It always starts the same way: desperation.

Desperation for revenge, desperation for money, for a new lease on life, to break free from who you were—be that because of a mistake or because you can't quite get out of that stink that clings to you. You know the stink. The stink of poverty, the stink of your parentage, your bloodline. The stink that comes with being called a bastard and being called the son of a traitor.

Desperation. Desperation makes you give yourself to strange places and take ugly risks. And the Neath, they're always waiting, they're always watching for you, people like you, to take those risks.

You asked me how they managed to get their hooks in me? They always had those hooks in me. Without them, I would have never made it to Captain of the Guard. Without them, I would have never managed to pay off my father's debt. Yeah, I had the skills, was pretty good with a sword, and plenty tough. Had a pretty rare Awareness-Deception Skill Fusion, too.

But guess what? Half the kids in the academies are special. They don't make it to Guard because there's no one giving them that extra push, no one helping them cut through lines. And ultimately, they're not desperate. They got the world in front of them. They're not nobody—only becoming somebody because the Neath and the Brokers decided to make an investment.

I suppose they saw something special in me, too. No deal was done on the part of charity, sure. It wasn't my bloodline, though. It might be because they thought I'd be loyal—probably not, though. More likely, the fact that they know they have me by the neck, and that I don't have any problems doing things that don't make other people sleep so well at night. Whatever the case.

Yeah, I did kill that one. No, I don't know what she did. No, I didn't know she was one of your informants. Yeah, I know what comes next. But let me tell you what you can expect from them, right? You can torture me. You can have your Psychomancers reach into my mind and rip every memory out of me, but it don't matter anymore. Because the moment I didn't check in, the moment one of their observers watched you guys pick me up, that's the moment their people made their move. Every speakeasy, hidden establishment, or whatever that's dealt with me has been relocated already.

The capital's a big place. There's plenty of abandoned buildings, plenty of gaps between the architecture. Now, the Ascendants, we say they're all-powerful, but I don't think so. I know they're not, because the Dragon Brokers, they seem to have some kind of arrangement going with you guys. Which is why there are only two of you inquisitors. Where's the rest of your squad, Master-Interrogator? Where's your torture kit? Where's your Psychomancer? Not here.

So, I know what comes next. My name is not going into a file in the Inquisition's ledger. In fact, I don't think most of them know I'm even here. I think the guys who picked me up won't know that their efforts didn't mean shit for piss. I'm not leaving this room. In a few days, my body's gonna surface in some lake somewhere, or I'm gonna be killed in some kind of freak accident. That's what the report will finally say when it reaches the coroner's office.

Anyhow, you tell the Brokers "thanks for the life." Couldn't have done it without them. I guess this day was always coming. But loose ends are loose ends, am I right?

-Interview with Salt Guthrup, Former Captain of the Constabulary for the Rosehearth District of the Capital, Yellowstone Republic

202 (I)

Sewer

There were, in fact, a few casualties at the start of the school term. A group of prospective students, bound for the capital from Mount Verne, near the border between the Republic and the frozen wastes of Torontus, were ambushed by some Jotun raiders. A battle ensued, and though the party managed to repel the Jotun, a few students-to-be and their accompanying guardians were tragically slain.

Though they suffered losses, the party was from a battle-hardened region of the Republic, and they decided to continue on, as they were a considerable way into their journey. Moreover, they wished for the Auroral Council to witness their dead so that a proper response could be mustered against the northern brutes. The caravan continued on, arriving with their fallen fellows in tow.

The deceased were preserved by crude measures of Cryomancy, keeping them frozen and free of decay. And now they resided in a Royal Morgue of Archmortalis in the East Highvine district. In time, their surviving family would come to the capital to claim the remains themselves. Teleportation was not a possibility; considering these children were from Mount Verne, there was more than a little chance that whatever was cast from the capital to their frozen homeland would be intercepted by Jotun Jump Magi.

And the bodies of the fallen had experienced brutality enough.

"Adam," Irons began, trying to push through the discomfort as he finished relaying the information. "I'm going to ask you to tell me something, and I'm going to hope that your answer is no. You're not going to do something Necromantic to the bodies, are you? Please tell me you don't have a Necromancy Skill."

Adam stiffened for a moment. Irons closed his eyes. "Arrow," he groaned under his breath.

"I have the Necromancy Skill," Adam admitted. He straightened his back and tried not to wilt before the disappointed stare of his mentor. "But I'm not going to use it on the dead. I wouldn't. It's a level of foulness that I'll never be able to sink to. We're not dragging a shadow of a deceased student back to do our bidding."

"Then what do you need a body for?" Irons asked.

"I'm the one that needs the body," Shiv said. "It's for the broken mask. If I want a Perfect Semblance, I need a body to copy it from. Are there any of the dead that are orphans or something? Because I don't really want to burn up a body that has a family waiting for it."

The captain grew even more disturbed. "I'm not certain. There were twelve slain in total. Eight of them were prospective students, children selected for their merits, combat or artistic and intellectual talents. Promising Pathbearers. I looked over the bodies and interviewed the survivors." Irons fell silent, and Shiv recognized the man to be someone possessed of considerable empathy, despite his stoicism. "I don't like this," he said, "and I would be utterly against it, if it wasn't you asking."

He meant Adam, but Shiv thought a bit more persuasion was still in order. "Yeah, I know, I don't much felling like it either. I don't like the fact that my mask burns up bodies, and I don't like the fact that I'm probably going to have to steal the identity of a dead kid to get what I want done."

"Kid?" Adam asked, turning to gape at Shiv. "You're barely older than any of them. Well, maybe not older at all."

The Deathless winced. Right, he was still eighteen as well. He didn't really feel eighteen anymore, though. After all that bloodshed, he wasn't considering himself a boy. Wait, when did I last consider myself a boy? Shiv paused as he ruminated on that. He was practically his own man the moment he left the orphanage. No one really cared for him aside from George, and with him making a living wage and supporting his own lifestyle, he had practically been a functional adult for nearly a decade by now.

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"It's the best I can do," Shiv said. "The best play we can come up with right now has me operating on Academy grounds. I can't be doing anything in the open, and I can't be exposed by the System every time someone sees me. And the way I see it, you need my help just as much as I need yours. Especially since you're rolling up against our gods."

Irons's expression hardened as he regarded Shiv. "I don't know you. All I know is that you are Adam's companion and there is a considerable bond between you." He hesitated before he finished his statement. "But I also don't know Lord Arrow anymore either. War changes a person. And if half of what you two say is true, then your allegiances… Who do you fight for?"

"We're fighting for the 'not letting the Ascendants get away with being bastards' side of things," Shiv began. "I'm fighting for my life, yeah. That's true. But we were doing everything we could for Blackedge. You know who wasn't? The Inquisition. They intercepted Slayers from Blackedge and tortured them. Killed some too. They were preparing to sell an Animancy Core to an Abyssal Lord."

The captain blinked twice, and Shiv drove into him harder. "Yeah, you heard me right," Shiv growled. "Animancy Core. Inquisition. Our people." Irons tried to look at Adam, but Shiv snarled. "Don't look at him. Look at me. You know I'm not lying. You know something is wrong. You want proof? We can show the survivors. But you're already looking at the ugly shit. You ran up against Daughter. And there's no way back from that."

"These are words," Irons said. But he swallowed hard, and his Adam's apple bobbed up and down. "Anyone can speak words. Words are the first refuge of the deluded and treacherous."

"My words are more than just sounds and wind," Shiv said. "You can feel it. And I'm more than words too. I'm the reason you aren't dead."

Shiv pressed. He folded his arms and looked Irons up and down. Psycho-Cartography told him to challenge the man, to provoke him into thinking a little deeper. "Listen, I respect you, Irons. I really do. You're trying to do right by one of your pupils, and you're trying to be a loyal citizen still. I can't judge that. Frankly, you're among the few not-pieces-of-shit I've met in the last few days—and trust me, that makes you platinum-tier in terms of company." He ignored the Educator's glare and kept going. "But you went up against Daughter. You fought an Ascendant. You got a sight of what they are, who they are. It doesn't really matter what you want now. They came for Melissa, and they're gonna come for you."

Irons betrayed nothing. The man's face was blank and hard. That stole another measure of respect from Shiv. Not everything needed a reaction. The Deathless was learning that point himself. Only when he was ready did Irons finally reply. "You might be right. Or you might be trying to turn me. You might be taking advantage of what I've learned. Even so, my loyalty is more than just faith. It's to the people that I've served, the people I've fought alongside."

"And I get that," Shiv said. "And I'd like to help you protect these people as well." He scoffed. "Look, I get the paranoia. I get that you don't like being here and this whole cloak-and-dagger bullshit thing that we have going. I get that figuring out one of your gods is a psychotic woman-child who uses orphans to channel the power of her soul is kinda fucked up. But right now, you and I only have so many choices. You can choose to do nothing, in which case, Melissa's definitely gonna die, or worse. And this thing you ran into, it's bigger than you. It's too much for one person to handle. Since it's looking like we might be stuck here for a bit, I'd say we can help each other. Because good man or not, you're not a Legend. And you're gonna need more power behind you if you want your student to survive at all."

"You think you'll succeed where I did not?" Irons challenged.

Shiv shrugged. "Well, again, I am the one who gave Daughter that scar. You're alive because of me. And I did break out of the prison with Adam and some others. So. Yeah. Let's face it, captain. We're all here because we're desperate."

Sticks and Stones 56 > 57

The captain fell silent at that. He looked at Adam, and the Gate Lord simply nodded. A quiet sigh slipped out of Irons, and Shiv knew his grip was sinking in.

"Even if I go along with this," Irons said, "I can't get you into the morgue. I need specific identification to get in. They record everything on the registry there. It's carefully monitored."

"Oh, we probably have a few means for that problem," Custiel cut in. "Getting into the morgue, well, that's easy. We got plenty of people working there. But you're not going to the morgue first. If you want to do this, you're going to the academy. We got people there too. More than just the two who are going to repair that mask of yours. Actually, that's where we stash a lot of our travelers, you know."

Irons's eyes suddenly snapped at the goblin. "What did you just say?"

"I mean, you guys got a lot of unused space there. Quite a few kids and plenty of faculty, but the academy grounds are big. Practically a small city inside a city, if you ask me."

"Where?" Irons growled. "Who have you been hiding in my academy?"

"Ah, ah, ah," the goblin said, wiggling a finger. "My job's already done enough. Besides, these guys are going to find out for themselves, and they're going to be assigned a liaison to make sure they don't end up telling nobody where we hide our special guests." Custiel leaned back in his chair. "The only reason this is working out is because you're going to be doing the Dragon Brokers some favors. And you're all part of the Neath now too, if you're getting down and dirty. But I want to give it to you straight. You take up this deal, and there's going to be a ritual at some point. You're going to be putting a few skills up for insurance. No diving into the muck unstained. For any of us."

That brought a beat of silence to everyone. But then Shiv regarded the Educator once more. "So. When'd you get tainted. And what skill did you put up for auction?"

Maia huffed, but said nothing.

"Big godsdamned favor, then," Shiv muttered. "Let's get on with this shit."

***

With all that was happening across most of the capital, they couldn't just walk in through Phoenix Academy's front gates. But ultimately, they weren't going through the front door anyway. Everything the Neath did, it did under the skin. And Shiv knew enough about human biology to know that there were a great many other systems circulating beneath the epidermis.

The circulatory system, for one. Blood surged along its channels and fueled the body. The architecture of a city was not so different. Buildings and streets were the skin, but connected to them were sewers, springs, and underfloor chains carrying mana. Spells needed to be directed from place to place. Water needed to be dispensed in every home for hydration and cleaning purposes. And from every home also came rubbish and biological waste.

That was how he discovered where the forger's den was. Though he'd been drawn across a series of brass pipes before finally being teleported into another section of the city altogether, he had expected himself to be under some kind of ordinary building, perhaps a residence or an even larger brewery.

The truth was beyond his ability to suspect.

The moment they stepped out of the chamber, waves of oppressive heat washed over Shiv. It wasn't nearly extreme enough to cause him any harm, but Adam hissed, Irons tensed, and the goblin forger stifled a slight growl of discomfort. "I always hate coming out this way. This is your fault, you bastards. I could be getting moved through the pipes, but now my den's getting burned. Everything's gonna get stripped down."

The air was so dry, Shiv felt his tongue shrivel. There was a faint shimmer in the air from the extreme temperatures passing through this place. Worse yet was the wailing whistle that constantly climbed and climbed. They weren't in a normal tunnel. The walls were made from some kind of heat-resistant material; the texture was rubbery, and its coloring was pitch black. Even so, steam rose off from the sides, and Shiv guessed that the insides of the insulating matter had coolant stored within.

A small squad of Pathbearers was waiting for them as well. They were dressed in heat-resistant armor, pulsing waves of cold radiated forth from them, and they held their weapons high, lowering them only when Custiel gave the say-so. One among them was dense with Biomancy mana.

They weren't dressed like the others. In fact, Shiv didn't even know what kind of being they were. They resembled a humanoid ant to some extent, but their face was mostly a slit with teeth running down the middle like a zipper. The rest of their body was chitinous as well, with several lashing antennae extended behind them. The strange creature stood amongst the other Pathbearers and made a series of hand signs using their forearms. They directed their silent language at Custiel, but the goblin just waved them off.

"Yeah, yeah, Reggie, I'm fine," Custiel said. "Came to an agreement with our friends here. Turns out everything was a bit of a misunderstanding."

Shiv could have said something, but the Educator let out a haughty hmph. At least she was going along with things for now. If she complained any further, he might've just gotten into a fight with her out of pure annoyance.

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