“It was?”
“It definitely was. Most titans haven’t kept up with the human technological revolution. Even Agnus got a nasty virus on his laptop a few months ago, although that may have been intentional.”
“Hah!”
I’d convinced Azure to help, but I suspected it would take a while to mold her into a competent fighter, much less a killing machine of the sort we’d have to become in order to really stand a chance against Sigmar, or even just the Amdahl cult. In the meantime, I had a new roommate.
“You want to do what now?” If Agnus was even half as shocked and awed as he sounded, then I had turned the tables on him and the unwashed plates off which he ate his strange meals...assuming that the plates themselves weren’t the meals. Clearly, associating with him undermines my ability to concentrate. What’s that shiny thing over there?
“I know it sounds dangerous, but Azure and I think that securing Amdahl’s Arbalest and other relics from the surrounding area would dramatically improve our defense and deterrence capabilities,” I explained. The throne room was unusually hot and stuffy today. Most likely this was intentional, and a harbinger of Agnus’s latest hobbies, although I didn’t want to stick around long enough to find out the specifics. Minnesota has hot summers, but I can’t take this type of heat! Azure seemed fine, though – without her own realm to manage, she had plenty of time to accompany me on my errands and offer moral support.
“Well... I won’t argue that seizing legendary artifacts would help, but even with a titan on your side, I can’t imagine you succeeding. Those things stay put for a good reason,” he responded.
“You don’t want it falling into Sigmar’s paws, do you?” Azure offered. “He might not be seizing everything now, but things could get even worse for us if he tries.”
“You don’t need to remind me!” Agnus slapped a hand against the armrests of his throne. “But Sigmar’s got enough firepower on his side to incinerate my court a thousand times over, and the last thing we want to do is provoke him... “
I suddenly had a radical idea, although I didn’t know that Agnus would go for it.
“You know, if we head out into the wilderness for any given amount of time, most of Sigmar’s potential reasons to invade your court are going to disappear, at least for a while,” I explained to Agnus. He raised an eyebrow.
“Interesting, but what about crime? And what will he think if you come back here alive and unkilled by his forces?”
“I’m hoping he’ll know real fear.” This made Agnus laugh like Santa Claus, but it didn’t really answer his question.
“I think we have enough of a security team that you’re not in any danger if I...uh...go on sidequests,” I continued. “You know how I told you about Ryan? He’s learning a great deal from my patient tutelage.”
“You want to take Ryan with you? Not sure what you see in him. You should take Haxabalatnar or something,” Agnus responded. He’d misinterpreted me and clearly wasn’t a telepath.
“I meant to say that Ryan could probably cover for me until I got back, but you’re right, I could use the help.”
“I’ll tell him I gave my blessing.”
That’s funny. Agnus was sweating bullets. “Charlotte, is it hot in here today, or is it just me?” he suddenly asked. Oh crap.
“I’m pretty sure it is unpleasantly warm here,” I said, trying not to step back too fast. I’d at least had the sense not to wear anything fancy to this meeting. Clearly I’ve made some progress over the last few months, but I still had a very bad feeling about this.
“Uh... Do I have to be present for whatever it is you’re about to do?” I asked Agnus, who seemed... fatter than usual. Steam was rising from his face now.
“I... Well... You know what? I thought it’d be funny, but it’s probably safer for you if you run along now.”
I made a mad dash for the exit and tried not to think about the horrific spattering and explosive noises that were beginning to build up behind me. By the time I reached the blissfully cool outside of the building, the local courtiers were beginning to scream and panic – more fear and dismay than actual pain at first, but I kept running rather than risk my life to find out what I was running from.
I think we should leave it at the fact Agnus is a titan, and that titans are given to outbursts that I would charitably describe as eccentric. I got a voice message from Azure a while later telling me the shower drain was clogged with something she couldn’t recognize.
Time to get my mind back on the task at hand. What could Haxabalatnar bring to a crack team of treasure hunting occultists in the pits of hell? If Agnus was recommending that I take along another noncombatant, then he probably had Hax’s chthonic upbringing on his mind. Hax had demonstrated his knowledge of daemonic culture, psychology, etc. on numerous occasions throughout the last few months, but if that was all he brought to the table, then Azure had him comprehensively outclassed and could probably take his job were it not for having her own separate demesne to run (and reconquer). I did the only sensible thing I could when I next saw Hax – I asked him if he had any combat training.
“If you want, I can show you,” he said. “Meet me at that gym you’ve been sparring at the last few weeks after work.”
So I did. The local gym is basically a YMCA with the logos scrubbed off, with a variety of facilities (no badminton court, though, which frustrates Agnus to no end), friendly staff, and a subtle sense of unease when you realize some of them are actually missionaries seeking to convert chthonic souls. This must be how the Village People felt. My martial arts lessons here were the first serious physical exercise I’d gotten since my tennis playing days in high school. It’s certainly more intensive. Less chance to wear dainty little miniskirts, too, but with Sigmar on the loose, I need to be more practical with my fashion choices, anyway.
I had two sessions a week – mixed martial arts with flavors taken from judo, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, boxing, and whatever the instructors thought effective in a real-life combat situation. I am still a beginner, but my trainer (the aforementioned Mindy, a chthon with the head and overall combat ferocity of a lioness) says I’m doing a good job. When I showed up at the gym after work, she was watching Haxabalatnar punch the air again and again and again. His speed and precision were astounding.
“You keep doing that and the air is going to start bleeding,” she said to him. Her dry wit puts Ryan’s attempts at humor to shame. Haxabalatnar then noticed I’d arrived and stopped to greet me.
“How was work today?” he asked me; this was apparently his idea of small talk.
“It was fine, I guess,” I responded. “Should we spar or something?”
Hax opened his mouth to say something, but Mindy cut him off with a bestial roar.
“That would be a very bad idea. Haxabalatnar has far more experience fighting than you do,” she snapped. I glared at her.
“With all due respect, Mindy, you do, as well, and you don’t mind roughing me up on occasion.”
“Well, sure! But Haxabalatnar doesn’t know a thing about teaching martial arts, far as I know.” It was Hax’s turn to glare at Mindy, but after a moment, he shrugged and silently conceded the point.
“Well, I still need to get a demonstration of his fighting skills. Any ideas?”
Mindy scratched at her ears and seemed to be lost in thought for a moment. “Oh, I know! I’ll be right back. I know someone who can help.” She pranced off into another room. Haxabalatnar and I stared at each other for a moment.
“You do anything other than punching?” I asked him.
“I shoot at the firing range, too. Agnus’s orders. These days, I mostly practice with semiautomatic rifles.” I made a mental note of that, although I had my doubts that gunnery would come in handy in the magic-replete realms of hell.
Mindy quickly returned, bringing an oddly familiar man with her.
&nb
sp; “This is Paul Gustafsson,” she explained. “Paul is a summoner, and he has agreed to bring forth a daemon who he feels would provide an adequate challenge for Haxabalatnar’s unarmed combat skills.” Oh shit.
“The fuck are you doing here, Paul?” I shouted. He gasped, Mindy jumped, Haxabalatnar seemed unmoved.
“I know what you’re thinking, but I swear I’m not here to kill you-” he began. Mindy apparently decided that Paul was lying and knocked him to the ground in a flash. Her jaws closed around his throat for a second; one of her teeth drew a speck of blood.
“Relax. Paul wouldn’t dare try to kill his former liege, isn’t that right?” I said. This was probably not the right way to talk to him, but I had the vague sense that killing Paul wouldn’t achieve much. I could be hedging my bets on that, though.
“Gack,” he responded; like most people, he is not eloquent when being strangled. I gestured for Mindy to loosen her grasp a little, and surprisingly, she did so.
“No, really. I defected from Sigmar’s service about a month ago, and I came here since I figured you’d still be around...”
Actually, what I really wanted to know is how he got through our security processes. The new emphasis on delays and strip searches at the checkpoints gave us more warning about potential infiltrators than we’d had before, and a so-called defector from Sigmar’s army was exactly the kind of thing they were supposed to filter out. Maybe Paul actually had defected (what did it mean that I didn’t immediately reject that possibility?), but that didn’t rule out other sorts of foul play. Perhaps Sigmar had jinxed him to eventually burst into flames or turn into a swarm of locusts. Alternatively, a mite daemon was following him around and spying on us as we spoke. If Paul had gotten through the checkpoints unharmed and managed to earn Mindy’s trust, though, he couldn’t be that bad, could he?
“I’ve been honing my skills. Do you remember Dewey?” he said to me in a nonchalant voice, as if Mindy wasn’t still moments away from ripping out his throat. I gestured for Mindy to let Paul go; she did, and he stood up.
“What, did everyone’s favorite library daemon defect, too?” I was beginning to have fun watching Mindy theatrically overreact to every little turn of Paul’s story.
“Not willingly. Not only did I kidnap Dewey, but with some practice and a few animal sacrifices, I’ve improved on the original model and expanded its capabilities to include various types of combat.” I suppose that was pretty neat.
“You want me to spar with a librarian?” Haxabalatnar asked. He seemed more anxious for a good fight than anything at the moment.
“Hey, don’t knock librarians. They know things,” quipped Mindy. “Paul, how does this compare to your training constructs? Those are fine for novices, but I don’t want to bore Hax,” she asked.
“Don’t underestimate Dewey. I’ve got enough CPU cycles to give Hax a run for his money.”
Paul left for a moment, brought in a laptop (sold, as he pointed out, by a company named Lenovo), and gestured at the doorway for something to enter. Dewey followed momentarily, and I only recognized its renewed presence from context. While Dewey had originally incarnated as a stumpy brown dwarf that pulsated eerily when it wasn’t being forced to shelf books, Paul’s care had transformed it into a towering, deep red, squid-faced aberration ripped straight from a Dungeons and Dragons sourcebook. It was almost frightening. I didn’t want to meet Dewey or similar alone in a dark alley. Or at the head of one of Sigmar’s armies. Neither Haxabalatnar or Mindy seemed the least bit phased by this, though.
Mindy gestured to me and led me over to a pair of chairs where we could watch the battle. Paul typed in a few commands on his laptop, and then gestured for Dewey to attack Haxabalatnar. It staggered over to him and started winding up a tentacle arm for a knockout punch. Haxabalatnar effortlessly sidestepped the eventual attack.
“Oh, come on! I can handle more than that!” he shouted, kicking out at Dewey and knocking it to the ground. This happened a few more times, and out of the corner of my eye, I could see Mindy yawning.
“Are you sure about that? Hold up a second, and I can up the ante,” Paul shouted back. Dewey trudged back to the laptop, allowing Paul to jam a flash drive somewhere in its back. The daemon’s eyes flashed incandescent blue (the color of magic, perhaps?) for a moment. Then, Dewey roared, rushed at Haxabalatnar with unprecedented speed, and managed to pin him up against a wall. That’s never a good sign, but Hax still didn’t look worried. I’m entirely aware that we were in a very controlled combat training environment, but I personally get uneasy when a sparring partner (usually Mindy) has me at a disadvantage. I probably had to overcome this if I wanted to go out titan hunting again. Haxabalatnar, though, took a deep breath, and headbutted Dewey in the abdomen. At least I thought it was the abdomen – daemon anatomy is administrator-driven at the best of times. Dewey recoiled yet again, and while this time it was able to dodge a few of Haxabalatnar’s attacks, he was still able to knock the poor thing halfway across the arena.
“Is this your limit?” Haxabalatnar said.
“Hey, come on! I told you to stop taunting your opponents!” shouted Mindy. Hax blew a raspberry at her, deftly dodging what Dewey must’ve thought was a surprise punch in the process. Even I thought his bravado was a bit uncalled for. Paul was looking frustrated as he turned back to his computer and typed furiously. For a moment, I thought he’d made a typo; Dewey abruptly collapsed into a crimson pool that seemingly began to soak into the gym mats. I was wrong – the pool lurched forth without regaining its previous cephalopod overtones and nearly enveloped Hax before he could roll out of the way.
“Okay, this is much better,” claimed Hax. Mindy stared quizzically at Paul, but both he and Hax glared at her. Dewey surged and retreated relentlessly, almost like a maelstrom, and Hax seemingly could do nothing but roll out of the way and hope not to drown. How was Paul doing this? I added animate liquids given murderous urges and conscious, coordinated mobility to my list of things to fear during the night, joining Sigmar’s assassins and overzealous Earth policemen-
Did Haxabalatnar just stomp on Dewey?
With one final splortch, Dewey’s already incoherent body reverted to coagulated blood and stopped moving. Haxabalatnar was now soaked up to about his calves, and I subconsciously moved my chair back a few inches for fear of the mess spreading. I caught a brief glimpse of a blue screen on Paul’s laptop and a flash of pure anguish on his face.
“Jesus Christ, man! I put months of effort and gallons of my own blood into Dewey, and you just squished him like a bug!” he shouted.
“Maybe you shouldn’t have liquefied him just now,” I suggested.
“Nobody else managed to eke out a victory over his ultimate form. I thought this would work!”
“I hope you’ve learned a valuable lesson, Paul. Nothing is infallible,” Mindy said. “I think we’re done for now. It’s time for your lesson, Charlotte. The rest of you can stay and watch if she’s okay with that.”
Paul and Hax apparently had other things to do, though. Mindy proceeded to give me an unusually strenuous lesson, but in spite of that, I knew she was still holding back.
“I’m fired up after seeing that duel,” she explained. Not the best reason to push me to the brink, but it’ll pass.
“But since you mentioned it,” she abruptly added, “Agnus himself told me to whip you into shape extra fast. Did you make him mad or something?”
“What? No! Well, maybe. There is something, but it’s too private for me to tell you.”
I took an extra long shower once I got home to help myself recover from the session. This was probably going to be the new normal; if it whipped me into shape, though, I wouldn’t complain. Still, I made a note to ask Hax if he had any secret techniques I could use to build muscle and stamina more quickly.
“I make a point of exercising regularly. Agnus says it makes good cross training,” Ha
x explained the next time I came into the office and spoke to him.
“Clearly. Look, if you want a position on the team, you need only ask,” I responded.
“Well, Agnus and I have been talking, and we agree that while it’s a risky proposition, it might be just what we need in order to keep the court safe, so I guess I’m asking.”
I didn’t want to force Haxabalatnar into what was really more of a revenge plot, as far as I was concerned, but it was clear that he had no love for Sigmar and his armies.
“It’s a formality, anyways,” I said.
“After what happened at the gym, he also recommended you take Paul with you.” A moment of silence.
“Hold on, what? Why? You smashed up Dewey without even trying!” I said once I’d finished processing Agnus’s absurd request.
“Sure, but I’m well versed in anti-daemonic combat methods. Most of the things out in hell don’t stand a chance.”
Another moment of silence. In my defense, I wasn’t convinced, and in Haxabalatnar’s defense, I was going to be hard to convince.
“Well, I know how to interact and negotiate with daemons, and I can probably defuse a situation if I have enough time,” he began. “But what if we have to control a daemon? They are efficient weapons in the right hands, and Paul’s look like they’re up to the task.”
I had noticed that Paul had rough, callused hands the last time we had worked together. Kid needs to moisturize.
“It would definitely come in handy if we got attacked by the local wildlife. I’m certain of it!”
Okay, that last argument was actually quite reasonable.
“We can’t shoot our way out of all of the bad situations. Some daemons are basically immune to bullets.”
“You don’t know Paul very well, do you?” I countered. Haxabalatnar was definitely making a good general case for having a summoner on your payroll, but little of what he said had been specific to Paul’s...talents.
“Well, no, but he seems like he knows what he’s doing.”
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