Chapter 20

Experimental trans-frequency device results - partial success. Successfully integrating a drop of the Pale King’s blood upon asking His Majesty allowed me to use it’s singularity-inducing properties to force photons from alternate planes of existence to manifest without interfering with one another. However, this also has the effect of obstructing visual sensory inputs - too much at one time will cause the user to grow distracted. I’ll give it to some noble or something - this is far too good a trinket to let it go to waste. With some more luck, I think I can contact the Elves and possibly make a temporary treaty. This might allow me to stop the encroachment of - Ripped text from the Journal of the Sage, recently found beneath the ruins of the Old Omnic library. Considered proof by the Radiant Church of the Radiant King’s existence among humanity. The trinket in question has not been found or recovered to date.

Levi had never been so thankful that her aunt had trained her in the art of stealth. Growing up, she always had complained about the odd way her only living relative had integrated chores and sneaking. From the bizarre methods of having to chop the hanging pieces of meat in the butcher shop without making sound and having to avoid carefully-set up alarm systems as a “family game”, she frequently wished that she grew up with a more traditional childhood. However, it had come in handy many times ever since her journey with Victor and Silk, and silently Levi thanks her somewhat-eccentric aunt mentally whenever her training comes in handy.

Currently, Levi was thanking her aunt once more as her cleaver cut through the throat of one of those paper abominations. Despite looking like wadded-up newspaper, a simple incision revealed that they were, in fact, flesh and blood. Dense, web-filled and thoroughly unsettling masses of papier-mache filled organs that, from the outside, looked like vellum-covered balloons. Instead of what one would expect in something’s blood, the fluid that leaked from the interlocked veins was a viscous, ink-like sludge. Carefully dashing away before the noise of thing’s weapons clattering away attracted more monsters, Levi moved on to her next target: a massive, hulking behemoth that appeared to be a massive leather horse, roughly twenty stories tall.

Victor, meanwhile, was having far more trouble than Levi. His knives, being made of nothing more than ordinary steel, quickly shattered when a particularly strong and brutish-looking abomination thrust it’s sword at Victor. In a desperate attempt to avoid damage while several others were swinging at him, he blocked with both of his knives. The simple stab shattered both of his knives and nearly pierced his heart were it not for the fact that Victor’s hand stopped the weapon. Instead of his right ring finger being severed cleanly, it instead landed a solid blow on the ring Victor had gotten from the vault in gildhelm all those years ago.

Looking at it bemusedly, Victor suddenly jumped into the air, turning his body horizontally and spinning as two massive tentacles immediately attempted to hit the area where both his head and his feet had been. Landing just after they retracted, Victor realised that when he was in the air, the monsters could not pinpoint his location. Slapping his forehead, he realized that the sound he was making from his footsteps was the noise attracting these eyeless creatures. Taking a pair of bronze-like kukri from one of his fallen enemies, he spun them around in his hands and began leaping at each of the necks of his enemies, killing them each with a clean slash on the neck. After leaping in the air whenever he got mobbed by a group of monsters and killing them when they could not see him, Victor felt a lot more safe now that he had a way to kill these things with relative ease.

While all of these events were taking place, a certain catsith was getting closer and closer to the center. She could feel it. Her cleavers, being made of composite nanofibers found from some Omnic ruins, had no signs of wear and tear despite fighting hundreds of monsters. However, the closer she got to the epicenter, the more dense the mob of monsters became. Feeling tired and lethargic, she missed a slice at one of the monster’s necks and stumbled, falling onto the ground as it turned around and lumbered over her. Raising it’s massive, bronze cleaver, it slashed downwards while Levi desperately scooted in order to avoid it. It was clear, however, that she was not moving fast enough. Just as she closed her eyes and accepted her fate, a massive CLANG rang out through the battlefield. It was Silk.

Silk quickly picked up Levi as if she was a drooping kitten, quickly moving to her next target. Instead of putting her gently on the ground in a safe spot like Victor would have, she instead threw her limp body at the leather horse-abomination. Before Levi even had time to scream, she impacted the side of the gargantuan beast’s midsection, easily piercing its soft skin. Inside, she found a dimly-lit structure that was lumbering along, piloted by more of the paper-like beasts.

Control panels attached to the wooden scaffolding that was the monster’s body were scattered haphazardly, and a small hatch next to her was spewing out more of the parchment humanoids. Instead of being a beast of war, she was thrown (quite roughly, as evidenced by levi’s smarting back) into an airdrop site.

Looking up above the hatch, she saw ordinary pages of books being folded and crumpled expertly by an invisible force inside of a glass tank. The pieces of paper then were put into a second tank where the partially formed body of a paper monster was being assembled with said bits of paper, with the folded components sometimes growing and taking on an organ-like shape. To top this all off, Levi noticed a thin stream of ink being ported into the unborn creature’s chest from a tube that extended through the ceiling out of her sight. Levi didn’t know what was happening, but she did know one thing: it was time to get to work. Taking out her cleavers, Levi got to work doing what she did best: sneaking and slashing.