Chapter 119. Not Exactly Helpless.
I woke with a pounding headache, and not the kind that meant I was going to be summoned again. This was the kind of headache you got from being slammed to the ground, tased multiple times, then injected with something to knock me out. I tried to open my eyes, but they were taped shut. I was also gagged, and tied down to a hard table that made my back ache. Panic began to set in, my captors weren’t the kindly pair that had visited my apartment a few nights earlier.
There was no Notice of Cessation that I could trigger here to escape whatever this situation was. I needed to remain calm and prepare to act when the time was right. This wasn’t like the first time I ran into cultists and corporate goons. This time, I was trained, armed, and had combat experience that most soldiers would envy.
My breathing calmed and the panic dissipated as I thought on all I had faced and defeated so far. I took stock of what I had to work with. My mana was full, but all of my items had been taken away. That didn’t mean I was helpless. My summoning figurines from the Foe Summoner class couldn’t be taken away permanently. I didn’t know how long it would take for them to return to me, but I’d be ready when they did.
If I could summon Rupert and Marvin Glum, I could have them free me and begin to hack our way out of this place. Time was on my side, so I stayed still and quiet, at least until the team was ready to be summoned. I could hear voices in the distance, and it seemed like an argument was going strong not too far from me.
“He’s awake,” a young woman’s voice whispered.
“Silence, I know that already. You’re here to scry his abilities, that’s it. Do your job, and you’ll live another day. Press your luck, and I sacrifice you to the master,” A second person, the woman with the shrill voice from the motel snapped.
“Fine, I’ll do my job for now. You can’t harm me, I’m the only one who can find your master,” the first woman muttered under her breath.
“Bhalkur begins to waken, and soon, we will find and free him. Once that happens, I may not need your services any longer. When I free him, our master will let me know his wishes directly and your value will diminish. Perhaps he’ll wish you to be sacrificed to him. Your mana and lifeblood will be a fine feast for our newly awakened Lord Bhalkur,” the shrill woman claimed.
Whoever these creeps were, they didn’t play well amongst themselves. Maybe it was something I could use to my advantage. The bad news was that these seemed like another group of cultists, worshiping something or someone called Bhalkur. I wasn’t afraid of some slumbering creature, and I sincerely doubted the mana level on our world could support some evil being that was powerful enough to gather a cult to worship him.
“Remove the tape, I need to see his eyes in order to read his soul,” the first woman whispered.
Rough hands pulled the tape from my eyes, not caring that they ripped out some of my eyebrows and eyelashes with it. I blinked, half blind from the oppressive fluorescent lights that bathed the room in their glow. As my vision returned, I got a chance to look around at my surroundings. I was strapped to a cold metal table, and to make matters worse, I was naked.
The table had drain holes placed at regular intervals, and while it appeared clean, I was sure that more than one person had their lifeblood drain away while they had lain here. Inside the room were several people. The first was a middle-aged and sour faced woman in red robes. Next to her was a younger, frail looking woman who was wearing grey sweats and a hoodie. The young woman stared at me from the foot of my table. Two larger men in white robes stood at the head of the table, clearly subordinates who seemed to defer to the woman in red.
“Look into her eyes, or you will regret it,” the woman in red ordered. She was the screechy voiced lady, which meant the young woman in sweats was the whisperer. I had no problem staring into the young lady’s sad, brown eyes. As I looked, I began to feel something, mana was flowing from her, burning off rapidly like it always did on Earth.
Tendrils of mana reached out to me, and I almost triggered my own mana in response. When the mana hit my eyes, I felt an intrusion into my mind. I fought back, pushing against the intruder sifting through my thoughts. To my surprise, she was forced back, the tendrils of mana finding no purchase inside my mind.
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“I have finished. His mind is strong, and while I don’t know what his class is, it’s safe to assume that he’s a mage of some sort,” the girl claimed.
“You will answer my questions, or I shall begin the sacrifice early. I can make your passing into Lord Bhalkur’s embrace a pleasant journey, or a painful one, it’s all up to you. If we detect you trying to cast a spell, you will be killed. Now, for my first question, what is your name?” The woman in red asked.
“Raymond, Raymond Durant,” I muttered giving her the name on my fake ID.
“That’s unlikely, but in the end, your name is unimportant. Tell me, Raymond, what is your class, tier, and rank?” she demanded. I tried to look scared and confused as I worked on a lie that would distract her from my real skills.
“I’m a fire mage, tier one, rank zero,” I lied as I tried to look around the room.
“Is that what this is, a fire wand of some sort?” the woman asked, holding up my pistol-like magic missile wand projector.
“Yes, it lets me shoot small bolts of flame. Hand it over and I’ll demonstrate,” I offered.
“Cute, but I want only the truth, no additional commentary,” she said, pulling a curved, and wicked looking knife from somewhere inside her robes.
The knife looked like something that you’d see in an Indiana Jones movie. A wicked blade that the bad guys would use to cut out your heart. Instead of my heart, she made several cuts at the end bottom of my toes. I’m sorry to say that my bravado failed at that point as my blood dribbled down onto the metal table.
She wasn’t inflicting a fatal wound, and I would never bleed out from a bunch of cuts to my toes, but I struggled to keep from losing it as the pain hit. One by one she slowly sliced into my toes, taking her time, and enjoying her ability to inflict pain on me. Things like this were much easier to face when you knew at the end, you’d just return home good as new. Here on Earth, dead was dead.
“There is still mana contained in the device, I can feel it, almost taste it,” the young woman said, before slinking over to the side of my table. “You should listen to the master’s favored, otherwise the pain will continue. Too many of us have been hurt, I don’t want any more pain,” the young girl whispered in my ear. One of the burly guards shoved her none too gently back toward the woman in red.
“Stay back fool, I need you to advise me, not banter with the sacrifice. If this does contain mana, when we’re done here, bring this to the offering room. The mana can be drained there for our master. Now, on to the next question, Raymond. What are these?” the woman in red asked, holding up several of my summoning figurines.
“I can answer that, Lucinda,” the young girl interrupted. “Those are summoning figurines. A mage can push mana into them and poof, the creature depicted on the figurine appears. Keep them away from him, he’ll have to touch them to use them,” the young girl claimed.
“Do they contain mana?” the woman in red, Lucinda, asked with a look of greed on her face.
“No, mana must be pushed into them to work,” the young woman replied, seeming to become bored with the whole process as she rifled through my belongings. The young woman wasn’t all there, and I didn’t know whether to fear her or feel sorry for her.
“Can you use these?” Lucinda asked the young woman.
“Let me see. Hmm, I can use some of them, but a few will not answer my call for some reason,” the girl muttered as she went through the small pile of figurines. The consumables could probably be used by anyone with mana, but the ones created by my Foe Summoner class were linked only to me.
“Is there anything else you can tell me about those?” Lucinda asked me, smiling as she watched a drop of my blood run down the curved blade of her knife. This was it, my chance. The young girl knew something about the summoning figurines, but she didn’t know one important part, the fact that my class allowed me to use them from range.
“She needs to be careful with those. Some of them are dangerous and can’t be controlled. Look out!” I shouted as I pushed a point of mana into the hound’s figurine which the girl was looking closely at. The figurine disappeared as the hound appeared next to her. I silently commanded the hound to attack Lucinda while I pushed out more mana to summon Marvin Glum.
Chaos erupted as the hound leaped toward Lucinda. She wasn’t a trained fighter, seemed more used to inflicting pain on helpless victims rather than defending herself. She took a clumsy swipe with the dagger, missing the hound who latched onto her arm and shook.
The two guards ran to assist just as Glum appeared. I targeted him to appear just behind one of the goons as I worked to push mana into Rupert’s figurine. I could only use the figurines linked to my class from a distance, reducing my options. Wasting no time, Glum drove his shortsword into the spine of one of the goons as the other turned to face him as he pulled a pistol from his robes.
Rupert appeared and my mana dropped further. Only one point was needed to activate a figurine, but this world burned two mana for every one point that I could use. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Rupert appear behind the unwounded, but armed goon. My ear drums threatened to burst as the goon began firing off shots at Marvin Glum. My best warrior turned into mana vapor as Rupert grabbed onto the goon’s arm, wrestling with him for the gun.
Lucinda dropped her dagger and the dog let go of her now-mangled arm before tearing into her legs. The young woman shrieked and ducked behind the table my gear was piled on. I watched one of her hands reach up and grasp a figurine. She had one of my consumables, and as a summoned being, she probably had enough mana to use it.
Being tied helplessly to a table, and with my best fighter dead, I could feel my odds of survival dropping.