by Angel Bright
Even odder to me were the continuously running sparks along the rays of the star that remained in the general contour. The sought effect had certainly been achieved. I had not noticed them when I entered, but their sparkle intensified. Tension filled the surrounding air, and I felt it all over my body, which seemed to enter a pulsating rhythm in sync with the running sparks. It was not unpleasant, but I began to worry about an element of interaction between us. I wanted to leave this room and noticed that my light tail was gone. It caused interest in me, at least until I found out I could create and control green sparkling stripes that were like my protective green lightning.
I thought about the coincidence of the number of rays of the eight-ray star like the number of people in the salon. Including me, we a total of eight. Lost in my observations, I missed the interruption of my relatives’ discussion and their surprised eyes staring at me.
My father turned to me.
“Raymond, you will have to stay here for a long time because it has become too dangerous for you in the United States. You will receive training as part of a special program, but you have to become self-sufficient and strengthen your health. The governesses’ time is over. You love learning. I hope you will find this interesting. As early as this afternoon, I will present you to some of your future teachers, but only if you show enough firmness and perseverance will you go ahead. You can look at the garden now. I will summon you.”
And that was it. That was my warm welcome and getting acquainted with the relatives. I did not even find out how my aunt Sybil was. Had she survived the attack by her unusual inquisitors?
I hoped to understand this and find out many other things, too.
3 Military Training—Survival and Clashes of Senior Sorcerers
I was a diligent student. I tried to learn various defensive and offensive techniques, both physically and with the handling of strong and weak energies. As before, I preferred to engage myself on an energy level, probably because of my lazy nature, but I often couldn’t come up with convincing arguments to divert the martial exercises outside or the exhausting and painful overcoming of all sorts of obstacles and problems on the improvised range. I suspected it was not a part of the park but a vast area where I found myself in a very mysterious way. Always alone, and in the most responsible and difficult moments, a transparent advisor or an instructor appeared, gave me the task of the day, and sent me to the range. I ran, climbed on rocks and through ditches, and dived in the rapid waters of mountain streams. Thus, I hated it most because I never had time to dry and warm myself. The icy overalls squelched on my legs and chilled my body everywhere they touched it. I would repeat the exercise on the next day without missing the busy morning classes. I would never have thought I could cope with such terrains, but when I realized I was the only person in a huge area with a virtual insensitive counselor who watched my attempts to survive with indifference, I desperately wanted to preserve at least my life but not the integrity of my suffering body. I was accustomed to my constant pain and the loss of parts of the body that were then fully restored while I was under anesthesia or hypnosis. I was losing parts of my hands and some bitten-off pieces of flesh, most of the time from my legs, which was accompanied by severe pain. But I had to reach the target—the only place from where I could get back home and get medical help.
It was a cruel lesson about work at a time when I wanted to go to bed and die, and the ultimate goal-exit was on the other end of an endless terrain. I was not sure whether I wanted to get there. The main group of my assailants was involved in an attack when I whined in pain and wanted to crawl rather than jump from rocks into unfamiliar waters from where I had to scramble out because the spilled blood attracted dangerous aquatic predators. It was even more dangerous in the jungle because I left a blood trail. And the trees were not a safe place but a threat because other unknown predators or snipers were lurking above.
When I was healthy and strong, I could hear only the footsteps of creatures running in panic, but when they smelled my blood, these same steps became closer and lurking. I repeated this task on the range eleven times.
I finally realized and understood that the real nature of the task started when I was crippled, frenzied, and desperate with pain. So, I decided not to allow myself to be injured. I remembered when and how I was crippled every time, and I made statistics and analyses of each episode.
The sudden attack always occurred in the first half hour of my appearance on the ground when I had not adjusted myself to the rhythm of the chase. I also remembered other cases when I was able to protect myself. There was a series of intense attacks where I changed the conditions and became a pursuer.
It was the Time of Enlightenment.
I began creating my defense series in advance, depending on the middle of the attack-challenge. I created a series of real and false attacks in rapid succession, accompanied by distracting illusions of shadows, thunder, and flashes, in the midst of which I took a position advantageous for an attack. Then, I set the beginning of the “Chameleon” complexes for which I collected the equipment on the range itself during the first minutes of my movement through an unknown area.
The food I received before the various tasks was always consistent with the difficulty and duration of my assignment, and I was frightened when I found a larger quantity of food. Gradually, the tasks were getting longer and more complicated, and I was forced to sleep outdoors, thinking with horror about the night and the next day. Quite dangerous animals that did not mind to try their nails, teeth, and poison on me moved around the forests and canyons. But with the skills I possessed and did not hesitate to use, I managed to keep them off, and they started avoiding me after experiencing the energy strokes and burns I inflicted on them. I also became a scourge for them and often heard branches cracking or stones falling to the side of the direction of my movement.
I had changed rather fast into a savage who fought well with everything available, no matter the terrain of the battle. I constantly improvised and changed the learned sequences of the battles against single or group opponents, which caused some of the battles to be repeated to achieve automation of the movements.
I dreamed of reaching the day when these inquisitions would remain in the past, and I believed it would happen soon, because repetitions of tasks I had already completed successfully were coming more often, and it was becoming increasingly rare for me to leave parts of my body on the battlefield.
One day, I routinely set my course on a steep sandy slope above a dark river with calm running water and stony banks. I attached a device with two metal spikes to my stiff-sole boots so I wouldn’t slip and knock down pebbles on the streets or break dry branches in the lush bushes on the slope.
As I entered the bushes, I gathered bundles of green leaves, which I crushed into a miniature press. With this thick mixture, I formed uneven green spots on my light-gray work overalls. A muddy puddle helped me for the light- and dark-brown interstices. I stained my face and neck in the same pattern, and I started making painful traps for my pursuers while on the move. I used these traps when I was accidentally detected and pursued. I already had a good sense for harmless places where to place my traps.
The pursued had the freedom to choose where to pass the course of maneuvering on the terrain. But the pursuers needed to follow the signs of his escape, and their rapid movement along the terrain was their weakness. Of big importance for the pursued was to find out the number of hunters, to be able to change the speed of pursuit, and the available time to place the traps. When traps were placed, the pursued had the potential to carry out a sudden attack on the shocked pursuers, with a great chance to get the entire group out of commission: strike one or two of the pursuers, and run demonstratively through the charged area. Crippling several pursuers slowed down or stopped the pursuit. The most dangerous part of the terrain was around the ultimate goal-exit, and the pursued would be well advised to deceive the pursuers into entering the protected area first.
I wasn’t going for a record-breaking time; instead, my goal was to mince a group of six experienced commandos. I taught them not to bring their own sniper forward to secure the difficult terrain. From the sniper, I got an excellent long-range blaster and a miniature camera with a radio.
I could already keep away from a group of pursuers I did not want to hurt and had some fun breaking their water vessels. Suddenly, I felt the premonition that they were trying to mislead me and that the victim was me again, if there was more than one group of pursuers.
This thought made me start climbing through a rocky narrow, which I abandoned after the first twenty meters. I reached an extraordinary steep slope with a cluster of semi-fallen trees. Under their roots, I set up a surveillance point and started a visual search of the woodland below me. Looking through the dim light of cameras could give my position away, but watching trees and grass did not give me an advantage. The last minutes of the control time I set for the ambush ran out when I heard a slight cracking of a twig over my head. I slipped slowly into the narrowest part below the rhizomes and waited. The experienced commandos knew about the possibly open rhizomes and were obliged to check for an ambush.
A narrow beam touched the interlaced roots, passed over the camouflage of my knee, illuminated the roots behind my back, and passed. I heard a zip of the static electricity of the field of a mobile camera that passed to the next tree. Several pebbles were thrown behind my leg when the scout took two steps to the side. I lifted slightly, stuck the spikes of my right shoe firmly at the base of a healthy root, and looked over the sandstone layer.
There was no one there. But there had to be a commando.
I then noticed that the natural background of the bushes blurred in one spot that appeared to be a ghostly, artificial humanoid image of the same bushes. This ghost took a step back into the forest.
I aimed the blaster toward the center of the ghost and met the terrified gaze of the creature hidden in the camouflage.
I hesitated and shot his leg under the knee. He collapsed, and his camouflage turned off.
With two jumps, I found myself next to him. On his shoulders and running to the middle of his chest and back was something like a packsaddle with three buttons on the edge of the front-right part. I made him a sign to take off the device and took it. I took the camcorder-radio out of his ears, and out of his hands I pulled a small console controlling the observer drone.
This device was somewhat familiar to me. The drone itself was like a tiny, whizzing insect, which I stopped and put in my pocket.
My suggestion to carry the sniper to an open place was not accepted, and I let him go his own way. Somewhere around, they had a masked stationary communication tool.
I ran a hundred meters and put the packsaddle device on myself. When I turned it on, I felt the hairs on my head and body start moving.
The device was working.
I reached the end goal-exit without any problems.
Ten days passed since my last crossing through a range. This day also began with a rich breakfast, as if it were an omen of another day of struggle for survival among a nightmarish, hostile environment. The skills I had mastered frightened me with the possibility of even more destructive magical attacks whose existence and peculiarities I did not know. I spent my days in intensive regeneration, after which I did not feel fit for active maneuvering in unfamiliar intersection areas. One of the people with the camouflage devices had wounded me terribly. He tried to pursue me to finish me off, and then I found him when he changed his position. His camouflage was not perfect, and he had lagged. The shooter did not look around enough. He was the same ghost I had spared in my previous pursuit.
I received a new and unpleasant lesson, but my passing through these ranges consisted of heavy and painful lessons.
I found myself in a forest with a slight snow cover. I was deprived of the opportunity to move without leaving traces, so I carefully deleted my traces before each jump. My senses were attuned to the utmost for ambushes or magical energy traps. Before each jump, I emitted an impulse with a frequency causing penetrating pain in the ears of the hidden sniper-ghosts, and I watched for every wincing in the surrounding trees. I avoided open spaces. Again, I decorated my work overalls and skin with muddy and green spots in the colors of the sleeping forest.
I watched closely the colors of the neighborhood for inconsistencies caused by magical energy traps. I had noticed that the introduction of a concentrated energy charge into the natural background of the environment increased the brightness of the low-frequency colors and decreased the brightness and contrast of the high-frequency colors. As early as the first lectures in magical skills, my instructors demonstrated how concentrated energies that were most commonly used in magic spells and magic traps changed my way of perceiving colors depending on the resulting frequency of the environment. The most gifted and experienced mages set no more than two fully powerful energy charges, which I found relatively easily. The main problem was where and when I was supposed to expect them. I could not monitor these changes throughout the entire duration of the operation. My energy traps were merely sensitive sensors that sent a weak encoded signal for activation of the main device. The powerful functional energy charge was spread along a broader area and caused only miniscule changes to the color intensity, which were hard to find in relatively large areas.
Every time, they sent me without weapons. The camouflage devices I had acquired in the previous ranges remained there. They did not cross with me when I left a range, and the ranges never repeated in the same area.
I needed a weapon.
I was looking for a sniper waiting in ambush.
The forest ended.
I prepared myself for a new way of moving and emitted an impulse of pain.
I caught a flicker among the harmless rocks in a dark crack—a sniper waiting in ambush. A sniper-ghost was somewhere around here. They always traveled in pairs.
I looked around and scanned the area in the hope of spotting silhouettes of hidden snipers in the places suitable for ambush. I had already made myself familiar with their camouflage apparatus, and I was looking for weak energy radiances, unnatural colors, ionized air, and anything unusual that might give a reason for observation. One of the tree roots on the opposite slope was hidden, and in the next moment the camouflage assumed its color and shape. I fixed my eyes on its position and pronounced the control syllable, activating weak magical activity. A small light mark appeared on the ghost-sniper’s camouflage.
I stopped the painful impulses, and with jumps I crossed the gulch with a small stream and moved toward the light mark I had put on the ghost-sniper. He did not violate my order for absolute immobility.
I put him to sleep him painlessly.
I took a blaster with a wonderful optical scope, and through the scope I found the stone cleft where the pair’s leader was supposed to be.
The cleft was empty.
I waited. To the right of the rocks, I caught a color shift. He had changed his position. I could shoot him but did not want to risk activating his protective shield. I was already behind his line of observation. Let him watch. I ran down the slope parallel to the gulch with the stream.
Cordoning a given area for tracing a single, well-trained target required the presence of many people and the necessary surveillance equipment, also in large quantities. Today, on the vast ranges, I did not find either of those things, but I was always found and ambushed. I did not find any marks or signaling devices over or in my body. The only remaining possibility was observation from the air through miniature devices. As a counteraction to their plans, I began to sharply change my course of movement and got around rough terrains with limited capabilities of visual monitoring from my part.
Today, I was particularly careful.
The magical obstacles and traps were always accompanied by an energy charge that created ionization of the surrounding air at night. But in the daytime, they changed the natural background colors of the terra
in,
I avoided craftily set magical traps and destroyed others with shots from the blaster I had appropriated. I got around people or dangerous predators I discovered or waited them to pass by without taking risks. I was expecting to be pressed by the sniper-ghosts and guided in a planned direction to meet new traps, but that did not happen.
After crossing the ridge of another steep hill, I encountered the silhouette of a human figure standing upright on the bare ridge on the next rocky hill. He was wearing a long dark brown robe and a funny conical hat. He was looking in my direction. I looked at him through the blaster’s optical sight. He had an old man’s face. In his right hand, he held a club by its middle and in a horizontal position. He raised it above his head and in my direction as a sign of greeting. I also greeted him with a similar sign.
He began shaking the club up and down around the axis. At the same moment, I felt the air around me start to vibrate. A series of fire rings started descending down my hill, spanning the entire massif. Shocked by the scale of the attack, I focused on recognizing the complex tangle of energy threads and sought the best counteraction. The total power of the energies included in the colossal trap was far above the natural background of the planet on which the range was located. Back in my childhood, I had tried building and destroying similar fire rings, but they were tiny compared to what I was seeing now. My body reacted spontaneously, and a web of many violet threads stretched out from me in search of energy sources.
