Conceal Me What I Am Ch. 13

The doorway down the forbidden right hand corridor that lead to their magical power generation facility was now unguarded. I guess I'd smoked those two clowns here, down by the door to the Pit. Like the other door, this one was well shielded and protected against unfriendly magical entry, but I was pretty much too angry to care. I stepped up to about ten feet away from it, double-checked that my shields were still powered up to eleven, and then I gathered up a metric crapload of raw power and chucked it at the door. For a moment I thought that it would resist my efforts, but slowly as the door burned with magical flame it began to just puddle down onto the stone hallway floor with little if any backsplash or forward penetration.

I didn't care... they'd grabbed Bel and put her into a breeding colony with a monster who had a cock about the size and thickness of my arm. Now I was going to show them some real penetration!

Behind the molten wreckage in the hallway were about a dozen or so wizards and probably pretty competent ones. Close to top shelf talent who spent their time controlling the various magical portals, energy fields and converters. Engineering types who probably never had had a decent fuck in their lives. Karmic justice that they were right next door to the prison area full of naked babes... all look and no touch for them!

Since I wasn't in any sort of chivalrous mood, I just roasted them and didn't bother teasing them by showing them how badly outclassed they were. My fire (and balls) were bigger, and they weren't going to live long enough to tell any flattering stories about me anyway.

A few more latecomers attempted to vaguely inconvenience my bold advance into their private magical playground, but this was piffle... sending boys to do a man's job. Before they could even blink they were scorched toast, leaving nothing but smoking boots and sets of warm silver insignia rank stars to clatter and cool upon the stone. I was accumulating a collection of these, tokens of dead Deseret wizards, their noble ruling class. Each and every one an essential cog of their perverted religion and ruling bureaucracy. I'd add this nice collection of insignia, battle stars of my minor victories, I'd decided, to my growing collection... the BMA folks back home just wouldn't believe my story already without a bit of hard evidence and these silver rank tokens were as hard as magical evidence gets. No one had ever taken a Deseret magician prisoner... it magically couldn't be done, but I'd bet that the GWA had a huge Imperial reward for the creative guy or gal that could arrange that miracle! Unfortunately, it would be today.

One last robed figure now stood in my way once I reached the main portal room. Arc-Tec equipment was everywhere but the really big show was a huge crystalline sphere where about two dozen dramatically different sorts of portals of various light and dark energy fields merged and twisted themselves into a rather excessively powerful electrical generator.

This would blow up real good, I decided... but first the Great-Lord Jamil, Wizard of the Second Circle wanted a few moments of my attention. He began the obligatory insults and taunting by giving me a little hissed speech in the Deseret priestly tongue, which borrows a lot from classical Aztec. But since I didn't understand a word of it, I frankly didn't care and just gave him a big shit eating smile. I'd gotten the jist of the message by the way he smiled at me, showing all of his well-sharpened teeth that had each been filed to a point. A mark of the highest Deseret nobility. He was just giving the usual warning that most bad guys give: 'You will know pain, then you will know fear, and then you will die!' More or less. Additional comments about one's mother were optional. I had better material than that!

I'd kicked his assistant' ass back at the farmhouse, a very capable sorceress of the Third Circle, and I thought mentioning this right of the bat would get the taunting portion of the magician's Code Duelo off to a nice start. Not that the Deseret assholes ever played by the rules, unless it gave them an advantage.

"Your stupid bitch back at Probert's farmhouse got her half-naked scrawny ass smoked fast. I hope you won't miss her too much... but I doubt if she could fuck any better than she could fight!" He blinked at that... score one point for the Zyphyr!

"Her skills in that sphere were not exceptional either, I must admit, but she did have her uses... and just like your particular friend, she did have a fondness for big black cock." Nice try, but at least it was in understandable English. My rescue had been just in time and Bel hadn't had a ride on Chuckle's big black stallion yet. Zero points awarded.

"Your big friend just got done taking it in the ass before I finished with him and I think he preferred it to the imported fluff you've been feeding him lately. Your so-called breeding program was going to create a race of wimpy fat sissy-boys and whiny oversized bitches with more aptitude for pounding down pizza than pricks... sorry to say, but all on their very own the US population has already beat you to this feat. I frankly wouldn't have bothered... unless you rather liked having his prick splitting your ass, or did his naughty smoky seed in your mouth make your tummy go all tingly?"

Nicely done! Three+ points for me, and game and match! Inter-species sex is always a ripe topic for the creative insult monger, and I was pretty sure this would jerk his chain, and it did.

The Great Lord got his frilly panties in a bunch and instantly and with great smoothness chucked off a nasty dark spirit bolt that bent and almost broke my shield. Granted, I didn't have all of my will embued into it for the moment, but it was a nasty unexpected shock. I grit my teeth and released a bit more of my anger and fury.

It just isn't fair! The 'good-guys' just can't use spirit that way! Unless you want to rip your soul into shreds with the backlash, we can only use it for fluffy-bunny purposes like healing and working with nature -- and very definitely not act against it! Alright, so this poptart probably didn't have a soul... I'm sure he was required to turn it in to teacher on the first day of magician kindergarten, but it still must have been causing him internal agony to pervert spirit that way!

Now it was my turn and just on principle I gave him a force-12 firebolt. I still needed to burn off (literally) a little more rage before I felt like getting even remotely subtle. His shields held as well, but his cute pointy shoes with the darling little curl right at the top were starting to smoke with fire. He tried to pretend I hadn't given him the good-ole hot foot and followed by with another massive dark-spirit bolt, but this time I was expecting it and I held out my still silver coated hand to block it, and that worked fabulously.

For my second offensive spell I decided to give him a change-up, and I tried my well-rehearsed Melon Charm on him. It didn't work, but it confused him. I guessed he hadn't seen that spell since middle-school, but he knew of it also, because he turned right around and tried to slap it on me! Sloppy and rusty and easily dispelled, but I gave him points for cleverness. My turn again.

I was pretty sure that he was looking for the heater once more, so I tried a different change-up with some earth magic this time. The floor was too naturally shielded, from having to support the magical pressure of all of the high grade Arc-Tec that was channeling the portal energy to either break up much or dig the bastard a nice hole to bury him into. Still the hailstorm of small rocks was denting his shield pretty decently and some smaller stuff pinged him just enough to rattle him a bit more. A distracted magician is often soon a dead magician!

Annoyed, and more than a bit concerned, he gave me his strike-out pitch... his best 'this fucker has got to die now!' spell, and it was a pretty good one. Dark spirit (of course) but with a sharp horizontal spinning rotation just like an electrical power drill. Hitting a shield the rotating flows of the magic weave would probably burrow right through most shields with hardly a pause, but I stepped up again and blocked it with my silvered palm and we now played the old schoolyard game of will against will. My silver hand just glowed brighter and his dark energy couldn't penetrate it and soon I was forcing his own powers against him, further weakening his shields and clearly demonstrating my will was superior.

His best punch blocked, my foe was taking his own advice now. He was in pain and he now knew fear! Time for him to shut up, go away and just die.

For this feat I decided to reply upon the old boxer's trick for when a foe is cornered on the ropes and already defeated inside his own head. The old jab-jab-knockout punch routine. First, fire. With my right hand still holding off his weakening dark spirit flow, I used my left to now deliver a tightly focused bolt of fire, to make him concentrate and tighten his weakening shield. Next, with the same hand, I concentrated upon another more general battering with rocks. The floor was a bit more weakened now and I'd dug out a bit of a pit in-between us for loose stuff to throw at him. This made him have to suddenly spread out his shields widely again and this effort was going to soon exhaust him.

Now, if I'd had any bit of Air Ley at all to work with, or even some water, I'd have gone for the quick rapid and clean kill, probably with a needle thin blade of air penetrating to his vitals, but I couldn't get my hands on either of these quickly enough here. Instead, I began to focus upon manipulating some of my liquid silver to return to its former shape, the 1cm round silver slugs, and then using spirit (air would have been much better) I suddenly repulsed the reformed handful of #0000 'quad-ought' sized shot from my hand towards my battered opponent, and nearly at the speed that a shotgun would have fired them... but the result was just about the same.

It wasn't a perfect clean kill, but it was close enough. The silver passed effortless through his weakened protections as if they weren't there at all and about a third of the silver projectiles struck home, albeit in mostly in non-lethal locations. That's the drawback of a scattergun sort of spell... but more than potent enough to do the job. I made a note to practice this spell some more... a lot more, at the local target range once I got my ass safely back home!

Asshole tried to mutter a necromantic death-curse against me but I torched him into ashes before he was even half finished. Hopefully. At least I didn't feel anything stick. Necromancy is a nasty and vicious sphere of magic; it's powerful, no mistake about it... but it's tricky to use and it nearly always takes more time than you've got in a crisis situation. Preparing a trap = it's deadly; nailing a foe when your pumper is already squirting blood everywhere = not so deadly.

His large two-star pips on his robe collar didn't fry with the rest of him and I picked them up as another souvenir. I doubted another mage in the entire GWA had an identical set won in battle. There are only eight mages in all of Deseret (allegedly) more powerful than this bastard. These are the members of the First Circle (rumored to be the seven most powerful and amoral wizards) and the big Cheeto himself, The Prophet. I could settle very nicely for never meeting any more of those ass-clowns for the rest of my life!

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

Shutting down this rather interesting constructed bit of Arc-Tec was actually a lot easier than the effort had been to implode the portal in the basement of the diplomatic residence. Really, the way this monstrous bit of electrical engineering had been constructed, the trick had been to not let the merged matrixes of various and sometimes contradictory magic get overpowered, resulting in a complete magical meltdown. Block just one of the positive energy fields, like one of the 'normal' domestic earth ones and its corresponding alien negative energy would soon knock everything else out of balance and alignment. It was brilliant work, creating a vast energy source probably bigger anything around other than Hoover Dam, and a heck of a lot smaller... and a whole lot more explosive if a chain-reaction meltdown was to occur!

I easily shut down two of the domestic power sources and Sean assured me that the resulting implosion of the remaining portals and the massive Arc-Tec generator would be massive and would annihilate easily the foreign negative energy ones, causing a nice little bit of destructive blowback up the line to their homes. The feeling on one of these portals was identical in feel to the one I'd destroyed in Chicago. One portal could be just random visitor trouble, but two identical portals indicated a major problem. Invasion? Extensive deliberate cooperation with Deseret? Maybe, or even probably. This was above my pay-grade!

"Not quite, lad." Sean giggled. "Now you know the game... and we're going to be busy for awhile until the very last hive is destroyed! It's more important than you know!"

There he went again with the 'we' bit! I really didn't at all like the way he said this. Someday soon, when our asses were safely home, me and my little scheming secretive buddy and I were going to have a little chat... and I was going to look up the most extreme and potent banishment spell in the books just in case I didn't like his answers! Suddenly, the idea of a quiet pig farm to ranch bacon for the alien gourmets in the multi-verse didn't sound quite so bad after all!

"Aye, we'll have that wee little chat latter, but now the fields are already out of alignment and an overload and meltdown is in progress and can't be stopped. If were you, I'd have the lasses well gone safe and sound, and by at least twenty miles in the next hour! So get running!"

He didn't have to tell me twice! I'd burned off just enough stolen hybrid-magical energy to take the insane edge off of my madness and I soon found Bel and Miranda, along with the other five rescued women, waiting for me at the elevator. I pushed the button to summon it, and it arrived just a few moments later already full of soldiers. They burned nicely and their smoldering ashes didn't disturb or appall any of the ladies one little bit.

I kicked out the worst of the smoldering bits of the fuckwads from the elevator and we took it straight up to the main level. A couple of times we stopped on intermediate floors and various wizards, officers, soldiers and researchers helped me to productively channel out a bit more frustration, often leaving entire subterranean floors now entirely on fire as we resumed our trip back up to the main facility. Nicely done, but the whole place was going to go sky-high in less than an hour anyway so my extra contributions weren't really all that necessary.

Sadly there was only one person at receptionist duty when we at last arrived back stairs, the poor military officer who had ignored me earlier on the way down. This time I completely had his attention. He was conditioned of course to fight to the death so I off-handedly set him and his desk on fire. He was never going to be cold ever again... and I was going to start dreaming about burning people in my sleep.

I let Miranda ghelp me with the return directions as she wasn't confused at all with the path we'd taken in, despite the fact that I'd had a hood over her eyes. She'd shout, "Thirty paces then left!" and I'd look quickly to the right to fill all of our pursuit paths with flame to keep the hallways clear. I had a lot of frightened women behind me that needed protection and couldn't afford to allow the retreating bastards to get in a lucky gunshot.

Miranda took a ten second break when we arrived back at the guard room to reacquire her silver loaded Tommy gun, full to bursting with a round magazine of exactly a hundred rounds and pointedly ignored the hints Bel gave her to pony over the machine gun to a grownup. I even let her use it! I needed two minutes to retrieve and don my old clothes and right when I was almost dressed a due of patrol magicians came down our the hallway in hot pursuit. They got their shields up but Miranda gunned them right down with two smooth bursts.

Out in the parking lot another trio of minor magicians immediately spotted us and fired off various spells that I could have safely ignored if I wasn't hauling alone a troop of civilians that was currently straggling a bit too far behind me to be safe. I kept my shield up in front of us to let them catch up and let Miranda play a bit with her Chicago typewriter. She nailed one, winged another one, and the third lackwit ran off to find reinforcements.

Ordinarily, at this point I'd have looked over the fine array of Deseret military vehicles and picked a nice VIP one styled for comfort and was hopefully bullet-proof, but I had a nastier chariot already in mind. Still, in the interest of public safety (ours) I didn't want any of these vehicles ever going anywhere, ever again. It was only sauce for the goose that one of these nice cars already featured Bel's old treasonous boss trying to charm open one of the locked doors. Clearly Bel had not taught him that unlocking trick.

"Bel, do you really need that fucktard alive? I suppose you can take him with us if we absolutely need him for a live party-favor?" I groaned, but in a loud stage voice sort of whine, meant to carry. Mason Probert already looked bug-eyed, and like a rat was trying to find a way out of this sinking ship.

"Unfortunately, that would be really helpful. No one is going to believe even half of our written or oral reports, even given under truth-charm. Just a little corroborative evidence might come handy." She admitted, and I had to at least partially agree. A bit too much of this whole entire operation had been seen by our eyes only, and our word against theirs.

So be it. The fat prick tried to run but I melon'd him... and gently. Sure his ears were bleeding but he'd live to stand trial and sing like a songbird. He was going to hang, no doubts about it... and if he didn't want a short rope he'd give up any incidental higher-ups who knew about the smuggling operations... and overt magical aid to Deseret. Oh, I hoped so! I couldn't wait to get back home to Texas!

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

Naturally the vehicle I wanted for this fine bright and early morning was the prototype of the BattleCar. I wanted to travel in style and let a few of my ladies release a bit of their own pent-up frustration in the process! But to get back there I needed to blast through three barbed wire fences and deal with about a company sized force of soldiers that were now guarding the wide-open pavement area outside the security zone. About a dozen of the remaining wizards had joined and together they hoped to put up a wall of burning fire and flying silver to stop our escape. Fat chance! They knew that we were coming, but I could see them before they could see me and that made all of the difference in the world. I couldn't afford another major earthquake, at least just yet, but a sky full of burning raining fire would do nicely!

They (and half of the fort) burned real nicely!

Bubbled up in a full protective sphere with everyone bunched up tight against me, I decided to ignore mostly random and inaccurate gun fire of the surviving soldiers. Most of them had only had lead bullets anyway, which didn't have a prayer of penetrating. Two lone officers armed with tools appropriate for the task didn't threaten us for long when 'Machine Gun Miranda' sprayed them down nicely and left them jerking on the ground mortally wounded. Still pulsing with stolen nether energies, my shields help up nicely against the remaining limited silver gunfire as flame, and Miranda dwindling magazine of silver ammo cleared a safe path before us. No one else decided to stop us and or even considered a standard Deseret suicide charge. Even the remaining zealots decided that they either didn't like their odds or we'd cleared out their officers, leaving the rest of the soldiers to wisely to wait behind shelter and await some new orders.