225 (II)

First-Aid

Shiv sneered. He halted time. His Inertial Overdrive roared with pleasure and yearned to discharge as Shiv flung himself into the air with his Shapeless Tides. The explosiveness of his momentum shredded his ligaments and unlatched his muscles from his bones. Shiv felt one of his lungs collapse as well. Really need to deal with the problem of moving too fast before my Toughness Skill matches my speed… Better get Multi-Tasking to evolve soon.

He ignored his wounds and spiked himself down on the unknown Chronomancer. The academy's temporal wards smashed down to crush both of them. They never got the chance. Shiv wrapped his still-working right hand around the neck of his adversary and tore them back just as they were about to plunge their blade into the pale-skinned girl's back. Golden mana burst out from the ruined silhouette, showering the Deathless as he cast himself a second back in time.

Shiv blinked back to his original position and dismissed his temporal shell before he found his Chronomancy field ground to dust. Time resumed, and though the tent was awash with wailing students in every direction, littered with moving bodies and flowing Biomancy, a single scream rose above the others. Shiv's head snapped in the direction of his enemy—he knew that cry. That was the howl of someone suffering the full extent of extreme mana strain.

A tall elven student toppled over. Before he went down, vanishing behind a wall of twisting bodies, Shiv saw a white beret fall from the student's head, and a faint glint of Chronomancy bleed off his body.

Shiv licked his lips. Got you.

The militia Biomancer that had come to help Shiv was startled by the sudden cry, as were many others nearby, and she barely responded when Shiv tapped her arm. "I think I just saw someone faint. I need to go check. I'll be back soon."

The Deathless tore off into the crowd before she could stop him. He slipped past and pushed his way through waves of crashing bodies, and he used his Vitaemancy to track his victim-to-be. There were a great deal of life signatures around him, but only one was doubled over the ground in spiritual agony. Only one glowed slightly brighter than most others here.

Assassin. Another one. Someone really felling wants that girl dead.

The Chronomancer was nowhere near the pale-skinned girl. Somehow, he'd cast his Chronomancy field at her from over eight meters away. Despite this, when Shiv caught a glimpse of her face between the gaps in the crowd, she was looking in the direction of the Chronomancer—and there was a naked look of suspicion and fear.

Damn. Girl's got the senses of a hawk. Maybe a Chronomancy Skill herself too. Who is she?

Shiv ducked down and moved quickly. He looked down at the shadows cast by the bodies of the other students and scoffed as he realized the boost offered by the Last Morsel had elapsed. Right. We're sneaking the old-fashioned way.

He used other students for cover and opportunistically snatched up a fallen white beret. By the time he got to the downed elven Chronomancer, there was a crowd forming around him. To Shiv's luck, it seemed like they were just volunteers and other students. The militia had not closed in yet.

"Militia Biomancer," Shiv called aloud, pointing at his beret. "Out of the way. He might be having a seizure. Give him some air."

If nothing else, the students of Phoenix Academy were conscientious. A way opened up before Shiv, and several students who hadn't noticed were pulled aside by their fellows. The Deathless advanced, keeping his head low and moving fast. He saw several other militia Biomancers heading in his direction, but they had Low Adept-Tier Reflexes at best. By the time they got here, he would be long gone, and the Elven Chronomancer would be taking a walk with him.

Shiv reached down and yanked the assassin to his feet. With a vicious jab, he sank his fingers into the base of the man's back and gripped his spine. His leather vest was no impediment, spreading like tissue before the press of a blade. As the elf nearly screamed in pain, Shiv wrapped a mana hydra around him and constricted his airways. He choked instead, and Shiv quickly dragged the elf along.

Inertial Overdrive 181 182

"He's choking, he's choking!" Shiv called aloud. "Clear the way, clear the way!"

More students parted before him, but he speared past them before they could get a good look at who he was. The assassin tried to struggle free from Shiv's grasp, who tightened his fingers around the fracturing column of vertebrae within him and pulled his Psychomancy away from Helix, attaching it to his new victim instead.

"Hi. Cute Chronomancy Skill you got there. Start moving those legs."

The elf tried to turn and get a glimpse at Shiv. Shiv almost closed his hand entirely. The elf's spine split in two. His legs went slack, and his body spasmed. Shiv kept the elf's twitches of pain contained using his Aegis of Assimilation. The two of them stumbled between crowds of students, avoiding other members of the militia as an interrogation began.

The Creeping Void 119 121

"That was a piece of spine in your lower back," Shiv explained. "It's broken now. I can fix it. I can put you back together. But if you try to turn and look at me again, I'll reach into your brain. I'll pop one of the vessels there, and I'll leave you for dead. You understand me?"

A snarl of pain leaked over from the elf's mind, but instead of fear, as Shiv had expected, there came a flare of rage. "You have no idea what you just interrupted, you stupid—You have no idea who I represent. You just ended your life."

"Yeah, that's why I took you alive." Shiv yawned. "So you can tell me about who you work for. You, and your friend—the one that started the fire."

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Just as quickly as the elf's rage came, it scattered, replaced by a cold, building dread.

"Now that's an appropriate emotion," Shiv said with a low chuckle. "Start talking, friend. Start with the girl. What's her name? Why are you guys going after her? And before you deny anything, I got our mutual friend stored away, so you keep that in mind."

"You have the Young Lord—Release him! You hold a member of House DeGraille prisoner!"

"Buddy, I don't even know what House DeGraille is," Shiv said flatly. "But you do, so you're going to start explaining things to me. Again, start with the girl."

Shiv twisted the broken pieces of spine, and the elf tried to scream again. Shiv pinched his vocal cords tighter with his Biomancy as a response. Blood poured down on the ground, but the Deathless caught it using another mana hydra head. He kept it contained within the wound, and while the elf screamed mentally, physically, he resembled little more than a man having something of a light seizure.

"Alright, alright, alright!" the elf howled. "I'll talk, I'll talk. You... you have no idea what you stumbled into. It's not too late for—"

"That's not what I want to hear," Shiv said. He began moving again, and the elf finally got on track.

"The girl... She's the bastard daughter of Hero-Inquisitor Simeon DeGraille. She was supposed to be dead! Slain! Somehow, she found her way to this school. The damned giants kept her alive…"

"So some noble is trying to kill his bastard daughter," Shiv said flatly. "And the way he decided to go about this is, what, hiring a sloppy assassin to do his work? You felling shits set an entire dorm on fire."

"That wasn't me. That was Alec DeGraille! Young Lord Alec DeGraille. He wasn't supposed to be here. He came to prove himself to his father, trying to regain his favor..."

"...by murdering his bastard sister," Shiv finished. He sighed, already tired of this noble house bullshit.

"To murder that bastard half-breed!" the assassin cried aloud. "She's not human! She has... She has giant's blood in her."

Giant's blood? And Shiv's suspicions began to blossom. He remembered feeling the girl's Cryomancy earlier, how it was like Andras's—like a Jotun's.

"So, humans and giants can crossbreed?" Shiv asked.

"It is not a breeding. It is a sculpting," the assassin snarled. "The Jotun are not born, they're molded from frost and the mingled blood of two—How do you not know this? Who are you?"

"Let's just say I've been missing for a while," Shiv replied. "But enough about me. You keep going. You're telling me that this Hero-Inquisitor sent you to assassinate this girl. But this whole thing got derailed because his idiot son decided the best way to go about killing his half-giant sister was to burn an entire dorm down."

"Yes," the assassin wheezed. A building current of fear flowed out from him and connected to Shiv. "Please, I beg of you, for the sake of your own life, you need to turn away. You need to let me go and finish my task. My life does not matter. Hero-Inquisitor DeGraille has a great many others that he can call upon. He will see the girl cut down before this comes to light. He cannot afford for the truth of her existence to be known to the rest of the Inquisition. You cannot stop him. He will get what he wants. He always does."

Somehow, Shiv didn't really feel that scared of some Hero-Inquisitor. Not after all the nightmares and monsters he'd faced. "Uh-huh. You know, if you're lying, I'll find out, right? Because I think I got young Lord Alec to talk with as well. In fact, I'll have a conversation with him right after this."

The Deathless paused as he observed his quarry. "So, I'm guessing you're probably an Interrogator. Someone working under the Hero-Inquisitor."

The elf flinched mentally. "'Who I am—"

"—doesn't matter," Shiv finished for him. "Yeah, guys like you love saying that shit. You're scared. I can feel it. If I let you go, you're gonna try making another attempt on that girl's life, aren't you?"

Deductive Reasoning 8 9

"She's not a girl," the interrogator whimpered. "She's an abomination. A half-giant."

"Yeah, and?" Shiv said flatly.

"She serves the Shattered Court! She is an Avatar of the Crone! A crone-to-be! If she's not cut down, someday, she will become a Prophetess!"

"Neat; cool story; I'm sure all the kids who died because of this understand now," Shiv deadpanned. "I don't know much about the Jotun, and I think I'm gonna find out on my own time. Anyway, thanks for the conversation. You turned out to be helpful. But I don't think I'm going to let you stick around to finish things out."

"Wait, wait, wait, no!" the elven Chronomancer screeched.

Shiv reached into the elf's body using his Biomancy and focused on a specific organ. The blood vessels in the elf's lungs swelled. "Shame you ended up inhaling some smoke when you were pulling students out of the building. They'll remember you as a hero. If they can figure out who you are at all. You steal that pin? Ah, I'll let campus security figure that out."

As the blood vessels burst, the elven Chronomancer gagged. Shiv let him drop, but as he did, he mended the wounds he'd inflicted on the man's spine.

A thud came as he hit the grass, and as the assassin lay there, twitching and spasming, Shiv casually tossed the white beret over the succumbing elf's body.

Aegis of Assimilation 118 120

After that, the Deathless took a few left turns through the crowd, and as he felt the temporal wards pass over him again, he cast himself ten seconds back in time. From there, he found his way back to his original group and adopted the guise of a weary volunteer.

"Heatstroke," Shiv said with a cough, allowing him to sell his own physical weakness. "No big deal."

The militia Biomancer from earlier blinked at him. "I see. It was quite a scream for heatstroke."

"Yeah, right?" Shiv chuckled. "Surprised me too. Anyway, where were we with her? Is she all right now?"

The nameless girl was back to muttering to herself, but she wasn't coughing so often anymore. The vomiting had ceased as well.

"We'll do another suite of scans on her soon," the Biomancer said. "But aside from what you found, I think she's going to be just fine." The girl eyed Shiv up and down. "Are you enrolled in 301?"

"Uh, yeah," Shiv replied. "Yeah, it seems like an interesting class."

"I think you would be a good fit for it." The militia Biomancer smiled brightly at him and extended her hand. "I'm Maxime Van Stormhalt."