by W A Rowland
“Bored?” Liam repeated unsure he had heard right.
“Yes bored. Luckily, the world is always coming up with some fun new hobby or fad for you to master,” Bast said with a wave of her hand.
“I see, and what are you mastering now?” Liam asked, expecting her to say something like kung fu or portrait painting.
“Binge-streaming. I just started season seven of the new Dr Who. Really hoping they keep Amy and Rory for another season. So much better than the old series. I watched that one too when it came out, but somehow missed the release of the new one. Still haven’t decided if I’m a Tennant or Smith girl myself.”
“Wait. Season 7? So you don’t kno—”
“LALALALA Shut up!” Bast shouted catching Liam off guard.
Steven laughed. “We’ve tried to warn her, but she doesn’t want to listen.”
“I don’t listen because you think it’s funny to ruin my fun,” Bast said giving a Steven a glare. “No, I learned my lesson when I let you tell me about the Sixth Sense. Never again.”
Steven grinned, but Liam was nonplussed. He looked at the two like they were crazy. This was the Bast, and she was bantering with Steven about a TV show. This world was crazier than Liam had ever thought possible.
“Liam probably doesn’t care to hear us bickering like children, he must be tired; after all, he’s had a long day,” Bast said with a sympathetic smile. “How ‘bout you show him to the dormitories and we can meet again tomorrow. He has a lot to catch up with.”
Steven nodded. “Will do.” And then he turned to Liam.
“Very nice to meet you, ma’am?” Liam intoned questioningly.
“Just call me Bast,” she said dismissively.
“Ok. That feels really weird to say, but sure. Nice to meet you, Bast,” he said, and shook the woman’s hand. Then he turned and followed Steven out of the door as she un-paused the episode she was currently watching.
ACROTERION
A scream echoed down the dark hallway of the Acroterion. Hooded figures made their way along the corridor, attending to whichever task the Association had demanded of them on that particular day. Captives were led, bound, gagged, and blinded to whatever fate waited for them in those deep, gloomy halls. In a small cell, deep in the bowels, one such poor soul found himself face-to-face with what could only be described as a creature of nightmare. Fangs dripped with the man’s blood as he screamed, struggling to get away despite being bound to a table. The nightmare creature was covered in black fur and bony protrusions ran the length of its arms and legs, both of which ended in vicious claws. It let out a tortured wail and bit into the man’s neck, drinking deeply of his energy. The man’s struggles ceased and his life drained away, as the creature devoured him.
From the opposite side of a pane of bulletproof glass, a man in a pristine business suit watched the gory display with a sadistic grin. He drank in the pain, the fear, and the agony of the victim before turning to one of his companions.
“Impressive Julian, and how exactly did you manage to trap a Wendigo of all things?” he asked a middle-aged, barrel-chested man to his left.
“Like you trap anything else, with bait. Found some local girl and tied ‘er up in a packing crate. Only had to wait an hour before big nasty there showed up to snack,” Julian replied in his gravely baritone.
“The girl?” the man asked.
“She didn’t last long. Shame, really, she was actually rather pretty…” Julian trailed off and then shrugged.
“Very well-done, Julian. The Association will be pleased,” the dark man said.
“Only doin’ my part,” Julian responded.
“And you seem to enjoy it so much. Which, since you do, I have another task for you.”
“Name it, and it’s done,” Julian replied.
“A core was recently stolen from a deceased member of ours. We would like it back. Attempts have been made with more mundane methods, but the results were rather lackluster. I need you on this. Ensure that it is found post-haste,” the dark man said forcefully. “The reward for returning one of the cores would be more than the worth of any creature or slave you might bring us.”
The big man’s eyes glistened with greed at the proposition. “Good as done,” he rasped.
“I expect so. Now, you must excuse me, I have another guest who requires my attention,” the dark man said turning and walking into another cell nearby.
The big man could just barely make out the shape of a teenage girl tied to the wall through the closing door. He turned away just before the screaming began. Julian smiled; he always enjoyed Mr. Black’s work, but he had a hunt to start.
KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING
Liam awoke with a jolt the next morning as a body landed on top of him. He yelped and tried to sit up, but was pinned by legs as they straddled his torso holding him down. His sleepy vision finally cleared enough to recognize a familiar teenage face grinning manically down at him.
“Good morning!” Sarah yelled loudly, making Liam’s head hurt a little.
“Sarah, get off!” came Hand’s stern rebuke as he bodily lifted the struggling teenager.
“Put me down!” she squealed and squirmed against him, eventually landing on the floor with a thump. “You dropped me!”
“You said to put you down,” Hand stated simply.
Sarah growled and jumped up. “I’ll fix you, you big gorilla,” she called back as she stomped out of the room.
“What the hell is going on?” Liam said, putting his hands on his face, feeling his adrenaline coming down from the sudden high.
“Sorry about that. She doesn’t sleep. Tends to be a bit much in the mornings.”
Liam looked at his watch. It was 8 am. He panicked for half a second thinking that he was going to be late for work, but then remembered the previous day. He felt the realization of everything come back, and it hit him like a brick. His life, as he knew it, was over. It wasn’t a great life, but it was what he knew, and now he was in some kind of underground society for demigods.
“Don’t forget that you’re apparently being hunted by some shady organization too,” Lily said.
“Lily, please don’t help,” Liam groaned.
Hand looked confused for a moment till Liam pointed to his head, and Hand nodded his acknowledgement. He knew what it was like having someone else living in your head. That thought made Liam wonder what Hand’s guide was like, but it felt inappropriate to ask. He got a wrench in his gut just thinking about it.
“Well, I’ll leave you two to wake up, but don’t take too long, Bast wants to talk to you once you’re up and moving. I’d recommend grabbing some food on the way too. The Talk’ always takes a while,” the big man said, and then exited the room.
Liam groaned again.
The main room was relatively empty as he passed through to the kitchen. His watch read 8:45, so he figured that most of the early risers were already up and out, and the late risers wouldn’t be up for a while longer. He didn’t immediately recognize anyone around him, so after making a microwavable breakfast burrito from the freezer, he picked a comfy looking couch that was relatively secluded from the room’s other occupants. It sat in front of a flat-screen TV playing the morning news broadcast, which was a story about some scandal in the political world. There was always another scandal in DC; he’d stopped paying attention to the news a long time ago, which was probably not the best habit for a lawyer, not that it mattered now. He sighed and settled in to enjoy his burrito.
He had just taken his first bite when a shriek echoed through the room. He jumped up, spilling sausage and cheese onto the carpet, and spun towards the sound. Behind him a few feet stood Cindy, dark curly hair and tan skin, wrapped in bath towels like she’d just exited the shower. She turned bright red as the location finally registered.
“Damnit! Not again!” she squealed and raced out of the room.
“What the—” Liam started.
“Heck?” Lily finished.
They
did the mental equivalent of looking askance at one another.
“She does that from time to time,” Bast’s voice said from nearby.
Liam jumped again, turned, and saw the demigoddess sitting in a chair a few feet away dressed in a professional looking white blouse and black slacks, and she had definitely not been there before. “Bast! I was about to come see you!” Liam squeaked out. Where did she come from? Liam thought.
Probably was walking around as a cat and we didn’t notice her, Liam replied.
“You would too if you could,” Lily said.
Liam didn’t have time to reply before Bast continued talking.
“Yes, I got bored and decided to come find you. I’ve had to acknowledge that in this day and age, most people don’t just jump and come running when you summon them. Gods, I miss Egypt. Those were good times.” Bast trailed off with a wistful grin on her feline face.
“Right, sure. What was that though? With Cindy?” Liam asked.
Bast shook herself slightly from her daze. “Sometimes she doesn’t focus properly and teleports unexpectedly,” she explained. “It’s usually after a shower or a massage or something. I think it has to do with her relaxing too much and letting her mind wander.”
“If she’s so unstable, why keep her around?” Liam asked. “Couldn’t that be dangerous for everyone else?”
“True, Cindy is definitely special and her peculiarities have gotten us into a bind more than once,” Bast said. “But for some of us, there isn’t anywhere else to go. The bonding can be traumatic for some and they can’t blend into society as easily as you and I. So, we do what we can to help them do something fulfilling. However, in Cindy’s case, she is a vital part of how we survive.”
“How so?” Liam asked.
“Well, she’s not only a teleporter, but an auger as well,” Bast replied.
“A what?” Liam asked having never heard the term before.
“She’s a precog; gets forewarned of potentially harmful events,” Bast clarified.
“So, she’s a prophetess? Doesn’t the whole paranoia thing get in the way of knowing what’s real though?” Liam pointed out.
“No, her auger skill is… different. If you ever see it work in person, you’ll know,” Bast said.
“Even with that. She seems like a handful to live with,” Liam mused.
Bast took on a concerned, almost motherly look. “She is, but she’s worth it. Just having her here is an inspiration to the rest of us actually,” she said.
“Inspiration? How is that?” he asked.
“Well, tell me, what do you think her guide is, Liam?” Bast asked quizzically.
The question caught Liam a bit off guard. He hadn’t started trying to figure out what other people’s guides are yet. Each time he started thinking of it, he got the same sick feeling in his stomach “Guide? I don’t know. Pandemonium? Paranoia?”
“It’s Courage,” Bast said with a slim smile.
Liam’s stomach did a flip. “Courage? But how? She doesn’t seem particularly courageous,” Liam asked as he shifted uneasily in his chair.
“But she is,” Bast said with grin. “You see, before she found her guide, she was extremely anthrophobic, a very severe social phobia, you could say. Essentially, she couldn’t be in the same room with another person except her mother without breaking down into tears. She was completely disabled and unable to accomplish even the smallest tasks without extreme difficulty. Getting a job was obviously completely out of the question, as was developing any kind of meaningful relationships. She never would have gotten out of it either if something hadn’t changed,” Bast said.
“What changed?” Liam asked.
“Her mother died,” Bast said.
Liam blinked twice and started to ask the question on his mind, but Bast held up a finger, stalling him.
“A freak accident going to work one day. Something that could happen to anyone. Poor Cindy was only 15,” Bast explained.
The dark scenarios in Liam’s mind fled as he realized something: even in this new world he’d fallen into, Murphy’s Law still reigned supreme.
Bast continued her explanation as he brought his attention back around. “She was dragged kicking and screaming from her home when Social Services came for her. They institutionalized and ‘treated’ her, which, in her case, was just a buzz word for ‘tranquilized till she was a vegetable.’ Back when this happened, the school of psychology still thought lobotomizing people cured schizophrenia; luckily, they’ve since learned a great deal about how the brain actually works. Anyway, she was committed in the very asylum above us for years until an old man visited her one day and gave her a core. And that changed her whole world,” Bast finished.
“Really? Guy just shows up one day and is all ‘hey, here kid, have a rock that gives you super powers?!’ Makes perfect sense.” Liam grumped. “There’s gotta be more to it than that!”
“Well, if you knew the old man, it would make sense, but that’s a story for another time, same as how I eventually found her. No, what you need to see is that compared to that scared girl in the asylum, the Cindy we know today is practically a social butterfly, and it’s because of her guide. Courage, at its core, isn’t doing something great or heroic; it’s doing something that terrifies you. Cindy is an inspiration, not because she’s a figurehead to gather around, but because she chooses every day to do the very thing that threatens to bring her to tears. Her guide empowered her to change herself.
“Yes, she gets antsy still and has her good and bad days, but her bond with Courage is one of the strongest bonds I’ve ever seen between a host and guide. It has to be for her to function at all,” Bast finished, looking at Liam deeply. “Now about your question as to why she’s an inspiration? Well, if you were in Cindy’s shoes, would you be able to do the same?”
Liam looked down at his feet, a little ashamed at having judged the girl so unfairly. “I don’t know,” he said finally after several moments of thought. “I never looked at life that way before. Guess there’s a lot I do take for granted.”
Bast gave him a knowing smile. “You see now why I wanted to talk. Liam, it’s important for you to realize that we demis are not super heroes nor are we villains. We are neither good nor bad by default; we are simply people. Our guides influence us and empower us, but in the end, it is still up to us to determine how we will act. Sometimes, even the best of intentions will lead to a horrifying outcome, that’s part of being human and having choice. It all depends on how you view good and bad, and your perspective on what your purpose on this earth is.”
“I don’t quite follow,” Liam said.
“An example then,” she said. “There was a young man some time ago that I knew, not very well, but well enough to see that he had a vision for what he wanted to accomplish with his life. He was an artist and he bonded with a core and chose Joy as his guide then joined a European group of demis based out of modern-day France. He decided that he wanted to bring happiness to everyone and encourage people to live better lives. A noble goal, right?”
Liam nodded, following her cue.
“Well, he ran for a political office and won, thinking he could use the position to better leverage his goals. He was charismatic and vibrant because of his connection with Joy and he drew followers to his cause by the thousands. He became quite famous very quickly throughout the world. Now, from that description, guess who I’m talking about Liam,” she asked.
“Napoleon? Maybe? I really have no clue. It doesn’t sound like anyone I’ve ever heard of,” Liam asked.
“You’ve most definitely heard of him, his name was Adolf Hitler…”
Liam’s mouth went a bit dry. “Wait, Hitler, the Hitler was a demi? And he was bonded to Joy… You’re pulling my leg. That guy was a monster! Grade A psycho!” he said incredulously.
“Now, you are getting the picture. He ended up as a monster. One of the worst villains the world has ever known. But no person begins their life as a monster, that is onl
y what they make themselves. You see, what Hitler set out to do was not what he ultimately did. He tried to come up with ways to make the German people’s lives better, but only theirs. He instituted programs and laws that were meant to help his ideal society like ‘Strength through Joy.’ From the beginning, his goal was purely to make the lives of his people better. Unfortunately, while his actions and policies did bring happiness to some limited number of people, they ended up hurting many more. He even ended up hurting his own people horribly in the process, because he lost perspective on his original purpose.
“In the end, he betrayed everything that he set out to do. He plunged the world into the worst conflict it has ever seen. And brought despair to everyone. When Joy confronted him about what he was becoming, he tried to sever their connection, but in the end he wasn’t able to do it and spent the last years of his life having to listen to Joy sing ‘Hava Nagila’ and ‘O’ Come All Ye Faithful’ in his head all the time as a form of retribution.”
“That would certainly explain why he committed suicide,” Liam said absently.
“Yes, he also had his people searching for cores all over the world, hoping that binding a new core would get him free of Joy. No luck though, obviously. But that’s neither here nor there. The point is that he had everything he needed to accomplish something good and great, but his own twisted mentality caused him to lose sight of what had made him human. He started to want power more than to help people.
“He started doing things that betrayed Joy, and slowly he went crazy and then committed suicide. Your guide is part of who you are now Liam. Whatever you do affects it as well as you. Do something that hurts your guide, and you will ultimately hurt yourself. Do something that strengthens your bond though, and you empower yourself. That’s both the price and gift of bonding your soul to another,” she finished up.
“So what is the purpose of all of this then?” Liam asked, still trying to absorb everything he’d just heard.
“Only this, never lose sight of who you are, Liam. Whatever powers you receive and whatever you set out to do, never lose your humanity, or you’ll end up a monster as well,” Bast explained.