The sword teaches Adam the meaning of honor in that moment.
He remembers the Emperor of Atlantis, describing the trap of Hobbes - mutual distrust, leading to mutual concealment.
His experience of the Negamatrix was a world where unexpressed emotions sprouted and festered. It was like kudzu, an endless growth that went nowhere and yet connected everything.
Honor is a world of rivers where those emotions flow from person to person. Those bad feelings don’t pile up - they are spoken, by people with the courage to admit themselves to others. They’re transformed, inverted, and redirected through personal integrity and social contract. They become life lessons or bonds or inspiring memories.
If you can’t trust someone to share their intentions - good or bad, it doesn’t matter - then you can’t trust their intentions. If you don’t know where someone stands, how can you respect their stances?
If emotion is the blood of the universe, Honor is its healthy circulation.
I don’t have to convince them to see things my way. I just have to show them who I am. That’s enough.
Adam raises the sword, and swings it in a wide arc.
The first wave of blasts are deflected by a power greater than all of them.
Memories of how William wields Excalibur come back to Adam in that instant.
William trains with Jaycee to become stronger. Not because the sword isn’t powerful, but because he wants the sword to be a partner, and he wants to be its equal as much as he can.
Adam feels his own glaring inadequacy here. He doesn’t even really know how to wield a sword properly.
When he fused with William and Jordan in Orion Schema, he could fall back on William’s sword-fighting skills.
But he can’t make a fusion now, because William isn’t here.
The divine voice of innocent ambition in his head asks a question for which he has no good answer. So what if he’s not here?
Another wave of energy attacks comes hurtling toward him. Adam blinks out of the way, preferring not to rely on Excalibur for everything.
It buys him a few more seconds to process the wave of feelings coming in.
It’s hard to accept that he might just, well, decide to fuse with William, light years away, and it could actually work. It’s like that joke about the English teacher, where the student says “can I go to the bathroom” and the teacher says “I don’t know, can you? Or did you want to say may I?”
It’s not a very funny joke.
He’s used to having family and friends around to sort of course correct him if he does the wrong thing. And it’s an easy cop-out to say “I don’t have the power”. But this whole trip has been eye-opening. He does have the power. He probably has even more than he thinks.
Can I fuse with William right now?
May I?
Is this what it feels like, Adam wonders, when his father the police sergeant has to decide whether to draw a gun and put his finger on the trigger?
This is that moment.
He forges a link, and makes the offer. Armiger, knight of the Grail Knights, I need your help.
The affirmative emotion comes immediately.
How did you even do that? William demands mentally, as the fusion stabilizes.
What, fuse with you, or wield Excalibur? Adam asks curiously.
Either. Both. Honestly, it’s like two miracles for the price of one.
Long story, Adam tells him. Just… can you handle the swordplay? There’s an awful lot of guys, but I have an idea.
Before the assembled acolytes of the Void, the young man with starry skin has transformed himself into the Starry Knight. Excalibur in hand, armored from head to toe, with a cape that billows behind it, the figure looks ready for battle.
The champions of fear and rage leap forward, Continuum Swords raised. Surely this figure can’t deal with all of them.
The Knight throws numerous copies of its sword into the air - a dozen - two dozen.
As the attackers converge, the Knight teleports effortlessly between copies. The attackers fly past a sword, only to have the Knight suddenly wielding it, swinging it at their openings. They turn to parry, but the Knight is gone again, to assault someone else.
“He fused!” calls one champion of the Void, discerning what just happened.
“With who?” someone else calls. “Ain’t nobody else out here but him and us.”
“Doesn’t matter!” replies the stalwart champion angrily. “Fuse up. Match him!”
What’s your idea? William asks. As entire pirate bands fuse in threes and fives, he’s got a moment’s reprieve to ask questions.
I remembered what you said, Adam replies, still furiously working on his own thing. About how fights begin with a question. What’s the other guy got? How’s it going to go?
Good, William grins mentally. Glad my advice wasn’t going to waste.
Adam continues his own preparations at breakneck pace. Well, I figured if they’re asking that question of us…
Where there was one, there are now many. The Starry Knight has cloned itself. Now there is one Knight and one Excalibur for every combatant on the field.
The battle descends into dozens of one-on-one-duels.
…We should lie, Adam finishes. These guys are powered by fear and anger and frustration and all those negative emotions, right? So the first part is, make them feel those things…
The trio of Kronal, Runus, and Shadra are facing a Starry Knight, armed with a sword of legend. They can feel the power pouring off of it.
They just… duplicated themselves! Kronal thinks in a panic.
Who is this guy? Runus demands. Where is he getting all this power?
It doesn’t matter! barks Shadra. She’s focusing on the Continuum Sword in her fusion’s hands, wielding it against the skills of one of Earth’s foremost swordfighters. There’s just one of him. And all of us. We’re gonna overpower him.
VT-25, UX-38, and TR-93 struggle. None of them are decent with the sword - they prefer flashy shows of pure energy to the intricacies of this ancient art. But the Continuum Sword is a potent power from another universe, and they’d be fools not to use it. Now, they find their usual tactics at a loss. Excalibur casually knocks aside their blasts and cuts through their shields like paper.
He is angering us, 25 intones.
He is infuriating us, 38 corrects.
The very thought of him is odious, 93 adds.
We should kill him, 25 declares.
We may not be able to, 38 states.
We should not have come up here, 93 sighs.
But it is too late for that, isn’t it, all three of them agree. Here we are.
How did you do that? William asks admiringly.
I used Peri’s illusion trick, and attached the bubbles to your sword clones, Adam explains.
He’s got an internal ouroboros, showing him the levels of emotion present on the battlefield.
His machine is assembled.
The energy from the Void’s warriors is high.
We’re almost ready.
The duplicated Knights wink out of existence.
The fusions on the battlefield once again have only a single target.
“His energy is way down!” announces the K-R-S fusion, taking readings.
25-38-93 concurs. “He wasted much power with his prank. Now is the time we avenge ourselves in earnest.”
The Void fusions circle the Starry Knight, swords at the ready.
Adam radiates readiness. When I give the signal, slice through their shields, aim for the core. I’ve got a lock-on gadget that will guide your sword.
Cool. What will that do? William asks.
So the second part of my idea is… They’re directing all those negative emotions at us, right? All that fear, hate, all of it?
Yeah? William agrees, but Adam can sense that he doesn’t fully grasp the implication.
Emotion is power. They’re offering us their power. So I’m gonna take it. NOW!
The Starry Knight leaps forward. Excalibur drives, point first, at the core of the fusion - a thing not in three-dimensional space, but beyond it. It crashes through the affected barriers standing in the way.
And with his target exposed, Adam throws his “harpoon”. It lands inside the tightly coupled Shards of the fusion.
All the feelings of the fusion before him - a quartet of space pirates of the Quasar Avengers Alliance, in this case - come pouring down the conduit connecting the harpoon to Adam’s collector. All their negative feelings about him funnel in, as power he can use against them.
You’re a fuckin’ vampire! William realizes with gleeful astonishment.
I’m accepting what they give me, Adam demurs. Okay. Keep doing that. We’ll harpoon as many as we can.
More attacks come in. This time, Adam can divert some of the newly acquired energy to shields. The fury of one fighting fusion becomes a defense against the attacks of their ally.
Yeah! William finally gets the tactic. You’ve turned their strength into a weakness.
Dislodge the intruding element! orders Terugar Chorn, chief of the first fusion to be harpooned.
We’re trying! his lieutenant, Shoragor Alta, protests. It’s drawing on our power and using some of that to anchor itself - like a barbed hook.
We could un-fuse, suggests Wartirk Mulian.
But pride prevails in Terugar Chorn’s heart, and his fusion-mates can sense it. No! He is nothing compared to us! We fight!
Adam knows he’s had good teachers. The people of the Menagerie - Leo and Jason, Charlotte and Harry, Alycia and Summer. His new friends, the people who came with him aboard the Love Bug. Even his enemies, like Ambra Nerach, the villain Sablestar.
It doesn’t matter if he wanted this originally or not. He chose to pursue it. And here he is now, fighting to show these people who he is, and who they can be.
The fusions are trying new tricks. They’re trying to break the harpoons’ connections. Some of them do un-fuse, and Adam just harpoons another fusion. Others try stuff he’s never seen before, like cycling their shields’ shape and composition. Sometimes it works, and Adam has to find a counter-trick. But there’s always enough guys to harpoon.
There’s always more guys, and it’s disheartening.
None of these guys are at Somber’s level, or that of a Coordinator of the Concordance. He’s grateful for that. He can feel William weakening, and he can feel his own energy draining. The collector he built is keeping the fusion’s outer defenses powered, but it can’t substitute for the heroes’ own fortitude. And neither of them want to drink from the well of negative emotion they’re collecting.
But the fusions are also tiring. Several of the unfused acolytes teleported back into the planet’s interior - surrendering their challenge against him. Others show clearly that they’re weakening. Their shields flutter or defocus, their blasts dim, and their sword-work falters.
We don’t have to beat them, Adam tells William reassuringly. We just have to outlast them.
Fine. I can do that.
Adam can feel his fusion partner’s weariness as clearly as his own. But mixed in with that are his other feelings. Loyalty to his friend. Pride in himself. A desire to show off to Jaycee how her endurance training paid off.
The Knight still flashes from sword to sword, forcing the other fusions to adapt. They’re wise to this trick now, unfortunately. When the Knight pops out on a sword’s location, the nearest fusions respond. They aren’t surprised - just kept on edge by the need to guess which sword the Knight will pick next.
For those moments when the Starry Knight is there, it’s Continuum Sword against Excalibur - a cosmic blade, forged by the dying embers of another universe, versus the manifestation of a universal principle of existence.
It’s a battle of technique, as the blades clash, or slide past each other, or the truths of momentum and angular velocity and other aspects of space and time assert themselves.
It’s a battle of endurance, as each combatant commits their remaining stores of energy - emotional power and simple willingness to engage in battle.
It’s a battle of wits, as the psychic engineers of the Void pit their own creations against Adam’s flowering inventiveness.
One by one, the alien fusions falter. A few unfuse of their own accord. Others simply run out of energy, letting despair and ennui overtake the fires of rage or the icy iron of pride.
One by one, they teleport back to the refuge of the temple.
And finally, the Knight teleports to a new sword, ready to engage. But there is nothing left.
Wait… was that all of them? Adam asks, struggling to focus.
Looks like it, agrees William. Holy…
It seems that Excalibur concurs. In a moment, the blade evaporates into nothingness, and Adam feels the fusion torn away from him.
He now stands alone on the surface of an alien world, with nothing but a fragile bubble between him and the heat of twelve suns.