Chapter 4
The High Council
Batarel arranged his notes on the podium as he waited for the High Council to enter the main chamber. He checked the viewing orbs he had prepared and double-checked his calculations, each of which had been triple-checked by himself and several interns that had been allocated to him since his arrival. The High Council of the Council of Wizards was not going to be pleased, but it wasn’t Batarel’s job to tell them what they wanted to hear.
He placed a hand on the podium and smiled as the wood responded by changing its texture and marbling. All around him, the stone columns, timbered banisters, and even patterned rugs morphed into different shapes and consistencies. Oh, how he had missed Chaos! He had visited every known projected universe in existence over the past ten million years, and though there were plenty of exotic realms out there, Chaos would always be home. Home was worth fighting and dying for.
As the High Council filed in, Batarel nodded to the grim-faced wizards and witches, none of whom returned the greeting—as was the custom. The leader of the procession and High Minister of the Council was Rabishu, one of his lovers. Behind her was Eranos, the old scion of the Agalal clan.
Unlike the rest of the High Council, Eranos actually did look at Batarel, and it wasn’t a friendly look. The Agalal clan had held the throne before his brother Ostat, and their rule was so filled with madness and magical murder that it directly resulted in the creation of the Council of Wizards and the restrictions on learning and using pattern magic.
By his proximity to Rabishu, Eranos had apparently gained the High Minister’s ear since Batarel had left for Earth. The scion of the Agalals stood to Rabishu’s right as they waited for the rest of the High Council to take their seats, but Batarel’s attention was drawn to Rabishu and the slits in her arms. The last of the council members reached their designated spots in the four-tiered, rank-segregated seating arrangements, and each turned to solemnly look at Batarel through their black, red, green, blue, and purple robes.
“You may be seated,” Rabishu raised her hand, exposing a couple of inches of zinanbar through the red slits in her skin.
Batarel let out a gasp, and she smiled back at him. He set his jaw and bit his lip. Now was not the time to tell her that he hated her body modifications.
“As many of you know,” she continued, “our Chief Strategist Batarel has been studying the failure of the three singularities to contain the Jehovan Order. Today we will hear more on the effects and collateral damage on adjacent systems since the induced Apocalypse two months ago.”
She stopped addressing the High Council and faced Batarel. “Are you ready to proceed?”
“I am.”
“Very well. Please begin.”
Batarel threw a viewing orb into the air. It whirled and buzzed before stabilizing and ejecting a fine mist in front of the evolving banister which separated him from the highest ranks of the Council. The orb projected a graph which mapped out the Order accretion disk and jet, which moved ominously toward Alurabum.
“Wait,” Eranos said, “are we looking at a projection of where the jet will be by year’s end?”
“I’m afraid this is a real-time feed of the current trajectory,” Batarel said. “The Order assault is already about a third of the way to Alurabum.”
The assembled wizards banged their hands against the banisters in protest, and the texture of the wood reacted violently. Sometimes, the banisters even changed shapes from cylindrical to squared-edge.
“That is outrageous,” Eranos said. “Recheck your feed. Three hundred billion light years in two months? I’m losing faith in our chief strategist.”
Batarel tried not to smile at the overt slander. Debates in the main chamber could get heated as members vied as much for position and power as they did for the truth.
“The pattern jet has traveled through multiple supercondensers at the hearts of nearby galaxies, which have significantly hastened its pace toward our universe.”
More rapping on the banisters by the agitated council.
An aged wizard named Bachnos the Blind piped up. “Are you trying to insinuate, Chief Strategist, that a failed scholar like Jehovah harnessed supermassive black holes to accelerate a pattern burst in a directed attack on our realm?”
“I think it would be foolish of us to underestimate what this scholar is capable of, wise Bachnos.”
Batarel closed his hand over one of the equation sheets and made a throwing motion toward the viewing orb. The viewscreen changed to a list of equations that his interns and graduate students at Chaos University had prepared.
“What are we looking at here?” Bachnos asked as all thumping against the banister ceased and the wizards looked closely at the self-solving equations in front of them. As terms were crossed out, some of the members who shared positions between the High Council and Chaos University gasped.
“I’ve seen these equations before,” Vichondrius, dean of the Math College, said. “In the Journal of Astrophysics, if I am remembering correctly, but it’s been a few hundred thousand years or so since I last looked into them.”
“The article was published 900,000 years ago, to be exact,” Batarel said. “It was the last journal paper submitted by Jehovah before he left our universe. If the university grant hadn’t required publication for continued funding, we might have never even seen this one.”
“I’m glad some of you have seen this before,” Rabishu said, “but what the hell are we looking at? Would someone please explain?”
“Basically, Jehovah was studying how to amplify and accelerate light energy between supercondensers,” Batarel said. “I believe he was doing this research in preparation for this very assault. We are under attack, High Minister.”
The assault on the banisters recommenced.
“How long do we have?”
“The bolt of pattern energy will reach us within ten months.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me!” Eranos yelled. “I call for an immediate vote of no confidence. This cannot possibly be right.”
Batarel threw another orb into the air and closed his hands over the graph and equation sheets. “Jehovah appears to have anticipated not only the exact time we would send the black holes, but also the precise galaxies we would take them from. Watch the equations above, which I have synchronized with our best guesses on the magical assault.”
The banisters creaked from the weight of the wizards pressed against them.
“Failed scholar, my ass!” Bachnos said. “How in the hell did we miss this? Alurabum will have to be evacuated. We will have to remount the Council on the Chaos Primal elsewhere, but we can’t move the Courts because they are fixed to the Chaos Primal projection point. The Courts are forfeit at this point.”
“We can’t allow that to happen,” Batarel said. “The Courts are a direct link to the Chaos Primal.”
“Well, such a collision of primal patterns will certainly be calamitous,” Bachnos said as he misunderstood Batarel’s point, “but we should be able to evacuate all greater demons from the affected area over the next ten months. We’ll just need to run simulations on the worst possible scenario.”
“Permission to discuss heretical topic number 00030587?” Batarel asked Rabishu.
“If you must.”
“Michael claimed that Jehovah had created a Soul Harvesting Complex, or SHC, in the heart of the Order Primal. I believe this assault is twofold. First, the Order jet is meant to destroy the Courts of Chaos and the Council of Wizards. Second, the jet will act as a siphon of energy and, consequently, immortal births from the Chaos Primal. The Courts will give Jehovah direct access to the means he requires to create a stable, immortal birthing process, on top of a SHC.”
“This is all conjecture,” Eranos said. “We should start the evacuations immediately.”
“An evacuation will not save our pattern from dying,” Batarel said.
“What are you suggesting?” Rabishu asked.
“A defle
ctor—one that wouldn’t be destroyed when pure energy hits it.”
No one appeared to understand the ramifications of his simple proposal. He closed his hand over an architectural diagram that he had commissioned from Chaos University. Above them hovered the ghastly outline of a black construct of pure zinanbar. Hundreds of miles wide. Hundreds of miles tall. Made out of souls.
The number of fists pounding against the banister drowned out any chance of conversation, and anarchy reigned in the main chamber. Rabishu looked directly at Batarel and nodded. She shook off Eranos’s words in her ear, extended a blade from her right arm, and slammed it into the podium in front of her.
“Silence!”
Everyone shut up and the banisters stopped rattling. “Chief Strategist,” Rabishu said, “how many?”
“I could use some help with the numbers,” Batarel said. “Perhaps we can take this discussion offline.”
There were dark mumblings across the four tiers.
“I’m afraid I need an educated guess right now.”
“A million,” Batarel said.
The number appeared to be too large for most wizards in the chamber to comprehend.
“That’s a hundred legions!” Eranos said. “There’s no way we could ever cover this up.”
“No,” Batarel said. “And if we want to maintain control, we will need to explain to the people what is at stake. There is a rogue pattern that is trying to destroy us. Tell the people, and they will do what must be done. Losing a couple of generations is nothing compared to losing all of them!”
“They would blame the Council for this,” Eranos said. “We sent the black holes. We allowed a rogue scholar to study heretical works. We failed to protect the realm from magical assault.”
Eranos whispered something into Rabishu’s ear. She nodded but didn’t repeat his thoughts aloud.
“There is no need to divert blame,” Batarel repeated. “We should simply tell the population what is at stake. They may even have other ideas on how to stop it.”
“There is no way that anything that has been said here leaves this room,” Rabishu stated quickly. “Not a damned word. This is sealed information, people. A word about any of this and you are dead. Our entire universe is at stake.”
“That’s exactly my point,” Batarel said. Eranos continued to whisper in her ear.
“Thank you for your presentation, Chief Strategist. We have much to deliberate, but let’s take a short recess first. You are all adjourned for an hour.”
Batarel waited for the other wizards to file out of the room. Several of them approached, shook his hand, and thanked him for his presentation. Others avoided him or left without acknowledging him, but he didn’t care. He waited at the door for Rabishu.
“May I talk with you privately?”
Eranos lodged a look of protest, but she waved him off. He gave Batarel a long stare before leaving the room. As the door shut, Rabishu’s eyes softened toward Batarel. He breathed a sigh of relief as she brushed her hand across his scarred face and nicked him with one of the blades grafted into her body.
“Sorry, love. I forget they are there sometimes.”
“What could have possibly possessed you to do that?”
She pushed them out of the slits on her arms and lifted the hems of her robe to reveal more blades along her legs. “They build their own legend. No one challenges me.”
He thought of Eranos. “Instead they ply your ears with honey.”
She laughed. “Jealous? You? I never would have thought it possible.”
“I’m just wary. Eranos looks at me like a disease in need of a cure, and you seem warm to his counsel.”
She reached down and massaged the front of his pants. “I warm for only one demon.”
He smiled as she kissed and pulled him toward her podium.
“How come you never challenged me for high minister?” she asked. “With your connections and power, you could have easily held this spot.”
“I’m not a politician,” he said, planting kisses along her neck—which was thankfully free of blades. “I would rather be in the field solving problems.”
Her brow furrowed as she squinted and grabbed him roughly. “Are you saying that I only make problems?”
“No,” he corrected himself and smiled as she released his more delicate parts. “You just focus on fixing a different kind of problem. If I had to deal with people lying to me all day, I would probably solve it with a chaos bolt rather than actually wasting my time listening to them.”
She laughed and pressed her body against him. “What a team we would make, Batarel! Me with my blades and you with your bolts and brains.”
He smiled at the compliment, and she kissed him once more before spreading her green robe, dropping to her knees and lifting his purple robe.
Was the beautiful and cruel head minister of the Council of Wizards really thinking about partnering with him? ‘Till death do us part’ was a long time for someone who lived for millions of years, but as he held her blonde hair between his fingers, he certainly found himself entertaining the idea. He could do worse.