The Comfort Of The Knife

While I’d left breakfast with my head held high, it took only a few hours and a boat for me to be brought low as the shifting ocean churned my guts to rebellion. It wasn’t that I was bad on the water—only days earlier I’d taken a ferry without incident—I was just untested when it came to enduring the faux-stillness of a boat. As every whim of the ocean rolled through the bones of the barge that the Lodge had assembled all us examinees on only hours prior.

I slid down the glass barrier meant to keep deck furniture from going overboard, and leaned into the soothing touch of Melissa's hand as she stroked my hair. Beside me, Amber had pulled over a reclining deck chair on which she was sprawled. While Lupe made herself comfortable in a chair beside Melissa.

Whining, I asked, “Melissa, do you have anything for this?”

She clicked her tongue. “Not right now,” she said. “I could expedite an internal mutation, but since it’d have to be tailored to your body it wouldn’t be done before we’re off the boat.”

“Couldn’t you just directly affect her spirit?” Lupe asked.

“I could if a little sick somebody hadn’t pumped her resistance to Sorcery so high. It’ll be purely biological vectors at this point that’d have any effect.”

“Ah, my mistake,” Lupe said with a smirk you could hear.

We’d been parked for about two hours at that point. Halfway between Brightgate Bay and an island about four miles off the coast. According to the pamphlet Amber read when we boarded, it used to be only one-and-a-half miles away. Yet, Old World climate change had eaten away at the coast, and events in Brightgate during the Changeover—or what would become Brightgate—had led to a short-lived exodus to the island and its relocation. There was more to the story, but I’d made it only the first page before I was forced into my current position vomiting up an expensive meal into the sea. The most recent was the loss of very thick fluffy pancakes which had soaked up the lavender syrup perfectly.

I shifted my head so I could take in the competition that milled about the deck. At a quick eyeballing, there looked to be only two hundred of us remaining—there’d been five hundred before the first test. Of the two hundred, I spotted a few faces from dinner last night that I’d set within my memory. They were the would-be-assassins who I knew had Melissa on their list, but Apogee had said we were one cell of many. Making every other unknown person a threat.

It was while I oversaw potential targets that I spotted a familiar furry entity on the head of an armless woman of little height sporting a navy eyepatch. One of the entity’s six arms held a pipe between its claws. Beside them walked a secretary narrow and sharp as an icepick. They took position in front of a microphone set-up on the upper deck.

“Oi,” they barked, their voice ashen and rough thus very attention grabbing.

“Good, now some of you who have minds sharp as those canines I bet you’re feeling right now, might know me as the Kennelmaster,” they said. “For the rest of you who have something akin to morals, and you less-than-sharp pups, you’ll be getting to meet me in the unenviable position of your Proctor. I will be the god watching over you and your little dramas—.”

“Time, Proctor,” their secretary—who I realized was likely their handler—interjected. “We’re behind enough as is because of your high standards around mai tais.”

“Alls below, they can wait or they’re fools who’re rushing to their doom. Besides, a mai tai is an art not just a common cocktail—it survived the Changeover for a reason damn it, have some respect.” They turned back to addressing us, “Now, because some people have no standards nor patience, I’ll explain your test—even though I know most of you were likely informed by some circle or other.”

Their secretary said, “I heard that.”

“Your test is Execution and Capture, a simulated game of a common Lodge request many of you will be using to fill out your quota of mandated actions. Often we’re called in or invite ourselves, to reap the lives of those summoners deemed unhandleable by all communities impacted from their actions. In most cases execution is not needed and thus, Capture. While infinitely harder, it is the more humane course of action as every summoner like every life may still prove capable of some benefit to the world.”

The secretary tapped at a sorc-deck they held, conjuring from a drawn together mist a recreation of the island in the distance albeit upside down so we could have a better look at where some of us would likely die. Above me, was a blocky castle covered in large pipes that wove in and out of its body like silver serpents winding through a corpse.

The Kennelmaster continued, “To facilitate this simulation we’ve re-sculpted the island and Fort Tomb—this year the Lodgemaster wanted an ‘enchanted forest’ theme. All of you will be teleported there to random locations where you will find a scroll detailing your target. You will decide whether to execute or capture them. The latter of which will require bringing them to the capture location also detailed in the scroll.”

Some yelled out, “Are we really supposed to just kill each other?”

“Supposed to—no—but I hope someone kills you for interrupting,” they said. “When you boarded, you all had a somnambulant cicada planted at the base of your neck which has likely burrowed into your body to take up space at your brainstem. Devised by some of the best gu-scholars on this side of the world, it will have constructed a Dream Shell for you. Making it so that whatever you experience happens to you, but does not affect your true Real body. If you would suffer bodily harm that could conceivably kill you, the Dream Shell will pop, dropping you into a brief period of slumber as the cicada burns itself from your body and you reawaken.”

I felt for the back of my neck even though I knew the Kennelmaster was right—the cicada had already burrowed into my body. While most of the people on deck were astonished or disgusted by the admission, I actually breathed a sigh of relief. Melissa had said that biological agents were the only things that could work on me now—Viscount and above sorcery not being accounted for of course—as my spirit was too hot to accept anything lesser.

The secretary said, “If executed, you may continue the test, but will do so without this safeguard. While all those captured will be detained until it becomes mathematically impossible to pass or are released by another summoner. Some of you will find your targets to be a poor match for yourself. In accounting for this scenario, Lodgemaster Khapoor has decided that you may still pass this test if you can execute or capture three people in lieu of your singular target.”

“And with that, good luck and fuck off,” the Kennelmaster said.

Instantly a person disappeared in a brief flash as photons warped to account for the spatial vacancy. I used Mother’s Last Smile to hoist myself up. We all looked at each other with our own unique flavor of anxiety as seconds and people dwindled before we too would be moved.

“How are we meeting up?” Melissa asked.

“We converge on you,” I said.

“Random starts, not good enough,” Lupe said.

Amber said, “We all meet up at Fort Tomb. One site. No chance to get lost.”

“Got it,” we stated.

Lupe asked, “What about Nadia?”

“We just—,” Amber was cut off by her teleportation.

“Ah,” Melissa yelled.

“I’ll be fine; the cicada means no one's dying,” I said.

Lupe argued, “But what if they—.”

Teleported. Melissa grabbed my arms—like that would’ve stopped anything, but I appreciated it all the same. We stared at each other as if any last questions or answers would be found in the other. Only to come to the conclusion that there were no more words, so I didn’t speak. Instead, planting a kiss against Melissa’s cheek. She opened her mouth to speak—teleported.

I clutched my glaive and pressed the shaft to my forehead in prayer to my Sovereign—and cause why not—a prayer to you, Mom. That my target would be a true enemy rather than one of my new family. Maybe I had more faith in that possibility happening than I’d had regarding any prayer being effective at mitigating my curse. A consequence of how much I’d hung my prior confidence on the belief I wouldn’t be facing it alone—how naive of me.

* * *

My mind didn’t register my own teleportation instead opting to cut away the interstitial moment of being at one place and now another. I shook my body out—you couldn’t tell that what moved was a sleepwalking body protected by a Dream Shell—and assessed my new location. They’d dropped me on a beach, white as powdered bone, that sloped up a hill leading into the depths of the forest Lodgemaster Khapoor had designed.

In front of me, nestled in the sand like a washed ashore bottle, was the scroll. A black tube six inches in length with a recessed button at its top. Technically they were sorc-decks in all but shape, but the shape had proved critical to designing a more secure one even if it also meant the device retained less information.

I freed the scroll from its dune and activated the button at the top. From a slit in its side it projected a cool sheet of air creating a thin mist that coalesced to become its screen. The first slide was my target and I knew my earlier prayers had gone unanswered. Swiping past, I read the second which detailed that the capture site for the test would be the same Fort Tomb that Amber, Lupe, Melissa, and myself had decided on making our rendezvous point.

“I guess I jump anyone on their way to make a capture?” I asked.

Stepping from my spirit, Sphinx said, “It’d be the prudent decision. Far easier to catch fish when others help hold the net after all.”

She stretched then spread her wings, so I could take my place between them. In a short loping step she hammered her wings against the air taking off for the sky. It was the quickest way to reach Fort Tomb—a place I could see above Nemesis’s ‘enchanted forest’ whose trees rivaled many of Brightgate’s towering apartment buildings in height.

When we’d cleared the canopy to reach the forest’s emergent layer, Sphinx swooped low, her paws skimming the leaves. I activated my Omensight to scan the area, but was quickly stunned. The forest was a multi-colored riot of Courts woven together to create something so unnatural yet seemingly Real. It almost hurt my eyes to look at as any one point I fixed my gaze on became a psychedelic static—only the forest as a whole was beautiful.

That was until the sharp spikes of Bloodlust appeared skewering the sky as they snaked out from the phalanx of the forest canopy. Examinees were making contact. It was then I smelled the aromatic copper scent of Bloodlust—there was a tie of murderous sympathy already attached to Sphinx. Signaling with my knees we veered off course diving down below the canopy as an ember flew wide before exploding into a rose of fiery death.

Sphinx bounded from tree branch to tree branch in a bid to bleed off momentum before we touched ground. When we landed, we circled to face the direction my fated tie pointed in.

“Ehhh,” our attacker groaned, “why’d you have to dodge? It’s not easy Cultivating embers.”

A hunched over man with dark eyes and darker bags exited the thick shadow that clung between the trees. He turned over a pill bottle rolling out three glowing embers into his hand.

“Am I your target?” I asked.

“No, just an opportunity. I’d rather collect points while its easy versus banking on the luck I meet my target. You understand, right?”

“Oh, I get it,” I said, crossing my fingers around our connection. “I was unlucky and got my friend as a target. Executing you helps me make a dent in the three I need to pass. No hard feelings?”

“None at all.”

He wound back his arm to throw the embers—at this range I could tell how he did it, Cultivating their heat and destructive potential over years until they’d become dangerous explosives. Before he could release his toss I uncrossed my fingers splitting infinity and igniting the fated tie of our mutual combat. He was halfway through his throw when he combusted—chalcedony fire crawling across his body like blazing ivy.

The embers fell from his hands exploding the instant they touched the ground. Three explosions that fought to consume each other swallowed up any vision on him. However, they did nothing to disturb the clutching darkness nor marr the trees of the forest as both were constructions of much grander Sorcery than either of us were capable of. When the flames cleared I heard the crack-pop of breaking ice. Where there’d been the ash sculpture of a dead man was replaced by the snoring body of one very much alive.

I saluted him and set off on Sphinx in the direction of Fort Tomb this time on foot. As the trees blurred into smeared walls of color, my tongue traced my curse-given fangs. There’d been no temptation to properly finish the man off. The only scent of Bloodlust was what preceded his attack meant to kill me.

“Maybe I’ll be fine,” I said.

Sphinx said, “Now is as good a test as any.”

Her words were prophetic as our path soon intersected a current of heavy Bloodlust winding between the trees. It fell upon my mind like a snake waiting, constricting all thoughts, as I had to know more, so I inspected the current. Using the Omensight, my vision carried back to the source—a small clearing, two Summoners wounded and curled beneath the skirt of a giant mushroom the size of a cable car stop, and two more eager to finish what they’d started.

“Do we press on?” Sphinx asked.

I pulled myself free from the vision to find Sphinx’s head twisted back to observe me. My tongue slid across my lips as I considered. We didn’t gain anything from rescuing people—they knew the risks…but I did need two more executions. It’d be on the way.

“Detour,” I said. “It won’t be a large one, and if those four wound each other it’ll be brief.”

Sphinx hummed, “If you trust your reasoning.”

She ran toward the source of the current, drenching my thoughts wet in the psychic gore that floated in the Bloodlust that dusted my mind. I formed a fist tight around Mother’s Last Smile, fixed myself on the woman I wanted to be that deserved Mom’s grace. She wasn’t a woman who grew giddy on slaughter or smiled as she killed. No, she was sober.

I raised my thoughts up onto this image making it an anchor. A rock on which my rationality could find respite from the surging sweetness of Bloodlust that we ran within. I checked my reasoning—it was still sound. I needed the kills nothing more.

Sphinx vaulted us up onto a tree branch that overlooked the place where the wounded summoners had curled up. We’d arrived only seconds in advance of the two who’d wounded them in the first place. They were of slight builds, differing in gender but obviously twins, and flanked on both sides by matching entities reminiscent of hunting dogs with faces made of churning blades like a woodchipper.

“Don’t make us keep following you,” the male twin said.

His sister said, “You’re dying either way. A Voracious bite doesn’t end until someone’s dead.”

“We’re doing you a kindness, finishing you off properly,” they said together.

One of the wounded summoners, a boy about my age, yelled back, “A kindness would be executing us and moving on. Your way would destroy everything about us.”

“True,” the female twin said, “but we want to be thorough about making sure you don’t pass.”

The male said, “It’d be pretty bad if the scions of two merchant families like you and your love there were to join the Lodge.”

If it wouldn’t have disturbed my hiding spot I would’ve hollered right then. I didn’t come this way to save these two—I only needed the kills—yet here I lucked out on premium targets. Would-be-assassins that might come after Melissa after finishing off these two.

When they strike we do, I said to Sphinx telepathically.

She replied, Then prepare now.

The wounded summoner raised a pistol. Squeezed the trigger belting out a brief flurry of bullets that were swallowed by a shield of yawning black and rotten teeth that materialized before them. Both twins cackled in unison at the ultimately futile attempt. I noted, however, that the spell, while quick, still took time to form.

“Shame,” the male said. “We worried your Luck would prove annoying to circumvent.”

The female nodded, “Stray bullets are so unpredictable, but who’d have thought Luck might prove so delectable. We’ll remember this meal won’t we brother?”

“At least until the next,” he said.

The both of them pointed at the summoners wounded and immobile siccing their entities on them. At the same time Sphinx leaped from the branch, her wings wide catching the air so we’d glide down toward the twins. I formed the requisite seal and glanced at the summoner whose gun still smoked, dragging him into a Godtime with me.

Both twins' faces froze in complementary sadistic expressions while their entities hung poised in the air ready to gorge themselves on the wounded. Sphinx landed atop one while I leaped from her back spearing the other to the ground. The Godtime prevented their autonomic spell-shields from forming. We decapitated their Dream Shells which popped not long after.

“Woah,” the wounded summoner said, in the time it took for me to save him.

He hefted his gun pointing it at Sphinx and myself—to be more accurate, he nervously changed targets between the both of us. I couldn’t help but drool a bit at how much the boy screamed, ‘prey’ with his body language. The Bloodlust wet the anchor of my reasonable thought—we’d be doing him a favor taking him out. He had a gun trained on us anyways. It’d be self-defense. Sphinx crossed in front of me—I’d taken a step toward the boy. When?

“Lower your arm,” Sphinx said, “we come not for you.”

The boy argued, “No, no, they approached us talking about forming a team. Then tried to kill us. I’m not lowering my gun just because you saved our lives.”

Sphinx sighed, “Your weapon is but a comfort, and will smother your own life if you continue to threaten ours.”

I shook my head jostling the Bloodlust-born thoughts off balance. Turned around and threw my glaive like a javelin away from me. Raised my now empty hands.

“Seriously, put the gun down. I don’t want to risk advancing my curse on the two of you,” I said. “Besides, you have a curse of your own. You heard those two, either you die or they do, and they’re only sleeping. So how about it, you put down the gun and handle them how you want while we continue on our way, deal?”

The boy hesitated—some point of me wished he pulled the trigger so I could see how well he burned—and then his love laid a hand missing three fingers on his shoulder. The bite marks of its edge slowly consuming more the extremity in a conquest of inches.

“Put it down,” he said. “We’ll need the bullets for them.”

“You will,” I said.

The boy lowered his arm. I breathed a sigh of relief as the Bloodlust which had become thick as fog soon dissipated. As the summoners made their way over I heard the faint beep of a sorc-deck notification. Looting one of the twin’s sorc-decks from their pocket, I opened the device using a sleeping twin’s thumb bringing up a map that had updated.

Across the map were triangles representing agents of the circle—such as the twins—and stars denoting targets on their list like the two wounded summoners. I groaned on my walk back to my glaive. Of course the circle had found a way to hack into whatever system the examiners were using to keep track of us. It even updated every ten minutes.

I swiped across the map until I found Melissa’s star. She was making her way to Fort Tomb—in good time as well—though between her location and mine there was a pack of hunters en route to intercept her path. Even more packs followed directly behind her. It’d be a race.

The sound of thunder muffled by a human skull clapped twice. I turned to the two summoners that had claimed the twins’ lives. They only had eyes for each other as they examined every bitemark to make sure none continued to consume their flesh. Lovers after all.

“Here’s a tip for you,” I said, “take the other twin’s sorc-deck. Apparently they and others like them are using some map capable of tracking targets like the two of you. Should help you avoid situations like this one.”

“Thank you,” the boy said, “and I'm sorry for pointing my gun at you.”

I climbed astride Sphinx—we knew our destination—and tossed my reply over my shoulder.

“None needed,” I said. “If you somehow beat them—unlikely but possible—I’d have executed both of you myself. Not for their reasons, just the test. Try not to die, okay.”

I left them with a smile. One that I tended to use when Dad and Mom made my favorite food for dinner. It was what came naturally when I saw those wounded boys that needed the other just so they could stand. The both of them scurried back in terror at the sight of it.

Sphinx ran hard blurring the trees again, and I turned all my thoughts—even the Bloodlust ones—toward my new targets. According to the map we were gaining on them. In seconds we’d reach them. Five. Four. Three. Two.

One. We broke past the tree line into another small grove where a bundle of five killers decided to make their stand. None of them had Sorcery to enhance their perception—it might’ve saved them. Alas, Sphinx and I were a blur of death that entered the center of their group. I whirled my glaive in a wide killing arc of bright metal.

Even without an Inviolate Star burning in my chest, Mother’s Last Smile was a conceptual weapon few could hope to match. It cleaved through necks and bodies with the smoothness of a knife spreading a thick jam across toast. Mom’s favorite was apricot.

A chorus of four cracking pops sprouted around me…four? I ran my eyes over each snoozing body to discover one was missing. It was the one furthest from me. I tilted my head in surprise as I saw the Ripples of a defensive spell in his wake. If I had to guess he had some shield or other that harnessed the conceptual power of an action and let him ride the Ripples of causality away from the danger. I giggled—he’d be fun to hunt down, I thought.

Then the map updated. All of their sorc-decks chirped bringing me back to the present issue. They’d wake back up eventually—I wasn’t going to kill them kill them after all—but I didn’t want to worry about potential threats at my back. So, despite the time it took, I made sure to find their decks and one by one set them on fire using Atomic Glory. If they were going to hunt they’d do it properly this time.

When that was done I urged Sphinx on after our straggler who the map showed as being just ahead of us moving still toward Melissa’s location. We raced through the trees, Sphinx kicking off of tree trunks and weaving in flaps of her wings to find any extra momentum possible. The lone survivor had maybe five minutes on us—his spell having launched him quite far—but we crossed the distance to him in only three.

We’d caught up to him in a field of bioluminescent flowers glowing in bright acid colors normally only visible under a blacklight. Fitting as stretching over the glade was a dome of Night freckled in pink stars. The survivor sprinted through the field without thought to its beauty in the direction of a short-haired woman meditating on a rock at the glade’s center.

“Stop,” I yelled, voice echoing through the glade.

He raised a hatchet ready to cut down the woman before she’d proven herself a danger to him. Something whistled through the air as it sliced into him. Pop went his Dream Shell. He stumbled, a now sleeping body. The woman opened her eyes looking through him and at me as he fell apart in two pieces severed lengthwise by a second whistle of an unseen stroke. Sphinx and I stopped, but it was too late.

Surrounding us and obscuring the treeline was a folding screen two men tall that circled the glade’s perimeter. On the screen were shimmering illustrations of sword wielding women dancing through the clouds and bisecting heavenly bodies with abandon. All of which glowed bright in the color of a Court whose name I felt on the tip of my tongue, but couldn’t verbalize.

“Am I your target?” I asked.

“Is your name, Nadia Temple?”

“Are you planning on executing me?”

“That’s up to you. Is capture on the table?”

I hefted my glaive, “Someone needs me right now.”

“Then you have your answer and I have mine,” she said. “I promise to be merciful.”

While her tone was clipped her voice was soft, breezy, as if she truly had no stake in any choice that led to this moment. To be honest, I don’t think she was lying. Though I couldn’t help but snarl at her offer. While she had no stake at all, I had everything at risk because those killers were closing on Melissa with every second that passed. Mercy, for me, was a luxury I tossed aside as Sphinx and I charged my test-assigned killer.