The sound of motors and gears hummed to life, and the last team of mechs rushed her like linebackers, aiming for the shoulders and torso. She hopped backwards and pivoted to the side, dancing like a white butterfly fluttering out of danger, while ripping off the arms of mechs. With the arms still inside them.
The guardsmen were veiled in an unnatural haze. The growl of high-torque electric motors filled the hallway. A whirl of bloody fog. The exoskeleton control systems were out of control. The extreme vibrations were shaking their operators to pieces.
Under normal circumstances, the internal medical monitoring devices initiated treatment and self-repair. The ranges of movement in a limb were restricted according to the damage in the affected area. If there was any possibility—even a one in a thousand chance—of the trouble externalizing and a meltdown occurring, the nuclear power cells would shut down.
The one variable impossible to predict—and thus impossible to program into the operating system firmware—was made real by the woman’s slender hands.
“It’s out of control!” shouted the guardsman missing an arm.
“We’re going to self-destruct!” screamed the one with blood erupting from his shoulders.
The still-standing guardsmen had to act immediately. Three of them circled around the back of the shuddering, shaking exoskeletons and focused their lasers on the central nerve systems of the mechs.
At close range, the direct hits sent electromagnetic pulses coursing through the mech superstructures, splitting the metallic skin like aluminum beer cans. The spinning sound of the motors suddenly diminished and the mechs—their limbs until that moment a blur of vibration—slumped forward and stopped.
“What about the woman?” groaned Uehara, having just shot his own partner to death.
The other guardsmen looked in the direction they’d last seen her. “She kept on going,” said the one plastered against the wall. “She went right over our heads. She fucking flew. And the side of her face—shit—after seeing that—I’ll never sleep again—”
“Tell it to your shrink! You hold the line no matter what! After her! Captain!”
“I can’t move,” the captain grumbled. He was flat on his back, wrecked and disabled. The two guardsmen who’d backed him up were in the same condition. “My power cells shut down. This suit won’t come off without an auxiliary unit. Uehara, you’re in charge. Get going!”
“Yes, sir!”
Four guardsmen took off running, their undamaged mechs barely making a whisper.
Of the original ten, two were dead, three were disabled and immobilized, and the one plastered against the wall turned the laser aperture attached to his right wrist around to focus on his own forehead—almost impatiently, it seemed.
Chapter Two
The sun perched high in the sky. Almost as if it never set in this world. Indeed, Doctor Mephisto had observed that the shape and length of the shadows cast on the ground never changed.
The sun, the forests, the lakes and streams were probably all man-made. Though even Mephisto couldn’t hazard to guess what manner of advanced technology made it possible.
A little over twenty minutes had passed since he’d dodged the heat ray—what might be called an ancient laser. The cool breeze flitting along the path caressed Mephisto’s cheeks. It came from the surrounding woods and contained within it a pleasant dampness as well.
He spotted the dark surface of the water beyond the trees no more than another dozen paces on.
“Water follows upon fire,” Mephisto said to himself. In the same instant he heard the sound of splashing water coming nearer.
Directly ahead of him, a luxuriant purple boat approached the shore. In the center of the boat stood a girl in a purple dress. She was as pretty and vivacious as a freshly-painted picture. A sense of calm filled the forest, quieting any desire to ask where she’d come from.
The hull of the boat scraped against the sand and stopped. The girl called out, “Come. My mistress bade me meet you here. The way by land is hot and long.” She bowed.
She wasn’t the seductress called Shuuran. The shape and complexion of her face, its brittle beauty, was closer to that of a doll.
“Will your mistress be waiting where this boat is going?”
“Yes,” she said, and rouge touched her white cheeks.
Without another word, Mephisto climbed onto the boat behind the girl.
The boat didn’t seem to have any kind of engine. Oars sculled the water on either side of him. They weren’t being pulled by the girl. The oars were attached to metal spheres on each side of the boat. The holes in the spheres were tapered and thus allowed a degree of play.
“Let us depart.”
The girl spoke, and the oars creaked. More ancient high technology. The metal spheres on the gunwales rotated slowly. The motion transmitted by this miraculous process moved the oars through the water with strong strokes.
The boat sailed into a wide waterway. Strangely shaped rocks hung like haunting ghosts over the banks. The shores of the waterway, hardly the width of a man’s shoulders, were crowded with stands of bamboo.
Standing on the bluffs looking down on them was a four-footed creature. A wolf or the legendary white tiger.
“Is there nothing here you are curious about?” the girl said.
“What would you have me be curious about?”
“I do not know. You must ask me.”
“How far to our destination?”
“I do not know.” The silence went on for a while. “Is there nothing here you wish to look at?” the girl said.
“What would you have me look at?”
“The sky. The sun. The clouds scurrying along. The bamboo forest hugging the shore. The tiger on the bluff. And yet you look only at the water.”
“My patients need nothing but water. This is from whence they came, and to where they shall return. It is worth pondering why people are made of water.”
“Kiii—” the oars sang out.
A hundred yards in front of them, the surrounding banks and bluffs narrowed sharply.
Just above the water’s edge was an arc of black oval holes. There were so many of them and they were so closely spaced together that they looked like a fat black line. As soon as the scraping sound of the oars reached the holes, white rope-like things wriggled out and fell down into the river. The white ropes didn’t sink. They swam vigorously, cutting undulating lines through the water.
They weren’t ropes. They were serpents. The eyes of the snow-white serpents sparkled like spots of fresh blood. Flicking their fiery tongues, they made for the boat. The scene wouldn’t simply have startled a normal person with normal sensibilities—it would have scared him spitless.
“If you wish to go to where my mistress abides, you must travel inside them. Have you any objections?” the girl asked curiously.
The mask of Mephisto’s face was as blank as it was beautiful. When the serpents had drawn within thirty yards of the boat, he stretched out his hands to the right and left. Metallic reflections shone in the girl’s eyes. In Mephisto’s pale hand was a coil of wire.
He pushed out a six-inch length with his thumb and pressed his nail into the base. The wire tore like masking tape and dropped over the side of the boat. On contact with the water, the wire looped around itself forming a coil of rings.
Either due to the nature of the materials or the wizardry in the Demon Physician’s fingers, those thin coils serpentined through the water like snakes. Under their own power, they aimed themselves at the onrushing serpents and darted forward.
By the time Mephisto dropped the last length of wire into the water, the serpents were ten yards away. The torsos of the serpents were as big as tree trunks. Their dreadful eyes peered down at Mephisto, full of hunger, greed and madness.
The serpents raised their sickle-shaped necks and formed a towering white wall across the narrow river.
The girl’s expression didn’t change. Neither did any human emotions so much as d
ent Mephisto’s beautiful visage.
Five yards.
The wind and clouds in the eternally blue sky reflected across the water’s surface. The serpents flicked their forked tongues. Their blazing red mouths gaped wide. They were poised to attack from three directions, with Mephisto caught in the middle of the trap.
At that moment, the heads of the serpents reared back and chasmed open to the sky. Narrow fissures appeared right below their open jaws. And deepened.
The scaled creatures beat their bodies against the water and plunged under the waves. The boat bobbed like a cork in a whirlpool. Yet through it all, the oars left pairs of wakes in the water and the boat proceeded on course.
The wet and writhing and glistening serpents twining themselves into tangled knots created a scene of utter insanity. And yet the boat sailed on in a sea of calm.
The black water chummed with red. Each time the serpents plunged their heads into the water, the color grew darker. Blood oozed from the fissures in their jaws.
The wire rings. The small rings that Mephisto had shaped with his thumb coiled around the serpents’ necks like tiny metal pythons, tightening with unbelievable strength.
A spray of water from the spasms of their death throes caught the girl in the face. Not a drop fell on Mephisto, though he didn’t move so much as an inch. Such was to be expected of the Demon City Physician. Even water feared marring that beautiful countenance.
A sound that hit the gut more than the eardrums pounded against the roof of heaven. A bone-breaking sound. The screams of those giant serpents.
The severed heads splashed down, raising columns of water and foaming whitecaps of red. The glimmering scales and flailing torsos followed, turning the river into a roiling lake of blood.
The roaring waves tossed the little boat around like a toy. Mephisto calmly stood there, eyes ahead, oblivious to the serpents and their death throes. Like a doctor waiting upon the expected reaction to a prescribed drug.
No matter what world he was in, he was always Doctor Mephisto, the Demon City Physician.
The cruelly frothing waves and hideous echoes faded into the distance. In time, they disappeared completely from the senses. The bamboo groves to the right and left grew denser and greener. The wind whistling through the leaves sang a funeral dirge.
“You are a formidable person,” said the girl.
“How much further?” Mephisto asked.
“I do not know. First on the list of things that do not belong here is time itself.”
“Then shall we continue sailing down this river forever?”
“Would that not be a fate most fitting for yourself? You would regret much if you never returned, but there would be, in turn, so many joys and more. In any case, here is where we must part company.”
“I fear I would be lost without my pilot and guide.”
“I was to remain with you only as far as the castle road.” She pressed her hands to her temples. “My duty is to accompany you no further. You may continue on alone.”
As Mephisto watched, the girl pulled her head straight off of her neck. It made a sound like popping the top off a cardboard tube. She held up her head. “I am a little worn out. If we continued on like this, I would undoubtedly become your slave.”
“I appreciate your being my guide.”
The head hovering over the headless neck laughed sadly. It glittered momentarily in the sunlight, drawing a glowing trail in the air as it fell into the water.
Mephisto paid no attention to the small splash, nor to the hard thud of the torso striking the bottom of the boat. Not because another enemy had popped up on his radar. Above and beyond seeking a way out, it simply did not engage his interest.
The water turned red.
Observing that the boat was in the center of the spreading stain, Mephisto looked down at the girl’s torso. Water gushed from the gaping round hole where her head used to be, water of the same crimson color. Probably her “blood.”
The arms lying there in the bottom of the boat, drained of life, lacked the fullness the girl’s had possessed. The sunlight shone off the hard, ceramic skin. She was a doll.
Steady as a ticking clock, the boat slipped across the bloody surface. Time passed. A band of light on either side of the river caught Mephisto’s attention. The glimmer of a rainbow.
A waterfall.
The mist engulfed him. The spray condensed in rosy pearls on the boat’s gunwales and on Mephisto’s white cape. The breeze brushing his cheeks died. The boat came to a halt. The water poured swiftly over the waterfall toward the new battlefield. A white mass bobbed along in the currents.
Mephisto’s sharp eyes identified it as the body of a naked woman. It disappeared momentarily into the mist. Not just one. More came tumbling over the watery cliff. There were now more than ten around him.
The bodies were dragged down in the whirlpool, and then floated to the surface face down.
Abruptly the bodies raised up their heads. Water streamed down their faces. Every manner of salaciousness and wickedness was etched on their voluptuous features, like something out of a bad dream.
Pushing themselves up with their arms—as if the surface of the water was hard as ice beneath their palms—the women came to their feet. Red rivulets slid across their bountiful breasts and dyed the dark hair between their legs. Theirs was the beauty of hell that never saw the true light of day.
“What do you think of us?” asked one woman, pushing out her abundant breasts. “We are not your pilots or guides. She’s dead. Give us your blood and your life.”
“Your journey ends here,” said another.
“The boat is dead in the water. There is nowhere else it can go.”
“Stay here with us forever.”
“We come for those men who live on the surface of the water. Look!”
The women directed their gaze to where a great logjam of ships barricaded the narrow river. Here a bow jutted out of the water. There another floated just at the water line, the hull cracked and covered with moss. Something white dangled over the sides. The bleached bones of a man’s arm and skull. The empty black holes of the eye sockets stared back at Mephisto.
“You are not the only one who has sought our mistress. But you are the most handsome.”
The woman who spoke had an aura of almost frighteningly raw sensuality. Her voice was laced with danger.
“In four thousand years, some one hundred men have sailed this river. Scholars and poets, warriors and warlocks. Alchemists who drove away the serpents with their strange concoctions. Huge ships stocked with slaves that were fed to the serpents. And so they made it this far. They all had the same goal—to drive a stake through our mistress’s heart. Why have you come here?”
Her eyes, colored with fierce hatred and deep derision, suddenly softened. A change wrought only by the kind of passions a woman can hold for a man.
Mephisto’s eyes in response were gentle but firm. “Where is your mistress?” he asked dispassionately.
“I don’t know. And even if I did, it is a place well beyond your reach. Better you spend eternity with us along this bend of an unflowing river. We will give you everything a man could possibly need.”
The woman who had spoken first cupped her breasts and lifted them up. The nipples grew erect. A white substance arced through the air onto the floor of the boat.
“Milk for you to drink. Flesh you may take from any of our bodies as much as you like. And we will pleasure you the way a man should be pleasured, night after night after night.”
They laughed merrily. Their laughter alone would unleash all the desires that resided between the legs of any man.
And just as suddenly stopped. An unexpected look of fear rose to their faces. The women stood like statues on the water’s surface. In their black eyes reflected the most beautiful face in the world, brimming with laughter.
This was the smile of Doctor Mephisto, that bespoke the good doctor’s opinion of the “fairer sex.” Beneath the
sunlight and the rainbow and the showering mist, the women turned the color of corpses.
“You will pleasure a man? Perhaps you could start by demonstrating what such a thing might consist of?”
A hand emerged from his cape, more comely and delicate than anything the women had to offer. The hand beckoned to them. Like marionettes dangling from strings, the naked women tottered towards the boat.
“Show me these pleasures of which you speak.”
The actions of the women that followed seemed to be responding less to the challenge than to the instructions they were being given.
Arms reached out from all sides. Not to Mephisto, but to the gunwales of the boat. They began rocking the boat, not with great gusto, but rather with a solemn sort of ritual devotion. Lurching starboard and port, aft and stern, the boat bucked atop the outflowing but unmoving ripples in the water.
As to the effect on Doctor Mephisto—there was none.
After several minutes, the women released their hold on the boat. The pitch of his voice unchanged in the slightest, Mephisto observed, “Rocking the boat right and left generates an excessively stimulating series of sexual impulses. Orgasm would be achieved in less than five seconds. The back and forth motion causes the spent sexual organs to replenish themselves. The pleasures thus produced would literally be endless.”
“It has no effect?” one woman asked in despair. “No one has passed through our watery pleasures. What manner of man are you?”
“No man denies himself pleasure.” Mephisto spoke like a professor lecturing a student. “However, a woman’s pleasures alone will never truly satisfy. Even in four thousand years of Chinese history, error has on occasion been mistaken for truth.”
“We do not understand. Why—”
“I do not know how long you have lived here. But a little ignorance now and then will hardly hurt.” A bright sound rang out from his right hand. The women watched as a wire ring dangled from his fingers. “At the very least, spending eternity talking about Doctor Mephisto’s handiwork will do you no harm.”
He looked past the women to the fortress of ships and dead men, and noted that they were fading away. The perpetual sky at the far end of the river was gone as well. Groves of bamboo sprouting from the black earth lined the water’s edge. The roof of a large manor was visible further in.
Yashakiden: The Demon Princess, Volume 2 Page 2
