15.10: Dakheng, Divided X (Patreon)

“Full disclosure,” Kyle said, flipping a knife around, “I saw the [QUERY] you used.”

“And?” I asked, restraining my curiosity. I had to tread carefully here. One wrong step and the critical information about my past might leak to people that really had no business knowing.

“I don’t know enough about nobles to be sure, but the flashes I got made it seem like you were one.” Kyle thrust the blade into his palm to punctuate his statement, the metal not punching through even though it definitely should have. He closed his hand into a fist around the place the blade had “stabbed” in. As I watched, he opened his fingers, revealing that there was nothing there.

“Interesting,” I said, still watching his little magic trick. I didn’t comment on his statement. Kyle was a good adventurer, yes, but I really wasn’t sure if I was comfortable with him knowing this kind of stuff.

We’d been walking down the streets of Dakheng for a while. The nobles had claimed to know the location of one of the commoner strongholds, currently unraided only because nobody knew which House might’ve held domain over it, and we were well on our way towards it. For an area that was supposed to include a stronghold, the streets were oddly devoid of enemies. The people we ran into were largely commoners milling about their everyday business, shopping and chatting and generally not trying to kill people.

“My sleight-of-hand?” Kyle said. “I’ve gotten quite good at it over the years. Perks of learning from the best jesters in the business and all that.”

“It’s not magic?” I asked.

“Some of the fancier tricks might involve true magic,” Kyle said. “But for the most part, I ensure that I never use my oath.”

Impressive. That was something I had expected someone to use spatial magic for—maybe a Displace or a Store kind of spell, not just their hands. Probably useless in actual combat, but impressive nonetheless.

“And on the subject of nobility,” Kyle said, closing his hand into a fist again. “I won’t ask. I’ve known a fallen noble or two in my time. I’m just letting you know for the sake of disclosure. I dislike secrets.”

He reached into his closed fist with two fingers, and when he retracted them, he held the knife between them again.

“Wow,” I said. I’d watched most every step of that, but I hadn’t caught him doing any tricks at any point. It was like he’d actually just materialized it from thin air.

“No court jester?” Kyle asked. “Ah, wait, the nobility is a sensitive subject. Sorry for touching on it.”

“Not an issue,” I said. “I never saw one, at the very least.”

“You missed out,” he replied with a grin. “We have all sorts of talents.”

“I’m sure you do,” I said, my focus not entirely on those words. He’d said something that had been important. “Hey, you said you knew fallen nobles, right?”

“A few. They tended to lay low in the circus for a while before moving on to greener pastures across the Tayan border. I don’t know what happened to them.”

“You’re quite the eclectic person,” I said. “Meeting former nobles regularly, knowing how to use your oath effectively despite having no education…”

“You’d be surprised how much being a professional jester helped,” Kyle said, slipping his knife away into some place I couldn’t identify again. “From what books I stole—er, borrowed briefly—it would appear that the mindset that one needs to effectively use an oath about imitation is awfully similar to the one required to deceive and entertain an audience for an extended period of time.”

“Something I’ll consider next time, then,” I said. “If I ever run out of career options, I guess.”

“It’s harder than you’d think,” Kyle said. “But we’d be happy to have new people.”

“You’re still a jester?” I asked.

“Occasionally. Adventuring doesn’t quite pay all the bills.”

“True…”

I frowned. Money hadn’t been a real issue for me for a while, especially after Jasmine had allowed me to move into her ridiculously large property, but the money situation wasn’t a total non-issue. I hadn’t really thought about it that much, but adventuring was a pretty shit job. Well, I knew that already, but it hadn’t really been hammered home for a while. This most recent trip had turned from a simple adventure into something far more.

“I don’t work with the same circus as before, but I do occasionally entertain people around the area. Sometimes, I even get to learn more about my oath. Helps with adventuring, at least to a certain extent.”

“You do have a rather unique pattern of combat.”

“Can’t help it. I learn through doing, and there was nobody to guide me through the doing of this whole oath business.”

That was another sticking point that I’d thought of sometimes but largely put aside. Kyle was a commoner, and not a high-class commoner at that. Because of the general information lockdown that the kingdom put on oath-related materials, Kyle had been handicapped from the start.

The thought brought back images of Nek, the poor overconfident oathholder that I’d knifed in the back. He, too, had been utterly underpowered because of the dichotomy in education for nobles and commoners. There was potential in both of them, and though Kyle had definitely realized some level of it, I couldn’t help but think what he would be like if he had had access to noble-level information about oaths from the start.

“Wait, does the TAG provide any information about oaths?” I asked. “I never had any reason to check.”

“Some,” Kyle said. “Basic information, mostly. When I asked, I was told that there would be more information if I joined the military.”

Ah, the classic. I didn’t have anything against the Crown in general right now, but even I could tell that there were some deep flaws in the system. After the continental war, Tayan’s standoffishness had never really died down, and the way that the kingdom pushed every last one of us towards the military was pretty indicative of that. Besides that, what other choice did we have? Kingdom research, the TAG—which, at its core, often ended up being the gathering place for the poor saps who had to do the shit work that the military didn’t want to handle—or be crushed under the weight of harsh regulation. It didn’t grate too hard on me at the moment, but I could tell where someone rising from a less advantaged station would be pretty much fucked.

“Why not the military?” I asked. “Sorry, you might have answered this question before already. I don’t remember.”

“I wanted more freedom,” he said. “I knew a lot of people who weren’t Tayan natives when I was working in the circus. Learned enough that I’m not sure I want to be in the Tayan military, at least. Not now. I want my options open.”

That made enough sense to me. Not something I needed to keep questioning at this point, but it was good information to have. Bits and pieces of Kyle’s personality made more sense to me now. I suspected that I wouldn’t have cared at all about that just a couple months ago, but time with Jasmine had changed me. I couldn’t say it was a bad thing.

We were approaching the supposed stronghold now, but we still had yet to run into a single piece of organized resistance. It was a little disappointing, actually, especially given that I had just learned a new spell specifically for this purpose.

“Should be around here,” Kyle said. “It’s a warehouse similar in design to the one that we met up at.”

“Got it.”

It didn’t take too long to find it. This time, there actually was some semblance of defense against outside intruders. Four guards in front of it, each of them wielding a melee weapon of some sort. A little more haphazard than the attackers I’d faced down earlier, which was odd. They didn’t seem as professional, either.

“This isn’t the same group that we’ve been fighting,” I noted. “They act completely differently.”

“Like they’re not comfortable in their own skin,” Kyle commented. “Are we taking them out?”

“Maybe,” I said. “Hold on.”

They were guarding the front door of the warehouse, but it looked like there werer more of them around the sides, so just trying to sneak in through a back door was probably out.

Alright. The road leading up to it was largely empty, so we’d be pretty exposed going up to it, but we were going to have to work with that.

“Act natural,” I told Kyle, glancing over at him. Upon taking in his jester outfit, I reconsidered. “Show me a trick?”

“Sure thing,” he replied instantly, as if he’d been waiting for those very words.

As we walked forward, he formed his signature spheres of magic in his hands, three of them colored red, green, and blue, respectively. I squinted, glancing at the spheres of power. I was pretty sure I recognized them, but I wasn’t totally sure. Whatever the case, they were definitely not something as mundane as simple balls, especially given how much oath energy was radiating off of them.

Not that you would think that from how Kyle was acting. He was juggling them without a care in the world, humming a jaunty tune to accompany it. It drew glances from the guards, but they weren’t glances of suspicion. More of the kind that a bored shift worker would give when it was nearing their time to clock out and they saw something funny nearby. Good attention, especially given what I was going to do next.

I started drawing out the pattern for the Blind spell.

“New spell?” Kyle asked. “I don’t recall you using anything of the like a week ago.”

“Observant one, are you?” I answered his question with one of my own, barely paying attention to what I’m saying. The memory of Jasmine’s hands in mine guided me, led my frame to be a functional classical shell.

“I try,” he said. “Anything you want me to do?”

“Get us an entrance,” I replied. “Take as many of the guards down as possible.”

“I’m not going to kill them, just so you know,” Kyle said. “These don’t look like trained professionals. Even if you choose to, I will not kill commoners.”

You won’t have to, I thought idly. The Crown will do it for you.

I left the words unsaid. Kyle definitely knew, but I was slowly growing to understand why people like him weren’t able to make the final step and take lives. I still thought there was a fairly pragmatic argument for just storming in and killing all the guards, but when I thought on the Byrons, on the carnage I’d wreaked during my time as a noble, I could feel an inexplicable weight resting on my shoulder.

Not quite guilt, I was pretty sure, but it was a presence nonetheless. If Kyle felt that weight too—a weight that was probably doubled or tripled because he hadn’t had the same emotion-killing childhood I had—then I could imagine why killing wasn’t exactly something he was prone to doing.

“I won’t be killing any of them either,” I said with a sigh, finishing the frame. “Jasmine would be pissed.”

Fuel. I poured oath energy into the frame, controlling it precisely to fill it up just right. My oath was coming slower, the power not as fluid as normal. Not enough of an issue to fuck with the spell, but enough that it was irritating.

Spark. “Cover your eyes. With magic, if at all possible.”

I let the deep black diagram resolve into something that was absolutely not black, igniting a bright flash of light that drowned out even the noonday sun.

“Go!” I shouted.

Kyle hadn’t been affected by the spell. Good. I hadn’t bothered to tell him how to block it, but it looked like he’d learned how to anyway. He sprinted towards the warehouse, rendering his oath to Shanzhai into the spheres of swirling non-color.

I followed him, my pace slower than his full sprint but faster than a normal jog. I didn’t bother forming any unstructured magic. It was too all-or-nothing for me to use against people that we ostensibly weren’t supposed to kill.

Either way, I wasn’t feeling anywhere near a hundred percent with my oath today. It had felt different in a way I couldn’t completely quantify. It was as if the well I was drawing from was deeper, but the bucket that I used to extract resources from it was moving slower. Not a great analogy, but it was the best I had. What was the word for this, again?

Oath desync, that was the term. The inverse of oath alignment, a concept that I hadn’t learned in great detail but had learned nonetheless. When one’s mindset was too far away from their god’s preferred one, they lost power.

That fit. The increase in the depth of the power well could definitely be attributed to the pile of oathholders I had shamelessly killed just last night. I didn’t regret the killings—I would’ve been dead already if I hadn’t committed to them—but I also wasn’t in a position where I was very likely to replicate the feat with these commoners. Was that “maybe I won’t actually murder everyone” mindset really that divorced from what Inome wanted?

Gods damn it all. That was the last thing I needed.

Whatever. I had what I had, and I was going to have to live with it. I hadn’t been lying when I’d said I didn’t want Jasmine to be disappointed in me for killing a bunch of commoners. I couldn’t quite picture what it would be like, but there was a nasty feeling in my gut that accompanied the non-image.

At least I’d had yesterday’s killing to feed my oath. That had to have done something to my oathholder class, though I wouldn’t be able to confirm that until I felt like going to the TAG again.

Something told me that the TAG wasn’t going to be very involved in this. As much as it pretended to not be a puppet of the Crown, it was as much a force of the Tayan kingdom as the military was. If the latter wasn’t going to be deployed for an inter-House conflict, the former almost definitely wouldn’t be.

“Front gate is clear!” Kyle yelled, throwing a sphere at a door. Its maelstrom of oily not-color resolved into a light blue, and it glowed bright before smashing into the warehouse’s entrance.

Right. That had been occurring. I looked around the area as I caught up to Kyle. He’d been thorough. Not a single enemy was left standing, though it looked like he’d managed to leave them all alive.

“What oath did you mimic?” I asked. “Just out of curiosity.”

“Alex of House Varga’s,” Kyle said. “Not every day I get to meet a Voci oath. I took his paralyzing clouds.”

Ah, that would’ve done it. With the amount of fine control he had over his spheres, all he would’ve had to do was hit someone with one of them and they’d be down for the count.

“Care to help me with this door?” Kyle asked. “I don’t want to accidentally kill someone if I detonate it.”

“You haven’t copied my oath?” I asked in return.

“Not fully,” Kyle said. “It is a rare oath to encounter, and a hard one to decode. I can stop at any time, by the way, just in case you did want me to.”

“It’s fine,” I dismissed. “It’s not a totally unique oath. Just a rare one. So long as you don’t copy every last trick I've got."

I did have some minor qualms with it, but Kyle was ultimately an imitator. Even if he turned against me, I was fairly sure I could take him in a one-on-one. Despite the class gap, there was no way a replicant of my oath was going to be as powerful as the oath that sourced from Inome itself. At the end of the day, if he tried to use my own magic against me he wasn’t going to succeed.

That was besides the point, though. I was getting distracted far too easily.

I pulled from my oath, wincing a little at how slow it came, and I drew unstructured magic into my hands. Nishi had been right when he’d said that I needed to learn more spells, but I couldn’t do all that right now. For now, I was just going to do what I was used to.

The roiling mass of ruin in my hands now complete, I tossed it at the door. It wasn’t a great throw, and it didn’t connect with much force, but that didn’t really matter when the wood disintegrated where my magic touched it.

After a moment or two, my packaged ruin finished demolishing the door. It wasn’t the cleanest breach, but it would do.

“In we go,” I said. “You ready?”

“Always,” Kyle said.

We entered.

The interior of this warehouse was a lot dingier than the one we’d just come from. Rather than organized shelves of packaged goods, there were opened crates tossed haphazardly around the place. People were sitting on some of them, chatting amongst themselves. There had to have been a few dozen people in here, spaced out unevenly throughout the place.

I made to cast another spell, and then I stopped.

Beside me, Kyle was crouched down, ready to fight. His spheres circled around him, flitting here and there like they were hummingbirds rather than connections to his god.

“What’s happening?” Kyle asked. “Not fighting?”

“I recognize some of these people,” I said. “We might not have to.”

“That’ll be a first,” he muttered. The jester looked up, catching my distinctly unimpressed look, and he flashed me a shit-eating smile.

“Ah, now look who we have here.”

The voice came from above. A glance up revealed a haggard man, slightly less unkempt than he’d been the last time I’d seen him, sitting atop one of the shelves.

“Hello again, Seb,” I said.