99 Gods: Odysseia

by Randall Farmer

  Dammit!

  Betrayer didn’t have time for this. She had barely twelve seconds left.

  Betrayer concentrated on Dubuque while holding off Verona, who had recovered from his moment of instinctive cowardice to go after her back. Dubuque’s Imago frayed, showing silver, and he gathered power from his worshippers and salvoed yellow helix after yellow helix directly into Betrayer. She ported around so that Dubuque’s next helixes hit Verona; she divided herself into three and used a Miami trick, dropping Dubuque out of the universe into a containment pocket. The pocket exploded and disgorged Dubuque a quarter second later. Betrayer stuck an enchanted sword into Dubuque’s body and detonated the weapon.

  The key to killing a Territorial God was to disrupt their Imago while protecting your own. Betrayer kept up the attack on Dubuque, ripping apart the enchanted walls and view-stations in the room, lifting them out of the universe and bringing them back inside Dubuque. Verona climbed on Betrayer’s back and went after Betrayer’s Mission, an attack form Betrayer had observed but never experienced. Verona’s attack felt like an attack on her soul. She countered by sending Verona’s mind into the Place of Time.

  The distraction wouldn’t be enough, she knew.

  “Cease and desist!” Dubuque said, a worshipper backed command sliding into Betrayer’s mind like a dagger, right through all of her carefully prepared and now territorially backed mind defenses. Dammit!

  Mind control had always been his best ability. He had saved up a trick just for this occasion and she didn’t know or understand how he had gotten into her mind. Or how to stop his control.

  She slowed and stopped her attack. Panic coursed through her at Dubuque’s unanticipated success. She hadn’t seen this possibility in the Place of Time.

  Worse, Dubuque and Verona didn’t stop their other willpower attacks.

  62. (Dave)

  Abe sent. Maria ported them out from behind cover, landing them roughly between Santa Fe and Richard of Orlando, on the lawn around the lair, ninety degrees from the front door. They adjusted their line and opened up with normal weaponry, attempting to attract Santa Fe’s attention. Santa Fe curled back into his stealth reality and vanished. Helix after helix appeared from nowhere, Santa Fe’s doing, and splattered into Abe’s group. Dave and Elorie stayed in the back of Abe’s group, Kara Minor at their side. Abe, Richard Cox and Tracy held point, closest to where Santa Fe had vanished, Christine Binglehauser a single pace back, now with willpower swords in both hands. Jan, with Knot’s hand on one shoulder and Diana’s hand on her other shoulder, stood to the side, sword out, waiting for the multi-Paladin’s inevitable attack.

  Dave and Elorie concentrated on immunity as the Indigo attackers attracted hot helixes, colors across the rainbow, from many different enemies. Elorie moaned and stumbled; Dave steadied her and kept her from falling as the world shook under their feet.

  The smoke and willpower flares of the battle opened around Dave, exposing the carnage. Richard, his face contorted in exertion as he supported at least five different aqua to green to orange protection spheres, stood over Bob as Bob writhed in pain. Maria sent.

  As Atlanta. The territory was hers.

  Richard knelt down in front of Bob, hands raised to the sky, sending screaming helixes into the piece of nothingness that held Santa Fe. The multi-Paladin appeared out of the fire and flame and smoke to the right, flying toward them through the attacks of an EW squad. Gore dripped from its metallic robot-like body; Christine screamed at its approach, violently reacting to its noxious presence. Evil. Evil. Evil. Dave couldn’t fight his hunches, his feet nearly frozen underneath him in fear, everything happening faster than he could twitch, let alone move. The multi-Paladin plowed into the nearest EW squad, fifty yards away, and began to fight, radiating intense short-range willpower attacks from its fighting arms. The multi-Paladin slew all the EW squad, pureed them, and in the process covered itself in gore.

  The multi-Paladin, worshipper backed, would live on beyond the passing of the City of God worshipped Gods. Its simple existence blasphemed against God Almighty, and what it would do was worse.

  Dave sent.

 

  Elorie yanked Dave around, away from the multi-Paladin. So far their immunities held, although the pressure on Dave from various willpower attempts to take him over nearly fractured his mind. Beyond the local conflagration, Dave knew other fights continued, other sorties, other groups of combatants, enemy and ally, fighting to the death. His skin burned, the air now nearly too hot to breathe. Inside of him, he felt Maria doing this and that, keeping him alive.

  Dave thought with adrenaline and testosterone, numb to the terror around him, riding his own fear, afraid to do anything, but he still kept up the mind protections.

  Nessa and Ken screamed in all their minds. She and Ken appeared, riding an astral projection, spraying telepathic bolts and interposing telekinetic screens, concentrating on the multi-Paladin. The multi-Paladin stopped for a moment, and then slowly waded forward despite Nessa and Ken’s efforts; Lydia and the Natural Supported left a trio of demolished Paladins behind and interposed themselves between the multi-Paladin and Bob.

  Abe sent.

  Maria sent.

  Elorie shook Dave’s hand off her and went into her full projective immunity concentration stance: feet wide apart, half bowed from the waist, her torso twisted up so that she could see her target. She spread her arms wide, above her shoulders, and splayed her fingers. Nothing sprang from them, but out where Santa Fe hid, splayed finger shapes cast shadows in ambient willpower energies.

  Dave’s heart caught, Elorie more devastatingly beautiful now, in this, than he had ever seen before. She had become Goddess, herald of the future.

  Kay, who had been keeping two trios of Paladins off them, turned and noticed the multi-Paladin approaching Lydia, the Natural Supported and Bob. She vanished and appeared behind the multi-Paladin, leaping out of one of the iPads attached to a fallen EW squad member. She blasted at the multi-Paladin, trying to distract. Dave, caught looking at the multi-Paladin, blinked shut his eyes to shield himself from her dazzle.

  The multi-Paladin turned and swung at Kay, wielding white willpower scimitars of force from its armored fingers. An instant later Kay, master of Progress, vanished into a silver fog, torn apart by the now weakened multi-Paladin.

  Ken sent, telepathy far faster than spoken words.

  Maria sent. The multi-Paladin turned back to them and charged, flying at them.

  To Dave’s surprise, Dana’s angelic glow appeared around Bob. Right. She was his foster mother.

  The multi-Paladin landed and engaged Lydia and the Natural Supported. Their attacks held the multi-Paladin in place for a long second.

  Elorie sent. Dave blinked and caught the end of the horror of the multi-Paladin wading through Lydia and her Natural Supported, emulsifying them after exhausting their defenses. Their death screams echoed through Dave’s mind, echoed by a Nessa scream. Maria’s presence in his mind expired. The enemy attacks vanished anyway, Kara and Elorie’s immunities back up and protecting them.

  With the Natural Supported down, the multi-Paladin didn’t have anyone between him and Bob’s defenders. The multi-Paladin leapt at them and attacked, Richard interposing him
self to protect Bob. The six Paladins Kay had kept off them approached Richard’s back, but they couldn’t penetrate his defensive screens.

  Richard of Orlando fought the multi-Paladin alone.

  Abe sent.

  Jan leapt at the multi-Paladin, only to be flypapered ten feet short, by a force field. She circled back toward them, quickly.

  Elorie yanked Dave’s head back toward their fight, at Santa Fe, who blasted at them with various helix attacks all nullified by Elorie. Tracy and Richard Cox leapt forward and Dave instantly concentrated on immunizing them as they leapt at Santa Fe, daggers in Tracy’s hands and two swords in Richard Cox’s. Tracy ripped a hole in Santa Fe’s guts and sliced open his throat, then rolled behind him, looped a piece of piano wire around his neck and began to saw at his throat. Richard Cox drove one of his swords into Santa Fe’s groin and slipped on by, skidding.

  Santa Fe bled red blood, shock on his face.

  Yes! They had followed their noses correctly to a terrifying cusp of fate, where because of a combination of projected immunities and Indigo-trained combat skills, normal mortals could face down a God, unprotected by any other God’s willpower.

  Jan sent. She leapt forward to engage the multi-Paladin alone, glowing Indigo in Dave’s mind, but not in his normal vision. No force field stopped her now.

  Santa Fe turned left, and Tracy, still sawing at the God’s now apparently mortal neck, flopped loosely behind him as he swung. Santa Fe quickly turned to his right, grabbed at Tracy, got her neck in his hands, and squeezed.

  Elorie screamed. Santa Fe threw Tracy’s decapitated remains to the side and charged them, blood spraying in all directions. His eyes focused on Elorie and Kara and blasted at their minds, trying to take them over. Dave’s conscious wavered and he slipped, momentarily freezing everyone but him in place. Fighting nausea and unconsciousness, he regained his mental focus and slammed shut all their minds, protecting them from Santa Fe’s attempt to take them over with worshipper-backed faux-telepathy.

  Behind them, Jan screamed, answered by a scream of metal on metal. Dave flicked his eyes and found Jan in a swordfight with the multi-Paladin, moving faster than any human he had ever seen move. Dave turned back as Santa Fe reached out and punched through Richard Cox, leaving behind little more than bloody fog behind.

  Abe and Christine stepped in front of Santa Fe and attacked. Christine leapt into the air and attacked with Betrayer’s willpower swords; she too moved almost too quickly for Dave to understand what he was seeing. Abe went in low, hacking at Santa Fe’s legs and slicing into the God’s abdomen, trusting his normal sword. Santa Fe raised a willpower shield; it flickered into existence flashbulb-like then vanished, undone by Kara and Elorie. Abe and Christine’s attacks hit and drew blood. Santa Fe responded by kicking at Abe with divine speed; Abe, similarly quick, rolled to the side and avoided most of the God’s powerful kick. Santa Fe grabbed Christine’s willpower swords with his hands and they vanished. “Fuck!” Christine said, and then leapt ninja-like at Santa Fe.

  Santa Fe ripped Christine’s guts from her body mid-leap, but Christine ignored that, grabbed on to the knob ends of Tracy’s piano-wire loop still around Santa Fe’s neck, and transferred the momentum of her leap and her body into the piano-wire loop. Santa Fe’s neck ripped open and he fountained blood. Abe leapt forward at the distracted Santa Fe, and with his sword decapitated the God. Elorie hissed, her hand in Dave’s squeezing his, painfully, concentrating on immunizing Santa Fe the same way she had been able to pop Betrayer projections.

  Santa Fe’s body fell to the ground, a bloody wreck, bled out. His head fell beside him.

  Unmoving.

  Dead.

  Behind them, the multi-Paladin didn’t fall, still powered by the City of God worshippers, as they had feared. Jan continued her fight, joined now by Knot, and glowing in the true Indigo of her organization’s name, now visible for all to see.

  63. (Betrayer)

  A wave of willpower disrupted her link to Richard of Orlando as Abe decapitated Santa Fe and the God died. Her gamble had paid off, although Kara, not Elorie, was supposed to have been the Immunity maven in the fight, and Jan, not Abe, was supposed to have decapitated Santa Fe. She had seen Abe, Dave and Elorie protecting the lair’s survivors. Now, nobody fresh remained to save them.

  Nearly bereft of willpower, Richard summoned Ken’s teek, something Betrayer hadn’t known possible. A backwards marriage linkage, she realized. The borrowed teek barely kept the multi-Paladin’s hands and arms off Richard.

 

  Betrayer didn’t have to send more. Knot blurred into motion and joined Jan in the fight, their indigo glow now bright enough to be visible to the unaided eye. The multi-Paladin recognized the threat, hopped back and blasted at the two of them. Knot channeled someone else’s immunity – no, utter skepticism that something as impossible as the multi-Paladin could exist – and turned off the multi-Paladin’s attacks. Jan leapt at the creature again and swung with her Hell-drenched sword, moving superhumanly fast. She didn’t behead the monstrosity, but instead cleaved the multi-Paladin vertically in half, from its right ‘clavicle’ to its left ‘hip’. Despite the insane and impossible sword-blow, the multi-Paladin didn’t fall apart. Instead, the multi-Paladin swung its left arm through Jan, folding her into a crushed mess on its way down. Knot skidded to a stop underneath the wounded but reforming regenerating multi-Paladin and reached out with her hands, wielding an indigo-enhanced Shaman ability to take over someone else’s magic. The gravely wounded multi-Paladin’s regeneration and reformation stopped and it physically fell apart, crushing and burying Knot under tons of Paladin debris.

  The divine Mission and willpower settled. The mortals had, for the first time, shown their power to the Gods and slain one. Jan and Knot, wielding tricks not of this Earth, had taken on the multi-Paladin and won, at the cost of revealing the Indigo to all who observed the fight.

  The City of God Mission shuddered one more time, but didn’t shatter, the power of the mortals against the Gods tempered by the fear of the Indigo, fear of the unknown.

  Richard of Orlando tapped into his territory, healed himself, gathered up Dave, Elorie, Bob, Kara Minor, Abe Cox and Diana Lowezski, the only survivors of the Indigo attack squad, and ‘ported repeatedly until he reached the basement of Betrayer’s lair, where an exhausted and mind-boggled Nessa, Ken and the remaining non-combatants huddled and waited for death.

  Over fifty Paladins flew through her lair, no longer opposed by anyone or anything. More trailed behind, anxious to revenge Santa Fe’s fall.

  Betrayer’s fight against Dubuque and Verona didn’t stop when Santa Fe and the multi-Paladin fell. Well, their attacks didn’t stop – only hers did, due to the success of Dubuque’s charismatic command.

  Panicked, she pulled on her territory, tapping into one of her fallbacks, a willpower battery she had hidden under her old Atlanta HQ. She had meant this for a final strike against Dubuque or Verona, if they had otherwise exhausted her. Instead, she flashed the fallback through her mind and Mission, instantly using up the bunkered willpower and freeing her mind.

  Only her trick didn’t work the way she wanted. Dubuque’s muttered grunt took her over in an instant.

  Shitfuck.

  Nessa screamed in Betrayer’s head, not at her but at someone or something else. The only thing Betrayer could pull out of Nessa’s unintelligible babbling involved amplifying something.

  The world dimmed as her imago frayed. Death loomed large and the dimness spread to her senses, of all things to her hands and feet.

  a new voice in her mind cried. Through Nessa, she knew this voice to be that of the Ha-qodeshim, Spang. Along with the voice came an unexpected and strange mental image.

  Betrayer accepted the suggested change. Not a change to her imago, but a change to her thought patterns. Thinking in sonar. In echo-location. In water currents. As
someone without hands and feet, but with a very sensitive snout, flippers and tail.

  Dubuque’s control fell out of her mind like a spat seed.

  She couldn’t let Dubuque back in, so dolphin in thought she remained.

  Translating human concepts to dolphin, she head-butted Dubuque and let loose a rainbow helix at Verona, focused through her voice, sonar pulse like. In this moment of triumph, at being able to invent battle tricks on the fly, she felt like War again.

  The divine emotion helped a lot.

  With but four seconds left, Betrayer bit Dubuque’s left arm off of him, his first life-threatening Imago damage. She ate his arm’s power and barked out a worshipper-backed red beaded helix at Verona, flinging him through several rooms of the now open-air ruined remains of Dubuque’s mega-church.

  Verona recovered and punched a White Lightning helix right through Betrayer, and she felt her Imago and her link to her old Atlanta territory destabilize.

  Dubuque screamed and remade himself, buoyed by the remaining worshipper’s cry for vengeance after Santa Fe’s death. “Stand still and die, Satan! Die Antichrist! Die, Great Satan, die!” The order slipped through Betrayer’s mind without effect. Dubuque dipped deeply into the power of his worshippers and his territory and blasted at Betrayer with a blue helix that bent reality and stressed Betrayer’s Imago into ribbons. With effort she reformed herself.

  Seventy percent of the way through the reformation she ran out of power. Oh, shit! Maria! Not now!

  Fifty-two Paladins blasted through Richard of Orlando’s defensive shields on the final defended stronghold, deep within Betrayer’s lair. They charged, one at a time, down the narrow corridor in front of the safe room. Dave and Elorie, alive but exhausted from their group’s successful slaying of Santa Fe, couldn’t protect anyone but each other. Abe took point and died, taking only a single Paladin down with him. Kara Minor, barely alive, cradled in Diana’s arms, couldn’t even summon the indigo to protect herself. When the next Paladin approached, Kara leapt out of Diana’s arms and shot it with willpower immune bullets. The Paladin and the one behind it dropped, as did Kara, her head bashed in.