Let me tell you something, Sijik. I hate Roland Arrow. I've hated him since the first time I laid eyes on him. I hated him when we were in the same class. I hated him every time he humiliated me during sparring. Every time he humiliated me during small group battles. Every time he humiliated me during the mock war engagements we waged over and over again.
You cannot conceive of the depths of my loathing. You cannot understand what it is like to hate someone so much that it builds up like sediment in your bones, like particulates in your blood.
You wake up hating this person. You sleep hating this person. You eat with the weight of this person on your tongue.
Hate, hate, hate is what I feel for Roland Arrow. But I also understand him. I respect his skill and the danger he poses as a Pathbearer. So no, we're not just going to walk up to Blackedge and simply demand that he drop the wards and let us in. We are not going to send 100,000 Pathbearers to their deaths against the single most dangerous man I've ever seen pick up a bow.
Do you know how brutally Roland Arrow humiliated our combat instructor? The man was a Master. The man was a legend in his time. A legend in his own mind. And he resigned. He resigned before the semester was over. Roland made a mockery of him.
You were not there at the Battle of the Eclipse. At the battle above the chasm. But I was. For all my hatred, for all Roland represents, for the one he serves, for his arrogance, his hubris, for leading my wife and my brother into a slaughter in the depths that they never came back from, for a war that should have never taken place, for an Ascendant that seeks to betray us all, I understand what he truly is. I understand the threat he poses. I understand that he is a Pathbearer without peers.
Never bring up this suggestion to me again, Inquisitor. You may not value the lives of these Pathbearers, but I do.
I come intending to inflict righteous retribution on Roland Arrow. And I will give anything to see it done. I will give anything to see my daughter retrieved. I will give anything, anything. I will sacrifice myself, not them. Not meaninglessly. They are good men. Good women. Good bots. And you will not waste their lives this way. We do this strategically. Carefully. Properly.
I will give Roland Arrow nothing for free. Not another second of my time. And not the lives of the lowliest mercenary.
-City Lord Havel Van Stormhalt to Inquisitor Sijik
113 (I)
Block
Gold-01 awoke with a scream. His flesh was frying, his legs felt like they were folded the wrong way, his tailbone felt like someone had been working on it all day with a chisel, and his insides—Great One—his insides felt like they were liquid. Searing pain flowed through his body, and he wished he were unconscious again. As his vision stopped spinning, he realized the inside of his capsule was glowing with heat. No wonder he was in so much pain; he was being cooked alive.
Veins of the Stormdiver 88 > 91
"Godsdamn it," Gold-01 growled. He drew upon his feeble Aeromancy, and he circulated a gust of wind around himself. It was moments like these that he wished he had Cryomancy; moments like these, he wished he'd also devoted more time to improving his Toughness. He tried to unbuckle himself from the capsule, only to let out another bark of pure agony as his broken ribs sank into a ruptured organ.
"Great One," Gold-01 whimpered. His words slurred into incoherence. His mind reeled. How did he end up here? What just... And then his memories returned to him. It was a massive blast that smashed into him and his dragon, that tore him across the world, that drove his head high against the ceiling of his capsule, knocking him out.
He ripped off his flight mask and felt at his head.
Blood trickled down Gold-01's skull, soaking his hair red. But that was how he knew he was still alive. Gritting his teeth, Gold-01 fought through the pain and reached into the emergency compartment within his capsule. It was badly dented. The capsule was practically curved in on itself. The left side of the entire compartment was folded inward.
Gold-01 simply stared in disbelief. He didn't know anything that could have done that to Adamantine. Frankly, he didn't believe it was possible. Adamantine was supposedly unbreakable for most Pathbearers. But he had been fighting a Hero. A Hero at the very least.
And then other memories returned to Gold-01. Torturous memories. Memories of his squadron being cut down. Of other dragons taking cuts along their neck, blood gushing out from their eyes and jaws as they fell. He remembered the dragons caught in the immediate vicinity of the blast. He was sure that he saw one vanish altogether, flayed out of existence by the blast. The others were flung across the world, cast like insects caught in the grip of a hurricane. And his comrades, his fellow riders… He didn't know what their condition was. He needed to find them.
But first… Gold-01 bit back a snarl as he finally managed to open the compartment. He pulled the dented cover off, but the sudden motion made him double over, and he puked all over himself. Blood mingled with half-digested chunks of this morning's breakfast. He was bleeding internally.
He needed the potion. He needed it now. He picked up the healing potion, and he found his hands were shaking too much. He controlled his movements. He bade his quivering fingers to slow. He remembered drinking potions before while badly injured during a prior mission, spilling half of them down his chin and chest, wasting precious resources. Gold-01 focused. Gold-01 carefully placed it against his lip and tipped it backward.
The potion was foul-tasting. It was like what one might think a slug would taste like if it had been ground up and laced with bitter acid. The healing potion crawled down his throat, making him choke for a moment just from how thick and viscous it was. But slowly, it worked through his body. It flowed through his veins, and his natural healing accelerated dramatically. That didn't do much for the pain, but he did feel parts of him knit back together inside.
Wounds closed, and there was a gradual itch that grew and grew, an itch he knew to be the mending of vessels and the regeneration of his bones. The broken pieces that still remained inside of him would need to be extracted by a Biomancer later, as that was to take place alongside a cancer examination. No matter how badly wounded he was, he gave it good odds that he would probably develop more than a few tumors.
He leaned back against his seat, then hissed as the heat returned. The moment without the Aeromancy circulating the air returned the temperature within his capsule to an unbearable level. He needed to get out. He wouldn't be able to rest inside here. So, Gold-01 reached down. He found the latch meant to pop the top part of his capsule. He pulled. The latch was stuck. Gold-01 let out a whimper. He didn't know if he had the strength.
But then he mustered himself. He mustered himself as he remembered what Master Irene said to him. If you don't have the strength, you will die. You will die alone. You will drown inside your capsule. You will be pulled under the water while riding in your harness. You will die, and you will fail your squadron. Remember this. If you do die, die making a difference. Do not let the Great Enemy take you freely. Don't let your death become an avalanche.
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"It won't," Gold-01 said. He was replying to a woman long dead. A woman he'd killed. But he still had to tell someone. He still needed to talk to someone. Gods, he wished she were here. He drew in a deep breath. His lungs ached. The hyperheated air burned his lungs and boiled his stomach, but he needed the oxygen for one last burst of strength.
Gold-01 reached down with both hands. He pulled hard. The latch clicked, and then something inside it broke. But just as hopelessness threatened to overtake him, the top part of the capsule burst off. The bolts holding it in place shot into the air. But with how deformed it was, it snapped off to the side and clipped Gold-01 along the left temple, opening a gash, and it slammed him face-first against a piece of hyperheated metal. Gold-01 let out a shriek. He pulled his face back. But the damage was done. It seared clean through his flesh, parting skin, muscle, and touching bone. He let out another groan, a groan that almost became a sob until he mastered himself.
"Can't touch it," Gold-01 slurred. He slowly rose on shaking feet, and he clambered upon his seat as he stared out over the blasted horizon. Gold-01's eyes widened. "This… Am I in hell?" he whispered to himself, and it was a proper question, for the horizon of Old Santabar had been changed.
Where there were once rolling fields of green and mountains running across the land like frozen tidal waves, ranging for kilometers beyond, now Old Santabar resembled a desert of glass. Ash rained down from above. A shroud of smog blocked the sky and the fragments of the Great One's egg from Gold-01's gaze. Up to his right, he saw the landscape running downward in a gleaming slope, a slope that curved and rose again. He was in a crater.
A crater.
Gold-01's mind spun. The blast the Heroic-Tier Pathbearer unleashed earlier had been massive. But could it have been this massive? Could they have had this much power within them? If they did, then what was the point of the chase? What was the point of any of it? If they were that powerful, why didn’t he just finish them all instantly? Why bother with the chase at all? Just who the fuck was he?
Gold-01 felt sick. Did the enemy Hero do all that just to toy with him? Toy with the riders who fought alongside Gold-01? What was this? What kind of monster did the System make Gold-01 face?
Gold-01 looked out across the desolate wasteland, and he cast his Psychomancy mana outward, a pulsing ripple that spread far. "This is Gold-01," he stammered mentally. He watched as his translucent mana crawled across the land. It kept going, but he couldn't see anything for miles. He couldn't see.
And then he did see something. He saw something he didn't want to see—he didn't want to accept.
He saw the glistening golden scales of a dragon, but it was half-melted, half-fused to the ground. Its lower body was gone. Just gone. There were no remains. No blood. It just ended. Fused into the glassed ground, the dragon's eye sockets were hollow. There were small embers burning within, and smoke seeped out between its remaining scales as well.
Its ribs were showing, and on its back was a capsule, or what remained of one. It was little more than a melted funnel. Nothing but metal slag. If there had been anyone inside, there wasn't anymore.
"Hello?" Gold-01 called out. Psychomancy pulsed out from him. He strained his Master-Tier Psychomancy as hard as he could. "Hello? Anyone? Gold Primary? Anyone? Gold-02? Gold-7? Gold-03?"
He was calling out to dead comrades now. And Gold-01 felt himself on the verge of breaking. He prided himself on his focus and iron will. But the hell before him, the sudden isolation, it was getting to be too much, too much. And then as he turned, he saw something else, a jutting curve, a series of ribs folded over his capsule. And then Gold-01 remembered. He remembered that he had a dragon too.
His dragon was gone. His dragon was... He found himself staring at three broken ribs, three broken ribs that were burned, scorched clean. Suddenly Gold-01 looked away, sinking fully into shell shock, doing everything he could not to consider his own dragon's death. The dragon he had fought alongside for so long. His dragon’s name… His…
Gold-01 crushed that chain of thought with his Psychomancy. A trail of drool dribbled down his chin as he took his first shaky step out of his capsule. As his foot greeted the ground, a series of cracks sounded, traveling from his ankle up through his body. He could feel the broken bones left within him rattling. Gold-01 flinched at the sensation. He cast out another pulse of Psychomancy.
"Anyone, please, someone respond! Fucking someone, someone, somebody!" Gold-01 was screaming at the end. He wasn't just calling out with his mind. He was calling out with his voice, his hoarse, burned voice. "Central! Gold-02! Anyone! Anyone!"
He fell to his knees, and the glass was burning hot as well. It seared his flesh even through the enchanted leathers he was wearing. It was supposed to modulate his temperature to suit any environment. This was an environment that no one could survive in. Gold-01 held himself. He hugged himself as he swept his gaze across the land. He hugged himself as he strained his Awareness, trying—hoping that there was another survivor, as he looked, as he searched for any sign of life, any sign of life at all.
But there was nothing, nothing but him and a half-melted dragon four hundred meters away. Nothing. And it was all because of one Pathbearer, that Hero, that cruel monster that toyed with him and butchered his fellow riders.
Gold-01 slowly lifted his head. His sorrow was overwhelming, but deep in the waters of his misery came another emotion, came a dark and building sensation. Gold-01 didn't know hate before this moment. Gold-01 didn't know the urge to commit himself completely to a personal quest, to give everything he had to murder one other man, one other Pathbearer, one that took so much from him—
Gold-01 cried out as he felt his life force get ripped out of his body.
The world around him blurred and went gray, and the remnants of his strength whistled out of him like air from a balloon.
***
"Godsdamn, I got lucky," Shiv thought to himself as he drained the only surviving rider he could find. "And godsdamn, is this poor bastard unlucky." As the rider spasmed, Shiv genuinely felt bad for him.
Judging from the few dragon bones remaining nearby, this guy likely survived because his dragon crashed back-first into the ground, pinning his capsule in place, while the dragon took the brunt of the blast.
Adamantine Adaption 157 > 163
Woundeater 85 > 86
Strider of the Unbending Path 124 > 128
Inertial Overdrive 107 > 111
And what a hell of a damn blast that was. Shiv barely felt any pain when he died earlier. His Adamantine Adaption responded to the first few hits, but all the ones that followed were immediately too much. He had no chance of surviving that, not a single damn bit.
That was probably why he gained so much of a massive leap in terms of Adamantine Adaption. But why did he get a leap for Strider as well? For Inertial Overdrive?
Shiv's paranoia was at an all-time high as the rider groaned and began to seize. The Deathless kept his gaze high, staring at the skies above, waiting for another salvo to descend to obliterate the land once more.
If that attack came from Vicar Sullain or his Necrotechs, Shiv didn't know what to say. Their dragons were here, as were their observation posts. If they had that kind of firepower, why didn't they use it on Blackedge? Why were they wasting it on him? Was he that much of a threat? Did they really have that powerful and potent of an arsenal that they could just casually expend?
Parts of him wanted to say no, but after what he'd just experienced…
Shiv felt a shudder run through his body. The Abyss had been portrayed as a place of deep mystery, of nightmarish danger. Shiv believed that for most of his life, he never doubted the fact that few Pathbearers had managed to venture more than a few kilometers deep than the chasm.
But after less than ten minutes on the surface, he'd encountered an observation post, was ambushed by ten time-jumping dragons and their riders, and then was immediately killed as a series of arrows infused with what felt like the power of small stars. Arrows that turned his body from a matter of biology into a function of physics.
A shadowy cocoon formed over Shiv as the last trickles of vitality were siphoned out from the unfortunate rider.
Yeah, sorry about that, Shiv thought. The rider went limp. He crashed down against the glassed surface of the ground that used to be rolling hills, soil, dirt, nature, and all that. Now, now it was just a blasted wasteland. Shiv had made some decimated wastelands in his own time, but this was on another level.
If Inertial Overdrive is Heroic, then is this the power of a Legendary Pathbearer? Shiv thought to himself. The revelation was as terrifying as it was inspiring. If this was what lay ahead, well, he couldn't wait to be able to break things on this magnitude.