The eldritch are not necessarily evil, but they are all fundamentally alien.

Take a person accidentally stepping on an anthill. Would you consider this action evil? Likely not.

Yet, that comparison is not entirely accurate. The eldritch often understand us on some level. They comprehend us. In this sense, they are never unaware of what they are doing. They are, however, simply beyond us—at least, most of us.

They have their own interests, their fascinations, and their desires, but they are not human desires. They are greater, more expansive, and more complex than most can ever know.

But as I have said, when Pathbearers grow, they grow greater as well. They grow stronger. Eventually, if an ant is infused with enough power, if it undergoes enough metamorphoses, it does not stay a mere ant. Its former self becomes a memory, and what emerges along that long track to ascension might rival more than just the greatest of men.

It might challenge a god.

So take heart, Seeker of Mysteries. If you have embarked on this path, know that despair is only a flavor and madness is but a temporary ailment. We are not the ones that break.

If you are here, if you are reading this, know this: to descend into madness or to rise and comprehend enlightenment is a factor of power, a measure of how well you wield your own mind. And that is your responsibility, your mastery.

Embrace the strange. Face it. And do not be broken.

–Seekers of the Elder Mysteries

86 (I)

Eldritch

Shiv’s eyes widened in horror and disbelief as he watched something shoot out from Uva’s right eye. It pierced clean through the entity, spearing its head-hand and wrapping around it like a serpent. A serpent that promptly ignited and burned the entity’s very body.

The colors of the flame hurt Shiv’s sanity to behold, and he watched as the entity coiled all its retroactive rivers in on itself.

“No! No!” the entity cried out. “Why, why are you here? How can YOU be here?!”

“I was always here,” another voice spoke. This one held Uva’s tone, Uva’s tenor, Uva’s pitch. But every syllable it spoke sounded jumbled, garbled, wrong. The strangely colored flame lining the serpent consumed the entity, and something began to tear it apart.

A battle was unfolding before Shiv, and sections of the entity went missing. It died, it returned to life, but then it died again, and immediately its focus scattered. Its rivers of retroactive time curled around its body, trying to ward off something unseen. One of the entity’s tendrils lashed out then and crashed down on Uva.

Shiv gave a hoarse cry of terror.

When the tendril rose, Shiv’s insides twisted in agony. She was flat. Pressed into the ground. Her armor was completely cracked open, and Shiv thought she was dead. But then he noticed a very strange lack of blood, and how she resembled a deflated balloon rather than a gory smear. That, and his Biomancy could still sense her organs and body architecture. She was alive, just… flat. And barely conscious.

“Uva,” Shiv said, casting a thought at her. She let out a slight moan, confirming that she was truly alive, but her mind, he never felt her mind this jumbled and chaotic before.

“Shiv… I don’t—I…”

“I don’t know what you did, but I think you just saved all of us.”

An incoherent noise came from her. And then a tentacle crashed against her again. Shiv flinched. But as it rose, Uva’s armor was badly cracked while she was pasted against the floor. Still alive. Utterly unharmed.

Shiv blinked. I’m not even going to question it. Go shit yourself, System. But thank you for whatever Skill Evolution you gave her.

Shiv cast a Woundeater into himself, fixing his broken body as he shot back to his feet. Beside him, Adam was huddled on the ground, clutching his throat, shivering. “Adam, Adam, we need to go. Adam!”

The Young Lord gawked at Shiv, his eyes wide, and he looked more shell-shocked than ever. Shiv didn’t have Uva’s Psychomancy capabilities. He couldn’t put Adam’s broken thoughts back together, pull him out of a state of shock. But thankfully, he didn’t need to.

The Young Lord clenched his jaw, and with what seemed like an impossible effort of will, he began to force himself to breathe, to stop hyperventilating. He stared at Valor and started gathering his scattered pieces. Shiv couldn’t tell if Valor was dead or not, but the ancient’s skull was badly cracked.

Just then, the entity flew overhead with a shriek, and the flames consuming it flickered, flashed, and finally burst into dust. Whatever it was fighting had just been slain, but the entity continued writhing in pain for a moment.

Shiv clenched his teeth, and he placed a hand on Adam’s shoulder. “The plan stays the same, but get the others out of here and jump from somewhere they can’t see! Somewhere the entity won’t be able to find. Go! Go now!”

“Shiv,” Adam said, breathing hard. “I—We have to run! We all have to run!”

“We’re out of options, and I’m the only one that can keep this thing at bay.” He shook the Young Lord affectionately. “And you’re the one with the grand plans. See if you can come up with one. There’s nowhere to go. And we’re not leaving the survivors. And I’m not turning from a fight. Here. Take Uva.”

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Shiv handed Uva to Adam, and the Young Lord’s eyes blinked rapidly as he stared down at the Umbral, now a little more than a completely flat sheet of flesh. “What in the Broken Moon happened to her?”

Shiv didn’t wait for Adam to respond. He burst up into the air, and he slammed into the entity’s back before it could recover. With another hard yank on his field, he sent both of them tumbling toward the horizon. And this time, he made some adjustments to how he fought.

He punted the entity, sending it even further into the distance. As it tried to jump back in time using its retroactive rivers. Shiv briefly halted time as his temporal shell flared. He intercepted the entity as it skipped backward in time, appeared where it had been three seconds ago. As soon as it finished its transition, Shiv smashed into it again—and even faster this time with all the momentum he had built up.

The entity shot across the sky as Shiv chucked it with a loud shout. The moment the Chronomancy river connected to its body went anywhere near him, Shiv released his temporal shell and let his Chronomancy recover. “Hit and run,” he said to himself. “Hit and run.”

Strider of the Unbending Path > 103

Momentum Core > 92

The entity turned and regarded him. “Anomaly. Don’t know how she contacted the Dreamtaker. Will tear the information out from her mind. Will take her eyes, replace them with my own. Vessel belongs to me. To the Stranger.”

Shiv growled as shot toward the entity again. And he watched how it reacted. His last engagement against it went bad because he fought too aggressively—stayed too close. He only had ten seconds of near frozen time. Ten seconds and not a lot of maneuverability while time was frozen. New rules: if he was going to halt time, he was going to do it close. For other instances, he would just keep time drastically slowed and alternate that with Outside Context Problem.

The entity blasted toward Shiv. His temporal shell hardened but didn’t completely solidify. Time slowed. The entity went from impossibly fast to being something Shiv could handle. He dove under two lashing Chronomantic rivers and pulled himself along a spearing tentacle. He slammed knee-first in the entity, scattering its proximal bubble of protective Chronomancy as he knocked it back.

Another of its tentacle stabbed at him from behind. He went outside of context. It simply passed through the space he’d just existed. “What is this?”

Shiv formed two laceration spells and unleashed them on the entity. It came apart. Shiv emerged in a burst of white and red. The entity saw him again. He paused time. He drove an elbow into the entity’s chest and drained its vitality. His Momentum Core was almost full. He let time resume.

Three seconds. Temporal shell barely damaged. It should recover faster this way.

Rivers of retroactivity cascaded towards him. He went outside context again. The entity lost track of him. He passed through the entity. He fired another laceration into the back of its body. It split in half. He froze time again and pulled a bone dagger out of his cloak to replace his kukri. Then, Shiv discharged the entirety of his Momentum Core as he slashed the entity. It split in half and respawned. He slashed it again and again. He killed it four times before the first crack appeared on his temporal armor.

Then he shifted out of context again.

With each blow, a battle rage built within Shiv. Images flashed through his head. Images of Valor’s cracked skull, of Can Hu unresponsive, of Adam’s near-death, and of Uva’s screams as it dismembered her. Gods, her screams. I’m gonna… I’m gonna tear this felling thing apart!

Something exploded inside Shiv as he let the anger take hold and guide him.

Skill Gained: Berserk (Adept)

Berserk > 1

A gate-shaking roar exploded out of Shiv as he clenched his fists as his body rippled with power. He dosed his Berserk skill with his incredible rage, and his muscle mass swelled twice over. Two retroactive rivers smashed against him. They broke against his Strider of the Unbending Path, chipping more of his Chronomantic protection away. But the entity was unprepared for the change Shiv just experienced. It launched a tendril at him, but he caught with a snarl. He yanked the entity into him and headbutted it. It snapped back—but he seized it by the midriff and powerbombed it down through a bridge, into the molten river and bedrock of Gate Theborn in less than a second.

Gravitic Wrestler > 127

A massive explosion shook the world. Molten rivers were flung high into the air, but Shiv kept going. He drove the entity deeper into the ground, the floor beneath him cracking more and more. Shiv drove it deeper and deeper into the shattering ground as he raged. He poured more of his anger into Berserk, and his physical abilities climbed to impossible heights. Every elbow, knee, and slam he formed combusted the surrounding air and sent earthquakes rushing through Gate Theborn.

The entity died over and over, and just as it was about to smash into him with another retroactive river and break his temporal armor, Shiv’s mind cleared. He triggered his Outside Context Problem again and dashed out of the way, leaving the entity confused.

He created some distance, pulling away despite every fiber of his being screaming for him to continue the fight.

It staggered in place, confused. Then, the entity paused. It looked around and sent a few of its rivers sweeping through a nearby descending tower. Shiv watched some of its echoing bodies splashed into the building, utterly obliterating it. When the echoes emerged from the rubble, they clutched people in their hands. Slaves, residents, Umbrals, humans, automata, it didn’t matter. Then the entity’s chrono-echoes planted the people against their head-palms and absorbed them. The people vanished into the swirling darkness at the heart of the entity’s head-palm. The rivers comprising its unnatural Chronomancy expanded back to their prime conditions, as more echoes emerged with each life consumed.

Shiv’s eyes widened as a chill ran through him—and it wasn’t just his fading vitality.

Now he understood how the entity regenerated so fast, how it restored the echoes it lost. It was eating time. It was drinking time out of people. Shiv’s Strider of the Unbending Path restored as he stayed in unaltered present. The entity couldn’t do that. Shiv guessed it didn’t even exist under the same rules of time as he did.

I need to kill this thing. No matter what. No matter what! If I don’t, it’s going to eat this gate clean. And what would happen if it left? What would happen if it went to Weave or somewhere else?

But still, Shiv heard Adam’s imagined voice echoing in the back of his head. Precision. Focus. Don’t just strike blind.

Be effective. Strike where you need to. Only where you need to, Uva echoed right after.

Even without them there, parts of their influence still remained. And Shiv was a greater warrior than he was before, even alone. He let out a breath. He let his rage build and prepared for his next instance of Berserk. There would be a time to unleash his fury. And he would choose when that time was. He would choose how he was going to act. And when he wanted to die.

And he was going to die a lot against this thing. But it would be on his terms. To keep the damn bastard confused. Until he finally won—however long that took—-or until the others figured something out.

Just as the entity flew out to claim more prey, he barreled into its back and drove a blade through its gut while draining its vitality. Its rivers smashed inwards, trying to cage him. Shiv halted time. And as soon as his vitality was restored and his Momentum Core was filled, Shiv poured every bit of anger he had into his Berserk Skill again as he recalled what this thing did to those precious to him. He reared back his fist and gritted his teeth. “You should have stayed inside that sword!”

And then he hit it so hard, its body disintegrated. His Momentum Core exploded more than it discharged. A shockwave swept out for kilometers as a massive crater formed on the floor of Gate Theborn.

Shiv’s Berserk died as he spent all his anger. And there was a good synergy between Feat and skill. With his Master of Rage Feat, Berserk was simply another magnifier for his already colossal physical skills that he could trigger at a whim without being consumed by lingering rage.

His anger built. He spent it strategically. Effectively. Precisely.

Berserk > 3

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