(II) Companions

88 (II)Companions

Shiv smashed into the entity for a second time just as it drove a blade through another of those ring-things. It let out a mind-splitting shriek of annoyance as Shiv flung his massive wyrm into its back. A mana explosion consumed them both—and Shiv took the opportunity to seize his enemy’s sword arm in an elbow lock.

It tried to move its retroactive rivers, to use its Chronomancy mana against him directly. It couldn’t. Not with all twenty-four of its remaining rivers locked in place by the ring-monsters. It tried whipping at Shiv but missed more than it hit as he started headbutting it.

And then the entity let out an agonized wail of torment that sounded like music to Shiv’s ears. He barely noticed the near-transparent Psychomancy threads buried inside the entity’s mind, injecting it with . He started hitting the entity as hard as he could, and somewhere between his second and tenth headbutt, just as his Momentum Core was on the verge of fullness, another piece of his broken mind slipped back into place.

Time.

Shiv could with time as well.

A golden layer of armor manifested over Shiv as time slowed—then stopped altogether as he pulled on the entity’s right arm with all his strength. His gravitic field exploded. The entity’s arm was shredded and dismembered. Shiv batted it aside and drove his head into the entity’s hand-face again. His Momentum Core rumbled inside him. Shiv unleashed every bit of force he built up right into the body with a charging knee.

Moving through frozen time was a struggle. Shiv still impacted it with enough force to obliterate the entity. The beginnings of a massive shockwave pulsed out around the being, but didn’t move any further than that. It returned to life—but this time it shot over to one of its non-trapped echoes a kilometer away.

the entity screamed, clutching its head.

A low, rumbling laugh sounded from inside Shiv’s skull.

Shiv allowed time to move at a trickle. His armor softened just as the first cracks formed. The fractures continued crawling across his temporal shell, but the damage occurred far more slowly than Shiv had expected. It was also far easier to surge across the world when he allowed time to progress at a slight pace. It was the distance between sprinting through mud rather than solid stone.

He closed on the entity in seconds. In that time, his armor grew ever more brittle, but Shiv didn’t care. He didn’t care that there were still many more echoes he had to kill before the entity stayed dead, or that it was shooting beams of accelerated time at him from its chest-eyes that he had to avoid. Shiv was moving. It was pinned and slow. Soon, he was going to get his hands on it. Soon, he was going to be bloody, angry, and joyous all at the same time.

Even in pain and madness, life was .

The entity sang. A spike of pain crashed into Shiv’s mind, and something broke inside him. Shiv’s violent psychosis spiraled into delusion as he believed himself to be invincible.

Shiv slammed into the entity with a final spike of his gravitic field. Parts of his golden armor shattered free from his body, but he would hold time at a trickle for as long as he could. It tried to center its beams on him, but Shiv spiked upward and then back down, mangling the large hand it had in place of a head. If Shiv was running through mud, the entity was submerged in it. Shiv blasted from point to point, slamming into the entity from above and behind. Its body folded and ruptured. It let out a howling song that tore at Shiv’s sanity, but he locked it in place from behind and began to drive brutal knees into its sides, filling his core again.

Strider of the Unbending Path > 113

Striking Proficiency > 41

Just as he felt his temporal shell shatter, he triggered his Momentum Core again while grappling the entity—driving it straight down through the air in a plunging suplex. He drove its hand-head into the ground as the air combusted around them again. The roar of the explosion was deafening.

The entity cut at Shiv and missed. It slashed at him wildly with its tentacles and missed. Shiv drilled the entity into the ground and left a tunnel two kilometers deep into the bedrock of Gate Theborn. He didn't miss.

As his Momentum Core finally emptied, Shiv started beating the thing again, elbowing and stomping its badly brutalized body, hammering it deeper and deeper into the earth—

And then it caught his right elbow and squeezed hard. Shiv’s Adamantine Adaption was beyond hardened to physical trauma by this point. It failed to break anything with sheer force, but it still pushed him back, even as he continued battering it with his free limbs. Then, its curled tentacles slashed back. They cracked against his back but didn’t do any harm. Then, they started wrapping around his body, and where Shiv’s durability prevailed, his strength proved insufficient against the entity.

That didn’t stop him from biting one of the tentacles before it could claim his left arm. A good thing too, because the entity awkwardly thrust out with Absence, seeking to pierce his chest just then. The blade moved. It sank a finger’s length into Shiv and got stuck. He howled and grabbed it with his Magebreaker.

Shiv's gauntlet rattled and cracked. The sword responded the same way.

The brief magical struggle ended as the entity hit Shiv's jaw with its free hand.

Shiv’s head snapped back. The world spun and shook, but Shiv managed to stay conscious. He did, however, get punched out of the tunnel he made through the collapsed underside of Gate Theborn, sailing through the air until his back finally crashed against the top of a building. Shiv pulled hard with his gravitic field before he traveled any further. The bottom section of the descending tower he slammed into burst apart, but the rest of the building was preserved. As were any of the living inside.

Then the entity came blasting toward him out from the deep pit they left in the ground, its many tendrils lashing wide. In the brief time Shiv was stunned, the entity managed to slay most of the ringed monsters holding its rivers in place. Shiv could see twenty freely moving rivers now; rivers of retroactive time that could be used against him again. Rivers it commanded to spiral around its body, ensuring that he would have to clash with its Chronomancy should his Strider ever get the chance to regenerate.

Didn’t matter. Shiv snarled like a wild animal as he shot toward his adversary. He accelerated, slamming his fists together, building up momentum. It shot toward him, its eyes glaring with abject and frustration. It sang that mind-tearing song again, but unlike when time was frozen, Shiv felt something harden over his consciousness just as something inside him began to tear.

Two voices called out to Shiv. He didn’t listen. His Berserk was still running hot—and it ran hot until another section of his ego fused back in place. Anger. Anger was a resource he could use. He could spend all his anger right now to empower his Berserk! Make his rage absolutely unstoppable for an explosive instant.

Shiv screamed internally.

Shiv triggered his Master of Rage Feat. He fed Berserk his anger. His physical capabilities exploded beyond measure. For a single instant, he went beyond Master-Tier in terms of Physicality, Reflexes, and Toughness.

The entity tried striking him with its retroactive rivers. It tried lashing him with its tentacles. Most missed because his Silhouette. The rest weren’t fast enough. Shiv manifested his mostly shattered time-armor just before he collided with the entity. He threw a colossal left uppercut. It got its sword in place to block.

Three things broke at once.

His Magebreaker struck Absence and split apart on Shiv’s hand. The sword screamed—and then snapped in half as he punched through it—punched through the entity itself. Then, Shiv’s temporal shell burst apart again. The entity died. And returned to life ten meters away. Shiv’s anger ran empty. His Berserk state ended. He managed a single confused blink before it smashed into him.

They exploded through the plaza, and as they climbed higher, Shiv saw an entire district of Gate Theborn crumble and plunge down to the utterly ruined bedrock below. He dropped an elbow on the entity’s face, but it caught his limbs with its tentacles and pulled him close before slamming a palm into his chest.

Silhouette > 96

A shockwave rattled Shiv. Three of his ribs fractured. He spat at the entity and blasted down using his field, pulling it along. Yet, it clutched him tight and held him in place even as he spiked his field in random directions, trying to get free. It drew itself closer to him, looming over him as he cried out with effort. Once more, it clutched his face and sang—sang its mind-breaking song as loud as it could.

But Shiv’s thoughts were still hardened somehow, and he only felt mildly disoriented instead. “Godsdamn,” he cursed. “Is there… a

It hit him. Over and over. The world shook. Things inside Shiv broke. Every time it struck the left side of his body, he howled with misery. Then, after an eternity of descending blows, the entity broke one of its fingers punching him and let out a melodic croon of pain. It flinched back, clutching its hand. Shiv laughed but gurgled and vomited blood all over the entity. It took practically everything he had to keep his head up after. Glaring was still easy, though. “Funny… I can’t… I can’t remember much… But you… Did you always hit this soft?”

Adamantine Adaption > 139

It reached a hand around Shiv’s head. And then a feeling hit him—instinct took hold again and he

He dodged inside himself somehow.

The world went gray. A shroud of white and red consumed Shiv. Someone fell out of him with a cry. Then there was a woman sobbing beside him, her expression manic, her mind badly wounded. To top it all off, Shiv felt with every passing instant, and a brightness lit up within the entity—and inside the woman that just dropped out from inside him.

A woman that the entity caught by the neck with an outstretched hand.

Primal panic consumed Shiv. He shot down and slammed into the entity, only for it to turn—the golden eyes lining its chest burning bright. He struck it—and then found himself cast back in time while it continued moving through the present with the woman still in its hands. It drove another blow into Shiv’s leftmost rib and caught him before he could sail off from the force with its tentacles.

Then, time resumed. The woman beside him gasped. Anger swelled inside Shiv, and he fed it into his Gravitic Wrestler, smashing himself into the entity and knocking Absence out of its hand—but then it sang. It sang, and he screamed as his mind started to unravel. The gate’s mana core shone right beside them, and the pain made Shiv’s perception tear until even light stopped making sense to him.

And then the singing stopped as the woman let out a piercing cry and unleashed a blast of colors into the entity from her eyes.

Parallel Thinking > 64

Flow of the Viperess > 72

Puppeteer of the Formless Strings > 111

Dreamtaker’s Gaze > 9

Uva gave up trying to figure out what was happening while Shiv fought and just reacted. She couldn’t keep up with a Berserking Master-Tier bruiser with Momentum Core constantly filled; she couldn’t keep up with the even faster Recollector; and there was no hope of her figuring out what was happening when either of them wielded their Chronomancy against each other.

Entire sections of time were missing from her awareness. At several points, she was trying to put Shiv back together, only to discover that the part she just shoved back in place was damaged again, and that he was smashing the Recollector deeper and deeper into the earth. Then, they were back up in the sky, and suddenly, she was falling out of Shiv after briefly weaving her mana strands through his mind, helping him maintain his mental structure against the entity’s unraveling song.

Now, after another patch of missing time, she found herself clutched in the Recollector’s hand while Shiv growled, held tight by all ten of the eldritch being’s tentacles. It started to sing just then, and Shiv’s growl turned to screams. But its attention was away from her, and the Dreamtaker took the opportunity to whisper to her.

And so Uva did. She let out a cry as she pierced the veil with her sight, opening a wound to the Outside. A blast of brilliant colors surged out from her eyes and crashed into the entity like a rushing current during a flood. It flinched. And then it screamed as a swarm of enormous, feathered tongues punched through its body. The Recollector ignited with prismatic flame as the tongues incinerated themselves. While it was stunned, Uva cast every last mana strand she had into its mind.

She expected to bounce off a hardened layer of Magical Resistance, but instead sank deep into its alien, byzantine consciousness with ease. Before she could cast herself into its mind, she felt its hand close tight around her skull. Uva gasped as she was squeezed—and then kept getting squeezed as her head was compressed across several new dimensional vectors that most people simply couldn’t access. Her face curved inward. Her hair and forehead elongated into a long, flapping strip as more of her head was displaced. She accidentally whipped the tip of her forehead into Shiv’s eye and heard him grunt in surprise. The entity closed its fist entirely—but it was still only affecting three dimensions of space.

That were the limitations of using Confriga’s body as a vessel. It needed to apply pressure across at least two more dimensions before it could actually crush Uva.

But by then it was too late. She cast herself into its mind and tore at whatever she could reach. She gasped as the sheer of its non-linear thoughts as they crashed into her. It screamed, because even non-linear thoughts and memories could be torn to pieces. Then, within its mind, she opened her gaze again, and the Dreamtaker laughed as more of its New-Dreamt ripped into the Recollector from the inside.

Uva would have gone longer—but then a patch of time went missing from her mind as she toppled out from the entity into open air. She fell from the sky for a full second as she noticed a corrosive rift open in the space above her.work was re-established for their team. Shiv shivered. “Who… Who's that…”

Adam cried. Two more of its arrows passed through the air beside Uva and Shiv, striking the entity at two different intervals of time. She could feel how much strain his mind was under trying to guess the Recollector’s next location… But he was it. He was the exact position of his enemy every time.

And just then, a loud shriek sounded as the entity reappeared over the remaining districts of Gate Theborn. Shiv’s breath caught as he saw something she couldn’t. A flicker of faint gold shivered around him. . She was starting to hate Chronomancy.

Several of Adam’s corrosive arrows smashed into it, but it didn’t dodge this time. The foul, green energies of Necromancy exploded over the entity’s body, but it didn’t scream. Instead, she heard Confriga wailing in its stead. It pointed at Shiv.

“EAT SHIT AND DIE!” the Young Lord shouted from afar, the heat in his voice masking just how terrified he was.

Dozens of Necromancy-tipped Veilpiercers blasted into the entity’s body. Cracks formed over it as the body spasmed.

“NO!” cried out. “YOU PROMISED! I WAS TO GET ETERNAL—”

An arrow crashed into the entity’s head, and Confriga burst apart into an outline of festering decay as he plunged down. But from his soul-withered husk hatched a new shape. A colossal shape of countless limbs, uncountable eyes, and a titanic ten-fingered head that stared at Uva with baleful hate.

“U-Uva,” Shiv muttered. Another piece of his mind snapped back in place. “Your name is… And—” His expression hardened, but she could see the unease in his eyes. “Cast yourself into Adam’s mind. Do it. Now!”

She wanted to hesitate. She didn’t. She cast herself across and—

And both she and Adam lost another patch of time as the true form of the Recollector and Shiv slammed into one another.