Path of transcendence om.., p.47
Path of Transcendence Omnibus II, page 47
A little more than half an hour later, with our bellies full, the three of us are leaning back in our chairs. Neither Maria nor Consuela has put in another appearance. If I could not hear the occasional noises from Maria's activities, I would think that we were alone in the house. Wherever Consuela has disappeared to, there are no audible sounds to betray her location or presence.
The girl's eyelids are drooping, and her chin keeps nodding towards her chest. Even if she is a nominal adult, being in a twelve-year-old give or take body, she does not appear to have the resilience or endurance of Pancho and myself.
*I don't know what half of that was, but it was some good food.*
Pancho smirks. *Authentic Mexican, it looked like mostly dishes you would find in the southern part of the country, near the Guatemala border. I may be American by birth and proud of it, but I still love the food from the old country. My grandmother used to make stuff like that. Well, not exactly like that, but it was close. My grandmother was from the Yucatán.*
I do not think I managed to keep the slight frown off my face. *There was a time I was proud to be American, but America changed. This . . . place is not the America I grew up in. The country where people were proud to stand on their own two feet and achieve something with their lives died in the bloodbath of spineless millennial nanny state politics. For more than fifty years, there was really no place in America for people like me. Or people like you.*
*Yeah, I know what you mean. Even if I'm not an ancient Neanderthal like you, the America I wanted to live in was already dying as I was growing up. Once those crybabies that couldn't even hear an upsetting word without breaking down into screaming hissy fits came into power, the America I went to war for died. Once I got out of the Corps, there was already no place for me, either.* Pancho stares off into space with a pensive frown.
After a minute or so of silence, Pancho yawns and looks around the room. *Damn, I didn't realize I was this tired. I've gone more than twice as long without sleep and not been this drag ass.*
Pancho's words and his yawn, make me realize that I am tired as well. I am a Dvergar. I should be able to go for a week without sleep and still be functional. Just being awake for thirty-six hours should not leave me feeling this run down. Is it some side effect from using the dimensional rift to travel from the Battleground of the Damned to earth?
Pancho pushes back his chair and tries to stand up, but his legs collapse underneath him. He grabs for the table to support himself and drags dishes and cutlery to the floor with him. The girl is already out cold in her chair.
I surge to my feet, but my knees feel a little wobbly. "What the hell?"
I try to get an axe out of my dimensional storage ring, but I am too muddle-headed to activate the ring's transmission gate.
This has to be drugs or poison. Why? What the hell is going on here?
Consuela walks into the room with Maria and the armed security guard at her back. The guard has his gun in its holster and a sword in his hand.
Steel is stubbornness. I barely manage to cast a pattern sight spell.
Looking at the three of them, the guard and Maria have some kind of Mana based abilities active. They appear to be Adepts, but I cannot tell much about Consuela. She looks like a normal human, but it could just be that she is not using any Power.
"Who in the hell are you? What in the hell are you?"
While Maria glares at me, as though she wants to kill me, Consuela only frowns slightly. "You Dvergar do live up to your reputations. There was enough anesthetic in the amount of food you ate to knock out a dozen cattle."
Dvergar? She actually knows that I am a Dvergar? How the hell can she know that?
I bite my tongue hard, and the pain focuses me a little. It takes a few seconds, but I manage to draw my axe out of my storage ring.
The guard's eyes narrow, and he moves between Consuela and myself. If it were not for the drugs, the guard would be laughable, but with the state I am in, he could actually be a danger.
A grey collar appears in Consuela's hand. Black runes are inset into the smooth hard metal. I may not know its origin, but I know its purpose. That is a slave collar.
Consuela looks at me with a bland expression. "Put this on and there will be no need to hurt your friends."
"Isn't Pancho your ex? I thought you liked him still?"
Consuela's expression does not change in the slightest. "My feelings for him are immaterial. My only loyalties are to the Feathered Sky Lords. They are of no value to the Lords, but I have orders to capture or neutralize you. For some reason, they want to get their hands on you, a Dvergar. Put on the collar, or I kill them!"
For fifteen or twenty seconds, I stare at the Consuela's eyes without doing or saying anything. I cannot get a read on this woman. I do not know if she will carry through on her threat or not. She could be a statue or a mannequin for all the emotion that is visible in her eyes.
Without taking her eyes off me, Consuela gestures in the direction of Pancho and the girl. "Jordi, kill them both!"
Jordi, the security guard, draws his gun and points it at Pancho. It is not the stun gun that I thought it was. It looks to be a .40 caliber semiautomatic, a Glock. That is not something that should be in the hands of any civilian in the United States of America any longer.
More than thirty years ago, the proglodytes managed to ram bills through the Congress that effectively outlawed firearms, even though, they did not repeal the Second Amendment. There was a few months long period of bloody gun confiscations. They made a media production out of the supposed rabid, ultra-violent, right wing, gun toting cretins and their resistance to the new laws. Tens of thousands of American citizens were murdered by the government because of their possession of firearms. At the end, most people were falling all over themselves to turn in their guns.
Now, a normal citizen or the security guards for a normal citizen should never be in possession of a semiautomatic pistol.
Jordi flicks off the safety and begins to squeeze the trigger.
"WAIT! Give me the collar! I'll put it on."
"Jordi, do not kill them!"
Jordi lowers the gun but does not holster it.
With a flick of her wrist, Consuela tosses the collar to me.
"It looks like what they say about lawyers having their morals and ethics surgically removed is true. You're one cold-hearted bitch."
Consuela's cold eyes do not reveal even a flicker of emotion. "Put the collar on, Dvergar! If you do not, I will kill them."
With a grimace I cannot hide, I stare at the collar for several moments. It is one of the hardest things I have ever done to not let my hands tremble as I put the collar on my own neck and snap it closed. Memories of the dark years following the Massacre flood my mind, and it feels like someone has stabbed a cold steel dagger through my chest.
"It is true what the Spymaster told me, you really are only a cowardly Earth human inside that rock ape body."
A pair of shackles appears in Consuela's hand. The cuffs are almost three-quarters of an inch thick, and the chain links are as thick as my index finger, my Dvergar index finger.
Consuela holds the shackles out to Jordi. "Secure his hands behind his back."
"Si, Ms. Consuela." Jordi seems to have a thick Spanish accent. He takes the shackles and stares at me. Those cold, killer's eyes of his seem to be daring me to do something.
"AAARRR!" I fall to my knees as pain worse than anything I have ever experienced rips through my body. I can barely stop myself from falling on my face, let alone do anything to fight back as Jordi secures my hands behind my back.
The tip of Consuela's finger is on a small ring I do not remember seeing on her hand, previously, and her face is displaying a faint smile. "That collar comes from Taereun. It was made in one of the kingdoms that worship the Feathered Sky Lords. The same is true for those slave cuffs. They are strong enough that not even a Dvergar can break them."
From Taereun? She has contact with Taereun? I suppose it should have been obvious when she called me a Dvergar. Without having some kind of contact with people from Taereun, there is no way she could have known I am a Dvergar.
Buried Secrets
*** Central California – Earth ***
Return: Day 343
August 6, 2078
(Brand)
Once the door closes behind that nasty bitch, I turn to my SUV and reach for the door handle.
Crack!
Subconsciously, without understanding why, I crouch and spin around. The arrow that would've punched through my heart pierces the armor over my left biceps. My armor slowed the barbed head enough that it is stuck in the middle of the muscles. Without armor, the arrow would have gone clean through my arm and entered my torso. I barely notice this pain; I have felt so many that are far worse.
Looking around, I cannot see any signs of the archer. I did not get a good look at the trajectory of the arrow, but from what I can tell, there were only a few places where the archer could have shot from. The arrow was travelling at supersonic speeds, so the Archer only had fractions of a second to get undercover, but I still cannot see him.
Snapping off the shaft, I leave the arrowhead embedded in my arm.
“Aaaaaaahhhhhhhh!" The scream from the nasty bitch across the street comes as a delayed reaction.
The cunt is standing in the open doorway of her house, but when did she open her door again? I am completely off my game. The bitch is less than nothing, but I should never have missed her opening that door again.
As I expand my spatial awareness, it feels like someone splits open my skull and digs around in my brain with a drill. Gritting my teeth, I search the area as well as I can, but I still find no sign of the archer.
I feel unsteady on my feet as I open the door of my SUV climb inside. Setting a random destination in the autopilot, I lean back in my seat and breathe deeply while the SUV drives itself out of the neighborhood. I do not see any signs of the archer in my rearview mirror. Since my spatial awareness is still not strong enough to see through solid objects, the body of the SUV will block it, and I cannot rely on my spatial awareness to search for him.
As I use my Ki to control the bleeding from the arrow wound, my body fills with burning agony. While fighting against J'Rome, I pushed myself too hard. Non-Transcendents were never meant to wield Elemental Power. By using as much of the Od as I did, I injured my Body, Mind, and Soul. It does not feel like I am healing as fast as I should. The injuries may be bad enough to have damaged my Pattern, but I have no way to tell at the moment. The long-term repercussions could become a pervasive problem in the future.
While I did not see my attacker, his using a bow instead of a gun means that he is almost certainly not from Earth. It seems that Woden wants me dead after all. His apparently willing capitulation after I defeated J'Rome must have been nothing but an act. It would not be the first time that the bastard has lied to me.
After travelling randomly for a while, I cannot spot anyone that might be trailing me. I set SUV's destination to the Urehara Group's complex where we are holed up. I still do not see any signs that I am being followed, but with Power, there is no telling how many methods they might have for tracking my van that I would be unaware of. Even though Boran did something to prevent Woden from scrying on us, that does not mean that it will stop any and all means of using magic to monitor us. If I have learned nothing else, I have learned that there are no absolutes where the uses of Power are concerned.
After the doors to the complex's garage close, I exit the SUV and enter the dormitory. As Elan looks up from her computer screen and sees the broken arrow sticking out of my arm, she frowns and quickly comes over to me.
“Where did you encounter someone using a bow on this world?" Elan inspects my injury with her Power.
“A sniper took a shot at me outside of my aunt's house, but I did not get a look at him. He managed to disappear as soon as he took the shot."
“This is going to hurt. Just a little." A knife with a thin narrow blade appears in Elan's hand, and a faint smile is on her lips.
As I give Elan a flat stare, her faint smile becomes more pronounced. The pain as she slices through the broken shaft is worse than originally being shot. With the arrow shaft cut down to the level of my rerebrace, Elan helps me remove my armor.
“It's barbed."
Elan smiles. “I know."
The only options to remove a barbed arrowhead are to force the arrow through my arm or to cut open a much larger wound and extract it. Despite the pain as Elan cuts the arrowhead from my biceps, I do not show any signs of my discomfort and continue to use my Ki to restrict the bleeding. It does not hurt as much is having a sword stabbed through my back, but it is still more painful than being shot in the first place.
With her eyes focused on my face, Elan probes my wound and the arrowhead with a form of Psi that I am not familiar with. It seems to be more like empathy than spatial awareness.
"What are you doing?"
Elan reveals a faint smirk. "What do you mean?"
I do not hide my scowl. "That Power that you are using, it is Psi, but I do not recognize the technique you are using."
Elan's smirk broadens. "It is a variation of an empathic technique that Wytches use to torture people. While training us, my Mistress once used this skill to make a man howl in agony from an inch long cut on his face. That man had previously refused to make even a single sound when she burned his cock off with red hot irons. If I were able to properly employ this technique, I would be capable of digging around in your wounds and enhancing the pain receptiveness of your nerves, but my Psi is so stunted. My Mistress was a full binary. I am not like her. I cannot use any Psi technique to its fullest. I have to use Mana to manipulate Psi, but doing it that way, weakens and blunts the effectiveness of the Psi."
I smile at Elan. "You're a vicious bitch. I like that about you."
Elan's smile is a dazzling mix of joy and cruelty. Sentient beings are complex, even something as moronic as an Orc, and Elan is far and away one of the most intelligent people I have ever met. She is probably more complicated and twisted that I am. Maybe, an extremely complex personality is an inevitable side effect of having a high intelligence. Whatever the reason, her mix of intellect, cruelty, lust, and obsession draw me to her. She has become mine, and I will never give her up, to anyone or anything.
A few moments later, Elan's eyes narrow and she stares intently at my arm before turning her head to gaze toward my chest. "Something is wrong with you. Pain is flooding through your body, but you are pretending it does not exist. What happened?"
I do not try to keep the wry smile off my lips. "It's not important. It's just a backlash from using too much of the Od. Give me a few days, and I will be back to normal."
Elan frowns but does not say anything else. After a few minutes, she drops the arrow on the table next to me. Taking out a vial, she pours some of the red liquid inside of it onto the wound in my arm.
This healing potion is different from the potions that I have seen Elan use before. It causes both burning and numbing sensations in my injury. Almost instantly, I feel the healing process begin to accelerate.
"There is something … bothering me. Since we left that Area 51, I have not been able to get it out of my mind. I first noticed it when you fought that Vaettir spawn, and when you fought J'Rome, I became almost certain of what I saw. There is something restricting the usage of Power on this world the stronger your level of Transcendence becomes." Elan is not looking at me as she speaks. She seems to be staring pensively at something that I cannot see, maybe, something that only exists in her mind.
"What's a Vaettir?"
Elan frowns. "That Priestess, she is at least part Vaettir. They are a sort of spirit of the dead. They are not exactly living, dead, or undead. In a way they are almost all three at the same time. I have no idea where or how they originated. I have encountered a few theories about them, but nothing that seems to make any sort of sense. Most of them serve Hel, but even the followers of the other Jotun Lords see the Vaettir as abominations. Even those that serve Hel are hunted down and destroyed by the followers of the other Jotun Lords."
I frown. "So she's another freak like us. Someone, something, that just does not belong."
Elan's frown becomes a little sad. "Are you looking to add another broken woman to your collection?"
I snort and give a half-smile. "Actually, I just want to fuck her. In reality, there are only two kinds of women: the ones you want to fuck, and the ones you don't want to fuck. Anyone who is biologically male that says any differently is either a eunuch or a faggot, not that there's much difference between the two."
Elan smirks slightly. "So, you're a toxically masculine, cisgender, sexist male."
"That is not funny." I do not conceal the irritation in my voice.
Elan's smirk turns into a grin. "Your world has the most warped views on what males and females are and should be that I have ever encountered. There are some very strange cultures and nations in the Battleground of the Damned, but the way that your rulers have twisted and broken the Minds and Souls of the people of your culture is impressive. I do not think that any of the Wytches in the Atran'ler Empire could ever have come up with something as insidious, demeaning, and destructive is this culture of political correctness on your world.
"Honestly, I am impressed. There is no sign of Power being used to cause this warped manner of thinking. It seems to have been done entirely through cultural manipulation."
In my entire life, there are only a handful of times when I have been left flabbergasted. This is the first time that I have seen Elan reveal anything close to honest admiration for something connected to the Earth. How could she possibly have anything even resembling respect for this warped, fucked up world I came from.
"How can you be impressed by this shithole? No. How did you manage to figure this out in such a short period of time?"
With a hint of confusion in her eyes, Elan looks at me. "You gave me the key. Did you not realize this? That Delphi system appears to have access to everything that exists in your world's electronic data network. I think it probably has access to everything that has been deleted from the data network as well. Many of the documents that were brought up when I was searching did not seem to exist in the data network any longer, but Delphi still retains them somewhere."
