Oblivion's Peril

by M. H. Johnson

  Soft arms suddenly wrapped around him. He blinked to feel Elise squeeze him close. "I can never repay you for what you did for me. For my friends and my beloved. For my mother and sister. If you ever need people you can count on, you know we are here for you." Sten and Gregor solemnly nodded their accord.

  Val couldn't help smiling at those kind words. "Hey, it's what friends are for. And speaking of friendship, don't I owe you all a hell of a lot of Elementium?"

  Gregor and Sten both exchanged the oddest glance before Sten abruptly broke out in laughter. "After what you did for us? You have got to be kidding, Val. I'd be insulted that you'd think we'd dishonor your sacrifices, did I not know you were just trying to be the best friend anyone could hope to have."

  Flashing a brilliant smile, Sten slowly shook his head. "You don't owe us the smallest copper, let alone a fortune in Elementium. Rather, it is we who owe you, a price we can never hope to repay."

  Gregor nodded. "But please don't take the Elementium you gave us, we could really use that, in case everything goes south here."

  Elise's eyes widened and Sten looked angry and amused in equal measure.

  Val couldn't help but chuckle. "See how easy it is to put your foot in your mouth? Good thing we're all so understanding. Even us wolves." Val winked. "Of course the Elementium I gave you is yours. No question. And if you change your mind on the rest..."

  Sten actually frowned at those words. Val quickly laughed it off. "Thank you, guys. I'm grateful. I promise I'll put it to good use, somehow. And it goes without saying that if you ever need a helping hand... and you can't frown at that, Sten, it's what friends are for."

  "Fair enough," the captain replied. "But we have a few ideas of our own that might just put us on equal footing with all your newfound wealth, my young friend. Time will tell."

  Val grinned at his smallest companion. "I do think Gregor is right about one thing. This is the perfect place to set up our alchemy lab. I'm fresh out of healing potions, and if there is one thing everyone manages to do really well, it's getting themselves hurt."

  Gregor's eyes widened. "Our alchemy set?"

  Val winked. "Don't worry, good buddy. I'm sure Ava would want me to share it with you. Especially since you'll be doing all you can to walk me through all the concoctions you master from that alchemy tome, how could I refuse?"

  Sten chuckled at Gregor's nonplussed expression, outrage mixing with relief and gratitude had reduced the man to an exasperated harrumph. "Fine! He can use the bloody alchemy set all he wants! Let's just get the thing, okay? It's absolutely priceless, and who knows what will happen to it if we just leave it there? Now someone help me pull this annoying tube out. I’m as spiked with cell regeneratives as I dare get without risking a full rejuvenation treatment!”

  "Relax, Gregor. I'm sure it will be alright. We’ll pause your treatment, but there’s no need for us all to go dashing back into the desert quite yet. We were there for a handful of days and not a soul came by in that time," Elise reminded.

  Sten frowned. "Gregor might have a point. Things are uncertain. Let's make sure all our resources are on hand. In fact, the most prudent thing we can do might be to remove every trace of ourselves from the vessel... just in case."

  All of them exchanged thoughtful nods. In case any inquisitor put two and two together regarding the crew that had warned Jordia to activate primary shields just moments before the massive dreadnought overhead exploded. They might have saved the planet from an inconceivably horrific radiation burst, but they would also be the target of any number of extremely uncomfortable questions if anyone found out who they really were.

  Sten exchanged a glance with Elise. "It's okay, Sten. I really am feeling better, and Val and I will be fine. Frankly, love, you still need to rest."

  Sten nodded, catching Val's gaze. "Take care of her."

  Val smiled. "You know I will." He then turned his gaze to the largest member of their group. Halvar was on the farmost bed, monitors quietly beeping as he slept. His massive body was as muscular as ever, perhaps thanks to the cybernetics stabilizing his Intense Conditioning even when comatose. "How is he?"

  "He suffered internal bleeding as well as dehydration. Fortunately, your timely intervention saved us, and the good doctor expects he will be up and around in just a few days."

  Elise gazed sadly at Val. "How is Julia?"

  Val sighed. "She was sleeping the sleep of the exhausted, whimpering even when I tried to hold her. I told Christine I was going to catch up with my dad. And now I have some more friends to check up on. After that? We'll head to the ship. I hope Julia will forgive me if I don't get back before she wakes up."

  Elise flashed an encouraging smile. "Don't worry about it, Val. Even for normal girls who don't level, when they first come into their own as Psionicists they can be out for several days, depending on how hard their mother and sisters pushed them, their first day of training."

  Val frowned. "What about brothers and fathers?"

  Elise blinked. "What about them?"

  "Don't they train with their wives and daughters?"

  Elise favored him with the strangest look. "Of course not. For the same reason men and women have separate baths and changing areas, save for when seduction is the goal. It allows a measure of privacy, and what needs to be more private than the mind?"

  Val blinked. "But what about you and I?"

  "I taught, Val. Master and student. We were not equals, and there was no way you could read my mind." She flushed. Both of them knew that somehow that wasn't entirely true, weak and vulnerable as he had felt before her at the time. "But most importantly, there was no one else."

  "Okay, I can accept that. But I have every intention of training with Julia."

  "Well, in your case it's fine since you and Julia are already lovers." Elise flashed a teasing smile. "I think you and my sister make a wonderful pair."

  Gregor's eyes widened. "Wait, you're sleeping with that girl? What about..."

  A powerful hand suddenly covered his mouth. "Don't say it, Gregor. What are you thinking?" Sten hissed.

  The smaller man flushed in embarrassment.

  Val felt his cheeks blaze. "It's sort of, well, complicated."

  Elise favored him with a knowing smile, patting his shoulder. "I'm sure it is. Come on, Val, let's go check on your Terran friends."

  The mood changed once Val entered the room he somehow sensed his friends to be in, several house guards in white uniforms instantly standing stiffly at attention as Elise nodded their way, one going so far as to announce their arrival moments before they entered. Christine, pale-faced, exhausted, but flashing a relieved grin, bowed her head. Val frowned to see the chamber partitioned off just as one would a decontamination center or an active hazard site.

  Elise frowned. "Mother?"

  "Everything's quite alright, love. This is just an added precaution. I'm sure you understand." Val frowned. For all that a thin film and positive air pressure differential separated them, Val could make out her features perfectly. Though Christine stood tall and strong, there were sores on her once flawless features.

  Elise's fingers clenched Val's arm in a vice-like grip. "Mother, what did you do?"

  Christine's tired eyes flashed. "I did what must be done for the sake of our house. Our kind." She lifted her head. "And all three of our Terran friends are well on the way to a speedy and complete recovery."

  "That's well and good, Mother, but what of the sores I see on your skin?"

  Christine frowned. "What are you talking about?" Her eyes widened as she caught Val's gaze, somehow seeing herself in his eyes. "Oh no," she whispered. "Oh no."

  She quickly turned around, pivoting toward what Val assumed were the UV lights before everything went dark.

  Val could hear the crash of Christine stumbling and tripping as the air pumps slowly died down.

  "Mother!"

  Val grabbed her arm. "The air filters are winding down. We're in danger of exposure. You have to go!"
/>   And then Val felt it, the reverberation of impact. Screams in the distance.

  Val's eyes widened. "We are under attack!"

  15

  Christine turned towards the distant screams faintly heard. "Always when we are vulnerable, always when we can least afford it!"

  Val nodded. "Serpents are in your midst, but no time for that!" For a heartbeat, he contemplated summoning a pillar of fire to light the room, then realized there was another way. Taking a deep breath, he allowed his psyche to sink into the shadows, welcoming him near instantly, thick with the promise of horror and death.

  Second nature to his soul.

  "Val? Val!"

  "Quiet!" Val hissed, doing his best to keep focus. There! he thought to himself, his Psi-Sense instantly letting him sense this portion of the Highblood complex as if he were looking down at a chessboard grim and terrible, already bloody with the moves being made, feeling the sense of enemies coming this way.

  An entire platoon of heavily armored soldiers, just seconds from turning down the medical corridor. And leading them was a figure crackling with intensity.

  A Highlord and his mercenaries, attempting a coup.

  Knowing they had no time, shadow locked gazes with Christine and conveyed all he could.

  "Oh no." Christine trembled. "Lord Blackenthorp. It must be! I must challenge him, talk some sense into him!" Her eyes widened at the tremors they could both feel radiating from the ground. "battle-mechs. The magneto-mines scattered throughout my territory should have disabled the mech-ware of any mechanized unit that dared approach! How many did he bring, that some got through? Val, it’s worse than I thought. He's not seeking to challenge us. The only way he could get away with striking a blue… he and his brothers are seeking to exterminate us!"

  Val clenched his fists. "Not if I cut those bastards down first.”

  Christine's eyes widened. “You must be careful, Val. Your flaw will kill you if you fail to hide your mind, and the Blackenthorps are notorious for their piercing gazes!”

  But Val was already gone.

  Screams and sobs as blaster-wielding mercenaries ruthlessly cut down any servant affiliated with the Highblood clan.

  A saturnine-featured man wielding a crackling Psiblade sneered at the kneeling mercenary before him. His attire was that of any Highlord aristocrat, but his body shimmered with the personal force field protecting him. "Well, Kutic? Where are the Highbloods? Where are the Terrans? Have you even secured the lab? I see no one but commoners, and Christine's force wall is still protecting the manor! Five thousand men cut off, and the battle-mech reinforcements damaged by Christine's little traps have yet to arrive!"

  The mercenary slowly shook his head. "No one save our mole, Lord Blackenthorp, now safely sequestered. Our undamaged battle-mechs are providing the distraction you requested, but no Highblood or mech unit has challenged them so far. With the power generators successfully destroyed, Christine's force field will soon fall, and then she will have to deal with the might and fury of the entire Blackenthorp Army!"

  "No need for us to wait around like weak-willed fools," the Highlord sneered. "Christine failed to catalyze her defenses in time. The hundreds we slipped through is enough for these vermin. The only way Christine or her foul brood will leave here is with their heads bobbing in our pain vat!" The man's dark smirk turned to a cold frown. "Now tell me why you have failed to secure the lab?"

  The mercenary lowered his head. "We have encountered unexpected resistance, sir."

  Pale fingers clenched Psiblade tightly. "Explain this resistance. Our legionnaires are more than a match for Christine's pathetic mercenary rabble!"

  "Yes, my lord. It's a Psionicist, unfamiliar to us. She screamed. Half the men went comatose." He pressed his ear. "Good news, sir. It appears she is retreating away from the lab.”

  Lord Blackenthorp sneered. "So. Christine's mongrel can actually shout?" He tilted his head, finally shaking it. "I will not muddy my blood with the likes of that filth, no matter how powerful. Have her killed and save her head for the pain vat! I can't wait to see Christine's face when she sees her daughter's mangled skull writhing in eternal torment! It will make defeating her that much sweeter." Cold laughter filled the corridor.

  And then over the comm, screams and shouts and a tinny pair of words that overshadowed everything else. "Titan's Blast!" A howling roar and the comms went dead.

  The Highlord's eyes widened. "A tactical spell? There is no way!"

  Suddenly the hallway was filled with screams and death, shadow taking shape and form, crackling oblivion tearing through raised limbs and fleeing bodies like a torch burning through cobwebs. The few shots that went off hit nothing but men crowded too close, happening too fast, mercenaries turning around only long enough for eyes to widen as their heads toppled to the ground. Lord Blackenthorp howled his surprise as his face was splashed with the blood of his dying men. He raised his blade in tierce, fumbling for his forceshield as four feet of crackling death hammered into his defenses, overpowering his bind and ripping through his guts before he could scream for quarter or parley.

  "No..." Blood poured from his mouth as he stumbled back, the hand that had been grasping his forceshield now desperately holding in spools of entrails, defenses ruptured under oblivion's blow. "You're... you're Dauda. Forbidden to interfere!"

  A heartbeat and shadow pivoted, an instant's reprieve as the too-savvy officer who had given his report blinked only once before his skull exploded, darkness allowing no enemy to sneak away.

  "Who else?"

  Lord Blackenthorp snarled at the words, wobbly but still on his feet despite his disembowelment, trembling hand holding his blade in tierce. "How dare you strike me without warning or terms, Dauda worm. This will not go unavenged! You will owe a blood price for this assault. Best scurry back under the rock you came from, lest you'd have me expunge your..."

  Blackenthorp's eyes widened as oblivion's blade windmilled forward in a Scheitelhau blow with the torque of both arms adding power, effortlessly slamming aside the trembling saber-like Psiblade held in a desperate grip that did nothing to stop Val's weapon from cleaving the man’s skull and chest in twain.

  The two halves crashed into the ground. The stench of blood and odd, terrified thoughts of disjointed incomprehension washed over Val as he raced down shadowy corridors once more, the Highlord’s exposed brain left to blink away the final moments of his shattered life.

  An agonized scream.

  Julia's.

  Shadow boiled and howled as it flew down blackened corridors, stumbling upon a scene of horror.

  Scores of soldiers dead. Shredded so utterly it was as if a meat grinder had exploded, entire walls blasted through, with nearby civilians crying out in agony, having been perforated by peripheral shrapnel as well.

  And in the heart of that devastation, gazing at Val with blood pouring from her lips was Julia. He could read in her mind the horror of having butchered so many with her spell, and the shock of having been taken by surprise.

  "You fucking whore!" cursed the wild-eyed man behind her. "You destroyed the lab. You destroyed what would have been my fortune. You've ruined everything! I hope your death is slow, bitch, just what you deserve!" With cruel slowness, the Psiblade was extracted from Julia's dying form, once-handsome features and a cherubic smile now twisted into something dark, malevolent, full of bitter hate.

  Philip. Christine's nephew.

  Val didn't think, then. Thought had fled.

  Rage. Fury, the howl of a storm determined to wash away everything in a sea of blood.

  Congratulations! You have embraced your wrath! 30% bonus to all powers and damage! Can you hold onto it and keep your head? Only one way to find out!

  Philip's eyes widened. "Shadows, I feel it. I... see you!" A mocking smile.

  And Val forced his rage to icy wrath, somehow ducking his mind even as a howling storm roared past him, blasting through him even as inky blackness anchored him once more.

  P
sionic Blast partially resisted! You have taken 20 points of damage to Health, Stamina, and Psions!

  Lucky you, all Health damage instead affects your Survival stat! More pain to embrace before you fall. Remember Yancey's lessons, Val. The fool who loses his cool won't be a fool for very long!

  Dark laughter. "I got you that time, bastard. You're just another one of Christine's pet projects, aren't you? Another one of her experiments as she lords it over all of us when this should be my lab and I the head of my own house! Christine with her insufferable arrogance will soon be screaming in my personal pain vat!"

  Philip’s features twisted in a vile smile as he deliberately slammed his heel into a sobbing Julia's ruptured abdomen.

  Her eyes bulged as she writhed and screamed.

  He chuckled cruelly, stepping in front of Julia's crumpled form. "Come out, Valor Hunter, broken little Dauda thing. Show me how hot you burn before I burn your mind to a cinder!"

  Arrogant eyes turned to a surprised snarl as shadow struck, Philip forced back as he fought to counter Oberhau and Zwerchhau strikes soon morphing into arcing cuts from all angles. A storm of blows mirroring the force and fury of a howling winter gale. An increasingly desperate Philip was forced back, back, before his boots stumbled over a sobbing Julia once more. In the split second needed to regain his footing, the panicked Highlord jabbed forward with his blade to keep Val back, overextended and off-balance for a single heartbeat. Shadow countered with a perfectly timed Schillhaw strike, controlling the centerline even as Philip was forced further off balance, Val's shift in grip and stance letting him master the bind so well he would have blasted through even a two-hander's ward, let alone a blade held like a saber.

  Wrist and belly were both cleaved open under Shadow’s furious assault. Philip collapsed in a shower of crimson, desperately pressing his one remaining hand against the flood of entrails and blood rupturing from his side.

  "I yield, I yield! Oh gods, I yield! Please, you must get us to the infirmary. I will call off the attack, I will call it off, I swear it!" Desperate eyes pled into the darkness. "Please, don't let me die. Oh gods, it hurts! Angel's mercy, I don't want to die, please, I'm sorry! I just... Christine didn't understand, she wouldn't let me prove myself, I was little more than her slave!"