Once there were twenty, but then the story changed, and the faith changed, and history changed, and so there were seventeen all along.
But then two more of our members disagreed about something major, something the others refused to abandon, and then there were fifteen all along. And finally, as the years dragged on, two more were weary. One settled their own affairs, and another simply disappeared. And finally, there were thirteen all along.
Except not.
Except I have always been here.
I have held a thin sliver… Just a strand of the power that once made us divine, and no one else thinks I'm still here. My statue in the church is gone. It has vanished. My power, driven by fate, shaped by history, has gotten cold.
But even so, even so, across the empire I have cults, and I have my agents, and I have my “Characters.” And my former comrades-turned-fellow divines… They linger, they squabble and bicker, and they fight over this paltry power they call godhood. They fight, but they don't see, and they don't realize, and they don't understand. They don't grow, and they don't change.
They are like a stale portrait. A pretty portrait, yes. Pretty every time you look at it. But it's the same portrait. And the portrait taunts you, because it is of a landscape. There is a horizon there, and they just refuse to seek it.
I am tired of this power. I am tired of it hanging on my neck like a shackle. I want to become something truly great, and I want to become it all on my own.
I want to be my own work.
My greatest regret of all isn't this power. It isn't what I had to do to maintain it. No. My greatest regret of all is that it's not mine.
Thaen is a blind, noble fool, but in this, he is right—we are not gods. We’re just slaves of faith and legend.
-Tome of a Forgotten Artist
74 (I)
Burn
"Adam, stay close to me," Shiv growled. He dashed right in front of the Young Lord just as the Educator moved her brush. A wave of paint came forth—and Shiv threw one of his stored corpses at it. Colors of consuming red, white, pink, and more swallowed the body and faded from the world. A cold weight hardened inside Shiv. This wasn’t like any foe he had ever fought before. "Stay close to me. She can travel across our perception. We cover each other. I have the speed. I’ll give you an opening."
"Right," Adam said, breathing hard. There was still a lingering trace of terror. “We need to hit her with a Necromancy arrow. There will be—”
“To hell with the risk, we’re getting Can Hu and Valor back from her. Whatever she is.” Shiv regarded the educator. She was connected to something that Rose kept calling a god-born-of-borrowed-myth. She kept muttering those words from inside his merging of soul and vitality—his Vitae,
as she called it.“What is that brush?” Uva asked with a mental shudder. “Every time she strikes my mana with it, I suffer a near-seizure.”
“I don’t know what the hells she is,” Shiv said. He triggered the Song of the Vigilant just then, and the world came alive with a resonant web. A web that couldn’t detect the presence of the colossal being that was watching them, however. The world around the Educator was still, but she filled her other hand with what looked like a pencil. Great. Probably some new bullshit he'd have to deal with. “I barely know what’s happening with my new Skill Evolution.”
Adam paused, and his head slowly swiveled to Shiv. “Skill Evolution?”
“She kept hitting me with Foreshadowing and drowning me in visions earlier. She was trying to get me to gain an Exposition Skill or something. Ended up—” Shiv didn’t finish that part. He refrained from sending Adam the memories of Rose and his Outside Context Problem Skill, but he did share them with Uva.
“I… What?” the Umbral choked out, seeming to be at an absolute loss. “How is this possible? His mother is dead. How does a portion of someone return from a skill?” That and a million other questions burned in her mind, but they all had more pressing problems.
“Don’t know,” Shiv said. He glared at the Educator as she just stood there for a beat, tracing something in the air with her pencil. “I think we’re all going to need to have a long conversation after we kill her. Adam. Uva. I’m going in. Stay fluid. Stay close.”
Adam shaped four more arms and prepared five Veilpiercers at once in response.
Uva simply reared back her strands, preparing to strike.
Shiv blasted toward the Educator and cleaved the ground with his blade. He was on the enemy in a moment, and she flicked her brush at him—only for him to blink back to where he just was and smash into her. His almost filled Momentum Core kept him at peak speed, but he wasn’t going to discharge anytime soon. Shiv needed the speed to keep Adam guarded.
The Educator slid back on the ground as he hooked his free hand under her left arm and controlled both her wrists. His blade turned into a blur of slashes and cuts. Conduit of Dawn activated. His physical slashes were amplified by a beam of searing heat. Slight scratches and cuts lined the Educator’s body, but she showed no pain—even as every single one of Uva’s strands stabbed into her.
Then, the Educator fixed him with a hard glare as he felt something splash into his Vitae.
“She is trying to reach your soul,” Rose whispered from within. “But she cannot find it. She cannot separate it from the rest of your being. She is lost in here. This is not her domain. Within you, she cannot be any kind of god at all. Not even a shadow of one. Listen… Listen to what words her soul speaks.”
Exposition: I have no idea how he’s resisting my Soulsculpting. It’s like there’s nothing solid for me to carve. I can’t touch any of his skills anymore. I can still sense that fragment of Foreshadowing—that piece of Rose Van Erren—but it has changed as well. Something must be wrong with his soul. An Animancer must’ve reached into this boy at some point. Give me something, Exposition. Give me a glimpse of something—anything…
“Here’s a glimpse,” Shiv snarled. He slashed his blade across the Educator’s eyes as he held her in place. Adam called out for Shiv to lower his head. The Deathless did just that. A corrosive arrow almost impacted the Educator, but she promptly burst into nothing but paint and color. The Necromancy-tinged Veilpiercer blasted across the land, shredding and withering a long stretch of the pastel horizon. Some crudely drawn trees began to melt, and the sun above adopted a frown.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
“It is rude to deface someone else’s art, poorly drawn though it might be.” The Educator’s voice came from all around them as Adam landed near Shiv.
“We need to stop her from just turning into paint,” the Young Lord snarled. He looked around, spreading his Awareness wide. His Seer of Horizons surged through the world, and he cursed. “And it’s just… It’s all just bloody painting here. We're stuck in a painting against someone who paints.”
“Yeah,” Shiv said. “Real surrealist nightmare. Did the Academy offer you a class on this?”
“What? Fighting in a bloody painting dimension? No. Absolutely not.”
Adam reached for something, and a growl escaped him. “I think she knocked the damn rapier off my hip earlier. I really need something to keep that thing on me. Damned spatial-temporal wardings affecting Binding Enchantments…”
Uva, however, noticed something. “Shiv. There’s an inconsistency in the art piece we’re in. It’s not an amateur piece, but a master playing at a child’s drawing.” She pointed a strand at a nearby tree, and he saw what she was indicating. Adam did too.
“That trunk is… rather vivid,” Adam said. “Let’s see if we can drop its quality to resemble the rest of the page.” He fired a Necromancy arrow at the truck. It struck. And the entire world around them curled and dissolved. The effects of his arrow were like casting a canvas to an open flame. Better yet, the Educator herself cried out, and with it, Shiv felt her try to reach into his soul once more.
Exposition: Ah, damnation, I forgot how much Necromancy stings. It’s going to take some time rebuilding that skill. A good lesson, though. I got carried away with that tree. I should spend more time on review rather than composition. I would have noticed otherwise. Now. Back to the problems at hand—I need to remove the Young Lord first, then the Psychomancer. As for the Lowe boy… I’ll need to take my time with him. I’ve never heard of a Deathless Path, and now I can’t even see anything about him.
Best that I release a mind mage from one of my pages to incapacitate him after I deal with the Umbral—and now I can’t even see her details either. And there was such an engaging story regarding the murder of her mother I was looking into.
For now, let us make this quick. They cost me enough illustrationsalready. I will reshape the Lowe boy slowly when I can. The others…
Udraal might be able to find some use in them. He will be pleased that I managed to find his father’s wandering pieces as well.
Udraal? Shiv blinked.
“Udraal Thann,” Rose said, shuddering at the very mention of the name. “Why—we slew him… How is he still alive?”
And then the horizon flipped over them like the turning of a page, and they were back in the ruins Lost Angeles. But the Educator was right there among them. She swiped a brush at Adam, but Shiv reacted in time. The edge of his kukri slammed into the brush. A parry followed. Frictionless Vector activated. Her brush unleashed a tidal wave of color into a building. As the colors settled, the building was gone, and in its place was now a stretch of a roaring, blue ocean that was juxtaposed on both sides by the ruins of a once great city.
Frictionless Vector > 56
Corrosion spread from Adam’s vambrace into his new arrow. As he prepared to release the shot into the Educator, however, another version of her appeared right next to him.
This time, Shiv didn’t react in time. A splash of paint crashed into Adam—but not before he released his arrow. The shot tore across the world, but it went wide. Two eerie, crackling green rifts opened at the point where Adam shot his arrow and right where the first Educator was. She almost dodged out of the way—but Shiv booted her back into the arrow. A blast of corrosive energy followed as the Educator cried
out again.Exposition: This would be bloody over already if I was who I was before—I would have just drawn a few Heroic-Tier illustrations and been done with this farce instead of dropping Master after Master. Well. At least the Young Lord’s dealt with.
“Adam!” Shiv shouted. He caught sight of the terror in Adam’s eyes as a rush of sky-blue paint consumed the Young Lord. “No!”
Rage exploded inside Shiv—but it paled before how much hatred was pouring forth from Rose. “My son! Give him back! GIVE HIM BACK TO ME!”
Shiv poured everything into Momentum Core. The other Educator was practically unmoving as Shiv smashed into her. He slashed and tore and cut. Multiple hues sprayed out of her body in place of blood. She struck back with a brush, but he hooked her arm around her elbow, snapped the limb and headbutted her in the face. He tried flinging her into the Necromantic rift, but she dissolved into paint again.
And just then, Rose screamed in his mind.
“She is coming! More of her! All she can muster at once! Dive deep!”
Shiv dove back into his own Vitae and out of the world’s context. The coldness hit him. And the coldness only grew as he saw Uva snap free from his mind. The Umbral cried out in alarm, and Shiv immediately reached back into reality after her.
“No, stop! She’s—”
But Shiv wasn’t listening to Rose anymore. He burst back out of his Vitae in nearly the same moment he went in. She couldn’t leave context with him—of course she couldn't. She didn’t have his soul. Uva’s shield broke into pieces just in time. Twenty Educators splashed down around them in bursts of color and paint. Uva’s Mind-Shattered Sentinel cried out as the enemy painted it away in brush strokes—and through the gap a pencil was cast through.
A line was drawn between Shiv and Uva. He slammed into the line, but he found himself unable to move anymore.
What the hells is this? Shiv snarled, struggling.
Exposition: Ah. He cannot interact with my Border Sketching. Well. Now I feel like a fool. I could have started the fight this way. Alas, I wanted to recruit them intact and reshape him with minimal difficulty. Laziness always brings about more labor in the end.
Shiv looked on, helpless, as the Educators swung their brushes, unleashing tides of paint over Uva. Her strands reached back for him, but they couldn’t pass through the Border Sketch outlined by her pencil. The fragments of her shield dissolved first, then the colors crashed over her. Fear flickered in Uva’s eyes for but a moment—then her courage solidified again, and acceptance followed. She looked at Shiv and called out. “Shiv. I—”
The colors swallowed her. The paint crashed over her body in a tide, and it melded her into the backdrop of the world. A second later, it was like Uva never existed.
“Both are lost to the pages,” Rose moaned. Retreat. Hide. Please…”
But Shiv wasn’t listening. The scene he just witnessed was seared into his mind. He saw Uva looking at him, her expression; Adam’s terror. Shiv shot beyond anger into a state of absolute hate-fueled serenity.
All around him were more Educators rushing in. He felt their brushes cleave into his back, stroking pain and hurt into his body. But unlike Uva and Adam, Shiv didn’t fade. He just bled. He just got hurt. The pain couldn’t take him, it could only wound his body.
And Shiv’s magic was fueled by his wounds.
His Woundeater exploded out from him as he fed his Biomancy with his constant, enduring rage. It cracked against one of the Educators in a massive explosion of crimson. It barely affected her. What did affect her was Shiv slamming into her at sound barrier-breaking speeds. The Educators staggered back as the Deathless became a blur of absolute violence. Through everything he touched, he broke, he cut. He targeted the Educators’ wrists and fingers. He ripped brushes from hands and shattered bones.
Deepest Edge > 61
They painted him. More and more Educators spawned in to bring him down, but Shiv didn’t care. He didn’t give a damn about defense—he just wanted to hurt his enemy. He didn’t care if they were a forgotten god or an Ascendant or anything. He would die and suffer as many times as it took to get his companions back.
A brush stroke went wide in the chaos, crashing over nothing. By this point, Shiv’s Silhouette was doing more in his defense than he was.
Silhouette > 71
Then, something crashed into his mind as he ripped one of the Educators off her feet by her ankles, using her as a flail against the others. Shiv cried out as he swung his Magebreaker in the direction of the attack. A spell broke. A person cried out. Shiv spotted an impossibly tall and thin creature striding amongst the Educators. Its eyes were bright and pure white, and its ears were so long that it went beyond merely elven ears. It looked at him with a mouth filled with sharp teeth, and it launched another Psychomancy spell. One Shiv parried into an Educator.
It became the last parry he performed as several jets of paint took the arm away from him. Just then, another splash of color crashed down behind him, and Shiv turned—only to catch a heavy uppercut under his jaw. His head spun. Stars flashed through his eyes. He found himself launched skyward, only for the new illustration to follow him up into the air. What chased him was an orc. An orc whose skin was green instead of gray, and it sprouted wings as it aimed a Dynamancy-infused right fist at him. The large monster frowned as it surged toward him, but Shiv took the orc back down to earth as he discharged his Momentum Core right into its chest.