The Eighth Excalibur

by Luke Mitchell

  “Prepare yourself for battle, Nathaniel Arturi, and do not give in to despair. All of humanity may well be counting on you. I will return as soon as I can.”

  The jiggle and wooden squeak of the back door opening cut through the night before Nate could answer. He whirled to find Kyle’s rotund silhouette in the doorway, with Marty craning over his shoulder.

  “Yo, Batman, you want a light out here?” Kyle called.

  The yard lights flashed on before he could say no, incandescent illumination spilling across the damp grass in time with the panic spiking through his chest.

  “Nate?” Marty called somewhere far away, as Nate whipped around to hiss at the Merlin to take cover. “You get lost, man?”

  Nate was too busy gaping at the empty space before him, the words stuck in his throat.

  The Merlin was gone. Again.

  “Were you talking to someone out here?” came Marty’s confused voice.

  “Talking?” Kyle said. “He looks like he just got caught consorting with demons.”

  Confused, mildly relieved, and more than a little frazzled, Nate turned back to his friends. “You guys just caught me by surprise, okay? It’s just me and Copernicus out here.”

  Just a man, his corgi, and his Excalibur, apparently arrayed against the entire Troglodan armada—and worse—in The Quest for the Holy Beacon.

  Ahh, and what a glorious quest it could be.

  “Could being the operative word?” Nate muttered quietly enough not to be heard by the others.

  That depends…

  On whether he could get his shit together and stop sniveling?

  Precisely.

  This was starting to get weird.

  Do try to refrain from sniveling about it.

  “Let’s wrap it up, little guy,” Kyle called from the porch, where he’d sank to haunches and was reaching out toward Copernicus, his breathing marginally elevated from the effort. “Daddy’s gotta come play Battle Royale with his squad like a responsible roommate.”

  Battle Royale.

  The thought almost made Nate laugh out loud. Only ten minutes earlier, he’d been fully intending to call it a night on the crazy and join his friends in the living room, reasoning that he’d tried his best for the day, and that none of this was going to be for anything anyway if he let himself slide off the deep end and lose his mind. But now…

  How could he even think about taking a video game break after what the Merlin had just shown him? How could he do anything but dive headfirst into… into what, exactly? Bonding with the Excalibur? Finding the Beacon?

  Saving the entire goddamn planet from death by aliens?

  Nate stared numbly at the house, wanting nothing more than to run inside, chug a beer, and sweep all this crazy shit under the rug until he could re-examine it in the light of day.

  I believe that is what you humans call cowardice at work.

  “You coming, buddy?” Marty called.

  Nate realized Copernicus had joined his roommates on the porch, and they were all waiting for him now. Three concerned stares and one wagging tail.

  “Go on in,” Nate said. “I’ll be there in a sec. Can you just get the light?”

  Kyle frowned. Marty looked like he might protest. Then Zach called something from the living room, and the three filed back inside, leaving Nate alone in the cool night air. The yard lights flicked off. From the darkness, he watched through the back door window as his friends collected their drinks from the dining table, shared a happy cheers, and shuffled back into the living room to resume their happy lives. Nate stood completely still, feeling adrift in the darkness. Completely alone.

  Not completely.

  That, at least, caught him by surprise enough to halt the negative spiral. Then Copernicus appeared in the kitchen window, happily panting out into the darkness after having apparently found a way up onto the kitchen counter. He put one little corgi paw against the window, and that did it.

  In that moment, Nate very nearly could’ve cried—for what, exactly, he couldn’t have said. No more than he could’ve said what the hell he was going to do about the galaxy-sized mess staring him right back in the face.

  What the hell was there to do about any of it?

  Prepare yourself for battle, Nathaniel, came the Merlin’s voice in Nate’s thoughts. Prepare your body. Prepare your mind.

  Nate stood there in the dark, thinking it over for a long time.

  He’d prepare himself, he decided. Starting tomorrow, he’d do whatever it took. He’d start training. He’d learn from the Excalibur—ask it every question he could think to ask. Maybe even play friendly, if he could. But first…

  He slid his phone out of his pocket and woke the device, the loose threads of a plan beginning to form in his mind.

  First, he needed to make the only sensible call one could make after everything he’d just learned.

  16

  The Iron Man

  With the occasional exception of the odd last-minute group project meeting—and one briefly lived attempt at “getting his shit together” junior year—Nate had rarely had cause to venture to the barren wasteland that was campus on a Sunday morning. To say the place was dead might’ve been a slight overstatement. Students were in evidence here and there. It was just that most of them looked like they’d left their better, thinking halves at home in bed, right where they sincerely wished they still were with them.

  Last minute group project meetings, Nate guessed. And probably a few soon-to-be failed attempts at getting respective shits together. College life at its finest.

  He trudged past the curved overpass bridge of the IT building, glancing across to the bioengineering building—wondering, as he so often did, where Gwen was and what she was doing—and reflecting that he probably wasn’t in any position to be judging anyone alive at this hour as he continued on toward Rec Hall, bound for his first official workout in… well, pretty much ever, as his dear mom had been quick to point out when he’d called her on the issue of funding his broke ass for this apparently highly questionable extracurricular.

  Of the two monumentally awkward calls he’d made last night, he still couldn’t decide which had been the more embarrassing.

  “Did you say a gym membership, sweetie?” his mom had asked on the phone in clear bafflement, reaffirming Nate’s every doubt and hesitation about his audacious new plan.

  The Excalibur had practically cackled with derisive delight.

  But at least she’d eventually agreed to foot the bill—after, of course, running Nate through the entire treacherous track of the Mom Gauntlet.

  Is this about a girl, honey? Because you don’t need to change a thing to impress anyone. You’re perfect just the way you are.

  Oh, well is it bullies, then? It’s okay to turn to a teacher for help, Nathan. I don’t care if the cool kids call you a narc rat, or whatever it is.

  Oh, well… are you sure it’s not about a girl, then?

  He was half-surprised the Excalibur hadn’t blown a fuse or pulled a sword muscle or something as Nate had calmly reminded her that he wasn’t in high school anymore, thank you very much, and that he really just wanted to start taking better care of himself.

  And sure, he wasn’t positive that preparing for battle actually rightly belonged in the taking care of himself column, no matter how much exercise was involved, but at least it had sounded good. A hell of a lot better than anything he’d managed to crap out in the call that had preceded it.

  In hindsight, he still wasn’t sure what he’d been thinking, calling the National Security hotline to report a goddamn alien invasion.

  Not that he’d been so careless as to come right out with it. He’d tried to play it carefully, tried to get patched through to someone up the chain of military intelligence—someone who might actually be a position to do something about the imminent invasion.

  Instead, he’d gotten Roger, loyal DHA call center operator. Roger who, bless his heart, had at least pretended to take everything N
ate was saying seriously, right up until he’d realized that the aliens Nate had started talking about a few sentences back were not in fact of the undocumented immigrant variety. It had all gone downhill from there. For the first time in his life, Nate had actually resorted to the old I need to speak to your supervisor chestnut—which, it turned out, didn’t actually work for matters of national security.

  Nate had been written off as “one of those Area 51 nuts,” briefly scolded for clogging up their precious call lines, and promptly hung up on. He’d sat there fuming for a good fifteen minutes after that, trying and failing to come up with a more useful plan than writing them a strongly-worded letter suggesting that they amend their hotline slogan accordingly: Your calls can make a difference. (Unless it’s about aliens. Yes, the outer space kind.)

  Shame on him for trying to do the responsible thing.

  Stymied by the powers that be, Nate had done the next best thing he could think of, and called his mom. And so it was that he found himself standing at the Rec Hall gym sign-in desk at 8:58 AM sharp, shifting uneasily beneath the moody judgment of the Excalibur, and the equally flat and unamused stare of the curly-haired desk attendant. Because if Uncle Sam wasn’t going to step in, at least he could pump some iron in the delusional hope that he might turn into some kind of magical King Arthur superhero, right?

  Stop it. He was almost surprised to realize the voice in his head was his own, and not the Excalibur’s. You’re here. You’re doing this.

  Worst case scenario, he wasted a few hours and ended up a slightly less pathetic version of himself. Maybe. Even that much was kind of hard to imagine under the stare of Judgy McJudgerson behind the desk, there.

  “Sorry, are you guys, uh, open already, or…?” He glanced off in the direction of the sounds of whirring machines and clanking plates within, wondering if he’d read the schedule incorrectly online.

  “They’re regulars,” she said, as if that fact were self-evident. “Sometimes they slip in a few minutes early.”

  “Right…”

  Nate had been surprised to see the facility didn’t officially open till 9 AM on Sundays, having always figured gym-goers were the sorts to get started early, even on the weekends. Apparently even fit-fam college kids needed their hangover sleep.

  It wasn’t like anyone was training to save the world or anything.

  “Well, uhh…” Nate said, holding his freshly charged ID card up. “Any chance I can slip in now?”

  She rolled her eyes and gestured toward the card reader with a demeanor that suggested Nate’s audacity was causing her significant personal detriment. He swiped the card, aware that a few burly early birds had just piled through the door behind him, and eager to be on his way.

  The card reader gave an indignant squawk that was quickly taken up as an indignant stare from the desk girl. So maybe the gym charge hadn’t gone through to his ID, after all.

  Wonderful.

  This is degrading.

  “How do you think I feel?” Nate whispered under his breath.

  Behind the desk, the girl turned from whatever she was doing on her computer to shoot him a shameless crazy guy look.

  I meant for you. I do not care what these petty meat sacks think.

  The desk girl gestured to the card reader again. All too aware of the growing line behind him, Nate swiped with a small prayer. The light flicked green, and he hurried past the desk with a muttered thanks.

  “Well, that’s good for you, buddy,” Nate said quietly, glancing back to eye the stream of the Penn State Beautiful-Jacked-People Club sweeping in through the open doors now. “Because I have a feeling we’re about to be rolling in the degradation.”

  Maybe coming first thing in the morning had been a mistake.

  He’d hoped he might beat the crowd and get a chance to start figuring out what the hell he was doing in here without a few hundred eyeballs waiting to see him fail. But now here he was crashing the party with the A-Team, and he was pretty sure the odd looks he was drawing couldn’t have all just been in his head.

  Maybe it was just the shiny black eye he was sporting. But he was still half tempted to come back later anyway, as he watched the new arrivals disperse amongst the free weights and the rows of pristine machines with an air of familiar routine, pausing only to say hi here, or shoot Nate a disapproving look there. Even if it was busy later, at least Nate could blend in with all the other sorry-ass weekend warriors fumbling their way through their workouts in their half-hearted attempts to work off the beer and pizza.

  If you are intimidated by these children, Nathaniel, you might as well go home now, and not come back.

  Nate started to open his mouth, then decided that, seeing as the Excalibur seemed to have no trouble reading his thoughts, he should probably nip the whole talking to himself in public thing in the bud. Well, THAT guy looks like he could bench press a car, he thought carefully, so forgive me if I’m feeling a little shy.

  A single unarmed troglodan could easily slay ten such men.

  What little victory he felt at the success of the silent communication was quickly buried by the unbidden memories of the troglodan’s ferocity in the park. Is that supposed to be encouraging?

  I simply preferred the time when your ancestors grew stronger by crushing the skulls of their enemies rather than playing with shiny hunks of steel.

  “Yeah…” Nate muttered, eyeing one of the empty squat racks at the far end of the row, and mentally running through the basics of what he’d read online. Well, I’m fresh out of enemy skulls to crush, so I guess this’ll have to do for now.

  The Excalibur didn’t see fit to reply as Nate crossed the escalating battlefield of the gym, trying not to make eye contact with any of the aggregating bro clans staking claim to their machines and weight stations along the way. From the far corner ahead, where another rack and lifting platform were half-tucked away behind a divider wall, there came a low, clattering thud Nate felt through his leg bones. Then another. And another.

  It sounded like the freaking hammer of Thor at work, and as Nate reached his target squat rack and caught a glimpse of the guy doing the lifting, the analogy only felt more appropriate. The guy was wearing a worn PSU sweatshirt, and he looked older from behind. He wasn’t a walking mountain of muscle like some of the others in here, but he looked plenty damn strong as he hefted a heavily-loaded barbell up from the floor and stood to his full height, the bar dangling from his hands with so much weight on either side that it was actually bending.

  A deadlift, some corner of Nate’s mind remembered. That was what the articles had called a deadlift.

  A freaking huge deadlift.

  It must’ve been over four-hundred pounds on the bar. Nate didn’t have time to count the plates and try to figure it out before the sweatshirted thunder god lowered the weight back to the platform with a low thud.

  “Holy shit,” Nate whispered, focusing back to the rack ahead before the guy could turn around and catch him staring.

  That one may be admirable for a human, but such a feat would be nothing for a true Excalibur Knight.

  “Well something tells me I’d still better start with just the bar anyway.”

  The Excalibur said nothing as Nate stepped into the rack and up to the empty barbell, checking its height against his chest, like the articles had said. It said nothing at all, but Nate could feel its silent judgment stewing all around him.

  The articles all said to start with just the bar, he thought.

  I am well aware, the Excalibur replied. I read and indexed every one of the articles you are citing in the time it took you to think that.

  Nate wiggled his fingers and scrunched his face in what he hoped was an understandably sarcastic sign for, Ooo, look at me and how smart I am. Then he remembered he was in a public space, and he crossed his arms, glancing furtively around to see if anyone had noticed.

  Do you know what I noticed? the Excalibur asked.

  No, but I’m sure you’re about to tell—
>
  THESE ARTICLES WERE NOT WRITTEN FOR AN EXCALIBUR KNIGHT.

  “—Me,” Nate finished aloud, dipping down to check his shoelaces in a wasted effort to hide his flinch.

  They are written BY sad meat sacks, FOR sad meat sacks. Are YOU a sad meat sack, Nathaniel?

  “I think we both know your answer to that question,” Nate muttered, standing back up. He gripped the bar and stepped underneath, resting it across his back like he’d seen in the videos. Now can you keep it down in there? I’m trying to focus.

  Yes, we wouldn’t want you to hurt yourself.

  One of the Beautiful Jacked People walked past Nate’s rack, frowning at Nate like he was a crazy person. Which, given what he’d just been saying out loud, was fair enough. As if to add insult to the Excalibur’s injury, the Bro eyed Nate’s empty bar and relaxed, moving on like Nate was simply too scrawny to reach the threshold where crazy actually became concerning.

  Nate ignored them both and unracked the bar, standing straight and taking a few steps back with it nestled across the less-than-substantial meat of his shoulders. It felt uncomfortable. Not heavy, necessarily. Just foreign. And as he gathered his thoughts and tried to descend into his first ever squat, the discomfort only multiplied.

  Things wobbled. Others stretched. Others found themselves in positions they couldn’t remember having ever been in before, and didn’t seem to believe they had any business being in now. Nate tried to keep straight all the mental cues he’d read about.

  Hips back.

  Chest up.

  Knees out. Out where?

  Grip the ground with your toes.

  He nearly fell over at that one. But then he caught his balance and rose, feeling at least marginally in control. He tried another squat. And another. Each one feeling weird and wrong—but slightly less weird and wrong than its predecessor.

  How fortunate that I took the time to heal your ankle for this.

  I’m trying here, Nate thought, completing his fifth squat and carefully stepping the bar back onto the rack hooks. He looked down at his ankle, wondering at the Excalibur’s words. His ankle was surprisingly pain free at the moment. Underneath the sweats, he knew he was still rocking some pretty gnarly bruises, but—