VIII-44 Soul Surgeon (II)

There must be a way I can set my father free. There must be, there must be, there must be a way to carve him out of that thing. A legend is just experiences, things we've done before. We can make a legend, yes. I can imbue him with the proper narratives, the proper struggles for him to reject the Thief. I can give him something all his own, something I strive to achieve, something that was born of my effort. No one else's, mine alone. I can free my father. I just need to understand, I just need to find a way to give the soul a skill that it cannot reject, that it will not reject, that is so fundamental to its shape that it becomes the very substance that forms the soul itself.

But how? How does one build such a foundation? How does one inscribe such a thing upon a stone? How? I must understand how. I must discover and learn. I must go deeper. I must. If I am ever to make my father true at all, I must—

—Udraal Thann’s Journal

VIII-44 

Soul Surgeon (II)

Skill Transplantations Available: Strider of Falling Fire (Heroic) / Momentum Superconductor (Heroic)

Skill Transplantation Unavailable: Fleeter Than First Light (Heroic) — Incompatible Legend

Twin notifications lingered within Shiv's gaze, then faded like the others. Within his heart, a budding ache began to build as coiling strands of searing blackness solidified within his Vitae like a congealment of filth. The Fleeter Than First Light skill lingered inside him like an arrowhead, forgotten post-surgery.

With every passing moment, the inflammation it inflicted burned hotter, became ever more untenable.

In less than three seconds thereafter, it was protruding from the surface of his flesh, and finally, it joined the last skill Shiv had ejected. As crystallized chunks on the ground, both of them held no aesthetic to their shape; the skills resembled clumps of solid light lacquered by a particularly vivacious hue of red. The lacquering was done haphazardly, with whorls and spike protrusions forming as if teratomas.

Once more, Shiv found himself wondering just how far biology was from Animancy.

“Councilwoman, we did another check,” the head Animancer declared. “The hollowed ones are empty. The Reflexes' skill has been carved clean.”

Shiv's attention briefly snapped to the man, who flinched under his gaze as if he'd been jabbed in the chest by a jousting lance. Motes of pitch-black fear spread out from him as he took a half-step away from Shiv. His terror was pure and deep, and soon he was completely swallowed by the blackness, but Shiv tore away that dread into nothing and poured the dark into his cape for later use.

“Thank you, Legend-Animancer Anderson,” Veronica said with a slight bow.

Anderson gave a half-hearted tilt of his head before fleeing from the room, one leg stumbling over the other.

Nihilist: It is not surprising. You are already kind of terrifying. The way you just did that, the fact that you managed to carve a skill out of someone—a Heroic-Tier skill... Well, the Animancer is probably wondering what you might do if you felt particularly entitled to use Animancy. Even if you can't accept the transplant, it doesn't mean you can't carve the legend out of someone. And I wonder, what is a Legendary Pathbearer, carved clean of their strongest skills? Nothing, maybe. Nothing at all.

Shiv pulled his focus inward and regarded the two stolen skills. The Strider of Falling Fire and Momentum Superconductor blossomed and burst inside Shiv. They were twin motes of vibrant energy, circulating and sparking with conductive currents that flowed through his vitae. It was like he had two extra hearts, both beating at different paces yet close enough in tempo and synchrony that he could see them, in some way, absorbed.

“Two stable skills,” Valor murmured. “Remarkable. I would say impossible, but then again, many things that should be impossible for a normal Pathbearer don't apply to you. This has to do with your Vitae, I think. The membrane composing your soul now contains innate skills, skills that cannot be located or isolated. A skill that now allows you to interface with other skills. It makes me wonder about your Severed Shadow. You evolved this skill without hitting the mana threshold, correct?”

“Yeah, right after sparring a match with some orcs.” Shiv frowned. “As much as one can spar with orcs, there's a lot of dying and hurting involved on both sides. The Culturist pushed it over the edge. He was also the first Pathbearer I ever caught with the Severed Shadow.”

“And you say it carves into Integration as well?” Anthony asked.

“If I'm not in my Revenant state, I'm always cutting into something,” Shiv said. “It gives me a steady influx of vitality, always. And if I really push hard, I can gouge existence wide open for a rush of vitality, causing a bunch of mana swarms. Not sure how that affects my present situation.”

“A great deal, I suspect.” Valor lifted a finger, pointing up toward the ceiling. Shiv briefly looked up before realizing his true intention. Subtextually, he indicated the world, as Valor then gestured toward Shiv. “As above, so below; as within, so without. This has been a phrase repeated by many cultures who believe that the whole of reality is mirrored by an individual's paracosm, their internal world, and vice versa. To some extent, it is true: we are not empty beings. We do not gain knowledge from nothing. We have to be filled by experiences and understandings, by theories and experimentation. We must struggle to make ourselves whole, and the information we obtain is never complete.”

“Well, that, and most of our struggles take place in the world itself,” Shiv added.

“Exactly. Without Integration, there would be no strife, no mana, no skills, no legend. You have created another triangle between you and the Pathbearer, from which you have taken these skills and Integration itself.” Valor let out something between a gasp of awe and a sigh of impending exhaustion. “I dare say that you might be an entire field of study unto yourself, Shiv. Everything you do, everything you're capable of, changes my understanding of Animancy and outright disrupts so many theories…”

“Would've been real useful if Udraal bothered to explain any of this shit to us,” Shiv grumbled. “Felling prick showed up, dumped a bunch of existential dread on our asses, and left.”

“He does have a flair for the dramatic,” Valor murmured, pinching his fingers together.

“He has a flair for being a jackass,” Shiv corrected. “I'm godsdamn serious. If he was here, then we wouldn't be groping around in the dark trying to figure out what I can and can't do. He made my Path. He created the ritual! Shit, the motherfucker gave birth to me. He's not just a shitty creator and a piece of shit. He's an absentee parent.”

A crushing awkwardness descended upon the room as Veronica lowered her head. In the corner, Maiden briefly stopped her soldering as her vision brightened. For the first time, perhaps ever, she regarded Shiv with the faintest notion approaching pity, but then decided against it and went back to hating him with the whole of her heart.

While she wasn’t distracted, that was.

“Deathless,” Harlem coughed, speaking from his pale-faced Avatar. “Do you… require a mender? Psychological aid?”

Shiv blinked. “No. But Udraal’s going to need that when I eventually ram my frying pan up his ass for everything he’s done.”

“Don’t you… cook with that?” Daughter asked, the monster and the child she enslaved sharing a question.

“Yeah, but don't worry: my fire can make anything edible. And I clean and stuff.”

“Are there health inspectors in Gate Piety?” Kathereine asked, squinting from above her granddaughter.

“I am the health inspector, and before you ask, no, I don't usually cook shit. My kitchen is really clean, and you can trust me because I burn everything with my fire.” Shiv raised his fist and called upon his nihilistic flame. A flicker of scintillating brightness danced before the room as Shiv gestured for it to speak. “Tell them.”

The Nihilist, however, said nothing. It merely bobbed up and down before finally fizzling out in a hissing display of impotence.

“That… that meant yes,” Shiv coughed.

The Beast of the Ninth Circle headbutted him from behind with a growl, as the Nihilist's refusal to state a truth brought Shiv's claim closer to a lie than not—just not close enough to swallow him.

Comedy 43 > 44

Valor coughed. “My son’s… sins aside, I now strongly suspect that he likely doesn't fully grasp your capabilities either, Shiv. Looking at how he has behaved and how he has taken a monitoring role upon himself, rather than directly intervening or pushing you down a specific path, I suspect that he, in a stroke of genius, created the substance of your soul and the nature of your path without fully grasping its finer mechanics himself.”

“You're telling me he managed to create me and do all that ritual nonsense without understanding how it even worked?” Shiv asked, incredulous. “That doesn’t make any felling sense.”

Veronica winced slightly. “It makes a bit too much sense, I’m afraid.”

Shiv glared at everyone present. “You guys aren't seriously telling me that science and magic is just mostly people wandering blind around the woods and bashing stones together until they find something that sparks, right? Right?”

Silence. Absolute silence. Maiden especially kept to her silence as her soldering intensified and her outrage grew.

“Huh,” Shiv muttered, feeling the romantic notion of an all-knowing genius scientist die within him. “I guess that makes me something of a scientist sometimes, huh?”

A violent crackle shook the room as Maiden drove her divine fist through her workbench in a blast of incandescence. “Make that claim again, Deathless, and we will discover the true extent of your flammability.”

Though often overcome with an impish urge to bait another's rage, Shiv found himself doubting the wisdom of such an action as he gazed into Maiden's empathetic core. She was nothing but hate at that moment. The instant he claimed kinship with her Domain, he became something that she despised above all others. Then, as he bit his tongue and refrained, her mind disentangled in a sprawl of cascading thoughts, and her heart calmed as quickly as it was incensed. Though it never truly lost its luster of hatred for Shiv.

“Shiv,” Valor sent telepathically. “Turn your focus toward your new ability before one of the Ascendants decides to test your resurrection again.”

“Great advice, Valor,” Shiv acknowledged.

He drew his Vitae inward as he fully manifested his Severed Shadow. He blazed bright while his rippling aura painted traces against the stone below. Even so, his cutting presence appeared to leave no marks upon the substance that comprised Veronica's office. It seemed that his uniqueness came second to an absolute power. The office was, after all, a place deeply connected to the Sage, and the violence-suppressing nature that entailed.

His strands of soul-stuff brushed against the two skills within him, and they resonated in sync with him more than ever before. The skills came together, magnetized as the only two foreign elements within his legend. As he caressed them, he found himself traveling down a stream of chaotic memories, all experienced as battles, struggles, victories, and failures born of the Pathbearers he'd harvested these skills from. He saw himself dodging, saw himself running faster, treading water, and then dancing upon falling raindrops. He found himself slow, mocked for his languor until he built enough momentum to leave all of his rivals startled. He felt the inertia and kinetic energy of the world as if it was something all his own. It was a battery or fundamental force he could draw upon, and he sank into it.

That was when the memory ended and he burst out from another's past and into his present, which was felt by the skills. They were so close to being embedded within him, so close to being something all his own.

Yet, there was something blocking the skills from fully embedding themselves within him. The shape of a soul was a hard thing to describe. It wasn’t something defined by physical dimensions, but it did have a relative shape that related more to the mind than the body.

But maybe that’s wrong too, Shiv thought to himself. Because a mind doesn’t really exist without a body. You have to interface with the world to fill a mind after all. It’s more like a mind processes a lot of this stuff. I guess what actually happens and what we experience has some level of separation as well. Which means some conceptualization and abstraction is diluting the truth of reality…

Shiv wondered what being the System was like. He'd spoken to the voice in the fire; it was aware of him to some extent, even exhibited aspects of a personality. But it didn’t decide for him or literally force him in any way. It was just there, watching and taking in information—the information inscribed on the fabric of Integration. Was that still another layer of contamination, or was it close enough to being pristine that it stood as the absolute truth?

Nihilist: Truth… Maybe that’s the wrong word here. Maybe what you’re looking for is empirical. Or something that can be proven absent of a mind and opinions. But if that’s the case, I think you’re looking down the wrong tunnel, because there is nothing more contaminated than a soul. You’re searching for something fundamental to reality when everything is, and when reality is just something people perceive and experience. What an absurd fucking endeavor, huh, Shiv?

Metaphysics 39 > 42 

Nihilism Be My Hearth, My Banquet 391 > 394

The levels arrived alongside a shift in Shiv’s mindset. He drew the other two Reflexes skills in close with his own and felt them each call to the other. The two foreign skills oscillated with unattuned mana frequencies while his Inertial Overdrive shivered in kind. Shiv tightened his internal grip. The rhythm continued, but it was not uniform across both harvested skills. The way he thought about it before was right: currents were running through him; chains of narrative that connected to one another. As he instinctively plucked those pathways, he found himself graced with stolen struggles and memories—the defining acts it took for the hollowed to reach their evolutions.

But a skill wasn’t just made up of defining feats. There were also moments of defeat and limitations to consider, and those spaces were dim and lifeless, bearing little of his vital glow.

He muttered these details to Valor, who nodded slowly as he took the information in. Meanwhile, a tension built in the air as Shiv was overcome with an urge to press these taken skills against his own. His soul itched rather than hungered. He only had a single spot available for his Reflexes—such was the case across the entirety of his being aside from his Golemancy, which remained corded taut to his Vitae by its twinned nature—yet he was driven by an urge to take something from these other two skills.

Like called to like, and Shiv’s Inertial Overdrive craved new powers for its roost.

“See what comes of the connection,” Valor said, though his tone emphasized caution. “Do not see yourself or your skill harmed. Retract them from yourself on damage.”

“I know,” Shiv replied, half-distracted.

“Shiv.” Valor’s voice grew severe. “Retract them the moment something is damaged. Your fortitude is not being tested, and your soul’s stability must be maintained for posterity and knowledge. Do not suffer mindlessly.”

A twinge of annoyance went through Shiv, but he softened a second thereafter. The warning was beyond necessary when it came to him. Wounds and pain had fallen to a place of disregard at the least and resources at their highest. Even if his Inertial Overdrive shattered, he would have kept going—he had always been rewarded for his recklessness and agony where others only found themselves crippled.

“Retract on pain,” Shiv agreed. He repeated the words twice more to himself mentally before he connected the harvested Reflexes skills to his own.

What followed was more implosion than explosion. Outside, there was no sign of tumult. Within Shiv’s soul, an entire section of his vitality was collapsing inward. His Severed Shadow brightened like a crimson star but gave little else in indication of his inner discord. Yet, it was hint enough. The entire room was filled with false gods, Animancers, and Legends. None were strangers to the changes unfolding within one’s soul. A hive of magical soul-analytics brightened over Shiv with but a gesture from Valor. 

Shiv hissed as his vitality dropped by twenty percent in an instant. Tides of cold battered their way toward his core, yet Shiv was far from chilled, for the heat of his soul was so great he could only compare it to that of a reactor.

His Inertial Overdrive skill blazed. Its fellow Reflexes skills combusted in parts and pieces. Then a new notification followed.

Absorbing Legend…

The rush of vitality spiked within Shiv one final time like a small star going supernova—then his form suddenly stabilized. His Vitae went slack and ejected two new husks onto the ground. The twin skills that were once regarded as kindred to Inertial Overdrive were now paltry fragments of the dullest red. Shiv blinked at his new excretions and sensed little to no essence within them. They were but shards beside the other two chunk-sized rejected skills.

“Spent—used up some vitality, but aside from that…” Shiv examined himself for anything amiss. Nothing. It just cost a hefty bit of existential structure. “I’m fine. No pain. No harm. No damage.”

As soon as he said that, a new line of text appeared before him—mocking his assumptions.

Legend Adopted

Skill Enhancement Available: Inertial Overdrive (Heroic) > Lord-Maelstrom of Hungering Kinesis (Unique)

Skill Enhancement Requirements:

> Absorb kinetic energy until you outpace an adversary who is dramatically superior to your initial speed.

> Race the sunrise across the horizon and stay within the receding shadow of night for an hour.

> Tear the kinetic energy out of an approaching hurricane and preserve a town from destruction.

> Tear the heat and kinetic energy out of a falling meteor and take its speed for your own while saving a close friend.

> Convert external kinetic energy to hypersonic speed.

> Convert heat to hypersonic speed.

Shiv looked through the requirements with wide eyes. Inside, his Inertial Overdrive remained as it was: Heroic-Tier and unchanged. But something burned bright inside it; strands of stolen legend had been internalized. Though each length felt cold and dead, Shiv realized they could be made true if he but replicated a few feats performed by the hollowed Pathbearers.

As he filled the rest of the room in on what he learned, he found Valor leaning back and nodding—as if expecting this to happen. “That’s why you rejected the other two skills before. Mana is one thing. You need to be superior or equal in level to manifest the skill itself, but if your legend and another’s are too far apart, you cannot replicate their feats either. In such a case, it matters little how powerful you are, as you simply cannot repeat the actions and struggles required to cement your adoption. Right now, your enhancement has not taken hold because you have not performed enough of the requisite actions that define the other two skills.”

“That explains why a lot of these requirements are so specific,” Shiv breathed. “Lots of protecting towns and saving friends using speed. Steal kinetic energy from a meteor; steal kinetic energy from a storm…”

Discomfort coiled in his gut as he regarded the fallen Inquisitors once more. A moment ago, they were just meat for him to cut into; all Inquisitors were bastards and all that. Now, they were people—made so by the fact that he had to relive their finest hours and gravest struggles, had to face the fact they had families of their own; people they loved and struggled for.

Where were those people now? Would they ever learn what happened to these Pathbearers? Can I ever make them whole? Shiv asked himself. Wait, I ripped their Reflexes out. Cut it free based on soul-petrification. So, does that mean that I can replace what they lost with someone else’s Reflexes?

Something told Shiv it wasn’t going to be so simple. The shape of a skill was specific—just ramming some other skill into the absence was probably going to be less a spiritual transplantation and closer to soul-sodomy.

“Hey, Veronica. Put these guys back under stasis. Better they stay preserved; I might be able to replace their missing skills at some point. That might get them to wake back up.”

She called for her subordinates to do as Shiv suggested, but her face remained mired in doubt. “Perhaps. But it’s more than their souls that were devastated.”

“Yeah. Minds too. But I got some details about who they are from their legend. Their egos might be gone, but their skills still remember. I don’t think I will be able to reconstruct the entirety of who they were down to the last detail, but if I have enough of them internalized… oh, shit.”

“What?” Veronica tensed. The rest of the room looked ready to run or teleport. Valor, comparatively, leaned in.

Shiv let out a chuckle of disbelief as a rush of epiphanies went through him. “This is probably how I managed to bring Rose Van Erren back to life. Enough of her legend was embedded in me that, when I evolved to Unique, it pulled her back into existence.”

Valor paused for a long moment. “...If what you theorize is true, then you recreated her. That would be why she lacks most of her skills and levels. You had the blueprint and data for her mind, but all the actions she performed in life remain lost. Which means that the original Rose Van Erren…”

“Is still dead,” Shiv finished. A beat passed. “Don’t tell her,” he hissed. “She doesn’t need this. It won’t help.”

Valor nodded once, understanding. “Of course.” 

“I know you won’t, Valor,” Shiv said, keeping his eyes locked on Veronica, and the god hovering above her like she was lounging on a couch. “I don’t doubt you. Songbringer?”

Kathereine rested her chin in one hand and blew out a breath that bordered on the offended. “You think I would torment a wrench just for the pleasure of hearing her weep?” 

Shiv frowned. “Yeah? Kind of.”

She scowled at Shiv and rolled her eyes—then placed her palm atop her chest. “Oh, fine. I solemnly swear to uphold the dignity of Rose Van Erren and hide the fact that she is a soul-clone birthed from a psychotic man-child and not the original person. May she never come to know that she is a homunculus.”

Shiv glared at her choice of words, but the Nihilist let out an awkward cough. 

Nihilist: Great-great-grandmama is kind of a cunt, but she isn’t all that wrong. We didn’t shit out a full Rose, more like a Roseling. Which also means that true resurrection is not possible for Georges after all.

We can’t partially resurrect him either, you fuck, Shiv snarled at his skill.

“Well, I wouldn’t say that. There’s still enough of Georges left in the Dreamtaker that if we chisel her soul open and suckle up all the oystery goodness, we might be able to shit out a half-decent copy of not-daddy.”

Nihilist, I just want you to know that if you ever evolve into an embodied form of some kind, I’m going to kick your fucking ass.

The skill gave an unimpressed snort. “Self-abuse is for the mentally ill, Shiv.”

Stupid thing to say to a guy who gets drunk off diseases. Also, I am mentally ill. I literally tore my dick off and threw it at the Culturist that one time. What do you think I’m going to do to you?

The skill hesitated. “I apologize for being an asshole.”

Thank you.

“Are you still planning on performing horrible acts on me?”

Yeah. I’m mentally ill, remember? 

“Fuck.”

“Okay,” Shiv said, shaking off another bout of existential malaise before it could drown him. “So. Uh. I guess it’s time to see if I can replicate these feats so I can enhance my skill, huh?”

“It can be,” Veronica said. There was hesitation in her posture and voice. “But Shiv. Do you… wish to take a moment?”

Shiv stared at Veronica. His Harbinger stirred. “I am unable to tell if she is simply attempting kindness or if there is something else at play. All—”

“A moment?” Shiv considered. He quickly shook his head, his fingers tapping together. “No. No. No moments left. Too many problems, with more rolling over the hills. We keep it going. We keep it going. To the next thing. Let’s see about making my Reflexes something more.”

Veronica’s gaze lingered on him so long that Kathereine’s gaze slowly slid down at her Avatar. “As you wish, Legend-Deathless.”

***

“I CAN’T FUCKING BELIEVE THIS FUCKING SHIT! FUCKING FARWALKERS! FUCKING CHORUS! FUCKING COCKSUCKING MERCH CHOOSING NOW OF ALL TIMES TO FUCKING REVOLT! THE SYSTEM IS FUCKING ME IN THE ASS! GODSDAMMIT! FUCK-FUCK-FUCCCCKKKKK!”

Maria's impassive expression crumbled into a scowl of distaste as the wails she'd been hearing for a good minute continued on, sounding from within the dingiest and most rundown looking establishment she had ever laid her eyes upon. She followed a step behind the Breaker as he pushed open the half-rotten door at its front, the words “Road’s End” sloppily scratched into the wood over it. 

Immediately, an airborne cocktail wafted over her senses, reeking of misery, triumph, yearning, but above all, regret. She could taste the sting of goblin piss on her tongue, mingled with alcohol strong enough to burn a hole through a dragon’s gut, further layered by salty tears and foul sweat.

“Fuck me like a virgin goat! System! Pull your Transcendent-Tier cock free from my face and ram it up my taut little ass instead! Just do it! Fuck me to death! You already took everything from me!”

The pathetic wailing grew even louder as they marched down the dusty hallway, lit by grime-coated tubes containing strange, glowing insects of various species. While Maria's agitation climbed, the Breaker just kept giggling like the oversized child he was—amused by a drunkard wailing slurs as if it was the height of comedy.

“Why,” Maria began through clenched teeth, “are we here?”

“Told you,” the Breaker answered, shooting a wink over his shoulder. “Need to grab a drink with an old enemy.”

“The Challenger said we are to—” Maria's glare intensified twice-over as the Breaker pressed a large, armored finger over her lips.

“Shhhhhhhhhh, sister. The boss isn’t the type to get up our asses about means and methods. So long as we find a way to crack that Gate wide open, we’re good. Nothing wrong with having a little fun before, after, or during. Now, loosen out your shoulders, and stop scowling so much; you really don’t have the face for viciousness.”

Maria looked into his eyes without raising her head, and he withdrew his finger. “Violence is not decided by aesthetic,” she said simply. 

“Maybe not, but it is elevated—”

“THEY TOOK IT ALL! DEANDRUS! THEY TOOK IT ALL! THEY FUCKING TOOK ALL MY SHIT! THEY TOOK IT ALL AND LEFT ME FUUUCCCKING BROOKKKEEEE! WHY DIDN’T I STAY AND FIGHT! I WAS SO CLOSE! SO CLOSE TO BEING ABLE TO BUY MY OWN DIMENSION! NOW I'M BACK TO NOTHING AGAIN! OOOOOOH, SYSTEM, JUST KILL ME NOW!”

The Breaker laughed through the interruption. “Heh. You’re going to hate this guy. But when you get a look at his merchandise, well…”

“I somehow doubt I will be so awed,” Maria said. “From the sounds he is making, he seems destitute.”

The Breaker waved her off. “Oh, he always does this. You see, his definition of broke isn’t exactly like ours. Or anyone else’s. Just you wait. He came through for my old enemies while they were sieging me and mine, so I've got no doubt he can come through for us too.”

Maria kept her expectations low and her hopes lower. Another undulating wail tore through the air as she cringed. “If this miserable bag of flesh comes through for himself, I would be impressed.”