(I) Tunnel

23 (I)Tunnel

“Finally,” Adam said as he equipped the final piece of his Legendary armor. His body was now clad in dense plates of polished blue. It was the color of a clear sky captured in the matter of a crystal, and when the Young Lord moved, the slates crenelating his armor made his body appear as if it were a gentle ripple on a lake’s surface. The pointed heads of twin hawks jutted out from his shoulders, and his sharp, open-faced helm only further emphasized the aesthetic. “Properly protected. And I no longer look like a clown.”

Uva wrinkled her nose at him, but Shiv noticed how she eyed the armor with something bordering on curiosity—or envy.

“Now,” Adam continued, tilting his head to look into the darkness. “I suppose the next pressing question is who takes point.”

“Me, probably,” Shiv grunted. Several Weaveresses and Umbrals looked at him in surprise. He didn’t get why. “I’m the only one that gets to come back if things go wrong.”

“Can you see in the dark?” Adam asked.

“No. Can you?”

The Young Lord grinned. “My senses are beyond mere sight.”

“Another skill.”

“Adept-Tier,” Adam boasted.

Shiv nodded slowly, pretending to be impressed. “And how’s your Toughness. Or Physicality? What evolutions do you have for those two?”

The Young Lord knocked his armored knuckles against his chestplate. “My durabilityis far beyond yours right now—” His expression flattened into one of reluctance. “Even if you do have some… ”

“I can practically hear the bile rising in your throat,” Shiv said, smirking. “But the armor isn’t going to save someone from overpowering and twisting your limbs out of place, is it?”

Adam scowled at that reminder. “Oh, and you have the Physicality to fight someone capable of that off?”

“Yeah,” Shiv said. “I’m an Adept there as well. I got Might of Mass. It helped quite a bit when I was pummeling that elemental golem into submission. But hey, I’m sure the couple crows you killed were more impressive.”

“Might of—” The Young Lord did a double take. “What? How? That skill should only be something that those of the Wrestler or Laborer Paths get after years and years of constant—” He narrowed his eyes at Shiv’s partially exposed torso, and his lips twisted into a sneer. “Is that why you look…”

“Bigger?”

“What are they doing?” the young Umbral asked, nudging Uva with her elbow.

“Picking an unfortunate time to be ” she said, narrowing her eyes in disappointment.

Shiv grinned as he continued. “Yeah. You can say I’m a bit harder to move now. Like an oak. You… really should eat more, Adam. Don’t worry, though, Young Lord. I’ll make sure you get all the protein you need. Soon, and with enough nutrition, you’ll be able to look like a… version of me.”

“As if I want that Skill Evolution,” Adam said with a shrug. “My strength will work in tandem with my speed. Fluidity and flexibility is where true power lies. I will achieve for my Skill Evolution—jump that skill straight to Master TierThat’s a truly worthy advancement in my eyes.”

“So. What you’re saying is that you accept the fact that you’re going to be and than me, and that you surrender to fate? Great. Good talk. I’m going in front.” Shiv walked right past Adam as the Young Lord’s mouth dropped in offense.

“How developed are your Reflexes?” Adam snapped from behind. He practically had his head pressed against Shiv’s neck. “And do you have a Skill? Because we are dealing with spatial magic here. You’ll get lost, blind and ignorant as you are.”

A Weaveress cleared her throat. “Honored guests, I think that we, warriors of the order—”

“No,” Adam and Shiv said at the same time.

“They boiled me alive,” Shiv growled. His bone drill trembled in the air and stabbed at the darkness. “I’m going in first. I’m going to rip the bastards apart.”

“And they tried to ambush me—tried to kill me,” Adam sneered. “This will not go unpunished. Nor will them bending a non-combatant to their whims by kidnapping her child!” The Young Lord’s outrage was genuine with the last part. Shiv was almost surprised.

The Weaveress fell quiet and looked at her comrades. The Umbrals blinked. The youngest member looked back and forth between Adam and Shiv with a glow of excitement to her eyes. She was enjoying their posturing.

“You know what, Adam? How about this: I’ll walk in ahead of you like a shield. You can be right behind me and tell me where the threats are coming from and which way to go. This way, you can fire your arrows from behind the safety of my body, and I can fight off anyone who seeks to overpower your nubile body.”

Adam’s mouth opened and closed several times as he processed how outraged he should be.

Valor said with a chuckle.

Finally, Adam shut his jaw and hissed: “Fine. But don’t expect me to go rushing into the darkness to save you if someone drags you off. I might not have the strength to lift someone of your immense weight.”

“Mass,” Shiv replied.

“Call it what you want,” Adam finished. “Just start walking, .”

The Deathless snorted as he shook his head at Adam. The Young Lord kept glaring, but allowed Shiv to take the first steps into the crevice. Before he pushed into the spatial passage, he shot a look at Uva, and she nodded at him.

she said. There was a slight coldness to her thoughts. He wasn’t sure if it was because they were preparing for combat, or if she felt offended by his secrets. Whatever the case, he trusted that not to be an issue right now. They were martial Pathbearers right now, and there was a crisis to stop.

“Man, this place is dark as shit,” Shiv muttered. He kept his long bone drill moving ahead of him—swinging it from side to side so he could keep track of the walls. That proved to be unnecessary, as he sensed some grains of organic material in the webs.

As he continued shuffling through the darkness, he felt Uva touch his mind again. Instead of sending him a message this time, he felt a weight settle into his thoughts. was all she said.

Shiv thought.

Behind him, Adam flinched and went still. “What did you just do to my mind, elf?”

Uva didn’t answer. Shiv could see the members of the Arachnae Order filter in behind them, keeping ample distance between each person in case of a magical attack. They took on a formation with two martials in front of and behind a dedicated mage while the Weaveresses prodded at the webs.

“They’re extremely dense,” one of the towering Weaveresses said. “They won’t let me through.”

Uva shouted over their connection.

A deafening chorus rushed through Shiv and Adam’s minds at once. Both of the surfacers jolted, and they looked at each other.

“Did you hear that?” Adam whispered. “What did your bloody girlfriend do to us?”

Uva answered. Suddenly, Shiv received a burst of brief images from her perspective. She was looking at the back of a Weaveress, and the young Umbral and two others were to stand guard at the entrance of the crevice to ensure they wouldn’t be flanked.

Adam shivered. “Mind mages,” he muttered. “I can’t believe the Composer doesn’t have them running a Curse.”

Uva said, her tone like hardening ice,

“Well, how do I felling do that when you’re already deep in my head,” the Young Lord complained. He somehow realized Shiv was grinning at him from behind his skull helmet. “Oh, keep walking, meatshield. And don’t stop until you stick yourself on a blade. Broken Moon, I really need to develop a Magical Resistance soon…”

“Aye, Young Lord Arrow,” Shiv replied. He understood the Magical Resistance part, though. It would be a convenient skill to have. But then, there was the other question of if Magical Resistance would stop him from using his Biomancy on himself.

The synchronization proved to be invaluable as they continued on. Every few steps, Shiv would get a snapshot of what the tunnel looked like from the perspective of someone who could see in the dark. The webs here were corded and dense, practically all bunched over each other in knots. There was also an ambient pressure in the air—that faint lurch of spatial magic pulling at his body.

Shiv sent. The Young Lord grunted from behind, signaling that he received the thought.

Adam said, his mind taking on a tense and frustrated tone.

Shiv answered.

Adam sighed.

Shiv blinked, and he connected these details to the automaton raven he killed earlier.

At the same time, Adam let out a gasp as he flinched. The Young Lord let out an incredulous laugh as he reactively slapped Shiv on the shoulder. Then, he seemed to remember who he was talking to and pulled his hand away.

Shiv taunted.

Uva cleared her throat mentally. Both of the surfacers quieted their minds. But only for a second.

“Still,” Adam said out loud, shaking his head. “A .”

“It’s awesome,” Shiv insisted.

“Yes, damn you, it is. I admit. But still. Do you not feel… disturbed? Bothered by your deaths?”

“No. It makes me better. It shows me my mistakes. It can only be good.”

Adam scoffed. “You’re cracked in the—” The Young Lord froze and held up a hand. Their entire convoy went still. Then, Adam did something strange—he his eyes and just stood there.

“Adam?” Shiv asked.

“Quiet,” The Young Lord snapped. “Give me—” Then, Adam opened his eyes again and his head snapped between several directions.

And then, as everyone instinctively dropped, Adam Arrow once again became an echo of his father. A cluster of watery limbs branched out from the Young Lord’s back, but rather than all repeatedly loosing shots from the same bow, he formed new bows and fired what felt like four separate streams of azure death. Fluid arrows screamed through the air like comets in every direction. This time, with all the levels he gained for his Reflexes, Shiv glimpsed the trajectory of the arrows and realized they were all being adjusted mid-flight.

Shiv thought. The amount of focus that took must have been colossal. And the speed at which Adam shot was absurd. Shiv couldn’t even follow the Young Lord’s blurring hands.

A full second after his call for everyone to duck, the crows came—bursting out from the dense webs that the Weaveresses of Shiv’s group couldn’t penetrate. They arrived with gleaming blades infused with spell and skill drawn—only for all of them to receive a swarm of arrows through their eyes, throats, hearts, and joints at the same time. Shiv guessed there were twenty crows in the ambush. None of them managed to do anything but die.

As they slumped and fell, some Umbrals stabbed at them—only to realize their enemies were already slain.

Uva said, her mind racing.

A chorus of and came from everyone in the group. Shiv, meanwhile, found himself gaping at Adam. The Young Lord dismissed his Hydrokinetic limbs and bows before regarding Shiv with a smug grin.

“How the hells did you know that was going to happen?” Shiv asked.

“Oh, I heard them. They were quite loud.” Adam wiggled his eyebrows.

“Loud?” Shiv barely felt anything—he only sensed a few of the crows with his Biomancy when they burst in. “Your Awareness must be ”

“Yes, well, not everyone can come back from the dead,” Adam shrugged. He eyed Shiv with a look of exaggerated disdain. “Some of us need to be—”

The webbed walls beside the Young Lord burst open. To his credit, he turned and unleashed an absurd amount of shots into the approaching figure. Unfortunately, most of his arrows exploded against the already mutilated corpse of a Weaveress—a corpse that slammed into and knocked Adam against the opposite wall. Just then, a thick metal arm reached out with a mechanical whine.