(I) Reunion

-42 (I)

Reunion

“Hey, Oldsmith? Is there a kitchen in this place? I’m more than a little pent-up after getting what feels like half a small nation killed, and I want to cook. I to cook.”

Shiv’s sudden request practically made the automaton slam headfirst into the ceiling in terror. He stood at the doorway of the interrogation room, coated in splattered biomass and drenched in blood. Behind him, the barely-dressed, physically healed, but now extremely disturbed duo that was Heather and Tran gagged at what Shiv had done to the Inquisitors. There wasn’t a single patch of the interrogation chamber that was untouched by blood or damage. The remains of the bald Inquisitor now resembled spilled porridge, and his two surviving comrades whimpered and wept from their wounds.

Both Siggy and Oldsmith gawked at the sight of the Deathless. A small, glowing wyrm composed of drifting constellations of spell-shapes orbited his left arm. But more importantly, his helmet and mask were off, leaving his face the only thing unblemished by viscera in that general area. And then there was the .

Siggy gagged. Oldsmith’s legs gave out as he began to pray. “I… oh, Ascendants, oh dear sweet gods, please protect me! Oh, Aurora!”

Shiv frowned and turned to look at the blood-meat sludge that was the bald Inquisitor. He grunted a dark laugh and grinned at Oldsmith. “Yeah. That one was a lot more faithful than you were. Didn’t help him much.” Shiv stopped to consider something. “Actually, I’m not sure if my new Biomancy Evolution will work on you or most automata for that matter.” Shiv hummed. “I got some thinking to do. And that’s why I need to cook. So again—before I lose my temper this time—kitchen? Where?”

Intimidation > 49

“N-not here b-b-but I-I-I—” the automaton started clutching his chest. Shiv narrowed his eyes.

“What the hells are you doing?” Shiv asked.

“Core… it’s misfiring and sparking…” Oldsmith groaned. “I need a moment.”

Shiv reactively pressed his Biomancy into the automaton and chided himself when he realized there was nothing organic to manipulate.

“Oldsmith,” Shiv said. “If you die from the bot equivalent of a heart attack, I’m going to steal your face and pin these murders on you.” He was already planning on doing something like that, but Oldsmith didn’t need to know all the details beforehand.

Suddenly, the Master-Advisor was feeling much better. “Y-yes, I’m—I have a penthouse! At—at the top of this building. We can… all we need to do is…”

“Wow, you hear that, Tran? Penthouse.” Shiv chuckled. Tran stared at Shiv with a traumatized expression as he soothed Heather while she struggled not to throw up. The Deathless winced. “Right. The Psychomancy and interrogation probably did something bad to the both of you. Let’s get you guys out of here and then… Well, I guess I could take a look at your mind. I’m an even worse Psychomancer than a Biomancer, though.”

That cracked something in Tran. “Well, that sounds pretty good to me considering what you did back there.”

Shiv laughed. “You have no idea what it took for me to develop that Skill Evolution.” Shiv paused and then shot the dead, soupy Inquisitor another look. “Actually, it was doing a lot of that. To myself and everyone else.”

Heather lost the fight against her rebelling stomach, but only ended up dry heaving over a puddle of blood. When she was done, she started sobbing quietly, prompting Tran to kneel down and hold her. Shiv just looked at them for an awkward moment.

“Alright, Oldsmith. Let’s go see this penthouse. After I try doing something about all this blood first.” Shiv examined his newly evolved Biomancy—. He called the blood-colored mana wyrm to his hand and studied it for a moment. It moved and danced to his whims. His standard Biomancy was still there, but this thing was attracted to injuries and physical harm. Shiv looked at the moaning Inquisitors, the Slayers he just rescued, and back at his wyrm. “Well, new friend, I think we’re both going to be eating good real soon.”

It took a while for Shiv to gather all the blood together. As powerful as his Biomancy was now, he still wasn’t any good at the very detailed operations. He accidentally flayed one of the Inquisitors a bit, and thus one of his wyrms got to feed a little earlier than expected. This was when Shiv encountered the first limitation of his new Skill Evolution. The Woundeater wasn’t a feed and forget magical skill, but rather concentrate and carry. The injuries and damages the wyrms consumed became crystallized within them as a new pattern to their overarching spellwork, and that demanded some pretty deep focus from Shiv.

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As for the penalties of getting distracted—well, the consumed wounds needed to go somewhere, and these wyrms were anchored to Shiv’s mana and soul. This was how Shiv accidentally peeled an entire strip off his own back. Such was the second limitation and consequence of Woundeater: it made Shiv the wielder of wounds, but also the default recipient if he didn’t pass them on to another organic entity. Pair that with the constant mana strain when channeling the Woundeater wyrms, and this was proving to be a very potent magical skill, but also a delicate one.

It was also something that Shiv was going to be constantly experimenting with, since he now had an easy means of casting his injuries at enemies or taking them from allies.

“This is awesome…” Shiv chuckled as he stole another wound from the female Inquisitor he beat down earlier. A wyrm rushed through her face, drawing away a mess of swelling wounds and fractures before diving back into Shiv. He felt most of his teeth shatter, his skull crack and balloon, and his brain throb with explosive agony. After a slight wince, he nodded to himself. “Alright. Three out of ten. But the concussion is useful. I think I’m going to start memorizing the effects of certain injuries. I think if I can capture a specific state of brain damage—wait, let me try something.”

He pulled one of his old corpses out from his cloak and cast a new spell. A wyrm surfaced from under his skin, swallowing all the damage he just inflicted on himself. A second later, his teeth were back, the inflammation and broken bones were gone, and the brain damage vanished. He cast the injuries into the body and to his delight, he watched the corpse shudder and twitch as it inherited all his wounds.

“Yes!” Shiv cheered, laughing gleefully. “Organic tissue. That’s all we need. I think.” A second later, the wyrm splashed back into him, and he grunted with discomfort. A bit of the concussion had returned. Not all of it, but some, leaving a pain in the back of his skull. Shiv frowned. He used his Biomancy to examine the corpse again and saw, though it sustained some damage to its brain, a few other parts were long-ruined by a lack of oxygen since death. In essence, he couldn’t inflict wounds on something incapable of suffering any additional damage. “So. Availability is an issue too. I guess the next thing is seeing how many wounds can be contained in my wyrms and if they pass through multiple targets at once… But they’re already pretty godsdamned awesome, if I do say so myself. What do you think? Tran? Heather?”

Shiv turned to regard the recently-rescued Slayers with a wide grin. The grin faltered slightly as they offered him slack-jawed, wide-eyed stares. “What?” Shiv said, unsure if he did something wrong. He cast the remaining head trauma still stuck inside him back to the slowly rousing Inquisitor. She gave a sharp cry and blacked out again—more from the shock of him blasting through her broken Magical Resistance. And was another little experiment he conducted. His field was three times wider in area, but a stronger. Previously, smashing his Biomancy against someone’s Magical Resistance felt like using a chisel to crack through a wall.

Now, he had a proper hammer, and godsdamn was he going to use it. But that roused a different question too: Why Magical Resistance didn't seem to evolve like the other skills. It just seemed to get stronger…

“What the hells happened to you, Omenborn?” Heather whispered, breaking the silence. She and Tran were both seated on Oldsmith’s couch now, each wrapped in a blanket, wearing a set of overly luxurious but ill-fitting robes “donated’ by the automaton. Two untouched cups of steaming tea were placed on the masterfully-carved stone table in front of them. Meanwhile, the two surviving Inquisitors lay shivering on a spread of plastic sheets that Siggy managed to find.

It was a temporary arrangement, but that was okay, because to Shiv, the Inquisitors and Oldsmith were just He would keep them around until he learned everything he needed. After that, Shiv would deal with them for good. Siggy’s fate was still to be determined.

Her compliance was mostly because she was piss-terrified of Shiv, but aside from being a slave runner and a drug dealer, she had been mostly cooperative—even useful during his shoddy attempt at an infiltration. Meanwhile, Oldsmith was sitting on the ground beside the Inquisitors, trembling and muttering pleas and prayers under his breath.

Having someone to contrast your virtues did wonders for how you looked.

“What do you mean, ‘what happened to me?’” Shiv said, frowning at Heather. “I got my Path. That’s what happened. I got killed. Got my Path. Got thrown down into the Abyss. Got killed a bunch more. Ran into some new people that are—” Shiv thought of Valor, the Composer, Uva, and all the others. Even Adam. “Well, let’s just say I like them a lot more than most of you assholes from Blackedge. And now I’m here trying to take this gate, stop a weapon from being delivered, and go save Blackedge. Even if it is filled with assholes like you.”

That left a lot of very details out, but he thought it was good enough for now. He’d give them the full story later. Right now, though… “Siggy! What’s the situation with those potatoes?”

“I-I-I—” a high-pitched series of stammers came from the kitchen. And a pretty good kitchen at that. Oldsmith was understating when it said penthouse. This place was a literal mini-mansion crowning the building. The penthouse’s wardrobe was practically as large as the tiny consulate the Republic had here. And that wasn’t going into the library, the recreation room, the machine-foundry—used by Oldsmith to maintain and improve its chassis. And the kitchen. Practically twenty full meters filled with every appliance and utensil Shiv could want. And a mana freezer and pantry with all sorts of ingredients. Ingredients found in both the Abyss and on the surface.

“I, uh…” Siggy finally managed. Shiv examined her using his Biomancy and sighed. She sliced her hand open again.

He sent a wyrm to handle that. The spine-broken Inquisitor Psychomancer wasn’t going to be using his hands much anyway. The goblin cried out again as the wyrm slipped into the kitchen and rushed back out before splashing into the Inquisitor. He gave a weak cry—and Shiv caught Heather clenching her jaw in what looked like hateful satisfaction.

“If you can’t go fast, do it slow. And clean the food. I’ve tasted enough blood for a day.” Shiv shook his head. “Now I know how Georges feels all the time. Basic things people can’t do right. And then they get too scared and start being stupid too. Still. Assistant chefs really take the load off of the general prep—ah, who am I kidding, I’ll probably have to throw out her potatoes and do it again myself. Can’t put up with terrible work.” He eyed Tran, and the man was still staring at him, unblinking, absolutely stunned.

Shiv sighed. “Alright. Cut that out.”

“What?” Tran said, snapping out of his stupor.

“The “shocked” thing. Is it so hard to accept that I’m a Pathbearer now? Is that it? You can’t imagine the Omenborn finally having a little power? Or are you just dreading the report you’re going to need to give Roland Arrow now?” Yeah, Shiv was still a bit pissed about that.

“No, what—wait, how did you know about that?” Tran asked.

“The Town Lord told me during the Festival of the Eclipse. As he admitted to me that he didn’t want me to take a Path—that he couldn’t let it happen, and that all the times you two showed up, it was to make sure I was still just a Pathless.” Shiv sneered. “And all that time, I thought you were nice because you were from the capital. Not like the other bastards. Guess I hoped a little too much.”

Tran had the decency to look ashamed. Heather, however, had to be . “No. This… this is impossible. You can’t be… You can’t be him.”

“I can’t be ?”

“Shiv’s an Omenborn—and, and he’s… I saw his bodies. There were so many of them…” She blinked, her wide, purple eyes staring off into someplace distant. “He died. Over and over… But… even if—no one progresses that fast. It’s been… two weeks? Maybe? Two weeks since the attack. You—you’re more than a Master. That one—” Heather swallowed, staring viciously at the badly beaten female Inquisitor. “She tore through us like we were nothing. She killed Glide and Alice like—like she was crushing .”

A tear fell from Heather’s right eye as she bit down on her bottom lip. Shiv was surprised. Heather Hawgrave had always seemed aloof and arrogant to him. Uncaring, even. But now she was openly weeping over the death of her teammates. .

“And you… ” Heather whispered. “What you did to her—the way you beat her—are you? What are you?”