Atomic Mage

by Garrett Carter

  He felt a bit of glee when the veiled looks of hate he was getting changed to the surprise from before.

  He felt a slight give in his grip as the men collectively began to fight against his power.

  The effort required spiked as smokey's big brother put his considerable might to fighting his grip.

  Doubling down on his grip and opened up the regulator on his skull mounded energy source staggered his focus for a second.

  That moment of freedom was enough for the lizard man to throw a small dagger into his chest.

  Grunting in pain as the dagger sunk to the hilt in his right pectoral, Cade fought to maintain his grip on the men.

  He focused through the pain as his grip on the slavers held.

  Using a sliver of power Cade removed the blade from his chest and glared at the lizard man.

  "That is going to cost you bud,"

  Surprisingly he found himself calm, sort of in the center of a storm the rage felt detached from him, still there close enough reach out and grab.

  Looking away from the frozen lizard man he took in the group arrayed before him, the last man he decided to call chain guy until he found out his name drifting over to stop next to the lizard man.

  Trying to think over his first contact with the people of this world he remembered the big teddy bear sending chain guy back to the boat and assumed he was the one in charge.

  Cade looked at him doing a quick scan of the bear-man finding nothing he hadn't already assumed, he was a big boy.

  Smiling down on him the bear-man growled out what Cade assumed were words.

  Shaking his head at the grizzly in man's clothes Cade indicated he didn't understand a word from him.

  Deciding to try something inspired by his hours-long fishing exhibition, he doubled down on this grip on the slavers.

  The insanity of what he was going to attempt gave him a moment of pause with its craziness.

  Hoping this either worked or at least didn't fuck up his own mind he scanned the grizzly man's mind, taking a few minutes to identify the paths of the electrical impulses in his brain took.

  A calm came over him as the sounds of the jungle became background noises to be ignored, the only thing in this moment was the sparks of electricity that ran through the bear man's mind.

  His concentration faltered for a moment as his silent world was shattered by the sounds of a massive storm.

  Cade braced against the mass of air and rainwater that threatened to send him tumbling into the darkness that surrounded him.

  A flash of lightning illuminated his surroundings for a moment, he saw a rocky hillside covered with grass and trees before he covered his ears as a booming voice sounded as pitch blackness returned.

  "How dare you hold me against my will human. I will crush you in my claws and listen to your screams of despair. Maybe after that, I will let you die. RELEASE ME NOW!"

  As he listened to what he hoped was the bear man's thoughts Cade recovered from his shock before he interjected with his own, "you have no idea who you are fucking with yogi." To the very very large and very very pissed-off bear man that he had trusted up in his grip back on the beach.

  Astonishment bloomed on the bear's face as he proceeded to try and spew his mouth gravel language at Cade.

  Sharply increasing the pressure on the bear man's chest in the physical world, he heard a muffled snap as one or more of the bear man's ribs snapped.

  The bear-man let out a wounded roar, silencing him after the intelligible tirade.

  Seeing that he could enter the mind of the bear-man Cade did the same with the others as a test.

  The human was a morass of fear, afraid of Cade's power, that it was strong enough to hold Krub who he assumed was the bear.

  "Not getting anything from that one, if I sneeze he might piss himself." Dismissing the fearful human he moved to the dwarf, his next target.

  Moving on to the dwarf Cade took a moment to take in the unbothered expression on his face in the physical world,

  "well how about a penny for your thoughts."

  Cade achieved that mental dead zone quickly before he moved into the dwarf's mind finding a slight resistance at his intrusion.

  Some sort of mental shield he guessed as he slipped through it with the effort of walking through a summer breeze.

  A loud blustery voice met him as he viewed the mental landscape he found himself in.

  "Who do you be to intrude on my mind like you belong here."

  Cade felt a tickling in his mind suddenly that had nothing to do with his powers.

  With a reflexive wave of a mental hand, he blew the questing presence away like a leaf in the breeze.

  Fear flooded the dwarf's mental landscape, Cade assumed the questing presence had come from old black beard over here.

  Not trying to get into a mental one way battle with the dwarf at the moment he exited the mental landscape that was to his surprise returning to its previous calm state at an alarming rate.

  "Gonna have to watch that one if I don't just kill him." He cautioned himself.

  Cade looked to the lizard man with a shrug.

  This one was going to die regardless of anything else, and dove in.

  A dark mental landscape met him draped in shadows and dark as a moonless night.

  He felt the lizard's mind casting about for a way out of this situation.

  Cade grinned at the futility of the action, he was dead he just didn't know it yet.

  Hopping out of the dead man's mind he took a look at the last man in the crew, well the last alive one he noted as he glanced at the black-skinned corpse.

  Looking at chain guy he dove in and felt another mental shield in place.

  "Well what do we have here" Cade said to himself as he examined the mental shield with interest.

  It wasn't any more effective than the dwarfs but orders of magnitude more intricate.

  Running a mental hand along the surface of the shield he felt another mental attack, he almost missed it due to the more subtle touch than the dwarfs figurative bashing at the gates.

  Having more of an idea of what to look for this time instead of waving it off with a mental hand he grasped it firmly with a mental hand.

  Feeling a struggle in his mental grasp he chuckled to himself at the familiar feeling of startled fear from his earlier training at the river.

  "This one is going to be full of information for me, let's get rid of his buddies first".

  Leaving what he assumed was the wizard's mind Cade took a look at his prisoners.

  A wide array of expressions met him as he used his real eyes again in what felt like days.

  Complete and total terror on the tanned human, the same composed bored expression from the dwarf as if he hadn't just been about to soil his britches a few minutes ago.

  Krub had a toothy snarl with hackles raised pointed Cades' way, with a tinge of pain tossed in courtesy of his broken ribs.

  He gave Krub a squeeze hoping to hear him squeak like a dog toy, slight disappointed grew on his face as Krub only let out a groan through his snarling muzzle.

  Cade looked at the soon to be dead lizard man seeing his eyes shifting from Krubs pained groan back to him.

  The wizard could wait he decided after tying off the wizard's restraints to the house's power supply and letting him fall unceremoniously to the ground.

  Speaking into all their minds he told them how fucked they were, and without further ado dived into their minds one at a time searching through their mental landscapes for a way to access their memories.

  Killing all of the would-be slavers wasn't an issue for him, any info he could glean from them would be a plus though.

  One of the first things he discovered was the name of the world he found himself on, Curset.

  He next scoured their minds for his location, some random river in a kingdom called Dejot on the southern part of the continent of Zeme he found himself on.

  Along the way, he discovered the location of their c
amp, where they a scouting party had gone out to collect more slaves from the tribes of beastkin people located in the vast jungle.

  Finishing his inquiry, these men, he used the word loosely with this group rapist and murders all, were of no use to Cade any longer.

  Giving the human, dwarf, and bear a quickish death by mashing their brains to a paste, he let their bodies drop to the rocky beach.

  Looking to the lizard man Cade spoke into his mind simply saying, "that knife was a mistake."

  Pointing to the hole in the right side of his shirt he saw the lizard man's eyes grow wide, well wider after he saw the gruesome bloody eyes, noses, and ears of his departed friends.

  "How would you like to die" asked Cade into the dead man's mind as he returned to the dark landscape.

  "In my bed of old age" the lizard man quietly replied.

  Cade laughed out loud on the dark dreary mental plane. "Well, that's not going to happen, so any other suggestions?".

  "None that I think would save me." Came the morose reply.

  Cade thought over what to do with the lizard man, the dive into his memories showing him that mercy wasn't something he could give the reprehensible being.

  A few that stood out were the savage rape and murder of a human female after a successful raid on a trading caravan, the cruel torture of one of the guards of the raided caravan for no other reason than boredom and to test the edge on the twin blades still trapped in his grip.

  A serial killing streak in his old village for the same reason of boredom and blood rounded out the charges.

  "Your definitely right about that." Cade said into the mindscape.

  "Let's have a little experiment, now if I am talking directly into your mind and I have no mind-reading powers that I know of we are going to poke around in your brain and find out where you are hearing me from ok."

  Silence met his declaration as a heavy fog of fear started to build in the lizard man's mindscape.

  "Well, let us begin why don't we."

  Your a wizard Cade...well kinda

  Cade spent the better part of an hour poking and prodding in the lizard man's brain.

  The soon to be dead man's name was Oren though he couldn't be bothered to commit it to memory.

  He was slightly disappointed to find out he wasn't telepathic, well not in the standard sense.

  He was manipulating the signals in the brains of whoever he was having a mind to mind chat with.

  He was blown away at the unknown utility of his abilities as it somehow transposed his speech directly onto Oren's brain, forcing the neurons of the speech center of the lizard man's brain to fire.

  He was shoving the information into him as he caused the requisite neurons to fire.

  The mind space that he had found himself in as he traveled from mind to mind he assumed was his own brain's way of integrating the information he was receiving from the slaver's minds.

  The only downside to the miraculous mental communication was that it only worked while he was present in their mental space.

  While useful, the failure to communicate in the physical world with his first visitors had him anxious to find a workaround to that problem.

  As he had held Oren's brain scan in his mind's eye during the experimentation he had slowly built up a fuzzy map of the different sections of the lizard man's mind.

  Cade had been overjoyed at his success, aside from the speech centers he had found the centers for motor functions and higher brain functions.

  While the intuitive ability was amazing to his geeky side Cade hoped he wouldn't always have to be present in a person's mind to communicate with them.

  It was either that or spend years learning all the different languages he was sure he was going to run into.

  An idea had struck him an hour after he had begun his tinkering with Oren's mind but he had held off implementing it, anxious as to how or if it would change him.

  Returning to the speech center of Oren's brain he performed some mental gymnastics and pulled what he could of the languages the lizard man was knowledgeable of, adjusting his own neural pathways to match his test subjects, gaining a splitting headache in the process.

  Wincing at the pain Cade cautiously reviewed his thoughts and emotions.

  He was relieved to find no new tendencies toward rape and unwarranted killing.

  As he took a few minutes from experimenting on the slaver's mind to let the pain pass he chuckled as the area he believed was the creativity center of Oren's mind had been lit up constantly as the Oren kept looking for a way out of the dire situation he found himself in.

  He gave the lizard man's mind a little squeeze to remind him who was in charge.

  Suddenly fissures exploded all around him in Oren's dark mental landscape as a few blood vessels burst in his brain.

  Cade repaired the damage quickly with a thoughtful look at the repaired landscape around him.

  Finding that the damage to the lizard man's brain reflected in the reptile's mindscape was new.

  Cade had one more experiment to finish before he would follow that conclusion to its finish.

  Driven by his curiosity, he excited the neurons in the motor centers of the slavers mind as he tried to puppet the lizard man around.

  The results were lackluster at the least and unmanageable at best, depending on how complex the action.

  Anything more than a run pushed his control to the breaking point, the dichotomy of his motionless body and that of his running lizard puppet too much of his mind to manage at the moment.

  If he used his body as a representation of the movements he wanted to complete he could force the lizard man puppet to follow his every move within its unmodified range.

  Anything he tried to make his Oren puppet do that exceeded its body's limits resulted in broken bones and ruptured organs.

  "He wouldn't be a bad running partner."

  Cade brought the newly healed Oren back to him to find out what happened to the lizard man if his mind was damaged irreparably.

  His experiments had the slaver crying for mercy at his feet in Oren's mental space, the fight long ago going out of him.

  Every attack he had received from the slaver in the shadowy plane during the lengthy testing of his powers had connected with Cade's mental self but not caused any lasting damage.

  He had found out that the damage he received in another's mindscape was easier to heal than a simple scrape was on his physical body.

  Ready to begin his last experiment with the lizard man Cade began to slowly separate the cells in the man's brain from each other.

  Oren's mental body suddenly fell limp at Cade's feet as the damage to his brain exceeded some limit.