The Comfort Of The Knife

Lupe had said she wasn’t a fighter, but whatever she lacked in martial talent she compensated for with an intergenerational rage. From above, the side, below, she spun and twirled the dawnaxe around her body transforming every missed attack into a new opportunity for its edge to taste the Angler Knight’s blood. The Angler Knight, however, looked at every opportunity she made and shut them all down with minimal effort. Letting the tip of his greatsword guide Lupe’s dawnaxe like an older sibling helping the younger on the way to school. All with one hand.

“Rage is a poor substitute for practice,” he said, punctuating his point with a flick of his blade throwing Lupe’s attempt at an attack beyond her ability to recover. “It’ll only lead you astray.”

Unable to recover, Lupe was forced to follow the redirected momentum of her attack. Pirouetting across the floor of the fort to avoid having it fly from her hands. I released the breath I’d held since Lupe initiated her charge; terrified that the moment she stepped within his field-spell he’d crush her into a paste beyond recognition. Though my attention shifted from the moment she was safe back onto the Angler Knight as he advanced toward Melissa. Clank, clank, clank.

With Lupe no longer blocking Amber’s line of sight, she removed dozens of knives from her storage-spell. Throwing them back-to-back at such speeds it was as if she’d released a flock of steel. It failed to halt his advance—clank, clank, clank—as he caught each one inside his field-spell only to instantly redirect them with a wave of his right arm.

I had to step back as the knives clattered against the door of my cell. Rushing forward just in time to see Amber remove the matte black gun from her storage-spell. That made the Angler Knight pause. He shoved his sword into the stone floor next to him.

“Is that really necessary?” he asked.

Amber shrugged. “Maybe not,” she said, “but better to be safe than sorry.”

“Don’t miss.”

Electricity sparked down the gun. A turquoise glow with it. Then a clap of thunder as a rod shot down the length of Fort Tomb faster than the eye could comprehend. Boom. A black cloud erupted around him. Silence echoed.

Lupe screamed, “He’s still up!”

If Amber’s strange gun made a clap of thunder when fired, the Angler Knight raised a chorus in return. The cloud parted like a donut as his own projectile slammed into Amber. I say, “into,” because the minute Lupe screamed Amber had already formed the seal to some unknown hand-spell that allowed her to evade life as a donut herself. It wasn’t a perfect defense as the projectile carried her up and over Melissa to the tune of ribs shattering.

When she landed, the projectile the Angler Knight had sent became visible. It was smaller than the rod Amber had fired, more of a puck really, but still the same metal. He’d caught it. That black cloud was the metal of the rod disintegrating against the sheer pressure and density of his field-spell. While the puck was what remained.

“A bit anticlimactic,” he remarked.

Amber flipped him off as she struggled back to her feet. “Hardly anticlimactic when it isn’t the climax, yet,” she groaned.

“I suppose that’d be you,” he said, his attention shifted back to Melissa.

In the brief pause of Amber’s attack, she’d Mutated herself into her chimeric form though this time modified to be a thing of sheer bulk and muscle. Six limbs, scuta tipped to spear-like points plated her body, and tusks that may have well been lances. The Angler Knight unsheathed his sword from the floor. Let it fall against his shoulder as he gestured at his body with his empty hand.

“Come on then,” he said. “You may as well try.”

Melissa roared, the timbre of her voice rattling the bars of every cell door. I felt it travel from the bars of mine down into my limbs, and knew she’d fail before she did. Animals roar the loudest when they’re cornered after all.

She charged the Angler Knight ready to meet him head-on. He had other plans; jumping into the air using a pressure wave for assistance he released another to propel himself back down with hammer-like force right when Melissa was below him. The floor beneath them cratered. Melissa tried to stand even as you could hear her reinforced bones shatter.

He stomped his foot releasing a third wave that forced Melissa to the floor. The Angler Knight shrugged the greatsword from his shoulder. Tapped it against one of Melissa’s scutum as he no doubt considered how he’d butcher her. I gripped the bars of my cell with all the force I could and tried to shake them. Rattle them so I could be something—a distraction—anything more than the bystander I was. My door didn’t so much as twitch. It takes a loose door to rattle after all, and these cells were freshly made courtesy of Nemesis’s design team.

The woman the Angler Knight came with yelled, “Stop playing with them.”

He turned back to her, this time speaking in a warbly voice that implied a sadistic level of whimsy. “I only followed the Young Master’s orders. He wanted to play, so we played.”

My jaw dropped alongside my hopes. It’d been so long since I fought him I forgot a key detail about the Angler Knight; he could use his entity to mimic himself. The girls hadn’t been fighting him, but a facsimile of him. One that wasn’t even trying to kill them.

Sharing in my shock yet exceeding my rage, Lupe struck a power chord that swelled with the fury of the Morning dawn. A beam—a laser—of distilled golden light brought day to the interior of Fort Tomb and was doom writ large for the Angler Knight’s double. Emerging as if surfacing from water the Angler Knight—the real one—wrapped an arm around his entity and leaped off of Melissa carrying the two of them to safety beside his human assistant.

She asked, “Why play with them?”

In a low smoky timbre I was familiar with, the real Angler Knight said, “To give them a chance to learn.”

His entity shifted back into the angler fish-meets-eel that I was familiar with and swam through the air around him—sinuous and taunting with its swiveling eyes.

“You’re not going to win this,” he said, addressing the girls. “Your best shot was then, and now I know how you fight. I have your measure, and it is wanting. So for my schedule and your health, don’t do this.”

Lupe picked herself off the ground. Amber shuffled forward. Both of them taking the opposite side of Melissa who’d Mutated back to her human form and was already repairing her bones. They were battered, but in no way did they project an air of defeat.

“You talk like we didn’t learn anything about you,” Amber said.

The Angler Knight tapped his sword against the ground—was he annoyed?

“Let’s say you did learn something,” he said. “Do you think you’re strong enough to act on it?”

Lupe plucked the strings of her dawnaxe, raising a resurgent melody that coated the three of them in Morning dew that cleaned dust from their clothes, erased bruises, and let them stand just a little taller. She breathed and I could tell that the rage from earlier was gone—it had to be if she wanted to win this fight. The three of them fell into their respective combat stances.

“So this’ll be your answer: camaraderie and death?”

Lupe said, “Yeah, it’s better than—.”

The Angler Knight was next to the woman. Then he was next to Melissa, his foot still in the air after kicking Lupe away. Wordlessly, he swept his sword through the space that should have had Melissa’s neck, but in the snap-instant of Lupe being kicked and him swinging the sword she’d already grabbed Melissa. Pulling the both of them past the curtains of the world and reappearing up on the catwalk opposite to my cell.

He examined the empty space, looked up, and shook his head. Then looked back to Lupe who’d lucked out as the kick landed against the flat of the dawnaxe. He took another pressure-wave-propelled step arriving just in front of her.

“This is what you call better?” he asked, a heat edging into his voice.

Lupe screamed into his face—he punched square into hers.

“This is the product of so much sacrifice?”

Blood poured from her shattered nose. Painted her teeth. She swung the dawnaxe, and like before he parried the attack with his own sword one-handedly. Her strike went wide. He wound back with his fist and swung up into her stomach. She lifted off the ground.

“Some adept strumming and manic swings?” he asked. “The Seven Families fought with such pride, such hope, and far more skill than you have right now.”

Lupe landed with stumbling steps. Bowled over but not fallen. Her hair, wet and stuck to her scalp. She hefted the dawnaxe and shook—from fear, rage, or some blended third thing?

“You fought them?” she asked.

He looked up and away to a battlefield in distant memory.

“No. They fought. The engagement was a slaughter. Yet to the last one, they all swore the dawn would rise and with it bring aid to the Sunken Valley,” he said. “Hope—worthless unless we speak of the Court. A shame that they spoke of you.”

Tears poured from her eyes, frothing the blood. She charged forward. The Angler Knight looked away from her and dismissed her with a single stroke that would’ve cleaved her head in half. I didn’t know why, but he turned the blade at the last second so the flat of the sword struck her. It still whipped her head to the side. Her body went with it all the way to the floor. She was out.

“Shame indeed,” he said.

“Melissa, we’re running,” Amber said.

“But Lupe—.”

“Now!”

Amber grabbed Melissa and the two of them sprinted down the catwalk. Amber froze as she realized they’d not stepped beyond the curtains of the world. The Angler Knight’s entity rippled with glee at Amber and Melissa’s expression of horror.

“No running this time,” it sang.

Amber vaulted onto the catwalk and leaped into the air. She reached out into empty space to access her storage-spell…only to fail at that as well. The Angler Knight caught her in mid-air with his field-spell. Slammed her into the ground. Lifted her back into the air.

“You’re the most dangerous one of you three,” he said. “That is, when you’re able to come and go as you want. When you can access your box of tricks.”

He slammed her into the ground again—shattering her arm. Lifted her back up.

“Take that away, and what are you?” he asked.

Amber said, “Beautiful and oh so clever.”

“Hmm,” he hummed. “Cunning is impressive, but meaningless in the face of both cunning and strength. I had the cunning to tune my field-spell to the cloying grip of Abyss, where nothing just comes and goes. Where there’s no aid to be found. No treasures to pluck. Just a darkness that you’ll soon become acquainted with.”

Amber’s body rotated in the air. He’d been slamming her side first, but now she was upside down. Her arms splayed out in an inverted crucifixion. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t look away. I couldn’t even hate him for what he said—it was the same weakness Amber recognized in herself. I just never thought someone would catch it as well.

“Which, I suppose, is where strength comes in,” he said.

“Wait!” Melissa called out.

He turned his head toward her. “Yes?” he asked.

“Can I still give myself up?” she asked.

I screamed, “Don’t you dare, don’t you fucking dare!”

“Princess, no, we’ll think of something. We’ll—.”

“Die otherwise!” she yelled. “We all die otherwise. This way, it’s just me. It will be, right?”

The Angler Knight set Amber back on the ground. She tried to stand but could at most rise to her knees and watch. As I could only watch. The Angler Knight held open his hand and caused Melissa to shoot through air into it. Her head lost in the enormity of his grip.

“You’re braver than I gave you credit for,” he said. “A pity then that this is a world which belongs to cowards and the cruel.”

“Which do you think you are?” Amber asked, spitting out blood. “Cruel or a coward?”

The Angler Knight sighed, “Shameful though it is, I’m both.”

Then, faster than Melissa could possibly Mutate, he crushed her skull. It didn’t take the Omensight to see how pressure compounded with pressure to levels of atmosphere that could never be Real. All for the purpose of reducing Melissa’s skull to a memory. He turned back to his assistant, sword over his shoulder, and walked away.

“Raise the Staircase, we’re—,” he said, cut off by the pop of a Dream Shell.

He spun around to find Amber already crawling toward Melissa’s snoring body. Over so many sleepovers I’d complained about that snoring, but right then it was a song I’d be glad to hear over and over again.

Sphinx said, “The maiden’s a clever Baron.”

The Angler Knight saw it differently. He marched toward Melissa’s body that Amber clutched against her breast. His sword traced a gouge into the stone. While his disgusting entity snaked behind him, its dangling lures trailing behind with deceptive beauty.

“Oh, this won’t do young master,” it said. “For them to take your kindness and bend it, disgraceful.”

“Your master’s kindness can get shoved up your ass,” Amber said.

Lifting a piece of rubble she lobbed it at him. He deflected it with his right arm up toward my cell where it pinged off the bars of the door.

“A rock, pitiful,” the Angler Knight said.

He took a half-step forward when Amber threw another projectile at him. A knife she pulled a knife free from her pocket—one last weapon I supposed—and threw it at him. He deflected it with his right arm again. The knife spun end over end through the air where it’d thread right between the bars.

Sphinx hissed, “Catch it!”

“Really, this is what your cleverness amounts to?” he asked. “An attempt to wound me using a method you already know is pointless?”

Amber flashed bloody teeth. “No, my cleverness comes from noticing that—like your entity—you deflect projectiles with your right arm. Only your right arm. Each time at exactly, oh, a fifty-degree angle. They kept pinging off the cell door.”

The Angler Knight asked, “They’re going to get out using a knife you threw?”

“See, that’s where I’m clever twice over,” Amber said. “Doesn’t take strength to make a control tablet look like a knife. Especially when the target’s so strong, they wouldn’t think twice about it.”

As the knife completed its most recent revolution—the game now up—its disguise fell away to reveal the control tablet to my cell. I thrust my hand out ready to pluck it from the air; felt the curse rise tuning my senses to detect the smallest shifts in its motion. Though that wasn’t all necessary, Amber had done good math, and it landed directly into my hand.

I bent my arm slamming it into the access panel. Listened for the click of the door. Click. Mother’s Last Smile in one hand, I kicked the door open and let the carmine run through my spirit, but this time not as a victim to its power—no, I plunged myself into its depths of my own will and fury. The curse made me into a beast, sure, but if it meant saving my girls then who needed frail humanity!

As I fell I made no sound; beasts only roar when cornered and it was hunting time. The Angler Knight looked up as I fell into the range of his field-spell. Bubbles sizzled in my passage as I ran too hot for him to even think of using it against me. He raised his sword to meet my glaive, but his entity was smarter than that as it wrapped a lure around his body, whipping him away from the descending stroke which would’ve cleaved him in half.

“I’m sorry,” Amber said. “We outnumbered him and…”

“It’s fine. No one died, at least not for real, and at least not yet,” I said.

The Angler Knight lowered his sword and took me in. He was quiet when before he was quick to rattle off his poeticisms and judgements. I leveled my glaive at him, held it in that firm-yet-loose grip, and bared my fangs at him.

“I’ve been waiting for round two,” I said.

“Two?” he asked. “We haven’t even had round one.”

“Ahhh, my bad,” I said. “When we fought last time it was at that AoSI lab where you got a hold of the axis mundi in the first place. You were kidnapping examinees at the time. Funny enough, it was where I killed someone for the first time. Felt horrible. Then I killed another thirty—maybe forty—of you little Lurker fucks. Stopped feeling bad after that.”

His voice quivered, as he said, “I would remember that, and you, if it happened. We only lost half that number on the mission.”

I laughed, “Well, you couldn’t remember things perfectly. Hit a few of your cult buddies with an Atomic Glory, and well, would be hard to remember them afterwards. Burnt them right out of reality’s pattern. All their attachments with them. While you, yeah Secretary lobbed the memory of us from your head when we made our escape.”

“I see,” he said. “I forced you into retreating.”

“It was a draw, you son of a bitch.”

“Says the woman in a muzzle,” he stated. “This is childish, take the girl and go. You all don’t have to die today.”

His assistant said, “But Marduk—.”

“Leaves me in charge of mission conduct. It doesn’t matter if one person gets away if we can escape without discovery,” he said, then turned back to me. “So, how about we part ways.”

I said, “That’d be a good deal, but I have a question first. When you crushed Melissa’s skull, did you know she still had her Dream Shell?”

“She was on the map, so maybe on some—.”

“No maybes,” I said. “They’re not firm answers. Did you crush her head thinking she’d die—properly die.”

The Angler Knight was silent. I shrugged.

“There’s your answer,” I said. “Some things just can’t go unanswered.”

He tilted his sword back up—this time grasping it in both hands. I had the Angler Knight’s respect…and his ire.

“Then forgive me,” he said, “as I hold you accountable for the lives you’ve slain and placed beyond the limits of memory.”

We stood there for five moments. Weapons at the ready. Entities prepared to cast spells. Each of us assessed the other, discovering how mirrored we were in our fighting styles. In the fact that I could feel his Bloodlust, recognizing it as something akin to my own. Why?

My mind wavered toward the question—with it the tip of my glaive—and so he struck. Catapulted by a wave of pressure he descended on me with a sword stroke that blurred back to where he once stood. He wanted to end this in one blow—that was naive.

“Godtime,” I said, my eyes set on his weak little assistant.

Unlike our last fight, when I’d tried to pull a Baron into my Godtime and still a Baron—the Angler Knight—outside it, I had a perfect target. His movements dropped to a quarter of his proper speed, but I’d cut it close as his blade was near to kissing my neck. So I leaned back, bent my knees, and let the sword sail above me. Shearing off the tip of my muzzle.

As he passed, I angled Mother’s Last Smile in the path of his over-muscled thighs. Canceled Godtime. Shhhplurt! His momentum restored, he did all the work as he helped my glaive slide through his body like a fish parts water. I smirked. He laughed. Our backs to one another only a foot apart if that.

“I won’t be trying this trick again,” he said.

“It’s pretty annoying,” I said.

“One could say being able to stand there ignoring a Baron’s field-spell is annoying,” he argued.

“True,” I agreed, “but when the Baron’s a master with it. It’s necessary.”

I whirled around, glaive high, and ready to cut him down. I was going to end this in one blow—and I thought he was naive.

“Abyssal Chill,” he incanted, reversing his sword into a backwards stab.

At the same time, ice materialized over the blade. Extended beyond the blade. Rushing up toward my face in time with his thrust. I’d positioned myself right where he’d wanted me in my haste to cut him down. Removing a hand from my glaive I used Atomic Glory as a booster to propel me off the line of his attack—it still sliced up my cheek severing a strap on the muzzle.

I rolled to the side. Bounced back up, and loosed two scorching beams of chalcedony flame at the same time—Twofold Atomic Glory. He used his field-spell to pull him out of the way causing the shots to go wide. Though in the process he left a thin trail of blood—he could move himself without moving, but friction still provided a frustrating resistance.

“Conceptual attacks do little I see,” he said, smearing my blood down his frozen blade with a finger. “Glad to see the Real is still useful.”

I flicked the glaive splattering an arc of his blood against the floor. Then removed the now dangling and busted muzzle from my face. Held it up to him in quiet thanks. He tilted his head in acknowledgment as I tossed it aside where it bounced off into some distant shadow or corner.

“Are you done testing me?” I asked.

He tapped his foot against the ground—testing how much weight he could put on his weakened leg. Pushed until blood squirted out, though he didn’t groan or hiss from it.

“I’m good,” he said. “You?”

I shrugged blinking on the Omensight. Immediately noted all the ties of fate that ran between me and him. I couldn’t name all of them—it was a rapid assessment—but each was thick as a ship’s rope. An Atomic Glory could travel along them but it wouldn’t destroy it.

Sphinx, we shoot him at the same time. You go through the real, I thought.

While you make use of fate. A fair strategy. Shall we? Sphinx asked.

She raised her wings firing a rapid volley of Atomic Glories. The Angler Knight’s entity swooped in low to the ground in a barrel that arced around him. A sheet of ice like a frozen wave materialized shielding him from the chalcedony fire. At the same time I covertly split infinity sparking Revelatory fire to travel down one of the thick roped ties of fate between us foes.

My smile spread as it raced for him only to freeze—why was he looking at me? Sphinx should’ve been seen as the real threat. He didn’t move. Did he just trust his entity that much? No, his hand was raised forming the seal to a spell that seemed…familiar.

He tossed his sword into the air, and the tie of fate I’d used for my attack shifted from him to his sword. I kept my eyes trained on him while his sword burst into chalcedony flames that burned it out of reality. While the rope of fate fell back down like some serpentine behemoth where it latched onto him once more.

“Is our courtship over?” he asked, still so fucking confident.

“I’d say it was a pleasure,” I began, “but I’ve wanted to kill you since I met you.”

“Shame,” he said. “It strikes me that, were things different, maybe we could’ve been friends. Push each other to the bounds of skill.”

I conjured an Inviolate Star above my finger. Popped it into my mouth, and grinned around it as I swallowed. A corona of chalcedony fire blooming around me.

“I have enough friends,” I said, and then attacked.

I was a shooting star racing across open ground in bounding leaps. When my foot touched the floor the Angler Knight stomped his heavy boot. A wave of force rippled out toward me.

“Only the Real works,” I reminded him.

He called back, “I know.”

The pressure wave struck my ankle, tripping me. Using his field-spell he set a point just past me and pulled himself forward. Fist out and clenched ready to ram in—and likely through—my body. I swung Mother’s Last Smile at the ground as an impromptu pole vault that sent me flying above the Angler’s Knight punch.

“The pressure of Abyss is only Conceptual when manifested from nothing,” he explained. “If I spawn force with actual motion then it’s as Real as you or me!”

He pivoted. Launched a right straight that released a bolt of pressure. I formed the seal for Atomic Glory—once more using it as a thruster—shooting myself up above the passing bolt. Skimming the top of the wave to right myself in mid-air.

“Note taken,” I said.

His entity lunged through the air. Mouth wide and ready to gulp me down—if Sphinx wasn’t there first. Atomic Glories turned her into a rocket as she rammed into his entity, shutting its jaw. The both of them spiraled up toward the ceiling in their own fight. While the arc of my vault saw me land against the catwalk opposite my ‘old’ cell. I clung to the railing, dangling along with any options that’d lead me to a win.

The Angler Knight was adaptable. Technically stronger than me due to the extra link even if he was stuck using half his skillset. While I was only strong if I could get my glaive through his heart. A prospect he didn’t seem too keen on allowing me to achieve.

“If you’re going to hang out,” he said, “I think I’ll re-arm myself.”

“With what?”

“A sword of course.”

He held out a hand and the broken piece of catwalk from earlier hurtled into his grip under the direction of his field-spell. Raising it into a vertical guard he shifted stance. Brought it down in a swift vertical cut.

“That’s hardly a sword,” I yelled.

He laughed, “I make do!”

I pushed off from the catwalk. Bisect the Sun. Mother’s Last Smile sweeping across the weaponized debris in an incandescent slice smooth as scissors through paper. I slipped into the gap between the piece that landed on the catwalk I’d been on, and the piece still in motion in his grasp. Caught the lip of the chunk he held—arrested my fall—then flipped myself over and onto the grated walkway using it as a slide to carry me toward him.

“Appreciate the help,” I yelled, with manic glee.

He yelled back, “Never.”

Shifted his grip and flipped the catwalk—depositing me to the ground. I landed in a four-point feline stance before transitioning into a low run. He dropped the catwalk. I rolled to the side. Punch, punch, punch. Pointed pressure waves exploded the ground beside me as I rolled free of each one. Rolling until I was perpendicular to him. He tried to shift with me, but I was on his wounded side—he couldn’t keep up.

I shot up. Raced forward already high on the scent of his blood. This would be a kill I’d relish forever—he made me work for it after all. In one last ditch-attempt to stop me, he used his field-spell to rotate his body. Punch, punch, punch. The pressure bolts were weaker—he had less time to wind up and gather power. Which let me dance around each one.

“Abyssal Chill,” he incanted.

A phalanx of ice spears materialized before me in a wave that traveled along the floor. I jumped—Bisect the Sun—and landed on the now-beheaded spikes that were smooth and level as a Master-crafted table.

“It’s time we end our dance,” I said.

Launched myself forward. Blind the Stars—it’d be done in one thrust.

“Yes,” he said. “Let’s end this.”

In one smooth motion, he unclipped the gourd that’d hung at his waist since I first saw him during my interrogation days earlier. Popped the stopper. Swung it in a defensive arc. Water from within the gourd traced a line in its passage. My glaive moments from impaling his helm, his head, as I delivered his death with expediency. Despite this, he was calm.

“Behold, Memories of the Diluvian World,” he said, and then all was water.