The Comfort Of The Knife

“What’s your fighting style?” Secretary asked.

“Why does that matter?” I asked. “This is an infiltration mission.”

Secretary waved off my question. “Humor me. If we have to fight, I should know how to play around you. So come on, what is it, fighter? Mage? I know it can’t be fusion.”

My hand wound over the shaft of my glaive. I hadn’t given it much thought—but back then I tried to tell myself I was just staying flexible. Everyone has an answer though even if they don’t know it. An inclination to batter away at a foe with weapons or limbs while you leave the casting to your entity, probably fighter. If you’re casting and letting the entity take the blows, that’s a mage. Fusion was nothing but the label. A merger of summoner and entity into some compound form. Each had their benefits and if I had an answer I hadn’t found it yet.

“Maybe fighter,” I said.

“Maybe, ugh, I can work with that I guess. Anyways, shut up we’re here.”

The van rolled to a stop and I shut my eyes—filled in the darkness purely off their words.

“That you Lenny?” a guard said. “Normally don’t come this late with the shipments.”

Secretary said, “It’ll make sense when you see how big these ones are. They drank most of the beer in the place and still took a few benders before they went down. Then there’s getting them into the truck. . .”

The guard grunted, “Yeah I know. Come on in. Dock four as usual.”

Then we were back on the move. The seconds dripped with what felt like hours between. From the change of sound—rubber’s sputtering babble against dirt to the flat echo of clanging grates—we had entered something. I heard what could be gates shutter behind us. Gravity lessened its hold on me and I knew we were falling. An elevator.

As we fell I felt the watery break of Realspace giving way to the clinging touch of the Conceptual. In the dark of the van I could make out the appearance of my spiritual musculature—Metallic with its damascus patterning—in lieu of my actual skin. My nerves ratcheted up there in the dark surrounded by sacrifices. Not to die, I’d hoped, but lives made into tools for the plan only Secretary knew.

“I need an Undersuit,” I whispered.

Secretary hissed, “You need to shut up. We’re only in the shallows. Curses don’t lurk here.”

My spirit clenched in doubt. Curses didn’t usually lurk in the Underside’s shallows, but it didn’t mean you couldn’t run into them. The only defense was an Undersuit, or suitably dense spirit. Two tools I lacked. The former because I never owned one, and the latter was unlikely at my link in the Chain. Even those hunters at Baron didn’t forego Undersuits if they could help it.

“Nadia,” Secretary whispered, “when I give the signal you’re going to leap out weapon first.”

“Why?” I asked, my attention broken from my worries.

“Nuh uh. Brutes don’t ask questions. That’s how you die. Be ready to do it or don’t,” they said.

They dropped me back into silence. I felt myself ruminate in the possibility of what would be waiting for me. What would be the best way to face it. I clutched my glaive close to my chest and breathed out any extraneous thoughts—the elevator was slowing.

“Fine.” I softly prayed, “May I ascend.”

The van pulled forward. Curved past someone that yelled, “To Dock U-three.” Then stopped, reversed, moved forward but curved, stop, reversed again, and we backed up into the dock.

“Go,” Secretary ordered.

The van’s back doors had barely opened—I hastened it with a kick. Leaped free from the van with my glaive held high and swung in wide threatening arcs. Mother’s Last Smile touched none of them. I wanted to save the bloodshed for her killers. The cultists gave me a wide berth with a shocked expression on their face. They weren’t used to someone who fights back. I shot a glance backwards in search of nothing? That was wrong. I knew it was wrong but in that moment I had searched for nothing and was left with an indescribable rage at an absence I could’ve sworn was a presence.

“Someone help me put her down,” a cultist yelled.

My attention returned to them—above their shoulders were sea angels like the front desk attendant had. Above them was a sphere of water about the size of a watermelon. One rippled then scrunched itself down releasing a stream of pressurized water. I yanked my body to the side only to throw up my arms as fists of water pelted me in the side. Forced me backwards—I fell off the dock—and I scrambled. Slipped past the van and out into the courtyard to find myself in the center of a quaint park cast in an unshifting twilight.

“No,” Sphinx said from their hiding place inside my spirit.

They tugged our connection, look up. I did. In the sky above the facility was a citadel of coral and sunken steel whose spires were a legion of spear points thrust toward us mortal things below. My eyes fluttered fast as a camera to try and avoid Underside exposure as I attempted to process what it was that the fortress was connected to—I saw barnacles the size of my school—and I just failed to understand. Sphinx enlightened me and I wished they hadn’t.

“It’s a Marquis,” it uttered.

“Oh,” I said.

The sky was a Marquis. An entity. So vast as to make you believe its stomach was heaven. If it had fins then they stretched beyond the horizon. I couldn’t even find its head. That belonged to someone. My mind was slowly falling apart at the enormity of the implication.

“I have her,” a voice said.

My body went stiff and my chin whipped fast enough to sling my brain into the wall of my skull.

* * *

I woke up, hands cuffed behind my chair, in a room that was a lab in another life. It should’ve been flat and sterile but instead I could see the streaks of blood that some low-ranking cultists hadn’t mopped up properly. There were darker fluids but I just lumped them in with blood—I had enough problems at the time. The first one sat in front of me.

It was a bulky shape clad in armor that looked reminiscent of old diving suits. The helm was bulbous and its slits for eyes hidden within the three by three row of lights. I could see the beams—guided by the helmeted person—lingered over my thighs, chest, and face. Their hands were gauntleted in the same dark brassy metal and lay atop the pommel of a two-handed sword wide as a headstone and tall as me. While the rest of their limbs and torso were plated in the spots necessary to cover those organs that you needed to keep going. Underneath that was something akin to a skinsuit. My problem was corded in muscle.

“Weird looking Undersuit,” I said.

He laughed—his voice was smoky like whiskey and low as the dog I knew he was. “It’s armor,” he said. “Undersuits are for those who fear the Underside’s mysteries.”

“You say fear, I say a healthy respect to retain my sanity and be curse-free.”

He said, “Then you’ll be happy to know, in the shadow of Atlantis’ Ferryman no curse will form that ails a friend of those who lurk in the depths of the world.”

“Quite the pitch,” I said.

“Doesn’t have to be just a pitch,” he said. “Tell me who you are, and we’ll be on track to becoming friends.”

I mulled over the offer and then spit on his helmet. Saliva—and a trace of mucus—splattered against one of the lights. He sighed at that. Then leaned back in his chair to explain.

“Seeing as you infiltrated this place you probably have a low estimation on the magic of the Abyss,” he said.

I agreed, “A few benders aren’t that impressive.”

“True,” he admitted, “they’re not and I never could get that group to practice. Lucky for you, I do practice. Reached Baron and gained some of our more iconic spells. Like Crushing Depths.”

His fingers curled into his palm like water diving down the edge of a trench. A blazing star of pain flared into my left hand—my bones were dust and my fingers limp. I hissed through my teeth unwilling to give him the satisfaction of a scream. Reminded myself I still had one hand then tried to form the spell to conjure my flames.

“No,” he stated.

The world pressed again and my right hand was now just another dull star of pain. No more hand-spells. A groan slipped from me. Spit dripped down my lip as I tried to suck in air as if that’d push aside the pain that hid where bones should be.

“Since we closed those doors, let’s introduce ourselves. I’m the Angler Knight,” he said. “Your name?”

“Nadia Temple,” I said.

“We’re still playing games?” he asked.

The pressure fell on my kneecap—he replaced it with burning agony. This time I screamed.

“I didn’t lie, fuck,” I said. “It’s not my fault my dad was uncreative.”

“Okay.” He asked, “Affiliations?”

“None.”

“Okay,” he said.

“You believe that one?”

I could feel the asshole smile behind that helmet. “Sure, from what Lenny told us you only know what, two spells? If you were a collective kid or from some big deal family you’d be prepared way better.”

“Hey, from how your mom screamed my name last night, I prepared enough.”

His fist snapped forward. Pressed my face in on itself before it withdrew and my head snapped backward. Strangely, I didn’t feel the metal against my face. Just a force.

“Do you have to make this hard?” he asked. It was like he just had to set me up.

“Whatever makes your mom happy,” I said.

The Angler Knight reached for a stoppered gourd at his hip the size of a small jug. His finger traced the stopper—twists it round and round—but then flutters off to return to resting on the pommel of his sword.

“You’re so petty,” he said.

I snorted, “You’re torturing me.”

“Fine. What exactly is your intention for taking the exam?”

“You really want to know?” I asked. He waved in front of us, floor is yours. So I told the truth. “I want to kill the Lodgemaster, Nemesis Khapoor.”

He leaned forward and investigated the conviction that brought an edge to my gaze.

“You’re really serious. Wonderful,” he said.

“Really?”

“Of course. That’s our goal as well. End her tyrant reign and act as the deluge to sweep her corruption from the world.”

“Hmm, you’re so noble. I just want vengeance for my dad and my mom.”

“If you looked around you’d see that more of us lost our dads and moms to the Red Witch of the Lodge than just you. Killing her won’t bring back the dead, but it’ll save plenty of parents going forward.”

“Maybe,” I said, “but I’d prefer to keep my reasons focused. Others can worry about the world. Now, since we’re so ‘aligned’ can I go?”

The Angler Knight rose from the chair—it was one of those small fold out things, no idea how that was comfortable—and held up a stalling finger.

“We’ll have to clear your story first. Then go from there. Stay tight,” he said.

He formed a different seal this time, and the hand-spell ushered in an abyssal darkness. There was and then there was absence. My eyes hurt trying to search for light that didn’t exist and an escape that seemed to be equally mythical in the moment.

“Nadia,” Sphinx’s voice came through as it vibrated through my spiritual musculature—why’d Sphinx’s voice have to feel so good.

I thought at Sphinx, the telepathy is new.

“Folded in on ourselves like this it’s easier for my words to reach you. I’ve tried before, but your focus is always somewhere else.”

I’m distractible, sure, but I’m listening now. Any ideas on how to get out?

“None,” Sphinx said.

Great.

“But I can remind you that you have the tools to escape. You just have to think.”

Let’s run through them. Tool one, my glaive which is not here. Tool two, the flames which I can’t cast with broken fingers.

“Tool three, the Omensight which mocks causality,” it said.

I can’t see, Sphinx, kind of hard to use a sight-based spell.

“In this moment, you can’t see, but you can see beyond the moment.”

I had seen Mom’s death through time as if I was there. My vision placed beyond the limitations of sight. I’d experienced it once, and I fluttered on the Omensight hoping to do it again. At first there was still darkness. Tears dripped from my chin as I felt the flames smolder. The panes fell away and my sight was free again. I reached for how I saw from before he stole my vision. Color and shape emerged to coalesce to form a tapestry of the present—it was still a new application, so the image was flawed. The ghost of the last thing I saw before darkness was burnt atop the present for me. The variant was messy, but I had still done it. Melded past vision to the present.

Suck it causality!

With Sphinx’s assistance, we scanned the room for a way out. I noted a clock in the corner—it was three a.m.—and tilted my head as I watched the second hand crawl at a tortoise’s pace.

“It’s unimportant,” Sphinx said.

It could still be useful, I argued.

Sphinx sighed and I felt its head spin in annoyance. “Revelation takes as much time as it needs for someone to learn. It doesn’t bow to something as plebeian as linear time.”

We can stop time? My mind was ready to bolt toward a plan at the idea. Sphinx trimmed the branches of that thought.

“We can take our time. In the same way that my Sovereign negotiated with you in between the quarter seconds of life and death. The gap between moments can prove interminable when you have a recipient.”

Couldn’t I use you?

“I am beyond causal time already. Within me is the host of Revelation. We’re not a fair target.”

Then why not just target me all the time?

“Revelation is potent in its singularity. Without the true clarity of a moment or message its strength would dull”

So diminishing returns.

“Very.”

Which leaves only the Angler Knight, perfect. They’d be stuck in this slowed down time with me, but as a non-slowed down person. It is useless.

I wandered from the clock to the rest of the room—let my eyes unfocus so I’d see everything—and my gaze landed on the Angler Knight. Strands of some fleshy mucus thread connected from the top of his head and wound up toward the ceiling. My vision—courtesy the Omensight—tilted upward while my head stayed level. The threads led to the coiled shape of an emaciated eel the length of an anaconda. Its teeth were a gnarly mess of needle-thin vectors in every direction. Along the bottom of the eel were thin tendrils topped with bioluminescent bulbs. I looked back to the Angler Knight and peered into him. In the tapestry of the world, the threads that composed him looked right. They were supposed to look right. Yet with a simple lean—my vision threatened to roll onto its side—the real colors showed themselves. The frigid oceanic darkness of Abyss woven to masquerade itself.

The Angler Knight, if he existed, wasn’t here. I had talked to a lure only maybe connected to a real man somewhere. My mouth twisted into a cunning smile—if he was fake what else was? I grit my teeth and flexed my hands. Pushed past the part of my brain screaming, fool fool we’re already ruined. Wrestled it down, wrapped my own fury at my mistreatment around its throat, and pulled. I silenced the doubting pain and I flexed. My. Hands.

“I’ll be releasing you. Is there a plan?” Sphinx asked.

Of course. I’m running it back.

Time resumed, and the Angler Knight had turned back to me. Acted as if he’d entered the room again rather than briefly go still—a puppet without commands—before whoever picked the controls back up.

I spoke first, “Hey, Knight, I think this friendship might not work out.”

“Why not?”

I bared my teeth at him—manic eyes that were amber pools of scorn and bloodlust. “I like to meet new friends in person. And I really hate it when they lie,” I explained.

“And this code of yours I care about because?” he asked—the bastard was humoring me.

“Cause I’m going to kick your ass with two spells. The Omensight, and. . .” I trailed off.

“And?”

“It doesn’t have a name actually. Uh, it’s like a big burst of fire. Something like a star igniting,” I said. “Star blast just sounds dumb. It’s too glorious for that.”

I linked my thumbs together. The Angler Knight looked around for the audience I was playing too. Gripped my chin and dragged my head into his lights.

“Pretty hard to cast spells when your hands are shattered,” he said.

Twined my index and middle fingers on both hands—didn’t set them against each other. Not yet.

“I think stars are nuclear or something. Oh, atomic, I like that word,” I said. His grip tightened, but I wasn’t falling for the lure anymore. I only had eyes for the puppeteer. “And, yes, it would be pretty hard to cast spells if my hands were shattered.”

Twined my ring finger and pinky on both hands. Again, I didn’t touch them. Not yet.

“So what’s the name then?” he asked. His voice a growl of impatience at my farce—not my fault I didn’t take the oral storytelling course in high school. Never even did theater despite the girls that wanted to see me take the stage.

“It’s pretty good. I’ll call it Atomic Glory,” I said. “But in this case I think it needs a more special name. Fivefold Atomic Glory.”

I brought my twined fingers together into something Amber would later tell me was a quintuple hand-spell. Five instances of Atomic Glory drank deep of fate and as many possible outcomes as my spirit could withstand. They vibrated within my spiritual musculature. Five layers of infinity folded five times over. My eyes squeezed shut—this would be bright—and I split five roads on the way to forever. I only wished I could see the Angler Knight’s face when it happened. When I birthed a star in the depths of the Abyss.

* * *

When I opened my eyes the first thing I saw was my mess. I had fallen through the floor on the ashes of my handcuffs and chair. My side hurt and I remembered how I hit a shelf before I rebounded to the floor. I looked around—I was in a supply closet—and Sphinx guarded the door. Its wings wide and the eyes on its feathers crackled with chalcedony flame.

“Did I kill his entity?” I asked.

“Slaying one of our betters unfortunately takes more than just a lucky shot,” it said. “However, it did flee. A tactic we should employ sooner rather than later.”

I grunted in affirmation. Took stock of the room—it really was just a supply closet—and grabbed a wooden broom. Gave it a few swings before I decided that it’d do. Then I turned the Omensight back on and parted the threads of the wall to see beyond. There was a hallway that was rapidly filling with cultists. They charged toward my little comfy closet.

“You cast, I bash,” I said.

Sphinx laughed. I was shocked. It said, “I had a feeling that would be your choice. You’re very tactile.”

“Thanks for the compliment. You can go first.”

Sphinx pouted but didn’t argue. We waited for the first wave to get closer. Closer. Our signal was silent—our spirits in alignment. Sphinx barreled down the door, wings wide as flame lanced this way and that. I leaped not too far behind—the head of the broom smashed into one girl’s throat. I shuffle-stepped and let the broom slide through my hands to strike the man next to her in the gut. Twist. Applied pressure at my end of the pole rocketing the head into his chin. His feet swung out from under him and I watched as the head of my weapon arced off behind them.

Another woman tried to slip under the man as he fell—I skewered her just above the knee. She collapsed and made a perfect cushion for the bundle of dead weight that smashed into her. I messed up when I tried to recover the broom pole. The girl I had struck in the throat hadn’t fully gone down. Her hand was raised—spell formed—and suddenly I was drowning.

My hands clawed at the orb of water around my head. Fingers parted fluid but nothing came away. I stared at her rippling face through the distortion of the water—at some point I’d dropped the Omensight in panic. Water just assaulted my throat and I realized that I was going to die. I locked eyes with the woman, pleading, and she just smiled. In fairness, I guess I did crack a broom right into her throat.

Chalcedony beamed across my vision—where did her head go—and I dropped to my knees. Banged my chest and coughed to expunge any her water from within me. The stump of her neck was charred black. Even now chalcedony embers nibbled at all she was.

“What the fuck, Sphinx!” I yelled.

“Gratitude is the normal expectation for saving a life. I forgive you due to the circumstances,” it said.

I used the wall to stand—her head was gone. Deleted the way my flames had ate that hunter’s arm. Consigned a bed to not even ash. I tried to look for ash, but there was none. Sphinx rammed into me. I stumbled from my trauma meditation.

“I thought most of their stuff was illusions,” I said.

“For the knight, perhaps,” Sphinx said. “Distance tends to blunt Sorcery and that’s without moving through a crude medium. As a lure, his power was phantasmal. They, however, are very much here and will ask no questions before they kill you. So, do we die here or do we make our way out?”

I put the headless woman from my thoughts—I could fight, it didn’t mean I had to kill—and I flicked the Omensight back on. A dripping charnel tie led from my chest—I looked up—to a crowd of cultists in the hallway around the corner behind us. They had orbs of water aimed at me. This time I was already on the move. Arms swinging and legs pumping as I outran the rain of glass and condensed water that’d shred my body to strings of meat.

We turned a corner of our own. Spotted a staircase and took it. Sphinx leaped down the stairs—I slid on the railing. The path deposited us into a cafeteria. Thirty cultists looked up from meals on trays with a shock on their face.

“It’s the—,” one nearly said.

I didn’t let him finish. My fingers were all twined for a Fivefold Atomic Glory. A star was born for the second time within the Abyss, and it burst like an egg. The yolk—a wave of chalcedony fire—that coated the tables, the food, and the people. Unlike last time, my Omensight was still on. I watched the flames consume their place in the tapestry. Threads of countless Courts—Abyss most prominent obviously—unspooling their energy that fed the flames even further. A conflagratory feedback loop.

What would haunt me—oh I knew it would haunt me—were the ties that burned as well. Love, friends, parents, children, the ties were all different. One of them even was to a beloved pet. I saw memories in the flames. A child’s first step. The day their father had finally said, I’m proud of you. So many weddings. I didn’t know these people and they didn’t know me. Yet I had stolen them from the world. Seared them from the tapestry and worst of all—the tapestry was fine. Their deaths didn’t matter—wouldn’t be known—because how could they matter when the ties of fate that bound them to those who’d care were incinerated. Not even a line of ash that could tickle their memory that there was someone who they loved and who’s gone.

“Nadia!” Sphinx screamed.

I came to myself crawling amidst the screaming emptiness of the room. Sphinx took my shirt by the teeth and yanked me back up.

“Do we die or do we go forward?” Sphinx asked.

“Forward, forward,” I said. Forward away from the horror. Away from the nothing I made.

We ran from the cafeteria and pushed out the double doors into the courtyard. Sprinted as the sound of watery bullets punctuated the air behind us. I didn’t know where to go, so I followed the first tie I saw—to my Mother’s Last Smile. I hopped onto Sphinx—it could run faster—and quickly peered down the tie.

The glaive was in an armory—cultists had taken it as well and were arming up. They had black rifles trained on the door that’d lead directly to the room. I pulled back from the tie.

“Second floor,” I said.

Sphinx listened. Pushed off from the ground and flapped its wings once, twice, and then tuck them in as we shattered the glass into a hallway. I used the Omensight to peer through the floor as I passed door after door. This one! I shouldered it open. Held my finger to my lips and stepped carefully.

Nothing. I stepped again. . . nothing. I muttered my dad’s pet phrase, slow is smooth and smooth is fast. I was in a hurry, but I couldn’t mess this up. Sphinx and I found a good spot. We were above the armory and their guns were aimed in the wrong direction. My hands rose, fingers twined, tap. Fwoosh, fwoosh, fwoosh. Bar after bar of chalcedony flame shot through the floor to take a cultist in the head. Arm. Leg. Heart. Arm. Head. I fired and Sphinx fired. We barely put a dent in them.

Their guns swiveled up.

“Move!” I yelled. We circled the room. Fwoosh, fwoosh, fwoosh. Returned fire as their bullets chewed through the floor like termites—where’d they even get so many bullets. Sphinx and I took shelter in a corner. The only dead angle in the room.

Quiet. I watched them as they watched me. Ready to perforate me the minute I left my safe angle. Sphinx shuffled in front of me. I scritched its head—I knew entities were immune to bullets, they were conceptually too weak in most cases—but Sphinx still didn’t have to do it.

“I might’ve overplayed our hand,” I said.

Sphinx nodded. “They have many cards.”

“Yeah, I almost wished this was a one-on-one. Then I could slow. . .” I trailed off.

In a one-on-one both of us would be moving full-speed, but in a crowd everyone but the target would come to a crawl. Sphinx’s face was a blend of disbelief and mad awe.

“The Godtime is sacred,” it said.

I cracked my fingers. “So that’s what it’s called. How practical.”

My way out needed one more piece. The cultists had reloaded their guns—even in slowed down time a wall of bullets was a wall of bullets. I needed cover and turned over all the spells I knew in my mind. Omensight wouldn’t work. Atomic Glory was hardly a defense. This new Godtime would be impressive, but it wasn’t right. I lacked a defense, an actual one, but I did have one last spell. The one that let Sphinx hide in my body.

“Sphinx,” I said.

It was definitely the adrenaline, but our spirits were in a special kind of alignment. Sphinx looked to me and flashed its row of fangs.

“Don’t make a mess in there,” it warned.

“Never,” I said. “Let’s do this.”

I inverted the hand-spell and felt myself fold into one of the more advanced yoga positions Mom would often do to show off. My spirit was origami’d so tight I wish I could’ve shown her—she was the most competitive mom ever—and I held that thought as I slid into Sphinx’s body.

The place was cramped—it had said the whole host of Revelation was here—but the moment I thought it the pressure vanished.

“Don’t worry about what doesn’t matter,” a voice said. Tight as a bridge of light and just as cold.

Another whined, “You’re ahead of schedule, I’m not ready.” It’s voice a tender despair as best laid plans were unmade and how beautiful their collapse was.

“Just the way of things sometimes,” a different voice winked. A rush of something within the branches of everything. A glimpse here, there, and so close you can touch it. Just far enough away you’re forced to chase it.

The last voice—was it the last?—threw itself around me like a selfish child. “Don’t bully, puppy, she’s so smart. Now let’s see how this plays out.”

I felt their hands guide me into position in front of a massive screen that wasn’t a screen at all. Through it I watched Sphinx stretch and prep itself. The floor was riddled with holes—especially at the center—and threatened to collapse.

Within Sphinx’s spirit I yelled, “The center. Aim for the center!”

Sphinx’s own thoughts echoed around me and caressed my being. You don’t have to yell.

It shuffled back—wagged its butt in micro-adjustments—then pounced. Arced high into the air and hurtled to the floor front paws first. Bam—it landed. The floor groaned, buckled, and collapsed. As one we rode the platform of flooring down into the armor while the rest rained as shards of debris. Despite the smoke the cultists opened fire upon the cloudy mass. Their guns sang a song of the Old World’s violence—machined and steady—but so brief. Click.

The cultists turned to grab more ammo from the boxes behind them. Others had already clipped magazines to a belt and reached for them. They’d stay reaching until I was done. I formed the hand-spell inside Sphinx’s body and peeled myself up and out of their spine. A few cultists looked on in shock—they got to witness my spell.

“Godtime,” I said—it was entirely unnecessary to say it, but damn it felt good. My eyes had locked on a young man far to the back of the crowd. He looked around wildly as everyone slowed to a series of micro-movements. The man tried to fight his way through to stop me, but he wasn’t faster than Sphinx.

It ran forward and leapt claws first into two cultists. Brought them down hard as its wings fanned out—eyes blazing chalcedony—and fired into the crowd. I leaped from Sphinx’s back and springboarded off the face of a cultist. I could see my glaive in an open locker.

Bang-woosh. A bullet sung past my head. The young man had his aim trained on me—time to swap—and found himself pulling the trigger on an eternal second. My new subject was an older woman closer to the front of the crowd. Her arm swung too fast—it seemed some would try to move harder despite the altered time—and her magazine flung from her fingers. She whirled around to spot me and swore at her empty gun. She reached for an already loaded pistol from her hip. In the meantime I had made my way to the locker.

Just in case I shifted targets to the girl next to the locker—her head moved only fast enough to whip into my shoe as I kicked her into the wood locker next to my glaive. Her head bounced—I caught it—slammed her back into the wood.

“Guh,” she moaned.

I dropped her and freed my glaive. The hard work was done—I shifted my target one last to an old man. He was near the girl whose head I introduced rather forcibly to the lockers. The guy already had freed his pistol—another person who knew when to give up on reloading—but I didn’t care. Mother’s Last Smile slid cleanly against my palms and the bright metal crescent took his head from his shoulders. As the Godtime fell I choose a new person to enter this creeping torture with me.

Whether my target dropped first or five near them it didn’t matter. The glaive leaped from my hands, shwip-swhip, like the shuttle of a loom. That bright smile tossing arcs of blood and life into the air as their associated bodies fell. It took longer than I wanted, but it was more humane this way. They’d not just cease to exist—but that didn’t mean I tried to remember them.

When the last person fell I realized the girl I had slammed into the lockers still lived. Sphinx raised a brow, it’s your call. I raised my glaive but shook my head—she wasn’t a danger to me, maybe tomorrow, but that’s tomorrow. Sphinx and I left the armory and I realized a tie had returned to me. It stretched across the hall and down some stairs. I followed it and kept my eyes clear for any cultists on the lookout for me. The only ones I spotted were slumped on the ground with glassy eyes that marveled at nothing.

The stairs led down into a basement where the walls were stone and a large cell covered one wall. At a table opposite the cell—closer to the stairs—was Secretary. Their spiritual musculature, a tight and shiny ectoplasm in the shape of themselves.

“Right on time, I’m ready to leave,” Secretary said. “It’s nearly four.”

I tried to take their head. They ducked the blow and tapped my wrist to send it even wider. I rushed down the stairs but they were gone. I looked up to see the clock had skipped forward two minutes. Sphinx sent through our bond, behind you. I whirled around to see Secretary sitting on the steps and flipping through a file folder.

“You really are a brute,” they cooed. “You went so loud there was nearly no one to stop me.”

I screamed, “You sold me out!”

Secretary shut the folder. “Technically I used you; I’m willing to use you again, and probably again after that because you’re just so good at making a mess.”

My jaw fell at the audaciousness of it all. Secretaries.

“You find the experiments you wanted?” I asked.

Secretary pouted. “Hardly, it’s just your usual nonsense where they want to kill the Lodgemaster and take over. Use the place as a springboard for further domination. It’s very trite.”

“Really?” I asked.

“See it all the time. I mean, you’re hardly a worthwhile Lodgemaster if no one has a grudge against you. Means you don’t do anything. Still, they are replacing people to seed into the exam. So we’ll probably have to stop that. Oh, and recover that experimental axis mundi—apparently they did get it shrine sized.”

“We will?”

Secretary winked, “I was using the royal we for that one, in reference to the Lodge, but if you’re offering—.”

“No,” I said. “Let’s free the captives and go.”

Secretary’s head tilted. “Why would we do that?”

“Cause we have to rescue them,” I said.

“Do you need me to check your memory?” Secretary asked amusedly. “First, I needed help with the goons at the station. You, your ex-wife, and the bossy one did that already. Second, was get information from the facility. Which. . .”

Secretary set the folder atop the stack they had assembled. Formed a hand-spell and discorporated the folders into a shower of evanescent lights.

“Is now done. Oh, look at that, no playing hero and rescuing folks on the itinerary.”

“But they’re members of the Lodge?”

Secretary nodded, “Some of them. Those researchers will be fine, the cultists haven’t killed them yet. Plus, we have the research so we don’t really need any of them if it’d be too fierce a fight to recover them. Yeah, better to let the Lurkers think we don’t care so they get let go faster.”

“And the examinees? They wanted to join you,” I said.

“So,” they said. “If they got captured they probably wouldn’t’ve passed the exam anyways. Doing it like this leaves okay odds that they’ll also be let go after this. Why do you care anyways, they’re your competition in this thing.”

It was a fair reminder. They were my competition, and every person I had to compete against for that top spot—my chance—endangered my way forward. I glanced at the head of my glaive. Would Mom smile if she saw me abandon them like this?

I huffed and walked in front of the cell—hefted the glaive—and cleaved the lock in two. I didn’t open the door. Didn’t go in and wake everyone up or give some rousing speech about working together. They were my competition—I just didn’t want to become a beast.

“Oooh, how conscience sating of you,” Secretary said.

They stood and shoved a thumb toward the stairs. The three of us exited the holding cells and traced our way through the path of destruction we had wrought. Secretary stole a glance inside the armory and whistled, impressed. The idea that I had impressed them was sobering.

We exited the building and found a problem waiting for us. It was clad in metal and a weird skinsuit, sword slung over its shoulder, and nine lights trained on us. This time, fully in the flesh, was the Angler Knight and his weird eel-shaped entity.

“At least let me see you off,” he said.

I hefted my glaive. “Sure, if you want to face a two-on-o. . .” and I trailed off. Something was missing. Again. I shook my head and focused.

“Do we die or go forward?” I asked Sphinx.

“Forward. Always forward,” Sphinx said.

So forward we charged to face the knight and his Baron.