As if needing to snap him out of the daze that came of staring at her, she said, pushing air out her lungs with the voice projection and sense of urgency of a television newscaster, “It’s Soren’s voice blowing on the winds.”
“Soren?” Ramon twisted up his face and focused his ears, craning his neck every time he thought he heard another word.
It was Stealy who decoded the message first, stealing it right out from under the winds that were cloaking the message in a toga of pressurized air wrapped many times around the body of the text. “Mandala magician, do your thing,” Stealy repeated. As soon as she did, Ramon could unravel the words from the distorting winds, as well, confirming what she was telling him.
“What thing? I honestly don’t have a thing. An ego the size of Kansas, I give you that. Unlike Victor I’m willing to cop to it, and even be a bit guilt-ridden about it, but I don’t have a ‘thing’, ok?” Ramon threw up air-quotes around ‘thing’ just to make sure everyone understood.
Vima came over and grabbed his face and shoved her tongue in his mouth, then she nearly sucked his tongue out. He pulled away, gasping. “Um, as hot as you are, I’m still getting used to you being an actual woman.”
“You can decide how you feel about me later, moron. Right now I’m only interested in my womb magic, and for that to work, I need your semen inside me.”
“Okay,” he said feebly, his voice hitting about three octaves higher than it should. “But I’m not sure…” But he was already rock hard, so there went that concern. His eyes went to Stealy, pleading for help. Stealy just looked at the two of them amused.
“If you’re looking to me to get you out of this, forget it. Deserts are hell on my motorbike. The sooner we’re out of here the better.”
His eyes went to Stealy’s motorbike. She’d upgraded some of its decorations. Next to the coiled whip hanging off the side were some Orc heads, the motorcycle treads running across their faces. The exhaust fumes from the bike, which they’d obviously inhaled, had caused their eyes to bulge even as they breathed their last; the bike exhaust was likely laced with magic, like the rest of the motorcycle. Maybe the magic kicked in if she pushed the right button on the bike.
Ramon was now stumbling about in the desert like a dehydrated man about to collapse, chasing his last mirage. Vima was bobbing up and down on his dick, pantiless beneath her short leather skirt; the outfit chosen because evidently she intended to fire up that crystal ball of her tummy as often as necessary to see her way clear to whatever her goals were. Unlike how he mind-melded with Stealy during sex, Ramon had no idea what was going on inside of Vima; only that the way she was strangling his dick with her vagina—well, he wasn’t going to be staggering far, one way or the other, before giving up every last drop of his life force. “I swear I have never had so much sex in all my life,” he gasped, managing to pry his and Vima’s lips apart.
The thought of the embarrassment of riches—and of more sex to come, was just a little more excitement than his body could handle. He climaxed and collapsed on the sand on top of Vima. The entire affair felt quick and desperate, as if both parties couldn’t contain themselves long enough to enjoy the anticipation of coming together; they just had to be together so badly.
Stealy peeled Vima’s and Ramon’s bodies apart, and pulled Vima’s tank top up, exposing her already pregnant belly, swelling from six months to nine months of fruition in a matter of seconds. And then, the skin stretched over her abdomen became as clear as crystal. That wasn’t a child she was giving rise to in there—Ramon wondered if she was even fertile and could bear a child—that was some kind of communiqué.
First, the pyramids of this planet revealed themselves in the crystal ball of her stomach, then the energy grid which connected the monoliths, showcasing the power spots the pyramids were sitting on. Then the camera pulled back, as it were. Highlighted was how this planet’s energy grid connecting the pyramids fit with other planets’ energy grids and pyramids, forming the rosary beads in a rosary that someone had created for the prayer magic. Someone had connected all these planets at their Ley line intersection points to feed the energy through the rosary itself. To drain the worlds of energy? To augment that energy and channel it toward a greater purpose?
This is what Soren meant by “Mandala Magician, do your thing.” Ramon fought to focus his mind past the distracting post-coital bliss that rewarded his body with feel-good hormones that far surpassed any post-workout or runner’s high. The endorphins were making it hard to focus but they were also altering his brainwave patterns; he could tell he was more whole-brained now than normal. Mandala magicians were deeply analytical, mathematical, to be more precise. The mathematical physics underlying the project of the rosary’s construction continued to draw him in as he pulled himself off the desert floor, leaned into Vima on all fours, and rubbed her belly, looking to coordinate his hand with his brain. He’d grown so used to rubbing his fingers over those ancient amulets in Victor’s penthouse apartment that they had become additional sensing organs, and right now he wanted to grease the wheels of his mind with them.
The two women stared at him, waiting for the revelation to break, but refused to disturb his concentration with needling remarks, like, “Well? Say something, you jerk?” He could do the dialogue for them without even trying. Strange how the verbal abuse that he’d endured from Victor had traveled with him in the form of the two ladies. Maybe mandala magicians needed that, too, to grow into themselves; it was part of the formula somehow.
“It’s another alien civilization behind this, not the escaped slaves from the Fenquin queen’s species, and not the ones that brought the animal-human hybrids to earth. It looks like all three off-world races were looking to fortify the Earth against the Fenquin queen’s return with cosmic-grade magic.”
Ramon kept rubbing Vima’s tummy, as if searching for the kick of the child inside; the kick he was looking for had more to do with a thwack to the back of the head that would get more information to flow.
“The different magics the savant and these other two alien species concocted, they’re like numbers in a combination lock, the more possibilities in each tumbler, the less likely the alien queen would hack her way past all the cyphers.”
“You think there are more of them, more tumblers?” Stealy asked. The question was that of a thief. She was likely curious to see if she could hack her way through the magics with her stealy magic, using a specialized aptitude the Fenquin queen did not share with her.
Ramon brushed his hand over the tummy of the moaning Vima, who continued to emit loud outcries as if in actual labor; they were just getting louder the longer this went on; and now she sounded as if the “baby” was crowning.
But the crystal ball seemed to be seeing further and further through space-time. Ramon brushed his hand over Vima’s belly the way he would a screen on a cell phone, pulling into focus different pieces of the panorama on which Vima’s belly could show but a small part at once.
“Yes,” Ramon said in response to Stealy’s question finally. “But look, these other planets, shielded within cosmic magic overlays, the lines connecting them are like the gelatins used by an architect to highlight each aspect of the construction. Each gelatin layer also recalls a Spirograph pattern. The planet inside those Spirograph patterns is meant to be protected by all the others energy patterns. And…”
“If none of those magics are the same, then none of those worlds wished to grant the queen easy access, should she hack the system around the Earth. They had no choice but to invent other magics to accomplish the same ends,” Stealy said, filling in for him. Her Stealy magic, for an application like this, was informing her every bit as well as his mandala magic. Ramon was using the latter to identify the various magic protections around these other worlds by the way they altered mathematical physics in those regions.
Victor materialized, standing over the three, Vima with her butt to the ground, Ramon and Stealy crouched down around her. “Nice, you three. You
’ve given me a breadcrumb trail to follow when leaving the Earth. Each one of those worlds will face a day of reckoning when their protection magic will fail, and they’ll need me to save them. Their allegiance to my ascendancy to king of the multiverse will be guaranteed then, allowing my influence to spread. Why, the gossip alone on the singularity telephone lines that can broadcast news across the heavens without delay…”
Soren materialized next and backhanded Victor. The karate chop across the neck severed Victor’s head and his avatar was gone. Ramon knew it was only Victor’s link to this world that was severed. “Ignore him,” Soren said. “Though I agree, you have done well. And Victor’s right in his own way, even if his visions of things to come are distorted by his megalomania. But it is I who will decide whose mission it is to save those planets from the Fenquin queen, or the next predatory mega civilization against which not even the CSA can defend; and if we even need to get involved directly.”
“The CSA?” Ramon didn’t understand what Soren was stating. But Soren had brought someone with him who no one had really registered until now—not with headliners like Victor and Soren pulling focus.
Cosmos stooped down beside Vima, pushing Stealy and Ramon out of the way, to flit through the images on Vima’s womb. She wanted to survey the panorama and the truth of Soren’s words for herself. “I don’t know how you did it, beast-man,” Cosmos said, still staring at the crystal ball’s reveals, and directing her words at Soren, “but, you’re right. The CSA would never have known of these worlds that have put themselves in a pupae state, cocooning themselves within so many forms of magic at once, in hopes that upon emerging as butterflies, that they will be powerful enough to take on the predatory mega civilizations that triggered these defensive measures in the first place.
“But if they were powerful enough to cloak themselves like this, they were already beyond the reach of the CSA, and that’s before they emerge as butterflies once the incubation period is over. Rest assured that metamorphosis to a higher state of empowerment is the real purpose of the three magic overlays each incubating world is using.”
Ramon forced his way back to Vima’s tummy, putting his hand on it again. “Yes, how could I have missed that? What Cosmos says is true. I guess it takes one predatory mind to know another—and just how its prey will react when trapped.”
Cosmos didn’t respond to his dig, either oblivious to his verbal barbs or distracted by more important matters. She stood, regarded Soren and the beast, standing, fused as one. “Your magic is interesting, for a primitive. I suppose this is your way of telling me I’ll need more than Naomi’s help to get where I’m going, I’ll need yours, too. And I’m guessing you want Naomi back, both you and the beast, who is hungry to lay claim to any form of psychic empowerment that comes his way.”
Cosmos took a deep breath. “I’ll take it under advisement.” With that, she bleeped out of existence, headed for God knows where.
“Feel free to leave, too, Dr. Frankenstein, and take your monster with you.” Ramon stood, challenging, posturing, blustering. “We were just starting to feel like major players before you heavyweights showed up to remind us how cosmically insignificant we are.”
Soren stepped up to him, brushed his hand gently across Ramon’s face. With his chi energy dialed up, Ramon’s dick was already getting hard. He wasn’t looking to fuck with Ramon so much as to get him to be more receptive to what he had to say. “You’re wrong about why Victor, Cosmos, and I were here. It’s because your puzzle piece, once slipped into place, warranted our attention. Now, just what do you think that means?”
Ramon slowly smiled. His ego was inflating again, feeling all-important, which is how he did his best work; it was how all mandala magicians did their best work, whether or not that self-importance was all that warranted. And Soren and the beast needed him, needed all of them doing their best work.
They were still stringing a net woven with strands barely a hair’s diameter, to catch a whale—the whale being the Fenquin queen. There was no time to lose on infighting between Soren and his own people, far less between Soren’s disciples and Victor’s. They needed to grow their alliances for what thin defenses they offered against the queen, not sever them faster than they could forge the links.
Soren disappeared from the stage of desert sands and strange, oversized pyramids.
“Well, where to now?” Ramon asked, eying the two women.
Vima’s “water” burst. Her womb deflated and the water pouring out between her legs was taking the magic fluid that allowed her stomach to function like a crystal ball with it.
Great. She couldn’t have held on a bit longer to give them the path out of here? Ramon thought.
He and Stealy helped Vima off her butt, each one taking an arm.
Ramon was already surveying the surroundings looking for a way out of this place in all the vastness. He could open a portal, sure, but to where? They needed a clue.
“Look!” Vima exclaimed, staring down at the smear of water on the sand. Like tea leaves it drew them a picture, at least in outline.
A picture Vima and Stealy were convinced they saw something in, but Ramon could detect nothing but precious water wasted at a time when he was ready to bend down and slurp it up, sand and all—forget where it had been. The heat of this world bore down on them with two suns to stoke it, one of the suns blazing a bright orange, the other a bright blue.
And then two of the six moons in the sky moved into position, eclipsing both suns, dimming them just enough to see a starry nebulae between them. It was a coat of many colors. Ramon glanced down at the wet splotch on the sand, drying now, but still holding on to the shape of the starry nebula above.
“Well, mandala magician? Feel like being baited yet again?” Stealy asked.
Ramon smiled. “You know, we mandala magicians have a strong thirst for adventure. It’s what causes us to leap before we look. You sure you want to get caught up in the same suicidal stupidity?”
“I say the Fenquin queen is feeding your thirst for adventure, and unlocking secrets to her own undoing in the process,” Stealy replied. “Who are we to get in the way of that?”
Ramon grunted. “If she’s the one baiting us, who’s to say we aren’t being duped? Stands to reason, unless she’s the one that’s suicidal.”
“Maybe she is. All alone for all these millennia, much longer, for all we know. Who’s to say she didn’t develop some self-destructive impulses—like a serial killer begging to be stopped?” Stealy’s grin echoed his own mischievousness as she spoke, a clear signal she was baiting him. But he didn’t have anything better to throw up against her rhetoric, and Vima, rubbing her tummy, was down for the count, despite standing on two legs, barely, holding on to the two of them.
“You have any idea where in the vastness of that starry nebula we’re headed?” Ramon asked.
Stealy closed her eyes to see if her Stealy magic could pick up on anything worth stealing across space and time—across that nebula. She linked with Ramon’s mind when she could come up with nothing. Then she looked at him and smiled. “It’s something else from your past. Looks like the Fenquin queen is determined to make you whole.”
“Erasing one more psychic knot of tension from bygone days?” Ramon grunted, thinking about it. “Maybe she wants me powerful enough to defeat Victor, because of the two of us, she finds me easier to toy with. God knows you two women have had your way with me enough to put the idea in her head.”
Stealy smiled condescendingly, refusing to dignify his fears with any more of a response. He opened the portal to the point in the starry nebula to which she was pointing the three of them.
“Glad you two can finally decide something without me,” Vima said. “I was starting to worry.”
In the next moment they were gone, sucked through the portal, the motorcycle along with them—God forbid Ramon should forget that.
THIRTY-TWO
The blind huntresses were hopelessly outnumbered. They’d formed a
circle as they had many times before about Augustus to keep the hordes at bay long enough, hopefully, for him to pull the necessary magic out of his ass to get them all out of here.
The huntresses were not without their own magic, but it was taking that and their fighting prowess just to hold the line. They had nothing left over to get them off the killing field and out of arm’s reach of the numberless Orcs. Exiting his patch of terra firma through a portal would require their psychic energy be concentrated and amplified through ritual, not drained as it was being now in simply staying alive.
The battle terrain extended for as far as the eye could see; the swarm of fighters populating it extended further—continuing to clamber over the distant hilltops as soon as there was room for them.
The only thing the blind huntresses had going for them was that the various hordes were as determined to take one another’s heads off as they were the newcomers.
Everything else was going against them. Aba noticed that for each kick that it took to throw an Orc or a troll or a gargoyle or gremlin on his back long enough to drive his own mace or hammer, knocked out of his hand, into his chest took as much out of her as dispatching a dozen or more humanoids. Their bodies weren’t equipped for this; this was a marathon fight for which the enemies’ bodies were perfectly engineered, not theirs.
“Hurry, wizard,” Aba said, keeping her voice neutral; she didn’t need the other blind huntresses, also fighting with the opaque screens over their eyes, responding to the fear in her voice.
“The Fenquin queen is actually trying to get us to relax our defenses. She knows you’re most at peace in battle, whereas I’m most at peace surrounded by my protectors.”
Aba permitted herself a brief, suspicious glance back at Augustus, convinced he’d lost his mind. “We’re huntresses, not warriors. There’s a difference. Albeit a slim one,” she said, dispatching the latest Orc with an arrow through the eye, fired from a self-loading crossbow, so she could keep the other hand free to wield her boomerangs. The magic-infused boomerangs subdivided into two, providing they split a skull open, to continue on separate paths. It was like a video game in which you could only gain more points and more skills with each successive prior kill. Leave it to the huntresses to use their magic sparingly—and to greatest advantage.
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