(I) Rematch

-Communication between “Corvus” and an unknown party as overheard by a Weaveress Shadow Cell15 (I)

Rematch

Shiv’s knuckles hammered into the relative softness of the raven-helmed stranger’s throat, and they gagged from the blow. He sensed the softness of their body—the parts that weren’t covered by armor, and he snarled in vicious triumph.

Shiv sneered internally.

But where Shiv had a minor advantage with his Adept-Tier Diamond Shell, his Reflexes were still pathetic compared to the raven. In an instant, Shiv felt deep gashes open up along his wrists, waist, thigh, and near his groin. The Deathless rasped and fought back cries of pain as he drove his thumb into the raven’s Adam's apple.

The assassin gagged once again and stabbed at Shiv’s side. Each stab broke skin but chipped against the dense tissues below. The best thing about Diamond Shell was that it made of Shiv’s body uniform in terms of hardness. That meant even nightglass needed to fight through every inch of flesh it pierced. Shiv was bleeding from practically everywhere, but the wounds weren’t deep enough to be fatal.

The raven-helmed stranger realized that as well. That’s why he changed his tactic.

With a surge of terrifying strength, he palmed Shiv off his body and sent the Deathless tumbling into the air. Shiv went flying—but drove his mana field against the raven in response. The raven let out another ragged cry—and Shiv felt something wrong with his Magical Resistance.

The raven was magically hurt bad enough that they couldn’t press the attack. As Shiv slammed back down the bridge, he cracked the stones beneath. He rose to his feet and took in his enemy properly for the first time.

Across from him, the assassin was bleeding too. But not from any of the wounds Shiv gave him. The raven’s left arm dangled like a deboned limb, and a deep cut ran along his left calf. His armor was dented, burned, and deformed. Each breath he took came with a deep wheeze.

Such were the questions on Shiv’s mind as he continued trying to break his enemy’s remaining resistance with his Biomancy while advancing on them. His mana field tensed hard like the magical muscle as Shiv focused. A crimson spell pattern formed between both his hands as he pressed them together. With every bit of effort, more of the raven’s compromised Magical Resistance cracked, and the assassin jerked and howled.

“E-enough!” Shiv didn’t even see the raven hit him. Even after all the levels his Reflexes got, he wasn’t fast enough. Shiv’s focus broke, and his spell died. A heavy bruise lined his lower stomach as he found himself launched off the bridge, the raven-helmed stranger tumbling in tow.

Not even a second into the fall, the raven-helmed stranger transformed into a mess of black feathers. Shiv realized the assassin’s plan of escape. However, Shiv could still feel his biology, still feel the enemy’s presence with his mana field, and so he smashed his Biomancy into him again, striking wild and hard. The raven cried out. Even though Shiv couldn’t crack through his Magical Resistance fully, it was enough to shake the raven's focus.

The stranger reformed just in time for Shiv to punch him in the face twice. Shiv could feel his Diamond-Shelled fists slamming and cracking parts of his enemy’s helmet. He wasn’t strong enough to deliver true harm this way—and Shiv knew it. It was just really hard to hit someone’s throat while free-falling. Still, the impacts distracted the raven long enough for Shiv to do something else.

Shiv twisted his body, gripping the raven by the waist, and between their two combined might they slammed into the edge bridge below and then bounced off the side again. Once more, they were in free fall, and despite feeling like someone had dropped a wall on him, Shiv was still combat-capable. The raven-helmed stranger, however, was gasping and wheezing. Every impact made his wounds worse, made him suffer more.

Shiv realized.

Grappling Proficiency > 26

Striking Proficiency > 15

He secured an arm around the raven-helmed stranger’s neck as they plunged further. He pressed his back hard against his foe and saw a wide-open walkway fast approaching. They crashed into it, and several Umbrals let out a unified cry of shock and fear. They backed away and a Weaveress ran up behind them, pulling them behind her, shielding them from harm.

Shiv squeezed his arms as hard as he could, trying to constrict the raven’s breathing. However, his enemy simply stood up, bearing his weight with contemptuous ease. His Physicality was still far superior to Shiv's. So, he adapted. He stomped his foot into the bleeding wound on his right calf and heard the man cry out in misery. Shiv did it again, and the raven dropped. Shiv felt the blood leaking from the raven-helmed stranger seep through his own leg as he secured a rear-naked choke.

“You bastard!” the raven-helmed stranger choked. “Why can’t you just… ?” With a staggering burst of strength, the raven buried his fingers into the ground and launched both of them off the walkway. Shiv tried to hold on, but suddenly the raven was a blur of motion. The stranger twisted. Two elbows cracked into Shiv’s cheek and then his nose. Shiv’s head snapped back, and he snarled in frustration more than pain. His nose was bleeding but not broken. However, the momentum of the fight had shifted in the raven's favor.

The air around him blurred as he felt his fall suddenly accelerate. The raven-helmed stranger clapped Shiv on the side of his head—his balance collapsed as sirens went off in his ears. The raven was on top of him now, stolen nightglass blade raised high to stab Shiv—but they crashed into another surface, sending them bouncing across what felt like a smooth, rolling texture. Shiv let out a grunt as his back cracked and dented against what felt like metal. He looked behind him and saw a group of Umbrals in what looked like carriage seats staring at him. There were even a few children. Beneath him, a beastly moan sounded. They were on one of those pancake things he saw flying through the air earlier, and it let out something that sounded like a cow’s moo.

Shiv didn’t have time to appreciate that, though. Not when the raven-helmed stranger jabbed two thumbs in his eyes. Shiv tried to stop them—caught him by the wrists, but he was still not strong enough.

To the raven’s mutual displeasure, he wasn’t strong enough either. His fingers pressed hard against Shiv’s eyes but didn't have the momentum to squash his Diamond Shelled-eyeballs, even if Shiv hissed in pain. “What? Why? You weren’t this tough—” Shiv kicked him between the legs again, and this time, raven let out a loud hiss of pain. Shiv swept his legs and rolled over on him. He dropped a knee on the raven's wounded calf, and the man howled.

Again, Shiv was on top of him, and drove his thumb into an opening of their visor. Something wet dotted his thumb. The raven cursed and tossed Shiv off. As Shiv rolled back to a stand, he saw the raven rubbing his left eye. The Deathless looked at his hand and frowned. No blood. Just tears. “Yeah, doesn’t feel good when it’s the other way around, does it?” Shiv snarled. He eyed the scared Umbrals before driving his Biomancy into the raven again. The enemy flinched back, and Shiv wrapped his arms around the raven's waist. Shiv eyed the Umbrals and offered them a grin. “Sorry, we’re just dropping by. We’ll be going now.”

Then, he suplexed the raven off the giant creature.

Physicality > 46

Once more, they were falling, and this time Shiv clapped the raven-helmed stranger on both ears.

This elicited a brief gasp from the raven, but he recovered faster than Shiv. He drove the back of his head into Shiv’s nose—worsening the bleeding—before hooking his legs around Shiv’s waist. Somehow, he managed to turn, and now Shiv was the one heading toward the ground first. He pulled at the raven’s head, but they crashed atop another bridge before he could shift their positions.

Something inside Shiv briefly clicked, and a flare of pain followed, but he had taken enough injuries over his life to know what was just a sprain and what was actually a fracture. He recovered, rising up to drive one of his elbows into the raven-helmed stranger’s injured arm. Unprepared, the raven toppled back with a loud curse, and his wounded leg gave out. He staggered back—but delivered a lightning-fast jab to Shiv's face before he could approach. This punch finally broke his nose, and Shiv groaned, blinking tears from his eyes and blowing blood out to clear his ruined airways.

The two stared at each other, gasping and snarling. They were like two wild dogs. Two wild dogs about to fight to the death in front of a group of spiders. Weavers—smaller than the Weaveresses from earlier—watched nearby, and they immediately clambered to the underside of the bridge for safety.

“What… in the Broken Moon is wrong with you?” the raven breathed. “Why won’t you just… stop?”

Shiv glared at the raven-helmed stranger and sneered. “What’s wrong with me is that some tainted asshole threw me off Blackedge.”

The stranger shook his head. “What even are you?”

Shiv looked at his enemy stranger and spat on the ground next to him. “Goddamn vengeful, is what I am.” And then he slammed his Biomancy field against the raven’s crumbling Magical Resistance as he charged.

The raven-helmed stranger let out a gasp of pain, tried to dodge, but his wounded leg failed him. Shiv, though far slower, shot low and spun around the raven, one of his fingers into the wound on the enemy’s right calf. The raven-helmed stranger screamed. Hot blood welled over Shiv’s hand as he used the stranger’s wound like a handlebar, and he began swinging—bringing the stranger up and down, bouncing them off the ground from side to side as hard as he could.

He wasn’t stronger than them in direct competition, but the weight of a person was trifling to his current Physicality, and so long as he kept his enemy off balance, he could keep swinging. He dented nearby railings, bounced the stranger off walls, and hammered him against the pavement until the stones broke, sending bits of rock skipping everywhere. Nearby, his field touched scared Umbrals—people backing away in surprise and shock. There were a lot of people here, and briefly he realized how far down he’d fallen.

Shiv thought as he spun around and bounced the raven-helmed stranger’s face off a nearby light post. Nightglass shattered and scattered on the ground. Shiv, using his Reflexes, caught one shard and jammed it into the wound he was holding. The raven-helmed stranger screamed again as Shiv pulled the blade up, severing his tendon in that leg entirely.

Reflexes > 39

But the same pieces of glass fell next to the raven-helmed stranger. At some point, the enemy lost his stolen blade—and now he had options again.

Within a half second, the raven vanished as he tore his leg out of Shiv’s grasp. Before he could react, the Deathless felt several points of his body erupt in blood and pain. He tried to take in a breath and coughed instead as something was pressed into his throat. Even with his Diamond Shell, he wasn’t immune to damage, and nightglass could pierce a high vampire. Most of the cuts the raven left didn’t go that deep because of how weakened he was, but still, it didn’t take much to embed a piece of nightglass in someone’s throat.

Shiv growled as he found the raven-helmed stranger trying to pound the blade lodged in his throat deeper. Shiv let them, trusting his diamond skin to endure in his stead. While he did that, he went to work on the raven’s body—stabbing underneath their armpit and slicing along the undersides of their wrists, just like he did last time. The stranger cried out, but Shiv betrayed no pain. Cuts and stabs were exchanged between them, and soon both were stained in each other’s lifeblood.

“Die,” the raven-helmed stranger wheezed, practically begging for Shiv to drop first. They hammered the shard, and Shiv felt it slide slightly deeper—every inch a struggle against his Diamond Shell. Shiv didn’t care. It didn’t matter if he died. It didn’t matter at all. He would give his life a thousand times more if it meant killing this bastard right now.

Suddenly, he found himself picked off the ground and flung into the air. As Shiv lost track of the raven for a beat, a burst of black feathers suddenly materialized above him, and then he saw the enemy spinning through the air. The raven’s left heel came down on Shiv’s neck. Before he could respond, he felt the shard of nightglass shoot all the way through him, severing the back of his spine.

Physicality > 47

Reflexes > 40

Knife Proficiency > 22

Diamond Shell > 55

Grappling Proficiency > 31

Striking Proficiency > 18

Parry > 18

Biomancy > 19

Shiv jolted, twitched, and perished in one instant as they fell off another bridge. His Revenant manifested and reached out to start draining from the raven-helmed stranger without missing a beat. The enemy cried out and tried to move, but Shiv rammed his Biomancy field into him again, stunning the man before he could escape in a burst of feathers. A drip of his mana seeped into the stranger, but when Shiv tried to pull him apart, a spike of pain washed through his own mind.

Shiv groaned, trying not to lose focus. He would need to give himself some time to recover.

They were once again in free fall, descending past the light of the higher city—past what appeared to be weaver laborers hammering and carving new murals in the obsidian of the great structures that composed Weave. As they descended closer into the dark, the raven-helmed stranger twisted in the air, striking wildly, trying to cut at Shiv’s incorporeal form as shadows began to congeal.

“What are you? Let me go. Let me go. I’ll give you anything. I’ll give you mithril. You just need to let me go. We can come to an arrangement.” The raven continued to beg, and Shiv’s hate for his enemy intensified.

If the felling bastard thought this was a thing about money and bribery, he was mistaken. The raven came to his home to kill his people and killed him several times over. Shiv might not have liked Blackedge very much, aside from a few people, but still, most people there didn’t have it coming. There was a difference between not liking someone and hoping they died. And Shiv remembered Feather, who gave him his armor after failing to save his sister. He remembered the automaton Pathbearer who died protecting Georges, and all the Arrow Family Guards who gave their lives in defense of the town's people.

Whatever they felt toward Shiv, they were good warriors at the end of the day.

Shiv promised.

Vitality Drain > 6

Vitality drained, and with his Magical Resistance breaking apart, the raven was unprepared for Shiv’s resurrection. He wrapped his hands around the man's neck and began to squeeze. The stranger choked with discomfort and tried to stab Shiv, but the Deathless chopped the raven’s throat again, just like he did at the start of the fight.

This time, he felt his hand drive deeper, and the raven's laboured breaths devolved into a coughing fit—leaving the fool ignorant of the fast-approaching ground.

Shiv landed a final elbow on the raven’s helmet at the same time they impacted the bottom of Weave. Their combined weight struck the ground like an artillery spell. Rocks splintered everywhere and the people around them scattered in terror. The raven’s broken arm made a terrible snapping noise, and the man started shrieking. This inspired Shiv to start slamming his wounded arm against the ground.

“L-let go! LET GO!” the raven wailed. He shoved Shiv off with a surge of adrenaline and launched the Deathless into the air. As Shiv went up, his original body tumbled down—apparently, it struck another of the flat, flying creatures along the way.

Shiv groaned as he saw his old corpse falling. He couldn’t let the Umbrals or the Weaveresses discover what he could do—who he was. Straining his barely recovered mana field, he pasted his body with his Biomancy, but preserved two ribs. Those, he sharpened as much as he could. As Shiv landed next to a splash of red, he rolled right and picked up his makeshift

It felt really weird looting bits of his dead body for weapons. Really weird. But also kind of awesome.

Shiv rose from the ground, covered in cuts, bruises, and stained with blood from his original body. A few meters away, the raven struggled to rise, stumbling out of the crater he lay in. His helmet was cracked from Shiv’s descending elbow from earlier, and Shiv saw the face of his enemy for the first time. The raven was a gaunt, bald man with a narrow nose and sharp ears. An elf, but not an elf from the Abyss. No, an elf that Shiv would see back home, like Heather, the Jump Mage from Tran’s team.

The Raven wasn’t some assassin sent from the Abyss—or at least, he didn’t seem to be. He was someone that Shiv might have encountered in Blackedge.

“What is wrong with you? Why are you like this? Why? Why are you so committed to seeing me dead?” the raven whined. He was a bloody mess, and he looked ready to drop.

Shiv spat, holding his rib-daggers high. “Nothing business, just personal.”