The smiling knight was a tough nut, a smiling nut. That face plate taunted her from afar, where he casually hid behind two knights as his bodyguards. Unlike his goopy compatriots, he had the wherewithal to see Elia’s bolts for the great threat that they were. The best way then to approach him was to peel away the outer layer of his forces, like an onion.
Elia was proficient in peelers of all kinds. She pointed a smooth kitchen knife at the knight with the sleet storm boon.
“Bring him to fall, Limolas!” she yelled.
“WHAT?” Lim yelled back.
“I… nevermind, KILL THE RED ONE.” She angled her staff as Rye launched another few chunks of ice like a mortar. The first one hit his shield with an ugly crack, but the next two pummeled him into the ground.
No sleet storm today. Instead, Elia found her feet rooted to the ground as another knight covered in green lichen commanded thorny twigs to grow from their barricade. At least they anchored her strong enough so she didn’t fall over from the next wave of vertigo.
The vertigo-knight died, even though he blocked Rye’s next bolt. Having found what must have been a stash of special arrows, Lim carefully fired three frost tipped projectiles in short succession and all three hit the purple knight, encasing his joints in crystalline structures.
Ouch, t-that was a low shot.
“Lim! Rye says you’re a great shot!” Elia said as she hacked her legs free.
“SHUT! SHOOT, STUPID,” was all she got back.
Eight enemies left.
For a moment, Elia just stood there with a smile creeping on her face as a cursory bolt was blocked by the smiling knight. The melee was approaching. This was what her second life should have been about, standing at the same level as the others, slinging magic like a badass. None of her boons were bad for once. It was time to see what a [Perfect Parry] and an upgraded [Cutting Cutlery] could do.
[Body] Cutting Cutlery [Common] [Essence of Keenness] [Essence of Rending] [Empty Socket]
In service to a lord with great taste, you have toiled your life to refine both palate and plate. You gain an uncanny proficiency with kitchen utensils and they may never grow dull or crack.
When applied to joints your tools of cuisine gain an unnatural sharpness, tearing apart even scales hard as steel for you to prepare the meat beneath.
It’s barely recognizable. Who would ever use this to cook?
Why indeed when it was so much better at invalidating a knight’s largest advantage: their armor. Where range was king, armor could invalidate that advantage as spears, swords, and arrows would deflect off and the wearer could advance without worry. Armor was expensive and when it came to melee, the rich won out, simple as. But where there was a rigged game, there were rules and where there were rules, there were exploits of her own to be made.
With as much cutlery as she could carry stuffing her bags, for once, everything lined up just right. She licked her lips as a knight clad entirely in black charged predictably ahead, watching her soul count climb again as Lim planted a magnificent shot right through the green knight’s visor.
You have gained: Soul x800
She threw a few knives at another knight, but they bounced off harmlessly. In front of this boon, chainmail might as well not exist and steel plate was relegated to the toughness of thick cardboard, but the strength came at a price. Two essences, and a restriction to only joints. It was still in her top ten of best boons she’d ever had, possibly top five though even with it the armored knights proved resilient, pesky adversaries.
“I wonder how much full plate costs?” Elia asked as a thrown spoon cut a sliver of mail from a knight’s neck.
W-well, in catsi terms, it would be around fifteen to fifty thousand donars, which is about the annual pay of a dozen veteran legion soldiers.
“This tells me nothing.” A boulder slammed against her pauldron, knocking her back. The offending knight soon had a fork sticking from his visor. “Ooh, longshot, extra points! Also, I meant more in current currency, in souls.”
Souls? Well, our first armor was quite low quality for three thousand eight hundred souls, our next one went for roughly twice as much after I haggled it down. Plate covering for most of our body would therefore come in at around twenty to thirty thousand souls, depending on quality and haggling I think?
Elia listened intently but just as she took cover from a trio of flying rocks, the barricade suddenly exploded. Splinters and barrel hoops flew every which way as she looked up at a dark knight with a helmet reminiscent of a cricket’s head. He had covered an entire eighty feet in a single jump and didn’t even break his ankles.
“You’ve got style! But do you have what it takes to banter?” The sloshing gurgle that was supposed to be a magnificent comeback did not pierce the language barrier. Elia ducked under two heavy chopping blades and retaliated with a long fork that went through the kneepad, chainmail and joint before coming out the other side
Roast Fork
A twin–pronged fork, made for skewering meat.
The fork stayed in his knee as she retreated, gathering a nasty slash up her arm. She grabbed a pizza slicer from her belt and with it, peeled the knight like a can of ravioli.
The whole encounter lasted only a few seconds, but a few seconds were enough as she saw three knights chase Lim off. She couldn’t do much against them up close, they had too much armor and didn’t allow her the luxury of aiming. Though, Lim did choose to retreat awfully soon and quickly.
Eh, if they failed, only Elia had to die. The three knights didn’t seem to care that they couldn’t catch a speeding cat-person and they were out of her picture for now.
Theodore had similarly bad luck. A blast of flame thoroughly charred a second knight cresting the barricade, but after that he looked well and truly spent and plopped over backwards, legs pointing to the sky. The knights ignored him as they breached the barricade. It was only her now. Only her and Rye.
A red-yellow smiling faceplate stood among the shattered defensive line. He spotted Elia, raised up his prayer bells. Nothing happened. Lim’s idea was sound, Elia could not hear a word.
Her smug smile was soon wiped away as two knights hewed at her from around an arch. One missed, the cake-slicer now sticking from its face while Elia dodged the other’s shield by a hair. It cut a furrow into the cracked stone, but with a quick one-two jab, her kitchen knife punctured clean through the undead’s light protected elbow and wrist, pinning him to the wall behind.
The blinded knight fought a one-on-one he could only lose. A tenderizing hammer to his knee proved unaffected by her boon and so she finished him off by kicking his legs out and stomping the cake slicer into his face until she felt something crunch.
I think I can never eat cake again.
“You!” she pointed her petal knife at the smiling knight. He cast another spell, but before Elia could mock his futile attempts at possessing her, the knight next to her pulled its arm away in a frenzy like none she’d seen before, armor and bone coming apart at the joint.
She pulled back, but the knight was right on her heels, swinging a poleaxe like a maniac as it cracked and shattered the nearby stone. Back, back and further into the garden she led him, hoping that some rosebush or other plant would make him stumble.
Instead, she felt a pillar to her back and the knight capitalized on it as his entire body wound like a spring before descending on her with a lightning-quick hammer blow.
He really shouldn’t have. His poleaxe met a perfectly positioned blade as Elia parried the strike with practiced ease. From the tip of her fingers down her arm and legs up into her toes, she felt every part lock in place and make her near immovable as the knight tumbled over her with the diverted momentum.
The smiling knight watched all the while. She gave the coward a single glance. Then, Elia pulled out her secret weapon.
With a single backhand draw and cut the last goop knight spilled another limb on the floor and in a dramatic finish Elia hooked him by the collar and tore ribcage and armor from sternum to groin like a can opener.
Cleaver
A heavy knife meant for cutting thick portions of meat, ligament, bone and all. The lack of a guard or any thought given to balance hints at this improvised weapon’s singular purpose.
“Dregs.” She spat on the floor. “So predictable.”
The smiling knight watched her intently as she flicked the goop from her weapon. It was a challenge as clear as day and he could not refuse for lack of other bodies to throw her way.
D-do you need my help?
Elia gave it a moment of polite thought. “Nah, I prefer to keep this one personal.”
Alright. You make him regret every deed on his no doubt extensive list of evilry.
She didn’t need to be told twice as she approached the knight head on. Her cleaver met the steel shaft of his mace and it felt like she had run up against a boulder. He pushed back and Elia found herself giving ground.
He was stronger, physically, and had more reach both with his weapon and height. He had a shield, too, and last time she checked shields didn’t have any convenient fleshy joints hidden beneath.
Swing after swing she was pushed back, never finding enough of an opening to capitalize on with her short weapon. When she attacked, his metal shield proved enough to take the lion’s share of the blow and there was no time for a quick refresh as their fight led away from the bowl of respite and towards the ledge.
He was going to outlast her or worse, push her off. She needed to take a risk.
She pushed into his zone of control, taking near misses and some heavy hits to her center body. Relentlessly, she tried to catch him off guard, throwing cuts and slashes left and right. Eventually, she found herself flagging and retreated back without much to show but exhaustion, and the smile on the knight’s visor nearly looked as if it grew twice in size as he went in for a punishing lunge aimed at either smashing in her head or breaking her shoulder and collarbone. Just as she predicted.
She turned away with a reserve of strength. The strike missed and she answered with a draw-cut. With a burning triumph in her chest she saw three fingers leave his hand as he dropped the mace and she pushed in to finish him off.
Her cleaver caught halfway in his neck. A tarry substance flowed out around it as he grabbed her with his free arm and slammed his shield into her face. As she felt the blow crack her jaw a slimy, invasive feeling wrap around her head, her spine, her arms and legs, ringing true in every bone of her being.
“Fly.” He said and lost his head as Elia was launched into the sky.
You have gained: Soul x4000
----------------------------------------
‘I definitely got off the wrong side of the bed today,’ Elia thought as she sailed towards Lim’s tower and hit it, failing to do anything more than add a diagonal spin to her zero-G tumble skywards. ‘I missed his shards. God fucking dammit.’
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Ear wax as a solution did seem too good to be true in hindsight. Sound could transmit through more than air and the knight’s magic wasn’t simple mind-control. She should’ve seen all of this coming. There was not a day in her life where everything went right.
The courtyard with its dead and dying gardens grew distant as she climbed up and up. There was nothing she could do besides throw something to redirect her momentum, but this run was lost anyways, and conserving gear seemed quite necessary. A fall from this high up would definitely smash her armor, hopefully not in a way that killed her within seconds of reviving. Worse, there was no way she could ascend the rest of the castle in fifteen minutes. Her souls and shards were as good as gone.
At the rate she was flying, she might miss the castle completely. Then she’d lose her souls, shards and her left hand. Stupid curse.
“This is like if Christmas and opposite day had a baby,” she grumped.
Rye meanwhile sounded like she was having the fight of her life.
AAAAH! DIE, EEL-THING, DIE, DIEEE!
“You can stop Rye. We lost – woah!“
Her arc sagged for a moment as she felt the sliminess in her head retreat. Rye was still fighting the magic’s influence, though this was clearly reaching out of the realm of mind control and into the realm of gaslighting reality. But that gave Elia an idea.
“Hey, Rye. Listen to me. Fight the… eel or whatever and win, but win slowly.”
There was the sound of jaws snapping, some chairs and a table with silverware falling over.
WAAAH, WE’RE SO FAR UP! ELIA, HEEELP!
“LISTEN, Rye. Can you do it or not?”
I-I’ll tryyyYYY!
Something stung in her head like a nettle squirming between brain folds.
It bit me. Elia, it bit me!
“Walk it off,” she yelled while noting how little the height was affecting her. Some part of her was always trying to wrench her attention towards the fact that they were out of bounds, that the roc would snatch them out of the air at any moment. That part had clearly lost against the part that had already accepted her death and was now calculating a way to make it hurt as little as possible.
Acceptance did not mean that she was incapable of fear. All the fear flew through her, jumbling together into the never-box wedged between folds of memory. She was going to have a bad dream or twenty about this.
She reached the zenith of her arc and found herself floating past the summit of the upper keep. The twin peaks towered above her still, but she flew close enough to the cliff massif that she could make out thin crags and optimistic shrubbery. Her body spun further, giving her a good look of Glenrock castle below. Like the Three Gorges Dam, it barred the way through a natural valley from one end to another, stemming the tide of dead that now blurred together in rivers and smears along the bottom.
They had crested the last part of the giant stairway when Elia spied towers and a gate keep ahead. The high road was close. They could still spin a win out of this.
“Keep ‘er steady Rye, we’re goin’ on a magical adventure.”
A nervous whimper was all the answer she got, but their curve of ascent flattened as gravity partially reasserted itself. She eyed the first set of towers, and as they passed over a road hidden beneath an autumn grove, she reached her legs and hands out as far as she could in the hopes that something would snag.
Her foot was the first, hooking briefly against a roof tile before it clattered to the floor, leaving her to grasp for the weather-vane in the form of a roc, or a chicken. It strained against her inertia, held for a brief moment, then broke away.
Weather-vane
A weather-vane in the shape of a cockerel. The cock is the most suitable emblem of the empire, as declared by St. Greg I, keeper of the tenth seat of the decibat.
“The more you fucking know!”
At least she bled off quite a bit of energy. Now, if only Rye could flatten their trajectory
“C’mon, don’t let me down girl.”
A shiver went through her body as she felt something slither from her mind, like a popping zit.
Oh no.
Just like that, gravity reasserted itself. She plummeted past the second tower, barely missed a statue poised to heroically skewer her and hit a roof, a roof that could not hold her weight and instead opened up to swallow her whole.
The ground hit her like a truck, followed by an avalanche of tiling and old wood. There were worse ways to die than being buried alive. She’d give this experience a four out of ten, with bonus points for the terrifying flight.
Moments passed. A last tile shattered on her head.
“OW!” Definitely a one out of ten. She wasn’t even dead. Tentatively, she opened her eyes.
She was in a room – a bedroom that smelled slightly of lilac and roses. A veil hung over the generously proportioned bed and in every corner, heaps upon heaps of flowers eked out a dry and conservative existence. The room looked like a young princess’s room, except with the pomp and kitsch turned up to eleven. A suffocating pit of naivety and pink.
Elia hated it already.
W-wow, you missed the bed by two feet.
She groaned, slowly looking for an escape. Sadly, bad luck stuck like gum to her shoe. Her spine was broken somewhere around the waist.
“Quibbles, you doin’ alright bud?” she asked.
“Ribbit,” Quibbles answered, or maybe that was her.
“Good one, Quibbles.” Elia nervously laughed, hoping to bleed out sooner rather than turn ever more delirious for the next few hours.
“Is that a frog?”
Elia shot up to look at the third voice intruding on her peaceful demise. From on top the bed, two large eyes stared down at her like sour clementines. It was an undead child, somewhere between eight and fifteen years old (maybe older, it was hard to tell as undeath did a lot of postmortem aging) and a mop of curly brown hair peeking out of its expensive but worn robes. One hand covered most of its face with the help of a fan, and the other threatened her with a knife that was a disappointment to all letter openers across the world.
Elia coughed up a mouthful of roof dust. “Hi there.”
“Hullo,” the child said.
They stared at each other some more.
“Would you mind putting down that knife, little guy?” Being stabbed to death by a kid would be an embarrassing way to go.
The kid did not comply.
“Alright, guess I’ll just find a corner to die in.” Elia laughed as she tried and failed to push herself to her feet, ignoring how Rye smoothly slithered into her voice box. “U-um, sorry to intrude? We were just passing by on our way to Loften.”
“… why were you on the roof?” the kid asked.
“I was kind of trying to… fly?” Rye knew how insane she sounded, but it was the truth she had been dealt. She wasn’t about to lie to a kid for no good reason, what kind of shining example would that make her?
“I will hear no excuses, servant.” The kid rang a bell she could barely hear, hiding his rows of sharp teeth behind a fan. “Go. You smell and look ugly.”
“… excuse me?” She was Rye, prima and citizen, not some servant he could order around and insult. Sure, she was covered in blood and dust, but he hadn’t fought mind eels and demons to get this far. Who did he think he was? “Alright young man, first off, people don’t fall through roofs for fun. It was an accident. Secondly, you are being awfully rude to someone who may well be outright bleeding to death on your carpet! Where are your parents? Who taught you to talk like that?”
“… this isn’t my carpet. Emperors don’t care about carpets. And they get to say who is and isn’t their servant.” He rang his bell again.
“That’s–” A finger shushed Rye. Elia had something to say.
Well, go right ahead. I sure hope you’re better than good at dealing with kids.
“Of course, brain bud.” Elia cleared her throat. “Listen here you little shit, I’ve got a dozen problems but even with a broken back a bratty kid is one I can solve easily and permanently, do we understand each other princess?”
“I am not a princess!” The boy shrieked, retreating further into his pink bedding and flowers. Elia crawled after, even managing to pull herself halfway over the bedside. She dodged the haphazardly tossed knife and got a fan to her face instead. In retaliation, she bit his hand.
“Y-you bit me!” The boy hissed, a row of sharp dagger teeth on display. “You animal. Savage. I will have your head!”
“Tell us where the nearest checkpoint – I mean, bowl of respite is, and we’ll be off in a snap, princess,” she said while pulling herself onto the sheets. “You got any royal snacks? A parfait, maybe some cake or steak and mash?”
“I’m not a princess!” The boy hissed at her.
… why are you like this Elia?
“I-I am the great lord Pim Sai-Ren the third, emperor and divine. You will bow and address me by my name.” The fan began to glow and before she could dodge Elia got bonked square on the nose. “Set!”
The light turned blinding. A sensation like inhaling an ocean pushed into her nose, then sank down to below her stomach. Immediately, a thousand different tendrils, claws and pincers hooked into her around the waistline, pulling, twisting, turning, mending shattered bone and returning each and every shard where it belonged. It felt like a hundred krill and smaller crustaceans crawling all across her insides and Elia was not sure how to feel about it.
AAAaaah… heyyy, this feels kind of nice.
Elia blinked. Some time must have passed as she was lying on her side and Pim was sitting some ways beside, hiding behind his fan.
Elia blinked once more. Slowly, she sat herself back up, wiggling her toes as she leaned left to right. She felt good, scratch that, she felt greater than ever.
And then it clicked. “You’re Pim?”
“The third! You were clearly going insane from the pain, so I told your bones to set you straight. You are welcome and you may leave now.” With a huff he dismissively turned away, one eye peeking at her ever so slightly. “Why are you smiling? Stop it!”
“Oh, nothing. Just figured how I’m the luckiest girl alive to have met you.”
“Flattery will get you nowhere, servant,” he said, beaming with smug satisfaction. Two fuzzy ears twitched beneath his hood in delight. Now that she got a closer look, he had a tail too, and claws politely hidden in the palm of his fist. “And I should not even be talking with strangers that stink of blood and other foulness. It could get me a sickness, like pussrot, or poverty.”
‘Must. Not. Pat.’ Elia thought.
Let me talk again.
Rye cleared her throat, straining to smile with every fiber of her being. “What she meant to say was that we know your sister, Lim. We– I’m here to take you to her, as she is… indisposed. Would you perhaps lower yourself in dealing with me for a while?”
The mention of Lim made his eyes wide as saucers before thinning to two suspicious lines. Definitely related, those two.
“You are hiding secrets. Lim never kept anything secret from me. She was the best guardian I ever had.”
Rye thought for a moment before getting an idea. She beckoned the young bekki closer and he perked a twitchy ear.
“I am actually two people.”
The boy was doing himself no favors hiding behind the fan, not when a flinch of his eyes or nervous movements of his hands betrayed him so easily. First he was surprised, then he seemed to dismiss the idea outright before returning to consider it with more thought. Haughty and spoiled as he was, he seemed gullible enough to believe the insane truth.
“And?” he asked.
Her smile grew genuine. “And if you don’t come with us, I might decide not to reign my other half in. She is not as kind as I. She is like a hound bred for war.”
That gained her a pinch to her cheek and a flick to her nose, undermining her intimidating air somewhat. However, between the blood covering her armor and the number of weapons she was carrying, not challenging her threat would be in his best interest, especially since he seemed little more than skin and bones beneath those expensive robes.
“She really hasn’t forgotten me?” Pim asked.
“Why would she?”
The kid swallowed.
“Rhuna beat her bad… to death and back, again and again. She was forced to swear an oath.” He lowered his fan and Rye thought he might one day make a handsome man, given ten or more years. “Rhuna comes by every now and then to make use of my miracles. I’m just a hostage. I’m just a tool.”
“How terrible!” Rye left a handful of tears behind as she relinquished control again. “Fff-udge me, all the more reason to kill her.”
Pim looked her up and down. There was not much trust or confidence left for her in those eyes. The moment they fell on the grater strapped to her chest among a handful of other knives, it dropped another few levels.
“She would turn you into mulch and feed you to her garden. You likely won’t even make it past the lord commander. But if she has sent for help then… then we might yet be free.” In an instant, his fan was back and so was his haughty tone. “I have deigned to allow you to carry me. I order it, in fact! Take me to my sister and our curse shall come undone.”
Elia arched an eyebrow. She jumped off the bed and in one fell swoop, grabbed the bekki in her arms. He felt so light.
“… you’ve been all alone here, all this time?”
“N-no!” The kid nervously bit his claws before realizing he had an unwelcome audience. “Yes. No one even guards me anymore, me, an emperor. They know if I run away alone, Lim dies.”
Elia noticed the golden oath script looped around his neck.
And if she runs, he dies.
“Alright. Fuck this place and everything it stands for. We’re getting you two out together, mark my word.” With any luck, Lim either beat or escaped the knights and was on her way here. If not, well, descending the castle would hopefully make for an easier journey than ascending it.
As she carried him out the door, past a pair of very dead guards and down some stairs, the bekki made it increasingly obvious that her close proximity was unwelcome. She didn’t smell that bad, did she? Elia took a bath barely two, three deaths… no, five… eight deaths ago?
Diversions, diversions! “What are you even emperor of anyways?”
Pim scrunched his nose in a way that was very un-emperor-like. “If you were read in history, you would know that I am the twenty-seventh emperor of the greatest empire under the sun.”
Hah, now look who’s keeping secrets. We don’t have emperors, that’s a bekki thing. We’ve always had the senate and the decibate for all our worldly and divine affairs. Then there are the orders of knights, the godly cults, governors and bureacurats and gah, don’t get me started on how that all works on a local level. There is no room for an emperor in Loften.
“Huh. Something tells me you’re a little liar.” Elia got bonked on the head with the bell for that.
Loft ringer
Once the primordial beasts were conquered by Worga and subsumed into the divine host, white rocs were given the task of bringing their decrees to the farthest reaches. The gods care little how their decrees are fulfilled, only that their will is met.