Choice

by Gary Stringer

  Hannah nodded and tried to smile as best she could and with a supreme effort, offered her sword to the sumorityl.

  “For Tanya,” she said, her voice barely audible. Her chest rose slowly and then slowly her lungs deflated. At last, the light faded from her eyes. Lady Hannah Collins, Knight Warrior and Hero of Paladinia, was gone.

  Chapter 29

  The immediate danger passed, Revered Daughter Calandra took the opportunity to heal Jayne’s injuries. She managed to reverse Toli’s skin damage, too, and a moment later the hobbit was as good as new, at least on the outside.

  Toli thanked her,but the cleric waved it aside. “I’m just glad to have found someone I could heal properly today.”

  “You can’t save everyone, Calandra,” Rochelle said, one healer to another.

  “Indeed not, child,” the cleric agreed, sadly.

  Loric prepared to return to the skies to give some aerial support to the Council of Magic and Callie reverted to her dragon form to join him.

  “They're having some problems with certain types of chaos monster that seem to be magically resistant,” the silver-blue-sapphire dragon told them.

  “They need support from non-magical troops,” Loric added, “but good warriors are hard to find at the moment.” The Shakaran City Guard was the only sizable force of regular troops that was still intact, but they had enough problems of their own, protecting the people of last free city in Mythallen, as well as dealing with vast numbers of refugees from across the continent.

  Jayne was keen but Loric specifically ordered her to stay out of it.

  “You can’t fight the chaos horde alone!” Loric told her and with that, the two dragons left.

  “What you need is an army,” Bunny piped up, “and I think I may have solved that little problem.”

  “Really? How did you manage that?” Toli wondered.

  Bunny snapped her fingers, as if suddenly remembering something. “Ah of course,” she said. “I haven't told you where I disappeared to yet, have I?”

  * * * * * The human wizard, Ryan Adarr had been performing his latest round of experiments in his underground laboratory, hidden in the middle of nowhere in the Wilderness. The traditional purple robes he wore, their white hood and cuffs declaring his allegiance to the Light, billowed out around him as he moved around the room, checking various Techmagic instruments. His Catalyst followed him around like a zombie...mainly because she was a zombie. She was new, but was performing her tasks adequately. His previous Catalyst zombie had been wearing a bit thin – he certainly went through them at an alarming rate these days. His life creation magic seemed to have an adverse effect on them, for some reason.

  Maybe I should investigate that, he pondered. It would mean time away from the main focus of his research and breeding programme, though, which he was loath to do. The other way, of course, was to stop using the shortcuts of magic he favoured, but that would slow down his research. No, this way was faster. If only he could create specimens with the Life Gift. Statistically, then, he would get enough with the Secret of Life to train as his own Catalysts. Even Life Calling would do, he supposed. Barely adequate for his needs but still better than the inconvenience he’d been forced to put up with for so long. Every few weeks, he had to take his zombie Catalyst out to hunt for her replacement. Turning the new girl into a zombie was the easy part, of course. The hard part came later. It took the best part of a day to cast the intricate spells to change the new Catalyst zombie into what he needed: unquestioningly obedient, yet still enough of a mind left to manipulate Life. Her first task, then, would be to kill her predecessor by Draining all the Life from her Store to replenish Ryan’s, leaving her to the ravages of raw magic. After that, his old Catalyst zombie would have just one final use as food. The new Catalyst zombie would get the brain. The rest would feed his sumorityl experiments. It was effective recycling of resources, but it would make things much easier if he had a Life Gifted sumorityl Catalyst.

  It hadn't always been that w ay. When he’d first started, he’d had a wife who was a Catalyst. Blonde, beautiful and half his age at just twenty years old. She had been besotted with him, she had worshipped him, she would have done anything for him - and she had. She had saved his life at the cost of her own. He missed her. He missed having a Catalyst he could rely on to assist him with his experiments and not practically crumble before his eyes. OK, his magic had already aged his wife, but she would have been useful for at least another ten years before she died, effectively of old age. As it was, he'd had to reanimate her corpse and she'd lasted just four weeks. Such a waste. Doubly so since she was killed by one of his own specimens, which then managed to escape. It had been his best specimen and his most frustrating. It had been the result of a mistake. Even now, just over five years later, he didn't know what he'd done wrong that turned out so right. There had been some kind of surge in magical energy, a random convergence of magic that he had as yet been unable to explain or recreate. That specimen had had something about it that made it different...almost human...almost perfect. Still, if he kept working at it systematically he was bound to get it right eventually. He was certainly improving. His latest batches of creations were fitter, faster, and stronger every inch the disposable fighting force he was working so hard to create.

  Ryan Adarr was working alone, unless one counted his Catalyst, which he didn't. There were hundreds of living creatures down there, but he was alone, for as far as he was concerned he was the only one who was sentient.

  He heard a feint noise. It was so quiet that had he been doing something that required intense

  concentration at that moment, he probably never would have noticed it. It was most likely just a wild animal of some sort, but there was a chance it could be one of those chaos creatures - a few had blundered inside in the recent past– in which case it would have to be destroyed. It was such a waste of time. Their flesh wasn't even useful for his life experiments, though it might serve as extra food for some of his creatures.

  “Orla, come!” he commanded his Catalystzombie, who trotted obediently after him. “Time to catch some vermin!”

  But it wasn't a chaos creature that he found, and though it was an animal in his eyes, it wasn't a natural one. He tried to act unsurprised at the sight: It was a slim, attractive girl in her early twenties with untamed, flaming red hair. Or so one would think. Ryan knew better - it wasn't a girl, it wasn't human, it wasn't even a person. It was just a specimen of a thing that he had created. His escaped specimen, come back to its creator after four years alone in the wild. A creature he had labelled `Bunny` as a joke.

  “So, my lost specimen has finally dragged itself home,” he observed with his customary cool detachment. “You're slipping - time was you could sneak around without making a sound.” “I'm not a specimen and this isn't my home,” she countered. “I'm here to ask for your help.”

  “Of course you are,” Ryan replied. “That's why I knew you'd come back. You could never survive alone out there. You need my guidance, my firm hand.”

  “Yes, I remember your firm hand.”

  “That was only because you refused to co-operate.”

  “Refused to be experimented on, you mean?”

  “That is the purpose for which you were created. You are the result of an experiment and subject to further experimental testing to help me create more of your kind.”

  “I'm a lot more than just a walking bag of experimental flesh,” Bunny argued. “No, you're not. It was exactly that sort of nonsense idea that led to my firm hand. You are what you are: my creature, my creation, a tool in my research and mine to use as I see fit. I've created hundreds of viable sumorityl creatures. More than a thousand, in fact. The gods didn't create them - I did! Me! I created them, therefore I own them. Just like I own you. This is your purpose. Sumorityl are incapable of any kind of independent existence.”

  Bunny shook her head. “You haven't changed, have you? What do I have to do to make you see just how completely wrong you are?
Two parents can create children, but they do not own their offspring.” “Children are sentient,” Ryan countered. “Sumorityl are animals. It would be a better analogy to say a human being can breed rabbits to create some cute new Bunnies. The human owns the parent rabbits and therefore they own their bunny offspring.”

  “No!” Bernice hissed. “I am not an animal! I’m a thinking, feeling person! All of your sumorityl are people! Look, your intention is to create life. Why is it so hard to accept that you've succeeded?” “Disposable animal life, no t people. You are, I admit, an excellent specimen, almost perfect, but you're still just a specimen. Give it up; you know why you came back here. You know it's the truth. You’re trying to be more than you are but you can't do it. That's why you need my help, and you shall have it. It's sentimental of me, I know, but I've kept your cage empty all these years.”

  “And all I have to do is crawl inside like a good little lab rat, or should I say lab rabbit?” Bunny said sarcastically. “Thanks, but that's not the kind of help I had in mind.” “Well, if you won't go to your cage voluntarily, I'll have to force you. You think I had a firm hand before? Well I obviously wasn’t firm enough. This time I will do whatever it takes to get you properly trained and broken in.” His Life Store was a bit depleted from his experiments, but that was easily remedied. “Orla,” he ordered his Catalyst, “Grant me Life so I can get this specimen back where it belongs.”

  Bunny was incredulous. “You named your zombie after your wife? Dear gods, that's sick!”

  The wizard shrugged. “It's just easier having something to call her and why should I waste energy thinking up a name when I can use the obvious one?”

  “Why don't you use her real name?” Bernice wondered. “Or rather the name of the individual she was before she was unlucky enough to run into you.”

  “I never bothered to ask her name. That information would do nothing to advance my research.”

  “And therefore it's irrelevant,” Bunny concluded, rolling her eyes. “Typical!”

  “Once I cast Spellbind, her whole reason for being was to obey me. When she followed me back here she gladly provided the Life Flow I needed to change her so she'd be more useful to me.” "She didn't do anything `gladly`," Bernice countered. "You'd stolen her will and with it her ability to consent. In fact, on second thoughts,” she reconsidered, “after what you've done to her, I suppose using her former name would be an insult, so it's probably just as well you can't defile it.”

  “After what I've done?” Ryan asked, genuinely baffled as to what he was being accused of. “Why? What have I done? Without me, she would have been just another Catalyst, serving in a Church somewhere, or maybe she'd have been another victim of this war. She was nobody important.”

  “Everyone is important!” Bunny insisted. “Each and every life is valuable!” “Yes, and her value lies in what she can do to advance my research. She was aligned to the Light, as am I, and this is simply her way of contributing to the greater good. She was a Catalyst before and she's a Catalyst now. What's happened?”

  “Before she had a choice!” “Nonsense! This girl had the Life Gift. She didn't choose the magic. She trained to be a Catalyst because without the constant training and use of Life, the raw magic would kill her. She was a Catalyst because she was born to be she didn't choose anything.”

  “But she wasn't just a Catalyst - she was a living, breathing, thinking person with hopes and dreams and ambitions of her own. She had friends and hobbies-”

  “--Selfish desires that would have distracted her from her true value to the cause of helping others. She's better off this way. I’ve freed her from all the useless things she would have done with her life.” Bernice shook her head in sheer disbelief at what she was hearing. “You really believe that, don't you?” she gasped. “You actually believe you've done her a favour by taking the bright young woman she was and turning her into this walking corpse! She'd be better off dead than like this! Hang on, what am I saying? She’s a zombie – she is dead!”

  “Don't be ridiculous. She’s useless to anyone dead - except maybe the worms and they'll have their turn eventually. Anyway, if you're so offended, justremember it's your fault she's here at all.”

  “What?" Bunny demanded. "How do you work that one out?”

  “If you hadn't killed my wife, I wouldn't have needed to replace her.”

  “Replace her? Have you heard yourself? For what it's worth, I’m sorry about your wife. She was a young fool, a little idiot who couldn't see you forwhat you are, but she didn't deserve to die.” “Nevertheless, it was your knife that killed her.”

  “I threw that knife at you. It wouldn't even have killed you, but she dived in its path, thinking to save you. Like I say, I'm sorry that happened, but she was your victim long before she was mine.” “Oh, I don't hold you responsible," Ryan assured her. "I don't expect you to show remorse. You're not capable of real emotions because you're just an animal. You acted on instinct, lashing out. The fault is mine for not training you hard enough. This time it'll be different.”

  Bunny screamed as he cast a Soul Whip spell, which felt as if he were attacking the very core of her being. After a few of those came a Spellbind and then she was on her hands and knees, unable to resist, unwilling to resist, unable to imagine why she would want to resist as he fished a metal collar out of his wizard's robes of imperial purple and handed it to her to lock around her own neck. She thought it was pretty and thanked the nice man for giving it to her.

  I could have simply Spellbound the creature, I suppose, wizard Ryan considered, and not bothered inflicting pain, but this is a more effective means of training it for the long term. He couldn't keep wasting magic on a Spellbind every time he wanted his specimens to do something. It would have to learn the old fashioned way - through pain. This one was more trouble than the others, but he would break its spirit soon enough. Even if it meant a slight delay to his research, the analysis of his best specimen would improve his understanding. That would make similar successes - and improvements - come more quickly in the long run. Bunny had no choice, no desire to do anything but allow herself to be led on all fours deeper into his lair, past dozens upon dozens of caged sumorityl. Such a variety of life he had down here. Some were reptilian, some had hair, and some even had feathers. They were strange to look at, but Bunny conceded that she too looked a little unusual when she changed her face. Had she been herself, she would have been appalled at the travesty of keeping them caged, not knowing anything about the outside world. She knew what it was like - she'd been caged herself throughout the first year of her life - and it seemed she was about to be so again. She had always railed against her captivity in the past, having somehow been born with knowledge of the world beyond her reach that she had never seen. This time, though, thanks to the Spellbind, she was absolutely delighted to be back home, about to be locked in her tiny cosy cage where she belonged.

  Wizard Ryan’s underground facility was now vast. All he needed was his own Earth Secret magic to shape and secure the tunnels. For a wizard of Ryan Adarr's ability, it was childishly simple. At last, they were in what was familiar territory for Bunny. True to his word, Wizard Ryan had left her cage empty and ready for her to occupy once more. He treated her to one more jolt of a Soul Whip spell, which in her current mental state she welcomed because she knew she deserved it and it was for her own good.

  Bunny meekly surrendered and entered the cage, but when Ryan reached for the ring of keys that always hung on his belt, he discovered it was missing.

  “Where are my keys?” he demanded, physically grabbing Bunny andshaking her violently. “What have you done with them, you little thief?”

  “Not guilty!” she protested. “Honest! It was her!” She pointed behind his back.

  “Oh come on, you don't really expect me to fall for that one, do you?” Then someone tapped him on the shoulder and he spun around, coming face to face with a vampire.

  “Boo!” said the vampire.

&nbs
p; Then Ryan’s world went black.

  * * * * *

  When he came to, it was he who was in the cage with Bunny smirking on the outside.

  “Hi!” she said with a big smile and a wave. “Cosy in there, are we? I hope so, because you're going to be in there a good long time.”

  Ryan went to zap her with another Soul Whip, but he went cold when he realised his magic wasn't there. “This what you're looking for?” Bunny asked, and Ryan yelled in pain as illusory needles invaded his skull. “I had to relieve you of most of your Life Store. Your Orla zombie was most obliging with that. Just leftyou with enough so you don’t burn…it was tempting to take it all, but I decided I’m better than that. A bit sloppy, wasn't it? Didn't you think to condition her to obey only you?” Ryan opened his mouth, only for an illusory gag to fill it. “That's just in case you get any ideas of calling for Orla to come and help you out,” said Bunny. “I can guess the answer anyway. You didn't think it was necessary since you were the only mage here. Expending further magic on deeper conditioning would be inefficient since it would do nothing to advance your research. You’re so single minded, that's your problem. Well,” she amended, “one of your problems. Now then, I'd love to stay and chat, but I've got a lot of people to see.” She held up a chart something from Ryan'sresearch notes. “Exactly one thousand six hundred and twenty three people according to this. You’ve been busy! Of course, you use the word `specimens` not `people` but we're obviously going to have to agree to differ on that for now.”