Memento mori.
A dead statement from a dead world in a dead language that few people can remember. Latin, I think it was called. At least according to the text I recovered from the ruins of pre-Integration Earth. The general meaning, from what I could understand, is that death is inevitable, and that one must remember that death is always coming.
But to a Necromancer, this has another meaning. Remember death. Remember that death is all around you. Remember that this world has died, that the entire world is an effigy to focus your power to draw on for necromancy. That is the first thing I believe any aspiring Necromancer should learn and understand.
Memento mori. Remember. Remember that you are already shrouded by death. Though you are a spot of life, though the world around you seems to be growing, flourishing, look between, and you will see death, death, death, so much death.
The hand of the Great Enemy stretches vast across existence. But the void is not death. That expanse between the stars and the worlds and the dimensions is not death. That is simply absence. Death is loss. Death is something that was and no longer is. That is the power of death; the withering, the decay, the entropy.
That is why, when you wield Necromancy, vitality is twisted, turned into the withering. The mind becomes an echo of itself, great intellects reduced to simple understanding, simple instinct, even after you reinstall them in a body. And the soul, in place of it, is merely a scar, a vessel for the Necromancer to direct their spells and intent.
This is why Necromancy stands at the Adept-Tier, at the very least, because it is tied to many other magical disciplines, Psychomancy perhaps closest of all, due to the nature of infusing one’s mind and manipulating intelligence and intent. But death goes deeper. It is the first threshold into reaching the soul, for it replaces and allows someone to reshape and manipulate the lingering essence of a soul that was.
And only after one fully masters absence and loss can they proceed to the next step. The step that most call Animancy. The first step towards understanding the divine. But I would say it’s more than that. Animancy is the foundation—the first step. The first step of all first steps. For without a soul, without that thing that allows us to wield meaning, to shape concepts, to generate mana, before a soul is bound with mind and vitality, there is nothing, merely absence, and not death.
For Necromancy to be true, something must first be lost.
-Legendary Pathbearer Valor Thann
54 (I)
Return
Gravitic Wrestler > 109
Psychomancy > 12
Practical Metabiology > 18
Knife Proficiency > 41
Dread Aura > 68
On the way back to Weave, Shiv grew beyond impressed by Adam’s Heroic-Tier Awareness. The Young Lord had borderline prescience now. He saw enemies coming long before they got close. Most of the time, he helped them evade patrols easily. When they couldn’t, he sent Shiv, Uva, and a few others ahead to conduct devastating ambushes against incoming threats.
A dynamic solidified in their group. Adam was the linchpin and the tactical mastermind. He called out targets, positions, and gave recommendations while firing precise shots to eliminate the most vulnerable members of the opposition. Shiv became both shield and hammer. He slammed into the hardest points of the enemy forces, cracking them, ripping apart the strongest adversaries while drawing fire from their support units. The Umbrals—and Uva especially—became the daggers, slaying stragglers, hidden foes, and cutting down major threats while they were busy struggling against Shiv.
Somewhere along the way, Uva achieved a state where she could use her own mind to designate targets for the mind-dead Greater Demon. This made her a psionic titan as well, and so most minor threats met swift and brutal ends.
Tragically, this meant no deaths for Shiv, and slow level advancements.
They proceeded across the land without too much difficulty after those initial few engagements. During that time, Shiv found himself split between cooking, going over a curriculum with Adam, studying Practical Metabiology through the Odes, healing people via his Woundeaters, spending time with the others, and being tutored by Uva in Psychomancy. Among some other things.
The Deathless had been basically alone inside the gate. He’d caused quite a bit of damage, somehow evaded capture, and even survived an encounter with the Gate Lord. But ultimately, one Pathbearer alone wasn’t going to be able to crack an entire gate—not even with inside help. He needed more than himself, and right now, he was more than himself. When he fought with the others, his power was multiplied, and his weaknesses were blunted. He found himself able to focus on dealing damage and breaking through the enemies without worrying overmuch about enemy Psychomancers, mages, or unseen foes.
This was the best part about fighting alongside good and capable comrades. Alone, when you made a severe mistake, that was it—death, or something worse. Together, when your strength flagged, someone would keep you standing until you recovered. When you made a mistake, someone would fix it. Someone would keep the group fighting. And when they needed you, and you helped them, something hardened between the two of you. You didn’t need to like each other. You didn’t even need to trust each other that much. But in the heat of battle, having someone you could rely on and who understood you comprehensively was indispensable.
Ultimately, they reached Weave in less than two days. The 402 slaves would have slowed them down substantially, if not for Uva’s idea to have Shiv create something of a protective vessel. He did so by ripping a limb off of the Jealousy when Uva briefly released the mind-dead Greater Demon for Shiv to do his physical exercises.
Shiv hid the slaves in the limb just because the meat was a proper cushion and the bones were good structural supports. The slaves didn’t quite like going back inside the gigantic monster, but Shiv was no engineer—and neither was anyone else in the group. If they were going to move fast, it was better that they were both protected and easily secured at the cost of a bit of blood and discomfort.
“That’s a really disgusting idea,” Adam said, gagging at the people crawling back into the wounds Shiv made along the tentacle. “But it appears to be bloody working. Quite literally…”
And it did bloody work. Shiv carried the entire tentacle like it was little more than a pebble in his hand, and without the slaves slowing them down, they practically tore across the Umbral Wilderness. The group used ravines and thickets to shroud their movements. With Adam charting the course, they didn’t get lost, they didn’t get confused, and they didn’t get ambushed. Not by feral weavers, not by distant vampiric snipers lurking in shadows hidden by foliage, not even by near-invisible dimensionals drifting high above in the sky.
“You know something, Adam?” Shiv thought, listening as Adam crushed a vampire’s heart in his hand. “If I ever lose my keys or something small, I’m gonna come find you immediately.”
The Young Lord snorted across the mental link. “And if I encounter the largest, tightest pickle jar in the world, I think I’ll defer to you. We’ll have to leave the intellectual work to the Sister, though.”
Uva hummed as she tore the mind out of a group of unsuspecting metallic dimensionals. “Such is the burden of competence.”
They communicated with each other across a span of a few dozen kilometers—contact made easy thanks to Uva wielding the Jealousy. Even as a Master-Tier Biomancer, Shiv’s own mana field was a dot at the center of the Jealousy’s Psychomancy field, practically a hundred times smaller. And now, Uva was actively directing all that colossal force. She was an inner accretion surrounded by a vast and encompassing sphere. It took a lot out of her, but it also made her stronger, made her more attuned to the Jealousy. With each fight, her efforts became less burdened, and her Psychomantic manipulation became far less restrained.
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“There is another patrol,” Uva said, speaking to everyone at once. “They are coming. I think that the sniper we eliminated managed to signal them. We should find an alternative route.”
Shiv responded to that news by cracking his knuckles. He did want to smash something again.
“No,” Adam replied, his tone blasé. “We stick to the route. They’re going to miss us. The mess that Shiv left back in the woods is probably going to leave them confused. All his flayed skin decoys will likely wreak merry hell on their morale. And all those supposed cave-biter markings that we left would make them assume marauding monsters attacked their people. I’ll keep an eye on them, but we’re close. We’re not wasting any more time. Let’s get back through the gateway, back to Weave.”
The gateway leading into Weave wasn’t the same one Shiv initially passed through. This one was located at the bottom of a glittering lake, down through a chasm, so deep that the dark was so encompassing that not even Shadowsense allowed Shiv to see his own fingers in that abyss. But as he found himself wondering, wavering about whether he was in the right place, he suddenly passed over a threshold and stumbled into a large corridor lined with glistening webs. A Weaveress greeted him on the other side, bowing and making the gesture they reserved for the Composer and those deemed Honored and Exalted.
“Exalted Guest Shiv,” she said. “You’ve returned safely from your trials outside.”
“Weaveress,” Shiv replied. “Glad to be back in a place that doesn’t take slaves, or makes me want to kill everyone.”
“It pleases us that you think this way,” the Weaveress muttered, sounding slightly uncomfortable.
Shiv patted the spiderfolk on the hairy carapace and moved on. Behind him, he dragged in the large, looming tentacle of the Jealousy. The spider gawked with all eight of her eyes and stumbled back.
“What is—what is—” she stammered. “Is that a tentacle?”
“There are slaves inside,” Shiv said. The Weaveress looked more confused than ever. “They are probably pretty uncomfortable by now, but this is the only way I could run across the land with the others without smearing them at the speed we were going.”
“I will—I will warn the others to begin proceedings and prepare the anchor.”
“Thanks,” Shiv grunted, pulling the limb along.
She retreated through the silken strands that composed the spatial corridor, and Shiv just chuckled.
Dread Aura > 69
“You love doing that,” Adam said, landing lightly atop the tentacle that Shiv was dragging. The Young Lord had his bow slung over his back, and the Umbrals were gathered behind him, resting as well. In the back, Ikki was bouncing up and down, excitedly narrating to the others about what she’d seen Shiv do earlier. Uva was the last one through, and Shiv felt her arrival when the Jealousy’s colossal Psychomancy field crashed over his, and it was immediately followed by Uva’s.
Shiv noticed her Psychomancy was changing on an even finer level. Before, her field rippled, casting out broadcasts, but now it seemed to be sinking, the ripples growing ever more subtle as she submerged her own mind into the Jealousy.
“You okay?” Shiv asked telepathically. Uva simply climbed to the top of the tentacle, joining the rest of her team and Adam, before she smirked at him. “Yes, I am learning to integrate myself better inside the jealousy’s mind. It was alien before. I had to force a few things. But now, after spending some time in its memories, I think it’s more like a sleeve.”
“A sleeve?” Shiv said. He was impressed. “I don’t think I could ever understand a creature like that. And I was linked with its mind for a while.” Shiv shuddered at the memory, but Uva simply laughed. Her laughter slithered across his mind, and he could hear an echo of the Jealousy. Shiv felt a cold terror run through him. He remembered that laugh. He remembered the beast’s screaming hate at the end.
Uva sent him a feeling of apology, and restrained the voice of the Jealousy. “Apologies,” she said, slightly embarrassed. “Sometimes, when you sync your mind with another on a deep level, they echo you, especially if they’re mind-dead.”
“Well, I hope it stays mind-dead,” Shiv muttered. “Last thing I wanted to find out is that the Greater Demon was actually just pretending this whole time, and turns out to be wearing you instead.”
That thought made him more than a little worried, but Uva simply prodded him. “Oh, is my sweet brute terrified that I might get my mind eaten?”
“Yes,” Shiv answered honestly, without hesitation. A feeling of slight warmth emanated from Uva.
“Do not worry, Shiv—it is mind-dead. You’ve broken it. You’ve broken it in the maddest way possible and brought us a corpse of a Greater Demon, a Heroic-Tier Jealousy. Two titans will enter Weave today. Only one has their mind intact, however.”
He grinned at her flattery. “Yeah, well, hopefully one’s also more handsome than the other.” Shiv glared at the tentacle, remembering how it used it to bash him a few times.
“Correct.” Uva paused. “A shame that you have too many eyes.”
Shiv barked a laugh. “I’m going to get you for that later.”
“Oh? How?” Uva taunted. Her teasing almost ignited something inside Shiv.
“You’ll find out later.” Shiv’s voice was edged with intent, and she responded with a hum of laughter.
“Fine. I look forward to my punishment. But dinner first.”
“Always,” Shiv finished.
As they reached the inside of the anchor, Shiv quickly discovered the tentacle was a bit too big to be brought in. He ripped open the tentacle, let out all the slaves, and had them filter into the anchor. Then, he clamped his hands together, using his gravitic field in tandem with his Biomancy to crush the tower-sized limb into liquid paste and bone dust.
When he finished, he turned to see everyone gawking at him. “What? I couldn’t let that block the path? It’d be rude.”
The corridor was practically drenched in thick, black blood, though. Shiv winced. He hoped the spiders wouldn’t get too mad about that.
“That is absolutely bullshit,” Adam muttered. “I need to get to Master-Tier Physicality by… by next month. I can do it. I can…”
Shiv snorted. “You guys should have seen me fight the damn thing. That was a messy felling brawl. And the bastard kept running away.”
“Oh, can you blame the poor thing?” Siggy said, her eyes wide like saucers. “You just mangled one of its limbs. You mangled a small building with your hands! You just clamped your hands together and—and poof! It’s gone!”
Shiv gave her a look. “Well, tell you what, Siggy—if you ever make it to Master, this is what you’ve got to look forward to. Of course, some of us here are Heroes. I’m sure that Adam here…” Shiv said, patting the Young Lord on the back a little too hard. A burst of force rattled across Adam’s armor, and the Young Lord was nearly launched off his feet. Shiv didn’t let that happen, though. He used his field to keep Adam standing. “…has far more strength and power than just a meager Master. Isn’t that right, Adam?”
The Young Lord glared death at Shiv. “Get tainted!”
“What was that? Is that a new skill name? A Master-Tier Skill, perhaps? Something for Physicality or Toughness?”
Adam walked away from Shiv with a growl of disgust.
As soon as they were all properly secured inside the anchor, the spells began to spin, and they were promptly analyzed. Some slaves looked at each other, their forms haggard, blood-drenched, but ultimately alive. The past few days probably seemed like a feverish dream for them. Most were still huddled together in their own little groups and cliques along the journey, but their terror at Shiv remained throughout. Despite him feeding them, despite the protection he offered them, they were apprehensive about approaching him. He couldn’t blame them: as he fought the jealousy, many died, and his Dread Aura didn’t help things either. He could still feel their courage—fragile, broken. Some might stay broken for good, but one among them stood a pillar, a pillar stronger than most.
Out of everyone, she alone approached Shiv, seeking him out as the teleportation anchor scanned them for contaminants and unknown diseases. “I… I want to thank you,” she said, her eyes glistening. He could feel her terror as well, but she was braver than she was scared, and Shiv quite liked that about her.
“Oh? What for?” Shiv said, turning his smile on her. She flinched at his sudden movement, and Shiv held back a wince. He was Master Pathbearer now, though he didn’t feel much like one. He felt powerful sometimes, perhaps, but he still felt like the same old Shiv as he always was—just tougher, stronger, and able to do some interesting things with injuries. But that wasn’t the case with other people. Shiv remembered how envious he was of even Initiate-Tier Pathbearers, how they moved too fast for him to track, how they were absurdly strong, even when their bodies and musculature were inferior to his.
It was unnatural. It was nerve-rattling. It was everything he ever wanted.
And now, he lived his very dreams.
The girl swallowed and continued. “I want to thank you for everything—for saving us from the monster, for protecting us across this journey, for feeding us.” She looked at the other slaves and licked her lips. She wasn’t sure what to say. She seemed lost. “What happens to us now?”