491 The Rat King [II]

The Rat King’s Ensemble is an extremely rare, dangerous skill most commonly found in possession of the Karnic Hivelords of Tombworld Karnais. As they were a roachoid species, risen and nourished to full sapience in the aftermath of an apocalyptic conflict that occurred just before System's arrival on their world, most of their skills are centered around three primary concepts: consumption of resources; propagation of drones that eventually develop into full-grown Hivelords (much to the detriment of their progenitor); and biological evolution to accommodate or surpass environmental hazards and limitations.

The reason the skill earned its name, however, is a peculiarity. For eons, long prior to the formation of Chorus and what we refer to as the civilized structure within Integration today, the Ratkin of a now long-lost world arrived upon Tombworld Karnais, bringing with them enlightenment, religious fervor, and higher sciences. They sought to enslave and control the Hivelords as a potent and renewable workforce. Though they were superior in all aspects, they found themselves inferior in the most important realm of warfare: logistics. All their victories were pyrrhic, and their grand struggle, though defined by a series of brilliantly won battles, ended in a catastrophic defeat at the end of the war. Their outposts were overrun, their mages were captured, and the rest of their kind were consumed.

The Hivelords were not akin to most other civilizations. Years of living in a destitute, ruined, and broken world had left them with a singular, unifying philosophy beyond their ravenous hunger: pragmatism.

Theirs was survival at all costs. Survival through all knowledge, through all means. With the arrival of codified and sophisticated magic, the Hivelords demanded to learn, and learn they did. From this, they developed their first true unified understanding of Biomancy. With it, their understanding of the Skill known as Atlas of the Flesh Scryer expanded. Previously, they'd assumed it was simply a development of their senses, a means of securing prey, as it were. Now, both skills were tied to the next stage of their evolution: the entwining of their minds with the full synaptic and mental capacity allotted within all organisms around them. From here, the Hivelords of Karnais went from a devouring swarm to one of the most deliberately pacifistic and enlightened races known to Integration.

—Encyclopedia Apocalyptia: Rat King’s Ensemble

491

The Rat King [II]

Skill Evolution: Atlas of the Flesh Scryer (Master) > High Infestor of Blood and Tissue (Heroic)

Skill Evolution: Metaphysics (Adept) > Beholder of the Finer Structure (Master)

Skill Evolution: Legion of Self (Master) > Insoul Empire (Heroic)

Shiv had an intimate relationship with tumors. The supposed immortality they portrayed, their constant urge to expand, to consume, and to eventually collapse a grander structure that once encompassed their own, was known to him like few other concepts. There was a messed-up parallelism there, one that aligned them in theme and function.

Despite this, Shiv didn't much like tumors, because they had killed him more times than he could count, and they were the main impediment that stood between him and being an adequate Biomancer. At present, Shiv felt a new overgrowth of tumors spread across his body, erupting from the core of his mind, curving along his misfiring synapses, trawling along his nervous system, and wrapping him in a dense layer of impending death.

Thus far, things felt less like a Skill Evolution and more like he'd screwed up another Biomancy spell.

That feeling didn't last very long.

His other two skills detonated. Multitasking bled over into Atlas of the Flesh Scryer, and his Metaphysics followed. It was the weakest of the three skills, and so its evolution was at once subtle yet unmistakable. Atlas of the Flesh Scryer allowed Shiv to glimpse any kind of biological organism he wanted in a great radius, and to transfer his perspective into one of his choosing. It was a useful skill, but Shiv more often used it as an enhancement tool for his Biomancy, since it was a fusion of his Awareness and his Practical Metabiology.

It was only recently, when he began constructing finer organisms, that he learned how to use his transferable Awareness to scout for him, peeking out from an unnoticed fly or spying something in the distance using a hawk as a vessel.

Now his senses were twinned and twofold. He didn't just see flesh; he saw something else beyond it: the meaning of what flesh might belie, the greater shape of the world itself. Biology existed in tandem with the environment. One couldn't be divorced from the other unless they were intruders that arrived from another place, another higher biosphere. Everything that evolved did so for a reason. Everything that climbed out of the primordial soup shared an origin but made different choices.

So too did the same logic exist under the System. One held their shape and adapted their biology with every passing Skill Evolution to become something that eventually dominated their environment and sought higher environments. In the end, the apex predators of the System were inverted beings, ones that had surpassed their little pawns and sought to bring their sovereignty to greater oceans.

Shiv embodied this more than anything else. He was covered in a glow that he couldn't describe, that betrayed color and was more a heavy, dense presence, an aura that anchored him within reality yet punctured its fabric. For the first time, Shiv saw himself as the System perhaps saw him: not as a thing that was constantly drawing in fire, but something that was a rupture in the flame. He wasn't simply suckling the totality of strife into himself with every battle he survived. He was a vacuum and its opposite, sucking all that fire out Backstage, out of reality, for as it was being funneled into him, it was being bled right back out.

“Shiv? Are you well?” Helix' question went unnoticed, but Ekkihurst, being more astute among the two Biomancers, already recognized what was unfolding.

“A Skill Evolution already? From this?” He sounded flabbergasted, borderline jealous, but then Shiv turned to look upon him, and the vampire Elder’s eyes widened. His flesh rippled with changes underneath as he was nearly provoked to attack in response. Something about Shiv had triggered an alarm within Ekkihurst's instincts. An alarm that came when a deer turned its head through the woods and saw the night glow reflected in a large cat's eyes.

And as the vampire gazed upon Shiv, so too did the Deathless gaze back upon him, but he gazed back in so many more ways and from so many more angles than ever before. Shiv's senses exploded across his form. His Awareness broke through a chain of dams he didn't know existed as they cascaded down his body. Every inch of skin, every bit of blood, every aspect of himself that was biological in function and origin was colonized in an instant. His Multitasking wired new pathways through himself, and his entire being turned borderline bio-electric with static knowing. Eyes began to sprout all around him. Ears erupted inside of him, lining the undersides of his skin. Yet his transformation was not so tumorous. It was, in effect, subtle. His evolution was total without rendering his biology deformed. Something had grown over him. Something had grown inside of him. Something had changed within his very blood, but on the surface, like with so many creatures, he seemed ultimately the same.

Metaphysically, however, a tumorous fire had been lit upon his form, burning scars over his being. Shiv could see it constantly collapsing, constantly floating inwards. The flames had eyes, had ears, had mouths, had lips, had tongues, and they were messy teratomas of incandescent design, a melange of misshapen organs that erupted over Shiv, existing in a liminal space between the flesh and the place it occupied in the metaphysical structure of the System above.

Helix and Ekkihurst were aflame as well, but there was a difference between them. There was a threshold between where the flame began and where their beings ended. Shiv could see parts of their skills expressed within them. Helix' essence was constantly shifting: a warring helix that twisted and broke like a ladder constantly being reconstructed, but that ladder was piercing through the protected threshold, stabbing straight into the flame—an expression of him going beyond being a mere Biomancer and delving into Animancy proper as the borders between flesh and soul vanished.

Ekkihurst, however, looked nothing like a human. He was, in effect, a monstrosity, almost Eldritch in design. His body was that of a gaunt, bald, wrinkled man, and his lineage core was as if an ocean of blood contained within too small a shell. When it beat, the world rippled along with it. He carried with him the flow, coursing with the vigor and vim of uncountable other vampires, and that blood ran up from the bottom of reality and crashed down from a single other source, one that had partially been tethered.

Shiv wondered who that one was. He'd always guessed that Ekkihurst might be a Bloodline Progenitor, but as Ekkihurst had claimed, he might not be the first of his kin. He simply might be the highest remaining one. Usually, that meant consuming your sire’s core and usurping their position. Ekkihurst, however, still had something floating above him, and that something caught Shiv's attention. The blood was flowing down from the highest point. All other blood was offered upward, all power given unto the Elders as a tithe.

The same did not apply to Ekkihurst; his Bloodline power flowed in both directions. That raised the question: What did he have over his Elder that he was granted blood from above and all the blood from below?

“With every evolution comes a new mystery,” the Harbinger breathed, half in awe, half weary.

Despite Ekkihurst's inner mysteries, he was a self-contained entity; the border between him and the strife serving as his blaze was clear and wide. Additionally, the vampire burned dimmer than both Helix and Shiv. That made sense. Ekkihurst was primarily a scholar, a practitioner of Biomancy seeking the higher miracles of the lore. He likely wasn't embroiled in anywhere near as much conflict as the constantly resurrected Deathless or the reincarnating orc who'd been so close to the former for so long

“Yeah, so remember when I touched that book?” Shiv began, his voice tense, his words echoing across the world from each mouth spread across his flame-scabbed form.

“Let me guess, you've uncovered a terrible, unexpected mystery, and now it has changed you irrecoverably in a way you can scarcely explain.” Helix' voice was filled with derision and helplessness. His jealousy burned both hot and bitter as he stared upon Shiv with tired eyes. “Well, I expected as much. You are a lightning rod for absurdity and power. I hope you know that. I also hoped for you to rub off some of that on me. For if I could evolve after a few thousand attempts at making a single organism and not only have it be successful, but have it be the thing that launches me straight over the edge into a powerful evolution, I would be…” Helix’ words failed him as he began gesticulating his existential miseries. “What is the point of your insistence? To torment me? That's what it feels like sometimes.”

The near-hopelessness in his words brought him a measure of sympathy from Ekkihurst, whose heart lit with soft colors. He briefly brushed the orc's shoulder in a gesture of solidarity and support. “Now, my fellow of the lore, let the feeling pass through you. Remember, there is a difference between potential and prodigy. Some people take a longer route to genius, and I dare say it is a better route after all. The Deathless keeps gaining more and more power before he is ready, and we must be here to guide him. In time, we will rise to power, already ripened and mature. Do not envy him. Envy us.”

Nihilist: I have a suspicion that this guy might be a Master-Tier Coper, at least.

Rude as the Nihilist’s assertion was, Shiv was inclined to agree. Every word Ekkihurst spoke was pure self-comfort. Not that he didn't understand. He remembered all the years he spent seething and yearning for the powers possessed by a mere Adept. Now he thought of Adepts as little more than Pathless.

Shiv considered telling them about the time cavern while withholding Melaia Kelhaus' presence. He decided against it. There was too much to explain and far too many questions that would follow. He knew that Helix was a consummate gossiper. If he learned, soon half the Gate would be aware. The Philosopher had specifically requested of Shiv to keep Valor ignorant. He didn't like lying to his master, but ultimately it had to be done. For Valor's sake and against that of the Thief of Lost Acheron, it had to be done.

As he came to that mental conclusion, he felt a warmth spread over him, along with a reassuring pressure. Even though Kelhaus hadn't manifested in the present, she was still there, across from time, fused around his Harbinger, watching, waiting, bound to him in more ways than he could know. It struck him that he was ripe for manipulation, that she, more than anyone else in the world, held sway over his heart and mind. But with how she behaved, the way she spoke, Shiv intuitively trusted her.

The ugly truth was: If she wanted to dismantle his mind and reign over his emotions, she could have done that. She possessed a Delved Harbinger, after all, power far beyond anything he could muster, along with millennia of experience. But that wasn't their path. Even if he wasn't fully sure about what the path was exactly, Shiv did know, however, that if he didn't do it to her, she likely wouldn't do it to him because it would deprive them of understanding, or enlightenment, as she called it.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Yeah, so it's just another day of being me,” Shiv said with an embarrassed laugh.

Helix seethed harder. Ekkihurst patted him again, and both of them committed to self-comfort as they commiserated and focused extra hard on Shiv's enduring ignorance and how this overflow of power was bad for him, actually, as there were many very talented, very powerful Pathbearers who found themselves dead ahead of time because their power left them arrogant and confused and pushed them to explore boundaries they weren't prepared to yet.

Shiv gave them both broad smiles before he realized his expression seemed closer to mockery than a genuine attempt at expressing happiness. Gods damn it, I'm too used to sneering at people. When's the last time I complimented someone beyond Adam and Uva for doing something good? Wait, when's the last time I really tried with someone who wasn't Valor? Man, Kelhaus is right. It's not just that I don't have any normal emotions. It's that I don't have any normal interactions with people…

This thought promptly broke apart as a tendril extended out from Shiv, or at least it seemed like a tendril at first. It was a coursing current of flame with a mess of sensory organs and awareness architecture fused over the thin inferno. A glimpse, a chain of tongues, a column of eyes, a mess of mouths, of teeth, of fingers, of skin, and a budding dollop of ears like bananas hanging from a tree erupted out from his first tail. Then another sprouted free of him, slithering its way over to Ekkihurst while the first sought out Helix.

Shiv's eyes, all of them, widened at the same time as he felt his spreading Awareness fuel his Multitasking. His fire spread over Helix, spread over Ekkihurst, and fused them in a cocoon of his metaphysical awareness. Their bodies didn't sprout any eyes. Their skin didn't burst and reveal tongues or teeth. They were not made into biological abominations. They remained as they were on the surface, but beyond the surface, they were biologically simulated, coded, and usurped.

Shiv could see out from their perspectives, but more than that, he could see as himself from every bit of their biology. He could hear what was happening inside of them. At a moment's notice, he could point his eyes inward and glimpse three different patterns at once: the material surface, the pounding of a heart, the gushing of blood.

All obscured, all chaotic, all too much for a human's eye to discern. He could also see the Biomantic renditions of Helix’ inner workings: a display of how the cells were dancing in unison, what parts of his body were interacting with one another, and what signals arrived from the brain to compose this orchestra.

The same applied to Ekkihurst, though the vampire was far different. The brain and all aspects of his biology were more rudimentary in function. It was the lineage core that mattered, and the lineage core was less a heart and more a burning star of biological magic, a wellspring that ensured the vampire's existence so long as it remained protected and stable.

Finally, there was the metaphysical layer Shiv possessed, his newest veil of perception. He saw the strife around them. He saw the skills within them burning bright, each one like a distant constellation unto itself. That's what they were: constellations, links of light between distant stellar bodies. He read from those lights brief glimpses of victories and defeats, of the legends that made up their sublime structure.

Shiv witnessed all this and more as his senses over them grew, along with his Multitasking. A pulse of bioelectric currents surged over them, and Shiv saw electrical phantoms manifest as a second layer upon his Awareness. He was no longer burning his own mind to the limit, expending every bit of focus and suffering an inevitable hit of stupor when he overdrew upon his mental capacity. Now, he was offloading that to others. His Multitasking and consciousness were expanding, invading not only the biological architectures he could sense but also the metaphysical ones that they embodied. Everything was connected, and everything ran back to Shiv like he was the heart of an entwined creature, a nest of beings tied together, bound into a knot and unable to break free.

More tails extended out from him. They stretched from the bowels of Courtney, rising through the halls and compartments of the Court Leviathan's innards. But before that, they began to spread across Courtney as well. Shiv's infectious Awareness crawled and crept through Courtney's marrow and began to seep along her exterior. Soon she would be consumed in turn, though she offered far less meta-Multitasking capacity compared to Helix and Ekkihurst. It wasn't simply a matter of biological mass. It was more about what they represented in metaphysics: how much they could sustain a person's power and physicality was a baseline, but the metaphysics tied to it was also just as important, perhaps more so.

Shiv needed more time to experiment and understand this new evolution, but with every bit of flesh he spread across metaphysically, his senses grew, his Multitasking expanded, and the number of minds running concurrently with his own ran in tandem. Now, he didn't need to switch lanes. All of them were running together. All of them were flowing back into him, much in the same way all that blood was bound back to a similar destination within Ekkihurst, from top to bottom.

Shiv shuddered internally. Well, this is fucking different.

Skill Fusion: High Infestor of Blood and Tissue (Heroic) + Beholder of the Finer Structure (Master) + Insoul Empire (Heroic) > Rat King of the Infested Skein (Heroic)

Rat King of the Infested Skein (Heroic) 204

The Rat King of the Infested Skein spread beyond Courtney and swept through all the customers and staff still supporting his kitchen. Most of them were unaware, but a few responded, most of whom recoiled, rising from their seats with their eyes wide. Those were the ones with advanced Metaphysics Skills, and they saw what was creeping through the chamber. They felt the spreading flood of Awareness teratomas wash over them. Some wanted to flee, but when the tails spread over the walls and entrance to the dining hall, they halted in terror and dread. As patches of darkness began to spread through the room, Shiv cringed momentarily and sent his Harbinger to explain things before he got a bad review.

His golden field burst across time and was made faster by Melaia Kelhaus stabilizing its fractures. The bound field arrived a half-second before hopping twice into the future to deliver separate messages. It warned the few Pathbearers who were currently rising and causing a commotion in their fear. It whispered to them telepathically, explaining that they were Shiv, that he was aware of the situation, that it was not harmful, and that it was simply an ongoing skill issue that he was trying to resolve. If it crept over them, it shouldn't affect them physically at all. It was simply an unexpected evolution taking place, and he would compensate them by offering a free meal.

Though the Pathbearers remained unnerved, they eventually found their way back to the seats and tables. They told their fellows that the head cook had just contacted them telepathically. The entire room was not actually contaminated, as they were screaming about, but more affected by “some Biomancy nonsense.”

A mess of emotions formed a fog in the atmosphere. Some people wanted to leave; some didn't care and wished to stay. An unsteadiness built as a lingering zeitgeist within this little space of the Gate, but all of them decided to linger, for the dread that came with offending Shiv was greater than their urge to escape from the restaurant.

“You derive great enjoyment from terror, do you not?” Kelhaus' words arrived in sync with the returning Harbinger, and Shiv stiffened at the accusation.

“I wouldn't exactly say I enjoy it, but—”

The Beast of the Ninth Circle rose, and it briefly head-butted Shiv over the back of the head. He winced, rubbing his neck, before glaring at the skill. It stared at him as if he were a dull creature, and Shiv raised both hands in semi-surrender.

“Yeah, alright, fine. I do enjoy it. I do enjoy scaring the shit out of people. I enjoy bullying them a little bit. I know it's not the best habit to have. I know it's not really nice of me, but yeah, I like it. I like it after a lifetime of no one respecting me. I like it after all the things it's gotten me, because when people are afraid of you, they'll do what you tell them to. It's how it works for others, and it's especially how it works for me.”

As honesty spilled out from him, he received nothing akin to judgment, only a brief hum of acknowledgement as the Philosopher subsided back to silence. That was beginning to annoy him just as much as the constant prevaricating mess of monologues she tended to deliver.

“What, no mention of potential flaws or things that are holding me back about this?” Shiv's question went unanswered for a few moments.

“You seem well-aware of why you terrorize people. You are fully cognizant of your behavior behind these inductions of dread. I do not have anything to add on the surface. Perhaps you might have a deeper question about why you enjoy inflicting fear, but until we reach that question, or until you personally decide against this course of behavior, I have nothing to share. You were shaped by the world, and you are aware of this. That is the first step. Do not rush the following ones. The two Legend-Biomancers tutoring you are right—even if most of their words are meant to assuage their own feelings. There is a reason why great monsters are often hunted by Legendary individuals, and why the most successful Legendary monsters are those who Awaken and stop being monsters. One must see the pattern. One must be aware of what fills the emptiness around them.”

Right then, what filled the emptiness was Shiv's expanding Rat King—the skill spread out from Courtney like a fungal infestation, one moving across the world at absurd speeds. As automata were non-organic life forms, they made him recoil. He could see their metaphysical architecture as well, but it was blurred, unclear. They were beyond him in a grand sense, something that he was allergic to. His tendrils tried to press upon them, tried to settle over them, but every tail that coursed into them withered and died, for there was nothing to root itself upon.

He focused on the other organics: dragons, humans, elves, goblins, insects. Even the bacterium in the air came alive with slight patches of flame. The bacterium didn't sustain him very well, but Shiv realized they were the entire reason why he could traverse the world in the void. He would have a harder time composing this power, for there was no biological pathway for his extension. But down here in a stable biosphere, within an ecosystem, everything he found himself aware of was something he could touch, was something he could connect himself to.

Crimson veins of lightning spread along the undersides of his tails, rushing back into him as electrical shades formed over all his contaminated subjects. A whirlwind of perspectives and senses descended upon Shiv. He stared out, felt out, used, and experienced the world not only through his own spreading awareness but through the eyes and organs of everyone else. The Gate was slowly becoming known to him in ways he couldn't describe before.

He was a roach creeping through the gutters, through the crusted cracks lining the grimy streets of the parlors and funhouses funded by the dragon brokers. He was a bird released into the air, meant to give the sky some ambiance by the races from the upper atmosphere, granted their own place of abode directly atop the mixed assortment of grounders below. Shiv was in the water as schools of fish—and he experienced the carnage of being sea life firsthand. He ate himself, or at least that's how it seemed through his Awareness. His senses were fused over the body of a larger fish and also painted upon the form of a smaller one. When one version of his Awareness swallowed the other, he felt the sudden loss. He felt a dip in his Multitasking as his mental capacity plunged, but it was regained as he spread across more sea creatures, as he spread across everything that sustained life, even the algae below, and sea flowers jutting like carrot tops through soil.

Throughout this journey, Shiv's Harbinger was in motion as well. He was skipping from time to time, place to place, and whispering explanations to everyone who noticed his power. More than Biomancy, this was Metaphysics, and anyone with any scholarly or higher aspirations toward understanding the nature of the world was well aware of the spread happening across Gate Piety.

The Dragon Brokers, especially those who noticed in advance, were hovering in the air and waiting for Shiv's presence. It didn't take much for him to elaborate, and they all laughed, though there was a measure of consideration in their laughter, especially Poverty, who cracked his fingers and regarded Shiv with that special glint in his eye. Shiv expected to receive a new offering or perhaps a mission from him. His heart was filled with duplicity, after all, and it was aimed at his three comrades. If this would result in a power struggle internally, Shiv would hear him out, but the last thing he wanted was a battle between four Legendary dragons who bankrolled much of the Gate’s economy.

Shiv also bounced off four individuals, four in particular who weren't automata. Some of them didn't notice Shiv. One briefly wriggled his nose and continued on. For whatever reason, their Toughness and Metaphysics were merged, and the System, along with Shiv, found it harder to sear the flames upon them to brand them with levels. How they developed this way and for what reason was beyond him, but he confessed to being interested in their persons.

Another of the group, to Shiv's startled realization, was actually Candles, who was slowly regaining himself, who was dimming his flames day by day. As Shiv studied Candles through Gone's perspective, peering out at him from the back of the goblin's skull, he noticed Candles summoning and dismissing fire, revealing his own skin over and over again as a newborn child might study their biomechanics and fingers in fascination.

All these moments, all these understandings, came crashing into him with his expanded Multitasking. His Awareness was the architecture for his expanding mind, and so he grew. He saw. He took all this in without much difficulty at all. Now he felt like an adjacent structure to the Gate itself, a part of its organism, a symbiote perhaps, or it was a symbiote to him. He felt closer to his new home than ever before.

And then he sensed it: a distortion above. He saw it first from the eyes of one of the sky folk and then from a chorus of birds. Then, from every angle, he saw it himself, a shift, a flash, a shivering in the sky. A kaleidoscope of Eldritch brilliance slivering down through the air and passing through the Gate. Shiv felt something strange shift in the structure of Metaphysics, but as the Terrorspawn and the mana core were devoid of Biomancy and all bacteria in its vicinity were hollowed clean, he couldn't truly grasp what it was.

But one thing couldn't be denied: The Terrorspawn was changing. The Gate's core was shifting once more, growing dense with mana.

And that brought new concerns and questions to Shiv's mind. Once more, his Harbinger jumped, but this time it jumped in pace with his spreading Awareness as he turned his attention toward the middle gateway of piety, toward the bunker that once led over to the Tutorial, now likely being used to access the Stranger’s Garden once more.

That was where Uva was, after all. She had to be there. He didn't find her in the Starhawk's perch as he was spreading through the castle.

Guh!

As he spread through a specific chamber, he tried his best to pull away from Adam and Isabella but failed; once more, the biggest problem of his Multitasking aspect made itself known. If he was unaware of something, he couldn't be unaware of it. He couldn't throw his attention in another direction. He couldn't sever his electrical shadows, so his senses were there, fused over Adam and Isabella, much to their ignorance, while he cursed and screamed internally, desperately trying to pry himself away.

His senses greeted each other in intermittent percussions, and Shiv began to mutilate parts of his memory to preserve the dignity of his friends.

Fine—I get it, System. I get it. I'm sorry. No more voyeurism! I’m sorry!

And though Shiv screamed, it was not enough, and so he tried to dedicate the bulk of his concentration to locating the person who shared his great sin. But as he crept through the bunkers, spreading over the guards and sinking within, where Merrielmel stood guard manning the slip gate, he asked the Philosopher for a favor.

“Hey, Melaia, can you remove parts of this stuff from my memory because I don't want Uva to see?”

“No.”

Her summary rejection arrived like a slap across his face.

“What? Why the hells not?” Once again, she didn’t answer—but he could feel her smirking. “You’re kind of a prick sometimes, you know that?”

“Hasn’t this been said of you?” she replied in turn.

Shiv frowned. “That doesn’t make it right.”

“Debatable, depending on one’s interpretation of ethics, but you have to admit it is somewhat amusing from my perspective, and that is the perspective that matters to me after all. Is it not, my most selfish Deathless?”

Shiv sent his Harbinger across the central gateway, unwilling to partake in this conversation anymore.