Path of the Deathless

“Eileen. My dear, sweet, vicious daughter. You are brilliant beyond measure. You are keen like a hawk. You are a cheetah in human flesh. And you were born to hold a blade. But do you know what your greatest fault is? Why you’re going to lose this match again?”

“Why, papa?”

“Because you refuse to imagine what it is like to be someone less than yourself. And you cannot imagine someone being better than you. At anything. If you wish to be queen, you need to have a good imagination. Checkmate.”

—Lord Lionel Harkness and Lady Eileen Harkness

317 (I)

To Beara Curse [I]

“Come the hells on!” Shiv cried out to the System. “Really? Really? We just got here. We took a single step into this dimension. You couldn't wait for more than a single second before you shit all over me!”

Curse Gained: Usurper’s Winnowing Curse - A feeling of utter despair seeps into your being and skills…

You are exposed to the Usurper Queen’s gaze!

The Usurper Queen has found you!

The Usurper Queen is watching you!

“Us,” Adam corrected wearily. “I finally got hit by one of your Curses too.”

Uva stared at the same set of notifications as well. Even physical absence wasn't enough to avoid the consequences of two failed Quests. Two failed Quests Shiv had never gotten any chance of completing. The Fairwoods were consumed by calamity—one that had been progressing for quite some time.

The atmosphere was choked by a dense veil of frost. A membrane of Cryomancy sheathed every square centimeter of this world, and worse, colossal sheets of rime fell from the heavens, hammering the earth like artillery. A tumbling blizzard blasted Shiv incessantly, but even through all that spectacle, his eyes were drawn upward. For a true nightmare was unfolding in the skies.

The moon of the Fairwoods was a dreadful thing to behold. Colossal wasn’t a strong enough word for it, and its size was the lesser aspect to its terror. Encompassing. It was so grand and wide that its edges almost occupied all corners of the sky, and the way it was hung in place so low overhead made it appear a boulder halted in time, capable of falling at any moment. But then there was the gravity that it projected. The pressure Shiv felt wasn't just physical but also emotional. An immense weight was trying to press an urge to surrender into him: a stamp of cowardice imparted on his soul. One could almost describe its surface as smooth and polished, but every now and again, it would quiver, and vague silhouettes of mounted riders would erupt free from the surface in sudden cavalry charges.

They leaped out from the moon's confines like skipping out from a pond, while their overwhelming numbers made them seem like a swarm born of a liquid hive. But the unshadowed riders weren't galloping aimlessly. No, they had a target. They flitted across the air like locusts drifting over a field, and they went out to seize what appeared to be a dying sun. Its flame was feeble and paltry, dwarfed by the moon so many times over, and as flames died down to embers. On top of the sun stood a single tower, a remaining structure riven by ruin and despair. It reminded him of the central spire for the Starhawk's Perch, the cornerstone of a castle meant to serve as an anchor for the day. The faintest trickles of warmth still leaked from it. It was infused with Pyromancy, but even that was going away. A crash shook the world, and another part of the savage tower fell away, like flesh peeling from decayed bone.

The moon's core opened up, exposing a cavernous set of jaws that could have consumed the world. It only yearned to sate itself upon the remnants of dawn. But within the moon’s maw was a castle, a thing idyllic, shaped from the fantastical dreams of children. With every second, it grew colder and greater, like it was feeding from this ultimate triumph. The lunar castle glowed so bright that it imprinted itself upon Shiv’s vision, and the ice that formed it was another kind of pale altogether. Simply witnessing it hurt. It made the cold sink into his bones, but he couldn't look away. It was a castle that held the aesthetics of murderous midnight. All its spires pointed like stilettos, its edges bladed, meant to cut and bleed, and its wings gothic and glorious, even from so far away.

“No… No, this cannot be!” Toasty wailed. “The season is not yet over! It shouldn't be anywhere near over. We can't be too late! It could not be… It could not be… It could not be!” He fell to his knees, and his crust burst open, rupturing as the supple bread that formed his body began suffering the ill touch of winter. “It cannot! I… I cannot have failed!”

“What the hells is that?” Adam breathed.

Shiv didn't have a good answer. “I'm looking at the same thing you are. Some weird dream shit is happening here—”

“No, not the castles, not the sun and the moon. Look past them, look above them if you can. What is that?” Shiv followed Adam's pointed finger to a place beyond both celestial entities. After squinting his eyes, he finally saw it through the undulating waves that left distortions in the air. Beyond the dense fog of frost that clouded all sides, there were colossal lengths embedded in the sun and the moon. Things that were attached to them; they seemed like clock hands in shape, pendulous in terms of mass. There was a faint clicking in the backdrop, thudding through the earth, snapping like a series of broken bones. And then there was a set of shifting wheels at the heart of this place, and it was only then that Shiv felt that strange and gentle tugging sensation inside his being.

Time wasn’t flowing right here.

“The sun and the moon are attached to gears?” Uva whisperer. Her mind chattered as she thought. “It’s like the insides of a mechanical watch.”

“Wait, how are you cold too?” Shiv could feel her trembling worsen.

“It’s like I’m not insulated at all,” Uva answered. “The cold is seeping through everything, even your mind. My mind too… This place is targeting our souls directly.”

That brought Shiv back to Andra's Cryomancy Skill again. The Jotun had been able to freeze everything: not just bodies, not just molecules in the air, but mana as well. But the chill that reigned over the Fairwoods was different. It didn't encase him in a cage of ice, but rather filled his being with an ever-growing amount of weight. His sluggishness was mental, spiritual, and physical. But it also felt metaphorical. Like a literal expression of despair: the hopelessness of dead winter.

Again, his Non-Sequitur rumbled in his chest but failed to trigger. He had a guess as to why: his visions were being silenced. Likely by the will of this Usurper Queen.

“Shiv,” Adam called. “Creeping Void. Now.”

He reacted without question. Adam, Uva, and Shiv had survived too many fights together for there to be a question of why. A gushing tide of miasmic darkness poured out around Shiv, enveloping everything within 100 meters. Midway through the triggering of his skill, a shriek emanated from inside him. Shiv's startlement was brief. Uva had shattered one of her many consciousness stacks, and with that sacrifice came madness, and from madness came a harvest of Aberrant Fractals. Uva gazed out from Shiv's eyes, and with the spray of Eldritch magic, the strange geometric abominations tore through the air, rising above the Creeping Void.

The Creeping Void 170 > 171

“Forming a perimeter,” Uva explained. “Adam. Enemy. Direction?”

The Gate Lord's body shifted with an inhalation of moisture. His glimmering, sky-blue armor vanished behind a turning wave of turbulent water, and he took the shape of a humanoid maelstrom that rivaled Shiv in size. He grew four sets of arms, three of which created meter-long Veilpiercers before nocking them along the strings of his bows. His final pair of hydrokinetic limbs waved in the air, shaping Divination mana as he cast a spell. The violet magic wrapped around Shiv and Adam, becoming a mystical screen layered over the world. Five figures lit up beyond the spell’s veil. Five figures riding hard on wolf-shaped steeds which could gallop just as easily upon the cold lining the air as they danced across the rime coating the ground.

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The riders came directly for Shiv and the others, and they weren't alone. The air came aglow with a glitter of ravens, and deeper in the wailing landscape of winter lurked unnatural things hiding amongst snow.

A clicking sound came from behind. Looking over his shoulder, Shiv noticed their gateway was part of a cavernous formation lining the side of a weathered mountain. A formation that was rapidly being frozen along with the Dimensionality lining the gateway itself.

“Shit!” Shiv hissed. He halted time and dove for the gateway to knock the crusting ice free with his Shapeless Tides. He ended up slamming shoulder-first into what felt like an orichalcum wall. The Dimensionality lining the gateway fractured—and then burst apart into shards of frost. Even time being frozen didn't stop the devastation, and it was then that Shiv realized the snow in the air was still falling, and the moon glowed ever brighter in the sky above.

Be not so selfish, Deathless. The pace of the story does not move at your whim.

Shiv let his Chronomancy field drop and immediately called out to his companions, "Guys. Problem. Gate’s broke.”

“What? For the love of…” Adam eyed the jagged pieces of ice lining the center of the gateway and sighed. “I think that pretty conclusively indicates we've fallen into someone's trap.”

“If only our ambusher knew how our brute cares little for distance or dimensions where his bodies are concerned,” Uva muttered. “Still. Can Dimensionality be frozen like that?”

“Not normally,” Adam answered. “But since when have we dealt with normal problems?” His mind entered a state of heightened focus. “I still can't sense anything clearly. The winds here…. The cold itself. It's like a blanket over my Awareness. It won't let me cast my Seer of Horizons out either, but I can still hear their heartbeats. I can hear their snarls on their lips. I think we're being hunted by wolf-men.” Adam’s battle-form splashed with agitation. “They sound a little bit like Five. I think they smell like him too, but the chill and the wind mask too much of their scents for me to be sure.”

Great. More questions. “How should we take them?” Shiv asked.

“I'm not sure if that's wise. Maybe we should avoid them for now. Get a better understanding of what we are facing.” Adam tapped Shiv on the shoulder and gestured at the Bread-Knight. Poor Toasty looked consumed by despair.

He was still on his knees, staring up at the moon. He could still see beyond the Creeping Void somehow, and he constantly reached out. His fingers were turning purple, as if his form could suffer frostbite as easily as any flesh. From his lips came pleas of disbelief, of misery. “I couldn't have been too late. I couldn't. I couldn't. I couldn't…”

“Shiv, let's grab him and get out of here. See if we can break contact with our hunters.” Adam fired one of his Veilpiercers. A spatial rift tore open before them, but it started closing again at an alarming rate. They had seconds to cross rather than minutes. “Damned cold’s making my Dimensionality shrivel. Shiv, fast.”

“Got it,” the Deathless said. Much as he wanted to stay and fight, his Non-Sequitur being compromised and a series of failed Quests falling on his shoulders the moment he stepped through that gateway left an uncomfortable feeling in his gut. Pair that with how the Usurper Queen was supposedly watching them meant that making some space and figuring out what was actually happening in the Fairwoods was probably wiser than the alternative. He reached down and plucked the Bread-Knight off his knees. With that, all three of them fled across the rapidly closing portal.

“You got any idea where we're going?” Shiv asked. He sent his tides surging forward, flinging himself again so that he would emerge from the other side before this entire space clamped down around him. The static walls were closing fast, bringing with them a feeling of claustrophobia.

“Not entirely, but he might. We're just repositioning for now, buying time until he can give us a direction, a proper one.” Adam’s hydrokinetic form shuddered. “Starhawk’s godsdamn bow! It's freezing! My Magical Resistance isn’t doing anything here.”

A pulse of focus ebbed over from Uva. “Dealing with that problem. It’s mostly just sadness—a rather pitiful Curse. But there is also something else: I might have eyes on a potential place of retreat if your dear Toasty gives us nothing, Shiv. He might be a fairy, but I can feel the sheer instability of his mind grinding inside him. He's close to the precipice of madness.” Uva routed scenes of scenery she beheld through her Aberrant Fractals to Adam and Shiv. Rather than being a vibrant forest filled with pine trees and glorious green, this place was a frigid wasteland. Massive stalagmites jutted out from the ground, and withered, miserable-looking stones stood as the only points of separation from the pale lands that surrounded them. Shiv couldn't even sense any shrubs using his Atlas.

Aside from their group and the monsters coming to hunt them, this place was absolutely lifeless.

Yet, over a kilometer away, there rose a single finger of smoke. It trailed through the air in defiance of the coldness and the wind around, and there came a flicker of light far below. The smoke was connected to a chimney, and that chimney, though vague, seemed a part of a village. It, too, was being battered by the closed fist of winter, but where there was a village, there might be people. Shiv reoriented himself. He activated his Atlas, and there came the faintest glow of organic tissue. There was at least one life within that community, one that was fading at a discernible rate.

Atlas of the Flesh Scryer 125 > 127

“Nice job, Uva,” Shiv said. "I think there's something there. Not sure what it is or if it's a trap, but it's something at least. Keep an eye out for anything else. Villages don't just spring up in the middle of nowhere.”

“Already on it,” she replied.

“Toasty,” Adam called. “I need you to focus and tell us where we are. If you know where the Summer Court might be, or how to get out of this wretched winter, we need to know.” He had a tendril of water wrapped around the Bread-Knight's body. He was shaking the Fae gently, trying to rouse him out of his anguished fugue. It wasn't working. Shiv could see Toasty’s emotional core, and it was completely choked by a whirlwind of pitch-black, swirling tar.

Sage of the Enkindled Heart:He is beyond the point of despair and coherence. It will take more than words or even pain to bring him back.

But that got Shiv thinking. “What about a dose of anger?” he asked. He unleashed a wave of black fire from his eyes, flooding the Fae's emotional core. For a moment, he felt his Sage of the Enkindled Heart clash against something there, something that was unnaturally cold, an all-consuming urge to bend, to break, to force one to surrender, to—

A piercing chill stabbed into the skill, and Shiv nearly cried out in agony. His flames cut out immediately. He gripped his eyes and stumbled back. “Agh! Shit!”

“No mental damage,” Uva called out. “You’re alright. But how—”

The Usurper Queen sees you, Deathless. She looks forward to making your reacquaintance.

“Of course she does,” Shiv and Uva deadpanned at the same time. Shiv chuckled as he wiped the blood away from his eyes. “Hey, Queen, if you're listening in right now, you’re not going to like what happens if we run into each other.” The winds carried a low, shrill laugh from high above, and Shiv knew the sound of mockery well. “Right, guess I'm gonna have to make you one of my victims too. Whoever you are.”

But a note of confusion also came from Uva. “Why did your notification say reacquaintance?”

Slipping out from the other side of the dimensional channel, the Bread-Knight remained inconsolable. Adam fired an arrow in the direction of the town. It tore another gash into the air, but this time it closed even faster, like a wound clotting before their very eyes. "Go, go, go!" Adam called out. The Divination spell he'd created earlier was still active, and through its protective threshold, Shiv could see more threats circling them. While the five wolf-men rode after the team, the lurking monsters hadn't gotten any closer. It was like they were keeping their distance deliberately, just hounding the group, watching them from afar in support of the cavalry.

The wrongness in the air just grew.

As the foursome tore across the insides of another dimensional channel, Adam began planning ahead. He activated his Commander’s Foresight—but the world continued to move at its standard pace around them.

Trying to break the pacing of a story is a cardinal sin in these lands, Young Lord Arrow…

“I think I might already bloody hate this place more than the Outside,” Adam snarled. “Shiv, you take Vanguard. Check the food for survivors. Grab them. Uva. Keep making those fractals. Spread them out and see if you can scare off the riders—maybe spot somewhere else we can flee toward.”

“Acknowledged,” the Seeker replied.

“Got it.” Shiv shot past Adam and made his own preparations. He started tapping into his Voidmantid armor’s sensory suite. The winds were frigid and painful, but he still detected pheromones. Supplemental skills are always—wait, one of the Quest rewards was a Secondary Skill. What does that mean? You can’t have a secondary skill. There’s no room inside the soul to develop one… right?

Considering Shiv never heard anyone mention anything about a secondary skill, that meant he was dealing with some really weird fairy nonsense. Weird fairy nonsense that he wasn’t going to discover, since those Quests had already been failed.

But there was still one left. One that made no sense to him at all.

Quest: Stop the Usurper Queen from reassembling the Broken Watchtower.