Chapter 08 | A Weird Dark Lord

The hot pot restaurant was the kind of place that understood its purpose. Low ceiling, warm light, tables designed around the assumption that people would sit at them for a long time. Outside, snow had begun to fall, not the aggressive variety, but the quiet, considered kind that came down in large flakes and softened the city's angles. The world had apparently decided that the afternoon's events called for a certain atmospheric acknowledgement.

Order had been restored to the mall district with a speed that suggested the relevant authorities had protocols for unexplained supernatural incident, civilian area and were not using them for the first time. By the time they'd retrieved the car and found the restaurant, the news cycle was already producing initial reports that managed to be accurate about the chaos and entirely wrong about the cause.

The five of them arranged themselves around the table, steam rising from the centre, the smell of broth making a compelling case that this had been the correct decision, and Matthias opened his mouth to begin asking the questions that had been queuing since the car park.

Yuki spoke first.

"Joseph's network," she said, with the efficiency of someone who has already organised the briefing in their head.

She was pulling her cardigan off one shoulder and draping it over her chair.

"Marco family runs an information network. It sounds more formal than it is, Joseph is an academic, his network is mostly scholars, historians, a few field people, some individuals whose professional relationship with the mundane world is loose. But they track movement in the dark-aligned community." She picked up her chopsticks. "A few weeks ago, the network flagged Sylvia. Cult of Apocalypse. She'd been moving with purpose in this direction."

"Moving toward me," Matthias said.

"Moving toward you," Yuki confirmed. "Intent: not to revive you in the cooperative sense. Intent to, eliminate the current vessel and attempt to redirect the soul into a more cooperative candidate. One the cult could shape from the beginning." She added something to the pot with the focus of someone who considers this a separate task requiring attention. "So Aki and I made ourselves available in the vicinity. We got there in time. Result: you are alive and moderately startled, which is the best possible outcome." She looked up. "Questions can continue."

"The cult isn't new," Belial said, with the tone she used when she was drawing on a very long memory.

She was watching the broth.

"The Cult of Apocalypse has surfaced and been dispersed several times over the centuries. Their objective is consistent, they believe the gods have accrued too much dominion, that the counterbalance a Dark Lord represents is cosmologically necessary, and they pursue it with the specific zeal of people who have reframed a power grab as a philosophical position." A pause. "Astreal and I encountered them twice, in different centuries, under different names. Both times in coalition with human forces. Both times we were able to prevent them from finding a viable candidate."

"There was one occasion," Astreal said, from across the table, with the flat delivery that meant she was about to say something remarkable in the most unremarkable possible way, "that came quite close. Wallachia, fifteenth century. A man named Vlad." A brief pause. "He fell from his horse."

"He fell from his horse," Matthias repeated.

"There was an arrow involved," Astreal said.

"Astreal's arrow," Belial added helpfully.

"He fell from his horse," Matthias said again, in the tone of a man processing a revision to his understanding of historical causality.

"The Cult had been cultivating him for some time," Astreal continued, with the equanimity of someone reporting a completed task. "He had the necessary disposition. The timing was inconvenient. The arrow was precise."

"History is different than you think it is," Yuki said, which she seemed to find unreservedly entertaining. "More arrows. More Astreal."

Matthias looked at Astreal. Astreal looked at her broth.

"We influenced events where we had to," Belial said, more gently. "Not often. Only when the alternative was a world too damaged for you to be born safely into." She met his eyes. "That was always the measure. Every decision, that was the measure."

He held that for a moment. Then: "Did either of you know Sylvia was coming today?"

"We suspected movement," Belial said. "We didn't know the timing."

"We arrived when we did," Aki said, "because Joseph's network flagged a surge in the cult's local activity two days ago. Yuki and I positioned ourselves near enough to respond." He loaded his side of the pot with practiced economy. "We cut it a bit close. I'm going to call it a success anyway."

"The sword," Astreal said.

The table went quiet in the way it did when Astreal indicated she had something to say that required proper attention.

"The sword Matthias manifested in the car park," she said. "I know that weapon. It is the Sun Blade, the Marco family's heirloom, held by their lineage since the age of the three heroes. It was forged for the specific purpose of combating dark-aligned entities and can only be wielded by those of Marco bloodline." She looked at the space where the sword had been, as though running the sequence again. "It should not have answered Matthias. A dark lord's soul, regardless of the vessel, should not be able to manifest a holy weapon of that lineage."

She said this in the tone of a person stating a fact, not a problem, but the fact itself occupied the table for a moment.

"So what does it mean that it did?" Matthias asked.

Astreal appeared to be working this out in real time, which was unusual. "I am not certain," she said, which was more unusual still.

"Weird dark lord," Yuki said, with great satisfaction.

She pointed a chopstick at Matthias.

"I said so. From the beginning I said so." She looked at Aki. "I said so."

"You said he looked like he took the train," Aki said.

"Which is still true, and also: weird dark lord."

"Wait," Matthias said. "My, previous self. Both Belial and Astreal wield holy weapons." He looked between them. "The cross staff. The tomahawk. Those aren't dark-aligned."

"No," Belial said, and the warmth in her expression had the quality of something that had also been a source of considerable advantage in a past life. "Before we came to him, we were consecrated priestesses. The holy affinity is not something that leaves you, it runs deeper than alignment. Even after we became what we became, we retained the ability to work with sacred weapons." Her mouth curved slightly. "The former dark lord found this very useful."

"He found it specifically useful," Astreal clarified. "He was not unaware of the tactical value when he..." she paused very precisely "...offered his patronage."

"Are you saying he kept you around for your holy weapon compatibility," Matthias said.

Aki's expression acquired the unholy delight of a man watching something very entertaining unfold. "So the dark lord's recruitment strategy was..."

"He loved us," Astreal said, and the words came out with a speed and a flatness that both indicated they had been prepared in advance and that their preparation had perhaps been required. The faintest colour had appeared at the edges of her composure. It was the only time Matthias had seen anything approximating a blush on her face, and it was brief, and she clearly intended it to remain unacknowledged.

Matthias decided to let it remain unacknowledged.

"Back to the sword," he said.

"Right," Yuki said, visibly exercising restraint. "The sword. Matthew, sorry, Matthias, didn't steal it from Joseph, if that's what you're thinking. Joseph still has his Sun Blade. I know because I spoke with him four hours ago."

"Then what was the sword I manifested?"

"That," Yuki said, "is a very good question." She looked at Astreal. Astreal looked at the table. Belial looked at Matthias. Aki picked up his glass.

Matthias reached into himself, into whatever part of him had responded in the car park, and let the sword come back.

It appeared the same way it had before: quiet, matter-of-fact, fitting his hand with the same settled rightness. The gold at its edge was still and calm. Aki leaned forward and examined it with the careful attention of someone who had been around enough heirloom weapons to know how to look at one. He turned his head, checked the grain of the light along the blade, looked at the cross-guard.

"Either," he said slowly, "this is a perfect copy. Which raises questions about who made it and when and why." He sat back. "Or someone with a very unusual sense of humour is doing something with holy weapons that the scholarship hasn't accounted for."

"Joseph will know," Yuki said. "He's chartered the earliest available flight. He'll be here in a few days." She helped herself to something from the pot. "He was excited, by the way. That is a direct quote from his message. Excited. Joseph gets excited about precisely two things: ancient ruins and anomalous weapons. This is both."

The sword dissolved from Matthias's grip. He looked at his palm.

"My morning," he said, "was supposed to be clothes shopping."

"It was clothes shopping," Belial said. "Then it was something else."

"Is this what my life is now."

"Probably," she said. Then, with the precision timing that Matthias was beginning to recognise as her signature: "Though if you ever want a mistress..."

"No," said Astreal.

"No," said Belial, simultaneously, and with exactly the same inflection as Astreal, which happened occasionally and was quietly remarkable each time.

Yuki leaned back with the pout fully deployed, arms folded, the picture of resigned theatre. "It was worth saying."

"It wasn't," Aki said.

"I thought it was."

The snow outside had settled into its rhythm. The hot pot was doing what hot pot was designed to do. Matthias looked around the table, at Belial beside him, at Astreal across from him, at Yuki pulling something out of the broth with great concentration, at Aki refilling his glass with the unhurried ease of a man exactly where he intended to be.

"Whatever turn this takes," Belial said, and her voice had the quality it got sometimes when it was carrying more than the words, "we are here. Both of us. Whatever this life becomes, you don't meet it alone."

"Same," Aki said, simply. "Yuki, Joseph, me. Different reasons, different history. But same." He tapped his glass on the table once, lightly. "You can have a normal Tuesday and we'll leave you to it. You can have a Saturday with monsters in a car park and we'll be there. That's the arrangement."

Matthias looked at him.

"That's a very generous arrangement for someone who prefers beer and poker," he said.

"I contain multitudes," Aki said.

"And," Yuki said, from behind her chopsticks, the mischief resurfacing like a tide that nothing had ever fully held back, "if the multitudes ever include a need for a mistress..."

Everyone laughed. Even Astreal, who managed it with the controlled precision of someone releasing a small, specific amount of warmth in a measured and intentional way, which was somehow the funniest version of it at the table.

Outside, the snow continued to fall, unhurried and even-handed, covering the Saturday in white.