[Archive] With This Ring (Young Justice SI) (Story Only)

[Mr Zoat]

4th Sigmarzeit 2512
Afternoon

"Not so docile, it seems."

I nod to the Countess. "No, it seems not. But I wanted to be sure."

The giant… Rat… Blob.. thing.. that's the only thing in the Nuln warrens that scanned as 'female', lies dead, a construct spear piercing it through the throat and out through its spine. It's about three meters long, with proportions halfway between a normal rat and a normal male skaven. I'd sort of assumed that this sort of thing was a specialised breeder variety, and its.. large womb, distended abdomen and eight warpstone-enhanced ovaries seem to lend a degree of credence to that idea. But I'd also assumed that such breeders were a Clan Moulder product rather than a natural part of their species, and that as such there would have to be at least some regular females as well.

Does the Curse of the Horned One spell turn women it hits into men? Or do females just not occur naturally amongst skaven and they have to breed with giant rats in the same way that beastmen can breed with livestock?

I moue as.. tiny hairless skaven infants start clawing and biting their way out of its vagina.

"Burn this abomination."

"Ah. I'm actually not very good at burning things."

I point, and the construct plaguebearers on perimeter duty step in and start stabbing. It's unedifying, but those are male skaven infants. There's a limit to how many Creatures of Chaos I can attempt to rehabilitate without spreading myself too thin.

A way behind us, I hear Richilde and one of the Countess's younger Greatswords keeping each other company in their ersatz vomitorium. The other Greatswords bear oddly-shaped scars which I've noticed amongst those who've survived one of the more unpleasant poxes, and I imagine that they got that surviving the aftermath of Tamurkhan's attack. After fending off an army of Nurgle-worshippers a giant mutant rat appears not to impress them. I haven't seen any sign of Nurgle's Rot in them, which is good because I don't have any idea how to remove a disease that infects the soul.

"Besides, I've removed the diseases from its body. It could be a fascinating object of study for your anatomists."

"Gruuubeeeeeer!"

The Greatsword with a beard down to the middle of his cuirass nods. "Countess?"

"Have the men clear the closest square and acquire firewood. I will have this… Thing and the others of its kin we recover burned where my subjects can bear witness."

"I'll see to it directly, Countess."

I feel it as my construct lanterns begin to return.

"All done, Countess. It might be worth filling in the passages, but the warren is uninhabited."

"And Gruber, find some volunteers from the dungeons." She looks my way. "Dungeon-delving is work for a not-yet-Free Company. They're far cheaper than adventurers."

"Yes, Countess. Will there be anything else-?"

"Get on with it, man." As he bows and then leaves she walks over to the skaven and prods it with the handle of her dagger. "Well, you've done it. You'll have my support in the Prime Estates, and I suppose that a more limited road-building program might be wise in any case."

"Thank you, Countess. I'll notify the Light College, so that their representative can liaise with your architect."

One down…

4th Sigmarzeit 2512
Later Afternoon

Graf Boris Todbringer peers at the severed, one-eyed head.

"No. Not him."

Since her brother is shortly to be marrying his daughter, Richilde thought that talking him around would be a straightforward business. I offered to restore his eye, but he wasn't keen on having his body unnaturally altered. Which isn't unreasonable, but…

I sigh as I toss the head onto the pile. "With the greatest respect, Graf, there are a lot of one-eyed beastmen in the Drakwald. Did he have any other distinguishing features?"

"He carried a whip and a sword."

But this is getting to be.

Ring?

Scanning. Scan complete. Matches available.

Just about every charioteer has a whip. Swords are even more common.

"Four horns or two?"

"Four."

Scanning. Scan complete. Matches available.

"Two big ones straight up and two small curved ones?"

He nods. "Yes."

"Excuse me."

I rocket away from Middenheim, heading for the Drakwald again. Target locked. Beastmen became their own army after I stopped being interested in Warhammer and I've got no idea if the beastlord I'm about to kill is at all important. But if it makes Todbringer happy…

There.

I raise my left hand, aiming at the large beastman standing next to the.. mutant dog thing. And fire! The beastlord is knocked back, his armour holding out against my shot surprisingly well. Fortunately it doesn't appear to include a gorget, so his neck disintegrates and I grab the trophy as the beastmen around him begin braying in alarm.

Hopefully, that's another one down.

4th Sigmarzeit 2512
Early Evening

"A… Head? A head! You got one-eye a one eyed head!"

Richilde and I nervously glance at each other as Elector Count Marius Leitdorf… Starts getting excited. His couriers appear used to it, in the manner of psychiatric orderlies who no longer start at sudden exclamations from their patients. His horse -which is standing nearby, in this second story room in the middle of his castle- snorts quietly.

"I am.. happy to get a head for you, your highness."

"Yes! I want to eat it!"

"I can cook as well?"

He lunges at me. "No!" He grabs me by the jacket, staring wide-eyes into my eyes. "I will eat it raw. Raaaaaaaw."

Probably… Best I make sure that it's completely clean, because if there's anyone who has the will to eat an entire head raw and the rank to ignore anyone who tries to stop him, it's Marius Leitdorf.

"Whose head, your highness!"

"Mine!"

…

Another glance shared with Richilde. "You want to eat your own head, your highness?"

"It seems about as reasonable as paving over the realm of Chaos." He releases his hold, then flaps his right hand at me. "Get on with it."

Hm. Well, actually…

I envelop his head in an orange glow. If I remove it piece by piece and replace it with a copy… I'll have to fake doing that to his brain, obviously, but that should be well within my abilities.

"Would your highness like a mirror?" I numb his nerves and then detach a portion of his neck while using constructs to maintain blood and air flow. "You may find this educational to watch."

He grins even more broadly, before pointing at a flunky as I slot the removed portion of his neck into a construct head mould.

"MIRROR!"

 

[Mr Zoat]

9th Sigmarzeit 2512
Evening

I flop back onto the sofa.

"Jesus Christ how is the Empire still functioning?"

Lady Richilde checks for observers, and then flops down next to me.

"Hard work by my uncle."

"Really?"

"He is a highly capable negotiator and diplomat." She sighs. "Though habit probably plays a part. And having an elected monarch."

"The one thing worse than those people in charge of an electoral province is them being in charge of all of them. It's actually quite an eye-opener for me. My home country is a democracy, so I've spent my whole life seeing the worst excesses of democracy, and after a while you can't help but think: 'were things really so bad before we could elect our leaders?'. And now I know."

"I did not think that Graf Todbringer was so bad."

"And I respect your loyalty to your brother's soon-to-be family. Did you not see how vacant he looked? He basically let his courtiers do all the talking until I got him onto the subject of beastmen."

"That is a valid technique. Sometimes it is better not to let people know what you think."

"For a dedicated Ulrician? I'm not playing to stereotypes here, but don't they value directness and assertiveness even more than Sigmarites, who aren't exactly shy and retiring themselves?"

"He has a lot on his mind."

"Like what?"

"His heir is unwell."

I open my eyes and turn my head towards her. "He could have led with that. There's no mortal disease that I can't cure."

"No, not a.. disease. He was born with… Difficulties."

Ah. I think I can work out what she's talking about.

"Has anything I've said to you given you cause to believe that I understand circuitous speech? Do you mean that he's a mutant, or has-"

"No! No. Not that."

"-some sort of deformity?"

"He has… Troubles of the mind."

"Oh."

"Are you unable to correct those? I was concerned that you might have tried that with Count Marius, and then he was… Much the same as he ever is. Perhaps a little more exuberant."

"All he wanted was a head. That was weird, yes, but not all that difficult."

She finally turns her head towards me, frowning. "I cannot understand how you did it."

I shrug. "The human body is made of matter. The ring can reshape matter. For mundane purposes there's nothing really special about a… Neck. I can take a piece of wood, reshape its material to match a section of his neck and then replace it."

"With wood?"

"It wouldn't be wood after I changed it, that's what I'm saying. In material terms it would be exactly the same as human flesh." I shrug. "In my world, our chirurgeons can remove failing organs from a person's body and replace them. It's not a completely safe procedure, but the majority of people who undergo it survive."

"Where do the organs come from?"

"People will them to medicine. The chirurgery needs to be carried out quickly, so people carry cards with them indicating that if they get injured and can't be saved they want their organs removed and used to heal the sick and injured."

"That is… Disturbing. I… Understand that it is intended as a final act of generosity… But taking parts out and putting them in someone else… I cannot help but think of necromancy or the foul deeds of Nurgle-worshippers."

"Dead organs aren't any good. And wouldn't Nurgle worshippers implant failing organs rather than healthy ones?"

"But if the person they're taken from is dead, how are the organs not dead?"

"It takes a while for the body to decay after death. Reducing the temperature extends that further. You still don't have more than a day or so..."

"But what of the mind? The brain?"

"Oh, we can't transplant those."

"No, with Count Marius-. The head was not alive, surely?"

"No, no. I left his brain in his head and created a copy for the head." I frown. That's not a great sentence, but I think that she understands. "It didn't have any… Activity. Ah, honestly, given the complexity of the human brain I doubt that I could create one. I don't know enough about how it records memories."

She lays there, giving her attention to the ceiling.

"Who is Jesus Christ?"

"Hm?"

"You said 'Jesus Christ' as an exclamation. Is that the name of the god of your people?"

"Ah. Sort of. He's the.. prophet whose teachings the main religion of my home country is based on. I'm not actually… A practitioner, I just got a bit… Frustrated."

"At least the Elder of the Moot asked for something practical."

"Yeah. I'll have to pop back and see how they get on with greenhouses. I could build them here but I didn't think it was worth it."

The Moot may be a tiny area, but we need a road built there anyway, which means that we needed to deal with him as well as the ten Elector Counts. And the Moot's existing roads are so terrible that wagoners charge extra if they're employed to travel there, so I'm not holding out much hope that they'll be able to do the work themselves.

But everyone agreed. Everyone agreed, and if this was anything to go by work will start in a year or two. Or three.

"Does the Empire just not do infrastructure projects?"

"Not on this scale. It will be a first."

"If it works. And we've still got to talk to the Tzar. Have you met him?"

"No. I thought that you had."

"Yes, I went daemon-hunting and we sort of bumped into each other, but he's been doing a lot of reforming Kislevite society and I'm not sure that he's got the cash for a major road-building program as well. And I don't know how the Ice Witches will feel about the imposition of hysh on their land, which is going to be a big issue because the Crown Princess is one and if she doesn't like it then it's not going to happen."

"I will speak to our ambassador and the ambassador of the Tzar concerning the…" She yawns, covering her mouth with her right hand. "Excuse me. Concerning how best to convince him."

"Yeah, that sounds like a plan."

I flop a little further. It was difficult getting a piece of furniture like this made, and the material it's cushioned with will need replacing well before the modern equivalent, but in the mean.. time…

"…with your clothes on?"

Whu-?

10th Sigmarzeit 2512
Morning

I blink at Aranei as-. Richilde stirs next to me and then jerks upright!

Aranei shakes her head. "If I must tolerate a human as a co-consort, you should at least do the job properly. Remove your clothes, and I will begin your instruction."

 

[Mr Zoat]

Break Time

17th February 2013
16:51 GMT

Focus.

Physical check? Human head back. Kon's a living kryptonian/human/genomorph again and Cernunnos is still himself as well. The gate here looks the same as the one in Duat, and the sacrificial altar-. Yes, there it is-.

"Human." The sheeda man standing next to the altar-. There's a hole in his chest, showing his lungs as they move with his breathing while also showing that his heart is entirely absent. "I know you."

We're on a stony cliff overlooking the ocean, and just visible out to sea is the familiar shape of the island of Themyscira. It's nothing like this close to a larger land mass in reality, so wherever we've ended up has moved it.

Get to that later.

"While I have no idea who you are at all."

"They told us, when you killed the queen. That was the last of our hope."

Kon and Cernunnos spread out slightly to the left and right. Kon's not giving the sheeda all of his attention as he listens for other threats.

"You don't need to raid the past any longer-."

"We can't!" He bares his teeth, which are surprisingly pointy. "Our future is no longer our future! I left my whole family behind and I will never see them again!"

Oh. Right, yeah. Their future still exists, but unless things go very badly wrong that's not our future any more.

Kon shrugs. "Your future was kinda evil."

"We had a life whose greatness you will never comprehend and you condemned it to death by your refusal to know your place! You are fit only to be chattel! CHATTEL!"

He expectorates the word, clearly losing whatever self-possession he had. Interesting that he doesn't appear to be Anti-Life controlled, particularly given that I don't think it would be all that difficult to turn him. Unless… Would the sheeda be resistant?

"You were making an almost sympathetic point until you said that. So, ah, you're under arrest."

He draws a knife with his right hand. Obsidian. Fits the Aztec look of the portals but I'm not sure-.

He pricks his left thumb and presses it against the altar, the red stains immediately changing colour to match the black of his blood.

"And now you are trapped, and your hearts will be offered up to the goddess who will give me the revenge I long for!"

He smiles beatifically, and there's a quiet sighing noise as the portal behind us closes.

"Okay, so, we're looking for a female elf? We have reason to believe that you were involved in her abduction."

"Stupid creature, do you not understand what I've done?"

"Yes, you've closed the portal to Duat, 'trapping' us. But we already know that there's a portal to Otherworld somewhere around here, and that-"

I point to where the island of Themyscira sits in the ocean.

"-is home for me and Superboy. So, ah, honestly? This is better for us than finishing the original investigation." Kon frowns at me. "Which we're still going to complete, but… You've been a real help, which is why I'm not branding you and compelling you to answer my questions. So, please: what's this all-"

"Hahahaha-."

The rocks and sands at the bottom of the cliff erupt upwards as a colossal creature leaps up from under the ground! Kon, Cernunnos and I leap off the ground and into the air as a vast hand slaps down onto the altar, sheeda and inactive portal and obliterates them, along with most of the cliff. The huge creature responsible stares up at us, head locked onto-.

Ugh-.

What? The.. sky is a flat surface about a hundred metres off the ground. No escape that way, and I don't think that breaking the structure of the local universe would have good results.

The giant creature resembles a cross between a human and a toad. The head is mostly human, but broader and having a wider mouth. The ears are larger as well, and have bulky earrings hanging from them. A decorative headdress made of what I think is some sort of woven material sits on her head, more like a tiara than the stereotypical feathered headdress. Her torso is unusually broad like her head, and has the same hole in the chest showing that her heart has been removed as the sheeda had. Her hands put me in mind of a sloth: short fingers with long claws. She wears a skirt in the Aztec style while her legs are disproportionally short, or are jointed in a non-standard way, and her skin is covered in scales. Her bare feet have the same claw-heavy structure as her hands, and they're digging into the ground.

"You know who that is?"

I shake my head. "None of my records on Aztec deities include up-to-date photographs. Cernunnos?"

"I avoid gods with a taste for human hearts."

"Looks more like someone has a taste for hers. Which Aztec god is it who eats hearts?"

"All of them except Quetzalcoatl."

He frowns as the Aztec goddess turns to face us.

"Huh. Guess we got lucky. Do you think that sheeda was controlling her?"

"He didn't have a heart either. I suspect we'll only find the one in charge when we find where the hearts have gone."

"She's not getting in the water. Do we need-?"

The sea beneath us erupts and we all evade as spires of rock shoot up towards us! I see the shockwave as they thrust the air aside before slamming into the sky-roof-. Dodge again! Her feet are squeezing into the sand and-.

"Waghaaaaaagh!"

I throw up! Everything I ate jumps out of my mouth and my stomach tries to follow it-.

In the corner of my eye I see the Aztec goddess's head split in two, a new mouth appearing between the left and right sides as it fully opens and her tongue extending up from her neck!

"Grughaaaaaagh!"

The world dims and my head-. I feel something hit my left side, but it's… Distant. I'm.. moving..?

Ah…

Not chemicals. Not shortness of oxygen. Probably not telepathy-. Magic. Tattoos and wards have a maximum absorption rate-.

"Feed me!"

Rockrockrock!

I form rock drill constructs and fly, smashing my way free from the spines that threaten to crush me! A glance shows that the other two are doing better, but-.

But while we've been dodging the giant heartless woman has been making a bridge for herself.

 

[Mr Zoat]

17th February 2013
16:54 GMT

"No."

I fire a beam of orange light at the giant woman, but it… Sort of bends, twisting into the hole in her chest and… Doing nothing.

Kon goes to work punching rock spurs, breaking them to dust before they can hit us or limit our manoeuvrability. Four shatter to detritus before he risks glancing at me.

"You okay?"

"Did you feel that?"

"What, the rock?"

"The scream."

"I heard the scream. Did it do something else?"

"Did to me."

And I've prepared. I'm as warded as a person can get, and Kon didn't even notice an attack. And it sucked up my orange light but doesn't appear to be using it.

"Are we gunna attack it?"

"Heat vision. I'll shield the island if needed."

I guess I can write off another clone. They're probably using its heart as a… Conceptual link? Sympathetic link? Though if the sheeda man was still walking around-.

"I'll need a few seconds."

I nod, forming a sphere around us. Rock spines fly at the stationary target, and the moment before they hit I add crumbler field generators to the exterior. Won't necessarily work if the rock is inherently magical-.

We're in the realm of the gods and not the material-!

The rock hits and my sphere begins to deform as I hook up my construct to my tattoos and hope that's enough as I apply the concept of hunger to the matter disruption constructs. The change is immediate, rock-and-the-idea-of-rock decaying to dust.

"I'm ready!"

I glance at Kon's eyes, which are glowing painfully brightly, and then drop the construct.

Wwwwkkkkkkkkk!

Water and rock alike are vaporised by sun-plasma and the world around me is darkened as my ring cuts down the incoming light in order to preserve my sight. Kon cuts out a moment-.

Dust howls around us, merging with boiling steam that Kon's attack created to create an instant electrical storm cloud. With the dust and impure steam creating intermittent channels to the ground, we're both struck repeatedly by small discharges.

"DID I GET HER!?"

I fly up-. There's the roof. I generate a crumbler wall and push it downwards, clearing-.

No, that's not-.

The dust swirls around my construct and flies at us! It rapidly coats the exterior of my armour and my sensors feel it worrying at every joint and edge like a sander. Empathic vision shows me Kon flying left and down, trying to get out of the particulate cloud. My armour is rated as being capable of surviving this, but if whatever force is animating this can understand that a kinetic belt-.

No, wait, that probably wouldn't-. He's taking it on his skin?

Earth control. The creature can control earth without needing it to be attached to the Earth.

Booster constructs and-. Force the earth crust off my armour over enough of an area to actually let me make constructs, then make booster constructs and fly backwards, crumbler… Crumbler barricade, and add a crumbler layer to my armour and hook it up to my tattoos. That should keep me safe, and Kon-.

About a mile away to my right I see Kon fly out of the steaming water, most of the earth cleaned off. His kryptonian overalls look a bit abraded, but they're quite a lot tougher than Earth clothes. Cernunnos… Is flying for Themyscira at best possible speed. And the giant woman… She's pulling herself back to her feet back on the mainland, the front of her chest largely burned off. In a few places her body fat burns as it runs down her skirt and legs, but as far as I can see she isn't showing any sign of pain.

Okay, my usual attack constructs aren't reliable in this situation. Kon gave her both barrels and she doesn't look all that hurt. I'd guess that destroying either her heart or whoever has it would kill her, but I don't know where it is or who has it. I don't know enough about Aztec mythology to beat her with cunning. That leaves… Brute force and...

Would the act of giving her a new heart fix… Whatever's happening here?

How would I even-? I can guess based on her physical dimensions what the heart should roughly look like if it were a purely material thing, but it's not, and I'm not a magician. Construct heart? I mean, I might be able to make it work…

There's something rippling under the-.

I boost towards Themyscira hard, because Kon made a giant shockwave which is travelling through the water and that's going to explode upwards once it hits the shallows. This is why I don't like physics!

Except we're not in the material-. No, not risking it.

Get ahead of the wave and… Send it around the island? No, that's still going to wreck the shoreline. Sonic cannons to counteract it. Yes, it'll make the water explode but there isn't anything here to hurt except a few fish. Wave is now-. Too close to the island, and I'm glad it was just from vapour expansion backlash because otherwise I wouldn't have been in position in time.

The boom-slap as the water Kon cleaved in two slaps back together reaches me just as I deploy the sonic cannons into the water. Takes a bit more effort than normal, but that's probably because this water isn't exactly water, and fire.

Plume as expected, and the shockwave is slightly weakened right here but most of it's still going.

"Can you stop it?"

Heh.

"I'm an Orange Lantern." I boost harder and generate a bigger sonic cannon. "I can do anything I-"

Into the water and fire!

"-want."

The world turns white with foam and the shockwave weakens-

Turn it up!

-and then reverses as the water briefly forms a gully from the conflicting pressure waves.

And stop. Check surroundings. Themyscira is-. Soldiers in gold are fighting on the beach, against-. Aztecs. Aztecs with holes in their chests where their hearts used to be. But it looks like they're holding, if only because you can't pierce orichalcum with obsidian. The big woman is more important.

"Cernunnos, could you make a heart live?"

"Fill a dead heart with life? Yes, I can do that, briefly. Do you have a heart?"

"Excellent. Plan is, I make a heart and shove it in her chest, you make it live and hopefully that throws off whatever spell she's under."

"What if she just hates you?"

"Then I kill-"

I see the speck that is Kon dive down at her, presumably hoping to repeat his prior trick and break her hold on the earth by separating her from it. The moment he gets a grip on her foot the ground erupts upwards and glows red hot!

"-her go!"

 

[Mr Zoat]

17th February 2013
16:56 GMT

Molten rock starts at 700o​C. Kon can take brief contact from material of that temperature without any problem. Longer contact is uncomfortable but not particularly dangerous itself, otherwise he'd burn out his eyes whenever he used heat vision. The problem is that he has no innate flying ability and his kinetic belt can't take that sort of temperature. If it gets damaged then the only way for him to get out would be to wade to the edge of the magma field and climb out. And he can get by on less oxygen than a human but he still needs to breathe.

Frog hearts are structured quite differently to human hearts. Three chambers rather than four, and no separation between oxygenated and deoxygenated blood. It's a poor design, like human eyes compared to the superior squid eyes and it means that I don't really know what sort of heart that woman is supposed to have. But assuming that this is mostly magic anyway, that we build our gods and monsters in our own image and that I'd probably want fully oxygenated blood given the choice, I'm going to go with a mostly-human design.

She stamps on the magma patch.

She can take the heart she gets. My boosters blaze and-. And I've left Cernunnos behind.

"Sorry!"

I grab him with a construct X-15 and accelerate it to match my speed, wincing slightly as I realise that I'm going to have to thank Lantern Jordan for that one. Okay, optic scans of the woman's interior show the location of the veins and arteries that would be connected to her heart so I can roughly guess the size, so that there, that there, and then the runes for health and life and… Blood? And earth. Overall configuration… Since I don't know what her natural mana flows are like I can only guess 'human but bigger'.

I move the heart to the canopy.

"Alright, it's done."

He uses his right thumb claw to cut the tips of his right index and middle fingers and then reaches up. I pop the construct canopy and he presses his hand into the flesh of the synthetic heart, his blood staining the closest 'blood' rune.

I can dimly feel it as something changes, and given that we're nearly in heart-insertion range I hope-.

The woman turns her head our way and I generate a crumbler ram and hope that-.

A rock spike erupts from the ocean and I block it with the ram. Another follows but we're already past it.

"Ready?"

"Yes."

I dismiss the X-15 construct, expand the crumbler ram and position the heart behind the head. Rotate the heart so that it's the right way around and lunge. The woman lowers her posture slightly and swings her fore claws at my construct. Dodge down, accelerate slightly and her claws just clip the rear of the construct. Dismiss, shove the heart into her chest and bind her flesh to it-.

Warning: power expended.

My rings blinks out and I start falling.

What?

No, I mean obviously I know what, I-. Her chest drains my guuuh!

Armour's flight system failed, but the armour itself stopped me from braining myself on the shore.

Ah.

I need to run because this armour isn't magma-proof.

But it does have power assistance, so I thrust my legs out and just avoid one of her leg-claws slicing through me! I try to get my legs under me but can't quite manage it, instead getting my left knee under my chest while my right leg is still stretched out. I bounce, twisting to the side and grabbing at the ground with my hands because she's swinging again!

"Any of your animal-"

The leg comes down in front of me and I-

"-parts burrowing?"

-slam face-first into her ankle.

U-gh.

Need to work on this armour.

Okay, use the sudden obstacle to lever myself upright-. She's lifting and there aren't any handholds but with her limb arrangement she can't stamp on me with her other leg when its that close. Drop to the ground. Is there any cover at all, and where's Kon?

Glowing ground was over that way but I need to run and jink!

I stagger sideways as her foot comes down again, but the ground seems to have stopped glowing which means-.

Semi-solid rock explodes outwards as Kon bursts through the surface!

Back to running!

"Out of power! Help!"

"Huh-?"

Kon looks down at me as I head for the cliff face, then the monster woman backhands him into the sea-.

Ah, hits him anyway? Oh, he managed to grab on, but I don't think she's noticed.

"Cernunnos, is the heart working?!"

He's flying as high as the sky extends overhead, careful to maintain enough space to dodge.

"It does not beat!"

Oh, of course.

"Kon! Get her heart beating!"

"How?!"

"Get in her chest and push it!"

I make momentary eye contact with him over her thumb claw, and he doesn't look convinced. But as long as she's distracted I can try recharging and not just running away and trying not to die. She finally spots him and brings her hands together in a huge clap, but Kon's had time to brace himself and is just about able to catch the incoming limb. Again, there's no pain reaction from her, but if she-.

She lifts the higher hand away and he holds on for a moment, then pushes off towards her exposed ribs. And I've lost sight of him, but now I've got the cliffs to my back I've just got to hope that she was having so much fun trying to stamp on me that she doesn't drop me in magma. Face her, and be prepared to dodge.

No, Kon's got her attention. She's trying to claw at her own chest, but her claws are thrown back as Kon punches them away. Okay, let's just hope that I didn't have to transmute some blood for her as well.

Now, recharging. I take a look at my rings… Right ring, Larfleeze's ring, the first ring, looks completely fine. If anything I'd say that it's glowing more brightly than usual. Left ring, Hinon's ring, is… Dull. Faded, and almost translucent. Almost like it's not really there. Makes sense. Hinon's ring is new and created by a race of materialists, while Larfleeze's ring has been exposed to the Ophidian for millions of years.

Lantern.

Nothing. Looks like subspace isn't available in this place. Darn. There are other things I could do, but they all require more attention than I can-

"AAaagh! What did you DO!?"

-spare.

Kon throws himself free and the woman folds her arms over the hole in her chest. Her head-mouth snaps closed and she looks around… There's a certain intelligence in her gaze that wasn't there before.

"Human! Explain or I will kill you!"

Still an improvement.

 

[Mr Zoat]

17th February 2013
16:58 GMT

As the only full human on the shore, I should probably field that.

"When we first found you, oh glorious one, your heart was missing from your chest! You attacked us quite vigorously!"

"What do you mean, my heart was missing?!"

"Looked like someone cut it out, magnificence!" I start walking closer as she stares down at me. "We could see your lungs!"

"My heart is in my chest."

"No, that's a new heart I made! I've got no idea where your original one is!"

Her unusual facial structure makes it a little hard to decipher her mood, and she's clearly having a nasty shock. But she isn't smashing me for my lies, so I'm going to assume that she's at least accepting it as plausible. I could ask her what made the wound in her chest, as that would help with the sheeda and the creatures assailing Themyscira. But that's probably a bit confrontational.

"Might I ask your name!?"

"Do you think I am some minor goddess, whose name can just slip your memory?!"

"I worship the gods of Olympus, divinity. I am far from my homeland, and their place of power. I probably never learned it."

"Then know that I am Tlaltecuhtli! Goddess of Earth and all the life that springs from it!"

I roll my eyes at that-. And Kon catches them and shakes his head. Yes, I had realised that now isn't the time for comparative theology. This blood-fuelled earth goddess might be the Aztec version of Demeter but she certainly isn't Gaea. I just realise that calling her out on her creative advertising wouldn't help the situation.

She crouches slightly, her right arm dropping down to tear rocks from the ground, a load that she pushes into the hole in her chest. The rock then spreads across the injury, merging with her flesh to create a patch. It's not the same colour as the rest of her skin, but it appears to be functional.

I wonder. If we accept that the Olympian mythos survives so well because they're drawing power from the chained titans, who are too fundamental to the human part of the Dream to ever fully fade, that makes them more powerful and more coherent than the gods of other dead or dying religions. As for the rest… I don't know. I remember reading in Hellblazer that the gods of dead religions don't get weaker, but Bast herself said that her realm was in decay without humans at least thinking of them. Maybe it's the realm? Or the human-comprehensible parts of the god rather than the core self?

Or maybe Hellblazer was wrong, or John was dishonest?

No, can't be.

"Do you require our assistance any further, oh Goddess of Earth?"

Might not have been wise to draw attention to the fact that she needed mortal help, but unless she feels like sharing what happened to her there isn't anything she can do to help us solve the case.

I think she's thinking about it, but then she spots Themyscira on the horizon.

"Why is that here?"

"Don't know. We were about to find out. They're being attacked by humans who have had their hearts torn out-."

"I will deal with them."

She stamps towards the misty sea, the stone causeway which Kon obliterated reforming to take her huge footfall and weight.

Kon ambles over, careful to keep Tlaltecuhtli in view.

"It worked."

"Good work with the heart massage."

He snorts. "Good work with the heart."

"That wasn't the hard bit." I look around. "Cernunnos? Are you around?"

There's a faint shimmer at the tree line and Cernunnos stalks out, keeping an eye on Tlaltecuhtli.

"You may have saved her from enchantment, but she still eats hearts."

"I haven't forgotten, but we're in the land of the Aztec gods. They all do it, and we're going to have to deal with them. Would you mind flying to Themyscira and letting them know we're here?"

"What's wrong with you?"

"Ring's dead. Kon, what's your damage?"

Kon pulls the melted remains of his kinetic belt off his suit. The suit is thin enough to be protected by his organic force field, but the belt extends outside of that.

"Fine, apart from the belt. Are you having trouble recharging?"

I raise my left fist and tap it against a personal lantern that isn't there.

"Yes. I'll need a moment. Please keep watch."

He nods, doing a quick check of our perimeter.

"Oh, and in case you missed it, her chest could absorb the orange light, so there's probably another-."

"One of your clones-" He nods. "-with its heart cut out."

"Just so. Okay."

This should be doable. I recreated Larfleeze's ring from pure avarice because it had existed for so long that it imprinted on it. My personal lantern has only been orange for a couple of years, but the orange light fountain has existed about as long as his ring. Not sure if Hinon dismantled it as part of building the Orange Central Power Battery, but the imprint should still be there.

I make a fist with my right hand and raise it slightly, contemplating the ring.

And it should be tied to this ring.

Just outside the-. Ooooh. It's actually a little easier to see things here without straining. No, no, not the desires of individual people. I want to see the distortion left by an object, things not tied to a particular person or mindset. A device that used to cage the Ophidian. There are Kon's desires and Cernunnos's desires and Tlaltecuhtli's desires and pull out pull out pull all the way out. There's the whole of the orange but it doesn't all flow from the desires of individuals. Behind that, there's the desires of groups, species, things existing beyond the individual. But aside from that, there are structures which emerge from the thing itself…

I reach out with my right hand and touch my ring to the structure.

This is my cause, this is my fight,
Shine through the void with orange light,
I've claimed all within my sight,
To keep what is mine, that is my right.

Something moves, and the previously empty ring becomes full again as I return to the realm of the gods and toss Kon a replacement kinetic barrier.

"Is it lava proof?"

"Try swallowing it."

He snorts, then we both rise into the air and head after Tlaltecuhtli.

 

[Mr Zoat]

17th February 2013
17:00 GMT

I watch from a little way back as P-.

I wince as the world shimmers. Out of curiosity I asked Scott about the level of arcane force it would take to make a New God as strong as me feel faint, and apparently it would be easier to crack the moon in half. To deliver that amount of energy without any detectable sign that it was being delivered is something he'd assumed would be impossible until I demonstrated it in his workshop. He didn't have any idea how it could be done, and Kanto…

Kanto expressed a mild interest in learning how to use something like that for assassinations, but he's happy working as a history lecturer so I think that it's best to leave him to it. In the fullness of time his god-name will drive him to expand his horizons, but we live indefinitely so there's no sense in hounding him or leading him astray. Something that Darkseid has never learned.

Anyway, the boy is standing next to the rock cairn that marks the resting place of the material remains of his mother. I honestly thought that he'd want to avoid ever coming back here, then I got a notification that someone opened a boom tube here. I opened one as well, and I'm not using any sort of stealth system, so he knows that I'm here.

I haven't really talked about this with them. I mean, they all know perfectly well what happened… If you ask them about it. But I think that the younger ones are mostly forgetting what it was like.

He hasn't. Clearly.

I take a couple of steps closer. Just a reminder that I'm here for him if he needs anything. I don't have much planned for today, and it's nothing I prioritise above the emotional needs of my eldest son.

He looks around. His expression is… Thoughtful? Pensive?

"Do you know where father's remains are?"

I shake my head. "No. To the best of my knowledge he died on the mainland, and the people who killed him had the knowledge to properly dispose of a vampire's remains. Most likely, they burned the body and buried small parts of the ash at a dozen different crossroads."

I could ask John Constantine about it, but I think it's probably better to let the matter lie. I have a small concern about the possibility of him getting back up, but John killed the king of the vampires years ago and he hasn't put in an appearance since. And I haven't seen Dracula either, so I'm going to assume that them getting back up isn't a simple matter of spilling a few drops of blood, if they can at all.

"What..? What would have happened if they hadn't caught him?"

"Difficult to say."

He gives his head a small shake. "I know he was a murderer. You don't need to protect me from it."

"I don't know the details of his life. Yes, he killed at least one woman locally, but that could have been-."

"Please."

I sigh, nodding. "Based on what little I know, he would keep preying on the local people using mesmerism to avoid raising the alarm. Given the relatively low number of deaths, it seems likely that he was doing that as a strategy, and given that your blood-siblings are all full-siblings I would guess that your mother was feeding exclusively from him. I imagine that once you were a little older he would have begun teaching you hunting techniques…"

Hm.

"What follows there depends how good a strategist he was. It would be almost inevitable that you and the others would kill a few people during your earliest feeding attempts, so remaining in a rural location would be unwise as there wouldn't be any way to cover up the fact that something wasn't right."

"We.. can't hold back."

I regard him levelly. "Couldn't hold back. You and the younger ones have focused well on your lessons."

"No-." He nods. "Yes, but we wouldn't have been able to hold back. If we'd stayed with them."

"There wasn't any way for him to have known that. Vampires get hungry, but they don't usually get overwhelmed by the need as you do. If they're hungry, then they're hungry all the time, whereas you don't experience hunger unless exposed to something that you can eat. Succubae and incubi experience even less compulsion."

And we can't test whether or not the children could be fed enough to grant them mental clarity in their bestial state. Some combinations just don't work well.

"Do you..? Remember being hungry while your father was alive?"

He looks down for a moment, then shakes his head. "No."

I nod. "Then making sure that you stayed full would probably be enough. They would probably move to a city, somewhere with a high murder rate so that they could conceal your early feedings. And hopefully where they could enthral a teacher to get you a basic education."

"Then they would have to either hope that you would snap out of it after feeding, or move to a war zone. Depending on how many children they had in total, they might have escaped notice for a while or they might get the attention of the Justice League. Between that and a child's natural inclination to follow their parents' example, it is unlikely that you would have questioned it."

He nods solemnly.

"Why did they do it? Miss Gloria lives around humans. She lived around humans before you got her a new body."

"Why.. everything? I can only guess. Binding herself to a human body effectively put your mother outside of Queen Triskelle's control for as long as it lasted. Triskelle is highly controlling, and probably wouldn't like one of her people forming any kind of power base away from her. Vampires usually turn humans in order to get controllable minions. There's no obvious benefit in siring children that a vampire would care about by default, and repeatedly being fed on would have limited his ability to build his own strength. My best guess is that he either wanted to unleash a novel form of death onto the world and thought that she was the best person to enable him to do it or he genuinely loved her and wanted something approaching a normal-looking life."

Now he looks slightly worried. "Does that mean that Mum is in Hell?"

I hesitate, then nod. "Probably."

Because the alternative is that you tore her soul apart and ingested it for arcane power and she simply ceased to be, and I'm not going to mention that even if I do find evidence for it.

"And would Queen Triskelle have… Done something bad to her?"

"Again, probably. If Triskelle was happy then we'd probably have heard from her by now. Since we haven't she was probably unhappy. Which means that either your mother was given a long-term punishment and there's not much we can do about it, or she was given a short term punishment and she's probably fine by now."

And the question I've been dreading…

"Do you want to try summoning her?"

He doesn't answer. He looks down, then off to his right where the sea is crashing against the rocky island shore.

"The others don't remember her, and Miss Gloria is very good at pretending to be human. I don't remember her all that clearly. But she was evil."

"That doesn't mean that it's wrong to want to-."

"I don't want to summon her."

I nod, trying not to look as relieved as I feel.

"I want to try summoning Caroline."

"Caroline..?"

"The oldest-. Our oldest sister. The… First one we ate. I came here-. Back, because I wanted to bury them next to Mum, but-. But we can, can't we?"

That's not much better.

"Do you know where her remains are, then?"

He looks at me sombrely. "I know where they all are."

What..? Would have happened to her soul? She could hardly be held responsible for the murders her mother and father committed. I doubt that she got any religious instruction, and she'd have been killed when she was… Fourteen, at the eldest? If her succubae nature resulted in her going to Hell she'd probably transform into a full demon relatively quickly, but at the moment she would still be being tortured. But I don't have a good way to help with that. No one really deserves Hell.

But that's got nothing to do with anything.

I walk closer to my boy, and crouch down to hug him with my right arm.

"We can try."

 

[Mr Zoat]

17th February 2013
17:01 GMT

"Lantern?!" Zosime looks up in surprise after shoving what looks like a javelin through the arm of an Aztec… Fine, zombie. "Prince Kon?"

The Aztec woman has clearly had a rather bad time of it, but despite wounds to her abdomen, neck and head she's still clumsily trying to rise, to attack the one who defeated her.

"Hey." Kon nods, taking in the fallen woman. "Are we holding?"

"This is hardly the first time the dead have attacked Themyscira." She looks down with the stoicism of a three thousand year old veteran. "Our fallen sisters usually dress more decorously."

I look around. It looks like the attack by the dead in this part of the island is under control, with the Aztecs being netted or knocked down so that they can be pinned. I generate construct spike drivers and speed up the process, earning myself a few grateful nods.

"If your shade ever attacks me without a shirt on, I'll be sure to dress you before anyone else sees."

"Shirt? I have bought sports bras from New York. They provide far better support-."

"You just want an excuse to-" I raise my eyebrows sceptically. "-show off your skin."

She shrugs. "Delphine likes it. How did you get here?"

"Ah, long story short, you should probably avoid the west side of the island for now."

Zosime frowns while Kon shakes his head. "How did Themyscira get here?"

Zosime looks over to her pentekontarchos, who nods as she organises her detachment to chain up the zombies and cart them away.

"It was just after Oizys touched our minds. Reformation Island vanished, and I hoped that whatever magic moved it would affect the rest of us as well."

Kon looks concerned. "How did everyone..? Did everyone make it?"

"After two thousand years of isolation I doubt that any of us have not felt such misery at least once. Though had it gone on longer it would have been uncomfortable."

"So..?"

"We prayed for deliverance. Some of those who are skilled with magic attempted to alter the wards to block out whatever malevolent magic-." She frowns. "What was it?"

"It's called 'Anti-Life'. There's this evil alien god called 'Darkseid' who uses it to make everyone so depressed that they just give their souls to him."

She actually seems to brighten up a little. "And you are fighting it?"

"Yeah. It's not easy, but Paul found a way to get rid of it."

"He has a several stage plan and we're only about half way there at the moment. What happened next?"

"The gods moved us here. The priestesses say that Olympus and Skybreak are now one, or… Connected together. We are in the realm of the gods."

I look towards Skybreak, and… Yes, the topography is a little different to what I remember, and a little more like what I remember of Olympus.

"And the Aztecs?"

"Is that their name? They do not talk much."

"They probably call themselves 'Mexians'."

She nods. "Like the woman at the pastry shop."

"No, she-. Maybe, but she's probably Mexican. That's where the word comes from, but it's not the same thing. Their gods require human sacrifice to remain strong, and they like receiving their sacrifices heart-first."

She frowns, looking down at the impaled man beneath her. "These are sacrifices?"

"We're not exactly sure-" There's a loud thud of footsteps heading towards us. "-what's happening there."

Zosime looks west, hefting her spear as the other Amazons abandon prisoner detainment and begin to form up. "When you said to avoid the west side of-."

The towering form of Tlaltecuhtli walks around the side of the mountain, stomping on- Quick referral to my mental map of Themyscira. -some pasture fields that she probably isn't damaging by accident, being an earth goddess. Amazon eyes widen and they shift into a dispersed formation.

"No, it's-." / "She's fine-."

Kon and I look at each other, and I bow my head to my prince.

"That's Tlaltecuhtli. She's an Aztec goddess, and she's here to-."

Tlaltecuhtli stops and reaches down, tearing Aztec zombies off their stakes and lifting them up. She then splits her head in two to reveal her second mouth, and…

Drops the zombies in.

"To help."

"Prince Kon-El!" The pentekontarchos looks at him for direction. "Your orders!"

"Move away from the Aztecs and let her take them."

"Ah, except…" I put a construct sarcophagus around the one that Zosime was working on. "This one, I'm experimenting with her."

The pentekontarchos frowns and looks to Kon for confirmation. He nods, and she organises her women to put the zombies in a pile and then back away.

While I stick a heart in this one, inject cloned blood into the circulatory system, and use a construct to make it beat, and then add a transmuted cardiac stimulator to keep it beating before closing up her chest.

And monitor for any change.

Kon comes a little closer, trying not to be overheard. "Should we try and help the others? Stop her eating them? I mean, can we?"

"We could try. I don't think we'd be successful, and as far as I'm concerned this is more like a resurrection than a healing. If it works and we get someone who can tell us what's going on then great, but if we can't then I'm not going to beat myself up over it. These people are dead, and when they were alive they were Aztecs."

"They died a long time ago. And they're the souls of the dead. This isn't… Right."

I shrug. "No, but it's part of their belief structure. When we find out what happened to their hearts we can try and sort something out but so far this one isn't moving."

I try scanning her again.

"I'd guess it's because they can't supply their own power in the way that a goddess can, but I don't know that. I don't have a perfect solution and this is the best available non-perfect solution."

He nods, clearly not happy but not having anything better. "Zosime, is Grandma in the city plaza?"

"If she's not on the beach, yes."

"'kay. Let's go check in with her."

 

[Mr Zoat]

17th February 2013
17:07 GMT

"Kon-El!"

Queen Hippolyta smiles broadly as we come in to land, then walks over and wraps Kon in a warm embrace. She's wearing a slightly more ornate version of the armour worn by the other women, and seems to be in generally good spirits. I watch for a moment, then turn to the nearby Philippus and open my arms with a winsome smile.

She settles for tapping her fist against my cuirass. "Lantern. I see that you restored the Earth Goddess's heart. I hope that you do not play Euanthe false?"

"Not intentionally, but who knows what women think."

She chuckles, because that's not just a chauvinistic jibe but a quote from a popular Themysciran play. The male character is something of a well-intentioned but slightly pompous figure of fun, and they.. were going to include it in their next international tour.

Queen Hippolyta half-releases Kon while keeping her right arm around his waist, leading him closer to the central table covered by a map of Themyscira. There are markers indicating the locations of Amazon military units, with slightly different signs to distinguish between guards and militia. All Amazons are trained as soldiers, but they don't all take to it to quite the same degree and they've only been able to get enough orichalcum to equip the standing army.

"We have some respite, now that Tlaltecuhtli is permanently dealing with the heartless. Orange Lantern, please update the map."

I scan, and shift the markers to their precise locations. Then I add markers for the remaining Aztec attackers and a single large one for Tlaltecuhtli.

Hippolyta nods to me. "The remaining heartless will be contained within the hour, and… Fed to Tlaltecuhtli. That will grant us the first true respite that we have had since the attacks started."

Philippus snorts. "I think that will create more disappointment than joy, majesty."

"Perhaps the loudest complainants would enjoy marching to the shoreline for reconnaissance."

"Your majesty, could you explain to us what is going on? Zosime gave a quick.. summary: Reformation Island vanished, the Anti-Life started affecting your minds and then you were teleported here, then…"

"Lord Hephaestaean explained that we had been brought here as part of his effort to protect both us and Olympus from the… Anti-Life. The precise mechanics are beyond my understanding, but we now stand a little closer to the gods than we did."

"Power… Gradient. It's possible to move physical objects into the immaterial realm. You have to have a fairly concrete part and it would take a lot of power…"

"Lord Hephaestaean said something similar. For a time we were simply relieved that we were safe. Then something occurred to cut us off from Olympus. The mountain is still there, but we cannot reach the gods and they cannot reach us."

I nod. "I couldn't rise more than a hundred metres into the air. I assumed that was just how it worked here. It wasn't like that before?"

"No."

Hippolyta shakes her head, and I wince inwardly as I realise that I'm not likely to be able to get useful thaumaturgical information here that could let me work out how that happened. Most Amazons have a basic grasp of magical practice but next to none of magical theory.

"So it's Tlazolteotl, right?" Kon's looking at me as he says it, but my only response is a shrug. "Bast said that she was looking better than she had for a long time. Aztec gods get stronger when they get fed hearts, and Tlaltecuhtli didn't have a heart when we got here."

"Plausible, if speculative. And it wouldn't explain why the other Aztec gods were okay with her doing that."

"What's Tlazolteotl goddess of?"

"Disease, adultery, vice and absolution. And bathing, for some reason."

Across the table, Menalippe looks slightly more horrified than everyone else. "And she consumes hearts for that?"

"All Aztec gods except Quetzalcoatl do. It's why no one worships them any more and why the whole region was happy to convert to Christianity. And why the Aztecs mostly got slaughtered by their tributaries rather than the Spanish who conquered them. Demanding money is one thing, but demanding people to be sacrificed isn't something people will accept in the long term."

"The hearts of other gods."

I shrug. "The principle's sound. Until we see some of the other Aztec gods, we can't conclude that for certain. Though it does put what Zeus did to Metis into perspective. Anyway, Kon and I are here trying to track down a kidnapped elf, and the sheeda who probably did that had his heart removed as well. And whoever it is also acquired the blood of a God of Travellers from some undoubtably nefarious reason."

"Which God of Travellers?"

I smile at Menalippe's disquiet. "According to the merchant, one from a dead religion. Hermes is safe."

Hippolyta considers the map. "Do the Aztecs have a navy?"

"They weren't much of a naval power when their civilisation was a going concern." Not compared to Britain, France and… Well, Spain. "Tlaloc and Chalchiuhtlicue share the 'water' domain, but I don't know… Anything about what happens in the Aztec afterlife. I had thought they went in for reincarnation so there should only be a few human souls here, but… That's clearly not the case."

"How long did Aztec civilization last?"

"About two hundred years, early fourteenth century to early sixteenth century. Depending on what you count. The people weren't exterminated after they were conquered by the Spanish, but their religion was prioritised for elimination due to the whole human sacrifice thing."

I get the general impression that the Amazons aren't exactly impressed by that. And to be fair, compared to them that's barely any time at all.

Kon frowns. "Grandma, why did the gods bring Themyscira here? I mean, specifically. I don't think Amazons and Aztecs have ever met."

Hippolyta look at Menalippe and raises her eyebrows slightly. Menalippe nods. "The… 'Anti-Life' was not merely disquieting to we mortals. Lord Hephaestaean moved Olympus to ward off its attack on the magics of Olympus."

"Because it's not being attacked here and now?"

"The magics being inflicted upon it here are different."

"So it was a trap." That gets some attention. "Someone -probably Mannheim- launches an attack on Olympus and leaves an avenue of escape. Lord Hephaestaean sees what looks like a solution and takes it, and runs into an ambush."

I guess forming a working relationship with the new War God was always going to take a little while.

Hippolyta nods. "That may well be. But what comes next?"

"Reconnaissance. Superboy, Cernunnos and I can fly across the landmass and try and find someone to interrogate." I waggle the construct coffin back and forth. "Bringing the zombies to their senses seems a little more difficult than the goddess."

Hippolyta makes eye contact with Philippus, who nods.

"Very well. Captain Philippus and our pegasus riders will accompany you."

"That-."

"We saw you fall from the sky, Paul. And Kon could have drowned in the earth."

I nod. "Of course, majesty. How quickly can they be ready?"

 

[Mr Zoat]

17th February 2013
10:21 GMT -7

"Hmm." Sunset looks over to Circe. "Does that looks right to you?"

Circe seems mildly puzzled. "It's not like you to be so hesitant, Sunset. Are you worried about what we will be conjuring up?"

"We don't really have demons in Equestria." She taps her tablet as she checks the geometry of the ritual space. "The closest thing we have are umbrum, and they're basically useless."

"And not evil?"

"Oh, they're evil." She shrugs as she lowers the tablet. "Or at least that's what all the records say. But they're hard to bind and they don't really have any useful magic of their own. King Sombra used to use them to possess ponies so he could control them, but that only worked because he was a manifested umbrum himself and they were okay working for him without being bound. For everyone else, if you're strong enough to bind the umbrum you can probably just mind control the pony you were going to order them to possess."

I raise my left eyebrow.

"Or-. Just-. Find some other way to do it."

I nod. "Just because you're Alicorn of Magic, that doesn't mean that you have to solve-."

"Solve every problem with magic." She rolls not just her eyes, but her entire head, demonstrating that ascension doesn't stop you being a teenager. "You sure it's not Celestia you're dating?"

"Yes." I look over the programmable ritual circle. "So what are you summoning up?"

"I figured the best place to start was the youngest succubus, because that-."

"Sunset, I have adopted nine children. I don't want to end up on a sex offenders register."

"No, it's okay. This spell is the version for when you want to send a succubus to seduce someone else. They know what you want before they appear."

"Okay." I nod. "Just remember that it's your magic signature that's on all of this, and I will have absolutely no hesitation in giving the police your name."

"Sunset?" The boy goes to take a step out of the double-warded viewing area I told him to stay inside, then remembers himself and stops at the exterior line. "Is it going to summon my sister?"

Sunset glances at me, a little awkwardness and uncertainty entering her posture. "It might, but probably not. We're just going to get a succubus who knows more about what's going on than we do."

He nods, looking pensive.

Sunset nods. "Alright, positions."

Circe and Sunset take up positions opposite one another across the summoning circle while I step inside it, careful to avoid interfering with their drawings. And then I make eye contact with the boy while theatrically wiggling my left hand. Now, normally, standing inside the summoning circle is a bad idea, but that is because most summoners are squishy humans calling up things more physically powerful than themselves.

But as John Constantine demonstrated with the Fuckpig, it doesn't always have to go that way. And I am a New God.

Sunset gestures, and the edge of the summoning cylinder shimmers. And there's a faint scent of rotting eggs, which suggests that whoever we're summoning predated modern hygiene.

And given the shape of what appears… Sort of a combination of Cro-Magnon and actual crow, with a diaphanous… Mini-dress. The face is a sort of human face stretched in such a way as to suggest a beak, while the dress and feathers fade into each other. Now, I could sort of see how a bird woman could be an arousing sight. I've seen Ms Thal's fan sites. This is… Something unsexy that you can sort of see that it could turn into something sexy… If someone put a lot of work in.

"Usually, they wait outside the circle, oh God of Conquerors." She blinks her too-large eyes. "Though given your power I can see why you did not. You should have more caution: this gateway can work both ways."

"Oh, I plan on visiting Hell eventually. I do appreciate your warning, though I am somewhat curious as to your reason for offering it freely."

"Someone of your power could easily represent a long-term contract. I would ruin my chance if you died foolishly. Though perhaps my caution was unwarranted, given your great power."

"It's a foolish overlord who gets annoyed at subordinates looking out for his interests. Now, I want some information from you."

"Volunteering information only goes so far. If you are not sending me out to seduce your enemies, I will require payment."

"Fair enough. What do you have in mind?"

"I understand that your library is extensive. Given their aversion to demons, Atlantean lore reaches us only slowly."

"You want books on thaumaturgy?" She nods. "Seeking to better yourself. I respect that. Bit surprised that you didn't ask for more, but okay."

"If you weren't willing to supply even that, there wasn't any point in continuing the conversation. Ordinarily, I would attack a summoner who was so miserly, but in your case I would simply have left."

"Rational. You're young, aren't you?"

"Is that something that concerns you? I assure you that any information that I have will be accurate. My nature will not allow me to violate pacts."

"I imagine that an older demon would be more inflexible, that's all. Very well. Somewhere between ten and fifteen years ago a succubus set up with a vampire man on a small island in British waters. They had numerous children. The vampire was killed and the succubus 'died' shortly afterwards."

"That is not possible. We cannot bear children."

"Unless the succubus possessed a human body. I'm not exactly sure how it worked, but…" I point over to the boy. "It did."

The succubus makes a quiet cawing noise.

"So can I assume that you have no knowledge of his mother?"

"Succubae come and go. I have heard nothing of a succubae doing what you described."

Hm. "Alright. Any succubae showing an unusual interest in newer succubae? Or.. other newcomers to Hell? Some of her children died a little while after she did and we're trying to track down their souls."

"Countless souls fall into Hell every moment. But children are rare. Why do you think they would be ours?"

"Inherent demonic magic, inherited from mother and father. I suspect that reality would have treated them as demons."

"I cannot demand that you pay me for information I don't have. If I return and look for those children, what can I expect in thanks?"

"Depends on what you get. You can have a book for any substantial piece of information, even if it's just the mother's name. If you actually find the children… I could bind you to the Earth for a decade or so. If you maintain your adaptability, you could use that time to flourish within the bounds of human society."

Behind me, Sunset frowns at something.

"And the Queen?"

"If she gives you trouble, refer her to me."

The succubus bows. "I will return to Hell to begin my search."

I watch the space she occupied as she shimmers into non-existence. Then I turn to Sunset, who rotates her demonic analyser so that I can see the name and the boy can't.

Caroline.

Hmm.

 

[Mr Zoat]

17th February 2013
17:38 GMT

"You ever feel like joining the Justice League yourself?"

Philippus shakes her head, her eyes taking in every detail of the landscape below us. Hippolyta has opened up the reliquary and Philippus is back in her 'training Diana' equipment: Hermes' spare sandals on her feet allowing her to fly and boosting her speed, and the misnamed 'gauntlets' of Atlas around her forearms to boost her strength and endurance. Unfortunately for information-gathering purposes, Diana and Donna still have their respective lassos.

"It would be wrong to get in the way of the princesses. They do not need old women like me competing with them for glory."

That's a very Amazon response, though I mean that in the sense that it's a response that made sense before the Exile. Much like asari, the young women fought and the mature women raised daughters and practised professions. Unless their core territory was threatened or they became officers. Amazons don't have a new tradition which takes into account the lack of enemies or their agelessness. There's no need to prove your courage in your physical prime if your physical prime lasts three thousand years. And there's no urgent rush to have children once you've done that if you're blessed by a goddess who hasn't realised that normal women run out of ovum eventually.

That's probably something we're going to need to work on before the current generation come of age. After this mess is over.

"I don't think she'd see it like that."

"Perhaps."

She looks up, not at me but at the twelve pegasus riders accompanying us. Two of them are Heraklya, while the other ten are 'normal'. All have orichalcum equipment. Unless the Aztecs have flying monsters this should be more than enough force for reconnaissance.

"What will their Earth Goddess do with the people she ate?"

"Souls."

Her eyes flick my way. "Shades have no need for hearts."

"I'm not sure those are literally hearts. You have to remember that we're not in the material world any longer. It's thrown me off a few times, too."

"What does taking the heart of a soul do to it?"

"Okay, you know that motivation actually comes from your brain but we poetically refer to passion as coming from the heart?"

"No heart, no passion."

"Or maybe they still have it and… Tlazolteotl, or whoever it is, is using it to change them as they see fit. The sheeda we met had his personality intact, so I doubt it's having the heart removed by itself… Or maybe it just affects sheeda differently? I don't know."

"But they still have their minds." She frowns. "Then why do none of them talk to us? They make no war cries. They do not organise themselves with words or use formations."

"Again, guessing, but there is a limit to how many ways a goddess can split her attention. If she's remote controlling-. There was a wizard I briefly fought on Earth called Papa Midnite. One of his things was to remove part of a person's soul to turn them into a near-mindless servant. They lost the capacity for independent thought. Couldn't even speak. Just follow instructions as best as their damaged minds could understand them. You could stab one and it would just stand there, bleeding to death, until it lost the strength to stand. When we defeated him we were able to restore the surviving ones…"

I don't know what happened to them afterwards. Given the spiritual damage that inflicted on them, I doubt they would have survived any degree of Anti-Life exposure.

I shake my head. "The point is, there are all sorts of things you can clip off a person to turn them into pawns. Remember what shades were like before Lord Hades had his revelation?"

She nods. "I do."

"To be clear, Lord Hades is a god I admire and respect because he does a very good job at running an afterlife. Not all religions are as fortunate as we are."

"He does now."

"Anyway. Going back to my original point, it's a big world and if you feel like doing some heroing, I'm sure we can find somewhere for you that doesn't detract from Wonder Woman."

"I will keep that in mind."

Okay, so the topography of this place doesn't match Central America, but the trees I've seen match those that are native to Central America. Which makes sense. There are mountains in the distance, though I'm.. not sure if they're affected by the one hundred metre limit. Is Tlazolteotl trapping her rivals as well? I think-.

"I smell smoke. And water."

Philippus makes eye contact with Cernunnos. "Where?"

He points to… Forward and right. I have no idea whether or not this place uses normal directions, and I've got no idea how to work them out if it does. "That way."

Ring, scan?

Compliance.

"My ring thinks there's a river. Beyond that, don't know."

But that makes sense too. Aztecs hunted, so naturally their afterlife has the associated ideas built into it. They didn't use power rings, so I've got to copy their methods if I want to get anywhere. I could…

I glance at the construct coffin I'm carrying along behind me.

I could assimilate her, then pull the new construct lantern into my ring to gain its memories. And yes, that's an even more horrible violation of her soul than has already taken place, but Anti-Life. And the horrible violations that are already happening to her fellow Aztecs, with or without the Anti-Life.

Perhaps if I use the purple healing ray for longer? I might be able to reconfigure-.

"Paul."

"Captain?"

"Scout ahead. I want to know what Cernunnos has found."

"Covertly or overtly?"

She frowns at me, then looks over at the flying horses-.

I generate a booster construct. "Just checking."

The booster ignites, sending me shooting over the forest and… Yes, there's the river, just peeking through the canopy. Drop through the leaves into the channel and accelerate faster, because just because there's no reason for the Aztecs to have anti-air weapons doesn't mean that they don't.

I blink, and a… Boat? Flashes past. It was stationary, wedged against the bank and a fallen tree trunk. It looked like it was in reasonable condition, but the light construction suggested… A fishing vessel? This may be a river but it's not exactly the Amazon. It doesn't seem like boat fishing would be the way to go for food collection. Puzzling.

Up ahead the terrain rises, the river cutting a valley into the harder rock on side. I can distantly hear the sound of crashing water from a waterfall. Not much in the way of other sound coming from that direction-.

And then I'm at the plunge pool, braking hard as I see actual man made structures. Rock buildings that put me equally in mind of the surviving Aztec structures and those of Themyscira, things built by people with primitive tools and methods but unlimited time and patience. The roofs are thatched, and the walls are brightly coloured with either different types of stone or some kind of paint.

I don't see any actual people.

But I do see an Anti-Life broadcaster.

 

[Mr Zoat]

17th February 2013
17:43 GMT

It's sitting on a small stone pyramid. I can't see any blood on the stones, but it might just have been washed off. No external power source, no obvious guards.

Scan.

No threats detected.

Yeah.

I create a second layer of construct armour around myself.

"Orange Lantern to Superboy. There's an Anti-Life broadcaster. Keep everyone back."

"Okay, but it's gunna take you about five seconds to destroy it."

"I want to check the setup first. I'll contact you when I'm done."

"Makes sense. Superboy out."

Design appears… Standard. I drift upwards, trying to get a full view of it. Because if I understand New God technology, there's got to be something linking it to the local thaumosphere… Or, just, normal-sphere here… Anyway, we should be cut off from Mannheim, so it would have to be…

Sonics.

Heart beat detected.

And there we are. There's a heart beat in there. Because hearts are how we power things around here, apparently.

What to do?

I mean, I'm still towing the zombie woman. Maybe I can try sticking this heart in her? Or at least get a look at what their hearts are supposed to look like here? I bring the sarcophagus closer and remove enough of it to get a look at her face. Nothing-.

And now it occurs to me that bringing her this close to a broadcaster wasn't the most intelligent thing to do. Send that-. House, grab spare stones from that house, put her inside and brick up the windows and doorway.

Right.

I send out a wave of orange light, trying to feel by weak kinetic impacts if there's anything invisible or otherwise dodging detection. Nothing. Repeat with tiny grains of dust. Nothing.

Okay, but why would anyone put a transmitter where there aren't any people? Because there used to be people, or because there will be people in the future and you want to be ready. This is clearly an inhabited area, but there aren't any people. Why would an area in an afterlife with homes have no one there. Reincarnation? They could be working… But there's only so far it's practical to ride on a llama. Aztecs didn't commute. If they were working then I should be able to hear something.

I look at the waterfall, and then fly up.

Yeah, more buildings at the top, but it's more of the same. Still no people. There… Yeah, that's an exercise yard. Simple shields and clubs are stacked, and there's a roughly marked area for the pugilists. Aztecs considered reincarnation to be something earned, rather than asked for or automatic. Maybe they were levelling up?

Whatever it was, they're not doing it here now. So not working. And-.

Wait, what's that?

I saw something shiny in that… Barn? Long house? I fly inside-.

Ah. That clears that up.

There's no blood, because why would the dead bleed? If they bled, the gods could take their nourishment from them and then just have them reincarnate. But there is skin, and discarded flesh, and damaged obsidian blades. And I think that's… Ectoplasm?

But no hearts. And no Aztecs.

There used to be people here, wherever 'here' is. And now there aren't. The broadcaster was probably used to control them, which means that the heart was probably installed first.

If I knew more about Aztec culture, I could probably learn a lot from this place. But as I don't, I just fly back down the waterfall to the plunge pool area. This place responds well to hearts?

Then we give it hearts.

BABUM. BABUM. BABUM.

I form a construct-.

Something blurs past my vision, my outer construct armour evaporating and the inner sporting-

Fly up fly away!

-claw-slashes? Replace it and-.

It's gone again.

Alright, replace immediately, evasive flight pattern, detail optic scan of my environment. If they're pushing off a surface using super speed then there'll be a depression where their feet impact the stone, or an explosion if they're pushing off sand. Non-perfect optic camouflage will cause slight ripples if viewed from variable angles. And add metal plating to-.

My outer armour fails and this time pressure continues and my inner construct parts in front of my helmet! For a moment I see fur and feathers before I counter, flash fabricated x-ionised knives stabbing and provoking it into disengaging. And it's gone, gone from my sight, gone from scan, no obvious sign of its passage.

Okay, try something else. Leave the knives, add wire to the construct in case the attacker is using construct disruptors specifically and fill the air with locally-sourced dust. An extra fraction of a second's warning from the particulates moving-.

Thereparry!

Two knives are on target, one hitting nothing but feathers, sending the cut ends spiralling towards the river below. The other hits the torso, causing the-. Figure to abandon their swoop and pull to the side, missing me-

I get more details. Humanoid with wings. More than one set. Talons on the hands and feet. Don't get a good look at the face.

-as I form a cold gun and take a shot-.

It doesn't work, and the figure disappears again, accelerating out of my dust cloud.

It's not as big as Tlaltecuhtli, but I don't know if all Aztec gods maintain avatars that big. Gaea walks around in a body the size of an unusually but not impossibly large woman. So I could be fighting a god. I'd assume that I was fighting some sort of supernatural creature but I don't know enough about Aztec myth to identify it. Emperor Itzcoatl destroying their early written records didn't help, and relying on Spanish monks for information regarding the supernatural wouldn't be a good idea anyway.

Grab the falling feathers. Can I at least analyse those?

Yes.

Eagle feathers. Some sort of eagle monster? No special counter for eagles-.

Disruption again, switch to knock-out gas and pump it out. Move the knives-.

"Kuh."

The shape flies away as I stare dumbly at the spear embedded in my right lung.

And then the pain hits!

 

[Mr Zoat]

17th February 2013
17:46 GMT

"Uh!"

And it's a shitty Aztec spear with a head made of obsidian and resin rather than metal! This is why Cortés wiped out your civilisation!

Dodge!

This time the spear skims my power armour, scratching a line across my side. Pain's ebbing a little but for some reason I can't regenerate myself or disintegrate it. Knives, move the knives faster, keep up the defensive pattern. The spears don't redirect themselves once thrown, so dodging is a better option than when whoever this is was just swooping at me with their claws.

"Un-hu-hu."

Can I manually kill the nerve endings? Yes? Okay, kill ninety percent, I still need some idea of what's happening. Manually close the blood vessels. Crumbler construct on my own armour at the impact site… Can I pull it out? Because I can oxygenate my blood by ring but I don't like the way I can taste my own blood in my mouth right now.

It's not coming out.

Why isn't it coming out? Because obsidian isn't supposed to come out. It's supposed to splinter in wounds and make them bleed and get infected. So I-.

Frantically viff because that's another spear! I twist and it skims my faceplate rather than gouging my eyes out!

Disintegrate my own numb flesh-. And there, it's free and finally out and… And parts still aren't healing because there are tiny bits of obsidian still in the wound, but it's still progress. Feel the bits I can't alter and use construct tweezers.

My tweezers snap a small piece, fragmenting the obsidian still further.

Alright, construct vacuum cleaner, I can replace lung tissue but I need the obsidian out! I-.

There.

I spin the spear and all available knives at the space with a slight disruption in the dust, and get to see the bird/cat thing frantically try to dodge away! Can't be precise, so I just stab-. Got the main right wing! Try flying now! Got the left leg with his own stupid spear! Got a bunch of minor wounds with the knives! I-!

He's actually bleeding. Not a heartless zombie, and that snaps me out of deciding to kill him immediately because if this is a stupid misunderstanding then that-. That would be a bad thing. Grab with a construct fist, shove him up against a wall and pin him there. Rip off his spear quiver and set it aside. He's strong but it looks like his strike-power mostly comes from his feet talons and finger claws. And those aren't gloves or boots, some sort of giant eagle talons have replaced his feet and claws have replaced his nails.

Ah. The vacuum has finished sucking out my obsidian-enriched lung matter and now I can finish regenerating myself.

Okay.

"Orange Lantern to Superboy. Just got attacked by a.. jaguar/eagle man. I'm fine now and will attempt to interrogate."

"Is the Anti-Life broadcaster still working?"

"Yes. I think I should try and find out if anyone's watching before potentially alerting anyone."

"It's your call. I haven't seen anything up here."

"Call you back when I've got something. Out."

The man in my construct-grip has… He's trying to go invisible, and parts of him are, but I can still see most of him and my construct can grip him just fine. The mask… It's an elaborate Aztec headdress with added mask component. The.. mask itself is an odd mix of jaguar and eagle: eagle upper and beak, with jaguar whiskers and teeth. Is it..? No, thank goodness, it's not attached to his face. Take it off…

It wasn't attached because his face isn't much different. His eyes are eagle eyes and there's a clear line where his lower jaw has been torn off and replaced with that of a jaguar. As a result I'm having trouble understanding his expression and I'm not sure he could talk if he wanted to.

His chest features a chest wound… But the chest has been closed up and… There's a heart beat. No, two heart beats. Strange. I'm increasingly getting the feeling that someone tried and succeeded in turning this man into a super zombie. Basic pattern recognition suggests that it will be a jaguar heart and an eagle heart, but… If I remove them both that might cause him to devolve to heartless status, and he was intelligent enough to use both tools and tactics.

I send my helmet into subspace and look him in the eyes to see if there's any sign of recognition. There…

I can't tell.

"Can you understand me?"

"Khkhkhkhkh!"

Something like the hissing growl of a big cat. Not promising, though I suppose I could fabricate some catnip.

Or I could crack open his chest and add in a newly-fabricated human heart. Or I could use the heart from the Anti-Life broadcaster-

No.

-or I could use mine. I mean, the orange light can push blood around my body perfectly well and that enlightened Red Lantern version of me didn't seem to miss theirs. But this is a magic place and I don't want to take the risk of losing something permanently by giving it up.

Lowest risk solution is a new heart, so let's try that. If it doesn't work I can always cut it out and try something else.

"I'm going to open up your chest and implant a replacement human heart. I'll try and numb the pain, but I'm not sure if my techniques…"

Wait. Did the Aztecs have access to coca leaves? I know that some tribes use it as a pain killer, and if injections don't work… And he doesn't appear to be responding to spoken words…

"Okay, I don't think you can double-die, so I'm just going to try to numb the pain as best I can, then I'm going to try replacing your human heart. Sorry in advance."

I pull the spear out of his leg and close the wound as best I can. Connect the blade to a chirurgeon engine, brace the subject, then inject them with painkillers and coca while they're staring at the blade.

Cutting open someone's chest to give them a heart. This is just about the most un-Aztec thing possible.

The blade goes down, and it looks like neither jaguar nor eagle have made him more resilient. Right, cut down the middle, use a probe… Eagle heart is at the top and jaguar heart is at the bottom. There's nothing in the location where a normal human heart should be.

Can I analyse his genetics? No. Clearly this is a dead Aztec. So… Use genetic records, clone a best-match for an Aztec heart, prepare cloned blood to pump in and… Imbue this heart with the desire to beat and enough orange light to make it happen, to become a man once more.

Then wince quietly as I crack a couple of ribs and enlarge the hole and… Put the heart in his chest, hook up the blood supply-. The heart is already beating, good. Now remove my knives and clamp them to my armour, reposition the ribs and knit them back together. Drop the spear off to the side and seal up the chest.

And then sit back, reducing the hand-construct restraining him until it's something that he could probably break if he put his mind to it.

"So tell me, are you a man again, or still a beast?"

Eagle eyes lock onto me, and he lunges through my restraints!

 

[Mr Zoat]

17th February 2013
17:49 GMT

A claw goes through my chirurgical construct, shattering it and causing the spear to drop.

Construct mace.

He flap/dives, grabbing the spear and bring it to bear on me just as my mace comes around and shatters the head, knocking the haft down.

"Are you a man?"

He tries to vanish from sight, but with a heart pumping orange light in his chest I can still see him.

"Or a-" I sidestep his charge, mace knocking the closest claw away from my face as I let him continue past me. "-beast? Because if the answer-"

He bends slightly, and I think he's… Yes, he's shaking, and I can see the orange colour percolate through his body more thoroughly. And…

"-is 'no', things are going to get unpleasant."

Orange filaments flash out, drawing runes for concealment and mana-eating on the rocks around us for me to tie into my soul. Okay, if that doesn't-

"M-an."

-work, then…

"Say again?"

"Man." He shimmers back into full visibility, looking me in the eyes. "I am a man, not a beast. Who are you?"

"Orange Lantern. And there are a great many things I need to ask you, but let's stick to the most urgent for now. What do you know about the broadcaster?"

I point, because I'm fairly sure that the Aztecs didn't have a word for 'broadcaster'. He follows the direction with a quick flick of his eyes.

"I am not a BEAST!"

He lunges for his scabbard, grabs a new spear and hurls it in a single smooth motion. The spear flies true, striking the main armoured shaft of the broadcaster and failing to penetrate.

"Is that what it's telling you?"

"Yes! That I am a toy, a tool for the evil god that made it! That I have no other function!"

"What is your name, man?"

"My-." He winces, then raises his right claw to his mouth-. He's bitten his lips, then cut them with his claw as he tries to feel it. "My name is Qualpopoca."

"There's a heart beating inside it-."

"Of course there is."

"Is it yours?"

"No. They took my heart as an offering to Tlazolteotl."

"Then who does it belong to?"

"An old man. Thin, with pale skin like yours. I thought that they were honouring him; he was smiling as they opened his chest. None of us had such courage." He shakes his head. "But instead they just took his body like the rest, while they made me… This."

Someone overwhelmed by the Anti-Life? A city master, perhaps? Not like I can show him a picture of every old man in the world and ask which it was. But if he's still alive, I should try and take the heart with me.

"Why did they leave you here?"

"To slay anyone who interfered with it. I am glad that you stopped me, but if your magic only shields my mind for a little while… I don't have the courage to reincarnate, but I would rather cease existing than continue as an attack-beast."

"Alright, but I'm trying to make it permanent. I'm not destroying you completely unless I know your mind can't be brought back. The results could help your entire afterlife."

But given that I appear to have cut him off from the control system which uses his original heart…

I generate a construct crumbler ram, inscribe it with runes of energy absorption and nullification and hunger and connect it to my tattoos.

And then I slam it into the broadcaster, just under where I can hear the heartbeat. I'm used to these things being supernaturally tough, fortified by the souls all of the Anti-Life sufferers within the city and by Mannheim himself.

This time it goes right through.

I'm so surprised that for a moment I hesitate, then I dive forward and tear into the failed structure, ripping through the material containing the heart and pulling it free and ugh.

Mannheim Is.

Yeah, I can feel that. Whoever this was, they were Anti-Lifed hard. But at least it's not broadcasting any more. Let's.. see. I can't reach the suppression chain I have stored in subspace, but I could create something similar using my tattoos to drain the energy. The runic system isn't really designed for this, but it's the best I can do on short notice and without a magic user on hand. I forge a chain, inscribe the runes and forge a connection before clamping it around the heart. That makes it quieten down, but I can just about still hear it.

"Feeling any better?"

"It is no longer screaming in my mind, but that does not mean that I don't hear its echoes in my soul. I know that I am less than a man, and was even before they treated my form as a-" He looks at his right hand. "-rag-quilt."

"What makes you say that?"

"Do you know where you are?"

"The Aztec afterlife."

"Aztec. That is what the Spanish called us. We are the Mexica. And this is just one part of the afterlife." He looks around. "Mictlampa. A place of respite for defeated warriors. It's supposed to be a temporary reprieve before we resume our journey to rebirth."

"And you didn't do that?"

"By the time that was an option our empire had already been destroyed. I could not face being reborn as a servant to the people that defeated us. Forgetting our ways, and forgetting our gods."

Forgetting the gods that commanded you to ritually murder people. But I'll be nice.

"Empires rise and fall. Your people weren't always empire-rulers. My people used to rule the largest empire the Earth has ever seen, and all we have now is a few islands."

"Were you the one that made it fall?"

"Ah, no." I frown. "That happened in my grandparents' and great grandparents' generations. And I doubt that you could have been responsible for the Spanish."

"No. But it was my attack on one of their outposts that caused the war which saw our defeat."

I shake my head. "I think that was the way they were going anyway. Ritually killing people for a god was considered to be a very bad thing in Europe, and the last people who did it were destroyed for it. You might have triggered the war, but it was already inevitable."

His posture suggests that he's not convinced.

"But if you want to quiet the voice in your head telling you that is true, why not help me stop what is happening to what's left of your people." I break open the house I bricked up to contain the heartless woman and pull her still-recumbent body out. "If I understand your thought-."

"Yes. I will."

"Glad to hear it. Superboy, the broadcaster is destroyed. Come on down."

 

[Mr Zoat]

17th February 2013
18:00 GMT

It's easier, here. I spotted that the first time Granddad brought me here, but it's getting more and more obvious. Miss Martian wasn't too happy about talking to the fire fomorians but we need to know exactly who's gone missing or we're just fumbling around in the dark, aren't we?

Wasn't expecting them to try setting me on fire right away, but it's elemental stuff. Don't use it all that much as a superhero because setting people on fire causes serious injuries and because the fire service usually get to fires quicker than I can. But right now three fomorians are trying to burn me to death and it's not working at all.

Actually…

Yeah, there we go. And now I can store up that fire for later.

I look through the fire towards Miss Martian, to try and-. Okay, I'm going to need to get her some flowers or something. I should have warned her-.

"Why won't you burn!"

I look up at the flaming giant with my face just like Granddad showed me for dealing with idiots. "'cause I'm a wizard. I don't fear your fire. I'm here because I want to help." I give them a moment, because I want them to have that in their heads for the next bit. "Did someone disappear? You're not the only ones."

It's a bit hard to tell when they're in walking bonfire mode, but I think they're all looking at the one who was talking for a decision. He ignores them and keeps looking at me. And I keep staring back at him. Am I too young for this to work? Does he think I'm an apprentice someone sent because they couldn't be bothered to come themselves?

Well then he can put up with it, can't he?

He takes a step back, then starts becoming less bonfire and more person. And he's old. His hair and beard are mostly white with just a little bit of red, and his beard covers most of his cheeks so there isn't much of his weathered skin visible. His eyes turn back last, and I can still see just a little bit of fire in the middle of his pupils.

"You're a Cornwall."

"I'm the current living Cornwall. And this…" Miss Martian isn't getting any closer, but she is out from behind that rock now. "This is Miss Martian."

"Hello!"

"Who else has been taken?"

"Just about every fomorian clan has lost someone. And that's just the ones where they live together. I don't know where all the hermits live so I can't check up on them. Who did you lose, and when did they get taken?"

"Brian. He's a child, he doesn't know enough to defend himself yet. He's been gone less than a day. We're searching for him ourselves."

That explains why they went for me. I'm the odd thing out. Interrogating me would have been more intelligent, but they just had a little boy kidnapped. So, be a hero and try reassuring them. "As far as we know, they're taking everyone alive. Where did you last see him?"

The old fomorian looks over to… A woman. Looks like she's been crying, and hasn't been sleeping. Maybe his mother?

"He was near by. I was tending the charcoal oven just over there." She points. "I turned my back turned for just a moment, and then he was gone and I couldn't find him!"

The old man nods. "She started shouting and we came running. I guess that's what you heard as well."

Actually it was Miss Martian hearing their panicking minds, but close enough. I just nod.

"Miss Martian, can you hear anything?"

She flies closer and her eyes start shining white. They go back to normal as she shakes her head. "No. I can't hear Brian or anyone who could have taken him."

Fuck! I hate missing person cases when it's kids! Alright, think. If she can't hear him then he could be dead-. But with his family searching they'd have found the body by now. Or he's gotten out of range super fast.

"Are you his mother?" The woman nods. "Alright. I need one of your hairs."

The old man scowls. "Wizard-."

I take a small knife off my belt, prick my right thumb so some blood ends up on the blade, and then I offer it to him. "Give it back when we're done, yeah?"

He blinks in surprise, then takes it and nods to the woman, who pulls a hair out of her head and hands it to me. I wrap it around my right forefinger and.. reach out for attachments. A hair's not the strongest link, but it's not bad and he's probably got a couple of her hairs on him-.

Yeah, got it.

I start running, feeling where his feet went. He was… Just running around, playing in the woods without going far enough away from the group to get worried. There are dangerous animals in Otherworld, but most of them know not to pick fights with fomorians.

**Robert?**

Right, I'm in a daze when I do this. Mind probably feels weird to her.

**I'm fine, M'gann.**

More trees, more nearly bare earth. I wouldn't say I'm going deeper but I'm definitely going away. Doing this spell tells me where he went, gives me impressions of what he was thinking but it doesn't tell me-

I stop where the trail ends.

-why.

A small clearing. Some plants on the ground, taking in light for as long as they can until the trees around it grow over the top or one germinates in the middle-. The trail ends. It doesn't go into the air. That leaves teleportation.

"You haven't-"

I can't feel a teleportation spell, so that leaves-.

"-found-."

I bring my arms together in front of me and then push them out to the sides, the earth in front of me splitting open in sympathy.

Yeah. They covered it over but they didn't actually collapse the hole in the earth completely.

"Magic gate. Not like the gnomes or elves use." I clench my right fist so the earthen slope reforms into steps and start walking down, M'gann floating down after me. "Don't know where it goes, but I can feel the trail right up to-."

To the blood on the little altar next to it.

"To the gate."

A stone archway, and the carvings look… Aztec? I don't really know South American history. I don't want to get confused between different groups. I glance back at the old man, who has led the family in following us down.

"Can I have that knife back?"

He silently nods and holds it out to me.

"Thanks."

I tap the bloody tip against the altar, trying to see-.

The blood vanishes, and the gate opens. Simple enough. Not all that secure, mind, but maybe it's guarded at the other end. Soon see-.

"We're coming."

"No." I shake my head. "We-."

"He's our blood."

"Miss Martian and me can hide in plain sight. Can you?" He doesn't immediately respond. "And I know that Brian went through there. I don't know that the person who took him did, or that they didn't come back. They could still be around here, so I need you to keep this end safe. If we need you, we can-" I burn up the hair around my finger before sheathing the knife. "-come back and get you. Okay?"

He keeps looking at me, then grudgingly nods.

"Thank you. Miss Martian?" She nods, floating just in front of the gate, and then goes invisible. I pull shadows and air around me as I do the same. "Go."

I run through the port-.

SHITSHITSHIT!

 

[Mr Zoat]

17th February 2013
18:00 GMT

"Okay. Turn left."

I can feel Match twist slightly, and then the oversized robot toy thing we're hiding inside turns too. Spoofing its transponder so that their control system didn't pick up on it wasn't easy, defeating it without completely wrecking it and then hollowing it out so we could hide inside it and still get the messages from its control centre was even harder. There's no way that it would pass a detailed inspection, and I really wouldn't want Match to fight wearing it while I was still inside.

But we're inside the castle now. Whatever it's actually called.

Batman doesn't have great records on this place, or whatever these robot drones are called. Back in the sixties there was a British man who fought crime using remote controlled robot… Toys. His name was either Eric Dolmann or Jonas Luthor -no relation- and he didn't ever use a code name that couldn't also be an actual name. He used Jonas when he ran the electronics repair shop he used as a cover and 'Doll Man' for a guy who fights crime using robot dolls sounds like it's not a real name, but there's not enough info in the database to know for sure. He hasn't been seen for over a decade anyway, but these look like they use an updated version of the same concept: giant science fiction combat robots.

My arm computer lights up as the central computer sends another query message to what it thinks is just another simple drone in its system. My computer's emulator sends the only response that could explain why we're where we are: serious damage detected, returning to workshop.

If I was the one programming the system, damage like that would make a robot shut down and then make a separate robot fly over, pick the damaged robot up and then fly it to be repaired. Maybe with the castle covered in wards that sort of system can't be made to work, or there are only so many doorways and they don't want to remodel.

"Okay, two robots ahead."

"Right."

The system has the approaching robots send the I.F.F. signal, which the robots on guard mode check with their own internal records. Good job I spotted that before trying this, or we'd never have gotten past the guards at the front gate.

"Hey, where do you think all the people are?"

"I don't know yet." The system that controlled this robot doll wasn't designed to ask questions like that. The drones aren't supposed to be all that mentally sophisticated; anything like that just gets referred to the central computer. That's gotta be some kind of A.I. but I don't know if it's actually got a personality. "If they were just using this as an operating base… I mean, we didn't used to have a lot of people in the Mountain.."

"I guess."

There's a short signal from the left guard robot, pulses decreasing in duration-.

"Okay, stop in two… One… Stop."

Match stops, and the left robot turns his 'face' towards us to do a full scan. It doesn't transmit it to us, because there's no point. What would a simple robot do with that information other than decide whether to return or not? But my computer picks up the message it sends back to the main computer.

I don't want to try hacking it without as much information as I can get, because government centres like this can use custom operating systems and sometimes even custom programming languages. And I don't know how smart the A.I. is or what kinds of things get its attention.

And I really don't want to get Mannheim's attention again.

I don't-.

Breathe in, breathe out. Remember what you're here for, and that this is gunna be over. I don't exactly think that I'm going to be laughing about this in a few years, but I know for sure that Mannheim isn't either.

"…bin?"

Huh. Ah, okay, the robot-. I missed the first dismissal transmission, but it looks like it accepted that as being a result of the damage. The second transmission was at a higher power level. Send the acknowledgement.

And the doors open.

"Okay, start walking again."

The doors look wooden, but Paul's magic-detecting amulet has been glowing constantly since we got here so it could be anything. The door mechanism-. It's like a giant hug-me toy attached to the ceiling upside down, with its arms threaded through a wheel mechanism just above the doors. If it was a person it would basically be having its arm bones pulverised whenever it opened or closed the doors, which fits the Anti-Life but doesn't match the records for Luthor/Dolmann. He used to pretend that his automatons were real people.

Now I think about it, that reminds me of the Ventriloquist.

"Hey there, Mister Centurior."

There's a woman over at a work bench. She's slumped and wearing messy overalls and has the look of someone who's been too badly Anti-Lifed to really take care of themselves properly. Her hands are constantly moving over a control panel, and there's a bank of.. dozens of monitors on the wall in front of her. I spot the feed from the two outside, and… That one is our feed.

There isn't an A.I.. She's handling it all.

"You've been in a fight."

She's not watching us, she's watching the screen-. The top down view of the workshop screen. The door-opening robot has cameras mounted in its eyes.

"I wonder who with? No, wait. I don't wonder things any more."

She presses a series of buttons, and we get another move command.

"Into the machine you go."

A corner of the room lights up, and there's a-. Boxy mechanical face with chomping teeth. It has large mechanical arms, a nose and eyes and for some reason it's painted a bright cheerful green color. The teeth open up to show a conveyor belt inside and the faint glow of a furnace further in.

I take a EMP batarang out of my utility belt, hold it in front of Match's face until he checks what it is and nods in acknowledgement, then hit the activator and drop it down the right leg. A few seconds pass, and then there's a fizz and a bright flash. A couple of seconds more and Match makes a show of trying to move that leg and not being able to while I prepare the knock-out gas.

"This is why they all left me behind, isn't it? I can't make anything work right. Armstrong, throw it in."

For a moment nothing moves. Then there's a squeaking noise from the ceiling as the door opening robot pulls its arms free from the wheel mechanism-

"Break out on three. I'll knock her out, you get the creepy long-armed robot."

-and then grabs onto rungs underneath it to kinda pull itself down. Looks like it's attached to the ceiling somehow, like an upside down jack-in-the-box.

"Right."

"One."

A second pair of arms drop down from its shoulders and grab the next set of rungs.

"Two."

A third set of arms drop down from its back and grab the rungs on the floor and that is a seriously creepy robot face. And I can see that the woman is the one controlling it. Does she just talk to it because she's crazy?

Guess we'll find out in a moment.

"Three."

 

[Mr Zoat]

17th February 2013
18:05 GMT

I snatch my left hand back and cut the connection as the recumbent woman's chest cavity starts trying to drink down the orange light I'm trying to use to infuse her heart with purpose. It wasn't doing that before. Someone knows what I'm doing and is taking countermeasures.

I shake my head at Philippus. "That's me out of ideas, I'm afraid. A heart didn't work, the healing ray didn't work and any orange light I try using just gets absorbed."

Philippus frowns at Qualpopoca. "If we use the rites of your people, a few drops of blood is all that it takes?"

He nods. "Yes. We offer the hearts of sacrifices to the gods to sustain them, but it was also customary for every warrior to offer a few drops of their own blood as well."

The woman I took from Themyscira hasn't recovered, but Qualpopoca obviously knows more about Aztec Mexica magic than I do.

"Would she be restored when we defeat Tlazolteotl?"

"I do not know. Perhaps. Perhaps not. Perhaps her soul will be so damaged that it will simply fall apart without Tlazolteotl's magic."

"Do you know why Tlaltecuhtli was eating the heartless?"

"She was not eating them. She was taking them into the earth to be purified."

"Does that work? I thought that there was a whole process you had to go through to be reincarnated."

"If you want to be reborn as yourself, yes. I believe that Tlaltecuhtli seeks to preserve as much of their essence as she can, in their damaged state. Or perhaps she believes that removing Tlazolteotl's magic is sufficient. The dead are hard to completely kill." He sighs. "I cannot say for certain. I was a warrior, not a priest."

Philippus nods. "It would be better to make her whole. She may have useful information. I will-."

"No, Captain." One of the Heraklya -a woman named Annis- steps forward. "It would be better to use mine. If there is a trap within her, I am better able to resist."

Philippus glances at me for confirmation. "Demi-gods have an inherent resistance to being changed by external magic. I'm not sure that it would be enough to actually matter in this context, but she'd be more resilient that you would."

Qualpopoca stares at Annis. "Demi-goddess?"

"Zeus, deposed King of Olympus, is my grandfather."

She doesn't look at me when she says 'deposed', but I feel the look she doesn't give. Darn, he's still out on Earth somewhere, isn't he? He shouldn't be too great a security risk, but I… I didn't want him dead. Or driven mad.

"The gods of my people do not breed with mortals. If the Orange Lantern says that it will work, I have nothing to add."

Philippus waits a moment, then nods. Annis draws her sword, runs the edge against the meat of her thumb, and then drips a few drops of blood onto the woman's open heart. Then she wipes the residual blood off the blade, and the scab off her already-healed thumb. And in the meantime her blood drops just sort of sit on the exposed heart, doing nothing.

Qualpopoca shrugs. "Perhaps more blood is needed."

"More blood isn't always the answer. Sometimes it's better to-."

The heart fibrillates.

I reach in with my right hand and grasp it, forcing it to beat in a proper rhythm.

"Oh."

"What?"

Annis leans a little closer. "I'm three thousand years old and I'm seeing something for the first time."

I glance at Philippus. "I had, 'a man handling a heart delicately'. How about you?"

"'A man pumping… A woman.'"

I mock-frown as the woman's heart starts to beat properly on its own. "Captain, crude."

Philippus shrugs. "Amazon comedy is often bawdy. As well you know. Particularly where men's activities are concerned."

Annis frowns. "I was being serious. A wound like this has meant death for my entire life. And this blood magic… Would it work on the living?"

"That is not how we used it." Qualpopoca sounds uncertain. He's had hundreds of years and he hasn't tried studying magic? Or is it just that people in Mictlampa aren't considered suitable for that sort of knowledge? "You would need to ask a priest. It was never used on me when I was alive."

I take my hand out of her chest, pushing the flaps of flesh on either side closed. "Superboy?"

Kon looks a good deal more unsettled by open heart chirurgery than the rest of us, but he points the purple healing ray and knits the woman's chest back together. And once that's done, I fabricate her a t-shirt.

Philippus returns her attention to Qualpopoca. "What vulnerabilities does Tlazolteotl have?"

"She is a goddess. By the standards of mortals, she has none."

Kon shakes his head. "We're a bit more powerful than a normal mortal."

"And she is still a goddess. She can strike you down with disease before you can raise a hand to her." He thinks for a moment. "Perhaps… We fed our gods with the hearts of the living. But… The Mexica are no more. The gods have not been fed for a long time. If may be that they are weaker than they once were. At least where other realms are concerned."

"Like Olympus?"

"What is that?"

"The realm of the gods of Greece."

He nods. "Yes. Without blood, without hearts, they would be crippled if they tried to attack it."

"Okay, that's-."

"G-hhhhhhhhhhhr!"

The recumbent woman awakens, sitting up and gulping down air, right hand grasping for her chest. Feeling cloth, she shoved her hand under her t-shirt to check her wound.

Kon manoeuvres himself in front of her. "It's okay. You're okay. We got you a new heart-."

"Tlazolteotl! She made a pact with an evil priest, and they-! They are sacrificing the dead-."

"Legions of heartless dead enslaved to her will. We know. We're fought them and you were one of them. What else is she doing?"

"I saw little, but there were other hearts in her city! The living, the dead, strange creatures… Some of the hearts were giant, and I could feel the power radiating from them. And it has been some time since I have seen another god."

"Qualpopoca? Any other gods knocking around?"

"Yes, but… I admit, I have not seen any of them recently."

"Great. We'll need to scout this ourselves, then. Where does she live?"

 

[Mr Zoat]

17th February 2013
18:06 GMT

GIANTROBOTS!

I bend light around me, because confusing peoples' minds doesn't work against most robots, and I leap into the air, praying like hell they don't have some kind of air density detector because two of them were LOOKING RIGHT AT ME when I came through and I can see little hatches opening.

Darts-. Shit, no, fucking javelins get fired out, and the… Pyramid? Stepped South American pyramid gets covered in them, some getting deflected and bouncing along the ground and others embedding themselves in the stone bricks. M'gann-.

She's invisible-. 'least, I really hope she is, which means that neither of us can see the other and some of my spells interfere with telepathy.

Ah… Okay, hands in front of my chest, bind the air between them to seek my target and the air around me not to transmit sound outwards.

"Miss Martian, I'm uninjured and.. directly above the portal. About twenty metres."

I look down at the.. stone gateway, build into a small stone building on the top of the pyramid. Next to it there's an.. altar-.

Is that blood?

Aztecs. Yeah, they-. Focus.

"The robots probably can't detect telepathy, so link us up. Over."

I release the binding and the air vibrates. It's weird: this spell can't tell me where she is, but the vibrations will only find her.

The big robots are still looking at the top of the pyramid, so I guess they don't have any sort of magic detection build-in. Which isn't all that un.. usual…

Wait. I remember… Yeah, Paul was explaining why Atlantis wasn't thrilled about Black Adam knowing Queen… Ganymede? And it stuck in my mind because he said that one of his old friends was an Aztec with power armour powered by the blood of murdered children. He.. made a construct of what he thought it looked like. Those robots look a lot like that construct, only much bigger. What was his name… Zumak? No, that's not it, but I don't remember-.

**What are they?**

**Do you remember Paul talking about Black Adam's old friends?**

**Ah, like Rama Khan? And The Anointed One?**

**Yeah. Do you remember what the Aztec one was called?**

The giant robots keep their javelin launchers ready, but they don't fire again. But a.. squad? Yeah, a squad of power armour-sized robots… Or power armour, I guess, they march up the pyramid. Big power armour. Those things are about three metres tall and at least two wide. The metal they're made of look like… Bronze? Or gold? I thought that Aztecs used obsidian.

**There was an Aztec? I thought they were from further back in time than that.**

The smaller suits reach the top and start poking around, trying to see if there's anything there.

**Yeah. Zumak?**

**Let me just try-.**

M'gann goes quiet. That happens when she shapeshifts her brain, and if she's trying to do something to make it easier to remember-.

**Tezumak!**

**Yeah, that was it!**

**Didn't he die thousands of years ago? I think I remember Paul saying he died in a volcanic eruption.**

**I don't remember, but I don't think it matters. Other people had his technology.** Unless… **Okay, I need to cast a spell to find out where we are. They might be able to detect it, so… Get ready to run and hide.**

**Right.**

Sympathetic bonds are easiest, but there's a bunch of ways to just… Pick up magic resonances. Otherworld is where dead Celts -and Cornwalls- go. So are we somewhere real now, or are we in someone else's afterlife? So look for resonances of death and living, something that would pick up people who aren't alive but are still doing things. Doesn't really pick up anything in Otherworld because everyone except past Cornwalls has left, but if this is…

Yeah, I'm getting something. Dead… But it doesn't feel like it did when I used it on great-granddad. I don't know what it means.

**Okay, I… Think we're in the Aztec afterlife.**

**Is that bad?**

**They used to do ritual human sacrifice.**

**Okay, but they can't sacrifice dead people, right?**

**Not… Not in the same kind of way. There is energy in souls, obviously, it's just a lot harder to use if they're not in a body.** I take a closer look at the suits of power armour on top of the pyramid. **Tezumak wore one of those. Or.. one like it.**

**Oh no! Do you think they're kidnapping people to sacrifice them?!**

…

**Probably. I don't-.**

**We need to find him! Brian!**

**M'gann-. M'gann, don't-!**

**If you can hear me-!**

**Yes, little one. I hear you.**

I hear a stamp-. All the power armour suits on the pyramid are standing to attention, staring-. Staring up at me, and where I assume M'gann is.

**More hearts ready for harvesting.**

Clink.

The power armour suits unfurl metal wings-.

Form air, to M'gann. "Shut down telepathy and flee." Release. And then start flying and trying to remember everything Paul showed me about warding. Come on, LexCorp was printing the designs on paper, I should be able to-.

The power armour suits flap and the suits go flying into the air fast! Two shoot past me close enough for me to feel the pressure wave. I don't strengthen the spell, and I just let myself get pushed by it because when they're that close if they've got any magic detection system at all they'd pick up on it. Drop down, give them a worse angle for their dart-launchers, and… Ward against metal, that'll have to-.

One metal head jerks to stare down at me, a rain of darts plinking off the stone a moment- ooof- later! Fuck! Move! Down the pyramid, through that giant robot's legs and over-.

God damn it, there's a whole city here! The trees were just-!

Put the ward back up, and then-. It wasn't down, just weakened a little bit. Fix it, and then-. Yeah, that's a basic scry ward. Not as good as the one on Paul's skin, but it should work. Into the trees.

Where's the power armour?

Darts shoot through the tree branches just over my head! Ah, ah-. No, wait, they're shooting the whole tree line. They've lost me. Okay. Stay near the ground until they stop shooting, then try and get hold of M'gann-.

Five power armour suits suddenly turn… Left of the gate, and then fly that way as fast as they can. I bet they're going after M'gann, but there's a fat lot I can do about it. No, I think-. I think I should wait until the others move away, then scout around. Brian and hopefully the others are still around here, and I need to get them out.

 

[Mr Zoat]

17th February 2013
18:08 GMT

"There's no off-switch!"

"And it's surprisingly flame-. Ah! Flame resistant!"

The woman laying on the floor under the control console was a pretty good programmer. She'd only been down about thirty seconds before the robot soldiers went autonomous. And it was only ten seconds after that that the two on guard duty outside-

I jump back and twist to throw an EMP batarang as a laser beam flashes through the air! I hit-. I miss the laser gun and hit the heavily insulated armour, the electrical discharge doing nothing at all to the robot.

-charged inside.

"Try freezing it!"

Match has got, like, three arms wrapped around him. They were bouncing him off the floor, but they gave up when it didn't work and now they're just trying to choke him out. Doesn't look like it's all that strong but it's super-flexible and kryptonian physical strength is way greater than their flying strength.

I back flip towards the creepy green incinerator as the other guard robot aims its laser at where I was, slashing through the air and melting the stone on the far side. I'm actually kinda impressed.

Smoke bomb. Actually-

I land and roll as the ceiling robot trying to hug Match to death fires a spare arm at me.

-let's make that two. I think they're using optic identification but they might have infrared vision. It's not that hard to make a camera that sees a little further into the red.

"Kinda hard to do if I can't-"

Okay, if EMP isn't going to work, I could try gel crystal. Have to get it right before they fire. The two robots are spreading out-

"-ugh-"

-and I guess a dead cat arrow might actually be useful as a distraction right now. Have to tell Roy when we get back.

"-concentrate!"

"Flashbang!"

The flashbang flies into the face of the ceiling robot and explodes, light and sound hopefully overwhelming its sensors. Match has ducked his head and closed his eyes, which-. Well, he'll still be deafened, but he can still see.

He grabs the arm around his neck with both hands, brings it up to his eyes and exhales, and a layer of frost forms on the metal as it super cools. Superman didn't used to be able to do that, but thanks to Angelika all the full kryptonians on Earth can kinda force the air in their lungs to stop vibrating and then breathe it out, absorbing all of the heat from the surrounding area as it starts vibrating again. I can feel the chill from-.

Whoops.

The sudden change in air pressure in the room blows a hole in my smoke clouds and I just push off the floor without thinking about it. The lasers flash underneath me as I hit the ceiling face-first and I'm reminded again that being a metahuman is actually pretty great because without the Danner formula? I'd have broken my nose at best.

"Y-ah!"

I hit the ground and dive out of the line of fire of the robots, getting just enough time to see Match shatter the metal of the arm and free himself before I throw another smoke grenade, roll and dive in the opposite direction. The hug-in-the-box-bot throws its remaining arms at the ground and pulls its bulk down right on top of Match, who breathes freezing air at it again as it descends. It should still be blinded, so how is it-? Vibrations, maybe?

Hit the ground, roll and throw smoke and keep going, preparing a liquid crystal batarang-. Now!

Two lasers point where I would have been if I'd repeated the dodge I used last time, and my batarang hits the closest before it can fire. There's a flash of red as the focusing crystal takes the brunt of the energy from the laser beam and has a meltdown, wrecking the laser.

Okay, that works.

I scurry past the woman, who's still unconscious. After I had to drug myself last time, Doctor Mist and Blue Lantern came up with a better way to get someone who'd been Anti-Lifed back on their feet. Liquid hope, with a nebuliser. It's really obvious in an Anti-Life zone when we use it, but I think we're already kinda obvious.

Stick it over her mouth, hit the switch and jump as the robot without a gun tries charging me down. Twist and push off the ceiling and slap an anti-armor charge on its back, dodge because it can rotate one-eighty at the waist and then dodge again because the explosion threw it at me.

Dead?

If it was designed like a human body then I just took out its neck above the shoulders, so that should be it as far as signals from the head go, but there's a small chance that its brain is in its chest or it uses short-range radio transmitters instead of wires. I didn't pick anything up before, but I'll know if it does it now.

I scramble and stick another charge on its back just in-.

Its arms reverse and grab me!

My computer pings a 'transmission detected' message as I shove my hands at its chest and try and stop it bear hugging me! Can't shout to get help from Match because the other robot will aim at the sound! Okay, think it through. Shift to the left-. Yes, it's just grabbing anything it can get hold of. It can't see to change its grip. So if I… Push… And get my knee between the chassis and my chest… I can push… Get a little space, grab another charge and stick it on the arm just below the shoulder and blow it!

BOOM!

The left arm loses all its strength, fingers still gripping but with no link to the upper arm its got no leverage. I slide out that way, its right arm clanking against its chest and then feeling around to try and find me.

That's kinda sad.

Then the other robot shoots it, and the laser burns right through the metal. Doesn't stop it trying to find me, it just makes it look more pathetic.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five.

The laser flashes out again. Five second recharge time run.

I pound across the stone floor, through the smoke and into the open where the robot is backing up. Guess it heard me. Not going to make it. Three. Draw crystal gel batarang and throw-.

The laser explodes, knocking the robot sideways and I'm sliding under it and reversing direction to slap charges on its upper and lower spine and jumping clear.

"Match, you-" The charges go off and the robot collapses. "-okay in-"

The weird pile of springs and arms shimmers slightly with frost, then shatters into super cooled metal fragments!

"-there?"

Match brushes off the metal and then shivers, rubbing his arms together for warmth.

"Yeah. Know who she is yet?"

"Not yet. I'm gunna take a look at the computer while we wait for her to wake-"

Something big slams into the door. It holds, but the other robots are only gunna keep coming.

"-up."

Match nods. "I'll hold the door."

 

[Mr Zoat]

17th February 2013
11:08 GMT -7

I spot John Constantine as he leaves a poker game, cheerfully waving to the now light-walletted FBI agents he just fleeced. They seem irritated, but in a 'what did we think would happen when we agreed to play cards with a wizard' sort of way, rather than a 'let's slash his tires' sort of way.

John's usually pretty good at judging that sort of thing.

And then he spots me, and just shrugs-. Wait. Oh, he's good. He tenses up slightly, but the change in his actual physique is so small that I didn't notice it until I gave him a scan.

Just the man I need.

"Mister Constantine. Augmenting your salary with the tears of rubes?"

"Why?" He fishes out a cigarette and sticks it in his mouth. "Want a game?"

"No, never liked poker. Listen, I'd like your help with a demon problem."

He sucks in air through his teeth, then pointedly exhales. Then he fishes his lighter out of his coat pocket, removes the cigarette from his-

"Look, if you're trying to push the price up you should know that I'd rather just pay what you want rather than-"

-mouth and then lights the end before returning it to his mouth and pocketing the lighter.

"-go through the rigmarole."

"Don't… Don't you have other people you can talk to about things like this?"

"You have a certain amount of field experience that lends itself to finessing problems rather than brute forcing them. My issue right now is that while the actual demands on my time are perfectly manageable, the potential demands on my time are immense. I could escalate the confrontation… Pretty much all the way, but I don't want to."

"Because… You're known for being subtle, yeah..?"

"Mister Constantine. I make you nervous. I accept that. That's why I avoid you as much as possible despite Sunset working here. But-."

"That's not it. Reason I jerked Alec around so much is because… You need to be able to smack someone down, even if you don't want to. It's like… Mutually assured destruction. A threat you don't want to unleash, but you want everyone to know you could."

"I am familiar with the idea, yes." I frown. "Wait, have you been using my name like that?"

"No. But people know that we know each other."

"I mean, I don't mind. I'm a shareholder in this school, so implying something that's true doesn't offend me, but if I'm acting as your guarantor then I'm not paying you for this job."

He exhales sharply through his teeth, half-turning away. "So what is it?"

"What do you know about Triskele?"

"About as much as anyone. Don't think she'd make a deal with you."

"Ah yes, what was it? One innocent soul every five years? And she gets to puppet you in the meantime? Whether she'd make that sort of deal with me or not is irrelevant; I wouldn't make it with her, and even if I was willing the Source has first claim. Issue is… You know about my children?"

"Heard a few things."

"Given that you killed their father, I think it would behoove-" He gurn-winces. "-you to pay a little more attention."

"Didn't think you knew about that."

"Yes, it's almost like I employ a legion of literal mind-readers or something. I'm not criticising you for doing it; he was a murderer and his children would almost certainly have been worse under his guidance. Did you ever find out who the mother was?"

"No. We figured that his brood would be vampires. New ones. Wouldn't be strong enough to cross running water."

"Good effort, but I found your ritual site. Try again, but without the lying."

"Fuck, fine. We knew him and the succubus were up to something on the island. Didn't know what it was, didn't see the kids. We just stuck a general purpose binding and got out, because if they'd have found us they'd have killed us."

A deceiver unmasked is still a deceiver, but I'd like to get him into the habit of lying to me just a little less. It certainly helps that one of his colleagues on that job sided with the Masons and got a full mental trawl before being put in permanent detainment.

"You know that I adopted the youngest. The eldest were eaten by the youngest. The very oldest was called Caroline, and a few hours ago we summoned a succubus of that name. Don't know for certain it was her-."

"Could be. Usually takes longer to turn souls into demons, but if she was mostly demon anyway…"

"She didn't recognise her brother, and claimed not to recognise the version of events I relayed to her. Obvious question: can demons tell direct lies to their summoners?"

"Yeah. For some stuff. A deal's a deal, so if you want them to tell you something honestly you got to make it part of the deal. Outside of that they can tell you whatever they want. Or just keep stumm."

"Can they be compelled to honesty?"

"Yeah. Get their full true name, get the right bindings on them, put them in so much pain that they'll swear on their true name that they're telling the truth… Other than that, it's like anyone else."

"How much do you know about the process of turning mortal souls into demons?"

"Did it, once. Bit of demon blood, a few of my worst parts, one of the better parts and the soul of an inveterate sinner. Mix it all up… And you've got a demon. More or less."

"The normal process."

"No. Got the impression it's not a lot of fun, but that's it."

"Given your profession and likely ultimate destination, don't-" He shivers. "-you think it might be worth putting a little more research time into it?"

He turns back to look me directly in the eyes. "Where are you going with this?"

"I imagine that the souls of the older children went to Triskele, she threw a wobbler when she found out that one of her girls got close to breaking away and altered the minds of her children during their transformation. If so, what I want to do is get them their memories back, ideally without having to launch an invasion of Hell myself."

"… Right. Pretty sure their boss could take you."

"Didn't you once send him back to Hell by tricking him into drinking holy water?"

"… Yeah. That caused a bunch more problems."

"I'll buy two super soakers. Any idea if that's actually something Triskele would do?"

"If it's messed up, she'd do it."

"Any idea what she'd want to undo it?"

"More stuff. Doubt it'd be anything you'd want to give."

"Can you find out without too much risk?"

"Maybe. Easiest way would be to just ask her. Pretty sure the boss lady could summon her and keep her in the circle."

"It may come to that. I'd appreciate it if you could try with subtler means first."

"Getting volunteered, am I?"

"I understand that your brother in law has gotten a bit stuck with a crisis of faith." I take a transmission node out of subspace. "Hide this under his chair. It will allow him to draw on a little of my spiritual power. He'll kick himself up the arse and become an actual person again."

"He wasn't my favourite person before he nearly got my niece killed."

"A word of prophecy, then. In his current state he's ridiculously easy to manipulate by any of your enemies. If you don't take action…"

"Yeah. Fine." He takes it from me and gives it a once-over. "Give me a few days to try some stuff."

"Thank you, Mister Constantine."

 

[Mr Zoat]

17th February 2013
18:09 GMT

**Brian!**

Hm?

**Yes, little one. I hear you.**

Oh dear. That was M'gann, and from the faint glow coming from my amulet an Anti-Life-aligned goddess heard her broadcast and butted in.

**More hearts ready for harvesting.**

**M'gann, can you hear me?**

**Paul?! Where are you?**

**Mictlampa. No idea where I am relative to your position. How-?**

**Tezumak! A bunch of his suits of armour have a magic portal to Otherwold! And whoever made them, they're behind the kidnappings!**

**Rightoh.** Philippus frowns at me as she spots that I'm not focusing on what Qualpopoca is saying. "Talking to Miss Martian in my head."

Qualpopoca just stares, but Philippus nods and Kon-.

**How'd you get here?**

**There's a portal in Otherworld. It links to ah-.**

**M'gann?**

**I'm okay, the Aztec robots chasing me just nearly hit me.**

"Qualpopoca, which way to Tlazolteotl 's home?"

"As I said, I do not know. The.. gods do not make a habit of confiding in me. I was suggesting-."

"Alright." I turn to the recently restored woman. "Ma'am? Do you know where your heart was removed?"

**How big are they?**

**About twenty feet tall. And bulky, like Paul's heavy armour, but with a head. And they fly with magic wings rather than gravity manipulation.**

That's an interesting approach. I can sort of see how it would work-.

"Cihuateteo. South west of here."

Philippus nods. "We do not know your territory and cannot see the stars. Which way is west?"

She points, and suddenly navigation is a good deal more simple. "We were carried to your island in the body of Tlaltecuhtli, and that turned the journey of years into no time at all."

Qualpopoca nods. "The journey to earn reincarnation takes four years and passing through nine different realms, each of which has their own perils. Even journeying to Cihuateteo would take at least a year on foot…" He shrugs. "I do not know what arrangements the gods have made for people who can fly."

"Let's hope not-."

Kon jerks his head around. "What's the obstacle closest to Cihuateteo?"

"Iztepetl." / "Iztepetl."

Qualpopoca frowns. "Those who wish to travel there must brave the mountain covered with razor sharp shards of obsidian. I do not know what will happen to people who try to fly over it."

"I don't think we'll be able to." **M'gann, we're north east of you. Head for a mountain covered in obsidian shards. Be careful, it's only possible to fly upwards a hundred metres or so. Superboy and I are coming to you now.**

**Okay! I'm on my way.**

The Amazons have already mounted their steeds, Annis pulling the woman up behind her. And now I'm reminded of an unsettling number of unsubtle Amazon 'romance' stories. Well, she's hundreds of years old and survived having her heart cut out. I'm sure she can manage.

I fly upwards to just under the limit, waiting with Kon while the winged horses get themselves in order. The equine form is not known for being aerodynamic.

Kon is staring off into the south west.

"Can you see anything?"

"Mist. I can see further in a vacuum, but I guess there's way more moisture in the air here than normal."

"No. I think the gods set things up to prevent people seeing too far."

"Why?"

Power trip.

"Because the journey is supposed to be a trial. If you can see the destination, you start relaxing."

The pegasus riders reach our level, and Philippus nods as I make eye contact. I reform my booster-.

"Prince Kon-El, go with him."

Kon nods and smiles as we accelerate away from the flock, jungle shooting by beneath us.

**M'gann, we're on our way. How many suits are after you?**

**There's five of them. I don't think they know exactly where I am, but they're moving in the same direction as me. And they've got dart launchers.**

I nod. I remember Tezumak's dart launchers downing the Flash due to the combination of speed and spread: while he could normally vibrate through or effortlessly move around them, Tezumak was able to create a spread where there wasn't room to dodge and… Something stopped him vibrating through them? I don't remember it clearly and Adom didn't know the details of how his armour worked.

**Dart launchers?**

**They can fire a dozen or so at once and they fire really fast. I tried phasing through them and.. it didn't completely work.**

**Are you hurt?**

**Don't worry, it's just a scratch. I'm fine.**

**Was it poisoned?**

**Ah, I don't think so? Not with anything that poisons martians, anyway.**

**Don't assume that. We're in a magic realm, so it may be more the idea of poison than chemistry.**

**Okay, so what should I do?**

**Keep flying and do not engage unless essential for your exfiltration. I'll check you over when we meet up.**

**Right. I'm coming up to the mountain now.**

**We're a little further away. E.T.A.… Two minutes.**

**I'm losing altitude!**

**Magic. Go with it. Are the power armour suits going down as well?**

**Yes.**

**Switch to a faster ground form. Preferably something from South or Central America, then head up the mountain. We'll see you shortly.**

 

[Mr Zoat]

17th February 2013
18:13 GMT

Faster ground form?

Oh, this is stupid! When I could only do a few Earth shapes I could just pick the one closest to what I wanted. Now I can do just about every animal in America-.

I'll try horse.

My frontal vision's not so good, but I can gallop and stay invisible and it doesn't look like the Aztec power armor can hear all that well. Wait, I remember a documentary I watched with Conner. Central America used to just have llamas, which are like short fluffy horses with bad tempers. I never actually studied them well enough to turn into one.

Four galloping legs go!

I should remember to send a thank you note to Mister J'arkus, because there's no way I'd be able to run this easily without his kuru pendant. Despite his… History, he's a really good researcher. I hope when martians start leaving Mars he can get a posting and hasn't been blacklisted.

There aren't as many plants as I get closer to the mountain, trees being replaced by small bushes struggling to survive in the thin soil. Still more greenery than Mars-. M'arzz, and Mister J'arkus's memory print says that the loose stones could be a problem for hooves. But it's still mostly soil so-.

OW!

Something pinched me on the pad of my hoof! I'm-. Bleeding. Not much. Was that just bad luck?

I look up the mountain, and then I give myself better eyes because while wild horses have okay long range vision I can't see a lot of color like this-.

The mountain's a lot blacker than I thought it would be. When Paul said 'obsidian shards' I thought he just meant… Piles of obsidian, or-.

There!

I do a little four-legged jump over a patch where the soil got thin and the black volcanic glass was poking though. And ow.

Why hasn't my foot healed yet? I can just shapeshift-.

**Paul, I can't fix my wound!**

**What wound?**

**Just a little one on my foot-.**

**Avoid getting wounded again. This is a high magic environment.**

There's a bush just up ahead, but I can't see what's on the far side. I turn right, galloping around it along the bare rock and soil.

**Some things that are meant to inflict wounds will just inflict them, whether they would normally be able to wound you or not. I had a devil of a time getting a spear out of my chest.**

**Understood.**

Um. Mole? Worm? It's still too flat for a mountain goat-.

In my right eye I can see the power armour suits running up the lower slope of the mountain, wings folded up in their backs.

Left right now.

Okay, there's a sort-of path leading up there, and there's also black crystals sticking out through the rock. Those ones aren't all that hard to avoid, but there's got to be more just under the ground. But if the power armor can't go any faster-.

CRUMPFF!

I scrabble to stop! A suit of power armor just hit the path right in front of me! It pulls itself out of the mountainside and then I freeze because it's looking down at the ground. It's trying to see where I'm standing, I know it. I-.

Wait.

Its armor is all scratched up where it hit. A couple of the pieces of obsidian went right into the armor.

Okay, that's great, but it's blocking the path. There's an almost vertical wall, and a… Awkward slope.

The power armor opens most of its dart guns. Some of them don't open but goat powers activate!

I jump as a horse, and the power armor turns to exactly where I land and fires right as I turn into a goat! Twist and dodge and shove with telekinesis because those are too close! Up the rock and I don't know what a sheer wall looks like to a goat but it still looks like a sheer wall to me!

I'll just use my telekinesis towaaagh!

I'll respect what the Aztec gods want me to do and just use telekinesis to feel the rock. Okay. That feels like something a goat could stand on. I think. And that one after it.

And jump!

Waagh!

Jump again! Jump again!

I get my front legs over the lip of the next ledge and frantically scrabble for any sort of support from my back legs. Telekinesis is letting me stick my hooves on the rock but goat legs aren't designed to pull in this direction! Shapeshift claws! Pullpullpull!

Ah-haaah-haaah.

I'm up.

I take a moment to look down the mountainside at the power armour suits making their way up.

Did they notice that?

…

CRASH!

AH! One smashes into the ledge right in front of me, scrabbling for grip even as it opens its dart launchers! Jump off the wall as it fires, jump off its head as it grabs the rock and pulls itself up a little further, jump into the wall above its head and jump off that into a small cleft and balance.

And gasp for breath and darts plink off the rock around me!

Idon'tlikebeingagoat! Idon'tlikebeingagoat!

Ow! That shot chipped through the rock and sent slivers of obsidian flying out!

Magically… Deadly obsidian.

I jump back a pace, getting as far out of their line of sight as I can… If that's even how they're detecting me. Then shapeshift myself an extra hand and grab a stone, a regular one. There's an obsidian spire, but I don't really have a good enough grip to hit it. Will this place let telekinesis work? Uh-huh, floating the rock, and slam it into the glass! And again, and again… Okay, that should be enough if I add in what the darts are smashing. I drop the rock and pick.. up.. the glass.

A golden hand grabs onto the edge of my crevasse.

And as the power armour pulls its head over the edge I fire a magical telekinetic obsidian sandblaster right in its face!

Its face is scoured off, the metal pitted and cut and the power armour collapses backwards, falling first onto the ledge and then down the slope.

Okay, good. Time to hoof it.

I look upwards, trying to judge a path that's got less obsidian sticking out, because from here on up it gets a lot more common. I suppose standing on the flat surfaces should be okay, but if they get hit by a dart…

Okay, got it. Goat-jump time.

 

[Mr Zoat]

17th February 2013
18:16 GMT

I don't like arbitrary rules.

Can't fly? Okay. There should still be a way to travel around that doesn't block things in case someone who doesn't want to take the trials wants to travel, but fine. Constructs not working on lumps of glass? Irritating, but perfectly 'fair', as this journey is supposed to be a trial for Aztec souls and they're denied anything that would make it not a test.

BUT THIS IS BULLSHIT!

Kon swings his tetsubo through an outcrop of obsidian as I use my Aztec-compliant wood and hide shield to block the shards which fly at us. And now the floor is littered with shards just big enough to threaten us but too small to efficiently move out of the way without cutting ourselves. AND I can see the other obsidian growths in this part of the-

"This isn't working."

-mountain expanding, paths which were nearly visible before now increasingly overgrown.

"Yes-! Yes, you're right. Ring, sonic-."

"No, that's not it, either." He gives me a hard look. "M'gann's over there and you're trying to think your way through a trial of the gods."

"Yes? I want to get there quickl-."

"Then you're not doing the trial. This whole thing isn't gunna let you think your way around it: that's not how these things work."

I glance up at the almost entirely black slope.

"The Aztecs need smarter gods. So we just run through it?"

"Yeah."

"This is going to suck. I can't neutralise my own pain and I won't be able to regenerate without setting them off."

"Yeah. I won't either."

"I-. I think… Up there?"

I point to something resembling a route that probably won't flay us too badly. We do actually need to cross the mountain and I imagine that constructing a hang glider at the summit -which the Aztec totally could have done- will result in a negative response as well.

Kon nods.

"I'll take the lead until I get light-headed from blood loss."

"You've gotta brave them, that doesn't mean that you've gotta get cut up by them."

"Aztec gods like blood."

I start, obsidian shards on the ground cutting into the metal armour of my boots. Not cutting through yet because my weight is spread widely enough to prevent it, but the sole is taking damage and that will change. I speed up, twisting this way and that to try and keep my arms and torso as much out of the way of the outcrops.

It doesn't work. A narrow crevasse we have to path through slashes holes in my back and front as I turn aside, and I feel pain as a misplaced hand results in a spine going through my gauntlet into my palm. I don't jerk it back because I'm much better at dealing with pain than I used to be. When I've got a purpose I'm working towards at least. And we need to get to ow.

Right through the side of my helmet. Because only shitty Aztec cloth armour is allowed to do anything. Yep, that's bleeding.

Up the-. And just like that the difficulty has been toned down. There's an actual path now, spiky as it is. I wonder if I could talk Zeus into taking over this place-?

M'gann needs help, focus and make an effort.

I pump my legs, feeling the effort in my calves as I do my best to run up the side of a mountain. And I feel.. the slight dampness as the thin cuts on the soles of my feet start to bleed in a way that I'm sure makes the Aztec gods delighted.

"You alright, Kon?"

"Helios's blessing is still working. So's the Danner formula." He accelerates past me, grabbing a crystal to pull himself up a steep surface. I see it cut into his hand, and then his wound closes up a moment later. "So I can-."

"Carry me."

He pulls himself over the lip, then turns and offers me his now completely healed hand to pull me up. "I don't think they'll let that work."

Okay, hand there, grip Kon's hand with my other hand, feet there-. And I'm up, and we're off again.

I can see the blood he's leaving where his feet are getting cut too frequently for him to heal it. Looking back-. And my blood too, from the looks of things. I could top up my blood supply, but quite aside from the gods' system considering that 'cheating' it would risk reinflating veins and arteries that are closed due to the lower pressure to prevent me bleeding further. That's why-.

"Kon, did I ever tell you why survival rates for wounded British soldiers during Falklands War were better than the rates for US soldiers during Vietnam?"

"No? Better hospitals?"

Okay, this bit is relatively straight, not too steep, bit of a scramble in a few places but I'm seeing more rock. Guess the mountain accepts that we're playing its game.

"No. Worse. US soldiers got evacuated by helicopter or boat as soon as possible. British soldiers got left on the freezing moor for hours because the country with the longest naval tradition in the world fucked up a naval invasion. Problem was that the US medical corps insisted on pumping blood into wounded soldiers to keep their blood pressure normal. Prevented internal clotting because the clots couldn't hold against the heightened blood pressure. They bled to death inside their skin. But lying on freezing ground on Goose Green slowed the British soldiers metabolism, and the lack of blood transfusions let them clot just fine."

"Okay?"

Shit, a completely sheer surface where the only handholds are obsidian. I… Ditch my armour, which was basically just hanging on at this point.

"Just thinking about it. Because of..."

I hold up my steadily bleeding arms. He nods.

"Well, there's no medical attention, but it's not cold enough to slow your metabolism."

We each nod and start ascending.

"Yay."

Hand on the.. flat part, the corners will cut a little bit, but the main 'blade' will remove fingers. Push and foot and.. next hand hold. And-. Glance upwards, and Kon's already half way to the top, and I-.

Crapcrapcrap!

Right hand slips on my own blood, and there's a nice pile of obsidian below me waiting for me if I fall off.

Breathe. Take a moment. Grab onto the actual rock. And start up again.

"You okay?"

"Good enough. Don't slow down for me. I'm okay but M'gann-."

Oof! What-?

Goat-?

GIANT ROBOT!

 

[Mr Zoat]

17th February 2013
18:21 GMT

Kon ducks as the gosh that's big lands next to him, the force of its landing shaking the mountainside! I brace as best I can with a goat in my face which isn't much unless I want to lose fingers, then my eyes widen and I press myself into the rock face as it fails to control its momentum and falls over me-.

It grabs at me with its right hand and I use a construct lasso and pulley to wrench its right arm away as it falls, spinning it around and then letting it go once it's out of range. One second passes and then I hear a thud and crash as it slams down onto the obsidian outcrop below.

"Beeeh!"

Goat and I can't see the robot because it's standing on my shoulders and mostly covering my face. Winch for the goat-.

It jumps off me, lands on a near-vertical surface, and then jumps up again to reach the top.

And then it turns back into M'gann. "Hey guys!"

I look down, thankful that I've long since overcome my vertigo, and see… Yes, that's more or less Tezumak's armour. The obsidian punched through the chest in three places and I can see blood leaking out from the wounds. But it still tries to get up.

"Hey, M'gann. What is it?"

I stab a construct piton into the cliff, attach a construct rope to it and to a construct harness around my chest, and lean back. A couple of jumps and I'm standing next to the armour. No… Obvious response from the mountain.

"Aztec power armour. I think. They haven't said anything."

I cautiously step around its flailing right arm, wincing as new shards are driven into my feet. I'm sort of… Floating above the pain at the moment but if this keep up it won't be all that long before my joking request to Kon becomes a serious one.

"You said there were five of them?"

Left hand on its forehead, x-ionised knife through its throat-.

Blood sprays out, covering me-!

"Ugh."

After a few seconds it.. dies off, reduced to a impressive but low-pressure flow from the wound. A human artery.. could bleed like that, but this blood doesn't look all that highly oxygenated. And there wasn't any noise from the interruption of the wind pipe. And the armour is still moving weakly when any normal human would flail frenziedly for a few seconds and then lose consciousness once the blood pressure in their brain dropped.

So I keep slicing.

"Paul, what are you doing?"

"Need to know what these things are. Miss Martian, is there a mind in here?"

"I.. can't feel one, but that could just be because they've got-"

I cut all the way through the neck, causing the head-. The helmet to fall off and the flow of blood from the neck hole to increase. There's no flesh inside. There's the neck armour, a.. metal 'spine' and a whole lot of blood.

"No one inside."

Analysis of the blood… It's a mixture from many different individuals. I can't… There are anomalous properties that suggest that there's an element of magic here, but a power ring can't characterise it better than that.

"I'd guess that they're using blood from people they've either abducted or Anti-Lifed to animate them. But…"

There's still a little… Movement in the blood. A small surge and then a stop. Another small surge, more of a ripple at this point as most of the blood in the interior has leaked out onto the mountainside.

I send filaments reaching inside the chest cavity-.

That's a heart. It's wired into some sort of frame, and… Okay, it's there.

I climb up on the armour-. I slip, the blood coming from my feet making them slide out underneath me and making me slam face first into the power armour's side.

Ah-ow.

"You okay?"

What do you think, Kon? "Miss Martian, I don't suppose-"

I check my footing better this time before hauling myself up.

"-you've got any healing potions, do you?"

"Sorry, no. Cornwall Boy does, though. Did."

I nod as I take position over where the heart is. This armour panel looks like it can be removed, but I've got no idea where the switch is. If it's even a physical thing, or wasn't sealed shut once its purpose was fulfilled.

Kon's head jerks up. "They're coming."

M'gann just looks determined. "We can beat them. The obsidian goes right through their armour."

"I'm pretty sure that Kon's fists will, too." I crouch down and start slicing around the edge of the panel. "Shout if you need me."

Construct shield.

And… The panel comes off, and there's an interior armour mechanism, but this one… Yes, the latch is there and there, twist and pull…

That's a human heart. Wait… No. Not a human heart. It's roughly the right size, but the shape isn't quite right. And it's still beating in its metal… Cage. Some sort of blood magic. The power armour has finally gone still. Curious that it doesn't have the same Anti-Life aura as the other one, but I don't know enough about Apokoliptian technology or blood magic to draw firm conclusions. Just in case this is linked to someone or belongs to someone, I take a couple of pints of blood out from the armour's interior. Then I tear out the heart and the housing along with it, fabricate a carry case for it and put it inside before covering it with the blood. Then I-.

There's another crash as another suit of power armour lands on the top of the rise. Kon and M'gann have already gotten out of the way, Kon darting back in a moment later to punch it in the leg. That knocks it to one knee, then it raises its hands-. Are those claws? Yes, yes they are. And it lashes out with them and forces Kon back.

I can't get up the cliff face while that's going on. There isn't another convenient way up here… I can go around, but that will take at least ten minutes. Or more, because my feet are a mess and it's all obsidian fragments. Standing here…

Hm.

I point my right hand at where the heart used to be and generate a heart-shaped construct before linking it to my tattoos. Grab the head piece and… Clone my own blood. Seal the neck, pour my blood inside it with a little of the actual blood that's leaking from just about all of my body at this point, then reattach the head.

"Ugh."

The power armour's eyes glow orange.

"Up you get. And carry me."

Its left arm grabs hold of me, while its right supports its torso as it struggles to rise. I use a construct to snap off the obsidian which ran it through, snorting to myself as I see the obsidian around us grow a little in response. That gives it the space it needs in order to get back on its feet, still holding me to its chest.

"Get us up there."

It follows my pointing finger, crouches slightly, and then leaps.

 

[Mr Zoat]

17th February 2013
18:25 GMT

Which put me in the exact line of sight of one of the power armour suits holding back from the brawl with Kon and M'gann. I jump off the arm holding me and duck down behind my armour's bulk as the flechettes plink off its chest. They can't penetrate fully whole-.

My armour shudders as a flechette hits the rent torn in the chest by the obsidian spike, punching through my repair construct and causing blood to leak for a moment before I patch it.

But they couldn't penetrate the metal with their flechettes.

Two are hanging back. One has its head and upper body wrecked, and is leaking blood. Not a lot. But the armour is clearly losing integrity. The other is down a right arm, and is using its left to support itself against the rock. Damaged legs? The two that have closed the distance with Kon and M'gann are fighting carefully, firing individual flechettes and planting their feet on the shrinking patches of normal rock before taking a swing. My team mates are more agile, using the power armours' bulk to shield themselves.

These are the only pursuers. If we destroy them, then it doesn't exactly matter how angry the mountain gets, because we can take our time. Assuming that Robert has the sense to keep his head down until we can reach him.

Robert who -and I think this as a friend- has a significant chip on his shoulder about not getting better training and more fieldwork up until I got involved, and certainly isn't just going to wait without an excellent reason-. I can't provoke the mountain.

I push the desire to leap at the second fire support armour into my armour, and grip on tightly as we're airborne again. And a desire to punch-.

The armour we're aiming at spots us coming in and tries to move, but its right leg can't react properly, trembling as it tries to support the acceleration. It still manages to back up a pace which means that we miss the arm we were aiming for, but we land almost chest-to-chest-.

I dart up and forwards and slash its neck with my knife, ducking back-. Ducking back to avoid most of the blood spray.

Shield us.

As our target loses a lot of its strength, my armour picks it up under the arms and turns, using it as a barrier against the armour with the damaged head as it decides to prioritise us. Flechettes… Some hit the armour but a lot go wide-. It can't aim properly. It keeps firing as it.. stumbles forward. Nothing wrong with its legs that I can see, so it's the senses again. It brings its right arm around in an awkward slap which is still strong enough to knock our shield out of my armour's hands, but it's now off-balance-.

Grab its head and crush.

My armour responds at once-. Oh, it felt that, and it tries to twist itself back into position to hit us or at least force the hands gripping its head off. Unfortunately for it, that just puts extra torsion stress on the damaged part of its-

And there's the blood fountain.

-body, causing the damaged metal to give way completely. The armour weakly slaps my armour twice more, causing no damage, before finally slumping to the ground.

I turn to see how Kon and M'gann-. Ah, good show. One of the armour suits they were fighting appears to have been introduced face-first into an obsidian spike. The other, M'gann telekinetically anchored its limbs for Kon to strike the joints. They're both down.

"Good work. Miss Martian, could you fish out their hearts?"

"Ah…" She looks decidedly disquieted. "Why?"

"Aztec magic. We might be able to use it to restore its owner to life… Or if it's the heart of a dead person, restore their minds."

"The heart of a dead..?"

Kon nods. "This is the Aztec afterlife. We think Tlazolteotl is doing something to their souls to control them. A bunch of them were attacking Themyscira with their chests cut open."

"Themyscira?"

I direct my armour to crouch down so that I can get at the heart of the robot it decapitated.

"Yeah, the Greek gods brought it here, but now we can't contact them."

Oh. Ah, I feel a little dizzy. I think I'm…

"Hate to be a nag.. guys, but please focus. I'm not doing so well."

M'gann looks at me in concern as Kon rips a heart compartment open. "I didn't see you get hit?"

"I know that between my armour and ring we usually count me as a 'tough' member of the team, but with magic attacks that bypass my constructs… I'm a lot squishier than both of you."

"But you can… Heal yourself? Right?"

"Not without setting the mountain off. And magic obsidian-" She nods. "-stops me healing the injury without replacing the whole area. None of this will matter in the long term, but right now I'm well below one hundred percent effective. So if we can finish-"

I cut through and pull out another heart, which I shove in a blood-filled tub.

"-up here and get over the mountain, I'll be a good deal happier."

Kon holds up the heart he obtained, and I repeat the containment process. And then…

Augh.

Kon looks at me as M'gann opens up the interior of the next armour suit. "How about you just focus on storing them and let us pull them out?"

I nod gratefully. "Thanks. Up."

My armour straightens up. Okay, let's see. One Anti-Life infected heart. Three regular hearts. And…

M'gann finds the switches and actually takes the heart out as the designer intended.

Four regular hearts. Hundreds of zombies. Ugh, I don't know it matching them up to the original owner matters, or if they just represent a particular capacity. There's probably some way to do it with magic. And… Robert might be able to cast that spell. Shouldn't be too-.

"Here you go." M'gann smiles awkwardly as she holds the still-beating heart in her telekinetic grip. "One heart, two careful owners."

"Ah, thank you."

Another box, another heart in a box. I strap them over the shoulders of the armour I'm riding. I briefly consider trying to repair it using parts from the other ones, but I don't know how to take them apart the easy way and making this even more of a kludge job isn't going to help.

"Right. I don't intend to bring this thing into an actual fight, so don't worry about picking a route that damages it. Superboy's regeneration is still working because.. it's magical, probably. Miss Martian, what's the best way across?"

"Ah, well, the route I used is only good for goats, but I can find you a way." She shifts back into goat form. **Follow me!**

She heads up the gentle part of the slope, leaping from rock patch to rock patch with the ease of a seasoned mountain goat. Kon heads after her with a little less élan, and I bring up the rear.

Robert, please be in one piece.

 

[Mr Zoat]

17th February 2013
18:29 GMT

At least I'm in one piece.

The power armour suits that didn't go after M'gann are on patrol, but it doesn't look like they've got any trace of me. I.. think I've got what Paul's tattoos look like copied right. The big power armour suits standing on guard duty in the main… Town? City? Base? I don't really know what this place is. All looks Aztec to me. They've gone back into standby, and no one has gone anywhere near the portal. Haven't seen any actual people, but I don't know if that's normal or not. Pretty normal for Otherworld, and the Aztec religion didn't go extinct all that much more recently.

But someone built this armour, and I'm not going to find out who by hanging around outside here. This… Ziggurat is the biggest building in the place, and the best guarded, so this is probably where I can find answers. Can't risk trying to talk to M'gann, not with someone listening in like that. And I can't risk waiting in case something happens to Brian.

But how do I get in? There are doors, but there are more big power armour suits next to it and they're closed and probably sealed anyway. Taking that fight is a non-starter. Running past them? Same sort of problem. But the walls aren't guarded in the same way. The ziggurat is made of stone blocks, or something like that. My magic lets me move stone around, so in theory I can walk through it and into the ziggurat. Except the wall is obviously going to be warded with sensors to warn them if someone tries this.

So as far as magic is concerned, I need to not be here. And the stones I move need to not be moved. The stones themselves need to think that they're in exactly the same place. Because if this is stone, that power armour will smash right through it to get to me faster than I can put the spell back up. Plus whatever they've got on the inside.

Don't fuck it up.

Kay, so the first thing is the natural state of the rock. I need to know that so that I can fake it convincingly. And I can't just probe it because that's a ward even I can cast. So I've got to create the idea of a rock that isn't there, switch the two around in the ward scheme without anyone noticing-. No, run them through the same attachments pretending to be one, then take the actual block out.

That… That should work, actually. I mean, it's pointless if there's a wizard actually watching me, but if that's what's happening then it's all pointless anyway. As long as they need the alarm signal…

Try it. Form the earth magic into the spirit of a block but not the form of one because I'm not sure I could hide that. Volcanic rock's easy enough, just got to take into account the fact that this is more of a spiritual world than normal earth so that's going to be a bit more pronounced… Yeah, that should do it.

And the merge has to be instant, no fiddling around and no feeling the spells out. Tune my fake block to not send signals and…

Quick check the giant suits of armour…

Merge.

Woo.

That's a lot of spells. I think… I think that they're doing what Paul did to the mountain: running a whole lot of spells through the outer surface, rather than just setting it to detect things or be stronger. I dunno what this all is, but my fake block looks like it's copying it alright. 'kay. That's the warn-.

Yeah, like that.

The warning spell, that triggered, but it isn't a complicated thing. Least, this bit of the spell isn't. Looks like it's just a low level alert. Which makes sense. That bit looks like the 'brick broken, send help' alert. And some of this stuff… Some of this I can't even tell what it does. But it doesn't look like its triggered from this block. Reset the warning spell, remove the actual brick from the network… Good. And cast Pass Through Rock.

I push into the rock wall of the ziggurat just as easy as I did in practice. The rock sends the alert, but since it's disconnected from the system it doesn't go anywhere. I'll have to reset it… No, that's not how it works. It constantly triggers while something's interfering with it, but once the interference is gone it stops transmitting.

That makes it a bit easier.

Okay, the stone doesn't go all the way through, and the next layer… Same thing. Create etheric stone, duplicate and look at the duplicate.

This one doesn't have the interference alert. Makes.. sort of sense. I guess they aren't worried about people messing about with it from the inside. Looks like the other spells get more complicated, but I can't even guess what they're supposed to do from here.

Keep walking, then drop the spell replacing the first stone once I'm out of it. And cross my fingers… Ah, not seeing an alert. Looks like it worked.

Press on.

And now it-. It's just rubble. Gravel. No spells on any of it, not that I can see. I'll have to remember this, because if I can just run along the inside without setting anything off that's a good way to get around.

And then it's another stone layer, same as before. And another, more like the outside. Normally I'd be getting tired by now, but with this place being more magical I guess I'm just…

I'm just charging off of the realm of a real powerful wizard. Or something bigger. Shit, I didn't think-. I mean, wizards on Earth can track me draining stuff but it's a lot harder. But if they haven't sent anything to where the drain's coming from… Maybe it's not that noticeable? Or maybe it wasn't M'gann's telepathy that let them pick up on us. Okay, just.. have to stop draining ambient power, easy enough. Didn't used to do it at all.

And… No more bricks. I'm inside. Nearly. Just have to stick my head out and then stop casting my earth spells. Deep breath.

And step.

Huh. No light. I guess the armour suits don't need lights. So there probably aren't any other people around here. Stealth spells are still going, and I can't hear any alarms.

So I'm in a pitch-black… Corridor? Room? So now what?

Can I hear anything?

Ah? No, not-. Yeah. It's quiet. Like a… Pumping noise. Did Aztecs have pumps? Or has someone imported something from Earth. Doesn't sound like a person walking, and I don't… I don't know enough about Aztec magic creatures to know what else it could be.

I need to see, but I don't want to mess things up by summoning light and showing everyone where I am. So… Heat vision. That's not impossible to detect, but since I'm mostly casting it on myself and just getting the ability to see things a bit differently it shouldn't have much chance of alerting anyone.

Quick check it won't interfere with my stealth spells… Yeah, should be fine.

Slight burning in my eyes… And… Okay. The walls are… Generating a little warmth. With dots along them generating more. Dots… Well, more like the size of my fist. Looks like I'm in a corridor about…

I take a step forwards to make sure that they're not embedded in the wall.

No, it's about two metres across and… Quite a lot longer. Can't tell if there are any turn-offs from here, but I'll see them when I get to them. The noise is… It's coming from a lot of places, and I think… I think there's a louder pumping noise coming from somewhere else. The quiet pumping is coming from all around, so I guess it's in the walls.

Weird that they've got heat sources lined up on the walls but nothing making light. Are there Aztec monsters that have infrared vision? If there are, there aren't any nearby. I walk over to the closest one and touch the wall next to-.

Damp, warm and slightly sticky. And it looks like the heat source is vibrating? Some sort of lightless fire? I reach out to touch it. Wouldn't be the strangest thing-.

Feels a bit rubbery. And it's moving, I think it's pumping-. Yeah, it's pumping, and it's sort of heart-.

Shaped.

 

[Mr Zoat]

17th February 2013
18:38 GMT

"Okay, that's it: I'm ripping my own feet off."

Kon jerks his head around from peering at what is supposed to be the Aztec afterlife for women who die in childbirth.

"You sure that's a good idea?"

"The obsidian is embedded too deeply for normal tweezers. I can't grab it properly with construct tweezers. My wounds have sort of scabbed over but they won't heal because I've got shards of magic death glass in them."

Kon lifts up his own right foot, revealing a mildly scabbed but basically healthy sole. "Maybe you shoulda tried being nicer to the gods?"

…

Apollo you fuck.

"I'm sure that Lord Apollo has a better sense of priorities than to deny healing to someone trying to save the world."

Kon doesn't look convinced.

I don't feel convinced.

I-. Wait.

"No, no. If Tlazolteotl has done something to take over this region, she might pick up on it. I-."

"What about-" M'gann swoops down. "-if I open up the armour and you get inside?"

"Possible. Tezumak obviously took his on and off. I should be able to rip the internal bracing out."

Kon frowns. "Doesn't it need a heart?"

"I can use the orange light, it's fine. That's basically what I'm doing at the moment. I won't be fighting at full effectiveness, but at least I'll be able to walk." I turn to M'gann. "See anything?"

"Big suits and little suits. It doesn't look like they're chasing anyone."

Kon nods. "Think we could sneak in?"

She looks dubious. "Can you turn invisible?"

"Can you adopt an irregular shape that could extend around him and keep him invisible?"

She thinks for a moment. "Yes. It wouldn't be a lot of fun, though. I'm not Plastic Man. I need to keep my internal organs in one piece."

Kon looks a little blank. "Okay, so..?"

"I'll.. need to swallow you."

"Oh. Ah…"

Kon looks at me. I look at the armour.

"So will I be in your stomach..?"

I extend a construct into the armour and start sucking the blood into a storage flask. Then I open latches and carefully remove components.

"No, I can make a rumen. That's like a special pouch in my throat. It's perfectly safe."

It's interesting how obvious it is that the parts needed to allow the armour to operate on its own are additions to the original design. Whatever Tlazolteotl's skills, thaumic engineering isn't amongst them. I.. recognise some parts of the runic control system, but only the obvious parts. There's a lot of complexity here I'm… I'm going to try and find someone to go over at some point.

"Do I..? Should I take my clothes off..?"

M'gann blushes.

Skeleton removed, I can get in. I can see where the gap for the wearer is. Tezumak was a big man, but the armour is far larger. Okay, clamber in, stick some gold-coloured metal to the interior where the holes are so that they're not immediately obvious, and… Yes, it's even obvious where the blood reservoirs are supposed to go. Add replacements, because I don't know what they actually looked like, and fill them with blood from my flask. Strap myself in and then connect the arcane systems to my etheric heart, the heartbeat of avarice.

BaBUM.

The armour comes… Not 'alive', not literally. But the blood lets it feign being alive for the purpose of control. That makes sense: there's no way a civilisation that old would have understood an electronic control system like what my power armours use.

"Alright, I'm ready to go. Have you come to terms yet?"

It projects my voice, which is useful.

"Uh, yeah." Kon lays on the ground on his chest and raises his legs. "Let's just… Do this."

M'gann… Assumes the form of a large…

I'm just going to look away and spare Kon the embarrassment. And hum, because that sound-.

"Okay. Ah. He's… Inside."

"Okay. Make yourself invisible and I'll head in."

"What if they attack you?"

"I know where the heart latch is, and I can drain their power. But if they didn't send reinforcements then I imagine that they're semi-autonomous. The regular robots probably won't recognise that I'm out of the ordinary."

M'gann's skin shimmers and then she vanishes, and Kon along with her. Quick check…

"Yes, this armour's visual systems can't detect you. Stick around until we're somewhere safe, communication to a minimum."

"Understood."

I walk through the forest edge and into the clear area around the outer wall. I can feel how to operate the wings, but I don't really want to fiddle around with systems like that and the visible damage this armour has taken means that not flying shouldn't look all that odd to any observers. The armour units on the walls don't react, and neither do the larger ones standing on the outside. I march towards the main doors, and they open without any special action from me. Okay… That is where the portal to Otherworld is, so if I march around for a moment then Robert-.

BaBUM.

What?

The Anti-Lifed heart is beating a frenzied rhythm in its compartment on my back. Why? There's nothing around-.

Justifiers start marching out of the portal, Apokoliptian weapons at the ready. A moment passed, and then Mannheim himself follows them. He doesn't waste time looking around at the scenery. Instead, he strides forwards, down the steps, the armour suits on guard duty there collapsing to the ground in his wake.

What's..? Going on?

 

[Mr Zoat]

17th February 2013
18:43 GMT

The armour suits don't get back up once he passes, either.

So… What, he's added some sort of counter-magic ability to everything else now? Or an ability to turn hearts off? If they actually retain any sort of awareness, that seems more plausible, but it's still-.

I carefully avert my gaze from him, looking only at the shoes of his escorts as I make sure that my empathic vision is as weak as possible because I still remember Mr. Nelson's warning about looking into peoples' souls. There's no way that he isn't almost as aware of the souls of the people with him as he is of his own. This area isn't Anti-Lifed so he shouldn't have perfect awareness, but I still…

Yes. I walk over to the entrance to a nearby building and take up position as if I was guarding it.

No chatter from the Anti-Life party. Because there's nothing the guards know that he doesn't and there's nothing that he wants that they need to be told to do. What an unpleasant way to-

BaBUM.

-live.

Is he aware of that? Has he been coming here for a while, or..? And I looked at him, which he would have felt, but… This place is Aztec in style, not Apokoliptian or modern American. The broadcaster was clearly his work but all the rest has been Aztec magic. So I'd guess that Tlazolteotl is working with him rather than being enslaved to him.

Why?

Don't know.

From the direction their feet are moving in, I'd guess that none of them are coming towards me. Can't risk looking at them directly, so… Ring, passive sonic imaging.

Compliance.

And… Yes. Just by listening to the echoes I can more or less follow-.

One of the large suits reaches across the top of the pyramid with the portal on it and picks up the fallen suits before walking off in a different direction. Hm. I could send M'gann and Kon after Mannheim while I follow the big suit, but we don't have any reliable covert way to get back in contact or find each other. We could both follow Mannheim but that would be kind of obvious. We could try killing him, but since he's here on 'friendly' terms with Tlazolteotl I'm not hopeful. Or we could try following the big armour and see where that takes us.

That sounds like the better option.

I step away from my post, and the sounds I'm getting suggest that the rearguard are watching me but taking no action. That's fine. Down the middle of the street, like a robot following the line to its destination. Is that how they walk? Don't know. But the alternative is activating the wings and none of the others seem to be doing that.

Tracking the big armour is easy: it's taller than almost all of the buildings. And the power assistance in this armour means that it's not a strain for me. Blood pressure… Okay. I.. could supply my brain by ring and leave the rest of my body to just try its best, but if Mannheim's around with… Poorly defined abilities, I think that the risk would be unwise.

No people around, but the stone seems to be in good condition and the greenery is in good condition. The armour suits don't appear to be doing it, so I imagine that it's just how this place is. I didn't have any preconceived ideas about what a haven for women who died in childbirth should be like, but I suppose 'just another Aztec city' is pretty reasonable. They wouldn't want to be reminded of how they died for eternity, and they'd have been living here for longer than they were alive. Certainly for longer than they'd been trying to give birth. And the aim was to give them a place to recover mentally before seeking reincarnation so the gods couldn't make it too nice.

The big armour suit looks like it's heading towards a huge building at… Roughly the centre of the city. It has the traditional stepped pyramid design but the individual steps are huge; big enough that the large armour would be forced to climb them rather than walk up them.

I pick up the pace a little, trying to be only just behind the large armour before it enters the building. No one looks, no one cries out and none of the suits I can see act any differently. I can't get readings from Mannheim's party from here, but if I really want to find them later I doubt that it will be hard.

Mannheim doesn't back away from fights. Not any more.

The large suit that I'm following stops just in front of a large door in the huge ziggurat. It's stone, and painted in surprisingly bright colours. I know that people in medieval Europe had access to bright pigments and dyes earlier in history than is sometimes assumed, but it's still a little surprising to see bold colours like that in an Aztec city. I suppose that even if it is an anachronism for the time these cities date from that doesn't mean that their afterlife wouldn't have it.

The big suit puts the smaller ones down and pushes-. Ah. The doors are stone, and on some sort of turntable. They swivel as the suit pushes, revealing the interior.

I can hear the sounds of a forge almost immediately. So this is where they're being made?

The big suit picks up the smaller ones and walks inside. It doesn't close the door immediately, so I accelerate to a jog and get inside. Then back…

To…

Walking normally.

So this is where they're keeping the heartless. And the prisoners.

BaBUM.

The prisoners are strapped to… The arrangement reminds me of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Bound wrist and ankle, gagged and attached to gurneys, they're pushed around the room by heartless… They're dressed as… Priests. In one part of the room they're… Being ritually bled, the priests officiating showing absolutely no emotion as they discharge their office. They're using knives and pots rather than modern medical equipment, but the blood is staying liquid rather than clotting anyway.

BaBUM.

In another part of the room more heartless hammer metal, pausing every so often for blood to be poured onto the plate. Magical transmutation? I can't… Immediately call to mind a transformation that would require human blood, but perhaps it's a conduit for some other spell instead. They're using only primitive tools, and their supply of metal doesn't seem all that large.

BaBUM.

The finished parts are carried up to the top of a dais where a single man is working on the internal frames. Parts are attached either by his hand or at his direction, blood is added and… I think he's performing a ritual anointing. His chest is cut open, but there's a visible heart in his chest-

BaBUM.

-and it's the source of the Anti-Life feeling that… It's not filling the room, but it's a constant background drone. The man himself is… Muscular. Huge, actually, six and a half feet tall and extremely muscular. I didn't think that sort of musculature existed back in those days, but it looks like I'm wrong. Close-cropped hair. Clearly of a South American ethnic group. There's an open suit of armour behind where he's working, metal stained by old blood.

And a… When he briefly turns in my direction I see a metal plate attached to his face over his mouth.

Adom didn't have any pictures, the statues had long since eroded to nothing and I felt stupid asking him to draw them, but… He fits the description for Tezumak.

I don't think anyone deserves to be Anti-Lifed, and the whole human sacrifice thing does get a little muddled in a place with an afterlife that rewards being sacrificed and allows reincarnation. But I don't like the fact that I'm about to help the least moral member of the League of Ancients, including the queen who reintroduced slavery to Atlantis.

Affecting the pose of automation, I walk what appears to be the correct route to the dais, evading the large armour suit as it heads outside after dropping off its load for repairs.

Time to start acting openly.

 

[Mr Zoat]

17th February 2013
18:49 GMT

Objectives:

1. Liberate and evacuate the prisoners.
2. Revitalise the heartless.
3. Destroy the power armour.
4. Prevent Mannheim and Tlazolteotl becoming aware of it.

Evacuating the prisoners is going to be hard. Not only are there a lot of power armours around with flechette launchers that would easily kill people with baseline human toughness, but the only portal I know which I could use to evacuate them is in the open at the top of a pyramid. The Amazon force following us is going to have to take their suddenly ground-bound flying horses over a mountain of obsidian so I'm not counting on getting reinforcements from them quickly. And there's a limit to how much M'gann can ingest.

Can Tezumak turn the other suits off?

Probably not. Assume that I rip his current heart out of his chest and replace it with one of the ones I took from the power armour we fought, and that brings him to his senses -which isn't guaranteed- then I'll have access to someone who can tell me everything I could want to know about the suits that have already gunned everyone down.

How about… Sneaking hearts into peoples' chests?

I don't think anyone here can detect that, but the change in their behaviour would be pretty obvious. As would the fact that their wounds were closing up. That's also the option most likely to tip Tlazolteotl off.

Can I engage and destroy all of the armour suits?

Hide behind the big armour, bleed the others out one at a time… It's doable, but it would almost certainly take long enough to draw attention from outside. And they might just decide to shoot the prisoners out of spite. Or be told to.

But if the armour collapses when exposed to Mannheim…

I follow what looks like a reasonable path towards Tezumak, following more or less the route the large armour took. It's… Waiting for instructions? Or just-.

It turns and starts walking towards me. Nothing strange about that, it's a straight line between Tezumak and the door out. And-.

It was close to Tezumak and that's clearly an Anti-Life infused heart in his chest. I don't know how to make Anti-Life broadcasters… I mean, I know their physical structure, but the arcane component is… Not something I'd want to rely on being able to replicate in a controlled way.

There wasn't any power armour in Mictlampa. So how could I broadcast..?

…

There must be a better option.

If I take control of the big armour-. No, same problem. Bystanders would die. I could fly everyone outside-. No, there are suits of power armour outside. Grab Tezumak out and interrogate him? No, that just-.

It's nearly reached me. It's going to walk over me.

My armour goes dead as I cut myself off from the honden. As much as I can, anyway. Because this could cause some nasty blowback. And then…

I imagine a universe where everyone trudges through their daily tasks in lockstep with the will of another.

BaBUM.

I push from my mind the possibility of living any other way.

BaBUM. BaBUM. BaBUM.

The giant suit of power armour shudders and shakes-

I accept it as my place.

-and drops to its knees and then collapses towards-.

Chuck the heart away and-. And I can think-. Fire up the armour and wings!

The armoured giant falls, clipping my feet as I try flying out of the way and sending me into a vertical spin! Dizzily I see M'gann vomit up Kon as they both charge over to where the prisoners are bound, M'gann's telekinesis already throwing heartless priests out of the way with bone-breaking force. The power armour suits are collapsing just as the giant one did-. No. Some have retained at least some of their power, just about remaining upright as they try and bring their flechette launchers to bear on any target.

There's a clank as Tezumak gets inside his armour-.

"Kon! Get him out!"

Kon doesn't look around, he just leaps at Tezumak, reaching his dais an instant later and shoving both hands into the rapidly closing armour. He heaves against the shutting mechanism-

"Ah!"

-which sprouts small blades which cut into his fingers, making him bleed.

I-.

I am glad that you know your place. Come to me.

Shit.

I get control of my movement, grabbing hold of a walkway and setting my wings to neutral. I look around-.

"Gimme a hand!"

Tezumak has gotten control of his arms and has used his right to grab hold of Kon's head. It's an awkward angle and he can't bring his full strength to bear, but Kon's hands are both occupied keeping his armour from sealing.

I push off, activating my wings and rocketing towards Tezumak's dais. I land with a thunk, then dash up to-.

Tezumak opens his flechette launchers, trying to pull Kon into the arc of fire-.

I fire a beam of orange light through the opening in his armour, construct hand forming around his heart! Grab and pull!

BaBUM.

It's out, and Kon shudders as he's exposed to the concentrated Anti-Life. Fortunately Tezumak loses focus as well, his eyes going from hard to somewhat vacant. I toss the tainted heart aside and grab one of the hearts from the suits we fought. Construct hydraulic ram, shove it in the gap and push. New heart in, link it up and replace some of the blood that was spilling out.

Would he have blood as a spirit? Or was that added for the magic? Don't know.

"Okay, done!" I step back from Tezumak and look around. M'gann's beaten up the heartless but some of the suits are showing signs of life. "Get the other armour suits!"

"But-." He looks at the hands that are holding Tezumak's armour open.

"I replaced his heart. No more Anti-Life infection. Go!"

He nods and leaps, landing on a suit that had managed to rise to its knees and slamming it back to the stone floor.

"Tezumak." He blinks and I see slight more focus in his expression. "Adom says-."

The armour slams closed and readies itself for combat!

 

[Mr Zoat]

6 882 938.M41

"I do not share your frustration." Fio'Vre Lar'shi Gru'oya makes a gesture to indicate that while she doesn't exactly disagree, she doesn't share my perspective. "I found it quite instructive."

"Yes, but you do agree, right? This doesn't make any sense."

"Aliens frequently do things that make little sense to me. As you have observed, by definition, different species think differently. There is more than one correct solution for the equation of sophoncy."

I throw up my right hand in frustration. "So why do you think this ship is a study in different ways of achieving the same outcome?"

She thinks it over for a moment. Gru was given this job due to the way she doesn't get flustered by alien technology, which the Lar'shi fio'ar'tol correctly deduced was going to be to most significant consideration to being assigned to studying the ring. I once asked how they determined that, and apparently they used to use a complex battery psychological test… But found that they got almost the exact same results far quicker by showing the students an Imperial servitor and watching how they reacted.

I was pleased to find out that it wasn't because of her name. On the other hand, as far as I'm concerned any rational person should find a servitor weird.

"The possibility which I think is most likely is that it was intended as a test bed for new technology. Putting them in a functional ship would allow them to be tested under load, and give better information than a laboratory test."

"The idea being that they would select the best and install it on future generations."

"Yes."

"Then where are they?"

She considers that for a moment as well. "Warp travel is not something that can be precisely controlled by any known species in this galaxy. While it is usual for ships lost in the warp to coagulate together in a vortex to form a space hulk, it is possible that a ship might find a current which caused it to exit the warp on its own."

"Where's the damage from warp exposure?"

"They had shielding devices. They were the source of our understanding of the technology."

"No crew, Gru. Something killed them. If it was daemons, then the shields failed. Or weren't perfect. There should be some damage."

"Warp dives have a far lower-."

"We know their fuel capacity, and we've scouted literally every system in range of a warp dive based system. That can't have been how they did it."

She watches me, waiting for me to calm down a little.

I bow my head. "Sorry."

She nods slowly. "We know the fuel capacity for the systems we can understand. Your ring had given us full access to some of the databases we could not decipher, but not to all of them. There are still systems we do not understand. You have told us that the ves'ron use drives which nullify inertia in normal space. Perhaps it is something like that, but not effective enough to entirely replace warp technology."

"One of the two would be faster. We know how far that could be for warp diving. Sure, they could have another system, but then why have the warp dive system?"

"The be'gel would make such a system."

"The orks would cobble the systems from captured ships together rather than regularise their ship-building. They wouldn't build it like that from scratch."

She regards me calmly. "Then what do you suspect?"

"Two possibilities. One, despite assurances from the T'au kor'ar'tol, we haven't been given access to everything. They're hiding the bodies, or… Okay, this isn't a fresh wreck or anything, I wasn't expecting it to be pristine, but parts have been removed and not included. Something that would make this make sense." I sigh. "The second is that they're pulling a Krikket and the ship's a fake."

"It was a real ship. We walked inside it."

"I don't mean that it's not a real ship. I mean that it wasn't a fortuitous wreck. Someone put it there for the early tau to find. And… Since they didn't know exactly what your species would be good at, they included a little of everything."

"Why would any species do that?"

"Necrons messed around with ancient humans to create pariahs. They can't cope with warp energy, so they wanted another species around who could dampen the connection between warp space and real space."

"That claim is based on the existence of pariah units amongst the ves'ron. The Tau Empire has not encountered them for some time. It has been suggested that they were only ever used by a single dynasty."

"Or there are a lot more dynasties waking up at the moment and they haven't all had enough time to pick up enough pariahs to form units. If they were even aware of the possibility. The point is, that very long term plans that might pay off are something that happens."

"Very well. Let us assume that one of the situations you suggest is correct. How would you determine the difference?"

"Ah… Test everything that could be a drive in the field. And everything that might generate power. Except for warp phenomena I can scan and replicate just about anything. Then we'd know what the greatest range could be. Then check all worlds within that area for signs of habitation. If anything matches, then we've got an origin point."

"And what would the significance of that be?"

"We might find other examples of their technology. After four thousand years I doubt that anyone there will remember it… If their civilisation is still a going concern. But they might at least give us some way to decode the remaining databases."

"And the only thing that would require your direct involvement would be the creation of the device copies." I nod, and she's been working with me for long enough to understand the gesture. "What else?"

"Hunt down the T'au kor'ar'tol's secure databases, including nudging peoples' minds to persuade them that I need access. And… At this point, probably the T'au aun'ar'tol's databases as well. That would get any records that I don't have access to. I'd need to do that myself, but it would be relatively safe and wouldn't require anyone but me."

"A-ttacking the aun'ar'tol is something of an extreme measure, regardless of other considerations."

"I know how tau get about the aun. If I was planning it, I wouldn't have told you about it. But… You weren't there, but the Admiral had a physical reaction to me showing her the image of Krona. If this ship is somehow one of his projects, keeping that from me is an astronomically stupid thing to do."

Her eyes narrow has they unfocus, Gru clearly going through a calming meditative exercise after my not-heresy.

"Perhaps we should return to a more productive avenue. How would you access the remaining databases?"

"If it even is a database. It scans a lot like some Eldar psychomorphic materials, so I'd… Try getting hold of a psyker. One with skills relating to transferring information. And probably spotting booby traps."

"None of the other databases have active defences."

"Warp-based technology needs to have active defences due to the warp. The daemons will worm their way through any undefended hole eventually, even if it's just to attack the minds of nearby sophonts."

"Do you have access to such people?"

"There are human astropaths I could call on. None cleared for access to this site. The genestealer hybrids are psykers and.. since they're under my authority I could bring one or two here, except that I am not a moron. Not trying to use Gremlin because even if he can get enough waaaagh energy, it would probably just wreck the database. That leaves-."

6 883 938.M41

The Dark Eldar wych prisoners smile near-mindlessly at me, eyes glowing orange. It turns out that that once you take out the sadism and hunger, there really isn't all that much left.

"How may we serve, master?"