255 (II)

  Extraction [II]

  ***

  "So, how's the food here?" Shiv asked. "Any of the ugly finger-shaped bastards good at cooking?"

  Uva couldn't help it. She let out a low, tired laugh. "You are ridiculous. But no, if I'm to be honest, I haven't eaten since…" She paused. Shiv also paused. He'd been in the kitchen recently. But when was the last time he ate? It was hard to remember. Did he even sample any of the bread at Monster Mystery Meat? He couldn't recall.

  "It's been a long bloody while since any of us had any rest," Adam said. The Gate Lord's shoulders sagged, and he looked at Uva attentively, waiting for someone to arrive. Roland and Rose were currently absent. They were tending to the wounded and the sick down within the castle's infirmary—including Isabella, apparently. Adam had let out a long, long breath of relief when hearing she was still alive, though the tension didn't leave him entirely. She was in the infirmary for a reason after all.

  The situation within Blackedge had turned for the worse in recent days, and not even because of the eldritch.

  Rather, it was due to the magical plagues that Sullain had inflicted upon the town during the days of the siege.

  And as the companions reunited, hovering at the center of this liminal space forged by two minds, a pair of gods conversed with each other, looming over them. Ethereal shadows that spoke in tones of distant thunder. Shiv could only faintly hear what they were talking about, but it sounded like an argument. A clash between two raging storms, both accusing each other of not being enough, of failing the other, both frustrated, both desperate.

  Hades Hymn stood a comfortable distance away from the gathered parties. The space the Headmaster gave was for privacy, but Shiv knew this was a telepathic connection. There would be no privacy here. However, he seemed indifferent to the moments happening before him, even a little bored, as if he had encountered this moment before one too many times and simply wanted to skip past it.

  Shiv reached out and took Uva by her left hand. She almost pulled it back for a moment, but then relented, letting him see how much her Cryomancy had changed her. The Deathless looked upon the temporally altered rime dancing across an entire half of her body. Beneath the altered frost, a tendril of blackness emerged, peering out at the Deathless.

  "Too late, too early, too unnatural," the Eldest declared. But their voice was a whisper, and there was a faint hint of fear. Fear not for Shiv, but something else. A fear chain extended out from under Uva's skin, but it didn't pierce Shiv directly. Instead, it slithered past him toward something unseen. Something unseen but close by.

  “Cullywier,” Shiv realized.

  "Excuse me?" Uva said, confused.

  "I got a fairy helping me out now, courtesy of the Brokers. Turns out the eldritch don't really like the fae because they're cyclical immortals or something."

  "Will not be able to change things. Will not," the Eldest almost seethed. "Will not. Cannot. Won't let you. Already happened. Already happened. Already happened."

  "Yeah, well, from my perspective, there's still a future," Shiv said, his jaw clenched tight. "And if you do see the future, I got a question for you. When do I reach inside of her and rip you out? When do you die screaming as I pull you apart with my bare, godsdamn hands?"

  To this, the Eldest simply retreated, unwilling to engage further with the creature that had delayed one metamorphosis already.

  "Felling coward," Shiv hissed.

  Uva let out a sigh. "I must confess that I have doubts about our current strategy, but I think I have doubts about a great many things these days. To use the orcs in the way you want to... It seems like trying to use one fire to fight another. It could see both battered into submission after the oxygen is all used up, but it's also more likely to combust and burn the rest of the gate down."

  "The world is combusting,” Adam countered. “Everything wants to burn us. Everything wants to kill us. We gain more enemies by the day. Shiv can't go to a restaurant without it turning into a revenge conspiracy for a fae Princess's rogue toast knight, who we still need to eventually return to the Fairwoods somehow. I mean, gods, there's been three catastrophes that we had to deal with on this day alone.”

  "At least," Shiv grunted tiredly.

  "And that's not including all the women that you've charmed while disguised," Adam snuck in casually.

  "You piece of shit!" Shiv hissed at his friend. “I’m going to mince your ass-folds, you hawk-looking motherfuc—”

  "Now, what's this?" Uva lifted an eyebrow. "Practicing your Infidelity Skill while assuming another's guise? How questionable, how utterly lamentable… And in scarcely more than a few days. How do the noble women of your Republic respond to this, Young Lord Arrow? Oh, right. You're an utter rake, Shiv of Blackedge."

  Shiv gaped. Adam blinked in surprise. "How do you know what a rake is?"

  "I've been speaking to your mother. Well, more like she's been speaking at a sliver of my consciousness, helping me keep sane while the rest of me continues my campaign of endless mental warfare against an entire nightmarish forest shaped from hand-themed monsters."

  And just then, she looked over her shoulder. "Ah, speaking of which…" Two more presences blinked into the mindscape. The world around them shifted like the parting of mists, and there, across from them, stood Rose Van Erren and Roland Arrow.

  Rose's hair was longer. Surprisingly, her complexion looked brighter as well. Her body and musculature were more filled out than before. Nothing substantial, but she was gradually developing out of being a meager Pathless.

  Roland, meanwhile, had gone the opposite way. He looked worse than he ever did. He was gaunter, his cheekbones were practically cutting out through his skin, his eyes were sunken, and he resembled a corpse that had just barely been wrenched back from the threshold of oblivion.

  The Town Lord flinched when he saw Shiv, and the Deathless barely held himself back from snarling at Roland. But Shiv asserted control over himself. No, right now, Adam needed to talk with his family. Adam hadn't gotten to talk with his family for far too long. And he needed it.

  Sage of the Enkindled Heart: We are responsible for more than just ourselves now. There is an ocean of anger in us for Roland Arrow. He might even deserve it. But we must wield the flame. We must deliver the flame exactly, precisely. There is no purpose to me as a skill if you burn Adam in the crossfire. We will kindle our hate if we must, but remember this: Anger is a means to an end. Anger is a weapon. We do not swing on our family. We do not swing on those who stand beside us, on the few beings that are precious to us in this life.

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  Philosophy 35 > 38

  "Mother, father," Adam breathed, and Shiv could hear the tears welling in the back of the Gate Lord's throat. He hid them well, but the Deathless's psychology was like a hound that could taste blood in the air. Pain, hate, anger, fear. These things left stenches. Stenches that his soul savored like a tongue.

  Shiv said nothing as Adam drifted closer to his family. The Deathless would stay silent until the time arrived, until he had a proper moment toward the end for certain things to be addressed between him and his former Town Lord.

  "Are you alright?" Uva said. Suddenly, Shiv realized she was holding onto him. Her ever-shattering hand curled around a few of his fingers.

  His first reaction was to brush her off, to assure her that he was unbreakable, but there was a maturity that came with his recent evolutions. "I'm changing. Not as much as you, but I think there are some things I have to face." He paused for a moment. "I got Cursed, you know?"

  "Again?" she replied, eyes widening. "Which god did you offend this time?"

  He smiled. She knew him far too well. "Maiden the Genius. I might have gotten into more than one scuffle with the Ascendants while escaping the Rubix Well." Shiv clenched his teeth as he forced the ugly truth out of himself. "Can't cook like I used to. Everything I try to make rots and starts bleeding. So there's that. Managed to steal a weird skill from a Bread-Knight earlier that lets me kinda sorta circumvent this. But, uh, don’t fully know how that works yet either.”

  Uva, for her part, didn't respond immediately. She took a few moments to consider how he was feeling and what she could say to help him. "I'm sorry. It feels like a dismemberment, doesn't it? Is that why I feel a sea of fire churning inside of you? You have it quite well controlled, though. Far better than before."

  "My Berserk merged with my Psychology," he admitted.

  A breath escaped from the Umbral. "You attain the oddest Skill Fusions."

  "I get forced into the dumbest fights," Shiv replied. "And it seems like that's contagious. I shouldn't be out here venting to you. It should be the other way around."

  A subtle smirk played across Uva's face, but it faded a second later. "I don't vent. I just solve the problem."

  He gave her hand a slight squeeze. Even within her mind, she felt cold—but her frost grinded against his Chronomancy as well. Change. There was no avoiding it as a Pathbearer. "I know, it's practically your most attractive trait. Well, maybe second, third, fourth, or fifth… I don't know. Currently, your most attractive trait to me is the fact that you can torture the Recollectors."

  "Ah, yes, I remember this: The quickest way to a man's heart is through the wailing screams of his hated enemies," Uva replied dryly. "I'll be sure to confirm this to the rest of my Sisters once I return to Weave."

  They stared at each other for a second, and then a snort escaped both of them. He pulled her in close and hugged her tightly.

  "I missed you something bad," Shiv admitted after a few moments of silence. "And I should have tried to reach you sooner somehow. Time doesn't pass normally in there, does it? Sounds like you've been there way longer than I've been out here."

  Uva shook her head and pulled away from him. "Purposeless regret is wasted. We cannot change what the System heaps upon us. We can only strive to overcome them, to rise beyond them. This is just another trial, and I chose to fight alongside you and Adam. I chose to be with you, and this is the consequence. I don't regret it." She tilted her head. "Do you?"

  "Meeting you? No, but I think that might be a selfish feeling on my part." He looked between her and Adam, even at Roland and Rose. He listened to Cripple and the Starhawk arguing in the distance. Shiv breathed in. "Despite everything, despite all the shit I have been through, I like this. Through the misery, through all the bullshit, through all the godsdamn strife, I like this. Because I can fight this, because I have people worth fighting for, and I have things worth fighting for. Before I met you and made my peace with Adam, all I had was Georges. I wasn't a person when I was living on Blackedge. I was just a survivor, an animal with a little bit more intelligence than most. Barely that, sometimes.”

  He looked into her strange, unnatural eyes, and he smiled. “Maybe running into you was just a thing of chance. Maybe all of this is just a roll of the dice. Maybe the System wanted it to happen. I don't know. And frankly, by now, I don't care. I've never been the type to consider how many alternate paths my life could have taken. It just feels like there's one—the one I wandered down, the one I chose. But I'd be lying if I said I didn't think you got the raw end of this deal when you met Adam and me."

  "How so?" Uva asked quietly.

  "Before we ran into each other, you were already an honored Sister of the Arachnae Order. You might not have leveled as fast, or evolved as quickly, but it would have been a safer life, a stabler life. You wouldn't be fighting for your life right now and trying not to be swallowed from the inside by whatever the fuck Eldest is."

  Uva hummed. "I think there is some arrogance to your logic."

  "Yeah? How's that?"

  "You are not the start of this fire. You're merely a part in a long chain. Udraal created the conditions of your birth; Udraal did this to you. And if not you, then it would have been someone else, if not me, then someone else. And despite the horrors I have to struggle through, we can't argue about absence, but only magnitude. I don't think I would have been safer by any measurable capacity if your fire didn't catch on to me."

  "I don't know, Uva. I don't think you'd be out here if it wasn't for me."

  "No, perhaps I'd be dead in the deep Abyss, slain by some vampire neophyte. Or more likely, I would have died during Aviary’s bombing of Passage. That was in motion regardless of you. And that would have likely succeeded if you weren't there."

  The Deathless paused to consider that. She had a point.

  "Perhaps my life wouldn't be as combat-intensive, but perhaps that combat-intensiveness is what's keeping me alive. Being next to you and Adam is what kept me alive. If I was weaker, if I didn't push myself to the very limit, maybe a lesser threat would have seen me as easy prey, and I would have been cut down regardless. We are the System's slaves. We don't get a choice about many things. Burning is one of them. We must burn. We must struggle. We must fight. Perhaps we are infernos now, and I could have chosen a smolder. But people have died from smolders. Weaker bodies, ruined by heat, too much for them to sustain."

  "Yeah," Shiv grunted. "Maybe I'm just trying to imagine that there was a way out for you, for Adam. Just pretending that there was a possibility of a better world."

  "Have you considered another possibility? Have you considered that this is the better world? That we are the ones who fight to make things different? That we are the players and contenders against the System's whims?"

  "I don't know, Sister Uva. That might be a little too ambitious for a simple brute like me…"

  Her spider-like wings fluttered behind her, and she rose up to wrap her arms around his neck. "Well, that won't do at all. You need to get a little bit more imaginative. Because I have a feeling that the problems we face will only get worse or more absurd."

  Somehow, Shiv experienced a clash between a smirk and a frown. His facial muscles managed a spasming mess of an expression in response. "You know, I really don't know how I feel about that."

  "Let me tell you how you should feel." Her voice got lower. "You should feel a sense of acceptance that there is a fire on the horizon. But you should feel an urge of resolve, because you know that your flame can be greater, that the System is the lesser blaze. That is how we will steal back our lives. It is the only way.”

  And Shiv saw something behind her eyes that made a shiver run up his spine. There had been a hunger there before, but now there was a hint that she was downright ravenous. Ravenous for more than one thing. She might have caught fire from being in the vicinity of his flame, but she took to the conflagration quite well.

  "And whatever our enemies do, whatever foolishness the Ascendants are trying to form, whatever delusional scheme Udraal Thann yearns to concoct, whatever the Eldest seeks to birth from my mind and soul, however much it wants to claim my life for its metamorphosis, we will be waiting, and we will find them wanting. If existence is a chain of predation, I say let us be the ones who feed. The System will not give us peace, so let us find the point where we find its fire wanting."

  And once more, a brief silence fell.

  "Was that too much?" Uva asked, uncharacteristically uncertain. "My mind is divided, part of me—"

  Shiv leaned down and drew her in close, returning them both to silence.

  It was remarkable how one flame could kindle another to new heights.