Book 3 - Chapter 6 - Prophet (Patreon)

AN - I did an edit of the previous chapter to address some of the viewpoint issues. I couldn’t hammer them all out without condensing that chapter too much, so I’ll spread the rest of it across future chapters.

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The doors to the inner chambers opened. Shadowsong stepped out, walking with a slow gait.

“Well?” I asked. “How did it go?”

He glanced at me, then shook his head. “Lady Dras is a Logi, she’s logged on her sheets they’re both innocent and guilty at the same time. She will attempt to weave a plan that can handle all outcomes. I’ve tried to argue that it would be safest to simply expel the Chosen completely, but the clan lord has made up her mind.”

“Only hard evidence is going to make her change gears?”

“In a manner of speaking.” Shadowsong said. “So long as there is even a slight chance that the Chosen are innocent, what they offer could save the entire clan should the worst come to happen. We either convince her this… ‘chance’ of the Chosen following through on their offer is not going to happen, with certainty, or we convince her the Chosen are too large a threat to warrant one possible clan-saving backup plan.”

Which might be a tough sell. “I don’t think we can find evidence that the Chosen plan to withdraw their ‘help’ if the moment comes.” I said, thinking. “It’s not like we’re going to get Lejis to monologue his evil plans. Would make everything easier though.”

Shadowsong strode forward, signaling me to follow behind.

“Why doesn’t she see them as a threat?” I asked. “They’re right on our doorstep for gods sakes.”

“The civilians are in jail and unable to fight. The single knight they have available is dearmored, and unable to fight. Their fighting force has either already infiltrated within the clan, in which expelling the civilians would do nothing but waste possible hostages, or their knights are still outside the clan - to which they would be stopped a distance away and ordered to stand down or be shot by railguns. Compared to the raiders and slavers, they seem to be a footnote to the clan lord's attention.”

“And if they come from the underground like the slavers did?”

“That would be the best case situation.” Shadowsong said. “Our knights would have immediate reason to attack and kill the traitors, as they’re not supposed to be underground. It would be enough justification. We would crush them and take their armors for ourselves. It’s unlikely they would be so dim however.”

“What else did you tell her?” I asked, changing the subject.

“She’s assigned more knights to bodyguard you, ones who wield the winterblossom technique. You’ve also been ordered to hand down knowledge to a select group of Reachers and Retainers, so that if you are targeted again, knowledge will not fade in your disappearance.”

“I take it you told her everything then?”

“Of course I did. She’s not only our Clan Lord, she’s Logi. Of all people that need every scrap of information, it’s their kind. They only make choices on hard data. Never instinct. No leaps of faith.”

“The Occult and everything else?”

He nodded. “She’s opened a line of investigation on finding out why the slavers would have willingly chosen to sacrifice nearly half of all their possible attacking potential, all for a better chance at taking you alive. We’re missing something. There’s holes in all the theories we come up with. She is considering there were politics involved that hampered the Slavers from the inside out, but even so, they would still need some kind of strong motivation to target you specifically.”

I thought about it and quickly reached a few conclusions I had. “If it had been them finding out I knew the Occult, they’d need to have been extremely certain to throw away their plans with the Chosen to catch me. They’d need to have proof. Did they get word of the knightbreakers? That’s the only piece of Occult tech I’ve built that anyone might know about. And there are only a handful, all in the hands of Lord Atius’s most trusted. There’s no way it’s those.”

“The winterblossom technique is also a possible prize worth fast-pacing their plans for.”

“Can’t be the winterblossom technique.” I said. “If they knew about the winterblossom technique, they would have to have learned it from a knight using it already - which means they wouldn’t need me anymore, since that traitor would have already leaked the secrets.”

And the slavers clearly hadn’t known anything about the winterblossom technique, or they would have been using it already in the fight. Come to think of it, they hadn’t even factored it in when they came chasing after me. They hadn’t known it existed.

“So if it’s not the winterblossom technique, nor the Occult, then why were they after me?”

Shadowsong shook his head. “You make a point on the winterblossom technique. But the Occult is a separate matter. Rumors must have circulated and the slavers could have gotten enough evidence to prove you knew the secrets, but not enough to know how those secrets work. That narrows down the possible avenues.”

“How’s the clan handling the whole attack in general?” I asked. “Lady Dras must have also told you the overall situation from her side?”

He nodded. “Half the council is reacting on emotion, mostly fear, suggesting extreme solutions. Anywhere from demanding a full purge of the Chosen to outright abandoning the clan in an early escape attempt. Misguided fools at best. But fear warps the mind.”

“And the other half?”

“Overcorrecting against that fear. They believe their gut feelings are suspect and refuse to act on any of it. They tamper down on their gut reactions, and instead put more weight on the opposite. Which is... misguided.”

He sighed, something I hadn't seen him ever do. "We must work with what we have. Focus on the tasks at hand and prepare for the raider invasion. See to your own House for now. They will need the leadership."

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The door swung open. Old ancient hinges grinding against metal. The heat differential would have made all kinds of damages to the structures down here, but it was testament to the foresight of surface dwellers that despite the centuries, the important bits still worked. Were designed to work, even in the sub-zero temperature.

Captain Sagrius walked into the old empty courtyard, boots stepping over the condensed ice below him. Security cameras I had installed over my time in my sanctum showed him approach the final bulkhead door. This one was also an effort to open, but the relic armor he wore made short work of it. I could tell he’d already spotted the traces on the ice at the floor, scrapes where the door had been opened and closed multiple times before.

Behind that door, were the Winterscar knights. All of us. A frankly ridiculous amount of relic armors looted from the slavers, all said and told. The Slavers had attacked multiple sites, but no site had seen as many knights as the dance hall had. They put a massive amount of their eggs into that basket and they failed. Which meant all their stuff was ours now.

House Shadowsong hadn’t come out of the smoke without prizes of their own. The prime had butchered four relic knights single handedly, and claimed their armors for himself. The cleanup also saw some more armors being seized. Knights with the winterblossom technique had easily wiped the floor with the slaver knights, taking their armors in for their own Houses.

Some Houses didn’t get in on the loot, but their complaints were low priority compared to current events. 

“Glad you made it, captain. Unless my count is off, that’s all of us now accounted for. No one followed you, right?” I asked.

He knelt down in a quick show of respect and shook his head, “No my lord. I made sure everyone left at different intervals and no one saw any of our movements.” He rose back up, and closed the door behind him, sealing it.

“I’m not a Deathless.” I said, again. I’ve told them multiple times now, but they’re all still caught up in calling me a lord whenever out of anyone else’s sight. The common soldiers too. The captain didn’t answer that. It seemed like an unworded agreement between everyone that anytime I raised up the Deathless issue, they would go silent and pretend they hadn’t heard it.

Sure, I could command them to acknowledge me, but that seemed a little tactless.

“I’ve called you all here today to show you why I say I’m not a Deathless. And also teach you how to use some of these skills I’ve gained.” I said, standing back up from my meditation pose, and flicking on the heater. It would take about thirty minutes to heat up the room, more than enough time to brief the soldiers on what was going to happen next.

“You gonna spill all the beans and turn all these knights into your squires?” Cathida asked on personal comms. “I approve. Wish I had snacks to eat while I watched. How much of the hocus pokus are you going to teach them?”

“All of it.” I said, and looked around the room. 

Everything was dead silent. No one even moved an inch. I took a breath, and spoke the truth. “I’ve cracked the warlock arts.”

Sagrius nodded, as if expecting this. “Deathless don’t create Occult blades.” He simply said at my puzzled head tilt, his hand resting on the pommel of his Winterscar blade. Oddly enough, it neatly answered everything.

“Wait… you knew I wasn’t a Deathless this whole time?”

Another knight opened up. “We aren’t sure, m’lord. You’ve shown powers Deathless wield, and knowledge that warlocks have. But whoever you are, what we know is that you’re someone worth calling a Lord. We all know it in our bones.”

The other Winterscar knights all moved in near tandem, hands tapping the sides of their chest in the traditional sign of gratitude to the gods.

I stayed silent for a moment, a little stunned before I shook out of it. Time was ticking. It already took a few hours to slowly get all my knights in one place underground without alerting any suspicions.

“You no doubt noticed my new found swordsmanship seemed to take a massive leap out of nowhere, and then my sister took it to another level. She calls this the Winterblossom technique. And I’m going to teach you it today, so that when you walk back out of here, you will be some of the most deadly knights to ever walk the earth.”

And so I went into it, telling them from the very start about fractals and how they worked. Where my powers came from. I had debated keeping Talen’s book and Tsuya’s seeker to myself, but ultimately decided if I couldn’t trust these men, I might as well already be dead. In for a trip, out for an adventure. So I told them.

It put to rest all the possible ideas that I was a Deathless at least. But it just shifted the goalposts in the end.

Cathida snickered. “Good job deary. Now you’re a bonafide prophet. Always knew you had it in you.”

I couldn’t tell what was under their helmets or going through their minds, not for some time until the room heated up, but there was a sense of excitement. Fervor even. It worried me, honestly. Like I’d been given a lot of responsibility, a role to live up to and now I had to live up to that role for the sake of others who were putting their life savings on the line in my name. If not more.

Once the room was heated, I had them all take off their helmets, to which I inscribed the soul fractal into each along with a few other fractals for them to practice with. I hadn’t been kidding when I said they’d walk out of here as the most dangerous knights in history.

They took to it like a weasel into a greased up pipe. Already told ahead of time on what to expect, they rushed right through the initial awe and in under a few hours, they were already training out in that deserted courtyard, moving at speeds only legends would match.

I joined in with them, feeling oddly enough - an equal. The winterblossom technique cut out the entire notion of muscle memory, leaving the armor to move as fast as the mind could think. Swinging arms in complicated motions was easy, though moving around took some more training. Leaping and dodging around at the speeds the armor could move now took some adjusting. But after the initial change, we were all on even ground. They knew every move in the schools of combat, same as I did. Now the only thing that separated us in skills was intuition and the developing occult senses.

If any of them touched on what Kidra could see, they’d raise head and shoulders above the rest of us. But for the moment, all fighting had turned into a battle of wits and knowledge, of which I had solid fundamentals.

And then Cathida happened. Because of course she would. I was training people in a courtyard. It had Cathida-bait written all over it.

To her credit, she’d been waiting for the group to even out to my skill level, where progress had stalled. “You know that combat engram is still kicking around.” She whispered in my ear. “I could take it out for a spin. It’s got pieces of all kinds of fightin’ I’ve witnessed. Who better to train these knights than your favorite teacher?”

“Curious definition of favorite.” I snarked. But she had a good point.

“I spent half of my life teaching squires half a scrap as good as these men and women here. The thought of getting to train the most deadly squadron of knights in the world in a technique even imperators would find a match... well that might be just enough to tempt me out of retirement.”

“You can drill the surface styles better than their own trainers could?” I asked, more curious.

“The real Cathida would have needed a few good years to study all the data and really digest it. She’s human after all. But I’m not. Made of nuts, bolts and apparently spooky hocus pokus that Deathless work with. Color me surprised on that last bit, but everything else, I know what I can do. I can master anything I see, even if I only see it once. All the skill and intuition of the old bat, and all the abilities of a relic armor. The old bat would shed a tear if she could see how Journey was using its memory of her.”

Can’t give me a more compelling argument than that. I gave my blessing, gathered the soldiers around and let Cathida take charge in honing their skills.

She was absolutely ruthless. The winterscar knights loved it. They took turns waiting for shields to replenish, each fighting giving them more practice on using the new technique to it’s breaking point. Time flew by.

And then a comms call from Shadowsong put it all to a stop.

“What’s the news?” I asked, setting my sword down for a moment and sitting next to a few knights. Others continued to spar, picking apart different techniques and testing out novel moves that could only work given the speed they could move at.

“We found the Undersider knights.” Shadowsong said. “Their airspeeder has just entered comms range.”

Wait.

What?




Next chapter - The beginning of the end times (T)