155 (IV)

Tarrasque

Once more, Shiv felt a surge of Biomancy pass through him. His flesh healed long enough for him to stand, long enough for him to realize what the Tarrasque was preparing to do. It brought a fist down against him, and through it all, it never stopped channeling its beam of Biomancy into his body.

The Tarrasque swung so hard that the air turned fluid with plasma around it. It would have been enough to disintegrate him entirely if it weren't constantly healing him as well. Because of that, Shiv got to learn what it felt like to burn alive from the inside, to be boiled and fried over and over again, but prevented from dying fully in an endless spiral.

Worse, he felt Blackedge dip as the wards held, but the spells and contraptions keeping it afloat did not. The air resounded with a deafening explosion, but then came the screaming wind as the entire town began to drop toward the chasm, bound for the Abyss.

"Shit…" Shiv groaned. He gritted his teeth and fought on anyway.

He lashed out using his Biomancy field. It crashed against the Tarrasque's face once more—and did nothing. It drew another fist back and showed him a contemptuous sneer. Shiv felt a special kind of hatred for the beast bloom inside him, for it stole not only his Vitae, but also his face. He spat at it. It didn't matter if the act was insolent or that he'd never reach it with his spit anyway. He spat at the Tarrasque even if it was the last thing he would ever do. "Alright then, give me a proper hit, you big—"

It obliged him.

This time, not even the constant stream of Biomancy could keep him alive. It flicked a titanic blade through his body, and the world dissolved into tides of destruction. Shiv died, and as he did, the barriers protecting Blackedge finally shattered. The wards broke apart and scattered in the wind. The spells flickered and dissolved.

The final layer of protection just barely parried away the surge of force and fire swelling down from the behemoth's fist, yet it shattered all the same.

Adamantine Adaption 195 > 199

Dodge 17 > 21

Gravitic Wrestler 160 > 164

Strider of the Unbending Path 146 > 151

Shiv found himself coiled around the Tarrasque. He broke just as fast as he drained its vitality, barely keeping himself in existence, but the Tarrasque ignored him for now. Instead, it reached out for the plunging Blackedge as gravity pulsed toward it in waves, as if the Tarrasque was a major celestial body.

All of a sudden, the town stopped falling.

The Tarrasque held up a single hand, and all of Blackedge went still and rose higher into the air. Some of the weaker buildings were ripped up by their foundations. Shiv could hear screaming, and then silence, as the Tarrasque made a fist. Dozens of buildings collapsed inward, and the belt of debris began to drift around the Tarrasque's body.

Rage exploded inside Shiv. He used it to fuel his vitality drain as he started to resurrect once more.

"Do you see now?" Sullain asked, preaching to Blackedge. "Do you see now the futility of defiance? Do you see now the inevitability of rich, righteous retribution, of death, of destruction, of hopelessness and despair?" The Tarrasque paused as Sullain's voice devolved into a sob. "If you see now, then you understand me. In this moment, we are more alike than you can imagine. Even if you do not believe me, even if you cannot believe me, we are kin. For these are the actions of Roland Arrow!"

The beast's heterochromatic eyes glinted hatefully as it turned its gaze upon Starhawk's Perch. "Come out!" Sullain bellowed.

It was still burning, still aglow with the Starhawk's might, but those fires were fading as well, and Shiv knew Roland was in no condition to respond. Shiv prayed that Adam wouldn't come down—that he would stay away for as long as he could while everything went to shit.

Shiv resurrected, using the brief lull in the Tarrasque's focus to recompose himself. As Sullain sobbed, so did the Tarrasque.

But before he could come up with an angle of attack that would achieve anything but his instantaneous and crushing demise, a shape descended from on high, a golden shape with massive wings.

Shiv looked up, and his breath caught in his throat. Uva, he realized, but rather than hope, dread filled him. Dread, because she was just going to waste her life if she came here. She didn't know what they were facing. "Stay back!" Shiv cried. "Just stay—"

But she didn't. She couldn't. She accelerated. He knew because he would do the same, even if it meant his actual end.

She slammed down upon the Tarrasque, and the dragon vanished in a flash of gold. The colossal monstrosity barely registered the—

A few missing seconds later, one of Shiv's ribs was broken, and he was flying backward.

As he came to a lurching halt with a tug of his gravitic field, he found that he had left a trail of fissures along a concrete path. He was down Minhall Avenue right now. To his left, he saw the town bank collapse in on itself, several walls toppling over. He could hear noises on the inside. People screaming. People praying.

But his focus didn't linger on them. Instead, it settled on the massive, golden dragon struggling within the Tarrasque's grasp just above, the image like that of an ordinary lizard clasped in a person's hand.

"And what is this?" the Tarrasque asked. "What in glorious madness is this? A lone dragon attacking me? No, something else." The Vicar sounded tired. He commanded the Tarrasque to place a single tentacle against the dragon's head, and it unleashed a pulse of Magical Resistance that echoed out in every direction.

Shiv was driven to his knees as his mana was flensed free from his body. Every bit of remaining magic across Blackedge winked out as well.

Uva was blasted free from the dragon with a scream, and the Tarrasque expertly caught her between two claws, dropping one of its knives upon a residential cluster to free its hand. Anger briefly exploded inside Shiv as he watched a few blocks of Blackedge turn to rubble and dust, but his mind lurched back to Uva in an instant. She cried out as the Tarrasque clenched its fingers.

Berserk 17 > 18

Shiv didn't think. He launched himself through the air in a blind rage. He had no plans. There were no plans. There was no hope. But he still had to try. He still had—

Something punched through his abdomen. He was just 30 meters away from Uva when he found himself halted in midair. A ragged cry of frustration and hatred escaped from his throat. He spiked himself again and again. He tried to trigger Outside Context Problem, but a half-second before he crossed over, a blow struck him in the head, before another spiked him down into the ground.

Concrete exploded around him. The world spun. And once more, something pierced his gut. He was lifted into the air once more. He tried to respond. He tried to gain control over his body. But his equilibrium was lost to him. Everything was tumbling and turning constantly. There was a ringing in his ears, and blood and teeth were spilling out from his mouth. As his hearing returned with a flash emitted by the Tarrasque, he could hear Uva screaming his name.

"Hush now," the Tarrasque said, speaking Uva. It held its claws high, observing the struggling Umbral closely. "What a curiosity you are. To encounter one of the Composer's children here, and fighting for a human town at that? Why, you should understand my plight better than any other."

Uva attempted to escape its grasp and reach for Shiv with her abstract Physicality skill. Her body flattened, bending and twisting in every direction in a frantic blur of movement, but the Tarrasque kept her pinned in place, using pulsing waves of Dynamancy and Biomancy to force her body back into shape.

Desperation ignited inside Shiv. He thrashed. He spiked himself in all directions, discharging over and over again, caring nothing for the worsening of his wounds. He needed to get to her. He needed to—

The Tarrasque made a gesture with one of its tentacles, and Shiv was pinned in place by an impossible weight. A crushing cage of force closed around him, and he felt his ribs break and his spine start to fracture. He tried to breathe, but his lungs burst. An agonized rasp escaped from him, and he heard a feral cry of anger leave Uva's lips as she channeled her gaze into the Tarrasque.

Yet, as the alien colors of the Outside flooded into existence and spilled across the great beast's body, it merely frowned in response. The Dreamtaker's New-Dreamt flowed out, unnatural creatures of impossible shapes, but even the eldritch spawn managed no more than to make the Tarrasque open its mouth and swallow the flood entirely, treating the breach in the veil like a feast. It slammed its jaws closed, and it began to crunch. A few of the New-Dreamt carved clean through its flesh, emerging in broken fractals and strange, sinuous forms. Yet, the wounds they left closed a mere second thereafter, and the Tarrasque simply tore them apart with flicks from its tentacles.

The colors stopped flowing out from Uva's eyes, and she sagged, her body deflated, and she flopped over. Shiv could see her face. Her helmet was cracked, and her expression was one of exhaustion and utter terror. He spiked his own field once more, but the cage around him tightened so much that darkness began creeping in around his vision.

"The colors of the Dreamtaker's realm," Sullain said, surprise tinting his voice. The Vicar sighed through the Tarrasque. "How interesting. I did not know there was someone corrupted to this degree. Even though I spent years learning, trying to understand their strange ways, I never could fully perform their feats of magic. They are not quite like ours. I suspect the lores they inhabit are simply far too different."

Sullain sighed again. The Tarrasque sagged with misery and exhaustion, a dissonance welling up inside Shiv at the behemoth's body language. "Misery. This did not need to be. This did not need to be at all. My goals and dreams were nothing more than to dedicate all I had to my studies, to lead those of Conjoined Faith as an example. And now, millions lie dead. Millions!" The Tarrasque's voice transformed into a rage-filled scream. It washed across Blackedge, tearing roofs from buildings and toppling half-collapsed structures.

But more clearly than anything besides, the scream contained the anguish of someone who had lost too much. "An entire city! A peaceful haven, my beautiful Submission! And now the Necrotechs who perished, who martyred themselves to take retribution, join them in their rest by the Great One's side. And you are at fault! You, Roland Arrow! All this death, all this miserable destruction! You have caused this despair. You!"

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Shiv started draining vitality from the Tarrasque, and it didn't even notice.

"People of Blackedge, come out! Come out! Come, bear witness to how your Town Lord hides! How he hides after he butchered and scorched my city! How he hides as he leaves you to your fate!"

The Tarrasque made a pulling gesture, and what followed was a terrifyingly controlled feat of magic. Every last house lining the top side of the city was stripped down to its barest foundations. People were exposed within, people dressed and undressed, people of all races, be they organics or machined, be they adults or children. And the people shuddered together, huddling in fear before the titanic abomination looking down upon their town. And just then, Shiv saw a series of wretched chains flowing into the creature.

It had Shape of Monstrosity as well. Or an even more powerful skill.

"Come on," Shiv groaned as he looked up at a sky dark with debris and stained with mana. "How much harder are you going to fuck me, System?"

"And you. Nuisance. Deathless One. It is time for a lesson."

The Tarrasque released Shiv, flinging him across the ground. He slid along the broken pavement, and a bloodied smear painted the way before he finally came to a halt. Shiv shook. His body ached. Despite everything, despite how broken he was, he pulled himself up using his field. His limbs dangled. His lungs were ruined. But he still had a working eye, and he still had working jaws, and he still had a few teeth left. He dragged himself toward the Tarrasque, spike after spike. He barely managed ten meters before it struck him again. His blood sprayed across the ground. As it broke him, it healed him again, hitting him over and over.

"Vicar, stop this!" Uva screamed desperately. "Nothing good can possibly come from this! Your crusade is in breach of every treaty! You have nothing to go back to if you continue—Stop this! Stop!"

But Sullain wasn't interested in her anymore. Instead, he turned his creation's fury upon Shiv, upon its undying victim.

Adamantine Adaption 199 > 200 (Skill Evolution Imminent)

Its tentacles descended in an endless series of whips, and the Tarrasque infused each of the blows with magic as well. Shiv felt his mind crack. He felt ice spill over his body. He felt his arms shatter and then regrow. Flames detonated inside his stomach. A swarm of insects burst out from under his flesh, eating through him. A second later, a flood of electricity crashed down upon him, and Shiv clenched his teeth, desperate not to scream.

The beating barely lasted for a few seconds, but it felt like an eternity. By the end, he found himself lying halfway up a staircase of cracked stone.

Strings of mucus leaked out from his nose, and blood dripped out from his mouth as he rolled over.

Then, as he looked down upon the ground, in a surreal moment of clarity, he realized he'd lain on these very steps once before.

"You are a wretched thing. A revolting creature. A spawn of wrongness and taint. The Town Lord is a good man, but his goodness has turned to a flaw with you. He should have allowed us to burn you on the altar like the demon you were while still inside your own mother's corpse. He should have… But he refused. And even now, he refuses to allow anyone else to correct his mistake."

Shiv choked out something between a pained sob and a disbelieving laugh.

Life probably thought it was being real funny right now. Shiv just thought it was kind of an asshole.

He looked towards Starhawk's Perch. Roland Arrow wasn't going to be able to save him. Not like that time. Shiv hoped beyond hope that Adam had fled with the others as Shiv and Uva kept the Tarrasque busy.

No one could save them. No one here, at least.

No one… Shiv thought. But we're still here. So let's see how long we can drag this out. Fucking orcs… Inquisition. Where are you shits when I need you? Hurry the hells up…

He pushed himself off the ground and glared at the Tarrasque. He spat red on the ground and scoffed. Force wasn't working, so it was time for a new strategy: Psychology.

"So I guess you're a little too good to kill me with your own hands, huh, Sullain? Now that I mention it, do you even have your own hands anymore? Do you even have a real body at all?" Shiv laughed. "Or did Roland take that from you too?"

The Tarrasque's eyes widened. The beast stared at him with utter disbelief. "Why? Why do you persist when all is obviously lost? Why?"

"Because I get to tell you to go fuck yourself," Shiv rasped as he took an agonizing step forward. "Because I don't know any other way. It doesn't matter that it's hopeless. It never mattered. I'm here right now, and so I'll do whatever it takes. I'll do whatever I can."

And the one thing Shiv didn't mention was that he was doing all that he could to stall for time. Because there might just be help on the way. The massive envelope of destruction left over from when Roland's great arrow clashed against the Tarrasque's falling form continued to block the sky. Below the cloud of devastation, Shiv saw shapes glittering in the air, coming into existence with bursts of teleportation. And to his dismay, what he saw were Necrotech Pathbearers. They appeared in the sky and above the Tarrasque in their thousands upon thousands.

As if he hadn't been fucked enough already.

The Tarrasque turned slightly but mostly ignored its allies. More Necrotechs began to blink into Blackedge. They emerged from pockets, from spilling waves of Dimensionality. They glared at Shiv as he staggered toward the Tarrasque. His fists were clenched, and he was just waiting for the great beast to strike him again.

But it didn't. It hesitated.

And Shiv continued. "Okay, so all of you..." He waved his hands at the Necrotechs. "All of you crawled out of the Abyss… just to burn this specific town down, yeah?" He looked upon the gathered army with scorn, and he spat a globule of blood in their direction. "But what the hells did this town do to you? Roland Arrow? Him? Okay, fine. I get that." He turned in the direction of Starhawk's Perch and snorted. "But I probably have more grievances with Roland Arrow than most of you do. If anyone's going to be kicking his ass, it would be me at the top of his list."

Several of the death-armored Necrotechs looked at each other, surprised by his words more than offended. A scornful laugh escaped the Tarrasque.

"Oh, and what have you lost?" the Vicar whispered.

"My life!" Shiv shouted. "My entire life! I lived here, yet I was barely a person. So what? You lost a city? You lost loved ones? Yeah, they're gone. They don't suffer anymore. I have known nothing but the heel of Roland Arrow—pressed just hard enough to hold me down, but not hard enough to end my misery. Your punishment was death. My punishment was life. I lived it, and yet here I am, standing up for it!"

Shiv knew he was being absolutely outrageous. He knew that his grievances were practically nothing compared to theirs, the Necrotechs who had likely lost families and loved ones to whatever atrocity Roland had inflicted upon their city for reasons Shiv couldn't begin to grasp. That part had always stuck out to Shiv. Even if he hated the Town Lord, the man had never struck him as someone who would burn a city to the ground. But that didn't matter at this moment. What mattered right now was that, since he couldn't beat them through force, maybe he could capture their attention for just a while longer. And this was where his experience with the orcs finally came in handy. Not because of violence, but just because of power plays.

Psychology 34 > 42

"You… you insolent…" Sullain sputtered, and then he let out a disgusted breath. "You distract me with your dishonest taunts."

Shiv felt his bowels plummet. "No," he said, with all the conviction he could muster. "Just think about it. I'm still here for one reason and one reason alone: I'm not going to let anyone kick the shit out of Roland Arrow before I do. Me!" He slammed his fist into his chest. "I don't care what he did to the rest of you, but I know this for a fact. Blackedge…"

Shiv swallowed as he looked around, at the streets he'd known all his life, at the people hiding within the stripped-down buildings. He saw faces caked in blood and dust. Some he recognized, most he'd never bothered to remember. But they knew him, and strings of fear flowed into his flesh as well, feeding him with strength, infusing his magic with more power. It wasn't nearly enough to stop the Tarrasque, but it did make him feel a little bit better.

"I hate most of the people here," Shiv said honestly. His words were barely a whisper. "I hate almost all of you. For everything you did to me, and everything you didn't. For treating me like I was a goddamn plague, I despise you, and I think I always will."

Shiv saw several of the locals look away from him.

"But just because I hate them doesn't mean they deserve to die." He looked at Sullain. "If you weren't full of shit, if you were being honest at all, then you would let these people go. You'd teleport them somewhere else, move them to the ruins below, and deal with Roland by himself. Because he's the one who sinned."

"They are his people," Sullain hissed. There was an edge of outrage to his voice now. "They are his. His, as Submission was mine. When Roland—

"Yeah, I know," Shiv interrupted him audaciously. "Yeah, when Roland sacked your city, he killed countless billions of people. But just how much do you want him to rule over you?"

The Tarrasque fell silent once more. No one else spoke. The Necrotechs looked at him as if he were mad, and Shiv noticed a look of appreciation on Uva's weary face.

"Well, how much? Tell me. Because right now, it looks to me that he scarred you so deeply that you will never let it go. That you can't turn away from the fact that everything he took from you will never come back."

"Be silent," Sullain whispered.

"And here you are, in your moment of triumph. And guess what your reward is? You made yourself into a mirror of Roland Arrow. Great fucking job, dumbshit. What a prize."

Psychology 42 > 45

"Silence!" And the Tarrasque began whipping him once more. He was launched through the air and slammed down on the ground over and over again. His flesh was torn open. His flesh was used back shut. For ten minutes, or maybe just ten seconds, he was brutalized. For ten seconds, he prayed for death. And at the end of those ten seconds, he got back up, like nothing had happened. "So, as I was saying—"

He was ripped off the ground by a tug of Dynamancy. He hovered in the air, trying not to black out as the Tarrasque choked him with its ocean of magic.

"Do you wish to die first? Is that it?" Sullain's voice was edged with hurt rather than actual hatred. "Do you think that it makes you powerful to provoke such pain in me, to drive me to the brink of madness, of misery?"

Then, two voices interrupted the vicar. The first was Valor's as the Legendary Pathbearer emerged from Shiv's cloak and raised a ghostly hand. "Sullain! You blind, ignorant fool! Stop this!"

And the other—

"OI, CUNT! LET MY FUCKING COMMIS GO!"

Shiv's head snapped toward the voice, and his jaw dropped. Standing a hundred meters away, at the end of Minhall Avenue, where the stairs rose to the upper city, was a man in chef's whites. His messy mane of dirty blonde hair was even more wild than before, and his cheeks were slimmer than Shiv remembered. But his face was red. Raw-red and furious. And he advanced on the Tarrasque with nothing but a chef's knife.

"Valor?" Sullain hissed with surprise.

"Georges!" Shiv gasped.

And just then, all at the same time, the dark clouds above were silently parted by a shape. Shiv blinked up at the sky, and he thought that the shape loosely resembled a sword. One that was the length and width of a mountain range.

"Ohhh, shit," Shiv groaned. "Sullain. Look up!"

"You cannot fool me with these feeble tricks, boy," Sullain said. Two tentacles extended out from the Tarrasque's body, prepared to seize both Valor and Georges. "I know—"

"BY THE GREAT ONE!" a Necrotech cried, pointing up into the air. "It's—"

And his breath caught in his throat as a colossal humanoid burst through the clouds just behind the blade, clad in Inertium armor and standing upon wheels of screaming flame. "Oh, hey, guys. Thanks for getting through the wards, but you can fuck off now. That's not a suggestio—Ascendants, is that a fucking Tarrasque?!"

Hawgrave's voice lost any hint of lackadaisy as she noticed the massive beast looming over Blackedge. And Sullain snarled as he noticed her as well. "Titansbane!"

And then came a third voice.

A voice Shiv knew all too well.

A voice that came not from the sky, but from the Abyss deep below.

"SULLAINNNN! SURRENDER YOURSELF! SURRENDER AND BE SPARED THE WRATH OF SIR MAAARIKOOOS!"

The Deathless felt his jaw drop. The Tarrasque's expression was much the same.

Then, suddenly and without warning, teleportation pockets exploded all across Blackedge as a horde of gray-skinned monsters flashed into existence and immediately leaped at the Necrotech army.

"SECURE THE INSUL!" Bonk cried through the havoc. "AND KILL THAT CHALLENGER-BLESSED TARRASQUE!"

World Quest Gained: Slay the Undying Tarrasque.

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