Extermination (Daniel Black Book 3) (41 page)

“Marvelous. That venomous bitch will never know what happened. Hah! She’ll probably blame it on old One Eye. Only, how will you reach Skogheim undetected?”

“There’s an interesting story to that,” I replied. “When I gained my flesh sorcery I had a few thoughts about expanding it into shapeshifting. I didn’t have time to take it that far, but I did get two specific transformations out of it. One was the catgirl shape I used on Tina, which is what drew Bast’s attention. The other shape I can do is a dark elf.”

I watched her face carefully as I spoke, and I’m pretty sure the surprise that momentarily showed there was real. That was followed a moment later by realization.

“That can’t be an accident,” Cerise commented.

“I suspect we have Prometheus to thank,” Hecate said. “I have followed certain advice of his in recent years, and he has always seen further than anyone else. Still, that changes nothing. If you can make this work, Daniel, then you have my approval to do it.”

“Thank you, ma’am. I’ll give it a shot.”

I hesitated.

“Is Prometheus still imprisoned?”

Hecate’s mood fell a bit. “Sadly, yes. The chains Zeus forged were mighty indeed, and since the fall of Olympus there has been no one who could free him.”

“Mara could,” I mused.

“Do you think to lure her away from her kin?” Hecate asked. “It’s a pretty thought, but an idle one. I feel certain the Titan of Forethought has already arranged his freedom somehow, though it may be long ages in coming. Better to focus on your own struggles, and leave the affairs of the gods to the gods.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “I’ll do that.”

“Good. I shall take my leave then. Be well, my disciples, and take care of one another.”

I glanced at Cerise for just a moment, and when I looked back Hecate was gone.

“So, your plan is to sneak into Skogheim and kill the ape men with some kind of weird magic poison?” Cerise asked.

“More or less.”

“You get to be the one who explains it to Avilla.”

“Joy. I’ll talk to her in the morning.”

I was expecting her to throw a fit. Instead she just listened intently to my explanation. When I was done she took my hand, and looked into my eyes.

“Promise me that you won’t go until you’re confident you can make this work,” she said.

“Done.”

“And that if you aren’t sure, you’ll try a different plan instead?”

“Sure. I’m not interested in getting killed, Avilla. I just don’t think we can afford to sit here and let the enemy keep attacking us until they find a plan that works.”

She took a deep breath, and let it out slowly.

“Alright. I trust you, Daniel. If you say this is our best hope, then I’ll believe in you.”

Wow. She said that so earnestly. There was a reason I’d fallen for this girl, and it wasn’t just her beauty.

“How can we help?” She went on.

“Well, if you know any blessings of good luck or general sneakiness this would be a good time to try them out.”

“I can do luck,” Avilla offered. “Enough that you won’t be found out over some silly little random accident, anyway.”

“Thanks, sweetie. That’s a big help. Beyond that, just be really careful about safety. I’m going to have to set up a special lab for this project, and take a lot of precautions to make sure the energies I’m working with stay isolated there. We need to make sure no one except me ever goes in there, or even opens the door.”

“This sounds quite dangerous,” Elin observed.

“It is. The forces I’m going to be working with will kill anyone without a healing amulet in short order, and normal healing won’t do much to help. What’s worse is that there are several ways it can cling to an intruder and be carried out of the lab. It would be very easy for a servant to catch a dose of radiation, and then carry it around the palace for a few hours exposing everyone else before they die. Avilla, I think you might actually be immune because of your nature. But pregnant women are especially vulnerable, so I don’t want to take any chances.”

“I’ll have Sefwin post guards,” Cerise said firmly. “You’re sure you can keep this contained?”

“I’m not going to take any chances with it,” I assured her.

Which was easier said than done, since I didn’t even have a Geiger counter. I’d wracked my brains trying to remember how those things work, to no avail. The frustrating thing was I could clearly remember having read about that way back in college, and thinking it was one of those clever solutions that’s really obvious in retrospect. But no matter how I cudgeled my brain I couldn’t remember the actual design.

Sometimes I really miss the internet.

Instead, my standard radiation detector ended up being a rat in a cage, wearing a collar enchanted to heal radiation sickness. The enchantment was linked to a dial mounted on top of the cage, which would show how much load it was under. A crude system, and there was no way to relate it to the measurements I was familiar with. But it was what I had.

To make sure I maintained good containment of everything I worked with I turned one of the larger unfinished spaces into a new lab. There were two small airlock-style rooms that one had to pass through before reaching the main work space, and all the doors were stone. The first room was a changing area where I’d leave my normal clothes and equipment when entering, and the second had a shower and a wardrobe for storing cheap robes I could wear while I worked. I put a rat cage in each of these rooms, so I could confirm that I wasn’t accidentally tracking out radioactive dust or something.

The actual lab had fairly thick stone walls, which I covered with an inch of iron for extra strength and to ensure they remained airtight. Since it was three stories tall there was plenty of space to work with, so I also laid down a layer of water two feet thick across the floor to act as radiation shielding. Good thing I’d learned how to do a basic water conjuration and banishment from working with Elin, because I wasn’t about to have her come in here every time I needed to rework things.

A judicious application of force magic allowed me to cover the walls and ceiling the same way, and even the door when it was closed. That should be more than enough to stop any neutrons or gamma radiation from reaching the stone of the walls, and unlike a lot of materials induced radiation isn’t a serious problem with water.

Unlike, say, stone. I was pretty sure that if I started playing around with big neutron sources the walls would quickly become radioactive without that layer of protection. So would my own body, for that matter. Keeping a thick wall of water between myself and my experiments should prevent that sort of problem, but I set up a third rat cage to keep next to myself as a way of monitoring my potential dosage.

As a final isolation step I redesigned my personal force field to have an airtight mode, with a variant of Elin’s air freshening spell to allow me to breathe when it was sealed. As long as that was active I’d have to move by flying, and rely entirely on force magic to manipulate objects. Inconvenient, but worth it to ensure I was completely isolated from the environment of the lab. I didn’t need to accidentally inhale a lungful of radioactive dust, or carelessly track it out when I left.

With my protective measures in place I could get to the fun part of this little project. Intentionally breaking my matter to mana spell in different ways, so I could see what kind of random destruction spilled out as a result.

In my first day of experimenting I found no less than six different ways to blow up my test pieces, and managed to blind myself twice. Not fun, but at least the experience was starting to give me a handle on how much energy I was unleashing. I strengthened the force fields I was working with, and dialed down the energy levels considerably.

As expected, it was quite easy to make an enchantment that didn’t cleanly convert whole atoms to mana. This tended to produce a lot of waste heat, hence the explosion problem. It also produced a truly hair-raising level of radiation, since subtracting three or four neutrons from an atom tends to produce highly unstable isotopes.

I was setting up all my experiments inside a big ball of water that floated in the air in the middle of the room, to further shield both myself and the environment from any nastiness they might produce. Once I solved the explosion problem I started putting a rat cage inside the water ball, with a thin sheet of iron attached to the side of the cage facing the experiment to block any alpha or beta particles it might emit.

I was a little surprised at how low the critter’s exposure readings were, and tried several variations looking for one that had more radiation output. Then I got a version that produced visible Cherenkov radiation, and realized the needle was still barely moving.

“I really wish I had a few reference books,” I muttered to myself as I watched the ghostly blue glow. “That’s got to be a lethal level of radiation, though. It’s clearly visible even in a brightly lit room. Do I need to switch to a weaker healing spell for the detectors?”

It took a fresh supply of rats and a day of experiments to get a handle on that. Apparently my healing was amazingly effective against radiation sickness, because an environment hot enough to kill an unprotected rat in a matter of minutes would barely move the needle on my detectors. I reworked them with a much weaker spell, and re-tested until they were sensitive enough to react to my latest test piece even when it was turned off.

Then I banished the test device, and noticed that they were still picking up a significant level of radiation. What the hell was left to be radioactive? The air? Impurities in the water? The cages?

I ended up spending several hours setting up spells to recycle the air and water in the lab, banishing the stuff and conjuring a fresh supply. The radiation levels quickly fell to zero once that was running, but the thought of airborne contaminants motivated me to add a positive overpressure system in the airlock rooms. The higher air pressure there would ensure that anything floating around in the lab’s air supply stayed trapped there, instead of drifting out.

The guards outside the door were bemused when I set up a little table in the hall with another detector on it.

“See that dial?” I said. “If you ever see it move, evacuate the hall and make sure no one comes near here until I say it’s safe.”

They were both elven women, a brunette and a redhead, both wearing the typical tight leather armor that showed off their impressive figures. The brunette frowned at the cage.

“Of course, my lord. Are you working with some sort of death magic?”

“Close enough. I think I have enough precautions set up to keep anything from leaking out, but this stuff is insidious enough that I don’t want to take any chances. In the same vein, let me know immediately if either of you develops any strange health problems. Low-level exposure can cause fatigue, nausea and general sickness long before it does any serious harm, but the effects tend to build up over time if it isn’t properly treated.”

They obviously weren’t thrilled to hear about that. But elves are made of stern stuff.

“We shall remain alert, my lord,” the redhead said.

I went back inside, making a mental note that I really needed to start learning the names of Sefwin’s staff. The maids too, for that matter. I’ve never been good with names, though, so that was going to take work. One thing at a time.

Now, how was I going to do this? Make a neutron source, and expose various materials to it until I found something that turned highly radioactive? That was a common enough effect that if I tried a dozen different materials I’d probably find something workable. But then how would I transport the dust? Maybe I could make a force wall strong enough to keep radiation from escaping a container?

I stopped.

Force constructs don’t destroy matter, they just push things around. Affecting light was hard enough that I had serious doubts about the feasibility of blocking x-rays, let alone gamma. Neutrons, on the other hand, shouldn’t be especially hard to stop. My normal personal shield probably had enough energy to bounce them.

What happens when you surround a sample of radioactive material with a field that reflects neutrons instead of absorbing them?

I was pretty sure anything fissionable would go prompt critical. Were any of the exotic isotopes I was playing with theoretically fissionable? I had no idea.

Well, important safety tip. No putting radioactive materials inside high-intensity force bubbles. Also, if I ever decided I absolutely had to make a nuke it just might be feasible after all. Although I didn’t see a good way to test that theory without potentially blowing myself up. That was definitely a final desperation move.

So, where was I? Induced radiation, right. What I really wanted was dust that could be spread around the target zone inconspicuously. Maybe I could find an element that works well, and then make a device that would conjure and irradiate it on the spot? It would take a hell of a neutron source to do that quickly, but I could make a big power source. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere near this thing while it was running, but there were ways around that. I could even make the device banish itself when I was done, to remove the evidence.

I started laying out the enchantment, already considering what materials to try it on. Sand, dirt and flour were all easy to get in powdered form. I could conjure metals in the form of grains or flakes, and the same was true of many types of stone…