Deathstalker 05 - Deathstalker Destiny

everything and nothing.
    Her mental shields were all in place, as strong as she could make them. The most powerful espers in the Empire could have walked past her door and not known she was there. Theoretically. Once, Diana would have been sure, but there were a lot of things she wasn't sure about anymore. It helped that directly above her were the killing grounds of the Arenas, where the dying never stopped. The endless flow of suffering and slaughter, and the raging emotions and blood lust of the watching crowds, set up a constant mental bedlam that no one should be able to detect anything through. Diana was as safe and hidden as it was possible for anyone to be.
    And none of that mattered a damn, because she was hiding from the Mater Mundi.
    It would find her eventually, if only through the process of elimination. There were only so many places on Golgotha where you could hope to hide from a determined telepath. With millions of minds to search with, the Mater Mundi would track her down in time, and then Diana would have to run again or stand and fight. Either choice seemed likely to end in her death.
    Diana Vertue laced her fingers across her stomach, and wondered what the hell she was going to do next.
    How had her life come to this? A fugitive in a dirty room, contemplating her own imminent death? She'd had such plans, when she was younger. Such fervent hopes and great intentions. All the wondrous things she was going to do… Of course, she'd had a lot of the fire and innocence knocked out of her on the ghostworld
    Unseeli. Used as bait to catch a monster, by her own father. Menaced and driven to the point of madness, and only saved at the last by the song of the dead Ashrai. She was never the same, afterward. As soon as her father's old ship, the Darkwind, had docked at Golgotha, she deserted the Navy and went underground, joining the espers rebelling against Imperial authority. She thought she'd found friends and allies there, and a cause to believe in, but in the end they just used her too. They hid her thoughts behind a fake personality called Jenny Psycho, and then allowed her to be captured and sent to the esper prison Silo Nine, also known as Wormboy Hell.
    And then the Mater Mundi manifested through her, giving her the power to free herself and the other esper prisoners. Diana thought she'd finally found her role. She embraced the Jenny Psycho persona, and allowed other espers to declare her a living saint of Our Mother of All Souls. But that turned out to be a lie too, when the Mater Mundi abandoned her on Mistworld, just when Diana needed her most. She should have known. She should have expected it. The one continuing factor of her young life had always been betrayal.
    Then the great rebellion, the overthrowing of Lionstone, and a chance for a new life for all espers. So Diana put the Jenny Psycho persona behind her, and tried to create a new role for herself, only to face the greatest betrayal of all. The new order turned out to be just as corrupt as the old, only more subtle. The new freedom for espers included the freedom to starve and die and be forgotten. And the esper underground, that great force for justice and the good, turned out to be an unknowing tool of its own subconscious. The last and greatest betrayal; that the cause to which she'd given her life had proven to be nothing but a mask for the same kind of heartless manipulation she'd been fighting.
    Diana idly wondered why she clung so grimly to a life that had brought her only disappointment and the destruction of her beliefs. Perhaps she continued just to spite the fates that seemed so determined to grind her down. There was a strong stubborn streak in Diana that would not yield to any outside pressure, no matter how great. Perhaps the only useful thing she'd inherited from her illustrious father. She was damned if she'd just give up and die, if only to frustrate the Mater Mundi one more time. She smiled widely at the ceiling above her, a thin-lipped snarl that had only the blackest of humor in it. Diana Vertue, or Jenny Psycho, or whoever the hell she really was at heart, had always been a fighter. Once more into the breach, into the Valley of Death, into darkness and damnation if necessary; just for a chance to drag her enemy down with her.
    It occurred to her then, in something very like an epiphany, that she wasn't necessarily alone in this fight. There were others like her, powerful minds unconnected to the Mater Mundi, that