Cults of the Dragon Gods (Path of Transcendence Book 4)

by Brian McGoldrick

  While Elan and Angelique discuss the food choices on the menu, I use the polished surfaces and glass that provide reflections to watch the people who come through the door behind us. Even after more than two hours wandering around the campus, I have been unable to identify a single watcher that could be tied to either any government agencies or whoever took a shot at me with the arrow.

  *Dacbold, have you had any luck identifying anyone that seems out of place?*

  A disgusted snort is transmitted through the raid channel. *The only things following you around are a bunch of vapid late teen and early twenty-something idiots that seem overwhelmed with outrage and indignation. I don't get what goes through the minds of these imbeciles their raising these days. What is there to get all bent out of shape about to drop dead gorgeous women hanging all over an ugly, scarred, musclebound oaf?*

  The melodious tinkle of Elan's amused laughter fills the raid channel, but she does not say anything. The continuing changes to her personality are confusing. In half a year, she appears to have a completely different side of herself. Instead of a vengeance obsessed fanatic, she sometime like into a twenty-odd year old girl enjoying her life. Granted, no one would every mist her for anything but a rather bloodthirsty, vicious, manipulative, sadistic, and masochistic twenty-odd year old girl. I cannot tell if the changes are real or just a facade.

  Elan and my eyes meet in our reflections. She gives me an enigmatic smile but still, does not say anything.

  *You may have been off-base about where they would look for you. Can you think of any better locations to try and beat them?*

  Dacbold may be right, but when I was here on Earth, there were only a handful of places that I would ever frequent. Thinking about it, my aunt's was not someplace that I would normally go. The only reason that I went there was to look for answers about who and what I really am. So, why did they ambush me outside of her townhouse?

  I know neither who they are nor why they attacked me. I need to rethink my strategy on luring them out, but without knowing which faction they belong to, I may just be wasting my time. Even though I was able to identify the locations of two vehicles that were not tracked by Delphi, I lost them after they entered a nearby highway. At the time there was not enough traffic to use the changes in the traffic patterns to track them.

  Carrying trays loaded down with enough food for eight people, the girls and I moved to a table against the back wall of the cafeteria. As I look at the people seated at the tables, I recognize a few faces that are part of the faculty or staff, but almost none of the students look even vaguely familiar.

  *That guy by the side wall keeps giving you the evil eye, Master. Did you beat them up when you were children?* Angelique tries unsuccessfully to keep a teasing grin off of her lips. She is not terribly skillful, when it comes to concealing her amusement.

  Looking in the direction where Angelique's eyes are focused, I see a male, who is approximately the same age as I am, staring at me with the venomous look. He seems vaguely familiar, but I cannot place him. It could just be another case of some dickless bastard who is upset that an ugly fuck like me is with not one but two top-quality pieces of ass. Even ignoring Elan's inhuman beauty, Angelique would still qualify as a one in a hundred thousand beauty here on Earth.

  The second man at the table appears to be a few years younger, in his late teens. He looks at me over his shoulder, but when he sees me looking back at them, he quickly turns away. "What's the big deal with those three, Bobby?"

  If I was a normal human, I would not be able to hear his words, but even without being able to reliably control my Power, my Body, which includes my senses, is no longer that of a normal human. Even without using Power to enhance my senses, the acuity of my hearing, taste, smell, and vision are probably five to eight times better than the common trash here on Earth. Even, the serfs and commoners in the Labyrinth of Yggr, to say nothing of Casters and Adepts, have physical abilities that are easily two times better than Earth humans.

  Bobby continues to glare at me. "That ugly fuck used to be a student here. He was an arrogant prick, who walked around with his nose in the air never giving anyone the time of day."

  "So, what's the big deal? There are lots of people like that."

  Bobby's hate filled eyes focus on the male with his back to me. "He didn't know his place. The piece of shit was having a fight with one of the hottest bitches in the university. Me and some of the boys on the team confronted him, and he talked back at us like he was better than us or something."

  I remember him now. He was one of those football faggots in that video the Special Agents Jones had used to try and coerce me. I remember one of them said that Bobby self-identifies as a homosexual. So, why would he have been upset about Mei fighting with me?

  "Why didn't you just beat his ass?"

  Bobby glares at his clenched fists on the table in front of him. "When I was a frosh, there were a couple seniors on the team that tried to beat his ass. He lured into a utility room that didn't have any social cameras. I don't know what happened in there. They never talked about it, but both of them had their knees and their backs broken. Even with modern medicine technology, they were never able to perform at the same level as before. They lost their positions on the team.

  "The police said they couldn't do anything to that bastard without valid social camera footage. When I brought it up to my uncle, he did some digging and found that the were social cameras in the utility room, but they were disabled. There was no evidence of who did it or when. There were dozens of similar assaults in the cock-sucker's past."

  "Mark McGuinness may be an asshole, but he isn't a cock-sucker like you are Bobby." The pretty-boy, blonde male that approaches the table looks to be about the same age as Bobby and myself, but he does not look familiar. He does not have the effete mannerisms of a bitch faggot, but something is still off about him. My gut says he is a homosexual.

  From the look on Bobby's face, he wants to kill the newcomer. The hate, fear, and self-loathing radiating from him are so intense that they hit me like a blast of hot, rancid air. Seeing Bobby's reaction to him, the malice and lust that the newcomer is projecting are just as strong as Bobby's emotions.

  "What do you want, Kyle?"

  Kyle, the newcomer, sits down on the bench next to Bobby. Snuggling up to Bobby, Kyle puts his arm around Bobby's shoulders. "Queer for quim, that is what you call yourself, isn't it?"

  Looking down, Bobby glares of the table in front of them without saying anything.

  Kyle smiles at the other male at the table. "Your name is Stan, correct?"

  The other male nods. "Yeah, that's right."

  "Well, Stan, I think I should tell you what your idol, Bobby here, is trying to do with you. If you follow his advice and self-identify as homosexual, as soon as you receive any benefits from it, he intends to blackmail you into becoming my sex slave. There is just one problem with this plan, I am not interested in you. Bobby here is the one I intend to keep as a sex slave until I tire of him.

  "Apparently, there are a fair number of heterosexual women who like engaging in sexual intercourse with homosexual men. I cannot blame them. After all, we look better, dress better, have a better sense of style, and take better care of ourselves than you breeders. And as a bonus, those of us with low self-esteem, who will settle for their disgusting asses when they cannot find a man, have no interest in slavering after them in a futile attempt to pursue a relationship.

  "In a rather foolish attempt to put himself in a position of being innocuous and unthreatening to those women, Bobby was stupid enough to self-identify as homosexual and receive the social and economic benefits of doing so. Since he is not a homosexual, that is a crime, and if I turn him in to the authorities, he could get a ten to twenty year prison sentence."

  Sitting next to me, Elan stares at the three pseudo-males with her lips slightly parted. This is the first time that I have ever seen her looking so shocked and flabbergasted. Once Kyle stops talking and
stares at Stan with a grin, Elan turns to me. *They hate themselves and each other, all three of them. Nearly all the natives of your world that I have seen hate themselves. Not every single person hates themself. There have been a few exceptions. Since we arrived here, I have noticed about fifteen in total that seem to have a sense of contentment or self-satisfaction with themselves. The rest hate themselves, but none of them have the intensity of self-loathing that these three do. The self-hatred in these three is an order of magnitude stronger than the worst I have found in anyone else. Until the one called Kyle told him about the one called Bobby's plans, the one called Stan seemed about average, but now, his emotions are even more vicious and unstable than the other two.*

  I laugh out loud. *This is Earth, the real Earth. I hated this place. I still hate it. The culture, the laws, the people, everything about this world is fucked up and twisted. Everyone wants to fuck over, use, and abuse everyone else, but not a one of them have the balls to do it without using the threat of the law, or the fucked up hand of the fucked up government. They are all weak and cowardly. There were so many times that I wanted to just kill people, but I restrained myself. I just made sure they were outside the view of any social cameras and hurt them so bad they wished they were dead. I was like them. Because I lived here and had no escape, I hated myself, too.*

  My laugh drew the attention of Bobby and his two friends. Bobby glares at me, but Stan looks sick and ashamed. Kyle is different. While stroking Bobby's cheek, he looks at me with an expression somewhere between a grin and a smirk.

  I do not care about their relationships with one another, but I notice something about Bobby and Kyle that does interest me. The both of them have ID badges clipped to their pockets, and the badges are for the Burning Medical Research Hospital. Bobby may have been a football faggot, but like myself, he was pursuing a degree in something related to Information Management. Even if they are a pair of self-loathing faggots, I may have a use for them.

  As a tablet computer appears in my hand out of thin air, their three pairs of eyes appear to be doing their damnedest the pop out of their sockets. I smile at the three of them, and seeing the expression on my face, they exude varying degrees of fear. Am I really that scary?

  Without any further conversation, the three faggots scramble to their feet and make for the door of the cafeteria at a half running pace. Many of the other people in the cafeteria stare at them with varying degrees of confusion, surprise, and amusement showing on their faces.

  As I bring up their information on the tablet, my low, nasty chuckle is filled with malice. Stan is only a student in his sophomore year. As I expected, he is useless. On the other hand, Bobby and Kyle may prove to be very useful. Bobby is employed at the Burning Hospital as a network security specialist, and Kyle is actually a medical intern.

  Connecting to Delphi, I set it to start recording everything from all of the electronic devices registered to Bobby and Kyle. As with Area 51, there are parts of the Burning Medical Research Hospital that turned out to be closed off to Delphi. The followers of Woden seem to be well aware of the nature of Delphi and they obviously have wards that can block it out. Using Bobby and Kyle's electronics, I may be able to circumvent the wards at the hospital.

  It will still be a few days before Valcrit is done ripping apart Turner's Mind. If I can learn a little bit more about what is going on in the Burning Hospital, it will help to answer a few of my questions. The Burning in the name of the hospital is the same Burning as Jenny Burning, the Lady of Gold. Since the oldest daughter of the current head of the family is a victim of The Great Fuck Over, it seems extremely odd that the Burning family would have ties to the followers of Woden.

  Fresno University was a State of California University at one point, but the Five Families, as they are called, acquired it from the state over thirty years ago and turned it into a private endeavor. Their family and given names are plastered all over the buildings and facilities of the University now. I do not know why they wanted a university, but between them, they control a huge number of high tech, pharmaceutical, and medical research corporations. I really cannot say that I care about their reasons, but I am hoping to find some clues that might lead me to their current younger generation. Once I find them, I will finish what I started with Tiara and Alaric.

  While we eat in silence, Elan seems to be carefully examining the other people in the cafeteria, but I have no idea what she is looking for.

  * * * * *

  "That was mostly a complete waste of time."

  Sitting behind the wheel of the van, with his arms crossed, Dacbold shrugs without saying anything.

  We are stuck in rush hour traffic. Based on the number of vehicles between us and the exit, it will probably take us another three light cycles to get out of the university grounds. This seems to be worse than what I remember, but my time in the Labyrinth of Yggr may have dulled my memories. I may not have been actively trying to forget this world, if such a thing is even possible, but I was certainly not making any attempt to remember it.

  "Have you thought of any other possibilities for where your attackers might be watching for you?" Elan stares absently out the side window of the van. Since the incident with Bobby and his butt buddies, she seems to be lost in thought. With her strength of will and force of personality, I cannot imagine that simply seeing how fucked up this world is would put her off balance, but it has obviously triggered some ideas or lines of thought that she cannot get out of her mind.

  "I'm not sure. When I lived here, my apartment was a rental, and the only other place I spent any time was Urehara-sensei's dojo. Besides my aunt's and the cemetery, this is the only place that could be associated with me."

  Elan's frown conveys an air of irritation, and I understand how she feels. If I had not sensed it, that arrow outside my aunts would have killed me, but when I partially dodged it, there was no follow-up. No assassin worth a damn would fail to finish his target. The incident just feels wrong to me. Who was the Archer? Was the attack even an assassination attempt, or something else entirely?

  "Harassment and distraction." Dacbold's voice is a flat monotone.

  I do nothing to conceal my scowl. "What could someone try to be distracting us from?"

  Dacbold shrugs. "I have no idea, but we have effectively wasted two days with no results to show for it."

  I run through everything that I know about the activities of Woden and Hel's faction and the little bit that Special Agent Jones mentioned about the dragon factions. There is nothing I can pinpoint that any of them would be trying to keep my attention away from. No matter what I do, I always have the problem of not enough knowledge.

  Being in the dark pisses me off.

  The light turns red just as we reach the exit from the University. If I did not know that the traffic computers kept the timing of the light cycles constant dependent on the time of day, I would swear that this last cycle was shorter than the rest.

  Crash! Thud!

  Dacbold stares at the arrow embedded in the center of his chest. Its shaft is an exact duplicate of the one that was in my arm.

  "Elan!"

  "I am putting a ward around the van now."

  Crack!

  Another arrow shatters against the invisible ward protecting the van. This time I saw the arrow coming and where it was shot from, but I cannot see the archer.

  Fresno University is fronted by a six lane divided highway, and on the opposite side, there are strip malls with stores that mostly cater to the university students. About a mile beyond that, there is an office park, filled with eight to twelve story buildings. The arrow came from the shadows on the roof of one of the eight story buildings.

  After jumping out of the van, I take off across the highway. While dodging and leaping over the cars, I pull my endless quiver from my storage ring. Taking Stone Feather Death from its pouch on the endless quiver, I string it when I land in the median.

  Crack-Boom. Crack-Boom.

  The low wall surr
ounding the eight story building's roof and an HVAC unit behind it explode into pieces under the impact of my arrows. In spite of my irritation, I smile slightly. As my strength grows, the draw weight of Stone Feather Death increases with it, and my arrows are easily traveling at three times the speed of the bullets Special Agent Jones fired at me the other day.

  A half-dozen explosions follow the first two, but none of my arrows find a living target. Snarling, I take off across the second half of the highway and sprint toward the office park.

  *Brand?* In the raid channel, the quarrying tone of Elan's voice is easy to identify.

  *Meet me at that office park. Dacbold, what's your condition?*

  Dacbold grunts. *The arrow went through my esophagus, but the bones of my spinal column stopped it. It did not hit my tracheas, lungs, or hearts. I broke off the shaft. I can worry about getting the head out later.*

  As I race toward the office park, I move in an erratic zigzagging pattern, but it seems to be unnecessary. No more arrows are fired at the van or myself. I store Stone Feather Death back in its pouch, and taking out my weapon harness with the bastard swords attached to it, I strap it on.

  Reaching the office building, I slip into the Shadow of the Od and ignore the burning pain that floods through me. Staying in the interstice between the Earth's plane and where ever the Od lies, I scramble up the glass face of the building on all fours.

  Back during the Great Fuck Over, Thorrin once told me about a superhero called Spiderman. I do not know if he was telling me the truth or bullshitting me, but I suppose if the character existed, I would probably look like him as I scramble up the glass face of the office building. As the random thought flashes through my mind, I frown. From Thorrin's story, Spiderman sounded like a real wimpy faggot to me. It seemed rather strange that people would read a comic book about a fence sitting, dithering pissant like that.

  Steel is pain. Steel is cruelty.

  Putting up with the pain, I use my pattern sight spell and examine the roof of the building. I cannot find anything alive other than some insects and birds. There are no signs are traces to give me any clues about the archer.