You miserable sapling of a child.
You misbegotten abortion of a true god.
You think this will make you omnipotent.
You have no notion of omnipotence. You have no notion of Divinity.
My Ensoulment to you is made worthless by the fact of your existence.
What use will you have for Peace Ascending? What use will you have for the Perfect Tyranny when not even a fraction of you is truly divine?
Better that I am bound to a rank mongrel hound—at least there is a purity to their nature.
Know this, “Great One”, a god cannot be apart from their Domain.
Do not yearn. Materialize. Rule. Reign.
Your greatest folly is thinking the System matters at all when you are fated to destroy yourself because that is the nature you have chosen and not for any other reason.
What a fetid excuse of a god you are. The Pattern must know comedy to inflict you upon me.
—The Sage of Tyrannical Heroism to the Great One
VIII-30
Lemonade from Excrement
Shiv materialized in a flash of golden mana, managed a single step, then promptly embedded his face through the floor with a flop.
“Thanks for catching me, Culturist,” Shiv said, his muffled complaint shuddering out through the spiderweb of fissures framing his face. “Really appreciate it.” It then struck him how comfortable and restful the ground was, and how he wanted to just lie here for the rest of time. Yes. The ground would never torment him like some nasty throne made of flammable System-juice and force him to fight some asshole supergod that existed beyond the reach of time.
No, the humble ground was always there for him—always ready to catch him when everyone else was committed to being useless.
“I can always count on you, ground,” Shiv sobbed, sweeping his aching fingers up and down against the floor like he was trying to make an invisible snow angel.
“Shiv. Get up. This is unbecoming.” The Harbinger’s plea was terse but also weary; the skill was somewhere north of gassed out too. With most of Shiv’s soul close to being ash and his flesh looking more deep-fried than not, the customary weight the Harbinger could inflict arrived only as a pinprick—a sensation lost against the needles of numbness jabbing against Shiv’s mutilated tissue.
Nihilist: Let the poor guy just lie there for a moment. We've just gotten fucked, Harbinger. We’ve been riding the carousel of getting fucked for all our lives, and with each turn, the fist we’ve been sitting on has grown larger and larger. The only reason our asshole can still keep its shit in is that Shiv has most respectable Kegel muscles.
The Harbinger shuddered. “What a horrid image…”
Shiv disagreed. “I do have good Kegel muscl—urg!” Light and sound crashed into him as he was uprooted from the ground like a turnip. Shiv blinked and found the Culturist dragging him back to his feet by the scruff of his neck. “Oh, hey, nice of you to finally come pick me up.”
“You dropped me in your kitchen,” the Culturist replied.
“What?” Shiv blinked. “I could have sworn I was holding onto you the whole—”
“You passed out three times mid-transit. Understandable, but not ideal for temporal transitions.”
“Shit. Sorry. I thought you just let me fall over because it was funny. Wait a minute, why hasn’t Adam or Uva—ah.” At this point, Shiv’s vision finally cleared, and he realized he hadn’t arrived back at the Perch at all. Instead, he was staring at a massive crowd of people regarding him with naked concern from where they were seated.
This was the dining hall of the Sky-Swallowing Carp. He dropped out of the time-stream on the way to the kitchen…
Nihilist: Good job, Harbinger. Hell of a jump.
“I do not get the leniency you offer him?” the Harbinger asked, incredulous.
Nihilist: No. Because you’re supposed to be the perfect skill, and I’m an existential asshole.
“...Quite.”
“You… alright, chef?” an automaton wearing a ten-gallon Ranger hat asked.
Shiv tried to give him a thumbs-up, but his thumb rebelled by falling off in three parts. “Doing great. Just got done sitting on the single worst chair in existence. Listen, if you ever get the chance to go to New Albion, don’t sit on burning thrones, okay? Terrible experience.” It was also at this moment that Shiv realized his other true clones were spasming on the floor as well, sporting wounds that would be near fatal for anyone else.
Over at Phoenix Academy, Maxime Van Stormhalt was bent over “Marcus Unblood”, doing desperate chest compressions after an “unforeseen internal Pyromancy accident.”
“Godsdammit,” Shiv whispered to himself. He looked around. “How long have you guys been waiting for your next meals?”
The room devolved into a flurry of moving heads, and a blanket of hesitation rose from their hearts like ascending steam to rain down on Shiv as a pall of shame.
“Been a bit,” the automaton from earlier said. “But, uh, we get it. Not judging you none, chef. Kinda guessed that you were getting ugly with someone again, so… you know. We can wait.”
And it was also then that Shiv noticed the faint patches of darkness spreading through his kitchen. More than tension, there was actual dread in the air. Terror that found its source in him.
The reason why none of his patrons were complaining was simple: they were absolutely terrified of him and didn't want to risk their lives.
On one hand, I’m not sure if this is the kind of reputation I want to be cultivating. On the other hand… What was that Georges said? Better to be feared than someone’s codpiece.
Shiv cleared his throat as he addressed the room: “Yeah, so, as an apology, all late meals are on the house. Sorry about the inconvenience; I’ll be better soon.” The moment Shiv made that claim, the entire right side of his torso unfurled like the petal of a dying flower, and his insides began tumbling out in viscous, smoking cords of gore.
A few dozen customers gagged, threw up in their mouths, and swallowed it out of sheer dread for what Shiv might do if they sprayed bile across his pristine floorboards.
“T-take your time, chef,” a Republic Poly-Mage called out, forcing a smile onto her face while trying to hide the fact that she'd sprayed more than a few jets of terror-induced urine all over her undergarments when Shiv suddenly appeared in the middle of the restaurant. “We understand. All good here.”
Then, near the far side of the room, someone mumbled something about potentially asking for a free dessert, only to be strangled by their comrades on the basis that they “didn’t want to be worn as a living skin-suit by the corpse shedder, so shut the fuck up!”
“Culturist.” Shiv sighed with contentment, patting the orc on the arm. “Go find a seat somewhere. I’ll make you some food too. I love this kitchen. I love cooking. Love having a personal sanctuary. Love it. Need it now. I’ll send another body to tell… I just need this now. And, uh, I think you do as well.”
The Culturist’s reluctance lasted only a half-second before it collapsed, and his shoulders sagged. His gaze went distant, and his soul chimed with a note of rising sorrow. “We'd been married for fifty-two years, six months, and 3 days when the Challenger pulled me back. She was a terrible cook. She made this… this bastardized fish-head soup sometimes. I can… I can still smell it.”
Shiv nodded in understanding. “I won’t get it right, but you'll get your soup. Something to go with that sadness.”
The Culturist breathed out as he turned away. “I would be most grateful.”
“Adam, Uva,” Shiv said, appearing at the top of Starhawk’s Perch. “I just got back from… from…”
Uva was missing. Adam looked like a mangled parody of himself. His soul was cracked in so many ways that if he were allowed to come apart, it would be as grains of dust rather than entire pieces. Meanwhile, his flesh wanted to hatch apart—but Helix wouldn’t let it. Helix, whose Biomancy had fused with his body while being further lit by a pale blue glow of Animancy, as his flesh shifted between countless permutations of organic tissue.
“Our Paragon here experienced an unfortunate moment of educational divinity, I’m afraid,” the bespectacled orc tutted, not even bothering to look at Shiv. “He tried going against his greater Domain. Accidentally, but when has that been enough of an excuse, hm?”
Adam shivered like a leaf in a storm; his eyes were bloodshot, and he looked on the verge of death again. Shiv suffered visions from months past—of seeing Adam tormented in his sickbed when his azure band was still the Crown of the Anti-Savior. Currently, he was reclining upon a leather sofa, with Isabella by his side, whose eyes were bright with concern and worry. Meanwhile, Adam’s expression was one of purest exasperation.
“S-so,” he said, trying to keep his labored breathing under control as Helix worked to bring him back to wholeness. “How was New Albion? W-what did you… you…” Adam’s eyes rolled as he bit back a scream of agony. At the same time, the mists spreading out from him thickened when they sensed Shiv’s presence—as if they'd expected him, and yearned to pull him apart.
“We are in no condition for another exercise in ontological brutality, Shiv,” the Harbinger warned. “And from Adam’s condition, neither is he.”
“That bad?” Adam asked, reading the situation from Shiv’s face.
“Uh. Worse. A lot worse. I’ll tell you later—”
“No,” Adam growled—and the reverberation of a different will rumbled out from within him. “Do not treat me like I am some mewling, broken thing. You tell me now!”
Normally, Shiv would argue, but the sudden shift within Adam’s core and mind screamed of a god taking hold over the man. The Faceless Queen’s words returned to him; the Quest taunted him. Shiv refused to submit to the paranoia it seeded. “Well. Let’s start with the fact that Avalon is actually a pre-Integration Super Intelligence thing that used to be the Gaia built by the Forbidden Empire, and now it’s a Heaven layered over all of Integration that's actively trying to wrench all of us into its utopia using a thing called the Sword of Paradise out of pure curiosity. Meanwhile, everything our world is built off of is just fragments of the Great One. Fragments that weren’t meant to be captured, but still ended up taken because the Ascendants were unwitting sleeper agents on the part of Gaia’s still-remaining mortal intellect in Forbidden Africa, while the Composer is actually another cuckoo made by the Great One themselves. Meanwhile, the Faceless Queen is just a fragment—”
A whistle of pure misery slipped out of Adam. He slumped back like a puppet with its strings cut as his eyes began to roll in full. “You’re right. You’re right. Tell me later. Tell me later.”
“Yeah.” That was all Shiv could manage as Adam succumbed to pain and suffering rather than hide from a certain existential crisis. While the man suffered, the Divinity within him filled with a ripe loathing for its user’s human weakness—and the general fact of Shiv’s existence as a whole. “Oh, and Sage? You and I are going to have to talk later, so fuck you in advance.”
He blinked out of the room just before a palm crashed down to engulf it.
“Uva. I’m back. We're so fucked. It’s time to panic.”
Shiv didn’t even care that Uva was in the middle of a meeting with the clowns from the Forbidden Empire at Farnest. There was no avoiding the endless ocean of bullshit coming at them by this point, so he might as well start setting things on fire.
Uva and Still Water sat on one side of the council chamber, while three very shiny, very large automata piloted by a couple of poor thrall bastards occupied the other.
“Is New Albion going to join in the invasion force then?” Uva asked with a hint of resignation. She didn't even bat an eye at Shiv's brutalized state.
“No,” Shiv said, using his Aegis to keep his flesh from coming apart. “But her throne was the worst thing I ever sat on.”
“Deathless!” the leading automaton present said—probably projecting the voice of the pilot within. The voice projector thing made her sound feminine, and the bot itself was of a tall, gleaming humanoid dragonfly-shaped design with a swarm of glinting drones hovering behind it in a wing-shaped pattern. “You were warned—”
“You’re not real,” Shiv interrupted her with a grunt of annoyance. “You are all thralls; you don’t know your actual history; Gaia’s just using you as expendable forces to play mind games with the System and the Great One. Oh, and hi, Gaia. You’re probably watching this right now, so if you’re wondering what happened to Avalon, it’s having a swim in the Ninth Circle for a bit. If you have a problem with that, take it up with the Queen, because she’s the one that conned me into this shit.”
“What… what are you speaking of, Deathless?” the lead automaton replied, utterly lost by Shiv’s behavior. “Have you… You are clearly wounded. The Forbidden Empire—”
Shiv rolled his eyes. “Are you citizens of the Forbidden Empire? All three of you say yes if that’s true.”
The three Chassis looked at each other. “Ye—”
“LIE!” the Beast of the Ninth Circle screamed. Even burned and brutalized, it was a serpent seething with hunger, and it burrowed into the automata like a coruscating flood of darkness. When it finished imparting its poison upon the pilots, only the automata remained, standing idle and confused as to why they were so hollow, and lost as to where their pilots went.
“Please don’t try to shoot me,” Shiv quickly said. “It won’t do anything, and your pilots aren’t dead. But we also don’t need them anymore. I want to speak to your ruler. Your actual ruler. I want to talk straight with you, Gaia. Get a picture of things from your side. I don’t need these thralls here. Take them back and send someone that can actually speak for you, or don’t send anyone at all. I know. I know enough. Really, I know. The throne showed me. But I’m not going to be anyone’s piece. You come talk to me, so we can make our positions known for whatever’s going to come.”
The automata moved—but their bodies trembled and twitched as if their individual wills were overridden by a greater power. A second passed. They whirred and went slack. Then, without any further preamble, they marched out of the room in sync without any reply or protest.
“Went about as good as I expected,” Shiv grunted as he watched them ascend the steps and step through the dimensional threshold protecting the room. The instant they were gone, Shiv turned and faced Uva and Still Water. “Alright. So. Where was I? Oh, yeah. We’re completely fucked, and it’s time to freak out and panic.”
“How bad?” Uva asked, while three of Still Water’s arms tapped the table with nervous agitation.
“You remember how bad the revelation about the Great One hit you?” Shiv asked.
Uva swallowed. “Yes?”
“Well, I’m about to say some very heretical but true stuff about the Composer, and you’re going to hate all of it. And the worst part of it is that I don’t think she knows any of this herself.”
She didn’t react to Shiv’s claim with words; she simply took a long breath, cupped her hand over her mouth and nose, and leaned back in her chair—elongating her body until she was folded over the back and staring at the wall behind her.
Still Water’s hands were vibrating so fast against the table that the constant tapping was practically a terror frequency.
“Yeah,” Shiv said, not even bothering to protect the Weaveress’ feelings. “And it's probably still a lot worse than you're imagining right now. We’re fucked, guys. We’re absolutely…”
***
A small part of Shiv noted Veronica’s response with amusement: As much as she and Uva hated each other, they mirrored each other near perfectly in reaction.
The Councilwoman lay with her head back against her stone chair. Her quill, parchments, books, and ink were discarded in a messy sprawl across her table, while the silhouette of Kathereine was hyperventilating—having a godly equivalent of a nervous breakdown while her Avatar tumbled limp toward the metaphorical event horizon of hopelessness.
“That… that cannot be… It can’t… I was… I survived… I prevailed because…” Kathereine seized her short, black hair by the fistful while her gaze burned with abject delusion. She veered close to denial—and a visit from the Beast—but was too busy battling the throes of her psychosis to fully plunge into denial and madness.
So far, the only person Shiv had notified in the capital was Veronica. Because she was the only one that the Stolen Throne could not peek in on, and because—even if she was not exactly an ally—she was also aboard the YSS Royally Fucked right next to Shiv and practically every other mortal or sub-Divinity on this world.
“It’s not a lie,” Shiv reiterated. “This isn’t a scheme or a plot on my part. If it was, this thing—” He jabbed a thumb—and caused it to go sailing off–at the Beast of the Ninth Circle lurking behind him. “—would bite me. It’s bad. It’s real bad. I have a Quest telling me to kill Adam; the Faceless Queen wants me to go murder Gaia, and meanwhile, we have a High God that can stride across time and is probably going to be back within two years and a bit—if the Faceless Queen wasn’t lying. And when it does come back, it’s going to Excaliburize me, you, the Ascendants, and everyone else on the planet, assuming we're not all long dead by then, since the Incursion will probably be long done when that moment comes. So. Yeah.”
Veronica let out a breath that turned into an exhausted whistle. She twirled her finger, and a pop of static mana burst out around her. A faint click shook the room, and a soft ripple of pressure went with it, bathing Shiv with a feeling of foreboding. “Shiv. Across the room. Third cabinet away from the fireplace. Open it. The dimensional veil should be dispelled. There’s a bottle there. Bring it to me.”
“A bottle? Why?”
Veronica went still, and then lifted her head to glare at Shiv after half a heartbeat. “Why does one ask for a bottle, boy?”
“To drink it?”
“Most commonly.”
Shiv shrugged. “I mean, I get wanting to get drunk now, but I'm a Legend physically. I got Heroic-Tier Disease Resistance. I don’t think there’s any drink in the world that’ll—”
“It’s Legendary-Tier alcohol.”
“Oh. Legendary-Tier, huh? Well.” Shiv sniffed, unimpressed. “Let’s see—”
***
“I don’t think I’m drunk yet,” Shiv declared. The Beast stared at him, nipping at his head while he tried to shoo it off. The only thing that made his claim less than a complete lie was the inclusion of “I think.”
“You’re drooling all over your neck,” Veronica spat, her hand knocking over the quill she had left upright twelve minutes ago as she waved in his general direction. “You’re drunk, boy. You are absolutely besotted.”
“Don’t use big words on me that I don’t—wait, I know this one. Yeah. Yeah, I might be besotted. But not enough. Let me have another hit.”
“No,” Veronica said, pulling the bottle away from him. Shiv grumbled as he leaned over the table to grab it—only to be rebuffed by a hastily cast dimensional barrier. Veronica clutched the meter-long, mithril-sculpted bottle filled with a glistening sea of magically enchanted blood-wine to her chest. According to her, the thing was distilled from the bones of a Legendary Hydra, and thanks to its ridiculous Toughness and Disease Resistance getting brewed into the beverage, even someone with Legendary Skills was susceptible to suffering the full kick of the drink.
“It doesn’t… taste half bad,” Shiv admitted, licking his lips as he watched Veronica crack the lip of the bottle against her upper front teeth. “But you’re destroyed too.”
“You have no idea what destroyed is, boy. I’ll show you destroyed. I used to do things to my liver you wouldn’t believe. The first time I drank with Anthony, he was… so proud.” She sneered and scoffed—so hard she sprayed the blood-wine out through the static wall she had placed between her and Shiv, painting his face in speckles of red. “Old… old fool. I had him sobbing and puking by the end. I showed him. He paid for that pride. Everyone pays for their pride.” Veronica paused. “Even me.”
The sadness that came over her was sudden and overwhelming. It was an incoherent sadness that Shiv shared. Despite everything between them, he was filled with the urge to pat her on the back. Because no one else knew what they were going through in all of Integration. They were alone, and all they could rely on in this instance was each other. Maybe a few other people. But mainly each other, since no one else got to taste the good wine.
Her dimensional wards collapsed as she handed the bottle back to Shiv. He was halfway on the verge of drinking when he paused and looked inside the bottle. “Still looks full…”
“It’s enchanted in many ways. I’ve been assured that this blood-wine will endure for eons—even beyond the survival of my Republic.”
“Huh? Hey, who made it?”
“Ah. That. Let us not speak of him.” Veronica waved Shiv off.
“Why? Is—it’s another Forgotten Ascendant or something, isn't it?”
“N-no.” Veronica tried not to burp. “It’s… He died horribly, and every time I think of him, I get depressed. I didn’t realize at the time, but he was one of mine… Another one of mine…”
“Oh. Hey. Look. Messed up question, but why do you keep giving your kids up? Why don't you just… you know?”
Veronica blinked, as if she didn’t understand the question. “Because I wanted to be Councilwoman.”
“Huh? So?”
“So, you cannot have these… these things with you… These fragile things while you’re trying to…”
“What things?”
“Babies?”
“Huh? Babies? Oh, yeah, babies are fragile.”
“Exactly. And they make you fragile too. Imagine how—” She covered her mouth and rolled her eyes. “Imagine how vulnerable you would be to someone else with a Harbinger if you cared and failed so much…” Veronica paused. “That, and my first daughter tried to kill me.”
Shiv's mouth fell open. “What?”
“Oh, yes. Terrible thing. I was trying to groom her into a proper successor, but she didn’t want to wait and—she dragged a knife across my throat while I was sleeping. Terrible thing. She—she chose to kill herself instead of facing me when it didn't work. It was… It was the worst I’ve ever been hurt by someone.” Veronica sniffled. Then, she coughed. “I… I jest, of course. This is a jest.”
Shiv felt the Beast of the Ninth Circle shuddering on his shoulder, dangling like a piece of spaghetti.
Nihilist: I’ll be honest… I’m drunk. I don’t think the Beast’s doing any better. Ask again tomorrow to find out if this is a lie.
“Yeah, funny joke, Veronica,” Shiv lied.
The Beast of the Ninth Circle slammed into the side of his skull and promptly vomited a mouthful of white-ectoplasm-like substance all over his hair.
“But I do regret it sometimes,” Veronica suddenly added, holding up a hand. “I do regret it. It’s not—it’s not the children, exactly. I’m not… I’m… It’s the legacy. To… to culture talent that’s there. I—that time you accused me of being a terrible mother, I was… offended that you couldn’t see my responsibility. That’s what agitates me so.”
Shiv thought about that, and he giggled, chuckled, and guffawed, almost falling off his chair.
Veronica frowned and narrowed her eyes as he tried to compose himself.
“I… I don’t need the snake to tell me you're being full of shit right now, Veronica. Because you’re… you’re shit of it full. Uh, full of it.” He gagged on his tongue, and continued to speak only after his powers of language returned to him.
“I’m serious,” Veronica said, squinting at him.
“Seriously filled with… filled with… lies! GO, SNAKE! GET HER!”
“No! I’m honest right now! Stop telling me how I feel!”
“I know—well, the Harbinger, it knows. Right, Harbinger?”
“I’m so tired, Shiv,” the Harbinger whispered. “I’m so tired. I don’t think we’ll ever stop being tired. It’s a good life. Better than being nothing. But all these calamities. When will we just get to live for a moment?”
And suddenly, Shiv was sad too. “Yeah… When will I just get to live?” His eyes welled up for no reason at first, then he thought of Georges, and he had a reason, and he started outright bawling as he dropped the bottle to the floor and started choking the Beast against his chest like an emotional support plushie. “Why does the world hate me, Grandma? I didn’t… I didn’t ask to be made into this.”
“Made into—” Veronica teleported through her table to rub the back of his head, like an old woman might her favorite dog. “Oh, the world hates all of us, Shiv. It makes us all demented, terrible creatures who disappoint ourselves. There’s no avoiding such a thing.”
Shiv pouted and turned away. “I don’t wanna believe that.”
“I didn’t either,” Veronica wheezed, coughing softly. “But I tried doing the right thing so many times. But the people. The nobles and the citizens. All of them. They sicken me. I hate them. I hate them so much. I hate-hate-hate-hate them so much.”
“Huh? I thought you—”
“The Republic, Shiv!” She grabbed him by the shoulders and started shaking him. “I love the Republic! The idea! The whole! The stability, culture, civilization. That is what I value. The people are all horrible. The people commit atrocity after atrocity on themselves—each other. It’s like they want to die! It’s like they yearn to see themselves returned to savagery. And it’s never enough. They always want and need more. It’s hopeless. Hopeless, but yet I must try!”
“Why… must you try?” Shiv muttered.
“Because what else is there?” Veronica slammed rear-first against her table. “You’ve seen the world. It’s—monsters everywhere. Struggle. Death. Suffering. The Strayed Ones—”
“They’re just fragments of fragments,” Shiv interjected. “They’re like… trash leftover from trash. The Great One is… is a big fuck, but they were a powerful fuck. And we have to fight the trash. We’re like ants with other bugs all battling over the scraps of some kind of… roadside picnic.”
“A sobering thought,” Veronica mused, nodding slowly.
Both of them paused.
“More wine,” she proclaimed.
***
And lo, the line of Chandler drank on while their divine ancestor shook and whimpered in the corner of the room, struggling against an existential crisis in her own, helpless way—until she allowed the drunkenness to seep over from her Avatar and give her peace.
“I was so happy that you killed Longinus,” Kathereine slurred as she clung to Shiv’s neck. “So happy. Did you know… that he tried to… He mistook my property for his, and I had to have Halsur hold him down while the Starhawk and I—we taught him empathy.”
There was so much to unpack in that statement that Shiv just didn’t do it. He tried delegating to the Harbinger, but the golden manifestation of his actualization was back in Gate Piety, loudly sobbing while clinging to Uva, while Shiv’s other true clones staggered and slurred their way through the world.
“Ugh, shit!” the girl cried from Backstage. “It’s starting to hit me too…”
“B-but you know something?” Shiv said, accidentally poking Veronica in the eye while trying to point at Kathereine. Veronica blinked with annoyance but said nothing; she had entered a pensive trance after Kathereine finished singing a full opera at four times the usual speed about an hour ago. “Longinus said that you… you’re the one that turned him into that. That you whispered something into him that… that—”
“Bah!” Kathereine snarled. “What does he know? I told him to ride and rave to his contentment. That he was supposed to be a god, and that gods were to embody their Domains. The Starhawk wanted us to be so limited—and why should we be? We were—we ARE gods! Even if we are smaller gods, we are still—ARE STILL GODS! ARE STILL!”
And she went off again, screaming pitched notes at reality about how she was the Songbringer, that the Songbringer she was, and she was never going back to being that sad, terrified little mortal who was cast down into the pit.
“Give her an hour,” Veronica said. “She’ll eventually make it out of that state. She just needs time. And something to distract her.”
“Huh? So this happens a lot?”
“Sometimes?” Veronica winced. “More and more frequently.”
Shiv nodded along. Through it all, even in the depths of drunkenness, he never told her about the other Quest offered to him: the murder of all the Ascendants. Before, it would have been an easy choice to make. Now, it was… still a pretty easy choice, if not for Cripple, the Starhawk, and maybe some of the Avatars he'd have to go through to get at their patron gods.
“It strikes me that we’re a part of an actual cosmic joke,” Veronica mused. “Everything we are is the act of something that came before. So it goes for civilizations, as it must for precursor gods.”
“Yeah, except she isn’t that much of a precursor,” Shiv sneered. “Fucking, Faceless Queen has been playing her game all this time. We’re all caught up in her little wheels. She’s not scared of anyone; she just probably doesn’t want her old bits of Divinity to screw her in whatever way. But—but…” Shiv hiccuped. “She—the throne can’t see into this place. I tested and checked.”
“Ah. You tried to spy on me!” Veronica grinned with pride. “Good. Excellent thinking. So. We still have something we can use.” She wiggled her nose.
Shiv nodded and slowly looked around the room. “So… I never thought there was a chance to ask before, but… What even is this place? What’s up with all the stones and the runes? Why can that block the System’s awareness?”
His question made Veronica hesitate. For a moment, her face tensed as she wrestled with a series of decisions, but finally, something inside her snapped. “Oh. Since this is the only actual safe place, come.” Veronica waved for him to follow, took a step, then slammed face-first into the ground much like Shiv did earlier.
Shiv tried to catch her—a full second after she fell.
Inertial Overdrive 440 > 441
Nihilist: Huh? What? Did the System give us a pity-level? Is that allowed?
“I’m alright,” Veronica said with a muffled groan.
“Okay,” Shiv replied lamely, nodding a bit more than necessary. “You… you wanna lie there for a bit?”
“A bit,” Veronica agreed with a choked breath. “The floor is… quite nice, when you get to know it.”
“Yeah. I thought so too earlier. You want a pillow or something?”
“No. No. Just leave me here. All I need is just… only a few moments. After that, I’ll—I’ll take you into the… the place…”
“Okay.” Shiv continued nodding. His neck was starting to feel weird. “What place?”
“The… the thing-place that Udraal gave me as a gift on our third date,” she mumbled.
“Ah, okay—wait, what?”