The Great Game

by O. J. Lowe

  As Rocastle sighed aggressively, Wim started to move across the room, running his fingers across the walls in deep sweeping motions, careful to not overextend himself too much. His connection with the Kjarn was still new, still fresh and while it was growing strong with every day, it still would have been all too easy to exhaust himself.

  “I had a room like this,” Rocastle continued wistfully. “Bet they gave it to someone else. I miss that room, even after it flooded. Best gig I ever had doing the scouting here. What the hells are you doing, anyway?”

  “Soundproofing,” Wim grunted. “It’s a big job, I need to concentrate.”

  “Why the hells you soundproofing? That really the best use of your time?” Rocastle sounded petulant like a spoiled child and Wim wanted so very much to ignore him. Instead he sighed and turned to face him, eyes narrowed. The fat man wilted under the glance and privately he was pleased with the reaction. The fear amused him.

  “Are you really as ignorant as you appear? If this turns out badly, do you want every person on the island to know about it? Especially with your record, they’ll probably shoot you on sight.”

  He clapped a hand on Rocastle’s shoulder and squeezed, letting just a little bit of Kjarn slip into his fingers to prove a point. He didn’t apply too much pressure but still he saw the fat man’s eyes widen a little as his grip bit down on the muscles. “Me, I’ll be fine. Might have to make a swift getaway but I will survive. No, this requires a delicate touch and that is something I do not think you possess on your own.”

  “I’ll show you delicate,” Rocastle muttered. Wim increased the pressure, a yelp escaped his lips. Idly he thought about breaking his shoulder or at least dislocating it. It took a moment but he chose not to. He might still need this noxious little weed yet. Still…

  “Can you repeat that?” he asked mildly, applying another bit of pressure and the yelp turned into a low howl, a moan of desperation. Rocastle tried to shake him off to no avail. “I thought I heard you say something.”

  “I didn’t!” Rocastle almost screamed it out. “I didn’t say anything.”

  Finally, Wim let him go and settled on the floor across the room from him. “I thought so,” he said as he closed his eyes. “She’ll be here. Soon. Stay patient. Don’t alert her or your life won’t be worth living.”

  Threats? From him? That was interesting. And worrying. What was he becoming? And more to the point, why did a tiny part of him enjoy it so much?

  Slipping into meditation was easier than ever, a nice slip into another state of mind, one of hyperawareness and sensitivity. Yet at the same time, he felt so much more alive than he ever had before. So… connected to everyone on the island. He could feel them all, a collective mass of individuals too densely packed together to make out. Searching for one specific individual however would prove to be more challenging, he found himself grasping out several times to no avail before finally locking down her position. This used to be so easy… He tried to quash the resentment down deep inside him. It wouldn’t help.

  Through his meditations, he heard her approach through the Kjarn long before he caught the sound of the key in the lock of her door and slowly he opened his eyes. This might need to be a swift job. With the door open, the soundproofing he’d thrown up around the room wouldn’t be as effective and she could still run…

  But she wouldn’t. She surely knew he was here, surely and she’d still approached. Unless she completely had lost touch with her heritage. She was curious and that curiosity would be rewarded tenfold. Yet as the door swept open, he found his hand dropping to his newly constructed kjarnblade just to check it for reassurance. He wasn’t expecting to need it. If he had to ignite it, then he had already failed in his mission.

  In truth, Wim Carson had already arrived at the conclusion he was more likely to use it on Rocastle than on his prey. He smelled her before she entered the room, she saw them almost immediately, tensed up and then came in regardless. Good, he hadn’t fancied chasing her through the hotel. Him, she recognised. To Rocastle, he registered a flicker of fear and surprise, of the unknown emanating from her.

  “I thought you were dead,” she said to him, her voice calm. Apparently, she hadn’t forgotten how to keep that level of poise.

  “Ascendant Arventino,” Wim said, his voice respectful. “I think you’ll find I am very much alive. And harder to kill than you might have been led to believe.”

  “Apparently so, Master Carson.”

  There it was. Not deference in her voice, there was too much to hope for in that but an acknowledgement of the authority he’d once held. She kept his eyes as she bent down to remove her ridiculous heeled shoes, he nodded slowly and relaxed.

  “I see this is what you’ve been doing since the Fall,” he said. “You became a spirit caller.”

  “I was always a spirit caller at heart,” she said. “Training to use the Kjarn didn’t change that. So was my master.”

  “Your master was a lot of things,” Wim said coldly. He watched her remove her other shoe to the point she stood barefoot across from him. “Not many of them good.”

  “He was a good teacher.”

  “As a Vedo, he was lacking. Dangerously unfocused on what he could have been. It was a mistake to give you to him. And now look at him. He abandoned you. The two of you could have done so much more. You lead the life of someone else not befitting to us, he hides away who knows where.”

  She said nothing, he felt a stab of anger filter through her. That had touched a nerve. Several maybe. “Neither of you are fit to bear the name.”

  “Master Baxter was a great man. He did…” She struggled with the words before getting them out. Idly he wondered if she believed them or if she was just paying lip service to someone who she’d idolised. “… He did what he thought was right. And not many of you ever did.”

  “Interesting you don’t count yourself among us,” Wim said.

  “He didn’t run,” Sharon Arventino insisted. “He had a plan, he was going to make it all better. If anyone could have…”

  “Do you even hear yourself?” Wim asked incredulously. “If he had this master plan to fix everything, where is he? How come he never came back for you? Why are you limiting yourself to being ordinary when you could be exceptional?”

  “Maybe some of us don’t want to be your kind of exceptional,” Sharon said. “My father, Alison Teserine… They pushed me into this. I never wanted it. But in a way, it made me so I can’t complain. No changing the past, but my future is something I can do something about.”

  “Yes, I hear,” Wim said smoothly. “I hear congratulations are in order of your upcoming nuptials.”

  Rocastle let out a whistle of demented glee. Sharon ignored him. “Why are you here?” she asked instead. “Because the Vedo are gone, barring my master…”

  “And I!” Wim snarled, surprising himself with the venom in his voice. “If there are Vedo to hear the voice of the Kjarn, then its hope will never leave the world. I’m here to take you back.”

  She rolled her eyes, an expression of audacity that would have infuriated him back then and infuriated him now. He wanted to strike out at her for her disrespect.

  “I recently encountered a Cavanda apprentice,” he said. “That means there are more. And only the Vedo can stand against them. I’ve seen it!” The words weren’t entirely true but he believed them. He knew what those unchecked Kjarn wielders could do. “Without us, they will overrun the world.”

  “Then go to Master Baxter, find him and tell him.”

  “He’s not my master!” The venom returned to his voice. “He’s not fit for that mantle. Just because he survived doesn’t make him the head of the order. That right should be mine! He’s a pretender. He should be coming to me. As should you. I forgive your transgressions if you accept yourself as my apprentice and come back to the path you should never have been allowed to leave.”

  Sharon blinked. “Master Carson. As much as I hear what you’re saying…” She hesit
ated for a moment, he thought she might go for it. He’d given her an order after all. She’d stand with those that she belonged with. “… I’m going to have to decline. That part of my life is long over. I’m not interested.”

  “You assume you have a choice, you insolent bitch!” White hot anger flared through him and he didn’t even try to swallow it down deep. He revealed the hilt of his weapon and almost drew it.

  She did react to that, her eyes widening and she threw out an arm, Wim grinning inside as he felt the Kjarn surge through her in a way that had been denied to it for so long.

  It looked like it took an effort but the cylinder flew to her outstretched hand and he sighed as she thumbed the activation switch and the blade burst into life, a silver blade with flecks of gold and black running through it emerging. He could smell the acrid scent of white hot energy, the odour of disuse. How long since she’d last activated it? A while, if that smell was anything to go by.

  “Still works then?” he said dismissively. His own kjarnblade crept into his hand but he didn’t move towards igniting it. “Ascendant Arventino, I’m asking you to stand down. I do not want to fight you.”

  “And I don’t want to listen to you,” she said. She shot a sideways glance to Rocastle who made a hurt face and gripped his weapon tighter. She brought her blade up, shielding her body pointedly. “Or him. Both of you, leave! Now!”

  “I can’t do that,” Wim said sadly. “I need your help and…”

  “No!” She sounded furious as the words left her mouth. “I’ll never help you! I remember you, Wim Carson and I know what you’re capable of.”

  “You remember what? That I was friends with your teacher…”

  “You tried to murder him! And me.”

  That much was true, he had to admit. It wasn’t the entire story but that fact was always going to condemn him in her eyes unless he could make her see sense. A lot of bad stuff had happened back then during the Fall and he couldn’t defend himself against the accusations. “I wasn’t myself. Nobody was that day. The madness had taken us all, bar you and your master. I don’t know why you two were spared…”

  “No, I wouldn’t expect you to,” she cut in with a sneer.

  “…If I had been able to stop myself, then I would have done so. But I’m better now. It took us all by surprise. But now my eyes are open and I will conquer this. I will bring the Vedo back. You and I will be the first of the new…”

  “You can’t control this. I don’t know how you got your connection back but…” He took a step towards her and she raised her weapon. “Get back! I don’t care. You might be able to touch it again but you’re making the same mistakes as the old order did before.”

  “The old order was perfect,” he said, trying to keep the control in his voice. “Cut off before its prime.”

  “You’re in denial,” Sharon said scornfully. “The old order deserved to die.”

  “You!” Something in him snapped and his words came out harsh and angry. His blade snapped on and he didn’t lower it, pointing it level at her throat. She didn’t move to knock it away but he could tell in her eyes that she wanted to. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, you stupid little girl! Just because you survived doesn’t give you a divine-given right to comment on our ways. You or your deviant master.”

  “And why was he deviant? Because he chose not to follow blindly into the paths trodden thousands of times before by you and yours? Because he was different? That made him the greatest of them all. Have you ever wondered why he and I were the only one unaffected by the Fall?”

  Wim had, but now wasn’t the time to debate it. She couldn’t know that. She wouldn’t. Didn’t. She was lying, trying to psych him out. “It won’t work!” He yelled. “You don’t know what you’re talking about! How could you? What we did was magnificence, the work of the divines and if Baxter survived it, then…”

  It felt like the pieces were falling into place. “Did Baxter get involved? Was he complicit in our destruction?!” Suddenly a great weight felt as if lifted from his shoulders, realisation dawning within him. “Were you?”

  “I wasn’t, Wim. Neither was he. It hurt him badly to have to dismantle it…”

  “But not enough to crush him! You’re both a disgrace!” Fury coursed through him now, fury as he’d never felt before and part of him knew it was wrong to feel like this but he couldn’t stop it. All his reserves were pitiful against the anger bellowing out in his being. “I came here to ask for your help but…”

  “I will not help you on your mad quest. Let things be. You can’t resuscitate the order. Not as it was.”

  “Ascendant Arventino,” Wim said through gritted teeth. “I do not, I repeat, do not…”

  And he let the Kjarn burst go he’d been building up inside him, emphasising his words, the sheer power forcing her to take three steps back. She nearly lost her footing. Rocastle nearly fell backwards off his seat. “WANT YOUR OPINION!”

  As she righted herself, she glared at him. “I was so hoping you would do that.” And then she was on him, swinging her blade at him and that was that as his own blade came up to block hers, the clash of light almost hurting his eyes as they met.

  “So much for never striking first,” she said. “You’ve forgotten that code that you claimed to live by. Now who’s disgracing the order’s memory?”

  He didn’t reply, just blocked her next three strikes as she continued to shoot her dirty little mouth off. “No hate, no anger, just duty and the greater good. Sound familiar? It’s the opposite of…” She swung out again, a two-handed swipe at neck height that would have broken his head from his neck if it had connected. He didn’t recoil at the flare as blade met blade. It wasn’t anything he hadn’t seen before. Next, she went low and he slashed to block her from taking his legs away.

  Even amidst the anger, he found he truly didn’t want to hurt her. He wanted her to see sense, which had been the true purpose behind the harshness of his words. But if she wouldn’t see it… Only together would they be stronger and she didn’t seem to understand that. Or want to. He moved his blade in unison with hers, never pressing an advantage, just halting her attacks well before they reached him. He was rusty. But so was she. They’d been suffering from the same malady in a way. The ability to touch the Kjarn in them had threatened to atrophy through underuse. Her movements were stiff, unfamiliar, but it looked like there was some sort of muscle memory remaining within her.

  Of course, her bastard master had ensured she was well drilled in that. Ruud Baxter, the disgrace of the Vedo, always chose a fight over another solution. Still their blades met, neither given as much room to move as they might have liked given the layout of the room. He swung at her, missed and cut her bed a great scar down the middle, only barely blocking her counter attack as he pulled free. In retaliation, she sent a weak burst of Kjarn lightning towards him, the smell of static sulphur thick in the room. He caught it in his hand, felt his skin fizzle under the charge and he tossed it aside, blackening the wall with the blast. Once more she came at him and he brought his blade up to defend…

  Rocastle’s kinetic disperser boomed and suddenly her eyes were wide as she was flung forward, he couldn’t have twisted to evade her even if he’d wanted to, reactions just too slow… and he heard the gasp and caught the odour as his blade went through her body and out the other side. Nothing held up against the power of the Kjarn, it was what made the blades so formidable as weapons.

  As soon as he saw the look on her face, he felt the regret, deactivated his blade and she fell to the carpet, the back of her head a mess, her neck at an awkward angle. Wasn’t dead yet but…

  The wave of power hit him like a tsunami, almost hurling him from his feet and rendered him insensible, everything she was, everything she had been and what she could have become forcibly being expelled from the slowly dying shell that had once been her body.

  He’d felt it. Anyone with a single iota of Kjarn sensibility, within a hundred miles would have fe
lt it. Anyone even who had a strong connection to her might even have felt it, that was the power he’d felt behind it. For several long moments he sat there slumped against the wall where he’d fallen, staring at the body. It wasn’t supposed to go like this. She was supposed to have listened to him. If she would have…

  “That was intense,” Rocastle said breezily. “Shame she had to twist. I could have…”

  What he could have done with or without was lost in the moment as Wim rose to his feet angrily and flung out with the Kjarn, grabbing him by the throat and holding him upright in the air. He wanted so badly to kill the fat fuck, make him suffer like Sharon had. Nobody should die like this!

  “Why the hells did you do that?”

  Pressure on his windpipe, Rocastle couldn’t answer but still he managed to smirk as the force on his throat only grew. Killing him wouldn’t be the right solution. But right there and then, if there was a correct solution to the whole mess, Wim Carson didn’t know what it was.

  He felt like he didn’t know anything anymore.

  Chapter Fifty-Four. Spiralling.

  “Once more, like an overindulgent child, the more the attention spins away from him, the more he cries and clamours to pull it back to him… Ronald Ritellia will speak before the media today about the latest tragedy to hit his grossly ill-thought out attempt at running a successful Quin-C in Vazara…”

  Kate Kinsella tagline ahead of Ritellia’s press conference.

  The twenty-fifth day of Summerpeak.