The chartmaker didn’t even acknowledge my entrance as I stepped inside. His quill scratched across parchment with the speed and precision of a man who had absolutely no interest in my existence. One of his thumbs bore a stubborn ink stain, and perched on his brow was a monocle so smug it sported a tiny, perfectly useless mini?monocle of its own, like some sort of aristocratic inception.

  Why did his monocle have another monocle? That was when I knew I was dealing with the eccentric type.

  This would not do.

  Time to unleash the might of a true knight.

  I took a breath, squared my shoulders, aligned my spine the way Sir Rond had drilled into me until my vertebrae ached, and entered.

  [Heroic Entrance Activated — Audience Impact: 10 seconds]The door smmed open behind me with dramatic perfection. A breeze that had absolutely no business existing indoors fluttered the desks, sent a few stray parchment scraps skittering across the floor, and rattled the inkwells just enough to make them tremble. For a brief three seconds, the chartmaker’s hand stopped. The faintest crease of astonishment appeared between his brows.

  [Heroic Entrance — Partially Effective]Yet, I was determined to smash that feeble attempt at control. I would crush his soul so hard, I would sunder his composure with the fury of a knight denied recognition, the silent storm of a hero whose glory demanded an audience.

  I raised my hand in the most commanding, galnt arc I could manage and rang out, “Behold the path of Saint Merin! Witness the steadfast might of a knight who bends neither fear nor fate!”

  The parchment seemed to lift as though caught in an invisible current, inkwells teetered on the edge, and a few quills cttered to the floor. The chartmaker froze entirely this time. His eyes widened, his thin lips parted, and for the first time, I could see genuine uncertainty cross his disciplined face.

  It’s working. It’s working now! The man who had been impervious to the might of Maximum Intimidation has now been reduced to a shriveling heap! I shall—

  Anabeth entered.

  She burst in with the cheerful force of a spring festival parade accidentally routed indoors. Her bright, curious energy bounced into the room like sunlight deciding it had had enough of the sky and wanted to personally inspect the furniture.

  “Oh! Sir Henry!” she chirped, csping her hands. “Isn’t this just the coziest little atelier?”

  [ERROR: Contradicting Aura — Heroic Entrance Colpsed]The chartmaker’s hand returned to the quill, and he resumed scribbling as if nothing had happened. My fully orchestrated dispy of knightly had been undone in a second by her uncontainable cheer.

  And, as if the catastrophe required reinforcement, in toddled Durand—her stone golem—who somehow managed to make everything worse simply by existing. He waddled in with proportions even more spectacurly incorrect than before, and his arms hung with the sck confidence of a child’s marionette.

  For the first time since I’d entered, the chartmaker reacted. His eyebrows rose in something dangerously close to interest as he peered at Durand with the intensity of a schor spotting a rare specimen.

  “Is that your creation?” he asked.

  Anabeth beamed. “Why yes! His name is Durand!”

  The chartmaker’s posture straightened. “So then—you are a thaumaturge? Or perhaps a Concord-Smith?” I didn’t even know what a Concord-Smith did. He studied Durand critically, tapping his ink-stained thumb against the desk. “Fascinating. The gait suggests partial aetheric drift, possibly from using non-aligning summoning material. And the proportional misalignment... did you intentionally calibrate it poorly to test perceptual variance? Or did you experiment with emotional input during summoning? Wait—what core did you use? Quartz? Obsidian?”

  The conversation was derailing. No. Spiraling. No. Careening down a mountain pass with no brakes.

  I could not allow this. A valiant knight always had a Pn B.

  I cleared my throat, summoning every ounce of bass and bravado I possessed.

  “Chartmaker.” My words vibrated across the room like a temple bell. “Attend me.”

  [Command Tone: RESISTED]

  [Reason: Subject has endured three decades of royal requisition officers]

  The chartmaker lifted one finger without looking away from his map. “One moment.” He blotted the ink. “Two, if you keep shouting. That resin compass is delicate.”

  My Command Tone had been reduced to background noise.

  No matter. A valiant knight always had a Pn C.

  What other skills could I use for this situation?

  Heroic Entrance: Failed.

  Command Tone: Failed in record time.

  Overwhelming Aura: Tempting, but the st time I used it indoors every chicken within a mile of Dunsvale stopped ying eggs out of pure existential dread for 87 days.

  Knightly Choreography: Breaks things. Usually ribs.

  Silver Tongue: Still negated.

  Inspiring Presence: Useless. He doesn’t need motivation; he needs fear.

  Moral Superiority: Risky. Might trigger a forty-minute lecture on cartographic ethics.

  Schostic Arrogance: viable. Academics fear only one thing: someone who sounds like they’ve read more footnotes than they have.

  However... how did one activate Schostic Arrogance or Moral Superiority on command?

  Last time they had just... appeared on the tip of my tongue, like inconvenient magical conditions tied to my emotional weather. These things tended to activate themselves like curses tied to my bloodline.

  But surely—surely—I had some influence over it.

  Then I realized I’d just fwlessly activated Command Tone. If Command Tone could be invoked just by thinking lower voice, heroic authority, then perhaps these other skills were simir. I didn’t need to unleash a full-blown, cathedral-shaking Intimidation Aura. I wasn’t here to frighten livestock three towns over.

  No, I just needed partial control. A little throttle, enough to nudge my speech into intimidating, snobby, or obnoxious. Those were, apparently, my only avaible modes of arcane oratory.

  Very well. If the Saints had seen fit to equip me with only three verbal enchantments, then I would wield them like the sacred relics they were.

  I narrowed my eyes at the nearest bookshelf and summoned the most potent Academic Tone I could imagine. I pictured footnotes, unread treatises, obscure citations, and arguments about historical map projections conducted entirely through passive?aggressive phrasing.

  Then I spoke, “Curious! One would think a chartmaker of this establishment would at least differentiate between the Westrin Meridian Standard and the Old Meridian drift. But perhaps I am expecting too much rigor.”

  [Schostic Arrogance (Lv. 10): ACTIVATED]

  [Affected Radius: 3 meters]

  [Danger Level: Mildly Insufferable]

  It worked. But then how couldn’t I use Silver Tongue, then? Was it because Silver Tongue was a lower-level skill than all the other Intimidation-based abilities, so it was automatically negated? Then again, Voice Recmation was a Lv. 1 skill, and it overrode my Intimidation Aura just fine.

  I checked Voice Recmation again. Ah. Of course. The tiny footnote I’d skipped st time blinked smugly at me from the margins of the skill description:

  [Overrides all Intimidation-based abilities, regardless of level.]That made sense. My meticulously annotated mental codex approved. Now... did my very carefully crafted Schostic Arrogance actually nd?

  I squinted at the chartmaker, who had set down his quill, fingers poised in the air like he was about to rewrite the ws of Westris itself.

  Excellent. The first crack in his schorly armor.

  He set down his quill. “Differentiate?” he repeated. “Sir, I drafted the new Westrin Meridian Standard.”

  What? There was a new Meridian Standard?

  He leaned back, as though granting me the honor of seeing his face in full disdainful profile. “I chair the Meridian Council. Every cartographical treatise within the borders of Greater Westris references my work. The coastal nations argue about my titudinal nomencture.” His voice dropped another notch. “The High College of Lineation calls me the father of modern mapping.”

  [Adversary Skill Activated: Schostic Arrogance (Lv. 12)]There was a Level 12?

  He picked up his quill again with the casual precision of one who has sin many with ink alone. “And you,” he added, “have stepped into my atelier and attempted to correct me with a tone that suggests you skimmed a pamphlet.”

  [Chartmaker Status: Apex Schor]

  [Warning: You have provoked a man who knows all fourteen methods of weaponizing cartography.]

  Anabeth, apparently deaf to the seismic csh of egos in the room, wandered over to the nearest stack of charts. She tilted her head at the chartmaker and widened her eyes until they couldn’t possibly become any wider, and asked in the most sunshiny tone imaginable, “Excuse me, sir, but how do you determine which meridian to start your lines from?”

  The chartmaker turned to her with an affable smile. “Ah, young dy, that depends on the survey’s purpose, the local topography, and the historical precedence established by the High College of Lineation. Here, let me show you . . .”

  The chartmaker’s eyes softened as he leaned over the charts and traced a finger along the lines. “You see, the initial meridian isn’t chosen lightly. One must account for magnetic variation, prevailing winds, and for delicate coastal measurements, sometimes tradition guides the hand more than reason.”

  Anabeth beamed, “Of course! The coastal measurements must align with prior surveys, but one also has to account for local anomalies. I read a treatise on this just st month.”

  “Ah!” the chartmaker excimed, leaning back as though discovering a kindred spirit. “Indeed! Most understand the theory, but few grasp the nuance. It is rare to meet someone who considers both the data and the history so carefully.”

  I filed inside my head. Grasping the nuance? She’s charming him! He’s smiling at her! Why did that work and intimidation didn’t? Did I miscalcute the aura levels?

  Perhaps my whole approach had been fwed from the start. But there was no time to argue with history. It wasn’t like I was allowed to talk normally, anyway.

  Left unchecked, my default Intimidation Aura would just start spewing whatever awful, sweeping decrations it liked—condemning his life’s work, his lineage, and possibly his boots. I could feel it stirring already.

  Absolutely not. I needed stability. I needed control. I needed... my st viable ability.

  Moral Superiority.

  A valiant knight always had a Pn D.