ΔV Pt. 16

"We cannot kill, in this time of our absolute need, the finest wizard in two universes," the Secretary-General said. "Let us face the facts, ambassadors, over the past three weeks, she has already brought five hundred and twenty two people back from death. Not from the brink of death, from death itself." He frowned around himself. "The factories that she controls produce the food for many of our citizens. We must keep this in mind as we discuss what we shall do with Miss DuBois."

The United States ambassador lifted his hand.

"I think it's less of what we should do and how we should use her, right?"

The Vedic ambassador nodded. She had been brought to Stark via one of the surviving out system ships -- one that had been able to reach Arcadia and return with another load of mages. The limitless reaction mass that each ship could summon let them make the trip -- and the teleportation portal that had been worked out between orbit and the surface made the logistics of getting past the haze of debris in orbit...possible. "It is a means of atonement, to repair the damage she caused."

A string of debate followed. Several states wanted her to be punished. Others wanted her to do more. Others wanted her to do less. One ambassador even wanted to have her do less -- citing that bringing people back to life was not a proven medical procedure, one that might have unforseen, unexpected, unwanted side effects.

Qasim, though, was watching the T'row ambassador: The slender magician, Cinder. She was looking thoughtful. Their eyes met and she rolled her eyes at him, and somehow, he got the feeling that she was hearing what he heard: Scared men and women, who had seen that their power was nowhere near as secure as they thought and were ready to lash out at anything. And so, when the conversation hit a lul, he raised his hand and the Secretary-General aknowledged him. Qasim felt a momentary flare of pleasure at the irritation that flared across the ambassador from the People's Republic.

"I have a proposal. We should punish Miss DuBois. She should face consequences for what she did." He looked at the Faeland ambassador. "You have banished the Dark Lord before -- sending them to another world. One without magic. So...we do that again. We send Annie DuBois and Dalethraxius to another world, without magic, and we don't rip a portal into their dimension. They live out their lives as mortals -- without any of the power they so crave. Quite an ironic end for them, eh?" He grinned. "But before we send them, we wring every droplet of power from them. Force them to raise every casualty, every lost soul. Have them make factories that make their own products for every city -- not just for their chosen pets. They can do it, and we have them in our custody. Lets use it."

The vindictive edge of the proposal struck the Starkers as appealing. The prophetic ending appealed to the Arcadians.

And the T'row girl was looking at Qasim, her eyes suspicious.

Qasim's poker face did not shift.

***

Spark.

Flare.

Heat.

Light.

Dale gasped in a fierce breath of air, his lungs filling. He blinked as he looked up at Annie's beautiful, perfect, lovely, glorious face. He slowly smiled at her. "He-"

"No time," Annie said, then shoved a bag into his chest. Dale, who had not expected to be returned to life, spent a few moments marveling at Annie. Only her, only this lovely, spitfire of a girl from another world, could not only return the Dark Lord of Arcadia to life...but she could leave him utterly speechless. He sat up -- and the bag tumbled into his lap and it opened up and gemstones spilled into his palms. Each one was perfectly cut, each one was clear. Diamonds. Perfect diamonds, throbbing to his touch with a raw power that stunned him.

Then he looked out and he saw that he was within a vast warehouse -- and the ground was neatly layered with shrouded bodies, laid in a grid that swept outwards. Some were misshapen. Some were small. Some were clearly mashed nearly flat.

Dale blinked slowly as he watched Annie kneel beside a body, the next one on the line -- he had been placed near the front of the row, beside a door. Two men in heavy power armor stood at that door, rifles in their hands, glaring down at them. He frowned, slowly, then stood, his hand closing tight around the bag. He walked to the next body, kneeling down -- and felt the distance between their death and now. Several weeks. His head bowed forward and he sighed, then whispered.

He could ask questions later.

For now?

For now, there was the word -- the word to heal the world.

The future could come when it could come.

***

Cinder sprawled in the bed of the hotel in Paris' arcology, the window set to view Paris as it had been before the Troubles and laid her hand on the lump underneath the blankets that was Lata's head. The feel of her tongue sliding along the hot, eager mound of her cunt made her want to curl her toes and moan her heart out...and so Cinder did both. She arched her back, sighing, then gasping out. "L-Lata!" Her voice hitched as pleasure crested inside of her, fiercer and hotter and higher than anything she had expected. Her arousal spurted against Lata's warm lips and her thigh tightened around the back of her lover's head, feeling the rough rasp of her scar against her skin. She quivered and clenched her hand tight, her breath catching deep in her throat.

The artificial light of the simulated sun felt gorgeous on her body.

Lata slid up past her thighs, kissing her belly, her breasts, then her lips, her tongue thrusting into her mouth. Lata then swept her into her arms, drawing her close as they laid together in the sheets. Cinder chuckled, softly. Lazily.

"I owe you..." She murmured.

Lata shrugged. "I can wait until you catch your breath." Her finger brushed through Cinder's hair, then pushed it back past her ear, smirking down at her. At that moment, with the pleasure of her orgasm still throbbing through her like the world's most pleasant ache, Cinder was fairly certain she had never seen a woman as lovely as Lata. But then the moment skidded away from her, skidded as Lata writhed, then slid from the bed. She walked through the hotel room, her muscular, scarred back positively glowing with the reflected light from the carpet. She came to the fridge and asked: "Champaign?"

"Gods, yes," Cinder said -- but the nerves in her gut didn't quite go. During the war, Lata and her had asked what they would be afterwards. Afterwards had come, and Lata was still here. Still kissing her. And Cinder liked having the large, tough woman around. But she had gone her whole life without anyone else, without anything but the short, grasping passions of a battlefield romance. She bit her lip, and then bit it harder as Lata turned, bottle in her hands.

"I've been thinking, Cinder," Lata said, her voice slow. Hesitant. Unlike her.

Cinder braced. Ready for what was coming.

"I believe I shall not inform the Roscosmos that I am alive," she said, casually. "My shuttle was downed, my ship destroyed in orbit. My crew is on the docket, to be raised within the next five months. Maybe I will be one of the missing." She shrugged one shoulder. "There are many people from many places, and surely, I can get an identification card here, with..." She paused. "With you..." She looked away, her cheeks darkening slightly. "Not that I wish to burden you with me -- but...we...we seem to be comfortable. We can see where we go. From here."

Cinder gaped at her. "B-But...but you were a captain!"

Lata shrugged one shoulder. "My whole life, I wished to see another world. I have. I believe, now, I want to see another human." She paused. "Even if you are not." She looked at Cinder. "And...you are very powerful now."

"The T'row nations are half fiction...propped up by your government," Cinder said, smirking at her.

Lata sighed, then set the bottle down. "True. I am sorry for have-"

"That's not me turning you down, Lata," Cinder said, her voice quiet. "If they ask, if Roscosmos sees you, and..." She shook her head. "Screw them. If they kick me out, then let some other T'row handle this." She grinned, then lifted her hand, crooking her finger. "I want to handle you."

Lata smiled, slowly.

Cinder was eager to see how long they could last.

***

Ning set down the tablet after the fifth nose poke on her foot. The tablet, which had been covering the antigovernment riots in Bejing, had been covering up the face of Hua, who was on his knees, shifted to the form of a large wolf. "Wolf!" he said.

"That is not the noise wolves make," Ning said. The distant sound of the surf crashed against the beach outside -- the house, the small and comfortable house, that had been provided by the United States government on one of their new costal regions. The view of the skyscrapers jutting out from the sea, slowly crumbling under the sea and the spray, was beautiful. If haunting.

"Wolf wolf!" Hua said.

"Qasim, your..." Ning frowned. "Pet?"

"Lover, friend, companion, draconic asskicker," Hua said.

"Your pet wants to play outside!" Ning said, rolling her head back.

Qasim emerged from the office that he had been working in. His lips pursed as he looked down at Hua, his hands on his hips. The time on Stark had been good for him -- the worry lines had faded and he had put on a few pounds of weight in muscle. His skin had tanned darker and he had gotten his chance to, at last, talk to an Imam about his role in the prophecy, about his...escapades in Arcadia. The conversation had been private, and he hadn't spoken about it to Ning.

But he also hadn't stopped fucking her.

Which meant he'd either not listened, or found quite the liberal Imam.

"Wolf!" Hua said, putting his paws on Qasim's thighs.

Qasim sighed. "Fine, we can go on the beach."

"Yes! And we can find...adventure!" Hua started to scamper in circles.

"No," Hua said, looking at Ning. Ning grinned at him. "We won't."

***

Lucas felt like his thighs had been turned into powder -- and he knew that they had gone too far when the floor started to rattle and bang as one of his relatives slammed the broom into the roof. Helen, who had a huge goofy grin on her lips, her skin having reverted to her preferred blue color thanks to a quick stop at an injection center, whispered: "Oopse."

"I think screaming might have been too much..." Lucas whispered.

Helen leaned forward and kissed him, warmly. Lucas swept his hands along her back, squeezing her ass. Helen moaned, softly, breaking the kiss and whispering. "Think we can go again if I'm quiet?"

Lucas groaned, as if in pain.

It turned out, the answer was yes.

***

Kaleb watched the stars and the debris wheeling overhead. His muscles ached pleasently and no one had been shooting at him. Life was good. This far from the arcologies, far from the rebuilding efforts, there were places where people still grew their own food, as part of the massive, arcane method the humans were using to try and keep their planet working. Kaleb wasn't quite sure how it worked. But he didn't really need to understand it -- all he needed to know was that the farmer who had returned to the little farmhouse after being raised from the dead and told what had happened while he had been 'out' needed a farmhand to deal with the snap colds and the strange wealther.

Kaleb, who had been wandering France after the shocking blitz had left him behind -- confused and uncertain of where to go and what to do with himself -- found working on the farm to be better than any other choices. He had left a farm to become a sellsword, and now he left being a partisan to be a farmer once more.

"Kaleb?"

Kaleb lifted his head. Celeste, the wife of the farmer, had stepped out. She had thrown a shawl around her shoulders to keep out the chill, but her breath still fogged the air. Her midnight black skin -- so close to a t'row's, but so very different -- glittered slightly in the warm light that spilled from the farmhouse's door. Celeste smiled at him. "You will catch your cold," she said, in the lilting language -- French -- they spoke around here. Without a translation spell, Kaleb had needed to a learn. But with several tongues under his belt from his time on Arcadia, learning a new hadn't been terrifying, even if French had several dozen letters that did nothing in a word for every sound that they made.

"I'm an orc. We're tough." Kaleb stood, grinning at her. Celeste looked away, her lips quirking up slightly.

"Well, can you live without dinner?" she asked, her voice coy.

"Oh, an excellent inducement," Kaleb said -- using a word he'd heard Cinder use once. Celeste chuckled and headed inside.

Kaleb followed -- speculating.

Speculating.

***

The Librarian, from all he had heard, was delighted to not be on Stark. Delighted and rapturously happy to have the turmoil and the upheaval and chaos that he heard about every time one of their awful ships came to orbit to pick up another load of eager wizards, eager to rush off and exert their powers. He was delighted, too, to have full run of Lord Winsom's home without having Lord Winsom and his court about, running their stories, engaging in their Tellings. He could slow down, relax, and simply...enjoy life.

What a concept.

Which was why he was stunned to his slimey core when he opened the door one day to find Squire Fireheart standing outside, a backpack slung over her shoulder. The viscaeral memory of her riding his cock slammed into the Librarian as he stood there, looking at her. Fireheart looked back at him, her cheeks heating. Was she remembering the same thing? The Librarian coughed, then bowed to her, curtly -- feeling the whispering caress of her many thoughts. Her many, many, many thoughts. She sounded as if she was considering a dozen possibilities, all at once.

The sheer buisness of her thoughts made it hard to predict what she was going to say.

Which, well, was why he was completely floored when she said: "Librarian, I have plans for some new construction in the Faelands."

"I-"

"I have claimed a new Telling -- a role in the greatest Telling there has ever been," Fireheart said, her eyes gleaming brightly. "But it will need preperations."

"We-"

"First, of course, we shall need to begin with rockets," Fireheart said, nodding slightly. "Rockets capable of reaching into suborbit. Once we have those created, we can begin to work on larger, more complex vehicles. And then we can construction our first frigate. We shall need several dozen, then a hundred."

"Bu-"

"The Telling begins at Ceres," she said, frowning. "That will be the tricky part to recreate. But we have many years to determine how to handle that." She turned back, smiling at him. "Come, Libarian. We have much work to do." She rubbed her hands together.

The Librarian whimpered.

***

Vidya and Mohammad sat together at the cafe in the outskirts of the Los Angelous reconstruction zone. The sky overhead was filled with the hot, bright white sparks of de-orbiting debris, gently brushed out of orbit via the caress of magic and the effort of the UNEC. Mohammad sipped his cup, while Vidya read from the news feed she had up. "So, the Chinese government has finally ceaded to the protestors demands for free access to the auto-factories," she said.

"Good," Mohammad said, his mustache twitching as he smiled. "Our government didn't even try -- for which I am greatful."

"A billion mouths to feed can weigh more on someone's mind than the profits of a coporation, if one has a properly attuned sense of morality," Vidya said, quietly. But the question that tingled on the tip of her tongue -- the question she could see on Mohammad's eyes -- was what next. The world was being fed on magic, clothed with factories that ran on magic. It was, in effect, exactly what the Dark Lord had wanted, and the Chinese government had been the first to realize what exactly that meant and tried to stave it off.

Vidya opened her mouth to comment on that excatly when a shadow cast itself across her table. She looked up and saw that the visitor was the one she had expected -- an unsmiling United States soldier. "Dr. Rachna?" the soldier asked. Vidya felt her stomach knotting, her hands clenching slightly. It was it. The reason why she had come to the LARZ, why Mohammad had offered to come with her, to keep her company while waiting for the hammer to drop.

"Can you come with me?"

Vidya's brow furrowed. "Y-Yes?" she asked. She had been so tense, so ready for the moment to come, to have it twisted aside at the last second felt...wrong. She gulped, then followed the soldier, Mohammad standing to follow. They walked through the half-constructed city's streets, coming to the large warehouse that had been, for the past year, called the Jesus Barn by the coarser residents. The guards out front opened the door and they stepped inside. The corner of the warehouse had been decorated a bit with hanging sheets, a small well used cot, and the rest of the place looked utterly, completely empty.

Sitting on a pair of cargo crates, flanked by two more soldiers, were the former Dark Lord and Dark Lady of Stark.

"Vidya," Dale said, nodding to her. "Dr. Rachna, I mean."

"Hey," Annie said.

Both of them looked worn down to thin nubs by their long trial. Casting day after day, hour after hour, minute after minute, left their skin thin and papery, their eyes slightly too large from their heads. Dale's hair looked as if it had thinned out slightly, and he was breathing heavily, despite simply sitting there. "Don't worry," he said, grinning at her. "Give me a week, two...five...maybe six of resting, and I'll be fine."

Vidya nodded. "I..." She looked at Annie, then at Dale. "I know that Sukhdeep was one of the first killed in all of this, so he'd be one of the last raised." She bit her lip. Hard. To see the families reunited, the people brought back to life, blinking, into the world. It had been so miraclous, so amazing, and over time, it had become so utterly mundane. Repetition had worn it away down to an expected, understandable thing. Put in an industrial diamond and get out a human life. But each time she had seen a new person leaving the Jesus Barn, to their waiting family, or to their waiting government spooks, Vidya had thought of her and Hua's fling. Of the way she had thrown herself at Mohammad. Of...everything.

"That's what we need to talk to you about," Annie said. She bit her lip, looking at Dale. Then she looked back at Vidya. "Sukhdeep isn't dead."

Vidya blinked.

"What?" she asked.

"He's not dead," Dale said. "He's not a ghost -- though I don't blame anyone for thinking he is. The spiritual eminations we normally get from the living is very vauge, he..." He shook his head. "I believe that he was caught in the same kind of energy field that launched me into this universe, when I was banished by the Elven Council before." He frowned. "But as it was accidental, rather than launching him into another universe, it...trapped him between them."

"B-But if he's not dead, how do..." Vidya blinked. To have felt the excitement, dragged out over so long, then having it undercut like this. It felt like a sick jock, an utterly sick joke. "What the fuck do I do now?!" She looked from Dale to Annie to Dale again.

Dale sighed. "I don't know." He pinched the bridge of his nose. "Your government was trying to break the lightspeed barrier. But they won't tell me how they did it, so...all I can say is that he's stuck betwixt and between."

Annie smiled at Vidya, weakly. "Sorry."

Vidya felt the smallest, lightest brush of hands along her back. That was all she had felt from Sukhdeep for a while now.