A Shuffling of Planets (The Chained Worlds Chronicles Book 3)

by Daniel Ruth

  "I am not a stinking Fairy," Eli shrieked as she stopped gobbling down a corner of the congealed pizza. "Pixie! P.X.I!"

  "She's cute," Cameron said hesitantly, seeming quick to come to grips with his altered reality. "I think we could sell fair... pixies to humans. Heck, with Walt Disney we wouldn't have to do anything at all."

  "Are these humans bad people," Eli asked, glaring at the two people in suits. "They look evil."

  "No, they're probably not evil," I said absently. "It's not the fae that needs your services..."

  The window broke, scattering glass over the room. Crawling through the opening was a creature that looked like a cross between a tiny man with warped features, whiskers that resembled fur and bulging red eyes. "Say Mistypebbles, you know you can't take goods from the mortals without my permission. I gots to take you back to the mound."

  "Get off my land trespasser," I spat moving to give him a kick. He spritely attempted to dodge out of the way. However, I am well aware that my reflexes don't match many of the nimbler species. I had already telekinetically stabbed into his brain attempting to paralyze him.

  A huge ripping sound was heard echoing through the room and a foul odor wafted through the air. It wasn't quite what I was planning but the involuntary function shocked the fae enough that I was able to contact him with my foot, catapulting him through the wall. I heard a series of bangs as the creature broke through several neighboring buildings.

  "I may have broken a few rules by following you home," the pixie sheepishly explained as everyone silently looked between her, the hole in the wall and myself.

  "I don't care if you ate their babies," I said grumpily. "No one breaks into my home."

  "Is that the client," Edgar partly woke from his stupor enough to numbly ask.

  "No, that was just an intruder," I replied grumpily. Imagine a pissant little fae breaking into my home. He was lucky I didn't slap him hard enough to explode him into a bloody mist. "The client is the shifters of America."

  Once again there was silence. "You'll have to elaborate on that," the thinner man stated after he had recovered for a few long seconds. "What exactly is a shifter?"

  "You've heard of werewolves in the movies," I asked. A sickly look appeared in his eyes. "It's all lies, except that there is a subrace that changes into wolves."

  "Werewolves... don't have a great reputation," Edgar said slowly.

  "They don't eat people," I began. "You can't catch it from a scratch and it's not a curse."

  "Unless the Wild Hunt curses you into a dog," piped up Eli. "Then it’s a curse. But you can't change back."

  We stared at the tiny fae for a moment. Then I continued as if she hadn't said anything. "Unlike the movies, there's also were leopards and werehyenas. Let's call these various packs shifters."

  The brothers looked uncomfortable hearing there were packs of shapeshifters roaming the world. "Why now? If the 'packs' have been among us all this time, why reveal yourselves now?"

  "Some of the packs got overeager," I explained as I got a broom out of the closet and started sweeping up the glass. I had never actually used it since I had been cleaning with magic. It felt pretty awkward. "You've heard of Dash? She went publish and some of the younger people started to think, 'why can't I do that?' Then some of the other packs who didn't want to come out started arguing. Next thing you know the police start calling the packs 'gangs' and they are fighting superheroes."

  "You're telling us that all the gang fighting lately are the packs," Edgar asked nervously. "I thought it was just the National Enquirer being itself when it reported the hero groups fighting werewolves."

  "Now you know," I said with a smile. This didn't seem to comfort them. "Anyway, our young compatriot Dash has the shifter dream. She's famous, accepted... even loved by the public. Even though she's caused a bit of heartache for the rest of the community we just want to let bygones be bygones. Since she has paved the way to humans accepting furry people like us, we think it's time to come out and show humans that we're just like them. Except furry and cute!"

  "And Dash is a... a were-cheetah?" Edgar asked uncomfortably.

  "You've seen her," I pointed out. "Now that you know about the shifter community, what else could she be?"

  "I suppose that makes sense," Cameron said dubiously. "You really do need our services then. Unlike fairies..."

  "Pixies!" screeched the fae, buzzing the man's head.

  "Pixies! Got it," shouted the man, waving his hands to fend off the buzzing creature. "All that the movies show are bloodthirsty monsters. It will be a tough sell. Fortunately, you have Dash. She's putting the sexy back into the hero business. With her to endorse you I don't think you'll have..."

  "She not going to endorse us," I interjected. "There were some hard feelings when she went and did her own thing. However, she shouldn't actively counter anything you say. We'll tell you all about her teenager dreams and hopes as well as the current generation of teenage shifters, who look up to her and idolize her. You just need to publicize it and spin it."

  "That's tougher," Edgar said with a frown. "You sure she won't object?"

  "I can guarantee that even if we bring her own mother on camera to provide a retrospective on her history that she won't say a thing," I said solemnly with my hand raised up as if giving an oath. It was true too. Dash was a demon. She was using her role as a 'superhero' to further her own goals. Most likely nefarious ones. But anything we do will simply solidify her identity. Her denying anything would open an investigation that would be the death knell of her plans.

  Naturally, if she did this, I would ensure that any public investigation showed that she was the demon in charge of the regular attacks and supply runs the city, perhaps the worlds were suffering. Even if it wasn't true, I would guarantee that evidence of such was found.

  The downside of this path would be that shifters would have to scramble a bit to survive the PR blowback. I was already tossing around some ideas for this contingency. I didn't think I would need it but I did think about it.

  Joe was looking at me in confusion. Probably because he was aware that I didn't know anything about Dash, let alone who her mother was. After all, I had just assigned the two pack leaders to hire detectives to track her movements and the team that she resided in.

  "Now you know the truth," I said humbly. "Do you want to be part of the greatest PR movement of our century? I heard you have done great things with people who have shady reputations. We are entire subraces with horrible reputations," I paused as I stared at them intently. "I know it will be tough but most of the shifters are just normal people who are fellow citizens who pay taxes and have picnics in the park. There is absolutely no eating or bloodshed, of humans, involved. And wait till Joey here shows you pictures of a six-year-old werewolf playing with a ball. That is PR gold!"

  Joe looked horrified. I wasn't sure if it was because I had mangled his name or he was thinking of his fellow shifters beating the living daylights out of him as he asked for pictures of their children doing dog stunts. I smiled as I thought of how upset they would be when I had them catch frisbees in the park.

  Edgar and Cameron seemed to communicate silently as they looked into each other's eyes. I couldn't see anything from their microexpressions. After almost a minute of this, the thinner one looked at me with determination in his eyes.

  "We'll do it," he said with determination.

  "Sure," Edgar said, nodding in agreement. "We've worked for folks that probably would have deserved what they pulled down on themselves. This is big and if you've been living under the radar for all of human history, there is no way you could have been as bad as the movies."

  "I'll have to do a bit of research but I think there is an entire fiction genre devoted to glorifying the various fictional races." A thoughtful look crossed his face. "Too bad you're not vampires, the vampire romance section is incredibly popular."

  "They can get their own rep," I said with a snort, eliciting a chuckle from the humans.
Joe gave me a flat look.

  An hour later Joe looked at me with mixed expressions. "You are going to have to beat the crap out of every single pack leader in the city. Every day. Forever." He seemed unhappy.

  "The pack's little secret has already come out. If the world wasn't distracted by walls of light in the sky, waves of demon insects and rampaging dinosaurs, then humans with torches and pitchforks would already be at your door." He started to raise his hand in objection. "Figuratively speaking."

  "The scary thing is, I can see it working," Joe grunted reluctantly. I nodded wisely. It should. I was blatantly stealing the tactics that had turned vampires from figures of horror into someone you would invite to dinner. It should be even more effective since even the cutest vampire isn't as adorable as a bundle of fur rolling around having fun. However, like the vampires, it wasn't going to do good things for their racial pride.

  "Simon, who's that," Karen asked from the couch while stretching and yawning. Our token human had slept all morning as we basically talked right in front of her.

  "Who's Simon," Joe asked, looking between us.

  "I am," I replied. "Karen here is going to be my new secretary. She's clued in on the supernatural side of the work." Joe looked like he wanted to say something but I raised my hand. "Since she is a human, she doesn't have to call me 'Arbitrator'. You'll need to fill her into the building renovation. It should free you up for our other projects. Make sure she has access to the money too."

  "I don't even know if I've been declared dead," Karen said scrunching up her face.

  "Let me check," I said as I activated my terminal and searched the internet for her name. "Um, yes. Two years ago."

  "Oh my god," Karen exclaimed in dismay as I used the tiny holographic display. "How many years was I gone. iWatches can do that now?"

  "The boss doesn't use that crap," Joe replied with a bit of reflected pride. "MI6 made that for him."

  "MI6," Karen said flatly. "The imaginary James Bond department."

  "Not so imaginary now," Joe said with a grin. "Anyway, we can have hyena man start the process of declaring you legally alive again. I bet he knows the right people that crawled out from under the rock next to him."

  "Joe is the wolf pack leader," I supplied at Karen's confused look. "Jim is the hyena pack leader. They don't get along." I gave Joe a stern look. "But they will get along anyway."

  "I know boss," Joe said, waving his hands in what he may have thought was a pacifying way.

  "Getting back to the renovations," I said, changing the subject. "Remember I want the top floor with a lab. Just copy Sulayman's layout. He had a great layout."

  "His laboratory was warded," Karen warned me. "I only saw it from the doorway. When the other humans couldn't take it anymore, they would run in there. Their bodies would melt and then catch fire within seconds. There wasn't enough to make a revenant."

  "What?" Joe asked in shock. "Where the hell was that?"

  "She can tell you later if she wants," I said to him absently. "Do what you can remember. I'll modify it if needed. You sing, right?"

  "Yeah," she replied hesitantly. "I was pretty good. Good enough to live."

  "Wait," Joe interrupted again. I looked at him in annoyance. "You look familiar. Karen Bailey? I loved your stuff! Your albums were at the top of the charts for two years! And then you... um, vanished. They thought a crazed fan kidnaped you and um... never mind."

  "They weren't far off," Karen said glumly.

  "Wow, Jim is going to have his hands full getting you declared alive again. At least without being swamped by the media."

  "Yeah, Jim's life sucks," I interjected blandly. "If you were famous, I don't know if it will appeal to you but I was going to offer the ground floor as your bar that you could sing in."

  "I would..." she began.

  "Boss, Karen Bailey was big," Joe exclaimed. "She wrote and produced her own music. A singing gig in a bar would be ridiculous!"

  "I would..." she started again.

  "Oh. Well, I suppose she could change the basement into a sound studio. I'd offer a couple of probes for recording and processing but without Beth here I wouldn't want the waste the time to learn how to program them."

  "Stop already!" Karen shouted. "I appreciate your concern but I want to slide into society by starting small. A bar would be fine. I might do some singing later on." She calmed down a bit and continued, "I'd be happy to have a studio in the basement. When I feel up to starting my career again it can be there. Not now though."

  "Just out of curiosity," Jim asked. "What's wrong with Purgatory? Is it broken down? I think there was a club in the building. All the stories mention one. It even sounds like each floor had one."

  "Building," Karen asked in confusion. "It's almost a city. Why would you think it was a building?"

  "It’s a pocket dimension," I explained. "It's infested with magic elves. I came to an accord with them but I wouldn't trust them to behave unsupervised."

  "Elves?" Joe asked in disbelieve. "Like keibler elves? Like Eli here?"

  "Pixie," screamed the fae as she jerked upright from where she had been napping on the couch. Looking around frantically her eyes finally settled on us. "Did you say something?"

  "No. Nothing," I said dismissively. After a moment of thought. "Think Tolkien elves, except evil. And about physically powerful as shifters, except they cast spells and illusions instead of shifting shape."

  "From what I saw," Karen reluctantly contributed. "Only the high caste sidhe like Ciarra, Gallia, Brann, and Cunobelinus could do real spells. The others are just strong and tough with illusion abilities."

  "Sidhe?" Joe said in startlement. "That’s not elves. That's serious mojo. Grandma was from Ireland. I heard some of her stories. They weren't evil though."

  "They are meaner than most of the stories I read in my research," I said. "Though Stella's stories seem to be pretty accurate. Eli called them Unseelie."

  "Unseelie? That makes more sense. Grandma had special stories with them. Who is Stella," asked the shifter.

  "Another magic elf I know," I began. "Just don't call her that. They're all a bit racist," I specifically didn't look at the pixie, though she looked suspiciously at me. "She's from a rival branch. They call themselves the Álfar."

  "Norse elves," Joe said in recognition.

  "That's what I said," I nodded in agreement. "But if you meet them don't call them elves. They start screaming at you."

  "I've heard of them," Karen said. "There was a war a few centuries back between the races. The Álfar were back by some serious gods in a pantheon and they had to pay the winners a price and retreat from the land." Karen thought for a moment. "They sounded nicer. I had sometimes wondered what it would have been like if..."

  "Unless you call them an elf, they are nicer," I admitted. "Although I only met one. The dimensional crossing they were using was cut off. I assume the same happened to the sidhe."

  "I guess so," Karen said with a nod. "There used to be lots of parties. Sometimes hundreds of Unseelie. Unless that was an illusion," she admitted reluctantly. "Most of the time it was just the sidhe you saw. And the queen of course."

  "The queen was personally there?" I asked in surprise?

  "Kind of," she said uncertainly. "From what I overheard she was a projection. She felt real but the sidhe said things that made it sound like she wasn't."

  "Oh, an avatar," I exclaimed in excitement.

  "What's that," asked the dire wolf.

  "A god can bud a lesser clone," I described. "And send it through dimensions to represent them. It can do everything the original can except at a smaller scale. She must have really liked this dimension, it's supposed to be hard."

  "Like a mini-me," asked Joe. Karen and I looked blankly at him. "Never mind."

  "Seems like I lucked out then," I said with a sigh.

  "How so," she asked.

  "If a god's avatar had been there, the fight would have been very different," I said with a shiver. The
best I could have expected was to escape. From what Maribel said only greater gods could create avatars.

  "But she was," Karen pointed out.

  "What?" I exclaimed in shock.

  "She is there," she repeated. "I haven't seen her since a few months ago but I heard them talk about her. She's hurt or something. I didn't understand it but she's there. In one of the back rooms."

  I was silent for a few moments. That was terrifying. I almost came face to face with a god. Or a clone of one. Then I thought of various scenarios and one almost fit.

  "You haven't seen her since the barriers went up," I said slowly, a grin slowly blooming on my face. "And she was hurt. I think we found out what happens when the link between an avatar and a god is severed."

  "The barriers you mentioned the Demon Lord set up?" Karen asked. Joe just looked at us in confusion.

  "Did it sound like she was catatonic or just hurt," I asked. I didn't know enough about gods to say how bad such a situation would be for one. Since I was allowed to take over the god's domain with only token resistance it must have been pretty bad.

  "I... don't know."

  "Well, never mind for now," I said with a shrug. "One more excellent reason not the set-up shop in Purgatory. Too many unanswered questions."

  "So, there's a god in Purgatory," asked the pack leader with trepidation. "Are you still planning to have your meeting with the Leopard Clan there?"

  "Sure, why not," I said with a smile. "How else am I supposed to get answers if I avoid it."

  Chapter 27

  At that point, Karen and Joe started to go through the paperwork that was part of the renovation project. Jim had handled most of it, so Joe and Karen were on mostly even ground deciphering it.

  Surprisingly Karen had some limited experience in construction. A few years ago, she had directed the construction of her studio. At a high level. Still, this was no different, I didn't expect my people to micromanage the construction team, just ensure that they delivered what was promised.

  Aside from not living in a dump and having a lab area, I didn't really care about the details either. Since I had a few spare moments I pulled out some of my spell tomes. I really needed to master the temporal spells. Joe gave me a sidelong look. I suppose I hadn't really played the role of a someone interested in books until then. No one except me could read them so he likely didn't realize what they were about.