A Long Time from Home Pt. 02 Ch. 03

I chuckled at that. Because many of my ranged Ars Mentalis tricks depended on verbal commands which required that the recipient knew the language, I usually try to learn as many languages as possible.

Using Ars Mentalis and someone to learn from, I could learn any language in a couple of days and besides having learned Spanish, English, Korean, American Sign Language, Mandarin and Cantonese from Alice, Rita and Karen, I had also learned Croatian from the red haired Natasa, that I had met on the beach during the Night of San Juan.

The five women I liberated in Malaga had allowed me to absorb even more during the trip across the Atlantic Ocean. I had learned Russian and Ukrainian from Petra, Hebrew and Arabic from Esther, Tamil and Hindi from Riya, Urdu and Punjabi from Ayanna and both French and the Gambian Mande language from Delina.

Since it was one of the few tricks that was reversible, meaning I could use it to teach other people a language I knew, I had taught all five women Spanish as that was the language of choice in this part of the world. Besides that, Riya wanted to learn Latin for her medical studies, while Esther had wanted to learn French, and Delina and Petra opted for American Sign Language, which they thought would be practical while diving. Something they had both tried and liked. Ayanna, who liked French cooking, had been in doubt for a while but ended up learning French.

Getting my mind back to the present, I looked in the large mirror and saw Svetlana blush slightly. "Don't worry, Svetlana. I can take a compliment."

That just made her blush even more as I took on the jacket as the last part, after having secured the throwing knife on my forearm. That made the other arm feel oddly empty, but until I got the other throwing knife back from Alice, that was just the way it was for now.

For a moment, I stood still, enjoying the feeling of Iron Silk against my skin and the memory of other times that came with that feeling. Then I donned the scarf and hat, before I nodded to myself and turned towards the women. "Svetlana, now it's the time to stay or go. If you chose to stay, it's gonna be for a long time."

"I'll stay." She shrugged. "Not much to return home to, to be honest... and those girls need to be rescued."

"Your choice." I said and looked at the wood covered wall, studying it for a heartbeat, before activating an Ars Mentalis trick by saying "Pulvis (Baylon: 'Dust')".

A heartbeat later, the wood disintegrated, causing a light dust to spread in the room, while screws and every other non-wooden object fell to the ground.

"... Mother of God." I heard Svetlana mumble in Russian behind me, but I ignored it. With the wood gone, I could see the steel casing of the elevator and the brick wall surrounding it.

Focusing on the left side, I repeated the Ars Mentalis trick and made a large hole by pulverizing both the bricks and the cliff behind it. That made even more dust fly into the air, so I cleaned the entire room with yet another trick. Now I could see the side of the casing, but more importantly, as I had removed a bit too much at the bottom, I could see that there was no hole for the elevator to descend into.

"That's not an elevator!" Svetlana suddenly blurted, as she studied the casing. "That's a double security door."

Having no clue what she was talking about, I looked at her. "Double security door?"

She nodded. "Yeah. It has two doors, but you can only open one door at a time, limiting the number of people who can get through in a hurry."

"Thank you." I said and turned back to the cliff. The important part was that it wasn't an elevator since it allowed me to go through the stone instead of using the door. Drawing the sword, I entered the state of Mutatur Tempus Mente (Baylon: "Time shall be changed in the mind."). My brain accelerated and everything else slowed to a crawl. Mental Power surged through my body, strengthening the muscles, and making me faster.

I dusted another chunk of the cliff, making a large hole into what looked to be a natural cave system. What wasn't natural was the electric light on the wall, but it did enable me to see three armed guards standing in the cave, looking in my direction. Two were relatively close to the door, but the third was further away.

Like most people in this area, they were short, but their wide shoulders spoke of physical training. All three were dressed in dark clothes and carried a gun in a holster by their side and a rifle slung over their shoulders. Their facial expressions were one of surprise, but as soon as they saw me, they started to un-sling their rifles.

As always, when using Mutatur Tempus Mente the opponents seemed to move extremely slow, and I used the time to look for any security cameras. Finding none, I returned my attention to the two nearest guards, who were still trying to get their weapons to bear.

They never made it. Slipping into Vis Mediation for a heartbeat, I activated Pugnando Mico Gradus (Baylon: "Combat Flash Step") Vis, which allowed me to move incredibly fast for a short distance, while still being able to react to my surroundings. None of the two soldiers had time to react as I moved past them in a blur of speed, using the sword to kill them both, but the power only worked to take me past the two first guards, so the third got a throwing knife in the throat, making him fall to the ground.

Returning to normal speed, I made sure that all three guards were dead before I retrieved my knife and sneaked further into the cave system, trying to ignore the spine-chilling feeling spreading in my body.

Just like some beautiful places have a lot of natural positive Vis running through them, the cave system was filled with negative Vis, making it feel like a cemetery. Any positive Vis had been negated long ago and I could feel the negative Vis of the place, indicating that a lot of death and other terrible things had happened down here. It was just as suffocating as going into an extremely foul-smelling sewer and it would negate at least some of my Vis Powers, but I would have to make do with the rest.

The next guard I came upon didn't discover me right away, so I used the opportunity to study his mind pattern. To put it mildly, it was a mess. The mind-control had been done with a lot of power, but very little finesse and it was so extensive that the guard almost couldn't function as a normal person. I doubted that even the Mind Healers at Baylon would have been able to do anything, as any personality had been wiped out, leaving an empty husk of a person behind. Unfortunately, it was a husk prepared to kill anybody that entered the underground complex or, if failing that, kill the kids and then themselves to eliminate any potential witnesses.

Since I was reading his mind anyway, I picked out the layout of the complex, along with where he thought the five remaining guards were as well as the position and appearance of the four girls that were held prisoners. To my surprise, I recognized three of the four blonde and blue-eyed girls, as they had been in the photo album I found in Curtis' house in Malaga. I had thought that they were dead and that they were here was good news. At least I hoped so.

The caves they were held in were laid out like one of the large hotel suites I had seen in San Jose, with a central 'living room' surrounded by five smaller caves. Four of them functioned as bedrooms, while the last was the bathroom.

I shook my head. While rough and simple looking, the cave complex was, at least in my experience, an impressive piece of engineering as both the girls and the guards had excellent facilities, with electric light and running water. Of course, modern technology made this a lot easier than it had been in ancient times but doing both well and in secret must have taken a lot of resources.

Another strange thing was that none of the guards were sleeping. With four being awake and walking around, I would have expected the other four to be sleeping or at least resting, but for some unknown reason that didn't seem to be the case.

The third strange thing was their placement. Considering that there was only one entrance to the cave, I would have placed the guards at the front of the entrance where they could stop any potential invaders, but the guards were all over the place. Of course with the mindlessness of the guards, they might just have been wandering around since they had nothing else to do.

Getting my head back on track, I used a powerful mind attack to stun the guard, or rather, I tried to stun him, but the damage Curtis' mind control had done to his mind rendered the attack useless. He did feel the attack and spun around, saw me, and went for his weapon. Repeating the attack from earlier, my sword penetrated his heart before he could do anything.

Cleaning the blade, I sighed. With the guards being immune to mental stun attacks the chances for taking them alive were severely diminished.

With the mind control Parker had used, the guards would keep on fighting no matter how wounded they were, and that raised the possibility of me being wounded. Something I couldn't afford if I were to free the kidnapped girls.

On the other hand, with the damage to their mind killing the guards might be for the best. There was no way people this damaged could ever be anything else than the mindless killing machines they were now.

Just to be on the safe side, I examined the mind of the next guard I came across as well, but the result was the same as his mind was just as destroyed as the other had been. Unlike the others this guard was wearing some sort of armor on his torso and while I doubted that it would stand up against my sword, I took off his weapon arm, before the follow-up strike hit his unarmoured neck, cleanly cutting off his head.

Going through the complex, I slowly, methodically, and silently took out the rest of the guards, which left me with the four girls. Luckily, their cells had a window by the door, allowing me to study them before I walked inside.

I sent a silent prayer of thanks to the goddesses, when I saw that they were in good physical condition. They had been fed well and wore nice dresses, which was a lot better than I had expected considering how long they had been here. According to the year noted under the pictures in the photo album, Curtis had abducted both Christina Becker and Jade Wilde three years ago, while Anna Weber had been taken last year. I didn't recognize the fourth girl, but I assumed she had been taken the year in between the others, meaning that she had been here two years.

All of them looked to be around the same age as Cyra and Zen, making them twelve or thirteen years old.

Mentally, it was a different matter. They were all scared out of their minds and it took a lot of both talking and Ars Mentalis to calm them down to a level where I could explain to them that Curtis wasn't coming back, and I was going to take them out of the caves. When they finally understood it, they started to cry in relief.

While I comforted them, I scanned their mind patterns to see what kind of mind control Curtis had imposed in them. To my pleasant surprise, Curtis hadn't been nearly as heavy handed with the mind control on the children, limiting it to a minor behaviour alteration, preventing them from leaving the cave. That was good news and removing the light mind-control didn't take much energy. I would have preferred to do it in better surroundings, but as long as the mind-control was there, they couldn't willingly leave the cave, so it needed to go.

As I guided the girls out of the caves, I reached out to Delina and told her we were coming out. There wasn't much point in rescuing the kids, just to have our own security guards shooting at us.

"< Are they okay? >" Delina asked immediately.

"< Physically, yes. But they'll need a lot of mind healing >"

"< Okay... I'll tell Svetlana and the rest to relax... Are you okay? >"

"< Yes, and thanks for asking. I've already told the four girls that the female guards are there for their protection >"

"< Good. No need the scare them more than they already are >"

When we reached the security door again, I discovered that Delina and Svetlana had been joined by Riya and the two other Sri Lankan guards, as well as the two other Russians, meaning that the Romanians and the Pakistani were responsible for guarding the Villa.

The six women quickly put their weapons away and started to fuss over the four girls, who were slightly taken aback by the attention. They quickly got over it though and allowed Riya and the rest of the women to take them to the kitchen for some ice-cream. That left me alone with Delina and Svetlana again.

The Russian woman was looking at me with something close to awe, while Delina curiously asked.

"How many guards were there?"

"Eight, but after guarding this place for so long, they weren't really prepared."

"Wait. You killed eight guys armed with automatic weapons with a fucking sword?!" Svetlana blurted.

"No, I also used a knife." I said and frowned as I remembered something. "Which reminds me, that we need to collect the bodies later and dispose of them."

Svetlana shook her head a little as if to clear it. "Leave that to us, sir. We'll use one of the helicopters to dump them later."

"The helicopters?"

Svetlana nodded. "Yes sir. Mr. Bunyan used a helicopter to get faster to and from the airport, so we have a SA Dragonfly 16 parked in the hangar over by the garage." She paused for a moment. "Actually, there's also a SA Dragonfly 30 over there, but that one arrived recently, so we haven't flown it yet. We need your permission to do that."

"I thought it was just a large garage." Said Delina.

"No, no... that's a real hangar with spare parts and all."

"Who flies it?" I asked curiously.

"Oh... Both Elena and Afifa are pilots, and Stella is a helicopter mechanic. I think that's how Mr. Bunyan got the idea." She stated matter-of-factly, causing me to nod again. For various religious and cultural reasons many of the Armed Forces around the world didn't allow women in combat roles but used them for support. Consequently, many of the former military woman Parker and Curtis had bought through Erebus had skills that weren't directly related to fighting. Like Riya was a medic and Ayanna was an Airforce technician.

"Fair enough." I said and looked at the sword. "Now, please leave, Svetlana. I need to change clothes and discuss something with Delina."

"Yes. sir." The Russian said and started to walk out, before she stopped and looked at me. "Sir, Mr. Bunyan imported a lot more than these four kids and some of the older ones were taken away. Are you going to rescue the rest as well?"

"Yes... Every single child we can find."

That caused her to smile and say "Good!", before she saluted me and left.

I waited until I heard the bedroom door close and then took off the jacket as quickly as possible. I knew it was only in my imagination, but it felt like the stench of Negative Vis clang to my clothes.

"Bad?" asked Delina.

"Worse than bad." I said as I dropped the shirt on the floor. "Filled with negative energy."

She shrugged. "Well, that was to be expected."

I suddenly realized that Petra was the only one I had explained Vis to and as I got out of my pants, I said, "It's not just an expression, Delina."

"What do you mean?"

"What I am about to tell you is a secret. You can never tell this to anybody else. That's an order."

"Yes, sir." She nodded as the Loyalty Codex kicked in.

With a sigh, I said. "Besides being a Mentat, I can also draw on Vis Vitae... Life Energy if you will... to make some extraordinary tricks. It's a positive force, created by good feelings and life." Getting an idea, I said. "You know about the ancient Chinese symbol for Yin and Yang, right?"

She nodded again.

"Vis is very similar to that, with a positive and a negative side." I pointed over my shoulder. "That cave system in there is filled with negative energy, which is not good, when you use positive Vis like I do. I feel like I have been crawling through a sewer."

She looked slightly confused. "What do you mean? What kinda 'extraordinary tricks' are you talking about?"

"Mostly healing, but it can be used for other things as well." Holding out a hand, I slipped into Vis meditation for a heartbeat, choosing a low-powered, but flashy Vis power. Big blue sparks ran down my arm and onto my hand, dancing from the tip of my fingers and illuminating the area around us in a pale blue light. "Like this."

Delina looked at the sparks almost as if she was hypnotized and walked closer to touch them, only looking up when I moved the hand out of her reach.

"If you touch them, you'll get a slight shock." I explained as I brought the hand back. "It's not dangerous, but I needed to warn you."

"Thanks." She hesitated, but then shrugged. "I need to touch the sparks, just to see if they're real."

Carefully, she reached out and touched my hand, getting shocked a bit as the sparks travelled from my hand to hers, glittering like small stars against her skin for a moment, before they faded.

I stopped the Vis-Power, making the sparks disappear and caused her to look at me. A moment later, she nodded. "Okay, I believe you... but where does the energy come from?"

"From just everything that makes people feel good." I smiled slightly. "Orgasms being one of the best sources. Especially for me, since women tend to release more positive energy than men, when they come." She looked at me with wide eyes, as I continued. "However, one woman can only release so much energy, so more women mean more energy. It's not harmful in any way, but it means that I will never want to be dependent on only one woman."

"And here I thought you were just a womanizer." She said with a smile.

I returned the smile. "Oh, don't get me wrong, I like women and sex a lot, so mostly getting Vis Vitae is just an excellent excuse for having sex. Not that I really need one, but there're times when I actually need the energy women release."

She considered that statement for a moment. "Like now?"

I shrugged. "Well, I did use an awful lot of Vis in there and I feel drained, but it's not critical." Chuckling, I added. "And besides, it will take some hours before I'm ready for anything sexual. Violence and bloodshed don't turn me on. On the contrary, it turns me off, so we'll have to wait for at least an hour."

She walked over to me and to my surprise kissed me softly. "Ivan, you're the most powerful and dangerous man I've ever known, but somehow you also manage to be as sweet as honey."

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A bath and a change of clothes later, I joined the women in the estate's giant kitchen where the kids were getting ice cream.

Riya saw me immediately and walked over to me with a serious look on her face.

"I did a quick examination of the girls and physically, they are in good condition."

"Good." I said in a low voice. I already knew since I had done a quick scan of their bodies earlier, but it was always good to have a second opinion. "But it's not their bodies I'm worried about. They've suffered a serious trauma."

She sighed and nodded. "I know, but my skills are limited to the physical, so I guess the rest is on you." She paused. "How good are you really at healing the mind?"

"I'll be surprised if there's someone better on the planet." I answered truthfully. Due to Ars Mentalis, I had a very good understanding of how the mind worked and I'd been trained by some of the best mind healers in the world. Added to that, Ars Mentalis was uniquely suited for healing the mind, as it could be used to weed out bad thought patterns.

Riya blinked a few times in surprise. "Seriously?"