Atomic Mage

by Garrett Carter

  Turning back to the cat woman Cade felt a razor-sharp-clawed hand grasp his throat.

  Looking down from his kneeling position he found a golden eye looking at him as she weakly struggling to turn his way.

  Grasping the clawed hand with his power, he dropped into the woman's mind and was intrigued by the mindscape he found himself in.

  A dense jungle going through what Cade felt was a rage-fueled hurricane was laid out before him.

  Taking a few steps toward the tree line Cade was taken a little aback as he came upon what he assumed was the woman's mental shield.

  Prowling toward him were ten huge black panthers, tall enough to look him in the eyes.

  Hee used this tried and true method of walking through them to be met with growls and claw swipes.

  Jerking back instinctively he gave a short chuckle and reached out with a mental hand on each of the mindscapes defenders and forced them to the ground.

  The giant cats fought fiercely in Cades grip until he placed a sharp mental slap on ten snarling noses speaking a firm "NO."

  Expecting a little more fight from the guardians he was surprised to see them all laydown and cease growling at him.

  The answer to Cades unasked question was provided a moment later as the raging winds calmed and a twin to the injured woman, who was still laying on the ground before his physical body, stepped out from between two trees.

  She was stunning, shorter than him by a little more than a foot with a beautiful face if a bit more cat like than he was used to, though his gaze was drawn to her golden eyes.

  He felt his fight or flight instincts beginning to kick in as the woman growled softly at him, her golden eyes glaring at him with open hostility.

  He wasn't proud to admit he might have snuck a glance down her body and Fuck what a body it was.

  As he snuck his quick glance looked down her body he noted a few things.

  She was fit with what looked like round full breasts covered by a leather sleeveless jerkin that showed off her muscular arms.

  His gaze traveled quickly down her slim waist to her wide hips that had plenty of padding which were contained in a pair of leather leggings that held her pleasantly plump thighs and almost equally plump calves.

  A more primal part of his brain bet money she had an amazing ass.

  Cade physically shook his whole body and thought of naked grandmas to refocus on the proven killer in front of him, evidenced by the bodies he had removed from her injured body and the inch long claws her deceptively dainty hands were sporting.

  "Why am is still alive mind mage?" The mysterious panther woman asked.

  Cade shook his head to answer her question.

  While in Kaz's memories he had gleaned some information about how magic worked in this world through Kaz's magic training with Rista.

  Though he had skipped over A LOT of their training which generally began and ended with Rista banging Kaz's brains out.

  Cade wasn't sure what to call what he was, his abilities were similar to pretty much every mage type he had learned about through his viewing of Kaz's training.

  What he did figure out for himself was that he could use his power to manipulate molecules and the atoms they were made of.

  The difference between him and a mind mage he believed was the scope of ability.

  He could just do more overall, actually being able to physically alter someone's brain instead of inducing feelings and the such.

  "We can discuss more about what I am after we figure out who YOU are and why I should finish saving you" he said with a neutral expression not wanting to give anything of himself away to the potential enemy in front of him.

  He was not ashamed to admit he found the confusion on her pretty face cute.

  Finding himself distracted again by the beautiful woman, he got himself under control reminding himself a pretty face wasn't all that was important.

  A stab of grief went through him as he remembered his Tony, beautiful in and out.

  Squashing that feeling down he looked again at the alluring cat woman, his gaze hard, he didn't want to mar his dead wife's memory with what he might find in this woman's mind.

  He decided to lay out the deal with the cat lady.

  "Mind mage or not you are near death and clearly dangerous, I'm going to look through your memories and see if you are worth saving, don't give me a reason to cut this short by fighting back, sound good?"

  "Good, let us begin."

  He finished the statement by diving into the woman's memories.

  The panther woman began to say something which he ignored as he began his task.

  A whole new world

  Mina's mouth gaped open as the mysterious man who had stormed into her mind disappeared before she could get a word out.

  Crossing her arms over her chest Mina stared at the space he had left with an irritated expression.

  "Might as well do some looking of my own."

  With a thought, she sent her two infiltrators to work stalking past the unfamiliar buildings of the stranger's mind.

  A chuckle escaped her as she found her caution unneeded as she found no shield or barrier in the tall dark man's mind.

  With no shield or guardians to worry about Mina entered the man's mind and stared wide-eyed at what she assumed was his home.

  The building was similar to a few she had seen in her travels, though the materials that composed it were unlike any other she had seen before.

  The white sides of the building were made of some sort of flexible overlapping material that had impressions of wood.

  As she walked around to the entrance she looked into the large windows.

  The layout and furnishings gave her a moment of confusion that was only matched by her increasing curiosity about the man.

  As she reached the black door of the home she turned the knob and pushed the door slowly inwards, her senses on alert for a trap or attack.

  She released the breath she had been holding after a few moments with no traps sprung or attacks directed at her.

  As she stood in the doorway Mina lamented the loss of her short swords for a moment, the blades had been left behind in the rush to escape Rista's grip.

  Padding lightly into the house she began her exploration of the intriguing man's mind.

  Laughing uproariously at Cade's face as he gave into Candice's plea to keep the stray she had just found, Mina found she wanted to get to know this man better.

  Her initial exploration of the home had borne little fruit.

  She had found no food or real weapons in any of the rooms she had explored.

  A few flimsy knives that wouldn't stand up to a rock were her only weapons at the moment, though useless they had still been shoved into a few hidden pockets.

  Her best find had been the large black rectangle on the wall of the largest room in the home.

  As she had sat on the couch her hand had landed on a smaller black rectangle with rows of soft squares on it.

  The wall rectangle had lit up after she had pushed cautiously on the soft red button, which had caused her to throw the small rectangle away in fright.

  Her fright had slowly evaporated as she watched the stranger's life play out on the wall rectangle that she had found out was a flat-screen tv mounted on the wall.

  She had sat on the couch watching Cade's life play out for far too long, her attention rapt as her intrigue had changed to honest interest as she watched Cade's wife Tony gain everything Mina had desired from a mate.

  The world that he had come from was very different from her own, the cars and planes that he had used for travel barely registering as possible.

  As she watched his military deployments pass before her eyes she again sat raptly, hope blooming in her heart.

  She wondered if the two long years of disappointment was at an end.

  Two long years of traveling from one village to another, of finding one male after another who failed to meet her expectations.

  What
this man desired was a woman who could stand on her own, one who could help him keep his home while pursuing her own desires.

  Her hope turned to unrequited lust as she fast-forwarded to the deployment's end and Cade and Tony's reunion.

  The ruff around her neck bloomed as the tv displayed Cade and Tony in the midst of making love.

  Mina shivered as she watched Tony's eyes roll back in her head as she reached her bliss, her shaking legs wrapped around Cade's slowly thrusting waist.

  This had not been the first time she had watched the two humans couple, some more intense than the others.

  "Would he hold me as dearly?"

  Her initial curiosity about this man had changed and she began to hope she could capture him for herself, and maybe a few others.

  "Many hands do make light work," she said as she used one of the many little sayings she had learned during her viewing of Cade's life.

  Her people were rarely monogamous, the males having more than a few wives and some of the females collecting their own husbands.

  Her contemplation ended as her heart broke for Cade as she watched Tony fight valiantly with her cancer.

  The woman was Dresk until the end, her spirit not flexing one bit as she kept fighting for herself and her family until her last day.

  Her viewing was cut short as she felt a change in Cade's demeanor as if he had come to a decision.

  Giving Tony a nod of respect from one warrior to another Mina turned off the tv and placed the remote back on the arm of the couch before she left Cade's mind.

  Returning to the forest of her mind the hope for her future with the strange new man causing her heart to race as she waited for him to surface and give his verdict.

  Super cat woman

  Surfacing in a particularly vivid memory from the within last week of the cat woman's life, Cade looked around Finding himself in a small clearing dominated by a single wooden hut.

  He watched with a neutral expression as the panther woman burst out of the hut trampling a well-maintained garden of jungle flowers.

  "Jesus she is fast." He said in awe as he watched the panther woman begin sprinting faster than he had ever seen anyone move, blowing his new top speed out of the water.

  The woman ran down a short path to a large clearing that was filled with men and a few women clothed in the same uniform black slaver gear that his welcoming crew had on.

  His hate-filled glare was mirrored by the panther woman as they both noticed the black-garbed slavers surrounding a group of screaming and crying women and children.

  The women and children were, he noticed furred in the same color pattern that you would expect a Jaguar to have.

  He watched as the black panther woman was hit in the gut with three arrows one after another.

  He heard one of the other females scream "MINA!!", as he continued to watch the memory play out.

  "Guess that's her name" Cade said as his mood soured, the fact that want he was watching had already happened not mattering one bit to his emotions.

  He watched with wide eyes as Mina snapped the shafts of the arrows off and charged at a group of slavers dragging another jaguar woman off to the circle of a dozen of the women and children the slavers had already captured.

  "Damn she's a tough fucking cookie"

  He saw a much larger jaguar corpse on the ground filled with arrows and slashed by cuts, what he assumed was a male jaguar was surrounded by 15 dead slavers.

  "Went down fighting for your family, good for you. I promise they will pay."

  Resolving to keep that promise Cade looked back to Mina's fight with the slavers.

  He was slightly surprised as she was handling her own if a little less grace than her little run through the woods had led him to believe she had.

  He noticed two of the slavers were already down with their throats torn out, the other two were barely hanging on as Mina performed a swipe to the neck of the slaver to her right which the man barely got out of the way of.

  The one to her left slammed a wooden baton into her already injured abdomen as she tried to shift away from the blow and evidently overtaxed her injured body and stumbled.

  Cade heard Mina's loud pained roar as the hit knocking the wind out of her.

  He noted the familiar sound wondering how close he had been dropped to the raid as he got back to the event unfolding before him.

  Mina had dropped to her hands and knees after the slaver's brutal strike gasping painfully.

  As the man drew back to knock her out with a look of savage glee written on his face the jaguar woman Mina had saved had recovered and with a roar of her own latched onto the gleeful slavers neck with her claws and savagely tore the throat out of the surprised slaver.

  The jaguar woman pulled Mina to her feet and turned to fend off the last man of the group that had been dragging her to the circle as Mina collected herself.

  Suddenly Mina and her savior stiffened as none other than Rista walked around a hut.

  "We were looking for you little Mina", Rista said in a sing-song voice, the same look of glee on her face as the gurgling slaver had as he bleed out at Mina and the unknown jaguar woman's feet.

  "You are worth more to us than all these other kitty cats combined, though they will fill my coin purse just the same. So how about you give up and submit to me and at all least your family will live. Continue to fight me and more will die."

  Cades face burned with rage at Ristas glee at the thought of killing and torturing more of the jaguar folk.

  He watched as the jaguar women fought the orc slaver's mind magic and was amazed as Mina's face cleared as the mind mage slaver visibly flinched.

  The second jaguar woman looking to Mina and uttered a muted word that sounded like "run" to his ears thought he couldn't be sure.

  His assumption was proven right as Mina took off out of the village in a sprint breathlessly swearing vengeance on the orc slaver as she disappeared into the tree line.

  What followed were flashes of Mina running through the forest with the slavers hot on her heels.

  The pained breathing and the grimace on her face told him she wouldn't last too much longer.

  The protruding arrows still lodged in her abdomen causing her to stumble every few steps as her flight through the thick trees jostled them.

  Luck was with her though as she stumbled to a halt as she spooked an animal, eerily similar to a boar, that took off to her left.

  Her head swiveled to the right as she saw a depression hidden behind a tree root.

  A look of relief flashed across her face before a shout was heard behind her.

  Jumping over the root and laying down Mina disappeared from his sight.

  Cade watched with a grin her pursuers take a sharp left after the spooked pig's loud thrashing.