208 A Favor
208 A Favor
Of course I hadn’t come here just to get my ass kicked.
I came with the full intent of doing the ass-kicking myself.
Plans, however, had a way of unraveling the moment you underestimated the wrong people. And Kingdom executives were very much the wrong people.
Pain still rang through my skull as I reacted on instinct. I grabbed the Fool’s cane mid-motion, fingers tightening around polished wood just as he teleported away with a mocking laugh, the weapon left behind in my grasp. I didn’t hesitate.
I drove the cane downward, phasing it with intangibility and aiming not for where Knightess was, but where her head should be. Telepathy and empathy gave me the rough outline of her neural mass. It was dense, alien, but still centered where a brain would normally reside.
The cane pierced.
Knightess erupted from the ground in a scream that vibrated through the street. The tip of the cane jutted from her eye, dark armor cracking as she clawed her way upward. Flames exploded from her hair, not metaphorical now but literal, a roaring storm that washed over me in heat and light.
She grabbed me.
Her arms locked around my torso, crushing, and burning. I phased instinctively, letting the fire pass through me, and seized her arm, trying to peel her skin away from bone with intangibility.
Nothing gave.
Her density was obscene. Compressed to the point where even my technique and power couldn’t find purchase. I couldn’t rip her apart. I couldn’t even tear muscle from frame.
So I disengaged.
I slipped past her burning form and sprinted straight at Maestro. I didn’t want to kill them. That thought flashed through my mind with surprising clarity as I ran. I just wanted them away. I tried to sink into the ground to reposition.
My powers slipped again. My stomach dropped. Someone was suppressing me. It was nullification, but not across the board. It was selective. One channel at a time. I couldn’t rely on intangibility, but my Enhancer and Biokinesis ratings still answered, my body moving with practiced precision as I adjusted mid-stride.
Maestro clicked his tongue.
“Such a lack of elegance,” he said, baton sweeping in a smooth arc.
A single note flew toward me. There was neither space to dodge nor angle to exploit. I could tank it, but I just had to time it right.
I blinked and suddenly I wasn’t there anymore.
I stood on the rooftop of a distant building, the city stretched out beneath me, chaos unfolding like a living organism. My heart hammered as I turned sharply, already preparing to retaliate, only to find Perry beside me, one hand gripping my shoulder.
“What the hell were you thinking?” he snapped. “You could’ve died.”
I exhaled, steadying myself.
Below us, Qilin and Golem were still locked in combat, tearing through buildings like children smashing toys. Qilin had fully shifted now, his body resembling a dragon forced into human proportions, scales rippling as lightning crawled over his frame. I’d seen that form before. It was back at the docks in Markend, when the sea was yet to activate his powers in full as he tried to kill me in this form.
Urbanite players were streaming in from the skyway, throwing themselves at the Kingdom capes with suicidal enthusiasm.
I turned back to Perry quickly. “Knightess,” I said. “Her body’s too dense. I don’t think she even has organs in the conventional sense. Don’t bother attacking her. We won’t make a difference.”
Perry frowned. “Why does that matter?”
“Because she’s not a priority,” I replied. “You are here to extract Qilin and Snap, aren’t you? Clearly, you didn’t plan for things to escalate this way. Now, Maestro next… he’s almost pure telekinesis. I’d bet ninety-nine percent primary. No real secondary or tertiary traits. He’s dangerous, but predictable.”
My gaze hardened. “The Fool is the real problem.”
Perry tilted his head, waiting.
“He’s not just nullifying powers,” I said carefully. I couldn’t explain everything, not without revealing far too much such as my Biokinesis rating. “Every time he activates whatever it is he does, my thoughts slow down. It’s like my neurons misfire. He’s lowering intelligence, or processing speed, or something adjacent to that.”
Perry went quiet.
With my particular combination of abilities, intangibility foremost, I could usually resist nullification to a degree. Fool was different. He wasn’t shutting my powers off so much as sabotaging the mind using them.
Perry’s expression turned thoughtful as he looked back down at the battlefield.
I understood, at least in theory, that the four factions of Lockworld existed in a state of strained peace. According to Qilin, that balance had been fraying for some time now, threads pulled too tight by ambition and paranoia. The problem was never ideology alone, but information. Or rather, the lack of it.
No faction truly knew the full extent of the others’ powers.
Urbanite was notorious for hiding its executive-level capes behind layers of noise and disposable players. Candyland did much the same, masking its real strength behind Candy Beasts and spectacle. Foresthome and Kingdom, ironically, were the most transparent. We had intelligence on the four capes now tearing Coomer Street apart precisely because they didn’t bother hiding. They didn’t need to.
Golem was proof enough. He had already grown to three times his original size, absorbing concrete, steel, and wreckage into himself until he resembled a walking disaster more than a man.
The observations I’d given Perry weren’t idle commentary. They were leverage. Knowledge of powers, of limits and priorities, was the real currency in Lockworld. I hoped that by showing him I could contribute more than brute force or recklessness, he’d ease up on me.
“I’ll pin down the Fool,” Perry said after a moment. “You’re free to do whatever you think is necessary.”
I smiled faintly. “I can make them retreat.”
His expression hardened. “Don’t get ahead of yourself.”
Then he vanished.
Perry’s teleportation range was formidable, and his speed even more so. I had no doubt he could reach Fool. Whether he could contain him was another question entirely, but that was a problem I couldn’t solve from here.
Instead of diving back into the chaos, I turned away.
I focused inward, tracing a thread I’d noticed earlier. It wasn’t psychic, not exactly, but it was undeniably artificial. It was something sustained by a power rather than a mind. A tether, faint but persistent, stretching away from the battlefield like a spider’s silk.
I followed it.
A few blocks away, the street grew quiet.I stopped in front of a tall, abandoned building, its windows dark and its entrance unguarded. Inside, dust coated the floor, and the air smelled old, unused. I climbed the stairs at an unhurried pace, each step echoing faintly, until I reached the middle floors.
That was where I found them.
A woman with red hair sat calmly on a polished chair, a small table set before her with a porcelain tea set, steam curling gently from a cup in her hand. She wore a Victorian-style dress, immaculate and utterly out of place. Beside her stood an old man in a tailored suit, a monocle perched over one sharp eye.
The moment he saw me, fury twisted his face.
He disappeared.
The old man reappeared an instant later, moving with speed that bordered on elegant. His hand struck toward my neck, fingers rigid, moving like a blade. His hand phased straight through my body, surprise flashing across his features.
My hand was already at his throat.
I reached deeper, letting intangibility bite where it mattered, and seized his spine. He froze instantly, body locked in place, breath hitching as the reality of his situation caught up to him.
Before I could speak, issue a threat or demand an explanation, the woman set her teacup down with a soft click.
“Please,” she said gently. “Stop.”
Her voice was calm, unshaken. When I looked at her, her eyes were bright and clear, unclouded by fear or malice. My Empathy reached out reflexively, brushing against her emotional state, and what I felt there was disarming. Sincerity. Concern. An almost unsettling purity.
“I don’t want anyone to get hurt,” she added, folding her hands in her lap as if we were having a polite afternoon visit rather than standing on the edge of violence.
I hesitated, my grip still firm on the old man’s spine, suddenly aware that this person was far stronger than she looked and my suspicion that she was the head-honcho of the Kingdom capes that came here. Of course, I didn’t think like this without basis. As part psychic, I could gauge someone’s abilities by there mind alone and I could tell this woman before me was more than she appeared to be.
“I’ll let him go,” I said calmly, my fingers still resting where the old man’s spine met consequence. “But if he tries something like that again, I won’t guarantee he walks away alive.”
I released my grip.
The old man staggered a half-step forward before catching himself. I straightened his suit without asking, brushed an imaginary speck of dust from his lapel, and patted his shoulder as if we were old acquaintances. He recoiled and retreated to the woman’s side, posture stiff with restrained fury.
“A proper introduction seems overdue,” I said, taking a step back to give them space. “You can call me Eclipse.”
The old man snarled. “How dare you lay your eyes upon my lady’s noble visage, you—”
I tilted my head. “Are you senile, or just that eager to die?”
His jaw snapped shut. His eyes burned, but he didn’t move.
“I won’t make the same mistake twice,” he muttered.
“Eustace,” the woman said gently.
At her voice, the tension in him visibly eased. He bowed his head, though his glare never fully left me.
“Behave,” she continued. “You are no match for him.”
I raised an eyebrow. “And how exactly would you know that?”
She studied me with a calm and appraising gaze that swept from my posture to my eyes, and to the way I stood without favoring any angle.
“I have known you,” she said at last. “In another world.”
I frowned. “You’ll have to elaborate.”
She lifted her teacup again, unhurried, as if the city outside wasn’t tearing itself apart. “Most capes who fall into this place assume they all come from the same world. The same timeline. That is… incorrect.”
She took a sip.
“There are many worlds,” she went on. “Many timelines. SRC did not conquer one reality. It harvested dozens. Perhaps hundreds. Capes who meet here often mistake familiarity for coincidence.”
Her eyes returned to me. “You are new. I can tell. This is the first time I’ve seen this version of you.”
“This version,” I echoed.
She nodded. “I knew you where I came from. You were an old man there.”
That caught me off guard.
My homeworld was delayed, nearly a century behind most of the others. I knew that much. Different versions of me should have existed, yes, but they should have been either long dead or altered by circumstances extreme enough to preserve their youth.
Light came to mind.
In his memories, I had seen him fighting versions of me who looked just as young as I was now.
The woman watched my expression carefully, as if gauging how much had just clicked into place.
“I apologize for Eustace,” she said, setting her cup down. “His loyalty often outruns his judgment.”
The old man bristled but remained silent.
She inclined her head toward me with elegance in every motion.
“My name is Cordelia.”
Cordelia glanced at her butler.
“Eustace, a chair.”
The old man stiffened, shot me a venomous look, and vanished in a blur. He returned moments later with a polished chair, setting it beside Cordelia’s with exaggerated care. The scrape of wood against concrete was sharp enough to count as a statement.
I sat, leaning back just enough to appear relaxed.
“Your power is strange,” I said. “Back there, when I clashed with your capes, I paid close attention to Knightess. It didn’t take long to realize she wasn’t a person at all.”
Cordelia did not react, though the corners of her eyes sharpened.
“She was a construct,” I continued. “Or something close to it. A power given form. The real cape was never Knightess. Instead,it was you, standing comfortably behind her.”
I turned slightly toward Cordelia. “How did you do it?”
“I would rather not answer,” she replied without hesitation.
Sitting beside her, I weighed possibilities and came up empty. I wasn’t sure I could defeat her if things turned hostile. I had seen powers in this world twist into unfamiliar shapes from Houston’s out-of-world mutations to Gameboy’s grotesque game-layer over reality, but Cordelia represented something else entirely.
I wondered, briefly, what she might have been capable of at her prime, without Lockworld’s power suppression.
Cordelia set her teacup down and turned her full attention to me.
“What do you want?” she asked.
I didn’t bother dressing it up. “Withdraw your capes. Urbanite is mine.”
She regarded me for a long moment, then smiled faintly. “I don’t care about Urbanite.”
My brow furrowed before I could stop it.
“But,” she added, rising from her chair, “we will leave.”
She turned to Eustace. “Inform the others. Full retreat.”
The butler vanished again, faster than before. When he returned, he bowed.
“It is done, my lady.”
Outside, the destruction began to quiet. In the distance, I saw Golem’s towering form recede, his bulk collapsing inward as he moved away from the battlefield. The pressure hanging over the street loosened, as if the city itself had exhaled.
Cordelia stood.
“That’s it?” I asked, incredulous despite myself. “You’re just leaving?”
She paused, then glanced back at me.
“You may consider it a courtesy,” she said. “Or the settling of a debt to an old face. See, I owe a lot to old Nick, though I doubt you’d ever measure to his fingernail…”
I frowned. “What do you want in return? Let’s stop playing games. I hate leaving debts unsettled.”
She took a step away, then stopped.
“It would please me,” Cordelia said softly, “if you were to kill Gameboy.”
She met my eyes. “If you do, I will look upon you favorably.”
I hesitated. “What was Nick like in your world, for you to offer me something like that?”
For the first time, her composure wavered.
“He was like a father to me,” she said.
My chest tightened. “What happened to him?”
Cordelia turned away. “He died insane, fighting the Entity. I know, it’s a pathetic end.”
She said nothing more.
Eustace took her arm, and in a blur of incredible speed, they were gone. The building fell silent around me, leaving only dust, broken glass, and the echo of a favor I wasn’t sure I wanted to repay.