VIII-75 Dread Horizon (II) (Patreon)

I pledge myself to you, O Ascendant of Justice, in defense of this Republic and our people and all the values we hold and all the truths we believe to be self-evident. I pledge myself to you, your power to my flesh, my body to your service. I pledge myself to you so that you might have an Avatar, and I might be granted power beyond power, purpose beyond purpose, and meaning beyond mortality.

I give all of myself to you so that I might be more than myself, so that I might face threats far greater than myself, so that I can live beyond my promise, beyond my potential, to the height of your will.

—Roland Arrow to Starhawk the Just

VIII-75

Dread Horizon (II)

The solutions to Maria’s problem came in the form of delegation and misdirection. It wasn't so simple as mentally hijacking some unwilling thrall and sending them in her stead to excavate the ruins of Farnest to uncover what trap was hiding there; no, she needed to think like the Deathless, and simulating his process wasn't difficult. Fulfilling the requirements, however, demanded a bit more cleverness on her part.

The Deathless knew she was coming across the vector of time. He knew she was exceedingly skilled. He knew that she would be drawn back toward the place where the rest of her Orchestra lay, mind and heart-hollowed corpses denied their final euthanizations. Since he knew all that, there was little to no possibility he would leave the Starhawk's manifestation exposed, not unless this vulnerability was bait.

Moreover, Maria knew that the Philosopher was aiding the Deathless, which meant that he technically had the edge when it came to Chronomancy. They would be capable of overwhelming her in mind and flesh and Chronomancy at a whim. 

To sum it up, Maria was absolutely not going down there. She also couldn't burst her Crimson Blade Belmonte and summon the Dragon-Knight she'd entombed within to serve as her minion. For though her knives were disposable, they still had greater value than just about any other she could quickly enslave.

Ultimately, Maria much preferred spending her enemies against themselves—she termed her approach as an act of offensive counter-autarchy, if only because it amused her.

She summoned and dispatched mind elementals to collect bits of information for her. She dared not overstretch and simply seated them in the nearby surfacer district to see how much the residents knew. When the dimensionals returned and were dismissed, she digested the information and came to a few probable deductions.

First, the Gate’s psionic network was down. Usually, the Dreaming Storm would be active, but since Uva Metabon was currently disabled for whatever reason and no one else easily capable of filling in for her, the entirety of Gate Piety was wide open along an entire axis of warfare. One of the enemy's significant weaknesses reared its head again: too much front-loading. Legends were unmatched in power, invaluable for economics and martial projection, but individuals were ultimately fickle and unpredictable, especially in the hands of fate. To lose a Legend was a tragedy for any regular power, but a proper state had to be prepared for it nonetheless.

Gate Piety was not—for it never had a chance to train or establish a reserve Psychomancer corps.

On that basis, that meant the Deathless couldn't easily communicate with the rest of the Gate. Neither could the Paragon himself, so the Legends fighting to defend Gate Piety were likely operating in independent silos. With Farnest obliterated, the Terminal Opus, that Lone Star Siege Crawler she'd slipped by earlier, had to be the closest thing they had to a proper headquarters, with how many Pathbearers were swarming around it.

Going off of that, with a bit of luck, I suspect that none of the other Legends in this Gate are aware of the trap at the bottom of Farnest. So what I need is a Chronomancer. An ignorant one. I lure them into place and see if anything triggers.

But while she remained under the protection of the Time-Tuner, she couldn't manifest her own Chronomancy, as her Harbinger was needed back on the other side. Thankfully, Maria was nothing if not dedicated to the art of delegation, which meant that you had to have backup plans and backup pieces of equipment to facilitate those plans, and backup minions to support both of those prior requirements.

And at once, Belmonte came back into play. It hung heavy on the right side of her hip, and she unfastened her weapon and summoned a new mind dimensional. It was tasked with carrying a single message containing everything Belmonte needed to do. With that, she unequipped the blade and surrendered control over to the mind dimensional entirely. It would dismiss itself after delivering the message, and Belmonte would be allowed to operate independently from Maria. There was a chance, a slight one, that he might choose to rebel and escape, perhaps even go turncoat. It was a low chance, and Maria had an easy solution for Belmonte that came in the form of her other blade, Nocturne. If Nocturne failed, she still had a dimensional satchel filled with other means of enforcing supplication.

Conjuring a new mind dimensional from a plane of thought, the translucent sphere rippled out from Maria's hands as she finished invoking the binding ritual. She allowed it to find succor in her thoughts, draining her as she would someone of their blood, before pushing it away and forcing it to task. It floated in the air for a beat before finally crashing down upon the crimson blade she'd left upon the ground. All around her, the world was shivering, vibrating in distorted patterns of gold. The Time-Tuner was screaming louder now. There was a crushing presence it couldn't ignore, and the presence was only getting stronger. She needed to be gone soon. She could feel the mechanism cracking and fracturing again, and this time its Legendary Self-Repairing enchantment was strained to the brink, for some of the cracks refused to close in their entirety.

Her clock was ticking. And in more ways than one.

Belmonte emerged as the blade holding him shattered. He whipped through the air in tendrils of lashing red, the tassels leaving wavelengths of gold in their wake. Through that gossamer spread, imprinted upon the air, she saw the Dragon-Knight entombed within, hidden within the form of a lashing weapon that was further disguised as a knife. It snaked through the air, slithering loudly, and it began causing a ruckus, striking and slamming down upon nearby housing. Roofs were ruptured, ceilings burst, and it struck, using time as cover, ensuring Pathbearers devoid of Chronomancy could not easily engage it on even terms. This immediately lured out the few chronomantically capable Legends there were in the Gate. 

For a second, Maria’s heart plunged as what she recognized as a few thousand Legendary-Tier Chronomancy signatures approached from all around—only for her to calm as she sensed the unified time frequency between all the entities.

Ah, Myriad Futures Blossom, or a similar Skill Evolution. Troublesome.

Focusing her Awareness on the approaching foe, Maria saw the face of a surfacer elf, one who was ritualistically scarred in a way that marked her as a subject of the Southern Gods. The unknown Chronomancer dispatched over sixty of her potential futures to resolve the problem that was Belmonte. But the knife-bound Dragon-Knight didn't stay and fight. Instead, he did as Maria commanded, slipping away and down into the rubble, his tassels slithering through the cracks, but his form going subtle and silent before they hit the level where Maria's former Orchestra lay in a chain of ruin.

Each of the futures cast by the elf dove down in pursuit, but Belmonte had been a Pathbearer who favored subtlety as much as he did overwhelming force. 

He managed to flee just long enough for the enemy to enter the vicinity of the trap. As soon as the first of the time clones got within twenty meters of the Vitae golem molded over the Starhawk's form, a plume of mist detonated out from it, and a palm briefly pinned the enemy Chronomancer in place. Each of her myriad futures went stiff, not just in the localized district, but across the entirety of the Gate. Offensively, Myriad Futures Blossom was one of the most potent Chronomancy Skills of the Legendary Tier in existence, but it came with significant downsides, such as all wounds or phenomena suffered being shared across all Chronomantic projections, for temporal deviation could not be allowed.

In this specific instance, however, no injuries followed. Instead, the elf simply struggled, unable to move the barest inch while clasped by that oppressive incandescence. Then, in the next instant, another spell appeared, this one forming a golden silhouette just barely larger than the enemy chronomancer. A keyhole manifested, flinging her forward across time. A transposition spell had been wielded against her, and it slammed upon her body over and over and over until finally her mana field broke and she was flung out of the present into the future.

Maria blinked twice as the Vitae golem spent the last of itself in a blooming burst of explosive cuts, a final farewell to anyone who remained in the vicinity. The cuts sliced clean through matter, severing and hewing more than two dozen of Maria's brain-dead Chronomancers where they hovered. They came apart and died, the orcs among them bound for reincarnation, the few others doomed to whatever fate followed after that final end. Maria deconstructed all that just happened in an instant. The Deathless' plan appeared insidious, albeit a bit simple: had his Vitae golem captured an instance of the Paragon's palm? The skill seemed to have moved into the future, where it was primed for instant deployment the moment a hostile Chronomancer approached. From the Deathless' perspective, he must have anticipated Maria's sudden ambush. He knew she was going after the Starhawk, and so he knew she had to approach, as she too had a bounded field—the Harbinger only capable of tactile spell-shaping.

As such, that left her susceptible to the palm, and while she was trapped in the mist, he would strike her not with an attack but with an attempt to move her across time. It was simply a Transposition, and it seemed that it was non-violent enough to skirt the rules constraining the Paragon's Divinity.

Clever; not clever enough. If only you were dealing with someone more easily harried… 

And yet. He was the one she chose. Why?

The lingering question went unanswered as Belmonte proceeded with his following orders: he reappeared, slithering closer to where the Vitae golem once burned, trying to tease out any additional attacks, further hidden transposition spells. By now, she was sure that the Deathless didn't intend to fight her at all, sought to overwhelm and crack her Harbinger and displace her across time to see the struggle between them finished before it could begin again in full.

But there was something wrong with the way he wielded his magic: it was insidious to an extent, but it was also overly straightforward. There were only so many layers to this. Perhaps he didn't have so much time to prepare. After all, he had to scheme against the rest of the Challenger's forces, but time should have been his ally. If the Philosopher was fully behind him, he should have had all the time he would have needed to come up with a proper counteroffensive. No, no, there was still something she was missing. Far too much she was missing. It still seemed like the Deathless was acting alone, without the guidance of another…

She shook her head and slowly, carefully, levitated down to where the Starhawk's twitching form was revealed. His mana-shaped body blazed, not only with his own Divinity but with a foreign ome branded upon him. The Gate Lord's glaring omniscience had been applied to the Starhawk himself, ensuring that nothing went unseen. Yet where Maria could not deny Adam Arrow’s Awareness, she could defy his reaction speed. Her Time-Tuner allowed it. She existed a few moments in the future, just as the Realmrunner did relative to Farwalkers. Still, the tuner was running hot for a reason. She was driving the device to its very limits, and another crack sprouted down its middle just then, threatening to see it unravel before her very eyes.

More enemies were approaching, and she needed to act fast. No more Transposition spells followed. No more attacks or surprises arrived. The Vitae golem had fully faded, and now the last bit of the Gate Lord's vaporous Divinity found itself following in the Deathless' wake. 

A mess of rubble and jutting matter protruded from the Starhawk's manifestation, his body a nexus of pain and flayed Divinity. Maria had no idea how one could do this to a god, had never seen such a wound take shape before. Immediately, looking upon him, she felt her insides turn. It was more than nausea. If she didn't possess perfect control over her biological functions, she likely would have vomited. At present, she fought against building waves of vertigo, forced her blood to keep flowing, and hardened her mind as much as she could, even though standing in the presence of a mutilated Divinity poured gallons of poison into the supple waters of her sanity.

She reached into her satchel without another moment of hesitation. Maria needed to leave, and she needed to do it fast. Insanity would devour her sooner than her Time-Tuner broke. As she pulled the severed limbs of the Starhawk out of their seal, they exploded through the air, slamming back in place upon their requisite stumps. 

Just like that, the Starhawk was made whole, and in the same instant a cascading series of golden blades swept through him, carving him, peeling away the damage inflicted upon him and remaking him in startling flashes of divine essence. There came a flash, and that crushing weight of vertigo and existential terror within Maria burst like a bubble.

A man fell in place of the Starhawk. Nude, small, fragile, frail, Pathless. She could sense that in him, feel that in him. He moved so sluggishly, even compared to an Adept, that he might as well have been still before her.

“Now would be the time to run, dear Insul,” the Challenger’s voice whispered, emanating from the groaning man upon the floor.

Then a shudder went through him as the Divinity deep inside reignited. He was reliving his history in real time, being carved and shaped by Avalon across time. The Challenger had planned something. He stayed vague with Maria, but he hinted that it would be quite the spectacle in the end. It was, unfortunately, a spectacle she didn't want to see in person, and so she fled as the Starhawk began to writhe once more.

This time, however, he wasn't gouged open. He was mid-metamorphosis, becoming god in one second, then unraveling to mundanity as he suffered brief spasms of humanity in the next. He cried out, his voice deafening, then a choked whimper. His pain was true and all-consuming, then less than insignificant as his shrill screams fell between that of a godly octave and a mortal's pitiful mewing.

Maria tore across the land as fast as her Reflexes would allow. She abandoned all subtlety and her incapacitated Orchestra. She ran and ran and ran as her instincts screamed for her to go faster and faster and faster.

She barely remembered picking Belmonte back up, but as she found the reformed blade in her hand, she drew upon his power to accelerate herself, using the dagger's Chronomancy to make up for her own lack. She blurred toward the Abyssal gateway, risking detection as she charged toward the Semper Paragon.

She didn't even hesitate for a moment, even as his mountainous shape came into view. 

Just as she dove past him, a wave of crashing pressure arrived from behind, and her Time-Tuner finally gave as the manifestation of a full pantheon arrived. The mechanism shattered—spraying apart in shrapnel pieces that bounced off her hip and spiraled through the air. In an instant, she was exposed, but she didn't care. She kept moving. She urged Belmonte to ride as fast as the knife could take her. Threads whipped out from its fractured length, and the Dragon-Knight within ferried her further, but she never got to the gateway, not before a sheet of gravity drove her magic and her body down against the ground.

Maria tried to rise, but every centimeter she managed to push herself off the ground felt laden with the weight of a mountain, and a shadow fell over her before she made it to her knees. The Semper Paragon bent down and angled his head as he studied her, his prismatic glow lighting her body, leaving her exposed in its baleful wake.

“What might we have here? I smell upon you the blood of Orphereus. Must be a strong one to have survived the first swing.”

And still, Maria spared no thought for the leader of the Descenders, instead looking over her shoulder, and the Semper Paragon did the same a moment later, following her gaze. As the Starhawk's voice rose, this time in a deafening wail that swept across the entirety of the gate, it drowned every bit of the atmosphere in unrelenting pain. A change was happening. A metamorphosis was in the air. The Starhawk was changing, and Maria felt more like prey than ever before.

Challenger… what have you planned? What have you done?

***

The Starhawk is no more. 

The Shrike is risen. 

All kneel and beg before the Ascendant of Stalking Sin.

The notification greeted Shiv like a haymaker to the back of the head. He blinked twice, trying to clear the words, as if they remained as if sunspots burned in his vision. He understood the text but failed to grasp what was being said, mainly because he couldn't comprehend what had just happened.

Then the Challenger began to laugh. Truly laugh. He must have received the same notification. More than that, son of a bitch must have planned this—was the one behind this.

Shiv lifted his head, only for the Breaker to move on him, but Shiv had been ready. Normally, the Breaker should be orders of magnitude faster than him. He was a Legend across the board, with plenty of nasty tricks, and for an orc that size, he moved as quickly as any Reflexes Legend Shiv knew, short of Gone.

Unfortunately for him, Shiv had developed a few nasty tricks of his own. His kinetic tethers were all focused on the Breaker, and suddenly all the speed possessed by the orc flowed downstream into Shiv. He dodged to the side, and dragged the Vitae-tipped teeth of his Last Morsel under the orc's lowest right rib. 

Cutting aura clashed against dense Necromancy. A splash of corrosive mana blasted toward Shiv, and he cried out as he slammed his shoulder into the impending wave of force. Just then, his Return To Sender skill activated, and his Shapeless Tides, though frayed and damaged, endured long enough for him to push the vector of the attack back toward the Breaker himself.

A fist charged with Necromancy went wide as Shiv redirected the initial burst of power. The Breaker tumbled comedically head over ass, then pirouetted in the air and landed on his feet, grinding himself to a halt upon the stone ground of the platform surrounding the gateway. 

When he turned around, he was grinning widely. “You did something real funny to my Reflexes, brother. Yeah, I can feel you sucking on me like a real speed vampire, but you're going to need to be better than that if you don't want me to put my hands on you.” 

As the Breaker delivered his threat, the ground beneath them rumbled, and rusted towers rose out from underground a few kilometers in the distance, forming a circle around the orc. Snapping cords whipped out from their sides, forming what seemed to be a grand arena. The same cords slashed out behind Shiv, and he turned, realizing that a boundary had formed, a sort of mock arena that was now manifest, running horizon to horizon, ending just before the opening of the dimensional gateway. “I want to get down and dirty with you, Deathless. I've been waiting for this. You first, then the Semper Paragon, then everyone else after." The Breaker drew in a long, satisfied breath. “This is going to be the best day of my life in a long while, and for a long time to come. But for you, you're going to look back on this day, and you're going to think to yourself, 'Oh golly, I wish I still had my ass! Why was I ever so dumb to think that I wasn't going to get squashed flat by Uncle Breaker?’”

And to underline his nonsensical threat, there came a blaring theme from nowhere, in which a chorus of orcs made their best attempt at tenor and failed. There were electric strings in the background, someone trying to murder a set of drums with what sounded like a warhammer, and a bass so heavy it made Shiv's bones rattle inside his flesh. As the lyrics kicked in, the Breaker charged forth once more, his speed comically slow, barely covering ground as he held his arms out by his sides, welcoming any and all attempts at a counterattack from Shiv.

“We don’t have time for this,” the Harbinger reminded Shiv, its tone urgent. “And we're not skilled enough to keep him at bay indefinitely. If he touches us just once, if he manages to break through our Magical Resistance…”

And Shiv really didn't have that many tides left. He might be able to steal some when he wrestled against the Breaker, but he would likely spend a lot more trying to keep that necromancy at bay. Each moment of contact wore him down, and he would be rendered skill-less eventually. When that happened, Shiv would go off like a bomb, and Gate Piety would bear the brunt of that price.

He strained both his skills to the very limit, using his Multitasking to stretch out time while also diving into his memories for any kind of solution, anything he could use against the Breaker to bring this fight to a quick end. From that came a memory—and the perfect skill to wield.

“His defense is just a masquerade,” the Harbinger realized. “In fact, everything about him is a performance. That armor he wears doesn't even seem to be enchanted. It's more of a costume than it is protection.”

The Harbinger’s judgment stayed consistent even now. The Breaker wreathed himself in exaggeration. His nature was a performance of falsehood and bravado turned skill—a grand skill fused with so many others.

Theater, in a word, Shiv realized.

Sometimes memories call to each other, and he thought of the moment Veronica brought him to the theater in the Republic to see that falsehood himself presented as propaganda. The Breaker was his own propagandist, his own opera singer, his own performer, and he'd presented himself to Shiv as a shrewd orc, a nonchalant orc, but an orc nonetheless. In his commitment, he had to be more than just that. He had to be a caricature, and so there were simply truths he could not abide by.

The Beast of the Ninth Circle reared back; Shiv prepared a question—one he took a gamble on.

Certain Odds: 100% chance the Breaker must lie to maintain his “antagonist” image if you force him to compliment you.

“Hey, Breaker,” Shiv shouted. “Before we actually get this started, I just wanna know something: How do you like my cape?”

That question halted the orc as much as Shiv's kinetic tethers did, and as the Breaker blinked, his eyes swept between the cape in question, Shiv's face, and the Beast of the Ninth Circle that was leaning over his head. Suddenly, Shiv saw a flicker on the orc's face, a breach in his facade. “You little prick…” 

And despite the Harbinger invested inside him, the Breaker had to be the Breaker in the end. He knew it was coming. He saw the trap. couldn't be more obvious, but sometimes it wasn't about obviousness or being aware of a trap. It was about being so true to yourself, especially when you were determined to uphold your own lie.

The Breaker was a very committed liar, indeed. “I think it looks like something you pulled out of a trash-pit, broth–”

The Beast devoured him in an instant, smashing down upon the Breaker's form and banishing him from this plane of existence, where he was to toil in the purgatory of the Ninth Circle. A spiral pattern lingered where the Breaker once stood, leaving a cold imprint on the flesh of the world. The battle came to a close before it could even commence as the Breaker's theme music screeched to a violent halt. 

The vocalist coughed, and the announcer, the loudest voice of them all, came back on.

“...I think we can call this a DQ—disqualification! The Deathless has disqualified himself! That Deathless has used a dirty social skill to eliminate the Breaker! Boo this man! Everyone, boo hi—”

Certain Odds 54 > 56

Beast Of The Ninth Circle 419 > 420

Before the gained levels could even properly settle into Shiv, however, both he and the announcer choked off, because in that moment the Breaker burst back out of his frozen prison like a swimmer surfacing from water with a butterfly stroke. 

Nihilist: Godsdamn, that was less than half a second—

Shiv ducked and dashed under the Breaker as the orc blasted through stone and soil, still in his butterfly pose, and suddenly much faster again. A sallow path was left in his wake, the ground hissing with corroded essence—the lore of loss seeping into its every grain.

“Nasty little trick, brother,” the Breaker said, slowly turning his neck until only half his face was visible to Shiv—who suddenly felt a terrible sense of foreboding. Something was coming. The Grand Maestro’s eye blazed with giddy excitement, and the muscles under his skin coiled like snakes. “Nasty, but not enough.” 

He turned to face Shiv fully, and violence came slithering from his heart—untethered from his discipline; unbound by Maria’s Harbinger. Now would be time for blood and ruin. “Thing about kayfabe, Deathless—it’s a performance. For the world! For everyone! But the best myths are not truly lies at their core! They are promises of who we always strive to be, yet never quite reach! And so the lies are for the others who truly believe, but not me. Because I know. And I dance. And I sing.”

Then, a heavy breath billowed out from the Breaker as he cracked his neck. “Before we begin, though, breaking character for you just this once: Yeah, I like the cape. I think I’m going to take it from you when we’re done and fill it with all the people you couldn't protect from me.”

Shiv smirked grimly at the orc’s bluster, bringing his fists up in a basic guard. “Well. Come and make that a truth before my Beast eats you twice for blowing smoke out your ass.”

“Truuuuttthhh,” the Beast agreed with Shiv, taunting the Breaker.

The theme kicked back in.

The cheering erupted anew.

Corrosive lightning crashed down from the skies and lit the boundaries of the ring, forging a barrier of Necromancy between Shiv and the gateway as the Breaker held his arms high. “Alright, little Cock-Ripper.” He closed his eyes and breathed in deep, facing the Tutorial’s fetid sky. “You asked for it.” 

Shiv took half a step forward, but then one of the Breaker's eyes cracked open, and the way he looked at Shiv made him stop dead in his tracks. The feeling of foreboding from before grew by a magnitude. 

Something was off. 

He couldn't explain it, but something was wrong —something obvious that he was missing, that he felt like a boulder in his gut, but just couldn't put his finger on. 

As the feeling grew and grew, as the Breaker's ominous silence and unreadable expression dragged on, Shiv's Skills reaffirmed his worry, not through words, but through deathly silence. They sensed it as well, but neither the Harbinger, the Nihilist, nor any of the others capable of speech had an answer for him. 

The lull in the conversation dragged on for torturous seconds, and the Breaker stayed completely frozen as Shiv's knuckles grew white. Finally, after a near-minute, the orc’s expression changed again. A thin, ever-so-slightly teasing smile spread across his brutish, rock-carved features, and he lowered his arms to his sides, letting them casually hang, almost as if no fight would follow at all. When he spoke, his voice lacked its resonant boom, and his tone was perfectly even: “Hey, Deathless. One last thing. Do you know where you are?”

Shiv's thoughts ground to a halt. “What?”

The word just slipped out from him. Of all the things he would have expected the Breaker to say or ask, this wasn't one of them. 

But the Breaker didn't seem to mind the answer at all. He let out a light, content sigh, and slowly raised a single finger toward the sky. “Boo.”

All the clouds covering the skies of the Tutorial disappeared in an instant, as if they'd never been there to begin with. 

And then it appeared. 

At first, it was just one star amidst countless millions of others dotting the midnight-black firmament, part of some constellation or another that Shiv didn't know the name of. 

But then it grew. And grew. And grew. 

Over the span of three seconds, it went from a spec to the size of the shattered moon that hung over Earth, but it simply kept growing—no, getting closer. 

And as the glowing orb approached, its color became clear to Shiv for the first time. It was green, a sickly, festering green that he was more than familiar with. 

Finally, the thing arrived right above them, and it blotted out the entire sky, as great and vast as a burning star, its oppressive, unimaginable glory casting all existence in a green glow. 

The Breaker suddenly exploded into motion again, and he crouched, his legs sliding far to the sides as he directed one palm toward the ground and lifted his right arm up to point upward in a violent flourish. 

His absurd pose was given inverse weight as a pillar of pure, distilled Necromancy fell from the burning star above as if a bolt of lightning a hundred meters wide, smashing down upon the Breaker and hypercharging his mana to a level beyond what any Legend could ever be capable of. 

Nihilist: Shiv. Shroud yourself in me. Now.

The Deathless didn’t need to be told twice. He conjured a wreath of scintillating flames into a magical aegis as the heavenly strike of Necromancy yet doubled and tripled in intensity, the noise unimaginable, giving off waves of force that would grind any ordinary Legend down to dust and then nothing at all in a mere instant. 

After all, as Shiv had been told what felt like a lifetime ago, no matter how powerful a Legend got, they were no match for a mana core. 

“WELCOME! TO! MY! WRECKLAAAANDS!” the Breaker bellowed, his voice that of a dimension screaming in unbound ecstasy, and every orc in the Tutorial screamed with him. “WELCOME! TO! MY! GAAAAATE!”

And with that display of disgusting power, Shiv caught on to the final fact.

“The Breaker,” his Harbinger choked, “is the Gate Lord of the Tutorial. ” 

***

The Starhawk had never once assumed Roland's flesh through force, not until now. The wrongness of the act took Roland off guard more than the expulsion of aggressive Divinity. As the Starhawk began to fuse around Roland, his instincts, shaped by constant battle, screamed for him to react, and react he did. His New Legend Plus skill triggered. His Reflexes and Chronomancy mingled together, and he stole a page from his would-be assassin, manufacturing something close to Gone's Skill Fusion to place him ahead of his impending enslavement.

Golden lightning fractured free from Roland's being—and its strands pushed him along the waters of time, driving him a full second ahead of everyone else. But the divine remained unbound by mortal laws. They existed in a place beyond time, beyond space, forged of their own sovereignty. The Starhawk could react. Still, Roland's sudden transformation and the shift in his soul, from the once Ascendant of Justice into discord, gave him just a heartbeat to act. 

That was all the time Roland needed. As he felt the former Starhawk try to fully entomb him in incandescence, the Town Lord of Blackedge shook off a rising current of grief as he did what must be done. His New Legend Plus activated once more, and he called upon that familiar skill which he used to neuter Veronica in his Delve. Now he turned that skill upon himself in an act of supreme self-harm. Yet the fusion was far simpler this time. His Knife Proficiency, Faith, Geomancy, and Physicality were all drawn to the max, while his Toughness was rendered null.

He manifested a blade in his hand, a steel-shaped combat knife for close encounters. What could be closer than shedding one's own blood to sever the link between Avatar and beloved Patron? As he drove the knife home, a flurry of thoughts passed through Roland, even though his Reflexes came undone. It was like the System decided to twist the knife before Roland did, to mock him with everything that was left unsaid between him and the Starhawk.

But before the sadness could truly overflow, the link was severed, if only temporarily. Roland's incandescence flashed and flickered. The Starhawk jolted out of his body, partially excised but not completely—and not for long.

And what he knew as the Starhawk was changing—transforming before his eyes. The Ascendant Roland worshipped his entire life was shifting between a screaming mortal, the guise he once held, and now a monstrosity, more bird-of-prey than man, rows of bladed wings and brambles hatching out from his divine flesh.

“ROLAND! ROLAND! PLEASE—”

Never had Roland heard his god scream like that—call out for him with such pain. But somehow Roland didn’t break. Something about his experience with the Challenger had left him changed. Far more willing to accept despair and move forward.

There were several options ahead: none of them good. There was no easy way for him to fully sever his link with the Starhawk. Nor did he want to right now. For all that went unsaid, for all that ill that was unaddressed, Roland had sworn an oath to the Ascendant, and he would abide it by all costs.

But he would not let the oath take from him the remainder of his people and his son.

Only now did the other Ascendants and their Avatars respond. The first thing they did was pull back—staggered by disbelief and fright. For all the dignity they tried to pretend at, they were gripped by hesitation and uncertainty. Where Roland gored himself in faith, flesh, and soul with his magic-made blade to buy time, the other Ascendants and the Pathbearers who carried them stood undone.

Kathereine in particular looked more lost than ever before. How ridiculous it was that after so many battles against her in his Delve, she reacted less like the scheming murderess she was and more akin to a woman who'd just stumbled across the dead body of a long-lost friend. Veronica held her composure, but remained at a loss as to what was happening and what needed to be done. Roland read something in her body language: she was primed, but she didn’t know what she had to do yet.

At any moment, she might decide that now was the time to rid herself of a dissident, to use this opportunity to slay Roland and capture the Starhawk in their shared state of discord. To reclaim the Perch and the bounty it holds. 

But she did not. She refrained. More than that, she looked to Roland for answers and explanations.

Only Halsur drifted closer, but even the towering Ascendant who loomed as patron entity over the Stormhalts could not veil his dread. For even if there was bad blood between them and the Starhawk, a Divinity shouldn’t be so undone, couldn’t be defiled, unempowered, and then altered so severely. And if it could happen to the Starhawk…

“Roland,” the Starhawk whispered, his voice imprinting notifications within the Town Lord’s mind. “Destroy… Destroy the Perch. Destroy—”

No! Roland bellowed. Immediately. Utterly. Resolutely. Starhawk! My Ascendant! I will—

“I am already ruined. I do not want—the mortal I was is changing, and not toward good. Only for the worst. Only the worst. Only for blood. When the c-” The Starhawk’s words cut out as he flickered between man, Starhawk, and horror once more. “When these changes end, I will not be myself anymore. I command of you this last service, Roland Arrow. As my penance to you and your blood, as I have failed you—I release you from your oath, and give this final duty: release me from my anchor in this realm.”

Roland’s insides twisted in agony. I… I can’t…

“It is the only way that—”

But the Starhawk stopped speaking, for a new radiance bloomed as Gate Piety’s mana core came back aglow above in sync. The Ascendants turned to greet a new incandescence—one that bore edges of faintest azure. And finally, Roland shifted as well, laying eyes on his son, who strode forth as the Ascendants stood still. Who stood partially manifest in soul and matter, beyond the laws of time. Who had a radiant Shard of Exalted flame drawn back and aimed directly at Roland’s chest.

He blinked. “Adam?”

“Trust me,” was all his son said.

Then, he let loose his arrow.