(I) Helix

—Confidential—

-Spell-Sealed Sync-Letter Between “Master-Advisor Oldsmith” and Inquisitor Sijik

135 (I)

Helix

It was less than a minute after Adam, Uva, and the others left to reinforce the gate against the orcs and help Shiv move his Court Leviathan over that an orc Hero greeted him in person.

The Hero rose from among the other orcs on wings of glistening red. They were shaped not from solid matter, but from chains of flowing blood. They spun around each other, bending like two coiling strings, and between them, horizontal supports connected each string to another.

The wings were too consistently shaped for the design to be random, and Shiv shivered as he took in just how powerful the orc's Biomancy was. The field projected from the orc stretched further than almost any other Biomancer Shiv had faced. Devon’s likely rivaled this orc, as did the Composer’s. But the orc's field was not only vast, it was . Being inside the orc's field gave Shiv the impression of standing within a pulsating membrane that stretched over all existence, rather than being cast in a moonlit glow of crimson.

Even more pressing was how the orc's body glistened with dense mana. Every part of him was infused with Biomancy, and the coat he wore, long and flowing, was no exception. However, Shiv also noticed strange creatures crawling along the coat. They resembled worms, centipedes, and spiders all at the same time, and they wove new strands across the orc's body without pause, strands that resembled the shape of the orc's bloodied wings.

Shiv thought to himself. And then it came to him. He remembered seeing it while in the library years ago, inside a geometry textbook. A helix.

Skill Gained: Memorization 1 (Common)

As the orc descended, Shiv looked upon the gray-skinned brute and noted that this orc was devoid of any scars. In fact, his skin was smooth. His eyes were also a bright green rather than the typical yellow.

His teeth were aberrant for an orc as well. Several fangs resembled the wedge shape of a herbivore, only slightly tipped at the middle. And then there were the spectacles that the orc wore. Shiv guessed that the spectacles were likely a purely aesthetic choice, since Pathbearers could overcome issues such as nearsightedness by visiting a Biomancer or elevating their Awareness Skill.

As the orc touched down before Shiv, his wings reeled back into his body and vanished entirely. His inner Biomancy field glowed brighter, and Shiv felt the sheer power emanating from the orc.

Even with all the fear flowing into his flesh and spirit, Shiv knew his Biomancy could not match this orc's. Not even remotely. At once, a shudder of excitement passed through the Deathless. He called for Heroes to approach him, for Biomancers to sort themselves out, and now a Heroic-Tier Biomancer came seeking him immediately.

"I have a complaint to lodge," the orc proclaimed.

Nearby, Mortar shook his head and let out a quiet guffaw. "Oh, Helix, of course you're here. Can't miss an opportunity, can you?"

The bespectacled orc didn't even regard Mortar.

"What kind of complaint?" Shiv asked, interested in where this conversation was about to go.

"The complaint has to do with clarity, or the lack thereof." Helix eyed Shiv with slight disdain. "You asked the Heroes to sort themselves from the masses, and then you demanded the Biomancers place themselves somewhere else. Did you think about what a Heroic-Tier Biomancer would do?"

"I'd assume that your title would mean more than that single skill."

The orc chuckled, but there was no genuine joy in it. It was the laugh one gave when they were speaking to a particularly simple child. "You assume? By the Challenger's whims, Insul. If you assume, I can only shudder to imagine the state of your Practical Metabiology."

"You don't need to imagine," Shiv said. A thin smirk spread across his face. "It's at thirty-eight."

The bespectacled orc let out a groan of genuine pain. "Thirty-eight? But your Biomancy is..." The orc narrowed his eyes. "So they weren't lying about you being Deathless. Let me theorize. You were incredibly reckless, killed yourself and other people multiple times, ruptured and ruined your flesh. And now you what? Use your bones as armor because they have adopted your Toughness. Is that adamantine? Hmm… variable structure, dynamic as well. That's Adamantine Adaption." The orc did a double-take. "Why do you have Adamantine Adaption?"

And that never got old for Shiv. "Well, you can thank 811 for that."

"You're going to have to be more specific," Helix said. "There are a great many 811s." But then the orc frowned. "However, I suspect I know which one. Joyful, inquisitive fellow, always watching. Aeromancy and a form of Geomancy that turns his flesh into crystalline rock."

Shiv was surprised. "You know him?"

"I know a great many other orcs. I'm almost at a thousand reincarnations. Quite a few cycles, I suppose."

"One thousand reincarnations, but a few centuries of life in every one," Tequila said. He suddenly blinked into existence beside Helix, wrapping an arm around the orc Biomancer. Helix regarded Tequila with disdain, but did nothing to push the other orc away. "This one here," Tequila said, wiggling his eyebrows at Shiv, "is well over a hundred thousand years old."

Shiv blinked. “What.”

"He exaggerates." Helix sniffled. "Perhaps not by much, but he exaggerates. Yes, I let my lives last, but it's purely for the accumulation of knowledge and to deepen my learning. I do not fear death. I merely think that it gets in the way of the proper work, of the true path, the highest path of dominance."

"Oh, here he goes again," Mortar grumbled.

"And here I go always," Helix said, his head snapping toward Mortar. "You are a fool if you think that we can only win by raw brute force alone." Helix closed his fist, and suddenly his flesh rippled. Blood danced past skin and settled again, but Shiv watched as Helix's skin, muscles, bones, and more shifted. It went from an orc's hand to something lighter, something slight, something soft of flesh, like that of a newborn human. And then it became insectoid, chitinous, and layered in a pitch-black exoskeleton. At the end, a river of hair broke over, and his hand became a hoof.

Finally, it settled back into being merely an orcish hand, but Shiv used that moment to glimpse inside Helix's biology, and he felt himself tense. There were no organs inside the orc. Well, none that he could feel. There was no heart, no lungs. Shiv paused. He noticed a cloud of substance dancing inside the orc, guided by his Biomancy. And just then, it occurred to Shiv that the orc lacked any Magical Resistance whatsoever.

This orc was the purest mage he had ever faced.

And as he gawked at Helix's strange interior, the orc Biomancer began a lengthy diatribe aimed at Mortar. "You think we're going to bomb everyone into submission? Is that it? You think that we're going to prevail by hammering people, attacking them over and over again in the most brutal, senseless, stupidly direct fashion?"

"It's worked in the past," Mortar said. "And I'm not direct. I'm distant and—”

"Yes, yes, you use the right ammunition for the job. You prepare adequately. You load, set ammunition into your mortar, and then you fire it over and over again. You use your Pyromancy and your Mathematics skills to triangulate your bombardment." The Biomancer listed what Mortar might say, one after another. "But this is only a limited form of dominance. You imagine destroying existence. Well, I don't want that."

"You don't?" Mortar replied with a sardonic growl. "Why don't you? Why, I despise you Exos. You, and—" Helix cut him off with a wave. Mortar's mouth vanished. Whisper let out a chuckle.

"Oh, poor foolish Mortar," Whisper said, shaking his head, "always picking fights with dangerous threats. Your fearlessness is why you don't reach the Heroic Tier so often, Mortar." And now the Artillerist was glaring at his robed companion.

"What the hell's an Exo?" Shiv asked.

"An Exo-Assimilant," Helix proclaimed. "I am of such a clique."

"Yeah, I heard about that," Shiv said. "I know you orcs have your own internal factions and stuff, but still, what the hell does that mean?"

"It means," Helix explained, "that I yearn for eternal domination, that I wish to subjugate, elevate, and dominate our enemies time and time again. And I wish to do so in ways more than merely the physical, merely the brutal." He aimed another glare at Mortar, and then he looked back at Shiv. "Death," he began, "is merely a great unconsciousness for many. It ends. It allows them to escape from knowledge, escape from responsibility, and I despise that. They must be taught the fullness of their weakness.”

Shiv was taken aback by the orc's vehemence.

"I despise the fact that our enemies are allowed to die, that they're allowed to escape this cycle, this struggle, while we return. My great foes have been robbed from me, perishing in other battles. And one even had the audacity to pass from old age." Helix laughed bitterly. "Old age! Senescence of all things, as if she didn't have a choice to elevate her Physicality or to seek out a Biomancer. By the Challenger's whims, she could have sought out! I would have preserved her, if only to show her her rightful place in existence."

"And where's that?" Shiv asked.

Helix answered by grinding his heel against the face of a human corpse.

Shiv snorted. "You're kind of a prick, aren't you, Helix?"

"I," Helix said, leaning closer, "am properly cultured, unlike certain other orcs from inferior cliques. No, they just want to bomb you or kill you or torture you. It is not enough. You must know where you stand in the order of things. That you are not true strugglers, not of war, not of skill, and not of magical discovery."

"And that's you, huh?" Shiv looked Helix up and down, surprised by everything the orc said. But after he had a few seconds to digest it, it wasn't that shocking. Orcs wanted to dominate, to hurt. And there were many ways to dominate and hurt. They might need to kill a few people for them to heal faster, for them to feed and reduce the feeling of the itch. But that didn't mean they only had to do that physically, that it would only be expressed through raw, unchecked brutality.

No. Helix was a brute of intellect, a brute of magic. And now he sought to proclaim himself before Shiv.

The Deathless offered the orc a slight nod. And he noted how there was a thread leading between him and Helix. Despite everything, the orc was on some level afraid of him. But the thread was just that. A thread. It wasn't a chain as thick as that which ran between Shiv and Adam. It wasn't a tether like what allowed Shiv to yank upon most orcs. No. Helix was joined to the Deathless by a thread. And that thread was, fitting the orc's namesake, also a helix.

"Alright," Shiv said. "I get it now. So, aside from complaining about my lack of clarity and telling me about how great your philosophy is, you got any other reason why you were in such a hurry to meet me?"

"Several. I wish to see your Court Leviathan," Helix declared. "It has been some time since I had access to such a creature, and it would serve my studies well."

"Yeah, hold on there for a second," Shiv said. He placed a single finger against Helix's chest. The orc's eyes cut downward and narrowed. "That's Court Leviathan. Her name's Courtney. You don’t do anything with her unless I give you the say.”

Helix's expression dropped to one of utter incredulity. "You named the Court Leviathan?”

"Yeah," Shiv said. "And we're also going to be eating it."

"We're what?" Helix sputtered. He looked at the other orcs around him.

Whisper simply laughed. "He's going to show you a few interesting things in a moment, oh Helix."

The Biomancer frowned, but he raised no further protest. "Aside from the Court Leviathan, I wanted to get your measure properly. I felt that you were a Biomancer, but there was something odd with your mana. Something off with your magical field. And now I understand why. You have next to no Practical Metabiology to support you. Not even an Adept-Tier Evolution. Such a thing is shameful." Shiv just rolled his eyes. "And you are indignant toward your incompetence. Your Deathless nature has rendered you—"

"Yeah, no," Shiv cut him off, annoyance finally winning. "That's not what happened. What happened with me was that I never got the chance to learn anything useful. Because the people I grew up around thought I was going to be a monster. And so they did everything they could to stop me from becoming a Pathbearer."

Helix took a moment and thought about what Shiv just said. And for the first time, the orc let out a laugh. "They thought you were a monster. That you were going to turn into something terrible. And they tried to slow your growth. Is that it?"

"They stopped it for a good long while entirely," Shiv replied. "Look, I'm going to state it plainly. Aside from cooking and a few other skills, I'm very blunt force trauma, not that technical."

The orc narrowed his eyes at Shiv. And a sense of unease entered Helix's posture. The chain of fear between them thickened, and Shiv laughed as both his Psychology and Shape of Monstrosity leveled.

Shape of Monstrosity 102 > 103

Psychology 13 > 14