Chapter 8-215: Setting New Courses (1/2)
Briggs chopped off a lot of heads with Endure in Axe Mode, and did exactly what he said, mounting that multi-ton skull with hanging tentacles right there on the prow of the ship, a truly macabre sight. Of course, most of the tentacles were eaten away by vivus, but it still looked nasty.
That he dared to do it and spit in the teeth of the dignity of the kraken was another thing. Let them come up here and protest!
The two crewmen were dug out of their little hidey-hole screaming in fear... which didn’t let up much when they saw we were not sahaug, given the appearance of the four of us, and especially me.
Everyone knew halvyr were Powered, after all. They started coughing up names, and through ESP, faces, dates, and worse, heaping more shit onto a pile of it that was growing deeper and deeper.
All of them had families at home being held hostage against their return. Their families were basically dead if the ship didn’t return, or the captain didn’t, or their cargo didn’t... so, yeah, they were hosed.
It was like the tenth cargo of people they’d taken, too. Not all of them had been Powered, either. At least three times, they’d anchored off islands in the South Pacific, and the captain had gone out to negotiate with things out there, and crates made out of something that wasn’t wood were traded to them for helpless humans, who were dragged off to someone unknown fate.
After they told us everything they could, including about Hong Kong and the situation there, Sama was still smiling in a friendly manner when she took off their heads painlessly, and they died and were reduced to white, drifting ash.
I Waterjumped back to Baja, then Teleported to Baltimore, where a retired ship captain with the confidence he could pilot the vessel had formed an ersatz crew of old merchant marines, with some young volunteers. One Mass Reduction, a Teleport, and a Waterjump later, and the somewhat dizzy men were coming up aboard the Rokugunate to pilot her north and deliver her cargo to safer hands.
Briggs said he would go along to make sure there were no unforeseen problems. A swimming sahaugh couldn’t possibly keep up with a ship over time, even a freighter like this, so I wasn’t worried about him being intercepted by the guilty parties coming back. There were already efforts being made to receive them in Baja, and from there, Briggs promised to head back to Hermitage and start some serious training in the compound that was going up there... and he was going to arrange a seaside facility to train Forsaken who hit Seven and got their Vajras on how to fight in the water.
I knew the motivation for men to learn how to fight the Sahaug and Deep Ones in their own element was going to carry across the globe. Powered could potentially do it, but no one really wanted to. It had to be done military-style, a goal and an aspiration for the most elite of the Forsaken, and then start drafting in and specially training some Powered to help.
But at some point, we were definitely going to mess the bastards up.
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Sama was delivered to Matarani by Master Fred and I. She vanished into the city, her hair black, skin and eyes as brown as the natives, but with a lot more murder in her than most of them.
If there were Cultivators in the Chinese quarter, she would literally sniff them out, but she had a lot of names to investigate there.
There were also a lot of people there clamoring to join my Allegiance, having heard about it from church contacts in the north. I had to spend a couple hours admitting faithful of the Church to the Allegiance, raising a Banner there in the small church of Sylune (which was likely going to get a LOT more attended and support soon), and giving out Blessings to really reward those who came to me and wanted to help.
Fighting this kind of evil was the sort of thing all people were meant to do... but this level of wickedness was coming from within, and from our own kind, not from the undead who everybody was looking at.
Sama started recruiting more, too. It wasn’t as easy for her as it was for me, but her Marked started to grow, too... almost as fast as the bodies started to pile up.
Before she was done, the Chinese Quarter was maybe a Chinese Sixteenth, and she had stumbled onto a Mafia operation of truly impressive proportions run by Imprus, Huul, and Shoul devotees among the wealthy families and military of Peru dealing in human traffic to enrich themselves and cow the population. They were dealing openly with Cultivators to get rid of potential malcontents and rebels, and the Deep Ones to make their enemies and criminals vanish, all just a part of doing business.
As Sama noted, it was real hard to rule or inherit without your head.
The Peruvian Powered, many of them employed by the junta and mafia families, suddenly found the entire country turning against them, including ALL the Good churches and the druidic Shamans of the countryside. Their own soldiers started rising in revolt and shooting their officers as suddenly information started spreading and coordinating in the country with damning speed, deeds were made known, guilt allocated, and a full-blown civil war erupted in less than a week from the time Sama set foot on shore.
None of which surprised me, although the later fact it was a month before the President’s head vanished between bedtime and sunrise one fair night did: I expected the former general to be dead much, much sooner.
Individually, the Powered could certainly take down any normal soldiers with breathtaking speed... except when the clergy started intervening, and holy war erupted among the churches.
Lots of soldiers not obeying their officers, seizing weapons and shooting said officers with them, was also a bit of a downer for the Peruvian government...
I also Waterjumped back to Baja once the ship arrived, to literal worldwide attention as the paralyzed tribesfolk were lifted out. I used the Song of Life to heal each of them by touch, one by one, breaking them out of their poisoned paralysis and back to motion, surrounded by understanding White Hands there to help them... making sure to use magic to adjust my skin color first so they didn’t think I was a devil while healing them.
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“So, what do you think of the vacation now?” I asked Master Fred, as we finally headed south once more, leaving behind a nation just starting the throes of revolution.
-I think my definition of vacation has yet to properly adjust to match yours,- he /admitted. -I still can’t believe you recruited Shvaughn.-
-On my end or hers?-