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 reasonably convinced, rightfully, that the Chosen are involved in all this. However, she’s logged on those damnable sheets they’re both innocent and guilty at the same time."Innocent and guilty? That sounds like Logi logic all right. "Let me guess, she's making plans for all outcomes?" I asked, taking steps to his side as we walked out of the council chambers.

He nodded solemnly. "I’ve tried to argue that it would be safest to simply expel the Chosen completely, but the clan lord has selected her judgement.”

“What's got her so stubborn? Is it politics or some outside scrapshit thing that's keeping her hands polite to the metal worshippers, or that only hard evidence is going to make her change gears?”

“In a manner of speaking, the latter.” Shadowsong said, taking a step into the more public streets. Our talks remained encrypted in comms, so we felt no true fear on being overheard. Not that anyone can hear anything anyhow with the sheer noise of the clan humming around us. “Tradition can be waived, albit with costs, but none that she isn't willing to pay. What stays her hand is that 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. Two last hopes are greater than one. That is the only protection they have according to her scale. To get her to change orders, 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. Push the scale too far the other direction.”

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. Or find he's written it out somewhere and forgot to burn the letter. Would make everything easier though.”

Shadowsong strode forward, signaling me to follow behind. We were passing by the smithing Houses. I knew the majority of those were tied up making aerogel foam boards for insulation. Those were apparently a very temperamental item to make, and the clan would need as much of it as possible to repair holes and leaks from explosions and other delightful events war brings with it.

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

“The knights she sees as a threat. The other Chosen are not. That, unfortunately, came from me. She asked for my analysis as First blade of their capabilities. It did not help the case I presented, but such is the truth. The civilians are in jail and unable to fight. The single knight they have available is dearmored, and unable to fight. Their true fighting force should be considered a separate entity entirely. They have 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 attention.”

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

“Should we only be so lucky the enemy is that overconfident.” 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 to push the clan lord's careful scale. We would crush them as well, and take their armors for ourselves. It’s unlikely they would be so foolish shortly after the Slavers were massacred attempting the same, with even the element of surprise in hand.”

“What else did you tell her? You had to have mentioned me at some point.”

“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. You remain with the clan lord's writ of passage, and full support granted by Lord Atius previously."

“I take it you told her everything then?”

“Of course I did." He scoffed. "I am loyal to the clan. 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. I am simply... frustrated by her train of thought. It will not prevent me from doing my work as First Blade.”

“The Occult and everything else?”

He nodded. “Given your contributions, she's seen fit to allow your House to retain all claims to armors taken, despite that decision making House Winterscar lopsidedly overbalanced compared to the other Houses." He reached a stop by the catwalks. Under us, the clan bustled with energy. Somewhere deeper under, the agrifarmers should be tending to the vertical crops, if I have my orientation right. Shadowsong's hand reached out and clasped on my shoulder. "This is a doubled edged gift. The decision will not be popular for her, as she will not elaborate on why she's allowed an unprecedented amount of power accumulate within a single house. You'll hear an official writ soon enough. How you handle the fallout of public opinion will be on you however."I gulped. Politics was something Kidra could dance around. "I guess the sheer amount of armor my House has now makes any headaches coming my way worth it."

He stayed silent at that. Watching over the lights twinkling all around under us. "So it may be. I have always found it grating to deal with people. You might have a talent for it, only unapplied yet. There are many talents, and we all have our roles to live for." A beat passed, and he shook his head, changing the subject a moment after. "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. There are holes in all the theories we have so far. Drass believes there were politics involved that hampered the Slavers from the inside out, rivalry perhaps. 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's only a handful, all in the hands of Lord Atius’s most trusted. There’s no way it’s those who leaked the secret out.”

“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. “Drass made the same point on the winterblossom technique, albeit with a different conclusion. Rumors could 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.”

“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 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. Instinct is a human trait that has served us well. It should be trusted and not second guessed.” He paused. "So long as emotion is not meddling under it all."

He sighed, something I hadn't seen him ever do. He'd always played the stoic, famous for it really, and the one time I'd seen him break character, he'd really had a bone to pick. "When's the last time you've taken your armor off and had a full night's sleep?"

The world under us continued moving, like an anthill that had been kicked over, rebuilding but furious. "Long enough." He said. "I will rest when the last threat has been put to the ground. This is why I am First Blade. Now, tend to your House. You have your own role to play in all this, make the right decisions. Fate will judge us all soon enough for it."

I thought about that as I walked back. Thought about it a lot. By the time I reached my House gates, I had made up my mind.

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. And best - we got to keep every bit of it. 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.

The hilarious part is realizing that at some point the slavers must have all gathered around some table to discuss their big plan. And were so spooked with Shadowsong's fame that they went with four times the normal amount of knights needed to put down a single duelist. They must have felt silly at the end of that planning session, overcommitting forces when other spots were stretched thin - and it still blew up on their faces. Goes to show, you can make all the right decisions and still fail. Today, I was doing my part to avoid having the same lesson getting beat into me by taking precautions and throwing some caution to the wind.

“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. Gossip had spread all through my house servants, but from there it had been a steel wall. The Winterscars considered each other trustworthy, and nobody else outside. Not close friends, not even family. Kidra had handpicked every person in the House, and clearly the time taken had paid off. So now I had a situation where even the lowest servants in my House knew I could channel the occult, but not even the clan lord's highest ranked Chenobis had any idea up until Shadowsong told Drass about me. From there, I had no idea who now knew.

The captain didn’t answer me about naming me a Lord, again. 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. By the time we're done here today, all of you should be able to do the same thing I did in that courtyard.” 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. I'd spent some time thinking about it, but the reality of the situation is that there were twenty three enemy knights unaccounted for who could chase me down again in my own home. I'd taken a small battery of drugs to prevent mental issues from that day, but the feeling of not being safe within my own home hadn't yet really gone away. Here's to hoping my actions today would change that for good.

“You gonna spill the coins 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. And I suspect, discovered some of the secrets they don't make public.”

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, giving it a fond tap. 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 for certain is that you’re someone worth calling a Lord. We all know it in our bones, m'lord. It just is.”

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. They all just seemed so... certain. Like it was an undisputed fact they hadn't even bothered talking about to one another. 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.

“All right. So, 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. We'll start with this. 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, historically speaking, I might very well be completely accurate on that. The Winterblossom technique allowed regular elite knights to fight on even footing with Lord Atius, a godsdamned Deathless. If I couldn't feel safe around them, there'd be nothing in this world that would do the trick. 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. And gods above did I not see the obvious coming, which is delicious irony considering what went down. “Good job deary." Cathida snickered. "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. The religious kind. Previously, they'd been willing to risk their lives to protect me, out of clan loyalty and culture. Now, it was tied with something even deeper. It worried me, honestly.

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. The technique itself wasn't difficult, once the right soul-position was learned, the rest was just re-adapting muscle memory. All the moves remained the same, and so all those years of experience these soldiers had with swords instantly compounded.

I joined in with them, feeling oddly enough - an equal. The winterblossom technique cut out the entire notion of reflex speed, leaving the armor to move as fast as the mind could think. Swinging arms in complicated motions was easy, it's moving around took some more training. Leaping and dodging around at the speeds the armor could move took the most adjusting. But after the initial change, we were all on even ground soon enough. They knew every move in the schools of combat, same as I did. 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 to become the greatest knights on the surface. 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, right up where progress slowed. “You know that combat engram is still kicking around.” She whispered in my ear, like the devil on my shoulder. “I could take it out for a spin. Who better to train these knights than your favorite teacher?”

“Curious definition of favorite.” I snarked. But she had a good point, and she probably knew it given the outright smug grin I could imagine she was sporting.

“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 elite 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. The combat engram's got pieces of all kinds of fightin’ I’ve witnessed. All the imperial styles, all the undersider ones, and all three of the surface styles I've seen you practice with. Shadowsong's peculiar moves. And even your sister's own tricky combos. I can master anything I see, if I see it once. All the skill and intuition of the old bat, and all the abilities of a relic armor. That cranky hag would shed a tear if she could see how Journey was using the memory of her. Be real proud of that.”

Can’t give me a more compelling argument than that. I gave my blessing, gathered the soldiers around, and then let her loose.

"All right you weaklings." She announced, catching them all by surprise at the sudden change of voice. "My little dear Keith's been kind enough to let me handle the stick and carrots from here. Time you all learned how to dance."

Sagrius, and the rest of the knights, just stared. I shrugged. "You know that rumor about my armor being haunted?" I said. "Well rumors, for once, were not greatly exaggerated. This armor was owned by an imperial crusader, a real cranky one too. And the armor remembers everything she's ever done in her life. So I asked it to compile a full memory of her and turns out, relic armors can do that."

"You are full of surprises, my lord." Sagrius said. The rest of the knights looked at one another. They murmured agreement, some giving small anecdotes of the latest gossip. Cleaning servants sent scampering away when the armor hissed at them in the night. Stuff that had Cathida's name all over it. Turns out she'd done a lot more I hadn't noticed, the little scamp.

"All of you chatter too much." Cathida said, raising my hand and pointing at one of the knights. "You, shut up, blade up. Come at me, and I'll give a little demonstration on why you're all going to hate me in the next few hours."

The knight didn't flinch at that. They're used to surface trainers, lived years under such, and so his reflexes were near automatic. Blade drawn, he charged in wordlessly.

She was absolutely ruthless. The winterscar knights loved it. Each fight give them more practice on using the new technique to it’s breaking point. She'd explain what they'd done wrong, where they'd gone wrong, and how they could fix their stances or hits. The same drill and training she'd give me, except these were soldiers who were actually good at picking up on that kind of feedback. So of course they progressed faster than I did. Outside of fighting her, they'd fight each other using crucible swords, waiting for their shields to replenish in order to take another go at Cathida. It was dawning on the knights here that what we had would allow completely brand new techniques and movements, actions that would have been ridiculous to think about at the speed a human could move. But now that the restrictions were gone, a whole different school of combat opened up. There would be four surface styles at the end of all this, instead of the three that had always existed up to now. We just needed time to optimize the movements.

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.

"The Undersider knights.” Shadowsong said. “Their airspeeder has just entered comms range.”

Wait.

They were still outside?

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