Mana Mutation Menace (Journey to Chaos Book 3)

by Brian Wilkerson

  "Well, why didn't you say so!?" The guards shoved a gag in her mouth. "If you want me to get under your skin, we can begin treatment right away."

  Two guards pulled her to her feet and then to the stairs to the third floor. She looked over her shoulder at Eric and the pleading look in her eyes galvanized him.

  “YOU WANT TO SEE A GRENDEL?”

  His eyes slitted and his arms transformed. His legs and chest followed until only his head remained human. He burst through his many restraints and kicked off the remainder. The two remaining handlers tried to restrain him again, but he grabbed both of their poles and shoved them through their chests. Then he used them as bludgeons on the therapist monster.

  Conner jumped back to the ceiling and the Eric threw his weapons after him. He dodged the first by jumping straight into the second. Only by twisting in midair did he avoid death by impalement.

  He returned fire with web blobs and Eric nimbly avoided them. Growling the spell for Flame Wave, he set fire to the center of the web. It spread quickly and Eric directed the wave on Conner himself. The spider lizard jumped from web to web until there were only flames to jump onto. His own thread ignited and he fell into a bonfire. By the time he hit the ground, he was severely burned. Eric finished him with a heel stomp to his head.

  Chaos breeds mages. Chaos breeds monsters. Must have mana; must have mana; must have mana.

  Eric roared in anger. He turned to the exit and saw Samael instead. Taking a calming breath, he returned to human form and said, “Out of my way, reaper. I have a lady to save.”

  She vanished. He picked up Annala’s weapons and ran up the stairs to the third floor.

  Two guards awaited him at the top and he blew them away with a Wind Bomb. Its power threw them past several small rooms until they crashed at the top of the next flight of stairs. Eric stored Annala’s weapons in a wind spell near the ceiling and looked around.

  The main room resembled Kasile’s dungeon: it was big, poorly lit, and contained horrifying fire imagery and prisoners locked into cells. The phrase “medieval medicine” flashed through Eric's mind as he watched grotesque creatures being tormented by similarly disgusting creatures in white coats. They were on operating tables equipped with straps and saws, tortured by mounted lasers while chained to poles, and locked into cages hovering over pits of bubbling liquid.

  The notion of saving them never occurred to him. He was not hungry and they were not threats to him. Nor was there anything in his human memories about jumping to the defense of strangers, except for that one time with Zettai, and maybe Kasile at the Joust...He shook his head and decided to puzzle it out later. He was here for one reason only, and she was further inside.

  It was there that his lady was imprisoned. Her wrists were cuffed separately above her head and her ankles were similarly shackled at opposing corners. Chains pulled her taut. She was further secured at her waist and neck, leaving her no room to avoid her captors’ cattle prods.

  “You are human.”

  “No, I’m nnaaahhh!”

  “You are human.”

  “I’m an elf! AAAAAHHHH!”

  “You are human.”

  “Please, staaaah!”

  She screwed her eyes shut to hold back tears and bit her lip to hold back sobs.

  Eyes slitted, Eric ran through the room, batting away guards left and right until he jumped forward to punch the nearest tormentor with the right hand of Eric the Grendel. It manifested an Order Shield and repelled him, sending him tumbling head over heels back to the entrance.

  A hologram appeared over him.

  “Welcome to the Treatment Center, Grendel,” Gruffle said. “Here we correct the physical mutations and revamp the mental ones. Your girlfriend, for instance. She thinks she’s an elf. A few days of constant electroshock therapy will clear away that delusion.”

  “Rot in the Abyss, troll!”

  “Funny you should say that. I’ll explain the joke if you make it to the fifth floor.”

  Eric clapped his hands together and extended the crystal of his staff. Its peak glimmered with the chaos power he took from Tasio and Dengel’s Lair. He ran forward like a battering ram and then jumped. The Order Shield resisted his force, but the Chaos Tip dissolved its power. Eric laughed madly at the prospect of tearing them limb from limb.

  On the other side, the monsters continued to torment his lady. One cut off the points of her ears, another shaved her head, and a third continued prodding her. She sobbed and pleaded, but they would not relent.

  "They did this during the Conversion War,” Gruffle said. “It messed a lot of them up. After all these years, I bet they're still in the nut house.”

  “Eat troll. Eat troll. EAT TROLL!”

  Other monster doctors left their side rooms to attack him, but Eric didn’t notice. Like monsters, he had a one-track mind. All he could see was Annala’s suffering. They attacked him with impunity until they inflicted serious wounds. Then self-preservation kicked in.

  He backhanded one and kicked another. Both of them soared across the room. Monsanity was a simple thought process. First, eliminate threats, and second, eat till full, and third, repeat. His head transformed into a grendel’s and roared. All of them fell back except one. Eric tore that one to pieces and stuffed them in his mouth.

  Am I a sapient or a monster? Hope or despair? What have I done? What will I do? The Trickster grins. The Trickster grins. The Trickster grins.

  The voice echoed in his mind. It cut through the bloodlust and hunger to return him to clarity. There was more blood on the floor around him than existed in his human form. Although not all of it was his, he was feeling faint. He dabbed a chest wound with his hand and stared at it.

  My blood. My lifeblood. It’s all going away. No, it won’t. I will not die. I will never die.

  He assumed a horse stance.

  “I WILL NEVER DIE!”

  He closed his eyes and focused his spiritual senses on the world around him. If everything was fundamentally mana, then everything could be transformed into it with willpower, understanding, and knowledge. This was the root of Universal Mana Enlightenment. Thus, it followed, if everything could be transformed, then it could be absorbed. This entire room and all its contents were power waiting to be claimed! By the virtue of his Razor Spirit, he claimed it.

  The torture treatment machines disappeared and were replaced by mana globs with their shapes. These flew into Eric. The walls of the sub-rooms converted and followed them. Every section of floor other than a direct path to the next set of stairs flowed into Eric’s body and soul, giving him greater power. He opened his eyes and they shined with it.

  “Enlightenment skill: Total Mana Absorption.”

  There were no more enemies but the ones in front of him. All others fell to the second floor when the ground vanished under their feet. He jumped down to meet them and plunged his staff into one of them. It paled and fainted as he stole the mana in its body. Looking through the eyes of the grendel, he saw only food around him; walking containers of mana. Then he heard Annala scream, louder than ever, and he jumped back to the third floor.

  Boosted by the additional mana in his system, he sailed through the Order Shield and into the guard holding the crystal generating it. The other three paused their torture to activate their own, but Eric was faster. Pulling his staff all the way out, he slew them all in one stroke each.

  Then he returned the staff to himself and turned his attention to his lady. With grendel hands and grendel strength, he broke the chains holding her in place. Then, with human hands and human tenderness, he dried her tears. She hugged him.

  Her seed of chaos continued its work automatically. The points on her ears were easy to fix. Her hair was re-growing, but currently, it was only ear length. The burn marks erased one by one. In mere minutes, she was pretty as ever, but the hurt inside remained. She quivered in his arms and cried anew.

  “Do want to talk about it?”

  She shook her head.

&nb
sp; “Are you sure?”

  She nodded.

  Eric listened for danger. Peter Conner was wrong about grendel hating revelry. The truth was that they had exceptional hearing. His grendel head was more sensitive to potential threats. A stray thought remarked how it nicely complemented darkness powers. When Annala was finished, she wiped her own eyes and looked about at the empty room.

  “Did you do this?”

  “Mana is mana be it solid or otherwise.”

  “I see.” She pushed herself away from him and took a breath. Then it was like she was back in a classroom.

  “It is good that you destroyed them. Despite being historical relics of humanity’s progress in Medical Mana Mutation, they are still barbaric devices barely worthy to be called an ‘embryonic form’ of a branch of medicine. It is both easy and simple to understand why my mother seeks to expand the use of the more civilized and effective elven technology in order to cast such antiquated models to the annals of history. They do not deserve a museum.”

  “No argument here.”

  Eric recalled the wind sphere containing the Death Killer bow, quiver, and the couple daggers. Dismissing it, he handed the contents to Annala.

  “Thanks.” She re-equipped and said, “Two more floors to go.”

  She walked behind Eric as they ascended the staircase to the fourth floor. It was practical for the archer to take cover behind the organic tank, but the true reason was that she was shaken by her experience and overwhelmed by fear. To think that her ancestors went through something like that; that there were people in her hometown that experienced that. It was constant for years; just a minute was a fate she wouldn’t wish on anyone.

  Then there was Eric. He was walking around with his grendel arms and sniffing like some animal. Her mother told her of patients who relapsed into monsanity and how it was often preceded by the human memories and monster personality merging. If that were true, she’d rather be behind him with her bow drawn and arrow notched.

  After the horror of the third floor, both Eric and Annala believed they would be ready for the fourth. They weren’t.

  There were velvet cushion chairs and fluffy couches. There were tables with coasters. Fabric of many textures and colors hung from the walls, or were stuck into wall slits in rolls. Mannequins posed in fine clothing. The only flaw in this luxury were all the slashes, debris, and bodily waste.

  Creatures that were otherwise human lounged about here. They had paws and wings, patches of fur or scales. Some were bird-like with insect wings or aquatic creatures with mammalian heads or tails. The one thing they all had in common was that they were zoned out with mindless bliss on their faces.

  “Pleasure mist,” Annala spat.

  “Pleasure mist?”

  “That’s what Fog is called when it’s used for recreation. It’s low-grade compared to the vapor that cloaks Mt. Heios, but it is still a potent mixture. If these people were not monsters already, they would be now.”

  Eric checked the room for danger with every sense available to him. His Magic Eye looked for runic traps, his ears searched for movement, and his spirit felt for hostile presences. Finding none, he stepped forward. None of the occupants reacted. Annala stepped forward and the tile under her feet flashed. Eric spun in place and reached for her, but it was too late. The tile’s rune had already done its work. Annala stood transformed…

  …Into a bride. Her armor had been reconfigured into a wedding gown. The bodice wrapped around her chest and torso like it was tailor made. The skirts, gauze, and petticoats were just long enough to graze the ground and create an artful display. Gloves adorned her arms and golden filigree circled them in a downward spiral down to the point of her middle finger. Veil, hairstyle, make up, etc.; it was all custom.

  “You look gorgeous.”

  Annala blushed and smiled. “Thanks…” Abruptly, she turned away and reached under the veil to tug her ear. The simple gesture commanded his full attention. “Hardly the time and…. would never work….why does Mom have such a function…surely they would—”

  “What wouldn’t work? I know little about fashion, but I think you pull off this look very well. I’d like to see you wear something like it again in the future.”

  Immediately, Annala became both immensely flattered and intensely angry. Cheeks red with one emotion or the other, she thrust her arms down and shouted, “Don’t say stuff like that to a girl unless you mean it! Do you even realize what you’re saying? It can’t work because….It just can’t!” She crossed her arms and glared, which, in Eric’s opinion, made her more appealing than ever. “Even if it were perfect, which it won’t be because it’s never perfect, it would be fatally flawed.”

  Eric blinked. “What do you mean? It looks perfect to me.”

  Annala threw up her arms in frustration. “I knew it! You don’t know what you’re talking about! You might never know what you’re talking about. Mom said something about regressive personality shifts in subjects as one of many reasons that her technology has been rejected in the past. You’re not Eric anymore!”

  She covered her mouth with her hands, but it was too late. With one slip of the tongue, she had made a fatal mistake. There would be no taking it back.

  “Eric, I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean it that way! It’s—”

  “No. You’re right.”

  His voice sent chills down her spine.

  “I remember now. The human aspects of Eric Watley were absorbed by the monster aspect. Child, Mage, Mercenary, Dengel’s successor; I ate all of them. The core of my being is a monster and everything else is merely accessories. My humanity is a veneer.”

  “Eric, that’s not true. I spoke carelessly.”

  “That’s why I can’t use darkness magic; that was Eric Watley’s specialty. It’s why I can’t read; Eric Watley was the bookworm. It’s why Mana Enlightenment is my best skill; I’m too simple minded to see anything but edible mana.”

  She cupped his face in her gloved hands and locked their eyes.

  “You are Eric Watley. You are my friend. I attacked a reaper for you.”

  Eric gently removed her hands and pushed her away. The hurt in her eyes didn’t register as anything but mourning for her dearly departed human friend.

  “That was before you realized the truth. Peter Conner was right. You saved a grendel that looks and acts like Eric Watley, but in reality, it isn’t Eric Watley.”

  Annala clasped her hands as if in prayer. “Eric….please…forgive me.”

  “Am I a sapient or monster? Hope or Despair? What have I done? What will I do? The Trickster grins. The Trickster grins. The Trickster grins.”

  Annala re-clasped her hands behind her back. They were starting to fidget. She didn’t want Eric to see her nerves.

  “I am a monster. I am despair. I have killed and I will eat. Indeed, Tasio’s grinning right now. He must have thought it was hilarious to see me claiming to be something I’m not. Why else would he allow this to happen to me?”

  “Eric, I beg you, listen to me—”

  "Hello and good day!”

  One of the mannequins came to life and bowed to them. Unlike the others, it was free of claw marks and refuse. Only the decay of time dragged on its plastic frame.

  “Congratulations on coming to terms with your mutation. I am the tailor for the Center. It is my job to give you the garments you need for your new form and identity.”

  Two cages descended from the ceiling. One was made of steel with heavy and painful restraints while the other was made of gold with light and comfortable ones. The tailor snapped his fingers and all the drugged up monsters of the lounge stood up lazily. They drooped and slouched like sleepwalkers.

  “One of you is a puppet for a princess and the other will become a prize for a knight. Please hold still for your fitting.”

  Eric and Annala readied themselves for battle, but then a hologram of Gruffle appeared.

  "Give up, Grendel! Do you expect anything less than a cage?"
>
  Eric’s mind bottomed out. Despair rushed his mind and squelched all thought. Gruffle’s words echoed and became louder as the truth sank in. A cage was truly his future.

  It might not have bars, but his room in the ICDMM was indeed a cell. He was locked in there for weeks and only let out for tests. If not in the room itself then the facility. There was no difference as long as the scientists could experiment on him. The samples they took from him and the feats he performed made them ecstatic. They were desperate. They wouldn't let him get away. They'd pick him and prod him for data until one of them died.

  Kasile had a different sort of cage in mind. It was her plans for Medical Mana Mutation. As the Modern Demon, he was the gag to shut up all her critics. He could see it now; the fire demi-goddess touting the virtues of fire and connecting Tasio the Fire Bringer to her message. The three of them would light the way to a future without mana mutation. Instead of a nobody mercenary, he'd be a mascot and figure of hatred. Forever in the spotlight and never in shadow.

  His fellow mercenaries! They made a living fighting monsters and his own teammate held this as a cherished dream! They were happy he was alive now, but what about the future? They would fear him, provoke him, or keep him at arm's length. The only possibility that scared him more was if their fears came true and he lost control. Basilard, a senior magic knight with a magic sword, struggled to subdue him. What about the others? A cage might be the only way to keep them safe from each other.

  Annala watched his breakdown from inside her cage. While Gruffle distracted him, all the monsters and the tailor ganged up on her. Between the elaborate dress and superior numbers, she was soon overcome. Now she was on her knees with four cuffs and a chain connecting her wrists and ankles. More chains wrapped her chest to pin her arms down. A noose prevented her from struggling too hard and a gag prevented her from calling out to Eric. Hot tears trailed down her cheeks at her helplessness.

  It was all because she couldn't shapeshift. There were a hundred and one things she could do if she still had access to that power. It was something all elves were born with and yet she was as static as a human was. She thrashed as violently as she could, but the cuffs held firm and the noose choked her into obedience. All this made the tears come faster and she sobbed into the gag. While she was carried away, Eric spiraled deeper into despair.