Paragon of Skills

The hour of the tournament, of Baal's death, is near. And yet, he's enveloped by the smell of jasmine oil and a rich perfume of saffron.

Baal stands in the doorway of an opulent room with his hands at his sides. He's been summoned through his oaths.

The room is large, with high ceilings and pale curtains drawn against the morning light. There's a long table set with fruit and chilled wine that no one has touched.

This is where Infernal Royalty comes when they visit the Academy. And everything here feels like it belongs to the Queen Matriarch. There's no trace of her spouse, physical or otherwise. It's all her.

She is standing near the window, one hand resting on the sill. The robe she wears is long, deep burgundy, cinched loosely at the waist. Her dark hair is unbound and not yet readied, relaxed. It's something you wouldn't expect given the circumstances. In fact, she looks unhurried, like she has all the time in the world.

I suppose she does, the Sacrifice thinks.

"Close the door," Maelthra says.

He closes the door.

She does not turn around immediately. She takes a sip from a glass of something pale, not wine, something lighter, and sets it down on the sill with a soft click.

"Come closer."

He crosses the room and stops the distance she prefers for conversation. He was taught this during his training.

She turns.

Her eyes look over at him like livestock. She lingers on the visible bruising.

"You look terrible," she says.

"Yes, Queen-Matriarch."

"Your oaths have been slipping." She says. "It must be the Headmaster's requirements for you to join the Academy. We had to strip the strongest bindings."

Maelthra picks up a small object from the table. He did not notice it when he entered. It was beneath a cloth napkin. The Sacrifice almost squints.

A ring seal.

It's made of dark metal, no larger than a coin. The edges seem to drink the air around them.

"The Headmaster forced many concessions upon me," she says. "I had to accept them. But not even the Headmaster is omnipotent." She holds the seal between two fingers, turning it slowly. "There are tools older than his authority."

She crosses the distance between them. He does not step back. She reaches up and presses the seal flat against his sternum.

Cold.

Not temperature. Something deeper. The cold of a thing that should not exist pressing itself into the architecture of his blood. He feels it find his pulse, latch onto it, and begin to count alongside it. A second rhythm. His heartbeat, and then, half a beat behind, the seal's.

Two pulses. His, and not his.

Maelthra steps back. She is watching his face.

His face gives her nothing.

Corrupted.

The power threading through the seal is wrong. Not Infernal. He knows Infernal and Devil's magic like the back of his hand. It was all taught to him during the time he spent in the breeding program.

This is something else. A parasite.

He was taught about this as well. The trainers in the breeding program were thorough about Evil Gods. Their methods, their marks, the particular taste of their corruption in the bloodstream. Devils can sense it. Every Blood of the Devils is built to recognize what tries to rewrite it.

An Evil God's relic.

No surprise. Maelthra has not converted. The notion is absurd. Maelthra serves nothing. She acquired a tool because the tool was available and suited her purposes.

"Four hours," Maelthra says. She picks up her glass again. Takes a sip. "You will complete your assignment, or the seal will slowly destroy your soul after killing you. The process takes about a hundred years along which your dead soul will experience the most incredible torture one can think of. Not even your likes would be able to withstand it. So, you can die a decent death or one of the most horrible ones."

She says this as if she was talking about the weather.

"The seal also carries a signature of Asmodeus to throw everybody off. I doubt the Headmaster would be so brazen to accuse me of using such a relic on you. Not even my husband knows of this." Another sip. "This should give you one last push to fulfill your duty. I don't like the way you've been looking at me. If you're scheming something, know that not even the Headmaster could save you now."

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He stands very still.

The second pulse beats in his blood. Slightly behind his heart.

Four hours.

The Sacrifice runs the calculation. It is not a long one.

There was nothing I could have done differently, he thinks, keeping his cool. This is just another day. All Sacrifices, as their names says, are meant to die sooner or later. Succeeding and failing were always the same thing.

"There is an additional task," Maelthra says. She has moved back to the window. Her back is to him. "My daughter is among the Dark Champions. You will retrieve her. Or what remains of her. Alive."

"Your Majesty, Queen-Matriarch, retrieving your daughter would interfere with the killing of Jacob Cloud."

His expression does not change.

"Retrieve," Maelthra says, without turning around. "Not rescue. Bring her away from the Dark Champions and subdue her before my guards will take her. If anyone stronger than you were to interfere, it would create problems. I know your real power. Wait for her to get weaker, then swoop in and reap the kill on Jacob Cloud and, if needed, cripple her."

"Yes, Queen-Matriarch."

"If you weren't about to perform the last mission of your life, I would be punishing you. You were trained to think. I don't like doing your work."

"I deeply apologize for lacking in judgment, Queen-Matriarch," he bows his head.

A pause. Maelthra turns her head slightly. Not fully, just enough to show the edge of her profile.

"The broken thing you've been keeping company with," she says. "I do hope she isn't watching. It would be a shame for her to see what you really are."

His hands do not move. His breathing does not change.

"That will be all," Maelthra says.

He turns. Walks to the door. Opens it. Steps through. Closes it behind him.

***

The cobblestones are uneven beneath the Blood of the Devils' feet.

He is currently walking toward the arena.

The bruising from the oaths pulses along his ribs in time with his breathing. The cold from this morning is still in his skin, settled between his shoulder blades.

The seal sits in his blood like a second pulse. He counts the offset. His heartbeat: steady, sixty-two per minute. The seal's counter-rhythm: sixty-two per minute, but lagging. The gap between beat and counter-beat is widening. When he first felt it in the villa, it was a fraction of a second. Now it is...

Getting wider.

His body is counting steps. It does this when told it is going to die. An old subroutine from the breeding program. The body inventories what it has left. He is ninety-three steps from the arena's eastern entrance.

Eighty-seven.

Eighty-one.

A fold in the air opens six paces ahead of him right when he steps into a side street to walk a little longer.

The Sacrifice's weight shifts to his back foot.

The figure straightens. He is tall, with an adult face, sharp and well-made. But the eyes are much older than the face.

His stance is relaxed, and his aura is controlled.

I can't win, The Sacrifice thinks immediately and further relaxes his posture.

"Who are you?" The Sacrifice asks with a warm smile on his face.

The Sacrifice notes the charisma on the man's face and then his dark robes.

Not a Dark Champion. But the stench of Corruption on him is incredible.

The seal in his blood hums faintly, and for a moment the two pulses align. The seal is recognizing something in this man.

"You feel it," the man says. His voice is calm. "The seal in your blood."

The Sacrifice says nothing but something shifts inside of him.

The man studies him. But it's not the way Maelthra studies him. He is looking at Baal the way you look at a lock when you already have the key.

"I am the Prophet of Asmodeus," the man says. He does not offer a name.

An Infernal.

The Sacrifice couldn't have told from his face. There's no redness, no horns. It's like this man shed everything his race made him look like.

"The seal is a Corruption Mark of the First War of Gods," the Prophet says, as if discussing another professional's work. "Applied within the last hour. Keyed to a four-hour cycle with termination on mission completion or time expiry." He tilts his head. "You're already dead. And I know that you know."

The Sacrifice stands still.

The Prophet steps closer, slow and deliberate, offering him every opportunity to react. He raises his right hand, open palm facing up, aimed at Baal's chest.

The Prophet's palm stops an inch from his sternum. A pulse of energy, clean, enormous, precisely controlled, passes from the Prophet's hand into the seal.

The corrupted pulse goes quiet.

Air comes back. Not gradually. All at once. His lungs expand fully and the difference is so stark that he realizes he has been breathing not at full capacity since the villa. His vision sharpens. The cobblestones beneath his feet have texture again. He can see the individual grains in the stone, the hairline cracks, a thin vein of quartz running through the nearest slab.

Then the Prophet withdraws his hand.

The seal snaps back.

The second pulse returns, louder by contrast.

And everything goes back as it was.

"That," the Prophet says, "is what I'm offering."

The Sacrifice looks at him.

"I have access to the deepest Infernal and Devil's knowledge," the Prophet says. "Not the watered derivatives your masters fed you. Only one man beside the Gods themselves ever knew more than I do. This seal and your oaths." He pauses. "I can break them. Every binding that despicable woman has placed on you, every chain her House has ever threaded through your blood."

The Sacrifice just observes the Prophet of Asmodeus.

"You were bred to be something extraordinary. You know this. The Infernals know this. They spent generations refining what you are, and then they spent just as long making sure you could never become it." The Prophet's eyes are steady. "I can make you what you were always supposed to be."

The Infernals did build him as a weapon. Designed him. Refined him. Trained him. Chained him. Pointed him where they needed him pointed and put him away when they were done.

"And what would that be?"

"A Devil capable of single-handedly destroying Infernal society as the world knows it."

"Right," The Sacrifice says.

Then, The Sacrifice steps to the side and walks beyond the Prophet.

He resumes his stride. The shorter stride. The compensated one. His body has re-accommodated dying.

Behind him, the Prophet stands on the cobblestones and watches him go.

"Interesting," the Prophet says, to no one.