Sages of the Underpass

by Aaron Michael Ritchey

They ordered.

  “So, do you guys just race trains, or do you spar?” Niko asked.

  Pax rumbled laughter. “Oh, we spar, you’ll see.”

  That seemed the end of it. Niko was left wondering what it might mean.

  Danette frowned. “We cut off early tonight. We should still be training.”

  Pax sat back, arm stretched behind Evelyn. “Eating is like training. Like Evelyn ate some concrete.”

  “It was delicious. But I want to talk about Niko. He’s been holding out on us.” She’d washed the blood off her scalp. She was a little pale, but other than that, she seemed fine. She was so small and thin, it was easy to forget how tough she was. And the fact she’d used her Second Study to reach through the train to get to the ribbon? Niko had never heard of such a thing.

  All eyes went to him. He did have things to talk to them about, but it wasn’t this weird Inversion thing. “I’m as baffled as you are. But I’ve been feeling more... feeling people’s prana and sharira. I know, that should just be Awareness, right?”

  “That does make sense.” Evelyn stared into his face. “But you didn’t grow up with your core like how it is. When you fought in high school, you were fine, weren’t you?”

  “Yes.” Niko wasn’t sure he wanted to say more. He’d only just met these people. He wasn’t about to spill his life’s secrets to them.

  “So what happened?” Pax asked.

  Danette waited on him. They all did.

  Niko reached for his coffee. “It was an accident. I’d rather not talk about it.”

  Evelyn was obviously too curious to back off. “Wochick saw it and didn’t say anything because you shouldn’t have any Radiance to your core, but you do. You used Inversion. You swapped just a bit of my prana into my sharira. I wasn’t out completely. I felt it. If you could practice that, it would give you a devastating advantage.”

  “So what happened, man?” Pax asked.

  Niko didn’t answer.

  Pax chuckled. “Okay, we’ll all go around and tell a deep dark secret about ourselves. I’ll go first. I love women, a bit too much.”

  Danette rolled her eyes. “That is not a secret. We’ve known that all along. And really, Niko doesn’t have to say anything he’s not comfortable with. But if we’re talking secrets, I used to live in the house by the Underpass. It’s my fault my family lost it.”

  “That’s a half-truth,” Evelyn said. “There’s more to it than that.”

  “There is,” Danette agreed. “What’s your secret, Evelyn?”

  Before she could answer, Pax rattled off a bunch of her secrets for her. “Evelyn’s mother was famous. And Evelyn’s a kindergarten teacher. And she has insomnia. Evelyn, not her mother. Does your mother have insomnia?”

  “So unfair,” Evelyn said. “And no, she doesn’t. I’ve been sleeping better, if you must know.”

  Niko looked at the two. Pax and Evelyn seemed like just friends. But they could be dating. He wasn’t sure.

  It was his turn. “I can’t keep both critique groups going. Things in my family have changed.”

  Really, they’d stayed the same. Another brother had bailed out of the family business. That was old news. In the end, Niko had told his parents that Pete was in trouble and wouldn’t be home for a while. Niko said he’d take over Pete’s shifts, which meant longer hours in the Fix-It Shoppe.

  His father had sighed, devastated. Worry over Pete just might kill him. As for Mamo, she knew the whole story, from the little Niko told her. She knew her children better than they did. That cold look returned to her eyes.

  It could very well mean that Pete might not be invited back into their home when this latest round of trouble blew over. He was twenty-one. Tato would never kick him out. But Mamo? She was capable of anything. She had a solid iron core. If she could channel that like prana, she could easily win the Unum at the Grand Tournament.

  “You’re gonna keep this group, right?” Pax asked. “You’ve seen what we’re doing, how badass we are. Or are you chasing the agent dream?”

  “It’s a nice dream,” Evelyn said. “But that’s not the secret I wanted to get out of him. I want to know what happened to his prana.”

  Niko was saved by their meal, breakfast for dinner, since the South Valley City Inn had questionable meat loaf and the fried fish didn’t smell right.

  Eggs, pancakes, bacon, and the rest. Danette got a big bowl of fruit and egg whites. Niko regretted his waffles. He had to start eating better. He was losing his gut, but not fast enough, and every fight at this point was key.

  Then there was Bonnie to consider. He wanted to look good for her.

  Pax started shoveling in a big beefy omelet. “You’re welcome to do what you want, Niko, and I know doing both is ideal, but that doesn’t seem like an option. We’ll be here, regardless.”

  “Henry never came,” Niko said.

  “He didn’t,” Danette said.

  Henry and Seo-yun were still at the Premiers. And since that group didn’t share much of their personal lives, Henry never asked Niko about the Sages.

  Evelyn wasn’t going to let it go. “Why is there Radiance in your prana? Was it a daemon? It had to have been a daemon. Or did you fight someone that tried to do an Inversion, and maybe, somehow, their prana mixed with yours?”

  “It was a daemon,” Niko admitted. The Premiers wouldn’t talk about their pasts with each other. The Sages were different. There wasn’t that BS competition keeping them apart. “I run into a lot of daemons where I work.”

  “At the Fix-It Shoppie,” Pax said. “Got it.”

  Evelyn and Danette ate, making eye contact, giving him their attention.

  Fix-It Shoppie. Like how Teddy referred to it.

  “My senior year in high school, about a month before I graduated, I got a call in North Devil’s Edge, on the East Oak border. A woman called in the daemon. She lived in this junkyard, and she couldn’t get a handle on it. I went, thinking it was a mid-level cambion, maybe something worse.”

  The memories came back, sharp, painful. He’d been sick of high school, feeling bad about dropping Teddy, and so in love with Taylor Sebastian. And there was the pressure of winning, since he had to prove himself to both college recruiters and to the Battle Artist agents. Getting a contract from a big corporation had been a definite option for him. He’d leave high school to become a Division One Battle Artist. Of course, Tato and Mamo wanted him to get an education first, which meant Division Two. He’d even considered the military, since the Division Three league also had recruiters out talking to high school students.

  Niko had gone to the Devil’s Edge junkyard after school. An acre of crap surrounded the woman’s little house: piles of TVs, old refrigerators, any number of radios—boom boxes, they used to call them—and a few cars.

  “It was this shadow, in a shed, and I caught it. It nearly torched my Whitney, but I caught it.” The daemon had been made of darkness, not silvery, like most of the daemons he’d caught over the years. The Whitney unit had nearly exploded. At the last minute, he’d daisy-chained another unit to help with the containment.

  “The woman paid me. I took it home. And I tried to cycle it. I did cycle it.”

  They had all stopped eating, listening to him tell the story. It was hard for him, and they all felt it.

  Pax winced. “You could’ve sold something that powerful. Did your parents find out?”

  This was where the shame and guilt came in. “They did. I mean, I couldn’t hide it from them. They found me in my room, half-dead, my prana in pieces, and they took me to Wochick. I had to tell them what happened.”

  “This explains it,” Evelyn murmured. “That daemon, it had Radiance energy to it. It cracked your core, but then repaired it with its own energy. That’s why you have such strong Radiance.”

  “I’m Harmonic with Radiance, naturally,” Niko said. “Couldn’t it be that? You guys are fighting using Harmonic techniques.”

  “We are,” Danette agreed, “but we don’t
have your natural ability. We have to work hard. We have to cycle hard. We have to optimize our Harmonic abilities. We’ve been experimenting with some tinctures. This is different, Niko.”

  “Hold on,” Pax cut in. “So what happened? I mean, you stopped fighting, obviously. But what else?”

  Niko wasn’t about to go into the whole Taylor part of his story. This was enough of a confession for one day. “I lost a belt, lost my Second Study, and went back to a Mercury Belt. That was the end of my fighting career. Wochick thought I was lucky to be alive. He made it clear I wouldn’t have a chance if I fought again.”

  Wochick always saw the worst in everything.

  Not Taylor. She’d insisted that he keep working. She’d never stopped believing in Niko.

  Danette touched her fork to her fruit but didn’t eat. She eventually put her fork down on her plate. “You’re free to do what you want, Niko, but your other critique group is not going to encourage you to use your Radiance Study. They are going to say you can’t master any other techniques than your Innate Harmonic Sign. You were crippled once. Don’t let this other group cripple you again.”

  Gooseflesh broke out over Niko’s arms. Danette had spoken the truth. But how could he leave the Premiers when another shot at an agent might never come?

  He needed to confirm Evelyn’s suspicions. Did the powerful dark daemon somehow give his core Radiance energy? Could he get Wochick to really look?

  “I ask you again,” Danette said. “How much of yourself can you surrender to your Art? Not to your dreams, not to your own ego, but to your Art?”

  It seemed Niko would have to give up everything he’d ever been taught.

  The Moneymaker

  ANDREW MET BARTON HENNESSEY at the restaurant at the bottom of SoulFire’s corporate offices. Five stars, thank you very much. Barton was trying to get an appointment with Monique Lamb, but she was beyond busy, as every good CBA should be. Andrew had heard rumors that the Chief Battle Artist had only fought in some Division Two lesser-known schools and wasn’t much of an Artist. He supposed the title really had more to do with publicity than actual fighting, and yet, a part of him didn’t like that his company’s CBA wouldn’t survive five seconds on the tiles.

  Barton was on the phone with someone, and he held up a finger. Andrew had to endure sitting there, waiting, while he ordered drinks and food. He tried not to listen, but that was impossible. Barton was on with someone from the League of Battle Artists. The conversation had to do with the new BCBA being a Division Four qualifier.

  When the agent finally shut off his phone, he was smiling. “Well, we got it. The BCBA will be hosting at least one Division Four qualifying event. It might not be this year, but the BCBA has a big future. Let me call Matthew.”

  Andrew didn’t like being put off, once again, and he ordered another glass of wine. Either Barton was comfortable enough for him to be an asshole to Andrew, or Andrew’s status was meaning less and less. Andrew figured it was the latter.

  He had the level-five cambion, still in the containment unit, and he’d been talking with an apothecary in the City, one not on SoulFire’s list of approved providers. No, Dr. Wolfe was into some shady stuff. The apothecary was working on a vape for him, a way of doubling the cambion’s power. That much prana would push Andrew into the upper belts—Neptune, Caelus, maybe even Saturn.

  There were risks, however. He could burn out his prana or crack it. Cycling powerful daemons was dangerous enough, even under an apothecary’s direction. That, and Wolfe said that the tinctures could become addictive. It wasn’t exactly prank, but it sounded close enough.

  Throughout his life, Andrew had controlled his wine intake. He’d controlled his lust, for the most part, so what was a little eJuice compared to those things?

  He might not need that in any case. Not if their next project came together like he hoped. He ate through his prime rib and asparagus quickly, a bit too fast, and maybe a bit too angrily.

  Barton, finally, got off his goddamn phone. “Sorry, Andrew. Matthew’s excited. And he’s fine with whatever we decide.” The agent laughed. “And I’ve decided. For the next Quarterly Con, we’re going to do traditional Artists versus the Unrepresented.”

  Andrew gulped his wine a little too eagerly. He had to wipe his mouth. “You’ve decided. Luckily, we’re both in agreement. Do you have Artists in mind?”

  “The Premiers,” Barton answered. “They’re wanting another chance. And if they can win, it would mean more capital we can use to get other Artists into the group. I put my name on it, put a call out, we could easily field a full Zodiac on either side.”

  Andrew shook his head. “The BCBA’s Arena Master isn’t going to be able to create an Arena that big. We could do a Triumvirate. That would be interesting for our group to see who gets to fight. Diana is out, obviously.”

  “Obviously.” Barton had ordered a salmon salad. And he dug into the meal, eating quickly to catch up. “She gave me some lame excuse, something about a sick mother, but we both know she lost her nerve. We can’t have that. It’s a game of one strike, but we’ll give her another chance. Because she’s so easy on the eyes.”

  She was. Andrew had thought about offering some private tutoring. Other women had fallen for that in the past. It was easy to go from sparring to more intimate acts.

  Barton continued, since he’d already made up his mind. Andrew didn’t much care about the matches, but he had a keen eye on his percentage of the take.

  “I like the idea of a Triumvirate,” Barton said. “We get our three best Premiers to go up against Danni Dragon and two of her merry band of misfit toys. The Sages of something or other.”

  Andrew wasn’t following. “Who in the hell is Danni Dragon?” He had to sigh. Another Battle Artist named Dragon? It was so cliché.

  “Danette something,” Barton answered, mouth half full. “You remember. She offered Niko a chance to become Unrepresented. As if that was really a chance at anything. The grand opportunity to die in obscurity.”

  “Niko Black. He’s still a part of the Premiers, right?” Andrew asked.

  That made Barton laugh. “As if he would walk away. No, Niko is smart enough to know what he needs to be doing. If only he wasn’t so compromised. And this cusp business. It’s cruel. He has the warrior’s fire, but everything else is against him.”

  “So the afternoon fight is the Premiers against the Sages. For the main event, I take the field with the best of the agented BCBAs. We go against some rabble that can’t possibly win.”

  “That’s what I was thinking. Can you work it into your schedule?”

  “Of course.” Andrew tried not to act insulted. Getting churlish with Barton, at this stage, would be a mistake.

  Barton finished his salad. “And I have a line on some of those Unrepresented Artists from the Sierra City Battle Con. This would be their shot in the big leagues. If I asked, they’d drive up.”

  “If we asked.” That came out churlish.

  “Sure,” Barton said offhandedly. “The point is, we get some new blood, we make it a spectacle, but I’m not offering representation this time. I don’t plan on going back to that well too often.”

  “Everything okay with Nance Iron?” Andrew asked.

  “Marjory is fine. She’s willing to play ball. I got her into a Battle Con in Oregon. She better win. That’s all I’m saying.”

  Winning was everything. Again, Andrew thought of the cambion and the risks he was willing to take. He had to nail down his percentage, right away, and not back down. Barton could be slippery.

  “How much does Matthew want?” Andrew kept the question casual.

  “The BCBA is officially a nonprofit, so it can’t be much.” Barton grinned like a hungry wolf. “They need to cover their costs, and Matthew wanted a piece for himself, so that leaves you and me. What were you thinking?”

  Smart. Barton wanted him to throw out the first number. Andrew was ready for that. “We divide the net in three. A third to the BCBA, Matthew
can take his cut out of that, thirty-three percent for you, and thirty-three percent for me. Only, you’ll get fifteen percent of that, since you’re my agent after all.”

  Barton waved that away. “I don’t need my fee. This is outside of our usual arrangement. I’m thinking you fight alongside Angel Ayunar and that Erosion guy, the weaselly guy. Dirk Shade, or what’s his name? He got that little deal with Anvil. Drake Shadow? He’s one loss away from trying his luck in Division Four with the rest of the has-beens and never-will-bes.”

  Drake, like a dragon. Not as cliché, but close enough.

  “Drake Shade,” Andrew said. Barton was trying to change the subject. “If you think thirds is fair, let’s go with that.”

  “Thirds? Does that make us equals?” Barton asked.

  The ice had gotten dangerously thin. “I don’t know about that. You’re more of a draw.” That was the truth. Barton wielded power, and Andrew wasn’t the superstar he had hoped to be yet.

  The economics of popularity and power.

  Andrew was going to sit quietly. He dropped his hands into his lap, let go of his thoughts, and started a round of the Duodecim.

  Barton showed his greed. “Since I’m more of a draw, I should get more, don’t you think?”

  Andrew shrugged. “I’m going to be the one bleeding.”

  “Not if you’re good,” Barton said with a smile.

  Again, Andrew didn’t say anything. He let go of his fear and his anxiety. Or at least he tried to. Barton wanted him to back down, or offer up another number, or to surrender.

  Andrew had fought too long and hard to surrender anything ever.

  Barton’s phone lay on the table. It buzzed. He picked it up, scrolled, but didn’t say another word.

  That was okay with Andrew. He had the Duodecim to keep his mind busy. He could sit there, for hours, focusing on his breath, cycling his prana, in a perfect state of peace.

  The agent laid down his phone. “Let’s make it a bit more interesting, shall we? I was thinking I’d take forty percent, and you and the BCBA can divide the rest. Matthew wouldn’t blink at thirty percent. It’s a nonprofit, we’re doing him a favor, and I want SoulFire behind this whole endeavor. I have the contacts there. It’s one of the reasons I wanted to talk with Monique Lamb.”