by Tom Larcombe
What can I do? If I listen to him then he'll die here, he thought. If I don't, then he'll never call me friend again, but at least he'd live.
Gunter was pulling rubble back onto his body, trying to conceal himself as well as acquire some protection.
“It's my choice Merlin, mine!” he said. “Now make yours and don't let all we've done to get you this far go to waste.”
If I ignore his choice, take it away from him, then what would that make me? Merlin thought.
He looked at Gunter and slowly gave the most heartfelt salute he ever would. Gunter clicked a magazine into his rifle and saluted crisply in return.
Tears streaming down his face, Merlin turned and quickly made his way down the last block to the building he felt his target was in. Gunshots rang out down the street as he examined the structure.
There, that's a ventilation system, he thought. Even if I can't physically get into the building through it, I can hide in there while I search for Ave.
He pulled himself up into a small structure that looked like a miniature silo. A large grate capped it off several feet above ground level. It was protected from the elements by a spired roof a few feet above it, leaving an open area between grate and roof. He dragged his body across the grate, settled into a sitting position, and placed a concealment shield around himself.
Merlin's eyes squeezed shut as he listened to the gunfire. Now and then he heard grenades exploding as well. He resisted the urge to send his awareness towards Gunter and try to help. Instead, he separated his awareness and sent it into the ventilation system.
Wherever she is, he thought, she'll need air. This tunnel will let me find her. Once I know where she is, what she looks like, then I can complete my mission.
He sent his awareness into the ventilation system's ducts. They passed through filters and purifiers before he saw the first grating. He peered through it and found an empty room. He continued through the system checking grating after grating. There were many people, even several women, but none of them showed any signs of the power Ave would be unable to hide.
Let me check, he thought.
He sent enough of his awareness back to his body to pull out the locator crystal. It glowed with a blinding light that increased when it was tilted down at an angle.
Below ground, I need to follow the shafts down, he thought.
A moment later he realized that the nearby gunfire had ceased. He swallowed and continued searching with his awareness. Meanwhile his body shook with sobs while tears ran down his face.
* * *
Merlin found his way down to the lower level of the bunker. Once again he began to check the gratings. A dim purple glow leaked through a grating farther down the shaft. He raced to that one and peered through it.
Two people occupied the room. One was male, in a plain German uniform whose insignia demoted a high rank. The second was female and the power radiated off of her like heat from the sun. The man was apparently reading reports while the woman paced. She was speaking continually but the man didn't seem to notice.
With the man seated and facing away from him, Merlin couldn't make out his features. The woman was pacing and Merlin did get a good look at her.
The body Ave had taken was pretty but not overly so. Her hair was a light brown, nearly blonde, and curled back from the sides of her face. She was at the low end of average height for a female but looked fit and well-dressed. When Merlin caught sight of her eyes any thought of her being harmless went by the wayside. Her eyes were cold and they showed the true age of the creature in control of the body.
“You can hold here,” she said. “There's no need to endanger yourself or the troops by trying a break-out. Weidling is trying to betray you, just as Himmler did. He wants to turn you over to the Allies for a reward and to ensure his own safety.”
The man murmured something to himself that Merlin couldn't make out.
“Give him permission to try but have him use his own troops for that. There are enough loyal soldiers that will remain to hold the city.”
The man picked up a radio and Merlin distinctly heard him give permission for someone to attempt a break-out with their troops. Merlin, with his Sight, saw that the man was wrapped in a delicate tracery of magic.
This is how she does it, he thought. She probably uses magic to make them consciously tune out her words while her victim's subconscious retains them and thinks of them as their own thoughts. Who among the leaders of armies would ever doubt their own thoughts? But now it's time to put a stop to it once and for all.
Merlin looked back at the man and recognized some patterns in the spells. Those regarding influence and persuasion seemed dominant but there were many others present as well, some he didn't recognize in the slightest. Several of the spells connected the man directly to the woman.
I need to get into the mind of that body, he thought. Then separate Ave from it and keep her locked away so she can't regain control. If I can do that, she's already provided me with a spell form for a jail that will hold her until she wastes away.
Merlin sent his awareness towards the woman, probing for any form of access into her mind.
But he found it well shielded. She noticed his efforts immediately and spun about, looking for a physical intruder. When she didn't find one, her eyes went wide and she looked again. This time, she honed right in on Merlin's awareness.
While Ave searched for Merlin, he was examining all the different spell ties he saw coming off of her that passed through her shields. Most of them went to the man in the room, but three extended out beyond the walls. Two of them he didn't recognize, but the third was the one she used to attack Nimue.
That one I know, Merlin thought. I examined the other end of it enough back in England. Maybe I can use that to get through her shields. Perhaps I can snap it and give Nimue some relief while I ride the backlash from the spell into the interior of Ave's shields.
He glanced at Ave. Her eyes were closed and he could see the power in her moving, forming something at her bidding.
She's probably preparing an attack, he thought. I need to act fast.
Merlin temporarily fused his awareness to the spell tie, he visualized it as grasping the tie as tightly as he could with one hand and holding on for all he was worth. He willed his blue-white flame knife into a suitable form for the situation, visualizing it in his other hand. Just before Ave finished preparing her spell, he swept the knife through the spell tie.
He thought he had a good grasp of what would occur when he did that. He found out he was wrong when he sliced the tie. Ave was currently using the tie to torture Nimue and now he found himself the target of the images used to torment his wife.
He recognized the scene instantly. He was lying in bed with Nimue, or at least someone that looked like her. It was the bed that Ave had created when she was draining him in her mental prison. The two of them had sex and there the scene departed from what occurred in his past. In the middle of intercourse the woman changed. She no longer looked like Nimue, now she looked like the woman Ave was currently controlling.
In the real occurrence in Merlin's past there was little dialogue but not so in this creation. In the scene he experienced, he was pledging his love to Ave and promising to leave Nimue for her. The scene continued on and on with Ave's overlaid dialogue slighting and insulting Nimue. When they finally finished having sex and Merlin rolled over to go to sleep, Ave glared straight at his awareness. The fact that the glare was targeted at the intended viewer, Nimue, did nothing to lessen the scorn and contempt she delivered with it. Then the scene flashed back to the beginning and started over.
Merlin was both trapped in the scene and watching the room in the bunker as he was yanked through Ave's shields. The spell tie had snapped and recoiled on her as he expected but he was dazed by his interception of the images being forced on Nimue's mind.
Fortunately for him, the backlash was sufficient to momentarily stun Ave. He recovered before she did and thrust his awar
eness into her mind.
* * *
Chapter 18
Merlin needed to put some sort of overlay on Ave's mind in order to deal with it more easily. The thought translated his surroundings into a construct he could relate to and he found himself standing in the entry hall of a castle that vaguely resembled Din Guarie. He'd visited the castle before his long sleep and his memories of it were still vivid. Unlike the real castle, the mental construct he created that vaguely resembled it had corridors leading in all directions. Some appeared to be ancient while others were brand new. The walls were covered with tapestries that hung to the floor and candles supported by chandeliers bathed the room in a warm light.
She'll be after me in moments, he thought. I need some time to plan.
Merlin glanced over his shoulder to see if she was pursuing him yet. Then he chose a corridor at random, sprinted into it, and discovered that it was long enough that he couldn't see its end.
He chose a door, once again at random, opened it and entered. He closed the door behind him but before he could begin to plan, motion in the room caught his eye.
He worked his way around the room. The tapestry that caught his attention with its movement showed Ave's dragon form. She was shape shifting into a human woman. He thought that it was her true human body since it wasn't the one in the sending he'd recently intercepted.
When the tapestry's movement ceased she was no longer a dragon but a comely young woman. While she was physically attractive, something about her face indicated that the beauty was only skin deep and madness lay beneath.
The tapestry went still and he looked to the next one as its image began to move.
The young woman was seducing an older man. In the tapestry, Merlin could see the spells that she used to bind the man to her bidding. When he was completely under her sway, the movement ceased.
Merlin was entranced. He was sure he was watching Ave's memories of something important to her that she had done in the past. His gaze shifted to the next tapestry when it began to move. He was aware that time was of the essence but he also knew that time, as he perceived it in her mind, did not match that of the physical world. She'd yet to even enter her own mind in pursuit of him and he was sure she was in the act of doing so even now.
The third tapestry showed the man scribing a large tome. Ave, in her human form, was dictating the work to him. Whenever the man showed signs of distress at what he was writing, the spell ties between the two of them flared brightly and the man settled down and returned to his work. When he finally closed the tome, the movement of the tapestry ceased.
Merlin stepped towards the next tapestry. It showed a large machine with many moving parts. Blank paper traveled into it and pages of printed text came out the other side. The pages were then bound together to form a book. Before the binding was completed on the first book, Merlin caught sight of the title page. The title read: 'Mallevs Maleficarvm'.
Merlin stepped to the last tapestry. He cringed when he saw its image. A woman was bound to a stake with kindling piled high beneath her feet. It was obvious that she was a wizard. Several times she started to shimmer and disappear, only to be struck hard enough to disrupt the spell she was trying to cast. Ave stood in the crowd and looked ecstatic when someone thrust a torch into the kindling.
Merlin turned from the tapestry before it went still, not wanting to see what occurred next.
* * *
I'd move to a different room but I doubt any of them are better, he thought.
Merlin paced around the room, averting his eyes from the tapestries. He paused for a moment and recalled the room he had appeared in when he entered. There were corridors on that level like the one he'd taken. There were also stairs leading up and down from it.
Now that I know what layout I'll be working with, I can firm up my plan. Since this is her mind, I wonder if the stairs down I saw lead to a dungeon. If they do, it may be laid out as a mental prison in keeping with my visualization of the place. If I can trap her in her own prison again, even just briefly, then I can arrange things so that when she thinks she's broken out of her own prison, she's actually breaking into mine. I need to go back to the entry room and check downstairs.
Merlin left the room he had hidden in. He followed the corridor back to the entry hall and turned to one of the staircases leading down. Before he started descending, he felt someone else entering the hall. He glanced from side to side and slipped behind the tapestry that hung on the wall next to the staircase.
Ave materialized in the entry hall, wearing the appearance of her current victim.
“Where is he?” she thought. Within her own mind, her thoughts came out as speech. “I bet he's trying to free the simpering little twit whose body I'm using. Not that she'll do him much good.”
Ave raced for the stairs next to Merlin. She flew down them at top speed, taking three steps at a time. Merlin slid out from behind the tapestry and followed at a slower pace.
So I was right, he thought. It is a dungeon of some sort down there.
The stairs were made of dark stone, slick with condensation. When he reached the bottom the air was heavy and dank, saturated with the reek of mold and mildew. A long hallway, with doors spaced at regular intervals, stretched out in front of him. Large colonies of fungi and slime hung in the corners while smaller patches adorned the walls between the doors. He heard Ave speaking somewhere down the hall although he couldn't make out the words.
Merlin moved down the corridor far enough that he could see which door was open. The voice was clear now. It sounded as though Ave was speaking to herself.
“You can't fool me, no-one would be here to rescue me. This is hell, or purgatory at the very least.”
“You idiot. I've told you over and over that you're simply being held prisoner in your own mind. It's far easier to let the body take care of itself if the original spirit is still resident.”
“You come to me and torment me. You must be the devil assigned to punish me for taking my own life.”
“You failed at killing yourself, you little twit. Both times you tried, you failed. The first time you failed on your own. The second time, I made sure you failed and locked you away down here so there wouldn't be a third time.”
Merlin moved back to the stairs and started the climb. The noise of the dungeon door being closed caused him to hasten his steps. He was at the top when he heard Ave approaching the bottom. Once more he slipped behind the tapestry.
“I smell you Merlin, I know you're nearby,” Ave called, her voice echoing everywhere in the castle simultaneously. “I should have killed you when I first found you at the research center.”
Ave's voice took on a sarcastic tone.
“I thought that you, the Great Merlin, would understand if anyone did. I'll never understand how you can treat those cattle as your equals and risk yourself for them. You're worth thousands of them, millions even. You and I are alike, we're truly unique. Individuals like the world has never before seen.”
Her voice was growing closer.
“But no, you had to go and marry your puling little apprentice. You had to join forces with my enemies. What a waste...”
Ave was at the top of the stairs now and Merlin could hear her soft footsteps.
“Now, you dare challenge me in my own mind. Are you so tired of life already?”
She passed him by on her way to the center of the room.
“You're in my mind, Merlin. I'm sure you're hiding with some of my memories. And so, what memory has surfaced recently but not at my own behest.”
There was a brief silence.
“I see, sweet little Heinrich. Heinrich Kramer: a clergyman seduced and bound by magic to see witchcraft everywhere. Then led by the nose to write a book about how to destroy it. Of course I ensured that wizards would fall into the classifications of witches. There were too many of them around then. I had to get rid of some.”
Her footsteps moved farther away.
“I'm coming for you
Merlin. I'll be there shortly.”
When he thought she was out of the entry hall, he hurried down the steps. At the door in the dungeon she'd opened earlier, he peered in.
The inhabitant looked exactly like Ave, in a physical sense at least. The look in the eyes showed that this wasn't Ave though. The prisoner's eyes looked confused and tormented.
This must be the original owner of the body, Merlin thought.
He opened the door with a tiny surge of power. He chocked it open with more magic. Then he stepped into the cell.
Tapestries, that he hadn't seen when looking through the the bars, adorned the side walls. Both of them were in motion. The common thread was the body that Ave was currently using.
The first tapestry showed Ave's body firing a gun at another woman's chest, then placing the gun in the victim's hand and leaving the room. The second showed Ave's body pushing a woman out of what appeared to be a hospital window. In each tapestry the look on Ave's face was one of ecstasy. Both tapestries looped endlessly.
Merlin looked at the woman in the room. She was chained to the wall and unresponsive to his entrance but when he leaned close to her she shied back. He noticed her occasionally catching a quick glimpse of one of the tapestries. Each time she did, she seemed to retreat deeper into herself.
Merlin turned the tapestries to face the walls and felt a slight drain on his power. He knew the feeling, it was the one he got when his magic worked to make the same change in reality as he had in a construct. So now the woman in chains wouldn't have to face the tapestries or the memories they represented.
I need to pull her out of this, he thought. She may be able to help and I may be able to get her body back for her if she does.
Merlin felt the burst of rage as Ave discovered that he was not where she thought he was. Her voice echoed through her mind.
“Where are you Merlin? You can't hide from me forever and you can't do anything to me unless you face me.”