265 (II)

  Beyond [II]

  The Gate Lord stared at him wearily. "You know, there is a high likelihood Maiden or one of the other Ascendants have said this word for word, considering what they were doing to prisoners within the Rubix Well, correct?"

  Shiv tried to think up a counterargument against that, and then settled on a grunt. "Ah, shit, you're probably right. Well, it's different for us because this guy's a bastard, and the orcs have it coming."

  Yet even as he said those words, they didn't feel as true as before. Back when he was so concerned with his own survival, a mere Adept or even less, it was simple. The world was plain. It was his own interests, his own desires, his own struggle. And then there were those trying to hurt him. There were those he deemed enemies, and he went after them like a hound. A monster.

  But now things were different. Things were uncomfortable. Veronica Chandler was his enemy, but she was also his benefactor under certain circumstances. Udraal was going to use him to resurrect the Great One, and he would need to finish Udraal off at some point. He knew he did, but ultimately, Udraal was also the only reason the Ascendants had failed to capture Shiv, Adam, and all the others that had escaped with them. Without Udraal, they would all be dead or mindless thralls by now. The Composer had likely known that and acted accordingly in coordinating with Udraal and buying time for him to arrive.

  What does "enemy" even mean anymore? Shiv thought to himself. Yeah, the thug was a terrible person, and Shiv didn't care that he was hurting this guy. But hurting someone and killing them was one thing; forcing them to do your bidding was another. I really need to find an alternative. If we can take one of the eldritch alive, we'll test this thing on them.

  Shiv waved the heart around. "Right. So I just tell the crumbs here to go inside someone. That's it? Just tell them to go inside someone and burst out, rip their organs open?"

  "Incorrect," Toasty called out. "How can breadcrumbs have the strength to rip someone asunder? No, you detonate their vitality and convert it into Loreflame. That is what scatters the flesh. That is what rends the soul." The Faebread huffed, then hesitated. "In fact, test it on yourself, Undying One. It is the best way you can learn."

  "You're not planning something sneaky, are you?" Shiv asked as he advanced on the Knight jokingly.

  "Always," the fae replied honestly. "But nothing that works on your like. You cannot die, you wrongly made monstrosity. I cannot breach your mind, nor pierce your resistance. There is only so much one's schemes can do."

  "So you say." Shiv looked at Adam. "Hey Adam, if anything happens to me, anything that I can't really recover from, give our friend here to the orcs. I'm sure they'll think of something I can't."

  "The grayskins? No, absolutely not! You keep those wretched creatures away from me! I refuse to suffer another indignity at their hands." The bread almost withered. "The last time they managed to breach the Fairwoods, I was forced to hear a composition. The things they did to music that day are beyond my ability to describe. It was wretched, vile, a defilement of the highest order. Even thinking about it makes me yearn for cleansing."

  "Well, if you don't want that, here's hoping I survive this. Hey, goblin. Get in my belly and blow yourself up."

  "As you command, Lord Longinus. Glory to the motherfucking Republic! Yeeaaaah!" The breadcrumbs flowed through the air, and they vanished down Shiv's throat and nostrils. However, he didn't feel them after a certain point, and that's when he realized they probably melted into the darkness as well.

  This is really convenient if I wanted to spy on someone. Yeah, that's kind of cool! Actually, if I manage to awaken a bunch of ingredients inside some noble's pantry, who knows what I might find out. People talk to each other in the kitchen all the time…

  And just like that, a whole world of new possibilities opened up before Shiv.

  “I'm inside you, Lord Longinus,” he heard the breadcrumbs call out telepathically. “However, for your second command… I don't really know how to fucking explode.”

  Shiv paused. "You don't?"

  "You must compel the blast yourself," Toasty explained. "Focus on the heart. Focus on your connection to the animated ingredients and compel it to disassemble violently."

  Shiv did just that, and after a moment of waiting, he felt the string connecting him to the black-crusted bread stuff break. The snap was violent. His hand jerked. Shiv's eyes widened, but no blast came. "Alright, well, I think I broke the—"

  And then Shiv's midsection exploded into a red mist that covered every person in the room. It was so sudden, so volatile that he had no chance to resist. Even so, his Magical Resistance probably couldn't have saved him to begin with because this seemed to damage his vitality directly. It was like being cleaved from within by a shrapnel life force. A shrapnel that dissipated in every direction, fading as Toasty once described. Like water kissed by the sun, turning to steam and nothing more.

  Shiv’s body slumped down on the ground as a chasm of brilliant red wept out from him. Most of his organs had been disintegrated, not even liquefied. What remained of his intestines tumbled out in ropes and fell to the floor with a wet squelch.

  Adam stared blankly at Shiv's corpse before briefly turning into water to get rid of the blood coating his entire body, while Jessica lifted her faceplate again after having lowered it without Shiv even noticing. Blood dripped from her armor, and she shifted back from where his intestines fell to the floor and sniffled.

  "Gotta admit, that packed a lot more kick than I was expecting. I'm gonna be watching out for this the next time we fight."

  And then her disconcerted gaze fell upon Shiv's Vitae form, and her mouth twisted in a look of raw disgust. "Okay, you're going to explain to me why you look like a bowl of spilled noodles covered in blood and some other fluids.”

  “Other fluids? Really?” Shiv communicated telepathically. One of his Vitae strands reared back like a snake preparing to strike. Jessica immediately positioned herself behind Adam. “It's not even the same color, you pervert. It's not even the same texture.”

  “I don't know,” Jessica replied. “It kind of looks the same color and texture to me.” She stood on her tiptoes to look over Adam's shoulder and shook him like he was one of her closer friends. "Back me up here, Little Arrow. Am I right or am I right?"

  "I..." Adam squeaked at the awkwardness of the conversation.

  Jessica smirked. "Oh, come on, you should know all about it. Or are you one of those special boys who refuse to experiment on themselves? Daddy never told you how your bit works?"

  The Giantsbane’s raw temerity made Shiv guffaw. Her words caught him off guard as well.

  In response to this, Adam's face turned nearly as red as half of Shiv's Vitae. “Shiv, Shiv!” the Gate Lord hissed. “Get me out of this conversation!”

  This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  Shiv sighed. "Alright, knock it off. Besides, bullying Adam is my job. You don't get to take that from me."

  "I don't?" Jessica said. She wrapped her arms around Adam's arms and waist possessively, and a playful look appeared on her face. "Well, he's in my clutches now. What are you going to do about it?"

  Shiv tightened the coil and wrapped a whip of Vitae around his Last Morsel. He pointed the frying pan at his rival Legend menacingly and spun it a few times. "You better let him go and give him back to me. If you make me come over there, you're going to regret it."

  Jessica pretended to consider his threat for a few seconds before she closed her eyes and shook her head. "Yeah, I don't think so. I'm not letting some kid take away my newest toy." She immediately picked Adam off his feet, who started kicking and thrashing.

  "I'm not some thing for you two maniacs to fight over!" Adam hissed. His protestations went ignored, however, by practically everyone but Toasty, who also looked on with rapt impish fascination. It seemed even the fae could enjoy a bit of Patternist entertainment.

  Shiv barked a laugh. "Oh, yeah? You just wait now. You just wait!"

  He immediately reached out and ripped the vitality out of a few of the prisoners. He resurrected immediately and flung himself toward Jessica. At the same time, the Giantsbane whipped Adam back and forth, swinging him like a sword in place of Rusty. But the Gate Lord wasn't content to play along anymore. Instead, he turned himself into water again, and a rush of mist splashed into Adam as he slipped free from the Giantsbane’s grip and fled as a splashing tide across the room.

  Shiv, meanwhile, slammed directly into Jessica, and she magnified her own size and density in kind, stopping him dead. Shapeless Tides accelerated across his body, slamming against Jessica. She shifted back and let out a grunt of effort. Her eyes widened as she realized he was still pushing, still cultivating more tides.

  And suddenly the mood between them shifted. A vicious grin crept across Shiv’s face. "You know, I was wondering, back at the hospital, which of us was actually stronger."

  His Magical Resistance crashed against Jessica like grand waves dashing themselves upon the face of a sloping mountain. He could feel her gathering more strength, more density. Anything to counter his constant accumulation of tides.

  The stalemate between them continued. Shiv's tides exploded outward as he activated his Bifurcated Processing. One after another, striped vectors speared into Jessica. With every blow, her body shook, and soon she was slowly sliding backward. She let out a long hissing breath, and the predatory smile on Shiv's face grew. “I guess we have the answer to that question.”

  Jessica laughed lightly in response. "Guess again."

  She shifted back and slammed both hands under Shiv’s elbows, breaking his clinch. Her body exploded to twice its original height, and Shiv found himself thrown off. He was stronger, or so he thought, but his strength wasn't overwhelming; it was only barely contending with her increase in power. And when the dimensions of her body suddenly shifted, the points of leverage between them changed as well—changed enough to throw Shiv off balance. He stumbled forward and pointed his vectors down in response, but Jessica shrank. And before he knew it, he lost track of her, failed to sustain his grip on her shoulders. She shot low like a bullet hammering into his gut, and a trail of flame lingered behind her as the flaming wheels of what he assumed to be her Reflexes skill burst into being.

  Shiv gasped as the breath was driven out of him. It felt like someone just slammed a hammer into his ribs, driving the tip into his diaphragm. It was a testament to his durability that he remained standing, that he barely felt it at all. But his durability couldn't save him from Jessica's sheer depth of skill.

  She ballooned in height and size again, driving her shoulder into his left knee. Instead of trying to slam all the way through and shatter the joint—something that probably wouldn't have worked against Shiv's sheer toughness—she twisted to the side and wrenched the Deathless off balance. He slammed down back-first against the ground, and then she was on top of him, with one knee braced across his neck and a finger pointed at the center of his forehead.

  Shiv's tides shot up. He briefly lifted her, but her weight increased, and the stalemate returned. However, this stalemate had her in an advantageous position. She was on top of him, and she drove her index finger deeper into his forehead.

  He called upon his Bifurcated Processing, using it to strengthen his Pillar of Orichalcum. Yet even as a tower of red and gold flashed around him, her finger continued sliding forth. She breached the outside of his bone helmet like it was nothing more than clay, and then split his skin like a blade carving through wet paper. He felt the tip of her nail, felt how sharp, how inexorable it was, and he gritted his teeth as it began grinding against the bone of his skull.

  Bifurcated Processing 60 > 62

  Jessica, meanwhile, wasn't even breathing heavily. She was smiling brightly, as if on a stroll during a warm summer day with singing birds and blooming flowers all around.

  "What do you want them to put on your grave when someone finally puts you down?” Jessica asked. “Because the way you're going, someone is going to put you down sooner rather than later. You're strong. Really strong, but not strong enough for it to make a difference. Actually, how's that last bit sound for an epitaph?"

  Shiv growled. He tried to stop time, but her Inertium Armor was pressed against him. It broke his temporal shell immediately, and she pressed her finger even deeper, breaching through the outer layer of his forehead. Bone fragments drilled through his vulnerable gray matter, and the Deathless spasmed. He tried to maintain control of his body, but she had pierced something vital, something that governed his motor functions, and then light began to twist and bend around his vision. He even started tasting strange flavors, flavors he couldn't name. But he could still hear her.

  Then, in a sudden instant, he felt her finger retract. Wind flowed over the fingertip-deep wound she'd left behind, and then that was in turn filled by a spill of burning fluid. Shiv blinked rapidly as his brain matter and skull knit themselves back together, thanks to a brilliant flame washing over his body.

  Suddenly, Shiv's vision returned, and he found himself staring up at Jessica, who was still standing over him and popping the lid back on a small glass vial in her hand. The right corner of her lip was curved up, and the Inertium on her arm was rattling, ringing after a good scuffle. It seemed like it was screaming in applause after their brief bout. She extended a hand downward.

  For two seconds, Shiv just lay there, processing his wounded pride and going over the brief battle, a battle that ended with him on the verge of death, spared only by Jessica's offering of mercy. He looked at that flask she'd put on her hip again, that flask filled with Phoenix Fire.

  Sage of the Enkindled Heart: Take her hand. Accept this loss. It's educational, and you now know a little bit more about her. The pride that doesn't serve us is pride that is worthless.

  The Deathless let out a breath and reached up, clasping her hand. She pulled him up with ease, increasing her height to draw him back to his feet before shrinking back down.

  "And that's what I said before," Jessica sighed. "You got too much too fast. Yeah, you are strong. Really, really strong. What do you got? Three different skills put together? A bit of Grappling? Physicality? Magical resistance? Real nightmare for most people. I'm not surprised you ripped your way through a bunch of Legendary monsters and a couple of other brutes in the prison. You're a bad matchup for them, and dying doesn't mean the same thing to you as it does for the rest of us."

  Jessica stopped talking then and slowly looked to her left. Shiv realized she was staring at Adam, who had a Veilpiercer half-drawn. He was aiming at her, and only after Shiv gave him a nod did he lower his bow.

  "And he's probably the other reason you managed to survive for so long." Jessica chuckled. "Yeah, you are plenty vicious. Monsters are aggressive, but that doesn't mean anything to you. You're about as aggressive as they are, and you still have that individual edge, that special bit of human ingenuity turned towards cruelty and violence. But it's not enough. Not enough against someone worth a damn."

  "Not yet, anyway," Shiv said. "But after another week and a month, another year, how do you think this conversation is going to go?"

  "Well, that depends," Jessica said. "Are you going to be alive that long? And who are you going to learn from? Because you need a lot of work if you want to stay alive. And who's to say if you get another week, month, year..." She paused. "Or even day. We're about to run up against a Legendary orc, aren't we? Might just end with you claimed for good soon. Your Path might be Deathless, but the end’s inevitable. Someone’s got all our numbers, boy. All we can do is keep delaying the void waiting for us at the end.”

  "So, are you offering to train us?" Shiv said.

  Jessica looked him up and down and snorted. "I think I can fix your flailing at least. That, and your inability to think even two steps ahead. But this was a good idea." She pointed at the surviving thugs. "The whole animate bread thing and blow people up from the inside using crumbs. Yeah, pretty tricky. I don't think I'd see it coming. And I doubt the Culturist will either. And I think that's your real edge: willingness to plan and to experiment."

  She pressed her index finger against his chest, and suddenly he felt a cutting sensation glide through him. It was like Deepest Edge, but far greater, stronger. Her skill didn't even need a knife; all it needed was something that could cut.

  "I'm telling you right now, though, the sloppy, easy days are over. You're done fighting as a monster. You're going to be more than that, more than just some brute. Use that brain of yours. It's there. I felt it myself."

  Her words brought back memories of Valor. Shiv sighed. And he gave her a grudging nod.