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

by Brian McGoldrick

  Special Agent Jones nods. "Yeah. Why?"

  "You have a way to kill one of them quickly?"

  Special Agent Jones opens up a case that was leaning against the wall of the truck and takes out an oddly shaped gun. "This is a Barrett .50 BMG sniper rifle. It'll go through the armor on one of those MTVRs that were in the Jap's garage. With the sound suppressor on it, those clowns from the other world probably won't recognize a gunshot when they hear it. The regular agency operatives are another story. If any of them here it, we're gonna be in trouble."

  If a bullet from that gun has that much force behind it, it should go through most any armor that Sandor's lackeys are likely to have.

  "Okay. You're with me. You'll be my backup, but unless there's a target I can't take out in time, don't shoot."

  "Right."

  I look at Dacbold. "Dacbold, stay with truck. When I signal it's clear, drive this truck into the loading dock we got it from."

  "No problem."

  "Valcrit, Elan, you're going to have to time taking out your targets to match our progression with the Power users on the ground. If one of them gets off a warning before we enter the hospital, there is no telling how much opposition will face."

  Once everyone is acknowledged their understanding, I glance at Tyrend, who has not said anything, and he shrugs. "I know. I'm useless like this."

  "Is everyone ready?"

  The others not or give a verbal assent. Of the five, Angelique is the only one who is nervous or on edge. Even after living through the Great Fuck Over, she is not a real fighter.

  *Special Agent Jones, you can understand my words, correct?*

  Special Agent Jones scowls. *This feels unnatural as hell. I understand you better than I have ever understood anyone, but I don't like being slapped with your emotions along with your voice.*

  My smile is slightly mocking. *Welcome to the world of empathic reception. You only have to deal with it while using the communication functions of the social organizers. Be happy that no one here is a ballless coward. Being an empath on Earth, it feels like swimming in a river of shit. The fear, self-loathing, jealousy, depression, and apathy from these cowardly sheep here makes me want to puke.*

  *You don't have that on the other world?*

  My grunt is half laughing and half scoffing. *Wherever you have humans, you have those that are cowards, but in the Labyrinth of Yggr and on Taereun, there is also aggression, naked lust, hostility, the will to dominate and destroy, hunger, and hostility. It makes you feel alive to experience it. Here, I feel like I'm walking through a slave pen filled with a bunch of ass-raped faggots.*

  Special Agent Jones smiles grimly. *I can't wait to see this other world.*

  *Let's go. We need kill some faggots that are in our way before you can see it.*

  As I draw both the Dark Od and Light Od into myself, intense pain fills me, and I clench my teeth. Elan frowns, but I ignore it. Turning around, I open the back door of the cargo box and silently dropped to the ground.

  Special Agent Jones is the only one that follows me through the poorly lit streets and parking lots. The other three do not need to leave the truck to make use of their Power at this range.

  I am more than a little surprised by how silently Special Agent Jones moves and how well he blends into the shadows. By Earth standards, he is a very big man, but he is also a well conditioned combatant and a superb athlete.

  The Dark Od spreads out around me, giving me that odd mix of sight and spatial awareness. The nearest watchers are more than a hundred yards distant when I first detect them. As the Od touches them, I sense the flow of Power within them. Even the Earth trash have Power, but their quantities of Ki, Mana, and Psi are too minuscule to be of any use.

  I locate my first target and move to a position with a clear line of sight. An illusion makes it look like the man is dressed in FBI body armor, but in reality, he is wearing a suit of plate armor. Settling down, I wait.

  *The ambushers have just completed their check-in cycle.* Valcrit's message is the signal to start.

  Sandor's men, including the Power users from Taereun, are all wearing vital signs monitors. Typing in a command on my tablet, I activate a Delphi routine that will spoof the signals from those monitors.

  *Elan, take out the first sniper.*

  *Done.* Elan's replies almost instantaneous.

  *Valcrit, take out the trash looking at my target.*

  Slipping into the Shadow of the Od, I cover the seventy yards between myself and my target in just over two seconds.

  He has good instincts. When I am within eight yards, he starts to react to my presence, but it is too late. In an upward thrust, the point of my left-hand sword punches through his gorget tearing through the back of his mouth and into his brain.

  *All targets with a line of sight on you are down. None of them called in a warning.*

  As we continue to circle around the hospital, the targets go down one by one without a single hitch. By the time we are approaching the eighth Power user, I'm looking for something to go wrong. With limited manpower, this is too drawn out of an operation to be going this smoothly.

  The eighth target is in the doorway of one of the university administration buildings. With his back leaning against the closed doors, the only way to approach him, from outside his line of sight, is from above.

  In the Shadow of the Od, where I can ignore the effects of gravity, I run up the side of the administration building and around to the front. Letting gravity take control of my body, I fall toward the guard with my swords poised to strike. His relaxed posture never changes, and the points of my blades slipped through the small gaps between his pauldrons and his helm. As he dies, his mind is filled with fear and confusion.

  *All targets down.*

  Valcrit's comment signals another kill with no warning given, but I cannot shake the feeling that something is wrong. Maybe, it is just paranoia. Nothing ever goes perfectly, and I'm waiting for the boot that we missed to kick us.

  My last target is pacing in a small circle. His annoyance and irritation are obvious in his posture and movements. I wait a moment for his back to turn to me.

  *Take them out!*

  Again in the Shadow of the Od, I rush my target. With his back to me and the design of his helmet, there are no good gaps to aim for. In a straight thrust, I drive my right hand sword through his back and out his chest, destroying his heart and severing his spine in the process. As I angle my sword point downward, the corpse slides to the ground.

  *All the ambushers have been eliminated.*

  Still feeling uneasy, I look around, but I cannot see anything amiss. *Dacbold, bring the truck.*

  *On my way.*

  With Special Agent Jones following, I head for the loading dock.

  The loading dock is dimly lit, but that is no impediment to me. I carefully scan the interior, and there is still no sign of visible social cameras or other electronics that I can tap into with Delphi.

  The rumble of a biodiesel engine signals the arrival of the rest of my party with the prisoners and new slaves.

  Dacbold parks the truck in about the same place as it was when we commandeered it. After shutting down the engine, he exits the cab and the back door opens up. The rest of my party quickly debarks, bringing the slaves and prisoners with them.

  Hearing the sound of multiple footsteps, I turn toward the doors leading into the hospital proper and look at the group of armored men moving out onto the loading dock. At the head of the pack, there are five copies of Sandor.

  Now that something has gone wrong, I feel better.

  The five Sandors stop facing me, and thirteen men spread out to either side of them. Taking a careful look at the twenty-six man, it is obvious, even with the visors of their armor closed, that there are two copies of each man. Moreover, nine of those pairs are familiar. The way that they stand and move is very much like the nine men I killed outside the hospital.

  They have almost certainly known that we were
here from the moment I killed the first of the Power users. I am starting to get more than a little pissed off.

  "Special Agent Jones, I thought you said there are only two seven foot long assholes not five. The city has really gone to shit while I was gone."

  Special Agent Jones frowns. "If anyone had told me there were five seven foot long assholes in the world, I would've called him a liar. Looks like it would've been my bad."

  "You two dickbags shut the fuck up!" All five Sandors scream at the same time.

  I grin at the Sandor quintuplets. "HaHaHaHa. Hey, cocksucker, when I crushed your balls in the goblin valley, did you feel it?"

  Sandor frowns at me with a confused expression on his face. "What are you talking about, asshole?"

  "You were in the goblin valley off the spider caves. You tried to stop us coming through the rift, and we killed you."

  Sandor's expression reveals completing comprehension, but there is fear underlying it. "Are you on drugs or something? The last time I saw you was in Gor'achen."

  *Valcrit, is he lying?*

  *He believes what he is saying.*

  *Brand, all five of those humans appear to be the Sandor that you tortured in the Gor'achen Arena, but their Mana is thin and weak compared with how he was back then.* Elan's tone is pensive and troubled.

  With my Psi being sucked into my core and fused into pure Trinity, my empathy is very weak, but not so weak as to be unable to sense the emotions of Earth trash. After hearing what Sandor said, Kyle becomes very afraid.

  Both Valcrit and I look at Kyle before looking at one another.

  *Tear his mind open. I want to know why he is so scared.*

  *Yes, Master.*

  I turn back to Sandor and grin. "Even if you have five half-assed copies of yourself, do you really think a faggot like you is a match for me?"

  Sandor's confusion is replaced by fury. "I'm gonna have a bunch of orcs pull a train on your ass before I torture you. You were just barely able to beat me, last time. Now, there are five bodies and one mind. You don't have a fucking chance."

  "HaHaHaHaHaHaHaHa." I slap my leg several times while laughing at Sandor, and the ring of metal on metal echoes in the loading dock.

  Sandor's fury soars to such a level that the faces of all five copies turn purple. "What the fuck are you laughing about? Are you stupid enough to think you're going to get out of this one?"

  I stop laughing and smile. "Moron."

  As I slip into the Shadow of the Od, the eyes of the five Sandor's open a bit wider. Without understanding why, they flinch as fear undercuts their fury.

  It takes me less than a second to cross the distance to the loading dock platform. As I hop onto the platform, I am already drawing my swords. When my swords clear their scabbards, the balls of my feet touch the platform, and I land heavy blows on the shields of the Sandors to my left and right.

  Not being fast enough to deflect the force of my strikes, the Sandors on either side are knocked back. The Sandor in front of me swings a heavy axe in an overhand strike, but he looks like he is moving in slow motion. Because of his sloppy form, his shield is out of position, and my snap kick passes under it, hitting him in the balls. The impact sends them hurtling backward, and before the pain registers, all five Sandors stare at me with a mix of disbelief and fear.

  "AAAARRRRGGGHH!" The agonized scream comes from five throats, and five pairs of hands grab at their balls.

  It seems that one mind controlling five bodies has some serious drawbacks.

  Behind me, Dacbold is halfway to the loading dock platform with his axe already in hand. Half a dozen of Sandor's lackeys jump down to intercept him.

  Pop! Pop! Pop!

  Special Agent Jones has that Barrett rifle held tightly against his shoulder and is firing at the lackeys closing on Dacbold.

  "AAAARRRR!"

  A lance of Psi from Valcrit strikes another of the lackeys. That one and the other in his matched set drop their weapons and grab their heads while shrieking.

  Elan and Angelique started weaving their spells, but I do not know how much time they will need to release them.

  Drawing as much of the Light Od into myself as I can, I pour a mix of Light and Dark Od into my swords. Before the Sandors have a chance to recover from the agony of one of them having his balls ruptured, I turn to my right and punch my swords through the abdominal armor of two of them and into their bladders. Flooding out of my swords, the Od ravages their bodies, burning and disintegrating them at the same time.

  "NOOOOO!" Again, five mouths give voice to the same cry.

  In just over a second, the abdomens of the two Sandors cease to exist, and their upper bodies and legs fall to the platform separately.

  Their fear palpable, the other three Sandors and their lackeys still on the loading dock platform stare at the remains of the two dismembered Sandors. They look like they cannot decide whether to fight or flee.

  Not giving them a chance to regain control of themselves, I jump on the Sandor that I originally kicked. The impact of my heels on his abdominal armor smashes it to match the crushed armor covering his groin. My sword pierces the visor of his helm, and the Od consumes his head.

  On the concrete in front of the platform, the six lackeys that attacked Dacbold are nothing more than corpses cooling in the dry night air. The two remaining Sandors and their lackeys start fleeing in all directions.

  Not showing them any mercy, we start cutting them down before they have a chance to escape. By the time Elan and Angelique release their spells, half of the enemy are already dead.

  As Elan finishes her casting, shimmering wards appear throughout the loading dock. They completely cut off all the exits. To escape, our enemies will need to punch holes through the walls of the loading dock.

  Angelique's spell is one of her whirlwinds, and under her control, it begins chasing down the fleeing lackeys and hurling their bodies into the walls and ceiling. The shrieking impact of armor against concrete conceals the sound of the shattering bones, and their corpses fall limply to the ground.

  From my first strike to the death of the last lackey, not even thirty seconds have passed. The only survivor is one of the Sandors, and I break his arms in multiple places before putting a slave collar around his throat.

  *Valcrit, can you sense anyone approaching?*

  Valcrit Psi reaches outward, and he frowns. *This area we are in and the storage rooms beyond are completely isolated by wards. There is no one else inside the wards, and I cannot tell what is happening outside of them.*

  With a feeling of annoyance, I frown. Jumping back onto the loading platform, I hit the call button for the elevator leading to the underground. The doors open revealing the elevator car.

  *Dacbold, make sure this elevator does not go anywhere. Everyone, get up here and bring the slaves. I'm going to do a quick scout. If it looks like there will be too much opposition, we'll head straight for the gate.*

  Leaving the loading dock through the doors that Sandor's group came in by, I enter the hospital proper. I am in a hall a bit over one hundred feet long. There is a set of swinging double doors like the ones I just came through at the far end, and several steel security doors with deadbolt locks in the walls on both sides.

  Dissolving the bolts on the side doors with the Od, I look inside and find that all the doors on each side open into two large storage rooms running the length of the corridor. Not wasting any more time on the storage rooms, I move to the end of the hall and listen at the double doors.

  I do not hear anything but, I can sense the ward enclosing the loading dock in storage rooms. I open the door and find another empty corridor. After about thirty seconds, the only sounds that I hear are the hum of machinery and a voice from a distant speaker paging one of the doctors.

  I take out my tablet and try to connect to any electronics with Delphi, but the Delphi virus within my tablet seems to be inert. I put the tablet away again.

  I have the hospital plans memorized, and I turn le
ft. Moving to the end of the corridor, I verify that the elevator bank I expect is in the alcove.

  *Elan, can you hear me?*

  *Of course.*

  *Interesting. They've somehow shut down Delphi within this hospital, but the social organizers appear to be working normally.*

  A complacent chuckle from Dacbold echoes in the raid channel. *We learned from the old whisper charms and guild bracelets. By creating an extra-planar communication channel, we can bypass almost any kind of ward or barrier. To actually cut off his social organizer, you would need to create a barrier based on dimensional energy, and even then, that might not break our communications.*

  Dacbold's smug satisfaction strikes me as slightly amusing, and the corners of my lips rise fractionally. *There is no sign of reinforcements coming. If you go through the double doors, there are storage rooms on either side of the corridor. Secure the slaves and one of them and bring Kyle and Bobby.*

  After just over a minute passes, the doors open and Dacbold looks out. When he looks in my direction, I wave him over. My party quickly joins me at the elevator bank with Kyle and Bobby in tow.

  Valcrit's Psi flashes, and Kyle uses his ID card to call the elevator.

  It is a tight fit for all of us to fit in the elevator, but we manage. There are only two buttons on the elevator panel, G and 10. I press the button for the tenth floor, and the elevator rises swiftly and silently.

  As the doors open, a huge room is revealed. Its dimensions are nearly as large as the entirety of the loading dock in the storage rooms below. This is not one of the areas of the hospital which that bitch Turner had access to. Exiting the elevator, I look around.

  Only one in ten of the overhead lights are on, and shadows cloak the strange machinery covering the floor. The machinery has the same general appearance as that in the memories Valcrit ripped from Turner's Mind. Most of it bears nothing close to the appearance of normal high-tech Earth equipment. Instead of stainless steel, glass, and plastic, the majority of the machinery here is made of an odd bronze colored metal and crystal in various colors, but here and there, there are ordinary Earth computers and monitors on rolling carts.