Knives in the Night

by Nathan A. Thompson

  That was an issue.

  I had been able to hurt every one of Cavus' lesser forms, and that fact was probably going to give me an infinite amount of satisfaction for the rest of my life. Granted, he would always repair himself afterwards, but in the meantime he would still scream like a little bitch over how unfair life was every time I landed a successful blow.

  But I had never been able to kill Cavus on my own. The most I had been able to do was to buy time for one of Stell's Satellites to obliterate him.

  "Do we know that for sure?" I asked, but Teeth shook his head.

  "We don't," he admitted. "And I'm pretty sure he's weakened a good bit. And if he was truly invulnerable to begin with, he'd be in charge here instead of sleeping away in whatever the Fiend version of a private nursing home was. So I'm sure we have a chance. But we need to take him seriously—if for no other fact than that Cavus is also taking him seriously."

  "Fine," I conceded. "But that means only one thing. To keep doing exactly what we were doing before: get stronger."

  Teeth grinned, baring his massive rows of fangs.

  "Damned straight," the dragon growled. He looked out to where the last of the poison specter was being swallowed up by our vital guard.

  The scorpion-spider ghost reared up on its back legs, gave one final, silent cry, then collapsed into a pool of black ink that hissed into steam as it was overpowered by my still-massive lake of vital guard energy.

  Teeth and I watched the energy roll toward us, then get swept up by the Keeper queen's spectral hand and pulled into my orb of Blood magic.

  "Alright," the man covered in blood-golden scales said, "Let's make sure we finish examining the poison before we make any changes."

  We did, or at least did the best we could.

  Even with my massive Intelligence Trait, I was no Nobel-Prize winning chemist. There were all sorts of components to this information that I couldn't really understand without at least another year or ten of scientific research.

  But I could more or less duplicate the poison now with my actual blood, if I used my magic correctly.

  And even if I didn't know the exact names of every scientific element involved in the poison's ingredients, I could still understand the effects they were having on my body.

  And I could understand how to tweak them ever so slightly, and give a different effect.

  So we had the first stage of Anahita's poison.

  As long as she had us, she could probably produce it on demand, as long as we were willing to cast the Vein to Vein spell and put part of our blood into another medium. We could also alter it to do different effects, and to work a little more quickly—although it would probably never be instantly lethal.

  Still though, Teeth and I had accomplished the task that the beautiful assassin had given us.

  But neither of us were satisfied.

  "Hey," I began, "check me on this, but...poison is just too much of something, right? There are a lot of toxins that can produce a completely different effect on our bodies if given in much smaller amounts."

  "Yep,” Teeth replied, giving me a sneaky grin. "From what I can tell of your human memories, you just described like ninety percent of Earthborn medical techniques. Almost everything you guys use to treat your bodies will kill you if you take too much of it, or take it with too much of something else."

  "Or ingest it in the wrong way," I added, "make it go to the wrong organ, at the wrong time. But we just kicked that thing’s ass," I explained, pointing to the pool of my somewhat diminished, but very undefeated vital guard. "And we have this matrix set up to divert anything lethal into multiple channels. We can make more of that poison, and then turn around and test on ourselves."

  "I was just thinking the same thing." Teeth nodded, still smiling. "And best of all, we're not inherently immune to our own poison. We just learned how to create and—shit." His eyes widened. "We're not immune to our poison. And we don't have a venom sac in our bodies to store it. As soon as we use our blood to create more of it, it's going to immediately affect us, before we can even get it out of our bodies and use it on whatever Anahita wants us to. We'll have to purify it, or it will knock us out again, and if we purify it, then it won't be any good as a poison anymore."

  "Yeah, but that just means that we have to do this next step anyway." I pointed out. "Thanks to our Blood magic and the Keeper organs we consumed so long ago, we can figure out how to render our own Blood immune to it, that way, we won't have to purify it to survive, and Anahita can poison whoever the hell she wants with it—well, except us, since we'll be literally immune to it. But not only that, we can take it apart, experiment with it to see if it can do any beneficial changes to our body—primarily by using our magic."

  That was true, I realized. Even if I didn't have a book on botany or an elemental periodic table in front of me, I could still have the poison, or the purified poison mist, pass through the other orbs, and see how fire, air, water, lightning, or earth would alter the toxin, and in different doses.

  "Let's do it," I replied, "the orbs are already interacting with each other anyway. And I have no idea how long we'll be unconscious, or even how long we've already been unconscious. Let's start with one piece at a time. Probably with Lightning, since it's in the middle with Blood anyway."

  My spiritual matrix did as directed. A spectral hand emerged from the Blood orb, holding a piece of the purified mist, and passed it into the Lightning orb.

  There was a small explosion.

  But when the light cleared, nothing was broken in this weird landscape, though my sea of vital guard in the distance had shrunk by a tiny but very noticeable chunk.

  "Okay," Teeth said, lowering his hand from his face. "Let's use a much smaller piece than that."

  And so we began, step by step, testing our body and magics little by little, one tiny, but probably still dangerous step at a time.

  Just as my Earthborn ancestors did so long ago, improving the quality of life on their dangerous world one risky experiment at a time.

  Until they could finally figure out how to do it safely and efficiently.

  Eventually, the poison could pass through Lightning's crackling energy without exploding, and then the toxins would return, now infused with charged ions and placed in its own secure part of the orb.

  Then we started with an even smaller piece and tried Water, then its Subideal of Ice, then Earth, then Air, and finally Fire. Each time, we could carry the nonexplosive results back into another isolated section of the Blood orb.

  Then we would direct the ghostly, robot-like arm of Prodontis to mix a tiny sample of each experiment with each other, and observe the results.

  "You do know it's not actually her, right?" Teeth asked as he saw my uncomfortable grimace. "That Keeper woman's gone onto wherever it is that people go when they die. What you’re seeing is what was inside herself, the magical part of her core that could alter and experiment with poisons."

  "Still feels really weird though," I said, as the ghostly, feminine arm did something with the Water poison and the Lightning poison that made my sea of vital guard glow brightly for a moment, and then begin to refill itself more rapidly. "And it's weird that I now have whatever she had. And can use it with my Blood magic to literally experiment on myself."

  "Not really," Teeth retorted, "it's Blood magic. I mean, think about it. You can use literally every one of your other Ideals to kill a large group of creatures at once, with very little effort. Hell, we have used those Ideals to kill large groups of creatures. We can also use them to fly, or breathe underwater, or start fires, or reshape the ground all around us. Blood magic can't do any of that on its own, but it can alter bodies- for good or bad." He looked out to our vital pool, unusually thoughtful. "I guess, when it comes down to it, Blood magic is all about giving, taking, and changing. Like Blood itself. Though Aegrim mostly used it for the taking and changing.

  "But we're not Aegrim," he added forcefully, grinding his long teeth together, "an
d we're not that hungry, creepy bastard Volagro, either. We've got our own legacy to forge, and if we want it to be longer than a lunar calendar month, we'll have to build it on the slaughtered corpses of every asshole out here currently trying to fuck everyone over."

  "Which means we go back to getting stronger," I replied, as the spectral Keeper arm over our heads mixed all of the elements together. "Every part of ourselves—and as much of our friends as we possibly can," I said with a blink, remembering the power that Val and I had both gained from my decision to entrust her with something important, and her proving worthy of my trust. "But for now, let's make ourselves strong enough for everyone rallying around us to be able to continue relying on us."

  Another flash of light came out from my Ideal matrix.

  This time, my vital guard surged, my Ideal matrix surged, even the ethereal ground beneath our feet surged.

  I spread my arms wide to embrace the surge.

  Power flooded through me.

  I embraced the power as well.

  Pressure flooded through me.

  A heavy burden that demanded I stay low, that I go no higher with my hopes and dreams.

  It mixed with power I had still not yet absorbed, proclaiming that I would remain under its limitations, no matter how high I reached.

  I caught the pressure with my open arms, but instead of embracing it as well, I flexed my spiritual muscles, heaved...

  And pushed.

  CHAPTER 30: NEW METHODS

  I blinked, twice but the ceiling just stared back at me.

  Ceiling. That was a good sign.

  "Vitals are all stable," Breena said, her familiar voice coming from my right. "He pulled clean through. Only gave us a small scare right there in the middle."

  "I am very glad to hear,” Anahita's smooth voice rolled into my ears (So hot, Teeth groaned). "How are you feeling, Challenger?" There was a worried edge to her voice. "I hope I did not cause you too much discomfort."

  "Not at all," I said as I sat up from the bed they had apparently laid me on. "I'm pretty sure I was able to put everything you gave me to good use."

  "Come again?" the dusk-skinned woman asked as she blinked in confusion.

  "Yup," Breena said with an unsurprised grunt. "Here it comes..."

  "My Blood magic wasn't just able to replicate the poison," I explained, swinging my legs over the side of the bed, before remembering that this room was stuffed full of historical antiques and that I had probably almost kicked over a priceless flower vase or something. "It was able to break it down completely, then try and recombine the venom with my other magics, to see if there were any healthy upsides to the ingredients."

  "Healthy upsides—" Anahita was blinking rapidly now. "There were no healthy ingredients...it was poison, remember?"

  "Well, yeah," I began, "but even poison has basic components to itself—"

  "Which in this case was more poison," Anahita interrupted, and Breena began muttering, "I told you so. I told you so," over and over. "I use this powder to kill people with advanced vital guards. I didn't just mix together a handful of inert substances to make something that would give stomachaches. Every ingredient was by itself one of the most lethal poisons a person could find outside of Earth's many dangerous environments. And I did so in a way that I knew would intensify each toxin's most dangerous qualities. It wasn't like I just mixed sodium and chloride together and gave you table salt!"

  "I told you so," Breena continued repeating, now sounding much louder. "Did I say I told you so? Because I totally told you so."

  "He was asleep!" Anahita snapped as she rounded on her sister Satellite. "How could he have possibly done all of that while sleeping off my poison?"

  "Hey, now," I interjected, holding my hand. "That's a bit unfair. You were the one who gave me the powder. You should have known that it would have knocked me out, which meant you were expecting me to be able to handle it."

  "Of course I expected you to handle it!" Anahita retorted as she turned back to me, after briefly giving Breena's smug expression an angry glance. "I was still concerned, but you had proven yourself very capable, so I trusted you when you said you would survive the poison. The key word in that sentence was 'survive.' You would survive it, and then use your magics to duplicate the effect, like an honest, normal mage. But you two are telling me that our Challenger figured out a way to not just survive being poisoned, but also detoxify himself and turn my concoction into a new set of vitamin supplements! And that he literally made those decisions on an unconscious level!"

  "Now she gets it." Breena rolled her eyes dramatically. "Long after the fact. And after like a hundred and ten warnings. Par for the course though."

  "I don't know what to tell you," I said with a shrug, hoping that she was just surprised, and not angry with me. "All I can say is that the spell was designed to work without me being awake, and that I've had a lot of practice being unconscious."

  "That doesn't even make sense," Anahita sputtered, gesturing in a way that reminded me of Stell any time I surprised her. "I've been sleeping all my life, but I still can't knit myself a new blanket while I'm unconscious!"

  "You can knit?" I asked, curious.

  "No!" the dusk-skinned woman snapped. "I was just using that as an example for why you shouldn't be able to do advanced and dangerous chemistry with your eyes closed!" She caught whatever next words were in her mouth, and took a deep breath instead. "And now I am yelling at a man who agreed to let me poison him, and came here to help me. Please forgive me," she said, her face taking on a calm expression. "I was worried about you, and then I handled my surprise over your good news quite badly."

  "Meh," I said as I waved a hand. "I'm not offended. This is far from the first time that one of your bodies has been irritated over the way I break the rules. And I'd apologize, if I could figure out how to stop doing things this way."

  "He means that," Breena said flatly. "He means all of that. Especially the part about not stopping."

  "At any rate," I said, as Anahita's composed face began to twitch around one of the eyebrows. "Do we have time for me to look at my mindscreen and see what changes happened?"

  "Yup." Breena confided. "Anahita and I were just talking about it. We budgeted some extra time for you to remain unconscious, in case you started to have a really bad trip."

  "Bad trip," I said, blinking myself. "Right. I definitely remembered being a little loopy in the beginning."

  "Oh?" Anahita asked blandly.

  I turned to look at her, and then Breena. But both Satellites had cool, composed expressions.

  "Soooo," I began, "did I say or do anything while I was out of my mind?"

  A single moment of silence rolled between me and Stell's bodies.

  "No, Wes," Anahita said first.

  "Nothing happened at all," Breena added innocently.

  "Nothing?" I asked, raising an eyebrow. "What do you mean nothing happened?"

  "I mean, absolutely nothing happened at all," Breena supplied, still sounding unusually cool. "You don't have to worry. You didn't say or do a single thing that would be viewed as embarrassing."

  "She's right," Anahita added, her own smooth voice somehow sounding calm, innocent, and completely insincere all at once. "And even if something embarrassing did happen, your secret's completely safe with us."

  I blinked and tried to hide my discomfort.

  They wouldn't...I started to tell myself. Or would they?

  They totally would, I decided. There was no way Breena didn't want some small amount of vengeance over all the head-breaking experiences I'd put her through.

  "Well, anyway," I announced, "I'm going to go ahead and check my mindscreen to see what all has changed. Breena, feel free to scan my status as well."

  "Sure thing!" the little fairy said, triumphantly happy all of a sudden. "I appreciate your understanding—I mean, yeah, let me make sure we got all the head bombs!"

  "Head bombs?" Anahita asked, tilting her head. "As in, 'explosives?'
as in, plural? How many complications does this Challenger have?"

  "Now she gets it," Breena sighed, "anyway, Wes, just go for it."

  I activated my mindscreen, and looked at the changes from the last Rise.

  The first I read over were the updates.

  The Challenger has successfully overcome an advanced poison composed of other advanced poisons. UPDATE: the Challenger has also successfully broken down said poison into its individual components, and then reapplied the components to provide beneficial gains to his body, which were further enhanced by the Challenger's different Ideal and Subideals.