A Prison of Worlds (The Chained Worlds Chronicles Book 1) (41 page)

“Fine. 
What about nanites?”

“Shouldn’t
be any effect.  As far as technology is concerned nanites are just complex
chemical reactions.  No electricity and although I hear quantum calculations
are involved... hmm,” I paused in thought, while opened the fridge and pulled
out some more leftovers.  “Now that I think about it the energy overflow may cause
more runaway behavior.  I don’t really know.  They never had nanites at home. 
My guess is that it would be fine unless magic was actively doing something to
them.”

We
went back and forth like this for several hours, developing contingency plans
and ideas to minimize loss of life.  He had me record the ideas on my terminal. 
His new one would be delivered by the morning.  I would send him the file when
it arrived.  By some miracle, Conrad didn’t call us about his holy reports. 
Jeremy promised he would submit a report along with our suggestions to the
officer in the morning.  Eventually, he couldn’t keep his eyes open any longer
and he headed back to the room his sister was in on unsteady legs.

A
minute later I heard a yelp and rapid footsteps heading back to me.  “There’s a
freaking cougar lying on the bed next to Beth,” Jeremy yelped.

I
thought for a moment and then nodded, “Must be the babysitter.”

“Why
is there a huge cougar babysitting my sister?” my friend exclaimed, with
suppressed tension.

“I
know, it’s absurd,” I agreed with him.  “Mei went all Conrad on us when we
thought about leaving Beth alone.  Started spouting laws and talking about
responsibility.  She made us wait for a friend she had in a local pack to come babysit. 
Your laws are completely out of control.  Its amazing everyone isn’t in prison.”

“Oh,”
Jeremy said as the anger left him.  “That’s okay then.  She’s a good friend.”

“I
think she just didn’t want to be arrested,” I cautioned him.  He ignored me. 
Why the heck did he get mad at me for allowing his sister to defend herself and
it is okay to call in a random stranger to stay with her?

“Since
there is a big cat in the bed, is there another place to sleep?”

“Sure,
take my room.  You can grab some of the clothes in the closet.  I think you
ordered some extra last week.”

He
headed to the back of the house again while I examined the house.  The couch
was in disarray, with all the pillows crooked and an extra blanket crumpled
half on it and half on the floor.  Coffee stains littered the counter and dirty
cups and dishes littered the kitchen and tables.  Dust was tracked into the
hallway.  It was all completely unacceptable.  I got to work putting the house
in order.  The bedrooms were mostly soundproof so I also vacuumed the floor. 

I
also spent a few minutes in the bathroom determining the new limits of my body. 
As I had thought, the rebalanced energies, and excruciating pain, had indicated
a fundamental change in the limits the rune imposed on me.  The room was too small
to fully check, by fifteen feet tall I was kneeling with my head bent.  With
the extra size came the ability to have some nicely sized teeth.  The jaws were
limited to roughly humanoid shape, therefore, they still weren’t my forearm
sized weapons.  Nevertheless, it was better and I didn’t feel so defenseless.  There
is nothing like being able to bite someone’s face off to say ‘this is my
space’. 

After
I finished with the sizes, teeth and talons I quickly changed from ogre, dwarf,
elf and back to human.  Attempting to change outside a roughly humanoid form
only brought a dull ache to my chest.  An effort to change to a gaseous form
set it on fire.  When I was done I had mixed feelings, but in general I was
pleased. 

To
celebrate I popped open my wrist terminal and ordered several new sets of
really stretchy pants, shirt, and underclothes.  It wouldn’t do to ruin things
with any embarrassing wardrobe malfunctions.  After that it was time to get to
work.

Several
hours brought order to my tiny kingdom and it was with a sigh of contentment I
headed down to my lab.  I wanted see if I could etch the magic negation symbols
tiny enough to be placed on the inside my wrist terminal casing.  I had gotten
really fond of the thing and I wanted to be sure it wouldn’t go up in a billow
of blue smoke.  Once I was done with that, I would work on the healing circle. 
If I could get skilled enough to work the sigils on the advanced version, I
might be able to do something besides mourn if one of my friends accidentally
had their heads blown off.

The
next several days were a similar pattern.  There were no kidnappings or rescues;
however, I spent most of the days working on perfecting my skills with
circles.  There’s a surprising amount of dead time during these kind of long
term endeavors where you are simply working on the right arc or curve of a
sigil.  So I thought about our predicament.

When
I went upstairs Jeremy, Mei and I discussed various plans and possibilities. 
Beth meanwhile spent a lot of time exercising her mental muscles by the simple
expedient of floating a spinning coin over her hand.  The disk was a
collectible from ages back when they actually used physical money.  No doubt
the economy would soon go up in a puff of electronic logic when the end came. 
Jeremy was the one that brought up that delightful possibility.  I personally
put forward the theory that the next line of currency would be bottle caps.  Except
for moving the information onto military computers, we didn’t have a solution
to that particular disaster.

Conrad
ate up our ideas with the enthusiasm of the truly desperate.  Considering how
hard he was pushing the military and upper government to prepare, if nothing
happened his career would be infamous for its shortness.  Still, I had to give
the man props for sticking his neck out for what he believed.  He was rarely on
hand, conversely I would frequently see his hologram in the living room talking
with the others. 

Stella
hadn’t shown up yet.  She had obviously gotten detoured, however we were at a
loss about what to do about it, except alert the police to watch for an elf in
a fancy gown wandering lost around town on foot.  She had after all taken off
with my magical tooth of tracking.

I
was also haunted by an overpowering feeling we were missing something. 
Admittedly I had actually missed a lot so far, the most significant evidently was
the decade of planning that Jin’s recent actions had been hiding.  Nevertheless,
we kept coming back to the map we had made of the ley lines and nodes.  There
was an obvious choice for a portal to be opened as the trigger for the massive
spell Jin had set up.  In the middle of Minerva Park was the largest node in
the city.  It was even within a stone’s throw of where we had rescued Jeremy. 
Of course, it was surrounded by a half-dozen shifter packs and Conrad had
installed enough hardened surveillance to start his own spy agency.

The
other nodes all had their own watchers.  We had tried following the mages
summoning minor demons back to their home.  The problem was that their spies
were better than ours.  All the watched nodes never had any attempts.  Since we
were watching all the identified nodes this meant the next few days had been
remarkably quiet.  As the days passed that was actually a bad sign.  We had no clues
and watching the nodes had actually made fewer leads.  I personally suspected
scrying, yet even when I figured out how to use the anti scrying ward I didn’t
see how it would change.  Since they now knew all the nodes were watched I didn’t
think suddenly not being able to scry a location would make them dumb enough to
think it was no longer being observed.

On
day three, I went outside to stretch my legs and try something different to
distract myself.  With a small case of my supplies and an extra set of clothes in
tow I headed towards where Mat’s body had been found.  Or rather the remains
had been found.  It took me a while but after an hour I had finally found what
I thought might be a small chip of bone.  I located a flat surface nearby and
placing the fragment on it, started to engrave a circle with a hastily formed
talon.  I was about half way done and the energy within the lines were peaking
when I heard something.

“What
are you doing, Professor?” as a familiar voice asked.

Looking
around I was taken aback when I saw a glowing blue transparent figure.  “Magic,
who are you?”  The outline was unclear, like viewing something through pebbled
glass.  My first conclusion was it was an astral projection.

“It’s
me, Mat,” said the figure in a perfectly reasonable voice.  “Who else would be
in this godforsaken place?”

“Hey,
I live here,” I replied offended.  Except for the occasional roaming demons and
naked vampires, it was a fine neighborhood.  When the buildings weren’t collapsing. 
“You seem not all there.  You wouldn’t happen to be an astral projection?”  I
asked hopefully.  That would be the easiest option.

“No,
I am pretty sure I’m dead,” he said solemnly.  “Never seen anything as creepy
as a bunch of monster bugs devouring my body before.  I think it unlikely I
lived through it.”

“I
can see how that would be upsetting,” I commiserated.  I didn’t know much about
ghosts.  Some people think they are echoes in the firmament of a person or even
a person’s actual soul.  “Are you bound to this location?”

“Not
really, I just feel more real here while you’re doing whatever it is you’re
doing.  Before that, I was somewhere else that made me feel... something.”

“Interesting,
I didn’t know ghosts were sustained by magic,” I nodded to myself.  “So when I
charged my circle, you manifested.  Before that, you were likely basking is the
energies of a node.  Say, you don’t feel the urge to eat human flesh or swallow
souls, do you?”

“Can’t
say I do, but I was frightfully cold before you did your thing,” he waved
towards my circle.  “What is it?”

“Well,
I was trying to see if I could regenerate you from this tiny bone fragment.”

“Would
that have worked?  I can’t say I would mind being alive again,” he said
hopefully.

“Frankly,
it was a long shot,” I responded hesitantly.  “Chances are good it would be a
mindless clone.  That’s why brain regrowth is illegal in hospitals, or so
Jeremy tells me.”

“I
can’t say that sounds good.”

“Well,
it wasn’t my first choice.  But it might have worked and it may possibly have had
your memories.”  Not likely but possible.  “There’s another more powerful
circle that can grab your ‘soul’ from the firmament and incarnate it within that
created body.”

“Why
not use that one, am I a soul?” he asked doubtfully.

“That’s
a question for a priest, however seeing you now I am inclined to think it would
work.  The drawback is that I can’t do it yet.  I bet could in a few weeks.”

“I
feel better than I have in a while,” offered Mat’s ghost.  “What’s the hurry?”

“Well...
there’s a good chance the world as you know it is ending in the next couple
days.  I figured ‘What the hell’?  What do we have to lose?”

“The
world’s ending?” Mat asked in concern.

“Turns
out Jin has had a greater demon helping him out for the last ten years.  There
is an excellent chance he is going to create hell on earth anytime now.”

“Wow,
that sucks,” Mat said morosely.

“You
seem calmer than you used to,” I said as I sat down.  I had paused in creating
the circle.  As ritual magic goes, it’s pretty forgiving of such delays.

“Already
dead.  I would hate the see the world end though.  Why did I come back?  I
never saw anyone like me when I was alive.”

“Me
either,” I said thoughtfully.  “Demons, even the little pests that got you,
have significant auras.  In the numbers they had, it might have created a high
enough threshold where you manifested from your impression on the firmament.” 
If that was all it took my world would have been crawling with spirits and
ghosts.  While they weren’t unheard of they were not common.  There was
something else involved.  “Anyway, I am not sure you would be able to inhabit a
clone of yourself, but we can try it.  With you here it has a much better
chance of success.”

“I
suppose if the world is going to end there no point in waiting,” Matt admitted.

“So
be it!  Let me finish this, stand in the circle and think happy thoughts,” I
said as I concentrated on finishing the circle.  Almost an hour later, I was
done.  I nodded at the spirit and activated it.

The
bone fragment, glowed and sparked, then started to bubble.  Within seconds, it
had gained mass until it was recognizable as a thigh bone.  Then tissue grew
along its length as the next bone extended up and down on either end continuing
to form a skeleton.  It was not instantaneous.  After ten minutes, some muscle
had formed over the bones and organs were visible through a bubbling froth.

“I’m
not feeling a pull yet.  Should I be worried?” a concerned Mat asked.

“It
probably won’t happen until the brain forms,” I advised keeping an eye on the
process and making sure the energies fed into the circle was consistent.  “Hopefully
the nerves and skin are complete or it’s going to hurt.”