Conceal Me What I Am Ch. 12

Ahead down the main hallway just beyond the door to the office and the other watch rooms was another slightly smaller locked steel door but I assumed that the Gate-Captain would have the key, and I made a note not to burn his ass down into ashes. At worst, once I'd cleaned shop here, I'd then quickly release Miranda and get her to tweak the lock quietly open. It was somewhat mildly irritating that she could already do several things much better than I could!

Entering his augustness's office, I leapt again to full attention and fired off a rather snappy salute to the short but sneering specimen of officerdom that awaited me, seated primly and erect behind his duty desk. The Gate-Captain gave me a nasty glare and mentally added my name to his shit list.

"You know, corporal, that salutes within the building are not required. In fact, within this facility itself the usual military courtesies are quite forbidden." The senior sergeant acidly commented, noting his boss's extreme annoyance.

"I've been told that Sir," I said as I directly faced the Captain, "but in matters of protocol, I've usually found that most officers prefer to be shown that respect... and it beats the alternative of having the Guard-Captain suspect me of any disrespect to his personage. Sir!" I did refrain from saluting this time, and both men decided that I wasn't worth the trouble of shooting.

"Sergeant, let the dumb PFC deliver his package and get his newly demoted ass back upstairs... and then go find his lieutenant and squad sergeant and give them a polite reminder of facility rules and regulations and attend to their punishment personally. A couple of dozen whip strokes should do the trick... and then let them give him a few dozen extra stripes of their own upon him to go along with his demotion. Now, now get this piece of shit out of my face!"

Alright, that was my final cue! It was now or never!

*************

First, just because the rat-bastard had pissed me off, I meloned the surly Captain's head... a tad over-excessively. Those walls - and the ceiling too, were going to need some heavy coats of paint as his brains were now completely decorating everything in the room, including me! Note to self -- stand back a little further the next time I want to explode someone's head!

The senior NCO was caught rather off-guard but amazingly his first gut reaction was to instinctively try and gut me with his large military belt knife. If I hadn't instantly raised my shields his entirely normal (but sharp) steel knife would succeeded. This made me wonder just how nasty things really were on the other side of that last door, and if that was a rabbit hole I'd forever regret diving into, all hell bent for leather! I didn't want to give this wily and skilled warrior a second poke at me so I next gave him in turn a slightly gentler brain squashing. He was still alive, probably, when he hit the floor face first, but he also was bleeding freely out of every orifice in his skull and probably would remain in a brain coma for far longer than this entire building was likely to remain standing.

Fortunes of war, buddy... your wizard friends have done this (and far worse) to pals of mine, and one of them, Bel, ought to be on the other side of that last sealed doorway!

Down the office hallway past the late Captain's duty desk, I ran into rather more soldiers than I wouldn't have preferred to have dealt with, or at least I'd have preferred to deal with them one at a time. Sorry, melon charming works great on a one-to-one basis, but sucks as an area effect spell. In times of great trouble, when nearly a dozen people are drawing sidearms or reaching for assault rifles, it is best to stick with what you know and do what you do best. In this instance, and nearly without any particular conscious thought, I raised up a nicely large storm of fire and in a matter of moments made sure that every little bit of organic life in the next three rooms had been sterilized with sheets of magical flame. Mold, mildew and roaches wouldn't bother anyone down here for a very long time, that was for certain!

With this limited military threat now removed, it was time to get that last steel security door out of my way and I was now much too annoyed and worked up to let Miranda deal with it. I didn't even bother to unlock her cuffs with the key, I just directed a pinprick of flame to enter the locks and they immediately melted her hands free. I did much more gently remove the hood and collar, freeing the girl so that she could now take her first looks around her and size up the situation while I gave her some quick orders.

"Shield yourself 100% and stick to my shadow and help me look out for Bel once I blow that last door off of its hinges. If I say 'Oh Shit!' you run... right back to here if you can manage it and then start putting your devious feminine mind to a means of teleporting yourself up out of about half a mile of solid rock. If the worst happens, listen to Sean and obey him without question... unless he's whimpering 'Oh Shit!' too. In that case, I would make urgent contingency plans to ensure that they won't take you alive after they're done with me! Unless you want a long personal tour of the breeding pit as well."

The look on my face convinced her that I wasn't joking. I had a very, very bad feeling about what might be secured behind this door leading to the breeding pit. The worst part was that due to my expertise in banishment rituals, I had a pretty good idea about the sort of really nasty visitors that were capable of, and had the inclination... to biologically mate with human females. Sure, some of their females get their own sort of fun on occasion too, like the Succubus I'd burned down part of Austin to get rid of once, but they're a distinct minority. Or so I hope!

Mars, and some other really dark nasty corners of the multi-verse, does wants women... and it was time to bring this little breeding program to an end!

***************

I slightly miscalculated my initial fire blast and instead of blowing the door off of its hinges I just carved a nice round smoking and glowing hole in metal that I could easily step right through. Adequate, but not as intimidating as I had hoped.

Inside here somewhere, there were wizards and I was ready to punish them for being extremely naughty and they didn't disappoint me by running away for help. That's one of the few good things about Deseret zealots, they're not usually the sort to hide and malinger for while thinking up some nasty clever plan to foil your assault or plot revenge, five minutes or five years from now. Instead, instead they're pretty predictable - pure 'scream and leap' as one military mage described their behavior to me once.

There were four of them, two decent Adept-level magicians and two extremely competent wizards who were highly skilled in all of the dark arts of arcane battle magic. They immediately charged right towards me casting their own spells of black unholy fire and for a moment gave my shields all of the exercise they could handle. While they were the masters of dark flame, they could not hope to withstand more than a moment of mine. It was purer in substance, and much, much more powerful than their shields.

The weak burned into cinder nearly immediately and the strong fought a brief delaying battle against my raging inferno until they in turn were consumed by the magical embodiment of my implacable wrath.

Miranda, once the smoke began to clear, shouted out that she could see Bel, locked inside some clear glass or crystal holding cell, naked and alone, but apparently unharmed. I looked over towards where Miranda was pointing and could see that she in turn had now seen us, and she was jumping and shouting with joy... and some extreme annoyance of her own. Around her I could see numerous other holding cells containing maybe half a dozen or so other naked captives, equally now hopeful for rescue, but clearly a bit worse off for wear.

I didn't need to hear Sean's loud voice now shouting 'Oh Shit!" to recognize serious trouble when I saw it. If anything the fear that I felt now was at least as terrible as the wave of dragon-fear we had faced in that Rockford, Illinois cellar basement. I didn't have a clue just what that hulking creature was, but it was pure evil personified... all nine or ten feet tall of it!

Miranda didn't need to be told twice to run like hell back to the other guard rooms and I'm entirely quite positive that Sean skedaddled right along after her, leaving me now alone!

Other than being gargantuanly huge, the creature possessed a skin so dark and rather reflective of the flames around us that it seemed at first to be made of obsidian, but it had flesh and thus it was probably mortal... and it had a massively huge swinging cock that would probably frighten a whale. Allegedly, women prefer well-endowed male partners, but this was ridiculous... and probably medically hazardous to take internally!

This I take it, was the resident bad-ass visitor and primary designated sperm donor. No wonder most of the other captive women didn't look too happy, or very healthy either! That massive member was frankly rather excessive for the assigned duties, and possibly even life (and internal organ) threatening. Well, I was going to give that big prick some major crotch burn!

Fire, and lots of it, did two just things.... jack and shit. The monster even had the nerve to laugh at me. I laughed back when his own inferno of daemonic fire did blast right through my shields as if they weren't even there, but except for more irreparable suit damage, I more or less survived that one... and the next, but I had some serious doubts about facing a third... or a thirtieth one! The mundane fire I could resist, but the taint of negative energy that accompanied it was wrecking havoc on my best defenses. It possessed just as much magical power as I and it had me in magnitude of volume and size!

Next I tried creating a massive earth wall to wrap up the sucker tight, but he bashed through it like it was wet cardboard. Sinking him down in a bottomless crater to the very center of the earth didn't work either. I created the hole but it filled itself in just as fast as I dug. The creature in fact handled earth magic better and smoother... and more powerfully than I did! Finding and retrieving the distant Air and Water Leys would take too long, minutes I didn't have. This giant was taking everything I could throw at him without even blinking. Laughing boy, Chuckles, as I now decided to call him, was already ahead on points and about to demonstrate who the real magician was down here in this abyss of hell!

I brought my shields up just in time to be nearly splattered by the strongest negative energy bolt of dark spirit my excessive imagination could even contemplate. It hurt worse than both any physical blow or mental nightmare I'd ever had, and I trusted to my feet rather than my shield when he immediate launched another similar blast at me that I just barely dodged. The next blast pulverized my former hiding place, but just for a moment the fiend had lost track of me, which gave me time to slightly clear my head out of its panic current mode and begin to plan an organized counter-attack.

Obviously a battle of ranged attacks was not going to work. That left either running like hell too or getting up-close and personal with it. It was naked, and with a pair of basketball sized testicles that ought to be a vulnerable area if forcefully attacked. Air ordinarily would do the trick, but I couldn't get my hands upon it fast enough to use it. Chuckles could just move as fast as he was tall and he was now heading my way!

The beast was immune to fire and had at least comparable skills as I did with earth... but at a distance. But, if I could harness an unhealthy amount of earth force into a directly pinpoint focused physical strike. That might work!

I had taken elementary martial arts self-defense classes long ago and knew how to do a 'roll into a flying kick', and after taking a quick moment of concentration I channeled all of the earth power that I could muster into my hands, and with a scream and leap of my own, I launched a physical attack aimed at the center of giant's right testicle. Since I was badly out of practice, the leap stumbled its way into becoming an awkward standing thrust and I socked the holy bejesus out of his left gonad instead. Not perfect, but a decent start.

The only problem was the blow hurt my fist more than his family jewels!

Then, to add serious injury to insult, his rapid physical counter-attack would have bludgeoned my bones into flour if my weak half-powered shield hadn't at least slowed the first blow down. The second blow didn't nail me quite directly or as solidly, but it still had enough raw force to send flying across the room and I slammed shieldless against the far stone wall only just slightly more gently than the crushing air blow I'd delivered to the treasonous FMBR wizards Desmond and Norman back at the Chicago gun factory.

The rib or two I'd already cracked earlier from silver bullet gunfire at the pyramid, probably now shattered with the impact, along with a few of their closest bone friends and relatives. I hurt bad; worse than anything I could previously remember in any of younger misadventures... even that Shadow Stalker, an inhuman killing machine, hadn't damaged me either so badly and extensively.

The damned bastard just stood there and laughed at me. Now I had Chuckles right where I wanted him --nice and over-confident! The problem was that I'd about had it and just about all of the fight had been knocked out of me. Even standing up was going to be a miraculous achievement of willpower, and a physical battle (or running) was now quite out of the question.

Worse, I couldn't get a shield up to save my life... literally. There was no time for any protection wards either, not even a basic circle drawn with my own blood. That was another problem; I now seemed to be leaking from just about everywhere!

In desperation, I threw my bag of salt at him and he laughed that off too. I guess his body wasn't much like a slug or snail anyway and he wasn't innately magic enough anymore to be vulnerable to that substance.

Standing over me the gleeful bastard had the nerve to taunt me and laugh yet some more. At least he wasn't going to add me to his harem for his sexual amusement... I really don't think I'd have enjoyed that at all! Instead he just chuckled some more and slowly meandered over towards me to finish the job. In just a moment he was going squash me with a foot or punch my skull a quarter mile through the stone floor... and there wasn't a single thing I could do about it!

I couldn't even sense, let alone use any of the ample power around me, not that a weak shield or another feeble earth force strike or firebolt would accomplish a damn thing, other than as a last final act of defiance.

This time my goose was cooked and I didn't have to wait long for the final blow to come!