Path of the Deathless

155 (I) Tarrasque

-Tarrasque: Beast of the End155 (I)

Tarrasque

Husk of the Adamantine Voidmantid

Condition: Severely Wounded

Everything inside Shiv shattered. His armor burst apart. He shot past the threshold of pain and entered a new realm where all he felt was overwhelming numbness. The winds glided over his broken body, but he didn't feel that. Darkness crept into his vision, but he refused to black out. He pressed a hand hard against his enemy, his immense and overwhelming adversary, and he tried to drain the Tarrasque of its vitality.

A trickle of vitality flowed into Shiv—but his focus shattered when an eruption of all-consuming light blossomed out of the Tarrasque. The monster’s mana left it in an enveloping blast of glorious white. Shiv howled in agony as every single magical skill he had felt like it was being wrenched out of his soul, like someone was gouging his core clean with a rusted blade, flaying every single mana field he had off his being. His biokinetic hydras were torn asunder, their bodies rendered into scattering sprays of red. His inner mana membrane burst apart. Shiv’s Psychomancy, Hydromancy, and Pyromancy dissolved outright. The only field that didn't hurt him to lose was Chronomancy, but even that was shattered.

The titanic beast performed a feat Shiv had experienced earlier at the hands of Jessica Hawgrave. Somehow, it managed to discharge its Magical Resistance as well. And while Hawgrave’s blast was merely a flash that filled a room, the Tarrasque's was a star going supernova—and it was unleashing all that power right into Shiv's face.

He felt death approaching. He felt his life slipping free from his broken body, and then the Tarrasque finally made impact—Shiv-first against the ground. The Deathless choked as his body turned to a smear. He felt his organs turn to paste, blood spray out from every orifice, and darkness splashed through him. The light left his vision, and the cold fingers of death pulled him down into the pleasant depths of nonexistence—

Adamantine Adaption 176 > 178

A surge of light exploded before Shiv’s eyes. He woke screaming as an ocean of vitality was poured directly into his body. He gagged, coughing violently as he spat out mouthfuls of blood. His flesh began to knit itself, his organs filled as his bones were snapped back in place, his ruptured muscles were fused together, and his mutilated form was reforged into a healthy wholeness once more. His armor regenerated as well.

Surprise consumed Shiv, but understanding followed soon after. He stared down at a radiant arrow embedded in his chest, an arrow that burned with a brilliant flame. It was the same fire he'd seen within Hawgrave’s bottle, the one she'd used to fix both him and his armor. It also didn't take much deducing for him to know that the arrow came from Roland. Roland, who was bombarding the Tarrasque looming over Shiv, striking its body with a thunderstorm of arrows where it stood at the bottom of a titanic crater somewhere in the war-scarred wasteland. Shiv thought, somewhere between surprise and relief.

Bright blasts blossomed across its colossal hide, and the Tarrasque resembled a mountain looming over Shiv. A mountain being hammered by the sky itself. But despite everything, it barely shook.

Then, a rumble of thunder vibrated the air and reached his ears. No, not thunder. It was cackling laughter, and to Shiv's disbelief, it actually sounded a bit like his own.

The constant explosions shrouded the back of the immense beast in a broadening expanse of light. Though it was consumed by shadows, Shiv could still see its eyes, one white, one red, and he could feel its Vitae spilling over him, caressing his mockingly, trying to rip his life free from him. But though it pulled at his Vitality, his Vitaemancy field kept his lifeforce in place. The Tarrasque let out a confused hum as Shiv snarled and shot into the air.

If this thing thought he was going to be easy prey, though, it wasn't going to happen.

He accelerated himself into its body. He slammed a fist into its underside before slashing up with his Skysplitter. His blade, however, bounced off the Tarrasque's impenetrable exterior. It felt like he was using a piece of plastic to saw through a pole made out of metal. Strangely, the texture of the monster’s outside felt like a crystalline layer, and the place he impacted shuddered thereafter.

Then, before Shiv could react, the very cut he inflicted on it was reflected into his body. A cut swept through Shiv. A deep laceration washed along his torso. His punch followed thereafter. He spiked himself against the force, holding in place as his mind struggled to process what had just happened.

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Something smashed into Shiv, whipping into him faster than he could see. It cleaved his arm from his body and flicked him across the land as if he were a flea caught in a hurricane. Shiv impacted a smooth surface several times, and as he tumbled, he caught sight of spell patterns beneath him. As he took in his surroundings, his mind ground to a halt.

He was back home.

He could see Starhawk’s Perch, Minhall Avenue, the residential clusters—

And he also caught sight of something else. Massive smouldering mounds of ash outside buildings.

He had a suspicion as to why they were there, but he didn’t want to think about it. Not with the desperate struggle taking place right now.

As he finally slid to a halt, groaning from the sheer weight of the blow, he finally processed that he was lying atop Blackedge's wardings, and they were failing wardings at that. Cracks were spreading across the layered magical barriers protecting the town. Spell patterns were winking out one after another, and Shiv could feel the mana beneath his remaining hand and legs quivering beneath his weight.

Shiv's stomach dropped. The town wasn't going to be able to hold out for long. He pulled himself up to his feet with a pulse of his gravity field. The loss of his arm would have been agonizing before, but by now Shiv barely noticed. He was too busy being overwhelmed by another sensation: the feeling of absolute dread.

Nightmarish disbelief flowed through Shiv’s battered body as he laid eyes on the revealed form of the Tarrasque for the first time. Above, Sullain’s former weapon broke apart into a descending ball of fire, and that bathed the great beast in light.

The Tarrasque stood in the lower portion of the old city's ruins, but still looked down on the town. Its titanic body rippled with gravity distortions, resembling something between a shark, a toad, and a turtle, but also countless more creatures Shiv couldn't be sure about. Its outermost shell was a layer of a jagged, crystalline material. Shiv could see Blackedge reflected along the fractal edges of the mighty beast’s exoskeleton. Hundreds of colossal tentacles sprouted free from its back, each one was ridged with diamond-like teeth. At the ends of each of the tentacles were gleaming eyes—eyes that stared like Shiv, eyes that glistened with different kinds of mana.

The Tarrasque had four building-sized legs, but this one also sported two arms. Muscular arms that clutched twin crystalline daggers made from the same force-reflecting substance as its shell. And then there was its face.

A face that was a hybrid between the bestial and the human. It even had a tuft of black hair in a short and messy style.

Its features faintly resembled a young man's, and it looked at him, sporting a jubilant grin.

“What the… felling fuck?” Shiv stammered, his mouth trembling with a mix of horror and incredulous disbelief.

“Shiv! Shiv! What’s happen—” Adam’s head peeked out from Shiv’s cape. The Gate Lord choked as he saw the Shiv-faced Tarrasque leering at them.

Shiv spat blood on the ground and rubbed his nose. Nothing for it. Time to keep fighting. “Get back inside, Adam. No opening right now. I think I have to soften it up a little.”

Adam looked up at him with utter disbelief. The Gate Lord was shaking too—doubtlessly suffering extreme mana strain as well from the Tarrasque detonating its Magical Resistance.“ Are you mad? You—”

“It can only kill me so many times before it gets tired,” Shiv murmured, looking the mountain-sized abomination up and down. “I’ll win. Eventually.”

The Tarrasque laughed again, and it began to stagger forward slowly, shaking the landscape with every step. It was taunting him—ignoring every arrow Roland hit it with. Arrows capable of utterly disintegrating Shiv in an instant. If there was an example for what Legendary Toughness looked like, this would be it.

“Adam,” Shiv growled. “Back inside. Don’t risk it.”

The Gate Lord shot Shiv a worried expression, but nodded. “I just need an opening. Just one.”

“Yeah,” Shiv replied as Adam sank back into the Forest of Alloy. “Just one.”

But why did it feel like Adam’s special arrow wouldn’t be enough?

Before he could ruminate on the hopelessness of the situation further, the Tarrasque .

But rather than a nightmarish facsimile of his own voice as he'd feared, Sullain’s voice echoed out from the Tarrasque. Somehow, the Vicar was still bound to his walking natural disaster.

“For fuck’s sake, your obnoxious babbling makes the damned Tarrasque even worse,” Shiv grumbled. He began stomping toward the massive beast with blade in hand. Terror lashed at his mind, but fear was only fuel for Shiv’s aggression. He wasn’t turning away from this fight. “It was bad enough when it was kicking the shit out of me. Now I have to hear you spit your bullshit through its lips too. And why did you make it look like me, you creepy felling bastard?”

Sullain chuckled like he was a kindly old priest instead of some Abyssal jackass trying to slaughter tens of thousands of innocent people.

Shiv'sexpression twisted further and further with every word the Legendary Mage spoke.

Sullain shouted the final words, and the Tarrasque slammed a titanic foot down against the wards. The cracks lining the magical barrier turned into fissures that began shaking immediately. Moreover, the Tarrasque's casual tantrum-induced stomp unleashed the force of a tornado. Shiv cursed as he used his Outside Context Problem to avoid the overwhelming blast. It tore across the top of the barrier and ripped through where he stood. ᴛhis chapter is ᴜpdated by N0velFire.ɴet

Pieces of magical shielding were shredded free from around Blackedge as well, and the hurricane winds carried far and wide.

Shiv thought to himself. He would have been dead if the Town Lord hadn’t flooded him with life force earlier. He definitely wouldn’t be able to use his Unique Skill right now.

Shiv’s thoughts went blank as the Tarrasque looked around. It was momentarily confused, but then, its head suddenly snapped in his general direction, and it narrowed its eyes.

A thousand-thousand alarm bells rang inside Shiv's head, and he didn’t waste time waiting to find out if the damn abomination could actually sense him. Shiv accelerated toward the Tarrasque, his mind whirling. He couldn't communicate with Adam and the others while he was outside context, and he realized he couldn't communicate with them anyway because his Psychomancy had been ripped clean from his soul. His magic would take time to reconstitute, but there was still a hope—something of a plan. If Adam could get his to strike the Tarrasque, then maybe it could strike a killing blow, or at least injure it severely enough for Roland to put it down.

But something kept gnawing at Shiv.

Something told him not even that would be enough.

He ignored the feeling and went for the Tarrasque's eyes. He spiked himself 100 times in a row. His body instantly came asunder, his flesh peeling like tatters, his outer armor ripping apart from the sheer acceleration. He slammed his Skysplitter right into the red, mana-filled orb that was its right eye.

The tip of Shiv’s blade snapped off.

Outside Context Problem 65 > 66

Deepest Edge 66 > 67

Shiv stopped dead, and he emerged from his outside context state in a blast of white and red. He discharged himself before launching himself back in time to four seconds ago. Fire and force exploded over the monster’s head. When the wave of destruction passed, the unharmed Tarrasque winked its right eye once as it grinned at Shiv.