VIII-85 Unwilling Goodbye (II) (Patreon)

It's called the Terminus Point because after this event occurs, there's no going back for all of Integration.

A world emerging from its Ambient Mana cocoon into greater integration is not a Terminus Point. A dimension facing an insurmountable apocalypse is not a Terminus Point. A universe being consumed by a Transcendent or High God for whatever ridiculous reason they might need to kill that many people is not a Terminus Point. These things are all too common, happening day after day.

What designates a Terminus Point is when the fabric of reality, or a foundational axiom that affects and governs everyone's shared reality, is irrevocably altered—hence the name: Terminus Point. 

The most well-known Terminus Point in documented history is of course the formation and the establishment of Chorus. Civilized Integration is an anomaly that has endured against the will of the System for eons, and our Terminus Point extends onward and will endure so long as we stand vigilant. But this is contingent on us being prepared, us being the first to act, and us resolving problems before they can reach full maturity. That means we have to intercept and contain all other Terminus Points that might affect ours.

As such, anything that affects time, space, the laws of physics, the rules of attuned magic, and every common notion we share must be detected, investigated, and resolved post haste. 

In the case of a suspected in-progress Terminus Point being reported, all resource expenditure restrictions are lifted. Every Farwalker in the theater is granted emergency powers to call on the complete arsenal of Chorus as well as all its cities to quell the threat in place.

However, you must be absolutely certain that what you're dealing with is a Terminus Point before you invoke this protocol. Mistakes are not acceptable—but neither is hesitation.

One hell of a burden rests on your shoulders now, Farwalker, but if you wanted an easier life, you would have chosen another path.

—“Terminus Point” — Farwalker Training Simulation

VIII-85

Unwilling Goodbye (II)

Shiv didn't think he would ever know a pain quite as deep and devastating as when he looked down upon Georges' withered body.

The way his heart tore and screamed called him a fool in every way but with words.

Arriving too late to save Georges had been an exquisite hell. Still, Shiv could admit to himself that there had been little to no chance of him saving Georges, short of his current self somehow casting himself back in time. Even then, he wouldn't have the ability to actually reach Blackedge. That required Merrielmel, and the Slipgate simply hadn't been ready when Georges was still alive. 

There simply hadn't been enough time. 

Time was undefeated, even against a true immortal.

And now, once more, time reared its vulgar head in mockery of Shiv. For all that he became, for all he could be, he was still outpaced by time. Still too deep in dire waters, faced with titans beyond his measure, and forced to watch the closest thing he had to a grandfather get forced into a fate worse than death.

But more than time, there was a higher element of despair. For even if Shiv had all the time in the world, if he had the rest of eternity to plan and plot, he still couldn't conceive of a way to solve the crisis. He didn't have enough power. He might never have enough power unless he chose the path of godhood, and looking at what it was doing to Adam, Shiv wanted nothing to do with that. He had no interest in eroding his own personality and binding his very character to the confines of a Domain. It was already hard enough being partially defined by one's legend; to be so beholden to one's own mythology that any deviation would see your soul broken was beyond what Shiv could accept across a lifetime, let alone the rest of his immortal existence.

And so it fell to the Thief to save Gate Piety, where Shiv could not, where Adam could not, where no one else could. But before the Thief awoke, Valor had to wipe his own slate clean. Wholeness meant the arrival of another and the subjugation of his current self. The terror he felt was palpable, overwhelming, hollowing.

It was one thing watching someone you loved choose death, but another witnessing their unwillingness to walk the plank of their demise, the fact they were being driven across the edge by a higher will that had used everyone from the start…

And so, where Georges was sadness-rimmed and further accentuated with the taste of shame born from Shiv's slowness and inability, this was accompanied by a feeling of blazing, hateful, bitter anger toward the Challenger, toward Avalon, toward the Great One, toward everyone in that Great Game beyond Shiv: everyone who cared only for their own desires and dreams and nothing else, no one else, least of all those beneath them.

Shiv opened and closed his mouth several times. He reached deep, trying to find the words. He had the words so many times before, to use against the Pale, to convince Veronica, to twist and goad Evanescia—

Then his mind abruptly went to a player he'd completely forgotten about. Why hadn't the Farwalkers intervened? The threshold was open. They should have noticed by now. If not Avalon’s actions, then the Challenger’s. Where were they? Where was Chorus?

“Listen, Valor. If there's any way at all, there might be a chance with the Farwalkers," Shiv said. "They still have an outpost in the Stranger's Garden. If we could find the Stranger somehow, we could convince him with something to pull his dimension closer to ours and overlap both dimensions or—”

Valor silenced him with a slow turn of his head. “Shiv, the siege is already beyond the point of saving for any of us. Avalon has claimed countless since the moment you were pulled into your Delve, taken the strongest defenders toward paradise. Some chose to stay, but they know, on no uncertain terms, that to reject heaven is to embrace hell. Such is the will of the Challenger. The ones who deny Avalon's touch will be given to the orcs to indulge their bloodlust. And the orcs have been uplifted as well. Hundreds of thousands of them are Legends now. This Gate will not hold any longer. We do not have hours or even minutes; there are seconds left, seconds and no more.”

It took a miracle of strength and willpower for Shiv to stop his hand from shaking like it hadn't done in a long time. It took a feat greater than that to halt the cracks within his being from widening. He didn't want to break down in front of Valor. He didn't want to succumb and crumble when Valor was already struggling with the weight of his own impending fate.

In defiance of his own emotions, Shiv smiled at Valor. He didn't feel it, but he made himself do it. Mind over matter, mind over heart, mind reigning above all. Like Kelhaus. The world outside threatening to collapse him, the world within still his to command. “They really fucked us good this time, didn’t they?”

Valor mirrored Shiv’s pain with a laugh of his own. “Devastatingly so.” He looked away from Shiv for a heartbeat, then forced himself to meet his disciple's eyes. “Despite everything arrayed against us before, I had a dream, which is one of the few I have in my present state: a true dream, not a memory.”

Shiv clenched his jaw and swallowed down the boulder in his throat. "Tell me about it," he croaked.

“I dreamt that we were at peace, that all of us were no longer surrounded by countless enemies, by all the mistakes of our past, and by all the threats we have to face and have yet to face. I remember feeling something I haven't felt in a long time: bliss. Even… boredom. I remember we were all inside your restaurant, in your kitchen. We were together. We were happy, not at war, beyond the System's grasp, beyond anyone's grasp, and I remember asking you to teach me how to cook.”

A burst of laughter escaped Shiv. He nearly doubled over as his composure threatened to buckle, but he held himself firm as he shook his head and pretended that the tears he was wiping away from his face were born of mirth. “Valor, you're really full of shit sometimes. Absolutely full of shit. You know how to cook. You're just trying to mess with me, aren't you?”

“Hardly! Adam and Uva were doing it as well. I didn’t want to be left out. I didn’t want to be alone.” Valor paused. “And in the end, I haven't been since you found me. Thank you, Shiv. Just for being with me. It is more than I could have ever deserved.”

At those words, a memory came to Shiv, one long-forgotten, of the first vision he ever received from his Foreshadowing Skill. 

The hero within the dagger calls out to you. He fears you are dead. He fears that he has been abandoned, lost to the world again. He has spent years lost before, and he doesn’t know if he can take much more time alone in the dark. As he might be your only hope in understanding this place, you are his salvation as well.

Shiv chortled harder as more tears spilled. “You thank me by holding onto yourself. Don't let the Thief eat you. Eat him instead. If you can't, just find a place in the bastard to hide. Hide somewhere. If you leave something of yourself, I'll come for you when I get out. I'm going to find you. No matter how deep you end up inside of him, I will carve you out. I will bring you back. And we will have that stupid moment inside my dumb restaurant that I really should have spent more time in with everyone. Together… and…”

The following inhalation was like sucking a whirlwind of razor blades down his chest. Hurts… hurts so much…

Valor, for his part, fared no better. He looked to Shiv as they both searched in desperation for something final to discover, last words, something to do to change their shared fate, but no words came. No understanding arrived. They were, in effect, lost and damned, with little hope and little means of averting themselves from what was to come.

In the end, the seconds passed all too fast. The thing about forever was that you didn't experience forever. The thing about time was that you only ever had the present, at least as a mortal. They were here and now, and always only here and now. 

In this instant, they were out of time. Neither of them wished to say the following words, and so they didn't, and they pretended that there was a way out, even if it seemed impossible.

Valor squared his shoulders and looked upon Shiv, playing the role of officious master for the last time—something he never was in life. “I will hold you to that promise, Legend Shiv, and I expect you to relieve me from my predicament posthaste. You have performed a great many feats and defeated towering foes. If you fail here, I will be most disappointed.”

A ragged note of pain and laughter slipped out from Shiv. "Can't have that now, can we? Well, you go in confidence, Legend Valor, because I'll be there for you when you need me, and I'll get you out of this, just like I have all the confidence that you're going to get us out of this now."

Neither one of them moved for a moment. 

Ultimately, it was the teacher who performed that miserable final act. He turned away first. He had the strength, though he, too, was beset by dread and pain.

The moment he shifted away, Shiv cried out, the words escaping him, pouring out from his lips and arising from his heart. His mind held no more control, not in this instant. His prodigious mental fortitude fractured and burst. "Valor!" he shouted, and his master halted. His body shook. He didn't turn, for if he did, he might not be able to leave. He swallowed and mustered himself, his control returning just as he lost it.

"You keep your promise too. I'm really happy to have... Before I knew you, there was only Georges, and I'm happy that you were my master, even if I didn't have enough time to learn. I'm... I was happy. We would be happy. We'll be… happy again.”

Every syllable felt like it was tinged with lies, but Shiv held on to them, held on and lied to himself with all his strength, with all he could muster. He lied and lied and lied and lied.

And for what felt like the final time, Valor played along, tilting his head just enough for Shiv to see that Necromantic shimmer in his eye. "We will," he whispered. "We will.”

Once more, the System's ruby-red flames returned, immolating Valor and rocketing him up from Shiv's Delve. 

Valor Thann ascended as the crimson meteor that had brought him into this place, and while he accelerated to greet his final fate, Shiv could do nothing but watch as his first Delve resumed. 

As Valor vanished, Shiv felt himself slump down to his knees, coming undone from the inside out. He thought himself about to burst, but everything inside stayed there, like tar hardened after a day beneath the sun. It wouldn't come out. Nothing would come out. The kindlement, his rage, his hopelessness, everything bled over him. Everything spilled in an aura of foul, festering fire, and still, it didn't leak away. His insides were boiling. His tears stopped falling. For what would be the point to waste his time with despair now? What would be the point?

It was then, as he considered raging, as he considered succumbing, as the first notification indicating the Delve was about to commence and his environments were hardening into solid shapes, breaking from their surreal designs mere moments prior, that he remembered what Kelhaus told him earlier. He still had some measure of control over the world within, even if it didn't feel like it. Even if he wasn't in charge of anything else, he could still gather his thoughts, and he could still decide how he wanted to behave.

In that moment, though he couldn't stop the pain from climbing to new summits, he let the world pass through him, and he let the pain flow out. It didn't leave him, but he remained open, utterly open, accepting.

For what else could he possibly do?

Slowly, surely, instinctively, Shiv's open hand tightened into a fist, and he planted that against the ground. His Shapeless Tides slashed out as vectors, slamming against the Delve-constructed soil beneath him, and he felt a thundering presence resonate within this realm. As it was shaped from his soul, so too was he bound to it.

The very earth itself seemed heavy with his pain. 

“Godsdammit. Godsfuckingdammit…”

But just as his arm went weak and he threatened to fall, as he thought himself on the cusp of breaking, a pair of slender arms wrapped around his sides from behind, and a warm presence pressed itself into his back to pull him back to his feet. “Come on—guh, you’re too damn big. Can’t even fucking get you up.”

Shiv turned, and his eyes widened.

[Initializing—]

Warning: UnABLe 

DELLNVVV—

UNABLE TO LOAD DELVE

DELVENOTINREALITYDELVENOTINREALITYDELVENOTINREALI

[INITIALIZING] 

“Back to your fucking feet, Deathless,” the girl snapped, grabbing Shiv by his collar and slamming her forehead against his. “We’re not felling done. Not even godsdamned close.”

***

“There is no more time, Roland. You must open your arms and embrace me. You have always done the unspeakable and unbearable for me. Now I ask of you to do it once more, for the last time. Just as you burned Submission in my name, at my will, so too must you act against your pride, against our dignity. There is no other way. There is no other solution. It is time to sacrifice. It is time to give so that we might be able to preserve our peopl—”

The Shrike broke off mid-word and clutched at his chest. His brambles quivered, and several of their tips fell off as if something within was trying to burst free. Then came the mist, the unmistakable incandescence that belonged to Adam, and a palm began to spread out from within the Shrike. Another voice boomed, and sneering, cruel laughter accompanied the sound of something on the cusp of breaking.

“What foolishness! What utter folly! The Challenger has broken you, Shrike, made you into his desired dog, and now you grovel and beg, whimpering to us about how we must kneel. No, we have no need of kneeling. You, however, have betrayed your Domain. A hero stands for its people. A hero is not shaken by great odds nor certain death, for to simply try is itself worth doing. Valor is worth pursuing by principle, and should death arise from such a journey, then so be it. Better to be will and spirit in motion than flesh in passing.”

A thin tendril of lightning rebounded off the Shrike's crown. Uva had been cast away, and a gasp of surprise emanated from her. As she reeled back to the supplicant, Roland heard the Stranger stop chanting to himself for a moment as his attention was drawn to the scene transpiring before them. The Shrike was beginning to cleave at himself, prying and directing his brambles inward, doing everything he could to dig out the hostile Divinity now blazing in his chest.

“No, no! Get out, out, you—”

The Shrike fell to fear, and that nourished the Tyranny and Heroism blazing within. At that, a beam of azure light erupted out from the Shrike. It shot toward the heavens, a pillar, a tower, a beacon of defiance that cleaved the altered Ascendant from soul to shape. The color of the clear sky crept across every thorn, every patch of briars, every aspect of the Shrike, as something crackled and burst apart inside him. The Sage stretched itself wide, its fingers spanning further until it swept past Roland and encompassed the entirety of his soul within a zone of uncompromising peace.

“Adam,” Roland breathed, his heart plunging.

At the same time, the Shrike began to scream. He tore from within, fracturing veins of incandescence causing godly ichor to spill out from him, to gush over Roland as entrails might pool from a disemboweled giant. But the bright magic did not flow for long, for it was sucked back in, absorbed by a new and ascendant being.

“Roland! ROLAND!” the Shrike shrieked, sounding more mortal than ever before. He flickered, the bare flesh at his core flashing into view with greater and greater frequency as his godly guise found itself growing thinner, weaker, and more brittle than ever before. 

Above him, a looming shadow hardened into form, a god bearing a band of blue wrapped around his brow, sporting a single eye while from the other socket poured an ocean of billowing mist.

The all-encompassing palm pressed down upon the Shrike. His briers burst, shredding free from his wings. False god that he was, traitor to his own Domain, he came undone as his torso fractured in three parts. His limbs were pulverized and pulped, smeared beneath the weight of his risen superior, and all of him that was undone flowed upstream through the mist to Adam as he grew, as he transformed, as he cannibalized that which the Shrike couldn’t hold.

“Roland! Please!” The reverberations of Divinity faded from the Shrike's voice. More and more, his mortality grew pronounced, and the Sage and Adam laughed as one as they directed their scorn and judgment upon the one who once stood as the patron god of the Arrow family. “Roland, stop him! Stop him! It's not too late. Stop him before he damns us! If you have any love for your son, if you have any care for me, take my hand, let me in, and stop him from consuming me! He will not be able to keep himself. He will not. The thing inside him will—”

The Shrike's voice trailed off into a roar of utter anguish as more of him broke. Of his great, godly guise, there was only a spine and skull left. Then, as he shifted back to mortality, the man in his place remained unharmed but curled into a fetal position as he muttered nothing to himself, as madness and trauma overwhelmed him. It was thus that he flashed between those two states: a desperate howling god, overwhelmed by a rival that mere seconds ago had been his inferior, to a broken mortal that muttered senseless mantras seeking release.

A gust of power drove Roland back. As he tried to move, he realized he couldn't reach for the Shrike, not even if he wanted to. He couldn't move. He couldn't even twitch of his own accord if the Sage did not allow it, and the Sage wouldn't allow it. The Sage didn't allow anything to come down to chance, not when the cusp of his ascension was at hand.

“Adam, wait!” Roland cried out, not for the Shrike, but only for his son. He didn't want Adam to be forced down a path he couldn't turn back from. He couldn't lose his son, his boy. He'd come so far, had given so much—they were only just reunited. He couldn't—

“We stand, here and now, in the shadow of your sins, Roland Arrow, yours and those of this whimpering whelp.” The being born of fusion between Adam and the Heaven once wielded by the Great Ones sneered down at Roland, judged him with as much contempt as he did the Shrike coming undone beneath their mass. “But not the sins you assume. No, your sin was weakness. Your sin was refusing to uphold your heroism when your god succumbed to the consequences of his theft. It mattered not that you were an Avatar, for a Pathbearer says no when their legend and righteousness are trod upon, when their will is defied. No, as your son has told me. No, as he told the Republic when they claimed him, when they captured him. When he could have succumbed and surrendered, he said no! And now we are here. You have driven him to this point.” The fingers of the great hand curled inward. “You have driven him to me.”

“No,” Roland whispered. It was all coming undone—The Sage… Had it been waiting for a moment like this?

“Too late to say it now, Roland. If you had solved this, if you and the Starhawk had come to terms and faced who you were, if any of you had simply had the courage to speak to one another as adults and sovereigns of your souls rather than slaves digging through the muck, unable to meet the eye of your betters, perhaps your path would have led elsewhere. In reality, for all your skill, you are less than even a hound.” And the Sage laughed, and for some strange reason, it sounded nostalgic in timbre. “For even the dullest hound knows when to slip his leash and decide his own fate.”

“Adam, listen to me. Listen, you don't need to ascend now! The Shrike is broken! We can stop! I can use my skill to subdue him!”

Roland's desperate pleas were joined with Uva's, though her words were transmitted psionically. But amidst the rumbling rise of the Sage's power, what she had to say was drowned and summarily ignored.

For a moment, Roland saw a twitch in Adam's expression: a look of absolute struggle loomed lurking just beneath the glare. Then it was gone. Adam was drowned as well, and the Sage reigned supreme.

“Too late for that as well, Roland. It was too late from the moment he fired that Shard into the Shrike—the instant the Shrike betrayed himself, turned away from his Heroism in cowardice rather than sacrifice, because he feared losing you more than the people of Blackedge; he betrayed his own Divinity. He fractured himself. He exposed his Domain, and all I needed to do was reach. He lacked the Tyranny, he lacked the will, and Adam was only too desperate, only too willing to use more of me, if it meant saving… you.”

A sickness surged through Roland. He struggled not to double over and spill his nausea all over himself within his own soulscape. “No, nonono… You can’t do this! You—release my son!”

Roland tried to clench his fingers around his bow to bring it up and fire a shot at the entity that now wore Adam. The Sage smiled, and smiled hatefully, sweetly, like a king about to bring his boot down upon an insect. The Sage pressed down. His palm ground the Shrike past Roland's field of vision, and while the false Ascendant’s bellows reached a fever pitch, Adam spread his wings, no longer inverted shards but rather striking meteors that resembled blazing comets, falling from the heavens, painting a trailing constellation behind him—connected to his azure band. He loomed just a meter above Roland, standing atop the epicenter of his palm like a dais.

“Consequence. There is something disgusting about that word. There is something insulting in the way only Adam Arrow, a mortal boy, grasped its weight and realized what he was about to surrender to me when we descended into the Shrike's depths. What he was about to give away, just so that I could save your life by stealing what used to be your Ascendant. The Great One failed to grasp consequence and was desperate to escape all of it. Without truly being your own master, you cannot stride beyond the mortal coil. You cannot think as a slave if you wish to reign over all reality. You and the Shrike are one and the same, both of you driven by an urge to ignore, to hide, to move on from your past. Never dealing with what came before. That is your great sin, Roland. You have never chosen properly, and so, in between it all, you must tear or perish beneath my palm.”

And the Sage laughed again, his voice lower than ever before. “And the bitterest thing was how you were undone. Another sin on your tally, Roland Arrow. The Starhawk couldn't hold on to his Domain because he loved you so, and the Shrike inherited that weakness, betraying himself because he couldn't let go of the same love, ruining his heroism. Adam triumphed because of love, but now he is merely a passenger in the coming crusade thanks to it. All that love—for you, Roland. All that devotion to you. Wouldn't it have been better if you were the god? But then again, what pitiful god you would have made—for what right Divinity cannot even choose what to do with one child?”

Roland couldn't shake, couldn't even sob. The Sage, cruel beyond measure, kept his tears from flowing and made him watch—made him watch as he descended, as he lowered a boot upon the Shrike—now almost fully faded.

With a final flash of divine mana, the Shrike vanished—and Matthew Thaen Carter remained. 

Roland made eye contact with the man who had become his god for the first time. He'd seen marble statues and illustrations of Matthew, so he knew what his god looked like back when he was mortal, but a gulf endured between depiction and actuality.

Matthew was thin—almost too thin for a longbowman. His nose was crooked, like it had been broken far too many times and set poorly. Beyond that, there were the scars on his face, pockmarking the left side of his cheek, like he had suffered a particularly nasty oil or acid burn in his past. Then there were his eyes: sad, soft, brown eyes, a mortal's eyes—a broken mortal's eyes.

Naked, terrified, and deprived of everything that made him great, Matthew shivered, and Roland felt something inside himself break.

He knew his god had been mortal once, just a man, but knowing and believing such a thing were not the same. Adam hovered above Matthew, and Roland felt his sinews tighten. For a heartbeat, he waited for the palm to press harder, for Adam to stomp down to crush Matthew’s skull with his boot. Yet there seemed to be a war waging inside the Sage. His face twisted, contorting between expressions of disgust, outrage, and finally acceptance, but it was the resigned, savage acceptance of a tyrant who decided an insect wasn't worth sullying the polish of his boots upon.

So he turned his gaze away as he drifted over Matthew, over Roland, and ascended upward. Slowly, the vapors followed him, and he relinquished his hold over Roland's soul. The moment Roland could move, he chased after his son, but the base of the mists suddenly halted, and Adam turned. He held out a single finger, and the massive cloud-shaped palm replicated his gesture.

"Oh, do follow me, Roland, if there is any steel left in you. I go now beyond your soul to fix the mistake you have made, the mistake you brought upon everyone. I go now because my Gate is at threat, because there are mongrel dogs who seek to challenge my Domain. You may tend to that thing you call an Ascendant. I have no more need of him, and it would be a mercy to drive a blade through his skull and be done with it. Afterward, you may join my side as my knight and deal with the problem we face. They have come to burn our home, Roland. They have come to burn everyone you swore to protect. There is no karma. There is no universal justice. There is no salvation. There is only the will, the want, and what can be done. I say this realm is mine. I say all realms are mine, and I say that my will is beyond the Challenger or Avalon or any dog who seeks to say otherwise. Choose, Roland, for I have already chosen, and unlike the Shrike, unlike your son, I grace you not with love, but with my scorn. For whoever you think you are, know that you are far, far less than that.”

And with that, the palm flipped over and carried Adam higher. Suddenly, there came a tearing sensation, and he burst out from Roland, blowing free of his soul in an eruption of divine power. Roland suddenly felt cold, overwhelming cold, and everything inside him came tumbling out in the next moment.

With a flash of blue and a swirl of godly mist, Roland found himself hovering in the air as golden blades fell, as screams echoed near and far, as the sky above was torn asunder and orcs fell as meteor showers, bringing with them fiery columns and tides of ruination. Gate Piety was being savaged, torn apart from within. What few defenders remained fought—holding pockets of resistance. Peacehold was burning. Enemy orcs were peeling it open with their Geomancy, reaching in to crush their brethren, and blood geysered out like magma drifting down the sides of a volcano.

Then there was the Terminal Opus, a mountain of machinery ablaze. It fired wildly in all directions, and the orcs cheered and called for it to strike, to strive, to die violently. They stayed their hand for now, though they could shatter it with their combined power, but a colossal spell shaped in the form of a guillotine inched closer and closer to cleaving the Siege Crawler in half.

While all this transpired, Roland felt a flurry of motion through the air as blood spilled over him. Bifurcated orcs tumbled past both sides of Roland, and he saw Jessica hovering a few meters away from him, Rusty raised high. They were surrounded by orcs, and she had clearly been moving as a butcher, guarding his body against all odds to Roland’s disbelief.

The swordswoman was absolutely still. Her armor rang and shrieked, magic bleeding from the interior. “So?” Jessica said, sounding too nonchalant for a woman facing down an apocalypse. “Do I need to take your head off too?”

Roland opened his mouth, but was interrupted as he felt a pair of arms wrap around him. Matthew was clutching him tight and refused to let him go. Somehow, the Shrike had followed him out into reality. Meanwhile, Uva and the Supplicant were nowhere to be seen.

“Hey! Dread Horizon!” an orc cried from afar. “Tell that one to cover up! Now’s not the time to be rutting!”

Roland ignored the beast as he looked down upon his depowered god, and Matthew stared up.

“Oh, god,” Roland whispered.

Matthew quivered. “No. Not anymore… Never again.”