226 (II)

Resolved

***

"My name is Hero-Inquisitor Simeon DeGraille! My bastard daughter… She lives within the Dragon Dorm… My fool of a son, he went there to slay her, to retain my favor! Children were burned! Students died because of my folly, my family's actions! This is all my fault, it was my doing, mine! I must be punished, I must be punished, please! Please, someone, punish me!"

The patriarch of House DeGraille and Hero-Inquisitor of the Yellowstone Republic wailed those words over and over again, right in front of the Headmaster's tower. The structure was a tall spire made from focus crystal, mithril, steel, and a series of exposed gears running along its length, making it appear like someone had forgotten to properly cover up a vast clockwork mechanism. Every few seconds, the gears would tick and clack, causing a massive pendulum set into the front of the tower to swing from side to side, while the hands of the clock face just below its peak spun in rhythmic beats. Why was it built like that and for what purpose? Shiv couldn't decipher. But it had a novel look about it. It was also surprisingly well hidden, nested around a concentric layer of libraries, laboratories, lecture halls, and a gymnasium.

Before the tower was a lovely yellow brick path flanked by blossoming black-petaled flowers Shiv didn't recognize. Kneeling upon the yellow path were two individuals. The first was the aforementioned Simeon DeGraille. He was stripped down to his underwear, snot and tears ran down his face, and he was on his knees begging for someone to deliver righteous retribution upon his deserving form.

Not far away, his middle son, Alec DeGraille, stumbled around making barely coherent noises. He walked in circles while holding himself, and every now and again, he would scream about how he "wouldn't do it again." Above that, though, he screamed of a monster, one that he couldn't recall, but one that he was sure was nearby.

A gathering of a few hundred students looked on in morbid fascination as the two nobles debased themselves. A certain Marcus Unblood stood among their number, and though he pretended to be as flabbergasted as his fellows at the academy, inside, it was all he could do to stop himself from scowling.

The Creeping Void 121 123

The younger DeGraille wasn't wrong. The monster was nearby, and he was making sure this farce was destined for a proper end. The DeGrailles were fools. The younger for performing such a reckless and despicable attack on Phoenix Academy, and the elder for building a hidden teleportation anchor so close to his study. Shiv had suffered through lengthy dialogue with both father and son, and in their short time together, learned to despise the two DeGrailles.

Apparently, the dorm-burning wasn't the only atrocity committed by the Young Lord. He also had a habit of torching escorts. A few prostitutes from a brothel had been burned to death when the Young Lord got carried away, and it had taken considerable influence on the Hero-Inquisitor's part to make sure the event was covered up.

Simeon's story was more of a tragedy at first. During his younger years, he was apparently captured by the Jotun, and due to the prowess he displayed and how many giants it took to take him alive, they decided to honor him by stealing some of his blood and torturing him into compliance. From his blood, a daughter was molded into being by one of the giant's crones. How this all worked was beyond the elder DeGraille as well. But at some point, when the giants dropped their guard, he managed to escape, and he stole away his bastard half-daughter as well.

At the start, he was simply moving on reflex. He didn't know why he took her. When he managed to get out of Jotun territory, he considered murdering her. But due to a mix of trauma and a lack of viciousness, he simply abandoned her near a border village. But she never truly left his thoughts, and years later, as he achieved the position of Hero-Inquisitor, he began receiving more and more reports that a certain white-skinned girl was spotted near the wilderness. Apparently, the people he'd left her with had been raided by the Jotun and slain. The girl had been taken back by her mother's people, and that was when the Hero-Inquisitor began making plans to see his unwanted daughter dead.

He sent a number of assassins after her, but many of them died due to unlucky circumstances. At some point, she broke free of the Jotun and vanished for a while. Then she was spotted near some hermit woman's cabin, and the hunt was back on thereafter. He wasn't certain how Clarissa ended up at Phoenix Academy, only that she arrived under the same conditions that applied to Marcus Unblood. The Wild Card Program granted her a place here, but it also placed a target on the back of her head.

At this point, Shiv wondered why the girl came to the Capitol at all. She must have known that someone was trying to kill her, and if she survived her father's previous assassins, she probably had a good guess as to whom. Despite that, she still came to the Academy. She still attended as a student, and as such, she was meant to be silenced quietly by one of her father's more established assassins.

Unfortunately, his middle son found out, and thinking this was a good opportunity to right his recent shame, he came to the academy in the dead of night, seeking to burn the half-giant girl to death in her bed.

Things went awry from there. Her Cryomancy, though not on par with her half-brother's Pyromancy, proved enough to give her a stay of immediate execution, and she fled. The resulting chase between the two of them caused the Dragon Dorm to be burned down. The Young Lord had corroborated that information with a bit more prompting from Helix, involving insects being hatched within his arteries, among other things.

And that brought everything back to the present, with both DeGrailles shouting their misdeeds for all to hear. There were signed confessions on wooden boards swinging from their necks like necklaces as well. The only thing missing from them was specific memories, namely, the memories that had anything to do with Shiv, Adam, or the others that had interrogated them.

It was as Shiv had said, he wasn't that skilled of a Psychomancer, but when you could absolutely shred someone's Magical Resistance, they had no means of holding you back from ripping into their minds. The process was messy and arduous, but Shiv had managed, though it was not nearly as clean as a more skilled mage could have achieved. Still, he destroyed mostly just the bits of memory connected to his identity, and now justice would see itself done in one fashion or the other.

Well, I suppose the Inquisition could come and pick both the DeGrailles up, Shiv thought to himself. If they do that, and they try to put their minds back together with an in-house Psychomancer, I'll just have to keep a close eye on them.

He'd imprinted the Elder DeGraille with a temporal echo, and so, even if the Inquisition hid the Hero-Inquisitor away, Shiv would be able to reach him.

As the scene played on, the front doors to the Headmaster's tower were flung wide open, and Hades Hymn strode out with the pale-skinned girl in tow. Clarissa looked like a rabbit caught in a trap. Her eyes were wide, and she reeked of fear.

While Hymn's strides were long and carefree, she practically stumbled toward her father. The Headmaster looked around, and, for a brief moment, his gaze fell on Shiv. The Deathless felt the pinprick of something brush against his mind, but just as soon as it came, it faded. Even so, his instincts told him to mind Hades Hymn. The Headmaster probably knew a lot more than he let on. As long as you don't go digging into my identity, we won't have a problem, Shiv thought to himself. Mind yourself, Hymn.

"Hero-Inquisitor DeGraille," Hymn said, clapping his hands together.

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He walked over to the kneeling inquisitor and tried to pull him back to his feet, but Simeon DeGraille simply let out a shriek and flinched away. "Don't touch—no, no, he's watching, he's watching, he wants me to be punished, punish me please, don't let him take me again, don't let him take me again!"

"Let who take you again?" the headmaster asked evenly, without any hint of confusion or suspicion, and that just made Shiv narrow his eyes some more.

Yeah, definitely knows a lot more than he lets on.

"Monster, monster, monster, monster!" Simeon repeated, and soon his son began to weep as well. Both the DeGrailles were in a wretched state, and Shiv could practically hear the howling laughter coming from the orcs hidden within his cape.

"You know, for a couple of torturers, they really didn't stand up to being tortured very good," Mortar chocked out between giggles.

"And here you were worried that the Insul was getting boring," Whisper commented snidely.

At this point, Simeon's eyes fell on his unwanted daughter, and he let out a ragged yell as he crawled toward her on all fours. She backed away in fright, but he scrambled like a dog with its eyes locked on a treat. He threw himself at her feet and cried aloud, "I miss—I miss—I deserve this! I did it. I sent all those people after you. I sent them. I didn't want you. I should have killed you. It was not—All those years ago, I should have killed you when I first held you. But I couldn't. I couldn't. And now I suffer. And now I suffer. And now I suffer!"

The girl was beginning to hyperventilate. Her Cryomancy billowed around her. But it was Hymn that intervened. He reached out and teleported the broken Hero-Inquisitor away with a wink. A second later, he snapped his finger. And the younger DeGraille vanished as well.

He looked down at Clarissa. "So, was that a madman or your father?"

She stared up at him, wide-eyed, with her mouth hanging open. "I... I..." She looked at the gathered students, and she almost caught sight of Shiv. But he ducked behind a few tall automata, hiding his presence.

"I don't know," she said. Her voice was barely higher than a whisper. "I don't think I have a father."

"Well, then this was all an unfortunate incident," the Headmaster declared. "I think we will leave this to the guard. Come along, Clarissa."

He patted her on the back and guided her back into the tower. At this point, the Prismatic Guard appeared—and Hymn casually teleported them away with a gesture as well, ignoring their protest. "We will finish our interview post-haste. But in light of what we have discovered, I think we can eliminate you or anyone associated with you as perpetrators of this vile act."

And Shiv realized what the Headmaster was doing. He was effectively severing the girl from the Hero-Inquisitor. He gave her a choice to reveal their connection or to hide herself entirely. And right now, she chose to hide. Well, perhaps that was all she could decide. The shock was too much, and Shiv thought it a bit cruel on Hymn's part to expose her to this directly. But then again, Hymn didn't seem to be the type to give much of a shit about anything. And aside from that, this made the entire affair a settled matter.

All that starts shit ends as… well, mostly shit still, Shiv thought. Well, at least we put an end to that for now. Adam will have to keep an eye on the rest of the family, but there should be nothing that traces back to us. Helix scrubbed our biological remains, and I made sure not to break anything inside his study. Adam snatched that weird Divination box on his table as well, so there can't be anything that gives us away.

With that, Shiv turned and slipped through the crowd. The surrounding students were loudly murmuring about what had just transpired, unaware that the perpetrator behind the capture and breaking of both the DeGrailles was walking away from them.

As Shiv approached the first ringed building surrounding the Headmaster's clocktower, a familiar presence settled beside him.

"Quite productive," Irons commented dryly.

Shiv bade himself not to flinch and simply smiled wryly. He couldn't tell if the captain was pleased or not. So he just shrugged in return. "I don't really ask to be involved in these problems, but they just seem to come my way. I only make sure they don't turn into lasting problems."

"And you are certain that this won't be a lasting problem?" Irons grunted.

The Deathless shook his head. "Yeah, pretty certain. Not much linking him back to me or anyone else I know. And if he tries to do anything else, well, sometimes life gets too much for a Pathbearer. And being a Hero-Inquisitor exposes you to a lot of nasty shit, doesn't it?" He made eye contact with the captain. And, for the first time, he detected a hint of unease on the other Pathbearer's face.

Irons looked away first, and he nodded. "I see. Do you know why it happened? The fire."

"Adam didn't tell you?" Shiv asked.

"He gave me a rundown. But he told me to ask you if I want to hear the entire story."

"Well, we'll explain it to you sometime when we all get together. But you'll be either pleased or pissed to find out it has nothing to do with how favored I am." A humorless laugh escaped Shiv. "I think I stumbled fist-first into someone else's story. You saw that pale-skinned girl there, the one with the Headmaster?"

"The half-giant?"

Shiv did a double-take. "Does everyone know what a half-Jotun is?"

"Unlikely," the captain replied. "I, however, have encountered the unformed of the shattered court. They are not regarded as full giants, more like shock troops. It is most common for a Jotun to mingle their essence with that of a monster. For them to sculpt a child in the image of an enemy Pathbearer, especially a human, is an insult and a form of respect in equal measure."

And that got Shiv thinking about Sullain's special project: the Undying Tarrasque that wore Shiv's face. "Great. Felling hate the frost giants already. I still don't fully get the girl's deal, if she's evil at all, but it seems like Simeon was just a victim at the start that decided to turn into a bit more of a bastard when he went about keeping his position and hiding his shame."

"So, he burned down the dorm?" Irons asked in a hushed tone.

"Ha, no, that was his idiot middle child, who's also a prostitute burner."

"A prostitute burner?" Irons said, surprised. "Then, wait, the brothel... I know something about this."

"Yeah, so you know what kind of freaks we're dealing with," Shiv said with a derisive scoff. "Anyway, he's the one who decided to take a direct approach. By direct approach, I mean that he tried jumping his own half-sister in the middle of the night inside her room. And when he screwed up trying to kill her, and she managed to get away, he tapped into the mana surrounding the structure. You know the rest."

Irons grimaced at that. But the expression was a fleeting one. "I see," he said again. "And so, all this was for the sake of conspiracy. A shameful birth."

"Yeah, seems to be. It really is kind of… underwhelming that over 40 kids had to die for that. But who the hells knows what's going on in the minds of the nobility? Anyway, I've had enough of this shit. I need to get my first class in order."

Irons grunted, rolling with Shiv's mood without suffering any whiplash. "What is your first class?"

"A Culinary elective. I'm going to be volunteering at a restaurant somewhere across the city. After that, I'm going to move on and take part in my first medical course. Biomancy-related, but it's mostly about helping people who are sick and injured. I might take up a more basic Biomancy course if I still need the additional support, but I think I want to move at a higher pace than most students. Wanna be hands-on."

"I see. You're taking Van Erren's Medic 301 course, then. You're going to be serving as an assistant resident. Respectable."

"Something like that. Got a taste for it earlier during the volunteering session right outside the Dragon Dorm."

"I heard," Irons replied. "Some of the militia spoke highly of you."

"And by some, do you mean Maxime Van Stormhalt?" Shiv asked.

Irons grunted. "She's also in the Tac-Strat class."

"Ah," the Deathless said flatly. He didn't know how he felt about being in such close proximity to a member of House Stormhalt. But from what he'd gleaned earlier, Maxime didn't sound fully overjoyed about her family either.

"Be mindful about the impression you leave," Irons said.

"Trying not to seem like too much of a bastard," Shiv said.

"That's not what I'm worried about," Irons replied. "I'm worried about how memorable you become." He briefly leveled a stare at Shiv. "Remember, Marcus Unblood is dead. You are wearing his skin. You bear his name. But there will come a time when you have to shed him. He is ephemeral. And there is something sacred in that. Be mindful of what you do. Be mindful when using him as your facade."

And with that, the captain walked away, leaving Shiv alone with his thoughts on the way to his first course.