Anker was in a real pickle. The guards' blades were at his throat and, once he had finished his theatrical monologue, also Clesbius pointed one of his two pistols at his head. Anker felt unable to utter even half a word. The tone of his voice alone could have set off the anarchists.

  “Let's get to the point, Anker. What brought you here?” Clesbius asked in a placid but mocking tone.

  “Don’t be hasty to jump to conclusions. Regardless of what my name or identity is, I really intend to join your cause and – ”

  “Cut the crap. You were sent to the Horn of Morghorou to retrieve Viryl of the White Gale's Exoplion. A difficult target for us, since it's protected by Radios of the Shining Sun, that straight, pompous, incorruptible pain in the ass. But then you were supposed to go back to Leopolis. Why did you come to Corlona instead?”

  “The mission failed because someone interfered and stole the Exoplion we were after, so I felt like letting loose a couple of days before returning to headquarters.”

  “I told you not to bullshit me!” Clesbius exploded.

  “But it's the truth!”

  “Frankleon, do me a favor,” Clesbius said, handing Frank a needle with his free hand, “Take this enchanted pin and prick him. Maybe pain will make his tongue looser.”

  Frank obeyed his master’s orders and vehemently stuck the needle into Anker's right shoulder, then returned to his place. An unrelenting burning ache engulfed Anker's arm and chest, and he couldn't help but cry out in pain.

  “Why don’t we try again, now? You and the other knight... let me check – ” Clesbius trailed off as he leafed through his dossier, “Here, Madja of the Raging Torrent, were supposed to go back to Leopolis after completing your mission. Though you certainly didn't do so, because our men are still waiting for you at the Cerisia crystalway station. You know, if you had managed to retrieve White Gale’s Exoplion, there would be an ambush waiting for you on the way back. So I ask you again: why did you come to Corlona?"

  “Do you think it's enough... to make me talk... you numb nuts? I get it, you know? You need me alive,” Anker panted, trying to resist the excruciating pain.

  “Are you trying to stall?”

  “Do I? Let’s say I do… we do. The only person who can reveal our plan to you is me… what are you gonna do, Kill me? You need to know what I know and there’s no way I’m gonna talk,” Anker rambled.

  “Oh, if you think two fresh-faced kids can sneak into the Wolves' lair and get away with it, you're sorely mistaken. Corlona is our city, Sanchiria our land. Not a leaf moves without our consent.”

  “Big words... yet I managed to sneak in here... under your nose. You’re a joke, a miserable rat.”

  “Well then, you brought it on yourself, kid. It could have been far less painful, we could have ended this with just one bul – ”

  Clesbius's words were interrupted by an unexpected boom, which seemed to have come from above. All the men in the room jumped up like springs. Clesbius immediately tried to regain control of the situation, “Don’t get nervous. Probably some idiot in the workshop has just blown up a can of black powder or somethin’.”

  “It seems it came from above,” one of the guards observed.

  “Oh, for Lazul’s sake! Then go check the control center to make sure our base is not under attack,” Clesbius ordered, pointing at the guard on his left.

  The guard drove away his sword from Anker’s neck and sheathed it, then left Clesbius’ office through the back door, behind the desk.

  As if nothing had happened, Clesbius resumed the interrogation. Anker continued to unnerve him with vague answers, wavering as if the needle's nociceptive amplification spell was still having an effect on him.

  While playing dumb, Anker tried to focus on a way to make his escape.

  Anker knew that the general rule was this: a knight without an Exoplion who faces a knight with an Exoplion is a dead knight.

  However, as for common folks wearing Exoplia and playing at being knights, that was a different situation. Being grafted with a Symbjorm didn’t make them knights.

  An Exoplion was just a multilaminate chest plate, whose innermost layer was coated with Fuligine Stone and whose sternal core consisted of a Memory Crystal in contact with the last layer. The data stored in the Memory Crystal could be read by the Symbjorm and transmitted to the user's nervous system, making the usage of the recorded spells spontaneous. However, there was a big difference between knowing a spell and applying it in a real-world fight. Knights took years to master the use of an Exoplion.

  The only two spells recorded by default on every Exoplion, from basic to gold, were "Ethereal Armor Summoning" and "Ethereal Weapon Summoning". As for ethereal armors, they were certainly lighter and more tenacious handmade ones, but structurally they had the same critical points. The more mobile the joints were, the more they left uncovered.

  Knights were well aware of this Achilles' heel and trained to scale back the feeling of invincibility that came with the release of the Exoplion's devastating sympathionic field. Being unfamiliar with it would overwhelm the user with a sense of well-being and omnipotence.

  Anker had prepared for the eventuality of facing an enemy in ethereal armor, and had hidden a throwing knife in the sleeve of his tunic. He had only one shot, which had to be precise and fatal.

  The opportunity arose after a few interminable minutes, when the guard sent to check on the situation returned in a panic. “Clesbius! Clesbius! There's hell breaking loose! We need you!”

  “What the hell are you babbling about?! What do you mean?!” Clesbius bellowed, turning around and giving Anker his back for a moment.

  It was enough.

  With a lightning-fast snap of his forearm, the knight hurled the enchanted dagger into the joint between Clesbius's helmet and gorget. The parabolic trajectory of the dagger was precise thanks to the “Guidance” spell, and the blade embedded itself between the epistropheus and the third cervical vertebra of the enemy, sinking in like butter thanks to the “Corrosion” spell. Despite the Exoplion's regenerative abilities, the blade was stuck in the spinal canal, making it impossible to restore the continuity of the spinal cord. Clesbius’ consciousness faded and the Exoplion deactivated.

  While the scene unfolded under the astonished gaze of the anarchists, Anker deflected the blade that was still at his throat with his left hand and threw himself belly-first onto the desk.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  Clesbius's ethereal armor crumbled, revealing his vacant eyes and agonizing expression, and Anker rushed to rip the chest plate from him.

  The guard behind Anker, recovering from the unbalance, tightened his grip on his weapon, and while Anker struggled with the chest plate straps, he rushed to stab him three or four times on the ribs, loins, and thighs. Anker ignored the pain and the feeling of suffocation and finally managed to detach the Exoplion.

  Frank, realizing what Anker was trying to do, rushed towards him, but it was too late. Anker was already leaning the Exoplion on his chest.

  He had won.

  An incredible force surged through every fiber of Anker's body, and thousands of new concepts began to rush through his brain. The four lacerated wounds on his back healed in a matter of seconds. Clesbius's armor, black and trimmed in purple, light as silk and harder than steel, wrapped around him like a drape. The two large-caliber pistols that had just been pointed at his head materialized in his own hands. Anker had never felt better.

  So many possibilities had just opened before his eyes!

  Anker launched himself into the air with an advanced anti-gravity spell and crouched on the ceiling. He realized that he had ten different types of projectiles at his disposal to experiment with his new weapons. He chose to use paralyzing projectiles.

  He fired both weapons simultaneously, aiming at the guards' abdomens. The Exoplion's mental enhancement spell guaranteed two clean shots fired with precision and a steady hand. The wounds were not lethal, but the two enemies were knocked backward and collapsed instantly, with all the muscles in their bodies reduced to mush.

  Anker twirled to the ground and turned to Frank, who was already preparing for the fight, but lowered his weapons and made them vanish.

  “You have to get out of here, now,” Anker warned him.

  “Do you think I'll let you get away with it without even fighting?!” Frank yelled, and without warning cast the “Firecracker” spell on Anker. It was a basic spell, with little or no offensive potential, nothing more than a warm-up exercise for newly grafted academy students. Anker deflected it with a flick of his hand.

  “Frank, I’m serious. If this place has a secret escape route, and I’m sure it does, take Nika and run before it’s too late. This isn’t a trap. I’ll stay here and not follow you,” Anker said.

  In response, Frank shot three more firecrackers. Anker then began to advance on him. The three firecrackers bounced off his armor, veering off their trajectory. Frank pressed himself against the wall, and Anker stood a yard away.

  “When I tried to shoot you this morning, I saw your force shield,” Anker said. Then he raised his hand, and with the “shatter shield” counterspell, he dispelled the invisible bulwark Frank was trying to protect himself behind. “You know, ‘force shield’ is the second spell we learn at the academy. The counterspell to break it is the third. But that wouldn’t even have been necessary if I’d shot you with the ethereal guns. I told you already and I'll tell you again: the knights of the Order are beyond the reach of amateur magic users.”

  “Fuck you!” Frank yelled, and after grabbing Anker's helmet he cast the spell “static spark”. Anker didn't even try to defend himself, he simply punched him square in the cheekbone.

  “Listen to me, idiot. My colleagues have received a detailed layout of this place from the automaton I activated when I came in this morning and in all likelihood, they are already razing it. They will reach the room where you keep the Exoplions and take one for themselves, and then they’ll be dangerous for real. You must leave immediately, possibly taking a route that my bug wasn’t able to discover. They are not like me. They have no scruples and don't particularly care about human life. You must not cross them under any circumstances,” Anker said.

  Frank put his hand to his cheek and his eyes turned red. A few tears of anger appeared. He shouted, spitting in Anker's face, “And then what?! What will we do, where will we go if this place is destroyed?!”

  “Listen, the only thing that matters is that you and Nika get out alive. Ferlonia has already taken too much from you. You are now grafted, and your abilities can be useful to many in the Free Communes and other kingdoms. Wherever you decide to go, you will find a way. I don't want you to die here.”

  “Damn!” Frank yelled and pulled up with his nose. Then he moved from his corner and headed towards the front door of the study, the one they had come in through.

  “Finally you've made up your mind, Frank. I'll try to intercept the others and distract them. For God's sake, don't waste any time.”

  “Alright, Anker. There's a hidden corridor behind a shelf in the first-floor pantry that we can use. But know that this isn't over between us, you cowardly bastard,” Frank said through gritted teeth, spitting out his resentment like poison.

  Frank reached for the doorknob, but before he could turn it, the back door of the study creaked open. The stone floor at his feet crumbled to dust, and a dense cloud of debris engulfed him. Frank began to struggle, but the debris compacted into solid rock with him in the middle. His blood and viscera splattered everywhere, along with his dismembered limbs dancing. His eyes bulged out of their sockets from the internal pressure.

  Anker, completely caught off guard, turned and looked over the desk. Kalira stood in the doorway, returning his gaze from within a flaming orange ethereal armor, waving a war hammer in her right hand while holding her pelvis with her left.

  “What a cocky little bastard he was. I've been listening to his moronic babbling since this morning,” Kalira sighed. Then she strode across the room, retrieved the Symbjorm bag on the desk, and from her open helmet spat on Frank's entrails.

  “Go explain to the residents in hell what your other tricks up your sleeves are, you sacrilegious piece of shit,” she added, imitating Frank’s voice.

  Anker put his hand to his mouth and suppressed a gag reflex.

  “I was skeptical, but I must admit that your automaton idea was a great find, Anker. These idiots had hidden almost all the Exoplions in a small room on the top floor, and the surveillance around the tower was really poor. They didn't think anyone would attack them from there. All we had to do was jump up, open a breach, grab one Exoplion each, and clean up all the rooms coming down. I see you've been busy too though,” Kalira observed with pride.

  “Actually, I barely escaped with my life,” Anker hedged.

  “We did everything we could to come and give you a hand as soon as possible,” Kalira replied, stepping over Frank's pile of organs. Then she opened the front door of the study, now all streaked with blood splatters, and said, “Let's go and rejoin Bersept and Geltram. They're already heading for the first floor.”

  Kalira and Anker retraced their steps through the narrow, intricate corridors of the base towards the first-floor hall. The more peripheral and isolated rooms were as silent as the central rooms, which until a few hours earlier had been teeming with noisy and busy anarchists. Now there were only a few still-warm corpses left, horribly mutilated.

  One of the most dismembered and tortured bodies was Follyhox's, which lay with those of three other warriors, much less defaced than his. These four bodies were piled up just in front of the service door of the hall, and it was easy for Anker to guess that they were trying to defend with a last line the non-military personnel who must have barricaded themselves in the hall.

  And so it was. The hall was also full of corpses. Some catering staff, infirmary staff, Urchibond included, and logistics staff, a total of over a dozen people, had been brutally murdered. Geltram and Bersept, also wearing ethereal armor, were cheerfully helping themselves to liquor at the hall bar.

  As soon as Bersept saw Anker enter, he raised his glass of cognac towards him and said, “I must admit, that the chick who tried to take you under her blankets this morning was quite a hottie. Let me tell you, you missed a good chance not boning her. But anyway, cheers for leading us here!”

  Hearing Bersept's welcome, Anker took a closer look at the corpses. Nika was among them. Her neck was broken and her white shirt had been torn open, revealing her soft, well-proportioned breasts. Her red rusty eyes were wide open. There were no other signs of violence on her body.

  Anker had a visceral desire to kill Bersept right then and there. He vividly visualized the image of his fist smashing through the glabella of that calf's head and then spattering its pink brains, and beginning to pace it back and forth, as if he were fucking the skull, while his big brown eyes with thick black lashes watched him blankly, wide open like Nika's.

  “Now all we have left to clean up is the entrance and the stables, and we're done,” Geltram announced with satisfaction.

  Anker's vision was interrupted, brought back to reality by Geltram's words. There was little point in losing his cool. In the first place, if he had attacked Bersept, he would have been outnumbered three to one. Secondly, his three fellow knights, rationally speaking, had done nothing that was outside their duties: of course, they had perhaps taken the liberty of carrying out a slightly too cruel repression, but all in all the code was clear. Those who undermined the kingdom's constituted order were to be executed, even summarily.