161 (VI)

Overwhelmed

The Tarrasque's Magical Resistance detonated, but it failed to get through Marikos's stream of power. The Dragon-Knight let out a cry of pain, and Shiv realized he was shredding his own magical field to sustain this effort.

Then, as the last trickles of flame left Marikos's hand, he clasped his claws together and he wrenched his arms apart.

Shiv caught sight of the Tarrasque. It was burning. Its outer shell was melting away. And then there came a detonation of fire. A blast so bright it seared spots into Shiv's vision.

But the detonation didn't simply scatter in every direction; it centered on the Tarrasque, collapsing inward around the massive creature, consuming it entirely. Large sections of its body dissolved, becoming faint particulates in the dark. Yet, even through that blinding carnage, Shiv could still see the Tarrasque's eyes, one red, one white, both affixed on him. No, not on him. They were looking past him for some reason.

The Tarrasque unleashed a pulse of gravity, trying to move forward. Marikos shuddered in disbelief. He tried to cast another spell, but he gasped and curled in on himself in pain as the full tax of mana strain finally hit him. The magical fire burst away from the Tarrasque, along with chunks of its body. Shiv felt his Pillar of Orichalcum hold, but only briefly.

Finally, it was too much for him as well. He shattered, and the only reason he survived was because of his escalating Toughness. He was launched like a pebble across the static horizon now—he and Marikos both. Shiv twisted through the air several times, and things whirled around him.

Pillar of Orichalcum 220 > 221

All was black and static, the color of Dimensionality mana, and he couldn't differentiate up from down until he finally caught sight of something. A brief flash of color. Shiv tumbled several more times, and there came an expansion of blue in his vision. Was he accelerating toward a lake of some kind?

His question was answered a moment later as he impacted a dense shroud of water. He plunged through, his speed going fast enough that the surrounding liquid turned to steam. As he shot out the other side, he struck a second layer of water, but then he inhaled, finding himself breathing in oxygen.

Shiv was confused. For a moment, he thought he was concussed and suffering from brain damage right now. But just then, he noticed a few hovering wings curl around him. Vector wings. Shiv wanted to speak, but only a pained wheeze escaped from him. Something was wrong with his left eye, and his right was nearly swollen shut as well. He struggled to hold himself up, but ended up collapsing backward.

More hands caught him. Uva's pale face came into his field of view. Shiv tried to grin, but his face refused to comply. He let out another slight wheeze as she took stock of his injuries. A brief expression of horror escaped her, and Shiv knew he must have broken something bad. She didn't usually give things away like that in the heat of battle.

As Shiv lay on the ground, he grew faintly aware of several other people around him. One of whom was a particular orc with a pair of spectacles on his nose.

"Your armor's destroyed, I see," Helix noted.

"Fuck the armor," Shiv croaked out. "I'm destroyed." He took in everyone's faces, read their concern, and strangely, he felt like a very lucky man. "I came to save you guys, by the way."

Adam offered him a look of utter astonishment. And then came a roar. The roar of a creature that just wouldn't felling die. Shiv gagged as a flood of Biomancy flowed through his flesh. His bones began to reconnect. His torn sinews reknit. Shiv's ripped skin came back together, and his organs felt reinflated. Slowly, Shiv felt his left eye get dragged into place, and a blurred splotch occupied part of his vision for a time.

"Help me up," Shiv managed. "Felling thing just won't stay dead."

Shiv extended a hand, and Adam let out a grunt, pulling Shiv up. Uva hooked her arm under Shiv's body, and she heaved upward as well, her form turning into the shape of a lever to help him stand up quicker.

"What in the bloody hells?" another voice commented off to the side. Shiv blinked. He slowly turned and noticed Georges was here too.

"Georges?" Shiv gasped. The chef stared at him and offered him a tired expression as he drew in another lungful of his cigarette. "So, how's it looking out there?"

Shiv knew Georges well enough to know when the man was nervous, and right now Georges was as terrified as Shiv had ever seen him. Even so, that didn't stop the head chef of the Swan-eating Toad from making light of things.

"Not too good, Chef," Shiv replied, clutching his ribs. "It's a bit worse than the seafood night with the allergic town guard from four years back."

Georges did a double-take at that. He shook his head and violently coughed. "Good felling fuck. We're probably buggered then."

"Maybe," Shiv replied. Another bit of his skull snapped back into place. "But I intend to make a bloody fight of it." Shiv and the closest thing he ever had to a father shared a look. Terror, pride, hope, and more were exchanged between them. No words needed to be spoken.

"Well, off you go, then," Georges said, trying to sound nonchalant. "Just try not to fuck it up."

"Yes, Chef," Shiv said with a grin.

Another roar came from the distance, and just then, Starhawk's perch began to shiver and groan. Shiv felt faint waves of gravity pry at the structure, and he activated his Farsight just as both of his eyes were fully healed.

In the vast distance, the Tarrasque clawed its way toward them, and… was it slightly dimmer than before? Had it died earlier? Had Marikos's magic killed it? Shiv hadn't noticed if it did. At present, it only had one arm, a fourth of its torso, and its head, but it was regenerating quickly, and it was tearing through Dimensionality to fling itself at Blackedge, though Rusty was trying to hold it back to the best of its ability.

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Waves of force crashed out from behind the Tarrasque's body, as if folds of water grinding over the surface of the beach. A cone of flame was beginning to curve around the top of its form, and Shiv realized what it was trying to do. It never did get to finish its meteor bombardment earlier.

This time, Blackedge had no remaining wards. It had practically nothing left, and Shiv was out of ideas. He couldn't get close enough to siphon vitality from the Tarrasque at all. And before its overwhelming and ever-growing power, he had no idea how he was going to last.

"I accept."

A loud, reverberating voice suddenly sounded from behind Shiv, and the Deathless turned, only to see that there were even more people in the room. Valor was there, along with a small group of humans Shiv didn't recognize.

They all wore the Arrow family armor, however, so it didn't take much for him to deduce that they were friendlies. Whisper, Mortar, and Tequila were there as well, and there were a few other orcs Shiv couldn't recall the names of. Nearby was Rose, trying to support an extremely sickly-looking Roland.

The Town Lord met Shiv's gaze, and Shiv glared right back at him. But not far away from the Town Lord was a massive, ethereal silhouette. An ethereal silhouette that looked fainter than the previous two Ascendants that Shiv encountered, but its presence was unmistakable.

This was the Starhawk himself, and he was the one that just spoke.

"I accept your offering, Sister Uva."

"You do?" Uva replied. She sounded surprised.

"He does!" the Dreamtaker cheered uncharacteristically to Uva's voice. "JOYOUS UNION!"

Shiv looked between her and the Starhawk, utterly lost as to what they were talking about.

"My lord!" Roland choked out. He looked like he was on the verge of doing something drastic. His eyes were wild, desperate. Shiv had a feeling that he was missing a great deal of context.

"Peace, my champion," the Starhawk said to Roland. "This is no slight against you. You have served better than I have any right to demand. But right now, in this moment, we face dire circumstances. And I have asked enough of you. It is time for me to offer something of myself. Trust and faith."

"Legend Valor," the Starhawk said, reaching out for the ancient Pathbearer. "You know the requirements for the ritual."

"And I will see it performed," Valor intoned. And immediately, spell patterns began to flash out from him. Spell patterns that circled around Uva.

"Wait," Shiv said. "What the hells is happening here? What are you guys doing?"

But before he could get any answers, a loud voice came from outside. "Friend Shiv, are you well? Are you alive?"

Everyone turned to see Marikos rise back up into the air. And where Shiv had been near death after the explosion, Marikos looked utterly unblemished of the flesh, despite his armor being absolutely shredded. Glistening, red and black scales glowed across his sleek form where obsidian plates had once been.

As he ascended, the Dragon-Knight stared through the shattered window of Starhawk's Perch, and he flinched back in surprise at the people within. Shiv took a step to his right, blocking Marikos's view of Valor so that they wouldn't have any issues.

The Deathless's reaction was instinctive, and he quickly pointed at the oncoming Tarrasque. "I think the bastard wants another taste of my stick and your flame, Marikos."

The Dragon-Knight gave a jubilant laugh as he shot the enemy a look, and then he groaned slightly. Though he sported no physical wounds, his spirit must have been raw. "I feel we will have to make do with your stick," Marikos mumbled. "My flames will take a while to recuperate."

But there came a flash of light beside Shiv, and Adam spoke thereafter. "That's fine. I have plenty of light to provide." Shiv looked down and saw that Adam's azure sun was infusing his newest Veilpiercer with a glow of gleaming blue and incandescent dawn.

"When did you get enough deaths for another angry arrow?" Shiv asked, pleased but curious.

"When you were off getting your head kicked in by the Tarrasque," Adam replied. "Someone had to cleanse the town of Necrotechs." Adam paused. "Well, I helped. Valor did most of the cleansing. But I still got my hundred." And he drew his arrow back. "And if you can give me an opening, I might be able to kill it again. At least for a few seconds. Maybe. After that…" Adam frowned. "We need to find a way out of this place."

Shiv looked past Adam's arrow, and he saw Roland's face. His eyes were wide with surprise. "Adam, what is that?" he asked.

"A lot has happened, father," Adam said with a wry smile. "Far too much to explain right now." He briefly offered the Town Lord a worried glance. "You should find someplace safe. You are in no condition for this fight. Mother, you should go with him."

And both Roland and Rose snorted. But their reactions weren't mocking. They simply found Adam very dear, judging from their expressions.

"There's nowhere to go, Adam," Rose said. "It's here or nowhere. When that thing comes for us—"

And just as the Tarrasque fully tore through the layers of twisting Dimensionality doing their best to delay it, a massive arm plunged into the pocket dimension. A massive arm that was encased in shuddering Inertium. It seized the half-regrown Tarrasque and ripped it out from the insides of the blade.

Everyone went silent. Shiv blinked. And then he flinched as Rose screamed next to him.

"Jessica! Jessica! You size-challenged, left-tit-smaller-than-the-right harlot, let us out of your fucking sword already!" she bellowed.

Shiv's mouth fell open at the stream of profanity leaving Rose's lips. And Adam shook with every syllable she spat. But the Deathless chuckled. He leaned in close to Adam. "Yeah. Don't they grow up fast?"

"Shut up," Adam breathed.

"What?" Roland muttered, utterly lost.

"Just feeling like a proud father," Shiv said wistfully.

Roland blinked harder. Rose groaned as she rubbed at her face, but didn't elaborate.

A pained noise escaped from the Gate Lord. "Why couldn't the Tarrasque have killed you?"

And before Shiv could respond with outrage, the pocket dimension began to shift as a crushing pressure passed over Blackedge.

"Yes!" Rose pumped her fist high. "Finally, she fucking responded. Jessica, I didn't mean the stuff about your tits!" As a tide of blackness crashed over Blackedge, everyone braced for the dimensional transition as they were ejected from the insides of the sword.

A moment later, there was light. Light and screaming wind as Blackedge briefly fell before striking the ground. A resounding boom shook the world as Rose and Roland struggled to keep standing, and a deafening roar came thereafter.

Shiv's eyes widened as he stared outside the shattered windows of Starhawk's Perch. "Oh… oh, shit."

In the far distance was Stormhalt again, pouring an ocean of crawling lightning over a struggling Tarrasque as Hawgrave—back in her gigantic form—dropped elbow after elbow on its partially healed shell.

But Stormhalt wasn't alone. Behind him hovered twelve more figures in the air, and beyond them loomed twelve illusory shapes that covered the horizon from end to end.

Twelve shapes.

Twelve Avatars.

Twelve Ascendants.

***

Quest: Break Vicar Sullain's siege of Blackedge and stop a war between the surface and the Abyss before it can begin.

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