Cults of the Dragon Gods

by Brian McGoldrick

  I tell Dacbold about Thorrin and Tyrend, and his amusement dissipates.

  "Elan, see if you can locate Tyrend and Thorrin. I'm going to talk to Special Agent Jones."

  Elan's expression turns thoughtful, and she speaks in a soft voice. "I could try, but it would be difficult. I do not know what variety of concealment wards they may be using or how to get around them, and Tyrend has the same ward from that Dvergar monster that we do. It could take days, and I would be unable to work on preparing Delphi for shipping."

  "Keep working on Delphi. Once we bring the Night Raven here, if their captors haven't tipped their hands, it should be easier to search for them. Just make sure that this place is covered as best you can with alarm wards."

  With Dacbold following at my heels, I head for the room where we imprisoned Special Agent Jones.

  "Do you have a problem with Special Agent Jones that I should know about?"

  Dacbold smirks. "Nope. He's just the kind of person that I enjoy taunting."

  "What do you plan to do about Thorrin and Pancho?"

  I sigh. "I'm not sure. If we could figure out where they are, we could break them out. I doubt whoever has them is just going to sit quietly. We'll get our chance to go after them."

  As I open the door, Special Agent Jones is staring at me coldly. The chains on his wrists and ankles give him enough leeway to sit up but not stand. His eyes are filled with the same hostility and animosity as the first time I met him. Despite being at the end of a five foot length of steel rod driven through the concrete floor into the ground beneath, the eyebolt for the chain attached to his right wrist appears to have already been loosened.

  Special Agent Jones displays his chained wrists. "Mr. McGuinness, would you care to explain this?"

  I give Special Agent Jones a faint smile that does not reach my eyes. "My sword pierced your heart. You died, but before I had a chance to leave the cemetery, you revived."

  Special Agent Jones laughs morbidly. "So those motherfuckers won't even let me die. That's really some fucking bullshit."

  "I could have permanently ended your life. It would not of been that difficult, but for reasons that I do not understand myself, I do not want to kill you."

  Long minutes drag out, while we stare into each other's eyes. Finally, Special Agent Jones releases the breath of air in what could be a soft sigh and looks at the ground. I do not know what he was looking for in my eyes, and I do not know if he found it.

  "Where do we go from here, Mr. McGuinness?"

  I shrug. "I'm not exactly sure. As long as you stay inside the bounds of those four sticks floating around you, it is fairly certain that Woden's bitch boys will not be able to find you. The collar on your neck is a slave collar. Because of how it is designed, it might, or it might not, block any Power-based control methods they are using on you. If you choose, you can leave Earth with us. There are people on Taereun with the knowledge to permanently disable the controls built into that plate in your skull. Whether or not they will do it in what they would demand in compensation, I don't know. It's your choice what you want to do, but I've already set up the commands in Delphi to launch the world's nuclear arsenals in just over a week."

  For a moment, Special Agent Jones looks at me with an unreadable expression. "You've stopped using double entendre."

  "I've changed."

  Special Agent Jones gives me an odd look, but after a moment, his normal, neutrally hostile expression returns. "Yeah. You've changed."

  Special Agent Jones stares into my eyes for a few more moments, before nodding. "Where are the American nukes that you set up for Delphi to launch?"

  "Cheyenne Mountain. Why?"

  Special Agent Jones laughs. "That's a red herring. There are no missiles there. The never have been. After the supposed nuclear disarmament, the government built a fake launch facility in Cheyenne Mountain. On paper, everything looks real, but the real missiles were taken completely off the grid."

  I look over my shoulder at Dacbold, and he shrugs. "Sounds like exactly what good old Uncle Fucker would do."

  I look back at Special Agent Jones. "Fuck me sideways. Do you know where the real missiles are?"

  "I'd say thanks for the offer but I didn't think you were a faggot. Besides, I don't fuck Faggots, I just kill them and write it up is killing subversives. The perks of being a government agent." Special Agent Jones smirks.

  "Ha fucking ha. What about the missiles?"

  Special Agent Jones' expression turns serious. "The biggest cluster of launch tubes is in Black Hills National Park. It's a little bit south of Mount Rushmore."

  As I try to remember where I heard the name Mount Rushmore, I frown. "I know the Black Hills are in South Dakota, but what is Mount Rushmore."

  With a somewhat shocked expression, Special Agent Jones looks past me toward Dacbold.

  Dacbold shrugs. "He's only twenty-something."

  Special Agent Jones' face flushes from anger. "Those libtard tools of the god fuckers really fucked over my country. The America I fought and killed for is dead. It's time we bury it.

  "Mount Rushmore is a monument with the faces of four US presidents carved in the 1920s. The problem for these libtards is that two of them are Washington and Jefferson. They were two of our nation's Founding Fathers, but these pieces of shit in control of our country vilify them as evil slave owners."

  Taking out my tablet computer, I access Delphi and try to bring up information on the Black Hills launch facility, but there is nothing.

  "I can't find anything about that launch facility with Delphi."

  Special Agent Jones scoffs. "I told you that it's off the grid. I think those god fuckers have done something to keep Delphi out. The same as they did in Area 51."

  I frown. "Do you know the layout? How many people are there? What the security setup is?"

  Special Agent Jones nods. "I've been to the launch facility. Since they brought me back, that Sandor fuck has been dragging me around with him, and he went there to meet with someone named Graham. They were installing some kind of weird metal and crystal things. I have no idea what they were meant to do."

  "Could that be the same Graham from the Postmen? I thought you killed him?"

  I look at Dacbold still standing in the door to the room. "Since Sandor is apparently still alive, and there are two of him now, I'm Guessing that however they kept Sandor alive, they did the same thing with Graham and the faggot."

  Dacbold grimaces. "I really want to know what is going on inside of the Burning Medical Research Hospital."

  "We'll find out. Once Valcrit finishes with Turner, I plan to go back through the rift and get the Night Raven. We can dig around and destroy the hospital on our way through."

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see Special Agent Jones grinning. As I turn back to him, he locks his eyes with my own in a hard stare.

  "I want in on it when you trash that place."

  With that metal plate making up the side of his skull, the man is a walking bomb, and there is no telling if the enemy can turn him against us or not.

  "Do you understand that with just the collar on, I cannot guarantee that they will not be able to take over your mind again?"

  Special Agent Jones sighs. "I'm a lot older than you, Mr. McGuinness. I fought in wars. I was an assassin for my government. If I haven't learned anything else, I've learned that there is nothing truly certain or truly safe. I am not one of the sheep that thinks I'm living in some perfect utopian socialist society. If you want to be a real man and not a faggot sheep living off the government teat, you make your choices, and you live or die by the consequences. If they take over my mind again, kill me and make sure you do it right. It will be a better fate than what they have in store for me."

  "You're vocabulary has improved. Special Agent Jones would have probably been pleased."

  Special Agent Jones laughs. "Yeah, he was always nagging me about my vocabulary. It was worse than being married."

  "I'll bring you with us. With
that collar around your neck, if you turn against us, I can kill you with a single thought."

  Special Agent Jones nods. "I would not expect anything else."

  "What about that missiles facility? What is the security like?"

  Special Agent Jones scoffs. "The human security is a joke. Just like everything else in this country, the military is gone to shit. But there are other things there. Those black and grey freaks that you killed in Area 51, there more of them there. They call them droger or something like that."

  "Draugr, they're a kind of undead."

  "Undead? You mean like zombies, the living dead?"

  One corner of my mouth twitches upward. "No, zombies are almost as dumb as your average American sheep. Draugr are intelligent, and they're as tough as a tree trunk."

  Special Agent Jones reveals a faint smirk. "Those faggots pretending to be soldiers were giving them a wide berth. They seem to be scared half to death by those Draugr."

  "Can you obtain or draw an accurate floor plan or layout for this missile base?"

  Special Agent Jones frowns for a moment before nodding. "Maybe, but I'm not sure I can do it without setting off alarms."

  I look at Dacbold. "Can you keep an eye on him for a few days, and give him a hand searching, using Delphi?"

  Dacbold grins. "Sure. You don't mind hanging out with me, do you, Clarence?"

  "You keep calling me Clarence, and once these chains are off, I'll knock that smirk right off your face."

  Dacbold snickers and displays a grin that would make a clown envious. Moving to where Special Agent Jones is chained, Dacbold puts his foot on one of the chains, and bending down, he takes a firm grip and straightens up.

  Screech! Snap!

  Dacbold casually drops the end of the chain that is still attached to Special Agent Jones ankle. "I told you, I'm not the human I once was, anymore. I am a Dvergar now. You can think of me as superhuman."

  With his eyes wide open and visible shock, Special Agent Jones stares at the torn chain. "How strong was that chain?"

  Dacbold shrugs. "It could've held 10,000 or 12,000 lbs. It's not anything special as far as steel chain goes."

  Dacbold has become stronger than I had realized. If he can tear a chain that can hold 12,000 lbs., he could probably lift a similar amount over his head. Among the players caught in the Great Fuck Over, the average Combat Adept types could have lifted around five to eight hundred pounds over their heads. For the strongest ones, they were probably pushing fifteen hundred pounds, maybe a little more.

  Since returning to the Battleground of the Damned in my real body, my own strength has been growing radically with my increase in mass and physical bulk. Right now, I would guess that I would be capable of doing the same with about five thousand pounds, or so.

  Special Agent Jones levels his stare on Dacbold. "You still haven't told me who you were when you were human."

  "Michael Kowalski. Major, United States Army Corps of Engineers."

  Special Agent Jones squints. "Girishk, the winter of '37."

  Dacbold nods. "Yep, that was the first time we met."

  Leaving Special Agent Jones in Dacbold's care, I return to the office I have been using. Most of the searches that I had Delphi running are complete, and I bring up the location of Thorrin's MTVR. It disappeared after leaving a mansion outside of Phoenix, Arizona that is registered as being the property of a Consuela Alvarez. Considering the kind of money that people living in that neighborhood have, the house having no connections to the normal social camera network is not surprising, but that is no bar to Delphi's monitoring. Unfortunately, while I can access several devices with cameras, there is no stored footage on any of them, and the mansion is currently unoccupied.

  I set up a search routine to attempt to track it based on traffic patterns, but I am not holding too much hope for success. There are too many roads in that part of the country that have minimal amounts of traffic.

  I also start new searches centered on the Five Families. They seem to be a lot more people who may be aware of Taereun on Earth than I had once thought. Just how extensive are the networks of people who were aware of the self-proclaimed gods of Taereun?

  The volume of data related to the US government and its possible connections to Woden's followers is massive. After looking through it for several hours, I come to the conclusion that I cannot be certain of what parts of the government are under their control and what parts are not. The only thing that I can be certain of is that there appear to be several factions fighting over control of the United States government. There are three fairly clear agendas that seem to unite different government bureaucracies and the politicians that support them. There is also possibly a fourth faction at work, but its apparent operations are so shadowy that it is hard to tell if there is any coordinated control behind them.

  Woden's followers are obviously in control of the FBI, but the majority of the FBI employees appear to be in the dark about who is really in charge. The Special Agent Jones pair were apparently in the dark right up until they came face-to-face with Woden's followers in South Dakota. In a more general sense, they seem to be using the Department of Homeland Security to further their agenda. Their control also appears to extend to all four branches of the military, at least what little remains of them.

  The second faction seems to be using the Department of Health and Human Services as its power base. On the surface, they are reliant on the welfare state for their power, but the truth should be more along the lines of their manipulating the poorest and least educated segments of American society.

  The only obvious points of control for the third faction are the IRS and the Federal Reserve. At first glance, this faction would appear to be in the weakest position, but on Earth, those who control the money control the society.

  The big question is which of these two other factions does Mikumi belong to?

  A soft beep from the computer terminal alerts me that Delphi has completed one of the search routines. When I check, it is the first phase of my searches into the Five Families. After making a cursory scan of the information, I smile.

  The Five Families are apparently working for all three of the obvious factions and probably have ties to that shadowy fourth faction. They do not appear to have any ideologies or loyalties to anyone. As long as they can make money, there will whore themselves out to anyone. I suppose when you come right down to it, there is no difference between a con man or a fence in the back alleys of the cities in the Battleground of the Damned and the highest echelons of the elite businessmen here on Earth. In the end, the only thing they care about is lining their pockets, and they will fuck over anyone and everyone to do it.

  I am not sure if any of this information is useful, and I send it all to a Delphi connected tablet that Dacbold is using. He knows a lot more about the politics and history of America than I do. Maybe, he will be able to make something of it. I include what I could track down regarding Thorrin, as well.

  Mixed in with the data related to the military, there are documents relating to the sale of the Iowa, the New Jersey, the Gerald R. Ford, and some thirty other smaller ships to the nation of Iran. Other than Iran being an Islamic nation, there was never much taught about it in my high school and college social awareness classes. With his background, Dacbold might be able to shed some light on why a ship sold to Iran would wind up in the Battleground of the Damned.

  *** Central California – Earth ***

  Return: Day 346

  August 9, 2078

  (Brand)

  The sound of a bell ringing in my ears wakes me up. I turn my head to the side, and a pair of eyes the color of honey Amber meet my own. Elan's head still rests on my arm, which she was using for a pillow, but the alarm from her wards has already awoken her as well.

  Elan closes her eyes momentarily and frowns. "They are trying to be subtle and come in from the roof. There are only two of them, but their spells are preventing me from gleaning any further information."


  "I'll deal with them. How accurately can you track their position?"

  "If I do not run around, I can monitor their location to within a hair's breadth of their actual position."

  I rise from our bed without waking Angelique. In near silence, I don on my armor and strap on my weapon harness.

  Based on Elan's report of the intruders' positions, I exit the building through a door more than a hundred yards away from their current location. It is extremely unlikely that they will have heard the door open and close.

  As I slip into the Shadow of the Od, the pain that hits me is even more intense. I do not know what is wrong with me, and I do not have the leisure to try and figure it out. With my jaws clamped firmly together, I swiftly and silently ascend the side of the building. As I slip over the low wall surrounding the roof, I duck into the shadows cast by one of the HVAC units.

  They are to the west from your position and moving in a zigzagging pattern away from you. Every … two or three … yards they stop and use Power to do something. I do not think it is a spell. It is probably something more like an Adept's ability.

  I move toward the west, but as I close the distance with the intruders, I do not see anything.

  You are less than twenty yards from the nearest one. He is directly in front of that large AC unit to the left of your path of travel.

  Where Elan said the intruder is, nothing is visible.

  Steel is pain. Steel is cruelty. I activate my pattern sight spell, but I still do not see anything.

  I cannot see them. Even using pattern sight, there's nothing there.

  There is a momentary silence on our whisper channel. If I try using any other spells, I will probably alert them. You are a Smith. Do you know any spells to see heat?

  Beneath my helm, an involuntary frown turns the corners of my lips downward. I know a few spells for detecting and seeing temperature, but I'm not sure how effective they will be with temperatures at this low of a level.