31 Disciples (Also Technically chap II-1)

Among the Necrotechs, there is the tradition of the Prime Disciple. When one ascends to Master-Tier, they become a Pathbearer charged with a set of responsibilities to the very nation that allowed them to climb to such heights.

At the hands of Valor Thann, a formal tradition was born: Masters would take on students, guiding them and instructing them along their paths—correcting mistakes in their thinking and perfecting their skills. Yet, despite being the progenitor of this custom, Valor Thann’s Prime Disciples remain few and far between.

By all accounts, Valor Thann is a master who seeks only the truly worthy. He does not simply lay eyes upon a candidate and bestow favor. Instead, Valor Thann waits. Valor Thann observes. Only after a student has demonstrated true merit—in intent, integrity, and resolve—does he deign to approach.

And even then, they are not embraced immediately, for Valor Thann demands one final thing of all his students. A simple request unreasonable for most.

His Prime Disciple must descend into death… and return unchanged. For his methods of learning demands that one survive expeditions into oblivion, over and over and over…

-He Who Halts Eternity: Valor Thann

31

Disciples

Shiv drew in a breath and then peeked out from behind the giant mushroom. A lightning arrow instantly crashed into his skull-helmet, damaging his armor. Then the rest of the arrows struck his cover as well, each imbued with a different spell, detonating the base of the mushroom in a colorful sphere of destruction.

The Deathless drew whatever he could into his Momentum Core as his speed accelerated. His exoskeleton shuddered as microfractures lined its exterior, but he fused the broken parts back together with his Biomancy. He charged through the explosion, forcing his way through the shockwave with Might of Mass and crashing through spikes of jagged ice. He could endure the physical attacks. They still hurt if he let Adam bombard him enough, but Shiv didn’t consider pain to be the problem at hand.

The largest issue and most pressing was finding the Young Lord in the first place. This part of the wilderness was dense with vegetation and mega-fungi. To make matters worse, there were lifeforms everywhere, and even feral weavers that joined at random moments. Shiv’s Biomancy warned him of those lesser threats—and allowed him to dispatch with them with a quick heart-stopping spell—but its field didn’t expand far enough to detect Adam. It probably couldn't sense Adam even if Shiv was Master of Biomancy right now and Masters had fields that could span kilometers.

Not with Adam being capable of firing his new bow from leagues and leagues beyond.

The only warning Shiv got before the next wave of attacks fell was a shiver in the air and a flash of light through the foliage. Filling his core with momentum drained during his sprint, Shiv felt time slow to a near crawl just as a mind magic infused arrow halted an inch away from his skull. How the Young Lord knew exactly where he was and proved so impossibly accurate with every show was a mystery to Shiv—but it did make this entire exercise a real thrill.

Whatever issues he had with Shiv notwithstanding, Adam Arrow was a hell of a hunter. He was fast up close, inhumanly accurate from afar, and always moving—always repositioning. Adam’s Awareness proved to be a monstrous boon in the wilderness, offering him borderline foresight about what was coming and where he was going. Shiv could barely be considered near-sighted by comparison.

But despite all of Adam’s training and versatility, Shiv had a few extreme edges of his own. A big one was Momentum Core.

Shiv discharged the skill exploded upward in a devastating detonation of velocity. With enough concentrated fire, Adam could blow through some vegetation, toppling the mega-fungi in half by compromising their base. But where Adam’s efforts left pockmarks of damage across the land, Shiv painted his progress across the land in swaths. All around him, the vegetation combusted, the ground tore, sound cracked, and the world trembled.

Adam launched projectiles that struck and left marks on the land; Shiv carried with him a tide of rolling calamity as all his overflowing momentum bled off. This time, he used his core to launch himself higher, flaying the canopy above him clean of greenery and mushroom caps. His Reflexes were dropping back down to baseline, but as he sailed through the air with bone drill in hand and his skeletal armor ablaze with friction-flame, he activated his Song of the Vigilant briefly while airborne.

It was a risk exposing himself this way. He learned that earlier when he tried to sprint through a clearing. But his Resonant Perimeter was one of his few means of locating the Young Lord reliably—and even then, it couldn’t stop Adam from simply flying off somewhere else. Momentum Core allowed Shiv to cover a massive amount of distance in an instant, but Adam wasn’t an idiot and knew better than to just move in straight lines.

I might need to deforest this entire place before he runs out of elevated perches to hide. And even then, he’ll probably just move somewhere else… There you are, bastard. The perimeter coated the land, highlighting hundred of meters of crisscrossing fissures lining the land. Pulped mushrooms and collapsed trees littered the land, but there, atop a lone mushroom cap, stood was a humanoid figure outlined in vibrating webs.

He was about to run out of Momentum Core—and Adam was probably going to respond at any time. So Shiv distracted him. With the song sustaining his focus, Shiv quickly shaped a spell as he grasped his bone drill using his field and launched it as hard as he could over the distance. It sailed off with a crackle—but Shiv shattered it before it left his field, sending it out as jagged pieces of shrapnel. He didn’t have anything close to Adam’s accuracy, but quantity eventually became a sort of precision all its own.

Sparks flashed across the Young Lord's armor, and Shiv watched him get flung off his feet. Grinning in delight, Shiv opened his armor and increased his Might of Mass—plunging down. As his decoy exoskeleton sailed toward Adam, Shiv used his Biomancy to reach into his cloak and pulled out three of the many reserve corpses he accumulated over the past few days, cackling to himself. I have you now, Young Lord.

He had gotten good at shaving the flesh off his corpses and extracting the bones using Biomancy. Thanks to his reading of the Odes, he knew which ligaments and tissues to unlatch before rupturing the skin along the spine. This time, he also made sure to dump all the organs and meat back inside his cloak. From there, he had three more skin decoys he could use momentarily, an actively forming set of heavy skeletal armor that would keep him protected, and eight smaller bone drills pulled along by his field. The last thing Shiv saw of his old armor was a chain of arrows splashing against it before he fell through foliage again. 

As he descended, he locked his new armor around himself and began draining momentum again. He heard a series of new blasts sounding from above. That was good. The plan was working. Adam hadn’t moved yet—it took him time to stabilize himself before he could unleash stronger shots. Shiv wrapped the skin from his flayed corpses around himself and struggled to keep his laughter under control.

The first night at camp, after amassing around ten corpses to build up his skeletal armor stores and to serve as “experimental biomass,” Shiv decided to have some fun. He took the skin off of one of his old bodies and made a mask of it before asking Adam if there was something wrong with his face.

The Young Lord’s cry of absolute terror was hilarious. So was the whole mess when Shiv threw the face away and feigned ignorance as Valor and Uva came to investigate.

Let’s see how loud I can make him scream this time. Shiv’s smile beneath his helmet could only be described as feral. But he needed to hurry. The Song of Vigilance was already beginning to strain his soul, and soon he would lose track of where Adam was. If he let the Young Lord slip now, he wouldn’t know how to begin tracking him down next time.

Shiv smashed through plant matter, nightglass crystals, and fungi as he tore forward. Slamming into something with Might of Mass did wonders to flood his Momentum Core, so he did it to as many things as he could. By now, Shiv sensed the Young Lord moving—saw his vibrating outline call upon his fiery wings to take flight.

But now Shiv was too close. And it was too late. Tearing out from the inside of another giant mushroom, Shiv felt the world grind to a lurching halt as he triggered another discharge. His bones rattled. His tendons jerked as a colossal force crashed against him. With the aid of Biomancy, Might of Mass, Diamond Shell, and his heavy exoskeleton, Shiv endured the cost of using his first Master-Tier Skill again.

He shredded through trees and fungi at an angle, tearing through them like a blade passing through butter. The horizon zoomed toward Shiv, and along that horizon, the Deathless found himself on a path to intercept the Young Lord. He was off by a good few meters—but that’s where the skin decoys were so useful. Shiv could wrap them around objects and use them as distractions—but with his skin also infused with Diamond Shell and wieldable via Biomancy, they served as a pretty good lasso too.

Adam might be versatile. Adam might be well-trained. Adam might be tactically minded. But Shiv learned his own way in the ruins of Lost Angeles.

He learned to be resourceful with what little he had, and he learned how to prepare.

Adam barely managed to turn when a skin noose hooked around his waist. Shiv felt Adam’s bladder quiver as the Young Lord discovered three of Shiv’s “faces” flapping against his armor. Adam barely had a chance to scream before he was pulled along by Shiv, the Deathless’s Momentum Core still discharging.

Intimidation > 10

To Adam’s extreme credit, he adapted quickly. He tried getting a shot off with Spellstring—what he named his new bow. That failed as one of Shiv’s trailing bone drills smashed into his shoulder and sent a shot off course. But Adam never limited himself to just one bow up close. He sported more arms and shaped bows from water. He fired two streams of arrows. The first clashed against Shiv’s back, the other began to chip at the skin decoys.

Shiv smashed his remaining bone drills against Adam, breaking the Young Lord’s focus just as he started shaping a teleportation arrow spell—Shiv learned how annoying those were the first time he almost got close. Without an anchor, even a novice Jump Mage was a nightmare.

Then they were in the trees again. Shiv blasted through bark and plantmatter as he yanked on his skin rope and pulled Adam closer. The Young Lord slashed at him using blades made from surging water. They flowed so fast that they took entire chunks out from Shiv’s exoskeleton. 

They probably would have cut through the Deathless’s initial armor, but Shiv learned to make his current sets much denser and thicker, exploiting his Diamond Shell to maximum effect.

With a final flex of focus before the Song of Vigilance became too painful to bear, Shiv wrapped his skin decoys around Adam’s helmet—fusing his flayed faces around the opening of Adam’s helmet. The Young Lord’s snarled with more outrage than terror this time—the startlement wearing off.

Then, Adam surprised Shiv for a turn: He managed a Portomancy spell mid-fall just as Shiv seized him by the neck. Suddenly, the Deathless felt a pocket of pressure expand around his fingers as a spatial bubble collapsed around Adam. For a beat, Shiv lost track of his adversary, but Adam cast the spell while blind and desperate, so he ended up appearing just and smashing head-first into a large, glowing plant of some kind. The Young Lord’s body spasmed as he bounced off the plant. Shiv plunged halfway through the same plant, ripping through its inners and covered in glowy, foul-smelling, glowing nectar of before he rushed back out.

And almost caught a teleportation arrow to the jaw. Shiv’s empty Momentum Core flared. He shifted—and drained just enough of the arrow's speed that he managed to duck out of the way of the teleportation arrows. But not all the others that followed. A flood of bright, blue arrows exploded against him, cracking the outer layer of his armor—fracturing even deeper as Adam started launching heavy shots from his Spellstring as well.

Shiv crashed against the wave of attacks. Mass of Might helped him push forward. Momentum Core siphoned away the energy from the oncoming arrows. Biomancy boosted Shiv strength while also allowing him to yank at the dense bundle of skin clutching Adam’s face.

The Young Lord was ripped off his feet with a cry of dismay. Shiv laughed—then crashed face-first into the ground as he slipped on a patch of ice. Godsdamnit Adam, why do you have so many different skills.

As Shiv launched himself over the frozen ground, he reached into his cloak again and projected a jetstream of blood and temporarily stored tissue at Adam. The Young Lord—with the aid of a dozen Hydromancy-forged hands—managed to peel off the skin noose, only for stream of crimson to crash into his face. Adam coughed, gagged, and then manifested his wings—only to crash into a nearby tree, cursing violently as he tumbled off. Despite this, he still managed to teleport. Right into another tree.

The sequence of events made Shiv almost double over laughing. Adam, meanwhile wiped away all the blood and viscera covering his face and armor, his eyes wide with rage. “Enough! Stop! Stop!” Shiv came to a halt before the Young Lord practically choking, pointing at the other man’s expression. Disgust, horror, misery, and violent anger simmered on Adam’s face. “You think this is funny? You—you cover another man in your… your gore and blood, and you use your own flayed skin to bind him, and you think it’s funny?”

“Your screams are,” Shiv said, gasping for breath.

“You are a sick man, Shiv. Sick! Broken Moon! I thought—I thought we were supposed to be training? That—that I was—”

“That you were going to put me in my place?” Shiv finished, staring at Adam.

“I did put you in your place. Several times.”

“When? Tell me when? Because it seems like I have you at my mercy.”

“Yes. Finally. After four bloody hours of wandering blind through the wilderness, getting hit by my arrows over and over, getting hit time and time again.”

Shiv waved him off. “Yeah. And I get hit by raindrops a lot too. Which was what your arrows were to me: raindrops.”

“Did you notice me not using the truly heavy spells I have? Did you not notice how I avoided striking you with massive bolts of lightning? Or—or mind-piercer arrows?”

“Oh, so you were just shooting at me for fun, then? Is having soft-hands and no muscle a class at the academy?”

“No, but usually, we don’t deal with a demented maniac who wears his own blood and flesh and whose highest level skill is Toughness of all things. Hunting you is like trying to kill a Titan Boar. Except you're much smaller, are capable of some crippled, non-healing variant of Biomancy, and you’re capable of competent planning. Damn you!”

Shiv wanted to continue the banter, but he paused. “Wait, did you just compliment me?”

“No! It’s an obvious observation. I loathe-loathe-loathe you, but the fact of the matter is that you’re not an idiot. And pretending you are isn’t going to help me.” Adam used his Hydromancy to blast all the blood and biomass of his armor as he scowled. Shiv felt him, pulling away the bits of mass stuck in crevices and gaps. “I hate the fact that you can plan! I hate your plans! I hate the very way you plan! And I hate your damned cape!”

“You could have asked me for the rapier,” Shiv said.

“Yes! I should have! Damn your smug, goading nature and damn my pride too!” As the last of Adam’s frustration left him, he folded his arms and sulked. But it was halfhearted. “Launching a set of armor at me. The thing you did back there. It was a good idea. I have a hard time telling if you’re inside the armor or not when you’re airborne.”

“Because my footsteps?”

“Yes. That, and I need to react. React before you can close enough to use your Biomancy. Frankly, I shamed myself by letting you get close. If this wasn’t practice…” Adam shook his head. “It won’t happen again. Mainly because I would rather die than let you wrap this! This!” He pointed at Shiv’s discarded skin decoys. Decoys shiv untied and moved back into his cloak, drawing a disgusted sound from Adam “That is disgusting.”

“It’s funny,” Shiv said. “I got you to waste some shots on them earlier. And they make good ropes, actually.”

“Only someone truly sick of the heart would enjoy using something like that.”

“I don’t really enjoy using it, but it does make my Intimidation go up. You just scream and I thought that was—”

“Yes! Fine! It scares me! I don’t like dealing with your flayed bodies! I don’t like all the blood and gore! Are you happy!”

“I… I guess?” Shiv grunted. He stared at the fuming Adam and shrugged. “I had to come up with something. I couldn’t get close to you at all—could barely guess where you were at first. I tried using Stealth but…”

Adam shook his head. “If it was a skill you used before, it has not kept pace with your others.”

“No,” Shiv said. “All I could do was avoid the worst of your hits while taking and drinking momentum from the rest. You’re Awareness is too high, so I can’t really ambush you. You can fly pretty, so I can’t chase you in the air for long, even if I fling myself around using Biomancy. And that’s not getting your Portomancy and all the other magical skills you have at the same time. Why the hells do you have so many skills?”

“Because every situation calls for a different solution,” Adam said. “That, and I started my training early. Earlier than most.”

“Yeah. It shows. Momentum Core was the only way I could close with you. Everything else wasn’t working.”

“Every time you used that damned, monstrous skill, I fight the urge to soil my armor,” Adam muttered, his expression distant. “I curse the owl for letting you achieve such an evolution. Every time you discharge, it's like a small Dynamancy Bomb going off. I can’t even fly against the shockwaves. You flung me off my vantage point more than once.”

“I was just trying to cut down enough of the trees to find you. But you just kept moving.”

“I had to. It doesn’t matter that your weapon skills are lacking to nonexistent or that you make questionable tactical choices all the time. I said before, you’re built like a Titan Boar. More enduring, in fact, since you keep repairing your armor with those corpses you have stored.” Adam shivered with disgust. “All your deaths have shaped you into a nigh-unstoppable juggernaut for your Skill Threshold. At least physically. System, it sickens me more to imagine what might happen to your Toughness soon…”

“Oh, so I’ve graduated from being a meat-shield?” Shiv asked wiht a laugh.

“Yes,” Adam said through clenched teeth. “Do you want more praise?”

“Do you have more?”

The Young Lord let out a disgusted noise and walked away.

“Where are you going?” Shiv called.

“To clear my mind of you! And of the sensations of your skin latching around my face!”

“You can clear it back at camp,” Valor said, descending from some place above. “I have seen enough today. Enough to know how to further your developments.”

“Ah, there you are,” Adam said, scowling at the floating skull. “You have us trek through the wilderness for days, do nothing to train us, and just watch us. And then when I ask if we’re any closer to the gate? What do we get? Not a clear reply from you. How are you going to teach us? No answer.” The Young Lord huffed as the skull just stared at him. Adam’s scowl collapsed as he bit his lip. “I… I apologize. I am just… my blood is high. I need a moment to… to reorient myself.”

Valor continued to say nothing. The silence dragged long enough for Shiv to be uncomfortable. Only then, did Valor speak again. 

“Do you know what am I doing right now?” Valor asked.

Adam looked to Shiv, but the Deathless didn’t have an answer either. “I… being silent? Judging me?”

“No. I am observing you. And I am being patient. This not doing nothing. This is the most essential thing any warrior—assassin or otherwise—must learn how to do. The environmental conditions were favorable to you. Your skills were many. Your experience far greater. And you did proceed with some caution and seriousness. You did watch him. But you were undone by something.”

“His tactics?” Adam sighed.

“Your own pride. I told you two to spar with each other. Shiv was not to hurt you. You could kill him. But I said nothing about retreat. Or ambushes. Or anything else.”

“So… I could have just left?” Adam said.

“You could have done many things. You could have teleported the moment his decoy armor closed in and avoided any chance of a confrontation. But you stayed to unleash your arrows because you felt challenged and slighted. Especially by him. And now you are conflicted about him.”

Adam scoffed. “Oh, yes. Please, tell me more things I know.”

“Certainly. Here is an uglier lesson: You understand better than I do your flaws, but you are not yet strong enough to decide against them. You do not have a technical problem, you have an emotional one. But that is just as well. I was far worse than you at your age. I did far worse than you. This is the consequence of life. But it is curable. You can be made stronger. But you must lose against your heart over and over and over. Until it makes you disgusted. And then finally you win. And the thing you couldn’t do before because just another decision.”

The Young Lord stared at Valor and grimaced. “And… you can tell all this just be watching me?”

“You can tell a lot about someone by what they decide to do. Yes. This will be the first thing I teach you. You are right. Your academy has trained you. But your training is mostly incomplete. So. To start. You train him.”

“What?” Adam said, blinking. He looked at Shiv? “Are you—are you serious? My training is to train him?”

“Yes. Show him what you learned at the academy. Make a competent soldier of him. A leader. He is a warrior now. But too much a brute. Too raw. There is power. But someone else always has much more. There is cunning. But it is the cunning of a scavenger and a stalker—of a spurned boy fortifying himself using scraps. Now, a fearless brawler remains instead of the boy, but his habits must be honed.”

“And why must I do this?” Adam asked

“Because you cannot decide if want to like him for who he is and the times he’s saved your life, or hate him because what he is and the things his parents did to yours.”

Adam just looked at Valor, his ways only managing a weak glare.

Valor continued. “The moment you decide how you wish to treat him for good is when you start mastering yourself. I cannot blame you for your feelings. But you must be responsible for yourself. The world cares not for our wounds. And there is no one else but us who can reach deep enough to clean out the deep pain in our wounds.”

The Young Lord took on a contemplative and absent look, but ultimately said nothing in response.

“Shiv. Your challenges are just so inverted. I fear you may be the most resilient disciples I will take in mind and flesh.”

“You fear?” Shiv said, unsure what Valor meant.

“Yes. Because it is hard to change someone who is unshakable. I will make my worries about you plain: you are not hardened by your life, you are almost unscratched by it. It took me years to process the bitterness and loathing I felt even after murdering my own mother. It took me longer to become a proper person. For whatever reason, you are not this way. There is too little bitter. So little it bothers me. It does not fit.”

Shiv shrugged. “I just deal with things, Valor. I don’t let them linger or dwell on them.”

“Yes. And that is part of the reason why you are blunt and raw. Life is pure arithmetic to you, isn’t it? Simple in many regards.”

The Deathless thought about that and nodded. “Yeah. I’d say so.”

Valor hummed a laugh. “For the first time, I will have a student that has completed the final part of their training before all others.”

“What part is that?”

“The descent and return from death.”

Shiv didn’t think that was exactly fair. “My Path lets me do that. It’s good for me. I don’t think it’s the same for those who have to do a ritual.”

“The technical aspects of the ritual are one thing,” Valor said, his tone hushed. “But there is a price most pay for facing that dreaded place. For entering the embrace of the great enemy and returning. Death has broken many disciples I thought promising. It scars them. If wounds their spirits and leaves them less than who they were. But the amount of times you have died… and the ways you have died… you stand unaffected. Even now.”

“I mean, I got a lot of skill levels.”

Valor laughed. “As I said: Arithmetic. But I fear the descent won’t be so easy for the Young Lord. So. When the time comes, you must aid him as well. Give him whatever peace you can.”

Adam didn’t respond to this, so deep was he in his own thoughts. Shiv was getting a grasp on how Valor intended to shape them. The ancient Pathbearer was going to build them both from different foundations. Spiritually for Adam, technically for Shiv. It made sense to some extent, but Shiv still wasn’t sure about being trained by Adam. There was still a lot of wrongness that rested between them, but maybe that was the point.

“You finished for the day. We go back. Preferably before the girl drags the rest of her scouting party to find us.” Valor paused. “I blame you for this, Shiv.”

“What? What did I do?”

“Cook.” Valor sounded practically miserable. “Cook very well, apparently. The Umbrals seem addicted. The Young Lord keeps trying to steal more. Even the Weaveresses that pass through grab a bite. And I continue to lack a stomach or even a tongue. Maddening.”

“Well, then I guess we should endeavor to find the fragment of you that you had for a body next.”

The skull went still in the air. Then turned to Adam. “Adept. I want you to understand that I absolutely have favorites among my pupils. And the favorite right now by far is him.”

Adam finally emerged from his thoughts to narrow his eyes at the hovering skull. “Fine. Just so that you remember I’m the one that gets to taste his cooking right now.”

Somehow, Valor managed an expression of abject misery with a flicker in his sockets and a twisting for his jaw.

*** 

Might of Mass > 71

Diamond Shell > 80

Momentum Core > 64

Parry > 31

Biomancy > 45

Pyromancy > 6

Psychomancy > 6

Awareness > 10

Intimidation > 10

Disease Resistance > 8

Practical Metabiology > 11

Vitality Drain > 9

Revenant > 5

“I really need to find something capable of killing me brutally,” Shiv muttered. Uva lightly elbowed him in the side before chiding him with her eyes. “What? My leveling’s slowed. I’ve only gained one or two levels for my skills over the past few days and deaths.” He frowned into the fish head soup he made. It was still piping hot—a benefit that even minor Pyromancy allowed—but looking at him reminded him how slow his Cooking Skill was progressing as well. “Now I feel even worse. If there’s only a way I could get because my cooking wasn’t good enough somehow…”

A silence dragged on for a while, as Shiv continued staring at his own reflection. “I need a shave too…” It was then that the silence became unnatural. As he looked up, he realized that the entire camp was glaring at him. Including Uva.

“His leveling has slowed over the past few days, he says,” Adam grumbled, taking another bite out of his fish head. “You disgust me, Shiv. You disgust us all.”

Shiv coughed. “I’m just… I’m just used to dying and making things quicker. Running into that patch of diseased bushes did wonders for my Disease Resistance.”

“Yes,” Uva said, her voice thin with annoyance. “And then you kept running back into the same patch until it stopped killing you.”

“I managed to isolate it with my Biomancy by the end,” Shiv said. “Of course I might have… caused some kind of cell deficiency too. I think it’s because I pulled all my infected cells together or something. I’ll check the chapter again. I think Dven will like to examine my corpses too. Maybe she’ll find something interesting there.”

“And that’s a sentence I never expected to hear in my life,” Ikki said, swallowing a piece of lettuce. “You’re really not bothered by dying at all, huh?”

“It’s just efficient,” Shiv said, shifting on his seat. Adam and Uva made contact then, and both of them shook their heads. “What?”

“Shiv. You can be very dear and very sweet. And considerate. But also sometimes casually disturbing. Sometimes all the same time.”

“I’m just being efficient,” Shiv repeated, feeling a little attacked. “I think how fast I progress is based on how severe my deficiencies when I die. But dying the same way to the same threat eventually erodes the effectiveness of my Feat. I need to… to seek out new deaths too. Broaden my experiences.”

“You’re doing it again,” Uva said, her tone flat. “You’re doing it right now.”

“Ah. Sorry.”

Ikki drained her soup. “I think it’s pretty weird but also kind of cool. Did Adam manage to kill you at all?”

“No,” the Young Lord groaned loudly. “He’s practically a giant cockroach by this point. A giant cockroach that can get very fast and who uses his dimensional cloak as a morgue for all his corpses so he can keep rebuilding his armor.”

“Oh! So that’s why you’re harvesting your old bodies,” Ikki said. “Wow. That’s a lot better of a reason than I thought.”

“What did you think I was doing?” Shiv asked.

“I donno. Mad Biomancy stuff. Like trying to keep a heart beating in a dead body or fusing flesh together to create a monster.”

Shiv started at her. “I might have done a bit of the former…”

“Eww,” Ikki grimaced. “Did it work?”

“Yeah,” Shiv said. “I even got the body to breathe again, but the mind wasn’t working anymore. I think it has something to do with being without oxygen for too long.”

“Creepy. But cool.”

Uva rubbed at her temple. “Mostly creepy for me. Sorry, Shiv.”

Shiv shrugged. “Biomancy isn’t everyone’s thing.”

“Neither is dying,” Adam muttered off by the side. Shiv caught the other Umbrals nodding in agreement.

Shiv eyed Uva’s nightglass field armor and considered something. “Actually… Do you guys want some armor?”

“Your skeleton?” Uva said, raising an eyebrow. She looked at the thick plates of Diamond Shelled bones presently fused around Shiv. She opened her mouth to say something in the negative, then paused. “It does seem rather durable, actually.”

“It’s also bloody dense and heavy. Like him sometimes.” Adam breathed. “I would know because he hit me with some of his bones. And there’s also another problem: Biomancy. Shiv, do you have an easy way for a Non-Biomancer to get in and out of your bone armor?”

Shiv paused. “Not yet?”

Adam put down his bowl and twirled his fingers as if to say, “See? That’s something you need to consider.”

Uva, however, thought a bit further. “I think there might be potential here. Maybe not as a full ensemble but as additional layering for the chest and legs. Heavy armor for heavy combat.”

Shiv looked at her nightglass armor again. “Yeah. The nightglass weapons are pretty sharp, but I found them to be pretty brittle, too.”

“The armor is treated,” Uva said. “And I wear my enchanted leathers beneath, so it’s not likely to cut me even if it does break. But if we were suffering a bombardment and my outer protection got compromised… Shrapnel can prove quite deadly.”

“And some bone plates might just patch things up.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” Uva nodded.

“Oh, does someone wear their dead boyfriend?” Ikki teased.

“Ikki,” Uva said, a hint of warning in her voice. This was not the “big sister mode, I’m going to pull your ear Uva,” this was “recently promoted Cherished Sister operating in the field Uva.” The young Umbral coughed, offered a formal apology, and then started maintaining her equipment.

“So,” Adam said, staring at Valor. “We missed a few topics out there earlier. You made things clear about our training, but what about the gate?” The Young Lord looked to Uva. “Are close? Far? Where are we? Can I ask for some details and get something more than just a non-reaction.”

Shiv noticed Uva looking to Valor for permission, and the skull nodded. “We are day’s walk from reaching the Compact gate.”

“A day’s walk?” Adam said, blinking in surprise. Then, his expression hardened. “We can get there faster if we just teleported. Do we have a route scouted? Wards? I can fly there and back within a few hours. Chart a route. Secure a space for us to jump across.”

“It must be traveled on foot,” Uva said. “Heavy warding. More importantly, Compact has Rift Demons contracted to serve as their scouts. Thus far, we have not been able to get past them. Attempts to teleport in the vicinity of a Rift Demon is… A dangerous proposition.”

“So, me and Shiv will eliminate the Rift Demons, then,” Adam said, as if things would be so easy. “He’ll charge them from the front and smash them, while strike with precision from afar. And then—”

“No,” Uva said, her voice firm. “We are not risking combat. Come.” She rose from where she sat. “Ikki. Legend Valor. Shall we show them?”

“Show us what?” Adam asked.

“Something to give you some perspective on the obstacles we face ahead,” Valor said, his voice ending with a low growl of foreboding.

The Young Lord sneered as he gazed into the campfire. “I will get back home. No matter what it takes. No matter the struggle. The entire world can be against me, and it will make no difference.”

A few meters away, Ikki snorted a laugh enough for everyone to hear.

“You doubt me, Sister Ikki?” Adam asked.

Ikki paused, looked over her shoulder, and nodded without hesitation. “Yeah. I do.”

***

“This is… bullshit,” Adam breathed.

“That… is not quite the entire world, but it is a sizable mass of people,” Shiv took in the horizon and found himself startled and impressed.

“Dimensionals, mostly,” Uva said, her expression focused and intense. There was a quiet anger in her mind as well. And soon, Shiv understood why.

The scene before them was one of fire and industry. The group peered down at the distant horizon from a mountainous high point. Below, dense forests of mega-fungi and arching trees ran—until they suddenly ceased. Severed at the base by adult-sized cave biters with blades attached to their sides. True to Valor’s words, the angler fish looking creature that killed Shiv so many times when he first fell into the Abyss could get much, much bigger. Most of them were the size of small hills, and on their backs seemed to be entire lumberyards run by shrouded figures and metallic dimensionals.

Then, the cave biters broke into song, their voices slow and deep, but definitely intelligible. “WE CUT ONE FOREST, THEN WE CUT ONE MORE, AND THEN WE EAT THE LITTLE ONES TILL THERE AREN’T NO MORE…”

And aside from the logger cave biters, there were also others carrying what seemed like golden cathedrals on their back. Cathedrals stuffed full of treasure. They stomped forward on a black-paved path, and chained to the cave biters were lines and lines of slaves. Shiv could see that a great many of them were Umbral, but the bulk seemed to be automata. And poorly treated too. Many were in disrepair, leaking, their electronic voices moaning and crying out in despair.

The caravan of slave-driving, treasure-dealing cave biters passed numerous guard towers infused with glowing fire elementals—Shiv noted the burning orbs at their peak were of the same brightness and design as the skull of the elemental golem he faced back in Passage. “Those towers will fry us if we try a direct approach.”

“They aren’t the main threat,” Uva said, pointing up above. Thanks to his cloak, Shiv had a bit of Shadowsense, and he perceived what lurked in the darkness much better than he did before. What he saw were fast, moving shapes. They were like smaller dragons, but their bodies were sharp and jagged. Atop their backs were riders clad in ebony armor. And then there was an even larger shape looming in the back. Its form was colossal—even larger than the small cave biters, and its outline reminded Shiv of an octopus. There was something about it’s single glowing eye though…

“Don’t look at the eye too long,” Uva said. Shiv turned his gaze away. “It will sense you. It’s called a Jealousy, and it’s a Greater Demon—one contracted to guard the gate.”

“But where’s the gate?” Adam said. “I only see more watchtowers, dimensionals, slaves, and people surrounding that large stone archway. Hmm. Maybe that’s a small fort off by the side, but still…”

At the end of the ebony road, the merchant cave biters walked toward a looming archway framing a set of old world ruins. The glowing eye stalks of the cave biters swayed—and fired every now and again, disintegrating slaves clever enough to slip their chains, but foolish enough to flee.

“Godsdamned monsters,” Adam spat.

Shiv agreed, but he was distracted by something else. He wondering how pieces of the old world could scatter so far, but then the archway activated, and a light splashed over all of them. A fiery, disturbing light. That’s when Shiv realized what he was truly looking at: the gate. The gate leading back to the surface, supposedly. But through the gate was a visage of another world. Another dimension.

This one looked like a vision from a nightmare. He heard the slaves wail as they were marched into the gate, their shrieks echoing across the lands. Soon, the shrieks became a constant, Umbral and automata voices becoming the bulk. Ikki’s expression hardened. Uva’s eyes went flat as she deadened her heart.

Beyond the gateway were other structures. Massive brass structures with magical sigils seared onto their surfaces. Off by the side, Shiv thought he glimpsed something that almost looked like a star, but it was black as ink and seemed to have chains latched into it. Massive chains connecting it to other edifices in the distance.

As the merchant cave biters passed through one after another, Shiv clenched his jaw in disgust. “Those cave biters? They’re running slaves?”

“Most of them are slaves too,” Ikki said. “They’re contracted to a master. Compact is a land of laws and agreements. But not justice or ethics. They will deal in anything, and they seek to spread as far and take as much as they can. Including people.”

“Yeah, well, they’re going to need to change their habits real soon,” Shiv said, glaring at the scene before him. There must’ve been thousands of slaves going in there… Just how many people were being transported? A slow, boiling hate churned inside Shiv. He hated slavers on principle. He hated slavers because they offended his every desire. He hated slavers because they existed.

And soon, he would show these slavers just how much he hated them, in every way he could.

“Is this… the only way back to the surface?” Adam whispered.

“Sure. You can try navigating your way back up the Abyss,” Ikki said. “But good luck with that. You’ll be wandering for months if the Court doesn’t catch you, or Descenders don’t recruit you, or the Necrotechs don’t execute you for being a surfacer.”

“We’re not just going through that gate,” Shiv declared. “We’re taking it from the Compact.”

Uva stared at him and bit her lip. “That will be tantamount to war, Shiv. War between Weave and the Compact. We have… agreements in place. That we won’t trespass on each other’s territory or take action against each other. At least not openly.”

“That’s fine. I don’t want to implicate you. Not the Composer. Not Weave. Not the Arachnae Order. You aren’t the ones that will be doing the taking. This is my gate now.”

The Psychomancer’s mouth opened slightly. “That’s…”

“Suicide?” Shiv asked, grinning. “Madness? Maybe. But it just sounds like a good time to me. Guess the system heard my prayers earlier.”

“They’ll have mind mages. Powerful ones.”

“Then, I better get to practicing more.”

Uva eyed him, and nodded. “I suppose we should.”

“You see now why the Composer was reluctant about this place,” Valor said. The fire in his eyes burned dim as he watched the trail of atrocity. “The Compact is a stain among the Faiths. Even more than the First Court. They traded everything once decent about themselves for power, and now to fill the hollowness of their culture, they create great citadels in the Abyss and across dimensions. Citadels filled with suffering and commerce. And they call that industry. And they call that civilization. And they proclaim themselves to be the true inheritors of the old world.”

The skull turned, regarding Shiv and Adam. “Shiv. Your declaration. Do you mean it?”

“Yeah. I look forward to killing every last one of the slavers. Even if it kills me. Broken Moon, I hope they can kill me.”

“Good. Adam? Are you still driven to reach your town in time to save it.”

The Young Lord’s stare hardened. “Never doubt me. If he can do it, I can.”

Uva looked at Adam and then Shiv. “It seems like a running theme between us Pathbearers.”

“Just the ones that love the climb,” Shiv said, earning a slight smile from her.

“Still…” Adam sighed. “How the bloody hells are we going to get in? Even if we could by some miracle—”

“Hello,” Shiv said. “Did you just say my name?”

“—Shut. Up. By some miracle… defeat that small army of… giant monsters guarding the gate, how are we going to get in without them just shutting it off?”

Everyone pondered that question for a moment. Except for Valor. He just observed. Not the gate, but Shiv and Adam.

“I might have a few angles of approach,” Uva said. “Some Shadow Cells have conducted raids on the flesh caravans to liberate their victims. Furthermore, we have contacts in the Compact garrison. Defectors and spies of our own…”

“I might have an idea,” Shiv said. And from within his cloak, he pulled out his other recent quest reward. The fused bronze face born of countless aviary helmets melting together during the mana bomb felt almost like a feather in Shiv’s hands, but he regarded its enchantments once more.

Equipment: [Mask of False Paths]

Tier: Heroic

Condition: Damaged

Composition: Bronze

Enchantments > Perfect Semblance; Adept-Skill Thief (0/1); Advanced-Skill Thief (0/2); Heroic Mind-Shield

“Is that the mask you got from the quest?” Adam asked.

“Yeah,” Shiv said, eyeing the rest of the group. “We said we wanted a field test. Well. Let’s find out what Perfect Semblance lets me do.”

And thus, he placed the mask on his face, and felt a dense barrier immediately sever his Psychomancy from the outside world.