With This Ring (Young Justice SI) (Thread Fourteen)

[Mr Zoat]

8th November 2012
That was easy

Fuck this hurts and fuck this place makes my whole body itch. Because why would the Caliph bring anything that felt like demon magic with him? I know the bloody story, and he gave the glass ball containing every demon Solomon ever bound to Dream as part of the fee.

Just me. Which means that none of the locals were ready for me.

And the Dream! The Dream pays lip service to normal rules at best. Dreams are confusing before their internal logic takes hold. Collect a little of that confusion, wait for an opportunity, and now I'm free in… Dream-Baghdad without anyone keeping track of me.

Getting out seems like a good idea, and I can manage that without Nommo's help. Just find an active dream, passenger possession on the dreamer and then sleepwalk them through an incorcism.

Thing is…

I stop walking.

Thing is, that leaves Quinn where he is. And whatever we agreed, he's obviously gunna have to come after me eventually. This is probably the best shot I'm gunna get at getting shot of the bastard. And I know how he thinks better than any of them. Nommo can probably get through his defensive spells-. Can he? Quinn's been devouring books on Atlantean thaumaturgy. Nommo doesn't have the same knowledge of magic theory. Does his experience beat that? I'd guess 'yes'.

But I don't know 'yes'.

Fuck. This is what I get for gathering up bits of John Constantine.

What's the smart p-?

I sidestep, using Dream confusion to disguise what I'm doing and changing direction, filtering into the crowd. Jacket off and hidden to change my colour, hunch a little and use a minor distraction spell to encourage people to avoid looking at me and the guy next to me.

Damn, that was close. I can feel it as the police, guards, soldiers, whatever they are, drop off a fucking flying carpet and start looking for me. Yeah, they've got some basic wards, but more to the point they're loyal. Obsessively loyal, like they can't imagine doing anything else. No internal corruption to work with. Could probably take one in a fight, but it would be messy and it would draw more attention.

There's a park up the wall to my left. How do I get up-?

Steps? Ah. There's wear on the top surface and the side surface. Clever.

I walk up to the steps and fall onto my back. Except I don't end up on the floor, I end up with my back to a wall, because the steps form a hinge point, something that looks the same whether it's going either way.

Right, stroll, pay attention but don't gawp like a tourist, get under tree cover. I remember enough about Sufi whirling meditation that I could probably pass myself off as an Islamic scholar if it came to it, but I'd rather just avoid a confrontation.

They didn't come for me when I got to the city, so what set them off? Did it just take that long for them to reach-?

I glance down and catch sight of Paul going into… Damn it, some sort of magic boutique. I think I'm… Yeah, from his point of view I'm walking up a bridge's support pillar. He hasn't spotted me, but he doesn't have guards coming after him. Tattoos? No, no, people have seen him, they could track the disruption he's causing indirectly easily enough.

Islam's a bit down on demons, isn't it?

Okay, the soldiers are searching the street behind me, and their mates are coming in from the opposite end. Doesn't look like they had anyone-.

Fuck, I felt that. Something just got changed. The people around me aren't reacting to it and I can't see anything. Keep walking, don't-.

"My first wish, oh spirit of air, is that you bring the one I seek to me."

Kah!

A fist of air and magic closes around me and lifts me into the air and my magic senses can just about pick out a partially manifested djinn glowering at me. Course, it probably hates its master more, but the master's the one with the binding spell. It pulls me through the air so fast that my surroundings blur, then I'm floating in front of a fat bastard eunuch sitting on the carpet that dropped those two soldiers off.

He grins through barely open eyes, the curve of his mouth mirrored in the wattles on his neck. Guess he's got to take his pleasures where he can still find them.

"My second wish, oh spirit of air, is that you bind his body and magic."

Chains of… Magic, and probably just magic, appear around me and my ability to sense what's going on is suddenly limited to my human senses. But the djinn hates its master. I still exist because I can still use magic on me, and while I can't break this chain with magic or strength, I reckon that just about anything else will rip it off me.

"My third wish, oh spirit of air, is that you return to my ring."

The djinn pulls a face of pure indignant rage as it feeds itself as slowly as it can manage back into the ring. Yeah. I'm not sympathetic, but I can empathise.

"Foolish demon. My master the Caliph -may Allah guide him- wishes to speak with you."

"I charge for consultancies."

"I heard you say 'please imprison me inside the Globe of Sulaiman ben Daoud, that I may see nothing and hear nothing and feel nothing for the rest of eternity'. Is that what you meant to say?"

"I thought he gave that to Dream."

"And where are we, oh accursed bane of the sons of Adam?"

Ah.

"Let's go see the Caliph, then."

"I am pleased that you are cooperating. My spells for binding demons are not intended for demons in human form, and leaving your headless body in the streets would cause needless work for the groundsmen."

The carpet starts moving, not that I can feel it. Doesn't look like we're being affected by the… By whatever the nearest 'down' is. No, we're just cutting right through the whole place, which means that I don't have the slightest idea where I'd fall if I jumped off.

Or how hard.

I don't know if I could put myself back together from here.

I tear my eyes off the 'ground' and see the smug bastard grinning to himself as the palace comes into view. Look at that ridiculous thing. Must have taken a fucking army of djinn to put that fairy tale thing together, because there's no way that mortal builders could have done that back when this place was real. Looks like we're flying to the upper tower, where… That's him, then. A short, thin man wearing one curtain with a turban made from the other one.

He smiles at me.

"Thank you, Fela."

"It is my pleasure to serve, oh incomparable master."

Looks like that's my cue. I step off the carpet onto the caliph's balcony. Guards, lots of guards. A couple of big blokes close by, and a whole lot more further in.

"You wanted me?"

He looks at me, and… Yeah. This isn't a man. This is some sort of idea of a man who thought he was a perfect ruler. Arrogant men I can work around, but this one is going to be intelligent enough that it's going to be tricky.

"I want to know how you and your party came to be here. I think it is high time that I shared the wonder of my realm with the real world, and I think you are going to help me make that happen. And if you are unwilling, you have four friends that I could ask instead."

"Yeah. Friends."

 

[Mr Zoat]

8th November 2012
18:11 GMT +3

"…fury of a storm is simply not possible!"

I nod as Haroun the dream chaser gesticulates to emphasise his point.

"'Not possible' as in 'no one has ever done it and it would be immensely difficult' or 'categorically impossible'."

He throws up his hands. "To Allah, all things are possible, but to exist in a storm is to try and walk on ground that will bear no weight with legs that will bear no weight. Our existence here needs us-." He looks away as someone walks into the not-a-bar that totally never sells wine and certainly never sells it to good Muslims. "Ahmad, Ahmad, back me up!"

Ahmad looks over, clearly puzzled, but he shrugs and ambles over to join us. "Why do you need backup?"

"This pagan wants to go through a dream storm."

"Oh. Why?"

"To get to the other side."

"You wouldn't just die. The things that make up your body would cease to be." Ahmad looks concerned as he shakes his head. "Don't do it."

"Okay. Is it possible to go around a storm?"

Ahmad sits down next to his… Friend? And looks at Haroun to try and get some idea what's going on. Haroun is still clearly frustrated.

"Look, this city seems pretty normal because the Caliph and Dream brought it here as-is. In normal dreams, you're constantly interacting with worlds that have their own rules. They usually resemble the real world in some ways because people mostly dream what they know, and those commonalities make it possible to travel from one to the other."

"Yes, I understand-."

"Commonalities. The rule-breaks are commonalities too, and a lot of the time they're the bit that lingers longest. And when the dreamer awakens and they're not limiting things, the rule-breaks can all-"

He claps his hands.

"-smoosh together, and you get a storm."

"Primordial chaos."

"Ah… I imagine it's similar. If you want to know if they're the same you should check with an Imam."

"Hm. There are beings who can exist in raw chaos."

"Yeah. Evil spirits. And definitely not men."

"Why not just wait until it falls apart on its own?"

"I don't think this one will."

Both sets of eyes widen.

"You want to get through-?" / "You can't go through-!"

"Assume that I do."

Haroun sits back a little, clearly uncomfortable. "Well… Don't. The Lord of Dreams could probably let you through, for Allah has granted him domain over this place and all within it. I cannot imagine anything else that could."

"What would you do if you found yourself caught in a lesser storm?"

"Leave as quickly as I could. If I could not leave… Seek shelter and pray as hard as I could."

"How do you leave? If they're as chaotic as you say-."

"When you flee from a normal storm, you're going to get wet, but if you watch the path you can avoid being hit by a blow-over tree, or by lightning. Unless a dream has broken down entirely there are still conceptual links, they're just… Disrupted. So if you keep your wits about you and run, it's possible, but…"

"But it would be chancy, and you wouldn't want to do it if you could possibly avoid it."

They're both nodding.

"Is there a way to calm a storm, even if it's only over a small area?"

Ahmad nods. "Wizards who have studied the Dream can do that, but they only do it when the city is threatened directly, and then they can only calm it a little."

I nod. That's basically the same thing that the others I've asked have said, but I think at this point I can treat it as being confirmed. I stand, taking a small pouch of period-appropriate coins off my belt and laying it on the table in front of them.

"Thank you both for your time."

Haroun smiles as he picks up the pouch. "You are welcome, sir."

I turn away and head out of the café, pausing once I get back out onto the street. I've managed to get hold of a few navigation aids, but nothing that would let us survive in pure chaos. Dr. Balewa might be able to organise something.

I'm more hopeful about the link, though. The Tower of Fate is a powerful anchor point of order in the material universe. From the sound of it, it should be possible to travel from an order-focused dream directly to the Tower. Or… It would be possible for someone other than me, anyway. Would Shivering Jemmy be willing to grant us passage-? No. Would she allow us to survive the passage after experiencing pure chaos? Probably, but that doesn't make trying it a good idea.

Would my tattoos allow me to absorb Dream-stuff until I could manipulate it?

That sounds like an even-

"…geldedbastard!"

-worse-

The Demon Constantine lands chest-first on the street in front of me, to the moderate consternation of the passers by.

"Fuck."

"Do you need any help?"

He's lost his coat, and as he pushes himself up I see that his chest is bloody and his ribs… Broken and bent inwards, piercing where his lungs would be. There's also a… Variant of the Seal of Solomon imprinted on his forehead.

"Give me a moment."

He closes his eyes, wincing, and his chest gradually shifts back into its proper place.

"I'm sure that John would appreciate the-" I touch my forehead. "-tribute, but I didn't think that was healthy for demons."

"They got me." He tries to pat his coat, presumably looking for cigarettes, then realises that he's not wearing it. "The Caliph wants out."

"Oh. That's easy."

"Right, because Dream owes you a favour and no one in modern Cairo would mind having this dropped on them."

"No, because I spoke to a version of myself from an alternate timeline where this city was the Middle East's main source of super powers." I walk closer and tap him on the forehead. "Can I speak to the management, please?"

 

[Mr Zoat]

8th November 2012
18:16 GMT +3

"It's really not that complicated, thaumaturgically speaking. People dream all the time, and anyone can learn to gain lucidity in their dreams. It would simply be a matter of matching volunteers to dreamers."

The dream of Haroun ibn Mohammed ibn Abdullah ibn Mohammed ibn Ali Ben Abdullah ibn Abbas, Caliph of Baghdad, doesn't look entirely convinced. Though I suspect that's more a negotiating tool than anything else; I know that a version of him either agreed to this or flat out suggested it himself.

"That would not grant them flesh."

"They lost that when your material self made his pact with Morpheus. Such pacts cannot simply be undone." I pause. "Not after so much time. If you were all still alive, I… It may have been possible."

"That sounds more like what I want. Speak of it, O sage of avarice."

"Your majesty, your material self, much diminished by sending all that was greatest about his realm into the Dream, died a very long time ago. What became of his soul is a matter for Allah, but from that moment you and he stopped being the same person. Like… Conjoined twins joined at the shoulder and then separated by a chirurgeon. Could they be reattached? Yes, maybe, with great difficulty. But as time passes and scar tissue forms… Or if one dies…"

"Speak more."

"I am a Hellenist. I do not claim that nothing exists above and beyond the kings of the angelic hosts; I have borne witness to feats of theurgy that cannot have come from anywhere else. But I personally worship beings who are closer to mortality. The chief amongst them is Hephaestaean, God of Artifice and Technology. He has produced a mechanism into which a mortal soul can be entrapped, which allows them to walk once more upon the Earth. If that was what was needed, I would trade with you for such vessels and be on my way. But the souls of the dead are understood. You are not Caliph Haroun al Raschid's soul."

He inclines his head very slightly.

"I am not."

"You are a dream of all that was great about him. You are… This place is unique. And as such there are limits to how much I can apply what I have learned about other forms of magic to your situation."

"What if Caliph Haroun al Raschid could live again?"

"Heaven does not allow resurrections after so much time. I checked. And even if they did, it is as I said. The two of you are separate."

I sigh.

"And even if we could get a piece of his body and grow a new man from it, they would not be you and you would not be them. They could become President of Iraq and they would still not be you."

"Then how could the world ever know my faultless city?"

"You'd have to build it again from scratch."

His expression hardens slightly. "You mean to say, I and whoever became my partner."

"If you did as I suggest, the two of you would not precisely be separate people. Each of you would be changed, and when they died you would be…" I gesture to him. "This, once more."

"This other version of you. Did they speak with me?"

"I am sorry, your majesty, I did not think to ask them for the names of people who were joined. I believe that your cooks were quite popular. Few men can become king, but everyone benefits from being able to feed themselves well."

That provokes a smile.

"Your soldiers too are sought after."

"And the women of my harem?"

"Some… Do. Their abilities do… Ah, not lend themselves to heroics. It almost certainly guarantees a high-placed but fairly mercenary sort of marriage, but I'm afraid that we're reaching the limits of my knowledge."

"And the boys of my harem?"

"Certain social customs have changed since your era. Respectfully, I would advise against it. Similarly, slavery is not tolerated."

"Slavery is not prohibited by the Quran."

"No, but it was prohibited by the British Navy, a fact that brings me not inconsiderable pride in the nation of my birth. Your majesty, the fact that you need to question me on that subject emphasises that you would require the knowledge of the one you would bond with as much as they would require your sagacity."

He appears to consider that for a moment. I imagine that he'd struggle a little with the change in the relative power of the Islamic world from his era where they invaded southern Europe at will, to the state of affairs that exists today.

"And if I were to follow your advice, how would I start?"

"Stop collecting dream fragments, and start sending out people to speak to dreamers directly instead. Once they know enough to predict a person's dreaming habits, send someone who is like the person they would want to be, and… Directly ask them. Repeated often enough and even a slow-witted dreamer will eventually see the pattern." I shrug. "Or just explain to me what you want, and I can convey your message to the waking world."

"And what would you ask in return?"

I shake my head. "Nothing. Having you acting on the world again serves my interests in generally increasing the capabilities of living humans. I would rather ease your path than risk someone else doing something wrong. Spreading the word is far easier in my era than it was in yours."

"You believe that the cities and nations of your world surpass the glories of Baghdad?"

"Yes."

"How so?"

"See for yourself."

He shakes his head. "You have seen little of my city. Such a thing cannot be."

"That must be profoundly dispiriting for you."

"I made my agreement with the being you call Morpheus precisely because I know all too well that mortal kingdoms fall and I could not bear the idea that no other age might know the glory we know."

"Huh." He raises his eyebrows. "It just… I don't know what I'd do if I thought that I wouldn't be surpassed. I've always assumed that other members of my order would learn from my successes and failures and in the fullness of time grow beyond me. That though there might be setbacks, that learning and civilisation generally continue to advance. I do not believe that I would have made the choice that you did."

"You claim to not feel pride?"

"Pride? No. No, I feel pride in my achievements, but it's about what I've done, not what I am. In your place, I might have commissioned a journalist to write books about my nation and scribes to make many copies, but to sabotage the material so that this would exist… I don't believe that I would have done this."

"I will consider this matter. Though as a boon unasked, I will have my court wizard remove the mark from your demon's head."

"Don't strain him on my account, your majesty."

 

[Mr Zoat]

November 8th, 2012
Sometime Around Ten

A hero bound to a chair-.

I just about get my hands up before my face hits the wall in front of me, then rest my forehead against it as the vision recedes. I don't remember that ever happening to Wesley. Or maybe he just got better at covering for it, I don't know. I know it.. hurt him, I saw the red marks on his arms one time after his dreams showed him some guy getting his arms cut off by a meat slicer. But it happened when he was dreaming-.

I'm literally in dreams. Aw, heck.

No, no, that could be a good thing. Okay, if I turn around and lean against the wall so I won't fall over again, calm down and close my eyes-.

A hero bound to a chair, ropes with strange symbols on them wrapped around his arms and ending in strange gourds on the ground. Another rope is wrapped around his head, and when his eyes flicker the pupils are heavily dilated.

I jerk back into-. Back awake as my bottom hits the ground. Okay, someone's taken Green Lantern prisoner and they're doing something to him that doesn't look too good. But I don't know where he is, or-.

Wait, wait, wait. I'm in a dream. This place is the dream of a city from a thousand years ago! Okay, let's try… Try something.

I close my eyes and I see a hero bound to a chair, ropes with strange symbols on them wrapped around his arms and ending in strange gourds on the ground. Another rope is wrapped around his head, and I reach out and pull it off.

Oh, I… Don't know how that happened, but now I'm here and Alan…

I pull the glove off my right hand and feel for a pulse. Yes, good, he's still alive, and from the feel of it he's basically healthy. We're in a… In a small room; it makes me think 'dungeon', which isn't a good sign. These ropes look like they're magical, and I don't know if tearing them off is the best idea. I can't hear anyone outside, but the edges of the door are stuffed with sack cloth to stop sound getting out. So they shouldn't be able to hear me, either.

"Blue Lantern. Can you hear me?"

"Nnnnnn Rose…"

Rose. That was his wife's name, the one who went… Oh.

I see… Faces and laughter, flowing under his skin, draining down the ropes into-.

My left knee hits the closest gourd as I collapse, sending it rolling across the floor. They're draining something out of-! I draw my knife and slice into the rope wrapped around his right wrist, cutting through and causing the rope to fall to the ground. Wait, wait, no, that doesn't put whatever it was back into him. Ah, quick, grab the gourd, rope still in the hole where the stalk was, then-. Then put the rope that was around his head back on, tie the cut end of this rope to it and put the gourd in his lap.

I step around the chair, cutting through the rope on the opposite side and then tying the cut end to the rope circlet and putting the gourd on his lap.

This time I've spotted the pattern and sit on the floor.

I see faces and laughter, flowing into his head from the gourds, getting back under his-.

The door bangs open and I leap to my feet-

"Who are-! Lord-!"

-and see a rough-looking Arab with a scimitar on his belt. He looks scared for a moment, and he's reaching for his sword go!

Two steps and I'm across the room, his sword just coming free! My right forearm slams into his neck with the full force of my body behind it, slamming him through the doorway and into the wall of the corridor outside. My left fist comes in low, slamming up into his diaphragm in a nasty punch Mr. Grant taught me. He's kept hold of his sword but his right arm is pinned against his chest so he can't really use it.

"He's f-."

I shift my right arm so that my knife is pricking his neck.

"Drop the sword, or we find out if dreams can die."

His eyes drop as he tries to get air back into his lungs, and eyes widen as he spots where my hand is. There's a clatter as his sword hits the stone floor.

"Now, I'm going to step back and you're going to come with me. We're going into the cell, and once we're in I'm going to strap you to the chair. Make any trouble and, well it's been a while since I've had to knock someone out without hurting them too much. Nod if you agree."

The guy makes a very small and worried nod, careful not to test my knife.

"Okay. Step."

We edge backwards, and I make sure to keep eye contact. Woowee! Not too bad for my first fight this century! My heart's racing and I can feel the sweat on my hands under my gloves. Okay, we're inside.

"Move around to your left. Slowly."

He does, and once he's far enough away from the door I step smartly away from him. His eyes are still fixed on me. Okay, his scimitar is on the ground outside but I've got a few moments until anyone wonders where he's gone. Next step, shut the door so he can't shout for help when he gets his breath back.

Then put my knife back in its sheath and take out my gas gun.

"You know what a gun is, smart guy?"

He nods.

"Okay then. What is this place?"

"My master harvests dreams from people. There are… Rich buyers."

Why bother with opium dreams if you can get real ones?

"Is that legal?"

He stares at me for a moment, then slowly shrugs his shoulders. I raise the gas gun and point it at his head.

"Guess."

"Men can sell their dreams, and they can be claimed from debtors. And taken from slaves."

"But you can't just grab people off the street. Right." I take my left hand off the gas gun and take a pair of handcuffs out of one of my pockets. "Catch."

I toss it, and he catches it with both hands.

"Put one around one of your ankles, and then the other around one of your wrists."

He hesitates.

"I need you tied up. Do you want me to hit you over the head, or are you going to do it yourself?"

He crouches down, trying to keep his eyes on me as he puts one of the cuffs around his left ankle, then the other cuff around his left wrist.

"Good." I lower the gas gun. "Now, you're going to hear a lot of stuff in a little while, and I really think you should stay right here and wait for the police. Or guards, or whoever enforces the law around here."

A slightly nervous nod, and he shuffles back into the corner of the room.

I walk up to Green Lantern and shake his left shoulder. "Blue Lantern? Are you awake?"

 

[Mr Zoat]

Five More
Minutes, Ma

Something…

It's slipping away. I'm not sure what it was, but I don't… I think I miss it.

Like a… Like a weight is being lifted after being there for so long I couldn't remember what it not being there was like.

I think-.

"Blue Lantern. Can you hear me?"

Heh, I don't know what it was I forgot. Didn't Ted Knight make a joke about-.

"…going stag, Jay. I don't wanna make things awkward for you and Joan."

I don't… I don't think I want to-.

"…friend of Joan's. You'll be doing us both a favor, really."

I see my own… Smiling face in the mirror at the back of the bar. God, I look young.

"That bad, huh?"

I know where this goes. I-. I remember the first time I-.

"Hey Rose."

And then it's clear again, no bar, no… People I don't remember. Just me, whoever I am, floating in the-.

I use a windmill construct to blow the poisonous pollen away from all of the people, catching sight of Thorn fleeing down a corridor at the back of the room. I think about going after her, but I can't risk any of that stuff getting on the civilians.

I don't wanna-.

I see Rose in her wedding dress and I'm-. Struck dumb. I don't move until Jay elbows me in the ribs.

I-. No.

Three people are dead in the streets and-. And-. And-. How the hell didn't I notice-. "You! I don't know how you're controlling my wife, but I'll-.

"Blue Lantern? Are you awake?"

I open my eyes, and there's. Some sort of bag on my lap, and something around my head. And my ring's gone. Where-?

"Wesley? What..?"

"Thanks, but you've got the wrong Sandman. Are you alright?"

I reach up and take a hold of the magical rope around my head. And I close my eyes and-. I don't even know how I should feel. Rose was in my life for over sixty years and these ropes were practically making my brain dribble out of my ears…

Damn it.

"Sandy, right. Back with it. Do I-?" I look down at my lap again and-. Gourds, they're gourds, with ropes tied to the rope around my forehead running from the tops. "Can I take this off?"

Sandy… Kind of… Shimmers-. No, it's like he gets a little insubstantial for a moment.

"Ah… Let me."

He goes back to looking normal, then takes a hold of the rope around my head-.

Fightblastshinesmilecoldwooshpeopletallskyhurtfacefacefacerecognizebuildingtrainmovingclacking…

Sandy pulls the rope off my head, then picks up the gourds and throws them across the room.

"Son of a-!" I shake my head, trying to clear out getting ninety years of memories all stuffed into it all at once. "Give a fellah a little warning next time."

"Sorry, Blue Lantern. I'm kinda new at this."

"New at-" I try to stand, Sandy hovering on my left just in case I collapse. But I don't. I may not exactly be feeling 100% right now, but I'm not that feeble. "-what?"

"You know how Wesley had visions? Well, now I do too. And a few others things while we're in the Dream. That's how I found you." He glances towards-. The door. "What happened?"

"Merchant wanted to show me what his dream transfer equipment could do. It was supposed to show me the storm we need to get through. Looks like he wasn't on the up-and-up."

"Did you see a lot of this building?"

"No." I look around-. He already got one of the guards. "Just a couple of rooms. Didn't see this place."

Okay, no ring, but I've been in worse spots, and… Right now I kinda wanna hit someone with my own fists. Only question is, are we trying to get away, or trying to take that dirty rat into custody? Hm. We'll have to play it by ear. The idea of leaving my ring behind sticks in my craw, but I can always-.

I hold out my right hand and think back to when I'd forgotten all my problems.

I can't call it to me like Paul can with his ring, but now I know where we're going.

I march over to the door, pull it open and cautiously stick my head out. Nothing much in either direction, and-.

Is that a scimitar?

I step out into the corridor, then crouch down and pick it up. I'm not an expert swordsman or anything, but it's amazing what you can pick up a little of.

"A sword?" Sandy's got his gas gun out and is covering the right hand corridor. "Isn't that a little..? Dangerous?"

"Not as dangerous as trying to fight a swordsman bare handed."

"I mean…"

I flash him a smile, which probably comes across as a little drained.

"I know. I don't plan on cutting anyone down, but sometimes the wages of sin are paid in pain." I start down the corridor in the direction I feel my ring in. "But I can hold them off until you can send them to sleep."

"I don't know for sure my gun works on these people."

I stop, frowning. Ah. It's a bit of a Paul solution, but it makes a worrying amount of sense.

"In that case, why don't you nip back and dose that guard?"

"Because-!" He winces at the sound of his own voice, and I listen carefully for the sound of anyone responding. Nothing just yet. "He's a tied up prisoner."

"Your gun's loaded with dream dust." I shrug nonchalantly. "Completely safe knock out gas. All that's going to happen is that he goes to sleep. Either that, or nothing at all."

"I guess…"

He doesn't like it, and I get that it doesn't feel right. But we need to know, and I can't think of any reason why it would hurt the guy. Sandy takes a few steps back, pushing the door open and raises his gun.

"Sorry about this."

Dream dust shoots out of the barrel and… Whaw, that takes me back, the clouds of the stuff settling in the dungeon room.

Sandy lowers the gun, nodding.

"It works."

"Good. They're not going to know what hit them."

 

[Mr Zoat]

November 8th, 2012
Just After Ten

It looks like there's only one exit, steep steps running up to a single door. The entrance to the corridor is wider than the doorway, so it could be held by a single man while the escapees surging for the exit would hem each other in. The door looks tough, and there's no guard on this side. The guard we have didn't have any keys on him, which only makes sense. Which means there's gotta be a guy on the other side. They wouldn't have a pass code; a place this size they're all going to know each other. Just a knock and a verbal confirmation through the slot set into the door.

The slot's shut right now, so no one's watching through it. But we'll make a noise heading up the steps. The sort of place where they don't make them watch through the slot the whole time, they're not going to assume that we're out right away, but if he hears steps and then nothing for more than a few seconds he's going to get curious.

Door's got the same padding around the edge that the cell door had, which means-. I was wrong a moment ago. The fellah on the other side probably won't hear until we get to the door and knock on it. And the signal probably isn't verbal, because he wouldn't be able to hear it clearly. So we could walk up there and knock…

"Sandman, what do you need for that teleport thing of yours to work?"

"I don't exactly know, Blue Lantern. I tried seeing you and I saw that room, but I don't know who these guys are or what the other side of that door looks like."

"Okay, but if someone opened that slot in the door, would that be enough?"

"I don't think so. All I'd see would be their eyes. I could gas them?"

I nod. "Then I could keep the hatch open while they fall over, you'd get a good look, teleport to the other side and open it up. Sounds like a plan. Let's go."

I don't exactly creep up the stairs, but I try and avoid making too much noise because there's no such thing as total sound insulation. No reaction from the other side… Good. Okay, we're here. There isn't really room to take either side, but Sandy stands with his back to the left wall and I take the right.

I raise my eyebrows, and he nods. I bang on the door twice with the hilt of the sword, then raise it slightly so that I can stick the hilt into the g-.

It swings away from us, a pair of eyes appearing-.

Sandy fires, a stream of dream dust blasting the unsuspecting thug in the face. He lets go of the door flap right away, but I get the sword handle into position and jam it open. I hear the 'thud' as the man staggers against the side wall, then Sandy pushes his face up against the hole in the door.

"Okay, I'm going to try-"

He closes his eyes, then sort of… Stutters, flickering in and out-.

He's gone, and peering through the slot myself I see him on the other side.

"-to." He looks around. "Got it."

"See the keys?"

"No, it's just a bar." He checks on the fellah on the floor, cuffs him, then comes up to the door. "Hold on."

There's a scraping sound, then he pulls the door open. Huh. I remember Paul saying that doors should always open towards an attacker, but I guess they just didn't have a way of securing it that way.

I pull the sword free from the slot and Sandy goes over to the guard and takes his. "Where now?"

I think Wesley would be pleased with how Sandy turned out. Ah, there it is. I raise my sword to a guard position.

"This way."

Okay, Al-Wujud didn't expect to meet me, so there probably aren't all that many people on duty right now. We've taken down two guards, there's probably another in reception and I didn't see a bodyguard with him when we were talking. I'm assuming that he has my ring on him, but if he's just got it locked in a box then I guess I'll just have to accept justice deferred.

The corridor goes a short way, a narrow barred window letting in just enough light to see by. Then it doubles back on itself, another door-. This one's just a regular door, blocking it off the rest of the shop. Opening it takes us out into a storage room whose walls are lines with shelves bearing more of those dream gourds. I get a momentary urge to smash them, but some of these might be legally owned. And it would make a noise and I don't wanna waste time.

Sandy stops and stares at them. If he's made some kinda deal with Morpheus then he might have some sort of authority over them, but we shouldn't stop here now. I gesture towards the door on the far side of the room, and after a moment's hesitation he follows me.

The next door takes us to what I'd guess is a break room. There's a table and a couple of benches, and none of it looks high quality. One door there opens onto a balcony, but the other leads towards-

"…exalted guest! You have my assurance that my latest dream is unlike anything even the Caliph has ever experienced!"

-the sound of voices.

"I hope that you are correct. His Excellency has been pensive of late."

Sword in the guard position, Sandy and I advance towards the sound of voices.

The first room is some sort of equipment room, maybe a workshop and storage area. None of this gear means anything to me. Then a short corridor-. I remember this room. This is where I first came in. No guard on the door. Sandy nods his head towards the door, and I shake my head.

"What could possibly be troubling him so?"

Another corridor, but it's far lighter at the far end. Some sort of courtyard, and I think I can hear a fountain.

"I don't know. There are some strange visitors in the city at the moment-."

I stride out, sword ready.

"Yeah." Al-Wujud and some other rich-looking guy are sitting on couches facing each other, two bodyguards a piece. "There are."

Al-Wujud blinks. "How did-?"

And there's my ring on his finger.

"You abducted me, stole my ring and stole my dreams. Kneel on the ground and put your hands behind your head."

Al-Wujud sneers. "Djinn of the ring!" He raises his right hand and points my ring at me. "Smite these-"

One guy -the other rich man's bodyguard I guess- grabs him and hauls him out of the way.

"-pagans!"

Nothing happens.

Why does he think-? Middle East, right.

I hold out my left hand. "I ain't dead yet, son."

My ring vanishes from his hand and appears on mine. Al-Wujud's bodyguards get between him and me, but they don't look all that happy about things.

"Sandman, gas these-."

"Wait!"

The other rich guy pushes his bodyguard aside and takes a step towards me. Okay, see what he wants.

"Yeah?"

"I am Vizier Jafar, chief advisor to his Excellency the Caliph. You are alleging that Uns Al-Wujud has committed a crime against you?"

"Yeah, I am."

"Then by the authority vested in me, I will place them under arrest. Are you willing to come to the palace to give testimony?"

 

[Mr Zoat]

8th November 2012
18:32 GMT +3

"Blue Lantern?"

I frown as a group of guards escort Alan and Sanderson into the drawing room The Demon and I were politely escorted to following our audience.

"Hey, Orange Lantern. Having fun?"

"I think I might have headed off a potential problem. And I've found out that what we're attempting is suicide. You?"

"I got abducted and locked up in a dungeon while they sucked my dreams out."

…

"I trust that you've resolved matters to your satisfaction?"

"They dragged the people away in chains. Their boss is explaining himself to the Caliph now." Alan looks around the room. "No sign of Doctor Mist?"

"If any of us could navigate a magic city, I'd assume it would be him."

Sanderson perks up a little. "I can probably do that now."

"Now?"

"I made a deal with Morpheus."

There's a sharp intake of breath through my lips, and the lips of… The courtier who brought them in, who after a moment nervously walks towards him.

"Sir, did you say that you made a 'deal' with the Lord of Dreams?"

"Yeah, I guess that's kind of a big deal for you guys, huh?"

"Could this humble one ask what the terms of your deal were?"

"Sure. The Dream will give me prophetic visions in exchange for living through them. Oh, and I can get visions of other places in the Dream and teleport to them."

I blink. "Does that include the Tower of Fate?"

"I dunno. I don't know what the Tower looks like." He shrugs awkwardly. "I never visited. Salem wasn't exactly a day trip."

"Okay, but-." I glance over to where the courier is dashing out of the room with one hand on his turban. I suppose that if the Caliph wasn't informed of that fact before now it does warrant a bit of haste. "Ah, but what exactly are the limitations? Can you take people with you? Because I wasn't exaggerating earlier when I said that everyone I asked said it was suicide."

"I don't know. I haven't tried much with it yet."

"Okay, well, try teleporting back to the graveyard. That way we'll know whether you can go between regions of the Dream or not."

He looks to Alan to check whether that's a good idea or not. Alan considers for a moment, then nods slowly. "Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. If you can just teleport us inside the Tower-. Paul, you've got recordings of the inside of the Tower, don't you?"

"No, but I can generate three dimensional images from my memory. I'm… Not sure what it looks like from outside, though."

"Why would we want to get outside?"

"I'm not sure if the interior exists from the Dream."

"Would Mist know?"

"I don't know. He'd probably have to look at it. Constantine?"

He leans back, folding his arms across his chest. "Oh, remembered I exist? How about getting this seal removed?"

"How about getting the Caliph to tell us how to activate it?"

"That's cruel and unusual punishment. What happened to being recognised as a person?"

"We're not in America and I'm not an American. And you're an escaped supervillain. You're still at large on the condition that you actually help us resolve this situation. In case I wasn't clear before: we're not friends or colleagues."

"Hey." I turn to Sanderson, who's still here for some reason. "The Constitution doesn't ban 'Cruel and Unusual Punishment' because the Founding Fathers just felt like it. It's banned because it's so immoral that no one should ever do it, whether they're American or not."

"I'll be sure to remind Zauriel of that next time I find myself in Hell."

"I don't know who that is, but someone else doing it doesn't make it right for you to do it."

The Demon raises his eyebrows, clearly pleased at the situation. Alan looks a little awkward, but I know he agrees with Sanderson.

"Do you feel that it's cruel and unusual to handcuff normal prisoners?"

"No, of course not."

"Demons are able to either tear through or magically subvert normal cuffs. The only things we have to restrain them are magic artefacts or spells. Not all of them work in the way we'd ideally like or as reliably as we'd like, but so far courts have found that having a restraint that actually works is more important that having a restraint that makes the prisoner comfortable. It's like how Belle Reve collars have the capacity to electrocute their prisoners. Unusual, yes, but not 'cruel' because it's actually required. The Demon Constantine has already escaped Belle Reve. As such, a spell that cripples him when activated is legally proportionate and necessary."

Sanderson shifts uncomfortably. "O-kay, I guess. But could you sound a little less enthusiastic about it?"

I nod. "If it makes you feel better. Are you going to try teleporting now?"

"Yes." He takes a moment to calm himself, then-.

That's… Instant Transmission. He even did the little shimmer thing that Goku does before he vanishes.

Damn it. I'm going to have to find a new joke.

There's another shimmer as he reappears.

"It worked. They're sitting around camp fires and telling stories."

"Oh yeah?" Alan raises his eyebrows. "What are they saying?"

"Rrrruh. Aaaagh. Things like that." He takes in our confusion. "I can tell that they make sense to each other. I've just got no idea what they're saying."

"Honoured guests!" The courtier from earlier runs back in, looking a little dishevelled. "Honoured guests." He comes to a halt. "His Excellency believes that he can resolve your issues here to your satisfaction, and can ease your path to the great storm."

"He believes that he can get us out of the way before anything else goes wrong."

"… It is impolite to argue with guests."

"Then we would be delighted to hear what he has to say."

 

[Mr Zoat]

8th November 2012
18:36 GMT +3

"Hand and a foot, right?"

"Heh." The Demon Constantine smiles at me, genuinely amused. I don't think that Alan gets the reference and Sanderson almost certainly doesn't.

The quiet whimper from Uns Al-Wujud strongly suggests that he does.

The Caliph takes my interjection in his stride. "The precise punishment for such an act is not precisely described in the Quran. In cases like this, where the guilt is so clear, I prefer to allow the involved parties to settle matters between themselves."

Alan frowns. "What do you mean by that?"

"Shari'ah law, Blue Lantern. Every case is a civil case brought by the injured party. Since you're the injured party, you can pretty much state what compensation you want."

He frowns deeper. "Anything?"

"It's a civil suit. There's a penalty under Quranic law, but that's only if it gets as far as a judge. And technically, it hasn't yet."

"And if it does, that's a hand and a foot."

"Mohammed -peace be upon him- probably didn't bother specifying a penalty for 'literally stealing a man's dreams' because it wouldn't have occurred to him that that was a thing that could happen, but a hand and a foot is the penalty for highway robbery."

"What normally happens?"

"If the offended party isn't feeling unusually vengeful, or if they think that the judge is dishonest and they won't get the default penalty, they will ask for an amount of money. Back on Earth, Muslim nations are generally moving away from that system because it effectively allows someone rich to buy their way out of trouble… Even more easily than what happens in the West."

"I'm not all that keen on maiming a guy."

"Now, you see, you shouldn't have said that. A man trying to get by in polite society who is obviously bearing an injury that would most likely have come from being found guilty of robbery is going to have a very difficult time keeping his business going. It's a sign to everyone looking at him that he's fundamentally untrustworthy."

"And he'll be down a hand and a foot."

"In the prophet's day, long term imprisonment wasn't really practical."

Alan looks over to where Uns Al-Wujud is looking fairly pathetic. "Did he do it to anyone else?"

The Caliph raises his right hand. "Be assured that if he did, they will be found and offered the same choice that you have. Be further assured that accepting the punishment described in the Quran is no sin."

"The Bible has it a little different."

The Caliph shrugs. "You may turn the other cheek if you want."

"Blue Lantern, can I make a suggestion?" Alan nods. "We've got a difficult journey ahead of us. How about 'he hands over anything that we'd find useful, and you get to punch him once'."

"Is-" Alan turns to the Caliph. "-that something I can ask for?"

"You can ask for the moon and stars. Whether or not Uns Al-Wujud will give them to you depends on how highly he values his hands and feet."

"I agree! I agree!"

Alan looks a little uncomfortable. "I'm not sure that this is really 'justice'."

"Oh?" The Caliph looks mildly curious. "What would you have me do instead?"

"I… Just think that the punishment should try to ensure that the criminal doesn't do it again."

"You think I should take his head?"

"No! I meant, having him.. work on his behavior, until he understands that what he's done is wrong."

"I imagine that cutting off his hand and foot would be a constant reminder about the limits of proper behaviour."

"That's not what I meant. Don't you have some sort of custodial system?"

"We have slave labourers. Do you want him enslaved?"

"No! God no."

"Blue Lantern, they've never encountered anything like our prison system. Your Excellency, I believe what my colleague is looking for would be something like… Working as a slave for a few months while an Imam preaches proper moral comportment to him, in the hope that some of it sticks when his labour term is over."

The Caliph makes a dismissive gesture with his right hand. "I don't have any use for a fat merchant as a slave. Do you want him to serve you in such a fashion?"

Alan shakes his head. "No, I suppose that I don't. Alright. One punch, and whatever we need to get past the storm." He turns to glower at Al-Wujud. "And it better be something good."

"Yes, oh beneficent one!"

"I mean… I don't know what we actually need, but whatever it is, that."

"Y-es. Oh Caliph, I don't suppose that any of your people have encountered the fifth member of our group, have they? Doctor Mist?"

"Yes?"

Dr. Balewa strolls into the audience chamber, a gourd under his right arm. The fat black man standing next to the Caliph stares at him for a moment and then quails.

Alan regards Dr. Balewa curiously. "Where have you been, Doctor?"

"When the Demon distorted the dream to separate us-"

"He what?"

"-I-. Yes, of course he did. He is a demon and a Constantine. I am surprised thet he lasted as long as he did."

The Demons shifts uncomfortably. "All part of the plan, right?"

"Yes. I thought thet I could promise you your freedom in exchange for your cooperation, because you would inevitably fail to live up to your end of the bargain. And you did. And now I do not hev to free you."

"But you still need me to get into the Tower."

"But you hev the Seal of Solomon branded into your head. All you can bargain for is forbearance."

"Ffffuck."

Dr. Balewa comes to the fore of our party, smiling at the Caliph. "I believe thet we can get through the storm. If Blue Lantern's agreement with Mister Al-Wujud is concluded, we will need the ropes with which he transfers dreams."

Mr. Al-Wujud nods enthusiastically. I guess rope's cheap. "Yes, oh mighty-."

"And all of his stored dreams."

"Ahhhhhhh…"

The Caliph raises his right eyebrow. "You believe that passage is possible?"

"Certainly. Would you like to watch?"

 

[Mr Zoat]

8th November 2012
18:58 GMT +3

The Demon Constantine struggles against the magic ropes binding him as we approach the storm on Roc-back.

"Bit excessive, innit?"

"No." / "I don't think so." / "No." / "No."

I hold out my fig jar to him. He looks at it, then up at my face, then tries moving his right arm, which is bound to his chest by magic ropes.

I grin, then pull the jar away and take a fig for-. Oh, they left the wasp in it!

Two claps from the royal palanquin, and we turn to give our attention to the Caliph.

"I am certain that this event will be memorable, whatever occurs. Still, I would be interested to hear how you plan to cross the storm before you are utterly unmade by its wrath."

"It is true. The spell thet I hev been using to get us this far will soon end. I am-."

"What spell?"

Because I don't remember seeing him cast anything, and even if he did some combination of my spell eater and tattoos should have dealt with it by now. Or at least provided some sort of warning.

"Orange Lantern, I am disappointed. Where are we?"

"The Dream, which… Has certain totemic forms which exist beyond the minds of individual dreamers, but I don't see how that's… The city."

He smiles. "Ah, you were paying attention. Good."

"The city has more tightly defined rules than the Dream in general. Which means that it can be manipulated into pushing us into advantageous positions."

"A Caliph, receiving honest but unwelcome advice from a mad prophet."

"I'm not a prophet. I never got higher in the Silver City than the Angel Kings. And they didn't give me any sort-."

"You've-!" The Caliph's eyes are wide, but he masters himself immediately. "Do you mean to say that you have visited the City of Heaven?"

"Sort of. Allah wasn't there in any special way. As I understand it, the gardens around the city are where the souls of the righteous monotheistic dead go to begin the process of shedding their egos so that they can join with God." I shrug. "It's not really my thing. They had to murder and abduct me to get me there, and I left as soon as I could."

The Caliph smiles. "That must be a story! In the unlikely event that your soul is not torn asunder, I bid you return to my city as my guest and share it."

I shrug. "Alright. Time allowing. Is it alright if I bring a guest?"

"By all means."

Excellent! It'll be nice to have a non-working date lined up next time Jade is available.

"Though I'm not sure how that helps us get through the storm."

Dr. Balewa reaches over and takes my fig jar, removing a single fig before passing it to Alan. "Each of us must eat one."

"A conceptual link by a single fruit?" I frown. "Seems a bit weak."

"Heroes sharing food before setting out on the final part of their quest." Alan takes a fig before passing the jar to Sanderson. "The difficulty is thet from the point of view of the city, our part in its story is complete. The magic may well be satisfied with us dying, so long as we do so out of sight."

"Hence you nudging me to bring up the Heaven thing. Alright, but that still doesn't get us through the storm."

Sanderson looks at the bowl, then takes a fig. "I think I've got an idea. Storms are made up of irrationality, aren't they? So there used to be more to every bit of the storm than is there now. And since we've got all these dream gourds with us, we might be able to attach these dreams to what's there."

"Good." Dr. Balewa nods. "Good. Of course, thet will not work, but it is a logical suggestion."

"Well, gosh darn it."

"The chance thet we would gather every dream whose irrationality became part of a primordial storm is astronomically low. No, we will be taking advantage of The Demon Constantine's command of chaos magic."

"I'm not that good-."

Alan ignores him, nodding slowly. "Is that why he's got the ropes?"

"Indeed. We will be pouring every one of these dreams into him."

"What?"

"All of them?"

Dr. Balewa nods. "Yes."

"What?"

"His aim will be to create a chaotic mess of mental imagery such as will allow him to connect to whatever of the storm's winds thet blow against us. If he is successful, and we are in constant motion, thet should be enough to create a short lived path through the storm."

The Demon's eyes are wide with astonishment. "Maybe, you crazy fucker, but I still won't know where I'm going! I'll be blind and deaf and high as a fucking kite on all that dream essence!"

"Thet is where Sandman comes in. He will need to use his Dream-granted foresight to bring us to the tower along the path thet The Demon will make."

"And that will work?"

"Thet can work. I will be using my owen abilities to help things along, but we are covering entirely new ground. I will hev to write a report for the Conservatory of Sorcery."

Alan looks unsettled. "If we survive."

"As you say."

Sanderson moves his mask enough to eat a fig. He then does so with a definite lack of enthusiasm. "What'll it be like?"

"The pathway will be both a pathway and a series of linked ideas and dreams. To move between them will require both constant movement and a constant change of thoughts as we comply with the tone of each Dream. There is nothing quite like it which can be experienced." He smiles. "I am looking forward to it."

"Because you're so old that new experiences are rare?"

"Ah, no. Since I hev joined the Justice League, I hev had a new experience at least once a week. Whatever reservations I hev about the organisation, thet, I do not regret. No, this is really more the first time I hev truly stretched myself with new magic in longer than I can recount."

He stands as the wall of the outskirts of the storm approaches.

"And now, the gourds."

 

[Mr Zoat]

Tower Offence

8th November 2012
19:03 GMT +3

That's a… That's a big ole storm.

It's a lot more intimidating from this side.

"Doctor Mist. Before we, um. Jump. I've got a couple of clones of myself in storage in Bir Tawil."

He glances at me. "Should I inform the authorities?"

"Last time I died, I was able to transfer myself into a clone. I don't think I lost more than a few seconds of memory."

"You were in space?" I nod. "Yes, I see. Interesting. But thet will not work here, even if the Ophidian is feeling generous."

"Ah. Well. Worth asking."

"No, it wasn't."

"I just like to plan-."

He hands me a length of rope, which I wrap around my left forearm with a sigh. Then he hands another part of the rope to Sanderson.

"Sandman, are you prepared?"

Sanderson shimmers again, staring at the picture I provided of the Tower of Fate. I hadn't really thought about it, but the angle of some of the 'external' windows meant that I did actually see some parts of the exterior. So he's got that, the probable view when looking in from outside, and all of my best wishes.

"I… I think so. I think I can-. See where I'm going to be. But I-. I can't see us there."

"Thet is because we are not yet there. Rope."

"Ah-? Oh." He ties it around his right arm. "I guess I have to go right after Mister Constantine?"

"Yes, and drive him on. We are depending on you."

Dr. Balewa pats him on the right shoulder.

Sanderson gulps. "I sort of wanted to ease myself back into being a super hero."

"Life is what happens when you are making other plans. Constantine."

"I'm surrounded by dreams and one of them's me."

I take a very deep breath-.

"Hey." Alan puts his left hand on my right shoulder. "You okay?"

"I don't like losing control like this." I shake my head. "Okay enough. Let's go."

"Remember: let your bodies and minds flow with events. Go."

Constantine jump-lunges into the swirling pink mists, Sanderson a heartbeat behind him. Alan goes next, and I'm next go go go!

There are mists, and I'm standing on a tiny platform on the edge of a canyon, barely big enough for my feet. On a platform in front of me way too far away I can see The Demon and Sanderson and this is a bad time for my vertigo to come back but Dr. Balewa said keep moving! They leap, and, ah, ah, there's a route and a path and we've all eaten figs so leap!

Mist swirls and I'm running along the dividing barrier between two lanes of roaring traffic either of which could obliterate me! Don't think about your footing don't think about your footing run run run!

"Hey!"

I glance up and see Alan running along a motorway gantry sign.

"Okay so f-."

He leaps and vanishes.

Ah.

Keep going keep go-.

"Jump!"

Jump! Where t-?

Manhole!

Fuckfalling!

The road and the cars are gone, replaced with.. land far below, wispy clouds and my falling colleagues and I think I'm falling behind a little?

I aim myself downwards and fuck that was a flying platform. That was a platform, was I supposed to get onto-?

That was another one, but I'm still moving and they're moving ahead of me so I assume that I'm going in the right direction? But the aim is movement, the idea of movement, catching the dream-wisps of movement that still exist in the storm and in The Demon's mania. Falling and distance travelled don't matter, this issue is that I'm-.

I'm seeing purple clouds intrude in the corners of my vision fuck where's the platform they're coming up too fast there leanleanlean!

Oof! Roll back on my feet platform falling to absorb impact run run leap!

Next platform there and I'm too far to the right ring?

Shit.

Ah… Angle body, air resistance. Helping but not enough. What are the others-? No time. It's a dream, try running on air. Like Wily Coyote. And it's working nearly well enough but I'm not quite I'm going to miss-.

Run along the rim, the edge, the side and the world shifts around me and down is sideways, the left side of my vision entirely enveloped by pink clouds. Am I getting further away, or is The Demon losing his grip?

Leap.

I grab a floating umbrella handle and then pull and release, flying through the air to grab onto the next one. In the corner of my eye I see the pink mist start eating the upper panels and pull and release!

I'm zooming down the side of a snow-covered mountain trail in a bath tub. Dr. Balewa's skiing on a dog a little way in front of me.

Ah, I think I-. I think I get it.

I shuffle to the back of the tub, seeing the pink mist just behind me, then dash forwards and leap, landing on the dog's tail.

"Going well so far?"

"Compared to what?"

We both crouch and then lunge, landing on a giant branch above a giant forest.

"Getting annihilated?"

"Yes, but we hev fallen behind Sandman and Constantine."

"Then we need to-" I jump grab a giant leaf and pull down to accelerate. "-go faster."

"It is not-" He copies my example. "-so simple, but I suppose thet it is a-"

Pink mist roils in from all direction, disintegrating the forest around us!

"-start."

 

[Mr Zoat]

8th November 2012
19:05 GMT +3?

Ah, ah, magic, how you think, think 'fast'!

I leap, not really aiming at anything in particular but holding in my mind the idea of being flung forward and the trees blur past me and the mists recede. The forest is still-

A new branch and keep running!

-dying, but the part that's dying is behind me and not getting closer.

Leap! There, a hole in a trunk, aim for-. It's getting bigger but okay, through the hole and-.

And an ocean on a buoy and leap, land on a small speedboat and leap, use the time in the air to glance back-

There's a pink fog bank rolling in, but it's continuing to fall back. It's directed movement and commitment to the idea of movement, not just moving. I know that I'm about twenty seconds from being erased from existence, but this is actually kind of fun!

Leap, and I fly through the air, legs flailing in a running motion as I go and here comes the cruise liner! Land on the deck, stagger a few steps, and-.

"Paul, what's going on?"

"Alan?"

Alan drops down from the upper deck and he's not running!

"Any idea-?"

I dart towards him, wrap my right arm around his back as pink mist flows down after him and drag him into motion!

"Keep running, keep running!"

He gets the idea, but I don't think he's committing.

"Where are we running to? I can't even see-."

"We're not running 'to', we're running. This is a dream and not an obstacle course, we're existing in a small bubble made by Sanderson and The Demon. Stop thinking and hurl yourself forwards!"

"Okay, I-"

The ship tips, the world turning around us as it goes over the rimfall, stars above and beneath us as everything starts falling!

Alan tries to grab onto a railing.

"NO! Run run run!"

I'm running down the near-vertical deck, and-. And he's still not there and there's a railing and I run along that and look up and he's not running! Rope rope life ring the mist is right behind him throw!

Missedfuck!

"Al-"

The mist surges down, and-. And it hits the railing first as my ring-on-a-rope falls back towards me, and Alan falls-

"-an, intent! Faster!"

He falls clumsily for a second, then manages to kick off the deck far enough that he's actually falling-. Falling past me because I stopped-! Move! Over the railing, throw the ring, leap to the ring and kick off towards… Whatever's that way! Rock, rock sticking out of the rim. Land running around it and kick off-.

And check what Alan's managing to-.

"This is crazy!"

He's got hold of a lifeboat and is paddling it downwards, good!

"Keep doing-"

I push off directly downwards, leaping onto a falling rock.

"-that!"

"I think I got it!"

Okay, Alan knows what to do, Sanderson and The Demon must or we wouldn't still be here, and Dr. Balewa can look after-

Another leap, and I'm standing on a tiny planet in orbit around a tiny sun.

-himself.

No sign of Alan, but that appears to be how things are working. Have to meet up later.

I leap over the sun, towards a slightly larger rocky world on the far side.

I just wish I knew if we were anywhere near the end. It's like-

Another jump and I'm standing on the solid core of a gas giant.

-a boss without a health bar. I've got no real idea whether I'm actually making progress or not.

A leap and a tiny exoplanet and then a flying leap into the void and the pink mist eats the system. Stars fly past, my feet darting out to touch them one after another to maintain my momentum.

"Anybody here?!"

The blackness becomes a wall, stars vanishing and only rock remaining! I twist and land on my feet, changing my orientation and running up/along the surface.

"Anybody at all?!"

The rock cracks and I grab the closest lump and push! They're moving in a chaotic pattern, and I'm forced to switch between shoving with arms and leg and-

Ugh!

-just take the hit to my chest before inelegantly scrambling around in order to keep going. The pink mist is still there, but it's well behind me.

Okay, I'm keeping my position, but am I still doing something wrong? I'm following the path Sanderson-.

What's he seeing?

The floating rocks around me dissolve into sand, forming a black desert under a black sky. The only illumination comes from a great glowing ring in the sky.

Towards Sanderson and The Demon-.

Something erupts from the sand like a flying fish leaping from the water!

"Orange Lantern!"

Sanderson's upper torso forms the leading part, while the trunk and tail are made of the black sand that surrounds us. The Demon Constantine is stuck in the torso, his head lolling as he maintains our dream bubble.

"Sandman! Which way?"

"I can't tell! Whenever I slow down to try and work it out, the mist catches up with us? I haven't even seen Blue Lantern and Mist!"

"I have! They were fine!"

"Oh, good! But I still don't know where we're going!"

"If I carry you, will you have enough time to have a vision?"

"Maybe. But we can't leave Constantine!"

"Of course not! Shift back to human form, then put him on my back. I'll bridal carry you."

"Can you do that and outrun the mist?"

"I'll have to! We need an exit!"

"Okay. Three. Two. One!"

 

[Mr Zoat]

8th November 2012
19:08 GMT +3?

His sand undulates and The Demon Constantine pops free-. Left a litt-. Got him, pull up, keep running. Okay. Holding him bridal style. His eyes-. He's not focusing.

"Ready?"

"No, hang on. Constantine?"

"Mrhmrhm."

"Can you give me a hand without stopping?"

"Maybe? What are you trying to do?"

Been a while since I practiced emergency carrying someone, but I can remember how it works.

"I need to move-"

In the corner of my eye I catch sight of pink mist because I'm not focusing on moving any more. A fireman's carry should work, but then I'll only have one arm to support Sanderson. I've got.. some spare rope, so-. If I tie Constantine's arm to his leg rather than holding it, or tie Sanderson to him…

"-him over my shoulders so his legs are on my right. Then I'll hook my right arm around his right leg and grab his right wrist."

"Is that stable?"

"Should-" Darn it, I can see the end of the desert coming up. "-be. Getting you on as well will be tricky, but that will work for him."

"Okay. How?"

"I'll hoik him up, you make sure he doesn't go flying. Ready?"

"Yeah. Go."

Now, in theory, a man of John's weight should be easy for me to handle. And certainly, I can lift far more weight than he carries. The Demon is lighter than I remember John being, but straighten arms out duck head raise arms roll-

Sanderson grabs him to balance the load.

-arms back to get him into position right arm around and he's on and stable-ish.

And my eyes flick down and I see pink.

"Run!"

"Running!"

We both accelerate, the extra weight-. I'm feeling it, but it's manageable, and his own weight is mostly keeping him in place. Can I use my ring to make extra ropes or straps manifest-?

"Aghjad!"

Sanderson staggers and I don't do that again, but I don't dare slowing.

"MOVE!"

He gasps, but manages to keep running, managing to pull up alongside me.

"You alright?"

"Yeah, I think? What happened?"

"I tried to use my ring. Sorry." We're seconds away from the edge. "Any idea where next?"

He shimmers for half a second, then nods.

"Aim left."

"Aiming-"

We run out of ground, and I-. Glowing rings floating in the air. I sight the one on the left and leap for it.

Now we need to get a bit of space before Sanderson can get on board and do his dream vision thing. If-.

"Can you-?"

Through the ring, Sanderson right behind me, and-. Brighter colours, physics-defying track, and I think I can hear-.

And then we're running down and gravity isn't correcting quite as much as it usually does and things are flying past faster than they should be but that's fine. That's fine, I just need to focus on moving.

"Can you see Alan or Mist?"

"Not someplace-" There's a weird arrow on the floor and suddenly we're hurtling through the air. "-like this!"

We land on skateboards which zoom off along a straight towards a curved wall. On the right there's a spiral leading upwards-.

"Dismount right!"

"Huh?"

I jump off the skateboard, which almost certainly wasn't helping with the 'keep moving forward' part of The Demon making a path… Though do we really need to do that when he's right here? No, we do, of course we do, the dream storm would just flow back in when the dreams we took from the gourds were all consumed. There's a time limit-

Sanderson makes his jump, clears that part of the course but trips on landing. He turns it into a roll, rising to his feet and pumping his legs all the harder to catch up.

-to how long we can do this.

"Constantine, how about a path out of here? We're trying to get to the Tower of Fate, remember?"

We ascend the spiral track, and I can hear Sanderson coming up behind me. Might actually be interesting-.

"Sanderson! Can you attach yourself to me in your sand form?"

"No-." I hear him panting as he continues gaining on me. "No. I just-. Come apart."

Because he's only gotten back to normal life recently, and probably isn't at full fitness yet. And I can't make a construct container without hurting him. Does he need to just take it? Don't know, not enough information!

Okay, we need Alan and Balewa, then we need a path out. But this technique should only make one path. If they've-. It they're still alive, they have to come-.

"Paul!"

I look up as Alan's boat hits the top of the spiral and starts sliding down towards me.

"Alan! We're going to put Sanderson in the boat, then pick it up and run with it!"

"What? Ah, okay?"

"Sanderson, get ready to jump in."

As Alan's boat rounds the corner in front of me I stop, turn and start running down to match velocities, grabbing its carry handle with my one free hand. A thump and a glance sideways shows me that Alan's mirroring-.

Sanderson comes up fast, jumping and turning to sand as he does so.

And then I see the pink mist consume the arena's stands.

 

[Mr Zoat]

8th November 2012
19:11 GMT +3?

"Is that-?"

I shoot Alan a glare as he slows down for a step. "Irrelevant!"

And credit to him, that half-step is the only one he misses. "Because we get out like this, or we don't get out."

My eyes flick down for an instant before returning to the curving path ahead. Sanderson is flickering, which hopefully means that we're leaving soon.

"If you've got an idea, pipe up. Just don't stop running."

"When we get back, I need to hit the gym."

"No, you don't. Your body is a manifestation of the blue light as much-." Ah, there's that first lick of lactic acid. "As much as it is flesh. Don't use your ring here."

"Okay." He's breathing a little heavier than I am, but I think he's okay at the moment. "What happens?"

"It messes Sanderson up." Who's still flickering. "Not sure how badly, but last resort."

"Got it."

Two loops left, then a straight. I don't think that the mist is getting closer, so this might just mean that we're getting low on gourd dream power.

"Constantine in the boat?"

"Awkward to put him there."

"Okay with the-. The weight."

"For now."

"Then we're-. Fighting.. Fate."

"Yeah, but we'll both be able to use our rings then."

"Unless he catches us outside."

"Short fight if he does."

"You're just filled with-. Positivity, aren't you?"

I frown. "Yes? It would be the easiest place for us to throw him into-."

"We're taking him alive, Paul."

"Sure, if reasonably practical. We're just… Forcing entry in case our worst fears are realised. He might just fold."

"Or have a good explanation."

I nod, taking a moment to regularise my breathing as we get back onto the straight. Okay, now we're doing the course backwards and it looks like… There was a wall-mounted sideways section. Timing is going to be tricky, and Sanderson is still shimmering, but I'm not-.

The Demon jerks on my shoulders. "I'm out."

"What?"

"The gourds. I'm-."

"How long?"

"Doesn't matter. I can't create more stability."

"Work the ropes, take our dreams. If we keep acting within the rules of this dream, it should-."

"Wrong ropes, and we're in a storm. It'll decay on us."

Ah. Yes, I can see the pink mists flowing in now, chunks of the track falling away and vanishing as individual trails rush ahead of the wave front.

"Ideas?"

"Bit late in the-."

"I got it!" Sanderson's head shoots up as his shimmering stops. "Keep running!"

"Suuuure?"

"Two jumps! You can do this!"

Alan nods. "We need to-."

"Synchronise. On my count, every other step. One, two, three, four." We both alter our pace slightly, trying to get into rhythm. "One, two, three, four, one, two three, four."

My legs are longer than his, but that's about as close as we're going to get. Jump's coming up.

"Jump on ten, not on eleven. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight,-"

The pink mist eats the wall holding up the ramp. Fuck it.

"-nine, jump!"

We jump, sailing unrealistically through the air with The Demon on my back and Sanderson in the boat. Sanderson yanks, tilting the boat just enough that we match angle with the wall jump as it starts to drift in the storm. Run, run, we've got about five seconds before we run into oblivion but there's nothing else to-.

Sanderson stands, pulls off his mask and hurls it ahead of us!

"Jump!"

Alan and I respond simultaneously, just as the ramp dissolves into the storm beneath us. I guess the bit of air we're in still exists-.

Something's glittering in the air in front of us, following the wake of Sanderson's mask. Sand? O-kay, I'm not going to question it, but there's still-.

"Mist!"

I turn left and see him standing on a hoarding, pink mist momentarily obscuring him from us. How immortal is he? I'm not hopeful, but it's possible that-.

Sanderson tears off his coat and throws it, the garment swinging through the air, hitting the mist, and-. It falls apart, but more glittering sand appears and the mist falls back. Dr. Balewa spots his opportunity, aims and then leaps, hurtling through the void and slamming into Alan's side!

"Oof."

"Your pardon." He untangles himself and takes position just ahead of Alan. "Demon, Orange Lantern's side. Prepare to run."

"Chance 'd be a fine-"

Far in the distance, pink mist pulls back and I can see the outline of a tower!

"-thing well fuck me."

The glimmering sand precipitates out of the 'air' before us, forming a path. The Demon moves quickly to get off me, getting his feet into position exactly as I feel a surface under my feet.

And we're running and we're running and we're out!

OOF!

And that's a wall.

 

[Mr Zoat]

Universe 191
22nd January 1945
08:43 GMT

Far below me, the broken remains of the Royal Navy limp back towards their home ports. I suspect that the older vessels will be broken up for parts. The rest might be as well, depending on how the final treaty negotiations go. I still don't really understand how this version of Britain ended up so far behind in radar technology given that we were leaders in the field in my timeline, but from what I've heard they genuinely had no idea how the vessels of the United States navy were finding their ships for months.

Though compared to all of the other things wrong with this world, who has better radar doesn't really rate.

The Confederates States of America existed until last year, and went from enslaving their black people to gassing them en masse. The Russian Empire's government is in a state of flux, France is semi-officially a puppet of the German Empire, which is frankly better than they deserve for what they did to their minorities.

If Britain had joined them in that behaviour I'd be heading to Australia to help them against the Japanese instead. As it is, I was forced to intervene to stop the German Empire dropping nuclear bombs on London and Brighton until even the characteristically bullish Winston Churchill was forced to acknowledge the international situation and sue for peace.

I am not happy with their choice of allies, but when you get right down to it… It's still my country.

My burden and I transition downwards, well inside the security cordon around Chequers and into the immediate presence of most of the British Cabinet.

"Gentlemen."

I give them a moment to stop soiling themselves, ignore the exclamations of surprise and profanity, and after a few seconds the demands of the bodyguards and soldiers that I lay on the ground.

I glare at Detective Inspector Thompson over the barrel of his revolver.

"I just demonstrated the ability to teleport. What exactly do you think your potato gun is going to do?"

"Good-! God!" One of the more intelligent apparatchiks is staring at the large metal ovoids I brought with me. "Those are-!" He turns to look at Prime Minister Horace Wilson. "Those are German superbombs!"

For some reason, rather than the snappy name 'nuclear bomb' or the technically accurate name 'fission bomb', here they're called 'superbombs'. And 'tanks' are called 'barrels', which sort of makes sense, and jet engines are called turbo engines, which doesn't.

"Those are the German superbombs that were heading for London and Brighton. Look grateful."

I retract the flight aura around them, causing them to fall to the ground and embed themselves in the lawn.

"I disarmed them, but they're otherwise quite functional."

A number of the men around me start to edge away, though I'm not sure exactly how they're planning on getting to the minimum safe distance. Soldiers start getting closer, though it looks like whoever's supposed to be organising them isn't physically present.

"Hm." Winston Churchill walks up to one and raps the knuckles of his right hand against the metal. "Thought they'd be bigger."

"If you'd been fighting the Kaiser's father, it probably would have been." My right hand shimmers as I take a small bottle of pills out of subspace. "A present for you." I toss it to him, and he catches it with the assurance of a man who spent a good deal of his youth playing cricket. "One a month should be enough to kill your black dog, though you shouldn't drive or operate heavy machinery for a few hours after taking one."

He looks into the bottle for a moment, then returns his attention to me, actually walking closer and sizing me up.

"Do you want something, young man?"

"Britain lost its empire -and Ireland- at the end of the first War. In a vainglorious attempt to get it back, you sided with people who thought that gassing sizeable parts of their own population was… Something other than totally monstrous. And now the country has no friends and an awful lot of dead young men. So what next?"

I transition next to him and put my right arm around his shoulders.

"Smile. I'm here to help."

I'm not sure if he's taking it in his stride or just too depressed to care. "Myes? How so?"

"I've managed to lay my hands on samples of technology about… Let's call it a hundred and fifty years, in advance of anything on Earth. Quite a lot of samples. And I'm willing to… Not so much 'share' as 'hand it over'. You don't have any oil any more? Don't worry, it all runs on hydrogen. Short of raw materials? Don't worry, I have spaceships. It is my desire and intent to use the opportunity caused by this destruction to build the country into something better than it's been before. Better than anything on the planet, in point of fact."

"Did you acquire this from some sort of space men?"

"Four foot tall lizard space men, to be precise." I release him and approach the Prime Minister, then look over to a comparatively open area to his right and raise my left hand. "If you gentlemen could make a space?"

The space is made with alacrity.

"This is one of their tanks. Note the general shape of the armour. You can keep it; I've got hundreds of thousands of the things. This is one of their fighters. Note the exterior radar and missiles. You can keep it; I've got hundreds of thousands of the things. I've put about half of the ships I acquired in orbit around Jupiter, the other half will get here in a few decades. I'll take a team of researchers there once you've assembled one."

Mr. Wilson tries to keep his face calm.

"What happened to their owners?"

"They tried to invade my planet and got their just deserts."

"Their government?"

"They tried to have their army invade my planet and got their just deserts. If their species reorganised their government immediately and started rebuilding their military infrastructure immediately after that then they might be able to get another fleet here in eighty years. They won't." He doesn't look reassured. "Have you ever met a lizard you liked?"

"Britain is in no condition to start a war."

"Good. Don't. I don't want Britain expanding at the expense of its neighbours; I want human civilisation in space to be British. You will have multiple new industries to send the demobbed men into, and the asteroid belts have material resources aplenty. There is no practical benefit from picking fights with Germany or America, though you'll find that kinetic harpoons fired from spacecraft are a reasonable strategic counter to enemy nuc-." I wince inwardly. "'Super bombs'."

"We have yet to conclude negotiations with the German Empire concerning reparations."

"Offer whatever cash and demilitarisation they want and refuse anything else. Make sure that you have the option of paying ahead; I'll cover it in gold the moment the ink is dry. Don't worry about territory: you don't need the Channel Islands when you're getting Mars."

He looks like I'm going too fast for him, which is entirely deliberate. But you don't get this far in politics by being a complete dullard.

"And, what do you want?"

"I want you all to buck your ideas up. I can accept that you didn't know exactly what your allies were doing but that sort of thing stops now. Strategic partnerships with evildoers are useful in the short term but always come back to bite you in the arse. If you couldn't explain it to St. Peter then don't do it."

He nods, slowly. "I think that we can reach an agreement. Would you like to come inside so that we can discuss your proposal in more detail?"

 

[Mr Zoat]

8th November 2012
19:21 GMT +3..?

I don't look around. "Doctor Balewa?"

"Yes?"

From the echo it doesn't sound like he did either.

"How fast does time pass in the Dream, relative to the material universe?"

"Usually, it passes at a slightly reduced rate. Though this particular situation has not occurred before, to my knowledge."

I cautiously shift my hands, carefully testing the strength of the Tower of Fate's exterior crenellations as I shuffle along.

"So we'll get back a little after we left?"

"Perhaps? Is it important?"

"Oh, just making conversation. I missed a global invasion last time something like this happened."

"What I wanna-" The Demon Constantine grunts as he reaches around a prominence. "-know, is how the hell Sandman did that. And why he didn't fuckin' do it earlier."

"I didn't want to give up my mask." Down the line, I hear Sanderson sigh. "Back in my day, superheroes all wore masks to protect their secret identities."

"Did it work when they were dead?"

"Yes." I look around to see Alan nodding. "Look at public records for any of the superheroes who were active back then. The only ones who got unmasked were the ones who chose to."

"And Albert Pratt, who was rumbled by the FBI."

"Okay, with a few exceptions, and maybe people didn't look as hard as they could. But the point still stands. Masks work."

"I'm a demon. It doesn't matter what you stick on your face, I can tell who you are by how your soul tastes. What was that glitter stuff?"

"Ah, well, I told you that Morpheus gave me the power to have visions. What I didn't tell you was that he gave me that power by blowing his dream sand over me. My mask is a gas mask; some of the sand got caught in the filter, and in the folds of my coat."

"In your coat." I can hear The Demon's consternation. "Wouldn't have been much."

"No, ah, the coat was more of a desperation move. To be honest, I'm a little surprised the mask worked as well."

"Or maybe it didn't."

"I sure hope it did. I don't want to spend my last few minutes climbing around a magic tower."

"No, I mean, Morpheus might have decided to give you a hand. Us a hand."

"Why would he do that? I didn't think helping people was something he did."

"It's not, but he faithfully upholds bargains and repays obligations. He might have decided that since he wasn't sure what if anything he owed you and Sandman One he should err on the side of generosity. You could ask him if you see him again."

"Or maybe I shouldn't. He might get uncomfortable if I draw attention to it. And I'll pay him back if he ever asks."

I pull myself up onto the top of a stone grotesque and finally! A balcony! And a way inside. The glass door is clearly locked and probably warded, but we've finally arrived!

"Nearly there, gentlemen. Constantine, you're up."

"Remind me what I'm getting out of this?"

But he follows me anyway, if only for the lack of anywhere else to go.

"A slightly nicer cell, and an official recommendation that they don't throw you into a dream storm as a method of execution because we've now got a way to do that to demons."

"Satanus getting the heave ho?"

"If I've got anything to say about it."

I work my way closer to the balcony, which appears to be a large ritual space rather than a small viewing platform. We've had to crawl around the outside of the tower about seven times to get here as a result of the non-Euclidian geometry and I'm glad that it's nearly over. Just have to have The Demon defuse any traps and then we're home.

Or rather, then we're invading the home of a hostile wizard. But it's a hostile wizard who would have to work at erasing us from existence, rather than sitting back and letting it happen by default.

Okay, handhold, climb up a bit…

I look down at The Demon. "Got enough room?"

He considers for a moment. "If I say 'no', will you jump off?"

"No."

"Then it's fine." He carefully manoeuvres beneath me, edging towards the balcony railings before stopping about a metre away. "Yeah, protective spell. It's supposed to report to the Tower's spirit if anything unusual happens. Order magic. And he's added a little something, but I can bypass that."

"Are you certain?"

"I wasn't absorbing parts of John just for fun. There are only so many things he can do with the place that don't use Order magic, because it's so bound up in the place, and I know how we all think."

There's a weak smell of burning pine needles, and The Demon nods in satisfaction.

"Done. After you, mate."

"Do I look stupid?"

"No, no. Lots of people make giant cakes." He reaches out and takes a firm grip on the railing before clambering over. "I'm in as much danger as you are, here. I'm not taking risks with my safety."

Fair enough, I suppose. I traverse along the wall until I'm above the balcony and then drop lightly down with my kinetic belt. I glance inside the Tower through the window but fortunately it's empty. Looks like it was part of the same ritual space as the balcony, the whole thing making a round platform bisected by the glass.

I don't think I've ever been there before.

Ring, check spell eater.

Temperature normal.

Thank you.

"It's clear. Everyone on board."

Sanderson comes over next, using his partially transformed sand form to hold onto the wall and move easily. I metaphorically hold my breath because he's magical enough that he might set off the alarm just by being here. I make eye contact with The Demon, but he just shakes his head.

Alan comes next, with Dr. Balewa bringing up the rear. Not waiting for them, the Demon ambles over to the window.

"Used. Recently."

I shrug. "It's his tower. Can you get us-" The door opens. "-in?"

"No." He walks through with his hands in his pockets. "We're completely stuck."

 

[Mr Zoat]

8th November 2012
11:01 GMT -5?
20:02 GMT?
31:65 GMT -17?

"There's something very wrong with these clocks."

Dr. Balewa looks at them for a moment and then nods, smiling. "Ah! I see."

"See what?" Alan looks at the clocks and then frowns. "Thirty one?"

"Not everywhere uses the same clock. There are parts of reality folded away from the world, and it is useful for Fate to be able to discover what the time is where they are."

"Alright, but the day is twenty four hours long. If they divided the day into a hundred parts then I'd get it, but that clock has forty five numbers. Was there a human civilisation that used to divide the day into forty five?"

"I do not think so. But the arc of the sun is a conceptual element thet is just as susceptible to manipulation within a part of the Earth-sphere thet has been twisted out of alignment as any other."

"I mean, twenty five hour, I'd understand-."

"Is this the sort of thing-" The Demon Constantine picks himself up from the carpet. "-superheroes talk about?"

Alan shrugs. "I tried getting them into football, but it turns out that it's not all that popular outside of the US. Did you find a trace yet?"

"I did, but I don't know if we can dodge the tower's spirit to get there."

"I haven't seen it for a while. Are you sure it's still active?"

"There's a limit to how much I can prod these spells without setting something off. As far as I can see, the detection network is still active. Exactly where it goes?" He shrugs. "Can't be sure."

"Doctor Mist?"

"I do not have Constantine's advantage when it comes to avoiding detection. And I am… Eh, somewhat behind in my studies of thaumaturgy."

Alan looks thoughtful. "So, can we just ask the spirit? I talked with it a few times in the forties, and it was always helpful."

"Maybe. And maybe it turns on the Tower's defences and phones the new boss." He shrugs. "Up to you, mate."

Sanderson shakes his head. "I don't think that's a good idea. I mean, we snuck into his house. I'd be mad if someone did that."

"Constantine, do you have a preferred first name?"

"Yeah. John."

"We can't have three John Constantines on a single mission. It's too confusing."

"Quinn's not a Constantine."

"Really? Because this whole mission is premised on the assumption that he is, and if it turns out that John the First really did just pick some Welsh guy I'm going to feel very stupid."

"I mean, he's not-. He doesn't have the right attitude. He hasn't suffered like Constantines usually do. Not just me, or whatever John 'the First' gave me. Look at our family tree and you'll see a bunch of men who scraped through by the skin of their teeth. And getting their teeth ripped out in the process. Quinn never had anything like that happen to him. He's not used to losing."

"That just suggests that the Constantine line has produced someone capable of exercising good judgement and not getting in over their head." I look away for a moment, taking in the clock room's many clocks and trying not to look at the dials. "Can you find John the First?"

"No. I can find where he's been, but Quinn's not going to put him somewhere without wards."

"Would John have given him the memories of how to remove magical traces?"

"We're out of luck if he did."

"How about Quinn's traces?"

The Demon frowns. "No, I can trace those easy enough. Why?"

"If we know where he goes a lot, we can avoid those areas so we don't bump into him. But he'd have to visit John the First sometimes." The Demon doesn't look sure. "Wouldn't he?"

"Depends where he put him. Last time I saw him, John was a leaking hole in the arcane universe filled with conflicting energies. Place as orderly as this, you should be able to feel him."

Sanderson looks concerned. "He's not dead, is he?"

"Doubt it. Think we'd all know about it if someone pulled that off. And you'd have found me off me face in a bar hosting the biggest booze-up ever. So? Marching orders, el comandante?"

I nod. "Look for paths he uses. We'll check each of them."

"Could be here a while. But since none of us age, who cares?"

"My girlfriend-." / "What do you mean?"

I frown at the clearly unnerved Sanderson, while The Demon openly scoffs.

"You're eighty years old and made of dream sand. What, did you still think you were human?"

"Seventy… Five. And yeah, I kinda did."

The Demon grins, shoving his hands in his pockets. "Heh. Yeah." He turns away and walks through a doorway. "I've got a trace. Don't know exactly where it goes, but it's probably not going to be a fuckin' race track."

Alan lays his right hand on Sanderson's shoulder, giving The Demon's back a mild glare. Personally, though… Isn't it a straightforward upgrade? His human body is human enough for ninety nine percent of the time, he gets a useful sand form and medium grade immortality. So The Demon's saying he's… What, that his human form is a dream so strong that it affects reality? Might mean that he can't have children naturally, but there aren't a lot of seventy five year olds who can do that.

I'll talk to him when we get out. Alan will commiserate with him, but I can emphasise the positives.

But since we're going deeper into the Tower of Fate, it's time for heavy armour. I rise a little way off the ground, the comforting bulk of my power armour appearing around me. And just to be clear what our purpose is, I write 'detain' in white paint on the larger armour plates.

"Everyone?"

Alan nods and construct armour appears around him. Dr. Mist shimmers faintly as he invokes his own protections, and after a moment's delay Sanderson's outline blurs as he converts his body to human-shaped sand.

Then we slowly walk after The Demon Constantine.

 

[Mr Zoat]

8th November 2012
11:33 GMT -5

Alan regards the vine-and-crystal covered doorway sceptically.

"Are you sure he came through here recently?"

The Demon is holding his hands just off the growths, moving them along the vines with his eyes slightly unfocused.

"Yeah. Yeah, but this is… New. It's not fitting in to the Tower's background Order magic."

"Thet is…" Dr. Balewa frowns. "Curious. Even if John Quinn was using magic thet was not derived from elemental Order, it would still make sense to integrate it into the Tower's magic."

"If it were me, I'd want to keep a few things available that the Lords of Order didn't know about. And I'd want to keep it close at hand."

Alan glances at me, then awkwardly looks away-.

"Just say it."

"I'm not saying that wouldn't be a sensible precaution, under some circumstances. But from what I remember about Kent Nelson and Graham Marrack, most magicians prefer to deal with magical creatures openly and honestly-"

The Demon Constantine starts giggling.

"-and having a weapon on hand wouldn't fit in with that."

"And if he wanted to keep it a secret, he would not put a direct passage to it from the Tower that could serve as their place of power."

Sanderson walks closer to the door, looking over The Demon's shoulder. "Does it matter? We need to take a look either way."

"Ah." The Demon smiles as the vines pull away slightly, crystals being carried back into their recesses. "There we go. I take it I'm going in first?"

"No." Dr. Balewa steps forward and gently nudges him out of the way. "If it is not tied in to the Tower's magic systems, I may as well go first."

"Knock yourself out, mate."

Dr. Balewa pulls on the door handle, and the vines extend around the walls and across the ceiling, depositing crystals as they go. Dr. Balewa gives the door a small tug, but it remains in place.

"Ah. The door changes the nature of the room. This is not a method I hev seen before, but the principle-"

The room darkens as the vines completely envelop it, the crystals appearing to glow brighter.

"-is not so different."

As I watch, the vines seem to fade… Those aren't crystals any more. That's the night sky. Ring?

Locations unknown. Constellations unknown. Unable to connect to Orange Central Power Battery.

Okay. Mildly troubling, but hardly unexpected. I look down… More stars? No, mapping shows solid ground. More crystals and vines. Only rather than trailing over brick, they're trailing over trellises in near rows. It.. looks like they're being farmed.

Alan generates a torch construct and plays it over the ground in front of us. We're on a short hillock a little way above a field. There's a rough path down worn into the earth, and the vines are indeed trained over wooden frames. There are lines of bare earth between the rows where the grass has been damaged by someone walking those paths frequently enough to leave a mark, though I can't see anyone at the moment.

"We should take a closer look. This is not something thet I was expecting."

He leads the way down the hill, and since this is starting to look like something that might result in a fight I take to the air. Alan follows a moment later, torch Alan sweeping the fields for anything… Else.

"Doctor Mist?"

He's accelerated to a jog, his speed causing parts of the path to give way and send him sliding downwards for a short distance. He keeps his footing though, and hurries over to the closest vine to grab hold of one of the larger crystals.

"What..? Is this..?"

"Looks like crystallised order to me, mate."

The Demon isn't running, and also doesn't look particularly interested. Which is a little suspicious. Something odd and magical and a Constantine isn't all over it?

I frown. "I thought you said this was cut off from the Tower."

The Demon nods. "It is. Doesn't need to run through the Tower to use Order magic." He looks around, not all that interested. "Maybe he's planning on taking students?"

"I don't follow."

"An infinitely fractal crystal makes a pretty good order focus. If he wants a lot of students, he could hand them out to everyone."

"What about machinery?"

"I don't see any."

I don't think he's right. A small bush would be fine for a class of students. As far as I know there isn't an extant Order cult that he could tap for extra teaching staff, so it would just be him for teaching staff. Given the general lack of education relating to magic in the surface world, his students would be starting from a state of near total ignorance. Which would make sense; if this was a master class they wouldn't need training wheels focuses.

The Demon might well not know about the League's worldwide magic detection network, but John Quinn almost certainly does. That's the thing that comes immediately to mind when I consider this sort of industrial production.

"Who does the farm work?"

We turn to look at Sanderson, who looks a little surprised at the attention.

"I mean, somebody's working here. You can see the trails."

Alan nods. "Lots of people. One guy walking around wouldn't wear a hole in the grass."

"Constantine, has John Quinn spent much time here?"

"Not right here. He's been through a few times." He turns, peering into the dark. "He spent some more time over there."

Ring?

"Farm buildings. Possibly storage sheds or dormitories. Warded against direct scans."

Alan nods. "Quinn isn't there himself, is he?"

The Demon rolls his eyes. "I'd have mentioned it. If we go somewhere and the first thing I say isn't 'oh shit, he's here', you can assume that he isn't."

"Doctor Mist, do you want to keep studying the crystals?"

He pulls what looks like a ripe one off a vine and pockets it before shaking his head. "No, thet can wait. Talking to the farm workers is more likely to be illuminating."

"Then that's our next step."

 

[Mr Zoat]

Universe 191
22nd January 1949
11:02 GMT

"Madam Secretary of State."

I'm already standing, as modern manners dictate, but I make sure to offer her my hand to shake. The 'other' party in the two party system the United States being literally called the 'Socialist Party of the United States' is… Well, it was a surprise. With no other major industrial nation embracing socialism in quite the same way it's the US that more or less defines what international socialism looks like. In an intellectual way it's quite interesting; Russia was brutal under the Tsars and remained brutal under Communism. American socialism is… Different, informed by a country that isn't anything like as brutalised.

When the party started, anyway.

"Mister Talwyn." She smiles -unconvincingly- and shakes my hand. The years since she was First Lady have not been kind: between her work in support of interwar disarmament which resulted in the Confederacy nearly winning the Second Great War and her support of the United States' current wave of brutal repression, she looks like someone with a great many regrets wearing her down. "Thank you for seeing me."

"I was curious." I shrug. "I'm really not sure why a person in your position would want to talk to me. Black Arrow has no economic interests in the United States, or… What are we calling it?"

Her face shifts uncomfortably. "Occupied Canada."

"And the southern part? I mean, the United States can hardly be occupying the United States."

She hesitates, then shrugs. "In private, I mostly call it the Occupied Confederacy."

I nod, and make a lip-zipping gesture. That gets a small smile.

"Is everything on course for the launch?"

I smile broadly. "Yes. We'll do final checks immediately before launch, of course, but at this point it's fuelled and ready to go."

"It-." She shakes her head. "It doesn't seem real. I was a girl when the Wright Brothers built the first aeroplane, and now your machine will take men to the Moon."

"The basic mechanics aren't that complicated. Mathematicians a hundred years ago could have calculated the flight path. Enough thrust and a sealed environment, and off you go."

"I think you're underselling the magnitude of your achievement."

"Oh, not my achievement." I shake my head. "I'm not much of an engineer. But we had a lot of ex-military engineers at the end of the war without much to do, And I do take credit for pointing them at the sky."

And I know for a fact that we're well ahead of every other country on the planet. Germany has a few simple rockets, but they're at least a decade behind what we're publically claiming that we can do. America is more or less not bothering, and having seen their budget it's not hard to guess why.

"How have you been able to make such rapid progress?"

"It's amazing what you can achieve when you're not trying to occupy a quarter of the planet. Or wasting energy trying to take it back."

Bullshit, of course. It's from our people reverse engineering reptiloid technology, something that is much easier now that we've got a fully translated version of their database to work off. Though I admit getting highest priority to the finest minds in the country is making that aspect easier.

Mrs Blackford nods. "I am personally pleased that this is a scientific project. Some of my Democratic colleagues have suggested that this might be a cover for a military missile program, but I have been tremendously reassured by what your press department has shown me."

I shake my head. "Obviously we could mount a fission warhead on a modified Skylark rocket, but… Look, we've got fission bombs and Germany has fission bombs. And between us, we've both got enough high altitude heavy bombers to overfly one another's territory and destroy all of one another's cities. Reliably. Mutually Assured Destruction, or, appropriately, 'MAD' for short. Using rockets instead of bombers would mean that we'd hit them fast enough to see Germany go up before we did." I shake my head. "I don't really think it's worth the investment. No, space for us, civilian rocketry and scientific missions."

"I'm very relieved to hear it. I take it that you mean to launch more missions after this?"

"Well of course. Honestly, the trip to the Moon is just to demonstrate to British tax payers what they've been paying for. Most of the useful work we'll be doing in the short term won't involve going that far."

"Such as?"

"I'm most excited about the idea of establishing a network of communication satellites. No more worrying about undersea cables for sending messages, or needing relay towers for radio transmissions."

She frowns. "Can your rocket stay up that long?"

"No, no." I shake my head. "To.. put it simply, the satellites stay up in the same way the moon does; they would be moving fast enough that they… Fall past the world. It's much easier out of the atmosphere because the air resistance is much less."

Naturally, we already have such systems on our bases on Mars and the far side of the Moon, as well as a series of relays across the system to maintain contact with Mars when they're on the opposite side of the Sun. But those are modified reptiloid satellites, whereas the ones we'll be using around Earth are human built.

"And will you be sharing that technology with other nations?"

"No, not really."

She watches my face, waiting for me to continue.

I don't, maintaining a polite smile.

"That is.. rather disappointing. I had thought that the invitation your government extended to the United States and the German Empire was an indication that you were prepared to engage with the international order."

Which would require that we formally agree to abandon fission weapons. Not likely, Madam Secretary. Not until our weapon satellites are in position.

"Madam Secretary of State, Britain is isolationist. Naturally, we're not really that keen to engage economically with anyone, least of all the nations who beat us in two Great Wars. I invited you here because we want someone who can report back about the civilian applications of what we're doing. And when we publish our findings, your universities are welcome to read them. But we're not going to do any sort of.. partnership, and we're certainly not going to share the products of our labours."

"Isolationist."

"As much as an island can be. Depending on resources sourced from outside of our territory proved to be a tremendous vulnerability, so we're arranging things so that we won't need them any longer. Self-sufficiency, that's the name of the game."

The good humour she showed at the start of our exchange has more or less evaporated. She looks even more tired like this. "Then can I inform my Democratic colleagues that Britain will no longer be supporting Canadian radicals?"

"We haven't since the end of the War. I realise that it's convenient to have a foreign power to blame, but the fact is that after thirty years of occupation and oppression they just.. really hate America. Yes, if you want my assurance, we're not sending them weapons or overtly encouraging them, but we don't really need to. If you want my advice?"

She cautiously nods.

"Just leave them to it. They don't have the industry to invade you and they don't have international allies to help them. Stop occupying them and at least you'll stop haemorrhaging manpower in the north of your country."

"Will you make a similar commitment regarding the Confederacy?"

I'm sure that she sees my instinctive revulsion at the place in my face, but the only way around that would be to use the ring and I'd rather avoid that.

"Yes. What the Confederacy did was an affront to all God-fearing people, and also to all rationality. But, again, it isn't us. They just hate you that much, and unlike Canada you can't afford not to occupy them. I will admit that some of my more bullish colleagues are deriving more than a little pleasure at what it's costing you to hold them down."

"And do you feel the same way?"

"It's convenient that you're distracted, but that's about it."

I glance down, checking my watch.

"Ah, we should probably leave now to get the best view of the launch. Today will be a splendid day for it."

 

[Mr Zoat]

8th November 2012
11:37 GMT -5

Dr. Balewa hesitates as we approach the circle of flattened ground around the closest barn. "There is life within."

I glance at The Demon, who shrugs. I could probably read the residual desires around here, but I'm a little worried that having the Ophidian extrude part of herself here would set off detection systems even with my tattoos. He -on the other hand- should be able to feel the patterns of their lives without risk.

He sees me looking at him. "What, you want me to knock on the door?"

"Do you think that you can convincingly act like John Quinn to people who actually know him?"

He exhales slowly, and then he straightens up out of his customary slouch. His stubble vanishes, his eyes lose a little of their unnatural glow, his hair shortens-.

Seeing him change like this, it's actually a lot more apparent exactly how much he looks like John Quinn. Yes, I thought Quinn looked like an idealised version of John Constantine the first time I saw him but now I'm seeing that it's literally true.

"How do I look?"

Sanderson smiles, nodding. "You look much better like that. I know it might seen vain, but I think putting a little effort into your appearance helps you get into a positive frame of mind. If you keep looking like a disreputable slob, you're going to start thinking of yourself like that."

The Demon exhales, then shifts his eyes in my direction.

"Passable. The voice is good, too. Can you fake the Order aura?"

"I can make them think I am."

Alan frowns, concerned. "Are you sure about that? If Quinn's made some sort of deal with-."

"Ancient magical powers don't do farm work." Straight-backed, he walks towards the man-sized door in the dormitory barn wall. "He's probably bound a bunch of dryads with chains of order."

I hope that's not the case.

The Demon glances back at me as he reaches the door, flashing me a grin that's perfectly in-character for him and not Quinn. What, is he trying to push me into killing John Quinn? Even if he is using dryads as slave labour, that wouldn't push me over the edge. Especially not with Alan here. I'd be angry, yes, but I'm not defined by my anger.

Or is he doing the Constantine thing of putting everyone he can a little off-balance in case he decides to take advantage of their discomportment later? Yes, that sounds more likely.

The Demon raises his right fist and knocks on the door twice. Hopefully, he's using magic to know that's how John Quinn would announce himself. As for the rest of us? Dr. Balewa and Alan are Justice League members. There's no obvious reason why a third party would be surprised at them being inside the Tower of Fate. If that's even where we are. Someone who was told 'allow no one in here' would… Probably accept The Demon's word for it that he was changing his mind. Unless they were bound not to. But we're never going to find out anything-

The doors slowly opens.

-if we're afraid to look.

"Master?"

The creature on the other side… Looks like a gnome. A little bigger and the muscles on the torso are a little more pronounced, but it's very clearly from a related species. Worse quality clothes, though, and there are significant amounts of… Hair? Fur? Growing from his forearms and chin. Records of fae creatures aren't detailed, for obvious reasons, but I'm guessing… Brownie?

I can't see any bindings, but brownies are supposed to like helping around the house anyway. Perhaps he just made a direct agreement with this group. Stories in folklore aren't a reliable guide anyway, and generally describe their interactions with people who aren't powerful wizards.

"Have you had any problems?"

"No, Master. All of the plants are growing nicely. The crystal harvest is on course."

The maybe-brownie doesn't even look at the rest of us. His attention is wholly on The Demon. His expression… Not fearful or hopeful, just sort of blank. The gnomes are much more inclined to demonstrate emotion through facial expression.

"Is the food alright?"

"It is filling, but bland and tasteless."

Still no real expression. The situation suggests that he would be afraid, but his body language and facial expression suggests that he doesn't feel strongly about the situation. This isn't how people do things. I edge closer to Dr. Balewa.

"Doctor, is the local under any external influence?"

"Perhaps I should get you something better, seeing as how you're doing such a good job."

"There is no ongoing spell at work on him. But, his behaviour is not natural."

"As Master wills it."

"Thet is now how brownies usually respond. Mister Quinn!" Dr. Balewa walks towards the doorway. The Demon glances at him, apparently indifferent. The brownie doesn't respond. "Might I check on the health of your servants?"

The Demon nods. "I think that would be prudent. You, step outside."

The brownie walks out without any particular excitement, and Dr. Balewa raises his hands. I'm going to assume that he's seen brownies before, so he knows what he's-.

There's a sharp intake of breath from Dr. Balewa, white mist rising from his hands.

The brownie appears to come slightly out of whatever fugue it was in, focusing on Dr. Balewa. "Oh dear, sir. You shouldn't have done that."

"You poor man."

"Oh no, sir. His actions were entirely justified."

I.. felt that.

Sanderson looks confused as Alan and I take a step back. "What? What did the little guy say?"

Behind the little guy, I see the other brownies gradually appear, forming a loose blank-faced mob.

The Demon looks them over without overtly breaking character.

"Stop. All of you, return to your bunks."

"I'm sorry, Master." His eyes are glowing and that's an Anti-Life infection. "But Anti-Life justifies our actions."

Vines leap from their trellises, flying towards us in defiance of botany! A raised hand from Dr. Balewa causes those coming at him to collapse, but Sanderson is caught flat-footed and is rapidly enveloped!

"Turn to s-"

I form point defence laser constructs while Alan creates a garden mower, the vines coming at us getting burned or shredded.

"-and!"

The vines lift him away, crystals glowing with golden light!

"I-I-!"

Alan takes off after him, construct saw blades trying to slice through vines that are now resisting.

"Sandman! Change!"

The crystals blindingly and then darken, light vanishing from the vine as-

"Get these fuckers off me!"

 

[Mr Zoat]

8th November 2012
11:40 GMT -5

-The Demon flees into the field, trying to keep ahead of the brownies!

"Sandy-man!"

"Mist, can-"

I attach a flight aura to The Demon and lift him into the air, clawed hands grasping at his shoes as they're yanked out of range.

"-you do something-"

I generate a construct barrier, trying to hem them in close to the barracks.

"-about the infection?"

"I will try, but something-"

The barrier construct comes apart under the claws of the Justified brownies so I change tack, using a small swarm of cattle prod constructs to knock them back one at a time and retreating the prods if a brownie takes a swing at one.

"-is different."

Sanderson reforms under the blackened vines, clutching at his head- "Gah!" -as the vines above him crumble to ash.

Denied their primary target, the brownie mob turn and lunge at Dr. Mist. He makes a twisting motion with his left hand just before the first leaping brownie hits him. It vanishes, as do the second and third. What did he-? There, a little way away. They reappear, reorient themselves and resume the attack.

Alan scoops up Sanderson and flies up into the air. "Does this mean Quinn's been Anti-Lifed?"

"That would be my guess."

Okay, brownies can't fly, so as long as we avoid the vine attacks-

I jink left to avoid their grasping.

-we should be alright. "Do we need to see anything else, or are we just getting away?"

In the blue light of his ring I see Alan frown. "We need to free them!"

Dr. Mist sidesteps a mindless lunge, then turns and grabs hold of his would-be attacker. "This is not like the infection we encountered in Bialya."

The brownie he's holding shudders and then goes still.

"If it was, I would have detected it on John Quinn. This is… N-"

Vines leap towards him from all directions, prompting no greater reaction than a negligent wave of his right hand. Fire swells in all directions, burning vines and incinerating crystals-

"-ew."

-but doing nothing to stop the brownie who appeared above him! It lands on his left shoulder, right claws cutting into his face and leaving bleeding lines across his cheek and forehead even as he drops his captive and tries to grab his assailant. The vines surge again-.

I grab onto him with a construct, attacking brownie and all. I know he's supposed to be immortal, but I'm not sure that makes him immune to being Anti-Lifed and frankly I don't want to risk it. I don't know how the brownie got above him. Was it riding the vine and then jumped off when it caught fire?

Dr. Mist's passenger slumps and the doctor finally manages to get a good grasp on it, a faint white glow shimmering from his wounds-.

Which stay exactly where they are.

"Doctor, are you alright?"

"They are able to use the Anti-Life as a spiritual weapon. We need to scour the area for more information!"

I nod, rising higher into the air and extending filaments towards his wounds.

"May I?"

"It is not critical, but, yes. I would appreciate it."

Filaments try to bind the flesh? Nothing. Purple healing ray from subspace? Nothing.

"Um."

"Yet I can feel thet it is not interfering with my natural clotting."

"Did you hear some sort of 'something equals something else' when they attacked?"

"I did not."

"Alan?"

He shakes his head. "No, I didn't. Can you do something for Sandman?"

"I-I-I'm okay." He manages to pull himself upright in the bubble. "It was just a shock, that's all."

Dr. Mist looks at him for a moment, then grimaces. "It would appear not. I am sorry."

"Okay, how-?"

A brownie appears on my armour's upper surface, fingers passing through my construct armour and biting into the joins in my armour! I chuck The Demon and Dr. Mist at Alan as I form a construct pole to knock the brownie off! The armour plate is.. loose, a dozen points of attachment no longer quite as connected as they-.

Alan chucks our passengers back as three brownies teleport onto him! I catch them as he spins in the air with a construct bat swinging! He hits one in the stomach and dodges the second but the third manages to grab his right leg and-

SNAP!

"God-!"

A construct lasso yanks it off, sending it tumbling back to the ground. It vanishes before it gets there.

They can teleport.

I turn the area around me into a sphere of construct spikes, and after a momentary delay while he braces his leg Alan does the same.

"Doctor, can you..? Stop them doing that?"

Dr. Mist still has hold of his prisoner, a faint white glow visible around his hands and in his eyes.

"I still need to understand more."

I nod, looking down. We're a little way above the fields now, and I can see-.

"There. That area looks like they've already cut it down."

The Demon grimaces. "They're going to tell Quinn, aren't they?"

"They were still calling you 'Master' when they attacked. Maybe he doesn't have the control he thinks he does. If they think you're him then there's no reason to tell 'you'."

He raises his eyebrows. "But they might tell whoever's really in charge. Efficient, if a bit likely to get us killed."

"Yes, seeing the completed form of the vines may be useful. But we should be swift. I do not think that they will call in Quinn, but thet will not stop them calling in someone else."

 

[Mr Zoat]

8th November 2012
11:43 GMT -5

This area still has trellises, but the vines attached to them are cut short and the bark looks burned. Carbonised. Dr. Mist is looking at them closely while The Demon makes what looks like a half-hearted effort to copy him. I'm keeping watch while Alan tries glowing at Sanderson.

"I'm okay, Blue Lantern. It just, ah-. That was a lot."

"What did it say?"

He jerks his head around to look at me. "Say?"

"The Anti-Life fragments we've encountered so far have been in the format 'thing equals other thing'. It would give us some idea of what sort of thoughts it's imposing on you, and how we could counter it."

"I didn't-. I didn't hear words, I just kind of got an impression."

"Okay, what sort of impression?"

Sanderson look uncomfortable, turning to Alan for reassurance.

"Sandman, we've all seen a lot of unpleasant things. Things that would make it hard for a normal man to sleep at night. Some of us, like… Well, like Orange Lantern, deal with it by not worrying all that much about being 'normal'-"

I nod. "It's true."

"-and some of us prefer talking things through with our friends. Helps get a handle on things, turns them into things you can cope with."

I nod. "Back before-" I point at my eyes with my right forefinger. "-I got disarmed and chained to a rock by killer robots who were going to kill me and my friends. Talking things over with Guy and Wonder Woman really helped me get my head straight."

"Head..? Ah, yeah."

Alan nods. "And talking with the Flash helped me after.. what happened with Rose."

"Right, your girlfriend. I.. didn't want to ask, but I guess she'd be… Dead, by now."

"Ah. Yes. She died a few years ago."

"And as always, giving information to the authorities makes it easier for them to apprehend the perpetrators."

"Okay." He nods. "Okay. It… I didn't hear it say 'equals' or anything, but just for a moment there, it was like my life was a big mess-." He bows his head, shaking it. "No, that's not it. It was like it was showing me examples from my life and saying 'look, you're making a mess of things'. And it was all… True? I mean, it wasn't trying to deceive me, just to show me why it saw what I was doing the way it did."

He lifts his head up slightly.

"That's what's shaking me up so much. I've had people throw insults at me plenty of times. I still remember Aunt Dian's face when I asked why those hoods thought my name was 'Cat Might' when I wasn't Wildcat's sidekick."

The Demon doubles over. "Fucking hell, mate."

"Sandman, you can string together a clip show of someone's worst moments and make someone believe just about anything about them. That doesn't mean that it's the definitive view."

Alan nods. "And sometimes hearing something about yourself you don't wanna hear is the kick in the pants you need to get up and fix it. You think your life's kind of in a muddle right now? Well, it probably is. You were locked up in a basement and then kept prisoner by dream demons for sixty years. You're in the middle of fixing it right now; in five years you'll be back on track."

Sanderson takes a moment to absorb that.

"Yeah. Yeah, you know what? You're right. Thanks, guys."

Alan pats him on the right shoulder with his right hand. "You're always welcome."

"Of course, that did sound like the most orderly interpretation of the Anti-Life, which… Makes a worrying amount of sense."

Sanderson frowns. "What exactly is the Anti-Life?"

"We don't.. really know. In fact, as I understand it, us not knowing is a big part of what keeps the universe safe. Because to know that a particular phrase is part of the Anti-Life, you have to understand it. And to understand it you have to believe it, to have it shape your thoughts. And it's all… Things that a person might believe in their lowest moments, and it-. You end up thinking that that's just how things are, that it's normal. And then you try and spread it."

"Oh." He looks around at the fields. "Ooh."

"But it is beatable. You're feeling better now, aren't you?"

He nods. "I am. But I thought this was just a bunch of magical plants."

"They are." Dr. Mist straightens up. "But as Orange Lantern said, thet is a most orderly form of Anti-Life. It can be made to flow through these crystals and infest the entire world. While I cannot deduce why it is thet John Quinn is trying to achieve this horrible thing, I can at least understand his methodology. Demon, do you have anything to say?"

"That I've got more fucking sense than to mess about with Anti-Life." Dr. Mist stares at him. "What? I'm self-absorbed, not suicidal. There's not enough me in me to want to hollow myself out more."

"Concerning John Quinn."

"He.. wasn't doing anything with the Anti-Life last time I spoke to him. It doesn't even make sense to me. He wasn't-. Controlling people isn't.. really part of our nature. Manipulating on a case-by-case basis, sure. Maybe give people a bit of a nudge. But controlling them like this?"

"Do I need to list your criminal acts?"

He rolls his eyes.

"I'm not trying to say I'm innocent in any general sense. Just that I haven't tried to mind control people on an ongoing basis. I'm already the most miserable parts of John the First, I don't want to find out if I can be double miserable. And I can't be bothered telling people what to do. Too much like honest work."

"See, if you start with that, it sounds more honest. Any idea where the finished crystals ended up?"

"There is a focal point, not far from here. I do not know if it is where the crystals are, but we need to go there first. This place is a threat I cannot abide by."

He turns to face me, and his face is still bleeding.

"This is why I joined the Justice League."

Alan nods. "Then that's where we're going. Any idea why the 'brownees' gave up?"

"They know that we can fight them off, so they're holding themselves in reserve until the next time we get into a fight."

"Or perhaps their orders do not include pursuit."

Seems a little hopeful, but I suppose it's possible.

"No way to free the brownie, then?"

"Not yet." He notions, and chains of rock rise out of the ground and bind his prisoner. "Not without more knowledge on how they were infected."

Alan nods. "But you will be able to, won't you?"

Dr. Balewa nods back. "I believe so. With the source removed… Yes, I believe so."

"Are we creeping up or rushing the target?"

"I believe thet the element of surprise is lost. Let us attack with-."

My colleagues vanish, leaving me alone with the brownie in the field.

 

[Mr Zoat]

8th November 2012
11:46 GMT -5

Teleportation? No, Dr. Balewa at least would resist magic-based teleportation and-.

Move-.

My construct barrier wavers and-.

Warning: spell eater temperature increasing.

Okay, clever dick. FEED ME.

And suddenly I can see the beam of purple arcane power boring into my construct armour, the construct replenishing as I take the pressure off by feeding on the magic. The beam is a straight line so over there! I fly rapidly over the blackened fields, construct hammer held at the ready. A railgun would be more effective but I do need whoever this is capable of answering questions.

I get a quick impression of robes and I swing the hammer, a translucent clawed hand appearing to catch if before it can hit its target! I dismiss the hammer at once and replace it with a railgun loaded with beanbag rounds, firing the moment it's ready. The shot goes straight through my target, but I'm getting a better view-.

Felix Faust.

Most of his power comes from his pact with a group of three eldritch creatures called Abnegazar, Rath and Ghast, respectively. His connection to them comes from a group of three arcane artefacts which should still be in storage-. In a secure Justice League facility which John Quinn would have full access to. Apparently, the act of tapping into them will break the spells binding them away from the material universe a hundred years after the year in which he first contacted them, so about fifty years from now. At which point they'll be Ophidian-food-.

I think I just worked out why the Reach abandoned Earth in the original timeline.

Of course, given that he was involved in Roanoke, my restrictions for dealing with him are a little more relaxed.

"Faust. Surrender or die."

"Anti-Life Justifies-"

I switch to mage slayers and fire at his centre of mass, but he interposes his demonic floating hand.

"-my actions."

The hand ripples, the spell-. Oh, is that ablative spell architecture? Clever, and since he's basically channelling power from his patrons who have the raw power to spare I'm probably not going to be able to out-drain it.

"What does the Anti-Life say, Faust?"

"Find out."

I'm yanked down as-. Where did these vines come from, this area was clear! I generate construct blazers and a plasma initiator construct but-.

Aimless=Valueless

I see myself going to Vega, and the unified fleet burning Wombworld from orbit, killing uncounted slaves and test subjects as well as the locals. I see the Orange Lantern Corps under Dox's command pushing the Reach back across the entire periphery. I see the Justice League's failure to accept an operational philosophy impairing their effectiveness.

"I'm-."

Aimless=Valueless

I see a world of people walking in lockstep, every action made at the direction of The Master working to raise the whole up, stronger and more vital than ever before.

But fortunately I don't care about any of that. I want, therefore I am. Sometimes the results aren't the best, but that's not why I do things. I do things because I want to do that when I think they will achieve something worthwhile, and I accept that I might be wrong. That's just life. And I'm certainly not going to trust that this time the autocrat who demands absolute obedience in exchange for benevolent tyranny will actually do a good job.

"Enlightened!"

Vines explode, crystals shatter and Faust gets knocked on his arse, though his floating hand survives.

Aimless=Valueless

"Says you."

Didn't get a clear vision of The Master, but I'm guessing Darkseid.

"What-?"

"Hello, Faust."

The floating hand is still there, but he doesn't react quickly enough to move it as my filaments leap out and grab him.

"Remember me?"

"Ah-?" He blinks, then frowns. "Actually, no. Where-?"

"Roanoke? You helped Klarion cast a spell that separated the world?"

"Obviously I remember doing that. I just don't-"

I spot the gestures he's making behind his back with his left hand and snap his left thumb's metacarpal so that his-

"Agh!"

-thumb is pointing backwards.

"In exchange for the information you possess, I will offer to abstain from killing you."

"You're a Lantern! How did you resist my power?"

"Killing you it is, then. Ring, assimilate."

"No, wait!" He holds up his hands, thumb dangling loosely. "I'll talk!"

"After Roanoke, what happened?"

"Fate put me in an oubliette, isolated from all magic. I don't know how much time passed. Then something happened, the spells keeping the prison secure weakened. I don't know what it was-."

"Me killing Nabu, probably."

"You killed-? How did-?! I mean-."

"Nabu's mind was a magic structure. Drain it faster than it replenished and his mind eventually collapsed. What happened next?"

"I worked at breaking out. Communed with my patrons, studied the remaining spells keeping me imprisoned. I was this close to working my way free when he turned up."

"He?"

"Someone wearing Fate's mask. It obviously wasn't him, but he could control the binding spells so I went along with him. He wanted my assistance in making contact with certain mortal allies of mine."

"I know who The Light are."

"And in getting hold of these… Crystals. After that, things get a little…" He frowns. "I don't remember. I don't remember much, except-. I suddenly felt that everything I'd achieved in my life was a foolish waste of time. A hex, obviously, but utterly overwhelming. You freed me, so you have my-"

He raises his hands, grinning and the universe expands away from me!

"-thanks."

 

[Mr Zoat]

8th November 2012
11:49 GMT -5

I throw out chains of orange light but the rapidly growing distance means that they move slower than Faust does. I fly at him and no, no, I can barely see the him-shaped blur now, the patch of grass I was standing on forming an effective wallpaper to my existence.

So I swing my chains around, sending them into the 'sides' of my prison, orange light radiating outwards as I

consume

the alteration-

"How predictable."

-to local-.

The colour vanishes, my surroundings now a featureless void. That… Wasn't supposed to happen. My spell eater isn't heating up so I'm not under the effect of an illusion-.

"Can you still hear me, Orange Lantern?"

I turn around, and… The void is still featureless. "Okay, that was actually clever. Some sort of.. tether that only the person trapped can cut?"

"Something like that." Faust's spectral head appears in the void in front of me. "I copied it from the people who imprisoned my sponsors."

"I'm not being your slave for a hundred years, if that's what you're expecting to get out of this."

"Hah! Hardly. That countdown only starts if I draw on your power. If I just drop the crystal I palmed into the ocean, you'll be trapped until the sun dies!"

"Okay. So is this just a boasting session to fluff your ego, or are you establishing a negotiating position?"

He grins. "I'm starting with boasting."

There we go. Do that some more.

"I'm mildly impressed that you admitted to it."

"I was imprisoned by Nabu and then subjected to the Anti-Life. I'm honest enough to realise that I could do with something to boost my ego."

"Okay. Then, well done. Klarion fared worse against me than you did."

"Some superheroes treat their fellow humans differently." He looks pensive. "I'm not convinced that you've pulled out all the stops."

"I haven't, but my passive defences were supposed to deal with things like that. How did you get around them?"

"I know! It's like you don't exist to my arcane senses! Constantine's work?"

"Among others."

"Clever, but it doesn't stop area effects or manually targetted effects."

"Did you consider using the drain itself as a marker?"

"Of course, but this was easier. Do you have any idea how hard it is to locate the source of a drain when the thing you use to detect it is being drained?"

Interesting. He doesn't appear to have realised that the drain comes from my amulet and not my tattoos. On the other hand, that only became 'common' knowledge in the villain community after he was imprisoned, so it's not really surprising.

"Yes. That's why I designed it like that."

"Not that it does you any good now."

"You do realise that Mister Zard will be hunting you as well, now that you're free of the Anti-Life?" The floating head pulls back slightly. "It was Zard, wasn't it? When I lost the ability to see my colleagues?"

"… Yes, we were all dispatched once the brownies reported the disruption. But he'll go after your friends first. Anti-Life does not encourage initiative. I simply need to be elsewhere when he's done. So tell me, Lantern: how did you breach the defences of the Tower of Fate?"

"In the library, there's a window. Through the window you can see a dream storm."

"Those are common enough. What of it?"

"We came in through that."

He gurns. "Non-sense. If you're going to lie, at least make it believable."

"Sandman's prophetic power comes from Morpheus himself. It wasn't easy, but that's how we got in."

He considers my answer for a moment, then appears to dismiss it.

"Fine. Don't tell me. With you as a hostage, I'm sure that I'll be able to convince one of your friends to show me the-"

Got you.

showmetellmeIwanttoknowwanttolearnwanttobecomemoreandbiggerandgreater

"-way ou-."

I hit him with my armour's taser, then clamp a suppression chain around his neck.

"Gah!"

"Good effort."

He grabs at the collar, feeling the solid metal with a look of near-panic on his face. "What are you?"

"See, if you hadn't crossed me just then, you'd still have had access to magic while we hunt down Zard and Thorn."

"They'll kill me; I'm defenceless."

"Good. I'm a soldier before I'm a superhero, and after Roanoke you're hostis humani generis. Getting put back in the oubliette is the best thing that could happen to you, and more than you deserve. Your only hope is living long enough for me to link up with Blue Lantern and praying that he talks me down. Now FEED ME!"

An orange wave shoots through the farmland around us, not coming from me but terminating with me. The layout of the vines changes at once, reaching in all directions as Alan slashes at the explosive growth and it tries to envelop him from all directions. Sanderson has opted for a T-1000 approach by replacing his forearms with blades. I can't… I can't see The Demon, but-

Railgun and fire.

-Dr. Balewa and Mr. Zard are having a magic duel I can barely perceive, white light glowing from Dr. Balewa as the undulating vines are forced to keep their distance. Zard clutches his face for a moment, meaning that he doesn't even have any chance at all to dodge when my railgun round takes his right leg off at the knee.

He doesn't cry out, just collapses to the ground as the wound starts pumping out blood. Dr. Balewa glances my way for a moment before dashing towards the fallen Wizard.

"I thank you for shutting down his defensive spells, but shooting him was not necessary."

"No, it was precautionary. The Anti-Life fragment is aimlessness equals purposelessness, and it encourages servitude to those uncertain as to their life's direction."

"Then this will be-" His left hand motions to the wounds, which knits closed. "-relatively easy."

His right hand taps Zard on the forehead, causing his eyes to snap open.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAGGHHH!"

 

[Mr Zoat]

8th November 2012
11:52 GMT -5

Dr. Balewa touches Zard on the lips, and the noise ceases. He's clearly still trying to scream, though I'm not sure whether that's because of his injury or the lingering effects of Anti-Life exposure.

Or he's reconsidering all of his life choices-. Yeah, I'm going to leave that sort of thinking to Alan. Zard learned magic in Tibet. What sort of Lama has judgement that bad?

"I am curious why his defences failed while mine remained."

Not that hard to work out from my point of view. He made contact with the Life Entity. The white light contains the orange light, so it almost certainly registers what he does as 'power ring' rather than 'magic'. Given that he's prime White Lantern material, he's going to need to know at some point, but…

"That's an ultra top secret Maltusian secret that I'm not going to tell you while we're in enemy territory."

The vines make a play for me, and I reward their persistence with a disintegration ray.

"Constantine?"

Dr. Balewa rises and gestures, a wave of white passing outward from the ground to a height of about two metres. The vine walls ripple, trying to escape before his magic… Just turns them back into normal vines with no Anti-Life crystals. The parts it touches gradually stop moving, an effect which flows up the vines to the parts Alan is valiantly trimming.

Two more slashes and he cautiously backs off, watching the vine closest to him grow buds which open into small white flowers. He regards the mass for a moment and then looks down at us.

"Are we done here-? Is that Wizard?"

"Wizard and Faust were prisoners of Fate. I suspect that we will find thet Blackbriar Thorn is at the centre of things."

"I guess old super villains don't die or fade away, they just wait until your back's turned and then jump you."

Sanderson explodes out of the vines in a flurry of blade swipes and severed plant matter.

He stands there for a moment, breathing hard, as the vine pile behind him collapses.

"I think I'm going to pave my garden back home."

"Don't make any rushed decisions, or at least meet a concrete supervillain first." I glance at the vines. "Blackbriar Thorn was connected to those, wasn't he?"

"He can control plants without a direct connection. I do not dare hope thet being exposed to Anti-Life would also make him foolish."

Alan looks around, frowning. "What happened to Constantine?"

"I suspect thet he was taken by the vines. I do not know what happens if a demon is subjected to Anti-Life, or if his nature will provide a measure of protection." He raises his right hand and draws a line in the air. "I can track his seal, now thet Wizard is no long obscuring the traces."

A moment passes and he looks down.

"Ah."

"Underground chamber?"

"Yes."

"That sounds like a job for-."

"A guy who can turn into sand and move through earth like it's water?"

I look at Sanderson. He interrupted me. That's new. Good for him.

"Yes, but we're going to need to get the rest of us down there as well. I suggest taking a look around and getting ready. And watch out for roots."

"I hear you."

He drops, his legs losing coherence first and merging with the ground, then his torso, arms, and last of all his head.

"This sounds like a job for Team Lantern. Unless-. Doctor Mist, would those flowers have any sort of anti-Anti Life properties?"

"A weak one. They would serve better as a conduit for my spells. Why do you ask?"

"I can cause plant growth."

"I'll make an excavator."

Alan generates a great borer construct, spins it up and presses it into the ground. Earth is shoved aside, great heaps piling up and Alan pushes the construct deeper.

"Would you care to explain?"

"I got a lesson from Lantern Medphyll. I can cause controlled plant growth by forcing the Green into things. Euanthe doesn't like it when I do it, but I doubt that she can feel it here."

"Can you send the vines down the hole which Blue Lantern is making?"

"Maybe?"

"From what we have seen of the Anti-Life and this place, it is likely that it is within Blackbriar Thorn. Freeing him will be difficult."

"Killing him would be easy, though. He'd get better in a year or so."

"We cannot take the risk thet he is reborn with his Anti-Life infection still in place."

"True. Alright, let's-."

I frown as I spot Faust fleeing as fast as his legs can carry him, grab him with a construct and carry him back, dropping him next to Mr. Zard.

"I can shoot one of your legs off as well."

Flashing a mild look of disapproval my way, Dr. Balewa taps Faust lightly on the forehead and he collapses into a stupor.

Right, my turn. I float upwards, reaching out into the Green with my rings. Forming the required pattern, linking myself to the fundamentally inhuman desires of plant life, it's not any easier.

All Things Strive.

"Blue Lantern? Could you-" The vines shudder before vigorously expanding in the general direction of Alan's drill. "-add a little space around the edge at the top?"

"Can do."

I watch as the vines and their little white life flowers burrow down the borehole, latching onto the exposed sides of the tunnel and extending towards the drill head.

One more evil wizard -possibly two if John's been infected- and then we can just free the brownies and wreck this place before going to fight Quinn.

Here's hoping.

 

[Mr Zoat]

July 27th, the Year of Our Lord 2282
Early Morning

As the Vertical Bird rotates its wings and rises back into the air, Tears-In-The-Rain clutches her right hand onto her shawl to stop it blowing off her head. Rather than pay attention to the Ammonites or Canaanites raising a shout in the town of New Canaan she instead focuses her attention on the rear… Compartment? Where Warband Leader Goris is waving farewell.

Chief Krono bade her farewell in Denver City, since his business with the other Chiefs would require him to remain there for more time. This was the earliest they could guarantee her safety in returning her home, and if she strained her ears she could dimly hear the sound of the flying machines of the Shi tribe far over head. He did not want to take a risk because it was known that the Ouroboros tribe has their own flying machines; more primitive than what his tribe-alliance could command but easily capable of harming a Vertical Bird.

She stood there, ignoring the closer shouts now calling her name.

The great machine-demon named Argos stealing her away from her people had been terrifying. She can admit that. Stealing women to wife was not unknown amongst the White Legs. Sometimes, it even produced happy marriages, though she had long ago decided for herself that anyone trying to steal her had best hope that their manhood was proof against knives.

She did not think that Argos had a manhood. And if he did, it was probably proof against knives. Still, she would have tried.

A giant machine-demon stealing away women from many tribes sounded like something from a bawdy tale told by drunken virgin boys. A giant machine-demon stealing women for a smaller machine-demon with many bodies who thought that it was a matchmaker…

"Rain!"

Now, she turns away from the distant flying machine. Smiling, she extends her arms to catch her delighted sister Dancing-Upon-The-Graves-Of-Her-Foes as the girl threw herself into her arms.

"Did the metal monster take you to hell? Did you kill all the demons?"

"No." She has a better idea of what the metal creatures truly are now, though she does not think that she will ever think of them in that way. "It was just a big machine, not a demon. And where it took me, the people did not let me kill anyone."

The small but very powerful gun given to her by Krono weighs heavily in both her mind and satchel. Far more advanced than anything that New Canaan can make, comparable in her experience only to the strange demonically-named weapons of the steam-worshippers to the north.

She sets her adopted sister back on the ground, prompting her to grab Tears' left hand and pull her in the direction of New Canaan.

"C'mon! Father wants to know what happened to you right away!"

Yes… Her father. Who was a war leader of great power, about to hear from his eldest daughter about the people who stole her away from his house. The religion of the New Canaanites was something that he had not fully accepted into his soul as he had accepted it into his head. Tears was… Worried, about how he might react.

The lands around New Canaan was well farmed, with water running in irrigation channels from the rivers and the water towers which collected it during the rainy months. And its people were industrious and God…

She frowns. Was it 'God-loving' or 'God-fearing'? 'Loving' would seem to make more sense, but she's sure that she remembers hearing the other as well.

Hard at work, then. Hard at work even this early in the morning. Some of them she half-recognises, warriors of the White Legs who have beaten their spears into pruning hooks so they may learn a new way of life as Ammonites. Apparently, that was something that God liked. Probably because spears were poor weapons compared to guns but He did not want them to waste metal.

Inside the town it was much the same. Many people that she recognised, few that she knew. Her friends would be busy with their work or their children. Her mother would be learning the medicines of the Canaanites, and unless her father 'had need' of them then her mother's sister-wives would be elsewhere as well. Her father would be in the Great Hall or in the Canaanite Temple, but Dancing was leading her towards the hall. There would also be Daniel, the priest of New Canaan who stood outside of the city when the White Legs came and tried to persuade her father to stop his attack. Her father laughed, then threatened, then argued, and never once did Daniel raise his voice or his hands. He was a good and patient man and she had thought about marrying him, but…

That… Did not seem quite so appealing now.

"Father!"

Dancing ran ahead with no regard for propriety, pushing open doors as she searched for their father. Tears took a moment to order her thoughts, and a second moment to pray to God for guidance. What had happened to her was so outside the experience of any of the Ammonites, and while her father was patient even he had limits.

"Father, a flying machine brought Tears back!"

And so she walked towards her father.

As she approached the chamber used for the meetings of the leaders of the tribe, elders of the Ammonites and New Canaanites began leaving. Ammonites smiled and told her that it was good that she was back, and Canaanites made the sign of the cross and thanked God for her return. And when they saw that, the Ammonites crossed themselves as well. Learning to serve a new God would take more time, but none of them refused. That was a good sign.

And then her father, Balm-Upon-Wounds, his war helm on a shelf behind him to show that he had put war aside. And Daniel, smiling in joy at her return.

Father was not smiling.

"Tears-In-The-Rain, my daughter. So. You are a married woman."

She didn't understand. Why would he think-?

Daniel looks awkward. "They broadcast it. The… 'The Wasteland's Most Eligible Bachelor'. We've still got a few working televisions here, and a couple of them picked it up."

Tears' face goes red, and her hands rise to cover it.

Father is still not smiling.

"He is a chief, and it was pleasing to see you triumph over the other women the machine-matchmaker brought. He seemed strong of body. Is he with you? I would… Speak to him."

"No… We are not married."

"No?" Her father shifts in his seat, right hand making a fist where it lays on the table. "He did not marry you?" His eyes narrow. "Daughter, did he..?"

"No! He took-. He did not lay a hand on me. He said that it would be improper to marry me without first meeting you and my mother and seeking your blessing."

Her father breaths easily once more, his fist relaxing.

"And that the matchmaker-machine did not have permission to arrange a match anyway. It did so because it is mad, and does not know how to do anything else."

"They did not hurt you?"

The strange… Rope that the big machine used to steal her had left a mark for several days, but it had not hurt that badly.

"Be at ease, father. They did not hurt me. But… You remember the tale Gregor Grey-Skin told you when he joined our tribe, about the Master of all Super Mutants?" Her father nods. Bands of mutants joined the White Legs after their Master died, and the tales they told were almost all that the White Legs knew of the west. "A Super Mutant tribe to the far east tried to…" She is not stupid, but she had not had a great education. Krono used words, but… "Make an heir to it. They created a great monster, and Krono brought together many tribes to fight it."

"Were they large tribes?"

How can she explain it? The warbands of Colorado alone were more than what the White Legs and New Canaan had together at the height of the war, and were machines rather than normal men and women. When she saw the far larger force that joined them from the south, she could scarcely understand how there could be so many people in the world. And then they were joined by an even greater host from the east.

"Yes, father. Extremely large."

"They hold him in such regard?" She nods. "Is he their Chief-of-Chiefs?"

Tears shakes her head. "No. He said that he is their negotiator. Their peace-maker and their shaman. He rules only a tribe smaller than the Sorrows, but their allies respect his wisdom."

Her father nods slowly.

"Do you wish to marry him?"

Does she? He was clearly a good leader. The members of his tribe that she saw were well armed, and all treated him with respect. He was patient and calm with his followers. Even when they were stealing women for him, so maybe that was not always good. His face was nothing special, but his body was strong-.

She found herself blushing again.

"I see that you do. I think then that it is time that the Ammonites got to know our neighbour to the west."

 

[Mr Zoat]

September 6th, the Year of Our Lord 2282
Early Evening

Father looks pensive as their convoy files into the building which the Sky Walkers have set aside for their use. Father has been looking pensive a great deal, of late.

"Daughter, I do not mean to call you a liar, but every member of the Sky Walkers tribe we have spoken to has named you their chief's wife. Is there something that you have not told me?"

Tears is a little annoyed to find herself blushing again.

The journey through the old White Legs territory was a stark reminder of how far their tribe had come. From roving hunters to farmers. From living in tents of hide to living in buildings of brick and stone. In truth, Tears had not recognised the site of their former main camp until her father pointed it out, so little was there to mark it as a place of significance. Some people still lived in the ruins of the town of Lincoln, operating its foundries and hunting the lands around for meat, but it was a tiny fraction of the numbers who once dwelt there.

And in the lands they had conquered between Lincoln and New Canaan it was almost as if it had not happened. The strange people of the Timekeepers tribe from Vault 24 were still building their clocks, the only change to their lives being that they now sold their excess to the Canaanite trade caravans rather than chasing them away. The Tar Walkers had paid them tribute, but now that had been cancelled to try and persuade them to listen more to the missionaries. The only change that Tears found in their lands was her father's youngest wife -only a few years her senior, which explains how he keeps his strength up when not on campaign- introducing them to her family.

But there were Ammonites who walked these lands. Though they had not precisely been White Legs territory, since there was only barren wasteland between Lincoln and the settlements of the Sky Reavers, neither side saw the need to an exact border. The people of Lincoln told them that was no longer the case when their caravan passed through, but to see so much land turned to not just farms but actual forests with such strange birds and animals in them… It was a strange sight.

And the great town of Groom Lake itself! Tears had seen robots and motor-driven carts called 'cars' and 'trucks' in Colorado. Utah had simple vehicles, usually little more than engines strapped to welded-together frames. In Groom Lake, the vehicles were like the vehicles from before the war left stranded on or next to the old roads. Only they were new and they still worked!

And the people dressed as Krono's warriors in Colorado dressed hailed her as the wife of their chief, and offered them hospitality and bade them enter. Did Krono think they were married? Did his tribe have a custom where they were betrothed until the moment when he met her mother and father and then they were immediately married? She had thought that they would have a Mormon ceremony, but he did not say anything about how his tribe does marriages.

"I do not think so, father. I think that they saw the same broad cast that you did and have not spoken to their chief since then."

"They believe that the machine-matchmaker is legitimate."

"Honestly, it's more that we're glad-" A man dressed in the manner of the Sky Walkers walks towards them, two Ammonites walking just behind him as an escort. "-that he's interested in anyone. This is a new situation for us. With our last chief-. The Whisperers, our old ruling council, had a kind of group arrangement to preserve their power. We're all hoping that Krono has something a little more conventional, and you fit the bill."

Her father frowns, causing the Sky Walker man to raise his hands.

"Not that Tears-In-The-Rain isn't a great woman to have as a wife! The Chief's a lucky man! She proved that when she won the contest! It's just that he's been Chief for three years and still hasn't married."

Her father is still frowning, but less aggressively.

"Is his manhood sick? Can he not function as a man?"

"Um."

The man clearly doesn't like thinking of his chief in those terms. Tears knows a few brews which can help with some difficulties, but she knows of warriors whose loins were injured and were never able to function again. A warrior should not feel ashamed by an injury unless it was gained foolishly, but she does not envy them. She does not think that she would feel complete if she could not bear a child.

"No, I don't think so. When we got the showers working, ah… I saw him, one time. It works."

Tears is not quite so sheltered that she does not know that might still mean that he isn't interested in marrying a woman. Still, he is a chief. He has an obligation to sire an heir. Just… Not with her if that is the case. She wants more than one. And she's fairly sure that Mormonism frowns on brother-husbands.

"Anyway. I'm Keanan Smith of the Sky Walkers, and I've been assigned to be your guide to Groom Lake. At least until Chief Krono gets back from Colorado."

Her father nods. "I was told that the monster from Los had been destroyed."

Keanan-Smith nods back. "Yeah, we all felt it. But there're a lot of important people over there right now, so the chief is using the opportunity to have everyone talk face to face. Sort out trade agreements and military pacts while everyone's in the same place."

Tears only remembers one such meeting of equals, when her father sat down with Chief Thunderbird of the Eighties to trade for a part of their territory which he needed for the attack on New Canaan. Thunderbird agreed, since he wanted to capture lands to the west and had no interest in the east. Other than that, her father's meetings were with war chiefs and the elders of defeated tribes. He was clearly in charge.

"What agreements does he seek?"

"Well, who gets the territory that the Super Mutants overran. Texas claims the part near Los, but there's a whole lot that used to belong to the Legion that needs someone looking after it and they don't think they could hold that much. The NCR had a research team up there and they wanted help backing them up. Except that's WARDEN's territory, so they had to sort out a treaty that would let them work there but acknowledged that they were WARDEN's guests and don't run the place. Rio Grande wanted the NCR navy's help with the Cartels, and they needed to agree a timetable for fighting Caesar's Legion. And the Chief wanted to make sure that the different Brotherhood of Steel chapters around there were cooperating with everyone. And he's probably going to talk about our accession to the NCR."

Her father looks around, frowning once more. "Has the NCR conquered your tribe?"

"No, but-. The NCR is a federation of tribes, with a great council that decides matters which affect them all. Given that we're friends and that almost all of our trade happens with the NCR, it makes sense for us to join as a new state."

"Would Krono still be your chief?"

"In the NCR, the chief of a tribe is called a 'governor', the chief of the federation is called a 'president', and the people who represent the tribe in the great council are called 'senators'. He could pick either job, but he couldn't do both. Or he could do something else. He said that if the Sky Walkers joined the NCR then he'd rather be the chief shaman of the NCR than Governor of the Sky Walkers."

Tears didn't know if the Ammonites would maintain the tradition of spirit walks. It wasn't something New Canaanites did but she didn't remember anything about it being explicitly forbidden. She did remember Krono's voice sounding in her head, but-.

Did the television show that sort of voice?

Her father looked confused. "Shaman? He talks with spirits?"

"Oh, no. Sorry, I forgot that your people haven't had much to do with ours. Like this."

Keanan-Smith turns away, than reaches his right hand out towards a crate on one of the wagons. It shakes for a moment, then rises into the air. It stays there for a moment, then floats over to a pile of similar crates and lands.

"Krono wants everyone to have this sort of-."

"Magic."

Tears can hear the tension in her father's voice. Not fear, but caution at suddenly discovering that something you believed about the world was fundamentally wrong. A White Legs shaman might assist someone in discovering something about their own nature, or show surprising insight into a situation, but she could not remember any story about them lifting things with their minds.

"Did you barter with demons for that power?"

"No. No, God no. This is-. We used pre-War technology to alter our minds. Demons-." He shakes his head. "I was part of the warband we sent to Oregon to stop the Odious King. He had a demon in his head, and right before Krono and Andrew Shaw banished it we all got a look at its mind." He shakes his head again, more vigorously. "None of us are crazy enough to barter with something like that."

"It is technology?"

"Yes. I can-. If Tears-In-The-Rain and Krono marry, we'd be offering it to her as well."

"I would like to see this 'technology'."

He sounds sceptical, but he has seen a great deal in recent years that in his youth he did not think that he ever would.

"No problem." Keanan-Smith nods happily. "Once you're settled in, I can show you around."

 

[Mr Zoat]

8th November 2012
11:57 GMT -5

Alan nods, pulling back his right arm and dismissing his construct.

"I'm through."

I nod. "You can take a nap. It's been a long day, and you're pretty-"

He exhales sharply in amusement.

"-old."

"Through the soil, jackass. You got the vines down that far yet?"

"Yes, it-."

I hear a faint crackling noise, and my connection to the vines wavers.

"Someone is trying to block me. I-."

Dr. Balewa winces. "Anti-Life. I can hold it off, but little more."

I glance at Alan. "I'll shoot the crystals if you keep Thorn's attention."

He nods. "On three. One." I stop touching the vines through the Green, since they've got as far as they're going and I need to focus. "Two. Three!"

We both fly over the hole and then down. I'm not too worried about construct armour. Anti-Life infused vines will probably punch right through it. What I am worried about is getting so much Anti-Life exposure that it still manages to affect me. So rather than physical armour-.

Something lands on my left leg, and I immediately react with a construct-spike. The brownie with its left claw embedded in my armour uses its right to slash apart the spike. Its claws aren't long enough to get through my armour, but it's still-

"Brownies!"

-capable of disrupting my constructs from there.

Alan hedgehogs, thin spines surrounding him in order to make a direct teleport strike impossible. Just in time, as three brownies appear around him. Two go to work attacking the structure, but the ablative spine lattice forces them to destroy each smaller construct one at a time. The third gets stuck in the gaps, and Alan restrains it so that it can't brings its claws to bear.

Decent idea-.

Another brownie appears, this one on my helmet. This time I don't use a spike. I use an x-ionised knife. I think it has time to see the glow and it definitely tries to interpose its claws as the blade leaves subspace, but all that means is that it loses its hand just before its neck. It falls in bits towards the tunnel end below us, and I adopt the defensive measure of having my remaining x-ionised knives orbit around me at speed. The brownie already on my leg gets special treatment; since it's not all that fast I have the time to aim at its forearms, slicing through them and denying it access to its claws. It teleports-

More brownies shimmer in and then leave immediately to avoid being slices up by my knives.

-away, and I knit my armour back into one piece.

"Need help?"

Spines shift and pin the other two brownies before-.

All three teleport away.

That's going to be annoying.

Coming up fast I can see the furthest extent that the vines I sent down reached, white flowers seeming to shimmer until about a meter into the interior of the underground chamber and then-.

Black crystals, writhing vines a dreadful sense that I'm in the wrong for being here.

Railgun, track a crystal with a mage slayer round and fire.

A vine darts out, taking the hit and being broken in two but succeeding in shielding the crystal but knowing that the feeling is artificial doesn't make it go away. Second railgun, track crystals at random and fire when charged.

Compliance.

It used to worry me when my irises turned into the orange sigil. Now I know that my head is glowing orange as I effectively offload the stress of accelerating my thoughts to a speed that actually lets me handle situations like this onto constructs. As Nabu's mind ran on structures of Order magic, so mine is running on the orange light.

That would have worried me.

But as Alan drifts past at a relative crawl… No. I need this.

Guns track and fire, vines shift and churn, the mass trying to prevent me getting a clean shot but I'm dealing with omniscience, effectively. It-.

I halt my forward motion at the entrance to the cavern, the few vines that lunge for me being sliced from the parent plant by my knives. We're come out in the upper surface of an ovoid cavern, vines and their black crystals covering the floor and ceiling both. I know that the vines also reach through the soil and out into the fields above us, but I can't see either those connections or the roots. These have to be at least in some senses normal plants; magic only gets you so far.

Alan flies ahead, spinning rotary saws cutting through the vines that drop down at him from above. His environmental shield is glowing brilliantly, hope being a better natural counter to Anti-Life than avarice. My railguns aren't getting anywhere, so maybe-.

Alan forms a grenade launcher and fires actual.. phosphorus grenades around the chamber. They burn brilliantly where they land, but the light is swallowed by the unnatural darkness of this room. I think I dimly see where Blackbriar Thorn might be, a mound of vines in the approximate centre of the floor. Or it could just be the locus of the vines. I take a shot that I don't expect to get anywhere and sure enough it hits… Can't see clearly, some sort of solid surface that just absorbs the hit.

I should have thought this out better-.

Ah HAH! Did you think we wouldn't notice?

I leave my railguns to it, while I transmute the air around me into illegally strong defoliant.

Did you think that we don't know the sound of our own thoughts?

My thoughts are usually disordered, jumping from one-.

Oh, STOP.

No. I'll make you stop.

The vines coming at Alan are replenishing themselves so fast that he can't afford to fly forward quickly any longer, rather he's forced to do what he was on the surface but with less room to manoeuvre. More importantly, his environmental shield has shrunk.

There's a basic rule of magic that the Anti-Life appears to have never learned. If something is touching you, you're touching it.

We open the Honden in the Black that is touching us.

"Purposelessness → Desire → Purpose."

I feel a sudden uplift as the oppressive blackness recoils, but it's too late. The vines spasm but they're not being replenished, my railgun rounds finally start hitting their targets and the crystals start shimmering with beautiful orange light. With the spell lifted I see Blackbriar Thorn embedded and impaled by vines, only his upper torso mostly visible in the mass at the centre of the room.

He snaps out of his stupor as the crystals start to shatter on their own, unable to contain the conflicting energies. For a moment we make eye contact, and he recognises me.

Then lightning flies from his hands and smashes me into the wall!

 

[Mr Zoat]

8th November 2012
11:59 GMT -5

Because-. How does he even know who I am?

Crystals continue exploding across the room, and the vines look more like vines rather than tendrils of eldritch evil.

"Green Lantern!"

Alan takes a moment to face Blackbriar Thorn. "Stand down, Blackbriar."

Thorn snarls, bringing his hands together in front of him, causing vines to leap from above and below, targetting Alan. Alan jinks and lashes out with construct blade which… Bites in and appears to get stuck, cutting through only slowly.

I frown as I try to remember what Thorn's motivation is. Supposedly, he got hit by a curse that a group of druids were using to try and kill Roman soldiers, but that doesn't explain why he took part in Roanoke Island rather than singling out Italy for retribution. Can't negotiate based on his objectives, he's already in line for the harshest punishment for mass murder.

"FATE!"

The chamber trembles as he does something with the vines threaded throughout the surrounding earth.

"FACE ME, COWARD!"

But if he's looking for revenge.

"We're not here to help Fate! We're here to stop him!"

The dome of plant matter that he's impaled into undulates and shifts in a mildly disturbing fashion. This time his lightning hits a heavy construct palisade, and I idly note that the brownies have stopped trying to attack.

"I WILL KILL FATE!"

"The thing that made you his slave is called the Anti-Life! We'll happily help you destroy it!"

"And YOU!"

Purple flowers I don't recognise sprout from nearby vines, rising towards me and releasing clouds of dangerous looking… Pollen? I generate a rotary fan construct and blow as much as I can away from me. Quick check, but I can't see any sign of The Demon Constantine.

"I'll kill YOU! Did you think I didn't recognise you?!"

He points his left hand at me, but nothing appears to happen. Okay, weed killer didn't work. Incendiary time. But I can be a little cleverer than Alan.

In the comics, Lonnie Machin managed to use Jade Scott's ring to change the universe's Planck Length over a small area in order to defeat a physics anomaly. I don't want to do that as I don't understand physics well enough to know what that would do, but I can alter the activation energy of particular chemical reactions in a similar way. Since I scanned the structure of the vines on the surface, a simple construct…

A wave of fire ripples through the vines, making them writhe in what isn't pain, just a result of the water in them vaporising and expanding, then breaching their skin and collapsing.

Not pain at all, and the screaming noise is escaping water vapour.

Thorn's pulling a face, but I don't know if he's getting some sort of feedback or that's just what he does when he's fighting. Alan fires energy pulses at him just as Thorn's vine pile undulates and rises.

"You have no conception of what this place is!"

I mean… True, but who cares?

The fires I'm generating are consuming all of the cavern except his core at this point, and the fumes and heat would be a problem if it wasn't for my environmental shield. I could open up with something a little heavier-.

"I'll crush ALL OF YOU!"

Does he sound a little orange-? I accidentally amplified his desire to destroy us, didn't I? Alright, I can fix that.

"What did you do with Constantine, Blackbriar?"

"Let me show you!"

Rock surges, enveloping his vine mound and torso, cracks appearing on the ceiling as the chamber loses structural integrity. I fire a couple of mage slayers at him, but the rock isn't enchanted so the rounds don't achieve very much.

"Blue Lantern, I think we need to evacuate!"

"What about Constantine?"

"I can't see him. Can you?"

"You're better at that than me." He scans anyway. "No."

"I can probably get it out of him."

The floor of the cavern cracks and crumbles as Thorn extracts more material and the ash of the roots that were embedded there crumble to dust.

"Alright, but-."

The rock pile in the middle of the cavern slumps, parts sliding free as the magic holding it together loses its grip.

It doesn't move.

Alan and I pause for a moment, weighing our options. Then we both generate pneumatic drill constructs and fly towards it, jamming the picks into pre-existing cracks. And after the first couple of strikes we both add construct earmuffs. Rock explodes away, the large mass being reduced swiftly now that it's not growing and its master isn't repairing it. As we get closer to the core we switch over to giant claws, draconic in my case and mechanical in Alan's, tearing at the looser rock and-.

Sanderson finishes pulling Blackbriar Thorn out of his anchorage and pushes him out, letting him fall to the-.

Alan catches him before he hits the ground and breaks his neck or something and forces us to wait until he gets reincarnated again. Of course, with no Anti-Life infection that wouldn't be a greater risk than there was before, but I think we're going to get permission to do something a little more permanent with him as well.

"Are you alright, Sandman?"

"Sure thing, Blue Lantern." He pulls himself out of the fallen colossus and lands on the broken ground. "I couldn't get through the vines, but the moment he pulled all that rock towards him it was real easy to sneak up on him."

"Good work." I give the chamber one last scan, but I don't find anything useful. I do however connect a filament to Thorn and drain out the excess of orange light because while he's not going to be easy to deal with I doubt that he'll be harder than he would be in orange crazy mode. Add a suppression collar and he's ready for interrogation. "We should get back to the surface."

I generate a platform and he gets on board, then the four of us fly back up through the hole Alan dug. Thorn stirs weakly, so Alan adds construct chains to my suppression chain, just in case. I don't think his physical strength has ever really been tested. We rise out of the hole and… Dr. Balewa is sitting across from a brownie with no arms, the stumps glowing as he regrows them.

"Good work, gentlemen. Urisk here has volunteered to explain what John Quinn has been doing with himself. I am sure that it will be an interesting tale."

 

[Mr Zoat]

8th November 2012
12:03 GMT -5

Urisk looks understandably nervous to have me standing so close.

What do you say to someone whose arm you've cut off? 'Sorry' isn't right, as it would imply that I now think that it wasn't the correct thing to do. And I think it was the correct thing to do, as a compromise to just taking his assault or killing him. 'I regret the necessity' is honest, but a little inhuman. 'Are you alright' is a patently stupid thing to say to someone who has just lost their arms.

"There." The glow ceases and Urisk checks his range of movement. "I hope that you are feeling-."

"Ah."

Urisk's pupils expands as he cringes, backing up as much as he can while still staying close enough to Dr. Balewa that he could dive behind him if I attacked.

"No lasting damage, I hope?"

Urisk uncringes slightly then freezes, waiting to see what I'll do.

"If that's what you're worried about, I don't hold you responsible for what you-." I look around the crowd. "What any of you did while under the influence of the Anti-Life. If that's what you're worried about."

Alan looks at me expectantly.

"So I see no need to continue hostil-."

"Paul."

No, no, it's irrational, but it's basically just social lubricant and it might make him more willing to talk.

"I'm sorry."

"You apologise?"

"It's not like I-" I dismiss my construct armour and send my armour back into subspace. "-like cutting people's arms off."

And… They're short. So I sit down, affecting a pose of relaxation.

Urisk doesn't appear entirely sure what to make of that, but takes reassurance from Dr. Balewa's presence.

"What do you want to know, great wizard?"

"Our colleague, the one who looks like John Quinn. Where did he go?"

"John..? Quinn..?"

"He wears the golden helmet."

"The Master-Magician." Urisk shakes his head. "No. He arrived later. The one who called us here looked like the demon's false-face."

I blink in surprise. "John Constantine? John brought you here?"

"The Laughing Magician. He was in pain. The crystals helped him stay himself, he said. He asked us to tend his gardens for him."

"Did he force you to come here?"

"No. No. We were relieved. Happy. Modern houses are full of electronics." He wrinkles his nose. "We find them uncomfortable. This place is nice, and we all know how to garden."

"Did he pay you?"

He hesitates slightly, then shakes his head. "Our needs are met. Amongst our kind, status come from the place where we work. For us, having the run of a place like this in the service of a wizard of such power is reward in itself."

I glance at Dr. Balewa, who nods distractedly. Right, creatures of fae don't have the same drives as material humans. If having a nice and primitive place to live is what they want, I hope they're happy.

"Where did the vines come from?"

"He never said. He brought them here as crystal seeds, and we nurtured them."

"What did he..? Do with them? To keep himself himself?"

"He forced magic into them. Weakened himself, and collecting the magic infused crystal. He seemed happy when we got the largest gems. He said that he had plans for them. Then…" Urisk looks away from us, towards his huddled colleagues. "It is… I don't-."

Alan kneels down and puts his right hand on Urisks's left shoulder.

"He got you with the Anti-Life, didn't he?

"I don't know the name. The Laughing Magician went away for several days, then… The other one arrived. He looked similar; we took him for the Laughing Magician's brother."

"Did he look-. Or feel, demonic?"

"No. We felt demon magic on him a few times, but he was no demon. Later on, he started visiting with the golden helmet."

I nod. "John Quinn. Did you ever see him and the Laughing Magician together?"

"No."

Well that's… Quinn's story mostly out the window. If John didn't give him a tour…

"Did the Laughing Magician take any crystals with him?"

"Once the other one arrived, the Laughing Magician took no more crystals."

"You called Quinn 'the other one' there, and not 'The Master-Magician'. Was that intentional?"

"Yes. Since the Laughing Magician wasn't collecting crystals, we thought the other one might make us leave. Instead, he told us to expand. More of us came to the Tower of Fate then, and the gardens grew. He took some crystals for his work, and the rest we stored for him. Then…"

Alan nods. "I think we can guess. Somewhere he ran into the Anti-Life."

"We knew he had changed, but he was our host, and wizards can be strange in their ways. He took some crystals and experimented with them, and with the vines. And some other people were brought here."

"Those three?"

"Yes. And others."

Oh great. "Did he say their names?"

"No, but it sounded like they knew each other well. One of them… He felt like a hole in the universe. But… I think that by then we were affected as well."

"Do you have access to the rest of the Tower of Fate?"

"Yes, but that isn't our agreement. We tend the farms."

"He did Anti-Life you. And if the Laughing Magician brought you here and was defeated, shouldn't you help him rather than the interloper?"

"If the idea of fighting him offends you, simply lead us through the Tower and then leave. We will handle things from there."

"Alright." Urisk nods. "We can do that. You will free the Laughing Magician and we will stay here, without the Anti-Life. Follow me."

 

[Mr Zoat]

17th September 2282
Midday

Vertibirds aren't the fastest thing in the 23rd century, but they've got excellent mechanical reliability and endurance. And a far higher flight ceiling than the handful of propeller-driven fighter planes in Caesar's service. I suppose that I could have taken a flying saucer back, but I'd much rather put them back into active service for the infiltration teams rather than acting as a taxi service for me.

The Shi's fighters escorted us part of the way, but had to turn north into Ouroboros territory in order to recharge. She is willing to let us use her airbases in part due to her friendship with Diana and in part in exchange for joining the alliance against the Legion. I've also agreed to augment her at some point, both with psionics and -if we can get it to work- FEV. She's a hardcore eugenicist who's been proclaiming her own divinity to anyone who would listen ever since she left Twin Mothers, and after her second in command rebelled against her she's looking to put that on some sort of evidential basis. I'm a little concerned about what happens if what we do fixes whatever damage her brain took during the Legion's conquest of the Twisted Hairs, but she's an adult. And it's not going to make her more crazy.

"We're a minute out."

I nod, though obviously the pilot can't see. "Thank you."

So I'm riding home with the Mojave Chapter of the Brotherhood of Steel, under Elder McNamara. After a long and borderline theological debate about the Codex, I was able to convince him that helping with security and maintaining the civilian electricity supply counted as acceptable aid to outsiders. And after a long and borderline theological debate with General Oliver, I was able to convince him that Brotherhood scribes stood a much better chance of getting pre-War technology working again than anyone he had under his command. So the Chapter is operating again, as a private corporation subject to NCR law and theatre command.

That was basically the arrangement I've tried negotiating for the Maxson Chapter as well, though in their case their bunker was pretty much written off by Cerberus's tentacles. Most of their paladins died in the war with Lanius and Cerberus, but enough of their scribes and knights survived for them to remain a viable Chapter. They'll be sharing the Boulder Dome with the Baggers, under WARDEN's watchful eyes.

I've got no idea what we're going to do with Arizona.

Diana got most of New Mexico, because she was best placed to actually make the place functional after the triple rampages of Paulus, Lanius and Cerberus. Texas wanted the part of Lanius's territory that was historically part of the State of Texas, which the Summer Federation didn't like because they used to live there. That resulted in them joining Texas with the two areas merging as a new Texan county. WARDEN got the newly liberated territory of Colorado and is planning to hold an election for governor just as soon as he can explain to his people what that is. Robot City got a copy of Doki Doki Shiteru 2, which should keep them entertained more or less indefinitely.

And we're all going to gang up on Caesar's Legion and its allies, and then… That's it. Apart from the Washington Brotherhood. And those weird insect-themed AIs in the Mid-West. And… Probably a bunch of other places that I haven't heard of, but…

Nothing critical. I'll be able to take a break. Maybe visit England, though that sounds like something that could turn into work. I don't know, it's-

The rotors switch angle for vertical flight. "Coming in to land now, Krono."

-nice to be able to make a difference.

I stand, keeping hold of the wall-mounted straps to maintain balance. And there's Groom Lake, and I feel a little weight come off my shoulders.

"…where everybody knows your name…"

"You say something?"

"Just singing a pre-War song to myself. It's good to be back. You?"

"Doesn't make much difference. Helios ain't exactly homey. I've got a few days of debriefing to look forward to about the state of the other Chapters, then they'll probably send me to Lost Hills to update the High Elder in person."

President Hayes is grudgingly giving Lost Hills their secondary bunkers back, in exchange for technical assistance with civilian technology. He wanted power armour, but that was a hard 'no' from the High Elder. Too much like adding to their military power. It works out for me, too, as it encourages institutional cooperation more if the NCR doesn't have power armour and needs the Brotherhood for power armour operations. I'm not sure that it's going to last; Hayes is going to pass that Bill through the NCR's congress to pardon former Enclave prisoners eventually-.

Maybe I could pre-empt it somehow?

We touch down in Groom Lake airport, and I step out of the vertibird with a wave to the pilot. She's back in the air almost at once, rotors turning to begin the flight southwards.

I then give my full attention to my welcoming… Committee?

Goris is letting out a continuous snort, his equivalent of a barely suppressed giggle. Keanan is doing that falsely-gormless smile that I've had a few subordinates do when the boss has done something foolish and they don't want to draw attention to-.

It.

They saw the broadcast.

And that's-.

Tears-In-The-Rain smiles demurely at me. "Husband."

Ah-h-h-h-h-h.

"Tears-In-The-Rain. Delightful to see you again. What brings you all the way here from New Canaan?"

She's smiling in that emotionally honest way she does so that I know even without probing her mind that she's making gentle fun of me. Then she forms an expression of mock-seriousness.

"Where should a dutiful wife be but by her husband's side?"

"Did-? You need me to explain things to your parents? Did you get kicked out of the tribe because of what happened? Because-?"

"She did not, though it speaks well of you that your first concern was for her wellbeing."

The man next to her is clearly a tribal of some sort, the crucifix around his neck with 'CTR' in place of the usual 'INRI' on the upright. Most of his body is covered in white or red paint, with a muscular body clearly visible underneath. Two ways of dealing with the heat in this part of the world: robes to keep the sun off or minimal clothing to let your sweat evaporate. I do perform a quick probe of his mind-.

"Chief Balm-Upon-Wounds." I perform a shallow bow. He's currently the ruler of most of Utah, and his rule appears to mostly be stable and non-evil. Getting him on-side would actually help quite noticeably with the strategic situation. "Welcome to Groom Lake. I trust that your stay so far has been pleasant?"

He nods. "I have learned much here. Keanan-Smith has been a good guide."

"And I-." I glance at Tears-In-The-Rain. "I wish to make clear that I had no idea what Doki Doki was planning, and I never did anything untoward to your daughter."

"So I have been told. And I have been told that you wish to step down as your tribe's chief to become the NCR's shaman."

"That's… One way to describe it."

"I think that there is wisdom in your decision. I had intended to take control of the tribes of Utah by force, but you have made me see the wisdom of absorbing them peacefully. I have sent a message to the Eagle Rock tribe, offering their chief the position of Air Marshall amongst the Ammonites if his tribe joins with ours. They know flying and flying machines well where we do not, but they are weak in other ways. Sharing our knowledge will make us both stronger. I know that they are worried about having to fight both us and the Ouroboros tribe, so I think that he will accept my offer."

"I don't know the man, but that seems logical."

He regards me impassively for a moment. "My daughter wants you as her husband."

"She-? Oh. She didn't… Say that when we last spoke."

She looks at me with mild affront. "It is not my place to ask you to marry me."

"It is if you want it to happen."

She draws herself up slightly. "Chief Krono of the Sky Walkers, I want to be your wife. Marry me."

Well…

"Tears-In-The-Rain, we don't know each other well enough to know whether we're a good match. But since you've come all this way… Perhaps we can do that now."