V-40 Coping

It is folly to presume there to be wisdom in denying your own rage. To pretend that you are not outraged by the atrocities inflicted upon you. To deceive yourself and claim to be calm when your heart is wounded, when your spirit is mauled, is not the act of an enlightened man, but merely one who deludes himself, a coward of war and soul.

To let your wounds go unaddressed is to invite infection, and to instill your body with vile impurity. You become a breeding ground of weakness, and the inflammation inside undoes everything you have built.

You cannot deny the hurt you feel, and you feel because your heart wishes to warn you. Your heart wishes for you to understand: You are not weak for feeling. You are weak for not being able to master your feelings and comprehend what it's trying to offer.

We are beings of body and spirit. To deny that we are creatures of flesh who suffer physical wounds and physical torments is to pluck your left eye and place it over your right. You remain half blind instead of seeing twice as true.

And so, you should let your rage flow, let it explode. Let it kiss the oxygen in the air and spread. You should let it run free. Let it rise. And you should give it unto your enemies, christen them and baptize them with what you have been forged from. Do not deny your rage, do not deny your hate, do not deny your anguish. Accept it, take it on to yourself, be clear of mind and sorrowful of heart at once. Be deep of anger and high of rationality. These things can exist together, they must, for that is the only way you will become a true warrior. It is your duty to become the vessel that can contain the fuel of your fury.

It is your birthright to rise above the mantle of your emotions.

It is your sovereign domain as a Pathbearer to decide your own fate.

Stop reacting. Decide. Reach deep and step, feel, but do not be deceived. Do not stray. Step, strike, and let it be known to yourself that the blow you delivered was cast by your hand, channeled through your body, and chosen by you alone. 

-Munkh Warbane, Grandmaster of the Shattered Staircase (Hidden Brawler Path Sect in Kuul-Mongolian)

V-40
Coping

The kitchen was wreathed by a storm of blazing anger, but there, at its eye, Shiv stood, unburdened, unbothered, and the source of this conflagration. The emotions of the Faebread were laid to ruin. Their hearts were filled to bursting by deluges of unstoppable rage. Soon, it became too much for them. Some fell upon each other, gingerbread knights ripping into their baguette steeds. The steeds themselves tossing and turning, knocking over entire formations. They rained down from above. Crashing against the stations, they descended into a frenzy of uncontrollable violence.

And the weaker among them simply collapsed, begging to be spared of this frustration, this rage, begging for an end. 

"It's too much! It's too much!" Some among the bread screamed. 

"I need to break! I need to kill! For the court! For the court!" Another howled. Wild shouts of primal fury mingled with desperate whimpers of breaking minds. While that went on, the Deathless who compelled them to forced brutality stood over the Anointed Knight that governed the fae pawns, preparing to indulge in his own acts of violence.

Shiv ignored the warring bread, ignored how the molding yeast was beginning to peel from the walls, ripping itself asunder as it too needed to express its absolute anguish. Instead, his attention was pointed toward another thing. The lid coating his Last Morsel had faded, and within, the meal he prepared for the Anointed One was ready. Nearby, two of his corpses lay butchered and still, barely more than pasted smears of viscera, carved clean of meat along the limbs. 

Within the base of the pan rested the flesh, and it was charred to a fine and crispy texture, wrapped in layers of mana, with Vitamancy being the strongest of all. A myriad of colors radiated out from each strip, and cast a most enchanting glow upon the room, shifting in hue with every passing second. Though Vitamancy dominated, there was also Biomancy, Hydromancy, Geomancy, the translucence of Psychomancy, and more than a bit of Pyromancy.

And so, Shiv plucked the first piece of his own flesh out. The smell was unique. He wouldn't call it good at all—he wouldn't even want to eat it himself, even if it wasn’t self-cannibalism. But for a fairy, this was certain to be a novel experience, and the Deathless looked forward to discovering how the Anointed One liked it.

"You will not make me eat," the Anointed One called out, but his voice was feeble and wretched, and his heart was badly mauled by the rage. As it poured into him, streams of blackened fire continued flowing free from the Deathless’s eyes. It filled the Anointed One with every passing second, and that in turn instilled the bread knight with Dread-Taint. From there, the Shape of Monstrosity skewed within Shiv's grew as well as the fear chain connecting the two of them turned ever harder.

"You have to," Shiv said. "You promised. You accepted this challenge. And I finished my meal. I didn’t expect this Skill Evolution. I didn’t remember the curse. And I have to live with that. And so do you, now that I’m here.”

The Anointed One reached up, bowed his hand, and grasped open air. His head was swinging back and forth, swaying as he struggled to control the overflowing emotions inside him. He wanted to put Shiv away to break free, but the Deathless was too strong, too overwhelming in both emotionality and physicality. To have held him in place with every surging tide, he left the fae knight pin to the ground and then, with a casual flick of his hand, ripped away the helmet that shrouded the Anointed One's face. The toast-armor burst apart into crumbs. It resembled a spray of dust, and the air grew obfuscated. With the drifting debris cleared, Shiv beheld the appearance of his enemy for the first time.

Though the Anointed One sported four arms, had a good few chefs trapped within his torso, and present himself as an intimidating knight carrying a halberd many times the size of an average man, the face Shiv beheld was green and soft. If anything, the Anointed One resembled a young man just on the cusp of adulthood—his nose and eyes were soft, and his expression was one of barely controlled fear. His lip tried to curl in anger, but the dread he felt toward Shiv, the dread he was boiling within, suffering through as he experienced Daughter's suffering as if it was his own, overcame him. 

He looked away. He flinched, and he seemed ever more the child because of it.

Sage of the Enkindled Heart: He wishes to resist you, but the pain is too much. The pain is alien to him. We feel that he is pathetic right now for being unable to sustain all that anger, but that is our urge to feel superior to him. Pleasurable reveling in our own superiority might be, there is something more worthwhile in understanding that the Anointed One simply might not have been exposed to feelings like this. A good thing to remember for the future. Everything has a breaking point. Especially the heart and mind.

Shiv dropped a piece of fried flesh on the Anointed One's face, but the Fae Knight tried to turn away from him. The laughing radiance that hovered just over the Anointed One's head began to dim, and Shiv heard a distant cry of pain emanate from within its glorious resplendence. "I refuse," the Anointed One snarled out once more. “I reject this challenge, I—” 

The moment he did, his body began to fracture and break. More crumbs burst out of him, and the howl of genuine pain erupted from his throat. He couldn't refuse. He accepted the challenge, and now it seemed that the narrative of the system itself was punishing him for going against his word. Shiv could feel the weight of existence bearing down on the Anointed Bread, and now the fae had to obey the price.

"It doesn't seem like you can," Shiv said, looking at the expanding fissures that ravaged the anointed one's body. "I think that you better open your mouth and try it. There's no way back. Not for either of us. All we got is the road ahead. So stop wasting my time, and I'll stop pouring more of my anger inside of you.”

"I am an Anointed Knight of the Summer Court," the Anointed cried aloud. Shiv's annoyance climbed, but rather than that provoking him to make a snide remark or hurling an insult, his mind remained cool on one hand and blistering hot on the other.

"And does that protect you right now?" Shiv asked genuinely. "Doesn't look like it, buddy. Looks like things are just getting worse. Now you're delaying the inevitable. Open your mouth, bite down so we can both move on. If this doesn't work, we'll proceed to the next step, and you might enjoy that more. Next step's violence. You get your chance to take a swing at me with that halberd. And frankly, I won’t lie, I kind of want to get bloody right now too. Just because it’s something I can do. Something I got good at. But I’m not going to do that until you taste my fucking food.”

Shiv paused and deliberated over whether he wanted to be honest with the Anointed One.

Sage of the Enkindled Heart: Do it. This will be a display of power, rather than an admission of weakness. The bread is different from you in many ways—utterly inhuman. But he knows emotions and knows power, and beneath you he suffers. He is at your mercy and hates it. It infuriates him. Do it, do it so that it will fold and bend. His will is on the edge—push him over.

So Shiv continued. "But another part of me also doesn't want to do violence. I want to hold back. I want to be pacifistic, if only to spite the system itself. It keeps trying to make me into something. Something monstrous. Something brutal. It keeps trying to kill me. I don't think it understands me, and I sure as shit don't understand it. But we can understand each other at least better than either of us understand the system. 

Right now, all I want is for you to taste that piece of fried meat on your face, to bite down and tell me if it's good or not. I don't even give a shit about anything else anymore. I just want to know. I just want to know that after everything I went through. I still have a means to cook. That I’m not just the Deathless that breaks things—that I can still create."

There came an uncomfortable gasp from behind. "Shiv, you don’t need to do this…" Adam trailed off, trying to find the right words. “You have him… Just breathe…”

Sage of the Enkindled Heart: Tell him that you understand what he's trying to do. Be honest with him, be clear. It will be good for your relationship.

Shiv looked over his shoulder and gave Adam a nod. "Yeah, I know, Adam. I'm just having an ugly moment right now. I'm processing things." The Deathless got even angrier with every second that passed, but his mind had never been clearer. "I need to do this, I need to see, I need to feel either some measure of elation or disappointment. I need this, please just give me a second."

The Gate Lord bit his lip but nodded. He stepped back and prepared an arrow, just in case. The other Faebread were fighting. Their battles cascaded into chaotic brawls all across the room, but few of them noticed Adam. Instead, they were attacking the closest thing they could see, anything to vent the burning anger that seemed to constantly spread and never seemed to dim. 

His new Berserk-Psychology Skill Evolution was dangerous. This was a skill that provoked someone else to strike and succumb to rage. If someone didn't have good control over their emotions, then this very well might turn an army in on itself.

Sage of the Enkindled Heart: Be wary when you use me. Do not unleash me blindly. I am an infection, an infection of your rage, but what you feel even when not magnified by the presence of the Fae is overwhelming. It is something bestial. It is not meant for the heart or mind of an individual.

Finally, the Anointed One turned his head and, with a greedy expression of effort, opened his mouth. He bit down on the piece of burnt flesh offered, and his teeth sank into the layers of mana charred into the texture first. The brilliant layer of mingled magic crusted over the meat flashed once as the Anointed One bit through them. As he chewed and swallowed, his eyes widened, and the look on his face went from one of greed to struggle to something closer to utter confusion.

The Anointed One blinked. 

Shiv couldn’t breath. He waited for the moment of judgment to come. And despite everything he suffered, despite being stripped of his cooking, despite how much he wanted to skip to violence, he genuinely wanted to know if his meal made during that desperate, feverish haze was any good.

"This… might be the worst meal I've ever eaten," the Anointed One finally admitted. And Shiv's heart fell and kept falling. It crossed into a pit of despair and plunged even further still. His rage grew to new heights. The darkness flowing free from his eyes came ablaze with a roaring crackle, and everyone around him was drowned by a new flood of fury.

But as the Faebread around Shiv were utterly subsumed by shrieks of rage-induced madness, he became more self-aware than ever. His heart hammered and roared like a bomb on the verge of going off. Outside, Shiv remained unphased.

Sage of the Enkindled Heart: Shit. Fuck. Fucking Maiden. We need to express this in some way, otherwise we won’t be able to focus. Beat on something that you cannot kill—something you can exhaust yourself hurting to take your mind off things.

"Yep. I got just the thing right here." Shiv agreed with unnatural calmness. He was a dichotomous soul, then, both supremely rational and unparalleled in self-control, but also a cauldron of unstoppable rage. Rage that demanded he break the world; rage that needed to be wielded and vented upon another. He spent his anguish with his Master of Rage skill, feeding it into his Leviathan of The Shapeless Tides. His physicality reached new heights, and Shiv casually picked the Anointed One up by the head, squeezing the knight’s head tight as he carried him across the room.

"Cease! Cease! Stop!" The Anointed cried aloud. Shiv decided to release him, just as the bread tumors began to finally spread across his body and mana fields. But despite this, there was a part of Shiv that didn't remain affected: the fear chain. And that was what Shiv gripped right after. He swung the bread knight like a morning star against the corner of the room. The dense cocoon of yeast and mold there splattered apart as the Anointed shrieked. The first impact caused the air to rupture. The sound barrier broke, and the Anointed Knight's body folded backward on impact. 

If he had been a normal human, he would have snapped in half altogether. Ultimately, though, he was of the Summer Court, and Shiv remained an interloper in this grand story—someone who wasn't deemed a proper adversary. But even so, the Anointed couldn’t properly resist, not with Shiv’s rage burning an emotional wound inside him. He couldn’t overcome the boiling fury Shiv unleashed, and so he writhed and kicked, flailing as Shiv dashed him against the hidden pastry station over and again.

Yeast broke away, revealing the hidden station, and the cold iron cage surrounding it. Bones of shining metal slipped through the rupturing mold, and Shiv saw that it wasn’t anything special. Just alloy—alloy that promptly glowed bright as the Anointed struck it. 

The Knight of the Summer Court let out a blood-halting scream as he was burned by the bars of the cage. It clutched its chest as if trying to stop itself from having a heart attack, and the chefs nested inside its body howled and screamed as well. They vomited from dizziness, and Shiv winced in pity. He didn’t have an easy way to get them out. He needed to force the Anointed to surrender them. 

The first impact shook the entire chamber. The bread coating the walls burst apart and rained down like snowfall. Shiv felt more of fae magic coiling through his being, trying to twist him into a thing of bread. He triggered his Non-Sequitur skill then and launched himself free from his body. As he slipped out of his Vitae decoy, he ripped compromised pieces of his soul and mana free in the process. Flaring spots of agony spread through him. He ignored that his rage was so great in the matter and his mind was so sharp that he delivered every hit with calculated precision. He returned to existence and continued his brutal onslaught, dashing the Anointed against the bars over and again.

Don’t even need to waste my golem on this.

His Shapeless Tides circulated along his fear chain, preventing the shockwaves rippling out from the Anointed One from smashing into Adam. But the Gate Lord was no fool. He had already dived back into his own shadow, hiding from the devastation that Shiv wrought.

Once, twice, thrice, then ten times Shiv slammed the Anointed One against the cold iron cage. Where Shiv inflicted no harm, the cage proved to be a brand that seared the Anointed Knight's body. The Anointed One screamed every time he came into contact with the cage, and lines of metal left pitch-black scars upon his toast-plate armor.

"Please, Deathless One! No more! Mercy, please!" The Anointed howled. He was utterly broken. And the pain of the cold iron kissing his body paired with the overwhelming tides of fury that had gnawed and boiled his heart proved to be far, far too much for him to endure.

He twisted and writhed like a dying insect. He screamed and pleaded for Shiv to stop, but the Deathless didn't. Not because he was uncontrolled in his anger, but because he wasn't tired yet, and there was still more fear and dread he could scar into the bread knife's psyche—and he needed to tire himself out a bit. Otherwise, he risked venting his rage on something else. Or someone else.

Sucks to be invincible sometimes.

Whip Proficiency 13 > 15

Shape of Monstrosity 145 > 147

Sage of the Enkindled Heart: Make sure you don’t kill him, but hit him harder. Use all your tides fast. Keep every blow contained to him. We’re hitting him hard enough to turn a small mountain to dust, so be careful not to let the devastation slip out. And while you’re this mad, focus on controlling every movement, and stay aware of the things around you. Your Multi-Tasking is close to the edge as well. Don’t waste this rampage. We’re ruined as a chef—for now. But we can be more. We can decide how we throw this tantrum.

Shiv heeded the wisdom of his skill and began spiking the bread knight down upon the cold iron bars over and over again. The bars didn't seem any different than most metals, in fact it was weaker than titanium. Nothing compared to adamantine, and not even in the same existence as Orichalcum.

However, there was a strange coldness that emanated from it. A kind of coldness that honored its name while mana didn't flow right around it, and there seemed to be an absence within the metal itself. An absence against magic, against mana, against the system. Every time the material kissed the Anointed’s body it scarred him, mutilated him. The sheer amount of fear and suffering inflicted upon the Anointed One was too much. His mind was on the verge of breaking and Shiv knew that, but he wasn't tired yet.

Sage of the Enkindled Heart: Stop. Give him a moment. He might not be easy to kill, but he can still be broken in other ways, and we have other uses for him. There are things we demand of him. Like releasing the chefs. In the meantime, deal with the pawns now that he’s downed.

Shiv's attention deviated for a second, turning away from the Anointed One as he released the fear chain. The bread knight crashed down on the ground, and the first sobs crawled their way free from his wounded throat, hoarse from screaming. "Enough, enough! Please, for the love of the Summer Court—for the love of the radiance, for the love of Princess Plum Blossom enough."

The Anointed One curled in on himself, barely coherent from his torment. He lay before the cage shaking, and he couldn’t meet Shiv’s fiery glare without whimpering in terror. The cold iron wasn't dented at all. It seemed pristine, unharmed. Its gleaming metal shone ever brighter where the fae struck it, and within its grip was a spill of doughy sludge and melted smears of dessert. Spores splattered between the bars. 

The bread knights had orchestrated their breakout from within this place. But now they were going to suffer. They were going to be broken upon an anvil of pain that served as their prison.

Darkness spilled out from Shiv. Darkness that he further fueled with his anger. The Deathless barely felt his fury lessen. So much was inside him that he didn't think he would ever run out by this point. So he took full advantage of that. He used it all on his Creeping Void and, as the room was drowned in shadow, the gingerbread soldiers and lesser pawns of the Anointed Knight were devoured in an overwhelming instant.

The Creeping Void 126 > 128

Shiv took in the fading forms of the gingerbread knights, the baguettes, and the molding yeast wrapped around the walls. He saw Adam poke his head out from the shadows, shooting Shiv a look of concern.

"Don’t start. I'm not well, Adam," Shiv admitted honestly, "but I'm dealing with it so we don't have a problem later. Just give me a few more moments to work through this. I’m getting my shit together.”

“Shiv, you’re scaring the bloody hells out of me. Why are you acting so normal?”

“Not insane. Yet. Just… a Skill Evolution. Give me a bit. PLease.”

Adam didn't seem convinced, but he was kind enough to let Shiv continue. Kind enough to let Shiv... "Look out!" Adam cried. The Deathless heard something ripping through the air behind him. He didn't spend any time questioning his missed action. He just reacted. Time went still. Shiv's temporal shell formed over his body. He turned, and he saw the edge of something close by. Anointed’s halberd and centimeter away from his head. A humorless chuckle escaped Shiv as he stepped past the hurled weapon and approached his foe once more.

Inertial Overdrive 185 > 186

The Anointed One was on his knees. A dense shroud of Chronomancy coated him—protected him from harm. Shiv couldn’t even move the fae while he was in such a state. Seemed the fae had a unique relationship with time—one that rendered them immutable in certain ways.

"You know, it's kind of a rat-bastard thing to do, trying to stab someone from behind," Shiv said. The Anointed Knight couldn't move, couldn't glare at Shiv.

But the Deathless could feel all the anger flowing out from the bread knight, and he heard the Anointed One's mind echo, "I cursed you, I cursed you, foul Skill Evolution. What evil do you even have nested inside you. You brute. You fiend. You honorless monster! You have no right to wound me like this, to abuse me. I am a Knight of the Summer Court, I am—”

"You are what I will make of you," Shiv declared coldly. "I am very very very fucking pissed. And if this goes poorly—and it is going poorly—I'm going to use that cage to torture you until there is nothing left of your mind. Normally, I'm not like this, it's a real orc thing to do, but the anger has got its hooks in me, and even rationally, I want it to have its hooks in me. I want my hate and rage to be someone else's problem, I want the fact that I can't probably cook anymore to hurt someone so badly, because it hurt me." 

Shiv paused as he processed his thoughts. "It hurt me. It's hurting me now. I feel like less of a person since I can’t cook right, and because of that I want to make you less of a fae."

Sage of the Enkindled Heart: Right. Continue. Deal with your problems now. Not later. Now.

A sigh escaped from Shiv, and suddenly the winds of violence pulling at his proverbial sails went quiet.

"Yeah," the Deathless muttered to himself, "I wanna hurt you because I got hurt. I wanna hurt you because that's the only bit of control I have. It's not really mature, is it? It's a very animal thing to do. Well, I feel like quite the animal, right? I don't apologize to you, but..." Shiv looked at the frozen faces nested within the Anointed One's chest: Chefs that were tortured that were mutilated, that were forced to behold atrocities committed by the fairies. "You have it coming. And maybe they do too, but you could have chosen better. Whatever you are, whatever the rules that bind you, you could have chosen just like I'm choosing right now."

Another second passed. Shiv's lip curled. "And I'm choosing to stop. I'm choosing to say that enough is enough, that I don't want to hurt you no more. That's it. I'm done. I'm done. You let the chefs free, and I’ll just put you in the cage. No more brutality. I’ll let you taste some mercy.”

And he let time resume. He watched as the fae knight crashed down to his hands and knees. The flung halberd shot across the room and embedded itself in the wall behind Shiv.

But it promptly came back.

Shiv felt a shiver in the air, and his mind went two places at once: A realization that the attack was still coming, that the Anointed Knight wasn't done. Shiv tilted his body to dodge—he didn't even use his Chronomancy this time—his inertial sheath roared, and he proved more than fast enough to avoid the oncoming blow. It slipped by him, missing him by a whisker’s length. It struck and ricocheted off the cold iron cage. Shiv saw the upper tip of the blade break free. As soon as he witnessed that and sighed. 

“You felling dumbshit. I was being honest.” A flood of anger was unleashed from Shiv’s eyes, it sprayed free like a tide of lashing fire, and it utterly filled the insides of the Anointed One. The bread knight threw his head back, and bleated like a burning goat. 

This time he broke. This time, the fae was stripped of all control. He shuddered and swayed on the ground, lashing from side to side. The halberd, guided by the fae’s unseen hand, struck the edge of the cold iron and shattered in pieces. A spray of plant stuff and brilliant motes of light filled the air.

Shiv ignored the broken weapon and stood over the bread knight. "Wasn't wise of you," Shiv said. "Even if you killed me, that wasn't wise of you. I wasn't going to go down that easily. I would have just come—" 

And he felt something break inside of him. Shiv grunted with confusion. Another thing blossomed within his being, another skill had crossed over that final threshold. He was evolving once more, changing. 

This place was a bitter, miserable pit. A scar had developed on his psyche. Something had been taken from him. But even in these conditions, he was clawing some control back. He was rebuilding himself— spiritually, mentally, emotionally. He was becoming better. It didn't make up for losing cooking, but it was something. And that was all he could do— snatch a little something back from loss.

Sage of the Enkindled Heart: Make no mistake, we are coping. And we are coping by feeding our emotions. We are indulging in power through impulse, dominance to make ourselves feel better, and we are hurting the Anointed One under the guise of retribution. But also because it is useful. It is best that we break him. Even if we cannot kill him, we can break him. And we can learn about his court and his kind through him. Sometimes, not being able to die is a very, very unfortunate thing.

Sage of the Enkindled Heart 104 > 106

Multi-Tasking 50 > 52 (Skill Evolution Reached)

Skill Evolution: Multi-Tasking (Common) > Bifurcated Processing (Adept)

Bifurcated Processing 52 (Adept)

At first, it didn't really feel any different, but then there was a tingling sensation in his mind, as if he could move it in a certain way, or stretch it. As he did, he felt a piece of him come apart. It was a tiny sliver of his cognition, and it wasn't ripped away from him.

 Instead, he realized he could devote it to simpler things, like scanning the room, or observing the specific corner, or potentially memorizing what he saw before him, while the bulk of his awareness remained settled on the writhing Anointed One. The Deathless narrowed his eyes and decided to test his skill. He pulled another strand of himself away, stretching it out and decided to devote it to focusing on the contents of the kitchen. 

He turned around and took in everything that was still on the Sauce Station. He saw the many different sauces, ingredients and pastes. And when he went back to the anointed one, he realized he could still remember everything there, because a good portion of his mind had been dedicated to that task. 

Pretty useful, Shiv said to himself. It didn't make him feel so distracted, either.

As he walked away from the anointed one, he tested another aspect of his new Skill Evolution. He decided to absorb and assimilate his two bodies and meld them together. He pulled another string free from his mind, but this time a spike of pain was driven deep into the base of his skull. It felt just like the pain that followed when he overused Adam's Commander Foresight skill. 

That has probably something to do with me overworking my brain, Shiv realized. He assigned the task to his second stream of subconsciousness, and a few of his mana hydra reached out and warped. It was a broad action and didn't demand much from his cognition, even so he could feel a background inflammation building in the rear of his skull. He was still being stretched, but he didn't actively need to focus on that. 

Instead, he could actively do something while another other portion of his subconsciousness did the busy work. This might just make my life easier, the Deathless hummed. Shouldn’t ever underestimate Adept-Tier Skill Evolutions. I can have this running while I flip through pages in a book or go through Odes over and over. Hells, maybe I can use this to accelerate the growth of my Memorization Skill, too.

A light flickered in the corner of Shiv's vision. As he looked to his left, he saw the radiance hovering over the Anointed One's head struggle to remain lit. It was fading, and the Anointed One seemed flagging as well. He was beaten in more ways than one, and he clawed at his chest, constantly whimpering. Releasing gasps of pain, that sounded like a child hyperventilating.

"Enough," the Anointed One managed finally. "Enough, you have bested me. You have wounded and violated the dignity of an Anointed Knight. Does that please you, Undying One? Does your vile ways… make you feel proud?"

Shiv shrugged. "No. I'm still mad. Real mad. And frankly, I don't care about you. You had it coming, but ultimately you just shit outta luck. You were here and I needed someone to hurt. You were it. If not, you and someone else. And you don’t die.”

Shiv reeled the two strands of his subconscious back and decided to give his bifurcated processing a new task. He wanted to observe the anointed one to see if there were any details missed about the bread knight. In seconds, something blinked into Shiv’s Awareness.

Farsight 84 > 85

He spontaneously noticed how the knight was constantly clutching at something, but it wasn't his chest, as Shiv first assumed. No… As the Deathless used his Farsight to zoom in on his bound adversary, he realized the knight was trying to hold onto something. What was that? Shiv didn't ask the knight what he was hiding. Instead, he pulled on the fear chain and the Anointed Knight was flung aside. 

The fae crashed on the ground and gave a loud cry of surprise. Beneath him, left near the cold iron cage, was that enchained heart he offered Shiv earlier—and it still shone with a brilliant hue of simmering vitality. "Huh, that's interesting." Shiv reached out using his mana hydra and pulled the heart back to him. "I'm guessing this is mine now."

Equipment Obtained: [Chained Heart of Lifegiving]
Tier: Heroic
Condition: Perfect
Composition: Narrativium; Mithril; Focus Crystal; Faeblood; Fulcavium; Elderflesh; Human Flesh; Elf Flesh; Raptor Flesh
Enchantments > Nourish the Heartblood; The Story Thus Far; Enchain the Transgressors; Life for Loreflame; Binding; Fusing; Regenerating; Counter-Scrying

"No!" The Anointed Knight snarled. He tried to rise—but the rage inside him made it seem like he was suffering from internal wounds. The Deathless didn't let the Anointed do anything. He swung his victim using the fear chain. Once more the knight crashed a rib-first against the cage. It seared him. It carved a deep gouge into his face and a shriek erupted from the knight's throat as he crashed down. 

Shiv tugged the knight back then swung him around before launching the knight into the cage. The Anointed struck the rear bars with a loud crash, and he slid down, his back heat-scarred and ruined. Shiv walked forward and twisted and bent the bars over each other, compressing the cold iron with raw strength alone. It sapped at his mana—but it not nearly enough. He was Legendary, and he wasn’t fae. 

Soon, the Anointed knight and the Pastry Station were now contained within a nest of twisted metal. As the knight finally managed to rise once more, he looked out from the mangled bars of his cage, and Shiv read his body language. The Deathless sensed his victim’s sorrow, his despair. 

He had escaped, he had taken hold of this kitchen, he had done so much, and now he was back. He was broken, he was beaten, and the one who did this all to him stood on the other side, and there was nothing the knight could do to avenge himself.

Shiv took a step closer to the knight; the Anointed One stumbled back, but shouted in agony as his back struck the rear of the cage once more. Rivers of warmth flowed along the enchained heart Shiv now held, and it fueled him with heat and power. “Release us…” Velly called.

He stared his prize and let out a breath. “Alright. Now that you’re back inside in your box, let’s talk.”

“Terms?” the Anointed One whispered. “You brutalize me, you destroy my pawns, and you demand terms?”

“Yeah. Like what you’re going to give me to stop hurting you.”

“Give you?” The Anointed Knight spat. “I still have—”

“You got hostages. Yeah. But I got this chain you can’t quite infect. And I got my anger. And I got you. I can’t kill you, but between my Enkindled Heart and the cold iron, I think I can get you pretty close to begging for death. So. For a start, you’re going to let the remaining chefs go. Or I’m going to compress this cold iron cage until it turns into a felling corset.”

The Anointed Knight shivered at the threat. “You… You…”

Shiv wrapped a massive hand around one of the bars and pushed. It folded inward with a scream. 

The Anointed cried out in terror in response. “I—I yield! I release the chefs! I release them and absolve them! No! Stay away! No!”

“I SUBMIT! I SUBMIT!” The Anointed One cried. “I WILL RELEASE THEM! I SUBMIT! NO MORE! NO MORE! NO MORE!”

Shiv stopped pushing the metal bar, and watched as the bread knight collapsed backward. As the fae bread lay there, shivering on the ground, Shiv noticed Adam was standing beside him.

“Are you… feeling better?” the Gate Lord asked.

Shiv looked down at the ground and shook his head. “I’m going to rip my soul open later. I need to break this curse.”

“Maiden?”

“Yeah. My cooking’s… It’s touched by rot and blood. My art’s fucked. I can’t…” He shrugged and gritted his teeth. “I’m dealing with it.”

Adam offered a look of sympathy. “I’m sorry.”

“Thanks, Adam. Now. You wanna see what we might be able to squeeze out of this sack of shit?”

“He doesn’t look like he has much left,” Adam said, unable to hide an expression of near-sympathy for the brutalized fairy.

“Maybe. But he needs to come up with something. Because I’m pretty upset. And I’m getting really good at pretending he’s Maiden right now, thanks to my new skill.”

“Right. And that skill evolution… is that why you’re so calm right now?” Adam asked.

Shiv smiled and shook his head. Adam shuddered. “I’m not felling calm, Adam. I’m just holding my own leash. So it’s not my problem.” He looked through the deformed bars of the cage and gathered blackened flames of hatred in his eyes. “It’s everyone else’s.”

Once more, the Anointed Knight began to sob.

A fear chain manifested between Adam and Shiv as well. “Shiv. I think maybe I should do some talking for a bit. You should… You should go check up on the surviving chefs.”