(I) Reforge

-Third Elder Malkide of the First Blood103 (I)

Reforge

“There is enough food for everyone,” Shiv declared, holding a whimpering, beaten mercenary by the leg. The merc dangled in the air, blood spooling out from his face in vicious ropes as he moaned with pain. “There are also enough ass-kickings for everyone who tries to steal food from literal children. If you want another bowl, you wait. You do not take. This is mine to give. It wasn’t yours to steal. If I see someone else taking something from someone weaker, I will take it back from you. And then I will take other things from you. Like your ability to walk. Is that understood?”

A flood of fear rippled off the mercenaries in waves. They quivered beneath Shiv’s glare, and after letting them soak in terror for a few more seconds, he chucked his newest victim at them. The merc struck the ground with a loud scream as he landed on his broken ribs. No one on the bridge helped him. No one even looked at him.

Shiv let another uncomfortable silence follow as he regarded the gathered Pathbearers on the bridge to the Surface Gateway. “I’ve also heard of a few more attempts on the life of the Gate Lord. I heard that some of you thought it was a good idea to move on to explosives and sabotage. Or prepare new viruses. Is that true?”

His Dread Aura trembled inside him, and most of the mercenaries reacted like petrified children. On one hand, he couldn’t blame them. On another, if anyone hurt Adam or Uva in any capacity, Shiv would probably gain a Brutal Torture Skill from the shit he would do to them. “Thelora. Siggy.”

A goblin and an elf shared the same shudder. Siggy spilled some of her leviathan tentacle soup. Thelora’s legs did more of the shaking.

“I—Great Hero. Please…” Thelora began, shrinking beneath his glare.

“I’m not blaming either of you. But you guys need to police yourselves some more.”

With an annoyed sigh, Shiv pulled off his helmet and descended onto the bridge. The dense crowds of mercenaries parted before him. The crowd squeezed together, desperate not to impede his person, desperate not to draw his attention. As Shiv marched toward Thelora, he looked in Siggy’s direction and gestured for her to come over. The goblin swallowed and shuffled herself between her fellow mercs.

All around him, hearts were pumping hard and fast. Hands were clenched tight, and ass-cheeks were clenched tighter. Shiv’s Biomancy gave him a lot of detail—and it also told him the mercenaries were much healthier than before. The soup had cleansed the survivors of the bowel-breaker and most lesser diseases. Those with lingering biological atrophy were restored as well—more energetic and limber than before.

In that respect, Shiv was pretty happy about what he managed to pull off. But on the other hand, he dramatically underestimated just how unruly the people got when he came offering food.

He thought he was going to have to give a long speech reassuring them about how the thing was edible. Instead, they all rushed forward, seeking to be served by one of the many distribution stations being run by the Arachnae Order. The slaves and Pathless were ravenous. Shiv expected that, but the behavior by some other Pathbearers was genuinely pathetic.

Pathetic to the point where it pissed Shiv off.

Among the many things that annoyed him, stealing food from a child was one. Shoving the child to the ground and trying to stomp on them for trying to get her bowl back went a little further. Shiv calmed himself by loudly beating the offending Pathbearer over the district. In the sky. Before everyone’s eyes. The mercenary broke several times, but thanks to Shiv’s Woundeater, he could still take just a little more punishment.

Just enough for the beating to last another round.

When Shiv was done being upset, he hit the man a few more times just to let the point sink in before he returned to the mass encampment trailing across the bridge. A general sense of order manifested among the survivors after that. This showed that people could learn. You just had to beat the shit out of one of them so hard that they started screaming for their long-dead father to come save them from Shiv.

“What’s that over there?” Shiv asked, looking at Siggy and Thelora first. Then, he swept the ground with his gaze. Not far away, where the bridge met the rest of the surface district proper, was a large metallic cauldron, installed by Can Hu and monitored by two Umbral Sisters. There was a slot at the bottom of the cauldron with a valve jutting out over it. When people went there, a Sister would turn the valve, and soup would flow out into a bowl. Used bowls would then be returned, cleaned, and filled once more.

“Food station,” Siggy croaked.

“Food station,” Thelora whispered.

“Food station.”

“Food station.”

“Yeah. Uh. Food station.”

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

A chorus of murmured echoes followed. Shiv nodded. “And what is my Tier?”

“I… Hero?” Thelora squeaked.

“Right. Okay. So. Here’s something that you guys need to understand. I’m going to feed you. I to feed you. I’m not going to torture you pointlessly. Or just butcher you without reason. But I also don’t much like any of you. I understand that most of you are amoral at best or slave-driving sacks of shit at worst, but this is no longer Gate Theborn. You might have noticed the horizon shrinking earlier. There is no more Confriga. Lord Scorn is not here. Not yet. And there are no slaves here. They’re just people. Just like you.”

Some of them grimaced at being declared equal to slaves, but Shiv paid them no mind. “And it doesn’t matter if you’re an Initiate, Adept, or Master. It doesn’t even matter if you are a Hero. When I feed you, you are all my customers. This gate is my kitchen. And when you are in my kitchen, you can complain about the service. You can say my food is shit and that you want something changed. You can even insult me to my face and not die for it. But you will not get in the way of another customer enjoying their felling meal. Is that understood? Because of how things are for now, I can’t throw you out. But I can leave you broken. Even if I don’t want to kill you.”

“Yes,” Thelora wheezed.

“Yes,” Siggy muttered.

More agreements followed, and when Shiv judged them to be adequately terrified, his expression softened. “Alright. Another thing: Anyone who is sick and hasn’t eaten should get fed next. There’s going to be more food. I’m always going to make more food when I’m here, but there are people who have priority status. If you want to be selfish, you must be powerful. And no one here among you is stronger than me. So. Be ethical. Or I’ll get unethical.”

Silver Tongue 20 > 21

Dread Aura 88 > 89

Another wave of muffled apologies followed. Shiv let the moment stretch a while longer and held back a faint smile. His attempt to advance both Silver Tongue and Dread Aura just worked.

“Right. I’m done chewing you out. Get that idiot fixed up—but no Biomancy. Let him heal naturally after he gets another meal later. I’m not giving him another Woundeater.” He looked at Thelora and Siggy. “And you need to manage yourselves. Right now, you might be wondering if you’re prisoners, slaves, or just awkwardly stuck. The answer is I don’t know either. We’re still trying to find out. But if you’ve noticed, I haven’t forced all of you into a prison or tried to butcher you. I didn’t feed you to my Court Leviathanto be used up as biomass. I fed you. Using the Court Leviathan. So you can expect a few different things from me. Right?”

There came a few nods—then the mercenaries froze. Several people squinted into their bowls, and one of them spat the soup back out.

“It’s made from ?” someone coughed.

“It’s made from that gives you regeneration, rejuvenates your organs, and cures your diseases,” Shiv declared. “And you liked the taste? Right?”

“Right!” Thelora breathed. Siggy nodded vigorously. Her nodding spread through the group.

A tall automaton among the mercenaries reached out and forced the guy who spat his soup out to drink it back up. “Do not get us killed by this maniac, meatbag! Drink! Enjoy! Moan! Moan loudly, now!”

“Right. Okay. You need to watch your own people.” Shiv’s voice dropped lower. “There are Umbral Sisters here. Weaveresses. Other people. I better not hear about you giving them trouble. I better not hear about one of you attacking any of them. And pray to your gods if any of them end up getting injured or worse, because that just might make me properly mad. And we’ll see how unethical I can get.”

“We—we won’t do shit, boss!” Siggy said, sweat pouring down her forehead. “If anyone’s stupid enough—”

“You deal with them. You guys do. Since I still don’t know how to handle any of this, you police yourselves. Do not make me come see you day after day. You understand? I told you earlier that I don’t care about you. I don’t care about killing you. I killed some of you. But things must just end up getting worse if I make a habit of that. I’m going to stay two things: Chef and Pathbearer. And my Path isn’t Warden or Slaver, unlike some of you. Do the very simple math and understand that if things get hard for me and mine, I will kill all of you.”

That wasn’t a threat. It was just a statement. It shook the mercenaries all the same. Thelora was always a bit pale for an elf. Now her complexion was approaching the hue of bones.

“So, save yourselves. Siggy. Thelora. You guys run this place. Don’t make me come around unless it’s to deliver food or help you out. I’ve lost taste in bullying you into compliance. And that’s all I’m saying. Now. What else do you guys need?”

The sudden shift in the conversation caught Thelora off guard. She blinked rapidly and stared dumbly for a second.

Siggy, meanwhile, was more prepared. “We need a place to live. A place to stay. We’re packed tight on the bridge, and there’s no room in the residentials. They’re kind of busted up anyway, so they probably need to be fixed up too. Also, the ugly thing you guys killed won't stop fucking screaming. It, uh, might drive some people nuts.”

Shiv winced as he turned to the soft blue patch of Animancy seared into the skin of reality. Just a few meters above the Surface Gateway, a massive smear of color still glowed faintly, and from within whispered a distant scream. The scream of an eldritch entity melted into existence itself. The Recollector wasn’t entirely dead, and that unnerved Shiv. But what shook him more was its current state of agony. Constant and unceasing.

When he focused on the patch, he felt faint pulses of radiate free.

“I’ll spend some time clearing out and scavenging from the rubble,” Shiv said, ignoring that topic for that. “We can probably get a simple camp set up soon.”

Someone cleared their voice behind Shiv. “We can… help and shit. If that’ll make things go faster?” Shiv considered the speaker. It was a bronze-colored, rod-thin automaton with a dozen whip-like arms. It quailed before his stare, but Shiv gestured for the bot to continue. “If we’re working and got stuff to do, there might not be that much trouble either. Right now, we’re kind of packed up on this bridge and waiting. Some of us asked if we could go and help with the cleanup earlier, but the Gate Lord didn’t give us a clear response.”

“Maybe because some dumb-fucks tried to kill him!” another mercenary shouted from near the gateway. “You think someone’s going to let us dig through the ruins without looking over our backs after that?”

Shiv noted the suggestion and nodded. “I’ll bring it up to the Gate Lord again. Anything else?”

“Ask him if some of us can leave!” another mercenary yelled—a woman who wore a suit of bright yellow plate armor and seemed pretty well-off. She appeared to be middle-aged, which, as a Pathbearer, meant she had to be quite old. “Some of us can be ransomed, if that is what the Gate Lord desires. We do not all need to be kept in place here, penned together like animals. It will lessen the burden on the Lord and this decaying place.”

A series of agreements and muffled scoffs followed. This Pathbearer had her share of supporters and detractors, it seemed.

“Only when the Gate Lord says so,” Shiv replied. “We’ll let you know what we want to do there once we agree. Not before.” He wanted to tell them that the problem wasn’t money, but secrecy from Sullain and the Inquisition, but they didn’t need to know that much.

When no one spoke after, Shiv gave a grunt and prepared to depart. But then, he saw Thelora holding out a slip of paper. “What’s this?”

“You asked for a list earlier. I… I didn’t have a chance, and I forgot when you returned, but… This is a requisition for proper supplies and necessities. Emergency medicine and rations are no longer needed, but the automata still need power and maintenance stations.”

And that was when Shiv noticed how rough a state many bots were in. He had been thinking so much about the needs of organics that he forgot about them. “Right. Housing first. Then, power and maintenance. Is anyone here in dire condition?”

A lull followed, and electronic voices declared various states of damage, but none of imminent mortal danger. Shiv nodded. “Alright. Hang in there. We’ll get you all sorted too.” He put his helmet on thereafter and gave those around him a final stare before he pulled himself up in the air. “And don’t make me come back early. When I next get back, it better be for supplies or housing.”

And with that, he launched himself up into the air. But this time, he shot well past the surface district and headed for a structure rising in the distance. He passed by hundreds of Sisters and Weaveresses administering assistance and aid to the slaves and other non-martials. Thousands of heads turned upward as he shot by, and he felt from them a rush of fear—though it was far more reduced than before.

As his Biomancy passed through them, Shiv let out a relieved chuckle as the bodies below actively healed and cleansed themselves of atrophy and disease. With the proper food, the body knew what to do. And this, more than taking the Court Leviathan and clearing it of vampires, filled Shiv with pride.

Many people died at his hands. And now a lot of people were going to live because of him.