245 (II)

  Backstory [I]

  Jessica's expression froze. She raised a hand in front of her mouth. Her face changed color, turning bright red. He would have assumed she was offended, but her emotional core didn't fill with any kind of heat whatsoever. It simply continued quivering with that tranquil water. And then it turned; it expanded, and Jessica started laughing. "Oh, you are bold. You said that to my face. Oh man, that is good."

  Sage of the Enkindled Heart: No matter what grudges we can hold against Jessica, we have to be thankful that she doesn't get offended easily.

  The Legendary swordswoman continued laughing for a full minute straight, and when she finally finished doubling over, she wiped her lips, scrubbing away the half-chewed chunks of biscuit she'd sprayed out. "Yeah, yeah. Anyway, I think I needed that. It's been a pretty ugly day for me too. You know, after telling you all that stuff… I'll be honest: Things didn't go so well for me because I ran into someone else."

  "Someone else?" Shiv said, feeling increasingly tense.

  "Yeah… so, I told you about the vampire, right? Well… I think the vampire was hunting my grandson. The other guy, though, was a complete surprise: the Deathless!"

  And something inside Shiv plunged to the very bottom of the Abyss, where the Great One resided.

  "The Deathless? I'm not sure I know who that is.”

  "Well, you probably shouldn't, but you did get a notification, right? Something about Shiv, the Deathless, how you're going to get 10 Legendary Skills if you kill him for good?"

  The Deathless in question slowly nodded, trying not to cringe or scream.

  "He was here tonight too. You might have missed him since you were trapped under that rubble and all, but he managed to make an even larger hole through the central tower of the hospital. He has this Pillar of Orichalcum Skill. Makes him a hard cookie to break."

  "But did you break him?" Shiv asked hastily.

  "Oh, well, I did pretty good, but..." Jessica hesitated. "He managed to get away. He has a lot of skills and System-knows what other weird Magical Skill hiding up his—” She snorted. “Well, it can’t be hiding up his ass anymore. Anyway, something about him isn't right."

  "Isn't right?" Shiv repeated, struggling not to smack her across the face. He wanted to know what his enemy thought of him.

  "Yeah, like, his skills are advancing a little too fast. Now, I understand he has some kind of weird, messed-up experiment Curse baby thing going there, but he's not the first Unique Pathbearer I've fought. He's probably not going to be the last Unique Pathbearer I put down, either. But he’s growing fast. And if I give him any more time, I can see him becoming a proper problem. And I hate proper problems.”

  Shiv nodded slowly, but Jessica wasn't even paying attention to him anymore, just staring up at the ceiling, lost in thought. "The first time I fought him was," she tutted, "maybe, I don't know, two weeks ago? We were on our way toward the coast, and he showed up out of nowhere, trying to infiltrate us. He had this guise…" She giggled. "He was trying to pretend to be one of the Inquisition's escaped soldiers, and, well, let’s just say I had a dirty little trick to counter his."

  She looked back down at him, amusement written across her face, and Shiv’s brain ground to a complete halt. 812. I felling forgot about 812.

  The Deathless just stared at her, and he tried not to betray anything. Though his cover was probably blown, she hadn't done anything yet. So, he was intent on making this charade last as long as he could so he could find his way out.

  "Shiv? Shiv? What's happening?" Adam asked.

  "I think we're blown."

  A note of alarm came from Adam. “What? What?! How?”

  "I think she's just been playing with us this whole time. The first time she discovered me was because of 812. She has him in her sword."

  "WHAT!" Adam nearly screamed.

  Shiv was too tired to be terrified. He simply accepted the situation as it was and prepared to adjust accordingly.

  And then Jessica did something he didn't expect. She sighed. She slumped over sideways and lay her head down on the table, blowing at a few of the crumbs lying there. "You know, hunting him down would be much easier now if I still had my Deathless-sniffing orc."

  "What?" Shiv said, a little too quickly.

  She frowned at him. "What you mean, 'what'?”

  “What orc?” Shiv asked, his mind racing to cover things up.

  “Oh, so, get this, right, our friend the Deathless has an ugly run-in with an orc at a place called Gate Theborn. It doesn't matter where it is; let's just say it's a place that you will never end up going to. The orc dies, revives, escapes from the grand gate near Lone Star, and makes his way all the way to our southern border, where he surrenders, submits to us, informs us of a specific threat geared to bring down the Republic, and says that he wishes to help us. Now, his condition is that he needs to be brought with us because he has the ability to sense whenever the Deathless is near."

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  "And he's gone missing?" Shiv asked. A feeling of hope blossomed inside him, though he quickly clenched it back under control.

  "Yup," Jessica replied, dragging her head back and forth across the table as she nodded. "The orc that was trapped inside my sword just went missing somehow. Poof!" She made a wild, wavy gesture. "Have no idea how he did it. Rusty has no idea. It's never happened before. So, I think that I'm dealing with more than one enemy Legend, probably one that specializes in stealth. He broke out with quite a few prisoners, and the orc went missing, I don't know, right after the Rubix Well went up. Pretty convenient, don't you think?"

  Shiv's mouth opened, but no sound came out. If he did speak, it would be little more than an extended wheeze. Unlike Jessica, Shiv did have a guess as to why 811 was free. Veronica. After all, who else could have reached into a dimensional blade and pulled its prisoner free? Who else but the one that Jessica suspected the least?

  The situation wasn't convenient; it was deliberate. Engineered so that Shiv wouldn't be tracked down by the Giantsbane so easily. Shiv hated it, but he owed his grandmother twice over now. Perhaps even more than that. Godsdamn it, Shiv snarled to himself. She's going to hold this over me next time we talk.

  Jessica turned over and glared up at the ceiling again, aiming her hate at the System. "Doesn't matter, really. It's just another fight, just another big brawl between Legends, just another crisis. Should keep your eyes peeled while you're around campus, though. There might be more escaped prisoners around here, preparing to cause havoc. That being said, this Deathless guy, I don't think you need to worry about him specifically that much."

  "Why’s that?" Shiv asked. Once more, his curiosity returned.

  Jessica reached up and awkwardly scratched the side of her face with gauntleted fingers. "I'm telling you all this partially to vent, because, well, you're just a dumb kid who's concussed, and you'll probably forget some of this anyway. You'll end up telling your classmates that you spoke to Jessica Hawgrave, the Giantsbane. And then the other details, well, who knows how much of that you'll hold on to? To answer your question, it's because despite everything, and despite how much I'm certain he hates me for what I did to him earlier…" She snickered as she trailed off again. “I told you I had a shitty day earlier, and I meant it. Literally. The sonnabitch was tougher than Orichalcum, but I managed to slip up his ass and start hacking him up from there. Let me tell you, he had some of the hardest felling folds I ever cut into. But I did. I split the insides of his ass deep, and he roared like a dying troll. I won’t lie, it sounded funny. Very. I almost feel a bit bad about it, but I’m also pissed at him for getting shit on my nice armor.”

  Jessica chuckled.

  Shiv’s eye twitched.

  "Shiv," Adam pleaded. "Just… don’t do anything. I know you want to, but just don’t. I understand. I’m here.”

  “That sounds really brutal,” Shiv finally said, keeping his tone neutral.

  “Yeah. But you gotta get down and dirty with people on your Tier, kid.” She started throwing lazy jabs in his direction. “I think I’m going to leave an Inertium bomb up his ass next time. That’ll fuck his shit up for days.”

  If Shiv hadn't had the Sage of the Enkindled Heart, he would have gone Berserk and tried to shove his Last Morsel up her ass right then and there just to sate his lust for revenge.

  Instead, his insides came afire with dark loathing.

  Jessica continued on, utterly ignorant about the hidden bomb sitting right next to her. "I don't think he's that much of a bad guy. No, he cares about the innocent. He cares about bystanders, collateral damage. He has Inertial Overdrive. He could have detonated it at any point. Hells, he could have done a lot of things to just utterly mess all of you up. And do some damage to me. But he didn't. That tells me something about him. Tells me that he's here for more than just blind revenge. That he's planning something. Or maybe that I'm not getting the full picture." Jessica fell quiet, and it looked like her thoughts were wandering again.

  And Shiv realized he had an opening. An opening to influence one of his enemies without violence.

  "Do you think people are hiding things from you?" he asked cautiously.

  Jessica's eyes snapped to him. She frowned. "Hiding things from me? Yeah, sure. Everyone hides things from me. I work part-time for the Inquisition. I deal with the politicians. I schmooze with the nobles. Everyone in the above categories are liars. And they're usually pretty bad liars at that. But…"

  "But what?" Shiv prodded.

  "But, you know, with the whole thing I'm embroiled in right now... feels like I'm missing too much of the picture. The Deathless told me something while we were fighting. Didn't have long to talk since he wasn't alone, and I ended up getting jumped by one of my old enemies' kids." She snorted. "Roland Fucking Arrow’s brat. If you heard the saying that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, well, I got a new one for you. Rat bastards breed rat bastards. And Roland Arrow is the rattest of bastards there is."

  Adam nearly exploded from sheer outrage. "Shiv, jam your thumb into this wench's eye. And then ram your frying pan up her ass! YOU KEEP MY FATHER’S NAME OUT OF YOUR MOUTH!”

  "Not now, Adam," Shiv said, finding himself in the awkward role of the calm one. "Not right now. You keep yourself cool."

  The Gate Lord struggled considerably more than Shiv did. "I need to evolve my Psychology Skill again," Adam grumbled.

  "Oh, yeah, speaking of which, what did you evolve?"

  "Cognitive Therapy," Adam forced out. "It's helping a bit."

  The Giantsbane let out a breath. "Anyway, before I ended up getting shot in the head by Roland's little shit, that Deathless guy said something about another relative of mine, Heather. I know she was at Blackedge. The Inquisition said she went missing somehow, but the Deathless told me that some of my own people got her. He said some pretty interesting things."

  "Maybe he was just trying to rattle you," Shiv offered. "Or pretending to be someone impartial. Someone else."

  Jessica shook her head. "No, no, that's not what you say to someone to throw them off. That's very specific. And frankly, he sounded like he knew Heather. So, I have two guesses. One: He hurt Heather, and now I'm down a family member, and I have to explain to someone why their daughter's not coming home again. Which is bad enough as it is, considering I barely talk to most of my kids anymore. Two: He's right, and Stormhalt and I need to have a bit of a chat."

  Shiv swallowed. "Stormhalt, like Maxime Van Stormhalt?"

  "Havel Van Stormhalt," Jessica corrected. "Let's not associate poor little Maxime with them. She’s uh…" Jessica looked almost sympathetic. "Her parentage really isn’t her fault. You really shouldn’t judge her for that."

  "I'm not," Shiv replied. "I just, you know, all I know is that she has the same family name. Assumed she's nobility."

  Jessica cocked her head. "Yeah, kind of. She is technically nobility, but in most other ways, she's a bit more like me: a bastard and an incest baby."

  Shiv choked on his own spit.