IV-22 Trust (I)

Most people do not truly understand their own flaws. It is easy to notice what weaknesses you have on a surface level, but past that, your problems are usually systemic and structural, majorly influenced by your environment and the context you face. This is where things get complicated; this is why many Pathbearers, even those who attain great power, are cut down in battle.

Often we say someone is clumsy or inattentive. These things can be generally true. These might indeed be weaknesses, yet in an active war zone, they suffer from no issues. In fact, they seem to be tuned into the battle itself. This is because they are not clumsy or inattentive in the proper way. Their focus jumps fast, taking in stimuli, moving from one moment to the next. This allows them to process the battlescape around them, meaning that their so-called weakness was actually structural strength. Then, in the same circumstance, someone who is extremely attentive in their daily work is overwhelmed. There is too much detail for them to sift through, and they are cut down in a moment of hesitation.

This, then, is systemic weakness and this is what many Pathbearers miss. They think simplistically, and there is a great benefit to doing so. If you make things that are complicated simple, you reduce the cognitive load you have to bear in combat and allow yourself to become more efficient. But this does not let you understand yourself, and you cannot afford to have a shallow comprehension of your own capabilities to the limits when you become a Legend. Before this point, everything else can be sustained by a single superior skill.

Overwhelming physicality will allow you to get a long way, but there is a term for a path-bearer that is legendary in terms of physicality and lacking everywhere else. A tragic corpse, because despite the potential lingering in their immense strength, they will not be able to wield it properly, because one skill cannot be a pillar. No, it has turned into a post, and everything else has become a liability. The structure must be strong, everything, everything.

-Valor Thann

IV-22

Trust (I)

The prison cell that the elf led them to looked no different from any other. Shiv stared down into its Orichalcum length and saw a moving spell pattern gliding along its cylindrical shape. He tried to make out differences in the spell shapes that comprised the patterns, but failed. Each of them resembled specific symbols, codified expressions of intent. Even as he used his Farsight skill, he couldn't tell anything wrong with them. And once more, Shiv experienced the problems that came with an incomplete education. 

Most of what he knew about magic was instinctive. He picked up a few pointers from Adam, Uva, and Valor. But past that, his formal education remained nonexistent. He had no idea why spells became specific patterns when one composed them. He had no idea how spell patterns were layered into a physical object beyond their caster.

Godsdamn you, Roland, thanks for leaving me a borderline illiterate mess.

He was about to continue his internal venting when his Psycho-Cartography Skill pulsed inside his mind. Instead of saying anything directly, it fed him a single feeling. Don't. 

A sour taste crawled over his tongue and stung his very mind. Shiv stopped complaining. He understood what his evolved Psychology skill wanted from him. It wanted him to move on. He was allowed to feel things, but the more he fed its feelings, the more he would reinforce those feelings. Being angry at Roland Arrow forever would lead him nowhere. He wasn't any stronger for it, any wiser, and the problem wasn't anywhere near solved. 

And where Shiv was lacking in education, he had more than enough experience. Experience working with anger. He could hate someone and still be useful while hating them. And that's why he decided to pay attention rather than sinking deeper into his mental malaise.

"Are you sure it's here?" the elf asked. She kept a few meters of distance between herself and Shiv, and he noticed around three golden shadows lurking to his right and left. Bonk had alerted him to the Chronomantic constructs, and Shiv thought he was about to get ambushed again. Yet they kept their distance as well, and eventually Shiv understood that they were means of preemptive defense. The fear chain connecting to him to the elf remained as hard as ever. She owed him his life, but he took from her respect and fear. He caught her looking at him then, and she ripped her gaze away, unwilling to face him for longer than a second.

Psycho-Cartography: Georges once told us it was best to be feared and respected at the same time. Fear made you able to make someone do things for you. Respect made them want to do things for you willingly. We have the former. It feels good. But I think we should build toward the latter.

Psycho-Cartography 66 > 67

Five leaned over the cell door and grinned. "Yes," Five said, "this is the right place."

The aviary agent waved a hand, and the automata heads on his back flared to life. Each of their optics were flickering, and a rush of electricity and mana flooded through his limbs. The spell patterns gliding within the cell came alive with activity. Mana pulsed out from them. They began circulating faster and faster. She watched, trying to understand what the wolf-man was doing. He felt a strange pull in the atmosphere. Five was clearly trying to rearrange something in cell spell patterns, but she wasn't sure how or why.

A few glowing shapes intersected as some of the revolving spells twisted at an angle. They collided on perpendicular axes, and when mana kissed mana, a few fragments and geometries were swapped. Shapes belonging to one spell pattern were inherited by another, and the inside of the spell pulsed. It was then that she'd noticed the burst of Dimensionality spewing free from the top of the cell. It overflowed like water gushing out from a bottle, and it briefly crashed against Shiv’s ankles, but it couldn't push through, and instead it rebounded from his shapeless tides, countered entirely by his vector-shaped Magical Resistance.

"What are you doing, little wolf?" Urri asked.

Five didn't respond to the Vulteg. Instead, he continued waving his hands, pinching at the distant spells as if they were right in front of him. He moved a few more of the patterns, intersecting them, and then swiping, switching a few pieces over. As Shiv observed, he began to gain an intuitive understanding regarding the spell patterns. Intent could be exchanged between each chain of spells. They weren't swapping mana. Shiv knew that because he could see a few Biomancy spells acted below, and they didn't get any weaker. Instead, it was like the commands guiding the spells were being alternated.

"It's a bit like the prison, isn't it?" Bonk said. A wry grin painted the orc's face, and Shiv took a moment to realize what he was hinting at.

Yeah, it kind of is. Shiv thought about the cubes, how they slid beside each other, how they all swapped positions, as if moving pieces from a moving puzzle. The spells were the same way. And something told Shiv that there was no coincidence. Magical Skills were designed to follow certain lures. Lures were shaped by understandings of the world, beliefs. That was what Valor said. Perhaps this spell that was being assembled had something to do with the very architecture of the Rubix Well. It made sense. They were probably going to teleport somewhere using the dimensionality mana powering the spell. But the internal logic of the magic still needed some adjustments.

With every passing second, Five's hands moved faster, and even Rebis was having a hard time following what the wolf-man was doing. Soon, the Dimensionality mana within the spell began erupting outward, spraying higher in bursts of static black. Shiv looked around briefly and felt his hair began to stand inside his Voidmantid armor.The avatars have been inactive for far too long, and there were no wardens here. He didn't believe that they were just being let go, so there were only a few other possibilities besides that. 

The first was that the avatars were busy, trying to handle the rest of the prison. Once they gained control, they would come back for him in force. The second was that they had other problems to deal with beyond the prison. That was just as likely. Shiv hadn't seen the Tarrasque quest come to a close yet, so he knew the giant creature was still alive. There was every possibility that the Tarrasque had returned to the Republic's territory, and the Ascendants were busy trying to fight it off.

But something wriggled inside his flesh, something uncomfortable. For the first time, he wondered if Adam was truly all right, or if something had happened to him by now. If the ascendants had captured Adam, or if Shiv didn't finish that thought. He didn't want to finish that thought. He faced horrors beyond his ability to comprehend—and killed them anyway—but the idea of Adam being dead bothered him. It bothered him enough that he had to burn off some of his anger before his Berserk Skill triggered. 

He channeled it into his Psycho-Cartography, and immediately the skill began talking to him, indeed at length.

Psycho-Cartography: Valor told you about this before. He called it the wound. The scarring. You're going to lose people in this life, Shiv. You know that.

Shiv tried not to lash out in denial. It was his own skill that was telling him this, after all. But something inside him just couldn't accept it.

Psycho-Cartography: You can't accept it because you're desperate to maintain some control over your own life. For most of your existence, you've lived under Roland Arrow's thumb. But he was too soft and weak to press. So you lived under the of a reluctant tyrant. Everything you suffered was from indecision. Indecision is entropy. And you want something more than rot. You want control. You crave it. Anytime the system or the world tries to take something from you, it sinks its fingers into your wound. And you’re tired of being hurt.

I can get better. I can get stronger. I can make sure that nothing happens to anyone that I care about. Anything that I care about.

Psycho-Cartography: You are growing stronger than most people can ever dream of, and it still won't be enough. You know this. I'm telling you this because this thing you face isn't logical. It's emotional. And I'm going to say something else that you're not going to want to hear. You don't want to deal with this right now. 

You're not going to beat it right now. You don't have the emotional bandwidth to process it right now. If I tell you the truth, you will push it aside, and it will hurt worse once you experience it. Hopefully we won't suffer this with Adam, but it's coming. The blow is coming. If we live long enough, we will lose more people. 

The system is not going to let us go.

Shiv wanted to continue arguing, but he didn't know what to say. A feeling of dread climbed up inside him and it corresponded with a loud laugh that sounded from Fives.

"Oh those tricky, tricky ravens," Five said. He brought his hands together and with a final click the insides of the cell turned into a large whirlpool of Dimensionality. Swirling tides of static black began to churn and soon they solidified into a dense shape. She no longer saw the cell itself. Instead there was a solid tunnel formed before him and that tunnel led into another place. As she looked across he saw that red-gold texture of Orichalcum, but then it was drowned by Dimensionality once more. Whatever place he just saw, Shiv guessed was still part of the prison. It wasn't just so easy an escape.

Why would it be? Shiv thought to himself. Nothing is ever that easy. Not in this life.

"I must go across first," Five declared. He regarded the Legendary prisoners and then Shiv thereafter. "There is a code in the spell. Morse. They wish for me to identify myself and confirm who I am. If I do not, they will not establish a proper connection, and we will not be able to find them. One of you should come with me, just so you feel a little more at ease. You wouldn't want me running off with my own people now, would we? And leaving you all lost and abandoned?"

Shiv frowned. “Are you trying to make us suspect you or something, Five.”

"It's what several of you are thinking, why avoid it." Five was studying Urri’s face. The large Vulteg just grunted with annoyance. And that's when the Deathless realized that a few of the prisoners were actively paranoid about a lot more than just Shiv. "I can't say I blame you," Five said. "However, I can give you a reason to trust me. Or at least a reason to think that I am a controllable variable."

Despite how thoughtful Five seemed, the way he operated made Shiv ever more wary. Bonk leaned down and whispered to the Deathless, "Be careful of this one. They are a clever operator. Spies often are."

Shiv wanted to volunteer himself, but stopped when he realized how that might look. He was in league with the wolf-man, at least from the other prisoners' perspectives. If he said that he would make sure the wolf-man wouldn't betray them, it just might cause a bit more of a problem. 

Instead, he decided to extend his trust and mercy to the only Legendary prisoner he faced in battle so far.

"Elf," Shiv said. His tone was rough and direct. "Go with him."

The elven Legend stared at Shiv. Her mouth was slightly agape. "You would rather me go?"

"Yeah," Shiv said. "I got your measure, don't I? It’s why I trust you more than most anyone else. Besides, you have those Chronomantic clones. You can send them to scout for you for something, really. It's more effective than what I can do. If something goes wrong, just swap places with one of the clones like you did earlier."

The elf didn't know what to say for a moment, but slowly she nodded very well. Her gold eyes flashed one time, and she let out a sigh. "I am called Kura the Omen. I have been placed in this prison due to a series of assassinations I performed within this Republic. I've killed the great many nobles for benefactors whom I cannot remember nor will I name, and today you have given me back my life. Despite my discomfort, despite my shame for failing to slay you, I acknowledge your mercy and your clemency. I will do as you say.”

"I, uh, okay," Shiv said, uncertain why she was stating all this out loud.”

"I will serve your interests until you are satisfied. I see that you are of the honorable sort." The elf shuffled uncomfortably. "I might have judged in my past life, but find myself at the mercy of now. Whatever you so desire, I will do my utmost to make manifest. Such is the debt I bear.”

One of the Legendary prisoners snorted. It was the man with blades growing out of himself. "Shit, you know, I get it. If you want to fuck him right now. I’ve been pent up in my own cage long enough to wanna fuck him too, and I’m not into men. But since you’re willing, we could all use a show."

And then something cracked him across the back of the head. She saw a golden shadow materialize and then fade in the same instant. The man turned. A few blades exploded out from his body, cleaving through the air. It struck the Orichalcum walls and left faint dents in the surface. Shiv blinked, barely reacting to what just happened, and the elves' expression didn't change. Most of the other prisoners responded the same way, and a few laughed. 

The blade-covered man snarled and prepared to push his way free from the other prisoners. She turned, ready for combat, but both of them flinched as Shiv yanked on their fear chains. The bladed man jerked to a halt, planting his foot hard against the ground and using a skill to root himself in place, stopping himself from being dragged forward. The elf, meanwhile, switched position with one of her shadows and got free of Shiv's grip.

Before Kura and the bladed man could continue their scuffle, the Deathless snarled. “Knock that shit off!” All eyes were on the Deathless, and he glared at both, unamused. "Alright, I'm gonna put this plainly, too. If anyone has something funny to say about me, it better be actually funny. And my metric for funny is making me laugh. I also would like to say that you better all start acting like fucking Pathbearers and not worthless thugs from some back alley. You're Legendary. Felling act like it. If you’re going to act like children, then I’m going to beat you like you’re my stepchildren. We don’t have time for this shit.  We're not fighting amongst each other if we're going to break out here. There's still avatars and wardens waiting for us. Save it for them."

The tenseness entered the air, and the other prisoners watched as the bladed man began to twitch. He glared at Shiv, and the Deathless' Psycho-Cartography Skill realized why.

Psycho-Cartography: You've offended his sensibilities and more his ego. Threatening him makes him look pathetic. If you don’t adjust what you said, he might have to fight you just to prove that he is a greater Legend. Weakness is fatal in this place—and you have failed to give him any respect.

Shiv struggled not to sigh. So far, the Legends he ran into in this prison aside from the avatars have been uneven. Some have been absolute monsters, while others are little more than overpowered children. The bladed man was closer to overpowered child—but Shiv really could afford another messy fight right now.

“Consider it a favor to me," Shiv added, trying to soothe how the man was feeling. "I'm asking, not telling."

The blade-covered Pathbearer considered the deathless for a moment, and then he let out a scoff. "Asking. Fine. Sure, Deathless. Seems I can be merciful, too. With the right people." He eyed the elf and spat on the ground. "Fucking bitch."

Kura was about to respond, but Shiv cut her off. "Don't talk to him, don't look at him, get in the portal after Five. We've wasted enough time."

She seemed like she wanted to resist, but then remembered that she just swore a long oath of loyalty to Shiv. Finally, she let out a brief sigh and took her position behind the wolf-man. Together, they descended at five's go. The wolf-man jumped down and she followed thereafter. In her place, however, was a golden shadow. It glistened in the air, and it lacked any detail, but Shiv could still feel the vitality seeping out from it. More importantly, he could see a faint trail of Chronomancy painting the world. He hadn't noticed that before, mainly because the trail was almost transparent with its thinness.

As the wolf-man and Kura remained gone for a few moments, Shiv stared at the prisoners and tried to shrug off the awkwardness. "So, do you all you guys know each other or what? Before the whole prison break thing, I mean?" He gestured at the group.

Several of the prisoners looked at each other, and Urri simply folded his arms. "We have laid eyes upon one another during our allotted activity time. But we were not allowed to socialize.”

“We are made to chance cubes and cells every few months,” the column-shaped Pathbearer said. Shiv still had no idea what kind of creature it was or if it was simply someone who had evolved into being a crystal column. The crystal comprising their body glistened. “It prevents us from establishing lasting connections. When freedom came, we burst and found ourselves faced with a shared foe. That is why we are together. When this moment is done we will be strangers to each other once more, but for now we are a horde."

"More like a gaggle of fools without any better options," the binaric crown-wearing automaton declared. "It is purely calculus that we are standing together. Alone we might be able to overcome a few wardens, but they know our capabilities and this prison was built to keep us inside." The automaton paused. "What you said earlier, that you have a Unique Skill that will allow you to trespass beyond the temporal loop, is that true?"

"Every word," Shiv said. "It's the same skill I showed you guys earlier. The one that kept making you forget where I was over and over again.”

"How does it work?" Urri asked. The Vulteg was trying to be slick. Too bad he had about as much as social finesse as Shiv did during a blind rage.

Shib, however, didn't reply. He didn't want to give away the secrets to his outside context problem. "Don't know how it works," Shiv said. "It just does. Do all of you understand every single one of your skills?"

"Yeah, yes, of course. Shit, guys who don't understand their skills don't learn, live very long." A chorus of affirmative agreements greeted Shiv, and he tried not to wince. There was a faint hint of judgment in their eyes, and slowly they were beginning to understand that Shiv might not be a conventional Legendary-Tier Pathbearer.

I don't know how to feel about most of these prisoners being more refined and well-learned than I am, Shiv thought. While also being barely more than emotional children at the same time. How the hells does that even work. 

Psycho-Cartography: Settle for using that as fuel when you begin making up for your lacking education.

"So I've got another question for you," the blade-covered Pathbearer said. Instead of staring at Shiv now, he was looking at Bonk. "How'd you get an orc bodyguard?"

"Bodyguard?" the gray-skinned brute said, with a laugh. "I'm no bodyguard. I'm simply serving my insul."

And a flash of comprehension passed across the bladed path bearer's face. "The Vaketh-Insul. Shit. You actually did the ritual." The man threw his head back and began laughing. Slowly, his laughter climbed higher and higher until he finally shook his head and let out a breath. "You know, I'm beginning to regret not taking that myself. Might have led me down a different path. Hell, the Lone Star might still be after me, but at least I would have someone fighting by my side instead of being a fugitive in this forsaken shithole."

"The Challenger offered you the deal, too," Shiv asked, surprised.

The man nodded. Several other prisoners muttered about getting certain offers as well, and suddenly Shiv didn't feel quite as special. 

The Challenger is amused by your jealousy.

"And most of you didn't agree," Shiv confirmed. The Legendary prisoners scoffed or just shook their heads.

"Becoming the Insul is more venom than one,” the blade-covered Pathbearer said. Mingling with orcs? Oh, that's an eventual death sentence. Besides, now that you're a legend, you're going to probably draw the attention of the Culturist at some point," the blade-covered man finished. "And let me tell you, that's not a bastard that you want to get to know."

“Who the hells is that?" Shiv asked. "Never heard that name before." Or had he? He couldn't recall everything that was exchanged between him and his orcs. But then he noticed a look on Bonk's face. It wasn't the look that Bonk usually had. If Shiv had to describe it, it was as close to true awe as an orc could muster.

"Ah, the Culturist," Bonk breathed. "Insul, if you have ever met a Legendary-Tier orc, you would understand that we contain even greater multitudes. Multitudes that sometimes leave us feeling." Bonk trailed off as he tried to recompose his speech. "He is an aberration. I wish to kill him some day and be the reason he must reincarnate.”

"You sound like admire this guy, in a fucked-up orc kind of way." Shiv said.

"I find him deviant. I find him incomprehensible. I find him terrifying." The orc drew in a long inhale, "and I find that intoxicating. Imagine one of your own kind, but you can't understand them. One of your own kind that has drifted so close to the races we face, to the peoples we hunt, that he becomes almost like them in certain ways. He experiences a true sympathy, true empathy. He learns their emotional baselines and briefly understands what it means to hate us, but then he returns to himself. He becomes the orc of orcs, and when he leads, we win. If he leads, that is.”

“Why If," Shiv said, not understanding why the orc used that word.

"If," Bonk said, "because sometimes the Culturist turns on us. The Culturist is also known by another name among our kind: Anzeth-Insul."

"Anzeth," Shiv said.

"It means arch-traitor," the orc said. "Often the Culturist learns how best to improve our species by betraying us first. He fights on the side of the enemy and learns how they approach our extermination. He teaches them how best to kill us if he deems them interesting, and then when the balance is tipped, he will return to see if he can figure out how to let us win anyway. Like war vaccination.”

"And the Challenger is fine with that?" Shiv asked.

"The challenger delights in it," Bonk replied. "The challenger loves nothing more than to see us grow, and to grow in any way possible. The Culturist has taken the exo-school of thought to the extreme. In fact, he is the paragon of that entire clique: to steal from other cultures and races and adopt their virtues for our own. Why, it's someone like him that is half the reason we orcs have non-orc skills anyway."

"It's most of the reason why you bastards have any culture," the blade-covered Legend added. "Without the outside, what are you?" He grunted with displeasure. "You're all just a bunch of mimics. You see how we act, you see what we do, you see how we dress, and you take from that. You take from that or you decide to fight against it. You don't have any culture otherwise. Your kind isn’t real.”

Bonk frowned at the man. "It's very reductive. I have my violence. That is culture.” The words were meant in jest, but the man just sneered.

"No, you are violence. It's more of a psychological flaw for you than it is culture. You, on the other hand, are just a copy. A copy of the Challenger and a copy of everyone you fight. And that's why I decided against picking up what the Challenger was putting down. I'm already a weapon, and I got no use for a bunch of weapons pretending to be people. You get me, creature?”

Bonk responded to that by smiling serenely, yet Shiv caught a glint of something in the orc's eyes. The bladed man shouldn't have said that. Somehow, in his bones, Shiv knew that Bonk was probably going to try to kill that man at some point. It didn't matter that he was a legend. It was just that he identified himself as a worthwhile target. And worse, he made this racial thing. And that simply escalated the scale of dominance.

Before any other barbs or words could be exchanged, the dimensional portal pulsated again, and Kura flashed back into place. She blinked into existence where her shadow stood and looked towards Shiv and the others. "It's done. But there’s something you need to do.”

She sounded uneasy, and the next moment, the portal splashed with Dimensionality mana, and Five emerged from within. He crawled up from the edge as the Dimensionality behind him turned turbulent. Before Shiv could ask for more details, the mana settled and slowly began to swirl.

"All right," Five said, "I managed to negotiate our passage. Believe they have the one you're looking for. You're in a lot of luck, my friend," Five stared Shiv down. "They managed to reach your companion just in time. Any moment later, and he would have likely been recaptured by the Ascendants. One of our deep cover ravens helped him escape, but she unfortunately perished in the process. A shame, but that is life. Whatever the case, the operatives inside wish to see you. They want proof that you are actually with me, instead of this being a desperate attempt on my part to be extracted from this prison.”

Psycho-Cartography: Subtle. Sneaky bastard is trying to get you to feel bad. To feel like you owe them something. I caught that sympathy growing inside you. He’s trying to compromise us.

"See me?" Shiv said, and now his paranoia was beginning to climb. He knew that he had a price on his head, one that made him a tempting target for all the prisoners, but likely the agents of Aviary as well. Considering how Aviary worked, Shiv didn't think an individual agent would try to kill him. It didn't seem to fit their way of operating. Instead, he was wondering, he wondered if he was about to trade one prison for another. He could see Aviary capturing him, experimenting on him to figure out how his soul worked.

Shiv left a temporal anchor in place and made eye contact with Kura. The elf turned away but confirmed Five’s words. "That is what they said. There is no lie in his words, but their intent cannot be discerned."

Even so, Shiv didn't know what better to do, and waiting was an action itself. However, waiting meant that he ceded his initiative to the Ascendants, and that wasn't going to work out. "Bonk, if I don't show up again in about 30 seconds, you know what to do."

The orb gave the wolf man a grin, and Five's expression remained placid to his credit. That placidity faded as he realized Kura was glaring at him as well.

"Same goes for the rest of you," Shiv said to the prisoners. "If I'm gone, that means someone has me, and someone might be a 10 Legendary Skill Pathbearer. And there’s no guarantee they’ll be as easy to deal with as I am.”

And now everyone was staring at Five.

"I speak the truth. This is not an act of betrayal." wolf-man called from behind.

"Guess we'll find out in a second," Shiv said. He looked down into the twisting ties of dimensionality and let out a breath. "All right, either I'll be speaking to Adam in a few seconds, or some Aviary assholes going to try to kill me or capture me. Let's see which. Never a dull moment.”

He hopped then before he had a chance to regret, and as he splashed down into the mana, a tightness gripped him. However, the tightness was abated as the magic found itself held at bay by his shapeless tides. Shiv had to remind himself about how his Legendary skill worked. He kept his tide still and let the Dimensionality take him. 

For a brief moment, he surged, squeezed across a narrow tunnel until he finally emerged in a new space. His body was rematerialized as motes of Dimensionality mana molded him back together. And it was that final emergency that left Shiv groaning with slight discomfort. He couldn’t see any spell patterns nearby—no teleportation anchor. This wasn't the Orichalcum chamber he saw earlier. Instead, everything around him was bathed in steam and coated by clammy heat.

Something felt off about this place. Like his teleportation shouldn’t have ended here, but was intercepted by something. Or interrupted.

Shiv looked around and found himself standing in what seemed to be an ovular tunnel. This place reminded him of a channel of some kind. Air constantly flowed around his body, leasing a loud trill as it rushed ahead. He pressed his hand against the wall, and he realized it was made from aluminum or some kind of softer metal. Not adamantine; definitely not Orichalcum. 

This wasn't a place meant to hold prisoners. Something told him it wasn’t even meant to contain people.

"Greetings, Deathless." The voice came from behind. Shiv turned, responding to the threat. He pointed his Orichalcum dagger at the ambusher and found himself staring at a shrouded figure bearing a raven helmet. The Deathless couldn't help but sneer underneath his own head armor, his own helmet. "We're glad to see that Operative Five has not deceived us in his desperation to escape from this prison. It saves us the trouble of trying to locate you ourselves.”

Shiv didn't trust a single thing the raven was saying, but the words mostly fit Five's story. "Where's Adam?" Shiv asked. "Bring me to him. I wanna see how he is. Whatever else you want to talk about happens after that.”

The raven didn't speak for a moment, and Shiv looked over his shoulder, wondering if now was the moment he was going to be ambushed. Instead, the raven nodded and Shiv realized he was having a telepathic conversation with someone. "Follow me," the raven said.

"Wait," Shiv replied. The raven froze. "Need to go back for a moment. I told some of my people that if I don't show up, that they could deal with Five. I don't think him being dead helps either of us right now, does it?"

The raven studied him for a moment and bowed his head slightly. “Make it quick. And tell the others with you to come along. We can accommodate more than one.”

Shiv really didn’t know how he felt about the raven’s words, but he didn’t have time to dwell on it. He blinked back over to where his anchor was. As soon as he appeared, half a dozen faces swung toward him.

"We’re good," Shiv said. "He wasn't lying."

The wol-fman hummed as he let out a bit of a breath. "Sometimes trust goes a long way."

"Yeah, not with Aviary," Shiv shot back. “Never with Aviary.”

Once more he descended into the dimensional portal and re-emerged in that strange tunnel, but this time, the rest of his group followed. The raven had accepted Shiv’s request quickly—as if he was expecting it. And that had the Deathless feeling some kind of uneasy. If it was Shiv, he wouldn’t be so accommodating. Letting a small army of Legendary prisoners into your hidden safehouse was an act of extreme trust, and that meant the raven wasn’t worried about being compromised or slain at all.

Shiv and the other Pathbearers blinked into existence the strange, humid tunnel once more.. The first among which was Urri. He was so large that he barely fit in the tunnel and let out a grunt of displeasure as a few other prisoners slammed into him from behind.

"Alright," Shiv said, staring the patient raven down. "Now we can go."

The Raven led Shiv's convoy of Legendary-Tier prisoners without any complaint or hesitation. If that was a good sign or bad, Shiv couldn't tell. What he could tell, however, was that the steam around him was unnatural. He knew how steam moved, how the wisping smoke could be disrupted by something passing through it. This steam resembled more smoke. It constantly went upward, and it didn't vibrate the right way. Shiv guessed that the steam wasn't actually steam, but probably a hidden Aviary agent. Shiv learned that assumption was right when it came with a massive spike in levels for his Farsight Skill.

Farsight 57 > 60

Yeah, really need to keep paying more attention and guessing. Having good awareness is pretty feeling important.

The raven led them down a widening tunnel, and Shiv continued studying his surroundings. Every few seconds he would feel a vibration shudder under his feet, and in the distance there was something humming, something that rattled aloud. Suddenly Shiv had a vague guess about where he was. This might be some kind of mechanism, some part of the prison that controlled all the moving wheels that might explain the constant vibrations and all the air rushing through it. 

It also might explain why it wasn't made out of Orichalcum, or how the Ascendants didn't know about this place. If it was built deep into the infrastructure of the prison, maybe it was overlooked entirely, or maybe this part was so critical or fragile that someone couldn't come here without compromising something essential. In the end, Shiv was just guessing, but he thought there were good guesses, and the exercise of thinking came with its own rewards.

"Hey, where are you taking us?" the blade-covered Pathbearer said.

"You will find out shortly," the raven replied without ever looking behind.

The blade-covered Pathbearer sneered at the Aviary agent and casually plucked a few short swords free from his anomalous flesh.

"We are in a turbine of some kind," Kura’s voice came from beside Shiv. He looked down at her, waited for her to keep speaking. "I sent a few of my shadows out. They've walked the length of this place. There is a large mechanism that sweeps through these tunnels, pushing and displacing the wind and heat. It is meant to generate electricity. I suspect that it's used as a power source for the automata that dwell inside the well."

Shiv didn't say anything for a moment, mainly because he didn't fully know what a turbine really was, or why the automata needed such a large structure to keep them powered. Kura took his speechlessness as understanding and continued.

“It’s also lined with mithril. There are so many spells passing through this structure that it is completely choked with mana. I suspect we are near the core, here. That might be why no one has noticed our presence—why the Ascendants have not found this place. It is a place of absolute density. It is—”

A faint azure glow emerged ahead. There came a loud crash elsewhere, followed by a heavy tremoring beneath Shiv’s feet. The Deathless stopped walking. The others with him followed suite. The raven’s head snapped to attention as the outline of three figures materialized in the dense mist.

“Move!” A voice cried.

Shiv’s eyes widened. “Adam?” He started walking forward, moving toward the azure glow. “Adam! I’m here! I—”

There came a flash of color as humidity turned to dryness in an instant. Shiv froze as a massive Veilpiercer flared into existence thirty meters away from him—pointed in his direction for some reason. As it did, Adam’s haggard face was revealed for the first time. A bloody gash lined his forehead, and beside him were two Pathbearers Shiv didn’t recognize. One was a limping figure comprised of sputtering embers, he groaned with each step and looked ready to fall over. The other was a goblin missing her left arm. Her body was veiled with quills of Chronomancy, and she vibrated even while idle.

Adam himself was coated by a dense shroud of water. Waves crashed over his body, and his body became fluid and turbulent. But his face remained, and there was a tension to his expression that disquieted Shiv.

“Adam,” Shiv called out. “It’s me! It’s Shiv—”

“Prove it!” Adam snarled back. “If you are Shiv, then prove it!”

The Deathless was startled. What the hells does he mean prove it?

And he wasn’t the only one with questions.

“Gate Lord Arrow,” the raven said. A Veilpiercer was loosed. It struck the ground right in front of the raven, and the Aviary agent flipped back, and Adam created a new dimensional arrow.

The Legendary-Tier prisoners and Rebis all tensed, but Shiv stopped them before they made this already chaotic situation worse. “Stop! Let me talk to him! Let see if I—”

“Shiv, if that’s really you, just don’t move,” Adam rasped. “All of you… just stay there. No one move until I get a good look… Until I am certain about who you are. Start with you, Shiv. Show me your Vitae. Do it. Do it now.” And just then, a flash of corrosive mana bled into Adam’s new Veilpiercer. “Or I find out the other way.”