496 Ordinary Wonders (How Shiv Learned the Beauty of Loving the Person and Hating the People) [I]

“If you wish to discover the promise of who you are, stand alone before a mob. If you wish to learn the depths of where you can fall, lose yourself in a mob’s shadow.”

—Old Kirimon Proverb

496

Ordinary Wonders (How Shiv Learned the Beauty of Loving the Person and Hating the People) [I]

Suffering, like success, tended to cascade across one’s life as a chain. This statement was not one of certain fact, but of a high likelihood, because most people didn't modulate their own behaviors. Most people fell prey to who they were, and they reacted accordingly.

At least that was how Kelhaus judged the situation.

As a philosopher, she spoke of things such as conscientiousness and being a self-moving creature. In that, one should be fully aware of why they did what they did, how they sought to move through the world, and how the world moved upon them. It was, in typical Kelhaus fashion, extremely complicated and pointlessly byzantine, but Shiv was slowly grasping her meaning.

Shiv could see that Marikos was a consummate victim. Though he possessed immense gifts as a Martial Pathbearer, his lack loomed just as large as his prowess, and such formed the core of his conflicting nature.

Marikos was someone who only knew the heights of true glory and the rancid depths of defeat. Everything in between was like a miasma to him, a fog that he drifted across and utterly avoided focusing on consciously. That was why he went to the extremes every time; he never considered moderation, because he'd simply never known it. Perhaps in another life, Shiv would have turned out as he did, a creature over the edge, who only saw the limits of acceptability.

But this was not that other life. Shiv was fully aware, whereas Marikos was utterly blind.

The Deathless and his orc companion arrived on the scene as two amidst the crowd. Even though their sizes were immense for individual Pathbearers, the variety of people one would find within the Abyss and on the surface was so fluid and varied that they drew no attention. Additionally, they were both shrouded in a tight layer of darkness, masking their true identities until Shiv decided otherwise. Even before their arrival, Shiv observed Marikos from a thousand different perspectives, even using the Dragon-Knight's own flesh as a catalyst.

The Rat King of the Infested Skein proved to be a stupendous evolution. It allowed Shiv to glean not only information through sight, sound, and taste, but also movement. When his Awareness spilled over, so many people were anchored to so much organic architecture and metaphysical significance that his Multitasking exploded to new heights, and so too did all the information he could process between the seconds. There was a lot to process about Marikos. For one, he was drunk, and that was an essay of detail unto itself. Marikos was possessed of Legendary Physicality, and to bypass that, he had to have been drinking an absurd amount of absurdly potent alcohol for an absurd period of time. Even with all the substances offered by the Dragon-Brokers, a Legendary dragon's inner physiology was closer in nature to an incinerator rather than a biological organism.

Marikos could have spent several days drinking entire lakes of purified absinthe and barely felt a thing. So that led to two possibilities. The first was Marikos spending a considerable quantity of mithril to buy something like Veronica’s Legendary blood wine, but distillations such as that brew were as treasured and rare as a fine art piece. Furthermore, Shiv knew that Marikos was in dire economic straits. Not because he was utterly broke, but because the Descenders Union knew enough about his behavior that he wasn't allowed to spend his own money. Some of the scribes that had arrived alongside Marikos functioned as something between minders and private accountants, with the major portion of their duty being to ensure Marikos didn't devastate himself economically while already debasing himself publicly.

But ultimately, the scribes could only do so much if Marikos pressed his will. There were many opportunities for a Legendary Pathbearer to make money. Many people were willing to throw money at you when you were a substantial figure of power. It was a weird thing about the world that loans flowed more easily when you were close to the top rather than desperate at the bottom. It seemed that people preferred to offer charity to those who didn't need it rather than those who had every need for it.

“It is not so simple a thing,” Kelhaus commented. “More than psychological weakness and cultural depravity, this is psychological uncertainty in play. You could bestow a few bits of treasure upon a starving urchin, and they may be cut down by sickness in the next moment. Then, on the dawn of the next day, it will feel all for naught. But a Legend will be here tomorrow, the next day, and perhaps when you are less than a shadow in memory, there is significance to their longevity and a certitude that your offering will not turn to waste. Yet even that is a mere justification one may make for themselves. Ultimately, what you do and how you act must be informed by your rationality and beliefs, rather than frivolous reactions of emotional input. Otherwise, you will always be prey to this world, and that is no way to be as a soul in motion.”

And she kept going back to that phrase: a soul in motion. A self-moving entity. Someone aware of where they were in the world, where they were in time, how they moved through time; why they moved, what fuel or means of propulsion drove them, what mixture of intellectual and emotional alloy defined their personal make. All these things and far, far more considerations came together to form the thesis of an individual.

But so many people were devoid of such a thesis. So many people were impulse and animal reaction. Nothing more. The potential existed, but the potential remained unharnessed. Kelhaus described it as an unlit candle. It could burn at some point, but after enough time, if left to decay and abandoned to entropy, the languor they imposed upon themselves through behavior saw them diminished and then turned to slag before they could ever combust.

This fact applied to more than Marikos, for though he was capable of conjuring an ever-enduring flame that ate away at all it touched, his mind and core were metaphorically dim. It was like he lacked the inward perspective entirely, was simply unable to understand what compelled him to do certain things, to be the way he was.

However, Marikos was not unique when it came to the spirit of this decay. The crowd was an extension, a mirror to his form, and they too stood barren of that inner perspective. As most judged or were pitying, they did so without considering why. They did so without referencing what notions they had of the world that propelled them into such states, into such mindsets.

Most present who saw Marikos as a problem or a fool were no better than he, for this incident took place in the gambling district, where people called the act of losing their hard-earned coinage to brokers of power and peddlers of flesh "entertainment" rather than "folly." And so, as Marikos wailed and whimpered, shaking the elven woman with his fingers while squads of Umbrals and other off-duty guards tried to talk him down, begged him to place his unwilling and unwitting hostage on the ground so that they might offer him comfort and so that this wouldn't turn into a global incident, Shiv took the opportunity to cast his own judgment upon the people who viewed this moment as a spot of theater.

There was a depravity present in the people, a roaring urge to imagine oneself above a Legend. And that depravity guided their behavior, provoked their reactions. Almost everyone present was an addict of some variety or simply careless in another way. And it wasn't like all of them were utterly ignorant either. Some were well aware that they debased themselves. Some even made the connection between their own state and Marikos. Some sympathized, for they had been where he had been. They had been close to that black edge, with blades to their own necks, but tears running down their faces as they wrestled with the black dog of self-loathing.

But that ultimately remained surface detail. They ultimately remained enslaved, not self-moving, but moved upon as detritus drifted across the rapid currents of time and existence. They were leashed at their hearts and their minds rather than the other way around, and as they were pulled, they were drawn deeper into the maelstrom and deeper into those who were more aware of themselves. People like the four Brokers, who watched from a distant plaza, looming at the top of their ever-rising treasure hoards, spying Marikos's tantrum using binoculars on sticks while sharing tea with one another.

Though this incident unfolded in one of their parlors, they didn't intervene. They didn't panic. They simply watched, and doubtlessly considered how they might spin this to their advantage.

Nihilist:Greedy fucks are probably going to hit us with a demand for recompensation. Probably loudly complain about business lost and how we're bad at managing Gate security. We'll make it a public affair if we don't give them a better deal or bribe them in some other way. Might be Marikos' fault, but it's also ours. It's always ours, even when it's not. That's the thing that comes with being a ruler. It's not about other people's reasonableness. It's about what they can get from you and what you can get from them. And the Brokers are nothing if not pragmatic devotees to greed.

“Yet they are barren on the inside as well,” Kelhaus responded. “You think too highly of them. Their minds are overactive, but they hide much of what they truly want inside their hearts, and often they are not fully clear about that either. Their cleverness runs halfway; their ignorance resides at the bottom—the foundation of who they are remains vulnerable.” She paused, and Shiv felt an almost mocking smile grow upon her soul. “You regard them too highly, Shiv, far too highly. They are as emotionally literate about themselves as Marikos is. He is simply more bombastic. They hoard wealth to escape from the drama of being mere animals owned by others, but still, they do not confront this. And so they are as behaviorally trapped as he is. Chains from chains, chains within chains, chains to chains.”

“Insul. Insul?” Bonk’s repeated prodding broke Shiv’s concentration. “I understand that you’re in one of those introspective trances that lets you build up your powers of talking at people until they cry, but how long do we need to stand here?” The orc took in the people around him with not-so-hidden disdain. And this was a rare thing from Bonk. He was a happy warrior who farmed easy moments of joy through wanton violence, but here he was, as judgmental as any other, staring down at Marikos making a scene in the district below. “Because if you're going to keep watching, I think I want to stand somewhere else. I don't want to remain here, starting to soak up all that sad, sloppy misery that's spilling out from the pores of the cattle.”

His words drew Kelhaus' attention. “A shame about this one. He has the right intuition and astuteness to be a philosopher, yet none of the interest, and even less of the temperament. Some tragedies are shaped by ego, some by the world, and some by preference alone.”

“Maybe a tragedy in your opinion, but I honestly think Bonk's doing pretty good for himself even now. He is who he wants to be more than anyone else I know.”

The Philosopher drew in a low breath. “I can see this perspective, and I acknowledge my judgment to be rooted in mine. I wonder why the world is not more like me sometimes, but that is the problem, is it not? You only exist as yourself. Everything is relative to you otherwise.”

Shiv and Bonk stood at the edge of a rooftop patio, looking down at an intersection of streets below, where Marikos sat on the vast space of an open plaza with his legs outstretched. Shiv would have described the space below as a courtyard, yet it was more like a haphazard nest of criss-crossing passageways that led from one parlor or drug den to another.

The Dragon-Brokers of High Harbor were nothing if not optimized when it came to maximizing their economic gains. The architectural layout of this district was an interconnected chain of debauchery. Whatever way you entered from the outer edges in, there were casinos and bars. Establishments meant to chip away your inhibitions through inebriation and pleasure over and over again until you got to the core, where there were other wonders waiting for you: shows and demonstrations, delights, and more specific pleasures for warriors and non-martials alike. And so the paths had to be wide and, more importantly, interesting to look at. There were art pieces lining the walls, engravings and statues enchanted with mood-altering magics, auras of heat modulation to keep the temperatures bearable when space was occupied by a heavy press of bodies.

This copy was made without the author's approval; their official page carries the chapter they publish for readers.

Now, most of the stray bystanders were clinging to the walls like organic crust or huddled around statues seeking cover from Marikos’ erratic tail. The two-hundred-meter appendage lashed and struck several surfaces, leaving long gashes along their lengths and deep divots upon metallic materials. As Marikos continued venting his self-directed ire, Shiv shook his head and decided he'd ruminated long enough. Bonk had spoken an unwitting truth: suffusing oneself among the sad would eventually cause some of that sadness to seep in. There was no avoiding it. You were how you behaved, and it was tied to everything you took in. There was no escaping the miseries of life if everyone around you was so committedly miserable, and that lit something inside Shiv, something connected to Marikos.

Marikos was watched over by his scribes, but they never truly tried to solve his problem, it seemed. They were all just using him, pushing him along. Whatever culture the Descenders Union had, it was not a decisive or effective enough doctrine when it came to banishing the shadows over one's heart.

I'm probably at fault as well. Been seeing Marikos as kind of a nuisance, but all he has are people who use him or people who put up with him. No godsdamn wonder he keeps trying to find comfort in places like this and making the same mistakes.

That bitter realization came in tandem with a burst of nihilistic flame. The scintillating mana residing within Shiv, that which allowed him to drain the zeitgeist from the atmosphere and kindle the perspectives and worldviews of people to obliterate his foes and smoke flavor into his meals, was growing at a prodigious rate.

Nihilism Be My Hearth, My Banquet 394 > 411

Nihilist:Expecting to find meaning among the meaningless is like trying to find hope amongst the hopeless. Nothing comes from nothing. But something can still come from you. You can give him some purpose. You can bring an end to this. Just like you're dragging Bonk around, you can tugboat Marikos into some place that isn't here and have him start doing things that aren't so wasteful and pointless. And you would have realized this sooner if you just thought of him as a person or even a companion, as you once did, rather than a problem or a character to put up with, as you have for a few months now.

And with that, Shiv entered the fray. He shot off the edge of the roof, surprising those around him as he shed the shadows that kept his identity masked. As soon as he emerged from the darkness, he fell like a spike of intensity. A pulse of energy flowed through the air. The people around him recognized his presence, and he looked upon himself through the scabbed organs he grew over their bodies. Using his Multitasking to examine the effect he had on the people and also the effect they inflicted in turn on him, he noted that he was larger in some people's eyes than others. A few considered if they could best him in a fight in certain situations. But there was a steady undercurrent of instinctive fear. He was a little too big to be a normal person; his movements were a little too explosive, and there was something else that unnerved them: things like the paleness of his skin, the odd nature of his eyes, black pools lit by white irises, and the way he moved. All of it came together to create a predatory image.

But Shiv realized something else: He was instinctively encouraging such behaviors. He spiked his tides and sent himself through the air as one would thrust a blade rather than how others flew. The reason why he unnerved them came with the steady recklessness he imbued upon himself. He acted as though his body and being were expendable, and they were, but not to everyone else. No, the shadow of death was much closer, far more tangible. Rather than just merely being a shape that pulled out from their legs, it was a beast that hounded them and not a source of power that cultivated their virtues.

That, and Shiv fed upon their fears, found power and privilege through intimidation after a lifetime of being disregarded.

Nothing really leaves you. You are who the world made you, but you don't need to stay that way.

Shiv struck the ground hard and drew the force back into himself, rather than cracking the cobblestones below. It was at once a display of his physical supremacy and dexterity all in one. The resounding boom that echoed out from him made the more timid Pathbearers jolt, while those ready for battle spun, conjuring spellshapes and steel to their hands in anticipation of an ambush. When the guards saw who had arrived, they backed away, opening up a path in the middle as the teams surrendered their position and allowed the Deathless to take over.

All eyes were on Shiv now, mutters and whispers in the air. As he swept the crowds, however, everywhere his gaze settled, silence followed. Shiv reveled in this power as well, and he used it to keep everyone as quiet as they could. For he wanted to focus the entirety of his attention upon Marikos.

Of course, a half-second later, another impact shook the ground. This one did dislodge a few cobblestones, sending them flying against walls, marring nearby surfaces, as Bonk was not nearly as considerate as the man he followed. Shiv mustered his zen reserves to stop his right eye from twitching. Doubtless, Bonk was trying to aggravate him even now, if only for a spot of fun—after all, wouldn't it be funny to ruin someone's portrayal of absolute self-control right as they were on the verge of cementing that as their image?

“Marikos!” Shiv called out, ignoring Bonk's disappointed expression when he didn't turn and chew the orc out. “Heard you've been having a bad day.”

Up close, Marikos looked much the same, yet all too different. His eyes were narrower than usual, and his maw was slightly agape, hinting at muscular weakness or just general lethargy. All in all, his back was taut, and the kinetic chain that ran along his spine was tense, while his limbs dragged and his tail whipped about. He was the opposite of Shiv. The juxtaposition between them was quite total, in fact. One was controlled, and the other was undisciplined. One was a monster that suffered from human weakness, and the other was a man with a monstrously steady mind. It went on and on, but most importantly of all, Marikos was lost to himself, to the world, and in his hand, he barely noticed the person he was screaming at.

The elf had the look of a mage, and Shiv almost cringed as he recognized her armor. This was one of the Republic's Polymagi. He would need to smooth over some things with the Captain present in the Gate, but so long as he managed to get this woman out of this alive, things would just blow over. On that note, she winced every time Marikos jerked her about, but with the Rat King consuming her as well, Shiv gauged her injuries to be minor: one punctured lung, a few ribs broken, some light internal bleeding.

Not pleasant, but she would survive. That, of course, was predicated on Marikos not squeezing her any tighter.

“FRIEND SHIV!” Marikos' cry was shrill and loud. At baseline, his bellows generated shock waves capable of pulverizing Adepts and liquefying lesser pathless. Here, however, his outburst was nullified. A heavily enchanted chimeric hydra-mermaid statue at the center of this nexus of pathways suppressed the noise, drew in the sound, and modulated it to a more acceptable—and survivable—level. “I have shamed myself! I have shamed myself and the Union and myself and you again. I beg of you: open my throat, hack into my head, stomp on my heart, and leave my disgraceful corpse outside in the Umbral Wilderness as a warning for the other fools that think to offend your dignity.”

At this moment, an Initiate of the Psychology and Rhetoric Skills would pursue a line of dialogue along the axis of compliment and comfort. It would seem like the natural thing, as their main source of context was comforting toddlers and children in the same way. Unfortunately, though Marikos was supremely immature as a knight, his immaturity was not rooted in childish innocence, but rather a desperate want to be punished to make up for his “sins.”

Denying him his due penance would simply make him act out more, and thus Shiv would make clear that he agreed that punishment was in order. Simply not in the form of death.

“I see you're determined to keep shaming yourself today,” Shiv said, drawing back on the gentleness in his tone. There was an edge to his voice now and an edge to his aura. The way he looked upon Marikos was the same as a stern father wondering if he should apply the cane or the word to a foolish son—one that was a good hundred times taller than him.

Marikos sensed the severity in Shiv's persona. In an instant, his fidgeting went from over-erratic to utter stillness. He said nothing, for it was not his place to speak anymore. He simply bowed his head, waiting for judgment to be cast and pain to come.

And so Shiv set the terms for that pain. “You're not a godsdamn child, Marikos. I'm not going to chew you out because you should know better, and the fact that you don't is an indication of moral weakness. But you want to know what really pisses me off about you making me come here today? You interrupting my day, my busy affairs, with this behavior? Do you? Well, let me answer it for you before you get it wrong: You can't make a mistake and demand that I hurt you for it. That's not taking charge of the mistake. That's being cowardly, and you are not a coward. You want me to hurt you? You want me to brutalize you physically? That’s your idea of an out?”

Shiv laughed, and he applied every bit of bitterness he felt into the sound. He didn't want this to seem mocking, though it had to be acerbic. This was a lesson, and it was a lesson applied directly to Marikos' ego. He wanted pain, and Shiv would give him pain. Except not the one he wanted. The deprivation of physical harm was the truest kind of punishment, because it took the choice right out of Marikos' hands. More importantly, it was Shiv's seasoned choice in front of everyone.

He was also, in effect, a political animal more than ever before. Marikos would be losing prestige today, but it would not be a permanent loss. It would be less scandal and more redemptive crusade if this was done right. More importantly, it would elevate the Deathless in the eyes of the public, for he too had a reputation he sought to wield, and that reputation needed to be fashioned and honed upon an anvil of public opinion.

“You do not get an out, Marikos. You don't get to do something wrong and then tell me how you are to be punished. You're right, you did breach hospitality. You did embarrass yourself. You did humiliate the Descenders Union. But you're not a coward. Pain and death are nothing to you. You're a warrior, no? You're more warrior than almost anyone else here. I don't mean that as an insult to them, but as a compliment to you, so the disgrace here is that you are a warrior and you're using that against yourself. You're using that against me. You're using it against all of us. This place, it's a place of pleasure and business. This is a place for everyone. You made a mess of that, and now we're going to make that better.”

“Better?” Marikos’ own bitterness rose in challenge to Shiv’s. “How can I make anything better? How can I know what better is?”

“I didn’t ask for your self-pity, Marikos. Do you want to be punished for what you did or not? Or do you want to end the facade of this mattering, and stew deeper in your own misery?” Shiv rolled his eyes as Marikos flinched; he needed him unnerved and bothered rather than actively depressed. Judging from how the sickly sludge of depression was breaking up around the edges of Marikos’ emotional core, the method was working. “You want to feel bad, fine. But this is more than you feeling bad; this is you needing to make it right. Gate Piety isn’t a place for cowardice, and again, I’m not letting you escape using that. You’re going to live up to your own dignity. And I need you to please start that by letting go of the Polymage you have there.”

Suddenly, Marikos remembered he was holding someone between his fingers—and dramatically dropped her in an act of alarm. Unfortunately, his drunkenness caused him to flick her across the ground rather than gently releasing her in a gesture of mercy. Shiv caught the elf before she could fully smear across the ground using one of the heads of his mana hydra—and was glad to have done so, as the newly-accrued injuries he assimilated away from her in the same motion were extensive and brutal. Over a dozen spinal fractures and that level of brain damage would have been pretty fatal even for a Master in Toughness.

Shiv looked over the gasping, shaking Polymage once more—and also noted the incandescent gleam spilling over his shoulder. Adam was also on the scene—had probably noticed Shiv’s presence before anyone else, and decided not to intervene himself. Uva’s presence was decidedly absent. No lightning split the air; no constructs formed across the horizon. She was off with Hymn, attempting to intercept some of Forbidden Africa’s outbound assets, and that would likely take more than a few days to achieve.

For a moment, as the Polymage hugged herself—a common after-response to suffering a series of devastating wounds and having them torn out of her. Shiv wondered how Uva would respond to this situation.

Nihilist:You know how. We love the girl, but she’s a mind mage to the bone. Everyone is going to experience several very funny memory-based abnormalities, and one person is going to be turned into a screaming vegetable trauma-generator.

“You alright?” Shiv said to the Polymage—and impressed it upon her using his Rhetoric. The weight of his statement slammed into her; the elf’s fidgeting came to an end, and her eyes widened as she was released by Shiv’s mana-hydra. “I formally apologize as Emissary of the Gate, and will personally make this up to you in due time. Now, if you would like to make a report, you can head to Farnest and seek out the offices there. If not, I suggest water and some sleep after this, because I don’t think you’ll be able to top this amount of excitement for a day.”

The poor woman looked like a deer strapped down on a butcher’s table. Her eyes snapped to Shiv, then back to Marikos, and then she nodded extremely slowly as her acknowledgment finally overcame her state of shock.

“Thank you for your understanding,” Shiv said. “Marikos. With me. You’re done here for today too.”

“With you?” Marikos didn’t understand—probably no one did, aside from Bonk, who was grumbling about the Insul punishing people by making them his forced interns.

“Yes,” Shiv said. “With me. You’re done here. And you’re not going to be coming back here for some time. We got work to do, you and I. You want to be punished? Well, here it is: You caused the Gate trouble, so you’re going to solve some trouble for the Gate. You, me, and Bonk are going on patrol and kitchen duty. Someone’s hungry? We feed them. Reports to finish, you two better get on that—”

“No!” Bonk shouted. “No! I knew it! I knew there was a reason why—”

“—and if there are disturbances,” Shiv continued, shouting over Bonk, “we settle them. Death and pain aren’t valuable, Marikos. And I’m not of the Union. Don’t expect me to uphold the same rituals. So it’s time to make up for your transgressions my way. And you’re making it up to me, not yourself. You feel bad? Well, that’s fine. You can feel bad while being useful. Now.” Shiv summoned his strongest sneer as he looked Marikos up and down. “You got an hour to sober up. When you can talk properly, you come to the Carp in armor, because today is not a day for moping; today is a day for making ourselves useful.”

“Or following the Insul and watching him bully people into doing what he wants them to,” Bonk grumbled.