The duellist separates from his entourage to approach the knight and Alex Wong. As he descends into the sand, a fresh set of rookie armour replaces the one destroyed by the soldier in the preceding duel. His bearing is casual but somewhat stiff and woozy, as if he’d just flopped out of bed in the morning with a hangover.

  Sets of weapons pulsate around him through a quick warmup configuration. Most spectating are awestruck by the fluidity of the tools resulting from their increased mastery. The erratic glances of the duellist, once used to coordinate their positions, are no longer as necessary, allowing him to cast a friendly look out through the swarm upon the two Offworlders being approached. This, combined with a present lack of physical interaction with the weapons, creates a false impression of autonomy. His tools seem to shadow him like a crew hyping him up and pampering their fighter before the big show, a mace behind begging to massage out the deep knots of a shoulder, a knife ahead—around the location of an opponent’s jugular—offering to open up the tap and pour their thirsty champ a cup. Nobody—at least nobody in the stadium—notices that their performance has declined, their pattern simplified and their average number reduced.

  The duellist brings with him the crowd’s collective eyeballs, too. Only now does anyone register Alex Wong’s private interactions with the knight. This sparks a flurry of questions. Some notice—or recall—that the knight’s sword is a cheap imitation of Worlddrinker; this duality, for the few curious enough to ever ponder it, has been explained previously as the knight being one of Alex Wong’s many fans, who sometimes imitate the ex-Tyrant’s weapons and appearance. The glaring hole in this explanation becomes evident now, seeing that the two are visibly hostile to each other. Others note—or recollect—the companionship between the knight and the duellist over the previous fortnight, another fact never adequately explained, and they wonder if the answer might’ve been through a mutual acquaintance with Alex Wong.

  A thorough investigation of these questions would eventually reveal the knight’s tale, but, as it is, curiosity has arrived too late, and nobody will be puzzling together the full picture before the last duel is decided. The closest to an explanation are a team of intern analysts working for the tournament’s commentators, who’d tasked them after the knight’s previous upset against the pro of researching the darkhorse contestant. Much of the necessary evidence is gathered before them: speeches by the knight accusing Him of larceny and swearing vengeance for the dead, footage of a public fight where the duellist and the knight hashed out some of these issues. It is theoretically possible that the interns could project this material onto stage—onto tyrant one and tyrant two—and recognise the true shape of the drama shared across them, if not completely then enough to prompt the commentary team to raise the relevant questions for the hundreds of millions listening, amongst whom some genius schizophrenic might deduce the answer. This is possible. Alas, it won’t be happening because the assistants have paused their research to feast on a mystery-meat platter wheeled in by a blue-moustached chef.

  The duellist has himself noticed the odd acquaintance. Nevertheless—with his concentration elsewhere, too—this invokes no more curiosity than Alex Wong’s coffee-stained royal outfit or suspicious glowering.

  At least, such indifference impedes the duellist at the lower layers of the design. There is, detected by nobody except fate, another, much older, much more calculating intellect that now shares his brain, an intellect that has long ceased to be a human. This other thing perceives all the drama and has done so for many days or, depending on how one reckons the time, centuries. This other thing comprehends the setup for its younger version’s ‘fate’, and it sees a thousand trivial methods of intervention. But, mysteriously, it’s given no indication of wanting to assist. Why not? Fate could guess at answers—a mature indifference to duelling, a protection of itself from exposure—but these are only guesses. The thing has adventured to a depth inaccessible to external reconstructions.

  These observations passing in a blink, the duellist re-equips the mask of affability as he joins the other two.

  “Good work on bolting shut The Gate!” he congratulates the knight, missing the prophetic irony of The Gate persona originally being his own. “You have the full gratitude of my bank account. The odds weren’t quite as profitable as the Frogster, but, still, it’s been a decent swindle.”

  His remark is reported to the crowd through unofficial channels listening in. This prompts a wave of friendly booing.

  “Sir Henry bet on me…” Justinian struggles to reconcile a chivalric aversion for gambling as a vice with his recently inflated image of the duellist as morally-faultless exemplar.

  “Nah, I bet on my own brilliance as a visionary and a teacher. So, my last-surviving student, how are you feeling? Not too nervous? I’d tune out the crowd and just pretend it’s another friendly skirmish.”

  “My worry’s not the crowd,” replies the knight cheerfully, forgiving the gambling as an issue beyond his lowly moral comprehension. “The worry’s my next opponent. Legend says he might be invincible.”

  The duellist waves a caught hatchet dismissively at these supposed claims of invincibility. “Don’t count yourself out yet. If my memory serves, your next opponent has asserted from the start that this format is an Achilles' heel. He could lose it.”

  The duellist has indeed prophesied his own fate repeatedly. However, neither he nor the knight interpret the admission now as anything but humbleness. The duellist, when first expressing the danger, had been more so imagining an obsessive, hyper-specialised veteran, much like the soldier just defeated. What’s more—a fact not known to others but crystal clear between themselves—their recent sparring record as teammates has become one of monotonous victory for the duellist, whose few losses are attributable to experimentation and handicaps that won’t be repeated on the final stage.

  A sceptical, more cautious mindset would raise the counterpoints negating any confidence in the above: the duellist only won his previous match due to its unconventionality, his issues in this format not conquered but circumvented, and the knight—who’d also had a lopsided record against the defeated pro—has been the beneficiary of a continuous rise in performance as he adjusts to the new shield gifted by the duellist. As it is, the duellist—coming off a victory against a death god and inflated by this to contemplations of cosmic-scale battles—is no longer able to contract his focus back to these subtleties in the comparatively tiny matter of an amateur tournament. To him, this doesn’t even qualify as a duel. It is rather a dull, half-asleep, meaningless breath between duels.

  “Is that so?” says the knight, unsure if he’d ever heard of this Achilles' heel but welcoming the encouragement behind the admission. “I guess I shouldn’t give up yet - maybe God will pull another miracle.”

  The duellist grits his teeth between a wince and a smile. “No gods, please. Not this round. I’ve had enough of them for one weekend.”

  The wince is a lie. Behind the truer half of the smile, his heart has leapt twenty beats at the transcendent proposition. There’s nothing more he desires than for another god to step into the ring with him, right now. Fatigued or not, it doesn’t matter. Prepared or not, it doesn’t matter. He, unlike those cowering in high places, is invincible, and every slip he makes is just a blessed chance to relax the body and contemplate the next assault upon their hallowed altitude. If they want to descend and roll with him down here, that’s even better. He is as much a creature of the flatlands as the peak. If they seek him at his lowest, he will teach them his lowest. They, too, will never sleep again. They, too, will spend the rest of their brief existence watching over their shoulder in anticipation of the coming knife.

  These, to clarify, are the internal ravings of the younger mind. The more ancient thing has already returned to hibernation.

  The other third party to this conversation, Alex Wong, listens to them talk about defeat with horror, hearing the ironic destiny missed by both the duellist and the knight.

  He begins to fume inarticulately, his arms flapping madly at the crowd in a bid for sympathy. Who amongst them could believe the audacity? These two conspirators are openly describing their plot against him and the sword! Unfortunately, Alex Wong is alone in this comprehension, and he remains alone as, pacing insanely, his mind tumbles through a tangled vortex of responses and imagined counter-responses.

  The other two watch this abrupt frenzy but immediately dismiss it. The duellist is indifferent at all levels. The knight, meanwhile, accepts that this figure who’d once held him in an obsessional rage has always been this way, a clown beneath both contemplation and contempt.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  The knight’s tale.

  --The Butcher (rising from a trench filled with blood, an arrow falling from the clutches of his armpit): All praises to the lord, I have been saved and reborn, and so has been the tale. How fare you, good customers?

  --Stooges #1-2 (still dead): …

  --Stooge #3 (still weeping after watching his brother get eaten by a bear, which has since been speared to death): …

  --The Butcher: You’re all on the money. We shouldn’t keep interrupting the tale with too much idle chatter. Right, so our knight, after gaining magical abilities and a sword of legend, is finally off to avenge his dead master.

  With vampire powers, with vampire sword,

  Our knight of gold pursued his cause,

  Enacting finally revenge

  Against the king who’d slain his friend.

  By cloak of night, he sallied forth,

  Onto the Westland’s capital,

  To find Gutkonig fast asleep,

  And sentence him for heathenry.

  But, odd, as marched he to the gate,

  Another knight would cross his way.

  --The Butcher: Warmooge adds some commentary here hypothesising over the identity of this second knight. I’m going to omit it because the character is mostly irrelevant, the fellow dying later to a random dart. It’s probably a fabrication for comedy. With me, good customers, you will only be sold the truth - the truth and the lowest-priced blackmarket eatables guaranteed!

  They wore a suit as blue as sky

  --Stooge #1 (imitated, talking from a leftover fragment of smashed ribs): Sky blue? This yarn’s in Togavi, right? That’s that Jocko Karnon.

  --The Butcher (whispering paranoidly): Quiet down, good customer. Don’t be so loose in uttering the name of that cursed Jocko.

  And swung a sword uniquely fine,

  Its blade cut from a glassy sheet,

  Diaphanous as insect wings,

  --Stooge #2 (imitated, severed arm pointing at Butcher): Diaphanous? Doesn’t that mean translucent? Butcher bro, isn’t that your stick: the glass scimitar?

  --The Butcher: A mere coincidence. There are plenty of counterfeits in circulation these days, as we’ve seen with the knight’s current sad sabre. Continuing on the weapon that’s not my one:

  A fragile thing but razor sharp,

  Which later seen sliced bones in half.

  --Stooge #1 (imitated): Bro, that’s what your sword did.

  --Stooge #2 (imitated): Jo's a big fat Lionel.

  --The Butcher: Scimitar – mine is a scimitar, not just a sword. An essential distinction. The narrative would surely have mentioned this unique quality if they were one and the same. Please, no further comments. You’re running up the survival clock on your poor leader.

  That scimitar was drenched in blood,

  Which Worlddrinker on passing drunk,

  This knight of blue on that effect

  Stopped our good knight and to him said.

  “Justinian? Is that you, Sir,

  The golden knight by evil cursed,

  Who gave five dragons their defeat

  And saved more maidens’ chastity?”

  Our knight, on mission concentrated,

  Spared minor nod to greet this stranger.

  Yet as he tried his path to go,

  They clutched his hand and whispered low,

  While dragging him, with strength bizarre,

  Off to a nearby cattle farm.

  “Wait, wait, wait, don’t tell me, knight

  That deadly look, that deadly blight,

  That deadliest of vampire swords,

  Are they directed at this lord?

  At Gutkonig, that pagan jerk,

  Who in the league of Satan works?

  Have marched you here to render judgement,

  And free us from his heathen gov'ment?

  Our golden knight replied, “Correct…”

  While by this stranger tightly clenched.

  “But how is it, my unknown man,

  This secret past you understand?

  My quest, its purpose incomplete,

  Has to no soul on earth been leaked,

  Yet speak you of my private ends,

  Like one with God’s omniscience.

  --The Somali: My temptress of the truth, the bard misses this throughout the tale, but, by my reading of this and the immediate scepticism, Justinian might be aware, behind the character, that this other ‘knight’ is—

  --The Butcher: Whoops. I didn’t mean to read that comment. Warmooge’s just giving more extraneous information on this side-character. The knight continues, I promise, to be quite irrelevant. Justinian's unnecessary scepticism continues:

  And how fix you my knightly arm,

  By which five dragons have been harmed?

  And what, before these mysteries,

  Is first your name, your god, and liege?”

  The stranger knight, in greeting gesture,

  His anonymising helm divested.

  “I have, good sir, no titles feared,

  But call myself The Knight Satyr,

  For born was I of marriage gross

  Between a human and a goat.”

  The knight’s revealed head appalled,

  With human face, yet monster horns.

  --Stooge #1 (imitated): Oh, horns, that’s definitely Karnon. The Earthfriend antlers.

  --The Butcher: Silence, please, I’m begging you, my noble but careless customer. A third repetition of that malefactor’s name might just summon him…or, worse, the cops that always hound his tail. We don’t need those soul-deflators here. Continuing on the anonymous knight:

  This bestial look had extra taint

  From flesh and eyeballs sickly pale,

  Recalling in their morbid hue

  The curse that ailed Justinian’s crew.

  “My God is yours, as is my might,

  Arising from unwanted blight;

  My name to you won’t be recalled

  Because too late I joined the cause,

  While you were in the highlands fasting,

  Entreating prayers for cure unanswered.

  --The Butcher: See, he’s just a fellow knight errant, a long-lost member of the gang.

  --Hooligan Leader (shouting for assistance, a stray mastiff barking after sniffing out their location underground, a squad preparing magic to shoot into their hole): Karnon!

  --The Butcher (sprinting over to the distressed leader, snatching up the dog, sprinting away): Just an anonymous lamb in Christ’s flock!

  --Hooligan Leader: Karnon! Really?!

  --The Butcher (petting dog): The Christian friend continues:

  As for my loyal liege, I vouch,

  It’s not the good knight’s hunted lout,

  Gutkonig no more my companion,

  Than he was yours or our monastic’s.

  If words, these easy things to fence,

  Are not sufficient evidence,

  I have a gift you’ll find superb

  That proves that fiend I couldn’t serve.”

  --Hooligan Leader (screaming as the flames enter to consume their body into ash): Oh, fuck you, Kar—

  --Stooges #1 (imitated, worried): Jo, did we just flip the quest?

  --The Butcher: Not at all. Number 3’s still alive and crying under the wagon of the bio-weapon.

  --Stooge #3 (pausing his tears when he hears a strange gurgling in the besieged wagon above him, the vehicle beginning to hum and glow, the alchemists tinkering inside cheering victoriously): ….

  --The Butcher (lying): Nice, task one complete – your team have practically scored the sword! Continuing:

  The knight a blood-soaked sack produced,

  And pulled from it his morbid proof.

  This on inspection seemed to be

  The severed head of Gutkonig,

  Whose kingly teeth were rigor clamped,

  Whose kingly eyes gazed dull and blank.

  --The Somali: This Togavian king lives still. [Fragment lost from The Butcher coughing] must have made a counterfeit to dupe the clown knight and lead him astray for his prank.

  The Satyr Knight, this prize in grip,

  Recalled his own deeds chivalrous,

  A crusade done in parallel,

  From seeking cures to touring hell,

  From crafting his transparent sword,

  Which was from dragon boogers forged.

  This day, before our knight could come

  And slay the Westland’s ruling scum,

  His horn-haired brother’d trot ahead

  And severed first Gutkonig’s neck.

  “Then why,” Justinian asked the satyr,

  “Do suffer we still from our ailments?

  If Gutkonig, the source of sin,

  Has by your scimitar been snipped,

  Then shouldn’t our malevolent hex

  Be from our Christian features shed?”

  The Satyr Knight responded sadly,

  “A man is done, but not our battle.

  King Gutkonig, my sword has chopped,

  But he was just a villain’s prop.

  On threat of blade, this head confessed,

  Twas not himself that capped our friend,

  Betruger, Lover of The Book,

  Nor he that our affliction cooked.

  Behind this wicked master first,

  A second more malevolent lurks,

  An emperor, both source and spring,

  Whose shadow rule waits banishing.”

  Our knight, who soon this fiend would fight,

  Will not His evil name recite,

  But all his sobriquet do know

  Which chills the hearts of goodly folk.

  His fortress from here floats not far;

  Across the bay on island dark.

  His bankvaults hoard our global treasures,

  And he wields today a stolen weapon.

  They travelled to His land by boat,

  With sails of motley leathers sewn,

  Which billowed flush with magic winds

  Sustained throughout their pilgrimage.

  Sea monsters tried their ship to sink,

  But knights and swords would amply drink;

  Leviathans, and flying sharks,

  Giant octopodes whose suckers clasped,

  A school of fish, and turtles, too,

  All Triton’s horde, the two knights slew.

  Their swords, such copious blood did shed,

  That across this world’s three continents,

  Beach-farers saw in stark surprise,

  Their shores immersed in rising tides.

  --The Butcher: Warmooge in an extended comment describes searching through news reports to no avail, concluding this to be one of the tale’s fictional embellishments. He vents his frustration by wishing similar unnatural calamities upon the infidel knight when he’s destroyed in the Maalinta Qiyaamaha, the blessed day of judgement.

  Through monsters slain, his strength improved,

  And Satyr Knight, of hand and hooves,

  Gave coaching extra in techniques

  For combating the shadow liege.

  Our knight learned tricks for wasting guards

  And secret infiltration paths.

  Of quickness, chaos, and surprise,

  The Satyr Knight most emphasised,

  For in this triple threat, he told,

  Awaits a clueless tyrant’s faults.

  They reached, after their ocean quest,

  The isle of He with name unsaid,

  Both knights encased in salty crust,

  Yet blessed with Christian swords unrust.

  When sighted they Chayoka’s shore,

  They on a reef their boat did moor.

  Their sally thus began a swim,

  Through miles of waves and jellyfish,

  Yet tougher than this zapping swarm

  Was the thick armour they’d adorned.

  Whose heavy steel almost them gave

  The Emperor Frederick’s buoyant fate.

  Both soaked, both stung, our two knights stealthed

  To infiltrate His citadel.

  Their maps, supplied by brother goat,

  Snaked starting from a hidden cove

  Through tunnels underground that fed

  Right to The Tyrant’s boudoir bed.

  --The Butcher: At last, good customers, our hero’s journey brings him into an epic confrontation with Him.