Splinters in Three Souls

By Ryan Viergutz

During an investigation into a series of earthquakes, the chaos mage Tatsuro Calesani experiences an attack on his powers. It could crush the web of fate that he treasures. The exact attack originates from another chaos mage.

He becomes embroiled in the schemes of La Familia Selva, Chicaygo's elvish mafia. Its leader, Grover Terthanatos, controls the site of a chemical spill, called the Hazardous Zone. The Lishera Corporation and its ambitious VP Narita Lakishu both want complete ownership of the Zone.

To stop the destruction of his chaos magic in a dangerous ritual, Tatsuro puts his trust in the mysterious mercenary Aila Watami, interferes with La Familia Selva's plan and changes Lishera Corporation. His livelihood on the line, Tatsuro could get through this alive, but he'll be lucky if he's whole.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ryan Viergutz
• Release date: Sep 3, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476133621

Ryan Viergutz

I'm a freelancer, writer, roleplayer and gamer. I don't want to live in the same place any longer than a year for a very long time and I am always yearning for adventure. The first two overlap often enough that they're almost the same thing, though they aren't by anyone's measure. Regardless of the state I'm in, I am always roleplaying and I allow myself to indulge in gaming, usually of a video game variety, sometimes. At any given time I will have a scifi or fantasy book in my hands or in my travel bag.

Book preview

Splinters in Three Souls

Ryan Viergutz

Copyright 2012 Ryan Viergutz

Published by Ryan Viergutz at Smashwords

This work is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of

fiction. All characters and situations depicted in this book are fictional. Any resemblance to

real people, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Other Books By Ryan Viergutz

Tatsuro Calesani, Chaos Mage

Stricken By Entropy

Splinters In Three Souls

Absolute Mayhem (Coming 2013)

Secrets of the Empire

Enemy Territory

Necessary Lies

Can't Fall Back (Coming 2013)

Blindsided (Coming 2012)

Blown to Smithereens (Coming 2012)

Unrelieved Debris (Coming 2013)

Instability

Two Ends of Destiny

Oracle Dream

Acknowledgements

This time the honor goes to the Field Museum in Chicago for being an epic place that makes writing about Chicaygo a whole lot different!

Chapter 1

Hands yanked on his collar, shook him solidly and almost tossed him backwards. Tatsuro whirled to face the threat, pistol in hand, and cocked his head at an angle when he saw no one behind him. The geological facility hummed and whirred with electricity in every corner. Light glittered on its steel walls and downed lines cast sparks across the room. None of the three men he hunted had come upon him.

Tatsuro rolled his shoulders and moved ahead. Computers, seismographs, weights and measures laid on counters and grumbled while they worked. The client, always paranoid, had called him here upon the sight of the whole facility moving without the dozens of scientists inside. His goggling eyes had unnerved Tatsuro. They had nothing on the room itself. In most contexts he would blamed this activity on ghosts and spirits, but this was something else.

He looked at one of the seismographs and the chart on the wall behind it. Circles and tacks covered it, showing the recent quakes that had spread through Chicaygo and nearby cities. More had happened than the usual for this tectonically stable region, namely any at all. The sight of all of those machines working without a human operator, like they had achieved sentience, sent shudders up and down his spine.

Someone slammed into his back. Tatsuro kept his grip on his pistol and shoved it out ahead of him. His attacker dug an elbow into Tatsuro's back, straight through his leather jacket. Tatsuro kicked at him, pushed himself away from the attacker, rolled and aimed his pistol at the man's heart. Blue and red lines, like electric coils, charged through the air and focused his shot. The man had no time to react before he fell to the floor.

Tatsuro pushed himself off the floor and raced for the closest door. The lines, assessing chance and possibility, showed him the quickest path to take. He heard one of the other men slam open a door, so when he reached it he kept on moving. A battle hadn't been in the original scheme, much less killing. He had meant to ascertain the reason for the active machines, the source of the unusual quakes and reorient them if he could.

The hands yanked on his collar again, more to the left, and the lines dimmed and reached in one direction. It reminded him of a gravitational field in space. It wasn't a metaphor he used often for his chaos powers, in part because they were tied to the planet, but this time it applied. Someone pulled him toward them. He reached a staircase and caught his breath. He would have to leave this facility to find out why it had went mad.

The remaining two men whispered to each other. Tatsuro could barely hear them. Certain they were at a good distance, he began to move down the stairs. Then one of them, an older man by the scratchiness in his voice, shouted to the other one and called him by a series of derogative words and insults. Tatsuro shook his head, a grin reaching across his face, and kept walking. He kept hearing them idly, but the next thing the man said made him stop.

You know why he got away, the man snarled. Didn't you recognize him? Don't you know exactly who he is yet?

The younger man mumbled something Tatsuro couldn't discern.

He's Tatsuro Calesani, a chaos mage, the older man said. The boss sent us here to eliminate one of those bloody magicians. It's going to be harder than you thought, Arrik.

Tatsuro felt his lips curl at these buffoons chattering about him while he made his escape. In truth, he had a great deal of advantages over them with his powers. If this interference across the lines of chance kept going on, though, he'd be bereft of them with nothing but his wits and cleverness. While he had plenty of that, that wasn't the point.

The lines kept tilting in one direction, left then right, and inside this locked down building Tatsuro couldn't determine if they wanted him to head north or south. He moved down the stairs, slow and gradual at first but faster and two at a time when he got to a decent length away from the attackers. His instincts said that the machines tied into the larger phenomenon happening in Chicaygo.

How that connected to his powers, he couldn't say, but someone wanted to keep him out of the picture. A large part of his personality relied on his manipulation of fate and he defined himself by how well he could read people and see events shifting in the world. Something had happened out of the blue, out of his awareness and taken him by surprise. For a normal human, it would have leave them shellshocked. For him, it could crush his entire life.

By the time he had went two floors down to the third floor landing, he heard the men above him. Their stomping boots gave them away. Tatsuro drew one of his pistols and kept moving. He spent a lot of time on his feet, chasing or running or investigating, so he was in good condition. Neither of the men above him appeared to be, to their misfortune. Tatsuro reached the first floor before he realised it and sneaked around behind a security guard.

Two doors to the left, the door had been left unlocked. Tatsuro opened it and left the building to retrieve his car a block down the road. He didn't care how much noise it made, because he was free and clear. Something twinged in his instincts, someone watching him, and the lines focused on a window on the second floor at the same time. One of the men, with mousy brown hair, had spotted him. Tatsuro hid behind a tree and raced behind the steel fence around the building.

He had to give the men the credit for their persistence. If they'd found him inside the building, they knew something about his movements, and they'd find him again. He guessed it'd be an hour before they found him again, though, and when he had returned to his car and started it up he knew exactly where to go.

Of all the people in the world, only another chaos mage could put a block in his path. Tatsuro had to overload him to get anything done and find out his identity. In a sense it's what his opponent had already done to him. To do that, to get the level of uncertainty he required to fight back, he had to go downtown. He had to get his hands busy in deep Chicaygo.

Ten miles out from downtown Chicaygo he knew he would have one freakish day. He managed to veer through most of the traffic jams on the roads and sped by three accidents without anyone glancing in his direction, but one stood out. The static on his lines pushed him into his path and he had to sit for a good ten minutes idling his decade old car. The gears in the poor thing grumbled and moaned. It didn't like to sit any more than he did, which was why he'd stuck with it regardless of its age.

Having trained himself to recognize greater meanings in coincidences and analyze puzzles, the two cars smashed on the side of the road looked like an implication. One of the two people, a Japanese man not dissimilar to Tatsuro with his mildly curved eyes and black hair, had come out of it unscathed. The second person, a male elf who had dressed up for some important occasion, had a much different resolution.

Elves couldn't easily die, short of ancient rituals or decapitation, maybe both, and this man showed how far they could go before their minds and bodies collapsed into a heap of brain damage and ruined limbs. His left eye hung out of its socket and his left arm dangled broken in a sling. He looked exhausted and weary from the accident, but a lot of his sharpness remained. Depending on his resources, he could possibly regenerate the damaged tissue.

He let his thoughts wander, certain he's return to that sight when he understood its importance. A few miles closer to the city, when its skyline embraced him like a friend, Tatsuro sensed a new tension that hadn't been there a few months ago. The city had gone through some drastic changes in three months, in its people, its infrastructure and its condition, and Tatsuro had been at the forefront of that long-lasting change.

A large part of the city, encompassing at least a dozen blocks if not more by now, lived in squalor, forced upon them. At first the police had gotten into the act, wary and unnerved by the chemicals that had spread and infected a hundred people in that area. Corporations and criminals had taken an interest and private contractors had joined the effort. Now a dozen factions held the Hazardous Zone away from the rest of the city. No one went in or out without authorization.

Typically its level of security didn't apply to the rest of Chicaygo. Tatsuro had to go through two separate checkpoints, showing his credentials to the police, and grated at the procedure. Cameras loomed over him. Road barriers made navigation a nightmare. He'd