by Jan Stryvant
"It's okay. It's nice that they're finally starting to treat me the same way they treat each other. I know it's taken me a while to get used to all the changes. Though," she looked at Sean, "a wager on who could get me to blush?"
"You should see the side pot on who would win it!" Sean said with a chuckle. "I had a hundred on Dae, so I think it's safe to say I just doubled my money, at least."
"Why Dae?"
"Because she's rude, crude, and not afraid of you in a fight. She may be small, but she's deadly!"
Estrella sighed, but had to smile. "Yeah, dwarves are like that. So, how do I use this thing you put in my head?"
Sean steered her into his office, which was a lot smaller than Roxy's. Peg wasn't there currently; she was busy helping get the kids moved.
"Okay, how do you currently use your lion powers?"
Estrella shrugged. "Mostly I just think about them. Mom trained me. She told me what they are, how they 'feel', and what to expect from them. It took me a while to get the hang of it, but over time, I got each of them down."
Sean nodded. "Okay, try doing the same thing, only this time, think about opening up your 'stats' menu."
"Stats menu?" she asked, looking at him.
"This spell is about looking at your statistics." Sean walked over to the whiteboard and picked up a marker. "Magic users use it to find out what their physical stats are, their mental ones, and then they go down to the list of spells. It looks like this."
Sean made a list on the white board; under the heading of 'Physical', he listed: Constitution, Agility, Strength, and Regeneration. Then he put the heading 'Mental' up and listed: Intelligence, Wisdom, Reasoning, Memory, and Integration. Last he put up 'Magical', and under that: Ability, Mana, and Will.
"Now, this first group," he said pointing to physical, "deals with your body, obviously. Some of these you can change, some you can't. The first three all magic users get; the forth one is only for us lycans. Magic users don't even see that one," Sean said taping the tip of the marker by 'Regeneration'.
"The second group is your mental abilities; again, some you can affect, some you can't."
"What's 'integration'? I think the others are obvious."
"That's another lycan skill magic users don't get to see. It's how well your two halves are integrated with each other.
"The last three on the third heading are all about magical abilities; I don't know if you'll see any of those. Heck, I don't know if you'll see any of this, because this is all magic user stuff, and we can use our experiences to make changes in most of these numbers."
"Then why did you give it to me?" Estrella asked.
Sean smiled. "Because for me, the memory stat," Sean circled it on the whiteboard, "has a tab under it that I can open up and see all the lion powers."
"So that's this 'list' you keep talking about?"
Sean nodded. "I don't know if I was missing it when dad was in my head, or if he was hiding it from me. But after he was kicked out, I saw a little drop-down marker, and I opened it up, and there it all was in a great big list."
"How big?"
"Well, it was broken up into three headings. One had to do with languages, one had to do with the mystical shit we get to do..."
"You mean leonine powers," Estrella interrupted, rolling her eyes.
Sean grinned. "Yeah, mystical shit. The third was our Status. It told how much power there was, how much I had saved up, the number of lycans currently alive, and the number of lions currently alive."
"So that's how Dad always knows how many lycans are alive!" she said, surprised.
"From talking with Dad, I'm not sure he experiences this the way I do. He told me he had to learn it all by pretty much just guessing and messing around with it. Magic users created a spell for their abilities, and I guess the spell just latched onto it, because it's a similar kind of thing."
Estrella nodded. "Okay, that makes sense. Well, let me give it a try."
Leaning back in the seat and closing her eyes, she concentrated on the idea of a list of abilities like Sean had put on the board.
Almost immediately, three words appeared to her: Statistics, Abilities, and Languages.
"I can see them!" she said, surprised.
"What does it say?"
"Well, the order is different, and so are the words. It says Statistics, Abilities, and Languages."
Sean 'hmmmed' at that. "Well, that's interesting. Then again, I've never done this with anyone else before, so it may be sorted by some unconscious preference of your own. Try selecting Statistics and see what happens."
Estrella did so, and immediately the same three items Sean had mentioned before dropped down.
"There're over five million lycans now! Oh, wow...."
"Five million, two hundred and ninety-six thousand, four hundred and twenty-three."
"Now twenty-seven," Estrella said and watched as the number continued to climb. "Someone's busy!"
"Yeah, we are, everywhere," Sean agreed. "Now, go to 'Abilities'."
Estrella looked at the very long list of things that quickly dropped down. "Wow, I know most of these! And you're saying I can improve them?"
"You can put power into them, so yes, you can improve them, but it's not as simple as that. For some things, you have to work at them and practice them while putting the power in."
Estrella scrolled down, looking for the word 'gateway'.
"I can't find the gateway thing you're talking about, Sean."
"Try looking under 'visit'."
It only took her a moment. There it was, 'Visit Leonine World'. The incorporeal skill had two numbers after it. It appeared to have a lot more power in it than it needed, and she said so.
"That’s because you opened it when we were in the djevel's world," Sean told her.
"Oh, that makes sense." She looked at the corporeal skill then.
"It's almost four million points!" she blurted out.
"Yup, and look at the point pool in your statistics tab."
Estrella did, and she noticed it was over three million now, though it didn't stay very steady, constantly moving up and down.
"It's close," she told him, opening her eyes and looking at him, the numbers and abilities still floating before her eyes. With a thought, she canceled the spell.
"If no one was using their power, we'd have more than enough, but I don't want to burn the whole pool, so I'm waiting until we've got more power."
"And then what? You'll open a gate?"
Sean nodded. "Of course I will! And then I'm going to drag Dad's ass through it so he's here with the rest of us. We have more than enough lycans now, as I understand it, for all those on the other plane to come here and help us! Think about it, twenty thousand more lions!"
"I'm sure he has a good reason," Estrella said.
"And if he doesn't?"
Estrella growled, "Then I'll help you drag his ass through myself!"
"Just remember, don't bring this up to him yet."
"Why?"
"Better to plead ignorance than to beg forgiveness after being told 'no'."
Estrella opened her mouth to make a comment about that, then suddenly blushed as she recalled doing the exact same thing when she'd gone through that gate so many centuries ago.
"I knew you'd see it my way!" Sean said with a smile, and getting up, he leaned over and kissed her. "I need to get back to work."
"Will you be traveling with us tonight?"
Sean nodded. "There’s no way I'm going to let my wives and children make that trip without me there guarding all of you."
Estrella smiled. "See you later, Love."
Escalation
"Turn left here and cut across yon field," Bilkie said.
Karl nodded, turned the wheel on the Fennek, and adjusted the tire pressure with his left hand. He then engaged the four-wheel drive system as they plowed through the closed gate and continued forward on their course.
"Anybody see anything?" Karl called over the int
ercom to the back, were Otto was sitting up in the open gunner's position, and two others, another werewolf and a mage they'd borrowed, were sitting in the passenger's compartment below.
"I'm impressed by your memory," Karl said as they bounced over the field. They were retracing the path Bilkie and the other Kitesh Korps had taken during their flight from Berlin. It was probably safer than going through any of the towns, a fair deal of which were now almost completely abandoned.
The Fennek was a fairly quiet vehicle made for exactly this kind of job. It was fast, and actually fairly comfortable on the paved roads, and the ride off-road wasn't as bad as it could have been. Still, it had been over a decade since he'd driven one. But because he had driven one, when the time came to send someone out to do reconnaissance, Raban had been quick to 'volunteer' Karl for the job.
Karl had thought long and hard about telling Raban off, but Otto had told him that arguing with lions was often messy business.
'What do you mean by messy?' Karl had asked.
'Well, when they bite your head off, the blood does seem to go everywhere!'
Karl shook his head and sighed. He didn't think Raban would go that far, but whether he liked it or not, Raban trusted him, and he knew the territory. He also got on quite well with the Kitesh Korps people. So well that he was now living with them. Sure, they were all crooks, and he was a cop, but that just meant that they had a lot more in common with each other than the average citizen.
"Nothing from up here!" Otto called down, breaking Karl out of his revery.
"Truth be told," Bilkie said with a chuckle. "If what Raban thinks is true and there really are just a few small bands running around to scare everyone off, we won't be findin' anything until we get to Berlin."
"Good thing we're not going to Berlin then, isn't it?" Karl replied.
"Still," Otto said, "he does want an idea of how far out they're ranging."
"Yes, well, if he's lucky and we're lucky, we might be able to tell him that, but I'm not getting within sixty kilometers of the outskirts."
"There's a hill to the north of us," Otto said. "Maybe we should head up there and get a good look ahead of us before we make our way down to the road to cross the Elbe?"
"Sure, why not? If it looks safe, maybe we can get out for a few minutes and stretch our legs."
"Oh, that would be a blessin'!" Bilkie said with a sigh. "We've been in this metal beast for way too many hours!"
Karl turned the Fennek and headed up the hill. He parked just a few yards shy of the top. No reason to make it obvious to everyone he was there. It'd be just his luck if there was still a higher-ranking member of the police around who might try to commandeer him or his vehicle.
After he'd parked, Otto and Jegel, the other wolf, went out and did a search of the area around them first, to make sure it was safe. Once the 'all clear' was called, they got out and stretched for a bit, Jurgen, their magic user, relieving himself on a nearby bush.
Karl found his own bush, then walked up to the top of the rise, where Otto and Bilkie were looking off in the distance with binoculars.
"See anything?"
"Not really, the town down by the river looks deserted. I guess people either fled or died," Otto said.
"What's that?" Jurgen asked, pointing up into the sky.
"What's what?" Karl asked, and everyone looked up. Off in the distance, way off in the distance, there were a bunch of contrails quickly streaking towards the ground. Karl suddenly got a very bad feeling.
"Everyone back in the truck! NOW!"
"I wonder where they're..." Karl grabbed Jurgen by the arm and hauled him off to the Fennek.
"Look away! Don't look at it!"
They'd just reached the vehicle when a bright flash appeared behind them. Fortunately they were behind the hill already. He didn't think they'd be in direct line of sight—Berlin was still almost a hundred kilometers away—but he still remembered all the drills they'd had to do back when he'd done his tour of duty in the military.
"What was that?"
"Someone just dropped several nuclear bombs on Berlin!" Karl said and, getting inside, he fired up the engine as the others followed.
"Close the door! Close the hatch! Seal up everything!"
"Won't we suffocate?" Bilkie asked.
"This thing has filters, we'll be fine."
"From what?" Jurgen asked.
"Fallout."
Karl spun the vehicle around and floored it. If someone was dropping warheads from orbit, the last place he wanted to be was near anything that could be a target.
"Otto! Get on the radio, call Raban, tell him what we just saw."
"Immediately," Otto agreed.
As they came down the hill, Karl glanced out the window in the direction of Berlin. There were multiple fireballs rising up over the city as the mushroom clouds formed. Too many to count at this distance.
"Do you think it was the Americans, or the Russians?" Jegel asked.
"Neither, I'd guess," Otto said with a shake of his head as he tried to raise someone back in Munich on the radio. "I don't think they'd have used more than one; I'm fairly certain their missiles have much larger warheads on them."
"How many do ya' think there were?" Bilkie asked.
"More than six," Karl said as he continued to drive.
"Do you think it killed the demons?" Jurgen asked.
"I think someone other than us can answer that question. I'm not immune to radiation, and neither are you. Otto? Bilk?"
"I'm not," Bilkie said.
"I think werewolves are," Otto said a little uncomfortably, "but I'd rather not put it to the test."
"Me neither," Jegel agreed.
Karl raised the tire pressure as they hit the road, shifted back to two-wheel drive, and floored it. Most of the roads coming here had been clear, and the Fennek could do a hundred kph easily. He wanted to get as far from here as he could, in case whoever was doing the shooting decided on another round. With sunset only a few hours away, he wanted to make as much use of the daylight as he could.
#
"The French just nuked Berlin!"
"What?" Sean said, looking up from his breakfast. It was just after eight, and he hadn't gotten to sleep until almost four. Moving everyone and getting their new living quarters set up in one of the newly constructed buildings last night had taken a lot more time than he'd expected.
Right now he was eating breakfast in the new 'mess', along with pretty much everyone else.
Oak said again, "The French nuked Berlin! It's on the news! They used one of their subs to do it. Dropped like ten warheads on the city; there's nothing left, it's like a big hole in the ground! One of the independent satellite mapping companies just put up a picture!"
"Why the hell would the French of all people nuke Berlin?" Sean asked, looking around the room.
Roxy's father Bill answered him, "After being invaded and conquered in two World Wars, the French developed a very progressive belief on self defense when they became worried about the Russians doing it a third time. So they made a rule that if anything made it to the Fulda Gap, they'd launch all their nukes. I guess this qualified."
"Well, if the French are doing it, I don't think we have to worry about the president giving us the weapons so we can do it here, too," Daelyn said as she fed Bernard.
"But the French?" Sean said, looking surprised.
"Don't sell the French short," Bill said. "They're a lot tougher than most folks realize. At least their military is."
"I wonder if the djevels will be coming back from that one or not?" Roxy mused.
"Depends on if there were any lions around to suck up their souls when they died, if I understand it right," Sean said.
"I don't think a lion can withstand a nuclear blast anymore than the rest of us, Sean!"
Sean shook his head slowly. "I dunno. If they were in something that could protect them from the fireball, they just might. But I don't think they'd be in any kind of shape to do anythin
g for a while."
"Is this the voice of personal experience?" Roxy asked with a growl and looked at Estrella, who just shrugged.
"It's not anything I'd want to repeat, like ever," Sean said with a shudder. "It hurt. And when I came to, it continued to hurt. But the rules are different there, so I don't know if that would work here or not."
"Hopefully this means Raban and the others in Munich have a chance now," Estrella said. "Most of the djevels were in Berlin, after all. If this killed them, it gives the people fighting in Europe much better odds for survival."
"I just wonder if the demons know what happened, and what they'll do to stop it from happening again?"
Bill shrugged. "No use borrowing trouble, we got enough of our own already."
Sean stood up. "Well, I need to meet with Samis about a few things, but right now I think I need to call Steve and get an idea of what's going on in DC."
Sean gave each of his wives a kiss, and his kids a pat on the head, and found a quiet spot to call Steve.
"Wow, you're up early," Steve said, answering the phone.
"We moved last night, and the kids are taking their sweet time with settling into the new surroundings. Sleep isn't something I got a lot of last night," Sean explained with a sigh. "Now, obviously you know why I'm calling?"
"Yeah, I would have called you earlier if I knew you were awake. But right now it's not like we can do anything."
"So why the hell did France nuke Berlin?"
"Because they weren't going to wait for a consensus or ask for anyone's opinion."
"What?"
Steve laughed. "That's what they said. They said 'Berlin was a problem, everyone knew it, and rather than sit around with panicked expressions and laments of fear, they dealt with the problem decisively, and once everyone has calmed down, the French government is sure cooler heads will not only agree it was the right thing to do, but will thank the French government for this bold and necessary action.'"
"They said that?" Sean asked, surprised.
"Almost word for word."
"And how are people reacting to it?"
"Well, after Tisha, the president, and I had a very unexpected meeting an hour ago, where Tisha went into some detail about what was going on in Berlin, the United States officially sided with France. Interestingly enough, Britain, Austria, and Belgium sided with them before that, and everyone else in the area added their support within the hour. Even the Russians are now praising France for its decisiveness."