96 (II)

Hunt [I]

Shiv and Uva both fell silent as they thought about the Recollector and what they had endured in the last hours.

“When it hurt you,” Shiv began, not sure how else to start this. “When you screamed…” He placed a hand on her face and stared into her eyes.

She cupped his hands in return. “However you felt then, I felt the same way. When I was in the teleportation anchor, I heard you scream and… I don’t think the memory will ever leave me.” Uva’s lip quivered. She was resilient, but she might have just found the limit to what she could endure. “I fear this may leave me with some scars to overcome, if I want to go through the process naturally.”

“You and me both,” Shiv replied. “I guess we can only keep saving each other in the meantime. You, me, and Adam.” Then, he paused. “This skill… The System…’

“It’s going to make us try and face each other someday,” Uva said, her voice filled with certainty. “Valor is right. Of this, I have no doubt.”

“I’m never going to try to hurt you, Uva,” Shiv said. “No matter what the System wants.”

She smiled. “I believe you now. But we all make promises. My mother made a promise. She meant it with all her heart too. The System did not care. It does not care for any of us.” And slowly, she pushed away.

“Power,” she said. “We need to be powerful. But even then, we need to be cunning as well. It must be strife on our terms, not its. Strife satisfies it, and so we must make our own. We must be strong enough to weave our own tale. To force our own desired outcomes.”

A quiet appreciation settled in, and Shiv just stared at her. “Are you hungry right now?”

“Perhaps…” She smirked back, wryly amused but also somewhat flattered, and then she was staring at him, and soon the struggle against personal desire became mutual. The moment dragged. Their gazes remained locked, as did their minds, but it was Uva who exercised her wisdom first. “But not yet,” she breathed. “Maybe when we have a proper moment, but not right now. There is too much to do right now.”

“Yeah,” Shiv said, wrestling his desires down after a brief struggle. He let out a breath. “Later.”

“Later,” she repeated. “For now, we have more than a few other things to handle. I’ll share my memories of the ability with Adam later. Once I shear away the,” she considered her words, “dangerous edges. He’s more sensitive to the eldritch than you or I.”

“You have any idea why that is?” Shiv asked. Then he considered Adam’s mother. Rose Van Erren was also very vulnerable before the eldritch. Even laying eyes on the Recollector hurt her mentally. She mended, much like Shiv did, healing and restoring her to her original state, emerging from madness somewhat whole, but quite traumatized.

“I suspect it’s his Divination,” Uva said. “That or just his nature, it’s hard to say. The mind is a strange and delicate thing. There is a fineness to the structure that is also very contingent and malleable based on specific details.” Uva pressed her lips together. “It’s rather complicated to explain, but quite interesting as well. Speaking of which, we will also need to further your Psychomancy. We’ve been getting behind on that.”

“Yeah, well, we’ve been pretty busy not dying,” he muttered. “I’m behind on my Practical Metabiology too, and on my goddamn cooking.”

A grimace crawled onto Uva’s face. “Yes. I could really use some food.”

“Everyone in the gate could really use some food,” Shiv said. “The mercenaries talked to me about supplies, things they need. I told them to get a list together earlier, so I’ll probably check in with them again. But after that, one of us is probably going to need to take a trip out, and I think that ‘one of us’ is me.”

She regarded him for a moment. “I think that might be wise. You move quickly, and you have the means to carry large prey and hold much needed supplies. I think you should hunt something with regenerative abilities.”

“Why?” Shiv asked.

“Because if your cooking can offer an effect from their flesh, it will be a temporary salve for the gate’s people. Regenerative healing will be very useful in keeping the Initiates and below in good condition.”

He grunted. “I’m going to leave through the Abyssal Gateway. I don’t want to risk anyone noticing us on the surface. Whatever is happening, whatever news is spreading, let’s give it a little while longer. The last thing any of us needs is Vicar Sullain realizing that Gate Theborn has fallen, and Blackedge might get help soon.” He considered Uva in greater detail. “I’m also not risking running into more unexpected surprises up top with how the System’s acting. That, and there’s the Curse.”

Uva frowned at that. “Yes, I suspect my presence on the surface will be a bit of a struggle. Darkness and minds must shroud me from the dawn’s hate. But also, someone needs to watch the gate. I think we’re all going to be rotating. This gate, though it is badly damaged and experiencing substantial decay, is also something of a sanctuary.” A thoughtful expression came over her. She held out a hand and pressed it against the cut lining the teleportation anchor they were in, the cut inflicted by her strange geometric entity. “I suspect this is the System’s desired outcome. A new story for this gate. I don’t even think it can be called Gate Theborn anymore. With everything destroyed, with the Stranger’s touch infesting it, it will soon revert to a much inferior state, albeit a clean state. We can rebuild the gate from the ground up. We can decide its development.”

“Or we can eventually be boiled alive beneath Lord Scorn’s endless tide of fire,” Shiv said. “That’s still a month away, and I don’t doubt the angry god intends to deliver on that promise. I also don’t doubt that we can’t stop a true god, though I don’t know very much about this guy’s capabilities.”

“Ah, a problem of great scope for later,” Uva said. “Right now, we just need to keep the gate under control and figure out how to save your Blackedge first.”

“Yeah. I don’t think Blackedge has a month.”

“Indeed,” Uva said. “In the meantime, I will have an Owl to interrogate and quite a few minds I need to sift through. I will try to monitor and track our fellow survivors.”

“Fellow survivors,” Shiv muttered.

“Yes, we all experienced a shared calamity.” And there her eyes widened. “I have a final request, Shiv.”

He stared at her and realized immediately what she wanted. He reached into his cloak and pulled out the tome—the eldritch tome taken from Confriga’s personal vault that she’d connected her mind to the first time the Dream-taker talked to her.

He also had ten other pieces of equipment there. In the fight, Shiv had lost his kukri, Adam had lost his rapier, and Uva had lost a full set of armor. They were due for some replacements. Maybe they could get something useful from Confriga.

“I think I’m going to drop some stuff with Adam before I leave. Have him look over them.”

“Perhaps it would be better to leave them with Can Hu,” she said. “It says it wishes to focus on improving its crafting. Earlier, I spoke to it about a potential Master Skill for it to select. But Can Hu is… reluctant to reward itself.”

“Reluctant?”

“It is–” she paused. “I cannot read its mind exactly, but I can tell it is troubled. Can Hu did not manage to protect you. It thinks of itself as armor still. And so, since it failed and broke down, leaving you at the mercy of Confriga and the entity, Can Hu feels as if it failed its purpose.”

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Shiv snorted at that. “You know, that’s bullshit. I’d rather Can Hu be alive than broken. If I fought the Recollector wearing it, there wouldn’t be a Can Hu anymore.”

“If only Can Hu felt the same way,” Uva said, her tone resigned. “Automata are not so different from people of flesh and blood in that many of them develop twisted ways of thinking, means of coping with their own failures. All these methods have costs, pains that we have to bear.”

“Yeah, I’m going to spend some time talking to Can Hu later,” Shiv said. “For now, I’m gonna get ready for a quick expedition. Regeneration. Right. Hydra or something. I can find something like that.”

***

After returning with Uva, Shiv handed the ten pieces of Enchanted Equipment acquired from Confriga’s vault to Adam and Can Hu. Both the Gate Lord and the Penitent examined the items carefully, with Can Hu asking Adam if he could find the Gate Lord’s missing sword along with the team’s broken weapons. Apparently, Can Hu thought it might be able to repair some of their damaged Equipment—or perhaps turn them into raw materials to be expended as upgrades for a new item.

In the meantime, the others committed to their existing tasks. Uva was mainly interrogating the Owl right now. Her mana strands were deep in the man’s mind, and every now and then, he would whimper from where he lay. Adam stayed near Can Hu and Valor, but his eyes constantly burned with mana. He never stopped watching the mercenaries. Paranoia gnawed at him, and even in a moment of rest, Adam looked haggard.

“I’ll get you some food soon,” Shiv said. “That might pick you up.”

Adam nodded quietly. “We’re close,” he breathed. Shiv regarded him. “We’re so close to home, yet why do I feel like something worse is lurking on the horizon?”

“Too many ugly fights too fast,” Shiv said. “We’ll get through it. We just can’t let the System outpace us.” Adam still looked stressed, and Shiv didn’t know what more to say. He reached over and clapped the archer on the shoulder. “Keep those teeth clenched and that back straight. And try to get your core dysfunction fixed by the time I get back.”

“Stop calling it that.”

“Nah.” Shiv grinned. “I think I’ll keep prodding you a bit longer with that.”

“The joke will wear out soon,” Adam sneered.

“I’ll find something else to bully you about.”

Adam let out a disgusted snort. He was annoyed, but already looked less stressed. Well, that’s a brief success, Shiv thought.

“I’ve opened the Abyssal Gateway. Just go and find something good for us to bite into. Something—”

“Regenerative. Yeah. Uva told me.”

Adam frowned. “Tasty. I was going to say tasty. Why regenerative?”

“For the Initiates and weaker,” Shiv answered.

“Ah. Right. Glad she’s here.” Adam shook his head. “Maybe she should have been Gate Lord instead.”

“I don’t like public speaking,” Uva messaged them telepathically. “I get stage fright.” Her voice was deadpan, but her aversion to receiving too much attention was true.

As Shiv prepared to leave, Valor called out to him with a weak rasp. “Shiv, we must talk later. About several things, about many things. Things that concern not only your status as System-favored but also the nature of your soul and mind.”

“Sure,” Shiv said. “I just need to—”

“Adam told me a bit about,” Valor tried to find the words, “the ordeal you experienced at the hands of the entity.”

Shiv thought back to his flesh being torn and broken, his mind ripped asunder over and over again, the things in his soul trying to peel and break him. It wasn’t a very pleasant memory. Shiv did his best not to shudder. “Yeah, not exactly my finest hour.”

Valor just stared at him. “And that’s all you have to say about that?”

Shiv stared back. “Yeah, I guess. It was kind of bad. I didn’t like it.”

The Legendary Pathbearer let out an unnerved breath. “Shiv, what you experienced is more trauma than what pretty much anyone could ever possibly endure. It would have taken… Uva put you back together, yes, but from what I understand, from what she told me, she didn’t conduct so much surgery as she peeled your broken pieces away from each other and reattached them to their proper positions within your mind. You healed yourself once everything was back in shape. Passively.”

Shiv nodded.

“Stop nodding!” Valor demanded. Shiv immediately stopped nodding. “Shiv. I want to talk with you about my son. Udraal. There are things you deserve to know.”

“The Udraal that sealed you in the dagger in the first place?”

“Yes.” Valor stared at Shiv for a moment before he continued. “For a long time, my son was working on several projects of the magical kind. And among them was something I worked with him to achieve. A regenerating, self-restoring mind. One that would have a few specific traits that could be imprinted on it and always return to that certain baseline, no matter what happened. Originally, it was the conceptual bedrock of a particular series of war golems we were trying to make, but I suspect it became something more for him.”

“So? What are you getting at?” Shiv asked, feeling a slight sense of foreboding.

“I’m beginning to remember certain things,” Valor said. “And your nature, the way you are not only Deathless in body and spirit, but how your mind itself seems to naturally reconstruct itself after taking catastrophic damage, going far beyond the bounds of any natural resilience… I do not yet have my power over Animancy back, but I can still examine you. I can… still…” Valor’s voice choked off, and he struggled to stay afloat.

“You should get fixed up first, Valor,” Shiv said, a concerned expression on his face. “All this can wait.”

Valor regarded him. “I fear it cannot, Shiv. But go, now. Go quickly. When you leave through the gateway, be fast, be alert, and understand that you will always be in danger now. Those moments of peace, treasure them, enjoy them. They will be brief. Find strength. Be more of yourself than ever before.”

Shiv considered the severity in Valor’s tone and simply grunted. “Well, Valor, I’ll tell you this much. I took things as they came while I was a Pathless, trying to earn a Path. And this, right now, even everything the Recollector did to me…” He licked the inside of his cheek. He was alive. It hurt like hell while he struggled, but he was alive, and he enjoyed every second of it. “…wouldn’t change a godsdamn thing. I’ll hear whatever you need to tell me later. I’ll do whatever it is we need to so that you can get a better understanding of my soul or whatever, but don’t apologize to me about this. This is the only life I ever wanted, and the System is giving it to me, bone-deep and raw.”

Valor let out a laugh. “And you truly are meant for the favored life. It’s also unsurprising why the orc fell in love with you.”

And that immediately killed Shiv’s enthusiasm. “Come on, Valor, don’t say that shit.”

“It is simply the truth,” Valor said. “Your casual enjoyment of great struggle reminds me of Marikos, and your taste for violence has more than earned you the Challenger’s attention. Tread carefully, and do not be consumed by your deeds. Remember: you are also a chef.”

“I am also a chef.” Shiv nodded. “And right now I’m gonna go get us some meat.”

“Yes, meat I cannot eat. Thank you, Shiv, it is always wonderful to be reminded of this.”

Shiv winced. “We’ll find another fragment of you soon. We’ll definitely get your tongue at some point.”

Valor signed. “At some point. If I am still whole and here at some point.” He laughed. “I am a pitiful sight, am I not? I was wounded so severely by something I could have killed so casually once. It is like watching yourself being strangled by a cretin while being unable to move your limbs.” Valor opened and closed his hands while shaking his head. “Ah. Apologies. A black mood was upon me. Now, I cast it away. Be away with you for now. I will examine the Educator’s tome in the meantime as well. It is something I am still capable of doing while I… while Adam keeps me sustained.”

The Deathless gave a final nod to the Legendary Pathbearer and shot out toward the Abyssal Gateway. He gave telepathic notice of his departure to Adam and Uva. It took him mere moments to cross the entirety of Gate Theborn, though he took care to avoid causing any shockwaves. It helped that the insides of the gate were shrinking as well. As he passed through the gateway, he remembered that it had been merely a few hours ago that the small army of vampires outside was torn apart between Adam, Shiv, and Uva’s team effort.

He found the scene of slaughter as he’d expected it. But more than that, there were now new figures before him. Several dozen new figures that were all staring at him, all of them Biomancers, all of them sporting sharp teeth, blood-red eyes, and an assortment of strange, biological armors.

He pulled himself to a halt in the air before the vampires. “So…” Shiv sighed. “You guys the after-action team?”

“A Necrotech?” one of the First Blood soldiers spat. “Speak, death-touched one. Tell us what happened here. An army of ours—”

“Oh, I killed them,” Shiv said. He felt the courage of several vampires shudder at once. They bared their fangs and hissed. “Well. Most of them. I had help. But I don’t think I’m going to need help with you.”

The lead bloodsucker sneered. “We are Masters of Blood, and you are but one—”

Shiv froze time. All the vampires went still. “Yeah? Well, where’s your Chronomancer?” No reply came. He let out a snort. “Well. Time to test Inertial Overdrive again. Let’s see how many of you suckers got Master-Tier Toughness.”

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