Nature knows what it means to lie. The art of deception flows in the blood, in the marrow, in every nerve fiber of its creatures. Civilization is no different. We are simply the conscious practitioners of nature’s finest ways, and you, our dear cuckoo, are to become the very epitomization of this grand deception.
We gave you a choice before. We asked you what kind of bird you wanted to be, an owl or a cuckoo. You chose the latter for a reason. You were driven back towards the dark, back into the embrace of your homeland, yet with an urge to slit its throat from the inside for what it did to you.
That hate compromises you for more delicate operations, but is a firm grounding. Good architecture for an imprint. A subconscious to guide your consciousness. It is with that grounding that we will guide you.
Once you are in your nest, we will send you your orders through subliminal messages. You will grow up with a fascination for surfacer news. You will do everything you can to secure and read papers published by Lost Avalon. You will notice the small mistakes there that no one else notices, but you will then forget about them by the time you're done with the paper. You will tell yourself that you are simply trying to understand your enemies, all of them, in service of your nation.
But then, in time, you will hatch.
You are a cuckoo bird, one born of civilization instead of nature.
You will not see your own betrayal coming, and neither will those who raise you.
—Designation Cuckoo
VIII-6
Cuckoo
Equipment Obtained: [Vestments of the Undying Cook]
Tier: Narrative/Master
Condition: Fine
Composition: Voidmantid Ceramic; Bloodroach Chitin; Deepcrawler Silk; Fleshdrinker Fungi; Bone Adamantine; Cabbage; Broccoli; Cream; Beef; Chicken; Turkey…(>+1000)
Enchantments > Compound Ocular Network; Antennal Resonance; Pheromonic Cipher; Master Regeneration; Magnified Vibrosense; Trauma Mantle; Myomeric Amplification; Mycelial Interface; Binding
Path:
Cook
Skills
To Me My Toads (Initiate) 88 > Heed Thy Toadfather (Adept)
This Fecund Flesh My Garden (Master) 44
Hungersense (Master) 34
Mealstrider (Initiate) 48
“You have got to be shitting me. You have absolutely got to be shitting me…” Shiv sighed the sigh of a weary man already overdrawn with political nonsense, now further faced with a deluge of spy, cloak and dagger bullshit. New Albion was always a salt upon the wound after the blow was struck. Politicians decided, but then the battle after the battle after the battle commenced, as the players and the shadows danced—and always stepped on each other's toes.
He leaned over his kilometer-long stove, savoring the sizzling sounds of the patties. Shiv could feel his burgers approaching the point of no return. If the scintillation bestowed upon them remained a few seconds more, they wouldn't be great food anymore, merely good, and he was almost willing to let that happen. These were supposed to be burgers, after all. Fast food options for fast people who had no appreciation of delicacies or flavor.
But hust because someone else was a degenerate didn't mean he had to suffer the same taint.
“Commis on station. Take over.” With that command, his toads strode forth, spawning from a peripheral realm beyond anyone's notice. Rather than being cartoonishly careless caricatures of incompetence, their behaviors and physical attributes mirrored Shiv—at least a lesser version of him, less refined but still disciplined, as they were beholden to this place of culinary worship. He drilled that truth into them with repeated sessions and constant training. He let them rest rarely, only when they were truly ragged, their tongues lolling out of their mouths and their bodies still from stress. At all other times, there was a version of him in the kitchen, aboard the Sky-Swallowing Carp, feeding, always working, always cooking, frying, salting, saucing, and more. There were his toads who watched and studied and slowly ground away those awkward edges that once defined them.
The toads were two meters shorter than Shiv, but they sported his musculature. The outline of powerful bodies bulging from the white fabric of their chef attire. None of them wore the hat, however; there was only one person who held that privilege, and it was the head chef of the Sky-Swallowing Carp, running the kitchen with the help of his toads, a few specialized volunteers, and an army of golems.
Flipping the beef patties wasn't a difficult act, but Shiv had something else occupying his mind. His patience was frayed, and a vision came to him of a momentary lapse in control: of a pan being flung so hard it blasted through the ceiling of his kitchen, piercing up into the restaurant itself and causing a mass casualty event as it ignited the air and boiled everyone beneath Heroic-Tier in Toughness. Shiv wasn't so sloppy anymore, but the thought still held weight.
Even before he gained Legendary Physicality, there were consequences. Collateral damage. Other people paying for his uncontrolled power. He still remembered their faces. He never wanted to forget them; the responsibility it instilled mattered.
And it was thanks to that same feeling of responsibility that he didn’t snarl and spit at the mirage lingering just behind him.
The Faceless Queen of New Albion was a ghost, undetected by Adam's Immolating Omniscience, unnoticed by everyone except for Shiv.
But she was present. She was here.
Of that, he was beyond certain. If this was a hallucination or a moment of madness, then that would have been detected by Uva. The brain and the mind were interconnected, and both expressed feedback when the other suffered externally affected experiences. The Faceless Queen was an illusion, an act of deception, perhaps, but not a falsehood unto herself. However, all the words she spoke and everything she did, most of them, were small bits of truth building to a grand tapestry of lies. The worst part of it was that Shiv was part of that tapestry now.
At times, he felt like a business partner, an unwilling one, but one that operated in tandem with her because, toward the end, it was for mutual benefit. Other times, he felt more like a pawn. She had him attend certain functions, take his Sky-Swallowing Carp across the Abyss to pick up specific people and drop them off here and there, and he listened. He listened because she never forced him to do any of these things. No, there was always a bargain, a give-and-take, an offering, just like there would be today. But with the news she brought and what she was undoubtedly about to ask, Shiv felt like telling her to piss right off, if only to spare himself the miseries of tradecraft for another day.
“Oh, come now, Deathless. It is not so bad. See things from my perspective like you always try to. If you had the opportunity, you would have done it too.”
He hated her whispers. He hated how melodic she sounded, how childlike she presented herself. He hated the way her body would shiver and change, how her tone and pitch would crackle, rise, drop, and shift. He hated her because he had no counter for her, even after two months of suffering her presence. Practically everyone else had an opening, a point of weakness he could place pressure upon and bend. A crack he could sink himself into and force wide, shattering them from within, both figuratively and literally.
The Faceless Queen’s heart, mind, and soul were as blank as her face. There was nothing for him to hold on to. She was as much an enigma to him now as the moment she first revealed herself to him during his negotiation with the Pale of the North.
And though she never showed it, a part of Shiv knew that she reveled in that dominance. Social superiority was control.
“And so she sinks her tendrils deeper into us. For the source of this hate comes from within ourselves,” the Harbinger mused.
“No,” Shiv shot back at her, shaking off his emotional malaise. “No, I wouldn't do that because, unlike you, unlike Veronica, the Ascendancy, and all the other bastards ruining this planet of ours, I don't use children as expendable munitions. I don't send them into miserable hell-holes as operands or assets.”
“But you do hire them as cleaners, assistants, and servers for your kitchen,” the Faceless Queen replied. A pause, followed by a giggle. “Not anywhere near the same thing, of course, but ultimately it is your choice. You save them. You expend yourself on their behalf because you pity them and can't stand that clench in your heart when you see them die, and because you have a vision of a world you desire. You're the monster holding the other monsters at bay, but beneath these walls, surrounded by these walls, under the fleshly roof of a monster made for war, you're just a chef. This is a place where everyone can be happy. What a wonderful playground. What a beautiful illusion. You're as much a performer as anyone else, Deathless.”
He looked over his shoulder and directed a flat stare at her presence. But his Psychology and Rhetoric found no purchase in her soul or mind. She was ethereal, ghostly, a phantom in more ways than one. There was nothing he could anchor himself to. Comparatively, he was the stone, and she was the rain. Though he couldn't be broken so easily, ten thousand years of droplets hitting your face would change you just a little, just enough. Erosion could be inflicted through more means than just Necromancy.
And Shiv was beginning to feel weary.
With another sigh, he dragged a hand over his face, as if that could wipe his exhaustion away. “So, she was always one of your Cuckoos. You were always planning to subvert the First Blood from the inside.” If he wasn't so outraged about her request, he would have been impressed. The sheer amount of preparation and planning needed to embed one of yours in a hostile nation as a child and keep them as a viable sleeper agent while they rose to the upper echelons of a society were inconceivable to him. Clearly not for New Albion. There was always a way in. There was always another angle. Always another bird.
The Faceless Queen tutted like a master chastising a foolish student. “You should know by now, Deathless, nothing is planned. Not in that sense. Yes, there's architecture. There's order. There's a sort of theoretical consistency you'd like to see manifest in the world. But nothing's guaranteed. That's the course of living in a dynamic reality. All world models are wrong, but every now and again, there's just enough symmetry for you to take a chance. Every Cuckoo is a chance. Most of them don't get to hatch. Most of them are crushed, not even because the enemy noticed someone in their nest doesn't belong, but just because of the cruel happenings of the System: a plague here, a war there, a civil conflict inside, a sudden disaster from the outside. As time goes on, the many little eggs we bury crack, one after another. However, every one in a thousand eggs gets to grow until they're ready. And when they get ready to hatch, well, we want to capitalize on our investment, don't we? In that sense, we're not so different from the merchant rulers of High Harbor.”
And that led to the Faceless Queen's request.
They were to call Valor back from performing his imminent assassination. The entire reason behind his absence on the battlefield was to facilitate this murder, to slip into the enemy's rear guard and to kill any competent command personnel or Pathbearers that were going to join the invasion force. So long as the situation was led by Scorn or Belalu’s minions, then the outcome would almost certainly be in Gate Piety's favor, if only tactically.
With Corcusa present, an actual adversary was in place—and one didn't suffer capable, competent enemies like that.
There would always be a price to pay, even if you managed to beat them.
Shiv triggered his Snapshot as he rifled through his old memories. He always felt something off about Corcusa. Tulveg and Ekkihurst were no longer so embroiled in the First Blood's politics—and were always outcast from vampire high society. The only one who knew anything about Corcusa was Angello, and only because they were both of the Ophereus Bloodline. He'd heard of her, but all he knew about the Legend of the Path of the Assassin was secondhand. Apparently, she was the personal assassin of Grandmother Ophereus, the Progenitor of the Bloodline, and almost no one knew what she looked like or why she'd been Embraced. The topic of her Embracement itself was a scandal, for Corcusa was an Umbral. A member of the very slave race bred many centuries ago by the First Blood itself to serve as blood bags, vessels of amusement rather than people, lower in status than even cattle.
With what Shiv knew about vampire culture, Embracing an Umbral into a Bloodline wasn't like freeing a slave. The First Blood’s notions of slavery were far different from that of the Compact of Babel. For the former, it was more so the equivalent of elevating one's favorite dog to sapience—perhaps doable, but very strange, and ultimately a humiliating, sacrilegious thing. One didn't give a dog a cape and crown in most cases without being regarded as an eccentric at best or a madwoman at worst. But Grandmother Ophereus was the single most charming woman in all the First Blood, according to Ekkihurst. Who would risk more than whispering behind her back without suffering the social consequences?
Nihilist: The strong do what they will. The weak suffer what they must. This is the one true rule under the System: with power, all things are permitted. Even cultural mythology and traditions can be defied by raw weight of individual power and influence.
“But there is still a cost,” the Harbinger added. “For a warrior, this is acceptable, but Grandmother Ophereus is a Social Legend—and Social Legends draw power from creating, maintaining, and upholding traditions, norms, and societal charm. She performs this act in spite of its costs, not because of it.”
And all that led back to the present—where another Social Legend was in play. “Does this Grandmother have any clue about this?” Shiv asked. “Does she know that her chosen protégé is one of yours?”
“Of course not,” the Faceless Queen replied—she almost sounded offended by the idea. Almost. But ultimately not. She wasn’t the kind to truly judge; there was a shallowness to her depth that blunted the offense behind her words, no matter how callous. “I can claim this because we didn’t know she was even alive until just a few months ago either.”
“A few months…” Shiv trailed off. Memories poured through him.
“Entire Aviary cells seem to be fleeing Abyssal nation territories, trying to escape however they can. The Necrotechs managed to purge most of their hidden vermin, but the Elders of the First Blood—poor as my relationships with them have always been—have informed me that their own Aviary spies have openly fled and left nothing behind.”
The Composer’s words had never quite added up to Shiv, even after Theborn was conquered, and at some point the topic had slipped his mind entirely.
“This has something to do with whatever plot you were running between Passage, Valor’s arm, and the rogue Descenders, isn't it?” Shiv asked.
The Faceless Queen raised her finger and slowly painted a square frame in the air. “The bigger picture.” But she spoke no more of it. “She came into notice—and was partially activated when she hunted down one of our misplaced Ravens. And now, every time she goes to sleep, the Home Office receives some very interesting dreams from her end.”
Dreams? The word sparked inspiration within Shiv. Finally, he might have a way of intercepting something for New Albion and getting one over on the Faceless Queen. He needed to consult Uva and get some help from the Dreamtaker for this. Easier said than done for the latter, with her time so occupied by all her new worshipers.
“Oh, that’s a good idea, but I wouldn’t waste my time that way,” the Faceless Queen said.
Shiv stopped his eyes from narrowing. He was getting very good at intercepting his own facial expressions. “What?”
“The plan to use that subverted Ascendant of yours to spy on her dreams. She can do it, but the Cuckoo will be burned if that happens. Standard Psychomancy countermeasures—and I assure you, we’re quite good at detecting gods.”
Shiv waited to feel a pang of something from his Gardener of Doubt—some kind of lie. Nothing followed. Felling bullshit.
“If I make this pitch to the others,” Shiv began, his right eye twitching as one of his toads yelped when they barely caught a patty before it toppled off the stove, “if we consider this, I need you to tell me what the endgame is with her. What are you planning to use her for, because according to Valor’s last missive, she’s going to be making contact with the Challenger in short time, and he needs to hit her as soon as possible. We’re already dealing with enough as things are; the orcs joining in—”
“Will almost certainly lead to the collapse of your Gate and another, and perhaps final, mass slaughter of your people,” the Faceless Queen agreed. “The Challenger’s fast concluded a month ago, but he committed to another voluntary month of abstinence so he can truly relish the bloodshed to come—as have his most loyal and powerful offspring. Things are going to be quite dire for you indeed.”
“Not a great pitch, Queen,” Shiv deadpanned. “Makes me think I should jump over to Valor and go on as many suicide runs as it takes in Vulketh to put Corcusa down.” Then, he paused and thought about her words. She did this all the time: she spoke, but she left details out and made him assume—until the situation was automatically misrepresented in his mind. A second passed, and the weight of paranoia sank deeper into his bones. “Wait. Is it going to be dire because of her, or in spite of her?”
The Faceless Queen raised her hands and clapped. Something in the way her body changed in shape every time her hands came together made Shiv’s intestines shuffle inside him like a nest of restless snakes. “Bon, Deathless. Bon indeed. In spite of. You see, the Challenger has been watching and studying the conflict from the first day. What she assumes to be her method of highlighting the weakness of your Gate and cutting out her more unreliable comrades is worth nothing in truth, but little Maria herself? She’s worth everything to him.”
Instead of asking another question, Shiv’s mind began putting pieces of information together based on her words and reactions. “She’s worth…” The Faceless Queen was inscrutable in a great many ways, but utterly predictable in one. Everything she did was done for New Albion’s benefit. She was a beast of realpolitik, and New Albion held a market monopoly over a single resource above all.
Intelligence.
“That’s why she absolutely can’t die,” Shiv realized. “You might be willing to strike a bargain with me if her career trajectory is just upward among the Progenitors. The vampires are probably subverted to all hells by your birds anyway. But the Challenger? You probably don’t have anything on his end—orcs aren’t reliable assets, even if they’ll betray each other and their god on a dime; he probably sees through all his children's eyes or something. But he won’t see this coming—or at least it has the greatest chance of feeding you information straight from the Tutorial itself. The vampires are the lesser prize; Corcusa’s going for gold because the Challenger…” Shiv went over everything he knew about Corcusa, and his mouth fell open slightly. “You think the Challenger is going to work with her because he likes her.”
Even without an expression to read, Shiv could feel the Faceless Queen’s smile. “He is going to make her Vaketh-Bakal. Like you. Because despite everything, the great God of Strife is more a slave to the System’s perverse poetry than just about any other in Integration.”
Deductive Reasoning 49 > 54 (Skill Evolution Reached)
Gardener of Doubt 100 > 102 (Skill Evolution Reached)
Skill Evolution: Deductive Reasoning (Initiate) > Shivers (Adept)
Skill Evolution: Gardener of Doubt (Adept) > Sower of Lies (Master)
Skill Fusion: Deductive Reasoning (Initiate) - Gardener of Doubt (Adept) > Dryad of Lies (Master)
A forest blossomed inside Shiv as two skills cracked and commingled. One, a skill driven to stalk truth from sense, subtext, word, and intuition. The other, a metasensory organ that felt lies like tactile pressure. Unseen vines branched out from Shiv as he brushed the Faceless Queen for the first time, and felt the denseness of her falsehoods.
Though she never lied to his face, she left so much out, and there was something about her that wasn’t real—that couldn’t be real. And that sense filled him with a direction and a hunger; made him know there was something misshapen in reality. If truth was the foundation of things, then this skill was a finger brushing upon the blemishes of reality—except the Faceless Queen wasn’t a blemish; she was a rupture, wallpaper torn haphazardly away to reveal a yawning void beneath.
She feels like the condensation of every lie in existence… A star collapsing into itself, always and forever. What even are you?
It was ever rare the thing for Shiv to feel like this about another.
“Do you even exist?” Shiv asked, his phrasing wrong and inadequate, failing to express the depth of his doubt.
“About as much as her,” the Faceless Queen answered. In the next moment, Shiv involuntarily took a step back as the blood froze in his veins. The Faceless Queen had developed a face. The smiling visage of Adam’s unborn sister flashed over her features for a quarter second before it vanished. “Very cozy nickname she picked for that skill of yours, I have to say. Backstage… Fitting.”
Continuity Error: What? How? How did she—
Shiv refused to say anything, but the growing horror and disbelief might as well have been painted on his face. The Faceless Queen gently patted Shiv’s lower back—for that was about as high as she could reach. “Solve your problem at hand first, Deathless. We’re not enemies. Not yet. And so, if such proves to be true, then we can make a deal. There is common ground.”
Dryad of Lies: TRUTH! ACCEPT! HER! OFFER! USE THE DARK TO HUNT THE DARK!
The skill’s voice thundered so loud and absolute that Shiv flinched and took another step back from the Queen out of instinct.
“Shiv,” the Harbinger said heavily. “I think we must consider the possibility of at least one of our skills being compromised.”
A lot more than one, Harbinger, he hissed. “She knows about the girl, about the Backstage—godsdammit, I fucking hate talking to her. She always does some shit like this. Keeps yanking me along.
Dryad of Lies: FOLLOW! THE! TUGS! SHE LEADS YOU TOWARD SWEETEST WATERS!
And of course you talk too. My head’s turning into more of a circus with every passing day.
“I’m willing to make a few formal offers with Gate Piety if you’re willing to do us this service in return,” the Faceless Queen continued. “There are other things you need to be concerned about. Like where the Necrotechs are hiding the last piece of Valor—and yes, it is no longer in the Moonlit Library. When the First Blood plans to march on Weave. Where the Challenger and the children of the Obsidian Serpent are having talks—”
“What?” Shiv said, the last part catching him entirely by surprise. “Talks? But—”
Dryad of Lies: LIE!
The invisible vines spreading out from Shiv bit into the Faceless Queen and burrowed through her presence. Explosions of knowledge splashed through his mind, each one arriving in scattered pieces and drowning him in moments of vivid detail.
He caught sight of the Faceless Queen elsewhere—speaking to the Southern Gods and striking similar bargains with them, exposing weaknesses in the Republic; at the same time, she did the same with Anthony, to Veronica’s supposed ignorance, and then repeated the act with the Councilwoman herself. These moments were connected by a chain of deception; each one shared a series of characters—were based beneath an overarching lie. The moment Shiv sensed a smaller limb, the skill pulled him up its branches.
And at the same time, Shiv felt his vines grow harder—absorbing the deception to thicken its figurative chloroplasts and armor his own untruths.
“Is there anyone you’re not in bed with?” Shiv rasped.
“Hm…” The Faceless Queen placed a finger against her chin and considered the question. “The French, when it comes to the weekend.”
For whatever odd reason, that wasn’t a lie at all.
“It's because of racism,” the Faceless Queen explained, as if hearing his thoughts—and perhaps she could. She shared that uncanny trait with Produveral.
“Racism,” Shiv repeated, unsure what else to add.
“Yes. From my side, in this case. One of the few traditions of old Albion I decided to keep.”
“What even are the French?” he asked.
She didn’t answer. Instead, she looked over his toads and sighed. “This would be so funny if they were actually frogs.”
“Huh?”
“Nevermind. You’ll understand someday. But I see your Dryad of Lies skill has been developed.”
“Okay, I’m getting tired of this shit.” Shiv ground his teeth. “How are you doing this? How do you know what’s happening inside my soul?”
“Oh, I don’t. But someone else does.” She somehow winked without any eyes. “Anyway, is that a yes? Are you going to help me save one of my rare few grown-up Cuckoos?”
Shiv hated making promises to her, but on the other side of the conversation, Uva and Adam listened in while still at the legislative session—both of their minds utterly drenched in terrified disbelief.
Adam sighed. “Gods damn it all. Yes. Tell her yes.”
“We’ll play ball for now,” Shiv muttered.
“Oh, how lovely!” She waved at his face, as if greeting Adam directly, and sighed. “I’m glad you’re always so reliable and reasonable, Deathless. We’re going to do great things together—and it’s been some time since I’ve appeared publicly. I must admit, the idea of walking in the open sends a shiver up my spine.”
“Wait, you’re coming in person?” Shiv asked, narrowing his eyes.
The Faceless Queen clasped both hands behind her back. “A bargain of such importance can’t be left to lesser hearts and narrower minds. And besides, you’re going to be my way of getting back at Chandler for all those nasty messages she threatened to write me.” And with that, she giggled once more and took a step away. “Please inform Legend Valor about your decision posthaste. It would be very awkward and uncomfortable to see this agreement made null because the hand that holds the blade has already drawn blood.”
“Yeah, I—” But the Faceless Queen was already gone. Like she was never there.
“Farewell to you too, Queenie,” he whispered. A black mood washed over him like clouds breaking into a sodden downpour. Veronica was powerful, but she never did—
The Faceless Queen appeared again—and Shiv caught his flinch before it could ripple through his body. “Oh, but you should kill the Salamander. He’s not one of yours or even one of Yellowstone’s—the real Salamander's buried next to a creek in Kentuck. The one you have in your custody is one of mine that strayed a bit too far from orders. Children… how distasteful, am I right?”
She vanished once more.
Shiv’s black mood spread over to Adam and Uva—with her suffering a particular kind of sourness. “Never in my life have I felt more impotent as a counterintelligence operative.”
“Tell me about it.” Shiv glared at the spot the Faceless Queen once occupied. “Still have no felling clue how she managed to follow me Backstage. Shouldn’t be possible. She never appeared there at all. She even knows about—”
Adam groaned and spat an intuitive guess before anyone else could respond: “You’re not the only entity who leaves context. If I have to make a wager—it’s your Garden that’s compromised. It has a budding personality, does it not? It's more than just a skill—and perhaps that’s how she imprinted herself on it. Or… did something to compromise it, anyway.”
The storm clouds over Shiv became a hurricane of frustration. “Of course. Of course it is.”
On the other side of reality’s curtain, the girl who didn't exist shrieked a slur at the Red Rider’s Hand—which had its middle finger pre-raised in salute, as if proud of its treachery.