If you need to train specifically for Physicality or Reflexes or Toughness your ass is as good as fucked from the get-go. There are too many Pathbearers who don't want to, uh, path… bear…
Too many of these fucking cunts want to be renowned warriors. They want the glory without the bloodshed, but the thing about being a warrior is that it's mostly bloodshed. Shoving dried shit back up your ass and clenching it until it turns into a diamond. Do you get my point?
Huh? You don't? You know what, never mind.
Look, girl, I'm saying that you don't get to train. You have a lifestyle now. When you wake up, you're going to be fighting, preparing, and training your Physicality, Reflexes, and Toughness. You're going to do this every single day!
What bothers other people is going to be routine for you if you want to be any good at all. If you want to be here in 100 years, you need to be worth a damn!
“Oh, civilization is gonna keep protected,” so stupid motherfuckers might say.
Let tell you sothing, girl. I rember the Dust King. Yeah, I rember this place before the Republic popped up. I rember all of it. I knew so of the Ascendants before they were the Ascendants. I know things about them that they wouldn't tell you in a million years. Things that should get thrown into a pit.
And the reason I've not been thrown into any pit is the sa fucking reason why I'm still here after 700 years! It's because I'm the Unseen Fucking Draw!
Ah, shit, I'm sorry for yelling. Look, I'm gonna be straight with you. You put up with a lot of my shit. I whore, I drink, I steal, I've murdered people just because I felt like murdering people. I'm not gonna be entering any kind of holy kingdom for the faithful of so god or another.
You're the best thing I've ever done, Jessica, so I'm telling you this straight. You're a swordswoman. You've done everything I've asked, dealt with all my unreasonable bullshit, so I'm going to be very, very honest with you: You don't get to have another life, even if you find so dumb cunt you want to have kids with soday and actually beco a mother. You're going to continue living this life, even if you're in love or you never fall in love, but you get really addicted to drugs or whatever.
Because guess what? You're gonna be the most dedicated fucking junkie in the world.
You're gonna get up, and you're gonna swing that sword, and you're gonna do your godsdamn weight training. You're gonna dodge, and you're going to take the beating, and you're gonna work your skills every day. It's a lifestyle.
There is no other life. None. You've decided to be a martial Pathbearer, so this is the way it's gonna be, this way, and that's it. It doesn't turn any other way. You want to live an easier life? Well, you shouldn't have picked up the sword. The mont you did, you were damned and blessed, because all those clowns who think that their so-called civilization is going to keep them protected are just gonna suffer and die.
There is no one else. There is no one else. There is no one else. Get that through your thick skull: You are all you got, so you start training all the ti now, now, now, never tomorrow, now.
Rember what I told you: Physicality, Reflexes, Toughness. All three must stay balanced. All three must advance at the sa ti. All three must keep growing forever. They're the foundation of your existence.
Sword Proficiency doesn't work if you're a cripple, now, is it? I've t so pretty good swordsn. I've killed so pretty good swordsn. Swordsn who made look like a drunk child. I had no right to beat him, but they had no right to let their skill go to waste like that with garbage Physicality and Toughness.
You only get to move on to other skills once these foundations are stable.
Your Sword Proficiency cos second. No conditioning and no stamina ans that you swing two beautiful swings, and then you gas out and you get murdered. That'd be a real tragedy. I didn't train you to be a tragedy. I trained you to be a fucking Legend, and you're gonna make it there! You hear ? No other way. There's going to be a lot of people telling you how technique is king or speed is king or whatever bullshit mystical skill or art that they pulled out of their ass is king. No, nothing is king without your basic attributes. Your foundation is that which decides all other factors. It doesn't matter if you're smart or strong or a genius or whatever. You have no capability to do anything with that until you have an unbreakable foundation.
So this is it. Where everyone else is gonna be treating themselves like an athlete or a swordsman or whatever goofy bullshit they call it, you're gonna treat yourself like you're a monster. You're gonna treat yourself like you own the world, and you intend to eat every unworthy motherfucker who gets in your way. And after you can do that, you can start getting clever, because every part of you, including your intelligence, including all the investigating you do, including all that creative bullshit you can pull in the middle of a fight, is contingent on you not choking on your own lungs because you didn't have the stamina to last.
Now, you'll train that stamina by grabbing a drink from that tavern we were at a while ago, the one with the topless goblin waitresses. Yeah, that's right, make a run for it. I don't give a shit if it's a day away by airship, Jessica. You got, like, I don't know, an hour.
—Varghan the Unseen Draw to Jessica Hawgrave
385
Contender [II]
Shiv knew that suffering from kidney stones was a special kind of hell. Powerful Slayers in the Guild had to bow out for entire days from it if they'd spent too much of their mith on gambling to pay a Biomancer to remove them. Beyond their absence also ca the screams, prayers for death, and howling shrieks that shook the otherwise serene nights in Blackedge. Even when Shiv was digging through trash in an alley, he still felt a asure of near sympathy for the poor bastards.
Just what kind of agony could make a warrior scream like that?
On this day, he had gained an answer, and it was an answer he never wanted to experience again.
“Endure!” Valor bellowed. “Endure, Shiv!”
But Shiv was in no condition to respond. It took all his fortitude not to throw up on himself, for so great was his suffering that every body he controlled was also curled in like a dying bug. His Pillar of Orichalcum was still active, growing ever brighter and ever tougher, but doing nothing to spare him from the pain. For his face was a chasm of gore; his lower jaw had been cleaved free from his body by a latching hook. The one responsible had since traveled down his throat into his stomach, carving a bloody warpath until she finally gashed through his digestive system and into his kidneys.
From there, he experienced true hell.
“The monkey pulls the peaches upstream!” Jessica shouted from inside his body. Her words were muffled and then drowned out as Shiv began spasming like a fish on land. There was little else he could do to express his pain, for she had just wrenched the entirety of his reproductive system up and into his bladder. “The dragon treads the river!”
An explosion of shrapnel tore through his insides, and Shiv blacked out and died for the fourth ti—or at least his physical body stuck inside Jessica's dinsional coliseum did. As the sweet nothing took him, Shiv's other bodies were freed from the shackles of pain, and once more he could command himself, at least for a while. It wouldn't take long for Jessica and Valor to demand another resurrected body for his next Toughness training session.
“Holy… shit…” Shiv shuddered, taking a mont to recompose himself. “Why did I ever go looking for help from this bitch? That was a mistake… I'm a felling idiot. They’re just torturing to death over and over.”
Pillar of Orichalcum 470 > 472
A grievous groan escaped from him as he stared at the notification in disbelief: All that suffering for two ager levels. He missed being easier to kill. At least at so point, he would just drop dead from a nicked artery. Now Jessica could keep going and going, working him like a butcher carving at from a carcass, and his body would just keep taking it.
“And it hasn't even been an hour yet. Not even an hour.” A humorless, near-mad laugh slipped out of Shiv. He had little issue with pain. In fact, he was more closely acquainted with suffering than practically anyone else he knew, but there was sothing very unique about having a shrunken Legend terrorize your insides. “Alright, Shiv, get your shit together. You wanted this. Maybe not her doing a kidney stone routine inside , but enough Toughness that we can shrug off whatever Roland throws our way.”
He gave himself a mont to recover—but even that respite was denied him as soone tapped him on the shoulder. As he looked behind, he realized he was focusing on the wrong body. His Severed Shadow was still with Marikos and the others. As the Descenders and Brokers commingled, Shiv saw only Tall Ben looking in his direction. The Hydra slithered one of his many armored heads closer to Shiv, regarding him with a wary stare.
“You alright there, Deathless? Saw you shaking and twisting earlier.”
At the sa ti, Shiv figured out which of his bodies actually got a tap on the shoulder. Back in the capital, Marcus had collapsed against the library table and started shaking like a leaf. Sowhere in the throes of his tornt, he knocked over the small mountain of textbooks he had accumulated and caused them to crash against the ground. All around him were students here to study.
“Hey, are you okay?” a tall elven girl in a mage's robe asked, looking down at him.
Convenient, Shiv thought. I can provide the sa reply to both.
“Yeah, just fine. Had a little bit of a kidney episode, but it’s passed now.”
Tall Ben's snake-like eyes narrowed. “Kidney problem, eh? That's strange, seeing as this body of yours doesn't even have a kidney.”
The elf just winced. “Oh, I'm very sorry to hear that. Do you need to see a Biomancer? I can bring you to the local hospital.”
Both of Shiv's bodies shook their heads.
“That's because it isn't this body having a kidney problem. One of my resurrections is… training.”
“Trainin’?” Tall Ben asked.
“No need,” Marcus slurred, giving the fellow student a smile. Shiv caught a slight swelling of warmth in her core. “I’m better now. Very kind of you to notice, Adept…”
She grinned. “Not Adept. Just Initiate. Are you sure you don’t need to see a Biomancer? It really isn’t far, and I’m training to be a Jump Mage. It can be good practice for .”
Marcus just shook his head, but kept his deanor pleasant. “Ask again in a couple of hours, and I might take you up on that. Right now, I got so more cramming. Always more cramming.”
And as he bent down to start picking his books back up, he saw the elf brush a lock of raven hair away from the front of her face as her eyes lingered for a while longer.
Holy shit, Shiv muttered internally, once again flabbergasted at Marcus Unblood’s natural charm. I can’t believe it. I know I was cursed and stuff, but not a single girl on Blackedge ever looked at half as nicely, even foreigners on visit. What is it about this guy? He doesn't look that good. He's physically crippled. Does he provoke so kind of wounded puppy thing in girls?
“Deathless?” Tall Ben said. “Was talking with you. Ya didn’t reply.”
“Yeah, sorry, I'm trying to wrangle multiple bodies at once again, and my Multitasking is pretty tired out. You know how it is. Wait, do you? I assud so, since you have twelve heads.”
Tall Ben nodded once. “Strange skill. Makes you forget who you are sotis. But it gets better with more practice. But if you want so advice to make it easy for you to tell which body is which, I'd say that you want to make them feel different first.”
“Feel different?” Shiv asked.
“Yeah, make a few bodies bigger, make a few bodies smaller, make one have more arms, another have multiple eyes, things like that. Make them separate in so way. If all your bodies are generally alike, of course, it's gonna take so ti to tell which is which. They all feel the sa, don't they? They all shape the sa, they all look the sa. Difference helps. Really does.”
And just like that, so useful advice fell straight into Shiv's lap. “You know sothing, Legend Ben? That’s good advice. Thanks.”
Tall Ben managed a very snake-like smile, and one of his other heads ca by to nudge the visor of his helt in a gesture mimicking soone tipping their hat. “Every guest wishes to make their host a happy man. Fact you make a an potsticker is plenty motivating for too.”
Shiv grinned. “Every host wishes to see their guest fed.”
The Hydra and the Deathless both humd a laugh—and continued to take each other’s asure.
This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Tall Ben spoke slowly and tried to sound simple, but he might be the sharpest among the Descenders' contingent, and he clearly suspected sothing of Shiv, for the Hydra's core resonated with suspicion more than any other emotion. The Descenders were still watching him, and Tall Ben, for one, wasn’t anywhere near as chard by Shiv as Marikos was.
Which, paradoxically, made Shiv appreciate the Hydra.
“A tyrant despises a good adversary, but a good warrior cannot do without,” the Harbinger comnted. “Should we overstep, he will act. He, or Tallowine. The Descenders are warriors, but social warfare carries as much shed blood as steel on Integrated Earth.”
As Tall Ben returned to commingling with the other dragons, Shiv departed from his cooking zone near the Abyssal gateway and set about recruiting everyone he could to prepare him for the coming duel.
He barely made it a few ters before one of Uva's strands latched onto him. “I see you and Roland have picked a most opportune ti to address your grievances,” she said with a hint of judgnt.
“Oh, hey, I was just about to co looking for you. Guess you saw the poster?”
“I was aware the mont you two started slamming your proverbial privates into each other like two jousting jockeys.” She humd a near laugh. “Now I see where Adam gets it from—and what he would be like if he was less easy to rile.”
Shiv used his formidable ntal discipline to not imagine crashing cocks together with Roland Arrow. “Yeah, well, Roland’s his dad, and this will be good for the both of us. Takes our minds off things and gets so of the pent-up misery out.”
“Also, you want to know if you’re strong enough to beat him.”
“Also that. Co on, don’t tell you don’t wonder that about people.”
“All the ti,” Uva admitted without hesitation. “Mostly privately, because I have little interest in fighting a threat twice.”
“Well, we’re talking about sparring, Uva, not killing each other.” Her mind gave off a pitched note of doubt. “I’m serious. I don’t plan on killing Roland. I’ll only break his jaw, tear off his limbs, shove a frying pan up his ass, and then emotionally destroy him at most.”
“Considering your Harbinger, that might see him slain all the sa. But I also suspect it will be difficult for you to get close enough to execute your usual strategy of brute force and attrition.”
“I know. Which is why I need—”
“I’m aiding the Gate’s immigration and security efforts, and so I will not be able to devote much of my mana to this matter, but I’ve already contacted everyone capable and willing to help you with this training. I’ll also have an instance of my ego in attendance for your training, of course, but I fear my only benefit will be to your morale.”
“That’s a pretty big benefit,” Shiv noted. “No one else can do what you can. I guess that makes you a Unique-Tier Skill in my heart.”
Uva cringed and laughed at the sa ti, her mind sounding like a squealing automaton tire rapidly losing air. “If only this were a duel of wits and inexplicable confidence. You and Roland would be a closer match there.”
“Ouch. Closer?” Shiv shook his head in pretend despair. “It’s like no one believes in .”
She granted him a snort. “Everyone believes that you are a monstrous, terrifying force, Shiv. Your will and capabilities are not in doubt. And I do hope you win. I would be most pleased if you could best Roland, if only for what that might do for your inner conflict, but I care for you too much to lie about your odds, and you are not so soft as to scorn for my honesty. Or at least I hope not.”
“Nah.” Shiv shrugged. A tiny part of him was sour she couldn’t lie about that, but it was such a small aspect of his ego that it barely inflicted a pinch on his flesh, even amplified by the Harbinger. “I know. Everyone keeps reminding , and I’ve seen what Roland can do. Which is why I’m actually looking forward to this. I do love so horrible odds.”
“Yes. Mainly so that you can die over and over and over until you derive depraved catharsis from your final victory.”
“Of course, that’s the way things should be! Imagine stomping on Adepts over and over. It sucks. There’s no rush or aning in that.” At the ntion of aning, the flas inside Shiv crackled with delight. “You can’t grow without strain, and if there’s no one that can challenge you, then you’re probably in the wrong place. What kind of asshole would I be if I just kept bullying the weak?”
The two of them paused before offering the sa answer in sync. “A vampire.”
Another beat followed as a shared realization circled between them.
“I have been thinking,” Uva began, her voice and mind awkward, “though the First Blood is vile and deserving of nothing but the most horrid of deaths, that perhaps we should be more calculated in our thoughts, actions, and language, and judge people based on their individual character before we consider their factional or racial affiliation. I spent so ti with the gnos in the Fairwoods, and…”
“Uh, yeah,” Shiv coughed in agreent. “Not a great habit, judging everyone the sa. Ends up getting you surprised when you find yourself facing soone outside the norm. So. Tulveg, huh?”
She sighed. “I am… trying to smooth the difficulties between us to ascertain how well he knew my mother, if his words are true. If nothing else, he has more than convinced of how much he hates his own kind by all the various slurs he has accumulated and created for the various Bloodlines.”
“Broken Moon… His hatred toward the vampires was so strong that it broke your racism? Fuck, just what tier is his racism?”
“Shiv,” Uva growled.
“But if he were to have a Tier—”
“Heroic,” she answered, humoring him.
“That’s it?”
“He wishes to see his entire kind aligned to his own bloodline ideals—he claims that he does not deserve to be held in any regard until he does.”
Shiv barely had the words. “Man, his racism Delve is going to be wild.”
Uva let out a beat of slightly awkward laughter. “Truly. If only your jesting skill were more evolved, maybe you could mock Roland into submission from a distance.”
Cody 28 > 31
“Well, might not be as impossible as you think,” Shiv replied, narrowing his eyes at the skill notification. “With a bit more ti and—holy shit.”
“Shiv?” Uva’s strand tightened with alarm. “Shiv? What’s wrong? Where’s the threat?”
“No. Not a threat.” Shiv swallowed as he saw a looming silhouette hovering before the mana core as Roland had done an hour prior.
The Culturist’s owl-like regalia was in full bloom, and a moonlit plumage that glead with the texture of chainmail pierced Shiv’s eyes. “He’s felling up. He finished his Delve.”
“So soon?” Uva replied, doubly surprised that she had failed to notice him—her and everyone else. “It’s been a week.”
“Only a week,” Shiv agreed. His own Delve had been faster, but from what everyone said, being trapped in the depths of a burgeoning Legendary Skill for weeks to months was the norm in the best of cases. The unprepared never erged from that evolutionary coma at all. But here the Culturist was, with arms folded and his eyes gleaming—azure blue?
“Sothing slls positively delightful,” the Culturist declared, his voice echoing from afar. The orc drew in a long breath. “Potsticker. It has been so ti since I enjoyed such an eastern delicacy.”
Despite everything, Shiv couldn’t help but laugh. “You godsdamned monster. You just don’t stay down, do you?”
“Orc,” the Culturist answered. “Trying again is what we do. Sothing you know better than us by this point, I suspect.”
Shiv rose higher, his body bobbing in place as all his Shapeless Tides speared up as one. “Adam—”
“I know. I am aware. I heard the Challenger. I know what he did. Even in my Delve, I felt it.” The Culturist’s mouth was drawn back with a snarl of fury, his chiseled face displaying the purest malice Shiv had ever seen in another Pathbearer. Then, the orc wrestled his emotions into submission. His rage broke like the ending of rain, and his emotional core was stabilized in an instant as an eerie and perfect calmness took hold, causing his mind and heart to enter a state of perfect equilibrium. “You took his arm?”
Shiv saw that the Culturist was looking at the Red Rider’s Hand looming nearby. “Yeah. Well, so version of did. Challenger reached a little too far into my Chronomancy and got cut for it.”
The Culturist exposed his pointed teeth again. “Good. Now. I would like to see my savior, if it is possible. But before that—” His stomach made a violent, gurgling noise that told Shiv what the next topic was.
“There are more potstickers in the surface district,” Shiv said. “We can go get you one.”
“Yes. But… what is that sll?” The Culturist sniffed. “There is a distinct flavor I can’t recognize.”
“Oh, I got a new Skill Evolution.” Shiv summoned his Pyromancy, and his nihilistic flas sparked into being atop his palm.
“Wait,” the Nihilist said, the gray embers lurching hard toward the Culturist like he was a singularity. “This one is different. This one is a sea of constructed aning. Cast upon him. Let feed on his supply.”
“Another speaking skill,” the Culturist noted. “Fitting for soone who likes to use their tongue so violently. And why do you want to burn , little fla?”
“It’s only little now,” Shiv said. “The mont it sinks into soone’s philosophy, it spreads fast.”
“Ah. An intellectually-derived mana skill. Quite the potent combination. But why does it glitter?”
“Because it has a Cooking Skill in it too. aning I can turn anything I fry into food. So. If you want to enjoy so cooked wall, I’m your guy.”
The Culturist grinned. “Did you fuse Cody as well?”
“I’m not joking.”
The orc’s grin faded sowhat. “Well. My Philosophy is Legendary…”
Shiv whistled. “Really? Well, that explains why the Nihilist is straining to unlatch itself from and hug you to death.” Shiv drew the fla back as it was starting to bend like a deford hook. “So. Potsticker.”
“Potsticker first indeed. All other woes and trials can follow thereafter—”
“Endure!” Valor and Jessica cried as one.
Shiv’s insides plunged into a bottomless pit. “Oh, shit, oh fuc—”
The Giantsbane magnified her size out of nowhere, going from sothing smaller than a grain of dust to a giant twice Shiv’s size as she slamd Rusty’s poml between his legs. The good thing was that the Severed Shadow lacked actual genitalia or any other fleshy elents and thus didn't suffer exact organ damage. The sad thing was how he kept it solid instead of clinging to the safety of being a full Revenant. The worst thing was how the pain felt no different from getting his balls collapsed into his guts.
Shiv released a feral hiss of anguish as he was launched up—straight into Valor’s descending palm. “Defend!” Valor shouted, spiking Shiv groin-first on Jessica’s sword-end once more.
“Defend!” Jessica echoed, hopping on the flat of her blade like it was a seesaw, launching Shiv back up—into Valor’s mana-charged stomp.
“Endure!”
Shiv activated his pillar, but he was getting bounced between two ass-kickings with no relief in sight.
“I’ll summon the others,” Uva said flatly, slithering out of his mind and leaving him to this damnable fate.
Shiv tried calling out to her, but Jessica proceeded to hit him on the underside of his armpit, causing him to black out from the sa sensation that had resulted in involuntary agony shits earlier. Again, it was good that the Severed Shadow lacked an asshole, but not great how the pain was simulated the sa way.
“Legend Valor,” the Culturist called out, his head rising and falling as he watched Shiv “train” his Toughness. “Has your pupil displeased you?”
“Not anymore,” Valor replied casually. He barely cast a glance at the orc as he sent Shiv back toward Jessica with a burst of Dynamancy. As Shiv grew tougher, the ancient Legend’s blows began to bounce off, leaving Jessica the main inflicter of true damage. Then he finally looked toward the Culturist properly. “Ah, you erge from your Delve.”
“I do. And I see. So. Training, you call this?” The Culturist tilted his head.
Valor gestured at Shiv—and created a pitch-black hand of mana to hold him in place as Jessica began unleashing a chain of rapid punches that had Shiv jerking like a limp doll with every blow. “The Deathless intends to duel Roland Arrow. The Dread Horizon has a challenger.”
“Does he now?” The Culturist nodded at Shiv, who was gagging on choked gasps. “Brave of you, Deathless. Comndable. But too soon. I see now why your training must be accelerated to such a brutal extent.”
And with that said, the orc rolled his shoulders and slowly rose up.
Shiv’s asshole scread a warning pulse of pain. “Wait! Wait! Wait! Culturist! Adam took your itch! You don’t need to do this!”
“Oh, it is not out of cruelty, but service.” The Culturist humd, tracing katas in the air as his hand ford flickering shadows behind him, and the visage of an over-muscled, midnight-maned horse standing on two legs manifested as an aura. “After all, you deserve to be paid for the potsticker you are offering and its most unique taste, and what more do I have to give aside from levels? Now. Resurrect a spare body. I do not wish to kill you for good. Legend Hawgrave, may I request that you expose his midsection to —I am going to make his skull and intestines change places, and require an essential ridian to see the process completed.”
“Jessica!” Shiv gagged. “Culturist! You fucks!”
“Oh, this I gotta see!” Jessica laughed as she began collaborating with the gray-skinned fuck without question.
Skill Gained: Hypocrisy (Initiate) 1
What? Why, System? Shiv asked.
Skill Gained: Racism (Initiate) 1
Oh, you motherfuck—
***
Shiv’s deafening howls of pain were louder than a thousand mana bombs going off as one. Part of that was due to Roland’s currently Heroic-Tier Awareness, but another part was how the boy was suffering what Roland could only describe as a Legendary gang initiation right above Starhawk’s Perch.
A horrific snapping noise Roland understood to be the pancreas and the gallbladder getting sared together made him almost spit out his tea. Beside him, Rose winced and face-pald, while their daughter-in-law gripped a pillow with white-knuckled horror.
“W-why are they doing that to him?” Isabella whimpered. “Should—should we help him?”
“No.” Roland sighed. “I’m not the kind to disrupt another Pathbearer’s training. He should face at his best.”
The Young Lady of House Stormhalt looked at Roland aghast. “Training?”
“Toughness,” Roland replied. He squinted at the Culturist in particular—who was also sneaking glimpses back at Roland. “He’s trying to make himself more durable. A reasonable thing to improve, since he will be taking the majority of the hits in our bout.”
“A lack of mobility and spatial magic superiority will do that to you,” Rose comnted. Roland smiled at his wife; even if she'd had lost most of her skills and levels, all that experience she possessed was still there. “Poor fucker might be able to move fast, but he’s only got ti magic and physical acceleration on the table.”
And Roland had many, many more options.
But there was sothing to be said about Shiv's staggering Toughness. Jessica Hawgrave was known as a butcher of Frost Giants, and her might and Sword Proficiency were a nightmare—so much so that Roland’s main thought when it ca to fighting her up close was to align his neck with her sword to speed up the inevitable beheading. Even with all his Unique Skills, that woman was as close to death with a blade as any could be.
Said woman was also hamring away at Shiv like he was a raw piece of iron—and hitting him with actual strikes as well. She could still hit him harder, but not without destroying more of the Gate.
“Hm,” Roland said. “Rose. I’m going down into the vault for a mont.”
His beloved shot a brief look at him, and her mouth opened. “You’re getting the Regret, aren’t you?”
“I’m half-considering risking a day-Delve with how much of a beating he’s shrugging off,” Roland replied, half-jokingly. And it was only half because he could hear the Deathless laughing in between the cries of pain and playful rcy.
“That worried, huh?” Rose said. “You know, you never took Harlon this seriously when you sparred.”
That comnt brought a swell of pain, lant, and pure, ineffable rage to Roland. “He’s not him. Not even close. Harlon… I…” Roland shook his head. “Harlon would look at that boy now, and sothing in him would break. Because a part of him always pretended to be harder than he was, even when things hurt him bad.”
“And Shiv just is,” Rose finished.
“And Shiv just is,” Roland agreed.
Because beyond the training, the instinct, the experience, and the skills, so people were just made for violence and struggle.
The Starhawk saw it in Roland.
And now Roland saw it in Shiv—more than anyone else he knew, even Adam.
This was why Udraal wanted to… Roland closed his eyes. Damn it. Damn it all.
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