The Eighth Excalibur

by Luke Mitchell

  It all means nothing if you cannot harness my power to find the Beacon.

  Too tired to even bristle at the chastising, Nate shambled out to the kitchen to get his breakfast and prepare for the morning’s training.

  That day, he couldn’t help but idly think he should probably go to class after the gym. He could barely bring himself to think about how seriously he was already falling behind, or what his parents were going to say when they found out he’d failed out of an entire semester. But then the Excalibur reminded him that a failed semester would be the least of his parents’ concerns when they were troglodan mining slaves, and suddenly that big database management test felt a lot less important.

  No matter what justifications he fed himself, though, he couldn’t ignore the fact that he was watching his neat little life slide into complete shit show disarray one day at a time. And the people in his life were starting to notice.

  The whispers and the odd looks from his roommates were increasing on a daily basis. They didn’t ask why Nate was all of a sudden practically living in his baggiest sweats. They’d stopped asking if he wanted to join them at the Mother Gaming Shrine in the evenings. Marty tried a few times to talk to him, but Nate didn’t have much to tell him, other than the thin lies that he was okay, and that Marty didn’t need to worry about him

  “Where have you been, man?” his friend finally asked one day. “I know you’ve been leaving before I even wake up every day, and it seems like you’ve been missing a lot of classes.”

  “I took your advice,” Nate said, barely even thinking about it. It scared him, how quickly the lies were coming these days. “Worked out a kind of independent study setup with Professor Hillman. It’s been keeping me pretty busy around the clock.”

  “Oh.” A tentative look of hope spread across Marty’s face, only twisting the guilt in Nate’s gut that much further. “Oh! Well that’s—Why didn’t you tell us, man? That’s great. What are you working on?”

  He should stop now.

  “Trying my hand at metalworking,” he said instead, thinking first of the gym, then holding up the random rune he’d idly sketched earlier, as if that were somehow proof, “but he’s got a whole slew of projects laid out.”

  “That’s awesome, dude!” Marty said, smile widening before it started to wane. “And this all doesn’t have anything to do with, you know…?”

  Nate feigned his best confused look.

  “With that night in the park,” Marty explained. “With all that weird stuff that happened. And with… you know, Gwen, and Emily Atherton, and, well, the accident. I mean, damn dude, it’s been a weird few weeks. We’re all kinda worried about you, if you haven’t noticed.”

  Nate forced a smile. It felt positively reptilian. “Just trying to have my cake and eat it too, man. You save one pretty girl from speeding traffic, and life starts to seem a bit too short.”

  What the hell was he even saying?

  He didn’t know—wasn’t even entirely sure why he was still lying to his friends, for that matter, other than out of rote adherence to what he’d come to think of as the Straight Jacket Principal. But Marty wasn’t arguing.

  His friend just inclined his head like he couldn’t quite argue with Nate’s nonsensical logic. “Well, I’m just glad to hear you’re sticking with your art. And you know I’m here if you need an extra hand staying on top of class too, right?” He grinned guiltily. “Or if you need a break one of these nights. We definitely wouldn’t mind having the full squad back in action.”

  At least that time, Nate didn’t have to force the smile, even if the result did look a bit pained. “Will do, buddy. Thanks. You’re a good friend.”

  Marty glanced at the movie Nate had muted when he’d knocked. “Guess that means I probably shouldn’t tell the guys you’re watching the new Power Rangers in here, then. They’d never let you hear the end of it.”

  Nate blew out a chuckle. “Thanks for that too, then.”

  His smile lasted right up until Marty closed Nate’s bedroom door on his way out.

  For a second, he felt the familiar temptation to just throw in the towel and go hang out with his roommates, consequences and Excalibur blackmail be damned. It would be good for his soul, and his friends deserved better than to be swept under the rug. Hell, maybe his soul deserved better, too.

  He couldn’t take much more of this.

  You won’t be taking much more of it, if you—

  “If I don’t buck up and find the Beacon,” he completed the Excalibur’s thought. “End of the world, I know.”

  Insolent cur, the Excalibur grumbled.

  Nate grinned a little in spite of himself, shifting his sketch pad around and snagging a pencil from the desk. Jarring as the constant stream of bickering and insults had originally been, in some fucked up way, it was almost starting to feel like the Excalibur was his only real friend in any of this.

  Clearly, he was losing his mind. Enough that he’d actually reverted to quietly speaking aloud when they were alone, just to make himself feel less insane about talking to the voice in his head. It didn’t help. No more than it helped sitting there every night, half-watching alien invasion blockbusters while he alternated between scouring the web for any sign of the Beacon, bursting blood vessels trying to feel its alleged call, and generally beating his head against the wall about why none of it was working, and what the hell he was doing wrong.

  You are still sniveling about what you are doing wrong. That is what is wrong.

  “Helpful,” Nate muttered, tracing the lines of the slick, rune-covered sword he’d been sketching out in tribute to his constant companion.

  He couldn’t help but think his “friend” had a point. Shiny new muscles, double the strength, and a marathon of movie “research,” from Independence Day to the complete Michael Bay collection, and Nate had yet to actually soak up a single nugget of the heroic badassitude he was after. Which made sense, he begrudgingly reminded himself, seeing as he wasn’t a badass. Or a hero.

  All it took was one look at his life to realize that.

  Even so, at least the Excalibur had bought into Nate’s training enough to begin filling him in on the larger backdrop of their situation. There was that much. Almost like his companion thought the effort might not be completely wasted on him, after all.

  Or maybe the Excalibur was just as desperate as he was.

  Bitter resentment and growing concerns of rampant schizophrenia aside, Nate couldn’t help but listen in wonder as the Excalibur told him of the grand Alliance the Merlin had long ago forged between many of the sentient species of the galaxy, uniting eldari, and gorgons, and even troglodans, just to name a few, against the unstoppable tide of some ancient evil they’d called the Synth.

  The Order of the Excalibur Knights had been born to act as a kind of glue to the whole tenuous arrangement—eight devastatingly powerful peacekeepers, chosen to lead the charge against the Synth, each answering to the Lady, and by extension, to the Merlin, above all else. And each, the Excalibur insisted on pointing out, far more noble and brave than Nate himself.

  “Duly noted,” Nate grumbled, brow scrunching in inadvertent sympathy as he etched a severe frowny brow over the ridiculous pair of oogly eyes he’d just added to the sword. “But why aren’t these other Knights all coming to help with the Beacon, if it’s really as dangerous as the Merlin said?”

  Just like that, the Excalibur took up the same surly silence it had been adopting every time Nate pried about the Merlin, and his untimely disappearance.

  “What aren’t you telling me, Ex?”

  Silence. Heavy, stinking silence.

  Merciful Sith, was he getting tired of this bullshit.

  And you think I am not? I have been hibernating for over a thousand years, Nathaniel. I do not know what’s happening out there. I do not even know that the Galactic Alliance still stands as I once knew it. You organics are hardly amenable to long term stability, so forgive me if I hesitate to engage in your pointless, sniv
eling conjecture.

  The snap of the wooden pencil in Nate’s hand was the only thing that stopped him from firing back at the Excalibur then and there. He looked down at the ruined pencil, the swell of anger subsiding by a few inches.

  “You can’t tell me there’s not some hope, then,” he said quietly. “Maybe if another Knight arrives in time—”

  If another arrives in time, you will be lucky if they do not slay you on sight and return your body to the Lady, that a more suitable candidate may be found to wield my power in her name.

  “Bullshit,” Nate whispered, without a trace of conviction.

  He sat there for some time, wanting to ask more but afraid of the answers—not wanting to spoil the small hope that, even if it came to that, and it was over his dead body, at least Earth would be safer with the arrival of a proper Knight protector. Because he wasn’t even sure about that part.

  Would they really be willing to pry the Excalibur from his dead hands?

  Was there even anything there to pry?

  Will it truly matter to you once you are dead?

  Nate swallowed, heavily rethinking that whole only real friend bit. A low whine from the bed interrupted the downward spiral.

  At least he still had Copernicus, he told himself, reaching over to scratch the corgi’s ears with a sigh. He’d gone back and forth with Emily, flipping and flopping on when they’d finally make the custody swap until it had finally become clear that Emily probably wouldn’t be going out of her way to take the dog back unless Nate went out of his way to make it happen. And screw that.

  He was still a little confused that someone, even Emily, could so readily set the pooch out of mind—even if Copernicus had apparently been an unwanted adoptee, born of Emily’s ex-roommate moving to new non-pet-friendly digs across town. Then again, after having turned down an invitation to join her out at the bars last Friday, Nate seemed to have gone from mysterious hero straight back to boring-ass IT Guy as far as Emily Atherton was concerned, so maybe moving on was simply her super power.

  That was fine by Nate. He would’ve given a thousand guilt-free nights with Emily Atherton just for another chance to see Gwen without a tyrannical Excalibur in his head, and life-or-death threats looming on the horizon.

  But hey, that was life, right? The jocks got the girls and the big money jobs, no matter what bullshit they pulled. The artists sold their souls and studied IT. The nerds took solace in their video games. And Nate?

  Nate had somehow become the bug in the Great System, throwing errors like feeble sparks in the darkness while the universe closed in from all sides, bent on his imminent deletion.

  “How did it come to this, boy?” he asked quietly, stroking Copernicus’ head. The corgi just licked his hand in a silent reminder that, however it had come to this, he totally had Nate’s back.

  It almost made Nate feel better.

  Today was going to be the day.

  Nate would’ve been lying if he claimed to know why, or how anything was actually different about this day in particular. He just had a feeling as he jogged home from the gym that morning, the early November air crisp and vibrant, his fellow students smiling as he passed—like the whole world had been ticking along all this time, and Nate had simply been too busy to notice until now.

  Maybe it was that he’d just miraculously pulled his first four-hundred pound deadlift after just under three weeks of training. Maybe it was that it barely even seemed to wind him anymore, taking the mile home at a flat out run. Whatever it was, he was surprised to realize he felt the faintest spark of hope sputtering through his inner darkness.

  Or maybe it was just the cute jogger who shot him an appreciative grin as he overtook her on Allen Street.

  Hope stirred, amongst other things.

  But hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane. Nate couldn’t remember where he’d heard that line, but it hardly mattered at that moment. Because hope, not unlike the alluring grin of a pretty girl, could also distract.

  Or so he pieced together after a whizzing something punched into his right temple and sent the world spinning.

  He was surprised to find he didn’t fall. Barely even missed a step. Barely even had time to think before he was plucking the brown, oblong something—a football, some non-screaming corner of his brain informed him—from the pavement, and whirling on his attackers with murderous intent.

  He was right in front of the Iota Nu Nu house, he wasn’t surprised to realize, and there was Todd, watching him with a quietly hateful stare from the deck swing while his pack of laughing hyenas all showered the one who’d actually thrown the ball with emphatic pats on the back.

  The thrower himself, standing with hands spread wide in dramatic wasn’t me fashion, didn’t manage more than a violently sarcastic, “Oh, whoopsie!” before the football slammed into his face, hard enough to send him staggering backward. Nate had only half-registered what he’d just done before the guy tripped and hit a window.

  Glass shattered. Curses flew.

  Nate noticed the cute jogger drawn up at the corner, watching it all unfold with eyebrows sky high. He turned away from her and kept running, ignoring the outraged cries from the INN deck, not trusting himself to hold it together long enough to apologize, or tell them to go shove it, or whatever the hell else might come spilling out in that moment.

  For some reason, he felt an overwhelming urge to cry.

  “Fuck!” he growled, turning the corner down a less public street, feeling it building like an impending vomit.

  It was stupid. Such a goddamn stupid little thing.

  “FUCK!” he screamed, swinging his arms violently through the air, wanting to go back there and hurt someone. Settling for stomping at the nearest wooden fence post, and feeling like a complete childish asshole when it have a mournful crack beneath his foot.

  He looked guiltily around, checking the thankfully quiet street, his mind calling up a memory from his childhood, when he’d seen on the news that a young boy had been mauled by a loyal Doberman, and Nate’s dad had explained to him, with that perpetually off-handed tone of his, that sometimes even a good dog can only take so much ear yanking and tail tugs before it finally snaps.

  Nate hadn’t thought about it in years.

  Such a stupid little thing. Nothing but a dime-a-dozen moment of mildly malicious frat bro posturing. Nothing to lose his shit over.

  Only he couldn’t seem to stop it now—every single problem, big and small, all crashing down on his head in a breathtaking orgy of fuckedness. A building mountain of failed schoolwork. Dodged coffee dates with Gwen. His friends’ sulky looks, and all their utter justification. The goddamned Beacon, and Air Force spies, and an entire armada of troglodans all bouncing around in his delusional head, right along with the missing Merlin, his divine Lady, and possibly the end of the Free Earth as they knew it. And those INN assholes couldn’t just leave him alone—couldn’t just be happy with their friends, and their partying, and their girls and failed algebra tests.

  Warm tears spilled down his cheeks before he could stop them.

  Today was the goddamn day, all right.

  This is not helping, Nathaniel.

  “What more do you want?!” he hissed, brushing away the tears and turning onto Irvin Ave, not particularly caring right then that the Excalibur almost sounded sympathetic, or that Mr. Humphrey was looking curiously up from his hedges down the block. “You’ve had me dancing like a goddamn meathead puppet for three weeks now, keeping me up at nights with all your horror stories and your blackmail bullshit, and you can’t even tell me why none of this is working. Why should I listen to a goddamn thing you say?”

  He stalked down the street with clenched fists, waiting for the Excalibur to fire back about how his insolent little hobbit cur ass should listen because it was the only thing that would save his backwater hovel of a planet, and because this sniveling hissy fit was nothing but another entry in the long list of reasons that this was all Nate’s fault, and not t
he Excalibur’s.

  But the Excalibur said nothing. Just loomed there on the sidelines of his mind like a resentful ghost. Nate’s phone buzzed with a text, and he unlocked it, glad for any kind of distraction.

  Gwen: “Tonight. You. Me. Drinks. Friends. Talking and—”

  The screen went black before he could finish reading. He frowned down at the phone, toggling the unlock button and giving the screen a few futile smacks when that did nothing.

  Nathaniel…

  That’s when he understood.

  He’d never tensed so hard at a single word.

  “Give it back,” he growled under his breath.

  Now is not the time to begin shirking your training.

  “Shirking my…” He huffed a bitter laugh, trembling, unable to believe the depth of this bullshit.

  We are getting close, Nathaniel. You must have faith.

  “Getting close?” Jaw tightening. “Getting close?” Throat constricting. Heart pounding. “WHY CAN’T YOU JUST TELL ME WHAT THE FUCK I’M SUPPOSED TO DO?!”

  When the scream ended, he was rocking on his feet, throat burning, hands on his knees, feeling like he’d just vomited on the sidewalk. He hadn’t meant to shout, but there was no one there anyway. No one but Mr. Humphrey down the block, and the goddamn SUV parked over behind the Hamilton Square strip in the other direction. Watching. Waiting.

  Nate threw the distant vehicle an emphatic middle finger and set off for the house stoop at a solid death march, almost hoping the Excalibur would fight back, that maybe his friends would hear the racket inside, or maybe his friendly spooks in the SUV over there, and that someone—god, someone—would have the decency to have him hauled off and committed.

  But the Excalibur’s silence had an air of finality this time, beneath the crackling sparks of its bitter… what, fuming? He couldn’t tell—no, didn’t care, he decided. Because he was done with this. Done with the secrets, and the silent treatment bullshit. Done bending over backwards just to ruin his life for this mystical quest he’d seen neither hide nor hair of since a drunk old man had strong-arm terrorized him into all of this.