No blood flowed, but that didn't mean there was no blood.
Wedged in tightly between the packages of meat, Juju had been frozen solid. Her dark brown fur was matted with the overpowering smell of caked frozen blood. This was not something that had just happened. Juju must have been in there at least overnight.
I threw my hands over my mouth. "Oh my God…"
Tears flooded my eyes. I blinked them back. This was no time to focus on myself.
Maggie began to howl, her voice raw with pain.
I reached out to touch her and she fell into my arms. I started flooding Maggie with soothing thoughts until I could feel that her small furry body was no longer shaking so hard. Then I pulled back to observe her condition.
The trauma in her eyes had lessen to the point where I could talk with her.
"Maggie. Can you tell me what happened? How did Juju die?"
She began breathing hard again. She began flooding images into my cerebral cortex.
She was working in the back kitchen shucking bags of corn cobs on the kitchen counter. Since I knew that food delivery to the Academy kitchens always came in the evening after dinner had been served to the students and staff, it had to have been some time between 9 and 10pm.
Suddenly, I could hear the sound of the Overlord saying something behind her. Through her mind's ears, the words barely made sense…something to do with the corn..and then Maggie jerked with the pain of being shocked and fell to the floor.
I knew exactly what had happened. The Overlord had used his Mage Staff to shocked her spinal cord.
Choking on my rage, I held onto Maggie as she began howling in distress. She clutched my tee shirt with distraught hands almost shredding the fabric.
I sent more calming waves into Maggie's mind until she regained a semblance of balance. She wiped her face with a shaking hand.
What happened next, Maggie. Tell me.
Maggie clamped her hands to the sides of her head, as if trying to shut out the images, but she could not stop them from reappearing. She had been shocked by the Mage staff and could not move but she could still see.
The Overlord flipped her body until she was facing him. He had a head of curly blonde hair and hazel eyes that were at that moment filled with lust.
I choked on my own bile. It was Tom Lackey, one of the new group of Overlords who had just joined the ranks only a few months before I graduated and left the team.
I could feel Maggie's panic because I could see that he was in the process of yanking down his pants.
But then Juju appeared behind him. With one swift pop of her rolling pin, she had whacked him over the head.
The Overlord cried out with pain and reacted without thinking. His hand was still holding the Mage Staff. He twisted his body and brought the crystal knob swinging behind him.
It hit Juju in the head once.
There was a solid sounding crack. Juju was falling over. At this moment, the image slowed down to half speed.
Time in Maggie's mind began slowing towards this scene which started repeating itself at the point where the Overlord swung the Mage Staff at Juju's head.
CRACK! The crystal knob made contact with Juju's head.
CRACK! The crystal knob made contact with Juju's head.
CRACK! The crystal knob made contact with Juju's head.
"Maggie. STOP!" I grabbed Maggie's shoulders and shook her hard.
Maggie shuddered, looking sick. She bowled over and threw up on the floor.
I ran to the kitchen sink and grabbed a cup of water.
Drink, I sent an Overlord command into her mind. Trained to obey strong commands, she took the cup and drank the water. Then I led her over to the work bench and made her sit.
"Where is this Overlord?" I asked out loud.
Front kitchen, she pointed.
"Maggie. Listen to me. Go find Tanner. Tell him to meet me in the front kitchen." I pushed her. "Go!"
Tanner was the head Overlord for the kitchen staff. He was a tough Overlord, but he wasn't unreasonable. I knew because I had trained him myself.
As soon as I made sure Maggie had taken off, I strode into the front kitchen with the Mage Staff gripped tightly in my hand.
This man was dead meat.
The front kitchen was a huge hub of activity. There were apes everywhere cooking up a storm. They were dressed int their chef's outfits of white overalls with a white apron covering most of their front.
As they worked, the apes chattered quietly in their ape chatter. Although the great apes were mostly left to their own devices, they were being continuously directed by several Overlords standing about with Mage Staffs extended.
I cast my eyes around until I found the Overlord who had killed Juju.
There he was. The evil creep.
I moved quickly towards where Tom Lackey was leaning up against the far wall and confronted him.
"I know what you did last night, you nasty creep." I shoved the glass ball of the Mage Staff into his chest.
Sudden fear flared up in Tom Lackey's eyes. But then he sputtered with indignant.
"Get away from me you crippled freak!"
I laughed and shoved the glass ball into his throat. "I'm not too crippled to crush this glass ball into your adam's apple, Tom. You better mind your manners with me."
Tom swallowed, the fear palpable in his eyes. "You're not an Overlord anymore. What are you still doing here?"
"Professor Morton sent me here to do a little bit of—" I ground my heel into his foot, "clean-up duty."
"Hey, Nana!" A voice called out from across the front kitchen.
Tanner Olson.
I stepped back without taking my eyes off creepy Tom.
"Hey Tanner. Can you come over here please. I need to talk to you about something."
"I'm here Nana. What are you doing with this Newbie?"
"Newbie? You mean this killer?" I whacked him with the metal side of the Mage Staff.
"Oooooooomph!!!" He gasped, clutching at his chest where I had thwacked him.
"What's going on Nana?" Tanner strode closer to me.
"This a**hole just killed one of our highly trained great apes, Juju and then stuffed her body into the freezer. I only found out about it because one of the apes told me."
"One of the apes told you?" Tanner threw his head back laughing. "Nana, apes can't think at that high level. The best they can do is grunt at you."
I stared at him. Tanner had lost whatever training I had given him a year ago. He was useless as an Overlord.
"Tanner. You do know what this is right?" I held the Mage Staff in front of his face and called out a single Broadcast Command.
"Guangweichuanbo!"
For a moment, nobody moved as everyone stared at the glass knob on the Mage Staff.
Nothing happened.
Tanner laughed.
"Nana, there's only one thing this Mage Staff is good for and it's not that useless command you tried to teach us. Don't you understand? It doesn't do anything!!!"
"Tanner, regardless whether it does or doesn't do anything, that Overlord still killed one of the great apes and stuffed her body into the kitchen freezer!" I pointed at Tom Lackey. "What are you going to do about that?"
"What am I supposed to do? There must be a good reason why he did it. Maybe the ape tried to harm him?" Tanner shrugged.
I rolled my eyes. "Why would Juju try to harm him, Tanner? Did you ask anyone to find out what happened?"
"Ask who?" Tanner glared at me.
"Ask Maggie, the ape who came to you for help!"
"Didn't I already tell you that apes can't talk? All she did was yank at my arm and pulled me here." He threw a disgusted glance at Maggie, who was standing with a group of ape chefs in the corner.
"Tanner, if you can't even do low level communication with the apes, why are you even working as an Overlord?" My patience was down to the nubs. He had been such a bright student. What had happened to him?
"There is no acceptable reason for an ape to try to harm an Overlord!" Tanner yelled.
"Tanner! Tom tried to rape Maggie!"
"Lies!" Tanner cried and swung his Mage Staff at me.
I moved and countered his swing.
CLANG!!!
My rage boiled over. I swung the Mage Staff back at him.
CLANG!!!
He blocked the blow.
CLANG!!!
I was about to bat him over the head with the glass knob when I heard a cry coming from my right side.
It was Tom Lackey. He had tried to sneak in an attack at me while I was busy engaging with Tanner Olson.
Except he never got the chance to carry out the attack.
One of the ape chefs had grabbed a hold of his body while the other had taken a hold of his head.
CRUNCH!!!
In one swift motion, Tom Lackey had been decapitated.
His head, attached to a long bloody spinal column had been ripped out of his body.
It bounced across the gleaming white kitchen floor, coming to rest at Maggie's foot.
"Mother Goddess of Mercy!" Tanner cried out in horror. He threw his hand over his face and backed himself up against the wall.
The other Overlords froze. They had all seen what had gone down.
I held my Mage Staff out, waving it around Tanner's head. "Do you know why those two apes killed Tom Lackey? Hmmm?" I threw a look at the other Overlords, challenging them.
Nobody moved a muscle. Nobody dared. There were thirty great apes in the Front Kitchen and only four Overlords in the kitchen, plus a decapitated one on the floor.
"The apes killed him because they saw the broadcast I sent through the Mage Staff." I held the staff up. Its crystal knob caught the light and gleamed. "I sent that broadcast using the Command 'Guangweichuanbo' that Tanner here thought was so useless."
The Overlords looked at each other nervously.
"I didn't see anything! Did you—did you guys see any—any broadcast?" Tanner stammered. The other Overlords shook their heads in panic.
"Just because you cannot see it does not mean it does not exist. Do not blame your incompetence and lack of abilities on anyone but yourself. Own what you do not know and try to improve."
I waved the Mage Staff around.
"Right now, all the apes know what happened to Juju and Maggie last night because I broadcasted Maggie's visual memory through this Mage Staff."
I twirled the Mage Staff around several times like a baton. Then I held it in one hand and tapped the glass knob into the palm of my other hand.
Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap
"This Mage Staff is a high level broadcast tool. It is not a cudgel people. If you use it as a cudgel, you could break it and render this very expensive magik tool useless."
I turned the point around and poked the butt into Tanner's stomach. HARD.
"Uggghh!" He grunted.
"Now, Tanner. As a supervisor, what do you do with a dead Overlord AND a dead great ape?"
Tanner's breath came in huge gusts. "I don't—I don't know."
"Wrong answer!" I swung the Mage Staff like a cudgel at him. It hit him in the chest with a THUMP.
I sniffed. I did not hit him hard enough to crack a rib. I still needed him to do some physical labor.
"I—I will place them together and tell the school officials that they fought and killed each other."
"Smart guy. As for the rest of you. I know who you are. If anyone makes a peep about this to ANYONE, I will send a team of great apes to your house. What happened to Tom Lackey is also going to happen to you." I glared at the Overlords. "DO YOU UNDERSTAND?"
The Overlords nodded wordlessly, their faces pale and contorted with fear.
Suddenly, the apes began chanting something.
At first, I couldn't quite understand, but as the chanting got louder, my face reddened.
It was clear, what they shouted.
"WARRIOR QUEEN! WARRIOR QUEEN! WARRIOR QUEEN!"