There is more worth to be had in claiming a disciple than in the matters of a master's prestige. Every burgeoning path there is akin to a garden, with many seeds that can be nourished and many others that must be avoided. As a master, you, using your experience, will guide them down the right path, and in turn, they will guide you down yours. For the analogy is not so simple: they are seeds, but they are also roots and foundations. They are growing forests, and they can elevate you just as they grow in potential. So do you: You see your mistakes in them, and so you can help them avoid the darkest of paths.
Yet at the same time, they can pull you away from the pitfalls of experience, for an untainted eye is also an untraumatized eye. What you have suffered will mark you, will scar you, but the world has not had its chance to scar them yet. Just as you can make them perfect, so too can they draw you back to a point where you were pure, where you were unmarred. In this is your own pursuit toward perfection as well.
Never before did I grow as I had when I took my disciples, for it is in training and the bestowal of knowledge that one truly embodies all they have learned and all they have become.
So to all those worthy and privileged enough to call themselves master, cast forth your knowledge, spread your wisdom, and rejoice. Do not fear the uplifting of the young and those who come, for as we are their salvation, so too might they be ours…
—Valor Thann
VIII-33
The Dread and the Shadow (I)
It took Shiv two entire days to find Valor, much longer than the lich had expected. Far too long, in fact. Such was how Valor deduced that there was something wrong, rather than simply the limits of Shiv's Awareness being to blame.
The boy made himself known like an Abyssal bear emerging from its cavern. The wet ground splashed and squelched beneath his weight. The still loam of the rich soil was displaced by his impending presence, and his soul burned hot with vitality. His magical lores whipped out, and a scintillating flame hovered behind him, lighting both his form and something else that clung to his shoulders.
For a moment, Valor thought himself staring upon Shiv's cape, further upgraded by Can Hu, perhaps. But then he saw the six red crescent eyes glaring directly upon him and realized it was something else entirely. Another presence hung over Shiv like an imposition, an alert monster that posed as an idle one. It looked upon Valor, glaring at him with something between avarice and wrath. Valor readied himself for anything, but it was Shiv's sigh that broke the tension before it could build. He stepped out from the dark, shedding the Trespasser Shaped of Dread and Null, and looked more exhausted than Valor could ever recall seeing his student.
He moved with awkward tension. Limbs swaying a bit too far. Muscles bundled tight, stretched taut like steel cords approaching the limit of their tensile integrity. Valor recognized his body language to be that of someone emerging from the deepest of drunken stupors. Shiv was hungover, not in this body, perhaps, but down at his very soul. This piqued his curiosity. Shiv was reckless at times but rarely irresponsible, and for him to be so besotted on this fundamental level that every one of his skills was also compromised and his soul was soured with alcohol meant something else.
A series of deductions took place. It was likely Veronica Chandler who had induced this state upon him. Or maybe not her. Maybe the Faceless Queen played her own game, but there was little worth in guessing. He returned to staring upon Shiv, who remained three meters away from Valor—his gaze pointed down, taking in his handiwork.
Along the bank of this river were three dead vampire scouts. They weren't the first to embrace Valor's journey back home. They wouldn't be the last.
A strange silence transpired between master and disciple as they regarded one another. Something had changed between them, something Valor couldn't understand yet, but he did not rush into the quandary with blind haste. Instead, he greeted Shiv with a nod as if there was nothing wrong at all, for sometimes the preservation of calm was the assurance of it. “We need to improve your Awareness and tracking abilities, it seems. It took you too long to find me, though you did eventually. I trust Adam had no part in this endeavor.”
“Adam? No, but the Stolen Throne helped me cheat a little. Even then, I don't think I would have found you if you didn't leave me a neat trail of dead vampires to follow across the wilderness.” Shiv licked his lips and grimaced. “I'll be honest, Valor. Finding you wasn't the hard part—but everything that came before… There are a few things you probably want to know about.”
Valor gave a quiet hum of affirmation. “I suspected as much. Come, there are fish in the river and a cavern nearby. You may buy my forgiveness with a meal officially and explain our newfound woes to me with savory flavors filling the bitterness of life.”
***
The lugerfish fillet was grilled to perfection. Scintillating flames practically stitched the stench of mystery and apprehension into the pearlescent, steaming flesh of the now-flayed shipfish. While the scent held a unique lure all its own and the texture tasted pristine and subtle, when it shredded upon Valor’s magically constructed tongue and filled his insides with splendorous warmth, it proved insufficient to ward off the dour mood that followed from Shiv's every word.
Valor's thoughts were blown out like a candle with the first revelation alone. The Faceless Queen was the Great One; this was proven beyond doubt by the Beast of the Ninth Circle. Valor didn't recognize the skill. It was another outcome resulting from higher machinations, something that the Challenger and the Faceless Queen both fed toward a predestined evolution. Even so, it ranked the least among the other unwelcome events in recent history.
As Shiv spoke on and on, Valor plunged into a morose existential silence and sank deeper and deeper with every revelation. He started laughing at one point, for it was just getting that absurd. Every single truth Shiv spat drew him even lower in mood and morale. His entire life had been shaped by the myth of the Great One, and long, long did he ruminate on which Faith represented the true will of their Great Progenitor God.
How little that all mattered in the end! How pointless! How worthless their feeble attempts at gaining insight! The enigma behind the Great One's fall, behind how they fell, resolved just like this. Yet with that came no relief, but rather a greater threat: a looming apocalypse upon the horizon, born at the Great One's hand, a divine being's adverse nature and avarice rather than any kind of profound wisdom. Their fate was decided before it ever began: a game, a gambit between two immortals above all other immortals, a superhuman intellect that preceded the System’s arrival, and a High God that simply couldn't abide by the fact of something being greater than they.
Darker still were the recontextualizations of Valor's path. He had memories, moments in his history that he couldn't decipher the meaning of. He fought the Faceless Queen several times, yet she held no grudge toward him. She did not dispatch any of her spies on missions of retribution, and more than once, he knew he was at her mercy, yet she had spared him. He wondered then if it was simply a thing of fortunate circumstance. Perhaps she still wanted to use him as a knight upon her chessboard. Now he might not even be that.
He had been arrogant, so arrogant, to think himself of being a piece of worth. Before a Transcendent, no, a High God, what was the worth of a single Legend? What was the worth of a single world in a single dimension? All of this, all their struggle, the Faiths below and the peoples above, felt so small, so hopeless. Everything that served as the foundation to Valor's worldview suddenly crumbled and parted, dissolving like quicksand beneath his feet. He was suffocating within his own ignorance, within his own dying beliefs. Shiv spoke slowly and calculated, crafting his words to lessen every impact, but what cushion could one bestow upon a complete crisis of faith? What could one do to alleviate the death of a god within the heart of their believer?
At some point, Valor realized the fish tasted like ash upon his tongue, a powdery taste that clung to his palate. It almost made him retch, but he had to swallow, for it folded around him and sank into him, was born of him. And so swallow he did, allowing the meal to plunge as dirt toward the bottom of a lake, building upon the rising sediment of depression upon the ground of the abyssal depths.
“I'm sorry,” Shiv said softly. There was a faint golden glow to him, a hint that the Harbinger was there, trying to find the words, the mannerisms, to make Valor feel better. But the Harbinger, though a puissant skill, was not all-powerful. Sometimes there was no better. Sometimes there was no hope as an antidote to the spiraling misery. “It’s hell on Uva too. She keeps things quiet and neat, but even if she's usually reserved, there are different kinds of quiet. This is not the good kind, and I don't know what to do for her. I don't know what to do for you when it comes to this, not even a little. I spoke to the Harbinger. I'm still talking to it. But it doesn't know either. Neither of us does. I have a lot of skills, Valor. I've dealt with a lot of things, but right now I…”
An old vessel of bones reached over a scintillating bonfire to squeeze a numb comfort into a boy who chose to be more than a monster. “It is not your doing. It is not your fault… It is… It is beyond us. Has always been beyond us.”
“Never stopped us before,” Shiv said.
“But it’s different now.”
A dappled pattern born of light and shadow danced across Shiv’s face as he lowered his head in unwilling acceptance. “Yeah. Bigger. Worse. Don’t even have a clue where to start with solving that.”
“It is my shame as a master to admit the same. The Composer. Have you told her about her true origins yet? Have you spoken to her at all since you’ve learned?”
Shiv shook his head and swallowed. “Uva said she wants to do it, but I don't think she has the heart either. Her courage is beyond doubt, but this is too much. She doesn't even know if she can trust the Composer, but the Composer probably won't be able to trust herself after this. She doesn't know she was always a cuckoo. Just another part of the Great One’s game, not a child or an Inheritor, just something to be used, another Demigod cast aside and spent as a last-ditch effort to ward off whatever Avalon is trying to do. Even now, I barely understand what happened on the Throne. All of it's burned into me, but it's also fragmented. The Faceless Queen used me in a way that would have killed everyone else. She used my new skill like a scalpel and pulled Avalon down, but it's just a delay, just a bit more time. She saw an opportunity in me, and she engineered it to perfection. She used me to drown an entire Heaven, Valor. And now she wants us to destroy the Forbidden Empire. Doesn’t seem like she’s asking.”
Valor was inclined to agree. “What of Adam and his awakened Divinity? You said that the Sage has told you much and has offered its way out as well?”
“A security blanket for the entire world,” Shiv grunted, though he let slip his disgust. “A palm pressing down on our entire world. Won't lie to you, I see more symmetry between it and the Great One than I would like. But that's the way of it, right? The Sage is a tyrant from the marrow outward. I don't think there was ever anything resembling a person in it. It's just committed to its own war, its so-called Canons. It's not gonna back away from this, and I'm afraid that eventually it's gonna wear Adam instead of it being the other way around.”
Valor nodded. And he had nothing else, for there was nothing else but impotence, but darkness ahead. Yet something trembled inside of him. His memory stirred, and he remembered being buried beneath smoldering rubble. He remembered surviving as his adopted family was butchered. He remembered being lost, being an angry child with nothing ahead but darkness and despair.
He had been here before, at the start of his life, so many centuries ago. He'd been here before, and he had survived. As his faith crumbled, his legend, born from himself, endured, and there was something there, perhaps not enough to be hope, but it was still true and strong enough to make him continue, to force him to continue. He had been here before, and someday he might be here again.
He simply made the choice that a younger iteration of him did all those years ago. There might not be a way out, but there was still a path forward, and he would walk it to the very end.
And with Shiv and all his other allies, he wouldn’t be on that journey alone.
“The Stolen Throne painted you in flames,” Shiv said suddenly. His eyes were locked on Valor, and their white irises burned bright in the darkness of the Abyss. “I saw you when I thought about you. The System showed you to me. It showed you practically everything. I didn't really mean to peek, but it fed me your feelings. It made me realize what it's like to be you. The Stolen Throne, it's unlike any skill I've ever seen. It's like a backdoor into the System itself, something that's more than Unique Divinity. Don’t even know how it’s stable in our mana threshold. But I know, Valor. I know your fear. I know you’re worried. About your past and all that. About what happened.”
Shiv's admission was painful, and Valor understood why. It was a deeply intrusive thing, but even an unwilling intrusion on Shiv's part. From what he claimed, the Throne had made him realize what it was like to be Valor, and that was a deeply violating act for both of them. Yet Valor's mind turned away from his own privacy and sanctity to something else, another, more taboo possibility that almost made him shudder. “If you could do that with Throne, then what about—”
Shiv interrupted him with a shake of the head. “The flames called him when I thought about him, but he just waved at me and disappeared.” A scoff burst out of Shiv’s nostrils. “Your son is a cowardly, conniving shit. I'd like to apologize for saying that, but I also mean it. That being said, he's powerful, and he's playing a part in this scheme as well. I just can't tell what that is. I get the feeling that he wants everything to go down the road we're currently heading for—like he's using all of this to refine me and the rest of his experiments. I didn’t get anything on your wife either—Avalon came, and I—”
“Just as well,” Valor declared. There was a gaping void inside of him, as if he wasn't sure if he wanted to learn the truth of his beloved's demise from Shiv or if he wanted to remember at all what his part in that tragedy was. But he had to go forth. There was no other way, no other possibility. There was no need to waver anymore. He had to go forth. “You have done far, far more than you should, Shiv. You have been forced to do far, far more than you should. This is not your responsibility.” Valor stopped talking at this moment as he realized his next words were as much meant for himself as Shiv. “We were not asked to partake in this: not this fight, not this life. That choice was never real, and I mourn that realization. I mourn that this is a fact rather than an angst-ridden lament. But I ask you now, what do you think we should do?”
Shiv let out a long chuff, sounding almost like a horse coming to a sudden halt. “What, about Avalon, the Great One, or this whole Mega-God War bullshit? Honestly, I have no idea. Not one clue. It's bigger than all of us. Right now I got the Backstage. I might be able to avoid Excaliburization if Avalon returns, but everyone else? Yeah, maybe the Sage is our savior. Maybe we have to actually consider moving everyone into the Fairwoods and burning them into Evanescia’s Watchtower. Maybe we'll be able to figure something out or pull something out of our ass that leaves just the Great One to deal with. The Sage isn't exactly stable itself. It doesn't view us as long-term entities, so to speak.”
A laugh escaped him, dissolving into nothing but dust on his tongue. “Long-term entities… fuck, we're not even pets to it. It calls Adam a user, but Adam is the one who will be used up. The Sage has talked about being bound to other people before the Great One, before Adam, and probably someone else before the Great One. It's older than time, maybe older than the System. It's playing on a different scale altogether. We are not in its interest. We're just part of its expression, something it has to consider for now, and I think that's how it goes for all the other big players…”
Shiv paused and stared intently into his scintillating flame. His expression hardened, as did his will. “Things are changing on the small scale too. Veronica… Well, I wouldn't call her an ally. I wouldn't call her anything, but by merit of what's happened, she's a lot closer to us than before. She doesn't have a choice. The Ascendants don't have a choice. We're all little bits and pieces being cast together. If we don't want to get used up, then we're gonna have to pool our resources. If we need something from her, she’s more likely to give it down the line. I don't think we can consider the Republic's threat fully nullified, but so long as the whole Great One-Avalon feud’s in play, I don't think we're in that much danger because we're all in the same shit heap together. Then, we got the fucking Challenger and the invasion force to deal with in the meantime.”
Shiv pinched the bridge of his nose. “Yeah, that big orc bastard's lapping their shit up all the way home. He probably knew or could guess this was gonna happen. Down the line, if his earlier behaviors are anything to go by, he's gonna give us another choice. Probably a binding offer to me or to Adam or everyone else. The preservation of Earth at some twisted cost. Maybe he'll have us choose how much of this world to sacrifice. Maybe he'll make me cook and eat half of all humanity in front of their loved ones or whatever. We'll have to survive the current invasion first, so I think that's what we're going to deal with—the orcs, the other assholes, the Breaker, Corcusa. They both got hit by the Excaliburization thing, so I don’t know what to expect there either, but at least we can fight and kill most of them.”
“What a heartening fact,” Valor muttered. “I should have slain her. I knew I would regret this.”
“I think we were meant to regret this, Valor. The Challenger knew she was a cuckoo, but the Faceless Queen? Well, she's playing a weird game, and I don't believe that she's going to be outplanned this easily. Whatever she has hiding up her sleeve, I don't think it's all the way out yet. There's still more down the line, or maybe the Challenger actually did outplay her? Seems like the Great One and the Challenger had a rivalry going all the way back, so it's not impossible. Either way, no point in crying over unslit throats—we just gotta fix that problem down the line, and I think we should start by making ourselves as powerful as we can. Which means we make a sprint on the Necrotechs for that last piece of you.”
“I concur.” Valor’s words lacked enthusiasm, but not certitude. This is the path, and it must be walked. “And so, we are to be homebound. I am to return as a reckoning upon my own people and take back what they withhold from me. Tell me, is anything born of fruit from Lady Van Erren’s diplomatic overtures?”
“High Undying talked nice but mostly wasted her time. She got the feeling they’re afraid of giving you back—that you might just kill some of them, or maybe that Udraal will pay them a visit himself to punish them for disrupting whatever torture he was trying to inflict on you.”
Valor nodded, expecting as much. “So. I suppose an investigation and a heist are in order.”
“Eh.” Shiv frowned. “The Great One owes us information, and I say we use her as much as she’s using us.”
Shiv's casual willingness to further engage the Great One took Valor by complete surprise. The young Pathbearer noticed and shrugged. “Doesn't really matter by this point. She's going to play her game, and she's going to try to force us into it. From what I can tell, we only got so many choices and angles. Less if you're not at the height of your power. Between you, Roland, and me and Uva, we might have some more maneuvering room, but we need to be as best as we can be within as little time as possible. Now, maybe the rest of us will evolve, but you're the oldest of us. You're the most experienced of us. If we can get all of you back together, that might give us some kind of edge. Any kind of edge. It doesn't matter if the Great One takes it seriously or not. What matters is that we can get your last piece before this invasion takes place. That’s the immediate threat. Now, as for how we’re going to get your legs back? Well. I have a cunning plan.”
Valor’s dagger heart quickened its mana oscillations. “Please, Shiv, measured. There are a great many innocents among the Necrotechs. Not all of them deserve retribution.”
“Oh, I know that. I don't intend on hurting them.” Shiv gave Valor a wink, one that held a little too much squeeze as his eyes came together. Valor suddenly suffered a brutal sense of foreboding.
“Shiv,” he cautioned once more.
The student continued on, undaunted by his master's worry. “We are going to use the power of implication on them. Implication!”
Valor turned the word over in his head and then repeated it aloud very slowly: “Implication?”
“Exactly! I think that instead of doing a heist or just committing to a direct military operation on the Necrotechs, I'm going to visit them myself. I want to see what your home's like! You and I can go along while everyone else makes additional preparations back at home, and I dunno, I think I'm gonna go wander toward the most Necromantically charged areas.”
A low growl escaped Valor. Foreboding was not a strong enough word. Downright ominous was the only way to describe it. “Shiv, please…”
“Trust me, Valor. It’ll work. We both know that I don’t want to explode and kill everyone, but they don’t!”
“Shiv…” Valor was on the verge of begging. “If you make but a single mistake, hundreds of thousands will be reduced to ash!”
“That's why I won't make a single mistake, Valor. But they won't know that. This is why I'll be doing the diplomacy this time. While they're distracted by me, in the worst case, you can go in and just misappropriate some things. Besides, I wanna see your home. I wanna get to know the Necrotechs. I wanna understand why they haven't sent a proper representative to Gate Piety yet. Is it because we haven't been nice enough, or just lacking proactivity on our part?”
A particular grin spread across Shiv's face. All moroseness was briefly forgotten as his emotional terrorist nature took hold. “I want to understand the Necrotechs, and I will do whatever it takes, inflict whatever discomfort I have to, to learn their ways.”
Valor's grievances towards his people were resolved and found themselves replaced with utmost concern, but mingled with that concern was a nagging feeling, an insidious, traitorous urge to maybe go along with Shiv, to discover where this path might lead. Yes, the High Gods and Transcendents were playing their games, and much was predetermined, but in Shiv's almost maniacal urge to gamble the fate of the world and use it as a tension whip against his enemies, they'd realized something: There was still a lot to choose from when it came to the small scale, and so possibly it was time to make a most unexpected choice. Maybe it was time to throw caution to the wind and take a step forward and embrace the unpredictable.
“If things really go bad, I’ll go Backstage,” Shiv added as the silence dragged.
“Isn’t your Backstage… made of vitality?”
“...Uh. I mean. Uh. Yeah. A lot of it. Hells, that would be a pretty big bang.”
Valor nodded slowly. “And even if you can avoid it, it is better not to risk yourself so much anyway. Perhaps it is best that we consider a golem. Or some other strategy—”
“Uva decoy.”
“What?”
“I can make a golem. Have Uva layer it. Uva-made decoy. Golem core. Vitality warp. My social skills.”
“Yes…”
“Yes?” Shiv repeated, growing more excited.
“Yes!” Valor agreed.
“YES!” Shiv pumped his fist.
The flame between them leaped up in a blast of triumph, and the ashen taste of faith-death faded as its flavor changed to something new—something elevated.
It wasn’t quite hope, but it was also more than despair. Just a bit of joy amidst the “what the hells do we do now,” and the revelation that there were still little choices to make along the way.
Little choices, but personal choices still.
As the sudden upswell of excitement died down, Valor and Shiv both let out a shared breath, and looked upon each other with a shared glow in their eyes.
“Shiv.”
“Valor.”
“I am glad, even if so much of our fates are manufactured, that our paths aligned and you found me that day when you fell.”
“You know something, Valor? I think that wasn’t planned at all. I think that was just the hand of chance turning over the hand of fate. But whatever it might be, I’m plenty glad to be here with you as well. Now. Let’s go make that fact everyone else’s problem.”