He was a man with no name. His identity had been carefully excised by means practical and magical. His face shifted and bent thanks to the carefully crafted skin-masks the shadowy Mountain Hermits crafted. He had even cultivated a spell that allowed subtle adjustments to his physique. You could shake hands with him, walk around the corner, and sit down next to him again and happily chat over lunch together without the faintest idea you were talking to the same person.
The man with no name would be the first to tell you- changing the length of your vocal cords was the easy part. Changing your habits of speech, the tone, inflection, cadence, cliches- that was the hard part. But it was all worth it. The Hermits had shown him just who was responsible for all the pain in his life, and he had been slowly paying it back. Starbrite and their collaborators were slowly losing. Losing people, losing power, losing their hold on Jeon. He was the arrow fired from the still night, the blackened blade plunging from a shadow into an unsuspecting back, the glass knife rising from clear water to slit Starbrite’s throat.
He had pruned away everything in his life. Not that he had much, but those few connections to humanity had been severed as completely as he could stand. He owned… almost nothing. Actually nothing, if he cared about the “ownership” the Hermits claimed over his face mask, spells and tools. He certainly had no friends, no lovers, his family was almost entirely dead and the one who was probably still alive had been cut off for years now.
It was a hard life, but a meaningful one. Which is why he had been sitting on the sofa in a newly emptied apartment staring blankly at the wall for two days. What was he supposed to do when all his enemies were dead and he didn’t kill them?!
The man with no name mechanically made himself a bowl of noodles. The noodles came out of their pack and were dumped in a bowl. Then the water went in, cool from the talisman. Then he sprinkled the seasoning packet. Three minutes in the hot box, and he had a piping hot bowl of noodles in soup. Just like Dad used to make. But he shut down that thought hard.
There was a knock at the door. He ignored it- the prior owner had gone up in a cloud of blue-green flames, so this was probably just a neighbor checking in.
The knock repeated, this time with a subtle variation in the rhythm. The nameless man took a long sip of his broth and readied a cut down firebolt fetish. It tended to end fights very fast in close quarters, and in the unfortunate event of the magic vanishing… assuming he or anyone else could still move… it was one hundred and fifty centimeters of cold iron infused ox bone. Which also tended to end fights quickly in close quarters.
A third knock, a third subtle variation. The man with no name crouched by the side of the door and reached up to gently twist the knob. Twice to the left, once to the right. There were two coughs, loud enough to be heard clearly through the door.
“Come in. It’s not locked.” Which was true. For the first time in his life, he simply could not be bothered with locking the door. He was back on the sofa with his bowl of noodles in hand by the time the door opened. The firebolt fetish was laid out on the sofa next to him. Trust in his circles was always conditional.
Two bland looking women walked into the room with a practiced casual air. “Codename Adder?”
“No.”
They smiled. It was not a warm or reassuring expression.
“Just checking.” They chorused. Then one of them continued. “Mister Hinds, we are here to deliver you onward. Your orders.”
“I don’t take orders.” The man took a long sip of his broth. “But then, you know that too.”
“You do on this.” They looked grim. “I’m told you can decrypt the message in this cristal. It should explain everything.”
The nameless man pressed the crystal to his forehead. A second later, it shattered into dust.
“Always gets in my eyes!”
“Ought to lean forward when you use memory crystals.” One of the women shrugged.
“Never seems to help. It always catches on my eyelashes.”
This got shrugs in stereo.
“I’m going to Siphios? To do what? Kill whoever killed everyone who worked for Starbrite?”
They shook their heads firmly. “We don’t know, but we did pick up something at the Bamboo Hut.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, Grandpa Stone said you were asked for by “Our friends in the Highlands. By name.””
“I don’t have a name.” The lips of the man with no name half quirked upwards. It didn’t really look like a smile.
“We know that too. But they don’t.” The bland women nodded. Then one couldn’t repress herself. “Were you really named Vigor?”
“Oh. I… don’t know why I’m surprised you are still alive, Professor. But I am happy nevertheless.” Sophia didn’t look happy. But then, she had been caught breaking into Professor Cuinard’s top secret backup-to-his-backup, off-site, black budget funded biothaumaturgical laboratory. Strictly speaking, she was discovered after she had broken in.
“Miss Medici? Now this is surprising. I was quite certain you were dead. Either in the purge of everyone with the System, or by vengeful Nephilim, depending on who got to you first.” The professor’s voice was rich. Which was fitting, as the professor was likewise. It also dripped confidence. Similar to the professor’s laid back swagger.
“I… declined to enroll in the System. And I suppose the odds of you being loyal to anything other than yourself were always zero.”
“Indeed. Although I am somewhat alarmed to find you here. I was quite certain I had erased all traces of this location. What did I miss?”
“Nothing.” She shrugged. She was wearing workout gear, without a talisman anywhere near her. This was probably adding to Cuinard’s confidence, as he conspicuously kept one hand in the pocket of his eight thousand wen overcoat. An overcoat he was wearing on a beautiful summer’s afternoon with the temperature hovering around thirty.
“There must have been something. I don’t believe you found your way into a bunker under the third sub-basement garage of the new SupremeCRISP! Arena. Especially since there is, in fact, no door, and it takes a very particular set of spells and tools to pass through the layers of enchanted concrete.” He slowly came closer. He had a good ten centimeters on her in terms of height. A good thirty years in age, too. At least one level on her. Lots of hidden weaponry.
Sophia didn’t look intimidated. She seemed a little tired. “Yes, that was rather a bore to work through. Still. Managed in the end.”
“How, Miss Medici?” Cuinard wasn’t smiling. But then, he rarely smiled. Once he sprung whatever nastiness he had in mind on her, then he would smile. Or if he was sucking up to a patron, but that was hardly relevant here.
“Oh, well, it wasn’t an oversight on your part. Backup Plan 88-9, in case of incapacity, insanity, possession or other malady of the mind. I found traces of Cheston Diplo in your Lab’s business records and ran him down with everyone else that seemed suspicious. From there it was just getting the information out of him, learning about your various safehouses, and picking the one that would suit me best. Not an oversight, exactly. A known danger, I would say.”
“Quite. Since Cheston was utterly entranced and geased to not say anything.”
“No, I think it was the parasites you installed in his brain that were the real failsafe. Another double-edged sword as it turned out.”
“I find them to be generally quite effective.” Cuinard’s lips were starting to tug up into a smile. “Which, I regret to inform you, you will be experiencing shortly. You won’t be any more agreeable to look at, but your tone will improve. It’s always been grating. This is really your chance to improve. Resign yourself, young lady. There is no door to run to. No help to call for. And you are not now, nor ever will be, my match.”
Sophia cocked her head to one side. Her eyes carried almost as much baggage as she did. “Oh? But then why am I glad to see you?”
“Eh?” That pulled him up with a jerk.
“Could I get your evaluation on a project? I call them Aeons. No idea where the name came from, but I think it would look great on marketing materials.”
Two flesh golems leapt into the room, moving faster than the eye could follow. Hands like hams came swinging down on the Professor, who crushed a charm. Sophia had a wonderful view of everything unfolding. The hands swinging in, the golden bell forming around the professor, then that bell shattering instantly under the weight of her creation’s mighty fists. The professor didn’t quite have time to realize what had happened before they were on him. Then it was all over but the screaming.
There was a lot of screaming. Sophia had a healing talisman handy, along with some rather excellent blood restoring medicine.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
“YOU SICK FUCK! You wanted me raped by goddamn Nephilim to save on experiment material costs! Bastard! Bastard!” She knew she had repeated herself four or five times at this point, but there was a lot on her conscience.
“Do you know how much I had to lie to get that poor girl-” Sophia didn’t realize she was avoiding saying her name, “to go along with the plan? You made me murder someone who could have been a friend, you evil shit!”
Cuinard might have contested that, but every time he tried to speak the Aeons crushed something painful, then Sophia regrew it. Which was equally agonizing.
Sophia wasn’t keeping track of time. It probably took a few hours for her to vent all her feelings. Eventually she joined the Aeons in stamping the professor out into a thin meaty paste on the floor. She didn’t mind the mess. Among her creations were things that would happily eat up everything and leave the floor hospital clean. She had spent a month down here, and the Aeons had only taken up seventy five percent of her time. Lots of time to make use of the more ordinary materials stored down here. She had already put the best stuff in her Aeons.
She didn’t take off the workout gear as she stood under an icy shower. Trying to not feel anything as she was bombarded by… everything. The universe seemed to crawl into her mind, unwanted and unbidden.
“Knock knock knock. Is this… whatsername. Loveseat? Sofa? Yeah, Sofa. The prick’s sister. Sofa.”
Amazingly, the sudden voice made her far more awake than the icy water. A small stone emerged from a wall, ignoring the banishments and anti-demon wards. Somehow. Should be impossible for an imp, but she was a big believer in the evidence of her own eyes.
“Who are you? And what do you want?”
“Who are any of us, really? And do I ‘want’ something, or have I been taught to believe I want it? I mean, I’m not Mister big brainy word guy. It wouldn’t be too hard for some little pisswizard or chatty birdfuck to convince me I want something, right?”
Sophia, for all her intelligence and experience on the pointy end of biothaumaturgy, had merely audited the mandatory courses on demonology. Since it was ungraded, she had spent her time in the lectures reading up on things she actually cared about. A bit of an oversight, she now felt.
“Why are you here, demon?”
“I gotta deliver a message and tickets.” The rock-shaped imp went silent. The shower added a pleasant white noise to the room which didn’t soothe anyone.
“To me?”
“To you what?”
“Are you supposed to deliver those things to me?”
“I think so, but how should I know, you know?”
“Then how did you wind up here! Through the wards! And banishments!” Sophia thought she was hanging on to her temper well. Must be a great grip she had on it, what with her knuckles turning white.
“Those are some, just, shit wards. Like…” The imp’s voice trailed off. “Like just super bad. I was following my summoner’s orders and tracking the bloodline linkage, then his summoner, or… wife? Maybe? Could have been a dude? You know what? The whole idea of sex is sick. You are all sick. You are gross and weird.”
This time Sophia didn’t jump in. She knew that if she opened her mouth, she would order the Aeons to smash this imp and then she wouldn’t get any answers.
“Anway, this… thingamahosit put a super spell-pokey bit on me and I went zoom and also woosh through most of the planet’s core and mantle and junk and made my way here. To deliver your tickets and the message.”
“What. Are. The. Tickets. For?”
“I dunno. You think I can read? That’s real judgy of you. Goddamn shitheel wannabee fakeass punkass excuse for a mage. Fucking embarrassed to even be delivering things to you. Goddamn horrible to think that I now exist in your memories. Blow your brains out as soon as I deliver my message. It’s the least you could do.”
The rock spat out a short stack of tickets onto the floor. It looked like spellbird tickets.
“Uuuuuhhhhhhh… The message is from your brother. He said he’s the one who you saw as a ghost that one time in your dorm. Message begins.” The imp’s voice suddenly changed, and she heard the warmest voice she knew.
Harmony sat in the empty ritual room. It was pretty smelly at this point, but the one time he stuck his head out into the hall, he deeply regretted it. All things considered, he could be hungry a while longer, and the quantity of gore rapidly going bad in the room distracted him from the stench of the “toilet corner.”
Needs must, and all that. Felt like a return to childhood, in a way. He worried about what happened to the System. It had just vanished, and for some reason, it wasn’t coming back. Nor was… whoever it was that pulled him out of the ritual. He had more and more questions about that, but for some reason, the man’s face never seemed to fix itself in his mind. He just had the eerie sense that he had never met the man before, but had known him his entire life.
The door to the ritual chamber had been firmly shut. Nothing good out there. Proving the point, a crow flew through the door and landed in front of him. “Oh, how homey. I really don’t often get sent to such delightful places. Mmm. Would you mind waiting while I tidied up?”
“Err… are you… of course you are a demon, stupid question. Waiting for what?”
“No no, Sir is quite right to question his sanity. Trapped alone, in the dark, surrounded by the ruins of more powerful beings and his own filth, knowing that he was put here and trapped here by forces far beyond his meager comprehension… insanity would be a blessed relief. Tell me, do you often think the world is off its kilter, that reality is nothing more than a painted scrim behind a blood-soaked pantomime? That the music of the spheres a hurdy-gurdy dirge and you the dancing monkey?”
Harmony recoiled. “No!”
“Then you truly are mad.” A storm of wind swept across the room, sweeping it clean. The filth was consumed with alarming cries of avian delight. Cries that sounded, too often, carnal.
“Delightful. Such a nourishing meal. My master does season his servant’s food with exquisite care.”
“You work for… him? The man who did this?”
“Oh yes. Him.”
The crow preened, then started cleaning its feathers.
“And… why are you here?”
“I’m to carry you to a boat, which will carry you to a small airfield, which will result, ultimately, in you reuniting with your family.”
Harmony paused. “This isn’t one of those word games where we will be ‘reuniting’ in Hell or something, is it?”
The bird seemed to hesitate. “Strictly speaking, you will all be in Hell at the same time. Your stay in Hell will last, approximately, for eternity. This is true for everyone. So everyone who ever lived, lives, or will live all reunite in the boundless infernal lands.”
“No, wait. I give to the Church of Praeger very regularly. I had my sins eaten before I flew out here. I should be a straight shot to Purgatory at the very worst.”
The crow looked puzzled. “Purgatory? I’m afraid I don’t know that Excellency.”
“Purgatory! You know, instead of Hell-”
The crow chuckled. “Oh I know that old lie, I was just… ah… teasing you in place of your brother?”
Harmony was very steady. He was now steadily considering snapping the head clean off a crow.
“Listen, Imp-”
“I was promoted. It’s why I can carry you out of here.”
“I don’t follow?”
“A pity. Then you will be trapped here forever. Well. Not forever. Once you starve to death, you will learn what ‘forever’ truly means.”
Harmony was steady. But he was also very ready to be out of this ritual room, and out of this deeply creepy base. He stood and gestured for the crow to lead the way.
“How is Vig doing, anyway? Haven’t heard anything from him in years.”
The crow chuckled, but didn’t answer.
“You still haven’t heard from Merkovah?” Truth asked. Etenesh just shook her head.
“Everyone and their dog-headed demons are looking for him, and not to shake his hand. He’s vanished. Like as not he’ll turn up again sometime. Possibly in our Great-Great-Grandchildren’s day.”
“Shame. I have a lot of very interesting questions to ask him.” Truth grinned. “So many.”
Etenesh looked thoughtful and cupped her ear. “You know, I think I just heard him burrow more deeply into the bedrock. Amazing.” Truth grinned and hugged her around her waist. The air was sweet, smelling of leaves warmed in the equatorial sun, passing rain and distant flowers.
“You get the cosmic energy gathering array set up?”
“And a dozen more. Jember helped, his church is about thirty kilometers from here. My family owns this whole mountain.” She flipped her hand casually. “With the exception of this property. Technically.” She smiled back at his grin. “You never asked why they picked this mountain for our house, did you?”
“I did not. I’m just glad they did.”
They looked out over the food gardens and the fruit trees, down the heavily forested mountains, and into the wider world.
“I dreamed of you, you know.” She said, “Quite insane dreams.”
“Oh? Was I naked in them?”
“You were not. But in the last one, you were happy.” She looked up at him, eyes as deep as mountain valleys. “Will you be happy with me, Truth?”
“I will.” He smiled again, then started laughing. “It’s the craziest thing! I feel like I’m finally starting to live my life! Not rushing around looking after everyone else’s life, not waiting for my life to happen, it’s here! It’s right now! I’m living my life right now, and I’m exactly where I want to be, with the person I want to be with.”
Etenesh smiled and reached out, her eyes asking for a kiss. He happily gave her the best one he could.
“Glad to hear it, Mr. Medici. Although that does raise a question.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. What does it mean to live one’s life in the face of eternity?”
“So that’s why I can’t eat geraniums any more. The sheer cynical immorality of it all got to be too much… say, old timer, why are you laughing so hard? You will choke on your peanuts!” The wandering mendicant pounded the beardy elder on the back so hard, his little hat almost flew off.
“Ah, I just felt one of my contingencies activate. It’s not a bad old world, not a bad old world. Getting better every day.” The old man’s face looked surprisingly youthful for a moment. “It will hurt you badly. But you have to be ready. Always ready.”
“To endure the bad?”
“To find the good. And to enjoy it. I think I will enjoy what comes next very much.”
Fin.