Chapter 377: Education [II] |
This Vessel of Pestilence and Panacea is rated as an early-tier Endhound skill, meant to hold and potentially terraform worlds for future redistribution to new inclusions under the Integrated Union of Chorus. Designated to develop toward biosphere-altering evolutions, This Vessel of Pestilence and Panacea allows the Endhound to grow and spread plague flies as if they are extensions of its body. These plague flies will spread across the land, claiming sips of sickness from surrounding organic life forms, absorbing every style of disease that afflicts them and taking that back into the Endhound itself.
With every disease, virus, prion, or affliction absorbed by the Endhound, its physical attributes will grow more enhanced. Its size will swell dramatically, and the swarm of plague flies it controls will expand until they blanket cities. But from here, the skill’s usage becomes twofold. For the Endhound, the diseases it consumes will be boiled away and forged into strength. However, it also gains a catalog of diseases within itself, ready to be spun up, mixed, matched, and then deployed against potential adversaries who are weak to more subtle forms of biological decay.
At the same time, this also allows it to treat and alleviate anyone suffering from a similar kind of disease, serving as both an elixir of restoration for populations that we wish to preserve and also a means of apocalyptic pacification against worlds that are hard to wear down through direct kinetic strategies.
ATTENTION: A chain of special permissions and conditional requirements needs to be met before the deployment of an Endhound possessing this Skill. As it is a cross-apocalyptic and terraforming skill, special care needs to be taken when directing the Endhound on its rampage. Furthermore, additional units must be in place to observe the damage dealt to the ecosystem and potentially restore a cascading collapse resulting from inadvertent plague mutation before a word is unnecessarily lost.
Should a rogue Endhound possessing such a skill be encountered, pull back beyond the effect radius and engage at a far distance. If this is impossible, ensure that a Mythic-Tier Biomancer is in the sector to fully remedy the dangers posed by this skill in short order…
—Beasts of the End, Second Edition — Farwalker Endhound Deployment Manual
377
Education [II]
The first thing Shiv noticed, aside from Isabella somehow being up and moving, was how much bigger he was than before. His body was a bomb of building strength. His muscles felt like orichalcum cords, growing stronger with every passing second. A rush of delightful electricity flowed through his blood, filling him with a raging momentum that yearned to be set free.
And then there were the flies. He could feel them as they clung to his back, spreading out in a thick buzzing veil that drifted behind him, flapping to and fro in an immense, pitch-black swarm, as if a parody of the dimensional cape which adorned his Severed Shadow. Each fly was the size of his fist, but disturbingly, they didn't have insectoid heads. Instead, they were things of flesh and robust muscle, their skulls resembling smaller, more shriveled versions of him, while their rears were thick nubs of pulsating tissue. They glistened with sweat and possessed stingers made from bone and enamel—hollow stingers that had organic straws on the inside meant to siphon and digest.
“What the f—” His words trailed off as he noticed pointed vectors flowing through them. Shapeless Tides. With every heartbeat, there came a rush of overflow vectors that spread out through his body, gathering in his limbs, clinging to his torso, rushing across his jaw, and sweeping through his hair. However, as new Shapeless Tides were generated, those along the periphery were pushed outward, were packed tighter and tighter, and some went circulating through his pestilential swarm as well. The flies felt like they were a part of him, and his Legendary Physicality treated them as a portion of his body.
More importantly, whatever they touched, he felt. He felt Isabella. He felt Roland. He felt Jessica. He felt Valor. He even felt himself from a strange outside perspective.
“Ah, Deathless, you are awake!” As Shiv looked up, he found Ekkihurst marching through the doorway, his crimson eyes glowing with glee. Behind him, there was a thin barrier of Biomancy preventing any of Shiv's new plague flies from escaping the room. “Once more, your robustness astounds. Only eight hours of partial incoherence. Eight hours and a Heroic Disease Resistance Skill Evolution.”
As Ekkihurst rushed toward him, Shiv realized the top of his head now barely rose past Shiv's waistline. Even so, he took hold of Shiv's hand without fear, vigorously shaking it as if congratulating a fellow scholar on some important discovery. A few of Shiv's plague flies bounced off Ekkihurst's body, and one landed upon his head, almost as large as his entire skull. And then, almost instinctively, it stung him, sinking its animal straw deep into his tissue and attempting to drain. But Ekkihurst refused to let the fly suck anything away, and with a slight exertion of his will, Shiv quickly commanded that plague fly to release him.
“Sorry,” Shiv grunted. “It just kind of did that. I wasn't even thinking.”
“But you are!” Ekkihurst corrected. “You are aware, subconsciously, that the flies are tied to you. They were born of your body. In the beginning, there were only a few, but as they drained more and more sickness, their numbers flourished. You went from having a few stray fleas to a swarm, and their individual sizes swiftly increased as well. Every single one of them is a carrier but also a potential remedy for a contagion. They drew away the sickness from all the other victims, and allowed you to actively concentrate the plague inside yourself even without the transplantation! This skill is… I have never seen its like! It is a wonder! A majesty!”
“It is a Tarrasque skill,” Helix spat, speaking from the doorway. “And I told you, vampire, to notify me the first moment he got up!”
“Ah, I apologize, Hero Helix. I was simply too excited. I wanted to see how our Deathless was doing!”
“He's not our Deathless. He's my Insul! And I will not see him lying—gah!” One of Shiv's plague flies collided head-on with the orc's nose. Helix stumbled back, clutching at his face as the fly promptly latched onto his forehead. “Oh, Challenger—get off of me!”
With the flick of his Biomancy, he wrenched the fly off of him, and Shiv felt an unnatural tug pull at a portion of his disembodied flesh. The plague fly bounced off a wall before it flapped its skin wings harder, taking to the air once more.
Helix did a double-take as he shuddered in disgust. “I see that those wretched creatures are still there.”
“Hero-Biomancer!” Ekkihurst cried, aghast. “Do not skill-shame!”
“I'm not skill-shaming; I'm just saying it looks wretched, horrific. They look like an artistic rendition of a fly created by an artist who only had Shiv as a reference when it came to organics.”
This caused Ekkihurst to snap his fingers. “You may be a genius here, O Biomancer. I think this is quite accurate. After all, one's skill only has their legend to reference, and so that might be it. His skill only has his organic tissues to go off of, and when it created these flies, it thus based them on him.”
“That's nice and all,” Jessica hissed from a corner of the room, “but can we get this skill to try again? Because looking at these flies is going to make me hurl.” She gagged and flinched every time one of the Shiv-flies droned near her. “I swear, kid, there's something deeply fucking wrong with you and probably fucking wrong with Udraal as well. Every one of your skills seems to be designed to give other people nightmares.”
Roland, meanwhile, stood still as a statue. But not because he was unfazed; if Jessica's heart was cold with primal fear, then Roland's emotional core was practically engulfed by an active blizzard. The plague flies creeped Jessica out, but left the Town Lord utterly petrified.
“Roland might have a phobia of insects,” the Harbinger noted. “How useful to know…”
Harbinger of the Tripartite Ruin 323 > 326
“Don't think I can change the flies, though I do kinda agree with you.” Shiv frowned at a few of the buzzing Shiv-sects. “I'd like it more if they were more bug and less me. Wait, Helix, did you say this was a Tarrasque skill?”
The orc pushed up his new spectacles and hummed. “Yes. This Vessel of Pestilence and Panacea. It allows the great beast to spread its influence across the land, but also to drink in every disease it encounters to form a potent, devastating cocktail which it can use to infest entire cities at once. It spreads the plagues of its own re-engineering, or potentially cures them, for what is a virus but also a double-edged sword that can be wielded against itself after a proper re-forging?”
“Well said, well said,” Ekkihurst praised.
“Why, thank—hmph!” Helix barely caught himself. “Regardless, with every plague you drink in, you will be able to distribute them to your victims through these flies, I believe. It will only make you stronger and increase your size. So long as you concentrate more of that power within yourself, you will grow, and so will that swarm.”
“That's useful and all, but can I still shrink down? Because this is gonna make it really hard for me to fit through certain doorways. Like that one, for example.” He stared at the exit. Even if he angled himself sideways and got down on his knees, he wouldn't be able to squeeze his way out. His torso was wider than the door, both across and from front to back.
“I cannot claim to know this. My direct experience with the skill is limited to being killed by it once in a past life, and testing of its environmental after-effects was impossible due to the Tarrasque destroying the world I was trying to capture.” Helix squinted at one of Shiv’s flies. “Seeing as they are tied to your biomass, though, potentially you can distribute more of your organic matter into them and cause yourself to be reduced down to a more… acceptable mass?”
Shiv tried focusing as he attempted to shed his biomass into more plague flies, but nothing spilled out from him. He remained as he was, closer to the size of a small building than a man. “Yeah, no, Helix. This isn't exactly a shape-shifting skill. Anyone else got any ideas?”
“I must confess that I am altogether unfamiliar with this skill,” Valor admitted. “Which is quite a confession on my part, for I have seen a great many skills, even with my memories partially obscured. I think I would recall something like this.”
“Same goes here,” Jessica added. “I fought someone who had Biomancy and Beekeeping fused together once. He grew some pretty massive mutated bees, but they were, well, bees, and not plague carriers. They didn't look like the guy making them either, and cutting them down wasn't an issue. This, though, is grotesque. Looking at this shit turns my stomach. Congrats, kid. You've outdone yourself. Another nightmare in the works.”
She began clapping sarcastically, and Rusty floated beside her to join Jessica's sarcastic applause using two hands of static mana.
Another plague fly zoomed over Roland's head, and he nearly flung himself through the walls to escape.
“Very promising for our duel to come,” the Harbinger purred. “We can figure out more about how this skill works, but for now—Isabella and the other plague victims: focus on them.”
Adam's fiancée was the ghost of the girl that dwelled in Shiv's memories. She'd never been physically remarkable for a Pathbearer, on the smaller side if anything, but now she was withered, her muscles shrunken, her face gaunt. Her cheekbones protruded from her skin, threatening to breach through flesh. Her eyes were so sunken they were practically pits, and her black hair was almost closer to gray, with her bangs matted to her forehead. She was the very image of someone who'd barely crawled out of death’s embrace, but despite the deprivation that still gnawed at her, there was a light in her brown eyes and a glow to her heart. She was joyous to be alive, in disbelief, rapturous at the second chance she'd been given. All that emotion was flowing towards Shiv. Her thoughts trembled like a sea crashing with raging waves. There was so much she wanted to say, yet none of the words managed to get past each other.
She was at an impasse with herself, but Shiv understood her gratefulness even before a single utterance was offered.
“Adept Isabella,” he said, bowing his head slightly in a grant of courtesy. He looked down at himself and realized he was partially covered by flies and wrapped in brain tissue. The cords were detached from where they once threaded through the walls. Normally, being coated and all that would have felt gross, but considering his new skill and that he would have been naked without such a covering, the flesh-coating was preferred.
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“Legend Shiv,” she replied, licking her dry lips as her throat bobbed. He didn't rush her, gave her time to formulate her thoughts, and speak properly. She was already overwhelmed, and additional pressure wouldn't help. She and the other plague survivors numbered sixteen at the end. A paltry sixteen. Storm clouds followed as a pall over every success; though the Perch had been saved and thousands of Blackedge’s citizens had survived, tens of thousands of others had been slaughtered—Georges among them.
For once, Shiv yearned for a bloodless victory.
But Isabella’s next words broke through his dourness like a beam of sunlight. “You really are a lot bigger now.” Shiv blinked at her, noting how she clutched her medical gown to stop her hands from constantly shivering. “I remember seeing you the day I arrived in Blackedge and during the attack. You were only a bit taller than Adam back then.”
“Oh, yeah, that. Well, got thrown down the Abyss, and the mushrooms there, they do things to you.” Shiv wiggled his eyebrows at her with all the grim severity he could muster.
He must’ve gotten a lot better at acting, because she tensed up, actually believing his words.
Acting 25 > 26
“I'm messing with you.” Shiv gave a slight laugh. The tightness in her chest dissolved, as did the tension residing in all the other plague victims, most of whom were listening and standing or sitting throughout the room. Though some of the survivors only knew him as the Omenborn, his relaxed demeanor gave them a means of relief, but even so, they were wary—and Shiv couldn't blame them. He would have been wary too if a six-meter-tall juggernaut who engulfed a room with head-sized plague flies was looking right at him. That tension was a knot he needed to work at for some time. “So, you got a favorite fly?” he asked, looking between the men and women.
They all looked at him, slack-jawed, most of them unable to process his words. Their skulls held waves of frozen translucent energy. Unlike Isabella, most of their minds were frozen stone-stiff.
Shiv waved them off, forgiving their reluctance to participate in his goofy joke.
Adam’s fiancée distinguished herself twice over when she pointed at one of the flesh-flies clinging to Shiv’s chest. “I think that's the one that drew the sickness out of me. Actually, flies shouldn't have stingers; these things are more like wasps or mosquitoes. Except that those are all insects, and these are clearly made out of human flesh and have mammalian features. If nothing else, this means they are closer to bats.”
“A valid argument,” Ekkihurst mused, nodding along. “But specifically, I believe the most accurate term for these creatures that were born of the Deathless to be Soul Chimera, since they emerge with the transformation of his skill rather than bio-thurgically constructed Chimera, which are the ones I am most familiar with.” He demonstrated that by turning the right side of his face porous. In an instant, bits of bone and tissue sank inward, revealing several hollows and making his skull become akin to a hive. From within those tunnels emerged pulsating insects, each one resembling Ekkihurst himself—much in the same way Shiv’s plague flies mirrored him.
Jessica gagged at the sight. “Biomancy is so fucking gross!”
Roland, meanwhile, was crouched, huddled in a corner with his body wrapped in a cloak of static embers—some kind of Pyromancy-Dimensionality Skill Fusion for escaping bad situations, perhaps.
“Well, whatever they are, that’s the one I like the most,” Isabella insisted. “It's also the first thing I saw when I woke back up.”
And with that statement, Shiv finally noted how there were faint cords of fear leading back to him as well—which explained why he had a notification bearing levels for his Shape of Monstrosity.
Shape of Monstrosity 170 > 173
An apologetic grimace adorned Shiv’s face. “Sorry for the scare.”
“It’s fine—I thought I was delirious. Or in hell.” Isabella tried to grin, but it was clearly forced. “I mean, why else would a huge, vaguely familiar-looking moth-fly with a wicked stinger be stabbing me in the throat?”
“She got the throat?” a nasally voiced muttered. “Come on, why couldn't I get the throat?” Shiv searched for the commenter and found himself staring at a young goblin woman who was leaning against her bedframe and rubbing at her right eye. The moment she realized that Shiv was staring right at her, her legs began trembling, and the fear chain connecting her to him strengthened, causing his head finally to press directly into the ceiling and fracture it.
Shiv bent over even more to avoid poking a hole through the stone. “Yeah, sorry. Didn't mean to do that. Wasn't exactly conscious. Actually, should any of you even be up right now? Are you guys cured?”
“Treated might be the more accurate term,” Helix said, looking over the survivors. “The plague still exists within them—it is buried so deep and connected to their minds after all, and no matter how much your flies drain, it's not going to reach the point where it hollows the true core of the Vicar’s spell clean. However, the plague has been dramatically weakened—because it seems to be fighting a variation of itself re-infected upon them. As such, it's burning away its mana, trying to out-adapt itself. I suspect it will eventually overwhelm this temporary vaccine, but by that point, a secondary injection from the plague flies might be all the extension you need.”
He let out a breath of astonishment. “You have gained an astonishing skill, Insul—but it is without a doubt more built for beast than man, for while you were besotted, your physical shape twisted at several points, and even your Revenant briefly took on the shape of a Tarrasque, only to revert a moment later.”
Shiv stared at Helix. “So… what does that mean?”
The orc hesitated before answering. “Truthfully? I am uncertain.” His body trembled with shame and discomfort as he looked toward Ekkihurst.
“An ignorance shared,” the elder vampire admitted. Something inside Helix stirred, and he regarded the Legendary Biomancer with narrowed eyes. “For now, however, the treatment is working far better than I could have ever imagined—and it was already working so remarkably. Do you know how rare it is for an individual to gain Heroic-Tier Disease Resistance?”
“Not really,” Shiv said.
“It almost never happens for most species,” Helix answered. “The simple fact is, Disease Resistance is hard to train. If you use your Biomancy to cure a disease before it can kill someone, well, that doesn't technically count as their strain; it is more your demonstration of skill. You've stolen their struggle from them. If you don't steal their struggle from them, usually, when a disease reaches a tipping point, they die or at least suffer permanent harm. And if you sustain permanent damage or simply a body so degraded that you need a High-Tier Biomancy to restore you to peak functionality, well, then you are wasted as a Pathbearer, aren't you?”
“Indeed, indeed, and it is a truly tragic thing.” Ekkihurst sighed. “There are so many useful and wondrous skills that we could delve into, but we never reach the point where they are given enough levels to flourish. Do you know that vampires especially are nearly incapable of gaining the Disease Resistance skill?”
“What? Why?” Shiv asked.
“Because the burden is reflected back to the Progenitor,” for a brief moment, Ekkihurst sneered, “or the Eldest of the Bloodline when it comes to plagues, and usually, their biology is perfected and modular—meaning diseases cannot find purchase inside them—at least purely biological sicknesses cannot. But with enough understanding and a smart enough virus…” He laughed. “Let us say that I am very proud of my Master-Tier Disease Resistance. Yet, in a little more than half a day, you have shamed me so. How wonderful. But Helix’ words remain true: The plague survivors are not cured, and so they must stay quarantined and under close watch. When their ailments worsen once more, I wish to see your flies sting them again—extracting the worst of the plague before injecting it back in to serve as a perfect anti-venom. Hah… A Tarrasque Skill—you must tell me more about this, Hero Helix. Your experience is great indeed; in this matter, I must call you my instructor.”
And with every word of praise, Helix’ spine inflated with pride, until he was practically leaning back physically while his head was metaphorically journeying up his own ass. “Well, when one walks the breadth of worlds beyond, they learn and see many things. I was of a clique with a certain group of orcs before: the Endhunters. We tried to stalk and prey on crumbling worlds besieged by Tarrasques, and though those lives didn’t last long, they were amusing and instructive…”
As the orc began to boast about his exploits to the elder vampire, who simply nodded along politely while his empathic core radiated sage-like patience, Isabella looked on at the two with an uncertain expression on her face. She shuffled closer to Shiv, her slippers sliding across the floor. “Hey, uh,” she whispered, trying to keep her voice low. “Is that really an orc and a… vampire?”
“Yep.” He glanced at her mind and then her heart. “You're thinking why the vampire doesn’t resemble the pictures in the bestiary?”
Her mouth fell open slightly. “How did you know?”
“Had that same problem after getting tossed down into the Abyss.”
She gawked. “Wait, I thought you said you were joking about that part.”
“I was joking about the mushrooms, not anything else. I did get thrown down in the Abyss after that raven bastard threw me.”
Her pupils shrank, and she grasped her gown tighter. “I watched him take Adam. I was… I couldn’t do anything to save him.”
“Well, you don’t need to worry about the raven anymore,” Shiv said, thinking back to how he killed the man back in Weave. I've come a long way since Diamond Shell. “He didn’t do so well in the rematch.”
“Rematch?” she said. “You fought him again? Okay, another question: Weren’t you Pathless?”
“I was. Then I died.”
The Young Lady of House Stormhalt looked at Shiv like he just spat a non-sequitur—which it might as well have been without context.
“I died and got my Path. I’m—it’s a lot to explain.” But then Shiv realized something: for the first time in a long time, he did have time. And he was looking at a miracle of his making. Isabella Van Stormhalt and the other plague victims were saved. He was too late to help Georges, but the others could still go home and see their loved ones—they had another chance at life. And it was thanks to him.
“We desired to be more than a brute,” the Harbinger said, savoring the growing warmth that came with this deed. “This is what it looks like. This is what it feels like. A good deed, made possible by a skill doubtlessly meant to spread pestilence, but turned toward a better purpose.”
And with that thought, Shiv sat down on the ground. “Actually, I got time: You wanna hear the long story?”
Isabella nodded slowly and looked around the room. “Is… is there a chair around here somewhere?”
“I’ll go get one!” Roland barked as he flung himself out the front door.
***
As it turned out, Shiv could shrink back down to his original size—well, at least pre-plague size. It happened on instinct and worked entirely counter to how he anticipated; instead of trying to shed more of his biomass into plague flies, he only reduced his stature when he drew them back into his body.
An hour into telling Isabella about his and Adam's adventures, he got tired of the sensation of cold stone pressing against him. He could feel everything his flies touched as they were extensions of his flesh, and so he commanded them all back. Every single plague fly took flight and speared toward him, while those already settled around his body reared back and plunged in deep. Rather than shredding through his flesh, they dove in with blank pulses of unattuned mana—merging with the depths of his being. Each fly vanished upon contact, and soon Shiv shrank down, reduced from the ceiling-breaking size he once possessed to merely being around two meters and thirty centimeters.
“Okay, okay, sorry to interrupt this really, really, really long fight with the... Recollector,” Isabella said, “but is this as small as you get?”
“Yeah, I think so,” Shiv replied. “Those are all the flies.” He rolled his arms, and underneath the silken layer of drying brain tissue, he could feel a simmering heat inside him. The Vicar’s plague now dwelled in his soul and sang sweet nothings to him from within his bones. Shiv was keenly aware of how potent a weapon such a sickness might be, and how much devastation he could cause if he unleashed it on an enemy.
And this skill also levels the more diseases it absorbs—which makes its synergy with my Biomancy insane. If I can actually make some more plagues to hit myself with, that means more flies too. More cures. More size. I can get into a real enhancement loop with myself here…
“Crazy,” Isabella whispered. “Not you—okay, you’re a bit crazy for the whole Corpse-Shedder Skintaker thing, but all those levels—Legendary-Tier in a few months… That shouldn’t be possible.”
“Have you tried coming back from the dead and getting levels for dying instead of staying a corpse?” Shiv countered.
“I don’t think that will work for me as well as it did for you, but you know what? I’ll be sure to make the attempt, if only as an experiment.” Isabella chirped those words in complete earnestness, and Shiv couldn’t sense the slightest hint of mockery or judgment in the girl. Even worn down and confused, there was only one concept he could use to describe her: curious. Endlessly curious. She had so many questions, stopped him constantly to ask about specific details, technologies, and spells.
Yeah. She’s a real thinker. I guess I can see why Adam wanted to marry her.
While he spoke to her, Roland arranged for proper food to be brought to the other survivors and for their families to be notified. There was constant movement outside the room, and Shiv could hear the surviving Arrow guards, Umbral Sisters, and survivors chattering with each other. More than a few times, he heard his own name spoken—in terrified whispers by the townsfolk, but with admiration when proclaimed by the Umbrals.
At some point, Shiv realized he didn’t hate the people of Blackedge so much as he felt bad for them. Sure, they'd treated him badly. Sure, his past was shit.
But now things were different. Life was going up for him, and so many of the people who'd treated him badly or ignored his plight would never get to enjoy another day again, never get to hold the ones they cared for again.
A Glimpse of Perspective: The past is real, but we live in a rushing timestream. All one has is thy present eternal, for that which is behind is prologue, and that which is to come is a mist of mystery yet parted…
A Glimpse of Perspective 97 > 100 (Skill Evolution Imminent)
It took a good few hours for Shiv to go over everything that happened, even with leaving out a lot of details, and during that time, Isabella requested a notebook, a pen, finished twenty-eight kettles of tea, and furiously scribbled notes as she tried to stop herself from breaking down as she learned of Adam’s most recent fate. Shiv watched as her face was scrunched tight—and it was while she was lost to deepest strain that she resembled her father at all.
Havel Van Stormhalt’s visage appeared in the back of Shiv’s mind, wreathed in midnight lightning, but while the man was a zealot who was defined by how much he despised Roland, his daughter was just a devourer of knowledge and an endless wellspring of questions. But for another thing, she refused to let him see just how shaken she was—even as her heart quivered and her mind wailed for something stable to latch onto, she forced herself forward, seeking distractions in the form of a long list of questions.
“I… So I wanted to ask…” She looked at the page before her and bit her lip. Shiv looked over her notebook and saw countless lines scribbled over, crossed out, and then rewritten. The topmost was a question titled “Adam DIVINE???”. Her eyes were locked on that, and her insides tremored. Every question that followed had to do with Adam as well.
“But none of them are what she wishes to truly know,” the Harbinger deduced.
Shiv studied the girl for a long moment before he decided to help her. “You want to go see him?”
Isabella went still. “I… We’re not cured. We need to stay here to avoid spreading the plague.”
“We got two very good Biomancers and lots of other mages. Besides, I got my me-flies. I think we can keep one carrier contained.”
“But Adam—”
“Is currently in a whole other dimension. And didn’t catch anything from you the first time he came to see you.”
“He… came to see me?” she asked, lip quivering.
“Dozens of times. So. You wanna return the favor?”
Isabella drew in a sharp breath through her nostrils, puffed up her cheeks, leaned up so she didn’t spring a tear, and nodded to avoid bursting into sobs.
Shiv smiled. “Alright, Lady Stormhalt. Let’s show you to your sleeping prince.”