Deathstalker 06 - Deathstalker Legacy

said. No waiting Paragons or peacekeepers, no troops with esp-blockers. Just a series of empty rooms in several anonymous office buildings, overlooking the Parade's route, as promised. The ELFs killed everyone else in the buildings, just to be on the safe side and because they enjoyed it, and then broadcast subtle telepathic avoidance fields, so no one else would want to enter the buildings. Happy onlookers crowded the streets outside the office buildings, and never knew or suspected a thing.
    The ELFs watched the Parade of the Paragons draw slowly nearer, from behind tinted windows, and smiled poisonous smiles. Thirty-two ELFs, the largest gathering of rogue espers in one place since . . .
    well, since the Arena debacle, but this coming triumph would pay for all those losses. The ELFs had decided that revenge on the Paragons wasn't enough. Not nearly enough. The crowds and the city had to suffer too. Thirty-two esper minds working together could execute all kinds of dark wonders and miracles. They would do terrible things, appalling things, bloody things. And the media cameras that came to cover the Paragons would broadcast it all live to a horrified Empire.
    Nothing and no one would be spared. The city would burn and the ELFs would feed, and they would come forth and walk openly in triumph through the Hell they'd made, and defy anyone to put right what they'd done. And before they left, they'd gather all the severed heads and pile them into a great staring mountain right before the main doors of the House of Parliament; a thousand heads for every head Finn Durandal had taken in the Arena.
    The ELFs hadn't told Finn any of this. They thought they'd let it come as a nice surprise. Before they made him cut open his own belly in front of the cameras, and pull out his guts, and feast on them until he choked. The ELFs had no interest in human allies, only in fools they could use. They'd given their word that he would be safe, that he would not be touched during the evil to come; but Finn of all people should have known that words only mean something if they can be enforced. His promises of future shared ventures meant nothing. Only revenge mattered.
    The Parade was almost upon them. Lewis Deathstalker led them down the street, so many poor fools heading blithely towards their own destruction, blinded by the adulation of the simple-minded crowds. It was time, at last. Dying time. The ELFs laughed together, hugging their vicious joy to them, and smashed the tinted windows with their minds. The shattered steelglass rained down on the unsuspecting heads of the crowds below. People fell screaming to the ground, cut and injured, some seriously, while the rest tried to run, and cried out in horror when they found they couldn't, held in place by ELF control. The
    ELFs emerged from the ruins of the smashed windows, walking out onto the air, and looking down on the Parade of the Paragons as they crashed to a halt in the middle of the street.
    They hung there, thirty-two ELFs, eyes blazing, mocking halos of leaping black flames circling their heads. Smiling widely at the screams that greeted them. They paused for a moment, to savor the thought of all the suffering they would soon inflict, of the vast emotional energies they would feed on, of their great and noble triumph over the lesser creatures that sought to drag them down to their level; and then the ELFs linked their minds and lashed out at the Paragons below.
    And found they'd been betrayed. Their minds met an impenetrable shield, their controlling thoughts thrown back at them in disarray. The Paragons were protected. They were all carrying esp-blockers, connected in series for greater power. The ELFs cried out in shock and horror, realizing that they had been lured into a trap by their own greed for revenge. Their mental link broke apart in a moment, and the ELFs tried to run; to fly from the trap prepared for them, every rogue esper for him-and herself. Only to find the oversoul was already there waiting for them.
    A thousand espers filled the sky above them, eyes shining like suns, hidden until now behind their own shields, their gestalt mind a barrier the ELFs could never hope to breach. And as the ELFs hesitated, lost and unsure, the Paragons on the street below drew their disrupters, took aim, and opened fire. The ELFs didn't even have the time to curse Finn Durandal's name before the energy bolts hit them. The oversoul had overpowered the ELFs' shields and shut them