Kompis

• Build & height: 1.80 m, solid and soft-edged: a fisherman's shoulders, a bit of a belly, big careful hands. He looks like the safest person in any room, which made him a perfect spy.
• Face: broad and kind, golden-tan skin, crow's feet from squinting at water. His nose bleeds after Subtick bursts, so there's often a dried trail on his upper lip. At rest he looks half asleep. He isn't.
• Hair & beard: brown hair under the hood, cut short and badly by himself. A braided beard, two thick braids tied with fishing line, with one strand of green lake-weed woven in that he never takes out.
• Eyes: warm brown. When Lust-sight is on they film over with faint gold, and the reader sees threads.
• Skin & sin-mark: the gold sin-mark sits on the inside of his left wrist: a small knot of golden thread, like a fishing knot. At K-III it will spread up the forearm in looped lines.
• Clothing, layer by layer: a thermal undershirt · a hoodie older than empires (moss-grey, patched at the elbows, a pocket at the front for dog treats, the hood always half-up) · canvas trousers with knee patches · wading boots · a bandolier across the chest with five empty loops (one for each soul-gun; only one or two are ever filled at a time). Since ch. 41, a small wooden box tied with string hangs at his hip: Ivar's pieces.
• Signature item: the hoodie, and Mingus at his heel in every panel.
• Movement: slow, unhurried, and he never runs unless Mingus does. In Subtick he moves exactly once, perfectly.
• Voice: gentle, warm and slow. He never raises it. He laughs easily and cries easily; when he does both at once, the moment is true. His balloons are soft-edged and rounded.
• Variant looks: Child (age 8, the burning village and the Nursery): a too-big hoodie and a hunting knife. Ridden (Saga II Arc 3): eyes filmed grey, moving like smoke. Older (Saga V+): grey in the beard, the lake-weed still there.

• Permanent marks (as of ch. 420): a dark ring burned into one palm from shaking Nagel's iron hand (ch. 360).

The world freezes grey. Inside that frozen instant, Kompis lives the next moment again and again (dozens, hundreds, eventually thousands of times), trying every angle, every shot and every step, and then keeps the one version he survives. Colour snaps back and he does that one thing, perfectly, once.

• The anchor: Subtick only works while Mingus's heart beats beside him. It's drawn as a golden pulse line along the bottom border of the panel (ba-dum. ba-dum.). No dog, no Subtick. Separating them is the enemy's best move.
• What it can't do: change what already happened. It looks for a survivable version of the next moment. If there isn't one, it keeps looking, forever. (Saga II Arc 3: in the dream, Subtick turned on him and relived his brother's death endlessly. There is no version where his brother lives.)
• Lust-sight is separate and passive: threads and gun-souls.

• Tempo: 12 for his body: an ordinary K-II, deliberately slow. But inside Subtick he lives one of Mingus's heartbeats up to ≈1,000 times (Saga II), ≈10,000 (Saga III), and in the end a billion (the Convergence), which is how the old legend of the "Subtick Billionaire" becomes true at last.
• Home tempo: Heartbeat, the realm that is the heartbeat. At the cabin his tempo and Mingus's are the same number.
• Heartbeat technique: SHARED BEAT. Kompis can lend his timing to anyone whose thread he holds. For one heartbeat, a crewmate acts on the version Kompis kept: they move where Subtick found the safe line, without having lived it themselves. It's drawn as a golden thread pulled taut between them. No one else in the saga can give another person their timing.
• Burn cost: every Subtick burst costs his body: sweat, a nosebleed, shaking knees. A Shared Beat costs double: his body pays for the friend's version too.

His body, and the dog. Subtick wrecks him a little every time (nosebleeds, trembling, days of exhaustion after big fights), and it requires Mingus. The deeper price is in what he's lived: Subtick makes him remember thousands of deaths he didn't die. [Arc 3 loss] Mörda's ride took the memory of his little brother's face.

• Separate him from Mingus and Subtick dies. (The Hounds' Ledger-chains, ch. 58/64. Lärka's HUSH in ch. 39–44 silenced the heartbeat itself.)
• Silence: Lärka (Bastion) was built for him. In a cone where heartbeats can't be heard, the golden pulse line goes flat.
• The past: Subtick can't fix the past. Mörda used that against him.
• His paperwork: Trisdel still owns his file. The Hounds and the Engagement Protocol can call him "back".
• Kindness: he will lower his gun for anyone who is hurting, enemies included (Lärka).

• MINGUS: see. Never a weapon, never the price.
• The five soul-guns (all forged at Smedjan by Malm; each soul is won over, not owned):

• Baldr's silver pen. He kept it after Saga I without knowing why. Inert.
• The box with Ivar's pieces.

He doesn't start fights. He stands slightly behind the line, reads the threads, and waits for the moment. Then Subtick, one shot, done. He protects; he doesn't hunt. Team combos: Shared Beat → Rougeina (she Swaps on his line) · Thread-Read → Vigolas's Gold-Point (what's valuable to them) · Subtick Shot + Trollmage's MACRO (the troll multiplies one perfect shot by however long he waited).

• Wants: a quiet life by the water with the dog. And for his crew to be alive at the end of it.
• Fears: the next Call (with no Ivar); being sent back; the door in his head where his brother is.
• Contradiction: a trained spy who can't stop telling the truth to the people he loves.
• Humour: dry and gentle, a lot of "…Yeah." and "Oh, Drekk."
• Habits: fishes off the stern; hums a lullaby from somewhere cold; talks to his guns; puts the dog's needs first, every time.
• Alone: he holds Ivar's box and says goodnight to it.

• Mingus: the dog is forever. His heart is Kompis's anchor.
• Vigolas: best friend. The man he was sent to betray. "We'll get him back." "How do you know?" "Because I'm greedy."
• Ivar: the grumpy old man in his rifle. "I liked the bear." "You shot its hat off." "It was a beautiful hat."
• Lärka: the hunter built to kill him. He taught her what a heartbeat sounds like, and she came back and kept his heart going.
• Mörda: the nightmare who rode him. He gave her a dream and she turned. She is now searching every sleeper's dreams for his brother's face.

• "Borrow mine."
• "You're getting good at that."
• "We can't save him. We never could. You can stop running now."
• "Come on, boy. Come inside. It's warm."
• "Okay, little one. Just for today."