(III) Overwhelmed

161 (III)Overwhelmed

The world shook and shuddered. The surface of reality resembled a pool struck by a falling boulder.

A screen of displaced force swept over Shiv, Hawgrave, and Marikos. Shiv remanifested his Pillar of Orichalcum as the Dragon-Knight held up his shield, and Hawgrave was driven back, only to twirl on her feet and angle her torso behind the dragon. She suddenly shrank, becoming the size of an insect as she vanished between the cracks lining Marikos's armor.

Just then, Shiv also noticed how Marikos wasn't bleeding anymore. There was a large hole in his armor where Stormholt's lightning had run him through, but there was not even a trace of blood left over. The Deathless blinked.

His momentary distraction broke as Stormhalt was launched across the horizon like a projectile. A burst of force cracked the ground, and the City Lord revealed he was still alive, as a pulsing wave of thunder kept him from the worst of the harm. Even so, he couldn't countermand the Tarrasque's overwhelming might. The lightning tree he was connected to snapped as well, breaking at the base.

As it shattered, the ethereal form of one of the Ascendants vanished altogether. Kathereine lingered for a moment longer, glaring down at the Tarrasque. It turned its red and white eyes on Marikos and Shiv. But just then, the Songbringer let out a pitched shriek. It was a piercing shriek, a melodic shriek. It was a shriek Shiv would give anything to hear. And it was a shriek that briefly left the Tarrasque stunned. Its eyes rolled, and its tongue lolled out. It resembled a large hound now more than ever, then. And slowly, Kathereine began to fade.

She turned and gave Shiv a final wink.

And as she vanished, a shudder of cold terror passed through him. Shiv resolved mentally.

Marikos cried out, not wasting his chance. His wings came ablaze with Pyromancy, and he tore across the air, dragging Shiv's pillar of Orichalcum across the ground. And the already devastated landscape parted in twain. Two streams of rubble exploded in opposite directions as Shiv found himself swung upward. Check latest chapters at novel•fire.net

The top of the pillar connected with the Tarrasque's chin. A resounding crash echoed from the huge beast's head. It reared back slightly, but its crystalline shell suffered no damage at all. Marikos pivoted. He twisted his body the other way, using the recoil to his advantage. He didn't lose any momentum at all as he brought Shiv down on the Tarrasque's head. The beast tilted and still failed to respond. Whatever Kathereine did to it, it left it stunned for an extended duration.

Shiv thought to himself.

And suddenly, Hawgrave reappeared, her body swelling to the size of a small mountain, and then even larger as she dropped down from the skies above. Shiv didn't even know when she'd left them. The last time he saw her, she was hiding in a crack along Marikos's armor. Now, she went into a crouch as she brought Rusty down against the back of the Tarrasque in a downward thrust.

Her blade glittered, but not with Dimensionality. Instead, it simply shone with a pale light that became a perfect reflection of the world around it. Shiv caught sight of himself, of his body encased in the red-gold amber of his pillar. He also saw Marikos, his face bared back in a snarl, his wings ablaze, his armor flaking away from his draconic form. Hawgrave thrust down. Marikos swung Shiv upward.

The resulting collision had four parts. Marikos and Shiv were the hammer. The Tarrasque was the victim, and Hawgrave and Rusty became the nail. The top side of the Tarrasque's body burst asunder. Black blood erupted from its back, raining down upon the wasteland like a volcanic eruption. Only then did the Tarrasque react, its eyes blinking. It drew in a long, shuddering gasp, but went still as Hawgrave slammed her elbow down upon the hilt of her blade.

Rusty gave a bellow of its own as it surged and, with a final flash, punched clean through the Tarrasque, ripping it almost in half. It dropped lifelessly from the air, and Shiv let out a laugh of wonderment.

They'd managed to disable it! Now all he needed to do was get close to the Tarrasque and—

The monster let out a loud laugh as its eyes swiveled back in place. It opened its mouth, and it showed Shiv something: a large, pulsating organ fused to its tongue. The Deathless was flabbergasted. Did the Tarrasque just pull the vampire heart-moving trick on them?

It reached up and seized Hawgrave by the leg. She let out a yelp, and the flaming wheels manifested beneath her feet. But as she tried to fly upward, the Tarrasque held her tight. Beams of magic impacted her armor and bounced off, but they still managed to stun her briefly. Briefly enough for the Tarrasque to get another hand around her other leg, and it swung her at the same time Sir Marikos swept Shiv forth.

The Deathless cried out, trying to get Marikos to pull away, but the Tarrasque was faster than they, and it used Hawgrave as a club of its own. She collided with Shiv's pillar, and it was then that Shiv discovered he wasn't quite tough enough to contend with both a Tarrasque's overwhelming might and the body of a True Legend.

Shiv's pillar snapped. His spine followed suit.

Pillar of Orichalcum 217 > 218

A chortle of pain came from the Deathless as the back of his head slammed against the top of his asscrack. To the merit of Shiv's Heroic-Tier Toughness Skill, however, Hawgrave let out a cry as well, and he was pretty sure her collarbone broke from the impact. Marikos called out, but he was promptly interrupted as the Tarrasque swung again and swatted the dragon out of the sky using Hawgrave's enormous body.

But that blow woke the surfacer Legend from her stupor, and she gave a vicious scream. She shrank, becoming impossibly small. In an instant, both she and her blade vanished, and the Tarrasque stumbled forward—off balance. A moment later, Hawgrave reappeared right behind it, and she hooked her hands along its hind legs as she threw herself over her head in a devastating suplex. The Tarrasque was wrenched off its feet and slammed down on its back. An earthquake shook the world, and Hawgrave crashed hard atop its body, maintaining side control as Shiv caught sight of a flashing piece of metal in her hands. Rusty had shrunk to the size of a knife, and she was currently using it to gouge the Tarrasque's body apart.

"It's in its mouth!" Shiv choked out as he spun through the air. A tentacle extended out from the side of the Tarrasque, and a beam struck Shiv dead on the head. Death came to him instantly, but more pain soon followed. A lance of spearing Psychomancy carved a screaming absence into his mind, and it only paused when Marikos returned, bringing his shield to bear. The Dragon-Knight’s voice droned on, sounding like a muffled cry underwater to Shiv’s addled mind as he called for his friend to get up.

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Pillar of Orichalcum 218 > 220

Gravitic Wrestler 171 > 172

Vitaemancy 84 > 86

Vitality Drain 70 > 74

Outside Context Problem 71 > 76

Then there came a crushing pressure. Shiv found himself pried free from where he existed. There was but a sliver of him left, a single string of vitae, and a few hundred meters above them, the Tarrasque re-materialized from a pocket of spilling static-black. It descended with its fists reared back and clasped together, and it brought them down to deliver a final blow upon both the Dragon-Knight and Shiv.

Marikos swept his shield up, and though the Tarrasque was overwhelmingly powerful, though it was many times the Dragon Knight's size, when its hands met Marikos's shield, the latter barely even budged. Every bit of force Marikos suffered was absorbed into the shield and was promptly unleashed back at the Tarrasque in an explosive cone. The titanic beast let out a desperate cry as it was flung through the air.

Shiv failed to keep track of it, but it jerked to a violent halt as Hawgrave swung her blade sideways like a bat, trying to split it in half. She managed to embed the edge of Rusty in the back of the Tarrasque, but a fourth of the way through its body, her titanic blade got stuck, and the Tarrasque slammed both its hands together.

Waves of cascading gravitational force ripped everyone away from where they stood. Hawgrave shrank once more, but the Tarrasque ripped itself free from her blade with a little bit of help from one of its Biomancy-infused tentacles and swung its hand out wide

A blinding detonation of force and mana followed, and when Shiv triggered his Farsight skill, he saw Hawgrave sail further and further toward the horizon. Much like Stormhalt earlier, she was back in her human form, over half a meter shorter than Shiv at baseline. And considering how limp she was, Shiv suspected she was unconscious.

Less than a few hours ago, she'd utterly demolished Shiv using only her fingers. But before the Tarrasque, even a Legend was helpless.

“Fuck,” Shiv whispered to himself.

The Tarrasque eyed Marikos briefly, but then it turned, and it growled something that made Shiv's heart stop.

The final orders delivered to the Tarrasque by Sullain were still in play, and its body became drenched in Dimensionality mana as it tore across distance and began pouring itself into Hawgrave's blade as it flew after its wielder.

Rusty gave out a metallic cry, and Shiv began draining vitality from the world, lest he perish from the cold. Just then, he thought back to what he'd seen Sullain do earlier.

The Tarrasque's form shrank as it cast itself into the blade in an injection of mana. Shiv halted time, only for his temporal shell to shatter as a wave of golden mana tore through him. A radiating gasp of disbelief escaped Shiv. Through the chaos, he failed to notice Marikos's temporal wardings, and what incredible wardings they were.

Of course, he had to find out the worst way possible at the worst time possible. He didn't have time to blindly emulate whatever the world's greatest Mage had been doing earlier. They needed to rip the Tarrasque out of that sword before it got to Blackedge. Without any better options, Shiv wrapped his formless body around the Dragon-Knight’s arm.

Shiv cried out with a burst of Psychomancy. Using the badly frayed Magical Skill proved to be a mistake. The projection of mind mana barely left him before it burst apart into a spray of nothingness. Shiv's Vitae form curled in on itself as he doubled over in pain.

Marikos cried, briefly eyeing Shiv with a look of surprise.

And then Marikos questioned no more as he dove through the air, reaching for the Tarrasque's hind legs. But the behemoth was impossibly fast, and with a final burst of static, it vanished. Marikos clawed nothing but open air, and a feeling of near despair spread through Shiv. Then Hawgrave's blade flared with its own Dimensionality mana, and it cast out a stream of magic, swallowing both Shiv and the Legendary Knight.

A moment later, they were falling, dragged through a tight tunnel that pulled them into a vast pocket dimension.

As they re-emerged, Shiv resurrected, having sapped a bit of vitality from Marikos. He intended to apologize as soon as he came back from the dead, but if the Legend noticed, he didn't show it. A new dimension came into form around them, but it was ultimately little more than empty space comprised of black static.

Shiv immediately activated his Pillar of Orichalcum, and Marikos let out a cough of surprise as he noticed Shiv's restored form clinging to his shoulder. He reached up and grabbed Shiv as they sped through the black expanse. Shiv tried to look around, but soon, his Toughness exceeded his strength, and he found himself only capable of staring forward. He didn't know where the Tarrasque was—

came a deafening bellow. Rusty's warning barely saved him and Marikos. The Dragon-Knight swung his shield upward, stopping the Tarrasque dead. The world-ending monster reached over Marikos's shield, but he struck at the Tarrasque's wrist using Shiv. The pillar rattled the Tarrasque's joints, and though it didn't sustain any visible damage, the force of the blow still knocked its grasping hand aside.

Just then, the pressure vanished, and Shiv realized they'd still been in transit a few moments ago, not fully in the dimension itself.

Marikos swung Shiv left to right, slamming him into the Tarrasque's head, face, body, and legs. Marikos cried out,

A surge of Pyromancy flowed over Shiv, and Marikos began to wail on the Tarrasque, using both might and magic at once. This proved to be a winning combination. As Shiv impacted the Tarrasque now, he started cracking its body. Something about Marikos's flames, impossibly hot as they were, weakened the Tarrasque's external shell, shattered its Magical Resistance, and did something to its crystalline flesh.

It did something bad enough that Shiv cracked the Tarrasque more with every subsequent hit. Marikos was swinging harder now, getting only faster. Shiv closed his eyes and swallowed back mouthfuls of vomit. It took a lot to make him nauseous, but the Dragon-Knight achieved it with little effort. Shiv activated the Song of the Vigilant, maintaining his focus not for spellcasting, but to keep getting tougher.

Even so, the arms race between the Tarrasque's body and Shiv's Heroic-Tier skill was a hopeless one. As the Tarrasque cracked, it healed, and as Marikos swung Shiv harder and harder, the Pillar of Orichalcum began to sustain damage, and Shiv himself thereafter. The soul-wounds inflicted by Stormhalt's lightning earlier still wept with free-flowing blood.

Part of Shiv's shoulder cracked, and then he felt one of his lungs deflate after a particularly heavy impact. Marikos let out a deafening bellow as he brought Shiv down, intending to drive the Deathless through the Tarrasque's eye. But massive hands clamped around Shiv, hands infused with the power of gravity. Shiv stopped dead. Marikos gave a cry of exertion, but he couldn't move Shiv at all.

Marikos adapted, blasting a beam of concentrated fire into the Tarrasque’s eye. But when the haze cleared and the smoke parted, the Tarrasque was glaring at them with a large, toothy smile on its face. It let out a chuckle, and it twisted its hands in opposite directions. Shiv's skill cracked, and part of Shiv's skull shattered as a wave of gravitational force flowed through his Orichalcum, slamming into his body. He let out an agonized shout, and he heard Marikos call his name.

The Dragon-Knight released Shiv then. He held up both hands, and an orb of pulsating fire materialized between them. It was an overwhelmingly powerful sphere of Pyromancy, bright enough that its very presence consumed this static world in light, and hot enough that Shiv felt his flesh char even within the pillar.

In that moment, he remembered something that Valor had told him, all the way back in the Umbral Wilderness.

Shiv had asked.

Valor had replied.

The Tarrasque prepared to unleash its explosive Magical Resistance once more, but Marikos still had one more trick up his sleeve. He slammed his foot against Shiv's pillar, and he drove Shiv into the Tarrasque's eye as soon as it released the Deathless. The behemoth let out a cry of surprised pain, and Marikos flung his arms downward, channeling the sun-bright incandescence of his Pyre of the Wounded Dawn directly into the Tarrasque's body.

Marikos cried, his voice resounding with power.