Why is suicide bombing your first resort when it comes to diploma—ah, I forgot who I was talking to. I’m sorry, dear. Please. Tell me more.
—Legend-Operative Uva Mettabon to Shiv
VIII-34
The Dread and the Shadow (II)
Muvark Lastbank never intended to become a Legend. He truly didn't. All he wanted to do was impress his father-in-law to claim the hand of his childhood sweetheart. Many such tales, many such stories. Unfortunately for Muvark, his last name was Lastbank, and his grandmother's blood flowed deeper in him than he ever desired to discover.
His family hadn't always gone by Lastbank, but by the time he was born in the Second Age, at the dawning of what was to be the Necrotech Empire, such was how they were titled. For his line held Renowned Economists, after Master-Tier Bankers, followed by Accountants aplenty, and in one extremely unfortunate case, a sharpshooter who, though born without a Martial Path, used her mathematical genius to land shots from impossible distances. Perhaps the rest of the Lastbanks would be more inclined to claim Hero-Mathematician Trushi despite all her eccentricities if she were, in fact, within the realm of acceptability.
However, when one’s nephew catches you trying to create a golem from mathematics textbooks to serve as an “ideal lust-slave for her uniquely odd circumferential pleasure,” the subsequent reputational damage becomes a bit more than scandalous.
There was a difference between deeply loving math and loving math deeply, or so the family saying went.
Personally, Muvark didn't understand what Trushi did that was so bad. It wasn't like she was comparable to Uncle Lico with that case of the unfortunate children who were used to discover how long a person's veins could extend on a drunken bet. She simply liked numbers too much, so much so that the only ideal man she could imagine had to be made from the substance of numbers.
Sordid family predilections aside, Muvark Lastbank was a remarkable mathematician. Turned remarkable economist. Turned remarkable accountant. Turned remarkable physicist. Turned remarkably wealthy investor. Turned mostly adequate politician. It was the last virtue that damned him. Muvark liked people a bit too much. Sure, he started this whole business by trying to make himself seem responsible, emerging from his delinquent phase when he assumed he was going to go into one of the life sciences and become a Hero or something, just to spite his father. Unfortunately, he found himself energized by the company of other people, especially wealthy people, especially those near the top, much like his father-in-law-to-be.
But ultimately, though the relationship between him and his supposed true love wilted, his bond with his father-in-law-to-be endured and grew ever stronger. The man took him less as a son and more as a personal tax assistant, then consultant, then trusted confidant, and finally inheritor after his daughter and son tried to have him assassinated on behalf of their mother.
Things got worse from there.
As much as Muvark liked people, he didn’t like being in charge of people. He didn’t enjoy telling people what to do or what to believe. The reason was less rooted in nobility and more in sensibility. The main reason why Muvark liked people was often the main reason why he didn't want to manage them. People were stupid. Incredibly, alarmingly, ridiculously, obscenely stupid. The worst part? They rarely knew how stupid they were.
That was the worst thing about being a politician: needing to make a group of absolute dullards do the right thing and, in the end, convincing them that it was their idea all along.
But the little tricks of misdirection and deception were easy to pull against the weakest of the population. Muvark’s day-to-day now consisted of his peers and other High-Tier Pathbearers who were somehow absolute geniuses in a scant few facets while being unimaginably simple at practically everything else—with special emphasis on how much they refused to understand the numbers. Even at the highest echelons of society. Especially at the highest echelons of society.
Again, Muvark didn't want to become a Legend. He would daresay that he regretted becoming a Legend, climbing so high only to experience so much heartbreak. For though the line of Lastbank was dedicated to numbers, it seemed that the rest of Necrotech society was counter-dedicated to the ignorance of numbers—a sort of practiced dyscalculia that dominated their society. Such had been the lamentable wave of things for the past hundred and fifty years since Muvark's ascent after his mentor’s untimely death at the hands of He Who Will Not Be Named.
Now he suffered in the chambers of the First Coven, where the highest and most esteemed members of the Necrotech Legions discussed and planned the course of their civilization. Or, more accurately, where Muvark charted the course of their civilization while everyone else attempted to slam this metaphorical ship they were sailing into every stone and glacier in the broad vicinity of its path.
“Say no again, you soul-molested rat! Say no to me one more damn time! Do it!”
“Eh, no,” Muvark repeated awkwardly. He didn't want to argue with Legend-Gravemaster Daedarshi, but there was really no choice—the mad bot wanted to dedicate 45% of the Necrotech's gross national production toward the raising of over one hundred new field armies. Daedarshi named it an act of pre-emptive and esteemed self-defense. Muvark replied that it was an attempt at accelerated bankruptcy and catastrophic depression.
It was ridiculous—so, just an everyday occurrence within the First Coven.
Daedarshi slammed his metallic fists down, and the room shuddered. A sounding clash echoed like a gong. The meeting tables had been reinforced by adamantine alloy for this very purpose: the gong sound. A sound that they spent three months voting on, with only Muvark dissenting. His argument was that a member of the Necrotech's most privileged elite should be able to control their emotions. The others disagreed, naming him as the specific reason why they couldn't do exactly that, and so he was overruled. The nice, expertly crafted wooden tables were then replaced by these ugly, metallic slabs that were cold to the touch and miserable to lean upon. All so Daedarshi could throw his tantrums without sending splinters exploding through the room and potentially clipping and opening a neck vein on one of his more unfortunate and lower-Tier attendants.
“Tell me no again! Tell me no again, you miserable bastard! And then tell me why! Why can't this be done?” Daedarshi seethed and sputtered. The Necromantic energies powering his warforged vessel spread free from his head module like spittle from a mouth.
Daedarshi was an imposing presence, standing as wide as an orc but twice again as tall, an inverse of Muvark’s form. His body was comprised of an eclectic collection of weapons, all melted down and hammered together, broken and seized implements taken from the hands of long-dead warriors, charged with the lore of loss so that they might serve as the perfect conduits for his Necromancy. Not that he was any good as a Necromancer. No, Daedarshi was simply a remarkable warrior who was even better at telling people what to do—if one re-interpreted "telling" as "screaming threats after invectives after more threats until a sobbing subordinate performed a miracle.”
“It just can't,” Muvark groaned. He arranged his many folders, in which his well-crafted mathematical arguments lay. He had offered them to Daedarshi before, but they were promptly thrown back at him, with one unfortunate page violently skewered by Daedarshi's dagger pinky over and over again, as if it were something to murder. “Legend-Gravemaster, I don't know how to be nicer about this. You are asking us to bankrupt ourselves to fight a war that doesn't exist. We have neither the space nor the need for a hundred additional field armies. There is no expeditionary campaign. We are not ready for another Grand War. Our treaties with the Descenders and Weave hold, and Compact and the First Blood are the Composer's problem, not ours.”
“Oh, they'll be our problem when we realize we can't trust those dragon-pegging bastards!” A blast of hissing steam erupted between the many crenelated gaps lining Daedarshi's body. His steel was hyper-heated, and the flicker of his fused Pyromancy skill leaked into his corrosive mana. He was on the verge of another fit when the rest of the First Coven intervened—not to defend Muvark's dignity, they didn't care for that much, but mainly because they had their own stupidity to exercise, and he was holding up the line.
“Come, come, Legend Daedarshi, we all understand dealing with Muvark has always been a chore.” Muvark glared at Legend-Heartsoother Amelie Smalldoor as she placed her porcelain doll-like hand upon Daedarshi's gleaming forearm.
On one hand, she was likely the main reason why the First Coven hadn't evolved into rampant infighting. On the other hand, she was also the worst of them, constantly inflaming their tensions so that she could be the one to get what she wanted. The only one who was immune to her charms was Muvark, mainly because she was so mathematically illiterate that "Just move the numbers around" was practically her catchphrase. Whatever allure her personality and physical beauty might provide was utterly eclipsed by her raging, benighted ignorance.
As Daedarshi collapsed back against his absurdly decorated throne, whips of corrosive mana spilled down into him, charging his Necromancy and allowing him to ground himself before he detonated as a blast of loss-infused flame. In his silence, Amelie Smalldoor took center stage. The real games were about to begin.
Muvark stared at her with murder in his eyes. The coins within his vessel's dimensional bank jingled as her pearlescent face cracked and broke into a taunting smile.
“The answer is no to you as well, Amelie,” Muvark declared in advance. That delicious little smile she practiced so many times in the mirror collapsed and folded and inverted, becoming a miserable frown. Her lips, painted red not by lipstick but actual dye, were the only patch of color on that otherwise porcelain-pale face.
“I haven't even spoken my mind yet, Muvark,” she whined.
“There isn't the need. One of your subordinates, let's call her, approached me the other day, trying to plant these ideas I can read on your face right now in my head. I know she's one of yours because she won't stop talking about how great you are. You insufferable, miserable, ridiculously arrogant doll!”
Amelie gasped and placed a hand upon her chest, feigning grand offense, and waiting for someone else to intervene on her behalf. Only Daedarshi shook his head, but that was all he offered.
The last member of the First Coven, Legend False-Namer Yessherab, simply stared on in silence, as he did ninety percent of the time when the topic wasn't political subterfuge, assassinations, sabotage, and, for whatever strange reason, Skullbowl.
Just as their argument was about to continue, there came a heavy knock upon their door. Dimensional ripples spread across that reinforced bulkhead leading into the private council chamber of the First Coven. At once, the group's mutually shared animosity broke, and their collective ire was, in a rare case, unified. For there was a small mechanism, a doorbell, established right next to the bulkhead. Outside, on the other side, was a simple set of words indicating that when meetings were in session, the bell was meant to be rung and the bulkhead was not meant to be bashed.
Such could only mean two things: there was a great and terrible calamity upon them, or an unfortunate apprentice had forgotten their decorum and would soon rediscover it when they had their mind and soul bound into a mobile port-a-potty for public use.
The violent hammering continued. Pulses of dimensional wavelengths washed across the door. If this was to be an attack, it wasn't a particularly effective one. However, in that moment, a new impasse formed as each member of the First Coven looked upon one another, waiting for someone to make the first move so they didn't have to. Eyes darted about, Muvark stared everyone else down, and they combined their glares to overwhelm his.
He knew what was coming. He had complete domain over all matters economic and mithril-related. His power in the realm of numbers was absolute. His power in the physical world, however, left much to be desired. Muvark was not much of a warrior. In fact, he would call himself the opposite of a talented, even coordinated warrior—feeble of Reflexes and Physicality. His Toughness and Disease Resistance were Heroic-Tier, but that was mainly due to an unwilling chain of circumstances on his part. One didn't survive a dozen assassinations, after all, without becoming harder to kill.
Even so, that had never stopped the rest of the First Coven from grabbing him, flipping him upside down, and rattling him about so that he could be discombobulated by the massive wealth of treasures he stored within his current vessel. A loud groan escaped Muvark as he rose. The ground shuddered and wailed. His weight was so ponderous that the room seemed to bend around him, and it did. He was the single greatest dimensional construct within this place, even greater than the wards placed upon the Coven's meeting chamber. Within him were portals leading to the Lastbanks, the only nationalized banks recognized by the Necrotech Legions—stored in a series of High-Category Gates, and containing the collective wealth of their civilization. All given unto him to govern.
Yet, contrasted against that great dignity and his supreme importance, was this act of pathetic supplication. He was a Legend among accountants, and now he was a miserable doorman because the rest of the First Coven couldn't be bothered to take a few steps toward the door.
“You disgrace me, and you disgrace this empire,” Muvark spat upon them.
Amelie scoffed. “And the way you walk disgraces my eyes, but you don't hear me complaining about that.”
“You are quite literally complaining about it right now!” Muvark seethed under his breath. He knew she was baiting him, but he couldn't resist it. Behind his lust for numbers, there was only one other thing that bothered him, and it was the deliberate mutilation of logic and reality.
And so, with constipated wrath in his heart and his mind scattered on faint and unrealistic ideas of revenge, Muvark commenced the Techno-Ritual to open the bulkhead door. The council tower of the Covens was the relic of an older age, a supposed void port meant to fling ships into and beyond the skies above the surface. Somehow, the scientific mechanisms that powered the tower still functioned in places, especially near the very bottom, and so a series of passcodes had to be entered. One needed to match an oscillating frequency through the manipulation of sound. Then, finally, only after an extended bout of linguistic dialogue with what seemed to be a fragmented mind built into the steel itself, did the bulkhead finally release its seals to allow for passage.
After a few moments, the colossal bulkhead groaned as it folded open, peeling in several directions like the petals of a flower. The dimensional wards popped as Muvark flicked it, allowing whoever was about to receive the great punishment to cross over into the chamber.
And cross over they did, at extreme and reckless speeds. A young woman, barely an apprentice, slammed headfirst into Muvark and promptly gouged her skull open. Blood immediately began to pour onto the floor, and Muvark winced as she clutched her head, groaning, shivering. Her body was already pale, and her skin was coated in a sheen of sweat. Her formal attendant uniform, black and azure blue, was soaked all the way through. It was as if she had sprinted to the First Coven for whatever reason—doubtlessly breaking several layers of protocol.
Each member of the First Coven had their own assistants and own attendants, and they should have been the ones waiting on the other side. Yet they seemed altogether absent—the post was utterly abandoned, in fact.
As Muvark stretched his Awareness out and used his Necromancy to sense additional mana signatures, he found himself startled to realize that there was absolutely no one here left in the tower. It seemed like everyone who once stood in this colossal vestibule had vanished all at once, leaving only a singular mortal attendant to address the four High Undying.
“M-my a-apologies, Legend Accountant, I-I didn't mean… I didn't…” she sputtered, trying to keep the blood out of her eyes and away from her lips. She clenched the gash shut as she blinked; her tongue warred against her teeth, and in that struggle, she managed but incoherent sputters and violent gasps. She was spent of stamina, of sense, and of dignity.
Her state was so severe that the rest of the First Coven rose from their seats as well, sensing something was deeply amiss.
“Gather your breath and speak,” Muvark said diplomatically. He didn't need the girl scared. He needed her to tell him what was happening, as something definitely was. There was no prank grand enough, no attempted assassination so total, that the rest of the council tower would find itself vacant.
And as she sucked in air like a fish would gulp water, she finally managed to nod and construct an understandable sentence: "He's returned! He's returned! He's returned with the others! With his new apprentices! He's returned!"
Bands of cold chill hardened within Muvark. His body went rigid, and he felt his fellows go stiff as well. Amelie was not truly an optimist, more a delusional pessimist who yearned to change realities with her doubt and ignorance so as to avoid the bleakest of fates. Unfortunately, her counter-reality methods weren't going to save her this time, Muvark realized. As did Daedarshi, as did their most enigmatic member—Yessherab.
The terrified girl's lips quivered, and finally she found the strength to push that name out, that horrible, terrible name that Muvark had prayed he would never hear again. “Valor Thann! Valor Thann has returned! And he has his apprentices with him! The Paragon of Piety, and the Butcher of the Vicar! The Deathless approaches the Imperial Reliquary! He speaks of caressing our Necromancy, of testing his Magical Resistance against it—he made bets that he will not explode. Even if he imbibes all of the corrosive mana into himself, he will not explode! And he says that he's willing to risk the lives of every last Necrotech to prove it!”
Muvark never intended to become a Legend, and this was one of the many reasons why.
The System was unreasonable; Pathbearers followed suit. In fact, Pathbearers were actively insane. Some day, you would run into one that was significantly madder than all the others, a statistical outlier, if you would. Valor Thann was an outlier of outliers, and now it seemed that he was determined to render Muvark's life a fever dream by bringing out someone who was even more of an outlier than he was.
“And there is an anomaly as well! A small divine shrine hovers above our airspace. We've tried to dislodge it with Necromancy, but nothing has affected it so far! A star burns above it, but its glow doesn't seem to burn anything. Instead, it is spreading an Awareness, an invasive Awareness Skill!” The girl was babbling now, coughing and speaking at the same time as rivulets of blood ran down the sides of her nose to leak over her top lip.
By this point, Muvark was no longer listening to her. He understood the severity of the situation. The rest of the details slammed into him as a fist would into the temple of someone already on the verge of unconsciousness after a bar fight. He shot a look at the rest of the First Coven. It wasn't the usual glare or pleading expression, but one of horrified disbelief.
The moment he finished turning his head, his expectations died once more, and a dawn of rage hot enough to scour a dimension clean of life rose inside him. Though they were rarely on the same page, though they loathed each other in the best of times and actively tried to assassinate one another in the worst, he still expected to commiserate with his fellows in the First Coven to deal with this national emergency, this civilizational crisis, this problem of their personal and continual existence.
Only to discover all of their vessels lying vacant on their thrones, each one barren of Necromancy, hollow of life and activity. They were like dead dolls left inside an oversized playroom.
Amelie was a porcelain figure abandoned in a hurry. Some of the looser blades that made up Daedarshi were scattered across the ground, and Yessherab was no more than a mess of blackened rags spilling across the table.
They had abandoned Muvark. They had cast him to the jaws of He Who Stills Eternity, and now he stood as the last of the First Coven, the most unfortunate and the least appreciated in the face of all their sins come home to roost.
“The Great One curse all of you! ALL OF YOU!”
***
Golemancy 58 > 64
Continuity Error 411 > 413
“Please, Legend-Deathless! Please, you cannot stick your head inside the Risen’s Mana Core!”
Over a thousand Necrotechs clung to Shiv and each other in a desperate attempt to stop him from triggering an apocalyptic explosion. He had just appeared in their capital city, manifested out of nowhere after a brief jaunt. At least that was how things were from their perspective. From his? Well, he went Backstage, of course. He wanted this to be a surprise and to distract their attention while Valor made his personal approach, and thus Shiv did so. He did so as the first of many problems to come for the Necrotechs, as Adam's glaring Omniscience carved over the horizon in his wake, followed by his godly shrine, while they skittered through the shadows, arranging long-overdue meetings with old friends and newer victims.
But that was neither here nor there. At present, Shiv was actually still in Gate Piety, far, far away from Necrotech territory. They didn't know that they were dealing with a golem. They didn't know that the vitality leaking from him was only a paltry portion of his actual power. They didn't know that the locomotion they wrestled against was actually Uva's Psychomancy made Unique through her exposure to the Outside. Ignorance was a potent tool, and fear, well, fear was at once delicious and provocative, enough to lure someone toward the precipice of a bad decision. As such, Shiv became a lightning rod within the Mausoleum of the Last Dead.
Terribly long name for a capital city, he thought.
Apparently, it was more compact in the Old Anglish in which the city was originally named, but with the passage of time and the changes made to language, things changed, as they always did.
Aside from the name being a mouthful, Shiv really appreciated the Mausoleum. The streets were bands of glistening ivory, threaded through the colossal architecture like circuits within an automaton. The structures, likewise, were intuitive and alive. That was how he would describe the Necrotech ecosystem: alive, as ironic as that was. Despite being powered by magic born from death and loss, Necromancy ultimately harvested echoes of people, and from those echoes they constructed a living, animated city with structures and machines that responded to the will of the users.
There were strange vehicles sprouting a dozen legs, resembling skeletal insects, further reinforced by steel bands and other bits of machinery. Other flying apparatuses were forged from the rusted, withered husks of long-dead automata, given life and then lost to life thereafter. The buildings themselves had an imposition of corrosive mana upon them. They radiated an aura of malice to Shiv, but that aura was also animated and alive.
Anyone who possessed any knowledge of Necromancy could weave and shape that communal power. From grand pylons and colossal spires, these energies were projected from building to building, allowing a sort of national bridge to be established. The Necrotech Legions seemed regimented, hierarchical, but extremely ordered. People moved in accordance with a grand rhythm. Everything was well planned, everything was sequenced, and everyone was absolutely terrified of Shiv for the threat he posed to the very fabric of their existence.
A deafening klaxon continued its undulating wails while a series of telepathic broadcasts constantly repeated, declaring where the Deathless was in the Mausoleum. As soon as he turned a corner or jumped across time, the announcements were adjusted. Streets cleared, buildings cleared. Necromantic mana was drained dry of massive structures eighty stories tall, stretching high into the pitch black above. These events repeated, district after district, street after street, borough after borough.
Families fled their homes. People riding in Necromantic constructs leapt out of their vehicles mid-flight, allowing them to crash down as they hopped and flew across rooftops through their own power, desperate to get out of the potential blast radius. The first responders scrambled by the Necrotech Legions found themselves impotent and terrified, for they, too, were powered by Necromancy. Where such a skill would be utterly invaluable on a battlefield against an enemy they sought to destroy down to the fabric of their soul, the Deathless was a quandary. They could hurt him if they breached his magical resistance, but hurting him meant that he would go off like a powder keg inside their living room.
Not an ideal outcome.
In the meantime, Shiv roleplayed how he imagined Longinus would wander around and point at random things while Low-Tier Necrotech Pathbearers tried to dissuade him from sticking his head inside still-active vehicles and abandoned war golems, like he was trying to do right now. He had pried its body open, or more like Uva had pried its body open using her Psychomancy, and now he was inches away from sticking his golem’s head into that glistening pool of corrosive magic.
Telekinetic bands, prying arms, grabbing at his shell, and desperate pleas all tried to prevent him from setting himself off. At the same time, looming over his shoulder, there came an azure blue glow. Adam's Glare of Immolating Omniscience was curling across the territory, and its shrine loudly broadcast Adam's voice as he declared his intent to prophesy and speak to a Necrotech representative. Meanwhile, Valor was making good progress as well, but to claim the last piece of him would require a bit more persuasion, a bit more finesse, and someone actually important to—
A heavy wave of pressure slammed into Shiv from behind: a High-Tier teleportation spell cast in haste. A loud and nasally voice boomed, carrying all the desperation of a man at the end of his leash: “LEGEND-DEATHLESS, FOR THE LOVE OF THE GREAT ONE AND THE LOVE OF ALL THE FAITHS, I BEG YOU TO STOP!”
Shiv grinned. He called over to Uva to withdraw his Psychomantically painted vessel, and then he did something peculiar. He cast his Harbinger away from his natural body and had it inhabit his golem. A flash of gold manifested over his expendable being, and he turned his attention upon the newcomer.
As Shiv pulled himself away from the flayed chassis of the skeletal security golem, he turned and looked past the numerous pale-faced soldiers and volunteers who were desperate to stop him from creating a localized apocalypse. There, at the far end of the street, flanked by a dozen Heroic-Tier dimensionals and non-Necromantic golems, was a corpulent Undying. He had a particular aesthetic to him. Instead of eyes, he had two coins embedded in his head, seeming like buttons on the face of a plush toy. In the place of ears, glistening strands of mithril flowed through the air behind him as willow leaves in the dark, glittering with silver. He stood three meters tall, but he was nearly twice as wide. His torso stood out of place with the rest of his body, resembling an enchanted bank vault—Shiv did a double-take. It was a bank vault, a colossal one at that. So great was his body's size and mass that it demanded two pillar-thick legs that were low to the ground and, by any standard of length, in the end looked ridiculous, like a large baby if said baby was the very embodiment of capitalistic endeavor.
Shiv stopped struggling against the masses and began walking towards this important individual. He almost tried to Analyze his adversary, but realized he didn't have that skill embedded within his golem. Kind of silly to realize the one time I try to Analyze someone willingly, I can't.
While he sauntered closer, the Undying took steps back, and several of his dimensionals formed a phalanx before him. They were dimensionals born of all elements of all the tombs' lores except for Necromancy, but the foremost among them was a massive blade dimensional sporting a vast collection of scimitars connected by strands of sand. Its main body was made up of broken glass and strange, hovering arms, and Shiv gave it another look as he sensed a particular aura of menace.
An actual threat. Interesting.
The Undying stole his attention once more, loudly clearing his throat and bowing, causing the contents inside his vault to jingle obnoxiously. “LEGEND DEATHLESS! I AM LEGEND ACCOUNTANT MUVARK LASTBANK. I WOULD BID YOU A FOND WELCOME TO NECROTECH TERRITORIES, EXCEPT WHERE WE HAVEN'T HAD THE CHANCE TO PREPARE A WELCOMING COMMITTEE OR A—eh, might we t-take this discussion elsewhere? And might I inquire if you know… If you know…”
“Where Valor is,” Shiv finished on Muvark's behalf. “Yeah, sure. Turn around.”
A remarkably unmasculine squeak escaped the Undying as he shot ten meters up into the air. He spun his dimensionals, swirled around, trying to fire another, then Shiv folded over, chuckling aloud as Muvark came down, hammering a deep divot into the ebony street below. In the silence that followed, as the debris gave a clattering applause toward Shiv’s emotional terrorism, the bulbous Muvark whipped his head around, desperate to ensure that the Deathless wasn't lying twice over, wasn't hiding the fact that Valor was actually there. When he finally calmed himself, he looked upon Shiv with the expression of a well-kicked puppy.
Meanwhile, back in Gate Piety, Shiv’s Beast of the Ninth Circle did nothing in particular, as the golem lacked that specific skill, even though the snake sensed a lie in play connected to itself.
“Alright, alright. I'm sorry, Legend Muvark. Really, I'm sorry. I just like to have a little fun.”
“A little fun…” Muvark gasped, sounding like he was about to have a heart attack even without the requisite organ, all the boom having left his voice.
“Yeah, a little fun.” And suddenly, he blinked his golem across time and wrapped an arm around Muvark's shoulder. Everyone went stiff. A scimitar was pressed against his neck before he even noticed the dimensional moving. He ignored it as he stared straight into the twin coins, which served as Muvark's eyes, turned sideways to face him. “But I suppose the time for that is over. Let's get down to business. We can talk wherever you want, but I wanna set the topic. I got a few questions I need answered—and Muvark, it isn't a threat when I say I would really like you to speak to me instead of Valor, because my master, well, I can't exactly say that he's feeling particularly kind today.”
It was then that Shiv learned how loudly a living bank vault could gulp.