Paladin · Biography #2

Cole Maddox

contemporary Earth — an Arizona copper mine

A foreman who keeps the iron alive, taken mid-shift into a stone cathedral — where a System he didn't know existed catalogues him and rolls him a class he'd never have picked.

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Arc so far

01 Cold Start PD 606 · Day 1 · a copper mine on Earth, then the Cathedral Sebastinum A foreman who keeps the iron alive, taken mid-shift into a stone cathedral — where a System he didn't know existed catalogues him and rolls him a class he'd never have picked. ▶ listen▣ convergence 02 Read the Plate PD 606 · Day 1 · The Vocation House Inner Chamber, Cathedral Sebastinum, Sebastopyr · the first hour after the rite closed His boot is still hunting a brake pedal that isn't there. The new class he didn't pick is stamped behind his eyes. He spends one of three attentional_capacity reading the room for hazards, queries the System for a sheet, and risks one point of a five-point pool on a stranger he doesn't trust yet. Honest dice. No fudging. ▶ listen▣ convergence 03 Load-Bearing PD 606 · Day 2 · 06:18 → 14:20 — first full day in Sebastopyr; East Curtain; first two confirmed kills; first level He went to the wall because that is what he is for. He took the brace because the brace needed taking. He killed two men and a third walked away and the radiant fire that came out of his hands the second time was not nothing. The thread held. The wall held. He held. And the System wrote down, where everyone could see it: *Paladin 2.* ▶ listen▣ convergence 04 The Second Bind PD 606 · Day 3 · 05:31 → 06:45 — the morning Cole's lens found the row he had not asked for, and the boy on the far end said please The thread brightened past where it should have brightened at 05:36. The lens fired unbidden at 05:48. By 05:57 Cole had identified the anchor as the patient Renata saved yesterday, by 06:08 he had keyed the lens at a 22-year-old kid on the enemy side, and the kid had mouthed *please* across a line that was not supposed to be possible. The war just got smaller and bigger at once. ▶ listen▣ convergence 05 Sweep To Fix PD 606 · Day 5 · 06:15 → 17:30 — the day Cole sat in the east-facing window, held the lens at the lowest draw a load-master can hold, and watched another summoner of another school work toward the room next door The morning was clean — four sweeps, no Vasko, four external releases verified. At 11:28 the fourth sweep found the signature Cole had been waiting nine weeks to find. Younger lineage. Sharper rite-grammar. Compulsion-binding instead of service-binding. Not honest. By 14:32 the working changed mode from sweep to fix. By 15:00 the wards cracked. By 16:04 Cole watched Mnehmos catch Ardin's collapse through the lens and let the lens die. By 17:30 he watched the architect bow at the chalk line and walk east with a twenty-two-year-old apprentice. He went to sleep listening to a thread. ▶ listen▣ convergence 06 The Thread Goes Still PD 606 · Day 6 06:15 → Day 7 11:00 — the denouement; one minimum-cost lens sweep per release, then watching the cavalry close, then the moment the architect's signature went absent at ten forty-eight Cole spent the denouement at the lowest sustainable draw a load-master can hold. One sweep at six-fifteen Day Six. One at midday for Brunna. One at evening for Hana. One at four-thirty Day Seven when Vasko fixed on Ardin. One at six forty-eight, eight fourteen, nine forty-eight as each of the last three released. Then he sat at the window with a child's primer of Sebastinum letters open on his lap and listened for the moment the thread went still. It came at ten forty-eight. He walked across the courtyard and told them plain. ▣ convergence