III-16 Peace (Deathless)

You will not become a true Pathbearer if you're afraid of taking risks, if you're afraid of doing new things, if you're afraid of developing

You will not become a true Pathbearer if you're afraid of taking risks, if you're afraid of doing new things, if you're afraid of developing yourself. You cannot let yourself go stagnant. But part of that is recovery. Part of that is having new experiences. Part of that is learning new things. Talk to people. Sink into the world. Immerse yourself. Open your mind to new encounters. Let your understanding of the world be varied and develop more than one skill.

It is a common thing for Pathbearers to over-focus, to over-commit to a singular aspect of themselves. A warrior who commits only to be a frontline warrior, prideful of physicality, toughness, and mace proficiency, but nothing else. Perhaps he will find himself accomplished in the use of a shield as well. But what worth is that in times of peace? To live is to war. The war does not just mean struggle against an adversary. It means to struggle against progress, against yourself, to build up your communities, and to forge a kingdom worth living in.

If all you are worth is the weapon in your hand, then what worth will you find of yourself when there are no adversaries to slay? Perhaps you will throw yourself time and time again into the fray until you truly find yourself favored by the system. But that is unlikely. It is more likely that death will find you first instead.

Become rich. Become broad. Once you establish a foothold with one skill, use it to expand your other choices as well. Breadth is choice, students, and choice is life. Choice is vitality. Choice is hope for the future. And choice is how you advance beyond your bottlenecks.

Become more. Don't just fight to hold and build up what you have right now. This is not a time of scarcity. This is a time for eternal growth.

-Master-Instructor Hercule Attano, Phoenix Academy GEN-PREP 101

III-16

Peace

After dealing with their “Idiot Weaveress Commander problem, Courtney, the Court Leviathan, remained where it was; Angelo was allowed to remain aboard Courtney, to stare catatonically into his soup, and Uva was allowed to remain in place at her current post, provided that a few other Umbrals kept an eye on her in case she exhibited any eldritch symptoms. 

All in all, this was the most optimal outcome. Null Mont was annoying, troublesome, and frankly kind of an asshole, but Shiv had dealt with assholes before. She wasn't any more special than a customer demanding special treatment or some noble who thought himself better than everyone else.

And I can't exactly kill all of my problems, Shiv thought to himself. Well, I could. I could definitely kill Null Mont. I could probably definitely eventually kill anyone, I think, but it's not that useful. Frankly, it'll make me more enemies than allies. The system is already gunning for my head. I need to be a little bit careful, more subtle. 

Finesse was the word he was looking for. Finesse gave him more options and kept things from getting messier. He’d killed enough people to populate a small town, recently. A bit of a pause was due. If he kept going like he did before, Shiv worried that he might slip closer to the state he was in when he was affected by the Orcish Skill—not a place he wanted to be.

As a moment of calm followed, he observed two dozen Umbral Geomancers supported by Can Hu lifting sections of the fallen gate back into place. Massive stone supports sprouted out from the ground, forming rows of pillars that led from the surface gateway to the abyssal gateway. Between them, the gateway to Vulketh was sealed twice over, once by spell and once again by a layer of dense alloy. 

For now, the Vultegs and Lord Scorn hadn't even done anything, but Shiv was sure the peace wouldn't last. Lord Scorn was quite offended that his gate had been taken and that his Lesser Marshal and forces had been butchered. Shiv expected another fight on that front sooner or later. 

Preferably later right now though. Right now, Shiv and the others could really use a moment to themselves to recover. To build up their arms and prepare for the ugliness to come. And there was going to a great deal of ugliness coming down the way. Especially with Lord Scorn’s quest hanging over their heads.

And that's another asshole trying to kill us, he thought to himself. Oh, there's nothing for it. If they're gonna come, I'm gonna have to break them. But if he wanted to break them, he needed to prepare, just like everyone else.

Adam used the opportunity to get some much-needed respite. Right now, he was watching the city from on high. His vector wings sprouted wide, each of the pyramid-like shards glistening in the air. He hovered beside his mana core, and Valor was there with him, gesturing, talking. Shiv found it amusing how Valor and Adam's relationship had developed. 

At first, Valor demanded Shiv stick him into the young lord's eye after the incident at Cradle. Now? Now they were talking about all sorts of things. They're practically spending more time together than I am with either of them, Shiv thought. Then again, he had a busy few weeks too, practically non-stop.

Every now and again, Shiv would see one of Uva's mana strands flick across the city, probably scouting down leads or trying to make sure no one was plotting any devious schemes. Her priority assignment right now remained the Owl, figuring out what Aviary was planning, why they were in league with the Educator, and more importantly, discovering what the Educator exactly was. She also asked for her eldritch book earlier. Shiv was slightly reluctant to give it to her, but then again, he did have the Odes as well, and she needed to understand her new skill. To understand her increasingly Eldritch… 

His mind trailed off.

He wasn't sure what the Dreamtaker exactly was. The Outsider had come in and assisted Uva when things got desperate. It reached out to her through the Eldritch Insight skill, and attached part of itself to her—or infused its eldritch domain to her eyes somehow—after she connected her mind to the eldritch tome.

That changed Uva’s Eldritch Insight Skill into something else altogether. The tome they took from Confriga’s vault was aptly named The Colors Beyond. At times the book murmured, but it spoke with a myriad of dissonant voices calling out still to the now dead Gate Lord, not responding when either Shiv or Uva spoke to it in return.

And there was another mystery they had to deal with. The second book-based mystery, they had, actually. There was still the Educator's Tome of the Forgotten Artist they had to work through. Shiv had taken a glance at that a few moments ago. It was still badly burned, incinerated when he ignited his soul by slamming himself into Adam's  Necromantic rupture. But still, there were pictures there, mostly depicting people or locations from the past. Most of the pictures were utterly ruined, but Valor said he might be able to restore some of them and uncover some more details regarding the forgotten Ascendant.

As for Shiv himself, he retreated to his personal quarters aboard the Court Leviathan. He suspected these quarters once belonged to the captain of this leviathan, the one who probably died when Shiv's inertial overdrive went off time and time again. But with the interior of the beast so badly demolished, and Shiv uninterested in the vampire aesthetic of blood and torture anyway, some redecorating was in order. 

But later. 

His first focus for now was meal preparation. While everyone else worked on their personal tasks for the gate, Shiv pursued his own art form—his own primary non-combat contribution to his team and the gate. He was thankful that the system allowed him this moment of calmness to further focus on his cooking. The people of the gate would need food for a while, and he would have to go out and hunt down more ingredients. He or some of the other Umbrals. 

Frankly, he preferred it to be himself. He suspected that the First Blood would likely launch counter-attacks or at least scouting teams back over here, and the difference between Compact and Weave was substantial. Weave, increasingly, seemed the weakest of the five faces to Shiv. They were careful. They moved in the dark, and they operated using small teams to survey their enemies and strike tactically, strategically, doing everything they could to avoid battles of attrition. 

Shiv also noticed a distinct lack of high-powered martial Pathbearers among the Weaveresses or Umbrals. Still Water was one of the major Heroes, and her specialty was in Stealth. Her reflexes were Master-tier, as was her physicality, but aside from that, Shiv wasn't sure about her other skills. There was also Devon back at the Cradle. However, she, like many of the heroes or higher at Weave, were more along the lines of utility Pathbearers, people who offered logistical or structural advancements for their civilization.

I wonder if it's all being held together by the Composer herself. Just by her, Shiv considered that. He considered how accessible the Composer was, how easy it was for her to interact with her people. Her song was always playing, and she had her own place at the heart of her dimension. Compared to that, the Challenger seemed of a higher nature altogether, a fundamental force of existence, a natural disaster lurking behind a veil. The system supposedly kept gods at bay, but the Composer seemed to have fewer restrictions than all the other ones. Maybe that's her special nature, he recalled her saying. Maybe that's because she's more of a demigod than a full one. She was born from the Great One, whatever that meant.

These were some of the passing thoughts he experienced as he worked on making more food. An Umbral Cryomancer and several Weaveress engineers dropped by to help him set up a few storage silos, large cylindrical structures made from alloy and infused with Cryomancy that were built beneath the Court Leviathan. Furthermore, not far away, Shiv had a “cooking arena” set up for himself. 

He didn't exactly have a full kitchen set available to him, but after using his Biomancy to clean the meat a bit and using his Skysplitter’s Master Magical Amplification to heat his massive pan via Pyromancy—or to fill cauldrons with boosted Hydromancy, he started preparing well-cook meat by the tons.

The Chef Unwavering 57 > 59

They still needed a self-sufficient water treatment plant along with a waste plant and functional sewage. So far, the survivors of the gate were out of the most critical circumstances, but a great many of them were weak. Some were elderly, some had problems with their bodies from long before. Shiv's regeneration had given them a brief surge of vitality. Their organs were rejuvenated, their lesser diseases were obliterated outright, but more complicated difficulties still remained. Some far beyond Shiv’s current capabilities to help.

And that made Shiv wonder. When my Biomancy fused with my Cooking earlier, I could see the effects of… well, if I just cannibalized someone using my Biomancy, if I absorbed them into myself, I think that's what the skill fusion let me do. But it also listed out the exact benefits, so I don't need to just taste them blindly to find out. This will be good for me to come up with a book of recipes. In fact, I should, yeah, I definitely should start writing something about this. Take down the details and list out what I can do.

Then, he paused as he considered his Plaguefueled skill.

But not only ingredients, not only dishes. I can absorb plagues now. Hell, I can absorb diseases. Anything that destabilizes my functional organic state should count as a disease. So if I inflict more of those on myself and absorb them, well, that's like another layer of Berserk on top of Berserk. Frankly, it's better than Berserk. It makes me feel a little bit drunk, but I function better with it. They can probably also go together. I should test that out sometime. If I use my plague-fueled skill on myself and then follow up with Berserk, how powerful will I get?

The prospects of that made him feel a little giddy, but Shiv centered himself before he got a little too deep into the fantasy. He needed to learn more about diseases, about viruses, about nerve agents, and all the things that could compromise a physical body's structure. Within the Court Leviathan, he died many times. 

He had absolutely no answer to the complexity of the viruses flooding into him. Any other Pathbearer—well, any other organic Pathbearer—would have fallen then, been slain by the biomantic plagues and sicknesses of the First Blood. He was a different case. He could learn in a way no one else could. He could experiment in a way no one else could. And with this Court Leviathan, he had more than just a steady supply of meat. He had something of a biological playground: a perfect test subject.

As long as I can keep it alive. It has a Biomancy Core, but I think it still needs to eat. It looks smaller than it did before, a little bit sluggish. And then Shiv recalled the prisoner containment pods on the underside of its body, and how it could assimilate biomass. It consumed a few of his bodies as well, directly through its brain. That would be a useful capability for Shiv to learn, wielding biomass directly and potently like that. But also, that might be the cost of sustaining the Court Leviathan. It might be able to regenerate, but its metabolism still ran off a substantial amount of calories. 

"Maybe I'm gonna need to go out and hunt down some cave biters for you anyway, huh, girl?" He didn't really know if the Court Leviathan was a girl, but he was already calling it Courtney. So. It was a girl to him. A large, monstrous, plague-infused girl.

At present, Uva said it was mostly in a docile state because it was passive, bred to be so, biomantically and psychomantically altered to be this way. If they wanted to spur it to violence, they needed to control both its body and its mind. She said she doubted she could do it alone since a lot of its biological structures were complicated, requiring more than a few Biomancers to integrate and direct its bodily functions. 

Right now, Shiv was barely tapping into any of its proper capabilities. The regeneration it was capable of was simply a passive thing. The beast was capable of shapeshifting, of modifying its biological architecture within and without. It could grow those maggots, large maggots even, that fired out and detonated themselves in spreads of parasitic acid. Shiv had destroyed all those creatures, but the Court Leviathan was definitely capable of growing more and more varied bio-organisms at that. It had those wounds within it as well, places for the vampires to conduct whatever foul blood rituals or flesh rituals they did to shape Blood Horrors and other monsters. 

Or maybe even themselves, Shiv thought. Maybe even myself. He remembered how some of the vampires could shapeshift, could adjust the nature of their flesh and bone on the fly. Shiv was doing a very rudimentary version of that with his bone armor, but he needed to think further, and if he wanted to get to that point, he needed to advance his Practical Metabiology.

As he finished preparing the bulk of the meat for the system, he made a few easy-to-eat military rations for his allies as well. He stored some of the Court Leviathan flesh in small packages, packages that could fit in a pouch or slot on someone's armor. With the amount of regeneration the Court Leviathan provided, it would be useful for Adam, Uva, or any of the Umbrals and Weaveresses to bring this on a battlefield. 

Shiv couldn't always be there with his wound-eaters, and allied Biomancers might be missing as well. If he could cook, if he could continue providing such powerful boosts in combat thanks to his Chef Unwavering skills, then he was going to do so. Frankly, that was another avenue of advancement for everyone: varied ingredient boosts. 

He wanted to see just how many boosts he could offer someone through a combination of different dishes. Right now, it seemed like it furthered someone's existing skills or amplified their physical and mental condition in some way. He hadn't cooked anything that affected magic, though. That was what he wanted to figure out next. Could he make magic better? Could he make someone learn faster if he just cooked the right meal or used the right ingredients?

Yeah, definitely starting that recipe book. He had an easy way of making functional health potions for everyone in the form of well-cooked Court Leviathan meat. Mixing in Mendules and some of the river weeds—what were they called again? Whatever it was called, it dramatically boosted that effect as well. 

But there were many creatures across the Abyss, many creatures Shiv had yet to sample. Why am I just thinking about the Abyss either? The Surface is also filled with creatures I haven't sampled yet. If I can do this with the Court Leviathan or the Jealousy, what I might be able to get from something like… Shiv considered a hawk, a rat. Do those offer bonuses as well? More than a recipe book, he was likely going to need to open something of an experimental slaughterhouse for himself, and a farm.

After a few hours, Shiv finished his preparations and stored a good supply of meat for the coming days in a few of his silos. This would go a long way to maintaining the gate’s stability and keep the weakest people fed and hale. He would need to go out and harvest more things in time, but for once, he felt like he had time.

Right now, the system was suspiciously merciful. There were no problems coming from the mercenaries, no fires started, no bombs triggered, no eldritch beings invading, Shiv took a moment to himself as he landed upon Courtney and took a seat on the beast's massive sloped head. 

He watched as half of a district was being connected to the surface district, offering the survivors more room to expand. Soon, they wouldn’t need to be so cramped anymore. The surface district also no longer had any buildings either. Most of their foundations had been compromised, and with how unstable they were, they had to be knocked down anyway, reused as material.

District Gained: [Unspecified District]

Shiv blinked as the notification appeared. Unspecific district. Yeah, the gate could gain skills and grow like a Pathbearer in some ways thanks to its mana core. He guessed this was something everyone in the gate saw when a major development was reached.

Regardless, the best thing happening right now as the bulldozing of the buildings in the surfacer district. The extra space allowed for full, temporary encampments to be built up. The first was for the automatons. Can Hu had gone there after finishing with today's reconstruction efforts to start building up something of a makeshift power station. He also constructed some maintenance drones that actively worked around the clock to keep the other automata functional. 

Aside from the automatons, there were the slaves and dignitaries. The slaves required more attention from the Umbrals and the Weaveresses. Many of them were weak of body, traumatized of mind, and had other afflictions as well. Shiv's Court Leviathan tentacle soup supercharged their regeneration for a while, rejuvenated their organs, and helped them deal with some of their lesser diseases, like with the spreading dysentery resulting from the Bowel-Breaker, but they still had many other problems. Some of them had complicated afflictions that went beyond lingering food poisoning or even metabolic dysfunction. Others had curses that necessitated non-physical treatments, and that was just the thing. 

There was more than one way to hurt someone in this world, and the sickness of a soul ran deeper than the sickness afflicted on the body.

It was an ugly thing, being Pathless. But being of the Path of the Slave. You were just pliable clay for someone else to abuse, clay that couldn't fight back because your Path didn't allow you to have the proper skills. The system was a cold piece of shit. All one needed to do was focus, and they would see so much ugliness even in existence itself.

Shiv had known that ugliness his entire life. He'd lived some of it, but now he wasn't going back. He wasn’t backing down. The system could throw whatever it wanted at him. He wasn't going back. He wasn't going to be broken. He would die for good before he let himself break.

But that was just how he thought.

Increasingly, he was noticing that he was different, dramatically different from all the other people. Valor wanted to talk to him about his mind earlier, about how it had been altered. Uva just needed to stitch some of his broken cognition back together before he started healing on his own accord, before he could re-enter the fight. 

Even now, though he didn't like thinking about it, the scars left over from the torture he endured at the hand of the Recollector were fading fast, and it barely traumatized him at all. He enjoyed that. He enjoyed feeling untouched by the world in some ways, being untouched by damage even after it was inflicted on him. But there was something deeply off about his nature just for being able to do this. Harlon and Vera Lowe, he thought to himself, my parents. My parents are the cause behind this. My parents and… Udraal. Did he help them with the ritual? Valor keeps bringing his name up. Was talking about my mind earlier. But the stories just say he was killed by Roland…

 Udraal Thann, Rose whispered to him, responding after a long lull of silence. I remember him. I remember facing him. A treacherous enemy, a dangerous foe. He was capable of so many things. And his expression was the saddest I've seen on a man.

"And you said that you killed him."

I'm sure of it, Rose breathed. Roland, he fired an arrow, an arrow blessed by the Starhawk himself. It struck the Abyssal Lord. It should have ignited his very soul, burned him to cinders at the foundations of his being. But here Valor is, talking about how his son still seems to be alive. No one seems to think this guy is dead, except for you. I watched. I watched as his soul came ablaze. I saw, I… I saw. 

And then Rose's voice trailed off as a whimper entered her breath. I saw so much and I can't remember. Why can't I remember? Why am I trapped here? Why am I bound to you? Did you…

"Rose," he said. He had no more taste for avoiding this. He'd ignored her long enough, felt uncomfortable about her long enough, but he was going to deal with some of this right now, if he could. "Listen to me. I told you before I'm going to try to get you out, but I need you to tell me something in return. I need you to tell me about my parents, about why they might have done this ritual, about… did they have any contact with Udraal before you and Roland killed him?"

Before… at any point… Rose gasped. I think… I think… A long silence dragged and Rose let out a sigh. I think I'm just a shadow of what I used to be.

"Yeah," Shiv said, letting out a breath of his own. "I think I see a lot of people who are shadows of what they used to be. I'm beginning to suspect that the system's trying to tell me something. I just can't quite figure out what."

No, no, wait, Rose suddenly said. Shiv's attention shifted back inward.

"Yeah, what?"

I think Udraal… I remember… I remember him leading us away…”

"Leading you? Where?”

There was… there was a moment, a moment of truce or understanding, a parley. He was leading us somewhere. He was… he spoke to us. He spoke to Roland, and Harlan was there, and Vera, and… and they were… I'm sorry.

"No, it's fine. It's just…" He gritted his teeth. "I'm sorry this happened to you. I'm sorry my parents did all this. I'm… I'm not sorry for existing, though. I don't hate myself. I want to live. I want… I want a lot of things. I'm… despite everything I suffered recently, I… this is a great life. I love being a Pathbearer. I love cooking for people. I love going from place to place, doing what I can, getting more skills. I can't be sorry about that. I won't lie to you."

Rose just listened. She didn't reply with anger or fury, but she did let out the slightest sob.

"But I am sorry that this is what it took to make me. I am sorry that if…" He tried to put together the words. The more he talked about this, the more chaotic his mind felt. "I… I am sorry that my parents were… whatever they were doing, I don't understand. Right? I… I didn't need to be deathless. Maybe. I could have been just… just a normal Pathbearer. And I… I would have been capable of living that way. I would have done great that way anyway. I would have fought. I would have done everything I did now. Maybe… maybe it would have taken longer. Maybe it would have been harder. Maybe I would have died even, but I would have been happy. I would have been happy with just that. 

“But now it's all done, I can't take any of it back. Do you understand? I can't do anything but try to make things right. To be someone who my parents weren't. And that someone is going to do everything he can to help you. If you do what you can to help me."

Do you care about him? Truly? Rose's voice came fragile, but filled with yearning.

Shiv paused. "Care about who? Who are you talking about?"

Adam. Adam, my son. Do you really care about him?

Shiv's mouth fell open. He was… it took a moment for him to reply to that. "Yeah. He's my… well, I thought he was an asshole at first. And then I kind of felt like he was my responsibility. And I also felt responsible for Blackhedge, and we're supposed to go back. But after all that, after some of the stuff we've been through, I remembered after bleeding by his side, watching him nearly die, watching him saving my life, me saving his… it's… this isn't just friendship anymore. I think we skipped that part altogether. There's still problems between us. I'm sure that exists, but after everything we've done…"

After everything Roland and Harlan went through, Harlan and Vera still killed me. They still cut my daughter out of me.

"What?" he gasped.

What? That is… that is the thing I remember most, the blade going in, and her… her… she was about to be born, she was screaming and…

A screen formed before Shiv and scenes played. Scenes he didn’t want to see at all. His parents’ faces were blurred, but the things they were doing—he watched the scene through Rose’s eyes, and it was too much. He didn’t want to know. He didn’t want to see this.

“Fuck! Stop! Stop!”

Rose didn’t. It was like she was in a trace.

Shiv squeezed his eyes shut, but that didn’t stop the sounds. Gods, the screams she was making. He could hear her even as he clamped his hands down on his ears.

Then, finally, Shiv opened his eyes saw his… The scene played from Rose’s perspective, so Shiv only saw his own mother from her backside. She was shaking. Shuddering as Harlon—Shiv’s father—held a small body and placed it against his wife. Then, he drove a blade through both of them.

There came red and a scream from Rose that Shiv would never forget.

The screen went dark. Rose stopped screaming. But Shiv’s mind was reeling violently. A flood of nausea swept through him. He swallowed hard, drinking down sour spit as he commanded himself, begged himself to stay composed, to not throw up. He always knew his parents were monsters. All of the stories indicated they were monsters, but to do that, to cut a child out of someone was…

I asked her. I asked Vera why, through it all. She was my friend too. Harlon was like my… was like an older brother. Why? Why? They never told me. Harlon was crying. Vera… there was no expression. They just cut and cut, and she was pregnant too. You were there, you were there, you were there." 

And once more, Rose veered towards the edge of madness. She veered, and Shiv understood.

Shiv shuttered. This was a mistake. He should have never talked to her. He didn't want to know this, he didn't. But then his crumbling terror met the bedrock of who he was. He couldn't avoid talking to her. He couldn't avoid knowing this. He couldn't avoid his past anymore. If he wanted to face the future, he would need to know what happened before. To better understand what he was, so that he could shape who he was. 

To be more than just an atrocity, a mistake, a monster in the making.

"Rose! Rose! Rose!" Shiv practically shouted the final word. She finally stopped. "Listen to me. I… that's… I don't want…" Shiv let out a growl. "Godsdamn it. Godsdamn it! Why do they have to be monsters? Why do they have to do this? I can't fix that. But I can… Yes, I do care about Adam. Yes, I'm going to do everything I possibly can to keep him alive. If it takes dying for good to keep him alive, then…" Shiv winced. "I don't want to die for good. I don't want to go away, not after everything I got to taste. But I'll do it. I'll do it. But I'll give a hell of a lot more than just my own life, if it means keeping Adam alive."

And finally, both quieted. Rose listened to him. You are not very much like him.

"Like who?" Shiv asked.

Your father, Harlon. He complained. He was such a whining bitch all the time, it got on my nerves. But you are… you are Vera's son, truly. I can hear her in you. Her more than him. And I hope you don't become her. I hope your words are true. Rose let out a final, shuddering breath. Please don't hurt my boy. Please.

Shiv shook his head. "If anyone tries to hurt Adam, I'll felling kill them. You got more than my word on that.”

And she said no more in response, lapsing back to silence, to the coldness of his vitae. Shiv sighed. "Well, that was a horrifying godsdamn conversation," he said, more to himself than anyone else. A gust of wind rushed over him, and in the distance he noticed Adam was no longer staring at his mana core, but directly at him. Shiv nodded. Adam probably saw that too. 

"Yeah, I did talk to her just now," Shiv said. "I'll tell you about it later, if you want. You’re going to hate this. I hated this. Right now, I think I'm going to read. I'm gonna need a moment. Tell Uva I'll be back over in a few hours. For now, I think I'm gonna do some reading... Long overdue reading, to—to cool off. I need a moment, Adam. Just give me a moment.”

And when no Veilpiercers zipped by came, when no mana strands arrived to sink through his mind, Shiv knew that he was going to get a moment to himself at last. Shiv gathered his Biomancy books and prepared to continue his education for the first time in a while.

At least, he thought that was what he was going to get, until a voice came from behind him. "You were not lying about your ghost."

For a moment, Shiv tensed, and then he saw Angelo standing there, staring at him from the bridge. The azure brightness of the mana core painted the vampire's face in a half-shadow, and he still looked wretched, but finally, he emerged from his catatonic state. His face was half-shrouded in shadow in the light, but he stared at Shiv with his eyes of faintest red. Shiv knew better to let his gaze linger on the vampire's face for long. His Charm Skill was just too potent.

"So, how do you like the soup?" Shiv asked, barely holding back a sigh. He really didn’t want to talk to anyone right now.

"I was surprised," the vampire replied. "It was among the better dishes I've tasted.”

"Among the better dishes?”

The vampire nodded. "You have good skill. But I suspect you are more dedicated to the fundamentals of cooking, to make sure nothing is wrong, rather than expression or pushing new thresholds of flavor. There is no mistake in the way you make your food. It's perfectly cooked, perfectly prepared, perfect. Except there is no…" Angelo made a gesture with his hand, a twirling of the fingers. "You need more expression. Not everyone will like it, but to truly go to the next stage, you need more expression." Angelo pressed his lips together. "That is what one of my masters once told me."

Now, Shiv's attention was entirely on Angelo. "You can cook?"

"I can do many things," Angelo replied. "To be honest, I was not a good cook. My mind drifted to other things. I was easily distracted. And I often lost track of my food, of my ingredients, of the steps. And I lost track of many things, including myself. But I have known brilliant cooks. I have known brilliant chefs. I have known food the likes of which few will ever taste."

"And that's not mine," Shiv said.

"Not quite," Angelo replied. There was almost something of a smile pulling at his face, but it never quite made it on. A stronghold of sadness had taken up residence in Angelo's eyes.

"Well, I hope I meet some of these brilliant cooks and chefs you talked about someday," Shiv replied. "I think my education still has a long way to go."

"Yes, but I think it might be difficult. You do have a propensity for killing vampires. They will likely sooner die facing you than indulge in small talk.”

Angelo bowed his head in concession. "I must ask," he said, gesturing to the book in Shiv's hand. "You know what that is, right?”

“Yeah. Odes. Damn good book. Why?”

“What chapter are you on in the book? I have gone through it as well. I am… curious. Most people are repulsed by it.”

“Sculptor Ekkihurst is a vile sonnabitch,” Shiv grunted. “But he’s also an artist of the flesh. I’m here to learn. I’m here to get better. And someday, I’ll might even use what I discovered here to put an end to him.”

Angelo turned his head slightly and there was a certain look in his eyes. “Which chapter are you on?”

"I'm going to take a look at the diseases. Maybe plagues or viruses, something. I'm planning on infecting myself. I tried the Bowel-Breaker a few times earlier, but my body's already adapted to that. It's not strong enough—not infectious enough, maybe. I barely feel a buzz anymore when I use it on myself. The damnedest thing about Plaguefueled is that it treats diseases like it's alcohol. And my tolerance is spiking up quick."

Rather than responding with surprise or astonishment about the nature of Shiv’s Disease Resistance Skill Evolution, the vampire nodded along. "Then what you need is a small variety. Small changes every time, just like with your cooking: novelty. Find the most basic of the viruses and just change it. Learn the foundations and change it ever so slightly every time. See how your body reacts to that. That is all I can offer.”

Shiv blinked. "Yeah, I think… Yeah, I think I'm gonna try that. Thanks."

The quiet between them dragged. Angelo lowered his head. "I wish to thank you as well. For not letting the Umbrals take me. I heard one of the Weaveresses was talking about using me as a prisoner. Or worse. I have… no desire to be used by anyone anymore. I won’t be used in… I don't understand. You have done me a kindness twice over now, and I have nothing to offer."

"It doesn't matter if you have nothing to offer," Shiv replied. "I help people. I help people because it's a sign. A sign of strength, a sign of what I want to do. It's the point of being a Pathbearer. It's not to take from the world. It's to do things in it. I don't want to help you because I was going to get something out of it. I helped you because I wanted to. And because the world can't stop me.”

Angelo's eyes widened a little bit, but then he bowed his head, and slowly he retreated back into the Court Leviathan, away from the light, into the dark, where he languished alone once more.

"And there goes another mystery," Shiv muttered to himself. But Angelo's recommendation still echoed in his mind. “Novelty, huh? Alright, let's see if I can make some novel viruses that my body can't quite keep up with. Wait. Some of the viruses and stuff are still lodged inside the Court Leviathan. The Biomancer just turned them off earlier.”

Shiv looked down at Courtney. “Alright. Let’s see if I can transplant some of your blood into me and trigger some of these diseases. Make it like a… implanted plague dispenser.”