77 (II)

Tome [II]

After Adam got tired of trying to strangle Shiv, everyone resumed their study of the tome.

“Most of the pages are badly burned, but we have confirmed that this is a Legendary item.” Valor offered the tome to Shiv, and as he placed his hands on it, a notification appeared, informing him of the tome’s critical details.

Equipment Obtained: [Tome of the Forgotten Artist]

Tier: Legendary

Condition: Destroyed

Composition: [Error]

Enchantments > [Error]; [Error]; [Error]; Record of Absolute and Unforgotten Truth; [Error]; [Error]; [Error]; [Error]; [Error]

But he didn’t even need the notification to feel how powerful the tome was. There was a trembling presence residing within it. More than attuned magic, more than anything Shiv had ever felt. It simply was heavy in the way that nothing else was, like it had been touched by something immense. By a god.

As he looked through the Enchantments, most only displayed themselves as Error. But there was one still left. “What the hells is this one?”

Valor hummed with curiosity. “I suspect it is a means to deny the influence of the other Ascendants’ revisionist powers. Your people believed that there were only 13 Ascendants. They also believed that the surface and Abyss war ended during the Battle of the Eclipse, that no true expedition into the Abyss ever took place; an entire military campaign missing from the collective consciousness of your Republic. A campaign in which the surfacers descended and pushed down into our homes, raiding our territories. I have gone through some pages, and we discovered portraits recording scenes from the war. The burning of Submission—Vicar Sullain’s precious City of Conjoined Faith.”

Can Hu shaped hands of stone and turned the tome directly to the moment that Valor described. There, a small patch of an illustration was preserved. It showed a great city lined with crystalline spires burning, people writhing in the flames, and from on-high, a host of flying Pathbearers looked down at the pyre. Shiv recognized one of them—and so did Adam.

Roland, Rose breathed within Shiv.

At the head of the warhost was Roland Arrow. His armor was basked in flame, and from his back sprouted colossal wings. But looming over him and glaring down at the burning city of Submission was a hawk that was the light of dawn itself, and its very essence trailed off into Roland’s bow as he prepared to release a shot.

“This…” Adam paused as he considered things. “I think I need to speak with my father when I get back home. About a great many things.”

“We might have to, considering the Starhawk is at the heart of all this,” Shiv said. He looked at the blazing hawk behind Roland, and a feeling crashed over him. The beginnings of Foreshadowing reached to claim his being, but it failed to seize him. Rather, it clutched Rose instead. She experienced the vision in his stead and began muttering wildly. From her eyes spilled out a stream of light, and it formed a screen before Shiv’s eyes.

Outside Context Problem: The Starhawk gazes down upon the world from his place beyond earth’s dimension. He can feel the noose tightening. He senses the determination spilling over from his chosen champion. Starhawk’s Perch burns over Lost Angeles like a second sun. Arrows formed from the very power of fusion crash down across the land, glassing entire armies. But it is within expectations. Sullain spent years preparing for this. He was aided by traitors of the Republic; a rival Ascendant to the Starhawk; and someone else…

Shiv saw Blackedge coated in a layer of divine radiance, but at its very apex, Roland Arrow soared. A burning hawk was fused into his back, becoming his armor and wings. Wings that embraced all of Blackedge, that turned away countless attacks. And every time Roland fired a shot, the sun above would flare. First, Roland’s arrow would strike. Then, a beam of unmatched radiance would crash down from above, utterly disintegrating an entire portion of the landscape.

And this was constant. Skills and spells zipped out all around Roland. His arrows snapped back in counter immediately. Then came the sun. Then came a brief silence.

For now, Vicar Sullain licks his wounds. But Roland is tiring. After over two weeks of constant combat and over one hundred million Necromantic constructs and enemy Pathbearers slain, his soul is withering from the sheer amount of power he has been channeling. The Starhawk’s mana might be immense, but Roland is still only a Master—his three Unique Skills notwithstanding.

“His what?!” Shiv shouted.

Everyone flinched back from his outburst, and he violently gestured at his own head. Uva blinked and connected to his mind. Immediately, she blinked. “You… What is this? Why do you have a notification screen?”

“Outside Context Problem,” Shiv said again. “Seems like it’s a better version of Foreshadowing too, since the vision is projected out from Rose, rather than me just suffering it myself and getting my cognition put on hold.”

As Uva filtered the memories across to the group, Can Hu awkwardly eyed Shiv, and he winced. “Sorry. We’ll fill you in afterward.”

“I’ll try to learn Binaric Theory at some point,” Uva said.

“It is well.” Can Hu sighed. “I could receive Psychomancy signals from organics before I was shattered.”

The scenes played through everyone’s mind, and Adam’s jaw dropped as Shiv recounted Rose’s words, since no one could hear what she was saying. “T-three Unique Skills?”

“Ah,” Valor said with a low chuckle. “I suspected something like this. A mere Master could not have done what your father did, Adam. Even a True Master is rarely chosen as divine champion.”

The Young Lord just kept gawking. His eyes grew wider and wider at the naked power his father unleashed. The very horizon was ablaze from Roland’s arrows. It made Adam’s Veilpiercers look pitiful altogether.

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And still he fights on, trying to locate Vicar Sullain, hoping to strike the great Necromancer down. He knows that if Sullain falls, the army will shatter. But even should he succeed, he would need to quickly recover and prepare. For the vicar to attack him so openly could only mean one thing—that his master’s rivals intended to strike first, and that the war of the Ascendants is soon to arrive.

The enemy thinks the Starhawk is alone. They think that he is about to embark on a hopeless cause.

They are wrong. There were once twenty Ascendants. Twenty who rose to godhood after descending to the deepest depths of the Abyss.

Roland has managed to locate the broken, Sacred Phylacteries of all the Ascendants struck from history, aside from the Forgotten Artist. And even her Phylactery might soon find its way to Starhawk’s Perch…

Outside Context Problem > 56

As Rose returned to silence, Shiv stopped narrating on her behalf.

“I am curious why we can see the scenes the System offers you, but not hear the woman herself.” Valor hummed.

“I think it’s because of Foreshadowing,” Shiv said. “The skill evolved, and the visions come from the System. It might not fully tap into the Evolved Skill. Or something. I don’t really know.”

“You might be right,” Valor said. “Your intuition led you there for a reason. Do not be so quick to turn away from your instincts. The visions do not need you to tap into your acausality. Rather, like what you said with the Educator, you are now insulated—so you are not the one that has to experience the visions firsthand.”

Shiv grunted. “Useful.”

“And my father might need this tome as well,” Adam whispered to himself. He gritted his teeth. “The System is playing its game again. Setting everything up for its perfect little collisions. We’re all just bloody figures on a board to it.”

“These are the conditions to continue escalating strife,” Uva commented. But a look of unease came over her as well. “We don’t know what the Starhawk’s plan is fully, but if he is collecting these Sacred Phylacteries, then isn’t the strongest likelihood of him summoning his lost allies?”

“Perhaps,” Valor said. “Or finding where they actually are; to break them and take their power in case they refuse to aid him.”

“No,” Adam almost snapped. “That’s not something the Starhawk would do. He—he holds to virtue and honor and truth with every breath.”

“Yet, we face a web of endless lies,” Valor retorted.

“Actually, I got a question,” Shiv said. “How does a god get forgotten by everyone? I don’t think they all have a power like mine, right? Could they be reaching back in time to alter things across history? Can you even do that?”

Valor shook his head. “The amount of power it would take for even a god to rewrite even recent history on such a level would completely collapse the local Mana Stability Threshold and shatter this meager world entirely. There have been entities that turned time back for a second. But even that is a feat that most cannot dream of. Not even a Legendary Pathbearer.”

Shiv stared at Valor, surprised at the old Pathbearer’s admission. “Not even?”

“Not even close,” Valor said. “The Legendary Tier… It reshapes your relationship with the System in the world. It makes you powerful in a way that allows you to defy gods. But there are still Tiers beyond that. And there are powers even greater by far. I told you, I’ve been to worlds where the ceiling is so high and the beings there are so powerful that I felt like little more than an ant. Yet I was a particularly clever and evolved ant, at that. So I managed to avoid being squished. Still, traveling in such planes and dimensions was always humbling.”

Valor trailed off for a moment and sighed. “I just wish I could remember more. And, no, if the Ascendants are changing history, they will not be doing it physically, but through the rewriting of people’s minds.”

Then, another piece of the Republic’s laws clicked into place for both Shiv and Adam.

“The Psychomancers,” Adam breathed. “The monitoring Curse. They’re supposed to be working for the government. They’re supposed to reach out and reshape the minds of people around them. The only people who likely know are of the Inquisition, or… or…”

Adam’s brow furrowed. “Or Lords, like my father. If things like this were happening, he would know.” The Young Lord considered that, and the implications of his words weighed heavily on him. “But why would he allow it, and why wouldn’t he tell me?”

“Perhaps he couldn’t let anyone know what he was planning,” Shiv replied. “This Ascendant rebellion thing… seems like a secret you keep from everyone because you don’t know who the Inquisition’s Psychomancers might steal memories from.”

“Just how long has this been going on?” Adam muttered.

“Considering the war between the surface and the Abyss,” Valor said. “Much longer than we think.”

“Well, I think we also know why Starhawk’s Perch is so important,” Shiv said. “It’s a Sacred Phylactery too. It connects a god to the world, just like this tome did for the… Forgotten Artist. That’s why Stormhalt wants it intact—wants the place captured. And I have a feeling he might have an Ascendant behind him as well.”

“City Lord Stormhalt exalts Halsur the Endbreaker,” Adam said. “But… Halsur is a guardian. A pacifist sworn to bear burdens. And what’s more, I don’t understand the point of these Phylacteries. The Auroral Council exists. They are the divine manifestations of the Ascendants upon this world. They don’t need to be bound to this dimension to do anything.”

“And so perhaps it is not a binding,” Valor said. “Perhaps it is parting. Like the partitioning of one’s soul. Much like… the Undying.” And an epiphany seemed to light up in Valor’s sockets. “Like me and my fellow Undying. We part our souls. We pour our skills and split our beings into multiple bodies that are still connected by thinnest tethers… A collective, severed, fragmented form of shared divinity…”

“What do you mean?” Adam asked.

“I cannot be sure yet,” Valor said. “I cannot be certain. But we know that they found their godhood in the Abyss. We need… I need more time with this tome. I need to—”

And just then, a flash of Dimensionality mana crackled at the center of the teleportation anchor. Everyone snapped to alertness. Uva’s shield glided in front of her as Shiv stepped into Can Hu. A spatial pocket expanded at the center of the room, and a shape plopped out from within.

A shape that was the badly mauled form of Guardshead Leu. The Vulteg was bleeding from multiple wounds. Most of her head tentacles had been shredded, and even her eye was missing entirely. A moan of pain escaped her vertical mouth as she pawed at the ground. Black blood bubbled beneath her, and she called out with a hoarse cry.

“Away,” she hissed. “Away from me…”

Shiv shook off his shock and cast a wyrm into her. At once, the Woundeater swallowed her injuries and grew bright with crystallized wounds. Leu stopped writhing. Her eye was back. Her tentacles twitched. She felt at her body and shot up to a sitting position, staring at the group.

“M—master Shiv,” she managed, breathing hard.

“What happened?” Shiv asked, kneeling beside Leu. “Did Confriga do this to you?”

“No,” she rasped. “It’s—”

And just then, the entire building above them shook violently as what sounded like a massive mana bomb went off.

Quest Gained: Repel the vampiric invasion and eliminate all infiltrating Aviary agents in Gate Theborn before they overcome the defenses and slay Gate Lord Confriga first.

Success: Evolve an [Existing Skill] to Master-Tier

Failure: The Court of the First Blood claims the mana core and begins to corrupt the gate. The Animancy Core is sent across dimensions and is lost to all parties. A detachment of the First Blood joins Vicar Sullain’s crusade. The First Blood launches a retaliatory offensive against Weave from the gate’s position within a span of two weeks.

A deep, suffering sigh escaped Adam. He looked up at the ceiling, as if glaring at the System itself, and scowled. “We just don’t get a bloody break.”

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