(I) Escape

-Essential Reading at Phoenix Academy for the Course PSYDEF-10152 (I)

Escape

“And thus are the fruits of my interrogation. I expect to gain more information soon, but I think we must beware. Our paranoia is insufficient. Whatever game is being played, the Republic is lying to its own people, even its Inquisitors. I suspect that the Aviary spy is here for more than just the Animacy Core. His targets have been too varied. Too chaotic.”

As Leu finished her false report, she watched as Gate Lord Confriga’s expression turned into one of barely suppressed rage in the reflection of the glass. She was in his personal quarters. Well, of his personal quarters. This was a place where one was punished for failure, or rewarded, in the rare case of success. The ground had grates in it for all the blood that had been spilled here. Those who often ventured into this place were like Leu—very good at their duties—or those who understood that they were likely heading for an execution.

Leu studied the Gate Lord for a few moments longer. The Lesser Marshal was glaring out over the many rivers. He was staring down at the only gateway left open, the length of this building crossing over back to their homeworld. Confriga’s personal tower was the only one in the entire gate that was built downward rather than upward, pointed towards the bedrock and the rivers of molten metal rather than the mana core in the sky.

It was a sign, a sign of Confriga’s yearning to return to his home, but also a sign and a tantalizing taunt against him, purposefully inflicted during his exile. To cross back over without gaining the favors of the Lords of Law and earning a writ of redemption from one of them would see him spurned still by Lord Scorn.

It brought Leu no end of pleasure, to see the Gate Lord so troubled, so tormented by his failures, so lost as to what was actually happening.

she thought, the hate coursing through her blood like a physical presence. But she mastered it. She made the hate cold instead of hot, and she bided her time.

She had a powerful ally now. A disciple of the Great Valor Thann. This Master Shiv was a strange Pathbearer, unlike any she’d met before. Considering the nature of his most powerful skills and the way he operated, he was more like a monster wrapped in the mind and flesh of a human. Despite this, she felt that she could trust him. She felt that she to trust him, that this was a sign of the System’s favor, that her revenge was finally going to reach its climax. At this moment, the Jealousy was likely dead, and Shiv was likely in the process of escaping with the others.

Soon, he would return with the Legendary Pathbearer. And they would bring an end to Confriga’s life.

What happened after that didn’t matter to Leu.

“Do you miss home, Guardshead?” Confriga asked. Leu was momentarily caught off guard by this question. Confriga was not one for open sentimentality, but she could hear the weariness in his voice.

“Sometimes,” she replied, “but I think mainly of my duties and of the processes of this gate.”

Confriga grunted. “I have always envied you, Leu. You know this, yes?” He turned to regard her, and once more she found herself surprised.

“You do, Lesser Marshal?”

“Indeed, though you might not possess the virtuous urges to inflict pain, to dominate, to break. Lamentable. But your focus, your dedication to your cause, your dedication to your role and your duties, you are…” He laughed. “...almost too good for me, Guardshead. Almost. I wish I had more like you.”

Little did he know the irony in this statement. If there were more of her, he would have been long dead.

He was about to say something else when somebody burst through the door. A human mercenary, looking haggard and terrified, rushed in. She realized he was a Dimensionalist, the badge on his armor indicating that he was from . Leu tensed. Had something gone wrong? Had—

“The Jealousy has been kidnapped! He stole the Jealousy!” The man's eyes were wide with terror, and his mouth was open wide. Spittle was flying all over the Lesser Marshal’s table.

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The Gate Lord simply regarded the man for a moment, looked to Leu, and then, with an infuriated snort, he strode forth and backhanded the Dimensionalist. The man didn’t fly off in a certain direction. He wasn’t splattered or crushed. He simply vanished into a puff of bloody mist, his armor disintegrating into shrapnel. A few shards crashed into Leu, but they bounced off her body, bruising and nothing more. Still, it was a staggering reminder of how much stronger than her the Lesser Marshal was. She couldn’t achieve anything like that with raw strength, not even close. She may have been a blade in the dark, but she was trying to find a way to slit the throat of a titan.

“You believe this?” Confriga said, his voice bearing a growl of primal rage. “These—these—these deceptions, these jokes that the mercenaries come up with. Do you remember them planting a bucket above my door and having it splash down on me?” Confriga snarled.

Leu almost laughed. She remembered how many mercenaries were flayed after that little prank. There were no more pranks in Gate Theborn after that.

But just then, another person rushed into the room, this one a Vulteg, one of their species. They bore the same agitation as the mercenary, the same terror in their posture. Suddenly, Leu thought something was very, very wrong, but she couldn’t tell what. The Vulteg messenger repeated the same thing the recently-vaporized mercenary had said: “Lesser Marshal! Lesser Marshal! He—they—they’ve stolen the Jealousy! They’ve kidnapped the Greater Demon!”

And this time, both Confriga and Leu looked on, truly stunned.

both of them spat at once.

As they tried to decipher what was going on, Leu was so lost in her own mind that she forgot something important. A series of explosions went off above them. Ones originating from the mana bombs she had planted all over the gate’s many districts. From above, tremors ran down, and the entire building shook. It took Leu a moment to remember that she was the perpetrator of this act and that she had a role to play right now.

“Uh, oh no,” she said, a little too late. “I think we are under attack. The spy has struck again, and, and I think he… he is also the one that kidnapped the Jealousy.” Her reactions were messy, but it was excusable, considering how caught off guard they were.

“Find him,” the Gate Lord snapped. His eye was wide with rage. His body tremored with power, twisting Necromantic mana bleeding from the three skulls locked to his chest. “Find!” His roar echoed out from the mana core, out over the entire gate, and his rage was palpable. “HIIIIIIM!”

Leu just remained confused.she thought.

Kidnapping a Greater Demon the size of a small mountain required someone to be incredibly awesome or insanely mad. Shiv, at that moment, felt like he was literally both on account of his brain damage.

Spells and skills of all types were bombarding the topside of the Jealousy, crashing against its Master-Tier carapace, splashing against Shiv’s Master-Tier Adamantine Adaption. But while wings and squadrons of enemy aerial Pathbearers hounded him, they were struck from the sky by arrows of lightning, of mind, of frost and fire. Absolute chaos raged all around them, and Shiv .

Atop the body of the Greater Demon, a new theater of war was taking place. A theater of war that was going to escalate soon, as they drew closer to an approaching cliffside overlooking a ravine. With a final burst of his Gravitic Wrestler, Shiv shouted and flung the Jealousy over the edge. He cried out for those helping him to hold on, and most of them did, each one clutching a crevice or a jutting portion of the Jealousy’s broken shell.

Uva didn’t need to hold on to anything, because he was holding on to her. She, meanwhile, launched Psychomancy spells in one hand and massive stabs of frost with the other. Her twin magics blasted in the air, and Shiv heard several Pathbearers cry out, heard their Magical Resistance crackle and burst behind them.

A rush of force pulled against his insides as they fell, and he reduced the feeling by tugging upward with his gravity field. He couldn’t quite fly with the Jealousy. Well, he couldn’t truly fly normally. He was mostly just pulling and flinging himself with his gravity field. Still, he could slow the Greater Demon’s descent, make it so that it wasn’t a violent impact, but rather a controlled landing.

A particularly youthful, girlish voice screamed out from beside him. “I think I’m gonna be really sick,” a pale elf said with a chuckle, clutching a broken cavity in the Jealousy’s shell, her other hand clinging tight to a glass halberd.

Shiv’s feelings towards the group that came to save him were pretty positive. Broken memories inside his wounded mind were beginning to itch as they fused back together. He experienced something like this with them before. They fought together. They knew each other. He trusted them, and they more than trusted him.

As they fell, as more spells crashed against the Jealousy, Shiv tilted the Greater Demon’s body and swung its limbs upward. The massive tentacles of the Jealousy parried and blunted some of the heavier-hitting attacks. Colossal explosions unleashed by Master-Tier enemies shook the Greater Demon and launched Shiv a bit off course, but with a snarl of effort, Shiv wrestled the massive beast back to a point of stability.

Parry > 49

Just then, from the side of the ravine, he saw a series of shapes blast out through a forest of trees that appeared to be drenched in blood under the dim illumination of the sky-ceiling’s glowing veins. At first, he thought he was looking at a swarm of bats, but then, as they came closer, approaching at terrifying speeds, Shiv realized they weren’t bats at all, but humanoids. Constellations of crimson spells danced around their bodies as their forms shifted. Some sprouted bladed digits. Others grew more lashing limbs lined with jagged teeth. These were Biomancers. These were….

Something clicked together in Shiv’s mind. These were high vampires. These were warriors of the First Blood coming to defend their territory. This was the border between the Compact of Babel and the Court of the First Blood. He finally realized what the voice speaking from Uva’s brooch was planning. He was going to trigger a border skirmish to cover Shiv’s escape.

Asshole or not, the guy in the brooch was pretty clever.

The high vampires came, numbering around a few hundred. Shiv couldn’t truly tell how strong of a force this was, but most of them had mana fields that were probably in the Adept threshold. There were, however, four that were Masters, and two of those Masters were superior to his Biomancy in both field size and strength.

As they clashed their mana fields against his, Shiv gritted back a roar of pain as he felt his still-wounded mana struggle to stay intact. But they didn’t launch their spells at him first. Rather, he felt them fling their magic against the wyvern riders and other Compact guards that were attacking him while also flinging their magic against the Jealousy.

Uva cried. Her voice was transmitted telepathically to the rest of the group, and Shiv felt them respond immediately. He was connected to their minds as well—could sense their alertness. He caught flashes of what they were doing, who they were fighting off, how strained or how chaotic their minds seemed. It was like he was synchronized with them, each of their minds stacked on top of each other. And it was all thanks to Uva.

Shiv cried mentally.

Just then, they crashed down on the floor of the ravine, the impact of the Jealousy’s colossal weight blunted by Shiv’s Gravitic Wrestler. It still sundered the river bed it landed upon, causing the rushing stream to spill down into the cracks.

Shiv kept moving. He launched the Jealousy forward again, sending it rushing down along the ravine, down an instinctive direction.

In the air above, the high vampires met the gateway guardians in a brutal clash of might and magic. Explosions and shockwaves swelled through the air, hammering against the Jealousy from above. A few of the Master-Tier Pathbearers between both groups met each other, intercepting their equals to protect the lesser members in their forces.

His enemies were going to be occupied with each other. Shiv laughed. He might just be able to finish this whole Greater Demon theft thing after all.

But just as he was getting optimistic, one of the Master-Tier Pathbearers slammed into the other, knocking their enemy off their mount and tumbling towards the Jealousy. They crashed down beside Shiv, hard enough to launch one of the Umbrals into the air. It was that girlish one— Shiv could tell by her shriek, could tell by her mind. He responded by swinging Uva high up into the air, and she reached out, caught the girl by her ankle, and pulled her back down. It was like reeling in a kite.

Shiv cried.

However, Shiv felt a click pass through the girl’s ankle. He and Uva pulled a little too hard.

Ikki’s scream passed through Shiv’s mind.

He winced.

And then somebody kicked him in the jaw.