Gala opening of the Museum of Meta-Human Science
The Eastside, Astoria, OR – Thursday 4 July 2019, 19:00
“I still think we should just use the Interceptor and arrive in style,” the Blue Flame said as he watched Quanta open one of his shimmering silver tele-portals. He stood with the rest of the Vanguard in the center of Defiance Plaza, the golden sunlight of an early summer evening glinting brightly off the blue glass of the towering AzTech Pyramid behind them. “It’d be much more dramatic, you know?”
“More dramatic than stepping out of thin air and on to the red carpet?” Chilz laughed. “I don’t think so! Although I’m still not sure why we couldn’t do this from the Ready Room…”
“I thought Quanta’s explanation was quite clear,” Totem said. Given his usual stoic expression, neither of his teammates could quite tell if he was joking. “The potential energy differential, not to mention the variation in air pressure, between 800+ feet and 40 feet above sea level is not insignificant. It’s more draining on him when he has to compensate for those when opening a portal. The elevation difference between the Plaza and the museum is negligible, so when he has a chance to take advantage of that, why not take it?”
“Exactly,” Quanta interjected, glancing over his shoulder at the others. “For once I’d like to arrive somewhere not feeling wrung out and drained. Besides, this gives me a chance to experiment with a wider portal, one we can step through as a group, rather than two-by-two like we usually do. That should make for a suitably dramatic entrance, kid.”
He gestured at his portal, which was indeed an oval much wider than it was tall, flickering silver at the edges and filled with a slowly shifting coruscation of pale pastel rainbow color. “Shall we?”
The Vanguard stepped forward as one, and through —
— and out onto the sidewalk in front of the new Museum of Meta-Human Science and History, more than five miles east of Defiance Plaza and their headquarters. A wide red carpet lay before them, leading up the wide steps and across the portico to the building’s set of triple doors. These were of greenish glass, matching the two story wall of glass that made up the walls of the new museum. The white marble third story seemed to defy physics, its visually more massive bulk seeming too great to be held up by the mere glass below it.
A cheer went up from the crowds on either side of the red carpet at the Vanguard’s appearance, after an ‘ooh’ of surprised appreciation at their method of arrival. The heroes waved to their fans as they mounted the steps.
“Well, OK, I guess that was a pretty impressive entrance,” the Blue Flame admitted, waving back at their adoring public. Quanta just smiled as the team stepped into the vast open space of the museum’s ground floor, already crowded with an uneasy mixture of the usual well-to-do supporters of the arts and sciences in Astoria, and the working-to-middle-class fans of super heroes. The latter were usually a much less common part of such galas.
With the renewed interest in all things both meta and magical in the wake of the death of Roland Reid and the huge free-for-all battle over his inexplicably (to the general public) re-located mansion, the opening of the West Coast branch of the Meta Museum had proved to be auspiciously timed. To take advantage of this trending interest the new curator/director of the main museum in New Atlantis, Jason Latimer, had quickly organized an exhibition exploring the dichotomy between meta-science and magic, posing the question: “Is there a difference?”
“A very good question,” Quanta said to Scion as they stepped into the crowd, heading for the small dais on the far side of the space, set up between the two curving staircases leading up to the mezzanine level circled the perimeter. “I’m looking forward to the panel discussion I, or rather Kyle Steiner, has been invited to participate in tomorrow night to debate the question. It should prove very interesting.”
“Yes, no doubt,” Scion agreed quickly, hoping to avoid a preview of his friend’s arguments just then. “Um, I understand it’s the new museum director’s first big event since he took over from Dr. Thomas after his retirement.”
“Yeah, so I heard. I have to say, I was surprised when Gerald resigned soon soon after the New Atlantis museum finished its reconstruction,” Quanta sighed. “He was always so enthusiastic about all things super-heroic; his energy was a big reason I supported the original museum financially, even before I gained my own powers. I heard he announced his retirement at the re-dedication ceremony back in January, effective almost immediately.”
“A ceremony I notice the Vanguard was not invited to attend,” Scion laughed, shaking his head in mock disappointment. “I’m afraid Dr. Thomas, despite his love of all things meta-human, finally reached his limit after our last, rather destructive, visit to his museum. But his successor doesn’t seem concerned about having us here this evening… although I suppose he could hardly have excluded us, in our own city.”
Gentle live music was provided by a string quartet positioned on the mezzanine level directly over the entrance, and it combined with the lazy burble of the large central fountain and the quiet murmur the 200 or more patrons already gathered to provide a comfortably elegant atmosphere. Banners hung from the mezzanine on the right side of the open space of the ground floor proclaimed the “Secrets of Roland Reid,” and many people were already circulating around the display cases. These housed magical baubles, notes, photographs, and even the former Master Mage’s iconic black-and-silver suit, complete with his famous Cloak of Flight. Others circulated on the left side of the museum, where symmetrical banners celebrated “Super Science of the Modern Age” amid displays of various advanced technologies, from both villains and heroes, scattered about in counterpoint to the magical displays.
“Hey, there’s Ryan Cope,” Chilz nudged the Blue Flame, jutting his chin toward the temporary dais, where a fit-looking, reddish-blond man in stylish contemporary tux-like suit was speaking to Director Latimer as they waited for their heroic guests of honor. “I’d heard his people would be catering this shindig, but wasn’t sure he’d show up himself.”
“Meh, I know we’re supposed to make an appearance at his new “restaurant experience” when it opens tomorrow, and yeah, they’re fun – you know I love pop-culture stuff – but c’mon! The food at Capes! is only so-so at best.” Jonny adjusted his mask absently. He and Chilz were both in human form, in deference to the setting. “I heard they were originally going to have some of our favorite food carts do the catering tonight, until Cope moved up the opening date of his new Astoria restaurant to match the museum’s opening.”
“Oh, you’re such a food snob, man!” Chilz laughed. “Sure, Capes! isn’t haute cuisine, but it’s OK, and the whole super-hero themed vibe is fun. You have to admit we always have fun at the Capes! in New Atlantis… Las Vegas… LA… and remember that time in Rio?”
“Yeah, yeah, they’re fun… and, well, Rio! But it’s so corporate now… I mean, he’s got what, more than 30 restaurants? And don’t get me started on the six hotels and three casinos! Ugh! Those food carts could’ve used the exposure a lot more than —“
The Blue Flame was forced to cut short his sotto voce complaint as the Vanguard stepped up onto the dais and, after a flurry of handshaking and greetings, arrayed themselves behind Director Latimer, Mr. Cope, and Devaj Achaya. Latimer stepped forward to the microphone at center stage and called for the crowd’s attention. The musicians paused their playing, and the susurration of conversation slowly died down as the crowd turned their eyes toward the stage.
“Welcome ladies and gentlemen to this gala opening of the West Coast branch of the Museum of Meta-Human Science and History. We are honored to have with us tonight not only members of Astoria’s premier superhero team, the Vanguard, who certainly need no introduction from me, but also Mr. Devaj Achaya. As the life-long companion and now widower of the late Roland Reid, he has generously agreed to loan the museum a number of rare and fascinating items from the life and collection of the former Magus Prime. These are at the heart of that half of our opening exhibition which deals with the mystical, magical and arcane aspects of world history and the meta-human experience.
“On the other side of coin, or more accurately the aisle, are the artifacts and devices of so-called super science — those machines, constructs and prototypes that, in the last century, have propelled science into realms once thought limited to fantasy. From Nikolai Tesla’s early forays into exotic energies and fantastically strong metals, through the many astounding inventions of Tom Swift, Clark “Doc” Savage, and Dr. Benton Quest, to the modern breakthroughs in matrix crystal technology of Drs. Mark and Elizabeth Sampson and their Momentum Foundation, you will find here a definitive cross-section of the cutting-edge technologies of the 20th and early 21st centuries.
“Hopefully the two halves of this exhibition will inspire you consider the dichotomy between traditional science, so-called super-science, and that which we call magic. Where is the dividing line between these disciplines, if in fact there is one at all? To further delve into these questions, and perhaps illuminate the direction current thinking is taking in the on-going attempt to synthesize them all into one theoretical whole, we will be hosting a series of seminars and debates, both here and at the Alden Morse Convention Center downtown, over the holiday weekend. Many of the field’s top minds will be there, including Dr. Mark Sampson, Tom Swift IV, and Dr. Kyle Steiner; we hope you will all join us for what promises to be a thought-provoking series of events.
“Now, before I turn you all loose to enjoy our exhibits and the wonderful food being provided this evening by the good friend of the Museum Mr. Ryan Cope and his amazing staff from Capes! I would like to mention some of those who’ve made this event possible. I’ve already noted the generous loans made by the estate of Roland Reid, of course, but other of his fellow members in the Liberty Alliance have also contributed many items from their own storied collection of trophies and mementos, gathered over the decades from heroes and villains alike. The Sampson family has also graciously —“
Latimer’s speech was cut short by a sudden eruption from the previously placid, burbling fountain in the center of the space. A geyser of water shot up almost to the central skylight, 30 feet above, to immediately cascade down again over the nearby crowd. A score or more of soaked patrons shrieked in startled outrage, and began moving away from the fountain.
But as the water sloshed back down into the basin, an ominous mist began to rise and roll out across the floor in every direction, and the move away from the fountain became a rush. Before the museum patrons had taken more than a few steps, however, a second more violent eruption occurred – this time it was a geyser of dark brown mud that shot up into the air.
It didn’t soar as high as the water had, and as it came down it stayed entirely within the basin, where it quickly began to form itself into a vaguely humanoid figure. When the transformation was complete a seven-foot tall golem of dripping mud stepped out of the fountain. When it spoke it was with a voice like rocks tumbling in a torrential flood. A French flood, apparently, by the creature’s accent.
“The Sampson’s? Ha! Those simpering amateurs don’t have a clue what to do with their power… but not to worry, mon amis, I assure you we do!” At that he flowed away from the fountain with shocking speed, and one amorphous arm snaked out over three meters to rip an emerald necklace from the neck of a gray-haired older woman. The crowd, momentarily frozen in place by the sudden uncanny arrival, now broke in a panicked rush to get away from the monster in their midst.
They spread out in every direction from the central fountain, but those who rushed for the exits quickly stumbled to a stop as a massive man-shaped mass of golden-amber crystal burst through the central of the three main doors, shattering the glass in all three and twisting their metal frames into abstract art. It roared a laugh that sounded like wind chimes in a hurricane, then grabbed a cowering patron and shook him. “Time to pay up, meine damen und herren!” it roared in heavily German-accented English. “Everything of value, into Der bag!”
At the same moment a man of living embers exploded through the museum’s central skylight, the air shimmering around him with a heat that vaporized the safety glass as it fell. He himself descended more slowly toward the panicked crowd, already half obscured by the increasingly dense mist that was filling the museum’s ground floor. His skin was the color and texture of charcoal, with an orange-red glow pulsing in the cracks of his charred-looking flesh. His hands were encased in what looked like asbestos gloves, almost up to the elbows, and they held two large canvas bags. The menace in his slow, silent approach made it obvious what he expected.
As the rest of his team leapt into action Scion hustled the civilians off the dais as he called up his tactical computer to learn what he could about the attackers. Devaj quickly took over, summoning a mystical shield as he led Latimer and Cope to the relative safety of the museums back office, allowing JJ to turn his full attention to his data feed and hacking into the museums control systems. He dimmed the lights, creating a much larger pool of shadows for Artemis to work with, then with a flick of his eye activated the team comms channel.
“Alright, listen up folks, looks like what we’ve got here are members of a French mercenary group turned super-criminal gang calling themselves the Fatale Quatre… the Fatal Four, in English. They used to work for Doctor Magnetik, until he sent them into the Iraqi dessert to find some mystical gems he wanted. Not clear if they went rogue on him before or after they were transformed by the gems, but since gaining their powers (and deformities) they’ve been on their own, mostly working in Europe and the Middle East. An appearance in the States is unusual for them.
“The walking mountain of mud is Antione Boucher, aka Boue (or Mudslide) – he can stretch that disgusting form to incredible lengths and shape it into almost any configuration, is essentially intangible to most physical attacks, and is surprisingly strong. The crystalline hulk over there is Jürgen Heinz, aka Zirkon, the only German in the group. His quartz-like body is incredibly tough and his strength is immense… there are unconfirmed reports of an ability to fire off crystal shards like razor blades. The Burning Man reject is Jean-Philip Marizan, aka Cindré (called either Cinder or Ember in English) — he generates and projects lethal levels of heat, and can fly, although he’s not especially fast in the air.
“There’s a fourth member of the group, as their name would suggest — Gisele Auclair, aka Fumée (or Smoke). She’s completely non-corporeal, a creature of smoke and air, and a powerful telekinetic, which is the only way she can manipulate physical objects. She can’t go fully invisible, but she can be difficult to spot… I suspect this fog is her doing, so keep an eye out for her.”
While Scion was filling in the team about the enemies they faced, Artemis had stepped back into the shadows behind the stair cases and around the feet of the giant statue of Ultra set between them, and vanished. She reappeared in the shadow of a pillar near the main doors, behind and to the left of Zirkon, and lashed out with her Shadow Whip. Its inky cords of twinned shadow wrapped around a translucent amber forearm, and she yanked with all her strength.
What would have pulled a less powerful foe completely off balance barely moved the behemoth, but it did force him to drop the tuxedoed museum patron he’d been holding up. The freed man scrambled madly away as Artemis released the whip’s grip and leapt forward, two fully charged shadow sticks suddenly in her hands… Zirkon didn’t move particularly fast, but his timing was impeccable. His backhanded blow managed to catch her in mid-leap, knocking her backward a dozen feet to slam into the pillar she’d appeared next to with enough force to make her see stars for a few seconds.
Totem remained on the dais, the better to survey the shape of the developing battle. His first thought was to cast his spell of the Sleeping Mists over the entire room… no, the risk of putting the crowd to sleep, but not the villains, was too great. Instead he focused his casting on what seemed to him the most powerful threat, Zirkon. The crystal giant seemed momentarily fascinated by the shining drops of green light as they fell around him, but they otherwise seemed to have no effect on him at all…
Quanta, on the other hand, thought that Mudslide seemed the more immediate threat, not to mention the closer one, and he moved to encase the man-shaped amorphous blob in a thick, tight shell of quantum matter. Unfortunately Boue simply oozed out of the trap in several directions, even as it formed. In seconds the several streams of muck flowed back together and he retook his humanoid shape several feet from the now useless shell. The hero let his artifact shimmer back into the quantum foam whence it had come…
Mudlside’s sudden transformation and displacement had the fortunate side benefit, at least from the villain’s point of view, of causing Chilz’ super-concentrated blast of sub-Arctic cold to entirely miss him. Instead it encased a display of ancient Hyperborean armor in a frozen shell, toppling the whole thing over with a sharp crack of shattering ice.
The Blue Flame rose to meet the descending Cinder, coming up from behind to tap the mercenary on the shoulder. “Why don’t you pick on someone your own temperature, asshole!” he said as he unleashed a plasma blast that sent the man tumbling away. This gave the Blue Flame time to vaporize a section of nearby glass wall, giving at least some of the panicked crowd an easy means of escape.
Scion finally joined the fray, hovering over Mudslide and sending a volley of highly-charged stun-balls into his oozing body while simultaneously trying to zap the brain the villain must surely still possess under all the muck. Boue simply shot the balls back out, missing several patrons only by chance. He seemed not to have noticed the brain zap at all.
Quanta’s quantum matter blast tore through the creature, to no effect – more accurately, Mudslide simply opened a hole in his torso through which the silvery stream of bucky balls passed. Quanta was forced to dissipate the attack with a muttered curse, before it could strike any unintended targets beyond the mercenary.
Overhead, Cinder had recovered from his momentary tumble caused by the Blue Flame’s plasma blasts and he came back swinging a searing fist, which passed through the hero as ineffectually as a bat through smoke. Blue Flame realized the two were at an impasse, neither able to really injure the other… maybe if heat was out, light might work? He aimed one of his dazzling bursts of blue-white light straight into the mercenary’s face.
Cinder just laughed. “Is that the best you can do, enfant?
Artemis, still a bit unsteady after repeated blows from Zirkon, some barely deflected and some not deflected at all, crouched atop a display case containing an old suit of power armor that had once belonged to the villain Juggernaut, back in the ’50s. At least she was keeping the hulking German distracted and away from the thinning crowd of museum patrons; but there was no way she was going to take him down like this – he was simply too strong, and invulnerable to any force she could bring to bear.
“Chilz,” she spoke quietly over the comms, “forget about Boue for the moment, Scion and Quanta can handle him. I need you over—“
She never finished the sentence as Zirkon’s arms reached wide, massive hands open, then slammed together with all his strength. The shockwave hit Artemis like truck, shattering the case on which she crouched and sending both her and the antique armor flying. She came down 15 feet away in a tangle of glass, armor and cape, and didn’t move.
Chilz and Quanta were both caught in the penumbra of the air blast, which nearly knocked them off their feet, leaving both momentarily disoriented. Totem, on the very edge of the shockwave, experienced no more than a sudden change in air pressure that made his ears pop. A dozen museum patrons were not so lucky, however, and were sent tumbling into displays or each other.
The mist coming off the fountain – smoke, actually Totem realized, catching a good whiff – was growing thicker and was already obscuring a good half of the museum’s first floor. Cindré chose that moment to abandon the mutually futile fight with the Blue flame, instead sending a blast of nearly invisible heat into the fountain’s remaining water. The resultant cloud of steam rose almost to the skylight, engulfing all the combatants.
The French mercenary might have expected to blind the heroes, but Scion had no need for the visual spectrum. Infrared was useless in the steam, but sonar clearly outlined the smug little bastard, and he landed a barrage of stun balls perfectly center-of-mass. Cindré tumbled ass-over-tea-kettle and came crashing down into a display case, momentarily stunned.
Chilz also found that, while he was as blind as anyone else in the roiled cloud of smoke and steam, some other sense told him exactly were Mudslide, and all that water he contained, was located. Complacent in his supposed invisibility, the villain never saw the ice cage forming around him until it was too late. He tried to ooze his way out as before, but this time the freezing air and ice slowed him down, and he was quickly encased.
Quanta had an excellent eye for spatial volumes and distances, and despite the shrouded environment in which he suddenly found himself, he knew exactly where both Zirkon and Cindré were when the steam rolled in, as well as the direction the Blue Flame was headed… there, that flash of brilliant blue plasma illuminated the cloud and a dark shape within, which staggered back… quanta dropped a large block of solid matter that should take out both the crystal giant and the obnoxious burning Frenchman.
The block did take Zirkon entirely by surprise, thanks to his teammate’s steamy diversion, and he staggered down under the sudden impact, driven to his knees, clearly dazed. Unfortunately, Scion’s attack had sent Cindré reeling out of range of the attack. Ah well, batting .500 isn’t bad, Quanta thought as he moved quickly toward where he knew Artemis had gone down.
As her teammate loomed out of the dissipating mists, Artemis slowly pulled herself to her feet, wincing at a strained muscle in her back. But already her remarkable healing ability was easing the pain, knitting the muscle and tendons back into their proper places. Kyle – Quanta– looked concerned, and she waved off his proffered hand, not ungraciously.
“I am fine, Quanta, thank you. You know I heal quickly.”
“Yeah, but I haven’t seen you actually knocked out too many times before, Artemis… so, were you dreaming about Dracula just now?”
“Very droll, Quanta.” Her glance at him didn’t seem particularly amused, but on the other hand, she hadn’t laid him out. “It would be unwise of me to do so, even if I was inclined… a useful ability, if one doesn’t want the Lord of Vampires showing up on your doorstep.”
“You have an entire ability devoted to not dreaming of Dracula?” He just couldn’t stop himself. “That is hard-core!”
“I also have an entire ability devoted to not smacking you when you’re being particularly asinine. Now, shall we try to wrap this up? The steam has dissipated, and the smoke seems to be thinning as well…”
Which was true, Quanta realized, although there was now a faint odor of sulphur dioxide in the air. But before he could mention it to Artemis, there was a series of sharp cracks as Chilz’ ice tomb encasing Mudslide blew apart explosively. Chilz was knocked backward, but still did his best to protect the remaining patrons trapped behind him.
Artemis saw Zirkon staggering back to his feet, his attention drawn to a knot of museum-goers trapped, with him between them and the wrecked doors. Before the monster could do more than take a step in their direction, she hurled her shadow sticks at the wall of glass behind the civilians, blowing it out in a glittering spray. The patrons needed no further encouragement and raced en masse for the sudden opening, while Zirkon turned to glare at Artemis.
Cindré pulled himself up from the wreckage of the display cases he’d landed amongst, the metal frames warping and the glass turning soft around him, and barely managed to roll away from Quanta’s attempt to encase him. In doing so he nearly ran straight into Scion’s next blast of stun balls, and only the massive bulk of a jet engine from one of Sky Master’s old planes saved him.
At the same time a recovered Chilz was raining down freezing hail on Mudslide, who simply seemed to absorb the attack. It did seem to be slowing him down a bit, Chilz thought, and he prepared to send another wave of sub-arctic cold rolling over the muddy maniac – only to see the mercenary vanish in a sudden flash of red flame and black smoke.
Across the room identical clouds of fire and brimstone engulfed the other two villains, and when it cleared, leaving only the rotten-egg odor behind, they too were gone.
•• •• ••
Once the Vanguard finished a quick debrief with both the police and a hastily dispatched agent from the local SHADE office, and he was sure the medical needs of the frightened and/or injured guests were being seen to, Jason Latimer approached the heroes, Devaj on his heels. The director looked distraught, and even the usually unflappable Devaj seemed visibly worried.
“Thank you for help this evening,” Latimer began, a weak smile briefly lighting his face. “This could have been so much worse… but as it is, at least two artifacts are missing from the displays, that we can be sure of: Arkanos’ Cloak of Flight and one of the Bloodstones of the Voracious.
“The cloak isn’t especially powerful or dangerous,” Devaj put in. “Mostly it has sentimental value for me. But I’m rather more concerned about the Bloodstone. I do not know much about it from personal experience, beyond the fact that it is one of a set of five identical stones; but I do know Roland thought them extraordinarily dangerous.
“The Voracious was, and I suppose still is, a most terrible entity. Sometimes also referred to as the Oathbreaker, the Devourer, and the Eater of Gods, any artifacts associated with this particular entity would be most destructive in the wrong hands. Roland recovered all five of the Bloodstones some years ago, alongside his young apprentice, Sabra. She may know considerably more concerning them than I.”
While Devaj was speaking to the heroes, Director Latimer’s phone rang, and he stepped away to take the call. After a brief conversation he returned to the group, even more visibly upset than before.
“Oh dear God. I just got off the phone with Professor Ashrok at Astoria City University. The museum loaned the University the other Bloodstone from Arkanos’ collection, for certain tests they wished to run on it. But it was stolen this afternoon. The stone… not the university. This… this is going to be an insurance nightmare.”
Devaj patted the younger man on the back and made soothing noises as he led him back to the office where they had sheltered during the attack, assuring him it would all be alright. He nodded to the heroes and gave them an encouraging smile.
Artemis sighed, and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “As soon as I heard about the Bloodstones, and the that they were a set, I was afraid of this – clearly, someone must be trying to gather all five of the Bloodstones of the Voracious.”
“Yes, it pushes the limits of believability to suggest two of the stones being stolen, on the same day, could be coincidence,” Scion agreed. “Still, it might not have been the same group behind the University theft. I think we should check out the crime scene there, learn what we can.”
“I’m more interested in where those bastards got off to, and exactly how,” Quanta interjected. “Scion, you said they’re known to use teleportation, but that this smoke and fire schtick is new. I assume the it’s window dressing, for whatever reason, and that they’re using some sort of teleportation tech or meta ability. I’ve been working on something with my own quantum tunneling and my post-cognition sense, and it’s just possible I might be able to track them.”
“If you can, that would be extremely helpful,” Totem shrugged. “But I suspect their method of escape will prove to be magical in nature.” He ignored Quanta’s grimace of annoyance as his friend stepped away to try his tracking luck, and went on. “That sulfurous effect is more commonly connected to infernal or demonic magic than to the elemental magic that empowers the Fatal Four… and didn’t your report say they open a single portal, much like Quanta does? This was three, possibly four separate, teleportations. “
“Four — I’m certain that Fumée was also present tonight,” Artemis said. “None of the other three had the opportunity to purloin the missing artifacts, but they certainly provided the distraction for her to do so.”
“Well, in my experience there are maybe half-a-dozen entities currently in the world that might be behind such a feat,” Totem went on. “Tethra of the Formorri, although I believe he is still in SHADE custody; the Brood of the Bronze Claw, certainly a likely possibility, given their involvement in the attack on the Sanctum Primus; the Crimson Mask; the Greek god Hades, that racist terrorist the White Knight, and the Succubus. She hasn’t been seen in several years, that I’m aware of, but I know she’s still around.
“I think that we should do as Devaj suggested, and try to contact Sabra. She is clearly the person with the most knowledge of the Bloodstones, and she may have some angle on this that we’re missing. I have her scrying mirror with me…”
“Hey, I think I’ve got it,” Quanta called out, motioning the others over to where he stood. It was a spot midway between where Zirkon and Cindré had vanished, as they’d been fairly near to one another. “It’s hard to describe exactly, but their exit locus appears to be a little over two miles away and about 160 feet up… a penthouse apartment, I think. I can’t give you coordinates, but I can open a tunnel to it.”
“OK, if there’s any chance they’re still there, we should go in force,” Scion said. “Totem, we’ll contact Sabra after we investigate this penthouse, I think time might be of the essence here.”
In the event, a show of force proved unnecessary. The place was indeed a small Uptown penthouse in a boutique hotel, two miles away on Coxcomb Hill. An empty penthouse, the heroes realized as soon as they stepped through Quanta’s shimmering portal. Clearly, the evildoers had moved on immediately after the heist, too smart to linger so close to the scene of their crime. A summoning circle was etched into the hardwood floor, the only tangible evidence that this was the right place.
“Well, the housekeeping staff’s going to be pretty, pretty upset by this,” Chilz said, touching an icy toe to the edge of the graven circle.
“No doubt,” Totem said distractedly, his focus clearly turned inward. “But this wasn’t a wasted trip. The mystical energy signature here, and details of this summoning circle, have narrowed the list of suspects down to one. I have little doubt now that the Succubus is back; and no doubt at all that she is the one behind the Fatal Four’s vanishing act.”
“Perhaps now is the time to contact Sabra,” Artemis suggested. “Unless you or Quanta can track her and her minions to their next destination?”
“Sorry, I’ve been trying, “Quanta said,” but I’m just not getting anything coherent… even my post-cognition seems screwy in here, like something’s creating an interference patter.” Totem just shook his head and shrugged.
“I’ll leave you to interview Sabra,” Scion said. “I’m going to head to the University now. The trail there is undoubtedly too cold for any tracking, so no need for the entire team. Blue Flame, you’re with me however, since you used to work at the University and that fact could prove useful.”
As his two teammates stepped out onto the wide balcony of the penthouse and launched themselves skyward, Totem pulled the small silver mirror, which Sabra had given him on their last meeting, from his belt and peered into it. He focused his thoughts on his friend, and after a moment the glass wavered, shimmered, and his reflection vanished, replaced by the image of Lady Sabra’s throne room in the extra-dimensional Dark World.
Sabra’s raven-haired form, dressed today in a light gray gown, trimmed with pale blue, rather than her usual white and blue costume, could be seen in profile, rolling her eyes at some sort of fairy-like creature next to her. “— don’t care if corn is new and scary. People need to eat. Have them- Oh?” She turned and met Totem’s eyes.
“Cooper! It’s been so long since I’ve heard from you… is this a social call, or Vanguard business?”
“The latter, I’m afraid, there’s been another problem involving Arkanos’ leftovers,” Totem replied. “And it’s only been three months since we last spoke.”
“Three months for you, my friend, but you know time passes more variably over here — it’s been well over a year since out last chat.” With that, she gestured and the living room of the penthouse seemed to break apart, dissolving away, until the four members of the Vanguard found themselves standing with Sabra on floating fragments of grassy turf, adrift in a kaleidoscopic void of misty rainbow colors.
“There, that’s better. I may still be constrained from returning to Earth, but I am getting stronger, and I can at least create this psychic meeting place for us to actually interact like real people… that mirror is so confining. Now tell me, what’s happened now?”
Totem quickly filled in the former Magus Prime on the evenings events, and the items stolen by the Fatal Four, as well as his certainty that the Succubus was also somehow involved. Sabra was not best pleased at the news.
“They stole the Bloodstones?! Oh, by the Lords of Order and Chaos… I told Devaj something like this would happen. He assured me the museum would bring on ‘adequate security.’ Oh… I guess he meant you guys…”
Artemis ignored this, she was sure unintentional, slight. “Sabra, what can you tell us about these Bloodstones of the Voracious?”
“Well, I first learned of them on my own very first adventure with Arkanos. We took them from this doomsday cult, who were using them to juice up the power harvested from their human sacrifices. I learned then that those things are dangerous, as they greatly augment the mystical power derived from ANY act of sacrifice.
“To the naked eye they appear to be five flawless rubies, each the size of a large walnut, but they’re also arcane batteries that absorb specific types of psychic energy — those of pain, death, and destruction. Legends claim they formed from the literal blood of an ancient, malevolent, alien entity when it arrived on Earth to consume an arrogant god. In the ensuing battle the creature spilt only five drops of its own blood before it devoured the god. Which, by the way, is how it gained one of its names — the Devourer.
“Because of the Bloodstone’s ability to transform the suffering of others into raw arcane power, good mages like Roland have always tried to keep the artifacts dispersed across the world, so as to keep the full set away from the evil and the ambitious. And if someone’s got all five again…
“But wait, no… Roland only kept one or two of the damned things after we confiscated them. Well, he hung onto all of them for awhile, to study, but eventually he made me come with him to return three of them to the places from which the cult had stolen them.”
“What can someone do with the Bloodstones?” Chilz asked.
“I mean, there was a whole doomsday cult based around them, so… rather a lot, I suspect. As ancient artifacts, associated with a pretty horrific and alien Elder God, they act like lenses to magnify pain and sacrifice. The more lenses arranged together, the bigger the magnification. Even without a sacrifice, though, they’re dripping with arcane energy. If Succubus has two already, she’s probably getting a magical power-up just holding them.”
“What do you know about this Succubus character?” Quanta asked. “How dangerous is she without the Bloodstones?”
“Pretty dangerous, actually. She’s a human woman… I think her name was Allman… possessed by a powerful demonic spirit. The link between them is unusually strong. Arkanos never managed to break it, at least not permanently, although he tried at least twice. She possesses powerful demonic magics, including hellfire blasts, summoning, illusions, and an ability to sap willpower and induce lust. Succubi are spirits of jealousy, too, and as such she can both shapeshift and manipulate the emotions of others.
“Come to think of it… jealousy is her whole thing. If the Succubus is after the Bloodstones of the Voracious, she’s probably feeling insecure about her magical abilities and thinks she can use the stones to augment her hell-born powers. Actually, I need to look into the possibilities here more deeply…”
“Where can we find the remaining three Bloodstones?” Artemis prompted, as the younger woman seemed to become lost in thought. “To where did you and Arkanos return them ?”
“Oh, yes… let me think. One was in Kurunda, in Africa. It had been a part of the royal treasury, before the cultists stole it. I remember it well, because I had to learn some Kurindi for the Ceremony of Return. Another one went to an old ruin in Antarctica, in a place called the Valley of the Bleeding Ice. That place was creepy, and I have to admit, it spooked me back then! The last Bloodstone we returned to the Master of Tyr’Ana in Terra Cava, the Hollow Earth. He was… not especially grateful, as I remember.”
“They stole Arkanos’ Cloak of Flight,” Chilz offered. “Could that have any bearing on these magical rocks, and what they might be planning?”
“The Cloak of Flight?” Sabra looked surprised, and shrugged. “It’s not an especially powerful artifact, as such things go. I’m guessing someone wants it more as a trophy, than for any specific nefarious purpose. Or maybe she just wants to fly.”
“What do you know about the Fatal Four?” Artemis picked up the questioning. “Is there any previous connection between Succubus and them that you know of?”
“Not that I’m aware of, no. They’re a pack of greedy mercenaries who got cursed by powerful magical gems they’d been hired to “acquire” by Dr. Magnetík of Illyria. Arkanos once tried to help them return to their human forms when they sought his help, but the only solution he found would’ve permanently removed their powers. They didn’t go for it… they very violently did not go for it! Although I think the smoke woman might have, if the others hadn’t gotten so… insistently resistant.
“They don’t really have any secret Achilles heel that I know of, beyond what they’re made of. Fumée can’t touch anything, and Cindre’s not much better off, even with those asbestos gloves. Boue can be frozen solid, I know, and maybe dried out? Zirkon’s solid and incredibly durable, but rather slow – in several senses of the word, if you know what I mean.”
“Sabra, do you know why Roalnd insisted on returning the Bloodstones to their original owners?” Totem asked. “Why not keep and protect them all himself?”
“I’m not entirely sure of his reasoning,” she shrugged. “Except that it’s generally a good idea to NOT keep an entire set of evil artifacts in one place for too long, even in the Sanctum. In any case, I assume you’ve come to me because you think the remaining three Bloodstones are likely the Succubus’ next targets, yes?”
“Indeed,” Artemis acknowledged. “Any help you can provide that might assist us in stopping her and her crew would be greatly appreciated.”
“Well, of course, I’m always happy to help old friends,” Sabra said, smiling at Totem. “It’s vital we keep the Bloodstones out of her hands… but there is little I can do directly, not from here, beyond giving you the specific coordinates of the remaining stones. I’ll also continue to research what the Succubus might be up to in gathering them all together, and keep you posted as I learn more.”
After providing the promised information and a few more minutes of general socializing, Sabra regretfully indicated that she had to return to her duties. Once the good-byes had been said the connection slowly faded away, leaving the Vanguard standing in the empty penthouse once again.
“Well, where to first?” Quanta asked with a sigh.
•• •• ••
Africa, as it turned out.
Scion and the Blue Flame’s investigation at ACU had gone quickly, the evidence of Mudlside’s presence, and his arrival via the water pipes, being very clear once they knew what to look for. After their return to Vanguard HQ, and a mutual exchange of information, it was decide that Africa was the logical choice to continue the case, as the continent held two of the three Bloodstones. Kurunda would be their first stop…
Early the next morning the Interceptor was climbing to sub-orbital altitudes for the three hour flight to central Africa as Jonny slurped his coffee and tried to get his brain in gear.
“I appreciate being able to get some sleep,” he said, yawning, “but shouldn’t we have taken off last night? I mean, how hard could it be for these super-crooks to steal the Bloodstone from some backwards, third-world country?”
Artemis, swiveling her station chair to face him, actually laughed. “Is that what you think of Kurunda? If so, I can only assume you’ve not been keeping up with my suggested reading in the archives.”
Jonny slouched down in his own station chair, shoulders hunching in a defensive shrug. “We’ve been busy lately, and there IS an awful lot to read. Besides,” he muttered, “I thought I was done with homework once I graduated from high school.”
“Yes, well, the homework never really ends, not if you want to be good at this job,” Artemis sighed, her usual inscrutable demeanor back in place. “But I suppose it’s appropriate I give a quick refresher course for the whole team, in case there are others who are equally uninformed about our destination.
“Not that it’s surprising if anyone holds a similar view, I suppose — thanks to Kurunda’s longstanding policy of isolation and secrecy, much of the general public still regards the country as little more than a traditional Sub-Saharan African kingdom, if an unusually stable one. They purposefully downplay the fact that the nation has somehow evaded colonial rule throughout its history, and since they import very little and, until recently, export even less, its a fairly easy illusion to maintain.
“In point of fact, however, Kurunda is amongst the wealthiest and most technologically advanced nations on Earth. They established a thriving technological base long before most European nations did, thanks primarily to a unique wealth of uruite ore and kundalini crystals found in the region. Today, most menial or difficult labor is automated, which leaves the citizens of Kurunda free to study what interests them, with science, art, and the humanities all being immensely popular.
“Despite the general secrecy, the other governments of world are, of course, well aware of the true nature of Kurunda, as is the Alliance. Indeed, it’s because the nation is also home to the hero called the Golden Cheetah, who protects her people from outside threats, that most people outside of Africa have even heard of Kurunda. When she joined the Liberty Alliance post-Invasion it brought an unusual attention to her homeland, for a time.”
“The rest of the world has been catching up with the Kurundans in the last half century, though,” Quanta added. “Despite which, they still maintain a slight technological edge, so I think our friends in the Fatal Four might find it more challenging than expected to extract the gemstone from their custody.”
“Indeed,” Artemis agreed. “Kurunda’s Bloodstone of the Voracious was part of a ceremonial headdress taken from a defeated crocodile cult when they acquired it about a century ago. After its last theft it is now kept in a secure vault in one of the National Treasury Buildings in the capital city of K’yangu. As I understand it, the kundalini crystals incorporated into the building’s security system prevent anyone, including even the Magus Prime, supposedly, from teleporting into or out of it. “
“Besides,” Scion added from the cockpit, “thanks to their isolationist policies, getting approval to cross the border, let alone visit sensitive government buildings, can take weeks, assuming we went through normal channels. Fortunately, I have some government connections there, and that let me cut through much of the red tape — but not all of it. I still needed those extra hours you were sleeping to get us permission to enter Kurunda at all.”
Despite those connections it was still a day and a half after they landed in K’yangu before the Vanguard were finally able to meet with Internal Security Director Gawiji D’Gali. Having worked with the Golden Cheetah over the years — and by extension many Western superheroes — D’Gali was more accustomed to dealing with the meta-human community than many of his countrymen, and actually listened to what the American heroes had to share. Initially skeptical of strangers arriving and requesting entry to his nation’s stronghold of wealth, the hero’s presented a strong enough argument that he personally escorted them to the National Treasury Building… along with two of his own high-tech armored and armed security guards.
The National Treasury Building appeared, from the outside, to be a large traditional Nubian-style domed brick building, surrounded by beautiful landscaping, while in the walled entrance garden two fountains burbled amidst lush tropical foliage. The charmingly provincial appearance was quickly belied, on closer inspection, by the variety of high-tech surveillance and alarm systems, as well as the guards carrying energy weapons.
“As you can see, our defenses are strong,” Director D’Gali said as they stepped into the building’s first security zone after he’d used the biometric ID system to open the massive bronze exterior doors. In the small vestibule two armored and armed soldiers stood at attention, and Scion’s sensors detected several weapons systems within the walls trained on them.
“But these are just the basic, physical, defenses,” D’Gali continued as he pressed his palm to the control panel for the inner doors. “There are sophisticated teleportation blockers built into the structure, there are no air vents or ducts larger than 10 cm in diameter, and even those have visual and energy sensors embedded within. Even the electrical system is entirely self-contained, with no external connection to the larger power grid. Aside from these doors, there is no other way into this structure.”
“What about the water system?” Chilz asked as they all stepped into the large reception area beyond the first security zone. “Does this place have its own water system as well?”
“Well, no,” the Director replied, frowning. “The fire suppression system is not water-based in the document chambers, given the fragile nature of many of the papers preserved here– it’s a halogen gas system, and entirely self-contained. The toilet facilities, however, are connected to the larger municipal system… as is the sprinkler system in the central vault, come to think of it. But both are regularly monitored for pressure, flow, and so on. No device should be able to gain access that way.”
“I wasn’t thinking of a device,” Chilz muttered to the Blue Flame as D’Gali turned to check in his party with the soldier manning the security desk in the reception area. Once the formalities were taken care of the young man touched a button on his console and the set of doors on the left side of the curved room slid open silently.
The group stepped through in a larger chamber which curved gradually to the right, clearly following the exterior line of the circular building. The room was filled with racks and shelves, lining the walls from floor to ceiling, all loaded with electronically locked document cases. Interspersed between the shelves were occasional sealed glass cases containing individual documents on display. Several long tables ran down the center of the room, comfortable-looking chairs tucked neatly under them.
D’Gali led them briskly to the door at the far end of the room, which slid open at their approach… a clue that they were being watched by the soldier at the security desk Artemis noted. The next room was very similar in shape to the first, but was more atmospherically lit. Spotlights highlighted display cases of varying sizes along the walls, each of which contained intriguing looking artifacts, from ancient weapons or armor, to a massive dragon’s skull, mounted at the center of the outer wall.
Directly across from the skull an airlock-like structure jutted out from the curve of the inner wall. D’Gali stopped before the massive steel door set in its face and briefly fiddled with another biometric ID system, and the door split open with a hiss of pressurized air. The chamber revealed was rather small, too small to contain the entire group.
“Apologies,” Director D’Gali said, “but as you can see no more than four people can be accommodated from this point. Captain Astor, Artemis, I assume you will wish to accompany me?”
“I’ll join the party too,” Quanta put in quickly, before Jonny could do more than open his mouth.
At the control pad to the inner door D’Gali paused and considered. “Not that I’m expecting any trouble, really, but I suppose it would be foolish to cut ourselves off from our available resources… therefore I am overriding the usual security protocols, to allow the outer door to stay open once I open the inner door. That way, should the need arise, both your teammates and my own men can reach us quickly.”
A quick series of entries on the key pad, and the heavy inner doors slid silently open, and the four stepped into the large circular space of the central vault. Ten meters in diameter, with a softly glowing dome eight meters overhead, the room was lined floor to ceiling with 13 very high-tech-looking cylinders of “safe deposit” boxes of varying sizes. And standing on the far side of the vault, in the very process of ripping open one of those boxes, was the leader of the Fatal Four, Mudslide.
Apparently oblivious to his sudden audience, the elemental mercenary reached into the box’s recesses and pulled out the Bloodstone. He held it up triumphantly, and bellowed out a deep, burbling laugh. “Three down, two to go, and we—“
“Put down that gem at once!” demanded a furious Director D’Gali, striding into the vault with the American heroes on his heels. He tapped a button on his watch and alarms began to sound, the lights dimmed, and red emergency lights began to strobe. Behind him, titanium-uruite bars slammed down across the doorway, and by the sound of it across doorways through the the building.
Boue’s bellow turned from laughter to a growl, and he lunged forward, his body enlarging and rising up, preparing to drop down and engulf the interfering fool. But Scion moved faster, interposing himself between D’Gali and the villain, and as the mud wave surrounded him the hero shot a jolt of bio-electric energy through his armor’s outer shell.
As Boue reeled back, regaining his more humanoid shape, Artemis vaulted forward over Scion and made a grab for the Bloodstone still held in one large, misshapen hand. A pseudo-pod of dense mud shot out and caught he in mid-leap, however, sending her slamming into the wall.
Given the relative success of his bio-shock attack, Scion attempted to immobilize Mudslide with his Tangle Field, but the villain simply oozed through the mesh, the electrical charge seeming little more than an annoyance to him – clearly unpleasant, but hardly debilitating.
“Give it up, Mudslide,” Quanta called out as the elemental once again reformed into something vaguely humanoid in shape. “The place is sealed off now, you can’t leave the way you came in, through the fire suppression pipes – at least not with the stone — and even if you could get past the Vanguard, the entire Kurundan army is moving to surround the building. Surrender! You’re French, it should be easy.”
“The name is Boue, you, ignorant American tool,” Boue snarled. “And I haven’t begun to show you what a Frenchman–“
As Quanta had hoped, using his hated American name and goading him had made the Frenchman inattentive – the half-ton of materialized quantum matter dropped onto him without warning. Unfortunately the very nature of his curse made him resistant, if not actually invulnerable, to the attack. His mud form splooshed out around the edges of the slab, but even as the quantum matter evaporated he was already pulling himself back together. And the Bloodstone remained firmly engulfed in his fist.
In disgust, Boue ignored the American’s further attempts to engage him in witless banter , and oozed toward the exit. Bars were no more a hinderance to him than police tape would have been; he passed between them and into the airlock without slowing. The foolish Africans would have been better off if they had simply closed the vault door — even he could have found no crack to exploit then. As it was, once he was past the heroes in the outer room, he would be “home free” as the Americans liked to say. While they struggled to disarm the system and raise the gates, he would simply move through them and on to freedom.
The first of those obstacles, which he’d rather airily dismissed, was the Blue Flame, who hovered in the air just beyond the bars blocking the outer door. There was nowhere to dodge, other than back into the vault, and he took the full brunt of a plasma blast, center-of-mass. Boue could feel the moisture evaporate from his body, the elemental earth portion of his matrix becoming harder and less motile… cracks appeared when he flexed or turned, and he staggered slightly.
From inside the vault, where Scion was working quickly to disarm the alarm system with the help of Director D’Gali, Quanta saw his teammate’s attack on their foe. He took the opportunity to attempt to encase Baked Mudslide in a cocoon of nanocarbon but, while the mercenary was less malleable, he was still immensely strong, and he shattered the structure as it formed.
Artemis, meanwhile, pulled D’Gali aside as Scion worked on the controls. “Director, do the teleportation shields surround the building, as a whole, or are they embedded in the walls of the entire structure?”
“Well, that is classified, of course, but under the circumstances… yes, the shield is contiguous with the outer structure. We saw no need to run it through the interior walls; even in Kurunda such technology is not cheap! But why do you ask?”
“Oh, I have an idea,” Artemis replied, and smiled.
In the artifact room beyond the airlock Chilz took a blast of mud to the chest, but barely felt it. Mudlside appeared to be rehydrating, probably pulling moisture from the environment, much as Chilz did himself, but he clearly wasn’t quite back to the strength he’d had in their fight back in Astoria. Which gave Chilz an idea…
As Mudslide moved forward to ooze through the bars and into the larger room, where he’d have more maneuverability and more tactical options, Chilz threw up a meter-thick wall of ice across the doorway. The Frenchman slammed against it, but could not penetrate it, and he drew back in frustration.
Chilz, however, had no trouble penetrating the barrier. Stepping up to the ice plug he passed into the ice, becoming one with it, squeezing, as it did, between the metal bars… and stepped out the other side.
“Give it up, Mudslide,” he said. “There’s no way out, so let’s just call it a day and save everyone some trouble, OK. Surrender, already!”
“Feh, enough with your puerile American humor,” Boue roared, and he punched the taunting hero hard enough to send him flying back into his own ice barrier, which cracked slightly under the impact. “Why we ever gave you imbeciles the Statue of Liberty I will never understand!”
Chilz had felt that blow – unlike the ranged mud blast, this had been a round-house punch, backed with all the villain’s considerable mass. Plus, Chilz had been steadily lowering the temperature in the small space, and slowly freezing the moisture in the other elemental’s body. This made him denser, true, but it was also slowing him down noticeably…
He returned a round-house punch of his own, knocking Mudlside’s lower jaw out of alignment – if he’d been human the blow would have torn the lower half of his face clean off. As it was, it dazed the mercenary, who failed to notice the bars rising up behind him. Nor was he aware of Scion aiming one of his Brain Zaps point blank into his head.
Completely staggered by that one-two attack, the stunned villain was unable to stop Artemis as she slipped past Scion, vaulted over the dazed Boue, snatched the Bloodstone from his weakened grip, and vanished into shadow.
Staggering back to his feet, Boue realized that with the stone gone, and no doubt beyond his reach for now, escape was his only priority. Even if that bastard Scion hadn’t already sealed off the fire suppression pipes, he was in no condition to use that trick now. What he needed was to get out of this trap…
The fractures in the ice wall, from Chilz slamming into it, were his ticket out. Feinting a blow to the ice giant, he liquified a hand and arm and hit the wall behind the hero. His matter penetrated the cracks, expanding and as it went, enlarging them, creating more… in less than a second the wall exploded into a hundred pieces.
He instantly oozed past Chilz and through the bars, which were already rising back into the ceiling, freed from the ice that had locked them in place. Great, his path to freedom was wide open now —
Chilz, the Blue Flame and Quanta triple-teamed Mudlside before he was halfway across the room. Frozen, dehydrated and squashed, he was also attacked by the Kurunda security forces, wielding Omnium energy swords. Which really hurt, even in his elemental form.
When the Blue Flame pinned him within a cage of searing plasma, he knew his only hope now was surrender. A tactical surrender. He made no attempt to resist as the American ice elemental froze him solid, but he was grinning inwardly…
With Mudlside immobilized in ice, the Blue Flame released his energy cage form and reverted to his humanoid shape. Quanta, wanting to take no chances, encased the cryogenically incapacitated villain in a thick shell of quantum matter. It was only after he’d finished that he had second thoughts.
“He doesn’t have to breathe, does he?” he asked Chilz, a little worried.
“I don’t have to, in this form,” his friend shrugged. “I doubt he does either. I wouldn’t sweat it. I mean, if being frozen solid didn’t kill him, a minor lack of air sure won’t.”
A newly arrived squad of now redundant back-up soldiers quickly had the doubly encased villain loaded upon a lift pallet, and they slowly made their way through the Treasury Building to the entrance, the heroes and Director D’Gali trailing behind.
“Artemis has secured your Bloodstone in our headquarters in Astoria, Director,” Scion assured their dubious host. “She’s just relayed that message to me through the Interceptor, and she’ll be joining us again in a moment.”
“Will she be returning with the gem, then?” D’Gali asked, frowning.
‘If you insist on it sir, certainly. But there is an on-going threat involving these stones, and until we resolve it I think it would be best if we retain custody of your Bloodstone. Our security is at least as tight as yours… and there is the added advantage that our enemies now do not know where the stone is.”
“Ha, you make a good point, Captain Astor,” D’Gali said, and gave a heavy sigh. “My own security clearly needs to be reviewed and upgraded… so, if you will undertake responsibility for this royal treasure, I will agree to leave it in your hands until it is safe for it to be returned to us.”
They had just past out of the Treasury Building and into the serene walled garden around it, and as they shook hands Artemis stepped out of the shadows around a nearby cluster of palm trees and flowering bushes. She nodded to her co-leader, and then her eye was caught by the silvery encased form of Boue. Her eyes widened.
“Scion! Are there portable teleport shields around Mr. Boucher? I don’t see–“
She was interrupted by a muffled “whump” of imploding air from within the quantum shell encasing the prisoner. Everyone, except the poor Kurandans, realized what had just happened, confirmed when Quanta dissolved the shell. Antoine Boucher was gone, only the stench of sulfur and a wisp of smoke left behind…
••••••
Fortunately for the Vanguard, Director D’Gali was disinclined to blame them overmuch for escape of the leader of the Fatal Four. They had, after alll, briefed him on the circumstance around the robberies in Astoria – he should also have given some thought to what would happen once they moved their prisoner away from the Treasury. He confirmed his decision to leave his country’s Bloodstone in the heroes’ hands, and did nothing to delay their urgent departure to seek the next stone.
And the next stop on the Vanguard’s Bloodstone World Tour was a remote and desolate highland in the northern reaches of South Africa. Since the country was an Alliance-signatory nation, and the Vanguard were acknowledged Alliance associates, clearances were granted with relative ease and speed. It was mid-afternoon on the same day of Mudslide’s stymied attempt in Kurunda when the Interceptor set down on a rocky plateau, near a large cave entrance that was known to be the entrance to Terra Cava closest to the ancient subterranean city of Tyr’Ana.
Signs of a decades-past mining operation, rusted and decaying, were visible around the wide, dark cavern mouth as the Vanguard began their descent into the depths. Lit by the powerful searchlight in Scion’s armor and shimmering witch-light conjured by Totem, at first the path was clearly man-made, a result of the mining effort. Eventually, however, they came to a large chamber with a tremendous crack running down the far wall. Beyond that fissure began a series of natural caverns and twisting passages, all leading ever deeper into the earth.
After several hours of walking through the strangely beautiful and haunting subterranean pathways, the Vanguard stepped out onto a large rocky shelf overlooking a truly vast cavern — at least two kilometers across and more than half a kilometer high. A dim, ruddy light emanated from numerous fissures in the stalagmite-riddled ceiling, illuminating a strange and ancient-looking city that rose at the cavern’s heart. It was a city of massive, blocky stone towers and disturbing serpentine archways, that left the heroes slightly unsettled.
“There is no freaking way this can exist underneath the our world,” Chilz choked out after a moment, breaking the awed silence that had fallen over the group at the sudden vista.
“No,” Artemis agreed, shaking off the strange, hieratic mood herself. “And Dr. Sampson proved that years ago, after the Sampson family’s first encounter with the subterranean denizens of Terra Cava. It is, in fact, one of the many pocket dimensions with which our world is riddled, and I would guess we passed the dimensional interface between Earth and the so-called “Hollow Earth” sometime shortly after we left the mine proper.”
“Unfortunately, I don’t think we’re the only ones,” Scion said grimly, pointing toward the city. “I’m afraid at least one of the Fatal Four is here before us.”
A grand, palatial structure loomed over the center of the city, and it was not difficult to understand Scions statement. A path of destruction wound from the base of the cliffs they stood atop into the heart of the city – numerous bodies, scattered around the stone pavement amidst scorch-marks, cracked stone paving, partially collapsed buildings, and columns of smoke marked the path of what had to be one or more of the villainous group.
As they quickly descended from the heights to the cavern floor, the heroes saw that the scattered bodies were not exactly human. The small, squat figures had pelts of short pale fur, which covered most of their bodies, and enormous eyes set beneath jutting brow ridges. Most were clad in little more than equipment harnesses or belts of various utilitarian configurations. Odd-looking pikes and clubs lay tossed about the dead and unconscious forms.
“Huh… actual Mole People,” the Blue Flame muttered, more to himself than the group. “Doesn’t look like they had much of a chance against those bastards, poor little guys.”
The trail of violence lead through the ancient, but clearly well cared for city, to a central plaza, over which loomed the palatial edifice they’d seen from a distance. Wide, shallow steps lead up to a pillared portico, from the center of which a great pier of stone jutted out into the plaza. At the end of the stone tongue a huge spherical construct of twisted and entwined metal sat, abstract art or something else entirely no one was sure. It glowed with a faint golden light, made coppery by the ambient ruddy “natural” light of the cavern. The massive double doors into the palace, or whatever, set at the center of the wall along the portico, were rent open as if by some great force. A powerful drumbeat was throbbing and echoing from within the dim interior…
As the Vanguard reached the foot of the stairs, Zirkon and Cindre burst out of the doorway, various Terra Cavan moloids hanging off of them or pursuing them with intent. Zirkon shrugged his massive crystalline shoulders as he plowed out of the building, and sent half a dozen of the little people flying into walls and pillars. Three of the defenders that attempted to pull down Cindre burst into flames as soon as they met his heat aura… their shrieks were heart-wrenching.
“Zirkon has the Bloodstone,” Totem called out. “You can see it glowing in that huge translucent first.” With a gesture he sent out blue bands of mystical energy, to wrap the hulking mercenary in the Azure Bonds, pinning his massive arms to his body. The Blue Flame took to the air and released a Dazzling Burst, hoping to blind or at least slow down the two villains.
Zirkon gave a mighty shrug, and the Azure Bonds splintered into shards of blue light that quickly dissolved back into the aether; and while the Blue Flame’s brilliant flare of light blinded half-a-dozen Terra Cavans, it failed to make either mercenary even blink. It did, however, distract them long enough for Quanta’s block of carbon to materialize over their heads.
With a sharp “merde!” Cindre leapt aside, while Zirkon slammed both fists up into the descending slab, shattering into several dozen pieces. The shrapnel flew in every direction, taking out several more moloids and bruising Cindre. “Fais attention à ce que tu fais, imbécile!” he shouted to his partner. He barely noticing the stun balls Scion fired at him as they disintegrated in his aura before even reaching him.
Chilz rose up on an ice slide, circling around to the left and caused a thick column of ice to rise up beneath Cindre’s feet. The Frenchman seemed to be surprised as he rose briefly into the air, until his aura began melting the ice beneath him and he sank into the column. Chilz quickly sealed the top of the column, momentarily imprisoning the obnoxious asshat.
Artemis appeared in the shadows between pillars on the elevated portico of the palace, and before the dust from Quanta’s attack had settled she was vaulting over Zirkon, bringing both of her Shadow Sticks down on his wrist, causing several small fractures to appear. He roared in rage, a sound like glass in a hurricane, but he didn’t open his fist… she was unable to snatch the Bloodstone from him before being forced to somersault away to avoid his massive fist.
As she spun back into the shadows, a bolt of golden mystical energy shot from Totem’s hands, aimed at Zirkon’s head. Belying his bulk, the creature moved with surprising speed, and the bolt splashed harmlessly against a pillar… but the Blue Flame’s plasma bolt struck the mercenary square in the chest. Micro-fractures radiated out from the hit, and the German roared again in pain.
Totem cast his go-to spell of the Sleeping Mists, but again the mystic somnolence had no apparent effect on the elemental villains… although it did put another batch of the angry Terra Cavans to sleep. The natives were now attacking both the villains and the heroes, as opportunity presented itself, making no distinction between the interlopers. The Vanguard, of course, did their best not to hurt any of the relatively squishy, but exceedingly numerous, little people.
Cindre managed to melt through Chilz’ ice prison in less than a minute, and he started to rise into the air— only to be knocked back to the portico by a stream of electro-bolts from Scion. Unlike the physical stun bolts, the energy slugs were relatively unaffected by his heat aura, and Cindre was briefly stunned. Which gave Chilz the opportunity to repeat his first attack, once again imprisoning the heat elemental within a giant ice cube.
Quanta continued to drop QM blocks onto Zirkon, keeping him off balance, while the Blue Flame again blasted the crystal giant with a bruising plasma bolt, followed immediately by a mystic bolt from Totem. Reeling back, the giant lifted one massive leg and slammed it down hard on the stone floor, which rippled like a pond when a stone is dropped in. The shockwave radiated out before him, cracking and fracturing the great stone pier which bisected the steps, until it reached the strange, spherical sculpture at the end, overlooking the square. The modernist-looking metal art piece groaned and shifted as pieces of the stone beneath it sank several centimeters.
The shockwave also knocked everyone not in the air off their feet. Which gave Zirkon very little advantage, as Quanta’s next block had already been forming overhead… it dropped down on the already dazed mercenary, driving him to his knees. But still he kept an unbreakable grip on the stolen Bloodstone. Cindre, meanwhile, used the distraction to once again melt himself free of Chilz’ trap.
This time it was Artemis who was there to try to keep Cindre down. She threw both electrified shock sticks at his head, but the Frenchman nimbly dodged, at the same time unleashing a one-two punch of searing heat blasts at her. Chilz dropped down off his ice slide directly into the path of the blasts, taking them full on, and parts of his torso vaporized in a cloud of steam. He staggered back, mentally scrambling to pull all the moisture he could from the air to heal himself.
At the same time Scion unleashed a large Tangle Field net at Zirkon, enveloping the crystal giant in glowing strands of energy that constricted the more he struggled. Cursing in German, the villain was left momentarily hindered and vulnerable, which both Totem and the Blue Flame took advantage of. While Totem’s mystic bolts staggered the bound giant, the Blue Flame flew far out over the plaza and then, with an effort of supreme focus, converted his entire lower body into a plasma rocket.
He struck Zirkon at a tremendous speed, and the shockwave hurled the giant backward, into Cindre, and both of them slammed into the palace wall behind them. The stone wall shattered, but held, and the two lay staggered and dazed in the wreckage. Artemis moved in quickly, seeing her opportunity, but Zirkon proved more resilient than seemed possible.
He staggered to his knees and with a bellow like a thousand windows being shattered, he burst the Tangle Field. The shockwave knocked Artemis off her feet and into a stone pillar, dazing her; it also sent Chilz flying backward and into the metal sculpture on the pier.
Already weakened, the huge sculpture shifted, wavered for an instant, and then toppled slowly down into the plaza below. The shriek of twisted metal and the crunch when it hit the pavement was followed instantly by a bright flash of amber light. A stunned and shaken Chilz staggered to his feet and peered down at the wreckage… he was relieved to see that it seemed to have missed crushing any of the little Terra Cavans who continued to pour into the plaza from every side street.
Before Zirkon could get fully back to his feet, Quanta hit him with a powerful blast of bucky balls, knocking him back onto his ass, and then ricocheted the stream off the crystal giant and into Cindre. Already staggered by the Blue Flames rocket attack, the smaller Frenchman was knocked out “cold.”
Quanta began to move toward the fallen mercenaries, his eyes locked onto the Bloodstone, now only loosely held in Zirkons slackened grip, when he staggered to his knees, wreathed in snapping ribbons of electrical energy, as his vision dimmed. If not for the insulating properties of his carbon shell, he realized that he might well have been killed by… as the electrical flares faded, he turned to see a strange figure striding up the stairs from the plaza, an equally odd-looking staff in one hand, still aimed straight at him.
The Master had arrived… just as the members of the Fatal Four were leaving, unfortunately.
“Danke schön for the assist,” Zirkon called with a grin to Chilz, still standing where the sculpture had been. “Auf Wiedersehen!” There was an awkwardly long pause then, and Chilz had just begun to step forward, when both Zirkon and his unconscious teammate finally vanished in a flash of smoke and brimstone.
“Thieves!” the Master cried, his voice weirdly resonate behind his golden mask. A hooded cloak, ancient and tattered, covered an odd assortment of armor pieces, and the tall staff he now slammed to the stones seemed equally cobbled together from bits of technology from various time periods. “Your accomplices may have escaped for the moment, but rest assured I will track them down and recover what they have taken, if it takes a lifetime! But you… you will soon be playthings, and then food, for my pets!”
As he spoke, scores more of the small, queer Cava Terrans had poured up the steps, and now he was surrounded by an army of hundreds of the mole people, who seemed ferociously intent on protecting their leader. For a tense moment the matter balanced on a knife-edge – but before he could order his minions to seize the Vanguard (or at least try) Scion let his helmet fade back into his armor and spoke.
“Sir, we are not your enemies! As your own people can attest, we were trying to stop the thieves, who sought to steal the Bloodstone from your rightful guardianship.”
“And we did our best to protect your people from the violence of the intruders,” Artemis added, stepping from the shadows. “Many lives were saved today, and we regret those we could not save. Out mutual enemies are brutal, savage people, who will stick at nothing to gain what they want, as you’ve seen.”
“The Bloodstone, eh?” The Master seemed at least willing to listen, if still suspiciously hostile. “What is it about that damn thing that so fascinates you surface-dwellers? It’s not like I don’t have much larger rubies in my treasury, but you never go for those…”
It took several minutes of fast talking on Scion and Artemis’ part, and consultation in an unintelligible tongue between the Master and several of his people, but eventually the underground ruler was mollified enough to desist in his plans to feed the heroes to his pet kaiju. Once Scion promised to return the Bloodstone to him as soon as they recovered it, the ruler reluctantly, and very ungraciously, agreed that the surface-dwellers could leave his realm unmolested.
While this was going on, Quanta studied the strange man from the sidelines. There was something about the Master that struck an uncertain chord in him… whatever it was, he could feel it was just on the edge of consciousness… something he should know…
“Quanta, can you assist me?” Totem broke into his train of thought, and the nascent epiphany was still-born “I believe that metal sculpture which was destroyed was actually the artifact preventing teleportation into or out of this palace. I was thinking that if you could help me raise back into place, at least, the gesture might help smooth things over with this ‘Master’ fellow.”
“Oh, yes, probably a good idea,” Quanta agreed, and reluctantly turned away from the ongoing debate between his teammates and the man in question. By the time the Vanguard was ready to depart the twisted, fractured metal sculpture, no longer strictly spherical, was back on the cracked stone pier above the plaza.
As Quanta opened a tunnel back to the Interceptor the last thing he heard before stepping through was the Master muttering in annoyance that he would have to send to the sorcerers of Nova Roma to re-cast the spells that had protected his palace… and they would demand something inconvenient in return…
••••••
Now one-for-two, and hoping to secure the final Bloodstone, the Vanguard wasted no time pointing the Interceptor south towards Antarctica and the Valley of the Bleeding Ice. Located deep within the Sentinel Range of the Ellsworth Mountains, they flew over the South Pole to reach it. The sun was just peeking over the horizon to begin the brief, two-hour “day” of the the Antarctic winter when the heroes descended into the remote, hidden valley.
It was a land that seemed somehow removed from the passage of time. Barren, icy scree and somehow liquid pools of black water covered parts of the valley floor, while imposing glacial cliffs climbed the rocky mountain slopes. Thick, red brine stains streaked the glaciers around the valley, millions-of-years-old deposits of saltwater oozing from cracks in the ice and casting an ominous flash of color over the otherwise monochromatic setting. The only evidence of Man, or at least of sentient beings, was a weather-battered stone archway, carved in eerie, alien glyphs, peeking out from one of the glacial walls.
Landing as close as was safe to the lone opening, the Vanguard still had a hike of several hundred yards in the bone-chilling Antarctic cold to reach their goal. Of course only Artemis and Quanta were even slightly affected by the temperature, the others being entirely protected by either their inherent powers, technology, or magic. Still, everyone grateful to step out of the bleak, strangely oppressive atmosphere of the valley, and its relentless winds, into what appeared to be a large antechamber carved from living ice.
A strange bluish-green light seemed to seep from the ice walls and floor, as well as from the jagged ceiling some 5 meters overhead. Strange runes and arcane circles of various sizes were carved into the floor, and the only object in the space was a short octagonal pillar near the back wall, its concave top containing a large transparent gemstone of many facets.
“What the hell is this place? Or what was it, I guess is the better question?” Quanta wondered, as Scion scanned the walls for hidden doors and Chilz used his ice sense to do the same.
“Whatever function these buried ruins once served, no really knows, so far as I’ve ever heard,” Artemis said. “Although they’re believed to be at least twenty thousand years old, they were only “discovered” in the 19th century. The Victorian explorers of the day referred to them as the “temple,” and the name stuck.”
“They thought this one room rated as a temple?” the Blue Flame laughed. “A shrine, maybe, but temple seems pretty grand.”
“No,” Scion said. “There’s a whole series of chambers, according to what little literature I could find online after Sabra told us where we were headed. There’s a trick to getting in, apparently, but not one I came across in my search. And I’m not detecting any mechanical or electronic doors, or even mechanisms… as far as I can tell, these walls are solid ice, within a framework of native stone.”
“Yeah, I’m not detecting anything but ice and stone either,” Chilz agreed. “And iron oxides, I think – those red streaks in the ice. I’m not sure how safe it would be for me to try and ice-walk through these walls, I’m afraid they might cut me to ribbons… I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
“There is magic at work here,” Totem said in a distracted voice, clearly concentrating on something beyond the others’ perceptions. “It is not a form I am familiar with, specifically, but there are fundamentals that all magic must follow…”
“Maybe we should all stand around in each of these magic circles on the floor,” Quanta offered dryly. “Then we can all chant the magic words and a door will open.”
“Actually, I think it’s much simpler than that,” Totem said, missing or just ignoring the gibe. “I’m sensing blood magic worked into the power lines here, and they all seem focused on that pillar with the gem atop it.”
Scion, who was closest, stepped up to the pillar and tried to lift the gem from its pedestal, but it seemed welded in place. “Blood magic, eh? I suppose I can spare a drop, if you really think it will do the trick.” He glanced back at Totem, who nodded slowly.
“Yes, I am reasonably sure that will have an effect,” the shaman agreed.
“An effect?” Chilz said dubiously. “Maybe we should be careful with this…”
“I agree,” Scion said. “Chilz, can you erect a nice thick ice shield around me and the pillar? That will protect the rest of you if something… explosive… happens, and my armor should protect me.”
“No problem, boss!” Chilz gestured toward his teammate and a foot thick wall of ice grew rapidly up from the frozen floor, arcing from wall-to-wall and screening Scion and the gemstone plinth from the rest of the chamber. Once it was in place, Scion retracted his left glove and pricked his thumb with a needle extruded from the index finger of his right glove. Squeezing, he let a large drop of blood fall directly onto the embedded stone.
Through the wavy, translucent wall of ice the rest of the Vanguard saw his shape step back as the transparent gem suddenly became infused with a blood-red light. The light spread quickly down the lines etched into the pillar, and from there raced out along the floor, following the shapes of the glyphs, symbols and circles carved there. In seconds every carved channel in the room glowed with the ruby light, and several cracks appeared in the wall on the right side of the chamber.
The cracks outlined the shape of a large door, and slowly the two leaves of the portal receded into the walls to either side, revealing six broad steps down into a wide, tall hallway. The ruby light flowed down narrow carved cutters to either side of the stairs and down the hallway, racing ahead to drop down a longer light of stairs six meters ahead.
Chilz sublimated his ice wall around Scion and he and the armored hero lead the team down the stairs and along the eerie hallway, whose proportions seemed subtly inhuman in both scale and design. The stairs, also slightly off to human sensibilities, too wide and shallow, dropped them down at least seven meters, where the corridor continued before ending in a blank wall ten meters on, where the twin lines of ruby light had outlined the shape of another door.
Nothing happened as they approached the door, however, until Chilz reached out to lay a hand on the icy barrier. At his touch the red light flared and the outline became an actual door, which slid aside into the walls, revealing a circular, domed chamber ten meters in diameter. In the center of the room another circle of lines and glyphs was carved, and the ruby light began to flow from the door into the grooves… where it stopped, as if waiting.
“I think we’re expected to take some action at this point, to continue,” Totem said. “I’m just not sure what that action should be.”
Everyone studied the strange marking and the unsettling red-streaked ice walls around them, looking for a clue, but it was Chilz who figured it out.
“I can see into the ice itself, and there seems to be a pit beneath this room… I think if we screw up here, the room will try and drop us into it. But I can also see the pattern of touches to the various glyphs in that circle. Given our position here at the door, I think I can figure out the logical sequence.”
As he touched several of the carved symbols in quick succession, each flared, and when the last one had died down a doorway on the left side of the room opened. Another corridor, identical to the one they’d just left, led onward and downward.
The pattern was the same as the corridors and rooms spiraled around and down, apparently spiraling to some central space deep beneath the Antarctic ice and stone. The puzzles in the next three chambers proved relatively easy to solve, with Totem and Scion jointly figuring out the second one, Quanta providing the needed insight for the third, and Scion solving the fourth.
But in the fifth chamber, they ran into trouble. There were no obvious signs to lead them to a solution, and there was apparently a time limit… 137 seconds after setting foot in the room the eerie blue-green light, which had so far illuminated every chamber and hallway, vanished, leaving only the faint red light of the blood sigils to hold back total darkness. The door behind them snapped back into place and vanished, becoming a solid ice wall again.
Then a black light began to grow, radiating out from the center of the room to quickly engulf the entire group…
It was a beautiful late spring day in Astoria as Jonny stepped up to bat for the first time this softball season. As he swung the bat, warming up, the announcer’s voice rang about across the stands. Suddenly Jonny’s blood ran cold as he recognized the voice of his nasty stepsister, Tiffany. How the hell had she gotten into the announcer’s booth? And what did she–
“Now up to bat, young Jonny Osaka, the pathetic bastard offspring of a teenage busboy at that greasy Japanese restaurant, Little Osaka,” Tiffany’s shrill voice practically radiated malice and glee as the crowd tittered uncertainly.
Looking over at the stands, Jonny saw his father, a pimply faced Japanese kid with lank, black hair, a whisp of a mustache on his upper lip, and a wide grin full of oversized teeth. He was dressed in his busboy uniform of black slacks and white shirt, and he waved enthusiastically at Jonny.
“Can you believe this loser, once thought to be a promising up-and-comer, tried to claim that the Steel Shogun was his father? What a joke, no wonder the man had Jonny’s mother killed!” And there in the strands, several rows back from Jonny’s father, sat the frowning Steel Shogun, surrounded my grim looking men in black suits and sunglasses.
Jonny felt the flush rising in his face as the crowd’s titters turned to guffaws of outright laughter. The coach was motioning him over, away from the plate. “We can’t have the sleazy bastard of a cheating whore on our team kid,” the older man yelled. “Get outta here, you loser wannabe!”
Dropping his bat, Jonny began to back away, and the laughter of the crowd turned to jeers and began to get hostile… no, this was wrong… Tiffany had embarrassed him in high school, yes, but that was years ago… he was… he was something else now, not in high school… and his mother no…
He couldn’t even bring himself to think the word, and the rage as he thought about the accusation tripped something deep inside him. With a sudden roar of power, Jonny burst into blue fire, rising into the air triumphantly. He may not know for sure who his father was, but he knew who he was – the Blue Flame, a founding member of the Vanguard, and a superhero!
Suddenly the nightmare popped like a soap bubble, and Jonny was back in the Ice Temple…
John looked up from the lab table, where the pieces of his latest invention were laid out, as his grandfather stepped into the laboratory/prison. Compared to JJ’s own emaciated figure, his Atlantean grandfather was a robust and muscular presence, and his overpowering presence dominated the room.
“So, grandson, what new marvel do you have for Us today?” The old man sneered at his manacled slave-technician, and tapped the bronze chest plate he wore. “Nothing to match this marvels armor I took from you, after your foolish rebellion, I’m sure.”
His grandfather had used John’s advanced nanite-and-magic infused armor to make himself Emperor of Atlantis, after killing his human grandfather, and had then enslaved him, using the threat of his mother’s life to keep JJ in line and producing.
Over the years since, John had been forced to create new technologies for the evil old man, technologies he had used to expand his empire to the surface world, killing and enslaving millions… the weight of his despair was crushing…
But wait, how could the old man be alive? Hadn’t he killed him… more than 60 years ago? And his mother… she had died already, at the old man’s own hands… no, this was wrong! It wasn’t real! He was no slave! He was Captain John Jacob Astor VIII — he was SCION, of the Vanguard!
The nightmare wavered and vanished, and Scion was once agin standing in the ruined Antarctic Ice Temple…
Chuck was alone in the blinding snowstorm, struggling to move forward… he had to find shelter, he was freezing to death… why had he ever come on this mountain-climbing trip? Oh, yeah, had had wanted to make name for himself, to leave some mark on the world, proof that Chuck Chisolm had been there.
But now he was going to die, alone and unremembered… the cold was quickly sapping his energy, and he felt a warm lethargy begin to creep over him… even his mother wouldn’t bother to remember her loser son, who’d froze himself to death on a stupid mountainside…
Froze himself… why did that strike a chord deep within him? How could he be freezing to death? He was… he was someone, he knew that… ice and snow shouldn’t bother him, right? Not even an Arctic chill should —
CHILZ! He was Chilz, superhero extrodinaire and member of the freakin’ Vanguard! And this was all bullshit… he reached deep inside himself, and touched the frozen gem hidden at his core –
The deathly cold faded away, the snowstorm with it, and Chilz was back in the Ice Temple in the Antarctic…
Kúng stood once again on the shores of his beloved island of Sgang Gwaay Llanagaay… but a terrible sense of foreboding hung over him like a shroud. He knew, with dream-like certainty, what he would find as he pushed through the trees to his village…
Yes, there they were, all of his people, the Elders, the men, women, even the children — all corpses, scattered abut the burning ruins of their homes. The bodies were emaciated, almost mummified, as if the very life essence had been sucked out of them…
And Kúng knew it was all his fault! He had left them behind, had gone out into the Outer World, where he had abandoned his quest… while he played at being a hero, his people had perished, waiting for him to return… even the poor children had been —
Wait, something wasn’t right… there were no children on Sgang Gwaay Llanagaay… he had been the last child born on the island, in fact… that was one of the reasons they had sent him into the Outer World… and this nightmare seemed familiar, somehow… as if he had lived it before…
With that realization the dead village wavered and vanished, leaving Totem once again standing in the ancient Ice Temple, surrounded by his friends…
Kyle sat in the overstuffed wingback chair, staring out the window at the bleak winter cityscape, nursing his third beer, and brooding over the failure that was his life…
From the family fortune lost in pursuit of realizing his grandmother’s human-enhancing formula, to his failure to even come close to achieving that goal, to being forced to drop out of graduate school so close to reaching his doctorate, to the the shame of having his Olympic fencing medals stripped from him when the secret of his illegal enhancements came to light… and now Epiphany was walking out of his life forever.
She stood at the door to his one bedroom walk-up flat, her hand on the knob. “I’m sorry it’s come to this Kyle, but you have no one to blame but yourself — if only you were the man you could’ve been, the man I needed, we might have stood a chance…”
And then she was gone, out of his life forever… his desolate, loser life… she was — wait, wasn’t she in prison? And hadn’t he helped put her there, as much as it had hurt? The beer dropped from his hand and gurgled out onto the cheap carpet… and… and how could he have been stripped of his Olympic wins for illegal enhancements if he’d never succeeded in perfection his grandmother’s formula?
None of this made any sense! He stumbled to his feet, clutching his head… No, he wasn’t a loser… he was… he was… the epiphany came like a blinding light — he was QUANTA, a founding member of the Vanguard and master of the quantum realm underlying all of reality!
The cheap apartment around him shattered like a struck mirror, the shards falling away to leave Quanta stand-in in the hidden Ice Temple once more… although the sense of failure and despair still clung to him, like maple syrup on his fingers after pancakes…
It was night and Artemis stood in the large semi-circular carriage way in front of Tulip Hill Hall, wearing only her night shift. She was drenched in blood so dark it was almost black, the whites of her wide-open eyes the only color in her staring face.
Before her loomed the plantation’s great oak tree, it’s crown engulfed in flames that burned but seemed not to consume, casting shifting shadows, twisting and writhing, all around her… shadows cast by the branches… and by the bodies hanging from nooses from every one…Old Toby… Young Toby… Miss Cassie… her mother Elizabeth… Carlton Ewes, the first man she’d killed, slitting his throat from behind as he laughed at her dead… all the other men from that terrible night… and all the other men, and women, she’d killed over the years… so many bodies, more than the tree could possibly hold, and yet they hung there, spiraling outward into infinity… and she felt they weight of each soul, crushing her own… and the ultimate futility of it all…for, whatever she did, however many she slew, the evil night went on and on, darkness forever…
And then she saw the bodies of her friends hanging lifeless in the distant reaches of that infinite tree of death… John, Kyle, Jonny, Gideon, Chuck, Cooper, and so many others… all dead because of her… she screamed…
As the other’s stood around anxiously, Totem and Quanta tried to snap Artemis out of her deep fugue state. The other members of the Vanguard had come out of their own nightmare visions on their own, if some with difficulty. But Artemis seemed trapped in whatever nightmare scenario was playing out in her head.
“My quantum healing isn’t doing shit,” Quanta growled, pulling his hand back from where he’d laid it on Artemis’ forehead. “Not surprising, I guess — it’s physical problems I can heal, sometimes, not psychic trauma. Totem…?”
“My own psychic touch doesn’t seem to be reaching her,” the shaman said frowning. “ But I can see the mystic threads from that dark light still flowing from the room’s sigils and insinuating themselves into her brain… perhaps if I sever them at the root…”
A golden light flared from his hands, cutting the dark strands, and Artemis jerked spasmodically, body gone suddenly rigid, and her eyes flew open as she gasped out “No! So many…” Then she slumped back in Quanta’s arms, dazed, but once more aware of her surroundings. After a few minutes
As soon as her teammates helped her back to her feet a minute later Artemis pulled away, clearly still shaken by whatever the room had pulled from her deep psyche. Her faint smile was more of a grimace as she assured them she was alright. “I just need a moment to get myself together… let’s just keep moving, we don’t have time to waste. I’ll be fine.”
Reluctantly the others agreed, and they moved through the now open exit from the nightmare chamber into the by now familiar corridor beyond. Totem solved the next room’s puzzle with his skill in magic, and that seemed to satisfy whatever powers governed the spiral maze; subsequent rooms present no further puzzles or traps, and all doors opened as the lines of red light touched them.
After a dozen chambers, the downward spiral of the so-called “temple” ended in a short corridor at the far end of which stood a massive door of stone, not ice. It was easily four meters wide and five meters tall. No markings were visible on the dark granite, no seams or cracks – until Chilz laid a hand on the smooth stone. Then a horizontal crack appeared in the door, halfway between floor and ceiling. It widened quickly as the two halves moved apart with a grinding rumble of stone-on-stone, the bottom half sinking into the floor , the top half retracting into the ceiling.
“Well it’s about time —“ Fumée began, whirling around to face the door. The expression on her translucent face when she realized it wasn’t her teammates striding into the room was priceless, Chilz thought. She stood in the center of a large circular chamber, more than 15 meters across, with a domed roof of blue ice glowing 20 meters overhead. A meter tall crystal pillar stood in the center of the room, and the last Bloodstone floated in the air near the villain’s insubstantial hand of smoke and vapor.
“Merde!” Without waiting to hear what her enemies might have to say, Fumée instantly began to raise a thick white smoke in the room, which quickly obscured both herself and the gemstone. Her muttered cursing in French seemed to come from everywhere at once, both muted and scattered by the swirling fumes.
Quanta immediately realized that she would be trying to escape with her prize before all else, and he threw up a solid wall of quantum matter to seal off the doorway. The French imprecations redoubled in fury and volume. “Let me out, you ignorant American swine! This is none of your affair, why must you interfere with my only chance to get back my body? My LIFE!”
“Gisele, I know you hate what you’ve become, and grieve for all that you’ve lost,” Artemis called out through the thickening mists. She had somewhat recovered from her earlier ordeal, but the thought of another body on her ledger dismayed her. She was determined to save this woman.
“But this alliance with the Succubus is not the way to get your life back… she’s insane, and it can only lead to disaster, not just for the world but for you and your friends. Please, stand down and I promise, we will find a way to restore your human form.”
“Do you take me for a fool?” Fumeé’s sneering voice echoed around the shrouded chamber. “I shall not fall for your pathetic lies.”
Quanta whipped around suddenly, for her last sentence had come from directly behind him. Although not as affected as Artemis, he was still feeling the effects of his own nightmare, and it slowed him. Before he could react, her human-like form had collapsed into a denser ball of smoke, which engulfed his head. He staggered back against his quantum barrier, choking and gasping… while his quantum shell was good at protecting him from most physical damage, he still needed to breath, and the villain’s vapors were filling his lungs.
In concentrating her suffocating attack on the hero who had blocked her escape, Fumeé let her attention wander a bit from her enshrouding mists, and they began to thin. Chilz was the first to notice his teammate clawing at the dense white cloud of smoke enveloping his head, just as Quanta collapsed to his knees. Realizing what was happening, Chilz summoned a Polar Vortex, focusing the concentrated, freezing air on Quanta and the their insubstantial enemy — unprepared, Fumeé was blasted away from her victim, her form temporarily dissipating into the surrounding vapor.
“Mademoiselle Auclair, please… stop and listen to me,” Artemis tried again to get through to the half-mad woman, while Scion scanned the room with his sensors, trying to find some way to pinpoint her actual location. “We have some of the greatest scientific and magical minds in the world in this room, and we have connections with many others around the world. We can help you!
“You’re not the only one to undergo an uncanny transformation, Gisele. Look at Chilz… or better, consider the Blue Flame. When he first gained his powers he was stuck in his plasma form, as insubstantial as you are. For a time he feared he would never be human again. But with our help he found a way to trigger the change, to become human again.”
To emphasize her point, Jonny dropped down and allowed his body to revert to its human form. A safe enough tactic, he thought, given that he could just re-ignite if she tried that suffocation shit with him – his plasma form didn’t need to breath. Nor did Chilz, who also reverted to his human body, figuring it couldn’t hurt Artemis’ argument, and it might help.
Quanta, however, remained vulnerable and, as the one who continued to obstacle her passage, remained Fumeé’s target. As the Blue Flame added his own arguments to Artemis’, the villain again coalesced her substance around Quanta’s head, and by the time Chilz’ had resumed his ice form his attacks were unable to dislodge her.
Quanta collapsed to the ground, unconscious, after a moment of struggle. Fumeé resumed her human-like form between his unconscious body and the blocked doorway. But the silvery mass refused to dissolve, despite the incapacitation of its creator, and in a fury she tried to pound on it, her fists wisping away against its impenetrable surface like the vapor they were. The Bloodstone orbited her head with increasing speed as her agitation increased.
“Ha! Got her,” Scion muttered triumphantly. Even without a corporeal form she still somehow had brainwaves, which his sensors at last locked onto, if only sporadically. While she stood distracted in her fury at Quanta’s barrier, the armored hero blasted her with his Brain Tickler effect. She reeled away, clearly stunned, her smoke form wavering and fraying at the edges. The Bloodstone dropped to the granite floor with several sharp ‘tinks’ as it bounced away.
Totem knelt down next to Quanta and began mouth-to-mouth, while Jonny dove for the skittering red gemstone. But just as his still-human hand came down on it, the stone shot out of his grasp, flying back into the smoky clutches of Fumeé. By her appearance and jerky motions she was still somewhat stunned from Scion’s attack, and she quickly faded back into the mists, which once again thickened around the room.
“Gisele, please stop this pointless fight and let us help you,” Artemis said, with increasing urgency. “At least let us try—“
“Gisele is gone, foolish woman, only Fumeé remains. And if the Magus Prime himself could not lift this curse, why should I believe you can?” Fumeé’s voice still held a certain Gallic contempt, but to Artemis’ ear she suddenly seemed less certain. “No. No, only the Succubus has the power… or she will, when she has all of the Bloodstones and completes her ritual.”
“But the Arkanos was able to lift your curse, wasn’t he?” Artemis countered quickly. “Only, it would have meant losing your meta-abilities, and your teammates refused to give up their power, didn’t they? The men, who still had physical forms, however twisted, made the decision for you, didn’t they? Men who didn’t know or really care about the hell you suffer in every moment, with no corporeal body… they decided for you, didn’t they?
“But they’re not here now, Gisele. This time the decision is yours alone to make. And in any case, the Succubus won’t have all of the Bloodstones for her ritual – we stopped Antoine in Kurunda, and that stone is safely hidden away now. Even if you manage to escape us, with this stone, are you sure the Succubus will still have the power to give you back your body? Are you certain she even intends to try, once she has what she wants?”
There was silence from the swirling fog for several long minutes. Then the vapors began to dissipate, and the translucent form of Fumeé stepped forward. The Bloodstone floated in her insubstantial hand.
“It seems I have no choice,” she sighed. “Since I cannot escape this chamber, even with the one who blocks my way unconscious, and I have no hope of defeating all of you, I suppose I must now take my chances, and trust that you can truly do as you say. I have certainly had my doubts about that harlot Succubus, so… let us see if you keep your word, hero.”
The Bloodstone floated forward towards Artemis, who reached out her hand. The gem dropped into her open palm as the last of the mists vanished and Fumeé dropped her head in resignation. Artemis slipped the stone into a pouch at her belt and nodded solemnly at the Frenchwoman.
Once Totem had a woozy Quanta back on his feet, his teammate waved a hand and his barrier dissolved back into the quantum foam underlying reality. With no practical way to restrain their former opponent, the Vanguard had to simply trust Fumeé not to try anything funny as they made their way back up the spiral of corridors and rooms to the surface.
As they neared the antechamber and the final exit, however, Fumeé slowed and then stopped, looking suddenly uncertain. The group stopped and Artemis looked at her inquiringly.
“It is the Succubus,” Fumeé explained. “She claimed that her scrying magics could not penetrate the mystic aura of this place, which I suppose is why she did not know I had become trapped, after taking the Bloodstone. But once I step outside, I greatly fear she will know I have betrayed her. And her reach is long…”
“Actually, I’ve been giving that some thought,” Totem said. “After our previous experiences with your team, I’ve been working on a spell that should shield you from both her scrying and her teleportation spells. I plan to cast it in the antechamber, just before we step outside this structure’s protection.”
Fumeé looked dubious, but Artemis was clearly pleased. “I think it would be wise to get both Ms. Auclair and the Bloodstone to somewhere there’s minimal chance of the Succubus finding them, at least any time soon. If your spell can shield us from her spying, even for a few minutes, once we step outside I’l shadow-walk them both back to the Pyramid. Once both are secure I’ll rejoin you all.”
It took only a few minutes for Totem to cast his ritual scrying shield, but there was a tense moment when the group stepped out of the Ice Temple and into the Antarctic dusk. Gisele, in particular, seemed wound tighter than a spring, waiting for the Succubus to teleport her away in a flash of fire and brimstone. But nothing happened, and after a minute or two she visibly relaxed. She offered no objection when Artemis wrapped her cloak around them both and stepped back into the shadows of the cliff… where they vanished.
By the time the team had trekked through the bitter cold and growing dark back to the Interceptor Artemis was waiting for them inside. “The Bloodstone is secure in the shielded vault, although well separated from the other one. I’m not taking any chances, having two of the damn things in such close proximity. Fumeé is in an equally secure cell on the detention level… she was not happy about that, but she wasn’t surprised, either. I think we won’t have a serious problem with her unless we fail to keep our promise to cure her.”
“Well, that’s a problem for tomorrow,” Scion said, settling into the pilots seat and flipping switches in preparation for take-off. “The question now is, where do we go next? The Succubus has three of the five Bloodstones… is that enough for whatever she pains? And if so, where is she? How do we find her? Totem, do you —“
Totem held up a hand to forestall his teammate’s question as a deep thrumming sound started coming from the small hand mirror that hung from his belt – Sabra’s scrying mirror, and their connection to her in the Dark World. Pulling it out and gazing into it, he saw his reflection waver, to be quickly replaced by his friend’s face.
“Cooper, finally!” She cried, the hint of annoyance in her voice carrying throughout the cabin. “I’ve been trying to reach you for hours now. I’ve got vital news.”
“Sorry Atara, we’ve been inside that Antarctic Ice Temple of yours, and apparently scrying doesn’t work in there. Fortunately, I suppose, or we’d have lost another of the Bloodstones to the Succubus before we’d even arrived. But at least we’ve kept two of the five out of her hands.”
“Ah, of course, I should have realized,” Sabra grimaced, her annoyance turned on herself. “Good job, saving that last Bloodstone! I apologize for being so short with you just now, but I’ve learned some new information about what the Succubus is up to, and time is of the essence, I fear.
“In researching ritual sites associated with the Voracious, I found references to a place called the Maw of the Voracious. It’s a hidden volcano in the Middle East, once used by an ancient Cult of the Devourer as an arcane furnace — one that can actually destroy magic artifacts. I think the Succubus is planning to use this Maw to destroy the Bloodstones!”
“Isn’t that a good thing?” Jonny asked, peering over Totem’s shoulder into the mirror. “If they’re destroyed, at least no one else could use them again, right?”
“Sure, it might sound good at first,” Sabra replied. “But all that magical energy needs to go somewhere. Even just released into the Earth’s arcanosphere, that much raw power would cause chaos around the globe. Which would be bad, yes, but manageable; I doubt even a demonic entity like the Succubus would go to all this effort just for some minor magical mayhem, however much they love chaos.
“No, she has something else in mind. There’s a very particular celestial convergence coming up in just a few hours…and I’m betting she is planning on using that cosmic event to channel all the power that will flow out of the stones when they’re destroyed straight into herself. And that kind of power boost might be enough to allow her to actually seize the mantle of Magus Prime for herself, giving her dominion over all of Earth’s magic.”
“But as Scion was just pointing out, she only has three of the Bloodstones,” Totem observed. “Can she still perform this ritual without all five?”
“That’s the one thing that gives me some hope, actually,” Sabra agreed. “The ritual is pentagrammal in nature, and very specifically requires five major arcane power sources to be sacrificed, to channel the power into the invoker. What worries me is, what other magical artifacts, of sufficient power, might she already have… and be willing to sacrifice?”
“Don’t each of the Fatal Four contain the mystic gem that transformed them contained within their bodies, such as they are?” Artemis asked. “And would they not qualify as suitable arcane artifacts to meet the ritual’s requirements, assuming she could extract them?”
Sabra’s image in the mirror looked momentarily blank, and then she began to curse, quite colorfully. Totem was slightly taken aback, as he’d never heard her utter more than the occasional “damn” before, in all the time he’d known her.
“Yes, in a manner of speaking,” she said, regaining her composure. “And I’m an idiot for not realizing it sooner. The elemental gems are not physically present within the Fatal Four, not exactly – their material form transmuted into pure arcane energy when they tranformed the five mercenaries, and it infuses their current forms still. In fact, that was the method that Roland devised to free them from the gems’ curse – force the stones to return to their physical forms, which would have returned the mercenaries to their human forms as well.
“The Succubus doesn’t actually need to extract the stones from their hosts — all that arcane power remains contained within the bodies of the the Fatal Four… if she simply tosses one or more of them into the Maw, it would be the same as throwing in a physical gem. While they may not be quite as powerful as the Bloodstones, those cursed elemental gems are quite powerful enough, I fear.
“There is no time to waste! The celestial convergence I spoke of, which is required for the ritual to succeed, is now less than an hour away. You have to stop that ritual from being completed!”
“You said this “Maw” is in the Middle East somewhere?” Scion called from the cockpit, where he’d finished the start-up routine. “There’s no way in hell we can get there from Antarctica in time, not even if we go sub-orbital.”
“Which is why I plan to open a portal for you, despite the terrible toll such a spell will likely take on me, casting it as I must from my Dark World,” Sabra replied grimly. “The site of the Maw is mystically shielded, in any case – without my help it is unlikely that you would find it at all, never mind in time. Get your plane in the air, Scion, and I will open a mystical gateway that will take you directly where you need to be…”
••••••
The heat hit the Vanguard like a blast furnace as they stepped out of the Interceptor onto the burning sands of the deep Arabian Dessert, somewhere in Saudi Arabia. Only the Blue Flame was entirely unaffected by the temperature, while Chilz did his best to keep a bubble of relatively cool air around his teammates as they made their way up the steep slope of basalt rising abruptly from the sand a hundred meters away.
Despite Chilz’ efforts, most of the heroes were sweating heavily by the time they stepped out on a broad shelf of black basalt overlooking a vast pit of roiling molten rock at least 60 meters across. The air above the natural cauldron shimmered with heat, and rising tendrils of volcanic gases hazed the air further. Narrow branches of solidified rock stretched out from the surrounding basalt cliff faces to criss-cross the seething magma pool, many of them meeting and holding in place a large, multi-tiered platform of black stone positioned over the center of the pit.
The three remaining members of the Fatal Four were spaced variously along the paths of twisted stone, facing a fourth figure who stood defiantly atop the massive central platform. This was a tall, gorgeous woman with long, flaming red hair, dressed in a black corset and thigh-high boots, with demonic red-black wings that somehow, Quanta thought, managed to look incredible sexy… and the small horns which sprouted from her forehead only added to the effect. The Succubus, without a doubt… and she held a Bloodstone in one of her perfectly manicured hands.
Seeing the heroes on the cliff above, she smiled and waved. “Welcome to the Maw of the Voracious, my would-be adversaries” she called. “You’re just in time for dinner.” She laughed out loud then, a very wicked sound, and hurled the Bloodstone away from her. It arced out in a brilliant red streak, down into the molten stone — there was a flare of crimson light as it vanished. A sudden coruscation of energy shot back up along the same arc, slamming into and enveloping the Succubus. Her back arched as if in ecstasy (or pain… or maybe both… it was hard to be sure) as the energy flowed into her. The crimson aura slowly faded away as she absorbed the power…
“Yes! I can feel the raw power coursing through me,” she laughed, the most lustful sound any of the heroes had ever heard. “And this is just a taste of the banquet to come!”
She gestured at the stone around her, and from it six twisted shapes began to rise. In seconds they had become terrifying gargoyles of shiny black basalt, a blood-red light glowing in the deep sockets of their eyes. The size of small ponies, their stone wings unfurled with the sound of cracking stone as the creatures took up protective positions around their mistress.
With all eyes locked on the Succubus, Cindre took the opportunity to rise slowly into the air, putting himself in a position to unleash a blast of lethal heat at the gathered heroes. But the Blue Flame was airborne himself in an instant. He reached out and absorbed the blast, causing his own blue-white light to flare all the brighter.
Totem took advantage of Cindre’s attack to attempt to bind the Succubus with his spell of the Azure Bonds. But as the shimmering blue bands tightened around her the demoness shrugged, almost casually, and they shattered into a thousand sparking shards and quickly vanished. With a smirk she reached into a pouch at her waist and pulled out a second Bloodstone, holding it up for all to see.
The Blue Flame immediately darted downward, dropping below the central platform to position himself to catch the stone before it could hit the lava. Unfortunately, the move was obvious to the Succubus, and at an angry gesture two of her gargoyles leapt into the air. In seconds they were on the hero, and even in his plasma form he felt their claws… damn, he hated magic!
As the stone beasts were mauling the Blue Flame, Chilz focused his elemental energy, already straining in the overpowering heat of dessert and volcano, into a ram of ice aimed straight at the incredibly sensual woman below him. And he couldn’t help but think about the obvious symbolism of his steel-hard ice ram penetrating her hot, sexy — the thought was cut short as the ice ram turned to steam several meters before it could make contact. Chilz shook his head and struggled to get his mind back in the game… and out of the gutter.
The Blue Flame, meanwhile, had had enough of the gargoyles. They seemed immune to his natural heat aura, although plasma blasts did seem able to chip away at them. Unfortunately, trying to keep one eye on the Succubus and the Bloodstone she held, and staying in a position to catch it if she threw it, severely hampered his ability to defend himself. Then he recalled an episode of that old Star Trek show he’d recently watched with Chuck, and he had an idea…
Momentarily rising up over the gargoyles, he pointed both hands directly downward and unleashed a tremendous double blast of plasma straight into the magma 25 meters below. As he’d hoped, it had the same effect as the phaser blasts in Star Trek had — the molten rock erupted into a violent, explosive geyser of superheated magma and gas. Both gargoyles were engulfed in the glowing column of lava, disintegrating almost instantly.
Quanta realized what his teammate was trying to do as soon as the kid had moved below the Succubus’ position, and thought it was smart… but he also felt they needed a backup. He focused his concentration, ignoring the distraction of their enemy’s smoking’ hot body, and mentally called into being the most complex quantum matter construct he’d yet attempted. A silvery net of carbon and asbestos shimmered into being ten meters over the surface of the magma pool – strands 2.5 cm thick, spaced 2.5 cm apart, stretched across most of the open space beneath the central platform where the Succubus stood.
And not a moment too soon… as the Blue Flame darted up to get above his attackers, and the molten geyser he created, she saw her opportunity and prepared to throw the second stone into the pit. But at the last second she caught sight of the net blow and realized its purpose. She would not let her enemies take another of her Bloodtones and steal her rightful power. In a fury, turned to glare at the heroes, seeking the one responsible for this insult…
Before she could take any action, however, the armored form of Scion swooped down toward her, a stream of glowing electro-bolts preceding him. With an angry gesture she disintegrated the projectiles before they could touch her, and the hero pulled up and away. But the distraction almost cost her the Bloodstone, as Artemis appeared from the shadows of the lower part of the platform.
The black-cloaked hero vaulted up and over the Succubus, reaching to snatch the gemstone from her hand — and if not for the increased speed and strength the destruction of the first Bloodstone had already imbued the demoness, her ploy might well have succeeded. As it was, the Succubus managed to whirl, duck and lash out with her other hand just in time, and the blow sent Artemis flying. Twisting in midair, she came down in the classic three-point hero landing, cape billowing behind her, before rolling into shadow and vanishing.
Briefly free of heroic distractions, the Succubus realized (as much through the process of elimination as by deduction) that it must be Quanta creating that cursed net. With a snarl of rage, she slipped the Bloodstone back into her belt pouch and unleashed a Soul Blast on the hero. The demonic energy drove him to one knee, momentarily dazed. Another gesture sent two of her remaining gargoyles to savage and tear apart the silvery net below her.
“Chilz!” Quanta gasped out over coms, struggling to keep up with repairing the damage to his net even as the gargoyles inflicted it. Another gargoyle was rising into existence not 10 meters away from him, and that would be one distraction too many, if he planned to maintain the net. “Can you create a transparent ice dome?”
“Transparent? Yes, although it takes a lot more effort and concentration to create. Why—“
“I have to keep my focus on the net I created, to keep her from tossing in another of those damn stones. I need protection!”
“Ah, got it! OK, give me a second…” Chilz focused inwardly, and began the formation of a three meter dome of ice over his friend, struggling to keep it as clear and free from impurities as possible. If I was capable of it, he thought, I’d sure be sweating right now…
“I hope that’s enough,” he called out as the last of the ice flowed together at the dome’s apex, leaving just a small hole for air exchange.
“Hope is the bedrock of heroes, my friend,” Quanta replied distractedly. “It is the stage upon which our heroic feats are performed…”
Chilz wondered briefly if his friend had suffered a brain injury with that mystical blast — it had looked nasty, all seething red and black energy — but an attacking gargoyle diverted his thoughts, and he impaled the creature on a large ice spike, straight through the torso.
Totem had engaged with Cindre after the villain’s first attempt to blast the team, casting his spell of the Sleeping Mists over the hovering Frenchman. But the man’s terrible aura of intense heat seemed to vaporize the magical droplets before they could touch him. Cindre seemed to realize he’d been under attack though, and from which quarter, as he unleashed another heat blast directly at Totem.
The shaman managed to defect most of the lethal heat away from himself with a hastily erected mystic shield, but was momentarily dazed and disoriented by the attack. He quickly tried to bind Cindre with another casting of the Azure Bonds, but his focus was fractured and confused, and the villain was easily able to burn them away before they could properly solidify.
Scion, meanwhile, had flown on from his initial bombardment of the Succubus to launch a massive attack on Zirkon, strafing the narrow basalt arch on which the massive mercenary stood. The initial pass cracked and damaged the stone bridge, but failed to shatter it completely.
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Totem called over the comms, dodging another blast from Cindre. “If we’re correct about the elemental stones within these mercenaries, than letting one of them fall into the magma would be just as bad as letting the Succubus toss in another Bloodstone.”
“Good point, Totem,” Scion acknowledged. “I’ll change tactics—“
He was cut off as he was suddenly engulfed in a thick stream of steaming mud, which battered at his armor and send him tumbling. It only took a moment for him to regain control, however, and as he turned to look for his attacker he saw that Totem had been hit by the area attack as well, and was down, clearly stunned. Boue was on another of the narrow basalt bridges, and so in no position to make an immediate direct follow-up attack on his teammate, but Scion wasn’t going to take any chances until Totem was back on his feet.
As he banked to focus his attention on Mudslide, however, he was buffeted by another attack. Zirkon, seeing him knocked back by his leader’s mud attack had slammed his massive hands together to create a tremendous shockwave blast aimed at the armored hero. The hit managed to send Scion tumbling again, ringing his bell considerably harder than Mudslide had. It also had the effect of returning the hero’s attention to Zirkon…
The Succubus, meanwhile, had realized that Quanta was continuing to stymie her attempts to destroy the next Bloodstone, despite her attack. He was apparently tougher than he looked. After quickly summoning up another batch of basalt gargoyles, which began to form in spots all around the pit, she turned her fury fully on the silvery hero. Calling upon her newfound energies, she lashed out with her ability to Cloud the Mind, seeking to weaken his will and fill him with an uncontrollable lust.
“Just try and focus on your damn net now, hero!” she crowed as he saw him stiffen and his eyes go wide.
Unfortunately for the Succubus, her spell succeeded beyond her wildest expectations. Overpowered by the chaotic new power gained in the consumption of the first Bloodstone, the spell not only filled Quanta with an all consuming lust, but with an obsessive and irresistible drive to act on that emotion. Perhaps with a normal human, this would not have mattered… what, after all, could a mere mortal do to impose his sudden, overwhelming desires on a demoness?
But Quanta was not a mere mortal. He was an extremely powerful meta-human who commanded the very building blocks of reality itself, and the spell had not so much sapped his will as focused it, with laser-like intensity, on a single goal: to possess the object of his desire, body and soul. Unusually well equipped to obtain that goal, Quanta leapt into action.
Shattering Chilz’ ice dome, he flew at tremendous speed straight for the warm, heaving bosom of the woman he desired above all others. A speed great enough, fortunately, that none of his teammates were able see the answer to what would happen with his quantum shell if he got an erection as Quanta. Too fast as well for the Succubus to do more than widen her eyes in surprise as he slammed into her, his arms wrapping around her and crushing her body to his, his hands twisted in her hair, pulling her face toward him as his lips sought hers, his hips grinding himself into her…
Before anyone, including the demoness, could react, Quanta had erected a shimmering Quantum Matter Love Cocoon® around the two of them, cutting them off from the rest of the world. It had all happened so fast, few of his teammates were quite sure what was going on, except perhaps for Artemis and Totem.
Boue had been attempting to engulf Artemis in his mud form on the far side of the pit, but on seeing Quanta latch on to the Succubus the hero had dropped him from her attention instantly. She nimbly rolled away from his attack, jabbing two shadow sticks into his neck in passing and stunning him with 50,000 volts. She then vanished into a nearby shadow, to reappear in another shadow on the lower section of the central platform. A graceful leap brought her to the top of the stone island and face-to-face with the silvery cocoon of quantum matter… at which point she was at a loss as to what to do next…
Meanwhile, the Blue Flame and Chilz were continuing to batter the remaining gargoyles out of existence… the Blue Flame blasting them into slag with his plasma blasts, while Chilz power-punched them with his steel-like ice fists, shattering them into rubble.
Scion, still engaged with Zirkon, was half distracted by Quanta’s sudden flight and strange behavior and he took another tumble from the crystal giant’s shockwave attack. Righting himself, he whirled back around and send a powerful Brain Zap into his opponent’s head. Zirkon staggered back, his massive hands clutching at his skull… and stepped over the edge of the narrow basalt bridge.
Scion shot forward so fast he nearly blacked out from the acceleration, his armored hand reaching for Zirkon’s flailing arms… time seemed to slow to molasses… he watched in horror as their fingers just missed… heard the sound of Zirkon’s wind-chime-like wail cut off as he plunged toward the molten maelstrom… the sudden silence…
Scion barely pulled up in time to save himself from suffering the villain’s fate, and as he did a flare of crimson energy erupted from the magma where Zirkon had disappeared. It shot straight up at first, several small tendrils of energy branching off from it as the main coruscating stream arced toward the Succubus… only to splash against the barrier of Quanta’s cocoon.
One of the smaller tendrils of energy brushed against Scion, and his armor briefly glowed a ruddy red before the tendril vanished. The other small tendrils darted off in random directions, vanishing beyond the walls of the caldera in seconds.
The main strand of arcane energy quickly gathered itself back together, a pulsing ball of crimson light hovering over the magma pit. It hesitated, for just a moment, then it too shot away — and straight into Totem, on the central platform with Artemis.
Totem’s body spasmed, head thrown back, spine arching, every muscle gone rigid, his mouth twisted in a silent rictus scream. In seconds the energy was drawn into him, and he collapsed to his hands and knees, gasping for breath. The chaotic power burned within him, and he struggled to contain it, to control it… and as he did, he felt the presence of each of the Avatars he hosted adding a portion of their strength to his own.
After what seemed hours of intense concentration, but was in fact only seconds, Totem rose to his feet, the new power still roiling within him but, for the moment at least, fully under control. As he stood the quantum cocoon surrounding Quanta and the Succubus shattered without warning. Artemis dove aside, barely avoiding the silvery shards that flew off in every direction, while Totem threw up a mystic shield.
In breaching the shell the demoness had managed to shove the amorous Quanta away slightly, but the ensorcelled hero was reaching for her again, apparently oblivious to their sudden audience, still focused on his singular goal.
“Quanta! What the hell is going on?” Artemis growled — and realized she was never going to get the sight of her ferociously aroused teammate out of her head, even if she lived another 150 years. While the villain was clearly taken aback by the hero’s “advances,” Artemis could also see that the Succubus was torn by her own demonic impulses — she was by nature a creature of lust and seduction, after all, and whatever her current goals, she was clearly struggling to keep her body from responding in kind to Quanta’s… efforts.
His gaze fixed on his lady lust, Quanta gestured almost absently, and one of his quantum tunnels opened directly beneath the pair. A look of confusion on her beautiful face, the Succubus’ wings beat frantically, trying to pull away, but Quanta’s lust-amplified strength held her close, and in an instant they had dropped through and were gone.
At that point several things happened at once. Artemis dove through the portal herself, which was beginning to iris closed, just as Cindre swooped up over the lip of the basalt platform and sent a blast of searing heat at Totem. Totem threw up a mystical shield with one hand, and with the other again cast the spell of Azure Bonds on Cindre. This time blue ribbons tightened around the villain, cocooning him from neck to ankles as tightly as a mummy, and he plunged to the rocky surface, hard.
Not giving the elemental mercenary another thought, Totem turned his newly amped power on the closing quantum tunnel, intuitively casting a Spell of Holding. The golden energy flew from his hands and struck Quanta’s shimmering silver portal, forming a ring to hold it open. After a quick survey of the battlefield, and seeing his teammates had things in hand, he leapt through after Artemis…
With the last of the basalt gargoyles destroyed, and no Succubus around to create more, Chilz and the Blue Flame were able to turn their attention to Boue, the last of the Fatal Four still standing. Like everyone else, he’d seen what happened with Zirkon and with the Succubus and Quanta, and he hesitated.
“Give it up, Antoine,” the Blue Flame said, hovering in the air above him. “You saw what happened to Jürgen when he fell into the pit… those gems that give you your powers are no different than the Bloodstones, you realize that, right? And since your hot lady friend needed five powerful artifacts for her ritual, and you guys only managed to retrieve three for her, which two of you do you thing she planned on sacrificing to make up the difference?”
Before Mudslide could respond, Cindre burst the mystic bindings that restrained him, drawing everyone’s attention. With Totem no longer present, the binding spell had weakened enough for the smoldering villain to free himself. He wasted no time on the heroes present, but instead dashed for the still open portal. Scion dove to stop him, but Cindre’s heat aura was too intense for even his armor, forcing the hero to back off.
“I’m going after him,” Scion called over comms. “My sensors show the portal’s terminus is 39.7678 miles due east of here, follow when you can!” Then he was gone as well.
“Feh, Jean-Philip always was a hot-headed fool,” Boue muttered. “If he’s stupid enough to still trust that bitch after all this, he deserves whatever he gets. But enough is enough, I am done here.
“I am leaving. Unless you heroes wish to continue the fight? But no, I suspect you have bigger fish to fry, eh?” He turned and began to scale the nearest cliff, heading for the top of the caldera and the dessert beyond.
“How do you plan to get out of here?” The Blue Flame yelled after him. “You do know we’re in the middle of a freakin’ desert, right?”
“Do not worry about me, boy, I have my methods,” Boue laughed, and vanished over the lip of the caldera.
“Chilz, you’d better go after him, make sure he doesn’t try to steal the Interceptor,” the Blue Flame suggested. “I’ll go through the portal to help the others, OK?”
“Yeah, I suppose we’d better make sure our own ride out of this hell-hole is safe,” Chilz agreed. “Call me if you need me… I think I‘ve had enough lessons to fly the Interceptor 40 miles if I have to.” In fact, he was hoping he’d have to… it would be his first chance to fly that beauty for real…
••••••
When Quanta and the Succubus had dropped through his portal and onto the burning sands of the desert, the demoness had finally managed to break the hero’s hold on her and had gained a little distance by taking to the air. But Quanta didn’t hesitate, flying after her with his amorous monomania still clearly obvious.
Before he could close on her again, however, Artemis’ Shadow-whip lashed out to snare the Succubus by one ankle, yanking her down so that Quanta overshot her. The demoness whipped her leg up, cracking the whip hard and sending Artemis flying. Spinning around to keep track of Quanta, the Succubus was struck full in the back by a mystic bolt from Totem. Staggered, she dropped from the air to slam face-first into the sand.
Where had that minor mystic gotten such power? she wondered, shaking her head to clear it. No matter, she’d deal with him in short order… but first her annoying, silver-plated lover-boy… as yes, there he was, diving down toward her. As flattering, indeed tempting, as she found his lust, there was no time for it now. If he survived her ascension, however…
Her blast of Hellfire struck Quanta in mid-air, wreathing him in crimson flames and hurling him violently backward. He arced down like a comet, trailing flame, to slam into a dune 30 meters away. The Succubus took off, flapping upward hard, and prepared to unleash a finishing blast on the dazed hero when Cindre dropped through the still-open portal and almost collided with her.
As she veered left, he twisted right – and ran straight into the Azure Bonds of Totem. Again. Once more wrapped up like a glowing blue Christmas present the villain slammed into the sand himself, dazed but still cursing violently in French. Before the Succubus could regain her lock on the still groggy Quanta, Scion flashed through the portal, turning in mid-air to fire a Brain Zap into her head at almost point-blank range.
The Succubus reeled back, spiraling once again down to the sands, clutching at her head. For just a moment Jennifer Allman peered in confusion from the Succubus’ eyes, before being pulled back down into her inner darkness with a voiceless wail.
“I’ll kill you all for this indignity,” the demoness shrieked, once again in full control of their shared body, if not her emotions. “You fools have left the Maw unguarded, and soon I will have all the power I need to destroy you all and take control of this world.”
Moving with lightning speed, she scooped up the writhing, bound form of Cindre and, with him dangling from one hand like a rag doll, aimed for the shimmering portal above them — only to meet the Blue Flame coming through from the other side.
Shocked to be on a collision course with the demoness, the Blue Flame reared back and unleashed a double-barreled stream of plasma at her, striking the Succubus full in the chest. She flipped end-over-end in mid-air, and for the last time that day plunged into the sands, trailing blue fire. Cindre’s limp form fell from her grasp and hit the sand hard, bouncing twice before coming to a stop half buried in a dune. Unconscious, his aura began to fuse the sand around him into glass…
The Blue Flame landed next to the unconscious Succubus just as Artemis and Scion reached her. Or rather, reached the unconscious form of Jennifer Allman. A mousy, average looking woman, a foot shorter than her alter ego, lay where the demoness had fallen. Gone were the wings, the horns, and the prepossessing physical traits that had defined the Succubus, leaving the corset/bustier and thigh boots hanging loose on Jennifer.
“A very nice shot, Blue Flame,” Scion said as he landed on the other side of the fallen woman, while Artemis knelt to pluck the pouch from their foe’s belt. “Good teamwork all around, people.”
“Indeed,” Artemis agreed, upturning the pouch and dropping the two surviving Bloodstones into her palm. “A pity we couldn’t save all the stones, of course, but four out of five is not bad. The question now is, what do we do with them?”
“We actually have a more pressing problem,” Totem’s voice came sharply over the comms. “It’s Quanta…”
•• •• ••
When the soul-searing hellfire had blasted Quanta into unconsciousness, it had also cleared his mind of the lustful obsession that had so completely consumed and overwhelmed him. But even groggy and dazed, he still remembered every second of the burning lust that had tormented him – vividly — and all of the actions that lust had driven him to.
“Devrik warned me that I should find a way to shield my mind from possession!” Totem heard Quanta muttering to himself as he clambered up the dune toward his friend. As soon as he’d seen the Succubus go down, the shaman had hurried to his fallen teammate’s side to render aid. As Totem reached him, Quanta’s silvery shell flickered and vanished. “Why the fuck didn’t I take his advice?” Kyle cried.
“Quanta – Kyle – are you OK? What happened?” Totem put out a hand to help his friend up, but Kyle jerked away from the touch, and refused to meet his teammate’s eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled, shaking his head. “So sorry…” He turned and, with a gesture, opened a quantum tunnel directly in front of himself. He’d stepped through it before Totem could do more than call his name, and it vanished on his heels, with an audible ‘snick.’
“He’s already out of my sensor range,” Scion said a few minutes later, after Totem had rejoined them and explained what had happened. “I caught one portal opening 40 miles away, and a second one opening almost immediately, right next to it… but beyond that I’d need a satellite link to follow him now.”
“I suspect that he’s running as far as he can,” Artemis said, “as fast as he can. Given what that demon did do him… I’m not surprised. You know Kyle, how conscientious he is, how concerned with doing what’s right. To be driven to such acts as he attempted, even if those actions were out of his control…
“I think even the Succubus was surprised at the strength of the lust she evoked with her attack on his mind. Already over-amped by the power she’d absorbed, she probably failed to account for the abilities of a meta-human… I’d guess succubi are used to being the ones in control when they evoke lust in humans.”
“We can’t just leave him out there,” Chuck said. The portal from the Maw had finally closed when Kyle had vanished, and Chilz had piloted the Interceptor, under JJ’s watchful remote monitoring, to where the others waited. They were now all gathered in the air conditioned interior to discuss their next steps, their prisoners securely contained. “He needs our help; whatever happened, it wasn’t his fault.”
“That’s true,” Scion acknowledged. “No one blames him, Chuck. But he’s the one who suffered having his mind and emotions fu… forcibly altered. He’s a grown man, and even if we could track him, find him, I think it would be wrong to do so. At least right now. We need to give him space; he’ll come home when he’s worked out whatever he needs to work out… and he wouldn’t have left if he’d wanted to do that with us around.”
Further discussion was pre-empted when Totem announced that he’d reached Sabra at last…