501 How to Siege a Gate [I]

Adept Adam. Select six Pathbearers from the class for your team. Keep in mind that everyone you do not choose will be arrayed against you when the exercise begins.

They will hold Practice Hill, along with its Category 1 mana core. One of them will be voted in as Hill Lord, and they will use the mana core against you and your teammates. Your goal is to push the remainder of the class out of the hill and take hold of it by any means necessary.

Adam, you and your team will get no further support. You will be granted no additional resources. You will be granted no intelligence. You will be on your own, left in the woods to plan and engage of your own accord.

Secure and hold Practice Hill for the next four classes. However, I have obtained explicit permission from the offices of campus safety and student affairs for you to engage in “extracurricular” aspects of this exercise.

To make things plain, you are allowed to interfere and sabotage each other outside of class without risk to the grades from your other classes.

Any and all means, Pathbearers. Any and all means but death.

—Captain Harry Irons, Tac-Strat 309

501

How to Siege a Gate [I]

2 Weeks Prior…

“So, sometimes, you just gotta hire someone to rub folds with the enemy before you can smuggle your dick up their ass.”

“Of course.”

“A very sensible statement.”

“Truly profound.”

“I concur. I concur thusly.”

It didn't really bother Maria that the orcs were assholes. What did, however, was how they thought themselves comedic geniuses on top of it.

At present, as the Realmrunner’s flame-sculpted form, projected against the underside of the Tutorial’s bleak clouds, continued with his horrifically vulgar and borderline nonsensical dissertation on how they were to break into Gate Piety, Maria stood atop the balcony of an old war tower jutting out from the wasteland, trying to ignore how all orcs she could sense within the few hundred square kilometers of her Awareness acted as if they were part of an academic function.

They were all dressed like intellectuals from a variety of cultures. Most of them had well-tailored suits they'd made for themselves, stitched pristinely and press-cleaned to a glorious, glowing sheen. Some of them favored long, flowing coats with tassels along their hips, while the others had body-gloves, but all of them shared a common aesthetic in the handkerchief they had neatly folded over their breast pockets. Upon that handkerchief was Maria’s embroidered face—pre-made to match her current “unfrowning” expression.

Every time the Realmrunner said anything bordering on tactical advice, mumbled a slur, or simply burped, they would all mutter things like, “Truly revolutionary; I never considered it that way,” or, “Yes, and his reference to the Insul’s undersized mammaries is not actually a low-effort attempt at sexual harassment, but actually a subtextual indicator of the need for stealth and deception.”

Unfortunately for all of them, her disapproval could only go so far. Her patience held for, as much as she loathed to admit it, she was actually interested in what the Realmrunner was trying to present. Though his words were laden with vile phrases and ribald analogies, the tools he had at his disposal and the strategy he sought to employ held actual promise.

Few were capable of traversing the Outside effectively, and the number of Pathbearers who had several lifetimes of experience smuggling cargo through the most perilous portions of the Outside was in the low single digits. But even that was the lesser benefit provided by the Realmrunner, for he had a means of masking his presence from the Farwalkers and Chorus as a whole, plus the resources to generate a short-lived dimensional shunt-tunnel that used its instability to squeeze mass quantities of goods and people across incomprehensibly vast distances.

All that information was coming together to paint a very vivid image as to how he intended to make his approach over into the Stranger’s Garden. Still, what she really wanted to know was his strategy for breaching their way into Gate Piety itself.

“Now, sticking to the fucking metaphor: The Stranger’s Garden is our proxy-pussy—since we already know the Outsider’s rubbing bits with the fucks at Gate Piety. And since some of your Weird-Boys peeking over into the Outside managed to figure out that the Stranger’s Garden gateway triggers a few times every week, we got both pattern and opportunity developing here—consistent enough for us to time our thrust after shrinking our cocks down to the proper size for subtle infiltration.”

“What beautiful verbal poetry,” Lungthief muttered right next to Maria, pretending to wipe a tear from his eye. The recently reborn Adept orc adjusted his tie, made from a nominally fitting pair of lungs he'd “pickpocketed” out of another orc’s ears a few hours prior. “Insul, are you not awed by our new friend’s linguistic capabilities?”

Maria deliberately ignored Lungthief—even as he nudged her with his elbow. Even as he did it again. And again. And again. He was on the verge of nudging her a fifth time when he was spontaneously booted off the balcony by a heavy punt. Lungthief’s rear—and entire pelvis—caved in and exited through his front. A spray of half-liquefied organs was whipped outward across the horizon in jets of puffing gore while the rest of him peeled and scattered until he was less than particulates upon the wind.

“Ah, damn,” a voice mumbled. The Breaker sauntered up next to Maria, holding a hand over his eyes and squinting into the distance. “I was trying to kick him over the bend. Forgot he was still an Adept and all squishy like. Sorry, brother. I'll buy you a drink on your next go-around.” Promise made, he lowered his head and grinned at her. “Anyway, how’s the presentation going, sister?”

Something almost approximating a polite smile spread across Maria’s face. It canceled out against her frown, so her lips became a contorted line. “The Realmrunner continues to indulge in his eccentricities. But I see his vision. If only the rest of my armies were so focused.”

The Breaker barked a laugh. “Oh, they’re focused, sister—more focused than a mob of druggies who just caught a whiff of that last bag of high they’ll be getting for the month. They’re just trying to piss you off, is all.”

“I am aware.”

“Are they succeeding?”

“Will they be pleased to know that I am rather annoyed?”

“Nah. My folk got higher standards. They’re trying to get your measure. You’re fun to tease because you glare but don’t really react beyond that. It’s like a challenge. Most people break pretty early—even the ones who think themselves all tough-like. You, though… You care less than most, but the few things you do think about are always churning in your mind.” His smirk grew wider—and somehow more genuine. “Might not believe this, sister, but I actually like that about you, yeah. It tickles me to see someone who’s pretty much the shape of their legend and not much more.”

“Not much more?” Maria repeated. She wasn’t sure if she was being praised or insulted anymore. The Breaker had a great many Legendary Skills. Delivering mixed messages with a smile on his face was premier amongst all of them.

“I’m just saying that you’re pure and straight. No kayfabe with you at all. Everyone usually does a little theater. They imagine themselves a little more than who they actually are—it’s a little lie to hold up the tent protecting their little egos. You don’t have that. You’re almost perfectly shaped like yourself. I guess that’s why you have that Harbinger now, huh? You and the Deathless are both almost perfectly yourselves. Both Insuls. Both pretty close to unbothered by my like.” He rubbed his chin in contemplation as he looked out over the orc-filled horizon. “I wonder, what does that tell you about us orcs that only the ones who are known to themselves are fit to use us?”

The answer was self-evident. “It’s less about you and more about how easy it is for you to prey upon another,” Maria said. “You are an externally facing race—made for war and nothing beyond. Hence, the oddities in your culture, and my position as Insul. There is little in common between the Deathless and me. But we are the same when it comes to you.”

“The same?”

“Yes. We are, as you say, close to our internalized legend. But that’s not the part that matters. The part that matters is that we are made to prey upon you instead of the other way around.”

And so the Breaker’s interest was piqued—the character he played receded, and the monster beneath surfaced to gauge her words in person. “And how is that? How do you prey upon us?”

“You are, as you say, a ‘mob of druggies who just caught a whiff of that last bag of high they’ll be getting for the month.’ That itch inside narrows your choices. Narrows who you can become, and how you react. Yes, you can surprise me with how you approach something, but the punchline is always the same. In this respect, you cannot walk away as I do. You cannot choose to be something else—to avoid a fight. Even now, I can see it in the churning of your heart and the reverberations of your mind.”

“And what do I want right now? What am I thinking and feeling, sister?” His voice dropped an octave as the Realmrunner loudly simulated various acts of eldritch fellatio—describing at length how he once blew a god to death with his Sex Skill.

Maria looked up and met the Breaker's golden eyes. “You want to finish the battle we had before properly. You want to know which of us is the better killer. Mentally, you’re thinking about how you can use your Necromancy to break my Harbinger before it becomes too problematic for you to handle. You’re relatively confident about the rest of my skills—but my daggers paired with the Harbinger, along with my capacity for summons, leaves you wary of an attritional fight. Because that’s a fight you will certainly lose.”

“I wouldn’t say certainly,” the Breaker breathed—almost incensed by her confidence.

The power she had over him was enough to bring about a true—cruel—grin on her face. “I would. After all, I am provoking you right now. I am dragging you close to the edge of violence. That you can barely hold back from finding out firsthand how truthful my claims are is clear to see for anyone with eyes. But unfortunately, I can do this, and you will have to suffer for it.”

“Hm? Do what?” the Breaker asked, suddenly confused.

Maria explained by turning away from him and saying nothing. Several seconds passed as the Breaker blinked—still moments away from full comprehension. In the sky above, the Realmrunner was loudly sobbing about something Maria hadn't caught, but she sensed genuine pain rippling across the Tutorial.

“Oh. Oh. You conniving little sucker.” Understanding hit the Breaker. Maria’s claim struck home. Primal anger warred with begrudging mirth as he let out a rough laugh, struggling to process how he'd allowed her to master him. “I see what you’ve done. I see it now. Yeah. Yeah. Dirty little trick.”

“It burns bad inside you now, does it not?” Maria asked, hiding her taunt in a question. “Your thoughts are getting turbulent. But there’s a lot of heat inside your core. It was hard for me to read before, but now that I’ve had a chance to learn your nature, you are quite plain beneath the mask. I see why you always wear your costumes. You need your little lies to keep yourself from devolving into a vessel of pure violence, don’t you? Because you have nothing but that which is in your name. You need a story to give yourself something else. Too much orc, not enough person.”

The Breaker clenched his teeth—and several of them shattered as spreading fractures expanded over his person. A dense shroud of pitch-black loathing further laced with growing respect spewed out from his wounds. “Strike… delivered,” he ground out. “Point… received.”

But as his words remained polite, his insides were aflame with a single desire. His eyes crackled and blazed with festering Necromancy, and the orc-themed armor he wore began to deform and rust. She could hear the disembodied announcer that came with his greatest Skill begin doing vocal warm-ups in the background—loud enough to distract the Realmrunner and draw the attention of the other orcs.

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All the other orcs in the Tutorial.

“Alright, which one of you fuck-bags is heckling me?” the Realmrunner bellowed from his heavenly position. “If you’re gonna be so godsdammed rude, then I’ll just fuck off, I guess! You can find someone else to help you breach this Gate and fist all the fuckers inside to death!”

Yet, loud as the Realmrunner was, he might as well have not existed at all. To Maria, there was only her and the Breaker—whose self-control was on the verge of slipping. Deliciously, though, he couldn’t afford to. Because the Challenger said so. And because the moment he breached the word of his god, the Breaker would find himself properly broken—for unless one was the apex of killers, there was still an order they were beholden to.

“War is politics by other means,” Maria whispered to the Breaker through her Harbinger, running a proverbial finger across his mind. “And so pure politics is victory without war. Can you do the same? Do you even have the will to win without fighting? Do you have the capacity to pull yourself away from a fight you’ve been dreaming of for months?”

The answer was no. Of course. Of all the orcs created by the Challenger, only one was known for deliberately starving himself, and that was the other Grand Maestro, the turncoat, the prodigal son, currently far away. This Culturist might have been the only one that could hold himself in temporary restraint before Maria's calculated provocations. The Breaker, though? His specialty was simply that he was more orc than any other orc, a purist of violence that hypnotized himself with theatrical performance to stay within the boundaries of coherence.

All it took was a tug via the Harbinger—a hint and a taunt turned challenge that the orc was fated to fail.

Then, just as the announcer started to clear his throat, he was interrupted by another presence looming above. The Realmrunner was imprinted upon the heavens as an animated image of flame, but a greater shadow now silhouetted him, a shadow that was beyond description, yet instantly recognizable regardless. It was the shape of strife and ruin itself.

Clouds shifted, turning into an outline of scabs to define his contours. The befouled atmosphere blazed with fire and ruin as distant stars went supernova, filling in the spots of his eyes. They glared down as blazing pits, and the Challenger said nothing, merely loomed as he made his intent known.

The Breaker forced himself to calm, as much as the Breaker could, anyhow. His blood was high, and he wanted to discover the truth that lay between him and the Legend-Philosopher before him.

Across the four corners of the Tutorial, the soil shook, and rubble moved. The tips of pylons, meant to be posts for a grand stage to a tournament, threatened to ascend, reaching the ground like a toddler's first teeth, but they froze beneath the Challenger's presence. His partial manifestation inflicted a gravity upon the world that couldn't be denied, especially by his most favored Maestro.

Maria could hear the Breaker's bones cracking, could feel his soul flickering like a candle kissed by a storm. But he refused to go out. Even now, an orc was an orc still in the face of certain death. Before his master, the hound still had hound enough in him, but in the end, not hound enough to deny the master’s will.

Just enough to express what he was, and to prove true Maria’s analysis.

When the Realmrunner didn't speak for another five seconds, she looked up again in suspicion and saw a new scene displayed upon the screen of clouds. The entire war-torn dimension of the Tutorial was captured by a new scene unfolding: their Insul and Grand Maestro in a standoff.

Her victory, small though it was, could be seen by all, and now the orcs regarded her with a higher measure than before. It wasn't that they hadn't respected her. They'd simply still been desperate to test her. Now that urge had diminished, for they understood that while she was not among them, she was a predator like them. Their attentions and behaviors subsided as some began tearing away the elaborate costumes they wore to deliver this concert of mockery. They fell into their cliques as they conversed amongst each other, discussing with full focus the coming raid on the gate known as Piety and the Demigod who made a foe of their progenitor.

The Realmrunner's attention fell on Maria as well. It lasted a half second, but that was enough for them to trade insights. She read upon the face of that wretched goblin-ogre an intellect that seeped through, much the same way the beast within the Breaker burst past his facade.

The Realmrunner and the Breaker were not so different, but the former, as with all things, was far more shallow. His shield was not an attempt at deluding himself into functionality, but another means of protection and invasion, all to prevent himself from falling prey to a higher power.

He was, in effect, the greatest rat in Integration, and the greatest rats were always smarter than they were quick or desperate. In return, he gleaned something from her, something he didn't like. She read that on his expression, from the little narrow pinprick he called a heart. But then he resumed his discourse, and all was cast aside. Cast aside, but not forgotten.

The Breaker drew in a sudden rasp that broke down into a fit of forced laughter. He slowly brought a large hand to rest upon Maria's back; her eyes cut across the space between them, swinging like a battle axe to strike the Breaker's form.

There was more than a little warning in her glare, and he gave her an easygoing smile as he patted her back twice before retracting his arm. That was his best attempt at declaring a truth. "Alright, point taken. Well received. Well struck, sister. I got a little greedy, and you made me bite my tongue." He widened his lips and showed her the fangs he broke apart earlier in a display of acknowledgment. “Again, I gotta compliment you on a blow well struck, but I'm gonna tell you this now: You won't do that again. We won't do that again, because if you do, it's gonna be blood between you and me. Yeah, it's gonna be blood. My reincarnation be damned.”

Maria acknowledged his threat with a slight nod, and they lapsed into a shared silence as the Realmrunner made an inexplicable noise somewhere between snorting snot back up his nose and a cough to draw everyone's attention back to himself before he continued his debauched declarations. In that silence, something else formed between the Breaker and Maria: their attention was perpetually laced together, and as she had his measure, she began thinking how to best use him in the coming battle. He'd learned that he couldn't wield her the same way, and so the power dynamic shifted. At least when it came to the politics of war, one of them stood a full head above the other. When it came to destruction and compelling the orcs, however, the dynamic shifted.

All things Maria assessed and had to consider. All things that would be in play when the war was in motion.

In the end, the Realmrunner's grand plan, deciphered through all his dozens of hours of spewing vulgarities, was disturbingly complicated. Perhaps it was best to say that he didn't have a single grand plan, but a concert of plans all clashing together, and he made use of practically every resource he was allowed and then some. The first thing he desired was an infiltration, him alone. This act of daring was the most surprising thing about him. He seemed the type to avoid all danger, and yet here he was, plunging headlong into an Outsider god's personal dimension, where the space of their realm and their actual body held no separation.

But then what he said next surprised her twice over.

“Yeah, I know what you're thinking. I know what you're thinking. Fat little thing like me walks right in there. I'm a fucking snack, right? The Fingerlings are gonna pull me apart. Well, bad news for you: I'm not going through the Outside! I already got a solution in place. That last little stretch within the Garden, yeah, that's gonna be a tight little run, but thankfully for you obese motherfuckers, I have a plan for that too. A real cunning one. But for this plan to work, I need all of you to be circumspect, and I don't exactly trust your fat gray lips from flapping about.”

A grand chorus of boos followed from the orcs, but Maria noticed the Realmrunner fiddling with his time-tuning device in the projection. Once more, her mind cleaved towards the mystery that mechanism brought, and the Realmrunner developed a particularly vicious smile that flashed for about half an instant before subsiding underneath his practiced sneer.

“In the meantime, I'm gonna need all of you to get ready. We're gonna have an artificial gateway, real unstable. You're gonna be shunted across like month-old diarrhea along an asshole that's on the verge of un-puckering, so you're gonna be blasted through and gonna be charging as fast as you can. But we're not going to be ambushing them through the Tutorial Gateway!”

All the orcs quieted down at that instant. Maria leaned in, and the Breaker responded in the same way, his eyes narrowing in consideration.

“We're not, because that's right underneath the mana core, and they're going to be dumping all that shit on us. No. What we're going to do is called an onion shuffle, right? In which we make them do something that's perfectly expected, and then we use that something to our advantage. Now, we know they're attached to more than one Eldritch domain. We also know that the Stranger is the stronger of the two Eldritch domains because the other one has gone to a 22-year-old ground-elf! Fucking carpenter on a cross, they're giving babies crazy shit these days. I was born in the wrong generation… Anyway, Orchestra One is going to be the suiciders. You guys are going to be pushing out through the Tutorial gateway when we have a brief moment of control, but you're gonna be distractions. I want you all to be wearing those mana bombs I gave you. I don't need you assholes to finish the raid all on your own. I just need you to get in place and set yourselves off! You understand? Blow the fuck out of yourselves! Bring destruction across the Gate so that we can get a proper foothold!”

The Realmrunner took a long breath as he began the next part of his explanation. “We need you to create a curtain of dimensional and temporal instability around Peacehold—stupid ass name, by the way—where the other fucking traitor orcs are. If things go right and they act how we expect them to, the toughest of them are going to be stuck in the middle, and that's where they'll be, slaughtering you guys while plugging up the leak. We're not going to get through the leak, as I said, and there's not gonna be one leak. At the same time, I'm gonna need that ground-elf Insul of ours—” He pointed down from the sky at Maria. “—to go home and muster up some of the best vampires she has. You're going to be trying to slip through the Abyssal gateway when their numbers thin during the attack. How are you gonna get in? I don't fucking know, alright? That's your problem. If you can't do it, you're a piece of shit. Did you hear that? If your Insul can't get in on her own through the Abyssal gateway and actually support you, she's useless, and you should eat her. But she should get in with her lead infiltrators and assassins. Maybe bring some assassin orcs, I don't know. I'm not a military strategist; I'm the guy who opens the door for you. You figure that shit out on your own.”

He cleared his throat again. “But meanwhile, I'm going to need your Seekers to convene and do whatever that weird Eldritch shit is that you do. I think there's an angle we can take in which you slip your way in using the Dreamtaker's sloppy hand-me-downs to carry other attacks over into the Gate. How this works, I don't know either. I'll leave that shit to you, but I'm saying that I can get you to the remainder of the Dreamtaker's realm. You just have to figure out what else you can do there. If you can't do anything, well, I can't help you, right? I'm not being paid here to help you conquer the entire game. Again, I'm just helping you get in.”

“All I'm hearing are three vectors of disturbance and disruption,” Maria noted. “If you are so certain that they can push us back through the Tutorial gateway and you want me to slip through the Abyssal gateway, then which one will be our actual foothold?”

The Realmrunner threw his head back and guffawed. “I'm glad you asked, bitch, because this is my master stroke, my nastiest, nastiest plan. This is why we're gonna blow up the Tutorial gateway first, to make it seem real messy. Before we blow it up, there is a critical part of our plan, and that's gonna need you, Legend-Philosopher, to get in early. A lot of pressure's riding on you because I need you to snatch someone, and then I need you to make sure that you're on the other side when I come in through the Tutorial gateway. We're gonna be moving something real quick, something special.”

That was all it took for a series of pieces to snap together in Maria's mind. She lifted her head and gave an acknowledging nod. It was a good plan, a very devious plan.

The people of Gate Piety could only interface with the Stranger's Garden because they had a specific mechanism, a slipgate, that allowed them to hijack and align with frequencies across Integration. It was, frankly, a marvel of magic and dimensional engineering. There were several components to it, along with a central engineer. Doubtless, she was tasked with kidnapping and then looting the necessary components, especially while it was active to keep the portal to the Stranger's Garden open.

If one could get into the Gate and could smuggle the necessary individuals and resources out while that gateway was open, at the same time using temporal mastery, then it would deprive Gate Piety of one of their finest edges. It would also allow the forces of the Challenger to hijack the surface gateway in turn while the defenders of Piety were distracted along two other axes.

“He's an absolute liar,” Maria muttered under her breath.

“Hm?” the Breaker grunted.

“The Realmrunner presents himself to be the fool of fools, but he has this all planned. It's like he's somehow spent years preparing for a raid on Gate Piety. Or perhaps he's done this so much that this is all second nature to him now. Just how powerful is he?”

“Power is not exactly the word I'd use to describe the ol’ Runner.” The Breaker grinned. “Protected and connected. Oh, and would you like to hear a little secret?”

Maria wasn't sure if she did. But in this circumstance, her curiosity still got the better of her. As the Realmrunner rambled on about what kind of venereal diseases they needed to spread to cripple the defenders most adequately, she connected to the Breaker's mind, and he whispered something to her that made her flinch with disbelief.

“He's going to be walking in using the Farwalker outpost. He's going to waltz right into the Stranger's Garden, and no one's ever going to see that shit coming at all.”

The Breaker grinned, while Maria frowned, unable to believe the claim. “But the Farwalkers, won't they—”

“Nah, sister, nah. They won't see him coming. They won't see him at all. It is impossible for them to see him. After all, they don't even exist on the same wavelength of time.”

“Wavelength of…” Another epiphany dawned on Maria. She wasn’t fully certain about this one, but something inside her chest tightened with alarm. “That time-tuner, was that granted to him by…”

The Breaker held up a large finger and shushed her.

***

The Umbral knew. That much was clear. The Realmrunner could read it on her face and posture even from several dimensions over. He had to mind himself around that one—she was a purebred killer; the longer he stayed around her, the more his skin screamed for him to get away.

Didn’t matter he was a whole Tier above her—if someone didn't put her down, she was going to leave a bloody gash across Integration at some point. All the Harbinger fucks did.

As he continued his performance for the orcs, his benefactors crackled a chain of messages to him across time—urging him to see his army made ready for intrusion.

Truth be told, it was he who left a trail for the Breaker to follow, allowed him to find Road’s End, all so that he could be begrudgingly bribed into giving this service, this breach of Gate Piety.

In the greater truth, Avalon activated him the moment it failed to Excaliburize the Deathless.

Everything that followed from that was just manufactured circumstance. Besides, the Realmrunner had a few pieces of cargo to reclaim from Piety as well. Stray goods he let spread across the world to serve as his little informants.

No one ever really escaped from the Realmrunner. They just thought they did, and they always ended up in interesting places for him to continue his harvesting runs. Him losing that last batch of goods wasn't a great outcome, but considering everything he saw through his daughter-slave’s eyes, Gate Piety was going to be the haul of hauls.

A bunch of Unique Pathbearers and a couple of Standalones?

Yeah. This was going to be a good time. A real good fucking time.

All he had to do was apply a little finesse, and after that, well, the rest of the process would be parliamentary.