VIII-79 Arrows (Patreon)

Impossible. Aggravating. Absurd. Stupid. What am I missing? What part of him do I fail to understand? There’s nothing different about his soul; he is just a Pathbearer like any other. There have been other geniuses. My father, the Semper Paragon… Many others. There have been Pathbearers of great power and unique birth. Others chosen by gods as Avatars. People who have ascended to godhood. Too many to count—so much data.

There have been many Unique Pathbearers—I have created some with my own hands. His experiences, his accomplishments, they aren’t… They cannot be so far beyond compare. They can’t! It makes no sense! None! 

So then why?! 

Why can’t I recreate him? I’m not just talking about Respecification—though that absurd skill doesn’t make sense either. Could it just be that his natural adaptability and massive talent allow him to learn and assimilate information better and deeper than most others? Is that so definitional that every aspect of him is consumed by this power? No, it just doesn’t make any sense!!!

And neither does the rest of him. I have created so many others—all in his image. All in his likeness. I have simulated the same upbringing for direct clones, the same environmental conditions, the same milestones—even replicated the same relations for him. There is no major deviation to my experiments—nothing—nothing that separates—GODSDAMMIT!

WHY CAN’T I RECREATE YOU, ROLAND ARROW?

WHY ARE YOU SPECIAL?

What makes you… you?

I don’t understand…

—Udraal Thann’s Lost Notes

VIII-79

Arrows

The Shrike struck out as a mockery of the Ascendant it used to be. Rather than directing blows with halberd or bow, its thorns spread first, encompassing space and consuming reality, staining all with the festering sickness that leaked as if tar from existential wounds. Like fissures lining skin, they ran along the gulf of Roland’s soul. His lesser Skills were as if distant stars, dipped and rendered putrid and dark by the seeping brambles.

He felt the infestation grip him, felt it nibble through his personhood bit by bit, yet never strike at the crux of who he was, for his grandest Skill, his truest Legendary Skill, remained protected in a barrier of misted vapor. The long fingers of the Sage endured, though the domain that Adam possessed would not, for there was an overlap between him and the adversary they faced—an adversary they could not so easily smite through spell or arrow.

Adam Arrow possessed a Domain of Heroism, as did the Shrike, and along that alignment, a divine clash was ordained. One the altered Starhawk was almost certain to win.

His incandescence passed through Adam's barrier, hammering his being like a monsoon ripping across the battered shores of an island. Every impact resonated with the flash of divine mana peeling around him, sending bolts of azure brightness out like embers straying from a red-hot blade against an anvil upon the moment of impact.

A chain of shots came forth, tied projectiles ripping across Roland's soul space. Neither Arrow ceased in his onslaught, the weapons of their namesake flying free from loosed fingertips as streaming rivers of myriad attunements and certain destruction. It was as if they projected dense beams of magic into the Shrike’s flesh, cleaving through mountain-sized patches of wicked thorns that burst and spread as metaphysical cancers. Yet no conjuration of flame nor invocation of cold could purge the ruination spawned by the corrupted Ascendant. For the substance that empowered his current design, that fueled his highest Domain, was shame, was sin, and Roland was a wellspring of regrets and foul deeds performed in the name of supposed higher justice.

Between the festering tips of those wicked thorn patches, Roland caught sight of glistening dollops so rich with color, so reflective in hue, that he saw himself across so many different eras, across so many different points in time. He saw the first person he slew in battle, a Pathbearer no older than he, one who didn't even see him coming. It wasn't a fair fight. The other fool lacked Awareness, and Roland struck along the axis of his foe's great weakness.

In the end, there was no hope there, no hope at all. And it was a righteous thing, his fellows had told him. It was the proper thing to do. It was the other Pathbearer’s fault for being so lacking. This was a hard world, they said, one where one had to take hold of all their skills, all their abilities, and make something of themselves against the cold laws of the System. Even then, that might not be enough, as it wasn't for the one Roland cut down. 

That night, after hiding from all others, pretending that he was unburdened with the aid of alcohol and more than a few forced jokes, he huddled in his sleeping bag as he clutched his weapon tight to his chest—his weapon that he used to take another's life, the weapon he was so proud of that he had made with his own hands, the materials bought by his own mithril. 

He held the weapon that he knew better than anyone else as if it were a dying pet. It was the only thing in this world that could fully resonate with him in that instant. For he had taken something worth more than he would ever know. For he had done something, and the weight settled on him only in the aftermath, bit by bit, until the guilt was unmistakable. Yet he wasn't sure how else to proceed. What else should he have done? The grief was there. He did not weep, though he tried to, and he found himself disturbed that he was so soft, so vulnerable for someone he barely knew.

Roland counted the number of people he killed after that. Ninety-three others followed his first victim. He remembered their faces as well, their races, their Paths, the expressions they had before they were acquainted with the soil. Then, as Roland's ninety-fourth kill arrived, their features grew blurrier. The details of their faces were smears, then their bodies, then more and more, until they were a mixed melange of outlines and silhouettes that were punched through by his arrows as he directed his shots toward the Shrike, watching as his attacks vanished into the glistening taint dropping and seeping free from the thorns leading back to the Shrike's befouled wings.

But the shame did not end there. Roland saw himself in other places as he grew in power and prestige. He saw himself standing in the Starhawk's shadow—of his pride, his joy, his triumph. He was battered and bruised, covered in blood. He thought he would lose his left eye that day when the Hero he faced struck him. It was a blow that would have taken his head off, had he not rolled so perfectly, had he not expended every bit of his Reflexes, every ounce of his Dodge, to turn it into a glancing strike. Even so, it left him unconscious for a while, and he would have died if not for Rose's intervention and Harlon and Vera's distraction. He would have died if not for them, but they were there. They were always there with him, and he was there for them in their time of desperate need.

When the Hero was about to tear them asunder, Roland rose again, and he fired that fateful shot—a shot that should have been impossible for a High Adept. A shot that slipped through the gap of the Hero's helmet visor and struck him dead on in his left eye—almost the exact same wound he had left upon Roland.

As the Hero, lacking in Toughness as he was, slumped over dead, his body crashing down upon a battered and broken Harland, Roland felt relief and triumph, yet no grief anymore. That was a long-buried feeling dulled after so many battles, a secondary concern when his own mortality had been brought to the fore. With that act, he caught the attention of the Starhawk, who sought a new prodigy and Avatar from the multitude of champions across the Republic. It was unthinkable to pick a mere Adept—scandalous as it was, even though Stormhalt had a claim of blood lineage rather than mere happenstance—but the Starhawk insisted and manifested before Roland to strike a pact.

Roland didn't think he was capable of such joy, such immense pleasure and satisfaction, but the Starhawk taught him otherwise, just as the Starhawk taught him so many things in the days that followed. While the young Pathbearer in the reflection beamed and grinned, his friends around him, all of them leaning against each other, were broken, but their spirits blazed bright. The one who remained at present, with only his son by his side, was a tower compared to the blade of grass he once was. Yet where his power now left his younger self enshadowed, he saw himself as a mere shadow of his former innocence, of his notions of glory. For the boy then was still pure, was still blind to what was to come and all he was to do. In the name of justice, those reflections curdled as the world descended into a kaleidoscope of battlefields. Roland was the only constant there: Roland firing his bow, Roland with the Starhawk looming behind him, telling him where to strike, and him obeying without question, with the highest efficiency.

Bodies rained down before Roland. They fell, touched by his arrows, taken from this world without any care. The first of Roland's victims was now a mere imprint upon a running river, coursing onward to the afterlife, all forgotten alongside the others. But somewhere deep and buried, he was there. Somewhere in the darkest recesses of Roland's bitterest nightmares, he remained. He endured, and so that seed of shame was left starved yet not severed, as it sprouted and joined with the briar.

And as Roland fought on, serving with faith and courage unmatched by any other, so too did his actions sour. The Ascendant of Justice turned to desperate measures, to brutality, to bouts of confusion and black-and-white thinking, as he commanded Roland to strike with impunity against those who committed sins insufficient to justify a higher severity of retribution.

Roland never contested his god's words, for who was he to reject an Ascendant? For who was he to demand an explanation from the icon of justice—who chose him, who molded him into more than he could have been as a meager mortal?

From that came a second seed of regret, a second node of sin that was watered time after time. Yet Roland gave it another name, thought of it as simply the sacrifice needed to uphold justice, as justice was not clean, was not goodness, was not kindness, was not softness. Every time Roland felt his heart quiver, he crushed the sensation. He starved that which threatened to unravel him even in the slightest of manners, and upheld his faith over his personal discomfort.

It was a hard world, after all, a world under the cold laws of the System, and one had to be strong, had to be greater and quicker, wiser and deadlier than all others to protect this land, this Republic, this pantheon of Ascendancy. 

Roland would make that sacrifice willingly in the name of his god, for his people, for his son to be, for his beloved, for his friends. He would make it a trillion times over and never feel regret. 

At least that was the tale he told himself, and in that deception, part of his legend was forged, and the seeds of his sin swelled ever larger.

Then came Roland's greatest act of atrocity. He saw Submission, recognized it by the way it burned, rather than the bones of the city still protruding from the blaze. He remembered the screams, the desperate struggles, the crackling of Necromancy as the warriors who held its walls tried to fight back. 

But the Dread Horizon had come, and the Starhawk was with him.

In Roland’s mind, it mattered not if they sent an army of Legends, a thousand Legends, ten million Legends. He would strike them all down. The strongest warriors were destroyed, their vessels sent screaming, as he pierced them not only in flesh but also in skill and soul. His shots were infused with the substance of their brethren’s souls, his quiver filled with Necromantic strikes that allowed him to shatter grand spells before they could form, landing shots along impossible axes.

As he shattered the war form of the Vicar after only minutes of struggle, he marched forth and heeded the Starhawk's words: “Burn this place, Roland. It is unholy, it is unclean, and we must see it rendered nothing but salt and ash. It is essential, Roland. You must do this. We must do this. It is the righteous thing.”

The Starhawk spoke those words then with such maniacal conviction that Roland could tell his Ascendant was lying, even back then. 

Thaen had never forced anything in his life, yet he was forcing these words out right then, desperately trying to compel them into truth, even after he'd admitted to Roland the truth of their campaign before. A truth far different than that which he bellowed in that instant.

It was also then that Roland gathered a sense that the Starhawk was withering faster in mind and in spirit than either of them was willing to face. And so they didn't. That became the third and fourth seed: a genocide performed for another purpose, a sacrifice Roland made to further his own goals. No better than Veronica in that instant, no better at all.

He told himself that such was the price of justice, such was what it meant to be a Pathbearer. It was the System's world, and one had to be colder yet to achieve the world they wanted to build, the tomorrow they desired. Maybe he would face an accounting someday, but it would be on his terms, on the Starhawk's terms, as the Ascendant of Justice, restored to full sanity and stability, would enforce a righteous reckoning rather than hopeless revenge.

But finally, there came Shiv, not as the monster of a young man he stood now, but as that little boy, that little screaming, miserable, midnight-eyed child that wailed and wailed, covered in his mother's blood, placed next to other corpses that continued shrieking. As his father was euthanized, he only stopped wailing as Roland's shadow dipped over his form. He was pale, the palest thing Roland had ever seen, a little doll carved from bits of fallen moon.

In his expression was so much of what had wounded Roland: where his former friends formed together, molded into a shape that should have been one of promise of tomorrow, of progeny and hope, and two families joined eventually through brotherhood and kinship. Yet Rose lay dead, as did Roland's unnamed, unborn daughter. The hate and the weakness and the exhaustion warred within Roland as a hurricane of intrusive thoughts took hold.

The first of which was to reach down and take the boy by the neck. As he raised him before his eyes, he couldn't decide if he wanted to squeeze, if he wanted to caress, if he wanted to forgive or butcher in torturous revenge. There wasn't enough strength in him to kill a child, and there wasn't enough strength in him to forgive either. So Roland settled into limbo, and that became a cage for a beast born of his once-closest companions. A beast he was desperate to starve, desperate to wound, yet incapable of seeing wounded. He intervened several times, leaving just enough food near the trash or along the way where the boy might scavenge, all while he found darkest enjoyment in watching the townsfolk loathe him, ostracize him, thinking it justified and calling it vengeance.

On this part, there was a seed within the Starhawk as well, one the Shrike now relished, for the Starhawk never intervened against Roland, just as his most faithful son never objected against him either. So they both played blind zealots to each other, deliberately ignoring the other's betrayal of their core ideals, as their mutual affection saw them commit shared sins that they should have been better than.

As Roland lifted his gaze, he found the Sage's palm completely surrounded, slowly shrinking as Adam struggled and strained against the riptides of greater Divinity. He was being wrenched away, and if he stayed, he would lose his Domain to the Shrike—but if he fled, it would be surrender. It would be the abandonment of his father to a monster that once stood as his family's patron god.

The jagged thorns formed a circular archway, then a ramp that extended forth as a platform. The Shrike walked upon the substance sprouted forth from his body, and it bled him regardless. It clawed and pierced his feet with every step, golden blood dripping out. Not the shade of Chronomancy, but the bright ichor of something pure, now tainted upon the path it chose to tread.

Gods thrived on myth and metaphor. The two were one and the same, and in this demonstration, the Shrike declared himself stronger than it was before, stronger with every step and stronger in its imposition over Roland. Still, he was still firing at the Shrike. His arrows arrived, piercing the Demiurge yet doing no true damage, causing only pain without harm. The Shrike looked upon him with profound pity and borderline mockery. He held his arms open, embracing the wounds his former faithful sought to inflict, bearing them as if it deserved this punishment, as if a demonstration of his own remorse and piety before Roland.

The Shrike came to a final halt at the edge of his tunneled arch that was perfectly shaped to serve as a ring for the Sage's index finger. He stared down both Adam and Roland and let forth a sigh. It was a heavy sigh, laden with all the regret that everyone felt, with all the turbid sourness and heavy bitterness that stank from sin, akin to an infected wound too late to be burned, spreading a plague upon the body with no chance of restoration.

“But I should not burden you so much, O Roland. I should not have cast myself so hard against you, nor your son. How could I have done this? How could I have been so vicious, so cruel? You will embrace me. You will both embrace me in one fashion or another. Know that I absolve you, but I cannot forgive you. I would release you if I could, but I will not, for I have learned from my sins, and you will learn from yours. The Starhawk before was a fool. He was merciless in his pursuit of mercy, a butcher who thought himself a proper architect of utopia. His arrogance fed yours, and we all suffered for it. We all suffered. You especially, you more than any other. Oh, my truest son, what have I done to you? What have I done to your house?”

“Father!” Adam cried out, his voice and soul cracking beneath the strain. He stared at Roland, yet he was on the wrong side, and Roland saw the mutilation his son sustained. The missing eye had now become part of his lore, unable to be changed, never to be restored. Never to be restored.

I can't undo it. I can't unfail you, my son…

The thought was more than mere thought. It sent an echo, a whisper, a thunderclap of noise through the world, and Adam heard it, and the Shrike heard it, and Roland heard it, as it sounded inside of him and, since he was already within himself, all around him as well.

“No, Father, stop! Stop! Master yourself. Get a hold of your mind. He's trying to bend you. He's trying to drown you in regret. Do not let him! This isn't the Starhawk anymore!” The desperation behind Adam's pleas was tinged with a growl of frustration as Roland was on the verge of tilting over into a bleak abyss. “Stop feeding him!”

But how could Roland stop, even if he was dealing with a parody of the Ascendant that he worshipped so totally, did he not—

“Whatever regrets you have will not be settled through sorrow, grief, or pain!” a deafening voice rumbled forth from Adam and the mists that sailed forth from his soul. The suddenness of Adam's surging Divinity struck both Roland and the Shrike. The thorns that were almost a ring fractured along the middle, and the Ascendant of Stalking Sin was driven a half step back, clutching his chest as he suffered the first true blow of the struggle.

Roland felt a crushing pressure seize him, a pressure that made his bones click and pop, drew his ligaments, and pressed upon his heart until every beat came labored and strained. It was only then that he felt the true mass of the power lurking within Adam, a power that his son had not called upon fully, had not aligned with totally, not nearly the same way the rule that Roland did the Starhawk. Right then, right there, there was no separation between Adam Arrow and the Tyrant.

“Master yourself! Right now, I have no need of you as a regretful, sobbing father. I have no need of you as a remorseful butcher, for the butchery has long been committed. For now, you weep and whimper and grieve the red on your blade, not when it was shed, not when you shed it, not when you shoved it in—now, of all times? Now! Just as you regret not speaking to me as a father before, because it brought discomfort to your faith, to who you were, and what you have done, now the lateness is pathetic. What is worse is that you are in the process of committing another sin, a final sin. The only reason he can reach you is that you are currently festering with sin! Wake up, Roland Arrow. Wake up and stop striking with spell or might. Strike with your heart. Strike with your faith. Strike with your mythology. Reject him for what he is, not what you who suffer under him. Take hold of yourself and be your own Pathbearer. Learn the worth of your own responsibility in all its misery and wholeness for this once in your life!”

Roland swallowed. The sheer harshness exploding forth from his son was unrecognizable, yet undeniable.

The Shrike tried to interject, to take hold of Roland once more and drive Adam from his soul. But where Adam was vulnerable along the Domain of Heroism, the Tyrant was a concept embodied, and the Ascendant of Stalking Sin had no claim to such a concept. He therefore found himself silenced, driven back once more by a meager demigod, but a demigod who possessed that which he did not.

“What is the worth of your sin? What is the worth of suffering from sin? What is the worth of all this regret, all this notion of wrongdoing and belated infantile sadness? Nothing. You are a Pathbearer, and before that you were a man, but yet you have forgotten this in your quest to savor and fixate on your pain. You have forgotten this time and time again, and every single time, no one has forced you into this suffering. You have done it over and over again, not because of the Starhawk, though you had the choice to reject him at any time. You just lacked the spine and the strength. Say nothing of this boy you call a son, but at least he has his own resolve. At least he has bitten my tongue as I have spoken, to deny me my rightful words, and that is a display of spirit enough, of Tyranny enough. What measure of your god's Domain lingers in you? Your true god's Domain, not this miserable wretch of a shadow born of the Challenger’s hateful loins? Why did the Starhawk lay claim to you? For I do not see it now. I do not see the man worth claiming. I do not even see a warrior, for you don't see the fight in front of you. For you don't see the enslavement taking hold. Without my presence, the briars would have sunk in, but if you were of worth, of any bit of your legend at all, you would have ripped those thorns free from your soul and cast him out without necessitating my intervention!”

The visions across Roland's past intensified. His great wrongs returned and intensified, replaying over and over again: the burning of Submission, the butcheries he committed, the slaughtering, the slaying, the assassinations, killing Jessica's daughter within the halls of his house of offered hospitality, his abuse and tormenting of Shiv.

All of it slammed into him over and over again, the seeds of sins inside of him. Powerful and potent, allowing the Starhawk to affect him even through the barrier of non-force, of non-violence.

But then the Sage's words bore fruit, and something else emerged amidst the sin, something else that outweighed the sin, something that Roland had forgotten, that had been blanketed and blotted out from his mind and memory by the horrific presence of his Ascendant unmade. That was who Roland was, who he had been in all the times that he did right, where he fought for the right thing, where he and the Starhawk were of one being, one soul, one action, one arrow to smite evil—and through their combined might, was evil smote.

Those moments were justice delivered, justice enacted by his hand, as true as every misdeed he had done. He had performed a thousand more services, not only for the Republic, but for those who never asked him. He had intervened for Lone Star simply because he was passing by. He had struck down orcs that were certain to overrun towns and cities to inflict unspeakable tortures upon the people within, and they had done that because that was who they were as well. For to discount the finest hour with the lowest moment was also a lie.

Roland began to burn. The briars around him mirrored the arousal of his spirit, the kindling of his heroism, which existed in spite of the sins he committed beyond it. They were joined, perhaps by individual action, by history, but he was not one thing. He was not his failures alone, and the Sage ground that into him. Through Adam, the Sage spoke, and though Roland was ashamed, his terror was brought to the present as he realized he was on the cusp of another sin. He wasn't about to lose his son to one divine being. He was on the verge of losing him to two. There was a cost to invoking the Sage so much, to drawing on all that power. Roland could feel it bleeding over at him, eating away at who he was, of who he could be.

“You shamed yourself enough, Roland Arrow, but there is still enough tyranny inside of you to decide who you wish to be now: sin or no sin. What will follow? Will you be a slave, or will you be a master? Sin be damned! Who are you as a Pathbearer? Who are you as a man? Who will you be? Decide! Decide! Decide!”

The Shrike bristled, enraged in a way only one god could be at another who was trying to steal away their flock. “He is mine, creature. They are both mine. Away with you, whatever you are. Away, and give me back my Arrows! Give me—”

Then suddenly there came another intrusion, and it fell as if bones splashing down into a sea. These bones were stained deep with strange energies, with the horrific aura that turned what used to be a gleaming animal into falling bodies of flame.

Roland remembered those descending embers: bodies flung from the skyscrapers of Submission, bodies that had once been people who had failed to escape their conflagration, bodies cast down, bodies that followed Roland into his nightmare, trailing dots of fire upon the backdrop of the horizon.

The Shrike turned as well, surprised by this shift of events, for he too had not expected this. How could he have been taken by surprise? Was this not born of his power? Were these not images conjured by the venom of his thorns?

Roland got his answer as the first of the falling fires came shrieking across the horizon of his soul. The scream, both a rising pitch of heat and velocity, was also the maddened wrath of the burning victim possessed by a malicious Pathbearer.

And it was then that everyone found themselves reminded of another fact: The Starhawk did not have just a single Avatar, for there was a time when Roland was incapacitated and required another—and utterly unexpected Pathbearer—to stand in his stead.

A crackle of psionic lightning burst out from the falling corpse ablaze as it struck the Shrike like a missile. A horror spawned from Gate Piety's heights somehow found its way into Roland's soul, into the Shrike itself, as the shadow Uva Mettabon flashed in a sprawling blossom of psionic stormstuff over the Ascendant of Stalking Sin.