To the Educator:
(Exposition: Most of them don’t know my name, and none of them know who I actually am. Nor do they care. They are content with their delusional belief that they are the ones who decide.)
The High Office of the Inquisition has dispatched new orders. You are to finish with matters in Lone Star immediately. Deal with what heretics are remaining and keep their cells suppressed for now.
(Exposition: Some scurrying heretics are the least of their problems. The Auroral pantheon is ripping itself apart, and their council in the process. The Starhawk is trying to break the very nature of their godhood, but the others cannot let go. They will not allow it. But even here, the others are divided. Two wish to kill Thaen and be done with things. The others still view him as their brother—merely lost and to be restrained.)
Gate Theborn is your next destination. You will find our liaison there and secure a weapon: an Animancy Core. You, then, will deliver the core to the Inquisition and await further instructions.
(Exposition: And there is more than just one conflict on display here. There are personal grudges being wielded by the divine. Roland Arrow has just as many enemies as his patron god, being the only favored champion of the Starhawk and the guardian of the Perch.)
High Office of the Inquisition, signed by Inquisitor Sijik.
(Exposition: This one will be on his way to Blackedge with a small force soon. He will be coming with Lord Stormhalt to finish the farce of an assassination they have planned. How pathetic.)
-Commands Dispatched by the High Office of the Auroral Inquisition to the “Educator”
(Exposition: Like they know anything about what is actually going on.)
73 (I)
Context
Foreshadowing: I am going to exploit this pseudo-vision I have inflicted upon you now. Foreshadowing is a very inconvenient skill to have. You should really evolve it beyond Adept as soon as you can. Here. Let me give you a bit of a hand.
Foreshadowing > 43
Shiv grunted as he felt something smash into him hard. He briefly lurched back but caught himself with his field. He tried to strike back, but controlling his body during the visions felt like trying to claw his way out from inside a dream. His consciousness was partial at best right now, and it felt like his enemy was manipulating his Foreshadowing somehow.
Foreshadowing: That’s because I am. I’m also not sure as to how a fragment of Rose Van Erren’s Foreshadowing Skill ended up inside you.
Something else hit Shiv as the vision intensified. He felt something punch into the flesh of his neck before he adapted. He heard a note of surprise as something exploded against him again—but failed to push him back.
Foreshadowing: And how in the Ascendants’ collective stupidity did you get Adamantine Adaption? That’s a skill common for colossal-category monsters, not individuals. Wait, your Path… What is that Path?
Foreshadowing > 45
Shiv tried to push back. He did everything he could to break free from the chaotic flood of details the Educator was pouring into his mind.
Foreshadowing: Not your mind. I am not a Psychomancer like your—your lover? Ha! And a Sister of the Arachnae Order no less. Wait, Silver Tongue? That’s her skill too! What is with all this debris in your soul? And how are you regenerating someone else’s broken skills? What a vexing mystery you are.
Another series of strikes hit Shiv over the head. Blows that actually stung and rocked him. It was like he was getting pounded on by the axe-bearing dragon again. But instead of being pummeled unconscious, he was just getting screwed over by his own visions. He then felt something like a chain tighten around his neck, but he managed to fling it away with a brief pulse from his field.
Foreshadowing: Gravitic Wrestler? Woundeater? The Chef Unwavering? What am I looking at? Why didn’t I ever notice you before?
Foreshadowing > 46
The visions ended. At least for a moment. Shiv’s senses returned to him, and he growled as he glared at the Educator. His helmet was cracked open, blood was trickling down from his forehead, and his neck was bleeding as well. He was inside some kind of ruined building, and the Educator ducked to the left as one of Adam’s Veilpiercer arrows almost hit her. The shot slipped over her neck, and Shiv grunted as he parried the projectile aside.
It blasted through a wall behind them, and almost immediately, the building began to groan and shake.
“I have questions—” the Educator began.
Shiv slashed the ground with his kukri and charged her. He caught the robed woman rolling her eyes as he blasted toward her. He launched two bone drills; a laceration spell in one hand, followed by a Bowel-Breaker; then he shot up an odd angle with a pull of his field before diving in to claim her head.
She was a step ahead every single time. She caught one of his drills and used it to deflect the other. Both spells crashed and exploded against her, but she didn’t seem to care—and for good reason. Her Magical Resistance made Confriga’s feel feeble. As Shiv tried to cut her again, she parried him with her brush and painted something in the air. A shape lurched toward Shiv, and he immediately triggered his chrono-anchor.
He blinked across the room just as a symbol splashed the space where he had just been. Shiv narrowed his eyes at the attack. He didn’t know what that was, but something about it told him he needed to avoid it at all costs. Just then, the building began to collapse. The ceiling above them broke apart and crashed down. Shiv didn’t care much, and neither did the Educator.
They both regarded each other for a moment.
“That’s an interesting knife,” she said. “Mainly because of the Chronomancy. Secondarily, because it reeks of the System’s vulgar, unsubtle interest in you. In fact, you practically burn with the System’s favor. So much that you ignited the other two with you. They’re burning as well.”
Just then, Uva’s mana strands speared into the room from all sides. One went for Shiv while the others went for the Educator. Shiv activated his Silhouette then, and the Educator grinned. “Oh,now there’s a proper skill.” The building crashed down on them. Shiv launched himself forward, using the chaos to mask his attack—
Then another vision consumed him.
Foreshadowing: Silhouette. Quite the skill—especially for someone like you. And at the Young Lord’s recommendation, no less. You and he are almost like Roland and Harlon all those years ago, down to the very dynamic. Except, you seem to actually be the man your father wished he was. And the man your mother wished she had married.
Foreshadowing > 47
Shiv could faintly hear Uva calling for him—then her call broke off into a cryof pain. Something inside Shiv recoiled. He struggled against the vision as much as he could, trying to break out. He fed his anger into his Gravitic Wrestler and barely mustered the focus to stomp down on the ground.
The vision broke, and so did the world around him. The weight of the fallen building pressing down on his back vanished as a shockwave erupted out from Shiv. Light splashed down on him. Light and—for a brief moment, he was stunned. He stood amongst the skeletal remains of a ruined city. A ruined city he knew, that he traveled and explored for so many years, clearing out lesser vampire nests.
This was Lost Angeles. How was he here?
“I quite dislike magic, you know that?” the Educator said. Shiv froze. He couldn’t see her at all anymore. He scanned his surroundings and focused on his Biomancy. “It twists one’s perspective on things and makes acts far too impersonal. Truth be told, it just takes the tension out of things. So many magical battles are just someone hitting someone else with a spell, then death. No way out. No tension.”
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“Well, come out, then,” Shiv growled. slashed the ground again with his kukri as he rose into the air. “If you want some tension, I can give you some.”
“Hmk. I take what I said in the vision back. You sound more like your mother. She was the aggressive one. Frankly, she was the one that made the mistake of conceiving you. Your father was far more cautious. Just a pity he loved her so much. And a pity it was the other way around with Roland and his Rose.”
Shiv heard the words she was speaking, but he wasn’t truly listening. Judging from how Adam’s arrows briefly stopped coming, the Young Lord was, however. Shiv was too focused on trying to hunt his adversary down, and—
“S-Shiv—” Can Hu crackled.
Shit! Shiv cursed internally. He'd forgotten about Can Hu. The automaton sounded broken.
The Penitent tried to speak. “Something—actively interfering—can—”
Then, Shiv shouted in pain as the wet fibers of a paintbrush burrowed clean through his flesh without resistance. He faintly heard Uva calling his name, but he growled and turned—only to feel the brush stroke away more of him. Shiv shot forward through the air and clutched at his back. Blood gushed out from the deep channels painted into his flesh. Painted. His wounds bled colors of concrete and rusted metal—the colors of the ruins.
“What… in the godsdamned hells?” Shiv groaned as he looked at his hand. He hadn’t been run through like that for weeks. Diamond Shell alone made him as hard on the inside as he was on the outside. Just what was that brush?
And where was that brush?
“A recommendation about being sneaky—you should avoid holding your bright, radiant kukri out in the open. Maybe hide it somewhere until you’re ready to strike. It really does your Silhouette an injustice. You should treasure your Stealth Skill more, boy. Nothing feeds you more tension than that.”
Shiv looked about and still couldn’t find the damned woman. Just then, he saw Uva’s strands slowly closing in—only for the Educator to materialize beside a string and strike it with her brush. Again, Shiv heard Uva scream.
Rage exploded through Shiv. He launched another laceration spell at the Educator, but she simply smiled, dove under him, and—
And he lost track of her again. It was like she vanished entirely as soon as she left his line of—
Wait! Shit! She can move across someone’s Awareness. That’s how she got to us immediately. She jumped across Adam's Awareness! She’s inside mine right now!
A vision smashed into him again just as he realized the truth. “Godsdammit!” Shiv snarled. “Stop doing that!”
Foreshadowing: No. Also, it’s beneficial for you. The sooner you develop Exposition, the sooner you and I can have a proper conversation. Also, good job on remembering my Skill Fusion. You put things together awfully fast. Now. I’m going to—
Foreshadowing > 50
Shiv sobered, but only for a moment. That moment was long enough. He tried something desperate and blinded himself. His eyes burst. The vision didn’t end. So he took a chance and went the rest of the way. Shiv stopped his heart, and he emerged as a Revenant a moment later, hoping it would be enough for him to escape the visions, or at least get a Skill Evolution capable of resisting his enemy.
Silhouette > 66
Revenant > 11
Skill Evolution: Foreshadowing (Adept) > Exposi—[Error: Skill Evolution Incompatible With Path]
What? Shiv had never seen an Error notification before. But that thought crumbled away as something else consumed Shiv’s attention. Heat. Immense heat. More heat than he ever felt in his entire life.
With the power she displayed, he expected the Educator to be strong of vitality, but nothing could have prepared him for what rose out from within the Educator.
And it did indeed rise out. Like a plant hatching and climbing toward sunlight. Except that the thing that grew out from the Educator was no plant, but a titanic, near-transparent, humanoid shape. It was so big that it blotted out Shiv’s view of the sky. It should have been utterly invisible, but the fact that it had vitality burning within its body gave Shiv the impression of a titan of fire looking down at him.
The massive being had more vitality than everything and everyone Shiv had ever drained combined, and by orders of magnitude at that. If Shiv had resurrected before the sun, this is what it would have felt like.
Severe Path Incompatibility Detected: Unable to Evolve Skill into [Exposition]
[Error: Unable to expand and modify Pathbearer’s Soul without affecting Vitality]
And at the same time, the colossal, burning entity glared down at Shiv. The Educator froze, long enough for one of Adam's arrows to crash into her and knock her back, long enough for Uva's strands to bounce off her Magical Resistance. But she stared at Shiv, and her expression was one of absolute shock. Her expression was matched by the immense being's body language, and the sky itself shook as a voice like rolling thunder washed over him.
"What. Are. You."
Another vision smashed into Shiv. It crashed hard against his consciousness, drowning him once more, but not manipulating his mind, just forcing details into him. Endless details, flashes of places and things he couldn't comprehend.
He caught a vision, a vision of twenty people condemned to death. Twenty people, all shackled to each other as they were marched to the edge of a chasm—the Abyss.
They were cast down by a burst of force, and each of them fell. They fell as one, and they fell as all. They fell as twenty, but then they fell as seventeen, then fifteen, and finally thirteen.
Then the vision broke, and once more Shiv felt his skill try to evolve, but his soul wouldn't allow it, and pain, pain unlike anything he'd ever experienced, consumed the root of his being. It was like something was hatching out from his very soul, ripping out from every fiber of his flesh.
Foreshadowing: What are you? Why are you not evolving the skill? What did you just do to yourself?
Foreshadowing: [Unable to Level Skill]
The skill was cracking and breaking inside of him, trying to transform, but his soul wouldn't allow it. If Shiv had possessed a mouth then, he would have screamed, and he would have kept screaming and screaming forever. That's how bad the pain felt; it was beyond what he experienced when he was purified within the teleportation anchor, when he strained his soul, mind, and body facing the Jealousy, when he took the brutal beating at the hands of the dragon-knights.
This was an immediate thirteen out of ten on the pain spectrum.
Slowly, the skill began to forcibly break and twist inside him. It felt like someone was reshaping his very bones while still inside his flesh. Foreshadowing needed to evolve. It was already beyond the precipice. It couldn't be itself anymore.
But Exposition was not for him. It was a thing that couldn't touch one's vitality, that needed to be soul-deep for some reason, untainted by the existence of a life force. But Shiv was an undying flame—life enduring.
And so the skill had to become something else altogether. It spilled into his Integrated existence, and the pain abruptly ended as Shiv felt a sudden coldness wash through him as his very vitality was siphoned away into the skill.
No, no! Shit! Shiv immediately shot toward the Educator and activated Silhouette. He could feel himself growing colder at a rapid rate, and he needed to fuel himself. At the same time, he felt the Foreshadowing Skill dissolve before the raw, chaotic nature of his life force.
Skill Lost: Foreshadowing (Adept)
Just as he seized the Educator, a flash of vitality pulsed through her—but Shiv realized she was but an empty vessel. There was no vitality to be sourced from her. Rather, she was just a channel—an anchoring vessel for the great being above. Their vitality surged into Shiv, and it went off inside him like a bomb. A mixture of brilliant red and white bubbled over Shiv, and the skill drank from that too.
The colossal entity cast a vision at him—tried to make him see something, but for a moment, Shiv was beyond their reach. His shadowy cocoon formed and began to crack in the same instant. His very existence was supercharged with a rush of power that was greater than anything he'd ever felt.
Vitality Drain > 30
And through it all, the awesome entity stared on as a trickle of them zipped over to Shiv, and finally, a new notification materialized.
Skill Gained: Outside Context Problem (Unique)
Outside Context Problem > 51
“Why isn’t Exposition working on you anymore? Why can’t I see your skills?”
Shiv ignored the colossal entity as he emerged from his resurrective husk. He drove his kukri into the face of the Educator. The blade only left a slight cut on her cheek, but nothing more. She responded by flicking her brush at him. The paint sailed through the air and—
“NO!”
Shiv felt himself get pulled away before it got close to him. But he wasn’t pulled back. Rather, he was pulled through something. Or at least that was how it felt. There was a layer of burning life-essence around him, red and white flames that shaped his very being. He was getting colder at an alarming rate. For a moment, he had thought he was truly dead, but when he looked down, he still had a body. He was still whole.
But there was something else here with him, in this space of red and white. Someone else. Just behind him.
He turned toward the unseen enemy in a blur, but his kukri froze an inch away from the throat of a ghostly visage, a person shaped from his very vitality.
She loomed over him, her body malformed but also strangely elegant. Her long hair was crimson, and a flowing, white dress whipped around her body in tassels. Shiv felt himself grow colder still, and he wasn't sure if it was his vitality burning away at an alarming rate or if it was just the sudden, horrible realization that he knew this woman. He'd seen her in paintings, in murals, in memorial photos, and more across Blackedge all his life.
This was… Rose Van Erren.