Jakob Pettersohn, Ch. 9-10

The Chronicles of Jakob Pettersohn - Chapter 9

At first I feared that the shock of Azrael's discovery, which he had pinned so much hope on, would plunge him into a chronic depression.  Indeed, he was rather sullen for rest of the day, although by morning he had begun to take an interest in things again.

Wilson had no real plans of his own, other than to travel around the country, and we tentatively revealed to him that we were searching for a very specific monument.  It turned out that he believed in some rather peculiar magical phenomena, such as the ability of pyramids to sharpen razorblades so he fairly quickly deduced that we were searching for a rock with special mystical vibrations.  A rather shrewd guess, all told.

With this in mind, he was happy to help us in our quest and proved a most valuable ally.  Stopping at the nearby city of Salisbury, Azrael and I played tourist for a bit, exploring a magnificent church known as Salisbury Cathedral.  I was astonished to learn that the priests worshipped the same god as the congregation where I grew up, although they did not call themselves 'The Church of Christ the Human' for fairly obvious reasons.

I also managed to purchase a UHER 4000 magnetic recorder and some tapes for it, two of which had pre-recorded material on them, the rest of which were empty.  Foolishly I left it in the van while purchasing some more food.  By the time I returned, Azrael had removed the the back cover and was spinning the large central flywheel with his finger.  He would probably have had the entire machine in pieces if I had not rescued it from his clutches.

After some further study at the local library, Azrael and I had produced another shortlist of monuments which could possibly be dimensional gates.  With Wilson's aid, we drove around the country checking them out.
We did actually find one, which caused Azrael to become excited, but it was pretty far gone and a number of stones had been removed.  We made a note of it, intending to return if we had no further success.  With some work, we might be able to reactivate it, although since some of the missing stones had apparently been broken up and used for houses or walls, it was only a slightly better proposition than summoning a Warp-Aci.

Our journeying was interrupted late one evening in August when a news broadcast came through on Wilson's radio which caused him a great deal of concern.  Apparently a nuclear submarine named HMS Resolution was going to be docking at a port in a place known as Barrow.  Since it was still fairly new there were some teething troubles and the machine was going to undergo a minor overhaul in the shipyard where it was assembled over the course of about three years, to the consternation of many.

On hearing this, Wilson became frantic and decided that we had to go there immediately to protest against it.  I was not sure why at the time, but I cautioned Azrael to be quiet.  Since it was fairly late, Wilson was already a little drowsy so we pulled up by a stream somewhere in the north of a place called Wales and camped for the night.

While Wilson slept, I probed his mind and reported what I could see to Page.  I made sure that he was asleep while we spoke - it would prevent him from hearing us, and it also allowed me to go a lot further into his sleeping mind than would have been possible with him awake.

"It seems that the humans have harnessed a great source of power," I said.  "If I didn't know better I'd say it was magic.  Apparently there are certain kinds of rock, which, when purified, release energy.  If you bring several pieces of the rock together it will generate an enormous amount of energy.
But this energy is poisonous and destroys life.  The residue will remain dangerous for thousands and thousands of years.  People are concerned about this since it will generate a lot of waste which they don't know what to do with, and also because if there is an accident, the poison could be spread over a large area."

"That doesn't sound too bad," said Azrael.  "All they need to do is get a dragon to look after this waste..  Oh.  No dragons."

"There's more," I said.  "They have also discovered that if you bring the pieces of rock together in the right way it will cause an explosion large enough to vapourise an entire city and turn an area the size of Zinvth and Armansta combined into a poisonous wasteland.  Wilson has seen some film of the results.  It's very, very bad stuff."

Azrael was silent for a few moments.  "And this 'submarine' thing has something to do with this energy source?"

"Yes.  They call it 'nuclear energy' or 'atomic power'.  The poison is called 'radiation' and appears to be an uncontrolled emission of dangerous energy.  You know, it's starting to come back to me now.  I read a few things about this in the encyclopedia, but it didn't make sense at the time.

"Anyway.  The HMS Resolution is a warship in the rough shape of a whale which is completely enclosed and able to sail beneath the water, where it can go undetected.
This particular machine does two things which upset Wilson and his friends. Firstly, it uses a nuclear power source to drive all its systems, and secondly, it is armed with atomic weapons, the ones which can vapourise cities."

"But why?"  Azrael was aghast. "What are they fighting against that would need that much death?  Demons?  'cubi?  Dragons?  A Fae gone rogue?"

"No, just other humans.  They call them the Russians, and they call themselves the 'Free West'.  Both sides have these terrible weapons and each side is afraid that the other will use them first.  The populace has either gone into a state of quiet resignation of their impending doom, or has determined to enjoy life while they can.  I think you can tell which group Wilson falls into.

"There's one other thing," I continued. "These Russians have apparently infiltrated the Free West with spies who disguise themselves as Free Westians but may suddenly cause chaos or something when they receive the appropriate  signal from their controllers.
It seems we were lucky with the gold.. the Free Westians are on the lookout for unusual behaviour and may have reported us as suspected agents of the Russia.  I didn't see anything in anyone's mind at the time, but we could easily have got into real trouble."

"These humans are bat-shit crazy." said Azrael.  "Um, anyway.  So where is this Barrow place?"

"Somewhere north of here, I think.  We'll have to ask Wilson when he wakes."



We were somewhere around Barrow on the edge of the coastline when the drugs began to take hold.  The van careened off the road with enough force to take it over the concrete barrier - smashing the suspension - and into the sea, leaving a trail of Volkswagen-branded parts in its wake.  The only thing I remember after that was waking up in a prison cell with Azrael and Wilson, but as I listened with my mind, I could hear the thoughts of the chief policemen in the room above.

He was composing the charge sheet in his head.  They were going to bust us for possession of the illegal drugs in Wilson's stash, probably with intent to sell, as said stash was quite considerable.  They hadn't worked out where I had managed to get all the gold from, or why I had an opened pack of rawhide dog-chews in my backpack, but he was assuming it was in some way drug-related.  One of the chews had been sent off for analysis.

They had also taken my UHER, the portable record player and our notes on the stone circles, which the chief was convinced was where we were meeting to sell our ill-gotten wares.  Fortunately they had not taken Azrael's charm, or all kinds of savage hell would have broken loose when he reverted to feline form.  Nonetheless, he looked very pale.

"What's the matter?" I asked.

"You remember that conversation we had last night?  About the submarine?" he replied.

"Ye-ee-ss.." I said slowly, although I knew what was coming.

"I recorded it," he said.

I was silent for a few moments, as all our plans of quietly exiting from this world suddenly vanished in a puff of Mary.  "Well, then," I concluded, "We shall have to leave.  We simply cannot allow them to play that back."

Wilson looked extremely alarmed.  "Are you dudes..."

"..Spies?" I said.  "No.  But I'm not sure you'd believe me if I told you the truth anyway.  Certainly I don't know what they'd make of it, but I don't intend to find out.  It's so far outside their experience that they'd probably assume we were spies anyway."

"What are you going to do, then?"  said Azrael.  "Warp-Aci?"

"No!" I replied.  "I told you, they take days to summon and anyway, seeing that would make the contents of the tape seem like a cub's bed-time story by comparison."  Wilson's eyes bulged, but I ignored him.

"We're in trouble.  Whatever we do will leave some evidence, but perhaps I can minimise it."  I moved towards the cell door.

As a cub, Izak and I had been quite proficient with magic, far more so than a regular Being, and this might have tipped us off that we were 'cubi and not simply a hybrid of wolf and phoenix as we had first assumed.  Among the spells which I had in my admittedly small repertoire were a few which could be used to levitate rocks and move other small objects.

I pressed my hand against the lock and it glowed faintly and the bolt slowly began to withdraw.  A little while later it became stuck.  My hand glowed brightly and the bolt suddenly shot back with a most unpleasant sound as the metal within the lock sheared.  "Oops," I said.  Wilson said nothing, but his face had turned the same colour as Page's fur would be in his natural form.

"Wait here," I said and crept out.  Unfortunately I didn't have the ability to make myself invisible at the time, but I was able to use my 'cubi shapeshifting powers to blend myself in with the wall.  This helped as long as I moved slowly.

Suddenly one of the policemen saw me.  Then his eyes took on a glazed look and he slumped to the ground.  I propped him in a chair and crept upstairs, hunting for the police chief's mind.  Several more policemen saw me and they too fell - in a world devoid of mind-readers, they had not evolved any kind of mental shielding.

I would have done the same thing to the police chief, but unfortunately I needed to know where our possessions were.  So I knocked, entered and said "Excuse me, sir, can I have my tape recorder back, please?"

"You!" he exclaimed, and pressed a button sounding an alarm.  "How did you get out of your cell?"

"Magic," I replied.  "Now please, give back my recorder."

In my mind I felt another policeman about to enter the room.  All the police chief heard was a muted thump as he fell to the ground as well.

"All your staff are unconscious now, so you're on your own," I said, starting to lose patience.  "Now give me the recorder.. I don't want to have to hurt you."

"No," he replied and drew out a small black object with a protrusion from his belt.  Very quickly he pointed it at me and with a loud retort there was a sudden, intense pain in my arm.
I screamed, not a human scream, but a feral one, a howl of primal rage and pain.  My tentacles sliced through the metal of the weapon, removing the tips of his fingers.  Reverting from the shock of the pain, he saw me in my base form, managing to utter the words "...what are you...?" before he too crumpled and fell.

Sadly for him it was not a clean, precise edit like the others.  A wounded 'cubi does not usually do a good job.  We later found that it took him a month to awaken from the coma.

Shutting off the alarm, I found some bandages and wrapped them around my arm.  Unfortunately Wilson entered the room at that moment and promptly became the second human to see me in my true form before I was able to shapeshift back.  I ate his terror which helped to speed up the healing process considerably and also left him relatively placid.

We searched the police station and found the tapes, the recorder and various other things including the stolen library books which we had actually come for.  Unfortunately there was too much for us to carry without the van, so we had to leave most of Wilson's stash.  Realising this, he had immediately gone for the marijuana again although to his credit, it made his nerves a lot steadier.
Taking the pieces of the chief's weapon, I put them and the remains of my gold into a briefcase, having tipped the prior contents onto the floor.  At that point we were able to leave the station.

No explanation was ever offered for our mysterious arrest and breakout.  Since we were high at the time they never got our names and with no witnesses who could remember the event at all, the incident was explained away as the result of some weird drug in Wilson's stash and quietly buried.

As we crossed the street, I suddenly realised that I no longer had the charm which Fa'Lina had given me to return to SAIA.

"What..?" screamed Azrael, "you mean to say you could have taken us back to the Academy all this time?!?"

"My Gods, Page!" I exploded, "Don't you think I already tried that?  It's dead as stone!  But assuming we ever do get back to Furrae, I would very much like to keep all my options open!"

The fumes from Wilson's Mary gradually began to calm our tattered nerves, and we trudged back towards the small town of Ulveston, where the van had been wrecked during Wilson's ill-advised experiment to see whether acid would improve his driving skills.  The last time I had removed my shirt had been in that van, so the necklace had to be inside it.

"Hey, Cross, man, can I ask... like, what are you?"
These were the first coherent words which Wilson had uttered since our escape from the cell, when his already strange life had suddenly been turned inside-out.

"Okay, Wilson," I started, "I feel guilty that we've dragged you into this mess, so I guess you deserve the truth.  This is going to be quite a head-trip, I'm afraid.  Are you up to it?"  He nodded.

Taking a deep breath, I began.  "Myself and Page - or 'Azrael' as he prefers to be called - are magical creatures from another dimension.  I have the ability to change form and read minds."  I ignored the bit about being able to steal and eat people's souls as he clearly wasn't ready for that.

"We come from a society which is rather backwards compared to yours, and so we travelled here to learn of your technology in the hopes that it could improve our own world.  Unfortunately we became trapped, and since that morning in Clacton we have been examining various ancient monuments in the hopes that we can find an abandoned but working trans-dimensional gate and reactivate it."

He nodded again.  "So what are the people like back on your world?"

"Well, unlike yours there are many different types of us.  You only seem to have humans as the sole intelligent race - for us, there are no humans and we are different kinds of animal.  You saw that I am a winged wolf.  Page here is a snow leopard.  His race can't shapeshift, so he relies on a magical charm to conceal himself.  If we find a secluded spot, he can probably show you if you like."

Wilson shook his head vigorously.

"I understand," I said.  "You know, I didn't know I was a shapeshifter at first.  It came as quite a shock, especially when I discovered that I would live to be maybe three thousand years old..."

"How old are you now?" he asked.

"Around 410," I said.  "You tend to lose track after the first hundred years... you start thinking in decades instead."

The police had had some difficulty removing the van, so it was still more-or-less where we had left it, but they had taken up where the sea couldn't reach it.  Sending the remaining policemen left to guard it to sleep, we entered the van and I quickly found my precious necklace, along with a few other oddments which I was reluctant to leave.

As we left the van, Page - having acute vision - caught sight of something on a nearby hill.  He sniffed twice, and began to get quite excited, just as he had at Stonehenge and when we had found the defunct gate in Monmouth.

"It's a gate!" he cried.  "I tell you, it's a gate.  I can feel its energy.  Wilson, do you know what that hill is?"

"I dunno, man," Wilson replied.  "It's a common.. I went there last year after the protest when the Resolution was launched.  You know... there is a stone circle up there.  Called the "Druid's Temple", I think.  Someone did feel some good vibes when we were up there before, man.  I thought they just had some good grass, though."



Strangely, as we approached the circle, Page became less tense and more businesslike.  He was utterly convinced of the gate, and I was dreading what he might do if it proved to be another failure.   Nervously I took one of the dog chews and munched at it as he set to work.

"The circle has been damaged," he said, "but I think I can compensate for it." so saying, he searched for a particular piece of rock, eventually taking one from a dry stone wall and placing it upon the ground in the centre of the circle.

"I must warn you, this is going to be a little different to the gates we've used before," he added and as his hands glowed, the rock began to rotate slowly, and then gained speed.  As it rose into the air, the ground in the circle began to glow faintly and then became brighter and brighter until finally the Gate was there in all its glory, blue as the morning sky.

"Well," he said to a stunned-looking Wilson, "I guess this is goodbye.  We're extremely grateful for everything you have done, both to help us find our way back and to help us understand your world's culture."
Azrael gave him the briefcase full of of gold as a parting gift and we shook hands, but there was a funny light in his eyes.  The Mary made it a little hard to read his mind so I couldn't see why at the time.

Page and I held hands and jumped into the Gate.  The transition was a little unfortunate since our gate was horizontal and the receiving gate was vertical, so we landed on our asses... all three of us.

"Oh dear," I said, looking at Wilson.
"You can say that again," said Azrael, but he was looking at the three weasel guards pointing their halberds at us.

Chapter 10

Azrael, Wilson and myself slowly picked ourselves up as the three weasel guards watched us nervously.  I could see in their minds that they were startled by our human appearances.  "The charm," I said to Azrael, reverting back to human form myself.  Azrael followed suit, but the guards did not lower their weapons.

"At ease, men," Page said, but to no avail.  "I order you to lower your weapons!" he said.  Finally, one of them stepped forward.  He was the captain of the palace guards, who I had appointed myself not five years ago.

"I was ordered to arrest you for treason, sir." he said.

"Treason?!?" shouted Azrael, "I am your lawful ruler!  What is the meaning of this outrage?" as he spoke, my wing-tentacles rose, the heads growling at the captain in a threatening manner.

"You are no longer our Lord," he said, swallowing.  "Our just and true ruler is Lady Siad, who came to power after you fled this world, leaving us without guidance."

"How long have we been gone?" I asked him, but he looked away and didn't reply.
"Three days," I said, reading the weasel's mind.  "She didn't wait long, did she?  Now tell me, captain, what happened to those whom we left in charge during our absence?"

He didn't reply, but became even more nervous.  "Dead," I replied for him, in a tone of disgust.  "Captain, I see in your mind that you were against this coup and only acted under your oath as a castle guard.  This oath was made to me.  If I were to release you from this oath, would you join us against the usurper?"

He shook his head, and I could see that he was beside himself with fear.  I couldn't really blame him - if we returned to power, he was sure he would face death for his part in the treason... but if his new mistress found out about the offer I had made, he wouldn't even get a trial.  He was caught between a rock and a hard place, as the saying goes.

"Very well," I said.  "Take us to your Lady, and know that should we return to power, I shall take your misgivings about the coup into consideration."

"Thankyou, Mi'Lord," he said uncomfortably, and lead us into the main chamber, where a brunette lapine figure was seated upon Page's ceremonial throne.  With a sudden shock, I recognised her - she was the same hare succubus that had tried to steal Chelsea's soul all those years ago.

"You were a fool to have spared me, Jakob," she said.  "I shall not give you the same mercy now."

"Is there some grievance between you?" said Azrael.

"Silence, Page!" she replied.  "You too were a fool to have come back through the Gate, breaking the exile which I had given to you.  You need never have known of the loss of your kingdom if you had only stayed where I had put you.

"As for Jakob... Hah!  I was there when his clan drove mine from our city.  Our leader was nearly killed in the struggle.  Only she and a handful of others survived that night.  We swore there and then that we would never rest until Daryil has been slain and his clan made extinct by our hand!"

"If you say so," I said.  "My family is an offshoot of our clan and I have no knowledge of their deeds, evil or otherwise.  Heck, my father didn't even know what they were called until he went to SAIA."

"Then you shall die unknowing," she replied and moved towards me.

"Couldn't we settle this like 'cubi?"  I asked.  "How about a nice game of Dreamwar?"  She didn't even grace that suggestion with a reply.

I really wasn't sure what to do.  I had never physically fought another 'cubi before... it was something that Fa'Lina's Academy tried hard to prevent, given that it was established to help preserve our race.

I tightened my mental shield and focused upon her, but she had done the same.  It would take just one slip from either of us and it would all be over.

Azrael lunged at her, his claws extended and his skin hardened and sharpened.  I had never seen him angry enough to do that before, but I kept my cool - otherwise he might have done the succubus' work for her.  She was less fortunate, but she pushed him aside quickly and closed the gap in her mind before I had a chance to exploit it.

Page was not so easily rebuffed though and redoubled his efforts.  The guards were not able to defend their Lady as the pair of them were entangled.  I joined the fray as well and between us we soon had a chunk of the hare's ear.  She yelled at her guards to aid her, but I knew she didn't want Page dead yet.  More likely she intended to steal his soul if she could, since it would greatly increase her power, as would mine - but absorbing the both of us at once might be too much for her to handle and was potentially fatal.

Between the two of us we managed to pin the succubus to the ground.  My tentacles closed around her neck - just one quick movement and she would be very dead.  The problem, ethical complications aside, was her guards who stood behind us, halberds at the ready.  All in all, it was a stalemate.

Suddenly the captain broke the silence.  "Let her speak," he said.  I didn't have much choice so reluctantly I unwound my tentacles from her throat.

"About time," she said.  "Now perform your duty and execute the traitor."

The weasel paused, his mind impossible to fathom.  His eyes kept glancing from the succubus to Azrael, and then to me.

"I said execute the traitor!" she commanded, furious at his hesitation.  "Do it at once, or you shall die too!"

"Yes, Mi'lady," he said, raising the halberd.  I closed my eyes.  A moment later there was a sickening sound, followed by retching from Wilson who was hiding in the corner.
A few moments later I opened them, and promptly saw the succubus.  I closed them again very quickly after that but could not stop myself from following Wilson's example.

"Remove her," said Azrael in an unsteady voice and clapped his hand on my shoulder.  "Come on, my friend..." he said.  "Let's get you and Wilson cleaned up."



Despite the appalling start, Azrael's plan for a new Furrae free of prejudice and hatred worked out reasonably well.  We set up a number of movements which spread far beyond Ha'Khun, and although their message rarely gained traction in the mainstream, the truths behind it were sufficiently self-evident for it to have survived even until today, nearly five hundred years later.

Wilson acted as our spiritual adviser until he reached the end of a full life.  I have often wondered what happened to his soul, whether dying in the wrong dimension caused him any administrative problems when he went upstairs.

Azrael and I had many happy years running the city together, inventing new things and engaging on yet more expeditions to the human realm.  We did eventually enrol as students at Essex University, with Azrael studying electronics and mechanical engineering as my own degree.

One of the more remarkable things we did in later years involved a financial scam which Azrael had devised.

When we had built the first machine that allowed us to leave Furrae, our method of financing had been rather crude.  We had initially used gold or diamonds, but these caused too many questions, since we had no address in that dimension, and that made getting credit or a bank account rather awkward.

Eventually Azrael had hit on a beautiful scam during an era when banks were offering credit cards like sweeties with only minimal checking.  I thought it was immoral myself, but finally agreed after Az convinced me that it was the credit card companies' own fault for not instituting proper identity checks and they only had their own greed to blame.
This was typical of Azrael - it was his idea of a good practical joke.  I think that Wilson would have approved as well, as it was just the sort of low-level subversion which he thrived upon.

Using the proceeds of some gold to set up an initial account, we bought a flat, which we did via an agency so no-one ever saw us.  Not that it would have mattered, since I could change my appearance at will anyway.
Then we took out a series of lineage ads in various newspapers, offering some kind of service to help people find work abroad - "Just send in your CV and references!"

Using this information, which was sent to a P.O. box address and then redirected to the flat, we were able to take out scores of credit cards from nearly every bank in other people's names, which were then sent to the flat.
We used each card to make a single, huge withdrawal from the bank's cash machines and then discarded it.  It took them several months to realise what was going on, and by the time the police entered the flat, they found it empty as we had long since fled.  Empty, that is, except for the floor which was covered in thousands upon thousands of unopened credit cards, far more than Azrael and I could ever have used.

That wouldn't work now of course, since this incident prompted the credit card companies to actually start cross-checking the identity of their customers, but for the pair of us it had been a windfall.  The money we had withdrawn had all been put into completely separate savings and current accounts, which I still use today for my occasional shopping trips into the human realm.

All told, we ran the city together for almost a hundred years until disaster finally struck, a disaster that would plunge me into the depths of insanity for the next three centuries.