Path of the Deathless

161 (II) Overwhelmed

161 (II)

Overwhelmed

Marikos cried out, holding his shield down. By this point, Stormhalt twirled around, and his body went stiff. An unfortunate Pathbearer fell past them and splashed into the tsunami of oncoming stomach acid. Her scream was cut off as she dissolved in an instant. Various other humans and orcs followed suit. Marikos repeated.

The City Lord began loudly praying to the Ascendants. The male Ascendant slammed his shield over Stormhalt. Kathereine just shook her head at the City Lord and chuckled.

Shiv just sighed. He had a feeling this was probably going to kill him one way or another. As far as deaths went, he wasn’t looking forward to this one. But he decided to perform a final struggle for the hell of it.

Once more, his Pillar of Orichalcum formed, and Shiv dedicated everything to his Toughness. The wall of acid impacted Marikos and broke around him. It then crashed against Stormhalt and rebounded from his body in a blast of concussive force.

A waterfall of bile impacted Shiv next. It wasn't just the acid that assailed his barrier of Orichalcum; it was also the sheer surging force of the fetid fluid. Shiv gritted his teeth and willed himself to become even tougher. The red-gold aura around him solidified, and the pillar fully formed once more. Just then, he heard Stormhalt cry out as the sickening sound of breaking flesh sounded from all around.

Then there was light, the light of day, the canvas of a war-battered sky, devoid of clouds and choked with rising columns of smoke. A dense, jelly-like substance poured out from various wounds lining the atmosphere. The beginnings of mana-storms were spilling out, condensing high above. Pathbearers, debris, and the partially dissolved corpses of fallen Dragon-Knights left the Tarrasque in a cataclysmic blast of vomit.

Shiv took all this in as he spun through the air for a few seconds, before he finally impacted something hard below. He groaned as he rolled over, only to find himself still a few hundred meters above the ground, at the edge of some dark shape.

A sprawl of rubble stretched from horizon to horizon. He realized belatedly that he was looking down on what used to be Lost Angeles. The ancient ruins from humanity's pre-Integration days were no more. Now, all was dust, detritus, and corpses.

It was then that a much, much louder groan than his own sounded from his side. As he flopped his broken form over again, he found himself looking at the underside of Jessica Hawgrave’s chin in the far distance.

The Legend lay sprawled out across the newly-formed wasteland on her back, with Shiv lying somewhere on her midriff.

Rivers of blood seeped out from the many rents lining her Inertium armor, and she wasn't the only one wounded. Her sword, Rusty, spilled Dimensionality mana out from the chips lining its edges, where it was embedded in the earth next to her. They both looked like they had been put through the ringer on the outside while Shiv and the others were getting smashed apart within.

And right then, a crash of thunder drew Shiv's attention upward. He saw City Lord Stormhalt rise higher into the air a few hundred meters away from him, the black tree of lightning sprouting from his body larger and more expansive than ever.

"Contemptible creature!" the City Lord choked out, trying not to gag as he wiped at his body. The insides of the Tarrasque reeked of something worse than death. "I will make you, make you…”

He couldn't quite finish his words as the Tarrasque standing in the distance began to . It had already fully regenerated, and once more, Shiv grimaced as he realized just how uncannily much it sounded like him.

Rather than attacking, the Tarrasque simply opened and closed its empty fists, looking at the survivors, what few of them there were left. There came a flap of wings above Shiv, and he suddenly felt himself get snatched up into the air by massive, clawed digits.

Marikos shouted toward her head.

Hawgrave let out a girlish squeak of pain as she craned her neck to look at him. she shot back with a groan. A loud click sounded from her pelvic region, telling Shiv she might not be lying at all. Hawgrave moaned as she muttered something to her sword.

Rusty gave a low droning sound, and she reached up to pull out a massive bottle filled with fluid fire from within the weapon—the same potion she'd used on Shiv earlier.

A loud crackle echoed nearby. A few stray spells impacted the Tarrasque, but rather than breaking against its crystalline shell, they slid off entirely. It was like the Tarrasque now had a Frictionless Vector-type skill that worked specifically against mana.

"You gotta be fucking kidding me," Shiv breathed. Not only was this thing getting resistant to physical attacks, but it was getting immune to magical attacks as well. What did they have left? Shiv reached for his Psycho-Cartography in desperation, but the skill responded with almost conscious levels of exasperation.

Psycho-Cartography:

As Shiv took in the skill’s narration, another sigh escaped him. "What the hells is my life?" he muttered to himself. But then there came a flicker of excitement, and almost unwillingly, a smile pulled his lips apart. This was his life, the life of a Pathbearer. It was unreasonable, sometimes it was downright stupid, but he was here, and he was living it, right down to the bone.

Slowly, Hawgrave rose once again with a stifled whimper, and Marikos took flight. She wrenched her sword from the ground and angled it high, but Shiv caught sight of her face as cracked pieces of her helmet fell away. Strands of strawberry-blonde hair were matted to her forehead with sweat. Her features were ashen and grim, and her green eyes were bloodshot. She was no longer the relaxed, carefree woman who had been casually beating Shiv with flicks of her hand. Here was a Legend in a fight for her life, a fight against an overwhelming foe.

An overwhelming force that, for some reason, seemed content to let them gather themselves and get up.

The Tarrasque, strangely, was chivalrous enough to let everyone recover, or maybe it was simply driven by cruelty. Yes, that was it, cruelty. Shiv read the savage emotion in the creature's eyes, eyes like his own. It licked its lips, and its broken teeth fell away as new hulking wedges of jagged enamel replaced them.

If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

A few more stray spells skipped off the Tarrasque's hide. Tentacles burst out from its body, and they began firing in different directions. Plumes of flame erupted in the distance, pounding spherical pockets into the already devastated landscape. After a second or two, no more magi—be they human, orc, or otherwise—casting feeble spells at the Tarrasque remained.

There was no one but Shiv, Marikos, Hawgrave, and Stormhalt left. Whether parts of the armies had fled or if they'd all perished entirely, Shiv couldn't say, but the battlefield was dead-silent now, aside from the brewing mana storms above, blotting out the sun.

The Deathless looked around in Marikos’s grasp as the dragon rose further into the air, but he couldn't even find the chasm leading to the Abyss. He couldn't make heads or tails of where he was exactly, but he did know one thing: His objective was close at hand.

"Hawgrave," he hissed, "Hawgrave."

She looked at him, somehow making out his words despite the massive distance between them. Shiv decided to press his luck. "Look, I have a Quest, and it will let me pick a Legendary Skill Evolution if you release Blackedge."

Hawgrave immediately snorted as a disbelieving laugh escaped from her.

"I'm serious," Shiv said.

she said through a faint tremor of pained giggles.

"For fuck's sake, Hawgrave," Shiv snapped, his anger and frustration reaching a boiling point. "I'm trying to make myself more useful here. Just release the town. Move it somewhere safe. Or something."

she shot back, gesturing at the lifeless wasteland extending in every direction.

A low rumble of delight escaped the Tarrasque. It seemed more than happy to watch them argue, at least for a while. Its white and red orbs flicked between everyone present, eventually settling on Stormhalt, who was drifting in the air at about the level of its eyes. The City Lord flinched back, but Shiv saw with his Farsight how his hands clenched tighter around the pitch-black mace he wielded.

The Tarrasque took a step forward. Havel swung. Strings of lightning impacted the Tarrasque's body. Yet, unlike earlier, the attack cracked through its shell but got stuck there. A thundering blast detonated along the Tarrasque's exterior, but it lazily stomped forth, utterly indifferent to the Ascendant's powers.

"By the power of the Endbreaker, I will strike you down!" Hawgrave bellowed. The ethereal silhouette of the large, storm-made figure thrust his spear high behind Stormhalt, and the lightning surging out from the City Lord's fingers grew ever darker.

Yet, even as the forks of lightning carved bloody grooves through the Tarrasque, it gave a very Shiv-like scoff and rolled its eyes. Then, it opened its mouth.

Shiv said. It didn't just look like him; it was starting to act like him too, and without Sullain puppeteering it, Shiv's voice was coming through after all.

Slowly, Marikos leaned toward Shiv.

Shiv opened his mouth, but only a choked sound came out. Of all the things he'd expected Marikos to ask him, that was not one of them. "No," he managed. He saw that Jessica was looking at him from the corner of her eye too. "No, I don't even think that would work. I mean, I don't know anything about Tarrasques, but—No, Sulain grew that thing. Apparently so that it could fight you specifically, by the way."

Marikos paused and considered that. Then he nodded like it was the most natural thing in the world. For anyone else, that statement might have been arrogant. For Sir-Legend Marikos Valdemar, the Fortress that Soars, it was kind of like saying the sky was vast.

"Hawgrave," Shiv tried, calling out again. "I'm not bullshitting you. If you let the town go…"

Hawgrave snapped back, her own patience fraying.

the Tarrasque said with a slightly stilted tone, expertly picking what looked to be a still-living orc stuck between its teeth out with the tips of two titanic claws. The small, gray body launched a final bolt of Dynamancy into the Tarrasque’s left eye, and the monster grumbled as it crushed him between its fingers.

" Hawgrave managed, eyes swiveling between the dragon and the Tarrasque as it very leisurely stomped toward Havel, who was still zapping it with his lightning.

Marikos asked, slightly confused.

The Dragon-Knight gave a venomous snort.

"What?" Shiv gawked. "Sullain's out here trying to drag the entire Abyss into a war, and you guys couldn't come to a conclusion?"

Marikos barked with dismay. The Dragon-Knight gave a growl.

"But Sullain was about to start a massive war," Shiv repeated, incredulous.

Marikos replied with a weary sigh.

Shiv blinked, but Hawgrave just nodded off by the side. Her colossal head bobbed as a tired expression was etched on her face. She hesitated for a moment, then let out a quiet breath. She shot the Dragon-Knight a look.

"Oh, we're together," Shiv growled. "I'm sorry, but why weren't we together when you flicked me at the Tarrasque earlier?"

Hawgrave winced with shame.

"Miscalculate," Shiv seethed. "That wasn't a miscalculation. That was you being a—being a bastard woman. You're a bastard woman, Hawgrave. An utter bastard woman who does bastard things.”

the Tarrasque echoed, running a long, barbed tongue across its teeth.

"Face me, vermin!" Stormhalt snarled. He shot through the air, and the lightning connecting him to the sky boomed with power.

Hawgrave choked out.

A sphere of lightning erupted from Stormhalt's hand, and it lashed across the sky. The Tarrasque responded by placing its two human hands against the ground, and it wiggled slightly with its hind section, resembling a large dog for a moment.

Then it vanished. Shiv couldn't even keep track of its movements.

His gut plunged as the Tarrasque rematerialized right next to Stormhalt.

it said, remembering what Shiv had said a minute ago. And then it did just that.