KNITE:

Eleven days. Each saw me face a new opponent. Each day, I defeated my foe fast enough for them to deem me too powerful for the floor. I’d assumed crushing the strongest criminal on each floor before the matches started would earn me a quick descent—researchers don’t much like being deprived of subjects to research or tools to research them with. My plan might've worked if every new floor had done me the courtesy of holding a criminal I could kill with impunity. They called The Bridge a prison. I expected unscrupulous murderers, rapists, thieves, and other such rejects of civilization. I was met with but a few, all of them too weak to control a floor and earn me my descent. Instead, I found rebels whose mutiny, to some degree or other, was justifiable. Though far from innocent, as almost everyone was, I could not sentence them to death. The prison wardens invited crowds to watch us for entertainment. They’d turned the prison into a pageant of violence. No longer was The Bridge a function of justice, a way to punish malefactors who’d become inhospitable to the people of Evergreen. Instead, it’d become a business of greed, a factory of knowledge and monetary gain, a place where they hoarded unwilling victims of royal abuse. When I killed them, Silas and Grono would know this was yet another reason why, though it counted more towards reasons I should than it did the reasons I would.

The Institute of Research wanted bodies to experiment on or experiments to observe. A quick battle denied them both. Disgruntled crowds who’d come to see a bloody battle of attrition didn’t help. And so down I went, day by day and floor by floor, until I reached the twentieth.

I sat alone in a damp cell covered in sickly moss, waiting for guards to collect me for the morning duels. They came seven deep, all wearing helmets and shields engraved with defensive matrixes. If I so willed, I could’ve killed them all, stormed the prison, rescued my target, and ensured no mortal lived to tell who escaped and how. I would not do so. My promises were as much armor to my soul as they were an anchor to my actions. Besides, Lorail was far too close for me to be so careless.

The guards surrounded the cell door in a half-circle, each prepared for violence. They were experienced men, strong, the best guards this squalid repository of uncooperative victims could offer. They had to be. One of them, their leader, his grey-speckled beard marking his experience, unlocked the door, one hand tight around a worn-out but well-maintained spear.

“Give us no problems,” he said, “and we will pay you whatever courtesy we’re permitted to spend.”

“I imagine that’s not much,” I said.

“As with everything, it’s relative. I think the little we can offer would be an insult outside the walls of Rainbow’s Arse. Here though, here it is heavier than gold.”

I nodded.

“I take it we have an agreement?”

I shrugged. “I agree with your assessment of this place and the worth of your consideration. As for the trouble, I can make no such promise. I suspect I’ll soon cause you more than you can handle.” The man tensed. Behind him, his men set their feet. I held up a hand. “However, you may lead me to my duel and expect no violence to come to you by my hand.”

From the little I could sense, there was not a miscreant among them. Each emanated a despondency for the duties they bore, drifting in a sea of evil and doing their best not to sink. Their only sin was not trying to swim to clearer waters. I understood why they didn’t—the prospect of drowning was a significant deterrent to any but the suicidal.

I got up from the wet stone and stretched my arms, groaning as I cracked discomfort from my joints. “I cannot heal myself?”

“There are leech matrixes below all the cells of the lower floor,” the lead guard explained.

“I know this is a skeleton cage.”

“You made it sound like a question.”

“It was. Let me be more clear. Why do you not enter and restrain me when your armor frees you from the effects?”

“The powerful are rarely powerful in but one way.”

I quirked an eyebrow. “Does your caution extend so far? Do seven of you seem too small a force to handle a single man locked from his sensus?”

“Better overcautious than dead,” he said. “And never more so than for those who make it this far down The Bridge.”

I chuckled. It was a tired, frustrated chuckle. I was sick of this prison, of being suspended from more important matters. For a man as old as I, it surprised me how harshly patience came to me.

The lead guard stepped in, sheathed his sword, reached back, took matrix-ingrained manacles from another guard, and clasped them around my wrists and ankles. He did not pull on them when he was done but gestured a hand to the open cell. “After you.”

I shuffled out, the chains rattling as my bare feet slapped against cold stone. Six guards flanked me, three on each side, as their leader led us down the curved pathway. Basic lanterns of smokeless fire hung along one side of the narrow passageway, still lit as the sun broke the watery horizon. Cells lined the other side, each showing a prisoner silhouetted by early dawn. All of them eyed me as I passed, curious about the newcomer. I watched them in turn, finding each less defiant as I went, more somber, more… defeated.

Sanas was the last of them.

I stopped. The guards halted a fraction later. I turned to face her. One of the guards, a young man sporting wisps of a mustache, tugged at my chains from behind his large shield. I did not move, my gaze fixed on my guard. My Sanas.

She used to have hair the red of fire, finer than silk, and almost as long as she was tall. She was bald now. She used to be intemperate to the odors of life, always carrying the scent of ash with her. Now, she reeked of a multitude of smells, all of them foul. She used to take pride in her clothing, obstinate of anything besides clean and creaseless garments. Now she wore rags, the threads loose and frayed, the edges tattered and torn. Only when I saw her eyes did I find what remained of the woman I knew. Hazel eyes. Kind yet hard. Unchanged. Unravaged by her time imprisoned in this hellish hole. They gleamed with her unbending will, shining and competing against the burnt orange of dawn.

Again, the boy tugged my chains. When it did not earn him the compliance he sought, he activated some matrix that sparked lightning around my wrists. Without thought or control, my hands jerked sideways, pulling on the taut chains.

The boy went flying. He crashed headfirst into the cell bars with a sickening crunch, his shield clattering against the stone floor as he fell into a heap of slack limbs.

The guards rushed me. The largest of them dug his shoulder into my side. Someone looped an arm around my neck from behind, hoping to choke me into submission. The only woman in the bunch swept a leg at the back of my knees, trying to make me kneel. Finding no way to join in without impeding their fellow guards, the others stayed back. I remained unmoved, eyes locked on Sanas.

“It is rude to stare,” she said, her voice distinct amongst the raucous guards.

“Disengage!” The head guard commanded, rushing in behind his subordinates. His subordinates stepped back. He approached slowly, both hands on his raised spear, the sharp end aimed at me. “Did you not promise?”

I peeled my eyes off Sanas. “The violence was their doing, not mine.”

He sighed and pulled back his spear to a stand by his side. “May I request you spare us from failing our orders?”

I held up a finger. “If you spare me a moment.” I turned back to Sanas. She watched me blankly. “Is a man who inspects his weapon being rude?”

A smile broke onto her face. “It is good to see you… Master.”

All the guards backed away, their terror instant.

I sighed. “Why?”

A glint of madness shone in Sanas’ eyes. “Because they deserve death. And because I wish to bring it to them posthaste.”

I shook my head. “You know I—”

It was their leader who attacked first. I thought him wiser. A shift to my right had the spear’s blade crack against the metal bars of Sanas’ cell. I stepped behind him, my hand reaching out and lifting the keys from where they dangled from his belt. He swung again, twisting to face me. I ducked under and threw the keys to Sanas.

The other guards came at me. They’d been frozen in shock and fear, terrified of who I was. Being ascended Branches, Named who served one of the Institutes or Houses, they knew now, of course, for there was but one man the infamous Firewitch ever called master.

I leaned away, snuck under, rushed over, and sometimes blocked the guard’s attacks. Some made it through. I could only do so much without sensus and the will to use my true soul. My body was as perfect as possible, my muscles a blend of dense weight and supple flexibility, my bones solid, and my skin as tough as that of the sturdiest of evolved beasts. With it, I escaped the whirlwind of blades pursuing my life.

I kept an eye on Sanas. She worked the key deftly, opening her cell and exiting her long-time cage. As she touched upon freedom, sensus exploded from her, wrapping her lithe form in a golden glow that burned her clothes to ash. The heat suffocated the lead guard, and he staggered back, beads of sweat blooming from his skin.

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She took her time with him. Her flames dabbed him here and there and kept him at bay. He could not fight back. He was meat roasting on the spit of her skill and over the flame of her vengeance.

I slipped past a man, letting the dagger of the one behind me plunge into his stomach. Another tried to Tunnel my thoughts. I opened the doors to my soul and showed him a glimpse of madness. He collapsed. I heard steps rushing towards us from the bridge platform.

“Sanas,” I called. “My shackles!”

Her eyes bore down on the man kneeling before her, my words falling on deaf ears.

“Sanas,” I called again, sprinting to her.

The head guard was on his knees, screaming. She stood over him, a hand gripped tight around his jaw. He pulled at her grip, trying to escape. He couldn’t. There was nothing he could do. His other eye was already a scorched hole of nothingness, the edges flaked with charred skin.

“We haven't the time for this,” I said.

The five guards stayed rooted in place, kept back by the heat of Sanas’ power, by the horror of what she was doing. I trusted they’d seen worse, but it's never the same when it's someone you know.

Slowly, the old guard stopped fighting. His jaw went slack, his tongue hung loose, and the juices of his eyes, darkened and thickened by the ash of his burned skin, trickled from his chin. I could smell the meat of his cooked brain. It bothered me to find my appetite excited. No one talks of it, but roasted human flesh smells disturbingly like boar meat. I liked boar meat.

“Sanas,” I said, “the shackles.”

For the first time since our reunion, she followed my order. It was a simple task for her Ignis Art to melt the metal bands off my wrists and ankles. Burned skin cracked and flaked around my wrists. I rubbed it off as she moved to my feet.

“You forced my hand,” I said.

“And?” she asked, coming to a stand.

“Sanas?”

Brow furrowed and teeth gritted, she said, “So what? For the torture I suffered in your name, you will grant me that favor.”

I grabbed her throat and slammed her into the bars of her cell, bending the metal. My hand charred, then instantly healed, then charred again. “I will be asked.” My voice was quiet but hard, slow but deep. “I will grant or deny as I please, and without thought, you will obey.”

She nodded. I let her go.

“He was not as innocent as you think,” she said, the shine of her sensus hiding her naked form from collar to toe like a tight bodysuit of molten metal. She looked glorious, yet something in her expression, some change which had befallen my second, screamed of fragility. Seeing frailty on the great FireWitch was unsettling.

“Who?” I asked.

Sanas nodded to the dead guard.

“Perhaps. But are they guilty enough?” I pointed to the six others who watched us. They stood frozen, too scared to skirt their duties, too powerless to approach the danger of Sanas’ Ignis powers.

“They watched. They snickered. They…” She grimaced. “Yes, they too deserve death.”

“Failure to act against evil is not, in and of itself, evil.”

Tears welled in the corner of her eyes. I had never seen her cry. Even now, she wasn’t crying, her eyes refusing to release the pain, to let her hurt reach the surface. “They assisted, made it… possible.”

“Fine.” I pointed to the cells that curved with the wall, the heads of the prisoners pushing against the bars as they watched us, madness in their smiles, hope in their eyes, death on their minds. “Can you say the same of them?”

She looked down at her feet then, hands clenched into fists. I could see her anger warring with her conscience. That was always her greatest weakness. It was also her greatest strength.

“You know what you must do.” I turned from her and headed toward the other prisoners. I, too, knew what I had to do.

She made their deaths quick. That is to say, I heard no screams. My task was not as simple. Seventeen of the eighteen prisoners suffered the ravishment of a scrying; their memories made prisoners within their own souls. I was not so callous as to cut them out or so pessimistic as to think Lorail herself or any of her more competent children would come to investigate. Still, the task was almost as distasteful as when I did so to Farian. Though they were strangers, so many consecutive scryings were, as a whole, almost as unpleasant. Dragging them from the cells as they screamed for mercy didn’t make it any easier.

There was one I spared: Ilinai, priestess of House Lorail. Seeing the small tattoo of Lorail’s crest on the pit of her throat, I left her for last. Surprisingly, she was a short woman deficient in beauty and far from what I'd expected for someone of her power and creed, her history and accomplishments, and her house.

“Ilinai?” I asked, opening her cell. Despite hearing the cries of those I attended to before her, she stood without fear, poised in her dirty rags as if she faced no danger at all.

“I’m honored,” she said, bowing, “that the great slayer of The Golden King knows my name.”

“You are responsible for the fall of Solor and his son, Soralm?”

She smiled. “And knows of my humble deeds. I’m chastened to find word of my reputation has reached the ears of a dead god.”

Her soul emanations were more challenging to read than others. Most practitioners of soul Arts were Tunnellers. She, like Leahne, was a Painter—that rare sort who specialized in illusions. Their souls were notoriously hard to penetrate, hidden behind some deceptive measure or other.

“Come,” I said.

“Else?”

“Else I will do so for you, and perhaps I’ll be less… genial for having to impose my will.”

She bowed. “Then, by all means, lead the way, God of Equilibrium.”

My eyes lingered on hers. Few knew the title Merkusian had given me. She was either well-read or had her ear on conversations she should not have been privy to.

We passed the guards on our way to join Sanas. Each had a hollow wound at the center of their head, cauterized and bloodless. I took a relatively fine cloak from their leader, a pair of leather shoes from a man with particularly small feet, and the shirt and loose-fitting trousers from the only woman in the bunch. More guards followed. They were left alive if unconscious.

We found Sanas at the end of the passage, standing before the entrance to the floor’s bridge, with the gate closed, the bridge extended, and the stage set. Past the metal bars, forty or so paces away on the opposite end of the bridge, a dozen humanoid reptilians half my height, emerald scales gleaming in the light of torches, smashed against their gate, shrieking for blood and freedom. Above them, crowds boiled over, hollering for entertainment behind the protective bars that separated them from the bridge and the endless chasm below. The crack of dawn, and here they were, hoping to be regaled by blood and death.

A surge of cheers came from above. A moment later, a corpse fell from a higher bridge, clipped the edge of our bridge with a sickening crack of bones, and then plummeted into the darkness below, the first victim of the morning duels.

Sanas stood watching the scene, naked, shoulders trembling, the source of her Title no longer hiding her bare skin. She was always the most passionate of my subordinates. It made her reckless. It made her a great warrior. But now that reckless passion, that fearsome power, strained her mental fortitude.

“Sanas,” I called.

No response.

“Sanas!”

Nothing.

I touched her shoulder. Her arm lashed back, covered in the smoldering heat of her Art. My hand met her forearm, halting her attack before it took my head.

“Sanas,” I whispered, letting my true voice roll a soft warning. Fury gave way to the calm respect she’d once had for me, her smile rueful, her eyes harrowing.

“I’ve lost my way,” she said. “Lost a part of me in these years held captive. I don’t know if—”

“A consideration for a later time.” I passed her the clothes I’d robbed from the dead. “First, we must leave this place. Do you know the way out?”

She nodded numbly, then began to dress as she spoke. “I know the route but not the way. Taking it will lead us to death.”

I frowned. “Tell me.”

“There are stairs to the—”

“No, tell me.”

Her eyes turned away; she understood what I was asking. “I’ve noticed…”

“We haven’t the time,” I said. “If you’ve something to say, say it.”

“You’ve…” She hesitated, taking a moment to tie a knot about the front of the oversized trousers I’d looted for her. Then her words came out in a flood, fighting to escape lest they be thwarted. “You've not used meaning in your Arts. You almost died under the blades of a mere Named, remained restrained by a mere leech matrix, and then needed my help to escape shackles made for mortals. You—”

I barked a laugh, short and loud and as abrupt in its beginning as it was in its ending. I’d thought her lack of trust in me was preposterous… until I remembered I’d let her rot in here for over a century. She’d been broken. Worse, she knew it to be my fault. Worse still, she thought it was because I was weak. I suppose, in a way, she was right. Hardship and misfortune persist only when one is too weak of mind, body, or soul to prevent them.

“I abstain because I’m not ready to announce my return,” I said. “Lorail remains in the city, and she might sense my presence. If she does, it’ll not be long before she calls the others.”

With Sanas’ brief and distant nakedness taken from them and the sight of blood postponed, the crowd's cheers steadily shifted to boos. Guards were shuffling through the crowd towards exits to investigate why we stood by the gate without an escort.

“In any event, I have a different thought on how to escape.” I turned back the way we came. “Follow me.”

I led us down the pathway of downed guards and back to Sanas’ cell.

“You cannot be thinking we dive for the sea,” the priestess said. “Not if you’ve barred yourself from your true abilities.”

I ignored her and walked to the metal bars.

Sanas stepped up beside me and peered at the waveless waters of The Dead Sea. “How are you going to get past the metal without your—”

I grabbed two bars and pulled, the muscles of my arms and back flexing as I put them to the task. Slowly, the metal began to bow to my will, screeching as I forced them apart. When there was space enough to pass through, I stepped back.

“Why did you not do so with the manacles?” Sanas asked.

“As you said, I was vulnerable to their blades. By the time I’d extricated myself from that danger, you were the easier option.”

I walked to the edge of the cliff and looked down at the rocky outcrops below, my sensus confirming the leech matrix did not extend beyond the confines of the cell.

“I will not follow you down,” Ilinai said. “Threatening me with death by way of your intent is a worthless incentive against death by way of your madness.”

Before she could stop me, I wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her to me. A yelp escaped her, and she burned red with embarrassment.

“I offer no incentives,” I explained. Her hands pushed against my chest. I tightened my grip and shuffled forward. “And who said anything about going down?”

My toes crept over the lip of the cavern, Ilinai pinned to me, both our weights on my heels. I turned to Sanas. “Take my back.”

Without protest, Sanas stepped forward and hugged me, her face pressed between my shoulder blades. “Madness,” she said. I could feel the tug of her cheek on my back as she smiled. Deep down, hidden by her sense of duty and restrained by her principles, she always did have a little of her sister’s madness.

I turned as I fell forward, Ilinai against my chest, Sanas against my back. My free hand shot up, sensus as solid as I could make it whipped out of my hand. A Zephyr matrix propelled us upwards with a mighty gust of wind. We soared, the floors of The Bridge flashing past us, the salty air pushing against our faces. Sanas laughed freely. Ilinai puffed her cheeks, on the verge of vomiting. At the apex of our flight, we hovered a dozen feet above the northern cusp of The Bridge. Another gust of wind pushed us clear and onto the roof of The Bridge building.

“That was fun,” Sanas said, coming up from a roll.

Ilinai wobbled before falling to her hands and knees.

I dashed forward. A familiar yelp rang out as I snatched onto a handful of hair, seemingly plucking a body from thin air. The illusion she left kneeling beside Sanas disappeared.

“I have soulsight, my dear Painter,” I said. “Your paltry tricks cannot hide you from me.”

Ilinai looked back at me, a fake smile trying to cover her grimace. “I hope the attempt hasn’t cost me too much.”

The back of my free hand rocked her back. She spat out a mouthful of blood and turned to glare at me.

“Not much,” I said, “but I advise you not to do so again. A second might cost you infinitely more.”

I released her. She did not crumble. Many would’ve. She stood tall, brushed the dust off her craggy shirt, and tried to smooth back her hair. She still looked like a beggar—not that Sanas and I looked much better. Time in The Bridge was not kind to one's appearance.

“Let's go,” I said.

The area around the annular building was vacant. A few members of The Research Institute meandered. Most were on the lower floors, ready for the poor prisoners who’d end up on their tables or in their cages that day. Many of the guards stationed there had been ordered to marshal the prisoners and keep the peace among the betting crowds. And so it was that, in the darkness of night, away from any vigilant, watchful sentries, Sanas, Ilinai, and I snuck out and into the streets of The Bark, the first prisoners of The Bridge to ever escape.