149 (II)

Trap

Psychology 33 > 34

Awareness 38 > 39

Deepest Edge 66 > 67

Strider of the Unbending Path 137 > 138

The Amnesiac erupted into a burst of bloodied mist. Shiv wrapped himself and his companions with his Aegis of Assimilation, but the other orc Psychomancers and Inquisitors were coated in a deep, dark red.

"Gods—fuck!" Adam shouted. He shot Shiv a terrified stare. "Again?"

"Yeah," Shiv said, glaring down at the jigsaw puzzle of flesh that remained of the Amnesiac. He held his Vitae-coated blade up to the other orcs, and tried to keep his rage in check—he did so by spending all his anger on his Shape of Monstrosity instead. "Hey. Eyes on me."

The other Psychomancers obeyed. Fear flowed from them into Shiv. Fear he drank in and relished. Fear he earned with the murder of their compromised Maestro.

Shape of Monstrosity 106 > 107

"You guys are done with the prisoners. I don't want you touching them anymore. What I want you all to do is prepare yourselves for the surface or the Abyss. Your Maestro here's got connections to an Outsider god we're not on great terms with. Or whatever the hells the Stranger is. I don't know if the Challenger cares, but if I catch any hint of Outsider that isn't the Dreamtaker, I'm killing the orc in question and mutilating their soul. You understand me."

The orc Psychomancers turned their eyes down again. Chunks of the Amnesiac drifted along a spreading current of blood. Giblets of flesh covered the kneeling Inquisitors and the orcs.

"Dominance," one of them breathed. "No hesitation. How sublime."

"Glorious aggression," another orc said, laughing. "We hear you, Insul. We heed you. But the prisoners—"

"We'll handle them ourselves." Shiv gritted his teeth. "I should have handled them myself in the first place. Godsdammit, I can't believe I let you bastards bribe me—I'm a godsdamned moron. The next orc that tries to mess with my head and gets caught doing so is going to permanently get their arms and legs cut off, and then I'm going to wear them like a felling pain vest that I can constantly dump my wounds into during a fight."

The Deathless let out a frustrated breath—and felt even more fear rush into his body. Additional chains hardened against him, and he followed them back through the open dimensional pathway. There, on the bridge of the Court Leviathan, the orc Biomancers looked on in rapt fascination. Valor raised Helix's head toward Shiv, and the orc swallowed worriedly as he met his gaze.

"Ah, Insul," Helix coughed. "You understand that it would be… exceptionally harder for me to direct your Biomancy studies if I were a quote felling pain vest unquote."

Shiv stared at the orc Biomancer. "That's part of why you're not a pain vest yet, Helix. Or dead."

Helix swallowed. "What's the other reason?"

"That you actually bribed me instead of doing what the Amnesiac just tried. But, Helix."

"Yes?"

"You threaten to give any of my companions a strange and rare disease, and I'll match that by giving you strange and rare wounds. I won't ever kill you, though. No. I actually kind of like you. And that might not be a good thing for you."

And then the Deathless said no more. Instead, he chose to wordlessly glare at all the orcs on the bridge as the rift slowly closed. When they were gone, Shiv saw that the orc Psychomancers were already gone, while Adam and Uva regarded him quietly.

The former looked concerned. The latter had a faint hint of lust in her gaze.

"Shiv," Adam said warily. "Are you alright?"

"I just had to kill two of these orcs because they did exactly what I was worried about. I'm pissed and paranoid. Which makes me more pissed."

"And aggressive," Uva whispered.

Shiv sighed and rubbed his face. "I should've taken the Inquisitors from the orcs. Should've done a lot of things. And now we have to worry about orcs being on some other god's payroll." He glared up at the ceiling. "You run a loose felling ship, you know that, Challenger?"

The orc god didn't say anything, but Shiv got the feeling the Challenger saw this all as entertainment.

I just have to be suspicious of all the orcs all the time, Shiv decided. Was it going to be exhausting? Yes. But it was probably going to level his Multi-Tasking fast too. If I wanted to take it easy, I would've just stayed in the kitchen all the time. Nothing for it. No complaining. Let's deal with the problems.

"Uva. The Inquisitors. What's wrong with them, exactly? What was the Amnesiac trying to do?"

"He basically hollowed them of self-determination. In theory, it should make them easy to manipulate and direct."

"But he did something to their minds?"

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"Yes. Hidden memories inside memories. Very subtly done. But my control of Psychomancy allows me to feel exactly how dense certain memories are. My suspicions were aroused because of that. It seems like an effective trap for another Psychomancer—especially with how he offered it specifically for my benefit. But how did you know he was serving the Stranger?"

"It was a blind guess," Shiv said. "But him choosing to wear a coat with a giant eye on it didn't help him. Guess he might not be fully aware of what went down between us and the Recollector, maybe. Doesn't matter. He's going to be reincarnating in pieces from now on. I kept enough of his brain matter intact, so I think he'll get to live for a while every time he comes back."

Adam shuddered. "Gods, Shiv."

"No. To hells with him. And fuck the orc that went for you too. I should've shredded that one as well."

"What?" Uva asked. "An orc made an attempt on Adam's life?"

"Yeah. Cost him a head and a life. We're going to have to look out for each other a lot more here. Even more than before. The longer we stay here, the more some of them are just going to try something. Different orcs have different impulse controls, but they're all going to try and hurt us eventually." Shiv frowned. "It's just hard to keep that in your head when they start charming you."

"And the bastards can be charming," Adam said.

"Yeah." Shiv sighed. "Especially for me."

Uva tilted her head and squinted. "I might have an idea on how to improve your Social Skills. At least, your resistance to being influenced or charmed by the orcs. But I'll need to vet him first. Make sure he won't compromise you himself."

"Him?" Shiv asked. Adam looked at Uva curiously as well.

"Angelo," Uva said. "He has a Master-Tier Charm Skill. And ten other Master-Tier Social Skills."

"Ten?" Shiv gasped. "Broken Moon, I didn't know he was that powerful."

"His mental state has left him diminished. But even so, letting your gaze linger on his face for a few seconds is usually enough for you to be compromised to a substantial degree. I suspect he served the role of seducer for the Ophereus Bloodline. And if you learn to resist him, it might make things easier against the orcs as well."

"You're willing to let Shiv be seduced by a vampire over and over?" Adam asked incredulously.

"I'm obviously going to stop it before anything occurs," Uva muttered in annoyance. "But yes: Comparatively, Angelo is far less dangerous than the orcs. Now. Another question is what we are to do with these inquisitors."

Shiv frowned at the eight blood-coated humans. They all just stared ahead through everything. Uva wasn't lying; the orcs did a number on them mentally. "Was the Amnesiac really better than you, or were you just saying that to throw him off?"

"When it comes to Psycho-Surgery? Yes," Uva admitted it without any difficulty. "I suspect things wouldn't have gone my way in a direct clash either. But his mana field was compact and more than a little unwieldy. Such was why I could feel how much he hid within a single memory, while he remained blissfully ignorant about his own mistake."

"Great. So. They're wasted." Adam bit his lip as he stared at the Inquisitors. "It might be more merciful to finish them off. Bloody hells, can we even trust the orcs to do anything?"

"Sure," Shiv said. "Fight. It's not like the Amnesiac wasn't planning to use the inquisitors against our enemies. I think I agree with the dead piece of shit: It might be a waste to just throw them at the Necrotechs. Sullain's already antagonistic toward the inquisition. What we need is for them to show up and start a fight."

"And how are we going to do that?" Adam asked. "Their minds are traps, and they're basically vegetables unless Uva fixes them, or we find a reliable group of orc Psychomancers. And good luck with that."

"Or…" Shiv said, grinning to himself. "Maybe we keep them like this. Most of them."

"What are you planning, Shiv? What's happening in that terrible, violent head of yours?" Adam asked, dreading.

Shiv smirked, then he reached into his cape and pulled out his Mask of False Paths with a flourish.

Adam and Uva both groaned.

"Shiv. Dear," Uva muttered in discomfort, as if a mother trying to tell her child she wasn't going to be buying them a present.

"Have you forgotten that you are the worst spy in all Integration—and likely beyond?" Adam hissed.

"Sure. But if there's one role I can play, it's a brain-damaged torture victim who escaped from the Necrotechs. We can pin all this on Sullain. We just get a bunch of orcs to alter the inquisitors' near-term memories while Uva watches or something. Then, I go to the surface with the other inquisitors, and we get rescued by Stormhalt. I'll get taken into camp, I'll tell them that Sullain has the Animancy Core and is about to use it. They'll rush in and start a fight. We'll have the orc forces join in and get an opening to evacuate Blackedge as well, while the orcs and Titansbane and whoever else gang up on Sullain."

Adam still looked uneasy. "But… if things go wrong even slightly…"

"I can leave a time anchor in the gate. I'll just cast myself back if things go to hell. Besides, you guys can come along with me. We can bring a few orcs over as well if we need expendable support. My cape has a dimension inside it."

Uva considered Shiv's plan with a hum, but Adam still looked uneasy. "What if I take the mask in your stead?" he asked.

"No," Shiv said. "I'm not risking that."

"And you don't have the emotional control for tradecraft either," Uva added.

"And Shiv does?" Adam hissed.

"I am surprised to say this myself, but he is actually less likely to murder Stormhalt on a whim."

"I—I just want to talk to him. I need to understand—"

"This is a sentence often said preceding a violent murder, Hero Adam," Uva noted. "No. And you are the Gate Lord. You are needed for the continual development of Gate Piety—and for someone to go over critical, strategic decisions. Such as planning the liberation of your town."

Adam grunted uncomfortably, but nodded. "I still think this is going to turn to shit."

"It will," Uva said. "But things 'going to shit' is a Shiv specialty. He thrives in nightmarish situations. And I mean that in a complimentary way, Dear Brute."

"I know…" Shiv smirked slightly. "And maybe a bit of chaos is what we need right now."

"Right," Adam said. "So. We figure out how best to return these inquisitors to Stormhalt and provoke him and his army into attacking Sullain. We mass the orcs on the surface in anticipation of the two sides clashing, then move to fully liberate and evacuate Blackedge when the battle commences."

"We should also let some orcs out into the Abyss in the meantime," Shiv said. "Have them harass the vampires so we don't end up getting attacked by another army out of nowhere."

"Right. Well. Fine. We have something of a general direction." Adam huffed. "Gods, I can't believe I'm about to let you play at being a spy again."

Shiv's face twitched. Then, an evil grin spread across his features. "I mean, what's the worst that could happen?"

"Godsdammit, Shiv, why the hells did you have to say that?"

"More deaths. More levels."

The Gate Lord groaned.

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