The Fire and the Storm - Metric Pro Edition: Fiction, Dragons, Elves, Unicorns, Magic (49 page)

Zayobod’s face hardened a bit.  “My challenge still stands.” he stated.

“And it’s still refused, though I’ll admit that if the dragon’s right, you’d be a tougher challenge than I expected.” she smiled.

“If you truly are as dangerous as the dragon says,” a male Sylvan elder said, “Then you’d be a good match for me.  I’ll challenge you, aerial combat, anything goes.”

“I accept your challenge!” Zayobod answered with a cocky grin.

“You are the one hundred and thirty-sixth pair of combatants waiting for the aerial arena.” Quewanak stated.  “I’ve done away with having people wait in line to fight.  I’ll let you know when the pair before you are making their way to the arena, to give you time to prepare.  That will likely be about four and one-half hours from now.”

“Thanks Quewanak.” Zayobod grinned.  “To be honest, I wasn’t looking forward to waiting in line.”

“And as to your evaluation of The Game of Status, you’re probably right, but I don’t care.” Dolimatbene told him with a grin of her own.  “Maybe my efforts won’t be very efficient, maybe I’ll lose everything and end up in poverty, maybe I’ll be killed, maybe it’s all a big waste.  I don’t care.  It’s worth it for the chance to win it all, and be recognized as the very best, in the only competition that truly is ‘anything goes’.”

“But you’d still have a better chance of winning it all and being recognized as the very best if you did it as an honest person!” Zayobod insisted.

“Perhaps so, but it wouldn’t be near as much fun that way!” Dolimatbene countered.

“Take it easy Zayobod.” Mark laughed, cutting off the young elf’s further retort.  “As you said, it’ll take many thousands of years to really change the Sylvan.”

“Tell me Senior Dolimatbene, if I may ask,” Helemia inquired, “Would you really rather be out in the world, fighting it out in the game of status, or here doing this; warring all day and partying all night?”

“Hmm.  That is a tough call.” Dolimatbene smiled.

“Wait until you’ve done it for a week or so.” Helemia chuckled.  “I’m sure the decision will be a lot easier then, especially if you choose to partake of the Drunkenness spell.”

Dolimatbene smiled, considered, and cast the spell on herself.  “We’ll soon see.” she declared.

“Well if you’re trying it, I will too.” Mark laughed as he cast it.  “I have no duties tonight, and I haven’t been moderately drunk since before we came to Hiliani.”

Soon everyone was trying it except the dragons, the unicorns, the young children and their parents, and the four young governors.  Shortly after that the party really got going.  Helemia had to increase the volume of the music twice so people could hear it over the multitude of exuberant voices.  Occasionally some of those in the lead group got up to dance or enjoy some other activity for a while before returning to their seats.

About three hours later a male adult Sylvan approached the twins, and stood staring at them.

“What is it?!” Helemia finally asked, irritated by his manner.

“I was with Vanakit Lamitkeze, the day he tried to get revenge on you.” the Sylvan stated in a strange tone.  “You killed me.  You made me fall and I smashed my brains out on a rock.  I died, I know I died; I felt it.  And then you brought me back to life.  And you were only babies at the time.”

He paused for a moment.  “None of us ever talked about what happened that day.  Not even to each other.”

Three seconds later he abruptly turned and walked away without another word.  They watched him go until he was lost in the crowd.

“Well that was strange.” Helemia declared with a laugh.

“Is it true?” Dolimatbene asked.  “Did you kill him and bring him back to life?”

“He wasn’t as dead as he thought he was.” Reggie chuckled.  “And we didn’t Heal him, Quewanak did.” he added with a gesture at the green dragon.

“Huh.  We always wondered what happened that day, when Vanakit never came back but the rest did.” she revealed.  “It’s true that they refused to discuss it, and it wasn’t worth trying to catch them and torture them to find out.  Many of them were more than a little strange after that, and now we know why.  Thinking you’ve been killed and resurrected could do that to a person, I expect.  I’d imagine Vanakit’s dead by now?”

“I’m not sure.  Quewanak?” Reggie asked.

“He’s in storage, as preserved and unchanging as a pickle in a jar, and completely mindless.” The ancient dragon reported with a shrug.  “If we ever find a use for him, I’ll reactivate him and put enough of a mind into his brain to make him useful.

“He was an interesting research subject for a few hours after I first got him.  I’ve seen a great many psionic attacks, but I’ve never seen a mind obliterated as thoroughly as his was without affecting the health of the rest of his body.  His brain was not harmed, it was erased, and it was done with a unique and ground-breaking psionic attack.  It was quite useful to study the results.  I’ve considered how useful it would be to be able to erase the mind of a demon and replace it with one of our own design.  I can think of no more effective technique for turning them to spying, sabotaging, and even counter-attacking for us.”

“Eww.” Helemia went, and wrinkled her nose.  “I haven’t thought about Vanakit in a long time.”

“Oh, a very long time indeed.” Quewanak teased.

“A hundred and twenty million years old, and that’s the best joke you’ve got?” Helemia retorted.  “Anyway, it bothers me that he’s just… stored, like a thing.  It doesn’t seem right.

“So I think I should fix him.” she decided, and Summoned him with a slight gesture.

“That’s creepy.” Valentia said as she considered the vegetative blank stare of the naked Sylvan who now floated before them.  “At least put some clothes on him.”

Helemia did, casting an illusory brown tunic on the limp body with only a moment’s distraction from the spell she and Reggie were designing.

“Did you know where he was?” Bezedil inquired, curious but unable to follow what she was doing.  “Or did you search for him, or have Quewanak tell you where he was stored?  I didn’t detect you asking, and I’m a bit curious.”

“She’s just aware of him.” Reggie stated.  “Her awareness of him was pretty acute when she wiped his mind, and she’s a good enough psionic that she’ll always know where he is if she wants to, even with no mind inside him to keep track of.  The uniqueness of his nervous system is enough for her to find his psionic aura.

“And to answer your next question, right now she’s designing an automated Reading that’ll Read her and me and everyone else here including Quewanak for everything that anyone ever knew or experienced of Vanakit Lamitkeze, and then it’ll consolidate all that together to try to recreate his mind, then she’ll try to put it back into him.  I’m helping her of course, because I can’t help it.  I couldn’t
not
help her unless I put a lot of effort into blocking her, but she doesn’t really need it.”

“Wow, that’s really very good.” Mark marveled as he psionicly observed what they were doing. 
“And it’ll be an incredibly useful addition to the Resurrection spell.”
he privately added to his family. 
“If it works good enough, we might not have to be Linked with someone to Resurrect them.  We might be able to gather enough information about them from everyone that knew them with this.”

“It worked.” Helemia declared with her eyes closed as she considered her results.  “But now that I’ve got a chance to consider him again, I realize how much I dislike him.  Even among Sylvan, Vanakit Lamitkeze was a very unpleasant person.  I think I’ll dilute this into a general Reading of every male Sylvan here.  And make a few more minor changes too...”

She fell silent for half a minute as she worked, while those around her who had the skills tried to follow what she was doing.

“There.  Now to put it in him…  Hm.  This is going to be a lot trickier than I thought.

“Father, without actually doing it, can you show me how you’d do it?”

“Wow.  This is a lot of work.” Mark said as he considered what she was showing him.  “Do me a favor; while I’m working on how to give this to him without screwing it up, get a consultation from Quewanak, Povon, Hilsith, Equemev, Yazadril, and at least three of these senior Sylvan, as to whether or not the amalgamation you’ve made of Vanakit and six thousand other Sylvan is going to be able to function as a complete and healthy mind.  No one’s ever done this before, and I don’t want to take part in creating a monstrosity.”

“All right, here it is.” Helemia said as she cast a ball of light that roiled with subtle and complex color patterns.  “A complete mind maintained as an energy field, exactly as it’ll be when it’s being maintained by his brain.  Now you can just take a regular Reading of it.”

“Sweet missing gods!” Yazadril exclaimed.  “I haven’t been this impressed since Mark altered the curse and saved Dalia!  This is groundbreaking work!”

“Thanks.” Helemia acknowledged, her face set in concentration on the spells she was holding.  “Half the credit goes to Six, of course.  He may not have had much choice about it, but he still did half the work.”

“Six?” one of the Sylvan asked.

“Governor Prince Markhan Reginus Longstrider the Sixth.” Valentia giggled, indicating him with a thumb.

“What do they mean about him having to help her?” the Sylvan pressed as he stared at the fascinating ball of light.

“They’re twins, and became psionic when they Linked each other in the womb, about two-thirds of the way through their gestation.” Valentia replied.  “They can’t turn off or block their Link with each other, but if they put some effort into it, they can block any information or energy from passing over it.  The rest of the time they share a lot of each other’s mental resources, and they have complete access to each other’s memories and experiences.  They each feel like they have their own mind and they have functioning individual personalities, even though in reality there’s only one mind between them, or maybe there’s three; hers, his, and the one they share.  I get a little boggled when I think about it too much.”

“That’s why we don’t think about it too much.” Reggie chuckled.  “It works so we just accept it.  If we pick at it too much it might not work as good.”

Suddenly he turned to Quewanak.  “Hey, what are you doing?”

“I’m hiding what’s happening here from everyone except the senior leaders of both communities.” the dragon flatly stated.  “I’ve erased the memories of everyone else here concerning everything we’ve discussed since Malatik Saputebome approached Helemia and told her that she’d killed them.  I’ve supplied them all with false memories and continuing false perceptions of what we’re talking about now, and none of them perceive the Mind Field or the body of Vanakit Lamitkeze.”

“Why?” Dolimatbene asked.

“The implications of what these children have done are beyond profound, and these techniques will be considered to be matters of utmost military secrecy, at least until they can be discussed in a closed session of The Military Council of The Just Alliance.  I expect that body to rule that they be kept secret at least until the demons are dealt with, and perhaps beyond that.

“I do this by divine prerogative, as Draconian God of Dreaming.  A status which you will also keep confidential.

“Consider that with variations of what these four have done… what these
fifteen
have done now that they’ve all contributed something to the spells…  Anyway, now that it’s stabilized, with variations of this spell skilled mortals could cast false minds to fool psionic searches, they could erase a person’s mind and replace it with an altered version or a completely artificial construct, they could duplicate a person’s mind and place it in another person or in a Simulacrum in order to make it seem like the first person was in another place, doing things that they were not doing.  These spells affect fundamental issues of individuality, and there’s no end to the mischief that could be done with them, while I can see very few beneficial uses for the techniques.

“Until now, only the gods could do such things, and they haven’t been able to give such divine abilities to mortals.  But with
this
, any mortal with sufficient skill and power could do those things, and there are thousands of such mortals.”

“Well one benefit would be to fix Vanakit Lamitkeze!” Dolimatbene insisted as she pointed at the limp and blank figure.  “He may have been a shit, but he didn’t deserve that!  Kill him or fix him, but don’t just leave him as a living corpse like that!  It’s bloody horrible and insulting to Sylvan in general!  How would you like to see a dragon that you knew reduced to live meat like that?!”

“That’s a good point.” Quewanak admitted.

“Yes, and here’s another one!  You’re getting all wound up about possibilities, when we still don’t even know if any of that is good for anything beyond making a pretty light!

“And how do you figure that fifteen people contributed to the spell?”

“Helemia and Reggie…” he began before Valentia interrupted.

“That’s Governor Longstrider or Six, if you please.” she politely insisted.

“Fine.” Quewanak agreed with a show of patience.  “General Helemia and Governor Longstrider Linked and received input from Karzog, Valentia, and Mark, as well as the eight people Mark suggested they consult with.  Including myself and you, though you didn’t feel their Link.  Mark Linked and received input from Talia and Alilia.  Yazadril Linked and received input from Nemia and Hilsith.  Helemia and Six incorporated all that input, including finalizing how to emplace the mind into Vanakit Lamitkeze, and once they had a finalized spell, Valentia re-designed and simplified it.

“The entire process was a phenomenal display of psionic ability, and you’re right in pointing out that it needs to be tested before it’s implications can be determined.

“So, I will allow the procedure to be completed.  I see no other urgent short term uses for those spells, and any more experiments with them that involve living subjects will have to wait until they’ve been discussed in the Councils of The Just Alliance.”

“Agreed.” Helemia nodded.  “All of you agree that this should be a healthy and functional mind, so long as it’s still the same as this once it’s in him.  Father, Valentia, you two should be the ones to emplace it.”