Aboard the Interceptor, somewhere over the Mediterranean – 6 July 2019
As she had done previously, Sabra, former Magus Prime of Earth and now unwilling Queen of the Dark World, created a mystical virtual environment for her meeting with her friends and allies of the Vanguard — a magical VR Zoom meeting, as Jonny called it. Dressed in robes of gray and dark blue, Sabra stood on an island of rainbow-hued rock, floating in a void of swirling, pastel-hued mists. Arrayed in a semi-circle around , and slightly below, her each member of the Vanguard present stood on their own small floating island. Off to the side a slightly larger island held the unconscious and restrained forms of Cindré and Jennifer Allman.
“I’m sorry to hear about Quanta’s terrible experience,” Sabra said, when the heroes’ had finished their description of the final battle in the Saudi Arabian Desert. “But I’m sure Captain Astor is right, and he’ll return to you once he sorts himself out.
“Nonetheless, well done, my friends… it is pity about the one Bloodstone, of course… I suspect even that single power boost will make it that much more difficult to ever separate Ms. Allman from the spirit of the Succubus now. Not that I’m convinced such a thing was ever really possible in the first place, sadly…
“Still, four Bloodstones remain… and remain incredibly dangerous. I have given this matter considerable thought in the last week, and I have come to the conclusion the wisest course of action at this point is to remove the stones from Earth altogether. And, while we’re at it, we should remove the elemental stones that power the Fatal Four as well. As long as the Maw of the Voracious exists – and I currently see no way to actually destroy such a locus of power — all of these artifacts represent a grave threat to your world.
“Therefore, I suggest that I should take them and secure them in the mystic vaults beneath my citadel her in the Dark World until we find a safe way to destroy them once and for all. What say you Vanguard?””
“Well, I don’t think we have any objection to having you securing the three Bloodstones in our possession,” Cooper replied, glancing for confirmation to Artemis and JJ. “Two belonged to Roland’s estate, and I’m sure Devaj won’t object; the third came from an empty temple in the Antarctic, and I’m still not entirely clear on why Roland returned it there last time; the Master of Tyr’Ana will just have to be satisfied with our explanation that his Bloodstone was destroyed in battle. But we did promise to return the fourth stone to the treasury of Kurunda, and we are obligated to honor that promise.”
Sabra’s eyes narrowed at that last caveat, and she looked ready to argue the point. But after a moment of two she mastered her annoyance, and shrugged. “Very well, I understand your position, although I think it short sighted. But there is still the other matter to discuss.”
With a gesture, she “looped in” Giselle “Fumeé” Auclair to the psychic meeting, and the Frenchwoman appeared, looking very alarmed, on the island containing the other two prisoners. Artemis and JJ exchanged an uneasy glance — the Vanguard’s holding cells were supposed to be proof against all forms of teleportation, both physical and magical, as well as extra-dimensional intrusions.
“Well, it’s not like she actually teleported her here – this is merely a psychic manifestation, right?” JJ murmured quietly to his friend, who nodded, but looked unsettled, nonetheless.
“Now, about the Prime Elementals, the gems that power the supervillains known as the Fatal Four,” Sabra continued. “Will you consent to turn them over to my custody, at least, along with three of the four Bloodstones?”
“I’m afraid we can’t do that, Sabra,” Artemis said quickly, before Totem could answer. “They are federal prisoners, and we are bound to turn them over to the proper civil authorities. As we recently explained to the Gaoler, it’s not our place to stand as judge nor jury _ not for him, and not for you.”
“Well, it’s not the persons involved that I’m worried about,” Sabra shrugged diffidently. “It’s the gemstones that pose the danger, and I would be content to simply sequester those in my realm. Then you could keep your prisoners, and they can stand their trials.”
“Wait, what?” both Fumeé and Cindré said at the same time, although in two very different tones.
“Are you saying you can actually remove this damn rock, and it’s curse?” Giselle asked in painful hope, while Jean-Philip cried furiously “You’re not stealing my power, you bastards! I know my rights!”
It took some wrangling, but in the end a compromise was reached. Totem, with his new power boost and under Sabra’s guidance, would perform the mystical surgery required to remove the elemental stones from the two mercenaries. Reluctantly, Artemis and JJ agreed that a case could be made for exigent circumstances, and an immediate threat to the world, which could provide the legal fig-leaf to cover overriding Cindré’s objection.
The Frenchman’s Prime Elemental Gem was removed first, in the Interceptor while over international waters. A test case that Giselle was secretly happy to have done before her turn came. It was a success, despite Jean-Philip’s howls of outrage – which had faded rather quickly once he was human again. While not as badly off as his distaff teammate, his powers, however much he had reveled in them, had cut him off from human contact… simply being able to touch, or be touched, again had very much softened the blow of being de-powered.
Giselle’s procedure had had to wait until the Vanguard were physically back at the Pyramid, but unlike her former partner she had undergone the psychic knife willingly. She broke down and wept when her physical form coalesced from the mists for the first time in five years. “Even the prospect of prison seems like a paradise, compared to the hell I was living,” she told Artemis privately, just before she and Jean-Philip were taken into federal custody by SHADE.
•• •• ••
Kyle sat in the old wingback chair that had been his grandfather’s favorite, holding the crystal snifter with its two fingers of Louis XIII cognac, and staring into the flames dancing in the huge fireplace. He’d barely tasted the expensive liquor, as his thoughts spun compulsively around and around, replaying the horror of the last 24 hours.
His immediate reaction, when he’d regained his faculties, his mind emerging from the red haze of his lust, was to run. He’d opened tunnel after tunnel, in rapid succession, jumping 40 miles at a time. Until he’d reached the Beirut. Still in shock, wanting only to move, he had reached into a place he hadn’t known he possessed and crossed the 120 miles to Cyprus in a single jump. From Cyprus to Turkey, across the Dardanelles, skirting the southern border of Illyria (even in his deranged state he had no desire to tangle with President-for-Life Dr. Magnetík or his cybernetic defenses), across the Adriatic to the heel of Italy… he’d finally run out of steam on the outskirts of Rome. 2400 miles in an hour. A personal best.
His Vanguard credentials got him on a flight from Rome to New York, and from there he’d made it to the shuttered family home upstate in two jumps. The surprised caretakers had taken one look at his face and hastily opened the place up, brought him the special bottle of cognac he’d demanded, started the fire (despite the July heat), and left him alone.
And so he brooded.
Intellectually, he understood that what he had done, what had been done to him, was not his fault. The Succubus had invaded his mind and used her – her– oh, fuck it, he was too tired to argue– her magic, to break down every human restraint he’d learned in a lifetime. She’d unleashed his inner id, and if she hadn’t liked it, she had no one to blame but herself.
No, what really unnerved him was what the release of his suppressed desires had revealed about himself, in conjunction with the nightmare the Ice Temple trap had pulled from his mind earlier. For years he had suppressed his emotions and desires – first the years spent pursuing his grandmother’s dream, and then the years spent trying to control the results of his success, and managing the guilt that had come with that success.
He’d long recognized that he tended to feel a form of “imposter syndrome,” never really feeling he deserved what he’d achieved, whether it was his Olympic medals or his meta-human powers or even his familial wealth. Hell, if it hadn’t been for the Incident, he’d probably have gone on toying with the idea of becoming a ’superhero’, but never actually doing it, for the rest of his life.
But the Succubus had cleared all that self-doubt away, burned it off like dross in a forge. He’d been pining, Hamlet-like, for a woman he really felt something for, the first in a very long time. His nightmare had forced him to face his fears, and to realize how small they were. It was time to act.
God knew there were a host of complications in the way of a relationship with Epiphany Jones… not least being the question of her own feelings toward him. There’d been an electric spark between them every time they’d met, few as those times were… but was that real, or just the excitement of combat? And was she crazy? And if she was, could she be cured? And if all that worked out, could he get her out from under the legal trouble her actions had landed her in?
Well, that was what psychiatrists and lawyers were for, and he could certainly afford the best of both. The first step was to get in to see Epiphany, to see how she felt about him… well, OK, the actual first step was to get home and let his teammates – his friends – know that he was OK. But after that…
•• •• ••
Three days later, the Vanguard were all gathered around the Round Table, staring worriedly into the holo-projector. In the last several months there had been increasing reports from around the world of increased supernatural incidents and a marked rise in dark forces, long suppressed, making forays into the light. But in the last week the number of incidents seemed to have redoubled, and they were seeing it in Astoria as well – increased cryptic sightings in the Mt. Defiance wilderness, strange disturbances in the Undercity, odd sightings from Council Hill to Lake Haven.
“There are two things in particular that concern me,” Artemis said as JJ pulled up a file. “Yesterday we received a notification from Interpol that Antoine Boucher, aka Mudlside, was found in a flat in Paris – in his human form, apparently de-powered, and in a coma. He’s not yet regained consciousness, although the doctors are optimistic that he will, eventually.
“And this morning John, as Scion, personally handed over the last Bloodstone to the security detail sent from Kurunda to collect it. Security was tight on both ends, and no one outside of this team and the upper echelons of the Kurundan government knew when, or exactly where, the transfer was to take place.”
“The hand-off went without a hitch,” JJ picked up the story. “The Kurundans are no amateurs with this sort of thing, their plane is fast, secure and equipped with advanced stealth equipment that frankly I envy. Yet an hour ago we received a communication from Director D’Gali that the Bloodstone has vanished from its secure case — in mid-air over the Atlantic.”
Jonny was the first to break the surprised silence around the table. “Maybe we should’ve listened to Sabra, and let her take that last Bloodstone. I mean, if someone else is gonna try what the Succubus was trying — hey, do we know if it was her?”
“No, according to my contacts at Forty Fathom Super Max, Jennifer Allman remains securely in the their psychiatric wing, under close supervision,” Artemis said, her expression even more neutral than usual.
“I’m really not looking forward to telling Atara about this,” Cooper sighed. “You just know she’s going to say ‘I told you so’!”
Artemis opened her mouth to respond, but before she could get a word out Dispatch broke through on the comms. “Vanguard, something very… weird is going on in the city. We haven’t received an official request from the APD yet, but we’ve been getting calls on the citizen’s hotline… a lot of calls. I think… well maybe you should just take a look — Channel 5 has their Eye in the Sky chopper headed to the problem.”
JJ hit a button on his console and the main screen on the wall behind him lit up with an aerial view of what looked like the stretch of Sunset Boulevard running through Prospector’s Gulch, between Uptown and Council Hill. The excited pilot/reporter was breathlessly narrating what appeared to be a car race…?