by N. J. Mercer
They walked on; all around them the air was becoming increasingly charged with aberrant psychic energy generated from the ceremony deep in the bowels of this complex. Air vents within the lantern recesses carried the hum of the portal and the baleful chanting. Both of these sounds were becoming increasingly audible from the passage itself, a sure indication that they were nearing their source. The persistent, twisted mantras gnawed at the minds of the sane.
“I wish they’d shut up,” Baccharus said impatiently, and Johnny felt the same; he was sure Sascha did too.
After a full minute of descent, there was still no end apparent to the subterranean staircase. Eventually, they managed to reach the first of the small landings, and just as they had observed earlier, two side corridors exited from it in opposite directions. After short deliberation, they opted to ignore these passages and continue further down towards the source of the chanting. They had considered separating and exploring individually, in the end they decided against it as all the evidence so far indicated that the enemy preferred to attack in numbers; alone they were likely to be easily picked off.
A few more minutes of progress down the stone stairway allowed Johnny to finally see the vaguest suggestion of where it might terminate. In the distance was what looked like a room; there was still a long way to go to reach it. Much closer was another landing, similar to the one they had passed earlier, complete with another two corridors leading off to either side.
“Hold on!” shouted Johnny at the top of his voice, and before his companions could make a move he was grabbing each of them, Sascha by his shoulder and the floating Baccharus by one of his fat cherub legs. Every nerve ending in the three friends tingled instantaneously as if they had been wired into an electrical current, and their vision suddenly blurred. Even with eyesight distorted, Johnny could still discern a brilliant bright explosion directly ahead of them followed by the appearance of dark menacing shapes. Both Sascha and Baccharus let out a cry that made no sound. Moments later, the blur cleared and their jangled nerves settled. Johnny had warped space–time into a wave that carried him and his friends rapidly back up the stone staircase to a point even before the first landing; somewhere they had been several minutes earlier. There was a very good reason for him to be backtracking like this so suddenly. Pouring out from the side corridors onto each of the two landings ahead were Disciples of Disorder. Some were clad in black leather, some in robes; mostly they were naked. The enemy had been covertly observing their progress and planning an ambush. By attacking simultaneously from front and rear, their aim had been to trap the three intruders between the two landings. It was an offensive led by none other than Psychic Lord Arkkun himself. He had been shielding the Disciples from detection with his mind. At the last moment he had diverted his mental energy into a huge psychic spear aimed at Johnny and his friends. The resulting shift in Presarium was all the warning Johnny needed to warp him and his company away from danger. Never before had he been able to execute so complex a psychic technique as quickly as he had just managed. The time necessary to focus his mind had been miniscule; a further demonstration of his enhanced ability.
From Johnny’s new vantage point, the result of Lord Arkkun’s psychic spear was obvious to behold; the steps where he had been standing moments earlier were now scorched and ashen from its impact. Johnny and his friends were safer in their present location, although their exposure to danger was still very apparent. In front of him, upon each landing, now stood two groups of Disciples made up of both men and pale, blue-skinned demons of the same breed that had been encountered several times already. Most were armed with dagger or pistol, a few were empty-handed and Johnny knew they were the ones to look out for as their weapon would be their minds.
Warping away so suddenly had caused confusion amongst friend and foe alike, and when the noise of the psychic spear had gone there was only the persistent sound of disembodied chanting in the air. Johnny prepared to retaliate; his companions had already made their move. The group of Disciples nearest to him was being assailed by energy bolts from Baccharus and bullets from Sascha, who held aloft Boyd’s revolver. Almost immediately, the air was filled with the smell of singed flesh.
The Disciples rallied quickly, and a couple of them started firing back with pistols. Their counter-attack was short-lived; two intensely bright flashes of light caused them to stagger about, disorientated and in disarray. Johnny had struck them with an attack of his own unique design; drawing ambient photons into a concentrated mass, he had released the lot in a psychic flare. Most of the Disciples were temporarily blinded, and the unlucky ones were left with permanent retinal scarring.
Sascha started shooting at any cultist who was showing signs of recovering vision; Johnny was impressed with the steady hand demonstrated by his lanky bookworm friend, who was turning out to be quite a sharp-shooter. He could see that Sascha targeted humans and humanoids alike; the desperation of the situation allowed him to strike without the moral consideration that might have crippled his fighting ability. The three friends had quickly killed or incapacitated the Disciples from the first landing; however, there were survivors amongst them who retreated to join their comrades on the landing further down to form a second front that was advancing warily.
Bullets ricocheted off the stone passage around Johnny and his company; they whistled past their ears, forcing them to keep their heads down and back off slowly. As the three of them prepared to launch a counter-strike, they were stopped in their tracks by the prone bodies of Disciples they had already dispatched levitating and hanging limply in the air in such a way that they provided cover to the advancing enemy. It was alarmingly obvious to Johnny that powerful psychic forces aligned to Disorder were now at work against them.
“I can’t shoot, Johnny! Those bodies are blocking my view!” Sascha shouted in desperation.
“Yeah, tell me about it!” Baccharus added – the familiar had released a salvo of psychic bolts, only to see them impact ineffectually against the hovering obstacles.
“It’s time I gave gravity a hand,” Johnny said.
With great effort and supreme concentration, he used his will to try to force the bodies back to the ground, where nature intended them to be, and managed to move them low enough for Sascha and Baccharus to pick off an advancing Disciple each. The hovering bodies descended further still, and Johnny seemed to be winning this battle of wills when his unknown psychic adversary changed tack suddenly. No longer happy to simply levitate the collection of dead and unconscious Disciples, his opponent decided instead to use them as weapons and sent them cartwheeling like rag dolls through the air with incredible velocity. They reached the friends, knocking all three to the ground and then landing on top of them. Even the airborne Baccharus could not avoid the stray leg that struck him squarely on top of his head.
As Johnny lay there, trapped in the tangle of bodies and limbs with his friends, he commended this feat. It would have taken a great effort of will to hurl the limp bodies of so many men and demons at them like that; there was a notable psychic indeed amongst the enemy – he wondered if it was Edward Devilliers himself.
The Disciples were quick to capitalise on their advantage, and the din of their gunfire reverberated through the passage once again; in the enclosed space the noise was deafening. Johnny heard another much closer sound, a dull thumping; it was bullets penetrating the bodies under which they were all buried. Johnny struggled desperately to free himself, knowing that it was only a matter of time before luck ran out and one of them hit home. He produced a psychic field which deflected most of the bullets so that they flew harmlessly around the three of them. Sascha and Baccharus managed to struggle to their feet again under this protection. Johnny got up last, and by the time he was facing the group of nine remaining Disciples, Sascha was preparing to fire back. Baccharus, quick off the mark as ever, was already sending glowing bolts of fiery psychic energy through the air in his trademark attack. Once Sascha started shooting, they managed to incapaci
tate, possibly kill (it was impossible to say) three more of the Disciples. Johnny did not attack; instead, he continued to focus on defending against the bullets flying their way. Soon, the friends found their own projectiles being psychically deflected into the stone walls of the passage; neither Sascha nor Baccharus could land a shot on the Disciples – the two sides were in deadlock.
Johnny looked carefully at the cultists. They were a collection of figures, both male and female, half of them naked except for tight leather masks that covered their heads and faces; the other half wore flowing black robes and cowls that hung low over the head. It was amongst this latter group that he believed the hostile psychic was present, and an idea for determining who this individual was occurred to him.
“Sascha, stop firing and chuck one of Boyd’s stone things instead. We won’t get anywhere unless we strike at the psychics amongst them.”
Sascha stopped shooting, and from the knee pocket of his trousers he retrieved one of the smooth stones. Discarding the muslin wrapping, he lobbed it underarm with a spinning rotation, just as Boyd had shown him. The centrifugal force activated the psychokinetic energy stored within the stone as it sailed through the air. The Disciples, unsure about what was heading towards them, watched suspiciously without relenting in their attack. The mystical artefact landed a few feet in front of them; stone met stone with a sharp crack and was followed instantly by a shockwave of psychic power that went off with a flash and the sound of flammable gas being ignited. All of the Disciples recoiled from the energy that was released; there was one robed figure amongst them who was affected by it far more profoundly than the others were. He was hurled backwards through the air with his arms and legs thrashing around until he landed painfully on the hard steps further down, drawing the attention of all combatants. This exaggerated response to the attack revealed him to be an advanced psychic.
While his fellow Disciples looked on with some distress, he stood up again and drew back the large cowl that hid his face, revealing fierce blue eyes that stared at Johnny through two holes in a tight leather mask. Without wavering, he removed the mask with a deft sweep of the hand.
“If we are to continue battle, then you should know who it is that will defeat you and your pathetic companions!” he announced with a wry smile. Challenging Johnny and his friends was an aged man. He had a narrow-jawed feline face covered in light wrinkles and long, wispy white hair brushed back all the way to his shoulders. His intense eyes never seemed to blink, making his appearance all the more striking.
“So who the fuck are you then?!” retorted Baccharus above the background noise of the chant.
“I am Lord Arkkun, wretch!” shrieked the beloved of Disorder, and with a flick of his hand he fired a beam of highly energised matter at the floating familiar. A glowing line stretched through the air from the white-haired man’s palm all the way to Baccharus. The familiar managed to hover nimbly to one side; he was not quick enough to avoid having his head narrowly clipped by the beam, sending him spinning backwards up the stone tunnel. Sascha retaliated by firing two shots from the revolver, Lord Arkkun simply raised his free hand and manipulated the Presarium within the bullets so that they disintegrated in mid-air.
Lord Arkkun was about to throw everything he had at the trespassers and his mind worked furiously to this end. With focused will, he aimed further destructive beams at Johnny and Sascha. Survival relied on Johnny creating a psychic shield to absorb and disperse the concentrated energy directed at them. When his beams did not make any headway, Lord Arkkun again launched the bodies of dead and dying Disciples at the companions, distracting Johnny and thus weakening the shield so he could follow up with further beams which managed to hit home. Johnny’s shield ensured that he and Sascha remained alive, but it did not possess sufficient strength to save them from singed clothing and painful minor burns.
The Disciples who had recovered from the concussive effect of the psychic grenade, and were able to fight beside Arkkun, continued their steady ascent along the stone passage; they were closing in on the friends with pistols firing.
This is not looking good, thought Johnny. His psychic stamina was being expended on creating shields and absorbing attacks; he knew they would not defeat Arkkun by relying on defensive measures alone. The Lord of Disorder clearly intended to destroy them before they had a chance to even lay eyes upon Edward Devilliers. Johnny would have to strike back … and soon.
“Both of you, get behind me; I’m dropping the shield!” Johnny shouted to his friends above the sound of gunfire and the electrified crackles of psychic energy.
“What are you going to do?” Sascha asked nervously as Baccharus, who had recovered from his head injury, stopped firing his bolts and hovered to take up position behind his keeper.
“It’s time to hit back!” said Johnny as he diverted his psychic energy from projecting the shield into energising an attack. The feeling of frustration at being pushed back, the pain from his burning skin, and the concern for his friends all welled up inside him. In this way, he found the heightened emotional state to give him access to more psychic energy than he had previously thought he could muster. Johnny had hoped to energise a powerful psychic spear to hurl at the enemy; the desperate situation gave him the strength to summon not one but six of these lethal weapons. He diverted the last bit of energy from his shield into the sixth spear, and in his mind all the weapons were fully primed; there was no shield so he did not waste any time. Johnny allowed his thoughts to become substance. Available Presarium contained within his vicinity came together to form the six fiery vessels of energy that he had blueprinted in his consciousness. They seemed to materialise out of thin air before him, and their physical presence was magnificent. Each was longer than a man and glowed with an intensity that pained the eyes. Johnny had arranged them to point at the enemy in a circle of five that reached the very edges of the passage while the sixth hovered in the middle. Almost as soon they appeared, the spears were sent hurtling towards the Disciples with a roar. The followers of Disorder shrieked at the sight, and realising there was no escape from the incoming weapons, they tried fruitlessly to shoot at them instead. The six psychic spears tore through bullets and Disciples alike, setting them alight or vaporising them. Even the bodies of the defeated, lying on the ground, were not spared.
Lord Arkkun, his eyes wide open and staring in terror, reflexively backed away before using his powers to try to quickly warp to another location; despite being a wily old warrior, he was not entirely successful. His dematerialisation shadow made fleeting contact with the high-energy spears resulting in a strange affliction (although one that was not uncommon in psychic battle). From now on, he was to be trapped in the form of a warp phantom; a bizarre existence in which he flickered in and out of reality. Sometimes his body was solid and at others composed only of ether. His physical form moved between these states randomly and beyond conscious control. The three friends watched as Arkkun became transparent for an instant and then disappeared.
The spears had performed their function admirably. Johnny no longer focused his mind on maintaining their form and so their structure dispersed, and they faded out of existence. The noise of combat had peaked with the roar of those spears, the final offensive of the skirmish; now that they were gone, there was only the sound of distant chanting and the ebbing of the portal again. Both were louder than before and their noticeably increased tempo provoked a sense of urgency.
Johnny, Sascha and Baccharus stood, sat and hovered respectively on the stairway, each taking a few precious moments to recover from the battle.
“That chanting, Johnny, how many of them do you think there are? I mean, it’s only the three of us,” Sascha asked nervously, still shaken from the fight.
“Four,” corrected Baccharus. “Boyd is around here somewhere – I know it.”
“Still, four against how many? You know what I mean?”
“Doesn’t matter! Didn’t you see those spears Johnny unleashed? PEEOOWW! Straight t
hrough those sons of bitches. There may be a hundred of them, two hundred; Johnny will come up with something.”
Sascha could only shake his head at his companion’s unfounded enthusiasm. Johnny had also been thinking, and it was along lines similar to Sascha rather than Baccharus. “You’re right, Sasch, we can’t just go in for a head to head confrontation – they will outnumber us easily. We need to sneak up on them somehow. What we need to know is the layout of this place.”
“How the heck are you going to find that out?” Baccharus interjected.
“There is a way,” said Johnny simply. His friends watched curiously as he went to examine each of the defeated Disciples, eventually stopping at an injured human who was masked, naked and barely conscious. “What I hope we have in here is a map!” he said tapping the Disciple’s head. Johnny pulled off the man’s tight leather mask, revealing a middle-aged face with a head of long black hair streaked with white. The Disciple was more conscious than he was letting on, which was going to be important.
“Mind probe?” Sascha asked hesitantly.
Johnny nodded. “I am not a fan of mind probes. I think it’s going to be necessary though. We have no time to waste.”
On hearing the words ‘mind probe’ the injured Disciple started moaning and tried to scramble away; unfortunately for him, he was too weak to resist whatever Johnny had planned. Sascha and Baccharus looked on with concern. To be the subject of a probe was usually an unpleasant experience, the Disciple could end up losing his mind; there was also a chance that he would be fine. Nobody would know until the process was complete.
Johnny crouched behind the semi-conscious cultist, placed his outstretched fingers equal distances apart on the man’s head, and he closed his eyes. He remembered something and opened his eyes again. “Oh, by the way, Sascha, try and find a robe and mask that fits you, preferably one that isn’t too tatty.”