.Chapter 43
I dropped the fake drunken smile on my face and looked around the street seriously as I used my ability to see magic to make sure no one was looking. Just to be on the safe side though I walked around the corner of the bar into the dark alley and stuck my finger down my throat. I puked up as much of the booze as I could. That should at least minimize the effect of the drink on me for what comes next.
I’d been considering my approach, but now that I had this stone magic I thought I had a pretty good idea. I softened the stone of the alley and sank down into it next to my fresh puddle of vomit until my head was below street level and the stone closed above me in a form fitting coffin. There wasn’t much air in here so I’d want to make it quick. I could feel the stone of the street and the castle like I could see a three dimensional image of it above me. I began moving through the stone, across the street and up the steep hill of stone the castle stood on. I moved up through the solid stone walls of the castle itself, higher and higher. This place had to have been made with stone magic itself at some point in the past, there’s no way somebody carved this out of solid stone. I had to contort my body a few times through some tight turns as the walls became thinner and thinner the higher up I went, until I finally found myself inside the wall of the highest tower.
With my magic vision I could see the count’s deep blue cloud of magic swirling within him as he lay horizontal just on the other side of this wall. I could spit on him if I wanted to just by opening a hole in the wall in front of my face. The problem was the myriad tendrils of air magic that extended from his sleeping form and whirled languorously through the room as he slept. I saw a tiny white speck of cloud that indicated an insect make its way under the door on the other side of the room, and as it brushed against a tendril it was casually crushed into oblivion as the tendril whipped down on it. I wanted to do this quietly, but I was pretty sure if I disturbed one of those tendrils with magic it would instantly wake the count and he’d make enough noise to summon the two people standing outside his door whose clouds swirled white and wispy where they leaned against the wall in the hall. Hmm, I stood there in the stone wall by the bed as I examined the patterns of the magic moving slowly through the room. He had the door, the windows, and the fireplace all but covered with them, but they weren’t very dense around his bed. Where’s my opening? There were a few moving along the wall I stood in and they seemed designed to stop anything blowing apart the wall itself from harming him and could probably shield him in an instant. Even the ceiling was covered as this was the top floor of the castle.
Then I saw it. There appeared to be a large number of magic clouds in the room directly under this one laying down as well. A barracks maybe? That might explain why he wasn’t guarding against anything coming from the floor. Anyone attacking from down there would cause a huge racket and he’d have plenty of time to prepare more thorough defenses. I smiled, there were no tendrils under the bed he slept in. A grievous oversight, my lord. Don’t mind if I do take advantage of it.
I firmed my will and created a thin stone needle that slowly protruded from the floor directly below his sleeping head. I slowly extended it up from the floor until I felt it touch the bed frame itself before stopping and focusing on the long stone needle’s strength, hardening it more and more until it must have weighed hundreds of pounds. It was actually a bit of a strain since I had to hold up the weight with magic braced through the stone of the castle itself to keep it from crashing through the floor and into the barracks. When I finally had it the way I wanted it, I slammed it through the underside of the wooden bed and up into the count head. I immediately caused it to split into a fractal pattern of thorns throughout his entire brain. Then I turned the thorns to tiny blades and rotated the mass of stone through his brain tissue reducing it to a bloody slurry. The deep blue magic tendrils winked out like they were never there. I withdrew the stone thorns into a single needle and pulled it back through the hole in his skull, through the hole in the bed, and back into the floor, where I churned the stone a bit to make sure it didn’t even leave a bloodstain where the needle had retracted.
The tendrils of air magic had dissipated almost the moment the needle pierced his skull, and the clouds of magic indicating people standing outside his door hadn’t so much as twitched, so I opened a hole in the wall in front of my face to breathe through as it was getting quite stuffy in my stone hiding place in the wall. I looked down and saw the count’s eyes had opened wide but were looking in two very disparate directions. One of them was filled with blood. I smiled. Fuck you, asshole. Sometimes people do get what they deserve. I extended two stone arms from the wall and encompassed his head in hands of stone before forming two sharp blades against his neck that suddenly sheared together, neatly clipping off his head. I drew the head back to the wall with the stone arms and entombed it next to me in the wall. Then I reached out a tendril of rock and created a small bowl at the end of it that gathered the blood that was pouring out of his corpse’s severed neck. I filled the bowl and then turned it into a blood filled sphere as I brought it back up to the wall and closed up the opening before me. It was difficult, but I smeared blood on the wall over the head of his bed forming the word RAPIST in large block letters in the common tongue. With any luck that’ll throw off anyone trying to figure out who killed him. It was remarkably difficult to write legibly like this though. It was like holding a slate against your face, and then writing on it while trying not to get any of the letters backwards. When I finished writing I pulled the now empty stone sphere back into the wall.
That accomplished, I sped back down through the stone of the castle walls with the count's head in tow. I whipped back across the street more quickly than I’d come, as I was getting pretty practiced at moving through stone at this point. I made my way back to the alley I’d started in and looked for magic clouds of people in the area. It didn’t seem like anyone was watching, so I popped back out, leaving the head entombed in the stone under the street out front. I’ll get it later, I thought to myself, it’s not going anywhere. I nonchalantly made my way out of the alley and back through the front door as I put back on my feigned drunkenness.
Knick was sitting at a table with Tom and had a large pile of gold in front of him next to his hand where he had splayed it out flat on the tabletop. Just as I noticed this, a knife fell from the high ceiling and hit the table between Knick’s fingers with a THUNK and sat there vibrating upright as the men surrounding the table exclaimed at this and tossed more gold onto the table as Knick raked in the previous pile to join the larger pile next to him. I walked in quietly behind Knick as he tossed his knife high into the air just shy of the ceiling as he held out his hand flat on the table without looking at the knife. I leaned down and whispered loudly in his ear, “Don’t flinch!” He twitched and the knife nicked his middle finger above the top knuckle as it landed with another thunk. The men around the table laughed uproariously as Knick grimaced and put his cut finger in his mouth. He pushed out a quantity of gold to equal the newest pile on the table and the men who’d wagered against him all took a portion of it as I sat down. They made their way chuckling back to their tables. “Sorry Knick. That was mean, but I couldn’t help myself.” I grinned as he gave me a glare. “Here, let me heal that,” I reached out and touched his hand and tried to run my magic into it. Something slammed against my magic and it snapped painfully back into me as I flinched back in my seat. “Ow! Shit Knick. Your magic really doesn’t like my healing magic does it?”
Knick raised an eyebrow as he took his finger out of his mouth to say, “I don’t have any magic.”
“Gonna hafta disagree with you on that point, bud. It’s like a blood red cloud swirling inside ya, and it’s thick enough I bet you could do magic if you worked at it.” What was it Demon had called him again? A blood mage? Hmm. “Well, if it’s blood red, maybe it’s blood magic. Try focusing on your blood. Maybe you can close up the cut yourself?”
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Knick’s eyes widened and he stared at the cut on his finger in front of his face as a drop of blood beaded out and began rolling down his hand. I waved over the waitress. “Some food for my friends and I, beautiful, and I think I’d like a glass of wine to wash it down. Actually, make it a bottle of wine for the table if you please.” I said cheerfully. Knick ignored me and continued to stare at his finger, so I looked over to Tom who was watching the waitress' ass as she made her way back to the bar to pass along our order. “So Tom, how much did Knick make with his random blademaster skills?”
“Blademaster? Well shit, no wonder then. That’s what I get for betting against him in that case,” he sighed. Tom gave the pile in front of Knick a professional glance. “Bit north of sixty gold I’d hazard. Not a bad haul. Personally, I prefer to stick to cards. Wouldn’t want to risk my fingers myself.” He drunkenly waggled his fingers in front of his face as if to reassure himself they hadn’t been harmed when Knick’s was. I looked over at Knick and my mouth dropped open.
The drop of blood was retracting up Knick’s hand. Tom saw it too and gasped. It was like watching the drop in reverse motion as it made its way back up the back of his hand, up his finger, and back into the cut. The cut drew itself closed. It didn’t fully heal but had pulled itself together firmly and could scarcely be seen if you weren’t looking for it. “Whoa, cool,” I breathed.
Knick was sweating a bit but looked proud of himself. “Yeah,” he said simply as he started stacking up his newly won gold.
“So, Knick, think you can move that blood on the table around?” I pointed to the few drops of blood on the table where the knife had hit his finger.
Knick clenched his hands into fists and stared at the tiny drops of blood in front of him with an intense focus. Then the drops moved. It was just tiny ripples at first, but then they began to flow together and then towards the center of the table where they bulged up off the tabletop slightly as they merged, forming a perfect sphere. “Nice!” I said. “Think you could form that into a shape? Anything you can think of. Just push the blood into that shape with the force of your will.” Knick didn’t respond, he just continued to stare hard at the ball of blood, and it began to change, pulling up off the table and lengthening. Ever so slowly the blood formed a very familiar shape. His knife. I leaned in closely and I could just make out the tiniest representation of the rubies that formed a wave pattern on the handle. At that point the waitress returned with a bottle and three glasses and began pouring and sharing them out to each of us. When she handed Knick his glass her attention was drawn to the tiny knife formed of blood, and her hand went to her mouth as she gasped aloud, drawing the attention of patrons at nearby tables who gathered around as we all stared at the tiny blood knife balanced on its tip on the table. Knick slowly pointed a finger at the knife and then raised his hand. The knife followed his finger slowly, hovering into the air over the center of the table. I cleared my throat, “Tell me, Lord Tom, would you say this qualifies as proof of magic and therefore proof of Lord Knick Redwater’s nobility?” I asked loudly.
Knick, his face now covered in sweat, jerked as he glanced sharply at me, and the blood knife fell to splat back into a tiny puddle in the exact center of the table next to the wine bottle. “I quite concur, Lord Nameless. It seems a new member of the nobility has joined us today.” Tom grabbed his wine glass and raised it. “To Lord Redwater! The newest unlanded noble in the kingdom!”
I raised my glass, “To Lord Redwater!”
“TO LORD REDWATER!” thundered the patrons around us as they broke into cheers.
“What?!” asked Knick, flabbergasted.
“We’re definitely going to need another bottle of wine, gorgeous,” I said to the waitress as I drained off my cup and poured myself another.
The rest of the night was a bit of a blur as we got progressively more and more drunk. I vaguely recalled having eaten some sort of meat pie that I’d ended up puking all over the stoop outside the bar as I barely made it out the door. Knick had played with that little puddle of blood for hours as we drank, and he’d formed all kinds of different shapes, from inanimate objects, to animated animals, to a recreation of myself holding my tiny blood hand to my chin as it appeared to calmly regard the much larger Demon for a bit before attacking him with a tiny blood axe while Demon chittered and hid on my shoulder much to the amusement of all.
Eventually it got late and most of the patrons had cleared out. Knick and I finally took our leave, though I did snag a half full bottle of wine for the road and we staggered drunkenly down the middle of the dark street. Knick asked me to sing my song for Dog again, and I mournfully belted out some more Amazing Grace for him as we stumbled along. We were occasionally yelled at by locals that we’d woken up. Knick would yell back a challenge or a threat and they’d close their windows meekly and go back to bed. Nobody seemed willing to take him up on it.
We finally stumbled back into the smithy yard. The cart was packed high and was covered with a waxed leather tarp while Goliath was tied up at a post near the front door. The windows in the front room appeared to be lit with candles on the other side of the nearly opaque curtains. I guess Ara decided to wait up for me. When we entered boisterously, Hammer and Ara were sitting on opposite sides of the room each on a couch and appeared to be drinking tea.
“My lord! Are you alright?” asked Ara, concerned. I waved her back into her seat as she started to stand and slumped heavily down beside her. Knick took a seat next to Hammer.
“I’m just fine, love. We’re just very, very, very drunk. Hazards of a night well spent.” I laughed as I looked at Knick and he smiled widely. “So, I suppose I should report on tonight’s going ons.” I held up a finger, “First, I took Dog to the graveyard and buried him in the first king’s mausoleum.” I shrugged. “It was probably illegal, but Dog deserved the best. When I put his body down on the coffin in there, a demon turned Dog’s body to stone and crawled out of the Dog statue.” I pointed to Demon, “This monkey isn’t a monkey. He’s a demon. I’ve just been calling him Demon for now. May come up with a proper name another time, but it’s been working so far so I think we’ll stick with it for the time being. Two,” I held up a second finger. “I paid Demon here a few things and he gave me badass stone magic. So now I’m a stone mage too.” I laughed uproariously at the disbelief on their faces. Knick laughed too, he was pretty drunk and almost slid off the couch.
“Speaking of which, are you going to give me that head already?” asked Demon with a slightly annoyed tone.
“Sure, sure. You said you wanted the head of my greatest enemy, and you shall have it my small friend,” I held out a hand towards the fireplace and drew the head up from the stone beneath the ground, through the stone of the fireplace, and into a tentacle that stretched out to the coffee table, forming a platter with a raised lip holding the late count’s head. “As requested, little dude. So make with the magic, yeah?” Demon jumped to the table and touched a hand to the top of the severed head. His eyes began glowing with that odd gray light and the head slowly turned to stone beneath his hand. I felt a loud creaking in my head until CRACK! Ow, that one stung a bit. I felt a tickle on my upper lip and rubbed it away to find blood on my fingers. I ran some healing magic into my head and it quickly ceased. I could still feel the stone beneath me, but it went so much farther now. I could feel some kind of stone structure deep beneath the lake and the town. Stretching north up the road I could feel something truly massive made of stone. The Mountain? Damn that’s weeks away by cart and I can feel it from here? “Whoa, I see what you meant, Demon. That’s a LOT more power than I got with the last price I paid ya. We’ll discuss the final price another time when I’m not out of my mind drunk. But, that brings us to the third thing!” I raised three fingers. “Last night I murdered this prick in his sleep and got away clean without anyone noticing I’d even left the bar! So we shouldn’t have to deal with anyone’s suspicions falling on us for offing this stupid fuck.” I leaned down and pointed a finger at the stone head’s nose. “That’s what you get for killing my Dog, asshole!” I sighed contentedly and then used another stone tentacle to pull his head back into the fireplace and down below the ground under the house. Knick had been laughing harder and harder and had finally slid to a seat at the foot of the couch where he continued laughing. “Oh, and Knick’s a lord now. He figured out how to use blood magic while we were getting drunk tonight.” Knick fell on his side laughing so hard he finally vomited. “All said, it was a shitty day but a great night. I think Knick even made like fifty gold practically by accident, and he barely cut himself doing it.” Knick was hiccuping now through his laughter and sounded like he may choke. “And so, Dog is avenged! We’re rich! And we’re getting the FUCK outa Lake City!” I stood and held my fist up victoriously.
Then the ground came up at my face very quickly as I fell over. I’m pretty sure I felt my nose break as I hit the ground. “Ow.” I said calmly and finally passed out.
I thought I heard Hammer speaking to Ara as the darkness closed in, “That’s Nameless for you,” he sighed dramatically.