It is not impossible to hunt an eldritch abomination and bend it to your will. It is actually quite a simple act. You will never fully comprehend how they think and how they function, not as you are. Even as a Legendary-Tier Pathbearer, there will be things that the Eldritch can do naturally that you will likely never be able to do unless you decide to undergo metamorphosis, which will see your mind changed and your skills altered.

  More on that another time, Sister.

  Where were we? Ah, yes. You don't need to understand something fully to hunt it. You just need to understand what it can and cannot do. All of the eldritch entities have rules of their own. They are not unchained, far from it. They cannot be, because if you are boundless, then there is nothing that defines you. And being eldritch is all about definition: The Stranger, the Dreamtaker, the Eldest, the Depriver.

  All of them were always trapped, ruled by their own narrow natures, and have now been further ruined by the System forcing them to develop skills which further bottleneck their natures. Once they were almost boundless, but they had very specific ideas and concepts they liked to wield. Some of them could only move in the depths of oceans. Or in the deepest reaches of space. It was simply what made them, them; a dream of the fathoms, so to speak.

  Now, though, with the System's sudden intrusion, they are no longer a nightmare of the fathoms—creatures of thalassophobia incarnate. No, nothing quite so esoteric.

  Take my first example: After being touched by the System and forced into its narrow framework, that incomprehensible leviathan was made into an entity—a “god,” perhaps—possessed of an extremely anomalous version of Hydromancy. It can still twist the very concept of the lore of water, yes, but that doesn't make it more. It simply makes it crippled compared to what it used to be.

  So, you can understand why they might be a little bit peeved about the System—and the Stranger for being the one to bring the infection home, by extension—but you can also exploit that. For where humanity rises, the eldritch finds itself withered. Their association with us isn't simply an act of dominance or a display of power. They're associating with us because they wish to infect the System back, to take back control. We served a bit of the former Divinity they used to have, and it really was Divinity beyond even the creatures we think of as gods today.

  I suppose the lesson here is that the System is the greatest eldritch god of all, and wherever you can, you use it as it bottlenecks your enemy. Remember, the System’s not your ally, but it's no one's ally, and that makes it the single most useful tool you can use if you know how to.

  -Hades Hymn to Uva Mettabon

  254 (I)

  Extraction [I]

  "Why are you grinning at me like that?" Uva asked. She stared at the man standing across from her, who had introduced himself as Hades Hymn shortly after his arrival. Well, it was more like he was reclining, sitting on and leaning against empty space. She guessed that wherever his true body was, he was on a lounger or couch of some kind.

  They had traded a few details: nothing much on Uva’s end, but Hades presented himself like an open book. He described how his family was bound to the Stranger by contracts of lineage, a lineage he didn't fully appreciate. He also elaborated that he was a Seeker and the supposed Headmaster of Phoenix Academy, the school Adam had gone to.

  The sheer coincidence made her suspicious enough, but his following statement put her entirely on high alert: "So, this Shiv you speak of, how close are you with him?" Hades’ smirk grew wider, as if he could smell the reek of their relationship wafting from her like an odor.

  "That is none of your business," Uva shot back coolly. She could feel him probing her, trying to understand her. She still didn't trust him. Neither did the Starhawk, for that matter.

  The elf shrugged innocently. "Well, I got another question: is this Shiv as big as a small shed? I'm talking somewhere between baby orc and overfed human."

  Uva hesitated. "I…"

  "Alright, so that's a yes," Hymn said, nodding. “So, he's this big,” Hades gestured vague contours in the air, “he wears some kind of ugly bug-adamantine hybrid armor. He's about—I don't know, was probably Heroic-Tier the last time you saw him? And he also has a mask that lets him steal the semblance of someone he's killed.”

  Uva prepared her Huntresses once more. Shadows crept along the exterior of Starhawk's Perch. Behind her, Valor loomed closer. Roland readied an arrow, but his body was still shaking from the exertion. And Rose? Well, she was there because no one could stop her from being there. In a fight, however, Uva expected her to be the first casualty.

  "Whoa, whoa, whoa," Hades said, holding up his hands. "Everyone, relax. This is not me threatening you in any way. It's just me telling you that your so-called Deathless has wandered his posterior onto my academy. He killed a pack of stray prison escapees hiding in my personal anchor. Ruined all the ancient booze I had stashed in the walls…”

  Uva's mouth fell open. "He's at Phoenix Academy? How? The last time I saw him, the Ascendants had captured him."

  Hades gave her a casual shrug. "Well, I wouldn't know. The Ascendants do all sorts of strange things. For all I know, they have him as a sleeper agent and are dumping him on my side to monitor someone else. Wouldn't be the first time they tried something zany like that. But I don't think that's the case. He's pretending to be some kid who is most definitely dead and was crippled physically before that. My guess is that he managed to break out of the Rubix Well at Yellowstone, and now he's hiding out here to escape the Ascendants. Though I'm not sure why he's bothering with picking classes…"

  "You know he's there, and you haven’t told anyone," Uva said slowly, utterly uncertain about where the man's loyalties lay.

  "Yeah, I don't see how that would benefit me, really. The Ascendants are hunting him, but the Ascendants are barely hanging on to the few threads of sanity they have left. Veronica Chandler could most definitely catch him herself if she really wanted him. Since he's wandering the town getting into fights with rival Legends, making a big ruckus, and no one's come to pick him up, my guess is that he has an arrangement with her too. Or there's something going on there between the two of them that I haven't figured out yet."

  Hymn smacked his lips loudly. "Many such cases. I don't know, maybe she's ploughing him too. She’s not above sampling some young and soft meat. Wouldn't be the first time."

  The Umbral’s left eye twitched ever so slightly.

  "Uva," one of Uva's many mind-stacks called out to her, "unclench your jaw and your fists. You're making your frustration very, very obvious. He is playing at your expense.”

  Another of her stacks sighed. “Why does he remind us of Ikki? If Ikki was unfathomably powerful.”

  "But that's just a theory," Hymn continued, "a Hades theory. Anyhow, he's been doing his best to protect my students and my faculty, and so long as he keeps doing that, I'm not going to bother him very much." Suddenly, his eyes cut away from Uva, and he grinned broadly at Roland and Rose. "Oh, yes. You two. Funny running into you here.”

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  “It’s my town, Hymn,” Roland said with a huff.

  “Hm. Not much of a town left. By the way, your kid is here with that Deathless of yours. He's hiding out in my downed coliseum, buried underneath the central gate of the academy. Seems like he's doing pretty well, but the kid's going through some stuff, you know? Very loud thoughts of existential angst and betrayed patriotism. It's a sad thing to see. But I think you know more about such sorrow than I do.”

  Roland's jaw fell open slightly, but Rose took a stride forward. "Really, that's what you're going to say to me after all these years? Really, Hades?" She spat the words at him, her eyes blazing. "No... 'You're still alive, Rose?' Or 'I heard you were dead?'"

  Rose fumed at her former Headmaster, but the man was utterly indifferent. "There are three possibilities, Lady Van Erren," he said, his voice dripping with condescension. "The first is that I've gone completely insane, and I'm hallucinating you, which would be quite a statement because I only found you moderately attractive while you were one of my pupils, and I’m not quite the ‘filemancer that Kathereine is. That, and your personality was like sandpaper being dragged upon my scrotum."

  A squeak of outrage escaped Rose, and Roland’s fists clenched.

  But Hymn pressed on. "The next, and more likely possibility, is that the Stranger is trying to twist the fabric of my mind. He's created a mental simulacrum of you to throw me off somehow. I don't know why he would create you of all people, though. Usually, he makes something of my father and mother, especially during their couplings. That typically causes me to be pretty traumatized for a while. You just leave me confused. The final possibility is that you're genuinely back to life. In which case, congratulations! You're not dead anymore. My guess is this happened because Udraal Thann did something exceedingly genius and silly at once. And since this matter has to do with Udraal Thann, I no longer want to be associated with it.”

  Hades reached up from where he was reclining and patted Rose on the shoulder. "Anyway, glad you're back. Your mother recently died. Your sister hates you. The lot's the same. Hurrah.”

  Uva watched as Rose seethed at the man as she never had before.

  A loud sigh rumbled from the Starhawk. "If I was certain it was you earlier, I would have told Sister Uva to simply tear you to shreds."

  "Ah, Starhawk," Hymn replied. "Glad to see you still have that tower-sized stake up your rear. Come to think of it, we're probably inside that stake, aren't we? Seen better days, hasn't it? The entire town has! Only 4,000 people left." He tutted at Roland. "Not very good, Town Lord. That's a pretty dire casualty rate."

  Roland Arrow looked away in absolute shame.

  “Go fuck yourself, Hymn,” Rose snarled.

  Hymn sniffled. “I was trying to do that earlier when someone bit into my simulacrum. Ruined a perfectly good wank session.”

  Uva stepped forward and glared at the Headmaster. "Enough. Shiv. Adam. Tell me about them. How are they? Can you get a message across to them? No, more importantly, can you get us out of this place?”

  Hymn folded his arms and leaned back. "I can do a great many things. But first, I'd like to talk about you. You and your little arrangement with the Eldest. The First of the Eldritch Gods doesn't just go for anyone. What makes you so interesting? I don't see it. Yes, you're a considerably effective Psychomancer, but as a Seeker, you're relatively green. You haven't even delved into any of the literature, have you?”

  Uva glared back at him for a moment, but the stacks of her mind proved to be traitors as a most delicate hope bloomed inside of her.

  "Do you think he knows how to stop the metamorphosis?”

  “Do you think he can help us shape it?”

  “We don't know. We don't know. We must ask.”

  “We must not make our motives transparent. He knows more than us. He could be a deception of the Stranger still."

  Hades tutted. "Dear Sister, if you think I'm trying to do this on behalf of the Stranger, understand that the Stranger's way is not subtlety. The Stranger's way is separation. He's broken from everything. He doesn't like anything because he cannot meld with it. And so everything disintegrates when he touches it. There is always a tearing with the Stranger, just like there's a tearing with me." And at that, his right eye began to glow. It burned bright with translucence, and the mana of Divination and Psychomancy oscillated between both of his irises. "More importantly, he cannot perceive the Eldest, just like you've noticed how the Dreamtaker cannot perceive the Eldest. So, this isn't deception; it's purely curiosity. Might I approach? I wish to examine how far along that wretched thing inside you is.”

  "Be wary," the Starhawk declared. "Hades is a Legend of considerable cunning. There is a reason he has survived under the Stranger’s heel for so many years, where countless other Seekers became mere sustenance for the Outer Gods."

  But as Hymn approached, Uva didn't resist. He lingered close to the left side of her body and squinted his eyes. Beneath the fractured fractals of the still ice was a shadow that peered back at him.

  "You!” the Eldest hissed from within Uva. “Another one I could not claim, the one that refused. Mind severer, deceiver's thief. Stranger’s abortion. I remember you."

  "And I remember you as well, Eldest." Hymn smiled, and it was a taunting expression, one directed at a defeated foe. A pang of desperate hunger and frustration radiated from the Eldest, and Uva tasted every bit of the Outer God's unnatural discord. That only further emboldened the flames of hope inside her.

  "Your condition is quite far along," Hades declared, "but it's not incurable. Well, technically it is, but it’s not guaranteed to be fatal.”

  “I am not a disease,” the Eldest snarled. “I am actualization. I need to become. I have become. I will become.”

  Hymn yawned. "Indeed, Eldest. However, we also know that your metamorphosis is a two-way thing. Either the seed that is your being hatches from within her, and she is usurped and taken as raw materials for your manifestation, or you are consumed by her and become the fuel for her apotheosis. Or such is your hope. To be reborn in one form or another. To cut down your children from the inside just as they tore you apart, just as they hatched from your grand body so long ago."

  "Hatched?" Uva asked, and another disconcerting notion passed through her. This made her think of her own goddess, the Composer, and of the corpse she was born from.

  "Oh, very apt of you to notice," Hymn said, smiling at her. A cold bomb detonated inside Uva. She realized he could hear her thoughts somehow. "The world is rhyme-happy. The System and integration are inspired by a great many things. But if you have looked into environments, ecosystems, and more, you would understand that ultimately, on a grand scale, that which consumes and deals with scarcity tends to resemble each other, even if the minutiae are separate."

  Tentatively, Uva extended a tendril of thought to him. A tendril infused with Divinity and hidden from the Eldest. "I have a strategy. I was trying to—"

  Hymn raised a finger. "You were delving into the minds of the Fingerlings to get a better grasp of eldritch cognition and thought processes, and you were planning to confuse the Eldest's offspring, the one that is seeded and hatching from your insides, by melding its thoughts with another Eldritch being, correct? You are to muddy and damage its psyche, just like your stillness allows you to damage the metaphysical forms of the Indexes, Pinkies, and Recollectors."

  Uva was at an utter loss for words. The other Seeker had guessed her strategy at a glance.

  "You are not the first to come up with this method. It is a brave and bold one, requiring one to be quite the unshakable, adaptable, and meticulous Psychomancer. However, despite my flowery praise, let me skip to the end for you. It fails, and then you probably die while the Eldest hatches free from your ruined, mangled body, wearing the best parts of your soul as if a cape of glistening gems. A very tragic result, but expected for a plan that was ultimately futile from conception."

  "So, how do I break free? How do I save myself?" Uva asked. "How did you save yourself?"

  He eyed her with his violet gaze. The Divination skill in him burned bright. "You don't happen to have any Diviner skills, do you?"

  "No," Uva replied quietly.

  "Well, that makes things harder, but I suspect you're a better Psychomancer than I was when I first escaped the Eldest's clutches. Unfortunately, it will require you to do something excessively dangerous."

  "I have something of a terminal condition right now," Uva said dryly. "I'm willing to try practically anything."

  "That's a good attitude to have. It might lead you to your ultimate destruction, but then again, we do live under a condition of strife, so what's the difference?" He paused for a moment and hummed to himself. "Your research into the minds of the Stranger’s offspring isn't wasted. It's going to be a critical part of your salvation. You are going to use them to access the Stranger again. And you're going to let the Stranger infest you. You will let him try to seize your vessel and your skills from you."

  And suddenly, Uva found her trust extremely scarce again. "Explain, and explain in detail."