Thank the gods, it is over. Cove was sore, exhausted, physically clean, and desperately needed a spiritual bath. The memory of his wife’s pained face hovered in his mind as he exited the locker room. How is Keeva doing? Will she even look at me when I get back to the hotel?
Two days ago, Cove had entered the Temple, passed the Seekers with Sera’s help, greeted the men serving with him, and captured their faces and forms before descending to the lower chambers.
He did his duty without complaint. Yet, he hadn’t found relief, pleasure, or amusement in the service for the first time in years. His heart and mind had been with Keeva, not the scores of women seeking to bear his child. It showed. For the first time, he had not had repeat visits.
The hallway and lobby floated past his vision as the performance-enhancing drugs and blissfire mists started to fade from his mind. His fingers massaged the growing aches that always accompanied the withdrawal. Several women smiled and thanked him for his service. He nodded, looked away, and kept walking. A sigh escaped his grim face as he thought: To the nine hells with them. I did my duty. There is only one woman I want to please and pleasure.
Keeva. Give me two days alone with Keekee. Heaven.
Now that a temple healer had recorded the conception of their son, the children he seeded in any woman would begin to count towards the obligations of his breeding license, thanks to some somewhat twisted privacy laws. Unless the Riddere had a cause, it would be more than a decade before government agencies would gain access to the genetic heritage of his children. It was the only positive from the last two days.
Cove’s soul ached, reaching towards the heavens, yearning for something or someone honest, an actual God with absolute power and authority. He whispered as he prayed to the unknown true God, spoken of by Lady Amelia. “I hope you are real. Please help Keeva and my children understand our relationships so that they can survive while I pay my debt to the temple. I lived a half-life before Kee and would be dead without her. Our girls would help me continue, but it would be a half-life, a ghoul’s existence; I would be an animated carcass if Keekee left.”
Cove opened the golden doors and left the temple. The sun burned in the late afternoon sky. Mater, the moon, the legendary home of Amelia, the Goddess of Motherhood, drifted towards its solstice. The Amelia Festival, harvest celebration, and gathering of everything sown during the Amekia Festivities would begin. The produce of fields and orchards would be gathered, the offspring of every creature would breathe their first breath, and every human would celebrate their birth. It was a time to remember the labors that brought life and look forward to the future.
It also caused chaos for the government records department. In Porto alone, tens of thousands of children would be born, as many youths would become teenagers, and half as many again would come to the party city of Heim to mature into adults. All would require new identification documents. This was the last week before the insanity began, and everyone enjoyed the last dregs of sanity.
Thanks to the Temple healer, he walked, no longer suffering from a broken ankle. He passed between scores of statues of Amekia, progressing from mother and child, backward, week by week, through the stages of pregnancy, to her in the embrace of a faceless man, then through the significant moments of a woman’s life, ending with her as an infant in her mother’s arms at the gates. This is sexist. Yes, Amekia is the goddess of fertility, but a woman's value extends far beyond her sex organs.
Threig, the god he worshiped with Keeva, focused on knowledge above all else. Learning was good, but life couldn’t be the pure pursuit of knowledge. The single-minded obsessive focus was wrong, not just of Threig or Amekia but all of Heim’s pantheon. There seemed to be a deity for everything except a balanced life. For that matter, what about an actual deity, a truly divine being, not a jumped-up human with eternal life bestowed by technology? Was there a real god?
The Goddess Amelia said she wasn’t a god but hinted she knew of a real one. Could she tell him about this unknown deity? Can I speak to this divine entity, and would it listen? Would it care?
The sunset left the gentle glow of Mater to light the sky as Cove caught the ring-road bus. He wanted to go to the hotel, kiss Keeva, and sleep. Instead, he got off three stops into the Government district. He walked along concrete paths lined with colorful ovoid-shaped stones towards a fifty-story glass eyesore that could, from above, with a generous helping of imagination, look like half of an enormous egg. Walkways extended to circular observation platforms every fifteen floors, north and south. An oval monument along the path said: Riddere, Southern Heim Office Tower.
Cove reached into his pocket and pulled out his ID folder. A Riddere identification and badge sat where his papers should have been. How did Gath and Essie exchange his ID? He knew better than to guess, but when? It had to have been after he left the temple, but how? Knowing wasn’t necessary. He had the pass, and the picture helped him find the correct template in his mental library.
A chuckle escaped his lips and grew into a muted comedy villain cackle. What he was about to do anywhere else in Porto would have drawn every seeker in the city. Yet here, On the front lawn of the agency tasked with capturing the cursed and turning them into agents, drones, or human cattle, there were so many mages using their gifts that distinguishing legitimate from illegitimate power was impossible. Cove previewed the model data, walked into the shade of an apple tree, picked a giant pear, and savored the juicy fruit as he transformed into Brigadier General George Poff. His face, hair, musculature, voice, and blood type all transformed; only his height remained the same.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
Cove stumbled and whispered, “What the—,” as a small duffel materialized by his feet.
Essie’s giggle filled his mind as she thought: Mister Saille said you forgot this.
Cove knelt to pick up the tube as he whispered, “Oh, thank the gods, if you can carry that, then you must have advanced your invisible skills enough to be dressed.”
An embarrassed giggle came from his left. “Not yet.”
“Then who brought the pack?”
“I did,” whispered Gath.
“Essie, you… are you…? Gath! Please tell me that my niece is not—”
“Geez, Uncle Cove! I am not an exhibitionist like Lyra, Bree, or Penny! I’m wearing my armor liner and swimsuit. I’d dress like Aunt Keekee, but this is all I can vanish at my tier.”
Cove glanced around as he thought: I wish I had my Azure suit.
Cove started, his eyes scrambling as Essie and Gath giggled and snickered, their voices darting around him like teenagers waging a tickle war.
Essie said, “Oh, yeah, Uncle Cove, I can see it now. Walking around Porto, you glowing like a lighthouse,” she snorted a laugh, “not conspicuous at all.”
She was right, but without the armor’s reservoir of Elystria, he was limited to the power stored within his body. Yes, his tissues hummed, and his glands sloshed with ten times the energy of just a few months ago, yet… he sighed… his natural reservoir was a piss in the wind compared to the ocean stored within his armor. It would have to do.
Cove found a public restroom and began changing into a Riddere brigadier’s uniform. His head spun. “Essie?”
Silence.
She’d better not be in here…
A toilet flushed in the next stall, followed by the click and squeak of the door. “Brigadier, you’re girl ain’t here.”
“Thanks,” said Cove with more than a bit of embarrassment. He finished tying his shoes as the other man washed his hands and left. He paused, opening the stall door as muted familiar giggles filled the restroom. “I do not believe in ghosts or snickering spirits. I trust whoever is out there will behave themselves and not give me a reason to speak to their fathers.”
“Yes, sir,” said Gath and Essie, their muted whispers full of giggles.
Cove rolled his eyes and left the building, leaving the crowded concrete walk and strolling across the grass. Every few steps began with a muddy splash and ended with a sucking squelch. To his right, a fifteen-minute walk away, on the far side of a short wall, ocean waves curled and crashed over a long sandy beach. Music from a dozen bars and dance clubs and the chatter of Riddere functionaries heading for a night on the town replaced the fading patter of rain. Lyra, Bree, and probably Penny would be in the last club, the Cotton Tail. Keeva might be chaperoning—probably not. He’d bet a hundred grams of Azure Keekee was across the street at their hotel. The dance hall, open on two sides to Jelray beach, one of the few public naturist beaches outside of Bordelwald, wasn’t somewhere Kee would be comfortable.
An unfamiliar reflection met his hand as he reached for the mirrored doors. He recalled the face from the Amekia Temple. A quiet man with a ready smile and a hundred tails of his sailor wife. The dignified soldier had proudly displayed the muscles he had earned climbing the stairs to his office on the twentieth floor and preached the blessings of physical exercise. He pasted on the barest hint of a smile, recalled two anecdotes, presented his ID to the reader, and pulled open the door.
Something invisible bumped past him as he entered. It took everything he had not to growl or trip. Being followed inside by Essie and Gath was not part of his plan.
The noxious, almost sweet stink of lowest-bidder industrial disinfectants struck like a barrage of forty-centimeter naval cannons. Cove moaned through a hand he didn’t remember cupping over his face. “Who died?”
“Sorry, Brigadier,” said a teenager, his words muffled by his respirator mask. He plunked his mop into his bucket and pushed the painfully yellow container out of Cove’s path. “Someone caught… Hey Kenny, what did that sop catch?”
“I don’t know, jelly rash?”
“Jelray Pox,” said Cove.
“Yeah, that was it. The bratty pellet jumped from the balcony on the thirtieth floor. Now we have to scrub the whole building.”
“I had it in lower grade,” said Cove.
Every child raised in small towns and villages caught Jelray Pox. It was a childhood disease; you suffered in your youth and lived the rest of your life in peace. Cove recalled enduring a week outside naked as a sailor with swollen droui glands, fever, itch, and luminescent purplish spots. His mother had rubbed sun-warmed clover on his skin and fed him thistle root tea laced with blissfire. She had cradled him on the beach, rocking, petting his hair, and telling him fish stories and ancient legends. Both Feardorcha and Wasserlyn had visited. Their apology had made him laugh, yet now he wondered. Why would they feel the need to apologize?
City kids living inside concrete, steel, and glass, breathing filtered air, drinking purified water, and eating prepared meals rarely came down with Jelray Pox, and that was a problem. For a non-mage, the older you got, the stronger the symptoms, and by adulthood, Jelray Pox only had two cures: becoming a mage or death. Most adults choose to die, unwilling to accept the stigma of magic, losing their status, and risking slavery.
Cove walked through the open security barriers, waved at the guard and the pair of security velociraptors at his side, and began climbing stairs. Cove kept walking as the raptors barked.
“There’s nothin’ there, Ripper,” said the guard. “It's just the cleaning crew and Brigadier Poff.”
Shite thought Cove as he rested a hand on the egg-shaped newel post cap. Following me inside was not part of the plan. Gath and Essie are going to get themselves killed. His head spun back over his shoulder. He gulped, ready to shout a warning. It was too late.