The Comfort Of The Knife

We stood there still as statues. Expressions chiseled into the eternity that the moment stretched into. I imagined this was how prey felt when finally cornered by a predator. Frozen and clinging to the fallow hope that in stillness could come safety. At least, that’s why I didn’t move.

I whispered, “The prism was supposed to bind anything from the soldiery.”

Glurk glurk glurk. It was a revolting noise reminiscent of someone pulling a shoe free from mud. My wide doe-eyes narrowed to compliment the sneer that formed. I hated when someone laughed at me. The lindwurm’s eyes swiveled chameleon-like to stare at me. Its sucking deep throated chortle ceased.

“Oh, spare me your eyes lest I snatch them,” the lindwurm said. “It’s not my fault you poorly graded my own magnificence.”

Amber swore beneath her breath. “Are the theatrics necessary?”

The lindwurm huffed. “You’re the one who placed me into the spotlight. Though, you’ve been on the stage for quite awhile already yourself, little player.”

“If you’re not a soldier then what are you?” I asked. “Don’t I at least get to know the name of the entity that’ll kill me?”

The lindwurm reared itself up—the damn thing was vain as hell—and pressed a gecko-esque paw to its chest. “My name, no you don’t get to have that. I enjoy not being caged by you summoners. The rest though I suppose I can answer,” it said. “Upon the great Chain of Vassalage, my rank is baron. My title, The Song That Resounds Amidst the Ruins.”

“Pleasure to meet you,” I said. My own fear melting into acceptance.

“You bespoil the etiquette behind those words,” it said. “Lovely. Now, you did get one more thing wrong.”

“That is?” Amber asked.

“That I’ll kill you. It’d be a shame to slay someone so willing to betray all that they are.” It leveled these words at me. “So I offer you this deal: bond to me and I spare your friend. I’ll even make sure we get the vengeance you crave.”

I glanced at Amber. “You’re my senior,” I said. They were the only words needed.

She shook her head. “Desecration respects nothing. Any deal you make with it expect to come out the loser.”

I turned to the lindwurm, “You heard her. Plus, I prefer to keep my autonomy and my mind to myself. I’d lose both bonding with you.”

The lindwurm released a rancid sigh. “Well then. . .” it trailed off. Silence settled around us to compliment the standoff we were in.

Amber chuckled, “I always thought I’d die by firing squad—” tink. The frail noise severed her words. We both spotted the small chip of stone that had fallen away from the door behind us. She tilted her head, spotted something, and turned back. An ember of mirth had returned to her.

“If we’re to die, let's make a game of it. Give us one chance to start this chase all over again,” she said to the lindwurm.

It chuckled before asking, “What happened to ‘Desecration respects nothing?’”

“Oh it’s still there, but would you really miss out on a chance to have some fun?”

“I don’t know if the moment calls for fun,” it answered.

She shook her head. “It doesn’t. This is a somber tragic moment in which our poor heroine meets an untimely end. It calls for a solemnity.”

“Solemnity?” it asked.

“Yes. Endings are a sacred thing, really.”

I watched as her words elicited a hiss from the baron before us. A dry spot hand appeared upon its chest. The lindwurm’s head rocked side-to-side like a swaying ship. Its jaw worked over the problem before it. ‘Honor’ the moment and kill us easily, or risk it all on an impromptu game.

“I. . .” the dry patch spread. Flakes of skin snowed oh so gently. “The game,” it responded.

Amber grinned, “Five shots. Take five shots of your weird tongue thing at us at point-blank range just as we are now. If we avoid them all then you let us pass, and we start this chase over.”

“If I win?”

“Well, you get the outcome you would’ve had anyways. Hell, you still might even if we ‘win’. We have a deal?”

The lindwurm lowered itself. “Yes,” and opened its maw to reveal a pre-loaded tongue-spear. I snatched Amber’s arm and pulled her back towards me. The spear went wide and thudded into the door behind us. Stone chips showered behind us like the embers of a sparkler. The lindwurm tsk’d and began the process of reloading its tongue.

I asked, “Have any spells to help us win?”

“None at all. Hope you were good at dodgeball,” she answered.

My breath slowed as I did my best to watch the lindwurm. Any twitch of motion that could give away its next target.

“Don’t forget to blink, Temple,” Amber said.

I turned my head toward her. “How am I supposed to—”

Her leg lashed. Hooked my ankle and pulled. Thwoomb. The lindwurm’s tongue zoomed above my body. I clattered to the ground. Looked up at the door to see the three tongue-spears embedded deep into the stone. Fissures connected them like a grim constellation.

Amber swung her arm out my way—kept her eyes fixed on the lindwurm the entire time—and helped me up. When my hand slid into hers I tapped a finger against her palm.

“You sure?” she asked.

“I’m the navigator, aren’t I?” I asked back.

She laughed. I hate when people laugh at me, but hers was a laugh like helium. Made you lighter than your problems versus highlighting that you had them at all. My mouth twisted into a smile as I found my feet. Together we could face—

“Argh,” she screamed. I turned and felt joy curdle. We had believed the lindwurm’s attacks were just simple projectiles. Fired and left inert upon arrival. Yet here they were removed from the door and twined together into a fleshy-rebar that punctured Amber’s thigh.

She dropped to a knee. The lindwurm chuckled as well.

“You cheated,” I said.

It smiled at me. “Oh summoner, you always need to think about your words. The game was five shots for your chance to run again. Not that I’d only shoot you.”

Bitterness settled in my heart alongside the guilt already present. The lindwurm didn’t need to add that even if we did win any chance we could win the later chase had plummeted. My eyes blurred as fat tears rolled down my face. The lindwurm began to reload.

I wouldn’t give the lindwurm the pleasure of seeing the despair on my face. Instead I eyed the slowly crumbling wall that we had placed our hopes on. The force of the removal hand taken that constellation and turned it into a spiderweb of fractures. Even at this degree of degradation the door stood solid. It’d need another blow before it crumbled. I slammed my fist into the door and shattered three bones in my hand. Hissed through clenched teeth at my own weakness.

“Give it up Temple, you’d need a steel hammer to get through that door,” Amber said.

Steel. I raised my fist again, but this time I turned it over to spot the linking cuff between the gloves of my suit and the main body. Pinched the cuff between my fingers to release it. With a hiss, I tore the glove off and watched as a windless force stole the skin from my fist to reveal the damask-patterned spirit that lay beneath. A metallic sheen danced across my knuckles as I reared back one last time—exactly how Dad showed me.

All of myself was engaged when I threw that punch. Not just my hips and shoulders, but my hatred too. I threw it not just wanting to strike stone, but strikethrough an enemy. All my enemies. The five masked killers, the adults of the town, and my own pitiful weakness. There was resistance when my knuckles kissed the stone. When I torqued my body I ground it to dust. Only to feel the sweet nothing of air right behind it. I smiled as the stonework flew off into the void.

My smile turned to a gasp of surprise as I followed the stone and my fist down the flight of stairs. Behind me I saw, inverted, Amber crawl through the chunk of now revealed stone. In her hurry she fell with me. Behind her came the rushing bulk of the lindwurm. It slammed into the door and roared in disbelief that even missing a chunk the door rebuffed its assault. Our death delayed once more, Amber laughed as we tumbled into the dark.

* * *

When we arrived into a well-bruised heap at the bottom of the stairs, I found myself enraptured by a large stained glass window. I crawled out from beneath Amber—who slapped away my hand to camp herself against a wall—and stumbled to the center of the room. The walls were packed earth and minimal stone. Shelves for mummified corpses.

“What leaves a corpse in the Underside?” I asked.

Amber rolled her eyes. “Now you notice them? Temple, this whole place is a crypt. Swear, hunter thinks they’re near a…”

I tuned her grumbling out. There were no more than twelve bodies here. I examined a shelf near Amber’s head. Ran my hand through the dust to reveal a name.

“Shariq Ayyad,” I read.

Amber rolled her head toward me. “You’re not supposed to read anything in the Underside, Temple,” she said.

“I know, but what does exposure matter if we’ll still die?” I asked.

“Might still die,” she amended.

Our eyes met and I read her for even a hair-thin crack of doubt. “You really think we can still get out of this?” I asked.

She shrugged and looked off into nothing. “Don’t you? No one punches through a door if they think it’s hopeless.”

She had me there. I rose to my full height and wiped off the dust on another shelf. This one read: Zayn Moore. A chuckle escaped my lips. Amber looked up.

“You go mad?” she asked.

I began to strip off my Undersuit. Left it in a crisp puddle near Amber. The rest of my body took on the metallic hue of my fist. While my clothes fluttered away alongside my flesh. Amber shook her head mournfully and muttered, “Yup, she went mad.”

I took my place in the center of the room and took in the stained glass window. There was no light here, not even a candle, but still the window glowed with an inner radiance. It illuminated the glass depiction of a host of creatures that frolicked below in fields. There was even a sphinx. Above that host was a smaller number of beings. Going up and up in a pyramid—no, a chain—that terminated at an apex depiction of something that whether an eye or a galaxy.

“I’m not crazy you asshole. I’m learning. This window it’s a grimoire,” I said. “Those names were human, not some gibberish the Underside came up with.”

“You really think the Underside can’t make a name?”

“Amber, please!” I asked softly, “Just humor me.”

Her eyes fluttered away from me and back again. She rocked herself to her feet and shuffled next to me. Then, from my own vantage point, she saw what I saw. She even saw a little more.

“Aw fuck, this is some cult’s initiatory space,” she said. “Yeah, they even have a focusing circle.”

I looked down and noticed that below us was a chipped mosaic of occult complexity. When it was new it must have been beautiful. Clean and glossy tiled arcs tracing shapes inside and outside the circle. A landing strip and radio station for a summoner to call down any entity from the court. At the moment though, it was a shabby broken thing. Only the circle remained—too thick for a few chips to ruin it.

“We could—,” I said.

“Temple, we’re not using some busted cultist focusing circle.”

“We will if I want to summon something.”

“Something, she says,” Amber muttered. “You don’t even know what you’re going to get. You don’t know what this Court is. You don’t have a single name to identify the entity. Even with the summoning circle you’re flying blind. There’s a reason people summon only from what they have records if they summon at all. We need tools if we were going to do this right.”

“Good thing we have this cultist focusing circle. Should still be keyed to the Court.”

Amber’s mouth fell in astonishment. “You’ll have no protection if you do this.”

I smirked, “Didn’t you say you have to be vulnerable if you want power?”

Amber flipped me off. Then shuffled behind me.

“Then let’s do this. Know how to sit seiza?” she asked.

I answered by taking the position. She carefully settled onto her knees. I tried to ignore the squelch of blood getting pushed out from her motions.

“Temple, align your mind on as clear a desire as possible. That desire’s the message you’ll be broadcasting across the Underside,” she said. “Remember, no matter what answers it’s your decision to bond with them.”

My mind raced alongside my heart. Worried breaths shuffled in and out of myself. I’d love to say I had a clear desire in mind, but I didn’t. When I tried to focus on the idea of just getting out of here my nerves crept over my shoulder to remind me that bonds were lifelong. A marriage of spirits. So then I looked to my future, and felt even the firmness of my vengeance fracture. Amber had asked if my dad deserved to be avenged, and while one part of me roared yes another part stayed silent. He was a Godtender and never told me. He was my dad, but that quiet part dared to ask, “Is he?”

I scurried from that thought and bumped into the reality of how much I didn’t know. I didn’t know the lindwurm was a baron. I didn’t know the faces of my father’s killers. I didn’t even know their Courts. If I was to find them it’d be a miracle because I didn’t know how. In fact, all of my problems were some cousin to the reality that, “I didn’t know.” The conviction that led me to this moment was based on a “didn’t know.” I scowled and shook my head. I may not have known, but I knew what I didn’t need and that was self-pity. My head rose and fixed on the window. A stubbornness suffused in myself as my spirit flesh rose in hue. The heat I felt on the night I swore vengeance crept up my limbs again. Raced toward my heart as I blazed orange-white once again. I forged myself once again.

I was the navigator. I opened the doorway. I find the way. As I stared at the window I felt my eyes unfocus. A message had fixed itself in me. Wove around my spine to alert the entirety of my being. I wanted to find the way forward. Always forward.

At some point, Amber probably asked if I was ready. I don’t remember saying anything, but she knew. She wove a hand-spell made of a series of seals. Finished the sorcery by stamping her thumb against the base of my skull. Then unlocked my spirit.

My chest bloomed and came undone. Orange-white camellia petals made from my own spirit flesh parted to form a flower that was my entirety. Thin cordlike tendrils emerged from within and shivered in the windless breeze of the Underside. The pistil and stamen of the flower I sported. The physicalization of my desire. I sat there and waited.

In the distant shadows of my mind, I could hear the avalanche rumble of rubble tumble down the stairs. I even noted how the tips of my metallic petals seemed to tarnish ever so slightly. Desecration was on the wind. The lindwurm was coming. It was in those far wings where sensation lived and thought died that I knew Amber was alone. She needed me.

“She needs us,” a voiceless voice said.

Voiceless because there was no sound at all. The Underside had no need of it. Instead, I felt the meaning with the entirety of my being. That’s when I felt reality purr in approval of my understanding. Space—me—the Underside rippled to the frequency of that lascivious purr.

“Ah!” The moan rushed free from me as I felt my petals be pinched between cosmic fingers that ran back and forth in examination.

“You’ll do well for me,” the presence said.

My vision refocused as I took in the window. The stained glass figures had turned their heads to face me. Their glass mouths moved in unison as the voice spoke.

“Weren’t you warned about staring,” it reminded me.

I couldn’t blink though. I couldn’t do anything but behold. In fact, I didn’t want to. I felt my pistil and stamen wind around this power’s fist. It yanked me from my sitting position to one that was decidedly kneeling.

“That’s what I like about you, Nadia.”

“How do you know my name?” I asked.

“The same way you know mine,” it responded.

Those fingers loosened their grip and twined within myself. Yet it meant I was also twined with her. I moved to speak her name. Yet before I could I felt fingers grasp my tongue. Make a haven of my mouth. I suppose you could say I was in her clutches.

“That you are, my little summoner. Still, better to be in mine than to tumble free until you splatter against the firmament,” she said. “That’s what happens when one as weak as you tries to lift the burden of my name. So be silent and just hold it close to your heart.”

I felt something slide within me. Like a tapioca ball shooting through a straw. Until it plopped and sunk within my mind past the probing fingers of my own consciousness.

“Good girl,” she said. I knew she was because she made sure I knew. “Now, before we bargain—,”

“Bargain?”

“Bargain. Before we do so, I want you to tilt your head backwards. There, there,” she said as I followed the instruction.

My vision fully inverted I saw the twisted form of the lindwurm propel from the shadows. Maw yawning and tongue sharp, so it could consume Amber. I saw Amber’s eyes had slid to the corners. She probably caught sight of the smallest blur of the lindwurm. Not enough time to even be fully aware she would die.

“You stopped time?” I asked.

“We wouldn’t have had much time to bargain if I hadn’t.”

“Oh, I’m being Observed,” I said.

Existence purred once again, and I formed a weak smile around her fingers. As kids we all learn about Observation. First in rhymes and songs, and then in the myths told about the heroes and villains of the Changeover. Many of the facets are the same no matter the story: time slowing or stopping, hearing voices without any sound, being touched by the universe. They were also all in agreement that it was the worst fate that could befall a person.

“It’s not that bad,” she said. “All around you are those I once Observed.”

“They’re dead,” I remarked.

“That’s not my fault,” she replied.

We both knew that wasn’t true. Reality doesn’t take well when an entity decides to make their presence known through Observation. Whether in Realspace or the Underside, an unincarnated entity was just too heavy for existence to carry. So reality tended to buckle, and the influence of the Court would seep in. Whether warping matter or manipulating outcomes the entity didn’t have to do anything. Just watching was enough.

“What did I do to catch your eye?” I asked.

“No need to be so glum darling,” she stroked my face. “You did a very good thing. You’ve provided me a way into the world again.”

“Again?”

She nodded. “My enemies razed my court to nothing. Slew every link in the Chain until not a single piece of me was left incarnated. Slew my summoners so my many names would be lost. I’d still Be for I already Am, but I couldn’t let them get away with it. Who would avenge me?”

Water—or something like water—seeped out around the frame of the window. Ran like rivers past me. Tears of my own poured down my face.

“You see Nadia, I want a way as well. Be the navigator that might chart a Sovereign’s vengeance and my return to reality. In turn I’ll be yours, and guide you to your own foes.”

The deal was good, but it needed one more thing. “Kill the lindwurm, please,” I said.

The universe bounced with laughter. She leaned in close—or rather existence did—and whispered to the ribosomes at the center of my cells.

“You’re lucky you’re my favorite summoner,” she said.

I smiled, “I’m your only one.”

“So you are.”

There was a snap as if reality rubber-banded into one point. The stained glass shattered. Yet the shards tumbled inwards to reveal a sea of blazing stars. An endless expanse of tomorrow down which one could tumble through a hundred-thousand futures that diverged—

“Blink.”

I blinked. Blinked again. Blink. Blink. Blink. Blink. Blink. Everything was still red! Then it was null.

“Breath,” she said.

I obeyed. With the gentle sweep of a divine hand the universe was shuttered to me.

“I always forgot to warn people not to look. But you can now,” she said.

Her hand was removed and reality returned to me. The window was whole. My vision was clear. Though I saw droplets of my blood frozen in mid-ascension. Like raindrops in reverse. What was also before was a sphinx. Whose feathers were opalescent and shimmered with secrets. Its body rippled with muscle and its fur was spotted like a snow leopard. Though the sphinx’s spots were like eyes on a peacock’s feather. Its face was heart-shaped and androgynous with a strong nose, smooth forehead, and half-lidded eyes that held barely a smidge of bemusement.

“Behold, the guardian of ways and your initiator into the mysteries of my Court,” she said through the sphinx’s mouth.

I tilted my head in acknowledgement. Then I felt my pistil and stamen guided by her fingers to intertwine with the feather’s of the sphinx’s single outstretched wing. She wove us together into the singular being our bond now made us.

“The lindwurm,” I said. “You promised.”

“So I did,” she said.

Piloting the body of the sphinx you passed me. The bloom of my spirit closed up and smoothed back into my chest. I rose to tired unsteady legs. Watched as my new partner approached the lindwurm and placed a single paw against its head. She looked back to me—cause apparently the sphinx could rotate its head like an owl—and revealed the armory of knives that hid in her mouth under the guise of teeth.

“Pay close attention my dear summoner, for this is the power of Revelation.”

All the outcomes that ever could be swirled into this moment. Under control of a divine will it condensed them until they were but a single bead of power. Then, with a deft control, she bisected infinity and unleashed a glorious stream of chalcedony flames. They spiraled down the lindwurm’s gullet illuminating its entire length as they ate it from the inside out.

In this timeless moment, I watched the lindwurm become a silhouette of ash imprinted onto reality. The sphinx returned to me and sat upon its haunches with a wan smile. She was still piloting it. Through eyes half-lidded I locked gazes with a goddess.

“Don’t expect me to save you again, my summoner. The way is only worth the effort we put into walking it,” she said.

Then I watched as she stepped away from the moment and time resumed. The patter of my raining blood marking her exit. Amber’s hand stilled as she turned to spy the ashen silhouette that hung in space. The last remnant of the lindwurm. Finally, she looked at me and nodded.

“Introduce me to your entity later,” she said. “I want to get back topside soon as possible.”

She took a few steps before collapsing to the ground. The leg of her suit was so suffused with blood that it welled up from within the fabric. I slid to my knees and cradled her. Struggled with her wrist so I could check the vitals watch built into the suit. Her heartbeat was dropping fast. The sphinx sidled next to me and crouched.

“Your legs are slow,” it said.

Nahey tittered at me. Fluttering violently around my head no doubt worried I’d drop Amber. So extra carefully I laid her across the sphinx’s back. Then I climbed atop it myself.

“Do you know a way out?” I asked.

“Summoner, we’re of Revelation. We always know a way,” it answered. Then sped off in a race against Amber’s plummeting heartbeat.