Knives in the Night

by Nathan A. Thompson

  “No,” the ancient Avalonian retorted harshly. “You’re getting yelled at so much because the Expanse sucks, and it has oppressed its people so extensively, and for so long, that they think everything depends on the Expanse continuing to suck in certain ways. It’s your job as a Planetary Lord and servant of the Destroyer God to show them that some things need to be broken, no matter how much everyone insists that their existence is a necessary evil. If you weren’t doing the right thing, then this corrupt Expanse would just tell everyone to ignore you and leave you alone. Now, back to those Rising thresholds.”

  The Pendragon had been pacing as he spoke, his cloak, armor, and scabbard swaying with his steps. Now he turned to look at me.

  “Once the fire in your soul reaches a size so large that it counts more as a conflagration than a light source, then you may use it to burn your way across the veil and into your next life. That requires hundreds of Rises, though, so it’s arguably the hardest method. But the second method is to do what I did. You take one skill and excel at it, until you pass the ranks of mortals and become a Grandmaster. It doesn’t need to be an Ideal, even though it will have acquired a magic of its own long before then—at the Adept level, in fact. That’s when you start doing things so well it starts to look a bit unnatural.”

  “I’ve never seen a Grandmaster,” I replied, “and I wasn’t even aware that there was a rank beyond Master in any of the skills. Stell had once told me that Adept was considered to be the highest rank people reached in this age.”

  “Well, that’s one more lie you can break for your people,” the former Planetary Lord said bullishly. “I want you to hear me on this, if you can’t stand to hear me on anything else: Do not listen to anyone who tells you victory is impossible. Let me rephrase that,” he said quickly, “do not listen to anyone who tells you ‘it can’t happen because it’s never been done.’ Anything truly worth not doing always has a better reason than that. At any rate, the gulf between the Skill thresholds is also very wide, but for most people, advancing their Skills is easier than advancing their Risen level. There are far more Practitioner-level cooks, for instance, than there are people who have reached even the Torch stage of Rising. You and your group are an exception to the rule, because you have all been Rising so quickly, and you yourself have unusual restrictions, which screams of genetic tampering. It makes me suspect that they used part of Peitan’s research on your people, back when they finally brought down the Earthborn. But with the power I’m going to grant you, I can help you break part of it, at least for a small handful of Skills. Probably no more than two or three, and only the ones I knew as well.”

  “Fantastic,” I replied, honestly grateful, “but which Skill were you a Grandmaster in?”

  “Swords,” he replied, shrugging, “specifically, Long Blades.”

  “Really?” I asked, surprised. “You chose that instead of magic? As an Avalonian?”

  “I told you,” the Pendragon grumbled, “any Skill becomes a form of magic if you take it far enough. And I chose Long Blades because I was entrusted with Breaker, and it wound up being the main tool that I saved my worlds with.”

  “Fair point,” I replied, “but it’s weird that you were able to use swordsmanship to ascend to the next life.”

  “By the time you reach that point, any Skill feels weird,” he sighed. “The things you can do at that level…even a Master is supernatural. I remember slicing through rocks, swinging Breaker in its sharpest form through a clump of grass in a way that bisected the insect I was aiming for but left the grass itself untouched. When I gained that level, I realized that Peitan was an idiot for not using his Air magic to anywhere near its fullest potential. Neither you nor I should have ever had a chance against him. But he never took his talent or his enemies seriously, or he would have learned a spell that would have trapped an opponent’s body in a miniature tornado, so that they could be helpless when he finally decided to finish them off.”

  “That does sound really cool,” I replied. “Maybe I should try to learn a spell like that.”

  “You probably will, some day,” my predecessor said with another shrug. “Air magic was the one Ideal I chose to practice as an Avalonian, though I never became as proficient with it as I did with the sword. I’ll try to help you with that, as well, if you want, if it will help you do your job.”

  Do my job…

  For some reason, that phrase stuck with me.

  “How far did you get with Air magic?” I asked, still mulling over the Pendragon’s last sentence.

  “High Adept,” he said without interest. “And that was only because I received a free point to assign per Rise due to being an Avalonian. And because it complemented my own blade work, but really, any Ideal can do that, one way or another. But in the end, it still didn’t give me any new abilities that I couldn’t already use as a Grandmaster Swordsman.”

  “But I’m just an Air Practitioner, and the magic already lets me fly,” I pointed out, confused.

  “Kid,” the Pendragon said with a smirk, “a Grandmaster Swordsman can slice a current of wind and make it carry him wherever he wants to go, and it won’t cost a drop of mana. Or he can stand on a sword, speak to the nature of the sword itself, and make it fly up and carry him to wherever he wants to go. Finally, when he decides there’s nothing left for him in this life, and he can’t make himself care enough to keep living, he can slice open a tear in reality and walk through that tear to Pass on to the next life.” His voice lost a little of its pride, but he continued speaking. “At the Grandmaster level, or even at the Master level, the Skill you use becomes an Ideal in itself. It not only lets you do supernatural things with the skill, it changes you in the same way the other Ideals do. For example, if someone swings a weapon at me, I can just parry with my hand, and then decapitate him by slicing his neck with my fingers.”

  Holy cow, that sounds cool, Teeth blurted. Why aren’t we taking him up on this yet?

  That was a damned good question. Doing any of those things sounded awesome, and Breaker was a sword, after all. It wasn’t like I wouldn’t wind up using the skill all the time.

  But that wasn’t what I was going to ask for, no matter how much I wanted to.

  “But you say you can only teach me a handful of things, right?” I said, intentionally sounding depressed.

  My predecessor gave me an annoyed look.

  “That is correct,” the Avalonian ghost said, his voice dripping with condescension. “Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m not here to help you finally figure out how to kiss a woman. We don’t have time.”

  Burn! Teeth chuckled, apparently not realizing that the Pendragon was technically talking to him as well.

  “Not that,” I said, raising a hand as I tried to explain. “Look, I would love to learn everything that I can from you, and being able to do all those things with a sword sounds absolutely freaking awesome. So does learning more Air magic. But I take it you’re not going to turn me into a Grandmaster by the end of this dream, correct?”

  “Of course not,” the ghostly king snorted. “You won’t gain more than a handful of ranks, but I’ll do what I can to remove the cap to your skill, or at least make it easier for you to level with plain use. You’ll still have to put in the work for it.”

  “Right,” I said with another sigh, “and that’s perfectly reasonable. But as much as I hate to admit it, more combat power isn’t what I need the most right now.”

  “Really?” the Pendragon asked in a flat voice, cocking his head. “You’ve got how many enemies again? And on how many worlds? With how much of a head start on figuring out their abilities?”

  “Too many, too many, and far too much,” I said, answering each of his questions. “But I know absolutely nothing about running planets, countries, or even cities, save whatever information I gained when I managed to dump free Skill points in. And I’ve barely put those skills into practice, except for the ones involving mass battles.”

  The ancient Avalonian re
garded me silently for a few moments.

  “So,” he finally said in a slow, deliberate tone, “instead of learning how to slice a thunderstorm in half, you’re asking me to show you how to be a better leader.”

  “Yeah,” I said, with a nervous swallow.

  “How to deal with things like budgets, city construction, managing a standing army.”

  His words felt more like an accusation than a question.

  “Yeah, that.”

  “Things like managing your population’s morale, or recognizing the early warning signs of the formation of a Trial, so that you or your army can get there in time to deal with it.”

  “Yeah,” I repeated, “even though my Steward already does that last one for me. But she’s not always around right now, and I figure that the more I know, the easier it will be for her to explain things to me.”

  “Right,” the Planetary Lord said in a tone that suggested he was disappointed in me. “You want to know things that will help you be a Lord when there aren’t any natural disasters or genocidal behemoths rampaging about. How to lead during a golden age as well as a time of trouble.”

  “It’s not just that,” I said, feeling defensive, even though I felt like I shouldn’t. “I need most of those management skills right now. Because I’m not fighting something that will go away as soon as I face it down and kill it in pitched combat. I’m facing enemies that can resurrect, get allies of their own, and attack my worlds on multiple fronts. Maybe if I was already a Grandmaster swordsman that could slice through time or whatever, I could deal with them all through sheer personal power, but right now, I need others to help me. And I need to know how to utilize that help. It’s not just managing more bodies. I need to understand how to set up the right infrastructure, to make sure I don’t run out of resources during this war, to keep the morale and health of my armies and allies up. I need all of that. I know I’ll have to delegate others to help do all those things,” I added quickly, before the Pendragon could finish opening his mouth, “but I need to know enough to recognize what to delegate, and to whom. In fact, I suspect delegation could be a Skill in and of itself.”

  “It probably is,” the Pendragon muttered. “Invictus damn it,” the ghostly king swore again.

  “Side question,” I said as my train of thought was derailed, “does he care if we use his name like that?”

  “Maybe,” the former king said with a shrug, “but I still figure he’s been called worse. Now about your request: it’s actually a damned good one,” the dark-haired man admitted grudgingly, “one I don’t want to recognize, because it highlights a weakness of mine. I never learned very many of those skills, kid. Not compared to my swordsmanship, or even my magic. And definitely not compared to my wife. She was the real glue that held my worlds together. So after she died, I tried to do everything all by myself, all of the time. And by the time I realized her people would suffer for it, it was too late. I had already exhausted my vitality. The best I could do was to create Avalon’s ancient Shelter function and lay down a framework, so that the structure could be used to assist the next Planetary Lord.”

  “All of that sounds infinitely more skilled than what I currently know how to do,” I retorted. “I don’t care what your Skill ranks are; there’s no way I learned more about being in charge of several planets in these handful of weeks than you managed to learn in your entire lifetime.”

  “That is very true,” the Pendragon replied, tapping his chin thoughtfully. “I’m not even a High Adept in any of the Skills you are talking about, but I still know more than you. You’re willing to spend whatever quality time we have together on learning those skills?”

  “I need those skills so badly that I’m willing to spend extra ‘quality time’ with you,” I said, returning the grumpy ghost’s sarcasm, “much less sacrificing the chance to riposte a douchebag’s greatsword with my little finger.”

  “Oh, hell, no,” the bastard ghost grumbled. “If I have to bother teaching you royal delegation or fucking planetary economics, I’m sure as hell spending extra time for both our sanities. I don’t care if it takes more of these pain-in-the-ass visits, I get to watch you knock yourself in the head trying to parry a tornado, or the whole deal’s off. Besides,” he added uncomfortably as he looked away from me, “Arden’s people will be better off if I try to teach you everything I know. Luckily, the bounty just made it possible for me to do this.”

  “Fair enough.” I noted the ancient King’s slumped shoulders and added, “I accept and will go one step further: teach me everything I need to know, and it will be easier for me to find and slaughter anyone else that had a hand in your wife’s death.”

  The pale man’s gaze snapped back up to mine, his pupils flashing like polished onyx.

  “Deal,” he said flatly, “now listen up…”

  CHAPTER 7: ESPIONAGE

  Chris’ Perspective

  “We’re here,” one of Dad’s agents told me as we walked back to the Pathway location.

  I looked over at him. He was dressed in one of the typical uniforms the Malus Order usually wore: a mix of black molded leather, and black chain mail.

  We were early, as far as I could tell. The Brute, that Gore-Crusted Pen or whatever the fuck his name was, wouldn’t arrive with the Pit Knights for another ten minutes or so.

  Dad wanted us to arrive before they did because we didn’t trust our Horde allies, and the fact that they could tell and were completely unbothered by that only made us distrust them even more.

  Fortunately for me, reaching the meeting place first meant that I finally had time to find out something that had been bothering me for a while.

  “Hey, um…” I realized that I didn’t actually know the man’s name. That was a learned behavior. Dad had taught me that deliberate ignorance over certain details of your employees’ lives could actually help cement control over them. Learn anything you could use against them, and make them beg to provide the rest, he had said.

  It seemed to work well for him, but it sure made me feel stupid every time I did it.

  “Hammill, Master Rhodes,” the man provided in a neutral tone. I couldn’t tell whether he felt offended that I had to ask or relieved that I had bothered to learn his name at all.

  “Right, Hammill,” I said, as if I had just forgotten for a moment. It somehow made me feel smarter. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask, because no one’s talked to me about it yet: what’s with our choice of uniform?”

  “What do you mean, Master Rhodes?” Hammill replied carefully. I could tell that he thought I was testing him.

  Which meant I needed to craft my inquiry very, very carefully, or I wouldn’t find out anything at all.

  “I’m talking about the fact that we always, always wear black,” I clarified. Even I was wearing full black attire, though at the moment I was just wearing a tank top and cargo pants. I hadn’t bothered with any actual armor because there wasn’t any point. If these vaunted Pit Knights were powerful enough to take out a guy that was running around killing Dark Icons and Lovecraftian horrors, then any amount of protective covering wasn’t going to save me if we had a confrontation past the Pathway traps.

  Not with only one guard as backup.

  Besides, it still made me feel like a goddamned LARPer.

  “I wear this because it’s the uniform we’re ordered to wear, Master Rhodes,” Hammill said, maintaining that careful, neutral tone. “If they tell me to wear a white suit of armor tomorrow, that’s what I’ll do.”

  “I know.” I tried not to sigh. “I know you’re just following orders, and I know you didn’t pick our official uniform. But I also know that you’re one of our senior operatives, so you were around when they were designing our field gear.”

  “Yes sir, Master Rhodes,” the man replied in a relieved tone. “It’s primarily tactical, just as it was back when we were stationed on Earth. Black is the easiest color to hide in, because we’re either operating at night or in a place where we can
find some sort of shadow. And even if we can’t, all of us learned enough from either the Ideals of Shadow or Darkness to be able to dim the lighting of a region and make it harder for our enemies to see. The material itself depends on what our function is, but we all wear either the lightest or the heaviest armor we can get away with, to help with our survival.”

  “Okay,” I said, having expected that answer, “but what about on diplomatic missions, like this one? I know the Horde won’t care, but the locals we’re trying to subjugate probably will. Is there any point to wearing an outfit that screams ‘hey, look, the bad guys are coming’? One that you heard them discuss, at least?”

  “There actually is,” Hammill answered, still sounding relieved. Evidently, he was taking my curiosity for what it was, instead of a subtle way to test his loyalty. “It turns out that the color black has a different reputation in these worlds. It’s worn by a lot of religious orders that don’t, um, worship the devil or whatever. Kind of like the cassocks worn by priests in some of the Greek Orthodox churches back on Earth, I think. There’s even a group of really respected knights in the Dawnlands that wear black armor all the time, and they’re some of our fiercest enemies. Since the color doesn’t have the same connotations that it does on Earth, but it retains the same tactical value, Command decided to make it our official uniform when we’re off of Earth. At least, that was what I understood,” he clarified, sounding worried that I might decide he knew too much or something.