164 (II)

Descend [III]

She knew the identities of the shining by intuition alone, and perhaps because the Starhawk was bound to her mind as well.

"They are here," the Starhawk declared. His ethereal form solidified with a gust of flame, and some details materialized on his body. She noticed the great halberd he bore, a thing that seemed capable of cleaving stars and planets alike, even in this muted representation of itself. She noticed his bow, forged from brightest starstuff, with an arrow nocked that trailed cosmic destruction.

Blackedge began to shiver as Uva prepared herself for a coming attack from the Ascendants.

But she was concentrating on the wrong thing.

A pained shriek shook the world from kilometers away. It was a cry of misery and pain, but it wasn't a human voice that delivered it. No, it was the Tarrasque's. And she turned her awareness outward, to six kilometers away, through a wall of descending ash and falling debris. She saw the large form of the Tarrasque, but more than that, she saw tides of swirling red.

It was like a typhoon was churning over the land, but rather than carrying wind and water in its wake, it displaced waves of vitality, waves of vitality that simply circled over and over again. Uva wasn't sure what the Tarrasque was doing, but her thoughts immediately went to Shiv, and she tried to reach out to him.

He didn't respond.

Their link had broken some time ago, either because he was slain, because of the Tarrasque's discharge of Magical Resistance, or because Shiv used his Outside Context Problem.

She turned her Psychomancy to Adam, and took a peek at the unfolding situation through his all-seeing eyes. His Seer of Horizons was active, and he was gazing upon the Tarrasque directly. It was writhing, its body was boiling with vitality, and that corona of white and red that swirled around it, which allowed it to resurrect time and time again, was dimming. Adam's Awareness jumped into the Tarrasque's open jaws.

Everything was a deafening storm of noise and chaos. Adam's awareness bounced between several walls of cracked crystal and bleeding flesh. In seconds, the Gate Lord found the one he was looking for: Shiv.

Shiv, who was partially embedded in the Tarrasque's flesh, Shiv, who was fused inside the beast's body and ripping the vitality out of its very being in an unceasing torrent.

"How is he doing that?" Uva asked.

"I am not quite sure," Adam replied, "but there was a tinge of excitement at the end of his voice. I think he's bleeding the big bastard dry." The Gate Lord fired another two Veilpiercers, and only then did Uva notice he was far above the clouds, hiding from the Ascendants. After taking a peek into his memories, she realized he was focusing on culling weakened orcs to further recharge his special arrow, and with a few more deaths, he would be primed to unleash absolute havoc. "But what of the Avatars and other Ascendants? When did they get to Blackedge?"

"Just now," Uva answered. She sent him a brief packet of memories, condensed so that he could stay updated about matters happening inside the perch and around it. A cold pool began to spread from inside the Gate Lord's abdomen. He was worried for his family, worried about what might happen to the Perch, and worried for Uva as well. The thoughts began manifesting in his head, but Uva stopped them before they could fully form.

"Do not try to distract the Ascendants," Uva said. "The risk is too high, and they are too powerful. You need to remain in place on watch to support Shiv. The other Ascendants have not acted yet, so I will remain in place and see that your family is protected, and that Blackedge is delivered to the chasm."

"Right," Adam acknowledged with a slight grunt of displeasure. "I… Take care of my family, Uva. And if anything happens—"

"You will know. And I will do everything I can to make sure your parents are protected. Now, focus, Hero Adam. Because I may have need of your eyes and arrows soon enough." She briefly squeezed Adam's mind, offering him a pulse of reassurance that she didn't entirely feel right now either. Still, it was enough to calm him, enough to get him to focus once more. "Now, how long until you're ready to fire your smiting arrow?"

His arrow ignited with blinding power as a stream of azure fire was injected into it from the sun hovering over his head. "Right now," Adam snarled. He took aim, drawing his Spellstring back. Several of the bow's strands came aglow with mana as he began to concentrate power. The Veilpiercer was brighter than the emerging dawn, and for a moment, Uva was afraid the Ascendants far below might notice Adam, that they would see just how radiant his arrow was, even through the dense clouds of the stratosphere.

But nothing happened to him.

"They are distracted," the Starhawk declared. "They are trying to understand what is happening with the Tarrasque as well."

Ah. Good work, Dear Brute. Your chaotic nature is aiding us even now…

Just as Adam prepared to loose his shot at the staggered Tarrasque, a flash of golden mana pulsed out inside Starhawk's Perch. A loud bang filled the room, and Shiv rematerialized, slamming his foot down the same way he did earlier. And just as he did, a notification flashed before Uva's eyes. A notification that made her stomach curl in horrified disbelief.

Hidden World Quest Activated: Slay Tanner "Shiv" Lowe, the Deathless, before he fully comes into his power and forcefully drives your world beyond its current Mana Stability Threshold.

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Success: Integrated Earth will experience its next Ambient Mana Threshold Evolution. The [Mythical] Skill-Tier will become available to all Pathbearers within this Ambient Mana Zone; Evolve 10 Skills to Legendary-Tier.

Failure: A specialized Incursion will be triggered to destroy Integrated Earth in 10 years, 6 months, and 5 days.

She noticed then that Roland was also frozen. He was reading something in front of him, and Rose was as well. Valor was staring off into the distance, the flames within his eye sockets flickering. Nearby, Roland's personal Psychomancer, Biomancer, guards, and more found themselves speechless at the Quest they'd just received.

Practically everyone here had gotten it. Which meant the Starhawk…

Oh, Composer. Uva's insides went cold. The power of the Starhawk trickled into Uva, but then began to slow. Her divinely-lit Psychomancy dimmed, and immediately she began to feel the pressure from the pressure of the hostile Psychomancers prying through her strands from outside. A sudden tension exploded inside the room, and the only one who didn't notice was Shiv, mainly because he was too busy cursing the System to properly react. Distrust spilled from Uva into the Starhawk, but his attention ultimately drifted away from her and settled upon Shiv.

"What are you?" he whispered, and his words went unheard by the Deathless, but the Umbral took them in as something akin to a threat. The Starhawk must have sensed her feelings, as he quickly turned toward her. "I do not intend to claim his life, but the other Ascendants will—"

"Shiv," she called out, ignoring the god's words for now.

The Deathless rose, and he had a haggard look on his face as he met her gaze. "Oh, hey, Uva. Was busy learning how to drain the life out of a felling Tarrasque. System decided to reward the usual way for figuring that out. So, uh, did you all get that Quest?"

"Felling shite, son," Georges muttered, worry etched deep into his face. "The hells did you do?"

"Exist," Shiv replied with a faint snarl. Valor moved to speak with Shiv, but there came a roar, and the Deathless's attention snapped back outside. He did a double-take as he realized the exterior of Starhawk's Perch was coated in a dense wall of Psychomancy mana, but that didn't stop him. "Godsdammit. Don't have time for this. Uva. I'm going for the Tarrasque. I'll try to finish it off. If it gets close, stun it if you can. Hold it in place. I'm going to leave it empty."

And as one of her strands shot out to link with his mind, he vanished. He splashed into himself in a burst of white and red, and then disappeared from her awareness.

For the next three seconds, Uva didn't know what she was staring at, what she was just about to do. She didn't even know Shiv existed. Then he resurfaced, and everything came back to her all at once.

"Uva," Adam called out, "I have eyes on him."

Uva looked out through his eyes and saw Shiv cutting past a group of magi trying to crack the perch's defenses in a burst of speed. While Shiv barreled through unprepared Republic Pathbearers, approaching the devastated town fast was the massive shape of a Tarrasque.

It wasn't moving quite as fast as before, and no gravity trailed around it. The air wasn't ionized; it wasn't even ablaze. However, it broke through the sound barrier, and it tumbled still, tumbled toward the undefended town.

Something is wrong here… Something doesn't feel right…

The gathered Poly-Magi noticed the Tarrasque, but then Shiv's form resonated with a pulse of pressure. As soon as he rang, the System sent a new notification.

The Deathless has been spotted. First to extinguish his Vitae will obtain the quest reward.

And judging from how thousands of other heads suddenly snapped to Shiv, he was probably pulsating right before their eyes too. The Republic's Pathbearers reacted in two ways. The First formed a barrier, a layered set of wards meant to intercept the Tarrasque, but more than a few others unleashed their spells at Shiv.

Just a shame they were too slow.

A dimensional arrow ripped open a rift in front of the Deathless, and suddenly, Adam burst out and pulled the Deathless inside. A barrage of spells cut left and right around the rift, and a fist formed from Dimensionality splashed against its entrance, collapsing it entirely. But by then, Shiv and Adam were both gone, displaced back above the stratosphere.

But before Uva could let out a breath of relief, the Tarrasque impacted the hastily-constructed wards and blasted through half of them. Its immense body shattered spell pattern after spell pattern with sheer weight alone, and just as the final layer began to collapse, a brilliant arrow erupted from a new dimensional wound before it exploded against the Tarrasque's form.

The titanic beast came ablaze with radiant fire, and the limpness of its body indicated it was already dead. Uva lashed out with her Psychomancy threads. They blasted through the Tarrasque's body, digging divots of gore and gouging deep into its flesh. Yet, as Uva's puppeteer strings searched, she couldn't find any purchase on its mind. In fact, she couldn't find any mind at all. It was then that she realized something. The Tarrasque was dead. There was no mind in it.

It was hollow, nothing more than a corpse.

But if it's truly slain, then why haven't we gotten the Quest rewards?

A storm of offensive spells crashed against it as the Republic's Poly-Magi began shaping siege-level magics, flames so hot that the sky turned pale. Destruction slammed down against the Tarrasque's rupturing flesh in the shape of a hammer falling on an anvil of magma, a rain of Hydromancy beams fused with Aeromancy, and arrows shaped from dense pillars of water and pregnant with screaming electricity.

More spells hammered against with every second it as the Republic's forces tore the apocalyptic beast apart in an overwhelming barrage.

The mutilated corpse of the Tarrasque slid off hastily erected wards, and as no movement followed, the tension within Uva climbed to a boiling point. "Adam! Shiv? Do you have eyes on the actual Tarrasque?"

But it was the Starhawk that responded first. "I can feel it. Its presence is…" The Ascendant froze. "No. Sister Uva. It's coming from—"

A deafening shriek shook the world. The ground trembled beneath Uva's feet, and a predatory mind bearing a storm of violence, hunger, and hatred exploded upward from below Blackedge.

Before Uva or anyone could react, the Tarrasque blasted free from the parting earth and crashed fist-first against the underside of Blackedge.

The town's very foundations shattered like a crumbling brick.

But before Blackedge could come apart entirely, Uva's empowered mana strands surged down, piercing through the material and stitching the dense clumps of crystal and stone, pulling Blackedge's base back together. She could feel the Tarrasque' grinding against her powers, wrestling against her with its dominion over gravity.

She responded by whipping its mind with her magic, and for the first time, her mana strands struck its mind—

But it was Uva who screamed thereafter. Screamed as a crushing maliciousness hammered through her Psychomancy and seized her very ego. A loud voice boomed within her mind as she learned firsthand why it was a mistake to trespass into a Tarrasque's mind.

"AND WHAT KIND OF COOKING-MEAT ARE YOU?" the monster bellowed with a loud cackle, sounding far too much like Shiv for Uva's comfort.

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