Mana Mutation Menace (Journey to Chaos Book 3) (14 page)

The receptionist appraised him with cheer and pep. “I know
you want to look around and decide if it’s right for you. Lots of people have
identity confusion after mutation. It’s not easy to accept that you’re not what
you think you are.”

“Shut up and tell us where Gruffle is!” Annala demanded.

The smile fixed itself on Annala. “Don’t worry. Many of
our clients wish to look like elves. They’re beautiful; both genders.
Unfortunately, some people go overboard and forget that they are truly human.
They start cutting themselves to prove they have a healing factor.”

Annala fell back and tugged her ear. Eric grabbed the
receptionist by her hair.

“Tell us where Gruffle is or I’ll rip your head off!”

Her face didn’t shift a micro-expression. “Aggression is
our most frequent success story. We’ve saved twenty people from execution as a
public menace. Unfortunately, this means less work for the Dragon’s Lair.
They’d really like to kill a grendel.”

Eric’s eyes slitted and he ripped her head off. Her neck
fell to the desk and gushed blood.

“Killing a grendel is a status symbol,” the head said.
“The local monarch rewards you with gold and weapons.”

“Eric!” Annala cried. “What have you done!?”

“She’s not real!” He passed his left hand through the head
and its image rippled. “It’s an illusion. Just like the fake you in the video.”

The head and the body vanished and in its place was an
image of Gruffle.

“Well done, Grendel, but I suppose any monster could tell
if its prey was real or not.”

“Gruffle, I’ve kicked your ass thrice already. Don’t you
remember lesson four?”

Gruffle smirked. “Oh, I know lesson four better than you
do. For the safety of the general public and your own good, you will be
confined to our facility for the immediate future.”

The doors swung shut and the windows shuttered. Wards
activated on both sides to reinforce them, then the eldritch light of Order
shielded them from Eric’s Magic Sight.

“Please cooperate with your new handlers. Your wellbeing
is their priority.”

Semi-human creatures marched into the room. They all
walked upright like a human, but beyond that, they shared no physical
similarities. Regardless, they wore the same uniform. In their hands, or
equivalent, they carried a noose on the end of a pole. It was the sort of thing
dog catchers would use on strays. There were six of them in total. Two of them
stood guard in front of a door marked “stairs” and the other four divided into
pairs to apprehend their charges.

Eric clapped his hands and withdrew his staff.

It emerges from my hand. It strikes down my foe. Claw
or a spear? Claw or a spear? Claw or a spear?

The words stunned him long enough for both of the catchers
after him to get their nooses around him. One at his elbows and the other at
his neck. They activated a rune and an electric current ran down the length of
the poles. His scream of pain mingled with a roar of fury.

“Eric!”

Annala, who had been fending off her own attackers, was
momentarily distracted by his cry. In short order, she was restrained and
electrocuted as well. Her bow and daggers were taken from her, but before they
wedged Eric’s staff from his hand, it retreated into his soul. More restraints
followed until both of them were utterly unable to resist.

“The therapist will see you now.”

Gruffle wiggled his fingers and his image vanished like a
trickster’s.

The repository was falling apart. Peeling and holey walls
were supported by crumbling pillars. Debris lay across uneven and warped
floors. As the guards dragged their captives up the stairs, they passed nests
of feral avian. Their nests were made between intersecting beams that
reinforced both. Like the monsters outside, they looked human with spare parts.
The most monstrous thing about them was the savage look in their eyes; slitted
like Eric’s.

The room for the therapist was on the second floor. It was
a small room with three sturdy chairs and a desk. There were cabinets too, but
these were torn apart. Much of the room was crammed with similar waste and
ruin, making the solid state of the chairs and desk all the more noticeable.
The trussed-up Eric and Annala were placed in two of these chairs and secured
with straps. An image of Gruffle appeared over the third.

“Brother-killer and Static Elf, the doctor will —”

“Sheriff, please cease with the derogatory nicknames.”

A spider dropped from the ceiling and into the final
chair. Red hair coated his body and blue eyes shone in large sockets. His four
arms were tipped with spider, human, and lizard hands, and his four legs
likewise. He wore a white lab-coat and dress pants and his lizard tail around
his waist like a belt. He gestured for the guards to step aside, then he began
the session.

“Hello, Mr. Watley, Miss Enaz. I am Hr. Peter Conner and I
will help you come to terms with your new identity. Rest assured that I will do
everything I can to make you comfortable.”

“We’re not here for therapy,” Eric said. “I have come to
arrest Gruffle in order to win a bet with a reaper so she won’t turn me into
one of them.”

“I see...” Conner wrote this down with two hands while
gesturing to Eric with a third. “How long ago did you make this ‘bet’?”

“It was half an hour ago. She appeared in the courtyard a
couple minutes ago.”

“I see...” Conner put his pad away and stepped closer to
Eric so he could place a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “The good news is, you’re
not alone. Grendel are associated with death, so many of them believe that
reapers follow them around.”

Annala rolled her eyes. “Eric, when you explain it like
that, then he’s not going to believe you. I might not believe you if I hadn’t
been there.”

Without looking at her, Conner held up one finger. “Just a
minute, Miss Enaz. I want Mr. Watley to know he has my full attention. Grendel
do not like being snubbed.”

“I’m not a grendel. I’m human.”

Peter Conner retreated up his thread to the ceiling and
crawled across the webs to an old record player secured in the corner. He
turned it on and a scratchy and skipping version of an old song began to play.
It annoyed the guards and made Annala wince, but Eric snarled.

"Legend says and eye witness reports confirms that grendel
dislike the sound of revelry. This song is played at celebrations from happy
hour to birthdays and marriage. You have the strongest reaction against it
because you are a grendel."

"No, I'm human and I simply dislike that song."

Conner dropped back to the floor and loomed over Eric. "Kallen
Selios did not reverse your mutation. She simply rebooted your brain. You are a
grendel that
looks
human."

Eric grounded his teeth. "I'm not a nameless monster.
I'm Eric Watley."

"Eric Watley
died
on Mount Heios. You are a grendel
that
thinks
he's Eric Watley."

"You're
wrong!"

A horrified look crossed his slitted eyes.

"According to our organization's intelligence,
Ataidar magecraft can implant memories, correct? In one week, world leaders
will meet to discuss medical use of Mana Mutation, correct? You are the first
to regain sapient, correct?"

"Stop! This isn't helping him!"

Peter Conner turned to face her and made eye contact.

"If you insist, Miss Enaz, we can turn to your case.
Your hair is not as brilliant as a natural elf’s and your ears are not as
pointed. You cannot shapeshift. A human could achieve this look with hair dye,
simple plastic surgery, and a regeneration spell. You've obviously been
traumatized by your experience as a daredevil and have concocted this elven
identity as a defense mechanism."

Annala’s response was both distressed and bored.
"I've heard all that before. If you want to get under my skin, you'll need
new material."

"Well, why didn't you say so!?" The guards shoved
a gag in her mouth. "If you want me to get under your skin, we can begin
treatment right away."

Two guards pulled her to her feet and then to the stairs
to the third floor. She looked over her shoulder at Eric and the pleading look
in her eyes galvanized him.

“YOU WANT
TO SEE A GRENDEL?”

His eyes slitted and his arms transformed. His legs and
chest followed until only his head remained human. He burst through his many
restraints and kicked off the remainder. The two remaining handlers tried to
restrain him again, but he grabbed both of their poles and shoved them through
their chests. Then he used them as bludgeons on the therapist monster.

Conner jumped back to the ceiling and the Eric threw his
weapons after him. He dodged the first by jumping straight into the second.
Only by twisting in midair did he avoid death by impalement.

He returned fire with web blobs and Eric nimbly avoided
them. Growling the spell for Flame Wave, he set fire to the center of the web.
It spread quickly and Eric directed the wave on Conner himself. The spider
lizard jumped from web to web until there were only flames to jump onto. His
own thread ignited and he fell into a bonfire. By the time he hit the ground,
he was severely burned. Eric finished him with a heel stomp to his head.

Chaos breeds mages. Chaos breeds monsters. Must have
mana; must have mana; must have mana.
 

Eric roared in anger. He turned to the exit and saw Samael
instead. Taking a calming breath, he returned to human form and said, “Out of
my way, reaper. I have a lady to save.”

She vanished. He picked up Annala’s weapons and ran up the
stairs to the third floor.

Two guards awaited him at the top and he blew them away
with a Wind Bomb. Its power threw them past several small rooms until they
crashed at the top of the next flight of stairs. Eric stored Annala’s weapons in
a wind spell near the ceiling and looked around.

The main room resembled Kasile’s dungeon: it was big,
poorly lit, and contained horrifying fire imagery and prisoners locked into
cells. The phrase “medieval medicine” flashed through Eric's mind as he watched
grotesque creatures being tormented by similarly disgusting creatures in white
coats. They were on operating tables equipped with straps and saws, tortured by
mounted lasers while chained to poles, and locked into cages hovering over pits
of bubbling liquid.

The notion of saving them never occurred to him. He was
not hungry and they were not threats to him. Nor was there anything in his
human memories about jumping to the defense of strangers, except for that one time
with Zettai, and maybe Kasile at the Joust...He shook his head and decided to
puzzle it out later. He was here for one reason only, and she was further
inside.

It was there that his lady was imprisoned. Her wrists were
cuffed separately above her head and her ankles were similarly shackled at
opposing corners. Chains pulled her taut. She was further secured at her waist
and neck, leaving her no room to avoid her captors’ cattle prods.

“You are human.”

“No, I’m nnaaahhh!”

“You are human.”

“I’m an elf! AAAAAHHHH!”

“You are human.”

“Please, staaaah!”

She screwed her eyes shut to hold back tears and bit her
lip to hold back sobs.

Eyes slitted, Eric ran through the room, batting away
guards left and right until he jumped forward to punch the nearest tormentor
with the right hand of Eric the Grendel. It manifested an Order Shield and
repelled him, sending him tumbling head over heels back to the entrance.

A hologram appeared over him.

“Welcome to the Treatment Center, Grendel,” Gruffle said.
“Here we correct the physical mutations and revamp the mental ones. Your
girlfriend, for instance. She thinks she’s an elf. A few days of constant
electroshock therapy will clear away that delusion.”

“Rot in
the Abyss, troll!”

“Funny you should say that. I’ll explain the joke if you
make it to the fifth floor.”

Eric clapped his hands together and extended the crystal
of his staff. Its peak glimmered with the chaos power he took from Tasio and
Dengel’s Lair. He ran forward like a battering ram and then jumped. The Order
Shield resisted his force, but the Chaos Tip dissolved its power. Eric laughed
madly at the prospect of tearing them limb from limb.

On the other side, the monsters continued to torment his
lady. One cut off the points of her ears, another shaved her head, and a third
continued prodding her. She sobbed and pleaded, but they would not relent.

"They did this during the Conversion War,” Gruffle
said. “It messed a lot of them up. After all these years, I bet they're still
in the nut house.”

“Eat
troll. Eat troll. EAT TROLL!”

Other monster doctors left their side rooms to attack him,
but Eric didn’t notice. Like monsters, he had a one-track mind. All he could
see was Annala’s suffering. They attacked him with impunity until they
inflicted serious wounds. Then self-preservation kicked in.

He backhanded one and kicked another. Both of them soared
across the room. Monsanity was a simple thought process. First, eliminate
threats, and second, eat till full, and third, repeat. His head transformed
into a grendel’s and roared. All of them fell back except one. Eric tore that
one to pieces and stuffed them in his mouth.

Am I a sapient or a monster? Hope or despair? What have
I done? What will I do? The Trickster grins. The Trickster grins. The Trickster
grins.

The voice echoed in his mind. It cut through the bloodlust
and hunger to return him to clarity. There was more blood on the floor around
him than existed in his human form. Although not all of it was his, he was
feeling faint. He dabbed a chest wound with his hand and stared at it.

My blood. My lifeblood. It’s all going away. No, it
won’t. I will not die. I will never die.