Chapter 31
There are plenty of other organizations that operate like the Order of the Aegis. Some have goals that align with the Order, some diverge, and others are opposed. The Order is one of the largest, but others are larger. Their goals are known only to their members.
Day 328, Igniday
The maul arced toward my head. I ducked and lashed out with a foot to catch Thallos’s ankle. He simply lifted his foot and planted it in my shoulder, knocking me off balance. I rolled aside just in time to avoid a downward slam with the battle hammer. I clutched the shaft of his weapon as I lashed out with a kick at his elbow. He let go to avoid the strike and closed in.
I pushed myself to my feet. The sharp-toothed Wild Elf came at me with a flurry of punches. I leaned left to dodge the first but took the second in my shoulder and a third in my hip. The last, an open-palm strike, jarred the joint.
I hopped back. Thallos pushed with a round kick. I barely blocked it with the maul’s grip. A snarl of pain left my lips. I adjusted my grip and threw a swing at his head that I intentionally overextended, staggering.
He took the bait and threw a hammer fist at my exposed back. I continued my turn, using the hammer for momentum, and spun a full three hundred sixty degrees to meet his fist with a heavy kick. The technique should have unbalanced me, but I used the brutish weapon as a counter-mass. I landed my attack against his ribs, knocking him off balance. His attack landed a fraction of a second later, just below my floating rib, with only a fraction of its intended force.
I knew he was going easy on me. He could have dislocated my shoulder and shattered my hip. He could have crushed my ribs.
I took my advantage and rushed him with a heavy swing. Still off-balance, he leaned back at an almost impossible angle to avoid it. I knew I wouldn’t get lucky. As the hammer overshot, I let go, letting it fly. As he straightened, his sight following it, I continued my spin and brought a teeth-jarring crescent kick at his head.
Without looking, he leaned forward, my arc passing over him as he charged. He pinned my leg, knee to shoulder, and bulled over me. I felt a pop in my hip, and flame lit the joint. He had dislocated it. For a single moment, everything moved at a snail’s pace. Crap. The world tilted and spun before the earth greeted me with rib-cracking force.
Thallos stood up, spry as ever. “You did good, boy. Used a weapon you had no talent with to your advantage and didn’t cling to it. You even turned discarding it into a tactical move.”
“I appreciate it, Uncle,” I huffed. “But honestly, I’m just happy you didn’t pull a knife on me.”
He passed by to get water bottles, tossing one to me. He pointed at me with his. “Guess again.”
I looked down to find a stiletto protruding from my dislocated hip. “Frag it! Rend it! Damn it!” I cursed, crawling to my good knee. I popped the cap off my water, gripped the blade, and yanked it free with a popping, sucking sound. My hip fell limp. I washed the blade clean and threw it at him. He caught it with a fist around the hilt, as I figured he would.
I hobbled to balance on one foot as I waved Tessa over. She hurried over, placing her hands on my wounded hip. I chugged the remaining water as ants crawled under my skin. My scar count ticked up to one thousand five hundred thirty-two.
As soon as the tingling stopped, I examined the work. The diamond-shaped scar was no bigger than a pen. “Thanks for that, Tess. You rock,” I said with an easy smile. We had become friends of a sort.
“Come on, Iver. I have to do this for class credits. It’s nothing special.”
“Are you saying if you weren’t getting credit, you’d let me bleed?”
“What?! No! I’m just saying what I do is nothing special.”
I gave her a false, stern look before dropping it to get down to her level. “Tess, it’s not just anyone putting me back together. It’s you. You could have said no. You could have gone back to the Med Center. When I felt like trash, you treated me like a friend. You’re the one who kept encouraging me.”
She looked at me with an expression I couldn’t read. “We’re friends, right?” she asked tentatively.
I grinned. “Damn right, we are.”
“Yoo-hoo! Loverboy,” came Thallos. “Quit making goo-goo eyes at the medic and come here. I need to give you an important talk.” Tessa’s light-green skin blushed dark purple. I rolled my eyes and stood, strolling over as he laid out a collection of knives on a metal table at the end of the Advanced Training Scenario Chamber.
The ATSC was a massive thirty-foot cube of reflective black walls, designed to emulate any environment.
“It’s not like that, Uncle, and you know it,” I chided.
“Oh, yeah? That’s right. You’ve got a gooey heart for the cat girl. I didn’t know you like hairy puss—”
“Don’t you dare finish that thought, Uncle, or I will have to kill you,” I tried to keep my tone stern, but my face broke into a smirk.
He turned, fists on his hips. “Boy, I could give you every weapon I own and still turn you inside out before you can say ‘potently petulant pussycat’.”
“Seriously?”
“Hey, you’re the one who brought up her joining. I said I needed more data.”
“And as I’ve told you, she wants nothing to do with me. Besides, after that show of power, I’d rather not become an ornament for an arctic spear. That’s why I want you to talk to her.”
“I understand. And you want me to mention it was your idea so you can get your tail tangled with hers,” he said with a knowing grin.
My face burned. “You know it’s not like that.”
He slapped me on the back. “I know, kid. I just wanted to ruffle your feathers. I’ll tell you what. After you hear what I have to say, and depending on your answer, I’ll track her down and have her show me what she’s got. If she passes, I’ll take her on, and you get to look like a hero.”
I searched his eyes for deception. When I saw he was serious, I nodded. “Deal. What’s this about?”
He looked at Tessa. “Tessa, you can leave. We’re done with combat for today.” He turned back to me. “Let’s wait for her to go.”
Tessa left with a wave. Thallos waited three minutes. This must have been serious. “Follow me,” he said. “We need to go deeper.”
I followed him to the mirrored elevators. He swiped his wrist over a scanner and dialed in a nine-digit code. We stepped in, and the car began to descend. We passed sub-level fourteen, seventeen, twenty, and twenty-five before stopping at thirty.
He stepped out. “This is an observation-proof room.” It was a fifteen-foot square, the walls, ceiling, and floor covered in sound-dampening foam. The only things inside were a metal table, five chairs, a mini-fridge, and a coffeemaker.
“This room is untappable. No bugs, no teleportation, no scrying,” he continued, making coffee. He gestured for me to sit.
“Why would the academy need this?”
“For talks like this, mission briefings, and the like. This is why I brought you here.” He set a cup of steaming, dark liquid before me. Instant coffee. Gross. “Let me start with a simple question. Do you trust me, boy?”
I recoiled. “What?”
“I know what I’ve been doing has been bad, but you know I’m not doing it out of malice?”
I fidgeted. “Well, yeah. I know your supervisors said you had to. It’s obvious you’d rather not bleed me like a pig.”
“So then, do you trust me?”
I forced myself to stop fidgeting and looked him dead in the eye. “Yes, I do.”
He sat back. “Good. Then I should start with the fact I’m a double agent, and I’ve been training you to be one.”
I choked on my coffee. After a few seconds of coughing, I demanded, “Excuse me, what?!”
“I’m a double agent, and I’ve been training you to be one.”
“Why?”
“Well, I need to give you the tidbit about Dark Hunters I’ve been keeping from you. I needed to be sure you could handle the truth.”
“Okay? So I’m worthy of super-secret information. Care to share?”
“Well, I’ve been telling you to call the Fragment the Hollow Fragment. The correct title is Her Fragment of The Blighted Heart.”
“Okay. I thought the Order were the good guys.”
“I’m here to investigate that. All the other sects protect the innocent and hunt the wicked. Not this one.”
“But they’re called Dark Hunters. Like hunters of darkness, right?”
“Think more like hunters in darkness, or at the behest of it. This sect throws the morals of the others out the window. Their thought is to get the job done by any means, even if it means killing innocents.”
“That sounds totally wrong.”
“I agree. It all revolves around this hidden fragment. The scripture says she is the most powerful but has no heart. So she’s hungry for them. Every so often, a lucky member is selected to find her a heart. But not just any heart. It must be from someone who has loved and lost.”
“Wow, that is fragged up. But why a heart like that?”
“Hells if I know,” Thallos said with a shrug. “I guess they taste the best.”
“So, in short, I’ve been training to perform sapient sacrifices,” I said in disgust.
“Not quite. You normally would be, but I have you on a track leading elsewhere.”
“And where does this track lead?”
“A good question. You are on the fast track to my role. It’s still an elite specialist, but I’m what’s called a Blood Arbiter.” He pointed at me. “A fitting title for a Myst-Blooded, don’t you think?”
He set down his cup. “I’m part of an organization called The Company. We have a goal akin to the Order. We caught wind of this secret sect and got concerned. They sent me in three decades ago. I joined and learned it was worse than we thought. Now my mission is to collect chosen initiates like you, tell you the truth, and prep you as a double agent yourself. You would be my fifth student to join The Company, if you said yes. Are you willing to join the good guys and take down this facade?”
“I—um, yeah. Yes, I want to put an end to this sapient sacrifice dreck. What do I do?”
“I’m proud of you, boy!” he cheered. “You don’t need to do anything special. We’ll keep training as normal. Just act normal and don’t tell anyone. But I’ll go find your lady friend and see if she’s got the chops to join us. I’ll have to fast-track her and tell her everything from the start. But for now, you go back to your room and relax.”
“Got it,” I answered with a determined grin.
