Lilly asked, “You’ve heard of the Forsaken War, right?”
“Of course,” replied John.
“The ancient old ones Darkness, Nightmare, Destruction, Chaos, and Betrayal made the g’athu during it. This was back when Betrayal was Curiosity. The g’athu were normal then. Not normal – they were probably still all psychos, but they were all different and had sex and made babies like usual, and all the babies were different.
“Well, long after the Forsaken War ended, the four strongest g’athu Eternals named Vos, Ri Opằ, Kathzun, and another I forget the name of, all had a plan. Vos worshiped Destruction, Ri Opằ worshiped Chaos, Kathzun worshiped Darkness, and the other worshiped Nightmare. Some say their plan had the blessing of the ancient old ones. No one knows for sure.”
Lilly lifted her head from John’s cheek and looked him in the eye. “Their plan was to kill all the other g’athu, even their own children. And they did. Besides the one whose name I forget. The Butcher killed that g’athu. It’s said the Butcher used to worship Curiosity but switched to Nightmare when Curiosity became Betrayal. Regardless, there’s only four different kinds of g’athu now.”
Lilly put her head back on John’s cheek and said, “They somehow figured out the budding stuff. All the Vos are copies of the original Vos, etcetera. For the most part. They think and act exactly alike. I’m guessing the g’athu sent to Terra are the Vos kind. They’re the most numerous. The Kathzun kind are the weakest in the Mortal Tree due to rage issues that cool as she ascends, so hopefully it’ll be her. The Ri Opằ are probably the most reasonable and easiest to deal with – for psychos, but they have the best tech too so hope it’s not them.
“I’ve never met the Butcher kind. I heard the core has him contained and takes outbreaks very seriously. Even the other g’athu hate them. Him. None of them work together, but the only g’athu other g’athu hate as much as they do everyone else are Butchers. They’re using demons from a tenth ring planet so it can’t be him. And the core has him contained.”
Lilly started to rub her fingers up and down John’s neck in a seductive way and John tensed up. She said, “Oh, come on! You’re such a prude now. I can’t even caress you? Fine, I’ll stop. This is important, so listen. The g’athu are powerful even without their tech. All the g’athu have the same aspects and concepts. We just call it ‘psion’ to cover their full powerset.
“It works slightly differently for the four versions of g’athu, but generally at Wood they can trick minds, at Bronze they can damage minds, and at Gold they can control minds. If you care to know, Diamonds have telekinesis, and their early Transcendents have precognition.” Lilly leaned back and looked John in the eye again. “Want me to keep going?”
John said, “No. Only up to Gold matters. Will they be able to do that to me? Trick me? Or damage and control my mind?”
Lilly put her head back on John’s cheek. “I doubt it. I’m safe too. Very few things that have a negative effect on the mind work on me. Probably for the same reason I can see Amber and all that. I have a Divine soul and keep a lot of other cool shit besides. Just remember, I’m not a kid despite this body. I’m not that much younger than you are. Want to join the mile-high club, cowboy?”
“What is this club?”
Lilly sighed. “It’s nothing you’re interested in, prude. I wish you’d…”
Amber ranking up interrupted Lilly. Both she and John looked over at the frog. The frog only remained for a moment before it transformed into a demon then into a young woman. Great gods below, she is so beautiful, thought John.
Lilly looked at John with a scowl on her face, as if she knew his thoughts. Amber pumped her arm in the air and said, “Peak, baby! Still keeping my lead over you, John! Woohoo! Bronze, here I come!”
An excited smile beamed from Amber’s face and seeing it sent butterflies swarming around John’s stomach. Both John and Lilly said, “Congratulations,” at the same time. Lilly laughed and said, “Jinx, you owe me a Coke.”
John replied, “I…what? I’m jinxed? How? And why? You want charcoal? For your witchery? Or do you mean you want me to make you a piece of jewelry as I used to? Actually, I do have jewelry for you. I have a new spatial ring. Maybe you can let Amber borrow it to see what’s in it?”
John fished the ring out of his pocket and gave it to his wife and she gave it to Amber. They spent some time on logistics and dumped much of the gear he recently acquired when the pilot complained about weight changes over a speaker, and they had to go about it more carefully.
John took all the crystals from the new ring into his old ring. There were only two light-green crystals, nineteen dark yellow, thirty light yellow, and around four hundred clear crystals. He gave Amber some yellow and light-green crystals to store in the new ring for her and Hubaba to use while meditating. He also unattuned his cap, left it on still, and attuned the band of suffering necklace. He still couldn’t decide what arm would be better to place the bracer on, so he left it in his ring.
John stored the phone Lilly gave him in a pouch, though he doubted he’d ever use it. He hated phones and how Amber would send men that were strangers crude pictures of herself. He thought it was disgusting and made her low.
Muzaran’s ring only had the crystals, a sword, books, medals, awards, a formal military outfit, some robes, a set of leather and scale armor, and two additional sets of the slick and shiny black outfits covered in areas with armor plating.
Lilly stated those shiny black armor sets had great protection and a great essence-shield that self-activated, and all three of them should change into that armor. She couldn’t attune her outfit to herself but since the essence-shield worked independently it still was a boon for her. Attuning the armor increased the [Physical Fortification] and [Elemental Fortification] the armor provided.
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John removed his leather armor and put on the new black armor. He couldn’t attune it yet, and he thought about going through heavier sets with his wife as she could tell him what the runes did. He still had the block of armor called Bulwark, though he needed to ascend more before being able to use it.
The new armor shrunk down to fit them all perfectly, and John had to force himself not to spy on Amber’s backside with his orb-eye after she exited the small waste-room of the plane after changing.
Most of the new gear and even most of the lower-tier gear in John’s ring went into the new ring that was lent to Amber, as well as all the outfits Amber wanted access to along with the books and other junk.
With the gear taken care of, Lilly said, “Adon, I doubt the g’athu sent a Gold to deal with Woods. They would’ve sent a Wood. So, the members of the G40 won’t be mind controlled. If the g’athu have heard of you, I wouldn’t be surprised if they send a Gold. Just follow my lead and let me do all the talking. I’ve had a lot of dealings with the g’athu, both as ally and enemy.
“Some of their tech will only work for their higher tiers, but most of it’s made to work regardless of tier, so even their Woods pack a punch. Oh, if a non-Vos picks up a piece of Vos tech, it explodes, and that’s true for all of them. So don’t touch anything they drop. I doubt this is going to be a fight, but this stuff is good to know. All the tech on their corpses will explode if you try to loot them. Got it?”
John and Amber said they did, and Lilly repeated to Amber what she missed about the g’athu.
Lilly and Amber continued to discuss the g’athu, but John was too distracted with cycling to pay close attention.
Cycling with the band of suffering attuned was painful, both in a normal and abnormal sense. The pain was tolerable to John, but the tingling and pins-and-needles feeling it caused to his insides was nearly enough to drive him mad, and it became worse when he tried meditating, almost stopping him from reaching a state he could gather energy with. If he hadn’t had practiced the same way of meditating for so long, and had been so inured and detached to pain, misery, and discomfort, he would have had far more of an issue meditating.
All in all, John understood why it was called a band of suffering. It definitely slowed his energy gathering down, but not by all that much. If he ignored the pain and pushed through, he gathered energy at close to his usual rate. And if he pushed through the pain, which he did, it left his meridians feeling raw and aching after meditation and cycling, and he hoped that was normal and strengthening them.
After looking around, John changed his plan to practice with blade energy. It was too risky, and even if he found a safe way to practice, he knew Lilly and Amber would probably yell at him until he stopped.
Great gods below, women can be annoying. Hubaba isn’t much better. I wish I could make copies of myself like the g’athu do so I could have interesting conversations with someone that thinks and behaves correctly. And has the right views of honor, thought John.
Instead, John practiced all the steps he had learned of blade energy, stopping just short of flinging it forward off of his blade. He would go through all the steps and restart again from the beginning. And even though he merely held Fireblade in his hand and did nothing dangerous, both Lilly and Amber kept looking at him annoyedly, like he was a child bothering them.
John wasn’t too worried about the g’athu. He had an uncanny ability to shrug off anything related to the mind, and that seemed to be all the g’athu had. He already faced the advanced tech of the demon War Academy and won, so he wasn’t worried about the g’athu tech.
What bothered John was that the rulers of Earth would consider a treaty with the g’athu, and that Lilly didn’t seem to think it was a bad thing since she and he would survive it. Would Amber and Hubaba survive? How many humans would? He was of the belief he should just kill them all. He decided to keep an open mind and see what President Gillis wanted. He wasn’t even sure it was about the g’athu.
Lilly asked if John would mind if she drank some of his essence while he practiced whatever he was doing, and he agreed and cut into his left arm.
Later, the pilot spoke over the speaker and told them to prepare for the descent. John was surprised as he was led to believe the flight would be much, much longer. Lilly said, “You have no idea how lucky you are. This is some sort of experimental aircraft. Yemen to DC is probably like twenty hours non-stop. We were going to do it in under ten hours. We got word we were going to Hawaii not too long after taking off. I hate flying, and shorter flights are good.
“Oh, me and Amber flew on some sort of hypersonic aircraft with no wings to Yemen. She had to fly as a frog the whole time to keep the weight down. It was crazy. I couldn’t even move. They thought it would kill me. The gees in this aircraft really bother me too, and it’s going much slower. Remember, I have no open cores.”
After landing, the three companions flew on a helicopter to a large building as John practiced the steps of blade energy the whole time, doing his best to ignore all else. The building was surrounded by the military, and inside were many tough-looking soldiers.
The three companions were informed President Gillis wanted to talk to John alone, and he was escorted to a large room with a giant and long table surrounded by a ton of chairs. Many televisions lined two of the walls. Ten soldiers stood about the room.
John spent countless time on guard duty as a soldier himself, so he knew the men wouldn’t be allowed to converse. He waited silently instead of asking questions.
Men in dark outfits, some wearing dark glasses, entered the room. After three entered, a small and elderly woman entered, followed by three more men in dark outfits. The small woman had short white hair and wore a similar outfit as her escorts, but her outfit was white and lacked the neck decoration her escorts all wore. He remembered the Havarti light cavalry making that neck decoration popular throughout Europe.
The woman smiled brightly and marched up to John with her hand outstretched. “Hello. President Gillis. I’m told it’s just John, right? Well, feel free to call me Kathy. Please, sit.”
Both John and President Gillis sat on the same side of the table after facing their chairs towards one another, which annoyed John as he felt President Gillis was too close to him. “Okay, John, let’s get to it. I won’t lie – all this crazy shit…I wasn’t prepared for it and I’m out of my depth. I might be the last person on Earth to open a core. I haven’t had a minute to myself since the invasions started.
“I nuked my own people, I nuked one of our closest allies, and I count myself lucky I’m responsible for killing so few. Our en...some other countries can’t say the same. The last demon portal has three Golds and they’re tearing through India unopposed. You and your friends have done well, but this is a losing battle. We’ve lost far, far too many already.”
President Gillis reached out and put a hand on John’s knee. “The g’athu have been mostly peaceful. I missed the press conference and meeting with you earlier this morning because one of them approached us. They want to form an alliance. They’ll take care of the remaining demons. Earth…I mean Terra, will join the faction the g’athu belong to called the Forsaken. They’ll protect us and integrate us into the universe.
“The G40 voted earlier today. Thirty-eight want to take the deal. I don’t see another way out of this without millions and millions more dying. Likely, billions.”
President Gillis patted John’s knee. “The issue is we can’t accept the deal. Somehow, you’re considered the leader of Ea…Terra. You’re not interested in running this planet, now, are you? Not from what I’ve heard. I’m going to need you to pass the torch to me. It’s easily done through the NCS.”
John looked President Gillis in the eye and replied, “No.”