Path of Transcendence 1: Ultimatum of the Nameless God (40 page)

When I put away the other clothes and took the vest, Perzey's kiss was so hungry we wound up back in the bed fucking like animals again.

* * * * *

*If Brand wants me to sit here naked, I will take off my dress.*

I look around the hall.
*This trash doesn't deserve to see  you naked.*

Grinning Perzey climbs into my lap, with her back to the room, and slips out of her thin dress. After dragging my vest off, she snuggles up against me.

*Now, they can only see my hair.*

*What was Helen like?*

Perzey frowns.
*Perzey doesn't want to think about Helen. She was short and fat. Helen was only 5'2” and weighed over 170lbs. She hated herself. She doted on her sister. Rachael was a slut, who fucked all the men Helen lusted after, but Helen loved her. Helen was weak. Perzey is happy Helen is dead. Perzey will be Perzey forever.*

I do not want to know anything else about Helen. She was typical of the weak, bullied victims of Earth, the people I always hated. Earth culture twists everything that lives under it.

“Brand, I know you like beer but try this.” Jinmu is holding out a ceramic jug with a paper seal on top. Another open jug sits on the low table between Jinmu and Trantor.

I take the jug from him. Breaking the seal, I smell herbs and strong alcohol.

“What is it?”

Jinmu smiles. “It is from my personal supply. The taste is very much like sake, with some very spicy herbs mixed in.”

I like spicy food. I take swig, and feel like my mouth is on fire. I cannot identify the herbs, but they add a heat like Thai peppers.

Perzey grabs the jug and takes a deep drink from it. After a few seconds, her face turns red, and she nearly spills the wine, before I grab the jug from her.

Jinmu's booming laughter fills the hall, and Perzey glares at him.

I lean back against the wall again, sipping from the jug now and then. Every time I take a drink, Perzey drinks too. She glares at me, when I laugh at her.

While from time to time, Divine Wind members have sat at the high table talking to Jinmu, Delilah, and Trantor, not a single one has approached Perzey or myself. Now, looking around the hall, I seen a number of them staring at me, with secretive smirks. I get the feeling they are sizing me up, but I do not understand the smirks.

I am not sure how much time passes, before the hall begins to shake and a thunderous rumbling hammers the world. The upheaval does not stop.

I try to circulate my ki throughout my body, and find that I cannot even touch it. It is almost as though someone has complete cut me off from my ki. How could that happen?

“Steel is cruelty. Steel is pain.” Nothing, I cannot even control my mana to activate my sight.

*Perzey use the wind to get to your feet*

Perzey's eyes go wide, and fear is all over her face.

*Perzey cannot use her Power! What happened to Perzey!*

No one else in the hall seems to having the same problem. They are unstable with the continuous tremors, but their Power seems to be working. Why?

My eyes move to the jug of wine on the floor, before fixing on Jinmu. He is staring at me, with a complicated mix of emotions on his face, but he can obviously use his ki.

I suddenly remember something from long before the Great Fuck Over. I saw Sulius once. He was friends with Herodotus, one of the leaders of the Rainbow society. They were the best of ass-buddies, and Herodotus showed himself to be a traitorous piece of shit after the Great Fuck Over.

What is happening with Jinmu? Have Sulius and Trantor manipulated him into doing something he does not believe is right?

The disturbance goes on and on, for more than an hour, before abruptly ending.

Everyone  is looking around in confusion, myself among them.

“What was that?”

“Was that an earthquake?”

“What the fuck is going on?”

The stream of random questions are all in the same vein, with no one having any answers. Jinmu is whispering with Trantor, and both of them look pale.

*Come on. We're going outside.*

Perzey leaves her dress lying on the floor and clings to my arm. Even though we could be in real danger, why is it I just want to throw her on her back and fuck her?

In their confusion and near panic, no one is paying attention to us. We slip quietly through a side door out of the hall. The passage is empty, and we race to the courtyard.

The door into the courtyard is closed, but there are people outside talking.

“It doesn't matter what that was. The DokkAlfar citadel is almost here. Go let Bushou know his guests are coming.”

DokkAlfar guests? What the hell is going on?

The door rattles, as someone pulls the latch handle, and I push Perzey against the wall.

The man in chain armor does not notice use, until he is already closing the door. As his eyes widen and his mouth opens to shout, my foot shoves the door closed, and my fore knuckles slam into his throat. The man falls to his knees gasping for air, and I apply a choke hold to his neck. Even without control over my ki, my strength far outstrips the man's.

Perzey is staring at me, with a grin and hard nipples. She runs the tip of her tongue over her lips.

“If you make too much noise, I will kill you. When I loosen my hold, you will explain about the DokkAlfar. Nod, if you understand.”

The man jerkily nods. As I release the pressure on his throat, the man twists his head around a little.

“Talk.”

“The DokkAlfar are the ones who have been paying us to hunt Thug Horde. They're coming here to collect a package.”

“What package.”

“I … I don't know.” Something in the man's voice sound odd.

“DENIZEN'S OF MY BATTLEGROUND OF SLAVES HEED MY WORDS! KNOW THAT ALL WHO  ARE WITHIN THE BATTLEGROUND CAN HEAR ME!” The booming voice seems to come from everywhere and nowhere, at the same time. It is a voice, I have come to detest hearing.

“What the fuck is that?”

“How is he projecting that huge image?”

“What the fuck is going on, tonight?”

I choke out my prisoner and drop him to the floor.

Cracking the door, I see over twenty men in the courtyard. They are looking and gesticulating at a giant figure floating in the night sky.

Dressed in grey leathers and a brown hooded cloak, the translucent image of The Nameless floats in the sky. The hood is concealing all of his face, except for the mouth and chin. In his left hand, he is carrying his ever present staff, the runes glowing with a deep blood-red light.

“UNTIL THIS DAY, I HAVE MADE NO DEMANDS OF YOU, BUT THAT CHANGES AS OF NOW. FROM THIS DAY FORWARD, YOU EITHER SERVE ME, THE NAMELESS GOD, OR YOU WILL ENSLAVED OR EXTERMINATED.”

When the voice pauses, the men in armor look at on another in confusion. They mumble questions at one another, but no one has any answers.

I wait for The Nameless start speaking again, so that I can use his voice as a distraction.

“THIS NIGHT, I HAVE ADDED A NEW REALM  TO THE BATTLEGROUND, THE WORLD CALLED EARTH. POSSESSED, BE AWARE, THIS IS YOUR HOMEWORLD. YOUR BODIES ARE DEAD, BUT YOU STILL KNOW HOW TO USE THE MACHINES OF YOUR HOME. MY PRIESTS AND ACOLYTES WILL MAKE THEMSELVES KNOWN TO YOU. THROUGH THEM, YOU CAN SWEAR FEALTY AND PERFORM OBEISANCE TO ME. THOSE WHO DO SO WILL RECEIVE PREFRENTIAL TREATMENT. YOU WILL BE GIVEN WEAPONS OF  YOUR HOMEWORLD AND BECOME THE VANGUARD OF MY CHURCH'S NEW ARMIES. THOSE WHO DO NOT SWEAR TO ME, WILL BE TREATED NO DIFFERENT THAN THE COMMON TRASH OF THE BATTLEGROUND.”

Perzey and I are at the ramp leading to parapets, by the time The Nameless pauses again, but our luck has run out.

The main doors to the keep are thrown wide, and Jinmu walks out, with the partiers from his Divine Wind at his heels. Most of them are still half or entirely naked. Some are stumbling, nearly overcome with the effects of too much alcohol or drugs.

Xenia is among them, her body and hair spattered with yellowish-white patches of dried cum. She looks around the courtyard, until her glare locks onto Perzey.

“There's Brand and the whore! Don't let them get away!” Her voice is a shrill, hate-filled shriek.

The men in armor we were passing behind, turn around and stare at us in surprise. Several of them are more interested in staring at Perzey's naked tits, than much of anything else.

“YOU WHO ARE NOT POSSESSED, YOUR KINGDOMS ARE HEREBY DISSOLVED. IF YOU DO NOT SWEAR FEALTY AND PERFORM OBEISANCE TO ME, YOU WILL BE MADE SLAVES WHEN MY FORCES SHATTER ANY PATHETIC RESISTANCE. LOYALTY, SLAVERY, OR DEATH, THERE ARE NO OTHER OPTIONS!”

As the last words are spoken, The Nameless' image disappears from the sky.

Silhouetted against the moon, in the now empty sky, one of the Seven Great Citadels floats toward the island. The Citadels are giant flying fortresses built at some point in the distant past. There are records of their existence more than 10,000 years old. Each one appears to have been built on top of a floating meteor, or mountain top. None of the Great Citadels are constructed in the exact same manner, but I am not familiar enough with the features to identify one of them from another. I have seen three of them in the past, but I do not think this is one of the three.

Forming n ragged semicircle, the armored Divine Wind troops are surrounding Perzey and I. A few of them even jumped up on the parapet walkway to block that route for us.

With The Nameless' voice gone, a pregnant silence has fallen on the courtyard.

I look at Jinmu. His eyes are haunted, but there is no sign of him being irresolute.

“What was in that wine?” My voice is pitched at a conversational level.

“A drug to inhibit your use of Power. It will block a persons ability to use mana, ki, and psi. Even your impressive physique should take more than a day overcome its effects.”

“Why?”

Jinmu sighs, and his eyes lower toward the ground. “Four years is to long for me to wait to escape from the Labyrinth. My baby girl is chained by the neck in a brothel. Her chain will barely let her stand erect in front of her crib. She has been beaten over and over. Now, she spreads her legs at the sight of a man.”

I feel bad for Jinmu, but I really do not have any sympathy for Mei. She was always a little bitch, and she made her own bed.

“So, why do you have to attack me?”

Jinmu points to the fortress. “The price the DokkAlfar demanded for taking me out of the Battleground was to turn you over to them in chains. They provided the drug, so I would not be forced to kill you.”

I take my swords out of my dimensional storage. “You're sending them to their deaths.”

The Divine Wind troops get visibly angry, at my words. My mocking smile, only reinforces their pique.

“Ignore Brand. He is just trying to anger you. Attack them as a group.”

Jinmu's words have a limited affect. Gamers are mostly arrogant pricks, who think they are better than everyone at their chosen games. These pricks probably still have not figured out and really accepted that this is no longer the game Taereun: Battleground of the Damned. They are going to learn the hard way, this is the real Battleground of the Damned.

*Stand with your back to the wall. Do not engage them, if they do not attack first.*

*Perzey will help Brand.*

*STAY BACK! You don't know how to fight without mana.*

Perzey pouts, as she pulls her swords out from her bracelet.

“If any of you touches the girl, I'm going to turn you balls into ground meat and leave you alive.”

“Do not touch the woman. It will only make him harder to deal with.”

At Jinmu's words, the troops glance at one another and start to close with me again.

With a snarl, I jump onto the ramp leading to the parapet walkway. As I launch myself over ten feet into the air, the troopers on the ramp stare in shock. When my feet touch the ramp, my left hand blade knocks the shield of the nearest one up. The following right hand blade punches through his lower abdomen, and a spray of blood fans out from his back. The stupid look on his face fades into a death mask, as my kick drives him into the trooper next to him.  My left hand spears through that troopers eye, killing him instantly.

Once the bodies clatter to the ramp, silence fills the courtyard. The rest of the armored troops are staring at me, in slack-jawed incomprehension.

“What the fuck? He's not supposed to be able to use ki or mana.”

My laugh is malicious. “Who the fuck needs ki to deal with bitches like you?”

I launch myself into the middle of the armored troops. As my victim tries to back way, my swords attack high and low. On my third strike, he moves his shield to far to the side, and my fourth strike, a thrust, goes through his throat.

The rest of the armored troops are starting to move, their anger visible in their eyes and their too tense movements. They try to surround me. Perhaps, they think they can stab me in the back. I step to the side, and the troops surround empty ground.

Even without my ki, Shadow Fist allows me to move in ways that draw out the absolute limits of my body's capabilities. I do not have the raw physical power of my Half-Dvergar body, but I have far more experience fighting than I did at the start of the Great Fuck Over.

“I'm over here. Try harder.”

“Caster's, attack!” Jinmu's words fill the fearful silence.

The caster's start chanting or drawing patterns in the air. I wait for the fastest to be almost finished. It only takes a few seconds. As his spell starts to cast, I move.

The trooper I am charging at has a look of terror on his face, as he raises his shield to slam me. I collapse to the ground, sliding toward him. My lead foot hits the trooper in the ankle, breaking it and flipping him over onto me. My punch, to his shield, sends him back up into the air.

Woosh! Boom! Crackle! Splat! Boom!

The spells slam into the troopers, while they try to dive in all directions to escape.

As I stand up, only slightly singed, Jinmu shakes his head.

“Enough!”

“You sure you don't want to do this a few more times? I have some other tricks I want to try.”

Whssshhh! Snap!

As I stare at Sigurd, the tow halves of the arrow fall to the ground at my feet. Sigurd's face is a mask of righteous anger.

“Et tu, Sigurd?” My words are soft, but I pitch my voice so that they carry. Everyone in the courtyard clearly hears them.

“They aren't trying to kill you, but you're murdering them! They're real human beings, from Earth. Just like you.”

My laugh is derisive, as I gesture toward the troops killed by magic. “You think they'll respawn in a day or two? You still think this is some fucking game? Get your head out of your ass. This is real. You're living the only life you'll ever have. Did you listen to that Nameless prick? He brought your precious shithole Earth into the Battleground. You can walk home anytime you want, but you'll be stuck in that body you're in now.”

More arrows fly toward me, and I cut each in half. One. Two. Three. Ten. Twelve. After twenty arrows, Sigurd gives up. He looks past my shoulder.

Turning, I see Perzey has moved away from the wall. She is watching me with a brilliant smile. Wearing only a loincloth, the swords held in her hands are raised halfway to her guard posture. Her hard nipples and flushed skin make it look like she just finished having sex. The innocent joy on her face is completely at odds with her physical state.

Behind her, Xenia is drawing back her spear for a thrust. Her face is twisted with malice, hatred, and resentment.

“Behind you!” I raise my arm, pointing.

It was too late, before I started to yell. Perzey's faces starts to show confused look, that turns to horrified agony.

With a thick hardwood shaft, the head of that spear is a good six inches wide at the base. Perzey's right breast is turned into a ruin of raw red meat and blood. The fountain of her blood sprays out more than six feet.

Looking over her shoulder, Perzey seizes the haft of the spear. As Xenia shakes the spear, trying to pull it out, Perzey clenches her teeth, her face scrunched up in agony.

All my life, I have lived with anger. It has never been easy to suppress. Too many times, I had to choke it down, because of the social cameras and anti-violence laws. No matter how fierce the anger of the past, nothing has ever come close to the rage that fills me.

One. Two. Three steps. My sword whistle through the air, as terror turns Xenia's face uglier than it already is. A yellow flow starts to run down her legs, but it has barely gone six inches, before my swords tear into Sigurd. His collar bone and ribs are shattered under the impact of my left blade. His left arm is severed above the elbow, by my right blade, before it punches through his floating ribs and tears up his intestines.

I do not know what he used to move so quickly, but in theory, there could be as many abilities as there are adepts.

Xenia bounces off the wall at an angle flipping and rolling across the ground, spattering piss over everyone near her path. Lying on her belly in the spreading yellow pool, Xenia stares at me, while quivering.

The entire courtyard has turned into a frozen tableau. The fear is so thick, the air feels like it is filled with sludge.

Sigurd weakly grabs my wrist with his remaining hand, as I start to pull my swords out of his ruined carcass.

My eyes turn to him. “Still alive? Was it worth it? Dying for that cum and piss covered whore?”

“Please . . . don't . . .” Sigurd's eyes turn glassy, and his hand flops to the ground.

Perzey's whimpering draws my attention away from killing Xenia. She is kneeling on the ground, with only the haft of the spear keeping her from falling over entirely. She smiles wanly, as I kneel down next to her.

“Perzey … sorry.”

“Ssshhh!”

Supporting her back with one arm, I lean her head back against my shoulder. I smile at her and pull the spear through her body in a single motion. The spear splinters stone shards from the curtain wall, when it strikes it.

“Ah!” Perzey's gasp of pain is weak.

“Where is your fucking healer, Jinmu?”

“We don't have anyone that can save her from that kind of wound.” Jinmu's voice sounds slightly sad.

Perzey opens her mouth to say something and is wracked by coughing. Blood sprays out covering her lips and chin.

“Don't talk.”

*Perzey sorry. I wanted to stay with Brand forever. Brand can't die. Promise Perzey. Promise me. Brand will live. Brand will kill them all. Brand will kill Jinmu, too. Promise!*

“I promise.”

Perzey smiles, and shakily reaches up to brush my cheek.

*No cry. Don't cry for Perzey. Brand too strong.*

I rub my cheeks, and look at my hand. What the fuck? Perzey's blood is slightly diluted with tears.

“I love you.” I whisper the lie in Perzey's ear.

Perzey's smile is brilliant. Even the blood cannot hide its radiance.

*First time. Only Brand loves Perzey. Kiss Perzey. Last time.*

Perzey is so week, she can barely respond to my kiss. The first time I kissed Perzey, her mouth was bleeding and the kiss tasted of blood. This time her mouth is filled with her blood. She breathes her last breath into my mouth.

Her eyes are already closed as I lay Perzey down on the blood soaked ground. When I push her mouth shut, she almost looks like she is smiling.

Sorry for lying to you, Perzey. At least, the lie made you happy.

If it was just a lie, why do I feel so empty?

Cackling reaches my ears, from behind me. Turning, I stare at Xenia.

A manic grin is plastered on Xenia's mouth, and her eyes are full of hatred and triumph. “That little bitch got what she deserved. She attacked me like she actually was someone. Fat little bitch was nothing but the designated cum sack to give to the ugly slobs we didn't want, and she was too stupid to figure it out. She got off too  easy. It should have hurt more.”

That cunt is the epitome of so many things I hate about the Earth. She is a reminder of why I played Taereun the game. Something fills the emptiness, hate and rage. It wells up from deep inside and brings the Dark Od with it.

“AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!”

My scream shakes the walls of the old fortress, as the Dark Od passes through my body.  Pouring out of my skin, the Dark Od surrounds Perzey's body, before seeping out of this dimension. With its disappearance, Perzey's body is gone. Only, her swords, jewelry, and loincloth remain. Why did  that happen?

Panting in reaction to the agonizing pain of the Dark Od, I start to laugh. At first a soft chuckle, it rises in volume and intensity, until insane, maniacal laughter echoes from the mountainside, rising  above the keep.

“Steel is cruelty. Steal is pain.”

A trickle of mana touches my eyes, twisting my left eye's vision so I can view patterns. I leave my right eye alone.

Taking up Perzey's swords, I slice my wrist coating the edges of both blades with my blood. In my mind, I concentrate on the image of an incredibly complex pattern.

“My heart is steel. My soul is the forge. My thoughts are life to my blade.”

I kiss the guards of both of Perzey's swords, and they float into the air, to circle around my head. I put Perzey's jewelry into one of my rings. The soul threads once attached to the items are gone. Taking my own swords, which lie on the ground where I dropped them, I stand and turn toward Xenia.

The cunt must have drank half the booze at the party. She pisses all over herself again, and scrambles backwards in a crab walk.