160 (I) Avatar

An Avatar of an Auroral Ascendant consists of three aspects. The first is a Sacred Phylactery. They must be in its vicinity to properly draw on the divine power of their patron.

The second is a skill. It is effectively a sort of conduit for the Phylactery. If the Phylactery is as if a source, or perhaps the attunement of the divine, then the skill nested within the Pathbearer serving as Avatar becomes a functional outlet.

At present, practically 90% of the Twilight Republic’s citizens possess a skill corresponding to faith. Faith that allows their Ascendants to reach through them. Usually, this results in minor miracles, in their gods whispering to them, sending directives, or guiding them in battles and in life as well.

However, for those that have been vetted by the Ascendants and chosen specifically to represent their interests either on the Council or in the Inquisition, a specific set of blessings will be bestowed. Blessings that will further mold the individual Pathbearer's soul until it is a proper receptacle for a specific Ascendant, or perhaps a few specific Ascendants.

Note: The Ascendants rarely like sharing avatars, because at times their Blessings clash and their preferences cause a certain pseudo-psychotic state as they blend the avatar's mind. This has been noted in the now masqueraded “Massacre at Delphia,” in which an otherwise commendable Pathbearer who had served as Avatar for ten years killed ten thousand people at City Hall after taking on five more Ascendants.

Addendum: Our current working theory is that the additional Ascendants occupying his being suffered a political disagreement that became emotionally charged, which led to volatile results.

However, the Ascendants that are closer together, or at least trust each other, usually have fewer compunctions about a shared avatar. In fact, there is a specific term for someone who bears multiple Ascendants within them: Gemini.

-Aviary Intelligence Report on the “Avatars of the Ascendants and Auroral Council”

160 (I)

Avatar

City Lord Stormhalt's eyes glowed like dark-blue beacons. The lightning flashing within speared out as razor-sharp tendrils, and they pierced Shiv's flesh as if the Deathless were made of paper. At baseline, Shiv's body should still be as hard as adamantine, but before Stormhalt's divine-enhanced Aeromancy, he felt unnaturally fragile, impossibly weak, and it didn't take much deduction on Shiv's part to figure out why that was.

Behind the City Lord, the ethereal giant flashed with the same deep blue light empowering Stormhalt, and slung around the giant's neck were a pair of slender, pale arms. The feminine figure reappeared once more, planting the bottom of her chin atop the giant's head. Where the giant was stoic and the City Lord had the expression of a furious hound, the woman just offered a delightful smile as she laughed.

There was a melody to her laughter, like a rising series of bells that chimed so crisp and clear that it made Shiv's very bones rattle. But as the sound died down, sorrow settled into Shiv's stomach like sediment, and it took all he had to stop himself from weeping. He wanted to hear that laugh again. He would almost do anything to...

Psycho-Cartography: No! You are mentally compromised. Her very voice must be bound to Psychomancy, or perhaps some High-Tier Social Skill. Deafen yourself. Deafen yourself now. Do not listen to her.

Psycho-Cartography 51 > 52

"So," the woman began running a red tongue over redder lips. "Our little enigma returns to us. Welcome, welcome. Glad to see you agai—”

And that's as far as Shiv let her get before he turned his Biomancy on himself. He burst his eardrums, and he clenched his jaw, shrugging off the pain. Blood erupted from both sides of his skull, and the City Lord blinked in surprise. The woman's lips continued moving, but soon the smile on her face turned to a frown, and the giant she clung to tilted his head slightly.

"Yeah, sorry," Shiv growled out. "Not here for conversation, just here to take a City Lord prisoner."

Instead of driving his Biomancy field against Stormhalt directly, Shiv flicked both streams of spilling blood out from his inner ear into the City Lord's eyes. They splashed over his face, crashing hard along the bridge of his nose, surging into his lightning-infused sockets. The effect was immediate. City Lord Stormhalt twisted back in surprise. Shiv couldn't hear him snarl, but that didn't matter. The Deathless went out of context and froze time.

As soon as he did, however, a blast of lightning erupted from Stormhalt. It was a bolt grander and blacker than any Shiv had seen before, and it tore a massive gap within the missile delivery chamber. The ceiling was gashed open by the spreading bolt of lightning, and Shiv watched in disbelief as it continued rising up, stabbing high into the distant sky. Soon, it grew to resemble a tower around Stormhalt, and its mana density thickened as well.

Holding onto the bolt was the ethereal giant summoned by the City Lord. The storm-made juggernaut moved with impunity, unburdened by halted time, and betraying no hint of surprise or confusion about Shiv's sudden disappearance. Power flowed from him into Stormhalt and out again, and Shiv noticed something glowing on the City Lord’s chest. It looked like a set of circular rings.

Is he wearing a pendant under his armor? So, if that’s the case…

A cold feeling washed through Shiv. He suspected he knew what he was dealing with: Ascendants. He had faced a Forgotten Ascendant, or such was what the Educator had claimed to be. The Forgotten God puppeteering the Educator, however, had been the size of the sky and looked down upon Shiv as a planet-engulfing giant would a feeble gnat. Right now, the storm-clad giant and the woman holding onto him were both abnormal, but ultimately human-like.

Despite this, their power was a continual surprise to him. Both of them continued moving, even as time stood still, and the woman’s eyes came aglow with Divination mana, leaking brilliant streams of violet light. She whispered something in the giant’s ear, and slowly, both their heads turned in his general direction. The Deathless found himself hesitating. Originally, he wanted to get behind Stormhalt, suplex him, knock him out somehow—see if that would dispel the ethereal figures that he'd summoned. No, however, with that massive pillar of lightning consuming Stormhalt's body, Shiv had a feeling that touching the City Lord meant either pain or death.

"Well, this is felling annoying," Shiv cursed to himself. He was running out of vitality fast, and now his plan to kidnap the City Lord and use him as a bargaining chip against Hograve had run into a new impediment. "Nothing can ever be easy, can it?"

He had long known the answer to that. Being System-favored, there was no easy meal. If one wanted to be a powerful Pathbearer, and when one caught the System's true interest, practically every second of one's life became a desperate struggle.

Right, fine. I can't hit him myself. But let's see here.Plenty of things I can launch into him. See what they do. And then after that…

Shiv came up with a quick plan. It was a relatively messy one, but it might just show him what the City Lord was now capable of. He went behind the missile cylinder Stormhalt had been inside of earlier and ripped it out of its foundations with a brief growl. Then he kicked it towards Stormhalt with a heavy punt. The cylinder shot forward, and it split apart clean against the massive column of lightning enveloping Stormhalt.

Okay. Weird. Not shocking, but slicing and cutting. Like there’s an edge to these lightning bolts.

A swelling weakness spread through Shiv's body. He was running out of time. He spiked himself just above Stormhalt, angling his body away from the pitch-black lightning. Then Shiv began to cultivate his Toughness. The Pillar of Orichalcum formed, and it shot high up into the air at the same time as it thrust downward. Its red-gold sheen crashed against the sides of the rising arc of lightning.

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That drew the giant's notice immediately. His head snapped up. He frowned. A series of other bolts tore down from the heavens above, splashing through the point where Shiv's Pillar of Orichalcum crashed against the thick cord of lightning. However, he didn't react to the bottom of Shiv's pillar, which slammed hard against Stormhalt's left shoulder.

The City Lord was driven through the ground as Shiv’s new Toughness Skill smashed into him, but then the lightning around him flared again, and it grew even darker. Any hint of blueness vanished altogether. Now it was pitch-black, darker than the void itself. And more, it did not possess a current. Rather, it was cutting. Splitting. And as it caressed Shiv's Orichalcum—

It hewed through his red-gold protections.

The Deathless cried out as he felt a wound open within his very soul. He ended his Outside Context Problem before he could entirely run out of vitality, and both of the ethereal figures noticed him immediately. The woman pointed at him, and the giant waved his spear. A chain of crashing bolts extended out from the massive fork of electricity rising from Stormhalt’s body. They impacted Shiv's pillar, and despite the Deathless infusing himself with as much Toughness as he could—so much Toughness that he couldn’t move whatsoever—he felt himself unravel as the lightning tore into his skill and ripped his soul open from the inside.

The attacks were intrusive—and Shiv had a guess as to why.

Animancy-infused…

"Godsdamn it," Shiv hissed. Soul wounds were another kind of pain altogether. Three bloody slashes erupted along Shiv's chest, but the giant wasn't done. Another bolt hit him, this one charged with a thundering tip of gold at the end. Shiv felt his temporal shell shatter, and he was launched downward and pinned to the ground as strings of electricity began to writhe and burrow deeper into his flesh. Shiv groaned, and he shook his head. Right, that plan didn't go so well.

He slammed his hand against the ground and tried to push himself up, but a resounding boom of thunder hit him like a falling hammer. It was injected into his body by the cords of lightning connected to him, and spots formed in his eyes as the concussion passed through his insides. Yet his organs remained unharmed, and his bones were not cracked. It was purely a stunning attack, one meant to daze him long enough for Stormhalt to seize him by the neck once more.

Before Shiv could respond this time, the City Lord held up a hand, and a stream of falling lightning tore through the top side of the ship. A massive mace was forged from the stormstuff in an instant. It was pitch black as well, and he tapped it against Shiv's head gently. The Deathless tried to respond. He flexed his gravitic field, attempting to throw the City Lord off, but even more chains of pitch-black electricity wound themselves around him, holding him in place. With every passing second, they injected more concussive blasts into his body. It was as if his insides were being rattled about, especially his brain.

And just then Shiv heard a bewitching melody; a low, trilling sound that came with the words sung within his mind. "Hush, hush, do not fight. Open your heart to me and let me show you new delights."

Shiv's Psycho-Cartography screamed while the rest of him relaxed. Hearing the music filled his body with relief and pleasure. And the singer continued on, her voice rising another two octaves.

The song ended as a large gray hand shot up and seized the City Lord by the ankle. “What in—” Stormhalt’s words died with a cry as he was wrenched through the ground. Shiv's eyes widened as he saw the City Lord vibrate, sink down, and then solidify with his waist halfway through the walkway they stood on.

"What..."

The world spun, but the Deathless took full advantage of what he assumed to be Bonk's intervention. Shiv spiked himself at Stormhalt and drove a right hook against the man's face. Stormhalt didn't budge. The necklace he wore beneath his armor flared brighter, shining through the plates protecting him, and a crash of thunder exploded out from his head. A fist of stretching lightning struck Shiv, and he found himself launched through cylinder after cylinder, bouncing across the room. A moment later, as he used his Biomancy to fix his injuries and restore his equilibrium, he heard a deafening crash. The entire ship shook. The chamber was drowned in blinding light.

Shiv winced and looked away, and when he managed to force his eyes open once more, the massive form of a club-wielding orc was driven into him by a chain of black lightning. Both of them were smashed against the walls, and the dark electricity wrapped around them before tightening like thorny brambles. They turned with force, and Shiv cursed as he found himself bundled tight against his orc-comrade.

"Hey, Insul!" Bonk slurred. Half his face was severely swollen, and his jaw was split open. Shiv blinked. It didn’t take the divinely empowered Stormhalt much to incapacitate a Heroic-Tier orc at all.

Shiv swiped his Aegis of Assimilation over Bonk. A mana hydra consumed the orc's many wounds, and it came alight with a constellation of injuries. The orc's insides were ruptured. His bones were floating about in parted shards. It was like someone had detonated a series of explosions inside him, and Shiv realized it was probably from the concussions injected by the strings of lightning. The strings of lightning were now lashing through every cylinder within the room. Metal screamed and peeled apart as shivering fingers of electricity crept along the walls, along the ceiling, along the ground.

Hovering in the air then was City Lord Havel Stormhalt. His helmet was back on, and the dark blue Aeromancy mana he possessed spilled from his dense helmet in a horizontal beam of light.

"I thought you said it was gonna be easy," Bonk grumbled. "I slammed my club into his cock three times down there. Three times. Once is usually enough to put down one of your human males."

"Yeah, well, I didn't know he had two Ascendants hiding up his ass," Shiv replied with a grimace.

The City Lord held out his mace. "You made a mistake coming here. I take you now into Inquisitorial custody, showing you the leniency you failed to offer my Pathbearers. But thereafter, I will put you to the question, and I will drive every confession from your lips. Until there is nothing but truth left inside you. Until there are no lies left for me to discover.”

Stormhalt’s voice shook the chamber, but Shiv knew that wasn’t the City Lord’s own power. Havel had ripped his knuckles open, hitting Shiv. Now, he was on a whole other level of power.

Shiv looked around the room. The ethereal figures were nowhere to be seen, yet there was still a pressure in the atmosphere, and that massive pillar of black lightning continued to stream upward from Stormhalt's body, binding him to the skies above.

"Yeah, I don't really think so," Shiv said. "Tell you what, if you throw that mace down and you come with me as a hostage so I can blackmail Hawgrave into releasing Blackedge, we'll call it even."

The City Lord leaned back. "So she already has the town in her blade, then?"

Shiv winced. Maybe he should have thought about what he was going to say before he said it. Bonk lightly flicked Shiv over the back of the head with his free hand. "Operational security, Insul. Come now. This isn't your first fight."

Shiv tried to project his Psychomancy to Bonk, hoping to establish a telepathic link, but it only made him wince in pain. His Biomancy and Chronomancy had recovered thanks to their high skill levels, but his other magical skills remained shredded from his earlier encounter with the Tarrasque. Shiv sighed. "Alright, Bonk, new plan."

"Which is?" Bonk asked.

“I make shit up and improvise. Can Hu,” Shiv whispered. “If you can hear me, fly the ship toward the Tarrasque and get us into the fight. The City Lord wants a fight, so drag him into it. Bail before you get close.”

A vicious scoff escaped Stormhalt as he twirled the mace in his hands. He drifted through the air as branching lengths of lightning pulled him through the devastated chamber. As he moved, the column of lightning connecting him to the sky continued cleaving a large gap into the ceiling above. "And while we are here, I wish to know exactly why you possess the capacity to return from death. The orc has told us such interesting things about you…”

Shiv reminded himself to kill 812 as painfully and debilitatingly as he possibly could when he next ran into the orc. Which was hopefully soon, because that was where Blackedge was found as well, within Hawgrave's greatsword. Cords of lightning connected to Stormhalt reared back as if they were serpents, but Shiv's Psycho-Cartography skill triggered within him, and he realized he had more options than just brute force.

Psycho-Cartography: He has engaged you repeatedly because his pride is wounded, and he wants to gain a feeling of retribution from you. It can be exploited—as can his hatred of Roland Arrow. Use that to focus his attention.

"Well, let me tell you something first, Stormhalt," Shiv said, pointing a finger at the City Lord. "Roland Arrow isn't yours to kill. He's mine. In fact, I wouldn't be here trying to take you prisoner if I weren't going for Roland Arrow. Truth be told, I don't care about your whole Ascendant civil war bullshit, Sacred Phylacteries, whatever." The Deathless caught a slight curl of Bonk's lip. The orc intuitively knew what he was doing. In fact, Shiv would probably guess that the orc also had something of a Master-Tier psychology skill. "I'm here for one thing and one thing alone: Roland Arrow's head, and I'll be godsdamned if you or any Ascendants are going to stop me from getting to him."

Silver Tongue 33 > 34

Rather than shooting forward, the bolts of lightning connected to Havel slackened as they lost tension. The City Lord lowered his black mace slightly. "Then that wasn't a ruse? What you told us earlier, when you infiltrated this ship, that was true?"

Shiv wanted to struggle against the lightning holding him, but they cut into his flesh and soul with every movement. But he didn’t need to be the one that broke this deadlock. He just needed to delay long enough to… Well, come up with some other bullshit as Can Hu drove them closer to the battlefield.

Shiv wasn't sure that the City Lord could contend with the Tarrasque, but considering how he'd managed to survive both Bonk and Shiv's attacks with contemptuous ease, the Deathless decided that he wanted to find out just how powerful an Avatar of the Ascendants truly was—but secondhand this time.

Because learning first-hand sucked all the ass in the world.