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

by Brian McGoldrick

  Knowing that I am wasting my time, I circle around the building's roof and scan everything within sight, but I find nothing.

  The sound of sirens and the sight of cars, with flashing blue lights, let me know that I am out of time. Cloaked in the Od, so as to be invisible to the Earth sheople in the buildings, I jump off the roof and run out of the parking lot in the direction of the van.

  *Stop where you are, and I'll meet you.*

  *Did you find anything?* Elan's tone of voice indicates that she has no real expectations for any results.

  *Not a fucking thing.*

  Elan releases her breath in what could be a soft sigh. *As soon as you shot at the archer's position, I started searching for him, but I was unable to locate anything. Whatever spells or abilities he used, they completely hid him from all the scrying spells that I used. There were not even any indications of inverted pattern casting.*

  Inverted casting or inverted spell weaving as a casting technique that is used to hide a spell pattern. It is one of the most common and also one of the most Power intensive to use. The caster uses their Power to twist the dimensional boundaries so that the spell pattern becomes isolated in a temporary, artificial pseudo-dimension. There is not a lot of knowledge about dimensional or planar theory required to use it. You just need to know the proper steps to take when weaving the spell pattern. Even with an inverted weave, there are still a number of ways to detect the spell, but you have to be using them in the first place. Because casting an inverted spell weave takes three to four times the Mana needed to cast the spell normally, most people do not bother looking for inverted weaves.

  There are other methods to conceal spells as well. If I include the variations on the main methods, I know twenty-one ways to cast a concealed spell, but there are still ways to detect the spell no matter what the method used to conceal it.

  When I return to the van, no one says anything else. Up until now, most of the enemies that my group has been dealing with have been arrogant and sloppy. Perhaps, they all thought that they were untouchable, or perhaps, they just looked down on me because I am human, or from Earth, or for who knows what other reasons. Now, we are facing an enemy that is being careful enough to prevent us from even knowing what he or she looks like.

  Sitting in the driver's seat, with his arms crossed, Dacbold has a pissed off scowl on his face and the broken stub of an arrow shaft sticking out of his chest. With the location where he was shot, it is a miracle that none of his major arteries were severed. Dvergar have redundant organs for just about everything except the digestive tract. The same applies to their arteries and veins, but internal bleeding from damage to a major blood vessel can still kill one.

  "So, that did not quite work out according to plan, did it?" Dacbold's voice is such a bland monotone that I am not sure if he is serious or sarcastic.

  My snort is half laugh and half irritation. "I didn't really have much of a plan, but I was not expecting them to be using concealed weaves that would keep even Elan from spotting them."

  "You were always winging it during the Great Fuck Over."

  Triggered by Dacbold's comment, memories of the long trek through the lands of despair drift through my mind. There were always new enemies to fight and a clear goal to fight toward. It was the best time of my life.

  "Do you think you can pull this out of my chest without tearing open something vital?"

  Steeling my focus to ignore the pain, I use my Ki to probe Dacbold's wound. An idea occurs to me, and I wrap the arrowhead and kinetic force. As I gently pull on the broken shaft, the arrow smoothed the slides out of Dacbold's wound.

  "Why did you not just do that with the arrow in your arm, instead of having me carve it out if you?"

  I shrug nonchalantly. "I never thought to try it."

  As she stares at me with narrowed eyes, Elan's alabaster skin is flushes nearly purple, and anger bordering on a towering rage fills the van. "You never thought to try it? Your so badly injured from your fight with that Priest that you can barely use your Power, and when you could have removed the arrow from your arm so easily, you let me carve the wound open even wider to remove it. Are you trying to die?"

  With my eyes wide open from shock, I stare speechless at Elan. I do not understand what set off her explosive outburst. I have seen her irritated and angry in the past, but I have never seen her so close to completely losing control over her rage. I only used a trick that I had not thought to use before. I simply happened to remember the way my Ki expelled the Crystal fragments from my body that time in Gor'achen and wondered if I could do something similar to remove the arrow from Dacbold.

  "I'm a fighter. You could call me a warrior. I've never expected to live to old age. Someday, sooner or later, I'm going to fuck up and wind up dead. No one lives forever."

  Elan's voice comes out as an angry hiss. "When you die, I die. I no longer have a reason to live if you are not with me. You should think more about yourself."

  Silence fills the van. I do not know how to respond to Elan. As Angelique grabs a bandage around Dacbold's chest, the both of them are pretending that nothing is going on.

  After staring at me for a few moments, Elan opens the side door of the van, gets out, and walks away. What the fuck? We are in the middle of hostile territory. The way she is acting is what I would expect of some Earth girl.

  Dacbold sighs. "If anyone ever told me I would feel sorry for a DokkAlfar Wytch, I would have laughed in their face. I don't like getting involved in other people's relationships, but I feel sorry for that girl. You should think more about her. Since I met her, she has never stopped paying attention to everything you do. It's like she lives and breathes for no other reason than you, but you don't seem to give a fuck if you live or die. You seem to take her presence for granted. Even if she's a crazy, murderous DokkAlfar Wytch, she deserves a bit more consideration from you, if no one else."

  When I do not say anything for a moment, Angelique looks down at the floor of the van. "Master, the Mistress loves you, more than I could imagine someone loving another. I'm amazed that she lets me share you. Just fucking her isn't enough. You should worry more about her feelings."

  "Are you just going and let your woman wander off when there are assassins after us?"

  Looking out the back window of the van, I see Elan turn a corner.

  "Make sure no one follows you back to our base."

  Getting out of the van, I head in Elan's direction. When I turn the corner, Elan is standing there looking at me with her arms folded across her chest. His simmering anger is intense enough that I can still feel it with my erratically functioning Psi. There is an undercurrent of other emotions but I cannot sort them out. For several minutes feel like an eternity, we stare at each other without saying a word.

  The street is not empty, and the people that pass gape at one or both of us. In Elan's case, there is no need to sense their emotions with the naked lust plastered all over their faces. As for the ones looking at me, it is the same with their disgust.

  A female, with her hair died half puke green and half pink, moves between Elan and myself. She is tall for an Earth female, about the same height as Elan. With warped desire and lust radiating from her, she puts her hands on Elan's shoulders. "Sister, is this disgusting, cisgender, male pig bothering you? We can call the po…"

  Crack!

  Elan's slap sends the female sprawling on the ground. "If you speak ill of my man again, I will slit open your belly and fuck your twisted cunt with my dagger until you bleed to death."

  "So, why did you leave?"

  Elan sighs. "I was angry at myself. I chose to believe that only the weak feel love for another person, but now, I understand the truth. It is not that only the weak feel love, but rather, love turns the strong into the weak. I have become one of the weak. I love you."

  I open my mouth, but no words come out. I am at a loss.

  Elan's smile is sad. Taking a step closer, she stretches out her hand and caresses my scarred
cheek. "You are still strong. I hope you never understand the meaning of my words. I do not want to see you dragged down and broken. I think I have known that I was weak for a while now. When that ancient monster that you served saved me from my Umbral Backlash, I had already fallen. I was wracked with pain and bombarded with emotions that I could not control, but the one thought that kept going through my mind was that I wanted to see you again."

  I draw Elan close to me, and she rests her head against my shoulder. "You're my woman, now. I won't let anyone else have you. I may not know what love is, but you belong to me. I'll try not to get myself killed before you."

  Elan laughs. "I know that you are who and what you are. Do what you must, and I will be at your side for as long as I live."

  "... a one-third black lesbian, and that cisgender, white bitch hit me so hard that I was unconscious." The self-identified one-third black lesbian female with the fucked up hair pauses and listens to the voice on the other end of her cellphone.

  "No, she's still right here. She's talking with this big, ugly, cisgender, white, male pig. There are social cameras all over the place that recorded everything. Get your stinking, cisgender, pig ass here right now and arrest them!"

  With my arm around Elan's shoulders and my hand on her waist, I walk away from the nasty, dyke cunt.

  "Hey! Stop right there! Those cisgender, pig motherfuckers are on the way to arrest you! You're not getting away!"

  I look back over my shoulder at the dyke cunt. "Die!"

  Blood runs from every orifice on her body, and as she falls to the ground, her heart stops beating. There was no power in the word itself, but the Psi blast using my braided Power burned out most of her nerves and ruptured hundreds of blood vessels.

  From the pain, it feels like my own body is being torn apart, I swallow a mouthful of my own blood. Elan's grip on my arm tightens, but she does not say anything.

  As we continue walking, the pain recedes a bit, and I chuckle. "Thrall taught me that, but I haven't had the chance to try it out before. If I could properly master it, it should work quite well against Casters and Adepts, as well as useless shit like her."

  "She was not a danger to me like Aluras, but you still protected me. I do not want you to be weak and love me. Just protect me like that for as long as I survive."

  "While I live, I will never let anyone try to harm you unopposed."

  Elan smiles. The malicious glint in her eyes enhances her ethereal beauty. "Is there anything enjoyable to do in this city?"

  Elan's abrupt changing of the subject catches me off guard. After a moment's thought, I snort in disgust. "Not really."

  "What do lovers do when they are not fucking?"

  "Uh … I guess they go shopping or on dates."

  "What do they do on these dates?" Elan's voice has an odd tone to it. With as much research as she has been doing, I think she probably knows more about dating than I do.

  "Go to the movies? Go out to eat? Go out and get drunk together? I'm not really sure. I've never been on a date."

  Elan laughs. "Then, you can take me on a date. I have never been on one either."

  Feeling more than slightly off balance, I stop and stare at Elan. "O … K."

  Elan's smile is more of a self-satisfied smirk than a smile, and her longer than human eyes are so squinted that there is barely more than a crack between her eyelid. Her mix of anticipation and joy beats against my skin like a warm sun.

  I use my tablet computer to have Delphi route and automated cab to us.

  * * * * *

  Elan and I look around the bar & grill. Unlike most eateries, this is not a completely automated business. While robotic equipment cooks the food, orders are taken in the food is brought to the tables by living humans. Behind the bar, their human bartenders. Whether male or female, the employees are all of above average appearance and somewhere in their twenties or thirties.

  To compensate for the extra expense of a human staff, prices in this bar & grill around three times the average of similar automated establishments. Since I am paying with fake money, I do not care about the prices. Besides, everything will be reduced to radioactive ash in a week.

  In front of us, there is a podium with a few teenage human girls behind it. As they stare at me with wide open eyes, I see the mix of disgust and horror reflected in their glassy orbs.

  Standing at my side, Elan is a mass of smoldering irritation.

  The eyes of one of the girls behind the podium shift from myself to Elan, and her face turns ghostly pale. "W-w-will th-th-that be a t-t-t-table for two?"

  I smile, and one of the girls collapses, quivering, to her knees. I cannot help myself and laugh at the terror of the girls.

  A male in his thirties, with a face is pale as the girls, hurries to the entry. As he stops next to the podium, he cannot hide the tremor in his hands, or maybe, he is unaware of it. "Excuse me, sir. I am going to have to ask you to leave."

  "Why? What have we done?"

  As he frowns, the man's lips tremble. "You are terrorizing my staff. If you not leave, immediately, I will call the police."

  My grin is like a predator staring at its next meal. "Check the security monitors. Neither of us will show up on the social camera footage."

  The man shoves the girls behind the podium out of the way and looks inside of it. I did not think he could get any paler, but as the blood drains from his face, his skin takes on the pallor of fresh snow. The the man's fear is an acrid stench in the air. Anyone managing a business where real humans serve their customers will be well trained on the meaning of someone not showing up on social camera footage.

  With modern laws, social camera footage is required for any criminal conviction, but there are people who do not show up on the social cameras. Their identities have been programmed into Delphi as untouchables. They are people who are above the law. It is a status that is not available to all the wealthy or all the politicians. As long as they do not anger too many of the other powers that be, untouchables can commit virtually any crime they want, because for them, nothing is a crime.

  "Wh-wh-where would you like to sit, Sir?"

  "An out-of-the-way booth."

  "Yes, Sir."

  While barely controlling his trembling, The manager himself leads us to a semicircular corner booth. "Will this be alright, Sir?"

  "It'll do."

  "Yes, Sir. I will assign our best server to your table alone."

  Giving the manager a go away gesture, I slide into the booth. Elan sits next to me and lays my arm around her shoulders. Her slender, willowy frame belies her surprising strength. Even though my bulk would make it awkward for her, she has enough physical strength to easily carry me.

  The waitress is even more nervous than the manager, but she provides prompt service. Every time the volume of liquid in our glasses gets low, she is there to take our order and bring us fresh drinks. Despite drinking enough to kill an Earth human, neither of us is even affected by the alcohol.

  While Elan and I watch the other people in the bar & grill, several hours pass. We do not talk much, but I am enjoying just having her with me.

  A squad of police enter the front of the bar & grill, and my muscles tense as irritation fills me. As the manager practically runs to the front, I stare at them and repress my desire to kill. There were too many times in my life on Earth that I had to choke down my anger over their treatment. Because of my scars, the bastards felt entitled to treat me like something less than human. When I beat the fuck our of the cowards that thought I was an easy victim, they hated the fact that there was never an social camera footage. Without getting footage of the crime, they were helpless, despite their overwhelming desire to persecute me.

  Elan strokes my cheek with the back of her hand. "If you want to kill them, do it. They are nothing before your Power."

  I take a deep breath and release it slowly. "There's no point. They'll all be dead in less than two weeks. Before coming back here, I didn't think that this world had s
uch strong chains on my Mind. I may hate being here, but it's a good thing I came. I need to understand my weaknesses."

  "There is nothing happening here. So, why are there ten of those police here?"

  I point to the end of the bar. There is a slovenly male in his mid-twenties sitting with his back to the bar. He has below average looks and nearly zero muscle tone. Even without knowing what is currently in fashion, I know his clothes are out of style. He is your typical loser geek with no social skills. He is alone and keeps scanning the people drinking and playing their social games. I do not need to be able to read his mind to know what his is thinking, I have seen and heard too many like him. He wants to be part of one of those groups of mindless drones, but he never will be.

  "He is not doing anything that violates this country's laws. Why would they be here for him?"

  I point at a group of five females. They are only average looking, but they are wearing tight clothing made from minimal amounts of fabric. If it was not for nano technology, they would be cows with rolls of fat bulging over their too tight clothing.

  Elan frowns. "The male has not been near those females. He is too terrified to go near them."

  I make a noise that is half grunt and half laugh. "The brunette with the fake tits in the blue dress. Every time she lets her dress slip down so you can see her nipples, the loser at the bar stares at her."

  "That is a crime?" As Elan looks at me with her eyes wide open, he blatant astonishment is audible in her voice.

  "They call it Visual Sexual Assault. It's a first degree felony, just like rape. Some cunt tried to get me arrested for it in college, but the social camera footage show that I never directly looked at her more than two times. With over ten hours of footage, there were less than two minute where she might have been in the center of my line of sight, and the two times I looked at her she was the one who approached me to curse me out. That wasn't good enough for the DA to persecute me. The prick was pissed about that." I laugh nastily.