The Armageddon Effect Page 8

  # # #

  Suul’jin Scouts

  [... in an obscure part of the astral realm, two Disavowed of Suul’Jin gazed into a small misting bowl ...]

  Scout Jiel’ra: Should we help him now?

  Scout Anwa’ra: You know the rules as well as I, and why they are in place.

  Scout Jiel’ra: He’s going to channel the firefall through the focus.

  Scout Anwa’ra: Maybe. If he does, he will contaminate the device.

  Scout Jiel’ra: I can give him a word of power. He will survive.

  Scout Anwa’ra: Perhaps it’s better to let him fade. You know who he is?

  Scout Jiel’ra: I do. He didn’t even look at the portal runes.

  Scout Anwa’ra: Compassion empowered him. Have faith.

  Scout Jiel’ra: We are almost out of time. I’ve lost count of how many attempts failed. The Armageddon event approaches.

  Scout Anwa’ra: You might alert the Ziir’Jal. That must not happen. Be patient and let our plans unfold.

  Scout Jiel’ra: The Council does not perceive clearly. Higher purity. Closeness to the one. It serves nothing. It’s in this world, and those like it, where we must mold our energies.

  Scout Anwa’ra: I agree, Jiel’ra. It’s why we fight the Jal. Their greatest deceit occurred when they convinced the Jin to seek purity. We alone stand against them.

  # # #

  I ran. The distant mountain peaks were on my left. The landmark bounced in my vision as I cleared the hilltop and headed down. The beams stopped. Great bounding leaps carried me swiftly over the burnt terrain. I glanced behind to see if they were following me. Three humanoid silhouettes appeared on the hilltop a hundred meters behind me. It was working. I was faster and would be at the ravine soon.

  How do I get the runes to take me back home?

  The rune circle rested in a small scatter of loose stones below me as I bounded over the side of the ravine. Dust rose in choking clouds as I half-slid down the incline and jumped into the middle of the circle.

  Dragon, Snake, and Star.

  The images settled in my mind.

  Activate travel runes.

  –Interactive mode engaged … transport link missing … portal binding accepted … initiating phasing–

  Missing link?

  The rest of the thought vanished as the runes began to glow and the ground blurred.

  Oak trees surrounded the small clearing. Fresh and clean, the air tasted of green wood and grass. Trout swam just below the surface of a clear pond in the clearing. Another monolith rune circle rose around me. Three pale orange runes dimmed on the stones. Next to the pond, sparks of every color danced high in the limbs of an ancient gnarled oak.

  Dammit.

  The clearing was beautiful and peaceful, but I just wasn’t in the mood for more adventures. Concentrating for a moment, I realized I hadn’t given the focus a destination.

  Once again I brought the three traveling runes into my mind.

  Activate travel runes.

  –Transport link saved … portal override accepted … roving target accepted … time base correlated … initiating phasing–

  Moments later, I was in my bedroom, hovering. I quickly merged with my sleeping form and fell into a dreamless sleep.

  # # #

  I woke refreshed. There was something about astral travel that tended to rest the physical body. It was weird but true. The cats joined me for yoga. Both licked their paws after finding a comfortable spot on the sofa. After the stretches, I prepped for work, fired up the Caddy and was soon sitting in my office chair, lord of the digital monitor once more.

  To say I was distracted would be a gross understatement. Production code debugging remained undone as the minutes stretched into hours. Instead, my fingers typed searches for pagan, ritualistic, and occult runes and symbols.

  I need to know more about the runes before I end up worm food in some alternate reality.

  When Deidra didn’t appear at the diner, I figured she would show up when she could. That might seem uncaring, but she had saved my life and gave me lifesaving devices. While grateful and concerned, I wasn’t in love with her. While cordial and caring, she had remained somewhat distant emotionally. Which was cool of course, and the reason I decided she must be busy with something to not come back. Still, I felt a strange attraction to her. Affection, not love.

  After work, I headed to the library in Colorado Springs. It always amazed me at what you can find at the library.

  I cruised into the parking lot of the large white building, parked the Caddy, and sadly realized the pristine pavement would soon carry an oily token of my visit. Nothing had worked to fix the oil leak; mechanics told me flat out there was no fixing it short of buying a new car. Sighing, I headed for the front doors. The two-story building’s levels were offset from each other laterally. It gave the library a futuristic look, which I found appealing. I walked in and after checking the card catalog quickly found the sections on Mysticism and the Occult.

  Before long, books on runes from every ancient culture littered the small desk near a window I’d chosen. The symbols on the monoliths closely resembled Phonetician runes, but none were a perfect fit.

  Begin recording.

  –Acknowledged … recording continued—

  Taking out my journal, I decided to record some of the symbols and their meanings on paper. The device could record images and thoughts, but writing helped make it sensible. I wrote down the dragon, snake, and star runes as travel runes. Someone activated the focus, and it wasn’t me. Someone was sending me thought impressions. Diedra? And who or what was Lej’jin?

  Search all databases for any reference to Lej’jin.

  –Query … Some databases missing or offline … No references to the name Lej’jin found–

  Damn.

  Events rolled through my head; first, it was the strong premonition that sent me to the cabin of blood-splattered horror, then I got yanked, literally, out of my bed into some other place, but where exactly I didn’t know.

  I’m not too keen about nearly dying in these little adventures. What’s up with that?

  Normally, I’m not the guy that wears an extra set of safety belts, just to be sure. And while I take the same risks everyone else does these days, I try to minimize those risks. It’s a prudent thing to do. Right? But this business with the devices and being a soldier for compassion is putting me into situations with an increasing likelihood that I won’t survive the encounter.

  Clearly the shield device has limits, as does the focus.

  I wonder what happens if the shield fails?

  I’d soon find out.

  MACHINATIONS OF THE COLLECTIVE MIND

  It was a good time to take this investigation to the house, so I saddled up my notes and headed home.

  Greek cuisine sounded good. A traditional family ran a specialty restaurant which featured delicious moussaka and spanakopita. Then, there was the specialty, baklava … numm. Afterward, I plopped on the living room couch, too full to move, and let my mind wander in a carbo-induced haze.

  Right. So, survival required more defense and offense. Maybe I should carry a gun. Even my neighbor’s babysitter has one; her dog too. Will a gun even work against these shadow creatures?

  Probably not.

  Still, I had the stainless steel .357 S&W. It was a centennial model with the inscription “Made in the 100th year of American Liberty.” Years back I carried weekly per diem in small bills for our work crew. I’d bought a jackass rig, straps crisscrossing the shoulder blades, with the gun nestled under my left armpit. The small holster offered the grip forward for a quick pull. State patrol officers taught me some basics as did frequent visits to a firing range. It was inconspicuous as long as you were wearing a jacket. I’d bought some speed loaders and added those to the new and improved “Lane, Armed Psionic Warrior” kit.

  “In the absence of light, darkness must prevail,” the ancient Buddhist proverb said. Here comes the gu
n-toting, amulet-waving, golden-blasting compassion trooper. I found the rig stuffed behind boxes in the closet. The handgun snug in the thumb-snap half-holster. The straps slipped over my arms as I tried it on and hefted the weight.

  The cats had vanished. Smart.

  Just need an amulet.

  I headed back downstairs, excited at the prospect of making a power artifact.

  During the search, Monk hopped up on the computer desk and flopped down near the mouse.

  “The recipes all required occult ritual to empower the artifact. What do you think I should do, Monk?”

  Monk just looked at me while kneading something under his paws.

  I wasn’t clear on what empower meant. Were the authors talking about willpower or something else? For about the hundredth time, I bemoaned the loss of the library function on the focus device. It needed a full five-bar charge to activate completely.

  In the occult literature, spoken words and chants empowered things. Was it the words, or the thoughts that accompanied the words that caused the empowerment? The advertising on the DVDs mentioned the ear turned sound waves into electrical pulses that resonated in the skull and induced the brain state needed to enter the psi. Could certain words could be power-words if they caused the required electrical resonance in the brain?

  Ugh, I’ll never figure this out.

  Maybe the runes created the channel. I pulled out my cell phone and flipped through recent images. There, the scene from the back room in the cabin from hell. My stomach rolled a bit from the memory, and bile rose in my throat. Nothing about human remains, nor a fire, had shown up in the news either. Strange. It concerned me that no one seemed to notice these events.

  Why not?

  The symbols on the cabin floor were different from the ones on the small monolith stones.

  Dare I use these?

  No. Too dangerous.

  I recalled how the compulsion of the firefall controlled my mind. No wonder. It was the distilled thoughts of billions of people.

  What about the compassion primal? Were there runes on those stones? A warm power infused me as I concentrated on the compassion primal. I felt more confident. My fingers tingled with power. Yes. There. I could see the runes on each monolith. Six monoliths altogether and a symbol below the primal which was also clear. Seven total.

  Store the images of each monolith.

  –Interactive mode engaged ... storage completed—

  Four runes activated travel with the monoliths. Their ordering must be significant. From my research, power came from what the paths between the symbols represented. Not the symbols themselves. I recalled from readings that two symbols represented a duality. The third symbol, birth, and the fourth symbol, unity of the first three.

  All I needed now was how to pronounce each symbol and, of course, some idea of what each symbol represented. I could see the cosmic headline now:

  “The universe unraveled today because some idiot spoke the universal destruction path. Way to go, duh.”

  I chuckled.

  When weariness finally crept into the back of my neck, the computer time blinked well past two in the morning. Tomorrow I’d attempt speaking some of the runes and see if the psionic focus registered anything.

  Monk yawned and looked at me again, scratching something.

  “What’s that under your paw, Monk?”

  The red medallion glittered beneath the black and white of his foot. Monk sneezed, got up, and jumped off the desk.

  I reached over the keyboard and picked up the medallion. Power tingled my mind like muscle twitches.

  The medallion had cost five bucks at a local yard sale. It was a waste of money. The fragile onyx always cracked. I had a collection of three-legged donkeys in the closet. They rarely lasted more than a week with all four legs intact.

  Why does it tingle?

  Roughly the size of the bottom of a soda can, the medallion depicted a crouched Chinese dragon with wings extended as if ready to fly. Above the dragon, a spiked sky extended towards the center of the medallion. The outer rim was thin and had small runes evenly spaced. The onyx looked unusually smooth. An odd sparkle caught my eye.

  I pulled out a magnifying glass from the desk drawer.

  Cheap onyx carvings were chunky cut, with large facets, not smooth.

  Small, delicate facets jumped into my vision. From hanging around John’s rock shop in Woodland Park, I knew quartz was hard to craft. Small delicate facets like these were impossible to achieve.

  My vision shifted, and the medallion’s structure leaped out in greater detail. I gasped. The light from it sparkled burgundy with flawless depth and clarity.

  It must be worth millions and was either pure ruby or red sapphire. I carefully placed the medallion back on my desk. My hand shook. It assumed its commonplace appearance again. A dull, rough-hewn carving of a dragon you see in tourist shops.

  Chance and fate were ideas to which I didn’t subscribe. Fate occurred because you predisposed your mind to look for those things that tended to support your goals or desires. Hence, you were more likely to find them. Maybe it wasn’t chance at all. I was Perseus in that movie where Zeus kept placing weapons and armor around him. I chuckled. If Perseus was a computer geek with night terrors, who OBEd in broad daylight, and heard voices in his head, that image might work.

  While my strength and confidence improved with each encounter-of-the-lethal-kind, desperation drove me on. Power had become a unquenchable thirst. I enjoyed it. It was my destiny.

  A distant whisper surfaced in my mind.

  Caution. Power can lead to obsession.

  After the morning yoga routine, I headed up the mountain with the psionic devices and the dragon. The focus slowly recharged and had three of the five rings lit up. I decided against going to work strapped and left the gun and rig at home. It would be difficult to conceal the weapon at work and sure to rouse questions.

  I know, “We got rights, yeah.” Any minute now the noxious minions of the great evil called government are going to come for me. Pfft. Fear-mongered hogwash. I was far more worried about what they weren’t telling us.

  Maybe they couldn’t. What if egregors controlled our highest officials? Maybe these career politicians were pawns, and open carry gun laws were just a ruse to arm a bunch of easily influenced humans to wreck violence and terror, a hidden master plan to create a world of fear, raising hate to cataclysmic proportions. If so, how far would they let the world burn?

  White puffs drifted over the top of Pikes Peak. Craggy pinnacles hid in crystalline mist. Shade walked out the door as I glanced at my monitor. Lunch-time.

  I decided to go by John’s rock shop on the way to lunch. The crisp mountain air blended with heavy scents of pine as a slight breeze ruffled my hair. Ever since Deidra had given me the devices, and with the yoga and thought shield practice, scary shadows and spooky errant thoughts hadn’t plagued me.

  The Dusty Diamond sat in a row of rustic wood-planked buildings not far from the office. Perched on a stool behind the counter, John looked like an old prospector. His deep wrinkles blended with a charcoal and ash beard. Frothy waves of gray hair capped wild white eyebrows, with hairs that sprang like a follicle explosion.

  “Hey. Lane. Devil’s blood. It’s great to see you. Ready for some more prospecting? I heard Lost Nugget creek had color.”

  I had known John Drexel for years. On occasion, I went all “mountain-man-gold-prospector” and tried my hand at panning in the mountains. I was terrible at it and rarely found anything except scrapes and bruises. But the solitude and commune with nature provided relief from my hidden things.

  “Hi, John. Not today. I wanted you to take a look at something. Maybe tell me what you think it’s worth and where I’d find a buyer.” I pulled the dragon medallion from my pocket and handed it to him. He looked at the medallion, glanced at me, and looked again.

  “Umm, sure, looks like red dyed onyx. One sec.” He settled a gemstone-viewing loupe into his left eye and s
tared at the medallion for several minutes, turning it slowly in his hand. Then he gasped and placed the medallion on the soft padded cloth. His hands shook and his face paled.

  “W-Where did you get this?”

  “I bought it at a yard sale.”

  He laughed. “A yard sale? Blast a cap.” He looked away. The lustful gleam in his eyes worried me. The intensity of his gaze faded. After a moment, he sighed and nodded to himself.

  “What do you see when you look at the dragon?”

  For a moment, I considered lying but decided I’d risk the truth.

  “It looks like a ruby medallion in the shape of a crouching dragon.”

  He straightened, reached under the counter, and pulled a fine silk cloth out. He draped the silk over the dragon.

  “Keep the dragon covered and show no one. Only a handful of people in the world will see that dragon for what it is. Lord be merciful. I assure you, most of them will try to take it from you. Violently.” He glanced out the storefront window as if expecting the gem police to rush the shop any second.

  “You can see what it is as well?” I asked.

  “I wasn’t always an old prospector. What I see is not clear, lad, but fuzzy and indistinct. Excuse me for asking something personal, boy. Have you had odd dreams lately?”

  I almost guffawed in his face but kept my cool.

  “Yes, some wild ones in fact.”

  He nodded. “Come back tomorrow around this time and bring the dragon. There’s something I need to check on. I may be able to tell you more.”

  “Sure.” I slipped it into my pocket and headed for the door. Wild dreams. I grimaced. If he only knew the half of it.

  “Son. Remember. Keep it hidden and show no one. The ruby dragon is dangerous.” Pulling a handkerchief from a back pocket, he wiped sweat from his forehead.