Chapter 01

            Morwen gave the tablet in her hand a worried look that continued when she raised her eyes to meet mine. “Are you sure this won’t hurt me?”

            With an effort, I kept my ears from folding back against my skull and revealing the flash of irritation that seems to come so much more easily these days. I tell them and tell them that I cannot lie and they don’t hear me. It doesn’t seem that it would be such a difficult concept for someone to understand. Maybe I’ve been giving humans too much credit again. Since recently I have been surrounding myself with them and then letting them tie themselves to me with psychic bonds, I really hope not.

            I plastered a confident smile on my face. “I’m sure. Twee have been in use for several millennia and they’ve never hurt anyone. You just swallow the tablet and in a week or so it’ll become active. I’ve already explained all the benefits it’ll give you.” I suppressed another flash of irritation, this time tinged with jealousy. This one was an old and familiar one and was about the twees themselves.

            Tirsuli history shows that a research team, of which I was a member, engineered the twee for the people of the Confederation. That’s true enough. There was a team and I was a member and we did create twees and give them out to everyone. In that regard, history is absolutely correct.

            It just wasn’t the first time that a twee had been made.

            I designed and built the first twee about five hundred years before I assembled the team to supposedly follow an interesting line of research that resulted in the twee. You have to understand, I didn’t build the twee for the Tirsuli people, but eventually I decided that I should get some use out of the things.

            I made the first one for me. For the next five hundred years I refined my work over and over in a vain attempt to get one to stay inside my skull. It was a disaster. If twee were alive to kill, I’d have killed thousands of them as my body rejected one after the other.

            I even worked for a while on a magical version of the twee, since the theory is that my body couldn’t reject it. The problem is that in low magic environments it might become non-functional and I was still working out a solution for that. The other and more significant problem is that magical constructs are hard to program strictly enough to keep them from getting ideas of their own. They can develop ambitions that might be contrary to the host, or even try to supplant the host’s personality. I certainly didn’t want one to try that.

            The entire project was one of my greatest personal failures and the fact that I turned it into one of the greatest creations for Tirsul doesn’t make it any less of a failure for me. Needless to say, sometimes it aggravates me that everyone else can use them. I’m talking about jaw clenching aggravation which results in broken teeth level of annoyance.

            So when some newly born person sits in front of me and questions the usefulness of the twee, I think it’s perfectly understandable that once in a while I get this urge to chop them into tiny bits.

            I never act on it. Besides, at my current power level I’m not sure I could take someone down quickly enough to make an example of them. Hell, I might not be able to take them down at all. Most pokegirls are vastly more powerful than I am right now. I hate being weak. I have to remind myself that I did it for what seemed like a good reason at the time and that twenty years isn’t really that long. It just seems that way as the seconds trickle by at the speed of molten glass.

            Morwen gave me a long suffering look and washed the tablet down with the glass of water I’d placed in front of her. “All right, it’s all done.”

            “Thank you, Morwen. I know you’re just humoring me right now, but I think you’ll be very pleased with the result.” The air shifted and brought her scent to me more strongly and I automatically suppressed the surge of desire I felt for her as well as my entire harem. Ok, I feel it for all females to one degree or another due to my curse, but I feel it strongest for the women I like to be around.

            Behind her, Misery cocked her head and raised a fist suggestively. I have to keep a very tight rein on my emotions around her. That damned delta bond gives my mini-top an insight into my emotions that sometimes worries me. Obviously she’d picked up on my irritation and who it was aimed at and was offering to correct the vampire pokekit’s trespass. I shook my head the tiniest bit and she relaxed.

            Having a harem of pokegirls is a balancing act at the best of times. Even the mildest pokegirl has a competitive streak and will find a way to compete with any other pokegirls around her. The most aggressive ones can make Klingons look tame by comparison, especially with a weak tamer who gives them free rein. Hell, they’ll compete with him if he’s not careful. With the pokegirls I’ve got, trying to maintain balance within the harem is more like juggling monomolecular knives during a bad earthquake. Someone is going to get hurt eventually. My primary job is to make sure it’s not any of them. I’d also like to keep myself from getting injured, but I know I’ll always put their well being before mine.

            The trouble is that they want to put mine before theirs and since they’re more powerful than I am right now, I have to listen to their reasoning. Thus we have conflicts. The funny thing is that it proves we have a healthy relationship. Ok, perhaps funny was the wrong word. Frustrating would work in its place, but the simple truth is that any healthy emotional relationship involves people who want to make the other happy and keep them whole.

            Most tamers on Prime don’t get that. Their loss. I suppose there could be made a defense for them in that they’re a product of the league educational system that for centuries has been dehumanizing pokegirls and, because they’re raised in that system, tamers are as much a victim of the system as the pokegirls are.

            I’ve got a simpler explanation that fits perfectly. They’re morons.

            Morwen frowned. “Can I go? I want to wander around the area and see what looks good for drawing. You said I could.”

            My memory is perfect. I cannot forget anything, although sometimes I wish I could. “That’s right.” I assumed a thoughtful look for a moment. “Check with Raven and let her know you’ll be roaming so you don’t get mistaken for a feral. Don’t forget your cloak. You’re still getting used to begin a vampire and sunburns would be rather severe for you.”

            The girl bounced to her feet with a grin. “Thanks.” She rushed outside.

            I turned to Misery. “Why don’t you go with her and keep an eye on her?”

            She chuckled. “I can play the annoying older sister. What about you, Kerrik? You can’t go around alone here.”

            “I’ll be right here. I’ve always got work to do.” I smiled disarmingly. “If I go outside, I’ll call for a guard. I’ll even wait for her to show up before I head off.”

            “Ok.” Misery hurried after Morwen. “Wait up!”

            I settled back in my chair and let my head rest against the wall as I looked up at the ceiling. Usually the whole twee thing didn’t annoy me as much as it did today and I decided that I needed to review a recent success to make me feel better.

 

            It was during the move from Prime to One and Jamie, Ginevra, Madison and I had come to One. I’d opened a temporal portal back to way before Europeans had officially discovered America and we’d all trooped through. I had to take them into the past so that the changes I was about to make to the future wouldn’t lock them out of the timeline branch that my actions would create.

            When I followed them through the portal, they’d stopped after exiting to stare at the herd of buffalo I’d warned them about. I eased around them as Ginevra looked at them with an expression of lust and whispered in a voice filled with awe. “An army of them. I couldn’t kill them all.”

            I chuckled softly as I willed the portal shut behind us. “Considering how many of them there are, they’d reproduce faster than you could kill.”

            Jamie noticed my movements and focused on me. “Where are we?”

            “The plains of North America. I have to make a quick trip, stay here and don’t go anywhere until I get back.”

            His duelist threw me a sharp salute. “Yessir.”

            Jamie grinned at her actions. “Aye, grandfather.”

            As they set up their security perimeter, I ran through a couple of quick mental exercises to set when I wanted to go and opened a new temporal portal. I knew when I’d set it for, but paused to read the portal energy signature to verify my destination before stepping through.

            I was still somewhere in the American Midwest, which was as I had expected. It was early spring and the morning air held a chill that I didn’t feel. I was only peripherally aware of it because my breath steamed as I exhaled.

            It was also 1992, or, in the league nomenclature, -10 AS.

            I levitated to a hundred feet and composed my thoughts. The form of magic that I use requires constant focus. A stray thought at the wrong instant could prove disastrous, both to me and to my surroundings. Mostly to my surroundings. I changed my color to mimic everything around me. Looking at me, someone would now think they were seeing what was on the other side of me. It didn’t make me invisible, but unless you looked hard, I’d be missed. Invisibility required enough power that I could be noticed by a pokegirl using magical detection spells while camouflage used so little power that only a very proficient mage would sense my presence at a distance. If Ygerna was on this world, she might, but I wasn’t planning to go anywhere near what would someday be the Blue League.

            Pre-positioning an observer was the first step. I created a softly glowing globe of energy that shot upwards and vanished overhead as it accelerated to 90% of the speed of light. Its journey would take almost nine minutes and would be ready long before I was.

            With a flicker of thought, I moved to hover over northern Africa. The sun was setting and the dry air was hot like the inside of an oven. A lone kite swept by, keening its hunting cry as it passed. A part of my mind that observed everything around me with a technique similar to the method Ginevra uses noted it while I reached out with the rest of my mind. A satisfied smile creased my face.

            Off the coast, in about fifty feet of water and below the sand, lay a hidden facility of Sukebe’s. It was essentially a scaled up version of a single one of the growth and storage tanks that he used for creating his pokegirl forces surrounded by a control system and a small crew of research pokegirls. This was one of the bases where Sukebe was creating his first generation legendary pokegirls. These were supposed to be the shock troops that distracted the world from his real threat, the normal pokegirls and the Bloody Flu.

            Inside this tank rested Typhonna. Not even I could hear her heartbeat through fifty feet of water, a dozen feet of sand and the fluid inside the tank, but I could sense the energy pulse as it contracted to send blood through her body. I was mildly surprised to note that she was actually female. This didn’t really alter my plans, but it did pose a question that I wanted answered.

            I was right on schedule and over the next hour I sensed her metabolism speeding up as the facility’s crew continued waking her for deployment. She came awake as the sun finished slipping below the horizon. In various places around the world, the other first generation legendaries woke up at roughly the same time.

            The team of alaka-wham in the facility worked together to exert their will on Typhonna in order to smoothly deploy her on her first mission. It was a masterful job and I took a second to appreciate both the finesse and the raw power that Sukebe had taught them to use so well.

            Typhonna responded by destroying the facility around her with her point singularity weapon. I guess I admired them too quickly. Oops.

            The mammoth creature ripped her way through the sand and paused to pepper the area with more micro black holes before swimming powerfully for the surface. She surfaced almost silently and turned her head to the east. According to the data collected by the satellite net, historically she’d hugged the coast around Africa, destroying everything as she moved. Eventually she entered the Mediterranean Sea and continued the devastation there before curving north.

            I focused my will again and light grew to the west. Typhonna swung around to eye it and saw the illusion of herself that I’d created for her to see. She roared a challenge that vibrated the air and turned towards it. I curved around behind her and followed as she charged the now vanished image. For my first experiment, I wanted to be far from land, in case something didn’t work out as anticipated. I also wanted it to be light so I could better see what happened and so I prepared myself to follow her until dawn as she headed out to sea.

            I had a whole slew of projects to focus on while following her, so I decided to explore the genetics of the neo iczel. Although not aware of her contribution, Gwen had been kind enough to provide me with a sample of her DNA and in my mind’s eye I spread it before me and began examining it. Later I’d design my own version of the magic pokegirl to see how I would have done things differently. I had no intention of making any, but it helped me to see how Sukebe thought and what his mannerisms were like. I was no Mentor of Arisia with an almost complete visualization of the Cosmic All, but I’d learn a lot about James by examining how he made pokegirls. Later, I’d find a neo iczel from this world and examine her DNA to compare it to how three centuries of evolution had drifted Gwen’s DNA from the original versions, if any.

            One of the valid complaints that Willow and Lily have about me is that sometimes I overly focus and lose track of time. When I came out of my reverie about pokegirl DNA, it was to realize that it was almost noon and I had to quickly verify that I hadn’t lost days instead of hours. My stomach was only unhappy instead of really pissed at me, so I’d only worked through the night.

            In front of me, Typhonna still swam; her powerful head undulating back and forth as she steadily drove through the water. I pulled a sample bottle from my pocket and used magic to completely sterilize it and invoke temporal stasis on the interior. I needed a place where there wasn’t any of the massive scale armor that covered most of her body and I needed it to be relatively still. That only left a couple of places on her, only two of which were really viable as she swam.

            I shifted from camouflage to true invisibility and suppressed my odor. Immediately I accelerated and dove, entering the water a couple of hundred yards in front of the oncoming legendary. I matched velocity with her and then slowed slightly, allowing her to gradually close the distance between us until her muzzle was in front of me. At this distance, her true size was brought into focus. She was impressive, I had to admit, and I looked her over eagerly as I pressed the sample bottle against the soft tissues just inside her right nostril. The bottle quickly filled with blood. Once full, I put the bottle safely away and accelerated again to begin slowly opening the range between us. I was almost a quarter mile in front before leaving the water and resuming my place behind her.

            For an instant I fought an urge to pit myself directly against her. Strange things could happen in a situation like that, and my natural inclinations quickly won out. One of the reasons I have survived to become as powerful as I am and as old as I am is by never using brute force against brute force if any other way of dealing with the situation exists. I have always preferred the minimum application of force necessary to do the job properly. To me, overkill was not only waste, it was unproductive and unnecessary waste and was thus to be avoided whenever possible. Too many powerful wizards had brought their full might to bear and eradicated their foes only to be taken down by the next one who struck while their power was still depleted.

            It just so happened that I’d done for several of them myself.

            In any case, my wolfish urge to fight her to the death was quickly overcome by common sense. I am not an animal and although every day the animal struggles to be free, I will always prevail. I am not here to kill Typhonna. I am here to make sure she dies, which is something entirely different.

            I’d briefly considered neutralizing her, but ensuring that she was completely ineffective and couldn’t get loose when I was busy elsewhere would take even more energy than a possible direct confrontation. To be honest, I wasn’t sure I could easily take her down and it only took a few moments of contemplation to decide this was not a viable course of action.

            I drifted up to two hundred feet and slowed to allow the monstrous pokegirl pull ahead of me until she was almost a mile away. While I shouldn’t have any problems with what was going to happen, a little more caution never hurt.

            I focused my will and released.

            Grouper, largemouth bass and many other fish feed the same way. Whether they wait for prey to swim by or actively hunt for food, the actual feeding mechanism is almost identical. Each of them opens their mouth quickly, which creates a vacuum inside the mouth that sucks the prey inside. Then they close their mouth and kill their prey with crushing teeth in the pharynx and then strain out the water through their gills before swallowing their meal.

             The horizontal portal that I opened a dozen feet underneath Typhonna’s toes was a half mile in diameter. On the edges of the circle, water thundered as it and she were sucked through it to vanish. Typhonna didn’t have time to react before she was gone. The portal dissipated as I cut the magic powering it.

            I was already monitoring the destination through the observer sphere that I’d launched earlier. The portal spun open there and the water and Typhonna emerged deep inside the photosphere of the sun. Everything glowed in the bright light for a heartbeat and then was gone, converted instantly into plasma that now streamed back towards Earth at close to the speed of light.

            The test was successful and now I would use it to deal with the rest of the legendaries that I didn’t feel needed to continue on this world. Once I retrieved Jamie from the past, I’d have to check and make sure that James didn’t make any more of them after his first ones vanished so mysteriously.

            I monitored the area closely for a few more minutes and then put the observation sphere back in standby as I reached into my pocket to pull out my com link. “Virtue, interface with the satellite net and find me my next target.”