12 Miles Below

A knock on the sliding door drew me back from my daydreaming. “Master Keith,” The voice said, clearly belonging to Sagrius, my captain of the guards. A curt and professional man who clearly took to Kidra’s views on keeping things organized. “House Insight has the next delivery of chains ready for you. House Hammersmith also arrived with a message informing you that they’ve made good on their delivery and await for you to personally pick it up, as you instructed.” He said, trim and proper.

Ever since my talk with Lord Atius, I'd been granted a writ of request, signed by him and with no limits. That’s a lot of responsibility thrust on my shoulders, so of course I made sure to abuse it as often as humanly possible. Hence all sorts of trips like these around the clan at odd hours of the day.

“Great, I’ll be right there. Gather up a squad of men and we’ll set off to go visit the cranky bastards and pick up our commission.” I answered back, stamping the Winterscar seal on one last requisition paper before folding it up and setting it aside. Work never gets done. When I come back, I swear there will be another pile to deal with. How Kidra managed to be so diligent about everything was beyond me, I was already late on a few dozen things and it’s only been a matter of days since she left.

Outside the estate gate, four Winterscar soldiers stood at attention, along with Sagrius. We exchanged nods as the estate gates opened up and the small team set out.

Ever since the Chosen had set up camp by the lower levels, I’ve never left the estate grounds without Journey and a few soldiers at my side. Call it a bit of healthy paranoia.

Oh, they’ve been an agreeable lot, all things considered. They volunteer to help out with minor tasks, share some of their medicine and supplies, have generally not caused any trouble, and more importantly: They sent out the majority of their relic knights to go deal with the budding raider staging grounds, miles and miles away from us. The priest was making a ruckus though. Giving impassioned speeches and being a general nuisance.

The freedom didn't do him any good.

Something of an undercurrent had spread among the clan. I don’t know if it was Lord Atius that planned that out, or if it arose naturally, but it was a thing of genius and seemed well in character for the crafty Deathless to orchestrate: It became a matter of pride to shut down and ignore the priest’s words.

The argument the Chosen made didn’t matter. All of it was pitted against the patriotic pride, where anyone who listened or agreed with his viewpoints would be seen as letting the clan down.

Lejis could have all the facts, logic and data right - none of it was working out for the poor bastard. The clan had closed ranks among themselves and stubbornly refused to acknowledge any rhetoric. Even worse, the more convincing he tried to be, the more people dug in their heels in as if they had been personally insulted. Must have been driving him crazy, or at least it would have if I were in his shoes.

He took it well all things considered, still volunteering and working among people, still trying to befriend everyone, and still not giving up when they gave him the cold shoulder or cordial treatment.

Lord Atius didn’t need to come up with any counter speech, nor appear wherever the wily priest was to give a counter speech. No, the clan lord left the priest free to do his own thing in the most backhanded manner possible. Paradoxically, the more he ignored the Chosen priest, the more people ignored him too. Which let our clan lord tend to his own plans in peace while the people did all the resisting for him.

While I’d been working on making weapons of mass destruction that I had no doubts would land me in history as a villain, the clan lord had gone all-in on his own power ramp. Specifically selecting a set of knights to train the Winterblossom technique to, no secrets held. The Shadowsong incident had made him decide it was better to get on with everything than brood for a few more weeks about the best plan forward.

Kidra had already passed down the technique from the moment she’d discovered it, marching straight into his office without appointment from what I’d heard. Unfortunately, besides being able to detect the soul fractal if his hand was on it, Atius himself wasn’t able to move his soul into it. Nor was he able to see the world with occult vision. At all.

For a Deathless, an immortal power straight from legend, that seemed odd to me how regular human beings were able to do things he was incapable of. He was still running experiments and trying to figure it out, last I heard.

Still. Despite not having any hands on experience with the Winterblossom technique, Lord Atius understood enough to teach the selected knights. Which included Shadowsong.

Speaking of him, I wasn’t the only one who played it safe walking out on the streets. Not even a quarter of the way to House Hammersmith’s estate, a familiar relic knight and five Shadowsong soldiers crossed paths with us, folding into our formation with practiced ease. The Winterscar soldiers were well used to this at that point, so nobody made any moves to stop it, instead shifting over wordlessly to let the Shadowsongs join rank.

The Shadowsong Prime matched my pace and walked at my side, like a shadow. I don’t know if Atius had ordered him to keep me safe just in case, or if it was his own choice. But he certainly must have had scouts posted by my estate entrance that would inform him anytime I stepped out, in which he would appear like a hawk within minutes.

It was awkward at first, since the man’s default social setting was to stay quiet with a hand on the hilt of his sword. He didn’t even explain himself at first until I asked, in which he simply said he was guarding me as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. After the first dozen trips running around the clan and dealing with getting the other Houses to do my machiavellian bidding, I got more used to his set of quirks. At the very least, I could understand more about why Ankah was the way she was.

“How goes training with the clan lord?” I asked him over our encrypted comms.

“Steady. Edragar is the most recent of our ranks to succeed. I suspect the other seven need more combat experience before they can stand their own. Even with your technique, it is unlikely any of them will be able to defeat Lord Atius anytime soon.”

See, there’s a sentence you wouldn’t hear very often. ‘Defeat Lord Atius.’

I wasn’t there to see it, but I did get informed of the event. Shadowsong was taught the secret and took to it about as fast as Kidra had.

Quick reminder that even with the Winterblossom technique - I was losing the fight against him when I dueled the man.

Now that he had the technique himself, he’d taken on Lord Atius in single combat, and won.

Without a doubt, he was the single most dangerous man to be around. Good thing he was on my side now.

Not that this achievement was uncommon for long however. “I think we should be pretty damn happy with thirteen of the knights beating Lord Atius. Don’t forget, he’s a Deathless. People being able to beat him isn’t the norm in the first place. If only seven of our knights can’t beat him with the Winterblossom technique, I think that’s already really good.”

According to what I know about our clan, every few decades, a prodigy in combat would be born that could duel and defeat our resident Deathless. This happened less and less over time as Lord Atius grew more skilled by dint of having more years of practice. Atius himself had told me he was never a prodigy at the blade, only that he trained relentlessly and consistently for longer than any man has lived.

As of the record, it had been a hundred and thirteen years since he’d last been beaten by anyone in the clan. Father had been the closest to that point, but he hadn’t been enough.

The Deathless had four hundred years of experience and his own relic armor senses honed to near perfection. He still couldn’t move quite as fast as the knights using this technique. Yesterday, Lord Atius was beaten by not one, but four of the twenty knights. The day before, he’d been beaten by nine. The winterblossom technique was an utter cheat, though to be fair Atius wasn’t using any of his own powers.

That wasn’t even the main problem - once the knights were using the occult vision correctly like Kidra explained, almost all of them could see every move Atius planned. Precognition was an advantage nobody could surmount. Assuming the knights were able to see concepts of combat, which wasn't always a sure thing. The occult vision was a strange thing where everyone had something more unique to their own personal biases.

“He’s been a pretty good sport about all this.” I said. “If I were an undefeated champion over a hundred years, and suddenly the kids I watched grow up waving sticks at each other started mopping the floor with me, I’d be a bit miffed about it.”

“Not in his nature to care about such concepts.” Shadowsong scoffed. “He doesn’t see any of this as a personal failure. Rather he sees it as a massive leap forward for the clan as a whole.”

Fair point. “Any other deviations on the occult sight?” I asked, changing the subject. That part always fascinated me ever since Kidra and I compared our differences. It was like each person gained their own personal super powers depending on what they were most familiar with. Most of the veteran knights who'd lived and breathed the schools of combat got the ability to see concepts of combat in their opponents. But that might not be the only thing they gained.

“Tanaris sees concepts of loyalty in people." Shadowsong said. "Amaranth isn’t able to pinpoint some of the more exotic movements in a few of the combat schools, but she is relatively young in comparison to the rest. It’s to be expected she wouldn’t be as familiar with them. A few other of the newer knights like her also can’t see concepts of combat as well as the veterans can. Varis is able to see people at a far longer distance than anyone else, however. The others are all standard vision as far as we logged. We've been keeping talley on what the sight grants each of us in depth.”

“Are you seeing different things? When I have my occult sights turned on, I see concepts of machinery around me. I can tell that behind that wall are a few pipes connected to the main water supply for example.” I knocked on the wall as I passed, the metal making hollow pinging noises. Ever since the Shadowsong incident, I’ve been diligent about keeping the technique running at all times. Walking and talking in it even. Not quite to the level of sleeping with it, but getting there.

“You are the only knight to be able to see such things.” Shadowsong said. “In addition to concepts of combat, I’ve recently come to understand that my own sight grants me concepts of danger as well, or hostile intentions people may have. It has proven to be almost as useful as the speed your technique allows, though harder to understand at first.”

I whistled. That speed increase let Shadowsong consistently win. That’s not something to scoff at if he said the other part of the sight was nearly as game changing to him. It would not be an overstatement to consider our clan as the single most powerful one in the world right now. We had dozens of knights that could fight at or beyond the level of a Deathless. No one else had that going for them.

Those raiders were going to have their party ruined unless they came in with overwhelming force.

“What is your objective with House Hammersmith?” Shadowsong asked after a few minutes of comfortable silence. Normally he doesn’t ask anything, so maybe he was slowly opening up a bit. I had decided a while ago that I’d discuss the reparations after we were done with the raiders, and he’d taken me at my word on that.

“I had them forge me basic blades, which I’ll be converting into Occult blades once they’re back home.”

Another nod. “How many have you requested for?”

I hummed, “About six hundred. Enough to outfit all of our Retainer houses and some of the regular military.”

“An reasonable number.” He answered back dryly at what was an entirely unreasonable amount of Occult blades. Most clans didn't amass more than two hundred - in total.

“Think it’ll be enough?” I asked a little sarcastically.

He scoffed again. “What I think, is that I’m starting to feel pity for the enemy. Which is unbecoming and profoundingly unnerving, considering the enemy are savage subhuman filth out to enslave, pillage and torture for nothing more than coin and sadistic pleasure.”

I gave him a grin, that my relic helmet unhelpfully hid. But somehow I think he could tell. “Just wait till you see the other project I’m working on. If you feel sorry for the rank and file, you’re going to feel horrified for their knights.”

“What have you crafted?” He asked. I could almost imagine a raised eyebrow, but I didn’t miss the beat of curiosity in him.

“It's the reason I've been running around collecting parts like people owe me money. You're going to love them. I'm fairly certain the raiders are not going to share that sentiment." I chuckled darkly at that. "Fairly certain. Gods, I'm pretty sure even the Winterblossom technique isn't enough to beat these beauties. True power is not letting the enemy even have a chance.”

"What, exactly, have you crafted?" He asked again.

"I call them Knightkillers." I said, drumming my fingers together like the evil little gremlin I am. The soldiers around us couldn't hear what we talked about, but they gave no attention to my antics.

My men have seen me do this almost daily by now.

"They're exactly the kind of weapon that sets up a fair fight." I told him. "And by that, I mean my definition of a fair fight, which is entirely unfair to everyone else."

Next chapter - The best kind of kill is overkill

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