(I) Compromised

-Master Sasha Orray, CHARM-309 Phoenix Academy146 (I)

Compromised

The orcs dealt with the surviving members of the Inquisition with mercy and moderate expediency. There wasn’t even any prolonged torture, much to Shiv's relief. However, the inquisitors were divided up among the orcs to be slain in a variety of ways he wouldn't mind forgetting, and a few were handed over to a cabal of orc Psychomancers for purposes against the Necrotechs.

When they finished, the stealthiest members of the orc army immediately vanished into thin air as they moved on Lost Angeles. The others followed Shiv back through the gateway, carrying a baggage train of equipment in tow. Shiv, meanwhile, hid his new armor within his cape, giving it more time to regenerate the damage it had sustained during the battle. That, and he would need Helix’s aid to fuse his current bone armor with the Husk of the Voidmantid properly.

As they crossed through the Surface Gateway, Shiv found himself greeted by the insides of a teleportation anchor rather than one of Adam's dimensional tunnels or the open air of Gate true name still pending. No spells lined the insides of the anchor, but the material that blocked his path resembled a curved wall of reinforced titanium.

“Oh dear,” Bonk said, tapping his grotesque club against a large hand. “Have we been locked out and banished from our home? Are we exiled?”

Ikki’s voice sounded through the metal.

“Security checkpoints?” Bonk asked. He chuckled darkly. “Why? Do you not trust us to protect you from the horrible, dangerous monsters outside, little Umbral?”

Ikki chirped.

A silence followed. Helix turned to regard Shiv. “She seems to think highly of you. Judging from her tone and inflection, it sounds like she admires you quite a bit.”

Shiv laughed quietly. “Yeah, Ikki is pretty cute—” He paused as he realized he was about to start telling the orcs about his experiences back at Weave. A heavy pride filled his chest as his mind went back to how he sacrificed himself for Uva and her team at Passage. The pride endured, but it was joined by suspicion. Shiv’s laugh died, and he started glaring at the orcs. “Psychology Skill?”

“Sweet Talker,” Whisper whispered with a faint smile. “Silver Tongue Skill Evolution. But good job, Insul. You noticed.”

Awareness 35 > 36

The Deathless scoffed at the orcs. “Yeah. Another ethical rule: stop messing with my head.”

The orcs just chuckled, and Shiv shook his head and muttered under his breath, “Can’t ever let my guard down around you bastards.”

“Then we are training you well,” Helix replied quietly.

Shiv frowned as he stared at the orc. “Training?”

Helix didn’t bother responding.

Ikki called out.

“Oh, just a bit below eighteen thousand now,” Mortar declared.

Ikki sounded concerned. Her worry made the orcs develop feral grins in response.

“Not nearly enough for it to be fun, I’m afraid,” Mortar mournfully sighed. He eyed Shiv with an expression of bloodlust. “But this will be solved soon. And you can thank Shiv for that. He is ever so thoughtful.”

Her words were unnecessary as the orcs were already neatly arranged.

For about an hour afterward, the orcs transitioned across the Surface Gateway checkpoint back to the bunker built over the Tutorial Gateway. The bulk of the orcs crossed over with their new loot, chattering to each other about whether they wanted to double-dip on the surface or head to the Abyss to brutalize the vampires next.

As the train of orcs filtered through the Tutorial Gateway, Shiv noted how the Psychomancers carried the surviving Inquisitors across with special care. As the Deathless made sure the final few orcs passed through without issue, Helix hesitated just before passing through the gateway. "You are not coming with us, then?"

"No, I got an interrogation to catch up on," Shiv said. "I want to see just what that Master-Inquisitor knows; figure out the next steps and all that."

Helix nodded very slowly, and he adopted a pensive expression. "When you are done, come find me aboard the Court Leviathan. There are things we need to talk about, and your training must continue, starting with the full regeneration and merging of your current armor with the Husk I just offered you.”

Shiv was quite looking forward to that, though he didn't let it show on his face much.

"Do not keep me waiting long, Insul," Helix warned. "I do not wish to be sitting idle while all the other orcs get to indulge in festivities. Understand that I am making a great sacrifice on the part of my pleasure and education, restraining myself from heading down to the Abyss. You have no idea how my blood yearns to punish the feeble Bloodspawn."

"Yeah, yeah," Shiv grinned. "I'll be there soon. Someone’s gotta keep an eye on you ugly gray bastards so you stick to the rules.”

"Good, good. I'm glad I could rely on you to be at the very least." Helix chuckled. “Righteous and greedy.” He regarded Shiv one final time, and his eyes glinted before he crossed over.

And as soon as he did, Shiv felt a strange hollowness inside himself, as if something had been taken from him, or a weight had receded from his body. "Might just be the tension," he muttered to himself. He'd done a lot more killing than cooking recently. Frankly, there wasn't even any parity between the two. He'd been spending way too much time fighting. "Godsdamned System just wants me to be a butcher, it seems."

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After he left the bunker, he headed toward the gate's oubliette. That's where he guessed Adam had brought the Master-Inquisitor. As he arrived at the temporary prison, he found armored walls being built up along the surface district.

Atop the parapets were dimensionals constantly monitoring the surrounding area. Their bodies resembled embers, but every now and again between undulating flickers, Shiv glimpsed humanoid forms. More than that, most of the structures in the surface district were being reinforced. They were thickening into brutalist blocks, and far below the surface district, another set of compounds were being erected. Shiv saw a great deal of Umbral and Weaveress traffic there. Perhaps Null Mont was setting up a separate base far from the center. He didn't blame her. With the Tutorial right here, things could go poorly fast.

The entire gate was awash with motion. Dimensionals drifted through the air, and towering constructs formed from earth and steel shoved bits of rubble into themselves. Humble Geomancers continued to tidy the rubble and ruin left over from all the battles the gate had suffered. Shiv also noticed a titanium cylinder built over the abyssal gateway as well. Ikki wasn't kidding when she said they were taking precautions, installing checkpoints everywhere. The damned orcs made life inconvenient, but ultimately, the damned orcs had their benefits as well. One such benefit lurked within Shiv's cape. As he prepared to descend, he opened a hatch into the oubliette.

"Shiv," someone called out.

The Deathless turned, and he found Valor hovering just behind him. The Legendary Pathbearer was alone, and something about his body language and the way the flames within his skull sockets were flickering told Shiv that Valor had been waiting for him.

"Valor," Shiv called out. "Are they down there? Has the interrogation started already?"

"Yes. However, I think we should take a walk for a few moments. It has been some time since we had a chance to talk."

Shiv felt an odd feeling creep through his gut. He had no apprehensions about speaking to Valor, but the way the Legendary Pathbearer was broaching this topic felt odd. Like they were about to do something taboo. Even so, Shiv ultimately relented. "Alright, so you want to go somewhere?"

"No, just around the tower is fine. This shouldn't take overly long."

They began their walk as Valor asked Shiv what he thought about their most recent raid, what he thought of the orcs' performance, what he thought they could do better, what he thought he could do better. Shiv answered the questions as honestly as he could, but it felt like Valor was avoiding a central topic.

"Good, very good. So you can tell how the orcs still have their inefficiencies, yes?" Valor looked at Shiv, and the Deathless just nodded.

"Yeah, I saw a few of them get caught out of position. They're not stupid, but they get overly bloodthirsty, then they kind of get carried away by hurting people—wasted a lot of opportunities to keep attacking. They were too busy trying to hurt and torture people. Also, they really don't care about friendly fire that much."

Valor let out a humorousless laugh. "No such thing as friendly fire with those creatures, I'm afraid. All fire is meant to harm, and there are no friends, not truly." Valor paused for a beat as he simply stared at Shiv. The Deathless shifted uncomfortably.

"Alright, yeah, I kind of get that."

"Do you?" Valor asked, lifting a ghostly eyebrow. Shiv wasn't sure how to respond to that. Now it felt like Valor was trying to grill him. "Earlier, when you had your conversation with the orcs, when you tried to instill some ethics into them, how did that go?"

Shiv hesitated before he replied. "Well, I had to do some negotiating. The orcs are... They got a bit of an itch to scratch. You might already know that better than I do."

"Did they kill the Inquisitors?" Valor asked very casually. Chapters fırst released on novel_fіre.net

Shiv's mouth opened slightly as he thought back to what happened to the still-living pile of inquisitors. "Yeah," Shiv said slowly. "They're dead, most of them. The orcs kept a few for false-flag purposes. Psychomancers took them. I suspect that the orcs are probably going to make them into double agents or something."

"I suspect you're right there," Valor said in agreement. "They will likely recondition the minds of those Inquisitors and send them after the Necrotechs or back to the main Inquisitorial army as spies. The opportunities there are countless, but the morality of such an action is questionable at best."

"Yeah," Shiv replied awkwardly. It still felt like Valor was probing for something, but he couldn't quite tell what.

"Does it bother you," Valor asked, "that they're taking inquisitors as prisoners? That they're going to twist their minds and use them as unwitting pawns, as expendable slaves?" Valor's description of how the inquisitors were going to be spent made Shiv cringe.

"Um, I mean, I wouldn't exactly call them slaves."

"Very well," Valor scoffed slightly. "Let us call them something else. Perhaps exploited prisoners, or orc entertainment, or human resources. The fundamental action behind what is going to happen to them does not change." Valor let out a quiet sigh. "Shiv, when they killed the Inquisitors, how did they do it?"

"Well, there wasn't really one way they killed them. Some of them..."

"Was it fast?" Valor asked again. There was no heat to his voice, and his expression was unreadable, yet Shiv’s mouth ran dry. He licked his lips as his stomach grew taut.

"...Fast-ish," he replied, sounding extremely unconvincing.

"Do you have a time for how long it took them to finish the inquisitors off?"

"I don't know." Shiv coughed. "Maybe ten minutes or so?"

"Ten minutes," Valor said. And for a while, the Legendary Pathbearer spoke no more. He stopped in place, right beside the infirmary, and he directed his gaze skyward at the abnormal mana core, glowing bright in the distance.

Shiv went still a step away from him, and discomfort began to build inside the Deathless as the silence dragged on, like barbs digging through his own flesh. "Valor?" Shiv asked. "Is there something wrong?"

" there something wrong?" Valor asked in turn. He looked down at Shiv again, studying the Deathless. "What do you think, Shiv?" Shiv wasn't sure how to answer that question. Before he could, Valor asked him another. "Do you enjoy the attention the orcs gift you?"

"Gift me?" Shiv said. He fought the urge to reach inside his cape, to push the armor in even deeper.

"They are lavishing you with attention, and mostly positive attention at that. Brutal as they are, the reinforcement they have provided you thus far has been overwhelmingly affirming. They have included you among their number. They have allowed you to partake in activities they usually only enjoy with other orcs. You're a celebrity. Do you enjoy it?"

Shiv's mouth opened and closed several times, and he fought through the discomfort. "Yeah," Shiv said. "Yeah, I like it. I haven't forgotten what they are, if that's what you're worried about."

"No," Valor cut him off for a third time. "I'm no longer worried, Shiv. But now I see what must be done. You are already compromised."

"What?" Shiv said. He had no idea what Valor was talking about. He reached inside his mind using his Psychomancy, but he felt nothing there.

"I don't mean that they have touched your mind, at least not directly. No, you are not compromised psionically. You are compromised ."

A reflexive swell of burning anger arose inside Shiv, but before he could reject that, he noted the anger, noted how foreign it felt. He never felt such petulance towards Valor before. Right now, however, he wanted to tell the Legendary Pathbearer to stop bothering him, that he was perfectly fine, perfectly aware of who he was and what the orcs were. But was he perfectly fine? Was he perfectly aware?

“The fuck did they do to me?” Shiv muttered, blinking hard. It was like Valor’s words just woke him from a stupor.

"Finally," Valor said, with a slight hint of joy to his voice, "you've noticed. That is a good start." Slowly, the anger began to dissipate, and a rush of other emotions followed. Disgust, horror, and... Shiv muttered to himself. At some point, while talking to the orcs, there was less him imposing his will on them, and more them influencing him.

"Yeah, look, Valor, they didn't take ten minutes to kill all those Inquisitors. They took about twenty. And a few of them, uh, did stuff that I normally wouldn't like very much." He looked down at the ground, slightly ashamed. "They, uh, they might have also bribed me with a new piece of armor."

And instead of chiding Shiv, the Legendary Pathfarer just chuckled humorously. "Of course they did. It is a very reliable way of influencing someone. Silver Tongue, Sweet Talker, Heart Render, Gaze of Affection, Bribery… These are all Social Skills. Social Skills that you do not have, that you are ultimately unaware of. And these are Social Skills that you have been exposed to before the orcs."

"So, you mean they've just been manipulating me all this time? Well, I kind of knew that already."

Valor shook his head. Shiv paused and let him continue his explanation. "There are two layers to orc manipulation. The first is the obvious, their overt approaches. But the orcs are cunning and insidious creatures. More than anything, they are also subtle creatures. Their overt actions allow them to learn your ways, to see how you react to certain stimuli, to certain ideas."

"And from there, they adapt, and they make a more subtle approach," Shiv guessed.

"Correct," Valor said. "You are honest. You are brutal. You are direct. And so the orcs avoid being direct. Worse, every now and again, they let you catch them making an overt attempt. They let you think that you are noticing. And that decreases your suspicion. It makes you think you have the better of them. This has two effects. The first, it increases your Psychology levels. It amplifies your Social Skills. But it still allows them to manipulate you. Still.”

Shiv breathed. "Godsdamn fucking orcs." He felt his hands start shaking a little at how hard they twisted his head. "So everything I've noticed so far might be something they've fed to me on a silver platter."

"Yes," Valor confirmed. "But this is good. It is a useful lesson, and it has done what I wanted it to."

"What you wanted it to?" Shiv asked, confused. “Wait, you me to get fooled?”

"I thought of intervening earlier," Valor mused. "I thought of intervening several times. In fact, I wanted to take your place, to deal with the Challenger in your stead. But with how the orcs were fixated on you, with how much they valued your presence, I realized this is to our benefit as well."

"Me getting manipulated is to our benefit?"

"Yes," Valor said without any hesitation. "The orcs are formidable adversaries socially as well. And so, you will have to grow quickly to face them, to even protect yourself against them. This will prepare you for future social encounters. The fact that they have managed to manipulate you is good. It will increase your paranoia. It will make sure you think thrice before assuming anything. In the future, whenever the orcs say anything to you, you will likely think back to this moment. Back to how they influenced you. How they turned your character in on itself using your flaws. And how they managed to compromise your efforts."

"So you wanted me to learn a lesson," Shiv said. The Deathless clenched his teeth as he felt frustration boil underneath his flesh. "You know, Valor, I think I'd rather you intervened instead. I, uh... The fact that you allowed them to brutalize those inquisitors means that you didn't care much for them in the first place, doesn't it?"

"Psychological manipulation isn't mind-control, Shiv. Once again, you are not compromised psionically. You are compromised behaviorally and socially. Your flaw here wasn't that you are bribable." Valor paused and cocked his head. "Being bribable is also a flaw, however. It allows people to own you, to own certain decisions you make. I recommend that you get rid of it. However good a piece of equipment might be, or however much someone may offer you in terms of treasure, understand that it is not yours. Because you have given a piece of yourself away to gain such things. It doesn't make you a slave, but it does make you predictable. And those who become predictable are easy victims."

Shiv tried to think of something to say, but nothing came to him. There was just an ill feeling in his stomach, and a growing sensation of shame.

Awareness 36 > 37

Psychology 31 > 32