73 (II) Context

73 (II)

Context

“How…” Shiv breathed, his eyes wide.

"I don't know," she replied. Her voice echoed slightly, but it was high and clear. She even sounded a bit like Adam. She looked at her hands. The vitality empowering both of them, that kept them in existence, was flickering away, like a dying flame exposed to falling rain. "I sensed there was danger… danger you wouldn't have been able to survive, and so I pulled you away. I pulled you out of the world."

Shiv just stared. "Out of the what?"

"The world," she repeated. "Outside, everything out there. It's dangerous, it's hateful, it's hurtful. There are so many threats everywhere. The waves of causality are so high…"

And as Shiv stared out through the film of his vitality, he realized something. The world had gone gray and dull, and his enemy seemed absolutely confused as to where he was at all.

In fact, the divine being was looking around, as was the Educator. Another Veilpiercer arrow crashed into her back and blew a chunk of her shoulder away. She barely noticed. Then, several more of Uva's strands stabbed at her, and they seemed to knock her out of her stupor.

"Everything outside is bound to the waves of choice and action. Action-reaction. But not you. You are not bound. You are the one thing that they have to tether themselves to. The Foreshadowing they cast... It broke against you several times, because you are not meant to be. You were never meant to be. I know, I know, because something of mine is there inside of you." She pointed at him, pointed at his chest, and there was a flash of hatred in her eyes. "You shouldn't be!"

She grabbed him by the neck, but her fingers melted into him. "You shouldn't be. Where? What did you take from me? Why? Why did you take it from me?"

“What are you even talking about?” he said, trying to distance himself from her hands. When he got a new skill, he didn't expect this.

"Give it back to me!" Her breaths came fast, and she began to hyperventilate. "Why am I bound to you? What is this? What is this madness? Give—give it back to me!”

Shiv considered stabbing her, but well, this was... He didn't know what this was. The woman looked like Adam's mother, but how did he evolve Adam's mother out of Foreshadowing?

For every second he spent within the shroud of his soul, Shiv could feel himself growing weaker at an alarming rate. He needed to drink someone else's vitality to restore this. He needed to if he wanted to remain in existence.

"Put me back," Shiv growled. "Put me back outside! I—we're going to fade away!"

She stared at him, then bit her lip in contemplation. "I… don't know how."

“What do you mean you don't know how?” Shiv asked, incredulous. “You pulled me into myself in the first place!”

She crossed her arms. "I was just reacting."

"Well," Shiv snarled. "React again. React!" He focused on his own vitality, and he began to pry. It didn't seem to help much, but then, her body superimposed over his, and they pulled together.

A second later, Shiv hatched back into existence, a blast of red-white fire searing the ground around him. Blood-red veins spread through the floor while white flowers bloomed from everything he touched. Flowers that pulsed as if they were beating hearts.

Shiv crashed down on the floor on all fours, feeling weaker than he could ever remember feeling. But he was back in the physical world, or wherever the Educator had dragged them. He looked around. There was color and sensation and—

"What just happened?" he breathed.

A massive blast erupted a few blocks away. "Shit," he muttered. "Adam. Uva.”

“Wait, Can Hu!" He rushed over to the downed armor. He forced it open and ripped out his old body. He settled in and launched himself through the air with his gravitic field. “Can Hu? You there?”

“S-s-still—” was all the automaton managed to say.

“Shit!” Shiv cursed again. He couldn’t have predicted this. What even was

As Shiv sailed through the sky, he couldn't see the colossal entity anymore, but he knew it was there. He knew it existed. "What is that thing?"

“A Demiurgos,” a voice suddenly whispered to him, speaking directly into his consciousness.

"Rose?" Shiv asked, his eyes widening.

“It's anAscendant. A false god pretending to be something much smaller. It is casting out waves, weaving schemes from the fabric of the world’s history…”

Shiv blinked. "I—What?"

“I see things, but they do not see me. I've been pulled beyond the bounds of what should have been... Beyond the bounds…”

"You're not making any sense," he muttered. Shiv considered if he had actually gone insane, but he didn’t think things were that simple.

“You're not supposed to be,” she replied. “We aren't supposed to be this way. Right now, this moment, it's an impossibility. It is all an impossibility. I knew, I knew something… I was… I gleaned the threads of causality. I read, I learned. And you, you shouldn't exist. But something—something dreamed you into being. Someone.”

And just then, he heard Adam scream in the distance. “No!” Rose cried. “Go! Faster! Faster, now!”

He accelerated. He accelerated even though his entire body felt enervated. He hammered his fists together, building up his Momentum Core as he smashed through the top side of a building to find the painter with her brush jammed through the young lord's cheek.

Adam was biting the brush. It had gone through the insides of his mouth and chipped several teeth, but he was holding her back, pushing at her feebly with his Adept-Tier strength. His helmet was somewhere beyond sight, but Shiv’s Silhouette was active as he—

Suddenly, he was pulled inside his own chaotic shroud of vitality. He let out a cry of exhaustion this time as his flame burned dim. Both Adam and the Educator briefly looked at him, but then they did a double take as if they weren't sure what they were staring at, as if they didn't know.

"Stop doing that," Shiv growled.

"I'm trying to help you!" Rose said. "We cannot get close this way. We must be careful. We must strike without leaving any ripples. They can see the ripples, they can feel the causality. They are a source of it. They will paint you. The brush reshapes souls. And I felt it when she struck you. She felt it. But you merely bled. She couldn’t reshape you. You are wrong. Abomination. Monster.”

Shiv ignored Rose as he advanced on the Educator. He could still move through the world even in his current state, and he didn’t wait to find out if he could hurt her through his vitality shroud while he was… outside the world or whatever.

Valor, I hope you can explain this shit to me because this is another level of felling weird, Shiv thought.

Shiv drew close to the Educator. He heard a sickening snap as one of Adam's teeth broke off, and his eyes rolled. An adamantine shield exploded through the dilapidated room, smashing into the Educator's side at extreme speeds. Her ribs cracked. She folded over, but she didn't fall. Any normal person would have reacted in some way, but she seemed immune to pain.

Once more, the shield smashed into her from the side, and Uva's strands struck, but the Educator fought with one arm, throwing paint at the strands. Uva's mana flinched back, avoiding the paint, and somehow, somehow Shiv could feel her pain.

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The last few times Uva endured those attacks, she ended up having a seizure. She had just woken up a few seconds ago. The world was screaming at him through his film of vitality—and he paused. He knew all this because the woman was whispering it to him constantly, muttering random details into his mind like some kind of mad oracle bound to his very soul.

With every step growing more strenuous, and his soul dimming to a flicker, Shiv got just behind the Educator, and he drove his kukri up under her chin. He stabbed, and Rose Van Erren stabbed with him.

Both of them surged forth, and he exploded out into existence with a blast of his unstable vitality, red and white colors flooding the world. His kukri slammed into the Educator's jaw just as he cast out a wyrm. It swallowed Adam's wounds before slamming into the Educator.

A detonation of mana exploded across her. She staggered, and Adam fired two more Veilpiercers into her face. Another two blasts followed, both of them dimensional. Two stacked dimensional rifts expanded right in front of the Educator’s face. Most of her skull was caved in, but her face bled paint rather than blood, and she kept fighting as if she hadn’t been harmed at all.

The Educator tried to respond, but Uva’s shield came back, and it crashed into the Educator’s elbow, throwing her brush off. A sickening crack sounded, but the limb didn't break. Rather, a part of the shield was fractured.

Shiv stole the moment and seized the Educator in a tight lock before suplexing her through the ground. He blasted both of them down through the many floors of the building, spiking his acceleration with his gravitic field. As they crashed through surface after surface, he drained her.

Vitality flowed back into his body. Heat exploded out from inside him, and he suddenly didn't feel weak anymore. Suddenly, he could hear Rose’s voice louder than ever before. She gasped as if a woman allowed a sip of water after years of wandering in the desert. And then he felt another rush of Foreshadowing crash against him, but the vision did not settle within his mind; rather, Rose intercepted it, and she muttered madly, cursing and screaming at the now-unseen entity.

Foreshadowing: What is happening to you? Why can't I see you anymore? What is your Skill Evolution?

As the Educator spoke to him, however, he realized her lips weren't moving, and her eyes were shifting around erratically.

He hit her three more times—a slice, two stabs—and then flung her through the final floor. He followed instantly, stomping down with both feet into her chest as he spiked his gravity field to its absolute limit.

The entire skyscraper burst apart and shattered with a deafening rumble. A slight crack sounded from her sternum, but she swiped her brush through Shiv’s ankle, and he collapsed with a shout of pain. His left leg came apart in two. She swept her brush out again, aiming for his neck, but Shiv drew in a breath and dove into himself.

Once more, he splashed into his soul-vitality fusion, and the red and white flames that composed his being spread around him like a protective membrane as he simply ceased to be in the outside world.

Foreshadowing: What? Who was I just? Who was I fighting? I was fighting someone…

The voice of the Educator came through, and she was confused, beyond confused. She was absolutely lost.

"Here, we are the only ones that can reference ourselves," Rose said from beside him. "No one can remember us. We leave the context of the outside world. Break temporarily from collective existence. But this shouldn’t be—we shouldn’t be able to endure an acausal existence. Your soul is wrong. Shouldn't be able to do this. Shouldn't be."

Shiv regarded the hysterical Rose, and he triggered his chrono-anchored strike. To his surprise, she remained with him, even as he delivered the blow to his adversary. Once more, he drove his kukri into the Educator, and a detonation of vitality followed the instant he made overt contact with the world.

He channeled a beam of light through his kukri and split the Educator from within. His Silhouette was active, so she swept her brush wide—but misjudged where he was due to his outline.

Silhouette > 68

Deepest Edge > 60

She twisted wide as her body came apart in a flurry of paint. Shiv shifted out of the world again and felt himself shivering from how little of his vitality was left. There, within the confines of his own soul, he looked up—and caught sight of the massive entity searching for him again.

Outside Context, he thought, and he spent a moment, just a single moment, thinking about what the Educator said. “Wait, Foreshadowing," he said. "A fragment of Rose's soul ended up in me. How the hell did..."

And it all went back to his birth, to the ritual. He stared at Rose.

"We are bound," she said. "All of me should be gone. And you were… You were never supposed to be born. And my daughter, and you, and her, and you… This is not the shape of a soul."

The colossal entity that was supposedly one of the Ascendants swept its head, looking across the land, trying to figure out what was hitting it. Once more, though, Shiv's flames burned dim. This new power, this new skill, drained his very existence rapidly. It sapped him at such an alarming rate that he might only be able to maintain it for ten seconds. Probably less.

He got behind the Educator again, and this time he dragged his blade across her throat, slamming the blade against bone as he began to sap her vitality once more.

Blood sprayed out from her, but it was colorful blood, kaleidoscopic blood. And as he flicked his dagger across, channeling Conduit of Dawn, he severed her head, only for her to turn around and kick him right in the chest. Shiv grunted as he forced himself to remain in place, and she swept out two strokes from her brush. The first he avoided conventionally, the second he evaded by going Outside Context. Rose drew him in once more, and he immediately exploded back out, launching a laceration into the Educator’s face before he triggered his Chrono-Anchored strike and slit her throat again.

Silhouette > 70

Every dive flooded his Stealth with more advancements, and the Educator’s naked confusion was all-consuming as he drained her heat again.

“How?” She asked, unbothered by how most of her skull was caved in. His Dread Aura sensed a crack developing inside her being. It wasn't the normal kind of crack you would feel when someone turned to cowardice. No, it was the kind of fear that a warrior felt, that someone who was versed in combat felt. They weren't shaken, they weren't nearly broken, but they were disturbed.

Just then, a corrosive Veilpiercer tore through the air from above, and suddenly the Educator burst apart into sprays of paint. She disintegrated before Shiv, and he dove back from the Necromancy. He watched as the arrow melted through the ground, but blinked as the Educator’s paint faded into the backdrop.

As he stood over where the Educator used to be, Adam descended into the room on burning wings and with his helmet back on. He looked at Shiv, and through the dust and rubble, Uva came, holding on to her shield as support. Blood was pouring from her eyes, and half of her face was swollen and bruised.

“She shattered my helmet with a kick,” Uva said, blinking rapidly with her good eye. “Only thing that saved my life.”

Shiv gave her a worried look and cast a wyrm into her. He healed whatever brain damage she sustained, and she gave him an appreciative nod.

"What… what happened back there?" Adam asked. "You were..." he paused. "I thought you didn't exist for a second. I completely forgot who you were. I was... I was so lost when I was looking at you. What did you just do?"

“Adam… I remember… Adam… I want to hold you again… Please just let me hold him once more…” Rose cried out from inside Shiv. She reached for Adam, but she was trapped inside Shiv’s vitality. Practically a whole other existence away. “Why… what did I do to deserve this torment…”

"I, uh," Shiv stammered, swallowing. How the hell was he going to explain any of this to Adam? "I’m not exactly sure, Adam, I, uh..."

But just then, he heard a scream from inside of him. “She's behind the girl!”

Shiv cursed, and he threw himself at Uva. The Umbral wasn't nearly fast enough to react. The difference between an Adept-tier and Master-tier Reflex skill was colossal, especially with his Momentum Core fully filled. He pulled her aside just as a jet of paint tore across the land, splitting even the horizon behind them.

Uva reactively dove into Shiv’s mind, and he slammed down behind Adam.

And once more, the surrounding environment changed. The colors of the world twisted, becoming less realistic and more…

"This looks like a bloody children's novel," Adam gasped. "What the hells? Where the hells are we? How the hells is she doing this?”

And from between the twisting shades of existential paint, Shiv caught a sign of movement. The ruins of Lost Angeles vanished, replaced by badly drawn trees, by crudely sketched clouds, and a sun that had a smile on it. He was standing within the page of a child's drawing. And from on high, something moved, a shrouded figure that loomed over them—loomed over seemingly the entire world itself. It seemed as large as another planet when gazed upon from the land.

"By the Composer," Uva breathed.

"By the Ascendants," Adam followed.

But then, the great being laughed. "Oh, no need to invoke my title in vain. I am here, Little Arrow. An Ascendant in the… Well, I’m not quite an Ascendant anymore. And I don’t really have flesh. But more importantly…”

Then, from the massive being descended a single droplet of paint, and it splashed down, reforming the Educator’s body once more. She stepped through the badly drawn trees, and her eyes were locked onto Shiv. She held out a brush and pointed it at him. “But before that, I have questions. I thought I had answers to give, some useful puppets to recruit, and a lesson to teach, but now I just have questions."

Every word she spoke was with an angry clench of her jaw.

"You," she said. "Tanner Lowe. Why can't I see your skill status anymore? What did you just do? And how did you slip away from my very awareness? My very memories. What are you?”

Shiv swallowed slightly as he felt the presence of Rose Van Erren lean over him. "I think I’m still in the process of finding that out myself. Now, point that brush somewhere else before I kick your ass a second time.”

The Educator paused, and then she sneered. “Oh. I wasn’t trying to hurt any of you before. I was trying to bind you to my book of illustrations as intact as possible. Like I bound part of the Penitent and the other two. But you… My brush only wounded you. Your soul refuses to leave your flesh… How peculiar.”

So that’s what was wrong with Can Hu—and that’s where Valor and Siggy were.

“Right,” Shiv grunted. “Let them out, and I won’t hurt you.”

“No,” the Educator said, widening her stance and assuming an actual combat posture. “Not until I figure a few things out. Not until I have you all stroked and collected within my pages."