Chapter 3

I figured out that today might turn into a total shitshow the moment my wet nurse walked in. She didn't tell me anything outright (what would be the point?), and she acted the same as always, humming and floating my chubby little carcass around the room with honest-to-god telekinesis, like a Sith. But…

Ah, that "but." Such a small word. So much baggage.

I'd gotten a lot better at noticing little things. Outside my body I caught more details than I ever could from inside it. In the eyes of my big red-haired lady-in-disguise I saw a faint worry, a tension—one of those cases where I didn't so much see it as almost physically feel it, like a string pulled tight. Usually the wet nurse's face said one of two things: either she was about to brutally off somebody, or—very, very rarely—something tender and genuinely motherly. Today it was some odd in-between. Like she was about to off somebody, but not in the usual way.

…Wow. Beautiful imagery. Truly.

My suspicions weren't confirmed until night. Babies sleep a lot, and I was no exception, but it's hard to stay asleep when somebody picks you up and starts bundling you in rags. It was like a bucket of cold water to the face. I opened my eyes and almost screamed at the sight of some creepy guy in a ninja getup, face covered. If my wet nurse hadn't started singing to me the way she always did, and if some part of me hadn't already sensed that something was coming, I really might have screamed.

Why scream? Element of surprise, mostly—and to screw over any would-be killer, just in case. Somebody might come running. Makes things easier on my petty little soul. Heh-heh-heh.

Once she was sure I wasn't about to sound the alarm, the red-haired woman (who, by the way, had dyed her hair black but hadn't cut it) gave me what I think was the faintest smile.

"[…] Cult Leader […]."

She said it with respect, I think, and a sort of pride. Like a mom whose kid just brought home his first good grade. Well, thanks, I guess. I wondered whether she would've knocked me out if I'd screamed after all. And if so, how.

Uh, let's not go there.

Without wasting a second, the woman strapped me to her chest and slipped soundlessly out into the corridor—where she ran smack into a vaguely Chinese witness in guard's armor who just happened to be walking by. I'm sure the odds of that meeting were astronomically low. I'd never seen anyone "extra" wandering around here before.

Well, I didn't have to wonder for long what came next.

For a moment, time froze. My wet nurse clearly hadn't seen this coming, and her eyes filled with an intent to kill so heavy it was almost physical. In the guard's eyes I caught a flash of surprise, then understanding, then horror, and then…

I didn't see the wet nurse move. I saw her silhouette blur, and at the same moment I registered my little body had been given a good shake. That didn't stop me from seeing the result: the guard's head had been twisted around. Literally—a full one-eighty. His body apparently didn't get the memo and stayed standing. His face was frozen in a grimace of horror, as though he'd known he was a dead man the moment he laid eyes on the kidnapper. I swear he felt it on some spiritual level.

The wet nurse caught the body as it started to topple and silently tossed the extra "evidence" into my nursery. Then, after making sure I was strapped on as tight as humanly possible, she took off through long, winding corridors. My brain couldn't keep up with how fast she was going. It didn't help that she'd wrapped us in that downright cheaty energy of hers, which let her ignore little things like sound and headwind…

Sure. Little things.

Like a silent shadow, the wet nurse ran a route only she knew. By minute two I'd given up trying to figure out where we were. Every so often the scenery changed enough for me to tell that we'd made it outside and were passing training grounds and assorted courtyards. A couple times she leaped up onto the roof tiles, somehow canceling out nearly the entire weight of her not-exactly-delicate body. Okay, I should've stopped being surprised the moment she started levitating me around the room, but come on…

These martial artists are goddamn battle mages, is what they are.

Outside, it was already autumn. The moon had risen long ago, and it lit everything up pretty well. As though she could tell I wanted a look around, the redhead stopped on one of the roofs and let me take in the view.

"[…] of the young Cult Leader […]," she whispered in a rough voice that wasn't hers.

We were in a valley. Two mountains hemmed us in from the north round to the west, and thick forest stretched from west to east. The view was gorgeous, and I got the distinct feeling that the location of this… gathering of shady superhumans was no accident. Just getting here would be a pain, never mind storming the place. And if the locals knew those forests—which I was sure they did—forget it. Near-perfect defense and cover.

If I hadn't learned to swivel my metaphysical head while outside my body (how else would I check out the energy inside me, duh), I wouldn't have made out half of what the redhead was trying to show me. With my "real" field of view—no chance. Lady didn't think that one through. Thanks anyway, though.

Special mention goes to the bells. For some reason there were tons of them: up on towers, strung right between the houses if you looked closely, hanging off the houses themselves. I'd never seen any at the training grounds or in the corridors, but out here, once you started looking, there were way too many.

Weird bunch, these vaguely Chinese locals. And the place was empty. Deserted, even, night or not. Somewhere far off, the local wildlife hooted and howled, a couple of lanterns burned here and there, and now and then stern guys in armor walked back and forth, but the overall gloom didn't budge. Not that this surprised me. Come on. This was the place where the mother—oh, mother of God—of my new little body got murdered in the creepiest way possible, while I got treated like a priceless vase from some dynasty or other.

Anyway.

I gave a grateful "ah-fu-agoo," which—by accident, I think—made the woman smile, and I'd already started naively believing we'd get out of here without any more incidents. Of course, I was wrong.

At some point we ran into the not-quite-blind-enough old woman.

It came out of nowhere. The redhead hopped down off the roof and ducked around a corner between two buildings, slipping past the occasional guard and the occasional clearly-more-important type (those didn't wear armor, just knockoff hanfu in assorted colors). And right there we stumbled onto a very familiar motionless robot, staring with blind eyes at the moon peeking between the buildings. My wet nurse didn't attack at once. She just froze and stared at the old woman. The old woman wasn't in any hurry to say or do anything either. She kept gazing at the moon.

Wait, was I witnessing the legendary telepathic link between two women?

Nope. Turned out they were just being mysteriously silent, lost in thoughts only gods and demons could follow (or, more likely, other women).

"The Cult Leader […] will not allow the young […] to grow," my wet nurse said coldly, in that rough male voice. It bugged me that the gist kept slipping away. Spoiled, I know, but I still wanted to know what exactly she was talking about.

"[…], I do not know, Red […]" the old woman rasped. The red-haired wet nurse went rigid—she'd been made. The old lady, who suddenly didn't seem like much of a robot anymore, kept looking at the moon (again, let's ignore the whole blind thing) and smiled. "[…] to think I would not figure it out."

"You cannot […] me. All that awaits you is […]."

And once again my wet nurse's eyes filled with a physical urge to kill, welling up from somewhere deep in her very being. I'd always figured that if eyes could show the state of the soul, it was only in a very loose sense. Now that phrase took on a whole new meaning. Granted, a big part of that was how insanely expressive everyone's faces were around here, and that outside my body I was obviously picking up on things beyond normal human perception. And considering that my chest now had two hearts beating in it—my regular one and a purely energy-based black one, which I'd either merged with the original or swallowed whole on nothing but a scarily accurate intuition—being surprised by a little extra weirdness was…

Kind of weird. Then again, that's what makes me human.

Corny and obvious as it sounds, the fact that I can still be surprised means there's life and feeling in me. For a guy whose body got annihilated to hell, that's a pretty good reason to celebrate.

"I do not even […]," the old woman said, shifting her gaze from the moon to my wet nurse with the faintest smile. A nasty one. Then her eyes settled on my long-suffering little body. "I do not […]. But…"

She never got to finish. My wet nurse lunged at her without giving her a chance to do anything, but the old lady sprang back with shocking agility, bounced off a wall, and landed on a roof. My freshly dyed wet nurse leaped after her, but there was one catch that complicated everything…

Me.

She clearly had to put in extra effort not to hurt me, and that slowed her down and cramped her movements. The old woman took full advantage and slipped out of that genuinely iron grip yet again by hopping to another building (spry old rabbit, dammit). Then, done tugging the tiger's tail, she pulled something like a flute out of her robe.

No need to guess what she did next.

So that's what all those bells were for.

The old woman began to play under the full moon, showing a frankly ridiculous amount of emotion, as though it gave her physical pleasure. Softly, unhurriedly, as though she didn't want to draw anyone's attention, but… I could see she wasn't just playing. Outside my body, my perception was wider and, well, abnormal. It let me see things ordinary eyes couldn't.

Waves. Waves of energy started spreading out across the area, unhurried but relentless, and somehow sinister. My wet nurse didn't let the old woman finish her melody of pure evil. In a single lunge, flaring with something like a red aura, she was at the mad crone's side and slit her throat with a dagger that came out of nowhere. But it was too late. The waves were spreading, and nothing could stop them now.

The waves didn't touch us—we were inside my wet nurse's red aura. Everything else, though…

The old woman's body fell, a smile frozen on her face. My wet nurse, already well aware of what came next, put the dagger away and, out of nowhere, stroked my head.

"Please bear with me, Young Cult Leader. Now […]…"

With that, she stopped hiding and wrapped us in a red aura that blazed in my perception and was starting to physically affect the world. I literally felt it on my skin (or, more accurately, my energy brains received a report that I'd felt it): the air around us was getting hotter.

The roof tiles under our feet trembled. Just a little.

The bells…

Ding.

Ding.

Ding.

Ding.

Dozens of bells started ringing from every direction. The sounds merged into one, drawing, to put it mildly, unwanted attention. Shouting and cursing broke out, shadows flickered. Before anyone could catch their breath, flashes of energy and pounding feet came from everywhere at once, creepily coordinated, like cockroaches. Someone was already up on the roof and running straight at us. And as though that weren't enough, drums started beating.

Boom.

Boom.

Boom.

The red-haired kidnapper-slash-rescuer had no intention of waiting around for the local devils crawling out of their holes. Apparently deciding that stealth was for wimps and we only had one shot, she went big. She lunged and went bounding straight up into the sky, pushing off—as far as I could tell—the headwind itself, blissfully unaware that she had once again trampled all over my entire worldview. Arrows flew at us. Someone tried in vain to run up the sky after us and fell after two or three "steps." I found myself staring at the full moon, humming a symphony of every swear word I knew under my breath.

For me, time stood still. For an eternity.

The full moon.

I sighed mentally.

Ye-e-eah. Lovely view…

And that's where my brain clocked out.