165 (II) Descend [IV]

Uva stared at the Feat for a moment, and immediately several spots in the room came to light before her. She turned to regard them. She realized they weren't spots, but rather crevices lining various minds. Roland had so many scars inside his consciousness, so many scabs to pluck and feed upon… He was so close to fully descending into madness, having suffered so much all his life. And as she took in his once-hidden fragility, an inhuman hunger pulsed through her.

She turned away from him just as she found herself running her half-severed tongue across her lips, immediately horrified by what she'd just been considering, and a bead of sweat rolled down her face as she realized the Starhawk's presence was still close to her. He noticed her new Feat too, but he didn't comment.

"I wasn't going to—" Uva began, but she was cut off as the Tarrasque cried out once more. Her attention descended, and she found herself staring at the Tarrasque, remembering its colossal mind, the hellscape it called consciousness. It wasn't madness, it was destruction distilled into a psyche. There was no mind for it to lose, for it was shaped by a Delve. But even so, there were people within its mind, and that was a sea of madness she could use to water her powers.

"Uva! Uva!" Adam's thoughts called out to her. The Gate Lord was stressed and overwhelmed. "Uva, we need you right now! We—"

His voice was cut off as something impacted the town once more. As Uva shifted her mind and looked out from Adam's eyes, she found the Tarrasque grinding Shiv's body into the underside of Blackedge. Pieces of the town began to crumble as the Tarrasque threw out both its hands and pulled in opposite directions, crashing wavelengths of force cascading out from it. Blackedge groaned. Uva's Psychomancy threads grew tighter and tighter. But even though she could exert physical force using her mind magic, it wasn't meant for it, and she was slowly losing that struggle.

So she abandoned defense and went on the offense instead. She directed her mana against the Tarrasque's mind once more, and when it pulled her in, she didn't resist. She descended into the realm of suffering, but instead of collapsing like a surprised victim, she plunged in as an arrow of divine vengeance.

Uva was encased in her own Psychomancy, and her threads exploded out like a bursting spider's web. A tide of black, festering rain washed over her, but she cared nothing for it, because before it could affect her, her mana field touched the many victims still residing here.

A soul-deep hunger flared to life within her.

And, with a ravenous indulgence, she fed on them.

Her Feat flared to life, and her translucent mana screamed with the songs of the Outside.

She felt her physiology change. She stopped being so human, so restricted. Her limbs became like the legs of a spider and then the branches of a tree. Geometry broke around her, and her mind became stronger than ever before, like an armored gauntlet where once she was but a clawed hand. Her strands grew thick, becoming shifting pillars rather than threads, and she swept them through the wasteland.

Bodies shattered, and Aberrant Fractals were summoned into being. The Tarrasque struggled once more, trying to deal with Uva while also doing all it could to preserve this world, this mindscape ruled by destruction. She channeled her gaze, and rather than coming like a beacon, it spilled across the world in a flooding torrent, and it just kept expanding more and more.

She didn't feel nearly as weak now.

Uva could keep channeling. So long as she had madness to feed on, she was endless, and the taste of broken minds and shattered thoughts was intoxicating. If this was what drugs felt like, then Uva was thankful she'd never indulged, for she was certain it was impossible to resist this highest of pleasures.

"Stop," the Starhawk called, but she didn't. She didn't want to. She never wanted to. The Seeker wanted to find the point where the beast simply became a beast instead of an engine of destruction, and then, when it only had one fragment left inside its Delve, she wanted to break it.

Uva would—

"Uva! Master yourself!" the Starhawk shouted. His voice was loud enough that the inside of her skull rang like a bell, but it was enough to shake her free from her fugue.

"I—" She realized how heavily the power was affecting her mind and swallowed. The Feat was feeding her with more power than she was capable of wielding. A burst of shame swelled in her chest, but she crushed it and turned her mind to adjusting her psychology. She needed to dull these sensations if she wanted to focus.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

But before she could get anything done, that scarred length of torn space she saw at the center of the realm's sky earlier ripped wide open. And as it spread, she thought—No, that's not a portal. It was like a pale, baleful eye. It flared into existence, bringing with it an invisible force that ripped ruins and bodies within the Delve asunder, and Uva briefly caught sight of something on the other side of that eye, something—something massive—

A beam of Psychomancy crashed against her. It nearly split clean through her protections. Without the Starhawk barely diverting the blast away, she would have boiled away into nothing.

You have seen something you shouldn't have. You are now hunted by the Farwalkers.

Before she could ponder the implications of that or start worrying about it, a massive gale of festering wind impacted her, and this time even the Starhawk failed to hold the entirety of the blow at bay.

There was more destruction and rot in the attack, and it washed through Uva's protective strands, digging into her supple consciousness. It seeped through her flesh, and Uva cried out as her body decayed and more of her psyche tore. But madness was her sanctuary, and she drew on her own wounds as well. Her pillars became the size of buildings, and soon the damage was blunted.

But the Tarrasque's entropic aura proved to be insidious. Every second she spent in this place left her mind blackening like a burning piece of paper. If she stayed in the open, the monstrosity would eventually winnow her down to nothing.

So she adjusted her strategy. Uva cast one of her mana strands into a nearby body, though it was far larger than the vessel it pressed upon. She injected herself across her mana, and she vanished entirely. This time, as she dove into her new vessel, she found herself plunging deeper and deeper, diving into the sea of madness that resided within their consciousness. She was like a droplet joining the ocean, and she lit the waters of their ruined mind with the colors of the Outside.

Soon, there was no trace of Uva in the Delve at all. Nothing but ruins and corpses to be remained. Ruins, corpses to be, and the baleful inner eye of the Tarrasque.

"Disappeared?" the beast's voice cried out.

The Umbral smirked internally. Time to see if I can teach this beast a lesson in counter-Psychomancy.

She came up with a planned strategy: to constantly raid and wreak havoc within its mind. To summon Fractals and slowly approach the scar-rimmed eye that lingered at the center of this skill. There, she would see if any true damage could be caused, contrary to the Starhawk's words.

But the thing about best laid plans was that they required your enemy to act in accordance with your expectations.

The Tarrasque wasn't particularly clever, but it was absurdly powerful. And when it realized it had lost her and was potentially in danger, it discharged its Magical Resistance, and Uva was ripped free from its mind with an explosion of pain.

For the second time, she snapped back into her body, and this time, she curled into a ball and whimpered as the worst migraine of her life took hold.

And she wasn't the only one affected. Across the town, she dimly heard Republic magi and other Pathbearers cry out as they, too, were incapacitated.

***

"Stop doing that shit!" Shiv snarled as he felt his Biomancy get torn apart for the hundredth time.

The world spun before Shiv's eyes as he coughed up blood and pieces of broken teeth. A minute ago, things were going well. The Tarrasque was briefly stunned by Uva's Psychomancy, and he took that opportunity to drain another pond's worth of vitality from it. But then it discharged its Magical Resistance, and everything was back to hell.

Shiv tried his prior draining strategy, but the Tarrasque was growing wise to his tactics. It immediately began using Dimensionality against him to teleport him out of its body and hit him at the point of his arrival. That's how he ended up embedded in the underside of Blackedge.

The only reason he hadn't died was that Adam blunted some of the impact with an arrow, a Dynamancy projectile that infused Shiv with greater protection. The magic shattered immediately, but Shiv had it to thank for only having a cracked back instead of being a splatter against dense stalagmites made from mithril and other magic-conducting materials underneath his hometown.

Pieces of Blackedge plunged down and struck the Tarrasque in the head, but it simply snarled and kept going, grinding Shiv deeper into the structure. Strangely, the beast was disoriented, shaking its head constantly while muttering to itself. Uva did something to it. Just not enough to spare Shiv the experience of being used as a meat-sponge.

Adam's arrows crashed into the Tarrasque's eyes over and over again. The Republic's Poly-Magi had been bombing it earlier too, but they were all stunned now, their fields shredded by the Magical Resistance discharge. Only the Gate Lord and Shiv were still active. And with how the Tarrasque was rearing its humanoid fist back, the latter was about to earn another death real soon.

Gravitic Wrestler 175 > 178

Pillar of Orichalcum 224 > 225

But then there came a bolt of black lightning, and before the Tarrasque could hit Shiv again, a net of electricity wrapped around its arm. It tried to push forward, but the stormstuff thickened until its body was coated tight, and just then, a portal opened above the Tarrasque's head, unleashing twelve figures.

"Fucking finally," Shiv wheezed. He glared as the Avatars finally entered the fray. They hovered but a few meters above the Tarrasque and—

Well, they weren't really looking at the monster for some reason. Shiv didn't get it at first, but then he got the notification.

The one to extinguish the Deathless's Vitae will gain the Quest rewards.

And as the Tarrasque struggled against Stormhalt's and Halsur's lightning, the other Avatars continued facing Shiv.

The Deathless grimaced. The reward on his head was far too large compared to the Tarrasque. He realized what was coming, but even so, he couldn't help but be offended. "Really? You're going to—"

The first among the Avatars waved a hand, and Shiv cried out as he was torn away in a flash of all-encompassing Dimensionality.

Blackedge vanished. The Avatars vanished. The Tarrasque vanished. The battlefield vanished.

Adam appeared in the corner of Shiv's vision, his expression frozen in a silent scream—but he never even came close to reaching his friend.

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