Path of the Deathless

96 (I) Hunt [I]

-Draft Excerpt of, Written by Shiv96 (I)

Hunt [I]

Shiv looked on at the strange geometric entity. As the shapes of the spiraled and twisted in along their own angles, they merged into a strange tesseract that simply kept folding in and around itself. And as Uva finished releasing it from the sigil, she reformed her body and let out a breath. Thereafter, she retracted her mana strands from Shiv and immediately cast them into the thing she'd just formed using her flesh. It froze in the air just centimeters away from Shiv's face.

He blinked at it. He could feel a strange ringing noise coming from the very edges of the being. It also his perception, making the area before him seem further away one second, and then impossibly close the next. Looking at it stained his mind, but more importantly, it was highly uncomfortable for Rose to behold, judging by the noises she was making.

As Uva let out a stressful breath, Shiv's mind was still reeling. His thoughts felt like they were reattaching to each other slowly. His awareness jumped constantly. He lost track of seconds and then minutes of time. As he finally steadied himself, he found Uva stitching herself psionically into the eldritch being. Strangely, there was a slightly hypnotic quality to the way it slowly danced.

Now fully merged with the entity, Uva spoke to Shiv using the very vibrating resonance it possessed.

A savage scowl crept over Shiv’s features. “And that’s the other reason why Adam isn’t here, isn’t it?”

she said.

“Yeah. And the System wants you to use it against him in the future, is my bet.”

Uva didn’t reply to that comment. She didn’t need to. By now, they both knew what was looming on the horizon.

She controlled it, and it flew through the air in a most unnatural fashion. Parts of its bodies, the lines, the folding edges, splashed out or speared forward. For a moment, he thought it might be something created from strange spatial magic, but it was entirely different from that. As it slammed down into the base of the anchor, it shredded through the dense metal in seconds and kept hewing deeper and deeper into the earth. It was like watching razor-thin blades glide through stacks of paper.

But slowly, its vibrations and shape were becoming more and more erratic. It was beginning to crack, its edges coming apart. she said. And then she extended it straight, its angle long. The world distorted before Shiv, and he suddenly found his perception filled by an intensely view of split metal.

Then, a thought came to Shiv. "Have it cut me," Shiv said. She paused. "We want a test, right? I got a Woundeater ready. Have it try to cut my arm off." He held out his left hand.

A note of utter disbelief entered Uva's mind, and she let out a snort.

"I'm just curious what it can do. Come on, don't be a chickenshit."

His casual insult caught her off guard. A sharp, pitched laugh came from Uva.

"A chickenshit," Shiv repeated, prodding her mind.

Her mind filled with vicious aggression and cold focus.

Shiv shuddered at the danger in her voice.

The Aberrant Fractal zipped into him. There was no warning. Just a sudden rush of movement. He followed it easily enough, but it was still jarring.

He felt a momentary resistance as his bone armor squealed. Parts of the geometric abomination broke from the impact, but others followed. Angles curved harder and became so thin that his adaption failed to keep up. They slit through his armor and then through his flesh, severing the limb entirely in but a moment.

Shiv let out a slight, annoyed hiss as he watched his arm fall off. It thumped on the ground. He blinked. “Hm.”

Uva asked, slightly concerned but mostly interested in the performance of her new skill.

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Shiv picked up the arm. He frowned at the limb and then cast a Woundeater on himself. A moment later, he had a new crystallized wound to examine and eventually memorize. But more importantly, the geometric abomination was a powerful creature. As he regarded it, it shattered apart, each of its fractals twisting in different directions, and Uva's mana strands reformed, weaving her body back into shape. Her shield materialized beneath her, and she stood unevenly. He caught her before she could fall, wrapping an arm around her waist, and she leaned against him. She was spent in mind and flesh from using the ability.

"It taxes…” Uva swallowed.

“It's okay, take your time," he said.

"It taxes the mind to control something like that. The way it moves, it's unnatural." But she held up a hand, and she warped some of her fingers. She made them reach out, extending impossibly far in a strange direction, then she flattened them.

Shiv blinked. "Neat trick. I can think of a few uses for that." She lightly slapped him on the chin. He grinned.

"The cut—the Aberrant Fractal—can rearrange itself. It is a physical thing, but the angles it embodies are so thin… It slips between the cracks of even the hardest material. But more than that, it can hide inside a mind. It can hide and slip through pores and more. I don’t know if it was the Dreamtaker that desired me to have this ability or the System.”

the Dreamtaker sang melodically. The eldritch being’s voice echoed from Uva’s eyes, and it interrupted them without preamble. Shiv's expression hardened immediately. He really didn't like the fact that it spoke using her voice.

"You're the other Outsider. I heard you a few times while Uva was in my mind. What the hells are you?"

Somehow, the eldritch entity’s understanding of people seemed at once extremely comprehensive but also somewhat confused. But then he reconsidered that statement.

"Those are eyes," Shiv said, a growl entering his voice.

"I'd do a hell of a lot more than that," Shiv said casually.

The Dreamtaker moved on from that line of dialogue as if it didn't matter at all. And then the Dreamtaker began to laugh. It was a discordant giggle that turned into a shriek and ended with a low sigh.

"And why did you help us anyway?" Shiv asked. “Isn’t the Stranger one of your kind? Is this some kind of god struggle between you two?”

"Infected?" Shiv said.

"Unbound by what?" Uva asked.

It laughed

The Outsider’s words turned into a hate-filled scream at the end.

The Dreamtaker's way of speaking was confusing, chaotic, and her tone grew more frantic as she went on. But from what Shiv could parse, she and the Stranger had both been non-thinking entities, perhaps intelligent in some way, but without personalities or a true character. Now that was being forced on them. Shiv didn't know how to think about that. He couldn't even imagine what it was like to not have a consciousness.

And the Dreamtaker trailed off for almost a minute before it finally said,

“Our forebearers?” Uva said, confused. She was as lost as Shiv through the conversation.

She didn't understand. Neither did Shiv.

"What the hell kind of mistake was that?" Shiv asked, unnerved.

And then there came a flicker within Uva's eyes. For a moment, the colors dimmed, and Shiv just saw a strange, twisting series of fractals there. Not so different from the Aberrant Fractal to some extent. There was also the color of her original eyes. A deep, dark blue layered upon the eldritch depths of the Outside.

the Dreamtaker said.

As the Dreamtaker’s presence receded, Shiv let out a deep sigh. "Uva. I don't know what to say, but I’m sorry for the fact that me being what I am did this to you.”

"This is not your fault." She lifted an eyebrow. "Shiv, I don't think you inflicted anything upon us. We decided to come with you."

"Yeah, but…"

"But the System would have made victims of us anyway. One way or another. We may not have become favored if we hadn't encountered you. But it would have tried to strike at us either way, one day or another. It wants conflict. It demands it, no matter what it takes. The only difference would have been time span and scale. And besides…” She ran a hand through her short hair. There was a streak of color there, cleaving down the middle. That color was constantly changing, coursing like a colorful river as it transformed again and again. "This seems more palatable."

"It does?" he asked.

She looked at him, and something twinkled in her gaze. "It is quite the thrill to deny chaos, to be calm and constant and enforce your own order when the world collapses around you. To stand before calamity and prevail." And there was that thrill inside of her again, the quiet need, the quiet urge to what the System pitted against her.

He grinned. "Well, at least we're having fun, right?"

"Yes," she whispered. "Fun."