Age of the Gods: The Complete, twelve novel, fantasy series (The Blood and Brotherhood Saga) (68 page)

Seth took his mental notes, and then took a moment to relax and listen to Sara’s heartbeat and breathing. He now felt he could pull off what he planned so long as he had enough time. Not even sure if she could hear him, he told her he was working on a solution and hoped that soon he would be able to help her further. Then Seth, knowing he hadn’t the time to take a break pondered what change he should perform next. He had already located the ribcage and head. Knowing that he would have to tackle these eventually he went for the easier one first. His previous failure on the ribcage he believed was due to his being ill prepared and the bat creature’s upright position. This in mind, Seth grabbed his tunic and tossed it over the beast that still attempted to stand, but wobbling like a toddler, would fall once again. Seth quickly wrapped the tunic tightly around it and using the arms of his tunic like cords, secured the beast’s new legs together with one sleeve, and bound its arms with the other. But even bound as it was, the bat would not remain still enough for Seth to feel safe removing the protective ribcage from its body. Seeing no kind solution, Seth simply repeated what the creature had already done to itself earlier. Grabbing the bat creature's head, Seth firmly bashed it into the stone floor until the beast lost consciousness. It was a wicked and crude method, but it worked.

Seth knew it would not be long before the creature managed to heal itself, so working quickly he located the matching patterns in both auras and quickly replaced the bat's ribcage and watched as the old one withered and another grew to replace it. There was a moment when Seth thought he had failed, when the new ribs began to form and were so small they squeezed the creature's chest cavity to an unbelievably tiny size. However, as they expanded the pressure was reduced and the creature thrived. Seth had his work cut out for him. For although the ribcage seemed a rather simple structure of stacked bones, each of those bones was interlaced with muscles and blood vessels, added to which the new ribs came complete with abdominal muscles that would need to be properly connected through an intricate patchwork. The number of connections to the ribcage pattern in the greater scope of the total aura was immense. The human body had hundreds of connecting patterns here, and the bat had numbers near equal to those of the humans. But being able to distinguish the various connecting patterns, Seth was more easily able to compare the two and sort out their differences. Making a few minor adjustments, several dozen swaps and a couple of small alterations, in less than two hours Seth had himself a miniature batman with humanoid torso, legs and arms. Overall, if Seth could get the creature to wear a hood, it could pass as a small child, but the head was still a problem yet to be solved.

Seth had identified the location of the head pattern already and had found out that he could not remove it as a whole. Instead he would have to work with the smaller patterns within it. It was a daunting task, for inside the head were hundreds of tiny patterns, and within some of those patterns were thousands of interconnected miniscule patterns, and within those were thousands more and Seth did not have the time to sort out millions of minute details. He would have to instead work to change the creature’s main physical features. Seth had no idea how he could alter some of those without catastrophic results. The shape of the bat's skull differed greatly from that of a human, but Seth could puzzle out no way to remove and replace it without instantly killing the beast. So for now Seth ignored the skull in an attempt to try and locate some of the actual facial features.

Upon close investigation, Seth realized that most of the smallest and tiniest patterns were similar to those of nerve connections, and so associated them with either the spine or brain and as such steered clear of them at all costs. Some of the larger pieces, however, had their own connective patterns to both muscle and bone and so could be the mouth, lips, eyes or nose, but there were more puzzle pieces than the creature had facial features, so it was a process that cost Seth four more bats. He had already dwindled the population of bats in the room down to only nine more. Seth worked smart after losing the most human of the bats. He began with the facial features of each of the ensuing bats, saving him immense amounts of work each time and he finally worked out all the facial features and inner mouth and throat muscle structure. Seth re-mutated this final creature’s arms, legs and ribcage as well.

Although very happy with his progress, Seth simply could not get his mind around the alteration of the skull. He could attempt to locate and change the bat's own skull pattern, but the slightest mistakes could cost him several more of the few remaining bats, if not all of them, and if they were all lost, so too was Sara. Seth believed he had located the swirling web representing the skull, having had to attach the connective patterns of muscles from the facial features all to the same bone connections. But just knowing where it was, was of little use. Seth pondered the dilemma for hours as his miniature man creature worked out some of the finer details of using his new arms and legs as well as sight. This, however, forced Seth to close his eyes to better concentrate without the distraction of an apparent toddler in the room. Seth was lost deep in thought pondering his predicament when he was struck simultaneously by both his solution and a great pain in his leg.

Opening his eyes to see the cause of the pain Seth was momentarily frozen in shock and disgust. The small bastard had apparently managed to crawl or waddle his way across the room to Seth, and apparently had chosen Seth as an acceptable food source. It had sunk his little razor sharp teeth into Seth’s calf muscle where he now began to gnaw viciously. Appalled at the beast’s actions, Seth kicked out at the creature with his other leg, sending it somersaulting across the floor to crash in a heap against the far wall with a scream of pain and a crunch. Seth, fearing his work ruined, watched the creature a moment to assure himself he had not killed it before looking to his own leg.

Seth bled from the dozens of small penetrating wounds, but overall the damage to his leg was not major, so retrieving his tunic he wrapped it around the injury and cinched it tight to keep pressure on the wound. Returning his gaze to the creature, his solution in hand, he simply waited for the bat to heal before he continued. But before Seth had the opportunity to progress further, the creature revealed its true nature. Seth had in fact witnessed the process before but hadn’t thought too deeply into the implications of how it could affect his work until now. For not only had the creature fed upon his flesh, but in doing so the beast had somehow siphoned off a very small portion of Seth’s immense life force. Without giving Seth the time to react to the realization, the bat creature twisted and altered Seth’s life force creating of it a small replica of its own original life force before allowing the two sparks of life to intertwine and become one. The beast began to mutate again.

Seth watched in horror as his hours of work were destroyed. He could perform it again he knew, but it was a loss none the less. Restoring to a small degree a portion of its prior physical form. twisting and withering its new human appendages and features, the creature became grotesque, misshapen and wretched creature with long boney fingers with a thin film of flesh between them. Its legs had withered and its feet twisted at odd angles, the toes becoming pointier. Its facial features were ruined as its eyes had taken on a milky hue. Seth was distraught. He had found a way to alter the skull without killing the creature and yet the little beast had thwarted all his efforts. Even through this major setback, however, Seth found knowledge.

With his expanded mental capacity Seth could recall memories in vivid detail, and looking to the ceiling at the remaining bats that still clung there, Seth realized that each of them had changed quite a bit from the time that they had arrived. No mortal eye would have noted the change, but through Seth’s vision of the gods he could see that each of the bats had become noticeably diminished. Each of their auras had shrunk greatly throughout the day, and Seth imagined that at this rate, none of the bats would survive another week. This fact explained the creature’s strange feeding habits. The bats had to sustain both their bodies and their souls, so to speak. As such, they gained nourishment from the animals they fed upon through siphoning off their blood, as well as replenishing their rapidly failing life forces in the process. Without feeding, the creatures would die within days, not of starvation, but their bodies would simply cease to have the spark of life within them as if they had died from old age. Seth made sense of the situation in short order, but also realized that much of the day had passed as the light filtering down from the room above had begun to fade. Fearing the bats would leave when darkness came, Seth returned to his work, starting over with the horribly mutated creature across the room from him.

Stripping the creature of both its twisted legs and grotesque malformed arms, Seth rendered the monster immobile. Then he repeated the process to remove and re-grow the beast yet another human ribcage and abdomen, and then deciding against facial features for the moment, Seth next decided to test his skull theory. Pouring yet more of his own life force into Sara, Seth removed several small portions equal to that of the bat's aura, keeping each portion separate. Knowing he could not remove the skull pattern from the beast's life force Seth set about doing something he had done hundreds of times, although not in this capacity. It was a simple solution if it worked as Seth intended, and just as he had melded wolf with human, Seth went about extracting only the skull pattern of one portion of Sara’s aura within him, and attempted to meld the pattern with the skull pattern of the bat. Just as he hoped, within seconds the creature's skull became more humanoid. Seth repeated the process several more times and each time he melded more portions of human skull pattern to the bat skull pattern, the more human the beast appeared.

Again and again Seth repeated the process, nearly eliminating all traces of the bat's previous skull, but for the life of him Seth could not get the two upper canine teeth to cooperate. They had become more proportionate to the rest of the human teeth in the creature’s mouth, but still looked slightly too long and a bit too sharp. No matter how many times Seth repeated the process of combining human with bat, the teeth refused to alter beyond this point. It was a minor detail, barely distinguishable in fact, but Seth wanted Sara to remain perfect when he healed her. However, he supposed this one tiny flaw could be overlooked, and so went about the process of completing the creature’s facial features for a second time. Having an almost perfect human face, Seth then restored to the beast a new pair of arms and legs, completing the transformation. But this time Seth knew he could not let the creature feed.

Removing both the tunic from his injured leg, and the belt that held his trousers, Seth cautiously approached, remaining clear of the little man's teeth. Capturing the unsteady creature was easy enough and Seth soon had the beast hog-tied with his belt, laying face down upon the tunic. Seth admired his work appreciatively, having altered the beast’s physical appearance nearly entirely to resemble that of a miniature human. Though the physical changes were amazing Seth had one last test for the small creature, hoping he had left all the beast's inherent abilities intact. Returning to his pile of armor, Seth retrieved his sword before returning to his captive. Then, grabbing the top of the small creature’s head, Seth wrenched its neck back, exposing its throat. Careful to replicate Sara’s wound exactly, Seth drew his blade down the side of the creature’s neck slicing through both the main artery and vein there. Seth waited as the creature bled out in less than a minute. Watching the spark of life in the creature begin to diminish rapidly Seth knew inwardly that he had failed. Somewhere in the transformation process he must have damaged the beast's ability to heal swiftly. Either that or even these creatures' amazing ability was not great enough to recover from such a wound. Seth did not know which was the case as he turned to Sara, having failed her yet again.

Taking his place upon the floor, Seth shifted to lift Sara’s head as the last of the evening’s light began to fade from the room and the remaining bats began to stir. It was then that the creature, Seth’s ultimate failure, began to thrash about wildly. Seth looked, expecting to witness the beast’s death throes, but found that it had indeed managed to heal, though the process had drained the creature of an immense amount of life, so much in fact that it was unlikely it would survive the night. So diminished, Seth wondered if the beast would have enough life left to have his intended effect upon Sara. Doubting his prisoner would be enough, Seth turned his gaze upwards to the now stirring bats, just as they began to drop from the ceiling and take wing, one by one fleeing through the portal in the stone above, disappearing into the night.

No time to waste, Seth jumped back to his feet and reaching out with his mind stole one of the last bat’s wings mid-flight. Careening into the wall the beast came crashing down from above where Seth caught it before releasing it upon the ground below him. Looking back up, Seth watched as the final bat climbed through the air, flapping its great wings, to exit the chamber. Seth targeted this beast as it made the hole in the ceiling, and as it cleared the hole it too dropped from the air wingless, bouncing off the floor of the chamber above before it came spinning down through the portal and through the air into Seth’s waiting arms below.

Having two more subjects to work upon, Seth gauged Sara’s progress. With the current rate of her dwindling aura, she had until sometime in the early morning. Feeling assured he could complete them both before dawn, Seth went to work transforming his latest two victims. Seth worked on through the night, perfecting his transformations, and two hours before the sun rose Seth was finished. His first completed creature had expired during the night, so Seth had used the belt to bind one of his latest mutations and the tunic to bind the other. This time however Seth was careful and kept them well enough away from him and Sara, as well as from each other, so that no one accidentally got bitten. Seth felt assured that one of the small creatures would suffice, but having a back-up couldn’t hurt his chances. Now Seth was ready, and his plan was simple.