VIII-83 Butchery Beneath Paradise (II) (Patreon)

The greatest insult I can deliver upon a world is leaving no survivors. I adore survivors. I cannot express the fondness within my soul toward all those who continue to strive and bear hate for me even after all is lost, those who so irrationally and utterly reject despair, trading it for hatred, trading it for a lifelong pursuit of revenge against me and mine, even though it is impossible to pursue that all the way to the end, to struggle against the very fabric of their existence. 

I'm going to warn you now: I will spoil parts of the ending. You're going to come to hate a great many people more than I, for the part that inspires such hatred lies in the ones who choose otherwise. For every struggler, there is a quisling one who is willing to trade all their dignity, all that they can become, in exchange for their life: a life under me, a life as an extension of me. Perhaps they believe that they have something to protect. Perhaps they must bargain and sacrifice all their self-image, all they wish to be, so that I can spare them—but no one is truly spared, not in the same sense that they think.

Of the two kinds of survivors I allow, there are those who impress me, and then there are the tools I use to fan their flame: close family, people they respect, people they held so much hope for, turned to my instruments.

Not even as orcs do I bestow upon them skills, for in the end, I don't want orcs of such uncertain quality. One must commit. One must devote all to who they are, and those who are snakes in the grass yet hold so much humanity regardless are disgusting to me. For you are impure, of the truest quality. You are impure to yourself, and what strength is that? What worth is power in such a little, feeble vessel?

Dear Struggler, I wish for you to understand that the wound that cuts the deepest will not be from the torturous implements wielded by my orcs, be they of metal or mana. 

No, the true wound comes from within, from the heart, from those you have sown much faith in and turned away from because they did not have your same strength. You are ultimately alone even amongst your own kind, for everyone else folds to me when you do not stand true, Pathbearer. You and I are one and the same, and so I must hurt you. I must hurt you in ways that reveal to you the trueness of your own legend, while leaving all others false and fickle…

—The Challenger

VIII-83

Butchery Beneath Paradise (II)

For a moment, a fleeting, bittersweet moment, Veronica thought her boy had done it: that Shiv had defied all odds again and brought forth a most unexpected victory. It was most aligned with his legend, after all. He resolved the crisis in the north with words rather than violence, and he had performed wonders in the south. Wonders no other could replicate, as he stalled an entire invasion in its tracks, grinding the wheels of the Southern Gods to a halt. 

When the Dimensionality painting the Abyssal gateway crumbled in a cascading distortion of explosions, she hoped that it was over, that the invasion had been stopped before it could truly begin. 

Then the notification smashed into her vision, and the first hints of the coming apocalypse unveiled themselves, tingling at the edge of her senses.

Veronica was a Legendary Dimensionalist. She felt the fabric of space quiver and bend before she saw it rupture and break. More so than any other on Earth, she was especially skilled at displacing things, at shifting and folding different realms together, at moving herself and so many others across vast distances. Indeed, with her mastery, she could perform the work of a Low Category Gate alone—a substantial feat for a Pathbearer—but even an Adept-Tier Dimensionalist would have felt what was to come. For the very substance of integrated Earth, and Gate Piety connected to it, was thinning. It was like the epidermis of a body flayed away to reveal the raw red skin beneath.

And so ruin descended upon Gate Piety in a cataclysmic instant. The skin of the dimension was sliced open as if by a scalpel, and she felt the tip of an immense blade slip through. As the veil between worlds thinned and was exposed, with no more Ambient Mana Threshold preventing the merger between this realm and a higher one, what burst through first was not the world they would contend with, nor a collection of gateways connecting Earth to that which they had bested and consumed. Rather, a blinding glow of golden glory made itself known, bringing a cataclysmic wave of pressure that washed over Veronica and all those who stood beside her.

She thought she knew power, deeply connected to a goddess as she was. That was a mere lie. Even as her grandmother rose to greet the height of their new ambient Mana Threshold, her Domains remained rooted in song and charisma. Her skills were Social, and the other ascendants were limited facets much the same. 

The Sword of Paradise was something purer than simply another god of the System, a Heaven, and looming behind it was yet another power that was beyond description, beyond her fathoming.

While a series of other notifications scrolled across her eyes, the rest of the Avatars struggled to stay upright, but Veronica kept her shoulders squared and her head raised, even as her heart fell. Then, without warning or prelude, the Challenger manifested before Veronica in the flesh. One second he wasn't, the next he was, a mere centimeter between his face and hers—causing Veronica to flinch back in fright for the first time in centuries.

“Greetings, Legend Chandler. I must confess, I was wrong: Up close, I do see the resemblance between your grandson and you.” He promptly stopped speaking as he held out his arms and welcomed the Ascendants' collective reprisal.

Incandescence consumed Piety as the combined power of a near-complete pantheon slammed into the Challenger. Cripple struck first, drawing upon the fullness of its might and absolutely disintegrating the body of its Avatar to deliver a blow of blows, a strike that ruptured the very fabric of existence within the Gate, tearing a gaping wound across all its mountain ranges and continuing to displace every cloud in the sky toward the horizon beyond.

Then followed Enoch, who created an armored tower of most intricate design. It fused around the Challenger, containing and rebounding every shock wave to concentrate the force inflicted by Cripple without having it spill over as collateral damage. At the same time, at the top of the tower appeared a series of arrays as Maiden imposed her will upon the world. Creations spawned forth from her Domains—and a beam channeled forth from a parasitic twin grown from a monster that devoured stars splashed down across the edifice, filling its insides with leeching essence.

Harlem delivered an imposition of truth upon the world, and Daughter vanished, a thing of tar-black violence smearing across the world to drive blade and venom into the Challenger's form. The rest of the Ascendants congealed their powers as one, pooling their potency as one, while the Songbringer lifted her voice in a rising song that deafened the world and inflicted an invasive serenity that no one could resist.

The sensation of peace became all-consuming, omnipotent in form, and it sank into the atmosphere. It overwhelmed all, seeping into even Veronica's bones. At that moment, she felt no scorn nor urge to fight, and there was no violence or ill will between her and the Challenger, even if he came forth to deliver upon her ruin or bleaker acts she had no desire to consider.

A shrill note rose. Existence vibrated. The vitality that represented the structure of the System and the world that embodied it shuddered, like glass on the verge of bursting, its resonant frequency matched by the Ascendant of Song and Passion’s pitch.

Once more, Veronica deluded herself, imagining she was on the cusp of victory, that they had taken a High God by surprise. The swelling of mana within the Ascendants shot far beyond Legendary, and the powers they each unleashed could sunder worlds, or so it felt.

But what was a world to one who had butchered entire dimensions, who had slaughtered uncountable lesser gods and Legends enough to fill every centimeter of a barren universe?

As the Songbringer sang, the Challenger just sighed, and the overwhelming huff of his disappointed breath billowed over Veronica like a hurricane. She was driven back, her considerable Physicality pushed beyond the breaking point and her grandmother's protections battered aside as if they were both feathers in that metaphorical tempest. The tempest continued—obliterating an entirety of Enoch's construct. The Builder cried out in agony, only to be silenced as the Challenger casually swatted him aside with a contemptuous flick. The Songbringer tried to concentrate more of her melody, tried to refine her tone, but she was silenced as the Challenger reached over and pinched her jaw shut with two immense fingers.

“Shhhh, parrot. Quiet now. I came to speak with a queen.”

The Challenger chuckled as bands of midnight black electricity coiled around his arm. Hulsur's Domain spread across him while Havel unleashed the full capacity of his Ascendant’s storm. Black lightning greeted a living embodiment of devastation, and, somehow, the Challenger was held firm. One Domain met another, and in the absence of indestructibility and restriction, the Challenger had no answer to that which Hulsur possessed, or so it seemed.

The Endbreaker was brief in his triumph as he tried to tighten his strands. His own strands began to coil around his neck and pull at his body, and he didn't even seem to notice. Rather, his eyes blazed red, the same color as an orc's, as he ravaged and raged.

Soon something snapped within him. Veronica felt the pulse and pop of his heart as his motions overflowed and a raging torrent of turmoil built up after centuries of repressed emotions, years and years of anger directed toward the other Ascendants, against the Songbringer herself. For all the times she was unfaithful, for all the times she used him as a tool, yet constantly drowned by his natural subservience, his love, and her sense-dulling hymns—all that came back at the same time as a bomb went off amongst the Ascendants. Suddenly, the Endbreaker wasn't just trying to restrain the Challenger. He became the centerpiece to a vast nest of electricity, and each one of his lashing bolts slammed into the unprepared Avatars, trapping the other gods as well in a cocoon of impenetrability as the Challenger continued his discourse, speaking from outside their muffled weave.

“To finish what I started, he has your chin. You are both remarkable physical specimens for humans. I suppose you are frail creatures by nature, but one must not judge a spider by its capacity to kill a lion, or so I am told. I am not here, however, to overly praise you. I wish to make my intentions known and plain. But before I continue, I'd like to hear from you as well, Veronica Chandler. What would you give to preserve your entire nation, that which you so laughably dubbed a Republic and not an Empire because you so desperately cling to the theater of democracy without truly enforcing the practice… But I digress. Born of deception or not: What will you give to preserve your nation?”

Veronica held her tongue. The defiance was almost impotent, but she surprised herself as she resisted, even when the Ascendants around her failed. Hulsur was merely the first to succumb. That blazing yellow glow, which defied the orcs and indicated the Challenger's influence, became infectious. It spread from Ascendant to the most susceptible lapdogs. Havel, naturally, followed, but everyone else, everyone but Veronica and Anthony, soon found themselves enthralled by a blazing itch to descend into ravenous violence.

That was the worst part of the Challenger, the thing she would have noticed and realized if she had the chance to study and respond. Rather than being forced to react in an instant, he was violence incarnate. He was a God of Strength. It was pure folly to think that one could strike him down with the very source of his Domain. How could a god of fights, of battles, of war be brought down through direct martial intervention? It was ridiculous, but so was the Challenger.

What chance do you have of slaying the High God of all things struggle and battle?

She almost confused the thought for her own, but she recognized it as the foreign entity it was and dispelled it as she hardened her control over herself. Before Veronica ever became the de facto Councilwoman over the Yellowstone Republic, she was her own master, and she knew herself truer than any other. This was a hopeless battle, and that meant it was time to break contact: escape and reassess.

But she needed a way to surprise the Challenger. She couldn't simply teleport away. No, his reach was too vast—she needed to think of a way to distract him, to leave him pinned in place, or perhaps to bargain with him, if that was at all possible.

And so she played along. She had no intention of folding to his demands. Even without truly speaking to him herself, she read his nature from his very pores, from the aura he emanated, which spread out from him like a plague: an aura of violence and impending bloodshed. There would be no world where someone dealt with the Challenger and emerged unscathed. This was going to cost her. It was going to bring pain. But what great deed didn't? 

“Everything.” That was Veronica's initial lie, for she wouldn't give everything to save the Republic. It would be a stupid, paradoxical thing to claim. If you gave everything, then you would have nothing, and the nation would cease to exist in its proper form long before even 25% of its identity had been given away. She knew this from experience, both as aggressor and defender against rival empires.

If you ripped away 25% of a culture, much of the remainder would collapse in on itself simply because there would be no architectural support, nothing to reference, nothing to uphold. Traditions devoid of problems or things to refer to are simply solutions that have outlived their problems, and so, in time, they become nothing more than blind and hollow rituals.

The Challenger was clearly trying to fish for something inside of her, trying to make use of her in a certain way. Disgusted though she was to admit this, she saw a shadow of herself in him. Arrogant, perhaps, but it was also true. He was as much of a conniving instigator as she, though for very different reasons.

The Challenger drew in a breath, and she thought he was about to breathe out again and spit his scorn upon her, but instead she sensed a sudden curiosity blazing inside of him. It was a calm, steady interest, and the manifestation of his personality pressed against her, as true of weight and force as the emergence of Avalon looming overhead.

“My, my, a lie! It seems that I've misjudged you dramatically. I assumed you were more vacuous of idealism than you actually were. How deliciously wrong of me. But why lie?”

Now Veronica reverted to honesty. “Because we are enemies.”

“But must we—”

A laugh exploded out from Veronica before the Challenger could finish his sentence. It was too absurd, and she was caught so off guard by his naked approach that her disbelief combusted into comedy. “Yes, we must, and now you're lying to me, Challenger, because I know what you are, just as much as you can see what I am. In what world do we become allies? In what world?”

She scoffed. “Let me guess your offer: You're going to tell me that I can preserve my people if only I turn my wrath upon those who dwell in Gate Piety, in a display of self-mutilation and grand betrayal. You'll even indicate that I can strike down Roland and kill the Starhawk using this opportunity. That you will have the entirety of my Republic spared if I only perform this act of fealty to you—that I scratch an itch I don't have, thereby debasing myself. I find myself bound to you in turn, and so I am spared, but I am functionally a slave, and I am worn down as you bully me into committing atrocity after atrocity, service after service, and I use myself as a murder whore to sate your amusement until finally I cannot take it, or you grow bored and break the bargain and kill all of my people while making me watch.”

And suddenly, the breath that was supposed to leave him was sucked away by Veronica. It was like she placed her lips over his and drained the oxygen from his lungs. For though the Challenger was strife incarnate, that didn't mean this little insect called Veronica Chandler was devoid of legend all her own.

Anthony chuckled behind her, resisting the urge to inflict harm on others or himself as best he could—and she saw that he arranged for his own harmlessness. There was a wound on his chest, a shallow cut made by a blade, and his being flared with faint blue. His skills were distorted and weakened so that he would bring no harm, even if he desired it. “A monster… should stay a monster…” he croaked. “Pure arrogance for a butchering beast to think they can play a con on a politician.”

And despite the direness of their circumstance, Veronica felt a warmth swell through her. It was a warmth she never gained from her father, but what worth was her father as a man anyway? He was helpless, weak-willed, a drunkard in the best of times, and he perished in the pursuit of pleasure found in the depths of drugs and other substances. If there was someone Veronica respected, it was Anthony, and so his praise was worth the entirety of the world, even if she had broken him in the meantime—especially since she'd broken him in the meantime. For the battle between them, as their powers exchanged hands and he receded into the backdrop while she ascended to the peak of the Republic, was far more intense than this little mind game the Challenger attempted to play.

Almost as if embarrassed, the Challenger joined in on the laughter as well, mocking himself, if only to retain a measure of power. “I apologize in truth now. I've been stung by you, little ape, and I see where the boy gets his tongue from. I meant to mock earlier when I compared you to your grandchild, but I see that he is the lesser rhetorician, and it had to come from somewhere. It had to flow from—”

“No,” Veronica said, invoking the Songbringer's power to silence the orc once more in a display of audacity, but also because her annoyance flared again. “Do not give praise to me for Shiv’s achievements. I can take no credit for the flesh I left abandoned then tried to enslave. He does not speak like me, though he might carry a measure of that inclination. We are different. He has the potential, but that is mostly what he is: raw potential with a measure of curiosity and a special perspective. I am not the same, though he likely would have recognized this ploy of yours as he shares that violence in his blood. And before you ask, yes, I would have betrayed him. I would have done any number of things to him to preserve my Republic if anyone had made me the offer—anyone other than you. Since it is you, however, I'm going to give my answer ahead of time. If you think that I will fold and perform your depravities for you, then I have to disappoint you, for I choose death, as it is no different to die slowly or quickly. The purpose of the Republic is to build a greater dream for a collective people, and when that dream is shattered, then there will be no people. There is only a series of brands and cults competing against each other within the ruins of what came before and what will transpire after as a new power takes hold. But there will be no power that takes hold if we exist under you.”

The Challenger stopped exerting his influence. He drew back his bloodlust, even as chaos erupted all across the Gate. Beyond her personal proximity, Veronica's senses detected a rain of orcs falling in a downpour. Each of them was immensely powerful, their mana fields covering leagues and cities. All of them were High Heroes at the very least, with countless Legends among them, and they would bring ruin soon. They would indulge themselves, but at present, the Challenger had no intention of joining them yet. With that, Veronica realized her true, subtle goal had been achieved. She was stalling for time now, and she'd captured the Challenger's curiosity. Now, time for an even more dangerous game: to keep it and to influence him without him realizing—if that was possible at all.

“How… fascinating. And here I was imagining it'd be so easy to have you debase yourself and traumatize the Deathless in turn.” The Challenger grunted joyously. “It seems that I've mistaken which kind of survivor you are. Oh, you might not be a tool at all… But I digress, and perhaps I judge too fast. Tell me more, Veronica Chandler. Tell me more about what you see in me and how you intend to manipulate me in turn.”

The damn orc god just had to say that before Veronica's hope could overswell. She saw through him to some level, but he saw through her all the same. She didn't like that, not even a little, for the brief glimpse that he was her foil on some level was slowly becoming less a shadow and more a solid truth…

***

“Valor. It’s time.”

Awareness, consciousness, and memory bloomed within Valor. He knew everything he had to, all at once. He saw the events converging, unfolding from a myriad of perspectives: from Shiv's, from Adam's, from Roland’s, from the Starhawk’s, from Corcusa’s, from the Breaker's, even bits from the Challenger's. He saw the encroaching death of Gate Piety as his lifeforce ignited behind his once empty sockets.

Yet the moment he tried to move, he found himself locked into stasis. His body was still apart, his pieces laid out, head pointed toward the ceiling, all contained in a tight, claustrophobic space.

He realized this was a storage unit, an armored and enchanted one. He could feel the humming of Dimensionality around him. He could sense the oscillating wards that parried magic, a sheath of Magical Resistance left in place to prevent anyone from reaching out and stealing his remains.

Worse yet, he could feel the wholeness of himself, all in close proximity. It wasn't just his active pieces, but also his missing legs as well. He could choose to reassemble himself once he was released from his torpor—and he suspected that was the whole point.

“Great One,” Valor said, surprised that his voice still worked even though his body was dormant. “It is you, isn't it? You are the one behind this. You are the one who planned this—you left me disabled. You forced all that memory, all that realization, upon me. You have shaped the conditions of my desperation. You are provoking me down this path, and now you wake me because I am primed, because the moment has arrived for you to spend me. Is that not so? Come out. Come out and face me!”

His rage burst out from him like water fissuring forth from a dam before all restraint crumbled and he was anger incarnate. Unlike Shiv, unlike so many others, Valor's rage was not a thing of fire, but kindred ice. It helped him focus. It burned cold from the start, and he likened himself more in behavior to Uva than to either of his two disciples.

The Great One, sensing his impatience and ire, though indifferent all the same, materialized beside him. She still held the guise of an ever-shifting human, but she appeared far older now, perhaps as a woman in her thirties by Pathless standards, though it was hard to tell without facial features. As the space he was in was far too small, more of a locker meant to store equipment rather than a full body, she materialized partly within the walls, overlapping with matter as she bent over to look into his eyes. The Great One hummed with slight amusement. “I should have expected this level of perspicacity from my disciple, even this shadow of him.”

“I am no disciple of yours,” he spat. “I am Valor Thann, and I am my own Pathbearer. You think that you can do everything: that you can play your schemes, manipulate what I see, what I know, and exploit my terror, my concern for my disciples, and drive me to undo myself—to surrender and undo myself—so that you can have your weapon again.”

The Great One, shameless as ever, shrugged casually. “Yes. Because there is no choice for you. Avalon has breached the threshold of worlds. The Mythic-Tier Incursion Quest will soon arrive—but that matters little, for the Sword of Paradise and the Challenger will see your world put to torment before anything else can transpire.”

“And the Thief of Lost Acheron is the equation for that particular problem, then?” Valor laughed. He laughed bitterly, as if it was a series of slurs hurled at the Great One. She stood impassive, lifeless, and listless. She took no joy in this, but she would do it regardless, for it was part of the Great Game. He was a piece that needed to be elevated from mere peasant to bishop or even queen: the Thief of Lost Acheron, the true incarnation of He Who Steals Eternity, a weapon to be wielded against the Sword of Paradise, striking at the sword’s hilt to sever the timelines through—

Well, Valor didn't even know what his true self was capable of, only that it would consume all of him to discover. And it wouldn't actually be him who discovered that, for there would be nothing left of him by the time the transformation was complete. What difference between that and death? Even if there was a continuity of consciousness, for everything he knew about himself to go away and be given unto something else, to someone else... Was that aside from a lesser, or perhaps yet more brutal form of death?

“I'll let you spend all of your rage at once,” she said, running a near-weightless hand across his skull. “Yes, this was planned. Yes, I intended nearly all of this. Yes, I positioned everything so that you have to act, that you have to make this choice. I took all other reasonable choices out of your hands to stop you from turning away; it's the same reason why I didn't intervene when Adam called me to. It's the same reason why I didn't help Shiv, why I didn't join in the battle.”

Valor scoffed derisively. “Because Gate Piety and all its people are such a small price to pay if it means gathering your enemies in one place and striking them down in one fell swoop?”

The Great One didn't speak for a moment, not because she was ashamed, but because he missed the point slightly. “Aside from you, all of Earth is too small to be described as even a single piece for me, Valor. You have no idea how much I would sacrifice.”

“I have no idea, and I have no intention of understanding,” he snarled. “What is worth being a High God when all you do is give yourselves and your pieces away? What will be left of you, even if you triumph over the System? You hollow, miserable, shattered effigy of who you were? All these faces you steal, all these identities you shift across… It must be easy when there is nothing left of your insides, nothing holding you in place. You have transcended nothing, Great One. You have achieved nothing. I wish you could see your own corpse and the wonderment and hope it brought upon us, the worth that it brought upon us, the faith that inspired so much grandeur and terror, so much goodness and horror. I wish you were the falsehood of yourself, for the truth is not even horrifying or unmaking, but simply bitter and ashen, like dust upon my mouth.”

As Valor's tirade came to an end, the Great One accepted his words without argument. One by one, she released him from his restraints. “I accept those accusations, but I will tell you that they do not matter. Avalon has struck a bargain with the Challenger, and that will be its undoing, for to bargain with the Challenger means to contend with his interests. On its own, my wayward blade would have cleaved the entire world and carried on. But the Challenger, mighty and terrible as he is, holds both vice and virtue in his innocence and curiosity.”

Valor almost sputtered. “Curiosity? Innocence?”

“Indeed. The Challenger is interested in people. He's surprised by people. He loves people, especially the ones who reveal themselves to be more than who they are on the surface, dramatically so. He's going to be distracted by Veronica Chandler. He's going to have a delightful time trying to break her down and digest her whole. In that time, we have our opportunity to strike, and by 'we,' I do mean you, Valor.”

She shook her head in disapproval, blonde hair swaying, as if a person chastising a junior. “The Red Rider is too soft and naive. I have always told him so, and on this day, I will have to instruct him on that mistake once again, as I have in so many battles before. Know that I do regret this. On some small level, I regret that your accusations are true. They just don't stop me. I have a dream, Valor Thann, and there is nothing I will not give to see myself restored and to see the System torn down. You would understand if you only remembered.” 

She sighed and clapped her hands together once. “Time to be whole again, oh student mine. Time to enact what we planned all those millennia ago, near the core of your world.”

“No—”

“You’re just wasting time,” she cut him off, voice neutral. “Adam will lose himself. The Gate will be slaughtered. Shiv will be driven into darkness. It's you or them, Valor. Your namesake, that which I gave you, or nothing but misery and ash. And we both know how you will choose.”

Bereft of any further arguments to make, Valor's emotions spiked with impotent anger and hatred in equal measure. “Godsdamn you,” he spat. “Godsdamn you!”

If the Great One had a face, a thin smile may have graced her lips at that moment. “Yes. I did damn myself. And now it's time to fix that. Put yourself together. Every second you wait, someone dies. And I don’t know how much more pain Rose Van Erren can take before she crosses back over that final threshold.”

Valor hesitated. His insides ached. A childish agony took hold, and he wanted to rave about how unfair it all was—to call out for his son to intervene—because why wouldn’t Udraal intervene and—

“Shiv,” Valor said softly. “I want to speak with him. And Adam. If nothing else.”

She inclined her head slightly. “I can give you Shiv. I fear the latter is impossible. This is the best I can do, and you will not have much time. Say your goodbyes, and carry on. I can only slow the pace of chronology so much for both of us before Avalon finally crosses over.”

As much as Valor wanted to demand more, he knew it was pointless. Granting him this much was already more courtesy than he had expected from her. 

But still. After all those years, after everything… was this to be the end?