Chapter 40 

Enchanting weapons, gear, and mystech components is just as much art as science. The craftsmen must know the material or object both inside and out at an almost intimate level and have a fluent knowledge of the Solidim Magic System. Those who are truly proficient with enchanting gear for adventurers and their ilk are known as Malloricks. Standard magic item enchanters for mundane items are called Myst Smiths or Myst Engineers. But Malloricks are the height of the craft, the masters among the sought by hundreds for even the simplest of items.

Day 381 Quenchenday

Once Tess had finished patching me up and the itching subsided, I made my way over to meet up with my uncle. My energy was waning from the last match and the encounter with Mallrimor, so I was lethargic and eager for a reprieve, and my stride reflected as much in heavy, slow motions. I stepped up beside him as he produced a black box from the bag. The box was wider than it was tall, with a glossy sheen, its edges and corners rounded off. It bore no visible seal or hinges. Yet it looked oddly familiar, but I couldn’t place it.

“You want to talk to me about a box?” I eyed the object with a puzzled expression.

He bared his teeth in an amused smirk without taking his gaze from the object in hand. “Not the box itself, boy. But what the box holds.” Thallos took the odd object and made his way to a bench set against one wall for quick weapon repairs. He set down the box in the most delicate way I had seen him handle anything. Thallos treated the thing as if it were priceless… or immensely dangerous. He drew his finger across the surface of the box as if shaping an invisible symbol. As he drew back his hand, the top surface rose and split in two. 

Just as gingerly as he had set down the box, he reached in with both hands and slowly brought out… Something. It was a mechanical contraption. Its right side housed a large scarlet gem shard brimming with raw power. The gem was locked in a spherical glass chamber, held to a claw-like mount, with several cables and tubs attached. On the device’s left side was a mythril ring the size of my fist, its outer left edge lined with a crescent of bladed spikes, longer at the top and shorter the lower down the circle you went. 

This peculiar thing looked far from friendly. Quite the contrary, the machine looked downright vicious. I eyed the contraption with a wary expression as I took a half step away. “What is that thing?”

“It’s many things, my boy.” Thallos’s gaze was locked on the device in an almost hypnotic manner. “It is the power to bring change. It is the key to improving the world. But most of all, it’s what you were made for.”

I took another frightened step away from Thallos as he closed in. “W-what?” His eyes shone with a mad gleam as they lifted to pin me with an intense gaze. It was then that I saw part of the truth. I had caught glimpses of this side of him. Little more than flashes of truth beneath a mask. This man was not healthy in the head.

“Come now, boy.” He took a commanding step forward. It forced me to take another step back in retreat. Thallos lunged for me, and I danced past his fingertips. “Don’t shirk your duty.” He tracked me with his gaze as I rushed across the room.

Rose watched me in obvious confusion, arms folded, brow raised. “What’s wrong, horn boy?”

In a wordless panic, I pointed my accusatory finger at the man I had once called uncle. As my finger aimed at the man, I saw what, on the surface, looked like a casual stroll toward me. But after all the training, I saw the nuances. The length of his stride, the angle of his back, how his eyes tracked me, the light tension in his swaying free arm, and its distance from his remaining daggers. That wasn’t a man. That was a predator ready to take a kill.

“Iver, don’t turn away from your destiny. You were made for this!” Thallos exclaimed.

I circled the room, shoulder close to the wall, and tried to get a clear line for the elevator. My pace was frantic as I pushed down the panic threatening to overwhelm me.

 “You know this is what your mother wanted.” He raved.

“What would you know of my mother!” I shouted, a tinge of anger coloring my fear.

“Oh, I knew her quite well.” He goaded.

I froze, my chest heaving in barely constrained panic. I don’t know why, but that made me realize where I had seen that box before. The day my father was taken from me, butchered. There was a black box taken from the cabin by the man in the red skull mask. The man I stabbed with one of Fermose’s arrows.

There was a flicker of teal and white around his hand, and suddenly, Thallos was right in front of me. He had closed the distance even faster than he had in the match. He slammed his free hand against the wall beside my head with a resounding strike that echoed across the room. I brought my knee up between his legs. Just as fast as his last motion, he blurred before standing just outside of my striking range. 

I had no feasible weapons other than my catlar, which was empty of almost all its tricks. My Mystwell was near empty as well. I looked at Rose, silently pleading for help of any form. She only leaned against the wall beside her, arms still crossed.

I needed to play for time. What could I do? I looked toward his light-eating ring, and I had a thought. “Your ring there is made of Umbranite and Whither Bane Wood, isn’t it? You’re a NightVeil. The caster classification specialized in assassination and infiltration. The very same caster class that has a ‘kill on discovery’ order nearly across the globe.”

Thallos tapped the side of his nose with an index finger in confirmation, a mad smirk still painting his lips. “I wondered how long it would take you to puzzle that out.”

I gradually inched myself across the wall. Only the most minor of motions. “Then you were holding back during the exam. You could have screwed around with our minds, our used slashes of wind, or hit me with even more necrotic energy than I was throwing at you. You were toying with us.”

Thallos gave me a lackadaisical shrug, his posture appearing to relax, but I knew otherwise. He propped his left hand against his hip, and posted on his left foot while standing on the ball of his right. The Wild Elf absentmindedly gestured with the device in his right hand. The thing he had been holding in reverence only moments before, he then treated as little more than a tool in hand. “You can call it toying. I call it… measuring your possible potential. But I will admit to having a bit of amusement at your attempts.”

“And my mother. You knew her?”

“Knew her, know her. The details are a bit fuzzy. But I know for sure that we need you, Iver.”

“And that box? Where did you get it?”

Thallos flashed me a knowing look as he said, “Why, I found it, of course.”

I was about to press the point, edging along the wall, until I caught sight of something. Framed in the hole I had cut into his shirt and jacket, nestled among his collection of scars at his shoulder, one stood out. An X-shaped scar with the points curled in. A custom-designed arrowhead for penetrating deep and holding. Designed by Fermose.

The moment came rushing back to me. I stood in the cabin’s doorway, my father bleeding on the floor and a red skull-masked man standing over him with a bloody dagger in one hand and a black box under his other arm. The world was shades of gray aside from the color red. His mask, the blood-painted dagger, Fermose’s gaping wound, the blood-stained floor. It was all so vivid they seemed to glow with a menacing heat.

There was an arrow clutched in my hand, one of Fermose’s. I clutched the arrow shaft so tight that it broke in two. I rushed the assassin head-on, full tilt. Not holding back, I lunged at him with all that I had. I drove the arrowhead half of the shaft deep into his right shoulder. There was a brief sense of satisfaction before the masked man batted me off him will effortless ease. I struck the floor, stunned, as the butcher walked out of the cabin and vanished.

My fear ebbed, to be replaced with blistering rage. I rose a quacking hand to point at the scar. “That scar. Where did you get it?” I demanded. I knew the answer as my past and present flashed between each other. The same height, same frame, same posture. But I wanted to hear him admit it.

Thallos gave another amused smirk and easy shrug as he waved off the question as if it didn’t matter. “I picked it up from some kid.”

He could have lied. He could have used mind-directed Resonance Myst to convince me. Thallos wanted me to know. This was all some sick game to him. But he needed me. I had some sort of value to him because of that device he held. I felt it was about time for me to get some vindictive venting. Time to see just how valuable I was to the sadistic sicko.

I took my accusatory finger, quivering with nearly unbridled aggression, and turned it over into a fist, displaying my defiance. “Well, that kid is out for blood.” I laced my proclamation with threads of iron will and dripping with a desire for blood.

Thallos flowed into a combat-ready stance like mercury, weight on his crouched back right leg, left leg stretched forward, his right hand holding the device held back in a defensive pose while his right was outstretched in an upward-facing claw. “If the child wants to play with the beast, then the beast will oblige. Now, don’t turn tail if this gets bloody.” He sounded amused. I figured that he planned on toying with me till I gave in. Well, I had other plans. I glanced over his shoulder to the elevator, judging the distance. Then I checked my Mystwell capacity, Nine Vells, at that moment. I’d need to make it work.

I ran my left hand across my bare chest, still covered in drying blood. Through checking the capacity of the mostly dried crimson smear, I found that it was far less effective a channel than the fresh thing.

I took a clawed finger of my catlar and drew a deep line across my chest. The moment the blood spilled over, I used it to summon one Vell of Morphic Myst to enhance my movement. I carved out a second line and used that one to summon a Vell of Distortion Myst to enhance my cognition. The claw wrent four deep gashes along the top of my forearm. As the mass of blood rose up and spilled over, I spent it to summon five Vells to summon solid shadow.

I shaped the shadow into a clawed and spiked gauntlet, but from the amount of Vells, I cast, the mass of shadow only solidified up to my mid-forearm. Flexing my newly armored hand in a test to find it lighter than my catlar, but it was also less protective. 

I turned my glare back at Thallos to find the bastard inspecting the nails of the fingers of his free hand in a mocking gesture to tease me. My response was to take a crouching combat-ready stance. With my tier-one physical enhancement, I threw myself at top speed in a lung at Thallos. As I drew near, I lashed out with a slash from my right hand aimed at his face.

Thallos leaned to the right, dodging my assault with ease. His response was to draw one of his remaining five daggers in a reverse grip and slash at my face. It was all done in a single fluid motion and almost faster than I could track, even with my enhanced eyes. I tried to lean away but was too slow. Fast enough to save my right eye but so slow that his blade carved a deep furrow from my right cheek in an upward arc to my right brow. The slash was so close that I could feel the tip of the blade cut my eyelid by the merest amount. 

The motion finished before I could finish a single blink, but he held the follow-through of the strike for a few seconds to make sure I could see what he had done. Blood streamed into my right eye, rendering me nearly blind. The slash across the eye’s lid screamed in pain, almost worse than the rest of the gash, but I pushed through.

Blood obscuring one eye, I threw a roundhouse kick from my back left leg at Thallos’s right front. He slid his leg out of my range and countered with an uppercut from the fist that held the dagger to my gut. The upward strike was powerful enough to lift me from my feet and knock the wind from my lungs.

I fell to my knees, gasping for air, my hands clutching my abdomen. With slow and patient ease, he pushed me over with the ball of his left foot. I fell onto my left side and desperately tried to fight to reflex to curl in on myself in the fetal position.

“Come on, boy. Is that the best you can muster in an actual fight?” Thallos taunted as he pressed his foot against the side of my face. He brought his dagger down to my eye level and made sure to reflect light from it into my remaining good eye.

I struggled to push myself back to at least a kneeling position I pressed up against the force of his foot and managed to lift a few inches from the floor before he doubled the weight on his pressing boot and forced me back to the tiles with enough strength to make my vision fill with static.

I wrapped the claws of my dark left hand around his ankle and dug the talons into his flesh. Thallos pulled his foot from my head as he taunted. “Oh, so the kitten has claws. Well, let’s see how the fluff ball can handle a Nemean Lion.” Only a heartbeat after he said this, I felt a concussive force strike my chest, rolling me away from him.

I hacked and wheezed as I came to a stop on my back. ‘He must’ve kicked me, the bastard.’ I thought to myself as I pulled myself to my feet. As I rose, I tried to wipe the blood from my eye, but the effort was in vain. I rushed at him with an onslaught of blows, clawing, punching, and kicking from any angle that seemed even the slightest bit vulnerable. As I pressed for any kind of foothold against the man, I pressed questions just as hard. I knew he couldn’t resist a satisfying gloat when he knew he was in a position of power.

“Why kill my father, you bastard? He never did anyone wrong.”

“Never?” He asked, his tone teasing the very antithesis to my comment even as he dodged each strike with the barest of effort. “I didn’t lie about us coming from the same clan. I was raised sensitive and soft in a clan of proud hunters. Fermose was older than me by a handful of decades but not too old to throw his egotistic weight around.”

He threw a roundhouse kick at my face so fast I could barely notice it, let alone block it. The blow landed against the side of my skull, and the strike threw me to the side. I barely righted myself before falling, but it was a near thing. My brain rattled hard enough to have me seeing double.

Thallos closed in with a leisurely stride as I tried to clear my sight. “The bastard took it upon himself to ruin my childhood. Anything I built, he crushed. Any friend I made, he drove away in fear.”

I threw a punch with my catlar, and he leaned away, dodging the attempt by the narrowest of margins. He then locked one hand around my wrist and closed in the other. With a vicious twist, a quick bend, and the right pressure, I found myself in a wristlock. I was totally immobile as he held me captive, able to break my wrist any time he wanted. He still held the strange device as he forced me into submission. 

“The adults said that it would harden me up. My parents said that I needed to learn how to fight back. And oh, did I try. But a puppy with fresh teeth can’t take down the young wolf who hunts with the pack. The bastard toyed with me every time I tried to fight back, and I only ended up looking the fool.”

I lashed out with my free hand in desperation. He leaned away from the slash from my claws and let it pass right toward the device in his hand. I struck the contraption as I had hoped, and it flew from his grasp to skidder away. His eyes tracked the device till it came to a stop. Then he shot me an annoyed look before breaking my right wrist with the ease of snapping a twig.

He released my hand as I stifled a gasp of pain. He walked to the valued device in no great hurry. When he released me, I looked to Rose for help. She still leaned there against the wall, watching like it was some kind of play. I turned my gaze to Tessa in desperation. The Gnomish girl looked on in horror. She clearly wanted to help but knew that she didn’t have the skills. She reached a tentative hand towards me before drawing it back to slip the fingertips between her lips.

I turned back to Thallos. He was distracted, so it was act now or lose the chance. My physical and mental enhancements provided almost no help, and he was too fast for me with whatever spell he had worked over him. I’d need to out-think him.

I rushed him from behind, knowing full well that he could hear me coming. When I closed the distance, I lept at him and threw a sidekick. Mid-air, I pulled my left knee to my chest, and when his head was close enough, I punched the leg out with all the momentum to my dash.

When I reached him, he was only halfway to the device. Without looking, he caught my kick by the ankle in one hand. Before he reduced my momentum to nothing, he turned and drove a punch into my chest that felt supersonic. There was a blur of motion and a feeling of impact against the side of my chest that felt like a brick shot from a cannon. I was sent into a spin that he only helped by swinging me like a limp cudgel. The world blurred, and breathing became difficult as Thallos spun me around three times before driving me headfirst into the floor. I didn’t really feel pain. There was pressure against the side of my head and shoulder, the world filled with static. The pressure left to be replaced with a full-body burn.

When the world stopped spinning and the static cleared, I found that Thallos had released me to fly from his grip to land head first and roll a good fifteen feet. I was that much closer to the elevator, but I had a terrible feeling. As fast as I could manage, I pulled up my therra-node. My scan told me I had three cracked ribs, a shattered wrist, and a sprained ankle. I pulled another program to the forefront even as I heard him sauntering towards me. I crawled towards the elevator, and Thallos went on with his story as he closed the distance. “Since I couldn’t beat him, I took out my anger on other things. That anger turned to fascination, and I explored. But when my dearest mother and father found me picking apart a fox, piece by piece, they got worried. They tried to fix something that wasn’t broken, saying my interest was disturbing.” I felt a vice-like grip around my broken ankle, drawing a burning pain only a half moment before I left the ground completely. I took that last moment of clarity to hit ‘send’.

The air whistled past my ears, and I tried to ready myself for what came next. When I struck the wall, I still broke more ribs, sprouted new bruises, and knocked the wind from my lungs, but having expected some kind of hard impact, I minimized the shock. My head still spun, and my vision still shined with a dazzling static of stars, but I was dimly aware of a pair of small hands pressing against my back.

Knowing what was happening and what would come next, I spent the last of my Vells by taking my entire remaining hand and using the shadow gauntlet to tear open five new gashes. I felt the Umbra Myst sapping my strength from the wounds I caused, but I focused and threw every last one of the five Vells I had into casting pure and raw Chaos. That new set of wounds nullified my mental and physical enhancements, but if I played this right, it wouldn’t matter. I took what I had and warped the probability of the universe to give me some form of good luck. I felt the itching tingle of healing magic rush through my body as I heard Tessa whisper, “Don’t worry. I’ve got you.”

I thanked whatever God or Titan that was looking down upon me at that moment as I felt my ankle and wrist mend to whole. But before Tessa could finish the job, her magic came to a sudden stop, and she let out a gasp of shock and agony. I pulled my gaze to her to see what had happened to find Thallos standing behind her.

“We can’t have that now, can we.” Thallos said in a smooth tone as Tessa fell forward me to show a dagger protruding from the small of her back, exactly at the spine. “I want a fair fight when I beat understanding into Iver. This is his baptism in blood. These are the final forging blows to hone him into a true blade worth being feared.”

I rolled out from under Tessa and rolled over onto my knees as swift as light and shifted to check on the girl. I knelt over her and checked if she was living. She was breathing and had a strong but rapid pulse. I checked the dagger wound to see if it was critical. The wound location wasn’t lethal currently, but it was at her lower spine, between vertebrae. She would be paralyzed from the waist down but would live. At that moment, keeping Tessa alive was all that mattered.

I turned on my heel while still crouched to face Thallos. The glare I pressed at him would’ve killed and rotted small rodents.

“You’re angry. Good.” He stepped out of my reach before I could lash out. He spread his hands in a placating gesture. “I see your eyes brimming with hate, boy.” He stated. “Hate is good. Hate keeps a man strong. Like how I hated the clan after I disposed to that annoying girl, and they exiled me. Focus on that hate boy. Nurture it.”

I slowly rose to my feet, waiting and ready. With no idea how the Chaos Myst I had cast would manifest, I had to be ready for anything. Five Vells was a pitiful amount of energy put into a luck spell, with my affinity score for Chaos being one of my lowest. That meant that the result could be as small as a misstep in Thallos’s onslaught, or the entire ceiling could come down if the right conditions were met. I just hoped that the conditions I had set in place would be enough to cross with my Chaos Myst and give me something that I could use to survive and escape with Tessa.

I held my position as Thallos circled me like a stalking hound, looking for vulnerability. I rotated to keep facing him as he circled. He pulled a couple of half-hearted lunges intended as faints, but when I didn’t even flinch, I could see in his eyes when she recalculated his approach.

Thallos stood up straight to take a lax pose. “You know you can’t beat me, boy. I’ve taught you everything you know. I’ve raised and nurtured your warrior’s skill and predator's instinct. I’ve seen all of your tricks. I know your tactics and style, and I outclass you in everything. Do you really want to keep this up?” He shifted to check his nails like our talk didn’t even matter. “Why not just give in, boy? You know I’ll win this, and I have plans for you. So just give in.”

I brandished my catlar in defiance. “And join the butcher of my father. I don’t think so.”

“But don’t you want to meet your mother?” Thallos gave in a tempting tease.

I felt a small hand brush against the shadows of my left hand, trying to slip something into my palm. I took the small device without giving away what happened. “You kill her too? Do you want a complete family collection?” I taunted.

“I haven’t killed your spawn mother. And if you join me, we can find her together.”

There was a tug at my leg. I knelt down, mimicking a lunging crouch, catlar held before me in a defensive yet threatening pose. I heard Tessa mutter to me, “I converted it all to raw Myst. Go win this.”

I sneaked a glance into my left palm to find the necklace I gave her for storing Myst for later use. I closed my fist and tried to draw from it with no luck. I guessed I needed a focus. So I shifted the shadows of my left hand around to expose my lower palm and extend the claw on my index finger. I felt the bite and the sapping of my strength even if the draw was by the smallest of margins, every scrap of ability and talent counted in this fight. I just hoped that it was a just price.

I focused on the trickle of blood and mentally bound it to the necklace in my palm. This entire act was pure theory of the moment, but I was enjoyably shocked to find that it worked. The small rivulet of blood in the palm of my hand charged with raw and unaligned Myst. I shifted the shadows again and drove four fingers into the heel of my palm till they reached the bone. Ironically, it was only by the skills he taught me and the sheer force of will Thallos instilled in me that I hid the act. I bantered with the sinvious bastard as I took an inventory of the Vells in my palm. “Find her? You mean that you knew her, and you lost her?” I relaxed my posture by only the slightest amount. It was meant to fool the master liar into thinking that I was taking in his lies.

“I knew he quite well, in fact, boy.” He took this opportunity to slowly backpedal to the contraption that still lay on the floor. “She was a member of the Company till she had a disagreement with the board.” He knelt down while still facing me and scooped up the device with a hand pressed behind his back.

I counted the charge at thirty Vells. The max capacity of the necklace when I gifted it to Tessa. It looked like she had been busy, but I was lucky for it. I relaxed my caltar hand by the slightest degree. “A disagreement about what?”

“About her work. She was a certified master of biology, chemistry, alchemy, and spellcraft. She said that it was meant for peaceful times. But the board thought her work was best put to use in bringing global peace.”

I relaxed a little more. “How was there a disagreement? Doesn’t bringing peace lead to peaceful times?”

Thallos gave a smile of honest joy as he relaxed by the slightest bit while approaching. “That’s how the board sees it. To bring peace takes effort, and effort is still needed to maintain peace. That’s the Company’s goal, to unify the world in peace.”

As he stepped closer, I continued to spill more blood from my palm and convert it into useable myst. At that moment, I had nineteen of the thirty Vells and channeled ten of it into Umbra Myst, the remaining nine I had converted into Death Myst. I was aiming for an even ten/ten ratio, but I needed to play for more time.

“Did my mother say her perspective?” I asked, trying to sound honestly curious despite honestly not believing a word.

Thallos, with the device in hand, gave an easy shrug, his readiness still there but wearing away if I kept at it. “She thought that peace through subduing misdoers couldn’t lead to anything but disorder when tensions rise too high.”

“Then where did she go?”

Thallos pointed his dagger at me in a sign of agreement. “That’s the issue. She fled the Company and left you and her work with Fermose. I’ve already explained that in the Company, you need to be ready to kill anyone to get the job done for the greater good-”

I pulled all thirty Vells into ten Umbra, ten Death, and ten Fire, only heartbeats before the elevator dinging to signal someone reached the floor. Thallos turned toward the elevator, and I took my chance. I shifted my shadow gauntlet into a whip, a weapon I had never shown talent with, and channeled all the raw myst I had been cultivating into the cord of power. Through the control of my will, the whip wrapped around Thallos’s right shin. The cable supercharged with Fire, Umbra, and Death had an immediate effect. I wrenched him off his feet to land on his chest, his pant leg burning to cinders and the leg below rapidly blackening with char and necrotic power. As his leg began to disintegrate, he reached back and dispelled the cord wrapped around his leg with a sweep of his hand. 

He pulled himself to his feet as the elevator opened to release Mystagogue Thrasher brandishing a massive war hammer burning with black flames, the Mysteriarch in her voluminous robes, an orb of pure lightning in her left hand, and a sparking rapier in her right, and a woman I had never met before in black leathers with spiked shoulder and armed with a long sword in her left and a morning star in her right the glowed with a sickly green light.