Deathstalker 08 - Deathstalker Coda

bloated like leaches. There was a very old name for the kind of creatures they were.
    The Arena became a slaughteryard, where the bodies were never cleared away, but just piled up at the sides. The sands were always red with blood now, and the stench was indescribable. The ELFs, far and far away, didn’t care. They were having fun. Sometimes they played with the dead bodies too, just for the distress they knew this would cause grieving relatives. They refused to be limited by human moralities or taboos. They saw themselves as more than human, and denied themselves nothing.
    They insisted on every single bit of it being televised, on every channel, simultaneously. What was the point of being bad, if there was no one watching to be shocked and outraged? Finn wouldn’t allow the ELFs to actually come out and say it was them, but the clues were there. And people did watch; there was a regular audience. Some, because a secret part of them responded to the atrocities. Some, with horrified fascination. And some, just because it was better to know, than not. Even when it was always bad news, people needed to know. And all across Logres and all the watching worlds, outrage and a need for revenge burned coldly in people’s hearts, and they readied themselves for rebellion, and watched hopefully for a sign.
    Joseph Wallace never watched, though he was careful to read all the latest reports. As the ELFs grew every day more powerful, and more closely tied to Finn, the more his own power and influence declined. The thralls on the streets might wear his uniforms, but they didn’t answer to him. Joseph was being sidelined, his power base eroded and even sabotaged by the ELFs, who wanted Finn’s attention all to themselves. Finn still called Joseph in for his disturbing little chats, but whatever influence Joseph ever had with the Emperor seemed to have disappeared. Secretly and privately and very much against Finn’s orders, Joseph’s people did their best to spy on the ELFs. Joseph had never trusted the inhuman creatures. He was Pure Humanity, after all. He gathered all his best information and intelligence and presented it to the Emperor, as proof that the ELFs had their own agenda, and was met with a cold, indifferent stare.
    I don’t care, Finn said flatly. As long as they get the job done, I don’t care what they do. And Joseph, if you can’t get your job done, I’ll replace you with someone who can.
    As the ELFs possessed more and more people, and the armies of thralls grew and grew, so the ELF leaders and the uber-espers became even more powerful. The pool of thralls was a power source, and the more the possessors took and inhabited, the more they could take. Their esper abilities had never been so strong, so far-reaching. More and more thralls were able to manifest their owners’ abilities by proxy, though they always burnt out. But as the possessors grew stronger, so the differences between the ELF leaders and the uber-espers became more pronounced. Neither side trusted the other, and they each had their own strictly enforced territories. There were occasional border clashes, as thralls fought with thralls, and filled the terrified streets with blood and bodies.
    Finn watched it all from a distance, and let them fight it out, carefully supporting neither one side nor the other. Divide and conquer still seemed like his best bet; while they were busy fighting each other, they weren’t fighting him. Besides, he enjoyed the spectacle. He allowed both sides to operate freely, while making it clear he wouldn’t tolerate any psionic battles in his capital city, because of the inevitable psychic fallout. He didn’t actually have any way of enforcing this, but so far the two sides were too preoccupied to notice. Finn was betting they’d weaken each other so much in their struggle, that whoever eventually emerged as victor would be too weak to threaten him.
    And then, he’d do something about them.
    But there were factors that even Finn didn’t know about. The uber-espers were determined to win, at whatever the cost. They had to win, and become more powerful than ever before, because they alone on Logres knew for sure that Owen Deathstalker was back from the dead; and they were all scared of Owen. Just one touch of his revitalized mind had been enough to show that he was more powerful than ever. More than the oversoul, more than any of them, and just possibly more powerful even than their original creator, the Mater