Chapter 109: Book 2: Chapter 11 (POV switch to Hector Guberschmidt)

Chapter 11

Hector Guberschmidt

Day 21

Hector ran and ran and ran, but he couldn’t lose them.

No matter what twists or turns he took, the chasing mob kept finding him. He’d already lost his bat. It had tangled with his legs early on and almost tripped him. Instead, the bat had been ripped from his grasp and rolled away and he didn’t have the time to retrieve it.

His chest heaved as he gasped for breath. It felt like he’d been running for hours. He must have covered the distance of a marathon and still, the mouth-breathing dolts unjustly pursued him. He couldn’t stop, there were too many of them, too many false accusers.

Nobody he’d passed had been willing to aid him. They shied away and remonstrated for him to leave them out of it. That his dire predicament was none of their affair. They were cowards, all of them.

The last two weeks had been unconscionably difficult.

He’d barely been able to scavenge enough food and water to stay alive. His thoughts had even turned to the shameful act of dumpster diving. But as desperation almost drove him to the unthinkable, he’d found the dead body of some vagrant or druggie that glowed with a faint light.

Hector had looted the corpse and secured a few scraps of food and some of these mysterious invisible coins. He’d heard while eavesdropping on others that there were black posts dotted throughout Detroit where you could spend this currency, even buy food and water. However, when he tried to go to the nearest, Hector had been jumped by a group of unruly youths who had threatened him until he had turned over all the coin he’d had.

He had been fortunate that he had left the meagre amount of food and water from the vagrant back at his house.

The city was in chaos, with nasty malcontents like those who mugged him and those currently pursuing him everywhere you turned. The police were a joke, most of them had either abandoned their jobs or joined in with the rampant law-breaking.

They should have been out here, protecting a worthy tax-paying citizen like Hector.

Worse than that, Hector had made an awful discovery during his courageous explorations.

He had risked life and limb to venture far from his father’s home to his mother’s apartment so he could piss on the bitch’s lifeless face. Somehow, utterly confounding all common sense, that ungrateful whore had managed to survive and then she had rejected him!

Again!

His mother claimed she had no food to spare, the lying, greedy, cunt. She would pay, oh yes, she would pay.

Once Hector had shaken his pursuers.

Hector passed a building site as he puffed out a shallow, ragged breath, but he couldn’t risk going in, it was far too open. His legs kept churning beneath him and then he spotted off to the right a building with what he thought were four white water containers installed on the roof.

Maybe he could hide there until the coast was clear.

He turned from the main road and saw the sign telling him it was called Canal Street and sprinted behind the grey corrugated walls of the warehouse looking for a ladder to get up on the roof and hide.

There was none, so he ran farther down this street looking for somewhere else that would conceal him and realised too late the road led onto a large quay.

There was nowhere for him to run but back the way he’d come.

Nowhere but the river and he couldn’t swim.

Hector turned around and saw his dozen pursuers jog down around the side of the warehouse he’d just passed. They cried out with feral joy, having discovered him once again.

They had him cornered, there was nothing for it. He would have to dive into the river and trust in his instincts to get him through this.

He was a Guberschmidt. They were made from sterner stuff; his father had told him so. They were meant for great things and his father had promised him many things and he would deliver. Guberschmidts always did, he just needed to stay alive a little longer. Shana and his father would be back any day now and then everything would be as it should be.

Hector sprinted for the quayside only to trip and hit the concrete face-first, breaking several of his teeth. One of his wretched pursuers must have used some power granted by the Framework. That was the only explanation Hector could come up with. He wouldn’t have tripped over his own feet in a fit of fear, such panic was the act of a lesser man.

The pain in his smashed jaw was excruciating and he rolled on the damp concrete as he cradled himself.

And then they were upon him. Holding him down.

“Did this fucking loser trip over his own feet,” a brown-haired man cackled.

“He sure did,” one of his companions jeered. “Look at the sweat stains on this slug. You’d think he’d run a marathon. We’ve barely chased him more than four blocks.”

Lies. Utter lies, they had used a power. Powers that had been given unfairly to the unworthy.

This Framework wanted to hold Hector back, just like everyone else did. That was why he hadn’t completed a quest or slain a mob or gained a single level yet. Not because of fear or laziness. The Framework was working against him, foiling him at every turn, it was obvious to anyone with the slightest iota of intelligence.

They wanted to deny him what was rightfully his. What was promised. Shana. His father had promised him the beautiful Shana.

She would be his wife, and she would love him, and serve him, and bear the fruit of his loins. Continuing the proud Guberschmidt name. His father promised and his father never lied. She would be his, her, and the endowment she would inherit. His father, Victor, had it all planned out.

The punks holding him down continued to mock him with their harsh laughter while the rest of their gang arrived and soon, Hector was surrounded by fearsome hoodlums, who taunted him for several minutes. They screamed threats in his face and stamped on him with their heavy boots while they laughed like braying donkeys.

Then the group made way for two people. A man and a woman.

The man was big and bald and had a tattoo of a snake winding around his neck. The woman was tall and slim, with long dark hair. She was pretty, in a trailer park kind of way.

Hector regarded her again, not as pretty as his Shana, though.

Baldy held the woman close to him and sneered down at the prone Hector.

“Carrie, babe,” Baldy grunted. “Is this the puke stain that tried to molest you?”

“Yeah,” Carrie stated, with a shrill nasally voice. “This is the fucker,” and then she spat upon Hector and kicked his shin with her pointed shoes. “Tore my favourite shirt and ruined my bra as he tried to grope me and stick his tongue down my ear.”

“Lies,” Hector cried. “You impugn my character, foul harlot!”

Her claims were a monstrous pack of lies. Hector had never molested her, he simply mistook her for his promised, his Shana, and embraced his beloved lovingly. He had still been in shock from the events at his mother’s apartment and hadn’t been thinking clearly. And they had looked alike from behind, it was an honest mistake to make.

Honest mistakes aren’t molestation, his father had told him so.

His protestation of innocence was interrupted as several boots slammed into his body. The gang kicked him repeatedly all over leaving him battered and bruised.

“Enough, boys,” Baldy barked out.

“We aren’t letting him off are we, Snake?” the brown-haired goon asked.

The bald man named Snake kicked Hector savagely in the groin. Despite the agonising pain, Hector was determined not to cry. He was a Guberschmidt and Guberschmidts didn’t cry.

“Fuck no. It’s a new-world-order boys, and we can do whatever we fucking like. But this worthless piece of shit ain’t worth more than a couple of XP for each of us, though. I got a better idea. Randy, gag the snivelling cunt. His crying is grating on my last nerve.”

The one Hector presumed was called Randy pulled Hector’s shoes and socks off and then stuffed the socks in his mouth to halt the imaginary wails of despair. Playing the good follower for his clearly deluded leader, Hector assumed. As if a Guberschmidt would shed a tear in front of scum like this.

Then as they followed the instructions of the unimaginatively named Snake, the gang dragged him across the quay and waited as one of their number ran over to the construction site and came back with several grey building blocks which they tied to Hector’s feet with a length of chain that had been lying on the dock area.

They were about to throw him over the edge when the woman, Carrie, called out. “Wait!”

Thank God! Hector thought.

She must have come to her senses and was going to tell them he wasn’t the vile pervert she accused him of being. She didn’t look very sophisticated, but anyone could suffer a crisis of conscience he supposed.

“Give him the Regen potion we got from killing that pack of goblins,” she suggested with a cruel glint in her eye

“Why the fuck would we waste that on this worthless lump?” Snake demanded.

“It’ll take the scumbag longer to drown,” she replied with feral glee.

Snake grinned back at her. “You got a wicked mind, babe. I love it. Randy, do it,” he ordered.

Randy pulled the socks from Hector’s mouth and when he tried to explain himself, Randy slammed his elbow into Hector’s temple, which left him groggy and barely conscious.

Then Hector felt the warm liquid of the Regen potion dribble down his throat, it had a bitter taste with a hint of peppermint. This was followed by the whistling of air as they threw him over the side of the quay.

Hector plunged into the dark, cold, water and the blocks tied to his ankles dragged him to the bottom of the river, where they thudded into the silt of the riverbed.

Hector struggled vainly to reach the surface. Despite the cloud of silt in the water, obscuring his vision, he could make out steps descending from the quay. Agonisingly, they were a few feet out of his reach.

The pain in his chest built as he held his breath for as long as possible until finally, he had to capitulate, and the air burst from his lungs, creating a swarm of bubbles. The traitorous bubbles, filled with his precious oxygen, fled upwards to the surface and freedom. Abandoning him to his grisly fate, as his bitch of a mother had.

Hector’s chest burned and he couldn’t help himself, he opened his mouth wide, and tried to draw in air but he drew in only water. Cold, dirty, water, that filled his lungs and started the slow process of suffocating him.

But he did not die, not yet.

Hector fought, as only a Guberschmidt can.

He tore at the chains that bound his feet fiercely.

Once again, he failed.

Unfairly held in place by the application of Framework powers, which was the only plausible explanation. It had to be that. There was nothing else that explained his failure to free himself.

The pain in his chest grew as the seconds passed.

But he did not die, not yet.

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Minutes fled by. The pain was unbearable for a mere mortal. Hector wept, adding his tears to the river water. Not from the pain, no, never that, but at humanity’s loss when his magnificence departed this world. He had so much to offer, especially in a world beset by catastrophe in dire need of true leadership.

But he did not die, not yet.

More minutes drifted by. World records were broken and left lying in the dust of history. Not that anyone would know of Hector’s grand achievement. Just another thing that he had been robbed of.

Hector believed he was losing his mind.

But he did not die, not yet.

And then a voice.

“Watch!” It cried in his mind.

The pain and constriction in his chest subsided. Blessed relief.

Then his life began flashing before his eyes. No, wait, not his life. This was something else, more like a movie.

The scene started from high in the sky where he could see a town below. Was that Detroit? No, it was too small and then the view zoomed down. There was an apartment building with a silver Mercedes like the one his father owned in the parking lot.

Wait, not like the one his father owned, but the one his father owned.

This voice was showing him the whereabouts of his father. Maybe he was on his way to save Hector, but he didn’t recognise the area. He’d been worried about his father, of course, despite his absolute faith that he would prevail against any and all odds. But it had been three weeks since he had left with Shana for Flint and the world went crazy. And they still hadn’t returned.

Was this Flint then?

The view zoomed in further and then changed angles as it swooped down, passed through a solid door, and entered one of the apartments in the block.

Now Hector could see all that was taking place within. There was his father, and he was brandishing a gun. Beside him, sitting on the floor was his beloved, his Shana.

There was a third figure, a tall bare-chested man, covered in blue tattoos. A wretched thug who was no better than the scum who had just wronged him.

Of that, Hector had no doubt.

It was this thug that his father gestured at with the gun. He had to be protecting his beloved Shana from this brute, it was obvious to anyone with eyes. The thug exuded an odious, undeserved, confidence and he remonstrated with Hector’s father. His father simply reiterated his warning with his gun.

Hector watched with glee as the unwarranted confidence of the musclebound idiot was replaced by cowering servility, as it should be. The worthless asshole was in the presence of a Guberschmidt, after all. Brains will always defeat brawn because brawn is for stupid meathead jocks.

“Torrrrin Carrrrrter…” the voice slurred.

So, that was the insignificant brute’s name.

Then his father opened fire on the swine. Hector would have too, scum like that didn’t deserve to walk on the same Earth as a Guberschmidt. Good riddance to bad rubbish as his father would say.

What was this? Hector cried internally. The bullets just bounced off Torin like he was made of steel. That was not fair, it was more of these disgusting Framework powers thwarting them, the noblest of families.

Then the brute, this Torin Carter, charged at his father with a blade he magicked from thin air and stabbed him in the heart.

“Nooooo!!!!” Hector screamed or tried to, but he had no breath left to fully express the depth of his emotional pain.

He watched as his father slumped to the floor. One of the greatest of men, unjustly slain by a monster. And then, aghast, watched as the beast turned his attention on his beloved.

But the scene shifted before he saw anything else that happened in the apartment. The vision had taken him to a new place now; another he didn’t recognise. From what he could see it looked like a small-town B&B.

“Morrrree to witnesss…” the mysterious voice gurgled for his benefit.

His view once again passed through closed doors, zipped through a living space and into the bedroom.

Hector spotted the monster immediately.

His back was to Hector, and he was naked. The ridiculous tattoos covered his whole body, identifying him immediately. Hector watched as the beastly brute clambered onto a large double bed that dominated the bedroom, but Hector couldn’t see past the brute’s obviously steroid-enhanced physique.

Everything about that monster disgusted him.

Hector’s view panned around to the side of the bed, and he could finally see what lay before this brutish Torin Carter.

Nooooo!!! It couldn’t be. It was his Shana, his beloved. Nude and on her knees. She had been imprisoned with chains by this monstrous creature and now he was going to have his way with her.

Robbed of her purity in the most beastly manner.

Hector couldn’t watch, but he had no choice, as the devil incarnate defiled his precious flower, repeatedly.

Her screams, oh, so many screams, would haunt Hector’s dreams for eternity. His very soul cried out in sympathy for her pain and suffering at the awful debasement. To be used ruthlessly by such a vile thing.

Rage burned in Hector’s heart like a furnace. Hate dripped from every pore of his skin.

“Gooood,” the voice approved of his wrath.

Hector would have his vengeance on this foul creature and all his ilk. He would die screaming, his torment so legendary, mother’s would scare their children by the mere mention of Torin Carter’s fate.

“Yessss,” the voice lisped. “I can heellp. Be my champppion. But mussst pay the prrrice…”

Hector didn’t need to consider the offer from the slimy sounding benefactor any further. “Yes, whoever you are. Whatever your price. I accept,” Hector gurgled in cold river water.

“Sholmdir,” the voice glurped, confirming his identity at last. “Thiss sshall hurt, but you sshalll risse sstrong. Agony iss but a fleeting disstraction. Ssavour and risse ass my sserrrvant! Risse ass my Champppion!”

Blinding pain tore through Hector’s body. A pain that was so intense that it made drowning seem like a spa day. Every cell in his body seemed to be on fire. Moments before he passed out, he understood he was being transformed and that he would never be the same again.

Hector did not care.

He awoke in the dark, the fire in his veins unrelenting until his mind could take no more and the greater darkness of unconsciousness swallowed him whole again.

This happened over and over again. The changes in the colours of the water told Hector that days were passing as his agonising metamorphosis continued. How many days he couldn’t be sure as he had soon lost count.

His new patron, Sholmdir, would occasionally whisper in his mind. He apologised or more accurately made excuses for why Hector had to endure such discomfort, over a prolonged period of time.

All Hector needed to know was that the Framework sought to block the process, to deny him his glory once more. He would endure whatever was necessary for as long as necessary to circumvent their unjust rules and seize his birthright.

Not that Hector had a choice once he had accepted Sholmdir’s bargain.

When Hector awoke for the final time, he was drifting face down in the river. His legs had been freed, but that no longer mattered. Being submerged in water was no longer problematic for him. It had been weeks, maybe even months, but the metamorphosis was finally complete. The pain in his body was gone, but the searing agony of his mental torment remained.

Hector had been changed by his acceptance of Sholmdir’s offer. Greatly changed. And the row of gill slits that ran along either side of his throat was the smallest of these alterations.

Hector was strong now and would soon be even stronger. The world, the Framework, and especially Torin Carter would soon realise their error in wronging him.

He knew where his quarry was, Sholmdir had shown him all he needed to know in the long dark. Torin was on Beaver Island in Lake Michigan. There he imprisoned his darling Shana.

Hector swept his powerful long arms with webbed digits and propelled himself up the Detroit River. There were several hundred miles for him to swim, but with Sholmdir’s enhancements, he could easily swim that distance by tomorrow. None of the creatures that lurked beneath the surface would be a challenge for him.

That’s when a searing pain like a spike penetrated his skull and arced through his brain. His limbs refused to work, and he floated partially paralysed.

“Do not be ssoo eager, my sslave,” Sholmdir’s gurgling voice spoke to Hector again. “I have given you many tooolss, usse them and build me an army first. Then sstrike with overwhelming sstrength. Utterly desstroy the craven fool who opposses me.”

Hector didn’t like how Sholmdir called him a slave. No matter, he would deal with that later. The god had always been arrogant and dismissive, but before he hadn’t had the spare mental faculties to put the godling in its place.

A godling that was firmly beneath Hector. He was sure of that.

Instead, Hector spent a moment assessing the full extent of the physical changes that had been wrought upon him. His mouth, much wider than it had been before, and filled with pointed teeth, stretched in an evil smile at what he discovered.

He would do as Sholmdir advised, not commanded. Hector could not be commanded, no matter what this foolish godling believed. Build up his strength. Forge an army.

First, he would find Snake and his cronies and drag them into the depths as they so richly deserved. Drown and devour them. Their deaths would feed his advancement. The wretched Framework stubbornly insisted that he remained only level one, with fewer than ten points of experience.

What trash, Hector’s experience dwarfed all others.

Then he’d give that lying harlot, Carrie, what she deserved and fill her belly with his transformed seed. She would beg for death when his progeny began eating their way out from her womb, but he would not grant her wish. There would need to be many others beyond her, but there were plenty of dirty, teasing whores, especially at his former high school, who needed to be taught a terminal lesson in respect.

They would regret rejecting a man of his greatness, yes, they would.

He would return to his mother’s apartment and end her stinking selfish life as well. That part wasn’t necessary for his rise to power, but she fucking deserved it.

Then, with his progeny at his back and raw strength in his arms, he would find Torin Carter and tear him apart for what he had taken from Hector and reclaim his betrothed. Make Shana his sea-queen, flood the world, and rule over his watery kingdom.

“Yessssss” Sholmdir whispered in his mind. “Drrrowwn them all, my ssslavvee, my chammmpppion.”

Hector had been chased, beaten, tortured, and drowned.

But he would not die, not ever.

The same couldn’t be said for the rest of the world.

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