76 (II)

Tome [I]

“What kind of skill is that?” Adam asked.

“I have… no idea,” Valor said. “I have never heard of such a skill before. At least, I cannot remember.”

“Me neither,” Uva muttered, but she was looking at Shiv with deeper concern now. “And this skill is the reason behind those missing patches of time? Your lost memories?”

“They’re not lost to me,” Shiv said. “And the skill, it… uh…” He looked at Adam and grimaced. “I don’t know how to describe this without sounding insane or hurtful, but I think it ended up resurrecting part of your mother, Adam. Rose Van Erren is attached to the skill and trapped inside me.”

The room fell silent. Adam’s jaw opened slightly as his face started contorting. Before the Young Lord could say anything, Shiv kept going.

“Before you ask me if this is a joke or if I’m just trying to mock you, no. That’s—it’s what I have experienced. But none of you can see her, because the skill is… It’s… it’s acausal? Like it makes me not exist for a while in the real world. I slip into my own Vitae and basically leave the context of—dammit, I’ll just show you.”

“Shiv, wait—” Uva began.

But Shiv didn’t. He shifted into his Vitae for just a beat. The world went gray. Adam was still staring blankly, a stunned expression on his face that became one of absolute confusion as Shiv vanished. His expression spread to everyone else as they stared off into the space where Shiv used to be.

“What… What were we doing just now?” Adam asked.

Uva’s strands twitched in the air, and they curved back at her, as if she were lost. “I think I was just linked to someone.”

Valor said nothing.

Shiv felt a bit colder, and so he moved to return. But before he did, a cry came from behind him. “Wait!”

Shiv paused as he turned to look at Rose. It was unnerving how detailed she looked, despite being entirely shaped by his Vitae. It was like the skill remembered how she dressed, the way she preferred her hair, and it even managed to portray how she cried. But its colors were only white and red, and so her tears ran like blood instead of water. “Tell him that I read him ‘Hark! Little Sparrow’ every night. He was young, but he should remember. Tell him that it was my favorite thing to say ‘bark bark bark’ and make him correct me. Tell him he used to get so mad and that I love him and that I—I—”

“I’ll tell him,” Shiv promised. And just as it started getting too cold, he resurfaced into the real world.

Everyone flinched back at his reappearance. Off by the side, Siggy cried out in terror. Shiv felt a stone crack into the back of his head as Can Hu launched something at him. Uva pierced into his mind while Adam prepared an arrow—only to freeze as his eyes widened in recognition of who he was aiming at.

Outside Context Problem > 55

“Stop!” Valor cried out. “Stop! That’s—Shiv! Shiv? How did you… What did you do?”

“I left reality,” Shiv said, fully honest. “I don’t really know how it works, but it does. It leaves me unaffected by things. It makes people forget I ever existed—like how it’s all affecting you just now. But it also burns my vitality. It burns it badly. Right now, it’s taking me some focus to just stay upright.”

He finished, and he realized he was wheezing. Outside Context Problem was powerful. But damn did it come at a steep cost. “I think I can kill myself for good if I overuse this skill. And I think… I think I can feel my vitality slowly coming back, but I need to drain something if I want to recover faster.”

“And that’s how you avoided the god for so long,” Valor deduced. He sounded more excited than ever before. “That’s how you survived. You left the context of reality. You are capable of acausality. The Necrotechs—no, any of the Five Faiths would kill to possess someone like you right now. I—if only my Animancy was better… I need to examine your very nature when I am more restored. This…” Valor trailed off. “I remember… I remember my son was trying to build something like this. A self-referential soul. Someone that could pull themselves out of the world while still moving within its confines.”

And there was something else Shiv needed to talk about. “Rose intercepted some of the god’s Exposition. She… The Educator mentioned your son by name. Udraal Thann. She’s working with him. She wanted to give you all to him for System-knows what reason. And she wanted to modify my soul directly for some purpose. Or something. She was definitely trying to get me to develop Exposition for a reason.”

Now, it was Valor’s turn to react like someone just slapped him. And Shiv still wasn’t done. “Adam. Look at me.” The Young Lord did. With wide eyes, a shaken expression, and dilated pupils. “I don’t know why this happened. I don’t know how your mother ended up inside my Vitae. But I’ll do everything I can to get her out. When I shifted out of context, she said that she used to read you Hark! Little Sparrow every night, and she would say—”

“Bark, bark, bark…” Adam swallowed. “I… I remember… It is one of the few things I remember.” His nostrils flared. He looked to Uva. “Did—did you ever—”

“No,” she responded summarily, firmly, but gently. “I told you. I would never reach into your mind like that against your will. And you are responding in a state of shock. I can feel it radiating from you. Shiv could not have learned this from me. I would not know where to look. And he does not have the skill to delve so deep…”

“I’m not lying,” Shiv continued. “I wish I was, but I’m not. I’m sorry. She wants you to know that she loves you, and she wishes she could hold you.”

A single tear dropped from Adam’s left eye. He failed to catch it in time. “I need… I need…”

“Adam,” Shiv stepped forward, but he stopped as Adam’s face twisted into an expression of pure heartbreak and torment.

“Please, just… give me… some space… a moment…” Adam barely croaked out the words as he hurried out of the teleportation anchor, stumbling along the way.

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Shiv wanted to go after him. Rose screamed for him to go after Adam from the inside. But then Valor put a hand on his shoulder. Shiv turned around, and Valor handed him the tome. “Put this into your cloak for now. We will need to investigate it more thoroughly. I will make sure he does not do anything truly foolish in the meantime. For now, keep your distance. He will need some time to adjust to this truth. As will I, with the knowledge of my son’s involvement.”

“It’s ugly, but it’s the truth,” Shiv said. “I don’t think we have time to put this off. And you all deserved to know.”

Valor paused, looked at him, and nodded. “Yes. And I approve of the honesty. But this is a wound his heart struggles to endure. Space. Time. Kindness. Give those things to him. He will come back when he has had a moment to mend.”

Shiv thought back to how Adam went out to hunt weeks back after their argument in the umbral wilderness. “Yeah. Okay. Just… keep him safe.”

Valor hummed and went off into the dark after the Young Lord.

Shiv was about to say something else when he snarled as terrible pain flared across the left side of his body. “Shit. Okay. Come, Shiv. This is nothing. Just a little sting. Just a little…” But it wasn’t. He had to actively fight the hurt, because there was another special quality to this pain: It was constant. Unceasing. It only had two modes: searing or flaring, with things usually as searing.

I’m going to need to stay busy, Shiv thought. Distract myself from the hurt. Dammit, this is going to make casting spells hard. Can barely focus…

“Maybe I can help,” Uva said. Her mind slipped over his again, and he felt her reaching for the part of him that experienced pain. But he caught her Psychomancy with his own, weak as his field was.

“No,” Shiv said. “Don’t. Don’t reach in. Don’t bind yourself to that. There’s no reason for you to feel it too. I don’t want to see you hurt.”

“Then the feeling is very much mutual,” she said. Her stare was hard and unflinching. She wasn’t going to budge on this. “Let me help. Let me in.”

Something inside Shiv melted at the look she was giving him. “It hurts pretty bad.”

“Pain is not something I fear,” she replied.

“I know,” Shiv breathed. “I, uh, didn’t really get to the part about getting a second Blessing before everything broke down. Maybe I should have started with that.”

“Second Blessing?” Uva’s brow furrowed.

“Yeah, the Challenger—the orc god… He might be the only reason I’m not dead. He let me drain him, gave me a Blessing, and said that he expects us to get bloody at some point.”

Uva just gave a slight, disbelieving scoff. “Unbelievable. You… you really are favored. With the benefits and torments that entails.”

Shiv just shrugged. “He branded me with something called the Icon of the Paindrinker. It makes the damage and pain I experience worse, but everyone around me suffers the same effects too. I think he expects me to use it on him at some point. Godsdamned orcs. He’s probably watching us now. Just chuckling and clapping. See how much he does that when I eventually split his skull open.”

Uva’s mouth opened slightly. “Well. That’s… I suppose I should start versing myself in the psychology of an orcish mind.”

“What? Why?” Shiv asked.

“Because we willprobably be fighting a great many orcs down the line,” she said. “I’m not letting you go to war against the orc god alone if that’s what’s in our future.”

We. Our. The way she immediately said those words, casually accepting the binding of their fates… Something inside Shiv burned hot, and it wasn’t the searing pain eating at the left side of his body.

And his thoughts caused a chain reaction inside her. It drove her wild that she could provoke this in him, and they both went past a certain precipice of self-control just then. But while he was distracted, she reached into his mind and burrowed deeper. She tied part of herself to his pain, and immediately, it didn’t feel so bad anymore. But his Biomancy let him feel how Uva’s body tensed, how tightly she clenched her teeth. She was fighting to keep herself from screaming.

“Too much,” Shiv said, reaching out to take her hand. “Less. Pull back a bit more.” She met his gaze, and he saw her reluctance. “We still need you. We’re not taking this gate without you. And you’re not going to be casting well while barely coherent from pain. It’s enough. The fact that you’re willing to reach in is enough…”

Slowly, reluctantly, she withdrew, and the bulk of the pain crashed back into him. There was just a bit that she siphoned off. He didn’t know how she did that, but she completely directed it into her, and it was still enough to make her shiver from the muscle strain. But still, she forced a cool, composed look and cocked her head. “I don’t know what you were complaining about earlier. You had worse. Six out of ten.”

Shiv laughed. And his want for her became unbearable. And across the link, he felt a similar raging desire inside her as well. They looked at each other. Uva’s gaze darkened. Shiv swallowed. “Can Hu. Me and Uva are gonna… We’re going to scout the building. Make sure that no one heard anything, and… Yeah.”

Can Hu’s optical lenses flickered at Uva, then at Shiv. Something of a mechanical chuckle sounded from the Penitent. “Leave the tome here, Pathbearer. It will be most helpful if one of us reviews its contents while the rest of us are recovering. I will watch our undefined prisoner of war-unwilling conspirator in the meantime as well.”

Siggy’s eyes were wide, and the goblin was beyond terrified at all that she had experienced. She was still shaking in the corner of the room, not having said a single coherent word since the Educator’s attack.

Shiv took Uva by the wrist, and they departed the anchor too. Somehow, he managed to fight through his pain and shape a spell. He found a place in the levels above that lacked any bugs and rodents, and as soon as he did, his patience shattered. He swept Uva off her feet and grunted as he ignored the exploding patches of torment rushing down his left arm. “Taking too long.”

She gasped but wrapped her arms around his neck as they accelerated along the excavated pathway leading to the hidden teleportation anchor. As they slipped out from Shiv’s tarp, he liquefied the bone coverings he used to coat his corroded flesh. Then, he tore away his mask and gave up on avoiding pain altogether. “The hells with this thing too.” It hurt worse than hell when he snaked his arm behind her back, but the pain could go eat shit. Feeling her lips against his was more than worth it.

“Shiv,” she rasped. “Your wounds…”

“Aren’t going to keep me from doing anything.” He blasted through a set of doors, and dust rose into the air in a swirling dance as they jolted around a corner with another pulse of his field. Soon, they found themselves in a dark, cool monitoring room overlooking stacks of rusted containers through a dirty, cracked window.

The setting was far from romantic. Frankly, it was even kind of creepy, but neither Uva nor Shiv cared. Her hands snaked under his shirt, nails raking down the good side of his back, her palm resting against his chest. He growled as he fumbled against her armor. He didn’t want to just tear it off of her—even though every fiber of his being screamed for him to hurry so he could feel her bare skin on his sooner. His frustrated growl turned into a hoarse cry of pain as his arm flared again. Uva briefly pulled away from him with concern in her eyes, and she looked at his injuries with a disturbed expression. “Your wounds…”

“They hurt. They hurt constantly. But they don’t hurt anywhere near bad enough compared to how much I want you.”

Silver Tongue > 18

Uva’s breath hitched, and her gaze turned ravenous. She helped him with the shedding of her armor. Whatever dominion pain held over Shiv’s mind was usurped by burning desire as he and Uva savored each other.

And between instances of intimate heat, gasping breaths, and sweet-nothings exchanged, a faint presence called out from inside Shiv, trying to get his attention.

But he was too far gone. As was Uva. For a while, all they knew was each other. All they felt was each other. And if incredible, unceasing pain couldn’t distract them from their urges, what hope did the ghost of a long-dead Diviner have?

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