Backstage

— (Number One Best-Seller among the Godhunters of Chorus, the City of the Twelve Worlds)339

Backstage

Skill Evolution: Non-Sequitur (Unique) > Jump-Cut (Unique)

Skill Evolution: Phase Frame (Adept) > Walker of the Phantom Path (Master)

Skill Fusion: Walker of the Phantom Path (Master) - Jump-Cut (Unique) > Continuity Error (Unique)

Sage of the Enkindled Heart 174 > 178

Inertial Overdrive 301 > 304

Strider of the Unbending Path 190 > 193

Psychomancy 39 > 43

Pyromancy 37 > 40

Hydromancy 15 > 19

Portomancy 6 > 11

Aegis of Assimilation 145 > 149

Shiv's spiritual architecture was evolving again. Phase Frame, once a pillar unto itself, was assimilated, merged into the greater tower of his being. But Longinus didn't know that, and Shiv didn't know how this skill worked.

“I'm going to give you a counteroffer.” Despite Shiv's best attempts, he couldn't keep the hateful growl out of his voice. “You're going to release Georges. You're going to let all the slaves here go, and then you're going to let me kill you. Because alternatively? I'm going to drag this out. I'm going to make this hurt. I'm going to do things to you that I'll regret. I'm going to do things to you that will give me nightmares down the line. I’ll take it too far.”

And though Shiv barely knew Longinus's character, the god proved himself as predictable as he was powerful. An amused twitch pulled at his immaculate, almost statue-like features.

There was a note of genuine curiosity in Longinus’ voice as he asked the question, and that made a shiver crawl up Shiv's spine. “Toys,” he breathed. His gaze was cold, but his heart was a roaring inferno of anger. “They're . You've been treating people like they're things.”

Longinus cocked his head.

Shiv snorted in derision. His fingers flexed. “You’re just a piece of shit to the bone, aren’t you? Were you always a piece of shit, or did the degeneration do this to you?”

“Mostly by fighting and killing things I had no business facing. It tends to make your skills level faster than forcing yourself on children.”

Longinus' imperious expression took on an ugly quality. Despite this little trade of barbs, he was taking it far more personally than Shiv was. That was saying something. The Deathless hated the god, but he was also far less fragile emotionally compared to Longinus. Every insult, every barb, every hurled curse Shiv sent Longinus' way made his incandescent form glisten like glass.

Sticks and Stones 96 > 98

Though another sneer spread across his face, the depth of his anger was blatantly obvious.

But with every word Longinus spoke, he betrayed himself more and more to Shiv.

Sage of the Enkindled Heart:

“You know, of all the Ascendants, I think I know the least about you,” Shiv began. “Remind me what your Domains are again. One of them Traveling? What's the other one? Being a chicken-shit liar?”

Longinus’ face was sculpted and handsome, unnaturally so. His chin was pointed and his jaw strong. His cheekbones were practically blades. His eyes blazed with the by now familiar incandescence shared by the Ascendants, yet they were like harsh beacons that speared one to behold, unlike the Starhawk's welcoming glow. Said divinely handsome face now contorted into a look of absolute offense.

Shiv ignored him. “You might have a bad memory, Longinus, but I don't. Let's do a little dementia check: How long have you been here? How long has Evanescia kept you flapping in this golden cage? How long have you worn Georges, pretending to be him? How long have you been slaving away in this kitchen, working for a Fae Princess, whom you keep having to refer to as ‘Her Hungriness’?”

Guided by his Psychology Skill, Shiv struck at the most vulnerable aspect of Longinus directly. “I'm honestly impressed that you can put up with that last part. You don't want to acknowledge anyone greater than you, but you have to, because you just can't break out of here. You're no less a slave than all the people you abused. Wait, is slavery one of your Domains? Is that what you are? Longinus, God of Slaves? The slave to enslave all other slaves?”

A wave of pure outrage detonated within Longinus’ emotional core. For all his bravado and arrogance and general cruelty, he himself was an open book. His skin so thin, his spirit so easily wounded.

The God of Travelers thrust forth. His main lance surged forward, driving a column of absence through Shiv's chest. Every other lance he possessed surged in, and it was a crisscrossing rain of spearing missiles. A nexus of threads formed, painting veins of incandescence in the air, wrapping the space where Shiv once existed in a dense weave of divine mana. The few hundred dimensionals Longinus had summoned unleashed their spells as well, saturating the air with more attacks. Beams of Chronomancy were woven with coiling dragons formed from Cryo and Pyromancy. Detonations of Dimensionality boxed him inside a cage that made teleportation impossible and unleashed waves of falling stone, pulling millions of tons of matter from another place. Entire mountains formed from magical alloys formed and promptly exploded outwards, filling the air with shrapnel that served as anchors for bolts of lashing lightning.

Not even a Legendary skill like Leviathan of the Shapeless Tides would have allowed Shiv to survive this onslaught. Every single one of those attacks struck—just as Shiv triggered his Phase Frame.

ensued.

One moment, Shiv was being shredded and scattered, his body destroyed and skewered from all sides. Then his Vitae flared, and the damage dealt to him—along with everything that struck him—detonated in a burst of vitality.

He promptly vanished without any hint of ever existing.

It should have been impossible. There was nowhere to evade in reality. So Shiv descended into somewhere that didn’t exist at all.

When Shiv tried to Phase Frame, he passed entirely through the threshold between worlds. Faster than he could properly perceive, he found himself tumbling through Integrated reality, through its farthest reaches, through the Outside—and then further. The attacks that were supposed to break him were rendered non-canon. The mana suffusing his being, wrapping him in a dense net of Divination, burst apart. A spray of violet essence filled the air, lingering as an afterimage, leaving a pseudo-decoy in his wake. That was what Longinus punched through.

It faded like a mirage a moment after, leaving a very confused god staring at nothing in particular within his torture dungeon of a kitchen.

Somehow, Shiv could still sense the veil of Integration. He was on the other side, cast beyond the grip of the System. The world here was a vague, geometric, featureless replica of the environment he'd been in. It was a shadowed place—a reflection of the space he just fled. And there was a slowness to how things moved out here as well, like Shiv had been disconnected from an overarching timeline. He made out vague forms around him. They were like clay figures. Longinus remained there; so did Georges within his body. Both lacked any distinguishing features or marks. They were merely models of who they used to be, models that glowed faintly with the mana that suffused them.

And that was another difference in this place. He could see mana. It shone brighter, clearer than ever before. He could distinguish all the spectrums. With reality's ambience banished from his senses, the nature of magic sang its melody to him in clear and crisp notes. And it wasn't just Longinus or Georges. All the dimensionals broadcast their wavelengths as well. Each one of their fields gave off a pinging sound rippling with their mana, and every single one was slightly different. Every single one cast a varied ripple across the shadowy sea that was Integration.

Shiv looked around, his brow creasing. “Where in the Broken Moon am I? What is this?”

“You're in the place that doesn't exist,” a tired, feminine voice sounded from behind him.

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

Shiv turned hard—and saw no one. But mid-spin, he caught sight of something impaled through his arm. Several somethings. The lesser lances that had pierced him through remained inside him. The spells that burst against him continued to bloom and flare. They were still here, but they had been fused with his Vitae, wrapped in a crimson coat of vital essence.

Had he the attacks? They were burning in his stead. He wasn't expending any of his own life force yet, and he watched as a few of Longinus's rods faded. They were melting away at the far ends, like candles spent of wax, and they were melting oh so slowly. There was a lot of mana in the lances. Enough to serve as fuel on Shiv's behalf for quite some time.

“Yeah, so you might have noticed this skill is kinda weird.” Once more, the voice came. This time, it was directly in front of him. Shiv looked ahead and saw no one. “Sage, is that you?”

“No, I'm over here,” another voice answered by Shiv’s left. Spinning, he found himself faced by a spitting image of himself, except that this Shiv was clad in scholarly robes, sported a pair of spectacles that glinted a little too brightly—casting a reflection of Shiv back at himself—and had a brain so large it was pushing its way out from his cracking skull.

“Oh, okay—wait, what the hells?” Shiv began to nod before he did a hard double-take. Sage of the Enkindled Heart stared back at him.

“What?” the Psychology Skill given flesh asked.

“Why… why do you exist? Here, I mean?” Shiv had gone through a few weird skill evolutions before, but this one was really taking him for a loop. He wasn't even sure if he was still sane. Maybe Longinus had killed him. Maybe this was Shiv's final dying dream or something.

“No, this is absolutely not your dying dream. I would have told you otherwise. As you might have noticed, I'm very good at facing the things you like to avoid.” Sage adjusted his glasses while his brain mass jiggled tantalizingly.

Shiv tore his eyes away from the top of his copy's head and shook his head. “Wait, no, this makes no sense. You don't have a body.”

“Correct. I don't have a body in reality. But we're no longer in reality. This is somewhere else.” Sage looked around. “Well, I wouldn't call it an unreality, since it still exists in relation to reality. Consider all these shadowy shapes around you. It's exactly the same in terms of layout and look as the place you just left—only slightly obscured by the System. I think we are behind the curtain, so to speak. Considering the narrative and theatrical quality this new skill name has, I would call this place the Backstage.”

“Backstage,” a new voice breathed to Shiv's left. “Indeed! What a splendid suggestion!”

Shiv slowly turned to behold another another Shiv. This variation was dressed in a theater actor's ensemble. A long, flowing cape billowed behind him, and he wore a nice leather doublet paired with long black slacks and Twin Griffin brand leather boots. His most distinguishing feature, however, was the mask covering his upper face. It was a simple face painted in a smile, yet also presenting a teardrop in the corner of his left eye. Remembering various newspaper images he'd seen in his life, Shiv recognized it to be a generic Yellowstone Republic Thespian's mask.

“Let me guess, you're my Acting Skill,” Shiv said.

“What? No, you utter buffoon! I'm a Glimpse of Perspective! Your Philosophy skill!” The mask-wearing Shiv turned away in disgust. “Even here, even now, your stupidity endures. I'm trapped! I'm cursed! Even Backstage, there is no liberation from the ignoramus.”

The entire thing was getting hard to process. “Sage, are you sure I haven't gone insane?” Shiv asked, nudging the big-brained version of himself with an elbow.

Sage rolled his eyes and readjusted his spectacles once again. “Absolutely sure. You know what going insane feels like. The Jealousy broke your mind. The Recollector too. You're just dealing with a tremendously powerful Skill Evolution right now, but you'll get used to and master it, just as if you have mastered all your other skills.”

“But maybe this one might be too much for him,” a voice declared behind Shiv.

He looked over his shoulder to behold another another another Shiv, this one cloaked in black robes. He wore a wide-brimmed hat of the same color, and the long, flowing fabric that shrouded his body had tall, winged collars that hid the under portion of his face. He also stood with his arms crossed and was squinting at Shiv. “I'll save you a guess. I am not what you think I am. I am not Stealth. I am a Gardener of Doubt. And if this place was untrue, I would hope it vibrated. I would hope the seeds in the soil shook and told me what is right from what is false.”

And just like that, three of Shiv's personality-infused skills were gathered around him. The moment he looked to one, the others stopped existing, but when he thought of them again, they just reappeared.

“Kind of how it seems to work out here,” the first, tired-sounding voice mumbled. But there was a difference between this voice and the three others. It was feminine and young, but also very flat in terms of tone. It was nothing like Shiv, so it couldn't be one of his skills—

“Well, I kind of am. I used to be Non-Sequitur. Who do you think kept offering you visions after you ended up shitting mom out?”

“Wait, what?”

“Yeah, you literally brought her back into the world and left me here in the dark. Well, kind of. I technically don't exist at all. So. Hooray!” The speaker appeared before Shiv without any warning. One moment, the only thing in front of him was the vague shape that represented Longinus—who seemed to be as confused as Shiv was right now. The next second, a young woman of Shiv's age stood before him. Her face was aquiline, borderline hawk-like if he had to give it a description. Her cheeks were hard and high. Her features were noble but also… awfully familiar. Actually, besides the golden hair, she looked like a female version of—

“Adam,” Shiv muttered. “No, wait, you can't be—”

“Yeah, I can't be,” the girl deadpanned as she rolled her eyes. "Adam's dead and sacrificed baby sister technically isn't real. That's kind of the problem. I don't exist. I . Despite Udraal’s best attempts, I remain pretty dead.”

Shiv gawked as the girl that didn't technically exist pouted. “Wait, but if you don't technically exist, then how are you here right now?”

“Because you subconsciously thought about me before. You keep expecting me to pop out with one of your skill evolutions, just like mom. This one hit the metric, or technically, it allowed me to become a tulpa.”

Shiv frowned. “A what-now?”

“The ignorance,” A Glimpse of Perspective moaned. “The .”

“Ignore the drama queen over here. Daddy Dearest really did everything he could to fuck up your basic education, huh?” Adam’s nonexistent sister smacked her lips together. “A tulpa is a mental construct or being that is made manifest by someone believing in it hard enough. Think of it as an imaginary friend you bring into reality by thinking about them super hard. Except this isn't reality. This place technically doesn't exist. Nothing exists here. Only you do. Well, sort of. You are the only thing that gives this place definition. And because there are no governing laws or rules or things to give this place structure, whatever you think kind of leaks over. That's my guess anyway.”

“You guess,” Shiv whispered. "You don't know?"

“No shit, I don't know. I didn't technically exist up until a few seconds ago, when you evolved the skill. The only reason I said I gave you those visions is that you ended up getting part of my essence after Udraal sacrificed me. I was kind of all tangled up with Mom in flesh and mana.” She shuddered. “Kinda gross, having to recall your own murder. Also kinda gnarly that your dad was the one who stabbed me, huh?”

Shiv struggled to find the words. “You… seem to be taking it pretty well.”

“Yeah, that's basically because you want me to take it well. Again, not technically real. I guess you can call me your ‘Continuity Error Skill’ or your ‘Vision Girl’ since I exist behind the curtain and can peek over other people’s shoulders for you—"

“And why I still kept getting premonitions after Rose left?” he asked for clarification.

The girl that didn't technically exist shot him an annoyed look and ignored his question. “Anyway, you have to understand that everything here is mostly a facet of your mind bleeding over into material reality. What's mental and what's material doesn't really hold many rules here. There's not a lot of weight. Your magic also doesn't make too much sense here, because, well, what's there to reference? There are no lores or people in this place. You're the only one here. Frankly, I would call you a god in his domain here, except there's nothing to rule over and there's nothing to shape, and we're only existing in a sort of penumbral, backroom of reality given structure by the place you just escaped from.”

Shiv stared on. The Sage coughed on his behalf. “Go easier. This is a lot to take in, and he is still processing a tremendous amount of emotional shock from what happened to Georges and what Longinus did to those people.”

The mention of the Wanderer’s name was what snapped Shiv back to focus. “Longinus. He's still there. He still has Georges. We need to get back—”

Shiv found himself cut off as a colossal, world-swallowing tidal wave of incandescent mana passed through him without ever brushing his body or soul. He could still sense the oscillating frequency, the color of magic. Then, before the tsunami of divine mana could even cease, there came a fluttering of pages washing over him. Back in the material world, Evanescia was reverting the Fairwoods. One page was flipped; two more followed, but then the pages flipped forward again, and the reset was undone.

Shiv scowled in confusion. “Evanescia is doing something.”

“More like she's trying to figure out what or who went missing,” the girl who didn't exist guessed. “Think about it. You left context, and unlike all the other times, you didn't pop back up after a few seconds. You stayed gone. There's an entire special storyline that's running in the Summer Court, one that's probably made just for you. A few minutes ago, the lead character of that arc fled Backstage and isn't coming back out. Now, the audience, because they suffer from object permanence, don't remember you exist. And by audience, I mean Evanescia.”

The Usurper-Narrator shifted the scenes back and forth.

Time advanced. Time regressed.

She regarded Longinus and the Summer Court. Judging by all the damage and evidence left within The Boiling Toad and on Plum Blossom’s table, it was certain someone had been here.

But there were lines missing from the story. It was like reading a nonsensical series of events that just happened without a clear chain of cause and effect.

Kelp soup had been made for the Princess of the Harvest, but who had made it? Why had they made it? How had they made it?

All these details were missing. Someone had attacked Longinus, but that was all she knew. Longinus had been attacked. His kitchen realm had been damaged and intruded upon, but everything was without description. There was something missing, something that was altogether absent from the world. Something that had been there before and was now gone.

A chill glided up Evanescia's spine. A breath escaped her. She'd missed that sensation. Was someone trying to steal her dimension from her? Did she actually have a competitor? A fellow Reader? Perhaps another construct like her sent by her creator? Or, more likely, by Udraal?

And she wasn't the only one who was confused. Longinus was looking around, utterly lost. Princess Plum Blossom wasn't sure why she was so mad, and a few of the Bread-Knights that Evanescia had inserted herself into during the last loop were lost as well. They had deviated from their routine, had been tasked with accompanying into the keep.

But that someone was missing from their memories. So were eight full hours of time.

With a thought, the Usurper-Narrator inserted herself into her strongest Mythic character as a safety precaution. She wasn't sure what was wrong, but until she could figure things out again, she wanted to stay extra safe so that she could actually get to the suspenseful part of the story and uncover just who had managed to escape from the pages of her book.

Longinus scratched the back of his head. He looked around, surveying the expanse of the Boiling Toad. His many slaves were still in position, yet they had gathered at the windows of their shanties, staring out from atop rooftops while some huddled and hid between the narrow crevices of their shacks as they often did when a purge was set to follow.

His grill district was utterly destroyed. There was a series of deep punctures, all made by his own lances. Longinus didn't break his own things on a whim. He must have been trying to strike at someone, but whom? He couldn't recall anything.

Uva noted the world flipping back and forth just as she piloted Mara toward the slave collector. The others in the Bell-Hold were assembling, preparing to board the Deepdiver’s tentacle for their descent into the Gnomish Underkingdom. But then, time halted, and the narrative was reversed.

For a moment, Uva wondered if the loop was about to reset. Then, the pages were suddenly flipped back forward, and time was allowed to resume as normal.

The Seeker hesitated. Something was very wrong. More worryingly, there was a missing spot in her own mind as well.

No answer came. But Uva didn’t let it go.

Adam's eyes snapped open. His ever-blossoming senses still hammered against his skull from the inside, threatening to crack his consciousness like an egg. Across from him, the Culturist shook. Beads of sweat rolled down the orc's large gray face like a waterfall. “What happened?” Adam groaned. “Did the loop just get reverted?”

“No,” the Culturist replied. His eyes were closed. His brow was furrowed in deep concentration. His focus refused to break, but he was under immense strain, and on Adam's behalf, no less. “Only a few seconds were reverted, and then those seconds were spun back forward. The Usurper-Narrator is looking for something.”

“For what?”

“I am not certain. And with the way she was flipping back and forth, I don't think she is either.”

“Anyway,” the girl who didn't exist continued, “I think you have about two hours until you burn through all that assimilated mana and start spending your own vitality to keep yourself existent out here.”

“Two hours,” Shiv gasped. That was far more time than he'd expected. But also, two hours gave him options. In those two hours, he might be able to fix his damaged skills. He could also stalk and study Longinus. It wouldn't be clear or easy. He couldn't hear anything from the real world, but he could still observe the god to a limited degree and ambush him when the opportunity presented itself.

Shiv realized.

“There really isn't,” the girl who didn't exist agreed, “but as Sage might say, it'd be foolish just to rush in. However…” A smirk grew on her face. "…you don't need to rush in. You can cut at him from the other side, and you don't even need to fully surface. It'll just cost you."

"Cost me?" Shiv replied. Cost me what?"

"Oh, you know, a hit of vitality. It'll probably burn through most of your stores. It's a pretty intensive operation, reaching over through the veil to affect Integration from the other side. Who knows how much of your assimilated mana it'll burn through? I don't. But aren't you curious to find out? After all, you got quite a bit of mana to spend. So how about it, Shiv? Let’s see you take this new skill for a spin, and add a few Continuity Errors to Longinus’s body.”

Despite how off-putting the Backstage was, and the aberrant nature of a girl who didn't exist, that was all it took to convince Shiv.

Without waiting, the Deathless glided over to the vague form of Longinus. His cutting aura radiated with new intensity, but the cleaving crescents passed through Longinus without harming him.

“Remember, you're on the other side of Integration,” the girl who didn't exist explained. “You can't just take a swing and hit something. You're not that close. You gotta dip across, and that means passing through the veil a little bit, reaching an arm over, sending an attack or a spell, and breaching the borders. That'll cost you something, so let's see what the vitality tax is.”

“How do I do that?” Shiv asked.

“The same way you came over,” the girl explained. She had her chin resting on a hand now, floating sideways in the air in front of him as if lounging on a nonexistent couch. “Try evading again… but maybe only with a part of yourself.”

Shiv looked at his crimson claws, trembling with edges that sought to rip the bedrock of a soul, and stared up at Longinus, who was still manifested above his unwilling Avatar in the form of a towering centaur. “Right. Dodge with a part of myself. Time to figure out how that works.”

He concentrated and tried to Phase Frame a specific part of his body. The Vitae that comprised him flickered. His arm combusted, and he felt a rush of cold hammer against his sides. It was like he tore down a set of walls he didn't know existed, and the non-existence that waited beyond came rushing in to fill the now unoccupied space. The divine lances stuck in his body evaporated en masse—spent to facilitate Shiv's action. But another miracle followed: his hand crossed over from the Backstage into Integration, and he felt a sudden jarring impact travel up his arms as his fingers raked across a godly face.

Even from the Backstage, Shiv could see the scratches he left on Longinus, could see how the god flinched. He quickly drew his arm back before he spent too much of himself.

“Well, that burned enough vitality to cut you down to maybe an hour.” The girl who didn’t exist whistled. “Expensive skill. But hey, you’re still here. You didn’t get dragged back over into reality like with Outside Context Problem—and there’s no obvious decoy like with Non-Sequitur, is there?”

“Yeah,” Shiv said, opening and closing his hand as he watched Longinus clutch his face in a pantomime display of vivid agony. “I think I can get used to being back here.”

Continuity Error 201 > 203