Deathstalker 08 - Deathstalker Coda

settled down beside Owen, and looked at him doubtfully.
    “What is the purpose of this device, Owen?”
    “Hope,” said Owen. “And maybe transcendence.”
    “Then let us all hope that by the time Humanity gets out this far, they will be worthy of what we have left them.”
    Owen said nothing.
    “We patterned the structure of the Madness Maze on your brain,” said Lucifer. “We found its intricacies fascinating. Human, but not just human. Is there something you’re not telling us, Owen?”
    “There’s a hell of a lot I’m not telling you,” said Owen. “And if you’re wise, you’ll leave it that way.”
    Owen looked at the Maze, and wondered how much of it was shaped by his memories of it; from his past, but the Light People’s future. Certainly his involvement in its creation explained why the Maze had always worked best for Deathstalkers. He had paid special attention to the construction of the core at the heart of the Maze, preparing it to protect and sustain the child that would one day come to it. Giles’s infant son; the Darkvoid Device.
    What is this for? Lucifer had asked.
    The hope of Humanity, Owen had said.
    It’s a bit small, isn’t it?
    Yes.
    When Owen was satisfied that the Madness Maze was complete, he then worked together with the Illuminati to create a guardian for the Maze: a single shape-changing creature derived from Owen’s own altered genetic makeup. (He had decided a shape-changer would be best able to hide and protect itself in all the long centuries it would have to survive.) He had to reassure the Illuminati that they weren’t creating some kind of living weapon, and so agreed to their demands that it be programmed only as an observer and messenger, and strictly nonviolent.
    The finished creature was an exact duplicate of Owen, though it had no personality of its own, as yet. Just a series of instructions and duties, and the instinct to survive. Owen had to smile, thinking of what it would become, after centuries of being other people.
    “When you first meet me, in the Maze, many years from now,” he said to the creature. “Don’t recognize me. Or tell me any of this. It would only upset me, and distract me from all the things I must do.”
    “Understood,” said the creature. “I will remember.”
    “Yes,” said Owen. “I know you will.”
    And he also gave the shape-changer his ring, the black-gold ring that was the sign and symbol of Clan Deathstalker authority, to be given to his descendant Lewis Deathstalker, at a specific time and place. Owen was concerned that Lewis might be so far removed from the direct Deathstalker bloodline that the Maze might not recognize and receive him. Owen felt naked and strangely lost without the ring, but Lewis needed (or would need it) more than he did now. It still felt like giving up yet another part of his human past. His human soul.
    He tried to think if he’d forgotten anything, but he couldn’t remember.
    So he said good-bye to Lucifer and the other Illuminati, wished them well, and dropped out of the present again, plunging back through time in his endless pursuit of Hazel d’Ark.

CHAPTER EIGHT

    MONSTERS OLD AND NEW
    T here were no ELFs anymore. They were all dead and gone, absorbed and murdered by a greater mental force, just as they’d always feared. Only their destruction came not from their most hated enemy, the mass-mind of the oversoul, but instead from their own allies and founders, the uber-espers. They had turned on the ELFs, overwhelmed their defenses, and ate up their minds, their personalities, so that not one trace of the rogue espers now remained. Now there were just the uber-espers, those old and terrible monsters, and the armies of thralls they commanded. Five grotesque, abhuman minds, operating hundreds of thousands of thrall bodies.
    The Shatter Freak. The Spider Harps. Screaming Silence. The Gray Train. Blue Hellfire.
    Old minds, old demons, older by far than most people realized. The uber-espers had been waiting and plotting and planning from the shadows of the Empire for untold centuries. When you expect to live forever, you can afford to take the long view. Lesser evils came and went, but the uber-espers endured, and now their time had come. They had spent centuries deciding what they would do, and how they would do it, arguing constantly among themselves of course, but never doubting that one day they would see all Humanity bow down before them.
    They were forced into hiding for many