Chapter 45

On the fourth day after creating the Sphere, everything changed. The first thing of note was that our new military had begun to arrive. Steve contacted me to let me know he and his men were ready to take up their duties.

I opened a portal for them to come through to Herring Farm and to their credit they all followed their commander through, nervous, even terrified in some cases, but still they came.

“Welcome!” I greeted them. Then I gestured to Sophie, and introduced her. “This is Sophie, and she’s in charge of this farm. In my eyes, Sophie can do no wrong. I hope you all understand what I mean by that.”

Steve nodded though his men looked confused as I gestured to my right. “This is Lucas. He’s in charge of security here and he’s second in command to Sophie for the farm, he’ll be in charge of assigning your duties. You can thrash all of those details out between you. I’m here just to introduce them and myself. I’m Clive, and this is one territory under my protection.”

“Protection from what?” A soldier asked. “A potentially very rough future,” I replied evenly. There will be some major changes coming to Earth and the whole Tertiary plane… planets in this part of the universe,” I corrected, then continued. “Those will happen over years rather than months, but right now your job is to provide a recognizable military presence. For those of you who want to develop serious powers, then the opportunity is there for you to follow me and be a guiding presence for all of humanity in the years to come.”

“Is that the culty bit?” another asked.

There was a sharp intake of breath from Sophie who scowled at him. But I just laughed. “Yep. That’s the culty bit . And there’s no pressure for any of you to do that.”

“But don’t worry,” Lucas added without expression though I could feel his humor through our bond as he spoke. “When you do eventually pray to Lord Clive, he doesn’t listen to your prayers.”

I suppressed my own chuckle at that, cast Lucas a disapproving glare and spoke again. “Lastly from me at least, thank you for coming. We’ll be expecting trouble from the police and possibly the army at some point, but we don't intend to give any ground. There’s no need for any of you to identify yourselves to them and if you stay inside the shield you’ll be completely safe… Bah, I’m rabbiting on. Sophie and Lucas will tell you everything you need to know over the next few days. I just came along to open the portal and say hello, and on that note, goodbye as well.”

I set off back up the bank toward the farmhouse to wait for Sophie once she’d finished with our new arrivals. She did so in record time as she caught up halfway to my destination and quickly and fell instep beside me. “I needed to tell you. The police have already been back, Clive. I wanted to wait till you returned to tell you, rather than bother you.”

That news surprised me. “Didn’t they want a statement from me?”

“You have enough to do. Chris gave them the statement as he was driving the bus, and we gave them Robert’s body.”

“Is that it?”

“No, it is not. They tried to get us all off the land again. They came with more officers. They moved around the entirety of the Sphere looking for an entrance and failed. They even dug a hole believe it or not.”

“Oh I believe it.”

“And then they left us with the warning that they’d be back. Lucas is telling those guys down there that he expects it to be the military next. We’ve also been given an eviction order from the land, and they tried to give us a cheque to honor the CPO and make it legal. Except they we didn’t take it.”

“Interesting. Thanks for letting me know days after the event.”

“You’re welcome. There’s nothing you being here would have changed.”

“Probably. But when the army do come I need to be called. I need to speak to those guys, okay?”

“Definitely,” she said almost looking like she was about to salute.

“And Sophie, I don’t like asking you this, but I want you to bring in the most converts. Don’t pass the role on to Kate or Chris. I know you want them to hit Paladin, but it’s more important to me for you to rank up with me.”

“Is there another Rank?”

“Yes. Spiritual Leader. I get to bestow another title on account of the second Sphere. At least I think that’s why I get another. Suffice to say, it's for Earth and while I can give the power and boons to another, and I still might have to, I want to give it to you. But that means you need to rank with me a hell of a lot more. No one in Falritas has enough yet to claim the title, but Joel and Grigor are the closest. To give you an example of the mountain you’d have to climb.”

What are we looking at?” she asked, her eyes glinting with a hunger.

“One-million Ethereal Transference. You’ve done insanely well to reach almost 200,000 with all the work you’ve done so far. I don’t like asking you to pray and convert people, but if you keep that pace up you can get to where you need to be, and I think it’ll be worth it for you.”

“I will, Lord Clive.”

I met her eyes seriously. “I know you will. And you will develop quicker in the Sphere, so spend as much time there as you can. Praying in the main temple is more potent.”

“I can spend time there?” She asked utterly surprised.

“Sophie, I’m asking you to be the Spiritual Leader for Earth. You are going to be the most powerful person here. The Sphere is your home. The main room at the top of the temple is yours.”

She stammered, then blushed. “You show me too much faith, Lord Clive. I’m not worthy of such an honor.”

“Bullshit, Sophie. You made that kind of Ethereal Transfer with me in a low Neuma Zone. You’ve almost reached Level 20 here too, which is no mean feat. You set all of this up! I know how hard you’ve been working, so don’t give me that crap.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Then don’t say anything at all and get yourself settled in the tower if you want to live there. I would if I was you. It’s pretty cool and has a hell of a view.”

Lucas interrupted a moment later. “Lord Clive. Bruce must have been keeping tabs on Steve, and he knows he’s here. He wants to bring his team through now.

I shook my head. “He’s a savvy one this Bruce, huh?”

“Very sir. But he’s a good man as well.”

“Okay then, I’ll head through to the Sphere and bring them in. Sophie, are you ready?”

With a “Yep,” that was almost a squeak she dashed after me as I created a portal to the new Sphere. I nudged her as we stepped through, and she mooned at the work that had been done since she came here on the first day.”

“No way!”

“Yes way. Oh, and I’ll need you to think of a decent name for the place.”

“You’re kidding me? Clive, I can’t do that.”

“Hold a vote if you want. Or we can call it Earth Sphere. Or Sphere two. I don’t mind, but that’s the extent of my naming efforts.”

“Didn’t expect when all this started that I’d have to be naming a bunch of things.”

While she tried to keep up, I shouted over for Peter to Join me. He was Lucas’s second and was now permanently stationed here.

“We’ve got the other soldiers coming through from Earth. Remember, they’re very fragile and will be for a while until you’ve trained them up.”

“How fragile are we talking? Because some of those folk back at the farm are barely level fifteen. A strong wind’d knock ’em on their arses.”

“Weaker. Because those level fifteens have benefited from the altar I already had here. These soldiers are likely to be level ten at best.”

Peter’s brow furrowed. He muttered something unintelligible to himself before responding. “Alright. I’ll whip these babies into shape soon enough. But we’ve got healers right?”

“We have, and I can heal if it’s bad, but Peter…”

“Yep?”

“It won’t be bad, will it?”

The slightest of grins stretched his face. “Nope.”

“Good,” I sighed and opened the portal up for Bruce and his men to come through.”

The big man came through looking more troubled than I’d have expected.

“Everything okay, Bruce?” I asked him.

“Well, Clive, I can’t say I’ve ever been to the north of Europe before, but I know this ain’t it. And I’m pretty sure I ain’t ever seen a tower like that before and, he took a little moment to take in his surroundings. I ain’t ever seen an island this flat before, apart from the base of your tower. Place looks unnatural.”

“That’d be on account of our building the place this week,”

“You made this island?” He said, hiding his doubt by turning to check all of his men had followed through safely.

“Sure did. It’s built up on a shallow part of the ocean floor. We’re in the middle of the Pacific Ocean a few hundred mile south west of Rapanui.”

He grunted in response, and I introduced Sophie again. For her he smiled and bowed.

“Pleasure to meet you, Sophie. How did you end up in charge of a man-made island,” he raised an elaborate eyebrow at me and I suddenly had a bad feeling about Bruce. As I could end him in a heartbeat and so could Sophie, I let it drop.”

“Sophie was my first follower on Earth,” I replied. “Since then she’s earned her place and more at the head of the Earth-based territories I have.”

Bruce nodded his understanding, possibly picking up on my unamused tone as well. I let it drop, Peter, less so as he scowled at the much bigger man as I introduced him.

“Peter will be responsible for most of your mele training. Work with him and Sophie for organizing on duty times. Other than that, how’s your sword work?”

Bruce grinned, meeting Peter’s eyes. “My sword works exemplary. Take sword, throw on ground, pick up rifle, kill enemy.”

“What about when your rifle doesn’t kill the enemy you’re targeting?” I asked casually.

“Never happened yet,” came the extremely confident reply.

I raised my arms out to the sides. “They it.”

“Yeah, not happening,” Bruce replied. “As impressive as some of this shit is, you could still be delusional.”

“Give Peter your rifle then.”

“He know how to use one?” Bruce asked, becoming for one of his men to hand over their rifle.”

Peter quickly readied the rifle to fire. Lucas had clearly done his job well in training the warrior.

“Do it,” I gestured for him to fire. Under normal circumstances he couldn’t attack me as a follower, but we both knew the bullets wouldn’t even tickle me and so he opened fire. He emptied the entire gun into me, not missing once.

I then repaired my clothes with a gentle touch of Neuma to them, keeping my eyes trained on the men in front of me as I did so.

“Peter here is also immune to your bullets, just less so than me. You probably will slow him down for a second or two if you shoot him. However, I said summoning the Sword off the Alo-im. Currently five feet of glowing Neuma, shaped into a deadly looking blade. With my other hand I raised a column of stone from the ground, a foot wide and six feet high. Then with the sword I slowly and deliberately cut the top foot from the stone column.

There were disbelieving gasps, but one of his men asked to see the rock. I kicked it over to him and he picked it up, muttering over it actually being rock.

“But you’re not gonna get weapons like that,” Peter said summoning his double headed battle axe from his void storage. You’ll get something like Hella here. Eventually.”

He activated the weapon’s Neuma function, moving toward the column with perfect footwork and an impressive overhead swing, he brought the glowing blade down cleaving through the center of the column, splitting it in two and causing a minor explosion at the end of the move that sprayed us all with rock shards and soil.

“So as you can see, while I want you to keep your rifle work up, there’s a chance melee weapons will be much more important in the coming years.”

I had considered the weapons of the people from Talitus, but I wanted everyone to have a good foundation in this type of combat too. After all our weapons still fared well against the guns of Talitus given the right circumstances. I said as much to those now very interested eyes hanging on our every word now.

“You can and will carry your rifles, but if anything happens to them, I’m going to make sure you can use a sword, axe, or a glaive. Which one is your choice.”