Mana Mutation Menace (Journey to Chaos Book 3)

by Brian Wilkerson

  “Isn't it dangerous to keep monsters in the village?"

  "Absolutely," Nunnal said. "That is why we take precautions. We need them for the Festival of Arin’s Ascension. If the summit deal goes through, we’ll have more mouths to feed.”

  "There are all kinds of delicacies," Kallen told Eric. "Tougai pudding, Siplic roast, Nsuopi taste fantastic in soy sauce—”

  The chimera had an astounding degree of knowledge about elven festival food. She also spoke fondly of it. Despite lacking a Seed of Chaos, she had more of an elven identity than he did. He supposed being raised here would do that.

  "Kallen!? What are you doing here?"

  Approaching them was Ralm with a trolley. Although he wore a lab coat and googles, his burden was not in the least scientific. It was laden with coffee, doughnuts, and other snack foods.

  Kallen frowned. "Why shouldn't I be here? My foster mom's your boss."

  "I didn't mean it like that! Why do you have to take everything so personally?"

  "You make it personal, like you did with Nilo!"

  "One flight with a friend and you make it sound like I made out in front of Annala!"

  “Don’t treat me like an outsider, Ralm. I know what a private flight between teenagers means among elves.”

  “Then you should know it’s not only for couples!”

  “Is that what happened?” Eric asked.

  “It’s complicated.”

  The Right Hand of the Grendel rose high. “Is that what happened!?”

  “Eric!” Nunnal shouted. “The poem.”

  Eric clenched. Then he hummed a tune and began to sing. "Am I sapient or a monster? Hope or Despair? Where have I come; where do I go? The Trickster grins. The Trickster grins. The Trickster grins." He unclenched.

  “Feel better?”

  “Yes. Ralm, I’m sorry for my lapse in self-discipline.”

  The elf boy shrugged. “Don’t worry about it. Elves hit each other all the time when we’re angry. It’s always funny until someone gets hurt, so for us, it’s always funny. Abyss, we were just about to blow the HPLC up for fun. Wanna take a shot?”

  Eric looked to Nunnal, “Can I? There’s a new spell I’d like to try out.”

  “Go ahead. There’s plenty more where that thing came from.”

  Eric rushed back to the pit room and the others followed. Pulling out his spear, he twirled it around and stomped the ground. "I'll vaporize it instantly." He pointed the crystal down at the beast that defied description.

  "Oh Spirit of Flame, release thy primal power onto mine enemy." The crystal grew red. "May fire and heat consume them utterly! EXPLOSION!"

  A red/orange bolt shot from the crystal and collided with the abomination. A great pillar of heat and flames gushed from the pit and scoured the lab's walls. Just as quickly, it was pulled back into the pit and the force field glowed red fire. When it stabilized and the dust cleared, nothing remained but ashes leaking shadows.

  “Nice shot, Second Choice,” said an aide. “Director Enaz, we have the following items available for your foster daughter’s use.”

  Eric didn’t catch the rest of it because it was techno-babble, but Kallen understood and said they would suit her purpose. The aide nodded and said he would teleport it to Albatros IX.

  “Why can’t he just hand it to us?”

  “I’m part of the Enaz family and thus legally an elf,” Kallen explained. “This means that I can’t give elven technology to anyone without the Supreme Council’s permission, but I can take it into my ship and add it to my ship. Once there, I’m in human territory and human society recognizes me as a chimera demon, so elf laws don't apply.”

  To complete the loophole abuse, they had to go to her ship so she could give it to Eric, technically an elf but not part of the village, so he could give it to Norej. Out of the mad scientist tree, through the Arch of Kresnik in the Embassy, walk to the airship hangar, and find Kallen’s personal craft among the many. All this was necessary to obtain something that was one room away from them in Dnnac Ledo.

  “Is all this really necessary?” Emily asked.

  “Part of the Conversion War was abuse of elven technology by humans,” Eric said. “Besides, lots of humans don’t like relying on elves for their technology. It’s a complicated racial pride, business interest, national security, and paranoia issue.”

  “Did you read that in a book?”

  “No, a vision quest conducted by Eaol.”

  “Ah.”

  One more lightning teleport later, Eric emptied the loot on Norej’s bedroom floor. The young master of the mansion stared speechless at the elven objects.

  “I can’t believe you did it.”

  “Now can we go?”

  With a sigh, Norej stood up. “A noble keeps his word. How are we going to do this?”

  Eric made a motion of drawing a cloak around Norej and he disappeared from the neck down. Then he pulled the rest over his head and he disappeared entirely.

  “This is divine darkness magic. I stole power from a reaper and then embraced the Spirit of Darkness to refine it to this level. You will remain perfectly invisible so long as I will it.”

  “As long as you don’t go into Honey’s cafe,” Emily remarked.

  “I can’t believe I’m doing this.”

  Norej repeated this under his breath all the way to the Arch of Kresnik, at which point Eric elbowed him into silence. Fortunately, he didn’t throw up when they reached the other side, like Eric did, once again.

  Ponix had already dismissed everyone else from the area. Only he himself was present at the security controls. With his top-level access, he fudged the records to make sure no one noticed that more than three people had arrived and then made sure that no one noticed his fudging or the fudging of the fudging.

  “Avoiding a revealing cover-up is Lesson 2.0 for elven intelligence officers.”

  Norej broke out into a sweat as soon as they left the Arch of Kresnik’s chamber. It wasn’t until then that it truly struck him that he was in the home of elves. His father raised him to think they were the boogeyman. Adrenaline ran wild through his system. Every time an elf looked in his direction, he felt like running back to the Universal Embassy. He called himself all kinds of names until he crossed the threshold into the Enaz home.

  Eric led him upstairs and Norej gulped. Above all, his father told him horror stories about “The Witch of Dnnac Ledo.” If she caught him in a room with her distraught daughter, she’d cut his testicles off, mutate them into an alien parasite, and force-feed it to him, then keep him alive with her arcane magecraft past the point where he would have died so she could test all sorts of horrendous spells on his undead body.

  Eric opened the door and he saw Annala curled up in her bed. Instantly, he felt nothing but sympathy. The girl he knew was cheery and confident, but this was abject despair.

  “Annala, my lady, I brought someone to see you.”

  “Go away. I don’t care.”

  Eric elbowed Norej. He swallowed several times to get his throat wet enough to talk.

  “Wh….what if…” He swallowed again. “What if it involves our club?”

  At that, Annala stirred. She removed the covers to check who her latest visitor could be and Eric's threat alarm went off. The lower half of every single hair was grey. The collar’s suppression matrix had progressed more rapidly in ten hours than it had the past day.

  “Norej? Is that you?”

  Eric dismissed the Shadow Cloak and Norej stood clearly in the bedroom.

  Annala shot upright and exclaimed, “It IS you!” Then dread rushed in. “What are you doing here!? Do you have any idea what my neighbors will do to you if they find you?”

  “I have many ideas,” Norej replied, “each more terrible than the last, but here I am nonetheless.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “To cheer you up, but don’t get the wrong idea! I wasn’t worried about you. Your boyfriend bribed me with elven tech and the restoratio
n of my family’s status.”

  “Elven tech….? You didn’t!”

  “I paid for it,” Eric assured her. “The smith wanted grendel skin for forging material.”

  “You tore the flesh from your body to make me happy?” Annala’s voice was adoring and her eyes shined love. “That’s the sweetest thing anyone’s ever done for me.”

  “AHEM!”

  Annala turned those eyes on Norej. “And you are the bravest human I’ve ever met. You certainly saved me from my foul mood.”

  She left her bed, stood up, and pecked his check. He blushed uncontrollably and giggled like a fool. Then he coughed and said, “Good, then you can go do your thing with your aunt and get the Summit moving.”

  Annala shifted back to her bleak mood. She dropped back to her bed and said, “That’s a non-starter. If Aunt Alexis truly experienced what I did in that vision quest, then there’s no way she’ll ever agree to allow humans inside the village and without agreement between the member nations, the ICDMM will dry up and disintegrate; no cure for anyone.”

  “It can work,” Norej insisted. “I know it can because I have proof.”

  “What proof?”

  “I’m here. I, who come from a long line of non-human haters. I, who founded a school club based on hatred for an elf. I, who despite acknowledging feelings of infatuation for a despairing friend, had to be bribed to come here.”

  Annala smiled slightly. “You’re infatuated with me?”

  The boy’s face turned pink. “Not the point! Don't presume that just because we're human we've forgotten about the Conversion War. Despite what some of you elves think, we're not mayflies or goldfish. We had a glorious civilization before you ruined it with your experiments. Our population was decimated. Even now, there are still fewer humans in the world then there were before the war. Elves may be terrified of leaving their forests because of humans, but we humans are terrified of the day you do.”

  Norej paused for breath and for time to compose himself. What he was about to say next was far more personal.

  “When you came to school, I shat myself. I had nightmares of the things you might do to me. I thought you were some advance scout for an invasion. Then I saw how kind you were to us mere mortals, and even fell for one. When we started that club, I began to think that, maybe, just maybe, it wasn't entirely impossible that you weren't a sinister and eldritch monster wearing an angel's face. If I can come to such a conclusion, then your aunt can as well.”

  “You think I have the face of an angel?"

  The boy’s face turned red. "Not the point! If you can persuade me with your sound arguments and lovely voice….arg!” He face palmed.

  Eric put a hand on his shoulder. “I know how you feel.”

  Annala giggled. “How about this? I’ll tell you what I learned, not because I want your help in finding a solution to this mess, but because I’m trying to convince you how hopeless it all is. You will use this information to convince me to try with Aunt Alexis, not because you want me to succeed, but because you want dirt on my family and my community for your newspaper. Does that sound good?”

  “Hmm…I don’t dislike that idea.”

  As the night continued, Nunnal brought up dinner on trays. Eric was quick to recloak Norej, but no one could deny that the elven matriarch left one more tray than there were visible people. The noble boy refused to touch his food until everyone else, including Emily, took a bite of it. Then he consented and ate the rest. At last, they came to a solution.

  “Yes, yes, I believe this will work,” Annala said. “If I can convince Aunt Alexis with this, then I can convince everyone in the village.”

  Chapter 13 Beseeching Rattlelance

  Early the next day, Annala waited for her aunt at the Guardian Lodge. Everything was ready. The only step left in her plan was to execute it. Her legs jiggled with nerves. If it didn’t work, then the Mana Mutation Summit would not reconvene until next year, and Lunas would push forward Order’s agenda. It would divide mortals and elves, defund the ICDMM, and spread Order’s influence. After the horrors she’d seen, she could not allow that to happen.

  Alexis walked in and froze when she saw her niece. Annala didn’t say anything and Alexis averted her gaze from her.

  “I heard what happened….and I’m sorry.”

  “No, I’m sorry. I was insensitive and overly curious. I should have listened to my elder.”

  Alexis cocked her head in Annala’s direction and arched an eyebrow. “Oh? You think you understand my position now?”

  “Yes, I do,” Annala replied. “Humans are greedy and dangerous. Their short and fragile lives make them obsessed with control in order to protect themselves. They seek the greatest power they can find and are too stupid to realize that the power granted by Order will not bring them control or happiness.”

  She shuddered and hugged herself.

  “Even though it wasn’t my real body, I can still feel that monster’s hands.”

  Overwhelmed by sympathy, Alexis gathered her niece in her arms. She stroked the girl’s head and rocked her back and forth.

  “I shouldn’t have snapped at you,” she said softly. “You’re bright, inquisitive, and compassionate. I should’ve known you’d seek out Eaol. What matters now is that you stay here where you’re safe.”

  “You’re right,” Annala said into her chest. “Elven villages are the safest places in the world, after the Noitearc Monasteries.”

  Alexis moved back. “What do you mean, ‘after’?”

  Annala's tone shifted into one of scholarly concern. “There have been occasions when a village was found and destroyed, but no monastery has ever fallen to enemies.”

  “True, but our defenses have grown in leaps and bounds since then. We are stronger and better prepared. Besides, Noitearc Monasteries have never fallen because they’re rarely attacked. The Great Tree is neutral in the First War.”

  “In other words, they’re safer because they don’t have enemies.”

  “That’s unusually laconic for you, but yes, you could say that.”

  “Then wouldn’t it be best if we didn’t have enemies either?”

  Alexis paused, then switched from stroking her niece to giving her a noogie.

  “Instead of Chaotic Doctrine, you use a Salicratic Dialogue. Have you meant anything you’ve said to me today?”

  Annala squirmed. “Of course I have. I wouldn’t lie to family. I really do think humans are greedy and stupid and have a need for control. Even Eric is like that. Isn’t that right, Eric?”

  Eric de-cloaked before Alexis’ eyes and she tightened her grip on Annala in shock. She didn’t notice the boy despite her practice and training. None of her devices alerted her to his presence. The Guardian Lodge was supposed to be fully secure and safe. She gripped Annala so tightly the younger elf eeped and so she loosened her grip.

  “Don’t be so surprised,” she said. “You know who built the lodge’s security system and you also know that this person agrees with me.”

  Annala slipped out of her embrace to stand by Eric, who slipped his arms around Annala and pulled her in. She nestled.

  “Covetous of my life, capable of great stupidity, and fond of all that’s gold and glittery? Guilty as charged.” He kissed Annala's cheek. “But I’d tear the flesh from my body if it would make my girl happy. If you don’t believe me, ask Sonic Pleaks. He has a copy of it on display.”

  “As bad as humans and other mortals are,” Annala said, “elves are the same way.”

  “We don’t—”

  “While they did horrible things in the Conversion War, elves were not blameless. My grandparents’ generation razed human cities to the ground because of the possibility that ordercraft might be used against them someday. They severely reduced the human population, let alone the other mortal races. It’s no wonder they’re scared of us.”

  “If we can defuse that fear, then there will be less anger, less hatred, and less suffering,” Eric said. “There’s no
better place for this than the Mana Mutation Summit.”

  Hand on her sword, her official sword that marked her status as Priori Guardian, Alexis said, “You two are wasting your time. It doesn’t matter what you say. My decision will not change.” Her other hand balled into a fist. “I will protect this village from all threats and that means no one from any mortal race is ever getting anywhere near it.”

  A red puppet poofed into existence at her right and sang, “Alexis.”

  A blue puppet poofed into existence at her left and sang, “Alexis.”

  A green puppet poofed into existence above her and sang, “Alexis.

  “I’m home,” said a voice behind her.

  At the sound of the voice, her eyes widened, her body tensed, and her face flushed. She slowly turned around to see someone standing in the lodge’s doorway. It was an adult male elf with a face like a movie star. He wore a gold and white cloak with the symbol of the Dragon’s Lair emblazoned on the back and held in place with a distinctively elven clasp.

  “Q-Quando!? What are you doing here!? You’re early and I’m not ready and—”

  In one motion, Quando went to one knee, grabbed her hand, and brought it to his lips. She blushed, pulled it away, and smacked him with it.

  “Don’t tell me she roped you into charming me!”

  “Annala did no such thing. Queen Kasile hired me for the Summit’s security detail. She figured an elven officer working for a human company hit the right note.”

  She crossed her arms. “My answer is still ‘no.’”

  Quando stood up and gave her his best charmer's grin. The younger couple were pleased to see a momentary weakening in her knees.

  “Alexis, my childhood friend, you know the depths of my power. I have full use of my chaotic abilities, even under the harsh glare of an Order Obelisk, and I have only grown stronger since that day. Match me against any ordercrafter and I will emerge victorious.”

  Alexis smiled indulgingly and placed her hand back into his own.

  “My love, I would trust you with my own life any day of the week, but when it comes to the village, I can’t take any chances.”