Author's Nightmare: Chapter 123 (Patreon)

Shango POV: Day 98

Current Wealth: 211 gold 39 silver 22 copper

I was not on the verge of shitting myself, for one thing, let’s get that out of the way before anything else. Beam seems to have an exaggerated impression of how worried I was at the time of Arthur’s defeat.

And to be clear, I was absolutely worried. This was a man I’d seen cut a cow carcass fully in half in training with one swing. A man who could hoist the four hundred pound Argar off the ground and throw him like a beanbag, all while fighting off two others of our best. And he’d been beaten. Beaten soundly. 

But Beam was grinning away, as if he’d just been told the secret to living forever. When his question came I realised why, obviously, but it was still a shaking thing to see. He was so damned sure of himself it actually made me jealous. 

“Alright then.” I replied, feeling my irritation grow to levels that were perhaps unfair to him. It wasn’t his fault that…Well, any of what was happening had happened. And I wouldn’t take it out on him. 

[Appraisal]

• Class: Dragonknight

• Level: 19

• Condition: Fine

• Modifiers: +5 Strength, +6 Speed, +6 Toughness, +7 Alertness

• Statistics: Strength 14, Speed 14, Dexterity 8, Stamina 9, Toughness 14, Alertness 15, Charisma 6, Intelligence 5

• Inventory: Local wear, plate armour, rapier

• Class abilities: Beloved II

• Current Experience Points: 306/580

• Unspent Skillpoints: 2

I winced. 

“One level up.” I told Beam, sighing. “Two skillpoints.”

It wasn’t that much of a surprise, with his newly grown strength and a decent chance of going up against either Argar or Arthur- a guaranteed “win” for us one way or the other- this had possibly been the least risky round for us so far. His power, of course, had suffered in its rewards as a result. Beam’s smile did seem to have a notch taken out of it as he realised that.

Beam spent his skillpoints soon, in any case, and I took in his new statline. It probably said a lot about how well we’d been eating regarding such things that I found the two point improvement a trifling difference. 

[Appraisal]

• Class: Dragonknight

• Level: 19

• Condition: Fine

• Modifiers: +5 Strength, +7 Speed, +7 Toughness, +7 Alertness

• Statistics: Strength 14, Speed 15, Dexterity 8, Stamina 9, Toughness 15, Alertness 15, Charisma 6, Intelligence 5

• Inventory: Local wear, plate armour, rapier

• Class abilities: Beloved II

• Current Experience Points: 306/580

• Unspent Skillpoints: 0

It was an improvement, I told myself. It was a big one. We’d just needed a lot bigger. The knowledge was heavy in my gut as I got to my feet, and all of us headed our way back to the mansion. 

Solitaire convulsed when we saw him, but didn’t attack outright. Somehow I’d convinced myself he might, that with our friendship dashed he might just pull off the mask entirely.

But no, that was stupid. He wasn’t a monster, he was a person. Just a bad one. 

“Arthur lost.” He echoed, licking his lips, twitching in all the ways I knew betrayed a growing urge to blow something up. “Well, that’s hardly unexpected. The King was always tougher, we knew that going in.”

We had, at that, but it was another thing to see such a wide gap demonstrated clear as day. Not to mention to our own not inconsiderable detriment. 

“Cheer up.” Solitaire cut in, slapping Beam on the shoulder. “We still have your new weapon, and none of the other contestants have seen it now, right? At least I’m guessing not. You don’t seem to have used it on Argar given he’s standing there and not…You know. Congealing.”

Beam smiled, mouth twisting, despite everything, inexorably upwards as he nodded.

“Right.” He breathed. “Yeah, that’s true, not a small advantage to be kept from the King either.”

“Not a small one at all.” Solitaire grinned. “And it gives you very good odds of getting past the next round as long as you don’t fight him.”

I did notice that even he wasn’t trying to convince Beam of his odds against the King of Blades himself. Which was fair enough, because Beam was too smart for that to possibly work. 

“Are we…Done with the tournament?” I asked, suddenly. It was a weird way to phrase my half-formed sentiment, so I gave the matter of cohering it into verbal form another go. “I mean…We’ve gotten plenty from it now, right? Beam’s one of the deadliest people in the city already, whatever comes next, right? A few weeks ago we were talking about the entire thing being out of our league and not worth the fee of entering. Now…”

Now we were speaking, straight-faced, about the odds of reaching the finals. Everything had been such a frantic, desperate blur that I’d barely even noticed it happening, but somewhere along the way of our participation…We’d become powerful. 

Properly fucking powerful, not just capable of bullying alleyway thugs. A laugh started building at the back of my throat for a moment.

Then it died, shrivelled up and started to excrete foul-smelling liquids as Solitaire spoke up, thus reminding me of our decapitated friendship. 

“We should start planning our next move, we’ve narrowed the possibilities enough that we can make educated guesses about what our situation is likely to be soon based on essentially just four scenarios.”

He so obviously wanted us to ask, to give him the prompt needed to “naturally” demonstrate how great and clever he was. I couldn’t be fucked dealing with his infantile narcissism anymore. 

“There are two scenarios just purely based off of whether Beam comes out of the tournament significantly stronger than he is now, or not.” I noted. “So I’d guess that the other two are also coming from a single coin flip variable. And it’s you, too. Are you suspecting we might be attacked by Byror and the Dead Edge?”

Solitaire’s face fell, which didn’t satisfy me in the slightest. Just made me feel more…Nothing. 

“Yes, I am.” He said at last, bitter in an instant. I wasn’t naive enough to think he was that irritated to have been robbed of his bragging. No doubt, he could sense exactly what and how I was feeling. It was one of a million brilliant things about him. And it was wasted, like all the fucking rest.

“So you think we have few enough realistic possibilities for our new situation that we can plan for all of the likely ones from here.”

Solitaire nodded. “Already started planning.” He shrugged. “And I reckon, if the worst comes to pass, we should expect some kind of attack. We’ve been kept safe until now by the optics of one noble attacking another, even indirectly, but your deal with Wilskasai, our growing effectiveness in the tournament, and the big display we’ve given everybody of our tool steel among other things…I reckon there’s a chance we’ve made ourselves too big of a problem to ignore.”

I wanted to blame him, but that would’ve been unfair. Even if Solitaire had been the only one attracting attention, and he certainly hadn’t, there was every chance of Byror and his cronies eventually moving against us anyway. We’d had no choice but to strengthen ourselves. 

“When do you think your projects will be finished?” I asked. Solitaire scowled, that way he always did when a problem had the audacity to confound him. 

“Depends. I need more mercury, and I think the alchemists in this town have slowed their sales to us specifically because of Byror.”

“Leave that to me then.” I replied, finding another stab of anger at the revelation. That bastard had his tendrils everywhere, and he seemed not to ever tire of using them to fuck us over. “I’ve made one impossible deal lately, reckon I can manage at least a few more.”

Besides, we were talking about probably more than a few dozen people. There were always a handful of cowards in any group of that size, and we’d suddenly found ourselves with no small amount of weight to throw around. 

“So we all have our nice little jobs then.” Solitaire smiled, practically dripping with sarcasm. “Let’s get to them. There’s still a few things I can work on while I wait on the mercury, at least, and the rest of us could use some R and R in any case. Big day coming up soon, right?”

His eyes flickered to Beam, who seemed suddenly to have graduated from mild disquiet and into full-blown fear over the duration of our conversation. I couldn’t blame him. As intimidated as I’d been watching the King of Blades beat someone capable of going sword-to-sword with a Spacemarine, I didn’t have to fight the bloody bastard. 

“Big day coming up.” Beam croaked, nodding, and taking his leave. Arthur headed out after him, moving with a bit of a limp. The King hadn’t hurt him that much, but nobody could take hits like that and not come out with a few bruises. A quick Appraisal told me he’d lost a point or two from most physical stats, which wasn’t a surprise at all. 

Perhaps one day I’d start being unbalanced, when people around us got hurt. But I reckoned we’d still not become powerful enough for that sort of complacency just yet. And I realised, then, that we maybe never would. 

Not if things went wrong over the next week or two.