“Just stay right there,” one of them said.
“Does this happen often?” Stephan asked.
“The dock boss thought you were spies. I guess he’s ... questioning her?” He replied, though he said the last bit a little weakly.
Cenewyg snickered at that, and several of the other men laughed as well.
“What I want to know is where the hell does Josie know him from?” I said turning to Stephan.
“Beats me, guess we’ll have to ask when they come out.”
“Do you mind if I sit down?” I asked the one who seemed to be in charge. “This could be a few hours.”
At this point they were all smirking.
“Unnh” He started but was interrupted as the door to the small station opened and Rondall leaned out. His coat and shirt were gone, and he looked at the rest of us and had the good graces to blush.
“Guy, take them to lunch or something and then take them back to wherever they’re staying.”
“You sure, sir?” He said looking a little surprised.
“Yes, they’re friendly. I’ll catch up with them when I’m err, done here.”
He pulled the door closed then, leaving us all staring at each other.
“So, how about lunch?” Guy, the one in charge said looking at us.
Lunch was a rather pleasant affair; it was the three of us plus Guy, and Rob who was one of his men. The rest he sent back to wherever it was they had come from.
Rondall we learned had been the god’s champion for almost five years now, there hadn’t been a champion here in the Scopuli in a very long time before this, but fighting between Sireen and one of the neighboring city states had been heating up in the last decade so their god had raised one up among them. Guy figured that Josie must have been someone who knew him before he became their champion.
They took us back to Henry’s house, returned the car for us, and wished us a good night. Josie herself did not return until early the next morning looking rather pleased.
“Okay, what the hell just happened there?” Stephan asked as she sat down to join us for breakfast.
“Rondall is sorta-kinda my ex,” she giggled.
“Huh?” I said and the Stephan and Cenewyg both looked confused as well.
“Rondall, used to be Ronda, who was the champion of one of my god’s biggest allies. Well when I was new to all of this, Ronda sort of took me under her wing and taught me the basics and well, one thing led to another....”
“Did you know she was here?” Stephan asked.
“I had no idea. Neither did my god, I asked him last night. Did Ary?”
Stephan shook his head, “Ary had no idea either. Did you tell him why we were here?”
Josie blushed, “Yes. He was pretty worried, four champions wouldn’t be something he could easily run off, so I told him the truth that we were just trying to get to the portal and had lost our boat.”
“What did he say to that?”
“Well, he said he’d have to talk to his goddess about it. That area of the sea has a bit of a religious significance to it, but he was pretty sure some sort of arrangement could be worked out. He said he’d talk to us after our show tonight.”
“Well that sounds good,” Cenewyg said. “I was worried for a moment that we might be facing another slaughter like in Ithaca.”
Stephan nodded, “Me too. Seems their soldiers have a lot better weapons than just knives and swords.”
“Well, let’s go practice,” I said. “We can find out what he can do to help us later tonight.”
The show went well, really well. I’d pulled out six new songs that we’d practiced for only a few days, so almost no one had heard them beyond a few of Henry’s staff.
When we came off the stage, Rondall was there and he asked us to go with him. Interestingly enough he led us to the temple.
Once we got there, he took us to a private room and sat us down at a table covered with food and other refreshments.
“Okay, here is my problem, we’re at war with another city, and I want your help to beat them.”
“You want us to fight a war?” Stephanie said surprised. “We didn’t exactly come here to fight.”
“You want a boat to sail through the gate? Help us win this war and we’ll let you sail back and forth through it as many times as you want.”
“Why us? Because we’re all champions?”
“Because you’re one of the best bands we’ve had through here in ages. Though being champions helps.”
Stephan looked at him, “Huh?”
“Battle of the bands?” I asked.
“Exactly.”
“How bad can that be?” I asked looking around.
“Very,” Rondall said.
Stephan sighed, “So what are we up against?”
“Sanctum’s band has beaten us the last three times we’ve met. They’re good, really good. It’s not just their champion in the band either; they have one of their allies' champions as well. So they’re pushing for an all out battle a week from now. They’re moving their actual troops up. If they win, we’ll be all but incapacitated, and they’ll sack the city and do so much damage we may not ever recover.”
“And if you win?”
“We’ll go out there and slaughter as much of their army as we can before they run away, while they’re incapacitated. That should keep them from bothering us again for a very long time.”
“Sounds bizarre,” Cenewyg said.
“You’ve felt how the music affects everyone here, haven’t you?”
“Well, yeah.”
“During a battle, the champion and the high priest get involved. It’s a thousand times more powerful.”
“Oh.”
“So, what songs do you have we can play?” Rondall asked Stephan.
They all pointed at me.
“You play bass?” I asked.
“Of course.”
I smiled.
We holed up in the temple after that. Fel was fine with it; in fact, he thought it might be a good idea. I gathered that Aryanna was okay with it as well. All of our upcoming shows were canceled, but no public announcement was made; we were just quietly taken off the schedule.
The high priest would be singing, and he had a truly amazing voice, I think I’d only heard one as good in my entire life. I had a lot of stuff to choose from, but it wasn’t that hard of a choice really. I picked four hours worth of songs for the battle, and taught six thinking a few extra might be wise. The songs were all from the same rock band, all of them long involved songs with a lot of imagery behind them and very hard to play. We practiced almost non-stop the entire week, Max, the high priest, really liked the stuff I had picked which helped tremendously. He taught us how these things worked, and went over our ‘battle plan’ as it were.
The day before the ‘battle’ the enemy troops started to show up outside the city, the city was locked down at that point, everyone knew what was coming, and I watched from the walls as they all arranged themselves like attendees to a show.
It was definitely different.
In the morning, their ‘warm up’ bands started to play. They’d assembled a little stage on a rise outside the city that I assumed had been used for this exact thing many times before. We’d be performing on a section of the city wall, that also had obviously served this purpose many times before, but we wouldn’t be having a warm up band, well beyond the usual bands performing in the city. When the time came, they would stop playing and the crowd would come down here. Then it would start.
Rondall waited until it was full dark. We all went and found our positions, we were literally close to the edge, and that was the first song I had picked of course. When we were ready, we nodded to him in the dark and he signaled someone off stage.
Someone obviously signaled the band on stage back in the city because when they finished their song the music stopped.
Silence. For the first time since we got here, there was silence, absolute glorious and fantastic silence.
I could hear the other band trying to play, and son-of-a-bitch they were playing our songs! The ones we’d been playing on stage at the amphitheater that is, not what we were playing now. Max and Rondall had told us, the quickest way to attack was to play the same music and try to take over the song.
That they had guessed who would be performing made it clear they had spies here. But what we were playing was radically different from what they expected. We drove hard through the song, for all that it was more of a ballad, but it had various movements and they were each different which made it hard for them to figure it out. Twice when they were starting to play along they tried to pull the song away from us, but we hit a break and went off in a complete different direction than they expected.
When we started the next song, we didn’t even pause, just did a little almost dystopian jazz break that sounded incredibly wrong, until we fired into the next song and it suddenly made sense. Max had come up with that entire riff by himself; back home he could have sold out the Garden - he was amazing.
It was pretty grueling, the only break any of us got was during the solos, and then you could take a drink and maybe sneak a bite or two. You couldn’t leave your position, and several times we had to change up things on the fly to deal with musical attacks by the other side. Halfway through one song Max jumped us into a totally different song, and then jumped us back when it was done.
It blew my mind, and the affect on the other side was worse. Their playing was starting to fall apart. I could see the rest of the band was looking tired, except for Rondall who looked fiercely happy, and Max who was just smiling as he sang. When we hit the finale Max flagged us that we were doing an encore. I noticed at that point that the other band wasn’t even playing anymore and that the city’s forces were pouring out of the gates, obviously intent on slaughter.
When we finished the encore, we stopped and a rather loud cheer went up from everyone in the city. The enemy troops had started to defend themselves at some point prior to our stopping, but they were being slaughtered on the field and many had already broken and were running for their lives.
The band on stage were dead, all of them. I don’t know if the music had killed them, or something else, and right at that point I didn’t want to know. I set my guitar down and went back to our room. I’d had enough.
That night I dreamt I was at Fel’s pub once more and we just sat there drinking for a while.
Eventually he looked up at me, “Bothered you that much?”
I shrugged, and then shook my head. “I love music, I always have. But to kill people with it? I don’t know why it bothers me, but it does.”
“Well, Sireen is pretty happy with your performance,” Fel said naming the other god. “Even told me she was going to grant you a little favor.”
I grunted.
“Will,” I heard a very musical female voice.
I looked up, it was the goddess Sireen. This was the first time I’d actually seen her in person, I’d only seen her statues before. She was quite lovely; I noticed suddenly that she was a harpy. Why hadn’t I noticed that before? But even with that, she was still beautiful and had a lovely voice.
“Your help was instrumental for our win tonight. I’m sorry if it hurt your love of music, we get so few who come here who have that love long before they ever set foot on our lands.
“So I am going to grant you a boon.”
I blinked, “I’m already a champion for Fel, milady, I don’t know what more than that I could ever want.”
She smiled, and if I thought she was beautiful before, this eclipsed that. “Such a loyal servant, your god truly has a wonderful champion. But I think you might enjoy this.”
I looked at her unable to think of anything to say.
“I have made it so that when you return, your pregnancy will continue uninterrupted. Fel has assured me that you would appreciate the gesture. Your child will simply wait in limbo until then, unknowing and unharmed.”
“My child?” I said and blinked.
She smiled that unbelievable smile again, turned and then was gone.
I looked at Fel, “My child?” I asked shocked.
Fel smiled at me, “You’re pregnant.”
“What?!”
“Apparently neither you nor Stephanie were practicing any birth control.”
“Yes, we were!”
“Not the first few times.” He smirked, “and one is all it takes.”
I could feel my mouth opening and closing, but no words were coming out.
“You’re almost three months pregnant. Normally going through a portal has no effect on that, but with the sex change, well, it destroys the baby. Sireen told me she could take care of that for you, and I thought you might appreciate it. Eventually.”
“So if I go back there, I’ll be pregnant?”
Fel nodded.
“Shit.” I looked away, “What do I tell Stephanie?”
“You don’t,” he warned.
“What? Why not?”
“Because she already has enough on her mind right now, and you’ll have to go back there for at least six months if you decide you want to have that child. Something I know you’re not willing to do just yet.”
I sighed, he was right. “This is... unexpected.”
“It always is,” Fel laughed. “But you have the time now to deal with it later.”
Nine
“Goddess I’m glad that’s over,” Stephanie said after we had sailed through the portal.
“You and me both,” Cenewyg grumbled.
“So where to next?” Joseph asked from where he was sailing the boat.
“Head south east. There should be an island. We need to land there.”
“Is that where we are going? Cenewyg asked surprised.
“It’s our next stop,” Stephanie said.
I was sitting on the bow, just staring out to sea ahead of us. We were all human now, and I was a man again. But what I had leaned last night as I slept was... disturbing. I wondered if I should go back. Or not? I had a choice to make and I had no idea what to do.
“You okay, hon?” Stephanie said coming up behind me and putting a hand on the back of my head.
“Yeah,” I lied, “actually killing people with our music was a little bit of a bummer. That’s all.”
“Well, you’ll get over it.”
I nodded.
“Oh, change into your champion form, okay?”
I looked up at her, “You sure?”
She nodded. “And stay in it while we’re here.”
I shrugged and smiled, “You’re the boss,” and changed into my furry self. I stretched and smiled, it felt good. I hadn’t worn this form the entire time we’d been in the last sphere for fear of discovery.
We sailed a week until we found land. There was a nice lagoon that we sailed into and there was a rather simple dock, which we tied our boat to. Stephanie had everyone in their champion forms and led us off the boat and up a simple path.
I could smell that there were a lot of animals around here, but all of them were nowhere to be seen. I wondered if my feline form was scaring them off.
When we topped the hill that the path was going up, I could see a large mansion of some sort down the other side of the hill. We headed for that and many of the animals I had smelled were now apparent. None got close, they all stayed well clear of us, but there was quite a lot of variety, I saw bulls, cows, horses, chickens, pigs, dogs, cats, sheep, bears, big cats, wolves, and a whole lot more. Surprisingly they didn’t seem to be bothering each other much, which was surprising considering the mix.
When we got to the door, it opened and standing there was a goddess.
I blinked in surprise. I’d never seen an actual goddess in a sphere befo
re!
“Circe,” Stephanie said giving a small curtsey, “I am Stephanie, these are my men: Cenewyg, Will, and Joseph.”
She looked at Cenewyg and then moved on dismissing him. When she looked at me, she smiled rather pleased. When she got to Joseph, she stopped and lingered awhile which made him blush and bow.
“Come inside,” she said in a voice that made my fur feel like someone was petting me. I shivered
“I didn't know goddesses could actually materialize in a sphere," I said surprised to Joseph as we walked inside.
"Depends on the sphere I guess," he said.
"Your Joseph is partially correct," Circe said from the rather nice chair she had moved to sit in while we were entering the room. "The location of the sphere in regards to the rest of the Infinite does have some effects on the rules that hold sway. If your journey continues further down this arm of the Infinite you may meet many more gods and goddesses. I am not alone on this sphere myself, now please, join me in dinner."
All of us sat down, she had a rather nice table set I must admit. I noticed that she was not partaking, but just watching. Of course a goddess probably didn't need to eat. But Cenewyg wasn't taking anything either.
"Not to your liking?" Circe asked looking at him.
"Umm, I seem to recall a story where men who partook of your bounty ended up as animals?"
Circe smiled and laughed, it was a truly delicious sensation for me; it made me want to purr. Joseph also looked a little entranced by it while Stephanie just smirked. "That wasn't the food, that was me! Of course I change those I find wanting into animals all the time, but your champion form cannot be altered so I wouldn't fear the meal."
"Are we umm, eating any umm, former people?" Cenewyg asked next, which surprised me, I didn't think he was the type that would have cared. That I didn't care surprised me as well. Then again, in my cat form my nature was a lot more predatory than it was when I was human.
"Does it matter?" She asked curious.
Cenewyg shook his head, "No I guess it doesn't."
"Then please, enjoy."
We all thanked her and ate.
Portals of Infinity: Book Two: The God Game Page 11