Reviled (Frankenstein Book 2)

by Dean C. Moore

  The wizard had been pacing while working on yet another of the cabbalistic figures, and was facing in the direction of the windows when Soren materialized before him; Soren wondered if Bingwen had seen the light show in the distance, emanating from his earlier encounter with the huntresses, the dragon morphs, and Augustus; and maybe felt motivated to take his studies of the cabbalistic figures further.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I haven’t gotten anywhere near that far yet with cracking the code. Besides, why would I use the cabbalistic magic against you?”

  “You already have. Or rather, your former student, Augustus has.” Bingwen startled, arrested his pacing, gasped. “I should thank you, really. The beast and I, working together on an even footing for the first time, were able to neutralize the attack. And, of course, the beauty of understanding any weapon in the arsenal means it’s a lot easier to get access to other weapons.”

  Bingwen took another cautious step back, risking toppling one of his trinket tables, trying to hide the retreat as merely reaching for his tea cup. “You can understand why I would be remiss to be more forthcoming with the beast, Soren, but with you, that’s another matter.” His tone told Soren he was just doing his best to snake his way out of his hole he’d made for himself, and there wasn’t an ounce of truth in what he was saying. Soren had to admit, married now to the beast, his ability to read people was so much better.

  “I suppose now, it’s okay to tell you that, yes, over the centuries, word reached me of an exotic, ancient form of magic. Well, of course, that being my specialty, I had to investigate.” Bingwen rubbed the wooden cabbalistic figure in his hand he’d been whittling as he talked, as if just trying to brush off the shavings, but Soren felt there might well be more behind the gesture. The shape, much in keeping with the Paisely-pattern-like figure Soren had once meditated on, might well describe yet another microscopic alien life form, aggressively armored, and sentient.

  “Save it, Bingwen. I know you were there. When the alien race touched down on Earth. You helped them build the temples. It’s remotely possible that the pyramid design they used—that would be imitated across much of the world—that your designs informed all the other temples.

  “Not all that surprising, really. You earliest wizards were dabblers; you lived in an age long before it was necessary to specialize because competition was just growing too fierce in any one niche. So, while today I’d have to suspect someone like Victor alone of having the necessary mathematical acumen to go with the cosmological physics required to design those ancient temples…. Well, back then, someone like you would have been called upon.”

  Bingwen had been smiling at him as if amused by Soren’s misguided sense of his history the entire time Soren was telling his tale. “None of us are that old, Soren. The most ancient wizards who developed the immortality serum for themselves only go back to—”

  “To you, Bingwen. You were the first immortal. You know how I know? I can smell it in the tea you’re drinking. The beast’s senses are quite acute. And my mindchip can make much of the information he’s uploading to it. I’ve been writing the algorithms on the fly as we talked to confirm for myself.”

  Bingwen clamped down on his jaw so hard his jaw muscles bulged, his breathing arrested. “I suggest the union between you and the beast has colored your thinking more than you care to admit, Soren, making you prone to paranoid hallucinations—wild, unsubstantiated fears.”

  “Yes, well, that’s certainly very possible. No denying it. I’ve been wondering as much myself. But then, you early wizards would have gotten pretty good at reading people yourself eons ago to survive this long. Couldn’t do it all with magic. Magic is a last resort, isn’t it? Because once you’ve used it, you’ve rather showed your hand.”

  Bingwen groaned with exasperation. “I think I much prefer the beast. At least he wasn’t trying to spin webs around me with his words, only to trap himself in the end with his own inescapable logic.” Bingwen had a bit of fun with that word ‘inescapable’, clearly thinking it anything but. But he was also pacing and gesturing along with the raised voice, and Soren couldn’t help thinking that those gestures might have been masking the beginning of his latest warding magic.

  “I really didn’t come here to hurt you, Bingwen,” Soren said, hoping to get him to settle down. “I just want to know what you know of the alien’s language.”

  “You know I can’t—”

  “Make yourself vulnerable like that?”

  “I was going to say you know I can’t give you what I don’t know.”

  “I’ll let you live, Bingwen, even though I know you’ll spend every waking moment hereafter looking for a way to bring me down, because your kind doesn’t like vulnerabilities, or wizards functioning at your level. That immortality potion you’re imbibing is just the smallest part of staying alive forever, isn’t it? Can’t imagine all the wizards you’ve slain over the millennia who were any real threat to you.”

  Soren realized too late what Bingwen had been doing with his mock gesturing and carrying on and protestations of being so wrongly accused. He was drawing out some cabbalistic patterns in the air, the tonal pitches he was hitting with his words of protest had less to do with his losing his cool at his false façade crumbling, and more to do with the spell he was invoking.

  Soren started gasping. His knees buckled. He grabbed on to one of Bingwen’s display tables. Like Victor, Bingwen was another artifact collector; unlike Victor, his trinkets were out in the open, laid out on tables, without fear of having them stolen. There was a clue in that, though Soren wasn’t sure it was pertinent to his immediate survival.

  “What have you done to me?” Soren gasped.

  “Turned your cabbalistic magic against you, of course. The mantra you decoded…. With some judicious recombining of symbols, there are any number of attacks that it can produce, all more severe than the acoustic blast meant to get you to back off. The puzzle, in its most unsolved form, is barely much of a weapon at all, by comparison.”

  Bingwen chuckled. “Forgive me, but I must go.”

  He gestured with his two hands and a pouch flew into his hand, not much bigger than a half-liter flask made from a sow’s stomach, and into it everything in his apartment flew; as if inside the sow’s stomach was a well-trained, well-behaved black hole, able to condense matter without doing it any harm; or, maybe the same way a JPEG renders an actual image, by removing any unnecessary atoms—sort of like the aerogel scientists Victor had befriended—so the actual article could be easily collapsed in size.

  Soren felt his thinking was shooting along tangents it really didn’t need to go down right now—he could well dissect the nature of that magic later—but the beast was less inclined to ignore anything. Working intuitively, he could make connections with discordant bits of information that Soren could not—no matter how souped-up his rational mind was with full access to his mindchip again.

  “Shakespeare was wrong, by the way—parting is not such sweet sorrow; it’s a decided relief.” Bingwen flung the door open with a gesture of his hand and magic to do the rest, long before he was within arm’s reach of the exit.

  “Hold that thought,” Soren said, his voice strained. He pushed himself to vertical again.

  Bingwen was about to leap through the door, which he’d turned into a portal with his magic that led to some other part of the world. The other side of the door just showed nature, rocks, grass, trees, as opposed to a Chinatown city scene.

  Soren stepped around Bingwen—frozen now in Soren’s spell, levitated, or rather trapped in mid-leap off the ground. “Such a fitting note to end on, Bingwen, don’t you think? I like how the bas-relief captures both your boldness and your timidity in one stroke.”

  Soren held out his hand and opened a portal of his own. Bingwen got teleported, alright, just not in the manner he’d imagined.

  He ended up as a beautiful drawing, like a Fresco, against the wall of the pyramid Lar was now exploring in Antarctica. Bingwen could s
till be seen reaching for the door from his midair leap; what was on the other side of that door contrasted magnificently with the city-life scenes from Chinatown—all now etched into stone millennia old.

  Lar gulped, staring at the new painting on a wall opposite from the one he was deciphering. He turned to face Soren at the other end of the portal.

  “How’s that keep-Soren-and-the-beast-at-bay magic coming for you, Lar?” Soren smiled menacingly. Lar started shaking all over. He was such an easy mark. Soren really hated to mess with him like that, but the kid needed to grow a spine and learn to do something besides trip all over himself every time he felt vulnerable—especially in a place like that.

  Soren chuckled. “Be sure to thank Bingwen for me, for all his help.” Soren turned his back on Lar as the portal closed behind him, laughing even more madly as he headed off to his next appointment.

  Did you enjoy that too much, Soren? Have you really become the bad guy in this story? Turning Victor into more of an anti-hero by contrast? Hard to think anyone could be so dark as to make that guy look good.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Victor was doing what he did best, letting other wizards make his mistakes for him, observing from a safe distance until he could collate the intel and fashion it into a weapon that would work against his enemy.

  His rainbow-colored mandala bridge had taken him to a rooftop in Swank Town overlooking a battle in progress between Soren and one of the sector’s chief wizards. Being from one of the ritzier burbs on the planet as Victor might expect, this wizard was full of flash and style—even his fighting method was more high-end stage magician than down and dirty street fighter, but that was not to say it was not impressive.

  Levitated above the roof, Mesmer, with a handsome, if gaunt and overly-chiseled face and lean physique, sported a pin-striped tux, top hat, and sequined fingernails. He pulled the trump card out from under his sleeve, and sent the fiberboard at Soren.

  The Jack of Spades leapt off the face and lurched for Soren, grabbing him and retreating toward the portal that the card had become. And down the hole Soren went. For a few brief seconds there was nothing but stillness, silence, and surprise.

  And then, as if mocking Mesmer’s act, Soren unzipped the sky, shocking the magician with an actual zipper, and stepped through the slit. He shoved Mesmer inside the cavity and zipped it up.

  The wizard vanquished, Soren took his bow before the crowd filling the perimeter of the roof. They’d been gathering there the entire time, coming up through the door from the stairwell, determined to get close enough to see everything—danger be damned. Well, that was Swank Town for you; these people never stopped believing life was anything other than a show put on for their benefit; even if that show turned out to be Armageddon, or this, its prelude.

  Yes, Victor felt it was fair to say, mocking Mesmer served the Beast’s sensibilities, even if it didn’t serve Soren’s.

  When the wizard unzipped himself and returned to this reality, then vanquished the zipper with a wave of his hand, the show progressed.

  After, of course, the latest round of “oohs” and “ahs.”

  From the flash points of the wizards’ minds all over the city, Victor realized he was going to have to transcend his traditional voyeur’s game. He threw up one mandala pattern after another, until he was surrounded by the many circular panels that collectively formed a dome about him. They had the added advantage of shielding him from all directions. They worked like one-way mirrors; he could see what was transpiring on the other side, but even if someone detected the portal’s presence, though they couldn’t see him, and jumped through the portal, they’d end up in some other quadrant of the galaxy.

  The dome included three arcing panels surrounding him at the first level, two at the next, one at the apex of the dome. That was because Soren was fighting on six stages at once! And this while only learning the rudiments of the cabbalistic magic he’d been inscribed with. As blown away as Victor was by that fact, it was increasingly difficult for him not to be equally knocked off balance by each of the battles depicted on each of the screens.

  The conflict going on in Chinatown involved a flying, ass-kicking female Samurai warrior. It was news to Victor that such persons existed. She painted whichever blade she was wielding, sword or dagger, prior to swinging or tossing it, with lasers emitted from her eyes. Those lasers laid down cabbalistic patterns of her own at the edges of her blades—different ones for each swipe that contacted his body. She was no doubt one of the ancient ones—whose wizardry dated back to the beginning of time; otherwise she couldn’t possibly have been so comfortable wielding the cabbalistic magic.

  Victor felt he could no more afford to ignore what she was doing here as what was going on between Mesmer and Soren in Swank Town. Even more so as each time her cabbalistic magic connected with Soren and the beast he staggered, becoming vulnerable enough for a sweep of her blade to take off his head—only to be thwarted by Soren recovering at the last minute. What was going on here bore closer investigation.

  In one way or another, the dramas on each of the six screens, reflecting the battles ensuing in each of the six districts, required his full attention.

  There was just no way.

  Maybe if….

  Victor had to relax his mind, and center. The next bit of mandala magic would be a bit trickier. He had to recall other versions of himself from parallel universes into this one, so they could all be focused on taking in the many battles Soren was engaged in at once, and so that the excitable reactions of the other Victors would register in the mind of the Victor from this timeline.

  To that end, Victor had to take advantage of his most sensitive disposition when it came to the geometries of space-time that allowed him to key into other dimensions and other time-lines readily. The other Victors, no less opinionated and quick to declare war on anyone that screwed with them, settled down quickly enough when they saw what he was up to and joined the caucus.

  As the other Victors observed the other dramas, he saw to the panel depicting the battle going on between Soren and Player, Soren’s own elemental magician.

  ***

  “So, let’s see how far you’ve progressed with your studies,” Soren said with a less than heartening smile.

  Player was hitting Soren with the fake bravado, for which he was famous. Soren had manifested on a rooftop, a nice flat one, to give them ample room for sparring. Player decided he needed more space still, so whisked himself up and away in one of his tornados, until he was hovering just a bit beyond and above the easternmost lip of the roof.

  Already the “Look!” and “There!” finger pointing, and gasps of wonder were bubbling up from the streets. Player had picked the downtrodden downtown for a stage, not yet converted into any roleplaying district. Hence, the inhabitants here would be all the easier to wow. Soren had no doubt that plot point had everything to do with bolstering Player’s ego.

  Player manifested a metal rod in his hand—drawing from the metal piping on the rooftop, and reassembling the molecules into a staff. He sent lightning along that staff from the sky above, straight at Soren’s heart. But the accompanying smack of thunder had been funneled along the pipe too, which altered the pipe’s acoustic properties—in keeping with the cabbalistic images Player had carved along it, as if they were engravings on an old-fashioned wooden staff. The combination weapon, synthesized in the moment, proved quite effective.

  Soren exploded. The goop and guts left on the roof startled Player, who had not expected his first strike to be all that effective.

  Soren, knocked clear of his body, seemed to have no trouble processing what was going on. It took but moments for that blood and goop to start reformulating.

  That was Player’s cue to snap out of his daze. He reacted quickly, magnetizing Soren’s mindchip to him, clutching it tight in the palm of his hands. But that did not stop the cabbalistic nanites from resurrecting Soren.

  Soren got sucked back into his body, feeling the union wi
th the beast once again. Holding out his hand, Soren said, “I’ll take that.” The chip flew toward him, taking up a new nesting place this time—between both hemispheres of the brain. “Interesting,” Soren thought. The chip’s new home might well facilitate the beast and Soren growing their relationship further. For now, his head, which had split open to accept the chip, resealed; in his mind’s eye, it was like watching a zipper pulling up a fly.

  “Impressive,” Soren said. “What else you got for me?”

  Player’s mock bravado was looking more spurious by the second. Soren felt Naomi establish a psychic link with Player’s mind. “I don’t think Soren wants anything other than what he’s always wanted, Player, for us to face our fears, before someone else has a chance to turn them against us.”

  Soren grunted. “I would listen to her,” he said. Naomi was no less startled, as she hadn’t shared the mind link with him; Soren had been able to eavesdrop anyway.

  Soren could tell Player was trying to get in touch with his fears of abandonment. All that was doing was causing him to lash out in anger, in an undisciplined fashion, weakening his stance further. “Pull yourself together!” Naomi coached in his head. “Use those fears of betrayal to seduce Soren to your side of things, to help you gain more control, not less.”

  Soren kept himself in a holding pattern. He was content to let things play out between Naomi and Player without interruption, because a new variable was in play.

  Apparently, when Bingwen let it slip how the mantra that Lar and Ramon had discovered on the wall of the temple in Antarctica really worked, Victor’s team had been eavesdropping on their exchange.

  That information now in hand, the team went to work deciphering it. It appeared they were making more headway than Soren and the beast were alone. Interesting.

  The implications were clear. Whatever cabbalistic images Victor and his cohorts figured out how to use and taught Player how to employ, Soren hadn’t seen anything yet.