To be a recruiter for Phoenix Academy is to dedicate oneself to hunting for golden needles in a grand haystack. The students are remarkable individuals. Though young of age, many of them have already demonstrated their virtues and potential. After all, though life is harsh, and the consequences are dire, there are always those who rise to the occasion and make a name by slaying beasts that threaten their community, by proposing theorems and building the walls of their home, be it residences to house the needy or fortresses to keep the beasts at bay.

But it's not power we search for. No, everyone's power is different, and power is a relative thing. For though Vanguards might be able to smash through stone and hold a breach, our true prize may be a Pathless who defies the odds to slay a den of feral ratkin, or in one very abnormal case from my recollections, an ogre.

"For the ones that strive beyond themselves," that is the unofficial motto that guides the recruiting department of Phoenix Academy. Because that is what it means to be a Pathbearer. Above all else, it is not power; it is the demonstration of ambition cemented by a feat of unmatched resolve.

The resolve to stand, fight, and prevail even in the face of fated death or defeat.

-Master-Recruiter Harvey Lynwin of Phoenix Academy

208 (I)

Admission [II]

Helix's poison slipped into Shiv's body with the subtlety of a passing breeze. The Deathless had survived and resurrected from a myriad of poisons and diseases ever since his encounter with the First Blood's Court Leviathan. Plagues and maladies had gone from afflictions of pain to fuel for his hypercharged immune system, dissolving internally like alcohol and taking root within his body. He should have expected Helix's spell to affect him the same way—to make him bigger, stronger, to flood his brain with that happy buzz.

But that didn't turn out to be the case.

At some point, he fell asleep. His heart stopped—and then he woke with a sudden gasp as the organ in his chest pulsed twice. The second pulse felt like a violent explosion going off against his sternum, and a rattling sensation of pain crept through his veins and crawled down into his bones. The seams of his flesh felt like vibrating cords, and the radiating pain took only a minute to resolve.

A plague-fueled haze had been triggered, and even so, Shiv wheezed and coughed. He was afflicted with something special, something unique, as his immune system tried to corner and consume the disease. But it was always a second behind, always trying to catch up to the maladaptive changes happening within his very cells.

"Insul, are you awake again?" Helix asked.

Plaguefueled 79 > 81

Shiv's vision was bleary and doubled. The freezer was a cramped space to begin with, and now, with his Plaguefueled state active, he was on the verge of getting lodged tight in the narrow crevice. A faint glow of Biomancy mana fanned out around his body, and as it did, Shiv watched as the mana of the spell faded around him like fingers vanishing into the dark. There were so many smaller shapes that made up the working that Shiv felt his mind reel as he tried to remember as much of it as he could. It was like a collage of constellations, of strings connecting micro-spell to micro-spell, each representing a fine aspect of human biology—or perhaps not human biology, but the pathology of the disease itself.

Shiv wrapped his mana hydras tight around his core, and as they delved deep, he realized the sheer complexity imbued within the poison striking at his heart. The first thing he noticed was how it constantly changed. Every second, the micro-spells rendering its structure shifted, swapping places or colliding.

Then they bred; as two micro-spells clashed, they shattered and became four, and then four became sixteen. While this happened, other micro-spells dissolved and simply died, but the organism itself was constantly evolving, changing, adapting to his Plaguefueled faster than the Skill could swallow it.

Shiv shook his head and tried to turn. He ended up bashing his elbow against the stainless steel wall to his right. As the metal dented and then tore, Shiv winced and stopped himself from rotating any further. Through the slight gap, he could see the body beside him. He recognized it. It was that blond-haired girl that Helix had tried to convince him to steal the identity of. Her eyes were open, and her chest was covered, but he knew it was really a decoy body, not the original.

"Are you feeling well, Insul?" Whisper called from within Shiv's cape.

Shiv tried to hold back a cough. "What in the Broken Moon did you hit me with, Helix?"

"Simply light venom meant to stop one's heart."

"Yeah, 'light venom'," Shiv replied. "My Plaguefueled can't even keep up with it."

"Such is the purpose," Helix retorted with a scoff. "If you were capable of resisting it, you wouldn't have perished long enough to create this situation. If we're going to follow through with this ridiculous scheme, we might as well do it properly. Regardless, the effect should fade soon, and you will be able to signal one of the attendants to let you out."

Shiv reached out to the rip he left in the steel wall and pulled hard. His Shapeless Tides splashed against the matter, and then he inverted their direction. He used them as an anchor to draw on the wall, and with a deafening groan, he deformed the metal further and squeezed the rupture shut.

As he did that, he heard a voice call out to him from just outside. "Whoa, what was that? What was that?" There was an electronic warble in the voice.

Shiv swept the space around him using a mana hydra. Though he couldn't detect any organic substances beyond the other bodies, he did see a glowing vitality signature from a few feet away above him, telling him he was dealing with an automaton. He cleared his throat and knocked weakly on the steel surface just above him.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

"Help," he croaked, trying to sell the scene of a barely-Adept Pathbearer recovering from a state of near-fatal torpor. "Please, I just woke up. I don't know where I am. Help..."

He stopped knocking. A period of tense silence followed, and then suddenly there was movement. Someone pulled at his morgue freezer, and the wheels under him screeched under his weight, but still managed to hold. A mechanical grunt came as a sliver of light fell upon him, and then he found himself staring up at a set of bright lights glowing from focused crystals that swayed from the ceiling.

A three-eyed automaton leaned over him. Slowly, the Deathless turned and croaked, trying to sell his state of supposed weakness. "Please, I don't know where I am. I'm supposed to be a student of Phoenix Academy. I was on an expedition from..." Shiv trailed off, trying to make it seem like he was about to pass out again, but his acting left something to be desired.

Mostly, it seemed like he was nervous and stuttering, because, well, that was what he was. Nervous and stuttering, trying not to let this identity slip through his fingers as well.

The automaton attendant stared at him for a few seconds longer, and its three eyes shifted, spinning on its flat, featureless face. "I... I see. I must get someone to… eh… someone who isn't me…" The automaton didn't finish speaking as it flailed out of the room. Shiv turned slowly, following its awkward, stumbling body. He realized it had wheels instead of legs, and it clipped a wall as it blasted through the grand oak doors leading out of this section of the morgue.

Silence returned.

Shiv was alone, aside from the orcs and Radio within his cape—discounting all the corpses too. The walls to his side were painted with classical illustrations, portraits of martyrs and heroes of the republic who fell in glorious battles. A great deal of color and detail had gone into illustrating them, and all the to-be-slain Pathbearers portrayed were unusually clean and joyous. People didn't look very pretty before they died. They didn't look all that attractive in the heat of battle either, but ugliness didn't make for a good story, did it?

"The stories we tell ourselves," he muttered.

The automaton custodian returned a few minutes later with a small group of priests—or so Shiv assumed. The first thing they did wasn't to ask questions, check on him, or even cover him up. Instead, they cast a spell, unleashing a panel of Divination over his body. Violet mana caressed him as several sets of eyes flashed bright with the activation of the Analyze Skill. Shiv only figured out what they were trying to do when one made the sign of the Ascendants.

"Not a thrall! Not a risen! Praise be the Auroral Council and the Grand Protectors! A miracle has transpired! The boy is truly alive and unblighted by the fell touch of Necromancy!"

Shiv released a breath as the gathered mob took him into their care. They dressed him in a set of black robes and slippers while guiding him out of the room into one of the private consultation quarters in the Royal Morgue. The building was vast. From all the vitalities Shiv could sense, there had to be thousands of people in here, spread across approximately twenty or so stories. It seemed to be built like a clump of light as well, with Shiv currently being on the twelfth level down.

The Royal Morgue had been built like an inverted tower embedded into the earth, rather than a risen structure. Judging by the filigrees of mithril and gold, a substantial amount of wealth had been spent during its construction.

The murals he saw within the room continued on. They sprawled across the ceiling and decorated every column and wall he came across. There seemed to be no shortage of fallen heroes who perished in service to the Republic. On the way to his temporary quarters, he noticed how there were painters hard at work, adding new martyrs to the sprawling tapestry. Art and propaganda had a habit of blending into each other. Both of them preyed upon stories and idealism, and one was so easily compelled to serve the other.

Shiv didn't know why he was so drawn to the paintings. It could be because he'd seen far too much death in far too intense a time. It had scarred him, even if he didn't notice it overtly. It had imprinted on him. He didn't have an issue killing, but with all the savagery and bloodshed he participated in, he could still see the faces and the wounds of those he'd killed. He remembered the abrupt brutality that accompanied each of their ends. For the Republic and the bards who cared for the fate of the fallen, death was a full stop or a final poignant line in a story.

For Shiv, death was less than punctuation; it was functionally a blessing for him to indulge in over and over again.

There's something wrong with these images, Shiv thought, his eyes jumping from mural to mural. Just as he looked upon them, he felt them looking back, and a growing weight of paranoia crept through him as he couldn't shake the feeling that he was being watched. Better treat them like surveillance. Who knows what kind of bullshit powers the Ascendants have? Painting and Awareness. Yeah…

As they sat him down in the consultation room, they brought him a warm glass of water accompanied by some bread, beans, and broccoli. He made sure to eat the food like a ravenous wolf, spouting generalities about who he was and what he remembered between every bite. The gathered priests listened on intently, as if he were a new prophet given unto them by the Ascendants themselves.

"A miracle!" an elven woman clad in dark blue robes exclaimed. A flowing cape swayed from her right shoulder, and emblazoned upon it was the face of Halsur, bearing his voltage shield in one hand and his bolt-shaped spear in the other. "Notify the university immediately!"

An old goblin wheezed, so aged that he had to walk with magical aids. A weight-bracing set of straps held the goblin upright, while crystals embedded upon his backside rippled with weak pulses of Dynamancy. "The Phoenix must send one of their own to verify this information," he declared, and that was exactly what Shiv wanted.

"Patience, Master Edelbert," a younger man among the priests chided. This man was human, but he was not dressed in any robes. In fact, aside from a pair of torn and worn slacks, he wore nothing, standing bare-chested and barefoot, showing his horrifically scarred flesh. Considering how his left arm seemed ritualistically severed, the cut being too clean and neat to be a wound inflicted during combat, Shiv knew this one was one of Cripple's fervent apostles. "He has been through an ordeal. If the dark hand of death has been repelled by this boy's soul, then surely he is Ascendant-favored."

"That is not in doubt," the goblin agreed, shaking his head. "It is not matters of the spirit I am wary of, but questions of the mind. Favored though he may be, I've seen such things before." The elderly goblin coughed. "Tell me, boy. You have no wounds on you. So, what do you remember? How do you remember returning? Please, tell us, if you may."

Shiv adopted a stressed expression and tried to sell them on his story, delving into his fabricated memories. The follower of Cripple chided his fellow priest once more, but Shiv spoke. "It was like nothing for a while. Like I was deeper than the deepest sleep I've ever taken. But then I woke up, and there was this pain in my chest. My heart… It was like my heart woke up with me. Like it was about to burst open inside me…"

"Ah, poison, then," the goblin huffed. "As I expected. There have been many cases where foul poisons have caused the circulation of blood within a Pathbearer to congeal or slow. Yet, thanks to their enduring Toughness, they managed to pull themselves back from the brink. Tremendous. Truly tremendous." The goblin sighed. "Yet, a lack of oxygen inflicts other maladies upon the body as well. After all, the mind is connected to the blood, and seeing as it choked, I fear that many Pathbearers find their cognition permanently reduced, even after such a miraculous recovery. Tell me, boy, how is your memory?"

"Hazy," Shiv muttered, trying to play along. The gathered priests asked him a few more questions about what he could recall, but soon retreated and left him to his peace. Within the consultation room, Shiv sat and waited. Soon, Phoenix Academy would be sending a representative to come and claim him. After that, he just needed to get behind the walls and finish the admissions process.

Then, he would be a whole new person. At least for a while.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.