327 Loop [II]
I love the little logs ‘Little Hero Mettabon’ leaves herself. It’s such a nice little character device. I find it beyond endearing, even. Sometimes I find myself tempted to taunt her about how I know what she’s doing—and kind of just allow it to carry between loops. Hmm, maybe ‘allow’ is too strong a word. The skill she possesses is still too eldritch, and the Watchtower hasn't fully purified her being yet, but it's not impossible to reach in and change certain things if I wanted.
I must confess, Psychomancy is not exactly a forte of mine, not when self-inserting into someone allows me to replace them entirely. Reaching into someone's consciousness and forcibly enacting your tyrannical desires is less than useful when you can steal the role of a character from them. I've always been a hands-on sort of reader that way.
No, I'm going to continue keeping quiet. I'm going to continue observing her. She's surprised me more than a few times now—and I think she still has a few hundred more subversions left in her back pocket. It is annoying how she refuses to assume the mantle I so graciously gave her; a rebel queen leading a former subterranean empire of freed slaves seems very suitable, considering her history. But maybe she's just not the leadership type. And perhaps she doesn't care about the other prisoners nearly as much as I want her to. Time might fix that, or a few adjustments to her position.
I might need to make things more dire, give her more of a reason to hate her captors. But the gnomes are already so loathsome. I don't think she needs that much more incentive.
Ah. To be decided in a future loop. I suspect my ‘punishment’ will spur some behavioral changes, stop her from directly trying to interact with me, to say the least. I'm a reader. I'm just taking a first-person perspective of my story. She shouldn't be touching me. It's very rude. But if I have to admit, she is rapidly becoming my favorite of the three. And I didn't expect that. Yes, the Deathless is a force of nature, and the currently still missing Arrow is the platonic ideal of a hero. But Uva Mettabon is a spider that seeks to weave a net over her prison. I love a character hubristic enough to think they can trap their narrator within a book. It’s so exciting.
Oh, and speaking of the Young Lord, I think I am narrowing down his positioning. He’s definitely not in the Summer or Winter Courts, so that just leaves the space in between.
So. You’re getting another chance, Harkness. I let you play as Queen, and you lost the crown in humiliating fashion. The girl brutalized you and keeps a thought-slave made in your image. The boy battered you like a stepchild. All that remains to complete your trifecta of failure is a defeat at the hands of Adam Arrow.
But, if you prevail… Should you find and secure him for me so that we can properly integrate our Knight in Shining Armor to unite the smallfolk and oppressed in rebellion against the tyranny of the Courts, then I might just give you a new storyline in the future.
One where you might be able to avenge your disgrace at the hands of these so-called children who have mutilated you.
So. Go out there and hunt, my hound. I didn’t let you keep all those levels for no reason. I didn’t provide you with an opportunity to Delve out of goodwill.
Bring me back my Noble Knight. Complete my collection.
—Evanescia, the Usurper-Narrator of the Fairwoods
327
Loop [II]
“Uva…”Adam coughed, working through his words. “Please don’t take this the wrong way—and never repeat this to Shiv—but the insides of your soul are so tight I feel like I’m squeezing into a crawlspace.”
Even that was an understatement. Uva’s Heroism was technically a pure flame: intense and undimmed despite all she'd survived. However, occupying the space within it felt like being trapped within a narrow crevice in the immediate aftermath of an earthquake, the surroundings clamping you in place and slowly crushing your bones to powder. It wasn't like Shiv, where there was practically a tower full of space to stretch out. Here, Adam's soul didn't even have room to shuffle. Then, there was the frigid hive that surrounded her Heroism; crossing that boundary left the Paragon shivering like a willow in a storm.
“Her drive to protect and serve was more determined by conditioned duty than an innate desire to protect,” the Culturist reiterated from the depths of Adam’s Awareness Skill. “This does not make her monstrous. It just makes her pragmatic and clinical.”
It also makes hiding inside her suffocating, Adam replied.
Uva hesitated. Instead of responding, she directed her Psychomancy strings deeper inside herself—but never found Adam. Entrenched within her soul, he felt every little thing she did and amplified her skills to new heights. However, his divine possession also brought a crippling disadvantage: mainly, he couldn't hide himself or his heroic presence. Neither from the one he was occupying nor the ones around them.
In the physical world, Uva's body was blazing like an azure sun rimmed by incandescent glory. The ogres that were meant to guard the prisoners in the cages were screaming, their eyes blinded, their footsteps pounding the ground as they staggered backward, crashing against the cavern walls.
The other prisoners, meanwhile, cried out with dismay. Their souls were engulfed in azure light, and it bent around most of them, barely seeping into their paltry Heroism—so sparse and thin it made Uva’s crevice seem like a chasm. The oddest among them was a grime-coated girl, no more than eight, who was wearing a set of dirty rags. Her eyes were lit with a gleam of suspicion, then confusion, and finally rising astonishment as her skin began to steam before Adam’s radiance. The ogres shared her fate, slowly steaming them like buns cooked in a pressure pan.
"I'm not inside your mind," Adam explained. "I'm inside your soul. You can't find me using your Psychomancy, but I'm connected to you.”
Uva’s paranoia lingered even with his explanation. “Have you proof?”
“Proof? What do you mean, proof? I'm inside your soul. I know you can feel me right now. Your levels are growing rapidly. Your skills are being magnified. Do you know anyone else who can do such a thing?”
“I don’t. But I also don’t know if you have been usurped by Evanescia—if this is another one of her games.” A cold scowl crept over her features. “Did you reach into me through the girl?”
“What girl? The one who keeps staring at you?”
“Yes.” Uva’s scowl turned to a frown as both she and Adam saw a look of pure confusion creep over the girl’s face.
And then, for seemingly no reason at all, the grime-covered little prisoner ignited like an oil-drenched bonfire hit by a Pyromancy spell.
Lend Thy Light (Unique) - Allows the Paragon to dwell within the soul of a virtuous Pathbearer. The Paragon will ignite the Pathbearer’s soul and cauterize their wounds while infusing them with Heroism. Your virtuous presence will banish the presence of evil within a Pathbearer or immolate a being of pure wickedness directly.
A shriek of pure agony tore out through the girl's lips, and a second later, a reverberating echo joined her. This one was far too deep, too strong to be the girl's voice, and as it rose in intensity, a shadow was outlined over the girl. It was a translucent shape wrapped around her, and it combusted from within. The featureless, ever-changing form of Evanescia briefly revealed itself as she was embraced by Adam’s presence. The ogres were torched by Adam's presence as well, but they responded with groans of pain as if being seared by a brand of judgment rather than condemned to a roaring blaze.
The prisoners within the carried cage cried out as they were flung into the bars. The ogre bearing their weight stumbled left and then right, crashing hard against the wall before tumbling backward, slamming its entire bulk down upon the rusted bars. A loud groaning noise followed—paired with the snapping of bone and tearing of flesh. Some of the steel legs snapped beneath the ogre's body, spearing out to rip the flesh of the unprepared prisoners. Others were simply crushed beneath the immense thing, the bending bars pressing their bodies in rooms until the bones inside them gave way. Scenes of calamitous discord followed; thrashing limbs and wailing throats became the way of the world. Yet a counter-force came to greet the carnage. A counter-force spawned from an unprepared Paragon.
Startled by the cascade of disastrous events resulting from his presence, Adam didn't notice how the wounds around him were being sewn closed by his incandescence, how broken bones were being pressed back together—not truly restored afresh, but reconnected by an azure flame that replaced damaged meat with constructs of Heroism. The prisoners came afire, but they did not burn. Instead, Adam felt them like seeds to be kindled. There was little Heroism in them, but that could be changed. All could be altered.
Evil to be purged, the righteous to be blessed, and the meek to be redeemed.
A chorus of voices cried out to Adam, voices belonging to Pathbearers and peoples of all races and Paths. It was a chorus buried deep within his soul, connected to his heart of exalted flame. It was a chorus that once spoke to him every time he fired a smiting arrow. It was a chorus that spoke against the cruel fate thirsted for by the System.
And it was a chorus that went silent as Evanescia tore free of the girl's body, surging toward Uva.
A brutal clash followed in the metaphysical. Adam cried out as his soul rattled and cracked, and in a burst of embers, found himself flung free from Uva's Heroism. His back crashed hard against the cages, and they were rent asunder as he was blasted out through the lengths of metal, into the soft, supple body of an ogre. He found himself lost in the embrace of hot blood and bursting flesh as his velocity barely diminished. The Paragon cleaved straight through the ogre and slammed against a huge, serrated tooth lining the entrance to the gnomish underground entrance. Only then did he flare his wings—but by then it was almost too late.
A constellation of bladed, impossible geometries crashed into his ribs from the side. He was flung out of position just in time to be spared a blast of time-stilling frost.
Adam didn't get a chance to recover. The enemy was upon him in an instant. Yet, Uva wasn't totally enslaved. Her strings twisted inward and outward in a wild web, each trembling with desperation. Three Aberrant Fractals broke out from Uva’s body only to loop around and come stabbing and tearing at their source, while another barely intercepted another blast of Cryo-Chronomancy on Adam’s behalf—trapped in a dense cage of halted time.
Despite the Eldritch nature of Uva's skills proving somewhat of a hassle, Evanescia piloted her body with ease. Her form shifted—legs morphing into eight spider-like limbs lined with eyes. Beams of Outsider energies speared out from them like small beacons and cleaved colorful gaps in the ground.
Adam felt his psyche fissure—but not truly crack. His Path Evolution had hardened his consciousness. But it was still nowhere near indestructible. He fired blindly, unleashing a stream of Shards of Exalted Flame to pierce Evanescia, but ended up wrenching them aside at the last second as he realized he would be killing Uva instead. As the arrows of burning incandescence crashed into the cavern walls and detonated in spheres of incandescent glory, the explosions were physical, magical, and spiritual all at once. They left massive gaps inside the mountain. They swept over the bystanders, mending broken bodies in an instant while incinerating the ogres from within. The two surviving guards, once tasked with carrying a cage of captives over to the gnomes, flopped down on the ground. Their eyes were burned empty, their evil-tainted souls hollowed from within.
The same blasts came nowhere close to touching Evanescia. She scuttled along the walls and across the ground at uncanny speeds, using Uva's body as if it were her own. A cone of fractals exploded from her back, and each one gleamed bright as it became a section of her insectoid wings. More Outsider energies flooded the cavern, and soon the very nature of space began to tear. With it came additional burdens levied upon Adam's sanity.
He drew his rapier to summon clones of himself, but before he did so, he could see shadows rise up where his initial arrows had struck. He could feel them, and even without commanding them, he saw his shadows draw their own bows formed from the ashes of this initial attack to fire new arrows at the back of the unsuspecting Usurper-Narrator.
What followed was a blitz between two small armies, instantly summoned by the Seeker and the Paragon. Adam created clones of himself, each one trying to create distance, accelerating backward to give themselves more room and calibrate their arrows to strike the filth festering within their friend’s soul. Concurrently, Evanescia unleashed a rain of Aberrant Fractals. The twisted geometries were more than cutting appendages; they displaced pockets of space, causing Adam to miss by the barest of margins, and re-routing Shards of Exalted Flame to collide with each other.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
This only created more ashen shadows. As Uva's eyes multiplied into eight, then sixteen, then hundreds more across her body, as she prepared to unleash a channel to the Outside and drown the Paragon in a flood of reality-disfiguring madness, a dozen flaming Shards cleaved into her back where she was unprotected. Adam felt each strike his shadows delivered as if it were loosed by his own hand. Threads of incandescent Divinity marred Evanescia's silhouette, chipping bits of her outline free and causing her to snarl with genuine pain.
Shard of Exalted Flame 207 > 209
These Arrows, My Memory 201 > 204
Levels rushed into Adam. His onslaught didn’t end. Between his clones and the ashen replicas conjured by These Arrows, My Memory, the subterranean depths were drowned by a light that was brighter than day. Through it all, Evanescia burned. Uva struggled, trying to break free. With each passing second, even more Adams manifested, rapidly overwhelming the summoned Fractals meant to cut him down.
The Usurper-Narrator's fate was sealed. All he needed to do was continue concentrating his firepower and—
Something smashed into Adam from below. A spear of magical force sank into his thigh and barely found itself repelled by his Legendary armor. The Paragon's knee sang out with a sickening snap to announce its dislocation. Before he could cry out, another dozen spear tips slammed into him, driving him up against the ceiling while strands spilled out from every surface to spear against his shoulders, his head, his neck. They crashed over Adam like an ocean of snakes, binding and squeezing him, and his Magical Resistance shattered after mere moments.
His Path had evolved, but Uva had changed substantially as well. He was familiar with her Psychomantic strings, but now she was the matriarch of the inter-routed web. Her Psychomancy could move a force from her mind, connected by mana and intent, even when separated. Just as he unexpectedly flanked Evanescia with These Arrows, My Memory, he too was ambushed by Uva's Eldritch Psychomancy, moving of its own accord.
Lashing tendrils of pain tore into Adam’s mind. His consciousness shuddered. His sense of self tumbled toward the final precipice where insanity awaited. The world around him turned double, then triple, then blurred. Though his ashen replicas continued to loose shots, propagating the air with more Shards, the possessed Seeker held them in little regard. With a casual gesture, she conjured pillars of time-stopping frost. And if that wasn't enough, another wave of Aberrant Fractals broke free from her spine.
While Adam's Shards managed to slip through the time-stopping glaciers, they were diverted into the walls and ground as Evanescia slammed into Adam from below.
Somehow, he managed to stab at her. A Hydromantic limb lashed out from his body, seizing the rapier he'd dropped to skewer his foe. But Uva's body contorted like a rubber band. Her torso folded into a narrow arch before snapping back in place, and then she struck him with a backhanded blow—one further augmented by her Eldritch Physiology and flood of eldritch beams channeled through the many eyes lining her limb.
Adam jolted back—would have been blasted through the ceiling if not for his Phoenix Riposte Skill. He flared bright, transforming into a comet while the piercing cry of a hawk sounded, and he slammed twice against Uva to return the blow he was bestowed. Bits of his friend burst free in messy sprays of ichor. She ruptured like a spider crushed beneath a heel, but her wounds didn't last. She regenerated, and that which she bled was replaced by a dense weave of tissue as strands of webbing stitched up what she lost.
She reached out with her Cryomantic arm and grasped Adam by the face, sharp claws digging into his temples. He tried to move, but a rush of coldness so deep and painful that time itself refused to flow where it went seeped into him. It seized him, trapped him, choked him, froze him solid.
If being inside Uva's Heroism was suffocating, then being trapped in a stasis of Cryomantically frozen time was agonizing.
And it was then, in the throes of his defeat, that he could hear the susurrations of Uva's many voices. The stacks of her mind that she still controlled raged, snarled, and begged for his forgiveness. They promised him they would break free, that they didn't want this, but the only face Uva's body had was entirely impassive, simply staring at Adam, even as it was scorched by his purifying flame.
And then the creature that wore Uva's body as if it were her own dared to smile. “I've been wondering where you were, Hero. You managed to escape my Watchtower somehow. What has happened to you? How did you get here without my knowledge? And why did the being in your presence burn so badly?”
There was a hidden growl of near-anger in her voice, but overall Evanescia just sounded excited, like a reader looking forward to the next page. “I have to confess, I didn't see this coming. I expected the Seeker to be more of an enigma, but you are just getting more and more mysterious, my knight in burning armor. Let me get a better look at you.”
And then, against Adam's will, he felt Uva's strands dig deep into him.
I should unequip my armor, Adam's racing mind decided. He did so without another second of consideration.
Meanwhile, from a narrow pinhole deep inside his own being, Adam could see his mind betraying him. Protected by his Domain, there was a part of him she would never touch. But it wasn't his mind. No longer bound, she smoothly plucked the helmet off his head and stared at his face, hers barely a finger’s length away. Something behind Uva's eyes flashed bright, and he felt Evanescia use the Analyze Skill on him. “Paragon,” she breathed. There was a flutter in her voice. “And a Domain…” The flutter vanished, replaced with disbelief and choked awe. “That can't be right. That can't be possible. Unless…”
While she was ruminating, Adam noticed something happening at her feet. He himself was caught within the grip of Uva's stasis, but his body still cast a shadow over Uva's body. And from deep inside, a powerful presence slipped free.
Everything happened in a blur. A massive hand reached up out from the dark and dragged Evanescia down and into the shadows. Once more, the Usurper-Narrator yelped in surprise, and as she was distracted, Adam's helmet went flying out of her hand and embedded itself in the stone wall. Her Cryo-Chronomancy spell broke in the same instant, and the Paragon was in freefall. His mind was still mauled, and he couldn't gather his focus—his sense of who he was and what he came here to do was lost to a maelstrom of incoherence.
As he dropped from the ceiling, Adam could barely remember his name. And that was the way he stayed until the rogue strand of Uva crept into him—began putting him back together.
Adam, her thoughts came, hushed and desperate. Adam. Adam! You need to flee. I can distract her internally for a few moments, disrupt her senses. I'm removing my own memories. I'll collapse my mind from the inside. She won't be able to have my body, but you need to run now, before she catches up to you with another. Get Shiv and find a way out of the Fairwoods.
The Paragon struggled hard to reply, but words were hard when most of your mind was little more than scattered pieces. “I need to…” But though his consciousness was shattered, his instincts remained, and action lingered in his very bones. Adam didn't want to run. He couldn't run. He wasn't going to abandon Uva now, not after what she'd done for him, for his family, for Blackedge. It didn't matter if it was duty or his Heroism. It didn't matter for what reason she did right. The fact that she did right, the fact that there was good in her, meant that he wasn't going to retreat.
He had enough of the Divinities abandoning their followers. He had enough of unworthy gods. He had enough of the System's callous abuse, of the pointless cruelties in this world.
Staying was obviously foolish. Here in the Fairwoods, Evanescia was a power far beyond any Legend. Something none of them had at any chance of contending with. But Adam had just cleansed the Culturist, had found his friends once more, and now, faced with an overwhelming enemy, the Paragon found himself guided by his basest nature.
His Domain was not that of intelligence, though he could be intelligent if his mind were whole.
His Domain was not that of strategy, though he had knowledge aplenty in that realm as well.
His Domain was of Heroism.
And Heroism demanded Adam shape it into an arrow before letting it fly free to seek the heart of the wicked.
His moment came as the Culturist surfaced from the dark. In a scant few seconds, the Legendary orc had been de-limbed and completely flayed. Adam only recognized the Culturist due to the bloody cowl that still clung to the orc’s twitching muscles, soaked by his gore.
The creature that rose from below, hefting the Culturist's mangled remains, was distinctly not Uva. Instead, it resembled a horrific parody of a humanoid. Its limbs were far too long, its hairless skin a translucent sheen of white, and Adam could see the muscles squirming under its flesh. Its eyes were pools of pitch-black hatred, hungering with the desire to hurt and feed. Nested within its chest was an orb of Dimensionality, so concentrated that Adam's skull ached with agony just from being close to it.
The Paragon felt his own Dimensionality shatter before his adversary’s mere presence. He was a worm trying to defy a falling mountain, but defying the mountain was what he had to do. Resist and die fighting.
Evanescia dangled the Culturist before Adam as a shield. The orc let out a wheezing gasp—but couldn’t speak. Every single one of his mana fields was shredded. His eyes, nose, ears, and toothless mouth were little more than bloody trenches in his skull.
The creature that Evanescia had mantled over herself gave a gravely chuckle. “Come now, Hero. It was a good plan, trapping me with your orc, but even you must be out of cards now. He must be a formidable power on your planet, but the Fairwoods are open to all worlds in Integration, and there are people who stride through these lands that possess powers beyond your reckoning and his.” The monster ran a long tongue over its sharp teeth, all visible due to a lack of lips. “I know them all. I have them all. Those who fall here remain characters for me to use, just as you will be, if you don't play along. Do you want to be a hollow shell that I can wear, or do you want to possess your own story, Hero? I can see you celebrated. I can see you rewarded for your virtues.”
But Adam didn’t hear her. He didn’t fire either. Instead, even a hair’s breadth away from psychosis, his mind was fully focused on something within Evanescia. It was a crack—just the faintest fracture—of light. Of fire. The rest of her was the stuff of sickness—a rot of the soul had consumed so much of her nature over the course of eons. She was like a ruined tooth on the verge of complete disintegration, yet there was a thread that remained—a smallest piece uncontaminated.
Against all odds, and to Adam's utter disbelief, there was Heroism inside Evanescia too. Just enough for him to notice, not enough to spare her from complete immolation.
And it was at that crevice of flame that he released his final arrow. She sighed. She moved the Culturist's body, trying to use the orc as a shield, but in her arrogance, she misunderstood the nature of Adam's skill. His arrow splashed into the ample Heroism that dwelled within the Culturist, but then it splashed through him and into Evanescia. Adam's own form thinned into streams of exalted flame, and he merged as one with his arrow, plunging into the Usurper-Narrator’s being like a divine missile.
And just as she had knocked Adam out of Uva's body, this time he dislodged Evanescia’s blurry silhouette from where it was inserted over whatever this Pathbearer was. At the same time, the crevice at her core fractured and ripped open wider. Adam screamed as it felt like the totality of his person was being squeezed down a keyhole. The pain was unspeakable. His soul felt like it was going to rupture at any moment. He had no mouth, and he couldn't scream, but Evanescia screamed for him as a blazing spider web of scars spread over her chest.
A spiraling vortex of Dimensionality formed. Freed from her control, the character that Evanescia had inserted herself into drew upon its Post-Legendary Skill, and it began drawing what felt like the entirety of the Fairwoods inward. The world became a singularity of space, grasped tight by a spatial spell so powerful it was about to take an entire chunk of the Fae realm with it, wherever that would be.
Between the wound she'd suffered and the imminent dimensional instability about to unfold, Evanescia made her choice.
Everything stopped. All sound ceased. As did all movement.
Once more, the world became a flutter of pages, each one turning in reverse, flapping faster as time and narrative causality reverted. Chaotic scenes of the battle that occurred between Evanescia and Adam played backward. But though the wounds dealt to their physical bodies were removed as the flickering scenes played on, the damage suffered by both their souls endured. For the briefest of seconds, they stared at each other: Adam, barely there, barely sane, but feeling a sense of righteous triumph; Evanescia, clutching at her chest, trying to squeeze the break shut, her blurry visage looking back at him in stunned silence.
And then they were both gone, both drawn back to the cage where Evanescia hid inside the girl and Adam arrived to be with Uva. The pages continued to turn, and they were reverted to even before that, where the Seeker’s story was just about to begin…
***
Restarting Narrative Cycle
Commencing Season of Spring
When Adam woke this time, he was in even worse agony than he could remember ever being in. Outside, he could feel sand pressing against his bare skin. His scattered thoughts froze at that. Bare skin?
Somehow, even with his soul near fractured, he managed to reach up and run a hand across his chest.
“Armor… Where…. Where’s my—”
Darkness took Adam. The last thing he caught was a glimpse of the ocean, and of the Culturist convulsing right beside him, screaming out for an instant before he realized his skin and limbs were back where they belonged.
***
Restarting Narrative Cycle
Commencing Season of Spring
Uva suddenly found herself in the depths of her subconsciousness once more. Something felt wrong. But she couldn’t tell why.
“Another loop, another failure,” Harkness taunted. “But I suppose the last run wasn’t exactly your fault.”
“How do you know that?” Uva asked. She couldn’t shake the feeling that something had gone very wrong—yet, why did her insides feel so purified? Why did she feel the urge to do right? To protect those weaker than her? Why was there a boundless sea of morale inside her, despite her being trapped in a loop?
Harkness scoffed. “We haven’t been penalized. So it can't be your doing. Congratulations, girl—you’re not the only roach the Usurper-Narrator needs to step on.”
And though Uva couldn’t fully remember what happened in the last loop, a feeling of elation took hold. Adam. Shiv.
Her boys were still out there, still causing havoc in the Fairwoods.
They might all be apart, but they weren’t alone.
***
Restarting Narrative Cycle
Commencing Season of Spring
“Agh! Fuck! Evanescia! You… you bitch-fuck! How am I supposed to cook a godsdamned felling ocean if you keep resetting the fucking story? What is wrong with you? What are you even doing?” Shiv raged as he found himself back inside his Severed Shadow once more. He had just gotten to examining the stupid jelly-crabs again when everything was rendered moot by whatever bullshit the Usurper-Narrator didn’t like this time. “And if you’re planning to hurt Uva, I’m going to do things to your ass. I’m going to shove something up it. Like a full godsdamned fucking… piano! Do you hear me?”
No further notifications came. Nothing announcing Uva was to be punished. Nothing at all.
Shiv took this as a sign that the Usurper-Narrator was rightfully terrified of him, and he snorted. “Yeah, that’s right. You know better. Anyway, I’ll be with you shortly. But let me finish cooking this time, dammit. I… I actually want to see if I can do this.”