Path of the Deathless

244 (I) Insight [II]

-Encyclopedia Apocalyptia: Atlas of the Flesh Scryer244 (I)

Insight [II]

The world around Shiv came awash with bright redness. It was the color of Biomancy calcifying before his very eyes. As he took in the body and mangled flesh of the goblin, a representation of her materialized over her form like an overlay of mana. Constellations and microspells crusted over her as if an exoskeleton.

Then, suddenly, it winked away.

“Malcolm, come on,” Maxime called, using her Biomancy to apply a final bit of mending to the goblin’s heart. “Don’t miss the lower valve.”

“I've got it,” Malcolm replied.

Shiv gave a vague grunt and tried to summon the mana overlay once more. He focused on the goblin, and in a surge of color, her Biomancy simulation returned. For a moment, he wondered if he had only developed the ability to see someone as a magical simulacrum of their own biology for his new Skill Fusion, but there was something else. Every other body in the room was glowing as well. He saw how he was glowing as well. There were aspects of him that shone in resonance with her biology, with her simulation.

And then there were those who shone brighter. In the corner of Shiv's left eye, he picked out other goblins in the room immediately. They were as if beacons, casting their Biomancy high in arcing streams that led back to the patient Shiv had just treated, and he realized what this skill allowed him to trace. The moment he focused on another one of the goblins, his senses began to pull toward them. The faint red trail wasn't just a vector painting their location. It was also a rope, a chain that allowed him to pull his own senses out of his body.

Shiv didn't fight it. He could hear Maxime saying something, hear Malcolm arguing with her, but then the Deathless’s senses were in flight, accelerating toward another one of the patients.

For the briefest of seconds, his biology merged with theirs. He sank into their body. He saw the world from their perspective. Things were blurry, and his body felt uncomfortable. His insides were impossibly tight. His muscles felt like they were sapped, felt like they were ripping apart. And then there was that weight inside of him, that weight that made his very blood curl, that made the oxygen hard to flow, that made his lungs shrivel. It was lodged deep right in the back of his spine, but he couldn't stay. Opening his mouth hurt; being alive hurt. Being awake was too much. He wanted to black out, but every time he closed his eyes, everything came ablaze with pulsations of fire. Every heartbeat was torment, and there was something heavy stuck in his lower left rib…

Shiv returned to himself as the merging ended. He slipped back across the connection and staggered back, shaking his head. “Whoa.”

Helix sounded like he was on the verge of screaming his demands out loud and giving away his presence.

Shiv looked upon the skill he'd gained once more and let out a breath.

The orc Biomancer began laughing aloud.

Shiv frowned at that assertion.

Shiv hated that he didn't have a good comeback for that.

Adam sighed. Shiv could feel the Gate Lord's exhaustion.

Shiv narrowed his eyes at the goblin. He expanded her biological mana simulation with a thought and looked over the damage inflicted upon her body. It took him a second to isolate the incision he'd made on her chest, but he was searching for something else.

With a little concentration, he isolated the crystallized blood vessels still afflicting her and followed them back to the source. The mithril seed was now missing, but every single vessel grew denser and brighter the closer they got to the point between her diaphragm and her stomach.

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Adam asked.

he replied. He focused on that spot, and he pinged it twice. All around him, the Atlas changed. Instead of simply highlighting the other goblin patients in the room, he now watched as almost every single victim from the Mithril Refinery explosion lit up. Their circulatory systems came aglow while the rest of their biological simulations dimmed. Yet there were lines of silver intermingled with the blood. The crystallization process revealed itself to be a sprawling network of woven strands, and the mana seeds nested in every individual were embedded in different places.

Maxime called out to Shiv, but he halted time. He needed to buy himself a moment so he could observe, so he could take in everybody around him.

He studied the patients and took his time, but just as the counter-chronomatic wave was about to shred his temporal shell asunder, he noticed a pattern that was congruous among all of them. A pattern that saw a dense concentration of those silvery veins. There was a nexus at their cores. It was always close to their heart, somewhere nearby.

The ones that were crystallizing faster had a shard or two splintered near their chest. The ones that were in yellow, however, they mostly had the seeds embedded in their arms, legs, or somewhere far away. The ones that were listed green, meanwhile, had the shards embedded mostly in their skin. They, too, were afflicted, but they weren't going to be suffering from a crystallization of the heart anytime soon.

Atlas of the Flesh Scryer 52 > 53

Shiv said telepathically as soon as he dropped his temporal shell.

Adam asked with surprise.

Shiv shared a few of his memories with the Gate Lord, and Adam hummed with fascination.

Solving the mystery of where the mithril seeds were was only part of the puzzle. Now he needed to consider a treatment. His Shapeless Tides could probably shatter the seeds, but if he simply stopped time and started breaking the mithril inside of them, then that would raise questions.

Miraculous cures happened every now and again, usually when someone achieved a Skill Evolution that altered their biology. But if an entire intensive ward of people suddenly went from dying from crystallization to being utterly healthy, yeah, that would draw a lot of heat.

Heat Shiv didn't need.

"Marcus!" Maxime said.

Shiv blinked. “Uh, yeah?”

“I've been calling you for a few seconds. Are you alright?" She waved at him. He realized the goblin's chest was now entirely healed. She and Malcolm had fused their power, mended the goblin's open wounds, and knitted her veins and arteries back together.

"It's just..." Shiv swallowed, trying to come up with a good excuse to justify his distraction. "You know, it's a lot of blood and quite a bit of shock."

Maxime gave him an understanding nod. "Yeah, I remember looking and acting like that when I started. But just listen to what I do and try to stay focused, alright? It's overwhelming in the beginning, but you'll get used to it."

Malcolm came by and bumped Shiv on the shoulder affectionately. "Eh, don't worry about this one: If tons of rubble couldn't put our golden boy down, I don't think a little blood’s going to be his undoing."

They moved on to the next patient, which, to Shiv's surprise, was a humanoid automaton. Usually, bots went to mechanical repair facilities. It was one of the major advantages of being an automaton. Short of sustaining catastrophic damage to their core or their central processing system, most of their components could be replaced, with the only issue being the quality and material of the replacement components. You couldn't just slam a titanium bolt into a bot that didn't have Master-Tier Toughness. It would simply convert the bolt over time to suit their body and further cause potential component mana rejection or material decay.

"Oh, Cripple, looks like we got a fellow here," Malcolm muttered.

"Malcolm," Maxime chided. "No racial epithets while we're treating the patients."

"Nuh-uh, I can say it." Malcolm pointed at itself. "I guess the Northern Hope is really overflowing if we're getting bots here too. Solar Com must be utterly—"

"There was an explosion at Solar Com," the bot patient declared. It sounded more coherent than the goblin, but there was still a crackle of weakness in its voice. “No space there. A bomb went off earlier. Returnists…”

“Oh, those shits,” Maxime grumbled darkly.

Malcolm didn’t comment there, but Shiv read a hint of anger from the bot Biomancer’s posture.

Shiv studied the automaton patient. Aside from having a head shaped like an anvil and six arms meant for different digging and refining functions, it looked mostly humanoid. However, its chassis was cracked wide open, with several different marks lining its interior. Here was something Shiv couldn't do. His Atlas couldn't peer into the bot at all. He couldn't sense anything amiss with the machine; it didn't even light up in his vision. He'd missed it earlier because of this.

Shiv announced to the passengers inside his cape.

Helix spat.

This engendered a flare of anger from Tulveg.

Helix started laughing performatively.

Tulveg insisted, infuriated at the orc's open hostility. His words were lined with a dangerous edge towards the end.

Before the argument between the orc and the vampire could spiral, however, Adam offered something useful.

Adam clarified.

Shiv asked.

Adam shuddered mentally.

Shiv wondered how he was going to let Malcolm know without seeming omniscient, or at least very, very questionable. He was only an assistant medic, experiencing his first day of class. Worse, he was supposed to be traumatized as well. Putting those things together meant that Shiv had to sell this as something of happenstance or pure luck. And that's what he did. He leaned over, staring at the automaton patient's small chassis.

"Hey, guys?" Shiv said, pointing at one of the long wounds. "I think I saw something glinting inside there."

Both Malcolm and Maxine waved for him to step aside, and they looked down. Malcolm's fan head expanded even larger. Instead of projecting a wave of Biomancy this time, it was a piercing noise that felt like drills going into Shiv’s ears.

"Someone call Maiden, because we have a genius right here! That's another sweet find, Marcus. You sure you weren't some kind of bot whisperer up there in the north?"

Shiv shook his head. "I haven't had that many experiences with automata, to be honest."

"Well, you're starting out right." Malcolm leaned down and extended its middle finger into the other bot’s body. It let out a grumbling groan that sounded like the grinding of gears.

"You know where the seed is?" the bot patient asked.

"Me? No, but our little machine whisperer here," Malcolm said, nudging Shiv with his heel, "managed to guess it right in one go."

Deception 47 > 48