Deathstalker 03 - Deathstalker War

had a doubt or a failure in his life. Besides, he smiled too much. Owen didn't trust anyone who smiled a lot. It wasn't natural, not in this day and age. He still didn't have a clue who the hell Young Jack might really be, but he kept his suspicions to himself. If the man was an impostor, he was damned convincing, and the underground needed heroes to lead the masses into battle.
    Even out-on-the-edge weirdos like Jenny Psycho. Owen worried about her. The espers would follow her blindly, just because she had once manifested the Mater Mundi, Our Mother of All Souls. They saw her as a saint now. A crazy saint, but none the less holy for that. And there was no denying she was powerful as hell.
    When Jenny really let loose, reality trembled. But with someone as maltreated and disturbed as Jenny Psycho, the balance of her mind was only a sometime thing now, and it was only a matter of time before she broke apart along the stress lines. Owen had already decided that when that happened, he wanted to be really far away.
    Ruby Journey… looked as disturbing as ever. If she hadn't been Hazel's longtime friend, Owen thought he would probably have shot her on general principles by now. Having Ruby around was like sharing a very confined space with a paranoid attack dog that had slipped its leash. The best you could really hope for with Ruby Journey was to point her in the right direction and then follow the trail of bodies.

    What Jack Random saw in her remained a mystery to Owen. Perhaps the man just liked living dangerously. There was no denying he'd been through some amazing changes. It was as though his body had turned back time, denying the passing years to become young and vital again. Owen wondered if aging was a thing of the past for all of them now, since they'd been altered by the Madness Maze. And if so, how long they might all live… Owen tried to visualize a future life stretching endlessly away before him, forever young, and then he smiled and shook his head. Much more likely they'd all be slaughtered down on Golgotha. Get through that first, and he'd worry about eternity later. He made himself concentrate on Random. The professional rebel looked sharp and deadly, eager to throw himself headlong into a battle he'd been looking forward to all his life.
    Despite himself, Owen worried about that, too. Such determination tended to be dangerously single-minded. Sometimes Owen thought Jack Random would walk right over the body of his best friend to reach the victory he craved.
    Owen felt guilty thinking such things about his friends and comrades, but his discovery on Mistworld of how little he'd really understood about Hazel had started him thinking, and he couldn't seem to stop. It seemed they all had obsessions and private agendas, and the old togetherness that the Maze had gifted them with seemed to have vanished during their separation. He could still feel their presence around him, but he could no longer sense what they were thinking or feeling. The closeness that had them finishing each other's thoughts and sentences was gone. They were no longer linked, mind to mind, as though what they'd been through on their various missions had changed them so much they weren't the same people anymore.
    He could still feel the Maze's power, burning brightly within them, and no more
    so than in his ancestor Giles.
    Owen studied the man thoughtfully, his hand unconsciously dropping to the sword at his side. Giles was still scowling at the view on the screen, lost in his own thoughts, ignoring the others. Of them all, Giles had seemed the most reluctant to investigate or use the powers the Maze had bestowed on him. As though they were a necessary evil, only to be used when there was no other choice. On the one occasion Owen had raised the matter with him, Giles had said curtly it was enough to be a Deathstalker, and that was the end of that conversation. Owen and Giles had always found it difficult to talk. They came from very different times and backgrounds, for all their shared name, and it seemed the only thing they had in common was the rebellion. Giles had briefly tried to be a father figure to Owen, after he had to kill his own estranged son, the original Dram, but Owen had put a stop to that. He'd had enough of his real father trying to run his life. He was his own man, and if the life he'd made for himself wasn't quite what he'd expected or intended, it was still his, and he guarded it jealously.
    And even beyond that,