Chapter 868 504 The Odds [II]

There are a few kinds of collateral damage you'll experience in war. The first category I'd like to call the unfortunates, because usually they're Low-Tier Pathbearers or Non-Martials. The people who have no chance of surviving an artillery shell falling near them or shrapnel ripping through the room they're in. You don't want to kill them, but sometimes things happen. Physics is a harsh mistress, and objects that are in motion stay in motion until they find themselves stopped suddenly inside the skull of a five-year-old goblin kid who was sneaking through the wrong basement at the wrong time.

Then, on the other end of the spectrum is the second category of collateral damage—the category of "Oh, Ascendants, oh, sweet System, I really should have aimed better.”

Any War Mage or mercenary who lives long enough will eventually experience a moment like this. You unleash a Siege Spell on a castle wall. Part of the wall tumbles through the air and smashes into a nearby tavern. That part of the wall is then thrown back at you at a speed at which half your circle can't react, turning them into bloody paste. In barely missing you by the length of an arm, you're still torn off your feet by the momentum, but then that's the thing that saves your life. Because in the next moment, some drunk Heroic-Tier Pathbearer with an axe the size of a small building slams down foot-first on the head of your commander, bursting him like a grape before vanishing through your auxiliaries in a tide of blood and gore.

If this sounds a little too vivid, well, that's because I've lived on both sides of the equation multiple times over. I've been the guy in the inn who got bombed. Why did I have to respond? Because I don't know if I'm being targeted deliberately or if it's an accident, and I can't waste time trying to figure things out diplomatically if they're actually trying to kill me. I have to respond the same way the guys I accidentally bomb have to respond, because any Pathbearer who's lived for a century, who's a Hero or a Master or anything worth their salt in combat, likely has a city worth of enemies out hunting for them. Remember this: we are children of Integration. That means that we live among wolves by default, not lambs.

So, you mind what you hit. You sculpt that spell to the best of your ability, and make sure you don't accidentally take the head off of some kid, because the worst case of all involves both of the aforementioned categories. In that worst case, you kill some unfortunate goblin kid in the wrong basement somewhere, but the guy who comes after you next isn't some drunk in a tavern responding in a blind frenzy for self-preservation. No, it's that goblin's Heroic-Tier father or Legendary-Tier great-grandmother.

Mind your godsdamn aim.

—Memoirs of a Master-Tier War Mage

504

The Odds [II]

Melaia judged the student trained by her utopian alternate and found the girl wanting. Corcusa was lacking in neither skill nor cunning. Her mana was ample, and her mastery over theoretical and practical substantial. What she suffered, however, were even greater deficiencies than the Deathless himself. Her heart was more than shriveled; it was castrated. It was deprived of all the fundamental experiences needed for one to be a philosopher. In essence, her shape was a counterfeit Harbinger.

She was desperate to control every aspect of herself, for that was the shape of her resentment. She was, in effect, a pawn since birth, used by the Great One in a great game greater than herself, greater than anything she could fathom. Now she wanted to be great in turn to seize back control, to be a player in Integration rather than just another piece. With that being her driving factor, how then could she suffer the torments of enlightenment? How then could she fully conceptualize and internalize the experiences needed to understand that she was only a part, could only be a part of totality, and not totality itself?

Avalon has misshapen you. The Excaliburization and your time in Paradise have left you undone. I would have never chosen you as you were, as there is no yearning for life itself, for experience itself, toward enlightenment itself for me to see. You seek an escape, but the Harbinger is not an escape. The Harbinger is the experience of eternal drowning, and as you drown, you do not die. As you drown, you go deeper, and you accept the pain that comes with drowning to learn where the boundless depths might lead.

She wanted to speak such words to Corcusa to elaborate on things, but decided that clarity was too perfidious. As with the Deathless, the girl would demonstrate her own value or succumb and be rendered worthless. They were so alike in many ways, but where she had some hope for the boy who named himself Shiv, she was uncertain when it came to the weapon forged by the Great One and stolen by the Challenger.

And so she sealed away Maria Corcusa to see if the girl could surface on her own, could break through this looping cocoon and realize that she was trapped deeper within the cave than ever before and wreathed by her own memories. For someone to align mind with feeling and spot the fact that they were lost amid shadows was a fine demonstration of potential, but it was only a start. It was only the possibility of growth rather than the certitude that one might yearn for enlightenment more than they wish to assert control.

These thoughts and countless more passed through Melaia just as an onslaught of strikes and spells did the same. The other Chronomancers on the offensive held little to no spark at all. No willingness to give themselves over to virtue, to accept and struggle against the weight of things. No, they were fully embodied and so rooted in obsession with particular things, to specific impulses that they came pre-damned, unable to be delivered from their miserable states.

The orcs especially were walking tragedies, each one reincarnated so many times. So deep of experience and memory, so versed in skill, struggle, and development. Yet ultimately so very shriveled, so very simple in desire, and so very narrow. The worth of sorrow and the pleasure of true community would be beyond the bulk of them. The Culturist, on his part, now held more than a spark. He was an ember that could be cultivated into a flame yet. But the newly-birthed pain in him was too deep, too true, too rooted in a world that wasn't. He had been stolen from a fantasy and deprived of his highest want. He had attained full personhood, yet with it arrived all the pains connected to it. One could not expect to obtain a full spectrum of emotion and not find oneself more fragile thereafter.

Openness meant exposure: exposure to additional inputs and outputs, exposure to more vectors of pain—deeper, more delicious agonies.

But once again, while the Culturist was brittle from within, the other orcs were brittle without. As they struck her, she simply pushed their obvious, hard-flung, and vulgar attacks further into her future for further use. When she saw fit, meanwhile, she retaliated using something both fine and insidious. Threads of snaking emotion lashed out from her, jetting free of her Harbinger in sprays of concentrated translucence. Nothing of solid matter could travel through time without significant burden. The metaphysical weight of spellstuff was also immense and demanded a considerable effort from a chronomancer to carry a spell with another spell.

But the rawness of thought and sensation was another thing entirely. She left bursts of understanding. Epiphanies gained after countless lifetimes. She cast them across the currents of time left in Corcusa’s wake, now anchored to Melaia, who assumed the flow of Chronomancy. Who struck and laid low an entire Orchestra of High-Tier Chronomancers in an instant. For the battlefield they lost was not time, but understanding—enlightenment.

In the end, their hearts were too narrow, their vulnerabilities too many. The orcs burst when they were exposed to the horror of true death, when they were overfed on the nectar of true love, of true community, of everything they weren't and everything they might be able to conceptualize but never truly feel. The yearning that followed was an unmaking, and they collapsed, not truly dead but philosophically so.

The Vultegs, vampires and other Pathbearers besides were not so easy to break, but just as easy to extinguish. They were riven inside, their histories leaving them awash with unsolved regrets, unhealed wounds. They burst along those seams, overwhelmed by grief, by terror, by things undone, by vices unsated, by virtues glimpsed but unpursued.

As Corcusa trapped the boy using her personal timeline, targeting him with her temporal anchors, Melaia did the same—but with far greater control, far greater mastery, far greater foresight. As she cast out her breadth of emotions, she also called forth the magic she stored in her then-present-now-past to clash emotion upon emotion, fire upon fire, and all that existed along the course of this timeline was swallowed by a sea of unraveling comprehension.

Precise knowledge inflicted upon the untempered mind of one who learned of destination without endearing to the journey was as fatal as any blade. All the Chronomancers along the route lifted their mouths in a grand exhalation as the last fibers of consciousness undid themselves, as the mind unleashed itself from the brain. They all crumbled, a grand opera of puppets choosing to slit their own strings and abandon their flesh to escape the miseries riding through their thoughts.

The girl’s mind dimensionals were shattered, unable to hold back a tide that had been building for eons. Their Chronomantic counterparts were rendered helpless in the end as well, for they knew time better than any other, but they were narrow vessels when it came to heart and mind. Melaia found her perspective amplified by exponents and multitudes as she threaded her consciousness into the army of time dimensionals Corcusa had summoned. They drifted wide, pulling apart in all directions across the Gate while unbinding themselves from the Deathless—breaking the existing spells holding him in place. Slowly, unlike all the other Chronomancers contained in the spreading stream, his consciousness came aflame, a paradoxical candle kindled by a stray bolt of lightning amidst a storm of wind and rain.

The Philosopher found herself threatened by a disappointed smile. Udraal had created quite the monster, but it was in this resilience that she pitied the Deathless. He wouldn't fully know the true weight of danger, the true risk of utter destruction, and that was to be his great weakness, his eternal unknown as a philosopher—

Just as Melaia had so many of her own.

“FUCK!”

***

Both curse and consciousness detonated outward from Shiv in a colossal tide. One moment, he knew nothing, severed even from unconsciousness. There was simply the bliss of oblivion, or close to true oblivion as there was. Then the next, there came a thought, and with that thought, a combustion. Shiv shuddered with awareness, and the Deathless was once more.

As he came to, his being felt embroiled in a sea of moving pieces, the edges lined with inflammation and pain. His sanity teetered as some of the edges refused to align their points, caressing then recoiling as memories came undone, disentangling as his mind restored itself.

His near-term memories and emotions came to him first: vicious anger paired with intellectual shame. He'd been led into a trap, and the blow that struck him was overwhelming. It drowned him, a Legend, in an instant, for he had been lured off alone, chasing Corcusa, who'd had a plan for this. She'd known he was going to do this, and so he walked neck-first into her guillotine—leaving his Gate, his people, open to his enemies.

“No…” he growled. Each passing thought carved through his brain matter like chains coated in flaming glass, but pain had long fallen beneath his concern. A wall of notifications greeted Shiv, dismissed in an instant, even as levels swelled through his insides, mingling the twin flames of pain and power into one. A mess of voices called out to him as well: one feminine, worried for his present condition; one low and mocking, sounding like his own; and a final speaker who remained incapacitated, sputtering broken phrases as he slowly came back together piece by piece.

A tide of other details crested within Shiv. His Rat King was still active. Countless images and sounds poured into him, assaulting his dignity. The orcs were butchering people all across his Gate. Shiv could taste the blood, could feel it as if it were flowing across his own skin, could sense countless synaptic shadows winking out as the people they were once bound to found themselves cut down and ripped from this mortal coil. Then there was the falling fire, the devastation ripping through the Gate. A chain of explosions enveloped the space around and within Peacehold as a ring of temporal and dimensional instability created moats within moats. Everything was incoherent carnage, battles unfolding everywhere, with no clear line, with no distinction between which spell was cast by whom.

And even now, Shiv remained trapped upon the waters of time, surging toward the future. He could feel that. He could feel it, but he couldn't quite pull himself away from the raging rapids. It was like a part of him had been broken, the part that remembered how to swim, that could swim at all.

As he struggled in vain, he felt another presence nearby, someone almost familiar. That's when he saw them, all of them leading to her. The Chronomancers were alight with golden mana, their bounded fields tethering their magics and histories one to another. A bolt, barring Shiv's mind from understanding, popped. A bit of magical theory spilled through. This was a magi formation, a concert of Chronomancers pulling and casting in tandem. They also had flickering lances of translucent mana flowing through them, conveying a network that linked memories through their force, or at least it did once. Now that same translucence spilled up into the miasma of gold which defined the space above.

For a second, Shiv wondered why—then he noticed how barren of consciousness each Chronomancer was. There was nothing left of their minds, and so the lore of mentalism had nothing to root itself. As Shiv's mind came back to function, he found himself taking in the fullness of this uncanny scene. The Chronomancers were scattered across the length of his Eldritch body. Each one hovered a half meter above the ruins of his sprawling Garden. They'd been in the process of excavating him, of peeling his rubble and lacerations apart to hunt down the seed from which the Garden poured forth.

But now they bobbed up and down like bodies at the base of a lake, tied to an unseen stone that kept them from surfacing. And he gleaned profound terror from their expressions: a shared look of anguish, of unspeakable pain, of madness inflicted upon them in a collective chain, taunting them about something they discovered, an enlightenment they didn't want and couldn't bear.

Their expressions were lost amidst the clash of rictuses, but they were all rictuses: pleasure, pain, sorrow, torment, joy. The feelings spilling from their cracked cores were different, but the reason behind the breaching of their cores and the quelling of their minds was the same: extremity. It was too much. Whatever they suffered, whatever they imbibed, was far, far too much.

Who did… Who…

Directly above his body, his original body from which the Garden spawned, he saw another two figures. Somehow, he'd missed them until now. Somehow, his Awareness crept back from the outward end to his source. Only now did he see the face of his savior and the trapped shape of his enemy.

Maria Corcusa was wrapped in fine threads of golden translucence. She shuddered and writhed, her Harbinger rattling against the mana imposed upon her, but she couldn't break free. Not so long as she remained within the grasp of her superior Legend-Philosopher.

The names and memories came back into place within Shiv's mind. He tried to rouse himself, tried to summon his own Harbinger, but the skill remained too broken, and he was barely capable of directing any magics besides. He had to suffer as time passed, as he glided toward the future, unable to intervene or defend those who needed him.

He screamed out for Kelhaus, but she disregarded him, even though he saw her gaze descend, even though he knew she was aware of his return. She had to be aware, for his core and his regenerating mind were plain for anyone with a Harbinger to see. She ignored him, just like she ignored the plight of Gate Piety. She might have intervened on his behalf to spare him from capture or destruction, but he realized she cared nothing at all for the others, or perhaps all this was merely another phase in her study.

NovelPhoenix's website has the author's own chapter; this copy was made without permission, and reading there supports them.

And maybe Shiv fell into the same category.

“Your defeat was an undertaking,” the Philosopher began telepathically, still looking at Corcusa rather than him. “And your rivals spared no expense and dared not underestimate your capability, even though she is many times your superior when it comes to cunning. Regarding the art of war, she treated you like the monster you were and found herself rewarded for it. Without my presence, her victory would have been utterly certain. If judged by that alone, one might call you fortunate, guarded by the hand of the System.” Kelhaus held out a hand and tilted it until her thumb was pointed downward. “Yet if one considers what came before the intrusion of the Great One and the sudden incapacitation that afflicted several of your fellow Legends, one might say you were damned from the start. What say you about your odds? What do you think of the statistics that define you?”

Translucence flowed out from her golden form and pooled down a ramp of rubble leading to Shiv's original form. He recoiled in disbelief, and then a flash flood of rage consumed him. He sparked his form, turning radiant in gold, glowing as if heated steel struck by a falling hammer, but his Harbinger was still fractured, only manifesting in shards, not yet coming to form.

“Kelhaus, you fucking—I don’t have time for this shit! You need to… You need to…” Shiv struggled to find the words to enforce his will upon hers. “The Gate—”

The Philosopher finally looked down at him, and there was a faint amusement in her expression, devoid of comedy, but rich with fascination. She wanted him to respond to the question she'd posed. She would only act if he replied. And so Shiv did, absurd though it was. He played his part in the riddle so he could compel Kelhaus to act on his behalf and protect those he couldn't.

“It's all bullshit, all of it. I'm not blessed or cursed. These are circumstances, and they're all coming together, crashing into a big fucking mess. I'm not anything. Everything is just always more and more numbers coming together. Statistics are just like a shadow. It's not the thing itself. It's not a blessing or a curse. It's everyone making their choices or not making any choices crashing together. There, I answered your fucking philosophical question! Now help me, or FUCK OFF!”

Kelhaus almost laughed. He felt it: that bubbling of emotion from her. As always, though, there was little humor behind her impending laughter. “You are saying a shadow is enough: the willingness to accept the world as it is and turn away. Hm. Such might be this one's undoing.” She flicked the cocoon of golden translucence she'd woven around Corcusa and lowered herself toward Shiv. She settled beside his real body, where the garden came free of him, and he felt her presence stabilize him. He felt her form slowly cement around him as his Harbinger was forcibly fused back together.

The pain that followed then was beyond description, but Shiv pressed through with nary more than a gasp of discomfort as he felt his many fragments crash against each other and click until they were fractured yet whole. At the same time, he tried to move, but the hate in his haste accidentally unraveled him a bit more. Rather than responding in anger, Kelhaus pulled his broken bits back into place with a rough tug as she continued her dissertation.

“I believe I've confirmed a few things from the girl. Things about her, a few disappointments, a few surprises, but moreover, a few things about the nature of Avalon and that which it calls Paradise. I see now that it stands anathema to Enlightenment. The version of myself that trained her is my naked inferior. She bestowed too much affection on the girl—her Harbinger is misshapen, and there are so many things she has not felt, so many things she has not considered.”

“So, what, you're saying she's broken like me?” Shiv asked. As he did, he tried striking Corcusa using lashing lacerations, but while his garden trembled, it refused to respond as Kelhaus held him back with a click of her tongue.

“Your limitations are symmetrical, but not so similar. You have been severed of so many essential experiences, and the weight of consequence lies lightly upon you, but she is worse. She, in her nature, is desperate in the assumption that there is a final point of escape, that she can rise out and claim true agency. She is driven by this internalized resentment, much to her path's deprivation.”

“Well, I can get her out of that mess,” Shiv muttered. “If you just let me reach her, I can solve all of her problems at the same time.”

Kelhaus shook her head. “No. I wish to learn more from her. I wish to see if she can surface. I protected you from her. Now I must see if she can provide me with any more knowledge, and so I must keep her guarded from you. For now, I am to mold you back into shape. It took you 20 seconds to recover from a state of total brain death. Udraal succeeded dramatically when he created you—at present, I dare say the Farwalkers, Chorus, and beyond would find you more potent than most of their Legendary-Tier Endhounds.”

Shiv's patience threatened to snap. “Look, Kelhaus—”

“But do you know what else I like about odds? Do you know why I find statistical abnormalities the greatest comedy one can experience?”

“I… well, godsdamned, tell me, then.”

“Because all too often, even when plans are best laid and you believe your power paramount, there are some things that are beyond your knowledge. There are some outcomes beyond your control, like which Pathbearers might walk through a certain gateway at a certain time on a certain day, during a certain invasion.” And Shiv realized Kelhaus was smiling. “The orcs and the Alliance have planned well, but they stepped into the darkest parts of the statistical shadow now, for they could not have foreseen me, just as they could not have foreseen the other two.”

“What other two?” Shiv asked. “Kelhaus?”

“You will greet them yourself in due time when you are whole—and I believe there is something you must retrieve from the Tutorial before it is lost to you forever.”

And as Kelhaus stopped speaking, Shiv felt his Continuity Error rattle and flare as a vision—and a rush of levels—came over him.

Harbinger of Tripartite Ruin 501 > 517

Leviathan of the Shapeless Tides 588 > 600

Lord-Maelstrom of Hungering Kinesis 459 > 467

Continuity Error 413 > 439

***

“No, for the last time, I'm not going to let the Abyssal kill you. That's not what we're here for. We're just going to smooth this out. She's a perfectly reasonable, perfectly patient person. Maybe a little bit too patient… She came to me about this. That's a sign of respect. A bit of fucking decency you don't get when someone is trying to just even the score. Trust me, I know, okay? There's plenty of times I did the other thing. When someone hurt one of you, I just killed them. Let's not forget that. Let's not forget that a big part of the reason why we are having this argument right now is that all those years ago, I decided to knock off half a dozen noble houses for one of you. Sure, fuck it, I will let you call me a drunkard. I will let you curse at me and call me an absentee fuck of a mom, but I repeat myself only once: You will not say that Jessica fucking Hawgrave is about to offer up one of her grandkids as a sacrifice to a System-damned 22-year-old child!”

Jessica's rant echoed loudly and far. It should have been an embarrassing sight to have such a dramatic, near-violent row with one's own family. It would have been if Rusty hadn't erected a dimensional boundary for Jessica to have it out with her two remaining kids and all of their children.

At some point, there was a faint hope on her part that her children wouldn't hold so much of a grudge that they wouldn't regard her as a drunkard—that they would be unreasonably understanding and saintly in their demeanor. Unfortunately, they were far too much like her and not nearly enough like her better half.

Things went from bad to abysmal dogshit the moment she stepped through her eldest daughter's front door.

Some part of Jessica was stupid or still drunk enough to imagine a heartwarming scene where she and her daughter looked upon each other. A complex array of emotions worked through them; it ended in a passionate embrace.

Her daughter did embrace her. Using a fist of Dynamancy.

And so instead of a happy, forgiving hug, things unfolded as a messy brawl through the Small Temples district of the capital.

Things only got worse from there.

As it turned out, both of her son and daughter had changed their names entirely, giving up both their given and family name to take on new identities away from Jessica's shadow.

Her eldest had racked up now-dead husbands and one ex-wife before she chose the name Mirabelle while living as a museum curator. Apparently, afterward she even tried doing the mercenary thing for a while as well—making it to a Low Master Dynamancer—before an ugly campaign out in Lone Star and a close encounter with an orc brought an end to that life.

After that, she settled in the capital—and found herself experiencing a string of luck when it came to work and real estate deals. Luck that went past the ridiculous and into “deliberately engineered by branches of the Inquisition to make sure one of their strongest Legends stayed happy with her nation” territory. With stability came relationships, another dead spouse, even more dead spouses, a few children, and the shape of a calm but fulfilling life.

At least until Jessica walked back in.

Her youngest, meanwhile, her only son, had performed a ritual to turn himself into a seafaring automaton for some reason—which reminded her that she really shouldn't have been too surprised when Shiv told her about her son's daughter turning into an elf somehow; it seemed to run in that branch of the family. Said son was currently somewhere in High Harbor, uncontactable. Last Mirabelle heard, her brother had joined the Silverclaw Merchant Navy and was a well-known deep-water spelunker amongst certain circles.

Oh, and apparently the Shiv wasn’t shitting her; the fucking dumbshits in charge of the Gate Theborn office tortured the living fuck out of her grand-niece, along with her boyfriend or whatever they were. This meant that someone back at the capital was going to get the full Up-Creek soon, and that Jessica had to pay Weave a visit at some point, since she was fully set on this miserable fucking family reunion apology tour shit.

The rest of her grandkids were scattered across the Republic—but mostly doing well. Which was why she left most of them alone. Except for Master-Surgeon Samuel Hawgrave—who was currently trying not to piss himself at what he assumed was his inevitable execution at the hands of a demonic mind mage.

Little did he know that this was likely the only way he was going to reliably get out of this mess, because that fucking girl meant bloodthirsty godsdamned business. Even if Jessica was too tough for her to crack, that didn’t mean she could protect her grandson from Mettabon—and this was a blood debt between them rather than Jessica herself.

But of course, her eldest wasn’t going to let one of her kids get dragged off by his absentee grandma into the jaws of an old, over-propagandized enemy. Which was why she decided to break from her wonderfully quaint little life after her attempted brawl with her mother—well, three brawls, because two more happened when Jessica first tried explaining why Samuel needed to follow her to a certain Gate.

And somehow, against all odds, despite everything, and after letting Jane—uh, Mirabelle—break every knuckle in both hands punching her for a half-hour, Jessica finally managed to convince them to come to Gate Piety.

Only for all the bitching she had to endure on the way over to push her close to the edge.

Sucking in a frustrated breath, Jessica rubbed her jaw and tried to ignore how her daughter was glaring at her—and how one of her grandkids was kind of a traumatized pussy.

Come the fuck on, Samuel, you gotta take this shit like a Pathbearer, was what she wanted to say. What did Jackie's genes fight their way through the generation wars for if you're gonna act like a two-meter mouse? The “Deathless” is a kid like half your age, and he’d jump at the chance to—well, he’s fucking the so-called Abyssal demon whose mom you murdered, so that’s a bit different. But still. Where’s your weird Eldritch mind-crushing wife or husband? Fuck. Shit. I’m spending too long with Shiv. Would I have thought shit like this before? Hm. Maybe, actually.

“Look,” Jessica coughed. “I’m sorry. Okay? Again. I’m really sorry. But we have to do this if you want to live at all. I don’t care that you don’t think much of me as mom or grandma, but the Giantsbane is telling you that this is the best thing you can do right now, alright? If you two want me out of your lives by the end of this, I…” Somehow, that little bit of her that was more Jessica and less Giantsbane struggled not to choke on those words. “I’ll… accept it. But we need to make sure this debt is squared right. I’ll pay whatever it is she wants. But you need to be there. You might not have meant to do the deed, but the blood’s still there. I know that. I know that way too damn well.”

She meant that from the heart, and for the first time, it seemed like some of her words were sinking home.

That didn’t mean their moods or behaviors got any better.

Jane—FUCK, Mirabelle—looked away from her and turned her coddling concern on her son—little wonder why Samuel gave Jessica all the smallest bitch amongst the dog vibes. Too much fucking pampering…

“Samuel,” Mirabelle said, sounding softer than Jessica could ever manage, made more uncomfortable by how she looked so close to her, only with a slightly flatter nose, auburn hair, and the height Jessica would have liked to get. “If you feel uncomfortable, just say it. Say it, and we go home. We go back home. She won’t hurt us. She’s… she’s a lot of things, but never abusive. I know that.” For a moment, Mirabelle chanced a look at her mother, and Jessica felt like she needed another dozen drinks.

Yeah, I know I’m the world’s worst felling mom. I know. I have it coming. Tell me again.

But then Samuel surprised her. He shook his head, and he lifted his gaze, hardening his jaw like a man pretending to grow out of a child in the span of a few seconds. “No, no. I've been dreaming about her for years. I've been dreaming about her blood on my hand for years. I knew this was coming. Somehow I… I felt that this was coming. I need to be here. I need to face her, same way she needs to face me. I need to tell her that I'm just sorry and I have it coming—”

“No, no, no, no, no, you don't,” Mirabelle said, her own anxiety taking over. As pathetic as it seemed, Jessica recognized that. It sounded like that before when one of her children was little, when one of them talked lowly of themselves.

Jessica wasn't a very good mother; that much she'd realized long before Jackie went away and everything went to shit, but you had to be a real piece of shit to let your kid tear themselves down without trying to help them even a little.

“Samuel, look at me,” Jessica said once more, the exasperation gone from her voice. “I meant what I said. She's not going to hurt you. She can't hurt you, not while I'm there.”

Her daughter almost looked like she believed her. Samuel, meanwhile, was close to resigning. But they didn't turn back around, and then they told Jessica they were going to follow her through that final threshold. A few more steps, and they would be in Gate Piety, and all this would finally come to a close.

“Alright. Rusty, drop the barrier. I think we're all ready.”

A shroud of black static crashed back into Jessica, fusing along the edge of her sword. It resonated against her hip, and the world was unveiled once more, the grassy plains of Old Santabar emerging as the dimensional fabric receded into the Legendary blade himself. Behind them, however, was another screen of static: a screen that led over into Gate Piety, where a certain girl’s judgment awaited.

Setting her jaw, Jessica steeled herself for whatever was to come. This could go any number of ways, but since she'd already done the infinitely harder part of talking to her family, she suspected whatever followed next would feel like a walk in the park.

Offering a greeting to the surface gateway's Republic guards, she walked past the screening lines and entered, feet moving to the rhythm of her heartbeat, her exhalation loud, releasing heat and stress in equal measure. “The worst’s over,” she said, mostly convinced. “The worst part's over. The next part is just about forgiveness. We'll get through this. We'll get through this shit, and after that—”

The world squeezed Jessica. A wave of pressure washed over her, and almost unwillingly she looked over her shoulder, expecting one or both of her kinfolk to be missing. But her daughter was there, as was Jessica's grandson, and the harshness inside her softened as she thought herself too hard on them. That bit of her which was more Jessica returned and made her want to cry.

She'd been apart from people for so long, lost amongst killers. She'd been hurting herself for all these years, depriving herself of any possibility of joy. It wasn't just Jackie she lost. She lost all that time, all those opportunities to hone her relationships, to build better moments with her kids—her grandkids…

“It's not too late,” Rusty whispered in her mind. “It has been years, but you've taken the first step. Now just take another.”

Jessica clenched her jaw and forcibly swallowed the lump in her throat, blinking rapidly. “Yeah. Yeah—”

The moment she stepped in the Gate, a wailing wave of heat washed over her, carried with it motes of Pyromancy. In the distance, a titanic eruption of volcanic devastation cleaved the Gate down the middle, and a chain of blasts shook the world around her.

Jessica's left eye twitched, and behind her, she heard her daughter gasp. She heard her grandson scream like a girl.

And then Rusty cried for her to turn left. And Jessica did. And she found her rising hopes plunging down through her gut and out from her ass as she witnessed an absurd butchery taking place.

A small mound of mangled remains was piled high—corpses and disembodied organs of all races mingled in that growing pit. Their faces, however, had been peeled clean off and were now being worn by a group of gray-skinned monsters who were taking turns fastening the stolen flesh around their fellows as macabre masks for a grand carnival.

Worse yet, Jessica recognized one of them, because she'd killed him over ten times in the last fifty years.

“Lurker!” she said, grasping Rusty with both hands as her face twisted into a twitching grin. “How fucking unfortunate to run into you here.”

The orc tensed and turned, as did his buddies. They looked down at Jessica, and their eyes fell to the blade she was holding and to the two people behind her.

“Giantsbane!” Lurker greeted, hiding the way he suddenly tensed with a cough. “You, uh… Why are you…”

“Challenger’s doing his siege thing, huh?” Jessica asked, looking around again.

Lurker opened his mouth—but then just awkwardly nodded. A globule of building-sized slag crashed down less than ten meters away, pulping the corpse mountain into soup that sprayed everywhere.

Samuel actually pissed himself this time.

“Any chance I can talk you into leaving?” Lurker asked, tilting his head.

Jessica narrowed her eyes. “Why? You’re not the kind to be diplomat—”

And then she felt it—a dimensional frequency shift taking place in the gateway she had just come across. The static mana along its surface rippled, and rather than being connected to the Surface of Integrated Earth, its route twisted and linked to another place entirely.

A place that spawned forth a few hundred other orcs.

They came laughing and hollering with spirits high—up until they found themselves coming in behind the Giantsbane.

Several dozen more orcs recognized Jessica—and she them as well.

“Oh, Challenger,” Slowroast-9912 groaned. “Jessica! It’s been—”

Jessica cut.

She cut him.

She cut the orcs behind him.

She cut the orcs behind those.

She cut orcs already in the Gate.

She cut every orc within a five-kilometer radius in a draw so fast that it turned them to bloody vapor a tenth of a second after their heads came off. Lurker almost managed a dodge—his reflexes Legendary—but Rusty tilted the angle of the slash just enough to take him along the neck as well.

And so what might’ve been a perfect dimensional pincer found itself undone as the head of an Orchestra slammed dead against one of Yellowstone’s finest monsters.