The Comfort Of The Knife

Sphinx pressed against me. Her warmth battling the wintry slush that’d become my veins.

“How many?” I asked.

Amber said, “Four. We lucked out there, but they hit fast and hard. They, um…”

“They what?”

“We lost the first and third floors. Some of them are chasing me down on the second. You have to hurry!”

I felt the mask in my backpack. Drip, drip, drip. “I’ll be on my way,” I said, and hung up.

Sphinx and I didn’t rush as we put the files back. Each second wasted on reversing any sign of our investigation was an agony. We’d lost the first and third floor. My mind was a maelstrom of the worst possibilities—Melissa disemboweled, Lupe beheaded, Amber hunted down and speared. Then the next moment the violence and the victim would shuffle around to taunt me with other arrangements. Was there any way for my friends to die that wouldn’t haunt me?

“Nadia,” Sphinx said, “we need a plan before we go back lest we tumble into a trap ourselves.”

“If things are that bad then no matter how we come back it’s a trap.”

I led the way out of the office, through the medical lab, and down the hallway.

“If they’re that bad.”

“You heard Amber—”

“Did I? Did we? The easiest sabotage happens under the guise of friendship.”

“So you’re saying someone stole Amber’s phone and mimicked her voice?”

“Is that so impossible to imagine?”

It wasn’t to be honest. Amber lacked offensive spells—well, maybe lacked them—and her motto was to cheat in any fight she found herself in. If the enemy cheated before she could then it’d be the situation with the lindwurm all over again. Stealing her phone would be rather easy. The mental phantoms of Melissa and Lupe’s death disintegrated from my mind. Amber’s, however, remained prominent like her last words to me: Don’t hold back.

Sphinx and I passed through the hallway of traps without sparing a moment of our attention. On the steps to the platform I shrugged off my backpack. Fished out the mask which had weighed on my back, and met Sphinx’s gaze.

“If I ask, would you put the mask back?” Sphinx asked.

I said, “Not until my girls are safe.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” she said.

“I hope you do. For both of us.”

Tears ran rivers down my face as I activated the Omensight and set the mask on my face. It smelled of the copper-citrus notes of blood. Tangy and tantalizing. A shudder ran through my body—the echoes of a night more pleasurable than I’d care to admit; the fear of what I’d soon do to those unfortunate enough to mar what was mine.

* * *

When we returned to the archive, the aching quiet was removed by the crooning strings of some distant flute. Its song was of soft blankets, crackling fires, and the build-up of snowbanks so high that they’d tease at the windows on the second floor. A yawn broke from my mouth. I narrowed my eyes at the unbidden vocalization. In a search for the song’s origin I noticed the snowy shawls of Sleep slung over the shelves, hung from the walls, and flooding the floor. It was even in the air. Snowflakes of sleep swinging lazily in their descent before joining with one of the pre-existing masses. A winter wonderland if there ever was one.

I turned a hand over and caught a snowflake upon my palm. It wasn’t Real. Just a representation of the audible yet invisible spell that blanketed the archive. A clue that only someone with sorcerous sight would have a chance at picking up on. I watched the snowflake melt in my hand decomposing into a faint smoke of Death and Stars. In fact, every snowflake that touched my body met a similar end.

“Looks like it’s more than my body temperature that rose. It’s like an innate resistance to spells or something.”

“A greater resistance is a fine gift, but don’t mistake it for immunity,” Sphinx said.

“I wouldn’t think of it.”

An Inviolate Star bloomed above my fingers as I formed the hand-spell. Its light repelled the thick layers of Sleep that’d risen to mid-calf in height. The bubble of safety was large enough to cover Sphinx and myself as I clung to her back on our flight to the center of the archive.

From the air I finally noted the origin of the song. Ensconced within the walls were speakers that all sang the same song of how comfortable it’d be to close your eyes and let Sleep take you. I sneered at the sentiment and the lack of threads connecting me to the spell.

“Where’re the ties of fate?” I asked.

“Not here. This spell it’s unfocused and uncaring. There’s no intention to target you, and thus no fated connection.”

“So it’s what, coincidence?”

“Nothing is a coincidence, Nadia. This is nature. It happens as it happens, and whether you’re there to hear it or not the sound and cycles exist.”

“I hate it,” I said.

“Agreed.”

When we neared the center of the archive I discovered the faces of my enemies. One of them was clothed entirely in black—sweater, pants, boots—with a semi-sheer black veil over her face. While the other was a brick-wall of a boy in denim overalls and a raglan tee. On his back was a shimmering aquamarine isopod that clung to his body with chitinous legs that pierced his body. Under the Omensight, both of them lacked the luminosity I’d come to expect from fighting upChain foes—good.

“Sphinx, maintain the star for me.”

I felt through my spirit as she wrapped the Inviolate Star in her own control. Carefully, I stood atop Sphinx’s back and formed the hand-spell for Fivefold Atomic Glory. Fuck holding back. I loosed the spell.

A streak of fading chalcedony flames trailed behind the brilliant howling star that consumed distance like kindling. From our distance to the square—we had a few minutes left before we arrived—I couldn’t tell if my two targets had noticed it or not. Even if they had, I didn't expect them to survive. When the spell had landed it exploded into a towering pillar of chalcedony fire that stretched up toward the spatially expanded ceiling. For a solitary moment it was as if a faucet had been turned on connecting the archive to a world of infinite fire.

We arrived as the pillar thinned to a needle and then was gone. In its absence I noted how much it took with it—the stele with the map, numerous petals and most of the miniature maze connecting the elevators to the archive’s center. I had us land in the epicenter of the blast. There weren’t any flames that kept burning—Revelation was a moment after all—so it wasn’t like the rest of the archive was at risk. I did feel a pain though, in the place where I remembered that there was a life where I would’ve been a researcher, as I noted how many racks of information, files, and artifacts I’d just destroyed.

“You didn’t hold back at all, huh?” a boy’s voice said.

I turned atop Sphinx’s back to watch as the boy and the black-clothed woman next to him surfaced back into reality. The planes of themselves slowly connecting until they had fully extricated themselves from whatever space they’d stepped out from. It was similar to what Amber had done back at the outpost. Slipping beneath the threads of the world.

“I didn’t want to be rude,” I said. “Now, what’d you do to Amber?”

I emphasized my question by leveling the glaive at him. He held up his hands and pointed past my shoulder. Wordlessly, I took back control of the Inviolate Star while channeled her own Atomic Glories so they’d be ready at my order. Sphinx raised her wings aiming the eyes at the boy while I turned my head, slowly, to his companion. She sat atop one of the racks. Between her fingers she dangled Amber’s sorc-deck—her bloodsoaked sorc-deck—as if it was a used tissue.

“Just doing some vocal training,” she said, before assuming Amber’s voice. “Did I do a good job?”

“No,” I lied. It was a masterful impression.

“Shame, I don’t think I’ll be practicing it much beyond tonight. Now, you can stand down and take the test next year, or you can be like Amber…”

She tossed the sorc-deck through the air. Blam. A crack of ear-splitting thunder. The sorc-deck shattered into a rain of expensive shards. My eyes slid to the boy holding two phantasmal revolvers in meaty fists. One was smoking—a wispy cloud of stardust that glittered in the light.

“Dead,” she finished.

“You’re lying,” I said.

“The only lie that’s been said is that I did a bad job. Toby, show her.”

The isopod on the boy—Toby’s—back extended long pedipalps that formed a halo behind Toby’s head. It twisted and wove Stars with Stars. As it worked an image of Amber’s slaughtered form took shape in between the three of us.

Phantasmal swords had skewered her chest. Her fingers were blackened and loose, unable to hold the blood-drenched knife she’d shown me in the library. There was no fire behind her rosy eyes. While her lips were pale, lifeless, never again to press against my own.

“Get it now. Back down or—”

My laughter severed her voice. Whatever script she was following I’d thrown her off of it into the deep end of what churned inside my heart. She may have been veiled, but the flood of laughter had instilled a tenseness in her body. She shared glances with Toby who looked to her for direction. It was just so funny that I couldn’t help but smile even though they couldn’t see it.

“Alls below, what’s wrong with you?” Toby asked.

“The idea that you killed Amber. She’s a Baron, and both of you are just soldiers. If all your team are like you then you’re down the person needed to even begin to challenge her,” I said. “But, I think I prefer humoring you. So let’s say you did.”

I slid from Sphinx’s back. Tossed the Inviolate Star just a bit above me as I formed the seal for Atomic Glory. My eyes on the thread of fate tying us together by her intent to threaten me.

“If you did,” I said, “then that means I’ll need your heads so I can have a good funeral gift.”

Infinity split. The tie between us went up in flames that raced along fate’s edge to pierce her heart. She likely had some sort of sorcerous sight as she fell forward and disappeared beneath the skein of the world. My flames burnt down to nothing as their target was—for all intents and purposes—no longer existent.

Toby lacked sorcerous sight, so when he finally caught on he was too late on pulling those triggers. I’d caught the Inviolate Star and slid my body in front of Sphinx as the “bullets” those unReal guns fired were dispersed along the edge of light the star cast.

Sphinx loosed her own Atomic Glories. They were a rapid fire barrage of chalcedony bolts that lanced the air. Speeding up, Toby’s entity traced a square with its pedipalps that conjured a wall that splashed against the hasty defense.

“My entity says we’re cousins,” Toby said.

“Really?” I asked.

“Yup, Primordials on my end,” he explained. “Revelation on yours.”

“Sphinx,” I said, “we’re definitely going through all your cousins after this.”

The conjured wall dissipated as did the guns in Toby’s hands. He bounced on the balls of his feet before suddenly throwing himself backwards. The pedipalps traced a circle conjuring a trampoline. It sproinged Toby forward fast as an arrow. Sphinx fired more Atomic Glories. She had perfectly calculated three steps ahead. Toby stopped two steps in. Circle. Another trampoline—this time below his feet—shot him upwards in a tight arc. Sphinx aimed upwards firing lances of chalcedony flame toward the ceiling. To its credit, Toby’s entity had already begun rapidly conjuring walls. One per lance. Null result. Null result. Null result.

He landed in front of me. Low as a monkey. Wicked sharp phantasmal swords of stardust in his hands. One upward slice! I danced back with a lean narrowly evading. He lunged forward catching me on the backfoot. Thrust his blade out to skewer me. Sphinx caught the back of my shirt with her teeth. Whipped me to the side as she corkscrewed low. Kicked her back legs out as they clanged against the quickly sketched shield that saved Toby’s arms from being maimed.

He slid back a few feet from the force of the blow. The shield already dissipating. Drip, drip, drip. This time the blood drops weren’t in my mind. A bright red splatter-flower had bloomed to the side of my feet. In a glance I noted its origin, a sanguine line drawn across the side of my torso. It burned with the reminder of my own mortality. I narrowed my eyes at the dissipating sword.

“Hmm, looks like spells from outside have problems, but spells from the inside are fine.” Toby said, “Tell Shenshen I need a bit of help.”

“Who are you talking to?” I asked.

A howl cut through the air in response. My gaze slipped from Toby toward the air beside me. Between the ever-falling snowflakes emerged a dire wolf. An iconic entity for those bonded to the Court of Sleep. Large as a sedan, their fur was wild and black like frostbitten fingers. Large holes seemed cut out from its limbs and shoulders through which the wind whistled and brought as herald a maelstrom of snow. While its skull was no lupine thing but rather a crescent of deepest winter blue ice brought to a sinister point. It was with that eyeless crescent skull it gored Sphinx and raced her off from beyond my light.

The wind came after toying with my hair as the cloud of snow formed a thick screen around the sanctuary my Inviolate Star provided. A spell in and of itself—rather than just the product of one—its composition obfuscated my vision due to the Omensight. Lines of thought plowed across my brow as I pushed my sight past the spell that had curtained the archive from me. Toby was gone.

I ducked low and kicked out, making a T of my body. My shoe crunched into Toby’s face. His feet continued while his head snapped backwards. His body spun and his head cracked into the ground. The knives he conjured dissipated instantly. One-handedly I attempted to twirl Mother’s Last Smile, but it wasn’t that light of glaive. By the time the tip was to the ground and I dropped to a knee in a bid to drive it through Toby’s face he’d already rolled away. Spun on his shoulder, snapping a kick into my already wounded side.

While I hissed in pain, he kicked back to standing. The pedipalps sketched a maul into his hands—the kind you’d use at some faire game. I yanked free my glaive only barely interposing it in time before the maul’s head swung into my weak side. Though I’d caught the maul on the shaft his blow still struck with full force. I felt it flatten the entirety of my body as if a wall had been slammed into me. Then came the waves of shock that rippled through my viscera and shook my teeth. It was a mercy that the blow sent me flying through the air into one of the racks. Less of a mercy when I bounced off of it into a secondary arc that landed me between the shelves.

Through wheezing gasps I voicelessly railed against the unfairness of it all. Toby was a horrible fighter. Physically capable but in a competition of skill he wouldn’t be my match in the slightest. He wasn’t my match in the slightest. Unfortunately his team had stacked the deck and dealt me the worst cards possible. If I dropped the Inviolate Star to wield my glaive properly it’d force me to rush through fighting Toby before the omnipresent spellsong put me to Sleep. If I didn’t drop the spell, then I’d be slowly ground to nothing under the endless barrage of Toby’s attacks.

I eyed the star that floated above my hands—even knocked aside I’d kept the spell up. I wanted to swear at it, furious that my opponent was the one who revealed one of its weaknesses. Spells cast within its light weren’t scattered the way external ones were. It’s why his sword and maul could wound me, but his bullets…his bullets couldn’t!

“Toby, if it wasn’t for your teammates I’d have killed you by now,” I called out.

Toby said, “Yeah, yeah, whine all you want, but I have my teammates and you don’t have yours. Complaining doesn’t change the facts. Besides, you’re the one stuck using an inelegant piece of Real gear. Me, all my toys are made to order. No fumbling needed.”

Through the Omensight I saw past all the shelves as his entity sketched a bench for him to sit on to catch his breath. The bench wasn’t Real, nothing about it was, and in truth its entire function was found in enforcing a causal relationship through its own ontological purpose. A bench was to be sat on, and thus he could sit on it. Effect found through the visual establishment of cause. Pieces were being slotted into place, a theory forming, and I tested it by examining my first wound of our fight.

The cut he’d landed on me still held traces of his Court, a few traces of the Bloodlust that seemed so loud and obvious when I wore the mask, and beneath all of that was the fate that came from being cut. Bleeding until my mind was dizzy and flesh pale. Until I looked just like Amber. His attacks had the full might of causality and fate behind them, and the wounds dogged you until you stumbled into a grave. This was everything I’d hoped for.

I regarded the Inviolate Star with a shy appreciation and embarrassed smile. It wasn’t its fault I wasn’t the summoner I imagined myself to be. If I was, I wouldn't have forgotten that there was a second way to use this spell.

“Hey Toby,” I said. “How’s my entity doing?”

“Better than you.”

“Great.” I said, “I think I’ve caught my breath. Ready for round two?”

“Sure.”

Using Mother’s Last Smile, I propped myself up. Leaned against it as I opened my first mouth, fangs parting in thick strings of bloodthirsty salivation. Opened my second, soft lips pushed aside by a flat pink tongue that made a tunnel for my spell to travel down. I pressed the Inviolate Star against my tongue. Curled around the sorcerous creation and pulled it into my throat. Felt it blacken my esophagus. Melt my intestines as it fell into my gut. It was an atrocious sensation, but after any bout of pain came the syrup flow of pleasure. That sweetness which made the whole cycle worth doing again.

It soothed the pains Toby had caused me. Diverted the fate of my wound and thus delayed my end. The flame that burned in my gut even soothed the secret hurts that drilled beneath my fingernails and made slow my hands—with the White Womb, had I killed a child? Without Amber can I pass the exam? Am I going to die? Under the pyroclastic flow that had worked through the barrier of my intestines and invaded my arteries all of those concerns became ash on my breath.

I was immolating. I was great. I would win.

My glaive felt loose in my hand as I my shuffled steps became loping bounds. Out past the wire-racks into the aisle. The corona of chalcedony flame searing those Sleepy snowflakes from the air before they had a chance to befoul my skin. I stared Toby down. He shifted and his bench collapsed from beneath him—its purpose fulfilled as he had already sat down.

“You crazy bitch,” he said.

I laughed, “Come on Toby, if we’re going to kill each other we have to go at least that far!”

Then I sprinted at him. A wide-mouthed hunting bitch ready to rip him limb from limb. He fumbled to his feet. Raised a rapidly conjured gatling gun in both hands. Fired.

Unwilling to reveal my gambit just then, I dashed to the side. Shifted myself to run in an arc around him. His thoughtless spray gave me perfect cover to run near Sphinx. She was wounded from the spear that was the dire wolf’s skull. Oh she’d given back as much as she could from how the flames licked at the entity’s body. It was—in even further testament to how unfair this fight had been—hardly enough to stop it. As its summoner’s song proved capable of putting even the flames of Revelation to Sleep. So I decided to even her fight.

“Sphinx, catch!”

I pirouetted on my next step, used all the extra force the motion afforded me, and threw my glaive. It spun end over end and struck the haunches of the dire wolf. Scored a sharp line through its flesh before arcing up into the air. In two wingbeats, Sphinx had taken to the air to catch the glaive’s haft in her own jaws.

End this cousin of ours, Nadia. She thought.

Click. Toby’s gun was empty. He made the mistake of looking down at it in disbelief as it discorporated. I raced forward. The scent of the kill teasing my nostrils and tying a noose about my inhibitions. There was violence to be done.

I wasn’t so lucky as to catch him unhanded—he’d formed knives just in time. They caught me in the gut at once. Both of them intent on pincering through my necessary organs. Knives stab after all. Toby yanked them back, his entity conjured more, and he stabbed again. Ten times he stabbed me between both hands. I stood there and took it. My body shuddered with each blow.

“Tsk tsk,” I said. “You’ll need something more Real if you want to put me down.”

As someone who suffers from chronic tunnel-vision, I understood Toby’s pain. He had executed his plan perfectly. Strike me with multiple causal weapons until I succumbed to my fated end. It wasn’t his fault that he didn’t know Revelation makes causality her bitch. Nor was it his fault that, despite having never done theater, I was still a decent actor.

“It’s not fair,” he said—and it’s only now that I realize he was so young, we both were. Shame.

I said, “It doesn’t change the facts.”

His weapons discorporating and mind fraying, Toby leaped backward to gain distance. Gain time to think. I denied him either. My foot stomped atop his pinning him to the ground. His entity’s pedipalps sketched a shield between his face and my fist. It was the causal truth that shields block, but we were beyond such concerns now.

My fist shattered his shield diverting the fate he wished to impose on my body. Crashed into his guard. His arms flew wide. My other fist curved in tight next to my lead foot. Crack.

“Sorry about your rib, Toby!”

My hands shot around to the back of his head. Toby had such pretty dark curls, perfect for gripping. I clinched and rammed my knee into his chest. Once, twice, three times and then crack. Now there was a song to be found. His sternum shattered I reared back for my killing blow. Formed the hand-spell for an Atomic Glory. Split infinity and clenched my fist around the flames sheathing it a formless mass of hungry fire.

I released a haymaker only a beast could devise. It arced beautifully toward his head. Through the Omensight I could already see the potential splatter patterns of his ruined burning skull.

“Intermission,” she incanted.

As I said and everyone tells me, I suffer from tunnel-vision a lot. In that moment where victory was nigh I forgot that this wasn’t a one-versus-two. It was a one-versus-three. My body—the world—froze for a moment and four things happened.

One. Toby’s teammate, the black clothed girl, returned from that secret place behind the world.

Two. She dragged him back from my fist, the heat of the flames had only just begun to melt his skin—I can still hear the fat bubbling and popping like bacon on a skillet.

Three. The two of them receded back behind the world only to reappear on the opposite side of the clear my earlier Fivefold Atomic Glory had made.

Four. This one I hated the most. The girl, probably using her own entity, added their fourth teammate to the fight. In that one moment where I lacked all agency and control due to a power greater than mine I struck an unknown well of compassion against those who suffered in my Godtime.

The Inviolate Star within me, already straining to divert the effects of the spellsong and Toby’s attacks as I didn’t dodge every bullet, failed to save me from this new sorcery. Sphinx had already warned me, albeit in reference to the after effects of Inviolate Star, that resistance even when overwhelming was not immunity.

Time began and I felt a small palm strike me dead between my shoulder blades. A cooling balm flowed from her strike across my back. Wound across my body snuffing the corona of flames that burned and flicked in petulant rage. I stumbled, rolled, and before I could rise to my feet—

“Bow,” the soft voice said.

My head snapped low, but my eyes rolled up to peer up at the one who ambushed me. She was cute—despite my snarling rage, she was. Small and pale as a doll with wide bright green eyes she wore her oversized jacket well. From its many steel loops were different booklets of seafoam formation paper. Their complex mortal crafted spells written in calligraphic strokes of Underink. On chunky turquoise platform mary janes she walked forward trepidatiously. There was a curiosity in her eyes at the beast before her.

“I need to know that you understand me,” she said.

“Understand that unless you let me go,” I said, “I’ll make sure to jam my Toby’s radii through your eyes after I tear them from his body!”

“Good enough.” She said, “First, I want you to hear me when I say that I am of the rank of Baron. You’re not breaking through my Suppression seal on your own. Second, this is your last chance for mercy. If you fight against my seal your organs will shut down and you’ll most likely die.”

I pushed forward. Limbs outstretched and hands ready to wring her doll-like neck until those emerald eyes rolled into her skull.

“Fine,” she said. “Die.”

Thud. My heart came to a rushing halt. Every part of my body froze in the moment of that last pounding beat. I could feel my nerves belay each successive order that would’ve let me follow through on my sudden assault. Instead I just fell to the ground. There was no pain—my receptors had stalled as well. Everything was shutting down.

The Inviolate Star within myself was but an ember stolen on the wind. It flew off into the recesses of my being. Not snuffed, but Suppressed. Then came the snowflakes that fell against my body. Thousands upon thousands of them entombing me in the winter chill of Sleep. I could imagine the soft furry blanket that I used to wrap around myself during winter. The crackle of the hearth. Mom and Dad quietly sipping tea. The gentle song of the snowy wind teasing the windows. It all lulled me into a darkness that dragged me…

Down.

Down.

Down.

Down.

Down.

Down.

Down.

Down.

Darkness.

My last sight was of an elevator opening. A woman tall and wolflike standing proud. Her hand to the air as she wielded something. While her guitar was strung low—perpendicular—to her body.