Senyak jumped from his seat and turned to Damni, screaming in exaltation. “He did it! I did it! We did it! Whooooooo! I can’t believe it!”
Damni was all smiles as Senyak fist-pumped the air.
“Independent chaos agent, my posterior fleshy seating pads! I shoved my foot up your internal and external sphincters! Wooooooooooooooo!”
“Very well done, honey! I’m so proud of you! But I think that wearing this human form is starting to increase your emotional responses. Why don’t you dial back your emotion centers for the next few minutes? We still have some work to do.” She gently tried to wave Senyak back down to reality... and to what little dignity he still had remaining.
Sen, currently standing on the ship’s command chair spinning around, shaking his booty in the chaos agent’s imagined face, suddenly got a serious expression and looked around to ensure that no one else was in the cockpit with them.
Standing up, he straightened his robes and topknot ponytail, coughing into his hand. “Ahem, perhaps you are right, Damni. There is still much to do.” He stepped down from the chair and embraced her, gazing up into her eyes as her three braids waved above his face on the sides of her oval-shaped head. “I owe it all to you, my Ka bond— My Wife! You lifted me up when I was at my lowest. You guided me when I was lost. I have no words, but I will show you over and over just how much you mean to me.”
A dark shadow crossed Damni’s countenance and was gone so fast that Sen thought he must have imagined it.
She then smiled in her warm, kind way. “I know you will... You are my heart as well! And, you know, there are a few more things about material-matter physical joining I was saving to commemorate your victory…” Her telescoping neck arced down to him, her lips nuzzling his ear and humming. “I could show you now...”
Senyak experienced a break of emotional control again as his physiologic responses began to deny him the ability to think. It started with an accelerated heart rate and then moved to quickened breaths. Anatomical alterations in areas below his waist soon followed.
Sen had just convinced himself to begin responding to Damni in kind–
His Ethos Combi chimed. “Possessed Ka dominion’s life force has reached critical status. Recommend immediate acquisition.”
What? The elder Sadie’s body was dying!? The chaos agent could escape!!
Sen’s mind whirled through the possibilities of Sadie’s Ka dominion expunging. The elder’s spirit had already moved on when her spiritual to physical connection had unexpectedly collapsed in the metal carriage. True, Joshua’s assault had been punishing... but it had only been a minor contributing factor. The Ka Dominion should have empowered her to survive even that beating... Combi estimates were that Sadie’s soul disintegration was primarily caused by the degree to which the Chaotic had pushed her attempting to defeat Joshua. He had enhanced her beyond what she could handle. The resulting surprise of Sadie’s spiritual severance from his dominion had trapped the Chaotic as the only remaining spiritual presence to become Sadie’s ‘soul proxy’.
Ka dominions were not Karmically free. To enact one, the Dominator had to insert a binding portion of their own spiritual tether in a superseding position to the spiritual link of the body being dominated. As long as the body’s original soul was proximate to the Dominion, Karmic Balance remained. The Dominator could control the body and leave at any time. When Sadie’s spirit had fractured under the strain and unexpectedly moved on to the mortal soul nexus, the Chaotic had been caught trapped within Sadie, holding the Karmic bag, so to speak, when Joshua had revived her body. It was true that the Chaos actor’s spiritual tether was not permanently bound to Sadie’s body. Sure, he could sever the tether at any time and leave Sadie’s brain-dead body to expunge... But not without cutting his own spiritual connection back to his own cultivation.
If he kills her... he’ll be as docile as a kitten from the amount of personal cultivation lost.
Maybe the Chaotic would do it in a desperate attempt to get away... But from what Sen had learned about him, the Chaos Actor really didn’t seem the type... The Actor’s only chance to avoid this was if Sadie’s body terminated from another cause–
Vacuous feelings of regret and anger warred for the front row in Sen’s mind as he saw the huge error he had made in taking the last several moments in prideful celebration over what had essentially been good fortune and not anything he had done himself. Because of Sen’s failure to act, there was a chance the opportunity to keep the Chaotic contained was lost, allowing him to escape his prison.
... After so many defeats, I still haven’t learned, have I? Maybe my father and senior brother are right... I am unfit to serve as Heir...
Right now, it was hard for Sen to argue against that– Damni moved into his field of vision with a serious but still hopeful expression on her face. Sen could hear her unspoken message... ‘Ya honey, you screwed up... but no one really fails until they give up.’
An absolute universal truism, and Sen was done with losing. Starting now he was going to give the important things in his existence the focus they deserved even if it required... Well not really having taken primary responsibility for anything before... Sen wasn’t quite sure exactly what would be required... But certainly not simply expecting everything to fall into place!
There was no time like the present to get started proving his true worth. Sen nodded to Damni, and two sharp pops rang in the thin air of the cockpit as they translocated to Sadie’s dying body.
* * * * *
Trapped in his forced possession of Sadie’s now neurologically dead body, the genocidal harvester Hantal Brundox reviewed his limited options.
Hantal was bound tightly by the ties he had created. Sadie’s soul was gone ... That had been a surprise. I honestly thought the old codger could handle more. Hantal’s Immortal focus of energy dispersion and usage had predicted a 60 percent probability that Sadie’s aged cardiovascular system would function at above 40 percent capacity given all of his hormonal adjustments and metaphysical channeling he had put it through. That was more than enough functional capacity to kill everyone in that elevator five times over. The odds had been in his favor. Her collapse had not been probable. Hantal would have called it bad luck if such a thing existed… But it didn’t. Only the probabilities of things are more or less likely. This was universally true. Of course, Karma could amplify the occurrence of any probability, no matter how limited. But such considerations were purely academic at this point. Karma didn’t factor into his actions or decisions at this point. After all, why would Karma be against me?
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Regardless of the cause, Brundox was trapped, and he would not sever the tie on his own until he was completely out of options. Separating himself from so much of his Immortal cultivation would be far too costly, setting him back thousands of Ka Nexus rotations of cultivation. It would also leave him so weak that even that doddering imbecile Senyak could catch him ...
...Such is the risk and cost of forcibly binding to another Karmically touched spirit being. Hantal internally shook his head... Even something as infinitesimally insignificant as a mortal...
However, if Sadie’s physical body died from ... other causes, then his current soul proxy of Sadie's body required for Karmic Balance would be extinguished, and he would be free to separate without sacrificing his tether. Sure, I will have to resort to Immortal actions that Senyak can duplicate even under that Penta Protocol ... But the off chance that low brow can best me in a game of chase is the least of my concerns right now.
Hantal mentally shook his head again. While Sadie was wounded critically with no remaining conscious brain activity, the remainder of her biological functions, ironically, were completely intact. He noted that she also now lay in the back of a speeding ambulance to guarantee that her functions continued...
Hantal needed to generate a third option. The Chaotic took a moment to reflect and assess... It had been a stinging slap in the face to ultimately be stopped in that last elevator car by a 0.04 percent anomaly. Presently, he had no way to get at the intervening mortal who had caused so much trouble for him. If Brundox could, he would be pulling out his hair from the frustration of just thinking about it…But Immortality was long; given the chance, I will wreak my vengeance. Anomaly or not... that mortal will pay for what he has done to me and my plans...
Unfortunately, right now, as much as Hantal wanted, he couldn’t afford the time to indulge in fantasies of retribution. He needed to focus on the more immediate issues. First, Hantal had obviously seriously underestimated Senyak or the help that he was receiving. It’s quite possible his lady is more than she appears ... Be that as it may, the two of them have obviously been unified against me from the start, and it was my mistake to think that I was only pitted against that slow-thinking face-puncher...
They had, obviously, figured out I was facing diminishing returns in my collection arrays and wouldn’t leave with less than half of my planned reward...
... But the artless cretin couldn’t have figured it out by himself...
... Clearly, he must have had help from the Masters...
Logical, but a dead end... Though Hantal couldn’t help but laugh inside the emptiness of his Ka Dominion’s broken mind at what a farce the Masters’ goal to prevent the multiversal extinction of all sapient mortals had become...
Why in the name of Ka would such a thing need to be done!? They are cultivation resources to use at my discretion... And I should know, shouldn’t I?
Hantal felt he should. Unlike most Immortals, Brundox had risen through the levels of mortal cultivation into his Immortal Transcendence. The Masters know nothing about mortal existence that I don’t? Mortals are merely physical entities, and it is only right that we Immortals should consume them in a use-as-you-can manner, for Ka’s sake! Why should they be conserved? Cloning was certainly an option any time their numbers significantly decreased, was it not? Whole iterations could be seeded with the genetic material necessary for their organic continuance if a given Immortal preferred that form of development over breeding them in static farms. In fact, there was not a single chance in his estimation that there weren’t already those doing exactly that. Perhaps that might be a direction for him to pursue for his next—
—A cyclic pinging of the ambulance’s monitoring equipment rang through Sadie’s ears and stirred Hantal out of his rant. Sadly, Sadie’s life force was not in danger... It was only time for the EMT to change the bag of intravenous fluids.
... Hantal figuratively rolled his eyes and refocused his thoughts on his current situation. Then he asked himself the most important question.
Trapped as I am, why hasn’t Senyak presented and collected me?
To be sure, Hantal wasn’t certain of the answer to this question at all... But he did acknowledge that the fact he had to ask it solidly confirmed his opinion of what a nonsensical boob the ‘Second Seeded Heir’ was. Senyak absolutely should have come and forced Hantal back to the Immortal Realms. Forcibly severing Hantal’s tether to Sadie was one among many ways the buffoon could do just that...
And at a very high cost to me as well...
Brundox’s next thought was even more sobering. Senyak could still show up and do so at any time... couldn’t he?
Hantal had always considered himself a very cautious being. First as a mortal, then as a light-aligned Immortal. He’d become even more so as an adharmic, dark-path-walking Immortal. Brundox hadn’t even turned to the dark paths of harvesting soul Essence until it became a last resort following two hundred thousand Ka Nexus cycles of stagnation at a bottleneck along the light paths of Immortal growth. The same wary nature that had led to his bottlenecks in using the methodologies of light were leading to success in navigating the paths of the dark. On careful reflection, Hantal smugly concluded that his natural gravitation to caution had largely paid off.
The chaos agent had applied his inherent tendencies of finding the highest reward, yet lowest personal risk cultivation methodologies when he began soul harvesting in this iteration. He purposely chose a multiversal backwater eight aspect doorways from any populated Immortal iterations. He had consciously accepted lower yields of Essence harvesting in exchange for the much lower chance of being seen and hampered by Immortals like Senyak and the Masters... And for going on nearly one hundred thousand local solar cycles, he had continued undetected. As a result, during this time, he exercised his free reign over the entire local iterational cluster.
Most importantly, Brundox had taken precautions to set up several redundancies of escape and a few quick solutions to anticipated potential problems.
I set up my contingencies purely in preparation for the unlikely chance that Immortals might find me. Those preparations had proven prophetic because, find me, the Masters had.
A cold mental smile spread over Hantal’s calculations. Without a doubt, he was adequately prepared for the usual snares and would certainly get out of his present situation... But he still regretted not succeeding in luring Senyak into forming a possessive Ka Dominion. I honestly tried to leave him no choice but to follow the dark ways of adharmic cultivation... A barking snigger escaped him. What would that blabbering incompetent do if he had to abandon his growth in the light?
Brundox’s cruel, spirit smile stretched from ear to ear as he answered his own question again.
He would fail dramatically. That goodie two shoes could never do what it took to survive in the dark!
The genocidal harvester laughed wickedly in Sadie’s empty mind as his treacherous fantasies grew so bold that they momentarily glinted evilly in her otherwise unresponsive eyes. Proof of the ageless adage... What misery doesn’t desire company on their way down?
But time was short, and as pleasant as it was to dwell on the possibilities of Senyak falling from his high perch as Marztanak heir to utter destruction, Hantal’s pragmatism refocused his thoughts to something even more important.
… What would happen if Senyak arrived to collect me? The answer was rather simple: all of my plans, all of my time and energy these long millennia would be wasted.
The party is over... It’s time to leave.
Even though Hantal would have to harvest an immature array and glean less than half of his already collected Essence, he was sure in his decision to take the proverbial money and run... And I have just the necessary tools to do it!
Hantal called into play one of his contingencies.