Josh stood and used the shirt sleeves on his biceps to wipe the tears from his face. Still downcast, he lifted his eyes and looked at Senyak with the faintest flicker of hope.
Mouth set in a straight line, Sen nodded back in universal, silent man-speak. ~We’ll fix it.~ and, ~Tears? What tears... I didn’t see any tears.~
The Clone interjected in a bored but accepting manner, “If we can proceed... We will now move on to the task of gathering Essence from other spiritual beings.”
The clone indicated a rubbish-filled and rusted-out dumpster against the alley wall. “Underneath this dumpster is a series of underground tunnels and caverns housing cannibalistic humanoid dwellers.”
He looked them both in the eyes and spoke in his even manner. “You will expunge them and absorb their Essence.” As if the deed was already done, the Clone turned his head and continued his instructions. “Furthermore, at the bottom of these caverns lies an abandoned and forgotten earth temple formerly occupied by early Gaia worshippers–”
“Wait,” Josh interrupted, shocked. “Gaia? As in–Mother Earth? She has worshipers here? I thought we weren’t in my iteration anymore. Why would a myth from my world have a temple here?”
The Clone looked at Josh like an eagle eying a field mouse. “Your insistence on maintaining a uni-iterational view of existence will no longer serve. Gaia is a being whose influence and legacy extend across all mortal iterations. Yours is not unique in this. This temple houses several items of power specifically attuned to Earth Essence. You will make your way to the temple and acquire two of these items.”
A considering look appeared on the Clone’s face. Then he provided them with more information. “... Being attuned to Earth Essence will provide you with advantages concerning Earth Aura, including allowing you to absorb it for conversion to usable Essence to advance your cultivation.” He then leaned in as if in confidence, “But most importantly for your short-term survival, Earth Attunement will significantly increase your physical resilience. You will even be able to form shields to absorb powerful attacks.”
Obviously finished providing useful information, the Clone leaned back out again and lifted an open palm to indicate the sky. “... It is past daybreak. These creatures are nocturnal. The optimal time to expunge them and harvest their Essence.
Senyak lifted his brows inquisitively and looked at Josh.
Still quiet but focused, Josh snapped his head up and down once, indicating he was ready for anything—anything that would bring me even one step closer to Sophie. So, yeah, I’m fully on board.
The dumpster was foul-smelling and heavy, with large bricks wedging its rusted wheels that hadn’t rolled since the Nixon administration. They pulled the bricks out, and Josh tried to push it...
Fail.
The Clone gave Josh a sharp look.
Oh yeah... I nearly forgot! We’re climbing the Path of One to Transcendence!
Josh pushed aside the inner adult screaming at the ironic ridiculousness of his thoughts and cycled Essence into his legs and arms.
Then he pushed again...
The dumpster moved all right, a little too well!
With a loud screech, the metal wheels rushed across the ground, gouging out a two-inch trail through the asphalt and dirt. Sliding the dumpster exposed a dug-out from below, a three-foot hole if the obviously pushed-out bricks were any indication.
The dumpster’s rear back wheel fell below the hole’s edge and got caught. Unable to take the pressure from Josh’s push, the rusted-out body cracked with a resounding bong. Putrid water spilled out, followed by bloated, gas-filled rubbish bags that burst on hitting the ground. And... big surprise here... among the refuse now spread over the alley were several human bones in varying stages of decay.
The smell in the alley amplified. Significantly.
Josh looked around sheepishly. “Well... loud enough to wake the dead, huh?”
“Or at least, certainly the cannibals... Proceed and use whatever weapons of opportunity you find. I will join you when necessity requires.
All they could see looking in was a tunnel headed down, down, down, and down at a sharply steep angle and into a thick and unbroken darkness.
Perhaps sensing their imminent demise, the Clone spoke one last time. “... This is for free, gentlemen. The hole is dark, and you have no light. Cycle Essence to your eyes and ears. You are cultivators, after all...”
Josh cycled Essence to his eyes and could see Sen doing the same. What was previously a very dark and foreboding hole was now a very well-lit and foreboding hole. Josh also cycled Essence to his ears and was surprised at what he could hear from below... heartbeats? Perhaps twelve separate organisms were creating a cacophony of tympani. Some of the beats were closer, some louder, but all were in regular rate and rhythm. Focusing on the nearest, Josh counted forty to fifty beats per minute. If they were human or at least followed human physiology, it meant the creatures were still asleep.
Josh caught Senyak’s eye and pointed to his ears. Senyak nodded, indicating he had already activated his ears and heard the same things. Reflecting, Josh thought that was a lot of information to get out of one nod. But Josh already had an inkling as to the answer to their supernaturally clear understanding of each other—the Karmic Bond.
From now on, they would have a much deeper understanding of each other and would always have an inkling of each other’s current actions, locations, and motivations. Such was Karma. Josh knew it in his mind... and his core, he supposed. Again, a bizarre train of thought for a Chicago-born criminal lawyer... But right now, Josh was willing to accept it as true. He had never identified himself as an Eastern philosophy guy, and all he knew about Karma was that a person lost it when they stole from blind beggars on the street. The truth of his thoughts about Sen just made a lot of sense to him. So, I’m going with it. Besides, compared to what has happened so far... this is one of the easiest things to accept!
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
But...
How the heck did he know what a normal sleeping heart rate was? Josh would need some answers eventually about how he’d suddenly gone from being a mild-mannered lawyer to Bill Nye, the Science Guy. But... right now, as they descended into the depths of Mordor, it just wasn’t the time. Josh, again, setting the issue aside, followed Senyak into the low-overhead hole.
The tunnel had started approximately three-quarters of a meter wide and a little less than one meter from top to bottom. Senyak pulled a few loose bricks from the sides and top of the hole to increase its opening. But he still needed to crouch and drop down to his knees for some of the lower portions as he moved along the first twenty-five yards. His shoulders and bald head scraped the tunnel’s top and sides, dislodging dirt and loose stones to rain down on them as they moved along. Before the light from the entrance was completely gone behind the drop and twists of the descent, they were both covered in dirt, mud... and other things they didn’t want to think about.
After fifty paces, the tunnel opened to a point where they could walk while keeping their heads down. Both audibly sighing with relief at the extra space, they continued.
The tunnel snaked to the right and left, around unseen obstacles. Several thick tree roots meandered through the dirt sidewalls. Sen cycled his Essence and quietly snapped off a one-meter-long segment for each of them. He handed one to Josh without instruction. None was needed. The thick stick was either to bludgeon the foul creatures they were heading toward... or for anything else they might run across. Josh took his without question and continued to plod on behind.
* * * * *
The Clone observed from the alley as Senyak and Joshua moved down the tunnel. Both cycled their Essence continuously to their eyes and ears to enhance their senses. He also noted when they wisely harvested tree roots from the exposed walls as improvised weapons.
They just might survive today... Time will tell.
A portal opened before him. Intensely blue, waving fibers of order shifted peacefully past the event horizon in the opening rift. An instant later, Zenyak pulled himself through space and time to a specific material world and into a space that just so happened to be occupied by his Clone.
“Report.”
The Clone dipped his head and allowed Zenyak to place his hand on it as if giving a papal blessing–
“--The Karmic link has already been upgraded to a full Karmic Bond? That was not probable... not at this juncture.” Lifting an eyebrow, Zenyak reflected. “I do good work, though, don’t I?”
“Well . . . I certainly do.” The Clone iterated irritably under a halo of blazing blue fractals.
Indifferent to his Clone’s comment. Zenyak voiced a litany of orders. “Stay with them. Continue your support for now. So far, their progress is in the top three percent of predicted probability outcomes. Let’s not break up the team while we are winning, hmmm--And how is Tanner’s mentation?” Zenyak interrupted himself. “Any anomalies in cognition or memories that you have detected that are not present in your direct observations?
The Clone’s constantly shifting hues of fractalized lines formed a deadpan expression. “No. His faculties are exactly as they were before you ordered the data overfeeding. “
“Excellent. Our healing interventions following his cerebral rupture and collapse were timely–” Zenyak again interrupted himself and returned the Clones' direct stare. “. . . As you wear a familiar face, I can tell you are concerned. Out with it.” Zenyak motioned with a bladed hand definitively.
“I have no concerns regarding your rolling the dice and possibly terminating a human in this or any other mortal iteration– I am, however, gravely concerned with claiming that Senyak bears the entire Karmic burden for Joshua Elias Tanner’s present circumstances, and we are merely stepping in as a cosmic Santa Clause to balance your grandson’s scales.” The Clone loosely pointed his index finger at Zenyak and spoke under his voice. “. . . If you don’t accept your role in creating this situation now, down the road, its teeth will flash at us in the night, and your debt will be all the greater for your omissions.”
Zenyak wore a mask of introspection. “Noted . . .”
Another quiet tear in space-time, and the Original was gone.
“... I can be a right self-absorbed prick, can’t I...” the Clone said in the empty alley, rolling his glimmering eyes at the actions of his original.
* * * * *
Thirty minutes later, Sen and Josh came to a waist-high dug-out portion of the side wall. Discarded bone with evident gnaw marks, moldering shreds of clothing, shoes, and other broken pieces of outerwear filled the space. Dirt and other filth caked all of it. Armies of ants and roaches crawled among the disgusting pile, chewing away at any remaining edible fibers and nesting in multiple places.
The smell was overpowering, and neither he nor Josh got very close. Josh even retched a few times quietly as they passed.
We have to expunge creatures this heinous, Sen thought disgustedly.
Sen could see as if standing in daylight with Essence continually cycling to his eyes. However, it was the heartbeats he focused on. Every step brought him closer to the first cluster of three. They were going to have to eliminate these creatures. Given what they knew about them, there were no dharmic issues with that. But just being mortal now made physical death a little more real, a little more... squishy.
Sen shook his head to get his thoughts back to the task at hand... There didn’t seem to be a significant Essence drain to continually enhance their eyes and ears. There was an initial cost of approximately 2 percent for each. Joshua had said it had taken the same amount to fuel the upper body strike that had taken Sen down.
Sen rubbed his jaw absently, still remembering the pain of Joshua’s strike. A decent hit, to be sure—but, without doubt, there would be payback. Honor demands it! But I need to focus on the here and now if we are going to survive... After the initial 2 percent expenditure, it didn’t cost anything. Perhaps because the organs didn’t have significant mass? Or, if conditions worsened, it might cost more? Is it that the Essence use is not ongoing, or perhaps there is a level of passive regeneration of Essence happening? Perhaps this body's organs are more relevant than I assumed and are contributing some benefit. Senyak was uncertain about what factors were at play with the two enhancements. But for now, he was glad for both of them.
After approximately thirty more minutes of continually moving down the tunnel, he and Josh came to a one-by-one-meter hole drilled directly through a massive block of stone that the tunnel they had followed ended at. Senyak crouched on his haunches and moved cautiously through the four-meter-long borehole. At the edge, he crouched, looking out on the cavernous space the hole exited into. Most likely, it was a courtyard to the old temple the Clone had told them about. Dark, rectangular pavers made up the cracked and dusty floor. In the distant center of the giant space beyond the hole, Sen could see the outline of a looming structure, dark and ancient, seemingly carved from the living stone of the cavern. A tower in its center rose thirty meters into the gloom above. To Sen’s sides, large blocks that made up the wall he had just crawled through. The stones marched off to the left and right out of sight. Where the cavern ended, either ahead, above, or to his sides, even with his enhanced vision, Senyak could not make out.
Looking down, he calculated a three-meter drop to the floor. The nearest heartbeats he had been tracking from the surface were a short distance into the cavern on the right.
Senyak made eye contact with Josh and pointed down, and clear meaning came through their Bond.
~I go first. You follow.~
Then Sen cycled Essence to his hands and legs, then quietly dropped down the smooth face of stone on the other side, cradling his cudgel under his chin. Nothing stirred on his reaching the paving stones at the bottom.
Sen looked around. Seeing no immediate threats, he signaled Josh, who came down the same way.
They turned to the right, heading wordlessly toward the first cluster of heartbeats. Approximately 25 meters ahead, the partially collapsed and squarish frame of an outbuilding sat against the side of the wall they had just come through. Curled together in sleep, three smallish, bipedal-humanoid figures lay among the shredded tatters of soiled clothing they had formed into a nest.
Sen and Josh stopped a rock’s throw from the sleeping forms, and Sen whispered in Josh’s ear. “Let’s get as close as we can. Try to crush the skulls of the two sleeping on the outside. I’ll take the right, you the left. Then, we move on the one in the middle. Given the lack of fire or other sources of light, these creatures have poor sight and good olfactory senses. If we can get to them fast enough, there may not be any kind of alarm. If there is an alarm, move quicker!”
Josh nodded and whispered back his agreement. “Get in quiet and brain the bastards. Got it!”
Sen nodded at his acceptance. I guess my plan is as good as any he has.
They cycled Essence to their arms and torsos. Raising their clubs, they slowly advanced on the sleeping forms from either side.
As Sen and Josh got within two steps, the sleeping forms’ heartbeats sped up to 150 bpm. The three dwellers surged up as one, pointed a thin arm each straight at Sen and Josh. Then they started screeching.
Josh would have told Sen that the little jumping mongrels were like extras from Invasion of the Body Snatchers, had he the time. Sadly, both of their time was up as the creatures’ undulating cries echoed throughout the cavern. An instant later, the three beasts standing and pointing were flying through the air as two launched themselves at Josh and one at Sen.
Their enhanced ears heard the remaining heartbeats throughout the cavern accelerate to around 150 bpm as answering cries came from all directions.
Then came the sounds of padded feet rapidly approaching.