Cults of the Dragon Gods

by Brian McGoldrick

  We watch the police crowd around the loser and handcuff him. From the expression on the loser's face, he might die of a heart attack before they get him to the police station.

  As the police drag the loser toward the door, the brunette gets in front of them and pulls her dress low enough to show off her fake tits. Her nasty smirk fits her ugly vindictive expression. "This is the twenty first century loser. We have the power now. These aren't for ugly geeks like you to look at. You're not the first little dick loser I've sent to jail, and you wont' be the last."

  I laugh. "With all the social cameras and witnesses with smartphone cameras, the police know better than to do or say anything. They can get away with abusing or killing people when there is no viral video to stoke the general fears of the sheep, but right now, if they even look at that cunt, they might wind up charged with Visual Sexual Harassment themselves. This world is fucking insane."

  Once the brunette cunt gets out of the way, Elan watches the police drag the loser out the door and looks around the bar & grill. "No one has did more than glance at what happened, and now, they are acting as though nothing ever happened."

  "Once you've seen it fifteen or twenty times, it just becomes routine, and most people have seen similar scenes dozens of times."

  We have a few more drinks, but we are just as out of place as the loser was.

  Elan sighs, and as she speaks, her voice is like a breathy whisper. "I do not think we can do this dating thing properly. We are not like the mindless sheep that inhabit this world. I am not capable of laughing and talking about sport and who set up who at work as though it is important."

  I snort and gently rub Elan's head. "As far back as my clear memories go, I could never fit in. I don't think I ever wanted to. This was never my world. Maybe, I always knew it on some level. The way they live has never been something I could do."

  Elan turns her head to look at me. "This was interesting to see, but there is no point in us being here, is there?"

  "You ready to go?"

  Elan's smile seems a bit sad. "Yes, let us leave."

  As we get up from the booth, the waitress rushes over. "Sir, the managers has comped your check."

  When I look at her, the waitress manages to not reveal any visible signs of disgust or fear. With a neutral expression on her face, she meets my eyes.

  One corner of my lip twitches slightly upward. "Do you have an implant chip?"

  "Yes, Sir."

  I take out my tablet. "Which hand?"

  The waitress holds out her left hand, and I use the tablet to add $10,000 to her account.

  The waitress' eyes open wide, and she gives me a brilliant smile. "Thank you, Sir!"

  Without saying anything else, I leave Elan toward the door. As we exit the bar & grill, the crowd of people on the street makes my skin crawl. I cannot imagine that I will ever liked crowds. Having too many people around me has always bothered me. Other than the women I am fucking, I prefer to keep everyone at a distance.

  Seeing my reaction to the crowd, Elan snickers, but I ignore her.

  As we walk toward the auto cab stand, I abruptly stop and spin toward my right. A head of honey blonde hair cut like a helmet disappears behind a rather tall man and does not reappear.

  Gritting my teeth as the pain hits me, I reach out with my spatial awareness and search the crowd for the girl, but I do not find anything.

  "Brand?" As she looks in the direction I am facing, Elan's voice contains a mix of curiosity and confusion.

  I play the image of the girl I saw through my mind, again.

  She had brilliant green eyes and was staring at me with a grave look. Her straight honey blonde hair was cut just below her ears. The style was like a helmet of hair, but it suited her. Her skin was deep bronze, like she had a permanent tan. She had wide hips and huge tits, with a build like a fitness model.

  "I just saw Mikumi."

  Elan betrays confusion for a second before her eyes open wide. "That little whore?"

  I nod. "Yeah, the whore from Gor'achen."

  Elan scans the crowd again. Her skepticism is obvious in her expression. "Are you certain?"

  With a frown, I nod, again. "It was her. Her hair was a couple inches shorter but there was no mistaking it being her. I won't forget those tits of hers anytime soon. I never forget a pair of tits that makes an impression on me."

  I turn to Elan. "I'll remember your tits until the day I die."

  Elan smiles and laughs. "My tits aside, where did that little whore disappeared to?"

  I shake my head. "I've no fucking clue. As soon as I got a good look at her, she ducked behind someone and disappeared."

  "Her and the other whores that disappeared from that brothel had some connection to the Dragon Cultist's uprising. Why would she be on Earth?"

  I frown and search through all my memories of Mikumi. In nearly all of them, she is sweaty and spattered with my cum, but the more I focus on those memories, the more certain I am that the girl I saw on the crowd was Mikumi.

  "Let's get out of here."

  As I turn back toward the auto cab stand, Elan slips her hand into mine. As she again looks in the direction where I saw Mikumi, I catch a glimpse of an evil smile on her face.

  *Tyrend?* I try to send a whisper to Tyrend, but the channel does not connect. I make a few more attempts to be certain, but there is nothing.

  If they have Tyrend, what about Thorrin?

  Thorrin? Again the whisper channel does not connect.

  I take out the first of the burner cell phones and hit the speed dial for the first of Thorrin's cell phones.

  "The number you are trying to reach is not currently available."

  After terminating the call, I get into the cab with Elan and program a random destination.

  "Neither Tyrend nor Thorrin are answering my whispers. The whisper channels are not connecting, at all, and Thorrin's burner is turned off or outside of cell service. That fat sausage Tyrend was fucking was among the whores that disappeared wasn't she?"

  Elan purses her lips for a moment before nodding. "Yes, she was."

  "I have a feeling that whoever has been taking pot shots at us is a dragon cultist."

  *** Southern California – Earth ***

  Return: Day 344

  August 7, 2078

  (Thorrin)

  The cell door opens, and a man walks in. His hair is silver, the same silver as an ingot of the metal, and his eyes are an odd blue with no whites or pupils. His skin is unnaturally pale, the pure white of virgin snow. Normally, when someone is that pale, you can see the blue tracery of their blood vessels, but with this man, the is not tracery of blood vessels and not even hint pink from blood flow. He reminds of a vampire that I ran into during The Great Fuck Over.

  The man stares at me with an odd expression. It is not exactly disdain, but I cannot think of what else to call it. "Harold T. Sawyer."

  Even though I know that they are aware of who I was, the name still hits me like a physical blow. There are only three people who should know that name is connected to this body on Earth: Brand, Dacbold and Farnulf. I cannot imagine that Brand or Dacbold would give that name to someone connected with dragon worshipers, but even though he is as odds with us would Farnulf join dragon worshipers?

  Brand figured out who I was on his own, or more likely, Jinmu did it with Delphi. That should have been an exception. Brand knew some things about my real life history that would have made narrowing down my identity simple. The dragon worshipers should not have that information about a Dvergar named Thorrin. So, how does he know? Could they have just been guessing?

  My confused expression is real enough, and I force myself to give the man a stare filled with nothing but blank incomprehension. "Who's that?"

  "Please, Mr. Sawyer. I am well aware of your identity. Just as I am aware of the identities of Mr. Sanchez and Ms. Turner."

  I look a Pancho, and he gives me wry smile and shrugs.

  "What do you want?"

&nb
sp; The white skinned man smiles. "Where is Mark McGuinness?"

  "Who?" I am ready for almost anything so my confusion looks real this time.

  I look at Pancho, and he appears just as confused.

  "If you promise to save my brother, I'll tell you!" The girls voice is practically a shriek.

  "Sophie!" Pancho's yell contains real anger.

  "Shut up! That monster is going to kill my brother! My brother is one the elite! He is one of the beautiful people! He is a genius! That disgusting freak should be grateful my brother wanted to experiment on him! He should beg someone like my brother to experiment on him!"

  The white skinned man smiles at the girl. "Be quite, child."

  The girl does not strop trying to scream, but no sound comes out of her mouth. There was no sign of the white man using any Power, but he still eliminated the girl's ability to make noise. He cannot be someone from Earth.

  With his smile still in place, the white man turns to Pancho. "Mr. Sanchez, I can reunite you with your granddaughter. All you have to do is give me the location of Mark McGuinness."

  The look Pancho gives the white man is about the same look you would give dog shit that you had just stepped in. "You're trying to get me to betray an ally to save Candace. You're one sick piece of work."

  The white skinned man's smile never changes. "Would you prefer to die without ever seeing her again and allow her to die as one of the disposable masses in our war with the Jotuns' heretical minions?"

  Pancho's face goes pale. "Pendejo!"

  A touch of amusement glints in the white skinned man's eyes. "We could always use her as a battalion whore. She was quite the good looking human girl and very healthy. At leas, she was before she became a drug addict. She should still be able to handle forty or fifty soldiers a night. The faithful need to be taken care of so they do not fall into the sodomitic tendencies that infest this mud ball."

  Good looking human girl? The way the white skinned man says the words make it seem like he is not human himself. He is not an Alfar, but his odd coloration could be natural to some other race. The question is, what race?

  The white skinned man glances at me for a second. It is almost like he knows what I am thinking, but that is impossible. This Dvergar body leaves me basically immune to Psi.

  Pancho looks sick. He is a man that stands by his allies and commitments and has a strong sense of honor. He sees Brand as an ally of sorts and does not want to sell him out. He is caught between his family and his honor.

  It is more than just ridiculous to think of honor on Earth. This is a world that discarded honor as anything but lip service more than a hundred years ago. Among the elite, pandering to the masses and the psychotic fringe replaced anything that resembled beliefs, integrity, and honor. For the masses, vapidly following and parroting celebrities while trying to scrounge up as many government benefits as possible became a way of life. Only a small fraction of the military retained anything that resembled a code of honor, and for those that did, their faithfulness and integrity were used to destroy them.

  Pancho looks at me with a pained expression. I want to help him, but I feel like no matter what I say it will just make things worse. However he chooses, he is going to blame himself.

  "Tell him, Pancho. If these snake fuckers go after Brand, they'll be going to their own deaths." My words make me feel like I am swallowing poison. Even if Brand kills all these snake worshiping bastards, it will not change the fact that we are selling him out.

  "Fresno, California. It's an Urehara complex on the north side of the city." There is no need to expand on the name Urehara. Anyone that knows what Delphi is knows what the Urehara Group is.

  The white skinned man laughs. "See how easy that was? I will make sure of the La Raza soldiers give your granddaughter your regards. She has been a whore for them since she arrived. Drug addicts are not useful for much more."

  "Puta madre chancla!" Pancho spits at the white man, but his spittle stops in mid-air as though it hit an invisible wall and falls to the ground.

  The bastard is worse than those career blood suckers in the government. He put Pancho in a position where however he chose, he would be discarding something he believed in.

  The white skinned man looks at me. "I have been called many things, but you may be the first to insult me by comparing me to an Umbral-spawn like a vampire."

  Even though my jaw does not hit my chest, I feel like it has. Psis are not exactly common in the Battleground of Despair or the Lands of Despair, but we ran into our fair share over the years. Because of this Dvergar body, they were never able to get much from me. How did he pick that thought from my mind so cleanly?

  "Compared to what you think of as Psis, I am a demigod." This time, the white skinned man's laughter is more mocking than before.

  After glancing at one another, Pancho and I stare at the white skinned man. If he can read our minds without our knowing, what was the point of his manipulation games?

  The white skinned grins at us. "You both chose to give up your friend's location. How does it feel to betray someone? How do you think he will react when I inform him of your treasonous actions? Will he die cursing your names?"

  "Brand will piss on your corpse, pendejo." The cold certainty in Pancho's voice surprises me.

  "Even if he were in perfect condition, your Brand would never defeat me, and his condition is far from perfect. I have it on the word of very reliable spies that he is losing his control over the Trinity. His Power is fluctuating radically. That is a sign someone on the verge of losing their ability to control Power." The real amusement of the white skinned man's smile is reflected in his eyes.

  *** Southern California – Earth ***

  Return: Day 344

  August 7, 2078

  "Spymaster!" The tone of the Mistress of Santa Rosa Island was sharp.

  The Spymaster composed his face into a bland mask with the exception of a supercilious smile on his lips. Turning around, he stared at the Mistress without saying a word.

  The Mistress made a poor attempt to hide the irritation that she was feeling, leaving her forehead scrunched up and wrinkles visible at the corners of her eyes. "What are you doing questioning those prisoners without my presence?"

  The Spymaster see the irritation and arrogance in the Mistress' aura, and a flash of contempt appears in his eyes. This ignorant female has no concept of her place. She thinks that being made the manager of other human on this pathetic world is due to her exceptional worth.

  "They are the companions of Mark McGuinness, the former ward of your brother that you betrayed to the Dread Reaver that was hunting him. I thought you had no further interest in him, his friends, or his affairs." The Spymaster delivered his words with a blatantly mocking tone.

  The Mistress' eyes widened, and she could not seem to decide if she was more shocked or angered. "I am the Commander of this world for the Thirteen Heavens. You are not even a part of the regular staff for this . The prisoners are related to acts that have destabilized the worshipers of the heretics. We do not know what impediments they may cause for our plans. I expect to be kept informed of anything relating to them."

  They Spymaster did not hide the contempt in his eyes. "You are nothing but a treacherous human that betrayed its own blood. You were given your position because you are a coward that would not do anything to upset the balance with the Celestial Court and the heretics. You are arrogant, but you do not have strength of character to go beyond trampling on those already beneath you. Due to your lack of courage to act on your ambitions, you were an ideal middle manager type to keep the pigs of this world in line, but your usefulness is near its end. Do not interfere with me, unless you want to experience life as a slave firsthand."

  The Spymaster turned turned his back on the Mistress and walked away.

  This human, Brand, could become a problem. From the memories of the prisoners, he is one of those rare beings with the Power to challenge those who are multiple Path or Transcendence hi
gher than himself. I was not present at the time and made assumptions that the Dread Reaver sealing his Power was nothing but the result of a squabble among pigs. Could there be more to it?

  It would be best if the little Dragonian and her pigs dealt with this Brand. The decision to have the hunters use arrows in the style of those Sisters of Penance was a wise decision.

  Too Many Questions

  *** Central California – Earth ***

  Return: Day 345

  August 8, 2078

  (Brand)

  "Clarence is awake." With a contrary smirk on his face, Dacbold is the picture of self-satisfied conceit. He has his chair pushed all the way back against the wall, probably, to help keep it from breaking under his weight, and his feet are crossed on the conference table.

  I raise one eyebrow. "How is he handling being chained up?"

  As he laughs, Dacbold's smirk turns into a mocking grin. "Oh, he's fit to be tied, very bad pun intended. He cannot seem to decide if he wants to be pissed over being a prisoner or happy to be alive without Woden's lackeys controlling his every move. Oh, and he still hates to be called Clarence. I tested if a few times just to be sure."

  I do not know how Special Agent Jones felt dealing with Dacbold, but with Dacbold's self-satisfied smugness, I cannot decide whether or not I should give into the urge to hit my own face with my palm.

  In the end, I resist the urge to smack my head with my palm, and then, I discard the idea of smacking Dacbold in the head. It would not do any good, anyway. I once heard someone say that you have to be careful of the quiet ones. He was talking about me, but I think it applies more to someone like Dacbold. For someone who was so stony during the Great Fuck Over, returning to Earth has turned him into an outright troublemaker.