Some Pathbearers like to claim that love and companionship are weaknesses that will unmake you. These Pathbearers are fools. Everything is a weakness. There is no single truth to strength. In fact, there is no skill, even, that is a strength in all situations. Skills make you more like the skills. If you destroy, if you kill, if you slay as a first resort, you will grow greater in the ways of the blade, grow stronger, grow faster.

  But you will also be drawn away from other possibilities, like diplomacy or more subtle means of conflict resolution.

  On a deeper level, perhaps you will not be wounded as much if you have no one you care about. Watching someone you love suffer or die is a particularly bitter kind of agony, and I wouldn't wish it on anyone. But having no connections is not a strength. Yes, you will avoid a certain kind of injury, but you will also experience others. Solitude, for one.

  I have tasted the decoction of solitude and found it a most disgusting potion. Let me tell you what solitude is, in its darkest moments:

  Solitude is you missing most of your fingers, with your tendons cut out of you, with your body tortured beyond the point of breaking, and your mind teetering on the brink of madness, with you hanging from rusted hooks within a prison, taunted by your torturers and knowing that no one is coming to save you.

  When the lonely make a mistake, it is a single event. A one-time thing. Alone, one error, one misstep, one failure will be your end. And for those of you who think that you will be perfect, that you will be a Pathbearer capable of facing all comers by yourself, understand that this feeling will not last when they drive the nails through your flesh. You will scream, you will break, and you will realize the mythology of your solitary power was just that: a story you told yourself.

  Yes, we are shaped from our stories, but before the stories, there is flesh, there is bone, and then there is the bitter realization that we are little more than animals at our base. And that animal echoes long even after we become Legends.

  The fate of the lone wolf is to die. Eventually, it is food. Perhaps you can say we are all food, if that is your means of rebuttal, and I might even agree. But the years that you spend alive matter. The people that you help matter. The things you do and the cultures you create matter, because we are not the System. We are not the gods. As far as you and I are concerned, the ones writing and reading these words are people. We exist relative to each other. We exist because of our communities, our homes. We exist for each other, no matter how much we fear, despise, or love one another.

  We exist together. And if you cannot find strength or use in togetherness, then I bid you good fortune, because I barely survived my solitude, and I assure you, you will not.

  -Valor Thann

  256 (I)

  Extraction [III]

  After the delicate moments of the reunion passed, there came a time to face hard truths—truths that you didn't wrap in obfuscating or diminishing language. It was going to cut, and it was going to cut deep, but everyone needed to know about the past. The real past.

  For all Shiv's enmity towards Roland, the Town Lord was owed that, at least.

  "So, to sum things up, Veronica Chandler's probably my grandmother. Udraal Thann was wearing the body of my mother when I was conceived. The one you knew as Vera Lowe was probably dead for quite some time. The Ascendants are degenerating, and our northern and southern neighbors are probably going to start a war with the Republic soon. Oh, and all this is because Udraal's trying to use me as some kind of resurrection incubator and make me revive other people like I did Rose. He wants me to bring his mother back, and he also wants me to return the Great One to life. That's about all the horrible shit I can think of off the top of my head. Any other horrible shit to add, Adam?"

  Instead of replying to Shiv, the Gate Lord simply looked toward his father with concern in his eyes.

  Roland looked positively wretched. The man was utterly still for a moment, and his skin somehow got paler. It was Valor who spoke then, breaking the uncomfortable silence. "Oh, Udraal… All this, all this because—You could not let go. Not like I could. But I could no more face her death than you. I should have known. I should have understood you more. I should have..."

  And then Valor spoke no more. The embers within his skull dimmed, and a loud sigh of exhaustion escaped the former Legend. "I was not there for you either, was I, Shiv? You Delved without me. I fear I have not made a particularly impressive mentor thus far."

  Shiv shook his head. “Don’t worry about it, Valor. Wasn’t anything you could have done. And besides, I think I needed to face that alone."

  "I should have been there," Valor insisted. "A master is supposed to guide his disciple. A master is supposed to enrich the lives of his students and prepare them for what they will face in the coming years. Now I question what I have helped you achieve. I question my purpose. If anything would have even gone differently in your life without my involvement."

  "We probably would have died at Gate Piety." Shiv shrugged. "We wouldn't have been able to deal with that Animancy Core without you. And frankly, I like you just the way you are, Valor. Mentor or not, master or not, powerful or not, we're still going to get you back together. And then we'll see how great of a Legend you really are. But honestly, all that stuff doesn't mean anything to me. You're the first friend I made after I fell into the Abyss, and you're going to be that way for as long as either of us is. We'll do what we can for each other, small or big. It's all we can do, anyway."

  Valor didn't reply, but something within Shiv knew that he had earned another measure of gratitude from him.

  Sage of the Enkindled Heart: You know what it feels like to be deprived of your cooking. Now imagine if that were applied to all of your skills. Only then will you be able to glimpse a fraction of what it means to be Valor Thann. To fall is one thing, but to be broken, to be trapped in a shell of yourself, deprived of your mind and body both... If there is such a thing as hell on Earth, he lives it.

  Shiv tried not to wince. Sometimes psychology and enlightenment were double-edged swords. For everything you understood, the insight cut you. The insight bled you. The insight taught you new things to fear.

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  "Excuse me," Roland whispered. It was the first thing he'd said after a long while.

  "Father?" Adam said.

  "Excuse me." Roland began to shiver. Rose reached out and took him by the arm, and he staggered away, as if trying to flee from the horrors just revealed to him. Rose's throat bobbed. Her eyes glistened. There were tears unshed inside her, but the bulk of her attention was devoted to the one she loved. Roland was coming apart at the seams. Shiv could feel it. Shiv could feel the things inside him shatter. The Town Lord rattled. Shiv's Gardener of Doubt tasted Roland’s internal discord, and Sage of the Enkindled Heart merely sighed.

  Gardener of Doubt: Remember, he was the one who slew your father. He was the one who had to put down your mother. He faced it all. He found you. He found his daughter after what you saw in the vision. And now, after so many years, not only have his old wounds been reopened, but he has learned that he didn't even kill the right person. His vengeance was more incomplete than he could have possibly imagined.

  "I need a moment," Roland repeated. "I need a moment. I need a moment. Excuse me, please. I must apologize. I need a moment. Hero Uva, please, if you could…”

  Uva didn't reply with words. Instead, she bowed her head and cut his connection to the mindscape.

  A moment later, Rose shot her son an apologetic stare. “He’s going to need me.”

  "I understand," Adam replied, shaken, but ultimately in control. "Go to him and make sure he's alright."

  Rose, however, only grimaced. "There's no being alright with this, Adam."

  As she flitted away as well, a long groan escaped from Hades Hymn. The Headmaster rubbed at his face. "This is why I don't want to be involved in any of Udraal's experiments. Every single one turns into a nest of nightmare trauma and creative atrocities."

  ***

  Roland Arrow barely managed a few steps away from Uva Mettabon before he doubled over, collapsed to his knees, and heaved nothing but sour spit. “Oh… Oh, gods…” he choked out.

  Strands of saliva swung from his lips while tears fell one after another down his face and onto the grime-coated floor. He was shaking. He was feeling himself shrinking. He was falling away from his body. Parts of him felt wrong, and he didn't want to be here. He didn't want to—

  A pair of arms wrapped around him from behind as a familiar warmth… a body he'd once thought he would never know again, pressed against him.

  "Roland," Rose whispered. "I know. I'm so sorry."

  They stayed that way for a long moment. She didn't speak; she simply held on to him, and Roland struggled to find his way back to sanity once more. It was too much. It was all too much. He'd been alive for too long. He'd been in too many wars, too many fights. He'd taken too many wounds and not nearly tasted enough triumph, not nearly had enough years of happiness. It was all too much, too much, too much. And the System, it took, it took, it took. And the monsters it birthed, the monsters that lived by the System's whims, regardless of whether they thought they were struggling against it or not, fed on his misery.

  "I thought I would never know," Roland said, his voice a hoarse whisper. He felt like a ghost inside himself, an echo of who he was, possessing his body. He closed his eyes, and scenes from that night, that terrible, terrible night, returned to him: scenes of violence, scenes of betrayal, scenes of horror, scenes of blood.

  It was all vivid; every little, minute detail burned into his memory.

  Roland remembered standing across from Harlon. He remembered screaming at his best friend, his brother-in-arms, asking him why. Why they did what they did.

  Harlon just stood there. Shaking his head. Crying. He couldn't say.

  Roland remembered taking a step toward Harlon, then. He remembered raising his hand and—

  His eyes snapped open. He didn't want to remember. But it was all there, as clear as if it was happening right this moment. As the scene played in his memory over and over, Roland began thinking. And he realized… Perhaps Harlon hadn't been able to say.

  That had been his first thought, of course. When he'd laid eyes on the scene, on Harlon, his first thought had been that someone had taken control of his friends. But there had been nothing. Not even the smallest hint of Psychomancy, or illusions, or otherwise, and the Starhawk had confirmed as much later.

  But now? Perhaps… Harlon wasn't a perpetrator? Perhaps Harlon was a victim after all? A slave to Udraal Thann’s whims?

  "I thought I would never know," Roland repeated. He slumped against Rose, and she grunted, bearing his weight with her still-recovering body. "I never told you what happened, did I?”

  His wife went still, and she slowly shook her head.

  “That night, that night I found Adam. I managed to save him. I noticed him. My arrows reached him before he could bleed out. I didn't realize. I thought—and I didn't know, and I didn't know. But I managed to find them. I found them inside our chapel. I found them there, and I couldn't believe it. I refused to believe.”

  Rose drew him into the crook of her neck, and he continued to weep, his body spasming, shaking. "I… I had to see for myself, and when I walked in, I saw you, and I saw our daughter, and I saw them, and I just... They could have cut me down, they should have cut me down, but Harlon, he wouldn't do anything. I just stared at him, and he was crying and crying, and I wasn't there. My mind wasn't there. He could have finished me, but he never did anything. I could hear the Starhawk screaming at me. I don't remember what he said. But I can still hear the sound of a child crying. Their child, not ours. Not ours. Not ever ours anymore."

  And now his beloved was weeping alongside him. And they were two broken pieces pressed up against each other. But sometimes broken pieces fit. Broken pieces filled in the pain.

  "You know the fucked-up thing?" Rose said, speaking through her own sobs. "Fucked-up thing is even when they were cutting her out of me, I kept thinking to myself, ‘there's no way Vera could do this to me.’ There's no way she could. She loved me too much. No matter what she said sometimes, no matter how she was, she loved me too much. I was certain of that. I was certain. And I thought it was wrong. I thought it was wrong." Through the pain came a laugh. "And now, maybe I wasn't wrong. It seems that Vera couldn't have done it. And Vera… We lost her first, didn't we? We lost her first. She'd been gone for a while. Maybe even for a long time."

  And with that realization, an agonized whimper escaped from the Town Lord as almost everything inside him came undone. His memories were ugly. The truth was uglier. And now, the adversary that had ruined their lives, that had taken so much from them, was back.

  And he wanted the Omenborn. He wanted to use the Omenborn for his demented schemes, and the Omenborn... It really was never his fault at all. He wasn't even a person in Udraal's eyes. Just like Roland. Like Rose. Like their daughter. Like Harlon and Vera.

  They were all just playthings, just variables, just pieces on a board, if even that.

  And so, that scant measure of shameful, pathetic, sadistic revenge Roland thought he'd taken was no revenge at all.

  All the years he'd punished the boy for the deeds of his parents, all the wrongs he'd done the boy to give himself that fragile, deceitful peace of mind that at least the one Harlon and Vera had done all this for, that child whose cries had sounded where his own had been quiet, would never live and flourish like they would have wished, like his own never would, were for nothing.

  Nothing at all. Ever since that terrible night, he'd been trying to strangle a shadow on the wall.

  Now, his wife had been returned to him, and by the one he'd directed all his loathing at all these years, no less.

  But Udraal was back as well. Udraal was still free. And Udraal was unpunished.

  ***

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