15 Rematch

No, no, no, this is not acceptable. I have delivered what you asked, what was contracted. I have fulfilled the conditions of my quest. Now, you promised! You promised that there would be a secure extraction, that I would teleport there, and you would take the Young Lord off of me and handle the rest. I would receive payment there—the other half of what was promised. Instead, I arrived there, finding everyone dead, and the rogue Necrotechs waiting in ambush.

I took grave wounds to escape with my life and preserve the Young Lord. So, I’m going to ask you again: Where… where… where is my payment? Where is my promised safe extraction point? We had an agreement. You are bound to the conditions of this quest as well.

You understand the consequences of failing the quest, of failing an agreed-upon contract. Do you want to fail? Do you want to feel your Path break and sunder inside you, irrevocably damaging some of your skills? Is that what you want?

No? Then get me out of here!

I’m moving deeper into the Abyss. I don’t want to do this, but I have to, because there is no way out. The upper levels are crawling with Vicar Sullain’s heretics. They are throwing everything they have at Blackedge, but the battle lines are stabilizing. Roland Arrow that… monster is matching the Vicar blow for blow, hour after hour. I can hear them down here. The world is shaking, and I have to continue fleeing with his son in tow. 

System help me if he defeats the Vicar like he did the last time and gets a Diviner to track me. I am not fighting Roland felling Arrow for your vanity. 

You get someone to come and find me. Get your Jump Mages and pull me out of this place. Pull me out of this place, before your precious Young Lord dies! And then… ah, if Roland Arrow finds me then, I’ll tell him everything before he finishes me. I’ll tell him who you are, and how you—

What was that? Come out. Show yourself. Show—

-Communication between “Corvus” and an unknown party as overheard by a Weaveress Shadow Cell

15

Rematch

Shiv’s knuckles hammered into the softness of the raven-helmed stranger’s throat, and they gagged from the blow. He felt the softness of their body—the parts that weren’t covered by armor, and he snarled in vicious triumph.

Looks like you should have spent some more time improving your Toughness and didn’t rely so much on that armor, Shiv sneered internally. My skin’s thicker than yours now.

But where Shiv had a minor advantage with his Adept-Tier Diamond Shell, his Reflexes were still pathetic compared to the raven. In an instant, Shiv felt deep gashes open up along his wrists, waist, thigh, and near his groin. The Deathless rasped and fought back cries of pain as he drove his thumb into the raven’s adam’s apple.

Yup. Definitely male.

The assassin gagged and stabbed at Shiv’s side. Each stab broke skin but chipped against the dense tissues below. Best thing about Diamond Shell was it made every bit of Shiv’s body uniform in terms of hardness. That meant even nightglass needed to fight through every inch of flesh it pierced. Shiv was bleeding from practically everywhere, but the wounds weren’t deep enough to be fatal.

The raven-helmed stranger realized that as well. That’s why he changed his tactic.

With a surge of terrifying strength, he palmed Shiv off his body and sent the Deathless tumbling into the air. Shiv went flying—but drove his mana field against the raven in response. The raven let out another ragged cry—and Shiv felt something wrong with their Magical Resistance.

It feels… pretty cracked already. Like it just barely healed from someone smashing it over and over…

The raven was magically hurt bad enough that they couldn’t press the attack. As Shiv slammed back down the bridge, he cracked the stones beneath. He rose to his feet and took in his enemy properly for the first time.

Across from him, the assassin was bleeding too. But not from any of the wounds Shiv gave him. The raven’s left arm dangled like a deboned limb, and a deep cut ran along his left calf. His armor was dented, burned, and deformed; each breath he took came with a deep wheeze.

Yeah, this bastard’s gone through hell. But who did this to him? And why is he here? Such were the questions on Shiv’s mind as he continued trying to break his enemy’s remaining resistance with his Biomancy while advancing on them. His mana field tensed hard like the magical muscle as Shiv focused. A crimson spell pattern formed between both his hands as he pressed them together. With every bit of effort, more of the raven’s compromised Magical Resistance cracked, and the assassin jerked and howled.

“E-enough!” Shiv didn’t even see the raven hit him. Even after all the levels his Reflexes got, he wasn’t fast enough. Shiv’s focus broke and his spell died. A heavy bruise lined his lower stomach as he found himself launched off the bridge, the raven-helmed stranger tumbling in tow.

Not even a second into the fall, the raven-helmed stranger transformed into a mess of black feathers. Shiv realized the assassin’s plan of escape. However, Shiv could still feel their biology, still feel the enemy’s presence with his mana field, and so he smashed his Biomancy into them again, striking wild and hard. The raven cried out. Even though Shiv couldn’t crack through their Magical Resistance fully, it was enough to shake their focus. 

The stranger reformed just in time for Shiv to punch them in the face twice. Shiv could feel his Diamond-Shelled fists slamming and cracking parts of his enemy’s helmet. He wasn’t strong enough to deliver true harm this way—and Shiv knew it. It was just really hard to hit someone’s throat while free-falling. Still, the impacts distracted the stranger long enough for Shiv to do something else.

Shiv twisted his body, gripping the raven by the waist, and between their two combined might they slammed into the edge bridge below and then bounced off the side again. Once more, they were in free fall, and despite feeling like someone had dropped a wall on him, Shiv was still combat-capable. The raven-helmed stranger, however, was gasping and wheezing. Every impact made their wounds worse, made them suffer more.

I can win this, Shiv thought. He’s broken and hurt. And I don’t care if I die. I can win this.

Grappling Proficiency > 26

Striking Proficiency > 15

He secured an arm around the raven-helmed stranger’s neck as they plunged further. He pressed his back hard against his foe and saw a wide-open walkway fast approaching. They crashed hard into it, and several Umbrals let out a unified cry of fear. They backed away and a Weaveress ran up behind them, pulling them behind her, shielding them from harm. 

Shiv squeezed his arms as hard as he could, trying to constrict the raven’s breathing. However, his enemy simply stood up, bearing his weight with contemptuous ease. Their Physicality was still far superior to his. So, Shiv adapted. He stomped his foot into the bleeding wound on their right calf and heard them cry out in misery. Shiv did it again, and the raven dropped. Shiv felt the blood leaking from the raven-helmed stranger seep through his own leg as he secured a rear-naked choke.

“You impossible bastard!” the raven-helmed stranger choked. “Why can’t you just… die?” And with a staggering burst of strength, the raven buried his fingers into the ground and launched themselves off the walkway. Shiv tried to hold on, but suddenly the raven-helmed stranger was a blur of motion. The stranger twisted. Two elbows cracked into Shiv’s cheek and then his nose. Shiv’s head snapped back, snarling in frustration. His nose was bleeding but not broken. However, the momentum of the fight shifted.

It was the raven’s turn to attack again.

The air around him blurred as he felt his fall suddenly accelerate. The raven-helmed stranger clapped Shiv on the side of his head, and suddenly—his balance collapsed as sirens went off in his ears. The raven was on top of him now, stolen nightglass blade raised high to stab Shiv—but they crashed into another surface, sending them bouncing across what felt like a smooth, rolling texture. Shiv let out a grunt as his back cracked and dented against what felt like metal. He looked behind and saw a group of Umbrals in what looked like carriage seating starring at him. There were even a few children. Beneath him, a beast moaned. He was on a flat-beast he saw flying through the air earlier, and it let out something that sounded like a cow’s moo.

Shiv didn’t have time to appreciate that, though. Not when the raven-helmed stranger jabbed two thumbs in his eyes. Shiv tried to stop them—caught them by the wrist, but he was still not strong enough. 

To the raven’s mutual displeasure, he wasn’t strong enough either. His fingers pressed hard against Shiv’s eyes but couldn’t get through fast enough, even if Shiv hissed in pain. “What? Why? You weren’t this tough a few days ago—” Shiv kicked them between the legs again, and this time, raven let out a loud hiss of pain. Shiv swept their leg and rolled over on them. He dropped a knee on their wounded calf and the raven howled.

Then, Shiv was on top of them, and drove his thumb into their eye socket. Something wet dotted his thumb. The raven cursed and tossed Shiv. As Shiv rolled back to a stand, he looked at the raven rubbing his left eye. The Deathless looked at his hand and frowned. No blood. Just tears. “Yeah, doesn’t feel good when it’s the other way around, does it?” Shiv snarled. He eyed the scared Umbrals before driving his Biomancy into the raven again. The enemy flinched back and Shiv wrapped his arms around their waist. Shiv eyed the Umbrals and offered a grin. “Sorry, we’re just dropping by. We’ll be going now.”

Then, he suplexed the raven off the giant creature.

Physicality > 46

Once more, they were falling, and this time Shiv clapped the raven-helmed stranger on both ears. Payback, asshole. 

This elicited a brief gasp from the raven, but he recovered faster than Shiv. He drove the back of his head into Shiv’s nose—worsening the bleeding before hooking his legs around Shiv’s waist. Somehow, he managed to turn and now Shiv was the one heading toward the ground first. He pulled at the raven’s head and they crashed atop another bridge hard.

Something inside Shiv briefly clicked as a flare of pain followed, but he had taken enough injuries over his life to know what was a sprain and what was actually a fracture. He recovered, rising up to drive one of his elbows into the raven-helmed stranger’s injured arm. Unprepared, the raven toppled back with a loud curse, and their wounded leg gave out. The raven staggered back—but jabbed Shiv before he could approach. This punch finally broke his nose, and Shiv groaned, blinking tears from his eyes and blowing blood out to clear his ruined airways.

The two stared at each other, gasping and snarling. They were like two wild dogs. Two wild dogs about to fight to the death in front of a group of spiders. Weavers watched nearby, and immediately clambered to the underside of the bridge for safety.

“What… in the Broken Moon is wrong with you?” the raven breathed. “Why won’t you just… stop?”

Shiv glared at the raven-helmed stranger and sneered. “What’s wrong with me is that some tainted asshole threw me off Blackedge.”

The stranger shook his head. “What even are you?” 

Shiv looked at the raven-helmed stranger and spat on the ground next to them. “Goddamn vengeful, is what I am.” And then he slammed his Biomancy field against the raven’s crumbling Magical Resistance as he charged.

The raven-helmed stranger let out a gasp of pain, tried to dodge, but his wounded leg failed him. Shiv, though far slower, shot low and spun around the raven, sinking one of his fingers into the wound on the enemy’s right calf. The raven-helmed stranger screamed. Hot blood welled over Shiv’s hand as he used the stranger’s wound like a handlebar, and he began swinging—bringing the stranger up and down, bouncing them off the ground as hard as he could. 

He wasn’t stronger than them in direct competition, but now the weight of a person was trifling, and so long as he kept them off balance, he could keep swinging. He dented nearby railings, bounced the stranger off walls, hammered them against the pavement until the stones broke, sending bits of rock skipping everywhere. Nearby, his field touched scared Umbrals—people backing away in surprise and shock. There were a lot of people here, and briefly he realized how far down he’d fallen.

Must have been a full kilometer, Shiv thought as he spun around and bounced the raven-helmed stranger’s face off a nearby light post. Shards of nightglass broke and scattered on the ground. Shiv, using his Reflexes, caught one shard and jammed it into the wound he was holding. The raven-helmed stranger screamed again as Shiv pulled the blade up, severing their tendon in that leg entirely.

Reflexes > 39 

But the same pieces of glass fell next to the raven-helmed stranger. At some point, the enemy lost his stolen blade—and now they had options again.

Within a half second, the raven vanished as he tore his leg out of Shiv’s grasp. The Deathless felt several points of his body erupt in blood and pain. Before he could react, he tried to take in a breath and coughed instead. Even with his Diamond Shell, he wasn’t immune to damage, and nightglass could pierce a high vampire. Most of the cuts the raven left didn’t go that deep because of how weakened he was, but still, it didn’t take much to embed a piece of nightglass in someone’s throat. 

Shiv growled as he found the raven-helmed stranger trying to pound the blade lodged in his throat deeper. Shiv let them, trusting his diamond skin to endure in his stead. While they did that, he went to work on the raven’s body—stabbing underneath their armpit, slicing along the undersides of their wrists, just like he did last time. The stranger cried out and Shiv betrayed no pain. Blood was exchanged between them, and soon both were stained in each other’s lifeblood.

“Die,” the raven-helmed stranger wheezed, practically begging for Shiv to drop first. They hammered the shard, and Shiv felt it slide slightly deeper—every inch a struggle against his Diamond Shell. Shiv didn’t care. It didn’t matter if he died. It didn’t matter at all. He would give his life a thousand times more if it meant killing the raven-helmed stranger right now. 

Suddenly, he found himself picked off the ground and flung into the air. As Shiv lost track of the raven for a beat, a burst of black feathers suddenly materialized above him, and then he saw the enemy spinning through the air. The raven’s left heel came down on Shiv’s neck. Before he could respond, he felt the shard of nightglass shoot all the way through him, severing the back of his spine. 

Physicality > 47

Reflexes > 40

Knife Proficiency > 22

Diamond Shell > 55

Grappling Proficiency > 31

Striking Proficiency > 18

Parry > 18

Biomancy > 19

Shiv jolted, twitched, and perished in one instant as they fell off another bridge. His Revenant manifested and reached out to start draining from the raven-helmed stranger without missing a beat. The enemy cried out and tried to move, but Shiv rammed his Biomancy field into them again, stunning them before they could escape in a burst of feathers. A drip of his mana seeped into the stranger, but when Shiv tried to pull them apart, a spike of pain washed through his mind.

My mana field’s strained… Shiv groaned, trying not to lose focus. He would need to give himself some time to recover.

They were once again in free fall, descending past the light of the higher city—past what appeared to be weaver laborers hammering and carving new murals in the obsidian of the great structures that composed Weave. As they descended closer into the dark, the raven-helmed stranger twisted in the air, striking wildly, trying to cut at Shiv’s incorporeal form as shadows began to congeal.

“What are you? Let me go. Let me go. I’ll give you anything. I’ll give you mithril. You just need to let me go. We can come to an arrangement.” The raven begged, and Shiv’s hate for his enemy intensified. 

If the felling bastard thought this was a thing about money and bribery, they were mistaken. The raven came to his home to kill his people and killed him several times over. Shiv might not have liked Blackedge very much, aside from a few people, but still, most people there didn’t have it coming. There was a difference between not liking someone and hoping they died. And Shiv remembered the automaton Pathbearer, who died protecting Georges, or all the Arrow Family Guards who gave their lives in defense of the town. 

Whatever they felt toward Shiv, they were good warriors at the end of the day, and blood begets blood.

I’m going to spill plenty, Shiv promised.

Vitality Drain > 6

Vitality drained and with his Magical Resistances breaking apart, raven was unprepared for Shiv’s resurrection. He wrapped his hands around their neck and began to squeeze. He choked with discomfort and tried to stab Shiv, but the Deathless chopped the raven’s throat again, just like he did at the start of the fight.

This time, he felt his hand drive deeper, and the raven devolved into a coughing fit—leaving the fool ignorant of the fast-approaching ground.

Shiv landed a final elbow on the raven’s helmet at the same time they impacted the bottom of Weave. Their combined weight struck the ground like an artillery spell. Rocks splintered everywhere and the people around them scattered in terror. The raven’s broken arm made a terrible snapping noise and the man started shrieking. This inspired Shiv to start slamming his wounded arm against the ground.

“L-let go! LET GO!” The raven wailed. He shoved Shiv off with a surge of adrenaline and launched the Deathless into the air. As Shiv went up, his original body tumbled down—apparently, it struck another flat-flying creature along the way.

Shiv groaned as he saw his old corpse falling. He couldn’t let the Umbrals or the Weaveresses discover what he could do—who he was. Straining his barely recovered mana field, he pasted his body, but preserved two ribs. Those, he sharpened as much as he could. As Shiv landed next to a splash of red, he rolled right and picked up his makeshift “rib shivs.”

It felt really weird looting bits of his dead body as a weapon. Really weird. But also kind of awesome.

Shiv rose from the ground, covered in cuts, bruises, and stained with blood from his original body. A few meters away, the raven struggled to rise, stumbling out of the crater he lay in. His helmet was cracked from Shiv’s descending elbow from earlier, and Shiv saw the face of his enemy for the first time. The raven was a gaunt, bald man with a narrow nose and sharp ears. An elf, but not an elf from the Abyss. No, an elf that Shiv would see back home, like Heather, the Jump Mage from Tran’s team. 

The Raven wasn’t some assassin sent from the Abyss—or at least, he didn’t seem to be. He was someone that Shiv might have encountered in Blackedge.

“But what is wrong with you? Why are you like this? Why? Why? Why are you so committed to seeing me dead?” the raven whined. He was a bloody mess, and looked ready to drop.

Shiv spat, holding his rib-daggers high. “Nothing business, just personal.”

The raven gawked. “What?”

“You really shouldn’t have come after my home. And you really shouldn’t have thrown me off Blackedge. This was your fault to begin with, but I’m going to see its end.”

There was also the small matter of the bastard knowing about what Shiv could do. He didn’t need the raven telling the Composer about that.

The raven-helmed stranger just looked at him and let out a long sigh. “You don’t even care about mithril, do you? You’re not going to stop no matter how much I offer.”

“No,” Shiv said. “I just want one other kind of payment.” He took a stance, shifting his legs wide and bringing his rib-daggers high. “Come on, you’re not that injured. You must be a High Adept or a Low Master. Don’t just let me kill you. I was just Pathless a few days ago. You imagine dying with that kind of shame?”

The raven-helmed stranger sneered and ripped away what remained of their broken helmet. The raven couldn’t put any weight on their right leg, but that didn’t stop his Reflexes from being so much faster than Shiv. The enemy rushed him, and Shiv accepted that he was going to be stabbed. That was the first rule of knife fighting: you were going to be bled. 

The raven lashed out with precision, cutting Shiv in multiple places, making a mangled mess of his torso. But the same as before—when the raven-helmed stranger’s nightglass sank through Shiv’s ribs, it didn’t go all the way. Every inch was a struggle, and the resistance meant that the blade was likely to get stuck.

Stuck long enough for Shiv to bring down both his ribs against raven-helmed stranger’s broken arm. The raven let out a gasp and tried to take a step back—but slipped in the blood leftover from Shiv’s old body. Shiv followed the enemy down. He stabbed at every open wound he could find, making them bigger. As the raven toppled back, sobbing from the agony, Shiv sprawled, letting the enemy’s nightglass rip out from him. The raven let go of his knife as he fell. Mistake. Shouldn’t give up in a fight. That only meant death.

Shiv fell on top of them. He jabbed a rib into one of the raven’s eyes. The raven howled. Then Shiv picked up the bloody piece of nightglass and drove it into the raven’s throat—shaking hands taking a moment to find the raven’s carotid artery.

“Nuh—please! Please!” The raven cried.

But Shiv couldn’t risk it. The raven knew too much about him. And frankly, the raven was his rightful kill. He needed to finish this. He needed to see the enemy die for the defenders of Blackedge. Shiv whispered to the raven, “I don’t care who you are or why you did what you did—I’ll find out about that later. But you ought to know something before you head off to wherever the hell that comes next.” Shiv pulled his nightglass blade along the raven’s throat and the enemy gurgled. Blood welled. The raven tried to throw him off, but the blood pooling beneath him made the assassin slip. 

Shiv dragged the cut deeper and harder, his arm shaking with the strain against his enemy’s Toughness. “The moment you threw me off Blackedge, you sealed your own fate. I was coming for you. One year, ten years, a thousand—I was coming for you. It’s better this way. It just puts an end to this farce sooner.” 

And with a final heavy shove, he drove his dagger all the way through their neck and began to pull in the other direction as well. The raven-helmed stranger’s eyes went wide as his mouth opened in a silent scream. “W-who—” the raven managed to wheeze before his cords were cut.

Shiv forced his enemy to look up at him, and he grinned—his face the expression of a victorious predator. “I am the one death will never get to keep,” Shiv whispered. And then he released his blade. The raven-helmed stranger blinked a few more times and, after no more breaths reached his lungs, he kicked out with his legs and went still.

As Shiv knelt over the corpse of his first great enemy in his hands, he couldn’t help it—he started chuckling, sated by this victory, satisfied that he avenged the deaths of so many, and heartened by his progress in so short a time. He tried to rise off of the raven but found himself exhausted beyond measure.

Foreshadowing: The raven’s death reaches across the world, causing a chain of destruction. Back on the surface, a certain City Lord screams out as one of his Quest-bound Skills shatters. His schemes are unraveling due to the Vicar’s betrayal, and soon, he will have no choice to involve himself.

He has no choice. His loathing for Roland Arrow is just that severe.

Diamond Shell > 56

Physicality > 48

Reflexes > 41

He tried to stand and slipped in the blood—his own and his enemy’s. Looking down, he felt a sickness come over him. God, he was barely human—more like a slab of cut meat hanging in a slaughterhouse. Still, Shiv forced himself to rise. Every movement made his body scream in pain, and his Biomancy revealed how deep the wounds went. It was only thanks to his Diamond Shell that he wasn’t bleeding out. That extended to his veins and arteries, making them as hard to cut as everything else in his body. But more than a few of his vitals were now exposed to open air.

“Broken… Moon,” Shiv groaned.

“Shiv! Shiv!” he heard Valor calling for him, and slowly he turned, feeling a pulse—an after-effect from a Jump Mage. He looked and saw his group of Umbral escorts quickly approaching him. The Psychomancer was still at their helm and she saw Shiv, her mouth dropped wide, and her eyes widened with horror.

“Oh, worse than it looks,” Shiv joked as he staggered toward them. His head spun, and he looked at the raven-helmed stranger. “You should… you should see the other guy.” And then, somehow, he managed another step before they had to catch him.

Psychomancer swallowed, pressing her hands against his wounds. He looked up at her, and he smiled. “You know, you never really did tell me your name.”

She looked at him incredulously. “Are you serious right now?”

“Hey, look.” He shrugged. “Not exactly bleeding to death, just a lot of pain.”

She sighed. “Uva.” 

“Hi, Sister Uva. I’m Shiv. Your security probably needs some work.” Shiv joked. “You can’t have your guests do all the fighting here.”

Her face went through several reactions before she settled on a disbelieving smile.

“You—are all surfacers like you?” she asked. 

Shiv then looked at the raven-helmed stranger once more. “Now, some of the unlucky ones are more like him.”

A weaver Jump Mage teleported them back up to where the fight began. As Shiv rematerialized on the bridge, the pressure clenched at his wounds, and he felt himself bleed even faster.

“So that’s why Tran said that you needed to heal up before jumping.” Shiv groaned.

“Are you all right?” the Psychomancer asked, letting him lean against her. She didn’t seem to be that upset about him bleeding on her.

“Yep. Been worse. Been better.” 

She looked at him as if she didn’t believe him.

“Trust me,” Shiv said. “I’ve been a lot worse.” And he had—many times in the past few days.

Looking around, he marveled at the destruction left in the wake of his struggle against the raven-helmed stranger. Several bridges below were dented, their edges missing chunks—imprints left by the battle. He also saw massive floating, flat creatures—beings that resembled the mantas he saw in the Blackedge Aquarium.

Manta meat tastes pretty good, Shiv thought to himself, his mind feeling a little unfocused from all the blood loss. “Could go for a good cooking session right now.”

As he looked around, another group of Umbrels appeared from the opening guarded by the two Weaveresses.

“Did you see him?”  A new Umbral called as she emerged from Passage’s exit. She led her own group behind her. “Did you find the surfacer—” 

“We found your assassin, Mipha.” Uva snarled. “You were supposed to keep him mind-chained and controlled. Look what happened.” She pointed toward Shiv, gesturing at him.

System… she’s genuinely mad about this, Shiv thought. He never had someone get mad over him getting hurt before.

“Sister Uva!” the Umbrel leader of the other team cried, and then found herself distracted by Shiv. “Is that a surfacer? What happened to him?”

“Your assassin is what happened to him,” Uva replied. “Your Weaveress will be hearing from me. This failure is unacceptable for a sister of the Arachne Order. You prepare yourself for this.” 

The other Umbral swallowed and nodded. She didn’t argue.

Shiv almost felt bad for her, but that thought didn’t linger because he saw what the Umbrals in the other group were carrying. There, lying on a stretcher, beaten, bloodied, with some of his limbs still broken and bound in tight casts, and looking like he hadn’t had a wink of sleep in the past few days was Adam felling Arrow. 

Slowly he craned his head. He looked at Shiv and reacted with surprise, and Shiv looked right back.

“T-Tanner,” Adam mouthed.

Shiv just stared.

“Do you know each other?” Uva asked Shiv, looking between them with suspicion.

Shiv stared at Adam Arrow. He considered how he could answer. Adam knew about his abilities too, but… considering how badly injured he was… Shiv couldn’t help it. He had the chance to do something funny, and he took it.

No one could say Shiv wasn’t a bit vengeful.

“I haven’t seen this man in my life,” Shiv said. He’d deal with that later, but for now, for now he didn’t want to think about Adam Arrow. He didn’t want to even talk to the young lord.

Adam Arrow’s face contorted into an expression of disbelief, and then delicious anger. “Bastard! Tainted bastard! Tanner! Don’t—don’t let them take me… Tanner…” Adam then lapsed back into semi-consciousness.

“Tanner?” Uva asked. “Who’s Tanner?”

“Beats me,” Shiv said, shrugging. “My name’s Shiv. It’s the only name I’ll ever have. The only real name, anyway. Now, let’s see your Composer before I have to fight someone else.”

“We can’t present you like this,” Uva said, looking him over with concern. “You’re bleeding. You’re a Biomancer, aren’t you? Why haven’t you mended yourself?”

Shiv looked at her. “Yeah, about that—I’m, uh, let’s just say I’m untrained, but I’ve got a lot of skill.”

She eyed him and slowly nodded. “Oh, oh dear.”

“Yeah, you, uh, you don’t want to deal with a cancerous mass, do you? Those don’t quip as well as I do.” 

“That would not be preferable.” She pressed her lips together. “Another Biomancer should be here at any moment.”

“That would be great,” Shiv said. 

The few remaining tatters of his chef’s outfit peeled off from his upper body as a strong breeze washed through him. He was now entirely shirtless, and then he caught Uva staring at him for a moment too long.

Shiv arched an eyebrow. “Maybe we can find some clothing for me to wear. I don’t think it’s proper for me to be standing half-naked before your Composer.”

Uva shook her head, finally sobering as she stared back at him. “I, uh, yes.” She swallowed, then looked away.

Shiv snickered, and to his surprise, the younger Umbral who had tried to speak with him earlier also laughed. They exchanged a knowing look.

“So, how are your first impressions of Weave?” the young Umbral asked.

“Yeah, it’s pretty high. I think I can get used to it. Hopefully I don’t need to fight someone every time I want to go down a floor, though.” 

She laughed.

***

“I have no idea how you’re still standing,” a Weaveress Biomancer said, shaking her head as she sealed the last of his wounds with her many limbs.

Shiv took the opportunity to examine exactly what she was doing in detail, focusing intently to learn if he could replicate the same techniques. He caught some of what she did: she was culturing specific parts of his body architecture to heal in certain ways, while counteracting that in other areas and suppressing healing overall. It was hyper-focused repair rather than broad scale.

Maybe that was my mistake before, he thought. I was trying to encourage the entire body to regenerate, or at least too much of an organ to regenerate, and that caused the cancer cascade. He still didn’t get everything she did, but he had enough of an understanding to start correcting his mistakes. Maybe with a few more deaths—or a hundred—I can get some headway into actual healing myself.

“Yeah, uh, I’ve got a pretty high pain tolerance,” Shiv said as he watched the last of his wounds close. He felt his restored skin and nodded. “You did a good job. Not even a little scarring—the Biomancers back on Blackedge usually left even a faint trace after their work finished.”

“It shouldn’t scar if you do it right,” the Biomancer said. 

“I’d be interested in learning about that—doing it right.”

The Weaveress eyed him. “Are you now?”

Uva interrupted. “Is he well?”

The Biomancer nodded. “Yes. He’s… well, frankly, it’s absurd how resilient he is. He has some kind of hyper-strong Toughness Skill Evolution that makes him durable all over, including his veins and cells. It took quite a bit of effort to heal that, but aside from his wounds… well, you have Disease Resistance, don’t you?”

Shiv looked at her. “Yeah, something like that.”

“You’re not sick at all, which is remarkable. You’ve taken many wounds in your life, haven’t you?”

“What is this, interrogation before the proper interrogation begins?” Shiv asked.

“No, just curiosity,” the Biomancer said. “Surfacers—we don’t get many of you down here. If you’re interested and you are allowed by the Exalted Mother, you can come to the Cradle of Flesh. We’ll be interested in examining you. And, perhaps, they can make a trade—a little bit more in-depth examination into surfacer biology for an education in Biomancy.”

“Sounds good to me,” Shiv said. “I’ll come looking for you, if they actually release me. I might have to look up a few books first, though.”

As he turned, Uva handed him a wet towel to wipe the dried blood off first, and then a silken doublet that was a deep crimson in color.

“Thanks,” he said. “How’d you know my size?”

“By looking at you? And analyzing,” she replied.

“What, you got some kind of Seamstress Skill?”

“What if I do?” Uva said, sounding slightly defensive. 

“Then I’d say you’re a pretty interesting person—Sister Seamstress Psychomancer.” 

She looked aside, and he couldn’t quite read what her face meant.

“Well, now that that’s over, I think we should get along before another attack occurs,” Valor said, sounding slightly annoyed. 

“We once again most deeply apologize for this affair. Oh, great one—” The Weaveress began.

“Just get us to the Composer. There is no excuse.” Valor sounded angrier than Shiv ever remembered. Angry over him. That was two people now. “Shiv, you’re all right?”

“Yeah. I won. The other guy didn’t. Good day.”

“It sounded like a particularly brutal fight.”

“Like almost every other fight I’ve been in,” Shiv muttered. “I think I’ve got my fill of violence for the day. Let’s get this meeting done so I can get put in prison or get set free to do some cooking.”

At his urging, the group continued on—and Shiv watched as the Umbrals carrying Adam Archer jumped away.

“I’m surprised you allow spatial magic inside the city,” Shiv asked.

“Only some have the privilege,” the Weaveress explained. “For immediate emergencies. Like someone about to die from their injuries.”

Shiv blinked. He had been too tired to examine Adam. Now he felt kind of bad.

As they got to the very end of the bridge, he found them standing around a platform with a massive crystal hovering in the air. It shone in a series of prismatic colors, and the pressure around it felt spatial somehow—but different.

“Oh, Denizen and Neighbor, we beseech you,” the Weaveresses began, talking to the crystal. “We ask that you loan your aid and child to us so that we might soar the skies for a temporary time for a proper and measured price.”

“What’s happening?” Shiv asked Uva.

She shushed him and simply gestured for him to watch. A second later, the crystal came alight and a fissure opened in the air. Shiv felt something—something akin to the pressure emitted by a gateway—as one of the strange flat mantas he fellen on earlier emerged. It let out a loud groan and slowly lowered itself before him, its flat underbelly waving just a few inches off the ground.

Shiv blinked. “What is this?”

“It’s a demon. You’ve never seen one before?” Uva asked.

“A demon?” Shiv muttered, sounding terrified. “This is the thing that taints people?”

“Oh, no—that’s a specific variety of demon. Those are from the Dimension of Flies—Plagueforms meant for combat,” Uva explained. “This one’s perfectly docile.”

“Docile? Demon?” Shiv said.

“It seems that you might need to add even another book to your repertoire,” Uva said. 

“Or maybe you can just explain more things to me.”

“I suppose I could. Now, would you please climb aboard, Adept Shiv?” And that was the first time she used his name. And his Pathbearer Tier.

Shiv acquiesced, since she was so polite. “Off to see the Composer, then,” he muttered.

“Yes, off to see the Composer,” Valor echoed.

The dagger sounded more than a little worried, though. “What’s wrong?” 

“For security to be breached like this? For them to fail in their duties so much? Something must have happened. The Sisterhood in my day would have never allowed this.”

Shiv paused as he looked at Valor. If the others took any offense at the dagger’s words, they didn’t show it. “Yeah, well—good thing I was here, right?”

“Yes,” Valor said, sounding a little bit proud. “A good thing you were. Good work, Shiv.”

He grinned, and he looked up to gaze at the Heart of Weave—the Symposium, within which dwelled a goddess. All in a day’s work, Shiv thought.