31 (II)

Disciples

“You can clear it back at camp,” Valor said, descending from some place above. “I have seen enough today. Enough to know how to further your development.”

“Ah, there you are,” Adam said, scowling at the floating skull. “You have us trek through the wilderness for days, do nothing to train us, and just watch us. And then when I ask if we’re any closer to the gate? What do we get? Not a clear reply from you. How are you going to teach us? No answer.” The Young Lord huffed as the skull just stared at him. Adam’s scowl collapsed as he bit his lip. “I… I apologize. I am just… my blood is high. I need a moment to… to reorient myself.”

Valor continued to say nothing. The silence dragged long enough for Shiv to be uncomfortable. Only then, did Valor speak again.

“Do you know what am I doing right now?” Valor asked.

Adam looked to Shiv, but the Deathless didn’t have an answer either. “I… being silent? Judging me?”

“No. I am observing you. And I am being patient. This is not doing nothing. This is the most essential thing any warrior—assassin or otherwise—must learn how to do. The environmental conditions were favorable to you. Your skills were many. Your experience far greater. And you did proceed with some caution and seriousness. You did watch him. But you were undone by something.”

“His tactics?” Adam sighed.

“Your own pride. I told you two to spar with each other. Shiv was not to hurt you. You could kill him. But I said nothing about retreat. Or ambushes. Or anything else.”

“So… I could have just left?” Adam said.

“You could have done many things. You could have teleported the moment his decoy armor closed in and avoided any chance of a confrontation. But you stayed to unleash your arrows because you felt challenged and slighted. Especially by him. And now you are conflicted about him.”

Adam scoffed. “Oh, yes. Please, tell me more things I know.”

“Certainly. Here is an uglier lesson: You understand better than I do your flaws, but you are not yet strong enough to decide against them. You do not have a technical problem, you have an emotional one. But that is just as well. I was far worse than you at your age. I did far worse than you. This is the consequence of life. But it is curable. You can be made stronger. But you must lose against your heart over and over and over. Until it makes you disgusted. And then finally you win. And the impossible thing you couldn’t do before becomes just another decision.”

The Young Lord stared at Valor and grimaced. “And… you can tell all this just by watching me?”

“You can tell a lot about someone by observing what they decide to do. Yes. This will be the first thing I teach you. You are right. Your academy has trained you. But your training is mostly incomplete. So. To start. You train him.”

“What?” Adam said, blinking. He looked at Shiv? “Are you—are you serious? My training is to train him?”

“Yes. Show him what you learned at the academy. Make a competent soldier of him. A leader. He is a warrior now. But too much a brute. Too raw. There is power. But someone else always has much more. There is cunning. But it is the cunning of a scavenger and a stalker—of a spurned boy fortifying himself using scraps. Now, a fearless brawler remains instead of the boy, but his habits must be honed.”

“And why must I do this?” Adam asked.

“Because you cannot decide if you want to like him for who he is and the times he’s saved your life, or hate him because of what he is and the things his parents did to yours.”

Adam just looked at Valor, his eyes only managing a weak glare.

Valor continued. “The moment you decide how you wish to treat him for good is when you start mastering yourself. I cannot blame you for your feelings. But you must be responsible for them. The world cares not for our wounds. And there is no one else but us who can reach inside to clean out the deep pain inside.”

The Young Lord took on a contemplative and absent look, but ultimately said nothing in response.

“Shiv. Your challenges are just so inverted. I fear you may be the most resilient disciple I will take, in mind and flesh.”

“You fear?” Shiv said, unsure what Valor meant.

“Yes. Because it is hard to change someone who is unshakable. I will make my worries about you plain: you are not hardened by your life, you are almost unscratched by it. It took me years to process the bitterness and loathing I felt, even after murdering my own mother. It took me longer to become a proper person. For whatever reason, you are not this way. There is too little bitterness. So little it bothers me. It does not fit.”

Shiv shrugged. “I just deal with things, Valor. I don’t let them linger or dwell on them.”

“Yes. And that is part of the reason why you are blunt and raw. Life is pure arithmetic to you, isn’t it? Simple in many regards.”

The Deathless thought about that and nodded. “Yeah. I’d say so.”

Valor hummed a laugh. “For the first time, I will have a student that has completed the final part of their training before all others.”

“What part is that?”

“The descent and return from death.”

Shiv didn’t think that was exactly fair. “My Path lets me do that. It’s good for me. I don’t think it’s the same for those who have to do a ritual.”

“The technical aspects of the ritual are one thing,”

Valor said, his tone hushed. “But there is a price most pay for facing that dreaded place. For entering the embrace of the Great Enemy and returning. Death has broken many disciples I thought promising. It scarred them. It wounded their spirits and left them less than who they were. But the amount of times you have died… and the ways you have died… you stand unaffected. Even now.”

“I mean, I got a lot of skill levels.”

Valor laughed. “As I said: Arithmetic. But I fear the descent won’t be so easy for the Young Lord. So. When the time comes, you must aid him as well. Give him whatever peace you can.”

Adam didn’t respond to this, so deep was he in his own thoughts. Shiv was getting a grasp on how Valor intended to shape them. The ancient Pathbearer was going to build them both from different foundations. Spiritually for Adam, technically for Shiv. It made sense to some extent, but Shiv still wasn’t sure about being trained by Adam. There was still a lot of wrongness that rested between them, but maybe that was the point.

“You finished for the day. We go back. Preferably before the girl drags the rest of her scouting party to find us.” Valor paused. “I blame you for this, Shiv.”

“What? What did I do?”

“Cook.” Valor sounded practically miserable. “Cook very well, apparently. The Umbrals seem addicted. The Young Lord keeps trying to steal more. Even the Weaveresses that pass through grab a bite. And I continue to lack a stomach or even a tongue. Maddening.”

“Well, then I guess we should endeavor to find the fragment of you that has the fleshy bits next.”

The skull went still in the air. Then turned to Adam. “Adept. I want you to understand that I absolutely have favorites among my pupils. And the favorite right now by far is him.”

Adam finally emerged from his thoughts to narrow his eyes at the hovering skull. “Fine. Just so that you remember that I’m the one that gets to taste his cooking right now.”

Somehow, Valor managed an expression of abject misery with a flicker in his sockets and a twisting of his jaw.

***

Might of Mass > 71

Diamond Shell > 80

Momentum Core > 64

Parry > 31

Biomancy > 45

Pyromancy > 6

Psychomancy > 6

Awareness > 10

Intimidation > 10

Disease Resistance > 8

Practical Metabiology > 11

Vitality Drain > 9

Revenant > 5

“I really need to find something capable of killing me brutally,” Shiv muttered. Uva lightly elbowed him in the side before chiding him with her eyes. “What? My leveling’s slowed. I’ve only gained one or two levels for my skills over the past few days and deaths.” He frowned into the fish head soup he made. It was still piping hot—a benefit that even minor Pyromancy allowed—but looking at himself reminded him how slow his Cooking Skill was progressing as well. “Now I feel even worse. If only there was a way I could get killed because my cooking wasn’t good enough somehow…”

A silence dragged on for a while..Shiv continued staring at his own reflection in the soup. He scratched at his stubble. “I need a shave too…” It was then that the silence became unnatural. As he looked up, he realized that the entire camp was glaring at him. Including Uva.

“His leveling has slowed over the past few days, he says,” Adam grumbled, taking another bite out of his fish head. “You disgust me, Shiv. You disgust us all.”

Shiv coughed. “I’m just… I’m just used to dying and making things quicker. Running into that patch of diseased bushes did wonders for my Disease Resistance.”

“Yes,” Uva said, her voice thin with annoyance. “And then you kept running back into the same patch until it stopped killing you.”

“I managed to isolate it with my Biomancy by the end,” Shiv said. “Of course I might have… caused some kind of cell deficiency too. I think it’s because I pulled all my infected cells together or something. I’ll check the chapter again. I think Dven will like to examine my corpses too. Maybe it’ll find something interesting there.”

“And that’s a sentence I never thought I’d hear in my life,” Ikki said, swallowing a piece of lettuce. “You’re really not bothered by dying at all, huh?”

“It’s just efficient,” Shiv said, shifting on his seat. Adam and Uva made eye contact then, and both of them shook their heads. “What?”

“Shiv. You can be very dear and very sweet. And considerate. But also sometimes casually disturbing. Sometimes all at the same time.”

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

“I’m just being efficient,” Shiv repeated, feeling a little attacked. He felt like he’d been over this topic many times the last few days. “I think how fast I progress is based on how severe my deficiencies are when I die. But dying the same way to the same threat eventually erodes the effectiveness of my Feat. I need to… seek out new deaths too. Broaden my experiences.”

“You’re doing it again,” Uva said, her tone flat. “You’re doing it right now.”

“Ah. Sorry.”

Ikki drained her soup with a loud slurp, staring at Shiv over the edge of the bowl. “I think it’s pretty weird but also kind of cool. Did Adam manage to kill you at all?”

“No,” the Young Lord groaned loudly. “He’s practically a giant cockroach by this point. A giant cockroach that can get very fast and who uses his dimensional cloak as a morgue for all his corpses so he can keep rebuilding his armor.”

“Oh! So that’s why you’re harvesting your old bodies,” Ikki said. “Wow. That’s a lot better of a reason than I thought.”

“What did you think I was doing?” Shiv asked.

“I donno. Mad Biomancy stuff. Like trying to keep a heart beating in a dead body or fusing flesh together to create a monster.”

Shiv started at her. “I might have done a bit of the former…”

“Eww.” Ikki grimaced. “Did it work?”

“Yeah,” Shiv said. “I even got the body to breathe again, but the mind wasn’t working anymore. I think it has something to do with being without oxygen for too long. Or my soul not being inside it.”

“Creepy. But cool.”

Uva rubbed at her temple. “Mostly creepy for me. Sorry, Shiv.”

Shiv shrugged. “Biomancy isn’t everyone’s thing.”

“Neither is dying,” Adam muttered off by the side. Shiv caught the other Umbrals nodding in agreement.

Shiv eyed Uva’s nightglass field armor and considered something. “Actually… Do you guys want some armor?”

“Your skeleton?” Uva said, raising an eyebrow. She looked at the thick plates of Diamond Shelled bones presently fused around Shiv. She opened her mouth to say something in the negative, then paused. “It does seem rather durable, actually.”

“It’s also bloody dense and heavy. Like him sometimes.” Adam breathed. “I would know because he hit me with some of his bones. And there’s also another problem: Biomancy. Shiv, do you have an easy way for a Non-Biomancer to get in and out of your bone armor?”

Shiv paused. “Not yet?”

Adam put down his bowl and twirled his fingers as if to say, “See? That’s something you need to consider.”

Uva, however, thought a bit further. “I think there might be potential here. Maybe not as a full ensemble but as additional layering for the chest and legs. Heavy armor for heavy combat.”

Shiv looked at her nightglass armor again. “Yeah. The nightglass weapons are pretty sharp, but I found them to be pretty brittle, too.”

“The armor is treated,” Uva said. “And I wear my enchanted leathers beneath, so it’s not likely to cut me even if it does break. But if we were suffering a bombardment and my outer protection got compromised… Shrapnel can prove quite deadly.”

“And some bone plates might just patch things up.”

Uva nodded. “That’s what I was thinking.”

“Oh, does someone want to wear their dead boyfriend?” Ikki teased.

“Ikki,” Uva said, a hint of warning in her voice. This was not the “big sister mode, I’m going to pull your ear Uva,” this was “recently promoted Cherished Sister operating in the field Uva.” The young Umbral coughed, offered a formal apology, and then started maintaining her equipment.

“So,” Adam said, staring at Valor. “We missed a few topics out there earlier. You made things clear about our training, but what about the gate?” The Young Lord looked to Uva. “Are we close? Far? Where are we? Can I ask for some details and get something more than just a non-reaction.”

Shiv noticed Uva looking to Valor for permission, and the skull nodded. “We are a day’s walk from reaching the Compact gate.”

“A day’s walk?” Adam said, blinking in surprise. Then, his expression hardened. “We can get there faster if we just teleported. Do we have a route scouted? Wards? I can fly there and back within a few hours. Chart a route. Secure a space for us to jump across.”

“It must be traveled on foot,” Uva said. “Heavy warding. More importantly, Compact has Rift Demons contracted to serve as their scouts. Thus far, we have not been able to get past them. Attempting to teleport in the vicinity of a Rift Demon is… a dangerous proposition.”

“So, me and Shiv will eliminate the Rift Demons, then,” Adam said. “He’ll charge them from the front and smash them, while I strike with precision from afar. And then—”

“No,” Uva said, her voice firm. “We are not risking combat. Come.” She rose from where she sat. “Ikki. Legend Valor. Shall we show them?”

“Show us what?” Adam asked.

“Something to give you some perspective on the obstacles we face ahead,” Valor said, his voice ending with a low growl of foreboding.

The Young Lord sneered as he gazed into the campfire. “I will get back home. No matter what it takes. No matter the struggle. The entire world can be against me, and it will make no difference.”

A few meters away, Ikki snorted a laugh loud enough for everyone to hear.

“You doubt me, Sister Ikki?” Adam asked.

Ikki paused, looked over her shoulder, and nodded without hesitation. “Yeah. I do.”

***

“This is… bullshit,” Adam breathed.

“That… is not quite the entire world, but it is a sizable mass of people,” Shiv took in the horizon and found himself startled and impressed.

“Dimensionals, mostly,” Uva said, her expression focused and intense. There was a quiet anger in her mind as well. And soon, Shiv understood why.

The scene before them was one of fire and industry. The group peered down at the distant horizon from a mountainous high point. Below, dense forests of mega-fungi and arching trees ran—until they suddenly ceased. Severed at the base by adult-sized cave biters with blades attached to their sides. True to Valor’s words, the angler fish-looking creature that killed Shiv so many times when he first fell into the Abyss could get much, much bigger. Most of them were the size of small hills, and on their backs seemed to be entire lumberyards run by shrouded figures and metallic dimensionals.

Then, the cave biters broke into song, their voices slow and deep, but definitely intelligible. “WE CUT ONE FOREST, THEN WE CUT ONE MORE, AND THEN WE EAT THE LITTLE ONES, TILL THERE AIN’T ANY NO MORE…”

And aside from the logger cave biters, there were also others carrying what seemed like golden cathedrals on their backs. Cathedrals stuffed full of treasure. They stomped forward on a vast, black-paved path, and chained to the cave biters were lines and lines of slaves. Shiv could see that a great many of them were Umbrals, but the bulk seemed to be automata. And poorly treated ones too. Many were in disrepair, leaking, their electronic voices moaning and crying out in despair.

The caravan of slave-driving, treasure-dealing cave biters passed numerous guard towers infused with glowing fire elementals—Shiv noted the burning orbs at their peak were of the same brightness and design as the skull of the elemental golem he faced back in Passage. “Those towers will fry us if we try a direct approach.”

“They aren’t the main threat,” Uva said, pointing up above. Thanks to his cloak, Shiv had a bit of Shadowsense, and he perceived what lurked in the darkness much better than he did before. What he saw were fast, moving shapes. They were like smaller dragons, but their bodies were sharp and jagged. Atop their backs were riders clad in ebony armor. And then there was an even larger shape looming in the back. Its form was colossal—even larger than the adult cave biters, and its outline reminded Shiv of an octopus. There was something about its single glowing eye, though…

“Don’t look at the eye too long,” Uva said. Shiv turned his gaze away. “It will sense you. It’s called a Jealousy, and it’s a Greater Demon—one contracted to guard the gate.”

“But where’s the gate?” Adam said. “I only see watchtowers, dimensionals, slaves, and people surrounding that large stone archway. Hmm. Maybe that’s a small fort off by the side, but still…”

At the end of the ebony road, the merchant cave biters walked toward a colossal, looming archway framing a set of old world ruins. The glowing eye stalks of the cave biters swayed—and fired every now and again, disintegrating slaves clever enough to slip their chains, but foolish enough to flee.

“Godsdamned monsters,” Adam spat.

Shiv agreed, but he was distracted by something else. He wondering how pieces of the old world could scatter so far, but then the archway activated, and a light splashed over all of them. A fiery, disturbing light. That’s when Shiv realized what he was truly looking at: the gate. The gate leading back to the surface, supposedly. But through the gate he glimpesed at the visage of another world. Another dimension.

This one looked like a vision from a nightmare, abstract but industrious, a world of metal and smoke. He heard the slaves wail as they were marched into the gate, their shrieks echoing across the lands. Soon, the shrieks became a constant, Umbral and automata voices becoming the bulk. Ikki’s expression hardened. Uva’s eyes went flat as she deadened her heart.

Beyond the gateway were other structures. Massive brass structures with magical sigils seared onto their surfaces. Off by the side, Shiv thought he glimpsed something that almost looked like a star, but it was black as ink and seemed to have chains latched into it. Massive chains connecting it to other edifices in the distance.

As the merchant cave biters passed through one after another, Shiv clenched his jaw in disgust. “Those cave biters. They’re running slaves?”

“Most of them are slaves too,” Ikki said. “They’re contracted to a master. The Compact of Babel is a people of laws and agreements. But not justice or ethics. They will deal in anything, and they seek to spread as far and take as much as they can. Including people.”

“Yeah, well, they’re going to need to change their habits real soon,” Shiv said, glaring at the scene before him. There must’ve been tens of thousands of slaves going in there… Just how many people were being transported? A slow, boiling hate churned inside Shiv. He hated slavers on principle. He hated slavers because they offended his every desire. He hated slavers because they existed.

And soon, he would show these slavers just how much he hated them, in every way he could.

“Is this… the only way back to the surface?” Adam whispered.

“Sure, you can also try navigating your way back up the Abyss,” Ikki said. “But good luck with that. You’ll be wandering for months if the Court doesn’t catch you, or Descenders don’t recruit you, or the Necrotechs don’t execute you for being a surfacer.”

“We’re not just going through that gate,” Shiv declared. “We’re taking it from Compact.”

Uva stared at him and bit her lip. “That will be tantamount to war, Shiv. War between Weave and Compact. We have… agreements in place. That we won’t trespass on each other’s territory or take action against each other. At least not openly.”

“That’s fine. I don’t want to implicate you. Not the Composer. Not Weave. Not the Arachnae Order. You aren’t the ones that will be doing the taking. This is gonna be my gate.”

The Psychomancer’s mouth opened slightly. “That’s…”

“Suicide?” Shiv asked, grinning. “Madness? Maybe. But it just sounds like a good time to me. Guess the System heard my prayers earlier.”

“They’ll have mind mages. Powerful ones.”

“Then, I better get to practicing more.”

Uva eyed him, and nodded. “I suppose we should.”

“You see now why the Composer was reluctant about this place,” Valor said. The fire in his eyes burned dim as he watched the trail of atrocity. “The Compact of Babel is a stain among the Faiths. Even more than the First Court. They traded everything once decent about themselves for power, and now to fill the hollowness of their culture, they create great citadels in the Abyss and across dimensions. Citadels filled with suffering and commerce. And they call that industry. And they call that civilization. And they proclaim themselves to be the true inheritors of the old world.”

The skull turned, regarding Shiv and Adam. “Shiv. Your declaration. Do you mean it?”

“Yeah. I look forward to killing every last one of the slavers. Even if it kills me. Broken Moon, I hope they can kill me.”

“Good. Adam? Are you still driven to reach your town in time to save it.”

The Young Lord’s stare hardened. “Never doubt me. If he can do it, I can.”

Uva looked at Adam and then Shiv. “It seems like a running theme between us Pathbearers.”

“Just the ones that love the climb,” Shiv said, earning a slight smile from her.

“Still…” Adam sighed. “How the bloody hells are we going to get in? Even if we could by some miracle—”

“Hello,” Shiv said. “Did you just say my name?”

“—Shut. Up. By some miracle… defeat that small army of… giant monsters guarding the gate, how are we going to get in without them just shutting it off?”

Everyone pondered that question for a moment. Except for Valor. He just observed. Not the gate, but Shiv and Adam.

“I might have a few angles of approach,” Uva said. “Some Shadow Cells have conducted raids on the flesh caravans to liberate their victims. Furthermore, we have contacts in the Compact garrison. Defectors and spies of our own…”

“I might have an idea,” Shiv said. And from within his cloak, he pulled out his other recent Quest reward. The fused bronze face born of countless aviary helmets melting together during the mana bomb felt almost like a feather in Shiv’s hands, but he regarded its Enchantments once more.

Equipment: [Mask of False Paths]

Tier: Heroic

Condition: Damaged

Composition: Bronze

Enchantments > Perfect Semblance; Adept-Skill Thief (0/1); Initiate-Skill Thief (0/2); Heroic Mind-Shield

“Is that the mask you got from the Quest?” Adam asked.

“Yeah,” Shiv said, eyeing the rest of the group. “We said we wanted a field test. Well. Let’s find out what Perfect Semblance lets me do.”

And thus, he placed the mask on his face, and felt a dense barrier immediately sever his Psychomancy from the outside world.

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