The wave of nausea struck the Jhisari like an ocean wave, telling him immediately that the villain was near.
He could not use the information. When his quarry triggered the hideous weapon whose secret his lord still had not deciphered, he was closer to it than he had ever come before. In horror, while he struggled to use his spiritual arts to gain the physical control needed to prevent vomiting and worse, he recognized the horrifying fact that the slaver must have spotted him, and purposefully worked into close proximity before activating the horrid thing.
The shame gripped him more violently than the heaves that have overcome his body, the realization that the slaver had known his presence while he failed to spot the slaver, the understanding that because of it he would fail to protect another innocent.
Pushing his mind through the fog of torture, he pressed out an active probe with the sense enhancing ethen he wore as a circlet under his hood. There…
He discovered to his horror that the criminal was already near the child’s bedroom. He had already reached his goal. The Jhisari’s surveillance position across the street was chosen to avoid the notice of the child’s mother, but it now left him with fifty yards of distance to make up.
As he struggled to his feet, fighting to keep control of his limbs, he watched the slaver wrench the window away from its frame and enter the bedroom. He pressed forward while the criminal pulled the girl, as stricken as himself, from her bed. He witnessed him implanting the vile slave stone into her skull.
The Jhisari brushed aside the anguish that moment brought and forced himself across the street. The girl might no longer be sheltered from the evil, but she could still be the last this slaver ever afflicted. Justice could still come down upon her captor. Her fate could still be changed.
If he could chant his mantra of body control with sufficient strength…
If he could wield his sword with sufficient speed….
The slaver had now gained full control of his victim. He commanded her to climb out the window and walk to his car herself. The utter obedience forced by the stone was more powerful than the Jhisari’s strongest body control mantra. With a nervous system under assault by the same nerve weapon attack that had crippled him, the child walked a straight line to her captor’s vehicle.
The warrior redoubled his will and drew his sword as he approached the villain, who carried an Earther pistol… he would not reach him in time. He turned the draw into a throw, sending the blade flying at him, then grabbed for his dagger. His rebelling body could not deliver the weapon accurately. It went sailing to his left as the criminal fired into his chest. His battle dress limited the effect of the weapon, but the flux-enhanced bullet still tore into him, near his heart. The impact knocked him down, laying him out helpless on the lawn as the dagger fell useless from his hand.
While the villain was escaping, he triggered the emergency signal in his communication ethen, calling desperately for his lord, then probed for the mother within the house, hoping the active pulse would rouse him. As a Highborn, that woman would have also been laid low by the nerve weapon, more so even than himself, but as a Highborn, she would also recover sooner and check for her child, and hopefully call for help. Perhaps the local police could again interfere with his flight.
While praying for this one last hope, the Jhisari passed out from blood loss.
