257 (II)

  Extraction [IV]

  Since he'd known the head chef, Georges had possessed a mop of dirty blonde hair, messy and untamed. That hair was nowhere to be seen. It had either fallen out or been shorn to the scalp, and his head was pockmarked with busted boils that leaked trails of dried pus. The rest of his body was also dramatically diminished. Georges was never a large man, but he was filled out in several ways and possessed something of a beer belly. Now, however, he was rail-thin, and his hospital gown swayed from him like clothing draped over a pole. And then there were Georges's eyes. They were so bloodshot that Shiv thought there were pools of blood forming around the head chef’s irises.

  Shiv sucked in a breath and took a step back, something inside him clenching tight in vicarious pain and misery.

  Georges, comparatively, just blinked as he squinted back. "Son, is that you? Felling hells, must be having another one of those fever dreams again. Fucking told that bastard I needed my cigs. Won’t stop hallucinating without them. You get larger every time I have a fever dream about you.”

  "No, no," Shiv managed. He had to force the words out of himself. "No, it's me, Georges. I'm here—I'm here to see you. This is, um, you're connected to me telepathically. This isn't a hallucination."

  Georges blinked twice, and slowly, a smile worked its way across his face. But even that small shift of expression seemed to cost the head chef a significant effort. His endurance had been wrung dry, his physique hollowed. He was close—close to the edge of oblivion; the disease was eating him away.

  But Georges didn't seem to care. With every passing second, the smile on his face grew like a flame building to a full blaze. "Felling hells. If I knew you were gonna come and see me in my dreams, I would've made myself a bit more presentable. Tried to grow my hair back and all that." Georges gestured at himself, and Shiv couldn't help but laugh. "What the shit happened to you? Last time I saw you, you were already the size of a small boulder. Why are you still getting so godsdamn big? You're not gonna be able to fit in the kitchen anymore if you keep on growing like this.”

  Shiv’s laughter only intensified. "Just what happens when you keep undergoing Skill Evolution after Skill Evolution, Chef. I didn't really ask to be bigger. It just keeps happening."

  Georges just rolled his eyes. "Well, if I could have said that shit to my first wife, we might still be married."

  "I don't know, Chef. Considering you spend all day and night in the kitchen and the rest of the time smoking outside in the alley, it wouldn't have mattered if you could get bigger, ‘cause she wouldn’t have gotten to experience any of it."

  Dimly, he got the sense that Uva was shaking her head off, muttering something about men. Even further in the backdrop, Hymn whispered something about size being a downside after a certain point, considering the tissue damage—something Uva and Shiv both didn’t want to hear from him.

  And then it was Georges’s turn to laugh. And that's what he did. He laughed, loudly and truly, until a coughing fit overtook him. A coughing fit that ended with him choking and fighting for breath. Then the illusion was broken. Georges’s sickness reasserted itself, and the joy on Shiv’s face was extinguished thusly.

  "Fuckin' hell, lad. Let me tell you: don't let a Legendary mage hit you with one of his sicknesses. That’s no way to go. That’s no way to go at all…"

  Shiv shook his head. "Yeah, I don't think that'd work on me. My body, uh, it kind of feeds off of sicknesses. Consuming them gives me a bit of a buzz and makes me… well, even bigger and stronger…"

  Georges eyed him. "Are you shitting me?"

  "Nope," Shiv replied. "Another benefit of coming back from the dead over and over again. Eventually, what puts you in a hospital bed becomes something else you can feed on."

  "Broken Moon, you're turning into an absolute monster. Roland must be shitting his pants brown now."

  "Yeah, well, Roland has other things to suffer right now instead of me."

  "Does he, now?" Georges laughed hoarsely. "Well, I hope that uptight bastard doesn't have to suffer too much. He's a piece… a real piece of shit sometimes, but he's tried, he's always tried. It's more than I can say for most men, far more than I can say for most felling nobles. And you? What about you? What's crawled up your arse and died?"

  Shiv was momentarily speechless. "There's nothing really up my ass."

  "Oh, bullshit, kid. Bull-fucking shit. We've been working together for far too long." Georges sniffled, and he looked around the mindscape. "Are there any cigarettes in this place? I could use a cigarette right about now." When Shiv didn't reply, he sighed. "It's in your eyes, son. It was always in your eyes. You don't say much when you're hurt, but you're like a dog. The anger leaks right out of you, and so does the pain."

  "Never thought I was that transparent," Shiv mumbled, frowning. Just how much did Georges manage to read from his eyes all these years, even when they were still all black?

  "So, what is it?" Georges asked again. "Might as well spit it out. Don't know how long I have before my mind goes. Or my body." The head chef of Swan-Eating Toad shrugged. Despite being so close to death, he seemed utterly indifferent to its presence.

  Shiv swallowed and finally managed to spit out the thing that troubled him most. The thing that connected him to Georges, to everything that wasn't death and destruction. "It's my Cooking skill, Georges. I got Cursed. Had a run-in with an Ascendant."

  Georges let out a cough. "Let me guess, Maiden the Genius."

  Once more, like so many times before, Shiv found himself surprised by his head chef. "How did you know?"

  "Because I can feel her scent radiating from you," Georges replied. "Because you aren't the first artist she's Cursed. The bitch is at once neglectful and vengeful as a parent. And everything she does, she does reflexively. Doesn't care enough to fix her daughter, but she does care enough to hurt everyone who tries to protect themselves from the little monster."

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  "Did you too?" Shiv asked. His fists were clenched. “Try to protect yourself from her, I mean.”

  "Not her," Georges replied. "I barely avoided her. No, my problem was with Longinus. I had a chef under me, a real good chef. Great with seafood, a girl who was practically a genius. But Longinus appreciated her for other reasons when he decided to visit us. She was focused on the cooking, he was focused on her. She said no. Longinus doesn't believe in 'no'. And with that, well, we all got fucked in our own way aside from Longinus…" Georges shrugged and spoke no more of it. "That didn't make us special. None of us are special when the Ascendants notice us."

  That vast pit of disgust Shiv felt toward the Ascendants only grew.

  "Getting Cursed is not the end, you know?" Georges rasped. "It's a bitch to solve, but it can be solved. There are people that can challenge the power of the divine. There are gods beyond our own. Longinus hit me with the Curse of Rooting. He had me trapped inside his palace, made me serve him. It was a miserable time, son, let me tell you. But then, one day, when Longinus was away, there came this visitor, a really damn strange one. He had these large, dark eyes, wings too. And feathers all over, feathers the color of midnight. He told me he was a Knight of Night from the Court of Winter, that he wanted to sample some of Longinus's delights. He meant food, and he also meant something more. He realized that I didn't want to be there. And so he decided to strike a deal with me. He decided to steal me from an Ascendant and give me as an offering to the Court of Winter."

  Georges's form flickered, pulsing in and out of existence.

  "Georges! Georges!" Shiv called out, worried that his mentor was dying before his eyes.

  "Anyway," Georges choked out. He sounded like he was gagging on his own tongue. "The Ascendants might be powerful, but they're not impossible to overcome. With how bloody big you're getting, I think you might be able to eat one of them sooner or later." Georges chuckled at his own, absurd joke. "Maybe then you can bully them into releasing you. Or maybe you can chance a wander into the Fairwilds. Not much risk for you. You can't die. At least you can't stay dead. The things you'll see there might be good. Good for your cooking, anyway, and—and—”

  A loud, choking gasp came from Georges, and the chef shuddered in his bed. “Oh, fuck me, here it comes again. Listen—Shiv… I would have—I would have liked you to take over the Toad if I, you know. But the felling restaurant got obliterated, so…”

  “No! Shut the fuck up! You stay the hells alive!” Shiv snarled those words desperately. He tried to seize Georges, but the man’s mind was getting weaker, his consciousness drifting further. He was slowly turning translucent—blending with the coiling mists that made up this place of thought. “You don’t get to felling die, Georges! You don’t! Georges!”

  Georges wheezed but still managed a defiant sneer. “Yeah, right. I told the Ascendants and the Republic to go lick shit and piss up their own asses. I won my freedom from the Fae Court cunts. You think I’m gonna let a fucking commis tell me what I can and can’t do? Fuck off.”

  Shiv’s rage combusted inside of him. But there was no easy enemy to strike at—absolutely nothing he could do. Anger failed him. His skills failed him. And with nowhere to go, Shiv felt desperate fear overtake him. He almost whimpered in despair. “Just—I’m going to get you out. I’m going to get you and everyone else out. Just stay alive. I need you to stay alive. Just a while longer.”

  Georges only shook his head. “Not in a hurry to die, son. But when the System wants a bite, it takes a bite. I just hope that I can give it the shi—shits.” Georges began coughing again. “Fuck me, feels like my lungs are shriveling inside me. I… Tell you what: I’ll try to make it last as long as I can. And you do what you can. If I die, you don’t blame yourself. And if you fail, I don’t blame you. How’s that sound?”

  “Like godsdamned shit, Georges!” Shiv practically begged. “Just don’t die. I need you not to die.”

  The head chef went still. “...Huh. You know the fucked-up thing, Shiv?”

  “Huh? What?”

  “I think I said those exact words to my father. But it didn’t—” And without any warning at all, Georges winked out altogether. Where he once existed in the mindscape was nothing. Just curling fingers of mist. Just stray winds of thought and fading memories.

  Shiv knelt before nothing and struggled not to come undone.

  “I—I couldn’t hold onto him,” Uva said from behind. “I’m sorry. He’s alive, but he’s comatose again. Sullain's sickness—it is trying to wither his skills. His body is degenerating along with his soul. His muscles are getting too weak to support even breathing.”

  Sage of the Enkindled Heart: Control yourself. You need to control yourself. You can’t stop him from dying if it happens, but you need to face it. Do what you can. If you lose focus now, there won’t be any hope for him—for any of them.

  “Okay,” Shiv said, forcing himself to stand. He licked his dry lips. “Okay. I can—I’m okay.”

  As he turned, he saw Uva approaching him—and she stumbled to a halt as she looked into his eyes. She flinched at the black flames of loathing spilling out from him, rising into the air like columns of smoke. They had nowhere to go; he had no one to use them on here. He needed to make himself useful. He needed to move fast.

  “Shiv—I—”

  “I’ll get you out,” he said, reaching forward, cupping her head gently, desperately. “I’ll get you all out. I promise. I felling promise. Just… Keep yourself alive. Keep them alive. I’m going to—I need to—” He stumbled away from her, and his mind entered a trance-like state. “We need the temporal lab. I need—I’ll find it. Tonight, I find one.”

  “Shiv,” Uva breathed. Her Psychomancy mana snaked around him and bound him tight, carrying her worry over. Shiv staggered as his Shapeless Tides rattled against her mana field. Part of him wanted to rip himself free, to fling himself at someone to fight—to make them tell him where one of these gates might be located.

  But Shiv was more than just a brute now. I am. I am. I have to be.

  “It’s alright,” Shiv said, turning to look at her over his shoulder. “I’ll be alright. I’m going to get you out. I’m going to get you out. I will get you all out.” His words were like a mantra, and his mind became an engine of desperate determination.

  A sequence of feelings flashed behind her eyes and trembled along her strings, but she hardened herself. “I know. But remember, Shiv. Be the flame. Do not be consumed by it.”

  “I know. I won’t. I won’t. Hades. Tell the Brokers yes. Tell them they'll have their seat in Piety. Get the slipgate whatever resources it needs.”

  Hymn looked Shiv up and down with an uneasy expression. “And… what are you about to do in your current state of mind?”

  “Jessica. Know where she is. She’s with the Inquisition. She fought with the Ascendants. She probably knows. I’m gonna talk to her.”

  The Headmaster winced. “I don’t think that’s the best—”

  “I’m just gonna talk to her,” Shiv insisted.