III-29 Offer (I)

I don't know how to stop the works. Let's start there. I have no idea. This war has been going on for generations. Longer than my grandmothe

I don't know how to stop the works. Let's start there. I have no idea.

This war has been going on for generations. Longer than my grandmother can remember. Maybe just as long as the last incursion. We're Lone Star. We fight. Our automata build their inheritors to be bombers, gunners, processors, makers. They yearn to become walking factories on legs, or siege engines that hold sky and land. Our children are soldiers from the day they're born. We live together in packs. No one even goes to take a shit alone.

Across the world, our artillerists and our Rangers are known, are honored, and flattered, and we are getting ground down. I've looked at the demographics. It's not going to be enough. It's not going to be enough for much longer.

We do not have three more generations, and the orcs… their numbers are limitless. They keep coming. There's more of them. There's always more of them. They don't stay dead. We have no way of quelling their numbers.

And every summer, it gets worse. That legendary warlord of theirs is learning our ways. He's adopting our ways. More than stealth, they're starting up their own artillery corps. They're fighting just like us. They have uniforms designed in mockery of us. And they're not doing it optimally. They're just doing it to insult us or flatter us in their twisted fuck ways.

And meanwhile, we die. They take our towns and we hear the screams on the wind. We go there and it isn't just the people in the towns they kill. It's the first responders. I looked at suicide statistics. I don't want to ever see that again. They're breaking us in more ways than one.

And I needed to understand how to stop them. I needed to learn their ways. So I did the unthinkable. I reached out to their challenger. I accepted that offer he had for me. The offer that had been there for 20 years. 20 years I ignored it. 20 years. And finally I agreed.

He sent me an orc to teach me their ways. To show me how to get better at killing them. And he did show me. And he did fight for me. He killed his own kind. He instructed me on orc psychology. On their nature. On their weaknesses.

And through it all I learned to spare. There's nothing to break there. They love this. The struggle of a war. You can't torture an orc because it's all in good fun for him. It's a novel experience. He'll remember you and he'll come back and he'll try to outdo you. He'll try to torture you better than you did him.

And they don't care about each other. They they can only love something else. Someone else that isn't an orc. Because they are each other's natural predators. Maybe that's our only advantage. Humanity will fight together. We're communal. Tribal. They they are a group of apex predators that put up with each other because this is a shared hunting ground.

High Command is delusional. They think that if we can mass enough artillery, enough powerful path bearers to perform one final charge that we can get to the other side of their gate and to destroy the connection between their dimension and ours. They don't know what the tutorial is like. They've never seen it but I have. From the orc's memories I have. That place is a death pit. We’re not taking it. Not as we are.

What we need is someone that is more than the orcs. That's better at brutality than them. That's more committed to violence. That's more willing to learn, adapt, become, and assimilate the ways of war than the orcs. We need someone that is practically exactly like them but isn't ruled by cruelty, isn't consumed by brutality, isn't enslaved to the cruel god that is the challenger.

But where the fuck are we gonna find someone like that?

-Hero-Ranger Morgan Munny

III-29

Offer (I)

Adam's pace suddenly slowed to a crawl, just as he arrived before the doors of the infirmary. Prior to this point, he had been flying fast, curving and twisting through the air with such a eulogy that Shiv couldn't keep up with him—not without throwing his knife and reorienting the direction of his Inertial Overdrive. 

But it wasn't hard to figure out why the Gate Lord stopped. Uncertainty gripped Adam. Anxiety. There was a great deal of weight that he felt. Meeting a mother he'd known to be dead all his life, a mother resurrected from the Vitae of someone he once hated.

But though Adam's footsteps slowed, Shiv's didn't. He seized the young lord by his shoulders, and he began to push him forward. The act stopped just short of Shiv picking Adam up by the back of his neck, as a mother cat would a kitten.

"There's no need for this," Adam snarled, shaking Shiv off. "I'm moving. Don't rush me."

"Not rushing you," Shiv said. "But you gotta put one foot in front of the other. This was never gonna be easy, but you need to talk to her. No running away now.”

"Just give me time," Adam spat. 

Shiv stopped walking. Adam stumbled away from him. He eyed the Deathless with an annoyed glare. But then the look softened, and the true depths of Adam's fear exposed itself in his eyes. He resembled a child now more than ever. His gaze lingered on Shiv's as if he was looking for direction. Direction from another man, little older than he, and no more clear-headed about how to proceed. But where Adam was hesitant, Shiv only knew one way through trauma and discomfort. 

Forward.

"Listen Adam," Shiv began. But then, instead of pressing on, he actually spent a moment longer thinking about his words. His Psychology and Philosophy Skills worked in tandem as he processed his own thoughts. What did he want to say to Adam? What was his intention right now? Was it to pressure his brother-in-arms? To get him to meet his mother immediately and see the matter done? Or was he trying to make Adam feel better? To assuage the Gate Lord's feelings and ensure that he didn't suffer any more lingering trauma? And there was bound to be trauma, especially after all that had happened. Especially after all these years lost.

I just want Adam to experience the best outcome. Whatever that is.

Adam stared at him uncertainly. "I'm not delaying," Adam said, making up a justification. "I'm just thinking about what I'm trying to say as well."

They were merely a few meters away from where Rose was. An Umbral emerged from the doorway of Rose's room, and she spotted both Shiv and Adam. But before she could say anything, he held up a hand, and a strand of Uva's Psychomancy passed through her as well.

Immediately, she offered a nod, and continued down the hall the other way. The rest of the rooms were empty, save for a Weaveress taking a nap. Standing in the hall was merely Adam, Uva, and Shiv.

Valor waited at the entrance, and Can Hu drifted there alongside him. The Penitent and the Legendary Pathbearer were talking. Both of them were looking at Shiv. He was going to have to discuss things with them afterward as well. But for now, Adam had need of him, even if the Gate Lord wasn't sure about it.

"Listen, Adam, I'm not going to force you to do anything. I don't think anyone can force you to do anything," Shiv said. "I don't know what it's like for you. I won't pretend to know. I'm going to tell you this. You're going to have to walk through that door at some point. If you're too stressed after what we've just been through, fine. But it has to be soon. There's not a lot of time to delay."

"I know," Adam whispered.

"But what are you afraid of?" Shiv asked.

"I don't know," Adam said. "My mother's back, I think. Or is she? Is she even my mother? Shiv, you pulled a woman that looks like Rose Van Erren out of your Vitae. She—I want to hope. But I'm also.” The Gate Lord looked down at the ground and bit his lip. “I’m scared. I’m afraid this will be taken from me.”

"Yeah," Shiv said, nodding in agreement. "We don't know. So, if this is going to hurt you, then it's a question of now or later. When do you want to get stabbed?"

And Adam's expression turned sour. It was an ugly statement, almost too ugly, but it was the right statement. Adam turned away, and he let out a sigh. "Yes, yes, now or later, I suppose. Now. I choose now.”

Silver Tongue 22 > 23

Psychology 6 > 7

"I'll be right behind you," Shiv said. "Maybe I should wait outside, too." Shiv's psychology was still active. "I'll be here if you need me, but I don't think I should be the person in the background when you step in." He paused, trying to think about how to put this. 

"I look like my father," Shiv said, "and the last memories your mother probably had before she died was him cutting her unborn daughter out of her womb. It was brutal. It was horrible." Adam looked like he was going to be sick, but it made the point known. "I don't want to hurt her any more than you do. Not in that way. She needs you. But if you need me, I'll be outside."

And as the disgust faded from the Gate Lord's eyes, he gave Shiv a final look of gratitude, and he turned, and he shuffled toward the room. At least he shuffled at first, but soon his shuffling became proper steps, and then finally he was at the doorway. He stopped. He looked behind, and Shiv, true to his word, was there with Uva beside him.

Finally, as Adam gave them a nod, he stepped in, and Shiv turned all his senses away. Adam deserved privacy. Shiv did his best not to peek, to ignore how Adam was standing past the doorway, just staring at his mother as she lay in bed.

And suddenly, Shiv felt the touch of a soft pair of lips grace the side of his right cheek. He looked to the side, and he saw Uva hovering just below him, pressed up against him upon her board. The basilisk venom was still active in his body. He reached three and a half meters in height, and he felt more like a small house than a person at this point. 

When he spiked his gravity field earlier, he tore a massive chasm in the earth behind him. The basilisk venom was like a steroid of steroids for his Plaguefueled skill.

Yeah, Shiv thought to himself, as he mentally chuckled, basilisk venom is going to be the next thing I'm going to figure out how to create using my Biomancy. It'll work great on my enemies if I want to incapacitate them, but more importantly… he clenched his fists and enjoyed the rush of power, of unfettered strength rushing through him. He was stronger, faster, larger, and more durable than ever. 

The only downside right now was that it took Uva’s Psychomancy to hold the worst of his drunkenness at bay. That was another thing he needed to improve on if he was going to use the basilisk venom: Self-control. This wasn't like drinking five cans of beer. This was like hammering ten bottles of liquor in a row.

He had only done that once, with Georges, on the eve of his 16th birthday. He insinuated that, due to his increase in height and muscle mass, he would drink the head chef under the table. It was meant as a jest. A Pathbearer was always better than a Pathless. But Georges had a funny way of treating jokes, especially jokes that annoyed him. And Shiv, meanwhile, had a problem with backing down from challenges. 

The consequences were disastrous. But it did get amusing when Shiv perfectly peeled his potatoes the next day anyway, despite suffering from the mother of all hangovers. Some of his hand-flesh went in with those potatoes, though, so Georges got to scream at him anyway.

It’s a good day when everyone wins.

"That was very viciously sweet of you," Uva commented.

He grunted as he looked at the door where Adam disappeared. "Yeah," Shiv said, "I'm just, I don't know, I feel responsible. I don't feel bad, or like I'm wrong, or like I did anything wrong, but I feel responsible for what happened to him. What happened to both of them?" He looked down, and he shook his head. 

Scenes played in his mind. Horrible scenes of his father bringing a blade down on an infant girl who wasn't ready to be born, and his own wife… his own pregnant wife who had Shiv inside her.

Uva shuddered slightly as she glimpsed the memories. "What kind of demented ritual was that?"

"I don't know," Shiv said, "but after seeing it…" he hesitated. "I still got a problem with Roland. But someone did something like that to you or Adam? I…" Shiv's hand shook slightly. What would he do? “I'm afraid of what I might do. Roland was too kind to kill a child and too hateful to just let me go. I might’ve been more hateful than kind.”

As Shiv departed the infirmary, he called out to Valor and Can Hu, getting their attention. "Valor," Shiv said. “Thanks for earlier. I didn’t know how I was going to do that shit without your help. No idea where to start at all.”

Valor held out a hand. "You did fine. Your inexperience was a barrier, but you did well to call me. And you did well thereafter. You as well, Uva." 

She immediately adopted a posture as if she was standing in salute for a superior officer.

"Will Adam be well?" Can Hu asked, a note of reverberating concern in its voice. "I have seen humans reunite with those they thought long lost. I must admit that the circumstances that exist in my data banks are not nearly..." Can Hu paused as he looked at Shiv, "...as novel as what resulted from you, Pathbearer."

"Yeah, that's becoming a running theme with me by this point," Shiv said. His arms were folded, he shrugged, but he was considering the implications of Rose's resurrection. Was it truly Rose? Was it just a copy of her, or was this something that Udraal had planned all along? Maybe Udraal was the only one that knew. Nonetheless, he would let Adam have his moment with the woman first. All the other questionable and miserable business could wait.

"But then, we still must talk of your new skill," Valor said, sounding uncertain. "This skill, this merged ability of yours, this merged magical ability of yours, no one has, Shiv. You understand this?"

"Yeah," Shiv replied. "It's kind of like becoming your own magic in a weird way." He summoned a little bit of Vitae to his palm top, and as the swirling mass of red and white shivered, he drew it back inside of himself before he lost too much vitality. "Still don't know what this really does," Shiv began. "It reaches out for me. It's like a solid."

"A solid?" Valor asked. "You can touch things with it?”

"Yeah, I spiked Adam in the chest earlier. I put a hole through a basilisk. It's about as hard as I am, moves as fast as I can, and I can direct it using my gravitic field. But inside me," Shiv patted his chest, "there's an active field—a mana field—that keeps it stable, keeps it from leaking out. Even after I die now, it's like a stasis zone for vitality."

"And your Revenant form before, what was the difference?"

Shiv considered that. "Before, I was just like a faint outline of myself. I couldn't really move because I didn't have mass. My equipment still followed me. I could strike people with that. But aside from my equipment and my magic, I didn't really have any way of affecting someone. When I resurrected, a layer of shadows would form over me and, well, it would hatch and I'd be back. Now, the red just stitches me back together. Well, it fills up and then I surface from it. All this weird metaphysical shit's giving me a headache."

"This is good," Valor said. "This is useful information. Was your shadowy cocoon before as large as your field now?"

Shiv considered that. "Yeah, just about.”

"Then I suspect it was simply the immature form of your current metamorphosis. A frame being built before the evolution, so to speak. And right now, you have ripened the skill. It has become something active, something properly mature."

"That's not the only thing," Shiv said. He remembered his conversation with the Vicar. Especially the part that had to do with Udraal Thann.  "Valor. I had an encounter with Vicar Sullain. We exchanged words while time was froze—Alright, maybe exchanging words wasn't all of it. He talked to me real nicely at first after he set me on fire with his Necromantic sun. And then he started trying to hash my name, trying to figure things out for me. He was pretty pissed off when I revealed what the Inquisition was trying to pull on him. So maybe we have an opening there.”

“Good,” Valor said. “The more at odds our enemies are, the better.”

“But, uh, he has some of my Vitae. He literally pulled it out of me when I exploded. After I went off, he caught it somehow. Just like he managed to capture some of Roland's arrows. Arrows that removed me from existence in a second. He’s godsdamn powerful. I felt like an insect next to him. What kind of Magical Skills does he even have?”

Valor paused as he strained himself, trying to remember something. “His ability to control magic was... was Omnimancy," Valor suddenly said. He lifted his head. "Omnimancy. The control of all magics."

"All magics?" Shiv gawked in disbelief. "What do you mean? You mean he has every single Magical Skill fused together into one?"

"It’s hard to remember, but… I believe so," Valor replied. But the Legendary Pathbearer sounded uncertain. "This is not good, Shiv... not good. With your Vitae… He may be able to do things we cannot conceive.”

"Yeah, what's worse is that he mentioned Udraal by name. He said that I was meant to be returned to him, like I was some kind of lost dog."

And that made Valor look away. A noise of discomfort escaped from him as he looked up, up at the Manor Core. His gaze, however, ran further into his own past rather than the light of the present. "Udraal," Valor said, "what have you been doing?"

"Yeah, I need to know the answer to that question too," Shiv said. "When we meet your son, Valor, I’ll have a lot of things to ask him, and I might not ask him so nicely."

Valor slowly turned and regarded Shiv. "Shiv, I pray for your sake that you do not meet my son. Not now, not ever." 

A growl almost escaped Shiv, but he controlled himself. He took in a deep breath. "Valor, I know he's your son—”

"No, you misunderstand Shiv," Valor interrupted him. "This is not me expressing protectiveness or fatherly love, though I do care for him still. Please," Valor choked. "But no, this is me expressing concern for you. My son isn't just a Unique Pathbearer or Legendary Pathbearer. My son is one of the few people I fear in all Integration. Let that statement stand for itself."

Shiv nodded, accepting Valor's statement, but not bending before it. Valor knew his son, Shiv didn't, and more importantly, this was going to be an unavoidable issue. "I don't think we can avoid this. With how much his name has come up, this meeting is bound to happen sooner or later.”

"It best be later," Valor said, with more than a little weight in behind his words. "You are not ready."

"Well, I wasn't ready for Sullain either," Shiv said, getting a bit frustrated with the direction this conversation was taking. "And I had to deal with him anyway. It's not up to me. The system is intent on throwing me against people who can contend with gods. Shit, it’s thrown a forgotten god at me already, and it wasn’t as powerful as Sullain was." And Shiv let out a stressful breath.

Valor wasn't looking away from him. In that moment, Shiv realized Valor was suffering too. Suffering from a similar problem as Adam . Where Adam was worried--was terrified that something would happen and take his returned mother from him. Or to steal the hope he was so afraid to bear. Valor didn't want to face his son at all. He still cared for his son. But there was terror in that as well. Not the kind of terror one would have for a monster. But one would have for someone who has wounded them too deep.

Psychology 7 > 8

Fuck me, everyone’s a mess in their own way, Shiv thought. He heard that statement from Georges once. He didn't ask the Master Chef why that was. Georges had his own life, had his own past. And Shiv never thought it felt right to pry. Might have been the same business with Valor. 

But in Udraal’s case, Shiv probably wasn't prying. It was probably just preparation for an inevitable conflict. And it is going to be a conflict, Shiv told himself. It was looking more and more like his parents went to Udraal to see the ritual done. Or Udraal influenced it somehow. Whatever the case, he needed to find out. And on his terms, not Udraal's or anyone else's.

"Shiv," Valor said once more, "you need to... No, we need to understand your new capabilities. Much is at stake now. With the Vicar possessing some of your Vitae, he may soon discover another weapon he could use against Blackedge. He may no longer have the Animancy Core, but he remains a Legend of Magic. We must comprehend the limits and functions of your new skill before he does.”

"And we're also gonna need an army," Shiv said. "The necrotechs, there was a lot of them. And it wasn't just a few stragglers. Their operation makes Confriga’s look like a joke. They had riders that controlled time dragons, Valor. They deployed in seconds after they detected me, and they kept finding me. I managed to make it all the way to Blackedge, but every damn step was a fight. Always one mistake from dying. And then I ended up getting lit up at the end anyway."

Shiv grimaced, as he also recalled being pinned in place by Vicar Sullain. The Vicar's powers of magic were beyond description. He had control over Chronomancy, Biomancy,Pyromancy, more. And they were all practically the same discipline to him. If what Valor said was true, if he truly was an Omnimancer, then, well, how the hell were they supposed to even figure out how to kill Sullain.

“Not alone,” Uva said.

Shiv grunted. “Well, we're gonna need to deal with the Vicar. We're gonna need to figure out my Vitae. We're gonna need to find an army to deal with his army. And more likely than not, we're going to need to find a way to help all the people at Blackedge escape their current encircle. But doing all that is gonna take… I don't even know what it's gonna take, a lot. I have no idea where to begin."

The Legendary Pathbearer paused and slowly looked at Can Hu. "Shiv… for your Vitae, I think we have a prime candidate to test your new skill on.”

Slowly, Can Hu turned to regard Valor. His body screeched and his eyes blinked. "Are you sure this is wise, Legend Valor?"

"I think there is nothing wiser, my friend," Valor said. "You have sustained severe damage—Damage to your soul. Your skills are shattered, and your very being is sundered to its foundations. Shiv shed Necromancy damage. That shouldn't even be possible, but with his changed nature and his Vitae—-He reached into Rose. He cycled the damage from her into himself. That is beyond Animancy in some ways. More direct. More… Let us see what he can do for you.”

Shiv looked between Can Hu and Valor as a heavy weight settled on him. "So what, I'm going to be able to fix Can Hu?"

"I wouldn't be absolutely certain about that," Valor said, tempering everyone's expectations. "But I wouldn't say otherwise, either. We must discover your limits first."

Shiv rolled his neck and looked at the Penitent. "Alright, then why don't we start now? I'm ready."

Can Hu slowly looked toward Valor, and the green in his optics shrank. "I… I am willing to try anything.”

"Was about to say the same thing," Shiv said. And immediately, Shiv channeled a stream of red and white into the Penitent. The Penitent's vitality was brutally damaged. Even before Shiv truly suffused his Vitae into Can Hu, he could feel the many gaps and pieces of its soul that were missing. It was like there were sections of the Penitent that had been outright removed. Not destroyed, not disfigured, removed entirely. 

Shiv had no idea how Can Hu was still holding together. To fully conceptualize the unnatural state of Can Hu's vitality, Shiv had to think of a pond. A pond that had sections of absence where water simply didn't exist. But the moment Shiv pressed against them, he found his Vitae sinking into the absence, filling them at an alarming rate and flooding the nothing with his white and red.

Shiv’s vitality plunged. He groaned, but Can Hu brightened with new life.

Vitaemancy 55 > 56

The Penitent shook and shuddered, but rather than its body sounding like screaming metal every time it moved, there came a stable mechanical whirr for once, and Can Hu moved like his body was lubricated. There was no resistance as he took a few steps back. 

But then Shiv’s vitality began to run dry, and the space within Can Hu grew ever more unstable. Parts of the Penitent filled with vitality. As it did, Shiv could feel shapes at the center. Broken shapes. The Vitae itself wasn't enough. Shiv didn't really know what he was doing with the shapes, and so the moment he stopped focusing, his Vitae was ejected from the cracked remnants of what he assumed to be Can Hu's skills.

Shiv was about to keep trying, but a rush of lethargy took him. His Vitae receded back into his body as he tried not to collapse. Chills shot through his every sinew. "I felt something," Shiv gasped as Uva held him up using her shield. "I managed to reach in and touch some of what was broken. I just, I don't know how to put it back together."

Can Hu felt at itself. It said nothing for a moment, but Shiv could practically taste the Penitent's astonishment. Valor, likewise, seemed positively ecstatic. He drifted beside Shiv, examining him up and down, while casting glimpses at Can Hu as well. "No, no, this is a great outcome. This is more than great. This is fantastic. Do not be discouraged. This is exactly the outcome we want," Valor said. "I assumed it wouldn't be easy. Even if I had Animancy, it wouldn't be possible. You couldn't put something so complicated back together. But the fact that you reached in, that you managed to interface with it, that you managed to touch it... What you have here is... I do not fully understand, but it can function analogously to Animancy. But Animancy is not something I could wield like a solid object. Like a surgeon’s tools.”

Valor looked down at his hands and a crackle of necromancy pulsed there. "Animancy is the shape of the soul itself, you modify it. It is not controlled by vitality, it is not interwoven with vitality, it is not a living thing. You manipulate the conditions of one's soul. You can influence the development of a skill on higher levels and deeper understandings. You can even inflict indelible harm to one's existence. But what you are doing here… it seems that you are inflicting some of your own existence on someone else, restructuring and resurrecting or—”

And Can Hu cut Valor off. "Valor," Can Hu said. "The skill doesn't say that it's broken anymore."

Valor went entirely still. 

Shiv's eyes widened. "Is it fixed?"

"No," Can Hu replied. "It says damaged."

"Damaged," Shiv echoed. "That's better than being broken, right?"

"This is incredible," Valor breathed. "This is..." And then Valor regarded Shiv and his breath fell low. "No. No. I think I understand now. This is... You are an incubator for souls and resurrections. My son has… You have made to return not only broken lives, but broken skills as well. Broken souls." The Legendary Pathbearer shook off his stupor. "I need that shard of myself more than ever. The part of myself that allows me to use Animancy. I cannot guide you properly without it. I cannot truly give you a mirror to work off of if I do not have the skill myself. But until then, until then, I can guide you on your discovery. And you need to continue treating Can Hu. Continue doing what you did today, just now."

"I'll get back to it the moment I recover," Shiv said. "I could just go out and drain some critters in the Umbral Wilderness, and then come back again."

"Yes, yes," Valor said, "do that, do that as fast as possible. See if you can fill every single one of his soul wounds. It's like a transplantation," Valor breathed. "You’re a universal soul donor, a perfect soul donor. Udral, what are you trying to make? Why can’t I remember?”

Shiv let out a grunt and slowly began to trudge towards the Abyssal Gateway again.

"You're going now?" Uva asked.

"Yeah," Shiv said, "no time like the present, right?" She looked at Valor and Can Hu before she followed Shiv.

"It won't be long," Shiv said. "I'm just going to find..."

"I'll go with you," Uva said. "I think there are some other tests we can run on proper enemies."

"Proper enemies," Shiv said, his curiosity piqued.

"Vampires," she said very simply. "The First Blood will attack us at some point. I wish for that point to be delayed for as long as possible. And few deserve whatever foulness might be inflicted by your new skill.”

“Uva. That’s kind of dark, but I also find it weirdly hot.”

Uva smirked with pride.

And just then, another notification popped up before Shiv. But this one was accompanied by a powerful pulse of weight.

The Challenger demands that you accept his offer.

"Godsdamn it, can't you wait," Shiv said.

"What?" Uva asked.

"The Challenger, he keeps wanting me to talk to him. He's really trying to push this offer on me."

Uva narrowed her eyes. "Have you decided? To accept."

"I don't even know what the offer is," Shiv shot back. "You? How's the Dreamtaker? Are they pushing anything on you?"

Uva was hesitant for a moment. "Not nearly as aggressive as your Challenger."

"He's not my Challenger," Shiv growled. "He's just... an asshole god I'm gonna have to deal with. And probably eventually have to kick the ass of." Shiv sighed. "Now, if I can figure out how to kill Vicar Sullain first, then maybe I can move on to imagining how I can kill an actual god."

"Then before we leave, I think you should briefly talk to him."

Shiv paused. "What?"

“We will need to know what he offers sooner or later anyway,” Uva said. “You do not need to accept. You just need to learn. When we debrief, it’s best that we do with all the information possible. So. I will talk to my personal problem. And you can talk to your Challenger."

"Stop calling him my Challenger.”

Uva pressed her lips together. “Considering he is willing to offer some of his forces to us? I suspect that makes him very much your Challenger right now. I have not heard of so many gods offering the boon of an army, and we are sorely in need of allies.”

“Godsdammit,” Shiv breathed. “Fine. Hey, Challenger. Asshole. I got a moment. Let’s talk—”

Shiv vanished from the gate.