346 Harbinger [II]
A lack of balance can see a Pathbearer broken. Not every Skill Evolution brings glory and the promise of greater power. Sometimes, if your foundational skills are out of alignment with each other, you can find yourself limited or even crippled by the changes you experience. The most common cases are ones where a Pathbearer achieves Master-Tier Physicality, only to find their body unable to bear the burden of their strength. With their Toughness lagging behind, though they might be able to hold up a crumbling building, their spine will shatter. Their flesh will tear. Their muscles will break loose from the structure of their skeletons, and they will fall and succumb, though there is supposedly power enough in their sinews.
To meet such an end is an ignoble fate, and so you must be strategic with your growth. Single-mindedness will prove more detrimental than useful. Even skills that do not cripple you dramatically upon use will see their effectiveness diminished. A Master-Tier magical skill will never achieve the heights of its potential if you lack the foundational mind skills to bolster it, if you are incapable of understanding the theory, if you do not have the capacity to calculate and predict how your patterns will come together, if you lack the speed to shape your mana in battle.
As such, and it bears repeating forevermore, your foundations must rise in pace with your highest skill. A tower can rise into the stratosphere, but any good architect knows that if the base is unstable, the heights they grace will only be temporary before a devastating fall.
Be mindful, be wise, be patient.
Or learn to reap lament from what should have been a just evolution.
—The Paths of Ascension: Essential Reading at Phoenix Academy of the Yellowstone Republic
346
Harbinger [II]
At first, Shiv had thought this Legendary Skill Evolution bore more consequences than it was worth.
He'd been wrong. Truly and utterly wrong.
Harbinger of Tripartite Ruin lived up to its name for both Shiv and his enemies. As it turned out, the only reason why it needed to sacrifice one of his worst memories to shatter the tower was that it lacked a mind and bore only the singular aspect of a body. As such, the Harbinger had to conduct a mental-emotional transplant, infusing it with the memory and the sordid feelings attached to it. Only after did it become fully tangible for the Harbinger, and with that came a shattering.
Since Longinus' slave wranglers were already whole of mind, body, and heart, there didn't need to be a sacrifice of memories on Shiv's part to see them broken.
The Deathless moved away from the rivers of sauce that formed the inner perimeter to the Boiling Toad. Longinus was left behind, raging in place, doubtlessly crying out for his vanished enemy to come out and die upon the end of his lance. Instead of obliging, Shiv made for the border of this kitchen stronghold. Though the Boiling Toad was comparable to a sizable town, distance wasn't Shiv's ally. He knew Longinus could cross the space between them in an instant, but every microsecond he bought for himself buffered his survival.
Shiv found an assortment of new test subjects near what could best be described as a massive lake-aquarium. Carved out in the shape of a crescent, the water was separated into salty and fresh bodies. The lake ran deep and dense with countless lifeforms. Schools of fish dotted the surface, while down in the dark lurked stranger beasts and larger leviathans. They weren’t Shiv’s targets. Instead, he stalked the people manning the ships that skimmed the surface. The hundred-meter-long vessels cast long nets into the deep and were manned by crews numbering four hundred. Unlike the other districts, the ship-slaves seemed to be pure labor—made to fish or work their Hydromancy under the cracking of magical whips and the hateful magics of summoned dimensionals.
The presence of the dimensionals brought forth another question: If Longinus was a god and so powerful in terms of his summoning, why did he have need for slaves? His dimensionals were more than sufficient as guards, so why could he not simply enlist some more Hydromancers without placing them in a state of bondage? On top of that, why were the slave wranglers individuals instead of dimensionals or monsters?
Those queries were answered the moment Shiv surfaced back in the context. Upon unleashing his Harbinger and activating Legion of Self, he gazed upon the other beings in existence with new eyes. The dimensionals possessed a Tripartite of mind and body, but their emotional cores were pinpricks compared to those of a person. The things they felt were base, akin to how an unawakened lizard or an even simpler creature might understand morality.
The same couldn't be said for the slave drivers, some of whom enjoyed their work with perverse cruelty, while others numbed themselves through drink, or drug, or self-delusion. The flames that filled their cores were vibrant, colorful, and flavorful in equal measure—and novel too. Every person felt their emotions in a different way, and every person tasted unique, filling the air with their own specific aroma.
Considering how the Wanderer could sense, devour, and inflict emotions, the question as to why this hellhole of a kitchen was so inefficiently run was answered.
But where Longinus was a glutton that feasted upon the nectars of passion, the Harbinger was a predator, a calamity of mind, matter, heart, and time.
Legion of Self gave him time to plot and plan, but its potential was elevated to new heights by the Harbinger. Shiv's bodies were limited by his Reflexes, by actions already performed, by logical contradictions that prevented one action from rendering another impossible. More than anything, however, they were limited by time. It took them time to get from one place to another. It took them time to inflict damage, to shape a spell, to shift their shape. But the Harbinger of Tripartite Ruin was time incarnate. It glided across the surface of a stilled present and materialized a moment in the future. Said future could be a half-second, could be a quarter-second, could be longer, could be shorter—could be any time that Shiv could process and any place within his perception.
More importantly, however, it could carry him from one place to the next. Clad within the golden shards of his flawed perfection, Shiv's evolved Chrono-Psychomancy fields became an armored form that granted him a new threshold of unburdened alacrity. Within the dense confines of his Legendary-Tier magic, the present was effectively still. Longinus still noticed him. He could still react, but the god's tools for responding to him were reduced, and the surprise provided by Shiv’s Continuity Error left the Wanderer a step behind—and left the god unable to protect his subjects.
Shiv reached the first slaver in little time at all. Her arm was reared back to deliver a curved whip crack to an unruly slave on deck. Her face was a mess of scars and tattoos, but neither ridges of ugly tissue nor colorful inks could hide the depravity that gleamed in the white of her eyes. The depravity shone through in the flame of her heart, which crackled and roared with venomous intent. Susurration slipped out from her mind the same way the flames of vile ardor curled free from her heart and befouled her person with a stench of darkness.
Incensed by her impurity, Shiv struck with neither warning nor mercy. A twin-layered fist shot out. The Harbinger struck, mirroring the actions of his physical body, and it became his gauntlet—a metaphysical armament that allowed him to strike at something even deeper. Twin Legendary lores came down upon Adept-Tier Magical Resistance. It was like breaking an egg by flinging a moon through the surface of a planet.
Overkill became an understatement. The slaver's already paltry protections evaporated before either blow even truly landed. When he finally struck, she broke in three ways and was flung across a new trajectory of reality.
Shiv's first punch was thoughtless. He didn't target anything specific. He just wanted to stop her, for her very existence offended him—or the Harbinger born of him. As such, her mind broke like it was made of glass. A storm of memories crashed against Shiv, bouncing off his Magical Resistance and skipping off the surface of his Harbinger like a wall of shrapnel. The feelings that fueled the furnace of her being gushed out in a gout of flame. It bathed him. It bled her final sensations into him, and her flesh didn't splatter in a spray of gore or final vapor, but burst as glittering glass.
As he pressed against her, as he drove his mass down on her, she wasn't scattered across the deck of the hundred-meter-long fishing ship. That wasn't Shiv's will. He didn't want to see her bleed on the slave she'd tormented in life as a final offering at the point of her death, and so he flung her on instinct, by reflex. He flung her along a new trajectory, unavailable to him before. Not across material space, but time.
He clotheslined the slaver’s broken remains so hard that he carried them into the future with him—and flung them even further still, even as he slipped back over into the present.
The transition was instant and jarring and came with a shudder that rattled the Harbinger. Instead of Chronomancy circling around Shiv, infusing his Harbinger's glass with solid mana, the golden magics that suffused him were flung forward, painting a single trail that he accelerated along.
Existence became frictionless and slippery.
Shiv surprised himself by jumping across time. He surprised Longinus twice over when he returned and found the god’s incandescent visage blazing in the air behind him, flinching as Shiv rematerialized.
“How the fuck—”
The Deathless suffered no such hesitation. He flung himself again, extending the path of his Chronomancy to the next slaver he saw before Longinus could do anything. It felt just like casting himself back in time, but where he could only rewind himself back across to a point weighted by a temporal anchor or only fifteen seconds in his retro-history, allowing him to traverse space without the manipulation of Dimensionality, the future was boundless. And the stores of Shiv's Chronomancy mana felt endless, for it was further kindled by the flames of his fury.
Sage of the Enkindled Heart served as his new Skill Evolution's foundation, a composite of his evolved Psychology mingled with a Berserk Skill. Paired with how much he despised Longinus for everything the god had done to Georges and all the people within his realm, Shiv’s anger proved ceaseless, and from that was evermore mana distilled.
Where his first time jump happened purely on reflex, his second was deliberate. He emerged a centimeter away from the next slaver. The moment he did, he felt a ripple of something crash into him. A wall of rage and want and lust. Longinus reacted with a skill, but it struck nothing—for Shiv had slipped from past to future from the place he once stood.
“Keep him unbalanced,” the Harbinger advised. “Keep moving. Take the slaver. Leap again.”
Shiv obliged. He reached out and took his next victim by the neck. The slaver's Magical Resistance turned to dust upon contact, but the rest of him was spared from harm. Even so, Shiv could feel the warmth of the slaver's emotions, of the mind that guided the elf-slaver’s actions—fragile, thin—and his rusted body. The Harbinger leapt once more. A new path was painted. A new destination was charted as its golden mana reached across the world.
With this time leap, Shiv brought with him a passenger. Caught within his Chronomancy, the slaver could but scream. His voice was a distorted cry of incoherent terror, and though his gauntleted fingers pried, he possessed little hope of breaking free from Shiv’s grasp.
The second temporal transition ran longer than the first. Shiv jumped across time and found himself displaced nearly a kilometer upward and two full seconds in the future. Below, the aquarium district was ablaze with incandescent colors as Longinus roared with frustration. He could remember Shiv now, but still remained a step behind and out of sync with his movements.
Truth be told, it was hard for Shiv to keep track of himself as well. Jumping across time wasn't like wearing his Harbinger in the present. Instead of time being still for him, he accelerated himself along the natural currents of chronology and arrived in the future. For everyone else, two seconds had passed. For him and his new prisoner, everything happened in an instant.
Holy shit, that’s going to take some getting used to. Even incomplete and flawed, the Harbinger of Tripartite Ruin was a Legendary Skill, and it made that known with every breath-emptying feat it allowed him to perform.
As Shiv tried to jump again, a synaptic shadow formed over him. Though his Harbinger was unbound by time, his personal Reflexes limit served as a ceiling. But it was still staggering. Three actions. He could perform three full actions while nested within his Harbinger where his physical bodies could only do one.
And he wasn’t done exploring the skill yet.
Harbinger of Tripartite Ruin 202 > 204
Shiv let Legion of Self roll a second into the future. He expected Longinus to be upon him, but the god wasn’t anywhere near. Instead, he was still down below, still on the deck of the ship, so overwhelmed by Shiv’s sudden transitions across context and time and space that he hadn’t caught up.
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That gave Shiv another precious moment in time to further his tests.
“Wait,” the Harbinger declared. “Let's see how far we can go backward across our own history. We have gone forward. I am reasonably certain that we can travel substantially far into the future before my mana field is strained. I wish to see if the same restrictions apply to our past as well. I want to see if we can slip out from the Boiling Toad and conduct an interrogation beyond Longinus’ notice.”
And so, with the slaver still in hand, Shiv obliged. He cast himself backwards across time. Strider of the Unbending Path's existing power still remained, but the Harbinger was far more than the Strider. The Strider, after all, was merely a Master-Tier skill; there was no comparison between it and what Shiv possessed now. And once more, the greatness of Shiv's new evolution made itself known.
A path formed, leading him back across his own history. Shiv glided back in time, but his transition was not so frictionless. Instead, it was turbulent and abrupt, as he was defying the rightful path of chronological progression. The turbulence only grew worse as he hit the points where he was out of context. It was like dashing himself upon a series of rocks, and his Harbinger fractured from the violence of the transition. Where its brittle form broke, Shiv’s Severed Shadow was shredded as well. Broken bits of Vitae were knocked loose from his body as the wounds dealt to his Harbinger were expressed upon him in turn—another weakness to be noted.
But he didn’t stop. He was too enraptured to stop. Though it took a great effort on his part, he was still reeling back in time, skipping over the moments he spent outside Integration. He was now back over the rivers of sauce, then over the grill, then back even further still, reeling all the way to the front gate. Every time he struck a point where he was out of context, his Harbinger would sustain more damage, and every second he spent reversing his history increased his turbulence. Chunks of vitality were knocked free from him, but his mana never became an issue.
Where the Strider of the Unbending Path recovered quickly and regenerated fast, the Harbinger’s strength seemed without end—and the only reason why it wasn’t an outright juggernaut was because of Shiv’s weakness and a lacking Delve.
If Legion of Self made Shiv exponentially more capable, then the Harbinger put him in another category of power. One Legendary Skill already changed everything for him. Another altered the way he understood his limits irrevocably.
Little wonder they said Legends could defy the gods.
“Shiv…” the Harbinger’s voice was strained. “Enough. We must stop.” But the Deathless was confused—he didn’t feel tired at all. There was no strain. “Not strain… But if I strike another point of turbulence, I fear I will shatter entirely.”
And that admission made Shiv stop reverting himself across time in an instant. A broken Harbinger meant a broken him. That was something he most definitely couldn’t survive.
When he emerged, he found himself far beyond the Boiling Toad. He was inside the keep once more, along the gallery of chefs where he first encountered Longinus—who wore the guise of Georges and presented himself as Ser Cuntus.
Shiv didn’t have the words. He hadn’t gone back seconds; he’d jumped back across hours. And the overwhelming joy and lightness he felt was—
That sobered him. Joy and lightness. A sensation of overwhelming peace and happiness gripped him, where a moment before, practically every fiber of his existence trembled with constant apocalyptic rage toward Longinus.
“It’s been spent,” the Harbinger answered. And to that end, the gold of its fragments was diminished and dim, and the flowing Psychomancy that leaked from its cracks alongside the tar-black flames of Shiv’s loathing had been reduced to a trickle. “In place of my mana, it has been spent.”
The thought that this was another flaw didn't even cross Shiv's mind. Reverting himself across hours of personal history was not a flaw; it was an achievement, but it came at a cost of resources. Emotional resources. Using the Harbinger spent his rage; the Harbinger was also vulnerable and needed to be kept out of direct combat. If a bit of temporal turbulence caused it so much damage and inflicted the same injuries upon Shiv, then letting Longinus hit the Harbinger directly was a death sentence.
“Alright, new adjustments: Leviathan of the Shapeless Tides and my physical bodies hit first. I don't use you in direct combat unless I am ambushing someone or there is an opening I can take advantage of.”
“Wise,” the Harbinger complimented. “It was also wise of us not to throw ourselves at Longinus. We left him confused, but if we struck him directly, perhaps it would be us who shattered instead of the slaver.”
“Probably,” Shiv grunted. “Speaking of slavers…”
The elf-slaver had gone completely still—and also wet himself. Compared to the tattooed slaver Shiv broke, the elf looked young. On its own, that meant nothing. Elves lived longer than humans at baseline and stayed youthful throughout the span of their existence, and Pathbearers of even the Adept-Tier could stay young for centuries. But this one lacked the stench of malice. This one didn't enjoy what he did. Instead, there was a resounding dullness that echoed forth from his mind and a numbness within their core. The emotions there were worn down from erosion. And there was something else—a chord of pure terror bound to Shiv, fueling him with physical and magical power.
Shape of Monstrosity injected a dose of magic back into the Harbinger, and its form grew just a bit brighter.
Once more, Shiv was reminded that a Pathbearer wasn’t a single Legendary Skill—that all skills worked in concert with the others. There was a grand synergy at play inside every individual.
“I… I…” The elven slaver was beyond words and petrified with terror. His mind also felt slow and meager in general, so he likely wasn’t the brightest to begin with.
Just thinking while remaining in contact with the elf's body had a consequence. Shiv's judgment proved infectious. Glass formed along the elf's face as he turned brittle, and without the constant threat of Longinus looming over him, the Deathless had the chance to examine the effects in new detail. The first thing that caught Shiv's attention was the Enkindled Shadow—a thing of black fire, further veiled by a membrane of mind magic—flickering free from the Harbinger's form. Said Enkindled Shadow adopted a stance much like a proper practitioner of the martial arts instead of a brawler. It thrust a palm against the slaver's face and imprinted that patch of glass in place, and with that came a psionic susurration conveyed of Shiv’s mind.
One that echoed with voices inside the slave.
“Slow, stupid, and dull as an animal.”
Shiv's telepathic voice was co-mingled with someone else, someone from the slaver's past, and the emotions inside the elf responded. Part of him clearly believed in his own inadequacy, and that was the final bit that allowed the alchemy to take shape. The elf believed he was stupid, and Shiv’s words reached into psychological cavities that ran so wide they went beyond wounds and became entire rifts. On top of that, however, Shiv found himself enraptured by that tar-black shadow. It seemed the Harbinger had a ghost of its own while it already served as a ghost to Shiv. But more than just a ghost, its blows and posture were those of a practiced pugilist that didn’t distinguish between mind or body.
And the Harbinger is fused from four different skills, most of which were fused from even more skills.
The sheer breadth of the Harbinger's capabilities was staggering. Its capabilities seemed to be expanding by the second. It left even Leviathan of the Shapeless Tides in shame.
“That is because you are not using Leviathan to anywhere near its true potential,” the Harbinger defended.
“Huh, but—”
“I’m currently modulating our emotions and thoughts so this feels constructive instead of mocking. Otherwise, we would have taken another injury. You are not using Leviathan well. And it is far simpler a skill to use compared to me. After all, it is the union between your Grappling, Magical Resistance, and Physicality. Of the three, Magical Resistance requires no skill, but how often have you guided your tactile telekinesis to control or subdue your enemies?”
Shiv’s mind went blank. “My telekinesis.”
“Tactile telekinesis,” the Harbinger corrected. “For that is what it is: Anything you can touch, you can manipulate and control. That’s why you wanted the skill in the first place. It’s what allows you to crush Blackedge or wrestle beasts many times your size and mass as if you are their equal. But how often have you let your vectors glide out from your body and ripple through the world? How often have you let overflow tides wash out from your feet and paint the environment around you, or rip ground out from beneath your enemies?”
He didn’t have a good answer to that. “I don’t think I ever did anything like that.”
“But you could. So long as you stay in contact with the ground, you can reach an enemy. You can direct your Shapeless Tides across the floor, seize their leg, and batter them against the ground after breaching their Magical Resistance. Or breaking their limbs with an ankle lock, or leg lock, or choking them from a vast distance with your vectors alone. All these things are possible if you apply your imagination.”
The Deathless was speechless.
“And the reason you are not feeling embarrassed right now is that I am dispelling that emotion before it can form.” Shiv noticed a faint flicker of enkindled Psychomancy curling through his mind, tuning his thoughts and feelings. “The damage would have been catastrophic. Let me add another rule for us: We do not split from one another unless there is no other choice. The risks are simply too great, and the benefits of fighting as a combined whole are overwhelming as hell. Apart, we are vulnerable. Together, we patch each other’s flaws.”
“Yeah,” Shiv breathed, trying not to swallow. “That sounds… Yeah.”
A whimper interrupted his internal discussion. “P-uh—please don’t kill me.” The elven slave was too petrified to cry, and what quivering courage he could summon was broken with his plea. “I don’t wanna die. I don’t wanna. Please don’t. I didn’t even ask to be here—I didn’t. I was just taken!”
Shiv frowned. “Taken?”
“By the Hunt, I was. They came a-riding when I was farming one night. I saw them galloping through the sky when the moon was full, and they saw me alone, and they swooped down and snatched me up and took me across!”
“Wait, where are you from?” Shiv asked. “Do you remember?”
The elf went silent for a beat. “Jiang Ning.”
“What?” Shiv said.
“My home. It’s a place called Jiang Ning. It’s… it’s near High Harbor, it is.”
Shiv had no idea about any Jiang Ning, but he knew High Harbor. That was the country in which the Dragon Brokers—it was on the other side of the planet. His planet.
“You’re from Earth,” Shiv muttered.
The elf’s eyes lit up. “Yeah! Yeah! I am! You too? Wh-what’s your name?”
Shiv ignored the question and asked another of his own. “How long have you been here?”
The elf’s eyes went distant, his brow furrowing. “Uh, it’s hard to remember, it is. It’s been… I’ve been a slave in the Toad for a couple of years? But when I showed enough loyalty to Ser Cuntus, he decided that I’ve done enough to earn the whip—”
“Earn the whip?” Shiv interrupted.
“Yeah. Most of us slaves don’t get to be not-slaves until we do something that shows how much we love him. And after that, we get a whip—and our collars removed. And that’s how we get closer to his perfection, you know.”
Those words packed so much subtextual information, it took Shiv a while to digest it all. “Longinus, you motherfucking piece of shit.” And the Wanderer really was. It wasn’t enough that he drank in suffering and forced himself on people; he also made them taint themselves to appease him. The slavers weren’t just slavers, they were former godsdamned slaves. And the only way out was the whip. It was a perverse display of power.
“But imagine the taste,” the Harbinger said. “Imagine getting drunk off your own feats of corruption and power.”
Shiv could, and it was a thing of horrifying dominance—the kind of shit that might make an orc’s eyes roll back in ecstasy. “Shit, Challenger, you would love this guy.”
The Challenger scoffs at your insult.
“Right. God of Strife, not False God of Exploration and Hunger and Sexual Depravity.” The anger inside Shiv was rekindled. The soft joy that took him was no more. It was astonishing how easily Longinus could arouse Shiv’s hatred—but good for his mana, though. His Harbinger was regaining its full golden glory, and some of his many cracks were being sealed shut via Enkindled Flame.
“Longinus too is an addict, an addict of sensation, a slave to his baser instincts. His mind might be strong, but his brain does not rule him. His animal urges are the things that decide his actions.” The Harbinger vibrated with disdain as its thoughts resonated with Shiv. “The Wanderer might possess a great many Legendary Skills, but Psychology is not among them. Or more horrifically, perhaps, his atrophy has rendered it impotent before his raging desires. What a harrowing fate for a Pathbearer.”
Yet, despite everything the Harbinger thought, it was something that went unsaid, but something that lurked in the subtext of its words. It looked forward to striking the Wanderer once more, to seeing just how fragile and flawed the god's psyche was. For if Longinus was half as vulnerable as his subordinate slavers, then hell would be awaiting in his future.
But they needed to be strategic about how they wanted to victimize the Wanderer. The Harbinger expanded Shiv’s options, but it also gave him a new point of vulnerability. One good hit, and the Legendary Skill would crack, and Shiv would go with it.
The Deathless was more powerful than ever; he was also more vulnerable than ever.
Sloppiness and foolishness were no longer luxuries he could afford.
“But we have other possibilities to consider.” The Harbinger’s intent settled on the slave’s mind specifically. Where it struck all three aspects that made up a person, now it was focused specifically on one.
Shiv’s Psychomancy was undeveloped—a consequence of the System never giving him any time to refine himself, and him not using it in combat enough to level. Things were different now that it was merged with the rest of his Legendary Skill. He heard and sensed things inside people when he came into their proximity. Certain thoughts and emotions were drawn to him like he was a center of gravity, and he could hear echoes of mind-stuff. This close to the elf, he could also feel how soft and exposed a mind was. It felt like an even thinner threshold to cross than Integration itself.
“I think we can,” the Harbinger whispered. “I think we can cross inside him.”
“Into his mind?” Shiv asked.
“Yes,” the Harbinger said. “We’re more than just time, Shiv. Do not hyperfixate on the most obvious parts of me and yourself. Imagine. Try.”
And guided by the Harbinger’s words and letting his intuition take hold, a shroud of fire and translucent mana coated the Legendary Skill—and Shiv within—as it pushed itself against, then into the elf’s mind.
The latter let out a gasp of anticipatory terror—but no pain followed. Death did not come. Instead, the Harbinger’s blazing form splashed into the man’s emotional core while the rest of its fragments slid into his mind. And in the aftermath, when the glow of Chronomancy faded, there was no sign of Shiv. There was no sign anyone was there at all.
Outside, the elven slaver blinked and found himself alone. Just in time to hear the pounding of feet as a group of Bread-Knights appeared at the end of the hall.
Inside, however, Shiv found himself falling through the wild frontiers of thought, emotions, and memory—a frontier that Uva was far more familiar with than he.