To Break a Curse

—by 313

To Break a Curse

Adam's greeting wasn't exactly what Shiv had expected, but the Gate Lord did have a great many responsibilities these days. Managing the massive group of refugees and the conditions of a developing Gate, along with several different Quests that held great ramifications for failure and grand rewards of success, were bound to wear on anyone's patience.

The sheer frustration leaking over the telepathic strand that connected both Shiv and Uva to him was palpable. Adam was sailing toward the Tutorial bunker at record speeds. Shiv also glimpsed something else from his friend’s perspective: wards were being layered over the surface Gateway and a concentration of war-ready dimensionals zipping across the air in active formations as well.

Maybe Adam was more than a little overwhelmed. Maybe something was actually happening.

Uva's mind was rife with urgency. A jungle of Psychomantic threads exploded out from Shiv’s dormant Gate Piety body, seeking fellow Sisters or anyone who could inform her about the unfolding situation. Shiv felt splinters break away from her mind, each one a fragment of her collective ego, but capable of serving as their own consciousness all the same. Her stacks began their conversations while the bulk of her remained present, interrogating Adam. With every person she connected to, it seemed like her cognitive processing and reflexes grew a bit faster, while her brain suffered no obvious overheating or strain.

Shiv thought aloud. He pulled up the skill and rubbed his chin.

Bifurcated Processing 86

He might be able to evolve that skill with a few more deaths. He'd let it languish by the wayside as he did all he could to level his Eldritch Physiology.

The sound of Adam clenching his teeth so hard they began to creak interrupted his musings.

After a moment of surprise, an amused snort escaped Shiv.

Shiv shot back.

Shiv hesitated.

An intrusive thought overflowed from Adam: he imagined slamming himself headfirst into the ground, just shattering his own skull and enjoying the blissful peace of death in a place absent from Shiv’s hyperviolence.

Adam was practically choking on his thoughts.

Shiv was about to reply when something hit him in the back of his head. An empty can of beans bounced off the floor, and Shiv turned to see Jessica glaring at him with folded arms. “Let me guess, you’re here to chew me out for the same thing Adam is?” he asked.

She raised a sharp eyebrow. “Depends. Is he currently chewing you out for performing a snatch and grab on a Hero-Executioner of the Inquisition and murdering a bunch of other people ?”

A near-innocent grin spread across Shiv’s face. “Wow, Jessica. I think the System should give you a Divination Skill if you don’t have one already.”

Her facial muscles did what he could best describe as spastic acrobatics. She went through a chain of near-inscrutable reactions before her eyes flared with outrage while her lips quirked upward in incredulous amusement.

Sage of the Enkindled Heart:

“What the fuck, kid?” Jessica finally managed. “What the hells are you even doing? And why?”

“The straight answer is that your guys keep kidnapping orphans for Daughter to use as meat suits. Trying to stop that, mostly. Was trying to kidnap someone who’s a bit higher up so we—uh, I can properly set the operation on fire. Shit developed from there. I’m sorry if this annoys you or something like that, you know?”

Comedy 13 > 16

The tiny swordswoman’s eyes bulged like they were being birthed out of her sockets. “You… Sorry if you annoyed… You… You audacious fuck.” She gritted her teeth to hide a shiver of laughter. “Take this seriously.”

“I am! About as seriously as the Inquisition takes sacrificing children to Daughter. I'm not doing this for fun or to smash up the capital. I'm doing this because children are being fed to some false god! And there's nothing you can say to justify that. Don't bother trying to deny it either. Even you’re not dumb enough to miss what they’re doing.”

The Giantsbane was just about to say something else when another part of his sentence clipped her like a cart tumbling downhill. “Wait, not dumb enough? You want to explain that?”

Sage of the Enkindled Heart:

He adopted a pitying expression and shook his head. “Jessica, I don't know how to tell you this, but… If you can relate to me and if you get along with me that easily and if you struggle enough to laugh at my stupid jokes… I'm afraid you're not that smart. I’m afraid we’re similar kinds of stupid. Must be that incest baby thing coming back to bite you.”

Sage of the Enkindled Heart:

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Uva hissed.

he replied.

Uva suffered mental damage trying to accept his claim.

“I should fucking kill you.” Jessica tried to seethe. She tried, but she couldn’t. She was remarkably bad at hiding her true feelings. There was agitation, disbelief, and even jagged shards of animosity in her emotional core, but she was also charmed.

Sage of the Enkindled Heart 150 > 153

Sage of the Enkindled Heart:

Shiv cheered.

Then, his jubilance winked out like a candle flame between two fingers as a cord of cold wrath tightened around him.

Sage of the Enkindled Heart:

A Glimpse of Perspective:

Gardener of Doubt:

A Glimpse of Perspective:

Gardener of Doubt:

Shiv whimpered internally.

Uva whispered back. She let a rush of promised punishments glide over into his awareness.

Shiv screeched to his skills.

Adam howled as he slammed face-first against the bunker, as unwanted scenes and nightmarish memories tore through his mind, a bystander caught in the crossfire.

Sage of the Enkindled Heart:

“So, what the fuck's your plan now?” Jessica asked, completely ignorant of the horrors.

“I mean…” Shiv turned and gestured at the gateway. Its surface shimmered with Dimensionality, and from the other side came an assortment of refreshing floral scents. “I kinda have to break a Curse, you know? I was thinking about heading over to fairy land and getting that done for a change of pace.”

Jessica looked at him as if he were completely insane. “You know the Prismatic Guard is going to try to raid this Gate, right? You know they're going to send in saboteurs, Shadows, Assassins, Thieves—”

“Yeah, I really don't think so. Not that they'll be in that much of a hurry anyway.”

The Giantsbane's eyes rolled as if she'd just sustained a concussion. “Kid, what the fuck are you talking about? I got a direct notification from headquarters that they're going to begin massing outside of Gate Piety.”

“Oh, they're still in touch with you. That's great. You tell them that maybe they want to consider doing something else instead. Because there are a lot of orcs inside this Gate. Don't tell them anything else. They can come to their own conclusions.”

Adam howled, stumbling and slamming from wall to wall like a ball bouncing down the hallways of the bunker. He was in a hurry for no reason. He couldn't come across and enter the Tutorial because the Slipgate was currently active, and the portal connecting Gate Piety to the home world of the Orcs was now tuned to the Fairwoods instead.

“You're bluffing,” Jessica said.

“Yeah, I dunno. Maybe kind of. Who knows? I certainly don't. I don't even really care that much. But I do know this: I can practically appear anywhere because of the Slipgate. I can swap with a bunch of different bodies across the world. Maybe I can do some more horrible things. Right now, I'm not targeting the Republic itself, mainly just the Inquisition and all the bastards who keep trying to feed orphans to a literal monster god made out of nasty black shit.” Shiv grinned. “The way I see it, the Republic's drawing its sword to threaten us, but I'm technically already inside its body. If I decide to cut in whatever direction, I think I can do a lot more damage to them than they can to us.”

At the sight of Jessica tensing, however, Shiv just shrugged. “But I'm also not going to do any of that anyway. You tell them—actually, you know what? You don't need to do anything, Jessica. This isn't your business, it's mine. I'll see if I can solve this quickly.”

Before anyone else could respond, Shiv's Severed Shadow drifted into the room and fully manifested. Its body flared bright red for the briefest of instances in senses while its Cape of Innermost Depth billowed dramatically behind its edged form. Rusty appeared in Jessica's hand, and she entered a defensive posture, but he didn't attack her. Instead, he just turned his back to her and had his Severed Shadow fling a magically locked notebook out from his cape. He caught the Sync-Letter with his physical body and immediately began preparing to have a correspondence with his estranged bitch of a grandmother.

Jessica's eyes widened as she realized what he was about to do. “Wait, no, Shiv, don't open—”

Shiv flipped open his Sync-Letter. The contents began thusly:

That was about as far as Shiv read before he was disassembled on a molecular level.

The world went white. His physical body died in an instant; his orichalcum-hard body shattered like sugar glass. The bunker fared even worse. The continent-shaking words hit him and his surroundings like a bomb of bombs. Veronica's most recent correspondence was more than mere words; it was infused with her collective ire and imbued with sound, force, soul magic, and wrath, and it manifested from within the Sync-Letter as a Rhetorical lance four hundred kilometers long and a kilometer wide that punched a clean wound through the bunker and gouged an apocalyptic path through the sprawling orc encampments and past the Tutorial's distant horizon.

The earth was split down to the deep bedrock. The sickly clouds were disemboweled, revealing a firmament made from screaming stars and enchained worlds for the first time. Colossal links of crystalline matter were threaded through various worlds, and they surrounded the Tutorial itself like a belt of celestial horror.

Hundreds of thousands of orcs simply ceased to be. Everything in the path of Veronica's greeting was reduced to less than rubble, not even dust lingering in the aftermath. It was like some divine titan, larger than the world, had carved a clear path of unmaking through an entire section of existence. But Shiv knew better. Shiv knew that this wasn't an act of the divine. This was simply the doing of an extremely powerful Legendary Pathbearer who held the true reins of the Yellowstone Republic.

When the translucent lance dissipated after a few seconds, pretty much everything around and behind Shiv was gone. It looked a bit like he was standing at the edge of a cliff face that bordered an unnaturally thin ocean, only that said ocean lacked any water.

Despite all this, however, the Sync-Letter was utterly untouched. Not even the pages had been ruffled. The Tutorial's gateway also endured, though its surface was far more turbulent than ever, rippling like tides dashed into a frenzy by the rising of a colossal Leviathan. And then there were Shiv, Uva, and Jessica. The first hadn't survived at all. He was still on the scene because his Severed Shadow couldn't be destroyed by pure force while in its Revenant state, but he felt a pulsating ache from the Animancy infused within Veronica's greeting.

Lacking a physical form and nested within Shiv's mind when the attack struck, Uva was protected but stunned at the Councilwoman’s awesome power. She was spared any injury but shaken where it mattered. But ridiculous as Veronica's Rhetoric Skill was, Shiv found himself even more impressed by Jessica, who had somehow parried the world-scarring blast. Rusty’s size had increased to be wider than Jessica's body, and his length vibrated dramatically, but behind it, Jessica stood shielded by the flat of her sword and utterly unharmed.

But not unstrained.

Shiv noticed her right arm trembling, saw the shaking in her legs. Withstanding Veronica's Rhetoric was a magnificent martial feat on its own—but there was still a tremendous gulf between the two women. A Legend though Jessica was, Veronica was one greater, one higher, one overwhelming.

Worst of all, one not even present.

For a Pathbearer to exert so much power from afar was… absurd.

Shiv looked behind himself and took in the carnage, watched as tides of lesser orcs toppled from crumbling structures and spilled into the deep channel the Councilwoman’s lance had left in its wake.

And just then, he noticed a faint trail, a tether of crimson leading out from the Tutorial back to some place far, back to the Republic itself. Shiv's reaction was automatic.

Veronica had taken a jab at him, and so he would return the favor. He slashed out using his Severed Shadow, unleashing the full might of his cutting aura. A slicing projection traveled along the tether and zoomed across dimensions. He waited with bated breath for a few moments, but unlike with the dimensional archer earlier, he felt nothing land. He felt nothing split or break.

Something told him that Veronica had dodged the attack entirely or somehow parried it.

Uva's metaphorical insides tightened with anxiety and disbelief. Try as she might, she couldn't imagine amassing such power for herself, not even in a thousand years.

Shiv’s eyelid twitched. “Nah, she's just a deadbeat bitch who shits out kids and forgets about them after. I can respect the power, but I will always despise the woman.”

“And that's why I told you not to open it.” Jessica sighed. She surveyed her surroundings and threw her hands up in disbelief. “Listen, you need to go make things right, because you're not the only one with weird bullshit skills. If Veronica really wanted to, she would just drop a bunch of flyers into your Gate. I want you to imagine what might happen to everyone inside Piety when they start randomly opening and reading these letters.”

Shiv paled. High-Tier Rhetoric was absolute bullshit.

The Challenger is amused by this family feud.

“Oh, fuck off, you fat, gray bastard,” Shiv spat.

“Yep, took her just about three words,” Shiv grunted. “Felling hells. Alright. I’ll make this quick. See if I can get her to piss off or something. Give me a second.”

Uva cautioned.

Adam cried in desperate terror.

Shiv triggered a new resurrection. A fresh physical body stumbled out from his Severed Shadow and immediately resheathed and activated its Eldritch Physiology. Its flesh began to shift, and he shifted his focus over to the new body—had it step into his cape.

“I'm just going to talk to her,” Shiv said aloud as he vanished into the dimensional fabric. “Try doing the reasonable thing and getting the Prismatic Guard to piss off.”

Even Uva thought he was mad now.

Jessica pressed her lips together. “You know, the smart thing for you to do is just write back to her.”

“Didn't I tell you I was stupid like you?” Shiv replied from inside his cape.

A low moan of pain sounded even deeper. From within the forest of alloy, a brutalized, limbless Inquisitor begged for a savior or a quick death. “Ascendants, help me!”

“Broken fucking Moon,” Jessica growled. “What the hells are you even planning on saying to her?”

Shiv just laughed. “No idea. I'll figure it out when I see her. What's the worst that can happen? Besides, it's probably going to be pretty easy to solve this anyway. Just one last detour before I head into the Fairwoods.”

Adam all but started screaming instead of forming words. “Shiv, Shiv, what are you doing? What in the godsdamn hells are you doing?”

But before anyone else could intervene, Shiv's bladed heart grew bright, and a gap split open upon the surface of reality. He switched places, allowing the body of what looked to be a sickly boy to tumble through from the existential rupture he left behind. Then, less than a second later, a gap formed within the boy's chest, and he was cast back through another gash upon the fabric of Integration as the Severed Shadow returned.

Substantially lighter than before.

Shiv said, speaking telepathically through his shadow.

“Put lead in the water or something,” Shiv mumbled. “Veronica's words can't hurt us if we're all too dumb to understand them.”

“That's not… how her skill works at all…” Jessica looked close to despair. But she noticed how the Revenant was fading from sight, turning back into a silhouette, and read from its dormant body language that Shiv was no longer there mentally. “…Why do I even try with him?”

Uva huffed mentally. Then, she realized who she was talking to and returned to her aloof posture. “Not that this should be any of your business. You are with them, after all.”

Rusty said, sounding more resigned than sour.

“We are,” Jessica insisted. “It's just that things right now are messy, and I’m keeping a closer eye on you. So that you don’t do anything against the Republic.”

Rusty concurred.

“Yeah, like—oh, come on, Rusty, you backstabbing prick! I’m—I was gonna—we’re helping solve that now, aren’t we?”

The swordswoman glared at her blade. “You're getting real cute with me today. I’m still loyal. I am.”

Jessica paused to consider that. “Fuuccckkk, I really should have gone back with him. I could still—”

“Don’t,” a low, basso voice sounded behind her. Jessica's bones nearly fled out from her skin when she realized the Culturist was two steps away. The three-meter-tall fucker had no right to be that sneaky. He had his hands folded behind his back and looked down at Jessica from beneath his stupid, feather-eared hood. “Let the Deathless face his own consequences and see if he can find a resolution in peace where one doesn't exist in war.”

“And what if things go wrong?” Jessica asked. “Because if Veronica or the Auroral Council really get pissed enough to make a decree, I’ll get my own orders too.”

The Culturist offered her a benign, sharp-toothed smile. “Then we discover which of our legends is greater. And the old ways continue on evermore into eternity.”