Goblin Queen: Katrina Baker Novel 03 Read online

I raised an eyebrow, “What do you mean?”

  She frowned, “Why are you so good at the rest of it? Let’s get specific, cryo-kinesis, why can you control that so easily?”

  “How hot or cold something is, is a function of molecular vibration, I just slow down the molecules, and the object freezes. Usually that state is governed by the conditions the object is surrounded by, but I can override that with telekinesis. I can even specify exact temperatures that way.”

  She smiled, “And how does quantum teleportation work?”

  I… had absolutely no idea at all, which explained the problem I had. Now it made sense, I could use teleportation via concept, and my power would do what I requested, but without knowing how it really worked I couldn’t feel it, or guide it, or limit the power it could use. Same thing with tearing a hole in a magic shield. I wondered if that meant once I understood how it worked, if I’d actually be able to sense magic. But how would I learn how it all worked? For now, and for a long time I’d have to muddle through, but maybe my mom could help me learn more about the quantum sciences. I was smart enough, but I was just eighteen and I’d only just graduated high school when I was sent here, and AP classes in physics, biology, pre-calculus, and chemistry didn’t cover anything nearly that complicated. I imagine it would take years of study and commitment, even with my mom’s help.

  Arella smiled, “Exactly so.”

  I felt a bit better from her presence, and talking about things. At least I knew what I didn’t know about my power, which helped a lot. Now I had a very long term goal, and knew how to stretch my powers further than they were now in the long term.

  I said, “Thanks, for the talk and just being here. I’ll come back in a few days?”

  Arella replied, “Sure, my sanctuary is always open for you Katrina Baker.”

  Then I felt faint, and found myself in the sanctuary of the temple again. I didn’t feel like much time had gone by at all, maybe less than a minute? With a thought, I teleported back home, and then got ready for bed and slipped under the covers.

  Gerard pulled me close, “Glad your back.”

  “Me too,” I said sleepily. Shortly after, I was out like a light, it’d been a long day.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Havoc said, “We have a problem.”

  “What is it mom?”

  It was early, and she’d woken us up. I was also starving, which came as no surprise.

  She replied, “Come join us for breakfast, and I’ll explain. It’s annoying, I don’t enjoy being thwarted.”

  “Alright, half an hour?” It didn’t sound like an emergency this time, and I wanted a bath.

  My mother said, “Fine, bring your appetites.”

  “See you then,” I said and hit the mute button, since there was no hanging up one of these things.

  I got up and filled the tub, and heated it with a combination of aqua-kinesis and pyro-kinesis. Gerard got in with me, and I squealed as he pulled me into his lap. Maybe we’d be a bit late…

  I teleported us both into the lounge, and then we left and walked down the hall to the kitchen. My parents being supers themselves didn’t let me down, and after a hurried good morning I sat down and started to eat my food. Gerard just smiled at me, used to my appetite by now but still a little bemused.

  Gerard said, “Good morning,” as he took a seat and started to eat a normal sized helping, though he did go back for seconds. My mom was an evil genius, and also a good cook. My parents ate with a one track mind as well, so we ate in silence, and when I was finished, I leaned back in my chair and sighed in contentment.

  “So, what’s the issue?”

  My mom sighed, “Let’s go in the lounge for this, I want to show you on the display as well.”

  I drank down the rest of my juice, and then got up, and we followed my parents back to the lounge and sat on the couch.

  She said, “We decided to leave the mage for last, and to get the demon in the northwest of Chilik. We thought if we took out the mage in the southwest, it might cause the demon there to head north. So we sent in thousands of those spheres, along with several goblin and orc units to prevent anyone from escaping. The good news is that all the goblins, orcs, and ogres that worked for the demon are already controlled by me. Outside of the ancient demon and his demon followers in their main home, which is a deep cave system, the northeast has been claimed, leaving only the Shadow mage’s minions in the southeast part of Chilik, and the mage himself.

  “The bad news is that demons are a highly magical evil race of beings. When they were hit with the darts, they didn’t pass out but merely got woozy for a moment, and subsequent darts had no effect at all. I believe their immune systems themselves are magical in some way. Sia has also indicated she lost connection with all the control implants put inside of the demons, so I think their immune system killed those as well. It’s an unforeseen issue at best, and we’re not certain how to deal with it.”

  I frowned, “Well if we leave them alone, they’ll raid north into Trelin.”

  She nodded, and waved at the viewer, which showed an aerial view of what I’d guess as Chilik and southern Trelin. It looked genuine. Across the top of the screen I could see the long escarpment, though I couldn’t quite make out Greycliff village. To the east I saw the long mountain range, and to the west the large forests.

  “Is that a simulation, or some kind of drone?”

  My mom looked at me guiltily, uh oh.

  She said, “Well, you know how I worry about you right? I may have put up a GPS satellite system so I could track the communicators and know where you are at all times.”

  I laughed, only my mother would put up a GPS satellite system just to track one person. I probably should be angry about it, but I was used to it. Plus, I was seeing the benefit of being able to call my mother in case Gerard is in trouble but I don’t know where he is. Which… probably made me more like her than I was comfortable with.

  She smiled back at me, clearly relieved we weren’t going to have an argument, “I figured as long as I was putting up satellites, I might as well build in visual and IR cameras, and various radar and spectrograph systems into it.”

  I shook my head and teased, “I suppose that makes sense mom, it would be wasteful otherwise.”

  She glared, but turned back to the screen, and tapped on the screen near the middle right, which zoomed into an area about a sixteenth the size. There were hills on the west side, the left side of the screen, with several goblin and orc tribes camped in a huge semi-circle, maybe fifty miles out from an area close to the mountains she was pointing at.

  “That’s where the cave systems are. They’re deep, and it’s a labyrinth. I get the idea the dwarves may have once lived there long ago, but abandoned that stretch of mountains once all the monsters were pushed south into Chilik.”

  I frowned, “So what are our options?”

  Dad said, “We want to contain them there, not only will it keep them from raiding north, but it will keep the warlike goblins and orcs from getting too restless. We just need to leave enough space so they can farm, the problem is they used to use the captured humans and goblins for that. At some point, they’ll run out of food, and swarm out of there to raid north, or even your mother’s goblins and orcs.”

  My mother, the goblin queen. I wasn’t quite brave enough to say it out loud though.

  She said, “The demons are a strong magical race, but a relatively small one in population and longer lived. We think there’s around five hundred, along with the more powerful demon who doesn’t age at all. The one the history book attributed to the witch’s meddling. We could just try and contain them, but it might be easier if we killed the immortal one, and thinned them out a little.

  “I think if the main demon dies, the rest will bicker and fall apart into smaller tribes like the goblins and orcs do. None of the other demons stand out enough, or are strong enough to control all the rest. The problem is assaulting the cave system to kill him, and making it back out
alive won’t be easy.”

  I raised an eyebrow, “So you want me to help?”

  She replied, “Yes. The demons can throw fire, cast curse magic, and see in the dark. I’ve mapped out the route we need to take to get to him, using the spheres, but if I just go alone and fail, it won’t be easy to retreat. Most of the caves are manmade, and there are various traps as well to avoid.”

  Dad said, “I suggested your ability to teleport would be crucial. We don’t want you fighting, or on the front line. The war-bots and goblins will take care of that, and your mother. But if things go sideways and the force gets trapped, you can pull them all out with a quick teleport.”

  She snorted, “Suggest my ass. He said he’d leave me if I was insane enough to assault that place alone. I have to admit he’s right, the dwarves built a deathtrap down there, and the demons are familiar with it.”

  “Do demons have shields?”

  Gerard said, “Not as such no. But they’re highly resistant to most magic by their very nature and bodies. I’m not sure if that would extend to your mental abilities. I’ve heard they’re masters of chaos and fire, but I’m not sure what that means.”

  Gerard and I exchanged a look, and I could tell he was willing. It was all the discussion we needed in order for me to make a decision.

  I looked at my mother, “I guess we’re going to find out. When do we go?”

  My mother smiled and pulled her gun, “How about now?”

  I giggled, “Fine.”

  When we rode the anti-gravity beam down, we were just fifty feet up. Honestly, it was a bit disconcerting as the fifty or so goblins stared up at us, weapons drawn. I could feel their excitement for battle, but the most disconcerting part was I could feel the worshipful regard they had for my mother, and possibly worse, for me as well.

  Apparently, my mother had programmed more than the ship to obey me.

  There were about thirty spheres my mother planned to use for scouts, their darts and lower powered sonic attacks were worthless against demons. There were also ten larger robots that were slightly reminiscent of spiders in that they had eight legs, they also had far more powerful sonic weapons in addition to two very sharp forelimbs for melee combat.

  The goblins entered first, and we followed, surrounded by the ten droids for protection. The cave system wasn’t what I expected, the walls were perfectly flat, and the hallway was perfectly square. It was obviously man made, or rather, dwarven made.

  I was using my new three level scanning technique when we ran across the first group of three demons. It’s hard to explain how it felt, but nothing was right. It was all blurry. My telepathy picked up some kind of thoughts, but they were chaotic, disjointed, and made no sense. The same with my empathy, I could use it to detect a demon, but couldn’t really tell what it was feeling. Lastly, my telekinesis can usually determine what something is made of, by sinking into and examining it on the molecular level. That too came back… wrong.

  I got the idea that it wasn’t their true thoughts, emotions, or their body, but their magic that was scrambling my own powers chaotically. It also explained why they’d be highly resistant to magic, because when a spell hit them it would be scrambled as well. It was like listening to a radio station that wasn’t tuned in right, or reading something that was extremely blurry. The effect is probably why the mind control devices failed, either the effect was scrambling the signal so that Sia couldn’t connect, or their bodies merely made the electronics fail in some way.

  Maybe that’s what masters of chaos meant, their own body and magic caused chaos on a quantum level that scrambled magic and my abilities. I wondered if I hit them with a hard enough telekinetic punch, if enough would get through to have some effect on them. I decided if I pushed hard enough, it might do some small amount of damage, but on balance it was probably best to plan and use indirect damage, which would be much easier. I pulled the dagger out of the boot sheath, and after a moment of thought I summoned one of my backups into my left hand.

  The master of fire part was obvious, they could channel elemental fire and toss fireballs. I wondered if the curse part was really more of the chaos part, if they could cast their own internal chaos magic into another race’s body, then bad, painful, and probably deadly things would happen. Like nerve pain firing randomly, or the signals from the brain to the heart being scrambled. On that not so joyful thought, I decided to share.

  “Three around that corner,” I sent a mental heads up to Gerard and my mother.

  The next moment the goblins rushed the corner, and hacked at the three demons with their swords. The surprise was total and they didn’t stand a chance, though one of the demons did let out a cry of alarm before he died. I had a moment of hope that demons backstabbed each other often enough that the cry would be ignored, but several moments later I felt over forty demons coming this way from several directions.

  I reported that out loud. At least I made a good life signs detector down here. I was starting to get a headache though, and cut off my telepathy and telekinesis scans, and stuck with empathy. It still sucked, the fuzzy responses didn’t feel right, but it wasn’t as bad as three scrambled senses.

  Mom said, “Let’s move quickly. It may prevent them from converging on us all at once.”

  We moved forward, and four of the spider robots lagged behind about ten feet to cover our rear. It seemed to go well for a while, but eventually there were a lot of demons on our trail in the same corridor, and a few smaller groups converging in front of us.

  There was a loud click, and then four of the goblins were sliced in half by blade traps. Just because it wasn’t exciting enough already. I used telekinesis to scan the stone around us, and found the trigger, and then destroyed it. I limited the reach to just past the goblins as we continued to move, maybe I could stop the next one before it happened. I updated Gerard and my mother.

  The first trap had slowed us however, and I could hear the sonic blasts of the spider bots behind us. Based on my empathy scan, it was working to an extent. The demons were being flung back, but their bodies weren’t being shaken to death on the inside. Damned chaos.

  I found and disarmed another trap, and then used aero-kinesis to catch a fireball sent at one of the spider bots, and threw it back at the chasing demons. I heard a loud scream at the explosion, and felt two empathy sources disappear. Good to know, they weren’t disruptive to their own magic.

  We started to move way too fast for caution, but I’d managed to make the chasing demons wary and they slowed down enough that we were gaining distance. The goblins, goblin mages, and the robots were doing a good job of clearing the area ahead of us, though they were slowly dwindling as well. I couldn’t do anymore myself, I was too busy with traps and protecting the rear. Then I felt the main demon, the chaos was so strong I had to retreat from him in my mind.

  “Mom, about four hundred yards ahead, and slightly down is the main guy,” I said.

  Mom said, “I know, the scouts are close to there already.”

  Damn, I forgot the scouts. There was a good hundred and fifty or so demons behind us now, when I got an idea and stopped.

  “Hold on a second, got an idea.”

  I sunk my telekinesis into the ceiling about twenty feet behind us, and used pyro-kinesis to heat it quickly, making it almost molten. I cooled it as fast as possible which made the stone groan and crack as it contracted, and then I hit it hard with a telekinetic punch. The ceiling caved in blocking off the path behind us.

  “That should slow them down. But you know there’s about fifty demons with our target, we should have brought more goblins.”

  My mom laughed as we started to move ahead again, one of her famous cackles, and I felt the demons behind us backtracking to another corridor, but they’d never catch us in time now. I focused forward completely, outside of my empathy which went in all directions, and just demolished the traps I found inside the stone, while I caught and returned any fireballs shot at the goblins when we ran across the
smaller groups.

  Luckily, the demons seemed to prefer using fire over their chaos, so far anyway. Either that, or the chaos thing was something only the older and more powerful demons could use on others at a distance.

  Unfortunately, my empathy range grew shorter in the forward direction as we moved closer to the main cavern, I couldn’t afford the harsh chaos the main demon put off, it was too disorienting. Still, the demons off to the sides, and far behind us wouldn’t catch up unless we took too long. I just wondered what my mother had in mind, taking out groups of five to ten was relatively easy, fifty demons plus the big one would be far more problematic.

  Who was I kidding, she didn’t have a plan, my mother had a sonic gun and a whole lot of crazy, and minions.

  Gerard felt alert, and he hadn’t had to really do anything yet, which was a good thing. He was the last line of physical defense for my mother and me. I felt a sense of implacable resolve and protectiveness from him.

  “We’re close.”

  My mom cackled, “Cover your ears!”

  Oh crap, maybe she did have a plan. I covered my ears, as did the goblins who were right around the corner from the cavern entrance. There was a loud high decibel bang that made my ears ring, and I saw a bright flash of light around the corner. Huh, she’d used the spheres as some kind of high intensity flash bangs in a self-destruct? I just hoped it would work, the demons were resistant to that kind of thing.

  The goblins screamed and ran into the cavern, and the robots, Gerard, my mother, and I all followed…

  Chapter Seventeen

  It had kind of worked.

  When I raced around the corner and entered the huge cavern which was full of demons, I realized this was their dining room. Almost all fifty of the normal demons were rolling on the ground disoriented and in obvious pain.

  The sixteen remaining goblins attacked mercilessly, along with the ten spider war-bots, and started slicing throats as quickly as possible. That worked well, since there was only two each to kill, but the large demon was already in their midst and killing them. He was much bigger, about twelve feet tall, and he dual wielded two handed swords, which meant he was extremely strong. The swords were also on fire, and left a trail of flames in the air. Then he killed a goblin fifteen feet away by shooting a fireball out of the end of one sword, while beheading a spider war-bot with the other sword.