Chapter 37: War is coming

Adam looked out across the city, its seeming normality was jarring, after all he’d been through. The women had left, as had Bones. But they had left Adam with secrets about the Elios system. Well Adam, thought he needed to hell out of Houston, as he placed the undersized Stetson on his head.

Sugar was pissed not because of the loss of a hat but the loss of a certain Kitsune. She needed to find her trail and quick. If only, to get her cut. Many others zeroed in on this bounteous location.

When Adam got back to the House of Lazure’s camp, everyone was getting packed up.

“I thought we weren’t leaving till the end of the week.” Enquired Adam. Finding his senior looking ruffled, calling out orders to his men.

“The news isn’t good for us or you, things aren’t going well on the frontlines. I shouldn’t be telling you this but you’ll find out soon enough and you’d better be prepared. Its void beasts, a whole army of them. And we just happen to be one of the nearest planets in the system.” His senior Kemp, dropped the bad news with no great fanfare.

Adam didn’t need to pack up his stuff, his belongs were of course in his new pocket dimension. Libby had worked out how to tie a line, a connection between a spot in the shadow realm and their pocket dimension. She had also been able to enlarge the pocket dimension (pd) considerably. They had after all received a massive influx of SP after having to destroy their second connection to the Elios system. From what the Kitsune had told him it didn’t matter whether the Elios system found out. It was sooner or later going to turn into a game of cat and mouse, or maybe cat and fox.

What to do? The whole point of signing up was to meet up with Sam, not get mixed up in someone else’s war. Although he supposed the destruction of the multi-verse would also cause problems for the many millions of Earthlings who had signed up and already left earth. Actually, Sam would soon enough be drawn into the war as well. At that point he made his decision.

Li and Iakesi, jumped from rooftop to rooftop, chasing the rays of the sun. They needed to get to home ground asap. She had no idea, well no exact idea of what would happen once she delivered her message to Adam. How could she know? Once the she had changed the situation, once she had created a divergence there was no way of telling, until that is she had another vision. And that might be some time, as right now things were getting a little busy.

They dropped off the side of a building, and swung from fire escape platform to platform, until they reached the ground. Iakesi could travel far quicker but with her disciple in toe, she had to do things the old fashioned way.

Li was not enjoying the workout, after fighting that enforcer she could really do with a bit of a rest up. She felt drained, low on qi, not qi-ed up. What was her master doing? First pissing of the enforcers, which she didn’t really mind, they were pigs. Li was getting ansy, things were starting to piss Li off.

They eventually got their destination, a venue, in a small alley of Piccadilly. It had been a little pub, and was operating now as a meet up point. Her master went and Li went to follow but her master came out just as quickly, as she went in. Pushing Li by the shoulder, she rough housed her back onto the street. Now what? She could do with a sit down and a bite to eat.

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They came out and something was different. Li couldn’t put her finger on it for a second. Then she realised apart from the splashing of rain there was no noise. The people in the alley way all stopped, staring at Li and her master. What had they done? Did they look funny of something? Then they moved, the people were weird, all lifeless eyes and juddering movements. Had she just walked into a zombie movie? She’d always thought I’d be cool, now she was not so sure.

She took her stance, a few goons wasn’t going to spoil her day. Even if they were zombie goons. But again her master almost took her off her feet, grabbing her by the shoulder and pulling her away. Then dragging her down the rain soaked alley out into a street, then abruptly coming to a standstill. WTF. Ah, ok, understandable. There were more, lots more, pouring down the alleyway towards them, and every one of them from one faction or another.

They had triangulated on their position, blocking every route. Li stopped breathing hard, clutching at her sword hilt. Her master nodded and she drew her blade. The street was lit up like a firework display as every faction member unleashed their most devastating attacks.

Sam had enjoyed her time with the godless faction. Once they’d stopped feeding her those goddam elixirs anyway. She liked it most to see the faces of the disciples who were taking the elixirs getting trampled under her sword strikes. She loved showing those stupid sec members that they didn’t know everything and that all their cheap jibs about her being useless were rubbish. It was time was a little retribution. Well they had made her fight before when she was sick. And now she was sick and tired of their bullshit.

She slapped away the pathetic sword strike of her opponent. The pure force of her counter, making them stumble back. She toyed with them. She could see it was annoying some of the trainers, but clearly not enough. What she really wanted was a decent opponent. But oh, no, they were only allowed to spar with the other new initiates. Trainers would give pointers but not do any sparring. Aggravating. She felt kind of sorry, and not sorry at the same time as she now just hammered strike after strike at her quivering opponent. As they kneeled raising their blade to block the barrage of attacks. They conceded the fight.

She saw someone she didn’t recognise whispering in old Andro’s ear. Then he came over. Time for more admonishments, fair enough I did go a little too far this time.

Andro led Sam off to a private area and asked her to sit down, He sat as he always did opposite her, offering her bloody tea.

“Drink the tea young disciple.” Andro ordered, well naturedly. Though she could see there was a worried look in her eye. Shit, thought Sam could she be thrown out of the sect?

Sam felt herself calm down as she sipped on the tea, eyeing Andro apprehensively. Once Andro saw she had taken a few sips he continued talking, “Sam you have a condition” I went to interrupt I had heard all this before.

“No that is part of it but not the whole. You have a condition that has been triggered by us giving you those elixirs. We had no idea but are no lesson responsible. It’s just your condition is so rare that we never suspected for a moment. In fact if it wasn’t for Senior Master Equos, no action would have been taken in this matter.” Andro related.

“Are you going to cut to the chase” Sam said belligerently. She prefered plain speaking especially when it involved her own health.

“You may have been infected since coming from earth. Infected with something that will completely take over your body if not stopped. It will technically, kill you.” Andro stated, looking for a reaction in Sam’s eyes.

“There is a cure but it will mean travelling away from this place. You would have to travel with Equos and a few selected others to find the necessary medicines.” Andros continued, worriedly.

“Ok. It’s a rare condition I get it. But why the journey? Couldn’t someone just go get the medicine?” Sam was now just plain confused.

“The whereabouts of the medicine, means travelling to enemy sect territories. Also you would need to take the medicine straight way hence you would need to be present” Andros finished.

Next you’ll be telling me were off to meet up with some dwarves and supplies, off to the land of the elves, I thought.