(II) Companions

87 (II) Companions

the Dreamtaker whispered within Uva.

Uva noticed Adam’s confusion, and she shifted her recent memories over to him. He reacted as if he had just been punched. “There’s… there’s another one of those things inside you?”

the Dreamtaker clarified.

Adam paled. “What—what do you—”

None of that meant anything to Uva right then. She only wanted one thing. “The entity. This Recollector. You can help us kill it.”

Uva asked, her expression grim. Her heart was trembling inside her chest, and she feared what might be asked of her. “I am to serve as your gateway again?”

“Me,” she breathed.

Uva’s eyes flared with colors beyond her expression. Beautiful colors. Incredible colors. Colors that lashed and mended a mind all at once.

“Uva,” Adam breathed, “I’m not sure about—”

The lights grew brighter—became more than just light. It became a channel, and she went from being an observer to seeing through the fabric of existence, and she saw them—so many of them lurking beyond. Lurking between. There was so much that the System barely touched. All of Integrated Existence was a roiling island of burning discord, surrounded by a miasmic ocean of wonder and madness.

Something slipped into Uva’s gaze. Something crawled up through her skull, prying her irises wide and dashing through. The creature was large—should have been too large to emerge from Uva’s skull. It was five meters long and resembled multiple resolving rings. Rings that railed with grains of sand that formed what looked to be biting mouths. Rings that bore the texture and pulsed like hearts.

“What in the Ascendants…” Adam gasped as he stumbled back.

Uva’s head deformed and stretched to impossible proportions. Yet, the entity managed to crawl through. And as it did, it immediately started dissolving. It let out a pained shriek as it cried.

And then it shot out from their teleportation anchor, rushing down the excavated tunnel to seek its quarry.

the Dreamtaker whispered.

And Uva cried out as she peered even deeper through the fabric of all that was.

More of those entities blasted out from her, squeezing out from her eyes. Her skull felt like jelly, and she tightened her mana strands around her mind like a fortress. Her Psychomancy rattled and strained as several of the eldritch creatures slashed at her, trying to get in. But she redirected the building madness and turned it back on them using her few unoccupied strands.

Uva stared until the madness grew too much, until her Psychomancy strands were on the verge of straining, and only when she could endure no more did she stop. As she closed her eyes, gripping her skull, she felt Adam stabilize her, and slowly she pulled her hand away from her face. Inside, the Dreamtaker laughed with greater pleasure.

Puppeteer of the Formless Strings > 109

Dreamtaker’s Gaze > 5

Non-Euclidean Morphology > 103

Ahead, a small army of the strange, ringed creatures squeezed down the excavator tunnel.

“You…” Adam swallowed. “That was one hundred and eight of them. Uva…”

Stolen story; please report.

“I’m fine,” Uva said. Frankly, she felt better than fine. She felt… Alive. Powerful, unlike ever before. And she felt a frigid anger building as she heard Shiv’s anguished roar again. “I will be fine. Once I break the Recollector’s mind.” She called her shield close to her and ignored the awakened item’s whimpering. “We will follow your plan. Get the Animancy Core in position. I will see if I can distract the entity and get to Shiv. I will stay connected to you and keep your mind stable. Gazing upon it will not break you like last time. I promise.”

She flung her Psychomancy threads out and connected her to the army she just summoned. Their minds were fractured things—things of broken time that smashed hard against her sanity. It was like they were small singularities of past, present, and future—and she only had the capacity to exist in the present. So, she reduced the number of entities she was connected to and barricaded her ego from the parts she couldn’t comprehend.

Cherished Sister Uva Mettabon knew how to pick her battles. More importantly, she knew how to make someone else fight her battles for her.

Adam looked down at his Spellstring, and his expression hardened. He was more terrified than he ever had been in his life. But he wasn’t terrified alone. And the thing was, Adam could fight pretty well while terrified. “Right. Let’s… let’s see what I can do about hitting the damn entity too.”

Uva blinked as Adam chose his Master-Tier Skill.

Divination didn’t feel like anything at the first level. At least, Adam didn’t notice anything different. But the moment he selected that as his Master-Tier Skill, an enormous sphere of pale violet expanded out from Adam, pushing out through the teleportation anchor, and going further and further beyond. Within the Divination sphere, he noticed strange rippling around a great many things. Things, and people. Can Hu, Uva, Valor, and even his own armor were giving off ripples. And then there were the near-transparent violet chains that connected one thing to another.

As he focused on them, the world began to speak to him. The ripples expanded and revealed to him a flood of shapes and details. Sometimes, he saw the forms of people. Other times, a burst of notifications spread across his eyes as details he had no business knowing emerged. But the information was always partial, and even actively changed at times.

Adam’s jaw dropped. He knew Divination was a complicated lore of magic. He took on a good few extra courses at the Academy in the vain hope he might attune himself to the power, to become more like his mother. But strangely, this Skill Evolution allowed him to move the field around. To fully imbue it into something.

As he tested that on the Graven Cage, a massive flood of details, histories, images, and more crashed against Adam. He flinched back and cried out as his mind strained. Something inside him would have broken if not for Uva bracing his mind and helping him sift through the overload. But as Divination mana slip into the cage, he saw Valor light up—and far, far beyond the gate, he saw a few hundred other entities light up as well.

Skill Evolution: Divination (Adept) > Mark of the Seeking Clairvoyant (Master)

Mark of the Seeking Clairvoyant > 101

He knew exactly where they were. He could feel them. He could tell their present state and the vagaries of what they did in relation to the Graven Cage. They were Silent Spinner and Beetles-Needs-Pets, as well as all the other participants in the ritual to create the cage—Necromancers from Weave. But as he tried to learn more, the sheer complexity of Divination forced him to stop.

Foreshadowing was simple. Existence just whispered things to you. It warned you. This wasn’t that. This was getting into the casual patterns that made up everything, and trying to sift through the general details. Adam was woefully unprepared for that. Just like he was utterly unprepared for this fight. But there was one thing he could do now. He could infuse his Divination into the entity. And he could track the bastard wherever it emerged. Or so he hoped.

“That… is a lot… But I think… It has to be enough,” Adam said. “I have to be enough.”

“We will be,” Uva corrected. “Whatever it takes.”

He met her now ominously brilliant eyes and let out a breath. “Right. Let’s… This damned thing traumatized us. Now. Let’s go traumatize it back. Let’s go save our bloody monster.”

Pain was a constant acquaintance of Shiv. Acquaintance because he didn’t think much of pain. Sometimes, shit hurt, but he dealt with it. That was a function of his mind and his natural resilience. It was why Shiv didn’t scream that much.

Now, with his mind drifting in broken fragments, he could hear himself screaming. He felt like a passenger in his own body as the the entity dumped inside him disfigured and broke things inside him. But they just wouldn’t stop. Every time his mind healed a bit more, they broke him again. Another tore at his soul, and that was worse. But it often overfed, and the entity had to pull it out from his flesh before replacing it with a new one.

Right now was one such moment. As the entity reached down, the tattered remains of Shiv’s consciousness responded the only way he remembered.

Another wave of soul-tearing pain crossed through him. Shiv blacked out. This was the best part of the torture. He got to pass out for a few moments. He knew nothing. The world was a peaceful place. But eventually, the pain would wake him back up again. Again. Over and over.

But with his building madness came something else. An indescribable rage that accumulated within Shiv like a bomb that wasn’t allowed to go off. There was so much inside him that all his skills were practically rattling.

Something assumed control of his thoughts, and he healed himself again. A well-fed serpent-thing was drifting along his arm. He cast that serpent thing. It ate his wounds. Shiv blinked. He didn’t know when he had regained consciousness. He was losing track of time. Hard to tell anything when everything was just .

The entity hung above him. Its tentacles were splayed out. Its many eyes glared at him in outrage. It clenched Absence with its right hand and balled its other into a fist.

Shiv clenched his teeth. He tried to get up. Then, pain exploded inside him again as the creatures hiding with his mind, soul, and flesh started ripping him apart again.

the entity screamed down at him. Shiv somehow managed to trigger his gravitic field, and he slammed his fist into it. It stumbled back and then struck him in return. Shiv slammed back down. The entity stood over him, stomping on his head over and over. He barely noticed that. The true hell was inside him. The true hell—

He heard the entity cry out in alarm. He felt it depart—felt its presence shoot beyond the reach of his Biomancy field. But he just kept screaming. Screaming until he felt someone new push into his mind. Her mind felt horrified, sorrowful, focused, and furious at the same time.

The entities inside him responded to the intruder’s presence with confusion.

The intruder spoke, her every syllable filled with cold, seething hatred.

And for once, the creatures inside Shiv started screaming in anguish—writhing inside his very being as colorful lights consumed him. Lights and colors he couldn’t describe. Shiv's pain faded briefly as he felt the intruder desperately reaching out, gripping his broken consciousness, and he tasted something from her.

Pain. Her pain. For what had been done to him. For how badly he suffered. And even broken, even though he was just an insane shadow of himself, Shiv tasted the first flavors of what he understood to be genuine love.

It was a sweet pain to give oneself up for those they cared about. It was sweeter yet to be saved and protected in turn.