Transcending Limitations

by Brian Wilkerson

  Neuro gestured to the scorch mark with his hand. To use his scythe would be disrespectful. “I take it that you already cleared this with Lord Death?”

  “Yes! He agrees with me! You know how it pleases him to have a new reaper in his corps and how thinly stretched his resources are!”

  Neuro knelt at the scorched circle’s edge and traced his finger along the red line. Lifting it to his face, he smelt and tasted it. “Unicorn blood.”

  “The healer in my team mutated into one. He was happy to help.”

  Neuro stood up. “My order maintains that there is meaning to our service as mortals. We are not simply sacrificial lambs for those that, for whatever reason, break the rules. You have my sympathies, but please, do not involve me in your family disputes.”

  He turned his back and the sight of it tempted Basilard into murdering him where he stood. Only the fact that such an action would be pointless stopped him. The exit clicked shut. Basilard grabbed a chair and threw it.

  “That was my only hope!” He blasted another chair with a mana beam. “There is no way to cheat Death; he always wins eventually!” He punched through the reading table. “Stars explode. Universes end. Even gods can be killed.”

  He pulled his fist back and stumbled back into a third chair.

  “Our universe is based on chaos,” Omnias said. He was standing in the doorway. “Chaos makes the impossible possible and enables defiance of fate. If you are a Chaosist, then you must accept this as truth and embrace it as your hope.”

  Basilard looked up at him. “In all your years, have you ever learned to knock?”

  Omnias handed Basilard a fresh cup of coffee. He accepted it without reply. Then he downed it and tossed it with the others in the waste bin.

  “You know, it’s peculiar,” Omnias said as he retrieved the thrown chair.

  “What is?”

  “You used to think Zettai was an abomination like Tarquin does now. As I heard it, you were the first to insist that she was your ‘legal ward’ instead of your ‘daughter.’” He worked a little magic and the chair was good as new. He placed it next to Basilard, sat down on it, and asked, “What changed?”

  Suddenly, Basilard drew BloodDrinker and slashed. The priest didn’t move and the blade stopped at his nose.

  “Can you see them?” Basilard asked. “The countless souls living in this blade? Bladi Chiefs, enemies of the Bladi Clan, random people, monsters; BloodDrinker eats all of them. Only the Bladi Chiefs, legitimate holders, maintain any kind of sentience, but they’re all in here in one form or another. All of them wanted me to become the father Zettai needed.”

  He retracted the sword and stared at it.

  “Peer pressure and filial piety wouldn’t inspire this kind of panic,” Omnias said.

  “She’s a good girl, and she was in a bad situation...” He wasn’t staring at the blade anymore. “So bright and earnest...Yearning to be loved and nurtured. She needed me, and during our vacation, I realized I needed her as well.”

  “Perhaps if you tell Paric Gold this story,” Omnias said, “he could write an article that would generate enough public outrage to change Lord Death’s mind.”

  Basilard laughed long and loud. He fell out of his chair in his intense mirth.

  Omnias blinked. “Was it really that funny?”

  The necro scorch mark burst with light. It reached the ceiling and became the Door of Death. It opened and a reaper floated out. A living spectacle of decay, he smiled with a mouth of yellow and brown teeth.

  “No,” the ghoul said, “it wasn’t.”

  Basilard nonchalantly returned to his seat. “Moving up in the world, Gruffle?”

  “I’m here to help you, Basilard Bladi. We can help each other.”

  “Let me guess: I kill Eric for you and Zettai’s death violations are expunged.” His eyes narrowed. “I doubt you have the authority to do that.”

  “As soon as Eric is dead, I will officially be the head dead guy around here. I could do whatever I wanted. Pardoning that squirt of yours will be as easy as swinging my scythe.”

  “I’m not putting myself at your mercy.”

  “I know I was a thug before, but I’m a reaper now, and we’re all about mercy.”

  Basilard deadpanned. “Go away before I banish you.”

  “If you’re going to be like that, then I’ll leave.” Turning his back on Basilard, Gruffle spoke over his shoulder. “I’ll just kill the girl and get it over with.”

  Basilard jumped from his chair and shouted, “You can’t!”

  Gruffle spun around and swung his scythe. Its blade sang as it reaped the air above Basilard’s head. He returned to a ready stance and said, “Five death violations and the smiting usually happens at four. Isn’t that what the altar server said? I’d be remiss in my duties if I left such a criminal alone.” He sneered. “Unless, of course, you help me with my Final Wish.”

  Basilard dropped his gaze and slouched. Ridley could certainly fend off any number of Bladi assassins, but a reaper was a different challenge entirely. She could kill Gruffle one thousand times and it would all be in vain if he somehow reached Zettai.

  “Okay, I’ll do it,” he said at last, “but I want it in writing and in blood; a necrotic-contract forcing the both of us to hold our ends of the bargain.”

  Gruffle smirked. “Already done.” He reached into his cloak and brought out a crisp white scroll bound with a brass clip. “An acquaintance of mine drew this up.”

  Basilard snatched it and unfurled it. Gruffle could never manage anything tricky, but he suspected that the reaper’s acquaintance had millennia of experience. At the bottom of the page, he turned it over and started over. Then he checked both sides with Magic Sight. Finally, he returned it and said, “You first.”

  Gruffle obliged by touching the first signature line with the butt of his scythe. The words “Benjamin E. Gruffle” appeared. Basilard bit his thumb and placed it on the second signature line. The words “Basilard Bladi IV” appeared. Then he closed his hand around the contract.

  “I’ll hold on to this if you don’t mind.”

  It disappeared from his hand and reappeared in that of Omnias. The chaos priest tucked it into his robe. “As the witness to the contract and a neutral party, I will hang on to it.”

  Both of them stared at him.

  “I know what you’re thinking and I would give it to the Fire Sage, but he’s a legal minor at the moment. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to change his diaper.”

  A magic circle appeared underneath his feet, and he teleported outside. The distance was ten feet. From the other side of a window, he pulled down his eyelid at Gruffle before truly leaving. Gruffle grumbled dark things about arrogant immortals before turning to his own exit.

  “Return here when you have Eric’s head. I’ll check with the big boss to make sure he’s truly dead. Then your squirt can live...until your relatives kill her! Ghahahaha!”

  He disappeared into the Door of Death and it sank into the necrotic scorch mark. Basilard was now alone in the library. Suddenly, he smacked himself in the head.

  “What was I thinking?! I already asked Tasio and now I...that trickster’s temper...”

  “Yes, you have indeed compounded your problems, Chief Bladi.”

  In walked Kaiba Gunrai and his twin assistants. That gaudy bowtie of his hurt Basilard’s sleep-deprived eyes.

  “I suggest you take a nap to refresh your mind.” From his pocket, he offered two pills. “The finest sleeping aids my company has to offer: instant effect and eight hours of restorative sleep guaranteed.”

  Basilard palmed BloodDrinker’s hilt, not because he feared attack but because he didn’t like the way the elf was eyeing it.

  “What do you want now, Gunrai? I’m still not giving you a blood sample.”

  “I want to fill your need, Chief Bladi,” Gunrai said, “and what you need is a way to save your daughter without dooming either your student or your clan.”

  “Why compou
nd my problems further? You like creating needs so you can fill them too.”

  Gunrai tutted. “That would be dreadful customer service. I say without exaggeration or hyperbole that the whole world is my customer and so I must treat everyone with respect. I can solve your problem and all I’ll need is temporary use of that unique sword of yours.”

  Basilard stepped back into a fighting stance. “I knew it! You want to mass produce BloodDrinker!”

  Gunrai sighed dramatically and his twin assistants echoed his disappointment. “Yes, I do, but I won’t do that this time. I even brought a contract to assure you of my honest intentions.”

  “You expect me to trust an elf’s contract?”

  “You trusted the one Gruffle gave you. I wrote it for him in exchange for a look at his scythe. It’s the lowest of the low to be sure, but it is still a genuine reaper scythe.”

  Basilard’s fingers remained protectively curled around the hilt of his clan’s heirloom.

  “Scales.” The male twin handed Gunrai a set of scales. “Weights.” The female twin handed Gunrai a box of labeled weights.

  Gunrai put each on the table between him and Basilard. On one side of the scale, he placed a single large weight that tilted it as far as it would go.

  “What you see is your attachment to your sword. Now watch as I attempt to balance it.”

  He added one small weight to opposite side. “Your attachment to your family.”

  The scale didn’t move.

  He added a second, bigger weight. “Your attachment to your student.”

  The scale moved a little bit.

  He added a third, still bigger, weight. “Your attachment to your faith.”

  The scale shifted significantly, but it was still tilted toward the sword. Gunrai added a fourth weight, which was the largest of the four.

  “Your attachment to your daughter.”

  Now the scales almost balanced; almost because the sword was still slightly higher. Again, Basilard huffed, clenched, and ultimately gave in. Despite its protests, he put BloodDrinker on the table.

  “Where’s that contract?”

  Gunrai slid it across the table and Basilard looked it over. Satisfied, he returned it to Gunrai to sign. Receiving it a second time, he looked it over a second time to make sure it was the same one. Then he signed. This contract he kept for himself.

  “It is a pleasure doing business with you, Chief Bladi.”

  The elf and human twins departed the library and left Basilard alone with his thoughts once more. He grabbed another book and started reading.

  Outside the library, the offered sleeping pills melted into Gunrai’s body. The twin humans also melted into golden-brown goo and merged into the elf, who was melting as well. His face shifted, his hair restyled, and the nature of his clothing metamorphosed. Divine radiance shined forth and his feet left the ground. Tasio the Trickster stared malevolently at every single spirit living inside BloodDrinker.

  “You can keep a secret, right?”

  The sword glowed and hummed.

  “Good. We have work to do.”

  In the space of a thought, he was in the Bladi main compound. In another thought, he became a duplicate of Basilard. His own mother wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. After all, the body is an illusion and no one knew that better than him. Then he punched himself in the face.

  “I shouldn’t have betrayed The Trickster.” He punched himself again. “I shouldn’t have betrayed The Trickster.” A third time, he punched himself. “I shouldn’t have betrayed The Trickster.” Then he looked straight at the reader and said, “Ever wonder where those brief and mysterious pains come from? Now you know.”

  Next, he pulled out a scroll and unfurled it. The title at the top read: “All the things Basilard Bladi would do if he weren’t afraid of the consequences.” The subtitle read: “A compilation of prayers to The Trickster.”

  “This is gonna be fun!”

  The first thing he did was visit Bladi that Basilard held a grudge against. All of them were either bedridden or confined to a wheelchair. Thus they were helpless against the coming onslaught. Wet willies, peeing in the bed, popping a balloon right next to their ears while they slept, and dropping water balls on their heads; all these petty pranks were the only the start of Tasio enacting Basilard’s deeper wishes.

  The second thing he did was tell everyone what Basilard really thought about them. This ranged from their appearance to fighting skill to intelligence and grating personality traits. It was all expressed with vulgar language as well. When they tried to talk over Tasio, he used BloodDrinker to make them shut up and berated them for that too.

  The third thing he did was use BloodDrinker to call a general family meeting. The location was the courtyard, and so the Council of Blood could not look down on him from their throne-like seats. Instead, he created an elevated platform of earth with which to look down on them. Once everyone that could make journey had gathered, he pulled out a script that he stole from Basilard’s study and read it aloud.

  It was a bold declaration of the beliefs that Basilard held dearly in the years before he became the Bladi Chief, and continued to do so privately. They were antithetical to everything the Old Blood considered to be orthodox and even some of the New Blood were shocked. This is because they overlapped with beliefs held by the excommunicated exile, Mr. 15. After all, the man was his mentor and his uncle. When the Council of Blood objected, as he knew they would, he silenced them with BloodDrinker. At the close of his speech, he said, “I am clearly healthy and so is Zettai. With our blood and Bladi Conversion, we can recreate the Bladi Clan without you. So all you stagnant wankers can go to the Abyss!”

  He paused to let the words sink in. That delightfully shocked gasp and those wonderfully horrified eyes; imagining the upheaval this would cause in the near future! On days like these, it was good to be The Trickster.

  “Now I’m going to do my job, which has nothing to do with the Bladi Clan,” the fake Basilard continued saying. “When I come back, I expect to see all of you busily working on the adoption ceremony for my daughter. Yes, ‘daughter,’ not ‘legal ward.’ I’m also about to file the adoption papers for that with Ataidar’s federal government. If you don’t obey me,” he waved BloodDrinker in the air above his head, “I will take steps as necessary to make sure you do.”

  Tasio jumped down from his platform and strutted out of the compound. Thanks to his divine sense of hearing, he could still pick up Tarquin’s shout of “I KNEW IT!” from a mile away.

  Meanwhile, deep within Mt. Fiol, Annala and Perrault sat in the tunnel playing tic tac toe. Omnias left some time ago and Gruffle was rounding up more spirits to send her way, so for the moment, she had nothing to do. At the sound of footsteps, she flipped her hood up and jumped to her feet. When she saw Basilard, she didn’t relax.

  “Hello,” he said casually. “I’m here to visit Eric.”

  “Sorry, but you can’t,” Priestess said.

  A little more nervous, he said, “I’m his mentor. Surely it would be okay.”

  Priestess’s stance was tranquil, but Perrault raised her hackles. “No one can see him until his ascension is complete. That includes you. This is for his safety. Please understand.”

  “Annala, let me pass.” Basilard gripped a sword he kept in reserve. It wasn’t as good as BloodDrinker, but it would do. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  This made her crack up laughing. “That’s who you think stands in your way? Annala Enaz, the teenage schoolgirl and novice cleric? Allow me to correct you.”

  She pounded her staff on the ground and the clack of wood on stone echoed in Basilard’s soul. She unfurled her spirit and made his knees buckle. She looked him in the eyes and inspired in him the Universal Dread.

  “I am a veteran cleric in the service of Lady Chaos. For five years, I have wandered the Veins of Noitearc, and I have never met my equal. I have killed monsters, demons, and fiends. Reapers avoid my path and sowers seek my aid.
The power of ordercraft fades in my presence. I am Priestess and I will not let you pass.”

  “You told me to be honest!” Basilard bellowed.

  “I what?”

  “In Sage Hearth, you told me to be honest with my actions. I did and now you’re stopping me from doing so!”

  “I’ve never said anything of that nature to you,” Priestess protested. “I haven’t even been to Sage Hearth! I’d love to read its records and its authors because they don’t allow copying and so... maybe I haven’t yet. My life hasn’t been linear since the Latrot raid.”

  Basilard unfurled his own spirit. She didn’t react. He released his full power. It made the tunnel shake and the air vibrate, but she mimed yawning. He fired off disabling spells from sleep to petrification to paralysis. She deflected all of them with her staff, then pulled down her eyelid and stuck her tongue out. He charged, but she kept him away with a mana beam that ignored his barrier. She cut it off as soon as she pushed him back to where he started.

  “Basilard, go away,” Priestess said mockingly. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “I can’t. The safety of my family and the future of my daughter depend on this.”

  “I know and I don’t care. Eric’s importance to me and to the future of Tariatla outweighs that of your clan and your daughter.”

  “Not to me!”

  He ran forward and made a downward slash, but she blocked it with her staff. He bore down on her with his greater height and muscle mass. She forced him away with her greater spirit power. Once again, they were separated by five paces.

  “I could have shapeshifted and forced you away physically, but I don’t need to.”

  “You will!”

  He attacked again and alternated between the physical and magical at a break-neck speed. Priestess negated both seamlessly. She never exploited openings or pressed advantages; just stopped him from advancing. She didn’t even sic her familiar on him. Hours passed this way and he got desperate.