242 (II)

  Disengage

  Time resumed. Shiv planted a temporal anchor—and something smashed into his back from behind. Jessica whistled by, giggling.

  Adam turned, bringing his arrow to bear—and barely ducked under a flashing strike from Rusty. He fired his arrow, and somehow Jessica deflected it. Then she was suddenly right in front of him, driving her blade against his Legendary armor in a spinning thrust.

  It didn't pass through the brilliant blue plate, but even so, Shiv heard the sound of rupturing organs and shattering bone. No!

  Adam let out a cry of pain as his body flared and transformed into a phoenix.

  Shiv lashed out wildly using his mana hydra, trying to feel where Jessica was. Even if he couldn't see her, she would still register within his Biomancy. He managed to find her out of sheer luck, slamming into her just a meter away from where Adam was. At the same moment, the Gate Lord surged towards his adversary, his body engulfed in a screaming comet of fire.

  Shiv curled his mana hydra behind Jessica, leaving her with nowhere to go. Adam slammed into the Giantsbane with the force of a falling meteor. The room was engulfed in flames. Yet in that same moment, Shiv saw Jessica manifest fully, her size magnifying in a blink. She was thrice his height now, and her blade was held across her body so wide and vast that it prevented her from sustaining any harm.

  She swung it upward, and Adam went tumbling back into the world, his fire peeling free of his body in dying embers. Jessica struck him three more times before he was launched further than a centimeter, blinking exactly to where he was.

  The Deathless's eyes widened. She had some kind of riposte skill that allowed her to deliver an immediate and spatially-defying counterstrike against an enemy. That had to be it. He flung himself at her, and she twisted on her heel, pirouetting like a ballet dancer to slice his head from his shoulders. But Shiv had anticipated this. He adapted. He reverted a second back in time, and she missed entirely.

  Instead of going after her, he reached out with his Biomancy. A surging hydra washed through Adam, ripping away his injuries. And terrible injuries they were. Adam's insides were practically liquefied. It would have been fatal if Shiv hadn't healed the damage immediately.

  I need to give Adam some more breathing room and help him keep his distance from her, Shiv told himself.

  He pumped out his Creeping Void just as Adam's vector wings flared back to life. The Gate Lord twisted through the air, curving while maintaining his momentum perfectly. In this regard, he had the edge on Jessica. Shiv saw a small speck of red miss Adam by the scantest of hair widths. Jessica, much smaller again, punched a pin-sized hole through one of the few remaining walls still standing behind them, and Shiv went after her immediately.

  "Adam," Shiv said using his telepathy. "Go down and find Tulveg."

  “There is no point,” a soul-curdling voice called out before either of them could act. “You are already lost.”

  Harlock’s proclamation made the world tremble, and Shiv's insides plunged like a stone dropping to the bottom of a lake.

  “Submit and obey!”

  Yet, before a divine flood of true darkness could seep into the room, usurping Shiv's Creeping Void, another layer of mana swelled over the gaps lining the top of the tower. This mana was composed of spores—spores that spread out in tendrils and sinews, growing a cancerous mass that shrouded the damaged infrastructure whole.

  Tulveg had returned without fanfare or declaring himself. His spores smashed against Jessica's body, impacting her one after another. He was a rain of unceasing missiles, and every strike he delivered sent a blastwave through the air. Just as Shiv wasn't equipped to fight Jessica, it seemed that the Giantsbane wasn't so accustomed to facing a Biomancer like Tulveg.

  She slashed out using her blade, but a few of his specks flashed golden. They slammed into her multiple times before she could block them, and her ripples of counter-temporal magic faltered when she was facing an enemy who relied on quantitative instead of qualitative power.

  "Deathless!” Tulveg called out.

  “Samuel isn't here!" Shiv hissed. "We need to get out of here! You need to get inside my cape right now!"

  "Unnecessary. I have already been hiding within the dimension you carry."

  Shiv sputtered. "What? Since when?”

  “From the moment I saw you emerge, I noticed the dimensional energies radiating behind you. I realized you were carrying a pocket on your back. Very, very innovative. I sent a few spores within, and now part of me resides there. I am already in place.”

  "Wait, so you were here this whole time watching me get my ass beat up and down the tower?"

  "I was observing our adversary, trying to understand her skills. Also, you were mostly sustaining damage at the top of the tower. We are nowhere near the bottom. Additionally, are you aware that there is an orc inside here? Should I kill him?"

  "No, no, do not kill Helix!" Shiv quickly said. “Absolutely not.”

  "Just as well. His Biomancy is quite impressive. I couldn’t have managed to breach his wards as quickly as I did without the use of Chronomancy."

  "Just leave him alone and help me deal with Jessica first! Samuel's not here. She's been waiting for you. This was a trap."

  Tulveg scoffed with disgust. "Look at them, proclaiming their own glory even as they fight like vultures. Despicable. Cowardly.”

  Jessica darted about, parrying with her blade, slicing through the spores that came near her. Yet there was always a spore more, and soon they buried her beneath their mass, boiling and writhing like spheres of undulating blood. They swelled, and a blast of Biomancy sent her sprawling across the ground.

  She grunted, bouncing twice before she crashed against Shiv's back. The Deathless lifted a foot and stomped down on her head with all his might, and he was delighted to hear a loud snap echo from inside her helmet.

  “Ah, fuck, my nose!” Jessica hissed.

  A resounding crash echoed through the building. Parts of the ceiling plunged down, and Shiv realized where it was plunging. So did Jessica. Within the room that was trapped in the collapse were people—the patients in the oncology ward.

  Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

  “No!” Jessica and Shiv cried at the same time. He abandoned his curbstomping, and she ignored her opening to counter-attack. They both flung themselves through a wall, accelerating the collapse as they slid beneath the debris.

  The patients moaned and cried as stones bounced off their vulnerable bodies. Shiv held his hands up. He caught the plunging ceiling. Tons of concrete and metal rebar slid against him, and his Leviathan of the Shapeless Tides made it seem practically weightless. Just as he prepared to channel the rest of his tides through the crumbling structure, Jessica raised her blade high up, and the room swelled with static darkness. In an instant, everything was absorbed into Rusty, and there was no debris left to harm the parents. There was also no more room around Shiv or Jessica—every bit of collapsing matter had simply been teleported into Rusty’s inner dimension.

  The 20 patients in the room cried out, some whimpering, others gasping for air. The Deathless and the Giantsbane simply stared at each other, taken aback by the other’s actions.

  "What even is your game, kid? You—" Jessica's words were cut off as Shiv flung a skin decoy at her. He then unleashed a spray of Creeping Void just as more of Tulveg's spores slammed into her from behind. At the same time, he used Non-Sequitur and then cast himself three seconds back in time.

  He blinked back to where he was in the room before, and he went for Adam. He ignored the academy’s Chronomancy wards slamming into him, ripping his temporal shroud away as he reached the Gate Lord. He didn't have time to tell Adam what was going on. He simply seized his friend by the midriff and cast him into his cape.

  "Gods, Shiv, don't just grab me from behind! Warn me next time!" Adam cried.

  "Cry about it later, we don't have time! Jessica's gonna be on us any moment. I need you to open up a pathway right now."

  "But what about... Oh, gods, Tulveg's right here. How long has he been here?"

  "The entire time!" Shiv replied, exasperated.

  "The entire… He was just watching you get beaten! He was watching me nearly get killed!"

  "Yeah, seems to be the case. Anyway. Adam! Pathway!"

  An arrow flashed out from his cape and opened up a dimensional channel he could flee across. Shiv saw sand, heard crashing waves, tasted salt in the air.

  This was the exact plane he'd been in earlier, when he'd saved the girl being pursued by the three violent little shits in the library.

  You got a fucked-up sense of humor, System, Shiv thought. He flung himself into the dimensional pathway, and true to Shiv's word, Jessica was on him in an instant. He was only halfway across before she slammed into him from behind. She drove herself against his lower spine like a bullet, and his Pillar of Orichalcum flared bright red. It endured the blow. It was growing stronger, and his Inertial Overdrive was on the verge of a roaring detonation.

  The world grew slower, yet Jessica still seemed terrifyingly fast. She hit him three times, the first blow taking off a chunk of his helmet and the upper flap of his forehead. The second and third bounced off as his Orichalcum caught up to the arms race.

  Shiv lashed back with his Biomancy field. One of his hydra’s heads smashed into her body, and she was driven back. Her Inertium armor rang with a rising squeal. And then they were on the other side, blasting through trees, splitting through the foliage, cutting the island in half. They tumbled one over the other. Shiv slashed down with his frying pan, swinging wildly. She slipped between the punches, caught one, and immediately spun over him, elbowing his head into the ground in a massive eruption of sand and dirt.

  The sudden impact sent Shiv stumbling. His legs went over his head, and he twisted and twirled several times, crashing through another tree. At the same time, she cleaved him right down the center of his legs. Shiv cried out as he felt something chip away at his privates, shredding his taint open. But Jessica wasn’t done. The gap she made in his armor grew wider, and she shrank to the size of a spec in an instant. She slipped inside.

  Shiv's pupils dilated.

  He reached inward, using his Biomancy field. Too late. Unspeakable pain exploded between his legs. His genitals turned to bloody mulch as she slammed her sword into them. It didn’t split, but both his balls felt like they got knocked out of him. Then, she carved his asshole wider and started going up his poop-chute. Shiv's Pillar of Orichalcum prevented him from being torn apart immediately, but that merely prolonged his agony. There was a special kind of misery, having a rival Legend carve up your rectum, slowly crawl beyond that, burst your prostate, and utterly shred your intestines.

  "Nine out of teeeeen!" Shiv practically shrieked. "Fuck's sake, fuck! FUCK! SERIOUSLY?!"

  And then he saw a stream of red surging from the pathway far behind him. It speared up, curving at an angle, and Shiv's eyes grew impossibly wide. "No, Tulveg, no, wait!"

  It went up the same way Jessica did. Every last spore Tulveg had. Shiv’s already mutilated folds practically became open doorways.

  Shiv only managed half a roar before he blacked out.

  A half second or eternity later, he woke screaming as Jessica erupted from his stomach and grew back to normal size, cast free by a swarm of angry spores. Shiv groaned and promptly vomited inside his helmet. "I… I felling hate her so much…" he mumbled to himself. He tore himself to his feet with his tides, stumbling as he tried to run the rival Legend down. Then his mind caught up to him, just as he tripped over his own intestines and fell to the ground. Also, where was the island, why was the water crashing back in a tidal—Oh, fuck, I discharged without realizing.

  The Deathless groaned and gurgled on blood and vomit as he pushed himself up from the colossal crater he'd made in the beach plane.

  "Shiv!" Adam cried from within his cape. He wasn't even using telepathy anymore. He was just shouting. "Shiv! We need to go! We need to go now!"

  "She fucking crawled up my ass, Adam!" Shiv shouted back, more out of indignation than anger.

  "Yeah, listen, I didn't particularly enjoy it myself," Jessica muttered, swinging her blade to ward off Tulveg’s spores. Her armor was caked in shit-stained visceral, and that image was promptly scarred into Shiv’s psyche.

  “Fuck you, you fucking bitch!” Shiv shouted. “Eat shit! Don't fucking talk to me!” He shuddered as he absorbed his own wounds. That didn’t do anything for the mental damage. He felt uncomfortable in his own skin. "What the hells is wrong with you? Who the fuck climbs up someone else’s ass?!”

  Part of Shiv wanted to keep fighting, to pay her back for good.

  Sage of the Enkindled Heart: Let it go, Shiv, let it go. You'll be able to destroy her anal cavity some other day in revenge.

  Shiv grumbled in assent—and then used his Sage to channel a stream of hatred from his eyes.

  Black fire spilled over Jessica—but instead of filling her emotional core, it found itself warring against something that melted his anger, something that doused it.

  Jessica let out a whistle. "You have Sage of the Enkindled Heart? Shit, I’m impressed. Learning to use your anger is good. But thing is, kid… I’ve been to Tibet. The Staircase has more than one kind of Berserk Fusion.”

  An Unwavering wave of calm expanded from her. The emotional core at her heart grew larger. It swallowed the environment like an expanding star, and Shiv felt a wave of tranquility splashing toward him. He didn't wait to find out what it could do to him. He unleashed another burst of his Creeping Void and went Non-Sequitur at the same moment her blade extended, piercing across the island and destroying his decoy. A splash of red and white followed, and then she lost track of Shiv. His vitality was desperately low. He staggered with every step, but he returned to context when he was far enough away to escape her motive for a second, then used his Chronomancy once more to fling himself back—back into the hospital.

  In that instant, he slammed the mask on his face and reasserted his Perfect Semblance.

  The Creeping Void 128 > 140

  Non-Sequitur 120 > 127

  Strider of the Unbending Path 168 > 173

  Shiv shuddered as he reappeared at the very top of Last Chance Sanatorium. He stumbled through one of the chasms leading all the way down, and he dropped to the ground. He deliberately fell to sell the illusion that he had been part of this struggle, that Marcus had barely survived.

  The Deathless tumbled down floor after floor until he finally slammed down along the middle of the tower. He didn't know if Harlock sensed him, didn't care anymore. He was spent, he was tired, he was worn to the bone. He dragged a few pieces of rubble over himself, and there he lay, waiting, shivering. Waiting to see if he'd managed to fool the Ascendants, if he'd actually managed to disengage.

  "Shiv? Are you alright?" Adam asked. Shiv shuddered. "Shiv?" Adam repeated, his voice high with concern.

  "She crawled up my ass, Adam," Shiv replied, his voice hoarse. "She crawled up my ass and ripped me open from the inside. That bitch. That fucking bitch. I’m going to kill her… I’m going to fucking kill her…”

  He was still chanting delirious nothings of hatred even when one of Vice 8’s clones found him.

  Book 5 of Path of the Deathless is fully written and available on ! Book 6 is ongoing. (Over 400,000 Words Advanced). Current release schedule is 1-2 full chapters/5,000-10,000 words daily.

  For discussion of the novel, join the official

  If you're enjoying the story, remember to leave a Follow, a Favorite, a Rating, and to write a Review!