Chapter 9-286: Inviting Circumstances (1/2)
The invitations going out had naturally stirred up great interest, and great jealousy, too. The invitations were not to organizations; they were to specific individuals in those organizations, namely their most pre-eminent individuals. If they didn’t choose to come, no substitutes were accepted.
He, his Vice-President Marcia Kennedy, and the leaders of the Republicans, Democrats, Liberty, and Green parties of the House and Senate were invited, along with the leaders of most of the Churches and powerful multinational organizations. Pointedly, there were no leaders of academia, the military, entertainment, or businessmen being brought in, who were creating rows about being excluded and denied their chance to meet Traveler themselves.
Likewise, the Prime Minister and leaders of the major parties of Canada were invited. The major parties of the European governments also had specific people invited, and naturally there was teeth-gnashing over that entire list, as well.
All the generals looked at one another, fighting the urge to say they’d love to go as well. After all, no major player except Heavenbound Hall had talked with Lady Traveler at length about anything, and finding out more from her could only be advantageous.
The information that she had given them was changing the world. Only the Hall might have had access to it early, and everyone was tracking the moves they were making now, trying to deduce what was going on.
The fortune they were making after buying up the mining rights in the Firezone might have had a little something to do with it, too.
“The security risk of having both you and the Vice-President there at the same time is not something that can be ignored.”
“Generals, and I mean this in only the best way, is there any way that the security at Heavenbound Hall is inferior to our own in that respect?” he had to ask, and watched them stew again.
Heavenbound Hall was rumored to have an angel and a genie in residence, and so had access to more powerful magic than almost any other faction on the planet. There were constant attempts to subvert or attack members of the Hall by their many enemies, yet they never seemed to get very far... and said enemies were almost always caught, and remarkably quickly, too.
There were unsubstantiated rumors that random bomb attacks that had taken place in certain areas were the results of terrorist strikes being spontaneously transported to the vicinity of their makers before going off. No one was sure about that, but it was true that even something as basic and crude as driving a fuel tanker and ramming into the Hall had never successfully taken place.
“The threat from Traveler herself is not something we can deal with,” General Mallory sighed. “You saw the video, sir. And,” the general suddenly sat down, looking five years older abruptly, “have you read about some of the reports coming out of the Far East, Mr. President?”
Havier nodded slightly. “It appears that she’s lighting into the Cultivators over there, and is raising up and arming the natives with the help of Heavenbound Hall... and some of the Tomb Clans?” he remembered vaguely. Another windmill-tilting Good Cause, he supposed, although he doubted there would be eternal gratitude for the deed.
“Sir, she’s been making up those Obelisks that give them internet connections through Heavenbound Hall. Through them, we’ve been able to exchange diplomatic and military information for the first time in decades with locations in the islands, China, Thailand and the smaller nations, and India.”
“Mithar, India...” muttered General Roberto Brown, the General of the Army, shaking his head.
“Sir,” General Mallory said softly, “she wiped out a fortified position of senior Buddhists in India, who had access to magic far beyond what we are capable of, short of forcibly bringing in dangerous Entities from outside the Shroud. She killed them all.
“Rough estimations are that in Bombay alone are that she killed ten million humans who had been turned into Buddhist Cultivators.”
President Havier sucked in a breath. Ten million... Powered? Equivalents? With ratios of Senior Powered? And things from Outside the Shroud?
By the Land, just how powerful was that young woman?
“In other words, what you are saying is that it would be unthinkably stupid of me to turn down her invitation.”
General Mallory opened his mouth, shut it, and glanced around the room at the others, including the silent Admiral LaSalle. “She is likely capable of taking on the entire United States armed forces by herself, sir. Turning down her invitation is indeed unwise.”
“Well, then, I’ll be clearing my schedule... and enjoying the view of the sky on the twenty-first,” President Havier agreed calmly.
He wasn’t scared of the young woman, despite her power, probably because the Land wasn’t. It approved of her and what she had done, so what was he going to do, overrule the Land?
Idiocy, and he didn’t get this job and want to keep it because he was an idiot. While the job didn’t have the power or influence it might have had were the world not such a magical place, it was still a place where many people and powers got together to get things done, and money and people were directed to projects nobody would fund themselves.
Now, he’d be going to Detroit, it seemed, and would be the first to hear some other world-shattering news. He didn’t know whether to be worried or excited... probably both were appropriate.
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It wasn’t boring or even tedious, given how places we had to go and things we had to kill... and there were things to see.
Particularly on the ocean floor.
A ninety-mile-wide Commune with Nature naturally allowed me to go all the way down to the ocean floor, and all of that stuff was painted into the Map.
That included things like, oh, underwater dens and settlements of aquatic races... or big bare spaces where no Divinations were possible, which also kind of stood out. So did larger raiding parties of supernatural entities, like, oh, eel-folk, who had demonic ties and influences that the Land definitely considered unnatural.
There was a raiding party of a couple hundred of them approaching southern India, and we diverted over to right on top of them.
They were three hundred feet down, and certainly didn’t expect volleys of Aqueous Shards to come streaking down from above and do the loop-de-loop circuit through all of them, slaughtering them all and starting them burning en vivus down in the deep.
Briggs was already making plans for me to map the oceans so we could find out where the sahaug and Deep Ones were holed up, and wondering if we could borrow some nukes to do the job. As they’d slowly done something similar on Terra-Luna, that didn’t surprise me at all. I was well aware of Briggs’ loathing for hostile aquatic races, especially Dagonic creatures of all kinds.
In the game, we’d never been allowed to try and track invading aquatic creatures back to underwater bases and cities, instead having to put up with regular invasions and the like. Briggs simply wasn’t going to put up with that shit in a real-world setting.
I didn’t have an issue with it. There were things we wanted to get rid of, and needed to get rid of, before the Shroud was lifted. Once the Shroud came up and the eyes of the dark powers turned this way, most of the competition better be dead, or we were going to be having problems.