by Daniel Ruth
“That was weird. It took me a while to get my shield to block out his creepiness.”
“Eh. It should fade, assuming he doesn’t get his body destroyed again. Think of him as a work in progress. Do what you can about the contractors. Offer them bonuses or something. Or... wait a minute. Stella.”
“What about her?”
“She has an earth elemental hanging around, trolling the wildlife around the Primary. Ask her if she can use it to expand the area.”
“That would be cool,” she began enthusiastically. Magic was cool. Although the territorial feeling her elemental stirred in me would be uncomfortable. I should find something to do that day out of the house.
“I don’t think she can do anything with duracrete though. She was complaining about it the other day and how unnatural it was.”
“Granite or whatever she wants to use is fine. A few wards will harden anything she sets up. That’s the great thing about have an apocalypse. Extra energy everywhere.”
“Glad it’s working for you,” Jeremy snarked without looking up.
“See if he can fix the grass in the yard too. Not sure about that. I don’t think elementals work well with organics. Be nice if she was a druid.”
“Do you think she’ll mind?”
“She likes to help and it will keep her mind off of being stuck here. Oh, I know offer her a barter. I hear primitive civilizations like that.”
“Sure. I’ll paraphrase that if you don’t mind.”
“No problem, you’re a great manager Beth. Tell you what, after you do this I’ll teach you how to do a psychic construct like a psi blade and we can go hunting for dinosaurs!”
“Oh, hell no,” shouted Jeremy, who was suddenly giving me his whole attention.
“I’d invite you too but you’d just get eaten,” I replied sadly.
“There will be absolutely no dinosaur hunts!”
I silently mouthed ‘dinosaur hunt’ and gave her two thumbs up.
“None!”
“You’re being unreasonable,” Beth turned back to her brother angrily. “With my force field, it has zero chance of hurting me and if my weapon is a fraction as powerful as Derek’s all I would have to do is touch it and we get food for the week.”
“No way!”
I turned away from their argument and started to troop to the bedroom. Then my wrist communicator rang. I looked at it in puzzlement. I could have sworn I shut it off when I went to Purgatory last night.
“Derek,” I answered as I closed the bedroom door. Beth and Jeremy’s argument was getting louder.
“It’s Conrad,” the voice said. “We need to schedule when you are going to Paris.”
“Is there a rush? I thought the dragon had already burned everything within her range.”
“She did. Now she’s raising the dead. Skeletons are roaming the city attacking things.”
“That’s ingenious. Still, skeletons are pretty harmless...”
“While the militia isn’t having any issues dealing with them, I want to get a permanent diplomatic solution before she thinks of something more effective.”
“She certainly sounds angry. Can’t really blame her...”
“I want solutions; not reasons why you understand what’s she’s doing.”
“Okay. The first step, you need a really big bribe.”
“Bribe?”
“Think of it as weregild. Recompense for blowing up her lair.”
“Gold?”
“I don’t think you can get enough gold. Try gems. Enough to sleep on. The bigger the better.”
“That’s easy enough,” he said thoughtfully.
I looked at his hologram floating above the wrist comm suspiciously. “Real gems. Not manufactured gems. Dragons can tell. They feel different.”
“That is more difficult. Does it have to be terrestrial gems?”
“Come again?”
“There are asteroids and planets that have easily accessible veins of precious metals and gems. Hell, the core of Jupiter is mostly diamond. Outgoing traffic is mostly blocked, but inbound is still allowed.”
“Interesting,” I whispered. Visions of sleeping on head size diamonds flashed through my head. “That may work. Send over a few samples and I’ll check them... with a bit of alchemy. Yeah, alchemy.”
“Assuming this works, can we send you out tomorrow?”
My face fell. I finally got the last pieces to put together some awesome circles and a few new wards and it has to be put on hold. Still, if we made up with the dragon, maybe she could share a few spells or enchantments. So far all I had been able to get from self-study, in regards to spellcasting, was to light my fingers on fire. Since I don’t smoke it wasn’t very useful.
“Fine. I’ll see who wants to come.”
“Wait a minute! This is a military mission, you can’t bring a gang.”
“Oh come on, it’ll be fun! Mei likes to travel. Estella is probably going stir crazy stuck here. Jeremy will... well I’m sure I’ll think of a reason for him. Beth can hunt dinosaurs over there with me and...”
“Beth as in Jeremy’s little sister?”
“Oh, you remember her? Yeah...”
“Are you crazy? You can’t take a six-year-old into a war zone.”
“Eight. Well, I’d keep her away from the dragon until we make nice, of course,” I replied mildly offended. “I hear she’s almost ten.”
“I don’t care if she’s seventeen. If she isn’t eighteen, then she isn’t going without her brother’s permission and I know there’s no way in hell he’s going to give that.”
“Well, he is pretty unreasonable that way. I’ll ask him, though. So you’re okay with everyone else? I’ll let them know.”
“Wait a minute, I didn’t say that! You can’t bring everyone you know with you!”
“I agree. We can leave Faramond behind. And the elemental. I doubt there’s room in whatever we’re taking anyway,” I nodded to him in acknowledgment. I absently turned the terminal off. So much to do before tomorrow. But first a nap.
I would try to convince Jeremy to let Beth come afterward. I heard some steps outside the door. Must have been Beth not wanting to interrupt my nap time. Such a considerate girl.
Chapter 11
There was a siren announcing the end of the world blaring in ears. It wasn’t something I could take lying down. That was why I found myself with my head buried in the ceiling. Apparently, leaping up with a significant fraction of my strength from my bed wasn’t the best decision. I think I heard the bed shred too.
“Ah man,” I whined manfully, as I pushed my pushed my way out of the gap between the roof and ceiling. I winced as I used too much strength and my arm went through the ceiling instead of easing my way out. “I loved that bed. Damn! I loved this ceiling! What the hell!”
“We had to get him up, Conrad’s going to be here any minute,” a young voice defended herself as I finally dropped to the ground in a shower of plaster. The house was an old design so it may have been less durable than the modern buildings of plasteel and permacrete. I had really liked the classic feel. It felt less prefab.
“Where the heck did you even get an air horn? What if he accidentally hit you,” Jeremy asked his sister as she backed nervously away from us. Okay, maybe it was just me. I may have looked a tad bit enraged as I brushed the plaster and detritus off of me and staggered, half asleep, towards her.
“Or even did something on purpose,” I muttered to myself as I glared at her.
“I have a force field. Listen, we’ve been trying wake him for over an hour. We were going to be late for Paris,” she whined as only an eight-year-old can manage.
I finally got my head around their words. “Conrad is coming? I thought I had until tomorrow?” I looked muzzily at the destruction of my bed and the hole in the ceiling. On the plus side, the roof was intact.
“It is tomorrow,” Beth yelled in exasperation.
If I slept all day and still felt this tired, I may be
closer to needing a week long nap than I thought. My anger and adrenalin slowly faded as I looked sadly at my bed. “Okay. Good job,” I said unenthusiastically. “Call the construction people. I want this fixed by the time I get back.”
“By the time we get back,” she said smugly. Then continued less certainly, “I guess if I offer a large enough bonus, I might be able to get some people to moonlight.”
“How much time do I have? I need to take a shower,” I said as I shook yet more power from my hair. “We’ll see who’s going. I need to ask everyone and I am not sure your brother is going to be okay with you going to Paris.”
“I am okay with it,” chimed in Jeremy. I stared at him in surprise. I had expected more of an argument from him. I had apparently completely guessed wrong about this ‘brother/sister’ stuff.
“Really?”
“Sure, it will be like a holiday. Paris is lovely this time of year,” Jeremy smiled brightly at me. I couldn’t tell if he was yanking my chain. He was right next to me when we watched how the city had dinosaurs roaming the streets, out of control fires and now a flattened area around the portal where an enraged dragon was destroying everything in reach.
“I already talked to everyone else while you were asleep,” Beth chimed in, distracting me with a tug on my arm. “Mei has to stay to organize the packs. She’s going to set up an outreach program to get the packs hunting dinosaurs in the city and others that have trouble with them. She says it’s the only thing they have ever agreed on.”
“Well, they are delicious,” I mumbled to myself.
“Mat won’t be coming either since he can sense magic and see other ghosts Conrad has him dealing with supernatural crime.”
“Wait a minute,” I object. “He isn’t any more durable than a human. Isn’t that kind of dangerous? I don’t want to have to stick him in another body.”
“They paired him with Ryder,” Jeremy offered, finally paying attention to the conversation. He must have been thinking about what a great vacation spot Paris is.
“Ryder. The guy that tortured you and may have possibly sold his soul to a greater demon?”
“It was Fenris that did that and there’s no evidence that he sold his soul.”
I stared at him. Was I the only one that was worried about Vatapi’s former minions? I shrugged my shoulders. If they wanted to get themselves killed, I shouldn’t stand in their way. I should start gathering biological material so I could raise my people from the dead if needed, now that I think I had figured out the new circle.
“Whatever. What about Stella and her menagerie?”
“Well, the elemental is staying at the Primary portal. Stella says elementals get hard to control if they are forced to stay away from their home plane too long. She seemed pretty upset about it even if it was her fault.”
“What about the other member of her zoo?”
“You shouldn’t be so mean to Faramond. He’s okay when you don’t aggravate him.” I glared balefully at her. “Okay, so he may be a little creepy with the staring and growling. But we shouldn’t judge people by their limitations.”
“I disagree. We should totally judge people by their limitations. And there’s a lot to judge.”
“Anyway, Stella has him doing something over by where the root of Yggdrasil used to be. She’s hoping a smaller tree might eventually bud from the remains.”
“Wait, there might be another way to connect the ten worlds together?”
“I guess.”
I thought about that. Would such a method bypass the need for my or Vatapi’s blood to travel from one world to another? Maybe only Stella and Faramond would be keyed to it as used to be the case with the original world tree. “So is Stella coming herself?”
“Well...”
“Is she still afraid of flying?”
“Kinda. Yes.”
“Wow, crash one time and she scarred for life,” I shook my head in disappointment. “You wouldn’t guess that from the Norse myths.”
“She really does want to go,” Beth added. “She wants to see if there’s any sign of a Yggdrasil root network in another city in the portal network and maybe get a look at the other dimension to see if her guess about the budding is right.”
“Paris is lovely this time of year,” I heard Jeremy sigh quietly to himself. Beth and I paused to look at him in concern.
“Has he slept lately?” I asked in an apprehensive tone.
“No... not much,” Beth said nervously. Obviously, she was worried about her brother.
“I guess he can sleep on the ride over,” I pointed out. “So... no Stella.”
“Not quite. She’s taking a boat over. It’ll take a little longer so she’ll meet us there a bit later.”
“Hopefully there isn’t a storm. If she has a bumpy ride she may swear off boats.”
“I don’t know about that. The net says the weather satellites really aren’t working very well. There are storms all over the place.”
“Well, I suppose we have to trust she knows what’s she’s doing. Hopefully, she can control the weather even if she can’t summon elementals anymore.”
“That’s as good as we’re going to get. I am going to take a shower. Call me if Conrad gets here early. Oh, and get together a ward kit. It should mostly already be in the backpack in the corner behind the table.”
It was fortunate that the hot water still worked, but I had paid a goodly amount to have the block on its own power network. I enjoyed the warm water but decided to splurge a little bit. Smiling, I pressed the big red button in the shower that would unleash super-heated water into the stall.
My smile vanished as the lights in the room flickered and dimmed. Cursing to myself I quickly pressed the button again to stop the boiling water. How disappointing. Apparently, the construction company didn’t take into account the entire block being used and drawing from the generator when they specified the loading requirements. That put me in a foul mood, but I tried to enjoy the relatively tepid water as I washed the plaster remnants from my hair.
While I dried my hair my eyes wandered the bathroom. They finally rested on the hairbrush by the sink. Entangled in it I saw a few short blond hairs, several long blond hairs as well as black and brown strands. I gently tugged them free from the brush.
That would take care of almost everyone. Unless I was mistaken that was pretty much everyone’s hair. I hadn’t realized Stella had used the brush, but that was very convenient. With these samples, I would, in theory, be able to recover any of my people if the worst would happen. Well, once I got the actual circle made. Finding a place for it was getting tricky, especially if I was going to be spending a lot of time in Paris.
I heard the door chime and figured it would be Conrad coming to pick us up. I pulled on a fluffy bathrobe and went out to meet him. Out in the hallway, I was surprised to see, not only Conrad but a vaguely familiar man. Biologically he looked to be about thirty-five, dirty blond hair combed back and an elegant goatee. He was dressed in a dark suit and red bow tie.
“Mayor?”
“Hello Professor, good to meet you at last,” he smiled exuberantly as he vigorously shook my hand. “Sorry to catch you out like this.”
“Good to meet you too,” I replied weakly. What was the mayor doing in my house? “I’d offer you some barbecued dinosaur but I think we ate it all.”
“I guess you haven’t heard, but I am no longer the mayor of Arc.”
“Um, sorry?”
“Nothing to be sorry about. I have been asked to accept a term as the president of the United Nations.”
“I see. Isn’t this an odd time to change up the government?”
The mayor glanced at Conrad. “You haven’t told him?”
“The Professor has been remarkably good at distraction whenever we talk,” Conrad grumbled.
“There is actually very little in the way of government at the moment,” the mayor stated giving me a frank look. “You’ve heard of the Announcement in the wake of the Mo
scow Event?”
“A little bit. The world’s mages gathered their power and did some sort of geas or veil to prevent the world from noticing the supernatural.”
“More specifically, although everyone was slightly affected, the world’s leader were the primary target. Guess what happened when the portals all opened and dinosaurs started roaming the streets?”
“With the increased magic enhancing the active spell... I would imagine they ignored it.”
“Correct Professor. Moreover, as things of a magical nature became more obvious and less ignorable, they started to have mental breakdowns. The less fortunate are little more than gibbering idiots. They are completely incapable of operating in today’s world.”
“Interesting. I think if they were had one of my wards of negation and were slowly...” I mused as possible solutions went through my mind.
“Thank you, Professor,” the ex-mayor interrupted. “As a long-term solution, we would, of course, appreciate any advice you have. However, in the short term, the leadership of most of the countries has been gutted. Only the younger leaders have their senses and now they are trying to do their own jobs as well as their superior’s, in very trying circumstances.”
“Unfortunate,” I nodded to him.
“I am heading to a Summit to help coordinate the world’s governments efforts. Thanks in a very large part to your advice and Conrad’s efforts we were placed in an excellent position to help the world recover.”
“Who will be taking over your position in Arc, Mayor?”
“Please just call me by my first name,” he smiled. “My deputy will be taking over as the new Mayor. Hopefully, the transition will be smooth.”
My smile froze slightly. I actually didn’t know this man’s name. I never really cared about him except for some vague knowledge he was setting up some special forces team, now known as AEGIS. “I wouldn’t want to presume, Mr... President.”
“Very well, Professor,” he acknowledged with good humor. I wondered if he was aware of my quandary. “I will be flying to Paris with you and then continuing onward to the Summit. Hopefully, we can deal with our first angry neighbor in a better and more effective manner than bombing him...”
