Life as a New Hire Ch. 38

The Golden Mare held up her sword to the Dying Light and judged her women had performed their duties long enough. The shrill horns unique to the Amazons sounded 'retire'. My ancestor, proud that she'd fought well in her first battle with all three of the housemates surviving, turned to tell her aunt something. The arrow from an Alan bow pierced her chainmail coif and slashed through her throat.

She spit out a gout of blood. Her aunt grabbed her niece's reins while calling out to her other kinswoman. They hurried her to the rear until she was sheltered by the mass of horsewomen. A warrior, more skilled in the healing arts than most, rushed to her side. My ancestor was still conscious, though she could not speak. The look on the new woman's face said it all.

As her mind slipped into darkness, she felt herself falling. Was she falling out of the arms of her guardians, off the back of her favorite mare, down to the trampled muddy earth? Or was she falling into the arms of her ancestors, the last of her line? As she passed from this world into the next, she heard the whispering of her Goddess ~ 'this is not over and you have not died in vain'.

(Three Goddesses Bad)

The medically induced fog was being dissipated by something foul smelling being waved in front of my nose. My muscles ached from me sleeping in an uncomfortable position for far too much time.

"Aaahhh ... I croaked. My throat was parched. "What the ...?"

[Mandarin] "He is waking up."

[Mandarin] "You three leave us," one of the necromancers spoke. "You, go get cleaning supplies and return in 30 minutes. You – stay by the door."

I opened my dry eyes to take in the scene.

I remained a certifiable threat. Out of the corner of my eyes (I couldn't move my head), two commandos were leaving out one door along with some guy in a pseudo-uniform who first bowed, then left with them. One guy in another pseudo-uniform bowed and was heading out the other door. The last man, the one told to stay, was the commando remaining on guard by the door the first three exited.

As for me ... I was stripped naked, spread-eagle on an onyx table. It was man-shaped with its greatest dimension being close to 3 meters. I've fucked women on a variety of stone objects. (Volcanic rock has its own textures.) My ankles and wrists were held in place by metal shackles. My head, quite literally, was in a vice. The only restraints I could see were on my ankles.

No Torquemada chains for these guys. They'd shelled out for the very best – some sort of a magnetic job with a handy dandy green light that informed me I was screwed.

"Where is Aya?" I croaked.

[Some funky Sino-style language I didn't know I knew] "Beginning marking his head."

The junior Gong tau priest began to draw something on my forehead. I flexed, accomplishing nothing.

"WHERE IS AYA!" I screamed. The senior Necromancer who had done all the talking until now, looked to the remaining commando.

[Mandarin] "What is the stinky barbarian saying?" he asked the guard.

[Mandarin] "He is inquiring the location of the child he was captured with," the man translated. Shit-head Honcho didn't speak English, didn't know I spoke Mandarin (or his sorcerous tongue), so believed there to be a language barrier which might be a problem if they interrogated me.

The twins were nowhere in sight and only the brother had spoken English before. My 'where' was a source of curiosity to me. I felt a slight, continuous tremor coming through the table. The space was slightly curved inward toward the top. The room was shrouded in black silk hangings. Then the whole room shuddered. We were still on an airborne aircraft.

Well – fiddle sticks ... I was still a bit dopey. Pamela wasn't likely to be busting in to save me anytime soon. I was on my own. How long had I been out anyway? No chronometers were visible.

[Mandarin] "Ha (the guy's name)," the scumbag laughed. "Tell him the child – his Aya – will be trained in the arts of a concubine, serving the lusts of my temple for many years."

Dick-cheese guard translated. I grew introspective. Apparently this lack of response irritated the current lead bad-guy.

[Mandarin] "Since he has not bothered to take her virginity, I will," the necromancer grinned like an eel ... if eels could grin, "once you are my slave." The guard translated. He got creative too.

"Once the Honorable Tsu (Chief Sleaze-Douche's name) has taken her flower, myself and another will take her other holes," the guard added. An angry retort was pointless and would only make feel them powerful. Pleading was even more useless.

"With the 'itty bitty' size of your erect penises, I'm not worried about her or any of her 'blossoms' being un-blossomed," I relaxed. Aya was alive and not 'deflowered'. They really should have killed her. Now there were two Amazons on the plane. They didn't understand that Amazons trained to fight all their battles outnumbered. Idiots.

I had Aya and she had me. These bastards were doomed. Exactly how they were 'doomed' I hadn't figured out yet. The guard said nothing for several seconds.

[Mandarin] "What did he say?" Tsu asked. The guard told him. Tsu didn't like that. He held out his horrific looking fang-like blade for me to see then dragged the tip along my erect cock.

[Mandarin] "Tell him if my Scepter of Manhood is not enough, I will animate his and use it on her instead."

My, that was rude. Any man who refers to his pecker as a 'Scepter of Manhood' had serious a serious size-phobia going on.

My cock was unimpressed, remaining tall, full, loud and proud. The commando translated while attempting to remain utterly emotionless.

"Oh ... let me think ... how long is this ritual going to take?" I inquired. Translated.

[Mandarin] "Tell him it will last the rest of his life," Tsu sneered. Translated.

"Cool," I chuckled. "Do you have a phone?" The commando mulled that over.

"Who could you possibly call, Dog?" he glared.

"No," snorted. "You've got me all wrong."

"I want you to call your mother and let her know you won't make it home – ever again. I'm going to end all your lives," I promised.

That finally earned me a sliver of emotion from the guy – anger.

[Mandarin] "He brags the he will kill us," the guard told his master.

That wasn't what I said! I said I'd 'end' them. Like most great potentates, I had others do my killing for me.

[Mandarin] "Better men have tried," Tsu scoffed. "They have all fallen before our Mandate in the end. Even in death, this one will serve us."

Wow, flashback to the Witch-King of Angmar.

'All the killers I have in mind are women, you misogynist freak'.

The goo on my forehead began to get irritating – alternating rapidly between hot and cold. Tsu began doing the same thing on my thighs.

His mixture of designs and Chinese characters was only partially visible to me. His buddy was working down my cheeks then onto my neck. They met at the bottom of my ribcage. Half were whole 'unspeakable' runes and blasphemous prayers to 'entities' whose names were the fantasy handles of every 14-year old geek overdosed on sugar and caffeine, deluding himself into thinking that hacking Mario Cart made him the next Cyber-Enigma.

The others; they were mapping me out like a side of beef. My skin felt electric. The duo began chanting. The nameless guy on top pressed the tip of his blade against my widow's peak (as much as I had one). Tsu pressed his point against my inner thigh. Beyond the painful scalping I was about to endure, he was going to start bleeding me out. This definitely wasn't torture.

They had promised to cut my soul out of my body and rip all of my secrets from my dead flesh. A piece of etiquette unknown to me until that moment reared its ugly head.

'Cáel,' Dot Ishara whispered. 'Swallow your tongue.' My first thought was 'Ishara shouldn't be expending so much of her energy trying to push herself through the Weave' then it occurred to me these dumbasses were doing all the heavily lifting for her.

They were parting the Veil and severing the Weave with their necromantic incantations and symbolism. I swallowed my damn tongue, or I truly tried to. I was choking alright. Just in time, Tsu began applying the cutting edge to my inner thigh. I felt that horrible chill that had every hair on my body standing tall.

A divine warning in Sumerian telling the Gong tau priest to stop what he issued forth from my mouth sans any air to let it be heard. Two small lines: 'This one is inviolate. Stop right now'.

No reaction from the necromancers. My lips formed a second warning, 'You have been called forth and warned. Cease at once.' I think ole Tsu began sensing something wasn't right, so whomever was moving my lips rattled off the third and final warning as quick as she could.

'One sliver of flesh, one drop of blood, one tear of sorrow and I will have my revenge'. It was something beyond my unintelligible gaks that alerted Tsu he was about to be boned. His assistant wasn't all that much in tune with the mojo. His blade sunk into my forehead maybe a centimeter.

[Mandarin] "STOP! Tsu screamed at the man. Too late. I felt a drop of blood ooze forth from the wound. It was 'SO ON!'

That point of etiquette? When a spirit owns, or possesses someone and it comes across a power, or a minion of a power ~ like Gong tau practitioners who work with demons ~ the possessing entity was required to give fair warning.

It wasn't Sarrat Irkalli, Sumerian Goddess of the Netherworld's fault that I'd swallowed my tongue (I'd done it on Ishara's orders and was hers to command) so that my word of caution were rendered soundless.

She'd met all that was required before an epic ass-whooping was going to be handed down, you know, the 'Old Testament, Wrath of God' kind of shit. Remember how I felt that the Gong tau adherents were doing something wrong? I was right. They were. This wasn't a 'slap on the wrist', or even '15 years in an Angolan prison where your nickname was Sweet Meat' as the necessary atonement either.

This whole room howled out its violation of the Weave. It was unnatural in a supernatural kind of way ... if that made sense? Magic was bad for a reason. Even though magic existed, the Universe still operated on Scientific Principles; things like conservation of mass and thermodynamics. Creating, or removing mass in Reality bashed the stability of the Universe over its head.

The same went for energy. If you threw lighting you were pulling electrons through the Weave, weakening it. Whatever they did in our reality, they accomplished by stealing from the legends and echoes of the past and all the potentials from the future. That was why Gods could appear so tough – they were devouring random possible futures.

Stealing souls was much, much worse; it stole parts of the present (the living souls) and pushed them to the other side of the Weave, where they didn't belong yet. Those stolen souls allowed entities on the wrong side of the Weave to tap into that 'real' power in our world without immediate repercussions (the bad karma).

It was short term power that put the long-term survival of the Weave in danger. The energy of that soul was supposed to power the Weave, but it wasn't doing that anymore. Tsu was about to be way overdrawn with some nasty-ass fuckers whose runes he'd scrawled on my flesh. Whoops. He'd promised them something that was someone else's property. In this instance – it was the Cáel soul shard triplet of the Alal-Baraqu-Cáel trio.

It belonged to Sarrat Irkalli and I had the feeling ever since she, Dot Ishara and SzélAnya had leapt inside my back in the warehouse, they'd been waiting to come out and play. I was Dot's House Head. I had made a pledge in SzélAnya's name before the Amazon Council, making her a candidate to rejoin the Host's Goddess and to use the Amazons to protect her mortal offspring from whomever was hunting them to extinction.

'Yours Truly' being in mortal peril (yet again) was as good a chance as any for SzélAnya to lay down the required miracle-working on the Amazons' behalf to advance her house down the road to acceptance. It was SzélAnya, daughter of the Cosmic Dragon, who's shared parental memories had enlightened me so I 'knew' what the heart of a dead star felt like. Through her sire, she shared his Legend. I felt so cold all over again.

In a non-Cáel encounter, Tsu had three normal safe-guards to keep himself alive.

I) Set up wards dedicated to his demonic Allies/Masters. He had created them – this room – but he'd put me INSIDE them to perform his soul-stealing ritual. Hadn't any of these bozos heard of the Trojan Horse? We were talking about the freaking Amazons here. The Iliad was our primer for why we'd had an undying hatred for all things Hellas going on for the past three thousand years.

II) He could have prayed for the Pacts (in which he pledged his soul to the Demon Kings) would ward him in the same way Sarrat Irkalli's actions 5000 years ago safeguarded me. This could only be voided if he refused to obey the three required warnings. Except Sarrat Irkalli had warned him the required three times, and he'd missed it.

Unless the Demon Kings wanted to have an occult showdown with around three dozen pantheons full of deities in an airplane in mid-flight, they wouldn't respond. Their idiot minion had violated the terms of his warranty. His were not the kind of Bosses who followed the 'spirit' of the agreement over the precise wording.

III) The Last Chance? The Goddesses had established a nexus point piercing the Weave locked inside my body and only a ritual wound unlock it. Don't bleed me and the damn spiritual door couldn't open. As long as he could keep the three goddess on their side of the Weave, he could fight them through their proxy – me. His buddy, by drawing blood, had initiated the soul-stealing ritual. The door was opened and the Goddesses stepped through.

Two final notes : Don't fuck with the Weave. IT will get you. Also, all that bad karma that normally stops Divinities from interfering? Well, all that bad karma was still accumulating ... for the side that had started the fight = the Demon Kings. Oh, when/if Tsu ever got back to his Masters ~ them being displeased would only be compounded by them being called Demon Kings.

Round One

Sarrat Irkalli : Since I could actually see spirits, I saw her spring forth from my body, looking like a Harry Potter Dementor on Slimfast. Seriously man, the chick needed to hit an 'All you can Eat' buffet, chomping down on a heaping helping of ... of something. She was all skin and bones. I'm not saying I wouldn't do her ... but I have abysmally low standards.

SzélAnya : She went down through the floor transforming from woman into dragon, still spiritual invisible to almost all. The two other people onboard who could see her were otherwise occupied. Before she left, my bonds' green lights turned red as they flipped open. The sole commando guardian was on the ball and went for his pistol. Whoops again. That was made of metal. A lightning bolt arched out of my chest and played Old Sparky on him for about thirty seconds. Ugh ... burnt pork.

Dot Ishara : She decided to sit this round out. The other two seemed to have my salvation well in hand.

Round Two

Sarrat Irkalli : I'll tell Alal he can go plug his dick into one of those turbines inside Hoover Dam if he ever asks me to help him get revenge on this Monster. I am NEVER going to piss this Bitch off (and Thank You Dot Ishara for making it so those two couldn't read my mind either). Tsu was ... immediately exsanguinated which is an unimaginative way of saying she forced every bit of blood in his body out of every orifice and pore.

I think he was alive for several seconds after that ... not that he's really dead even now. More on that later. The second necromancer started to scream which clued me into this whole space being sound-proofed.

Dot Ishara : 'Let her have her fun,' she whispered to my resurgent spirit.

"No shit," I mumbled. Since she was an intelligent & capable divinity and knew I wasn't stupid ... no wait, it wasn't that her pussy itching. She couldn't read my mind and it was making her overly protective. "What did SzélAnya tell you about me?"

Round Three

Sarrat Irkalli : The sole survivor, being gripped by boundless, and totally justified, fear that he'd backed the wrong side all his life (or so I hoped), retreated to the far cabin wall. I was sitting up, so I got the full splendor of Sarrat Irkalli coagulating Tsu's blood into some horrific crimson, liquid doppelganger of her true shape. I looked away and found myself staring into his terrified eyes.

[Mandarin] "You are on your own, Buddy," I addressed him. Yes, here at the end of his existence, I was letting him in on the fact that I did know his language and knew every evil thing he and his cohorts had said when they assumed I was both powerless and ignorant.

SzélAnya : The plane bucked abruptly. A peel of thunder vibrated the whole craft. When my feet swung off the slab small arches of electricity beat my feet to the floor. Great. More than one girl had jokingly called me the 'Energizer Bunny' ... and here I was, a lighting jar. Close enough.

Dot Ishara : 'That was uncalled for and mean. Still, I accept the fact that we have used you as a lure to kill them and steal their souls.' Oh yeah. I should have realized that in one fell swoop, Sarrat Irkalli could gather up the soul, shade and essence of a major Gong tau necromancer without violating the shaky agreements that kept those factions on their side of the Weave.

That was pretty much it. Oh, the unnamed Gong tau mook went down screaming. His fists splashed through her liquid body while the talons she formed tore chunks off his body. It took about forty-five seconds for Sarrat Irkalli to finish a fight that should have taken five. Oh, she wasn't done with him – OH NO! She motioned me off the table. I rapidly complied.

She dragged his corpse onto the slab, taking my place. When she did so, I noticed three things. Tsu's, his henchman's and bodyguard's souls were all trapped in this room with us. None of them had SzélAnya' power to penetrate the wards – from the inside. The commando's ghost was slowly sitting up, clearly confused with his new state. Not Tsu though.

His specter flitted around the room, desperately trying to find a pinprick in his wards and failing. The henchmen's soul was still cowering over the place where his body had died. Sarrat Irkalli began her own ancient Sumerian invocations. Within seconds, the henchman's ghost was screaming as the ritual dragged his essence back to his corpse.

The Netherworld Goddess began to 'compact' the body. With her hand on his chest, she was exerting gravitational pressures that were collapsing spirit, flesh, organs and bones into one 12 cm long carnivorous creature's incisor. I could still hear him screaming inside his prison. She picked up her handiwork.

I was busy gathering up stuff and taking what I could from the deceased commando because someone would be coming back soon. I realized that my finger was no longer chard. I mumbled a quick thanks to Dot Ishara for healing me. SI put a squishy hand on my right shoulder. I slipped out from under her grip and stood away from the corpse ... and its soul. Quick as lightning, she skewered the guy's phantom with her new dagger. The spirit wailed as it was sucked completely into the blade.

[Sumerian] "Hold this for me, mortal. Don't stab anyone with it because that will expend its power. To recharge it, I'll need another soul. Do I need to repeat myself?" SI enlightened me. I shook my head. She flipped the blade around so she held the curved blade and I had the hilt ~ which resembled the bleached root of an ancient Smilodon fang.