372 Hospitality [II]

You are confused as to why I cut down Hero Wilson. Good, very good. That means you are trying to understand the world.

I'm going to teach you something, son. I'm going to teach you a lesson that you will never forget. Not in this life. Not in the next. Not in any. Not on my honor and not on your will.

You will never, never, never defile the law of hospitality.

When someone takes you into their home, you are to respect them as host, even if they are a hated enemy. When you bring someone under your care, see to it that their every need is met and that they are spared all discomfort. Above all, never, never, never exploit them. Never take from them or use them in any way that denigrates your value as a Pathbearer or betrays your honor.

Honor confuses you. I understand. I know it's not pragmatic or efficient. It bothers your mother as well, but she understands why we hold to this honor, because in this respect, honor is life. You can capture someone. You can do terrible things to them. You can commit atrocities during war, and aside from those you hurt, no one else will be inclined to put an end to your existence. However, if you break the rules of hospitality, if you breach that inviolable code, then all will shun you; all will descend upon you and try to seek your end.

You already know how the System feeds off strife, how it empowers itself through conflict and bloodshed. In an existence so cruel, one must live up to their own legend and live with a measure of honor, or they will see themselves cut down. Hero Wilson failed to learn that lesson. Hero Wilson thought he could earn my favor after defecting to the Necrotechs by housing and murdering his former comrades under false pretenses—violating their guestright. An unforgivable act, even if it benefits our people.

This measure of honor I speak of is not about dignity or emotions or even societal fixations. It is about life. A life worth living. A world worth living in.

If there were no honor, no hospitality, then there wouldn't have been you. I would have never risked siring a child if distrust and violence were the only way, for can you imagine the sheer bitterness that might come if you were to strike me down within our home, within our common sanctuary, just because you desire one thing and I another?

That's no world to be in, no world at all. Even though we are practitioners of war, there has to be a possibility of peace. There has to be hope. There has to be.

—Valor Thann to Udraal Thann

372

Hospitality [II]

Writing 18 > 19

Magical Theory 12 > 19

Hydromancy 19 > 22

Pyromancy 37 > 44

Skill Gained: Geomancy (Initiate) 1

Skill Gained: Aeromancy (Initiate) 1

Skill Gained: Cryomancy (Initiate) 1

Skill Gained: Reading (Initiate) 1

Aegis of Assimilation 149 > 154

Memorization 32 > 34

Physics 2 > 3

Analyze 9 > 15

The Chef Unwavering 98 > 99

Portomancy 11 > 13

These Words of Truth and Adoration 78 > 83

Harbinger of the Tripartite Ruin 307 > 323

Atlas of the Flesh Scierer 130 > 136

Shape of Monstrosity 164 > 170

Legion of Self 144 > 155

The Creeping Void 171 > 175

Continuity Error 227 > 233

This Severed Shadow of Blood and Bladed Soul 291 > 294

Leviathan of the Shapeless Tides 548 > 549

Vitality Drain 204 > 207

Peace stood the highest and hardest of treasures to earn for one favored by the System.

For an entire week, Shiv was spared from conflicts.

For an entire week, he was spared the need to bloody his hands. For three days, nothing bad transpired. No calamities resulted. No mana bombs went off. No nightmarish beast from the outer dimensions came bearing ruin in its wake.

But it wasn't because the System had stopped trying. The change in Shiv's circumstances was due to a simple fact: he had proper support now—an immense amount of it.

It was mere hours into the evening after Shiv finished entertaining the Dragon-Brokers that the flames of the first quiet crisis were extinguished. A lone automaton bearing a grudge against the masters of High Harbor slipped into the Gate. Avoiding Uva’s Psychomancy and vanishing from sight altogether, he carried within him a highly unstable mana bomb, one infused with a special concoction. On the surface, it seemed like your usual Pyromancy bomb. Yet, upon closer examination, it contained an artificial plague capable of making one's flesh slough free from bone. It was also specially attuned toward a golden dragon's physiology, but remained broad and adaptive enough that it could affect practically anyone of organic origin.

The only reason the Gate didn't suffer an unnecessary calamity that would have collapsed relations between the Dragon-Brokers and Piety was because Can Hu detected a strange signal ringing out from within the rogue automaton. The Penitent then resolved matters personally with a single salvo.

After the Challenger broke Adam, he rebuilt Can Hu from the base to the hull, and with its skills largely restored and its structure reinforced, its bullets flew free and shredded the lesser machine, reducing it to scrap and exposing the dragon-killing ordnance hidden inside.

Besides that, the Gate suffered a ceaseless influx of First Blood infiltrators. All of them ended in failure. The ones that weren't detected by Uva were discovered by Tulveg’s spores, and when an elite bloodspawn possessed of Heroic-Tier Stealth slipped through, she was promptly ripped apart as Helix, Still Water, and Valor ambushed her all at the same time.

From there, Shiv used his Atlas to mark specific aspects of vampire biology. After filtering out Tulveg and Angelo, he managed to hunt down the rest of the saboteurs himself. There was no fight there. None whatsoever. One moment, they were alive. The next, he cast himself forward using the Harbinger, and he rendered them puffs of crimson mist by accelerating himself through their bodies.

Once the infiltrators cleared out, Helix adjusted his defenses and wards along the Abyssal gateway—and asked Shiv’s permission to add magical protections to the surface gateway as well. To Shiv's surprise, Helix continued serving Gate Piety, indifferent to the Challenger's call to return to the Tutorial. Bonk was the same, and he wanted to come back into Piety as well to spar with Shiv, but he ordered the orc to remain beyond the Gate, at least for now.

“I'd tell you I'm sorry about your little friend, Insul, but I’m not one for lying.” Bonk shrugged, but then a slight grin crept over his brutish features. “But you made the Challenger pay for it, yeah? I felt his arm getting cut off, like it was mine. Savagery.” He bared his fangs in appreciation. “Absolute bloody savagery. Nicely done, Insul. That's the way this is supposed to go! Challenger got greedy with you. He could have hurt you plenty, and you wouldn't have held a grudge over it. Now he might have ruined a good thing for all of us.”

“Good thing, huh?” Shiv scoffed. “You and your brothers better hope I find a way to make Adam better, because if he gets worse, I'm not going to be the worst of your problems.”

“Ah, right, Valor and Roland. Sounds like a good time.” Bonk smirked. “But to be honest, as fun as it would be to die fighting any of you monsters, I'd rather you keep me around for the big one.”

“The big one?” Shiv asked.

“We still got a Tarrasque out there, yeah? That hunt's not done, and when you go after it, I want to be with you. Even if I’m just an Adept right now.”

Despite the hatred Shiv harbored against the Challenger and most of the orcs, Bonk was different—or at least inspired different feelings inside of Shiv. He owed Bonk for saving him in the Rubix Well.

“But do not forget what he is. He didn't do that out of a sense of nobility or decency. He will still inflict whatever pain he can upon you if there is an opportunity. He is simply the bluntest of weapons amongst the race of psychopaths. Although, it is worth noting that he has been nothing but honest.”And both the Harbinger and Shiv were certain of that, for Bonk’s emotional core and mind were of a tranquility without peer. Compared to the Culturist, for example, who was filled with self-doubt and loathing for his nature, Bonk was practically an enlightened sage.

And ultimately, it wasn't just Helix and Bonk. Whisper was still lurking around, as were Tequila and Mortar. They remained hidden in the bunker, waiting for Shiv to seek them out—apparently, they wanted to stay on no matter what, simply because they found their Insul’s company so amusing.

There seemed to be something different about certain orcs. The ones that were known as Maestros had a will of their own and individuality that went against both grain and god.

And then there's the Culturist,Shiv thought to himself.What the hells are we going to do about him? Adam said he burned the Challenger's influence out of him, so what's he going to become? Is that influence gonna stay gone? What are we even going to do when he comes out of that Delve? And how am I going to keep things calm between the Culturist and Lone Star when they get here—if they decide to come?

With new possibilities came an endless chain of questions and worries. That was the worst thing about peacetime: you had a period to think, and as you thought, anxiety followed because you quickly realized you didn't have the answers to the complicated problems.

Back when he was being hunted and hounded every other day, the only thing he needed to do was react: Die, return, and solve the problem.

But the matters that faced him were bigger than ever before now, and not the kind of thing he could simply solve by resurrecting and evolving a skill. Politics needed a gentle touch. People needed to be understood, and the battles that lay ahead were more social and psychological than directly physical. That didn't mean the System was done forcing its wars on Shiv.

But he didn't need to fight alone anymore.

The start of the second day was announced by a piercing shriek echoing from the height of Starhawk’s Perch. A piercing shriek that was abruptly silenced. By the time Shiv got to where Adam languished, the killing was over. Valor stood with a corrosive dagger in hand atop the body of a dissolving Vulteg. Uva and the others responded seconds thereafter.

“It seems the Educator's painted world has become a literal lifesaver,” Valor declared. “The assassin failed to get through the borders. And he made far too much noise.”

“Not nearly enough,” Uva choked in shame through clenched teeth. “He still got close. Too close. How could we have missed him?”

“Because he was veiled by a god, and you have little experience performing counter-intelligence on the divine.” Valor then demonstrated what he meant by vivisecting the corpse of the Vulteg with a casual swipe of his blade. A gush of incandescence spilled into the room like steam, and the presence of Divinity lingered for a moment, staining the air before it dissipated with a final snarled curse.

“Eat my fucking shit, Adam Arrow! I’ll have you eat all my fucking shittttt…”

The following silence was broken by Rose. “What the fuck? Is this what you kids have to deal with?”

“To be fair, I consider Lord Scorn a side horror among all the main horrors,” Shiv muttered. After a moment's consideration, he corrected himself. “Actually, I wouldn't call him a side horror; more like miscellaneous. Not sure I’m using that word correctly, but he’s like a rash that keeps coming back instead of the knife that kills you.”

“That one-eyed-fuck nearly murdered Adam!” Rose hissed. She hugged herself as a rush of vulnerability took hold. “I was here the entire time, and I didn't even sense him.”

Uva stretched a hand across the room and laid it upon Rose's shoulder in comfort. Shiv, meanwhile, could only sigh. “Yeah, the thing is, lots of stuff almost kills Adam. Lots of stuff does kill me. It's pretty much our lives by this point. Even if we don’t want to deal with it.” He rubbed his face in frustration. “So much for swearing to live my life in defiance of the System, huh, Valor?”

“Beseech hope in one hand and fill another with spell and steel,” Valor replied with the dryness of experience. “It is good to have aspirations; it is not so good to be murdered by inflexibility.”

“I guess.” Shiv frowned. “But sometimes I really can't shake the feeling that the System is just laughing at me for having any thoughts of peace at all.”

“Then in this matter of the heart, you and I are as kin,” Valor replied with sympathy. “There is no rest for those who walk the Path. No rest at all.”

Even Shiv didn't grasp the sheer truth in Valor's words at that moment, for not much later came the vilest of days, as an outbreak of Greater Mana Leeches collectively developed a Filth-Crawler Skill.

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It happened while Shiv was training his Legion of Self. With all that needed to be done and the ceaseless threats, he spread himself in mind and body, dispatching his resurrected forms to serve as many purposes as he could.

While his Severed Shadow of Blood and Bladed Soul spent most of its time battling in the kitchen and trying to make enough food to feed an entire Gate for the council to come, another instance of Shiv stood guard by Adam's bedside, doing all he could to make sure no one would ever get close enough to threaten his friend again.

Meanwhile, he found his return to Phoenix Academy covered by Captain Irons, with the man declaring Marcus Unblood to have contracted a particularly virulent and vicious lung-eating plague. Such prevented Marcus from being expelled, and also allowed Shiv more flexibility and deniability when it came to dealing with the other students. Upon greeting and updating Irons about all that happened in the Gate, the normally unflappable Captain’s expression cracked in tortured sympathy.

“Adam… How is he?” Irons asked.

“Not great,” Shiv replied. “He's still screaming for us to kill him. Or to let him kill something. But the hurt’s bad enough that someone would have to fill his hands with a weapon and help him drive it into a skull. He’s not doing any killing on his own.”

“And you claim he has a mantle of Divinity now as well,” Irons said, unwilling to process the implications behind those words.

“I don’t claim, that’s just what happened.”

A pained groan escaped the beleaguered Captain. “I lack the words. Give Rose and Roland my sympathies. This is too much. Far too much power. Far too fast.”

“We’ll do everything we can for Adam, and try to figure something out with this coalition thing. With all the Ascendants being drawn out of the capital, though, maybe we’ll have an opening to conduct a more in-depth—”

“I think I know where Melissa might be,” Irons interrupted. Rather than appearing uplifted, there was a dourness to the man’s expression, like he didn’t know how he was supposed to go about things. “Your actions last week left the Inquisition in a state of heightened terror. They concentrated so many High-Tiers in anticipation of another attack that some of their lesser sites became porous.”

“You went and investigated on your own?” Shiv grimaced. “I thought we agreed to do things as a team, with you telling me to do stuff while not exposing yourself?”

“That arrangement continued in your absence.” Irons almost smirked. “I do not possess a noble’s wealth nor a Shadow’s Stealth, but I have my connections and experience. I have comrades too, and some identify as mercenaries with loose morals and little patriotism—the type that just might break into a secured facility or location to balance the blood debts they owe. It is important to know if you are the right man for the job, Shiv. Not even equipment can make up for a lack of expertise, so there comes a time when even the finest warrior must delegate.”

“Right,” Shiv replied. “I’m actually getting that lesson blasted at me from all sides. Can you believe I haven’t had to kill anyone for the last few days?”

Irons’ heart radiated with discomfort. “That sounds like a good thing.”

“It is, but I'm usually not that lucky. Well, maybe less luck and more… I got a bunch of people that help me out with things now. Real powerful Pathbearers too. Between Valor, Jessica, Roland, and everyone else in the Gate, I actually feel like I’m just a cook again—most problems are already settled by the time I get there.” Shiv chuckled. “I guess we really were just handling too many problems raw and on our own.”

Then, a sudden realization sparked in his head. “I really underestimated the worth of community and civilization. Might’ve been too alienated my entire life to properly understand the worth of having a lot of other people help you with stuff. We were just throwing ourselves at problem after problem, most of them too big for us. But up until we got the Gate going and managed to save what was left of Blackedge, no one seemed to care.”

Captain Irons nodded—and his sympathy was so heavy Shiv got a secondhand heartache from the man.

“He is a good sort, and possessed of a softer heart than he would like,”the Harbinger declared.“He has built walls around himself to prevent his innermost self from suffering devastation.”And true to the skill’s words, Shiv saw there to be countless wounds lining the insides of Irons’ core.

“System takes without care, and gives us what we need but don't want,” Shiv muttered. Those words triggered a sudden pull—and a startled response from Irons.

A Glimpse of Perspective flickered over the veteran, portraying him alone in a dark room amongst a dozen veiled corpses. The place was damp, the air was cold, and Irons' armor was battered and dented. Blood seeped from the crevices and gaps that marred the metal, but where he bled free from his body, he hid his face so that no tears would be shown.

“You ever regret caring about things so much?” Shiv asked, curious.

Irons scoffed. “Sometimes. But I lament the fact that other people don’t more.”

“Yeah, that makes two of—aw, what the fuck?”

From Irons’s perspective, Shiv started gagging for no reason. “Shiv?” He leaned in, both concerned and unnerved. “What is it?”

“It’s… it’s nothing,” Shiv said, trying to hold back his nausea. For while he replied to Irons in bursts of dialogue, his other bodies were active as well, and one of them just had the horrible misfortune of witnessing the birth of a nightmarish Dread Leech King that swept through the surfacer district.

A dense sphere of near-solid fecal matter swallowed almost everything around the Surface gateway, but within that disgusting shit-storm, Shiv’s Atlas allowed him a glimpse of what was actually happening.

Incoherent screams, choking, gagging, vomiting, and a carnival of other fetid occurrences made the environment within the sphere of pestilence look like sewer hell. The pink-eyes suffered by the people unfortunate enough to be close would soon be the thing of legend. Then there was the mess of oily leech bodies coiled about each other, forming an undulating nest of writhing lengths. Connected to them were people—mostly Pathless and Initiates, who shrieked for salvation as the leeches attacked them in search of more waste to merge with, and more mana to assimilate.

After getting a flutter of insight from those suffering the indignities of the Greater Mana Leeches, Shiv decided he’d seen enough and stopped using his Atlas for the rest of the day.

He also graciously allowed Jessica to resolve the situation in a flash—because she deserved her moments of heroism too, and she was pretty good at destroying asses. Much better than him, anyway.

“Deathless,” Irons said, back in the capital. “If something is happening, you must tell me. There is no cooperation between us without trust.”

“It’s not that,” Shiv said. “It’s just gross. I think we have a Greater Mana Leech infestation. A bunch of them are, uh, they’re up, uh—”

Irons understood, and stopped reacting altogether. “Ah. A common problem. Practically every campaign sees at least one outbreak—especially when Biomancers are in short supply. Salt and targeted spells are your best solution. Fire is the Vanguard’s choice—or just having a good Disease Resistance Skill. When the leeches latch onto someone with a strong immune system, they usually die quickly.”

Shiv kept his face completely neutral. “Huh? No shi—kidding? That’s rough. I don’t know anyone who has a good Disease Resistance Skill.”

“Do you not have Plaguefueled?” Irons frowned. “I think either you or Adam mentioned that being among your repertoire.”

“What? Nah, Irons, you’re just misremembering.”

“My Memorization is Master-Tier.”

“Well, you just performed a Heroic-Tier of forgetfulness. It happens.” Shiv threw up both hands in an innocent display. “Anyway, back to where you think Melissa is. That’s why I came here to speak with you, anyway.”

“FUUUUUUUCCCCKKKKKKING MANA LEECHES!” Jessica bellowed so loud that her voice caused windows to shatter for three districts across. A pocket of nothingness burst the enormous shit and leech cloud. “COME ON, GUYS! WHAT THE FUCK! YOU NEED TO ENCHANT YOUR WASTE PITS! ANTI-PEST IS PRO-FUCKING LIFE!”

And to make matters worse, Roland returned at that very moment from his run across the surface. Through the gateway. Just as the shit-wave was coming right at him.

Shiv decided to stop focusing on what terrible things were happening inside the Gate entirely and commit himself more to what horrors were waiting within the capital.

“I believe the Inquisitors have moved her from Flamecrown Castle,” Irons said. “From the surveillance logs my associate retrieved, she was spared an execution despite Daughter’s insistence because of direct intervention from ‘The Speaker.’ Melissa was then marked for ‘re-education’ and shuttled to one of a few local facilities.”

“Fucking Veronica.” Shiv scoffed. “Well, at least she’s alive. Kind of surprised, to be honest.”

Irons shook his head. “The Ascendants are amoral, and the Inquisition are brutes, but the Councilwoman is someone who abhors waste. She likely doesn’t see a point in murdering a child. It will take effort to remove the unwanted memories buried inside Melissa’s psyche, plant suggestions toward greater loyalty to the Republic, and return her to the Academy with an excuse justifying her absence.”

“Meanwhile, her sister continues being an expendable murder-doll Daughter can wear,” Shiv spat. “Let’s not be overly kind to Veronica here. She just chose to be the smallest piece of shit she could when it came to Melissa while maintaining a child-murdering pipeline. But yeah. At least she’s alive, and maybe we can find her. So. What are we gonna do?”

“I am going to try to narrow the potential locations. In the meantime, I’m going to brief you on a list of already confirmed facilities to surveil and study.”

“I could try infiltrating,” Shiv suggested. “Not a lot of risk for me.”

“Even if that were the case, being detected would simply see her moved, and our task of intercepting and rescuing her made even harder.”

“Ah. Right.” Shiv paused. “I should have thought that through a bit more.”

“That’s why I am here,” Irons said. “Now. If you have time, we should begin…”

As Irons began going over the details of the surveillance mission, the copy of him that continued playing as Marcus Unblood—pretending that he'd just recovered from a terrible sickness—dragged himself out of his dorm and started living in the library full-time. The flying building of lore and literature never closed, and so he never left. As a Legend, his stamina was nigh-limitless.

And so, for the first time in a long time, aided by a skill that let him pilot each of his bodies in cycled instances, Shiv actually got to learn. He found a nice, secluded place in the back of the library and stacked a small fort of Biomancy texts in front of his body, effectively blocking himself from sight. Two minutes into reading, he stopped to borrow a dictionary. His broader vocabulary was fucking abysmal. Then, he ended up getting twelve more books on grammar, syntax, literature, writing, speechcraft, magical theory, and philosophy.

Constant high-intensity combat had hardened Shiv’s will so much that forcing himself through the boring bits of a book took little effort at all. He still alternated between the texts to give his mind some time to digest the information, and as he got into the magical texts once more, he found himself in the experimental pocket dimensions within the library to practice spells.

Biomancy was at the forefront of his studies, but he also began incorporating all his other lores to make up for months of neglect. Pyromancy proved far more intuitive than Shiv had expected, and there was a certain thrill that came with creating a chain of small explosions in the air. Additionally, all the time he spent in that magically attuned zone caused him to gain several more magical lores that he lacked before, rounding him out even more.

As he flipped through the texts on magical theory, Shiv found himself gritting his teeth in frustration and regret as two specific mega-chapters glared back at him. The first was the chapter on Chronomancy, detailing spells specifically meant for a bound-field caster—which was the formal term for when your mana field was effectively concentrated around your body. Instant alacrity was a well-known concept—and one of the main reasons Chronomancers were so extremely valued. Apparently, attacks and spells could be pre-cast and stored within a Chronomancy field, and powerful Chronomancers were known to literally store actions in a stasis—able to fling those attacks into the future, unleashing them all at once in a single, devastating instant.

Atop instant alacrity were spell-stacking and spell-slotting, which effectively allowed a good enough Chronomancer to be their own Poly-Magi formation as they assembled extremely complex spell shapes stored in advance. It also allowed them to access a new level of spell modularity, which meant they could tweak the very nature of their magics on the go, such as what lore formed the center of a specific spell, and how the other attunements worked in support.

This effectively made his Chronomancy a bit like his Shapeless Tides—Shiv wasn’t even tapping into the lowest levels of either skill’s true potential.

But what drove him into a near psychotic break was the section on Vitality Drain—because there weretwenty thousandpages on the theory of vitality, and how it was to be properly used.

His fate was sealed from the very first paragraph.

Vitality is not actually a stream of life force as intuition might lead one to believe, but more like the conditional attunement of existence itself. Such is why a layer of vitality exists over the void as well. It is thin and weak, with the veil of existence easy to pierce, but it still exists. To that end, it is also good to understand vitality as a sort of metaorder that serves as a skeletal structure holding all things in place, a reinforced layer to existence that anchors beings to the System and allows them to gain levels and evolve skills. The skill Vitality Drain, meanwhile, is not about the absorption of life force so much as it is about the alteration of existential order followed by the inevitable imposition of entropy that results from such a disruption.

As such, the few Pathbearers who gain this potent skill must learn to anchor themselves in place to maximize the influence they have over the wavelengths of vitality—for the laws of relative existence are in effect, and a lesser form with weaker mana can do little more than assimilate parts from a greater structure, but when one pilots the totality of existence as their anchor—

Shiv nearly ripped the book in half. His hands trembled. Vessels inside his brain burst. The version of him that pretended to be Marcus Unblood began crying silent tears in the library. Silent tears of pure aggravation.

A nearby automaton librarian noted his pain and halted mid-step. “Are… are you okay, student?”

“Yes,” Shiv choked, his throat bobbing up and down. “Magic is… Magic is just sobeautiful.”

Though he couldn’t read the electric static that made up the bot’s mind, its empathic core shone bright with understanding. “Yeah, I’ve been there too. I recommend Concelhuad’sBook of the Five Loresif you haven’t gotten there yet. It had me leaking oil real fast. Really good writer—not many can mix literature, prose, and technicality like her.”

Shiv just nodded. In the library, that was.

The version of him back in Gate Piety, though, expressed himself very differently.

His Harbinger carried his body and flung him three seconds into the future. His Severed Shadow and Harbinger blinked into being right next to a surprised Helix and Bonk just outside the Abyssal gateway without any forewarning, and thus, Shiv started to rage.

“SYSTEM! YOU FUCK! YOU FUNNY, FUNNY, FUCK! I GET IT! I GET IT NOW! SO FUNNY! AHAHAHAHA! SO FUNNY! YOU’RE SO HILARIOUS! ISN’T THE SYSTEM HILARIOUS, GUYS? NO ONE TALKS ABOUT HOWFUNNY THE SYSTEM IS!”His shouts toward the end of the sentence greeted the world like small mana bombs going off in a cone in front of him.

Bonk’s eardrums burst in spurts of gore, but the orc just nodded along, indifferent to his deafening. Helix, meanwhile, responded with a building terror. “I… Insul—Eek!” He squeaked un-orcily as Shiv seized his face with both hands.

“HAHAHAHAHA! LAUGH WITH ME, HELIX! I GET IT! I GET WHY YOU LOVE BIOMANCY AND MAGIC NOW! I GET IT! I GOT TO READ FOR EIGHT HOURS AND I FINALLY GET IT! I GET SO MUCH OF IT! THE SYSTEM’S BEEN FUCKING ME SO HARD! BUT I MISSED THE FACT THAT IT WAS FISTING ME TOO! COCK IN MY ASS! FIST DOWN MY THROAT. MEETING IN THE MIDDLE! THE SYSTEM’S USING ME TO JERK ITSELF OFF INSIDE ME! HAHAHAHA, LAUGH AT THE STUPID DEATHLESS! FUCKING LAUUUGH!”

Helix’ glasses disintegrated at some point during Shiv’s psychotic break. Between Adam’s suffering, the Challenger, the fucking giant red hand that kept whispering to him, all the constant bullshit, and learning that the System had been keeping so much basic, useful information from him—useful information that made him realize he was actually exponentially more powerful than even he'd realized—Shiv’s Harbinger failed to prevent this bout of psychosis.

It was truly hilarious. It really was.

So funny.

So. Incredibly. Funny.

Coping 3 > 37

And so Shiv laughed and laughed and laughed until he was on his knees, sinking into the sodden mud near a set of trenches, dragging a flailing Helix down with him as the Hero-Biomancer begged him to let go.

“Excuse me! Pardon me!” A high, lispy voice broke through Shiv’s confusion. Slowly, he turned, and Helix did the same. They found themselves staring down that long, black thoroughfare that led up to the lined trenches leading into the gate. Hundreds of magical turrets came aglow with gleaming spells to greet the unexpected visitor.

He was a strange sort—dressed in fine, dark silks, holding a long cane, sporting spectacles, and carrying a leather bag on his back. His head was a polished pearl of baldness, while his skin was milky-smooth and the color of opal. Even from afar, though, Shiv recognized the visitor—though that version of him Shiv was familiar with looked younger; different by a bit.

“I received a letter from a student of mine!” the man called, waving a piece of paper in the air. “Tulveg invited me here, saying that there was a particular plague that might vex me.” He gave a grandfatherly laugh. “I told him I doubted it. But he insisted. He never insists. Ah, but he never writes in the first place! Regardless, where are my manners: I will give my name and Tier if you would but grant this humble student of the body a measure of hospitality, for I am the oft-exaggered Legend-Sculptor Ekkihurst, first and last of my line, and I come seeking to further my knowledge.”

And then, for a beat, his face wavered. “Also, forgive me, but I heard your screams earlier. I happen to know a few very, very capable menders of the mind. If you grant me your hospitality, I might be able to inquire about their assistance as well. You sound like you are in dire need, young man!”