Page 14 of Dark Shaman: Eternal Hope (The Children Of The Gods #100)

ELUHEED

T he military transport vehicle bounced over rough terrain, taking Eluheed deeper into a part of the island he'd never seen before.

Through the windshield, he caught glimpses of training fields stretching toward the mountains, obstacle courses constructed from logs and rope, and rows of low-slung buildings that looked more functional than aesthetic.

This was where Navuh's army lived and trained, far from the luxury of the mansion and seemingly at the opposite side of the island from the opulent harem.

"Civilians never get to see this sector," Navuh said from beside him, his voice carrying that particular tone of satisfaction he got when revealing something he considered impressive. "The military installations are kept confidential."

Eluheed kept his expression neutral as he catalogued every detail. Guard towers at regular intervals. Cameras mounted on poles. Warriors running drills in perfect formations despite the oppressive heat. "It's extensive," he offered because Navuh expected him to say something.

"Over ten thousand warriors are stationed here at any given time," Navuh said.

"Though that number fluctuates depending on deployments.

" He gestured toward a massive concrete structure built into the hillside.

"The main barracks are underground. Those flying overhead won't see anything of interest out here.

They are also easier to keep cool that way.

The vehicle descended a ramp that led beneath the earth, fluorescent lights replacing sunlight as they went deeper. The air grew cooler, but it didn't turn stale. The space was properly ventilated, but it wasn't as cool as in the harem.

"The ventilation system is ingenious," Navuh continued, clearly enjoying showing off to someone new who was seeing parts of his hidden empire for the first time.

"When I bought this island in the 1920s and began construction, air conditioning wasn't widely adopted.

Mechanical cooling was unreliable and expensive to maintain on an island.

So, I used the gods' proven systems instead.

Well, not just any gods. My grandfather was a genius who found simple solutions to complicated problems, like how to make life bearable for people who couldn't tolerate the intense sunlight or the heat it produced. "

After the driver parked in an underground garage, they got out and Navuh led Eluheed through a heavy steel door into a wide corridor.

The walls were unpainted concrete, utilitarian and harsh, but the air was surprisingly comfortable given that there were no compressors pumping cold air into the submerged space.

"Diagonal ventilation shafts," Navuh explained, pointing to grates set high in the walls.

"They create natural convection currents.

Cool air is drawn from deep underground while warm air rises and exits through vents in the hillside.

The barracks are comfortable even without air conditioning.

The only structure I had air-conditioned from the beginning was the harem.

" He smiled. "My ladies always got the best accommodations. "

They walked deeper into the complex, passing dormitories with rows of bunk beds visible through open doors, communal bathrooms, and a mess hall that could seat hundreds.

Everything was clean and organized and typically military in its austerity, with no personal touches anywhere.

These warriors lived like tools in a toolbox, stored efficiently until needed, but that was not much different than what soldiers contended with in other armies.

"The detention facility is new," Navuh said, leading him through another security checkpoint, where guards looked at Eluheed with frowns but said nothing while bowing to their lord.

"We converted part of the original barracks after the rebellion to create a secure detention center.

Before that, I just had troublemakers executed, but I need the enhanced ones for future testing, and the regular soldiers acted under coercion, so I decided to spare them. "

He sounded so magnanimous, as if it were a huge act of mercy on his part to spare those soldiers.

The corridors grew narrower as they continued, and Eluheed noticed additional cameras here, with overlapping fields of view that eliminated any blind spots. The air grew heavier somehow, though the temperature remained constant.

"The regular soldiers who joined the rebellion are housed together," Navuh said, stopping at a reinforced door with a small window.

Through it, Eluheed could see a large room filled with bunk beds, with perhaps forty men sitting or lying on them.

"They were followers, not leaders. Susceptible to the influence of the enhanced soldiers but not autonomously rebellious.

" Navuh moved on, leading him down another corridor.

"The enhanced soldiers are kept in isolation. Solitary confinement."

They reached a heavy steel door marked with two guards standing outside, both holding automatic weapons. At Navuh's nod, one entered a code into a keypad, and the door clicked open.

Beyond was a corridor lined with cells, each with a small window and a food slot. The silence here was oppressive. There were no voices, no movement, just the hum of ventilation, but Eluheed felt something else, a pressure against his mind that made his skin prickle.

"Thirty-nine enhanced soldiers," Navuh said. "They receive food and water, but they don't go out, so there will be no interaction with each other or the other soldiers."

"What if they compel the other soldiers to release them?"

"They can't," Navuh said, but not with his usual conviction.

"Their one compeller is entombed in the tunnel leading to my bunker at the mansion, and so far, none of the others have developed compulsion ability.

It's still possible that one or more will, so I'm waiting to see what will happen.

In the meantime, they are suffering from withdrawal symptoms and are quite miserable. "

"Dr. Zhao didn't leave any drugs for them?" Eluheed asked.

"He did, and we even have his formulas, but I'm still waiting for my people to find a replacement for Dr. Zhao. In the meantime, we are rationing what he left among the soldiers to keep them from going insane."

Navuh was in an uncharacteristically chatty mood, and Eluheed was committing to memory everything the lord was revealing. He didn't know if he would ever find any use for the information, but it might somehow prove valuable.

He walked over to the first cell's window and peered inside. A man sat on a narrow cot, his eyes closed, his lips moving as if in conversation with someone invisible or with himself.

"His name is Nahil, but he calls himself Transcendent," Navuh said with derision. "He was one of the leaders, but he's obviously insane. He claims he can hear the voice of the universe itself."

"Do you want me to touch him?"

"That's why you're here, but we need to secure him properly first, so let's continue walking until they prepare him for you."

Eluheed had a bad feeling about that. "How are they going to subdue him?"

Navuh chuckled. "With enough manpower."

As they continued down the long corridor, Eluheed first heard the sounds of the door opening, then the sounds of struggle, followed by the rattle of chains, and eventually the low whine of the beat-up soldier that was more like a wounded animal's than a man's.

He abhorred violence, and he couldn't help but empathize with the man's pain, but then he remembered Tamira trembling in his arms, terrified of what the monsters would do to her.

Regrettably, he couldn't dismiss it as irrational panic. She'd had good reason to be terrified. Men like that, enhanced soldiers, even in human form, did unspeakable evil to women when they conquered a territory and killed the men so there were no protectors left.

"We can turn around now," Navuh said. "He's secure."

"I figured as much," Eluheed murmured.

"I need to know if they're truly communicating telepathically or if they're simply insane. I thought that your ability could give you an insight."

The truth was that Eluheed was curious about that himself, but he was also afraid of touching the man if it was true that the thirty-nine could communicate telepathically with one another.

It would be a jumbled mess that might pull him under.

As the door opened again, the enhanced soldier opened his one good eye and looked directly at Eluheed. The other eye was glued shut and purple, but the color was already turning yellow, and in moments it would be as good as new.

That didn't matter. What mattered was that he was chained to a chair that was bolted into the concrete, and it was safe to approach him.

"A new player enters the game," the enhanced one said, his voice rusty from disuse. "Which side do you play for, human?"

Eluheed kept his mental shields up in case these soldiers could not only access each other's minds but also those of other immortals.

"I'm not on anyone's side. I'm here to understand what's happening to you."

"Understanding requires opening your mind," Transcendent said. "But yours is barricaded. How are you going to understand when you are not willing to open your mind?"

That was a valid question, and Eluheed hoped that the vision would come without him having to lower his mental shields. He couldn't allow these creatures into his mind and into his secrets.

They would hold him hostage, threatening to tell Navuh that his human pet was actually an immortal from another world.

"The visions come when they will," Eluheed said. "I need to touch you for them to come. Will you allow it?"

"Do I have a choice?"

"Not really, but it's polite to ask."

Nahil snorted. "There is nothing polite about my situation but go ahead. Touch me. See what we've become."

Eluheed hesitated. Every instinct warned him against making contact, but Navuh expected results. He put his hand on the soldier's forearm.

The world exploded.

No, it expanded.

Eluheed was suddenly pulled into something vast and interconnected, a web of linked minds that were trying to create a whole and act as a hive, but their efforts were chaotic, their thoughts jumbled.

Not all of the time, though. They were like streams feeding into a river, but the river was muddy, not clear.

Eluheed tried to pull back, but he was drawn to the connection.

He could feel their emotions, access their fragmented memories of the enhancement process, Zhao's drugs flooding their systems, the moment when the barriers in their minds dissolved, and they touched each other, and also something more infinite.

They were losing their minds, but they weren't completely insane.

Not yet. They were like individual drops of water, suddenly aware they were part of an ocean.

Aware of him.

Panic flooded through Eluheed.

He wrenched back his consciousness, reinforcing his mental walls and flooding his mind with the persona of Elias, the humble shaman. But the knowledge remained. He now knew how to access their network, how to slip into that stream of connected consciousness.

The physical world crashed back into focus, and Eluheed found himself on his knees, Navuh's hand on his shoulder, Nahil watching with a knowing smirk on his swollen lips.

"What did you see?" Navuh demanded.

Eluheed's mind raced, sorting through what he could safely reveal. "They're... connected," he managed in a shaky voice that he didn't need to fake.

"Is it telepathy?" Navuh asked.

"It's more than that." Eluheed rose to his feet on unsteady legs. "It's like...imagine if consciousness itself was an ocean, and we're all droplets in it. We think we're separate, individual, but underneath we're all part of the same water."

Navuh's eyes sharpened with interest. "Let's get out of here." He motioned for Eluheed to step out of the cell. When they were out of the section, he waved his hand. "Now you can continue."

"I'm just hypothesizing here, but I think that whatever Zhao did to their brain chemistry with the enhancement process dissolved some kind of barrier.

A filter that normally keeps us separate.

" Eluheed was breathing hard, still recovering.

"They can access that underlying ocean directly, and that's how they communicate, not by sending thoughts to each other but by meeting in that shared space.

They are still new to this, and it's a mess in there, but they need to be watched because they are learning how to navigate these waters. "

"Can they be blocked?" Navuh asked. "Separated?"

Eluheed shrugged. "I don't know. I'm not a scientist, and I don't know whether what Zhao did is reversible."

"This collective consciousness," Navuh said once they were back on the surface. "Could it be a delusion?"

"It didn't feel like a delusion." Eluheed rubbed the back of his neck with a shaky hand. "Some think that consciousness is the foundation of the universe, with the material world being derivative. But to me, it sounds too esoteric, too abstract to be taken seriously."

"Why couldn't consciousness be primary?" Navuh asked, again surprising Eluheed with how open-minded he seemed to be.

"Because if everything emerges from some universal consciousness, then why is there suffering? Loss? Pain?" Eluheed voiced doubts he'd carried for centuries. "What universal consciousness would choose to create such a harsh world?"

"Perhaps it's a feedback loop," Navuh said.

"The universal consciousness creates the material world, but then that world becomes independent of it.

It develops its own rules, its own patterns.

And the experiences generated—joy, suffering, discovery, loss—feed back into the unified mind, and then the mind creates more material worlds. "

"You make it sound like a game," Eluheed murmured, forgetting for a moment that he was addressing the lord of this place.

"Because it is a game." Navuh's smile was cold. "The consciousness divides itself into players, sets rules, and watches what unfolds. Some players win, others lose, but the game itself continues."

"Then what's the point?" Eluheed asked, his frustration bleeding through his words. "If life is just a milestone in some larger game, why does any of it matter?"

"Because we're still playing." Navuh grinned maniacally.

"And in every game, there are winners and losers.

I'm obviously a winner. Perhaps somewhere there's a great scoreboard, tallying the points over countless life cycles.

" He trained his dark, intense eyes on Eluheed.

"I would love to see my status on that cosmic scoreboard. "