Slave Pits of the Tyrannical God (Path of Transcendence Book 2) (32 page)

Whoever is probing me is not trying to break past my shields, he or she is just tracking me. There have to be psi techniques to conceal your mind from probes like this. If I knew one, I might never have been found. The more I do, the more I find myself lacking in knowledge and techniques. I do not see any pursuers, but that does not mean they are not there. Pausing periodically to listen for the sounds of pursuit, I move at random through the sewers, but I keep drifting toward the outer edge of the citadel.

I think I am fairly close to the outer edge and looking for a sewer outlet, when I pause. The faint sound of hard leather on stone reaches my ears. There are pursuers in the sewers. If I can get my hands on one of them and drag him into a pocket dimension, I may be able to interrogate the fucking puke and get a better idea of what Aluras'bektsh'tar's game is. I would hate to have wasted my time assassinating that caster bitch, with nothing better to show for it.

Finally, I can hear the sound of strong winds down a tunnel. I am standing in an octagonal room that contains a huge basin in its center. On five connecting sides, sewer tunnels dump into the basin a dozen or so feet below the bottom of their sewage channels. In the middle of one of the opposing walls, a much larger channel leads out of the room. The only problem is that there is no walkway in that tunnel, but that suits me better than if there was one.

The sounds of pursuit are audible from three of the sewer tunnels, but the noise dies out in two of them. I am not sure what they are doing, but they are not getting any closer. Only the pursuers in the tunnel I entered this room by keep coming. From the sound of the footsteps, there must be two companies of them, but the fools are making it easier for me.

I stand next to tunnel my pursuers will come out of, with my back to the wall. As the DokkAlfar soldiers leave the tunnel, they turn toward me, while moving into position to create a half-circle in front of me. Ten DokkAlfar, one squad, are facing me, and I can hear at least another squad of them still inside the tunnel.

All the DokkAlfar surrounding me are waiting, with their weapons pointed at me, but not a one is saying a word to me. What are they waiting for? There is a faint energy that might be psi, perhaps telepathy. Someone is giving this group orders, but I cannot tell if the communication is with one or all of them.

The DokkAlfar nearest the sewer tunnel, the last one to come out, takes out a slave collar. I may not know much about how the DokkAlfar slave collars work, but I am familiar enough with their patterns to know that this one is not normal.

“Put this . . .” The voice is too high pitched. This is another female squad commander.

My movement catches the DokkAlfar commander off balance. Even for DokkAlfar, when one is talking, it will take it fractions of a second longer to shift its mental gears to deal with something other than the the words it is speaking, like sudden violence. Wrapping the DokkAlfar's right arm with my left, I twist it into a painful submission lock, and she arches her back in an attempt to relieve the pressure on her elbow and shoulder. My right palm slams into her stomach, doubling her over and increasing the pressure on her joints, while carrying her along with me.

Behind me, the DokkAlfar's squad scrambles to chase me, but they seem leery of attacking, most likely afraid of injuring her along with me. Their hesitance gives me the second needed to reach the edge of the basin and leap off. Sliding my hand up under her helmet, I release a wave of ki into the DokkAlfar's head, and she loses consciousness.

Pain rips through me. My body feels like it is being torn apart. Dragging another being into the Shadow of the Od with me is more difficult than I ever imagined it could be. The pain does not end, but we are both in the Shadow of the Od. As my feet touch the surface of the sewage filled water, I begin to run again.

Fwoosh! Boom! Crack! Boom!

Barely missing me, spells detonate in the mouth of the outlet tunnel, as I disappear down it, and the energies wash over me without doing any damage. The water level is low enough that I have several feet of clearance above my head, and after less than a hundred yards, I reach a row of metal bars blocking the outlet. Beyond the bars, I can see the cloud filled sky and the sea of Trinity below. The red-tinged light makes this look a gate into hell.

I still wonder what the source of the red tinged light is. The Furnace of Life and Death is emitting a combination of silver-white and purplish-tinged black light, so how come is the background light a bloody red color?

The DokkAlfar is lucky her helm has strong straps keeping it in place, as I hold her by it when I release her arm. With the way I rattled her brain, she should stay unconscious for quite some time, so I do not need to worry about her causing problems.

The bars blocking my way are almost as thick as my wrist, with less than a foot of space between them. The metal they are forged from is an alloy of steel and and Blood Iron. The DokkAlfar seem to use this Blood Iron allow extensive in their defensive construction but not for weapons and armor, which I do not understand. Blood Iron is stronger and harder than the black alloy they normally use, so why not use it for their weapons and armor?

With the size of the gaps between the bars, I need to remove two of them, if I am going to fit through. Since waking up from my coma, I have developed an extremely thick and burly physique. The amount of bulk muscle I am carrying has my weight up near the three hundred pound mark, while I am barely more than a fraction of an inch over six feet tall.

It would take far too long to corrode such thick bars, but there are many symbols of breaking, each with its own properties, and no metal is perfect. They symbol I use finds the flaws that exist in all solid objects and exaggerates them. In less than a minute, I have two bars weakened enough that a kick with a focused blast of ki is enough to shatter each one.

With the bars gone, the gap is nearly three feet, but my shoulders still only clear it with an inch or so on each side. Even though I know that I have put on a lot of mass, I am still not really used to how thick and heavy my arms, legs, and shoulders have become.

Still carrying the unconscious DokkAlfar by her helmet, I move onto the outer surface of the citadel and look around. There are a few gryphons with riders flying around, but if they are hunting me, they do not seem to be aware of where I am. Below and to my left, there are the open gates of one of the docks. I do not know which level they are for, but considering how far down the side of the citadel they are, it is probably the Fourth Layer or maybe the Fifth Layer.

I start running down the side of the citadel. The outer surface is rough, filled with fissures, ledges, and chimneys, much like a mountain. I have never tripped over an concrete information about the source of the floating islands that were used for the bases of the citadels, but the ones I have seen look like the could be asteroids or pieces of mountains with their peaks flattened out. It really does not matter where they came from, but the roughness of Gor'achen Citadel's outer surface makes it easier to hide from any pursuers that might be trying to find me.

The psychic probes are still following me, but their strength is attenuating as I move down the side of the citadel. During the Great Fuck Over, we always found it hard to do anything except confront the DokkAlfar armies in head on battles, and I think I finally understand why. With even a handful of psis who could monitor our movements, even if it was only once we were within five or ten miles of them, how could we ever surprise the DokkAlfar?

The base of this citadel is somewhere around six to seven miles in height. The First Layer rises in tiers another half to three-quarters of a mile more above the curtain wall making the entire height of the citadel somewhere around seven to eight miles. This citadel is taller than Mount Everest, with a diameter of more than five miles at the widest point, and there are six more under the control of the Atran'ler Empire. With the possible exception of the Dvergar, there is no power with the Battleground of the Damned that can challenge the DokkAlfar.

I move quickly, but there are more gryphons in the air, before I am half way to the docks that I am targeting. The riders of the new gryphons are obviously searching, and there is nothing besides myself that would make sense as a target. As I move farther down the citadel's base, the psi probes become more tenuous, and their search area becomes wider. It seems that I am far enough from the psi that he or she can no longer accurately track me.

Using all the cover provided by the rough outer surface, I finally reach the docks. They are set back from the outer surface, and huge door can be used to close off the entry. Berthed at the wharfs, there are a mix of stone DokkAlfar airships and the wooden ones used by other races. Slaves under the close scrutiny of whip masters are loading and unloading cargoes from some of the airships, while others have their hatches buttoned up tight.

Staying in the Shadow of the Od and using the shadows of the material world, I cling to the roof of the docks and slip in near the corner. The psi probes abruptly disappear, after I pass under the massive gate. I have entered a pocket dimension, but whether the dock is its own pocket or part of the layer behind it, I cannot tell.

Not leaving the roof of the dock cavern, I move to the passage with the least traffic and sidle down the wall to enter it. Not a single being reacts to my presence, and I disappear from the docks as though I was never there. After less than fifty yards, the passage ends, and I enter the main cavern for this layer.

Instead of moving down to the floor level, I climb upward to get a better look at the layout of the layer. It appears that I am in the Fifth Layer. From above the layer can be divided into four areas. Two of them are clearly demarcated by a fence and a wall, and the the other two more or less spread one into the other.

The fenced area is a large military base. Three quarters of it is a training field, and the rest is made up of multistory barracks, smaller parade grounds, and administrative buildings. Other than guards and patrols, there is no visible activity in the military base.

The walled area contains decaying buildings ranging from shacks to multistory, multifamily residences. Thousands of human and orc males are visible, all wearing slave collars. Most are sitting or wandering in groups, but others, again in groups, are involved the ages old sports of beatings and gang rapes. This must be the infamous general slave pen that Tyrend was originally thrown into.

The third area is warehouses, which are obviously where the incoming and outgoing goods are stored. Mixing with the warehouses before separating into its own area are a mix of residences, ranging from nice to lavish, and walled or fenced compounds. Some of the compounds appear to be residences, and others are guarded complexes that do not have an obvious purpose. Though, the guards on those complexes have an air of private security thugs about them.

I need to find someplace to question this DokkAlfar, someplace where her screams will not be heard. There are wards all over the place, with the exception of the interior of the slave pen. Maybe, it would be better to take her someplace where no one will care if she screams.

Staying high on the sloping wall of the cavern, I easily slip past the guards and move toward the back of the slave pen. There seem to be six or maybe seven major gangs in control of the pen, and the one that controls the area farthest from the walls looks to be the largest.

With the collars on their necks, they have no control over their Power. Their raw emotions are filling the slave pen, like sewage in a cesspool: fear, hate, anger, lust, more fear, more hate, bloodlust, pride, arrogance, self-hatred, disgust, still more hate, still more fear. The nearly overwhelming intensity of them all makes my skin crawl. This place makes me feel like I am back on Earth.

Most of the slaves are naked, but a few have tattered pieces of rope or cloth tied around their waists like a status symbol. Each of them has one or more other slaves following them, holding onto the rope or cloth. When there is more than one follower hanging on, there seems to be a pecking order determined by how they are holding on. The grips range from using the thumb and forefinger to a full handed grasp. Despite their self-loathing, even the catamites seem to have something resembling pride.

Even though there have to be hundreds of thousands of slave in the pen, there are still many buildings that are completely unoccupied. Whether within or without the gangs, the slaves seem to mostly clustered together in groups, probably for security and strength of numbers.

Finding a five story building with no traces of anyone inside, I quickly walk across the air and enter the top floor. Snapping the odd slave collar on the DokkAlfar's neck, I leave her lying on the floor and check the building. There is no one living inside, but I find some skeletons and a partially dismembered rotting corpse, with what appear to be teeth marks around the missing sections.

Returning to the top floor, I sit down. For the first time in hours, I drop out of the Shadow of the Od, but the pain filling my body does not go away. My vision is blurry, and the pain is the same burning feeling as when I pushed my ki too far in the Swamp of the Lost. Only this time, I can feel the burning in my mind and soul as well as my body.

After stripping her of her armor and clothing, I tie the DokkAlfar with her own harness and gag her with strips torn off her own clothing. With the slave collar on her throat, she will not be getting free, before I have time to react.