People are not statistics; rather, they are endpoints that feed into statistics. The great mistake many people make is that they see these commonalities between peoples of certain cultures, how certain races exhibit the same behaviors, or beliefs, or ideas. This is the complicated intermingling between the biological determinism or structural shape of one’s cognition, and that, in turn, influences behavior, which causes them to behave a certain way.

But these behaviors are branches. They expand, they blossom into unexpected outcomes.

And more importantly, people can change. People can believe different things. People can be influenced by different things. People transform. People evolve. This is what makes others uncomfortable. It is easy to tell yourself, for instance, that Umbrals are a little better than slaves, that they cannot achieve the greatness of any true Pathbearer. After all, that’s what you’ve known them as. You would even lie to yourself and say they find bliss in slavery. Yet, part of you knows that this is a lie, or perhaps you are so deep in your own deception that you refuse to see it. Hence, don’t be surprised if you find yourself dead at the end of an Umbral’s blade. The same thing, however, goes for the vampires and the orcs. Everyone is driven by a certain set of impulses. But how they express those needs and what those needs do to them in the context of their environment and other encounters, that cannot be understated.

Your genetics and your make-up do not compose the entirety of your destiny. And this—this is why Animancy is complicated. Because Animancy is all of you. Every aspect. For however complicated one’s biology is, imagine that, but now you are intermingling with the world. You are an entire organism and a cell, and you and the system have to negotiate who you will become.

It’s overwhelming. It’s vexing. And people, they are not logical. We are in so many regards animals, even as we rise in terms of power, in terms of understanding and intellect. We are animals. We want. There is nothing rational about what I am doing. I know many things. I have achieved incredible power. But this is all relative. It’s all relative.

I am so aware of the mauling I have received, of the wounds that drive me, of how insane everything I do must be in the grand scheme of things. But I have to go, I have to walk this path. I don’t know any other way. I refuse to bend. The System has forged me into this. It has made me so willing to defy, so eager to fight its cruel oppression. It’s made me yearn to take revenge on a thing that might not even be able to conceive what revenge is.

And though I have been described as unique and individual, I know that’s not the truth, for there is a strong echo of my father in me. We cannot let go. We cannot let go. We will not let go.

-Excerpt from Udraal Thann’s Journal

241

Vengeance [II]

The vision broke, and Shiv found himself hyperventilating, gripping the edge of a bed so tight the metal was bending between his fingers.

The children of the ward shuddered and twitched in their beds. All of them were crying out, coughing, calling for their parents. Sobs erupted, and it was like the entirety of the ward woke up at once.

A child nearly flung herself out of her bed, clawing for Maxime. The Biomancer stumbled backward, startled by the sudden explosive motion of her patient.

“Mama!” the little girl cried. “I want my mama!”

Nearby, a boy fell out of his bed, bouncing off the ground with nary a grunt. The medics that had come along with Shiv were frozen. The twins held on to each other, their fight or flight instincts coming to an impasse, deciding on inaction.

All around Shiv, children were sobbing, crying, but their grief wasn’t their own. Instead, it radiated out from the spores nested within them. They were agitated, threatening to detonate out from their flesh.

“You,” Tulveg said, his silken voice now ice-cold. Shiv realized with startlement that the vampire had somehow seen what the System had shown Shiv. “How… dare you? That wasn’t for you to see!” Tulveg screamed, and his rage nearly drowned the room.

Shiv didn’t panic. Instead, he responded to the vampire’s ire with a single statement of honesty, guided by the Sage of the Enkindled Heart: “I know Mettabon’s daughter.”

Sage of the Enkindled Heart 108 > 110

His words doused the vampire’s building rage like a cold downpour. Tulveg fell silent, and the children did so with him, all calming in the same uncanny instant. “You… do?” Tulveg whispered. “Which? Which of them?”

“Uva,” Shiv said. “Uva Mettabon.”

Tulveg let out a surprised breath. “Yes… Yes, she spoke of her. The one that was going to follow in her footsteps. Great One… Uva…”

For a few seconds thereafter, Tulveg said nothing at all.

Shiv found himself dealing with some emotional recoil. The dagger Uva kept in her apartment, the one that had been revealed to him in a vision, and which had later given him a second vision when Uva let him touch it. It had shown him the perspective of the killer, a soldier, one who answered to the Auroral Council directly. Shiv had never found any direct leads to the killer’s identity. Now, out of nowhere, he didn’t just find a clue; he was close.

The one who’d murdered Uva’s mom was right here, in this very building. Shiv would be excited, if not for one detail: the man’s name.

Samuel Hawgrave.

Don’t doubt for a second what that name means, Shiv hissed internally, not even having a sliver of hope that this was a coincidence. The man was a relative of Jessica Hawgrave, the Giantsbane.

“Then you have cause here too,” Tulveg said to Shiv after a long moment of silence. “If she means anything to you, if you hold her dear at all, if your emotions that I feel are truly as strong as they seem, then this is your act of revenge to partake in as well. I was captured and imprisoned below the heart of the Republic for trying to claim his life. I followed him back to the surface. I braved the dawn. I came here for him. I was thwarted once, but today, today we will have him. Today we will have the life of Samuel Hawgrave.”

“Would he be related to Jessica Hawgrave by any chance?” Adam asked for confirmation.

“Feeble grandchild of the Giantsbane,” Tulveg spat. “A failure of her bloodline, a runt of all metrics and measures. No true Pathbearer, merely a coward, a rat scuttling through the darkness of the world, fleeing from his misdeeds.”

“Huh,” was all Shiv could say. The situation at Last Chance Sanitarium had undergone two twists. First, he expected to be facing two Morbomancers fighting over the death of their child. Then he was dealing with a Legendary vampire, a disciple of Ekkihurst the Sculptor, no less. Then, the vampire revealed himself to not have malicious intentions for the children in the hospital, and Shiv found out he’d been in a relationship with Uva’s mother, and that he was here to take revenge for her murder.

It seemed that the System heard him when he begged for no horror shows. But instead, he was now embroiled in something infinitely more complex. Shiv took a moment to gather his thoughts. “Alright, the Morbomancers. You have them under control, but what happened to their kid? Did you kill him?”

“No,” the vampire replied, his voice raw. “I didn’t intend for the child to be sick. I was lurking inside his body. I was trying to heal him, but… It was my fault. It was my fault.” A feeling of self-loathing came from the vampire. “I let my focus slip. The prey was right there. Hawgrave… Right there in the hospital, masquerading as some kind of master, healer, senior resident, as if he had done nothing, NOTHING during the war!”

“Kill him! Kill him! KILL HIM!” the children all around began to chant in unison.

Maxime was backing away, and the utter terror radiating out from her was overwhelming. “M-marcus! Marcus!” she called out. Her breath hitched. “Stay close!”

Malcolm stuck his head back into the room. “Alright, is anyone else creeped out? ‘Cause I’m totally creeped out.”

Vice-8 appeared behind the fan-headed automaton, and the boar looked at everyone and the children. His eyes were wide, and even he reeked of terror.

None of them knew what was happening. None of them but Shiv.

“Tulveg,” Shiv called out. “Tulveg, I understand why you’re mad right now. But if you want your revenge and if you want my help, you need to get a hold of yourself. You’re affecting the children! You don’t wanna hurt these kids, do you? If you are who you say you are, you need to keep it under control!”

His words landed. Slowly, the children began dying down. Their cries of rage and their sobs turned silent, and as one, they yawned. They laid their heads back on their pillows. The ones who fell from their cots crawled back in, pulled the blankets over themselves, and at once, in sync, in perfect harmony, went back to sleep.

“Okay,” Malcolm said, its voice a mechanical crackle. “What the fucking fuck?”

“Insul,” Helix said. There was an edge of tension to his voice. “If you’re going to help this bloodsucker, you must do it fast. He is coming after the spawn of the Giantsbane. If he is to be our prey instead, then we need to be quick. She will not be far behind.”

Shiv deliberated about what he was going to do briefly. There were too many things happening. There were too many variables.

“Shiv, quick, a word.” Adam reached out to Shiv using his Commander’s Foresight, and time was held still for their perception.

“This is how I see things,” Adam declared. “First, we have Tulveg. He is not a threat to the children; it seems that he’s been actively healing them. But he’s still a danger. A danger to the people here and to the Republic. But from everything I’ve observed so far, I think we can use him. I think…” Adam shuddered.

“What? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Just undergoing a Skill Evolution.”

“Oh? For what?” Shiv said.

“Psychology,” Adam replied.

“Psychology? When did you start leveling that?”

Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

“When you started digging into it,” Adam shot back. “Wasn’t going to let you bully me emotionally, was I?”

“You started leveling the Psychology Skill just to be competitive with me?” Shiv asked, partially flattered, also amused.

“Shiv, focus!” Adam snapped. “What we need to do right now is secure Hawgrave. Get Tulveg to our side, but do not let him kill Hawgrave… Not yet. I want to know every single detail. If we can capture Hawgrave, if we can hold him, and we can secure Tulveg’s loyalty, then we will be even stronger than before. We are amassing quite the force in the Colosseum, and with his aid, with his special expertise and his skills, we might be able to reach across the Republic. We will be able to learn things we couldn’t before. Imagine his abilities used against the Inquisition or for Irons’s sake.”

And as always, Adam was thinking ahead, thinking about the bigger picture. “Yeah,” Shiv said. “Yeah, I can see it. That’s a good idea. Alright, I’ll see if I can talk him down into capturing Samuel for now. We do this fast.”

“I’m going to fire Veilpiercer at the top of the tower first. I’ll move to assist him as best as I can. I’ll come in soon. I’m just gonna need an alibi, something to justify Marcus’s disappearance. What do you think?” Adam asked.

“I don’t know, I think I’m going to have our friend here disappear me using a cancerous monster.”

“It will raise questions if you keep surviving these terrible incidents,” Adam said.

Shiv clicked his tongue. “I think I can come up with something for that. For now, we need to do this fast. It ain’t just about Tulveg anymore. Uva is owed something here too. But if I’m going to be honest? I don’t know, Adam. With a Hawgrave involved, I think this shit’s about to get even messier than we can handle.”

“Then we go fast. I’ll make contact with Tulveg first, and then we’re going to need you over. I don’t think anyone else can breach the vault as quickly and easily as you.”

“Got it,” Shiv replied, and with that, their brief communion came to an end.

“Tulveg,” Shiv called out as time resumed its floor for his mind. “I need you to give me an alibi. I need you to form your spores together and rip me out of this room, anything to justify my absence. If I’m going to help you, then I’m going to need to move across quickly. Adam’s going to be joining you in a second.”

“Good, good,” Tulveg whispered, his voice hoarse with anticipation. “Finally. For so long, I’ve languished in those cells. But now we have a chance, a chance to finally make things right.”

“But before we do anything,” Shiv said, “understand that revenge is more than yours to take. Revenge belongs to Uva as well. It’s her mother whom Samuel murdered. You are not the only one that Hawgrave has hurt. When we take this guy, we take him alive. Do you hear me? I want this to be properly settled.”

The vampire’s mind tensed up. “So be it. Her revenge as well. Yes, it is Mettabon’s blood. It is only proper, it is only proper…”

Sage of the Enkindled Heart: Listen to his voice. He’s having a hard time convincing himself. Be wary. This is a very emotional matter for him, so we must approach this carefully.

“Hey, Tulveg,” Shiv said, “I’m helping you now. We’re doing this. When Adam shows up, you’re going to know that I’m being truthful, and I need you to have your shit together. Do you have it?”

The vampire hesitated, then said, “Do not question my mental fortitude.”

“Well, don’t make me question it,” Shiv shot back. “We’re allies now, which means your responsibilities extend beyond yourself. How much of Last Chance do you control?”

“Functionally? All of it. I allowed you to enter because I wished to eliminate the worst of you.”

“The Hero-Biomancers?” Shiv asked.

“Yes, I would have incapacitated them and then removed them from the equation if you weren’t here.”

Shiv winced. From what Tulveg described as “dogs of the Republic” earlier, he would have likely killed Maxime as well. Anyone who wasn’t a child or a patient.

A note of complex emotions suddenly bled over from Tulveg. “He’s here, and by the Great One, he looks just like him. His father, his mother. Adam Arrow. You are a bloodline’s realization.”

“That’s good and all, but, Tulveg, we need that alibi. Get me out of this room and get me away from the others.”

“It will be done,” the vampire replied.

Shiv noticed something just above him. His awareness pulled his senses to an alert state, and he realized a gathering of spores was congealing on the floor overhead. Shiv briefly found himself confused as to what was about to happen before the ceiling suddenly burst open. A mess of cancerous limbs wrapped around Shiv like a fallen net and began drawing him upward.

Maxime cried out. Her hand flared. A pyramid-shaped Biomancy spell manifested, but then he was being reeled upward. Blades of wind slashed through the air just above where he’d been a moment ago as Vice 8’s wind clone missed its attack on the limbs.

Master-Tier Reflexes, Shiv estimated. But it’s just a clone. Maybe the original has something stronger.

As soon as Shiv was pulled through the floor, he was released from the cancerous net. The first thing the Deathless did afterward was rip off his Mask of Stolen Paths. A wall of tumors fused over the way he was pulled through, and from below, he heard a series of echoing thuds. His allies were trying to save Marcus. He could still hear Maxime screaming his name.

He winced internally. The poor girl was probably going to blame herself. Well, the good news was that Marcus wasn’t dead. Bad news was Shiv needed to figure out a good reason why Marcus wasn’t dead, but that was a problem he put in the “something-to-think-up-later” category.

Shiv’s body flashed white as he returned to his original form, and he heard a chuckle of surprise from Tulveg. “I see. No wonder you hid yourself so well. The System truly wishes for your death.”

Shiv didn’t waste time replying. He knew his destination was upward, and he didn’t have any time for subtlety. He tuned his Bifurcated Processing and began cultivating Overflow Tides once more. This time, however, they were going to be used in service of a vampire rather than to overcome him.

He crouched, and then Shiv exploded upward like a bullet. Layers of concrete and reinforced metal shredded in his wake, like a spearhead being driven through layers of tissue. To be a Legend of Physicality meant the world felt like glass. Everything was brittle. Everything was too soft. Everything demanded that you keep yourself controlled. Once more, Shiv found himself glad that he’d chosen this Legendary Skill Evolution rather than Nexus of Implacable Destruction for the cataclysmic power that it offered.

Leviathan of the Shapeless Tides allowed him to move smoothly, to keep the damage he inflicted restrained. More importantly, it allowed him to hold back the rippling devastation that trembled from his inertial sheath. If he only had Gravitic Wrestler, there would be no way he could do this. The interior of the building would crumble entirely, and unspeakable amounts of casualties would soon follow.

Once more, Shiv thought back to his experiences at Gate Theborn, and he struggled not to cringe. So many people who died every time he used Momentum Core, so much unneeded destruction…

That is a sign of maturity, Sage of the Enkindled Heart whispered to him. That is the meaning of understanding the weight of your actions. You underwent the Delve. You felt the weight of those lives lost. You cannot make it right, but you can make the future brighter.

The Deathless accelerated, but along the way, his awareness skill drew his attention once more. His subconsciousness constantly lashed at him, shocking him from within. He noticed something in particular: a single life signature moving at the same pace he was going, up the center of the tower. With its brightness, he guessed that it was probably a Heroic-Tier Pathbearer, and they were accompanied by someone else, someone who held the same degree of mana. Probably Javelina and Vice 8, Shiv guessed. Shit, we’re gonna be in a race.

He accelerated but kept the devastation contained near his body. Just then, he felt some of his bones begin to rattle. A flare of pain danced down his body, and he drew upon his Bifurcated Processing Skill once more. This time, he used it to build up his Pillar of Orichalcum. Finally, he was capable of doing all three at once. The pillar exploded out from his being. It speared upward, and Shiv made sure it wouldn’t crush any patients above or below him.

A gleaming, red-gold tower rose up, and it grew stronger with every passing second. Shiv accelerated. He burrowed through the interior of Last Chance, and in a matter of moments, he arrived at the apex of its center tower.

As soon as he blasted out of the ground, he began moving toward the strongest life sign in the area. Adam was there as well. The architecture at the top of the tower was cold, stale. Something had stripped the air clean of taste, and there was a particular stinging sensation every time Shiv drew breath. He suspected that the Biomancy here was actively cleansing the air, stripping it bare of all kinds of bacteria and pathogens.

Dust and debris rained down upon Shiv, and his path was made clear by the many holes he’d left within the building. But now was not a time for hesitation or subtlety. Now was the time to move, to see this done. He accelerated again, blasting through walls. The room he’d just left had several containers and a series of beakers attached to water boilers, as well as magical sigils decorating the center of the room.

He erupted through the nearby wall and immediately took a hard left. Though Tulveg and Adam were waiting 15 meters away, the room before Shiv was dense with bodies, many bodies. He didn’t know why they were packed in so tight, but he didn’t want to risk any harm coming to them. He moved down the hall, and there was a terrible wrenching sound. Metal and concrete shattered.

The top side of the building was exposed, and his Pillar of Orichalcum became as if a blade disemboweling the very cap of the hospital. The light of the sky spilled down, and Shiv could see the reddish light of the evening sun as it plunged beyond the horizon, sunlight further veiled by Harlock’s darkness. That darkness seemed like a dome of liquid shadow draped over the capital, and it appeared to suddenly drip down, coalescing toward Phoenix Academy. The time Shiv had left grew even more diminished.

The Deathless chose this moment to activate his temporal shell. Strider of the Unending Path allowed him to hold time still, but the Ascendants possessed an apparent immunity to Chronomancy. It wouldn’t protect him or stave off their coming. However, Harlock wasn’t Shiv’s only worry. He had other adversaries to concern himself with. And as he rounded the hall, he blasted through a set of doors, smashed and turned a storage room into nothing but rubble before he finally shredded through a layer of hardened alloy.

On the other side, he found Adam and Tulveg staring at the door. The vampire himself wasn’t moving, but the many spores that bled out from his body that were nested in the Morbomancers standing to his left and right were glowing brightly.

Tulveg shot him a glance. “You come, Deathless.”

Shiv ignored him. He had a task to accomplish and no time to waste. Stepping past Adam and Tulveg, he slammed himself against the vaulted doorway. He drove his hands against the vast array of shifting spell patterns and gritted his teeth. Whatever was hiding in here, the Academy didn’t want it getting out.

But Shiv had been cultivating Overflow Tides for quite some time. He was practically lined in striped vectors, and he used them all in a crushing instant. He overwhelmed the magic protecting the vaulted door and detonated it around him in a massive blast, a blast that he managed to catch and compress between his hands in a feat of disgusting strength.

Shiv held the magic together tight—compressed it even as it lashed at his very fingers, and then, with a final surge of effort, Shiv crushed it. Instead of exploding outward and swallowing the top of the building, it went out like a candlewick between two fingers, spewing free in beams from between his closing fingers until there was not even that. Finally, the vault ahead was exposed. Shiv pointed his innate tides forward, and he carved a brutal path in.

Strider of the Unbending Path 168 > 169

Orichalcum was an interesting metal. It responded to how much someone wished to stay unbroken. With every passing second, the pillar of red gold grew ever brighter around Shiv, and he didn’t care that everyone could see. He needed to do this quickly, and quickly meant overt, meant loud, meant every bit of power he had, meant pushing his inertial overdrive to the very limit, before the temporal wards of the academy ripped through him.

Shiv blasted through the door—and he gasped as a tide of splashing gold cleaved into him, shredding his Chronomancy field away in an instant. But it wasn’t the academy’s wards. No, those arrived a second later. This was something else. No. Someone else.

A blow struck Shiv. A blow that came so fast, that hit him so hard, he would have disintegrated outright if his Pillar of Orichalcum hadn’t been active; if his Shapeless Tides didn’t absorb part of the impact.

But Shiv still grunted as he was flung back. Then, through the dust and haze came a flickering strike. It was fast. Almost too fast for him to react to. But he’d been feeding his inertial overdrive for a while. Shiv swung up instinctively. The end of his Last Morsel clashed against something that was impossibly powerful, impossibly strong. And he felt a crushing pressure, something trying to absorb him from the other side. The Deathless’s newly generated Overflow Tides crashed against that pressure and severed him from the brutal pulling sensation—

Something thin blurred through the air

Shiv twisted hard to dodge out of the way, but he hissed as he was speared through his upper left pec and right neck by two more attacks he failed to perceive altogether in a startling instant.

Inertial Overdrive 188 > 190

Farsight 95 > 97

A vicious impact crashed into his chin, and Shiv’s teeth cracked and chipped as they slammed together. A snarl escaped him. He had no idea what was hitting him, and he couldn’t—

Suddenly, he froze as he caught sight of something darting right by his eye—a figure so small they might as well be the size of an insect, clad in dense, vibrating armor and holding a small, static-coated blade of rusted metal.

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