The Awakening
Part II
Kraden jumped at the sound of furious knocking.
"Jenna..." he muttered. "It has to be her."
Kraden looked to the locked and chained wooden chest, hidden away in the corner of his living room, beneath a stack of books. The elderly sage could not feel the Necronomicon's evil magic, but Felix had often warned him of what could happen if it should fall into the hands of someone without will enough to resist its temptations. And when Felix had discovered Jenna had taken it, he had entrusted it in Kraden's care.
For Kraden was no Adept, and he could not hear the whispers.
Jenna continued to pound on his door, and Kraden remained at his table, doing best to ignore Jenna's furious rapping.
"Kraden, open the door!" Jenna pleaded from the outside. "Please!"
There was pain in her voice, and he longed to ease the poor girl's suffering. But Felix had told him not to listen to her, no matter what she said.
"Kraden, please!"
He looked up, to see Jenna was looking in at him from the other side of his window. She look ghastly, malnourished, sick... Kraden hated to see her like that. However, it was a lot easier to ignore her when she wasn't pleading with him with with her burning eyes.
"Jenna, I cannot," he said. "This is for your own good."
"Kraden, please let me in!" Jenna cried. "I'm dying. Felix won't... he would let me die just because of that book. I'll bet he didn't tell you that I'll die without it now! Kraden, please don't let me die out here in the cold..." There were tears running down Jenna's cheeks.
She was dying...? Would Felix really hide that from him?
No, he wouldn't. Not something like that. It was a trick. The desperate manipulations of a desperate person experiencing withdrawal. Kraden had to be strong for both of them.
He stood and moved to the window. Jenna's face, still beautiful despite her condition, grew hopeful, as she believed he was letting her in. Instead, he stopped at the window, and looked at her with shame in his eyes.
"I'm sorry," he said to her. "This is for your own good."
Kraden pulled the curtains closed.
Jenna all but screamed, and she threw herself up against the glass. She begged and pleaded with him, but he did not move from the sofa in the center of his living room, his gaze locked on the wooden chest that contained the vile thing that was tormenting Jenna.
Jenna pleas grew quiet, and for a moment Kraden feared that she had been telling the truth, and was now lying dead in the street. He reassured himself that Felix would not lie to him.
Long minutes passed.
Kraden wondered if Jenna had left. Allowing himself to check, he turned around in his seat and looked to the window.
Jenna's silhouette had not moved.
A chill ran down the Alchemy sage's spine. Something was wrong. Jenna was too quiet, too still... she was watching him through the curtain, her gaze locked on his exact position in the room, even though she could not possibly see him through the blinds.
Kraden turned back around, unable to meet the girl's unseen gaze. Instead, he found himself staring at the wooden chest that held the Necronomicon, and another shudder ran through him. Kraden was no Adept... but he could feel something. There was evil in that book. An evil so great and ancient that mortals like themselves had no hope to even think of resisting.
The sage suddenly felt claustrophobic. He felt pressed like a worm pressed between two boulders. While before he had been guarding the book from the outside, he now felt like the book and Jenna were trapping him.
"My powers are fading," Jenna said slowly. "I grow weak, and lack the strength to break down the wood of your door, or the glass of the window. My thralls must sleep, or drain me further. I am weaker now than I ever was before I bled and could control Psynergy."
The voice that spoke was not that of the hopeful girl Kraden knew. The pitch was still the same... but there was no emotion in her words. The inflections were wrong, like someone who had never spoke was trying words for the first time.
The wrongness of it made Kraden uncomfortable. It was like he had fallen right into the uncanny valley, surrounded by living dolls and things with artificial faces. Was Jenna even the same person anymore? Or had some thing from the book entered her and taken over?
"But I can still feel you, Kraden," Jenna continued in her unnatural voice. "I can feel all the things you hide from the world. All the frustration... all the loneliness. The way you hate yourself when you realize what parts of Mia and myself you had been staring at..."
"S-stop..." Kraden said, too quietly for her to hear.
"How you desire to feel the delights of the flesh, as you once did when you were a young man," Jenna said. "How you long to be with your wife. The wife who died too young. An accident... an explosion in your own Alchemy lab in Tolbi. An accident that haunted you with the possibility that it may have been your fault."
"How do you know these thing...?!" Kraden demanded. "Stop talking about that! You have no right to talk about her!"
"I see all the nights you cried," Jenna said. "How you pleaded with the gods to give her back to you. The gods that you never believed in. How you swore to do anything to have her back."
"Stop-!"
"I can give her back to you, Kraden."
He froze.
"The gods cannot restore your beloved wife," Jenna said. "Nor can the wonders of science or Alchemy. But my power... my power can. All you have to do is open the door."
He trembled. How he missed his wife... How he longed to feel her in his arms again... How he wanted to hear her voice one more time.
He had long ago forgotten what her voice sounded like.
"Just open the door, Kraden."
Garet did not sleep that night.
Instead he sat upon his bed, his sword cradled in his lap. He watched his door like a man hunted, expecting Jenna and the brainwashed Isaac and Felix to burst through at any moment. To turn him into whatever they were...
He was exhausted when the sun finally rose and his parents and siblings rose and began their morning routine. He put his large sword back in its place on his wall, but he took a dagger and carried it in his pocket.
He went to breakfast and ate what he could. He was so tired and nervous and afraid he felt like he was going to through up. But he forced himself to nibble on his toast and drink a couple sips of orange juice.
His strange behavior did not evade the notice of his family.
"Are you feeling alright, Garet?" his mother asked. "You look like you didn't get much sleep last night."
"I, uh... had a stomachache," he lied lamely.
His sister Kay snorted. "That's what you get for eating like a pig all the time."
"Oh, that reminds me!" his mother said. "I wanted to ask about those cookies you brought over. Jenna made those, didn't she?"
Garet looked up suddenly. "How do you know that?"
"Well, that is her family's basket, isn't it?" Garet's mother continued. "Did she make those for us? Because if so, I'd better do something for them in return."
The image of Jenna brainwashing his mother entered Garet's mind, and he panicked. "No! Nonono, she made them for Isaac, I think. But he didn't want them or something, so she gave them to me."
Kay rolled her eyes. "Jumpy today, aren't you?"
"Oh, I see," his mother continued. "In that case, you should take them back to her. I don't think it would be right for us to enjoy something she made for someone else."
The color drained from Garet's face. "I don't think that's a good idea. She, uh... didn't want them for a reason."
"Nonsense!" his mother said, waving away his protests. "You don't have anything else to do today, do you? No, of course not. Go ahead and take the cookies back to Jenna and her family. I was going to make brownies later, so it would be unnecessary for us to have so many snacks."
His father and Aaron grunted in agreement.
"Fuck..." Garet muttered under his breath.
Ten minutes later, Garet was pulling on his boots, with a basket of day-old cookies beside him, when his sister approached him.
"What did you do?" Kay asked him.
"What are you talking about?" he replied.
"Come on, it's the most obvious thing in the world," Kay told him. "Let me guess: you stole those cookies from Jenna, didn't you?"
"I did not!"
"Well, you definitely pissed her off in some way, then," Kay said. "You're always trying to get in Jenna's pants; there's no way you would say no to any chance to go see her. And whenever you get her mad at you, you're always running from her in fear. That's why you were up all night, because you were waiting for her to burst through the door and come after you."
Garet sighed. That last one was too true for his comfort.
"I'm going with you," Kay said. "Knowing you, you'll try to ditch those stolen cookies. You'll never learn unless someone makes you. So hurry up, and let's get going. I have other things to do today."
Garet swore under his breath again. He had been planning on tossing the cookies in a garbage can somewhere. Was he really that predictable?
Garet and Kay departed from their household and crossed the streets of Kalay on their way towards Felix and Jenna's house. Garet glanced at the various faces in the throng of people as they wove through – some familiar, some he had never seen. How many of them were under Jenna's control? Was it just Isaac and Felix? Was it everyone in the town except for him? How could he possibly tell?
Every set of eyes that met his felt like a judging suspicion. He had never been so paranoid in all his life.
They reached Jenna's house, and before Garet could say anything, Kay stepped up and rang the doorbell.
Nobody answered.
"I guess nobody's here," Garet said. "Too bad. Let's go."
"Like you're getting out of this that easily," Kay scoffed. "The door's unlocked. We can still leave the cookies here." Kay turned the handle of the door and it opened. She disappeared inside, and with a frustrated sigh, Garet followed her.
Sure enough, the place was empty. No Jenna, no Felix, and no parents either.
"Don't touch anything," Kay told him with a stern glare. Then her face split into a devious smile. "I'll be right back. Go leave the cookies in the kitchen."
Kay then ran off towards Felix's room, leaving behind her unamused brother.
"Hypocrite," Garet muttered as he made his way to the kitchen. "I bet that's the whole reason you wanted to come here in the first place..."
Garet left the wicker basket on the kitchen counter. He left and returned to the living room, where a faint glimmer of light caught his attention. He noticed something on the bookshelf, placed between two of the books.
Felix's Cleric Ring.
And with that reminder, the fear returned to him in a cold rush. There was no way out of his current situation. Kay would not let him get rid of the cookies, and she would naturally make sure he left them right where she told him. Of course, as soon as Jenna returned home, she would see the basket and know he had been there. He could stick with his cover story, that he had been coerced by his family to return them, but even is Jenna bought it, it would only make her more cautious. In the worst case scenario, she would suspect that he knew, and try to assimilate him just to be safe.
It was entirely possible that she was going to assimilate everyone anyway, or that everyone was already under her control in some way. In that case, the Cleric's Ring would be his only protection. And this was his only chance to take it. If Kay came back while he was still deciding, she would not let him take it. In fact, she would probably tell Felix or Jenna. So if he wanted to take it, he had to do it immediately.
However, if he did take the ring, then the moment that Jenna or Felix returned they would realize someone had come in and taken it. Which would mean that someone knew what was going on. And then they would look in the kitchen and see the basket...
Garet swore. No matter which option he took, he was still screwed in the end.
"Damn it all..."
He then heard Kay's voice calling to him from upstairs, "Garet, you better have done what I told you to do!"
Garet reached out and took the Cleric's Ring from the bookshelf and stuffed it in his pocket.
Kay emerged from atop the stairwell, giving him a suspicious look. "What did you do?"
"I didn't do anything!" Garet protested. "I put the basket in the kitchen, just like you told me to."
Kay strode past him and went to the kitchen. She emerged a moment later, seemingly surprised that he was telling the truth.
"I guess your brain won out over your stomach for once," she sighed. "It'll come back around by lunch time, though. You didn't have much for breakfast, I noticed."
At the mention of lunch, Garet remembered his plans. He was to have lunch with Ivan at the palace, much like they always did. He wasn't sure if he could go now. With the knowledge that Jenna was brainwashing people, Garet didn't know who he could trust anymore.
Still, he needed help and Ivan was a pretty safe bet. The boy was no fool, and his own mind-reading abilities would likely help in figuring out who was under Jenna's control, and who wasn't.
Assuming Ivan wasn't already one of them.
Garet would simply have to approach Ivan in a way that wouldn't be very obvious.
"Are you being brainwashed by Jenna?"
Ivan stared at him, at a loss for words.
Before he could pull away, Garet took Ivan's hand into his own and slid the Cleric's Ring onto his hand.
Nothing happened.
Ivan looked down at the ring, raised an eyebrow, and then looked up at Garet again.
"Is there maybe something you'd like to talk about?" Ivan asked.
Garet pulled the ring off Ivan's hand and stuffed it back in his pocket. "Yes. Let's go somewhere private." He looked around a few times, to make sure nobody had seen them, before taking Ivan's hand and leading him away.
They went to one of the guest rooms in Hammet's palace, and Garet locked the door behind him.
Ivan crossed his arms. "So... what's this about Jenna now?"
Garet stayed with his ear pressed up against the door for a minute, listening for the sound of anyone who may have followed them. Once he was satisfied, he turned back to Ivan. "I think Jenna has been turning people in the town into mindless servants."
"Well, she certainly has her admirers, but I don't..."
"I'm not joking, Ivan," Garet said with his firm, 'I'm serious' face. He checked the door one last time, then sat down and told Ivan what he had seen in the woods.
Ivan listened closely, nodding a few times, and keeping a level expression the entire time. Once Garet had finished his story, with his account of finding the ring in Jenna's house, Ivan closed his eyes for a moment, thinking.
"And you're really serious about this?" Ivan asked. "It's a rather difficult story to believe, so if this is part of some elaborate joke your no-bullshit mode will lose all credibility."
"I'm not making this up," Garet insisted. "I saw what I saw. I hope I was wrong, or that I just had some bizarre dream, but I know the difference. I've never been so paranoid in my life. At the least, we can't trust Jenna, Isaac, or Felix anymore. You're the only person I dared to talk to about this."
Ivan sighed and sat up. "Well, this changes things. Either I've got two very crazy friends, or you're both telling the truth. Being the brother of a prophet, I'm not allowed to believe in coincidences, and this one is just too abstract to be plausible anyway."
"Huh? Wait, two?"
Ivan nodded. "Yeah. Come with me, I think we should all discuss this together."
Ivan led Garet out of the guest room and through the halls, to the other side of the palace. On this other side, yet another guest room awaited. Ivan reached in his pocket and pulled out a key, which he used to unlock the room. They then entered.
Mia was lying atop the bed, her eyes open and staring listlessly at the ceiling. She turned her head to look at them as they entered the room, and she blinked in surprise when she saw Garet was with Ivan.
"How are you feeling?" Ivan asked her.
"Not much better," Mia replied in a tired voice. "It just won't go away. No matter what I do, I just can't stop... well, you know."
Mia's cheeks burned red and she looked back up at the ceiling. "I'm so ashamed of myself. It's all wrong... all of it. I feel so disgusting. I... I hate myself."
"What happened?" Garet asked.
Mia's lips trembled, a single tear running down the side of her face. But her eyes narrowed in rage, and she spoke with hatred: "Jenna."
Garet and Ivan pulled chairs up beside Mia's bed. The healer did not move, or turn her gaze away from the ceiling, but she continued to speak to them.
"She did something to Isaac. We were having lunch in the orchards. The day was perfect. Then Jenna showed up and changed Isaac somehow. She made him say these horrible things to me, and then they left together. She turned him into some kind of puppet. I went to him, but he ignored me like I wasn't even there."
"Garet told me that he saw Jenna doing something similar to Felix," Ivan told Mia. "Apparently, Felix was immune to her powers until she took the Cleric's Ring off of him."
"The Cleric's Ring..." Mia muttered. "Yeah, that's right. We found that in Crossbone Isle. I gave it to Felix so that he could use that Darksword. It resists curses."
"Right," Ivan said. "But it doesn't let you get rid of them, if I remember correctly. I nullified the dark effects of the cursed gear, but we still couldn't get rid of it."
Mia's cheeks were flushed and her breathing heavy. Her gaze was distant, like she was thinking about something else. Garet was about to ask her if she was alright, but Ivan spoke first.
"Focus, Mia!" the small boy snapped.
Mia blinked, and then she turned and buried herself in her pillow, sobbing.
"I'm sorry..." Mia cried. "I'm so sorry. Please don't hate me..."
Ivan placed his hand on Mia's shoulder. "Don't talk like that. We're gonna figure this out. We could never hate you, especially not for something that isn't your fault."
Mia rolled over, and gave them a sad smile. Her eyes were red and exhausted.
"What happened?" Garet asked, no longer able to stand not knowing.
Ivan sighed, preparing to explain, but Mia hushed him and told Garet herself.
"She didn't just change Isaac," Mia explained. "She did something to me, too. She told me... Gods, she told me that I wouldn't like men anymore. She said that from now on, I would be attracted to other women. I didn't believe her at first. I thought she was just nuts. But once I got back to town, I kept looking at girls and... thinking lewd thoughts about them."
Normally, Garet would have cracked a joke about something like this, but with how upset it was clearly making Mia, even he couldn't be so insensitive. Garet knew when to keep his mouth shut.
"We have to do something about this," Garet muttered.
"But what?" Ivan mused. "At least three of our friends are under the book's influence. The only ones who aren't are Sheba and Piers, and they're away. For all we know, Jenna could have everyone else in the town under her control right now. What can we possibly do?"
"Someone or something is controlling Jenna," Garet declared. "I've known her my whole life, and she would never do something like this. Not in her right mind."
"We have to figure out where she is getting these powers from," Mia muttered. "We have to separate her from whatever is making her this way."
An idea came to Garet, and he turned to Ivan. "I've got it. This situation is desperate enough that you can break your rule, right?"
"My rule...? Oh! You mean my promise not to read anyone's minds."
"Yeah. It'll be the easiest way to figure out what Jenna is doing, and how she got these powers. Just look into her memories of the past few days."
Ivan frowned. "I dunno. I mean you're right, the situation certainly justifies it... but Jenna would know immediately that I was using Psynergy."
"So we create a distraction."
"That could work on an ordinary person, but an Adept would still sense my Psynergy."
Garet scratched his chin. "Well... then we just need a way to distract her and have a reason for you to be using Psynergy at the same time. She will think you're doing something else."
They thought about it for a moment, wracking their brains for ideas.
"I got nothing," Ivan sighed.
"Me neither," Garet said. "Yeah, that's a stupid plan. We would be trying to get her to both ignore and pay attention to you at the same time. My plans suck."
"Maybe..." Mia said quietly. "It would be possible to have someone else using so much Psynergy that Jenna would not notice the small amount needed to read her mind."
Garet and Ivan both looked at her.
"Go on," Garet said.
"Garet, how much Psynergy do you have available?" Mia asked.
He thought about it. "With all my Djinn set? Enough to torch the whole town if I needed to."
Mia nodded. "Good. Here's my plan..."
Jenna stopped in front of her house, with Felix and her parents in tow, because someone was blocking her path. A palace guard stood before her, holding a scroll which he handed to her as she drew near.
"What is it?" she asked, taking the scroll.
"Your invitation to the palace," the guard said. "There's going to be a special feast prepared this evening for you and your friends and family, and an announcement made at its conclusion."
"A celebration in my honor?" Jenna asked, blinking in confusion.
"For all the Warriors of Vale," the guard corrected impatiently. "It will begin soon, so you had best go straight to the palace."
He should be more respectful to me, Jenna thought. "This is awfully sudden."
"I'm very sorry, my lady," the guard muttered sheepishly. "I only know what they told me to tell you."
"Hmm..." Jenna considered. While she had been hoping to return to her bedroom and read from her favorite book, the idea of a big celebration sounded fun. She turned to her brother and parents, and they all nodded silently.
"Okay, then," Jenna said with a smile. "Let's go."
"Right this way, my lady," the guard said, trying to hide his nervousness. "Please, watch your step."
A few minutes later, they found themselves at the palace, which was alive in activity. All around, servants were carrying trays of fine food and assembling decorations. A table had been set up, with enough seats to hold two dozen people, and was covered in a mouth-watering selection of Kalay's best.
Jenna quickly spotted Ivan, who was surrounded by servants that were listening closely to his orders. It seemed that, as usual, he was organizing things. She wanted to go over to him and ask about this big sudden event, but he was clearly too busy. She figured she would have plenty of time to question him once the feast actually began.
"Felix!" came a loud voice from across the hall.
Jenna groaned silently as Garet's older sister Kay ran up and started talking to her brother. Felix replied with the same terse sentences he would always use when confronted by Kay and her obvious infatuation with him. Jenna rolled her eyes and looked elsewhere.
In the conundrum that was the busy palace Jenna saw many faces, some familiar, some new. None of them stopped to pay her even the briefest of glances. She started to feel rather unloved. Mentally, she called out to Isaac.
Her golden-haired love came to her a few minutes later, having apparently been somewhere else in the palace. He wrapped his arms around her and held her close, and she felt warm and safe.
The people who passed by in the palace would now glance at her occasionally, and they would instead smile and nod to her. Nowhere did Jenna feel the coldness of a judging stare.
Everybody loved her.
A flash of blue and white caught Jenna's attention, and she just barely managed to catch a glimpse of someone running up the stairwell off to the side of the palace.
Jenna grinned as an idea formed in her head. She turned to Kay, who was still forcing conversation with her brother and began to whisper in the red-haired girl's ear.
Mia returned to her secluded room, short of breath and shaking. It hadn't been the race back that had frightened her or left her the way she was. Mia collapsed on the bed, tears forming in her eyes as she remembered.
The image of Jenna being held by Isaac like that...
She hated Jenna. A part of her wanted to take her mace in hand and march down to the hall and strike Jenna over the head until she moved no more.
Mia had never before had such violent thoughts. The only person she had ever come to hate was her cousin Alex, who had betrayed her clan to light Mercury Lighthouse. But that had faded with time, for she herself had eventually made the same betrayal. She would never reconcile with Alex, even if he did still live. There were other reasons why she hated him.
But not even Alex could arouse such feelings of rage in her.
Part of Mia wanted to go and murder Jenna in cold blood in front of a hundred people. The other part of Mia... wanted to pull off Jenna's clothes and kiss her nude body.
Mia's cheeks burned red. She gripped her pillows until her knuckles were white. No matter what she forced herself to think about, nothing she did could ease the lust she felt. Her whole body burned with desire.
The door to her bedroom opened, interrupting her futile efforts to cleanse her mind. She turned in the bed, expecting to see Ivan, but instead she was greeted by Garet's elder sister, Kay.
"Mia, what are you doing up here by yourself?" Kay asked her. "There's going to be a big celebration downstairs. Don't tell me you're planning on hiding up here while everyone else has fun?"
Kay smiled as she spoke, and that alone was enough to set Mia's pulse racing.
The redhead drew closer to Mia's bed, and she spoke in an increasingly impish voice. "It's not healthy for girl to spend all her time alone, you know. You have to get out... and do things..."
Kay's arms wrapped around Mia's neck, and the girl moved in and sat upon Mia's lap. Her face was only a few inches from Mia's own. Mia could feel Kay's breath tickle her own lips.
She could not move.
"Quit being such a prude and have a little fun for once," Kay said deviously.
And Mia could not offer even a modicum of resistance as the other girl's lips touched her own.
Jenna looked around, and did not fail to notice that even though the feast was supposedly in honor of the Warriors of Vale, two of the them were missing. Mia's absence, was expected. The healer would be busy for quite a little while.
Garet's absence on the other hand, was rather unexpected. It wasn't like him at all to miss a feast.
So with those two gone, and Piers and Sheba in other lands, only herself, Isaac, Ivan, and Felix were there to enjoy the feast. The other seats were taken by various parents, as well as Hammet and Lady Layana.
Conversation buzzed between the grownups, but the present half of the Warriors of Vale were quiet.
Jenna had asked several times what the purpose of the feast was, and what he was going to be announcing at its conclusion, but Ivan would not tell her. Jenna considered simply making him tell her, but he had promised that there would be quite a surprise at the end, and she was a total sucker for surprises. She decided that forcing Ivan to tell her would just spoil the fun.
And Jenna loved fun. She smiled as she thought of what she had accomplished. Isaac was hers, Mia was out of the way, and her brother trusted her again. And of course, she had her book back.
Jenna closed her eyes and thought of the book. Now that she had it back, she was never going to let it go again. She could feel its warm, reassuring energy humming to her from within the bag under her chair. Her body grew pleasantly warm as the energy filled her, like the bright rays of a summer's sun. She moaned quietly, and squirmed a bit in her seat. She felt like something in her was about to change, and the feeling grew in her like a wave about to crash down. She moaned again as it drew near, and...
"Jenna?"
She opened her eyes. Ivan was staring at her with a confused expression.
"Are you alright?" he asked.
She smiled. "I've never been better."
As the clock struck the ninth hour, there was a roar that echoed throughout the palace.
Everyone rose and rushed outside, not quite in a panic, but in a frantic excitement. All those who had gathered for the feast rushed out and stood in a crowd at the steps of the palace gate. Ivan was the first out, with Jenna and the two Venus Adepts close behind her.
High above the city, a great red image appeared, and began to circle above. Jenna gasped in awe as she realized just what she was looking at.
A giant red dragon.
The beast roared once more, and then it swept down, passing dangerously close to the city. As it drew near, Jenna felt a powerful wave of Psynergy wash over her, and she realized that the creature was an artificial construct created by an Adept. Never before had she felt so much Psynergy being used in a single moment, so it was overwhelming.
The dragon swept by them once more, then landed upon the palace roof. It gave a mighty roar that was so loud it shook the ground they stood upon, then it flapped its wings and rose back into the sky.
The dragon flew until it was a safe distance from the city, then it burst open in an explosion of orange light. The dragon's energy showered down over the city like orange snowflakes, and everyone was cheering.
Once the applause died down a bit, Garet emerged from the shadows behind the palace, and did a theatrical bow.
"Thank you, everyone," he said. "I also do parties."
Jenna excitedly joined the others congratulating Garet on the awe-inspiring display. As she drew near him, his grin did not fade, but his hands quickly found themselves in his pockets.
He did not take them out until after she left.
Garet sighed, drained after that excessive display.
The announcement itself had been nothing special. Some amusement park place where young Adepts could train their Psynergy while also learning the story of the Warriors of Vale. Hammet had been planning to build it for some time, but it was only now that it was being unveiled to the public. The response had been positive, but nobody had really been that interested after the feast and the Psynergy dragon.
Not that the announcement itself was important even to the people who had planned it. To Garet and Ivan, the real mission had been carried out clandestinely.
Garet found Ivan alone in the hall, waiting for him. The guest had cleared a few minutes earlier, leaving only them.
"Did it work?" Garet asked him.
Ivan looked down at the floor. "It did and it didn't. I was able to read her mind quite easily. And from her reaction, she was very well distracted. But..."
"But what?"
Ivan sighed. "Her mind was empty. There was nothing. Static. That can only mean two things. The first is that she was able to totally block my mind reading Psynergy ahead of time with her own will. And Hama is the only person I've ever met who could do that. It's possible that the book gave her the power, but the other possibility is more likely."
"And that possibility is?"
"That I was picking up her thoughts," Ivan said. "And I just couldn't understand them. That Jenna's entire mind has been... replaced by something too alien for me to understand."
Silence settled over the hall as the weight of Ivan's words set in. If that was true, and Jenna's entire mind was really taken over by something like that, then...
Could they even save her?
Ivan turned to Garet, his eyes serious. "Go home and pack your things. We have to get out of here tonight."
"W-what are you saying?"
"It's too dangerous to stay here," Ivan said. "I've seen the emptiness in Isaac and Felix's eyes. They're her puppets now. And if her power is as great as I fear, than we have to get away from her while we still can. It's only a matter of time before everyone in town is assimilated. We three have to leave, and come back when we know more and have a better plan."
"Why can't we just make that plan now?"
"Because it won't take her very long to figure out that we know!" Ivan practically hissed at him. "As soon as she checks for that ring, and realizes it's gone, she'll panic and just start turning everyone around her into her damn thralls until she figures out who is immune. She probably won't notice its absence until tomorrow, but she could figure it out as early as tonight! She could be walking in her house right now, and checking to see if its still there."
"Fuck..." Garet muttered, his blood running cold. "The cookies..."
"What?"
"The cookies that Kay made me return!" Garet said. "As soon as she gets home, she'll see those and know I was in her house. She'll see the ring is gone, and she'll put two-and-two together. She'll figure out that everything that we did tonight was to read her!"
Ivan's face was as pale as snow. "Oh, gods. We should have left as soon as you showed up today. Go now! Hurry and get only what you need! I'll get Mia, and we'll meet back here! We'll escape through the tunnels in the back!"
Garet nodded, and took off.
"Mia, we have to-!"
Ivan froze.
The room was empty. Mia was gone.
Garet burst through the front door of his house, to find that nobody was there. His house was barren, and deathly quiet.
"Where is everyone...?" he muttered under his breath. Dark images formed in his mind's eye. He saw Jenna, standing before his entire family, who bowed to her.
He shook his head. He was just overreacting. They were likely just at some afterparty somewhere. He felt the Cleric's Ring around his finger, and assured himself that it would protect him from Jenna's control.
He went to his room and grabbed his bag. He threw what essentials he could in there, and he grabbed his sword off the wall. With the blade strapped across his back, he ran back downstairs and into the kitchen. After stuffing some food into the bag, he turned and ran outside the house.
Where a crowd of people were waiting for him.
He stopped dead in his tracks. Everyone was there. Everyone in Kalay. All the people who had lived their lives there, and all the refugees from Vale. A massive crowd of people, who blocked every path of escape.
Isaac and Felix.
And Jenna.
There were no pretensions in the way Jenna stared at him. She watched him, with hungry, menacing eyes. Eyes that did not blink.
"Going somewhere, Garet?"
She knew.
His eyes darted around, looking for a way to escape. There was none. And that's when he saw it.
Mia and his sister, standing at the edge of the group. Their arms were wrapped around each other, and their lips were on each other like they had been glued together. Kay broke off her kiss with Mia, and started to trail kisses from her neck to her collarbone, while Mia looked right at him and grinned.
Mia was gone.
Garet's panic turned to rage, and he faced Jenna. "What have you done to them?!"
"I made them happy, of course," Jenna told him. "I've made everyone here happy. Everyone, tell Garet how happy you all are."
"We are... happy..."
"We are happy."
"Happy..."
"All... happy..."
Garet took a step away from them, his back meeting the door of his house.
"Hold him still," Jenna instructed the two Venus Adepts at her sides.
Before Garet could get away, Isaac and Felix had moved in and seized him, holding him fast by his arms. He tried to pull away, but in their thrall they were far stronger than he was.
"Remove his weapons and that bag in his hand," Jenna said.
They did so. His sword was removed from his back, and the dagger in his pocket was thrown aside.
It would have been easy to escape with Psynergy, but he just couldn't do that to his friends. He couldn't hurt them.
Not even when they were like this...
"I could just remove that ring on your finger and turn you right now," Jenna said with a smile. "But what's the fun in that? You will be turned in time. First, I think I should reward you. You see, you treated us all with that little show earlier. You know, with the dragon and all. So I think it's only fair that we give you a little show in return."
Jenna snapped her fingers, and Kay and Mia moved from the edge of the crowd to right in front of Garet.
Mia started to remove Kay's clothes, and too late Garet realized what was happening.
"No! You sick perverted bitch! That's my sister!"
"Oh, Garet," Jenna said, far too sweetly. "We are no longer bound by blood. We are all children of the same being. We are connected by the love that the book has shown me. The love of Aarazsarthl. And soon, you too will feel his love..."
Despite how sickened he was by what Mia was doing to his sister, the fact remained that Garet was still looking at two beautiful young women, and his body still reacted all the same.
"Well, look at that," Jenna observed. "It seems he is enjoying this after all. Wouldn't you agree?"
Ivan emerged from the crowd and nodded.
Garet closed his eyes and turned away. He fought the urge to cry. Everything had ever known was gone. Everyone he had loved was under Jenna's control now. He was the only one who was still free, and once Jenna was done with her perverse amusement, she would take the ring off him and he would be gone, too.
"Resistance is futile, Garet," Ivan said. "Give in and submit. The pleasure is indescribable."
Garet heard moaning, and he wasn't sure if it was coming from Mia, Kay, or Jenna. Or perhaps all of them.
Then Jenna moaned loudly, and he could not keep his eyes closed any longer. He saw the briefest flash of Mia's tongue running across his sister's navel, before he looked up and saw Jenna.
She was holding a book, caressing it like a lover. Jenna moaned again, and her body twitched and squirmed like she was the one being kissed by Mia. Strangely enough, Mia and Kay had ceased their perverse display, and were looking up at Jenna. All of the people in thrall were looking at Jenna. Ivan, Isaac, Felix...
"It's..." Jenna moaned. "Happening... It's... oh, it's waking up... Mmmmmm... yes... oh... yeeeesss..."
Garet shoved Isaac and Felix away. They did not struggle. Their attention was fixed on Jenna. It was as though he had ceased to exist, as far as they were concerned. And as Jenna moaned once more, some insane part of him desired to stay and see what was going to happen.
"To hell with that."
Not wasting the moment, Garet grabbed his sword and bag from the ground and ran, pushing aside the dazed thralls gathered around Jenna.
In the distance, he could hear the sound of bones shattering, and Jenna's ecstatic cries.
As he ran, he saw Kraden standing outside his small home. The Alchemy sage was not with the thralls, he was simply standing on his own, absently watching the crowd from afar.
"Kraden!" Garet called out, stopping. "Kraden, are you under her control? Are you free?"
The sage turned slowly to him. "Ah, Garet. How nice to see you. Have you met my wife?"
And then Kraden stepped aside, and Garet could see inside his house, where a half-rotten corpse was seated at his table.
"Isn't she lovely, Garet? Jenna brought her back for me..."
And the corpse slowly turned its head and looked back at Garet with empty eye sockets.
"Gods..." Garet gasped.
An ear-splitting shriek filled the air, and Garet spun around to face the direction he had ran from. And then he saw something he would never forget.
Jenna was rising from the ground, large bat-like wings carrying her up. Her red hair was longer, reaching down to her ankles. A tail hung from the base of the base of her spine, with a dart-like point at the end. And her eyes glowed bright red. Her red lips were curled in the cruelest of smiles.
"You can run, Garet," she laughed. "But you will return."
Run he did. He ran and ran until the city of Kalay was but a flickering light on the horizon, and he continued to run. He ran all night, until dawn finally broke from atop the trees, and he collapsed of exhaustion in a glen within the woods.
And he dreamed dreams about Jenna, and the beautiful devil she had become.