(I) Backstory

-Valor Thann246 (I)

Backstory

Shiv coughed a few times as he tried to clear the spit from his throat. "I'm… sorry?"

Jessica offered him a wry grin, her eyes twinkling with amusement. "Oh yeah, truth always throws people for a loop. Well, it's the ugly reality of it. I might be a Legend now, but you go back, I don't know, about a century or so, and I was just an uppity swordswoman who really shouldn't have been born. Mom and dad were stupid and then dead. Grandad didn’t have the will to finish me off, but also no real experience in raising a hellion. That's what a bunch of nobles liked to tell me before our duels."

Her eyes turned into crescents, and her smile grew even wider. "Maybe because the truth of my birth hit a little too close to home. See, the nobles used to practice a little thing we call genetic engineering and blood coding. They wanted the best genes for themselves and their kids, but they keep forgetting the fact that we live under the System. The System hates it when you try to bypass strife through means outside of its purview. It despises any kind of collective effort to make life easier for the individual, and so, well, it hurts you. It hits you with all kinds of things, like Curses and such, when you do things that might make life easier for people."

"But what about bloodlines and inherent benefits for certain races?" Shiv asked. “Elves are better at magic stuff, right?”

"Ah." Jessica held up her finger. "Now a good question. My only guess as to that is the possibility that the System sees it as a trade-off. See, if you're a kid with a bloodline, that means you probably can get started in greater scuffles than other children your age. It's a tough benefit analysis. Meanwhile, if someone gets blood-coded to avoid certain diseases, that's just not fun. It's not fair. They're just skipping everything. They're . The System doesn't want skipping, the system wants you to fight and die or fight and prevail. No avoid, never avoid."

She suddenly stopped talking and looked Shiv up and down. "Your name’s Marcus Unblood, ain't it? Unblood tells me that you have an ugly past too. What are you, some kind of bastard from up north? I guess that's the Unblood meaning, right?"

"No specific parentage," Shiv said, trying to phrase it diplomatically.

Jessica snorted. "'No specific parentage.' If only I could have used that. I think being an Unblood would have been better than being whatever I was. Jumped at the chance to steal Jackie’s family name to wash off some of the stink, but it’s still there. Like an old injury that didn't heal right. Or a defining memory. Running from it doesn’t do anything because it sticks to you. Like blood-caked shit. And not even a pressure wash will get it off your back.”

"I wouldn't know anything about that," Shiv almost growled. "I don't really get caked in bloody shit often."

"I'm sure you don't, kid." Jessica laughed. "But, um, well, you asked me quite a bit about me. What about you? Let me know a few things about you.”

"Me?" Shiv said. His mind went totally blank. He only knew a few aspects of Marcus's backstory, and from what he'd experienced earlier with Magnolia and the other Old Brunswick people, he had a whole lot of blanks he needed to fill up. Maybe she was testing him, trying to get him to reveal something. His paranoia remained strong, even after she'd admitted to no longer having 812 in her sword. "Not much to say about me, really. I'm from the north. Just some simple kid. Cursed. Not very well-liked because of it. Don't like giants. Had a bit of a rough trip coming over here. Woke up in the morgue because a giant poisoned me."

"Woke up in the morgue?" Jessica said, leaning in. "Wait, you revived in a morgue?"

"I just woke up in a morgue. They thought I was dead. My heart stopped."

"Your heart stopped?" Jessica repeated. She considered that for a moment, as if trying to see how plausible it was. "Okay, yeah, that's actually kind of interesting, Marcus, you see? You shouldn't put yourself down. You've had plenty of weird shit happen to you too." She giggled again. "Who says Legends get to have all the fun? Well, they can have a lot more fun than you do, but the problems are also infinitely greater. For every great peak, there is an even greater ditch. You go from being up in the clouds, and then right afterward, you're down in a collapsed tunnel, trying to dig your way out."

She looked down at the floor and drummed her fingers on the table in a rhythmic beat for a few moments. "You know, I'm kinda jealous of you."

Shiv did a double-take. "You are?"

"Yes. I am. You see, the sweetest part of my life was when I was in Master-Tier. In Master-Tier… almost no one really bothered me. Young, part of a mercenary group, still had my husband, first kid was on the way. We got to adventure everywhere. It was pretty good! It was all pretty good!"

She sounded more and more animated as she talked, but then something formed behind her eyes. Something Shiv couldn't quite grasp. "Things get messier once you hit Hero. Now, I'm not saying it's all sunshine and daisies as a Master. Far from it. People try to kill you, you fight a bunch of people, but you're powerful enough that most people probably don't want to waste their lives spending resources on you specifically when you're not in an actual military confrontation. Meanwhile, you're also not powerful enough that everyone on top of you or running the nation demands your attention, your presence, your favor to help them deal with whatever bullshit they got themselves into."

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Jessica started rubbing her face again, as if the mere memory of things was exhausting her. "But then… the whole Legend thing, this whole deal about ‘building your own glory,’ yeah, that comes with another part. It's called increasing your own baggage. Because you don't become a Legend clean. Nope. You have to kill a whole bunch of people and do a bunch of things. And sooner or later, you'll find yourself standing in the middle of a million dead enemies and a thousand live ones. Problem with those thousand live ones? They're all mean, tough, and vicious incest babies like you who shrugged off life’s attempts to abort them and keep refusing to die. And now they’re the animals you have to fight all the time.”

Jessica's naked bitterness took Shiv aback. "It… sounds like you don't actually enjoy being a Legend."

"Oh, no, I do." Jessica grinned. "I love being a Legend. I love being able to call upon Rusty and split the 'rise in half. I love being able to slice and stab and cut so far that my enemies don't even see it coming. I like opening a wound in space, stepping across, and then hacking a Jotun in half from behind while his family screams, while his tribe breaks and runs. I love hearing the lamentations of a Prophetess up north, declaring that she has seen my death, and then just taking her head off casually because what she's seen is delusion instead of Divination. I love all of that. It just comes with a mountain of shit."

She drew in a sharp breath as she tried to put her words together. "I'd like to think of life as this, right? It is a big mound of brown stuff. Now part of that brown stuff is pure, undigested, messy, sick person diarrhea."

Shiv tried not to imagine that. He failed. Jessica was going hard into the scat imagery today.

"Now mingled with that messy, soupy diarrhea—with its wonderful textures all clinging to everything—"

"Please stop," Shiv begged.

“—is chocolate. The best chocolate you've ever eaten. The kind of chocolate that melts and folds around your gums, that makes you adore sugar, that makes you want to go into a diabetic coma. But they're all crushed together. The shit and the chocolate mixed with each other. That's what being a Legend is like. And as a Legend, you have a mountain worth of shit and chocolate to consume. Now, the only way to find out which is which? You bite down. Good news, there's always a little bit of chocolate in the shit. Bad news, there's always a load of shit on the chocolate. No easy way of avoiding it.”

Shiv pressed his lips together as he considered that. “Sounds pretty miserable.”

The Giantsbane splayed her hands open. “It does, doesn't it? But you see, despite everything, I still wanna stick around. I still wanna keep playing, keep struggling, keep fighting. Because it matters. Yeah, I don't really talk to my kids that much. I spent too long up north. They don't really understand me. But that's fine. They're still here."

Jessica flinched almost imperceptibly as a shadow crept over her eyes. "Most of them, anyway. You thank Roland Arrow for the daughter I lost. But you know how many other people go back to the mud, unable to protect their own kids, forced to watch them die? Seen it too many times. Being a Legend gives you a choice. Being a Legend gives you a fighting chance. And being a Legend that you use that chance, because trouble is going to be coming from all corners, from all people, and you don't really have allies anymore. At least, not in most cases."

Shiv's grudge towards Jessica still burned hard inside of him. But as she rambled, a new feeling mingled with the lingering anger: a feeling of unwelcome sympathy. She was alone in some respects. She sounded miserable despite the glory she espoused. Now she was here, venting, dumping all her problems on some random Adept kid she didn't know and didn't think very highly of.

"Why don't you try to change it?" Shiv asked, the Sage of the Enkindled Heart burning hot inside of him.

Jessica frowned. "Change what? My life?"

"Yeah. You're a Legend, right? You have power."

"It doesn't really work like that, kid."

"Why?" Shiv asked. He was getting a little annoyed at her. At the defeatism despite her power. It was… Well, in a word, it was—

Helix finished for him.

Despite everything, it was Tulveg who spoke up in her defense.

Helix shot back.

Tulveg scoffed humorlessly.

Shiv could tell the vampire's words left a cut, but before their argument could continue, Jessica sighed. She didn't directly reply to his last question. Instead, her gaze went someplace distant again. "You see, Jackie was the idealistic one. I just liked swinging the sword. If you'd said this to him, he probably would have written it down to think about it later in his free time. He loved to write. Loved to talk to people. Loved to try to make things better. Loved a lot of things…"

Jessica trailed off, and neither of them said anything for a few moments.

“Jackie would have loved a lot of things,” she suddenly continued. “Being a parent. He cared more about that than I did. Me?" Hawgrave licked her lips and then slumped as if there was a tangible weight pressing upon her shoulders. "You know, after Jackie died… Ah, you know who Jackie is, right? My husband?"

"Yeah. Mad Atlas," Shiv said. He didn't know that much about the man, but Adam had told him a few things.

“Right. Mad Atlas. That's what they called him after… it happened.” Jessica laughed, but this time her voice held no humor. "He would have hated that name. He hated all those stupid titles. He just liked being called Jackie. He didn't even like 'suffering' a Pathbearer honorific."

"Sounds pretty down to earth," Shiv replied.

And this time, Jessica did genuinely laugh. She barked a loud note of joy and nearly jumped off the desk. "Down to earth! Hah… He would have loved that shit, kid. ‘Cause he was a Geomancer and had his Physicality fused with that, and being down to earth gave him strength, you know? Anyway, you'll get it when I give you more context. Jackie, right? Everyone loved Jackie. Jackie would go around the world fixing things. He would go to gates, and then he would worry about the creatures inside. Didn’t like hurting animals. He would talk to people. He would go around camp building up fortifications, fixing people's homes when we stopped in towns. He'd do all this, and he'd still always be wondering how he could make things better, how he could be a better person. I… I think that’s why I fell for him—because in a world of hard, incest-born bastards, here was a guy who's decent. Even with power and renown, he was just decent. Not just to the good little people but to a messed-up street rat like me."

But then the brightness and joy bled out from her eyes like blood from an open wound. "I'm not like that. Never was. Guess I have the ability to be pleasant with people, but honestly, I don't let things go too well. After Jackie died, I went up north for a good eight years. Didn't tell my kids, didn't tell anyone, didn't ask for permission. Just went, and I started killing. Killing, killing, killing. Killing giants, because it was their fault. Couldn't let it go. I killed so many during those years. Didn't stop fighting for months, and they sent more and more people after me. Armies and hunter-killers and rival Heroes and finally Legends. Killed them all. Rusty and I. Only reason I stayed sane was because of Rusty. But the thing with him is that he imprinted on me, so he loved Jackie as much as I did. And so we fought, and we killed, and we butchered. And with our efforts, we took a few percentage points off the frost giant population count."

"That's how you got your name," Shiv said.

"That's a bad story," Jessica replied. "But, well, this couldn't last forever."

"Were you cut down? Did you have to be saved?" Shiv asked, more curious than anything else. This didn't track with what she was telling him.

The Giantsbane shook her head sadly. "Left, cause after eight years of killing, right? Found myself hiding in a cave, preparing for the next massacre. Had gotten my eyes on a whole chain of towns and cities to butcher my way across. Then comes this runt of a girl. Not big for a giant. Still huge, though, much larger than me. But she stomps in my cave, probably ‘cause I hadn't bothered really concealing it, and there is this fire in her eyes. She has this hateful rage seeping off her, and she's pointing her axe at me. And around it there's these walls of blood that circle it like some nasty crimson whirlwind." Shiv still held eye contact with Jessica, but he had the feeling she wasn't truly looking at him, then. "She tells me that I killed her father, her brother, her lover, and that she is here to see things settled. 'Let blood be blood,' she declares."

"Was she also a Legend?" Shiv asked.

Jessica smiled softly. "Please, she wasn't even a Hero. Barely a True Master. After her speech, she raises her axe and the blood whirlwind around it, takes a step toward me—and I cut her down. Not even a fight. Then, as she lies there, split from shoulder to groin, she shivers, she looks up at me, and she spits her hate between mouthfuls of blood. After a few moments, that hate becomes sobbing, and between sobs she cries out for all the ones I'd killed. She cries out for all the things she'll never get to do. She asks the System why something like me would exist, why it would take so much from her."

She shook herself, and it seemed like she only saw Shiv again right then. "After that, the hate inside me froze over. Don't get it wrong. I still hate them. The loathing’s still there. It just doesn't burn that bright anymore. I just paused. I think cutting apart that giant girl made me realize it was all bullshit. I wasn’t unique. My loss is just another story that’s been happening, that keeps happening, that won’t ever end, because of the System. I left the same night. I came home. I did the usual thing: drink and venture around, reconnect with my kids, and all that. But it wasn't the same. And nothing's been the same since."