Ryk E. Spoor's Blog

Let's see what happens with Xavier now that strange things have started...

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Chapter 2: Rescue and Remembrance

Xavier blinked himself slowly awake. A room he didn't recognize. Carefully fitted stonework, painted in a pattern of sunset colors that made the room feel warmer, comforting. A soft bed under him, one that smelled new-washed. His head was slightly elevated, and looking ahead he could see the wall, also of stone with a polished wooden door – currently closed – in the center.

Just tightening his gut in preparation for sitting up warned him that was a terrible idea. A wash of sharp, ripping pain screamed at him to lie back down! He did so immediately; his training with Shihan had taught him to listen to what his body told him, and there obviously wasn't any emergency right now that justified taking chances.

For a moment he wondered if the last memories he had were some kind of dream or illusion. But if they were, how had he gotten out of that attack alive? No, it had to be real, ridiculous though it seemed.

The door opened silently, and the old man came in. He glanced over at Xavier and nodded. "Awake already, I see. You recover quickly, Xavier." He put down a tray which held a pitcher of water, a cup, and a bowl. "I will help you sit up, and then you can have some broth. Your insides are not yet ready for much else."

As the old man helped him up, Xavier noticed the IV drips in his arms. "This… isn't a hospital, but you've got IVs?"

"Such equipment is not hard to get, if you know how."

"Did you… sew me up?"

"I did." The old man frowned, putting deeper lines in his mohagany-colored face. "Such wounds are very dangerous, and demanded immediate attention. I have also made sure your rib is properly set, reinflated your lung, and attended to your other injuries."

"Are you… a doctor?"

He smiled. "I am. And other things as well." He picked up the bowl. "Now, let's see if you can hold this down."

Xavier didn't like being fed by someone else, but he liked pain less; moving his arms hurt the rest of him, although his arms themselves seemed fine. It was a pretty good broth. "That's … homemade," he said. "Not packaged bouillon."

"Your sense of taste, at least, is not dulled." Another smile. "Your mother cooks well, I take it?"

"She does, Michelle does, I do okay, and when Mike's home he…" He found he couldn't go on; once again, the realization that his big brother was never coming home again had ambushed him in the middle of a thought.

"Mike? A brother? Did something happen to him?" The man's voice seemed to hold genuine concern and interest.

Xavier opened his mouth, closed it, shook his head. "Sorry. It's nothing you need to worry about, sir."

"I apologize. As long as it has nothing to do with why you were in that alley, nearly nine hundred miles from home, you are correct, it is nothing for me to concern myself with."

Xavier winced, then his head snapped up. "How the hell do you know where I live?"

The dark-skinned hand pointed. Xavier saw his backpack lying there against the wall. "You carried more than sufficient identification, including your address."

"Er… yeah. Sorry." He looked away, then back. "Why would it matter?"

"I have saved your life from a rather unusual and perilous situation. Even traveling alone I would have expected a young man of your age and apparent social standing to have taken a rather different route out of Chicago."

He grimaced, swallowing another spoonful of broth the old man offered. "Yeah, I should have. But I'm mostly walking and hitching to save my money. This other old guy said you could get to a good road for walking that way."

His benefactor raised a white eyebrow. "He did? Interesting."

"Interesting enough that if I ever see him again I'll kick him somewhere painful. And you still didn't answer my question."

"Not entirely, no," the man agreed. "Because, in short, I would hate to have saved a life that is to be thrown away immediately afterwards. Where are you going, son?"

Xavier looked at him, then shook his head. "Sir… look, I'm not really ready to talk about it."

The white hair combined with mustache and beard made it harder to read his benefactor's face. The man merely studied him for a long minute while Xavier took a few more spoonfuls. The eyes behind the hair glinted green, a startling color in that dark face. "I suppose you can take your time, Xavier. You won't be moving for a while. I can make sure you recover, but those kind of wounds are slow to heal for even young men like yourself." He smiled suddenly. "Even young men who are in excellent shape. You acquitted yourself quite well in that confrontation."

"Well? I only got two of them, maybe messed up a third. You … Damn, sir, I thought I'd seen people who knew how to fight, but I don’t think even Shihan could have done that."

"Shihan Butler?"

"You know him?"

He smiled again. "He is … quite well-known in the profession, and knowing where you came from, it seemed most likely. I have met him a few times, yes, some years ago. You have great fortune in having him as a teacher."

Xavier nodded, and finished the last few spoonfuls of broth. "He taught me and… and Mike. Mike was way ahead of me there, though, he could've been on the track for champion, which is one reason it makes no sense…"

He stopped.

"Ah." The white head nodded slowly. "No accident, but murder, then."

Xavier suddenly felt confused. What the hell am I doing here? How can I do what I have to do if a few punks … He looked up. "The police aren't going to find his killer," he said, as the old man began to stand, taking the empty bowl away.

The head turned, a white eyebrow raised. The man slowly seated himself again. "Aren't they?"

"I don't think so." He realized he was committed now; if this man wished him harm, he could simply have let the gang finish him. Why not trust him? He had to tell someone. "I remember when I told them how my brother died…"

***

"… and that's all I remember, ma'am." Xavier felt numb, exhausted and every feeling except dull rage gone.

Lieutenant Reisman nodded sympathetically. "I'm sorry to have to put you through that again," she said, "but Morgantown PD is trying to do this so that – hopefully – you don't have to get flown out to L.A. to testify." She looked at him with an analytical gaze. "Are you up to a few more questions – ones you've probably heard before?"

He nodded.

"The voice – are you sure it was a woman?"

He thought about it. "Yeah. Young one, maybe just a girl. I'm sure. I could be wrong, but I'm sure, if you know what I mean."

She smiled. "Yes, I know exactly what you mean, and I wish more people could say things that clearly. You mean that your gut says it was a woman, even if you could imagine a man sounding like that."

"Yes, ma'am, that's it exactly."

"You mentioned your brother was on edge, more nervous lately, and that he said he had 'evidence'. Do you know what he had evidence of?"

He'd been going over that in his head for hours. "No, I'm sorry. All I know is… it can't have been anything ordinary. I mean, drugs or smuggling or something like that, he'd run into all that before, but whatever this was, it was weirding him out somehow. I never heard M…Mike so…" and the tears were trying to start again.

The police lieutenant put her hand on his shoulder. "Sorry, Xavier. Look, that's enough, I think." She shut off her recorder and straightened up. "We'll find the person who did this. I promise."

***

"But they didn't. Weeks went by, and eventually they found some guy, drug-related gang, and said he was the one who did it." The anger and bitter, acid disappointment rose in him again. "They said Mike had a history of investigations into drug-related crime, and okay, yeah, he did, but anyway they said somehow the cartel had figured out he was onto them and killed him."

The old man's eyes flashed green again from beneath his hair, but he said nothing for a moment. Finally, "But you don't believe they got the right man. He denied it?"

"No," Xavier admitted grudgingly, knowing how that sounded. "He confessed. Exactly the story they said it was, and he was going to testify about the rest of the gang. Found hanged in his cell before that happened, of course."

"Hmm. Still, he did confess to that crime. Why do you feel so certain this man is not the guilty party?"

Xavier started to reply angrily, but then it penetrated that his benefactor wasn't arguing; he was asking, quite seriously.

"I… a lot of little things. Partly it's just that I'm sure that was a girl I heard. Not some guy six feet two and two hundred pounds. And what the person said, that just didn't sound like someone doing a killing for a gang would do. Hell," he said with a small smile, "I just found out what a gang might do when they're killing someone."

The old man nodded seriously. "Go on."

"Umm… well, there was Michael's reaction. Before…" he didn't let himself start crying this time, but it was a close thing, "… before he screamed, that is. If some big guy had come towards him, while he was on a payphone trying to avoid a drug gang, he wouldn't have been all casual about it. But he sounded like he was just trying to tell someone that he was busy on the phone – like maybe he thought this girl wanted to use the payphone. He didn't sound like he thought this person was a threat until, well, they pulled out whatever weapon they used on him."

Xavier realized his eyelids were starting to droop. "Jeez, I'm tired. But there's other things… like, um… well, Mike wouldn't just scream like that if someone ordinary cornered him… plus Mr. Wood said…" It dawned on him that he was getting disjointed. "Sorry, I think I'm checking out."

"You should have gone to sleep some time ago," the old man said with another smile. "Strong will must run in your family. We'll finish talking, later."

Xavier tried to protest, but somewhere in the middle of that, sleep ambushed him.

Chapter 3: A Doorway Opened

The room seemed warmer and brighter when he woke up, and the pain in his stomach was of hunger, not the lingering agony of being stabbed. Cautiously, he tried sitting up. Hurts a little… but it's a lot better. In fact, it's a lot lot better than I'd have thought. Wonder how long I slept.

He was tempted to try to get up, but he restrained the impulse with a reminder of discipline. Don't want to undo anything that's been fixed so far.

The door opened and once more the old man came in, as though he knew Xavier had awakened. "How are you feeling?"

"A lot better. Better than I thought I'd feel."

"You slept a very long time, and I've been treating you to maximize your recovery." Xavier did not miss the fact that this didn't actually tell him a thing about how the stranger was treating him. "If you are hungry, I will give you something. It appears you sat up on your own, so perhaps we will even let you walk a bit afterwards – and go to the bathroom on your own."

Thinking back, Xavier could vaguely remember a few times where he was awakened, at least one of them involving a bedpan. He winced. The idea of some stranger helping him go to the bathroom really bothered him. "Yeah, let's do that."

"First, we'll see how well you handle your food."

It was food this time, of a sort anyway – pureed stuff, mostly. But it wasn't just clear liquids, and that bothered Xavier. I was stabbed in the gut. That should take a while to heal enough that anyone would want me putting something even vaguely solid through it.

On the other hand, again, this guy clearly had saved his life and seemed to know what he was doing; Xavier had absolutely no doubt he'd have been dead even if the gang had decided to leave him alone after that wound. So he ate, and felt that vague shakiness of someone who hasn't eaten for a long time fading away. The old man waited patiently until he was done.

"Do you remember what we were talking about before you slept?"

"Why I didn't think that guy killed Michael."

"Clearheaded enough. Do you need to use the bathroom?"

"Not yet."

"Very well. Then let us go on. Were there any other reasons you can recall?"

Xavier tried to remember where they'd left off. "For me I guess the clincher was when they sent Mike's stuff back to us. He used to keep a lot of stuff on his laptop, but he also took notes in paper notebooks. He showed me how he organized his stuff before, and one habit he had was that he took down each major investigation or job in a fresh book, and then copied things into electronic files afterward.

"Well, there wasn't a current notebook. The stuff they found on his body didn't include it. And the notes on his laptop talked about other jobs he had, but nothing about a current investigation on his own."

"Ah. You mean that he had other freelance work?"

"Yeah. Mike was in pretty good demand, so he always had jobs on for someone."

The old man nodded. "And that meant, of course, that there were entries of work being done – no obvious gap of time in which he was not working."

Xavier felt a rush of gratitude at the fact that the old man seemed to be taking him seriously. "Exactly, sir. But I just couldn't believe it all, so I took the machine to this guy who lives near us and runs an information service and I paid him to have it checked out.

"So Mr. Wood comes back and says that in his opinion someone did a lot of erasing. He couldn't recover much but he found enough to tell him that there were a lot more notes on the drive during the last four months than we found." He looked up. "Er, I need to go to the bathroom now."

The old man helped him get up; it hurt a lot, but Xavier didn't feel that sensation of something ripping, or about to rip. The door on the lefthand side of the room opened into a large and elaborate bathroom – what Xavier guessed were literally marble floors, hand-cut stone counters, décor he'd only seen on television. This guy… he's either rich, or he's got a serious bathroom obsession.

A few minutes later he came out under his own power and sat back down on the bed. He decided not to lie down yet, even though his gut ached, and so did his chest now. "I asked Mr. Wood to see what he could find out about Mike's last few months, and he found out a lot of interesting things. Like there were a lot of big gaps in his location – he was mostly around Los Angeles, yeah, but Wood had a hard time tracing exactly where and what he was doing. In his opinion, that meant that either Mike was being real covert, or someone was covering their tracks, or both."

"Getting a professional to do that for you must have cost something."

"Cost a lot, actually, yeah. And at that point Mr. Wood said I needed to go hire a professional investigator, because it was getting too much like a criminal case for him." He took a deep breath, ignoring the pain. "And then I found the pictures. He had one of those really expensive miniature digital cameras, a Lumiere SilentShot 2100, and that wasn't on him when he was found – but I was trying to…" he suddenly found himself unable to speak, and his eyes stung again.

Breathe. The pain helped this time. "I was trying to salvage his coat, you know, it was something I might be able to keep, and when I was trying to work the stains out I felt something hard. It was a memory card for the camera. He'd shoved it into a hidden pocket I hadn't seen and I guess whoever killed him hadn't seen it either. The card was mostly empty… but it had three pictures on it. Pictures of a girl I'd never seen before, still don't know who she is, but I can recognize buildings and things around her – and the timestamps are the from the day he was killed."

"You brought this evidence to the police?"

"Yeah," He grimaced. "Lieutenant Reisman agreed with me that it looked funny, but the LA police felt they'd closed the case and no one wanted to re-open it." He shook his head, and he couldn't keep the fury out of his voice this time. "They were going to let that monster who killed my brother walk, they didn't even care that she was still out there, that she'd laughed right in my ear when she killed him! Didn't care that my mom was like a total wreck and my sis wasn't much better, that I couldn't … couldn't even…" he stopped, tears of rage once more on his face. "So if they weren't going to do anything, I was going to."

"I see." The old man looked at him for a while, then stood, offering his hand. "Let's walk a bit before you lie down again."

Xavier found walking was painful, but he was curious about this guy's home. Through the main doorway there was a wide, carpeted hall, going in a gentle curve in both directions. They walked slowly, coming to another door every so often; sometimes his host would stop and open one of them, letting Xavier get a glimpse. The kitchen was brightly lit, white countertops and stainless steel and efficiency glittering on every sparkling edge, with multiple appliances spaced across the counters. There was a separate dining room, actually smaller than the kitchen; Xavier guessed that this guy didn't have many guests. Another door opened to show a library – a real library, which extended so far that there were actually three separate doors at widely spaced intervals leading to it. Those doors were all on the left; when he saw a door on the right, it was clearly an elevator.

Something was bothering him about the setup, though. The old man seemed to notice, because he smiled. "What have you noticed?"

What is it? he asked himself. Something about the rooms seemed … off, as though there was some essential feature missing. But what feature would you expect to see in all the different—

"Windows. You don't have a single window anywhere here."

"Very good, Xavier. You are observant."

"You still haven't told me your name, either."

"That, also, is true. I have been pondering that for quite some time."

"Pondering? What's there to think about? What should I call you?"

"A name can mean many things," he said. "My question to you is quite simple: when you are well, what do you intend to do?"

"Finish my trip. Hopefully with fewer stabbings this time."

"I see. If I understand you correctly, you have set out – yourself – to find your brother's killer and bring her to justice." The man was looking at him with a quizzical expression on his face, one eyebrow raised in amusement.

The flippant phrasing stung. "Well, no one else will!"

"Perhaps not. Still, allow me to put it this way: you have disappeared from your home to seek this revenge, leaving your mother and sister doubly bereaved, to hunt down a person – or, more likely, persons – whom your brother was still tracking, and about whom there was some secret that made your brother disbelieving, nervous, or even afraid. You are doing this on your own, with no help or backup, and if you are successful, you will be confronting someone who managed to kill your brother – who, you yourself imply, was a more formidable man than you are – with apparently little effort at all. Have I described the situation correctly?"

Xavier found himself simultaneously infuriated at this old bastard's cold-hearted summary and appalled at himself. What the hell have I been thinking? Mom's going to be going crazy! 'Shelle too!

He sagged against the wall, the pain in gut and chest trying to take over. "Yeah. Yeah, you have, and I'm such a moron. I… I guess… I guess I'll have to go back."

The old man nodded slowly. "But can you?"

Xavier thought about going home, admitting what he'd done… staying home. And his gut twisted, this time for nothing having to do with being stabbed. "I guess I could. But… I can't stand the idea that she's going to walk. I can't! I hear that laugh every night! She thought it was funny!"

Another nod. "So you would destroy yourself in the process if you were to return without having at least finished the effort."

Boy, that makes me sound like some obsessive psycho. But – well, yeah, maybe I am. "Maybe I'd be okay. People get over stuff like this, don't they?"

The man sighed, and suddenly he did look old – not just white haired, but ancient as though the whole world weighed down on him. "Some do, Xavier Ross. Others… others can only 'get over' it by finishing the job they begin. I said to you that I did not want my work wasted. Tell me as honestly as you can: if I bring you back to your home, will Xavier Uriel Ross find his way to healing?"

Xavier wanted to say he would. He thought of his mother, and sister, and wanted to be back home with them so much it hurt. But he thought of just going back to school, of letting that past go, and that high, delicate laugh echoed through his head and he felt his teeth grind, his stomach boil, his chest and gut scream as he tensed. "I… I don't know. I don't know, sir, I really really don't."

The old man looked at him for a long moment, then extended his hand, helped Xavier to stand fully upright again. "So it has to be, then. You have asked what you shall call me."

He turned, and his back was once more straight, the white hair cascading down in perfect verticality. "You shall call me Sensei."

"Er… what?"

The man was leading him down the hallway. "You will not be yourself unless you see this through. Yet even you now realize that you have set yourself on a course that cannot help but end in death, the way you are now.

"So the only choice is that you become the weapon you wish to be, Xavier Ross. You must become more deadly than your brother, faster, more capable than he was or ever could have been. You need to pass into secret places without being seen, learn truths hidden even from your police, and in the end you must be able to trace through those truths to the ultimate confrontation that you seek – and survive that confrontation – before you can go home again."

The two were in the elevator, going down, and Xavier felt a chill as he stared at the mysterious old man. He suddenly realized there was something much stranger going on than he had ever imagined. "You… you know who she is, don't you?"

"I do not know. But your story gives me reason to suspect not who she is but what she is, who she serves and why, and how a young woman of such slight stature could so easily overpower and kill a man such as your brother."

The elevator had two sets of doors, Xavier realized – one on the side by which they had entered, another opposite those, like some he'd seen in hospitals. The second set opened as the old man finished speaking.

Xavier stared, open-mouthed. It was clear that the hallway's curve encircled this entire area, a single cylindrical room that was over a hundred feet across and a hundred high. The center was dominated by a slender column that rose three-quarters of the way to the ceiling and ended in a wide, flat platform whose top he could not see. The column was covered by projections of metal and glass and wood.

The rest of the room was filled with equipment – barbells and weightlifting machines, balance bars, vaulting horses, climbing projections on the walls, a complex wooden sparring dummy, sandbags, practice mats, racks of wooden swords, poles, other weapons, some of which Xavier didn't even recognize. There were real weapons, too, glittering with steel edges or unpadded, polished wood, a set of the plum flower or Mui Fa Jong poles, other equipment more exotic than anything he had ever seen. "Holy…"

"I did not find you by accident, Xavier Ross," the old man said quietly. "The one who sent you down that alley knew precisely what he was doing. He intended you to be caught by that gang – not because he intended you to be killed, but because he knew that the confrontation would draw my attention, that I would intervene."

Now Xavier transferred his stare to the old man. "You… you know who that guy was?"

"Know, yes, and I also know he would do no such thing without pressing reason. He saved your life, albeit in a most … roundabout and painful manner. I know this, and I … owe him certain favors.

"So here you will stay, Xavier Uriel Ross, until you are ready to continue your quest… or until you find enough inner peace that you find you can let that quest go."

This is … a storybook moment, Xavier thought, and wondered wildly if he was going to wake up in a minute, with Michael alive so he could laugh at the ridiculous fantasy. But another part of him knew it was real, very real indeed, and that terrified him, because if stories like this came true, the world was something much scarier than he'd ever imagined.

But the old man was waiting, and Xavier knew why. He swallowed, knowing that in a way the decision had been made a long time ago, the moment that someone laughed into a phone with blood on her hands. "Yes, Sensei."

The post The Spirit Warriors: Choosing the Players, Chapters 2 and 3 appeared first on Ryk E. Spoor, Author, Gamer, Geek God.

Earth: August 1999

Chapter 1: Encounter in an Alley

This was a stupid, stupid idea.

Xavier glanced back. Of course, they're behind me too.

The oldest member of the gang was maybe two or three years older than Xavier; the youngest, maybe fourteen, a year younger. But there were at least fifteen or twenty of them, and only one of him.

"So is this where I say I don't want any trouble, and one of you says 'too bad'?" he said. There was a dumpster to one side. If I can at least get over there, the wall and the dumpster cover my sides. Of course, then I'm cornered and I'll have to beat all of them, or enough so they decide it's not worth it.

But I've got to do it. Otherwise that … monster… will have won.

"You're trying to be funny," the obvious leader – a six-foot three, heavily muscled boy with pale skin, tattoos, and brown hair down to his shoulders – said. "If you just dump everything you've got – and it's enough – maybe we'll all laugh, and you won't have trouble."

For a minute he thought about it. They probably won't take my ID, I don't have credit cards. But without the money, how can I get to California? How can I find out what happened?

But the chuckles around the slowly-tightening circle told him that "maybe" was an awfully frail hope for escape. If I get out of this, I'm going back, finding that bastard who told me about this shortcut, and kicking his balls right up into his oversized funny hat. Why the hell did I even listen to a freak like him?

He was in the corner now, hard blue-painted steel on one side, bricks on the other. He unsnapped the strap, let his backpack fall. For a moment the others stopped, probably thinking he'd decided to give them everything they were asking for.

Well, I'll do my best to give them what they're asking for.

He dropped into a simple front stance and waited. A ripple of laughter went around the group. But the simple pose reminded him of that day, of the last hours he remembered being happy…

***

I can't wait to tell Mike! Xavier thought as he leapt easily off the bus and jogged towards his house. The glittering, heavy golden medal bounced off his chest with each step, and he knew he was showing off, knew that the sparkle off the medal in the late-evening summer sun would draw every eye.

"Mom, Michelle, I'm home!"

His older sister turned, then gave a little scream. "Oh my god, Mom, Xavier's got the gold!"

"Oh, my goodness! Hold on, don't move!" His mother, gold-haired like his older brother Michael, appeared, camera in hand. "Let me get a picture." She took even more photos than Xavier felt were entirely necessary – he could smell the roast chicken that was obviously waiting for his attention. Then she stood back and just looked at him for a long moment; he could see a shimmer of not-quite-shed tears in her green eyes. "Your father would be so proud."

As usual, he didn’t quite know what to say to that. Dad disappeared when I was, what, two? Don't even know what happened to him, some people say he ran off with another woman.

But Mom always talks about him as though he were just about perfect. Finally they were heading to the dining room! And she always ends up comparing me to him because I look a lot like him…

He glanced reflexively at the picture – one of only two photos of his father he knew of – on the wall. It did look much like him, sharp angles, a hawklike aspect to the face, and most of all the large, uniquely gray eyes, eyes that seemed to follow you from the picture. Never did like that one much.

But after dinner was the best part of the day. He went upstairs to his room and picked up the phone, dialed the number his brother had given him. Can't wait to tell him…

But this time there was an answering machine, telling anyone trying to contact M. T. Ross to call a different number.

That wasn't terribly unusual – as a freelance photographer and sometimes investigative reporter, Mike sometimes had to move quickly. And he did sound a little tense, something he was looking into sounded kind of bad…

Still, it didn't worry him as he hung up and started dialling the new number. Mike was as good a fighter as Xavier was, and bigger, tougher, and a lot more experienced. He'd been in war zones, walked through countries in revolution, taken pictures of erupting volcanoes from inside the crater, followed police on major drug busts, interviewed gang members, and walked a mile to the nearest hospital after being knifed in the back by someone from a different gang.

The phone on the other end barely rang before it was picked up. "Xavy?"

"Mike! Stop using that name!" It was an almost standard greeting – his childish nickname was annoying, but Mike refused to stop using it.

"Not a chance." Xavier could hear waves in the background. "You and mom and sis okay?"

The question wasn't unusual, but … Mike sounded funny. Too serious. "Sure. I have something to tell you."

"I've got something to tell you too," Mike said, and this time he was sure. Mike sounded dead serious, and tired. "But you first."

He shrugged off the phantom concern. "I got the gold in the tournament!"

For a moment the dark tone was gone. "Way to go, bro! I'll bet Shihan was happy!"

"He looked almost happier than I was, I think," he said, grinning again as he remembered Shihan Butler's ecstatic grin. "The team got four golds, six silvers, and six bronzes overall, but I was in the top rank, black belt, and the Japanese were brutal this year."

"But you still took 'em all down. That's my little brother. Congratulations." He was silent for a moment. "Look, Xavier – I don’t want to worry Mom."

That sounded ominous. "What? You're not going into a war zone again, are you?"

"No," he said, then hesitated. "Maybe… yes, in a way. I don't know."

"Mike, that doesn't make any sense."

"I've been tracking … something. I haven't been giving anyone the details yet because…" Again, a hesitation. "Dammit." The voice was hushed now, whispering, and Xavier felt a chill run down his whole body. Mike, the confident, carefree, invincible Mike, sounded scared. "Xavier, it's crazy, but I think I've found actual evidence."

"Evidence of what? Look, I think I should get Mom –"

"Not yet. I have –" he cut off abruptly, and the quality of the sound showed he'd pulled away from the mouthpiece. Where is he? A pay phone?

But Mike was saying something, but not into the phone. "I'm sorry, I'm in the middle of – GOD, NO!"

And then Mike screamed. There was a banging, a smashing rattling noise as of something being hammered against glass and metal.

"Mike! MIKE!!" he was shouting into the phone, but the screaming went on, a shriek of horror and agony that suddenly just cut off.

Xavier halted his own screams, listening desperately to the hushed, rhythmic waves. And then to the lilting, insane laugh, the laugh of someone who had seen something incredibly funny in the death of another human being. A laugh that died away into the wash of the surf, and then, even as he became vaguely aware of footsteps coming at a run up the stairs,a voice, a delicate, sweet voice. "Oh, so pretty, so pretty, the patterns in the moonlight. But oh, such a waste of blood."

His mother was there, staring at him, but he held to the phone with a deathgrip, and there was the unmistakable sound of a hand grasping the phone, and the girl was whispering, "Michael's quiet now. He says goodbye."

And the phone went dead.

***

"So the kid knows kung fu!" the leader said, and the voice snapped him back to now. The laughter had continued, and now they produced more weapons. Mostly knives, but there were a couple of guns. Forget the guns for now, if they shoot in this mess they're more likely to hit their friends.

Two of them lunged forward then, knives out. Xavier didn't bother to try the fancy trick of kicking the knife out of the hand; he simply moved slightly aside, caught and twisted the arm as it went by, and at the same time kicked sideways and down. He felt his gut tighten, nausea rise as he felt the knee break, cartilage and bone bending sideways with a green-stick crunch and a scream. Sorry, Shihan, I'm using what you taught me to hurt people. He knew self-defense was allowed… but this was still horrid.

No time to think, just do. He continued the spin and twist, brought the other boy's arm farther up, heard the pop as he dislocated the shoulder. I am going to puke after this, if I live through it.

But there were others already coming in. He tried a kick, caught one in the groin, but he was wearing something, a hard cup, kick probably hurt but not enough, the others are coming, block that strike, got to get away, maybe up –

He tried to leap to the top of the dumpster, but the one he'd kicked in the groin caught his leg, slammed him down. Xavier tried to roll but there were two others already on him, kicking, pounding. He felt a rib snap, knew the pain would hit as soon as his body realized what had happened. Then a new pain, a cold-flaming pain sliding through his gut, and he realized with dull horror that he'd been stabbed. They picked him up, threw him down, tumbling half-conscious and in agony across the filthy pavement, and as he twitched, trying to find some way to get control of his body, he saw the leader raise his gun. "Bye-bye, karate kid."

"That's enough."

The voice cut through everything, even Xavier's foggy consciousness.

Standing at the far end of the alley was an old man. He was tall, with white hair that fell so it covered much of his face, and thin within the simple black shirt and pants he wore. He stood in a strange pose, arms parallel across his body, almost as though he had stopped in the midst of folding his arms.

"Enough?" The leader spun, pointing the pistol at the newcomer. "How about enough of th-"

And without so much as a pause, the old man was there, taking the gun from the leader's hand in a single motion. "I said that is enough."

"What the – take this asshole down!"

Xavier could not see – could not grasp – what happened next. It was a blur of motion, grunts of pain, screams, curses. But then two or three people ran past him, fear as plain across their faces as skywriting, and he could see, in his dimming sight, the old man standing above the unconscious – or dead – bodies of all the rest.

The man walked past the sprawled bodies and bent down. "What is your name, son?"

"X…Xavier…" he managed, hearing a faint gurgle. They must have hit a lung as well as my gut. I'm a dead man. And I've failed. "Can't… die…"

"All things can die," the old man said, and his arms slid under Xavier, lifting him so easily that it felt almost like floating. "But not you, not today."

The post The Spirit Warriors: Choosing the Players, Chapter 1 appeared first on Ryk E. Spoor, Author, Gamer, Geek God.

Here's the first of several samples of my newly-published novel Choosing the Players!

THE SPIRIT WARRIORS

Prologue: Witness to the End

Zarathan: 500,000 years ago

"Should I be leaving?" Khoros said, looking somewhat up at his host.

"Oh, pfft," the gigantic Toad said airily. "It's been quieter down in the great City for a week now. Don't know what got into those Sauran's heads, but I'm sure they're all feeling silly about their ideas of rebellion. Rebellion against what? Their parents, the Dragons?" Blackwart made a rude noise. "The real problem with Elbon Nomicon and his brood is that they spoil their children."

Khoros chuckled. "Your … lack of care for the solemnity of the Dragon Gods is noted, and notable." He pushed his black hair – just now growing a bit too long in the front – away from his face, reached over and grabbed up a tankard. "And admittedly welcome, when the other gods are so hard to reach."

The God of the Toads gave his own chuckle, a thunderously deep sound from a cavernous throat. "Oh, I'm hard to reach when I want to be, but you're fun to talk to, Korrie."

"Korrie is also a bit disrespectful. You're speaking to the First Master of the Teralandavhi of Atlantaea itself!" Khoros suspected his smile ruined any attempt to look dignified and serious.

"So sorry, Learned Master Korrie." The long tongue snapped out and snatched a huge grizzyk beetle from the air. "How's the family, by the way?"

"Aerinne's on the diplomatic mission to Thovia – a planet that's just emerged into the galaxy, and being courted by the Ptial, as well. She'll be back soon, I'm sure, but that's why I'll have to be heading home tomorrow; can't leave Earanthin to mind the whole house by himself. He's got swordsmanship to practice for the grand celebration, after all. Beallare's been accepted to train for the Eternal Guard, so she's too busy to help much. Shirene is –"

An invisible shockwave ripped through the still air – silent, intangible, but carrying with it the weight of darkness immeasurable. The sunlight was just as bright, yet seemed somehow dimmed, weaker, and the birds fell silent, the bees muted their hum. For a moment, the world was shocked to silence.

"What…"

Blackwart slowly rose, golden eyes narrowing in disbelief. "Ohhh, that is very bad."

"What is very bad?"

"I see beyond the horizon, far away, in the wasteland of the first great shame, a tower blacker than night," the Toad-God said. "The Black City has come to Zarathan."

"By the King and Queen…" Khoros was stunned. He knew the theory by which even so massive and mystical a city could be brought to superposition with the living world, but to do it? "And the Black Star himself then gazes from his throne upon the world itself?"

Blackwart's eyes narrowed still further; Khoros sensed the godspower at work, seeking truths that would be hidden even from a wizard as powerful as he. "I sensed him – for a moment. But that sense faded. He has left the city, mere instants after bringing it here."

"That makes no sen–"

This shockwave was not immaterial. A great roar and thunder, the passage of something too immense to grasp, black-red, flaming ebon and scarlet, radiating malice and anger and, Khoros thought, an aching sorrow beyond human understanding. But after that monstrous form came another, equally incomprehensible in vastness, this one shining crystal that cast forth fragments of light in all the colors of the rainbow, a shout of courage and hope, touched too with a sadness quiet yet ocean-deep.

The trees of the Forest Sea bowed at the wind of their passing – and Khoros knew, with disbelieving awe and the beginning of true horror, that only the essential magic of both made it possible that anything beneath them was left intact. "That – that was the Dragon-God himself! But the other…?"

Blackwart the Great raised himself to his full height, and the power of the gods rose about him like a cloak; there was no longer any of the playful indolent about the Toad-God, only a grim determination. "An abomination of Kerlamion. He has made one of the Great Dragons into something of the Hells, the Hells of Kerlamion's design. Khoros, I see the design now, with eyes that seek the vision of the Overworld. It was Kerlamion who was behind this from the first, speaking poison to the Saurans, perhaps in the guise of the others, perhaps through agents, and the same to Syrcal, to make of him an answer to Elbon Nomicon himself."

Khoros gripped his own staff, a simple affair of twined white-and-black wood, ornamented here and there with thyrium, gold, and silver. "I will return home, then; surely the Eternal King and Eternal Queen will send aid." He smiled wryly. "Even a demon-drake such as that will find the warships of Atlantaea no easy target."

Instead of a quick assent, his words made Blackwart stiffen. "But he would know that," Blackwart said quietly, a new dread instilled into every word. "He would know that Atlantaea would never stand idle when the Great Dragons and Zarathanton were in peril, allies as they have been for ages, tens of thousands of years."

The horror exploded through Khoros. "And he surely would be here, leading his creation's assault on the Dragon God and his Fifteen, unless –"

"Unless he had another target, another job that only he could do," finished Blackwart. "Go! Go swiftly, but prepared, my friend, for I feel something else, something obscene that looms just beyond my sight!"

Khoros sprinted from the clearing, down a green-shaded path, hearing the consternation of the other Toads of Pondsparkle and their Sauran and human allies as they, too, realized that a war of terrible powers had begun. The gold and violet mantle of his Mastery belled out behind him, and his magic rose, gave him the speed of thunder itself to cross the six miles between him and the World-Gate in as many breaths.

With a shock, he realized something was wrong with the Gate itself; instead of the blue-green shimmer of the ocean and the high platform of the Teralandavhi, the seven-sided arch seethed with fragments of broken scenes and nauseating, twisting light of dead-gray and venomous green. Even as he stared, the gray was spreading, the green flickering, the hints of distant locales dissolving.

"No!" he shouted, and jabbed his staff into the center of the World-Gate.

The way between worlds should have opened as easily as the well-oiled hinges of the door to his own home. Instead, it resisted, a whining, shuddering force unlike anything he had ever encountered. A vague image came to him, all the more terrifying for its indistinctness, an image of some monstrous fate befalling his family, his wife, his five children, and he gave an inarticulate cry, drew on the forces of the world around him, the power of the World of Magic itself, and drove his will against the churning, grinding vortex.

The power ran from him like water from a cracked glass, and had he not the Forest Sea to draw upon he would have been empty and worse in the first second. But even the abominable, impersonal hunger of the warped World-Gate was not – quite – a match for the energies of nature and the will of Konstantin Khoros. For an instant, the whirl and churn stabilized, showed a cloud-shadowed and tumbled landscape, and Khoros leapt through, feeling the Gate break as he did.

A sharp projection caught his foot and he tumbled across broken pourstone and glass, rolled upright to find himself in the wreckage of a huge building. For a long moment he could not imagine where he had arrived, for there was nothing familiar in the crumpled, smoking wreckage, no shape or outline he could call from memory. Even the sky above was alien, seething black clouds lit by eldritch flashes.

But then he saw, leaning at a sharp angle, still stuck in an unbroken portion of roof, a great silver spire with the three flags – for the Eternal Rulers, for Atlantaea, for the Teralandavhi.

Khoros realized he had frozen, staring at the ruins for long moments of disbelief. Not two days before he had left this very spot, in the center of the university of learning, and now…

Aerinne. The children!

He scrambled up the highest slab of wreckage, seeking a vantage point, finding his magic wavering, as nearly uncontrollable as it had been when he was first apprenticed. What is happening? I have to get home! I must go now!

He reached the crest, hauling his seven-foot frame to the broken peak with main strength, staff now slung across his back, and stood, to gain his bearings. But once more he froze, unable to grasp what he saw.

Even fallen, this piece of the Teralandavhi stood more than a hundred and fifty feet above the rubble-strewn streets below; he could see across fifteen miles of the greatest city of the Empire – which meant the greatest city in all the Galaxy.

And all he saw was destruction.

The central Tower still stood – but flashes of gold and blood-red that blasted out from the windows at its peak showed that battle was joined even there, in the very home of the Eternal King and Queen; Khoros could sense that it was the Queen herself that did battle, against some terrible enemy he did not recognize. Screams and shouts echoed from all directions. The streets were littered with the shattered hulks of skyships, hundreds, perhaps thousands of them – and with the broken, twisted bodies of those who had themselves plummeted from the sky when magic no longer served them.

Against the black-swirling clouds rose a vast shape of darker black, a darkness that took in light and gave back nothing, save only the cold blue-white glow of eyes of atomic flame: Kerlamion, the King of All Hells, now in a form that loomed a thousand feet over the burning city. Demons of all sizes, shapes, and features ran, crawled, flew, and oozed through the shattered streets, and Khoros felt the very essence of magic flickering, twisting, warping.

Too late! Oh, Torline and Niaadea, I'm too late! The horror was almost too much to bear. While he had been sitting and chatting cheerfully with the old Toad-God, Kerlamion's forces had sealed the Gates, preventing escape, removing any chance for the alarm to reach Zarathan. He had been wasting time with jests and snacks while his home, his life, had been being wiped away!

With the great Tower's light and the few still-standing buildings, he could see exactly where and how he stood; the Teralandavhi had been so broken he had gotten turned around, but now he could make out the lines of streets and buildings – and there! There, his home, within its little border of green, and it was still standing, not yet afire, walls not yet broken!

Heart pounding painfully, he reached out, caught at the very essence of reality, controlled the bucking, uncertain power, forced it once more into the shape of his will and need, and cast himself across no-distance and not-time to stand now but a hundred yards from home.

A gangling, vicious form of a demon, a thyrialog, barred his way – but the creature's mystical Scintillae were weak and flickering. Whatever happens with magic, even they are not immune!

Fighting another human might have been nearly unthinkable to him, but this was an inhuman monster, one of the worst of demons. Khoros did not slacken his pace, but whipped his staff from his back and swung in a single motion.

The thyrialog sent its Scintilla of Fire to shield it, and warped essence struck the magic bound into the staff; the two exploded, sending Khoros skidding across shattered pavement. But the feedback through its own magic was far worse for the demon, who screamed and collapsed. Rolling to his feet, Khoros sprinted for home, stamping one heavy boot hard onto the thing's head as he did.

The front door was open – broken in. No, no, please, by the King and Queen, no…

Perhaps they had been out. Surely Aerinne was not back yet…

Oh, no, by the Gods. If the skyships had fallen to ruin, if his own magic had become nigh-uncontrollable… what must have happened to the starships?

A small part of him wanted to insist that it wasn't that bad, that surely these terrible, inexplicable effects must be limited to the capital city, surely no farther than a few hundred miles. But a terrible, aching certainty had taken hold of him, an undefinable but growing understanding of what the King of All Hells was trying to do here.

He skidded through the doorway, nearly tripping over a body. It's a demon. A demon, not one of…

In the room just beyond, he found them, and read the way of their passing. Young Loryn, already skilled with the twin-blades at thirteen, had fallen with one of his vya-shadu through the chest of his killer, a squat, piglike demon. Beallare had taken three before they passed inside the range of her killing fire. Shirene had done well for herself too, the last demon's neck broken by her bare hands. Ailda, smaller and the most skilled with magic, had fallen faster, his magic failing him when he needed it most; and Earanthin's great blade was broken, shattered at last after taking its own toll of those that had invaded their home.

He sank to his knees, sobbing, shaking now one and the other, searching for signs of life that had long since departed, as the city burned around him.

The ground itself shuddered and rippled, bringing him to his feet. The battle is not over. He sensed something else, a gathering of magic such as he had never imagined, evil and implacable, an enchantment of such might that even Khoros could not grasp how it was even possible.

It was not the only force at work; Khoros suddenly sensed two others, familiar presences: Idannus, his student and the greatest prodigy of magic Khoros had ever met, scarce older than his fallen Loryn, and Yurimekistos, fellow Master of the Teralandavhi, only ten years younger than himself.

The younger was gathering magic to him in a stupendous swirl, the power only a prodigy such as Idannus could hope to control and that only one so young would dare attempt. The older… was at the door.

Khoros stepped to the hallway, desperate for a friendly, or even merely familiar, living face in this sea of death. Yuri had been moody – moreso of recent – but even the grim teacher of the magics of death and the ways of the Hells would be more welcome than demons.

But Yurimekistos' face was ghastly to behold, so drained of blood that his mahogany skin was tinged with gray. He stumbled drunkenly, eyes wide and staring, and his hands shook. It took a moment for him to see the movement before him, and another to recognize Khoros.

The other Master froze, stepped back; then he swallowed and spoke, his voice a rusty, gasping whisper. "Khoros."

"Yuri! By the Dragon God, Yuri, what has happened here?"

A laugh was torn from the other, an ugly cackle that broke into a sob. "I happened, Khoros. Gods and the King curse me, I happened."

A cold, cold fear touched his heart, spread through his whole being like frost across a glass. "What are you saying, Yuri?"

"They lied," he whispered again, eyes no longer entirely focused. "I just wanted… a change, to not be like this… Even my students, they didn't like death magic, did not want to learn the ways of gates to the nether realms, no one does, except me, but why?"

"Yuri…?"

"It was just supposed to be a demonstration!" he screamed. "Show them how it worked! I was … I wasn't going to actually leave it open, they just…"

Khoros stared at the other, a colleague, once – he had thought – a friend, and now he knew he had not even approached the limits of horror. "You opened the barriers?"

"Just one!"

Anger began to rise, bringing a welcome, searing warmth that burned away horror and loss. "You fool."

"Shut up!" Yuri rounded on him, eyes now blazing, face flushing darker. "You wouldn't know, everyone loved your work! No one turned away from you learning what you did! You never –"

Khoros lunged, caught up the smaller man, smashed him against the doorframe, then dragged him in, throwing him into the charnel room beyond. "Loved? See what you have done to what was loved?"

Yurimekistos' gaze flicked from one still form to the next, eyes growing wider with unbelieving shock; he scrambled backwards with a cry, staring at the bodies, then back to Khoros. "I… I…"

The rage carried Khoros forward. "Traitor and murderer! You have served Kerlamion, and I hope you find yourself well-paid in this!"

"It's not my… I didn't mean –"

Through his teeth, Khoros growled, "You didn't mean for my family to be slaughtered? I am sure. It's not your fault the Teralandavhi lies shattered and burning, the work of fifty thousand years gone in moments? You didn't mean to bring the ships falling from the skies?"

In a paroxysm of fury, he swept aside the other's shaky attempt at a defense and hurled him through the glass doors beyond. "How can it matter what you meant? You have dealt with demons, with the King of All Hells, and you were one of us, Yurimekistos, one of the Masters of the Teralandavhi – the Master who knew the ways of the demons that live beneath the rule of Kerlamion!"

"They tricked me! It's not –"

"Silence!" Disbelief and loss and anger warred within Khoros. He felt broken within, weary and sorrowful and furious at once. "Enough, Yuri. Enough. You knew better. I know not what words were used to snare you, to convince you to make bargains you knew had to be traps. And to be honest – I cannot bring myself to care. You have betrayed Atlantaea. Even if the King and Queen save her, it will be ten thousand years before she recovers."

Wrath rose icy cold within him, and he pointed at Yurimekistos; the other mage shrank back. Despite the abrupt, surging chaos of the powers, he found the magics once more in his grasp, and lightning and fire played across his fists. Power to blast Yuri to ashes, to less than ashes, and his hands, his whole body vibrated with the urge to do so.

But staring at the broken, anguished face of the sole other survivor of the Teralandavhi, he found he could not… quite… do it. He could not kill another human being, not one he had known for so many years, not one helpless and horror-filled before him.

But his fury required a release; his children's bodies demanded justice – a justice that, in the end, might be worse than death, but even as he thought that, his will and power shifted, became a living malediction. "Accursed you are, accursed you shall be, Yurimekistos, traitor, false friend, until the day you are ended, or the day you face yourself and see the bitter truths of all you have been and done. Go, betrayer, self-deciever! Go into the ruins you have made, and pray that your end comes swiftly!"

Yuri staggered to his feet, fighting against the twining threads of magic Khoros had called down in his rage, and ran off, screaming his fury and self-pity.

A different surge of magic, even as the earth shuddered anew, and Khoros saw a brilliant golden spark standing before the ebon outline of Kerlamion. Idannus' light lashed out, and instead of being consumed, it struck the towering King of All Hells. Khoros stared in amazement as the prodigy of the Teralandavhi sent his gold-flaming energy out again, and a third time, ripping across the darkness of a living void and making Kerlamion cry out in fury and pain, making the King of All Hells stagger backwards.

But then the Seventh Tower exploded, and Kerlamion braced himself, focused his power. Idannus' next salvo splashed harmlessly and was consumed in pure black energy, and a stroke of the Demon King's immense blade shattered all but the last of Idannus' shields; a momentary flicker of magical vision showed the boy, black hair streaming in the wind to frame a grim if handsome face atop a lanky frame even taller than Khoros, hand white-knuckled on the crooked staff as his other hand was flung wide, artist's fingers painting walls with sorcery and will.

Khoros ran towards his last apprentice, knowing he was too far, and that even were the two of them together, there was not a chance, not a single chance in all the realms of the gods that they could withstand the power of a living black star.

But Idannus' expression shifted, awareness of doom transmuted to last-minute inspiration. He flung out his arms, and the magic detonated from him, echoing across the entirety of the falling city and beyond. Even as the magic reached him, Khoros could barely grasp what it was that the desperate youth had attempted, even as he found himself cast out, out, away from the Fall of Atlantaea –

He came to, aware of cold and damp. Mist swirled through thick-boled pine trees, the scent filled with a melancholy that echoed his loss. It was quiet, save for the wind and the occasional flutter of bird wings, and, once, the distant howl of a dog or wolf. It came to him, at last, that he was truly alone, and memory of the fallen children returned, with the overflow of tears, and he allowed himself to cry, to let the pain and loss be at least temporarily assuaged by catharsis.

After some time, he forced himself to his feet and looked around. A few lights glinted in the slowly-darkening twilight, hinting at a distant village at the end of the trail he stood on. To his right, as he faced the village, the trail continued towards what might be a castle half-hidden in the mist. To the left, there were hints of a small game-trail but no other signs of habitation.

He flicked his hand, called forth a sphere of light. It was easy, with little sign of any oddity. I am back on Zarathan, then, or one of its associated realms.

Khoros considered, for a moment, taking himself back to Atlantaea, but he shook his head. He could finally recognize what Kerlamion had been attempting, and with the uncounted deaths as the city fell, the King of All Hells must have succeeded. Earth was cut off from magic, and there would be no help from the stars, for with magic cut off all of the devices of Atlantaea would fail. A million worlds and more had fallen in a single day.

But WHY?

That question loomed immense, demanding his attention, even here in a chill, unknown forest. Atlantaea had stood, shining and strong, for a hundred thousand years. The Saurans and their Dragon forebears, too, had laid the first stones of Zarathanton in the same age as that of Atlantaea's birth. The two civilizations had worked together for, now, over fifty thousand years.

In all that time, Kerlamion had paid them scant attention; the politics of the Hells were enough to occupy him and his, as he wrestled first to claim and then to keep the throne from his brother, Erherveria, or others who aspired to rulership.

Something had changed. Something – or, perhaps, someone – had convinced Kerlamion to destroy Atlantaea, as… what? Not targets for wealth and power, Kerlamion would hardly care about that. And surely Kerlamion knew the power of the Eternal King was nothing to be ignored.

No, the only thing that made sense was that Kerlamion had become convinced that both civilizations were a threat to him. And while, perhaps, that would have ultimately been true, ultimately lay far off in the future, even from the point of view of the King of All Hells or a Dragon God.

Khoros nodded, fitting pieces together with cold rationality, picking up hints and clues that had been heard over the past dozen years. Some being or force had arranged for Kerlamion to become suspicious or fearful of Atlantaea and the Saurans, had perhaps even specifically manipulated the way in which events had unfolded.

His anger welled up again, and he saw once more the faces of his dead children, the burning of his city, the crumbled ruins of the Teralandavhi, and he welcomed that anger. But instead of burning to rage, he cooled the anger, made it into determination, poured that into his heart, filling it with nothing but purpose.

Someone had set in motion the events that destroyed everything he had loved. Kerlamion had sealed away magic from the sister world. And Khoros… Khoros was still alive, somewhere distant, yet with his magics still at his command.

Someone was going to pay. Khoros knew this would not be easy. At the moment, he had not the faintest idea who Someone was. It would have to be a being of surpassing power, subtlety, and guile, someone who could either pass unnoticed even while influencing others, or who could disguise themselves as appropriate advisors – or both. The power and skill needed to successfully do this so as to leave Kerlamion – in his own realm – not an inkling that he was being manipulated? Staggering.

Khoros, however, thought he had one advantage: he knew there was a Someone. He could not, of course, prove it – it was more than half-guesswork and instinct – but just the knowledge itself would give him the ability to view every event from that vantage point.

Finding that Someone would be a monumental task; Khoros would have to winnow through all the possible candidates, from demons to gods to mages and monsters, and – without tipping his hand – determine which of all of them had to be Someone. And even once located… well, any of the candidates would be formidable beyond easy imagining.

But there was also another task to be done, another enemy to deal with, and this one he knew: Kerlamion.

The King of All Hells might have been manipulated into destroying Atlantaea and the Saurans, but Khoros suspected the precise method of annihilation had been completely Kerlamion's vision and choice. And, Khoros admitted, it was absolutely brilliant. No one would have believed it possible, but anyone who knew it was possible to seal magic away from Earth would have realized that it would, at a single stroke, destroy Atlantaea. There would be no need for a war that spanned a million worlds and warships uncounted; just a single, vicious strike at the heart.

Yes, the Great Seal that Kerlamion had put in place had to be removed. And given the brilliance and elegance with which the King of All Hells had removed both Atlantaea and the Sauran Realms, the undoing of his achievements demanded a certain elegance of its own, a particular symmetry.

It, too, would take time. Thousands of years of time. Perhaps more. But one particular symmetry Khoros was determined to enforce, a personal one, a strike of which, he knew, his beloved Aerinne would have fiercely approved.

Kerlamion had taken away their five children.

Five children, then, would take away all he had achieved.

The post The Spirit Warriors 1: Choosing the Players, Prologue appeared first on Ryk E. Spoor, Author, Gamer, Geek God.

A Kickstarter for The Apocalypse Maidens, the sequel to my mahou shoujo senshi novel Princess Holy Aura, is now underway. As of this writing there are 26 days left in the Kickstarter and we've a long way to go. I know this isn't a good time of year for Kickstarters, but I'd really like to get this underway, having just finished up all the deliveries for my prior Kickstarter for Shadows of Hyperion.

Please back the Kickstarter if you can, and/or spread the word to anywhere on social media you think people might see it! The link is:

The post Kickstarter for The Apocalypse Maidens is LIVE! appeared first on Ryk E. Spoor, Author, Gamer, Geek God.

An encounter with a villain...

-----

Chapter 9.

Oasis' gut seethed with nausea and acid fire, staring at the urbanely smiling face. Though different in detail, the smile, the cadence of that voice was all too familiar, and brought back echoes of the nightmare on Hyperion Station.

Through the other part of herself, the not-quite-separate yet not-quite-merged Kimberley, aka "K", she got fury and fear that intensified her reaction. I'm actually trembling, so furious and terrified that my body's shaking!

The fury was seeing an enemy – that enemy, one of the worst of all Hyperion – wearing the body and face of one of the best of Hyperion. "You murdered Jonny!"

Without conscious volition, she found herself taking a step forward, hands curling into lethal shapes; Wu was easing into a combat pose.

Fairchild raised a finger in a cautionary gesture. "Oh, now, that would not be a good idea. The Arena does not approve of violence, after all."

"I have beaten four of its Adjudicators," Wu snarled. "I can kill you before that many get here!"

"But then you will be murdering Jonny, not me."

The burning fire in her gut turned to ice.

He obviously saw the shift in her expression; that urbane smile broadened just a hair. "Oh, yes, indeed, Oasis-Kimberley, Wu Kung; I have not erased Jonny. He's just not… running the show at the moment. But that does provide me with a bit of insurance against overly-violent simian demigods, yes?"

"You get out of his body!" Wu clenched his fists. "Or I will make you do it!"

Oh, no! She stepped in front of Wu, hoping he would understand why, would remember that they absolutely must not show off their special Hyperion powers to anyone –and a thousand times less to Fairchild. "You wanted us to see you."

"Well, not you specifically, although it's always a pleasure to meet with such a fine young woman," Fairchild replied. "But it was important to have someone from our old group find me and have a little talk, so we knew where we stood."

Her brain was finally catching up with her anger, and it was screaming warnings at her. What the hell is he up to? This makes no sense. He could have kept this secret for a lot longer. What's his game?

She repressed another shudder. It should have been DuQuesne who met him. Or Ariane, maybe. Fairchild's a worse monster than any of the people I ever fought.

It occurred to her that they didn't have to face this on their own. But as she opened her mouth, that finger rose and wagged again. "Now, now, let's not bring anyone else into our little tête-à-tête, eh?"

Oasis swallowed her anger. "Then what do you want, Fairchild? It's hardly a coincidence you show up the very first day we start seriously looking for you."

"First day for you, dear Oasis. Third day I have been subtly, yet sufficiently obviously, walking the Arcade. Fishing, one might say, for just the right sort of tug on my line – people who would appreciate what I have here," he gestured to himself, "and truly value it – and the other, shall we say, merchandise I have to offer."

Telzey. Giles. D'Arbignal. It was deadly clear what he meant; since Fairchild was wearing the body of a Hyperion they'd thought burned to a cinder, they could reasonably assume Fairchild had the other three somewhere. Almost certainly in suspension; only an idiot would leave any of those three conscious enough to think about escaping, and Fairchild's no idiot.

Wu Kung's rumbling growl reached her ears, but this was merely anger in his throat; she didn't sense any indication that he was going to break the masquerade. "Do you have my world as well?" the Monkey King forced out between clenched fangs.

The smile broadened. "All things are possible, Sun Wu Kung. One must admit, it is so much more convenient to have a portable set of hostages as well as the more, shall we say, organic sort."

Wu spat something in his synthetic language that made Fairchild laugh. "Inventive in invective as always, Monkey."

"What. Do. You. Want?" Oasis ground out.

"Oh, you mean, in exchange for some of my merchandise?" Fairchild smiled broadly. "Amnesty and freedom, of course. I have various interests in our home system that were already becoming rather hedged in by various law-enforcement activities, and now that my existence is known I am sure there is a rather comprehensive set of charges prepared for me – possibly rivaling that of poor Maria-Susanna."

Charges? Charges! She fought to conceal a smile. I think Fairchild's outfoxed himself this time! "Yes, you're a very wanted man by now." She glanced at Wu.

Wu Kung suddenly grabbed Fairchild's arms, as Oasis said loudly, "By the authority vested in me by Captain Ariane Austin, Leader of the Faction of Humanity, I hereby arrest you, Alexander Fairchild, for multiple crimes against individuals and institutions of the Solar System, including but not limited to suborning the personal AISage of General Esterhauer, releasing lethal software constructs, accessing multiple sealed data repositories, and more. The full list of charges will be provided for you."

Fairchild's eyebrows had risen during her recitation; but instead of looking angry, frustrated, or worried, he simply smiled again. "Under what authority are you laying hands on me, Sun Wu Kung?"

"You are a member of the Faction of Humanity," Wu said. "That gives us the authority. Right, Oasis?"

"Exactly. Enforcement within a Faction is outside of the Arena's authority."

"Ah. So it is. But I believe you will find your jurisdiction is not so clear."

"Indeed," said a deep, buzzing voice.

For the second time that day, Oasis found herself dumbfounded with anger and horror. Emerging from the nearby crowd was a huge Molothos, shell red with a sprinkling of black. "Doctor Fairchild is currently under the protection of the Molothos, Oasis Abrams," said the huge alien. "You will have your… friend release him, or I will have to consider you to have violated the peace," he spat the word, "that Leader Dajzail so generously permitted to exist between us."

For a moment Oasis stood frozen, staring between the clawed alien and Fairchild’s sardonic smile. Then she forced herself to speak. "Let him go, Wu."

"This is… grrr!" Wu Kung released Fairchild with a visible effort.

"So much better," Fairchild said. "I will be open for contact every day for an hour at the day's peak; if anyone wants to negotiate for my … stock, please call me then." He brushed at his suit, straightening out the creases Wu's hands had caused. "But don't wait too long; I have other potential customers."

He turned to his alien companion. "My business here is concluded; you need tolerate no more of my 'perambulations' about the Arcade." With a courteous nod, he walked off; the Molothos followed after a glare at both Oasis and Wu.

"We just let him go?" Wu demanded.

"We have to! You think I like this?"

"I could follow them!"

Oasis and her second self considered that for a split second, then they both shook their collective head. "No, bad idea. You almost blew everything back there, didn't you?"

Wu hung his head. "Almost."

"And there's no way to know if Fairchild's trying to bait you. He might plan on you crossing a line. We've got to get back to the Embassy and let everyone know."

Wu Kung sighed. "You're right."

I wish I wasn't, Oasis thought. I wish I'd been wrong about finding Fairchild.

No you don't, came Kimberly's thoughts on the heels of her own. Now we know that Jonny, Giles, D'Arbignal, and Telzey – and maybe Wu's whole world – aren't lost. And no matter how this plays out, that is good news.

Oasis wished she could agree. But she couldn't shake the feeling that somehow, Fairchild had gained far more from their meeting than either of them knew.

The post Shadows of Hyperion: Chapter 9 appeared first on Ryk E. Spoor, Author, Gamer, Geek God.

Oasis and Wu get an assignment!

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Chapter 8.

"Oh, that's just perfect," Ariane said, and Wu Kung thought he could see the sarcasm dripping from the last word. "Maria-Susanna's a Shadeweaver, or on her way to being one, Byto might have been killed over Hyperion, and Fairchild's disappeared in a way that indicates he's already got allies."

"Yeah, it's just a cornucopia of great news," DuQuesne said, grinning blackly. "What about on your end, Captain? Got anything to take the edge off?"

She shot a glance at Wu. "I'm afraid not. Well, some good news; we're making progress in populating and fortifying our Spheres Tellus and Gaia. Pretty soon we'll be at the point where we can start checking where their Sky Gates go, which will give us a lot more options for travel." She grimaced. "As long as it doesn't turn out they all go to the Molothos or something, anyway."

"But?..." Simon prompted.

"But we haven't got a sniff of our other enemy in the Solar System. Mentor isn't even much help; he says that while he can deduce some general characteristics of the adversary, it fits a broad array of Hyperion villains, and there's not enough information to narrow it down yet."

"And by the time we do narrow it down, it'll have cost us something," Oasis muttered.

DuQuesne shook his head and looked around. Laila Canning and Carl Edlund were also there, but hadn't spoken yet; at the big Hyperion's glance, though, Laila sighed and sat forward.

"I can confirm that there has been one new Initiate Guide ascended very recently, who I believe has been assigned as Advocate to the Genasi," she said, in her usual precise tones, "and there are at least two other such rituals being discussed for the near future. So, I believe we can consider our theory confirmed."

"So it's possible that Maria-Susanna could be a Shadeweaver at almost any time," Ariane said. Her scent was more resigned than angry or worried.

"Afraid so, Cap," Carl said. "Not much we can do about it, though."

"No. We have to focus on what we can do. Marc, I presume you don't have any firm leads yet on Byto?"

"Not yet. Some vague indications – a couple of people who saw someone who doesn't fit the description of any of the people yet questioned – but there's at least three different descriptions, so we don't know if we're missing one person or three or more."

She nodded. "All right. Well, for most of us, it's going to be business as usual. Any of these things could be a major problem, but at the moment we don't have an emergency as far as I can see.

"So. Marc, you keep up your investigation. Simon, Laila, Carl…" She gave a wry smile. "I'm afraid you're going to spend the next week with me playing catch-up on all the routine stuff. A lot of it piled up while we were out in the Deeps and I've got to go out and be The Leader of the Faction of Humanity for a lot of people, as soon as I've caught up on everything here."

She turned to Wu. "Which means, Wu, that I'm going to be stuck here in the Embassy for at least a few days. So, I am putting you and Oasis on another assignment: find Fairchild."

Sun Wu Kung felt a thrill of excitement go through him. Dr. Fairchild would be a formidable adversary, and finding out what DuQuesne's old nemesis was up to? That would be invaluable. And as long as the Captain stayed here, she should be safe. "Yes, Captain!"

Oasis did not smell quite so eager, but the grimness of her scent was overlaid with real pleasure. "I was hoping you'd say that. That jerk's got to be found."

And the original Oasis has a real account to settle with Fairchild, Wu remembered. The Hyperion AI villain had tried to literally download himself into Oasis Abrams, and only K's arrival had saved her; even then, Oasis had been too badly hurt to survive on her own, so K had done the only thing she could; accepted a full download of Oasis into her own Hyperion body. The two of them were now, very nearly, one – and both of them had a personal grudge against Dr. Alexander Fairchild.

"Then let's go!" Wu said, leaping up. "There is so much to search!"

He heard muffled chuckles around the room, which made him smile too. If I am not needed for the fighting, I am needed to help people laugh. Laughter is a weapon on its own.

Smiling, Oasis joined him. "Do you even have any idea where we are going? Even if he's on Nexus Arena, that's still huge – and there's plenty of places we can't go."

He skipped out the door into the false but convincing sunshine of Nexus Arena's streets. "Not the faintest!" he said, and did a tumble around her as she walked. "But I don't believe there's no one who has seen him or heard him, and I don't believe Fairchild would just hide away in a room, either. Do you?"

Oasis pursed her lips, then shook her head. "You know, no, I don't. He liked being seen. He liked being out-and-about, as DuQuesne put it. When he wasn't in his lab, he went to fine restaurants, saw plays, attended scientific conferences, traveled the world. He wouldn't just disappear indoors for very long."

"Good! We agree! So that means…?" he raised a brow at her, grinning with his slightly-sharper teeth.

She paused, then returned the smile. "The Grand Arcade."

"The Grand Arcade!" he agreed. "We can search and enjoy ourselves there!"

"Focus, Wu! We're not going to just hunt for him around your favorite food stalls."

"Not just there, no," he agreed. "But he needs to eat. Not the stalls, but the restaurants."

She snapped her fingers. "Mairakag Achan!"

"Yes!"

Oasis quickened her steps. "That's good thinking, Wu. He doesn't just run the best restaurant in Nexus Arena, he's taught the top chefs of most of the other good ones. If Fairchild hasn't changed his habits, he's got to have shown up in one of those."

"Even if he is hiding away," Wu went on with the thought, "he'll be getting food from somewhere – and probably from those restaurants that have good human-compatible food."

"His clothes, too," Oasis said, tossing back her four red ponytails as she hailed one of the automated floating transports. "He has that whole 'white suit' thing going, and according to DuQuesne he pretty much never changed it, even when he was out in space working with aliens. He's almost certainly sticking with that now – I caught sight of him twice before and it sure looked like the same outfit."

"Hm. Yes, so he had to either bring many suits with him, or he had someone here make them. And there are not many humans having their clothes made here yet. He would have to have them properly washed, too, yes?"

Oasis took one of the front seats on the floating transport; Wu Kung continued standing. "I… guess so, yes. Medical nanos keep working in the Arena but not cleaning and repair ones, so his clothes have to be maintained the old-fashioned way. Though if he's in someone's Embassy, I'm sure they could do that inside the Embassy."

"So, what else? There must be other possible places to look!" Wu Kung was definitely excited now. They had leads, and ones that he could follow, not ones that would require tiresome computer searches or laboratory analyses or any of the other things that the Monkey King did not do. This involved running and smelling and asking questions and maybe following people, maybe even getting in a fight if he asked the right questions!

Oasis twirled one ponytail absently. "Well, if he's not in an Embassy, he has to be staying in one of the various hotels, rent-a-rooms, places like that. He'd have to have gotten himself money from somewhere, so he traded something – probably unique human artifacts."

"Or information. Would he trade information about us?"

The deceptively young face frowned in thought. "He… might. But he'd be really, really careful about it, because he wouldn't want to reveal anything that might be useful to him later. Certainly isn't going to tell anyone about Hyperion unless he can really make a profit from it, and the profit would have to be huge."

"Good! So, we can also check the merchants interested in that kind of thing!"

She shook her head with a smile. "And all of this could take us months!"

"I was imprisoned for five hundred years inside a rock, I can take months!" I do not want to take months, but I could. It would be very boring, though.

Oasis laughed. "I used to have a hard time waiting for summer vacation, so maybe I'm not so patient."

The Grand Arcade was the central business area of Nexus Arena, and covered a huge, generally circular region between the arc of the regular Embassies and the plaza of the Five Great Factions. A cross between an open-air market, several shopping malls, casinos, theme parks, and major commercial warehousing and shipping operations, the Grand Arcade was a place you could find almost anyone or anything. It murmured and sparkled and glowed and moved, carrying sound and vibration and brilliance and scents evocative and mouthwatering and vile all at once.

While Wu's long-term preference was wilderness, there were times he enjoyed the incredible bustle of a city, and the Grand Arcade distilled that into an intense whirl of confusing sights, smells, songs, and shouts. Wu laughed, and the two of them plunged into the crowds thronging the Arcade.

Some hours later, he had to admit that even being in a place where you could find anything didn't guarantee you would find the particular thing you were looking for. Mairakag Achan had seen a white-suited man, but the last time he had visited had been quite some time ago. The other obvious restaurant choices also had not offered much in the way of success.

"No luck here, either," Oasis said, as they left one of the rooming establishments. "Proprietor thinks he saw someone like that, but it was weeks ago."

Wu Kung shrugged, optimism undaunted. "But we've barely started! We'll find something – I know it!"

Oasis grinned back. "You know… I think you're right. He's been somewhere around here, and someone's definitely going to know something!"

They cut through one of the enclosed semi-malls, stopping to ask a few questions at each location that seemed likely to interest Fairchild. Then a stop at three food stalls, which allowed Wu to fill himself up, at least for the moment.

"I really like that alavime dish," he said, bouncing along cheerfully. "All the vegetables are new, but very tasty!"

"It wasn't bad, but I prefer the –" Oasis broke off, staring to one side.

Wu Kung caught a flash of white on an upright figure, just disappearing through a doorway. "Is that –"

"I think so!"

They threaded their way through the crowd as fast as they could, but by the time they reached the location, there was no sign of the white figure.

"Wu? Can't you… sense him?"

"Still don't want to try much with my powers. But…"

He sniffed, slowly, deeply. Not that, that's a Chiroflekir. Not that one either – Dujuin. Sort out my scent and Oasis', too.

Wait… there is another human smell here!

The smell was vaguely familiar, but mixed in with so many others he couldn't be certain of what he thought he recognized. But there was a trail, and he could follow it!

He started striding forward, testing the air every few steps, then running, jumping over people too slow to move when he needed them to. Whoops, ran past it – that exit, there!

He burst back out into sunshine, Oasis trailing him by a short distance, and looked around, sniffing again. Ugh, one of those smokesticks! But yes, he passed here, went, went…

Just at the edge of the crowd, another flash of white in the sunshine, passing under an awning into shadow.

Oh, no, you're not getting away!

Wu leapt into the air and bounced from support pillar to nearby awning to roof, sprinting over anything and everything that could support him in the dash towards the elusive white something. Behind, he heard a curse, a laugh, and then echoes of his own progress as Oasis followed. There were gasps and an occasional angry shout, but he paid no attention.

The distant figure disappeared into another doorway, a small building that Wu knew had two other exits. "I'll take the far one, you go around the other side!" he shouted to Oasis.

He caught a guy wire for a big tent, spun around it and catapulted himself high and wide, hurtling through the air above startled Arena citizens, came down atop a floating taxi, momentarily surprising its passengers, and then dove to catch a nearby banner and fling himself onward.

He hit the ground, rolled to his feet, and dashed into the entrance he remembered, eyes searching the interior of the small group of shops.

And there it was, the white hat, just going out the other exit!

He sprinted after it, hoping Oasis had gotten there ahead of their quarry.

He zipped past two stolid Dujuin who glared at him with futile annoyance, and slammed his way out of the door, just in time to see Oasis dropping down from another awning, directly in front of the figure.

From this distance, Sun Wu Kung saw that it was indeed a human being, wearing an immaculate white suit, complete with a white hat with a black hatband. At Oasis' appearance, the man spun around – and then froze as he saw Wu standing not four meters away.

The man took off the hat and nodded, smiling a familiar, friendly and open smile that stunned Wu into momentary immobility. "Hey there, Wu!"

Oasis had reached them and she, too, froze, astounded. "J… Jonny?" she breathed after a moment. "But… but you… you're supposed to be dead!"

Then Wu caught an undertone of scent – not the happiness of a reunion, but a cruel pleasure, the smell of a cat toying with its prey. "You. You're not Jonny at all!"

The friendly smile transmuted with horrifying ease into a cold and mocking grin. "Oh, well, I did rather fear you could sniff your way to the truth, Sun Wu Kung," said the mouth of his old friend, with an accent and cadence chillingly familiar, yet alien to that mouth.

"Oh my God," Oasis whispered. "You soul-violating son of a bitch!"

"Tsk, tsk, such language, my dear Kimberly. I can't imagine you'd have used that in front of your mother."

Wu Kung heard himself growling deep in his throat. "Fairchild," he snarled.

The blond-haired man bowed. "Doctor Alexander Fairchild… at your service."

The post Shadows of Hyperion: Chapter 8 appeared first on Ryk E. Spoor, Author, Gamer, Geek God.

Simon gets a date, gets some news, and gets an idea!

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Chapter 7.

The door chime finally drew his attention; Simon said "Come in," absently, while still focused on the tri-display in front of him.

"Since you were taking a break today," Oasis' voice came from behind him, "I thought we might –"

Feeling his face flaming scarlet, Simon hit the off control on the little console.

But by the raised eyebrow and widening grin on Oasis' face, he knew he'd been a split-second too late. "Simon, were you… you were! You were watching Davia the Dynamo!"

He closed his eyes in embarrassment. "I'm afraid I was. I'm sorry, it's probably terribly insulting to any Hyperion to…"

"Oh, piffle, Simon." She stepped forward and gave him a firm kiss, which did go a long way towards convincing him not to devise a way to shrink into invisibility. "Sure, some of us didn't want to think about it, but a lot of us got used to the idea that we had a sort of public image. Davia might not want to see the show, any more than I want to see people watching my origin source show from the twentieth century, but it's nothing we'll get mad about. Hell, after I met him, I ended up reading all the old Sherlock Holmes stories."

Her face fell, and he didn't need to ask; Holmes was clearly one of the ones who hadn't made it out. "Well… I'm glad you don't think less of me."

"I thought your secret crush had been your AI-copy of Dr. Kanzaki," she said, putting down a bag she had in one hand. At his twitch, she grinned broadly. "Oh, yes, Ariane told me about that one."

"My childhood follies will continue to haunt me, I suppose. Dr. Kanzaki was a bit farther along. Davia was my old-fashioned crush when I was, oh, thirteen or so. I played through it four… no, five times, and of course I collected several of the bestplay series – had a part in one of them, in fact."

"That must have been exciting; having a version of the series include part of your own playthrough."

"It was. In fact, it was that version I had with me, though my part was small and doesn't show up until Season Four." He glanced down to the bag. "What's that?"

"Oh! As I was saying before I realized I had an opportunity to make you cringe, I thought we could spend today together before another emergency hits."

Simon saw that in the bag were warmsealed meal packages, a bottle of wine, and various desserts, and looked up. "Oasis… have I told you I love you?"

"Not in the last eight hours," she answered, and kissed him again. "I love you too, Simon."

"Even with my little secret shames?" he said.

"Oh, we all have those. I'm never telling mine, of course, but DuQuesne, oh, I could tell you a few things."

"Really?" he smiled back. "Well, let me get this old thing out of the way," he said, reaching for the tri-display console.

"Don't," she said with a smile. "You were obviously settled in to dive into the nostalgia; I'll take the dive with you. Honestly, I did see some of the bestplay of one season of Davia, so I'm not totally at sea. Where are you in the plot?"

"Are you sure?"

"Simon, I came here to just relax, cuddle, and hang out with you. If that involves watching an old cheesy show, that's just fine. I'll make you watch some old Sherlock Holmes vids with me later. Deal?"

I really did want to see this… and she makes it all right, just being here. "Deal."

As he set the player back down and prepared to restart, she asked, "So, like I said, where were we?"

"Davia had just been captured by The Void."

"Oh, that's early on. If it's the first Void line, yes?"

"Yes, it is."

They settled back to watch, Simon now aware of the companionable warmth of Oasis next to him, one of her long red ponytails trailing down his shoulder and across his chest.

"Hey, wait, Davia can control electricity and it makes her superhuman in like every way, right? So why can't she break out of that?" Oasis asked.

"Oh, normally she is, but like a real dynamo she needs to have something start her turning, so to speak. All of the Force Four have that kind of weakness; Sakura the Sun needs to somehow get exposed to light equal to that of the Sun, Jyrie the Jet needs wind, and Titania the Torrent needs water. Once they each get enough, it ignites their Heartflame," he pointed to the many-pointed jewel in the center of Davia's chest, "and they can access their full powers."

"Oh, right, now I remember. It'll keep burning unless they go unconscious, but once that happens, it's out."

Simon nodded. "Ordinary sleep won't do it, but the Void made sure she was completely unconscious. Without that ignited, the most she can do is a few little sparks. And it takes a lot of power to start." He gave her a hug with the arm he had over her shoulders. "Thank you for this. I felt so silly."

She kissed his cheek. "Well, I wouldn't ask Davia herself to watch, but I'm fine with it. So where will she –"

A green comm-ball popped into existence, making Simon jump half off the couch. "Doctor Sandrisson," came the neutral voice of the Arena's message system, "as you are the ranking member present, this request comes to you." Another voice spoke. "Captain Austin, I, Amas-Garao, request an audience."

"Who?" Simon repeated, although he was quite sure he had heard correctly.

"Amas-Garao," the green sphere repeated, this time in the unmistakable deep, somehow sinister voice of the eldest Shadeweaver.

Well, that is a new one. The Shadeweavers, and Amas-Garao in particular, didn't come by and courteously knock on your door, asking to visit; they just popped up out of nowhere, like any proper wizard of uncertain motives and temperament.

Simon couldn't help but feel that this event could not bode well, and from the look in Oasis' eyes, she agreed. "If you wish to speak to the Captain, I'm afraid she's not here." Which was not only true, but emphatically so – she had gone to have a private, no-way-to-intercept conference with Saul, Davia, and Mentor, and Tunuvun if he was still there. More, DuQuesne wasn't in either, as he was trying to run down the leads on the various possible witnesses to Byto's murder.

"If she is absent, you or Doctor DuQuesne will be acceptable," Amas-Garao replied. "May I enter, Doctor Sandrisson?"

He only hesitated a moment. "Certainly. I will meet you in the entrance hall."

Oasis fell in next to him as he rose from the couch. "Mind if I tag along?"

"I absolutely urge you to do so. Speaking with a Shadeweaver like Amas-Garao is not a job for one person."

It was true that in the long term, Amas-Garao had not seemed so much malevolent as simply playing a deeper game than everyone else – but if you didn't know the game or your position in it, well, that could end up being the same thing as being a victim of the game.

When they entered the hall, Amas-Garao was standing, studying one of the statues that Steve Franceschetti had installed a while ago – Aryabhatta, the ancient Indian mathematician and astronomer. As always, the Shadeweaver's appearance echoed his voice; clad in dark robes, shadowed and sinister, despite being notably smaller than either Ariane or Simon; Oasis could look the inhuman Shadeweaver in the eyes, if she could see them through the gloom projected within the Shadeweaver's hood.

"Ahh, Doctor Sandrisson. A pleasure to see you." The Shadeweaver gave a creditable bow. "And this is Oasis Abrams, I believe?"

"Indeed. Oasis, this is Amas-Garao, one of the foremost of the Shadeweavers. Amas-Garao, Oasis Abrams, agent-at-large for Captain Ariane Austin."

"A… broad and appropriately obscure title, Agent Abrams," Amas-Garao said, with sardonic amusement. "Interesting." He turned his head, the cowl surveying the room. "As is this entryway. There is much insight to your history here, more than I would have expected."

"There are some things we don't mind people knowing," Simon answered. "And I suspect that without the proper context, even you will not draw all the correct conclusions from the data available."

"Undoubtedly true. Perhaps your designer is more clever than I thought; whet the curiosity, but make it seem more is revealed than truly can be seen."

"But you didn't come here just to look at the statuary and decorations, Amas-Garao."

"No. No, indeed. I came because I must fulfill a promise I made to the Captain, quite some time ago."

Oh, dear. "Yes?"

"Yes." The word was drawn out, a statement of drama or reluctance. "I am here to inform you that the one calling herself Maria-Susanna has become apprenticed to the Shadeweavers."

"Good God." He also heard Oasis muffle a curse. "Just now?"

"As of a few hours ago, yes. We are determining her exact place and course of instruction, but I had given my word that you would be notified if this came to pass."

"You're aware that she's one of the most wanted criminals in the Solar System?" Oasis asked, her voice controlled but tense.

"We are aware of that, yes. The acceptance of a new member always comes with risks, Oasis Abrams; the Shadeweavers believe, of course, that we are able to better deal with such risk than others. If she is dangerous and capable… we can work with that."

Simon knew, just from the set of Oasis' jaw and the narrowing of her eyes, that she was thinking that the Shadeweavers might be the ones being worked on. And having spoken with Maria-Susanna himself, he was inclined to agree.

On the other hand, they had no say in the matter. "Very well, Amas-Garao. I thank you for bringing this matter to our attention promptly. I will inform Captain Austin as soon as she returns, and I am sure she will be grateful for your timely notification."

"Give her my warmest regards." Amas-Garao bowed again, turned, and opened the door. Somewhere between stepping through the door and reaching the outside path, he simply faded away.

"Oh, that is just all kinds of not-good," Oasis said, as soon as the door had securely closed.

"I am sure I don't even begin to appreciate how many kinds," Simon agreed. "I can't reach Ariane, but I think I'd better let DuQuesne know right away." He raised his voice. "DuQuesne!"

A green comm-ball winked into existence, shimmered momentarily scarlet, then went green again. "Simon? What's up?"

"A… situation. I am not sure I want anyone else to hear it."

"Hold on, I can get some privacy in a moment…" The sound of some movement, a door being closed, and the very faint noises of DuQuesne checking for eavesdropping. "Okay, I'm good. What's the problem?"

"Maria-Susanna has joined the Shadeweavers."

A pause. "Klono's bouncing bronze… dammit! That's a potential worst-case scenario."

"Is it, though?" Simon said, thoughtfully. "I mean, the idea of Maria-Susanna as a Shadeweaver is not something to make anyone feel comfortable, but she will have to take time for the training. And then she has to wait for a slot to fill, which means she has to wait until one of the existing Shadweavers steps down. And I don't see Amas-Garao letting her get a slot unless and until he's sure she's not going to be a problem."

"I find your faith in Amas-Garao's paranoia and caution touching but possibly naïve. You talked with her, didn't you?"

Simon thought back to the one long conversation he had had with Maria-Susanna. He remembered that sensation, which he now knew to be part of his strange Arena-granted abilities, and how it had intervened to somehow insulate him from the impact of a personality unlike any he had previously encountered. "Glamour, in the ancient sense, yes. But surely a Shadeweaver has ways to resist that. It's coming from the same basic source, I would have to assume."

"Hmph. Maybe. But you have to think to use it, and she's good – the best – at keeping you from thinking that you need to defend yourself around her, because she is nothing but the nicest person you've ever met."

Simon didn't like to argue against DuQuesne, especially in areas the huge Hyperion undoubtedly knew more about than Simon ever would. Still… "My suspicion, Marc, is that 'nicest person' would itself be a flashing warning sign to people like Amas-Garao."

"Ha! A definite point. He knows she's a wanted woman, and that generally doesn't fit with 'nice'." The amusement faded from his voice. "Still, he doesn't know Maria-Susanna, and I don't think it would even occur to him to grasp just what she is."

"Would she tell him, though?"

"I hope to all the gods of space not. The truth about Hyperion isn't something we want spread around."

That much none of them would argue about. The general residents of the Arena would be even less able to understand and accept the horrific nature of Hyperion than the average citizen of the Solar System – and in a purely practical sense, no one in the Faction of Humanity wanted anyone in the Arena to have a hint of the nature of that project, since it might possibly point them in the direction of realizing what people like DuQuesne could do if they wanted.

Outside of their own Faction, there were exactly three people who knew any of the details of Hyperion…

No. There are two.

Simon was recalled to the present when DuQuesne's repeated "Simon? Simon, you there?" broke through his momentary train of thought. "I'm sorry, Marc – was distracted by a thought. Probably nothing, but…"

"But?"

He glanced at Oasis, whose raised eyebrow showed she hadn't had the same thought either. "It occurs to me – because of this conversation – that there was something else very close to unique about Byto Kalan, something that would have made perfect sense to discuss only with you, the Captain, or perhaps Sun Wu Kung."

There was an intake of breath on the other end. Then, "Damnation, you're right. Hyperion. He was one of only three outsiders who knew anything about it."

"Him, Tunuvun and Selpa'a'At, yes," Oasis said in a tone of revelation. "Orphan and Vindatri might guess some of it – they've heard the name, I think? – but only those two were there when Wu Kung answered their challenge."

"And they were enjoined by the Arena itself to be unable to speak of it to others," DuQuesne said slowly. "Which means if they ran into anything that made them even think of Hyperion, the only people they could talk to about it would be us, and specifically the three of us who were there for the discussion." A loud sigh. "Blast. This may have absolutely no bearing on what happened…"

"… or it might have everything to do with what happened, yes," Simon finished. "Sorry, Marc; I know this complicates things even more."

"No, don't be sorry. It's a damned important point and I'm glad you thought of it. I'm going to hope it has nothing to do with why Byto got killed, but you can be sure I'll be keeping an eye out for that possibility now."

"What about Maria-Susanna?" Oasis said. "Returning to the original subject, you know."

DuQuesne made a rumbling noise, halfway between a growl and a curse. "I don't think there's much we can do, really. I mean, the Shadeweavers have been warned about her, and they've taken her in. Technically, that puts her out of our jurisdiction. Up to the Captain whether we try to do anything about it." The sound of DuQuesne pacing. "But you also are probably wrong about them having to wait for a slot to open. At least if our theory about how the Shadeweavers and Faith slowly expand their ranks is correct."

"How so?"

"Crap," Oasis said suddenly. "The Genasi."

"On the beam and in the green," DuQuesne said with grim amusement. "We just helped the Genasi become First Emergents. If we're even near right, that means a bunch of new slots became open." He frowned. "We could probably check that if we have Laila nose around the Faith and find out if they've selected an Advocate for the Genasi yet. If they've done any initiations recently, or are getting ready to, we can figure our theory's spot-on, and that means there's a Shadeweaver slot open for Maria-Susanna to step right into."

"I would hope they have other candidates ahead of her, as the Faith do," Simon said.

"No doubt they do, Simon, but I'll bet my bottom dollar that if anyone can jump the line, it's a Hyperion." A pause. "And speaking of Hyperion problems, Oasis, have you seen anything of Fairchild?"

"No. And that bothers me."

"Bothers me, too. That man stands out in a crowd, even a crowd of humans. Here, he should be easy to spot as an albino polar bear in a black velvet box. If no one's seen him, it's because he's doing a damn good job of hiding, and he is damn well not doing it anywhere in our Sphere, so he's here somewhere."

"Which means," Sandrisson finished, "that either he has more resources here than we would have expected, or he has already allied himself with another Faction – and one that has not felt it appropriate to notify us."

"The last bit isn't quite so noteworthy anymore," Oasis said. "Humans can join other factions like any other species, and there's no requirement this be reported. Heck, they probably couldn't report it for all species, given how faction compositions change regularly."

"There's some kind of reporting requirement," DuQuesne said, "I remember Ariane discussing it with someone, but the details escape me. But it's probably something like a quarterly transaction report, not a formal notification like we just got about Maria-Susanna. That kind of thing isn't going to happen unless both sides know how important the individual is, and we have definitely not publicized anything about Fairchild."

There was a noise in the background. "Hmph. Look, Simon, I've got to get back to what I was doing here. Thanks for the heads-up and that unpleasant but important thought. I'll be counting on you and Oasis to look into the other stuff, along with the Captain once she's back."

"You can rely on us, Marc."

A chuckle. "I know I can. Thanks, Simon."

Simon grimaced as the comm-ball disappeared. "Oasis," he said, with a frown, "how is it that I made a call about one problem and find it developed into three?"

Her laughter was the only answer.

The post Shadows of Hyperion: Chapter 7 appeared first on Ryk E. Spoor, Author, Gamer, Geek God.

DuQuesne conducts an interesting experiment, and a discussion with Orphan about a dead Champion...

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Chapter 6.

Orphan held his head slightly tilted, one hand absently stroking his crest on that side. "Please repeat that, Doctor DuQuesne. I want to be sure I understand what you are asking."

"I want to find out if I can read your mind – with your permission. Telepathy, in other words. The ability to directly make contact with another mind through no physical intermediary or technological aid such as the implanted radio-contact devices we all have used at one point or another." DuQuesne considered, then gave a cynical grin. "Well, aside from the Arena's technology, which I would presume is actually behind this."

Orphan drew back from DuQuesne; it was a subtle thing, almost a compression of the alien's body rather than an actual movement, but DuQuesne was sure of what he was seeing.

They were alone in one of the private conference rooms – the most assured private location DuQuesne could arrange at short notice. He'd made sure that there were no bugs of any sort he could detect, and Wu Kung had done his own sniffing around for any form of "magical" influence – not, he devoutly hoped, that there should be any, but none of them really knew, for example, the limits of the Shadeweavers or the Faith.

Orphan relaxed a fraction. "This is also a power you believe you have? Similar to the unheard-of abilities I observed on Halintratha and later on board my own Zounin-Ginjou?"

"I know I have this ability with my own people," DuQuesne said. Normally he'd have tried to dance around things, but he was asking Orphan to take a risk even human beings might be really reluctant to take; they'd already agreed part of his payment was knowledge. "I've tested it with Ariane, Simon, a couple others. What I haven't done is used it on any alien species."

"Ah, Doctor, it becomes more clear. You have need to know whether this power will work on such, and yet an equally strong need to keep the secret of your impossible powers from others. Thus… myself as the only reasonable candidate."

"As usual, got it in one, Orphan. Even Relgof, while he's seen some strange things, doesn't have the faintest idea of what's really going on. You were the one who introduced us to Vindatri; you even figured out what was strange about us before we did."

"Indeed." Orphan leaned back, studying DuQuesne narrowly out of dark alien eyes; his disturbingly humanoid face was even more immobile than usual, betraying nothing of his thoughts. "And if I say I decline to participate in this little experiment?"

"Then I shrug, maybe curse a little, and start trying to figure out who I can go to next while revealing as little as I can, I guess. Not going to force you to do it, Orphan."

"Nor, in honesty, would I expect you to." Orphan rose and paced for a few moments, his tail twitching, his wingcases tight. DuQuesne saw his hands unconsciously make the outward flick that meant no at least once. "When you say 'read my mind', what exactly would you expect? What would you 'read', and what would I sense?"

"The idea – and the way it works with my own people – is that it's not much more than you'd get by talking. I'd probably pick up a few side-thoughts that you didn't direct at me, but no deep secrets, and I'd be concentrating on only straight-up communication. You'd just get words and images and I'd get the same."

"Dangers?"

"Minimal to you. We strained our abilities in that last battle, so there may be some to me. Partly I want to learn how much harder it is to connect with an alien mind than a human one, just in case I have to."

Orphan went momentarily still. Then his wingcases relaxed and he tapped his hands together in a yes that seemed to indicate not assent, but understanding. "Byto Kalan's murder. You were present, and you do not intend to leave it as it was."

Always knew he was sharp. Never underestimate this guy. "On the beam and in the green," he agreed.

"And you think this may help?"

"Help now, I don't know. It's more that it could have helped, if I'd known I could do it safely."

"Hm, yes, I see." Orphan gazed up and out, then looked back to DuQuesne and tapped his hands again. "Very well, Doctor DuQuesne. You have been candid with me, and I have gained some most interesting information already. If you do discover, inadvertently, any secrets you know I would rather not have disclosed, I will expect that you will find a way to reciprocate?"

DuQuesne considered a moment. Orphan's request was not, really, unreasonable. The true currency of the Arena was secrets – information you held and could control. "As long as I don't think you tried to shove those secrets out in order to get paid for them. Deal."

"My, Doctor DuQuesne, you have gained the appropriately suspicious attitude. Well stated." Orphan's half-bow was completely unironic; he respected someone who played the game well. "So, is there anything I need do?"

"Relax and if you feel something odd, try not to fight it. If it hurts, of course, tell me right away."

"I most assuredly will."

DuQuesne closed his eyes, relaxed his body. Then he reached out, looking for a mind.

Immediately he felt tension somewhere within him, but not – at least yet – at a painful level, and he sensed indeed there was a mind nearby, one whose surface sensations were strong – the emanations of a mind of some power, even if untapped.

Reach out, find the way to fit my mind to theirs, to speak to their mind as I do to Ariane's…

The strain increased, spiking suddenly to pain – but for an instant, he sensed an intelligence, one startled to perceive DuQuesne there, within his own mind. He had a momentary impression of a vast mansion, a fortress, a lonely place of discipline and longing and fear and hope, and within, a burning spirit of such intensity that he felt almost as dazzled as when he had first looked upon Ariane's mind.

Then he found himself being helped back into his chair. "DuQuesne! Doctor, are you well? Must I summon assistance?"

He got a grip on the edge of the table, metal cool and rigid beneath his fingers, stabilized himself and sagged into the chair. "Gimme… a second to catch… my breath."

Red pulses of pain echoed through his head, only slowly fading. "Well. That answers that question." He blinked his eyes, managed to focus on Orphan, on whose alien face he could still discern signs of worry. "You okay, Orphan?"

"I? I am… uninjured, Doctor." The Leader of the Faction of the Liberated stood slowly and backed off a pace, giving DuQuesne a bit of room. "But I did… feel something. Hear something. See something." A quick flash of the wings, a nervous laugh. "Ahh, Doctor, words are inadequate for that experience, I think."

"Yeah. Yeah, a mind-to-mind link isn't something easy to put into words. Can I ask what you felt or saw?"

"Truly, Doctor, I do not think I am adequate to the task. I shall assay it, however." Orphan paused, wingcases fluttering, body wavering between tension and what seemed excitement. "I saw… a great light, a light that contained pain and loss, triumph and failure, and a whirling dark of secrets of what seemed to be more worlds than I have ever imagined. It was… both joyful, and sad, and cold as the winds of the Arena's storms. It was, indubitably… you, Doctor, but even my words are truly insufficient to convey the shock of the moment."

"Huh. Don't know if I warrant that much poetic license, but if that's what you saw… Okay. I saw… well, a fortress of a mind, protecting something so precious that the value alone was enough to break a heart or three."

The crested head tilted. "Brief… yet I think I may understand what you mean. So, you have answered your question, then?"

"Not the way I'd hoped, but yeah. If I was in good shape, I could link up with alien minds with a little effort. In my current state, I would hurt or kill myself if I really tried hard – and I'd have to try hard, at this point. Later on, it should be easier. Maybe we'll revisit this in a few months."

"I am highly intrigued, Doctor. You can count on my assistance in that event."

"Good." He sat up a little straighter, focused some meditations to dull the pain, drive it back. Hope I haven't done any actual damage. "So, you got any angle on what happened to Byto?"

"Any 'angle'? You mean, do I have any particular view of interest to provide?" Orphan re-seated himself in the chair that fit his particular anatomy. "I do not know, in truth. It seems evident to me that his murder was well-planned, yet rushed in some fashion. A truly, properly timed and executed assassination would have ensured he was very dead, not left him wounded yet with some deteriorating functionality."

"Hm. You mean, whoever it was planned to kill him, and had even gotten the basic setup down, but they planned to execute the plan later and something forced their hand?"

"Precisely, Doctor. My sources say that there was little-to-no evidence of the actual assailant present, which speaks well to their foresight and preparation. Yet they failed to actually kill their target. Either Byto managed to drive them off unexpectedly, or someone interrupted the attack in some fashion."

"And if he'd fought them in any way, there'd probably have been more evidence – something on his horn, under the nails, something." DuQuesne thought about that. "Someone spooked 'em before they could finish Byto off. Someone…" it became clearer. "… someone who didn't know they were doing that, or they'd have come forward already."

Then he shook his head. "Eh, maybe, but they're certainly researching all the people who went through that area. Just being questioned about it would jog just about anyone's memories."

"That is true," Orphan said, but his voice held the deeply ironic tone he often used when pointing out something he found particularly amusing, "but I believe you are missing the more likely explanation.

"The person had something else to hide. And so, while they may know something about who and what killed Byto Kalan… they have a very good reason to never speak of it to anyone."

DuQuesne smacked his forehead, eliciting a momentary jolt of red pain. "Ow! Blast it, you're right. You've got to be right, Orphan."

The challenge before them loomed larger, even as it became clearer. "And that means we've got to find the list of all the people who passed through there – a hell of a number, I'd guess – and then figure which one of them has a secret so big that even murder isn't enough to make 'em talk!"

Orphan looked abstracted. "Indeed. Although there is one other explanation… to me, perhaps, the most interesting one."

DuQuesne felt one eyebrow rise. "Okay, hit me with it."

"What if," Orphan said slowly, "the killer chose not to finish Byto?"

The post Shadows of Hyperion: Chapter 6 appeared first on Ryk E. Spoor, Author, Gamer, Geek God.

There's been a murder, and DuQuesne was right there..

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Chapter 5.

"You're back!" Ariane exclaimed as DuQuesne appeared in the doorway. Then, seeing how the massive frame sagged, she ran to him, caught his hands in hers. "You look terrible, Marc."

"I feel terrible. Klono and Noshabkeming, I feel terrible." The way he muttered off the outmoded Hyperion curses without so much as a selfconscious twitch told her just how bad it was. She exchanged glances with Wu Kung, as her bodyguard helped DuQuesne in, and saw the same concern in his eyes.

"They couldn't save him?"

DuQuesne shook his head, then sank heavily into one of the Embassy chairs scattered about Office of the Leader of the Faction of Humanity – that is, her office. "Whoever did it knew damn well what they were doing. Surprise isn't that he's dead, it's that he lasted as long as he did." He closed his eyes, shook his head again, then blew out a long breath. "If we're gonna talk this out now, I need about a gallon of strong black coffee and half a mountain of food. Didn't take any time to eat or drink while I was there."

"Jesus, Marc. With your metabolism that's just … stupid, Mr. Hyperion Superman. Should I get anyone else here?"

He sighed. "I'd really just rather talk to you… but no, dammit, this is going to involve all of us." He grimaced. "At least get Simon in here. If I don't miss my guess, that'll bring Oasis too, and we'll have the inner circle of the Inner Circle complete, anyway."

She called Simon – finding that DuQuesne's guess had been right on the dot, and didn't that give her an odd twinge of combined approval and jealousy? Get your brain straightened out someday, Ariane. You and DuQuesne decided to move forward while you were out in the Deeps; did you really think Simon would just sit there waiting? Or Oasis, for that matter?

She also arranged for DuQuesne's late dinner – the steaks he loved, steak fries, a big salad. It arrived about the same time as Simon and Oasis.

"They kept you this long, Marc?" Simon asked, eyebrow raised in combined surprise and worry.

DuQuesne raised a finger, asking they wait, as he finished swallowing the first huge bite of steak. "Ahhh, that hits the spot!" he sighed, and then took a big swallow of coffee. "Well, wasn't so much they kept me as I kept myself. I wanted to find out what they learned. I wasn't a suspect – too many witnesses to show that I simply couldn't have been out there at the right time."

"So, who are 'they' who are involved?" Oasis asked. "The Adjudicators? I'd think this would be a big thing for them."

"No such luck," DuQuesne grumbled. "If it'd happened inside Nexus Arena, sure, but it didn't. Whoever it was knew just as well as everyone else that you'd be an idiot to try anything inside the Arena. Even if you could somehow get away with the murder, the Arena would know, and you can bet your very last dollar it'd nail you for it in the end."

"Most people," Simon said slowly, "Yes. But there are at least two groups for which that might not be entirely true."

DuQuesne nodded while chewing, glanced at Ariane.

"Obviously," she said. "The Shadeweavers and the Faith. And us, perhaps, although I wouldn't want to test that. But this…" She shook her head. "It is just not their style, either of them. The Shadeweavers aren't an organized group, but still… straight murder doesn't seem to fit with their usual behavior. And they certainly wouldn’t do it so…" she waved her hands, trying to find the right word.

"Crudely?" Wu Kung supplied. "No, that is not their way. They are too twisty, too proud of their fancy powers and fancier plans to just ambush someone. It was an ambush, yes?"

"Yep. Someone knew his routes and set him up. He was stabbed with something with a curved blade that penetrated the body right through two vital organs. It also carried a payload of medical nanos tailored to interfere with his." He bit off another piece of steak, chewed. "As for who the investigators are, it's a sort of mishmash. The Vengeance not only used Byto, he was actually part of the Faction, so they're the first part. He was a big noise back with the Dujuin, too, so some of their people are in on it. And, of course, the Champions just lost one of their own, so you can believe they're sticking their noses in."

Ariane shook her head, the impact of the event slowly becoming clear. "Marc, whoever did this just made a whole lot of enemies – big ones, too. The Dujuin are a pretty widespread species, the Vengeance is one of the Great Factions, and the Champions… They must have been desperate."

"Maybe. Maybe." DuQuesne ate furiously for a bit, the frown on his dark olive-tanned face fixed and focused.

Oasis' eyes were looking to the ceiling, as though seeing something up there no one else could. "I dunno, Captain," she said after a moment, then looked down so her emerald gaze met Ariane's. "Sure, that's a high-profile killing, but from what DuQuesne says it was set up perfect. Whoever it was isn't so desperate that they couldn't take the time and effort to figure out the perfect place for a hit. You'd think if things were that far along, someone like Byto Kalan would've known it, wouldn't he? He'd have been alert."

DuQuesne nodded. "That's it exactly. Byto's a Champion. I may have met him on the field of battle in a card game, but he was someone who'd be able to take on pretty much anyone in a scrap and at least hold his own. He wasn't stupid in any sense of the word. Whoever it was managed to get to him despite all that, and that tells us a lot about them."

Simon looked puzzled. "What does it tell us, then? I admit I'm not quite seeing it, other than that they must be quite formidable – but that was already obvious."

"It tells us," Wu Kung said, "that either this person is even better than Byto Kalan, or that Byto trusted them – that even on alert, he did not think of them as a threat."

"And there are not very many people better than Byto – if he was on alert. Do we know if there's evidence he was on alert, Marc?" Ariane asked. "Anyone, even the best, is an easy target if they don't know they are a target."

"Good point, Captain," DuQesne said, draining the rest of his huge mug of coffee. "But no, I think he was on alert. He'd asked to see me to discuss 'something', but he never told me what the something was. This was over comm-ball, and he was still being cagey. So, either he suspected someone could listen in, even on that communications channel, or he was damned worried about something to the point he didn't want to put it in words until he talked to me personally."

Ariane did not like the way this looked at all. "DuQuesne, you've only known Byto for a little time now. I know there's a bond between people who've played the Challenges the way you two did, and you've played a couple more private contests with him for fun, but doesn't it strike you as odd that he'd be coming to you with something so worrisome? Wouldn't he go to someone in his Faction, or one of the other Champions, or someone who was his actual friend?"

The sour, cynical expression on DuQuesne's face echoed her own doubts. "Sure does seem odd, yeah. No matter how I look at it, the whole thing stinks."

"Trying to set you up for something?"

"Byto? No. He was as straight as a die, I'll bet my life on it. He might trick you in a Challenge, but personally he was a stand-up guy." His gaze flicked to Oasis.

She wore the same expression, like she’d bitten into an apple and discovered it was a lemon. "Ugh. It means that he didn't dare trust any of the people near him. Something was wrong either with them, or with what he'd discovered or figured out or whatever that he couldn't just bring it to someone nearby."

Wu Kung hissed. "Yes. Something that might mean anyone he trusted was part of the problem. He came to you for the same reason that Orphan said he asked us for help with his one problem: we are so new that we have not had too much time to become part of the tangled web these people weave."

"That's the way I figure it, yeah."

Simon tilted his head, then his green eyes narrowed. "Oh. Oh, my. Then all the people investigating his murder…"

"… may just be the prime suspects," DuQuesne finished.

Ariane nodded slowly. She could follow that line of thought far enough to know how messy this could get. And with the murder having occurred when Byto was heading to a meeting with DuQuesne, it was obvious that there was no way they could avoid being involved, even if DuQuesne was the type to let go of someone he knew being murdered – which he wasn't.

But there was one thing that really bothered her.

She took a breath and focused on her second-in-command. "Marc, why are we even having this conversation about all the motives, means, and opportunities?"

"Eh?" DuQuesne looked genuinely puzzled.

"Marc, you're a telepath. You just talked with me mind-to-mind not that many hours ago, and here was Byto not half a meter from you and you couldn't get out of him who did that to him?"

DuQuesne lowered his fork and knife, and closed his eyes. His mouth tightened, and she could see his neck muscles jump with restrained anger or shame.

After a moment, he opened his eyes. They were somehow even darker than normal, and the faint shadows under his eyes made them look deeper-set, hollow and pained. "A lot of reasons. You want the whole lot?"

She looked at Simon, Wu, and Oasis, then nodded. "I think we all need to know all the reasons, Marc – good or bad – because knowing when we can rely on our abilities, or when we can and should use them – or not – is going to be absolutely one of the most important parts of our future tactical choices."

He sighed, nodded, and contemplated his food; he made an abortive gesture, as though to shove it away, but then caught himself, grimaced, and with obvious reluctance started eating again.

Ariane waited; she'd learned that sometimes Marc had to get things arranged just so in his head before he would speak.

"All right. You're right, as usual, Captain." A flash of white teeth, the smile there and gone, a flash of humorous lightning. "So, the first reason is where I got these powers, and how they were used. You know my background's a mishmash of two separate series, so it didn't follow the plot of either very closely. I spent about forty years, subjective, in that simulation, of which twenty of them were going through a pretty clever blending of the early Skylark and Lensman novels."

Ariane nodded; she knew she was probably the only other person in the room who'd read the books he was talking about, although Simon had undoubtedly skimmed summaries and Oasis/K had probably seen some of it.

"Anyway, in the original Lensman series, the whole conflict between 'we should trust these Lensmen' and 'Lensmen: Threat or Menace?' was played out in what amounted to one election." He shook his head. "Even the people running Hyperion didn't swallow that one. There was a lot of caution and suspicion surrounding anyone who had telepathic abilities, and we had a whole powerful code of behavior about when you could, and could not, use those powers. One of the absolutes was you do not read minds without explicit permission, except in self-defense or in pursuit of your official duty – and you'd better be able to show how necessary it was, and that it was within your personal authority to make that choice."

"Ah," Simon said. "So, your basic training meant you could not just casually read Byto's mind?"

"If he'd been, oh, one of our people, that'd have been different," DuQesne affirmed. "But I have no standing with the Vengeance, with the Champions, or the Dujuin, that would've made that an easy choice. Yes, it could be justified… but I'd have to get that justification clear in my head first."

"Still, that was a long time ago, Marc," Oasis said, frowning.

The cynical smile Ariane knew well curled one side of DuQuesne's mouth. "Sure was. So, add the next reason. For fifty years, I was in a place where none of my powers worked. And I had to make myself accept that. By the end of our main adventures, I had internalized the psionics I'd gained, the mental scope and reach and power that Norlamin and Arisia had given us. And then it was gone."

He looked at Oasis. "I know it was hard for you, K, but at least your 'powers' were just… being more of who you actually were. For me, it was … it was like having both legs cut off, no warning. I spent the next fifty years driving every bit of those habits, those skills, those beliefs, into the same area of my mind that other fiction existed; worked on it so hard that a part of me believed it was fiction, in a way."

Oasis bit her lip. "Yes. So just using them takes a conscious effort now."

"Getting better as time goes by, but hell, I've only had 'em back, only used them, for a few months now." A wry grin as he looked at the Hyperion Monkey King. "Easier for you, Wu, really. While you always knew it was fake…"

Wu Kung looked embarrassed, but took DuQuesne's hint. "… I knew it was fake, but… well, because I hid from that truth by running back to my old world, I never really got out of the habit of using them. The only reason I didn't discover I could was that the way in which I was beaten in this real world…" his normally-cheerful face was downcast, "… well, it absolutely taught me how useless my powers were here. I knew it was true that I had no special powers any more once I left my home."

"But," DuQuesne finished, "that still meant he had the habits of using those abilities recent in his mind. So, once he realized he could, he ran way ahead of us others in using them."

"That's two reasons. And I'll admit, they're good reasons," Ariane said. Personal training bound up with emotions are real good reasons you might hesitate a few seconds… and there were only a few seconds for Marc to act. "But you said, 'a lot of' reasons."

"Well, five reasons, to be accurate." DuQuesne set down his fork and knife again, leaned back, eyes distant. "The third… has to do with the way telepathy worked, according to how I learned it in my Hyperion world. The whole schtick of the Lens was first and foremost as a translator, and that was the one job it did for you without effort, without focus. Here, though, the Arena does that; I don't need my special powers for that.

"But what wasn't without effort was making contact with nonhuman minds. Even if they sounded like you and your friends, that was partly a trick of a perfect translator. We've run into some of that here in the Arena; being able to speak with someone so easily helps mask the actual alien nature hiding behind the translation."

"Ah," Simon said. "So, going actually mind-to-mind with an alien species you do not really know could take time and effort before you could really reliably acquire information from their mind?"

"On the beam with that one, Simon. That leaves aside whether they have any reluctance for the contact. Dying, Byto might not have noticed… or he might have freaked out and fought the contact."

He turned back to Ariane, who already found herself nodding. And that means…

"Next – Ariane, I was able to speak to you mind-to-mind, but even then I could feel a strain. It wasn't big, but it was noticeable. We'd all agreed we would not use our powers if it could possibly damage us, and making first contact with an alien mind – a dying alien mind – was something a lot harder than touching your mind. It would have been a terrible risk, which I was under orders not to take."

He looked up with an apologetic grin. "And finally… Ariane, I'm a Hyperion, but I'm also human. I wasn't really thinking about being in danger, or any of those things. I was a little worried about Byto, then I heard the screams, got there, and was trying to figure out if there was anything I could do for him. By the time I realized he wasn't going to survive… well, he was one instant from dying. I didn't have time."

Ariane inclined her head, then forced herself to smile. "Thank you, Marc. I could probably have guessed some of those reasons, but it's good to have it all out in the open. I don't suppose there's any way we can find out if you'd hurt yourself making a telepathic link to another species?"

DuQuesne took another sip of coffee, a thoughtful expression on his face. "Sure. But there's risk in all of them. I guess the best shot would be Orphan. He already knows about many of our Arena-born powers, so we wouldn't be revealing too much by asking him to help, and the cost of helping in the experiment would be balanced by him learning a bit more about our abilities, so we wouldn't owe him anything."

"He'd have to agree to keep it secret, of course," Simon said.

"Ha!" Wu Kung said. "That one? He collects secrets like a dragon hoards gold, Orphan does. He will not give them away. As long as he is our friend, he knows it would cost him too much, anyway."

"Wu's right," Ariane said, smiling as she often did at Wu. "Orphan knows we're his best allies and that betraying our secrets would hurt him in many ways. DuQuesne, why don't you arrange that?"

"Will do, Captain. What about Byto?"

As the saying went, in for a penny… "Marc, you were right there. He was trying to contact you, personally. Probably, through you, the Faction of Humanity. This is our business, and if he came to us, he probably thought the secret would be important to us in some other way. So yes, Marc, we investigate. I'll give the whole summary to the rest of the Inner Circle and we'll go from there."

She glanced up and out, as though she could see the rest of the Arena through the meeting room walls. "Someone thinks they can get away with murder. It's up to us to prove them wrong."

The post Shadows of Hyperion: Chapter 5 appeared first on Ryk E. Spoor, Author, Gamer, Geek God.

And it's time to introduce a new complication...

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Chapter 4.

DuQuesne watched as electrical sparks crawled around Davia's hand, and pretended not to see the tears trickling down the young-looking face.

They were sitting in a private meeting room. The main part of the debrief, summarizing the events of the last year or so from the crew's point of view, had taken quite a bit of time, but Ariane had decided that the more personal parts of the debrief, especially the revelation that the Hyperions were gifted with the abilities of their fictional worlds, was something that needed less of an audience.

As usual, she'd been right.

"Dy-namic," Davia whispered, then blushed in embarrassment. "But… damn. Marc, I…" she trailed off.

"Yeah. When I realized that I could be everything I had been, it hit me the same way. Brought the whole damned past right back into my head."

She nodded, still staring at the brilliant light display. "But we don't get the past with the powers. Don't see Rich Seaton anywhere, or Wu's friends. Right?"

"Yeah," he said, and the thought of Seaton weighed down on him again. Maybe I'll never really stop missing him, DuQuesne admitted to himself. We were a team like no other. "Yeah, we get back what we were, but that doesn't get back the world and people we knew."

"Farrin, Jyrie, Sakura…" she trailed off. "Eh. I guess the real problem is I let all that go decades ago, Marc, and now here it is. So, you figured all that out from Wu going Doolittle on our Upper Sphere?"

"Not just that – there were more clues – but yeah, that was my first inkling. And it was a good thing, too." He finished summarizing the more spectacular recent events, including the godlike Vindatri, his defeat and return as an ally, and the details of the confrontation with the Molothos. "Then we just recently found out – from Wu – that we'd overstrained ourselves with our powers, so it'll be a while before we can do much with them. Stroke of luck you showed up when you did."

"Luck," Davia mused. "Always had it in my world, but you say we all have it here?"

"As near as I can figure. I mean, it sounds crazier than a whole hotel full of bedbugs, but both Orphan and Vindatri believed it, and neither of them is anything less than a Big-Time Operator, believe you me. And the evidence is pretty convincing… even if it's damned creepy, to use one of Ariane's favorite words."

Davia took a deep breath, let it out with a whoosh. "Well, I'll just have to get used to all this. What do you people want me to do, then? Sounds like you need some backup, with all of you benched."

"That part isn't so bad," DuQuesne said with a chuckle. "Not like we were either going to advertise our powers, or use 'em casually. No, the real issue as I see it – and I think the Captain will back me – is that until now we didn't have anyone with that kind of secret muscle that we could really send back home for any length of time. Simon and I, we're almost as well-known as Ariane, and we've got a lot of connections here."

Some of them more obvious than others. Hell, I'm supposed to meet up with Byto Kalan in a little while, and while our meetings are usually just friendly, they've got diplomatic aspects to them, too; he said there was something he needed to discuss with me this time. Given that Byto was a well-known Champion in the various Challenges, that wasn't so surprising; Champions by their nature also made great neutral messengers for communications that you wanted to be deniable in case things went wrong.

Davia raised her eyebrows. "But what good would I do back there? I mean, sure, I might be a little tougher than average, but –"

DuQuesne thought back over the dialogue they'd had. "Huh, I guess I did compress it too much. Dav, our powers work in the regular universe too, now that we've awakened 'em here. At least, I'll bet you fun, money, chalk, or marbles that they do. Ariane's powers work just fine both places."

"You mean it? That's a shock!" She grinned as sparks chased themselves around her hand again. "Seriously, that's actually… scary. Thought I'd gotten used to the rules of the real world, and now this Arena changes them back. So, what do you want me to do?"

"Hold on a sec. Ariane?"

A green com-ball popped into existence, the shimmering sphere of light flickering red for just a moment before the Captain's voice answered. "Yes, Marc?"

"You got a minute?"

"If it's about Davia, yes. I'm wading through some of the metaphorical paperwork that piled up while we were elsewhere, so not if it's something less urgent."

"Got it in one. Mind if I go mind-to-mind on you for a sec?"

"It won't hurt you, will it?"

"Don't think so – doing a telepathic communication to someone a hundred yards or so away should be about the same as you moving a glass of water, and Wu said we should use our powers a little."

"Then go ahead. Stop right away if it hurts, though."

"Believe you me, I'm not risking my brain just for convenience."

But though he felt some kind of phantom strain, somewhere within his skull, the telepathic link brought no pain, just the warm sense of Ariane Stephanie Austin closer than any ordinary contact would allow.

The telepathic exchange was detailed, but – from an outsider's point of view – lasted barely an instant. He ended it with a private thought of affection and a promise that he'd stop by to see her later, after his meeting with Byto.

Turning back to Davia, he nodded. "Ariane says what we really need is an agent back in the System – someone who can help Saul, Robert Fenelon, and General Esterhauer get things done, and keep them safe. Our little compromise that resolved the conflicts between Ariane and the CSF/SSC is still pretty shaky, and now that we know there's one of our old AIs out there trying to play the assassin card? I don't want to rely on anyone else, not even Tunuvun and his people."

"You trust them? Or not?"

"Tunuvun? Well, Wu trusts him, and that means a lot. And from what you said, he just got himself almost killed saving Saul. So yeah, I trust him, and he and the other Genasi are tough customers, no doubt. But…"

She grinned. "But even so, they're no match for the Dynamo?"

He laughed. "Don't think anyone there is, except just maybe another Hyperion – and anyone who hasn't gotten the briefing won't know they can have special powers."

"Okay," Davia said, "Then I guess I'd better head back to Saul, report what I've learned, and check to see if he agrees with your assigning me to be a sort of watchdog."

"You don't mind?"

"Mind? DuQuesne, this was the kind of thing my old crew was meant for. Sounds like a good fit for me while I adjust to the changes. If I think it's gonna be boring, I'll let you know. I'm guessing this renegade AI will keep it hopping, though."

He nodded and grinned back, then gripped her hand. "You take care, Dav. We'll all stop back there soon and have a long, loud shindig for all us survivors. We've earned it."

"You can shout that to the heavens!" she said. "Okay, see you soon!"

Like any good courier, she didn't dally. Gold badge glinting from her collar, she darted away as soon as the two of them left the Embassy, with a wave and a smile.

DuQuesne waved and smiled back, and turned towards the Docks, which was where Byto had arranged to meet. Professional Champions of the Arena's Challenges were an odd lot; technically, most of them were members of one Faction or another, but in practice they were a sort of breed apart, with their own traditions and practices. This meant that often they preferred not to meet at their Faction's Embassy, and if they wanted to discuss something … delicate, would pick even less conventional places.

There were a number of meeting places on the Docks that provided secure locations for games, conversation, and business – or all three – while also offering a spectacular view. One of these, called "Veringthe", was Byto's favorite spot to play a game of Racing Chance – the private version, where you had racers simulated by the Arena rather than the real thing, but could bet and influence the game the same way. It afforded a very fine view of one of the Docks.

Traveling through the Arena itself was generally without incident. That didn't mean, of course, that he was unobserved; his size and human appearance drew stares, and those who recognized him had more reason to be both interested and cautious. This was the human who'd beaten the Molothos and thrown the corpse of one of the invaders straight into the face of Dajzail. No, anonymity wasn't going to be something he could expect here.

Nonetheless, the walk through the Embassy area and past the elevators that led to Transition was uneventful. He ratcheted up his observation and caution quite a bit as he passed through a huge doorway and arrived on the Docks proper, because while the Arena frowned on, and generally prevented, significant violence within Nexus Arena, the Docks were not considered to be "within" Nexus Arena. Violence could, and sometimes did, happen on the Docks, and with the number of enemies Humanity had already acquired, DuQuesne knew he'd be a fool not to assume he could be targeted.

At the thought, he grinned inwardly. Of course, anyone targeting me doesn't have the faintest clue in Hades of what they'd be getting into!

He reached Veringthe without so much as a hint of trouble, however, and in a few moments was settling into his chair in the private room Byto had reserved, sipping at what was a pretty good imitation of a mint julep. He leaned back and relaxed, waiting for Byto to arrive, thinking about everything that had happened in the last few days. The recovery from the battle, Ariane's gambit for peace, and now Davia. There was a lot to think about.

Finally, it dawned on him that he'd finished his julep, and Byto still wasn't there. DuQuesne sat up slowly. That's not like Byto. The alien Champion might look like a grouchy, bipedal rhinocerous, but like most of the Dujuin he was actually a considered and considerate being, and punctuality was one of his virtues; after all, you didn't do well in a Challenge if you didn't show up when expected.

Odd that he didn't call if he was going to be held up. Then again, if whatever had stalled him happened after DuQuesne got to the Docks, he might not have been able to. Might as well give it a try, anyway. "Byto Kalan," he said to the air.

A ball of green light shimmered into existence… then flickered, fuzzed out, became a smear of green barely visible in the air.

"What in the name of…?" DuQuesne glared uneasily at the faint light; he had never seen anything like this before. Either the Arena made the connection, or it didn't, and if the recipient didn't want to talk to you, the comm-ball didn't act like an old TV screen filled with static, it went bright red.

Then he heard the screams from downstairs.

He burst out of the door and hurdled the balcony ledge outside, dropping ten meters to land on the ground floor.

Lying half-in, half-out of the entryway was Byto Kalan, deep-purple blood pooling around him.

DuQuesne knelt beside the Dujuin Champion. He was barely conscious, and Byto's small, dark eye slowly opened and focused. "Du…Quesne…" he breathed.

"What happened? Who did this?"

"Stop… it…" The last word ended in a hiss of air, and the eye closed.

"BYTO!"

The post Shadows of Hyperion: Chapter 4 appeared first on Ryk E. Spoor, Author, Gamer, Geek God.