NOVEL NEXT Book 3: Chapter 74
Danefer grew more careful with his Griidlords after Crassus died. He had started the war with ten Griidlords. I had personally killed three of them. His margin of advantage had shrunk to two. He needed to spare them. The two remaining turncoat Griidlords had no Pods. They were wild Griidlords from their own lands, their suits would not heal if wounded.
I could imagine what they had been promised. Our suits. No Griidlord would easily give up the power of the suit. They must have believed deeply in the cause of the Green Men to have left their own cities. They must have had faith. They were committed to their paths now. They could not go back, only judgement and death awaited there. They could only endure the path they were on and pray that it ended in the slaving of our Tower, the deaths of our Griidlords, and the chance to start again.
Enki kept us abreast of their troop movements. Balthazar no longer questioned my sources or the validity of my intel. It was the one card we had that allowed us to endure. I had been right, the plans that Enki reported often proved to be false information. Danefer truly suspected that Enki was spying on my behalf. I never ignored the hearsay Enki reported, but I did not act on it. I only trusted the facts. The actual locations and movements.
They tried to circumvent my special eyes. They sent troops without Griidlords in an attempt to surprise, but the disadvantage to their manoeuvres was insurmountable. They struck suddenly when they could, trying to trim my warnings.
They seemed to know more than they should as well. They had their own sources of information. Sources that must have been high in our power structures, for they seemed to know at times what we would do long before the orders were disseminated.
We endured.
The weeks stretched, the war became less a matter of moment-to-moment peril and more one of long, gruelling, attritional combat.
Olaf was not the only one of our Griidlords whose growth had surged forward. Tara, Magneblade, even the mighty Alya all reported level gains that they had not seen in years.
We had the better of the fighting in those weeks. We clashed with Griidlords and nearly took some heads, but never quite closed the deal. We fought with their endless throngs of rough-necked goons. My hands had been red before, but as the weeks passed, I started to lose all sense of the meaning of mortal life. My heart grew numb to the killing.
When the stars aligned, we could send trains. Only one of us on a given trip, but when we knew no major offensive could be pressing, we sent a Griid-train. The war was having a draining toll on our economy, our finances, and our materiel. Tara and Olaf were the lowest levelled of our suits, though Olaf was growing prodigious with the benefit of the synergy skill. I had lamented that skill when I first gained it, seeing it as a hollow replacement for something palpable and offensive. As the war stretched, I saw its value.
As for my other non-offensive skill, Door was a blessing from the universe. By using the Midnight Door I could be anywhere and back. The cost was not nothing. It meant that I lost access to the skill for an entire twenty-four hours after using it to return. But the freedom! And the access! I could be in the Burgh, collecting journals for Katya. I could be with Katya, learning what she had learned. I could be with Dirk, communicating with The Blood, progressing our negotiations. I could be in the monastery basement near Dodge, viewing the books Leona had been tasked with collecting for me, learning the legends of the Griid and its entities without Enki's awareness.
In the middle of the summer, there had been a serious attempt by Buffalo to cross the River Albany from the north. They had forded and bridged it, all without a single Griidlord present. It was Dirk's intelligence that drew us to it. Having no Griidlords at the site may have allowed them to work in secrecy, but when we arrived, it allowed us to murder with wanton effect.
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After that defeat, we had every indication that there was no imminent threat. Tara was assigned to take a train to Minneapolis. I lay in my pod, recovering from minor damage from the battle, trying to imagine an excuse for taking the train for myself when Enki appeared in my head.
"So… hey kiddo… I don't know how to feel about this, but it seems like I've been given a message to deliver to you. Yes, that's right, me, a component of your very god, a being omnipotent—"
I cut in, "You're not omnipotent or else you wouldn't need me for whatever it is you need me for."
"Fine! Fine. A being really super powerful, omniscient—"
Again, I interjected, "Not omniscient. As far as I can tell, you can only see through the eyes of Griidlords."
A grumbling sound filled my mind. "Okay, fuck it then, fine. Do you want to hear your precious message? And don't even think about trying to send this one back. I barely, barely caved to relaying this one. This is an indignity I shall not soon recover from."
I said, "It's Racquel, it has to be."
"Yeah, the foxy lady from the North. Hey, I just realized, it's been… how long since you last both mushed your squishy bits together?"
"What's the message?"
"What? Hmmm? Oh, yeah. She doesn't want you coming to see her."
I spluttered. "What?"
"Hahahaha! Sounds like the spark has gone out, champ!"
I sat in the pod. I knew that could not be true. It had been impossible to come to her, and she had not made her way to me… but still…
Enki continued, "Nah. I'd like to point out, for reasons of personal compulsion, that that was not a lie. It does indeed definitely sound like the spark has gone out based on the information I just relayed. However… it's got more to do with her teammates breathing down her neck."
"What?" Fresh alarm spiked in me.
"Yeah. It looks like all that mushy bit squishing might not have gone completely unnoticed. There's at least some suspicion up there that she's been bumping uglies with a Griidlord from outside the city, and boy oh boy do they not like that. Nothing concrete obviously, or she'd already be dead. Nothing concrete yet anyway. But she can't afford to have you turning up for a lodge hall booty call—see how that rhymed—when she's under special attention."
I felt a terrible impotence. She was so far away, out of reach of my Midnight Door. If something happened to her… "How bad is it?"
"How the fuck should I know. I popped in to see what was cooking in her noodle and decided to treat my very distinguished and worshipped self as a postman. I told you what she told me. In summary, don't go north for boinking or your secret girlfriend will probably be executed… and maybe you too. There. Happy?"
I wasn't happy at all. I lay in the pod, staring out the huge glass wall, just thinking. It was a while before I realized that Enki's presence was still lingering, though oddly silent.
"Enki? Why are you still here?"
Enki said, "There's something else…"
I waited in perfect silence.
Enki said, "We made a deal when you agreed to murder that mentally ill lady on the mountain."
"Don't say it like that."
Enki said, "Fine, fine. We made a deal. On reflection, it probably wasn't cool of you to exact so much price for the service, seeing as how it was partly your fault that Julia needed euthanizing, but one way or the other I agreed to the terms and now…"
I perked up. It could not undo the strain the information about Racquel had just placed on me, but I could do nothing to suppress my sudden excitement. "The door!"
"Yeah, kiddo. I've figured out the door. If you take a stroll down to that little townhouse you've been neglecting, you'll find a little parcel by the back door."
I said, "A parcel? From you? How did you—"
"Don't go asking questions you know I won't answer. Just take the fucking thing and go find out what's behind that them dang door. I gotta tell you the truth, because, you know, I always gotta tell you the truth, but ever since we made the deal I've been itching to find out. And remember, you promised to tell me too."
"I remember."
Enki waited a moment, as though there was something else I should be adding. After a moment I said, "Um… thank you."
"Youuuuuur welcome! This is gonna be fun, kiddo! Or not at all! It might just be a closet, or an escape room, or one of those self-asphyxiating masturbation chambers… probably not the last one, your pops was rich enough he could probably have hired a bishop to asphyxiate him while he… I digress. Toodles for now, kiddo. See you soon. Real soon."
And I was alone again. Alone with new worries and fresh excitement.