Danaerea

Posts Tagged ‘Greek gods’

OBSERVATION RESUMES

Richard was back in the grove overlooking the lake. He leapt up from his seated position by the tree. “Alea Chantal! Sarsoneth! Where the hell are you?”

“Right here Richard.” Alea Chantal stepped into view from a shadowy spot beside a cluster of birch trees a few feet away.

“That bitch is crazier than I thought I was. She’s got a thing on my head that’s gonna suck my brain out or something. We’ve got to do something.”

Alea Chantal’s smile was barely a flicker across her face. “No more denial eh, Richard? Meeting a Disaffected will do that to you. As to ‘doing something’, we’re trying Richard. It isn’t easy. If you were in full control of the g’ru’tnok you’d at least be on an equal footing in regards to abilities. You can do everything she can do. Unfortunately, she still has a few millennia on you in terms of practice.”

“Did you say ‘millennia’?” Richard asked.

“Yeah, millennia; and for a Disaffected Yannoneth, every second of that time is filled with delusions of grandeur and plotting to take over the world.” Alea Chantal rolled her eyes. “Did you get that bit about being ‘the most powerful Yannoneth’? Every single one of them makes that claim.” She made a rude noise. “I bet even Sarsoneth could have beat her, back in the day.”

“Your confidence in me is touching, my dear,” came Sarsoneth’s voice, although his tone, as flat as ever, didn’t seem touched. “However, I must remind you, again, that we have limited time. I am finding it difficult to deflect the probe that Faloneth is using on Richard. We must continue to act with dispatch.”

“I agree,” Richard said. “I want to get as far away from that nutjob as possible. So how do I get control of this g’ru’tnok, whatever it is? Is it in the lab? What’s it look like? Is it like that d’na’whatever that Jaimie found in the temple? I didn’t see anything like that.”

“You didn’t spend much time looking either,” Alea Chantal noted, drolly. “Once you got a look at Faloneth, your eyes were pretty much glued there.”

She didn’t bother waiting for Richard to reply. “G’ru’tnok isn’t an object. It’s the energy that permeates the entire planet. It’s in and around everything.”

Richard’s scepticism kicked in. “New Age gobbledegook,” he snorted.

Alea Chantal shrugged. “Have it your way. This is all just a dream.” She began to fade out.

“Wait. Point taken. I’m trying, okay? So how does this g’ru’tnok help us? What am I supposed to do with it?”

Alea Chantal regained solidity. “You can do anything with it. With enough practice. That’s the problem. You should have had years to learn to how to manipulate it. Decades. Time to hone your skill before you ever faced a Yannoneth one on one.”

Richard pressed. “Okay, so that was Plan A and it’s out the window. What’s Plan B? You and Sarsoneth did pretty good back in the jungle, with my arm and the jeep and Carlos and all that. Why can’t we do the same thing now? I’ll empty my mind, let you drive, or possess me, or whatever the right term is. Let’s just get that thing off my head while I’ve still got a brain in my skull.”

“Faloneth is not sucking out your brain Richard,” Alea Chantal replied. “As to what we did in the jungle, that was a cakewalk compared to this. We only had Carlos to deal with. You saw how easily Faloneth kept him immobilized in the lab while she was dealing with you. He wasn’t even an afterthought.

“Whatever we do will have to be swift and it’ll have to be brutal. We won’t get a second chance. You can’t just ‘let us drive’. The d’na’tnek doesn’t work that way. Even with the unique engineering the Twelve gave you, what we’ve already done was almost impossible.”

“‘Engineering’?” Richard asked suspiciously. “Hang on. Faloneth wanted to know who ‘created’ me. Who are the Twelve? What the hell does that mean, ‘engineering’?”

Alea Chantal was uncharacteristically contrite. “I’m sorry, Richard. As Sarsoneth is fond of reminding, I sometimes have trouble focusing on the task at hand. Once we get out of this, we’ll explain it all. Just as we’ve promised. For now, just think of the Twelve as the good guys and the Yannoneth as the bad guys. Given what Faloneth is trying to do that shouldn’t be too hard, should it?”

Richard couldn’t argue with that. For now. “So we’re back to the original question. How do I escape?”

Sarsoneth spoke up. “I believe I may have the answer to that. If a feedback loop can be created in the crystalline structure of the d’ha’taan, it should overload. If we act at the exact moment that Faloneth is placing it on Richard’s forehead, while she is still in physical contact with it, we should be able to direct the overload through Faloneth’s nervous system, rendering her unconscious.”

Alea Chantal was enthusiastic. “She won’t know what hit her. Can you make it look as though it overloaded naturally? Or at least as a result of some mental trap set up by the Yannoneth that she thinks created Richard?”

“The latter would be more appropriate. This is, in fact, a technique that was used by the Disaffected themselves during the Shelter War. Faloneth will find it quite plausible that a rival would set such a trap in Richard’s mind. When she recovers.”

“Not enough energy to kill her, I suppose?”

“Unfortunately, that is correct.”

Richard was thinking about something else. “What happens if you don’t time it right?”

“Should Faloneth remove her hand before the overload is initiated, you would most likely be killed,” Sarsoneth replied matter-of-factly.

“Don’t be a woos, Richard,” Alea Chantal chimed in. “A quick-fried brain is better than the slow dissection Faloneth has planned for you any day.”

Richard didn’t have any reply to that so he ignored it. “So once she’s knocked out what do I do? Ask my good pal Carlos to unlock my cuffs and show me the door?”

Alea Chantal laughed. “Glad to see you’re getting your sense of humor back, Richard. No, silly, once Faloneth is out of the picture, that’s when we do what we did in the jungle. You focus on each of the restraints and we get busy.”

“And Carlos? The guards?”

“The discharge from the d’ha’taan will affect all minds for some distance, Richard.” Sarsoneth said. “It is only because Faloneth is Yannoneth that she must be in contact with it. In fact, the discharge may permanently damage anyone else in the room.”

“The hell with them. They killed at least one of the members of my team, maybe all of them. If they’re following this psycho bitch, they take their chances.”

“Indeed,” replied Sarsoneth. “Faloneth is removing the d’ha’taan, Richard. She must use it again for our plan to succeed.”

Everything faded again.

OBSERVATION PAUSED BY REQUEST

Enquiry Response: To the Member’s point: both human and Danaerean terminology is being used due to the unusual intermingling of the two cultures.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download