"I have no idea," I say. "I've been thinking the same thing, and the only answer I can come up with is that maybe this was a practice run."
‘This is a hell of a practice run,’ she says. ‘But, you're right. There's something weird afoot. Bye bye Puerto Di Paz, I suppose.’
“Unfortunately, yes. Vacation is over. It's time to get back to work."
‘Okay. I'll check out what's happening beyond The Field. I'm sure those three made some noise crossing over to this plane.’
"Thanks, Astraea."
‘Are you going to be okay with that bomb?’ she asks.
"Yeah. I'm gonna take it out of town and drop it off with Kyle."
‘And don't forget about the ID,’ she scoffs. ‘26. Who are you trying to fool?’
"Okay, I already told you I was going to get him to fix it."
Astraea smiles and gives me a wink. I know what's coming. She's going to disappear. So before she does, I try to catch one last glimpse of the form she's assumed. I take one last look at Emily before she goes from the clear, to the wispy, and then eventually fades.
Three
As soon as Astraea leaves, I press a button on my earbud applicator. A holographic orange visor appears across my face, ear to ear, right over my eyes. The word 'Halcyon' appears briefly, with that oh so familiar Halcyon chime, and then disappears.
"Call, Kyle," I command.
"Calling Kyle," replies an electronic voice.
A smiling picture of Kyle appears on my visor. Red letters beside the picture read, 'Dialing,' then turns to, 'Ringing.'
Kyle is a half-elf, and he's got the pointed ears to prove it. The good thing is they’re not as pronounced as his full-blooded elven brothers and sisters, so he can pull off having them out in the open. His face is slender, sharp, and so well-contoured it makes me question my handsomeness. He has flawless golden-brown skin, green eyes, and straight light brown hair cut short, strategically mussed, and spiked. He looks young in the display picture — late twenties by human standards, but he's been around for four hundred some years, or cycles as his elven brothers and sisters would call them.
The phone trills four times before he answers. He appears in front of me with a blip. He is at his work table, and his aquiline nose is buried in some gizmo.
"Ah, well if it isn't The Bearer," he says.
His voice has a lyrical, otherworldly, tone common to his race. It's hard to pinpoint the accent; there's a layer of central Africa, mingled with the East Indies, and Arabic tones. The voice comes from his celestial blood. Elves were the first intelligent creatures on Earth, and as such were closer related to celestials than all other creatures. It's the reason it's easier for them to tap into the pool of arcane energy called The Field Eternal (The Field for short).
I don't do magic much. It's rare among humans. It takes an immense amount of fortitude, and our bodies can't handle using Field magic for too long. We're too far removed from celestial energies. I have a magic sword, yes, but that's pretty much the extent of it for me.
"Hey, Kyle. Long time, no see. I was wondering if I could drop by for a bit."
"Why, of course," he says. "My door is always open for a friend. What is the occasion?"
"Uh, nothing major. I'm just coming to drop off a bomb."
He stops tinkering and raises an eyebrow at me. "I beg your pardon?"
"Yeah, it's a long story," I say. "Well, actually not that long. I pretty much had to wrestle the thing out of some ogres' hands."
Now he puts everything down on the table and gives me his full attention.
"Excuse me, did you say ogres?"
"Yeah, three of them,"
"Three ogres? Well, that certainly is curious," he says. "Conjuration, or Possession?"
"Conjurations," I say. "I got them sizzling in the back of the truck as we speak."
"Three full conjurations?" He shakes his head slowly.
"Yeah. Tell me about it. You haven't heard of anything weird happening up at Superior, have you?" I ask him.
"I haven't had much contact with the Elven Nation in years,” he says. “But I can certainly ask a few questions for you if you'd like."
"Yeah, sure," I tell him. "That would help a lot."
"Perhaps your other friend has been up to no good," he says to me.
Thaddeus. I wouldn't call him my friend, more like an ex-con on parole I have to keep tabs on constantly.
"Yeah," I say. "I've thought of that possibility. I'm going to see Thaddeus next. But first thing's first."
"Yes, I suppose the bomb is a priority," he says. "Very well. I will see you soon, my friend."
"Yeah, thanks, Kyle," I say. Then I hang up.
Whew! If anyone knows how to get rid of this bomb safely, it's Kyle. I met him about three hundred years ago when he helped me track down an elven fanatic named Jaqu, and his cronies. They were a bunch of militant eco-terrorists looking to eradicate the human race. Things were getting pretty bad back then environment-wise. What with the human population growing at dangerous proportions and the Earth's resources getting depleted and such. It almost led to an all-out war between elves and humans. Kyle and I ended up taking them down. We’ve been friends ever since.
As I near The Dome, I decelerate and descend the delivery truck by lowering the throttle on the G-Drive. An area of The Dome opens wide enough to let the delivery truck through. No password. No electronic vehicular signature needed. We’re in America, for crying out loud. We can come and go as we please.
The Dome is there to protect the twin cities from high winds and other weather conditions capable of sending all those flying cars and floating districts crashing to the ground. It’s made up of trillions of nanobots doing a bunch of cool stuff, like transmitting the entire spectrum of radio band frequencies, giving free, city-wide internet, phone, television, and radio access. It controls the climate inside, and I'm sure would protect the city from threats outside if it came to that. I pass through The Dome, get outside Minneapolis/St.Paul's city limits and the entire truck shudders from the turbulence of pure, unfiltered wind.
I lower the truck, so I can get out of the headwind, and fly at about fifteen feet above some prairie wheat fields. Having the majority of the world's population living in floating cities freed up the rest of the land to grow crops to feed the world's sixty billion citizens. The continent of North America is now made up of six cities whose population number about three to four hundred million people each, and the prairies have become a sea of edible plant life. The rolling grasslands look like the undulating waves of an ocean as I fly over and look out at it through the windshield.
I drive on for another forty-five minutes — about two hundred miles from The Dome's edge. When I get close to Kyle's place of work, I look down to the ground. There are two hundred or so self-driving farm machinery, all lined up along a dirt road, going back to their home for the night. I follow their trail up to the head of the line. They're headed to a large rectangular compound, simple in design, meant to house the vehicles after a long day of work. The machines split up from the main line and sort themselves into ten long barns with corrugated roofs, each machine parking itself into its assigned stall.
About a mile from the compound is the maintenance building. It's a big barn, a hundred feet long, and fifty feet wide, with two big double doors. As I land, I see Kyle leaning against the door frame; the huge double doors open. There are six machines inside. Three of them are raised on hydraulic platforms and are at different stages of repair. I get out of the truck. Kyle is shaking his head at me.
"Hey, Kyle," I greet. "What's going on? You look disappointed."
"Tsk-tsk-tsk. Well, Bearer, I have got something to show you."
Four
Well, this looks bad. Not me, of course, because I look pretty good on camera. What I mean is that the whole situation looks bad. What am I looking at? I am looking at a three-dimensional streamed video of myself fighting ogres inside a flying delivery truck. The picture quality is amazing
.
"Wow," I say. "Whoever shot this is a pro."
"A child shot this scene," says Kyle.
"Well, I gotta say, baby. The kids got talent in spades, see. The kid's gonna be a star! A star, I tell ya!" I say, making my voice sound like a 1940's Hollywood tycoon.
"I don't understand the reference."
"God, I forgot," I say. "You're way too young to get any of my jokes."
I hear him chuckle from somewhere behind me. My attention is focused on the video playing on a rectangular holographic computer monitor floating in midair
Kyle's right. A kid shot the video from the backseat of a car. The little tyke is talking to his dad from time to time while filming.
"What is happening, dad? Should we call the police?"
The dad chuckles "Nah. Someone's shooting a movie, son. Those are monster avatars programmed into their image modulators."
"Aww, I want that avatar in my modulator,"
"I don't know; those costumes look pretty good. Must be very expensive mods. Maybe if you're good, Santa will get you one for Christmas."
The dad actually could be right. Not about the Santa part. About the movie part. With advances in camera technology, anyone can shoot a good quality movie these days. And they do! The movie making industry has become a free market where anyone can self-publish and sell. Plus, how else would you explain a regular dude fighting ogres with a glowing magic sword? Well, it must be nothing more than costumes, actors, props, and stuntmen, of course. The mind will always reduce the impossible to what it can comprehend and imagine.
"Keep filming, son," urges the father. "We can post it later, and maybe one of the producers will see it, and buy your footage if they like what they see."
The kid starts filming with a renewed vigor. He aggressively hunts for good angles. He even asks his dad to drive a little bit closer behind the truck so he could get a good view through the truck's open, roll-top, cargo doors.
I'm wearing a blue shirt, jeans, brown boots, and a brown leather bomber jacket. That's the avatar I have on my image modulator. These days, people wear plain white thermal suits ('thermals' for short) covering us from the top of the neck down to our toes. Then we have image modulators programmed into the applicators we wear on our hips containing avatar programs. We can make our avatars, or buy avatar designs online. Then with a press of a button, voila! Your applicator projects the image on your thermal, and you look like you're wearing whatever you want to be wearing. The amount of resources we save on textile manufacturing alone is staggering. The only real piece of clothing I wear is my belted sheath for my sword.
In the video, I have my sword out, and it's magical, which is why it shows up on film out of focus and blurry. But to the kid filming, it looks real enough. I watch myself miss ogre number one with a descending cut, but before I could follow with a thrust, ogre number two, behind me, swats me away with a forearm. My feet leave the ground, and my back crashes against the trailer wall. Then ogre number one punches me in the jaw, and I fall to the ground. That’s when I see the bomb inside an open carrying case under the driver’s seat. Then the ogre driving (ogre number 3) turns its head towards me and roars.
The kid that was filming zooms in for a close up of my face as I try to get myself up from the trailer floor.
Ogre number one stands over me and is about to hammer two huge fists down on me for the coup de grace. I roll between its legs, stand up, and this time my findente cut doesn't miss. I bring my blade down on its massive back, slicing it clean across and down from its right shoulder to its left hip. Immediately, the ogre sizzles and smokes. Yellowy brown ooze seeps from the gash I gave it, and drips out of the pores of its pinkish-gray skin, pooling underneath it.
Ogre number three flips the truck on auto-drive and gets up to join in the fun. As it moves towards me, I get low on a near guard, the pommel of my sword held in front of my navel. Then I drive my sword upward through its sternum. Its red eyes bulge, and I twist my sword within it until it too starts showing signs of a demonic creature dying.
Then, in the middle of pulling my sword out of ogre number three, ogre number two grabs me by my neck from behind, and launches me out of the trailer's open cargo door. My sword catches something on the way out of dying ogre number three's sizzling body. My grip slips from my sword's handle, and the sword falls on the truck's steel floor.
I manage to grab onto some loading straps, hanging from the trailer's wall near the door, with my left hand before I tumble completely out of the back of the truck. I try pulling myself up, but ogre number two punches me in the face. The forceful blow dazes me, and my right hand releases the straps while my left remains firmly holding on. Then the ogre wraps his hand around my neck and lifts me. That's when I release the straps with my left hand so that both my hands can try to pry the ogre's fingers open. My feet are kicking wildly. The last ogre dangles me out of the truck's doors trying to squeeze the life out of me. That's where Kyle pauses the video.
"There's something wrong here," he says.
"I know, I know. I was getting my butt kicked. But it gets better. I end up killing this dude. Keep playing the video. You'll see."
"I was not talking about that, Nyyx."
"Oh, is it my hair?"
Kyle puts his face in his palm.
"Gods. Look again."
I inspect the paused video closely but see nothing amiss. Everything is as I remember it.
"What, Kyle?" I ask. "What am I supposed to be looking at?"
Then I see it.
"Oh, crap."
"Indeed," says Kyle.
"This is impossible," I say.
"Normally I would agree with you, friend," says Kyle. "But with this video evidence, I must say I am quite vexed. Are you sure they were conjurations?"
"What? Yes! Of course I'm sure. These aren't the first demons I've killed. And if you look in the back of that truck, there are three dissolving ogres as we speak."
I rewind the video and play it again from the start.
I can't believe I missed it the first time. It was staring me right in the face. It's those fricken ogres. They're not blurry. These ogres were supposed to be out of focus, but they weren't. They're full on, high-definition visions of pure ugly. The kid even got a close-up of the ogre's face as it's strangling me. The expression of joyful malice in the ogre's red eyes shines as bright as two rubies. Something is most definitely wrong.
"Let us go take a look at the back of that truck, shall we," offers Kyle.
"Yeah...yeah..." I say, as my eyes linger on the video before walking through the holographic screen, and following Kyle out of the maintenance barn.
I walk out into the cool, summer, prairie night. The stars are out, and there is not a cloud in the sky. Kyle is already at the back of the truck. He flips open the door latch and pushes the door up.
The chug-chug-chug of the truck door, riding upon its rollers, echoes through the nighttime stillness. Then the look on Kyle's face changes. His green eyes widen with surprise. He takes an infinitesimal step back, and the color drains from his golden-brown face.
I walk towards him, and I look in the truck. My shoulders drop. I fall to my knees. I'm about to retch. On the floor of the truck are three dead human bodies, lying in yellowy brown pools of evaporating ooze. My throat attacks me with intense stabs as I gag.
Five
Bile spews out of my mouth and onto the ground. I look up and beg Kyle.
"Kyle, please. You have to help me!"
Tears half blind me, drool hangs from my mouth. Kyle looks down at me, reluctant to approach.
"You know I can't do that," he says.
The mother of all contractions stabs me in the gut, and I curl into myself, screaming.
"You have no idea what's about to happen, Kyle," I plead.
Tears of pain are streaking down my face. "You haven't seen this happen to anyone. You have to — ACK!"
I scream — loud, deafening.
"You have to heal me," I say
. "It's the only way."
Kyle stretches out a slender open hand. The air changes as he gathers Field energy from all around us. Then above his hand appears a spinning yellow crystal made of light. Healing energy swirls around it like yellow eddying smoke. Then Kyle takes his hand away, and the healing glow disappears.
"I can't do it," he says. "I am bound by the same treaties you are. I cannot use my magic on you."
"Kyle. You have no idea — AAARGGGHHH!"
I've seen what this looks like from the outside. It's not pretty. My mom suffered what I am about to go through. I watched her face deform and contort in ways I'd never seen; red cheeks puffing out, blood vessels bursting red from bulging eyes. She looked like a demon. I do not want to end up like her.
The airways constrict in my neck, and my breaths become short. I gag as a burning sensation runs up along the inside of my esophagus. More bile comes out of me. I wipe the drool from my mouth and look down at what came out, which is now a disgusting puddle of blood on the ground.
"Kyle—"
I try to speak, but my throat clamps shut. I scratch at my neck. My body convulses. The shakes are small at first, but I know they're going to get worse. A lot worse. I raise my trembling hand to beg Kyle to help me up. By this time, Kyle is inspecting the bodies on the truck's trailer floor. My vision blurs. Kyle looks back at me, horrified. He drops the body he is looking at and rushes towards me. He jumps down out of the truck and starts gathering me up in his arms.
He is talking to me, but his voice isn't registering in my head. His words sound like a series of reverberating pulses: "womp-womp-womp-womp-womp."
My body shivers. I'm cold from the outside-in, but there is also an unbearable heat coming from inside my body and radiating out, giving me cold sweats. My skin tingles. I look down. There are maggots, curling, crawling, rolling, shiny, and festering on my forearms. I scratch at them furiously with tremor-stricken hands.
The Irispire Portal Page 2