208 (II)

Admission [II]

"Have the grovelers left?" Tequila whispered from inside Shiv's cape.

"Yeah," Shiv replied, but he narrowed his eyes at a representation of the thirteen Ascendants detailing the ceiling above him. He saw each of them in their exaggerated glory: the Starhawk with his resplendent wings and bow soaring above; Enoch, represented by a faint, shrouded figure wreathed by the sun, standing on the apex of a tremendous tower; Kathereine, singing and wreathed by the magic of her own musical notes; and Halsur not far away, bearing a shield and spear for her protection.

Cripple and the others were present as well, all of them looking glorious in diminished ways. Might not be a room specifically dedicated to them. Even Daughter wasn't a nightmarish being of psychopathy and horror, but more a shadowy protector, embracing a sobbing, lost girl.

Yeah. That's Daughter, alright. Not some kind of psycho-killer who wears little girls. Definitely not.

A sigh escaped from Shiv as he considered the faith of his Republic, the faith that consumed his fellow citizens. He'd gotten lucky in a way; his alienation from his own society prevented him from developing the faith skill. In turn, he'd accepted the fact that his gods were ultimately either weak-willed fools or cold, monstrous bastards far easier than it would be for most. Shiv still felt a swell of bitterness when it came to his own past, but now, it seemed things weren't so simple. Sometimes, enduring one wound can help you avoid another.

There came a sudden knock at the door, and Shiv flinched. He nearly summoned his Last Morsel to his hand before he caught himself. I am just a physically crippled, but medically gifted, Low Adept, Shiv reminded himself. Physical violence can't be my solution in public. Not if I want to keep this identity longer than a few minutes.

That didn't mean he couldn't use his magical skills. He pointed a mana hydra through the door, and his Biomancy wrapped around a robust physique. The magical outline of the person was rendered, and Shiv felt a hefty weight press down upon his Biomancy field. The one he was sensing was mentally strong. Their bones were like metal rods, and their tendons were like cords of steel. Shiv guessed they were a Master in Physicality at the least, and after a second longer, he managed to decipher their sex as well.

The micro-spells representing the person's genitalia and other minor details told him a woman was waiting behind the doorway, and around her were the priests from earlier. Shiv had no idea who to expect—perhaps someone else from the morgue who wanted to talk with him.

Practical Metabiology 44 > 45

"Come in," Shiv said. He cringed at how hoarse and soft Marcus's voice was. It sounded far too much like a whimper for Shiv's comfort. Stick to the cover. Deal with it.

The door opened, and a battle-hardened woman stepped in. She wore a thick alloy vest, and carved into the front of her sleeveless cuirass were two wolves chasing each other's tails. One of them radiated waves of Pyromancy, and judging from the design of the other, Shiv suspected it was infused with Cryomancy, portraying a kind of elemental balance. The next thing of note about the woman was the two axes hanging from her hips. They seemed to be one-handed weapons, and their edges sparked with faint arcs of electricity. The flat sides of the blades were also decorated with glistening spell-symbols.

And then there was her face. Her hair was done up in a dense braid of green, with thin bones threaded in between the fibres, running all the way down to her lower back. Three scars ran along her lower lip, and painted trails just underneath her right cheek looked like she'd taken a claw to the face, and it never healed properly. While he was observing her, she looked back at him, but she wasn't studying him. No, she had a very obvious glare in her eyes—the type of glare one reserved for someone you scorned, or an enemy you intended to slay.

The hells is her deal? Shiv thought to himself. Wait, don't tell me she felling knows Marcus. Ah, hells, System. Barely had this identity for longer than a few minutes. Don't do this shit to me right now.

Slowly, she marched into the room as the priests chattered away behind her. They muttered things like "a miracle" and "Ascendant-blessed." Through it all, she said nothing. The intense animosity in her eyes never faded, however, and Shiv grew increasingly sure that her uncoiling hatred was directed toward Marcus for some reason.

"Yes," she said, her voice coarse as if made so from a lifetime of yelling. "Truly a miracle. But, holy ones, if I may, can I be granted a moment of privacy?" She made the gesture of the Ascendants, tracing a cross into the air with her right hand before splitting it down the middle. "We have suffered a great deal during the expedition, and it warms my heart to see another of my kinfolk survive, even if it is in such... miraculous circumstances. But the expedition, the losses we took, were truly sorrowful, and I wish to know how he feels in private."

"Certainly, Magnolia of Lutherbrook," the goblin wheezed. "We understand how this may be an emotional moment for you, to find another Pathbearer under your charge lost but returned. In their light, we flourish."

"In their light, we flourish," the other priests echoed. One after another, they shuffled out from the room, and as the door closed, Shiv found himself left alone with a woman whose body language trembled on the verge of violence.

Psycho-Cartography: Look at her face. Look at how tight her shoulders are. Look at the glare in her eyes. It's taking everything she has not to bury one of her axes in your skull. Whatever Marcus did, she hates him. Hates him a lot. But there is something else. She knows she's not justified in killing him. Otherwise, she likely would have acted already.

A tense silence unfolded, and Shiv watched Magnolia's lip curl, revealing a mouthful of clenched teeth. "Of course it was you, Unblood. You bastard. Of course you were the one who came back, not my Opal."

Shiv blinked. He had no idea who the hells this woman was talking about, but Marcus probably did. That being said, he could probably piece a few things together. Her Opal. This woman was likely speaking of a child, judging from the seraphic warmth in her tone. Furthermore, it seemed like she blamed him for Opal's death.

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"Have you nothing to say, you curse-spawn cur? You vile vermin?" As she hissed her hatred at him, Shiv felt his own anger begin to reflexively rise, but he caught himself before he could return a threat and bite back at a woman who seemed desperate to start a fight.

Shiv might be strong enough to crush this woman like an insect, but Marcus was just an Adept. A crippled one at that, lacking any proper martial skills. So, in the absence of having anything to say and not wanting to give himself away, Shiv decided to keep silent. He remained impassive, and the blank look on his face drove the woman to a new height of rage.

She started to tremble.

"Nothing? Nothing! You say nothing to me now? After a lifetime of defiance, after never knowing when to control your pride and tongue, now you think it proper to be ashamed? To be quiet? Now?!" She slammed the bottom of her fist atop the table between them, and it shattered into splinters of wood. The tray Shiv had eaten from tumbled through the air and ricocheted off his forehead. He didn't even blink.

"No," the woman hissed again, and he tasted a faint whiff of alcohol on her breath. The point of her finger came close to his eye, and he saw the faintest sparks of electricity building there. "I will not accept this. I will not accept that you are the one that came back. You of all people. Motherless, fatherless, ruined, crippled thing that should have died before leaving the womb. You mistake of a child. You take my Battle Sister away from me in childbirth," a hysterical laugh bowled free from the woman, "and then you have the audacity to spill your seed into my daughter! To impregnate her?"

This time, Shiv flinched slightly. Okay, he thought to himself, that shit came out of nowhere. The hells were you doing, Marcus?

"Mine!" Magnolia repeated for a third time as her lip quivered. "Mine! And you let your bastard seed fill her with bastard offspring! And instead of being righteous for once in your life, instead of letting me solve your problem, you turn her against me! You twist the mind of the recruiter! You make them force me to take you on, to bring you on this expedition to the capital! You steal a spot meant for someone better so you can go to the academy! You! YOU!"

Shiv's instincts screamed out to him to strike first—to rip her apart before she struck. She was on the verge of going for one of her axes. He could feel it. He couldn't stay silent much longer unless he wanted this to end in a fight. He doubted she could harm him, even if he didn't focus on strengthening his core. The mana powering her axes had little hope of overcoming his Shapeless Tides, and the material of the axe itself would chip and shatter upon greeting his Orichalcum-hard skin. After that, though, his cover would be effectively blown, preservable only if he eliminated this woman.

But that led to a chain of other issues. Killing her wouldn't be hard. Shiv could stop time right now, stand up, and simply pull her head free from her torso, and there would be nothing she could do to stop him. But what would he do with the body after that?

He could completely mangle it into a ball using his Biomancy and hide it within his cape, but that wouldn't solve the problem of her disappearance. What the hells was he going to tell the priests when they came in and found her missing? He would be the prime suspect, considering that he was the last person to be in her presence. And that would leave a trail for the Inquisition to follow.

The miraculous resurrection of some kid in a morgue was bad enough. A kid in a morgue making a Master-Tier Pathbearer disappear during a one-on-one conversation? Yeah. This cover wasn't going to last beyond that.

Godsfuckingdammit, System, Shiv thought to himself. He knew the peace couldn't last. He knew the System was going to try to pull him back into that cycle of bloodshed. But Shiv had more options than just violence now. At the very least, he could be verbally and psychologically violent. And so, without any better options, Shiv decided to go on the offensive, as his instincts demanded.

The social offensive.

If I can get her to lose control and get the priests back in or stall until someone gets here, that might give me an out.

"Yeah," Shiv said, leaning back into his chair and adopting an utterly indifferent expression. He even rolled his eyes for good measure. "Cut my head off. Drive those blades into my corpse over and over again until I stop twitching. That'll make your daughter happy."

Magnolia's mouth fell open and slammed back together so hard Shiv heard one of her teeth crack. "You... you..."

"Yeah, me, me," he replied, not bothering with the whole confused child act anymore. He wasn't sure where he was going with this yet, but if he could be provoked into making a loud enough ruckus, maybe the priests would return and spare this poor, unfortunate woman from getting turned into a ball of flesh.

"How dare you?" she whispered. A tear dropped from her left eye—a tear of pure rage. She bit down on her anger as Shiv kept going with his lashing words.

"What do you mean, 'how dare'? I dared because I'm a Pathbearer. I dared because I could. I did. And that's the way it is. You know, you talk a lot about me, me, me, everything I did. How about everything you did, huh? If you were such a good mother, if I were such a terrible person, why'd you let me beat you at every turn? I mean, my Physicality's crippled. I'm a literal crippled orphan. How are you going to let someone like that outdo you, impregnate your daughter, and then end up coming to see them with a straight face?" Shiv held out his hands in utter disbelief. "It's pathetic. And now you're here, whimpering to me instead of handling it like a proper Pathbearer."

Something in her face broke. "You... you... you don't know anything!"

"I seem to know plenty," Shiv shot back, folding his arms. "Seem to know your daughter well enough to make you a grandma."

"She was poisoned by your words! By your act of feeble, tragic determination!"

"I don't know, it seems I knew her pretty well. And she knew me too." Shiv wiggled his eyebrows. "Sticks and Stones, right? Call me a cripple, and I'll call you mom. How about that?"

Sticks and Stones 58 > 60

Her entire body tensed. Her flesh turned brittle and glass-like. The woman shook with rage. One of her axes found its way into her right hand, but she was caught between the urge to let it fly and strike him down or to hold herself at bay. "You didn't know my daughter. You don't know me."

"I'd beg to differ," Shiv said. "Hells, I probably knew her better than you did." A choked snarl escaped from the woman, and Shiv, riding a high of audacity and verbal bullshit, kept going. "After all, I was the one who got her pregnant. Not you. I guess that means it's just 1-0 for me, am I right?"

Magnolia's face went blank for a moment. His audacity and strange line of thinking had rendered her mind befuddled. And then he had made the mistake of grinning at her, and that sent her over the edge. Her hand shot out. Quick—but only for Marcus's standards. Shiv had to force himself to sit still and wait as she pulled at his collar and tore his loaned clothes.

Low Master Reflexes. Yeah. Not the guy you should be fighting, Magnolia. Not smart. And then he watched her commit to her mistake; she lifted her axe high and let out a feral snarl. Not smart at all.

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