(I) Companions
Chapter 181 of "Path of the Deathless" opens with suspenseful action: -88 (I)CompanionsSkill Gained: Berserk (Adept)Berserk > 1Dedicated mages usually didn't get the Berserk Skill. Some... Keep going!
-88 (I)
Companions
Skill Gained: Berserk (Adept)
Berserk > 1
Dedicated mages usually didn't get the Berserk Skill. Some frontline Dynamancers or physical-enhancement Biomancers, perhaps, but they were more mixed-role combatants. Psychomancers, however, practically never gained the Berserk Skill. never, because something broke inside Uva as she laid eyes on the broken, mutilated form of Shiv.
The sounds he made while the entity tortured him were âwere bad enough that she had to silence a part of her own mind to stay focused. But as she commanded the Dreamtakerâs eldritch spawn to swarm and tear the Recollector apart, she saw Shiv clearly for the first time, and it felt as if someone shoved a burning blade into her heart.
She knew it was going to be bad. Uva thought she was ready to face anything. She was wrong.
Shiv resembled a large sack of bloody, screaming meat more than he did a person. His body was twisted and warped in so many unnatural ways that it took all she had not to puke all over her shield.
The Dreamtakerâs words glided across Uvaâs mind while dozens of the ring-shaped eldritch entities she directed vanished from her awareness, diving into the past to strike at the temporal echoes of the Recollector. She commanded a core group of ten to stay close to herâto cover her and delay the Recollector if it noticed what she was doing. She couldnât fully dive into any of their minds due to their temporal non-linearity, but she could still communicate with them while they remained in the present. And there were parts of them, like the Shoggoth, that did align with her.
Hate for one. Absolute, all-consuming hatred for the Recollector.
She used that hate to guide them. And she felt that hate overcome her self-control as she drifted over the massive crater Shiv lay in.
the Recollector roared as it spasmed and twitched in the air. Its tentacles lashed about, and it began to blink across time and space. Without Chronomancy, Uva had no ability to perceive the battle that was actually happening. But Shiv could.
And Shivâ
Uva groaned as she covered her mouth. Her horror and misery were contagious, as all the ten New-Dreamt she had guarding her began to let out vaguely human cries of anguish. Worse, there were stillinside Shiv. Things that twitched and writhed and pushed under his skinâstruggling to deform his adamantine flesh. And there were other things in his mindâshe could sense the mangled remains of his ego and the vermin who constantly feasted on his mind, on his very being.
A storm of cold rage consumed Uva as Berserk took hold. She lost all sense of self-control as she dove into his mind without hesitation. She found the ripping at his sense of self. His mind was constantly mending, but the damage they inflicted⌠There would have been nothing left of anyone else.
These entities were without true physical form. Instead, they were contained within a series of discordant notes that crashed against her mind, that tried to inflict psychosis on her so they could slip into her cracks as well. Unfortunately for them, Uvaâs sense of self was nothing but violent, unstoppable rage, and every single strand of her Psychomancy flared with hateful intent.
And through it all, there was still a cold, calculated hand directing Uva on her offensive. Still just a sliver of rationality remaining.
They sang at her. She drove her strands directly into them and flooded their minds with her hate. The entities grew louder from the anger she poured into them. But then they kept swelling, and the entities shrieked and wailed and ruptured into deflating notes as she overloaded them. But she didnât only use her Psychomancy. Her single thread of rationality made her breach the threshold to the again. She used her psychosis as a shield against madness and unleashed the full power of her gaze. A torrent of brilliant changing colors flashed inside Shiv, and as she cast her light on the remaining entities in his body, they screamed, they tried to flee, but she drove them back into the Outsideâinto the Dreamtakerâs domain.
There, she watched as they were mauled and devoured by other entities of even greater strangeness. Beings Uva couldnât yet comprehend. But she didnât care. She continued burning them with her glare, unleashing more and more color until her rage finally ran dry and the quiet voice within commanded her to stop.
Puppeteer of the Formless Strings > 112
Berserk > 3
Dreamtakerâs Gaze > 7
Shivâs body stopped glowing. He wasnât screaming anymore, either. But his mind⌠â
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
He barely looked human from all the damage he'd sustained on the outside. Inside, it was even worse. But already, she could feel his mind starting to mend. The many broken pieces and badly mangled memories glided back toward each other of their own volition. A rush of hope passed into Uva. His mind regenerated. For whatever reason, his sanity and mental state always returned to a strong, stable baseline. Today, she was all too thankful for that. She moved the pieces back together as fast as she could.
Faintly, she realized two of her guards shot off to engage the Recollectorâto draw its attention away and give her a chance to mend Shivâs broken consciousness.
the Dreamtaker whispered.
As Uva connected and wove the many fragments of Shiv back in place, she felt something from him. A reactive, intuitive warmth. A heavy, crushing happiness. The feelings drenched her Psychomancy, and she couldnât help but laugh to herself in disbelief.
Two of her New-Dreamt crossed over from present to past. A moment before they did, she felt an impact as they intercepted some of the Recollectorâs temporal echoes in a brutal collision.
Hearing the damned entityâs voice was like someone running a blade along the bone of her skull. Uva shuddered, but rallied as she continued her task. She reached out and pulled the largest pieces of Shiv back in place as all her remaining guardians broke away from her mana strands. They were all across time now, restraining the Recollectorâs Chronomantic attacks by attacking its very past.
To Uvaâs reliefâand astonishmentâthe fragments of Shivâs mind started melting together and regenerating. It was unnatural; it was bullshit; it also wasnât nearly fast enough for him to reach full coherence in time before the Recollector was on them. She watched the Recollector through Shivâs eyes as it vanished and reappeared, skipping kilometers of distance at a time. She caught it ripping one of the New-Dreamt apart, pulling the lesser eldritch entitiesâ revolving rings from their bodies.
Shiv groaned internally.
She winced as she felt his pain, his confusion. But there was something else there: Rage. A massive, enormous silo of rage that had been building in the depths of his being, magnified by all the torture he just endured.
Shivâs mind reacted instinctivelyâalmost joyously. And without any prompting from Uva, Shiv exploded off the ground as his own Berserk triggered. His casual and sudden decision to charge the Recollector after all the trauma he sustained baffled her and caught her entirely off-guard.
It caught the entity off guard too as he slammed into it hard enough to create another explosion of force and flame. The world shook. Even tethered to Shivâs mind, Uva could barely keep up with what was happening. She was still Adept-Tier in Reflexes, boasting only a Flow of the Viperess Skill Evolution. A Master was usually a blur to her. With Berserk and Momentum Core, Shiv was moving beyond most Master-Tiers.
And then the Chronomancy came in, and she found herself unable to follow the resulting battle at all.
she thought. Then, a discordant sound crashed against Shivâs consciousness, and the parts that were healing started to fracture again. Uva responded immediately, binding and fixing what she could.
Berserk > 9
Adamantine Adaption > 138
Shiv didnât know his own name. He couldnât remember his own life. All he knew was that the ugly thing with a bunch of tentacles and eyes left him brokenâbut the dumb piece of shit forgot to finish the job for good.
Rage consumed Shiv. Absolute rage. All-gripping rage. But with rage came joy, for now there was an absence of pain and a comforting presence in his mind. He wasnât alone. He knew that. Shiv just didnât know who he was withâbut he felt like he really liked them. And them being here just spiked his rage into new heights as he faintly remembered a woman screaming as she was dismembered.
The air around him ignited a millisecond before he struck the entity dead-on. Through it all, he sapped momentum instinctively, his speed spiking with every passing instant. Shiv struck the thing with a headbutt. The rest of Shivâs body was still deformed and broken from the torture. He felt a misshapen sack of meat. He didnât care. It didnât matter. He would beat this thing to death using himself as a blunt instrument, and he was going to doing it.
He crashed into the entity while it was struggling with some kind of creature made of rings. It spattered apart as Shivâs face sheared clean through its body. Intense pain exploded through Shiv as he felt part of his jaw fracture from the sheer force of the impact. An explosion washed out over the world. A tide of force flung fire ahead of itself, deepening the crater at the very base of the gate.
Something cried out inside him to stay hiddenâto use his Shiv reactively went transparent.
But the entity didnât stay dead. Instead, an echo of it crossed over from a golden river. From⌠a retroactive river of time. It came and swung a blade at Shiv. It cut fast. Faster than even Shiv while Berserk was active.
And missed. The blade went over his head. Shiv headbutted the entity again in its ugly palm-face. Several fingers snapped. The entity reeled back. Shiv felt a thundering pressure hit peak capacity inside him as he blasted through the creature, going so fast that he carried with him a tide of devastating force.
Silhouette > 95
Momentum Core > 96
For the second time, the entity disintegrated. But Shiv kept going. He tore the entirety of Gate Theborn, and flames clung to his body as a hurricane followed in his wake. The ground beneath cracked asunder, parting as a spreading fracture, unzipped by his speed. As Shivâs Momentum Core finally went empty, pulled with his gravitic field and launched him back toward the fight as he started slamming his fists together.
the entity screamed. From afar, Shiv could see the entity trying to move, but its echoes were pinned in place by a series of ring-shaped creaturesâlike the one the entity ripped apart earlier. Dozens of the entityâs temporal clones were clenched tight within the ring-shaped creatures, and more importantly, its retroactive rivers were also anchored in position as well. It began shifting its trapped echoes over to its main body as it killed the ring-monsters over and over, trying to its own
The entityâs wails echoed across the entirety of Gate Theborn, and Shiv realized he could hear a bit of Confriga in its voice. Confriga? Why did he remember that name? Why did he hate that name? It didn't matter. Nothing but hurting and killing the entity mattered. That was why he was here. That was what he was going to do.
Then, there came another voice inside him, begging him to heal and arm himself now that he had a moment to breathe.
Shiv growled, bloodlust overtaking his thoughts. And that was the downside to Berserk: You didnât get to keep your rationality while it was active, and Shiv was very, pissed about all the pain the entity had put him through.
Part of him tried. Tried as hard as that little broken piece of his consciousness could. But the battle-madness gripped Shiv deep. Bloodlust and muscle memory guided his intuition.
A feeling of absolute incredulity exploded inside him. And a second voice joined the first. Shiv was too busy shouting at the entity to properly hear the new speaker, though.
âPunch!â Shiv growled. Faintly, he recalled hitting people with his injuries. He could feel his injuries⌠Feel his body. He just needed to on moving his injuries intoâ A small wyrm splashed into existence with a flare of crimson mana from Shivâs intent. It burrowed into him, consuming the many injuries deforming his body. Parts of Shiv snapped back into place. Most of his pain vanished between bites, but the left side of him still hurt constantly. The wyrm glowed around his person as the fattened length of its body gleamed with crystalline chunks. It was nearly a full meter longer than him now, but he could still feel it. And he was going to smash the entity with it.
He wanted to say something, but lost track of his own words and just started howling incoherently instead.