III-7 Hunt (II)

I'm starting to think that you need to be a pretty good Biomancer to achieve the best kind of cooking possible. I can't believe how effective Biomancy is at making my cooking better. I can tell the quality of meat without even really getting into the nitty-gritty shit, uh… 

 I don't need to cut it open, I don't need to prod it in parts, I don't need to look at it. I can just feel it. That, and I can start manipulating organic tissue. I can tell just exactly how something's burned, how badly it's burned, for how long it's been burned. All this stuff, it's beyond useful. Super useful.

(Note: I should outline more. My thoughts jump too much. Adam says that I probably have some kind of hyperactive attention profile. He says it's very common in vanguards because how many stimuli they’re exposed to.)

But more than that, you can tell certain things about how they might taste, or how they might go together. If you sit and observe a creature, you observe how it interacts with the world, or kind of how it interacts with itself to some level. It's a bit like watching an egg simmer or laying on a pan. But if you have Biomancy, you can feel it all. You can tell what's happening at a delicate structure level. At a delicate structure level, is it that? Can I say that? Okay, I'm going to use it anyway.

But yeah, you can tell, and it's really, really helpful. But more than that, you can adjust your own tastes. Now, this is not entirely useful for a mass-market situation in which you're making food for a lot of different people, but you can probably shape your tongue to know what they like—which is pretty cool but complicated. I tried. I tried it on myself first and got cancer a few times, but I've got to figure out how to do it. I gotta figure out how to do a lot of things.

I can't be putting off any more Practical Metabiology. I'm going to start learning that even if I'm in the middle of combat, if I have to. It's getting in the way of me becoming a better chef. I need to be a better chef. The system might want me to kill. But that’s not all I am going to be. I’m more than just a killer. The Path is more than just violence.

Besides, if I don’t figure this shit out, Adam will keep calling me an orc. And I’m nothing like 811. I’m not.

Skill Gained: Writing 1 (Common)

Oh, finally. That took a while. I’ll probably need more lessons from both Adam and Uva… Maybe more Adam. I have a hard time focusing when she glares at me.

-Draft Excerpt of Deep Delicacies and Exotic Delights, Written by Shiv

III-7

Hunt (II)

There were thirty-six of the vampires at the start of the second. When that second ended, most of them simply disintegrated before a sudden blast of flame or were reduced to sprays of crimson color. A few Low Masters proved stronger. Stronger in the sense that their torsos remained intact. Said torsos were also launched kilometers into the horizon with the detonation of Shiv's inertial sheath.

In his hands were four lineage cores—hearts claimed from the strongest vampires. The blood and mana within the cores pulsed out and connected them to the weaker vampires in the group. That’s how Shiv remembered how the vampires were a multi-level marketing scam, with the elders getting more powerful somehow as they created more spawn or something. When he killed the weaker vampires, there wasn’t that much effort to the strong ones they were connected to, but when he slew a supposed elder, the weaker vampires’ cores shriveled magically even while his temporal shell was active and time was halted.

Time resumed. And Shiv’s disappointment followed. He expected at least one of the vampires to be a High Master, but between Inertial Overdrive and his Chronomancy, he inflicted a bit too much damage. After spiking his gravitic field twenty times in a row, even the toughest vampire started coming apart as Shiv drew closer.

And that’s not just because of one skill, but several working together, Shiv thought. Another crater lined the outside of the Abyssal Gateway, and what few bits of vegetation remained were burning as well. It’s going to be hard to use Inertial Overdrive with non-martials around. I can see the system forcing me into a situation like that.

He chucked the lineage cores into his cloak and sighed. “Thanks for the speed-bump, system. Now. Give me a moment so I can find some food for the gate first. I’ll fight whatever horrible bullshit you throw my way with a smile on my face if you’ll just give me a few godsdamned minutes.”

The system mocked him in response. A flash of Biomancy mana pulsed in the corner of Shiv’s vision. A vampire emerged from a cloud of dust. Then a flood of other spells came from even deeper in the woods. 

Huh. Scouts. Or just another war party. Well. Let’s see how you guys do.

The spell curved through the air, a thing of festering flesh and howling pestilence. Shiv froze time again. His temporal armor was cracked, but he still had approximately two seconds. Two seconds was a lot of time with Inertial Overdrive. He spiked his field thirty concurrent times—felt his bones fracture. Felt his skin tear. Then, as Shiv blasted right beside the vampire, he watched as the bloodsuckers skin flayed—and he saw more hidden scouts ignite deeper in the woods from the air friction. She popped his sheath just as his temporal shell shattered.

Three kilometers of space around him dissolved as a sphere of destruction spread out from him.

Chunks of burning vampire rained down from the sky, and Shiv waited. He glared at his surroundings and pulsed his Dread Aura. Nothing. He focused his paltry Awareness, but that wasn’t that helpful, either. He kept his Creeping Void held back for a while longer as he baited out more attacks, but when none came, Shiv scoffed and let the blackness flow.

Rose began shaking. Slowly, a screen from before him and she whispered a series of words behind his ears.

Outside Context Problem: A monster. A Necrotech monster! That’s what killed the horde! That’s who butchered the force meant to take Gate Theborn. A monster sent by the Necrotechs to claim the gate first.

Yelette fled through the woods. Her flesh was seared. Her ears were burst. She was healing and weeping and fleeing at the same time. It took her some time to manage the teleportation spell while maintaining Stealth, but she did. The elders needed to know… They needed to know this gate was lost to them.

It was a Necrotech Gate now.

Shiv considered the vision for a moment and let out an amused chuckle. “Well. This should make things confusing for the First Blood. Might make them think twice about coming here again.”

He channeled a Biomancy spell and repaired the damage he inflicted on his bone armor through his inertial detonations. The system was probably going to send another problem for him soon, and maybe the next time it would be something horrific or nightmarish, something he couldn't handle so easily. Better get moving before that happens.

He shot high into the air, and as he did, he momentarily paused to look at the old ruins just a few kilometers away from the archway. He remembered looking through the inactive archway the first time he rushed up to Gate Theborn weeks ago with 811. Shiv felt a strange kinship to ruins. It was a place of history, but also a place of mystery. When he had a moment, he would go take a look there.

For now, though, he shot off across the land, blasting over the ravine he once fell from while dragging along the mind-broken Jealousy. He kept himself at a respectable speed and maintained his Creeping Void. His Master-Tier Stealth Skill was paradoxically very noticeable overall, but made pinpointing his exact position very hard. Just the way Shiv liked it.

He kept to a quick but controllable pace. Shiv discovered Inertial Overdrive still built up over time. Much slower than how fast it would when he spiked his gravitic field, but the pressure and speed still climbed at a terrifying rate. To maintain a controllable, non-destructive speed, he ended up popping his sheath every few seconds or so.

Across the Umbral Wilderness, loud booms declared Shiv’s path. Eventually, he decided against using his Inertial Overdrive altogether. He wasn’t traveling in a hurry, after all. And the noise he was making was probably alerting enemies to his presence from over a kilometer away.

I might be the most unsubtle Master-Tier Stealth-having Pathbearer in the Integrated Multiverse, Shiv thought.

Past the slaughter and destruction near the Abyssal Gateway, the bioluminescent beauty of the Umbral Wilderness revealed itself, and Shiv let out a briefly comforted sigh. It was a reminder that not all the world was consumed by this madness. There were still some places of calm, places of rest left. He didn't think he could ever regard the umbral wilderness as such a place. But after his experiences within Gate Theborn, he would take being killed by a group of feral weavers over and over again compared to the torture he suffered facing the Recollector.

From on high, he scoured the land while blanketing entire sections of the wilderness with his Creeping Void. The darkness concealed his exact position and proved to be a layer of confusion against anyone who tried to ambush him. With how the system was acting, Shiv didn’t want to take any chances.

While he flew from above, he focused on his senses and mana fields. He knew in the river below there would likely be some of those strange lobster-like creatures, and he knew also that there were rabbit-like entities elsewhere in the wilderness. 

I probably need to draw a hunting-foraging map for myself or something, Shiv thought. And he began to strain his awareness as well, trying to pick out key details on land, listening carefully, as he tried to gather more information. But the quieter sounds were drowned by the air rushing past him, and the rest of the noise seemed to bleed together and not offer him much of anything useful.

How does Adam do this? It's so silent…  Wait, not silent. Just really subtle. There were noises coming everywhere, but for a long while he disregarded it as white noise, ambience he could ignore.

After a bit of searching, he found dense patches of sprawling blue colors and shot straight down. To his delight, he was looking at a massive cluster of mendules. He swept across the ground and started gathering them en masse with a massive smile perked on his face. As he harvested his favorite abyssal mushrooms, Shiv hummed as he collected a few other varieties of micro-fungi as well. Those were hard-capped and light green, and Shiv’s Biomancy felt a few odd growths inside them. Time to try some new stuff too. Hopefully, this one doesn’t kill me. I’ll eat one first later when I find something to drain vitality from.

And thus began a period of peaceful foraging. He spent far too much time fighting these days. Far too much. Consumed by bloodshed without time to decompress and cook.

Shiv wanted to be a Pathbearer more than anything. He wanted a life of adventure, of freedom. A life that was his own. But not all of that life needed to be violence. Not all of that life would be violence if he had any say in it. He would have been more than happy being a chef, he realized. The battle-lust that took him was sometimes a thrill like no other, but cooking left him feeling satisfied and whole. It was the part of him that stood beyond the casual brutality of the world. It was him creating rather than breaking.

And there, as he hovered over a vast field of mendules, Shiv felt an overwhelming sense of peace pulse from his very core. He thought back to merely a few hours ago when he faced the Recollector. A few hours ago he was misshapen, broken, torn again and again. A few hours ago, he struggled and fought and died over and over again.

So much death had choked Gate Theborn. Too much. Shiv thought about how he interacted with people and frowned slightly. With a few hours distance from his deeds and his blood now calm, some of what he did seemed a bit too vicious. He didn’t mind killing. It didn’t bother him. He liked facing and breaking powerful enemies, but he was slightly unnerved by how many people he slaughtered over the past few days alone. And it felt normal to him. Like he had just taken a brisk jog.

Is this what happens to all Pathbearers? Shiv thought. He considered how terrified the mercenaries were—how disconnected he felt from their needs and the needs of the other survivors. The slaves, the weak, the non-martials… I didn’t really think about them much, either. I was one of them about a month ago. And already I can feel myself forgetting what it was like. I got used to this too easy. Too fast… is this the ritual’s doing too? Godsdammit. What the hells were you doing? Huh? Mom? Dad? How am I like this?

An impossible fight was thrust upon him, and somehow he and the others came out alive. They were rewarded for their struggle with power, with advancements, but with that reward came a certain fate. A fate that locked them into more conflict.

Even now Shiv could feel that. He could feel the system's oppressive desires swell around him. To feel it pulling him from place to place, pulling things towards him, meant to inspire new struggles, new strife. And he knew Valor’s words were right. Most people would have broken under the strain, the trauma, the suffering. By this point, Shiv barely cared how badly the Recollector tortured him. Thinking back just pissed him off, and getting mad made him more powerful.

And that made Shiv think of some of his skills as well. Several of his strongest skills were commonly found in dragons and other colossal monsters. His Chronomancy was a dragon’s Master-Tier Chronomancy Evolution. His Adamantine Adaption too. Comparing his skills with other individual Pathbearers, his skills were more brutal and destructive by far. And he was inclined toward instinct and violence—was impossibly resistant.

Maybe… Maybe the ritual was supposed to make me a monster? But it was only part successful? Maybe I got part of a monster’s mind? Fuck. Were my parents trying to make me some kind of perfect Pathbearer? Someone that isn’t afraid of conflict or violence? Is that what this is?

Shiv considered Adam. Adam was brave. Shiv could feel how badly broken the Young Lord’s courage was when facing the Recollector. Death shook Adam—left him traumatized. Even now, Adam’s mind was in turmoil—and Shiv didn’t know what that was like at all. It was like trauma and misery glided over him. It was oil to his water—it touched but didn’t linger. He was pent-up. Frustrated. He wanted to cook. But he could fight. He could do this forever. But Adam couldn’t. Uva could modify her own mind, but even she had her limits.

Meanwhile, all it took for Shiv to enter a state of relative bliss were a few blue mendules in his hands and a moment of peace. Slowly, he was beginning to understand why how he acted bothered people.

I should pay more attention to what I do sometimes. Watch myself. I… I like being this strong. I like just shrugging this trauma off, but I don’t want my mind to do something… Shit, I don’t trust my mind anymore. Godsdammit, system, is this something you intended too? To make me paranoid about myself?

No response came. Shiv glared out at his surroundings. At shadowy mountains in the distance, at massive mushrooms drifting through the air, at the forests nearby filled with strange serpent-ape things who crawled up the trees and shrieked fearfully at his Creeping Void.

He let out a sigh, and let it go. The hells with it. I figure it out. I’ll do the right thing. Try to, anyway.

As he finished with his mushroom gathering, he followed a nearby river and picked some lobsterlike creatures out from its bottom as well. With the crustaceans, he also discovered a strange series of thick, glistening weeds. He wanted to see how that tasted later. Perhaps he would have a bite first himself to make sure it wasn't threatening to anyone else along with a few of the mushrooms.

Awareness 11 > 12

On a whim, he dove into the coursing waters, splashing and immersing himself in the refreshing flow. All the blood and viscera clinging to his body peeled off in an instant, and Shiv's Biomancy was powerful enough that he could feel the organic particles in the water. The particles massaged his flesh, seeping into his body. This water was mana-affected in some way. He could feel it; he just couldn't exactly determine how. As he soaked for a while, he rose into the air, his mind refreshed, his body feeling electric with motion.

Shiv let out a laugh, and he splashed back down. He held his breath for a while, but after a few minutes, he decided that he wanted to resurface again. Having Master-Tier Physicality changed things. It changed things a lot. It made every one of your biological processes more robust by a magnitude. And pairing that with his Toughness, Shiv wasn't sure how long he could hold his breath—go without food, drink or sleep. But aside from exhaustion, injury, or desire, he thought he could last as he was for months or even years. 

But he didn't want to restrain himself right now. He wanted to live. He wanted to sink into the moment, into this moment of true and absolute freedom. A flow state took him. He indulged and acted as he wanted for the first time in a long while. Blackedge had been a cage, and when he first fell from the surface, the Umbral Wilderness was far too deadly for him to just adventure around.

Now? He tempered and hardened. Far stronger than ever before. And that meant the world was truly open to him. Open on a level few other Pathbearers could enjoy.

He held on to every passing instant. He took in the world around him, listening, hearing the insects chirp, watching how the river flowed, studying it with his Biomancy, reaching out, using his magic and feeling all the bio-matter around him. Shiv halted time at several points as inspiration struck him, as he tried to hold onto an instant or a scene. And during those moments, as his temporal shell slowly cracked, he wished that he was an artist or a writer so that he could keep those moments with him.

It was then that a thought struck him. I should write a book of recipes or at least document my experiences down in the Abyss. Yeah, there's all kinds of stuff here that people can eat, or dishes people can make, the surface doesn't know about. Might be useful for the future, and I think I'll enjoy it. Wonder what I'll call it, though.

He continued along, following a river, but he made sure to keep track of Gate Theborn. It wasn't hard to spot exactly, and he always had the ruins to follow if he got too lost. But he kept his awareness open, and he let his spirit loosen. Adam needed deep rest, Uva needed her quiet, and this, this was part of what Shiv needed: To feast on the world before cooking.

Being in the moment felt right.

Skill Gained: Philosophy 1 (Common)

“Huh?” Shiv blinked. “Philosophy?” The skill notification caught him off guard, but then he smiled and accepted it. “Donno what you’ll bring, but I look forward to seeing what you get me at Adept.”

As the river he followed ended at a deep pond, he found strange plants extending out from the base of the body of water. Plants that lined the ground in neat parallel grids, and along those grids were jagged, gleaming blue petals. Some had blossomed, and at their core were these ripe nodules that smelled almost heavenly. It wasn't exactly a sweet flavor they gave off, but rather an earthy, fragrant taste that was hard for Shiv to describe. He'd never encountered such a thing before. The best thing he could compare it to was a little of rainwater mingled with the taste of watermelon.

He began to harvest those as well, but soon he found that things were piling within his cloak, that he was running out of room. He stared at his Cloak of Midnight's Kindred and gave it a nod of admiration. It, perhaps more than any of his other enchanted items, served him well. "I'm going to see if I can get you an upgrade," he said, patting his cloak. "Thanks to you, I can see in the dark, okay? Also thanks to you, I don't need to go around carrying everything in a bag."

The system forced him into conflict, but sometimes the system also provided. Maybe that was by design. Following that thought, Shiv regarded the world. He felt himself as a part of the world. He was immersed in his tasks, thinking about his past, his present, the coming future, cooking. But he just then noticed something. There was no conflict right then. He was not killing anyone, not fighting anything, not ripping anyone asunder. The system might force him into ever-escalating battles, inevitable struggles, but right now, this moment was his. More importantly, the world was larger than he. He might have been favored among favored, but even so, there were other players on the stage, other dancers, other path-bearers. A head chef ruled the kitchen, but he was just one chef, and the dishes would not be made by him alone.

Philosophy 1 > 2

Shiv laughed. “I should maybe do more deep thinking.” He paused. “I don’t think I’ve ever really done anything like this…” Most of his life was survival, toil, and battle. The streets and the ruins were his battlegrounds. They tempered him. Then the kitchen was his sanctuary—a place where he was accepted and wanted, even if Georges loved to scream. But through it all, he always lived in the moment. He didn’t cling so hard to the past or fear for the future. He always fought for the present.

And maybe that was partially why he got the Chronomancy Skill Evolution he did too.

Shiv let out a sigh, and a weight escaped him. There was a growing feeling of acceptance. He didn't rush so much anymore. He would get the food they needed—cook something that would be able to provide regeneration for all the survivor within Gate Theborn. But along the way, he would soak himself in the world, just like he soaked himself in the river earlier. And also soak himself in his thoughts.

"I wasn't lying," he said to himself as he wandered in the abyssal wilderness. "It is the Pathbearer's life for me. No other one will do." He let out a breath of wondrous awe as he looked up. Massive, trailing bioluminescent plants crept along distant mountains, and the ceiling glittered with color and clashing beauty. The world was brutal, and the world was beautiful; often both at the same time.

And along his wanderings, as he slipped past a dense section of pointed trees that seemed to have a layer of calcified stuff on their outside. He found himself staring at a colossal bulbous plant that gleamed an amber-red in the light. His Biomancy had detected the plant a few moments ago, and it pulled him toward it. It seemed so full of vitality, so full of some kind of flavor. It was pumped with energy. 

As Shiv breathed in, he started gagging. The sweetness that radiated from the plant was incredible. The entire plant was approximately 100 meters wide, and it was half again as tall. As he walked up, he sank a finger into it and he took a bite. Immediately, his Biomancy detected changes to his body. It was so sweet that even his arteries began to fill with fast-hardening plaque.

"Broken godsdamned Moon," Shiv breathed. His eyes rolled from the flavor, however. "The thing," he let out a gasping laugh, "this thing's a killer. But damn, if we could just sprinkle a little smear of this on something, that would be… that would kill a guy with a sweet tooth." And he pulled a chunk away from the plant, placing it within his skin decoy turned handbag for now. He wouldn't use that on anyone else. 

He would test the plant on himself and likely suffer a few heart attacks before he died. But Shiv was fine with that. He would simply resurrect and learn from his demise. And probably enjoy this demise, actually.

I wonder if there's some kind of heart attack resistance skill. Or maybe just, I don't know, plaque resistance? Fat resistance? Metabolic resistance? I'll need to look into the force-feeding chapter in Odes later. Man, Ekkihurst kills people in a lot of weird felling ways.

But while he indulged and admired the great plant, his peace was, unfortunately, not to last. The stay of violence Shiv had lasted approximately an hour. A scream announced its end. A pure shriek echoed from afar. The shriek of a man desperate to escape, pinned and on the verge of absolute despair. Shiv felt the hairs on his body rise, felt his senses sharpen. Someone was under attack and not that far away at all. He turned, following the sound, and he rose into the air. He made a note where the large plant was so he could return later, but for now, he had something to investigate.

"I see what you're doing," Shiv said. "Thanks for the moment of peace, though." He wasn't overly happy that the system was dragging him away, but by this point, he learned to take what he could get. 

After a lifetime of being denied, gratefulness was an easy thing for Shiv to internalize.

It took him little time to locate the source of the screams. He found himself soaring up along the flat face of a ravine. He had his Creeping Void active, and so a swelling, dark mass followed him as he went, curving along the edge of the cliff as he shot higher into the air. A second later, Shiv found himself hovering a few meters away from the edge and taking in a most peculiar scene. 

A group of ten heavily armed vampires, coated in dense scar-tissue armor, stood around a shrieking man with his silk shirt torn from his body. Three of them were holding him down, while a fourth shaped a Biomancy spell around him. Spell patterns swirled around the victim in a strange, layered circle. And then there was the vampiress with a dagger saddling him. She was carving into his bare chest using a ritual dagger. Shiv’s Biomancy told him that the dagger was hollow at the hilt, and it was rapidly filling with the victim’s blood. As the vampiress traced another stroke across the victim’s flesh, she whispered something to him about ruining his Lineage Core so he could sire no more mongrels and reducing him back to cattle.

This was when Shiv noticed the victim was a vampire as well. He, too, had a lineage core. His biology matched theirs. But, for whatever reason, they turned on him. Seemed to want to ruin his core and made him human again for whatever reason.

By then, the first of their number noticed the impenetrable darkness gushing over them. “Darkness? Why is—”

A laceration spell smashed into the vampire’s face. The upper half of his head fell off. The other vampires didn’t see Shiv’s spells coming either. The Creeping Void was a wonderful skill to have.

The Creeping Void 108 > 109

In seconds, four of the scar-armored vampires came apart in pieces. He accidentally cut a Lineage Core in half. Three of the other vampires let out ragged cries of absolute agony as their Lineage Cores began to shrivel.

Huh. Must’ve gotten an elder or something. However that works.

“Attack!” The vampiress with the ritual dagger screamed. “We are under—”

Two lacerations hit her. They detonated against her Magical Resistance. Shiv responded by beheading her the direct way—with the edge of his hand. Then, he used her rapidly regenerating body as a club to beat all the other vampires into submission. A few struck out blindly using Biomancy spells. Blindly wasn’t good enough. Glowing shapes slashed out into the darkness, and they came apart, screaming as Shiv casually walked up to each one of them and broke them using his field.

Aside from the one vampire he accidentally killed, the rest were still functionally alive. Already, they were regenerating, and Shiv used this opportunity to study how their biology worked. He still couldn’t heal anything aside a laceration very well without using a Woundeater, and so their unnatural regeneration was going to be useful for him to study. Maybe I should request that I get to study the Jealousy as well. I can regenerate too. Hydras as well. Hmm. Maybe I should keep one alive—No, that seems like torture. Agh. Getting too used to this. I don’t need another orc skill.

The Challenger is watching.

Yeah, keep watching asshole. I’m not just some psychotic murderer. I’m a deliberate killer, and I’ll probably kill these vampires when I figure out what’s happening here. Just not before.

As he let his Creeping Void die down, he turned to look upon the victimized vampire. His chest was badly cut, but quickly healing. As Shiv regarded the victimized vampire’s face, he did a double take. The vampire had the finest black mane of hair he had ever seen. It was like a curtain of midnight silk. His sharp features and the thinness of his nose also caught Shiv off-guard as well.

He shook his head and looked away. Some of the effect faded immediately. The hell was that? Some kind of social skill? It’s not Psychomancy. Was that Charisma?

A whimper came from the bare chested vampire, and he looked up at Shiv. The vampire’s courage was shaken, but there was still iron inside him yet. The wounds were beginning to fade on his body, and he swallowed.

“Having a bad day?” Shiv asked.

The vampire gasped and shivered. The trails on his cheeks showed Shiv he had been crying. “Maybe… maybe the worse of my life.” The vampire’s voice was soft and thick with sorrow.

Shiv nodded. He cast another few lacerations at the scar-armored vampires he just obliterated to keep them from recovering. “So. Why were they trying to butcher you. Don’t think I ever saw a vampire getting attacked by its own kind before.”

The sad-eyed vampire looked on at Shiv. Shiv looked away as soon as he felt himself drawn to the vampire’s features once more. Shit. What the hell is that skill. It’s like it forces me to look.

“They were… I left… I told them I left… I was done.”

“What?” Shiv asked.

“I didn’t want to be of the First Blood anymore,” the vampire breathed. “I left. I wanted another life for myself. But they wouldn’t let me go and… and…” The vampire let out a sob as his inhumanly attractive features contorted into one of pain. Just hearing the vampire weep made Shiv want to break down as well, but the Deathless resisted. “And they came to my home… my town… Oh, Hawthark. What have I done to you…”

“Hawthark?” Shiv asked.

“It is… it was the town I tried to start,” the vampire whispered. “The town I tried to start with my wife. It is…” He slumped down and started sobbing.

“Hey? Hey?” Shiv spoke twice more to the vampire, but the latter didn’t respond. He wanted to keep the dialogue going, but he realized the heartbroken vamp was in no condition to talk. So, Shiv continued his conversation with another vampire instead.

Shiv let the vampiress with the ritual dagger regrow her head. He studied the process in detail as he waited, standing over her.

Practical Metabiology 32 > 33

***

As a layer of skin finally fused over Octorie’s skull and her eyes blinked, her gaze cleared and—and terror exploded inside her.

Looming over her was a huge skeletal figure. The bones he wore gleamed with a metallic sheen, and his irises were pale—paler than white-hot flame. In his hand was something—

It splashed down beside Octorie, and she flinched. There, just a few inches from her head, was a massive lump of bone, cancer, and flesh fused into something like a whip-flail. It was connected to the skeletal brute’s left arm by a cord of tissue and spine.

“Hey, you're finally alive again,” the skeletal brute said, his voice low and guttural. Just a few meters behind him, the traitor knelt there sobbing in the dirt. “Got a few questions I want to ask you…”