“Emily, I need you,” Jason said.
Those words were music to her ears. She wanted to be needed and to feel useful. But Jason couldn’t know how she felt, or he would get the wrong idea.
He didn’t understand; they were people from vastly different worlds. While she was in trouble, her Father was Lucien, the Grand Inquisitor of Mississippi VHA.
Emily admired his love of her culture; that’s why she chose to play house with him, and when he did his duty, her Father would reward him. Jason would never have her virginity or hand in marriage; a noble lady would never lower herself to marry a peasant.
“What can I do for you?” Emily asked.
Jason showed her a blue canvas projected from a floating box. Strange symbols covered the box, the same symbols that covered posts, walls, and approximations of wardstones. What do farmers need with such encryption for their runes?
She regathered herself; he needed an answer. “It's beautiful.”
Jason grinned like she gave him a compliment. The man was always needy for those.
He pulled out a few old dusty tomes filled with rune theory. The texts looked like reprints of some of the forbidden texts in her Father’s private study. What they called cultural secrets were kept by the high nobles of the Inquisition, sacred towers, and orders.
Jason had taken them from their bathroom. She put her coffee mug on top of the one on the coffee table and left a ring.
She had read a few pages from those tomes before her Father caught her. They held advanced theory; only wizards and archmages were allowed to study.
“Father always hated mages, but I think there is something noble about these ancient symbols. Mother would say take what we need to toss away the rest. Atom loves quoting her; he’s been working on seals to tame demons like a true Xia clan heir.”
There was so much to unpack there. Was Jason’s Father a hidden wizard or, worse, an archmage? No, what was he implying about his Mother?
Was her lover a long-lost scion of the immensely wealthy and powerful demon-cultivating Xia clan, or did Jason have an active imagination? For a burly farmer with a nice face and cock he dreamed big. Their Mother walked out on them, so of course, she was a member of the Xia clan. Of course, their Father, Ra, hates mages with a name like Ra. In her entire life, she had only met one cultivator, a representative from the Xia clan. He was a noble, powerful, and handsome man who looked nothing like either brother.
It was a tale she wanted to believe but couldn’t.
She gazed fondly at her crazy boyfriend, fighting against fate itself. Eventually, they would both face reality. Emily would marry the usurper's son to reconfirm the right of rule for the new Grand Inquisitor’s family.
…
I recorded our power levels for the 10th of August.
Atom PL 1895
Jason PL 2359
There was a lull in the response from the VHA. I killed one of their tax collectors and his bodyguards armored with top-of-the-line equipment. My actions had to be on their minds, but I doubted I was a high priority. More than likely, I was moved to a later list, and the VHA were biding their time waiting for things to settle.
We weren’t the only farm, and there were soft powers the VHA could use to curb our rebellion. They wouldn’t work, but they were options.
Our plan involved devouring all our resources before embarking on a suicide mission. After only ten days, Jason was almost a quarter of the way to the finish line.
Gravity training was incredibly effective. We needed far more rest periods than Jason liked, but I enjoyed my time with Ember.
She could change her shape into different animals, from a giant bat to a massive black wolf. Her steps were quiet; I had to focus energy on my ears to hear her, and she could easily slip by my aura. Her energy naturally shifted to mirror my own when she was sneaky. My mind considered her background noise, and I often lost her.
Vampires were incredibly dangerous. The government’s assassins couldn’t be underestimated.
I stacked ribs, steak, and bacon on my plate and drank from a mug of minced spirit herbs from my Mother’s old garden. Everything had to go, including Father’s old basement lab. While it wasn’t the main lab of Ra, it was incredibly dangerous.
Seals were incredibly useful for stretching space, but the sub-lab had more than our culture. It blended cultivator talismans, Dao, and our Father’s seals. Below the elevator's surface was an entire ecosystem of escaped mutants waiting to cause trouble. Before we left, they needed to be cataloged, culled, or released.
Father used his lab to genetically engineer our cows, chickens, and sheep to resist energy mutations. Food wasn’t the only purpose of the lab. For every chicken that produced meat and eggs, there were Trolls, Illithids, and stable Queen Dagan Wasps. In that little lab, the trolls are the lowest order of mutants that all others feed upon.
I wrote on the calendar that we would inspect the lab on the 1st of September, 2880. Letting the VHA or some other group stumble upon it could only end badly. Releasing some of the genetically engineered mutants into the ecosystem would be devastating. While Mississippi was home to car-sized kings in Yellow Jackets, tall ones, abyss bears, and bleed wolves, they were known pests.
Kings in Yellow Jacket carved pollen-coated signs in their territories, tall ones appeared on the edges of photographs when stalking their prey, and abyss bears smelled like rotten eggs. All of them could have been avoided by the warry. Trolls loved to kidnap and rape human women; they often hunted in packs, and their antlers can be mistaken for whitetail deer.
It would be bad if the lab monsters were free.
Jason sat in front of me and glanced away. We were still sparring, but Jason wouldn’t speak to me in or out of the room. Emily served him while Ember slept upstairs in the blacked-out room.
The blond had bruises on her arms and shoulder. One of her spells should allow her to heal minor wounds. Why was she showing them off to me?
“Have you been down to Father’s lab recently?” I asked.
Jason shook his head in the negative. It bothered me that he wasn’t speaking to me far more than it should. If I broke down and admitted it, he would win, know my line, and take me to it every time.
“I didn’t know there was an underground lab here,” Emily said.
This place was one of Father’s hidden research labs before it was a farm. Research that crafted powerful mutant creatures had been used to create impeccable livestock.
“What has Jason told you about our home? It doesn’t matter. Mages can grow stronger by defeating monsters; most should be contained. Well, you can check it out while we’re training. Make sure to lock the door when you enter. We don’t want anything getting out.” I said.
Jason threw a piece of bacon at me. I dodged left and took a bite of steak. If Emily got herself killed exploring Father’s lab, we wouldn’t have any reason to save the POWs heading to Jackson Megacity. For us, despite Jason’s protests would be a win.
“What’s down there?” Emily asked.
“We don’t know for sure; it’s been years since we’ve been down there.” Jason glared hard at me.
“There are great opportunities to grow stronger if you’re willing to take them.” Mom used to say things like that. She loved to misrepresent things to the unwary. “Again, don’t let anything out; some monsters could mess up the local ecosystem,” I said.
“Like the golden boas in Florida,” I recalled Florida had a small cultivator Sect deep in the Everglades, the hottest and second most irradiated place on the planet. “Exactly like them,” I said.
“Don’t go; it's unsafe,” Jason said.
“I’m a mage. I need to fight monsters if I’m ever going to get stronger.” Emily said.
“A wizard would have trouble in what remains of Father’s lab,” Jason said.
A smile crept across my face from my minor victory. While Jason didn’t say anything to me, I would take the minor wins when I could. Breaking the silence was the first step to returning our relationship to normal.
Jason nodded to me, and I followed him to the training room. The place had an unneeded red tint to match the ancient, animated show we watched as kids. Jason took a stance, and we fought methodically in the 5x gravity of the training room.
Control as it turned out was much more important than power. Taking breaks frequently was the only way to ensure steady growth.
“Has Emily been using her magic to heal your wounds?” I asked.
“Shut your mouth, little brother. How my woman treats me is none of your concern?”
He was talking to me again. That didn’t mean all was forgiven, but it was a step in the right direction. I needed to take the opening or be doomed to a life of silence.
“I worry about you,” I said.
“You coddle me so you can get ahead,” Jason said.
“We have no one else but each other,” I said.
“If Emily dies, you won’t have me. It's not like it matters. Father probably stashed bastards in every state. We can’t be the only ones trained in our culture. The pool for the experiment couldn’t be so low.” Jason said.
An experiment was what he thought we were. Father was hands-off at the best of times and often didn’t know what to do with us without Mother. When he experimented with mutants, he was an entirely different man. I couldn’t parse the two most days.
We traded blows faster than normally. Lightning crackled, and tornadoes swirled around us as our auras clashed. My control had sharpened from my time with Ember while his own held small Nordic runes. Kenaz runes shined like stars held within the blue of Jason’s aura. The supplement controlled the vast waves of energy radiating from Jason.
I felt his aura crash against mine, and my control wavered. It was a cheap shot against me, but I couldn’t refute its effectiveness.
Jason always wanted to be a mage.
The blasphemy of infecting our culture with another culture wasn’t impossible, but it would cause a dead end. Jason amputated his potential for concealment with tumorous Nordic runes. Other runes played their part, and Jason’s aura appeared like blue constellations.
My mind fled from the horrid sight to the image of Mother’s favorite statue. Consume, digest, and shit out what we don’t need. This wasn’t consumption; it was an alien mass jammed sewn onto a once-perfect body. Jason didn’t make the runes a part of his aura; they controlled it.
“How could you allow this?” I asked.
I felt a spear of aura jab into me, threatening to pierce my defenses. My feet left the ground, and I impacted the wall. Really, I was lucky Jason’s aura didn’t run me through.
“Now, no matter how strong I become, I won’t need to worry about controlling my aura. I’ve simplified my problems.”
Jason hadn’t blunted his attack; it was like a jagged piece of glass, sharp and brittle.
“Yes, you have become simple,” I said.
I struggled back to my feet, thinking about what I learned. We were not allowed to use mage or cultivation techniques when growing up. “I always wanted to challenge the heavens,” I said.
Our Father’s culture focused on a powerful foundation before introducing aura. We had to forge our own method to control our power. Once we mastered concealment, we could shape our auras differently. Weapons were well within the range of possibilities.
All we needed was control to gain our rightful techniques.
Jason’s rune-filled aura gathered around him like a man with a spear replacing an arm. The image burned clearly in my mind.
Jason PL 2800
The runes had increased his power further. Filling an aura with runes before concealment was mastered was a mistake. Our culture had steps for a reason. I didn’t know how much trouble Jason was in, but his future growth could be stunted by this action.
“Did Emily make you do this?” I asked.
“This is what I wanted. We have a devil, little brother, so no sacrifice is too great.” Jason said.
Was he really quoting an old dictator to me?
Did Jason really want to raid a Megacity and become enemies of the government? Rescuing some POWs might get overlooked in a backwater like Mississippi. Invading a Megacity would put us at the top of everyone’s most wanted list.
“I’m going to pay for my words to Emily then.”
“Yes, prepare to take your beating.”
We traded blows faster than ever before, and every hit I took was brutal. A stab wound opened near my heart and stopped only an inch deep. Blood leaked from the wound before a harsh kick slammed me against a wall.
“Get up, little brother; we aren’t done.”
I struggled back to my feet, tightening my control closer to my skin, and held a hand to my wound. This wasn’t over.
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