Chapter 29: Liberation

It was a small bed, with barely enough room for Sirius, so Eva, spending the night, slept on his chest like a cat. She woke up at dawn the next morning, finding Sirius already awake. He was looking up at the ceiling with a smile, watching several rocks fly around the room and controlling them with flicks of his fingers.

“What are you doing?” she mumbled.

“All my life, I’ve been surrounded by people who could do telekinesis. Finally, I get to use it. It’s so much fun!”

She sighed in happiness. “I love seeing you smile.”

The two then got dressed and left Sirius’s room, making the perilous journey to the small village the sect had built in the ruins of the temple. There, all of the masters and disciples were preparing for battle.

“We’re a long way away from any concentration camp,” said Eric once Sirius and Eva arrived. “Where do we start?”

“It’s not as simple as that,” Sirius replied.

“But you said that today, the war would resume.”

‘War, yes, but not combat. First, we must prepare. Right now, our greatest weapon against Dominion is the Nexus Strain. As soon as he finds out about it, he’ll do all in his power to wipe it out. We need to spread it as far and as fast as possible, get as many people involved as we can so that they can all contribute, and fight Dominion on multiple fronts. So, before we confront his forces, all masters and skilled disciples must scatter across the globe. You’ll place yourselves in positions where you can spread it.

While you make the journey, Sirius and I will start liberating camps and infecting the freed prisoners. The more people we have contributing their energy, the more damage you’ll each be able to do from your ends. Since you’re all linked up to me and Sirius, the power you receive will be enough for you to take care of Dominion’s prison managers. Then, the more people you infect, the more powerful we become as a collective. Dominion is going to be in the state of Maine, waiting for Sirius to arrive and fight him, so as Sirius and I make our way there, we’ll try to combine the power of as many people as possible for the fight.’

Shahti chimed in. “But in the time it takes us to all scatter across the globe, Dominion’s forces will have moved in on this place, and since they’re telepathically linked, if one of them sees you or anyone else with the Nexus Strain, there is a good chance Dominion will discover it. Plus, what do we do about all of the noncombatants in our midst? Even with Sirius defending them, all it takes is one of those big ones to get by him for it to be a slaughter, regardless of the Nexus Strain.”

“And if you and Sirius remain here instead of going after Dominion, he’ll know you’re just buying time and trying to pull something,” said Leon.

“The Grandmaster and I have that covered. The time between when we reveal ourselves and when I fight Dominion will be everything. Too soon, and the Nexus Strain won’t have spread to enough people. Too late, and Dominion will begin implementing counter-measures, like killing prisoners so that they can’t be infected. Not only can I free souls from Dominion’s control, but now that I’ve combined my powers with the Grandmaster, I can also block the telepathic link between Dominion and his monsters. I’ll start liberating camps here, but Dominion won’t see a thing. These lands and what goes on will be completely blind to him.

As for the noncombatants, Dominion’s forces will be too busy dealing with me to bother looking out here for civilians, and everyone in the Sect of Silver has trained to disappear into the wilderness and live off the land. We didn’t remain hidden so long just because of that mountain.”

“How is everyone supposed to scatter across the globe without Dominion’s forces spotting us?” Eva asked.

“The sea. All disciples know how to use telekinesis in order to walk on water, and with the Nexus Strain, crossing the ocean on foot will be easy.”

Fifty masters remained, as well as less than a hundred battle-ready disciples. Each master was assigned a location and would take a small group of disciples with them. Five masters would spread across South America, five across North America. One Master in Japan, five in China and Russia, four in Southeast Asia, ten in Africa, five in Europe and the Mediterranean, and five in eastern and northern Europe.

Time was of the essence, so everyone else had to be dispatched that day. However, the members of the Sect of Silver were still human, so it would be cruel to not give everyone the chance to bid farewell to each other. A professional handshake, a friendly hug, a long-sought kiss and love confession, or to even simply see the faces of the people they had grown up with; this would be their last chance. True, they could communicate with each other through the Nexus Strain, but so many masters and disciples would surely never make it back or see each other, disciples saying goodbye to their parents and masters holding their children one last time. It was a scene that had happened billions of times throughout human history; the soldiers saying goodbye before heading off to war.

Sirius kept his distance, watching from the outskirts of the group. Eva was with him. “Aren’t you going to say goodbye to anyone?” he asked.

“I told you before, didn’t I? I can never forgive them for the way they treated you all these years. Any conversations worth having can be done through the Nexus Strain.”

“That’s a very grim way to live.”

“Well how many people in there do you actually want to say goodbye to?”

“Huh. Good point.”

Eva leaned her head against his shoulder. “I don’t consider these past years to be my life growing up in the Sect of Silver. They were my life growing up with you.”

Sirius looked up as Master Brahman, a large man with a braided beard, approached him with three disciples. The four of them bowed their heads. “Grandmaster, we humbly thank you for everything you have done for us! You taught us, raised us, and sheltered us for all these years, and we will always be grateful!”

‘You are quite welcome.’

Sirius expected as much, but it still annoyed him. Was everyone just going to talk at him like this? He could feel Eva’s grip on his hand tighten in anger for their rudeness.

“And Sirius,” said Brahman, kneeling down with his students, “I am aware that we have treated you cruelly for a long time, but you have proven us all wrong and earned our respect and gratitude. While we do not deserve forgiveness, I hope you will at least hear our apology.” They bowed with their heads pressed to the earth. “I do solemnly apologize for every transgression we’ve made against you. We will fight for you until our dying breaths.”

Sirius was utterly taken back, with Eva’s mouth hanging open. Eric and Shahti were also in shock. Then, those who looked over and saw Brahman bowing became still, likewise amazed. All became silent, Sirius at a loss for words. An apology? Gratitude? Only a handful of people in his life had ever given those to him. How was he supposed to respond?

Then Eva gave him a soft elbow in the ribs.

“Oh. Uh ... apology accepted.”

Brahman and his disciples thanked him and moved away, and immediately, another master and her students arrived. Like Brahman, they thanked the Grandmaster for everything he had done for them, and apologized to Sirius, while voicing their gratitude for ending the battle against Fenrir and his forces. The scene was repeated, all the other masters and disciples coming to voice their feelings. Even the civilians came forward. Sirius listened to everyone, eventually getting past the feeling of awkwardness, and behind him, Eva leaned against his back. She was hiding from everyone, not wanting them to see the tears of joy running down her cheeks.

After the farewells had been given, the masters and disciples left, though Eric, Shahti, and Eva would stay with Sirius all the way to his fight with Dominion. Those who were dispatched shot off with cheetah-like speed, moving faster than even their normal spirit energy would let them. They rocketed across the continent, heading both west and east. However, they never dropped their guard. They avoided the sun, didn’t leave footprints, moved silently, and didn’t produce any noticeable energy signature. As long as every drop of power they conjured up was used solely for physical enhancement, it wouldn’t leak into the environment and be detected by patrolling spawn.

Even when reaching the ocean, they didn’t stop and simply ran across the water like it was shag carpeting. By emitting a telekinetic field from their feet with each step, they could solidify the water enough to bear their weight. They would be crossing oceans on foot, something that most people, even members of the Sect of Silver, would normally deem impossible, but they had almost limitless stamina thanks to the Nexus Strain, and they were prepared.

Under their robes and training uniforms, they wore special dry suits made of oiled alpaca wool, and their backpacks all had old recycled bottles tied on to provide buoyancy, letting them sleep in the water without drowning, unless they found an island to make camp on. They had some food with them, but their diets would consist mainly of seaweed and whatever they could fish. Water would be collected from the rain or the air with telekinesis. While this all sounded harsh, it was nothing they hadn’t trained for.

With the warriors scattered to the four winds, it was time for the noncombatants to do the same. They disappeared into the wilderness, to live off the land and hide out until the war was over. They all had their arquerite talismans, so they were blocked from spiritual sight, and they had been trained in avoiding detection, so their chances of survival were good.

Soon, all that was left was Sirius, Eva, Eric, and Shahti, standing in an empty village beside a hollowed-out mountain.

“So, now we can start liberating camps?” Eric asked.

“Right. We have to keep Dominion’s attention while everyone else gets into position. Master Shahti, what is the nearest prison?”

“Manaus, to the east, along the banks of the Amazon River. And Sirius,” said Shahti with a proud smile, “as a fellow master, honorifics are not required.”

Her words sent Sirius’s train of thought off the rails. That’s right, how could he forget? He was in such a hurry to receive his runes and get stronger that he forgot about their significance. He was now a master of the Sect of Silver, ready to have his own disciples. He still felt so young, so inexperienced. At that moment, it was like all of his mental preparations and courage vanished, and he felt the expectant and soon disappointed eyes of his nonexistent students on him.

‘Relax, you’re ready. While it may be true that I had to rush your development, you have the mental and emotional fortitude to train students, and you know all the exercises better than most others. Let’s just deal with Dominion first, then you can think about disciples.’

The Grandmaster’s words calmed him down. “All right, we’ll go there. But not on foot, I have a faster method.” He then leaned forward, and from his back, two white-scaled wings grew and unfolded. They were the Grandmaster’s wings, accessible to Sirius.

“So you’re going to fly there?” Eric asked. “Do you ... want us to ride on your back?”

“No, grab ahold of my wings. I can fly with telekinesis.”

Shahti and Eric stood behind Sirius and clung to the backs of his wings. The bones and muscles in the wings were thin, and the leathery membranes felt like they could easily tear, but these wings were stronger than steel. Eva, on the other hand, took a more comfortable route and held onto Sirius’s back, her arms wrapped around his neck.

“Ok, everyone ready?” he asked. They all nodded. “Hold on tight. I’ll try not to give you whiplash.”

His aura enwrapped him, and the ground trembled as he was lifted into the air. He rose up above the canopy with his three passengers hanging on for dear life. He then turned west, flying first at walking speed, then jogging speed, sprinting speed, and kept ratcheting it up until he was going over a hundred miles an hour. An ocean of green whipped by him, with his passengers looking away so as not to get hit by bugs.

‘Sirius, one of the spawn is up ahead.’

“Yeah, I sense it!”

Miles away, a vulture was searching the rainforest. It perked its head up, sensing the approaching source of power, but before it could do anything, Sirius punched the air. Rather than producing a radiant light, his power surged through the air so fast that it was barely visible. Struck head-on, the vulture exploded into vaporized gore, and the demon spirit commanding the proto-souls within it was set free. Since Dominion still hadn’t claimed the soul component of the last Guardian, his proto-souls still lacked the ability to think in abstraction. It also meant that they couldn’t be brainwashed. Even without Sirius dealing the finishing blow, they wouldn’t return to him.

‘We’re moving in the right direction. Once we reach Manaus, we’ll drop the three of you off to begin the fight while Sirius and I kill off any other scouts in the area that could warn Dominion or other prisons.’

Within minutes Manaus was in sight, but like all other cities, its name was all that remained after Dominion took over. It was a massive concentration camp, just like all the others, with barely any of the original buildings remaining. As Sirius and the group approached, the spawn all became alert, sensing a massive incoming source of power. Hulks and vultures took to the air and began firing spirit blasts and Sirius, but he easily deflected them with his own power.

‘Sirius, land in the center of the prison, then spill a drop of your blood on the ground and press on it with your hand.’

“Just a second!”

Sirius swung his arm, launching a crescent blade of energy that sheered across the sky and obliterated half of the airborne defenses. With that opening, he dropped down into the center of the concentration camp, surrounded by brick buildings and barbed fencing. Guards were swarming like ants under an overturned log, with alarms blaring that the camp was under attack. The rifles they carried, normally only armed with rubber bullets to put down slave rebellions, were now loaded with lethal rounds.

Once Sirius touched down, Eva, Eric, and Shahti bolted in opposite directions. Sirius bit his hand to draw some blood, and then pressed it into the soil. From there, runes made of his blood stretched across the ground, forming an intricate web with each symbol glowing with power. Above his head, a massive dome made of his own energy surrounded the concentration camp. Since the runes were made of his blood, they received energy from him, and the runes themselves shaped the energy into the barrier so that he wouldn’t need to put his focus into doing it himself. Even if someone tried to ruin the formation, the equation itself could only be broken by someone near Sirius’s level.

‘There, that will keep any of Dominions monsters from escaping, and they can’t send him a telepathic message about what’s going on. Now finish off the stragglers.’

“I’m on it.”

He took to the air with enough force to open a crater. Now that he didn’t have passengers to worry about, he could move at his maximum speed. Leaving the barrier, he faced all of the flying spawn that were stuck outside. Sirius and the Grandmaster had already severed their link to Dominion, so he wasn’t seeing anything that was going on. Loyalty compelled them to fight and they charged towards him, but with just a swing of his arm, he released enough power to dispatch them all.

Now he had to hunt down all the other scouts.

Gunfire and shouts filled the air and Eva, Shahti, and Eva fought the guards and the spawn. Now that the shield was up, they could fight with all of the power given to them by the Nexus Strain. They had split up to divide the guard’s attention, and each was doing well on their own. The bullets used by the guards couldn’t pierce their enhanced bodies, and their reaction speeds were so great that they could see them in the air.

Eric was sticking to his preferred fighting style, Argata strikes with Boro force. Just like Sirius, every enemy he touched would explode from the sheer power inflicted on them. Guards would fire from a distance while spawns of all types swarmed in. Having already gotten plenty of experience in fighting them the other day, he dodged the fists of the hulks with ease and dispatched them with individual punches. So much spirit energy was surging through him that he felt unbeatable, and what’s more, he could feel Sirius’s power coating all of his attacks like a laminate, so that every time he killed a spawn, their link to Dominion would be severed.

He moved through the inner camp, trying to draw all eyes on him while searching for prisoners to free. He entered a building used for food processing. Staring down a corridor, he spotted a guard already in the process of drawing his pistol. Eric was faster on the draw and fired a spirit blast that burned a hole in the man’s chest. With enemies already closing in on the building, he sprinted down the hall, looking for more enemies to kill. The right half of the building held the cafeteria for the guards and the kitchen, but in the left half, the meals for the slaves were prepared.

He entered a pair of double doors on the left side and gagged at the sight. On the work floor of this open warehouse, there was a colossal vat with chutes from food processors leading to its open top. The best food went to collaborators and their families, the normal food went to the breeders, and the leftovers were given to the slaves. Deformed or stunted crops, animal bones, and other food waste were ground up into a fine mesh and mixed together, then baked into the form of nutrition bars, but the main source of protein for the slaves was the slaves themselves.

The corpses of prisoners, their souls already harvested, hung on meat hooks. Their heads had been chopped off so that none of the prisoners would get a prion disease from eating human brains, as well as to make sure they wouldn’t find any recognizable teeth in their food. Their fingers and toes had been chopped off for the same reason, to prevent nails from being discovered. Their gastric systems had also been removed, as well as their bowels and bladders, so the food wouldn’t be tainted. One by one, they were dropped into an industrial meat grinder and turned into slurry, then poured into the vat with the other ingredients.

Back in Augusta, Eric had heard stories about the slave’s food, but he didn’t want to believe it. Now, he had to see it for himself. The skin on his cheek where his brand used to be, it was starting to itch.

From a catwalk above, a guard opened fire on Eric. With a roar of fury, Eric leaped up onto the catwalk, ripped the rifle from the guard’s hands, and broke his jaw with it. Then he hoisted the guard above his head and threw him into the meatgrinder. He looked around and began firing blasts at every collaborator he saw. He slaughtered them whether they were armed or running away. He destroyed the machinery, the meatgrinder and food processors, and obliterated the hanging corpses. He destroyed everything around him and continued doing that throughout the building. When he finally came out the exit, the entire warehouse was burning.

Guards surrounded him and opened fire, but he mercilessly slaughtered them all with his bare hands. He then moved on to the next building, but once more staggered from the sight. He had entered the breeding chamber. Before him, dozens of young women were bound in stocks, sobbing from the rape they had just suffered. They were just kids, fifteen or sixteen years old at the most, their inner thighs slick with semen and the blood of their torn hymens.

Eric roared in anguish and drilled his fist through the wall next to him. Had they arrived just ten or twenty minutes earlier, they could have prevented this. They could have saved these girls from torment. The screams these girls would have made, he could imagine them so clearly because he himself had made women scream like that. He was only fifteen when he was forced to be a collaborator, but even he had to take place in the breeding program. It was Dominion’s way of preventing his subordinates from rebelling. Once they got their hands dirty, once they became guilty, they’d lose faith in themselves and realize that there was no way out.

How many women was he forced to rape? He couldn’t remember. He had spent the last twenty years trying to erase their screams from his mind. For all he knew, they could have all gotten pregnant with his children. They’d be around Sirius’s age. After he and Misato escaped with Hijiri, part of him had wanted to tell her what he had done, to confess his sins in the hope that he could be forgiven, but he couldn’t take the risk. After everything she had suffered, she would surely have looked at Eric the same way she looked at Dominion. To her, he would just be another monster that made women suffer.

Trying to hold back tears of rage, he freed the girls from their stocks and helped them to their feet. “Don’t worry, I’m here to rescue you.” Many broke down crying at his words. He wrapped his hand in spirit energy and touched each girl on the shoulder, awakening their souls and infecting them with the Nexus Strain. Despite what they had just endured, the power rushing through them captured their full attention, and they touched their cheeks as the felt their brands disappear. “Find a place to hide until the fighting dies down. If anyone tries to hurt you or capture you, you can fight them off with this power. Just trust your instincts and you’ll be ok.”