I was full blown fighting with myself in that moment, so much so that I couldn’t even hear Kraken yelling advice through our mental link. The largest part of me wanted to dive into that little nugget of information and parse through every bit of knowledge for myself. I could feel the compacted swirl of different lives’ worth of memories tucked away in that tempting little marble, begging to be learned and experienced just one more time. Oh the things I could LEARN!
The other, somewhat more sensible part of me, understood that real life does not wait for anyone, let alone almost immortal sorcerers. It marches on, giving two shits about whatever the fuck I actually wanted to do. My meager sense of responsibility did however manage to pull my head outta’ my ass and redirect my attention in the proper direction. Figuring out that I at least owed it to the people that I’d saved thus far, I secreted the orb full of knowledge away into Gungnir’s storage space as I stepped out of my stone dome to manage the rabble, barely able to handle ignoring the greenish-blue strands of memories calling out to me, fragments of memories such as a skeletal hand peeling a young girl’s skin off in the shape of a page or a condensed series of images of a young boy growing trees and pulping them in liquid mana that flowed a soft sky blue.
Time only made it worse. My attention frayed during the long week in which I was forced to hold everyone’s hand. And this was irritating the longer it dragged on the more I wanted to just bury everyone below the bedrock since I had plenty of my own shit that I actually wanted to do.
But no, I did the adult thing. I knuckled down and buried the green monster rearing its ugly head. I wiped everyone else's asses before taking off and doing my own thing. First, I had my elemental sergeants continue the effort of combing through wrecked suburbia and returning the area to its peaceful, pre-human era by getting rid of any and all buildings that I hadn’t specifically said were exempt from magical bulldozing. It’s only good business to make sure the undead roaches didn’t have hidey-holes to wait me out and then surprise-murder the people here when I leave. Part two consisted of using those same elementals to set up the basics of shelter complete with pre-carved runes for me to empower that allowed for basic air conditioning and water conjuration so people could actually live in this bum ass part of Arizona.
The Luneks plus the meager amount of humans from Remy and Fernando’s group ended up settling by the nearby river that nobody could remember the name of and I made a few solar panels for them to experiment with even though the Luneks would probably lose their shit over it. Several large columns of transmuted crystal were planted into the earth so that only about three feet of them were sticking out of the ground, each column covered with molded granite and connected to solar panels that I carefully built so they could be the inhabitants emergency mana batteries for whatever the hell they wanted.
Part three of easing my conscience consisted of making and following through on the offer to transport any person that didn’t want the desert life to join the group at New Richmond, which pretty much all of the humans did. Except for one lonely bastard who said ‘fuck this’ and hiked down the river at sunrise. Ignoring the old foo, I left Kraken in Sunstone Castle to repair the sixty or so golems that had been damaged and also to boost production until I was sitting on five thousand golems. The caveat I mentioned was that after the repairs to the original army, the main priority was to allow the underground batteries to be charged up to full first, just in case I had to deploy to Greenland early.
Under the efforts of my army, directed by Kraken and myself, Phoenix, Arizona took on a very different, more natural look than it sported in the past hundred years of human development. Gone were the slender metal mountains giving the sky the middle finger in the wretched desert heat and in their places stood humble stone longhouses and a few large barns in the distance closer to the river. As Severak and his group of unstable Luneks wanted to stay in the inhospitable desert, I figured I might as well let them, but giving them the basics of shelter and magic A.C. allowed my conscience to be free and clear.
By the time I had shaken out every last straggler and shuttled them to where they needed to be, I finally noticed that Acantha, Remy, Fernando, Versonae, and Arglyn were tiptoeing around like I was some magical giant on a rampage.
“What?” I cursed, whipping around as I returned to Phoenix from my last trip to New Richmond. “What is it? Is it something I did or said? Did I suddenly get really ugly?”
All five stared at me as if I actually had grown another head. Acantha’s hair glowed with the warmth of a living fire as Remy and Fernando looked at each other, Remy’s dark skin glistening already with sweat even as Fernando’s tanned complexion welcomed the sun. Versonae’s light feline coloring served to deflect the sun’s rays even as the heat was just starting to ramp up which was causing Arglyn to pant.
“Here.” Acantha reached forward a fist, turning it over and opening it to reveal several clumps of fur. “I figured you forgot this for your DNA bank. It’s a chunk of fur from every Lunek here.”
“It’s kinda creepy that you let people experiment on themselves, hombre.” Fernando cut in, fingering the grip of his magical bats. “I mean, I know it’s voluntary but damn, that’s some freaky shit right there.”
Not willing to argue the morals of self-medication or experimentation, I gave a quick thanks and snatched the clumps, feeding them to my little flesh golem as I muttered my thanks. I watched the surreptitious glances they all gave each other, clearly they had more than enough time to talk and get each other up to speed. I wasn’t privy to the details but this group right here was already on the fast track to becoming friends.
Irritating, but probably inevitable. I had my own plans that took priority. Arglyn and Versonae were two powerful Luneks, the best of their tribe according to what Severak claimed as well as what Kraken’s and my own magical senses said. These two were going to be bodyguards for Johnny and Reeanth, they just didn’t know it yet.
Two days later . . .
“Yo! Quit droppin’ off your damn strays, man!” Scott half-heartedly growled as he sullenly pulled on a beer as Mark downed his own right next to him. Night falls very differently in the forest of the Eastern United States compared to the majestic hush of the desert sunset. The deciduous landscape heralds its own darkening as the trees do their best to shade the forest floor well before the sun has truly fallen. The desert comes alive at night, but simply can’t compare to the sheer amount of life in the forest. And humanity seems to be dead set on adding to the cacophony.
“Keep’em comin!” Mark countered loudly, glaring at Scott as he slammed his own mug into the tree stump table we were sitting at, wiping off the humidity induced sweat. New Richmond had really come along in the time that I’d been gone, so much so that they easily had more than enough space to accommodate the refugees I’d dumped on their doorstep. Remy and Fernando took to the people here as if it had been home all along for them and Versonae and Arglyn weren’t looked at twice. Johnny and Reeanth were still shooting glares at me as I had told them the night before about my plan for the two Luneks to be their bodyguards but it didn’t faze me at all. Mostly they were pissed that I left them behind to conquer a city without them.
“Look! Just because you found a way to make ‘the world’s best magical wood’ from pumping saplings full of mana and trading it to the Conglomerate for alcohol doesn’t mean you should drink it all!” Both Cassandra and Lovera were standing in front of the fire as they chewed out the men, the background of flames giving them the ‘Hell-derived-authority’ look.
“What?” That made my head spin. Just how far into multi-dimensional commerce did this group of idiots get while I was gone? “Who? Didn’t they fuckin’ take a chunk of humanity for a while for all kinds of shit? I have so many questions about this!”
Mark and Scott both let out competing burps as Jamal popped out of the woodline, his dark green and black scales almost making look like an avenging shadow. “Yup! Until the Centauri put the screws to’em to put chunks of us back!” Reaching over, he snatched a beer and cracked it as he looked towards the treeline. “Hey! Come on out Lyra!”
As the slinky form of my forest’s secondary guardian unfurled from the shadow, her approach was far more hesitant than the overbearing dragonized man who towered over most of us.
“Something about a witch coven asking politely for the seed humans to be put back for later?” Scott mused aloud, not even noticing the womanly figure coming towards the group. “The cyborgs don’t notice how much they talk when you drink with’em.”
“Yes, darling?” Lyra asked, flowing through the shadows as if made for them. Time with Jamal had done her good apparently. The squinted line to her brow was gone giving her face the much needed softness that served as a dryad’s natural lure. As the moment of hesitation fell away, Lyra willingly sauntered to her nook underneath Jamal’s outstretched arm, planting a wet kiss on his lips as she smoldered in the evening light.
“Who are you and what have you done with Leafy?” I joked, chucking a little acorn at her. “Did he pull that giant stick out of your ass or is that a different process with dryads? Maybe stickin’ one in?”
That coy little smile let me know that I was most likely on the right track. Good thing I could magically control my sex drive, otherwise I’d never have gotten anything done. Ever. More dryads lazily hung about in the edges of the clearing, giving lusty smiles to any male that looked their way. The night fell away as I found myself partying just as hard as the refugees here, anything to relieve the stress of the past months and I even saw some of the human refugees from Arizona throwin’ em back.
It was weird though, the way I saw myself as different than human. It’s not just about having an upgraded body with magical reptilian vitality, but the mindset itself was different. No longer would my lifespan be limited to the average eighty years. No longer would a bone break set me back in life by a few months, laid up to heal. No longer would I have to deal with the concept of running out of time, because that simply wasn’t the case anymore. My magic, my sorcery, my very course of life altered the little stream that is me.
And so for tonight, I partied.
During the party, I took the opportunity to force my new crew together under the influence of potent alcohol, pouring mugs of the dark brown stuff at a table and dragging people over. Arglyn sat heavily down across from Johnny as Versonae gracefully took her seat across from Reeanth. Acantha delicately sipped at her own mug across from me while Remy and Fernando watched from the other table, curious as to why they weren’t there with us.
“Everyone,” I started, looking at the five sitting around me. “Look at the person across from you. That’s your new partner. Arglyn, meet Johnny. Johnny is a kick-ass cultivator and Arglyn is a giant meat shield. Reeanth, meet Versonae. I’m pretty sure you both will have a good time together. And last but certainly not least, Acantha is the flaming witch over there, my vassal? Partner? Not really sure where you stand other than the fact that you’re the replacement for my brother till he gets back. Anyways, the general idea is that we’ll be in teams in the near future as we are literally almost ready to assault the North fucking Pole. Questions?”
To be fair, the drunken stupor was to be expected as we were at least three hours into slamming back the alien liquor, or at least I was. “The only one who can say ‘no’ here is Johnny, just a reminder,” I clarified, conjuring ice cups and filling them up with water for the table while properly stumbling through my words. “Johnny is my friend but the rest of ya are my ‘vassals’, voluntarily except for the furries.”
“My lord, I don’t believe a drunken planning session is the best idea,” Reeanth cautioned, pulling my mug out of my hand. “Maybe when the sun rises we’ll have fresh minds for planning.”
“Bullshit!” Johnny yelled, standing up so fast he knocked over all the cups. “It’s the best time! I always wrote my papers drunk in school! Get’s that creativity goin’!”
“Damn right!” I agreed, waving my hand and covering the table in ice, shaping it to form what I remembered of Acantha’s rendition of the Hungry One’s fortress. Quickly snagging a downed mug, I refilled it before putting more detail into the icy rendition. The simulated ground was mostly flat in stark contrast to the gigantic, zombie and skeleton covered fortress complete with little ice sculptures of dragons, wyverns, dinosaurs, freaky things-BOOM! Reeanth slammed her maul into my sculpture, pulping it without destroying the table.
“Hell no!” Seems like I’m not the only one having a good time. “Have you even tried talking to them?” The entire table went silent as Reeanth’s words stumbled out the way my legs were doing.
“To the who?” Johnny asked, his eyes focusing in and out.
Taking a deep breath and gathering herself, Reeanth sat back down. “If they can build a castle then they can probably listen to reason. They are undead, not unthinking.”
Flames shot up into the sky as Acantha took a swig and melted the ice on the table. “You can’t reason with the undead! They already know what they want . . . you! They want your life, your blood, your soul, they want to drain you dry.”
It wasn’t funny because it was true, it was funny because Reeanth was plastered. Falling down, slur I mean shlurring her words all over the places as Johnny and Versonae did their best to hold her back and sometimes hold her up. Arglyn sat there glumly pounding his own drink as Versonae sipped at hers with wild eyes as she couldn’t help but watch these savage, uncouth humans drink themselves into the ground. We didn’t even notice the Karen-esque group as they moved closer to us with their arms crossed and faces pinched.
I could tell from their hoity-toity faces that they didn’t learn a goddamn thing from our last conversation, although from last time I distinctly remember three blondes, not four plus a brunette. Burping loudly as I rounded on them with a full mug, I squinted as their outlines sort of blurred together.
“And you fine ladies think we should deal with the Hungry Ones how?” My question caught them off guard as their prepared rant, I assumed, was of a different vein.
“Ignore them!” Jamal called out from the side, his hands mysteriously busy below the lip of the table as Lyra furiously blushed. “They’re just a little pent up is all . . .”
Two of the five faces went from pinched to livid and the other three simply incorporated the high-browed kind of sneering that you just want to smack it off, as in backwoods Alabama-beat-your-wife kind of smack, the almost comical horrific kind you see on crime shows.
“Kathicka, seriously, what now?” Mark gasped through his laughter, barely able to handle the ridiculousness of the womens’ faces. They were all screwed up as if we were obese pets, too fat to take care of ourselves and too stupid to know better. It rankled deep in my soul. “Nobody’s doing anything ‘odd’ or ‘weird’ around here.” The head blonde lady, so I assume, glared down her pert little nose at him even as Mark made finger quotes. “Don’t tell me you’re here for our big bad sorcerer?” He turned to make eyes and kissy faces at me.
I muttered a quick ‘fuck off’ and shoved Mark into Scott as Jamal snickered while poking a finger in and out of his other hand.
“So you show up, drink our booze, laugh with the men, and dump refugees on our doorstep? What right do you have? The gall!” That voice once was irritating, nasal, but now it was smooth and melodious, perfectly wrapped up in the kind of scorn that queens of old would pay good money for. It made me want to smack her more, and not in the good way. “And then you all have sex with those things!”
Elaine, Kathicka’s seeming number two brunette, cut in. “It isn’t right, it isn’t natural! They’re not even real women! They’re monsters!”
I flicked stray droplets of beer at them, pleased to watch the women draw back in disgust. “Thought we discussed this already?” I slurred, my eyes half open. “I do whatever the fuck I want, pretty much whenever I want.” With a small exertion of will, I rippled the dirt beneath Elaine’s feet and forcefully moved her entire body further away from me. “Ah! There, that’s much better. The stank of pettiness is beneath me!” I laughed, poking my finger onto the tip of my nose as I perked it up, making fun at her highbrow manner. “And until you can kick my ass or even give it the good old Southern try, then stay over there.”
Petty, yes, I know, so what. Ever met someone who’s face screamed something along the lines of ‘inherently predisposed to be a bitch due to genetics?’ It’s like the worst kind of bitch face. I don’t know how these freaking apocalypse survivors did it but fuck me man, they’re actually alive!
How?!
At what point do the attitudes shift, as in, ‘maybe I shouldn’t be a cunt today?’ Nope. They didn’t learn. The sudden snap-hiss combined with a horrible crackle sound was nothing compared to the long whip of liquid lightning that extended from each of their palms. Oddly hot in the flickering light. Real dominatrix vibes.
“Put’em down gals,” Mark ordered, his voice light as if ordering another drink. “We’ve been through this already, or have you forgotten your new leg already, Elaine?”
“Huh? Leg?” I asked, turning to Scott for clarification.
“Yup, they did a coup thing like a month ago but Mark shot Elaine in the leg! Blew the damn thing right off!” Scott chortled. “Guns still beat whips even when magic’s in play! Distance plays a role, but they wouldn’t know since they rarely get their hands dirty.”
Jamal laughed, wiping a tear from his eye. “If it weren’t for the flesh golem, we would’ve called her Stumpy!”
The whip lashed out to the side, cutting a nearby sapling neatly in two. “We’ve all learned a trick or two.” Kathicka’s grin was nothing short of boiling maliciousness as blue wisps of mana pooled out of her hands linking her together with her little posse, her own whips gaining an unnatural solidity as the left one speared forward, slicing the table in half. Drinks and shards of ice were flung everywhere as everyone drunkenly jumped and stumbled back as the table was sliced apart. “The Fae are more than willing to teach us the secrets of magic!”
Through the midst of everyone yelling a mix of ‘what the hell’ and ‘hey, fuck you’, Jamal didn’t play around. Kicking the largest chunk of shattered table at the whipping witches, he grabbed the next biggest piece and hurled it right after the first one. Elaine and Blondies One and Two behind Kathicka lashed the projectiles apart. “We women don’t have to live under the boot of men anymore!”
I stood up and yelled, drunkenly pointing in their general direction. “Hold the fucking phone! Ain’t this over the top?” Conjuring a swimming pool’s worth of water, I blasted the women and froze them to the ground. “What gives? Am I missing something here?”
It surprised me to find that Kathicka and them weren’t actually glaring at me, but at Jamal. If looks could kill he’d be the cheese grater version of himself plus or minus a dick.
“Jamal?” I asked, turning to look at him, his sheepish face telling most of the story.
“They don’t seem to be as open about sharing like me,” Lyra tittered from behind Jamal. “Once they had a taste of him they couldn’t seem to get enough. But dryads don’t mind sharing, in fact, we love it.”
“This is a sex problem?! Jealousy? Are you serious!? Is your life this small? How do you not have bigger concerns???” Kathicka’s group took a step back at my outburst, the sheer incredulousness of the underpinning reason.
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More red faces than I cared to believe confirmed the truth. I guess my flesh golem really did get rid of one thing, the fact that any violence short of death is pretty much acceptable. If you can just toss your severed arm into a magical healing blob and put your wounded stump on it and it goes away, then what’s the actual cost of violence? There really isn’t one then. They seemed to have figured that one out faster than I did.
“Seriously? Use the golem to freaking tune down your sex drives or something . . . sheesh!” Draining my mug, I lightly placed it down on a quickly conjured granite stool.
My attempts at drunken reasoning went right over their heads as each one of the contentious women crackled with lightning that bonded them all together like a web, levitating until they were about six feet off the ground. Each one had a golden necklace inset with a purple stone that hovered just above their chests. A quick look in the magical spectrum showed that there was another stone that the purple one was set into, the purple one linking their minds as the clear one functioned as some kind of elemental transmutation lens. The purplish energy seemed to flow around the crackling strands of lightning connecting them.
“Well that’s new!” I cursed, backing up and reaching for a ton of power, pointedly missing Kraken and Gungnir all the way in Arizona as I scrambled for my rifle.
“Not really!” Mark yelled as he and Scott took cover behind the trees at the edge of the clearing. “We fought them to a standstill last time they tried a coup but the floating shit is new!”
“That’s what I said! ‘That’s new!’” I snapped back.
Mark glared at me and then sadly at his smashed mug. “True, but in a different way, it’s basically the same situation.”
As one, the mini-coven spoke. “Kneel sorcerer! We have borne your derision long enough! KNEEL!” The invisible lines of mana connecting their heads with the white sparks of mental energy showed me that they weren’t simply sharing their mana. At this point, they were one entity, jointly compounding their very selves, lifeforce, and brainpower to be a five-part conjunction of arcane power.
For once, I didn’t have Kraken to basically narrate for me in my own mind at the speed of thought, but it was pretty obvious to me what the hell was right in front of my face. Jamal had basically screwed around on the Karens having some fun and they got their panties in a twist. The monkey wrench though was that this society was actually revolving around the concept of ‘the strong rule’, BUT the huge caveat here is that my flesh golems removed the physical consequences of violence. Ipso facto, anyone here can literally fight up and to the point of death because of my gift allowing them to regrow anything that got blown off. As long as they kept the resident flesh golem full of meat then magic will allow this weird ass society to grow in all kinds of unforeseen ways. Incidentally, accidentally, without any actual intention from me, I had removed a fundamental underpinning of a community, and here it was playing out in front of me.
Five bolts of lightning flickered out right as SAW intervened, channeling the energy into the runes of my armor as Svalinn ate most of it.
Shifting Rune protocol engaged.
“Not prey, weak.” Svalinn grumbled. I patted my two-part shield.
I sighed. [I’m really glad no one hears what goes on inside my head.]
But it was funny, truly. For all their power, all of their foresight, planning and whatnot, they had well and truly fucked up. In taking a look at the Karens in the magical spectrum, I noticed a very key fact that their magically uneducated asses had overlooked. Their focus stones were completely unguarded. The very key to their power, the gems governing and facilitating their arcane bonds was wide open. With a flex of power, I reached forward with my Earth Sorcery and shattered the vulnerable cores of their amulets, robbing them of the nexus governing their flowing web of power. As one, they crashed back into the mud at my feet. I laughed, still swaying from the liquor.
“No wards? No runes?” I giggled, kicking up mud with a flick of power and getting them all good and dirty as well as grounding out any and all electrical power. “No brick wall for the big bad wolf? You told me to ‘kneel’?” I laughed even harder as I blasted them over and over with streams of even more freezing cold mud. “What kind of medieval bullshit is that? Who the fuck do you think you are? Fuck! Look around you! I made fucking toilets for you! For Pete’s sake! You’re in civilization because of me!” I would have fallen on my own face in that moment if not for Jamal snatching me by the back of my armor.
“What in the Sam Hell is goin’ on round’ heya? Can’t a good ole country boy get drunk and pass out without you magic freaks blowin’ shit up every time Jamal fucks a tree?”
I hadn’t heard that voice in months. Turning around, I saw a much slimmer Billy stumble down the dimly lit path between two buildings, his three hick friends behind him. Before I could greet them properly, Jamal snuck over and pulled the unconscious coven off to the side all the while fiercely whispering at Lyra to help them some water. Sally joined in the scolding with the wrath of a bored woman as Jimmy and Tommy held their heads and moaned. “Someone get these two hair of the dog right quick!”
“How the fuck, where the fuck? For fuck’s sake!” I hadn’t seen these four in months or maybe even a year by now, frankly, I’d been so damn busy with everything else that I had completely forgotten to check up on them after I gave them each their own weapons and wished’em good luck. I’d been through so much that I’d shoved in the back of my mind: the Ripples were still coming through, a childish deity almost lasering me to pieces, Gungnir had a piece of my soul, and Reeanth was a real dick.
Thank God for small changes huh?
The morning arrived with its own abominable cost that Flesh Sorcery so graciously took care of while everyone else hung around the flesh golem to cure their ills. I didn’t pity them, not one bit. I wish I had a flesh golem in my life that could get rid of hangovers, would’ve paid all of my money back in my college days. Now, I could magically sweat out the horrific toxins of dwarven alcohol. Shit, most of last night was fuzzy, in the ‘did that shit really happen’ kinda way. Wow, what a thought.
Figuring that I might as well take advantage of the time that nobody wanted to bother me, I headed off for a self-guided tour around New Richmond. In the few months that I’d been gone, an eclectic blend of buildings had sprung up. A bastardized dreamland of a suburb took up several square miles with some houses being a clear attempt at bringing modern style housing back while others were clearly a stylistic welcoming of what magic could do. My favorites were the large trees that had been grown and shaped to be bulbous houses both high up in the trees. Some people had cool ideas like growing the trees so they intertwined and opened up into honeycomb style houses woven close together like a mystical nature commune. The largest building dominating another clearing in the deciduous landscape was a stone and tree fortress with overbearing oaks serving as the inner security towers with a high wall of slick, polished stone that almost covered up the treetops.
Not actually entering any of the buildings, I skipped around towards the east where I remembered the greenhouses were starting to be constructed somewhat close to the river. “Achoo!” A loud sneeze preceded the exodus of a woman in a silver, skintight getup that could have passed for a sci-fi spacesuit. Ripping her helmet off and gasping for breath while slamming the door to a translucent dome, Cassandra didn’t even acknowledge me as she hacked out a lung.
Conjuring an ice bucket full of water for her to drink even as I childishly imagined blasting her in the face with water, I put it at her feet and waited until she got a hold of herself. “You ok?” I asked with an eyebrow cocked. “Guessing that ain’t a normal greenhouse, huh?”
“It used to be!” She sputtered, guzzling down the offered water before dumping it over her head, her long black hair glistening as she wrung it out. “Damn building was fine until we added in the extra mana pipeline-”
“Come again?!” I interrupted, whipping around and reaching out with my senses, feeling more than a few pulsing golden threads of power reverberated in several directions. I had never felt anything like this. It was as if a cloud was trying to shed its ethereal nature and become a solid. But then in the next moment it was just a web of power made up of only a few strands pulsing gouts of mana underneath the surface of the earth.
Scrubbing her face with a bit of leftover water and then shaking the droplets off her hands, Cassandra spoke so fast without seeming to take a breath. “Well, the channel from the sunstone nest in the center of town that you made provides any and all UV light and heat for the greenhouse plus some mana, then we have the other one that pipes in water from the river as well as converted mana from the kinetic flow generator-converter-thing, and THEN we have the one that connects via crystal tether to the solar panels out near the river. That one gave us more than we expected and BAM!” She clapped her hands together. “Freaking portal to faerieland in the middle of our garden greenhouse dome!”
I barely even noticed the rest of the still-in-progress city that I wanted to see over the dense white fog of almost solidified mana that tapered off as the door sealed shut, the outer lining blending in with the rest of the building. “Faerie what now?”
“Fae! Not Aelves, Fae!” Cassandra yelled, turning just a bit as if she were talking to herself in a fit of madness as opposed to the actual conversation I was hoping for. “They’re different! Two separate kinds of pointy eared bastards that are freaking night and day! Sprites, firbolgs, brownies, ballybogs, nookles!”
Going with what I wanted to do originally, I blasted her in the face with water with a squirtgun level of force bringing her back to the here and now. It nicely cut off the devolving rant. I shot her again. “Get a grip! No mam! Not today! This is your fuckin’ problem! Apply some problem solving skills!”
She gave me an incredulous look. One delicately hand with a tiny womanly finger put itself two inches from my nose. “You’re the one who dumped tons of tools here! You’re the one who gave WANDS to children! What about the freaking sunstone power plant?! All you!?”
I shook my head and took a step back. Maybe she had a point. “Fine, fine, here, think about it this way. Grab a few earth elementals from the kids and have them seal the slippery bastards away. Shit, don’t care what you do, but probably throw some freaking iron on the seal! I hope that works.”
That last part I muttered to myself, turning on a heel, I cut my way around the nonsense that did not apply directly to me right until I walked a bit too fast straight into the Karens. A blast of lightning at my feet pulled me up short.
Cassandra ran into my back, surprising me as I didn’t know she had been right on my heels yelling something about needing silver, iron, and sugar in whatever form children like nowadays. This unfortunate meeting at the fork in the dirt road was also witnessed by my assorted posse of Acantha, Reeanth, Johnny and the Luneks who were a less disturbing shade of green than they were earlier this morning.
I couldn’t believe my own lying eyes as I lay there sprawled in the dirt, Cassandra behind me saying some unintelligible apology even as my gaze promised all kinds of torture to the posse of women in front of me. Their smug looks and haughty faces were just begging to be cut down a peg or two. Unluckily for them, mercy was in short supply today as my own evil imagination poked my two struggling brain cells with a wicked idea. I figured I might as well bring them down to my level. Shaking the ground, I violently heaved all the earth within twenty yards of me, a veritable ripple blasting everyone off their feet even as it flung me up to my own.
Before my friends could react, a crack tore up through the greenhouse behind us, a fact that I tucked away till later as I pulled my rifle off my back, since Gungnir was still at Sunstone Castle. Without a forewarning, I began calmly yet very carefully firing standard crystal rounds into each discombobulated bitch as I softly sang the fucked up Baby Seal Army cadence to myself. It gave me great pleasure muttering with a crazed smile, “You can hit’em with a bat!” Boom! “You can hit’em with a brick!” Boom boom! “You can poke’em in the eye with an eye-pokin stick!” Boom boom!
As the Hellions from Suburbia screamed at me for blowing holes in their legs and arms, which I made worse by specifically aiming for non-vital parts and then plugging up the wounds with conjured mud, I kicked a few of them in the head to shut down the whining. “And that’s how we make our livin’, clubbin’ some baby seals!”
More than one person vomited just off the dirt path we were on. “This is fucked up man!” Johnny said, turning a bit green even as Reeanth creepily smiled, nodding in her classical Centauri fashion, vigorously with a side of fanatical approval.
“They started it,” I fake whined, pointing my rifle at the lead bitch’s head. “And I’m finishing it,” I growled, firing as another song struck me. “I’m not crazy, I’m just a little unwell . .”
“More like messed up in the head dude!”
“Well done my lord. Vengeance is greater than justice, but the meeting of the two is so sweet.”
Morality. The last gasping dregs of pre-apocalypse virtues were loosening their hold on me spurred on by the infantile behavior of these grown ass women, the lifetime of modern American conditioning, the imprinting of family forced values, the almost thirty years of indoctrination reared their dying instinctive cries as I smashed them. The five wounded, crying, magically empowered women at my feet were completely at my mercy, and it was a shame.
It wasn’t like I was executing a child, because a child doesn’t know, a child doesn’t understand, a child possesses the quality of innocence. These women didn’t have that, they had haughtiness in spades, idiocy by the barrel, and decided to swing their non-existent dick at the wrong man in the wrong time of history.
God, I didn’t like it, but a little teeny tiny part of me loved it.
My Flesh Sorcery is an incredible power, part of what makes it so great is the fact that it brings my instincts closer to the fore, more under my conscious control, and what it was telling me right now was that their blood splashing across my skin due to my brutal acts was delicious. My newly altered body thirsted for power, for mana, and the blood bags in front of me were full of it. My Mind Sorcery was clearly laying out the pros and cons of it too in that timeless moment as this was a side of my Flesh Sorcery that I never really indulged. From what I could tell, I could have easily been the magical version of a vampire, draining living things with my blood magic instead of fangs. Combine that with the upgraded reptilian DNA and some things that used to not be palatable now seemed to be a bit more in the realm of possibly delicious.
On the one hand, I didn’t need the mana. In fact, I had access to more power than I knew to do with, but it’s like the fat guy at a buffet. He ain’t actually hungry, he just wants more. And in those crystal clear moments, I wanted more, I wanted to shower in their blood, the embodiment of their lifeforce, their mana made real. I could drain them of everything that makes them living beings if I wanted to, and I almost did. Instill fear into the masses, let them know that this wolf isn’t gelded, that my fangs were long and sharp and hungry. And I deserved it too. I made this town, I provided the tools and inspiration for it, practically bringing New Richmond half a step away from the standards of modernity. To be fair, most of the people here, the poor survivors of the apocalypse, were decent human beings that were grateful. And let’s not kid ourselves, I mainly did all of it for the children. They didn’t deserve this.
But the other half of this rotten deal is that the savage cunning that I carefully stowed away so that other people wouldn’t notice acknowledged the simple fact that there is even more strength in numbers, in powerful allies, in having the backing of a group behind you, just in case. I guess some of those numbers though, needed just a bit of pruning. In the half second of me mulling over both sides of the issue, I acted.
Forcing a wave of calm over the five bedraggled women with Mind Sorcery, I had them all focus on the lead bitch, Kathicka. Grimly, I pulled the trigger, completely removing any trace of her face. Grabbing her corpse by the shoulder and lifting it one handed, I shook it in front of the rest of them. The dead body flopped bonelessly, my Flesh Sorcery ripping the last bits of life out of it.
“DO NOT FUCK WITH ME!” I snarled, placing my gun at my feet as I stood up straight, casually ripping off each limb and throwing them at the others, clocking each bitchy Karen in the head with a severed limb, before spiking the bleeding torso at my own feet. Johnny stepped forward, about to yell and interfere, but Reeanth yanked him back with a glare.
An example.
That’s what Kathicka was. Make an example out of a deserving person and the rest are far more likely to fall in line, especially if that one individual was the instigating factor, and if my instincts were correct, she was definitely the head bitch.
“Acantha, burn them clean,” I ordered, sending over a series of mental images to make my meaning clear. Shrugging her shoulders, my ward carefully burned the dismembered body to ash while oh so exquisitely burning off the top layers of grime and skin off the other four, slowly torturing them, branding them with the lesson I had in mind. Even though they could go and get completely new, perfectly healed bodies over at the flesh golem, no amount of flesh magic would be able to heal them of the trauma of the kind of torture Acantha was begrudgingly bestowing upon them at my command. The body, in many cases, can heal much better than the mind can.
As the green flames licked away every bit of grime and epidermis off the four remaining women, Acantha stepped back and vomited as Johnny and Reeanth carried the barely breathing victims away, Reeanth looking strangely proud even as Johnny right beside her looked sickened.
“He’s right,” Scott remarked, gulping as he tried to hold back another round of vomit. “That was fucked up. I mean, I get it. No law and they could have killed you if you weren’t prepared or way overpowered but shit man.”
Scott and Mark both rubbed at the Glyph Blade tattoos curling up their arms, shaking away the scene they’d just witnessed as I banished the remaining flecks of Kathicka’s blood. Ignoring them, I turned and walked away, fully intent on finishing my self-guided tour of New Richmond. Walking with a newfound purpose, I grappled with my newly established moral foundations or lack thereof. I wasn’t sickened by the sight of what I’d commanded to be done even though I had voluntarily set myself against being the leader of this settlement. I wasn’t even bothered by it, in fact, I was still angry, perturbed, pissed off that they were so ignorant to the fact that I could have squashed them with my eyes closed. It wasn’t even a near thing, it was a short Jewish accountant with his shoes tied together trying to dunk on Lebron. The sheer level of mental ineptitude astounded me.
My own thoughts kept rolling around in my head like pins in a bowling alley with a gorilla chucking the fucking bowling ball at them. War changes people. Apocalypses change people. Violence changes you. But what does that even mean when strength . . . when laws . . . are ultimately backed by violence?
Does it make it inherently good or bad, or is it simply a fact, an undeniable foundation of existence, like gravity? It exists in the state of ‘being’ or ‘is’, as in it will be there long after I’m gone because it’s been there long before I ever was. Or I could simply be way too into my own head and this is all bullshit, probably, maybe, most likely.
Another thought screamed its annoying opinion even as I pushed it into the recesses of my mind, maybe I went a bit far. But then I mulled over that thought a bit more. What if those bitches had done this to the Centauri diplomatic party down the road, or to some other kind of visitor whose sensibilities were far more delicate than our own? Interstellar war? Dimensional conflict? The consequences of their idiotic actions could have been mind-blowingly worse than me taking one of them out and teaching the rest a lesson. I mean, the other four can be fixed right up thanks to my golem . . . wait . . . wait . . .
Sprinting back to the main part of town where my town-gifted massive flesh golem sat in its own little house, I got there just in time to see Scott, Mark, Johnny, and Reeanth set the witches down as Acantha reached for the golem to get it going.
“Wait!” I yelled, running up and slapping the golem with my hand. Quickly locating the four ladies’ DNA sequences in there, I put a set of conditional locks on their access. “All right, now you can heal’em.”
The shivering, moaning burn victims were gently laid on top of the flesh golem, its gray folds enveloping them with ease as its girth could have fit a van. Within five minutes, it spit them all out onto the ground . . . technically healthy. “What the-” Johnny gasped as I snickered.
Pointing at the discolored red, gray, and purple burn marks covering each of them, I shook my finger as each of them came to. “Yup, punishment part 2! No outer healing, no beauty treatments, none of that shit. Since each of you suck as a human being, you can stay looking like this for the next year. No golem enhancements of any kind for any of you. Welcome to looking like a nasty ass swamp hag!”
Turning to Mark and Scott as they gaped at my intrusion, I gave a bit more clarification. “Look, I’m not completely heartless. I’ve put a key in the system for both of you. If both of you agree, Mark and Scott, then y’all can commute their sentence to six months of looking like this, but I’ve also made it so that it can be lengthened as well if they don’t learn their lesson. Up to you guys at this point. Pretty sure I ain’t coming back here after this.”
Mark’s queasy expression lightened up at my explanation but Scott was full on frowning. “I don’t want this responsibility either! The hell are we supposed to do with this shit?” Scott complained. “I got enough work keeping the damn forest creatures away and keeping the stinkin’ wizards from experimenting us off the face of the earth! How many explosions did we have in the last week alone? Not to mention Jamal screwin’ everything that moves!”
Mark jumped in too, his eyes pleading. “We’re not saying that we’re ungrateful, dude, but this ain’t no city. We don’t have a government, a police force, a set of laws, nuttin’.”
“Then get rid of them for all I care!” I snapped, grabbing the four womens with gigantic hands of conjured ice. “Would you like me to kill them for you? Would that soothe your conscience? It’s that easy, trust me, or I could have Reeanth do it. Maybe Versonae or Arglyn are a bit peckish, let them have a snack. Hell, do what the Amish do and just shun them, kick’em out to deal with life in the New World on their own.”
“That’s not what I meant-”
“But it is what you meant,” I argued, poking Mark in the chest. “You want me to come in and fix your problems, but haven’t I done enough? Haven’t I fixed enough? Who let Kathicka and Elaine get this way? Who let them gather up three more like-minded individuals and create a group of power-hungry freaks that were willing to attack someone just to make a statement? Magic is real! Shit man, what if the children got in their way? You know what? Screw it.”
Turning to Versonae and Arglyn, I gestured at the squealing women who were begging for any semblance of mercy. “And what would the Luneks do with traitors, or attempted murderers?”
“Death,” they both growled in unison.
“And the Centauri would do what?” I pointedly asked Reeanth.
She grimaced but held my gaze. “Tossed out an airlock with no suit or sold to the Witches as slaves.”
I couldn’t help the evil grin. “And what would the Aelves, dwarves, minotaurs, or Fae do in my position?”
Nobody answered but everybody gulped just thinking about it. “So I’m assuming they’d do the same but worse?” Silence heralded a grudging assent. “And nobody wants to give me a valid suggestion in apocalyptic justice that doesn’t include kickin’ the bucket?”
More potent silence.
The crack in the greenhouse grew even locker, the popping sounds of solid rock snapping under the stress of growing pressure grabbed our attention. “Shit, shit, shit!” Cassandra cursed. Rolling my eyes, I walked calmly over to the slowly growing crack and cast my senses past it. It wasn’t just an overpacked area of dense mana, something on the other side was actively pounding away at it like old school miners with picks. Not wanting to meet whatever kind of creature came from a spontaneous portal in a mana-dense greenhouse, I filled in the cracks with conjured granite and patched it up.
“There, problem solved for the immediate future,” I groaned. “But this ones’ on y’all. There are actually things or people or something sentient-ish in there, but I’m getting the fuck outta dodge.” I kept complaining/yelling as I walked away, fully intent on leaving this ungoverned batch of crazy. “Good luck with the Fae!”
They can figure this shit out for themselves.