That was a minor variation on the technique I’d already developed for summoning molten nickel-iron from the Earth’s core. I didn’t want explosions powerful enough to damage the stonework, but molten rock from the upper mantle was a lot less energetic. A little testing confirmed that I could get it to come out as a high-velocity spray rather than an explosion, and while it would thoroughly wreck anything caught in the tunnel it didn’t strike the walls with enough force to damage them. There was only a slight drain on the structural reinforcement spells, not nearly enough to create a vulnerability an enemy could exploit. Not that many enemies would be casting spells while they were being sprayed with molten lava anyway.
No army of ape men was going to fight through that to get at my girls. Even if there was a major attack while I was away, they’d be safe.
Now I just needed a way to take the fight to the enemy. But I still didn’t know if my idea would even work.
“Cerise, do you have a way to contact Hecate?” I asked over dinner that night.
“Well, duh. Of course I do, and so do you. You do remember she made you her champion, right? We just need to go over to the chapel and do a little sacrifice.”
“Hey, she didn’t exactly give me a long explanation of how she does things, remember? I figured it was something like that, I just don’t know the specifics. I’ve got some crazy ideas for what to do about the ape men, but I need to check with her before I do something this drastic.”
“This ought to be interesting,” Cerise chuckled. “Well, I guess we can do a midnight communion tonight and try to get her attention. She doesn’t always answer, but if it’s both of us… oh. Fuck, that’s kind of… uh, I guess we’re really at the top of her list right now. She says she’ll be there.”
“You are her high priestess,” Tina said knowingly. “Of course she keeps an eye on you. Daniel? Bast wants you to try not to kill all the dinosaurs.”
“I wasn’t planning on it,” I assured her. “Dinosaurs are cool. Say, what’s it like talking to a goddess like that? Do you hear her voice in your head, or what?”
Tina shrugged. “It’s not like talking. I just know what she wants me to know, sometimes.”
“Same here,” Cerise confirmed. “I can’t just talk to her, and I don’t hear her voice. But she can see through my eyes and hear through my ears, and if she wants me to know something I just do.”
So, divine stalkers? That was actually kind of creepy. Not that I was going to come out and say that, of course.
Cerise insisted on actually teaching me the communication ritual instead of just casting it for me. I suppose that made sense, although the fact that it involved a blood sacrifice was a little off-putting. As usual, she was unfazed by that part.
“The amulets make this so much easier,” she confided. “Usually a priestess can’t do this very often, because if you don’t have an enemy to sacrifice you have to use enough blood to be dangerous. But now I can bleed forever without any risk, and the blood still carries just as much power as normal.”
“Just don’t let that lure you into getting carried away, Cerise,” Hecate said. “You know I don’t have time to chat about every little thing.”
There were no special effects. Just one moment Cerise and I were alone in the chapel, and the next there was a goddess standing next to us. Cerise started, and took a step back.
“I, um, fuck that was fast. Welcome to the Black Island shrine, my goddess. Thank you for answering our call.”
“Yeah, thanks for sparing us a few minutes, ma’am,” I said. “We know better than to bother you over little stuff.”
She sat on the altar, looking faintly amused. “What, no kneeling abasement and declarations of abject devotion? I believe my little Cerise has finally discovered her own worth.”
Cerise flushed. “T-thank you, my goddess. Daniel kind of inspired me.”
“Then my choice is vindicated. Well met, Daniel. What question did you have that requires my counsel?”
“I need to know if the gods have banned radiological weapons,” I told her. “Or, for that matter, if a certain earth goddess is likely to recognize one for what it is.”
Hecate frowned. “Radiological? More translation, please.”
That was promising. I considered where to begin with my explanation, when I noticed the bandages on her left arm. It was partly concealed by the sleeve of her jacket, but something had chewed her arm up pretty badly.
“You’re hurt?” I said in surprise. “Um, can we help you with that?”
One eyebrow rose fractionally. “I don’t know, Daniel. Can you help me with this?”
She offered her arm. I touched it, and tried to evaluate the wound.
The intensity of the magic at work there was blinding. Healing magic of fantastic power was pouring into the wound, fighting against a malignant curse that lurked within. It was like that mage-killer bolt the dwarves had hit me with, only a thousand times more powerful. Whatever had inflicted that wound would have killed me with a scratch, amulet or no amulet.
But it was only a thousand times more powerful. Not a million, or a billion. Hecate’s magic was a vast bonfire compared to the spark of my own sorcery, but it was only a bonfire. Not a star, or some incomprehensible vastness.
She was old, and strong. But she was desperately weary, and not far from the limits of her strength.
“Well?” She asked. “Do you have a miracle for me, or are such matters beyond even a wizard such as yourself?”
“Yes,” I replied. “Cerise, bring me the spare power stone from my lab. I’ve just found a use for it.”
“If you say so, Daniel.”
Her tone said she thought I was nuts, but she hurried off to fetch it anyway. Hecate watched her go, and then turned a questioning look my way.
“You’re right, I can’t channel enough mana to make any real headway against something like this. Honestly, I’m a little afraid that if I made contact with it that curse would just eat me. But my big power stones can put out about a third as much magic as you’ve got going into that healing effect, and they never get tired. That’s enough of an advantage to let you heal yourself in an hour or two instead of having the wound linger for days, right?”
“It can produce that much power?”
Cerise hurried back in at that point, with the sixty pound rock in her hands. Hecate took it from her, and contemplated the device for a moment.
“This is a very odd enchantment, Daniel. Am I seeing this correctly? It eats the substance of the stone, and somehow turns it into magic?”
“That’s right,” I confirmed. “It should be good for something like a century or two, depending on how heavily you use it.”
“How remarkable.”
She drew on the power stone, and deftly spun together a fantastic weave of complex spells that enveloped her arm. They sank into the wound, pushing back the curse that lurked there and soothing her injured flesh.
Hecate gave a soft sigh, and some of the tension slowly bled out of her.
“Much better,” she said. “Thank you, Daniel. This will be quite useful. By the standards of the gods it is only a minor artifact, of course. But it has been more than a century since I had any tools beyond my own weapons and raiment to work with, let alone a source of power not rooted in myself. I don’t suppose you could make a greater one than this?”
“Probably not,” I admitted. “I could scale it up maybe another thirty percent before I hit the limits of what I can enchant with my own sorcery. In theory I could spend a few weeks making a device that enchants bigger power stones, but the slightest imperfection in the enchantment would probably destroy the whole city. Which actually leads back to my original question.”
“Ah, yes. Radiological? The translation I’m getting simply raises more questions.”
I gestured to the stone. “I can tinker with that enchantment to change what kind of energy it emits, and whether it eats complete atoms of the stone or just individual subatomic particles. I f
igure with a little experimentation I could find a version that emits lots of neutrons, which will tend to convert whatever they hit into radioactive isotopes. Use that to make a supply of radioactive dust, spread it around the Halls of Slumber, and the andregi all die of radiation poisoning.”
Cerise frowned in confusion. “You lost me completely there, Daniel.”
Hecate, however, looked impressed.
“The wisdom of philosophers,” she breathed. “What a startling vision of hidden secrets. You are certain that this actually works, Daniel? This is knowledge from your world, and not some phantasm of sorcery?”
“Yes, we have all kinds of technology based on nuclear physics. Coming up with an effective weapon is going to be tricky, but I’m sure of the underlying principles.”
“Marvelous. That venomous bitch will never know what happened. Hah! She’ll probably blame it on old One Eye. Only, how will you reach Skogheim undetected?”
“There’s an interesting story to that,” I replied. “When I gained my flesh sorcery I had a few thoughts about expanding it into shapeshifting. I didn’t have time to take it that far, but I did get two specific transformations out of it. One was the catgirl shape I used on Tina, which is what drew Bast’s attention. The other shape I can do is a dark elf.”
I watched her face carefully as I spoke, and I’m pretty sure the surprise that momentarily showed there was real. That was followed a moment later by realization.
“That can’t be an accident,” Cerise commented.
“I suspect we have Prometheus to thank,” Hecate said. “I have followed certain advice of his in recent years, and he has always seen further than anyone else. Still, that changes nothing. If you can make this work, Daniel, then you have my approval to do it.”
“Thank you, ma’am. I’ll give it a shot.”
I hesitated.
“Is Prometheus still imprisoned?”
Hecate’s mood fell a bit. “Sadly, yes. The chains Zeus forged were mighty indeed, and since the fall of Olympus there has been no one who could free him.”
“Mara could,” I mused.
“Do you think to lure her away from her kin?” Hecate asked. “It’s a pretty thought, but an idle one. I feel certain the Titan of Forethought has already arranged his freedom somehow, though it may be long ages in coming. Better to focus on your own struggles, and leave the affairs of the gods to the gods.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “I’ll do that.”
“Good. I shall take my leave then. Be well, my disciples, and take care of one another.”
I glanced at Cerise for just a moment, and when I looked back Hecate was gone.
“So, your plan is to sneak into Skogheim and kill the ape men with some kind of weird magic poison?” Cerise asked.
“More or less.”
“You get to be the one who explains it to Avilla.”
“Joy. I’ll talk to her in the morning.”
I was expecting her to throw a fit. Instead she just listened intently to my explanation. When I was done she took my hand, and looked into my eyes.
“Promise me that you won’t go until you’re confident you can make this work,” she said.
“Done.”
“And that if you aren’t sure, you’ll try a different plan instead?”
“Sure. I’m not interested in getting killed, Avilla. I just don’t think we can afford to sit here and let the enemy keep attacking us until they find a plan that works.”
She took a deep breath, and let it out slowly.
“Alright. I trust you, Daniel. If you say this is our best hope, then I’ll believe in you.”
Wow. She said that so earnestly. There was a reason I’d fallen for this girl, and it wasn’t just her beauty.
“How can we help?” She went on.
“Well, if you know any blessings of good luck or general sneakiness this would be a good time to try them out.”
“I can do luck,” Avilla offered. “Enough that you won’t be found out over some silly little random accident, anyway.”
“Thanks, sweetie. That’s a big help. Beyond that, just be really careful about safety. I’m going to have to set up a special lab for this project, and take a lot of precautions to make sure the energies I’m working with stay isolated there. We need to make sure no one except me ever goes in there, or even opens the door.”
“This sounds quite dangerous,” Elin observed.
“It is. The forces I’m going to be working with will kill anyone without a healing amulet in short order, and normal healing won’t do much to help. What’s worse is that there are several ways it can cling to an intruder and be carried out of the lab. It would be very easy for a servant to catch a dose of radiation, and then carry it around the palace for a few hours exposing everyone else before they die. Avilla, I think you might actually be immune because of your nature. But pregnant women are especially vulnerable, so I don’t want to take any chances.”
“I’ll have Sefwin post guards,” Cerise said firmly. “You’re sure you can keep this contained?”
“I’m not going to take any chances with it,” I assured her.
Which was easier said than done, since I didn’t even have a Geiger counter. I’d wracked my brains trying to remember how those things work, to no avail. The frustrating thing was I could clearly remember having read about that way back in college, and thinking it was one of those clever solutions that’s really obvious in retrospect. But no matter how I cudgeled my brain I couldn’t remember the actual design.
Sometimes I really miss the internet.
Instead, my standard radiation detector ended up being a rat in a cage, wearing a collar enchanted to heal radiation sickness. The enchantment was linked to a dial mounted on top of the cage, which would show how much load it was under. A crude system, and there was no way to relate it to the measurements I was familiar with. But it was what I had.
To make sure I maintained good containment of everything I worked with I turned one of the larger unfinished spaces into a new lab. There were two small airlock-style rooms that one had to pass through before reaching the main work space, and all the doors were stone. The first room was a changing area where I’d leave my normal clothes and equipment when entering, and the second had a shower and a wardrobe for storing cheap robes I could wear while I worked. I put a rat cage in each of these rooms, so I could confirm that I wasn’t accidentally tracking out radioactive dust or something.
The actual lab had fairly thick stone walls, which I covered with an inch of iron for extra strength and to ensure they remained airtight. Since it was three stories tall there was plenty of space to work with, so I also laid down a layer of water two feet thick across the floor to act as radiation shielding. Good thing I’d learned how to do a basic water conjuration and banishment from working with Elin, because I wasn’t about to have her come in here every time I needed to rework things.
A judicious application of force magic allowed me to cover the walls and ceiling the same way, and even the door when it was closed. That should be more than enough to stop any neutrons or gamma radiation from reaching the stone of the walls, and unlike a lot of materials induced radiation isn’t a serious problem with water.
Unlike, say, stone. I was pretty sure that if I started playing around with big neutron sources the walls would quickly become radioactive without that layer of protection. So would my own body, for that matter. Keeping a thick wall of water between myself and my experiments should prevent that sort of problem, but I set up a third rat cage to keep next to myself as a way of monitoring my potential dosage.
As a final isolation step I redesigned my personal force field to have an airtight mode, with a variant of Elin’s air freshening spell to allow me to breathe when it was sealed. As long as that was active I’d have to move by flying, and rely entirely on force magic to manipulate objects. Inconvenient, but worth it to ensure I was completely isolated from the environment of the lab. I didn’t need to accidentally
inhale a lungful of radioactive dust, or carelessly track it out when I left.
With my protective measures in place I could get to the fun part of this little project. Intentionally breaking my matter to mana spell in different ways, so I could see what kind of random destruction spilled out as a result.
In my first day of experimenting I found no less than six different ways to blow up my test pieces, and managed to blind myself twice. Not fun, but at least the experience was starting to give me a handle on how much energy I was unleashing. I strengthened the force fields I was working with, and dialed down the energy levels considerably.
As expected, it was quite easy to make an enchantment that didn’t cleanly convert whole atoms to mana. This tended to produce a lot of waste heat, hence the explosion problem. It also produced a truly hair-raising level of radiation, since subtracting three or four neutrons from an atom tends to produce highly unstable isotopes.
I was setting up all my experiments inside a big ball of water that floated in the air in the middle of the room, to further shield both myself and the environment from any nastiness they might produce. Once I solved the explosion problem I started putting a rat cage inside the water ball, with a thin sheet of iron attached to the side of the cage facing the experiment to block any alpha or beta particles it might emit.
I was a little surprised at how low the critter’s exposure readings were, and tried several variations looking for one that had more radiation output. Then I got a version that produced visible Cherenkov radiation, and realized the needle was still barely moving.
“I really wish I had a few reference books,” I muttered to myself as I watched the ghostly blue glow. “That’s got to be a lethal level of radiation, though. It’s clearly visible even in a brightly lit room. Do I need to switch to a weaker healing spell for the detectors?”
Extermination (Daniel Black Book 3) Page 35