105 (II)

Persuasion

A blast of wind washed over both of them, and before Null Mont could be sent flying, he reached out and caught her with his left hand. “Shit, sorry. Didn’t think I cut that hard” The tip of his blade severed a small piece from Courtney, the Court Leviathan. A piece of the tentacle fell. The leviathan didn’t even notice, for the wound filled a half second later.

Shiv shifted his new blade and caught the piece of Leviathan flesh along its flat side.

“Shiv!” Uva hissed across their link. “Do not hurt her in creative ways, either! No Bowel-Breakers or—”

“Relax.” Shiv grinned at Null Month. “This is just going to be a conversation about personal property, what constitutes a prisoner, and also respecting a certain Cherished Sister of Weave. I know some of what she wants isn’t entirely unreasonable, but she can’t just take my stuff without even asking. And more importantly, she can’t just take you. Not now and not on a whim. We have extremely pressing issues. These things need to be discussed. And if she’s not going to respect us, I’m going to have to cook for her.”

The Skysplitter began to shrink. The blade retracted, and in seconds the massive, tower-sized blade drew closer to Shiv’s body, bringing the piece of leviathan flesh with it. But when the blade reached forty meters, Shiv stopped shrinking it. Instead, he descended, and found two nice pieces of rubble to place his Skysplitter upon.

We’ll be able to start up a nice fire below…

“What are you doing?” Null Mont cried. She pried at her arm, and Shiv released her before this could truly turn into an actual struggle.

“Are you hungry?”

She froze. “What? What are you—”

“Let me cook a piece of a Court Leviathan for you. Did you have any earlier?”

“I… No! No! I refuse! I refuse to eat this… It is a plague-beast of the enemy. How you managed to convince the others to indulge in such a foul act, I will never understand, but—”

“Come on, I insist,” Shiv said. “I really do.” He gave her his most earnest stare as he started channeling a stream of his own Pyromancy across the blade. Despite his fire magic being relatively underdeveloped, the edge of the blade ignited like a burning rainbow, amplifying the power of the magic substantially. Soon, the first sounds of cooking flesh sizzled upon the blade. “You won’t regret it. And, I’ll tell you what. If you don’t like what I cook for you, I’ll let you have the Court Leviathan.”

“Let me?” Her voice was somewhere between confusion and absolute fury. “I am the Exalted Mother in charge of this expedition, and I will not be talked down to like some kind of weaverling! You—”

But just then, Adam appeared beside her, coming to an uncanny halt as his Vectors of the Eternal Ascent stopped their acceleration. “Shiv,” the Gate Lord cried out, his voice nasally and high with exaggeration. “I told you to watch where you are throwing that thing, you silly goose!!”

Adam zipped beside the Weaveress. “I am so terribly sorry!” he said, gripping Null Mont by another one of her arms and pulling her down even faster alongside Shiv. “Please, let Shiv apologise for this grave transgression to you by cooking you a meal.”

“What?” she said, her anger losing the fight to naked confusion. Across their mental links, Shiv and Adam could feel each other struggling not to crack up.

“Do not make me laugh, you shit,” Shiv said, his right eye twitching.

“Focus on yourself, you bastard. And stop making that expression at me.” Adam shuddered, clenching his teeth as hard as he could.

“Cooking food,” Adam said, “is something surfacers do as an apology to each other all the time. We must insist. If you reject us, Shiv will be required to commit an honor suicide to redeem his shame.”

“A what?” Null Mont gasped.

Shiv shook his head. “It is a thing of honor.”

“Honor is extremely important to us,” Adam said, staring intently at the Weaveress.

“Honor and respect,” Shiv added, spiking his Dread Aura ever so slightly. “So, please. Take a bite. Just a tiny little bit. Let’s talk about what just happened between us. You know. Start off on a new foot. Turn the page.”

The Weaveress’s head swung between them. “I…”

But by now they were grounded, standing upon a field of rubble. A field of rubble further displaced by Shiv dragging a massive blade across the ground.

Null Mont was placed before the Skysplitter as Shiv pulled out his chef’s knife and cut the leviathan into several smaller pieces. Briefly, he dosed it with a puff of moisture using his Hydromancy and shaped a Biomancy spell as he started kneading them into five dense spheres of meat. Then, he pressed the meatballs back against the blade, and they sizzled before Null Mont very eyes.

Her courage started trembling. But a burst of lightning flashed out from her body. “This… I do not know what trick this is. But you cannot force me to eat flesh rich with viruses and plagues.”

“I think I can,” Shiv said. “I’ll take a bite first if you’re worried.”

“I’ll eat one right after to show that it’s safe,” Adam continued.

“I do not care if you eat the entire Leviathan!” Null Mont snarled. “There is no way you can make me devour a piece of that… that creature. No one but Her Lady Arachnae, the Composer herself, could compel me to… to…”

And now Null Mont noticed a certain Legendary Pathbearer hovering beside her. “Young one,” Valor began. “You should cherish every bit of food you get. Every flavor. For you never know when you might lose the opportunity to indulge in the finer things in life.”

“G-Great Valor,” Null Mont squeaked. “I—I thought you were… You are still damaged. I think you should—” She then finally noticed how her Umbrals were getting called away by Can Hu, leaving her here entirely alone.

“Eat,” Valor said. “Taste it. Taste it on my behalf. I insist. I want you to describe how it tastes to me. Every detail. It will be an honor to hear such a thing from you. More importantly, I will offer a good word to the Composer about your bravery and willingness to experiment when I next greet her in person.”

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“I…” Null Mont flinched as Shiv held out a small piece of leviathan meatball impaled on the end of his chef’s knife.

“Come on,” Shiv whispered. “It’s just a bit. I gotta make you feel better. I gotta apologize. I have to. I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself if, say, this was your last meal. If you somehow got ambushed and then torn apart by the First Blood while trying to get back to Weave with my Court Leviathan, I would consider it a great regret of my life.”

“He would be honor-bound to raise your shadow and make your Necromantic remnant eat the food instead,” Adam whispered. He added a shudder at the end.

“I don’t want to,” Shiv said. “But traditions demand it. Honor and respect.”

“Honor and respect,” Adam repeated.

“Take the bite,” Valor said, leaning in. “Do it. Do it now.”

Dread Aura 90 > 91

Null Mont’s courage shuddered and cracked as she looked between all three Pathbearer’s pressuring her to take a bite. “I—I… Oh, Composer preserve—”

***

“Oh, Composer…” Null Mont looked between them, and slowly she stared down at the prismatic edge of the Skysplitter. Her body language betrayed just how forlorn she was that there was not more food. But more than that, it betrayed how confused she felt. “How?”

Shiv snorted as he shook his head. His arms were folded, and he had watched her squirm throughout. Squirm, until she took her first bite.

Then, the ugly part was all over. Everyone else regarded her with a similar level of amusement.

Now that the Weaveress was appropriately sedated, Shiv intended to deal with the issue properly.

Shiv walked off to the side and pulled a piece of rubble over. He sat on it and stared at Null Mont for a moment. “Look, Exalted Mother, can I be very honest with you for a second?” She looked away from her food and stared at him. There wasn’t so much anger, terror, or annoyance in her anymore. It was mostly just faint astonishment and incredulity.

You could control a lot about how someone acted if you had something they wanted. If they were happy, if they were influenced, if they wanted something from you. That’s what Shiv realized. That was what he learned from watching Georges deal with people over the years.

And this was the main reason why he told Uva that he wasn’t going to hurt Null Mont, why he knew it was going to be the absolute truth. Because day after day, month after month, year after year, Georges would get into fights with Pathbearers, soldiers who frequented the Swan-Eating Toad.

And after the fight, after intense exchanges of curses, and sometimes the involvement of guards, the same Pathbearers would come back to the Swan-Eating Toad and eat there like nothing had ever happened. Because they wanted the food there. Because the fight was a momentary lapse in self-control, usually on their part. Georges just got very mad. But there was nowhere like the Swan-Eating Toad. And feelings were things that changed with proper incentivization.

Null Mont was a glory-seeking narcissist that was about to negatively affect the group’s cohesion. But she ultimately wasn’t a lethal threat, just a social one. And social threats were just another thing Shiv needed more practice in dealing with.

“What do you mean by honest?” Null Mont replied, sounding uncertain and dubious.

“Yeah,” Shiv said. “I like being honest. Look, you trying to take the Court Leviathan from me was kind of a shitbag thing to do.” He looked at Courtney. “I spent quite some time clearing it out. In fact, I died a good few times taking that. Now, if you wanted to buy it from me, or potentially if you wanted to explain how useful it would be for Weave and why I should give it to you, I would have dealt with you honestly. The answer would have been no, but I would have been straight. And I wouldn’t need to do this whole threaten you with a knife then cook food on it shit to get you to speak with me like an actual adult.”

Null Mont’s palps reared back in near-outrage. “I—”

“And Angelo, the vampire you want to take prisoner, you understand that he was going to get his heart cut out by the others, right? He was just trying to set up a village. You don’t even seem to care about why I brought him back. You know how many vampires I’ve killed in the past two days alone? A hell of a lot. Think about that. And think about why I left him alive.”

“It… He is of the First Blood. He has a Lineage Core.”

Shiv frowned. “Yeah. I guess he can be useful. Have you tried talking to him? Asking if he can help you? Did you even speak with him once at all? No. He’s still on the Leviathan, last I checked.

“He hasn’t even touched his food yet,” Adam confirmed. “He’s just staring into the bowl.”

“Shit,” Shiv muttered. “I probably should go talk with him myself. But back to you, Null Mont. The fuck’s your problem? What are you trying to do? What? You think bringing back a Court Leviathan is going to get you accolades and glory? Null. How the hells did you get sent here? Because you didn’t think this through. You didn’t think a lot of things through. Why do you think I would have just let that go? Why do you think the Composer would have rewarded you for slighting people she considers heroes just for bringing back… What? A Court Leviathan? Yeah. Nice. Useful. But you think it’s more valuable than the Jealousy?”

“Slightly less,” Null Mont said.

“What?”

“It’s useful because it regenerates.” She let out a sigh. “It’s a partial solution to the population problem. Weaveress eggs… You know how our life cycles work?”

Adam and Shiv shared a look as both of them understood.

“You’re using them as breeding material?” Shiv said.

“Yes. And they are good incubators at that. Good stock. But we still need more.”

“And so you just tried to take it from me?” Shiv asked.

“I just…” Null Mont paused. “I assumed you wouldn’t fight me over it.”

“Because you’re a Weaveress?” Shiv asked. “And I’m not?”

A long pause followed. In the end, Null Mont didn’t say anything.

Shiv considered several options then. He decided to exercise a bit of charisma for once. To see if he could make use of her instead of just terrifying her into submission. She wanted glory? She wanted to indulge in pride? Fine. He’d give her those opportunities. But she would need to play along and learn about respect.

“Exalted Weaveress, I am not an Umbral. I am not of your culture. Your social advantages don’t mean anything to me. So. You’re going to have to deal with me like I’m a person. You’re worried about Uva being compromised by the Outsiders. Fine. Valid fear. But sending her back to Weave on a whim immediately is stupid. Do you think we can hold the gate without her? What other Heroic-Tier Psychomancers do you have?”

“There is a risk she might be compromised,” Null Mont said.

“Yeah. But did she tell you everything? About the Dreamtaker? Her new skills.”

Null Mont looked away. “Yes.”

“And you think an Outsider would let her do that? Just give all that away? The suspicion I get. The rest of the shit you decided is half-assed. This is not the time to take her out of the field. We can’t afford it. You can’t afford it. And the Abyss can’t afford it.”

“The… Abyss?” Null Mont replied.

“Yeah. We’re here to stop another war between the surface and the Abyss from happening. And you were about to get in the way of that.”

Once more, her courage fissured. “I… I—”

“She might be more of an arrogant, unthinking idiot than a narcissist,” Adam muttered.

“Yeah. How the hells did she find herself in charge of this expedition anyway?” Shiv asked.

“Well. Weaveresses are overly favored… And with the right connections…”

“You think that’s how it is?” Shiv asked.

“That’s how it is everywhere,” Adam replied.

“Listen, I see that you’re still thinking about Weave, so. I’m going to help you. And you’re going to help me. How does that sound?”

“How?” Null Mont asked.

“Instead of you just walking around and making a bunch of executive decisions, why don’t you come along with us, and we can figure some things out together. Think about it. Would it be more glorious for you to take part in an operation that stops Vicar Sullain from getting a whole lot more people killed than whatever you were planning?”

Silver Tongue 21 > 22

Null Mont considered it. And then she regarded him once more. “Perhaps… Maybe… We can discuss a few more things over a meal? One you make? To further the honor and respect between us.”

Shiv smiled. “Yeah. Honor and respect. Sounds like we reached an understanding.”

“Shiv,” Adam said. “I think I might just take you up on some cooking lessons.”

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