Absolute Power: A Portal Harem Fantasy, page 20
“Together,” Blair interrupted. “If we take the time to drop in one at a time and Kasen notices before we are all together, who knows what he’ll do or what traps he has set?”
Mary chuckled uncharacteristically. “I won’t say it’s not possible, but I doubt Kasen has set traps. He thinks too highly of himself to believe he’ll be found in his hidden lair. The man has more pride than I can dose most people with, truly.”
I glanced out over the desert. “Mary, Blair, and I will fight our way through. We are going to have to move fast and head straight for the boulder. Edwin, you’ll stay here.”
As he opened his mouth to protest, I put my hands on his shoulders. “You can heal better than any of us, I’ve been told. Luckily, we haven’t had to use those powers of yours since I’ve been here, but they are invaluable just the same. You stay here and let us get through. Then Callie will fly out to get you. You’ll have to be ready, though. Can you do that? Can you be ready?”
Edwin’s eyes flashed sadness, anger, understanding, and finally, acceptance. “Yes, I can do that. I guess I’m getting the pass, in the end. I won’t have to hurt any of my neighbors.” He stared out at the Shadows.
“Good. The plan is in place. Let’s go rid this place of that evil bastard, Kasen and fix this world,” I said.
A silent nod from Blair, Mary, Callie, and Edwin, and we turned towards the Shadows and stepped out of the trees. The sun was high in the sky, beating down on the vast expanse of desert that stretched between them and us. Blair kept her sword sheathed, and my chakrams were secure on my belt. We were going to have to fight hand-to-hand. I’d seen Callie crush a man with her wings so I had no doubt about her abilities to do battle. While I hadn’t asked what sort of fighting abilities Mary had, something told me she’d be able to hold her own. Plus she had sin magic in her arsenal.
As we neared the groups of Shadows still swarming on the piles of animal carcasses, the sounds they made grew louder. They were all babbling, screaming, and grunting. Some were still able to speak coherently, but they were angry and berating at best. The insanity on their faces was clear, and some of them even foamed at the mouth.
At first, they didn’t seem to notice us, but that didn’t last long. The second the first one spotted us, it was as though they’d sent out a beacon to the others. Suddenly, every Shadow stopped and turned towards us. Without hesitating, many of them began collecting makeshift weapons. They pulled bones from the carcass piles and rocks from the sand beneath their feet before slowly moving towards us.
I didn't know how we were going to get through without killing any of them. All I knew is that we had to try.
Callie, standing tall and looking stronger than I’d ever seen her before, stepped forward to speak. I could tell by the look in her eye that she already knew her words would not be heeded, but she felt she needed to say them, anyway.
"We don't want to hurt any of you," she said firmly. "We are trying to save you, trying to end your fear. Let us pass so we can save you."
The Shadows acted as though Callie hadn’t said a single word and surged forward. In their advanced stages of insanity, they were out for blood. I stepped forward and threw a punch when the first Shadow came within striking distance. My fist connected with his jaw, and he stumbled backwards. I swung at the next, and the next after that. As determined as the Shadows seemed to be, they were much weaker than I thought. I was able to take most of them down with just one punch.
Callie, instead of dealing blows, repeatedly opened her wings, allowed three or four Shadows to get close to her, then wrapped her wings around them to fling them away. With one twist of her back, she was throwing Shadows thirty feet away.
Blair was a thing of wonder, more so now that she had full command of her mind again. Her body moved with an unexpected grace as she turned and twisted and flipped, landing foot, knee, elbow, or fist on her targets. She looked more like a gymnast performing than a warrior. Every movement she made had a purpose, and it flowed into the next seamlessly. I could’ve spent hours watching her move like that.
However, I had no time for battlefield appreciation. As the Shadows swarmed, their sheer numbers became the challenge. I couldn’t swing my fists fast enough to keep up, too many Shadows were rushing Callie at once, and Blair was running out of room to move. That’s when I realized I was missing someone.
“Where’s Mary?” I yelled over my shoulder to Callie as my fist connected with a man’s throat, sending him flying.
“I don’t know!” Callie yelled back, grunting as she threw more Shadows. “Mary!”
Blair caught my eye between roundhouse kicks and jerked her head to her right. “She was that way last I spotted her.”
The Shadows pressed in even closer. I could feel their fingertips begin to graze my clothing, trying to scratch and tear at my skin. They were relentless. They kept coming at us, even though we were hitting them with everything we had. I knew if I stopped moving, I’d be completely overwhelmed within moments, and I couldn’t let that happen, especially if Mary was in trouble.
I swung my fists with renewed speed as the worry in me built. Slowly, I began to move through the crowd of insanity in the direction Blair had shown me to go. I leaned forward and charged. Shadows fell like bowling pins as I rammed into them. I was nearly amused at how much easier it was to take them down by simply running into them, but quickly learned why it wasn’t the smart play. While they struggled a bit once they hit the ground, they still didn’t stay down long enough.
At that point, however, I was searching for Mary so I wasn’t too concerned. I simply needed to get through the crowd.
I surged forward again, shoving Shadows into each other and planting an elbow into one here and there as I passed. Then something changed. I charged through a group of Shadows, knocking them out of the way, but the next swarm weren’t as feisty. The one after that was even less so. In less than a minute, the Shadows I was moving through had gone from ravaging psychopaths to domicile idiots. It was as though the further they were from where the girls and I had been originally attacked, the less they gave a shit about what was happening. I chalked it up to up to their diminished mental capacities until I broke through one more, small crowd, and found myself face-to-face with Mary.
“Are you alright?” I yelled at her, grabbing her shoulders.
“I’m fine,” she snapped, moving her head to the side to see the Shadows over my shoulder. “I’m sorry this isn’t working faster, but it is gaining speed.”
“What isn’t working faster?” I asked, stepping out from in front of her so she could have a clear view of the Shadows.
“I didn’t say it wasn’t working,” she replied. “I said it’s been slow going. I’m giving them a little incentive to stop attacking us.”
The amount of concentration on her face was impressive as her eyes flipped from one Shadow to the next. She would catch their eyes for a split second, stare into them, make a swiping motion with her hands, then move on to the next. Whatever she did to them, it seemed to instantly drain them of their savage determination somehow.
“What are you doing exactly? If we could do this to all of them, we’d make it through no problem,” I told her.
“I’m dosing them with a small amount of Sloth,” she answered. “I’m not giving them enough to fester and eventually kill them, but enough to basically make them too lazy to fight. It won’t last long though.”
“Perhaps I can help with that,” I said, excited to give sin magic another shot. “If I remember correctly, I just find the quality in myself, tear off a little piece, and project it at them, right?”
“Yep,” she answered, eyes flitting from Shadow to Shadow.
I took a step forward and swung a few times, knocking the Shadows closest to me down so I’d have a chance to concentrate. Then I thought of the one time I felt the absolute laziest. It didn’t take long to figure out when that was: any time I was watching reality TV. Even thinking about it was irritating. There was something about the fake, scripted drama that was supposed to represent ‘real’ human emotion that was fascinating to me, and I could plant myself on a couch for an entire day, put off any responsibility I had, and simply binge. That’s why I’d stopped watching years earlier.
For the moment, however, I needed that feeling of lazy, don’t-give-a-shit about responsibility feeling so I thought of old-school episodes of The Real World. Then I locked eyes with a nearby Shadow, took a small piece of the feeling of laziness inside me and projected it out with a push of my hand.
I was deeply satisfied when the Shadow’s eyes drooped immediately. It was a woman, and she had gone from clawing and charging, to barely walking and looking around aimlessly.
I turned my head towards Mary. “This is perfect!”
“Good job,” she said. “One down, one-hundred-fifty to go!”
Her words sparked an idea. “We have to get faster. I’m going to try something.”
Mary glanced at me quickly, then went back to work while I tested the theory I’d just created. I took several steps back, clapping my hands together to get the Shadows’ attention. They immediately pushed forward to follow me. Soon, they were moving ahead steadily, forming a half-circle in front of me. I pulled one of my chakrams from my belt and held it in the air, just over my face. It took me a second to find the proper positioning, but soon, I figured out the perfect angle to hold the blade so that the sun would glint off of it. As soon as the first reflection bounced off, the brightness pulled the sight of every Shadow in front of me. That was what I needed to know, whether I could get their attention all at once.
I wasted no time. I held my blade lower, in front of my face but low enough so that my eyes could peer over it. As I searched for the angle I needed, I found the sloth inside me and began tearing it up into tiny pieces.
The sun hit my chakram and bounced off. Dozens of Shadows’ attention were caught by the flash. They all turned their eyes to my blade, which I immediately lowered. That was when I managed, with one quick swipe of my eyes from left to right, infect them all with Sloth. I’d simply needed to make eye contact more quickly and drawing all their eyes to the light that my face was directly behind had been the way to do it.
Mary had glanced over just as I tested my theory and saw its effectiveness. “Give me your other chakram!”
I pulled my second blade from my belt and tossed it into the sand beside her. She scooped it up and the two of us went to work. With each of us infecting anywhere from five to twelve Shadows at a time, we made our way through the crowd quickly. In minutes, we had infected the Shadows who were attacking Blair and Cadence, and not long after that, we’d infected all of them.
When the last Shadow was subdued and effectively Slothed, Callie slapped Mary on the shoulder. “Why wasn’t that the plan to being with?”
Mary looked both proud and embarrassed. “I thought of the sloth, but Hudson figured out how to use it quickly enough.”
“You would’ve done something similar eventually,” I told her. “Working together just sped things up.”
“Speaking of which,” Mary started. “We’d better do the same. Callie, go grab Edwin and let’s get to the rock before the Sloth wears off and theses Shadows come after us again.”
Callie didn’t hesitate for a single breath. She spread her wings, flapped once and took off for the forest’s edge in a bright, golden flash. Blair, Mary and I turned towards the boulder where the entrance to Kasen’s hidden lair was suspected to be, which was finally visible to us. We moved quickly and by the time we reached it, Callie had returned with Edwin, the two of them dropping down from the sky.
25
It only took a moment to find the opening in the boulder. Kasen had barely attempted to hide it. Seeing the lazy way he’d simply left a bit of an overhang of rock to try to camouflage the entrance, I lost a bit of respect for him.
“Why would he not hide this better?” I asked Callie.
“I don’t know my brother’s thought process with this,” she replied. “Perhaps the hiding wasn’t the biggest issue. Maybe if he hadn’t needed to find a way to block Cadence’s powers, he would’ve stayed above ground.”
“What is underground that could block her powers?” I asked.
“I have no idea,” she answered with a shrug. “Let’s go find out. We are so close.”
Blair stepped forward. “Do you have a plan for when we get there, wherever there is? Are we just going to storm the place? I think it’s a good idea for me to put up a protection field around the five of us. Maybe Kasen won’t be able to sense us as quickly.”
I raised my hand in the air. “I vote for storming the place. Blair, great idea about the protection. Also, keep an eye on your inner minds. If I heard Kasen, he may be able to get into your heads once he knows you’re here.”
“Not mine,” Callie reminded me, “but he can with the rest of you. You won’t even know he’s there. It’s like he’s an unknown passenger that spies on you, so be careful and notice any changes.”
The others nodded, and we stepped into the carved opening in the boulder. Once my eyes adjusted to the dimness, I adjusted the blades on my belt and took a deep breath as we started our trek through what turned out to be a maze of tunnels that lay beneath the scorching desert.
We wandered through the underground labyrinth for what felt like hours. We’d been lucky that it was lit by small torches perched in sconces on the tunnel walls, but every tunnel looked the same. Very soon, it was apparent we could become lost in no time. So, we back-tracked to the boulder and began making a map as we moved forward.
It was more than two hours later before we emerged into a vast underground cavern, and my breath caught in my throat at the sight that was before us.
Fifty feet in front of us stood a magnificent castle, with towers stretching up into the darkness overhead. I hadn’t realized we’d traveled down enough to put as deep in the earth as we were. I don’t know what I’d been expecting as far as Kasen’s lair, but a damn castle definitely wasn’t it. The walls were crafted from gleaming white stone, and the fortress was bathed in an ethereal glow that seemed to emanate from deep within its walls. I looked to the girls, and Edwin, stunned by the majesty of the sight before us.
“He built a castle?” I whispered.
All three girls slowly nodded as they took the sight in. “Uh, huh,” Callie muttered.
“I guess that tells me one thing I need to know about him,” I said in a whispered chuckle. “He’s a pompous son of a bitch.”
“You have no idea,” Mary replied.
Edwin tapped me on the shoulder. “Now what?”
“In we go,” I told him. “Stay more alert than you ever have. I want you, Callie, and Mary to look for Cadence while Blair and I locate Kasen. You can get to work getting her out of her and healed up.” I nodded to Blaire. “We’ll go take down that bastard.”
Without a word, we began to make our way towards the castle, our hearts pounding with a mixture of excitement and trepidation. As we approached the castle door, a massive, arched slab of wood, a sense of unease grew within me. It was as if the castle walls themselves were alive, pulsing with a strange energy that seemed to seep into my very being. Could the mental energy that Cadence projected make the castle pulse?
As I pushed open the huge door and entered the castle, we found ourselves in a grand hall, its walls adorned with tapestries and intricate carvings. The air was heavy with the scent of incense of all things.
“That’s how he did it,” Mary said, shaking her head.
“Did what?” I asked her, following her gaze to a bare spot on a wall.
“He covers the inside of the castle with Flapora. It’s a mineral that energy will not pass through,” she explained. “I didn’t know there was this much of it in all of Slanos. How did he get it all?”
I heard the answer to Mary’s question in my head before I heard it out loud. My hands flew to my chakrams as I spun around.
“The mining operation to get all the Flapora was an extensive pain in the ass,” Kasen said as he walked out from a shadowed stairway at the back of the room.
I sized him up from across the room as his eyes scanned his visitors, settling on Callie. He was taller than me by about an inch, but I was more muscled. His hair was long and the darkest blue-black I’d ever seen. His skin was an extremely dark, burnt orange and his eyes were nearly white. While I’d seen him inside Callie’s memory, he looked completely different to me in person despite the minimal change physically. It was, hands down, the look in his eyes and the way his thin lips tilted up at one side that made Kasen both intimidating and very clearly evil at the same time.
Kasen’s lips turned up in a full-on, creepy grin as he looked at Callie. “Sister, how well to see you. Some time has passed.”
“Don’t speak to me, Kasen,” Callie hissed, not even attempting to remain calm. “You’ve failed.”
“Oh, have I now?” Kasen laughed heartily, throwing his arms in the air and spinning around like an overly dramatic actor. “Just because you found me, you think I’ve failed? You couldn’t be more wrong, sister. I could’ve told you that before you made the trip, but Mr. Biceps over there blocked my psychic projecting abilities somehow.”
Kasen’s eyes shifted to me after he was done spinning like a maniac. “Speaking of Mr. Biceps, what is your real name?”
To the surprise of everyone in the room, including Kasen, Edwin shouted out, “Shut the hell up, you psychotic god wannabe! Where is Cadence?” as he ran up to Kasen, shaking a fist in his face.
Kasen glared at Edwin with his eerie, white eyes, and the entire room held its breath. I took a few steps forward, certain I was going to have to dive between the two of them at any moment to save Edwin. Suddenly, though, Kasen shrugged nonchalantly and stepped to his left. He raised his arm and gestured towards a massive, arched doorway to our right.
“Her room is right that way,” he said.
