Path of the Deathless-259 Loyalty [I]

Path of the Deathless-259 Loyalty [I]

Let me tell you something about loyalty.
Loyalty is a story about heartbreak.
Every time.
If you become a Pathbearer powerful enough to matter, you're probably going to live for a while. And slowly, as time goes on, you're going to notice that the people you know either start changing, or they die.
Eventually, you will realize that the culture around you is like quicksand at your feet. You will wake up one day and suddenly find that you don't truly know anyone anymore.
You don't know what motivates the people around you anymore. You don't understand what the fuck the kids are talking about. You don't get what the hell the political birdwits around you are trying to do—they’re not even good at being corrupt, like back in your day.
But you're still stuck with them because, well, that's the way of the world, isn't it? They’re “family”! You’re a “people!” You're supposed to stick with your nation, with your people—family! Whatever the fuck. You're supposed to hold out with them and try to make a better life for everyone.
Except that's all bullshit. It really is. The sooner you face that reality, the sooner you'll set yourself free. Loyalty is not a valuable trait in the long run.
Loyalty to people doesn't work because people either die or change and stop being worthy of your loyalty. Loyalty to a nation doesn't work because a nation isn't a thing. A nation's a nebulous concept, see? Not even your culture is something worth being loyal to, because by the time you hit Hero, you've probably lived for, I don't know, a century or more. A century’s like three, four, maybe five different generations for humans.
And in those generations, things change. People change. History leaves wounds. Strife leaves us deformed. And what comes out the other side? Not what went in. You wake up one day and find everything a husk of what it used to be.
Sure, things could get better again, but if you cling to that hope, it's eventually going to get worse too. Nothing big lasts for long. Not when individuals can have as much power as they do in our age.
The kingdoms and nations that last, they last because they’re some hyper-powerful Pathbearer's personal pet project, a carefully curated, fragile sandbox, rather than a real, natural society.
I was born into an empire known as the Laxus. The Laxus was a beautiful place: big marble statues everywhere, lots of different gods. They'd talk to you if you spoke to their statues, offer encouragement, and all that. The buildings were clean, the streets were wide and grand. At our peak, we boasted three different worlds under our dominion. Three planets conquered and subdued, integrated into our superior culture. The Laxus was the greatest thing in Integration, and I loved it more than anything.
But you can probably guess where I'm going with this. It didn't last. The Laxus endured for well over a thousand years, much longer than most nations, especially ones at a cosmic scale, but in the end, it came apart all the same. In this instance, it was because of three specific people. Our glorious Empress had three children before she decided to do the noble thing and fall in battle, saving us from the Viridescent Scourge.
And then her three hyper-powerful children, who were all supposedly honorable and well-intentioned Pathbearers on their own, quickly realized that their notions of honor and good intentions were different from each other. And so, when their dialogue broke down, we went from being an empire that ruled over three different worlds to an empire tearing itself apart, fighting over these three worlds, and then to three separate empires after the fighting didn't turn out the way anyone wanted it to.
I was barely more than a Low Hero at this time. And when I came out of that, a much greater man than I was before, when I woke up one day after the fighting had mostly died down, I realized everyone I knew was gone. Gone or unrecognizable. Billions were dead. The culture I believed in was shattered and ripped to pieces. And there was nothing replacing that.
I can't tell you how much I cried. I can't tell you how hard I tried to put things back together. I can't tell you how hard I tried to convince every single one of the inheritor rulers that we could still be a single nation.
It didn't matter. Loyalty doesn't matter. Loyalty is like fucking a Pathless, taking a fancy to them, and expecting them to live longer than a century. They just won't. Unless you dump all the resources you have into keeping them alive. And even then, you're going to be wanting to keep them inside a special little cage away from harm, otherwise any stray gust of wind might rip them apart. And in that cage, they're going to rot. They're going to wither. And they're going to go away at the end despite it all.
Don’t cling to anything but yourself. It’s the only thing you might be able to keep in the end.
-The Realmrunner
259 (I)
Loyalty [I]
"So, run this by me again," Jessica said, rubbing the bridge of her nose. "The Inquisition captures Heather and the only other survivor of her Slayer team. And rather than holding them in a cell and properly obtaining information from her mind, they decide to torture her to death instead? Inside a black site located in the
basement of the Republic Consulate
of Gate Theborn?"
"Yeah, that's about the way of things," Shiv grunted.
Jessica made a series of noises like she was trying to process the truthfulness of his words. "Listen, kid. When you're trying to convince someone the people they're working with are outright evil—"
"They are," Shiv said, not even bothering to let her finish. “Fuck the Inquisition. And fuck you for pretending to not know who you’re serving.”
"You need to make it seem more realistic," Jessica finished, a tired growl entering her throat.
"That's what happened," Shiv insisted. "She would be dead if not for me reaching my Biomancy Skill Evolution right then. She and Tran would both have died inside that anchor, tortured to death by a bunch of Interrogators who shredded their minds and mangled their bodies. A bunch of Interrogators and Inquisitors that she and Tran ended up killing later out of revenge. Something that only happened because of me.”
Jessica blew out a tired breath. "Alright, that's your claim. But do you want to know what I think? I think that I don't know if I can trust you. I think that I'm not even sure that you actually know Heather."
"I don't know her well, or personally," Shiv admitted immediately. "I didn't like her when I was growing up because she was always kind of a bitch to me. But I do know her. I even knew her before she turned into an elf."
"Huh? She what?" Jessica did a double-take. "She turned into a what?"
"She took on some kind of Blessing, and she turned into an elf," Shiv said. "You didn't know that? It happened quite a while ago."
"Look, it's kinda hard to keep track of everyone in my family—"
Shiv barely held back a derisive snort. "Well, congratulations! You heard it from me first. Heather got turned into an elf. Heather also nearly got turned into a corpse by the Inquisition. Which is the more important part here. You don't want to believe me? Fine. You don't want to believe my memories? Fine! But I know where Heather is. She's still in Weave. And if you want to accuse the Composer and her people of twisting Heather’s mind, sure, go for it. But she's alive, and she's only alive because of me. Meanwhile, you and that shit-fucker Stormhalt decided to—”
“Yeah, yeah, alright!” Jessica snapped, cutting him off. “You know what? Fine. Fine, I believe you. I believe you.”
And now Shiv felt whiplash going the other way. "What? Just like that?"
The Giantsbane shrugged. "Look, kid, everything between us is not personal on my end. Well, aside from whatever reason you’re coming after my grandkid. I'm not out here hunting you to try and bring you in because I don't like you or something. That doesn’t matter that much. I'm here because the Ascendants are coming after you, and I am loyal to the Republic and the Ascendants. It's really that simple. At the same time, I know the Inquisition gets up to some fucky bullshit—that a bunch of inquisitors are upjumped nobles playing their own bullshit games and making a mess of things for the rest of us."
"And you're still working with them?" Shiv asked, his incredulity rising by the moment.
"Yeah, of course I'm still working with them," Jessica said. She looked at him like he was simple. "Because what's the alternative? Go at it alone? Do my own thing? Stop caring?" She threw up her hands and rolled her eyes. "Let me tell you something about that whole 'I can do it myself,' 'I don't need to be loyal to anything,' kind of thinking, kid. Doesn't go anywhere. It's about as useless as being overly loyal. Both of them are pointless. Neither of them does anything for you. You're going to have to make a choice, and you're going to use your power to enforce that choice. You're going to use your power to shape a world you want. The easiest thing for me to do, the
smartest
thing for me to do, so that I can live the best life I can and my kids stay safe, is for the Republic to keep standing and for the Ascendants to stay as strong as they possibly can.”
She pointed a finger at him. “We have a good thing going here, Deathless. You're young, right? And you're being dumped into one nightmare after another. I can't blame you for being angry and lashing out. But I'm telling you now, you don't know what it was like before. You don't know what it was like to see tens of thousands of people wiped out on some random fucking Restday because a Primal Gate opened up, vomiting up an endless tide of Master-Tier monsters. Frankly, the best thing you can do for yourself is just give up. Walk back into a cell. Let Chandler cut a deal with you—and odds are, you’ll end up in the Inquisition too, after a while. It’s the way it goes for most of us reasonable Pathbearers.”
Shiv's eyes blazed with black fire while looking at Jessica, who was proving to be a test of his patience. "You know the Ascendants are degenerating, right? You know they're becoming caricatures of themselves."
Jessica shrugged. "Yeah, I noticed. I'm not stupid. I don't like looking at it. But Chandler's gonna fix it. Chandler fixes fucking everything. It's what she does. It’s who she is. And so long as she’s here, and she’s most in charge, then I’ll be doing what she wants me to do—”
“Then why the FUCK were you with Stormhalt?!” Shiv shouted, taking a step toward her before he caught himself. “She didn’t sanction that! I
know
she didn’t! That was Kathereine and that murderer bastard Havel’s personal grudge!”
“And mine as well,” Jessica replied. She bared her teeth, and for a moment, she looked more like a jackal than a woman. “I was going there to see something settled with Roland. That’s it. And frankly, it would have gone better with me there. I would have taken the city, dealt with Sullain, and made sure no one died. You getting involved is the reason why everything went to shit. There wouldn’t be an Undying Tarrasque if you didn’t give a soul donation to the Vicar.”
Shiv almost had an aneurysm right then and there. “You—felling—I—”
“You know I’m right,” Jessica said—but the tone of her voice told Shiv she didn’t believe that, and the impish grin on her face revealed she was just trying to piss him off. If he didn't have Sage of the Enkindled Heart, he would have likely snapped right then and smashed something. As it stood, his reservoirs of rage climbed just a bit higher.
“You’re enjoying this,” Shiv said, his anger fueling his calmness. Talking to her made him more rational, more astute. “Do you want me to start a fight?”
“I like the tension,” Jessica replied honestly. “Makes me feel alive. The possibility you might just try to kill me tickles me somewhere deep. And the fact that you’re not attacking me makes you more interesting. It’s like adding some condiments to the conversation.”
Sage of the Enkindled Heart 112 > 115
“Okay… Okay.” Shiv was practically ejecting steam from his nose at this point. “I will tell you now, I’m not going to hit you. Not unless you start the fight first. So, you can forget about pissing me off enough to start a brawl.”
Jessica pouted. “Aw. Really wish you didn’t have Sage of the Enkindled Heart. That would make things more thrilling.”
Shiv's fingers twitched as he desperately tried to think of where to take this conversation. “Why won’t you take me seriously?” he hissed.
“I am. I just… Fine. Sure. I already accepted what you said about Heather. So. What now. What are you trying to do here, boy? Some Inquisitors fucked up. I’ll let Chandler know. She’ll fix it. Hell, she’ll probably spank Stormhalt and get Kathereine under control right after. Nothing for us to do about it.”
Shiv stared at her. To his incredulity, it almost sounded like she
genuinely
believed that. "Really? That’s what you think? Because my grandmother seems to be really selective about what she fixes. She sure as shit didn't fix the lives of all the bastard children she abandoned. She sure as shit didn't fix Daughter and whatever the fuck she's doing to all those poor orphan kids. She sure as shit didn't fix the Tarrasque. She didn't fix the Blackedge siege. She didn't fix anything that's happening between Roland and you, or Stormhalt, or between the Starhawk and the rest of the Ascendants! What
did
she fix? Tell me! 'Cause I'm missing your perspective, I think."
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. sightings.
To add oil to the fires of his frustration, Jessica didn't say anything. She just looked at him, her expression unreadable.
"You know, I… I don't understand you. I don't get you at all," Shiv said. "I'm telling you all these things, and on some level, you accept it, but you just don't seem to care." And then the realization hit Shiv. His mouth fell open. "You… really don't care. You don't care about
any
of this, do you?"
And at that, Jessica's body rattled with the vibrations of doubt.
"Do you even care that they tortured your grandniece?" Shiv asked.
The Deathless expected to see something akin to anger flare within the emotional core rooted within Jessica's chest. At present, nothing flickered. There weren't even the faintest embers. It was just a sloshing, viscous mess of hollow moroseness. The emotions that spilled from her were at once dour and slow—like sludge, like the beverage she consumed; caustic but unable to kindle a flame.
"I guess I do," Jessica lied, but there was no true animation behind her. It was just a reaction. It was just something she knew she was supposed to say. "Look, I'm not gonna do nothing about this. There will be an investigation, and I’ll speak with Heather and explain to her the way of things.”
Shiv growled. "The way of—You aren't listening to me. You're not listening at all. I have already dealt with them. Your grandniece has already taken her revenge, for whatever that's worth. What are you even thinking about? This isn't about a few interrogators who were inquisitors. This is about all of the Inquisition. This is about
your
Republic. They're the ones who decided to do these things. They're the ones who decided to turn on Blackedge. They are the godsdamn monsters here."
Sage of the Enkindled Heart:
Let your emotions run free. For once, she wants to see something from you. She is not offended by your anger or your accusation. She seems to almost appreciate it. She seems to be attracted by it. She wants to see that you're human. She wants to see, so show her. Show her the outrage she no longer seems to possess. She is a moth, and you are the flame. Set her afire if you can.
"You asked me what my game was earlier, when we were fighting in the hospital. Well, I'm gonna ask you the same thing right now." Shiv clenched a fist and seethed openly. He wanted to squeeze the life out of her. He wanted to shake her until she gave him something. Anything that he could cling to. Anything that he could fully comprehend.
There was something wrong with her. Something absent. This conversation was feeling worse than useless. Part of him wished they would just start fighting. This felt pointless, almost, like she wasn't here—like there was too much of her missing for words to serve any meaningful purpose.
Shiv let out a breath. "You stopped fighting me to go save those patients, to stop them from being crushed under the falling debris. If you don’t care, then why?”
"Yeah, about that." Jessica uncrossed her legs and leaned in. "You did the same thing. Tell me why."
Shiv’s nostrils flared. If there was one thing she did like, it was annoying him. "You motherfu—I'm the one asking you. I want to know why you did it first, since you don't seem to care about anything. Since you're just reacting and living, doing whatever the Ascendants or the Inquisition tells you."
But the rival Legend shook her head, and she taunted him with a faint glimmer of amusement behind her eyes. "Nah, you care about this more than I do. You'll learn, kid, that in any kind of relationship, the person who cares less than the other has the upper hand. So, you flap your gums first. I want to know what you feel. I want to know what drives you. Mainly so I can better hunt you later, but also because I'm curious. You’re a pretty interesting animal, Deathless.”
Once more, Shiv found himself struggling against the urge to launch himself across the room and bury his frying pan in her skull. "Because I don't want any bystanders to die, alright? I don't want to see more dead innocents. I hate collateral damage. I've done enough collateral damage for a lifetime. If I have to see another person who doesn't have it coming get killed because of me or someone else, I'm gonna feel it, alright? I already feel it. I feel it too much. It makes me think that I'm pathetic, that I'm not a proper Pathbearer. Because what's the point? What's the point of letting people who can't protect themselves die? What's the point of killing these people?"
"Some might think of that as power," Jessica retorted. “They will say that being able to kill whoever you want, break whatever you want, is power.”
"Yeah, and some people are unfeeling monsters. I'm going to be more than that. I mean, what's the point of becoming a Legend? If we can't do things that matter for the world, if we can't make lives better, if we're just breaking things, then why not just be a Tarrasque? Why not just let everyone be a Tarrasque? What's the point? What's the felling point?"
And Jessica continued to be aggravating. She shrugged. "Maybe there is no point, maybe there is no purpose. You ever think about that?"
"No!" he nearly shouted. He was reaching the point where he didn't even want to have this conversation anymore. "No, I don't think about that, alright? Because
of course
there's a point! Of course we care if other people live. We're trying to all just live together. It's the thing we do where we break things, and we talk about dominance. What's the point if we can just hurt someone who is weak? What does that give you?
Satisfaction?
I can get satisfaction from food or sex. If we're talking about that, then we might as well just burn our brains away with drugs or drown ourselves in alcohol. It's just about pleasure, isn't it? No! No, it fucking isn't! It can't be! It can’t! That shouldn’t be the way of the world. Not for us! We’re not animals. We… we
make
things. We create. We should be more.”
Rhetoric 3 > 4
On some level, Shiv understood he was making an overly emotional appeal to Jessica. That there was very little logic involved. But in his defense, he had little grasp of whatever psychology she was going about, and frankly, he didn't have the mental capacity to understand or relate to her. He was just telling her how he felt. Telling her what mattered to him, things that didn't matter to her. More and more things mattered. People mattered. And he was going to make her believe him.
"I saved those people because I could, because doing the right thing
is
dominance. It's dominance against the System. It's proof that even if I have to put up with strife, even if I am going to become more powerful, more destructive, I don't need that to be someone else's problem. Because I guess I think that it means more if your strength makes a better world. If you can stop people from dying from suffering. If you can make people happy. If you can feed someone who's hungry. That all matters. It's something that you've done. It's something that you can create. It's not just break and break and break. Seems like that's all of the other Legends do, though. All the great powers, all the Divinities, all they care about is how much they can break, how many they can kill. But if we're all like that, if all we do is just break and kill, then what's going to be left of us? What's going to be left of this world?"
Jessica placed her chin upon one of her hands and batted her eyes at him. "You know, I can't tell if you're really, really naive, overly optimistic, or just desperate to see a better world."
"I'm just tired," Shiv admitted. "I can try doing the whole bleak thing or the 'don't care about anything' thing that you think I'm doing, but it doesn't work, alright? Until a while ago, I lived for survival. For a time, all I wanted to be was a Pathbearer. For a time, all I wanted was power. For a time, I didn't even think about myself as a person. That was before. Now that I can choose, now that I have seen how people live and how bad this world really is, I want to add to that. I don't want to be part of the cancer. I don't."
He took in a breath, and Jessica said nothing. She just kept observing him. He did, however, detect a hint of something from her blade. Rusty shivered in the air and slowly moved away from him, as if it was overcome by a sense of shame.
"When I look at you, when I talk to you, when you just blow off everything, and you don't react, and you don't care... I just
don't
get it. I don't. And you frustrate me because you're not like so many other people in the fight. Because you
do
seem to care about some people. You’re not here just to break things and hurt people, like the orcs. And you care about the Republic, but you just..."
Shiv trailed off. Something clicked inside him. “You don't care about
yourself
that much, do you?” he said, frowning. “Do you not remember what you wanted? Do you not remember who you used to be?”
And for the first time, something behind Jessica's eyes shifted. Her breath slid out of her as a long sigh, and she lay back on her bed, completely indifferent to the fact that she was leaving herself more exposed to attack.
Gardener of Doubt 57 > 60
"I do, in some ways. Don't want to die, for one thing, even though I think it's coming. Even though I think there's no avoiding it. But… you know how tired you are of watching all those people die of that collateral damage? Yeah, I know how that feels a little too well. Now, you imagine that it keeps on going for years. And years. And
years
. And even after you become a Legend, you realize you can't protect them. Even after you reach the apex of your skills, even after you can cut a mountain in half, even after you butcher armies of invading giants, you still end up spending the aftermath digging bits of dead kids out of debris. You still spend your days listening to loved ones howling for the ones they lost. You still keep losing people close to you.
Still
. You realize that being Pathless or a Legend doesn't mean anything at all. I wasn't shit as a Pathless, I wasn't shit as an incest bastard, and I’m not shit now."
Jessica stared up at the ceiling and gave a bitter laugh. "It's all just noise and bullshit. It doesn't get better. It's not going to get better. Not alone, and not when you don't have absolute power."
Shiv's eyes widened for a few seconds. He couldn't even find the words. "So you just... You live like this. You spend your time here, doing the Inquisition's bidding, reacting. You barely care, because you're tired, you're a coward, and the System’s hurt you too much. That's what you're telling me?"
"I'm telling you that you're going through a phase," Jessica corrected, still not looking at him. "That you seem like a nice kid, but you're in a really ugly situation. That everything you're doing, that all you're struggling to do, that all you want to see done, isn't going to come true. Because it doesn't matter if you're an Adept, a Master, a Hero, or a Legend. It doesn't matter that the System is freaking out about who you are and wants the world to kill you or keep you in a cage. You're just a Pathbearer. You
bear a Path
. You're just playing under the System's rules, and eventually it's going to grind you down. You're going to be either a monster or..." She lifted her head and stared him dead on with a predatory gaze. "Gonna be exactly like me. Someone who doesn't give a shit. Someone who barely cares. Just enough to make a better world. Just enough because the rest has all been used up."
"No."
Shiv's response was immediate and filled with grave intensity. "I'm not gonna be like you. I will be dead for good before I ever become like you. You say you're tired? Fine. Guess you've been doing this a lot longer than I have. I guess you've probably suffered more loss than I have. But I know tired too. I've taken pain too. And I see the end. I see what's coming for me if I don't do this. If I just... give myself to the Ascendants. Just be their slave. Just let the Republic use me, like they're using you."
Jessica sniffled. She sat up again and stared directly at him. In her eyes was not judgment, but pity. And there was bitter irony there as well. "You know something funny, kid? I think I said something like this years ago. I think I gave just about this speech to someone else. Some other Hero or Legend before my time. Now just dust. Food for the worms—back to the mud. As it goes." She shifted a bit on the bed and patted the space to her left. "You want to sit down here? I'm tired of looking up at you. You're too goddamn big. Too tall. Hurting this old woman's neck."
Shiv just glared in response. He wasn't here to offer her comfort. He was here to get information from her, to see what he could make of her. And so far, rather than getting anything useful, she just felt pathetic. She was ruined. What the hells was there with Legends and being ruined? So far, not counting his allies, who all had issues of their own, he'd faced Sullain, Udraal, Veronica, and now Jessica. All of them were wrong in some way. All of them were deformed on the inside. Shiv couldn't claim to be mentally healthy himself, but even with his being partially constructed based on a Tarrasque, he was still more of a person than they were.
It can't be inevitable,
he told himself.
What they are, what they've become, it can't be inevitable.
But though he said this, he felt himself rattled as well. The Gardener of Doubt took effect on him. He was beginning to worry. He was beginning to suspect. And he desperately hoped—refused to accept—that the System might wear him down someday as well.
Jessica chuckled and waved a finger at him. "I know that look. I made that look after that conversation I had with the dead Legend. Or was it with you? Doesn't really matter now. Didn't matter before." She sniffed and rubbed her nose. "You were not the first person to rebel against the Republic. I did it. I did it after Jackie died. After I lost a cause to fight for. I came back from the North unsatisfied. The revenge I thought I was going to take didn't really happen. But something was different about me. I was a Legend, and I thought I could change things."
Shiv’s breath stilled. "You tried to fight the Ascendants?"
"Ah, no. Wouldn't call myself particularly religious. Still not, but my biggest grudge across my life wasn't with the gods. It was with the people that decided to stick themselves in between: the fucking nobles. See, after I got done blaming the giants for starting the war, the blame shifted over to the nobility, because they were the ones that kept feeding and suckling off the teats of our Republic. They were the ones who kept siphoning away resources—doing everything to enrich their houses at the cost of the rest of us. That's what I told myself, anyway. The fact that some snot-nosed noble bastard decided to put my oldest daughter in the hospital just before didn’t help."
Jessica’s eyes darkened. "Imagine me. Imagine me coming back home from the North, a fresh Legend. Barely even cleaned all the Jotun blood off my armor. Now, imagine me, standing there, listening to a Biomancer explain to me how she'd had an 'accident,' how she was hurt during a sparring session over some 'misunderstanding.' Unfortunately for the Biomancer, I'd had those misunderstandings before too. I knew what he meant."
She held up a hand and mockingly balled a fist. "And once again, I had a reason to burn. New reason to hate. I didn't even go see my other kids. Went straight to the noble bastard's house. Wasn't much of a conversation to be had. I showed up. I wanted an explanation. They thought they were better than me; they told me to fuck off. One of them still thought I was a Hero. He died first. The rest of the House didn't do very well either when they jumped me. Killed them all. Killed practically every man, woman, and child who filled their hands with steel, who could conjure or shape or wield a skill against me, didn't matter if none of them were any threat to me at all. And when I was done, I decided to set their estate on fire. Then I moved on to their neighbors, who came to assist them. By the end of that night? I'd killed, I don't know, a good five hundred nobles and three thousand retainers. Hadn't even broken a sweat when the sun came up. And when I saw that sunrise, I realized I was pissed enough and so broken that I had no issue dying. I didn't care what happened to me. So, I went over to the next house. I wanted to see just how
much
of the nobility I could clear out. You know. For fucking up the defense of Delphia.
For getting Jackie killed.
For everything they did—and for the parasites they were. Quite a bit, as it turned out.”
“I… I didn’t know this,”
Adam suddenly whispered.
“I don’t remember—I’ve never heard of the Giantsbane committing a mass slaughter. How?”
Shiv was utterly speechless. Despite everything, he struggled to imagine Hawgrave murdering children. "How the hells did they let you stay alive afterward?"
Adam wanted to know the same thing.
“The nobility wouldn't stand for this, wouldn't stand for just some up-jumped peasant—Hero or Legend regardless—butchering entire houses. Even if they are at odds, even if they are rivals. This would be ruinous for their authority."
"Chandler," Jessica said. That was her answer. And Shiv really should have seen it coming. “Chandler decided to get involved. Because if there’s one thing to know about Veronica Chandler, it’s that the bitch never lets a good crisis go without her taking advantage of it…”

.
!
259 Loyalty [I]