iron and shattered into pieces. A spray of plantstuff and brilliant motes of light filled the air, and Shiv sighed.

  “You felling dumbshit. I was being honest.” A flood of anger was unleashed from his eyes, and it sprayed free as a dark tide of lashing fire, utterly filling the core of the Anointed One. The bread knight threw his head back and shrieked like a deer that had been set on fire.

  This time, he broke. This time, the fae was stripped of all control. He shuddered and swayed on the ground, rolling from side to side. Shiv took a step forward and loomed over the broken knight. "Wasn't wise of you," Shiv said. "Even if you'd killed me, I wouldn't have gone down that easily. I would have just come—"

  Shiv felt something break inside of him. He grunted with confusion. It wasn't a bad sort of breaking, no, it was growth. Another thing blossomed within his being, another skill had crossed over that final threshold. He was evolving once more, changing.

  This place was a bitter, miserable pit. A scar had developed on his psyche. Something had been taken from him. But even in these conditions, he was clawing some control back. He was rebuilding himself—spiritually, mentally, emotionally. He was becoming better. It didn't make up for losing his cooking, but it was something. And that was all he could do—snatch a little something back from loss.

  Sage of the Enkindled Heart: Make no mistake, we are coping. And we are coping by feeding our emotions. We are indulging in power through impulse and dominance to make ourselves feel better, and we are hurting the fairy under the guise of retribution. But also because it is useful. It is best that we break him. We can learn about his Court and his kind through him. Sometimes, not being able to die is a very, very unfortunate thing.

  Sage of the Enkindled Heart 104 > 106

  Multi-Tasking 50 > 52 (Skill Evolution Reached)

  Skill Evolution: Multi-Tasking (Initiate) > Bifurcated Processing (Adept)

  Bifurcated Processing 52 (Adept)