(II) Block

113 (II) BlockShiv paused as he considered what his skills would be like when they became Legendary. Inertial Overdrive came with its own consequences. He became aware of one of those consequences when he overspiked himself right beside the rider he'd wanted to take hostage. Shiv just wanted to move faster, but the poor High Adept dissolved into nothing but bloody mist.

Shiv thought, He looked up at the sky and frowned.

And just then, a Veilpiercer slammed down on the ground next to him. A dimensional rift opened, and Adam zipped through. He came to a sudden halt immediately beside Shiv to see the Deathless fusing a new set of armor around himself.

"Adam," Shiv breathed. He gestured at the surrounding devastation and winced. "I didn’t get hit by Necromancy. I was trying to—"

"I know," Adam said. "That was Father."

Shiv's eyes widened. "What?"

"That was my father," Adam repeated, his heart pounding fast. "I saw the same skill recorded in the Educator’s tome. I saw..." Adam trailed off. “This was done by my father. I'm sure of it. I was—I barely managed to avoid it by dashing back into my rift. But this was—”

His eyes widened. He looked past Shiv, and then he turned as well. There came a flash of color from the dense blanket of ash and smog above them. There came a blinding pulse. Just then, a brilliant needle tore through the clouds. It was followed by a few hundred other needles. No, not needles, . They zippedacross space in a blinding instant. Shiv activated his temporal shell.

Time froze. Most of the arrows stopped. Some of them kept going.

The arrows that hunted him still were golden, and they tore across frozen time at twice the speed Shiv could move. He only managed ten spikes before they reappeared around him. The arrows collapsed around his person, and they came within a centimeter from striking—when they suddenly stopped.

Because they lost track of Shiv’s existence.

Outside Context Problem 60 > 61

“Fucking Roland,” Shiv snarled. “I knew he was planning to do this shit.”

“Roland…” Rose breathed. “Oh, my love.”

Shiv shot her an annoyed glare, but then noticed how one of the arrows turned and faced Adam.

Roland’s trance broke. He took a moment to focus—to truly observe the other Pathbearer and—

Roland gasped and stumbled back. His guard captain caught him before he could fall.

An ill feeling fell over Roland, but just then, a massive shape twisted over the sky, its mouth opening a thousand times over like an impossible fractal as it descended to swallow Blackedge whole. It crashed down against the town’s wards, and some of the spell patterns flickered out.

Roland saw some of the town’s Dynamancers collapse as they struggled against the eldritch beast’s weight. They stood on the borders of Blackedge, and they strained themselves to the limit and beyond. They needed him. He couldn’t afford to be distracted. Not now.

Roland hissed and took more levels out of his Toughness, Navigation, and Memory Skills, dedicating them to his

Parallel Thinking 81 > 201 (Skill Evolution Imminent)

Skill Evolution: Parallel Thinking (Adept) > Stacked Consciousness (Heroic)

Suddenly, he could focus on multiple things at the same time. And he nearly dropped dead as his organs started failing from overstrain.

“Biomancers,” Roland gasped. “Attend me.”

Shiv let time resume as the arrows pulled away from him. Adam stared at them for a moment, and he swallowed.

“Father?” Adam said.

One of the arrows shivered in the air, and then it motioned a nod.

The Young Lord bit his lip. And Shiv started getting cold again. He immediately positioned himself behind Adam, drew in a steadying breath, and glared at Rose.

“If he shoots me and kills Adam, you'll be my witness.”

Rose frowned at him. “Roland would never harm our boy.”

“Yeah, well, I’m here right now, so we can see if he wants Adam alive more than he wants me dead.”

Shiv re-emerged into existence. The arrows around him flinched in a surprisingly human way.

“Shiv?” Adam breathed. He did a double-take just as he remembered Shiv’s existence. “What are you—”

“What?” Roland spat. He must’ve been going insane. A dying shriek came from the massive eldritch titan as a flood of brilliant arrows tore it apart from the inside. But while he handled the monster, the Omenborn…

Shiv stepped behind Adam with his hands high. “Don’t godsdamned shoot me, Roland. Or you might cook your precious boy too.”

Adam noticed Shiv maneuvering behind, and he scowled at the Deathless. "Really?" he breathed.

"Yeah, really," Shiv growled. As he looked at the many arrows, Shiv held up a finger, one in particular.

"Shiv," Adam hissed.

"What?" Shiv growled. "Your dad felling smote me from existence using the power of the sun. I'm allowed to be a little bit pissed off." One of the arrows drew a little closer to Shiv, and he immediately ducked behind Adam.

“Shiv, there’s no point to this—”

“If he wants to blow me up again, I'm going to have to rely on your Legendary armor of unbreakable nepotism. I’m not taking that shit to the face again.”

"I thought you enjoyed dying."

"Yeah, when I have someone to drain. Who was I going to drain if I didn't come upon that unlucky asshole over here?" Shiv said, gesturing at the dead rider.

"Me, you idiot," Adam breathed. Shiv paused. Adam folded his arms. And he looked slightly embarrassed. “I wouldn't have just let you vanish from existence. That’s the entire reason I came. I rushed over because I thought there weren’t any survivors.”

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

Shiv stared at Adam for a moment. Then he grunted awkwardly. "Yeah. Uh. Yeah, I guess. I guess that's right. So, uh, what the hells do we do now?"

"Now?" Adam stared at his father's arrows. "Now we..." And then the arrows receded. They shot back into the sky, moving so fast that Shiv could barely keep track of them. Barely. But as an experiment, he spiked his field more than a few times. Adam let out a cry as the force swept over him. Shiv went faster, faster. He spiked himself over sixty times.

His body was on the verge of breaking apart in an instant. His heart burst open, and Shiv cast himself back in time a second. He undid all his spikes of gravity. He returned to an unmoving state. His wounds were gone as well.

The arrows were still more than a little faster than he was while he was near death.

Shiv thought to himself. As he considered that question, he clenched his fists and his fingers tapped on his blade.

One of the arrows slipped back through the clouds as if threatening Shiv, and he ducked behind Adam again. The arrow retreated once more.

“Yeah, that’s right, piss off, asshole,” Shiv growled.

"My father is not being an asshole," Adam snarled. His eyebrows were furrowed, small, patchy arcs of red hair climbing towards his forehead. "He clearly had a good reason to shoot at you, and… and…”

"And what kind of reason was that?" Shiv spat. "I was trying to get away from the dragon cavalry—I manage to get away from the dragons. I avoided all those beams of Necromancy just for him to obliterate me and an entire section of the landscape. Actually, if he could do that, no wonder he's been holding off Sullain so long. No wonder he's been able to defend Blackedge for two weeks on his own. He doesn't need us! Let's go back to the gate. Let's close it and just wait for him to win on his own while we kick up our feet!"

Adam took a step toward Shiv, and his eyes simmered with unbridled rage at even the suggestion. "We are doing that," the Gate Lord snarled.

Shiv frowned at Adam, but then he let out a sigh. "Godsdamn it, all right, fine. So, what now?"

"Now we keep going," Adam said. "The observation posts here are either completely destroyed or buried beneath a tide of glass. We have an opening." And Adam held out a hand. "I managed to capture one of their dimensional ships earlier.”

"Dimensional ?" Shiv blinked. "Is that a thing?"

"I don't know exactly what it is. It's a ship that has a dimensional gate. I boarded it. I managed to capture the people aboard it. And then I piloted it back over to our gateway." Adam briefly looked at his current dimensional pathway. It was slowly closing. "What happened just now between you and my father might have been a misunderstanding. Were you wearing your armor?"

"I'm always wearing my armor," Shiv said.

"Were you wearing your helmet?"

"Yeah." Shiv paused. "Well, no, my helmet fell apart in the last fight."

"There we have it," Adam said. "He probably thought you were a Necrotech soldier. Why don't you just change the design of your armor, huh?"

"What do you mean, change the design of my armor?" Shiv folded his arms. "So I'm going to have to change my design just because they happened to copy my style."

"They looked like that first."

"Well, how was I supposed to know that?" Shiv replied.

"It doesn't matter anymore," Adam muttered, waving him off. "He knows now. It won’t happen again. Just get moving. We have an opening, and my father's watching us. And since he hasn't struck you again..."

"Yet," Shiv said.

"Yet," Adam begrudgingly agreed, "you can continue on. You can fly. You can reach Blackedge, and you can finish your scouting run. But the fact he can reach us this far is…” Adam narrowed his eyes. “Far beyond Master-Tier.”

“Yeah.” Shiv shook his head. “More like Legend. Your father’s a damned monster. And Adam. I’m still going to kick his ass down the line. For this and everything else. I’m stating it plainly for you. I’m not letting this shit go.”

The Gate Lord just stared. “Do you think you even can?”

“I’ll just have to keep dying and find out.”

Adam scoffed, but he clearly didn’t like what Shiv just said. “Go. Go, now. Finish the scouting run.”

Shiv let out a sigh. "Fine." But he briefly looked around him. "I'm going to probably take an alternative route instead of going straight over. I expect Sullain’s people to come investigating real soon.”

"Probably a good expectation," Adam said, nodding. "Alright. Well..." Adam awkwardly looked down and licked his lips, then his expression softened. He promptly patted Shiv on the shoulder. "Glad you're not dead for good."

Shiv chuckled. "Yeah, me too. Thanks for… coming to get me. I appreciate it.”

"I'll keep watching you," Adam said, smirking. Then he looked up as well. "More than just me will be watching you now, I think." Adam's expression, however, was wistful, hopeful, even joyful. That wasn't anything Shiv felt towards Roland Arrow.

They parted then. Adam vanished back into his dimensional pathway before it closed entirely, and Shiv launched himself into the air. He pulled his gravitic field, and he flung himself forward, sailing high into the sky.

Trailing particulates of ash washed over his body. But as he accelerated, they burst apart, and as he climbed his Inertial Overdrive, he thundered with energy. Soon, the horizon blurred towards Shiv, and his bones began to fracture. But he needed to get out of here. Anxiety built up inside him like a lump. It grew more and more painful, tighter with every second.

He waited for Roland to strike him down after all, now that Adam was gone. He waited for another of the arrows to descend from above. He waited, and Shiv prepared to spike himself more than ever. He tried to trigger one of the plagues he had stored in his body, but then he realized that piece was lodged in his old corpse.

Shiv thought to himself,

And as he burst through a layer of blackened clouds, a cocoon of searing heat and breaking ash peeled away from him like surface tension. Once more, the naked night sky greeted him. The glistening shards of the moon danced above, and in the distance, brilliant gems flashed and dimmed. Perhaps they were true stars, perhaps they were more of Roland's arrows. With how many scintillating constellations there were blanketing the sky above, pockmarked with clouds, Shiv couldn't be sure.

"Hey, Roland," he cried out, "if you're listening to me right now, , I'm not here to kill you or anything. The Omenborn Curse died the day I did on Blackedge. You're welcome for me dying to protect the town, by the way. You're also welcome for me helping your son out while you were sitting on your ass here for weeks. I guess you couldn't spare a few arrows for your own boy."

A part of Shiv knew he was being petulant, foolish, even, for taunting someone so powerful for no real reason. But he couldn’t let it go. The bastard just blew him to pieces. Shiv didn't even have a chance to defend himself.

Shiv sighed. He imagined himself having good odds in a fight against just about any Master-Tier Pathbearer right now. Shiv thought he was going to show Roland the what-for when he got his Momentum Core, but now…

Shiv couldn't help but laugh. He had been delusional, and Roland Arrow was . If he tried fighting Roland Arrow now, he would get killed in an instant.

Shiv thought to himself.

And then Shiv detonated his inertial sheath for the first time as he sped toward the Tidewall, toward Lost Angeles, toward a fast-approaching horizon.

Back at Blackedge, atop Starhawk's Perch, Roland Arrow was shaking. The bulk of his minds fought on. The bulk of his minds were still dedicated to defense, to bombarding the literal tide of eldritch entities Vicar Sullain had summoned today. They were new creatures on the field; strange, sinuous nightmares that consumed pockets of space.

And from those pockets leaked more of the Outside. More of the Outside that spontaneously died as Chronomancy arrows exploded into existence and lit up the night.

The System allowed the eldritch in right now for some reason. The System wanted the vicar to have this power. Most mages—even Heroic or Legendary Dimensionalists—couldn't reach the Outside so easily.

Something was happening. The world was scheming for a grander war. Just like it always was.

But a part of Roland, that very foundation of who he was, that small bit of him that was utterly human, knelt within his personal chamber, shaking. Knelt as his Psychomancer tried to hopelessly fix whatever was broken inside of him, as his Biomancers gave what little bit of magic they had left to keep his heart from stopping.

"It's not you," Roland whispered, "it's not you, it's not me, it's not..."

"My Lord, my Lord," Chris, his personal Psychomancer, breathed. "What's wrong? What's happened? What have you seen?"

He stared at her. His mouth opened and closed several times, but even as he stared at her, he wasn't staring at her. He was staring at another scene. He was staring at his son standing next to the Omenborn…

Harlon’s son… Vera’s son.

Tanner. Tanner was beside Adam. And they looked…

They looked just like Harlon and Roland so many years ago. The thought almost made him throw up. It was like a taunt inflicted across history.

And Roland couldn’t take it. He shouldn’t remember their faces. He shouldn’t remember—

"Chris," Roland whispered. “The memory blocks you put in me have broken. I remember his face again. I remember her face again… I remember…”

Chris paled. “My Lord, I—Forgive me, this—”

Roland clenched his jaw and let out a breath. "My son is coming home to aid us, and I think our doom might be coming with him." He closed his eyes and looked up.