IX-43 Cost of Care (Patreon)

I'm going to put this as plainly as I can. You're going to be riding on a railway. Well, it's more of a metaphysical railway, but the basic functionality is essentially the same. 

It's just the effects that are going to be a little bit more esoteric and strange.

What you're looking at right now is an Endless shell. It's a golem. Short form, I like to refer to it as a shell. You can call it whatever you want, but I suggest you guys standardize how you refer to it to make communication easier. Maybe hold a vote later or something. 

You're going to be wearing these shells. They have an operational time span of approximately one real-time hour. I can extend that, but there shouldn't be a need because you need to get in and get out quickly. If you can't, you're likely going to get Excaliburized.

But that might be the least of your concerns if you choose to rig one of my shells.

First things first, you cannot put one of these shells on yourself. It might be metaphysical armor, but it's one invested in and created by me and no one else. If you try to push yourself in from the outside, it's either going to cut you in half, or you're going to destabilize and therefore collapse the existence of the shell.

I see questions on your faces, as in, "Why didn't I make the shell material in some aspect?" That's a good question; I could have made it partly biological. However, strange external biological organisms give off too much of a signature; one Avalon will notice. It might be primarily a Heaven of Time, but Avalon has a complete catalog of information running back to the pre-System days. It will notice if something seems like an invasive organism. It will notice if the structure of an organic construct is anomalous in any way—and it will figure this out in a fraction of a microsecond, and once that happens, you're going to be isolated and then cleaved into a false paradise.

Also, if Avalon cleaves into you, it's likely not going to burst the shell immediately. Instead, it will collapse the outermost ring, which is primarily its vitality and chronomancy layer. Everything on the inside is made to interface with you. This is where we get into the critical functions of the shell. You are to use your emotions and thoughts as haptic controls. When you put the shell on, what you will see, I will see to some capacity, since the shell will interface with you in heart, mind, and spirit. If the shell collapses, it's going to take part of your heart, mind, and spirit away. 

Don't worry, it shouldn't drive you insane, but since such a collapse should only happen in the case Avalon strikes you, there is a sort of failsafe in place, as I can't have any information leak to it. This failsafe will peel parts of your awareness away and also perform an act of targeted surgery on your soul, so that you don't retain bits of this inside your legend. I need to scrub things clean, and that's why wearing one of these shells needs to be your explicit choice.

Every time you venture out to raid a paradise, you might not be coming back. You need to understand that. You need to understand that fully. I cannot protect you from Avalon. I can barely protect myself. If you ever want to get out, though, we're going to need to break our prison from within.

The choices here are limited. You can either be logistically supporting, or you can be actively engaging. If you want to be actively engaging, then you need to be cleared by me or the Thief, and especially the Thief, because he's the senior immortal here. Don't make eye contact with him. Also don't look away from him. If you ignore him too much, he'll kill you. Let me remind you: he's not your friend, but we're all after the same thing for now, and afterwards we can talk about the other matters we're concerned with.

Now, when you're wearing the shell, it's going to function like a vehicle more than a set of armor. It's going to get you from place to place, and it's going to feel like you're controlling a sort of inert automaton that slides around the rails of time. I've created a set of overlapping tracks. These spells that I've left in place are called overlap shift spells. They've effectively been placed by me, created by the trail I've blazed, so that you can move along the trajectories I've left in my wake that I've crossed over several times. This will allow you to get to any paradise I’ve been to with maximum efficiency. You're going to be sliding from ring to ring, and all you need to do is think and feel as if you need to move. Focus on the direction, and the golem will do the rest. I have several sets of overlapping rings, so if some of them get disrupted or vanish for whatever reason, you'll have several other routes leading back to Road’s End.

However, know if you're going to use a Skill or a spell, it will function differently while you're inside the golem. You have to focus again and think and feel to leave your Skill or spell within a specific anchor. Once the golem departs, your action will remain within the loop behind it, and then, as my mana fades over time, it will be triggered like a mine or a preplanned proximity bomb of some kind.

This will be how you engage Avalon. Remember, we start by scouting. We identify and then isolate the Alephs, and then we take the Alephs. Any engagement against the other entities within a paradise is a net loss on our part. Avalon is infinite in power—any war of attrition or direct confrontation is to its benefit.

And so, these will be the rules of engagement. You will survey, scout, divine, observe, and bring back whatever information you can. You are watchers right now. You do not engage or do anything until intelligence is fully confirmed, and you will not act of your own accord until you get the explicit approval of the Thief or me.

Remember, we're not going for a single Heaven. I don't care if you know the Pathbearer or not. I don't care if you have an easy opportunity to extract or kill the compromised Aleph. When we strike, it's going to be total. We're going to get everyone we can out from inside Avalon, and we're going to move them into a Banality Cell for temporary holding.

We’re going to take everything from Avalon—everywhere, and all at once. And if we do it right, the poor fool won’t ever see it coming.

—Tempus Edax Rerum by (Partial) Mythic-Deathless Shiv of Blackedge

IX-43

Cost of Care

“Deathless, I have eyes on an Aleph.”

“Another Aleph spotted.”

“I'm pretty sure I've got an Aleph here, but… can an orc be an Aleph?”

“New Aleph confirmed.”

“Five here, no Aleph, looking at a lot of raw time soup, just churning gold to the right and left and up and down. It keeps going on and on. You sure you've been through here, Deathless? I see a nexus of overlapping anchor-routes, but they're all leading further into the Chrono-wastes.”

“It’s Solizmort! A big wave hit some of the loops behind me. I'm on a new roundabout now. I'm going back. I'm getting a little bit scared. The place I was looking through changed pretty dramatically. It used to be pretty and bright and underwater, but now everything's just angry and stormy in the sky. I don't like going through the sky. It makes me feel like I'm always falling… and the thunder is scary.”

“Master-Ranger Margaret checking in. Can confirm the hydra's report. Turbulence hit me pretty bad. The paradise did a switcheroo or something. Everything just got fucked up behind me. Nearly left me shredded and stranded. Thought I was done for. I'm on an emergency route too, circling back to Road’s End. Seems like Avalon's moving places over each other. That's how it's feeling to me, anyway. I think I caught sight of another set of routes you laid before, Deathless. They're gone now too. Good news is that the inner loops you've shaped through Avalon’s vitality and unused time mana are still stable for now. I don't think the sword suspects we've gotten out yet, but it's paranoid enough to keep shuffling anyway.”

“Paranoid or predictive,” Veronica cut in. “It knows the Thief has already spread through many of its paradises, and so it is actively attempting to dislodge the spiritual infestation using any means it can. As such, all of you must continue to apply due caution with every course of action we take.”

“All of you?” Five chuffed with amusement. “All of us, you mean, Councilwoman? Do remember, you're in the same situation as we are. Or have you forgotten that you are trapped and operating alongside a lowly prisoner such as I?”

Veronica didn't bother dispatching a reply to the lupine—though Shiv tasted her ire all the same. The way it ebbed over their network was subtle, like small grains of salt moving across his tongue, dissolving. But for whatever haughtiness or pride Veronica possessed as a vice, it was a paltry vice before the presence of her professionalism. She was no less competent as an in-field Pathbearer than as a tyrant, and thus knew better than to clog the loop-routes up with pointless arguments.

Communication found both boon and bane in the Lore of the Endless. Those rigged within a shell and riding the overlap routes laid by Shiv received instantaneous updates as the thoughts of their comrades circulated the entire architecture at microsecond delays. Such was of deliberate design on the part of Shiv, but also enforced by the limitations of his magic. Every shaping he applied was bound to an anchor he'd left behind, linked to anchors that were laid as if rail lines through repetition, performed by passing over a place repeatedly until a pattern formed, a pattern that he could close into a loop and therefore create a vein of spreading traffic within the sprawling labyrinth that was Avalon's churning innards.

Each of his loops was small and revolved at maximum speed and frequency. The delay of information and material transition across each overlap shift was less than a microsecond, practically imperceptible for those beneath Master-Tier. One who possessed Legendary Reflexes might suffer a bit from the lag, but it was no great thing, and everyone needed to be synchronized in dialogue anyway.

Thus, imperfection was the order of things. For all Pathbearers to work within such a system demanded generalized convenience rather than specified arrangements.

At present, they had forty-one in-field Pathbearers—dubbed Divers: the first volunteers to wear one of Shiv's shells, to ride the routes as he did, to walk the paths he laid, to survey and scout across paradises in hunt of vulnerable Alephs—while also mapping out the inland geography that constituted this instance of Avalon.

There was a staggeringly vast space to map out, but it was not infinite. Avalon contained great patches of unshaped Chronomancy. The Chrono-wastes, as the Divers had come to call them, stood as the first points of compromise. When the Realmrunner departed Road's End while serving as Aleph, he traversed a great many paradises with staggering ease. However, his travels usually led him to specific problem paradises, where he was set upon a specific problem with specific instructions.

Said instructions also came with specific constraints, such as never going beyond a certain set of borders, never being allowed to venture beyond Avalon's desired boundaries. It didn't seem to trust the Realmrunner while he was trapped here at all, and that hinted at more than a bit of acrimony—confirming the Realmrunner's claims of being just as much a prisoner as anyone else here.

Despite this, he was more prisoner-warden than true prisoner, as he enforced Avalon's will in exchange for a modicum of privilege and pleasure. But the Realmrunner was a conniving sort, and even with heavy chains laden upon his person, he still found ways to skirt the edge. His movements became erratic. At certain points, he lingered overlong and kissed the threshold where the wastes began and certain paradises ended.

And Avalon was a most efficient machine indeed; it acted like the System in certain ways. Every resource it devoted toward its paradises was dynamic and variable. Certain Pathbearers who never dreamed of becoming Legends or anything of the sort found their worlds constrained to a small plot of land, an expanse of a village, perhaps no further than the next town over, before everything unraveled in an ocean of golden mana. Others demanded a staggering amount of resources: entire galaxies generated to sustain the curiosity and daily habits of princes and princesses born of Post-Mythic empires.

Shiv hadn't an inkling of what it took to simulate that many realities, all stacked over and across from each other, with different flows of time, with different paces of present, past, and future, with different entities emulated down to near-perfect replication—all these functions and variables moving, adapting, and changing to the pleasure of their Alephs and the accordance of Avalon, without fail. To put things plainly, the Sword of Paradise's cognitive processing power was beyond words. It was a level of complexity and immensity that would dwarf the collective intellectual capacity of everyone on Integrated Earth fused together, and then multiplied by orders of magnitude. The fact that the Ancients managed to construct such a device, and that it then usurped them and achieved newer heights still under the System, was testament upon testament. 

But even a Superintelligence could suffer from ignorance. If Shiv were to pit his own cognitive capacity against Avalon's, he would be a fruit fly trying to contend with a Legend of Parallel Thinking. But the thing about fruit flies was that they were so easy to miss for a giant. 

That which remained unknown was a void of awareness, and it was in that void that Shiv found his sanctuary.

Ironically, it was Avalon who provided the most stable expanse of void for Shiv to exploit. The Chrono-wastes were sources of reserve mana. They glowed with the radiant incandescence of Divinity and Chronomancy like liquid gold, both mana types fused together as one, but the wastes were stable. They were wide, and they were great, and they did not shake or change nearly as much as the paradises themselves.

Though the ceiling of Avalon’s power output was practically peerless in Integration, likely only matched by the few other High Gods that existed, it never overdrew on this power without reason. The Sword of Paradise could instantaneously forge entire universes into existence by bringing its divine might to bear, but doing so was simply not in its interest. It sustained exactly as many paradise as it needed to and no more, operating at the most minimal mana level—and when one paradise required fewer resources than another, the mana taken away from it would flow to another place running at higher processing rates to sustain another victorious war on the part of someone like Caine Hauser, or another grand feast of butchery for some orc who relished in the delusion of rising to the heights of the greatest Legends in all Integration and then falling in hopeless defeat against a yet more insurmountable foe, only to do it all over again, again, again, until that foe fell as well, and he moved on to the next simulated adversary, just a bit better, just a bit more insurmountable, just a minor bit more of a tease to keep the cruelty going.

Avalon would have been the perfect game master if it was inclined towards such entertainment, but it was not. All these paradises were catalogs, and it held the bulk of its power in great restraint, as if eternally on edge, prepared to fight a battle against a rival of equal aptitude. With the Great One not fully extinguished and sure to be planning her retribution in the shadows, Avalon might have been right to take such precautions, but it could never have anticipated how its preparations left it vulnerable to Shiv all these millennia later. 

For its habits and stability were what allowed him to traverse this place just as the Realmrunner did now, skirting barely under its influence while it was most distracted by outer calamities. Where the Realmrunner ran in repetition, so did Shiv, and as he did, the anchors were reinforced. The overlapping shapings were fused, chain from chain, into place—into the fabric of time and the vital structure of existence—and from there came points of emergency egress that were practically never overwritten or destabilized in any manner.

It was through these Chrono-wastes that Shiv continued building new paths toward the unknown, while his allies ran along routes well laid. He forged spiraling symbols meant to perfectly emulate certain sections of this reality. 

On their surface was time mana, everything beneath was vitality, and in the undertow were the slicing edges of immaterial knives, the shifting tides of thoughtstuff, and the steaming passion of broiling emotions. As the outside looped rapidly, so too did Shiv's grand spell adapt to the passage and flow of time, and his shapings turned fast enough that he could adjust and camouflage himself, at least in the most stable of environments.

It was not so easy to deconstruct and submerge himself in the flow of time on a whim, but he replicated his original feat all the same. It just took a few extra steps, a bit more consideration on his part. Everything had to loop, and so, loop after loop, he had to flow onward. Thus, he developed an adapted loop: one that moved forward while snaking over itself, a serpent loop, as it were. It effectively folded over itself again and again, dragging itself into the linear future as a set of shifting chains moving via tension rather than applying a deliberate vector to a mana-shaping.

This act demanded much of his processing power, and so he didn't try to replicate the same spell for his shells—at least not yet, not until he was more refined in mind and personalized attunement.

For now, however, he was a folded helix of a snake, each length folding in on the other, but its outer section a strange, muscular wheel, with its inner bands contracting and loosening to allow for maximal wriggling. And in his wake came new anchors—the reward for his labor in the form of convenience for all future travels through this space.

This cycle continued on for days and weeks, with Shiv operating in twenty-hour increments before winding down and returning to a passive, restorative state in which he focused on creating more Incarnates and therefore more mana batteries to draw upon. The mana he invested in this task remained at a near one-to-one gain-loss rate. Though his shapings were perfectly stable and post-entropic, the shifting of paradises cost him a great mass of magic that would never be returned—not until he let his Demesne seed the contextless void in exchange for a rain of golden harvest.

The Bones of New Lazarus 4533 > 4032 > 4534

Through the process of intruding and hollowing Avalon from within, Shiv also achieved new discoveries about his Myth. One stood out above all others: When one reached Mythic-Tier, they could lose mana levels as fast as they gained them. 

Shiv, for his part, gained levels extremely fast and lost them even faster if he wasn't careful. 

With the Endless sourced solely from him, every bit of mana he lost was also his responsibility to recover. He found it inconvenient at times. Before, the System would patch his mana field when it ruptured. It would regenerate without any thought on his part should it be ripped clean from his form. Now, if he diminished himself down to nothing, then he needed to start again from a single Incarnate. That was a new logistical burden all its own, but it stayed with the growing theme of becoming Mythic. He was not so much a singular Pathbearer anymore, more like a burgeoning empire unto himself, with the annoying resource management that came with such an empire to boot. 

This is likely why the terms sovereignty and Demesne are used in the first place, Shiv realized one day as he mulled over the metaphysical meaning involved. 

This growing understanding saw Shiv operating as Avalon's mirror, in a sense, for he grew ever more conservative with every task he set himself upon. His mana could be sacrificed. He was fine so long as he maintained an equilibrium, but he didn't want to diminish, not only because of the psychological dissatisfaction that came with resulting weakness, but also because he needed every resource he could possess if he wanted to outmaneuver and overwhelm the Thief.

The Thief, who was mysteriously absent for hours on end, vanishing and reappearing without rhyme or pattern—carrying within his heart a building, black flame of wrathful, naked excitement.

When pressed to share what terrible scheme had him feeling so overjoyed, the Thief simply chuckled, wagged a finger, and told Shiv to wait, promising he would despise it, but be astonished and awed by his master's deviousness all the same. 

Shiv naturally glared, didn't respond to the obvious provocation, and began scheming himself. He had no intention of being overly surprised by his master if he could help it. If he couldn't help it, well, he would damn sure try anyway, because nothing would be gained from rolling over and allowing the Thief to slit everyone's throat. Even if they were both immortals, even if the horrid, lurching sensation of mortality that resided within the others disgusted Shiv, he couldn’t just let his master indulge in wanton butchery.

Because, though Integration was heartless, though High Gods and Transcendents could be cruel, cold, and callous to those beneath them, and even if life-devouring nothingness was all that waited beyond the final reach of existence for all but so few, someone should care amongst that landscape of nothing.

Someone should care.

And Shiv did. 

If he didn't, he might as well draw back the curtain and let Avalon lay its blade against his neck, the falseness of the paradise to greet him be damned. 

It mirrored a philosophy he developed in his youth, one he still saw as pure as back then: If he didn't care, why not just be an orc?

Of course, caring came with its own caveats and consequences—and the start of that lesson began when Curtis came to Shiv with a particular request.

“Hey, uh, Shiv… Lord Mythic-Deathless…” Curtis reeked of trepidation from every pore. Even seated, Shiv was at eye level with the Displaced, and so he softened his features to apply the slightest measure of comfort he could. It helped to some capacity, but whatever Curtis wanted to say was caught in his throat and wouldn't slide free. It was clear that he had a grand request, one that he wasn't certain Shiv could deliver, one that might not even be possible. Yes, that was the case.

Shiv leaned back and stopped stirring his soup. “It's not going to feel better until you say it, and it's probably not going to feel better after you say it either, but it'll be a start.”

A little "o" formed the center of Curtis's mouth, and his eyes widened before he gathered himself again. “It freaks me out every time you do that shit, right? The whole mind-emotion-reading.”

Shiv shrugged. “Didn't actually read your mind or your emotions, if you're worried about that. I could tell that you were nervous, and I deduced why you were nervous. So. You want to rig up one of my shells too?”

For the second time in their short dialogue, Curtis looked like he'd been swept off his feet. “Okay, come on, man. You're just yanking me back and forth now. This is bullshit. You have to be using some kind of telepathy on me. You have to!”

“I am not doing a ‘Jedi,’ Curtis.” Shiv leaned back in his bone-forged chair, and the shifting of his weight sent a slight squeak as one of its femur legs slid upon the glass floor. “There are only so many things you might want, and I have not exactly been blind to you, though I have been busy. I've been trying to find where you're from. The Realmrunner had to have snatched you from somewhere, and I have Incarnates still mapping the possible places out. But the Realmrunner had been active down here for a while, and calling Avalon enormous is an understatement. That being said, if your home exists here, I will find it. More of a question of when than if…”

“Right on, man. Right on.” As Curtis spoke, he deflated halfway, but there was still a strand of hope holding on like a steel cord drawn to its tensile limit. “There’s another thing too, though. I'm no fighting guy. I'm not good at sports. I was never brave, but I was raised to pitch in, you know? Mom and dad made sure of that.”

These words illuminated Curtis's deeper struggles. Shiv stood, making sure not to let the chair squeak under him. He loomed over Curtis and placed a hand upon the man's back, walking him to the winding hallways where the exits lay.

No one ever stepped through those vertical slits, for to do so was to invite Avalon's attention. Even now, there were Divers coming in and moving out, and they did so with flashes of red-gold shells of mana hardening around them, as the Endless allowed them to clip on and ride the metaphysical rails laid in place.

Coming back this time were Gone and Five: another successful run, another two hundred or so Alephs identified. There were still more than a dozen other Divers in the field, and they worked night and day constantly, though Shiv demanded they take shifts; a single mistake or misjudgment would see them exposed. Exposure meant Excaliburization. Excaliburization meant a scalping of their mind, their emotions, and their soul.

“Five, Gone,” Shiv greeted.

The Raven grinned and tipped a nonexistent hat to Shiv before stalking off, and Gone gave Shiv a quick nod before zipping beside Curtis to pluck the phone from his pocket and begin swiping through its contents before he could so much as blink. He didn't even respond anymore. It was practically a routine between them. Music blasted from the device's speakers as she played that song she found herself addicted to at full volume, without consideration or concern for anyone else. Not that anyone complained, of course.

The song had a strange rhythm. Shiv wasn't sure if he liked it or not, but the rhyming and the attitude were something else entirely. The contents, he couldn't fully grasp either. He suspected he lacked a great deal of context.

The band was a musical ensemble that focused on aggressive poetics, and they mainly recited the name of their clan and how it wasn't anything to fuck with. The lyrics were boastful to the extreme, and at several points Shiv found himself utterly lost when this Wuu-Taang Clann made what he suspected to be hyper-specific cultural references, but it made Gone happy, and so he forgot about his lesser complaints.

Now Shiv was at a crossroads of his own. He needed to figure out how happy he wanted to make Curtis—if he could make him happy at all, and how much he wanted to risk the man, for though Shiv's mana flowed over Curtis without suffering the same restrictions as others, the man wasn't a Pathbearer. He wasn't a Martial of even the slightest capacity. In fact, he was sub-Pathless, if such a thing was possible. More importantly, there was something endearingly civilized about him, like he was from a softer time, perhaps, but also a kinder one. Shiv wasn't exactly sure he wanted to see that ruined.

“You're not a burden," Shiv said as he gestured at the temporal exits around them. "You do not need to fling yourself at this task to find whatever measure of respect or to be regarded as a person. You didn't ask to be here. You were taken from your home, placed in a cell, and now you share a circumstance with the rest of us. But I understand your feelings. I understand that you want a measure of power and that you don't want to suffer fragility after being exposed to a group of… superheroes, is it?”

“Yeah,” Curtis nodded along. “You guys are like, if the mutants evolved by working out or doing math super hard. Though most of you aren't always having random relationship issues with each other, being abducted by aliens, or dying… wait, shit.”

A hum of laughter left Shiv. “It's fine. Slip of the tongue, figure of speech. You did complain that one of those mutants kept dying and coming back too, and stronger every time as well.”

“Well, I wouldn't exactly call her stronger. It's just that the writers ran out of ideas of what to do with her. They just let her be a god for a while, and then they killed her again, and then they brought her back. It's really messy.”

“Hm. Sounds familiar.” Shiv briefly glared upward, knowing the System received the message. “Regardless, I can give you a rig. I can allow you to move around inside this place, but I don't want you to go out because outside is chaos, and you must be capable of split-second reactions—sub-millisecond reactions,” Shiv emphasized. “Furthermore, I don't want to lose you to Avalon because I have no idea what it might do to you. You've displaced some of its magic, and so I can only imagine that it would be more than happy to rid itself of you or eradicate you in some way. You're an unacceptable threat, both when possessed by the Realmrunner and by the Thief and me. And taking a bitter turn, you're going to be a threat toward us.”

He gestured an outline around Curtis with his index finger. “When you attach yourself to the shell, it's going to connect with your mind and your heart. You can interface with my magic. You do not displace it, and so you can use it. But if things go poorly, I have no idea what your chance of survival is, because you are not a Pathbearer by any means. If I slice into your mind, if I tear a piece from your soul or your heart, I don't know what will become of you, and I don't want to find out. I suspect we're on the same page here.” A sudden dilation in Curtis' pupils and a major spike in his heart rate told Shiv all he needed to know. “Exactly. I will give you these ‘superpowers’ if that will make you happy, but we have to strike an arrangement: You don't leave until I can personally accompany you and find your way back home. You will not be reckless, and you will not be foolish. Deal?”

“Yeah! Yeah! I can… I can hold it down, man.” And now Curtis' breath was quickening. He was looking forward to this. He wanted powers of his own, and Shiv knew that want well. As an Omenborn Pathless street rat, he would have done anything to get the slightest taste of a Pathbearer’s majesty.

“We always dream of what we can’t have,” Shiv mused. His hand remained on Curtis when he imparted his shell. It flickered into shape, a translucent thing within, further hardened by pitch-black fire, and then layered in a looping chain of vectored blades, each one circulating along Curtis' exterior as the mana hardened into place. Then came vitality and time, congealing around his outsides, and he burned. Then black, red, gold, and translucence mingled into one, taking root upon his form, and that was all it took.

A slight imparting of magic, a bestowal of power not gained but rightfully offered all the same, just to give another a measure of joy. It was perhaps unthinkable for someone like Veronica to grant so much of herself to another, who, in truth, didn't see Curtis as a threat. The man wasn't conniving. He was just true to his name, Displaced, and he should be allowed to have some slight consolation for being here. He was as much a prisoner as everyone else, and in some sense, even more so. Being among Pathbearers when you were not one and could never be one had to be unspeakably alienating.

“Holy shit," Curtis breathed. He looked around as the mana field subsided. In truth, it was still there, but flickering and revolving so fast that it might as well be imperceptible. He could apply the same trick to his domain, but usually he bound it to his own emotions or someone else's, hiding its expanse in a heart rather than allowing it to flood an entire region of space. “Holy fucking shit.” Curtis spun as he looked around. While he did, the shell came into view once more, glistening and blinking. As he suddenly snapped back along the way he came, he flickered so fast that even Shiv had a hard time keeping up.

Such was the function of the Endless: one could travel across a vast distance in a single instance because all the loops were folding in on themselves. A loop represented true stillness in the sense that it was a moment perfectly frozen, not a moment hyperaccelerated, until the present was disconnected from the progression of the future.

Curtis began blinking from place to place, appearing behind people and loudly whooping as he was granted abilities beyond a mortal's wildest dreams for the first time. His voice carried the notes of a child lost in play; a most pleasing sound to Shiv’s ears. In fact, he found greater pride in this act than in all the tracks he'd laid in subverting and infiltrating ever deeper into Avalon's bones.

We've created far too little in our time, the Harbinger intoned. We've fed, we've nourished, but for most of our existence, our Skills were blessed and christened through violence. This is something else. Looping back around, there is great symbolism and a baptism in this. Our Endless is more than a weapon. Far more.

“He's really quite pitiful, is he not?” The Thief’s words ended with a sniffle.

Shiv closed his eyes before looking over his shoulder. “I’m assuming you didn’t come just to be an asshole.”

“No. Not just.”

“What a great noble character you possess, Master.” The Ouroboros materialized around Shiv, its eyes widening, its body tightening. “Satirically.”

The self-eating leviathan slackened and released a sharp hiss of disappointment. “Bullshit! Hungry. Let me eat something.”

“Soon,” Shiv replied.

“You always say that.”

“And I always mean it. Be patient.” Shiv turned his attention back to the Thief. “So, are you going to finally tell me about whatever horror you’ve been breeding in Avalon’s basement?”

“Avalon does not have a basement, so to speak,” the Thief began, but with the widening of his mouth, he exposed pearly white teeth, each one gleaming like the shine of a predator's canines under moonlight. “That being said, I have made several most pleasing discoveries, one of which I will only reveal when we are engaged in proper conflict. The other is to taunt and please you in equal measure. For as you feel so festive and charitable, I think I am not to be outdone by you, my disciple. As you have made the others pleased, I shall please you as well.”

Shiv really, really didn't like the sound of that—and let the feelings show on his face.

“Oh, no need to be so sour, O disciple mine. You will enjoy this. After all, it concerns your beloved.”

A vacuum opened inside Shiv. He was thoughtless, emotionless, devoid of everything, and a flickering warmth he hadn't felt for so long began at his core. He almost snuffed it out because he didn't want to believe—had no desire to be hurt if this was a trick on the part of the Thief. “Uva.”

“Ah, no, the Outsider-to-be remains frightfully elusive, to her credit; I was speaking of one Young Lord Arrow. The third part of your ‘Favored Three.’” The Thief could barely hold back a laugh at the title, and let it show on his face. 

In his better, younger days, Shiv might have squinted at the Thief. Now, his elation endured all the same. He kept waiting for a taunt to follow, a revelation of mockery on the Thief's part, but it never came, and the Ouroboros never swallowed his master, and so these words must have been true.

“And I wish to speak with you regarding that matter as well, for I am impressed by your capabilities as a Chronomantic cartographer, but I do not think it is a good use of your time and labors to linger in this paradigm. Perhaps in a few ten thousand years, you and this rabble might finally lay Avalon low this way. Before those years pass, you could perhaps also take hold and apply stolen Excaliburizations, but I would prefer to see that timeframe shortened dramatically. I think I can provide you with a measure of passion you have been without; through the Avalon we remain trapped in, I have made contact with the rest of its instances, and in the overlapping of blades, new paths have opened. Paths I have walked, and paths you can now walk in my shadow as well. Such is the application of your lore. Is it not a closed loop born of repetition?”

As the Thief waited for an answer, Shiv’s nostrils flared. “Why?”

“Why?”

“Is this supposed to be a threat? That you have them at your mercy?”

Now the Thief's pity was reserved for Shiv. “You think so poorly of my nature. If I desired their deaths, I would have delivered it upon them, but for now, I will humor their continued existence, as it motivates you, and your development is worth many risks to me. Even the chance that you might fall back into your old ways with your forthcoming reunion. But though this moment might seem like a long-yearned dream for you, know that the same sentiment might not be shared in the inverse. A great deal has changed, not only for you.”

There was only one thought in Shiv's mind: That didn’t matter. That didn’t matter at all. 

In this moment, nothing mattered. There were only two lights in Shiv's mind, two stars in the void of his heart, and he needed to find them. This time, he would never let them go. “Show me your route. Give me a path.”

The Thief’s smile never faltered—and there was venomous glee leaking from the crevice that was his heart. “Gladly. And you should get the others ready to move as well, for I think it is time that we resituate the exact timeline Road’s End occupies. Better to be trapped beneath the enemy of my enemy than within the belly of the beast, is it not?”

Shiv, the Harbinger said gently. Do not be blind. Ask him. Ask him the question. Ask him what might break your heart.

Shiv almost didn’t. “How much of him is left?”

The Thief sighed dramatically. “That is part of the reason why I wish for you to enter his kingdom first instead of me. For your question, I cannot say. Perhaps there was a separation at some point, but what distance can a boy who plays at being a tyrant maintain between himself and an implacable god that always was and will be?”

Everything inside Shiv curled as the trepidation which once gnawed at Curtis turned its teeth on him. There was a price to pay for being someone who cared. And the price was coming. Shiv felt it coming.

And a long-forgotten emotion returned to him in full.

The sensation of cold, hopeless dread.