III-10 Cremation

Thanks to the gifts offered to them by the Lineage Cores and the malleable and ever-enduring nature of their bodies, the embraced of the First Blood are unfettered from consequence, free to use their bodies as a canvas, the blood as paint, their very foundational biology as a means to discover the great mysteries of what life can be. And that is the truest gift the Lineage Core has given them: discovery without consequence. Discovery with consequences for all other people who are not them.

What matter is mutilation if you can simply regrow? What point is there in fearing disease when you can receive none, when you are afflicted by none truly? And what fear do you have of physical ruin when, at the allowance of your elder, a simple bestowal of power on their behalf can bring you back from the brink of utter destruction? If the vampire's core is not destroyed, they remain truly whole and they can return regardless.

And it is with this blessing that they have created their armies, their artworks, their kingdoms of blood, flesh, and tissue. They have delved deeper into the nature of Biomancy than any other faith in the world, and perhaps any surface nation as well. And though the war beasts they have forged are not truly path-bearers, few leave an encounter against the Blood Horrors not feeling shaken by their numbers and the grotesque quality of their features. And few can deny feeling a sense of awe as they lay eyes on the Court Leviathan for the first time.

-Sire and Sired: The Chain of the First Blood

III-10
Cremation

"You, you will not escape your fate. Even if you kill me, even if you murder me and crush my core, you will not escape your fate," the vampiress Biomancer muttered. Her face was a jigsaw of ruin, blood dripped from pieces of jetting bone, and her limbs were missing. Her chest had been flayed wide open, but Shiv still couldn't find her lineage core. 

Her Biomancy was potent, and to make matters more annoying, she fused it with a Stealth Skill. She dove into the Court Leviathan and melded with its flesh. Unlike all the other vampires who attacked Shiv directly. She ambushed him, and she probably would have killed him too, except he had Chronomancy. Chronomancy, paired with the fact that, approximately thirty seconds ago, he found and broke the Chronomantic pylon that sustained the wards within the beast.

When Shiv hit the Biomancer, she didn't know how her limbs got broken, how her face was so caved in. She didn't know why her friends were all suddenly dead. What she did know was that this fight was lost. He could hear it in her voice and taste it in the way her courage shook. His Dread Aura quivered in delight.

Dread Aura 88 > 89

And she was now the last. 

The last surviving vampire.

The last surviving anything within Shiv's Court Leviathan. It was Shiv's Court Leviathan. There were no Blood Horrors around. No bloodsuckers. Not even the large maggots remained. He made sure to pulp them all. He had seen enough maggots for today. Especially maggots that burst out from his flesh.

"We will come for yourselfh," the vampire continued, shaking as she tried to regenerate.

"Your core is in your head, isn't it?" Shiv asked. He pressed his Biomancy against hers, but she was a stronger Biomancer, even in this broken state. And more than strong, she was unnaturally focused and masterful and skilled. She countered him with everything he did. And he rolled his eyes, though he appreciated her stubbornness. “Yeah. That’s right. Better to die clawing at your casket than just go with a final sigh. Least I can say that about you.”

“Save your compliments.” he let out a whispered laugh. "When Hero-Elder Kraid finds you, when my great mentor lays his hands on you and peels your flesh into a sculpture, he—"

"Wait, did you say Kraid?" Shiv interrupted her. 

She paused. "You know of him? The great system favored."

"Know of him? I killed him about a day ago." Shiv stared at her. "Well, maybe less than a day ago." Shiv shook his head. "God, it's been a long-ass day." He looked up at the sky, and he frowned deeply into the bioluminescent ceilings. The top half of the Court Leviathan had been blown open again, though was slowly fusing back together. "Yeah, more like twelve hours ago, maybe. He put up a bit of a fight, but he was nothing compared to the guy that came after."

The vampire's mouth opened and closed. "You lie. You're.... You couldn't possibly…”

Shiv was tired of the “you couldn’t possibly” talk. He stomped her head in, and beneath his heel, he felt the delightful crunch of a Lineage Core bursting apart. A flood of Biomancy and blood gushed out around his feet. The floor beneath him used to be made from stone and lined in carpet. The room he was in probably belonged to Malteek, some kind of personal quarters, judging from all the finery. There were statues here, some kind of cage with a collar inside. Shiv didn't really want to know much about what went on there, but there were also books. 

Books on Biomancy, if judged by the diagrams, and then books mostly on smut based on the pictures.

Malteek was kind of a freak.

Shiv collected all the books he could. The Biomancy for his own use. The smut to bully Adam with at some point.

There were also a bunch of other things, but they didn't quite survive the inertial detonation that Shiv unleashed. Shame, but potentially not so much. He really didn't like the First Blood. Everything they did was sour with violence and depravity.

The best thing he did to this Court Leviathan was wiping the vampiric scourge from its body. Figuring out how to do the other stuff with the leviathan would be a longer-term project, but operation no vamps alive was done. Didn’t stop the leviathan from spraying a constant stream of diseases out from its body, but hey, good for leveling.

Plaguefueled 59 > 61

His Plaguefueled Skill had climbed two more levels since last time, but now he was no longer gaining. He probably needed to get something special to gain more levels in it now, but it was a good skill. And it also showed him his priority. It also adjusted his learning priorities for Biomancy. He needed to learn how to inflict plagues on himself, as many plagues as he could, as potent and deadly as they could be. That way, his body could assimilate them, but he needed to be a bit careful. 

There were costs to being Plaguefueled. Costs to all skills.

“Like being drunk as hell,” Shiv muttered. His head pounded like he was hungover, but a sense of lethargy filled his sinews and muscles as the plagues began to die down. Simply feeding himself the same plague in rapid succession also didn't work, because his system simply assimilated to it, got used to it. It was like drinking the same amount of alcohol after your body has been conditioned to its degree. You needed to go harder, or potentially, and this was an assumption, he needed to wait a while before he could absorb more plagues and feel the buffs gain strength.

With his last enemy slain, he shot up into the air and sailed out from the open wound and dangled himself before the front of the Court Leviathan’s head. He waited for it to heal its newest injury. Once it regenerated, he deactivated his Creeping Void so that it could see him. The beast regarded him for a moment, its massive bulk shaking, its four kilometers of length shuddering and sending massive blast waves through the air. Shiv barely felt the blast waves. To him, they were like a slight breeze caressing the face of a mountain. 

For a few moments, it stared at him, and he stared at it. He wondered if he needed to wrestle it into submission, to use his Dread Aura to intimidate it into obeying him, or something. But it seemed surprisingly vacant. Vacant of thought, vacant of reaction, vacant of self-desire.

The monster's mind was nothing but impulse and chaos. He briefly interfaced with it again earlier using his Psychomancy, trying to control it. He failed a second time, but by that point, it was less because it was too chaotic and insane. Rather, he just didn't understand it. It was too alien by far. 

He didn't know how Uva did any of this. He would probably need to have her instruct him on how best to pilot an animal's mind.

There's another thing you can give me, he muttered under his breath. Psychomancy training, too. I think you're the bigger windfall here, not the skill.

The Court Leviathan didn't respond. The reason it probably felt insane earlier was because a good portion of the vampires were fused into its body. And, to his surprise and delight, it didn't have one brain. It had twelve cluster-like brains, all intricately connected to each other via lined cords of reinforced tissue. Destroying one cluster wasn't going to kill this thing. All twelve needed to go to really do anything, and they kept regenerating anyway. 

Furthermore, it had a series of stomachs. Stomachs and weird-womb things. The wombs seemed to be able to grow things. The vampires had Biomancy lab-things connected to to the wombs by one-way reinforced windows.

On the Court Leviathan's underside, connected to the stomachs by dense sacs, were cages, holding cells, and macabre torture chambers. The First Blood captured people and placed them in these containment units. And recently, there had been people inside, he could tell from the leftover blood. But they had all been offered to the leviathan, assimilated within its guts, like he was after his first few deaths.

But the most important part of the beast was the Biomancy mana core lodged at its very center. A constant flow of blood and tissue rushed out. That was the reason it could keep healing. The Biomancy mana core hummed out to him from deep within the beast, and even from the outside, he could taste its tantalizing power.

But without any vampires to direct its will, it couldn't do anything with it. This was how the Court Leviathan unleashed so many plagues. This was how it assimilated flesh. How it could shift its body. And potentially it would be how Shiv could learn to do the very same. His Woundeater was a first step. But after fighting these vampires, he realized he was barely scratching the surface of Biomancy at all. There was still far more that he could do. And it was thanks to their donation of a Court Leviathan that he would be able to do it ahead of schedule. Having a living, enduring, and constantly regenerating test subject went a long way.

"So, you're not going to do anything, are you?" Shiv said, looking at the Court Leviathan. The massive, slope-headed beast didn't even respond. Its many eyes glared lifelessly, but it just hovered in the air, its many tentacles undulating, swinging over the land. But it did no more than that, and slowly Shiv descended, keeping his eye on his new pet. Making sure it didn't bolt away at the last second, didn't get teleported. “Just stay here. I’ll come back for you. Got a sad vampire I need to talk to first.”

And that's another thing I need to get better at dealing with, Shiv thought to himself. There were a few jump mages there, one of them almost got me. Almost ended up tossing me into another dimension or something. Probably need to ask Adam for some tips to fight those guys without my Chronomancy. That thing could have gone sideways real fast. 

And that was just it. His Chronomancy saved him a great deal. It allowed him to have retries when he made mistakes. It allowed him to go back in time and attempt the same action over and over again until he got it right. It allowed him to freeze time, giving him free hits, tearing apart enemies that should have been able to contend with him, at least for a period. Chronomancy was only Master Tier. But Shiv was going to focus hard on it to make sure that it was going to get to heroic as soon as possible. It was a game changer for him. More importantly, not many people attuned to time itself.

All to prepare me to fight Sullain, huh, system? Shiv thought. There was no response. But with everything that had been positioned in his path, with all the obstacles that shaped him, the system didn't need to give a response. 

Shiv knew. Shiv strove. Shiv died. And then, eventually, Shiv prevailed. That was the only exchange needed between them. He was done blaming the system, done talking to it, until he could figure out what it was. Right now, he was going back to his old way. The best way, the way he knew how. He would take things as they come, and he would get whatever he could out of it, no matter what life threw at him.

But still, I should develop more skills. Disease Resistance showed me something. You can get a lot more with new skills. A single-skill Hero is not nearly as effective as a ten-skilled master in terms of options. Or even capability. I need to be more than just a brute. Or a bomb.  And he regarded his Deepest Edge next, along with his Whip Proficiency, Dread Aura, Silver Tongue, and more… Maybe a social skill too. Silver Tongue has been neglected. I shouldn’t just use it to spit funny quips at Uva. It can do more. Just like Angelo’s Charm.

As he touched down at the heart of Hawthorne, he looked at the lone cathedral and shook his head in disgust. True to what he saw earlier, there were hundreds of flayed bodies draped around its front. And he didn't notice a large tarp made from human skin drifting off by the side. It was connected to the cathedral, too, and the vampires had been doing something vile there, had been growing creatures from the people. Blood Horrors, if Shiv could judge correctly. 

A few badly grown Blood Horrors lay at the bottom of a pit, their bodies consumed by teratoma, jutting hairs sticking out from clumps of bone, teeth, mangled tissue, and more. They were parodies of a person, parodies of even monsters. And compared to the Court Leviathan, they were positively ugly. It wasn't that the First Blood couldn't make something beautiful in aesthetic. 

It was just that the Blood Horrors they created were monsters, pure and to the bone.

The rest of the town was awash in blood. The residences had biological tissue inside them. His over 200 wide Biomancy field told him that a good deal of that was human flesh. Very badly mutilated human flesh. Some pieces of flesh were too small. The bodies were too small. He retracted his mana from them. He didn't want to know. 

Even if he was immune and resistant to trauma, there were some things he didn't want to dream about. Besides, he had to harden his heart for the horrors that awaited him in the silo. And he knew that whatever he found inside there would make him hate the First Blood even more.

As he got closer to the silo, he heard a loud crash as the side of the wall shook. Shiv gritted his teeth and prepared to go in. His mind spun, but he remembered Angelo. It wouldn't be surprising if the rogue vampire decided to go in to free his own people during the chaos. The silo was a tall, round-shaped building with a blood-splattered entrance at the very front. Shiv could still see a trail of blood leading out from it. 

A trail of blood left by the badly mutilated corpse of a child once held in the grasp of a high vampire. Shiv wished he could sort which high vampire that was so he could take his time with the bastard. But, truth be told, they likely disintegrated along with a few thousand Blood Horrors during Shiv's frequent detonation of his inertial sheath. Again, he needed to be more calculated, more careful. Uva could have probably found which Blood Horror did that, and Adam too. Now, some measure of revenge escaped Shiv because he was too blunt, too brutal.

Focus, Shiv said. I need more focus too. I need to level my Awareness.

He drew in a breath, and he let his creeping void flood out from him. The world was subsumed in the darkness, and Shiv became the only man with any eyes in that miasma. He struck the door of the silo, bending it inward. The steel screamed and curved before his unstoppable might, but as he entered, Shiv caught sight of the nightmarish hell within.

And that stopped Shiv dead.

It was like a slaughterhouse. Bodies hung, naked bodies. The things the First Blood did, how they fused the people together, how those arms and legs shouldn't be there, those faces… those are not adult limbs. And the parts in the children—they were too big. It didn’t fit…

“Fuck,” Shiv hissed.

It took a lot to shake Shiv, it really did, but the First Blood managed posthumously. The First Blood hurt Shiv, not physically, just mentally. His mind reeled. He pulled his helmet off and violently emptied the contents of his stomach all over the ground.

"Godsdamned monsters," he growled. He slammed the bottom of his left hand into the side of the silo, and it curved inward with a loud shriek. After a few moments of composing himself, he gritted his teeth and walked back in. He tried to ignore them, tried to ignore what happened to the people here. But he couldn't ignore Angelo, who was kneeling at the center of the silo, loudly sobbing. 

The rogue vampire held something, something far too small, in his arms. Shiv tried not to look at it. He tried not to look at the woman that lay not far away from Angelo. There were so many cuts on her that Shiv groaned as he kept his bile down. For a moment he felt his mind begin to reel, but then it reasserted itself. He was unbreakable, but he mended mentally as fast as he tore.

"Angelo," Shiv asked. He looked to his right, and he saw a Blood Horror pinned to one of the walls, a pitchfork lodged in its chest. It was dead. That was likely the bang Shiv heard earlier: Angelo impaling it against the wall. From above, things dripped down, blood and other substances. Shiv didn't look. Shiv didn't want to look.

"It's my fault. It's my fault. It's my fault," Angelo muttered over and over again. He was shaking. His nails remained transformed, sharp blades instead of soft fingers. He released the small thing he was holding, and clawed at himself, leaving deep gashes.

"Angelo, stop. Stop." The vampire closed in on himself. He wasn't even crying anymore. He was catatonic. "I… all I knew these people, I met them. During my time, I met them. I struggled. I… I was… the First Blood made me do things. They made me meet people and I… I finally, I managed to make connections and and and…" Angelo babbled incoherently, but Shiv got the gist. He didn't realize that a vampire's mind could crack, could break like this. But, now that it happened, there was only one thing to do.

"Alright, I guess I'm gonna have to introduce you to my girlfriend too if I’m taking you with me," he muttered. But before that, he looked at the bodies all around and grimaced. "I don't think we should just leave them out here. Angelo, you said you knew these people, right?"

Angelo stopped shaking, stopped clawing at himself, slowly. The very changed vampire rose. He turned to stare at Shiv, and Shiv immediately turned his attention away, protecting his mind from the Charm Skill Angelo possessed.

"Yes," Angelo breathed, "and it's my fault."

"No," Shiv said, interrupting him. "You can say that later. Right now, what you need to do is bury them, or do something for them. It's not right if we just leave them out there, just hanging like pieces of brutalized meat." It took a moment for Shiv's intentions to sink in, but a little thereafter, Angelo nodded.

"Yes, yes." And his eyes widened as his pupils dilated. "Wait, the Court Leviathan! It's still out there."

"It is," Shiv said, "but it's mine now." Angelo didn't process what Shiv just said.

"What do you mean?”

"I killed all the vampires inside of it. And out. Leviathan was fun. The vampires were shit. They deserved worse.”

"What? All of them?" Angelo whispered. "But how? The Court Leviathan, it carries an entire court, an entire generation of…"

"Yeah," Shiv said, nodding. "I killed an entire court then. And frankly, aside from the leviathan and maybe one or two of them, they weren't that impressive. I guess they were here to take a compact gate. The gate me and mine already took. They were probably here to support an army of bloodsuckers too. Of course, that army's not there anymore either. They also started boasting about this Hero, but well, I killed him already a while ago. So, I don't think this court has anything on me. But I do thank them. That leviathan, pretty cool creature. I like its plagues."

Angelo was just staring at him. "You are… you must be truly favored. A True Hero.

Shiv snorted at that. "A Low Hero. But Favored like you wouldn't believe. Frankly, if I take you with me, you might come to hate me for it."

"I cannot," Angelo whimpered. "I cannot have the capacity to hate anyone but myself."

"Right. Well, you're going to hate yourself after we handle these bodies. So, fire or burial?"

Angelo stared at Shiv. "Fire. After what has been done to them, I think they would want fire."

And Shiv lifted a hand. A paltry flame danced upon his palm. "Well," Shiv said with a breath. "Looks like it's time for me to see if I can get some skills out of this."

***

Pyromancy 8 > 9

Skill Gained: Psychology 1 (Common)

Shiv did get a level out of pyromancy, but he also gained another skill he didn't expect. He looked on at the psychology skill. He wasn't sure why he got that. Maybe it was from considering Angelo's mental state. Maybe it was from all the self-rumination he'd been doing in the middle and between the bloodshed. Regardless, more skills were always welcome. But psychology, much like philosophy, were strange skills to gain. He wasn't sure where they might lead or how their adaptation and so on evolutions were changing.

You don't know? Rose asked from within. Her breath was soft. Her presence, however, was growing stronger. She'd only just recovered, just put herself back together completely after the Recollector's assault from earlier. She still felt fragile in a way, but her presence was intact. How can you not know? All children experience their first Skill Evolutions around their graduation days from the Rudimentaries.

"I didn't get to have a pre-academy—no Rudimentary for me," he replied, speaking quietly to himself.

You didn't? No. How? Your skill?

"It turns out when your parents murder a certain Town-Lord's wife and sacrifice her baby daughter in a ritual as well, they don't tend to like you, and no one takes you. No one but a chef with a terrible attitude." Shiv spoke without rancor, but there was still a bit of bitterness in his voice. He had focused on getting rid of it. The way he saw things now, it didn't matter anymore. He was a Pathbearer, and he'd caught up to the others—more than caught up, he'd shot further than most Pathbearers would their entire lives. 

He had no room to complain. Well, that's a lie. He had every room to complain. It just didn't matter. 

The system wanted him to fight. It didn't care if you suffered, it didn't care who died, didn't care about the weak. It only cared about those who threw themselves against death time and time again, only to come out on top. Or to be a footnote in someone else's story.

Is that all these people are? Shiv wondered. He looked at the massive bonfire he started. So many bodies he gathered. So many bodies he cleaned alongside Angelo. So many bodies now burning, now embers to the wind. He didn't know their names. He didn't know their lives. He had no memory of them. But hearing the vampire cry beside him was bad enough. Shiv, on some level, was glad he didn't know them. He was also glad he hadn't been hurt very badly thus far.

Guardshead Leu had been killed in an instant. Crushed. Murdered. He couldn't save her. That felt terrible enough, but he didn't know Liu very well. He had considered what might happen within himself if he saw Uva die. If he saw Adam die. Just the thought made his gut twist. It twisted even more violently than when he threw up earlier. It twisted so hard that he let out a growl of dismay. Angelo briefly eyed him, but went back to muttering under his breath, saying prayers for the fallen.

Shiv's mind would return to baseline. He knew that he wouldn't break, not for long, not for good. That he was sure about. But would he still be himself afterward? He thought not. Pain of loss. Losing someone. That was more than just a feeling. That was more than just trauma. It was an absence in your life. It was like a permanent bit of sadness inside of you. Sadness didn't break people. Sadness just changed them. And it was a change Shiv never wanted to experience. But as he promised himself that he would never let anyone he cared about fall, that he would always support them, a cold feeling began to well on the bottom of his gut. A cold feeling he couldn't ignore. 

Outside Context Problem almost triggered then, but it went quiet.

And Rose let out a sigh instead. I think, she began, hesitant. But then she gathered her resolve. I think we need to talk about many things. My mind is still a swirl of chaos. I remember fragments from my life. But we must talk. We must. You've ignored me long enough.

"I haven't ignored you," Shiv said, a surge of heat entering his voice. Then he tempered it. "I haven't. I just don't know how to deal with you. Alright? Now, if you didn't notice, there's a lot of other terrible shit happening every second, every moment. The system's probably going to throw another group of dragons at me now that I survived this. Or maybe New Albion is coming in this direction with a second and third army that I'll need to fight off. I've got a lot to deal with. And frankly, I'd rather keep fighting than deal with you." He realized how it sounded at the end. And so, he kept talking. "It's… I don't have a problem with you. I don't even know you. But I don't know how you ended up inside me, alright?"

"Who are you talking to?" Angelo said, staring at Shiv.

"No one," Shiv said. "Ghosts. Ghosts, maybe like you are now, muttering to the dead.”

The rogue vampire eyed him. His gaze was filled with withheld tears that he refused to let fall. But as he drew in a breath, he asked Shiv another question. "Does your ghost speak to you?"

Shiv hesitated. He didn't know how to respond to that. But as he did, eventually the truth came out. "Yeah," Shiv said, "and I don't know what to say to them."

"I envy you," Angelo replied softly. "I would give anything to hear from some of my ghosts. Anything."

For a while, they just watched the bodies burn. The smell was foul, but better the taste of flame and cooking flesh than whatever vile stench the First Blood left behind. As Angelo stared on, Shiv moved on to the rest of the town. Many of the houses were made from wood. He thought they would burn, too. But as he considered calling out to Angelo, he found the vampire walking toward him and walking past him.

"Hey, Angelo," Shiv cried out. "Where are you going?"

Angelo froze. He looked at Shiv. "Back."

"Back?" Shiv said. 

"Back to the First Blood?" Angelo's expression hardened. "I have fled from them long enough. They want my head. They want my life. They want my core. I'll show it to them. I'll…"

"No," Shiv interrupted him, following after him.

"I'm not. I'm not. This is not a moment. This is… This is… I thought… I thought…" Angelo was on the verge of unraveling again. 

Shiv reached over and gripped him gently by the shoulder. "Look, if you want to go get yourself killed, I will let you," Shiv said carefully. "However, maybe consider coming with me, going to get some help first. And then, if you still want to die in, I don't know, a week…" Shiv considered that statement. "Well, you know, in a week you might be dead. Hell, in a week we all might be dead. As you said, I'm system favored, and I'm really, really favored. So, those are your options from my perspective. I'd frankly want you to pick the one where you live a little while longer."

The rogue vampire's expression turned into something Shiv couldn't read. And then Shiv couldn't read them all together because he looked away.

"I really hate how effective your Charm Skill is," Shiv muttered.

"I'm sorry," Angelo said. "But… I don’t matter… I shouldn’t live. I can’t… why do you care what happens to something like me? I see the relish in your eyes. It pleased you to kill my kind.”

Shiv considered that. Why did he care about Angelo? He was just a vampire he came across. Just some screaming victim he decided to save. And that was just it. He felt bad for the poor bastard. And ultimately, he never met a non-terrible vampire before. Angelo was novel, and Angelo was tragic. Together, that was enough.

"Well, it seemed like you need help," Shiv said. "After everything I did recently, I think I should help more people. I tried, but…" He thought about the people who died when he fought at Weave. He thought about the slaves that died when the Jealousy came crashing down. He thought about the mass death experienced across Gate Theborn during his battle against the Recollector. "Everyone… people…" Shiv gathered his words. "People seem to die around me, and I don't want that. I want to be better, so I'm going to help you if you let me. I'm going to do the right thing. I'm going to kill the bastards, but I’m also going to be careful. I’m going to help more people. More helpless people. Because the system might want strife, but I want to see a better world.”

Angelo continued gawking at him. The vampire's expression turned from offended to incredulous to tearful to a point of neutrality. "How? How are you real? Favored… they are not like you…”

"What do you mean, they're not like me?" Shiv said.

"Favored are creatures of power and brutality. They don't care about others. It's all for their skills. It's all to use other people. Pathbearers," Angelo shook his head.

Every single word the vampire spoke came from a point of trauma. Shiv didn't know Angelo's experience. But even in his short time with the vampire, he could tell just how deeply scarred the poor bastard was. Every time he spoke, he sounded like he was on the verge of collapsing again. Every single time. It wasn't just with his village, though that might have been the tipping point. He was broken long before. Long, long before.

And this time, Shiv's Outside-Context Problem did trigger. 

Outside Context Problem: A woman smiled down at Angelo. She is not the first to see him that night, but she will not be the last. She found use in him with her daggers, with her ink. His flesh is perfect, and that offends her. So she rent him and tore him at his flesh. 

His siress allowed it, desired it even. 

Angelo had proven to be most unruly in recent days, sparing someone he shouldn't have. It is this, it is such behavior that makes her so enchanted by him, but also so offended. Why wasn't he like the rest of them? Did he think he was so good, so perfect, simply because he seemed pristine, simply because he took to the blood better than most of his generation? No, no, he would learn, and she would make sure he learned.

"Please, please stop, I'll do, I'll do anything, please don't cut me again." Angelo whimpered, and his voice was beautiful too. The way he cried was beautiful. Everything about him was too beautiful. She started with his eyes this time, and his screams, they were a thing of elegance.

"Stop it, stop!" Shiv turned away. The verification screen played several scenes from Angelo's past, and all of it, all of it, was beyond horrible.

I can't help it, Rose said. The apparitions, they come to me, they slam into me. Foreshadowing, foreshadowing is tying me to the world. It's not your skill anymore, but I am your skill. I am bound to you by a skill and soul. I don't want to do this, it just happens. It's not up to me.

"Well, it's not up to me either." Then he noticed Angelo staring at him, his jaw wide. "I’m not insane," Shiv said. "When I say I have a ghost, I literally mean I have a ghost inside me."

The vampire slowly closed his mouth. "It is well. I do not judge."

"It's fine if you do. It's just, I'm not insane." Angelo seemed like he didn't believe Shiv. "I'm not insane," Shiv said for a third time, slightly annoyed. "Thanks a lot, Rose."

It's not my fault, she snarled inside of him. I didn't ask to be trapped inside of you. Child of my murderers…

"Yeah, and I didn't ask for you to be stuck in me either, so thank my parents."

I don't think I will ever do such a thing, Rose growled.

"Me neither," Shiv replied. With a sigh, Shiv looked up at the twirling ash that once belonged to many mangled bodies. The townsfolk of Hawthark. "Townsfolk?" He looked at Angelo. "Wait, were you like a mayor of this place or something?"

"I was the leader. I showed people how to put things together, how to live off the land. How to adapt new ways of thinking and adjust themselves to a life of subsistence. A life of agriculture and peace. It was going to be… peace. We weren’t going to do anything to anyone.”

"Huh. Alright, so here's what's going to happen. You and I are going to get on board that thing." He pointed up. The Court Leviathan had not departed. Hadn't done anything other than wave its limbs slightly. Angelo looked up at the beast and Shiv saw the reluctance in his expression. "All the vampires and Blood Horrors aboard are dead."

"Do you know that a Court Leviathan usually carries at least ten thousand high vampires?"

"Yeah, I don't think I killed ten thousand. Maybe, I don't know, two, three hundred? Probably most of them got deployed off to the gate or something. I don't really know. They were probably here for the gate. And they just stopped by, as you said earlier. But I definitely didn't kill ten thousand. I definitely killed everyone inside, though."

Angelo stared on, and then with a slow nod of acceptance and a trembling heart that teased Shiv's Dread Aura, he gave a whispered, "I trust you. But, a Court Leviathan, it usually takes hundreds of vampires to compel. Thousands, in most cases, if the kindred are not strong enough of Biomancy and Psychomancy.”

Shiv hummed. "I mean, I'm a Master Biomancer, so…"

"That is not enough. Hundreds of master tiers, hundreds."

"Are you master tier?" Shiv said. He didn't think so. Angelo's Bomancy was… well, it was there, but that was all he could say about it. It was probably Adept.

"No," Angelo shook his head. "I have no mastery in the high gift."

"The high gift?"

"The shaping of life," Angelo breathed. "The weaving of blood."

"Yeah, sure, fancy way of saying Biomancy. Alright, so we're not moving it that way. I guess we're gonna do the other thing."

"The other thing?"

"Yeah. You get inside or on top, and I pull."

"You what?"

Shiv stared at him. "I'm pretty sure I was very, very clear about what I'm gonna do."

"But how are you going to pull? It's four kilometers long! It’s the size of a mountain.”

“Yeah,” Shiv grinned. “Just a mountain. Should be a breeze.”

***

Gravitic Wrestler 141 > 142

"Slow down!" Angelo screamed, crying out the shattered windows of the bridge just atop the leviathan’s head.

"No," Shiv grunted. His Inertial Overdrive was building. The Court Leviathan let out loud cries as its body jerked behind him, flopping up and down. A cone of air friction folded over him and the massive leviathan. They were going faster than sound right now, and with his Creeping Void active, it just looked like a large black mass was cleaving across the sky.

The leviathan was heavy. It might have been one of the heaviest things he ever lifted and pulled, but between Inertial Overdrive and Gravity Wrestler, he managed. It just took a lot of thinking to do. He thought back to his torture at the hand of the Recollector. He thought back to Uva being dismembered. And then he thought back to Adam getting his head torn off again.

As it turned out, you can only think about the same horrible instances in your life so many times before you kind of got used to them. It still filled him with an ill feeling, but he wasn't so mad anymore. 

He was running out of anger, and as he was running out of anger, his arms were straining. His back was searing with pain and exhaustion. "Alright, come on, Shiv," he said. "Just another level for Gravity Wrestler, and we're gonna get it through the gate. Just imagine the stupid look on Adam's face." And then he began to chuckle, as he actually did imagine Adam's face. And Uva's face.

Shit, this is going to be weird to explain to Uva, he thought. She probably knows what a Court Leviathan is, better than I do anyway. I better stay ahead of this thing and make it really obvious. Or maybe not, maybe I should just pour a creeping void over it. Actually, maybe I should park it outside a distance away, it's got a bunch of viruses around it, doesn't it? Better get that figured first. Then, I’ll figure out how to use its meat—or go off and hunt something else.

As he flew closer and closer to Gate Theborn, he saw that the fires consuming its nearby woods had gone dormant. Massive fields of ash and ruin extended everywhere. Toppled watchtowers and broken spikes of bone lay in the dirt. Blood soaked the soil, dried blood and bits of bodies. A massive crater lined the outside from where Shiv's Inertial Overdrive detonation kissed the earth deep.

Just outside the gate, Shiv saw a small army of Weaveresses and Umbrals making for the gateway. A smile crawled over his face. Weave was moving in. Support had arrived just in time. And there, on the ground, he thought he recognized someone. “Ikki!” he called out aloud.

The young Umbral turned and blinked, squinting at the darkness approaching. Some of the sisters and spiderfolk prepared for battle, but Shiv ceased his Creeping Void and emerged from the darkness with a huge tentacle slung over his shoulder.

“Shiv!” Ikki squeaked. Her joy at seeing him made him grin harder. “What are you doing out here? I thought you were in the gate?”

“I went out hunting.”

“Oh?” She stared at the darkness behind him. “Well, what did you get? Show us! Show us! Is a cave biter? I bet it’s a cave biter—you totally hate cave biters so much.”

And then, behind him, his miasma broke, unveiling his glorious prize. A series of terrified cries sounded from the Sisters, weavers, Weaveresses. Ikki’s jaw dropped, her heart tensed for a moment, and then she stared at him as Shiv’s Dread Aura shuddered inside his chest. "Shiv, do you—do you know what you’re pulling there?”

"Yeah," Shiv said with a massive smirk. "Meat. I got us a renewable source of ethically obtained meat."