(I) Fall

-83 (I)

Fall

The winds ripped around Shiv as he flung himself closer to the Abyssal Gateway. Confriga's army was completely broken. The last of Confriga’s Master-Tiers lay dead or writhing atop mountains of corpses. Comparatively, Shiv could barely sort the remains of the rest of Confriga’s army out from the literal sea of dead Blood Horrors and vampires.

Being outnumbered was an ugly thing.

Being unnecessarily outnumbered because the Gate Lord was too much of an arrogant asshole that wouldn’t stop butchering his own soldiers, didn’t request for support from his own homeworld, and generally did nothing but make bad choices after bad choices was just tragic.

Also true to Adam's words, the First Blood was utterly spent. The vampiric army filtered in through the gate as a trickle now, not even a river. More and more of the final remnants of the invasion force limped across—the true reserves. They lacked actual combat experience, judging from how hesitant they were about entering the fray against Confriga directly.

And that was just the thing. Despite his army being dead, Confriga was still fighting—and fighting like a Vulteg possessed. That was one thing Shiv had to give Confriga: The Lesser Marshal was a bastard, and Shiv was going to enjoy killing him, but Confriga was a warrior to the bone; to the bitter end.

Biomancy spells and all sorts of other magic bombarded Confriga, but the Lesser Marshal powered through them as he butchered his way through the vampires. His blurring wings incinerated anyone below High Adept-Tier who dared to approach him outright, and those above fared little better.

He was fighting approximately fifty of them at once while being encircled. Some of them worked to pin him in place with spell after spell, hammering away at his Magical Resistance. Some attacked him physically. But between his armor, his extraordinary Toughness, and his extremely high Physicality, Confriga never stayed pinned for long. And everyone who came anywhere near him paid a brutal price.

Every time he struck a blow, dozens of vampires would be torn apart and then ignited by the heat of his wings.

But that was just the thing. You could rip a high vampire in half, and the bastard would just get up after a moment. You needed to crush their Lineage Core, and sometimes, vampires learned how to hide their core pretty well too.

But that wasn't the only problem. With Confriga so occupied by the elite of the First Blood, the other vampires and Blood Horrors spilled around him. They sailed through the air, curving past the ruins that were the customs and processing building, planning to overwhelm the rest of Gate Theborn.

Shiv realized if they did get in and sank their teeth into the vulnerable population, they would be dealing with more Blood Horrors, and an even larger, lesser vampire outbreak. There was no way they would be able to hold the gate after that anyway.

Adam said.

Shiv said.

Shiv growled.

Adam replied, and that statement immediately brightened Shiv's mood.

Shiv accelerated in the air, Silhouette active, with the winds cracking around him. He smashed through the sound barrier and began to pound his fists together, his Momentum Core climbing. Then Adam's arrows descended—hundreds of them, with hundreds more every passing half second. The Young Lord’s clones spread across the sky, their bodies left in shadow by the dormant mana core. The rapier, Adam’s Spellstring, his vambrace, and his new skills made him utterly overwhelming.

The insidious thing about the Veilpiercers was that they didn't truly travel through physical reality. No, they, like their name suggested, tore across dimensions, and Adam just didn’t miss—even before his Skill Evolution. The weaker Blood Horrors were blown apart immediately; their cores pierced through, their bodies detonating into thick, bloody mist.

Stronger enemies got buried with Necromancy arrows. They howled, and that was only made worse as Adam unleashed a series of other magic spells using the power of the Spellspring. Mostly he struck at their minds, stunning them, and that quickly proved to be fatal.

Shiv slammed into the invaders from a low angle. Anything that wasn't ready for him simply disintegrated. He was moving too fast, and his gravitic field let him pulp whatever he touched. The Blood Horrors burst against him like flies splattering beneath a swatter. Some vampires held a little longer, but these weren't Master-Tier, just Adepts sent in to take the rest of the gate while Confriga was pinned.

They were all considerably weaker than the vampires he faced within the teleportation anchor as well. But once again, they were vampires, and so without crushing the core or destroying them some other way, they could continue regenerating and fighting. So Shiv did something both brutal and practical.

He didn't go core hunting over and over again. He simply crushed their entire bodies into small chunks of mangled meat. The wet noise of pulping flesh followed, ending only when Shiv felt the pop of a Lineage Core.

Shiv conserved his Biomancy and let it recover some more. Can Hu joined in on the action as he unleashed blasts of small, pebble-sized steel balls that shredded the weaker of the Adepts. And soon they dropped as Adam left them utterly pulverized under another stream of arrows.

Through it all, not a single Veilpiercer even came close to glancing at Shiv. It was a testament to the Young Lord's skill, but also an active relief. For most people, firing in the chaos meant risking hitting their own front-liner. For Adam, it was just a slight adjustment to his aim.

The Deathless and the Archer pushed harder with each other’s momentum. Shiv smashed, shattered, and terrified, breaking the cohesion of the swarm. Adam pierced, slaughtered, and blinded, crippling anyone who dared try to flee. In less than three minutes, about four hundred flanking Adepts and Blood Horrors were rendered into pieces and splattered remains.

Shiv realized. He thought back to his fight against the owl in Passage and grimaced.

Then, another vampiric wave came, but that didn't matter. More were dying, dying under Adam's arrows, dying as Shiv charged into them. And for a brief moment in the heat of combat, Shiv felt a strange sense of discomfort.

Not so long ago, he wouldn't have been able to contend with even one Blood Horror. They would have seemed too fast, impossibly strong, and unkillable without a substantial advantage or copious amounts of fire. Now it felt like he was stepping on insects over and over again. And that made Shiv realize another thing about being a Pathbearer. It inherently alienated you from those weaker than you. You forgot what it was like to starve, to hurt truly, to be crippled and broken. You forgot a lot of things about weakness, until it was taught back to you by a stronger, more advanced adversary.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

The slaughter of the flanking Blood Horrors and vampires proved to be a rehearsal. When they were all finally butchered, Shiv found himself standing atop the rubble that was the customs and processing building. He still wasn't sure how it got knocked over. And then he recalled that Uva slammed the Shoggoth into Confriga's army.

Just when he thought he couldn't adore that woman more…

He looked upon the Abyssal Gateway, and by this point, it wasn't even a trickle anymore. Just dots were coming through. Dots who were vampires, horrors, monsters, individual golems—anything they could throw at Confriga, anything. The two armies had worn each other down to the nubs, and Shiv's team had done catastrophic damage to both of their cohesions.

Below, at the very bottom of the city, Shiv couldn't even see the molten rivers anymore. They had been completely covered by the dead. It was an endless carpet of red. Rivulets of viscera ran from mountains of bodies, descending as waterfalls. Some smoldering mounds of burning corpses added points of differentiation amidst all the slaughter, but ultimately made no difference. If Shiv had to guess, he thought that almost five thousand vampires and monsters were lying there.

Adam muttered.

Shiv let out a breath. Killing enemies up close made sense but this many dead… It felt surreal.

Uva interjected, then, her mind mostly occupied by other things.

Adam cried. Then he trailed off.

"I'm beginning to feel like there's a reason for that," Shiv said. He had a growing hint of suspicion. That Roland Arrow did a lot of things for hidden reasons. Considering how dangerous the Abyss was, how powerful each of the Five Faiths was, and how Roland Arrow personally invaded the Abyss and managed to drive many of the Five Faiths back during his campaign, Shiv couldn't imagine the surface to be weak. It just wasn’t possible. In fact, he suspected the Republic was a lot stronger than he or Adam knew.

No, that was a facade, or at least a masquerade against its own people as well, and his thoughts flowed over to Adam, even though the Young Lord was more willing to give his father the benefit of the doubt.

A loud, deafening roar was followed by a massive shockwave. A torrent of force slammed into Shiv, and he pushed back with his gravitic field. Even so, he had to exert a bit of effort to remain in place.

As debris and ash flowed over him, the space cleared, and Shiv could see Lesser Marshal Confriga's petal-like wings spread wide. He was surrounded from all sides, and Biomancy spells crashed against him over and over, but they didn't seem to stun Confriga at all, rather just enraging him further.

He moved fast, almost too fast for Shiv to track. He struck one of the Master-Tier vampires, and a channel of force exploded through them. The top side of their body disintegrated, but before he could snatch the core, another Master-Tier vampire slammed into him, this one completely shifted into their combat form. The attacking Master resembled a mass of lashing tendrils shaped from glistening tendons and mouths ridged with bloody fangs, and they gripped down on the Lesser Marshal's armored body, biting over and over.

Confriga tried punching this one as well, but rather than being splattered by the channel, they simply split their body apart and glided around Confriga's form. Suddenly, the vampire became as if a biological iron maiden. Even from so far away, Shiv could feel what the vampire was doing. It was creating ridges of bladed tissue within where Confriga was, trying to grind him apart. And as Confriga flexed, letting out another roar as a shockwave exploded out from him, the shapeshifting vampire simply spread wide, becoming as if a parachute and letting itself be carried away rather than suffering any true damage.

But there was a strategy to this distraction as well. The shapeshifter left just in time for another massive artillery barrage of Biomancy spells to crash over Confriga. This time, the Gate Lord did yell as a series of crimson explosions swelled wide, so wide that they swept even over Shiv, over a good tenth of the entire gate.

Uva muttered.

As Shiv took in the combat, he realized that was ultimately the problem with fighting an army. If they could pin you with their front line, it didn't matter if you were a Hero or even a Legend. After enough hits to your Magical Resistance, your soul would crack open, and it would allow someone else to reach into you. After that, well, magic was a treacherous foe. Tsunamis shaped from horrible cancerous tides crashed down upon Confriga, and he split them in half with swiping cuts from Absence.

Confriga wielded the blade with ferocity and skill. But more than just that, true to Uva's words, there was something about the long, thin weapon that made Shiv wary, that told Shiv something was hiding in its deeper darkness. His cuts seemed to make reality in some way, made the world around its edge shake and quiver.

"Come then!" Confriga roared, "Come, and I will show you how I earned my title as Lesser Marshal!" His wings turned as he twisted on his heel and spun in place. The burning petals suddenly stretched, becoming over a hundred meters long each, and the Lesser Marshal unleashed a fiery tornado upon the gate. It completely pulverized all remaining High-Adept vampires, and even the Master-Tiers ignited and they screamed, buying him a momentary opening—an opening that didn't last long enough for Confriga to do anything. Coiling surges of blood swept over his wings and then crystallized in an instant. A few hundred wound golems flew overhead, and they immediately began extending their grotesque forms, developing new wounds as they cast spell after spell upon Confriga from above. The Gate Lord shouted as he was impacted over and over again, mana detonating against him.

And for the first time, Confriga fell to one knee. But only ever so briefly.

Shiv said.

"Yes, well, as much as this miserable bastard deserves this, if he falls, we'll be the ones fighting all the damn vampires." So Adam let out a breath. He spent a few moments considering the task at hand. "Let's say we take a quick stroll out beyond the gate. We slaughter their backline. We cripple whoever they have left. I think Confriga still has some fight in him. He'll be able to stalemate these Master-Tiers for a while longer."

Uva said, her strands slithering forth, moving carefully and slowly, trying to avoid being noticed. paused briefly.

Shiv asked, wary about what was in his cloak.

She gave a vague hum.

Shiv grunted in return. He didn't really have anything good to say about that, even if he felt Uva might be a little too blasé about all this. Besides, who was he to talk to? He was learning most of his Biomancy from the mental imprint of a cruel, mad artist of a vampire lodged in a near-universally banned book.

Adam said,

Uva said, grateful that Adam was still thinking about her team.

Adam replied

The Young Lord landed beside Shiv, his own wings going dim. He had a Veilpiercer nocked, and he looked to the Deathless. "You ready, monster? I’m going to open the way for you first.”

"Just fire your shot, hawk—Oh, wait, before that. Give me one second.”

Adam frowned as he let his bow go slack.

Shiv pulled a few things out of his cloak. He'd been thinking about this for a while, about improving his own strategies and enhancing his combat capabilities. He had power now, he had speed, he had concealment and durability. His magic still needed quite a bit of work, but the reason he prevailed against so many adversaries, and strange adversaries as that, was one thing: surprise, an instinctive cunning that had guided his hand so long, and once more, he let it guide him.

He was missing something for the mid-range when his Biomancy was spent. His Woundeaters had a limitation, and that was his magical field. And past a certain point, he wasn't so accurate with his bone drills either. So he needed something that could extend, something he could cast out and keep extending forward onto the horizon, or reel back at any time he wanted. Something he could use as a that didn’t constantly strain his mana.

And so, between his Biomancy and his gravitic field, Shiv came up with a new and enticing idea. A new, enticing, and potentially flexible instrument.

"Shiv," Adam said, his eyes narrowing as the Deathless began to draw out his old bodies and extract their spinal cords. "What are you bloody doing? Why are you mutilating your own corpses right now? Now is not the time."

"Now is the perfect time," Shiv said. And as he extracted the spinal cords and fused them end to end, he drew sections of biomass along the construct’s length, lining the interior and the upper side of the extended cords with tendons.

Adam's jaw dropped a little at the casual violence.

Uva said, sounding confused.

And then Shiv performed the part he was looking forward to. He gathered two of his reserve adamantium armors along with other bits of hardened tissue at the very head of all the spines and tendons he was weaving together. And then he bade the biological material to , and it did. A clump of metallic cancers began to spread all along its length, and Shiv fashioned the edges to be jagged and blunt in random places for variety.

Finally, he wrapped the end of the weapon around his left arm, and he tested his new creation.

He jerked it back in a looping arc and used his gravitic field to guide the mass of bone and cancers. As it sailed through the air, he used his Biomancy to further refine it, to adjust its shape and increase its aerodynamic nature. With his fields, he wielded the flail as if it were an extension of himself. He swung it backward, and since it bore the collective mass of several adamantine bodies, it came crashing down approximately a hundred meters away, sending dirt and debris high up into the air.

Then, with a casual tug, Shiv flicked the makeshift flail back toward himself as he wrapped both spine and tendon around his arm. He performed his final flourish, allowing it to vanish back into his cloak without even catching it. It disappeared into the dimensional opening, but part of it remained connected to Shiv's arm. This made it a concealableweapon as well.

The Deathless laughed. "Those bastards aren't going to see this one coming."