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

[Mr Zoat]

1st May
18:04 GMT -5

Leonid watches as I finish transmuting another box of crumbler ammunition as we both continue to ignore the.. buzzing sound that Mr Yao has been making for the past five hours.

"Would that work?"

"They're my go-to option for hard-to-kill targets when constructs don't work." I glance up at him. "No guarantees."

"Of course." He pauses briefly. "Do you think I should have brought my spaceship?"

"Not without knowing how it would interact with the witch-path. And you'd have had trouble fitting it into the basement with the machine."

"We could borrow Atom's white dwarf fragment." He glances up at the sky, though the local white dwarf is over the horizon. "Should we get him more?"

"I don't.. think that what Atom has is actually a piece of a white dwarf in any literal sense. And I can just make electron-degenerate matter if he really wants some."

I haven't spent much time looking into Dr Palmer's work. It's a bit like superspeed; so absurdly broken if applied in a military context that I'm hesitating to put it into wider circulation. Dr Dane's formula would be far safer, though… Far less useful, even if I could get it.

"Are you prepared to sell this 'electron-degenerate matter'?"

"Sell commercially?" I send the bullet box into subspace and sit up to look at him. "No."

"The Russian Federation does not want certain technologies to spread. My government could give people super speed at any time, but we do not do so. We respect the balance of power."

"And if I gave you some electron-degenerate matter, you'd only have as much as I gave you, and you want me to believe that your superiors would… Just make a couple of shrink systems and then stop, the same as they did for the Garrick Formula."

He nods. "Yes. The Star Wars defence system increased tension between Russia and America because it could prevent Russian nuclear missile hitting America while American missiles could still hit Russia. Russia has no desire to expand its borders by force, but in such a situation it is logical to attack because the primary deterrent is about to be rendered useless. When the radar stations they would use for tracking were removed, relations improved."

"I suspect that my 'colleagues' in the Great Ten would also appreciate a sample." Mr Yao glances back at us. "If the balance of power is being preserved."

"The United States government doesn't have shrink technology. Giving it to Russian and Chinese governments doesn't preserve the balance of power, particularly given that I don't own the technology. Unlike Mister Garrick, Atom has never acted as an agent of the American government. So when it comes to this sort of technology I'm afraid that my answer hasn't changed; create a planetary defence force and I'll equip it, but I'm not supplying individual armies." Hm. "Except Themyscira, because they've got a three thousand year long peace record and won't use it anyway."

Leonid shrugs. "I will pass that on. I am curious. What would a 'planetary defence force' look like?"

"Like a unified planetary military created for the purpose of, one, defending the Earth from external threats and, two, defending human expansion off Earth."

"The Russian space program is currently the most advanced in the world. And my ship can fly in space without-" He glances at Mr. Yao. "-causing me to melt."

Mr Yao shakes his head. "I do not want Orange Lantern to share this technology with China. I simply wish to preserve the balance of power along the border between our countries, and that requires that neither of our countries get it."

"Normally I'd say that's the sort of attitude that's keeping humanity back, but in this case I think it's the sort of attitude that's keeping us from nuking ourselves." I look from Leonid to Mr. Yao. "I… Thought that the issues on your border were resolved."

Mr Yao nods. "They are. And we both want to make sure that they stay resolved. If one side gains an advantage… Sometimes, these things change. But since you are not supplying anyone, it does not matter."

"So… No one's going for the EDF idea?"

Mr. Yao looks away. "It is… Doubtful. I assume that the technology you would provide would be for 'EDF' use only, and not supplied to participating countries?"

"Absolutely."

"If you want a formally informal answer, I will ask my superiors. But it seems unlikely to me that the People's Republic of China would be interested in such a thing."

"The Russian government may be prepared to agree not to use such devices on Earth. Recent events have led people to reconsider space security."

"Please inform them that I am disinclined to be negotiated down."

I take the small sample of possibly-Sheeda blood that I scraped off my armour out of subspace and take another crack at it. More because I don't particularly want them to carry on trying to bid for technology that I'm not selling than because I think I'll learn anything new this time, but hopefully they'll get the hint.

"Be you able to decipher some secret from their blood?"

"No. Not really. I can't even tell whether or not our attackers were true Sheeda or your atavistic cousins, because Sheeda are essentially humans."

Abednego frowns. "I-. I do not understand. Are they not some other species?"

"Oh. I'm sorry, I hadn't realised that it wasn't common knowledge here. No, Sheeda are humans from the far future."

He grimaces. "What horror could have befallen them to turn men into that?"

"We don't know. The Huntsman didn't say, and I haven't met any intelligent Sheeda."

"Yon man who spent time in their lands. Could he not find the truth of it?"

"He probably could have done, but he was fighting for his life and scrabbling for enough food and water to keep himself alive. He didn't really have the opportunity to study their history."

And he… Honestly wouldn't have been inclined to. If the idea even occurred to him.

Nothing here immediately puts me in mind of another species… Or rather, there are things in their blood that also exist in other species, but it doesn't look like the result of interbreeding or a simple graft. Really, I'm.. more surprised by how much 'human' there is. It certainly makes sense to me that a being like this could have children with a human without medical intervention. If this is designed rather than the product of however millions of years of natural change, I'd assume that it was deliberate. Do they..? Come to the past to pick up breeding stock as well as technology and raw materials? If so… Why? Is their population inbred? Was there a disaster which hurt their genetic diversity?

What the heck turned us into these things?

Abednego pulls the horses to a halt and dismounts, witch-signs glowing over his hands as he walks towards a standing stone.

"A moment, goodfellows."

"What is it?"

"A way to inform those we would visit that we do so in peace." Glyphs light up over the stone as he runs his hands over them. "I think it best that there be no more surprises on either side. And if they are not willing to treat with us, I'd druther know now."

 

[Mr Zoat]

2nd May
01:34 GMT -5

A glowing two-dimensional blue-white fence surrounds our campsite. Abednego's eyes are glowing a similar colour as he writes in a journal. I did volunteer to take the watch myself, seeing as I can go without sleep for long periods without any negative consequences, but when he said that wasn't a good idea I decided to bow to his experience.

Empathic vision turned up maximum comfortable levels I scan our surroundings again. Nothing yet.

No one responded to Abednego marking the monolith, but he didn't seem to find that unusual. If most contacts between warlock-breed and witch-hunters results in a to-the-death fight it's hardly surprising; the sensible thing to do would be for both sides to cordially avoid one another. And if they just avoid us until we get to the original settlement… Whatever state it's in, that's technically a success for us.

I'm particularly looking forward to getting a look at Melmoth's remains. Confirmation of what the Sheeda of the future look like and not merely their hybrid descendants will not only allow me to fine-tune my scanning but perhaps work out how to turn warlock-breed back into regular.. witch-breed..? Would that be the word?

I walk quietly over to 'quiet conversation' distance with Abednego and sit down. He looks up and sets his journal down… He picked up a biro from our parallel. Didn't buy a history book but-. Picked up a biro from the Hall of Justice.

Practical.

"If the people we're going to see are warlock-breed, what are your people called?"

He shrugs. "Men. I take your meaning, that we are not men as your people are, but a more accurate name… Well, what would we call ourselves? Sheeda-breed? Sheeda-kin? T'would be unthinkable for most."

"Witch-breed?"

"To be a witch is to use magic, and the warlock-breed use magic more freely than we do."

I nod. "Are they Christians too, or have they left the faith?"

"I… Be unsure. Some settlements have crude buildings with crosses affixed, but… Oft times the cross is not a simple-" He makes the sign of the cross with his right forefinger. "cruciform, but has other additions. It could be meaning something else."

"Why would their buildings be cruder than yours?"

"Fewer people to work upon them and carry the knowledge, methinks. Warlocks of the first generation did oft change when they are on their own, flee on their own, and may be slow to be accepted by others of their kind even if they find them."

"How do you personally feel about warlocks and the law surrounding them?"

"I be not one who puts obedience next to godliness, but such rules as our people have exist for goodly reasons, for the most part. Warlocks do not come to be for trivial or trite reasons. But neither do I believe that any act is unforgivable, should they honestly and truly repent for it." He looks down for a moment. "How do your people deal with such crimes?"

"Depends. Most nations on Earth don't have a significant number of magic users, so there generally aren't 'separate' magic crimes. Minor magic users can generally be dealt with easily enough by the normal criminal justice system." I smile. "We've actually adapted a prison to be able to hold powerful demons who commit crimes in the material world, and so far it's working surprisingly well."

"You arrest demons?"

"What should we do, kill them? Their spirits just return to Hell to regain their strength. Binding them in a sacred place would work, but there's a history of the people guarding them suffering 'piety failures' and the maleficent entity escaping. There are pagan gods who wouldn't mind taking custody of them, but transferring prisoners from one country to serve their sentence in another is… Legally difficult."

No matter how much more sense it would make for Satanus to be bound in Tartarus than Belle Reve, Congress wants to get its money's worth. Senator Knight said that he'd revisit the issue if there were any escapes, but I think he was mostly trying to get rid of me at that point.

Themyscira has been at peace for three thousand years. Cronus has been bound in Tartarus for at least twice that. A few European ambassadors I've spoken to sounded somewhat interested, but Mr Churkin said that Russia was happy with its current arrangements. Which means they've made a pact with someone, because I've met what passes for Russia's magic corps and they're a band of barely competent ritualists. Goodness only knows what China's doing.

"You keep demons in your land because imprisoning them elsewhere gives your lawyers trouble?"

"I got a law passed which gives equal recognition to all intelligent beings. Banishing a demon that hasn't done anything else illegal is fine, but if they commit crimes then we have to punish them in the same way we would a man." I shrug. "Not my best idea."

He draws himself up slightly. "Do demons.. openly walk your lands? I confess, I was not looking for such creatures when I visited."

I think about the Praexis Demons.

"Not openly, but there are a few around. Weak ones, mostly. The stronger ones draw attention from people who can actually fight them reasonably quickly, and they struggle to manifest on Earth even with help. Is demon summoning a problem here?"

"Only twice in all our history has a warlock been condemned for treating with demons. Neither time did they go so far as to summon one bodily onto Earth. Malevolent spirits are far more common."

"How many warlocks do you actually get?"

"Perhaps one every five years, on average." He shakes his head. "Nowadays it is more likely to be small groups falling to corruption over decades, rather than one man or woman more frequently."

"But if they're doing that, why don't they just… Leave? Load a cart up with the materials to start a farm, take a team of grundymen and head off?"

"Why thinks you that they don't?" He shakes his head. "Our witch-signs tell us if a man or woman breaks their vows where they are planted, but they do not tell us what comes after or what occurs further away. If they are far away, we'd not know it."

"'By definition, we can only study failed criminals'."

He smiles faintly. "That's a fair way to put it. Though if your embassy goes well, we may prevail upon you and your comrades to look around for us."

"Is that a good idea? We wouldn't want to start a fight."

"Unless they be in league with the Sheeda. As I have told you, the warlock-breed are descendants of those who broke their vows. If there is a chancellery of malefactors elsewhere in these lands, that is a just concern."

"I suppose we could have a look around. It-."

"Oh, could-"

Ring showing nothing vision showing nothing armour construct armour.

"-you now?"

Without rising, Abednego tips his hat in the direction the voice came from.

"Pleasant evening, Mistress Butler."

"I'd not be so quick to say that."

A patch of the darkness takes a new texture as a humanoid figure appears, and -ow- I start getting meaningful returns. Rather than the grey-blue of the witch-folk, the person has skin which shades from grey to sandy yellow. They also have the Sheeda's elongated ears, and… Either heavy scarring or.. some sort of skin growth. Their forearms are long enough to reach the ground and they're broader than a normal human could be. It puts me a little in mind of Klarion's monster boy mode, but more… Unhealthy. Like he made it to a plateau of power and this 'Mistress Butler' fell well short and was left unfinished. Her clothing consists of a cloak made of reptilian skin and a dress of pale blue wool.

"But rather you than another. You and your people will be wanting an escort, I take it?"

Abednego nods. "If it will not trouble you too greatly. They have news which concerns us all."

"Aye, well." She comes a little closer, the barrier repelling her for a moment before Abednego waves his right hand to drop it. "As you have news for us, so we have news for you."

 

[Mr Zoat]

2nd May
01:43 GMT -5

Back on the cart, with Mr Yao in the back with Leonid and me and both of them not yawning. I suppose that between Russian military academy and Chinese boot camp they've become accustomed to disrupted sleep cycles. Outside the cart our surroundings flicker and fade, partially illusory and partially spatially displaced.

If any of us were actually magicians I'm sure this would be fascinating. Especially considering that their formal magic education is bound to be worse than what their oath-following kindred have.

"Mistress Butler." She turns her head to regard Mr. Yao, her neck just a little too long and too flexible when compared to human norms. "Do you know who or what it was that attacked us?"

"Something invisible, was it? You couldn't see it even when you knew it was there?"

"Saw one of them pretty well." I take the blood sample out of subspace and hold it out to her. "Tough, but not unbeatable."

"You killed one of them?"

"Probably not. Even with a nasty hole in its chest, it managed to disengage. Starfire thinks he hit something, but we couldn't pierce their illusion."

Disturbingly elongated fingers pluck the vial from my hand.

"We can use this. We may finally be able to undo their 'fluences."

Abednego glances at her. "Have your people suffered from their depravations?"

"Aye, we have. At first 'twas little more than a light touch 'pon our wards. Then people began to vanish. The first few were taken when they were alone. Then they began acting more openly, stealing our folk away in the middle of crowds, of locked rooms! What are they!?"

"We're not sure, but there's a chance that they're Sheeda. Actual Sheeda from the Land of Summer's End. The place from which Melmoth fled."

"If they seek him, they're seeking in the wrong place. Our village is nowhere near his grave."

I suppose that the Sheeda wouldn't necessarily know… No, it's the first thing someone they were torturing would say, isn't it? A truth that would make the pain stop and get their attackers to leave their family alone. 'The place you want is nowhere near here. Go there instead of here.' Did they.. just not bother asking?

"How long do they go between abductions?"

"They have no pattern."

Mr. Yao frowns. "Do your people have no military? No government which could send aid?"

She turns and bares her teeth at Abednego. "Have you told them nothing?"

"I felt it best for them to see with their own eyes."

"We were forty eight. Now we are twenty seven. We have no grundymen so raise creatures of the Sheeda to aid us."

"Is your settlement one of the larger ones?"

"We do not have so many settlements that that question has meaning. Not that I have knowledge of. If we gather in numbers his kind come to destroy us."

Abednego doesn't look around. "No pilgrim such as I stood amongst that host, Mistress Butler. You'd not tolerate me here if one did."

"Hm." I try scanning her, and the clumsily-stitched glyphs on her cloak's collar shimmer.

"What are you about!?"

"I was thinking that it shouldn't be too hard to reconfigure your body. I doubt that Columbia has fully accurate censuses. If you looked like a Sheeda-altered human rather than a warlock, it should be easy enough for your people to slip back into society."

"Fool! Altering our form with magic causes this."

Abednego shakes his head. "Nay, Mistress Butler. 'Tis the breaking of the oath and the spell bound to it that causes warlocks to change. None of your folk have sworn the oath-."

"Some have."

I frown. "Why?"

"The fools feel the guilt of their ancestors. That this is a punishment sent by God. Perhaps some hope that they may be absolved, changed back and so return to 'righteous' society."

"Can't help with God, but if all that's happening is that your Sheeda genetic characteristics are getting hyper stimulated, resetting it should be easy enough. You'll need to remove your ward, but-."

"Hah!" I think that's a genuine expression of amusement; her altered facial structures make it difficult to tell. "Is this the type of man your land breeds, who would snatch a woman's cloak from her body within minutes of meeting her!"

"Yes, because I derive most satisfaction from solving problems, and this is an eminently solvable one. Failing that, it shouldn't be too hard for us to relocate all 'warlock-breed' to another part of the planet. You'd be safe from the Columbians there, at least for a few centuries."

"And what do you want in return?"

"Technically, nothing. I'd do it without asking anything in return. We would like information on the Sheeda, examples of their physiology and technology and any leads you have on who it was that attacked us, but if you refused us I'd still try to help you anyway."

She regards me cautiously for a few moments.

"We are hunters and farmers. We know little of the Sheeda. Any help I could give you, you could get better elsewhere. The witch-man's people could help you more."

"I said I'd help for nothing, and you think I might take that back because you're offering something?"

"And the other villages could offer you more. One… They try to study magics that are forbidden. I have not tried to confront them because I lack the power, but if our attackers are warlock-breed who found some way to change themselves further, that is where I would look."

Mr. Yao nods.

"We shall enquire with them once we have seen to your people's needs. If-."

The cart appears on the bank of a small river, a crudely-built town just ahead of us. No paving here, and I suspect that if we were in the rainy part of the local year the streets would be a quagmire. Ghostly lights illuminate the buildings, which are a mixture; wattle and daub walls are the most common, though some appear to be tents with leather in place of canvas. Some have roofs crudely made from bundles of branches and others use what looks like segments of the shell of giant beetles. As for the people, Mistress Butler appears to be an average representative. Some are closer to human norms, with a signature mutation or two. I see one man with standard puritan dress who could pass in Columbia if not for the strange tentacle-like structures which emerge from his head. The most extreme example has all of Mistress Butler's mutations, as well as compound eyes, fangs and a single dragonfly wing emerging from their back.

"Aye, not a pretty sight, are we?"

"I've seen worse."

"I'faith, if my brother and sister witch-hunters saw these people as we do now, I believe there would be less animosity between us." Abednego pulls on the reins and the horses come to a halt. "If it please you, Mistress Butler, take us to the site of one of the disappearances. Even my more fanatical brethren would say that the presence of true Sheeda should be my priority."

 

[Mr Zoat]

2nd May
01:50 GMT -5

"This is a maggot pit."

It's a maggot pit.

A hundred and thirty three Sheeda maggots writhe at the bottom of a steep-walled pit as a local youth throws the chopped entrails of various local animals down to them. The maggots orientate on them at once, squirming towards them. The youth has skin of a shade of deep pink that I've never seen on a human, and his fangs are so pronounced that they jut out from his mouth top and bottom. He's also really thin, though I'm not sure if that's a mutation or just his build.

Or malnutrition.

"What happens when they reach maturity?"

"They don't." He raises his right hand, a witch-sign glimmering between his fingers. He swipes it over the rim of the maggot-pit, and as it swings I see the invisible signs branded on the 'foreheads' of each of the maggots illuminated by its ethereal light. "We bind them to this form as we in turn are bound."

"And what do you get out of them?"

"Maggot milk."

I blink. "And you..? Drink it?"

He looks at me like I'm an idiot. "No, good sir. It's a resin. We use it to keep the water from our homes and our boat."

I nod and.. look away from the maggot pile as they pull the offal into their mouths. Aside from the other four pits I can't see any other pastoral areas. They've tried to keep as much of the tree cover from the surrounding areas as possible, and the sloped sides of the gully we're in create a canopy of greenery which will probably make this place dim even in the day.

"Mistress Butler mentioned other farm animals?"

"We let them roam. We couldn't feed the live ones close to the village, and the dead ones we keep for times of direst need."

I look at the giant undead cricket-spider that's staring off towards the village edge. I suppose that being hunted by the Sheeda is a pretty good example of a dire emergency.

"Do the maggots react to the intruders?"

"No reaction I could ken. Though they are maggots, sirrah."

Fair point. Not like they're about to start singing. Still, I can scan them and their undead fellow Sheeda creatures without difficulty, and I've found something jolly interesting. There are segments of their genetic material which are shared, completely identical between each type of Sheeda creature and the warlock-breed but not the Columbians. But I'm not completely sure what it actually does. It looks like it creates a protein which absorbs contaminants in the blood stream to aid the liver in filtering them out into the waste system… But the physiology of a maggot is radically different to the physiology of a giant insect. I'd assume that it's engineered in, but there are several ways to create something that would be better at the job. And they also share chunks of non-coding DNA whose purpose I can't decipher.

I suppose if Melmoth was just breeding naturally… Or raping the women in his power for the fun of it, he wouldn't check which parts were transmitted due to a lack of genetic technology or a lack of desire. But they're active in all warlock-kind, whatever their physical mutations.

"Tell me, do the physical changes you possess relate to those of your parents?"

"My mother shared my teeth, sirrah. But if there's a pattern beyond that, I see it not."

They don't run in families, but there are definite commonalities of style. The same things are mutated, and in only so many ways. They're not just getting animal parts randomly grafted on or having their bodies twisted like they were plasticine in the hands of a cruel child. There's some purpose at work here.

I sigh inwardly. But I think it's a purpose that requires a team of biomancers to understand.

"Did you grow up around here?"

"Somewhat close to here. Then the witch-hunters came, and their.. fire."

Ah.

"I'm sorry to hear that."

He snorts a humourless laugh. "'Tis our lot in life. Neither our mannish forebears nor our Sheeda forebears have any love for us, and most warlocks don't either."

"I'm-." I frown. "People like yourself, or first generation warlocks?"

"Both. I have only seen a warlock once, and he and his grundymen hurried through here without stopping. They felt only contempt for us. I could taste it."

"Literally or metaphorically?"

"Literally, though his scowl made his mind plain." He shrugs. "I taste it with my eyes."

"By spell, or an innate ability?"

Another shrug. "I don't use witch-sign, but maybe there is some other kind of magic? May I take my leave, sirrah?"

"Oh. Of course."

He turns and strides away, which-. He's been feeling my avarice. That… Must be uncomfortable. And if he's just feeling that it's there, he might not see what it is that I want.

I give him time to get away, then walk away from the pit and back towards Mistress Butler's home. Two rooms and a dirt floor, though the glyphs around the wall work to keep out moisture. Along with the maggot milk, presumably. There's a saw propped up against the outside wall, and it isn't made of metal. It couldn't be; they have no way to mine iron or copper and trade with the Columbians isn't possible. And stealing would be entirely too risky. Instead, this saw is made from part of a macro-insectoid's body. A foreleg, I think, with glyphs carved into it to extend its lifespan.

The door is open so I wander inside, where Abednego, Mistress Butler and Leonid are looking over a crude map. They look around as they hear me approach.

"We need actual researchers. I think there's something revealing going on, but I don't have the skills to study it."

Abednego raises his eyebrows very slightly. "Oh?"

"I'm not a magician. I can recognise some things based on what I've studied, but if someone's done something genuinely original there's no direct way for me to study it. Unless someone wants to go warlock while I watch so I can see exactly what happens."

"What is it that you have found?"

"There are certain characteristics of the body common to warlock-breed and all Sheeda creatures that I've been able to examine. It's not in people like yourself, or completely Sheeda-free humans like Starfire or me."

"Be it in the grundymen?"

I nod. "Yes. It's probably why branding works. Have you ever tried to brand a warlock?"

"No. Pistol shot is my preference for such as they."

"Do you know if it works?"

He shakes his head. "It has not occurred to any who would put it to paper to try. And I'll not be expecting the warlock-breed to volunteer for such treatment any more than I would turn myself warlock to assuage your curiosity."

I nod. "Mistress Butler, would your people mind our magicians coming here?"

"Now?"

"No, not right away. We only brought one with us and he's busy at the moment. It will be several months from now. And in the mean time… Would you like me to do some work on your town?"

 

[Mr Zoat]

2nd May
02:23 GMT -5

"Wards still alright?"

Mistress Butler cautiously nods as she taps her right foot on the tarmac which now covers the village's main road.

"What be this made of?"

"Concrete, bitumen and small stones. It'll hold up to repeated impacts and water no problem."

Once it became clear that Mistress Butler wasn't fleeing a war party, most of the locals went back to sleep. Right up until the village around them turned orange.

I know it's more efficient for me to badger people into doing research that will improve our knowledge of the universe and open up new technological possibilities, but there's something I find really satisfying about building things. It's like how I always tried to capture buildings in Command and Conquer even when it wasn't efficient to do so. It's not a good idea for me to spend my time like this, but it's… Nice, when I get the opportunity to do so.

Mr. Yao smiles as I lower my rings. "If you are finished, we have our next objective."

I nod. "The original settlement or the Sheeda-ites?"

"The Sheeda-ites. The identity of our attackers is a more urgent concern than studying their history."

I nod. "Right you are. Are we getting back on the cart, or can we fly now?"

He turns away. "Get in the cart, Orange Lantern."

I stride after him. "How about if I fly straight up and then straight down again? The spells can't confuse my mind if I don't use it."

"What would happen if someone tried that to get to Themyscira?"

"The spells around Themyscira obscure it from detection until you're right on top of it. If you get close anyway they generate a sudden storm, but if you tough that out you can get there safely. That's how Herakles managed it."

"These spells were put in place by the gods of Themyscira?"

"By the five goddesses who are their patrons, yes. And yes, I know that they're going to work better than thousands of badly maintained spells put in place by badly trained humans, but that's why I think I can probably bypass them."

"And warn our targets that you have that ability."

I raise my hands. "You're in charge, Physician. If you want to travel by cart, we're travelling by cart." I walk towards-. "Oh. Mistress Butler, you haven't had anyone who wants to risk me altering them to human physiological norms, have you?"

"No, I have not. And having heard you say that you know naught of magic, I doubt that folk will be."

"Alright, but remember that the offer was made."

"Yes." She looks around at her reformatted village. "I think I will be long forgetting this."

The cart rocks slightly as Leonid lands, while I just float over the side and land lightly. Mr. Yao climbs in from the rear while Mistress Butler and Abednego take position at the front. I could improve the village as long as I left anything with a glyph on it unchanged, but this whole cart is covered in them. I couldn't even add tyres. I mean, it's got leaf springs, so it's not as bad as what the Amazons use, but it's not exactly an easy or comfortable ride.

"Onwards, my boys."

Abednego doesn't bother with the reins this time. The horses clop forward, apparently untroubled by the novel road surface or the fact that I was performing transmutations directly in front of them. But I suppose that they were raised in a society of magic users.

Leonid leans forward. "Mistress Butler? How much contact have you had with the people we are visiting?"

"Nothing for eight years. Five years ago a warlock came though here and asked for directions, but we have seen neither hide nor hair of him since."

"What.. part of the year five years ago?"

We exit the town and.. our surroundings begin blurring again.

"What import is it?"

"Given that warlocks are uncommon, I imagine that he'd just become a warlock and other people had been aware of it. Particularly given that he had functioning grundymen with him."

Abednego glances back at me before returning his attention to the pathway.

"That does not necessarily follow. Between here and the land to which Melmoth brought us there are like as not a great many unhallowed bodies."

Leonid frowns. "That was five hundred years ago. Should they not have rotted by now?"

"No. Our bodies do not decay, but rather ripen after our deaths. Our grundymen have far greater strength in death than they did in life."

"I assumed that was…" He looks at me. "I don't know the English. Hysterical strength?"

"Hysterical strength."

"Yes, hysterical strength."

"I be not certain what that is, but I be confident that is not what it is."

"Yes, those Sheeda traits that Columbians don't have in life become active in death." Ugh. "Maybe I could ask Natasa to come here to study the process? I don't know any pure non-sacred necromancers."

"Sacred necromancers?"

"Not Christian-sacred. Pagan-sacred." I frown. "I mean, I do know some Christian magicians… But one's a papist and the other's a werewolf."

Who surprisingly got in touch with me via the Justice League to find out if I knew where John Constantine had gotten to. Given what Brother Chalice did to him during that whole Nameless Beast mess I was surprised that he cared. I mean, yes, werewolf battle monk. If he'd been seriously annoyed he'd probably have eaten John…

"And neither of them are necromancers."

"In Russia, we have werebears."

And that goes on the slate. Along with finding Cyrus Gold's corpse and seeing if he's got Sheeda blood in him.

Mr. Yao looks thoughtful. "Mister Abednego, will you need to conceal yourself when we arrive? If they study forbidden magic and harbour warlocks, they will not welcome you."

"Nay, Physician. My dress is not so outlandish that they would comment, unless I brandish my pistols. If they ask, tell them that I am a guide."

"As you will. Mistress Butler, please tell us what you can of their people and home."

 

[Mr Zoat]

2nd May
02:57 GMT -5

"You know, I think I need to tell Batman about this."

Leonid frowns faintly. "Yes. He will want a full report."

"No, no, I mean…" I stamp my right foot twice. "The cart. He likes to be fully prepared at all times, but at no point in our training were we stuck in a cart for hours. Hey Abednego, the booby trap spells you were talking about. Do they go underground?"

"They do not. The maggots do, but the spells do not."

"If we negotiate a settlement of some kind, I'll build you a tunnel network before we leave."

"I think perhaps that no agreement could be wide-reaching enough for that to be-."

The blurred landscape around us winks out, replaced by a dull blue emptiness. The runes on the cart ignite, radiating out of the wood and metal with enough intensity that I blink and try to look away. Abednego and Mistress Butler have witch-signs in hand, and the tone of Mr. Yao's humming has changed.

"Cunning." Abednego's signs shift, twisting and moving. "'Tis a while since I have seen such a thing."

I consider asking what happened, but it's best to let them work through… Whatever just happened. I could offer to help, but Mr. Yao knows what I can do and will ask if he thinks it would be useful while the other two don't know how their magic interacts with my constructs. Leonid looks at me curiously, but I shrug and shake my head.

Mistress Butler glares at the nothingness. "A wrinkle in the fabric of the world. Warp and weft twisted aside-."

"I be having the gist of it, Mistress Butler. I pray you have patience."

MALEVOLENCE.

Oh.

"Did anyone else feel that?"

Abednego nods. "They're not so foolhardy as to let things like that into the world, but they'll bait a line with us if it stays in the river."

A vaguely… Cone-shaped distortion is.. growing larger. I'd say 'in the distance', but I've got nothing to use to judge scale by. Construct armour and charge an energy pulse.

Mr. Yao looks at my left hand with concern.

"I'm not shooting it, I'm just getting-"

Our surroundings… Bubble, patches of rocky scrubland appearing and vanishing in an uneven mess-.

The springs screech as the cart drops onto the stony ground, wherever we were vanishing back to wherever it was. Mistress Butler staggers off the front board to touch the ground and even the taciturn Abednego looks relieved.

"Was that..?" Leonid looks mildly bewildered. "Bad..?"

"Yes it was." Abednego nods. "Yes it surely was. Though I suppose to one who knows naught of magic it would merely seem-."

I release my blast, the giant mosquito shimmering into being and being torn apart by the orange energy! A warbling note from Mr. Yao highlights another two, which swiftly join their colleague in oblivion as Leonid leaps from the cart and pulverises them with his fists!

The witch-signs etched into their carapace fade and fail as they bleed out, and I start scanning. Yes, Sheeda creatures, the signature biological markers are all there.

"Hid in the eddies of the spell." Abednego nods. "Cunning. Mayhap this is their perimeter watch, and they will bear us no malice?"

I spin out filaments, running them along every surface and up into the air-.

I grip and pull an object unseen but still tangible.

"GAH!"

Orange light grips a humanoid outline and slams them to the ground as Abednego steps up and thrusts a burning witch-sign to their face, particles of illusion flaking away and revealing… Black armour, in a shape nearly but not quite human.

Abednego lifts his brand away and steps back.

"We do not come here for war, but you'll not find us lacking."

"Aye, witch-man, you being here while we are at our weakest is the devil's mischief alone."

"You live far from our towns and villages and we know little of you. Even should I want to, I could not act on knowledge of you I do not have. Pray tell, what malefactor is it which afflicts you? For you are far from the only afflicted in these lands."

I lean closer to Leonid. "I could see through that. Our attacker's concealment was much better."

He nods, keeping his eyes on the newcomer. "Yes. I could feel the wing-beat of the insects. And I think Physician could hear them."

Mistress Butler steps up beside Abednego. "Speak, girl. I know Abednego as I knew his master; he bears us no malice."

The helmet turns our way. "And what of them?"

"W-."

"Yes, we are here to help as well."

As he kneels down and hums at her I remember that Physician is in charge of this, and bite down my intended introduction. I've got out of the habit of acting under someone else's direction in the field. On team missions I lead a squad, and when I work independently I direct myself. I.. don't think I like this, but I suppose that if I wanted a Justice League slot then I should have handled Nabu differently.

Avoiding the mild irritation wouldn't be worth it.

"That-." The figure in armour shakes slightly as Mr. Yao's pitch changes, and then a degree of tension leaves them. "Thank you."

"Please. We came here because we wish to fight the Sheeda, who threaten our world with a Harvest fleet. When it comes, we will have to fight millions of invaders. We must learn all that we can of them before that occurs. If you do not trust our word, at least believe that we are interested in our own people's wellbeing."

"They're here."

"By that, do you mean 'right here'-?"

"They came to our village months ago. We thought they were outcasts as we are, but the creatures of the Sheeda obeyed them more readily than they ever obeyed us. We should have-." She snarls, then pulls herself upright. "They wanted to know about Melmoth, about our history. Seemed to be a natural enough thing to question. We showed them the Old Town. I did not myself see… What happened, but my-. They got into one of Melmoth's armouries. Took his weapons for themselves and announced that we would be their slaves in the name of their Queen."

Yes! They're actual Sheeda!

"Those who resisted or fled, they slew. Our only freedom comes from when they hunt for others."

Mistress Butler scowls.

"And what do they do with them?"

"They do not invite us to join them. But we do hear the screams."

Abednego nods. "I wonder, child, how it is that you escaped to be here?"

"I did not. I hoped to find something I could trade to them."

"So that they might leave your people in peace?"

"So I could become more like them. Strong and powerful, not an ignorant savage living in a forest."

There's a moment of silence.

"If you help us kill them, I can augment you using their corpses."

Mr Yao, Mistress Butler and Abednego turn their heads to look at me.

"What? I can."

 

[Mr Zoat]

2nd May
03:09 GMT -5

The trees are dead as we approach the pro-warlock settlement. Still tall, still solid to the touch, but there's not a leaf on their branches and their bark has.. taken on an almost… Varnished appearance. I'd ask what the heck happened, but we're moving into contact and I don't want to make unnecessary noise.

My preparations for our second encounter are taking most of my attention. My armour's kinetic barrier has been redesigned to reduce the noise it generates when it touches things to near nothing. That cost me its ability to absorb kinetic attacks, but the Sheeda didn't really use those last time so I think it's reasonable. I ran out of internal space for the phasing and invisibility systems I usually use and the next-best replacements wouldn't work well together, so I decided to switch invisibility for active camouflage that's merely good. Entropic weaponry doesn't exactly have a counter… Well, it does, but you have to know exactly how the person shooting you is accessing the Bleed and I don't.

The next best thing is messing up their target acquisition system. Which is what phasing, camouflage and… Dodging are for. In addition to that, a layered plasma shield where the charged gas films are interspersed with layers of vacuum tends to slow down the rate at which it chews through the target. Doesn't really work well with the phasing or the camouflage, but if they've got exotic target acquisition or anti-phasing technology or magic I expect to find out quickly and switch over.

I've also done something that I wanted to avoid doing and implanted my rings inside my body, with one in my chest and the other in my skull. My fingers have glowing pieces of plastic on them instead. A head shot… I'm not completely confident in my ability to survive one. Then again, I'm not confident of their ability to survive me, either.

Leonid said that he was just going to use his own speed for defence. It's not.. a terrible approach, assuming that he can hurt them. Mr. Yao also declined my help, while the magic users have done something.. unsettling-looking with the blood sample I offered them. They're flickering in and out of visibility now, just… Visually merging with their surroundings.

On the far side of the tree line the bare earth starts. The wraith that I think is Abednego takes the lead, and… A shimmering path over the hard-packed soil appears. I drift along it, noting the difference in philosophy as I go.

Mistress Butler's people hide under the canopy, minimising their footprint and using concealment magics. These people clearly don't care about hiding. This is landscaping for fortification: to better enable them to fight potential attackers. They're not hiding at all. Not from a visual inspection at least; I can't speak for their magic efforts. And the wall at the top of the earth slope is made with… Flesh. Beetle shell and beetle meat, human bones and ligaments, wood… All magically preserved and fortified. They drew the runes with artfully arranged veins, and in my rear view camera I can see Leonid glower.

Pretty big wall, and our girl from the inside -who's bound, gagged and blindfolded and geased against using magic for about four hours according to Abednego and is very definitely being kept on the outside- said that her people aren't doing their usual patrols. Their Sheeda overlords didn't order it today, and they've been doing the stupid-evil thing of killing people who try to be helpful when they weren't ordered to be. Still, I'm a little nervous to be floating my head above the parapet, but I'm following the shimmering 'safe' path…

Head-mounted camera shows no activity, and between optic camouflage and my wards I should be pretty hard to see. And.. over I go, up and… Down. Not touching the ground but floating just over it using my kinetic belt.

The buildings are made of… Not sure. It looks like macro insect shell, but crafted with far more skill than the roofs of Mistress Butler's village. Purpose-grown house insects, or perhaps force-grown after their death? Another subject that will be interesting to study at leisure.

Their windows even look like insect eyes. I mean, they're not; I checked. But in the white dwarf's half-light it would be easy to imagine. The individual houses are fairly large and solidly constructed and I can see a few that have been destroyed with vehemence. The carapace is melted and the building sagged before rehardening, the eye-window holes empty and… Yes, the bodies left where they fell.

No Sheeda in sight as yet. No Sheeda insect mounts. Just a shimmering path from the blood-seeking spell Abednego and Mistress Butler cast, leading further into town. Nowhere else to go.

I'm… Getting vision on the town folks. Some of them, anyway. A few who feel brave enough to move through the streets, more sheltering in their homes. Their mutations are more uniform; human or waif proportions, thin limbs and short tentacles projecting from areas of dull green skin. That can't be chance. I think they've learned to at least somewhat control their changes. That could be invaluable for the others.

The blood-path is leading towards… Not the largest building, but one which holds the relics the locals excavated from Melmoth's former home. A sensible enough place for them to make their base of operations. No idea if any survivors from amongst those abducted from Mistress Butler's village are held there, but after killing the Sheeda we can look for them at our leisure.

The door to the landing area is open-.

There's a giant fly that's looking very dead. Tougher looking than the other Sheeda-insects that I've seen, yet somewhat… Bleached? Plus the burns from-. From Leonid's energy blasts. If I'm reading its physiology correctly, it would have lived long enough for a short flight… I don't think we're close to where we encountered the Sheeda, but the locals have shown the ability to reanimate Sheeda creatures. Perhaps its rider kept it going?

The other two giant flies are stabled, troughs of meat paste being rapidly emptied by their proboscises. They've also got the same slightly-bleached look, so I'm going to assume that's what 'Feed Me' does to them. The glyphs inscribed on their carapaces are still there, though, so it didn't drain their magic… Unless they're so innately magical that all I'm seeing is the altered colour. Scanning them is a risk. Shooting them dead… I would expect a magic-focused civilisation to have riders bound to their mounts in some way, so that would tell them that they need to be on the alert.

There's a door here to the interior, and I can see though the external windows that there's light inside. Phase through or try opening it? There are risks-.

A shadowy man figure peels away from a patch of darkness and passes his right hand over the door frame. I don't see a glyph, but a moment later the door retracts and Abednego disappears again.

Good show. Of course, I'm not going to assume that was sufficient to stop whoever is inside from detecting that the door was opened.

I float inside, putting a little more speed into it. Yes, this looks like some sort of military barracks. Wide corridor, thicker walls, bunks…

I can hear something.

The shimmering path leads onwards and left. The sound is coming from the right. No words, just objects moving against each other.

No. Follow the path.

The building isn't huge; this isn't a particularly big settlement and wouldn't have much use for an inner keep. If the witch-hunters got this far then they weren't going to be stopping. It's only about twenty metres further where the path takes me into… A room with… Pits, about two metres by seventy centimetres, filled with… Pale green gas. Fog. I can't see into them any significant depth and I'm not sure how far down they go. The shimmering path leads to one.

I float over to it and look down. I guess that my attacker is in there. Cleaning? Medical? Some sort of healing pit? I dimly remember the Sheeda in the comic using something a bit like this to travel through time, and… Wasn't there a cauldron?

If this is for healing, now seems like an excellent time to assimilate a Sheeda. But I need to confirm this Sheeda's location as well as the locations of the others before kicking anything off.

I float away from the pit, getting a mild frown from Leonid as I do so. Yes, I know we're following the path to our destination but the target isn't here. I look at Mr. Tao, and he nods and gestures to the exit. I float-.

"MRAAAAAAAAAGHHHHuuuugggghh…"

I don't remember the Sheeda particularly caring about the infliction of pain per se, but they certainly don't care about the wellbeing of their guests.

I turn to Mr Tao, who nods and motions for me to investigate, along with-. Ugh, those two puritan-shaped blurs. He then points to himself and Leonid and the pit. Right, makes sense. I'm pretty sure that Leonid can kill anything he can get his hands on, and neither of them have invisibility. If fighting starts they can catch us up.

I trigger my phasing system and fly in the direction of the scream.

 

[Mr Zoat]

2nd May
03:16 GMT -5

The first bunkroom is just that: a bunk room.

The second is also a bunkroom, but this time it's occupied. Warlock-breed lie on the beds, eyes staring blankly at the ceiling. They appear to be wearing… Whatever the Sheeda picked them up wearing. No… Obvious-. Ah, a neck clamp of some sort. Presumably holding them in near-total paralysis, 'near-total' because I can just about see them struggling to breathe. Storage for whatever they're planning on doing with them? I'll come back once the Sheeda are dealt with.

The third room is also a bunkroom. And a mortuary. Or.. possibly meat storage. I don't remember whether the Sheeda had any particular problem with cannibalism. The bodies have been mutilated, cut open and… Parts removed. There the flesh has been stripped from the left side of the skull, which in turn has been opened to allow the removal of parts of the brain. Next to that unfortunate a rib cage has been opened up and the lungs and liver are missing. The rest are in worse condition still. I'm not sure which part of this world the victims came from. I can't see any mutated parts, but I'd have to check their genes with an active scan to be certain.

Why be selective? There's no way they have the facilities to analyse arcane physiology like this here. Are they removing them? Planning on taking them back to the future for some reason? I'd consider it as taking hunting trophies if there was any rhyme or reason to the parts they were taking. Donation? I wouldn't think so, and the remains here certainly seem… Fresh enough.

"Mamuraghahhhhhhhhh…"

I phase through the wall in the direction of the noise.

Two figures in bleached armour are standing next to a warlock-breed who is strapped to a mobile platform. The one on the left is holding some sort of beetle, which is chewing through their victim's right arm. No, chewing though connective tissue, like a scalpel with mandibles. It looks like the warlock-breed has.. some sort of exoskeleton growth? And it's being peeled away in sections. Other pieces of skin have already been removed, and laid out on a… On an organic frame, which appears to be supplying them with a green fluid in place of blood from a slowly-beating bladder at the base.

"We are fortunate with this one."

"Melmoth's loss is our gain."

"Come now. This would not have bought him back into her good graces."

They're both fully armoured but I can only see their side arms. And as far as I can tell they're both looking at their victim. Who's still conscious, but no longer able to make noise due to the damage to his throat.

"Nor would it us. I am concerned about the Lantern."

They ride giant insects and their surgical tool is an insect. That skin loom thing looks… If not 'alive' then at least biological. Is their armour alive as well?

"Why? This world is far from Earth."

"If the profligates have Lanterns, that implies that they are close to freeing themselves from Earth. If that is true, then this harvest-."

Left glares at right. "Do not speak it."

"As you insist. But you understand-?"

Left returns his attention to his victim. "An alternative would be preferable in any case. Something that gets us out of the sun. Events merely emphasise the importance of-" With a tug a section of carapace comes free, and it gets attached to the frame. "-our work here."

"Melmoth's work here. It is unfortunate that he is dead. It would be enlightening to question him."

"I will trust Melmoth to remain dead when the Queen eats his still-living body, and not a moment before. I suspect that we will find his trail once we move on."

"The leg, you think?"

"The fleshborer thinks not. The taint of summer's dawning is too great for it to have use to us."

"It is well-intact."

"We have no need for revenants. These people are broken. It would serve no purpose, even as a distraction, and our flies are well-fed."

"It seems so wasteful. We could create a true reclamation vat."

"I did not volunteer for this duty in order to 'recycle responsibly'. For this brief time we may be as profligate as our ancestors. I suggest that you enjoy it, for it will not come again."

"The Queen's order-."

"Applies under the vampire sun, yes. But we are no longer there. And her commandments relating to Earth do not apply, for we are not there."

"True. But if we are to be profligate, may we not do so properly? The larger settlements are more likely to have treasures worth plundering."

"Alas, we are bound to our task. Still… It would not hurt to acquire specimens from there also."

"And food, and drink."

"If you wish to be violently ill, be my guest. We are not as our ancestors were."

Left shrugs and gestures to his victim's throat with the beetle.

"A simple fix. I could take his tongue and temporarily replace my own. That would grant me the taste."

"If you could make it function, which is not a certainty."

"I would have many attempts."

"Perhaps. We must process our current cull first. Then if Anarawd has not stirred himself there would be no harm in it."

Left raises his beetle.

"May he rest well and true."

He moves it towards his victim's throat-.

I take an x-ionised blade out of subspace and send it at his throat!

He reacts a fraction of a second before it hits, catching the blade on a neck-ring rather than the seam I aimed for as he turns aside and tries to crouch. The construct holding the blades registers the hit, but his head remains lamentably on his shoulders. He backpedals while his colleague draws his gun and fades from view.

I drop the blade and open fire with a mixed volley of crumbler and phasic rounds at the one who went invisible, while the other gets an orange energy pulse as I move around the room. An entropic beam punches a hole through the wall where I was a moment before, and some equipment is knocked back as my railgun rounds hit something. The orange energy pulse wrecks the other Sheeda's side arm and it-

"E-h."

-stumbles as the gun's power cell detonates against its leg.

Then Abednego steps out of its shadow and jams a witch-sign through its helmet's eye, causing it to freeze up as the sigil shudders! Railgun rounds clearly unreliable I switch to a beam singularity and fire an arc across the origin point for the entropic ray. The Sheeda fades back into visibility, my beam having caught him across the hips and sliced him in two. He's still alive and he's dropped his gun, but he's bleeding freely and from his limpness I see that he's not long for this world.

I send out filaments and stop the bleeding, then reach into his soul.

"Brand."

His torso spasms, his eyes snap open and flare orange-.

His body collapses, decaying into flakes of dust that I turn my sensors up to maximum to try and analyse… No, I'm not getting anything helpful. I know what ash looks like.

Abednego's opponent appears to have a similar reaction to his witch-sign; his eyes flare white as Abednego steps away and-.

Dust again.

Damn it-!

No, can't worry about it. I remove the severed tissue from the frame, press it into the wounds of the vivisection victim and take out a purple healing ray.

 

[Mr Zoat]

2nd May
03:27 GMT -5

Anarawd sticks his head up through the mist, then freezes.

Mr. Yao nods politely. "Greetings, Anarawd."

A shift in the position of his right shoulder suggests that he's reaching for something.

I raise a construct autocannon. Abednego holds two pistols at the ready. Leonid brings his energy blasts to the 'ready to fire' status.

"I would advise you to think very carefully before doing anything precipitous."

Anarawd relaxes his shoulder, then raises his hands. I note that he's not wearing the armour his comrades were, meaning that I'm getting my first good look at a Sheeda. His nails are inch-long claws and his fingers are just slightly longer than those of normal humans. His skin is bone-white, and the tips of his ears extend to the level of the top of his head which is shaved but for a top-knot. A thin decorative tattoo has been stencilled across his forehead and his eyes are a gloss black in iris and sclera.

"Thank you. I was not certain that Sheeda could surrender."

"Huuuuuman."

"I am the Accomplished Perfect Physician. Would you like a hand out?"

The Sheeda's eyes narrow. "You will die."

Mr. Yao nods. "Yes, someday. But not today, and not by your hand."

Anarawd considers for a moment, then puts his hands on the edge of the pit and pulls himself out. Stronger than a baseline human would be with arms that thin. He's still wearing a pair of pants, and there's an unpleasant-looking knife strapped to the belt. He doesn't resist as Leonid relieves him of it.

"Do you have my colleagues?"

"I regret to inform you that they are dead."

"Then.. I am your prisoner." He brings his wrists together in front of him. "What will you do with me?"

"You will be interrogated at length. We know that there is a harvest fleet due to return to the present. This will be the final Harrowing."

Abednego places manacles around Anarawd's wrists, locking his entire forearms together. He then kneels to lock looser chains around Anarawd's ankles before standing and looking the Sheeda over.

"The terror of my forebears. 'Tis a strange thing to see you in the flesh. Do you know what Melmoth had planned for us, or are you ignorant of his aims?"

"I am not of the High-Born. Whatever schemes Dark Melmoth had in mind, he would not have stooped to tell me." His eyes narrow slightly. "And if you have slain my colleagues, you must have some idea of what we are doing. And if you know of the Harrowing, you must know something of what my Queen has planned. I am uncertain of what knowledge you hope to gain from me."

Mr. Yao nods. "And uncertain you may stay. Mister Abednego, can you secure this prisoner?"

"Aye, though it is not our common practice."

"You have a common practice for Sheeda?"

"Aye." He nods. "We have slain every Sheeda we have ever fought. T'was but one before today, but we were thorough with it." He puts his right hand firmly upon Anarawd's left shoulder. "And I would consider it no bad thing to add another Sheeda to that tally, so tempt me not."

He pushes Anarawd, and the Sheeda begins walking where Abednego indicates.

Leonid and I turn to Mr. Yao.

"What now, boss?"

"Orange Lantern, please inform the surviving people of this town that the Sheeda are dead. If there is some connection to their world and era, try to discover it. If they have physicians, ask that they come at once to assist Mistress Butler. Starfire, please pick up the young woman who aided us and bring her here so that Mister Abednego can unbind her."

"Sir, she said that she wanted to become like the Sheeda. Are you certain that we should release her?"

"That will be up to the people of this town. We are not here to set this world to rights."

Leonid nods, and we turn to walk towards the exit.

"I'll have to test how effective this armour is later."

"They did not detect you. I would say that it was effective." He grimaces. "That was disgusting."

"Your first time seeing mass murder?"

"Yes, thankfully." He shakes his head. "We are shown pictures. We see the remains of the dead that are recovered in the field to try to reduce how it shocks us. But to pin a man, a woman or a child to a bench and then cut them apart with a beetle… That is not the same thing as dying in battle." We reach the courtyard in silence. "It was not your first time?"

"My first time was after Klarion split the world. I don't know if you heard the interview, but I spent some time removing the bodies of children whose aircraft crashed."

"The League asked you to?"

"No, it just needed doing, and since I can't be traumatised like a normal person anymore I thought it was best if I did it. Diana still needed to bench me after I went into a fugue at the sheer senselessness of it."

I look over to where the flies are continuing to eat, blissfully ignorant of what's going on around them.

"The gordanians I marooned?" He nods. "They used implanted bombs to keep their prisoners in line. I've seen recordings of what the psions did to their prisoners; recordings made by the psions themselves for entertainment purposes. I've seen recordings of Spider Guilders eating the crews of entire ships alive, and I've seen the Reach drug entire planetary populations into executing each other." I shrug. "We deal with these things so that other people don't have to."

"How fortunate for us."

"Would you prefer it if we weren't?"

"No, I suppose not."

I shrug. "I'm afraid that all too often this is what the job is about. You… Find a pile of bodies and deal with it as best you can. I'm sorry, but I'm not really… Shockable in the way that most people are. I can get Lantern Gardner to talk to you if you like. Or… I think Robin's encountered a few things like this if that would be easier."

"No, I… Think that I will talk to my priest, when we return. And… Perhaps I will request a leave of absence."

I nod. "Quite reasonable, under the circumstances. But… Look, I know that the Russian government wants you to graduate to the Justice League eventually. This… Is unusual, but-."

"But I will see it again. And again." He looks at the ground for a few moments. "Yes. Yes, I understand. This is the job that we take on."

He rises into the air, and flies back towards the dead forest.

Right then!

I fly upwards and generate giant sonic projectors and cinema screens showing my face.

"Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, it is my great pleasure to announce that your Sheeda domitors are either dead or in custody. Your town is no longer under their control. Would anyone with medical knowledge please report to the barrack building. Would the town mayor or other civil leader please report to the barrack building for a full debriefing. Would anyone with an immediate security concern please report it to the glowing orange man. Would anyone…"

 

[Mr Zoat]

2nd May
09:29 GMT -5

"O-h."

I smile at my interviewee. "Mister Rathaway, please, come in."

"Ah… Right."

The young man comes into the office I'm using in the Weatherly Building on Sullivan Street, Metropolis, just about managing to avoid catching his briefcase in the door as he closes it. While the charity Lex set up to handle this sort of thing generally conducts interviews -such as they are- by video link or on-site visit, it has nonetheless proved sensible to actually have somewhere physical in which to base operations. And to allow the occasional meeting with someone who… Is between workspaces.

"Mister Rathaway, thank you for coming." He's standing a little way away with his briefcase clasped like a shield. "Would you like to..? Take a seat?"

"Thank-thank you." He stiffly comes forward to sit in front of my desk, running his right hand through his hair. "Sorry, I just… Wasn't expecting you-. To-to do the interview personally."

"Oh, I usually don't. But I like to stick my nose in to things I'm attached to every so often, just to check what's going on. And unlike my fan mail, I can't outsource this to the genomorphs."

"You.. outsource fan mail?"

"Flash probably could handle all of his if he really wanted to, but for someone like me it's just not possible. So I could either ignore it, set up some sort of automatic boilerplate letter, or have my in-house hive mind write what I'd have written if I'd read it."

"Huh. Yeah, I guess that makes sense. I mean-."

"So while I didn't actually write your reply, I did check it before taking this meeting, and I'm very glad that you took g-dwarf four seven eight's advice." I gesture to him with both hands. "So why don't you show me your work?"

He nods, still visibly off-balance, and lays his briefcase on the desk before popping the catches and opening it up.

"I was born deaf. I've got-" He turns his head to the left, reaching up with his right hand to pull his hair back from his ear and revealing a small scar. "-an implant now, but I was wearing a hearing aid in elementary school." I nod, and he drops his hand and faces me again. "Getting.. the implant… Growing up having to plug myself in when I wanted to hear anything, that made me very interested in how sound works, and all of the applications it has. Sound has an emotional impact on people, not just in… Reminding them of things, but in actually… Reliably, measurably affecting their mental state. That's… That's what I got my Master's for, and now I'm looking for sponsorship to develop the technology commercially."

"That's what we're here for." I smile. "What can your technology do now, and what are you hoping to be able to do with it?"

"At the moment I've got a device the size of a flute that can… Make people extremely suggestible when they hear the music it plays. Only while it's playing, but it works on just about… Everyone. Ah."

I nod. "I was assuming that you would have tested it exclusively on humans."

"Sound energy is kinetic energy transmitted by vibrations. If a person can hear, then they should be susceptible, but that only applies to humans. I don't know how your species would be affected."

"What degree of control does it grant the musician?"

"That depends. A short burst of sound can… Make a person make a sudden movement with.. their arm, without knowing why their arm is acting up. An ongoing song can make a group of people stand still or walk somewhere, but it's pretty obvious that they're not acting of their own volition."

"How do people feel about being controlled after they… Wake up?"

"Usually, if it's their first time they're a little scared, but obviously I let all the volunteers know what was going to happen in advance. As far as I've been able to tell, there's no lasting effect from the control; it's completely limited to controlling physical actions."

"And the effect only lasts as long as they can hear the sound?"

"A few seconds after it stops, then they snap back immediately."

I nod. "That's got some obvious applications as a low lethality police weapon."

"It's not low-lethality, it's zero lethality. This isn't a sonic cannon, Mister Grayven."

"There's no such thing as a zero lethality anything. What does it do to people with a hearing-impairment? Or synesthesia? Or when the one playing it doesn't notice that the person they've ordered to walk is reaching the edge of a cliff?"

"I… The sonic waves can vibrate bone, so unless they're deaf due to damage to their auditory cortex it shouldn't matter. I had one of my assistants test it on me and it still worked. Synesthesia or.. a cyst on the auditory cortex, it.. should just fail to work. And with the cliff thing that's not the music that's killing them."

"It's less dangerous than a firearm or taser. I just want to make sure that you understand that if your end product gets sold as a weapon, someone will eventually die from it. Of course, weaponising this technology is far easier than doing anything else with it."

"That's… That's kind of why I'm here? I'd like funding to investigate other uses. To see if there's a sound for making angry people calm, or making people more alert or attentive."

I smile. "Stranger things exist. Do you have a full written proposal? With costings?"

He nods and pulls out a binder, laying it down next to his briefcase. "Of course I do. I want to get this approved. I don't wanna get tossed off the lot because I didn't read the requirements."

"You'd be amazed how many people don't." I take the document and begin skimming it. "And the thing is, due to the sort of person we're trying to attract, we actually can't just throw them out if they can't put a written proposal together." He frowns. "I mean, don't get me wrong, this definitely helps, but these grants are intended for potentially violently destructive would-be supervillains. Half of our staff are qualified psychotherapists for a reason."

"I'm-. I'm not a… Supervillain."

I look up from his document and raise my eyebrows.

"Sure thing, Pied Piper."

"Oh, Jesus, the rats were just a test-run. I wasn't actually-."

"Ah! You didn't mention that. It's far easier to get approval for Jain-friendly pest control than for anything involving humans. Can you make instruments that just work on vermin?"

"Yes, I could make one… Shaped like a dog whistle. It would be… 'Call' or 'flee' only, but it wouldn't be hard to make. It just seems… Kinda…"

"If you can reliably remove all the rats from a major city, not only will you get enough money not to need our help, but you'll reduce the spread of infectious diseases. I'll be happy to recommend that we accept you on-" I tap the folder against the desk. "-the basis of this alone, but in purely self-interested terms that may be the best route for you. Obviously our.. colleagues in LexCorp will be delighted to help you with the business side, if you choose to make use of-"

Lantern Grayven, we have a problem.

"-them." I push my chair back. "Excuse me."

"Ah..?"

I stroll over to the window. We're only just past morning rush hour, and there are plenty of people in the streets below. They're.. pointing upwards, phones out. I look up as well, but I can't see anything from here.

Sinestro?

I believe it's the-

Red beams flicker down, punching through buildings and people with equal abandon!

-Sheeda.

And then I hear the screaming start.

I turn back to Mr. Rathaway as I take my weapons out of subspace and summon my drones.

"You have a prototype in that case?"

He nods, pulling out a flute and nervously bringing it to his lips as I generate construct armour.

"Keep it with you. You're going to need it."

 

[Mr Zoat]

4th Pflugzeit 2510
Early afternoon

"That's… Curious."

Aranei frowns at the standing stone in the middle of the village square. Around us, a curious mixture of Bretonnian peasants and beastwomen work to prepare the fields for our first major planting. The beastwomen were a major find; far stronger than normal humans but far more sociable than their male brethren, they've been perfectly happy to pitch in in exchange for protection and a share of the crop. I'm still not really sure why the females are so different to the males, and Aranei hasn't really been able to help me. Neither healing people nor subtle ghur manipulation were really the focus of her magic education.

"What is?"

I took a bit of a risk in picking up a selection of potatoes from Lustria; I remember hearing that they can be poisonous and the lizardmen certainly never bothered to put them through the selective breeding process which humans did back on Earth. But as best as I can determine they should be sufficiently safe and nutritious to join turnips, oats and legumes in the local diet. Peasants in Mousillon have some fishing but not a significant amount of herding, which seems odd to me. As a result, while most of the Dark Elf residents are a head taller than me poor diet means that I've got at least that on the locals. Those who didn't have some sort of gigantism-granting mutation, at least.

"The distortion in the winds of magic which I felt last week." She gestures at the stone, causing the runes carved into the surface to distort very faintly as she makes use of the region's natural magic flows to try and narrow down the source of the oddity which has drawn her attention. As I'm not a magic user myself there's no.. light show. Not that I can see, anyway, but I've at least gotten to the point where I can tell that something is happening. "I've been trying to study the after effects, and I believe that I have a better read on it."

"Can you tell what it is?"

She makes a face like she just bit down on an unexpected lemon.

"… No. It wasn't an ignorant human wyrd drawing upon the winds in ignorance, or a daemon or chaos spawn."

"A vampiric transformation?"

"I doubt it. It's too structured to be primitive dark magic." She considers that for a moment. "Though it is true that I have never had the opportunity to study such a transformation directly." She lowers her hands and pulls a map of the duchy out of her satchel. Unrolling it, she points to a location on the edge of the Forest of Arden. "There. Whatever happened, that was where it happened."

That's not… Too close by. Given the nature of this world I would prefer to keep my head down until I've had a chance to gain more experience, and even after I've spent months draining the local dark magic taint down to safer levels this duchy is basically Bretonnia's Sylvania. But large magic distortions happening in the vicinity of my home base is… Something I have to show an interest in before it blows up in all our faces.

"I'll take a look."

"You should take an escort."

I frown at her. "Who? The cloaks are a give away, the beastwomen-."

"I will accompany you."

I look at the spiked, skull-embroidered and generally minimalist 'I grew up in the arctic, this is roasting' clothing she always wears. "I'm not sure that's a better option."

She moues and raises her hands slightly. "Dress me in Ulthuanian garb so that I only intimidate the ignorant peasants. That will assuage your concerns, will it not?"

"I suppose." I focus on my desire to have her accompany me in a way that doesn't result in her getting shot full of arrows. The result is that her usual ensemble is replaced with a multi-layered robe in two tones of blue, with gold decorative thread work and borders. She looks it over and sniffs. "Tolerable."

I offer her my right hand and she gracefully accepts, returning the map to her satchel as she does so. Once it's safely stowed she nods and we shoot upwards, the world gradually spreading out below us.

"Such unthinking power…"

Aranei has a habit of… Purring when I do something like this. Her appreciation for having a powerful patron was one of the few non-evil things I found in her psyche when I 'operated' and I thought that leaving it would help her with interpreting her older memories. And it… Does…

I focus on the area she pointed to and fly us in that direction as rapidly as I can. We don't really have anything challenging us for airspace; Bretonnians do make some use of pegasus and hippogryph knights, but they're uncommon and they generally have better places to be than Mousillon. Getting spotted would be unfortunate, and having our point of origin spotted would be far worse. I can't afford to spend all of my time in the village if I want to get anything done, but I don't want to come back one day and find everyone dead.

Mousillon is heavily forested, not because it's naturally particularly fertile but more because there aren't enough people who want to fell it to make much of an impact. Most of the places that aren't covered by a forest canopy are bare because the soil literally can't support large trees; swampland and places where the topsoil is a few centimetres thick over chalk or stone. The land we're travelling towards is swampy, a narrow creek which-

Alert! Exotic contaminant detected.

-has some sort of magic taint to it. Ring, scan for people.

Compliance.

One person-. Oh. It's… Him.

"Aranei, you remember that Questing Knight who came across you a little after I did?"

"Yes? What of him?"

"He's the only person in the area you pointed to."

"I assumed that a fool like him would be dead by now. I suppose this speaks well of his strength of will, if not his sense of direction. Will we speak with him?"

"May as well."

And down we go.

I take care to come down well out of lunge-distance. And hopefully out of challenge-distance as well; the ground here would make any attempt to bury him quickly fatal. I'd been hoping since we hadn't seen him since that day that he might have left…

Huh. His surcoat is torn and muddy… Fair enough: we're in a swamp and he can hardly take a tailor with him on his quest. But his armour appears to be in a similarly sorry state, and I know that Bretonnian noblemen are taught basic armour and weapon maintenance. Bretonnian squires are trained peasants after all, not junior noblemen. And his face… It's not the beard; shaving regularly would be something of a luxury on a campaign, let alone a quest. It's the dirt and the fact that he's just staring into space without even a fire. He looks like he's been in the metaphorical wars when he'd only been trained for literal wars.

"Sir Mallobaude? Are you well?"

He looks around slowly as we touch down. From the looks of it he doesn't really care that we're here; he only moved his head on a sort of mechanical instinct. When his eyes finally alight on us there are a few moments of blankness, then a very dim light of recognition appears.

"Oh. You."

"I ask again, sir knight: are you well? You seem to be rather the worse for wear."

He turns his head away, looking over to where his sword lies carelessly discarded onto the muddy ground next to him.

Then he hangs his head.

"Leave me be."

"Come now, that's no attitude for a knight of Bretonnia when confronted with a man like me!"

Aranei flashes me a look of frustrated confusion and I respond with an 'I'm going somewhere with this' wave.

"I am no knight. Before you lie the broken remains of a fool.."

Aranei shakes her head. "'Fool', I'll grant you. But you remain unbroken in body if not in mind, and it appears my lord wishes to offer you succour. He's done the same to less worthy beings before, so I imagine that the offer is genuine. What ails you?"

"If you have any mercy then le-."

The three of us turn as we hear the sound of approaching hooves, and Aranei swiftly makes the gesture to inform me that magic was employed.

Scan.

Ah. A small party of lightly armed nobles. A hunting party perhaps. Their leader has a tabard of three black flowers over a black fleur-de-lis on a white field. And none of their hearts beat more than once a minute.

 

[Mr Zoat]

4th Pflugzeit 2510
Early afternoon

"Sir Mallobaude, is that you?"

The lead vampire reins in his… Undead horse a little ahead of his party, and regards the miserable knight with a look of sympathy. The four knights escorting him… One vampire, and the others… Wights, I think? They don't have the flesh to be vampires, but their manner is too purposive to be skeletons or zombies dressed in armour.

"Are you injured, sir?"

The horses strike me as odd. I would have thought that a vampire pretending to be a human Bretonnian lord would have raised a living horse to be accustomed to the undead, but that's definitely not alive. It's not a skeletal horse… 'Nightmare'? It could be a reasonably intact zombie, or… I don't remember anything about non-human vampires in Warhammer, but I suppose it… Could be a vampire horse. Or a wight horse? Are wight horses a thing?

"Crippled in spirit, my lord. Hale in body."

Oh, so the vampire gets a polite response, but I get told to buzz off. I look at this lord's face for a moment. Ah, Mallobaude doesn't know the man is a vampire. That's… A problem.

Vampires are fast. I remember when Warhammer Armies: Vampire Counts was released, signalling the switch from general undead to all-vampires all the time. There was a short story in White Dwarf where a necromancer out-magiced his Necrarch master only to be killed by his brute speed and strength. I don't know exactly what that high initiative and strength translated to in real life; I've put more effort into trying to avoid standing out than hunting the undead. I don't know if he's fast enough to kill Aranei before I can grab her, or if he's strong enough to kill me though my environmental shield.

Magically I'm not too worried. 'Levels' were a game mechanic, but vampires do make poor magicians and Aranei has dispel magic scrolls. Destroy Magic scrolls are a bit beyond her, and she'd never even heard of the nifty hex scroll which turns the enemy caster into a toad. But unlike a vampiric lunge, spells have a bit of a build up and she should be able to warn me.

And speaking of the revenant, he regards me for a moment with a mild frown before dismissing me. Aranei gets a slightly more considered look, presumably because he thinks she's probably a user of high magic and so a major threat to the undead, though possibly because her outfit causes him to class her as 'foreign noble, probably more trouble than it's worth'.

The moment passes, and his focus returns to Sir Mallobaude.

"Have you encountered some impediment to your quest? If your trail has gone cold I'm certain we could find something in Mousillon for you to slay in the Lady's name."

"Her name." He gives a huffing, desolate laugh. "Why? My quest is complete. I have drunk from the grail. I…"

"But this is marvellous! Please, come to my estate. I will put on a feast of celebration!"

Just in case this vampire is one of the sensible ones, I shake my head at him.

"What did you see, Sir Mallobaude? What did the Lady show you that has affected you so?"

"We are pawns to the gods. That is what she showed me. All our virtue, all our martial pride, and all that she values in us is our ability to serve her."

The vampire affects a puzzled expression. "Do you not want to serve her?"

"I expected to serve an end!" His anger pulling him out of his funk slightly, he pushes himself to his feet. "To create something! A kingdom purged of the taint of chaos! Some recognition for my sacrifices and achievements! Instead-." He shakes his head, his passion evaporating. "Instead, the Lady told me directly that she regards us as pawns, that our struggles are merely to get us to a point where she considers us worth investing in." His head falls. "To hear valorous knights demeaned in such a fashion by the one they.. serve…"

The vampire nods. "It is… Shocking. As a knight myself, it… Chills me to my heart to hear such a thing. And you are sure that the visitation was genuine, and not some… Chaos-spawned illusion?"

Mallobaude shakes his head. "No, it was exactly as the legends described. As my father described. The Lady, the cup… And not merely that, she told me that there is no fundamental difference between herself and the Dark Gods, merely a divergence in opinion! That we knights are as deluded as the madmen who sell their souls to Chaos!"

The vampires nods. "This is not something you can keep to yourself. If the entire knightly class of Bretonnia is being deceived by a malevolent patron, they must be informed, that they may cleanse themselves."

I frown. "Why?"

The vampire's eyes dart my way for a fraction of a second though his body continues to face Mallobaude, trying to convey with his general demeanour that I'm not worth listening to.

"Because a knight is sworn to truth and honour, and continuing to practise deceit upon his fellow knights fails to uphold either."

"True, but… The fact that the Lady commands Bretonnian nobles to follow a particular code for purely selfish reasons doesn't take away from the value of the work they do while following it. If a beastherd threatens a peasant village with murder and rape, do the villagers care whether their saviour cries 'For the Lady!' or 'For Sigmar!' or 'In the name of Asuryan!'? No, they do not, they merely care that they are saved. I see that your goddess being indifferent to your deeds hurts you… I'm sorry, but I've never been a man of faith myself. When I do a good deed-."

"When you save pirates from righteous vengeance."

"Come with me, and see the village their labours have built. See the new mill, the irrigation systems, the school and the forges. Speak with them, and learn how they feel about their new lives."

He gazes at me blankly.

"If you serve no god, why do you even care?"

"Because you are a man, as I am a man. Because you are distraught, as I have been distraught. Because when I do good, the consequences of that goodness are all the reward I need; the gods could spit on me and I would still be happy."

Now the vampire is glaring at me.

"And what of the service rendered? If the gods merely demand the service of mortals for their own amusement, that is not an affront that can just be ignored."

"A saint and a highwayman are both made of the same meat. And the best revenge on a lying goddess is to live well in spite of her." I raise my eyebrows. "And I'm a little surprised that a vampire includes himself in the 'mortals' category. You are aware that you can't permanently die, yes?"

Mallobaude straightens slightly.

"A vampire?"

"A family affliction; I manage it as best I can."

I smile. "At least you're not a Nagash-worshipper. But alright; I think that Sir Mallobaude's best course of action is to devote himself to his people rather than his goddess. What would you prescribe?"

"Tear down the faith. Show his-." He turns back to Mallobaude. "Your fellow knights that they have been deluded. Slay the false prophetesses and the liars who serve them. Take Bretonnia for yourself, free its people from their divine oppressor!"

"And kill thousands… Tens of thousands of men and women whose only crime is to believe the same lies as all of those around them? And replace the existing order with what? If you tell knights that their faith is a lie and they believe you, what rules will you put in place to guide them?"

"They will follow him if he has the strength to lead!"

"He barely has the strength to stand upright! Sir Mallobaude, come to my home. Speak with my people. Let me tell you about my plans for the world, and how gods are not invited."

The vampire frowns.

"Sir Mallobaude, ignore this prattling peasant and accept my hospitality. We can send out messages to my neighbours that you may share what you have learned. Even if you choose to take no other action, they deserve to know."

Sir Mallobaude raises his head slightly, and chooses.

 

[Mr Zoat]

Faed Away

Earth 12
15th January 2002
10:37 GMT -5

The Brown farm has clearly seen better days.

Back in 1997 a farmer by the name of Enoch Brown developed a growth hormone which could turn a normal farm animal into a giant farm animal. He first unveiled it to the public at the Gotham Agricultural Expo, where he displayed a sheep nine feet tall. He claimed that his work could end world hunger, which was obviously incorrect… But maybe he just made that claim for press release purposes.

But whatever his work could have done for the world of agriculture, his work came to a screeching halt when the sheep broke out of its cage and ran amuck. Mr. Brown gave it a sedative and no one was significantly hurt, but the resulting panic spooked a local judge into ordering him to cease his research and barring him from bringing giant animals into Gotham. I'm not… Quite sure how a judge had the authority to do that, but no one other than Mr. Brown was interested in contesting it at the time. I suppose that after the first few 'angry' scientists the people of Gotham rather lost patience with that sort of thing.

What happens next is a relatively predictable revenge story where a slighted scientist uses his work to take revenge on those who've wronged him, leading to a brief altercation with Mr. Wayne and his eventual incarceration.

Between the criminal damage, assault, blackmail and the attempted murder of a police officer, both Enoch Brown and his daughter Emmylou Brown received rather substantial prison sentences. And yet, a mere three years later, Emmylou Brown is out on parole at the family farmstead. I suppose criminals being in and out of incarceration is something else that Gotham has gotten used to, as I wasn't able to find a mention of it in the local papers. I only found out by chance, when I tried to get Detective Bullock to talk to me about some of the local… 'Characters', and he definitely hasn't forgiven her for trying to feed him to a giant pig.

Given that this is private property and I'm in America, I make a point of having my hands empty and clearly visible as I walk up the driveway. Neither she nor her still imprisoned father have any history of using firearms, but I imagine that's one of the things that prison life can teach you.

"Hello!?"

The newspapers said that the animals were removed after their arrest, a claim confirmed by Detective Bullock. He also said that some people 'from the Feds' went through the laboratory to make sure that it was safe. But while owner and daughter were in prison no one was doing any upkeep on the place. The fence around the farm has lost most of its paint to the elements and is rotting in places. The land is almost completely overgrown, and even the dirt lane from the closest road appears to have the weeds cut back only recently.

"Hello?! Miss Brown?!"

It's quiet out here. We're far enough from Gotham that there's barely any noise from the city other than the occasional muffled blast of a foghorn from the docks, and at this time of year the wildlife isn't particularly active.

"I'd like to talk to you about your father's work!? If that's at all possible!?"

The house and farm buildings look mildly dilapidated, but the house is more of a piece of cover for the underground bunker where most of Mr Brown's sensitive work took place. So once the mess the hazardous materials team made is cleared up it should still be perfectly habitable.

"Excuse m-?!"

A hard door slams and a well-built young woman in farm overalls strides out, glaring at me.

"WHAT?!"

I stop talking, because while Miss Brown isn't technically super strong she's still far stronger than someone of her proportions should be. Strong enough to lift an obese police detective over her head and throw him with no apparent effort.

"I'd like to talk to you about your father's work!"

She's striding towards me and looks irritated, though whether that's me or the situation I'm not at all sure.

She slows slightly, looking at me suspiciously as she gets to within non-shouting conversation distance.

"Who are you, anyhow?"

I smile warmly. "My name is Peter Wynne. I run a company called 'Schizo Applications'. We specialise in helping people bring.. exotic products to market, and fund research with the aim of turning good ideas into marketable ideas. I.. heard about your father's work while I was in Gotham-"

Deciding that if the local version of Pamela Isley was 'turning people into plants' crazy then she was a risk beyond what I'm willing to take.

"-and I thought that I'd see if anyone was home."

"This here's private property."

"And I'll leave at once if that's what you want. I.. did try phoning, but I couldn't get through-"

"They cut us off."

"-when I-. Yes. And you didn't reply to my letter."

"Mail man don't deliver 'round here."

"So I thought I'd pay you a visit in person. Though -as I said- if you'd rather I leave then I'm happy to do that."

She tilts her head to the right, her gaze more quizzical than suspicious.

"Who'd you say you worked for again?"

"'Schizo Applications'. And.. I don't work for them. I own the company. We… Recently became the largest supplier of electricity in both North America and Europe?"

"They cut the power, too."

"Ah." … "Sorry?"

"None'a Pa's work had anything to do with electricity."

"I've already got electricity. But I think that there's a market for enhanced farm animals… Perhaps not as enhanced as some of the ones which you and your father produced-"

"Mister Bleaty just got scared by alla them flash bulbs!"

"-but there's definitely a market there. As well as for your own enhancements."

She frowns.

"You work fer the gub'mint?"

"No. I mean, we probably supply them with electricity, and I've.. been involved in negotiations with various government bodies… I'm not sure what you're implying."

She nods, her face relaxing.

"Don't pay it no mind. My daddy's not here right now. But if ya'll come up to the house I'll listen to your offer."

I nod. "Thank you. Though before we can begin… Can I make sure that your release from prison was legitimate? It's just.. something the human resources department are a bit hot on."

"I ain't suppose to talk about it. Daddy made a deal, and I'm out."

"'Out' as in you were pardoned, or-?"

"I ain't suppose to talk about it."

"But nothing that will stop you being officially employed?"

"No."

"Well, that's.. fine, then."

I suspect that someone in the superhuman security apparatus pulled something. That or Lex Luthor paid someone off. But she's out and the local police aren't planning to try to arrest her, so that shouldn't be a problem.

"Have you been back long?"

 

[Mr Zoat]

Earth 12
10th February 2005
13:14 GMT

Oh my.

Oooooh my.

Lantern Stewart leads the way through the corridors of the Watchtower, past the staring gazes of the various.. superheroes I can… Mostly recognise. Red Tornado, yes, Elongated Man, yes, and… Bwana Beast? Others… Don't ring immediate bells, though with the more conservatively dressed ones I'm not completely sure that they're not part of the crew.

The whole thing's a bit out there, and-

"Hey, Mister Wynne!" / "Hey, Peter."

I wave back. "Hi guys."

-Courtney and Patrick are the only people here I actually know.

"So… A space station with artificial gravity. Human technology, or did you import it?"

"Wayne Technologies reverse engineered it from crashed Thanagarian ships after the occupation."

Perfectly plausible. While I employ a large number of Thanagarians, plenty work in other places and my employees are mostly ex-soldiers rather than technology specialists. And there's nothing stopping a company with the right connections mastering Thanagarian technology with human scientists. I know perfectly well the sorts of things that human technologists can do when they set their minds to it.

"I see." I look around and… That's Crimson Avenger. I've tried to get my head around this… Whole thing. I know my DC, and Crimson Avenger was chronologically one of the earliest superheroes. If that holds true here then he should be about eighty by now, if not older. And yet he's a contemporary of someone like Bwana Beast rather than the far older Wildcat. "So is Batman planning to give me the ring he stole from me back at any point, or do I have to sue you people in open court?"

John Stewart doesn't turn around.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Do you really think I don't know the difference between a glowing piece of plastic and an actual power ring? I was willing to chalk it up to a temporary attack of Bat-paranoia, but since it hasn't reappeared in my safe yet I thought I'd use the opportunity this represents to raise the issue directly."

"You'll have to talk to Batman."

"Or I could talk to the Sector's senior Green Lantern, who he almost certainly asked about it. Lantern Stewart, that's theft. The Justice League does not have the authority to confiscate private property on its own recognisance."

This time he does stop, and glances at me. He looks slightly uncomfortable, but I suspect that's more due to being discovered than actual guilt.

"That depends where you got it from."

"Lantern Stewart, I employ a great many lawyers. I've checked in every jurisdiction in which I do business. And I can tell you now: it does not. I could have stolen it from Ganthet's laboratory and it wouldn't make the slightest difference to the legal position. Earth does not have extradition treaties with other planets. If you think I stole it from someone on Earth you can apply for a confiscation order and have me arrested. What you can not do is steal from me."

He looks mulish, which I suppose is a job requirement for a Green Lantern. Or maybe it's not? I'm not sure whether the local version of the Corps works on pre-War of Light principles or post-War of Light principles.

"Do you want me to serve him papers in his public identity? Because I'm not playing around here; you will be returning it to me, or that's what will happen."

"We don't take kindly to threats."

"And I don't take kindly to theft."

We spend a few moments staring each other down, but dealing with recovering supervillains on a daily basis has caused me to grow a considerably stiffer spine than I had when I first arrived on this Earth. While I don't think I could win a staring match against someone with an environmental shield under neutral circumstances, he knows that he's in the wrong and that if it came to it I'd probably win.

He looks away.

"We don't have it anymore. It's on Oa."

"Do you routinely trade in stolen property, or am I uniquely privileged?"

"We wanted to make sure you weren't dealing with Qward. Since they're the only other people who can make power rings, it seemed like a reasonable guess."

I frown.

"All the maltusian factions have the ability to make power rings. You've met Star Sapphire. It's not like the Guardians are the only ones who can do it."

His eyes glow for a moment.

"So you're saying you got it from someone the same species as the Guardians."

"No, I'm saying that if you can't produce the ring, plan legal action is a go."

"I'll-. Ask them."

"They've got until my legal department complete the forms." I look around as Booster Gold and Blue Beetle try to pretend that they're not listening in on our discussion. "Though I'm willing to extend considerable leeway if I get an orange personal lantern out of it."

"That isn't gonna happen."

"I can't sue the Guardians, but I can sue their agents. I haven't expanded my operations off-world yet-."

"Just-. Come and meet the rest of the founders. We can talk about this together."

I nod and shrug, and he continues to lead the way through the Watchtower, towards some sort of meeting room.

"Yes, in a meeting where I'm outnumbered seven to one. That sounds completely reasonable."

"If you're this angry about it, why-" The door opens and he leads the way through. "-did you agree to come here?"

I raise my right hand to greet the rest of the founders.

"Because I thought it was just Batman being sticky-fingered." I glare at him. "And yes I did realise that you stole the ring from my safe, Mister Wayne. You'll be hearing from my lawyers. And imagine how disappointed I am to learn that you are all in on it. Is your new motto 'Truth, Burglary, and the American Way', Mister Kent?"

He exhales. "Batman.. told us about that after he did it."

"And did you tell him to give it back? Or did you rubber-stamp him sending it to Oa, the last place I'd want it sent? Handling stolen goods. Is a crime."

"So… Okay." Flash raises his hands defensively. "I think we got off on the wrong foot. Ah. Yeah, the ring thing… Probably didn't make the best impression, but we just got our asses kicked by a parallel universe version-"

Batman, Hawkgirl and Wonder Woman are glaring at him.

"-of you, and we were worried you might be planning something."

"I'm planning a court action, yes."

Okay, I think I've made my point there. The ring will either come back or it won't.

"I've never met a parallel universe version of myself, so I can't vouch for them. But there are counters to any approach; some better known than others. If you fought a version of me and lost then he probably had more resources to draw on than I do; I'm pretty sure that even if I had the ring back I couldn't beat you. So I can't help you there."

I shrug.

"What else did you want to talk about?"

Batman leans forward slightly.

"I'm interested in getting your take on League operations. You've clearly given the matter some thought."

"My first thought is that breaking the law in front of someone who knows your secret identity is a good way to bring the whole thing crashing down. Governments do not like losing the monopoly on the legitimate use of force, but they tolerate you because you're popular and generally do a good job. Lose one of those and you'll see anti-vigilante laws getting enforced again." I shake my head. "What sort of guns does this station have?"

Manhunter's face betrays nothing. "That is highly secure information."

"Because I've looked at the publicity images, and I couldn't see any gun ports. With lasers and railguns you could cover something like… Sixteen percent of the Earth's surface with flak batteries to intercept missiles and attack craft. You'd need more platforms to complete the network, but I doubt that Earth's governments would complain about guns that couldn't target the surface. If you want any other advice, I'll need access to your databases."

"And the God damned ring back."

 

[Mr Zoat]

3rd May
14:16 GMT -5

"…mortal remains of our brothers and sisters in Christ to the earth."

I was somewhat relieved to learn that the inhabitants of this town don't routinely strip their dead for parts.

"That they may in the fullness of time rise once more to aid their living kin."

Not because what they do is less ghoulish, but more because it's less Sheeda-like. 'First' funerals aren't that big a deal in Columbian society, and it looks like that's a tradition the warlock-breed have maintained. It's not until a person's final death that you can fully commemorate their lives. They don't bother trying to convince themselves that the grundyman they've raised is just a mindless and soulless zombie; their theology makes specific reference to the fact that they're not.

"I shall now read from the Gospel of John, chapter eleven."

Abednego looks around the crowd of mourners, who I suspect are gathered here more because it's a social event than because they're particularly interested in what this outsider has to say. They started depositing the bodies as soon as the holes were dug, and I started doing that as soon as they were all identified. The holes were something else that's different from Christian burial as it's practised on Earth; they're only two feet deep to make pulling the grundyman out easier, and the corpse gets rope wrapped around the torso for much the same reason. And they're buried face down so that they can't climb out on their own.

"'Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village…'"

They're actually paying more attention to the ropes than to the bodies, something... I suppose that I should withhold judgement until I observe a second funeral, but I already know that Lord Hades wouldn't like this. I shake my head and turn away as Abednego continues his reading. I offered my aid in making repairs, but unlike Mistress Butler's village the people here have enough of a resource surplus that they can afford to do things in the manner of their choosing. They don't want help from me, and they don't want me to disrupt the magic they use.

"…join us here."

Mistress Butler is talking to one of the village's two surviving 'shapers'. Magic users who specialise in biology, though they'd be totally out of their depth talking to a true biomancer. Everything they do relies on the Sheeda traits that they and the Sheeda creatures possess.

"That is a generous offer, Mistress Ginter, though you will have to forgive me if I am somewhat surprised by it."

"We have empty homes and work enough. Our need is greater than our reluctance to involve those who do not think of our condition as we do. We are not unaware that the Unenlightened threaten you and those other settlements close to their lands."

"Will you also make such an invitation to the other villages?"

"If we can safely make contact with them." She turns to face me. "Is that a thing that you may accomplish?"

"I keep getting told 'no', due to the danger that the spells pose. I doubt that I could do it without the Columbians detecting it."

"Do they not know that you are here?"

"They know that my colleagues and I are heading this way. They don't know exactly where we are or who we're talking to. As I see it, any risk incurred would be yours, so if you want me to make the attempt I'll put the idea to Accomplished Perfect Physician."

"And in return, you would ask us to show you Melmoth's Tomb."

"We're rather hoping this motivates you to do that anyway. But… No. I am willing to do that anyway. Though I suggest that you give more thought to the offer I made to relocate you."

"I accept that you made the offer in the spirit of kindness, but we will not be moved to suit those people."

"I didn't make the offer to please them, I made the offer to preserve your lives. And theirs. To my mind, if two peoples have such irreconcilable differences, moving them to separate locations is a perfectly sensible thing to do."

"No."

"Mistress Ginter-."

"We will not do it. Not while they still take the pledge. Not while their timidity still gives rise to warlocks. We will not abandon the few free-thinkers who can escape from their iron-bounded civilisation."

I bow my head slightly.

"I'm.. saddened to hear it, but very well. If we're fortunate, it will be unnecessary. Regarding the Tomb-?"

"Your Sheeda prisoner can show you its treasures better than any of us. Unless you want a tour of the place."

"I would, actually, though I suppose that it's not a priority." I hesitate. "How are.. your people feeling about this?"

"We will mourn our losses. And our weakness. But more than anything… There is almost a relief to it."

Mistress Butler nods. "That we are not so similar to Melmoth that his kin would see us as their kin; that the accusations of the Columbians are fear-filled lies."

"I… Suppose. I referred more to the truth of our history. That the self-serving version told by the Unenlightened is not pure invention. That Melmoth's kin are as self-serving and cruel as their tale makes them out to be."

"I don't remember hearing them say that about other Sheeda, only about Melmoth himself."

"And how long were you amongst them?"

"No, I'm not suggesting that you're wrong; I'm asking for clarification. What do they say about other Sheeda? I'm working off the stories of a mad scientist who didn't actually see that much and the history of the handful of people who survived the last Harrowing."

Mistress Ginter blinks at me with both sets of eyelids.

"What be a 'harrowing'?"

"You don't know anything about where the Sheeda come from?"

She shakes her head.

"Okay, well, I suppose it can't hurt to give you a summary. The Sheeda are the-." They left in the sixteenth century. They're very unlikely to have a concept of natural selection or evolution. "-Are altered humans from a very long way in the future. They live on Earth, but so much has happened between then and now that it seems like a completely different place. Every so often they travel backwards in time and destroy civilisation. They loot everything they can load into their harvest ships and then return to their own era, but not before burning everything that's left. We don't know exactly how many times they've done it before; they're pretty thorough about destroying all traces. Melmoth was their king, but lost a power struggle with their current queen and had to flee. Exactly why he did any of-" I look around. "-this is a mystery to me, and from the sound of it the Sheeda here didn't know either."

"By whom were they altered?"

Hm. Worth asking, I suppose. Their whole identity is built around their difference, after all.

"I don't know. It could be that they changed over time, or that they changed themselves. I rather get the impression that you've been altering yourselves."

Mistress Ginter nods. "Based upon them. We have not created anything new, not to our knowledge."

"But you know how it might be done?"

"Yes…" She frowns thoughtfully. "Pray excuse me, Orange Lantern. I must.. speak with my people. We will arrange for a guide for you on the morrow."

 

[Mr Zoat]

4th May
18:51 GMT -5

"This.. way."

Anarawd leads us through the desertified land that was once farmed by the Columbians. Scraggly grass sprouts through the dried plates of soil on the ground, and dead trees act as the only windbreak. A few miles away I can see the sea for the first time since coming to this planet, surf eating away at a shore with nothing to anchor it in place.

It looks like some combination of the passage of hundreds of years, hostile spellcraft and the elements have destroyed whatever the first generation built here. I'm a little surprised that there isn't some sort of monument here, but I suppose that would be somewhat out of character for the practical Columbians to build something they didn't have a material need for.

"How did it get like this? I mean, this whole continent has been pretty heavily forested."

Our guide, a local man named Peter, shrugs.

"Which part? This land is not a joyful place."

"The soil. If this happened in Melmoth's era, it should have recovered by now."

Abednego considers my question. "I think it started with rampaging Sheeda-beasts." He pats his spider on the head. "They be wont to run riot when unbound."

"And that damages the soil?"

"Much of their bodies are poisonous, and their habits are destructive. They are made for our labour, not to be a free part of Creation. The soil needs creatures to maintain it, and they were not proof against such things."

"Al.. right."

"We lack goodly records of the fight with Melmoth, but battle magics which drain vitality come natural to such as us."

Anarawd twitches, earning a curious narrowing of the eyes from Abednego.

"Some part of this could be from then, but I suspect that the greater part of it is more recent." Peter glares at the back of Abednego's head. "How long ago was it, witch-man?"

"Eighty years, or thereabouts."

"What was?"

Peter glowers. "An unwise warlock came here, searching for the means to undo the changes her body had gone through. Witch-hunters followed and found our town."

"Your town? Did they scout the area?"

"Nay. We used to live here. 'Tis the obvious thing to do, when you are no longer welcome in Columbia. The Sheeda-beasts live here in larger numbers than anywhere else, and there is the lure of finding relics. We gave the warlock refuge… But we did not spot the witch-hunters."

"And they did this? Or… No. They went back and got friends."

Abednego sighs. "Aye. That was the last time the might of Columbia was roused in wrath."

I look around the blasted landscape.

"Alright. An indiscriminate bombardment… Because the Columbians didn't know exactly what you had or-."

"Or they did not care."

"This is a pretty enthusiastic bombardment. I've only seen long arms with enchanted bullets."

Abednego raises his right arm and points to a.. shallow pond a short distance away.

"Witch-hunters mostly hunt warlocks and Sheeda-beasts, or apprehend more common criminals. But some have knowledge of true battle magics. They are not much called for…"

"The first our grandparents knew of it, the mere touch of the land burned all who stood upon it."

"Didn't they have defences?"

"Aye, wards to detect the beasts, or tell us when a new warlock was coming in case they were one of the truly mad. We remember Klarion even now."

"Good news on that score."

"We know that he left these lands."

"No, I mean that he's dead. I was part of the team that finished him."

"That is good news. But what one madman did, another can do as well."

"There's a way around that, but… Yes."

He frowns. "What way?"

"There's a limit on the number of Lords of Chaos who can be active in a particular area. If someone who isn't a criminal lunatic does it and then sticks around, you don't have to worry about someone who is doing it." I frown. "Um, sorry. Off-topic. So they weren't prepared for a Columbian attack?"

"No. They were not. Our protections are somewhat stronger, now. And we too study the magic of war."

"I've offered to just move all your people to somewhere else on the planet."

"Would that stop the Columbians coming for us?"

"It would make it far harder for them, and give you time to entrench yourselves."

"And our crops? And our beasts?"

"Crops I can move. Beasts… You'd have to make arrangements for them, but yes."

"And what would it cost us?"

"You wouldn't be here to pick up anyone who goes warlock in the future. You wouldn't have access to-" I look around again. "-this place, but if you weren't getting much out of it anyway-."

"If they were not getting much out of it then they were not looking correctly."

Anarawd raises his hands and gestures, a thin tower that looks like it was grown from coral shimmering into view. Peter and Abednego both blink, staring at it.

"Dark Melmoth may have hidden his tools from human eyes, but he made little effort to hide them from ours. Or perhaps he did, and time or his death has unmade them."

Mr Yao lays his right hand on the door, humming quietly for a moment.

"And what lays within?"

"My salvation." I frown as Anarawd looks around the group. "You will not defeat the Harrowing. Your future is in our blood. But the Queen will have my body given to the digestion vats if I return as I am now. My only way to buy myself back into her good graces is to discover Dark Melmoth's plans, and convey that information to her. My colleagues and I did not do more than a brief survey of the outer parts. We felt that the reward did not outweigh the risk. But if what you want is in here then our interests coincide."

I narrow my eyes-. Looks like he's telling the truth, and the witch-people went over him for arcane defences so I suspect that it's genuine. I nod to Mr Yao.

"As you say. Take us inside, and show us what you have found so far."

 

[Mr Zoat]

4th May
19:22 GMT -5

I look at the hibernating maggot-like creatures with the very visible insects inside their translucent abdomens. Giant normal maggots, not Sheeda-maggots.

"Why..? Beetles?"

"Dark Melmoth wished to farm here. They would consume the stones in the soil, and excrete substances to provide nutrition to the plants."

Peter looks interested for a moment, before setting his face back into neutral and pointing his hands at the closest. A.. complex witch-sign appears between his hands.

"I notice that your people use a lot of biotechnology. Is there a special reason for that?"

Anarawd appears to try and decipher the reason for my enquiry. The conclusion he reaches appears to be 'person asking is a fool'.

"The magic we use to control them would hardly work on a mechanical device."

"Perhaps, but machines can be operated with magic; I've seen magic-operated mechanical arms. Is there a reason why you don't use those?"

"If you want to talk about the rulership of our society, I suggest that you capture one of the High Born. I have never seen machines like that, but there are many things which I have not seen."

Peter dismisses his witch-sign and shakes his head. "How do we awaken them?"

"They may be commanded by any who know the proper signs."

"Show me."

"Alas, I know only the signs for their cousins in the Land of Summer's End. Perhaps your people can discover it."

Which is fair. I wouldn't expect an office worker to know how to fly an aircraft.

"Anarawd, what exactly is a 'vampire sun'?"

"It is the malevolent orb about which our world rotates, feeding on the life and animation of all who dwell there."

"Do you know why your sun is like that?"

"It is as it is. It has been that way for as long as I have been alive. Perhaps even for as long as we have been Sheeda, and not human."

Peter glares at the maggot and tries a different sign, causing its beetle-sack to ripple slightly.

Mr. Tao looks thoughtful. "I am impressed that they have remained alive for so long. I cannot see any way for them to absorb energy. They are not eating. They are not exposed to the sun."

Anarawd makes a dismissive gesture. "This is no great span of time for one of our living tools. If the spells are properly laid in, they could survive the passage of eons."

"Does Melmoth have that skill?"

"I would imagine so. He is old in blood and bone, and led Harrowings before the Queen removed him from power. He would not have survived so long were he foolish or ignorant."

"'Is'? Do you share your colleagues' opinion that he's unlikely to be dead?"

"I have no special knowledge of Melmoth's status. These…" I assume that he's looking at Peter, though his sheer black eyes make it difficult to tell. "Descendents of his, may have been able to kill him. Those who lived here fell to us too swiftly for me to assess them. And anyone can be taken unawares."

"Abednego, did your people ever try to summon his shade?"

"We did not. That form of necromancy is proscribed, on pain of broken-oath."

"Do Sheeda bodies reanimate in the way grundymen do?"

Anarawd shakes his head. "When we die and our remains are taken by our kin, we are placed in the reclamation vats, that the materials used in our creation are not lost."

"Lost..?"

"To the hunger of the vampire sun."

"And that doesn't happen while you're alive?"

"Perhaps if we were to fly close to it. I have never heard of anyone try."

"But on the ground or in the air, you are unaffected."

"Yes. Though I do not see how our sun will allow you to prevent the Harrowing."

"I don't hate you or your society. My preferred solution is to find a way for you to exist without the Harrowing. To do that I have to learn how things work in your era."

"Would it not be better to solve that problem for your own era first? If nothing else it would give us more to take."

"I'm perfectly capable of creating a matter transmuter which runs on a Bleed torsion generator. No external input required; you can make whatever you want. I don't because I think it would destroy our civilisation. But if it's that or suffer through a planetary invasion I'm happy to toss you one or two."

Anarawd looks at me incredulously.

"What would stop the vampire sun from consuming it?"

"I-." I blink. "No wonder Sivana couldn't get decent data. He hardly ever used biotechnology. He had to outsource his own children's augmentation."

"Sivana? The small human with-. He devastated entire colony sectors."

"To be fair, if those colony sectors were generating the Huntsman your people sent after him, that may have been me." Hm. "Abednego, do your people have any record of the sort of creatures their forebears used while they worked for Melmoth?"

"Not that they put to pen." He looks thoughtful. "Though if there are unhallowed dead as date from that time still at rest in these lands, it would be no heresy to call them up and question them."

"Can grundymen talk?"

"Aye, well. There are spells to aid such things. But I must ask: to what end would I be raising it?"

"I don't know what's important. We don't know what Melmoth's ultimate goal was. Any firsthand account might be helpful, it might be informative or it might be useless. I have no way to know in advance."

"I will ponder the wisdom of it." He looks around. "I believe that we have seen all we may of this chamber. Anarawd, where else did you explore?"

"Further down. Though I warn you, if Dark Melmoth put any defences anywhere, they will be there."

"Did you discover some in your first foray?"

"Yes, but they were designed to keep out beasts. Sheeda-beasts and humans alike. They did not trouble us. But you are not Sheeda."

"'Tis a true statement. But I be somewhat more hardy than my forebears. Lead the way."

 

[Mr Zoat]

4th May
19:37 GMT -5

"…say hold!"

The lines of green poison weave through the air and strike at Abednego's ward-signs even as Mr. Yao sings through the register-!

A stone cracks, shooting stone fragments across the room. The deadly tendrils fade a moment later.

Abednego lowers his arms and nods respectfully at Mr. Yao.

"Thank you, good sir. Melmoth was clearly both canny and vengeful."

Leonid winces slightly as he clenches and relaxes his right fist, the light of my purple ray playing over the area of his right arm where the strands touched.

"Yes, that feels better."

"Good show."

"But I do not understand how the spell got through your construct shield. It did not damage it."

"Construct shields only block tangible objects. It might look like a glowing strand of stuff, but as far as I can tell the light it gives off is a side effect of the passage of the arcane presence. I haven't… Yet worked out how to make my constructs drain magic by default." I shrug. "That's something I can work on while we're here."

Leonid nods, and touches his spell eater with his left hand.

"And this?"

"I never said that spell eaters are a perfect defence. Usually magic users try to power through the draining effect, but a sufficiently skilled one could probably find a way to bypass it. Any protection can be bypassed, though… I'd like Doctor Balewa to study the interaction."

Anarawd is standing back, not far enough to appear as if he's trying to escape but far enough that he feels justified in his hope that the defensive spells won't target him.

"You have Sheeda protective amulets? Did Sivana recover them for you?"

"No, I and an Atlantean magician called Sephtian developed them. Draining a spell tends to make it fall apart and prevents the more complex effects taking effect. And they eat through ongoing effects if the magician isn't continuing to supply them with power. We haven't ever really looked into sophisticated ways to bypass them, because… They're already cutting edge and they're not supposed to be relied upon."

"And you did not design them based on your study of the works of the Sheeda?"

"We developed them months before I had confirmation that the Sheeda even existed." I watch his face carefully. "Hey, is that temporal proof that we survive the Harrowing? The data had to-"

"No."

"-come from somewhere, and your people aren't particularly innovative."

"We may be less creative than the People of Spring, but we are perfectly familiar with spell-crafting. We could simply discover those same principles without your input."

"Did you?" Abednego and Mr. Yao begin cautiously surveying the room. Peter is giving Abednego the eye… Because the level of skill he just showed is above what he thought the average Columbian is capable of. That… Could be a problem, but we can probably explain it by the fact that he's a guide to the parts of the continent outside the boundaries of Columbia, and needed to study for his own defence. "Because that sounds like something that would cause the creator's name to be a rather big deal in your history."

"I have not studied our history in such detail."

"And I haven't studied avionics but I still know who the Wright brothers are. Still, it's nice to know that I'm such a big part of your culture; the last few time travellers I've met haven't even heard of me."

"No, that-." His eyes move away from us to stare at nothing. "No."

"And do you have records of how the Sheeda came to be? How you stopped being baseline humans and became this? Was it gradual or did you intentionally remodel yourselves?"

"That-." He actually backs up a step. "That does not matter. This is who we are."

I.. think I should give him a while to stew on that. I don't want to make him so afraid of what the truth could be that he does something foolish.

"It's interesting to see a time traveller so ignorant of history." I walk over to where Abednego is opening… Some sort of chrysalis? No, it's a living creature in its own right. "Found something interesting?"

"Mayhap."

It opens easily in response to a witch-sign, revealing a suit of armour like what the Sheeda wore, broken into parts. No, disassembled. This is an armour station.

Mr. Yao looks at Abednego.

"Mister Abednego? Is this significant?"

"We have not had a suit of their armour to study prior to now. Arrayed like this, 'twill be easier than with the damaged versions in town. Mister Anarawd, is this manner of device the normal way of arraying your armour when not in use?"

"Yes. When not in use. Simply taking it off in the field is…" He spreads his arms slightly. "Unwise."

His armour was pretty wrecked, and I'm not sure that we can learn much from it. But clearly it did its job, given that he's still alive.

Four more pods, four more suits of armour. Did Melmoth have accomplices, or did he just keep these spares for himself? For himself and any worthy descendants? Five suits of armour wouldn't be enough to conquer a planet, but perhaps it would be enough to carry out an assassination? Or reverse engineer to produce en masse? As a.. time traveller, I imagine that he was perfectly comfortable with long-term planning.

"How long would someone like Melmoth live?"

"Dark Melmoth often boasted that killing him was impossible. That a relic of one of the earliest Harrowings sustained him better than mortal blood."

"Is that true?"

"He… Survived a great many assassination attempts. Wounds that should have been mortal. Poisons known to be deadly. When a new attack occurred, he was said to make a great display of it. But… This is reputation alone. I was born under the rule of our glorious Queen. I have never seen him."

"And none of the assassins tried the whole 'fate worse than death' thing? Burying him in a solid block of concrete, that sort of thing?"

"The Queen has decreed something along those lines. I… Would imagine that it was because he was not entirely without supporters, who would see opportunities in defending him or liberating him. Or perhaps he stages the attacks himself, to better demonstrate his power. At this far removed, I could not say."

Abednego makes a slow circuit of the room, witch-signs faintly glowing as he checks for other traps. Leonid takes a closer look at the armour.

"Should we put it on?"

Abednego shakes his head. "I'd not recommend that, not unless your forebears were Sheeda."

"Or perhaps use it as a shield?"

"Without the correct invocations, t'would serve you not." His sigils dim. "The room is safe, as far as my magics can tell."

"Let's press on, then. I want to see if I can actually block the next attack."

 

[Mr Zoat]

4th May
19:54 GMT -5

Abednego lowers his hands, witch-signs fading.

"It will not yield to my subtle magics, I'm afeared. All I can offer is best wishes and a blasting hex."

Mr. Yao nods. "Peter?"

The youth nods and steps toward, running his finger tips down the solid material of the door. The door… I wouldn't say shimmers, but my underdeveloped magic sense feels something.

Peter steps away. "Nay, sir. It responds to Sheeda blood, but it feels the manish blood within me and will not open."

I give Anarawd a quick repeat-scan, then synthesise a vial of Sheeda blood and play a purple healing ray over it for a few moments. Abednego frowns curiously.

"On my Earth, we have creatures called vampires. Intelligent animated corpses who maintain their existence by consuming the blood of the living. They don't have to kill to live, but the whole thing is a bit unsettling and I wanted to develop an alternative way of feeding for them. Our medical science is advanced enough to produce synthetic blood, but it lacks the arcane vitality which vampires need. This is-" I turn off the purple ray. "-vitalised Sheeda blood."

I float it closer to the resolutely closed door.

Nothing happens.

I uncork the vial and tip a small amount of the blood onto the surface of the door.

Nothing happens.

"Or it might not be a purely blood-based lock."

I tip the rest of the blood over my right gauntlet and step forward to touch the door myself.

Nothing happens.

I shrug inside my armour, disintegrate the blood and vial and than step back out of the way.

"Pass."

Mr. Yao nods. "Anarawd, what do you suggest?"

Anarawd looks uncertain. "Do you not have weapons?"

Another nod. "I could break this open with a note, but I would rather have this facility as undamaged as possible. Please step forward."

He hesitates, then comes forward with his hands forward and fingers outstretched.

"I.. cannot feel any of the spells which are in common use in the Land of Summer's End. Dark Melmoth may have a lock which is far more complex than anything I can open."

"Still, I would appreciate you making the attempt."

This is a curious question. How far can we… How far should we push him? He and his people are committed to killing most people currently alive on Earth and stealing everything they can carry. He hasn't repented in any sense and the only reason he's sticking with us is naked self-interest. If he's a prisoner of war we.. aren't supposed to compel him to assist us. Does Columbia have.. laws relating to war? They're certainly not signatories to the Geneva Conventions. And neither's Themyscira. And yes, precedent says that if a Sheeda war fleet was overhead right now I could mind control him, but… One isn't. I'm pretty sure that if he says 'no' that I could square it with my conscience anyway…

But is he a prisoner of war? We're outside Columbia's borders here. I'm pretty sure that they'd just… Consider him to be a bandit. If there was a reason for them not to kill every Sheeda they met beyond 'we haven't met any'. Which would probably mean execution. So…

Anarawd touches the surface of the door, and green… Veins? Marbling? Appears on its dark surface.

Anarawd freezes.

"Anarawd, do you recognise this response?"

"I am-. Not-. High Born-. This magic is more sophisticated than-"

The door turns to dust floating in the air, then vanishes completely. Anarawd takes a hurried step backwards, his hands still in their raised position.

"-anything.. I know."

The room beyond appears to be… A control room? There's a techno-organic control panel, what looks enough like an Atlantean illusory display that I'm going to assume that's what it is, and… Not a lot else? The interior wall has a knobbly surface but I can't see any runic inscriptions.

Kind of dull for a final room, but I suppose that Melmoth was working with limited resources.

Or maybe there was a guardian beast and it died.

Leonid glances my way and I grant him construct armour, working in enough rune work and hunger that it should work against exotic attack. But that's why we put the super tough guy at the front. Mr. Yao nods and Leonid cautiously advances, eyes at medium glow.

I generate a sensor array construct and get scanning. The material this place is made of is… Sort of like chitin, in the same way that ceramic armour inserts are sort of like clay. I don't think this was ever part of a creature, even a magically-constructed one. I really have to take samples for Sephtian; if Atlantean bio-artificers can replicate it then we might be able to get Atlantis into space after all.

Leonid makes a careful circuit of the room before turning back to us and nodding.

"Clear."

I enter next, focusing my scanning on the control console. It's resisting exotic scanning, but more mundane sonic and thermal scans show where it's getting its food from. Deeper underground, there are creatures bringing it nutrients. I suppose they must have been too deep for the Columbians' spells to kill them. Either that, or too different from things that would usually be considered 'alive' for it to have been affected.

I don't.. actually have any Atlantean biomancers in my circle of contacts. Not my close contacts, anyway. Which is a shame because I think we're going to need a whole team here.

I send filaments throughout the room, but I can't feel any concealed objects. Low level magic, but no more than I would expect from this amount of Sheeda biotechnology.

"Clear."

Mr. Yao comes through next, his continuous hum causing a slight fluctuation in my armour construct. A moment passes and he nods at Abednego, who motions for Anarawd to enter first and then follows him in.

Mr. Yao looks at Anarawd and then gestures to the control system with his right hand.

"Does this seem familiar to you?"

"This.. precise design is new to me. Perhaps unique. But I can at least perform its basic operations."

"Please attempt to access the records contained here."

Anarawd nods, then focuses on the strange keyboard and begins pressing keys with purpose. The keys are marked with straight or slanting lines, which I assume make up the written form of the Sheeda language. The symbols aren't getting translated by my ring, which… Presumably means that they have no direct equivalents.

A moment passes, then tiny witch-signs in shades of green and blue flicker in the illusory space for a few seconds before drawing together into the form of a Sheeda man.

Anarawd tenses and lifts his hands off the control panel.

"Melmoth."

 

[Mr Zoat]

4th May
19:59 GMT -5

Blue-grey skin, pointed ears which are noticeably shorter than those of the three other Sheeda I've met. His face… No, his head, is taller and narrower than a normal human head, but only subtly so. You could meet a man of those dimensions on the street and only find it unsettling rather than monstrous or alien.

Naturally, he has a goatee.

"If you're seeing this message, then I have a visitor from Summer's End! Greetings, cousin. Welcome to my home away from home. Try not to trouble the locals too much; they can be ever so useful when they put their minds to it. And their backs, and their cunnies. You get used to the sunlight eventually; enjoy it! You'll not see its like again, and the burns are only temporary."

The illusion raises its right hand to its right cheek and touches it before lowering its arm again.

"If I'm still in residence, then make yourself known to me. I will welcome you warmly, and explain the purpose of the operation I've set up here. It will be pleasant to converse with an educated soul after so long amongst these… People. And as you can tell, I am rather partial to the sound of my own voice."

"Can you access the records?"

Anarawd tried pressing a few buttons. "It's locked while this plays."

"I can tell you of the true history of our people, which I'm certain that my dear wife has done her level best to conceal. I can tell you of the glories of the First Harrowing, the people we killed and the magics we stole. I can offer much in return for your service, and… As of now, my dear wife will consider your loyalty suspect and order you killed should she see you again."

Mr. Yao nods. "If you are able to agree, do so."

Anarawd glances at him, clearly concerned. "I would not dare betray the Queen. And he would know that."

"But do you think he'd enjoy watching you try to lie about it?"

"He may. But amongst Sheeda, that sort of torture is unusual. We-"

I nod resignedly. "Save it for humans."

"-save it for Peoples of Spring, like yourselves."

"And I see that you've brought humans with you. How very open-minded!"

Melmoth may not look all that inhuman but his constant toothy smile is a little disturbing.

"Two local men and-. Is that a Lantern?"

Are Lanterns a big enough deal that he'd program this to recognise one? From the fact that the two I killed yesterday recognised me and the fact that I think the Green Lantern Corps was active in this region of space during at least one previous Harrowing it's certainly possible-.

He's looking at me. That could be a programmed response, but-.

"Yes, yes, this isn't a recording. Imagine how surprised I was to be notified that someone had opened up my old hidey-hole."

The illusion… Makes eye contact with each of us in turn.

"I assume this means that her majesty Queen Gloriana Tenebrae is even now on her way at the head of a Harrowing fleet. Thank you for letting me know, I'll carry on with my own plan in response. But what to do about you?"

Ring, trace the communication channel.

Mr. Yao takes a step forward. "We are willing to cooperate to defeat the Harrowing fleet. Once the Queen is dead, you could resume your place as king."

Working.

"But I want to Harrow you too! The only philosophical difference between myself and ole' Glory-bra is that while she believes that she should rule the Sheeda, I believe that I should! We can't reconcile, but, well… Your civilisation is dead and damned either way."

"We have access to other worlds. We could rehome your people on another planet, where you could rebuild your civilisation."

"I'm sure that you could and I'm sure that you would. But my dear optimist, you need to understand that I really like hurting people. I absolutely love having them under my power, and I won't give that up for something as trivial as good sense. We have time travel; did you really think that if we wanted to we couldn't arrive during a period where there were starships on Earth and simply steal one? We don't Harrow you because we need to in order to sustain ourselves. We Harrow you because it lets us sustain ourselves while still being ourselves; casually cruel and vicious and revelling in our superiority. And, frankly, your utter destruction is well worth that."

"There is no room for negotiation?"

"Not.. really. I mean to say, if you wanted to arrange yourselves into patterns and then kill yourselves we'd probably let you, and if by some miracle you actually won then I imagine that the last few survivors would throw themselves upon your mercy… Perhaps. But on the core issue, I'm afraid that you are shit out of luck."

Unable to trace.

I connect a filament to Mr. Yao and send a message through it.

"Do you want me to try assimilating the console?"

He gives his head a small shake.

"Why did you found this colony?"

"If I had to live in exile, it may as well be a comfortable one. Have you ever tried taking a shit in a garderobe? Barbaric."

"That is.. all?" Abednego's hands are balled into fists. "You stole our forebears away from their homes-."

"Oh, you didn't think you were actually important, did you?" He pantomimes astonishment. "You did? Well, let me disillusion you: you're not. You're the result of me not realising that I'm biologically similar enough to humans that I can breed them."

He smiles. "Mea culpa."

"That's really it? I'm a little disappointed."

"They can't all be sinister plots. Though my actual breeding project is doing quite well. And since Glory-tits is on the move again… I suppose that it's time to ring the dinner bell."

He actually reaches out of shot and picks up a gong and mallet.

"Dinner time, children! Dinner time!"

I hear a fizz coming from the lumps on the wall the room and-.

"Attack from below! Everyone-"

I stick flight auras around Mr Yao, Peter, Abednego and Anarawd and pull them up-

"-off the-"

-as the creatures below us cease their regurgitations and bolt for the surface!

"-floor!"

The floor buckles and the frantic burrowing displaces tonnes of soil in an instant, silicoid claw-faced worms bursting through, magically-enhanced corrosives bubbling from their maws!

 

[Mr Zoat]

4th May
20:02 GMT -5

Three worms more coming door-. Door closed worth preserving structure no.

Acid midair construct barrier destroyed physical barrier melts partial neutralisation-.

Mr. Yao sings and the acid loses all momentum and falls back to the ground. The worms aren't bothered by it but the material covering the floor begins bubbling.

"Back, beasts!"

Abednego raises new witch-signs, each the size of kite shields. He gestures at the closest worm, which responds by lunging out of the ground and chomping at him! I yank him back, the sign attached to his left hand passing through the worm's maw with no noticeable effect.

"Ha! What fun."

Melmoth has a cup of tea and is sitting watching us, the-. The console appears to be immune to the acid.

Leonid blasts the door, which distorts slightly but then holds fast. His next shot hits one of the walls to even less effect.

The worm that failed to grapple Abednego burrows back underground as two others-.

The room tilts measurably. We're being undermined.

Strands of orange light connect my right hand to the console, causing it to briefly glow-.

Melmoth looks mildly disappointed as the console decays and his illusion projection fades away.

The new worms spray acid upwards Mr. Yao sings acid keeps coming! He twists aside, acid burning through his robe but missing his body. His song changes and the temperature of the room drops, frost forming on the worms and walls.

The worms appear unaffected. The two new arrivals lunge for Peter, forcing me to pull him towards the top of the room to dodge their mandibles. The two original worms spray acid in a wide arc, splattering Leonid's construct armour-

Hunger.

-which holds, which I'm pleased about. I form a construct railgun with the same rune work, load crumblers, point it at the door and fire. The hit causes a hole about forty centimetres across, which Peter might be able to squeeze through but is far too narrow for the rest of us. I reload and fire again as Leonid literally chances his arm by punching a lunging worm. It gets slammed back into the now-gelatinous floor with a quiet splat, Leonid jerking his fist back as the construct gauntlet gives up the ghost.

Vitriol.

Vitriol containment procedure requires countermagic or feeding it base until it's neutralised. There isn't an easy way to deal with it. With the worms being a constant source that won't work. Killing the worms might, but escaping is a priority. I've got a range advantage while their spit-pressure appears to limit them to shots of about three metres.

Second railgun shot fires, and-. The door is somewhat abraded, but it's still very much whole. Worse, the door appears to be regenerating the damage of the original shot by shifting material from the rest of it.

Alright, be clever, then. I fire strands at it with the aim of assimilating-. They're turned aside by a magic effect. Fine, assimilate-.

Buh-?

Leonid shoves me aside as acid sprays past where I was, droplets splashing on my construct armour anyway. I twist in the air, letting them spray off and shoving an x-ionised sword at the worm's neck as it lunges for me! The blade goes through its grey epidermis, shearing its three-pronged head from its neck, acid dribbling from the wound. The blade's a write-off so I drop it, and-.

The worm-corpse explodes! Fragments of its armour and blobs of highly acidic floor gunge spray outwards in all directions!

I try to interpose barriers and Mr. Yao howls a wave of kinetic energy, but all of us are hit! Anarawd's face is a rictus of pain as his right leg gets coated, the glutinous blob dripping down having eaten down to the charred bone! Peter frantically tries to wipe what he can off with the tattered remains of his travel cape before it can eat through his armour, but I can see the point where it gets through on the left side of his stomach.

"YAAAAAGHHH!"

Leonid copies my action in shaking the stuff off his construct armour and uses precise energy blasts to knock the worms' heads away from us. Mr. Yao shouts the.. same note he used when Klarion mind controlled him, break-breaking the universe around the door and carving a hole out of the surrounding walls. Abednego flies through immediately before turning small witch-signs on himself. His clothing appears to have protective spells bound into it, but the acid has eaten its way through and has badly burned the flesh beneath.

Leonid grabs Peter while I grab Anarawd and we both head for the door while Mr. Yao turns his doom song on the console room. What's left of the console evaporates, along with the floor and the visible parts of the worms. I-.

Mr. Yao doubles over in the air and coughs, small flecks of blood-.

I yank him out and put up a hungry construct wall between us and the console room.

"Physician?"

I don't say anything stupid like 'can you heal yourself?', because he'll tell me if-.

"Purple…"

I draw my purple healing ray and-

On the other side of the barrier I see a new worm breach the surface and launch a spray of acid. The construct is thicker than our armour and can take it for now, but that's a temporary thing and I need to do something nice for Wallace when we get back.

-shoot Mr. Yao in the mouth. Sonic scans…

"More worms coming. We need to go."

"Yes." Mr. Yao straightens with a nod, and I offer Peter the purple ray. He takes it, his breath unsteady from the shock. "Starfire, lead the way. Lantern, rearguard."

I nod as Leonid takes-

The building shudders and the walls tilt.

-off down the corridor towards the stairs.

"The acid's sinking the building."

I float backwards, holding Anarawd in a construct while the worms alternate between spraying acid and ramming my construct barrier. It looks like their innate magic isn't restricted to their acid, because those impacts shouldn't be doing that much damage.

Abednego helps Peter get moving, and a low hum from Mr. Yao tells me that he's listening to the vibrations of our surroundings. Pull back pull back-.

I transition myself and Anarawd back as a worm explodes in from the left wall, squirting acid in all directions! The others take immediate advantage of my barrier vanishing and surge forward, cracking the construct-.

I drop the construct, lash out with x-ionised blades, then create a new-.

The blast hisses through the air! No sludge this time, but super hard fragments wreathed in acid annihilate my barrier construct and eat into my armour construct and-.

Oh. No, that's gone through my regular armour as well.

I take advantage of the momentary respite as more worms pull themselves up to remove melting lumps of my own flesh from inside my armour, disintegrate what the acid hasn't and then heal myself. Then I create a new barrier and continue to pull back.

 

[Mr Zoat]

4th May
20:03 GMT -5

"The doorway is blocked."

I grimace faintly as I use very strong railgun shots to knock the worms back, keeping them off my barrier as we near the exit. When we headed down I could scan reasonably freely, but now it looks like Melmoth's flipped all of the switches. I can't even scan the next room with a default scan, and alternate sensors aren't returning completely reliable results.

"By a door or by the earth?"

"Neither? It looks like… Lichen? Dark grey?"

I feel through the construct holding him as Anarawd twitches in shock.

"If you know something-?"

"I have underestimated the Dark King."

"Not a capital offence. Care to narrow it down?"

"Orange Lantern!" I switch my attention from our Sheeda prisoner to Mr. Yao. "I should be able to sing open a hole, but for us to clear the distance-."

"I'll shield us and move us."

I move closer to the exit, the six of us clustering together. Something else for the slate: an alchemically-enhanced base to go with the alchemically-enhanced acid. Sure, in a situation like this it would cause a colossal explosion, but it would probably be a mostly-conventional explosion and I'm good at surviving those.

There's no countdown. Mr. Yao opens his mouth and I've already wrapped everyone in a rune-inlayed construct barrier, dropping the barrier to our rear. The worms have lost a degree of their focus and aren't quite as quick to go after us as they were when they first emerged, but-.

Mr. Yao pronounces the-. Yeah, great, now my ears are bleeding. The grey organic stuff covering the entrance is torn apart, the soil behind it blasted aside… For a moment.

I seal the construct and then shoot us forward, spinning construct drill pushing the subsiding soil aside and pulling us through for a few seconds until we're back out over the desolate plain.

I stop, turn, and turn the construct drill into a construct platform.

What little is still visible of the tower is rapidly sinking into a highly acidic bog, though that might be due to the empty chambers below the tower falling in on themselves. The worms are… Breaching the surface in a dozen or so places, though they aren't trying to attack us. I don't see any eyes, so perhaps they can't see us?

The grey lichen-like material is visible in patches all across the wasteland, and… I can see it slowly growing. It doesn't appear to be affected by the worms' acid. Our mounts are gone. The worms might have taken them, or they might have fled. There aren't any flying Sheeda creatures that I can see-.

I add a dome shield around the platform we're standing on.

"Anarawd, I would appreciate it if you would expand upon your answer."

"It-."

"Orange Lantern." Mr. Yao fixes me with a steady glare. "His leg."

"Right." I move Anarawd into a standing position and attach filaments to the acid-burned parts. "You might experience a few moments of discomfort."

Unlike with the creatures below, when he's not wearing armour Anarawd is perfectly simple to scan. Reconstituting his leg using my own revulsion at physical imperfection and desire to hear what he has to say is a simple matter.

When I'm done he stares at his new lower leg in nearly as much discomfort as he showed when he lost it.

"How long does it last?"

"I don't know. How long do Low Born Sheeda usually last?"

"The discomfort. It feels physically normal, but it does not share my soul."

"I'm afraid that I can't really help you there. If you come back with us to Earth, I can ask a biomancy specialist to take a look. Now about that lichen-stuff."

"The Earth of the Land of Summer's End is not like your Earth. The light of the vampire sun weakens and kills; it does not nurture and strengthen as your sun does, nor the suns of this world."

"Yes?"

"But the rest of the world is altered as well. Our creatures may borrow some parts of their form from the creatures of your era, but they are altered; larger, fiercer, enhanced by magic and possessing something of Sheeda biology."

"So.. I've already noted."

"Our buildings are the same. Our great vessels as well. Each is in part alive; a creature as those Core Worms are or as the Spider Mounts are. Our buildings are the same, and the Earth itself, that is enveloped by it the… Lichen? That is what you call it?"

"Until I can analyse it properly, yes."

"Our entire world is alive in some form or another. But our world is sustained by the Harrowing."

While… Melmoth's… "You think he's transforming this world?"

"I am not High Born. I do not understand the magics which allow us to raid the past. But if Melmoth feared that no more Harrowings were possible, or if he intended to cause this one to fail to spite the Queen-."

"We'd remember you, and never let ourselves become you. You'd need somewhere to come from, like a planet full of people with Sheeda DNA who used Sheeda-style magic."

"The pathways to future and past bring us from our world to yours. I always assumed that they were the same world; that we were your future. But if Dark Melmoth sought to secure us a new past… This…"

I take another look at the grey-coated worm-ridden landscape.

"This is how it would start."

"You do not understand. Everything we know about ourselves-."

"No, I just don't care. Will the people who live here be able to survive if the world is Sheeda-formed?"

"I-. Yes, certainly. Not so easily as we, but the beasts are controllable and for the most part work at their intended function without distraction."

Abednego nods. "'T'would mean the end of Columbia."

Peter hands me the purple ray back. "We must warn the town. Mayhap we can stay ahead of the beasts."

"How does that lichen interact with other plants?"

"It grows best on rock, but it will throttle any living thing not born of the Sheeda, given time."

"Does it have weaknesses? Some way to stop it? To kill it?"

"There are creatures which feed upon it, but never to the point of eradicating it."

"Orange Lantern." I look at Mr. Yao. "Get in contact with Lantern Stewart. I need to consult with Wonder Woman."

 

[Mr Zoat]

4th May
20:03 GMT -5

Much as this sucks, as planetary invasions go…

Sivana grins menacingly as he flips the switch on his hex-generator, and the sky ripples as the harvest-ship that has been eating its way through what's left of Detroit suddenly loses its wards and becomes visible. It had been a disturbing sight: factories and homes just vanishing without rhyme or reason, and unlike with the raiding bands it isn't just a matter of hunkering down until the invisibility spells lose power. I don't know what they can do Sheeda-side, but on a magically active planet like modern Earth the ships can keep it up indefinitely. Not just invisible to the electromagnetic spectrum but almost unthinkable.

The arcane engineers in the Queen's employ will realise what's happening at once, and they'll shout warnings. I can already see insect-riders rising from the stable-bays-.

"It would be so easy…"

Sivana's hands are twitching over the console which controls his other tools-.

I shake my head. "Doctor, the Queen isn't even here. I didn't like letting them destroy our shipyard in Kenya, but I did it because I knew it was necessary. If you can't control yourself-."

"I know. But to have-" A light comes on. "-them…" He recovers his smile. "There. They're calling for aid."

Jon and Sam agreed to pulling back US military assets once we discovered where the harvest ship was. They may not be real warships, but their beam weapons would shred pretty much anything that could be sent against it. The only avenue of attack is to take advantage of the fact that it has relatively low power reserves, and… You'd have to maintain a constant attack for days and take tremendous casualties to make that matter. China decided to ignore my advice and try that after their nuclear strike failed, and… It will work. After about a week and the deaths of half a million soldiers.

No. We need the Queen to deploy Castle Revolving somewhere we can get at it. And given how they really don't want to lose the harvesters…

BOOM! Kill.

Two blaster-equipped drone squadrons fly out of the boom tubes and fly at the Sheeda air cavalry. I learned the painful way that any attack that doesn't kill them lets them adapt their armour spells to nullify it, which forced me to bench my entire purple death ray force. Ah, yes, the Sheeda have spotted them-.

"They're calling again. Do it now!"

My eyes flick his way for a moment. "I'm choosing to interpret that as a request."

I raise my right arm, fusion cannon construct manifesting as I point it at the harvest ship. Which thanks to Circe hasn't spotted us yet, though that will soon change. This time the gun manifests differently, the ongoing terror of everyone left in the city and the fear of a world under assault meaning that I can afford to put a little more pressure on things.

Let's see. Don't want to knock the ship out completely…

There. Here I Stand.

I aim at a point just above and to the left of the primary harvesting array. And I fire, a blinding line connecting me to my target and punching through the far side. Face Me!

I step up onto the bonnet of an abandoned car and stride down the roofs of empty vehicles, Circe's ward evaporating around m-.

One of the harvest ship's underslung beam weapons orientates on me and fires, an entropic ray about a metre across hitting me on the upper right side of my chest. The crashed vehicles behind me decay in moments but I'm a New God. I am fuelled by the Source. And I did just shoot out about two thirds of the power relays to the lower platform. That probably helps.

I target the gun and fire again as I continue my advance, neatly shearing off the gun that shot me.

"Face me, Queen of the Sheeda!" WHERE IS YOUR NAME, THAT IS WRITTEN IN THE STARS?!

For a New God, that's throwing down the gauntlet. A demand that they confront the one shouting it, and a gamble from the one shouting it. Because if they demonstrate their nature and successfully slight yours, you get a very long term disadvantage using New God technology and God-powers against them. Of course, by making such a bold statement you get a boost and if you can make your claim of superiority stick then you keep it. To anyone else it's pretty much just an insult: strongly implying that since they're not one of us that they are ultimately unable to effect a change of any significance.

But it's still God-speech. A challenge shouted on a thaumically active planet. So when the Queen gets a request for help… If we're right, then she'll think of this as a personal insult and turn up to put me in my place. If not? Well, then I get a free harvest ship.

With the challenge issued and unanswered, my armour's ability to resist attacks by anyone working for the Queen is magnified… To a point. An unanswered attack will still weaken it, but only if the attack actually does something and is entirely unanswered. I don't have to spend the rest of eternity chasing down one guy who got a lucky hit in. But as the gunners on the back of the Sheeda flies try to find time to focus on the ground targets that they're designed for while the drivers duck and dive to try and avoid the blaster shots… They must recognise them by now. A couple who-. Ah, they're tanking shots, they've already acquired immunity. I could probably power through it using-

Red beams from their entropic rays hit my chest to very little effect.

-my God powers, but that would imply that they were significant enough to warrant it.

I raise both forearms in their direction, generate pulse plasma guns on both forearms and open fire. I do add a little of my own power to the shots to make my point, because there's nothing quite like a coup de grâce that misses to make a person look foolish.

What emerges from the guns are barely visible flickers of burning white, each existing only for moment before losing their heat to the surrounding environment. But in that moment they punch through Sheeda fly wings and harnesses, causing mutant insects and riders to tumble through the air and crash uncontrollably into the ravaged city.

Looks like Sheeda armour isn't very good at absorbing kinetic shocks. Worth remembering. I drop the construct on my left forearm and aim the one on the right at the fliers trying and failing to duel with the far more agile drones-.

And there's the castle. There's no transition; it doesn't shimmer or generate any kind of portal I can see, even with my goggles. One moment local airspace contains drones, insect riders and a harvest ship and the next there's a giant… 'Lump of radioactive coral' would be my best stab at describing it.

I don't know exactly what the glowing green bits do but it's somewhat irrelevant. By answering my challenge, Queen Gloriana Tenebrae has created a link between us. I might be able to exploit that unaided, but-

I twist the knob on Circe's amulet, which starts sparking.

-why have friends if you're not going to exploit them?

"Hush tube." Stand before me.

"Ping."

"Sivana-."

"Lex is already en-route."

"Good show. See you shortly."

Because while I can probably kill the Queen, stopping the ship is a dicier prospect. But what the heck? I dismiss my gun construct, fold my arms behind my back and walk through the hush tube in an utterly unhurried manner.

And I appear in front of the Queen's throne, Sheeda I assume to be the command crew at stations around the room and what must either be her bodyguards or her handmaidens crouched at her calves.

…

The bondage theme is strong in this one.

"Queen Gloriana Tenebrae?"

Guns and blades are drawn and I affect an air of being utterly unimpressed.

"I will now permit you to surrender."

 

[Mr Zoat]

4th May
20:07 GMT -5

"So confident."

"Yeah." I smile, nodding. "Pretty much."

I look left and then right.

"These guys are… Veterans, right?"

"These are High Born. Augmented by Sheeda science and magic to be far greater than any man."

"But you're the only one with head cancer." I frown. "Might want to get that looked at."

The right-hand handmaiden hisses, showing off her fangs.

…

Can I get homesick for a place I've never lived? Because if they worked a little red or blue into the monochrome colour palette in here this could actually be Apokolips.

"Derog? Kill this intruder."

A male Sheeda in armour plucks a spear off the wall and spins-.

I shoot him in the chest with an energy pulse and he slams backwards into the wall.

He drops to his feet and smiles. "Foolish, Child of Spring. My armour-"

I draw my daiklave and generate a fusion cannon construct.

"-is now impervious to-"

I fire, and only the photosensitive properties of my goggles allow me to see Derog parry a beam of ultra-hot high pressure ions, in a way which somehow nullified the energy therein completely rather than sending it into one of the neighbouring stations. The goggles also allow me to aim the tip of my daiklave as I make a ring-assisted lunge, shoving the point through his philtrum and into his spine. Then I swing it around to the right in an arc, taking away his body's support and causing it to collapse.

"That was fun." I turn away from the growing blood-pool-. I shoot Derog in the face until his head is entirely disintegrated because I don't know how well Sheeda aristocrats regenerate. "Might want to consider helmets."

"You're not wearing one."

"I'm not seeing anything that's actually a threat to me. You, on the other hand-."

The amulet splutters and dies.

Wait…

Uh.

"You're not her. You're a body double." I shrug with both arms. "This is what I get for fighting idiots for so long; it confuses me when I run into someone moderately clever. Pretty good effort for someone with no direct exposure to Apokoliptian technology."

"Kill him."

Right handmaiden lunges for me with more than human strength and speed. Guess they don't know that much about Apokoliptian technology, then. The challenge is still in effect, and if whoever-that-is on the throne sends people at me without having the other party designate them her champions…

Fortunately, I have more than human speed too. Sword's out of position but she's not wearing a helmet either. My left fist hits her in the side of the head and sends her flying, though she's tough enough that her skull didn't shatter. In the fraction of a second when she's still in reach she tries to cut my gauntlet with her nails and.. scores a tiny scratch which doesn't penetrate. Not bad for a fingernail.

"Bored now."

I raise my fusion cannon and shoot the queen in the exposed midriff. The shot bores right through her and into the throne, and almost immediately her outline changes from demon prostitute to… Humanoid insect thing.

Meeting a distraction with a distraction. I'll admit to being mildly impressed.

Wreck the Empty Throne.

The barrel of my gun widens as the Sheeda form up behind me, swords, spears and shields and I've no doubt that they're all quite good with them. Instead of fighting them I fire again, the left handmaiden diving aside as the throne and the wall behind it are annihilated.

And then I run through the hole, leaving the command crew behind.

"Mother Box, get me a location for Sivana."

"Ping."

Because now the command crew have to choose between doing their jobs-

An arrow plinks off my back plate.

-and pursuing someone who has demonstrated the ability to kill them.

"Ping."

"Are you sure, because-?"

"Ping!"

"Okay, no need to take that tone! Boom tube."

"Ping."

Fine. Angle?

"Ping."

I point my fusion cannon just a little to the left of the focus of the ship's temporal manipulation effect and fire a wide beam, carving a line through the ship's internal structure. Then I fly, trusting my armour to keep the heat and poisons off me. Flying out-.

There's a green bubbling pit surrounded by some sort of ritual space. A heavily bleeding Thaddeus Sivana shoots the Queen though the head with.. a gun that hurts my eyes to look at. She's-. Why are there arrows-?

Sivana shoots her through the heart, collapses, then props himself up just enough to shoot her through the neck, fully severing her head.

Artemis drops down from a crenellation. "I was going to take her alive!"

"And I wanted her dead, so I killed her."

I frown at her. "Artemis, what are you-?"

She glances at me, frustration evident though her mask. "Mister Miracle found a back door."

Someone else who decided to ignore my advice. "Right. I don't know…" Sivana pulls a device out of his coat and draws a rune on the floor in his own blood. "Doctor?"

"This is the centre of their time drive. The green substance is literally trans-temporal."

"Okay, yes, good-."

His device glows.

"I'm going to use it to erase the ship from the present. If I'm very lucky, I'll wind back what they did on Venus-." He coughs up some blood. "But I doubt it."

"Is there a reason why you're rushing this? If we capture the ship-."

"You're going to prevent them from ever being. I can't take the risk of this ship disappearing on us. I think I should be… Sorry, but I barely care about myself at the moment and I certainly don't care about you."

"Artemis to team, get out of here!"

Sivana smiles peacefully. "Two…"

I step forward grab Artemis and fly at-

"One…"

-the pool!

"Goodby-."

 

[Mr Zoat]

5th May
02:47 GMT -5

"…anything in the system?"

John shakes his head. "It's a binary system. Having a habitable planet here is strange enough already. There's some dust, but no asteroids worth talking about."

"Did your ring recognise the location?"

Another quick shake. "No. We could be in a parallel universe, or another time, or just another galaxy where the Corps doesn't have good star charts."

"Or all three."

I glance at the doors leading to the parliament chamber where Abednego is making his full report.

"I've never evacuated a planet before. You?"

"Yeah. Once. You know what a 'maximizer' is?"

"A type of badly programmed AI. One that is told to do something and given no mechanism for assessing its objective relative to the wider needs of society. You ran into one?"

He nods. "It wasn't all that clever, but it had already converted pretty much its whole home system into machinery. By the time Lanterns got called in, it was already getting near another inhabited planet. That was a bigger evacuation than this, and they were able to terraform their planet back after we got done destroying the robots. This isn't the same thing. If we take these people away, they can't ever come back."

He thinks for a moment.

"You got a way to beat this thing?"

"Giving the Columbians better profane and arcane technology will probably allow them to survive. Better necromancy…"

"What about using your ring to disintegrate it? You said that the Sheeda stuff you tried it on turned to dust."

"On a life form by life form basis. And while I didn't get a perfect look, I think this planet is covered in Sheeda beasts. I think Melmoth brought a cross-section here with him and told them to go forth and multiply. My worry is that he's spent the rest of the time since his 'death' doing the same to other planets. Or that he's trying to convert the entire mass of the planet."

"How dangerous are they? Unless there's something I'm not seeing, you killed them easy enough. And they can't use technology, so they can't get off-planet."

"The worms we fought were his mining tools. The magical super-acid was their equivalent of a drill, not a dedicated weapon. Assuming that the Columbians have been reasonably thorough in keeping Sheeda creature levels down… I'd assume that the really dangerous creatures mostly live away from here. If Melmoth was mostly leaving them wild he wouldn't want them near where he was building his settlement."

"How was the village planning on handling it?"

I shrug.

"Their creatures broke their obedience spells when Melmoth flicked his switch. They handled it, but can't evacuate without a way to transport.. food, at least."

"They could come here. You said there aren't that many of them, even if every small town packed up and moved out."

Yes, like the town with the maggot pit. Whose inhabitants are almost certainly turning into spine rider thralls even now.

"I doubt that the Columbians would accept that. I didn't ask them to point out their warlocks, but I'm confident that there are a few."

He folds his arms across his chest. "You think they'd sing the same tune if we told them we're helping everyone or no one?"

I raise my eyebrows. "Would religious fanatics fold to external pressure quickly?"

He looks away. "Yeah."

"Of course, religious fanaticism could help. If I give one of the locals an orange ring, they might be able to carry out a purge."

"'Purge' as in 'get rid of the Sheeda animals', or 'purge'-."

"I'd wrestle it off them if they attempted genocide. But the locals are far more invested in this world than I am." I exhale. "It's a shame I wasn't able to make common cause with Melmoth. If he's got a plan to defeat the Queen, we could make use of it."

"How exactly is he planning on getting his animals back to Earth?"

"Pass. We still don't know how he got all these people here in the first place. It could be that there's a space ship somewhere on this planet that we haven't found. He clearly has a good enough command of magic to hide it from our scans, and I don't know if Doctor Mist understands this planet's magic or the magic of the Sheeda well enough to locate it quickly. And…"

Oh heck.

"It's not like we actually know that the settlers on Roanoke were the only people he abducted. There could be any number of settlements across this world or across others in the same situation."

"You actually think that's what's happened?"

"No idea. Which is rather the problem."

We stand there for a moment, and I strain to hear any sound coming out of the debate chamber. No, no chance of that in a society of magic users.

"Do you have someone in mind?"

"For what?"

"Recruiting. If you need to recruit a local to deal with the Sheeda lichen, or animals. That Abednego guy?"

"No, his style of magic means that he doesn't think in the right sort of way. If I actually had to pick someone I'd probably ask them to line up witch-hunters and get them to drop their personal wards so I could get a good look at them. But if I had to pick someone now… Beulah Bleak."

"Klarion's sister? Doesn't she hate you?"

"That's not necessarily a bad thing."

John snorts in amusement.

"She was willing to die if she got another shot at Klarion. She's driven, selfless and devout. I'm not sure her staying in the Corps afterwards would work, and she's definitely a genocide risk… Or if Doctor Mist finds a way to transport everyone here back to our Earth."

"You think that's a good idea?"

"They've got a very useful skill set. I'm sure we can find somewhere to settle them if they're willing to trade their arcane knowledge. And if three witch-hunters handled coming over without being disabled by culture shock, I'm sure they can manage. And we could put the warlock-breed a long way away from the rest, if that was going to be a problem."

I know Russia would snap them up, especially if we sent the rest to America. There's no future in relying on uneducated tribal shaman, and no obvious way to transition them into something better.

"In fact, I should probably-."

My ring blinks, and John's does as well. We both raise them, and Alan's head appears.

"Paul? John? We've got a problem."

 

[Mr Zoat]

5th May
02:53 GMT -5

Ahead, I see Alan shove the wave of grundywomen back, the revenants losing their footing as he moves them faster than their sluggish reflexes can accommodate. And this is a problem. The mob I can see represents a sizeable portion of Columbia's industrial base. While a powerful headshot will destroy a grundywoman, it will also ruin their economy. They literally won't be able to sustain themselves.

And I think Alan knows that and is holding off, because he's just as capable of headshotting them as I am. I don't see any living Columbians around, which is a moderate concern. Undead work gangs usually have overseers who make sure that their charges remain focused on their work and make running repairs to the flesh and the spells as necessary.

"Blue Lantern! What set them off?"

I come to a halt a short distance from him while John goes higher, green light strobing out as he searches for people in need of rescue.

"Your guess is as good as mine."

Unlike some types of fictional zombies, grundymen are completely silent. Their footsteps make noise, their clothing still rustles and blows still pound, but not a single sound issues from their mouths. No breathing, no moaning, no unbidden words.

"They're strong; stronger than the ones who attacked us at my home. But-"

He shoves the grundywomen he has contained, keeping them squeezed together and off-balance. They can't bring their strength to bear in a coordinated way.

"-I think I've got them."

I nod, taking a look through empathic vision. If someone is manipulating them, I should be able to see a reflection of their desires-.

Oh.

Strands leap out from my outstretched hands, striking each grundywoman on the back of her neck. Where every spine rider is crouching. And assimilate.

Most simply evaporate as I strike them, the undead they were controlling becoming listless and purposeless without their motivation. A few draw their swords from their host and slash my strands. That works until I reallocate strands that have already destroyed their targets and attack them from multiple directions. Hm, alright, I know that assimilation doesn't work as desired. Let's try something a little different.

I release my construct-Lantern wraith and deposit it just above the undead.

"Possess one of the Sheeda-faries."

"Gladly, master."

One spine rider simply tries to flee, and the orange spectre swiftly undulates through the air and catches up with it, circles around it and then lunges, passing into its body and causing its eyes to flare with orange light…

No disintegration.

I sigh. I'm going to need to assimilate more demons. I wonder if I can get a warlock to summon some for me?

"Did you get them all?"

Quick check…

"All the ones in the immediate vicinity. Remember, they can stab through construct barriers."

"I'll have you know I've dealt with stronger grundy-men than this." He dismisses his construct. "Green Lantern, did you find any stragglers?"

"No." John flies back our way. "And I didn't find any living people, either."

I look around-. We're on the periphery of the capital here, where they put their tanneries and other industrial processes so that the sound and smell can't offend the living. I can see people… Some distance away, but-.

"There should be more people here than this."

Alan blinks. "Melmoth kidnapped them?"

"Spine riders control people, and can plan and execute complex strategies. They could do this without Melmoth's direction." I look from Alan to John. "I don't suppose that either of you have a secret ward-bypassing scanning technique?"

John frowns. "I thought you did."

"Yes, but I doubt that we'll have hours. I-."

"Captain Atom to Blue Lantern and Green Lantern."

Alan nods. "We're here, Captain. Go ahead."

"I'm in a town to the north. We're under attack by some sort of stinging insect. I need one of you here to cover the evacuation."

Alan nods to John. "You're faster than m-."

"Physician to Justice League. A town to the north-west is under attack by a group of Sheeda-altered mantises. I would appreciate help."

Alan nods. "I'll take that one. Orange Lantern, can you follow up on these abductions?"

"On it. Canis, are you busy?"

"Even the songs they sing in praise of the Source are bland."

"Brut can track people shielded by magic, right?"

John shoots off to the north while Alan creates a compass construct before heading for Mr Yao.

"Of course."

"Please come to my current location. Spine riders appear to have abducted some locals."

"I come."

I look at the spine rider my wraith is possessing.

"Does your host know where they're going?"

"No, Master. This one was not called to return, merely to take a zombie and attack any humans it could find."

"Do they have an easy way to locate each other?"

"No, Master. Mundane senses only. Its magic skills are innate, not learned."

I nod as Brut lands at the end of the road and bounds towards me, Canis on his back.

"You have something for him to scent?"

"These grundywomen were taken by spine riders, and I've got a spine rider here."

I have the wraith-possessed spine rider fly downwards, and Brut gives it a quick sniff.

"And those who were taken?"

"No list. Their supervisors were taken too, and I've got no idea who owns each company or where they are."

"Then we will start in their middens. Forward!"

 

[Mr Zoat]

5th May
02:59 GMT -5

Canis lets Brut lead him inside the main… Beamhouse? Inside of Smyth's Tannery, and nods as the dog makes a sort of gurgling growl at one of the liming vats.

"Yes, I see it." He looks around with a mild frown. "Odd that they only used one, but then I suppose they were pursuing the mindless-"

He pulls out his mace and smashes it into the wooden side of the vat!

"-dead." "Strike the Lies."

The wood cracks, and for a moment I see gallons of putrid fluid stream towards us..! Which then fades out, leaving a gap in the beamhouse and a hole in the floor about two metres across.

And neither my empathic vision looking for emotional resonances nor my ring's scans could tell the difference. I.. wonder if it's possible for a human to become a New God? If it is, that might cover my… Not 'weakness' exactly, but the.. hole in my strengths? I'll ask later.

Canis moves to the edge of the hole and looks down the vertical shaft. The floorboards have been… Gnawed? And the soil which makes up the first few metres is being held in place by more of the lichen. At least it wasn't acid-melted, but that does mean that the spine riders are either cooperating with another type of Sheeda creature or are perfectly capable of suborning non-humans.

I take a moment to try scanning for skin cells, air movements, footprints… Yes, there are a few things which suggest that they might have come this way, but Canis's blow hasn't removed all of the effect of their warding.

"Is this where they left, or just where they came in?"

"The trail is clear to me. Here they came, and here they left."

"Could they be deceiving you?"

"If they were deceiving me, how would I know?" He shrugs. "If you had asked me before I came to Earth, I would have cut you down like the Lowlie you appear as. But if I later considered the question, I would have concluded that only another New God could disguise things from my senses. But the Earth has shown me many strange things."

"I suppose it doesn't matter. Do you know if the Spine Riders can affect you? Or Brut?"

Canis cranes his head forward and points to his heavy gorget with his right hand.

"I added this to my armour in preparation for this mission. And-" He pats Brut's collar. "-so long as I live, this shall serve as well. They may be able to take control of individual nerves… Perhaps. But then they are within striking range. Now forward!"

Brut leaps, clearing the lip and twisting as he enters a shaft just big enough to fit him! He turns as his claws scrabble on the lichen on the far side and then.. dashes down, his claws finding just enough purchase to keep him anchored to the interior wall.

I thought I was over my vertigo. Apparently I was wrong.

I don my armour and fly after him face first, orange light shining from my body lighting up the interior of the shaft. Of course, most of what I can see is the back end of a giant dog, but it should give me at least a little warning of an oncoming attack as Brut dashes down at terminal velocity-.

"Where is your joy, Lantern? Does this not fire your blood even slightly?"

"No."

"Bah! Does nothing excite you?"

"Plenty of things excite me. Cleaning up the mess caused by someone else's egotism isn't one of them."

"Hah! You must invite Cheshire to the Mountain! I wish to see how you change in her presence!"

Brut makes a loop of the tunnel's interior as it bends and levels out, going from running on what would have been the new ceiling to the floor.

"I'll mention it to her."

No ladder, I note. Spine Riders can fly, but they can't carry their hosts. Or at least I've never seen them do so. So did another creature help them down? Columbians don't fly, and Sheeda only fly on the backs of their beasts.

The tunnel doesn't branch, so they must have brought everyone they took to that one tannery and brought them here. Spine Rider hosts only move as fast as they normally do, so they're reduced to human running pace while Canis and I are much-

Canis strikes the side of the tunnel with his mega rod and the tunnel ahead of us bursts into flame! Ring-!

Oh.

The flames are about 2000o​C, which while extremely dangerous to human flesh doesn't do a thing to Canis, Brut or me as they wash harmlessly over us. So that wasn't intended to hold us off.

-faster.

I take a moment to look at the lichen-covering of the tunnel. No, that isn't affected by the flame either. I-

"Master." The wraith flies level with me. "My host form was destroyed. I may take another at your command."

I doubt that was intentional, but it does show how much more fragile than Canis and me the Spine Riders are. Unless it was keyed with some sort of bypass spell? It also implies that the ones puppetting the grundywomen weren't supposed to return, or at least not return this way.

I draw the wraith back into my ring.

"Canis, Apokoliptian Fire Pits. Does anything grow in them?"

"Some strange creatures live around the edge. And there are tunnel-living Lowlies who live close to them. What of them?"

"I was thinking that we could use this lichen as a heat-resistant building material."

"Ah, a living world? An entire planet, alive and yet in constant pain, continuing to exist only by inflicting that same pain on others. Has the beauty of the vision enraptured you as well?"

"No."

"I wonder if the Queen is Apokoliptian. I have seen none of our technology, but the signs of a thing are not the thing in itself."

Scrub that idea.

We're heading… Further inland, into the areas the Columbians haven't settled yet. It's a little strange that they've generally grown their country back towards the lands their forebears fled from rather than away from them, but I suppose I can understand rallying your people against a known threat. It's not a sensible decision, but I can understand it.

If I were a Spine Rider, what would I want out of life? Unlike Star Conquerors they're not helpless without hosts, even in maggot form. I… Think I'd want to use my ability to achieve a goal, but… I wouldn't want to be stuck on a host full-time. Of course, that assumes that Spine Riders have human-equivalent intelligence, which given their tiny craniums seems unlikely.

Maggots can and will eat anything alive. To sustain a population, Spine Riders need enough for them to eat, and it wouldn't be practical for them to farm or hunt conventionally themselves… Host bodies as well-tended tools? Unless they're compelled to obey Melmoth or the Queen in some way…

Not enough information.

"Lantern! We just tripped a warding glyph! They know that we pursue them!"

Hardly surprising.

Far ahead of us I can see a light, but the tunnel hasn't turned up and there aren't any canyons in the area. Let's see what they've been building down here.

 

[Mr Zoat]

5th May
03:03 GMT -5

There's light at the end of the tunnel, a dull and washed out blue clashing with my own orange glow. Otherwise there's next to no electromagnetic radiation… Though again, that could just be the wards. Can't scan ahead and I can't see much from this position-.

Canis and Brut burst through the entrance first, and by some miracle aren't immediately riddled with energy blasts. I'm a half-second behind them-. It's a cavern, possibly naturally occurring-? Volcanic rock. An old magma chamber?

Most of the interior wall is covered in the same coral structures as Melmoth's redoubt was made of, There are… Patches of the lichen, but it's not growing on the coral. I assume that it's designed not to attach itself to other Sheeda growths. Or perhaps enchanted? Globs of some sort of resin are attached to the coral in various places, and they're the source of the sickly light which permeates the gloom. There are a dozen or so tiny tunnels leading upwards towards the surface visible on the upper walls and the ceiling of the chamber-

"Ah, you again."

-and another image of Melmoth shining from a dais at the centre.

"So glad to see you!"

There's a staircase leading down near that dais, and I can see the abduction victims walking zombie-like down into the bowels of the earth. I fly-.

"And-. Oh my, is that a God?"

Something lands on my right shoulder and I throw up construct spines to stab it! The Sheeda maggot gurgles, gunge leaking from mouth and stab wounds as it shimmers back into visibility.

"Canis?"

"I haven't seen a God for millennia. What brings you here?"

Brut slows as Canis stares around the chamber, as if he were searching for something. "There is something here. Something of the New Gods."

"We can pull the place apart once it's safe." I fly for the staircase, strands darting at the Spine Riders who turn their hosts around and generate warding witch-signs. "Just-."

"Are you trying to-" Canis swings his rod and smashes a maggot clear across the chamber and through Melmoth's illusory face. "-rise above your station, elf-man? Would you-"

Two of the globs of light glow slightly brighter for a moment and then fire, beams of blue plasma lancing out to strike at Canis! A twitch of his legs and Brut jinks, the beams missing and-. And reforming into blobs.. at the point of impact, their glow now considerably dimmer.

I've… I've never seen a weapon like that before.

"-dream of-"

Three start glowing, and Canis's momentum-. I interpose myself, taking a solid shield out of subspace and bracing in the air. The beam hits, and my armour takes it without too much-.

Pjjccchhhuuukkk!

My armour doesn't take that without too much difficulty! Explosive acidic plasma! Shield's gone, arm's gone and a lot of armour has been eaten through-

"That looks painful."

-and something is nullifying my usual pain nullification! Gaaagh! Cauterise! Remove affected armour plates and flesh! Regenerate and evade!

Gritting my teeth as I dart aside from a follow-up shot, charred meat that used to be part of me falling out of the hole in my armour. Canis-. Took a hit, and I see him roll to his feet in time to dodge another two shots. Brut's heading for the people going down the stairs while his master tries to make it to the dais. Right, so I can-.

Dodge again! Dodge again!

"I rather thought that I'd hit a ring, there."

Okay. Feeling slightly better with my chest and shoulder back in one piece. Railgun, solid shot, target a glob and fire.

Shot punches right through without disrupting it at all.

That's… Not how fluid dynamics usually works, but fine. Load mage slayer, fire and move!

"Lanterns. Such an adaptable nuisance."

The glob goes out and slumps, whatever was holding it together allowing it to survive in a semi-solid mass but not preventing the magic being nullified. Or something simpler, maybe? I evade again and wait until a glob near Canis glows and then fling a plate of steel into the space between them. It hits and creates a violent explosion, heat, pressure, light and acid exploding in all directions and only slightly redirected by the metal that it swiftly consumes! But Canis is unaffected and.. it doesn't appear to be re-coagulating.

Whereas the one -dodge!- that I shot with my mage slayer just re-enchanted itself and tried to shoot me. Low tech solution it is, then.

I head towards-. Darn it, the puppeted Columbians are out of sight. Head that way anyway, draw fire. Can't tell where the globs are going to be shooting reliably but the 'glow-to-fire' gap appears to be constant. Firing firing and throw! Yes! Another one dowand that's a lot of lights.

Ah.

"And you were doing so-."

Canis does something to the console as Melmoth vanishes, which is progress, but doesn't do much to help with the shots I'm about to-.

Think fast.

Beehive structure, base filler to try and make it explode outwards when the two reach, secondary layer, tertiary layer and force field to protect against the mundane effects build build build! The near-sphere appears around me piece by piece as the orange light takes what it can from subspace and transmutes the rest, printing the material into three dimensional space as quick as I can make it! I can't see out once a layer is complete so I just have to cross my fingers and prepare to dodge if something-.

The structure shakes as the beams hit home, and I start losing construct probes in the outer layer at the same time as the first base-acid explosions start happening. Given the patterns of pressure, angles of attack and the weight of the whole thing, I estimate-.

The second layer explosions on the underside go off and the third layer is unaffected while the third layer above me is still taking damage. I use construct blades to cut a hole down and then fly down and out before dropping the acid shelter on the ground. Not bad for a.. two second job. Lights are out so I take light globes out of subspace and toss them around before heading for the stairs.

"Canis, you alive?"

A passing globe lights up the dais, shining on his face as he works the console.

"Yes. I thought that Mother Box might have a little more luck against the Sheeda systems than your power ring." He shakes his head. "It is a sad day for Apokolips when we are less feared than you are."

"I suspect that Darkseid would find the Sheeda instructive, if only as an example of mediocrity."

"But they know us, know our technology and abilities. You are concerned for what their existence means for your people." Canis glances at me for a moment, considerably more serious-looking than I'm used to him being. "I am concerned what it means for mine."

Yes, Apokolips being gone. What a… Tragedy.

"Alright, you work on that, I'm going to follow the Columbians. I'll shout if I need you."

 

[Mr Zoat]

5th May
03:05 GMT -5

I send filaments down ahead of me, though not as far ahead as a truly cautious approach would involve. I am trying to rescue these people alive, and I'm far more survivable than they are.

Nothing much, nothing, there! I grab the Columbian thrall and pin their arms to prevent the Spine Rider controlling them from using their magic. Then I loop filaments around their neck-. Got you!

The Columbian man stiffens at once, his heart racing and his breathing erratic. His pupils are dilated and aren't really focusing on anything. Ring, quick health check… Nothing he won't recover from on his own, but with a little power ring I can make that now.

"Sir?"

"B-by God Almighty-!"

"Sir, you've been taken by a Spine Rider. I've killed it, but your coworkers are still being held. If you can remember anything about what it told you to do, that would be very helpful. Otherwise, please head up the stairs and stay close to my colleague Canis."

"I-" He sits up, his right hand going to the back of his neck. I closed the wound when I treated him, but I use a filament to pick up the Spine Rider's sword from the ground and hold it out to him. He sees it and nods. "No, good sir. I saw little of their attack before I was… T-taken, and then it was… As if I was in a dream, compelled to walk ever onwards with no sense of my own self. I-I have no idea what they plan for us, but I pray you, destroy these devils. Save my friends."

"I'll do my best. Up, now." I give him a hand and he pulls himself to his feet. "Canis has a large dog with him. He's a little strange, but he knows his business."

He nods jerkily and then darts up the stairs.

There's no one else in range of my filaments, but the magic here is either making them fade out or preventing me from getting feedback.

Or… Thinking about the feedback-.

I check my spell eater, but it's still in place and at a reasonable temperature. Not cold; there's been enough magic thrown around to get it a little heated. But it should still be working.

For one entirely inappropriate moment I'm reminded of when I started watching anime. It was completely different to any of the tropes I was all too familiar with from western animation, and I mistook that difference for originality. Here, I don't know if the Sheeda are being truly clever or if they simply use arcane attacks that happen to be different to the ones I'm used to guarding against.

Not that it makes much difference; I'm here with the equipment I have now and I have to deal with them.

I fly downwards. Not much dust, but my rings ever-so-helpfully point out the disturbances in the dust on the steps and the walls. Not walking lockstep in the way that star conqueror victims tend to. No spell snares, but I suppose that if a random group of tannery overseers are capable of using magics which could harm me then they certainly couldn't do so quickly.

There's an opening up ahead, and a chamber beyond it. The ongoing sensor dampening magic is making me consider simply feeding on the magic… But I don't want to risk harm to the hostages unless a reasonable alternative presents itself.

And…

Huh.

The Columbians are kneeling in ranks before… Some sort of multi-headed mosquito… Thing. Most are collapsed, and as I watch the mosquito finishes draining the last few and withdraws its heads. I can see the blood running through its translucent body and into… A… Its vast body, bloated and fat.

A construct blade severs the heads. Filaments annihilate the Spine Riders and mend the Columbians. Other than the shortage of blood, there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with them. Was that… It? The Spine Riders brought them here to feed this.. thing? I restore their bodies as best I can and then deposit them by the door. Working out what the heck Melmoth was trying to do needs to be my priority.

Or… Does it? Can I think of a single non-evil thing that Melmoth might be doing with thirty pints of type-unmatched Columbian blood? No, no I can't.

Thick bands of orange light connect me to the still… Aliveish? Mosquito-thing, as I have a crack at assimilating it. The things I cut off… Yes, they had mouths and eyes but I don't think they were actually 'heads' in any conventional-

"Still alive, Lantern?"

-sense.

The creature is resisting, glowing runes all over its carapace making it hard to make contact. But that's fine; I'm trying to kill it anyway.

I ignore Melmoth's voice and form a railgun, load mage slayer rounds and fire at the most important-looking cluster. The first round strikes it without difficulty, and this time it actually works.

"How are you doing that? Some sort of leeching spell?"

The runes near the impact site stop glowing, and some sort of feedback causes the carapace nearby to crack up and the runes there fail as well. Immediately I follow up with an orange strand and attempt to assimilate it. The strand connects, and the creature turns to dust.

Mostly.. turns to dust.

"Ah. Curious. That particular redundancy wasn't created with Lanterns in mind."

There's a pile of.. tissue, or.. organic material. I assume that it isn't 'Sheeda' enough to have been included in the disintegration effect. It's.. like spider web: cream in colour, strong, slightly sticky in places and… It looks like it's cocooning… Someone or something. Columbian blood that hadn't percolated far enough through the system splats to the ground as I generate crumbler constructs and start… Pruning it back.

"Other than you wanting to be as evil as you can, what is any of this about?"

"Oh, this isn't about 'being as evil as I can'. There are far more ways to be evil than I currently indulge in."

"So when you claimed that you 'really like hurting people'-?"

"Oh, I do. But unlike some of my kind I know when to practise restraint."

"You just prefer to live-" Behind me the recovering Columbians begin making a retreat. "-in a situation which doesn't require you to."

"When I ruled these people I enforced my own laws in a completely fair and even-handed manner. I just didn't subject myself to them. What's the point of being king if you can't be king?"

"To create the greatest and strongest realm you can, with the most prosperous and capable people, as a testament to the rightness of your rule."

"Well…"

"But I suppose that's not for everyone. Particularly if this is all you've managed since the last Harrowing, you malignant incompetent."

The shape is humanoid, though I can't see anything that suggests that they're alive. But… This civilisation is rife with necromancy, and there are humanoid species with decidedly non-standard vital signs. I wouldn't want to kill an intelligent undead creature that hadn't done anything wrong.

"You know, I had considered keeping you on with your facilities intact. Now, I think I'll let you watch everyone you know and love die screaming before I turn you into a gibbering pet."

"Melmoth, if your threats worried me I wouldn't bother talking to you."

"I suppose you have acquitted yourself reasonably well so far. But I rather think that's about to change. You see, after I was deposed and abandoned after our previous Harrowing, I had the complete run of a dead civilisation. Access to all manner of interesting things. All sorts of interesting people. And their corpses. The main drawback of replacing my blood is that I don't have any Sheeda blood in me any longer, but my seed is still Sheeda seed, and my descendants have me in their blood."

"And it doesn't take a lot of blood to make a grundygod."

 

[Mr Zoat]

5th May
03:09 GMT -5

…

No, the logic is sound. If he got hold of a New God corpse and dosed it with Sheeda blood… Or Columbian blood, that's how grundies exist in the first place. I didn't realise it could be introduced post-mortem and it didn't occur to me to find out how long grundies had to ripen for-.

The room above wasn't created in the day since we gained Melmoth's attention. Someone built this a while ago. And the Columbians have been under low-intensity attack by Sheeda creatures for their entire history. Melmoth's thralls could have taken the occasional citizen or their blood, without it seeming remarkable. They could have introduced blood little by little for decades. Centuries. More than enough time, I'm sure.

Still. Undead New God isn't exactly outside of my weight class, and that's assuming-.

I send filaments everywhere in the room except the stirring spider web cocoon.

No, nothing here I can feel. Grundies are controlled by sigils, binding them to the caster. There's no one here to brand this one. Melmoth might be able to predict its behaviour, but unless a sophont magic user appears here he can't control it.

A thin and pallid hand shoves itself free of the covering.

Unbound grundies I did ask about, and Cyrus Gold's behaviour is apparently atypical. Usually they either lie in their graves or stagger towards light or magic. When confronted, they're not usually violent unless attacked, and then they usually only flail around and try to get away.

I run a quick check on my armour and confirm that the Columbians have evacuated. Then I form construct blades and cut through what's left of the webbing.

The figure within has clearly seen better days. Their flesh hangs loose on their muscles-. Her flesh hangs loose on her muscles. Her armoured cuirass is curious: steel plate and chain with New God style tron lines as part of the tabard and helmet. Her gaze is vacant, her skin the classic blue-white and what hair I can see is snow white in colour.

"In case you're wondering, I carved the control sigil into her skull."

Oh.

"gnHHHHHHHH!" I Wake!

Skin tightens, flesh swells back into something approaching full vitality as she pulls herself free. Her armour likewise starts to take on the shimmering, vital appearance of the version that Canis and his family wear.

"I particularly enjoyed working on this one. Her father was the one who brought the Castle Revolving to my era. Whatever his Gods did to enhance him made him immune to my techniques, but his misery when I worked on the rest of his crew … That has kept me warm on many a cold evening. Aurakos? K-."

I deaden the air, preventing the verbal command from reaching her, or anyone else he might have tucked away.

"Ma'am?"

I run a construct cable backwards towards the stairs-. Still being jammed. I fabricate a material cable and begin playing it up the stairs.

"Ma'am? Can you understand me?"

She grabs a sword with the same 'New God meets Iron Age' design as her armour from the webbing next to her, and the tron lines become active as soon as it's in her hand.

Cable up, get me Canis.

Compliance.

"Orange Lantern to Canis, what happens when a New God is resurrected from the dead?"

"That cannot happen. If a New God has a God-Name, then their soul would be unified with the Source upon their death. There would be nothing to resurrect."

"How about if they were only mostly dead? Or if their body was reanimated? I ask, because-."

"Because you are looking at some fresh horror of human ingenuity. I will come to you."

"Get the Columbians out first." I turn my attention back to the-. To Aurakos. Daughter of Aurakles, presumably. "Ma'am, can you understand-"

There's a dim yellow glow under her helmet.

"-me?"

She makes eye contact with me, and seems considerably more focused than the other grundies I've encountered.

"You will die." Even the Odds.

Construct shield.

…

Construct shield.

My environmental shield goes out and… I'm fully aware of my aches and my armour switches back to 'manual'.

I deploy my right forearm's x-ionised blade as the Dead God lunges forward, turning aside her two-handed swing. In this armour I'm nothing like agile enough to dodge-. But I can be fast. Before she can recover I lunge, ramming my armour's bulk into her chest. She's knocked back slightly, and her sword is out of position as I punch with my left gauntlet. She's not any shorter than me but my head isn't particularly mobile like this-.

She sidesteps, proximity sensors guiding me as I blind parry and then trigger the armour's flight system, flying back-. Not flying back because that's not working either.

Oh this is bullshit!

How to win a flipping sword duel? Firstly, given that while I have done some primitive weapon practice I don't have the drilled reactions of people who focus on it, ensure that I'm as accelerated as I can meaningfully be.

I throw myself into a forward vault as Aurakos gets behind me and slashes at my back.

Oh, she's just this fast. Not Flash-fast or even Kid Flash-fast, but far faster than physical power can explain. Fast enough that I can't just out speed her. Upside down in mid air I can see her reacting, moving, stepping forwards to keep the distance between us as small as possible.

Taser? No, that's offline. Or rather, it registers as online but isn't actually doing anything when I trigger it. Blade in the other forearm? Doesn't deploy. I'm sure that if I had time and freedom I could hunt down whatever the core of this… Spell? Was bound to and shoot it.

Behind her I see Canis coming down the stairs behind her. And then stop.

"Lllllllll-"

I land on the wall and push off, catching and turning aside her sword again and hitting her full in the chest with my extremely heavy power armour. This time she goes flying and I switch back to normal speed.

"-antern, she is challenging you!"

"Yes?"

"You are bound together by the will of the Source!" Aurakos lands in a crouch, slides, and then locks her eyes on Canis. "You are balanced in power, by the Source's will!"

"Literally or metaphorically?"

"Yes!"

"That's not funny, C-!"

"We are the manifestations of the Source! It has granted her this power! You cannot use powers or equipment she does not have, save to balance her! And the same applies to her!"

…

And my rings are in my chest and my skull and my armour's systems are integrated.

Damn it.