“I'm not worthy.”
Sil bolts out of the room, not giving me a chance to say or do anything. Shey gets up and trails behind her, giving me a flashing look so I know she's on it.
“Wells, better be that, then dead ferever.”
I turn around to look at Pffif. He's right. I thought I lost her, for however many hurtful moments those were. Now another realization sets in: maybe I have. I have to go to her. I start for the door and Gunter's large hand around my arm stops me dead in my tracks.
“Wait,” I hear him say, “All may not be as it appears. You and I must talk.”
He releases my arm and I turn towards him, torn between the urgency of tending to Sil and whatever it is Gunter appears to know. I don't have words.
“Everybody out,” Gunter booms out, “We have private matters to discuss, your wielder and I.”
Both Vets and Pffif posture up immediately to my defense. “We be thinkin' not,” says Pffif standing up for a united front.
Gunter turns to Pffiferil and says one weary word, “Please.”
Pffiferil, standing atop the recliner, and Gunter pause there for a moment, neither moving. Finally Pffiferil shrugs, says, “Well, ye said please.” and jumps down from the chair.
“Come on big girl,” he says, waving her on as he makes his way to the door. Vets' eyes look to me for confirmation. All it takes is the slightest nod for her to know it’s okay. Once they leave and close the door, Gunter walks over to the window and clasps his hands behind his back.
Just a little too familiar.
“Did you hear of the battle in Omaha,” he asks me.
I did. Albeit the media would have you thinking that Znuul himself shot the rockets, guns and set off the bombs.
“Yeah, Gunter. What does that have to do with anything?”
“I met him in battle. Righteous battle… honest battle. He prevailed.”
“You fight, it's only a matter of time until you get your ass kicked at some time Gunter, you know that.”
“He showed me mercy,” he says turning around. “He could have killed me with the poison stinger in his tail, but he did not. A most deadly poison…” His voice trails off as he plops himself down in the recliner. Somehow, he seems so much smaller. “I could not comprehend that he let me live. He said funny, I’m the only one dispensing mercy today. Those words haunt me.”
He leans back in the recliner and he runs his fingers through his hair. “Paetricius says I over-think these things.” A faint smile returns to his face.
“What the hell does all this have to do with my Silithes?”
“Everything. Maybe nothing. The truth is,” he says leaning forward, “that she must have passed judgment. She is not dead… or truly dead as the case may be. I have seen the sword's judgment of the wicked.”
He said “she” instead of “it.” Something’s up. The hairs on the back of my neck are standing at attention. Something is not adding up.
“Why would she say she’s not worthy, then? She wasn’t acting like someone who just got judged as an upstanding citizen.”
“I cannot know these things. All I know is the judgment of the sword upon the soul is final. She walked away. She spoke to us. How one such as her can do such a thing is beyond my ability to reason. It is beyond what I have come to believe. Arthur, your… your succubus lives.”
I take stock of that. There are times to ask why, and there are times just to be grateful. I think this is one of those times to be grateful. I nod at Gunter to acknowledge the point.
“I need to speak of larger things, Arthur. Right now in Russia, a demon attacks. It’s holding children hostage. And it’s called for the head of Ahtsag Znuul. It’s time for you to take up the sword again. Earth needs as many swords as it can, and Yayne should not sit on the sideline. By my estimation, it showed your pet demon the error of its ways and let it live. Return the favor, rejoin the fight.”
“Dammit.” I turn around and pick up Yayne by the hilt. “What did you do?” I ask it. “You want back in the fight, tell me what the hell you just did – now.”
Nothing, except maybe the smallest hint of what I think may be frustration.
Then I hear a single word, faintly – “worthy.”
“Gunter, get Paetricius and get talking. I’ll step back up – on my own terms. Now I need to know what the hell Yayne did to my Sil. And what does it mean by worthy?”
Gunter’s face lightens up. “It spoke to you? This is good.” Gunter bolts from the chair and again lays his sword atop Yayne. His face registers surprise. He looks over to me. “I will have Yayne repeat this, slowly so I can repeat the words.”
Gunter nods a couple times and his face becomes quite somber. “We begin. It was found worthy. It was shown its monstrous ways and it was repentant. It seems to carry the ability to love. Yayne believes this because of its connection to you, your soul directly influencing it. Yayne feels you must learn that the Dzemond, in their hearts, are evil. They are born to evil, they live for evil. To teach you the truth of the lesson, he asked it to be set free to be as it truly is, without your control or influence. The Divine apparently obliged. Yayne wishes you luck in surviving... her.”
I don’t need to hear anymore. I tear out of the room and see Shey pacing in front of a door.
“Silly’s not acting right,” she says. “That sword did something to her. She yelled at me and kicked me out of the room. I think she’s been hurt.”
I don’t bother with a response. I just barge in. There she is, sitting against the wall, her knees pulled up to her chest. She looks up at me her face twitching, eyes feral. I see her hands around her legs flexing. She starts to cry.
“I’m so goddamned hungry. I hurt.”
“Just a sec,” I say back and recite my second largest healing spell and release it her way.
“Shit!” she cries out, the feral look intensifying, “That’s not going to work anymore Arthur, look at your arm - then get the hell out of here.”
I look at my arm… the glyph for Hjuul, the glyph for Arix, no glyph for Sil.
“I’m not your summonling anymore. And that damned sword didn’t leave me with anything. Nothing but hunger. So, get out… Now! I have to feed and I don’t want it to be on you.”
Chapter 28
I offer myself to help her hungers. That just really – really - sets her off.
“Just get out! That’s what that damn sword wants. I don’t think I could stop and you’d... That way it’s right and free to get a new wielder. Are you that damn blind?”
“Just hang on,” I tell her as calmly as I can, which is not too calm. “I have an idea, they’ve got to have that mage recovery blue stuff here, I’ll go get a gallon of it.”
She looks at me for a moment. In that moment, I know how that juicy, sizzling steak must feel when they bring it to my table.
“Get. Out.”
“Okay, but I’ll be back – with blue stuff.,” I say as positively as I can.
I leave. Once out in the hallway, I hear Sil scream. Not an expletive... Just a scream - like a wounded animal. Crap bricks. I look over at Shey, who is just as taken aback.
“Don’t let her go anywhere. I’m getting her some… medicine.”
“What’s wrong with her?”
“Explain later,” I yell as I start to run towards the nurse’s station. Gunter steps out of the room we were in, sword in hand. I stop dead in my tracks.
“You will not harm her. You and Yayne have done enough already. You hear me big-man? She is hurting bad and I blame you.”
I turn to Shey in the hallway. “Don’t you let him hurt her.”
My very agitated state has the rest of my summonlings coming out to see what’s up. I give them the abbreviated version.
“Sil’s not a summonling anymore. Do not let this man harm her.”
Arix’s smile engulfs his face, “I have permission to use lethal force?”
“Only if he goes after her.”
Vets nods her
acknowledgment.
Gunter’s not pleased with me at all. I don’t care. Time is wasting and my Silithes is hurting.
“Your feelings are misplaced, Arthur. Do you really wish for another flesh and blood demon to walk our realm,” Gunter asks me.
“Not another, just Sil.”
Shey yells out, “Yeah!”
Knowing time is wasting on this horseshit and that Gunter is well covered, I rush down to the nurse’s station and dammit, nobody is home.
I rush behind the desk and pick up the phone. Not knowing what extension to dial, I push “0” for the operator.
“This is Nellie,” says the voice of the receptionist.
“I need Doctor Bart.”
“Who is this?”
“Arthur. We have an emergency on the fourth-floor private wing.”
That must have lit a fire under her as she says, “Oh!” then after some fumbling, says, “I’ll have him call you at that extension.”
Crap thorny sticks. Time is not my friend. Finally, the phone rings.
“This is Bartholomew.”
“We need that blue stuff. The mage recovery elixir.”
“Who is this?”
I bring him up to speed with the situation, in the most abbreviated way I can.
“My god, you’re telling me we have a flesh and blood Dzemond in this facility?”
“I’m telling you she’s starving, knit-wit. Let’s get her fed.”
“We don’t keep stocks of that,” he tells me, “We’re healers of the body and we do not rely on arcane energy for our ministrations, we rely on the divine.”
I can’t accept that answer and speak my mind.
“This is a protectorate facility and surely, somewhere, you have to have some for either mages passing through or assigned to help protect this place. Are you sure? This is my Silithes we are talking about and she is hurting.”
“Maybe we do, I can’t be positive,” he says back, “Go to the elevator and we’ll go to the lower level, we can look together.”
I waste no time and get to the elevator. I don’t have to push any buttons. The door closes and the elevator moves down - slowly, too damn slowly. The door opens. I am greeted by white walls and plain linoleum tile.
Dr. Bart’s voice finds me quickly and I turn to him, “Over here. I’ll take you to the stock room.” We head down a hall take a turn and go down a long hall. He swipes his security card on the access panel and the door opens.
“If we have it, it’s here,” Dr. Bart says.
I’m faced with a long storage room. My exasperation is boiling over. Going through each shelf will simply take too long. So, I look over at Doc Bart and share my exasperation with him.
“We don't have time to hunt through all this. Where are the most likely places it would be?”
“Follow me,” he says understanding the issue at hand.
I follow him through the room, and on the sixth shelf he examines, he pulls out a small dusty leather bound container. “This, I think.”
He unzips it and inside are three bottles of bright blue potion.
“Seal it up,” I tell him. We don't need to drop it and break them.
Alarms go off. So does Dr. Bart's phone. I hear him say, “Yes. Get her contained. Use whatever force necessary. Try not to kill her, we're bringing something.”
I'm about to rip into him, but he stops me, “Third level. The dementia wing. She's locked herself in a room there - Mr. Patterson and Mr. Kowalski's room.”
I take off running to the elevator, Doc right behind me. “Stairs will be faster,” he says.
We bolt up the stairs and he swipes his card at the door for the third floor. It's not hard to tell where she's at - the room with the Paladin and four armed guards outside of it, guns drawn - like those will do anything but piss her off more.
“Door's blocked somehow,” says Paladin Larry.
The patients are mostly reacting to the guards, oblivious to what's really going on. Dr. Bart scans around, “I see Mr. Kowalski. I don't see… dammit take down that door!”
Larry's clodhopper boot slams into the door. It jars. He takes some steps back and barrels through the door.
“Crap,” I hear him say and I move quickly into in the room. No Sil. The window has been shattered.
And Mr. Patterson appears to have died a euphoric death, judging by the smile left on the face of his dried out husk of a body.
Chapter 29
Veliky Novgorod
The teachers asked that the children be allowed to relieve themselves in the bathroom. Upon reflection, Ahzna agreed with that request after having been exposed to the odor of one child’s aging urine. Another teacher insisted that the children must eat. That was a good suggestion too.
Ahzna takes another bite of that teacher’s bicep muscle. She didn’t break her promise, it wasn’t a child she killed.
It occurs to her that with some simple preparation, these humans could be made into any number of dishes. But she’s not a cook – that would be beneath her station.
The communication device she spoke with Ahtsag Znuul through starts buzzing and beeping on the counter. She stands and walks over to it. Reading the panel on the front reveals simple enough instructions – accept or decline. She chooses accept.
“Who calls?”
“Your prey awaits you outside,” says the deep voice. “I told you I would make every effort to be early. I have never been a liar – remember? Leave the children in the school, unless you feel you need something to hide behind.”
That statement makes Ahzna laugh a little. Such an obvious ploy to protect the young humans. “Maybe I should bring a few, so you can see how pitifully they die.”
“It will make no difference in the end,” says Ahtsag’s deep and calm voice. “Your hopes will flee and I will devour your very soul. Come out, I wish to see how the nanite armor has improved.”
Click.
She takes another chomp of bicep meat and commands the suit to extend her helm. She follows by calling the force cannons on her arms to deploy. She reaches back and takes the grav-rifle.
“Nobody leaves without my permission, or I will hunt them down and kill them most painfully,” she proclaims loudly, the suit enhancing her volume. Having laid down her decree, she heads out of the office and the building.
“Nobody leaves,” she tells the Vetisghar summonling patrolling the first floor. It nods in acknowledgment.
She steps out of the building.
The humans are cowering behind their little barricades. She sees the cameras turn towards her. The police train their ineffective little pellet guns on her. She scans the crowd… nothing. Turning around, she looks up. Nothing. She regards the group again.
“Suit, scan for non-human life signs,” she commands it through her neural link to the suit’s A.I. The blast glass shows a grid and her view dims. Sure enough, he’s here - from the look of things, sitting on the hood of a car behind the crowd, intently focused on her.
She points at him. He rises.
“Switch to standard spectrum vision,” she commands the suit.
She sees her prey approach, standing tall above the crowd. He makes his way through the humans and causally moves one of the barricades out of the way, causing the humans guarding the area to startle and train their guns upon him.
He seems to pay no heed to them, but he does put the barricade back in place. How polite…
She takes him in. He stands a good head or more taller than Bikruut did. She figured the legends had to exaggerate his size; legends always exaggerate. Except maybe this time.
She flips the grav-rifle up and lets fly a volley of four shots.
She sees his arm extend, palm out. The shots crash into an unseen barrier and fall harmlessly to the ground. His arm flexes and she dives into a roll, knowing he just propelled that barrier at her. Coming up from her roll she fires off another volley, which meet another impenetrable barrier, now brought up by his other hand.
He sends that barrier her way again and she responds the same way with a diving roll and return fire.
The shots are met again by his barriers. This time both hands held up. She recognizes this maneuver - the death shields – a technique invented by Znuul. He begins moving in towards her. She knows if he gets close enough, he will bring his hands together and she will be squashed between the shields. She casts the rifle aside and lets loose with the arm-mounted force cannons. Not aiming for him but before him, tearing up earth and pavement.
He’s smiling at her, the bastard.
The suit alerts her, “Potential psionic attack noted, increased neural activity in the forebrain.”
She snarls and falls into her training, taking control of her emotions and dividing her conscious thought processes. “Fear casting,” she says to the suit.
“You will have to do better than old tricks and weak attempts at mind control ancient one,” she yells at Znuul.
He lets loose with a loud bout of laughter. “Where’s your sword? Surely you wouldn’t try to take my head without one.”
Her hands go to her knives and she begins to charge forward.
“Warning: buildup of nether energy detected by the target, deploying counter-measures,” announces her suit.
Znuul’s wings flare out and flap in time with the stomping of his foot.
The wall of force impacts Ahzna, who is pushed backwards violently She jumps slightly so her feet are not tripped up on the ground, she relaxes and lets the wave slam her into the building. If nothing else, it buys her some distance and time to think.
But no, somehow Znuul has closed the distance. How has he done it so fast?
His fist slams into the side of her head before she can register the blow. “Shock presented exceeds normal Baalig capability,” says the A.I. calmly.
She swipes outward with one of the knives, knowing he will press the attack. She feels the crack of his shin against the back of her knee, causing it to buckle and the suit to protest. Size is coming in to play; she realizes that his arms are longer than hers, and his leg easily outreaches her arm and knife combined. She triggers the other knife to extend to sword length and deploys the plasma energy along its edges. She spins in towards Znuul, aiming for his middle, hoping to take an arm or better.
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