by Garon Whited
“Hmm.” She looked around at the frosty zombie parts. “No, I’m not really too keen on anything else just now. Let’s get your crap sorted out so we can leave.”
“I thought you might see it that way.”
The preparations for sneak-bandaging the lesser nexus points went surprisingly well. The power flow from the major nexus was low enough and controlled enough to make spellcasting reasonably safe. Mary made an excellent assistant—a spare pair of hands can make most projects go more quickly. We prepared a number of spells together, channeling and focusing energies to build four small, pre-charged gate spells. Bandage spells were another matter, however.
I spent a lot of time with a mirror, studying the slow ooze of power from each of the Fries’ nexus points. Minor nexus points are much less dangerous. My guess was they could be handled—in their current state—by a mortal spellcaster. He wouldn’t enjoy the experience, but he would probably make a full recovery.
But bandaging these four minor nexus points was trickier than I’d thought. The Fries had capped them, built spell-construct power taps over them. Fine and good, as far as it went, but I destroyed those power taps a moment after I broke their domes. The result was something like firing a shotgun into the side of the house to destroy the tap for the garden hose. The wreckage is messy.
Still, the wound in the world wasn’t bleeding magic too badly. It was a rather wide wound—each of the four were similar in that respect—but this was patching a low-pressure vein, not sewing closed a piece of torn heart muscle. Each minor nexus would take a larger bandage, but the bandages could be thinner to begin with. As they soaked up power, they could grow deeper into the wound, thickening and strengthening as they went, while the natural healing of the planet did its best to repair the damage.
Maybe a pressure sensitive function… something to keep the bandage from growing too thick and strong. Maybe even to have it slowly dissolve if the pressure differential was too low. If it’s down deep in the wound and skin is growing over it, the skin can take some of the load, so the bandage can slowly dissolve away as the skin takes over. Yes, I think that might be best. But I’ll remember to do a patient follow-up visit or two, this time.
The magic was complex, yes, but it broke down into simpler processes. Mary and I built the simpler parts of the spell, drawing them in diagrams on the temple floor. I did the more complicated bits myself while explaining how it worked.
She thought it was a good idea. I have hopes this will actually work the way I want it to.
When night fell in the monastery, we hid underground again. After a brief break for hygiene, we returned to our spell preparations. Given the ten-hour time zone change between our locations, it would be close to sunrise here before it would be night on the east coast of North America. Tricky timing, since opening a gate into a sunlit area doesn’t do anything good to the vampire doing it. I wanted to be ready to open gates, fire bandage spells, and close them, one-two-three-four, like clockwork.
It felt a lot like preparing for the original assault on Johann. Less dangerous, less nerve-wracking, but similar.
Mary was a huge help. Once the sunset line passed our first target, she handled the magic mirror, sighted in on the nexus, and opened the prepared gate spell. All I had to do was look through the spatial opening, spot the ripped-up area in the planet’s magical field, and launch bandages at it.
It did, in fact, go like clockwork—or teamwork. There is much to be said for being prepared and having an advanced apprentice to help.
The only thing that didn’t go perfectly was the Toano nexus. I covered most of the ripped-up area with bandage spells, but our post-bandaging scrying showed me I missed a bit, over-covering one area and leaving an uncovered gap. It wasn’t a major problem. We simply took another pass at it, albeit in more of a hurry. Still, it was only one more nexus bandage spell. We finished well before our sunrise deadline.
Planetary first aid? Check. One more thing off my list.
I handed off the live wire into Mary’s care, opened a gateway from a portable gate to the temporary gate downstairs, and went down to turn off the tap. We closed up shop, sealed the orichalcum hatch, gathered up our stuff, and went back to Apocalyptica.
Let’s see if we can get my ball back.
Nexus, Tuesday, April 5th, 2049
San Francisco was much as I remembered it: very clean, very open, and humming with electricity. The air had that ocean-fresh smell to it. I don’t know if that’s the way it was back in my day, in my world, but the air quality of 2049 in Mary’s version of Earth is pretty good.
Sadly, we arrived in the middle of a driving rainstorm, which kind of put a damper on my enjoyment of the place. Our gate terminus was a hotel-room door. We stepped into a vacant room, dismissed the gate, and turned around to open the door and walk calmly out of the hotel. On the way down, I called for a cab.
I forgot to be sneaky. As the cab door opened, it played my customized welcome sound. Google remembered me. I’m not sure that’s a good thing. A lot of vampires and magi are probably more than a little irritated with me. Some of them might have technical people—or programs—actively looking for me.
Maybe I shouldn’t come back here so readily. This place could prove unexpectedly hostile. If I’m going to help Diogenes use this as a resource point, I need a new, rock-solid identity, not just a few fake IDs. I’ll have to look into it. I wonder if BitRate is still in business?
We took the cab as far as a local theater and switched. This time, we went into stealth mode as we booked another cab, this time using an electronic money stick. Let this be a warning to online shoppers: the default payment method may be convenient, but it may be a little too convenient!
As the cab drove us around, I triangulated on the psychic imprints and Mary corrected the cab’s course to close in. They were all clustered together. In the same house, even. In the hills. On an estate. Behind a tall, somewhat familiar gate.
Of course it was on the Fries’ estate. Where else?
We cruised past it on a couple of sides, enough to confirm the coordinates, then stopped off at the nearest motel.
“What do you think?” Mary asked, toweling her hair dry. The rain was still coming down. I lay down on the bed with a grinding squeak.
“I think we should go in loud and heavy, beat everyone inside into submission, and get my ball back.”
At the sudden silence, I lifted my head to look at her. She stared at me.
“Are you serious?”
“Yes. I’m tired of politics, adventure, emotional trauma, and all the rest. I want to get the damned ball, lock it away somewhere, and let Diogenes probe alternate universes until he finds Mount Doom. I want this crap over. I’m lazy. I’m irresponsible. I’m a bad person. I admit it. I’m learning to live with it.”
Mary sat down on the edge of the bed, laid her hand on my chest.
“Do you really believe that?”
“Of course.”
“I don’t.”
“You don’t live in this skull,” I countered. “I do.”
“At night, you don’t have a reflection.”
“True. So?”
“Has it occurred to you it might be significant of something?”
“No, not really. I mean, it’s a vampire thing, or thing involving a magical orb sucking my dark side out of my body, or something.”
“You don’t have a reflection,” she repeated. “You don’t have a way to judge yourself.”
“I can see me just fine.”
“Yes… I suppose you can. You can’t see what others see, though.”
“They’re deluded idiots. Present company excepted,” I added. Mary smiled slightly.
“I just want you to know you’re not irresponsible. You worry about it, but you’re not. An irresponsible person doesn’t worry so much about it. You’re also not a coward, or unhandsome, or any of those other things you seem to think about yourself. Oh, you say such things in a self-deprecating manner, deflec
ting and hiding it with humor, but I see right through you.”
“If you say so.”
“And another thing. If you agree with me just to shut me up or avoid a serious discussion, I’ll smother you with a pillow.”
“Ah. Well, if you’re going to get all murderous and evil about it…”
“I’m serious. I know you’ve been through one of Hell’s smaller hiking trails, so I know you need to be… what’s the word? I don’t know. You need to find a way to find yourself again. There’s only so much anyone can take, and you’re near it.”
“Oh? What makes you say that?”
“You’re moody, grumpy, depressed, and willing to go down the kill-everything-that-moves road as a primary option. That’s not like you.”
“I am not depressed,” I lied.
“Just moody, grumpy, and willing to go down the kill-everything-that-moves road?”
She’s right, Boss, Firebrand said, from its case.
Mary chuckled.
“I didn’t ask you,” I complained.
Yeah, but she is right.
“About what?”
Everything.
“You’re not helping.”
She’s trying to, and I’m helping her. It counts. It does count, doesn’t it?
“All right, all right. It counts.”
You just don’t like it when people help.
“I love having help!”
Not when it’s about who you are. What you are.
“Not,” Mary corrected, “when it’s about how you see yourself.”
Yeah, Boss. What she said.
“Can we please ignore my personal problems and focus on finding the evil artifact?” I complained.
“If you like, but you’re proving the point.” She held up one hand to silence my reply. “I only wanted you to know I recognize you have problems—and I love you anyway. When you want to talk about them—if you ever do—I’ll be exasperated it took you so long, but I’ll help.”
“I’m ambivalent about your reassurances.”
“Nothing in life is a sure thing,” she replied, sweetly. “Now, do you really want to go into the House of Fries and punch your way through everything?”
“No. I want guns, too.”
“I’m torn between clapping my hands in glee and worrying about you.”
“Pick one,” I suggested, “or come up with a better idea.”
I can grab an unprotected human being and yank the life right out of him. It takes a moment of concentration, and it takes longer the farther away I am. There are other factors, of course—can I see him, is he being active, is he moving, is he already tired, is he magically sensitive and resisting, and so on. But, in general, with the Average Human, I can choose to give him the tendril equivalent of a roundhouse swing and make it look instantaneous.
Mary does not share this ability. I have an uncounted, possibly variable number of invisible psychic tendrils. She has one. I blame her initial vampire species, but I have an idea for helping her develop another one.
Anyway, she can drain the vitality out of someone but it takes, under ideal conditions, close to a full minute. It takes even longer to drill down deeper and siphon off the thing we call a soul. This makes her ability less useful for quietly killing guards while sneaking into a fortress. It’s great for making someone feel tired, even faint, before killing him by more mundane methods, though, and it’s perfect for a little light snacking on the vitality of a crowd.
I wore my cloak of darkness (patent pending) and she wore her high-tech ninja armor suit. She did the lead sneaking, I did the follow-up sneaking. We worked our way around the estate perimeter to check for guards—both were at the front gate. While they were sitting in their guard booth, they died quietly.
Farther in, we found a few more guards on active duty, patrolling the grounds or keeping watch. I kept an eye out for problems while Mary went inside, found the central security station, and made extensive use of knives.
Diogenes gave her some new ones out of some super-space-age material. They’re slightly curved, sharp only on the outer edge and the point, and don’t set off metal detectors. They’re also wickedly sharp and, according to Diogenes, should stay that way if not mistreated. I didn’t get to see the bloodbath firsthand, but I did walk through the room, later, to clean up—blood crawled off monitor screens, out of keyboards, even out of the carpet to slither up and over my boots, into my skin.
I am a forensics expert’s worst nightmare. Other people’s, too, but for different reasons.
We took our time. The goal was to kill all the guards without anyone triggering an alarm. Mary was confident. I wasn’t. But it turns out I can be taught. I practiced being sneaky, stealthy, and quiet while Mary treated most of the trip as a field exercise for her inept student. I think it was payback for making her open a gate on her own.
She covered for me twice when I made minor goofs, then explained why it was a goof. For example, you don’t open a door and look in. You either wave a tendril through the wall to feel the room for people—much like shining a flashlight around to see anyone—or you open the door boldly, as though you belong there, and march in ready to kill everyone. Slowly creeping isn’t sneaky; it signals you’re trying to sneak and failing. Opening a door and entering like you belong there is how people normally enter a room and doesn’t trigger an instant suspicion.
There are times for each, and knowing which is which is something that comes with experience. I’ll get there.
Unsurprisingly, there were very few magical effects around the place. A few objects were present, of course, each in their display case or whatever, but there were no active spells hanging around.
When Mary was happy with our kill count, we did another sweep of the place to make sure we didn’t miss anyone. We didn’t. We also didn’t find my Orb.
“Safe?” Mary suggested. “Basement vault? Curse box?”
“I don’t know. Give me a minute.” I raised my smaller spell-antenna again and turned in a slow circle. “I’m not getting anything, now.”
“So, it was a signature on someone?”
“Perhaps killing everyone we encountered was a trifle premature,” I mused. “Interrogating some of them might have helped.”
“We can ask others, elsewhere.”
“Maybe. Let’s look for clues here, first.”
We went over the house and grounds with considerable care, searching. Mary called me out to the garden and the Ascension Sphere I’d built for the Fries so long ago. I went to see what she found.
The garden layout was still there, but the magical portion had been used. It wasn’t hard to see how. In the center of the Sphere’s diagram was a ring. Well, I say a ring. It was really more of a circular area around which the whole structure of the garden spiraled. Twice. In opposite directions.
The grass, the gravel, the trees and flowers—all of it was warped, distorted, as though some strange space-bending effect emanated from a central point, rippling out in a pair of counter-rotating spirals, twisting space and matter as it exploded.
“I’ve seen this effect before,” I noted.
I seem to recall it, too, Firebrand agreed.
“What is it?” Mary asked.
“When I fled through a gate from Karvalen to this world, T’yl destroyed the gate behind me. This caused it to… I don’t know exactly, but it didn’t shut down. It had some sort of distortion effect on the local spacetime that destroyed the gateways as well as the magical opening, leaving behind this double-spiral pattern weirdness. It also destroyed any chance for pursuers to track me through the gate. No gate, no trail. No trail, no pursuit. The Orb of Evil was present, so whatever it uses to sense the world around it might have worked through the sack it was in. It might have duplicated the technique.”
“So, what happened here?”
“My guess, based on my paranoia, cynicism, and pessimistic outlook, is the ball grabbed someone by the brain—or maybe by the greed, or fear, or something
similar—and used the power in the Ascension Sphere I built, to create a gateway into another world.”
“The circle in the center doesn’t look big enough for a person.”
“But it’s plenty big enough for the Orb,” I pointed out. “Maybe it didn’t want to bring anyone from this world, or maybe it had power constraints limiting the size of the opening. I can’t say. But I’d be willing to bet the Orb, for its own reasons, persuaded or manipulated or dominated its way into having a gate opened for it. Probably one with a built-in self-destruct. It wouldn’t want anyone left behind to be a source of information on where it went.”
“So, if it’s escaped from this world into another one,” Mary asked, kicking lightly at the oddly-rippled garden dirt, “what do we do? How do we find it?”
“I don’t know. As far as I can tell, there is no way to do an interdimensional search spell. Doesn’t mean there isn’t one, but I have no idea how to do it.”
“How firm of an ‘I don’t know’ is this?”
“What do you mean?”
“Is it like doing a cybersearch and studying for a week? Or is it taking apart the alien gadget and hoping it doesn’t blow up?”
“Is it something I can do but don’t know how, or does it require a leap in theory to be able to attempt?”
“I like the way you put it. Yes.”
“I’m fairly sure there is a way to do it, but I don’t know how. I think I need a leap in theory. Inter-universal detection spells ought to be possible, but how to use them across inter-universal barriers stumps me. It’s outside my current theories of magic. Even Johann, with all his power, resorted to using ghosts as remote probes rather than do a seeking spell. If I take time to solve it, it could be a day, a week, a year—or never. I have no way of knowing.”
“Fair enough. So, where do we go from here? How do we find it?”
I sat down on a rippled concrete bench. I’m not sure it was supposed to be curved, but it held me.
“I’m wondering that,” I admitted, tiredly. I thought about it for a while and Mary sat down with me to hold my hand. After a while, I shook my head.