(I) Descend

-Interview with Master-Lieutenant Harrison Haebenauer of the Yellowstone Republic Special Operations after 165 (I)

Descend

The Tarrasque’s bestial madness gored Uva’s consciousness like a thing of claw and fang. Though Uva drew upon all her empowered Psychomancy, she was still drowning, drowning beneath the Tarrasque's overwhelming weight. Its mind was unlike anything she'd ever tasted. It didn't so much have thoughts as it did axioms, things it had to do. There was no choice in the Tarrasque's mind.

Violence, destruction, death, cruelty.

These were the only options it had, the only things it truly understood.

And connected to its emotions weren't memories, but what felt like a , a realm made up of ruined buildings, of the bodies of Necrotechs, Umbrals, elves, humans, goblins, and more. It was a bleak world, punished by blackest rain, where dragons plunged down into a festering wasteland, where the rivers ran with foul black ichor, and where the very winds were infused with sickness and wilting decay.

The mind of the Tarrasque swirled like a tempest madness, and Uva felt herself be torn free from her corporeal form, dragged into the depths of the great beast in a brutal instant, drawn into the black reality hidden within the Tarrasque’s mind.

Everything blurred. She bit back a haggard cry as she tried to keep her mind from breaking. And then she landed hard on the ground, and something inside her broke as her Non-Euclidean Physique failed to respond. Her Blastmolt Skill triggered. She blinked into place a meter away from where she struck the ground, and her Blastmolt exploded beside her, launching her further. Pain blossomed along her ribs first, but then it began to spread across her skin and down her flesh.

It was then that she realized the foul darkness within the rain here was eating through her.

Uva held up a hand, and her eyes widened in animal panic as her armor began to flake and dissolve, and the skin underneath was peeled layer by layer. Misting trails of blood danced around her, and the agony she suffered grew from severe to exquisite.

The Tarrasque cackled through the howling winds. It was nowhere to be seen, yet it was everywhere; all around her. Its voice rumbled like distant thunder, and as she looked up into the sky, there was a long, scarred stretch in this reality that stood before her like a pillar made from scabs. It went high up into the air and slipped past the thick blanket of ill clouds spewing tar-like venom upon the land.

As Uva lowered her head, she also realized she stood among a mountain of bodies, a sea of bodies, a of bodies. These writhing corpses—No, not corpses, , people still alive, still suffering, cried out all around her. A symphony of nightmarish suffering greeted her senses. Most of the victims here were flayed down to the bone across half their bodies, and from their open wounds wept sores, sores that were constantly nourished by the black, sludge-like rain.

More rain hit Uva as well, and it began to burrow into her rotting flesh, into her mind. The Tarrasque's fell influence was tainting her, settling into her body and soul, compromising her mind, and filling her with that same malicious desire that constantly oozed from the monster’s every fiber.

Bit by bit, she felt its mind intrude on her. If it were an ocean, and she was a pond, she wasn't just being swallowed; she was being subsumed. Soon she would join the other victims here, be flayed down to the bone, made into an exposed husk of spewing viscera, and her mind would go as well.

Here she was no Psychomancer, not even a Pathbearer. Here she was sapped and withered, weakened and decayed. Here she was—

The Dreamtaker's pulsing words were spoken in cadence by the Starhawk, and for the first time, truly the first time, both her eldritch ally and the Earthwhile Ascendant moved in tandem, unleashing their power through Uva, driving the Tarrasque's brutal presence back.

Uva flared with power, and a deluge of colors exploded from her eyes. She turned her Dreamtaker's Gaze upward, and twin beacons of eldritch brightness cleaved a scar through the fetid night sky.

The foul clouds were parted in twain, and the black rain dissolved before the sudden presence of the Outside. The Tarrasque let out a cry as something foreign and hostile intruded into its mind. Cracks began to form within this mindscape, this inner hell that resided in the Tarrasque's consciousness. She felt it lash at her blindly with its overwhelming magic, yet its waves of mana were raw, unrefined.

Colossal tides of magic smashed into her, translucent waves that impacted her mind, yet they were cut aside, for even gale-force winds couldn't split a mountain, and that was what Uva was with divinity burning in her veins.

She was a Psychomancer, she was a Pathbearer, and as the Dreamtaker and Starhawk had declared, she wasn't alone. She had the backing of something more, something , and with the Tarrasque's intrusive powers stalemated, she struck back in return.

Blastmolt 89 > 90

Puppeteer of the Formless Strings 145 > 146

Viper Stance 77 > 79

Her retribution was meticulous and multi-angled. Her strands exploded out in all directions, rooting through the Tarrasque's mindscape, piercing and shredding. She couldn't find any thoughts for her to break, couldn't find any memories for her to manipulate. Again, this thing didn't have a consciousness, not really. It had intentions, it had things it knew, and it seemed to have a living world, or rather a living nightmare, that resided in its depths. But she was here, and one thing about the nightmare was that it still had a shape. It still was a thing of patterns, horrifying though the contents may be, and so she attacked it.

She turned her gaze down upon the victims littering the ground, their bodies draped over the many jutting ruins that characterized this place. As the colors of the Outside swept through their bodies, they dissolved, turning into flaking hues that merged with the eldritch gradients. The Tarrasque cried in outrage, offended that she was unmaking some of its destruction, stealing away some of its victims, and so she adapted. She turned her Psychomancy on the other bodies. Their minds were mostly hollow, but there was still a sliver of them left. Of course, there had to be. If not, how would they suffer, and how would the Tarrasque continue to feed?

She burrowed into them and crushed them without mercy. She didn't have time to consider the ethics of what she was doing, if this was right or wrong. As she shattered them, she felt a piece of the Tarrasque break as well. It was rooted within its victims. It was forged from them, seemingly. She didn't understand how its mind worked, but now she had a theory. Perhaps it gained more consciousness with every person it slew, with every body it destroyed, with every mind connected to a Pathbearer. If that was the case, then it made sense how it was gaining sentience so fast.

It was literally sapping it from its victims, not so unlike a Jealousy.

But what about this world? Why was it physical? Why was it so unlike any mind she'd ever entered? Her mana strands cleaved deep gouges through the ground, her every movement like a natural disaster, and countless writhing bodies came apart in face of her attack.

Beyond the weltering gore and water falling organs seeping out from widened wounds, she noticed structures, bits of debris and ruins. She recognized some of it. There were pieces from Blackedge, judging from the architecture, but others were chunks of material from Abyss. She recognized the face of a partially collapsed residence block—Descender style—and with every revelation, her understanding climbed to new heights.

A Tarrasque was a creature of destruction. It fed from destruction, it was nourished by destruction, and her mind instinctively turned to another type of being that was sustained the same way: orcs. Did the Challenger have a hand in creating the Tarrasque, with how it acted and lived?

Warning: You seek dangerous information. Pursuing this line of questioning further will put you at risk and draw the notice of the Farwalkers.

Uva remembered hearing of them. They were the ones that created Inertium, a strange group that hated mages and magic. But what did they have to do with Tarrasques?

The System's next notification came as suddenly as the first.

It is recommended that you do not pursue this line of inquiry any further.

This second notification came with a pulse of dread, dread that seemed to seep from the very world itself.

The System was her. Uva couldn’t remember it ever doing that before, or even hearing of anything similar happening to anyone.

Uva’s thoughts went unanswered.

No further notifications came. But the dread lingered, as did the feeling that she had overstepped. She pushed it aside, as the Tarrasque unleashed another wailing rainstorm of entropic destruction upon her. Bodies dissolved into crimson mist, and as it came crashing against her, she wrapped herself in the dense nest of Psychomancy. Once more, the winds broke against her, but then she was moving.

She cast herself into one of the bodies, and she avoided another attack by diving deeper into one of the many minds sustaining this whole nightmarish reality. The Tarrasque went after her by destroying the body. A tide of rot and decay slammed down upon her vessel, and she was dislodged in an instant. She couldn't wrap herself in time, and so she lost an arm.

A pained wail escaped her as her flesh and bone came apart, but she unraveled herself into mana and blinked elsewhere. It gave her enough time to recover and preserve the rest of her body. A sickness burrowed through her flesh, but before a fever could overcome her, a rush of flame exploded free from her very pores as the Starhawk unleashed its cleansing influence, matching the Tarrasque's pestilence—but not for long.

The ravaging winds surged to even greater speeds, and the howling noise drilled into Uva's skull.

The first cry of struggle sounded from the Ascendant lending her his power, and a melody of torment escaped the Dreamtaker as well. A churning malestrom of pestilence, decay, death, and more crashed down on Uva, clenching her, and slowly it took the shape of a massive claw, a Tarrasque's claw holding her at its epicenter.

the Starhawk growled, forcing the words out through their connective link. Uva was astonished at the Ascendant's weariness.

“Is the Tarrasque truly stronger than you?”

the Starhawk shot back,

“I’m within a skill?” Uva asked, her mind racing. And as she looked around, noticing the many broken corpses and ruins, it finally clicked.

Of course there would be mountains of bodies here. Of course this would be a place of unrivaled destruction. It is the that made up the Tarrasque's existence in the eyes of the System.

the Dreamtaker hissed.

Uva tried to reel herself back into her own body, but found herself unable. A single thread led up into the air, but it was being gripped tightly by the turbulent atmosphere. The Tarrasque kept her pinned, and she could feel its malicious faux consciousness grinding against her. She was locked here, like an anchor pinned between two stones. She pulled harder, used the fullness of her mana, even used the power lent to her by the Starhawk and the Dreamtaker. She barely managed to budge herself. So long as the Tarrasque was focused on her, she wouldn't be getting out.

The Tarrasque’s malicious voice trailed off, and a heavy hint of Shiv bled through. For a briefest of moments, Uva flickered with a pale-white glow—a pale white that she remembered seeing through Shiv's eyes.

This was the Chef Unwavering, and she was being marked as something .

Uva deadpanned to herself.

But how was she supposed to distract the Tarrasque? She turned her eldritch gaze on the ground again, and the countless writhing bodies, along with jutting edifices of past destruction, turned to brilliant hues as they were swallowed by the Outside. Uva's eyes widened further, and she devoted all of her power to her Dreamtaker's Gaze.

The Eldritch Unique Skill once again carved a gaping wound through the Tarrasque's mind, and it briefly let out a very Shiv-like yelp of pain, but then the yelp died down, and the Tarrasque began to laugh.

Dreamtaker’s Gaze 25 > 26

A gap briefly opened within the Tarrasque’s Delve, and a pathway to the Outside formed. Strange, formless monstrosities flooded the Delve—and were promptly devoured by the merciless downpour and wilting winds.

The feathered serpents Uva had used against the Recollector undulated into the Tarrasque's Delve as well, but they, too, were withered; they, too, were extinguished, first deprived of color, rendered dull and gray, before they finally dissolved into motes of ash.

Uva's heart plummeted. If that didn't work, then what else did she have? She brought up her skills, and her attention settled on the only other Heroic-Tier skill she had: Shaper of the Aberrant Fractals. She remembered how she'd created the Fractals, remembered what they could do. And as she looked around her, she saw so many bodies here, so many bodies infused with trauma and consumed by madness.

A nervous breath escaped her. This would either work, or she would be completely and utterly doomed. But she had a feeling that the Tarrasque was about to learn what it was like to have a swarm of screaming shrapnel rip out from the inside of its being.

Her mana strands exploded out in all directions, and she screamed as the pain ravaging her increased a dozenfold. It felt like streams of acid were trickling through her flesh, ripping her asunder from the outside in. But as the Tarrasque roared with glee, Uva unleashed her Aberrant Fractals, compelling them to arise as she pulled at the broken people around her.

Victims cried out and shuddered.

Hundreds of writhing bodies went stiff as Uva's many strands were drawn taut. And at once, she . She pulled like she was trying to reel a particularly tenacious fish free from the grasp of a frozen pond, but with a final cry of effort, she wrenched them free.

Dancing shards of strange geometries glided through the insides of the Tarrasque's Delve. Space itself was shorn apart, and Uva directed them outward, directed them with a single command:

The Fractals heeded her command, and as they did, they began to shred through the bodies, the collapsed buildings, and through the fetid ground as well.

Blood, dust, and other matter sprayed free into the dark sky, and though the Tarrasque tried to crush the Fractals, the space around them always bent, for geometry was twisted around the Aberrant Fractals, and so the destruction of her newest assets was delayed. Her cloud-shaped eldritch nightmares tore through matter like a swarm of locusts, and they narrowed and thinned, extending in all directions as they left gouges and gashes across the mindscape.

Uva found herself grateful that the Starhawk was empowering her once more. Originally, when she invoked one Aberrant Fractal, fatigue washed through her body. A lingering fatigue that lasted hours. Now? Now she'd summoned hundreds, and she was barely breathing heavily.

Shaper of the Aberrant Fractals 111 > 114

the Tarrasque groaned. A bit of its sapience was seeping away. Its grammar was collapsing, and its words became slurred. Perhaps she was right. These dead bodies and the minds they were connected to did host its greater intelligence, and as more corpses were wiped from existence, the effects were debilitating.

The winds around Uva began to die down, and the black miasma staining the air abated. But as the winds all but halted, the oil-slick rain escalated into a torrential downpour. She realized that the miasma hadn't disappeared; it had merely left the winds to unleash itself from the rain with renewed focus, and the cascades of wretched liquid now hammered her Fractals.

Though air, wind, and matter parted around the Fractals, the rain came with a festering aura, and that made her Aberrant Fractals decay. Their glass-like shards grew dull and black as cracks spread along their lengths. One after another, they began to split and shatter, but the Tarrasque was no longer looking at her, too focused on shattering the eldritch intruders, and she reeled herself back with a final exertion of will.

This time, nothing held her in place, and she zipped free from the Tarrasque's mind and returned to her own body.

Puppeteer of the Formless Strings 146 > 149

As soon as her mind slammed back into her flesh, she found Roland and Rose leaning over her, along with Valor holding her still. Uva blinked and found blood spilling down her lip, her tongue partially bitten through. She wanted to say something, but Valor simply held and pressed a hand against her head. "Uva, Uva, are you well? Are you whole?"

She turned one of her strands into Valor's mind and sent him a telepathic confirmation. “

"You touched the Tarrasque's mind and went mad. You were twisting and writhing on the ground. We only managed to sedate you thanks to Roland’s servants." Uva looked to her side and found a short-haired woman and a stout man staring at her warily. The woman was a Psychomancer, while the man was Roland’s surviving Biomancer. She offered them a grateful nod, but then noticed that the dense nest of Psychomancy protecting the Perch was still in effect.

Uva thought, blinking.

The Stranger smiles upon you.

He wants you to know that he will not let you die so easily, Seeker.

Skill Altered: Parallel Thinking (Adept) > Splitmind (Master)

Uva understood what had happened, then. She clenched her teeth and tasted the blood running down her throat. Right now, she was bound together with the Dreamtaker and the Starhawk on a level tighter than most could ever conceive of. Of course the Stranger would use this moment to intrude and seize another one of her skills.

Still, it was helping her. And that was what she needed right now. All the help she could get...

Another roar shook the world, and the Tarrasque sounded furious, but at the end of its call, a new notification appeared within Uva's vision.

Feat Gained: Dreamer of the Black Gnosis (Unique) - Allows the Pathbearer to sense, absorb, and dwell within spots of psychological madness. Absorbing madness will hypercharge the Pathbearer's Psychomancy and Eldritch Skills.