“Nice.” Casimir said. He rubbed his dirty hands on his pants.
Priority Warning!
“Warning? About what?” He said, confused. With how his sight was, he could not see if an attacker was approaching.
You have ten excess Obedience Points ready for assignment to statistics. Further inaction will trigger automatic allocation. Would you like to assign your points?
“Yes. Yes, I would like to distribute my points. Um, ah, can I get—"
Warning! Essence levels depleted by repeated usage of Skillset and time elapsed. Powering down user access to restricted mode in twelve seconds until the next infusion.
“Wait! Assign one point each to all six stats, and then one more to Vitality, Perception, Fortitude, and Strength!” said Casimir, trying for a useful spread. Who knew what he might be required to do and what stat would be best for it? His internal organs writhed in him, coming alive with their own purposes and straining against the tissues that confined them. Muscles thickened, retinas detached and then reattached themselves in a superior configuration, and his brain contorted into a better sculptor than nature’s vision. For a brief, sweet moment the shadowy haze in the open air lifted. And then Casimir looked for what he had been missing. Out past the fenced landscape of his family, beyond the estate district’s carved hollow was a viewport that let the rich observe the subterranean world through a peephole.
All it gave Casimir was a glimpse of true reality. That was enough.
Past the open keyhole resided the empty abyss and the other proud pillars of Salvation II that stood defiant against physics by their own merits. Except the abyss was not empty. The void was not just darkness and air, and the pillars were not standing against gravity and erosion by themselves.
“Oh. Oh, oh, gods, I have to,” Casimir panicked. “I have to tell someone.”
With Perception’s true sight and Observation’s passive ability, he saw veins as wide as his father was tall, vessels that pulsed with seething lightning and murky blood. They issued forth from the Spire from pores that throbbed with Dreadshine’s blue radiation, and the veins stabbed across the miles of cavern air into the other stalagmites. His stomach sickened, Casimir placed his hand against the ground and wondered if the stone was alive. The Spire had to be. It was almost organic. The glowing pores in its surface made him search for a word. Trypophobia. The contents of his belly spilled out as he retched. Bile coated the ground.
Unable to bear to look anymore, he chose to inspect the changes to his stats and in the same moment found that the shining letters and numbers on his arm were fading.
“No. No!” Casimir shouted, pawing at his inner arm. What was left in their place as a remnant was a series of angry red scars all in a line. They matched up perfectly to the size and shape of the Dreadshine numerals, but they were without grandeur. Lifeless would be the wrong term, as they looked downright feverish to the point of seeming infected.
It's alright, it will be okay, I just need to make sure that I get back on time. Barasa will give me more. What’s a little bit without it? I don’t need my arm to glow to know that I still have a place. Casimir thought. His arm throbbed, the skin around the dimmed marks reddening and puckering at the edges.
Casimir grit his teeth, his green eyes wide. This was agony. His father likened the loss of the System to addiction and withdrawal from alcohol, but that was off, way past off. This was not an inverse of an emotional high or just a dependency developed, it was like there was a wound and an active infection going. One that was only halted in its place when he had energy, Essence, infused into him. Could this kill him? And if so, how long did he have? Barasa might have planned to intercede at some point, but he might have also been expecting the charge he had given away to last longer.
“No. I refuse to die like this. Not in the dirt.” Casimir said, struggling to his feet as waves of dizziness came over him. His arm was swelling to a hideous extent. Sausages for fingers, a hunk of meat for a forearm. That only made him more determined. If he was going to die or be incapacitated, he would not be found lying on his side like a wounded animal with a disfigurement that terrible. The young man made it three shuddering steps before he fell and smashed his chin into a bed of lichen. Footsteps came running, a voice calling.
“Young master, young master!” The night guard said. “Oh gods above, your arm! We have to get you inside, you need medical attention.”
“No.” Casimir slurred.
“What? You’re delirious, sir, you must let me help you.” The guard said back. He sounded scared enough for the both of them.
“No.” Casimir repeated. “I will… I will make it on my own. You may not help me.” There was no honor in that.
“Do not shame yourself with cowardice. You must switch off your Observation or walk onwards sightless. I won’t allow a fragment of my will to degrade his honor.” Barasa said. The man, self-interested or not, had done something for Casimir that no one else did. He provided an example. The priest was someone to emulate. A higher standard, not just a richer or more connected one.
“I am a fragment of an exalted human’s will.” Casimir whispered. And with that sentiment he dragged himself to the door, blood leaking down his face to feed the fungal ecosystem.
“Sir, I must insist, please, your father will be angry with me if I don’t assist you.” The guard fretted. The burly man was reduced to a mother hen around a problem that he could not hit, yell at, or force a result from without getting in more trouble than he would in doing nothing.
“My father will understand.” Casimir assured him, each word coming in between staggered breaths. Maksim Shuisky would understand about this, more than most things. The only better way would be to provide some plan for making money from the suffering.
“At least allow me to take that cup from you, sir.” The guard pleaded. “Let me do that much.”
He was delirious with pain, but he thought he might have fought the man tooth and nail over it even without it. Did it matter whether Casimir held it? It did. He could not explain why but some vague mixture of upholding his promise to bring it back in one piece and the desire to hold onto the last thing he had Observed had its grip on him. The refusal to give ground in any way was important, just as it was to salvage whatever he had and to maintain determination.
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This isn’t just masochism, this is training. Barasa would expect more than what the average person can give, and I’ll be asked to give more. If I can’t push myself through pain, then I don’t deserve the Ascendancy’s System. Casimir thought. “Fight.”
“Sir?”
“Fight!” He hissed, making it to the door. It had been shut when he left and his head sagged against it, blood marring the clean and stately surface. His arm was growing numb, a fact that scared him more than when it was burning like fire from inflammation. “Fight!” With an unstable stance that more pushed against the door than slid up it, Casimir raised himself upward. Ascend. Climb the distance.
Never had such a short length of height felt so high. For all his human weakness could tell him, the rise to stand and open a simple doorknob with his left hand was an altitude change as drastic as going from the lowest part of the Spire to the highest. His lungs burned and his legs stumbled, but in the end that doorknob twisted, and the door opened inwards. Casimir’s weight and the motion of the door swinging open risked a fall.
“Don’t fall!” The guard said.
You’re damn right that I won’t fall. I will not fall. Casimir thought. And if he did fall despite his will and his passion?
Then I would get back up again. As many times as necessary until I had either done what needed to be done or I’m dead. He vowed. By the time the Ascendancy saw him for the first time, by the time that Barasa saw him again, Casimir would forge himself into their perfect candidate. They were unknowable so he would become something inscrutable in motive to the average person. Unfathomable save that whatever the mission was, his performance stood out. He wanted to make it so that if any other person were to look at him that they could not do as he did rather than just that they would not.
“Harden yourself. Harden your mind. Harden your soul. To steel, to diamond,” said Casimir. That resolve felt physical too. It was filling him up, a wire frame phasing through his bones to hold him upright. Once the fear left him, so did the pain. Speaking was coming more easily. That was a relief. As was standing, funnily enough. Even his right arm was starting to come back to paleness rather than engorged purple and red.
“What happened?” He wondered. In the scars on his arm, there was just a hint of light coming the raised lines of the markings.
Emergen… sourc… of Essence… accepted… Abrogation backlash… mitigated… Powering d—
An extra source of Essence accepted? From where? Casimir wondered. The other strange thing he noticed was that as much as it was the same narration heard only by himself, it sounded off. Somehow different. Like it had more emotion than it usually did. That tension almost colored it red. Strange as it was to say it that way, when he only perceived it as a voice in his head, but it certainly felt that way. Tasted that way. The stuttering stops and reluctant pauses in another voice might have felt anxious or tired, but smeared with that emotion it made Casimir imagine someone too angry to speak, a person who could only manage to get a few syllables out or a word before they had to stop again.
Acquire… Acquire new S-Type Essence from…
Annoyingly, it cut off there without telling him what S-Type Essence was or from where it was being obtained from. He didn’t even know what the type he’d already gotten was or where it had been gotten either.
Y/N?
He narrowed his eyes. It was hard to tell what was best.
The issue with my arm was the lack of power being present, but I caused that issue by haphazardly testing things. That said, I cannot let myself run out of power either. The questions are, how long do I have and what will getting this “S-Type” of Essence require?
He decided it was best to be rational yet bold.
“I will be going up to my bedroom.” Casimir told the guard. “No, you can’t have the cup, I’m keeping it for now, but you do have my permission to catch me if I fall or something while I go up the stairs.”
He had no intention of making a commitment to either ‘Y’ or ‘N’ before he had gotten to the comfort of a bed to collapse on should he need it. The trip up the stairs had him breathing heavily, but still, he could not help but marvel at his restored arm. Casimir thought he could guess what had fixed it. He had already been rewarded by the System with Obedience points once for completing a quest, why could there not be other set mechanisms of reward? Everything seemed to have been healed when he rallied his strength at the end by following Barasa’s example. That had to be it. He was not sure what to think if it was not an internal supply activated upon the right conditions.
“Will you be alright, sir?” The guard said nervously. The man stared at Casimir’s arm, it was hard to tell whether it was out of religious devotion or concern for his own job.
“Yes, thank you.” Casimir said, closing the door of the room and sitting on the edge. He had destroyed the sheets with dirt, but he found it hard to care. He rubbed the lightly glowing scars. Still dim. “I’m ready.”
Y/N?
“Yes.” Casimir said. This time he felt something wrench at his mind. There was siphoning sensation in his head and his spine, like a vampire drinking fluid from out of them. Moments later, he began to feel heady, his thoughts a haze and his body feeling like it was floating. There was nothing to grasp onto, his whole sense of self was just… slipping away. It’s taking from me. Casimir realized, staring at his hands and struggling to remember that they were, in fact, his and attached to his body. The flow of his substance being diverted into the brands shifted slightly at the thought. Before, it took from me too. The Essence is my essence, or drawn from another human, parts of the body and the mind.
The stream of S-Type Essence twisted upon itself, the siphon growing more refined in its draw from him. The flow stopped and he heard a phantom bing from an unheard bell.
Your emergency source of S-Type Essence has been accepted.
“Your voice is different now.” Casimir noted. The other variant before he had just filled the new type was angry, but this one sounded distant and even disdainful, no matter how polite the words were. Like it was too proud to take notice of him.
Would you like to finish the merge of your two transferred donations?
“Yes. Yes, I would.” Casimir said.
Error.
“What’s wrong?” Casimir asked.
Merger requires synchronization with human framework. Non-standard physiology detected.
“Oh. That makes sense. Could you recalibrate away from the current frame to something else?”
Yes. Please make a Level Three confession for merger.
“I don’t understand what that is.” Casimir said.
An admittance of one’s sins openly.
Casimir told the System the worst thing he had ever done.
“Well?” said Casimir.
The confession must be to another. Openly so as to invite punishment. To call down retribution unto yourself.
The voice had become two, detachment and emotion blending with each other on some words and separating on others.
“I can’t do that. Not for that one.”
Then say another or wait for a new sin to emerge.
Casimir did not know what the consequences of waiting would be and he only had one large enough to stain his hands.
“Alright. Can I say it to someone who already knows the truth?” said Casimir, gathering himself when the System affirmed it. It was time to see Ekaterina.
----------------------------------------
Casimir Maksimovich Shuisky
Stats:
-STR:2
-VIT:2
-CHA:1
-PER:2
-FOR:2
-DEX:1
Skills:
-Observe Lvl 3
Traits: Shuisky Heir, Inverted Human
Allegiances: Shuisky Family, Cult of the Delving Wyrm, The Ascendancy