Path of the Deathless-260 Loyalty [II]

Path of the Deathless-260 Loyalty [II]

Hear my song.
Hear it true.
Hear this hymn.
Hear this tune.
Hear these strings within your mind.
Hear these notes unraveling the ties that bind.
For what was will never be again.
And for what I sing to be the truth, beginning, middle, and end.
Hear me now, and hear me through.
What once was lost, and thus fades the truths you knew…
-Kathereine the Songbringer,
Hymn of Ensured Truth
260
Loyalty [II]
"I see you looking at me there like you don't remember this butchery happening. Well, that's normal. Most people don't remember that to be the exact turn of events. Instead, they know this little period of history by another name. They call it the Half-Cape Rebellion."
Jessica's words caused Adam's mind to reel in disbelief.
"What? No, nonono, the Half-Capes were trying to overthrow the Ascendants on behalf of the Southern Gods. They were in league with the Scarred Ones and the Lords of Blood and Sacrifice. They seeded cults across the capital in some of our most major cities. They primarily targeted other noble houses. Eventually, it was estimated that 25% of the nobility were affected. This is basic history. I don't recall ever seeing an exact casualty count, but…"
"Now, you might be thinking, 'But wasn't the Half-Cape Rebellion some kind of Anti-Ascendant conspiracy created by the Southern Gods of Sacrifice?'" Jessica rolled her eyes. "Absolutely. It did happen. Except that the Half-Capes of House Alano were put down before they could ever truly fan the flames of rebellion. But thanks to Kathereine, that little conspiracy stole my spot as we rolled in a grand rebellion to rip the nobility apart from the inside."
"So, you're telling me that Kathereine somehow used her divine powers to twist
everyone's
memories? To make them forget what actually happened?" Icicles were forming in the depths of Shiv's chest. If the Songbringer was capable of such power after all, then just how much didn't the Republic know about the outside world? Was this something they'd used against the Abyss? How many times had they rewritten the past?
"Close, but not quite," Jessica said. "The Ascendants are powerful, but there's a limit to that. There are other gods across Integrated Earth. There are Legends too. And Legends have the capacity to resist the will of gods. So, even if you manage to get
practically
everyone, there will still be a few people who remember what actually happened, who resist the pull of retro-history."
The Giantsbane shook her head and laughed. "The Southerners tried to use that on us a few times. They hit us with these Psychomantic bombs that were supposed to mentally enslave everyone they hit. It affected some people, but almost everyone with a bit of Magical Resistance shrugged off the effects because of how dispersed the bombs’ mana was. And also, our gods responded in kind.”
She waved a finger in a spiral motion. “You know, the thing about trying to rewrite history is, it's more than just memory. Erasing someone's existence means more than just wiping them out from everyone's recollection. There will still be rooms where people used to live. Items they had, things they left behind, traces they left on the world. And once you notice these things, well, it hurts the mind pretty bad to try and recall something that wasn't. Or something that was and then made not to be."
Before Shiv could respond to any of that, Jessica waved him off. "Look, the whole Psychomancy thing is a fucking mess. I don't like mind magic, I don't like Psychomancers, and anyone who uses it is kind of a creep in my book. And the powerful ones usually leave entire sections of the population broken mentally, never truly achieving their goals anyway."
"So, what did Kathereine do?" Shiv asked.
Jessica gave him a cold, cruel smile. "She didn't use Psychomancy to change the past. She used a Social Skill l to twist the
present
. It wasn't a thing of, uh, what the fuck did they call it… felling… retroactive design. It was propaganda in motion. The moment I began my massacre, the Inquisition responded. Initially, they were dispatched to bring me down. And the bastards did, after less than twelve hours. “Apparently, they have contingencies planned for every single Legend or High Hero in the Republic, and they can assemble specialized teams meant to counter you. They dropped a series of dimensional wards so I couldn't use Rusty to maneuver or escape. Then they threw a bunch of expendable monsters at me while their specialized Psychomancers drilled through my Magical Resistance and turned my lights off. Sure, capturing High-Tier Primal Dragons is expensive, but it's less expensive compared to losing a Legendary Pathbearer you spent years of time and tons of resources training."
"So, they captured you," Shiv said.
"Oh yeah, they even put me in a cell. Kind of like you, I guess. Stripped naked, chained down... One of the Ascendants comes to talk to you. Who'd you get? Was it Cripple?"
"You know it was Cripple," Shiv shot back. "You were there when Chandler ambushed me during my escape."
Jessica nodded, and the grim mirth never faded from her eyes. "You want to guess who came down to speak with me? Who decided to comfort my wounded heart and try to fill me with purpose once more? Come on, guess. Let's see if you get it."
Shiv frowned. Part of him wanted to push past this, but he was also genuinely curious. He read her face, and there was something there for him to discover. A hint. As he focused on her, he realized there was a glint of irony in her eyes. He had to have a connection to the Ascendant she was thinking of, and that left only a few choices.
It couldn't be Cripple. No, Cripple likely would have told Shiv something about Jessica if they had a prior arrangement. More importantly, Cripple wasn't responding now. Radio remained silent within Shiv's cape. So it was either Halsur, Kathereine herself, or the Starhawk—and only the last one suited the System's insatiable urges.
"Was it the Starhawk?”
The Giantsbane clapped. "Got it in one! The Starhawk just strolled into my cell and talked to me about why I did what I did, like a kid in detention. Even tried to empathize with me. He told me he was sorry about Jackie, about my kids having to grow up without a father, that he understood there's a great many injustices being committed within the Republic. All that corny shit I really wanted to hear."
She noticed the look of near disbelief on Shiv's face and shook her head. "Look, this was before the time he decided to do a little rebellion of his own. He still fully bought into the whole Republic project. And he was practically the most loyal out of all the Ascendants. He did what he could to keep everyone together. He cared the most. Even as they all degenerated, he just cared some more. Because he was
Starhawk the Just
, and he was trying to do the right thing, always—for the kingdom, for his family, for his people. Up until all three of those things started clashing with one another. Which is how we got into our current mess."
"What happened after that?" Shiv asked. "Did you just go along with the Starhawk?"
"Hah! Fuck, no. I was still on my suicide run. I told him to let me out of my chains, give me back my sword, and give me a proper end. I wanted to die butchering the noble shits who got us into all those messes, who killed Jackie. Now, the Starhawk wanted to keep working on me, but halfway through our little conversation, Veronica Chandler decided to drop in, and she told the Ascendant to take a walk."
Jessica licked her lips and gathered herself. And Shiv saw it—a flicker of something snaking out from her body. The faintest trace of fear, thinner than string but truer than doubt. “That was the first hint I got of who was really running things in this Republic. My conversation with her was very different. I tried to provoke her into killing me or letting me out. She told me to shut up, and it felt like someone dropped a mountain on my head. It hurt. It tore into my mind and it battered my soul. You ever have someone beat you into submission using their words? You ever find yourself coughing up blood as someone recounts your flaws and breaks you from the inside?"
"You literally saw her use her Rhetoric on me," Shiv said plainly.
"She didn't use her Rhetoric on you, kid. She barely whispered to you. She wanted you intact, just like she wants me intact. She's not a cruel woman, but she'll do cruel things. If you give her a choice, however, she'll default to efficiency, and she'll give you the carrot while waving the stick somewhere far away. Which is what she did to me."
Jessica drew in a long breath, then, and the blade hovered near her. Rusty cleared his throat.
"We shouldn't tell them so much. We shouldn't. They do not need to know."
"Why the fuck's it matter, Rusty?" Jessica scoffed. "Either way, we're going to be working with him in the future. Hell, if I had to guess, Veronica is going to have me serve as a mentor to you and Young Lord Arrow, if he's willing to come into the fold as well. Speaking of which, tell him to come out of your circus cape. Just him, not the other clowns."
Shiv almost let his surprise show on his face. "You knew they were there this entire time?"
"Kid, Rusty here has Legendary-Tier Dimensionality. Of course we knew. And if you were going to start a fight, the first thing he would have done was rip your cape open."
Shiv's lips thinned, but she ignored him. "Anyway, after torturing me to near-death with her words, reminding me how shit of a mother I was for up and leaving my kids without any farewell or forewarning, and telling me that Jackie was dead over and over again, I was pretty close to begging for death myself. Then, she stopped. Then, she fixed me with a few words. That was another experience: having every bit of your self-esteem and your broken soul put back together by someone convincing you that you're alright. And then she broke me again, and she made me alright again. And so on. By the time it was over, I was pretty close to being done. There wasn't much left of me. Not until she whispered something. Not until she brought me back fully for us to begin our proper conversation."
Jessica held up her index finger. "She explained a few things to me: firstly, I was supposed to become a hero of the Republic. In fact, there was a propaganda campaign positioned and ready to kick off all across the Republic about how I was the one that managed to stop the Half-Cape Rebellion. My slaughter of a few noble houses became a
peacekeeping operation
. It was described as clearing out cells of cult-like conspirators who wanted to bring our great nation low and turn us into slaves for the Southerners."
"And everyone just… believed that?" Shiv was stunned. It didn't make any sense. If the noble houses knew, then how could they go along with this?
"Of course everyone believed it," Jessica replied without any hesitation. "Because the alternative is that the Ascendants and Veronica Chandler, Legendary Councilwoman and the most trusted woman in all the Republic, is lying, and that she's doing something to cull the nobility. That also means that the Half-Cape Rebellion was something she decided to foment. Something she supplied off the side. Until it was ripe, until there was an opportunity for them to spend them as political capital."
Jessica realized he still didn't get it, so she elaborated. "Alright, unknown to me, there was a bigger game taking place then. It was between Veronica Chandler and the late Councilman Hendricks. Now, Councilman Hendricks was a member of House Hendricks. Square jaw, nice hair, big fucking asshole—wanted to shove his cock into anything that moved, and sometimes did. You can see why Longinus loved and used him as an Avatar. At the time, there was a struggle going on between him and Veronica. He wanted to split the power of the state to divert more authority from the top and divest resources to each of the noble houses. His argument was that it would make the Republic more responsive, allow the local rulers and nobles to strengthen themselves and diversify the Republic's capabilities, and all that drivel. More practically, however, it would make him and his family even richer than before and would allow them to dictate the future of the nation."
"And Veronica was against this?" Shiv asked. "Isn't she supposed to be a noble too? She's descended from Kathereine."
"But there's no House Chandler, is there?"
Shiv paused. He couldn't quite recall ever hearing about a House Chandler.
"Right, exactly. There's no such thing as House Chandler. That's because the Inquisition
is
House Chandler. That's because the upper echelons of the Republic
are
House Chandler. That's because control and rulership over the entire political apparatus concentrated into one woman is the idea of House Chandler—not nobility, not bloodline,
her
.”
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, the violation.
Shiv grimaced. “So, this was a fight between a woman trying to stay as close to an absolute monarch as the Republic has, and a fucker trying to pull some of her power over for himself and the rest of the elites. I don't know who I want to root for less."
"You want to root for her," Jessica said, as if he were simple.
Shiv gritted his teeth. "I would never root for Veronica Chandler, no matter what she did. She disgusts me. Who she is disgusts me."
The Giantsbane looked him up and down and gave him a smirk. "You know, you sound like her sometimes. You act like her, just with a lot more anger and a lot less control. Yeah, I was wrong. You probably won't become like me if you live long enough. No, she'll use me as your whetstone, but eventually she'll be molding you into something or someone like her. Just maybe not greater than her. She probably wants another monster, a reliable monster, one she can understand. And before you say that's not happening, get this—it's not up to you. I thought it was up to me, and then it wasn't. Now, where was I? Right, Hendricks. He was the Avatar of Longinus. At the time, they were going through a bit of an imperialism kick. There were still pockets of land in the East we hadn't claimed, and we had to drive back the Storm King from the Atlantic, so, plenty of money to be made in wars and conquests. But it's also expensive—expensive in lives and expensive in resources. Veronica wanted everyone to sit tight, to build up, to play defensive for a while.”
Jessica didn't make it hard for Shiv to guess where the issue arose. “Hendricks disagreed?”
“Hendricks disagreed. And then he started gathering support from all the High-Tier Pathbearers, because the strongest of the Republic had the opportunity to make money, but they were being ordered to stay away from hostile borders under the rule of law. Didn't seem to make sense to most people, right? If you're powerful, you should be able to do something without someone even higher up the political ladder telling you otherwise."
"So, Veronica ended up using you against Hendricks? Wasn't he supposed to be an Avatar of Longinus?" Shiv was getting a picture of the chaos, the political machinations.
Always some bullshit up at the top. Always.
"He was, but for most of the Ascendants, Avatars come and go. Frankly, there are only two that have remained consistent after all these years. And that's just the way Veronica likes it. Back to me, though. Turns out, one of the houses I decided to empty out was House Hendricks. The boy who hurt my oldest daughter? Yeah, another Hendricks brat. Didn't know his name, didn't want to know, just wanted to kill. And now I find myself involved in someone else's war, in a struggle that initially had nothing to do with me, but now sees me taking the center stage as someone assisting the Inquisition in an operation to ‘preserve the Republic's sanctity and security’ or some felling shit like that."
Shiv began to put the pieces of the story together. There were conspiracies arrayed against conspiracies. The Half-Capes were supposedly a group of rogue nobles that didn't hold that much significance in actuality. They were just patsies used by Veronica to justify her actions against a rival. Now, Jessica's involvement was circumstantial and beneficial; made possible through happenstance. But there was something he couldn't quite figure out yet. Something that didn't fit for him.
"Why'd she need to use you?" Shiv asked. "Yeah, sure, you're a Low Legend by that point. But why you? She has plenty of other resources. If the Half-Capes were in place to be expended... why you?"
"Because I'm the Giantsbane," Jessica said, an empty smile on her face. "Because I'm the one the smallfolk love and the nobles fear. Because my name echoes through the Republic, and because people look up to me for whatever stupid, delusional reasons. And because it's easier to shape propaganda using people who are already involved, twisting the actual situation rather than trying to change what actually happened."
"So, you ended up butchering most of House Hendricks and a bunch of other ones, and now she wants to take advantage of that. She wants to make you seem like a hero for what you did." But then things clicked for Shiv. He understood what Veronica was thinking. "Holy shit, you were also expendable, weren't you? She was using you against Hendricks, but she didn't know if you were going to succeed. If you failed, she would disavow you, and then she would say that you were simply a mind-broken Legend who went on a rampage. But since you succeeded, the propaganda played all the way through, and so you basically became a hero that put down a spreading cult trying to destroy the Ascendancy rather than someone who was venting her rage by committing mass murder on the nobility."
Deductive Reasoning 12 > 15
Gardener of Doubt 60 > 62
The Giantsbane looked surprised. "Good shit. And here I thought you were a little bit dim, kid. You know, sometimes I can't tell if you're really smart or really fucking dumb."
"Depends on the moment, I guess," Shiv said. He had to admit, the scheme was devious. Of course, Veronica would use Jessica this way. The Giantsbane had nothing left to lose, was desperate, wanted to kill the nobility, and had the capacity to bring down a Councilman.
Now, how Jessica managed to kill an Avatar, Shiv wasn't sure. Maybe Longinus was disabled somehow, but he could imagine it happening. And since Jessica was the one coming after Hendricks, Veronica could keep her hands clean.
"You know, the funny thing about loyalty," Jessica continued, "is that everyone's loyalty is mostly to themselves or their family or something personal. No two people have the same amount of loyalty to the same thing. Hendricks, for all his flaws and for how much of a piece of shit he was, really believed in Longinus. He believed in traveling, expanding our horizons. Longinus liked Hendricks mainly because they shared similar flaws, you know? Sex, mithril, drugs, wanderlust. But Hendricks's greatest mistake was thinking that he was Longinus's friend. Before Hendricks, there was another, and another before him, and probably at least one more before him. The Wanderer knew Veronica far longer than he did Hendricks, and though Longinus wasn't the fondest of the Councilwoman, he knew which way the coin would probably land."
Jessica paused. "He also knew that Veronica always offers a larger carrot than the stick she promises to hit you with if you don't play along. She'd already found a replacement for Hendricks. One of his retainers, funnily enough. Some guy he forced into his service. Poor bastard. Wasn't even a High-Tier Pathbearer in martial terms. He was just some artist, a chef, I think? George or whatever. Can’t fully recall."
Shiv felt his breath catch in his throat.
"Georges Archambault?"
"Yeah, something like that. Anyway, she managed to strike a deal with Longinus. If he, perchance, would be absent for a period and find himself venturing over into the Fairwoods while one of Veronica's operatives smuggled the chef into the land of cyclical wonders, well, let's just say Hendricks would be caught with his pants down, and his unprepared ass would be fighting me, a battle-hardened, don’t-give-a-shit-if-I-live-or-die Low Legend without the support of his patron god."
Shiv barely paid attention to the last few sentences. This changed what he knew about Georges once more.
Hells, maybe Georges doesn't even know this about himself. He just said Longinus kept him captive, not that he was being groomed to become an Avatar…
"Anyway, I tried to resist Veronica at first, just because I had a few lingering bits of spite. I'm a pretty proud girl, but it was just for show. She had gotten all the way down to my barrel, and if she hurt me again, I would break completely.” Jessica smiled again, and Shiv felt himself unnerved by the expression. “But she didn't. She asked me to reconsider and made me an offer. An offer that
ruined me
. An offer that made sure I would
always
go back to her. And made sure I would never be alright again.”
"What was the offer?" Shiv asked, though he felt an undercurrent of dread beginning to build.
"Jackie,"
Jessica breathed. "Jackie was the offer."
"What, your husband?" Shiv asked. His brow creased. "You said he was dead. He died carrying the city of Delphia."
"That he did." Jessica nodded. There was something dark building behind her eyes. A hint of storm clouds. But also of glory, and the closest thing Shiv had ever seen to true, genuine happiness played across Jessica's face.
It was like she was a beacon briefly flickering before forgetting how to shine, and it filled him with horror. "Jackie is dead, but Veronica has a gift. Powerful Psychomancers can make you dream of things, can alter your memories, and adjust your personality. I don't want to forget Jackie. I don't want to remember him having… gone somewhere. I don't want him to be taken away. So, they don't do that. They don't take my memories of him away from me. No. Sometimes, Veronica and her grandmother get together to tell me a story and sing me a song. They make him real for me, for some periods of time. They make me believe he's still around. They bring him back to me. I'm with him for a while. Even if he's not there, I'm with him. You don't understand how wonderful it is, to just… just… just…"
Jessica's fingers twitched as her breathing grew fast, and her blade drew close. It nudged her like a dog trying to comfort its owner, and she shuddered. She held on to herself, and for the first time, Shiv saw Jessica Hargrave for who she truly was.
She wasn't uncaring. She wasn't indifferent. She wasn't just some monster leashed to the Inquisition who did whatever the Republic wanted. This had nothing to do with patriotism. She was
broken
, conditioned like a dog, dependent like an addict, and the only ones that could supply her with the right kind of hit were the ones who controlled the Republic—Veronica Chandler and Kathereine the Songbringer.
"Fuck,"
Shiv whispered.
The ghost of a smile appeared on Jessica's face. "Yeah. Fuck. When I woke up from that story, and I turned around in bed, and… and he wasn't there, I knew that there was no more hope. They had me. They didn't need to threaten me with torture anymore. I folded. They sing me that song and tell me that story, and I'm with him. I am. He's
real
. You don't get it. You would
never
get it unless she did it to you. And she's going to do it to you one day, kid. You're going to lose someone, and she's going to give it to you. She's going to whisper that sweet fantasy so good with her tongue that it becomes real, and that song is going to turn the world around you into something you could only dream of. No, better than what you can dream of. And you're going to hate the real world every time you return. Every time. Every time!"
Shiv flinched at the intensity in her voice. "Is… is that why you looked the way you did when you were at the bar?" he asked, taking a step back. "There's just no stimulation that lives up to that, huh? You're just passing the time while you're here, and you're living for those moments that aren't real—"
"They're real to me!" Jessica almost shouted. "They're real to me," she said again. Her voice fell quiet. Her fingers dug into her bedsheets. "They're real, alright? I—I know he's not actually here, but it's real to me. You can judge me if you want. You can think that you're better than me if you want. But let me tell you this: I'm not the only one who chose the felling Ambrosia. I'm not. You're going to be next. Someday, somehow, you're going to choose that. I thought I was better. I wasn't. And neither are you."
The room was swallowed by a flood of discomfort. Shiv stared at the Legend and realized she wasn't that. She had the Tier, she had the skills, but she wasn't really a Legend. She was barely a Pathbearer anymore. She belonged to someone else, and she was consumed. Ruled by fantasy.
Sage of the Enkindled Heart:
And we have her greatest weakness. Her loyalty isn't to the Republic at all. It's to what Veronica can provide—Jackie Hawgrave, her lost love. Everything she does now is because she can't let go, and because she doesn't want to be here. She likely has a hard time even facing people like her family because she cannot turn away from the past, and they remind her that time moves on.
"Why are you telling me all this?" Shiv finally asked, his voice quiet.
Jessica didn't reply at first. She made a gesture that he couldn't decipher, and after a few moments, simply shook her head. "You know, I was just thinking that. Maybe I feel bad for you. Maybe I don't think that you deserve what's going to happen to you. Maybe I'm just in the mood for something unusual. I don't know. Does it matter?"
"Yeah," Shiv said. "Yeah, it matters. Because, well, because I might be able to provide you with more than a fantasy."
The Giantsbane became as if a statue in terms of stillness. When she moved again, there was a dangerous gleam in her eyes. "Alright, I'm gonna need you to explain that. The fuck are you saying?"
"Rusty," Shiv said. "You saw her. You saw Rose Van Erren while you had Blackedge inside of you. Did you tell her?" He gestured at Jessica. "Did you let her know?"
The dimensional blade hesitated, but Jessica didn't.
"Yeah, the illusion," Jessica said. “What about her? Come on, kid, you can’t use a fake to—”
"It's not an illusion!" Shiv snapped. "She's real. She's back. Back from the dead." He cut Jessica off before she could respond with outrage or offense. "I'm not bullshitting you. You told me a bunch about you, well, here's something about me. I'm Shiv. I'm called the Deathless because that's my Path, and that's my Path because I'm some kind of fucked-up experiment made by Udraal Thann intended to resurrect the Great One. Before that, he's going to use me to try and resurrect his mother. How that works, I don't know. I do know this, however: Approximately a month or so back, I gained a Skill Evolution, and that caused Rose Van Erren to crawl out from my soul. As far as anyone can tell, it's her. In the flesh. She's missing some skills, but it's her real soul, her memories are the same, and her personality hasn't changed."
"The fuck's your game now, kid?" Jessica asked. There was genuine anger rising inside her. Enough that even her strange, tranquil core couldn't douse the flames.
"Not playing any game at all," Shiv said. "You want to talk to her? I can arrange that, but I'm going to need some assurances from you, and I'm going to need to discuss some other terms with you."
The rival Legend laughed. "You must think I'm drunker or stupider than I look right now."
"I don't," Shiv hissed. "Look, I know it's hard to believe, but you know who Udraal Thann is. Think about why I would lie to you. You want some more honesty? Here: I want to know where one of Maiden's temporal gates is because I need them. I need them so I can save the people I care about. So I don't have to suffer my own Jackie."
Jessica's body tensed, her fists clenched, and her dimensional blade slithered through the air, hovering before her, presenting its hilt so that she could grab it.
Shiv sighed. "Look, I didn't come here wanting to—" He stopped himself. "Okay, part of me wants to hurt you for what you did to my ass. But right now, we have the chance to do something that matters. We can help each other. If you don't trust me, then..." She looked over her shoulder. "Cripple, is there anything you can say to her?"
Radio didn't reply. The Deathless gritted his teeth. "Alright, stay silent, then. Fucking hells. Jessica, I'm not bullshitting you. Rose Van Erren
did
get resurrected by me. I can do that. How? I told you before, I still don't know. But Udraal does. And Udraal wants to do a lot more than just resurrect a person. So, if he can bring back a god, then—I'm not saying that I definitely can. I'm not promising anything, but, you know…"
"You said you have a way for me to speak to her?" Jessica asked. There was no more playfulness in her voice, no more rage. It was all cold, all unflinching intent.
"Yeah," Shiv replied. “Yeah, I do. I know you still might not trust me, but—”
“Take me to her,” Jessica said without preamble. She got up, and to Shiv's surprise, Rusty swept through her. Instead of being cut, her body shifted. A magical layer of flickering blackness flowed over her, and in its place, the inertia armor she wore into battle surfaced. "Take me to her," Jessica repeated once more. "I want to see her. I want to see for myself this ‘resurrection.’ After that, we can talk about whether I'm going to put you down, or we can negotiate about what you want from me."
A quiet breath of tension slipped out of Shiv. "Alright, that's fair. But we're going to be dealing with some people you might not find trustworthy."
Jessica scoffed. "Please, kid, whoever your sketchy friends are, I doubt they're worse than the crowds and Pathbearers I used to run with. Hells, I even had to work together with that creep Hades Hymn a few times under Veronica's orders. And that guy made my skin crawl. Motherfucker smells bad, and I saw him talking to a book made from human skin once. Bleh. Trust me, I can deal with weird.”
A beat followed. Shiv coughed. "Well, since you worked with him before…"
"Oh, fuck me," Jessica groaned. "Really? Hymn? Me and my big felling mouth. I'm regretting this shit already. I'm gonna need another drink or three before I go…"

.
!
260 Loyalty [II]