"The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting." - Sun Tzu, The Art of War
_____________________________________
Molten copper scales caught the light and rasped against themselves as the dragon surged forward.
My spell enhanced reflexes, which had served me so well in the past, were not up to the task. The dragon's hand grasped my chest. I was hurled up and backward to be pinned against the wall. The strange scent of the creature hit me even as my astral sight was assaulted by the sheer brilliant power that held me fast.
"I said, give it to me. NOW." My skull rang from the force of dragon's thoughts battering their way into my mind.
"No." I gasped.
The beast growled and plumes of strange smoke surged from its flaring nostrils.
I was terrified. There is no shame in admitting fear, chummers. Fear saves your hoop more often than your trusty sidearm. Fear informs you of danger, triggers your reflexes, gets the adrenaline flowing and generally does heavy duty in the task of keeping you alive. Dragons, they radiate an aura of power that generates bladder releasing terror. My fear was too real, and threatened to overwhelm me. I looked into that maw filled with teeth that would make a shark jealous and wanted to scream.
"I'm losing my patience, ape!" The thought voice rang in my skull. "GIVE. IT. TO. ME."
"No." I managed to squeak. I saw the anger blooming in the dragon as it fought to control its terrible wrath. My mind became quiet and clear as I saw death before me. The great beast was stronger, faster, smarter and far more magically powerful than I would ever be. It was going to kill me with no more thought than going over a speed bump.
"Machine, hand him the stone." Samantha said firmly. I couldn't see her, but her voice carried that same clear tone of command.
"No means no, Control." I replied.
The dragon roared and my ears rang. Blood erupted from my nose and ears, my eyes stung from the force of the air blasting past me. I was thrown onto the leather couch near the floor to ceiling window that overlooked downtown Seattle. It flipped backwards and I was spilled onto the immaculate floor.
"I WILL PRY IT FROM YOUR COLD DEAD HANDS!!!" the voice hit my mind and pushed my face to the cold floor.
I thrust my hand into my pocket and pulled out the small stone, light erupting from between my fingers. My intuition screamed at me to run, my mind was numb from the shock of the telepathic assault, but in that moment a sliver of inspiration hit me. I was pushing myself up from the floor when a cackle escaped my throat. "Great. I've gone as crazy as Creep" I thought to myself. I laughed anyway. The thought crawling through my mind was too ridiculous to be real.
The dragon stopped and roared at me again. My left eye began to bleed as the capillaries in my tear ducts ruptured from the impact.
"Pry it from MY cold dead hands? Sure you can, but then it would never be yours, would it?" I snapped at him. The more I thought about it the more it made sense. The dragon could have invaded my mind and made me give it over, could have torn my arms off and pulled it from my pocket, or just had Samatha fry me in my seat then pull the charred stone off my corpse. But he didn't and there it was.
I held the small stone in the palm of my hand, light bathing the room and my bloodied hands. "You're going to TAKE this from me? Waste a perfectly good asset over a piece of stone? It's mine. It likes me. I've claimed it and in spite of whatever you may want me to believe, I know it in my soul that this stone would never accept you if you took it." I looked up at the dragon, its fury plainly obvious. "If you took it, it would never be yours. That is the trick, isn't it? You want me to 'give' it to you. You toss me around the office but don't kill me. Dragon's aren't stupid, you know I can't defeat you, but I could certainly get lucky." Blood ran down my cheek, out of my ears and onto my suit. "You can't have it. And, unless you want to terminate our contract right now, you'll get the frag out of my way. I need to change."
I was pretty sure I had fragged up for the last time in my life at that point. No one said anything for a very long moment. Samantha's aura was brilliant in its naked power but the dragon's aura blazed in its wrath.
"No one defies me, little mage." his thought voice was loud, but firmly controlled. The menace dripping from the words into my mind.
"No one steals from me." I replied.
The dragon stared at me with inhuman eyes, the gleam of its scales softening as its form shifted back to the familiar form of the most terrifying man I had ever met. A wave of his hand collected the shreds of his clothing into a twirling mass of fabric that swarmed over this body, joining together until he once again wore the same immaculate suit he had shredded with his transformation. His eyes gradually shifted back to the stormy blue-grey, his aura becoming that of a perfectly mundane human.
He smiled at me, his thought voice once again invading my mind. "I didn't think you would understand the significance. I underestimated you." He walked over next to Samantha and gestured toward the door.
"I'll take that as a compliment." I said as I limped out of Samantha's office.
I wove the healing spell as soon as I passed the receptionist desk, holding it fast to myself as I called the elevator. I rode the metal box to the 87th Floor, got off and started walking toward my office. There were several weapon specialists who fell silent and stepped aside as I walked past them. The blood on my hands and clothes were my own, I had no doubt I had left some on the carpet and the elevator floors. Fey was waiting at my door. When she saw me approaching, she stiffened.
"Machine?!? What the frag?" she took a step toward me but I raised my hand.
"I want a sit rep on Creep and Jazz asap. Verify the data personally. Take four men with you, weapons free." I told her.
"What?" she stopped cold, confusion on her face.
"Move it." my voice was low and firm. I didn't leave room for questions in my tone. Fey nodded and darted off, calling out names to the FNG's I had just passed in the hall. I entered my office and locked my door behind me.
{Continued in part five}
---------
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I hope you join me for Part five.
Friday, October 26, 2018
Wednesday, October 17, 2018
The Art of War, Part Three: Know your enemy as you know yourself
“The art of using troops is this:
~ When ten to the enemy’s one, surround him
~ When five times his strength, attack him
~ If double his strength, divide him
~ If equally matched you may engage him
~ If weaker numerically, be capable of withdrawing
~ And if in all respects unequal, be capable of eluding him... for a small force is but booty for one more powerful.”
– Sun Tzu, the Art of War
______________________
January 13th, 2061
0745 hours, Seattle Metroplex local time
Redacted office tower, 87th Floor conference room
Samantha Goode was less than thrilled that I had taken three days of my allotted leave time. "There are potential missions being evaluated. I trust you are fit for duty?" Her voice was cold and aloof.
"I'm fine." I replied. "Mr. Johnson seemed rather interested in the metaplane he called 'The Place of Gates'. You wouldn't happen to know if any knowledge of that place held any interest, would you?"
Samantha's eyebrows arched. "You didn't."
She was a frighteningly powerful magician, but I managed to look her in the eye anyway. "I did, though admittedly by accident. That's not all though. I managed to bring a few things back with me."
I opened the buckle on my rucksack and spilled out the meager contents. The credstick, pocket secretary and enchanted tiepin of a dead man slid out on the table. A plastic bag holding a single chipped piece of stone, no larger than a golf ball, got hung on my pack's heavy stitching and forced me to upend the bag to dump it out.
Samantha didn't move, but under my astral sight I saw her open herself and awaken her astral perception. The dead man's things were lifeless, gray silhouettes resting on the table. The tiepin held a soft aura, its power inert as it wasn't bound to a living being.
Across from me the astral echo of Flick's suicide clung tenaciously to the wall. I usually made an effort to sit with my back to it so I wouldn't be confronted with the image of Flick's terrified soul vanishing into nothingness. There had been attempts to cleanse it from the room, but it always reappeared. Flick's terror haunted the room and always would. Samantha ignored it, as she always had.
"You don't mean to tell me you found mundane items in a metaplane." Her eyes lingered on the tiepin then on the stone. "Unless," she paused "... you accessed the plane via a spirit gate. Did you? Did you find a spirit to open the way?"
"No. Nothing like that actually." I replied. "Sit down, this is going to take a while." I began the tale with my trip down into my basement, and carried all the way through my return. Samantha watched me intently, her astral gaze heavy upon me. She wasn't concealing her power from me and under my astral sight she was a blazing fountain of magical power. Trying to lie to her was an idea I considered too stupid to entertain.
"I did some matrix searching and turned up a missing person report, with an image file that matched the dead guy." I concluded. "Now I'm bringing his stuff to you, figured Mr. Johnson might want it looked at."
"That's rather thoughtful." Samantha replied. "What of the focus and the stone?"
"The focus isn't mine. It belonged to the dead guy. As far as I'm concerned you can analyze that too." I paused and picked up the small plastic bag holding the stone. "This is mine though. I'm sorry but I'm keeping this. I brought it because I thought you may want to see something."
Samantha's expression didn't change, her aura betrayed a slight curiosity before she reigned in her control. I opened the bag and dropped the stone onto my open palm. Light exploded from chipped stone the moment it touched my skin. "I think it likes me." I said.
I watched as Samantha's aura changed from one of unrestrained power to one of a perfectly normal mundane woman. She stood and collected the dead man's possessions from the table. "You're right. It is yours." With that she walked stiffly from the briefing room, leaving me alone with the astral imprint of Flick's dying moments.
I raised my right hand, the small stone blazing away in my left, and put an effort of will and magic into a prayer I aimed at the wall. "Rest in peace, Flick." The mana left me and wiped the astral stain of pain and fear from the room. It would return in a few days, it always did, but for the moment I felt as if I had given her some measure of relief.
January 15th, 2061
0900 hours, Seattle Metroplex local time
Jazz was still in a coma. Creep was under sedation. Fey was pissing me off.
"I'm telling you Machine," she insisted. "you're too picky. Just grab some wiz-kid, make her an offer she can't refuse and BOOM! New magician!"
"Fey, you don't know what you're talking about." I replied. "Magicians aren't all the same. We're not AK-97s you can just buy off the back of a truck. I was a wiz-kid once and there is no way in Creep's personal Hell I would have been able to cut it in the situations we end up in."
"Creep is drek-headed lunatic and we're better off without him." Fey fired back. "That chummer is out of his mind and just as dangerous to the team as anything else I've seen in the brief time I'm been on this crazy job."
"He's a lunatic, but he's OUR lunatic. He's also out of the picture for the foreseeable future. I'll find the magician we need, not one that we have to worry about. In the meantime, you put the weapon specialists through their paces, get all the FNGs* up to speed on our communications, and get that requisition in for more incendiary weapons. We got lucky to get out alive, Creep lost his mind helping us escape and Jazz may not survive at all." I pulled out the guest seat in front of my desk and gestured to it, then seated myself in my own chair.
"How fraggin' crazy are we expecting things to get?" Fey asked tersely. "We've got most of a damn platoon assembled now. What the Hell are you expecting?"
"Fey," I said firmly. "You've not seen the worst of things, yet. Before you came on I saw things that were, individually, far more dangerous than those creatures in the ruins. There are things out there that don't have names because the metahuman mind can't wrap itself around the existence of them. Creatures which are so alien to our existence that our minds are strained just to look upon them."
Her face flushed as her temper rose.
"I'm not feeding you bull-drek here. The weapon specialists are there to handle the things we can kill with bullets and fire and explosives. The magicians are there for the things that don't die that way." Her aura flickered at that as realization hit her. She was still angry but she was fighting to reign it in. "You're damn good, Fey. I wouldn't let you stand in Jazz's spot if you weren't. Don't mistake this though. I'm not in command because I'm a magician. I'm in command because I get the job done, because Jazz didn't want command and because everyone else who could have been in this job is dead. Keep asking questions, but do it in here so we can talk it out."
"What are we going to do next?" she asked.
"Same thing we do every time." A smile crept across my face. "We kill monsters."
1358 hours, Seattle Metroplex local time
The panel on my desk lit up with a call. Samantha Goode's face blinked in the contact panel. I activated the answer button.
"Machine, can you come up to my office please?" The question was a politely veiled order.
"Certainly. Now, or did you have a time in mind?"
"Come on up." Samantha replied, then the call ended.
"Drek." I swore. I locked the drawers on my desk and grabbed my rucksack before I leaving my office. I passed a handful of FNGs* who were dressed for 'the office' and discussing the virtues of the latest assault rifle as they walked toward the break area. I took the elevator up and was met by Samantha's personal assistant (I never did learn that woman's name), who escorted me to Samantha's office.
"Enter", Samantha's voice carried nicely through a concealed speaker on the door.
I walked into her office and discovered that Samantha Goode wasn't alone.
"Machine, it is good to see you." Mr. Johnson's voice reached my mind but not my ears. "You've been wandering about in strange places."
He sat in Samantha's chair, his hands folded on the desk in front of him. His eyes were the same storm of blue and grey. Under my astral sight he looked every bit the normal, perfectly mundane mortal. I was convinced it was all a lie. To his right, Samantha Goode stood with an unreadable expression upon her face.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Johnson." I replied. "I wasn't expecting to see you today."
"You should hone your intuition then." He smiled back at me, his lips parted to reveal a perfectly radiant smile while his thought voice flowed over my mind. "After all, you did practically demand this meeting."
"I'm afraid I don't understand." I said.
"Come now!" I winced as my skull echoed with his unspoken words. "You come into the office with evidence of a metaplanar incursion, plant the possessions of another operative on the conference room table, display your claim to the Place of Gates, and then claim that you don't understand?!?!"
It felt like I was being accused of something. "I didn't kill him. He was dead when I found him."
The smile vanished from Mr. Johnson's face. The blue vanished from his eyes leaving only stormy grey. To my astral sight I caught just a glimpse of the power in the man as mana flashed behind his eyes. A thin wisp of smoke flowed from his nose carrying with it a scent I didn't recognize. "You can't believe this has anything to do with one dead man."
The truth of my situation hit me suddenly: 'claim to the Place of Gates'.
With magic, there is a lot of significance to associations. A drawing or mock-up of a thing can be used to affect that thing. Bits of your clothing, hair, fingernails, blood or other body parts, can hold power over you. The same is often true of objects. You can affect a building by using scrapes of paint you scratched off its surface or spy into a building by holding a light bulb stolen from its bathroom. A piece of stone broken from the foundation of a metaplane may very well hold a degree of power over the place itself.
"I see illumination of the fact has finally reached you." Mr. Johnson's voice broke the silence in the room. He was speaking, for which my skull was very thankful. "You have made a claim on the Place of Gates. You have held the very foundation of that world in your hand and yet, I doubt you understand the significance."
"The building that manifested, the other gates, the whirlpools; all of them are incursions into that metaplane. The plane is being invaded by other worlds, other realities." It was a staggering thought.
Mr. Johnson's face hardened.
"This level of knowledge of the metaplanes is rarely seen in university educated magicians." Samantha interjected, "It is understandable that he may not fully realize the severity of his actions."
"Irrelevant." Mr. Johnson, snapped. He held his hand out to me and said, "Give it to me."
The hair on the back of my neck stood up. Samantha's face was expressionless, utterly unreadable. I felt the very real need to urinate but managed to maintain my composure and the sanctity of my clothing. I looked at Mr. Johnson, the 'man' I most feared in all the world and, for a moment, I was going to hand over the little chip of stone. I reached into my rucksack, fishing for the plastic bag and my hand bumped my menpo-style ballistic mask.
I looked down into the bag and saw the small bit of stone resting in its bag, lying in the eye of the mask. Something burned in the back of my mind, fighting against the fear of the man. 'Give' he had said. There was something to that.
I put my hand on the mask and looked back to Mr. Johnson, his insistence was etched across his features. Samantha Goode was motionless beside him. The room seemed suddenly warmer and sweat broke out on my brow.
'Give it to me' he had said. When Mr. Johnson had ever wanted something from me he had always offered something to me in return, its how I ended up working for him in the first place. Now he was demanding my small stone, a token from a metaplanar day trip, and he wanted it badly. 'Give'? It was out of character.
"I'm afraid I have to decline." I replied. "It's mine, after all."
Smoke spiraled out of Mr. Johnson's nose. That dreadful suspicion I had been harboring crept back into my mind. "What?" His voice was low and laced with menace.
"I'm saying, 'no'. I'm not going to give it to you." I replied. "I was off work, at home and off the clock. I recovered this stone on my own. This is beyond our contractual relationship and I'm afraid I cannot give it to you."
"You're refusing me?" Mr. Johnson asked.
"I am." I gulped. I couldn't help it, I was scared.
"You work for me." He hissed.
"I was off duty. This is personal property." saying it out loud reinforced my failing courage.
"GIVE. IT. TO. ME." He stood, his hand thrust out to me.
I walked over to him and looked him his stormy eyes. The same strange scent hit me as smoke continued to stream from his nose. To my astral sight his eyes blazed like acetylene torches. Blinding if I were using my physical eyes to see them. I was finally catching a glimpse of the true power of this 'man' I had been working for and it was terrifying.
I thought about Aria. I thought about Pepper. I thought about my twins and my powerful spirit daughters. We stood there for a long two minutes while I stared into the crack in Mr. Johnson's façade. Finally, I answered: "No."
My flesh and blood eyes saw Mr. Johnson's pupils elongate as his eyes changed. His hair grew longer and thicker. Scales the color of molten copper appeared on his skin as he suddenly grew larger, his neck elongating as his head changed shape and his body adopted wholly inhuman proportions and shredded his perfectly tailored suit. A long tail erupted behind him and his bulk knocked the desk over, forcing me to jump away to avoid being pinned under his weight.
Where once the most formidable man I had ever met had stood making demands of me, now stood a dragon. Its bulk tearing at the wall behind him and scattering the furniture. Its eyes locked with mine and I heard Mr. Johnson's thought-voice ring painfully in my skull. "I. SAID. GIVE. IT. TO. ME!"
There is an old saying in the Shadows, 'Never make a deal with a dragon'. It's one of the first things you ever hear in the biz, and if you're really lucky its one of those things you'll never have a chance to test.
I'm not very lucky.
(Continued in ~ The Art of War, Part Four)
---------------------------------------------------
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Thank you!
~ When ten to the enemy’s one, surround him
~ When five times his strength, attack him
~ If double his strength, divide him
~ If equally matched you may engage him
~ If weaker numerically, be capable of withdrawing
~ And if in all respects unequal, be capable of eluding him... for a small force is but booty for one more powerful.”
– Sun Tzu, the Art of War
______________________
January 13th, 2061
0745 hours, Seattle Metroplex local time
Samantha Goode was less than thrilled that I had taken three days of my allotted leave time. "There are potential missions being evaluated. I trust you are fit for duty?" Her voice was cold and aloof.
"I'm fine." I replied. "Mr. Johnson seemed rather interested in the metaplane he called 'The Place of Gates'. You wouldn't happen to know if any knowledge of that place held any interest, would you?"
Samantha's eyebrows arched. "You didn't."
She was a frighteningly powerful magician, but I managed to look her in the eye anyway. "I did, though admittedly by accident. That's not all though. I managed to bring a few things back with me."
I opened the buckle on my rucksack and spilled out the meager contents. The credstick, pocket secretary and enchanted tiepin of a dead man slid out on the table. A plastic bag holding a single chipped piece of stone, no larger than a golf ball, got hung on my pack's heavy stitching and forced me to upend the bag to dump it out.
Samantha didn't move, but under my astral sight I saw her open herself and awaken her astral perception. The dead man's things were lifeless, gray silhouettes resting on the table. The tiepin held a soft aura, its power inert as it wasn't bound to a living being.
Across from me the astral echo of Flick's suicide clung tenaciously to the wall. I usually made an effort to sit with my back to it so I wouldn't be confronted with the image of Flick's terrified soul vanishing into nothingness. There had been attempts to cleanse it from the room, but it always reappeared. Flick's terror haunted the room and always would. Samantha ignored it, as she always had.
"You don't mean to tell me you found mundane items in a metaplane." Her eyes lingered on the tiepin then on the stone. "Unless," she paused "... you accessed the plane via a spirit gate. Did you? Did you find a spirit to open the way?"
"No. Nothing like that actually." I replied. "Sit down, this is going to take a while." I began the tale with my trip down into my basement, and carried all the way through my return. Samantha watched me intently, her astral gaze heavy upon me. She wasn't concealing her power from me and under my astral sight she was a blazing fountain of magical power. Trying to lie to her was an idea I considered too stupid to entertain.
"I did some matrix searching and turned up a missing person report, with an image file that matched the dead guy." I concluded. "Now I'm bringing his stuff to you, figured Mr. Johnson might want it looked at."
"That's rather thoughtful." Samantha replied. "What of the focus and the stone?"
"The focus isn't mine. It belonged to the dead guy. As far as I'm concerned you can analyze that too." I paused and picked up the small plastic bag holding the stone. "This is mine though. I'm sorry but I'm keeping this. I brought it because I thought you may want to see something."
Samantha's expression didn't change, her aura betrayed a slight curiosity before she reigned in her control. I opened the bag and dropped the stone onto my open palm. Light exploded from chipped stone the moment it touched my skin. "I think it likes me." I said.
I watched as Samantha's aura changed from one of unrestrained power to one of a perfectly normal mundane woman. She stood and collected the dead man's possessions from the table. "You're right. It is yours." With that she walked stiffly from the briefing room, leaving me alone with the astral imprint of Flick's dying moments.
I raised my right hand, the small stone blazing away in my left, and put an effort of will and magic into a prayer I aimed at the wall. "Rest in peace, Flick." The mana left me and wiped the astral stain of pain and fear from the room. It would return in a few days, it always did, but for the moment I felt as if I had given her some measure of relief.
January 15th, 2061
0900 hours, Seattle Metroplex local time
Jazz was still in a coma. Creep was under sedation. Fey was pissing me off.
"I'm telling you Machine," she insisted. "you're too picky. Just grab some wiz-kid, make her an offer she can't refuse and BOOM! New magician!"
"Fey, you don't know what you're talking about." I replied. "Magicians aren't all the same. We're not AK-97s you can just buy off the back of a truck. I was a wiz-kid once and there is no way in Creep's personal Hell I would have been able to cut it in the situations we end up in."
"Creep is drek-headed lunatic and we're better off without him." Fey fired back. "That chummer is out of his mind and just as dangerous to the team as anything else I've seen in the brief time I'm been on this crazy job."
"He's a lunatic, but he's OUR lunatic. He's also out of the picture for the foreseeable future. I'll find the magician we need, not one that we have to worry about. In the meantime, you put the weapon specialists through their paces, get all the FNGs* up to speed on our communications, and get that requisition in for more incendiary weapons. We got lucky to get out alive, Creep lost his mind helping us escape and Jazz may not survive at all." I pulled out the guest seat in front of my desk and gestured to it, then seated myself in my own chair.
"How fraggin' crazy are we expecting things to get?" Fey asked tersely. "We've got most of a damn platoon assembled now. What the Hell are you expecting?"
"Fey," I said firmly. "You've not seen the worst of things, yet. Before you came on I saw things that were, individually, far more dangerous than those creatures in the ruins. There are things out there that don't have names because the metahuman mind can't wrap itself around the existence of them. Creatures which are so alien to our existence that our minds are strained just to look upon them."
Her face flushed as her temper rose.
"I'm not feeding you bull-drek here. The weapon specialists are there to handle the things we can kill with bullets and fire and explosives. The magicians are there for the things that don't die that way." Her aura flickered at that as realization hit her. She was still angry but she was fighting to reign it in. "You're damn good, Fey. I wouldn't let you stand in Jazz's spot if you weren't. Don't mistake this though. I'm not in command because I'm a magician. I'm in command because I get the job done, because Jazz didn't want command and because everyone else who could have been in this job is dead. Keep asking questions, but do it in here so we can talk it out."
"What are we going to do next?" she asked.
"Same thing we do every time." A smile crept across my face. "We kill monsters."
1358 hours, Seattle Metroplex local time
The panel on my desk lit up with a call. Samantha Goode's face blinked in the contact panel. I activated the answer button.
"Machine, can you come up to my office please?" The question was a politely veiled order.
"Certainly. Now, or did you have a time in mind?"
"Come on up." Samantha replied, then the call ended.
"Drek." I swore. I locked the drawers on my desk and grabbed my rucksack before I leaving my office. I passed a handful of FNGs* who were dressed for 'the office' and discussing the virtues of the latest assault rifle as they walked toward the break area. I took the elevator up and was met by Samantha's personal assistant (I never did learn that woman's name), who escorted me to Samantha's office.
"Enter", Samantha's voice carried nicely through a concealed speaker on the door.
I walked into her office and discovered that Samantha Goode wasn't alone.
"Machine, it is good to see you." Mr. Johnson's voice reached my mind but not my ears. "You've been wandering about in strange places."
He sat in Samantha's chair, his hands folded on the desk in front of him. His eyes were the same storm of blue and grey. Under my astral sight he looked every bit the normal, perfectly mundane mortal. I was convinced it was all a lie. To his right, Samantha Goode stood with an unreadable expression upon her face.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Johnson." I replied. "I wasn't expecting to see you today."
"You should hone your intuition then." He smiled back at me, his lips parted to reveal a perfectly radiant smile while his thought voice flowed over my mind. "After all, you did practically demand this meeting."
"I'm afraid I don't understand." I said.
"Come now!" I winced as my skull echoed with his unspoken words. "You come into the office with evidence of a metaplanar incursion, plant the possessions of another operative on the conference room table, display your claim to the Place of Gates, and then claim that you don't understand?!?!"
It felt like I was being accused of something. "I didn't kill him. He was dead when I found him."
The smile vanished from Mr. Johnson's face. The blue vanished from his eyes leaving only stormy grey. To my astral sight I caught just a glimpse of the power in the man as mana flashed behind his eyes. A thin wisp of smoke flowed from his nose carrying with it a scent I didn't recognize. "You can't believe this has anything to do with one dead man."
The truth of my situation hit me suddenly: 'claim to the Place of Gates'.
With magic, there is a lot of significance to associations. A drawing or mock-up of a thing can be used to affect that thing. Bits of your clothing, hair, fingernails, blood or other body parts, can hold power over you. The same is often true of objects. You can affect a building by using scrapes of paint you scratched off its surface or spy into a building by holding a light bulb stolen from its bathroom. A piece of stone broken from the foundation of a metaplane may very well hold a degree of power over the place itself.
"I see illumination of the fact has finally reached you." Mr. Johnson's voice broke the silence in the room. He was speaking, for which my skull was very thankful. "You have made a claim on the Place of Gates. You have held the very foundation of that world in your hand and yet, I doubt you understand the significance."
"The building that manifested, the other gates, the whirlpools; all of them are incursions into that metaplane. The plane is being invaded by other worlds, other realities." It was a staggering thought.
Mr. Johnson's face hardened.
"This level of knowledge of the metaplanes is rarely seen in university educated magicians." Samantha interjected, "It is understandable that he may not fully realize the severity of his actions."
"Irrelevant." Mr. Johnson, snapped. He held his hand out to me and said, "Give it to me."
The hair on the back of my neck stood up. Samantha's face was expressionless, utterly unreadable. I felt the very real need to urinate but managed to maintain my composure and the sanctity of my clothing. I looked at Mr. Johnson, the 'man' I most feared in all the world and, for a moment, I was going to hand over the little chip of stone. I reached into my rucksack, fishing for the plastic bag and my hand bumped my menpo-style ballistic mask.
I looked down into the bag and saw the small bit of stone resting in its bag, lying in the eye of the mask. Something burned in the back of my mind, fighting against the fear of the man. 'Give' he had said. There was something to that.
I put my hand on the mask and looked back to Mr. Johnson, his insistence was etched across his features. Samantha Goode was motionless beside him. The room seemed suddenly warmer and sweat broke out on my brow.
'Give it to me' he had said. When Mr. Johnson had ever wanted something from me he had always offered something to me in return, its how I ended up working for him in the first place. Now he was demanding my small stone, a token from a metaplanar day trip, and he wanted it badly. 'Give'? It was out of character.
"I'm afraid I have to decline." I replied. "It's mine, after all."
Smoke spiraled out of Mr. Johnson's nose. That dreadful suspicion I had been harboring crept back into my mind. "What?" His voice was low and laced with menace.
"I'm saying, 'no'. I'm not going to give it to you." I replied. "I was off work, at home and off the clock. I recovered this stone on my own. This is beyond our contractual relationship and I'm afraid I cannot give it to you."
"You're refusing me?" Mr. Johnson asked.
"I am." I gulped. I couldn't help it, I was scared.
"You work for me." He hissed.
"I was off duty. This is personal property." saying it out loud reinforced my failing courage.
"GIVE. IT. TO. ME." He stood, his hand thrust out to me.
I walked over to him and looked him his stormy eyes. The same strange scent hit me as smoke continued to stream from his nose. To my astral sight his eyes blazed like acetylene torches. Blinding if I were using my physical eyes to see them. I was finally catching a glimpse of the true power of this 'man' I had been working for and it was terrifying.
I thought about Aria. I thought about Pepper. I thought about my twins and my powerful spirit daughters. We stood there for a long two minutes while I stared into the crack in Mr. Johnson's façade. Finally, I answered: "No."
My flesh and blood eyes saw Mr. Johnson's pupils elongate as his eyes changed. His hair grew longer and thicker. Scales the color of molten copper appeared on his skin as he suddenly grew larger, his neck elongating as his head changed shape and his body adopted wholly inhuman proportions and shredded his perfectly tailored suit. A long tail erupted behind him and his bulk knocked the desk over, forcing me to jump away to avoid being pinned under his weight.
Where once the most formidable man I had ever met had stood making demands of me, now stood a dragon. Its bulk tearing at the wall behind him and scattering the furniture. Its eyes locked with mine and I heard Mr. Johnson's thought-voice ring painfully in my skull. "I. SAID. GIVE. IT. TO. ME!"
There is an old saying in the Shadows, 'Never make a deal with a dragon'. It's one of the first things you ever hear in the biz, and if you're really lucky its one of those things you'll never have a chance to test.
I'm not very lucky.
(Continued in ~ The Art of War, Part Four)
---------------------------------------------------
Thank you for reading my fan fiction!
Recently I've heard from several readers who told me they enjoyed these tales. I want to thank you folks particularly, as it is a fantastic thing to hear.
I also write and publish role playing game material, though not for Shadowrun (unfortunately). If there is ever an open game license for them though....
As of the release of this story I presently have a RPG sourcebook for necromancy for the 5th edition (of Gary's game) that is funding on KickStarter. The link is below. Please do check that out, support it if you can, and please do spread the word by sharing it around on social media. Every share is a fantastic opportunity for people to discover a KickStarter project and is greatly appreciated.
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Until Part Four, I hope you enjoyed this entry and I look forward to your comments either here, below or on social media.
Thank you!
Wednesday, October 10, 2018
The Art of War, Part two: Plan carefully
"Plan for what is difficult while it is easy, do what is great while it is small."
- Sun Tzu
____________________________________________________
I've gone on metaplanar quests before. In each of those excursions I've had to confront the Dweller on the Threshold. The Dweller has confronted me with terrible challenges in each of my quests. I've confronted the ghosts of the people and creatures I've killed, confronted dead chummers and one dead girlfriend, been called to account for my crimes and sins and had my mind and soul battered.
This time the Dweller must have decided that enough was enough, because he was trying to cut me into small pieces.
"Who dares to approach!" The Dweller bellowed. The ten meter tall, four-armed giant bore four glowing swords. Each flickered as if they were on fire.
I was determined to show no fear, even though I felt it to the core of my being. I shouted my name, my real name, to the Dweller and hoped against hope that it would let me pass.
"Tommy." The Dweller growled. "DIE!" It lunged forward with all four swords.
I felt the heat from those blades as they passed within a centimeter of cutting me into ribbons. My reflexes, though enhanced by powerful spells, were barely sufficient to keep me from being skewered. My hand went for my gun by force of habit, only to find nothing there.
"Whimpering pup!" The Dweller roared. "You DARE, confront me!?! I'll cut you to ribbons, then feast on your soul!"
I'm not going to lie to you. I was scared. The Dweller moved with the fluid grace of a spirit, all quicksilver and shadow. Swords flashed out at me and it was all I could do just to avoid being skewered.
"There are secrets beyond your grasp mortal!" A giant glowing sword flashed by my head.
"There is knowledge which you shall not possess!" I ducked under two swords as they streaked above me.
"You think you are worthy to just reach for any knowledge, any power, just because you happen to see it?!?! Power is not some low-hanging fruit for you to pluck!" A flurry of strikes came at me. I jumped back, desperately trying not to die while the Dweller was making a fantastic effort to murder me.
"Your time is at an end, mortal! Whether by my blade or by the passage of time, you will die!" The Dweller pressed his attack. With those swords his reach was every bit of seven meters, making it all but impossible to get out of range. He was fast and looked strong enough to cleave me in half with little effort. "DIE, TOMMY! DIE!"
There was a primal rage in that voice. I ducked, jumped and spun to keep myself alive but I hadn't managed a counterattack. It was just a matter of time before I would be dead. The Dweller bellowed his challenge at me, a terrifying prospect made all the more urgent by the flash of blazing steel. The Dweller raised his swords high, preparing for a flurry of strokes that would leave me as nothing more than shattered soul fragments.
I pointed and loosed the first spell that came to mind. "IGNIS MAGICAE!"
A ribbon of white hot flames shot from my outstretched finger, catching the Dweller in his right eye. The eyeball exploded and the Dweller howled in rage and pain, dropping a sword as one hand went to his ruined eye.
"IGNIS MAGICAE!" I loosed a second spell, catching the Dweller's left kneecap and bringing him tumbling down in a crash of steel and a rattle of the planes themselves. The castle gate behind him remained closed.
"I forbid your entry. You shall have to kill me in order to pass." The Dweller sneered as he pushed himself to a seated position.
"Ignis. Magicae." My spell caught the Dweller in the crook of the arm supporting his weight. Once again he fell, the landscape shuddered as if from a great earthquake. Steel rang as his swords fell.
"Disgraceful." The Dweller's voice was laced with pain. "Finish me then, mortal. Go beyond and claim your blood stained prize."
I raised my hands toward the Dweller. The giant reeked of the sickly scent of burning flesh. There were perhaps a dozen different spells that came to mind. The giant was powerful but badly injured and another spell would kill him. I stood there, my hands aimed like weapons, and stopped.
'Why would I kill the Dweller? Is it even possible? What is the point?" These thoughts raced through my mind as the Dweller stared at me with his one good eye, his face etched with pain and defiance. I knew at that moment that I had the power to kill him.
I also realized that I had no reason to.
"No." I said. "I won't kill you. I didn't come here to fight. I came here seeking knowledge."
I lowered my hands. "I won't kill you for a convenience. I don't know what all your hostility was about, but we'll see each other time and again as the years pass."
"You? You would show mercy?" The Dweller seemed genuinely surprised. For a moment, I felt a profound sense of shame.
"You sound surprised." I replied. "Yes. I grant you mercy. Until next we meet." I turned, intending to find my way back to my mana flooded home, but encountered the castle gate. It loomed large and open before me.
"For some, being merciful is a great challenge." The Dweller's pained voice whispered into my mind. "Until next we meet."
*****
I walked through the gate and into a swirling current of water. I kicked up toward the faint light of the surface. The current was brutal, and kept pulling at me as I struggled to escape. Minutes passed as I fought my way to the surface. In the distance I saw a small island crafted of fitted stones, a single stone pillar rose from its surface. The water around me was clear and the sky above was a beautiful shade of sea-green. Seven moons hung in the sky. I turned my gaze from the dark moon, fearful that it might take notice of me. To my right and slightly behind me, a stone arch rose from the depths. I saw five others that were intact while the seventh was a crumbled ruin. A light blazed atop the pillar.
I intoned my levitation spell, rose up from the water and floated over to the island. It looked just as I remembered it. Each detail on the pillar was exquisitely carved. I floated up and gazed at the searing power of the totem capping the top. The stone arch I had arrived near shone with hellish firelight. A dozen swirling whirlpools were scattered around it. Above the blue moon a single point of light crept across the sky. The twin suns were on the horizon, bathing the sea-green sky with a warm red-gold glow.
I watched and saw the same beautiful place I had once taken refuge in. It was nearing nighttime, the air carried the salty sent of the sea. Only the whirlpools and the pinprick of light over the blue moon were different.
The suns set and darkness draped the sky. By the light of six moons and my spell enhanced senses I basked in the beauty of the place. For a time, I'm not certain how long, I forgot my purpose. When I finally regained my focus, I noticed a something moving beneath the churning waters of one of the whirlpools. I floated over and plunged down into the water to get a better look.
It was a man.
He was dressed in a white suit with a brilliant red tie. A black pentagram tiepin held his tie in place. His hair floated about his head and he bobbed about at the mercy of the currents. He didn't respond to my presence so I swam out to him, fighting the currents as I went, until I was facing him from a distance of three meters. His features were locked in an expression of dread realization.
He was dead. I swam over to the corpse, the current tugging at me all the while. I grabbed his arm, and began to swim toward the surface. It took most of an hour to pull the dead man from the sea and onto the island of stone.
There weren't any signs of injury so I assumed that he drowned, unable to free himself from the whirlpool. How a corpse got to a metaplane was a profound question. His suit looked quite modern and the tiepin was imbued with an aura of enchantment. I went through his pockets, looking for any clue as to who he may have been. I found a credstick (Which is a REALLY weird thing to find in a metaplane!), a high-end pocket secretary (Equally weird!), and an ID card proclaiming membership in the Fraternal Order of the Garden State Thaumaturgic Union.
My corpse was from New Jersey.
I dropped his credstick and ID card into the pocket of my drenched bathrobe. His pocket secretary still had power so I pressed the corpse's thumb to the screen and watched as it came to life. 'No Signal' was promptly displayed across the top of the display. I accessed the calendar and found it indicating an appointment for the early afternoon,'Exorcism?' was noted in the event details as well as an address and contact name. There were pictures of a woman and two young children in his photo gallery, as well as a text file from a sender indicated as 'Beth' that appeared to be a selection of school supplies.
"Damn, chummer." I said. "What happened to get you all the way out here?"
Thankfully, the corpse didn't answer. {Hey. It's not paranoia, I've seen that happen before.~ T.}
I was pondering the possibilities when I saw the ghostly outline of a skyscraper take shape in the waters behind the stone arch beneath the blue moon. It was of a familiar, modern design and though it was translucent in the way of ghosts and spirit manifestations it suddenly displaced a vast amount seawater, throwing up a tremendous wave that washed over the island and cast me back into the sea.
The rising suns revealed an additional dozen whirlpools around the gate I had arrived near. The blue moon above took on a thin sliver of gold that ringed it in the sky. I waited for the sea to calm its fury, then plunged down into waters near the whirlpool I had emerged from. A spiral of trapped air churned and bubbled in the fierce current that tugged me downward. I was twenty meters down when I saw a that the sea bed was formed of fitted hexagon-cut stones. They stretched as far as the eye could see in all directions. Beneath me, many of the stones were cracked and worn. Bubbles rose from one broken stone, flowing up the current and into the whirlpool. Faint light lined the crack that ran the width of the stone. There were a score of stones with similar damage scattered around the stone arch. Strange shadows, phantasmal terrain, and ghostly figures appeared and vanished in the light erupting from the cracks.
I dove down to the fractured stone. It was six meters across, give or take a few centimeters. Small bits of stone, broken from the large hexagon, littered the surface. I picked up a few small bits of the debris and slipped them into the pocket of my bathrobe. The light shooting through the cracks reminded me of the blazing orb in my basement. The light felt warm there in the depths. The water held a chill and was rushing into the cracks as bubbles streamed up.
The bits of stone that littered the surface seemed to have come from the cracks. I picked up one of the larger pieces, found a space along the cracks that it appeared to fit in, lined it up and lowered it into place. The stone fit seamlessly, and the stream of bubbles became less pronounced. Another stone was fitted into the place, then another. With each bit of stone that was replaced the whirlpool's current weakened and the stream of bubbles lessened. I fitted all of the pieces that I could see but the crack remained. It was smaller and the current was far less intense than when I arrived.
I peered down into the crack and saw nothing more than a brilliant light. I found myself falling into that light and was soon engulfed by it. When I opened my eyes I found myself covered in ectoplasmic goop. It completely covered me and was disintegrating rapidly. I stood up and found that I was chest deep in the muck. My bathrobe was drenched and I was very cold. The elemental spirits had vanished, their service done.
My astral senses showed that the ball of light was still brighter than it had been, but the stream of ectoplasm had stopped. I touched the engraved circle with my bare toe and exerted my will to deactivate the circle. Ectoplasm rushed out, knocking over my chair and the candles that had burned down to nubs.
I shivered violently and padded upstairs to see if Aria and the girls had left yet. I was halfway up the stairs when something buzzed in the pocket of my bathrobe. I reached in and pulled out the pocket secretary I had found on the corpse. The display indicated an incoming call from "Beth" and the network connection was busy pulling down several messages. The small device buzzed incessantly at me until I opened its battery compartment and pulled out the power cell.
My own pocket secretary was upstairs, still sitting on the nightstand next to the bed. Of Aria and the girls there was no sign. I thumbed the accursed device and found a dozen messages from Aria asking me to call her when I 'got back'. The date display was January 10th, and it was almost 1900 hours. I had been gone for almost two days.
*****
The sudden surprise in the night and the immediate need to evacuate the family struck me. I spent the 11th and the 12th setting up a new safe house and fitting it with things we, as a family, would need if we ever had to go to ground. I brought Lilly and Rose there individually, so as not to leave Aria without help.
My ally spirits are my children in every way that matters to me. I also depend on them to protect the family when I am away. We have certain contingency plans in place, what to do if there is a medical emergency with the twins, what to do if Aria gets hurt, what to do if/when I die, and other more mundane plans. After this incident we had a family meeting.
"Girls, I want to talk to you about the future and another set of standing instructions. Things to do if particular things happen." I told them. Lily and Rose looked at me intently while Aria sat close by side, her hand gripping mine. The twins were playing with a pair of stuffed toys on the rug before us.
"You know we have code words. Those that we've set up like 'Flashlight', 'Medic', 'Diaper change' and so on. Today, I want to talk to you about a new code word. This one is 'Rapture'..."
We discussed the plan in detail. Neither Rose nor Lily liked it at all, and Aria renewed her insistence that I summon another ally spirit. The twins played through the entire discussion, giggling and fumbling around until they became suddenly quite silent as Aria made me promise to summon another ally.
"You can't expect the girls to do that without you having another on hand to help you." she said. "Promise me, Tommy. You'll bring another to help. Promise me."
I sighed. Summoning another ally spirit was a good idea if ever we needed to evacuate. The time and energy it would require would be immense, but I was confident that I had recovered enough power from my summoning of Lily that I could bring forth another without breaking my own magic in the process. "Okay, honey. I'll do it as soon as I can."
I was going to say something else. Provide a rough estimate of when I could conduct such a summoning, but the reason for the twins' sudden silence hit me as the foul stench wafted up from the rug where they sat, blushing.
"Oh, my God!" Aria proclaimed. "Girls, did you poop?"
"I hope so," I injected. "If not, I can't imagine what it will be like when they do." I stood up and spun a little magic in the air, lifting the tiny, stinking children into the air. "Rose, Lily, 'diaper change' is in effect." We walked the girls to the changing tables and did battle the with the stench of filthy diapers. It was terrible. The twins giggled the entire time.
*****
In my basement laboratory, small bits of fractured stone sat in a containment circle I had scribed onto a work table. They emitted a faint luminescence in the dark and glowed with mana energy to my astral sight. The fragments had come through in my pocket, just as had the pocket secretary and credstick I took off the corpse. The tiepin focus I stored within a separate containment circle, just in case.
In the days following this incident, there were sporadic news reports of strange astral happenings at various sites around the world. I did some matrix searching, the public/legit user kind, and found mention of a missing person from the Far Hills area. The picture matched my corpse.
I began to formulate the design for a third ally spirit, devoting a few hours each night after I came home from work. I had a plan and I needed to be prepared to implement it if the need arose. Years as a Shadowrunner had taught me to be ready to bolt when you need to. It only took a couple of years of family life for me to get comfortably settled. It's easy to lose your edge when you're comfortable.
'Rapture', I hoped I never had to use it, but I had to be ready.
*Continued in Part three*
---------------------------------
Thank you for reading my fan fiction!
I hope you are enjoying The Art of War story arc.
I do also release RPG material under the SRD 5.1 OGL (as published by WoTC). Presently my newest book, Whispers of Persephone, if on KickStarter. If you would, please do check that out and share the link with others. I'm placing a link below. I am also a creator on KickStarter's Drip platform, which is similar to Patreon in some respects. You can find my Drip page HERE, so please do give that a look too.
Thank you. I hope you'll check out Part Three.
- Sun Tzu
____________________________________________________
I've gone on metaplanar quests before. In each of those excursions I've had to confront the Dweller on the Threshold. The Dweller has confronted me with terrible challenges in each of my quests. I've confronted the ghosts of the people and creatures I've killed, confronted dead chummers and one dead girlfriend, been called to account for my crimes and sins and had my mind and soul battered.
This time the Dweller must have decided that enough was enough, because he was trying to cut me into small pieces.
"Who dares to approach!" The Dweller bellowed. The ten meter tall, four-armed giant bore four glowing swords. Each flickered as if they were on fire.
I was determined to show no fear, even though I felt it to the core of my being. I shouted my name, my real name, to the Dweller and hoped against hope that it would let me pass.
"Tommy." The Dweller growled. "DIE!" It lunged forward with all four swords.
I felt the heat from those blades as they passed within a centimeter of cutting me into ribbons. My reflexes, though enhanced by powerful spells, were barely sufficient to keep me from being skewered. My hand went for my gun by force of habit, only to find nothing there.
"Whimpering pup!" The Dweller roared. "You DARE, confront me!?! I'll cut you to ribbons, then feast on your soul!"
I'm not going to lie to you. I was scared. The Dweller moved with the fluid grace of a spirit, all quicksilver and shadow. Swords flashed out at me and it was all I could do just to avoid being skewered.
"There are secrets beyond your grasp mortal!" A giant glowing sword flashed by my head.
"There is knowledge which you shall not possess!" I ducked under two swords as they streaked above me.
"You think you are worthy to just reach for any knowledge, any power, just because you happen to see it?!?! Power is not some low-hanging fruit for you to pluck!" A flurry of strikes came at me. I jumped back, desperately trying not to die while the Dweller was making a fantastic effort to murder me.
"Your time is at an end, mortal! Whether by my blade or by the passage of time, you will die!" The Dweller pressed his attack. With those swords his reach was every bit of seven meters, making it all but impossible to get out of range. He was fast and looked strong enough to cleave me in half with little effort. "DIE, TOMMY! DIE!"
There was a primal rage in that voice. I ducked, jumped and spun to keep myself alive but I hadn't managed a counterattack. It was just a matter of time before I would be dead. The Dweller bellowed his challenge at me, a terrifying prospect made all the more urgent by the flash of blazing steel. The Dweller raised his swords high, preparing for a flurry of strokes that would leave me as nothing more than shattered soul fragments.
I pointed and loosed the first spell that came to mind. "IGNIS MAGICAE!"
A ribbon of white hot flames shot from my outstretched finger, catching the Dweller in his right eye. The eyeball exploded and the Dweller howled in rage and pain, dropping a sword as one hand went to his ruined eye.
"IGNIS MAGICAE!" I loosed a second spell, catching the Dweller's left kneecap and bringing him tumbling down in a crash of steel and a rattle of the planes themselves. The castle gate behind him remained closed.
"I forbid your entry. You shall have to kill me in order to pass." The Dweller sneered as he pushed himself to a seated position.
"Ignis. Magicae." My spell caught the Dweller in the crook of the arm supporting his weight. Once again he fell, the landscape shuddered as if from a great earthquake. Steel rang as his swords fell.
"Disgraceful." The Dweller's voice was laced with pain. "Finish me then, mortal. Go beyond and claim your blood stained prize."
I raised my hands toward the Dweller. The giant reeked of the sickly scent of burning flesh. There were perhaps a dozen different spells that came to mind. The giant was powerful but badly injured and another spell would kill him. I stood there, my hands aimed like weapons, and stopped.
'Why would I kill the Dweller? Is it even possible? What is the point?" These thoughts raced through my mind as the Dweller stared at me with his one good eye, his face etched with pain and defiance. I knew at that moment that I had the power to kill him.
I also realized that I had no reason to.
"No." I said. "I won't kill you. I didn't come here to fight. I came here seeking knowledge."
I lowered my hands. "I won't kill you for a convenience. I don't know what all your hostility was about, but we'll see each other time and again as the years pass."
"You? You would show mercy?" The Dweller seemed genuinely surprised. For a moment, I felt a profound sense of shame.
"You sound surprised." I replied. "Yes. I grant you mercy. Until next we meet." I turned, intending to find my way back to my mana flooded home, but encountered the castle gate. It loomed large and open before me.
"For some, being merciful is a great challenge." The Dweller's pained voice whispered into my mind. "Until next we meet."
*****
I walked through the gate and into a swirling current of water. I kicked up toward the faint light of the surface. The current was brutal, and kept pulling at me as I struggled to escape. Minutes passed as I fought my way to the surface. In the distance I saw a small island crafted of fitted stones, a single stone pillar rose from its surface. The water around me was clear and the sky above was a beautiful shade of sea-green. Seven moons hung in the sky. I turned my gaze from the dark moon, fearful that it might take notice of me. To my right and slightly behind me, a stone arch rose from the depths. I saw five others that were intact while the seventh was a crumbled ruin. A light blazed atop the pillar.
I intoned my levitation spell, rose up from the water and floated over to the island. It looked just as I remembered it. Each detail on the pillar was exquisitely carved. I floated up and gazed at the searing power of the totem capping the top. The stone arch I had arrived near shone with hellish firelight. A dozen swirling whirlpools were scattered around it. Above the blue moon a single point of light crept across the sky. The twin suns were on the horizon, bathing the sea-green sky with a warm red-gold glow.
I watched and saw the same beautiful place I had once taken refuge in. It was nearing nighttime, the air carried the salty sent of the sea. Only the whirlpools and the pinprick of light over the blue moon were different.
The suns set and darkness draped the sky. By the light of six moons and my spell enhanced senses I basked in the beauty of the place. For a time, I'm not certain how long, I forgot my purpose. When I finally regained my focus, I noticed a something moving beneath the churning waters of one of the whirlpools. I floated over and plunged down into the water to get a better look.
It was a man.
He was dressed in a white suit with a brilliant red tie. A black pentagram tiepin held his tie in place. His hair floated about his head and he bobbed about at the mercy of the currents. He didn't respond to my presence so I swam out to him, fighting the currents as I went, until I was facing him from a distance of three meters. His features were locked in an expression of dread realization.
He was dead. I swam over to the corpse, the current tugging at me all the while. I grabbed his arm, and began to swim toward the surface. It took most of an hour to pull the dead man from the sea and onto the island of stone.
There weren't any signs of injury so I assumed that he drowned, unable to free himself from the whirlpool. How a corpse got to a metaplane was a profound question. His suit looked quite modern and the tiepin was imbued with an aura of enchantment. I went through his pockets, looking for any clue as to who he may have been. I found a credstick (Which is a REALLY weird thing to find in a metaplane!), a high-end pocket secretary (Equally weird!), and an ID card proclaiming membership in the Fraternal Order of the Garden State Thaumaturgic Union.
My corpse was from New Jersey.
I dropped his credstick and ID card into the pocket of my drenched bathrobe. His pocket secretary still had power so I pressed the corpse's thumb to the screen and watched as it came to life. 'No Signal' was promptly displayed across the top of the display. I accessed the calendar and found it indicating an appointment for the early afternoon,'Exorcism?' was noted in the event details as well as an address and contact name. There were pictures of a woman and two young children in his photo gallery, as well as a text file from a sender indicated as 'Beth' that appeared to be a selection of school supplies.
"Damn, chummer." I said. "What happened to get you all the way out here?"
Thankfully, the corpse didn't answer. {Hey. It's not paranoia, I've seen that happen before.~ T.}
I was pondering the possibilities when I saw the ghostly outline of a skyscraper take shape in the waters behind the stone arch beneath the blue moon. It was of a familiar, modern design and though it was translucent in the way of ghosts and spirit manifestations it suddenly displaced a vast amount seawater, throwing up a tremendous wave that washed over the island and cast me back into the sea.
The rising suns revealed an additional dozen whirlpools around the gate I had arrived near. The blue moon above took on a thin sliver of gold that ringed it in the sky. I waited for the sea to calm its fury, then plunged down into waters near the whirlpool I had emerged from. A spiral of trapped air churned and bubbled in the fierce current that tugged me downward. I was twenty meters down when I saw a that the sea bed was formed of fitted hexagon-cut stones. They stretched as far as the eye could see in all directions. Beneath me, many of the stones were cracked and worn. Bubbles rose from one broken stone, flowing up the current and into the whirlpool. Faint light lined the crack that ran the width of the stone. There were a score of stones with similar damage scattered around the stone arch. Strange shadows, phantasmal terrain, and ghostly figures appeared and vanished in the light erupting from the cracks.
I dove down to the fractured stone. It was six meters across, give or take a few centimeters. Small bits of stone, broken from the large hexagon, littered the surface. I picked up a few small bits of the debris and slipped them into the pocket of my bathrobe. The light shooting through the cracks reminded me of the blazing orb in my basement. The light felt warm there in the depths. The water held a chill and was rushing into the cracks as bubbles streamed up.
The bits of stone that littered the surface seemed to have come from the cracks. I picked up one of the larger pieces, found a space along the cracks that it appeared to fit in, lined it up and lowered it into place. The stone fit seamlessly, and the stream of bubbles became less pronounced. Another stone was fitted into the place, then another. With each bit of stone that was replaced the whirlpool's current weakened and the stream of bubbles lessened. I fitted all of the pieces that I could see but the crack remained. It was smaller and the current was far less intense than when I arrived.
I peered down into the crack and saw nothing more than a brilliant light. I found myself falling into that light and was soon engulfed by it. When I opened my eyes I found myself covered in ectoplasmic goop. It completely covered me and was disintegrating rapidly. I stood up and found that I was chest deep in the muck. My bathrobe was drenched and I was very cold. The elemental spirits had vanished, their service done.
My astral senses showed that the ball of light was still brighter than it had been, but the stream of ectoplasm had stopped. I touched the engraved circle with my bare toe and exerted my will to deactivate the circle. Ectoplasm rushed out, knocking over my chair and the candles that had burned down to nubs.
I shivered violently and padded upstairs to see if Aria and the girls had left yet. I was halfway up the stairs when something buzzed in the pocket of my bathrobe. I reached in and pulled out the pocket secretary I had found on the corpse. The display indicated an incoming call from "Beth" and the network connection was busy pulling down several messages. The small device buzzed incessantly at me until I opened its battery compartment and pulled out the power cell.
My own pocket secretary was upstairs, still sitting on the nightstand next to the bed. Of Aria and the girls there was no sign. I thumbed the accursed device and found a dozen messages from Aria asking me to call her when I 'got back'. The date display was January 10th, and it was almost 1900 hours. I had been gone for almost two days.
*****
The sudden surprise in the night and the immediate need to evacuate the family struck me. I spent the 11th and the 12th setting up a new safe house and fitting it with things we, as a family, would need if we ever had to go to ground. I brought Lilly and Rose there individually, so as not to leave Aria without help.
My ally spirits are my children in every way that matters to me. I also depend on them to protect the family when I am away. We have certain contingency plans in place, what to do if there is a medical emergency with the twins, what to do if Aria gets hurt, what to do if/when I die, and other more mundane plans. After this incident we had a family meeting.
"Girls, I want to talk to you about the future and another set of standing instructions. Things to do if particular things happen." I told them. Lily and Rose looked at me intently while Aria sat close by side, her hand gripping mine. The twins were playing with a pair of stuffed toys on the rug before us.
"You know we have code words. Those that we've set up like 'Flashlight', 'Medic', 'Diaper change' and so on. Today, I want to talk to you about a new code word. This one is 'Rapture'..."
We discussed the plan in detail. Neither Rose nor Lily liked it at all, and Aria renewed her insistence that I summon another ally spirit. The twins played through the entire discussion, giggling and fumbling around until they became suddenly quite silent as Aria made me promise to summon another ally.
"You can't expect the girls to do that without you having another on hand to help you." she said. "Promise me, Tommy. You'll bring another to help. Promise me."
I sighed. Summoning another ally spirit was a good idea if ever we needed to evacuate. The time and energy it would require would be immense, but I was confident that I had recovered enough power from my summoning of Lily that I could bring forth another without breaking my own magic in the process. "Okay, honey. I'll do it as soon as I can."
I was going to say something else. Provide a rough estimate of when I could conduct such a summoning, but the reason for the twins' sudden silence hit me as the foul stench wafted up from the rug where they sat, blushing.
"Oh, my God!" Aria proclaimed. "Girls, did you poop?"
"I hope so," I injected. "If not, I can't imagine what it will be like when they do." I stood up and spun a little magic in the air, lifting the tiny, stinking children into the air. "Rose, Lily, 'diaper change' is in effect." We walked the girls to the changing tables and did battle the with the stench of filthy diapers. It was terrible. The twins giggled the entire time.
*****
In my basement laboratory, small bits of fractured stone sat in a containment circle I had scribed onto a work table. They emitted a faint luminescence in the dark and glowed with mana energy to my astral sight. The fragments had come through in my pocket, just as had the pocket secretary and credstick I took off the corpse. The tiepin focus I stored within a separate containment circle, just in case.
In the days following this incident, there were sporadic news reports of strange astral happenings at various sites around the world. I did some matrix searching, the public/legit user kind, and found mention of a missing person from the Far Hills area. The picture matched my corpse.
I began to formulate the design for a third ally spirit, devoting a few hours each night after I came home from work. I had a plan and I needed to be prepared to implement it if the need arose. Years as a Shadowrunner had taught me to be ready to bolt when you need to. It only took a couple of years of family life for me to get comfortably settled. It's easy to lose your edge when you're comfortable.
'Rapture', I hoped I never had to use it, but I had to be ready.
*Continued in Part three*
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Thank you for reading my fan fiction!
I hope you are enjoying The Art of War story arc.
I do also release RPG material under the SRD 5.1 OGL (as published by WoTC). Presently my newest book, Whispers of Persephone, if on KickStarter. If you would, please do check that out and share the link with others. I'm placing a link below. I am also a creator on KickStarter's Drip platform, which is similar to Patreon in some respects. You can find my Drip page HERE, so please do give that a look too.
Thank you. I hope you'll check out Part Three.
Monday, October 8, 2018
The Art of War, Part One: Gather information
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| Art by: Christian Martinez From: Whispers of Persephone (now on KickStarter) |
“Every battle is won before it’s ever fought.”
―
Things at home were buzzing with excitement as the mainstream Christmas holiday (mandatory gift-giving day) was approaching. Aria and I bought new toys for Jasmine and Violet and after considerable thought, bought gifts for Lily and Rose. After the issue at the archology the previous year, we ordered our gifts from the 'trix.
I spent time during my lunch breaks shopping for a gift for my wife, and my evenings playing with my twins and enjoying my family. The twins liked to be levitated around, which led to the invention of a strange game where I would float them around the room then Aria would have to guess which twin was which. She always knew the correct answer.
Lily and Rose stayed home unless I called them. Aria's life was easier with them around to help with the twins, and I didn't feel pressed to have them around at the office. I was busy, and spent very little time in my basement laboratory that month. Venturing down to check my inventory of key supplies, and to reassure myself that the wards on my safe were intact.
Christmas came and there was a lot of joy in the house. We made it through the conventional holiday season and kept right on celebrating through the Orthodox holiday season as well. Snow fell over the Metroplex in the early days of January 2061, blanketing the city in a veil of white.
*****
I opened myself to the astral plan and beheld a misty fog of mana flowing through the house. It was growing thicker, more dense, and the air was becoming chilled as the magical energies continued to manifest in my home. I felt a rumble of power beneath my feet, and felt a sinking feeling in my gut. There were sounds in the astral plane, a low murmur or buzz like you hear in a large church before services start. It may have been distant voices or astral echoes surging into prominence with the presence of so much magic energy. I didn't know what was going on, but I had a bad feeling.
The stairs to the basement were shrouded in a real, tangible mist. My astral senses were occluded by the mana-mists that were trapped within my home. The wards were holding well, bottling up the mana and keeping it trapped inside. My bare feet felt the cold concrete of my basement as I stepped down and thumbed the lights.
My basement was laid out in very particular manner. Everything has its place, the equipment is aligned according to geomantic principles, and I have a circle etched into the concrete. That circle was six meters across and its center rested beneath the small glowing orb that provided such a steady flow of mana into my home. My eyes saw a dim light in the fog while my astral perception saw a brilliant light blazing like a small sun hovering over the circle's center. Dew was visible on every surface I could still see through the thick fog.
This bizarre manifestation of mana energy was something I had never experienced before. In fact, I had never even heard of anything like that before. Mana and mist flowed from the mana eruption. Dew had collected with small puddles of mana within the circle, while so much more was pouring out into my lab.
"Right. First step, containment." I said out loud. Talking to yourself isn't a bad thing unless you start using different voices, right?
"Father?" Rose's thought voice sounded worried.
I looked about at the mana flooding my basement and calmed myself. My reply was as gentle as anything I would have said to the twins. "It's okay Rose. I'm fine. Protect the family while I resolve this."
"Yes, father." She still sounded worried.
I scrambled over to the my reagent cabinet and pulled out a sealed glass bottle filled with fine blue sand. The sand had been collected in the Painted Desert and carefully purified from any lingering pollutants over the course of hours of alchemical refinement. The powder was always cool to the touch, tingled with the promise of magical potency and was one of my more rare reagents. I pulled away the wax seal that lined the cork and walked back over to the engraved circle in my floor.
I realized that the mists I could see weren't water vapor. The spell I had quickened to myself which allowed me to see underwater would have cut through regular fog easily. No, this was something else. I passed through it and my skin tingled with every step. Sparks popped along the glass bottle every few seconds, making me jump at the thought that the glass might break. It came to me as I bent down to activate the magic circle engraved into my basement floor. Ectoplasm. I was seeing a full blown manifestation of mana and the mist were the physical embodiment of mana and spirit energies, ectoplasm.
My hand pressed through the clear plasm I had mistaken for dew and made contact with the engraved circle on the floor. "Operio" I whispered as I forced the circle closed with an effort of will. The circle came alive with magical energy, forming a barrier round the blazing point of light that was spilling mana and ectoplasm into my basement lab. The mists outside the circle began to drift down as they were cut off from the energizing flow of mana energy. A clear slime of ectoplasm was collecting on every surface. I checked the circle's integrity, noting with satisfaction that the Seal of Solomon I had painstakingly painted on the ceiling above the circle appeared to be acting as a lid as it was holding the mana energies down in the circle. Sparks flashed within the circle as bottled up mana energy was flooding the circle.
"Step two: Identify problem." I told myself. "Or is it, 'assure safe working environment'? I always forget which."
"Father," Lily's thought voice this time. "Mother wants to know what is going on."
"Not certain yet." I replied. "May take a while to fix this. Ask her to call the car service. She and the twins need to be away until I get this contained. Tell her they should go to her mother's place for tonight to let me work on the problem."
"She will not like your answer, father." Rose interrupted.
"I know, but right now I'm not sure what is happening. Mana is ankle deep in the basement. I'm literally slipping in ectoplasm." I saw mana energies spark within the circle. "Get them out of here safely. Let me know once you have arrived and notify me if there is any trouble."
"Yes, father." Lily and Rose's thought voices whispered into my mind.
I turned my attention toward the vexing problem before me. Mana energy was building up within the circle, I didn't dare to release it as there was simply no way of telling how it might affect the materials in my lab. I called out to the elemental spirits I held bound and watched as they manifested within the mana heavy environment. Earth and fire spirits were tasked with reinforcing the circle. Air and water spirits crossed the circle's boundary with me, as we stepped into the flood.
I stepped into the heavy mist within the circle, ectoplasm clinging to me in a fine layer of ooze. I reflexively wiped at my face, pushing away a layer of ooze that was replaced almost instantly. The floor was cold, and covered in inches of ectoplasm. I lay down in the muck, turned my focus inward and let my astral form slip from my body. The power surging out of the blazing orb had a purity to it I had rarely felt. There was a faint odor that reminded me of the sea after a storm.
Mana filled the circle, growing more intense as power continued to pour in from the metaplanes. Minutes ticked by, but the eruption of mana only grew more intense.
"Drek." I cursed quietly. The elemental spirits looked at me with curious expressions. "I need answers, and I know where I'm going to have to get them." I returned to my body, and sat up in the slimy ectoplasm. It was twenty centimeters deep and had a faint blue luminescence to it. I called out to the second air elemental I held bound and relayed a series of carefully worded instructions. It retrieved a box of candles from the reagent cabinet and set them around the circle's at the cardinal points. It pulled out a bag of salt harvested from the Dead Sea and laid down a second circle to encompass the candles. A single command to the fire elemental ignited the candles. The second circle came alive with energy, the candles shooting bursts of flame forty centimeters into the air.
I lay upon the cold concrete, submerged beneath the ectoplasmic slime.
"Spirits of fire, light of the east, I beseech you. Light my way as I journey the hidden paths. Cast aside the darkness that I may see." I intoned the words through slime covered lips. "Spirits of the waters, keepers of the secrets of the deep, I beseech you. Reveal unto me that which I seek. Part the deceptions of time, and reveal unto me the truth. Spirits of the earth, foundation of the world, I beseech you. Support my efforts as I travel the darkened paths. Guide my steps and strengthen my resolve. Spirits of air and sky, breath of the world, I beseech you. Watch over my working, blow back the dusts of time, and grant me your foresight." My astral form once again began to slip from my body even as the final words left my mouth. "May your power aid me on my journey."
My astral form swam through the energetic ooze and soared into the blazing star above me. A river of power flowed over me as I approached a dark four-armed figure guarding what appeared to be a castle gate. The Dweller on the Threshold stood ten meters tall if he was a centimeter, glowing swords were brandished in each of his four hands. "Who dares, to approach!"
I swallowed in fear. Apparently, the Dweller on the Threshold was in no mood to frag around.
_______________________________
Thank you for reading my fan fiction! I do not own Shadowrun. This fan fiction is based on game play events and tells the story of one of my favorite characters.
I also design, write and publish role playing game material (not for Shadowrun though).
Recently, I was invited to be a creator on KickStarter's Drip platform. On that platform I am providing behind the scenes information for subscribers, as well as offering monthly PDF publications. I hope you'll check it out here: https://d.rip/w-s-quinton
I also have a book project on KickStarter at this time, written for the 5th edition of Gary's game.
As always your comments and questions are most welcome.
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