Harbinger [I)

Harbinger [I)

Harbinger of Tripartite Ruin (Legendary) 202

Attention: Delve requirements for Skill not yet met.

Something tore from Shiv.

The pain was beyond comprehension.

It felt like his soul was hatching from the inside. Even as he dropped beneath concept and context, plunging Backstage once more, the agony continued. It was no attack delivered upon him by Longinus. It was no spell, no physical wound. It was an evolution and fusion that saw four of his skills brutally sundered to be rebuilt into a singular whole.

After everything Shiv had endured, he'd thought himself beyond pain. He'd thought he was done screaming.

How little he knew.

Fusing the Harbinger of Tripartite Ruin redefined his understanding of torment. His mind broke in half. His flesh turned to glass and shattered.

His Chronomancy field was ripped free from his soul, pulling toward a place beyond the three-dimensional, before it plunged back in like a thousand searing daggers. They hammered his already sundered fragments deeper into his splattered flesh. Vitality spilled free from his Severed Shadow. He twitched and writhed, and psionic waves of bellowing pain blasted out before they, too, were consumed by the shard—merging before Shiv was nothing but ruin, fragments unto himself.

And at his core was a flame darker than the void. It boiled his broken fractals. It melted them, hardened them, and eventually lit them. Slowly, the flame began to die, and bitter recollections returned to the Deathless unbidden.

He remembered being a child. He remembered the streets of Blackedge, of everyone who spat upon him, who scorned him, who cast him away, who threw stones at the back of his head, and who used their skills to abuse him.

He remembered the townsfolk who despised his very existence, who invoked the symbol of the Ascendance and cursed his very presence. He remembered the War Priest who beat him, who humiliated him, who threw him down the stairs of the church before snapping his arm. He remembered people who spat upon him, pissed on him, and left him shivering in the street.

Decrepit alleyways all too familiar manifested before him, their materializations so vivid he could swear they were true, but between seconds of spasmodic suffering, the translucent mana broke. Shiv realized his Psychomancy had turned on him—it was lashing into him, tearing at his very sanity. The fabric of his consciousness was mauled and torn, tattered like a curtain shredded by a careless blade. There were gaps lining his sense of self, gaps that caused his history to bleed through from one point into another.

He remembered starving—more than anything, —and the cold, and the people who scorned him. He remembered the loneliness. And he remembered the hatred he felt toward everyone in Blackedge, toward Roland Arrow for condemning him to this life for a sin he didn't commit.

Shiv hated Blackedge. How could he have ever forgotten? The memory of that hate inflicted him with a tangible agony. He was boiling from the inside. There was an inferno cooking his organs.

His maelstrom of ineffable misery reached new heights.

More moments followed, moments closer in terms of personal history: His flesh burning from his own fire bomb, the hundredth lesser vampire lying dead at his feet, but granting him nothing. Roland Arrow denying him his Path, denying him even the opportunity of becoming a proper cook. The attack on Blackedge during the Festival of the Eclipse. The death of Feather, the guard who'd failed in protecting his sister. Adam grasping his hand as he dangled above the Abyss. The raven-helmed stranger, his own first death, Vicar Sullain rising from the darkness, followed by his fall into the Abyss. Afterward, there was a stretch of bliss, sweet nothingness. Uva's face briefly appeared, then Adam’s, then Valor's, and those of all the others he met at Weave. But they were ephemeral, like a ripple beneath a dark and frozen lake. For a moment, they were there; the next, they were gone, scattered, shattered like him.

The Deathless ceased to know himself. His soul wasn't coming back together. His body wasn't taking shape, and his mind was little more than dust. He was lost to himself, tumbling from memory to memory. He recalled every folly he'd ever committed: the collateral damage he caused, the countless undeserved victims that died during his wars, the mistakes he made in battle, and his many own, horrific deaths.

All of them were relived for a short eternity. He didn't know how long he spent in this state. All he knew was that the slightest bit of his consciousness which remained burned like a desperate ember. In the throes of his evolution, he could hear someone calling for him, but they were far away. Maybe that was himself; maybe it was his own thoughts given voice. He felt something pull at his mind—brutally wrenching the memories plaguing him free. Then came the sweet, soothing balm of ignorance.

The relief he felt would have reduced him to inarticulate sobs if he had but eyes to weep, if he had but a voice or body to express his release.

The pain afflicting him dissolved. Then there came the clicking sensations, the pieces of him coming back together. Something was being built around his person—built from the remnants of his mind, from a destroyed portion of his body, from the crumbled remains of his heart. His emotions still felt raw and ravaged, but they also had been reforged. The presence inside him was stronger than ever before, and there was a flame infused within his attunement, a searing flame that powered every part of his soul.

Then came the . Every single bit of rage he'd ever felt went off inside him like a bomb, but rather than exploding outward eternally, the fires became an ocean of crashing waves, contained within a marble. That which swept out from him was soon drawn back in riptides of power that assembled more of himself.

A light came on inside Shiv. A flicker of his whole self returned. A voice beckoned his attention, commanding his notice.

The voice was familiar; it to be familiar, for it was his. Yet, it seemed to echo back from a point in the future, or perhaps it was cast forward from an instance in the past he just couldn't remember. Regardless, it reached him. Regardless, it compelled his sorrow. The voice was racked with regret, and so too was Shiv, for the voice was his. They were one and the same, but they were also separate despite needing to be whole.

There was something that bordered on mockery in the voice now. There was no ill intent in it, however—simply a dry mirth, a weary acceptance, an understanding that he'd failed to grasp before.

“What… what are you saying?” The words slipped out from Shiv. He was barely aware of his own thoughts, let alone what he was voicing.

Light entered his eyes.

Light returned color to the world, and he saw once more. He saw the Backstage, the garden taking shape—the many wounds that became colossal vines and plantstuff coating the ruins of Lost Angeles and countless other battlefields he'd survived, intermingling into a landscape of destruction.

And in this realm defined by disfigurements, wounds, and broken things, Shiv found a most befitting addition. Opposite him hovered a mirror to himself. Yet, the mirror was a distortion; the one he beheld was himself, but so much more. Shiv saw his physical form reforged in a substance made from golden glass. Yet the glass was fractured, the cracks leaking flames of purest black, and lining the glass was a membrane of thought-stuff, of mental magic, bleeding out from the matter.

The Harbinger stood apart from Shiv in other ways. He looked —aged far beyond a teenage boy.

His eyes were pits of piercing darkness. Looking into them filled Shiv with an inexplicable dread. Though the Harbinger's form was fractured, he wore what seemed to be a modified chef's outfit. It flowed around him as a long white coat, and in his hand was a blade—a cooking knife, but one stained deep with blood. What wasn't lined with crimson revealed reflections, screaming visages, echoing howls, memories, and understandings that were locked deep inside Shiv. He could hear them, but they remained trapped.

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In the Harbinger's other hand was his currently lost Last Morsel. It was a construct much like the Harbinger himself, also made from fragments of golden glass, but an echo of its power lingered. The memory that shaped it was palpable, and something compelled Shiv to reach forth to touch his lost frying pan. He felt it: the orichalcum texture, the shape, the edges.

He ran a finger across its edges and flinched back as his skin was sliced open, a spray of vitality chipped free from his hand.

It was real. Real enough to harm.

the Harbinger declared. The Harbinger held up his right hand, and the slightest movement caused his limb to crack. Bits broke away from him and then slid back into place. He was constantly shattering and reassembling—always in pain, just like Shiv was.

Bands of frustration tightened inside Shiv. He glared at his skill. “Sage… Did you evolve solely to shit-talk me?”

The Harbinger snorted.

“Glad to see my perfect self is still a prick.”

the Harbinger answered with a voice as dry as desert wind.

“Is that why you’re all cracked? And why it hurt so godsdamned much to evolve you?” Shiv felt his own Severed Shadow and struggled not to shudder as he recalled what he'd endured. “Barely came out of that sane.”

“I’ll break apart again? Why?”

“Yeah, I wanna know that too,” a girl’s voice sounded, and Adam's not-sister drifted into view beside Shiv, her arms crossed in apprehension. Strangely, the Garden of Wounds and Broken Things had gone silent. It was like the dimension made from devastation was listening intently, trying to understand what Shiv had undergone. “It’s only been around a few minutes this time, by the way. In case you want to know. You were screaming your mind off for most of those two minutes, and your Chronomancy and Psychomancy fields stepped out from you and started putting both of you back together. It did all that pretty quickly too.”

And that had Shiv sifting through his own memories. He knew he was an orphan from Blackedge. He knew that he'd gone through a great many torments. He knew that—

The mere recollection of Georges' death greeted him like a stake being driven through his heart. “Agh! Shit!” Shiv's chest cracked open like it had been struck by a Legendary axe blow. Chunks of Vitae broke away from him—enough to see him extinguished at baseline. The only reason why he remained in existence was because of that which he'd stolen from Longinus. Without that harvested life force, there wouldn't be anything left of him from the harm suffered just now.

Before Shiv could unravel any further, the Harbinger reached out, and its hand and Last Morsel came asunder in a kaleidoscope of pieces. Where its outer layer unfurled in a storm of temporal fractals, Shiv saw the hand within reach forth. It was a thing of fire; it was a thing of Psychomancy. It was a thing made solid through reforged emotion, married with two different fields of magic and the concept of shattering a heart through physical and verbal violence.

The Harbinger reached into him like he was an open book and, with a casual pinch, clamped down on a vein flooded by an ocean of grief.

“What… what the fuck was that?” Shiv gasped. “Why does feeling bad crack me open? Unification of our vessel? Harbinger, I’m going to need you to start making some sense here—” His voice cut off in a bark of pain as a portion of his skull split open too.

The Harbinger winced.

“Why?!” Shiv shouted.

“No, the—” He caught the flat look on the Harbinger’s face, and some more of Shiv’s Severed Shadow split open. He flinched, then paused. “Oh. I’m doing it again.”

“I… I can’t even stupid? Otherwise, I’ll keep cracking?”

the Harbinger answered,

Shiv stared. “So. This Legendary Evolution basically made me the single most vulnerable Pathbearer in all Integration?”

the Harbinger whispered. He slipped his hand free from Shiv’s body and raised it in front of his face. His golden form shone, and the mana fields that comprised him were so dense with attuned magic that Shiv was rendered speechless at his own power.

Thus did Shiv's second Legendary Skill turn. Turning away from the Harbinger, he looked upon a skeletal ruin, a long-hollowed megastructure that stood near the borders of Lost Angeles. Shiv remembered smashing through that building during his scouting run.

the Harbinger commanded.

And so Shiv did. It felt strange directing his Chronomancy and Psychomancy without them being attached to his body, but ultimately, the Harbinger felt like a limb or a mirrored version of himself. It wasn't another body that he had to control down to the slightest twitch of a muscle. He didn't need to draw upon his Legion of Self. He simply thought and reacted, and the Harbinger obeyed.

But there were a few extreme differences between it and his current body. Shiv's Severed Shadow and his physical forms were potent but limited in terms of speed. How fast he could move and react was determined by his Shapeless Tides and his Inertial Overdrive, which he'd been stacking as much as he could throughout combat since gaining his Heroic Toughness and first Legendary Skill to keep his body from breaking and his surroundings safe. He was fast—could keep getting faster, so long as he didn't discharge his Inertial sheath. But even if he kept building up his speed, he was still slow compared to the likes of Longinus—and practically unmoving when measured against Gone.

The Harbinger suffered no such limitation. The skill could materialize anywhere Shiv perceived. Because of course it could; even the Strider of the Unbending Path had this ability. Being able to move in an accelerated field of time made the Harbinger look like it was teleporting, painting paths of Chronomantic gold in its wake. It snapped into place much like Shiv did when he was reverting himself back into the past. Instead, however, the Harbinger was doing the same thing for the future—and it didn't seem to be limited by a few seconds of time anymore.

The Harbinger materialized within the skeletal tower, and Shiv saw through its eyes like they were his own. He tried to cast himself across but couldn’t.

the Harbinger declared,

“Makes sense,” Shiv said. He also noted the faintest veins of translucence connecting him to the Harbinger.

The Harbinger’s sudden words made Shiv's mind go blank. “I think that's the first time anyone has ever said that to me. On top of that, why? What does that even mean, you need to spend one of my traumatic memories?”

“Huh? Just hit it—aw, fuck!” Shiv felt his torso tear open, and he doubled over as he clutched at the wound. He sensed scorn leaking over him from the Harbinger. “Are you thinking I’m an idiot again?”

The Harbinger demonstrated exactly why Shiv was an idiot by waving his fractured hand into and through one of the walls of the decayed edifice.

“Well, knock that shit off,” Shiv grumbled. “You’re tearing me up worse than felling Longinus.”

“Fuck,” Shiv whimpered. “Alright, looks like we’re doing that goofy positive self-affirmation shit.”

The Harbinger sounded amused, and that made Shiv realize just how felling annoying he was someti—

Another gash opened upon him. Shiv yelped, and a genuine burst of anger ignited inside him. “I’m getting really tired of this shi—agh! Felling—AGH!”

“I’m… I’m fucking trying…” Shiv hissed.

Comedy 20 > 22

Skill Damaged: Comedy

Even Backstage, the System found a way to taunt Shiv. “Just give me a godsdamned memory!”

“A bit hard when you pulled a bunch of memories out of me! I don't care, just spend one from my childhood—they’re all the same miserable garbage anyway! The War Priest! Use that one!”

And with his tacit allowance, the Harbinger acted. The enkindled flames within the Harbinger were vented out from the cracks that disfigured his body. The pure-black fires consumed the inside of the long-wrecked tower in an instant and began to rise. A veil of translucent mana gripped it as well, but then there came a change—a flash, a glinting, a scintillation. The tower had gone from a structure made from broken stone and jetting rebar to a sculpture of glass.

Then, with an almost contemptuous jab, the Harbinger shattered the transmuted ruin. The fifty-story tower was obliterated, much in the same way Shiv had been during the initial skill fusion. But where his vitality allowed him to reform without suffering permanent harm, the same couldn't be said for the tower. It rained down in a shower of broken shards and blended with the garden of destruction thereafter.

The Garden of Wounds and Broken Things does not appreciate you defacing its horticultural arrangements.

Somehow, Shiv could taste an atmosphere of frustration oozing out from the surrounding landscape, like there was an unseen will judging him nearby. But the Garden was only a secondary concern, for there was a blank spot inside his mind now. A memory had been boiled away—smelted by his rage and unleashed upon the physical world. “Holy shit, so I can turn people to glass using my own hurt feelings?”

the Harbinger replied.

Shiv almost reflexively argued with his skill, but he closed his mouth and wagged a finger at his skill. “Almost had you thinking I was stupid there for a second, huh?”

the Harbinger confirmed.

“Yeah, it just took me getting another skill damaged—wait, if you can use my mental issues to turn something into glass, can you punch someone in the soul?”

the Harbinger answered.

“Oh.” Shiv’s disappointment came with another helping of pain—it suddenly felt like his entire chest was bruised. “Harbinger, I’m trying not to be an asshole, but my random thoughts hurting me really sucks.”

“Okay. What the hells is a Tripartite?”

For once, Shiv wasn’t mutilated for asking a question.

Shiv scowled. “You ?”

“Not even that.” Shiv scoffed. “Longinus isn’t doing so well with that omniscience stuff either, I think.” Back in Integration, Shiv peeked at Longinus smashing the ground over and over again, throwing what looked like the mother of all tantrums as he struggled to control his overflowing frustration. “You know, if I could attach you to Longinus—”

the Harbinger cut him off.

“Seriously?” Shiv asked.

Shiv hummed. And he started thinking. “Okay. I have an idea.” He called the Harbinger back, and it reappeared over him in an instant before anchoring itself back over his Revenant. “That’s going to take a bit of getting used to. Alright. So, I think we need to run some more tests—but not on Longinus. Not yet. Risks are too high.” He waited for an injury to appear, but no wounds opened upon his soul.

And suddenly, the biggest downside to his premature Legendary Skill Evolution didn’t seem so crippling at all. “Well, then. Better keep you real close until I need to use you.”

“How many slave-wranglers do you think Longinus has?” Shiv asked. “He doesn’t seem to be the hard work and constant labor type, and considering how the dimensionals were in the middle of stopping a breakout when we got here, I think we might have no shortage of other test subjects.”

“We still have to be fast,” Shiv finished. “Right. Back and across—and you’re a lot quicker than I am. So. How about it? Do you want to find out if you can punch someone in the personality defect so hard they break like a window?”

And a strange and beautiful friendship began to bloom between Shiv and a skill-born version of his future self.