(II) Rubix

170 (II)Rubix

As he traveled beyond the Orichalcum walls, he found that the warden's memories were right. The supports here were made of mithril, and there was so much mana circulating through them that they were practically as durable as Orichalcum itself to Shiv. Spell patterns of every type circulated within this space.

Shiv felt like he had smashed through drywall and found himself among the inner bones of the prison. was how he would describe it. Although there were still twenty meters of room between the mithril and the gear-shaped mechanisms that were fused to them. Massive pillars of mithril were connected to the Orichalcum by large bolts. The bolts were made from mixed components. Some were red gold, others were crystalline, an integrated set of materials.

As Shiv looked around, he noticed that the mithril supports were also connected to other structures. There seemed to be adamantine caps built over them, caps that were connected to the gears he'd noticed earlier. And before Shiv could wonder why there were gears here, said mechanisms began to spin. A loud rumbling followed, and soon sparks flew out from behind the mithril architecture. Shiv flinched back, expecting an attack of some kind. What he didn't anticipate was for the mithril around him to suddenly start moving.

One of the supports slammed into his back, and Shiv was briefly caught off guard. He found himself nudged forward before he converted the force acting on him into overflow tides. Suddenly, the gears around him screamed in strain, and several cracked, spraying out as broken fragments of metal. The mithril pillar that Shiv was pushing against shuddered with magic and launched him off at an angle. He slammed into another pillar and ended up cracking it with his Orichalcum pillar.

The crawlspace was filling with debris, but the overall structure continued moving. He could see more gears spinning along the sides of every mithril support in his field of view. And then, after a few seconds, there came a sudden crash as the gears shook. A vibration passed through the entire structure. Another burst of force washed into Shiv as striped vectors as he held himself steady against a structural bolt connecting the mithril to the Orichalcum walls.

A low groan filled the insides of this crawlspace, and the Deathless swallowed, not sure if he'd broken something essential or if it was supposed to be like this.

Regardless, after a second passed, Shiv reacted off of instinct. He flung himself at the gears, and he barreled through them with a spike of his shapeless tides. Compared to the mithril and Orichalcum, the gears themselves were positively fragile. They turned to dust at his approach, breaking apart into the finest grains. But as Shiv burst through them, he found himself slamming against another set of gears, breaking them too, before he breached into a new crawlspace, one that resembled the area he'd just left.

The Deathless bounced off a mithril pillar and came to a halt against a new layer of Orichalcum. He blinked as he tried to process what had happened. He spun his head and looked behind him. Through the way he came, he saw dangling mechanisms, broken belts, and mana bleeding into the air.

he reassured himself. He placed his palm against the Orichalcum. Suddenly, his mental map was updated. The prison no longer looked like a disk. Maybe it was a series of disks stacked together, and he was between them right now. But if it was a disk, then where was the larger prison? Was he going upward, down? Was this the right way out?

He bit back a hiss of frustration as he considered what to do next.

Shiv thought about how Cripple had pursued him when he had a kidnapped guard nearby. That had been the reason why Shiv couldn't claim a guide after choking him out. The bastards were just relying on him staying lost. Now he was in another section in the prison, and Shiv had a feeling it was going to be much like the prior one.

When he tore through these walls, he would find himself staring down a narrow valley. But this time, there might be new Pathbearers, new wardens, or maybe prisoners. And that's what Shiv was counting on. Prisoners. If there were other escapees, they might have better knowledge of this place's layout, or some other information he would find useful.

Part of him was afraid of it being more mithril and gears. Gears that led to another section of the prison. That he was trapped so deep and between so many layers that he was going to have to spend days or even weeks digging himself out.

As Shiv deliberated, the surrounding gears screamed to life once more. But as they tried to move, the entire structure locked up. Too much of the surrounding architecture had been damaged. Some gears spun on, connected to nothing. A shower of sparks descended on Shiv, and his surroundings groaned with strain.

And that brought a new surge of motivation to the Deathless. He might not know the layout. He might not understand where he was. But if he broke enough of the internal mechanisms, he could see this entire place locked up, stuck. And even if Cripple wanted him ignorant, sooner or later Shiv was going to figure out how this whole prison worked.

He drew in a breath. He drove his hands against the Orichalcum once more and began to tear. This time, there was no tension. He would deal with the Ascendant if it appeared. But he had a feeling that Cripple was somewhere else, probably trying to hunt down the Legendary Psychomancer that blasted Shiv's mind earlier.

"Wait!" Shiv growled as he made his first gap in the red-gold metal. "I should have asked that guy for directions! Or help! Dammit, Shiv, think!”

Feeding a spark of anger into his Legendary Skill, Shiv's hand blasted forward, and he tore a clean hole through the Orichalcum. Slowly he began forcing it larger, pushing at the sides using his vectors until it furled outward.

Shiv shot through.

Once he was on the other side, Shiv found himself greeted by a horrific sight of death and gore as he shot down the sides of an Orichalcum valley. "Broken Moon," Shiv whispered to himself as he looked down upon dozens of wardens decorating the ground. Most of them were in pieces, dismembered in brutal fashion, and all of them were missing their eyes. They also had what looked to be bladed feathers lodged in their torsos. The feathers radiated with magic and bled a bright-white aura into the air. Shiv wasn't sure what kind of mana that was, and had never seen anything with that hue or color before.

Tentatively, he descended, his black leather shoes splashing down into the blood, and he pumped Creeping Void out of himself just in case there was someone hidden preparing to ambush him. Shiv licked his lips as he regarded the bodies. He swept over them using his Aegis of Assimilation and studied their wounds.

Shiv turned one of the bodies over and he winced in pity. He was looking upon the face of a relatively young human woman. Her shoulder-length hair lay splayed behind her, blonde locks drenched in red. Her features were twisted in a frozen scream, but her eye sockets had been brutalized.

Whoever attacked her drove their fingers in and crushed the sockets as well. And Shiv was willing to bet this was done by someone's thumbs because he felt the faintness of a print embedded against the woman's very bones.

Psycho-Cartography:

Psycho-Cartography 62 > 63

New Skill: Investigation 1 (Common)

Shiv examined the other Pathbearers and found each of them in a similar state. With the amount of damage inflicted upon their bodies, their equipment was also unsalvageable. But then a glint flashed in the corner of his eye. Shiv turned and found a blade drifting in the blood. A blade that maybe wasn't so much a blade after all.

It resembled something between a wand and a dagger. The way it was shaped was pointed, and he could see a thick orb of Pyromancy dotting its tip. The spine of the weapon was made from focus crystal, but the sides were Orichalcum. Shiv blinked and walked over to the weapon and knelt down. He studied it for a moment, trying to see if there was anything wrong with the blade, before he reached down to pick it up.

The moment he did, a hand shot out from the blood. A clawed hand that clamped around his wrist. A surge of Biomancy surged out of that hand—

Shiv didn't bother wrestling with his foe. He flung himself back in time, shouldering a temporal wave aside with a roar of effort. And then, as his hidden enemy surfaced from the blood, he slammed into them, pinning them against the wall. He felt a lashing claw, infused with Biomancy, bounce against his shoulder. Shiv directed his overflow tides against it, and the blow was knocked aside. Before his enemy could do anything else, Shiv wrapped his arm around the hostile's back, and he flung both of them in the opposite direction.

A loud crash sounded as Shiv slammed his ambusher head first against the opposite Orichalcum wall. A cry of pain escaped the ambusher, and Shiv wrenched them over his hip, slamming them against the wall once more. As they crashed down, he locked their arm and twisted hard. He pulled at an angle using his vectors and then slammed a fist down against their elbow. He tore the limb clean off.

The ambusher was wailing now, but they weren't done yet. They slammed their remaining hand upon the ground where all the blood was, and spears of red mana slammed against Shiv. Or rather, they would have, if his Aegis didn't catch them. He pushed back using his own Biomancy field, but gritted his teeth as he felt his adversary slowly overpower him.

"Yeah," Shiv growled, "you got my number there." But then he tipped the scales by slamming his foot down on the ambusher's chest. They let out a gasp of pain, and he pumped his shapeless tides into their body. A brief clash followed. His Legendary skill speared against their Magical Resistance and their Biomancy. And with every heartbeat, more of them broke apart.

Several blood-forged spears impacted Shiv, but he ignored them. A faint Orichalcum pillar came into shape around his body, and the blood constructs flashed harmlessly against his form. It helped that his force vectors were threading through his enemy's Biomancy now, making them far weaker than before.

For the first time, Shiv got a good look at his enemy and recognized them for what they were. "Fucking vampires," the Deathless spat. The bloodsucker writhed and twitched beneath his feet. He reached out with his remaining hand, gripping Shiv's ankle, trying to shred him from the inside. Shiv pushed back with another pulse of overflow vectors.

The vampire's fingers were bent back and twisted. Shiv didn't even have to reach down to do it with his hands. The vectors did the jobs themselves. Some halves of force angled the vampire's fingers backward. Others ripped the hand down the middle. The vampire opened his mouth, and Shiv saw bladed fangs coming up to bite his leg. The same bladed fangs were shattered as the Deathless brought his elbow down, crushing the vampire's jaw into the back of his throat.

With that, the vampire's Magical Resistance crumbled fully, and Shiv clutched him by the face as he tore his Biomancy asunder as well. A wailing cry escaped the ruined bloodspawn, which died off into unintelligible gurgles a moment later. Shiv drove his Aegis of Assimilation into the vampire's body and found their heart immediately. To his surprise, the vampire was pulling a new trick. Its heart was split into different pieces, all of them connected by dense strands of tissue. Shiv had no idea what that was, but he had a feeling that if he fought the vampire conventionally, just crushing one heart wouldn't do.

"You and your goddamn tricks," Shiv said. "Well, the tricks won't save you now." The bloodspawn made a whimpering noise. Shiv frowned. It was hard to tell the vampire’s age with his narrow, vulpine-like features and that long mane of wild, white hair. The vampire had also seen better days. Its skin was sallow, like molded yellow wallpaper, and its eyes were pitch black.

What's more, Shiv could see its veins. They were filled with coursing darkness too, and Shiv had no idea what was happening there either. The vampire whimpered. It held out its remaining hand to Shiv, its remaining mutilated hand. Fingers were pointed in the wrong direction, but they were healing before the Deathless's very eyes. He snorted. "Yeah, no, you don't get to kill all these people, attack me, and expect mercy."

The vampire shook his head. Shiv paused. He looked at the dead wardens nearby and ripped the vampire off the ground. He held the bloodsucker up with one hand and pointed to the nearby bodies. "Why, you didn't kill them?"

"No, no!" The vampire shook his head vigorously. "Not me, not me. It was, it was the ."

"The what?" Shiv said, trying to decipher the vampire's slurred and broken words.

"Rebis!" the vampire cried, louder.

"What the hell is that?" Shiv asked.

"Zenith prisoner! Zenith prisoner escaped!"

"And you're not a zenith prisoner?"

"No," the vampire cried out. “I am only Zeroth!”

Shiv was having a hard time deciphering the vampire's messed-up words, so he projected his Psychomancy into its mind. With its Magical Resistance shattered and all its mana fields utterly destroyed, it had no capability to resist Shiv. He dug into its thoughts and stood amidst a whirlwind of chaotic memories. The vampire was terrified of him. A dense chain of blood and tissue formed between them, as Shiv's Shape of Monstrosity was empowered.

The vampire flinched as it heard Shiv's telepathic message, but he nodded in response.

Shiv said.

the vampire cried out. But a beneficial thing about Psychomancy was, you could get a general feeling when someone was lying, nested so deep in their mind. Shiv didn't want to kill any of the wardens, but vampires, well, aside from Angelo, most vampires were fair game. He didn't even really consider them people. He reached down and crushed its arm at the shoulder. The vampire let out a piercing cry.

Shiv said. He pulled on the fear chain running between them and noticed that he was growing a bit bigger. As he grew a bit bigger, parts of his newly stolen armor began to buckle and break. Shiv sighed.

Shiv asked.