187 (II)

Udraal [II]

Sullain shuddered as he held his hands up. "Udraal, Udraal, please. He has taken all from me. Do not let him have my life as well."

"Sullain," Udraal said, sounding absolutely exasperated. "We're already here. Please what? Please what? What life? What hope? You can't make it right anymore. In fact, you should have held your city all those years ago. You should have stopped Roland." He paused and then shrugged. "You should have. But Roland exceeds a great many of our expectations. And so I give you my lament, for I truly do not wish you dead. But you must die. You must. For you have interfered with my experiment."

His fingers began to sink into Sullain's shoulders, and Shiv could have sworn he heard the Vicar's collarbones crack. A loud howl of pain sounded from Sullain, and Udraal's expression never changed. He just looked tired, annoyed that someone else couldn't understand what he was saying. "And more importantly, what made you think you could take my work and pervert it? What made you think that I was done with this world?"

Sullain gasped as he struggled against Udraal, kicking and hammering his limbs. To Shiv's astonishment, Sullain proved to be the stronger of the two. Udraal's arms shattered, blood splashed, and bones jutted free. But before Sullain could do anything further, another version of Udraal emerged from his planted flag. And he held Sullain in place by gripping the scruff of his neck.

"No, don't. Don't! I'm not ready! I'm not ready!" the Vicar cried aloud. The Udraal with his arms broken looked at the other and simply shrugged. He marched away, even as Sullain wailed on, splashing into the Animancy-infused standard. A few moments later, another Udraal emerged.

Ritual of the Dichotomous Soul, Shiv realized. There were a lot more than one Udraal because his bodies were scattered—all bound together by the same soul.

"You have no idea how much I envy you right now," both Udraals said at the same time. They also had their eyes locked on Shiv, and the Deathless did all he could to not shiver. The scene was uncanny. The orcs around them were watching, observing how Shiv faced his maker; meanwhile, Udraal was actively goading him into shifting his soul burns over to Sullain.

"Deathless, please, please don't," Sullain cried aloud. "I will forswear my vengeance. I will let you go. I forgive you for all that you've done."

"Did you hear that, Deathless?" Udraal said dryly. "He forgives you. Too bad I do not forgive you, Sullain. I pity you. I understand your state of mind. But I do not forgive you for affecting my work. This is more than just us; this is for the enduring immortality and preservation of everyone. And you almost ruined that."

"I was wrong. I was a fool. Udraal…" Sullain sobbed.

Udraal frowned sadly. "That Tarrasque, it belongs to me now. What I made flows through its body and curdles inside its very bones. And said Tarrasque is now threatening my homeworld, the place where most of my experiments still reside. Have you no foresight, Sullain? Did you truly not sense that this would come back around to bite you?"

"I can make it right!" Sullain screamed. "Udraal, please, if you..." He drew in a long breath as he spoke his next words. "If you would but restore me, if you return my Legendary skill, I will see the Tarrasque contained. I will offer it to you as a gift!"

"There's no need for that," Udraal replied, "and there's no need for you. I'll just go get it myself." He scoffed. "Why would I need you? Now, Deathless, please, show me what you've learned, if you've learned anything at all."

But Shiv didn't show Udraal what he'd learned. He retracted the Vitae back into his body and simply glared at his maker. A moment of silence passed, and Udraal sighed.

"Ah, petulance, is it?"

"No," Shiv said, his anger turning from hot to cold. It was like a chunk of ice inside him now, and he was beginning to get the measure of his maker. "I'm just not a dog. I don't do what everyone else tells me, not when I don't want to."

At that, an arrow sailed through the air. It tore a gap across the flesh of existence, and it struck Sullain, and the Udraal holding him. But it skipped off their bodies, as if repelled by an unseen field. Udraal ignored the dimensional arrow altogether, as he and Shiv began a stare-down. While the Deathless was glaring, Udraal studied him with an inquisitive glint in his eyes.

"So how are you going to fix your spiritual burns, then? Would you have done it if I hadn't ordered you?"

Shiv considered Sullain, saw the absolute terror in the man's eyes, and realized he didn't care. Sullain, for all his begging, for all his present weakness, had no issue condemning an entire town to death for the actions of one man. On top of that, he had no issue unleashing an undying Tarrasque on the world.

"Probably," was Shiv's answer. "I don't much care about him. He has it coming."

"Has it coming," Udraal said with a slight hum of amusement. "Your notions of justice are brutishly adorable. And simple. I quite like it. But you're not going to hurt him now because I told you to."

"You don't own me," Shiv almost snarled.

Udraal considered his statement and then nodded. "I do not own you. I do not wish to own you. Slaves are such feeble, worthless things. I did, however, have a hand in making you." And before he could say anything else, another dimensional arrow came, bursting free from a rift. Udraal caught this one and flicked it aside. "Do you mind, Young Lord Arrow? I'm having a conversation right now."

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"I'm going to kill you," Adam rasped. There was hate in his pain, and that hate gave him the strength to continue standing, to prop himself up against the wall and try to fire another shot.

"Well then, Deathless, since you're not a slave of mine, would you mind restraining your friend? The attempts on my life are getting annoying, and though I do appreciate his unyielding determination to kill someone he simply can't, I will cripple and incapacitate him so we can finish our conversation without further interruptions. And I will do it in ways you cannot fix. And that way he will stay until I bother to restore him."

"Adam," Shiv said. He looked at his friend, and the Gate Lord's expression was heartbreaking.

"You heard him. It was his doing. All of it was his doing. My mother, my sister, my life. It was supposed to come from you as well."

"Technically," Udraal interjected, "your mother was supposed to go for Adam. She was meant to draw some of his genetic material from his corpse. After that, she was meant to inject it into her egg to make a complete set."

Adam was speechless with horror, but the rage inside Shiv combusted.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" Shiv spat. "Why—Fucking why do all that? I saw what they did to… to…"

"The ritual demands death and violence. Yes. Very disturbing. But necessary due to Roland and Rose's exposure to the Great One's Dreaming. One needs to die to break their connection to the Great One." The way Udraal casually recounted the details of his atrocious experiments left the Deathless horrified. It took a lot to faze him. The First Blood managed to do it. The Recollector was an aberration that should have never been, but Udraal just didn't care. Udraal only wanted to see what the outcome of his experiment was.

"Again, your anger is understandable," Udraal carried on. "But right now, focus on getting yourselves fixed. Focus on doing the pragmatic thing. Don't think I'm not sympathetic to your loathing, but it also doesn't really matter." Udraal seemed actively disappointed now. He threw Sullain aside and placed his hands on his hips. The other version of himself started shaking his head and walked back to the banner. With a flash of Animancy, he disappeared. "Another of me is needed elsewhere. A great many things are in motion; I need to catch up on all I missed since I was gone."

Shiv didn't move an inch. Udraal sighed again. "Listen to me. I am impressed that you managed to endure this long. I am impressed that you avoided the Ascendants and somehow broke out of your cell on your own. What confounds me is your refusal, however, to deal with the problem right in front of you."

"Which is you," Shiv said, gesturing to him.

"No. It is the fact that you are still untrained and let yourself be trapped in this prison in the first place. I understand the main reason you are here is because you exposed yourself to the Ascendants while fighting the Tarrasque." Udraal clicked his tongue. "A fight that you lost control of. Very poor planning, dear boy. When you don't control the variables, you often become one."

Shiv stared at Udraal with disbelief. "You're seriously fucking criticizing us for being inefficient right now?"

"Why else would I criticize you?" Udraal said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. "Of course I'm going to criticize you for being inefficient. You're a Pathbearer. You need to face the problems and solve them. Languishing in your emotions... You can be emotional if you want, but languishing is not very useful. Let this be a lesson for the both of you. Hate, if you must, but hate effectively. Hate, and do something with it. That goes for you as well, Young Lord." He smiled at Adam, and the tension in the air climbed even higher.

"I will see you slain, Udraal Thann," Adam seethed. "I don't care if it takes this life or the next. I don't care if it takes one year or ten thousand. I will see you slain for all that you've done. To me, my family, to this world, to Shiv."

A pang of emotion passed through the Deathless. He barely noticed it, underneath his thundering heartbeat.

Udraal nodded nonchalantly. "I'll have to try and remember that, but I suspect it will blur with the illimitable amount of threats I've received in the past." He smirked slightly. "You are unique, Adam Arrow. Don't think you're not. What you aren't, however, is special." His smile died on his face, and a shadow crawled over him once more. Shiv noticed it, then. The shadow was always there inside him, a darkness he simply held at bay. "For you live under the System, and under its boot, no one is special. All is fuel. All is feed."

A beat of silence followed, and for the first time, Udraal seemed to realize there were others in the room with him. He frowned slightly to himself, but said nothing. Instead, he regarded Sullain, still crumpled in a heap on the floor, and pressed his lips together. "So tell me, experiment of mine, if I hadn't arrived, how would you have escaped?"

"Probably wouldn't have," Shiv admitted. The words tasted bitter on his lips, but he wasn't going to deny them. "We were in a real bad spot."

"I know. I know, because you, little more than a boy, tried to face Veronica Chandler and the rest of her godly circus. Much like the Tarrasque, that's not a fight you should be involved in. You need to be more self-interested. More self-protective." Udraal hummed. Then smirked. "Use your Vitae on me."

"What?" Shiv said.

"Is there something confusing about my words?"

Shiv stared at the man who shaped his Path, his life.

"Use it. Do it. Try to break me. You don't like me much. I see your anger. I accept it. Go. Reach into me with the Vitae. Show me what you have learned."

Faced with the gleeful smile on Udraal's face, the groaning Sullain, and so many eyes on him, Shiv swallowed.

And made his choice.

Instead of striking at Udraal directly with Vitaemancy, Shiv channeled all his Unique Skills at once. He went Non-Sequitur, bursting free from his body while he wrapped Udraal with threads of Vitaemancy. As soon as he did, however, he felt his magic get driven back. His threads were swatted aside as red-white mana exploded out from Udraal, rupturing free of his being like vines. They shredded through the world and struck Shiv as if razors digging through his flesh, even while he was apart from reality.

The Deathless cried out in pain as he clutched himself. New wounds wept blood from his shredded torso, but his attention remained on Udraal. The Abyssal Lord seemed unaffected, but another version of him, faint and ghostly, fell through the floor in a cocoon of Vitae. It was like a husk being shed from a soul. As it vanished, another ghost emerged over Udraal.

A ghost that resembled Shiv.

A ghost woven from Vitae itself.

"Ah. Managed to sever ourselves from the System's awareness with one of your Unique Skills, have we?" Udraal nodded with appreciation. Superimposed over him, Shiv's clone glared down at his original self with a brutal snarl. "Well. I think I will take a copy of that skill as well. But first—since you won't cooperate—let me decide in your stead. I'll help you. Practical education is always my preference anyway."

And before Shiv or Adam could do anything, the ghost-clone of Shiv unleashed a stream of Vitae. White and red swallowed Shiv, pierced through Adam, and connected them to the screaming Sullain.

Life seared through the Deathless's flesh. Life, power, and the careful touch of someone who knew his own soul better than he did.

Udraal breathed out. "So. Let us start with the burns. Are you ready, Sullain?"

"No! NO! UDRAAL! MERCY! UDRAAL!"

"Hm. No. It's not up to you. But I might fix you after if the feeling strikes me."

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