292 (II)

  Downtime [IV]

  "Here," Valor suddenly declared.

  The group came to a stop before a partially collapsed building. At its center, cradled within the rubble like an egg in a bird’s nest, was a smooth, oblong shape. The material that comprised it was perfectly mirror-like; Shiv could see his own reflection without any blemishes. The moment he laid eyes on it, however, the suffering inside him spiked. Instead of being like inflammation, it was an inferno commanded to rage. Despite the pain it inflicted upon him, something about the mysterious shape compelled Shiv to go forward. He ascended the small hill of debris on which it lay, and with every stride he took, he felt the misery that assailed him build in intensity. Something didn't want him so close to the object. Something was doing all it could to retain its hold on him, to never let him go.

  "Shiv," Uva called out, worried yet hesitant to stop him.

  But the Deathless was in a near trance-like state. And then, as he got within a meter of the thing, all his physical ailments vanished at once.

  The searing aches were gone. The building paranoia was gone.

  Everything was gone.

  He felt… normal.

  More normal than he'd ever been. But he also felt heavier, weaker. His joints screamed at him as if they were under an immense load. To put it quite simply, Shiv felt released, but also impossibly human. He had almost forgotten this feeling. This was what it was like to be Pathless—to be mana deficient. Or perhaps something more.

  Shiv used his Biomancy to disassemble his gauntlet. Bits of bone and other matter peeled away, but the effort was considerable and took a near-minute on his part. But there wasn't any mana strain involved either. It didn't feel like he was wrestling against an immense weight; it didn't feel ike he was struggling against an impossible force. Instead, it was simply like he was trying to direct a limb that no longer really existed.

  He pressed his palm against the reflective surface. It felt cold to the touch, but there was something beneath as well, a trembling force that crashed against his Shapeless Tides and parted them as if the Legendary skill that ebbed and flowed through Shiv was nothing more than a mirage; immaterial dust.

  "Our skills, our magic, our very legend is born from stories," Valor said from the foot of the ruin. "The System finds its fuel in the conflict resulting from the intersection of stories. But here, as we press ourselves against the remnants of the old world, of the instruments the ancients wielded to kill one another, we find the death of the story as well. That absent feeling isn't just deprivation. It is the complete and utter exile of the System. Here, close to a stillborn bomb of the pre-apocalypse, there is a coldness. That coldness is the apathy of an existence before the System. And so long as we remain here, no Divination will allow another to set their eyes and ears upon us. No skills will function at their true potential. And if I am to stay for overlong, I will fall inert, for it makes little sense for a set of bones to carry consciousness without the existence of magic."

  Shiv looked over his shoulder, down the hill of rubble, and met Valor's eyes. The flames behind his eyes flickered. "I brought you here because I suspected there would be such a bomb or some other destructive mechanism from the olden times. Something that releases pulses of radiation, that the System refuses to touch. I brought you to this place so that I can speak with you directly, without betraying my intentions to my son. Or to the Ascendants."

  "But why don't we want the Starhawk to know?" Adam asked. "If your plan was to deceive our enemies, then we could have at least invited my father. His counsel would have been—"

  "He is not my disciple. I do not trust him as I trust you. And truth be told, I partially blame him for the way things are right now. It was his decision to serve the Starhawk that caused some of this. It was his decision to commit the same folly the Ascendants did that furthered this madness. And I am not innocent here, either. I have tried to bring the Great One back. I am the one who stained my son's mind with an urge to seek absolute immortality, to bring back what we have lost. But that ends. No one is to reach the Great One—no one is to awaken the Great One. Doing so will not be our salvation but our undoing. Anyone who seeks to continue exploiting the Great One for their own gain, whether it be towards ethical ends or for personal power, courts destruction not only for themselves, but this world and several beyond it."

  "But why?" Adam pressed desperately. "Tell me why. Tell me why the Great One poses so high a risk."

  "Because of your sister, Adam," Valor admitted. He sighed. "Or perhaps not her specifically, but the idea of her. The Five Faiths have committed many sins, but the one thing we are unified on is our devotion, or at least fear of waking our precursor. The Great One was struck down. It was their descent that gave us prosperity and preserved our existence. To awaken them would destabilise or ruin the Five Faiths, yes, but it would also do far, far worse. The Great One does not have skills as we understand them. Instead, they possess Edicts; things that shape reality, and Canons; things that define the new laws of the world."

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  "So, what you're saying is it's too much power for one Pathbearer to have, right?" Shiv asked.

  "No. Let me put this into perspective: What you are feeling right now, that absence followed by nothingness, that is what you would feel if you ventured too close to the Great One. The first time I walked into their embrace, settled near their blood, their flesh, their heart, their organs, and offal, I was utterly stripped of all my skills. I found myself without any magic, little more than a figment of someone else's dreams. It was not a weakening. It was an utter overriding of my nature. I went from being a person with my own story to something less than a side character. If magic is an ocean, then the Great One is more than a Leviathan. They might be something that directs the tides themselves. I would not say they are greater than the System in its totality, but they are great enough that the System must bend to their whims."

  And slowly the point was sinking in: the Great One was simply more important than almost anyone else, and their powers extended beyond magic. The System granted them special leeway as well, to do as they pleased, to change reality as they wished.

  But that led to another, more disconcerting question: If they were so powerful, then what had struck them down? What had caused them to perish and crash into their world?

  Valor stared at Shiv, reading his thoughts from his expression. "What happens to all things within Integration? The System sees them struck down through one means or another. Just because the Great One was powerful enough to bend and tax the System does not mean the System would allow them to reign without consequence. But the Great One is more than mortal, more than even Divine. They are power incarnate, and power incarnate does not simply die."

  The old Legend let out a weary breath. "And here is where the Ascendants’ hubris led us astray. When they made their pilgrimage, they changed the Great One's dreams. They made the Great One dream of themselves as each Ascendant. And their power flowed thusly. But the skills of the Great One are still growing as they dream, and the new laws are incongruous with the old. Now, the Ascendants seek to overwhelm the narrative building up within the Great One. To delay the inevitable. The first to act was not Kathereine the Songbringer. No, the first act had always been the Starhawk. And he sought to enact specific changes before his fellow Ascendants did to secure his dominance, his authority over the others, and to let justice reign.”

  Valor hesitated before he continued. “Adam. Do you know how many people your father betrayed during the Abyss War?”

  “Betrayed?” Adam echoed, his expression twitching with uncertainty.

  “The other Ascendants learned of his plans. And they moved to stop him. The Starhawk risked breaking the Great One’s slumber and inflicting a lucidity on the dead Archgod. He commanded his champion to action. Roland knew the risk. Roland obliged. And by the end of things, it was not just the Five Faiths versus the surface, but also you and yours against your own kin. Such is why Jessica has a true grievance with your father. The Inquisition is not made up of noble heroes, and the Stormhalts have always been at war with your House. But their losses were true and real. For the Starhawk, his invasion and the atrocities that resulted from it, the burning of Sullain's free city being just one among them, were merely an act of lesser evil. Something necessary to seize the advantage first, before his erosion was completed.”

  “No,” Adam breathed. “You—”

  “Ask your father,” Valor said, voice hard. “Ask him when we return. He may delude himself about why his god commanded him to ignite the war, but not the blood he shed. Not the deeds he performed.” Valor let Adam crumble into tormented silence and continued. “But the Starhawk’s plan was multifaceted. He knew the Phylacteries might be compromised in time, that he himself might be beyond saving. And so, he plotted to create a new god. One that could be nested within the Great One without causing any inconsistencies, one to be conceived within the Great One's depths."

  "My sister," Adam said.

  “Yes. The first among the new and true Ascendants. A child that would inherit not only the legacies of your parents, but a God above Gods. With so much favor tied to her, the potential of heights she could reach would be endless, and her growth would be unchained. Or such was the hope. Ultimately, the Starhawk failed to take into account my son's cunning and opportunistic nature. And so your sister went from divine inheritor to sacrifice. And Shiv was in turn blessed with the legacy and potential meant to be hers.”

  Where a tired sigh escaped Adam, Valor met Shiv's eyes, the expression of his thin face unreadable. “And the Great One did not forget this. They did not forgive it. They remember being slain. They remember dying at the hands of Vera and Harlon, how they were made an offering to another. And so significant was this memory and understanding, so traumatic was the ritual that it reshaped the soul of another child. It takes… quite the act to create a new Path. Quite the act. But the Great One lays dreaming. The Great One is not truly dead. And if the Great One is returned, they will not be born joyously, but from the soul and flesh of someone they were shaped to loathe. Shiv. If my son’s plan is to succeed, make no mistake—the Great One will likely seek your unmaking. The System is fueling an incursion not just to balance your growing power, or to amplify your Ambient Mana Threshold. It’s doing all this to either stabilize the instability you are causing through your undying nature, or to see you made so powerful that you can give the Great One a war worth fighting when they are awakened—however that comes to be.”

  Shiv drew in a long breath… and nodded. “Yeah. Alright. I can see that.”

  “‘Alright’…” Valor studied Shiv. “That is all you have to say.”

  Shiv scoffed. “My life has been nothing but one nightmarish fight after another for a long godsdamned while. I kind of figured the System was going to pull some shit. By now… things are what they are.” The Deathless shrugged. Georges’ death put things into perspective. And all the conflict had hardened his already pugnacious nature. “I’ll deal with it. I’m guessing you’re going to try to convince us about how we’re going to screw everyone else over and stop them from getting to the Great One now and causing that apocalyptic brawl, right?”

  Valor didn’t reply immediately. “Are you sure you are not—”

  “Valor. I don't give much of a shit anymore. Just tell me the problem, then get to the part where we can decide what we want to do, and how we’re going to kick its ass.”

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