86 (II) Eldritch

86 (II)

Eldritch

As he prepared to continue his offensive, every single echo the entity had snapped a glare at him. They gazed scornfully as he froze time beyond him from their retroactive past. "I see now. You're not a person. Not a person at all. Lies, deception. You are an agent. All of you, agents of the Dreamtaker. Sent here to bring down the gate to lure me out. All this planned to spite the Stranger. Won't let you succeed. The master must cross over. The master must arrive. This world is promised."

And then each of the echoes began to shudder. Shiv wasn't sure what this damn thing was doing, but by now it surprised him enough that he wasn't about to risk anything.

He triggered Outside Context Problem again and vanished.

The entity lost track of him. But it didn’t stop what it was doing. A loud note of discordant confusion sang through the world, and it felt like someone was grinding a nail through Shiv's inner brain mass. His eyes rolled, and beside him, Rose screamed, wailing in agony as she tried to claw at her eyes. She was composed of his Vitae, though, so nothing really happened. It was strange how much more affected Adam and Rose were compared to him. Uva and Valor were practically the only people to endure better than he did.

As he got some distance from the enemy, he let time resume and allowed his cracked temporal shell to heal. He took in a few quick breaths and observed his adversary, watching them to see what they were going to do. A second later, an entire river crashed back into the entity. Every echo within that river slotted over the entity's original form, superimposing again and again and again until they all vanished.

Just then, the entity bent inward, driving a hand into its palm-shaped head. And as its fingers descended the spiral lining the center of the palm, it extracted a gleaming blade that seemed to be an exact replica of Absence.

At the same time, the entity itself began to transform. Hands burst out from its tentacles, each one groping at the air, writhing and grasping for nothing in particular. Its body swelled. New eyes opened along its ribs, eyes that blinked and glared; eyes that flared with golden brilliance. Behind, the original form of the entity—the colossal creature made from fingers, eyes, and the large ten-fingered hand—briefly flickered and vanished. The other retroactive rivers were shortening now as well, actively being consumed by the entity to power this change.

Uneasiness gripped Shiv. He approached it carefully, just as his body grew a little too cold, and he rematerialized back into the real world. He also finally remembered to reactivate his Silhouette, and—

The entity blinked across time. It appeared beside him and slashed—but it slashed too wide.

Silhouette > 87

A colossal wave of force swept through the world, rushing forward across the entirety of the gate's underside as an invisible tide. Then, the entity blasted through him. It had become so fast, so impossibly strong, that Shiv couldn't even react to his own beheading.

Momentum Core > 94

Adamantine Adaption > 131

Woundeater > 79

Silhouette > 91

Gravitic Wrestler > 129

Strider of the Unbending Path > 108

Outside Context Problem > 58

He felt like a Pathless facing a Pathbearer. As his head toppled off his body, the entity reached out and crushed his skull. Not even adaptive adamantine denied it for long. The new eyes lining its body snapped about, blinking, constantly blinking, always glaring. And after a moment, they narrowed in on Shiv and squinted. “Found you…”

Shit.

He immediately froze time. But as he solidified his temporal shell and halted, the eyes remained on him. Beams of accelerated time blasted his temporal shell apart in an instant. Suddenly, time surged. Shiv felt displaced. He grew impossibly cold. Right then, he very well should have died. Would have died if not for the entity misunderstanding what he was.

"Think you can deceive my perception? Can still see you! Sense you!" It swung its blade through him. The cut was so fast, a firestorm ignited around the entity, and it unleashed a blade of wind that just kept traveling behind Shiv, slashing through the very earth beneath them, splitting the molten rivers until there was a chasm four kilometers long. Shiv reached out, draining the entity. It was still accelerating his passage of time, not allowing his Chronomancy mana a chance to regenerate.

Instinctively, Shiv activated his Outside Context Problem just as he resurrected. Instead of taking several seconds, it was instantaneous. The entity’s temporal eye-beams also accelerated his vitality drain and resurrection process, and it nearly accelerated him back to an early death as it cleaved out to kill him again.

Once more, it was confused, but the eyes were looking around, blinking, searching, until somehow, they faintly tracked where he generally was. "How the hell is it doing that now?" Shiv asked. "I'm acausal right now. How is it doing that?"

"Feels, feels wrong, feels wrong," the entity cried. Its voice was melodic, like a series of instruments. Shiv thought it was a bit similar to the old jazz band that once played at the Swan-Eating Toad, especially the saxophone. The very notes it hit briefly shattered his focus.

In the second it took for him to grow colder, he studied the eyes and felt their flow. Earlier, they blew apart his armor. It was like a condensed beam of Chronomancy.

It was accelerating me, Shiv realized, into the future unnaturally fast… Before the present was done. And then he understood something about Chronomancy and time. The present was the only natural time period. Anything but the present was unnatural. Anything but the present demanded mana.

Shiv's Chronomancy Skill Evolution worked in a strange way. He couldn’t quite project his Chronomancy like Sullain or this entity did, but he was shrouded in a perpetual present that insulated him from outside time. It allowed him to keep to his own temporal pacing, so long as his Strider of the Unbending Path remained intact. The entity, though, didn’t seem to be grounded in the present. No, its Chronomancy was rooted in several pasts.

If Shiv was a temporal fortress, this thing… He didn’t have words to describe what it was. It was a felling nightmare. It didn’t make sense. And now, it could accelerate him into the future with its new eyes. Godsdammit…

He emerged once more, a detonation of white, red, and he exploded forth as he tried to drive a fist into its face. It responded immediately—somehow predicting exactly where he was going to be. Once more, it beheaded him. Once more, he died.

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Strider of the Unbending Path > 112

Adamantine Adaption > 134

Silhouette > 93

He reached out, draining it. He exploited its time accelerating beams so that he could restore himself to life. As soon as he resurrected, he went outside context again. But this time, he got very close to his adversary.

It’s got some kind of precognition now too. I need to make this messier. He seized the entity with his field and flung it downward. He managed to push it 10 meters before its tendrils spread out. It felt like they were clutching reality. The entity didn't so much fly as it swung, clinging to sections of nothing and launching itself. Slowly, it regarded him with its many eyes. "See you now."

Shiv cursed as he shifted back into his Vitae again. It cut out and sliced nothing. He cast two lacerations at the entity. He expected it to come apart and expend two of its echoes with each death. It didn't. His lacerations crashed against a shroud of Magical Resistance. Okay, what the fuck? Shiv thought. It didn't have that before.

Shiv tried to freeze time, but its golden eyes swung around its body and glared at him. His temporal armor burst. The entity caught him by the throat and choke-slammed him back up through the underside of an entire plaza. He swung at the entity. It jolted back in time as it swapped positions with one of his echoes. Then it did again and again until it was darting all around Shiv, moving too chaotically for him to track.

He prepared to shift out of context again. It let out a piercing note that drilled into his mind and tore his senses apart. Before Shiv could recover, it drove a tentacle into the back of his head. The world spun and danced in Shiv’s vision as he felt himself crash through wall after wall. As he blasted out through another building, body slick with blood and dust, he slid to a halt along a bridge, and the entity slammed down just a few meters away from him.

Shiv wheezed. His skull felt all sorts of swollen. Cracked. The entity walked right up to him, and he spat blood on its foot. As he tried to rise, it reached down and clutched the back of his neck. He struck at its elbow, but it shrieked at him again, and pain exploded in Shiv’s skull. It wasn’t a natural psionic attack, but simply a noise that a human couldn't possibly take.

It took him by his limbs using its tendrils, and Shiv cried out as it pulled him in four directions at once.

"I am sure you have died now. None of that is a trick of time. None of that is Chronomancy, what your people call the alteration of time. You are not altering time. You are altering death. How? No more to existence. Existing change after death. How are you still alive?"

Shiv spat at the entity. "Come and find out, asshole. Let’s play a game. I’ll kill myself, and you'll kill yourself. See who doesn't come back after a thousand times. Winner gets to shit on the loser’s corpse. Loser stays dead.”

The entity observed him for a while longer, nodded, and then drove its sword through his chest. Shiv howled. The sword began to sap at him, drinking from his very soul. But his soul wouldn't let go. It was lodged in his vitality. But it still felt like someone was flaying him from the inside. When Shiv thought crashing in the necromantic rift might have been the worst pain in his life, he was wrong. This was on another level of suffering, and it was constant.

Every cut the blade inflicted on him tore at his skills and mana. But his soul just wouldn't let go. Shiv remembered Confriga dissolving Pathbearers with his blade. This wasn't a sword that looked like Absence.

This was Absence.

It was Absence without the entity hiding within. And now it was using the original blade on him.

Shiv tried to stop screaming, tried to keep his wailing under control, but the pain... But what about the pain?

He tackled the entity through the floor and back down into the bottom of the gate again. A blast shook all of Gate Theborn. But the entity blasted him with its temporal accelerating gaze, and suddenly, Shiv found himself displaced—

Something crashed hard into his skull.

The world went white. Then, Shiv woke screaming as the entity drove its blade into him again. He tried to fight it, but it wouldn’t stop singing that noise that clawed it his mind…

"Now. Die for good." It was like an owner chastising its dog, but Shiv simply spat on the blade, and then he spat on the entity again.

He could feel his lifeblood leaking out from him, but he simply managed a bloody sneer. "I'll be seeing you soon again, you piece of shi—”

Every single one of the entity's echoes screamed. Their eyes opened, and a noise, a noise that lashed at Shiv's very capability to think, consumed the gate. A spike of pain swept through Shiv, hammering down into the base of his skull. Something inside his memories shattered. His mind began to unravel.

“Ah. Identified weakness. Memetic resonance. Sound. Cannot process. Here. Have more.”

And it grew louder as Shiv experienced the first true seizure of his life. He gagged and twitched on the ground. His eyes rolled within his skull, and he tried to fight it off, but the noise.

System… make it stop…

Then, briefly, it did. Shiv sucked in a gasping breath. His mind was in tatters. That wasn’t like any kind of Psychomancy he experienced. This was breaking him on another level. Breaking everything. His bones were fracturing from the noise itself.

“Stop—stop singing,” Shiv gasped. “It’s… Your singing’s so shit… It’s like an… anti-skill.” He couldn’t help it.

The entity gripped him by his neck. Shiv struggled, but he had a hard time even remembering what his own name was. “Going to take some time taking you apart. Learning. Understanding. Cannot see your history. Cannot see your fated death. Wrong. Wrong! WRONG!”

It bent down and clutched his face with its hand-head, and it began to suck him into the vortex at the palm's core. Shiv screamed and gurgled. The entity pulled harder and harder. He caught a glimpse of a place—colors he couldn't describe—creatures that—shapes—his mind couldn't process what—

Shiv howled in agony. He gripped the fingers comprising the entity's face, and he pulled with all his strength. One cracked, the other barely twisted. The entity drove a fist into his stomach, and Shiv vomited into the vortex at the entity’s palm.

"If body won't die, if you won't stay dead, then mind will break. Will see you if you can become vessel instead. No insight. Hard mind. Regenerating mind. Regenerating soul. Can break over and over and over. Will break over and over. But won’t die. Won’t stay dead. See now with future-gazing. See. You are an abomination. Cannot let you endure. Cannot feed your nature.”

“F-fuck you,” Shiv grunted. He tried prying himself out from the entity’s grasp, but it just tightened its grasp. Then, something slipped out from inside the creature’s palm. Strands of unnatural radiance bled from its many eyes, and they splashed against Shiv’s face, burrowed into his wounds. Shiv struggled, but the song it sang grew louder and louder, and blood vessels burst inside his head. Shiv’s eyes rolled. And then something clawed its way in under his eyelids as well.

More things emerged from the entity and pushed their way into Shiv’s broken body, into his broken mind.

“We will see now. See how long it takes for you to empty, break, shatter, be worn.” And the entity's hand-shaped head made a twitching gesture, and the creatures that the entity deposited inside Shiv began to sing a torturous symphony from within his flesh.

On that day, everyone within Gate Theborn discovered just how loud one who didn't fear pain could scream.