Alex had been a gamer more or less his whole life. His mom often had to pull extra shifts at the diner where she worked, and often came home dead tired. He’d been just a toddler when she first parked him before a TV screen and handed him a controller. Not that he was one to complain about questionable parenting; Hemingway had once written that there’s no friend as loyal as a book. Alex had found games to be much the same; they never failed to make him feel warm and fuzzy inside when life became too much.
Except for Phantom Black, of course.
Phantom black was… well, it was different.
It was a single player action role-playing game, both popular and infamous for its unforgiving difficulty. Alex was sixteen when he first played it, one warm and wet summer when he had to spend all day in bed nursing a broken leg. He was totally unprepared for the kind of challenge Phantom Black presented, so much so that it broke his spirit time and time again in ways no other game had.
It wasn’t just that it was a difficult game. By that time, Alex had played hundreds of titles. Some of them were mechanically difficult, yes, requiring near-perfect reflexes. Others required a deep knowledge of the game system, and others hours and hours of grinding. No–Phantom Black was bleak, and playing through it required a special brand of masochism. There were no heroes in its dystopian setting, no shining beacons of hope, no chosen one clichés or high-fantasy tropes, and no plot armor protecting the player from the dangers of its grim environments. The world was an empty place forgotten by the gods themselves, the player character a feeble nobody, the bosses many times bigger and more powerful than them.
Alex had seen the game over screen–a simple “You Died” written in red over a black background–more often than that of any other game he’d played. Still, against all logic, he kept coming back for more. It took him months, but he finally made it to the credits roll–and then proceeded to immediately start all over in the game’s New Game Plus mode.
What kept him was the feeling of overcoming insurmountable odds every time he managed to finally defeat a powerful boss enemy. It didn’t matter whether he did that on his fiftieth try, by sheer luck, or by the skin of his teeth; what mattered was that he did. It was proof that it was doable. It was proof that guts, hard work, and perseverance did work, and that kind of gave him a quietly optimistic outlook on life no high-octane power fantasy ever could. It was the kind of wisdom he often found himself turning to as a young adult, too, when the sheer challenge of making ends meet as a working-class blue collar nobody threatened to crush him.
That’s where he caught his mind wandering now, too. He was going through the now-familiar motions of crafting extra warding charms from dead Kannewik hair, when he suddenly remembered going against the Banshee Queen boss in Phantom Black. There was no cunning strategy there he could draw from and use against Mother and the thing in the Chapel, but the two situations still felt eerily similar.
Going against the Banshee Queen was what true Phantom Black fans cut their teeth on. There was no gimmick to that fight, no shortcut, no obvious way or strategy to gain some decisive edge over the boss and her minions. It was a test of everything the game had taught the player up until then, and it had taken Alex a great deal of planning, preparation, and trial and error to win. A shitload of “You Died” game over screens, too.
Going against Mother would be like that, minus the fact that he’d probably have to get it right on the first try or risk getting another fresh serving of near-death trauma and his companions killed.
His plan, crazy as it had sounded when he’d explained it to Fawkes and the Brethren, was solid. Still, it wasn’t enough. They’d have to dot all their i’s and cross all their t’s and hedge their bets and watch their six and do a dozen other expressions’ and idioms’ worth kind of stuff, and still their chances weren’t looking great.
The Brethren were off in the tunnels looking for low-dweller corpses to bring back. The stinky, malformed hunks of dead flesh and bone were the lynchpin of Hunter’s plan. Fawkes had stayed with him to make sure nothing snuck up on him as he worked on the charms. She was doing her part, too, haphazardly sewing blankets together into a huge makeshift sack–another vital element of the plan.
She’d barely said ten words to him since the Brethren had left, and most of those had been to scoff at Hunter when he’d pulled the severed Kannewik head out of his backpack. There was a lot for her to unpack, Hunter figured, a lot to process. For him too, depending how well the face-to-face with Mother went.
Crafting the same kind of charms over and over again wouldn’t get him far, Hunter realized as he was finishing off the final of the corpse hair charms he’d sat down to prepare. He’d only gotten a couple of points in Craft Spirit Charm, just enough to hit 10, and he’d made no fewer than five charms; one for himself, one for Fawkes, two for the Brethren, and one for Fyodor. The direwolf was as part of the group as anyone. He deserved the same kind of protection. He was sitting by Hunter with closed eyes and one ear cocked, listening for anything out of the ordinary. When push came to shove, he’d do his part, too.
“Will this work?” Fawkes asked him, showing the huge blanket sack she’d just finished working on.
“It will have to," Hunter shrugged.
Not much of an answer, but it was enough for the old swordswoman. She put the product of her handiwork away, drew her saber, and set to sharpening and polishing it to a mirror sheen.
“Uh, I… Do you happen to carry a dagger or something?” said Hunter, pulling out his own knife and frowning at how ineffective a weapon it would make against something like one of Mother’s malformed devotees. “I seem to have misplaced my glaive back at the chapel.”
“That’s why I told you you need a sidearm, lad” Fawkes half-scolded him. “Those who prepare, survive. Those who do not, do not. Let me see what I can do.”
She put her right hand inside her left sleeve, poked around for a couple of seconds, then pulled out a large, deadly-looking dagger and handed it to him.
“Here. It’s called a rondel dagger. Make sure you don’t misplace this, too.”
Its steel blade was long and slim, narrowing to a needle point at its end. Its handle was carved from some kind of well-worn dark wood, and it had a round handguard and a spherical pommel. Hunter felt its balance and heft and found it reassuring–very much unlike the fact that Fawkes couldn’t possibly have been carrying it in her sleeve. Its blade alone was as long as his forearm.
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“One day you’ll have to tell me how you do this.”
“One day I may,” she said, her face all too serious. “But today won’t be that day, lad. Have you handled a dagger before?”
“Uh… no?”
Fawkes took the rondel dagger from his hands, shaking her head and muttering something under her breath–something rather unpleasant, if Hunter had to guess.
“Now listen here; you can either wield it either underarm–like this–or over arm with a reverse grip. Like this. Both edges are sharpened, but this doesn’t mean you can go around trying to slash things with it. This kind of weapon is primarily used for stabbing. Got it?”
“Got it.”
“Good. It takes some getting used to, but it’s an excellent weapon to carry as a sidearm. I would show you a technique or two, if we had the time, but we don’t–so don’t get overconfident with it or you may end up low-dweller feed.”
“If it all goes according to plan," Hunter said as Fawkes gave him back the dagger, “I probably won’t have to use it at all.”
“That’s a big if. I don’t know if it’s madness or genius, this plan of yours.”
“Probably a bit of both. It depends on whether it works or not.”
They said nothing for a while. Hunter tried to make a makeshift scabbard for his new blade, then gave up and simply hung it from his belt. Fawkes sharpened her saber with a whetstone, her face unreadable. There was a palpable something in the air that hadn’t been there before, an unspoken tension. Hunter found he didn’t like it one bit.
“Fawkes?”
“Hmmm?”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it. I haven’t used the thing in ages anyway.”
“I don’t mean about the dagger. Not just about the dagger, anyway.”
She raised her head from her work and threw him a look that was half surprise, half qualm.
“What for, then?”
“A lot of things. A hell of a lot of things.”
Fawkes didn’t ask, and Hunter didn’t tell.
***
“These enough?” an out-of-breath Sister Peregrine grumbled as she dropped the mangled carcass of a low-dweller at Hunter’s feet. Brother Aurochs was just a few steps behind, carrying four more, give or take a limb or two.
“Peaches and cream” nodded Hunter, sizing them up.
“What now, then?”
“Now we chop them up.”
That was the grisly part of the plan and it took the four of them the better part of an hour, but it had to be done. Butchering corpses was a lot easier when you had some actual butcher tools, like a cleaver or a bone saw. Hunter found that out the hard way. Their hunting knives weren’t much use when it came to cutting through stringy low-dweller flesh and gristle. That huge axe Brother Aurochs had been swinging around during his short stint as a two-legged bovine juggernaut would have been useful, but it was lying on the floor of Mother’s chapel along with Hunter’s glaive–if her goons hadn’t repurposed the weapons already.
When they were finally done they were covered from head to toe in stinky dark ichor, but the large sack Fawkes had sewed together from their blankets was filled with arms, legs, heads, and other chopped up body parts to the brim. Fawkes and the Brethren sat down to catch their breath and clean themselves a bit, and Hunter passed around the Kannewik hair charms he’d made. Fyodor didn’t have a collar or anything, of course, so Hunter had to tie the charm to the hair of the direwolf’s own fur.
“What are these?” asked Sister Peregrine, examining the tangled mass of corpse hair in the torchlight.
“A bit of transient magic. It will protect us from getting hypnotized and whatnot.”
“Do we have to eat them?”
“Eat them? No, ew, just… just pin it to your tunic or put it in your pocket or something.”
The Sister shrugged and did just that.
The group sat down to catch their breath for a while, each preparing for what was to come in their own way. Fawkes kept herself busy inspecting her weapons and gear, making sure every button was buttoned, every strap tightened, every single one of the who-knows-how-many surprises she carried on her person in its right place and within easy reach. She was acting purely out of habit and going through the motions on muscle memory alone. There was a weariness to her that simply hadn’t been there all the other times Hunter had seen her do that, a fatigue he found quietly disturbing.
Brother Aurochs sat cross-legged and meditated with his eyes closed, his great chest heaving slowly and peacefully with each deep breath. Absent-mindedly or not, Hunter couldn’t tell, but the hulking man’s breathing was in perfect rhythm with the insidious, ever-present heartbeat of the Halls of the Cor Ancestors.
Sister Peregrine tried to do the same, but, quite understandably, couldn’t. She kept groaning and squirming and fidgeting until Brother Aurochs finally placed a calming hand on her shoulder. Without their animalistic headdresses and with their faces finally unobscured, they looked more vulnerable and human than Hunter had ever seen them before. Relatable. Likeable, even. He caught himself wishing he’d had a chance to get to know them better. Or that he would have one in the future, when they were out of this mess, he corrected himself. Hopefully.
Fyodor was curled next to Hunter, resting his big furry head on his lap and radiating reassuring warmth. Biggs and Wedge were perched on the direwolf’s flank, two balls of ruffled black feathers and curious beady eyes. As if understanding the gloom of the moment–which they probably did, to some degree–they wisely kept their beaks shut.
As for Hunter himself…
Now that he had an idle moment alone with his thoughts, his initial enthusiasm and confidence in his batshit crazy plan was starting to lose steam. As he watched his companions prepare themselves for what could very well be the last moments of their lives, he finally started to get a glimpse of what Fawkes had been telling him all along. There was a quiet disconnect there, a chasm between them and himself that could never be bridged. What for them was a matter of life and death, he merely experienced as a self-imposed test of conviction. He simply didn’t have enough skin in the game to join in that quiet all-or-nothing camaraderie. Would he still be here, if he did? Would he be as brave and willing to fight, if it was his actual life on the line?
Fuck if he knew.
It was Fawkes who finally broke the silence. She rose to her feet, patted herself down, spat on the floor, and squinted towards the dimness that was the way back to Mother’s chapel.
“Well, sitting around and waiting won’t do us much good. Let’s get this over with. Now’s as good a time as any.”
The Brethren said nothing. They helped each other up, grabbed their weapons from the neat little pile of gear and supplies they’d stacked at a corner, and left the rest behind. Hesitating just a moment, Hunter did the same. If–when–they’d need rations and tools and changes of clothing again, their packs would still be there waiting for them. They each grabbed a corner of the carnage-filled blanket sack, the four of them, lifted the stinking thing in the air as best as they could, and started for the doors of the Inner Sanctum.
“So, uh, let’s review the battle plan one last time," said Hunter as they were getting nearer. Nobody replied, but he went on anyway. “Fawkes, you mix those potions and spill them all around these the body parts, get that Phage thing started. Once it’s ready, we bust in the Sanctum guns blazing. We hold the line against the uglies for as long as we can, while the ravens drop infected body parts on anything and everything that moves, Moth-, uh, Sister Finch and her alien friend included. If things get too wild, we skedaddle and pray the Phage thing does its job. Any questions?”
“Yes," said Sister Peregrine. “What’s skedaddle?”
“Get away as fast as we can.”
“I see. It’s a stupid plan.”
“It’s the only one we have," Fawkes butted in, saving Hunter the embarrassment.
“It’s only going to get us all killed.”
“If it does," said the old swordswoman, flashing a wolfish grin, “let’s make sure we take the damn things down with us.”