Chapter 164: A Simple House Call

The client packet sat at the corner of his workbench with Perren's route notes squared on top of it, both unopened, both a problem for future Cal. Cinder's light came through the window slit above the basement stair as a thin scarlet band across the floor. Cal spread his loadout on the bench: Bael'zhar in its sheath, one of Piker's daggers beside it, the potion pouch with two Mana draughts and two healers, checked and re-checked by touch through the leather. A folded preservation cloth in his pocket, packed just in case.

Hopefully contingencies he wouldn't need, but he knew no plan survived contact with the enemy.

For weeks in Mirathra, he'd ridden the [Portal] scry-preview home every night and eventually found his target by leapfrogging the viewpoint down lanes Thal had run barefoot as a boy, through the fence line of the Mycari enclave and up to the manor with the fungal carvings and the raised wood spelling Blackbriar in Mycari above the lintel. Herod read late. Always in the study, his chair with its back to the north wall, and always alone.

In the final week before Cal returned, the manor had changed. Runelamps blazing in rooms that used to go dark. The servants dismissed before second dusk ended. And a naked sword on a stand at the old lord's elbow, close enough to reach without rising.

Word of four dead opportunists had likely come back down the channels that had originally carried news of Cal's bounty. Herod was sitting up at night and waiting for a knife.

As he should be.

Cal clamped [Aura Suppression] down until his own presence felt smothered, then rolled his shoulders once. He had come back through Deadfall's gate in daylight, and in front of witnesses. Tomorrow, the few people who knew about the standing bounty would hopefully put his return and Herod's end together, or at least enough to seed doubt and fear if anyone ever thought of hurting him or his friends again.

He drew Mana up out of his core and cast [Portal]. The scry-preview opened in his mind's eye: the study, warm with runelamp light, the shelves, the chair and sword. Herod Blackbriar sat in it with a book open on one knee and his silver-white hair straight down his back, unmoving. Too composed for a man reading. The sword waited on its stand at his right.

Cal tried to set the aperture vertically, edge-on, so that it'd open in the middle of the old lord's skull. For some reason it wouldn't ignite, so he moved it above the man to the crown of his head. Then he opened it.

The seam split reality. Two halves of Herod came apart along a line that had never touched steel, and the book dropped, and the chair separated—

—and both halves of Herod lost their shape on the way to the floor, sagging, thinning, coming apart into a slow cloud of drifting spores that smelled of musky cellar.

Cal reached for Bael'zhar's hilt before his mind caught up.

Herod stood a dozen feet in front of the chair with his back against the shelves and sword in hand, his left arm opened from shoulder to elbow, the sleeve black and glossy with blood. The dimensional shear had caught him partway out in spite of the fact he'd dodged. The Mycari looked at his ruined arm, then through the open seam and directly into Cal's eyes.

"So, you came after all." He spoke so softly the words barely carried, yet every syllable was polished. "As you came for my son."

"Get over yourself. Your son attacked me first, every time, right up to the last one that cost him his life," Cal scoffed from his side of the aperture. "And for that, you paid four men to try to kill me in Mirathra. Emphasis on the 'try,' obviously. That is why I'm here. The grudge could have died with Narbok."

The Blackbriar Patriarch straightened off the shelves and ignored the horrible wound to his arm. "Coin is what remains to me. You hunted a young man through the trees and tore him apart, and now you stand in a hole in the world and speak to me of grudges? What grudges? It was proper. My son acted to cleanse a stain from the honor of his house. That the stain proved stubborn does not make the act less appropriate, and no accounting given by a mongrel has ever mattered in this room."

Cal could only shake his head at the man's logic as he quickly thought through his next steps. From the beginning, there was only one way this was going to go, especially now. Herod had survived and seen his face in the attempt and now knew his portal secret. More than ever, he needed to put the man down. There was no version of tonight where he backed away.

The potential bloodline was the harder problem. Steel had slid through Narbok like smoke, and he had never tested whether ka-vae'zhar gorged on Stamina would fare better. Tonight offered exactly one trial, now, and it would only count if Herod first wrote the shortsword off as harmless.

Bael'zhar stays unpowered until the strike that matters, or else he might get wise to it. And I'm about to give him the last 'mongrel accounting' this room will ever have.

He stepped through, and the aperture sealed behind him.

Stamina ignited through his spirit before his boot finished landing as [Crimson Overdrive] flooded in, and he tapped a sliver into the nerve cluster behind his eyes. The room dimmed and slowed. Sound went distant and thick.

At reduced subjective speed, Herod Blackbriar crossed the study and was still deadly fast.

The sword whipped around in an arc that would have opened Cal's neck, and one of Piker's dwarven daggers rose to meet it. Nothing met nothing—the blade passed through the dagger without Cal seeing how, but Cal was already turning his whole body out of the line because he had dealt with this trick before.

The point went by an inch from his throat. Bael'zhar came up on the return and went through the old lord's forearm without resistance.

The arm stays attached for now: the shortsword lights the moment I feed it, and a lit edge coming at a man with room to move is a threat he never underestimates again. The first time it burns, it has to be something he can't pull out of.

Cal gave ground into the furniture, read the surroundings with his perception sphere, and let [Combat Analysis] count the tempo.

The next cut caught him across the ribs and laid the leather open, a shallow line of fire along the track where the son had once cut him to the bone. He kept his footing and kept breathing, letting Herod come on.

They traded the study back and forth. Cal would have been dead within three exchanges without [Liminal Breath], and he paid for his reaction speed with a spike of pain behind the bridge of his nose. Herod accelerated past what a one-armed man his age had any right to, and every time he shifted, a distorted shape of him stayed behind—bodies made of spores, bursting apart when Bael'zhar or the dagger found them. Cal killed six copies in as many seconds. The air went hazy and gritty on the tongue, thickening with a fine drifting fog that swirled in the runelamp light as they darted about.

The old lord looked offended that he hadn't managed to kill Cal yet.

He wants my off-hand. Three passes running he's fished for that dagger. Maybe…

Cal gave it to him.

He let the low feint come, let the flat of the sword slam across his knuckles instead of slipping it, and Piker's dagger went spinning away under a table while pain lanced up to his elbow. Herod committed to the opening and put everything behind it.

Bael'zhar went in over the top of the sword and Cal opened the channel he'd kept shut, Stamina slamming down the blade as the point reached the old lord's collarbone.

Herod phased. His upper body went to mist mid-motion, but the heart-iron bit anyway.

The matte black blade stabbed through what should have been vapor, and the red vein in its center blazed as Stamina poured down it, blood wetting the edge in a thin coating. Herod Blackbriar made a sound he probably hadn't made in fifty years and tore himself backward off the point. The lord stared at the shortsword in a half-blood's fist, and whatever contempt had been holding his face together curdled into something much older and much less certain. He touched the wound with two fingers and looked at them, then quickly backed out of blade reach.

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Cal felt as much as saw Mana flood through the man's spirit and into the gap between them.

The floorboards under his boots warped. Wood peeled up in slats and drove through his calves in four places, then a fifth, splinters an inch thick punching in and rooting and pulling downward. He howled and hacked at one, splitting it, but two more came up through the same hole and climbed higher.

Holy mackerel, it's just like Christoph's entanglement Spell, but even stronger! Blood was already running down and pooling in his boots. It's going to reach something important soon if I can't escape. He strained [Liminal Breath] and bought himself as much thinking room as he could.

A throwing knife from the void ring was pointless, as Herod would let it phase. Throwing Bael'zhar might work, but he'd only get one attempt and the man was fast, and if he missed then Cal was pinned in a room with no weapon that could hurt his enemy. Which left magic or his bow in his ring, and [Immolation] would be faster and impossible to dodge in a room this size, no matter how fast Herod was. He breathed in to start the spellwork, and tasted the haze.

The sporecaps! Angelika's fire lance in the dungeon set a whole cluster of things like these off! If these things are flammable, I need to be careful!

The fungus from the cave was likely different from what Cal assumed were bloodline-fueled spores, but caution was warranted anyway, and he went with it. The study was fogged wall-to-wall with airborne organic dust, and he was staked into the exact center of it.

He needed the air around himself clean and the air around Herod ablaze, and he needed both near simultaneously.

Cal stopped trying to split his mind like he did with Grubby and simply needed both things at once, with no part of him arranging which came first.

Something behind his eyes finally gave way.

Left hand: [Air Orb], three runes, gorged on Mana until the [Continuance] ring bulged. Right hand: [Immolation], eight runes, coming a breath behind because of the longer cast time.

The air orb roared to life first as a hard radial slap that scoured Cal's zone bare and drove the entire fog of the study outward in one shove, packing it densely against the shelves and the walls. A one-armed lord stood there too, completely focused on his Spell driving stakes into a dull-ear's legs.

It seemed Cal had been right to fear the spores when he saw the look Herod made, as he finally realized what was happening. Cal watched him glance up from the casting and read the room an instant too late, as the formal mask came apart and only fear remained.

"Sh—"

Fire leapt from Cal's palm and the study became light and sound. Overpressure hammered Cal in place against his own stakes, tearing his legs and crushing his ribs, blowing the sound out of the world and replacing it with a ringing drone. Flames shot across the ceiling in a sheet. His exposed skin burned, and his ears filled with warm liquid.

When his vision came back through the smoke, the north wall was gone, the shelves were a bonfire, and Herod Blackbriar was in pieces across the burning floor.

[Perfect Memory] handed it to him without being asked and wouldn't take it back. Months ago, the son had gotten out one syllable of a plea, and tonight the father had gotten out one syllable of a curse. And they'd both ended in pieces.

What a strange bit of symmetry to think of at a time like this.

New blue light opened at the edge of his sight, joining the other waiting notifications.

[New Skill Gained: Dual Casting (E) - Novice]

Under the chime, the part of his mind that had loosened still responded. He was relieved to feel he could lean on it again.

[Spiritual Perception] brought him news of a presence before the footsteps did. Small, low-tiered, and coming up the corridor at a run. The blast had knocked them down and he felt them stop, and stay stopped, and he waited for the sensible thing: for them to turn and run away.

Instead, they got up and came on, toward the room where their lord was slain.

Crumb.

Cal moved everything at once. Two Stamina-flooded chops of Bael'zhar took the barbs off at floor level, and he painfully tore his legs free with the stubs still in the muscle, then pivoted his back to the door. The shortsword went into the void ring while he dragged the preservation cloth out of his pocket with his other hand, folding it over his nose and knotting it behind his skull as the door came open. He turned around slowly.

An old Mycari woman in a nightdress stood in the doorway holding a kitchen knife in both fists, looking at a masked half-elf standing in a room with what was left of her lord. The knife trembled as she worked her mouth.

Cal took one step toward her.

She dropped the knife and ran, shrieking down the corridor and out into the enclave.

[Your proficiency with Intimidation (E) has increased to Practiced]

Wonderful, I've managed to terrorize a brave old lady in her nightie. Very good, Vox. Let's hang that one on the wall.

Outside, the first alarmed voices started to rise.

Herod had come through the blast with both hands largely intact, which was grim luck and useful all at once. Cal crouched and checked the fingers, finding no void ring. Nothing on either wrist, nothing on a chain at the throat, and that told him something about how far the Blackbriar coffers had fallen. A lord reputed to be over a century old, and not one spatial artifact on his person.

The sword lay six feet off with its guard warped. Cal fed it into the void ring, then dug Piker's dagger out from under the destroyed table where it had spun.

He swept the room. [Spiritual Perception] read matter as well as spirit, and he pushed it out through the smoke as a beam, building the study in grey model form in his head: shelves, floor joists, the cavity behind a scorched painting on the east wall, and inside it, a strongbox.

The beam also found, in the desk, a small carved thing in a room stripped of every other sentiment.

Cal crossed to the desk and opened it, grabbing the carving in his fist before he even decided to pick it up. A bird cut out of four inches of soft pine, one wing cut too deep so that it was a little crooked. A child's work. Somebody had gone at it with more will than skill and quit on the feet entirely.

He knew whose it was without asking.

Abruptly, he sat down on the edge of the desk. He hadn't planned to. The house was burning over and around him, yet he sat there and turned the carving over, finding it hard to hold steady.

Narbok was only sixteen. He came at me with five others and killed Gavin and crippled Mira and would have done worse. But he was also somebody's kid who couldn't carve feet.

Above him the ceiling gave somewhere, and part of the corridor came down. He fit the bird into the void ring beside the father's sword and shoved his emotions down. The Blackbriars had made their choices, and he wasn't going to regret his. Neither could he pretend it hadn't cost him something.

He pulled a wood axe out of his ring and went at the timber around the strongbox with every swing empowered, and the wall came apart in chunks and splinters until he could tear the strongbox loose.

Voices outside had multiplied and grown in strength. Cal checked [Aura Suppression] and found it still clamped down, which mattered more than the fire did. Were he in the enclave's place, he would have everyone strong enough in the surrounding area pushing their senses inside for a signature to chase, and there were Mycari in Deadfall who had felt his aura before.

He drank both Mana draughts he'd prepared, one after the other, then built the hundred and seven runes again with the ceiling burning over his head. The portal opened into his own basement, where Cal shoved the strongbox through, half-lifting and half-rolling it across the boundary, then turned back for the parting gift.

Three more [Air Orb] constructs spun to life on the manor side where he left them running, as the fire climbed down the hallway. Stone foundations, high-tier neighbors, and a damp forest would keep it to one house. Probably. And that was fine. One house was the message.

Cal released the portal and sat on his floor beside the strongbox with his legs stretched out, taking a moment to catch his breath in the cool, clean air. Eventually he got to working the lock with his perception, reading the tumbler stack as grey shapes and spinning the dial until the pins walked into line.

Inside were four sacks of gold that sagged where they sat, a few folded sheaves of parchment, and one small stone that held its own shifting light entirely within itself, its surface packed with runes too fine for the eye. A keystone. He had watched Selara pass one of those to buy him a foundation at Lady Helyna's. He had no idea what account this one was married to, only that it might be worth a lot… or a little.

Ah, my first magical credit card. Or is it a debit card? I guess time will tell.

The parchment was the more interesting find. Deadfall dungeon writs, seven of them, sealed by Legion High Command and the Dominion Chancellery, and not one name written anywhere on any of them.

"The bearer of this instrument is entitled to the designated delving slot in the designated window, annually."

Bearer instruments? Like in finance? You could trade them, gift them, lose them in a card game, or steal them out of a burning study.

And there was the joke buried in the convenience: everyone in Deadfall who mattered knew exactly whose weeks those were, regardless of if the writs were named or not. The day Cal presented one, somebody would do the math on Herod's death, and the answer would have his name in it.

What to do, what to do?

Make it a problem for future Cal, that's what. He folded them back into the sheaves without deciding anything. For now, he was going to check the rest of his notifications that were stacked down in the corner of his vision.

[Your proficiency with Ambidexterity (E) has increased to Adept]

[Your proficiency with Liminal Breath (E) has increased to Adept]

[Your proficiency with Aura Suppression (E) has increased to Adept]

[Your proficiency with Portal (D) has increased to Practiced]

That's when the fire bells started somewhere to the north, first one tower and then another.

Cal finally drank a healing potion, his Skills with pain management combining with the adrenaline into a soothing cocktail that made such serious injuries a mere inconvenience. The wood fragments pushed out of his calves as the flesh knit with an ugly crawling sensation he had learned to sit still for. Burns faded off his cheeks, and his ribs stopped grinding.

Last of all, he reached for the three air orbs and found he still had a connection to them, even on the far side of a portal that no longer existed, and still drawing on his Mana at the same rate through however much distance of intervening space. That was interesting. If distance meant nothing to the connection, that raised… so many questions.

He let the Spells go and the Mana draw stopped. Burning down the enclave wasn't his intention, and now that the fire had been picked up by the village at large, it'd done what it needed to.

Then he cast Sunny for more light and pulled the client packet and Old Perren's route notes to the middle of the workbench, opening the first page. He began memorizing crawls and cut-throughs that Team Zenith hadn't explored, while the enclave glowed faintly orange through the window slit above the stair.