No Longer An Enemy.
Book 3 in 18 parts, By FinalStand. Listen to the ► Podcast at Explicit Novels.
"My Sister wished to know if you speak Mandarin," the brother translated for me.
"Hi, I'm Cáel," I greeted him. "Who are you guys?" He looked to one of the two goons holding on to me. I received a painful kidney punch. I discovered a whole new super-power. It hurt for about two seconds then nothing.
"I asked you a question," he repeated.
"No, I don't speak Mandarin," I lied so well it came across as a dour confession.
"Yet you know the secretive language of the Earth & Sky," he stated.
"Yes, I do. I have a thing for dead languages. Maybe in a few more years, I'll pick up your Mother Tongue as well," I bantered.
No punishment was immediately meted out, so I suspected no one close to me, besides him, spoke much if any English. Jian Bob (my new name for him) didn't relay my insult. I wasn't worth it. He went straight for the reason for our get-together.
"You are going to die, Mr. Nyilas. That is a given," J B began.
"We both know you have done enough damage to our cause to be worthy of elimination a hundred times over. I'm going to show you respect by not lying to you about your possible fate. What you can do is save your young companion. We understand you two are close," he appealed in a very polite manner. Aya snickered.
"Cáel, these people are mentally challenged," she giggled to me, "or hideously misinformed."
"I know, I know," I smiled down at Aya. "Still, they have gone through a great deal of effort to insult our intellect today, so let's humor them a little longer." Jian Bob issued several casual orders.
In short order, a third man had hold of me by the jaw with one hand while trying to hold my eyelids open with the other. One guard held her by the shoulders. A second held her right hand, extending her ring finger. A third man held a knife to her top knuckle. A forth stood close with a small blowtorch.
"She may be a small person, Mr. Nyilas, but she can still die by the Death of a Thousand cuts," he explained.
"I love you, Aya," I told her softly.
"I love you too, Fehér mén," she succeeding in keeping most of the fear from her voice.
Neither one of us could stop this. Aya certainly didn't expect me to compromise the Host for her benefit. She was as much an Amazon as the first Epona.
"First, I wish to know what alerted you to the attack at the Summer Camp," Bob began the interrogation.
"We know you were responsible. We want to know what happened." I looked into his eyes and waited patiently. He nodded to the guard, who shoved my face toward Aya's extended finger until I was less than a foot away.
"Do it." The Order came in Mandarin.
The guard cut the top part of the digit off, one knuckle. I looked at the flesh and bone being cut away. In a clinical manner, I noted how sharp the blade was. I saw the blood shoot forth and heard Aya's little voice cry out in pain. I was pulled back and pointed at Jian Bob again.
"Do I need to repeat the question for you?" he said.
"No, I caught it the first time," I grimaced. "It tells me that you haven't the slightest idea who you are fucking with." Bob made a slight hand gesture and the blowtorch cauterized Aya's stump. Her little lungs belted out a terrible screech that wound down as her feet gave out and she hung limply in the guard's grip.
"Revive her." The blowtorch guy, clearly not his first day on the job, snapped some smelling salts under her noise. Aya revived, sobbing and in a great deal of pain.
"Cáel," she whimpered. "I have found my stillness. I'll be okay now." Her sobs subsided.
"Shall we try this again?" J B remained coolly polite, almost urbane.
"Nah," I joked, "we are both pretty good over here."
"Again." The Mandarin order came. Off went another digit of her ring finger. This time her scream was much more exuberant and forceful. We all know it hurt like Hell, but the world had turned.
"He's going to kill all of you," Aya snickered while she sobbed. "You are all going to die."
"Mu, what is the little girl saying?" she asked Jian Bob, real name Mu.
"She is stating her belief that Cáel will somehow kill us all," he and his sister shared the joke.
"Let us see what her tune is when they start in on her left hand," the woman smiled at her sibling.
That implied they'd cut off her right thumb and fingers, digit by digit, until one, or both of us cracked. The man nodded and Aya's nub was burned again. Her scream was more of a cleansing shout.
"Cáel, do you think I will have a nice horse to ride when I join Epona's herds, or will I get a pony?" Aya whimpered.
"Not a clue," I began before Mu had the face-hugging guard apply a finger strike to my solar plexus. Alal's gift had allowed me to partially organize my brain functions. Coping with pain was a whole lot easier now, but I had to be careful to monitor it because pain was Nature's way of letting you know that there was something wrong with your body.
"What color would you like me to pick up and have waiting for you," punch, "when you finally take yourself to the cliffs?"
"Again."
"This is accomplishing nothing," the senior bald Mo Fo grumbled. "He clearly cares nothing for the child and has been trained in counter-interrogation techniques."
"There is nothing to indicate that," Mu bristled.
"Xiàsh, burn the tip of his left forefinger," senior necromancer commanded. The guy holding my face coordinated with the men holding my arms to free me of my bonds and wrestle my left arm forward. I didn't bother resisting.
It didn't take the commandoes long to figure I had stopped caring. On came the flame and the pain. Oh, I screamed. The pain was real. What had changed was my ability to shuffle it off to an isolated memory file to be tackled later. The bald creep stepped into my field of vision. His eyes were windows to the abyss. My "spirit" sight opened my eyes to the truly inhuman sections of his mind and soul.
"See, normal techniques will not be affective. We will do it, " and they realized the enormity of their mistake by assuming I was paralyzed by the pain. I broke free of the guy on my left and began twisting around the guy on my right. I wasn't getting away, I was going for his QCW O5. I knew their favorite martial arts styles and their weaponry now.
The guy I was rolling behind realized what I was doing (going for his gun), but mistook my intentions. I wasn't trying to get away, or steal the gun (still strapped to his body). That cockhead even helped me out by lurching ground-ward. I swung the gun up, hit the selector and fired two quick bursts.
The first three rounds hit Mr. Blowtorch in his right thigh, shredding it. The second burst caught Mr. Knife guy in the crotch, a triple 21mm castration. Had Blowtorch Guy not been busy trying to keep the strands of his right hip connected to his right leg, he could have stopped the blood fountaining from his buddies shattered groin. That was the end of my joy.
I was born to the ground and the guy whose gun I'd borrowed pulled away. I hit the concrete surface hard. That was only the beginning of my issues. Radiating from the floor was cold beyond cold. I had the sensation of falling into the heart of a cold, dead star. How I even knew what the felt like was an impossibility.
"He feels very cold," protested one of the two guards, in Mandarin; pulling me back to my feet groused.
"If your incompetence has led to his terminal condition," the male twin threatened. I felt the approach of the female twin, her reaching for me. A new intense pain seared me to the cores of my bones. Before she yanked my hair up, my body reignited.
I found myself stared into her pitiless eyes that regarded me with the casual callousness of a veterinarian preparing to put down some rabid stray dog. She ran three fingers over my cheek.
"What are you babbling about?" she snapped at the two commandoes. "If anything, he is feverish."
"Zhen, have him sedated," Chief Necromancer demanded. "Mu, now we will do this my way." Once more I was bound. Someone stabbed a needle into my right triceps. That was a mere discomfort. If I had any consolation, it was hearing Mu ordering the execution of the two men I'd shot.
They didn't have the time and facilities to tend to their immediate emergency needs and taking them to a trauma center wasn't going to happen. Those two went into body bags. I had to assume they would be joining us on the plane, though they'd be in the cargo compartment.
"What are you smiling at?" I heard Zhen snapping before my world collapsed down to a pinhole of light.
"Lady, I don't know what you said," Aya declared happily. "You are probably angry that Cáel has already killed two of you and we haven't even got off the ground yet." I heard a sound I couldn't make out followed by another and finally a third. That resulted in an Aya-squeak. Ah, she'd tried to hit Aya and Aya had dodged the first two blows. Good girl.
"Cáel isn't going to like you doing that," Aya chirped.
"Aya's a winner," I mumbled. I wasn't in control of my senses when they dragged me onto a waiting jet. I wasn't worried. With Aya at my side, I was invincible.
Dreaming
I looked at her face, so youthful, beautiful in her own way, yet far from innocent. She bore a terrible weight. The armor she was wearing, that of a heavy horseman of the steppe, was a leather coat, chain links over her vulnerable regions (throat, underarms and skirt), with the rest being covered by darkened bronze plates.
Her iron helmet was open-faced with mobile plates covering her cheeks as well as the sides and the back of her neck; it bore a white horse-hair plume, it was the only feature of her panoply that would draw any special attention her way. She carried no shield. Instead, she wielded a powerful horn & sinew composite recurve bow. She used her knees to rise up on her mount and fire over the mare's head.
Similarly attired women rode close to either side of this young woman. Both were older; one in her early forties and the other ~ late thirties. The one to the left bore a lance, not in the couched fashion most people today are familiar with, but used in a double-handed over-head fighting style.
The woman to the right fought with a strange blade. It wasn't saber ~ an ancestor of that blade perhaps. It was about a meter long, no hand guard, single-edged except for the top 4 cm on the back side which was equally sharp. Her left hand remained free. I think I saw her purpose. If the young woman got into difficulty, her guardian on the right could pull her horse away and lead the woman to safety.
Behind and beside those three rode perhaps three hundred of their sisters. Those in the center were as heavily armored as those three. On each flank were the lighter, faster bow-women, on smaller steeds. The women in the center rode larger mounts that were good for carrying weight and pushing home a charge, while the flanking steppe ponies were virtually tireless.
In the center, identified only by her long golden-mane helm, was the Golden Mare ~ War Leader of the Host. The Amazons didn't fly pennants or carry banners. They judged the course of battle by that woman's head movements (the mane was quite long) and the shrill horn blasts unique to the Amazons.
Let the barbarians have the all too common deep booming horns calls and their totems raised high for the world to see. Let the Romans keep their trumpets and Legion standards. Amazons had been putting those fools in their graves from time immemorial. Right now, those horns had summoned the Host to a trot.
The Hun, Attila, had tasked the Sarmatian Chieftain, under whose banner they rode, to deal with another crisis, the third this short day. Once more, they directed their horses over Catalaunian Fields. The Ostrogoth had gotten themselves into a world of trouble, those filthy, stinking Germans (why was I even thinking that way?)
First the Amazons had ridden forth on Attila's right, reinforcing the allied Germanic tribes on the Right Wing in their attempt to force a wedge between Aetius' Romans and King Sangiban's Alans. They'd shown the fools the way, but the supporting Gepids cavalry was too timid and by the time they began to approach, the Golden Mare had been forced to sound 'retire'.
The Roman auxiliary cavalry, though of poor quality, had plugged the gap. The Host were too few and too valuable (in their estimation) to die holding a position that their 'allies' might not rescue them from. Next, they had been directed to attack the center of the Alan cavalry line in support of the Huns.
Despite the cowardice of their king, the Alans were hardy fighters and too accustomed to the style of steppe warfare that the Host practiced to be lured away from their position. Arrows were exchanged and brief, brutal skirmishes developed, but no advantage was gained. With their mounts exhausted, the Golden Mare had ordered the Host to retired to their camp to water their horses and refill their quivers.
That bit of common sense and tactical wisdom placed them in their present crisis. Their Ostrogoth allies had been beating themselves against their Visigoth cousins all afternoon, charging up the same cursed slope that any sane commander would have found a way to flank. No, the Germans had failed seven times using the same plan, so they tried an eighth.
Miraculously, they had gained a toehold on the ridgeline and killed the Visigothic King. Like a mob of mindless farmers, the Ostrogoths stopped to celebrate their 'victory' and taunt the Visigoths with the mutilated body of their fallen leader. The Visigoths had been properly incensed and counter-attacked. That's what Princes were for, to avenge their fallen Sires.
As the Host exited the Hunnic laager, they'd seen the calamity unfold. The wavering Visigoth infantry had stiffened their line. Believing the Ostrogoths would press forward, the Horse-tail banner of Attila himself broke away from the central Hunnic body, pivoted to his left and thundered into the Visigoth's exposed flank.
In the din of battle, it may have looked to the Great Warlord that he had a vanishing opportunity for victory. From the valley below, it was much clearer to the Amazons that the moment to break the Visigothic infantry had passed. The Huns were too tired; their mounts frothing from a long, hot afternoon of battle. Without a swift follow-through, the attack was doomed.
At that point, headlong flight for the Amazons wasn't possible. Their long term survival hung on the Hunnic King keeping his Germanic 'allies' in line. They were still somewhere in eastern Roman Gaul, with the Rhine to ford and a land thick with perpetually vicious, blood-thirsty, crotch-scratching, flea-bitten Germanic barbarians to cross before they saw the green rolling hills of home again.
No, the Golden Mare, and that young lady knew they had to do something to stem the tide of this disaster for another hour, then darkness would force the combatants to separate so they could try their hand at battle the next day. As the Golden Mare rode to the Sarmatian Chieftain, a rider came through the dust from Attila. The Visigothic cavalry had returned with a vengeance and the Ostrogoths were folding up.
The Sarmatians (with their attached Amazons) were to 'somehow' repair the situation. As the Chieftain, the Golden Mare and three Sarmatian tribal leaders hastily discussed the actions. They saw the Hunnic Right, under hard pressure from the Roman attack, beginning to disintegrate. Of immediate concern was the rift opening up between the retreating Hunnic Gepids and the Hunnic horsemen holding the center.
King Sangiban had finally discovered his manhood. The Alans attacked through that gap in the Hunnic lines and a rout was in the offing. The Sarmatian Leader decided he had to answer Attila's call. The Golden Mare offered to take her Amazons and whichever tribal leader volunteered first to ride with her against the Alans.
She drew her sword and held it aloft then motioned the Sarmatians to look at her shadow.
"We will hold them off until the length of our swords double (the shadow). Then we are all on our own," she offered. There was no further discussion necessary. There was nothing else to say. The Host and their allies had the fresher horses and full quivers.
The Alans had numbers but no heavy horse present, yet. The Host had answered Attila's call to war and now, nearly a year away from their homes in the forested steppe lands of modern-day Bukovina. At that moment they were wondering how few of them would ever see their horse herds roaming free this side of life.
That was where my vision came in ~ that woman was 'Ishara', the last of my major bloodline of the first Ishara and this was the last hour of her life. The other two women were the only other two members of that vanishing bloodline. One was her aunt and the other a cousin. Despite the dire peril to their lineage, they joined their sisters in battle.
Even though they were outnumber 2 to 1, the Amazons swept aside the first burst of Alans, scattering their bands and hunting the slowest of them down. Rushing alone to fill the gaping hole in the main battle lines was to abandon all tactical sense. Eighty Amazon heavy horse and perhaps twenty more Sarmatians ~ they were integrated now ~ alone simply weren't enough.
For the roughly 300 lightly armored horse-archers, it would be a pointless suicide and that was not the Amazon way. Instead, they scattered the initial Alan rush then gently trotted back down the slope. Of course, the Alans regrouped and followed. It was the battle pulse of steppe skirmishing.
By simply existing, they turned the rushing wave of that first Alan charge into a slowly strengthening tide. The Alans' mounts were tired and in need of water. Their quivers were nearly empty and some were seen at the top of the slope looting the quivers of the fallen. Whenever they could, the Amazons killed those clever souls.
Killing an archer closer to you who only had two arrows left wasn't as economical as killing the one who was both dismounted, thus an easier shot, and about to have fifteen bolts to use against you. Without the constant harassment, the Gepids were able to keep their retreat orderly. In turn, the other Germanics farther to the right kept their mobs relatively intact as well.
Their success earned them the inevitable enemy reaction. From his vantage point, the Roman Aetius saw the vulnerable and unsupported position the Amazons held. If he could push past the Amazon screen, he could still achieve a route instead of accepting a mere victory for his side. The solution was a force of over two hundred Roman Heavy Horse, many of them Sarmatians in Roman service. The troops may have been Sarmatians, but their commander wasn't.
Pro forma, when the larger Roman force advanced downslope, the Amazons obliged them by slowly zigzagging down slope away from them. To a warrior born to the steppe, the Amazons weren't running away, they were simply increasing the numbers of arrows they could fire before the final contest of arms began.
The Roman commander sounded the 'full advance' and obediently, his men rolled forward. The Golden Mare looked to the last Isharan and smiled. Surely the Seven Martial Goddesses (one of which was Ishara) had given them a great gift, a stupid enemy. The Amazon light cavalry scattered to the flanks. The heavies bunched up tightly and went to a trot while still moving away.
By that time, they were on the flat, somewhat muddy floodplain and the Romans kept coming, right along the stretch of ground the Amazons had been churning into mud with their own mounts. Belatedly, the Alan horse-archers realized the catastrophe the Romans were riding into but they hadn't the discipline to form up fast enough to do much good.
When the Romans had cut the distance between them and their targets in half, their commander realized that the Amazon heavies had bows and his men didn't. At that point, had he finally realized he was in trouble, there wasn't much he could do to save most of his men. He ordered the charge, full gallop. When the distance close to around twenty yards, the Amazon heavies broke into thirds.
Two groups kept retreating straight away, toward the Hunnic camp. The third broke off to the left at a 45% angle from the other two. The Romans kept their discipline. The commander was able to dispatch 70 of his men to chase down the third group. If this secondary Roman group noticed that when they left the already well-trodden muddy ground they picked up their speed, there wasn't much they could have done about that as well.
As the distance closed down to those last ten yards, the first group turned rapidly, formed into a tight V-shaped formation and counter-charged into the main mass of Romans. They didn't have much time to build up momentum. They didn't care. In fact they wanted to keep their tight wedge. 130 tired Romans steeds collided with roughly 30 Amazons, my ancestor included.
The Roman Commander found that his men hadn't impacted Amazons hard enough to shatter them. His men surrounded their enemy quickly, but their preponderance of men profited them little. It was of great use to the Amazon and Sarmatians horse-archers now swarming in from all direction.
The Roman charge had ground to a halt and they made excellent targets with little fear of hitting the Amazon trapped in the middle. The second Roman group had something similar thing happen. The group of 35 they were chasing turned to face them. This group, though, formed up in a line, clearly intending to absorb the attention of as many of the Roman attackers as possible.
Charge met counter-charge. The fighting become confused with both sides losing some of their cohesion. The Romans were going to win this uneven struggle, given enough time. Less than two minutes after the first clash of arms, the 'missing third' of the Amazon/Sarmatian heavy cavalry slammed unimpeded into the second Roman group's rear, doing what Heavy Cavalry did best, running over things.
The second Roman group shattered on impact. Those small groups that recoiled from that initial shock began running upslope mistakenly thinking they were being allowed to escape. When they saw the enemies forming up and heading the other way, to the main body of Romans, they had cause to hope. Only when the Amazon horse-archers closed in on those survivors did they realized how wrong they were.
One Armored Roman was more than a match for any one, or two horse-archers, but Five? Due to the actions of a double handful of brave Alans, a few Romans managed to stagger back to the top of the slope that so many had advanced from less than 30 minutes earlier. For the main Roman body, there were no happy endings. The Roman Commander wasn't some Germanic hero. He was an officer and tactician.
He realized that the horse-archers were whittling away on his men on the outside faster than his men on the inside were crushing the group he'd 'trapped'. From his point of view, he'd accomplished his mission, driving the 'Hunnish forces' off the slope. He was wrong to believe that. He hadn't 'driven off' anyone.
Even as the Roman call to 'Rally' sounded, the victors of the 'secondary' fight rolled into his men. Within thirty seconds, the Roman rank and file realized they'd lost this particular fight and began to break off in the only direction left open to them, moving diagonally between the retreating Hunnic and Ostrogothic forces and the Hunnic laager.
Those roughly 50 men had to run a gauntlet of 25,000 enemies to make their exit from battlefield's farthest point. The Amazons didn't keep track of them. They reformed their ranks, tended their wounded and gathered their dead. After dark, they would return to those piles to give their sisters a proper burial. Currently they had to return upslope to continue screening their allies from the Alans as the Germans fell back.
The Golden Mare held up her sword to the Dying Light and judged her women had performed their duties long enough. The shrill horns unique to the Amazons sounded 'retire'. My ancestor, proud that she'd fought well in her first battle with all three of the housemates surviving, turned to tell her aunt something. The arrow from an Alan bow pierced her chainmail coif and slashed through her throat.
She spit out a gout of blood. Her aunt grabbed her niece's reins while calling out to her other kinswoman. They hurried her to the rear until she was sheltered by the mass of horsewomen. A warrior, more skilled in the healing arts than most, rushed to her side. My ancestor was still conscious, though she could not speak. The look on the new woman's face said it all.
As her mind slipped into darkness, she felt herself falling. Was she falling out of the arms of her guardians, off the back of her favorite mare, down to the trampled muddy earth? Or was she falling into the arms of her ancestors, the last of her line? As she passed from this world into the next, she heard the whispering of her Goddess ~ 'this is not over and you have not died in vain'.
Three Goddesses Bad
The medically induced fog was being dissipated by something foul smelling being waved in front of my nose. My muscles ached from me sleeping in an uncomfortable position for far too much time.
"Ah, I croaked. My throat was parched. "What the,"
"He is waking up."
"You three leave us," one of the necromancers spoke. "You, go get cleaning supplies and return in 30 minutes. You, stay by the door."
I opened my dry eyes to take in the scene.
I remained a certifiable threat. Out of the corner of my eyes (I couldn't move my head), two commandos were leaving out one door along with some guy in a pseudo-uniform who first bowed, then left with them. One guy in another pseudo-uniform bowed and was heading out the other door. The last man, the one told to stay, was the commando remaining on guard by the door the first three exited.
As for me, I was stripped naked, spread-eagle on an onyx table. It was man-shaped with its greatest dimension being close to 3 meters. I've fucked women on a variety of stone objects. (Volcanic rock has its own textures.) My ankles and wrists were held in place by metal shackles. My head, quite literally, was in a vice. The only restraints I could see were on my ankles.
No Torquemada chains for these guys. They'd shelled out for the very best, some sort of a magnetic job with a handy dandy green light that informed me I was screwed.
"Where is Aya?" I croaked.
(Some funky Sino-style language I didn't know I knew) "Beginning marking his head."
The junior Gong tau priest began to draw something on my forehead. I flexed, accomplishing nothing.
"Where is Aya!" I screamed. The senior Necromancer who had done all the talking until now, looked to the remaining commando.
"What is the stinky barbarian saying?" he asked the guard, in Mandarin.
"He is inquiring the location of the child he was captured with," the man translated. Shit-head Honcho didn't speak English, didn't know I spoke Mandarin (or his sorcerous tongue), so believed there to be a language barrier which might be a problem if they interrogated me.
The twins were nowhere in sight and only the brother had spoken English before. My 'where' was a source of curiosity to me. I felt a slight, continuous tremor coming through the table. The space was slightly curved inward toward the top. The room was shrouded in black silk hangings. Then the whole room shuddered. We were still on an airborne aircraft.
Well, fiddle sticks, I was still a bit dopey. Pamela wasn't likely to be busting in to save me anytime soon. I was on my own. How long had I been out anyway? No chronometers were visible.
"Ha," the scumbag laughed. In Mandarin, he added; "Tell him the child, his Aya, will be trained in the arts of a concubine, serving the lusts of my temple for many years."
Cock-cheese guard translated. I grew introspective. Apparently this lack of response irritated the current lead bad-guy.
"Since he has not bothered to take her virginity, I will," the necromancer grinned like an eel, if eels could grin, "once you are my slave." The guard translated. He got creative too.
"Once the Honorable Tsu (Chief Sleaze-Douche's name) has taken her flower, myself and another will take her other holes," the guard added. An angry retort was pointless and would only make feel them powerful. Pleading was even more useless.
"With the 'itty bitty' size of your erect cocks, I'm not worried about her or any of her 'blossoms' being un-blossomed," I relaxed. Aya was alive and not 'deflowered'. They really should have killed her. Now there were two Amazons on the plane. They didn't understand that Amazons trained to fight all their battles outnumbered. Idiots.
I had Aya and she had me. These bastards were doomed. Exactly how they were 'doomed' I hadn't figured out yet. The guard said nothing for several seconds.
"What did he say?" Tsu asked. The guard told him. Tsu didn't like that. He held out his horrific looking fang-like blade for me to see then dragged the tip along my erection.
"Tell him if my Scepter of Manhood is not enough, I will animate his and use it on her instead."
My, that was rude. Any man who refers to his pecker as a 'Scepter of Manhood' had serious a serious size-phobia going on.
My phallus was unimpressed, remaining tall, full, loud and proud. The commando translated while attempting to remain utterly emotionless.
"Oh, let me think, how long is this ritual going to take?" I inquired. Translated.
"Tell him it will last the rest of his life," Tsu sneered. Translated.
"Cool," I chuckled. "Do you have a phone?" The commando mulled that over.
"Who could you possibly call, Dog?" he glared.
"No," snorted. "You've got me all wrong."
"I want you to call your mother and let her know you won't make it home, ever again. I'm going to end all your lives," I promised.
That finally earned me a sliver of emotion from the guy, anger.
"He brags the he will kill us," the guard told his master.
That wasn't what I said! I said I'd 'end' them. Like most great potentates, I had others do my killing for me.
"Better men have tried," Tsu scoffed. "They have all fallen before our Mandate in the end. Even in death, this one will serve us."
Wow, flashback to the Witch-King of Angmar.
'All the killers I have in mind are women, you misogynist freak'.
The goo on my forehead began to get irritating, alternating rapidly between hot and cold. Tsu began doing the same thing on my thighs.
His mixture of designs and Chinese characters was only partially visible to me. His buddy was working down my cheeks then onto my neck. They met at the bottom of my ribcage. Half were whole 'unspeakable' runes and blasphemous prayers to 'entities' whose names were the fantasy handles of every 14-year old geek overdosed on sugar and caffeine, deluding himself into thinking that hacking Mario Cart made him the next Cyber-Enigma.
The others; they were mapping me out like a side of beef. My skin felt electric. The duo began chanting. The nameless guy on top pressed the tip of his blade against my widow's peak (as much as I had one). Tsu pressed his point against my inner thigh. Beyond the painful scalping I was about to endure, he was going to start bleeding me out. This definitely wasn't torture.
They had promised to cut my soul out of my body and rip all of my secrets from my dead flesh. A piece of etiquette unknown to me until that moment reared its ugly head.
'Cáel,' Dot Ishara whispered. 'Swallow your tongue.' My first thought was 'Ishara shouldn't be expending so much of her energy trying to push herself through the Weave' then it occurred to me these dumbasses were doing all the heavily lifting for her.
They were parting the Veil and severing the Weave with their necromantic incantations and symbolism. I swallowed my damn tongue, or I truly tried to. I was choking alright. Just in time, Tsu began applying the cutting edge to my inner thigh. I felt that horrible chill that had every hair on my body standing tall.
A divine warning in Sumerian telling the Gong tau priest to stop what he issued forth from my mouth sans any air to let it be heard. Two small lines: 'This one is inviolate. Stop right now'.
No reaction from the necromancers. My lips formed a second warning, 'You have been called forth and warned. Cease at once.' I think ole Tsu began sensing something wasn't right, so whomever was moving my lips rattled off the third and final warning as quick as she could.
'One sliver of flesh, one drop of blood, one tear of sorrow and I will have my revenge'. It was something beyond my unintelligible gaks that alerted Tsu he was about to be boned. His assistant wasn't all that much in tune with the mojo. His blade sunk into my forehead maybe a centimeter.
"Stop! Tsu screamed at the man. Too late. I felt a drop of blood ooze forth from the wound. It was 'so on!'
That point of etiquette? When a spirit owns, or possesses someone and it comes across a power, or a minion of a power ~ like Gong tau practitioners who work with demons ~ the possessing entity was required to give fair warning.
It wasn't Sarrat Irkalli, Sumerian Goddess of the Netherworld's fault that I'd swallowed my tongue (I'd done it on Ishara's orders and was hers to command) so that my word of caution were rendered soundless.
She'd met all that was required before an epic ass-whooping was going to be handed down, you know, the 'Old Testament, Wrath of God' kind of shit. Remember how I felt that the Gong tau adherents were doing something wrong? I was right. They were. This wasn't a 'slap on the wrist', or even '15 years in an Angolan prison where your nickname was Sweet Meat' as the necessary atonement either.
This whole room howled out its violation of the Weave. It was unnatural in a supernatural kind of way, if that made sense? Magic was bad for a reason. Even though magic existed, the Universe still operated on Scientific Principles; things like conservation of mass and thermodynamics. Creating, or removing mass in Reality bashed the stability of the Universe over its head.
The same went for energy. If you threw lighting you were pulling electrons through the Weave, weakening it. Whatever they did in our reality, they accomplished by stealing from the legends and echoes of the past and all the potentials from the future. That was why Gods could appear so tough, they were devouring random possible futures.
Stealing souls was much, much worse; it stole parts of the present (the living souls) and pushed them to the other side of the Weave, where they didn't belong yet. Those stolen souls allowed entities on the wrong side of the Weave to tap into that 'real' power in our world without immediate repercussions (the bad karma).
It was short term power that put the long-term survival of the Weave in danger. The energy of that soul was supposed to power the Weave, but it wasn't doing that anymore. Tsu was about to be way overdrawn with some nasty-ass fuckers whose runes he'd scrawled on my flesh. Whoops. He'd promised them something that was someone else's property. In this instance, it was the Cáel soul shard triplet of the Alal-Baraqu-Cáel trio.
It belonged to Sarrat Irkalli and I had the feeling ever since she, Dot Ishara and SzélAnya had leapt inside my back in the warehouse, they'd been waiting to come out and play. I was Dot's House Head. I had made a pledge in SzélAnya's name before the Amazon Council, making her a candidate to rejoin the Host's Goddess and to use the Amazons to protect her mortal offspring from whomever was hunting them to extinction.
'Yours Truly' being in mortal peril (yet again) was as good a chance as any for SzélAnya to lay down the required miracle-working on the Amazons' behalf to advance her house down the road to acceptance. It was SzélAnya, daughter of the Cosmic Dragon, who's shared parental memories had enlightened me so I 'knew' what the heart of a dead star felt like. Through her sire, she shared his Legend. I felt so cold all over again.
In a non-Cáel encounter, Tsu had three normal safe-guards to keep himself alive.
1) Set up wards dedicated to his demonic Allies/Masters. He had created them, this room, but he'd put me inside them to perform his soul-stealing ritual. Hadn't any of these bozos heard of the Trojan Horse? We were talking about the freaking Amazons here. The Iliad was our primer for why we'd had an undying hatred for all things Hellas going on for the past three thousand years.
2) He could have prayed for the Pacts (in which he pledged his soul to the Demon Kings) would ward him in the same way Sarrat Irkalli's actions 5000 years ago safeguarded me. This could only be voided if he refused to obey the three required warnings. Except Sarrat Irkalli had warned him the required three times, and he'd missed it.
Unless the Demon Kings wanted to have an occult showdown with around three dozen pantheons full of deities in an airplane in mid-flight, they wouldn't respond. Their idiot minion had violated the terms of his warranty. His were not the kind of Bosses who followed the 'spirit' of the agreement over the precise wording.
3) The Last Chance? The Goddesses had established a nexus point piercing the Weave locked inside my body and only a ritual wound unlock it. Don't bleed me and the damn spiritual door couldn't open. As long as he could keep the three goddess on their side of the Weave, he could fight them through their proxy, me. His buddy, by drawing blood, had initiated the soul-stealing ritual. The door was opened and the Goddesses stepped through.
Two final notes : Don't fuck with the Weave. It will get you. Also, all that bad karma that normally stops Divinities from interfering? Well, all that bad karma was still accumulating, for the side that had started the fight = the Demon Kings. Oh, when/if Tsu ever got back to his Masters ~ them being displeased would only be compounded by them being called Demon Kings.
Round One
Sarrat Irkalli : Since I could actually see spirits, I saw her spring forth from my body, looking like a Harry Potter Dementor on Slimfast. Seriously man, the chick needed to hit an 'All you can Eat' buffet, chomping down on a heaping helping of, of something. She was all skin and bones. I'm not saying I wouldn't do her, but I have abysmally low standards.
SzélAnya : She went down through the floor transforming from woman into dragon, still spiritual invisible to almost all. The two other people onboard who could see her were otherwise occupied. Before she left, my bonds' green lights turned red as they flipped open. The sole commando guardian was on the ball and went for his pistol. Whoops again. That was made of metal. A lightning bolt arched out of my chest and played Old Sparky on him for about thirty seconds. Ugh, burnt pork.
Dot Ishara : She decided to sit this round out. The other two seemed to have my salvation well in hand.
Round Two
Sarrat Irkalli : I'll tell Alal he can go plug his cock into one of those turbines inside Hoover Dam if he ever asks me to help him get revenge on this Monster. I am never going to piss this Bitch off (and Thank You Dot Ishara for making it so those two couldn't read my mind either). Tsu was, immediately exsanguinated which is an unimaginative way of saying she forced every bit of blood in his body out of every orifice and pore.
I think he was alive for several seconds after that, not that he's really dead even now. More on that later. The second necromancer started to scream which clued me into this whole space being sound-proofed.
Dot Ishara : 'Let her have her fun,' she whispered to my resurgent spirit.
"No shit," I mumbled. Since she was an intelligent & capable divinity and knew I wasn't stupid, no wait, it wasn't that her cunt itching. She couldn't read my mind and it was making her overly protective. "What did SzélAnya tell you about me?"
Round Three
Sarrat Irkalli : The sole survivor, being gripped by boundless, and totally justified, fear that he'd backed the wrong side all his life (or so I hoped), retreated to the far cabin wall. I was sitting up, so I got the full splendor of Sarrat Irkalli coagulating Tsu's blood into some horrific crimson, liquid doppelganger of her true shape. I looked away and found myself staring into his terrified eyes.
"You are on your own, Buddy," I addressed him. Yes, here at the end of his existence, I was letting him in on the fact that I did know his language and knew every evil thing he and his cohorts had said when they assumed I was both powerless and ignorant.
SzélAnya : The plane bucked abruptly. A peel of thunder vibrated the whole craft. When my feet swung off the slab small arches of electricity beat my feet to the floor. Great. More than one girl had jokingly called me the 'Energizer Bunny', and here I was, a lighting jar. Close enough.
Dot Ishara : 'That was uncalled for and mean. Still, I accept the fact that we have used you as a lure to kill them and steal their souls.' Oh yeah. I should have realized that in one fell swoop, Sarrat Irkalli could gather up the soul, shade and essence of a major Gong tau necromancer without violating the shaky agreements that kept those factions on their side of the Weave.
That was pretty much it. Oh, the unnamed Gong tau mook went down screaming. His fists splashed through her liquid body while the talons she formed tore chunks off his body. It took about forty-five seconds for Sarrat Irkalli to finish a fight that should have taken five. Oh, she wasn't done with him, Oh no! She motioned me off the table. I rapidly complied.
She dragged his corpse onto the slab, taking my place. When she did so, I noticed three things. Tsu's, his henchman's and bodyguard's souls were all trapped in this room with us. None of them had SzélAnya's power to penetrate the wards, from the inside. The commando's ghost was slowly sitting up, clearly confused with his new state. Not Tsu though.
His specter flitted around the room, desperately trying to find a pinprick in his wards and failing. The henchmen's soul was still cowering over the place where his body had died. Sarrat Irkalli began her own ancient Sumerian invocations. Within seconds, the henchman's ghost was screaming as the ritual dragged his essence back to his corpse.
The Netherworld Goddess began to 'compact' the body. With her hand on his chest, she was exerting gravitational pressures that were collapsing spirit, flesh, organs and bones into one 12 cm long carnivorous creature's incisor. I could still hear him screaming inside his prison. She picked up her handiwork.
I was busy gathering up stuff and taking what I could from the deceased commando because someone would be coming back soon. I realized that my finger was no longer chard. I mumbled a quick thanks to Dot Ishara for healing me. Sarrat Irkalli put a squishy hand on my right shoulder. I slipped out from under her grip and stood away from the corpse, and its soul. Quick as lightning, she skewered the guy's phantom with her new dagger. The spirit wailed as it was sucked completely into the blade.
"Hold this for me, mortal, she said in Sumerian. Don't stab anyone with it because that will expend its power. To recharge it, I'll need another soul. Do I need to repeat myself?" Sarrat Irkalli enlightened me. I shook my head. She flipped the blade around so she held the curved blade and I had the hilt ~ which resembled the bleached root of an ancient Smilodon fang.
I gingerly received the blasphemous weapon. It's oily, foul texture was more psychosomatic than real. It didn't make it any less creepy. But it got worse.
"I'm I going to need this?" I asked her. She'd already turned to her next task. Her blood flowed back into Tsu's body.
When she finished 'inflating' the corpse, she began chanting using his pale bluish lips. Tsu howled out his mind-numbing fear as he began being dragged back 'home'.
"Help me!" he screamed, in Mandarin. "I'll do anything you want. Break a ward. Any ward."
"I find your lack of faith disturbing," was all that came to mind.
He looked both terrified and confused at the same time. Who didn't know that classic line from Star Wars, especially this ready-made minion of the Dark Side? I didn't have a chance to ask him as Sarrat Irkalli drew his soul back into his body as if she was some sleazy time-share saleswoman who had tricked him into a ten year lease on a condo overlooking scenic Porte au Prince, Haiti.
(A brief glimpse of why Weave of Fate is a good thing)
Of greater import to me was that I'd been handed a tool to cut the Weave of Fate and breach the barrier between the dimension as we knew them, the Current Land of the Living and the detritus, dreams, nightmares, and births not yet recorded in the Once Had Been and all the Might Yet Be's.
These were fractured, incomplete mirrored realities that existed parallel with our Earth. Realms of demons, divinities, spirits, Paradises and Hells, all intersected in the Weave. The Weave of Fate bound everything together in order to keep Oblivion at bay. Stars were born. From their inferno's cradle, planets came into being and failed or prospered, yet all would perish.
Either the Great Fires that birthed them would consume them when their Star surrendered to Death, or they survived the death of their parent only to die inside and crumble into nothingness. But presence of Life was never completely extinguished. It flickered here then there. Sometimes in many places and in more than one instance hung on by a slender promise not yet unborn.
Life had found a way. I had been stupid to see the Weave as being solely concerned with the fates of Terra, or Sol. We terrestrials were mere a cresting of the waves of Creation ~ a minor summit in an ocean that had a history so long forgotten even the Weave could not comprehend its origin.
Divinities, they were not caretakers of the Weave. They husbanded, pampered, punished and marshalled the forces of sentiency. It was blind, deaf and dumb humanity who by the very pulse of our hearts and the firing of our synapses, repaired and revitalized the Weave.
With our faith in our existence, on our belief in Science and a Universe that made sense, we fed a construct we could not classify with the normal five senses. We would provide, until our last breathe as a species, the vitality it took for Life to spring up somewhere else and continue on when Sol gave one last explosive impulse to the Universe and consumed Terra ~ devouring her child in her death-throes.
At some later date, in a twisted bout of insanity, or a fevered dream, this new life would see me, my shadow, my legend. Sanity would return, the Veil would reassert itself, they would wake-up and the truth of the Weave would fade from their conscious minds, for most of them. For those tiny few, they would become magicians, prophets, messiahs and powers so dark they would bring nightmares to life.
(The Plan, then the other plan, then whatever works)
Speaking of nightmares, I was living one and I was seriously in the mood to share. My assets were formidable.
-Three dead bodies ~ one violently exsanguinated then reanimated / one ripped to pieces then turned into a dagger / one electrocuted which qualified him as the 'least-freaky' dead.
-The aforementioned person turned into a new horrific device of destruction
-The aforementioned animated corpse
-One QCW-05 Chinese Suppressed Submachine Gun with 21mm subsonic round, & a 50 round magazine & 4 spare magazines.
-One QSW-06 Chinese Suppressed Pistol, 21mm subsonic round, 20 round Mag; 390mm with suppressor) (with 3 magazines)
-One regulation, single-bladed combat knife
-Miscellaneous bits of useful body armor
The make, model and especially the ammunition were important because normally, you didn't want to fire ANY firearm on plane. Those two Chinese death dealers were 'subsonic' rounds and I was about to gamble they couldn't punch through the plane's fuselage. Since I didn't want to die and was far more opposed to killing Aya while she had a chance left, I had to bet on that.
I had put on the Chinese commando's armored vest. He was a big Han, but that didn't equate to being as big as me. He also had tiny feet a freaking 7, what had he done? Cut off the feet of a midget and sown them on? Oh, his package was rather insignificant. I wasn't going to put on his underwear and his pants didn't fit. I did put on his armored knee pads and forearm guards.
The clothing of both necromancers were no longer available so I ended up removing a black veil covering one of the windows and created an impromptu kilt; definitely not a man-skirt. I didn't care how Gaelic the Irish thought I was; I wasn't running into battle with my Family Jewels on display. The bastards I was going to kill had swords, and guns.
My plan was very basic. Using a dash of surprise, I was going to sprint from my compartment over an unknown distance to the pilot's cabin and kill the Mo-Foes, the pilots that is. Why? I was betting somewhere in my plethora of Alal-induced skills was that of a pilot. Hopefully a jet pilot. When my life was imperiled, one of my funky brain patterns would reference the skill.
Then, as the only pilot left on the plane (I hoped), I could crash land this pig on some neutral location. Obstacle One: out of the window on the side I'd already exposed I saw nothing but water, way, way down. I checked out the other side. Tons of the blue stuff.
I took the commando's watch. It was a fancy rig that covered a multitude of time zones. It still was set on New York time, 1:20 a.m. Wednesday. I hit 'reset'. Now it was 8:20 pm Tuesday. Considering I had been knocked out on Monday morning, this was so not good. Hmm, it seemed to be almost, the snazzy little toy had GPS. It happily reported that I was at 16.72 north, 169.24 west, which put me, over the fucking Pacific Ocean.
It had an altimeter setting. It was at 12.75 km, I wanted to vomit. I calmed myself down. New plan, just like the old plan. Nothing had really changed. I was going to crash land in the ocean. The Pacific Ocean. With a planeload of people who wanted to kill me. Well, planeload might be an exaggeration.
There was nothing to indicate to me the size of the plane except that it was a commercial passenger plane. Tsu sat up. The lack of any sustenance in the past, 36 hours meant I didn't poop on myself.
"Give me back my dagger," 'Tsu' extended 'his' hand.
'Say what, Bitch? It's mine now! Finders keepers, Losers weepers.' I returned her blade in the manner it was received, hilt toward her. I could see Tsu's soul trapped within his pupils.
"What does it do?" I inquired.
"It transfers energy cross the Weave." She was 'plucking' Tsu's mind.
That wasn't too helpful.
"What is the plan?" Not-Tsu asked me. That was even less encouraging.
"What was you three's idea for saving my life?" I requested.
'Render this aircraft's control systems inoperable, decompress the plane by blowing out all the available portals, whisk your body safely outside then deposit you on the closest landmass that promises further, an inhabited island,' Dot Ishara answered from inside my head.
"What about Aya?"
"We are not here for Aya," Not-Tsu informed me.
"Well, that's not going to happen," I responded in the negative. "Saving Aya is Priority #1. So, what can you three do? And where is SzélAnya anyway?"
"She found a cyclone close by and is bringing it to us. Then she's going to harness its natural forces to fry the plane's avionics, communications and flight control systems," Not-Tsu reported with all the passion of a person recalling the number of brown crumbs on her plate after eating some toast.
"How many enemy are on board?"
"I take it you mean how many people are on this plane that are not Aya, Forty-seven," Ishara replied. "I can tell you where they are, but not what they do."
"Why not? You are a Goddess?"
"That would violate our policy of non-interference directly in mortal affairs," was her comeback.
"That policy isn't stopping SzélAnya," I reposed.
"She has been driven insane with loss, hopelessness and grief," Not-Tsu told me.
"You saved her," my Matron Goddess added. "If you let me back into your mind this could go much faster."
"No. I'll live within my self-imposed limitations. What can the two of you do for me, and thank you, Sarrat Irkalli, for saving me while looking after your 'fucking with my family for your own goddess-damn reasons' personal agenda?
"I can guide you and heal your body," Dot Ishara stated.
"I can walk around in this mortal shell," Non-Tsu shrugged. "I can also access Tsu's memories and pretend to be him. I can fight using his native abilities as well." Eureka!
"Can you take a pistol, go to the cockpit and kill the pilots?"
"Yes."
"How much damage can, Tsu take?"
"As long as the muscle and connective tissue is functioning, I can work the body. The level of physical trauma is otherwise irrelevant. This body cannot die," she let me know.
"Didn't you make the same mistake with Grandpa?" I suggested.
"It was not a mistake and this is different. Alal's physical form can quickly regenerate from any level of physical damage. This body doesn't do that. Until the last of the living matter perishes, this body will remain Tsu's tomb. It won't even enjoy the normal levels of human healing."
That's what I meant about Tsu not really being dead. I had to wonder when the last bits of DNA rotted inside bones and teeth.
To see if my plan had even a miniscule chance to work, I snatched up /tore the Velcro on one of the seat cushions. I buckled myself into the seat across the way, braced, and fired into the opposite (exterior) wall. Pop! (The sound suppressor worked like gangbusters). Nothing. I could do this.
Then I heard the low hissing noise. New-new plan. Just like the old-new plan, but things had to be happen right now. The door opened and in came the 'mop and bucket' guy. I was still buckled in and the only one clearly visible since not-Tsu was still on the ground. His mouth opened and his lungs inflated. He was going to call for help.
I put a bullet into his chest, right of his sternum. He pitched backwards and his accoutrements went crashing behind him. I tossed not-Tsu the pistol.
"Go kill the pilots. I'll keep as many people occupied as I can," I hissed as I unbuckled myself. The bucket and cleaning supplies were falling down, stairs?
"Ho?" a voice called out from below. "Ho, don't screw around." I had a few seconds to master the situation. I had to open not-Tsu's door, break the wards, then race to the sound of the voice. "He's going to get his tongue ripped out, just like the last guy," I heard some woman bitch about the imagined fate of ole Ho.
As I leapt over his body, I realized that there was a narrow, spiral stairwell going down. I rushed to the bottom super-quick. The six people (four men and two women) I came across in what looked to be the plane's galley were stun-fucked to see me, that's for sure.
"No sudden moves," I kept my voice calm yet lethal. "No one has die."
They all snuck peeks up the stairwell.
"Ho won't be joining us for the rest of the flight," I scanned the room. No one had a gun, but two of them had nice ID badges. One said Senior Pilot and the other said Secondary Flight Engineer (aka Co-pilot). They also had a medical cabinet.
Well, they had kept me sedated for over thirty-six hours. They had to keep that somewhere.
"Who handles the medicine here?" I asked. No takers.
"Either someone is going to be honest, or I'm going to have to kill all six of you," I explained. No takers.
"Last chance. You might want to consider that I'm down here which means the people upstairs were in no condition to stop me.
"If we help you, they will kill us," the pilot weaseled. Didn't care. These people knew the kind of monsters they worked for. I shot that man in the heart. The rest jolted.
"I killed him because I knew he wasn't the medical technician. I'm going to count down from 3, 2, 1" Pift! There went the co-pilot.
"It is me!" the older of the two women exclaimed. "I'm the medical technician." The plane jolted, lurched then the engines began to race. That would be the pilot and co-pilot on duty dying.
"Inject everyone with the drug they gave me and make it snappy," I barked. I heard mumbling in Mandarin and the sounds of feet hitting the floor from the 'rear'. "What's down there?" It seemed that we were 'In for a Penny, in for a Pound'.
"The sleeping coach," a steward volunteered.
"Danke," I said as I steeled myself. The plane lurched again and I heard several suppressed weapons being fired from the front of the plane. I popped out into the hall, facing the rear in a crouch. There were two commandoes coming my way. I went full auto. The first two were caught flat-footed with their ballistic vests in hand. I cut them to pieces.
A third guy jumped back into his bunk, but dropped his QCW-05. I was pretty sure the walls of the sleeping cubicle weren't nearly as thick as the fuselage. I gave that bunk eight slugs and made two other guys duck for cover. I exchanged magazines before taking the reprieve to rush the two men I'd fatally wounded. I snatched up their pistols, submachine guns and one ear piece then dodged back to cover.
No one was in a rush to shoot back with their QCW's; maybe because they knew the rounds could fuck up the plane? The woman had pulled out two small vials and one needle. Screw the hygiene and cross contamination issues. I slipped the earpiece on.
"How many pilots are on the plane?" I glared at the steward.
"Ta-two," he stammered. I pointed QCW down the hallway and fired one blind burst.
"Here," I handed him a fresh QCW. He didn't know what to do about that. "See, with those two dead here and my ally killing the two in the cabin, I'm the only one left who can fly this plane. It would behoove you to not let your friends kill me." He didn't believe me. "You, I pointed to the other woman. Call the cockpit."
For a second she was fearful of the possible reaction of her masters. Then the plane took a savage lurch and began descending rapidly. She was punching the call button like crazy. I popped off a few round in the hallway.
'Behind you!' Dot warned me.
I zipped back right before to QSW-06 rounds went racing through the space my head had just occupied. I poked my borrowed QCW and shot blindly back.
"Send the two pilots up immediately," Zhen seethed.
"Lady Duan (Zhen and Mu's family name), they are dead." Silence.
"What do you mean? Speak carefully," Zhen's voice became utterly emotionless.
"I, " the female steward looked at me. I nodded. "The barbarian has broken free, murdered them and multiple warriors too. He also claims he can fly the, "
The power died. We were all plunged into near darkness for several seconds.
What little illumination that reached us was from a handful of uncovered seat-side portals in the front of the jet. All of that was secondary to the plane nosing more and more.
"Cease-fire! Cease-fire!" Mu shouted. Then, over their commlink, "We must take the barbarian alive. Teams, identify." The emergency lighting kicked on, giving the area an orange-ish glow.
"I'll make it easy on you, Duan Mu," I interrupted the roll-call. "I speak your language, you Monkey. Drop your weapons and I'll fly this plane for you."
"Surrender, or we will kill the girl."
"Surrender, or I'll end you all," I countered.
"You are bluffing. You wouldn't let the child die if you could help it," he started. The plane began to seriously nose over.
"Mu, the controls are dead," Zhen called out. "We need get to the parachutes."
Fuck, I hadn't counted on that.
'Dot?'
'We are ahead of this issue,' her psyche snuggled my mind. 'Hang onto something. Wait for it.'
"Mu, you might want to hold up on killing Aya until you actually have a person successfully exit the plane first," I called out. The plane tipped forward then a thunderous boom went off beneath us resulting in the craft violently shooting up and knocking everyone into the ceiling as the plane righted itself.
The man's scream was almost lost in the explosive decompression. Two more screams followed in quick succession. Then the jet began to pitch forward and rolling to the left at the same time. I threw away my more animalistic fears of being ripped out the plane as a prelude to a 10 km fall and propelled myself forward. Despite the craft's roll and the aisles 10% decline.
I passed several 7P commandos who were clutching their seats with white knuckles. A few where keeping their companions from being sucked out of the open door near the cockpit. I floated toward the yawning abyss. On the third row from the door, Mu was crouched down, one arm around a seat belt and the other clutching Aya to him, an arm around her chest.
I arrested my progress for a second to pull close with them both.
"Hi Aya," I kissed her forehead. I had been aiming for her nose, but, you know, turbulence. "Are you ready to start killing people?"
"Of course, Fehér mén. Where did you get the zombie and the dragon?"
"Book of the Month Club ~ Young Adult Section," I shouted. "Gotta go."
As I left, I heard Aya hollering at Mu,
"I told you if you didn't leave him in Mexico City, you would all regret it," Aya reminded her Chinese captor of a conversation I hadn't been privy to.
I was half way out the door when a silverish-gray, serpentine tail encircled me and deposited me half way into the cockpit. Zhen was futilely struggling with the unresponsive control panel and dead stick. I instantly identified her problem. Non-Tsu had rammed her dagger into the pilot's console. As an isolated action, the multiple redundancies would have survived the damage.
As a locus for all sorts of yucky energies involving death and decay ~ this was a NTSB technical reconstruction nightmare. That was assuming they could locate us with the most advanced deep-sea investigating techniques. She was in the co-pilots seat. A commando was in the pilot's seat. I touched and imparted 100 kA to the minion of all things impure and foul.
Perhaps my sense of urgency overwhelmed SzélAnya. The man cooked and exploded into man-bits. My seat was now empty. Before Zhen could completely make out the coiled white-maned tail keeping me in place, the appendage withdrew. A second later, something slammed into the side of the aircraft and a smell of burning metal and rubber permeated the cabin.
We were in a bad way, but the door had been shut and sealed. I was busy waiting for Alal to show me how to fly a plane, hmm, okay, I wasn't sure what a DC-7 was, but it wasn't a commercial jet airliner. Mother-puss-bucket, I finally found something the Old Man didn't know and it was when my life literally depended on it.
I also find the edge of a Jian blade against my throat.
"How did you get here?" Zhen seethed, in Mandarin.
"I'm here to fly the plane."
"The controls are dead. All the systems are fried. Even if they did work, I've never flown something this big. No, I repeat, what are you doing here, and since when do you speak our language?"
"Controls, ah hah, " I looked over the darkened controls. The dagger!
Why the fuck would she leave it there? I looked at the non-Tsu, whose blood was draining away at a too rapid rate. I placed my hand on the dagger. The lights came on. The instruments weren't at 100%, Hell, they were barely at 50%, but it was better than several seconds ago. Zhen had one hand on the co-pilot's joy stick. She had some minimal level of control.
By the look on her face, she couldn't believe my hand on the dagger and the controls coming back was anything more than a coincidence. I let go. The lights went out again.
"By all means," I offered her the chance to grab the dagger hilt. "What? Did you seriously believe that yours was the only mythology that mattered? You sent some sick fuck to rip my soul out of my body and hadn't thought that my deities would protest?"
She twisted the sword around in a rapid flourish, then drove it into Non-Tsu's chest. She grabbed the arcane dagger, but nothing happened. She looked pissed. As for Tsu, he was already missing his right arm at the elbow, his left arm was gone at the shoulder, his right leg was off at the knee and his skull was partially split and then he'd been decapitated. His blood/ichor was rushing off elsewhere. I didn't have time to worry about where.
A quick look at his ruined face showed one haunted eye staring back. His soul was still trapped inside his ruined mortal clay. Good for him. In my panic, I had zoned on the two necklaces with the bone reliquaries. The plane began to nose over to the left. If there was any positive news going on it was that we'd dropped under 7 km.
"Do something," Zhen demanded as she yanked her hand away. I put my hand on the dagger and we had power once again. My other hand rested on the pilot's joy stick. The basics like airspeed, altitude and direction were easy enough. Things like 'thrust ratios' and 'engine temperatures' were something I was still trying to decipher.
"Okay. I have some conditions before I save any of you," I looked at her.
"You will die before we do," Zhen threatened. I laughed. She looked furious so I laughed harder.
"Listen you stupid cunt, " and she aimed a hand-chop at my Adam's apple. I let go of the dagger and we began to spiral out of control once more.
"Put your hand back on the dagger," she yelled.
"Why?" I shifted back in my seat and relaxed. "In case you missed it, you gave me over to a cretin who was going to take my soul and sell it to some demon as if it was Gatorade (I was making that up). This doesn't not inspire me to place my life in your hands."
"The girl will die too," she tried to get clever. She was scared and it was clawing like a wild animal behind her eyes.
"So will your brother," I grinned. "Under your tender mercies, you were going to try and pervert a smart, wonderful little girl and turn her into one of you sex slaves. We are both better off dead than putting our lives back in your hands."
"Very well," she mulled that over hurriedly. "I will give you my word that we will return the girl alive and unharmed to her people if you put this plane down in one piece. You must still come with us." I was distracted by something.
'Wakko, SzélAnya tells me there is an island about 20 kilometers away. You can get there before this cyclone tears this craft out of the sky,' Dot told me. I even got a visual of the landing strip.
Honolulu it wasn't. In fact, it looked like a big slab of concrete at one end of a lagoon; a tiny speck in a hugely angry sea. Problem: the runway ran from North-northeast to South-southwest and we were approaching form the Southeast. I'd have to circle the landing strip in this POS, battered by 80+ km winds, out of the Southwest.
The Alal-pilot strongly suggested I wanted to come around from the North, into the wind as opposed to it pushing me down the runway as a tail wind, since the North end of the concrete was awash in the waters from the lagoon. The South end was awash in waters form the Ocean. Choices, choices.
"You are a woman in the Seven Pillars, your word is useless. The only people who value you are your brother, definitely, and possibly your father, since you have some skills and you aren't a brood mare for a man thirty years your senior. You are on the right track with you and yours making a pledge though," I finished the first round of emotional Ping-Pong.
"What is going on?" Mu staggered into the cockpit, stumbling over Tsu's mangled corpse. He was back to being Tsu since Sarrat Irkalli had slithered her bloody ooze elsewhere.
"If he doesn't touch that dagger, we are going to slam into the Ocean, Brother," she snarled.
"Put your hand on the dagger," Mu demanded.
"Fuck you," I laughed at him. "Where's Aya?" Mu's hands went for the back of my neck and my right elbow. Bad move. I twisted, and as I did so, I brought my QCW-05 around and fired off a round into his thigh right above the knee.
Since it had been in my lap, he hadn't perceived it as a threat until it was too late. Mu manned up and didn't scream. He certainly had a nasty, bleeding wound. He did slump back toward the cabin door.
"Brother!" Zhen exclaimed. She went for her sword. I pointed the gun at her.
"Do it and I'll put a bullet in you too," I challenged her. She was about to say something. "The only person coming into this cabin before we land is Aya and your brother isn't leaving until I say so."
"He'll bleed out," Zhen pointed out. Mu was busy turning his sash into a tourniquet.
"You catch on quick," I glared. "Mu, if you patch up that one, I'll shoot you in your other leg, or your stomach. Either Aya comes in here alone with a medical kit, " I grabbed the dagger because Alal-pilot was strongly suggesting we were about to be entering a dive too steep for this crate to recover from, or maybe for a DC-7 to,
"What is going on?" Mu grimaced.
"Brother, as I told you, when he touches the dagger, we have power for controls," she was caught between concern for her brother and a desire to establish some power. "Give the hostage a medical kit and send her to the cockpit. Mu has been shot."
"Duan Mu; what are your orders," came the response. I was right. If Mu was dead, or incapacitated, the Seven Pillars troops wouldn't be looking to her for leadership.
"Hold on," Mu rumbled to his troops. "Why shouldn't I have you killed now and be done with it, let us die as true warriors of the Seven Pillars?"
"Because all you will succeed in doing is killing Aya, Mu." I was keeping it civil for the nonce because I had renewed faith that I could save Aya. "My Goddesses are here, with me. The storm? She's mine. Your buddy lying on the ground? Take a good look into his left eye and wait for it to blink. Comrade Tsu brought a toothpick to an ICBM exchange and now the rest of you are paying the price."
"His eye moved, " Mu mumbled. He really need to get that leg looked at.
"Brother, let them send the girl in. You are bleeding out."
"One condition, Mu," I stopped him from doing as his sister requested. "You and everyone else on the plane who works for you is going to swear an Oath to my Goddess."
Mu sneered over the reference to my 'Pagan' Goddess.
"Do it, or I'll knee-cap your sister. We'll still land the plan, but she's going to be getting around on one leg for the rest of her life ~ as short as that may be. Swear by Ishara that neither you, nor anyone you command will lay one finger on Aya; not harm, or restrain her in any manner, and you won't shoot at me either."
"And if we do?" Zhen asked. Oh, I like clever people. I much more prefer people who think they are far cleverer than I. I was a liberal arts major and knew the value of proper word placement. They thought they would both lie to me and trick me even if they didn't lie. I hadn't ask them to not attack me ~ I hated butchering defenseless foes.
No, I wanted Aya safe, my main goal. They assumed I had missed out on not completely guaranteeing my own safety. They were also forgetting that Aya could still kill them and I doubted she had my overly-masculine honorable inclinations.
"I'll get your brother medical attention.
"Fine," Mu grunted. "We swear."
"Order your men to say these exact words: 'Swear by Ishara that neither you, nor anyone you command will lay one finger on Aya; not harm, or restrain her in any manner, and you won't shoot at me either'."
"This a magical oath," Mu hissed out his pain.
"Brother, do it, please," Zhen begged her twin. Mu relented, the order went out and the oaths of every Seven Pillars of Heaven society members was duly noted by my Goddess. None of the Goddesses could be around too much longer. The Gong tau threat had been neutralized.
The Weave would want to shut this running sore and fix this fuckup Tsu had created. Good Guys, Bad Guys, the Weave didn't care. Currently, the fear that they were close by was my greatest tool. Aya came forward. She was about to leap into my cluttered arms when she noted Mu looking in a bad way.
"Mr. Mu, it is not too late to say you're sorry," Aya counseled him. "Cáel is a wonderful Father and I'm sure if you really mean it, despite all you've done to us, he'll spare you." She opened her kit and got to work using her basic Amazon First Aid skills. While Zhen and I formulated a plan, all our communications were gone and our avionics was unreliable, Mu helped Aya tend to his wounds.
To be continued.
By FinalStand for Literotica.