Greetings And Goodbyes 22-08 (Heretical Edge 2)

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Of course, the rest of my going away party with all my friends ran long into the night. I was glad I had that ability to go so long without rest, because I was sure going to need it by the time all this was over. At this rate, I was going to end up needing a break before I ever actually left to meet Ehn in the first place. Especially when you added in the emotional cost of leaving all these people behind for who knew how long. Yes, I would still be in contact and keep track of what was going on, at least as much as possible. But that wouldn’t be the same as being here myself. For all intents and purposes, I was leaving them to handle all that stuff without me. It made me feel weird inside.

Either way, I didn’t have a choice. Not a real one, anyway. I might feel anxious right now because I was leaving the people I cared about for a while. But it would be a hell of a lot worse if I didn’t do this and it turned out I really could have helped stop the Fomorians if I hadn’t been so selfish. 

The day after that big party, where I had spent hours long into the night talking to what seemed to be everyone I had ever even slightly interacted with, was my last day here. This was the day I had to spend with my family. My dad, my mom, sort-of stepdad or whatever Deveron was, my grandparents, big sister, little sister, big brother, and my niece. 

I had thought that we would spend a lot of time talking about everything that still needed to be done, or about what I was going to do while I was gone. But we didn’t. Not that much anyway. Actually, most of the day was spent taking a hike through Yellowstone Park down on Earth. We didn’t talk about anything that important or world changing. We just hiked through the beautiful scenery and talked about stuff we liked to watch, listen to, anything like that. Somehow, we had agreed on an unspoken rule not to discuss anything important. Even Wyatt went with it, and simply regaled us with a story about the time he had tracked a pack of violent werecreatures through a forest fairly similar to this one. 

Needless to say, he wasn’t the only one with an impressive tale. Koren, Tabbris, and I were treated to hours-worth of amazing stories, even from my grandparents, who talked both about things they had seen while out in Seosten space, and stuff they have been through in their supposedly completely ordinary (but not at all boring) lives. 

Eventually, we stopped by a lake and fished. Yes, we actually fished the old-fashioned way. It was just the right level of boring, allowing us to sit there and focus mostly on more stories. Popser brought out a grill at one point and we had dinner using the very fish we had caught.

Yeah, it was pretty great, especially since it actually allowed me to stop thinking about all that important stuff and just enjoy the time I had with my family. There would be time to dwell on everything else later. 

After hours of playing around the lake, fishing, eating, and just talking, the sun was starting to set. I stood at the edge of the water, skipping rocks with Koren now that we were done with the fishing part and wouldn’t scare anything away. The two of us were talking, not about Heretic stuff, but about our lives before all this started. She told me about being the spoiled but somewhat neglected child of a big shot lawyer (Abigail still felt bad about how far she had allowed that to go while she had been busy with her job), and I talked about being a kid and teenager back in Wyoming. Not that my life before all this had been anything ordinary, considering how often I managed to find trouble. But it had been pretty mundane by the standards I was using now. 

Either way, we chatted about that stuff, teasing one another about the whole aunt and niece thing. In the background, the adults were talking, while Tabbris went swimming in the lake itself and kept diving down to look at the fish there. I had even let my sharks out through the portal connection I had with them, so they could stretch their fins in this new water. Obviously, they were still protected from that whole salt versus fresh water problem thanks to Wyatt. They could swim in any of it.

Climbing on Princess Cuddles’ back, Tabbris called out to tell us she had found a really pretty Arctic Grayling (some sort of fish she had shown me a picture of earlier) down there. Smiling at that, I waved to my sister and spoke quietly to the girl next to me. “Keep an eye on her, okay? She said something about going with me, but I talked her out of trying. It’s better for her to stay here with her mom most of the time and just stay in contact through our connection.”

“Better for both of you,” Koren noted. “It’s the best way for you to know what’s going on here, and for everyone here to know you’re okay.” She sighed and looked at me. “You have to be okay. Whatever happens out there, whatever this guy wants you to get into, take care of yourself. Don’t let him control you too much.”

Despite the doubt and uncertainty I felt about the whole situation, I offered her a faint smile. “When have you ever known me to let anyone control everything I did and who I am, no matter how powerful they are? This guy might be strong, but I’m still me. And I’ll still be me when I get back.”

We embraced like that, before I saw my grandparents beckoning me over to the tall rocks they were standing by. So, I excused myself and walked back that way. 

“Do you think you guys can stick around and not get taken on any more wild outer space adventures while I’m gone?” I managed to ask without allowing my voice to crack too much.

Grandpartie stooped to pick me all the way off the ground, crushing me against his chest in an embrace that made me let out an embarrassing squawk sound. “Sounds like you’re the one disappearing on a space adventure, kid.” He reminded me of that while continuing to hold me tightly. “So you just make sure you find your way back here before you miss all the fun, you got it? If this situation with the Seosten comes to a head and you’re still off gallivanting around with your new dragon tutor, I don’t think we’ll ever let you live it down.” His words were teasing, but also tinted with emotion. It was obvious that he didn’t want me to go. But he, like everyone else, knew it was for the best.

After I promised to be back, even if I had to tell Ehn to give me a sabbatical, he let me down and gave Grandmaria a chance for a hug. The two of them set me down there by the rock and talked about their wedding day, which had apparently been a bit of an adventure in and of itself when their first choice of venue had been rained out. Then their priest had been arrested for some sort of money laundering or something. They still weren’t completely certain about the details, but it sure sounded exciting. Especially when the priest had stripped naked (yeah, he turned out to be incredibly drunk) when the cops showed up and went streaking through the assortment of shocked guests and police.

It stayed exciting as a story rather than tragic because they had still managed to get married in the end. And they had enjoyed their actual ceremony, crazy as it was, perhaps more than they would have enjoyed the normal, planned one.

It was a story I’d heard little bits of previously, but this was the first time I’ve gotten the whole thing from start to finish. They had previously said I wasn’t old enough to get into it, considering the whole drunk, naked priest thing. But now, apparently I finally was. 

Honestly, I was pretty sure they could’ve told me the story before and the whole me not being old enough thing was just an excuse so they have a good story to tell at my own wedding if I had one, or something else big and important. Maybe my high school graduation. 

Whatever it was, they had clearly decided that this moment was a good one to get the whole thing out. And boy was it a good one to listen to. From Grandmaria imitating the way all the little old ladies had screamed when the priest stripped himself and went running through the crowd, to Popser mimicking the priest himself flailing the whole way through and drunkenly screaming about the cost of reshingling the church roof or something, it sounded like a really wild time. I was just sorry it happened long before the advent of cell phone video.

I also took the time to tell them a few stories of my own, from my old Bystander life. Just like before, these weren’t Heretic stories. They were just my own stuff from my time in Wyoming. It was the sort of things I would’ve been nervous to tell them before, stuff I might’ve thought would get me in trouble. Or at least make them tell my dad so he could put a stop to it. My habit of finding trouble hadn’t completely come out of nowhere once I got to Crossroads. That had simply magnified the sort of threats I was capable of finding. Thankfully, my ability to deal with those threats had been magnified a fair bit as well.

And speaking of people whose ability had been magnified, they both showed me how much they had improved with the powers they had inherited. Which, considering how strong those powers were, meant my grandparents were going to be two of the strongest members of the rebellion before too much longer. I was very okay with that. They were the sort of people who deserved that. And given the level of trouble my family tended to attract, they are going to need it. 

After leaving the two of them for now, I went over to talk with Deveron, Wyatt, and Abigail. My half-siblings and my step-father. That really was the best term for it, I supposed. Step didn’t really define it properly since he had been married to Mom before my own father was. And technically, I supposed, they were still married. They were still together just like Mom was with Dad. It was the same way I was with Avalon and Shiori. Terms be damned, I was just glad they had worked it out.

The three of them were about a hundred yards away from the lake and rest of the area where the others were. It was only once I got closer that I realized they were practicing with some sort of booby trap landmine spell. Apparently Wyatt and Abigail had both come up with it together and were showing it to Deveron. He gave a couple tips based on his own experience, but for the most part, it was their own thing. Which they also showed to me as soon as I approached. 

“Okay,” I started once they had explained once, “let me get this straight. If any person steps within the barrier of this spell, it makes a face outline of what they look like in a sand pile that’s sitting somewhere else, like the security room. From that point on until the spell is canceled, everything that person says is also said by the sand facsimile so you know what they’re talking about. What if more than one person goes through it?” 

Wyatt was positively bouncing with glee. “We thought of that! Of course we did. Show her, show her!” He waved both hands toward his sister and father. 

Abigail and Deveron looked at each other before shrugging as they moved to step one at a time through the spell area. First, Abigail’s face appeared in the sand at full size. A second later, a much smaller addition of Deveron’s face appeared below that, just barely large enough to make out a couple minor details, like the picture in picture setting on a television. As I watched, Wyatt touched the smaller bit with two fingers and the facsimiles switched places so Abigail was the small one and Deveron was the big one. Apparently you could set the spell so that it would stick with one until you touched it like that, or make it automatically switch back-and-forth based on who was talking. 

They were still working on perfecting it, so I sat there with them for a bit and worked on it as well. But mostly, I listened as the three of them talked about their own old lives. Deveron gave a few stories about the old rebellion and also about being a student at Crossroads. Wyatt got into a bit of his own life growing up, which mostly just made my heart ache about how rough he’d had it for so long. There was a reason he had grown up to be so paranoid. But he was getting better. We were all getting better. And, of course, Abigail told stories about being a lawyer, and about being in law school. Which, if I understood things right, involved a lot of heavy drinking. From the stories she told, I was starting to think my half-sister could drink Ruthers under the table. Which would’ve been one hell of a way to settle this war. Actually, come to think of it– nah, he totally wouldn’t go for that. 

Abigail, of course, made me promise repeatedly to keep them updated about what was going on and to be certain I could say no if Ehn tried to get me to do anything I didn’t want to do. She was very emphatic about that, as were the other two. I reassured them as much as I could under the circumstances, but mostly kept the conversation as casual as possible. I didn’t want to spend this time fretting about what was going to happen in the future. I just wanted to talk about the past, or about nothing in particular. I wanted to enjoy this time with the various pieces of my family, since I had no idea how long it would be before I saw them again.

With that in mind, I finally made my way to my parents. Mom and Dad were standing together under a tree near the lake, talking about one of the first dates they had ever gone on together. I started to leave them alone, but they insisted I join them. So I found myself standing between the two of them, leaning against my father with both of their arms around me as they talked about those first times spent seeing one another, long before they had ever known anything about this stuff. In those days, my dad had regaled my enraptured mother with stories about being in Los Angeles and all the trouble he’d gotten up to there. Which they both laughed about now. But still, it just made me feel even closer to my father. Like me, he had found plenty of danger and excitement on his own long before the whole Heretic situation was an open part of his life. 

For the next little while, as the sun finished setting and the moon rose, I simply stayed there with my parents. Tabbris joined us after a while, clearly nervous about interrupting, but it was my mother who insisted she come over and sit. 

So, she did. And then the four of us talked even longer before eventually getting up and moving back over to where everyone else had already gathered and started a fire. We sat in a circle around it, watching the flames and talking about everything and about nothing. We told stories that alternated between frightening and funny, or even both at the same time. There were jokes, boasts, teasing, and more. I had no idea how long we stayed there like that, though to be honest, it could have been decades. Decades of some of the best moments I remembered having any time recently. I was there with my family. Even better, Avalon and Shiori joined us eventually. As did Asenath. Senny, the first Alter friend I’d made, the source of the best decision in my life and the sister of one of my girlfriends. She absolutely belonged here too. 

Yeah, I could definitely get used to this. Unfortunately, it couldn’t last forever, no matter how much we might’ve wanted it to. No matter how much I wanted it too. Eventually, it was clear that it was the end of that day. Which meant I needed to try to sleep a little bit before Sun showed up and wanted to get this show on the road. 

So, we doused the fire, cleaned up, and made a portal back to the station. I was going to sleep in my own bed rather than at my family’s apartment. There’d been a lot of talk back-and-forth about that, and I’d promised to come to the apartment with Sun once he showed up so I could give a last minute goodbye. Right now, however, I needed to sleep in my own bed one more time. 

Once on the station, before I could head off that way, my mother pulled me into a tight embrace. It wouldn’t be the last one we shared before I left, but I still felt myself clinging tightly to her. “I’m scared,” I whispered once we were completely alone and the others had moved down the hall. “I don’t know what’s going to happen while I’m gone.” 

Mom held me, brushing my hair back while meeting my gaze. “It’s okay to be scared, my Felicity. We just don’t let it control us. And you have never allowed your fear to rule you. Whatever happens, no matter where you go or what that man involves you in, know that I am your mother. And I will always be there when you need me. Even if it is only in spirit, through the lessons I know you’ve learned.” 

“Thanks, Mom,” I murmured, feeling a shiver run through me. “Something tells me I’m gonna need every last one of those lessons. But hey, at least I won’t be completely alone.

“After all, Persephone’s coming along, and how much trouble could I possibly get in with her beside me?” 

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Commissioned Interlude 21 – Historical Figures Part D (Heretical Edge 2)

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Cassandra 

“Are you certain this is going to work?” The short, somewhat voluptuous woman with reddish-blonde hair asked the question a bit pensively. She wore a forest green tunic with a dark red belt and a black cloak with its hood down. At that particular moment, she was kneeling in the middle of a small cottage room, surrounded by spellwork runes that had been drawn all along the floor and walls. Four metal statues of humanoid figures, slightly taller than she would have been while standing, were arranged around her in each of the cardinal compass directions. The statues stood facing her with their cupped hands out, each holding a small crystal ball which glowed a different color. Red, blue, purple, and yellow. 

The room’s only other occupant, the handsome blond man known as Apollo, offered her a reassuring smile. “Don’t worry, Cassandra. I’ve been checking out this spell of theirs for months now. They might think it’s unbreakable, but trust me, I can play it like a peunte.” After pausing, he added, “That’s an instrument that’s easy to learn.”  

The woman swallowed a little nervously. “Of course I trust you. I’m alive because of you, after all these years.” 

“You’re alive because you bonded with my blood,” Apollo corrected with a soft chuckle. “And now you shall stay alive for as long as you wish because of it. Through as many more centuries as you like.” 

“If those centuries are spent with you,” Cassandra replied, her gaze meeting his adoringly, “then they will seem to be only moments.” She closed her eyes briefly and took a breath before opening them again. “And when this spell is done, I’ll be able to fix it for anyone I want?”

He nodded once. “Exactly. I’m turning you into a back door to their spell. Whoever’s targeted by it, you’ll be able to give their memories back. Void, you’ll be able to turn the spell off entirely for anyone you want so they stop forgetting everything magical they see.” Leaning down and reaching out, he gently brushed two fingers along her face. “You’ll have total command of it. Are you ready?” 

Leaning into his touch, the woman shook her head. “Almost. Just one more thing.” With that, she pushed herself up a bit, touching her own fingers against his chin before gently kissing him. Her voice was a soft murmur, “I love you, Pollo.” 

Her kiss made the Seosten man smile broadly. “I love you, my Cassandra.” He ran his fingers one more time along her face and through her hair before straightening up. “Let’s get this over with then. I can’t wait to see the looks on their faces. Puriel might just have a stroke when he finds out what happened to their precious spell.” Chuckling with amusement at the thought, he took a step back before touching the rune nearest the doorway. His eyes were watching the love of his life, a human woman he had met through sheer chance, with a sort of feeling part of him had never believed he would be able to have, let alone see returned in kind. “See you on the other side of this.” 

And with that, he exhaled before speaking the command word that would trigger the elaborate spell he had spent so much time putting together. It would take some time, almost half the night they had left, but when it was over, Cassandra would be tied to the spell that would eventually become known as the Bystander Effect. After spending so long arguing against his people creating the spell to begin with, he had decided to deal with the problem his way. His intention was for her to be able to control the spell, to turn it off in whoever she wanted. 

Unfortunately, intentions and results didn’t always go hand in hand. 

*******

Several Hundred Years Later

Sitting in the back of a tavern, Cassandra, once daughter of King Priam of Troy so many centuries earlier, put her cup down and looked over toward her waiting host, who stood with his hand out. “I still owe you for all the drinks I’ve had.” She spoke the words matter-of-factly, though she made no move to reach for any coin purse.

There was a brief pause before the man lowered his hand and barked a hard laugh. “You’ve drunk too much, lady. You paid for everything already. I’ll not have your drunk arse losing more of your coin and then complaining to the guards about getting cheated. Now, we’re closing up, so you better head out.” He gestured around to indicate the rest of the empty bar. “I’ll need to be getting some sleep myself before long. Early day tomorrow.” 

Rising and drawing her black cloak around her figure, Cassandra flipped the hood up and began making her way out. Just as she crossed the entrance to the street beyond, the woman caught a glimpse of four heavyset men waiting for her to one side, partially hidden within the shadows of the nearby building. Drunk and armed with clubs, their intentions were clear. Particularly considering how long they had been staring at her within the bar while drinking only an hour earlier. Part of her had hoped they would content themselves with simply looking, but since when did men of that type ever believe that was enough? 

With a heavy sigh, she turned to look their way as they stalked toward her. Her voice was calm, yet tinged with annoyance. “You find me incredibly attractive and desirable, and would like to initiate physical intercourse.”

The result was immediate. All the men stop short, looks of revulsion crossing their faces as they looked her up and down. One turned a little green and turned to spit on the ground. They murmured to one another about how disgusting the pig was before continuing to make their way down the street, leaving her alone. Their words turned toward mocking one another for ever thinking such an ugly creature could be suited for their beds.  

“That wouldn’t work so easily if they weren’t affected by the Seosten memory spell.” A voice behind her, near the space between the tavern and its neighboring building, spoke up. “Would you have been ready for that if it came down to it?” 

Cassandra gave a low, humorless chuckle. After a moment, she turned to face the man who stood in the shadows. When she spoke, her own voice gave no doubt as to the razor-sharp anger she felt. “Why don’t you come closer and see if I am prepared to defend myself from the most worthless dregs of society, Apollo?”  

He took a step, not coming near her but at least emerging into the light where she could see him better. “It took a long time to find you, Cass.” While there was hate in her words, his were filled with remorse, sorrow, and loss. 

“And I told you to stop trying,” she snapped testily. “Your arrogance already ruined my life once, do you truly wish to do so again? Because of your spell, the one you were so confident of, no one believes anything I tell them. No matter what I say, they think I’m wrong. Or worse, intentionally lying. Do you have any idea how hard it is to accomplish anything in this world, to be known for anything, to build a life when almost everyone you talk to always thinks you’re wrong or lying? I have found various tricks in getting through this life, as you just saw. But that can’t work for any true relationship. I can have no friends, nothing real and lasting. Even when I manage to use this curse properly, always saying the opposite of what I mean, they still see me as untrustworthy. That spell of yours makes people hate me. It makes them see me as a liar. You made me an outcast from every possible family and friend I could ever have had.” 

Wincing, Apollo nodded. “I know. I… I’ll never be able to tell you how sorry–” 

“I don’t need your apologies,” she retorted. “They are as worthless as ever.” She paused before giving a dismissive snort. “Did you know, I’m so connected to this Bystander Effect from your people, that it gives me visions. It’s connected to every human being, so it sees everything going on in this world, collects all that information, and makes me dream about things that have not happened yet.” 

“It’s analyzing data and predicting probable outcomes based on that information,” Apollo replied slowly. “Because you’re connected to it, you see its predictions as dreams.” 

Her eyes narrowed into a glare. “Yes, well, no one believes what I say about those predictions either. Not even those who aren’t affected by the spell to begin with. Every human believes I’m lying about everything I say, and every nonhuman believes I’m a fool. I tried to warn a village full of otherworlders about a plague that was coming. They laughed at my words, and I was forced to watch a hundred children suffer and die. Then they believed I was responsible and tried to burn me. More than a dozen times that and things like it have happened. I’ve watched so many suffer and fall who could have been saved if they listened to me. But because of your curse, because of your arrogance, they never do. They never will. I will see tens of thousands of deaths or more, and I will never be able to warn them.” 

“It’s protecting itself,” Apollo noted with a grimace. “Anything you try to say about what the spell shows you would be wrapped up within the spell itself, the effect much stronger. That’s why it even works on nonhumans.” 

Cassandra’s tone was mocking, though even that was tinged with despair. She felt so lost and alone, but would never accept help or comfort from the man she saw as responsible for her situation. No matter how close they had been at one time. “Thank you, I hadn’t realized that for myself over the past centuries. I’m so glad you’ve been able to track me down and save me from my ignorance.” 

Apollo swallowed before starting again, even though he knew how useless it was. “Cassandra, I–” 

“No,” she interrupted. “I told you before and I’ll say it again, I want nothing to do with you. Not after what you’ve done. You told me you knew what you were doing. You promised you could help. Instead, you made certain no one will ever trust me, or believe a word I say. You made me an outcast from everyone I could ever love, from any life I ever could have had. You made me see tragedies throughout this world that I can do nothing to prevent. You made everyone I could ever have loved see me as a lying fool. Leave me alone, Apollo. Next time, I really will show you how dangerous I’ve become.” 

With that, she turned, adjusting her hood, before stalking off into the night. 

***********

Medea 

As the sound of a soft chime filled the elaborately decorated office of the Olympus’s chief logistics officer, Kushiel looked up from her desk and smiled faintly. Her voice rose while she touched a button to make the doors woosh open with smooth efficiency. “Come in, Medea.” 

The figure who came through the entrance was slender and quite young by Seosten standards. She had been barely fifty years of age when this journey of theirs started, essentially still a child in so many respects. Now closer to one hundred, she still appeared to be what the humans would consider her very late teens or early twenties, as she always would thanks to their Tartarus-gifts. Her hair was dark brown, almost black, and worn in a long braid. Her eyes, almost too large for her face, gave her an innocent, naive sort of appearance. She wore a dark green Seosten bodysuit rather than any more elaborate clothing, and had a pair of enchanted goggles set on her forehead. Those were often pulled down over her eyes, making them look even larger and earning her various teasing nicknames throughout the ship, often involving animals with very large, bulbous eyes. 

“Y-you know my name?” the young Seosten officer managed, before blanching. “I m-mean, reporting as ordered, ma’am.” 

“Come, sit.” Kushiel gestured to the chair in front of her desk, waiting until the girl did so. “I’m told that you requested leave to spend some time on the planet, away from regular duty.” 

“Oh, not exactly, ma’am.” Blanching immediately as soon as she realized that she had just corrected the woman in front of her, Medea stammered. “I m-mean, I still want to do my job. I wo-work in botany, you see. I just wanted to take some time on-planet to document some of the rarer species of plants that I’ve been getting some glimpses of. It’ll take months to catalog everything I want to properly, but it’ll be worth it, I promise. S-some of the plant species on this planet are incredible. If I can build a proper database and connect the records we already have of the plants we’ve been growing on our greenhouse deck, I might be able to crossbreed them with the Rysthael plants to create… unbelievable hybrids. Plants that could cure more diseases than we ever thought they could, or feed entire populations with every bit of nourishment they need in one little bit of fruit.” As she went on with that, the girl forgot her own nerves, sounding more excited by the prospect and her own ideas by the second. 

Chuckling softly, Kushiel leaned back in her seat. “Yes, well, I’m inclined to allow this extended leave. But only on one condition. You see, there is a human on this planet, by the name of Jason. He–well, let’s just say he aided me when he did not have to. Now he’s been on a bit of a quest to collect an enchanted bit of cloth. The details are unimportant. Suffice to say, I want you to aid him. Help the human find his bit of magical cloth, and protect him from those who would cause him harm. Keep an eye on the man for me. While you’re doing that, you may catalog any plants you wish.” 

Taking that in, Medea rocked backwards, mouth opening and shutting a couple times. “Oh. I mean, I’m not really much of a soldier or anything, ma’am. But… but okay. Anything I can do to help the mission. I’ll protect this human, and help him find the magic cloth he’s looking for. May I ask one thing though? 

“What is this… Jason like?” 

*******

Ten Years Later 

“You are a bastard, Jason.” As she said those words, Medea crouched in the dirt behind the home she had shared with the man in question for some time. Their two young children lay cradled in her arms, unmoving and pallid. 

Jason himself, a human who stood just under six feet, with long, dark blond hair that fell in curls to his shoulders, shook his head while staring that way. “You would call me a bastard when you are the one who murdered my children?” Despite his words, there was little in the way of actual grief in his voice.

“You never saw them as yours in their lives,” Medea retorted. “You’ll fool no one by calling them such after their deaths. And did you truly believe that I would simply sit around and allow you to use me for your own ends?”

Jason made a scoffing sound. “Use you? You nearly ruined me yourself. Yes, you aided my quest for the fleece, but you also murdered the king who requested it, the man I intended to impress with it. You destroyed my chance to be recognized by him. The entire point of getting the fleece in the first place was to gain his favor, and you murdered him.” 

“To save your life,” Medea retorted, still cradling her children’s bodies. “Pelias wished you dead, and would have ordered it the morning after his demise. But yes, you are correct. I killed for you then, as well as before and since. I have killed for you many times, and now you sought to throw me aside in order to marry this princess.” 

“I would have kept you and the children safe,” Jason shot back. “Glauce would not have objected to your presence as a concubine.” 

“A concubine?” Medea’s voice was high with disbelief. “You truly believed I would sit around as your sex toy just so you could have the political power you’ve always craved? I loved you, Jason. I truly did. I have done everything I could to protect you. But it was never enough.”

“When Hera sent you, I thought you had power,” Jason insisted. “I thought you were one of the Olympus’s leaders, like Artemis. But you were almost… nothing. You were a lowly crew member, who barely rated a mention on their ship manifest. Do they even think of you now? Has Hera summoned you back at any point in the past decade? Or has she forgotten you entirely? Even your gift isn’t that impressive, when put next to the feats of your betters.”   

“My gift…” Medea echoed, raising her gaze to stare at the man for a moment. 

Jason’s head bobbed. “Yes, what was it you called it? The ability to think? Assuming it exists at all and isn’t something you simply made up. After all, it’s not exactly something that we can see for ourselves. You say you can freeze time, but it’s not as though you can move while it’s frozen. You can accomplish nothing, other than ‘think.’ You say it gives you unlimited time to consider what you’re going to do or come up with the answer to a question, but you can’t actually do anything until you stop using the power, so what good is it?” 

Medea was silent for a couple seconds, before speaking flatly. “You would be surprised how useful the ability to take as long as one needs to consider their actions can be. For example, I considered killing you for ten minutes just now. I decided against it.” 

Jason took a step that way. “You think you can threaten me now? You’ve already poisoned the king and princess I was to wed. They’re dead, as are the children you were so proud of. And the rest of the court are coming soon, to put you to trial. There will be no escape for you now, no matter how long you can think about it.” 

Rising with the bodies of her children on either arm, Medea retorted, “That’s what you think.” As she said that, lights appeared behind the woman, revealing a small shuttlecraft, one of the Olympus’s many craft meant to ferry small groups or even individuals across the planet. The silvery-blue craft was teardrop shaped, standing twelve feet tall, twenty feet wide at the base, and thirty feet long. As Jason gaped, the side opened, extending a ramp, which Medea strode toward, still carrying those young, limp bodies. 

“Where do you think you’re going?” Jason snapped. 

Pausing on the ramp, Medea replied, “I am going to bury my children somewhere they will be respected. Don’t expect to see me again.” With that, she allowed the ramp to close behind her and moved past the double row of seats, placing one child in each before vocally ordering the ship to depart. The console lit up, and the shuttle began to rise. As it did, allowing them to leave Jason and the approaching angry mob behind, she produced a handful of leaves from several different plants from her pocket, crumbling them together between her fingers, before putting the mixture in her children’s mouth. 

After a moment of no response, they began to chew and opened their eyes, color returning to their faces. “Mama?” one of them asked, “what’s going on? Where are we going?”

The woman touched each of their foreheads. “You are hybrids, part-human and part-Seosten. My people would kill you if they knew about you. We’re leaving this place. We’ll find somewhere new to stay. I believe there is a whole new continent out there, begging to be explored.” 

And thus, Medea and her children set out, preparing to settle in what would, in some far distant time, be known as Australia. 

*********

Jack o’ Kent

“Come on man, get those bags full. Quit stalling! Ain’t nobody coming to help you!” The shouted words came from a man in a dark ski mask, who held a pistol aimed toward another man in a security services uniform. That latter figure was carrying heavy bags away from the armored van that had been forced to pull into the dark alley they were in now, driven off the road by the Mercedes that now sat with its trunk open. In most cases, of course, an armored truck versus a luxury car wouldn’t have ended with the latter’s triumph. But this particular car had been magically reinforced, making it more than strong enough to force the van into this corner. 

The driver of the van, a furry Rakshasa (cat-like Alter) was currently kneeling on the ground with his hands behind his head while the second thief (who also wore a ski mask but whose body was at least seven and a half feet tall and seemed to be made of rock) held a heavy-duty shotgun close to him. The rock-covered thief snarled, “And don’t you think about being a hero neither. You start shit, this buddy of yours’ll be the first to go.”

“I’m doing it, I’ve got it,” the driver’s partner held up two of the bags he had just taken from the back of the van. He was a plain-looking man in almost all respects, his straight dark hair cut to medium length, just past his ears. He appeared human or at least human-passing, standing several inches under six feet, with a wiry build. “Don’t worry, neither of us are being paid enough to fuck with you guys on this. See?” He walked around the back of the open Mercedes and tossed the bags into the trunk before jogging back to pick up the next couple bags under the watchful eye of the first thief. “I don’t even know what this stuff is. Too heavy to be cash. You guys stealing jewels?” 

“Here’s an idea,” the humanoid masked figure snapped, “how about you stop asking stupid questions and just put the shit in the car before we blow your partner’s head off and then start taking turns having some fun with you?” 

Meekly apologizing, the other man hurriedly continued carrying bags from the van to the car while the two thieves anxiously waited to leave with their loot. Finally, the last of the goods had been dropped into the trunk. Standing back there with his hands raised obediently over his head, the security man half-stammered, “Ok-kay, you’ve got what you want, now it’s time for you to leave, right?”

The rock-man with the enormous shotgun chuckled humorlessly. “Yeah, totally time to leave. Thanks so much for your business.” With that, he lashed out with the gun, smacking the Rakshasa driver in the back of the head to knock him out. 

Immediately, as his partner fell limply to the ground, the man by the car lowered his hands. “Well, I’d say this was a productive outing.” His voice had lost all nervousness, adopting a completely casual tone. Likewise, his body language betrayed no worry about the guns the other two held. 

“Yeah, we’ll see about that,” the humanoid thief retorted. “Are you sure you got all the good shit? Be a pretty damn bad waste to spend all those months getting you embedded in that company just to walk away with garbage.” 

The man by the car in the security uniform gave a brief nod. “Oh yes, I’m sure. There’s just one little problem.” 

“Huh? What problem?” The rock-man snarled, turning that way expectantly. “We just pulled off the heist of the fucking decade, don’t start talking about problems now.” 

Their partner, the supposed armored truck escort, shrugged helplessly. “Well, you see, it turns out I was never that good at sharing.” With that, he hopped up on the bumper of the car, gave a cheeky wave, and then jumped into the trunk itself feet first, vanishing from sight. 

Both of the armed thieves looked at each other for a brief second before sprinting to the car. They arrived, standing in front of the open trunk, just in time to see a glowing portal in the bottom. A portal through which they could see what looked like an old furniture store somewhere far, far away. Their view was from the ceiling, looking down on the room. Their bags of loot were lying there, with their ‘partner’ crouched next to them where he had landed. Turning back that way, he saluted while calling, “Thanks for the help!” 

“Hey, hey!” the humanoid thief started to scramble into the trunk, even as the portal began to close right in his face. “We’re partners, you son of a bitch! You can’t do this!” The portal was already too small to fit through, but he stuck his gun into it, only to have the barrel sheared off as the opening closed around it. “You fucker! You can’t do this, Jack! Jack!

“Jack!!!”

*****

Chuckling to himself, the man called Jack crouched to look through the bags of loot that he and his now-former partners had managed to liberate. Just as he dipped his fingers into one of them, however, his head tilted, and he spoke simply. “You know, it’s been a while since you tried to spy on me. I thought you were done with that.” 

“Spy?” the man lounging in an old recliner on the far side of the open furniture show area replied. “I think you mean testing you.” With those words, Apollo straightened up and walked that way. He wore a crisp white suit over a red silk shirt, along with dark sunglasses. “After all, I have to make sure you haven’t been slacking off. Wouldn’t want one of my own Natural Bonded to get a bad reputation.” He paused, seeming to consider that before a flash of painful memories of Cassandra passed through him. “I mean, an incompetent reputation. Pretty sure you already have a bad one with plenty of people. Including those friends you just left behind.”

“Don’t worry, I know how to handle my own reputation,” Jack retorted smoothly, rising to his feet to face the other man. “Without making it boring.” 

Apollo’s head shook. “Heavens forbid. Death before boredom.” A fond smile came as happier memories crossed his mind at the thought of days long past. “You always did enjoy being a handful.” 

With an easy grin that seemed to light up his otherwise relatively unremarkable and plain face, Jack shot back, “Well after you saved my life, I felt like I needed to make the most of it.” 

“I’d say you did that pretty well,” Apollo agreed. “Immortalized yourself in nursery rhymes and stories. Who knew you’d be able to turn your near-death experience falling down a hill after fetching water into something children would chant centuries later? How is Jill, anyway?” 

The other man shrugged a bit at that. “Why don’t you ask her yourself? She’s still pretty shy, but she does like you.” 

With that, his head tilted, turning one way, then another. Finally, his gaze found Apollo once more with a softer smile, body language changing to become visibly more uncertain and awkward. “Hello, Apollo.”

“Hey there, Jill,” Apollo greeted her fondly. “Keeping your brother out of trouble?” 

“The worst of it, I think,” the female-presenting facet confirmed. “He does like finding it, though.” She added that bit with a tiny frown.

Apollo chuckled. “Oh, I know he does, believe me. When he’s not cheating to win bets with me about bridges or crop harvests, he’s using my power to make some magic dealers accept an old cow in exchange for enchanted beans so he can climb through a portal to steal a bunch of gold from a giant. Whom he then tricks into jumping off a cliff.” 

Blushing a little, Jill offered a shrug. “He keeps himself busy, I guess. Did uhh, did you come find us for a reason? You’ve been gone for awhile.” Her tone on the last bit was curious. 

“I figured you didn’t really need me that much anymore,” Apollo replied. “Besides, it seems like every time I come back around, your brother has a new wager he wants to make.” 

“A new wager I want to win, you mean,” Jack, taking over for his head-sister, replied simply. His body language immediately became more confident and outgoing. “And is it my fault you didn’t think about the fact things like dogs and other animals would cross that bridge too, not just people? Or that some crops are harvested from the top and some from the bottom? Really, you were basically asking to lose those bets.” After a brief pause, he added, “Though it was Jill who wrote down the stories about them. She writes down all the stories, and keeps spreading them.” 

“She’s always been proud of you,” Apollo agreed with an easy chuckle. “After all, you tricked the devil, more than once.” 

Jack’s reply was casual, yet still somewhat pointed. “And something tells me you want more of that trickery aimed at someone else this time. You didn’t just track us down and show up for a simple social call, did you?”

“I really do want to catch up with everything you’ve both been up to,” Apollo insisted before giving a soft sigh. “But yes, I did have something else in mind too. Something important.”

“Whatever it is, we’re in,” Jack informed him. “We owe you that much. Though I can’t promise we won’t make a profit off it too.” 

Apollo nodded. “I wouldn’t expect anything less. And believe me, there should be plenty of opportunity for profit with this. Not to mention bragging rights.

“See, you’re the best thief I know. So I want you to help us steal the former Headmistress of Crossroads away from the prison they’re keeping her in.” 

*******

Nellie Bly

“Hard to believe this used to be the headquarters of one of the biggest newspapers in the country, huh?” As he said that, Arthur Chambers stood in the middle of an old, dust-covered room. The whole place was full of desks and typewriters that hadn’t been used in many years, leaving the clear impression of what had once been a bustling main floor crowded with people shouting back and forth about stories and deadlines. Now the overhead lights barely worked, flickering, repeatedly, and sending shadows dancing through the room. Thankfully, he held a flashlight in one hand to take up the slack.

Maria, standing next to him, shook her head at her husband while holding a rock that magically glowed with its own flashlight-like beam. “Harder for me to believe that this place hasn’t been refurbished or just completely torn down for a new building. You’d think they would have put something else here by now. When did the paper close down, again?”

“Nineteen twenty-three.” The answer came not from Arthur himself, but from the headless man standing near the doorway. Well, not quite headless in the sense that he didn’t have one at all. He actually held said head tucked under his left arm. Still, it was a sight that might have been startling not so long ago, if Arthur and Maria hadn’t known him quite well. In fact, they had come here with Brom Bones after having a lovely brunch with the man at a place just down the street. He had quite rightly enthused at length about the hotcakes there and insisted they stop on their way to this place. What the Bystander Effect made the people in that place believe they were seeing as the head on the table called out orders to his body about what to select from the buffet was anyone’s guess. 

Walking fully into the room, Brom continued. “It closed just over a year after her death, actually. Not that she still worked here. Hadn’t worked here in decades, actually. Not since they stopped letting her do the work she came to the paper for to begin with.” 

“Well, that’s what I was hired for, wasn’t it?” The other new voice came from a nearby desk, where a glowing, semi-translucent figure perched on a chair that had been pulled out. She had been a handsome woman in life, with short brown hair and gray-green eyes. Looking down at herself, the woman frowned slightly at the blue dress she wore, waving a hand to transform it into suit and tie. Smiling then, she straightened up before looking straight at the head-carrying man. “You’re a necromancer. You’ve been feeding me power and calling for me since you came into this place.”

“We’re sorry to disturb you, Miss…” Maria paused. “I’m sorry, do you prefer Nellie Bly or Elizabeth Cockran? Or Elizabeth Seaman?” She ran through the famous woman’s penname, birth name, and married name in quick succession. 

“Oh Nellie’s quite fine,” came the easy response. “After all, that is the name that people know me by. I’d say that’s the part of me that stayed behind in this place when I passed. It’s like your friend there said, I stopped working here in eighteen-eighty-seven. Do you know why I started in the first place, how I was hired?” 

Arthur chuckled. “Yeah, as a matter of fact, our granddaughter, Felicity, wrote a school project about you when she was in junior high. You’re a bit of a hero to her, actually. If I recall correctly, it was eighteen-eighty-five when you took offense at an article you read about how women were meant to stay home cleaning house and making babies. And instead of just stewing about it, you wrote your own response back to them.” 

“I did, indeed, Mister…” The ghost woman trailed off. “I’m sorry, you seem to have me at a disadvantage.” 

“Arthur,” he informed her. “Arthur Chambers. And this is my wife.” 

“Maria,” the woman in question put in with a smile. “Our friend over there is Brom Bones. He agreed to help us out with this when we heard you might be haunting this place.” She paused, frowning uncertainly. “Is haunt a bad term?” 

“Seems fairly accurate from where I’m standing,” Nellie replied. “As I was saying, I’m still not exactly certain why my ghost chose to appear and be locked to this place, when I only spent a couple years here. I suppose it was quite formative for my future. I wrote that letter and the editor enjoyed it so much he put out a message, asking me to identify myself. I had written under the pseudonym ‘Lonely Orphan Girl.’ But his response convinced me to reveal myself, and he hired me. I wrote a few more articles for them. It worked well for a while, then they got complaints because I wrote about women working in factories. The paper leadership decided to move me over to start writing the sort of thing women were supposed to write about. You know, fashion and society sort of things. The proper place for a woman writer, if you will. In their minds, anyway.” 

“If I remember Felicity’s report properly, you didn’t exactly take that lying down,” Maria noted. “That was when you went to Mexico, wasn’t it?” 

Nellie gave a short nod of confirmation, beaming at the thought that their granddaughter knew so much about her. “I spent about six months there, as it happens. Then I had to leave. The Mexican dictator, Porfirio Diaz, didn’t seem to like my writing either. Probably because I didn’t like him imprisoning another journalist for criticizing him. But his anger was a bit more directly dangerous than that of a few disgruntled factory owners, so I came back to Pittsburg.” She gave a soft sigh of regret then. “Not that that lasted long, of course. They put me right onto those same boring old stories again. So I moved to New York. Had a devil of a time getting a job there, until I agreed to go undercover in a lunatic asylum.” 

“That one I knew about,” Maria quickly put in. “Even before Felicity did her report, I mean. You spent ten days in one of the worst mental asylums in the country and put out a whole report exposing them. It actually forced them to reform the system somewhat. You led a whole new field of women into showing that they could contribute to journalism by going undercover like that. Stunt girls, they called them. Now that was glorious.” 

“Please, you’re going to make me use up all the energy poor Mr. Bones over there provided just by blushing,” Nellie objected. “I only did what felt right and just at the time. If others saw fit to follow that as an example, I am quite proud and far more humbled. I said it before and I shall say it again. Energy rightly applied and directed will accomplish anything. Any of the women who came before or after me could have done the same. Many likely better than I managed. There’s nothing special about me aside from the fact that I did rather than simply think.” 

“You say there’s nothing special about you,” Arthur objected, “but not only did you pioneer the entire field of investigative journalism, for women and men, you actually set a world record for traveling around the world.” 

Chuckling a bit self-consciously at that, Nellie bowed her head in acknowledgment. “A record which only stood for four months before it was broken, as it happens. I was simply inspired by Jules Verne’s ‘Around The World In Eighty Days.’ I wanted to prove it was possible, and the paper I was working for accommodated me. In the end, it took only seventy-two. And now I’ve heard that such feats are possible in mere hours for some. Less if you’re of the… magically inclined, though that seems to be a fair bit of cheating, by my thinking.”

“Revolutionized investigative reporting, showed that women could be real reporters, pissed off a dictator, went around the world in seventy-two days, and if I recall Felicity’s report correctly, even invented the fifty-five gallon steel oil drum we still use today after taking over the company your husband owned.” Arthur sounded awed. “That’s what I call making the most of your life.” 

“You say that like I was perfect,” Nellie murmured a bit self-consciously. “Believe me, I was far from that. I did my best with Robert’s company, but I didn’t know enough to notice when certain people were stealing from it. The whole thing went under because I couldn’t stop their embezzling.” 

“And then you went right back to being a reporter,” Maria pointed out. “You switched careers to run a manufacturing company, did what you could, then returned to your calling in time to report on World War One from the frontline. You were the first woman to go right into the war zone like that.” 

Arthur cleared his throat. “All of which is to say, we would be incredibly appreciative if you might allow our friend Brom here to bring you with us on a trip. Our granddaughter’s away right now, but she would absolutely love to meet you.” 

“Oh.” Nellie Bly’s ghost blinked before looking back and forth between them for a moment. Finally, she offered a faint smile. “Well, I have been stuck in this building for quite some time. 

“And I always did love an adventure.” 

*******

Odin 

The ship appeared to be damaged beyond all conceivable repair. It tumbled through deep space, far from any inhabited planet or sign of civilization. At one point, the thing had been quite impressive, shaped like a massive crescent moon the size of an actual moon. From one end of the ship to the other, counting the curved structure, was almost two hundred miles. Unfortunately, roughly fourteen miles of that along the inside curve had been blown apart, revealing the broken interior, where anything that had once been inside that portion of the ship had long-since been lost to the ravages of space. The rest of the structure had been locked away through sealed blast doors, but the damage was done. This was not a ship that would fly under its own power any time soon. Particularly not with the loss of its actual crew almost ten thousand years earlier.  

And yet, that ten thousand year journey of drifting aimlessly through empty space came to an abrupt halt, as a second ship, this one undamaged, appeared in its path. This new ship was shaped like three arrows, stacked with two underneath the third. Where the individual pointed arrowheads would be on actual arrows was a single larger blade-shape attached to all three ‘shafts,’ and at the opposite end where the feathers would have been was a single large orb structure, also encompassing all three. The blade at the front was twelve miles across from one side to the other, three miles tall, and sixteen miles long from the sharp tip to the point where it connected to the rest of the ship. Each of the three connected ‘arrow shafts’ were three and a half miles across, and thirty miles long to reach the big orb at the back. Finally, the orb itself was fifteen miles in diameter.  

The new, totally functional ship came to a halt once it was in position directly in the path of the drifting, broken one. They were still several thousand miles apart from one another, though that was practically eye to eye as far as distances in space went. The broken ship would be right on top of them within a relatively short time. 

Or it would have been, had the functional ship not promptly projected a massive, colorful beam that way, sent from the tip of the suddenly-glowing blade-like structure. At first glance, the beam might have been mistaken for a laser, aside from the fact that it was colored like a rainbow. In fact, that was precisely what the beam looked like: a four-mile-wide, three-thousand-mile-long rainbow. As soon as the beam struck the other ship, near the undamaged end, its forward momentum came to a complete halt. It ceased its millennia-long drifting and froze there. 

Meanwhile, inside the broken ship, at the point where the rainbow beam had struck it, was a pitch-black chamber. At least, it was pitch-black, until a bright glowing portal appeared on the wall directly connected to where the rainbow beam was hitting the opposite side. The portal, rapidly growing to become ten feet across and twelve feet high, illuminated what turned out to be some sort of cafeteria area, though the seats and tables were clearly designed for a species twice as large as humans, with six legs. 

First to arrive in the alien cafeteria through the portal was a human of incredible size for his species. He stood seven feet tall, with a heavyset body that was equal-parts bulk and muscle. He looked not like a chiseled bodybuilder, but like a man who competed in actual weight-lifting competitions. His red hair was worn long past his shoulders, with a matching thick beard. In one hand he carried a hefty-looking hammer with glowing runic symbols along both the handle and the metal head. He wore what appeared to be black and red chainmail armor, though it was clearly constructed from much more advanced materials than any found during the medieval times of Earth. 

Right behind that man’s arrival, appearing through the portal as he peered suspiciously around the room, were a couple dozen small ravens. They might have been mistaken for cyberforms at first glance, but they weren’t entirely constructed of metal. Their wings and talons were, and their eyes were cybernetic as well, but they had started life as organic beings. They were cyborg-ravens gliding through the room (or in some cases outright stopping to impossibly hover in midair) while scanning every inch of it for danger. 

“The least you could have done,” announced a voice as another man came through the portal, “was wait until the ravens ensured the place was safe.” The newcomer wasn’t quite as tall as the first man, though he still stood several inches over six feet. His own hair was brown, and he too wore it long with an equally impressive beard. His own futuristic chainmail was brown and amber, and he carried a long broadsword with its own glowing runes in his left hand. His right hand was made of metal, clearly robotic in nature.

“Bah!” the first man retorted, “where’s the fun in waiting around till they tell us we’re allowed to come through? We can’t let them have all the excitement.” 

The second man started to reply, before a third appeared through the portal. This one stood shorter than both of them, not quite reaching six feet. He was not built as heavily or as muscular as either of them, appearing to be relatively thin. His hair was gray-white, with his own long beard. He wore no armor and carried no weapons, clad in what looked like a blueish-gray tunic and pants that would not have been out of place strolling through an Earth village a thousand years earlier. Another of the cyborg-ravens perched on his shoulder. One of his eyes was biological, the other replaced with a cybernetic implant similar to those of his ravens. 

“There’ll be plenty of excitement, Thor,” Odin announced. “Heimdall already gave it another scan. We’ve got a small army of surviving Fomorian creatures and whatever they managed to turn the crew of this ship into. They were scattered throughout the whole place, but it sounds like they know we’re here, because they’re starting to congregate this way. Sif and Freyr took a second group through another Bifrost beam to come at them from behind. But we get the direct assault.” 

Sniffing a little, Thor touched a finger to his eye. “I knew you loved me, Father.” Gripping his hammer tight, he cast a sidelong look toward the other man. “Ready to have some fun, Tyr?”  

Grunting with a mix of acknowledgment and amusement, Tyr cracked his neck. “I suppose I must always be, if I am to stay at your side.” 

“Remember, war is our tool, not our goal,” Odin advised. “We rid this vessel of the Fomorian infestation, then we search it from top to bottom for anything that could aid our actual quest.” As he said that, the man gestured with one hand. The actual lights of the ship immediately came to life, not just in the room itself, but everywhere within the massive, two-hundred-miles-long vessel. With that simple wave of his hand, he not only took control of the giant ship, but supplied enough power to run its vast energy needs. 

Back on Earth, the Heretic known as Gaia possessed one-half of the powers of the Djehuti. The technopathy side. The Heretic known as Seller, on the other hand, possessed the biological-manipulation side. Odin, on the other hand, possessed both sides. And not the powers of the Djehuti, who were imperfect clones of Ymir, last survivor of his world in the previous universe. No, Odin was a Natural Heretic of Ymir himself. He possessed the full strength powers of both sides, and could build and control anything, be it biological or technological. And he was all-but unmatched in combining both aspects. 

Along with the return of the lights, the doors at the far end of the room came to life as well and wooshed open. Thor and Tyr immediately began to stalk that way, with the cyborg ravens flying ahead. Watching them go, Odin trailed behind, his cybernetic eye scanning the structure of the ship, analyzing its make, the materials, design, everything it could. 

It would continue to take quite some time, more than it already had. But even if it required another ten thousand years or more, Odin and his people, the Aesir, would find what they were searching for. Namely, a way to combine every bit of technology and magic they were able to scavenge together from millennia spent scouring every inch of a dozen galaxies in order to finally destroy the four universe-ending monsters who had emerged from Tartarus millions of years earlier. 

Nearly every life in the previous universe had been wiped away by those four creatures, leaving a bare handful of survivors. Odin’s benefactor, Ymir, was one. And he had sworn an oath to never forget the threat that those beasts presented. 

One way or another, Odin would put the proper pieces together, and destroy them. 

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Calm Before 20-05 (Heretical Edge 2)

Previous Chapter / Next Chapter

A/N – The non-canon for this story was posted over the weekend and is able to be read by everyone right here

“Answer her,” Avalon was already pressing, her gaze intent as she stared that way. “Why were you looking for Hajer? And why in an old hotel that was taken over by a gang of Alters?” 

“To answer your questions in reverse order,” Manakel’s ghost informed us, “Hajer moves around quite a lot. Hence her title. I had it on quite good authority that she was there most recently at that time. Why she went to that place, I could not possibly say, only that she was at one point. Unfortunately… for me at the time, she was gone by the time I arrived. Which, as you have already learned, was not something I enjoyed learning.” He paused, giving a slight sigh before pushing on. “As to the first part, I wished to employ her services in removing the protections from Miss Sinclaire here.” His eyes moved to Avalon, who was still staring intently right back at him. “It was a long shot that she would agree to such a thing, but then, we were trying a lot of long shots at the time. And she has been surprising before in what she has agreed to.” 

Squinting, Valley slowly asked, “She’s the ancient human who was bonded to one of those Primals, right? The… whatever they were who created the weapons the King of Canada uses.” 

“Yes,” he confirmed. “Your people would have called her a caveman. Or cavewoman. Bit offensive, but not incorrect. She was born in a time when the majority of your people did live in caves, when most of the Alters who would eventually come to call this planet home had not yet arrived. And those who had were… genuinely more threats than allies. In the early days, there were large portions of this planet which were ruled by incredibly dangerous creatures. Among those ancient inhabitants were very, very few of the beings you call Primals. Their own species was already doomed despite their vast power, and you might say a couple of those who were left… retired here. They stowed large armories of their advanced weaponry, such as what Oberon found.”

“Um, why were they doomed?” I found myself asking uncertainly. “I mean, as a species. What happened to them?” Was it weird that I was asking questions of the guy who had spent so long trying to murder my girlfriend and destroy my entire life, as though he was just another teacher? And did the fact that Avalon was right here with me, also asking him questions, make that whole situation better or worse? I wasn’t sure, but it was definitely a thing. 

“We don’t precisely know, to be honest,” was Manakel’s somewhat disappointing response. “Well, there are theories based on information we do have. I can tell you the one I subscribe to, which is that the beings we know as the Primals performed a spell that was so… dangerous and consuming, it destroyed their ability to procreate. And it did so to such an extent that even cloning would not help, because this spell they created and triggered worked by draining the life force from any iterations of their species who were not alive at the moment it was triggered.” 

I absorbed that for a moment before my eyes widened. “Wait, you mean they effectively destroyed their own ability to continue their species because they made a spell that killed any members of that species who weren’t there at the time? So they could never make any more, and the ones who died just… never got replenished?” 

“That seems like a very bad plan,” Persephone put in, gently rubbing one of Cerberus’s heads. “I don’t know what sort of goal they could have had for that.” 

“What she said,” Avalon noted dryly. She was still watching the man with obvious suspicion despite her curiosity. “What the hell were they trying to do? Are you sure they did it to themselves? That sounds an awful lot like something someone else would have done to them.” 

Mankel’s head bobbed slightly to acknowledge the point. “Yes, well, as I said, we know very little about them for certain. For the most part, they came from a time long before even my people. Certainly before we were an intergalactic civilization. We’re forced to piece things together from old records and stories. But we do know that, within the few records we have found and translated, the Primals repeatedly referred to their situation as something they had done to themselves. They blamed no outsiders, no invading enemy or force. Whatever happened, they were the source of it.” 

“So they couldn’t have any kids or create any clones, or do anything that would carry on their species,” I murmured. “And apparently this spell or whatever it was couldn’t be stopped. They were stuck with just whichever of them happened to be alive when the spell was cast, and once they died, that was it.” The idea made me shudder. What would it be like to live as a people as advanced as these Primals had been (if the weapons Oberon had found were any indication) and then become completely helpless to prevent your entire species from just dying out? 

“A few ‘retired’ to this planet, and this Wandering Woman, or Freyja, or Hajer… whatever she calls herself, she came across one of them way back in the primitive days.” Avalon frowned a bit. “If they lived so long ago that even your people didn’t know anything about them, they must live for a long time for any to have survived long enough for a primitive human to meet them.” 

The man gave a slight nod once more. “Yes, they were incredibly advanced in many ways, to the point of becoming nearly entirely immortal, in some cases. And yet, still, once one died for any particular reason, they were gone forever and the species was one step closer to complete extinction. And even they could only prolong their lives, or protect themselves from outside threats, for so long. Or perhaps some simply… chose to die, after so much of their species was wiped away with no chance to return to their former glory. They could have given up.” 

He was silent for a moment after that, clearly considering how it would feel, before visibly swallowing. Then he went on. “Hajer met one and was bonded to them. Perhaps it was an intentional way for that particular Primal to feel as though they were passing something of themselves on. Whatever the reasoning, she is quite possibly the most powerful being on this planet.” 

“She has the ability to undo things,” I remembered. “Mom said if she focuses on something or someone, she can undo the effect of anything. If you burn a house down, she can wave a hand and put it back to the way it was before the fire. Even if that means bringing everyone who was killed in the fire back to life. But like, she can even undo learning. She can make you forget things, or even erase skills out of your head by removing the fact that you ever learned them.” 

“All of which is correct.” After saying that, Manakel paused, glancing away as though losing himself in thought for a moment before shaking it off as he turned back to us. “As I said, my goal was to find her and convince her that it would be in the best interest of this world for me to succeed in my mission.” His gaze focused on Avalon as he flatly finished with, “My mission, of course, to kill you. Again, for however little it is worth, you have my apologies. Yet I did, absolutely and without question, believe what I was saying at the time. I believed that killing you, eliminating any possibility of Liesje’s spell from ever being put into the world, would maintain the peace here. Because if my people found out that spell was active, I believed they would come here in force.” 

“Yeah, they still might try that,” I muttered under my breath. “But I guess you didn’t find her.” 

“No, I did not. So I returned to other plans.” He looked to Avalon once more. “Plans which failed.” 

“Yeah, we’re all glad about that, believe me,” I noted. “But anyway, to get back to the whole reason I brought that up in the first place, you said you could help me learn to undo that… ‘severscatter’ spell that you used on Grover’s friend so we can bring her back?” 

“As I also said, it will take some time for you to learn enough to do so,” the man reminded me. “But yes, I believe it can be done. Once you have learned how, you will have to go to the spot where it occurred. And you will need to know as much about the girl as possible. That, you will need this… Grover’s aid with. But assuming all goes well enough, you should be able to, ahem, bring her back.” 

My phone buzzed at that point, so I glanced down at it before replying, “Well, I’ll definitely be coming to you for lessons soon. But in the meantime, it sounds like the others are starting to wake up.

“And I really need to get back there in time for my grandparents to meet Theodore.” 

******

Of course, Manakel had no idea what I meant by ‘Theodore,’ and I wasn’t yet to the point where I felt like explaining it. So Avalon and I left him there with Persephone and Cerberus. They had a lot to talk about, and I was pretty sure most of it was pretty private stuff. Still, I made sure Percy knew she could call for us any time she wanted, and that she absolutely did not have to do anything Manakel told her to. And I told Andromeda she should listen in and make sure nothing untoward happened. Even if he was being… well, nice now, I wasn’t going to take any chances. Having a secretly-still-evil Manakel manipulating Persephone into something bad wasn’t quite the worst situation I could think of, but it wasn’t good either. 

Either way, right now wasn’t the time to think about all that. Now was the time to focus on Grandmaria and Popser, who were standing in the kitchen alongside Dad, Mom, and me. And Loudpound, who was wolfing down a very large stack of pancakes at the table. Or rather, pancake and egg sandwiches. She took two pancakes at a time, shoved several spoonfuls of scrambled eggs between them, then ate the result like a sandwich. While sometimes dipping it in syrup. I wasn’t sure I’d ever want to try it like that, but she sure enjoyed it. 

“Uurph, I gotta tell ya, Grandma Chambers, you make some fine flapjacks,” she announced after devouring another of her concoctions. “I mean, I never actually had real ones before, just what I’ve got from borrowed memories, or how they taste inside. But if I had to have anything as my first outside meal, I’m glad it was this.” She took another huge bite then, with a murmur of pleasure, then gulped down half a glass of milk. 

Staring at the greenish-brown, taller Denny in wonder (for more than one reason, I was sure), Grandmaria finally found her voice. “Oh, well, if you think those little things are good, you should try my cookies sometime.” 

Pointing with her latest pancake and egg sandwich clutched in one hand, Loudpound declared, “I’ll hold you to that! Err–what?” She looked to the side as though listening to someone else before muttering under her breath, then turned back. “I mean, thanks. You know, for that and all this food. It’s all ahh, it’s all good.” 

Grandmaria paused before smiling. “Well, I’m just glad you’ve all been enjoying it. Or… is that just you? I’m afraid I’m not quite certain how that works with your… ahh, situation.” 

Taking another gulp of milk to finish off the glass, Loudpound shrugged. “I’m not really the explaining things type, unless you’re talking about explaining just how much it hurts to have my fist in your face. Then I’m more of what you might call an interactive teacher.” She offered a toothy grin that showed off her fangs. Then there was another pause as she listened, before shrugging. “Yeah, well, you do it.” 

With that, her body shrank down half a foot, back to the original Denny’s height. Her skin shifted away from the brownish-green and became a bright fuchsia, while her clothes were a mint and black mix. She even had a matching cape. Her eyes were yellow with no whites to them, and she had short and spiky white hair. 

“Hi!” the new arrival chirped. “I’m Tailor! Letters was gonna come out and talk, but she’s busy right now. I wanted to say I really liked the pancakes too! I probably wouldn’t have put them together with the eggs like that, but it was a new experience. I think new experiences are good! Err, most of the time. Okay, okay, maybe there’s a lot of bad new experiences, but this one was just weird, and weird isn’t bad! I like experiencing things.” 

She looked to my grandmother then. “We can taste what the person on the outside eats, but it’s like… one step removed? It’s not quite like having someone describe something to you, but it’s not exactly the same as experiencing it yourself either. It’s like, uhhhhh… you know when you eat something and then a couple seconds later you can still remember what it tastes like really well? It’s sorta like that.” She thought about her own explanation for a second, then gave a firm nod. “Basically.” 

“Well,” Popser started, “it’s certainly a delight to meet you, Tailor. I hope we didn’t annoy your… sister? I hope we didn’t annoy her too much with all our questions.” 

“Psshh, nah, she’s okay.” Tailor waved that off. “Like she said, she just doesn’t like to explain things. Or listen to things being explained. She gets bored pretty quick.” Her head tilted to look up toward the corner of the ceiling. “What? You do. I didn’t say it was a bad thing.” Looking back to my grandparents, she added, “Anyway, we decided we don’t really like the term sister or brother, because… well, some of us are more connected than others. Letters was reading stuff online earlier when she was out, and she thinks those should be called syslings. Like system siblings. That’s what we are, a System, basically. We didn’t start out the same way they do, but… I mean, it’s close enough. Anyway, we’re the Carnival System. Some of us are syslings, some of us aren’t. Mostly we’re what you call Aspects, or maybe headmates.That’s another word Letters found. Individually, we’re Aspects. When you’re talking about what we are to each other, it’s Headmates. Loudpound and Bijou are syslings because they’re really close, even though they’re pretty different. But just go with headmates for all of us as a whole.”  

Dad, who had been standing in the back corner of the room next to Mom as they watched all this, spoke up. “I had an interview with someone like that awhile back. We were trying to find out what they knew, but the one we needed to talk to was, ahh… gone. I think they said he ‘walked out.’ I ended up talking to their–what did he call himself? Archeologist, that was it. He called himself the System Archeologist. He had this mental museum of all of the pieces of memory the other parts of them left lying around. Ended up being pretty helpful. And ahh, educating.” 

We all talked a little bit more about that, before Grandmaria promised to make cookies soon, and said she would invite any of the Carnival System out to help. Then she and Popser decided they were ready to go in and see Theodore. Apparently the System had already figured out that he couldn’t manifest outside. He wasn’t exactly the same as them. They were all pieces of Denny, at least partially, so they could take over and control the body. But he was more of a separate entity inside her memories, and apparently that wasn’t enough for him to take over. Though, to be honest, I wasn’t sure he even wanted to. He was pretty nervous about interacting with anyone in there, let alone taking over the body in the ‘outside world.’ 

In any case, Tailor swapped with Walker, who grunted her own greetings before waving for us to step together. So, Mom, my grandparents, and I all moved closer. The four of us were going in. Apparently it wasn’t easy for Denny to support too many people inside herself at the same time, and we didn’t want to push things any further than that. 

We arrived in the carnival itself, and my grandparents looked around in wonder. Grandpartie went on a bit about how amazing it would be if they could make a virtual reality video game look this good, while a few of the Aspects cautiously watched from various game booths and rides. They weren’t approaching. 

Then a voice spoke up cautiously from nearby. “I… hello.” It was Theodore, of course. He tentatively stepped out from behind one of the booths, looking nervous. He had dressed up in a cute little black suit with a blue bowtie and matching boots. 

Turning that way, Popser was the first to react. “Aha!” he crowed, making Theodore jump a little. “There’s my grandson!” With a grin, he stepped that way, then paused before lowering himself to one knee. Even then, he still towered over the small boy. “I like your tie. That’s not a clip-on.” 

“No, sir,” Theodore confirmed. “Bang-bang helped me tie it.” 

“Well, he did a bang-up job.” Giving a laugh at his own joke, Popser added, “And it sounds like he’s a good friend. You can call me Popser, or Grandpartie, just like the others.” He offered his hand. “You like Theodore or Theo?” 

After a very brief pause, the boy accepted the shake, his own hand vanishing into our grandfathers’ much bigger one. “I think I usually prefer Theodore, but… Theo sounds okay coming from you, uh, sir.” 

“Theo it is, then,” Popser agreed before waving a hand. “Maria, come meet our grandson.” 

Soon, the three of them were talking animatedly. Well, our grandparents were doing most of the talking. Theodore stayed pretty quiet and just watched. But his eyes were certainly animated, as he stared at them and alternately nodded or shook his head while they asked questions. 

Stepping next to my mother as that went on, I quietly murmured, “I’m pretty sure this is good for all of them.” 

Her head gave a short nod, eyes remaining centered on Theodore while shining with half-shed tears. “Yes. It’s good for them, and for us. And I think it’s good for Denny and the rest of the Carnival as well.” Saying that, she smiled even more at the sight of Popser rising while picking Theodore off the ground so he could hold him up as high as possible, making the boy give a reflexive laugh. Her voice became so quiet, I could barely hear her next words.  

“It’s just plain… good.” 

Previous Chapter / Next Chapter

Growth 18-05 (Heretical Edge 2)

Previous Chapter / Next Chapter

Dinner that evening was really something, to say the least. We didn’t eat out in the main cafeteria, figuring this was something we would want to keep a little more private. It would’ve been pretty hard to focus on things with a couple hundred pairs of eyes from everyone else in the room constantly staring our way if we had eaten in public with someone like Jegudiel. He was the sort of guy who tended to attract attention even without the whole archangel thing. With that added in? Forget it, we never would’ve had any privacy at all. And having all those people watching our every move would have made the whole situation even more uncomfortable.  

In the end, it was still a fairly large group of us at the dinner, all lined up along either side of a long table that had been set up in the Moon’s apartment. Along one side of the table was my dad, both of my grandparents, Wyatt, Abigail, Koren, and me. Along the other side were Haiden and Sariel, Vanessa and Tristan, Jehoel, Spark, Puriel, and Tabbris. Jegudiel was at the end, with Tabbris next to him to his right (her mother on her other side) while I was next to him on the other side, across from my little sister. 

The entire table was laden with dozens of heavy platters of food. Seeing all of it, Jegudiel  clapped his hands together once very loudly, the sound echoing through the room. “Now this is a meal!” he boomed, a broad smile spreading across his face. “You make sure to eat as much as you can, little teuslin,” he teased with a look at Tabbris. “We’ve got to make sure you grow up nice and big so you can squish the heads of your enemies like geppins.” 

Blanching a little bit, the girl squirmed in her seat. “I’m not really sure I’m gonna be up to, um, you know, squishing.” 

“Oh don’t you worry,” Jegudiel informed her, “I used to be a pint-sized little thing like you too. Believe it or not, I was even smaller when I was your age. And even if you eat all you can and still turn out to be a tiny one, it doesn’t really matter. You’re big where it counts.” He offered the girl a wink as she stared at him. “Hell, from what I’ve heard, you being kind of small right now is the only thing that’s keeping you from taking on the entire Fomorian Empire by yourself!” His words right then were accompanied by a hearty laugh. 

Smiling a little despite myself, I watched the girl’s reaction while speaking up. “She’s impressive, that’s for sure. I’d be pretty dead, or worse, right now if it wasn’t for her.” 

Grandmaria took a sip of her water before speaking. “And we’re all certainly glad that didn’t happen.” She smiled my way while adding, “Plus, I can’t say I object to having another grandchild to spoil. Not to mention how much Arthur appreciates being able to buy more of those little video games and pretend they’re actually for one of them.” 

Popser made a huffing sound deep in his throat. “You know I can’t just hand those over without making sure they’re appropriate. Besides, when they put them in the system, what if they have questions about how it all works? I need to have a thorough understanding of all that.” 

From where he was sitting next to his own father, Dad leaned over and whispered something in his ear. Popser listened, then gave a short nod before adding, “And working with them gives me a chance to practice with these technology power whoozits.” 

For a moment, it looked like Jegudiel was going to say something about that, his expression curious. But Haiden spoke up first. “I’ve got a question of my own for you, big guy.” His gaze was focused down the table to the archangel. “How do you think the people on the front line of that war would feel about the idea of working with humans instead of using us as flesh-and-bone mecha to pilot around? You know, letting us have a say in what happens. Is it like people around here talking about asking their trucks for permission to drive them?” 

Obviously, he wasn’t the only one wondering that, but I was still surprised that anyone had asked so directly during the very first meal with this guy. And judging by a few of the looks he was getting from some of the others, they might’ve thought that he had gone too far. 

Jegudiel, however, observed him curiously before giving a short chuckle. “I wouldn’t have expected any other question from the one they called the Bane. You did an awful lot of damage while you were out there, you know.” He actually sounded admiring in that moment rather than reprimanding. “Kept a lot of them on their toes, so they didn’t get soft back away from the front lines.” Pausing briefly to consider, he amended, “Well, not as soft, anyway. You did some fine work. A lot of bad work too, but considering the situation… ehh, can’t say as I blame you too much. 

“Anyway, as for what you were asking about, I don’t really know, to be honest. I don’t use a host unless it’s for some quick tactical advantage, making them think I’m not there or something like that. And in those cases, it doesn’t tend to last very long. If there’s some big discussion going on about that, I haven’t heard it.” He shrugged. “But then, I’m usually too busy kicking Fomorian teeth down their throats and then ripping their spleens out to get the teeth back to actually listen to stuff like that. Tell you what, I’ll have one of my people who’s actually more into that subtle talking stercus ask around to see what the general feeling is. That good enough?” 

Haiden seemed to think about that briefly before nodding. I had the feeling he was surprised to get an actual thought-out response, let alone an offer like that. “Yeah, I’d say that’s good enough.” Another pause came before he added, “Thanks.” 

From there, Wyatt asked something about a bit of Seosten magical security he had been working on taking apart, looking for advice from Jegudiel. The thing was, I happened to know for a fact that he had already long-since solved the problem he was asking about. Clearly, this was a test of some sort. He wanted to know if the man would send him down the wrong path. Whether he did or not, I wasn’t sure. Because even with the advanced lessons I had been getting, I absolutely could not follow Jegudiel’s response. And Wyatt’s next words sounded even more like total gibberish. From the way Sariel reacted, I could tell they weren’t actually just fucking with us and were actually saying real things. But damned if I could follow any of it. 

Still, at the very least, I was able to sit back in my seat and watch them go through this whole impossible-to-understand discussion. Then I looked back and forth along the table, seeing everyone watching as well. My grandparents, my dad, the Moons, we were all sitting here with Tabbris’s archangel father while he and Wyatt discussed security spells. This was all so surreal. Even in a world that had already been so impossible, a world where I had once foolishly thought I was completely beyond being surprised, this was… something. 

Sometimes, I had to take a metaphorical step back and really look at what my life had become over the past year and a half. Honestly, I had no idea how I had gotten here. 

And I certainly had no idea where I would be once another year and a half had passed. 

******

I may not have known where I would be in eighteen months, but the next morning I was attending Xenozoology class, where we learned about Alter animals. Lillian wasn’t there to help teach this time, of course. She was still with Mom in Peru, working on taking care of that whole situation. But we did have Scratch, the short guy from Eden’s Garden who I had met at the beginning of the year working with these animals. 

Obviously, he didn’t look any different now. The man still had the same long, dark gray hair tied into that same ponytail, and that crescent moon-shaped scar still marked his very tan face from just under his right eye down to his cheek. Even after all of this time, I still had no idea what had caused his scar. Nor did I know any other name he went by besides Scratch. But then, from what Miranda and Seller had said, no one else seemed to know any other name either. He simply was, and apparently always had been, Scratch. 

At the moment, the man in question was standing next to a cage that has been covered with a tarp. He was watching me and the rest of the class, his gaze making it clear that he was considering just how to start this lesson. Or possibly wondering if we were ready to hear it. Finally, he exhaled, the sound of his soft sigh stopping the whispering that was going on. Not that there had been a lot of it, but still. Everything went completely silent at the mere prospect that he was about to say something. 

“No yelling,” the man started flatly, in the same simple, soft voice I had come to expect from him. He wasn’t the type to raise his voice or act outwardly excited. He always carried himself calmly. Which was probably why he was so good with the animals. Or maybe the fact that he spent so much time with animals was why he talked like that. I wasn’t sure which came first in that particular egg and chicken situation. “No raising your voices or blurting things out if you’re not called on. I don’t want any of you scaring the poor guy, or making him think he’s in trouble. When you want to say something, raise your hand until I say your name. When I do, you talk in a normal, quiet, civilized tone. Does everyone understand?” 

He waited until we had agreed before putting his hand on the tarp. Once more, he looked over at us, his eyes inquisitive. “How many of you can tell me what this is?” With that, the man pulled the tarp away from the cage, not so much ripping it off as giving a simple gradual tug so it came up smoothly and steadily. Probably to avoid startling the creature inside. 

And what a creature it was. Now that we had a chance to look at it, I could see what looked like an ordinary wolf at very first glance. Except it was bigger in the shoulders and had paws that were more like a bear, with long claws. Which I was given a decent view of as the thing reared up on its hind legs once the tarp came off. It didn’t just briefly rear up either, it stood and stayed that way, its wolf-like head snapping first one way, then another as it took all of us in. The thing pressed its paws against the glass of the cage, deadly claws extending. Yet I didn’t get the impression that it was trying to break out, or even threaten us. It seemed more like it was showing the claws to let us know that it wasn’t helpless, and that if we tried to hurt it, there would be a fight. 

So it was a wolf with bear paws that could stand on its hind legs, but that wasn’t the only thing different about this thing. It wasn’t simply a bear-wolf hybrid. That much became clear as the large bat-like wings unfurled from its back and spread out. Probably to make itself look even bigger, to ward off any potential threats. The thing was spreading those bat-wings out from one end of the cage to the other, its eyes looking over every one of us in rapid succession to assess if we were going to try to attack. 

“No sudden movements,” Scratch reminded us in his soft tone, drawing the creature’s attention briefly before it went back to looking at the rest of us. “Don’t startle him. Just let him take it all in. He’s usually in a bigger enclosure, so he might be a little grumpy right now. But he’ll be okay. Especially once we get him some food. He’s been doing presentations with me for awhile now. Like I said, how many of you can tell me what he is?” 

Vanessa wasn’t in this class, or I was certain that her hand would have rocketed straight into the air. Instead, it was Jason Furuya, the Natural Prevenkuat Heretic, who raised his hand. The Asian guy, who had a scar of his own over his cheek (though not as pronounced as Scratch’s, waited until the teacher said his name before speaking. “He’s a Kludde, right?” It sounded sort of like ‘could’ but with the added L sound right after the kuh sound. Kludde. Like if you mixed up could and cloud and tried to say them both at the same time, or something. 

Scratch smiled faintly, giving a short nod. “That’s right, top marks, Furuya. What else can you tell me about the Kludde?” 

“Uh.” Jason hesitated. “They originated–I mean, here on Earth that is– around the Netherlands and Belgium, right? People thought they were werewolves at first. Uh, werewolves with wings, I guess.” 

“Werewolves with wings, or even the Christian devil,” Scratch confirmed. For a moment, he looked a little amused. Probably because he was thinking about the fact that even his own moniker used to be a nickname for the same devil. Old Scratch, that was. Or maybe he was thinking about the fact that we literally had Lucifer himself, now Apollo, living with us. Either way, he took a moment to smile about something before continuing. “People thought a lot of things about them, some true, some not. Who knows why they’re called Kludde?” 

Even as he asked that, the creature opened its mouth and gave a sharp barking sound. Which sounded an awful lot like its actual name. It barked again, and it sounded even more like it was saying ‘kludde.’ 

“Now that’s just cheating,” Scratch informed the creature with a sidelong look. “You’re not supposed to give them the answers, Montgomery.” 

Rebecca started to say something, a noise escaping her before she caught herself and raised her hand. When the man said her name, she asked, “Montgomery? His name is really Montgomery?” 

“That’s right,” Scratch replied with a simple nod. “Montgomery here is the nicest of his pack. There’s also Edna, Waylon, Ned, Maude, Luann and Seymour. Maybe once you all have a little more experience, I’ll let you see the rest of them. But for now, let’s stick with Montgomery. Who knows something else about the Kludde? Anything at all, I’m sure you’ve heard of them now and then.”

One of the other students, a tiny pixie with long green hair and polka dot clothes, flew up and down in the air to attract attention with her arm raised. Seeing that, Scratch pointed. “Jeckselprea?” 

“Just Jeck is fine, sir!” the pixie chirped. She sounded like Namythiet, and I found myself briefly wondering how the other pixie was doing. “And is it true that if you kill one of them, seven more appear?” 

Scratch shook his head. “No, that was either people getting them mixed up with Jekerns, or just seeing babies crawling out from under the mother’s body and thinking they magically spawned.” He paused before muttering, “People can be really stupid sometimes.” He shook that off before focusing. “If you kill a Kludde, you just end up with a dead Kludde.” 

“Are they shapeshifters?” Koren asked once she was called on. “I think I remember something about how they can change into a lot of different animals.” 

“That they can do,” Scratch confirmed. “Kludde are very powerful animal shapeshifters, almost as good as Pooka. Even stronger, in some cases. They can become plants too. Makes it a little complicated to keep track of them when they keep turning into trees and bushes in their enclosure.” He added that bit with a small smile, clearly amused by a memory of just such a situation. “Some say they can become human, but it’s rare. And even when they do, they don’t talk. They might mimic things they’ve seen humans do, just to try to blend in. Or hunt.” He added that bit with a small smirk. “Anyone else? They’re shapeshifters, they can fly with those wings even in this form, and they do not spawn seven babies when they die.” 

Ruckus, the guy who looked like an assortment of slinkies, raised one of his metal coils until Scratch acknowledged him. “They’rereallyfastright? Imeanlike… theycangetfrom… oneendofthisroom… totheother… sofastit’s… likethey’reteleporting.” 

Oh yeah, Ruckus talked like December. Except somehow, he seemed to get words out even faster. Thankfully, someone seemed to have had the same talk with him about slowing down slightly so he put some intentional pauses in his sentences. Not exactly between every word, but enough that it wasn’t completely impossible to follow what he was saying. Just difficult sometimes. It made me wonder if all of his people were like that, or if that was just a Ruckus thing. 

Scratch nodded. “Yeah, they’re pretty quick, whatever shape they’re in. I’ve clocked Montgomery here doing two hundred and ten miles per hour in a sprint. Not quite blinding speed, but you try telling a Bystander in the seventeen hundreds that what he called ‘incalculable’ speed is actually slower than the airplanes they’ll use in a couple hundred years.” He chuckled softly before sobering. “So yes, they’re very quick, even faster when they fly, and they can shapeshift. All of that makes them pretty dangerous when they want to be. Which brings me to the next question, who can tell me what they like to eat?” 

No one had any answer at first, until Shiloh raised her hand and hesitantly offered, “Um, liars?” She sounded uncertain, like she thought she might just be repeating a silly rumor. 

Scratch, however, beamed a bit. “Yes, actually. That’s pretty much right, believe it or not. The Kludde have the ability to sense when someone is lying. Not just a little white lie, but the malicious kind. They can tell when someone is keeping deep, dark secrets. Evil secrets. And the worse those secrets are, the more… evil the person is hiding inside, the tastier they are to the Kludde.” He paused then, clearly letting that sink in before dryly adding, “As you might expect, a lot of the people in positions of authority and power didn’t really like having them around. So, even before the whole… Bystander Effect came to full power, they started spreading rumors about the Kludde eating babies, literally being Satan or just a demon in general, spawning from the cremated bodies of dead witches, that sort of thing. Anything to stop people from paying attention to what–or rather who the Kludde were actually trying to eat. And, as a side note, that’s also where we get the concept of hellhounds. Well, that and the whole Cerberus thing, of course.” He gave me a brief look before continuing. “They went all-in on making these guys look as evil as possible, just so they’d be hunted to extinction. And they nearly succeeded. Montgomery and his pack are one of only a few left here on Earth. Well, somewhat close to Earth, anyway.”  

Offering us all a slight smile, the man continued. “I’m going to let my buddy here come out of the cage in a minute. Everyone just stay calm and steady. Spread out so there’s several feet between each of you. I’ll lead him to one person at a time. Let him sniff you and then put his head down. When he does that, you can touch him. Just scratch behind his ears or under his chin. And if any of you aren’t comfortable with doing that, go ahead and take a few steps back that way. No one’s going to give you a hard time. 

“And if they do, let me know. I have plenty of other fun things that could eat them.” 

******

So, I made it through the rest of that class, as well as the next couple. Eventually, I was on my way to lunch, wondering if I would see Tabbris there or if she was still busy with Jegudiel. On the way, however, I was interrupted by the sound of someone calling my name. Turning, I saw Miranda sprinting down the hall. She came to a sliding stop, blurting, “We gotta go down to the Eden’s Garden rebels, down by the ocean, the hotel, down there. We gotta check it out.” 

“What?” I blinked a few times, head shaking. “What’s going on? Is something wrong?” 

“Wrong?” she echoed, grinning. “No, nothing’s wrong. It’s right. Dakota, she did it. She finally got them working.” 

“Dakota–the vines?” I realized belatedly. “She managed to make the vines grow?” 

Miranda’s head was bobbing rapidly. “Not just grow, she managed to get a few of them to bloom. New apples. She made the vines give off new apples. 

“We can make new Heretics!”  

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By Blood 17-01 (Heretical Edge 2)

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Christmas morning was, to say the least, a bit of a blur. It seemed weird to immediately think of it in the sense of a montage, and yet that was what it felt like even while it was happening. I had my grandparents back, and that was a whole thing. I spent hours just sitting on the couch with my parents in their apartment on the station, listening to Grandmaria and Grandpartie tell stories about what they had been through since they were transported to the Seosten homeworld. My grandfather, of course, compared everything to various adventures in Star Trek. That was a whole thing, especially since my father’s favorite captain was Picard and Popser’s was Sisko. My grandmother and mom, meanwhile, liked Kirk the best. All of which begat an entire conversation about various episodes and what-if situations. And apparently whenever Uncle Al showed up (he was giving our immediate family time to reunite), he would have his own very strong opinions to share. 

Personally, I didn’t really pay that much attention to that entire franchise, but it was still nice to just sit there and listen to them go back and forth about it. Though, to be fair, given the people involved I would have quite willingly listened to them go on about nearly anything. All that mattered was the fact that they were here now. They were all here, together on Christmas morning after we had been separated for so long. Hell, even the fact that it was Christmas was basically immaterial when you got right down to it. My grandparents had arrived. It could’ve been Arbor Day, and it would still be one of the most amazing and wonderful times of my life.

There was also the fact that through that, I found out that my grandmother had become a Puriel-Heretic. Seriously, she was bonded to him and it had stuck. She actually had his power, even if she was only a tiny fraction as powerful with it as he was at the moment. But she was learning. Baby steps, just like the way I was with my incredibly powerful Necromancy. Except even more, because it was goddamn Puriel. 

Which, of course, fled to a sudden moment of fear about what would have happened if the Whispers had decided to go after her instead. Whether their lack of attempt had more to do with not knowing about that, or her not being powerful enough for their purposes yet, I was just glad they had mostly left her alone. 

And she wasn’t the only potentially-absurdly powerful grandparent I had, either. Well, she already wasn’t because of Dare, but still. She wasn’t the only potentially-absurdly powerful paternal grandparent I had. Grandpartie had been bonded to the same sort of thing Gaia and Seller had been bonded to. He had picked up the technology control powers, like the former headmistress. Because of course he had. This was my grandfather we were talking about. He loved new technology. Given the chance to mentally control it? I was willing to bet that he had quite literally jumped at the chance. Possibly to the point of banging his head on the ceiling.

So, both of my paternal grandparents were bonded to incredibly powerful beings, and had their own absurd gifts that they were slowly learning how to harness. Which was… yeah, that was a thing. 

Not only did we sit there listening to Grandmaria and Popser tell their stories, but we also got to tell them our own. Well, mostly me. I ended up talking a lot that morning, from quite early, essentially re-telling the whole story about what had happened since I took the bus that morning a year and half earlier. A year and a half. God, it felt like so much longer. Most of a lifetime, actually. When I tried to think about what life was like before that day, through the first full sixteen years of my life, I almost couldn’t picture it. The whole thing basically felt like a story I had read somewhere, rather than what amounted to almost ninety percent of my life. 

In any case, telling the story (or many stories) about what I had been through up to this point eventually led to my grandmother insisting we make cookies and take them with us when we visited the others. She felt distraught that she hadn’t had time on Earth to actually buy presents, and assured us all that they would be doing that eventually. No amount of protests that it wasn’t necessary would dissuade her. She was going to get presents for everyone, no question about it. We would just have some sort of late/extra Christmas when the time came. 

That, of course, added to the ‘montage’ feel. I helped her bake cookies, while also taking the time to help my parents put the finishing touches on the gifts we were taking over to the others. Which was supposed to have been done the night before, but we’d been a bit occupied. 

We weren’t too far through that before Tabbris arrived. She had been spending time with her other family, and popped up to meet our grandparents for the first time in an actual peaceful, quiet situation. Or at least, that was the idea. Except as soon as she arrived and saw them in the kitchen, Tabbris immediately hid behind me with her hands on my shirt. She was clinging to me while peeking out that way, making a very uncertain noise in the back of her throat. Apparently it was one thing to meet them in the heat of the moment back on the ship with everything that had been going on, and quite another to do so right now on Christmas morning with no other distractions or anything. 

Brushing her apron off, Grandmaria took one look our way and seemed to understand. She immediately reached out, plucking one of the just-finished cookies from the tray. Her voice was chipper as she took a couple steps our way. “Now, if there’s one thing I know about my Flick, it’s that she loves my coconut chocolate chip cookies. She doesn’t share them with anyone she doesn’t really care about. She especially wouldn’t break one in half except for the most special sort of person.” 

Having said that, she extended a hand with the warm, delicious, oh-so-incredible cookie in her palm, offering it to me. In the background, I saw Popser and Dad having a quiet conversation in a corner of the kitchen while occasionally glancing our way, and Mom was pretending to be busy with the mixing bowl, all of them giving us time to get through this.

Taking the cookie, I went down to one knee and looked toward Tabbris. My hands smoothly broke the treat in half before I spoke quietly. “She’s right, you know. I don’t share my grandmother’s special coconut chocolate chip cookies with just anyone. They have to be my top most favorite people in the world. And splitting just one?” I gave a low whistle before raising my half of the cookie to take a bite. Immediately, my eyes rolled back a bit as I gave a murmur of appreciation. Then I lifted the second half and offered it to the other girl while continuing softly. “That sort of thing is only for someone I love very much.” 

There was a brief pause before Tabbris, face pink, slowly took the offered cookie half and bit into it. Immediately, she visibly shivered and gave a very quick nod. Her voice was a whisper. “I wouldn’t wanna share a whole cookie either.” Having said that, she quickly shoved the rest of the cookie in her mouth and murmured appreciatively. Then her eyes blinked open once more to focus on our grandmother, offering a tentative smile. “Um, hi… hi.”

Gesturing back and forth, I introduced them officially. “Tabbris, this is our grandmother. Grandmaria, this is Tabbris, my sister.” 

“Why, hello, Tabbris.” Grandmaria stepped over closer. She didn’t go down to one knee the way I had, instead reaching out to take the girl’s raised hand as she started to wave. “Do you know what my very favorite sorts of heroes are?” 

“Um, no?” Tabbris offered a bit uncertainly while letting the older woman take her hand (her other one was busy checking for any crumbs from that cookie). 

With a kind, gentle smile, our grandmother explained, “I have three favorites. My first favorite heroes are the very sneaky ones who do all this work to help people without getting a lot of credit for it. My second favorite are the people who help my friends and family. And my third favorite are my own family themselves. So, you know, by all that, I would say that you might just be my very most top favorite person right now. I’m not sure yet though, we need one more test, just to check.”

Eyes darting briefly to me, still kneeling beside her, and then back again, Tabbris hesitantly echoed, “One more test?”  

Still giving the same tender, welcoming and yet somehow conspiratorial smile that I recognized from so many years past, Grandmaria gently replied, “Well, yes, before I decide if someone fits the family member sort of favorite person, I have to see how good they are at hugs.” 

A giggle escaped the girl beside me, before she managed to retort with a somewhat-straight face, “I dunno, that puts a lot of pressure on a first hug.” 

With a laugh at that, our grandmother tugged her over by the hand and the two embraced. It was somewhat tentative at first on Tabbris’s part, as she was obviously still a bit nervous about the whole thing. But that quickly vanished as she felt just how intently Grandmaria was hugging her, and she ended up latching on just as tightly. 

Watching that while smiling, I straightened and glanced to my parents. They were both watching as well, and Dad gave me a thumbs up. Then he leaned over to whisper something to his own father before both of them chuckled softly. 

By the time Tabbris and Grandmaria separated, Popser was right there. He reached down, taking the little girl by both hands and squeezing them. On a ‘one, two, three, hup,’ he hoisted her off the floor and into his arms for a tight hug of his own. 

It didn’t end there either. They both passed Tabbris back and forth for several more hugs before being satisfied for the moment. Then we got back to talking while finishing the last batch of cookies as I (with help from Tabbris, Dad, and Mom) finished getting them caught up on what they had missed. Or at least as much as we could think of right then. I was sure there would be a lot more specific details we have to get into later. But they had at least the broad strokes. And it also gave me a chance to let Tabbris know about just what our grandparents had been bonded to, so I could see if the look on her face was as great as the one on mine had probably been. So, of course, she had to hear all about that. And they both had to demonstrate, which was fun. Especially when Popser got Tabbris to ‘pull his finger’ and turned every television, radio, light, etcetera in the apartment on, including setting off a couple alarm clocks. And yes, that made Tabbris fall over giggling.   

Eventually, the cookies were ready and we packed them up along with all the presents, before heading out to go see Abigail, Koren, and Wyatt. They were waiting for us in Abigail’s apartment, and we all exchanged more hugs and greetings. Grandmaria and Grandpartie were both immediately taken with all three of the others, and stories were soon flying back and forth. Wyatt wasn’t exactly shy (awkward sure, but not shy), yet even he seemed to take to our grandparents incredibly quickly. Before long, he and Popser were sitting at a corner of the room, going over some sort of security device designs that Wyatt had scrawled on the back of a napkin. They sounded like little kids conspiring to build a tree house or something. It was pretty great, even if I was a bit nervous about what they would end up with. 

Koren, standing beside me as we watched everyone interacting and laughing like that, leaned over to whisper, “Did you ever think we’d be standing here like this back at school last year?” 

The thought made me snort at first, before shaking my head. A lump had formed in my throat. Looking at everyone, I stopped to think about how lucky I was in that moment. Sure, plenty of bad stuff had happened. And plenty of other bad stuff would happen in the future. But right then, I was celebrating Christmas with my father, mother, Grandmaria, Grandpartie, Koren, Wyatt, Abigail, and Tabbris. They all knew the truth, they were all on the same page, and we were together. What would the me from the year before even do if I had told her this was what the next Christmas would be like? I honestly had absolutely no idea. 

Of course, that led to the question of what next Christmas would be like, but I wasn’t going to focus on that right now. This was a day that I wanted to savor every last minute of. 

Finally, I found my voice. “Nope. I think I can safely say that I never expected to be in a situation like this.” Then I glanced toward the other girl and added, “Especially not when we first met.” 

Koren, in turn, snorted while giving a vigorous nod. “Especially not when we met.” After a brief grimace, she offered a small shrug. “I guess that just goes to show how much things can change, huh?” She glanced over toward Wyatt before adding, “Really, really change.” 

“Here,” I raised my hand with a treat in it. “Try one of Grandmaria’s cookies. Believe me, you wanna talk about change you’ll look back on? 

“After this, everything in your life will be ‘before cookie’ and ‘after cookie.’”

*******

So, that was how Christmas went. Well, that was how Christmas with the family went. We exchanged presents and all that. Uncle Al did eventually show up, which started a whole other round of stories, especially when who he really was got pointed out. And yes, they all made me change into my werelion form to pose with him. It wasn’t exactly the same as a real Nemean Lion (I was entirely too tiny), but the others got a kick out of it anyway. 

All in all, it was fun. And I also spent time with others, besides family. It was an entire day of that stuff. Not to mention the fact that everyone else was still deep in partying mode after that whole protection spell thing. Which they had gotten Puriel and everyone else linked into, so hopefully they would be safe from Whisper counterattacks. And beyond that, they were apparently working on security updates on the station to keep them out or monitor for them. I’d tried to get more information, but Abigail basically gave me a hard stare and told me to enjoy Christmas. I sort of heard an unspoken ‘or else’ behind her words, so I left it alone for the moment. Abigail could be pretty scary in her own right when she wanted to be. 

Late that night, after almost everyone else had already gone to bed, I was sitting in the park part of our housing area, watching a few people on the forcefield elevators as they came down. I had both of the rings that I had inherited from that Seosten ghost hovering close to the ground in front of me, as Jaq and Gus played by hopping back and forth through them from both sides so they could be faster or slower. They were clearly amusing themselves quite a bit, and I couldn’t help but smile every time I glanced that way. 

“Well, it’s nice to see they’re having fun.” Asenath, seated beside me, noted. “Who gave them the Christmas hats?” 

Yeah, both cyberform mice were wearing little red Santa hats that had been attached to their equally-little heads. There were even tiny bells on the end that jingled softly whenever they did their hops back and forth. 

“Shiori,” I informed the other girl, as a fond smile found its way to my face at the thought. “I told them they didn’t have to wear the hats past the party, but you should have seen the look they gave me. I’m starting to think I’m going to have to get that girl to make a whole bunch of little hats for them to wear. Otherwise I’ll never get those ones off them.” 

With a very low chuckle, Senny took a small piece of metal about the size of the top of a soda can from her pocket and tossed it down for the pair to immediately start munching on from either side. “Well, I can’t exactly blame them. They are very stylish.” 

“That’s for sure,” I agreed, before looking toward her. “It must be weird for you. I mean, you grew up before the whole Santa myth was even–” 

“Myth?” She glanced to me and raised an eyebrow. “After all this time, you really find the story of Santa completely impossible to believe?” 

Her words made me squint at the girl. “You are not about to tell me that Santa Claus is real. I’m sorry, but if you say those words, I’m just going to get up and walk away.” 

She, in turn, gave a low laugh. “Okay, the answer is no, he’s not real. And yet he is. Sort of.” To my confused look, Senny waved a hand. “It’s the elves that are real. Or rather, the LVS.” When I didn’t get it, she spelled it out. “The L-V-S.” 

From there, she told me the story about the tiny creatures who had arrived on Earth with no memory of their past, and their only clues being a badly damaged ship with the letters L V S visible. Letters the collective amnesiac creatures had taken as their name. LVS or ‘elves.’ Apparently they had been helped a lot by the actual Saint Nicholas way back in the days that he had actually lived. Once he died, they spread his legend and basically helped create and push the whole Santa Claus thing. And they tried to give gifts as much as they could. Clearly, they couldn’t do the whole world or anything like that, but they did do what was possible. And any parents that happened to see brand new gifts under the tree with no explanation, well, that was covered by the Bystander Effect. If they even got that far. According to Asenath, a lot of people just assumed either the other parent or some relative left the gift. They ignored it. 

Hearing all that kind of made me want to meet these LVS, but apparently they were pretty notoriously secretive. Asenath herself had only met them one time, a few decades back. Still, I’d met enough important people in the past year and a half that I wasn’t going to rule out the possibility. 

Before I could say anything else about that, the phone in my pocket buzzed. I plucked it out and took a look before blinking. “Uh, maybe it’s a good thing you’re here,” I murmured. “It’s Jack Childs.” The Eden’s Garden Victor was calling me, and I could only think of one reason for that. 

“Hello?” I answered, hitting the speaker button. “It’s Flick, and Asenath is here too.” 

“Ah, good to hear,” came the response. “Heard a lot about you, Asenath. Good things, for the most part. And plenty of bad from the right sort of people.” 

“I do enjoy hearing that the right people have bad things to say about me,” Senny noted. 

We both heard the man chuckle. “Ain’t that the truth. Anyway, a happy Christmas to you both. But I think you know why I’m calling.” 

“You have a lead on Kyril Shamon’s secret prison,” I immediately replied. “I mean, where he might be keeping… Tiras.” As I said that, my eyes darted toward Asenath. She had gone a bit still, staring intently down at the phone. 

There was a very brief pause (which seemed to be a lot longer than it actually was) before Childs confirmed. “That’s right, we’ve got a lead on it. But even better, we have a lead on a transport that’s taking place. If you can take a group, subtly intercept that transport, and show up there, you’ll be able to get your entire group inside before they know anything’s wrong and when it all goes down, Shamon will think the Rebellion simply chased it down that way.” 

“So whatever resources you used to find out where it is won’t be burned,” I murmured thoughtfully. A part of me wanted to note that they also wouldn’t have to get their hands dirty, but I knew better than that. This was about more than Senny’s dad. As important as he was to her, and to Shiori and me by extension, there was a whole war for the world and beyond to deal with. The rebel Victors couldn’t blow every resource they had to help save one guy. Or even a full prison camp. 

“Yes,” came the response. “The transport isn’t for a couple weeks, but if you’re interested, you should start putting together a group to deal with it. Be ready to get into the camp, find the prisoners, and get out before Shamon finds out and sends reinforcements.” 

“Oh, we’re definitely interested,” I replied, smiling dangerously toward Senny. 

“Just give us the details. We’ll take care of the rest.” 

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At Last 16-13 (Heretical Edge 2)

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To say that the Whisper-Ghosts reacted badly to their Get Into Tartarus ticket being taken away would be a bit of an understatement. In the moment after the prototype ship vanished with Puriel and the kids on-board, a near-deafening scream went up throughout the room. It came not only from the Whispers who were possessing ghost ‘bodies,’ but from all of them. Dozens of the things, most nearly entirely invisible aside from distortion in the air, expressed their fury from all along the outskirts of the room. The discordant howl of rage sent an almost painful shiver through me. There was power there. Which wasn’t surprising, given how much their voices could affect people when they whispered. An outright scream like this, coming from that many of them? No wonder it felt like the magical equivalent of nails on a chalkboard. Even with our protection, hearing it made me want to gouge my own ears out. 

And that was the point, I immediately realized. The scream was an attempt to push through all our protection and force us to harm ourselves. It even almost managed it, despite everything. At the moment I had that thought, the next that leapt to mind was, ‘Grandmaria and Grandpartie aren’t protected.’ Yet even as I spun that way, hand outstretched to stop them from being made to do anything drastic, I could see that the situation was already well in-hand. Both of my grandparents, Uncle Al, and that Native American guy, were all unconscious on the floor with Mom, Sariel, and Athena standing over them. Apparently they didn’t want to take any chances. Which, given how powerful the Whispers clearly were, made sense. 

Thankfully, the Whisper-scream (yeah) didn’t last for long. Which was the good part. Unfortunately, the bad part was that as soon as it stopped, the assortment of possessed Olympian ghosts and air distortions closed in on the rest of us from all sides. Invidia was, as usual, at the front as their leader. Her gaze was centered on me, and I was pretty sure that the hatred in her eyes was coming from both her and Charmeine. With that little move back there, I had just made myself the Whispers’ personal enemy. Which was just fantastic, because I didn’t have enough of those anymore. Definitely needed to add a few more to the list. 

“You,” Invidia snarled, that single word containing about a decade’s recommended allotment of spite. “You are–” 

In mid-sentence, she abruptly vanished from that spot just as my mother appeared there, sword slashing through the space she had just been in. Mom’s own voice was hard. “Stay the fuck away from her.” The tip of the sword was pointed at the spot where Invidia had reappeared, a bit further back. “You already lost. Get over it.”

“Did we?” Invidia snapped back, as the other possessed Olympian ghosts gathered around her. They were all staring past my mother to meet my gaze, and it was very clear that the animosity I had sensed was coming equally from all of them. I hadn’t just made Invidia hate me, they all did. Their whole group, if not their whole… species or whatever. Which might be a new record even for me, given how recently we’d met. 

It was actually Theia who spoke next. The Seosten girl was standing on the spot where Puriel had been when he was thrown into the other ship. “You failed to take my father, so you failed to open the rift.” Her voice was as flat and matter-of-fact as ever, yet I could sense an underlying hint of emotion there. Theia, quite understandably, probably had complicated feelings about her father. Yet these creatures had been trying to take him away from her right when she had been about to be reunited with him for the first time since she… well, since she had changed so much. They had both changed a lot, and these Whispers had very nearly snatched Puriel away from her before she ever had the chance to have a real face-to-face with him. No wonder I could hear anger in her voice. 

Although to be fair, I was pretty sure everyone in this room was angry at the moment. 

“She’s right,” Athena put in. The woman had all-but materialized on the other side of my mother, with Dare right next to her. “Your efforts were focused on using Puriel to open a new way into Tartarus. He’s gone now, and no amount of bellowing is going to change that.” 

Invidia made Charmeine’s eyes narrow, her voice low and dangerous as she stared intently through everyone else to meet my gaze. “Perhaps not, but we may still extract a high price for such a delay.” 

“Extract a high price,” Dare informed her in a voice that somehow managed to convey even more of an open threat than her actual words did, “and pay an even higher one.”

Invidia’s eyes finally turned away from mine to look to her, a snarl finding its way into her retort. “Is that so? Because it seems to me we have you outnumbered. And we gain an even better understanding of our physical capabilities with each confrontation. You cannot hold out for long. Your resources are far from infinite, this far from any reinforcements.”

“Are we far from reinforcements?” I pointed out after taking a breath. “I mean, you just saw our extra ship jump in and then out of here instantly. You really think you can finish us off before Andromeda drops off Puriel and the kids then comes back with some help?” 

“Perhaps,” Invidia snapped in my direction, though she didn’t exactly sound confident. I was pretty sure she was running the numbers in her head and didn’t like what it was coming out to. “We can handle you, at least, annoying one.” 

“You’d have to go through all of us to do it,” Avalon retorted, putting herself slightly in front of me with her arm raised, projecting a blade from her gauntlet. Miranda silently joined her, even as my mother moved closer as well.  

Beside me, Cerberus gave a low growl through each of his heads. Persephone piped up, “Felicity has many friends you would have to go through. Including us. And we just got here. We can keep playing for awhile.”

She was right, of course. First, she and Cerberus had only just gotten started, which was the whole reason I’d kept them in reserve as backup even after the Whispers first showed themselves. It didn’t make sense to blow that surprise the very moment we saw some bad guys. I’d hoped that if Kushiel was here, we could have surprised her with them if things ever got really bad. And second, because the two of them were a Revenant and robot dog respectively. They didn’t really get tired. At least, not like that. I was pretty sure Cerberus could run down enough to need to recharge or whatever, but that wouldn’t be for quite some time. His makers didn’t want to have to go find a thousand double a batteries or whatever in the middle of fighting Manakel. 

Invidia was staring that way, her gaze locked onto Persephone. “And what precisely are you even doing? You should be aiding us, not hindering our efforts. You are a puppeteer of dead things, Revenant. You worm and slide your way into the dead and control it from within. You are nothing without the dead. We are all-but family, practically your siblings. You have far more in common with us than these creatures. And even if there were no similarities between us at all, you should want what we want. Unleashing this… Tartarus as they call it will bring even more of the power you are so fond of.” Her eyes darted briefly to me as she added, “You think this child, already about to fall in on herself after so minor an exertion, can offer even a small fraction of the necromantic energy that Tartarus being fully unleashed would bring into this universe? You latched yourself to that power’s previous custodian, and now to the child for no merit of her own. You aid her for the power she controls, and yet the source of that power could be in the palm of your hand. You bow to the one who holds a flashlight, while ignoring those offering you the power of the sun itself. All you need to do is stand with us, and you shall never be in the dark again. We know you better than they ever could. This girl will never see you as a romantic partner. She’s only using you for the strength you provide.” 

The others were staring our way, and it was all I could do not to turn and look at Persephone myself. But something told me that one of the worst things I could do in that moment was show any doubt in her. No matter how worried the paranoid part of me wanted to be, I had to trust her. More than that, I had to show that I trusted her. 

To that end, I stepped forward and over slightly, putting myself not quite directly in front of Persephone, but slightly to the side and ahead. I moved to a spot that put my back to her both literally and symbolically, while simultaneously being physically closer. My voice was sharp. “You know what’s funny? You’re trying to say that you can give Percy what she wants better than any of us, but you don’t even know what she wants. You don’t know what she likes. If you did, you’d know there’s no way in hell that she’d ever want to release a bunch of universe-destroying monsters. You know, because she lives here. Percy?”

“Yes, Felicity?” she chirped a bit from behind me, sounding curious. 

“What’s your favorite thing to do at two-fifteen on Saturday and Sunday morning?” I asked without looking away from Invidia and the other Whispers. Immediately after answering the question, I spoke the answer right alongside the Revenant. 

“Sit in the fluffy blue recliner with a hot, wet towel over my feet and a bowl of popcorn, half cheese and half caramel, in my lap watching the excellent Home Shopping Network and making up stories about what the people who buy the items are like.” 

We both finished saying that, word-for-word, before I added, “How do I know that? Because I talk to her. Because I’ve asked her that four times and she’s given the same answer every time. Because I like knowing things about her. And it’s kinda hard to have a shopping network, a TV, popcorn, a towel, or a recliner if there are a bunch of monsters destroying the universe.” 

Stepping back a bit, I reached a hand behind myself to find Persephone’s and squeezed it, all still without breaking eye contact with Invidia. “You think you know her? You don’t know a damn thing about her. You think you can talk her into betraying me because you tell her I don’t have romantic feelings for her? I never lied about that, not once. I have been completely up-front about that. But me not feeling anything romantic for Persephone doesn’t mean I don’t care about her. She is my friend. And if you open your mouth to try to manipulate her again, I will come over there, rip you out of that ghost body, then twist and fold your incorporeal ass into a shape that’s so geometrically impossible you’ll end up breaking the fabric of space-time and traveling back to inspire M.C. Escher. Leave my friend alone.” 

Speaking brightly, Persephone chirped, “Thank you, Friend Felicity. But I am more than capable of speaking up for myself.” She paused briefly before giving a short nod as she focused on Invidia and the other, increasingly angry Whisper-Ghosts. “As she said, you are not my friend. She is.” Her head tilted then. “Perhaps you should not have cultivated such a strong reputation for manipulation. Nothing you say is believable.”

“Yeah, well, they’re accustomed to having the power to back it up,” Apollo noted. “When you get too dependent on using a power that lets your voice manipulate and control people, well… let’s say I know what that can be like.” 

“You are nothing to us,” Invidia snapped in his direction, clearly offended by the insinuation that there was any similarity between what they did and his own Olympian power. 

Apollo, for his part, simply shrugged as though that didn’t bother him. “Maybe not, but your thing hasn’t worked so far. Actually, you’ve kind of failed at everything you’ve been trying to do this whole time.” 

“Everything?” There was amusement mixed in with the anger in Invidia’s voice. “Is that what you think? Because from where we are standing, we are in a much better position with these… bodies than we have been before.” She gestured around at the other Whisper-possessed ghosts. “Your annoying efforts to prevent us from opening the way to Tartarus notwithstanding, our efforts here have not been wasted. Whether you survive this encounter or not remains to be seen, but we will emerge stronger than we have been in many millennia.” 

“Sure,” Apollo agreed in a tone that made it sound like that didn’t even matter. “Not to mention Tartarus clearly isn’t going anywhere. It’s a whole universe out there. Not like it’s just gonna disappear.” 

“Of course not,” the Whisper retorted, her eyes narrowing at him. “Tartarus has existed since before the creation of this universe, and it will continue to exist long after every star which warms your worlds has burned itself out. It is infinite. And we have patience to match. Your efforts here are nothing more than a brief delay.”

“Not even a particularly good one,” Apollo noted. “You have plenty of other options for opening a rift into the place. You don’t even need any of us.” 

“No,” came the response, “we do not need you.” 

“We’re not worth your time.” 

“You’re not worth our time.” 

“You should just leave right now.” 

“We should just–wait–” The very slightly glazed look that had crossed Invidia’s face started to clear as she focused. “You–you are not–” 

Apollo spoke once more, his voice firm as it filled the whole area around us as though he was speaking through a microphone that didn’t exist. “You should leave right now and go as far away as you can.” 

That was what it took. An instant after he finished those words, Invidia and the rest of the Whisper-Ghosts vanished. As soon as they did, the blond man staggered a bit, giving a heavy wheeze. “Ohhhkay, that took a lot more than I thought it would. They’re strong.” He glanced to the rest of us. “I wanted to ask for more information about what they are, but it… they were too strong. I could feel it. I would’ve had to keep talking for another ten minutes to get anything, and she was already starting to work it out. Had to go with the quick fix instead of the long term answers. Sorry.” His last word came as a mutter, the man clearly annoyed that he hadn’t been able to get anything else out of them. 

“Dude,” Miranda started while shaking her head, “you managed to voice-manipulate a bunch of alien creatures whose entire thing is voice-manipulating people. Even if you didn’t get everything you wanted out of it, that’s nothing to sneeze at.” 

“She’s right,” Dare agreed, brushing her sleeves off a bit before focusing that way. “We should focus on the fact that we managed to get out of that situation without losing anyone. Particularly Puriel. He is safe now, and they don’t have what they need to open a way to Tartarus yet.” 

“But they still got away with new ghost bo–” I started before abruptly spinning to focus on the group who had been standing slightly away, staring at all of us through that. “Grandmaria, Popser!” The words had barely escaped me before I was dashing that way. 

“There she is!” my grandfather cheerfully called while reaching down to haul me up from the floor as soon as I was close enough. He hugged me to his chest, even as my grandmother stepped in to join the embrace as well. Soon all three of us were embracing in a big group right there. I was basically squished in the middle, but I didn’t care. My grandparents were here, they were safe. Everything else could wait for the moment. 

Actually, no, not everything. In the midst of that, I started to think about Tabbris and my father, only to hear the latter’s voice. “Mom… Dad.” 

He was there, with Tabbris right at his side. The two of them looked pretty worn, and it was obvious they’d been through a lot down there keeping the Whispers away from the Slide-Drive. But they made it, just like the rest of us. We might’ve all been exhausted, but we were alive. And, well, the universe wasn’t about to be overrun by giant monsters, which was a good thing.

Opening their arms without taking their grip off me, Grandmaria and Grandpartie beckoned for their son to come right in. He did, and then there were four of us. Which quickly became five as my grandmother reached out toward Tabbris, taking the suddenly-shy girl by the hand to pull her in close. I could see the shudder that ran through my little sister before she let herself embrace her new grandparents tightly, one after the other. And they hugged her right back. There was no hesitation, they both pulled her right in close and tight as smoothly and immediately as if they’d known her for years. Probably because they understood just how much this would mean to Tabbris, how important it was. 

Speaking of important, no matter how good this hug might’ve been, it was missing one person. Dad and I both met each other’s gazes before nodding. We knew. Turning slightly while keeping one hand on my grandfather’s arm, I looked over that way with a simple, “Mom.” 

There she was, standing just to the side as she watched what was going on with that sword still held tight (maybe a little too tight) in her grip. At the sound of my voice, Mom started a bit before sheathing the blade. Her mouth opened and then shut as she fought to find the right words. 

She might not have known what to say, but my grandmother did. Extracting herself, Grandmaria took a few steps over there. She raised both hands, voice quiet. “I owe you such an apology, Joselyn. For… for the things that–” 

“No,” Mom interrupted, shaking her head. “Maria, you don’t owe anything. If I saw what you–if I…” She took a breath before letting it out, clearly trembling just a little despite herself. “I would have said even worse things than I’m sure you did. I would have done worse things.” 

“Oh,” Grandmaria half-drawled with a note of embarrassment, “I don’t know about the first bit. I said some pretty awful things.” A self-deprecating smile found its way to her face before she stepped that way, reaching out to take both of my mother’s hands. Her voice was even quieter, yet stronger. “You did what you had to do to protect your family. I–we could not be more proud of you, dear. And… knowing what we know now, I understand it may feel very silly for someone so much younger than you are to express that sort of sentiment. It may mean very little–” 

“No,” Mom interrupted, voice catching a bit. “Believe me, it… it means more than you know.” 

“Joselyn,” Dad spoke a bit tenderly, reaching out that way. He didn’t say anything else, just stood there with his hand stretched toward her. 

Grandmaria, meanwhile, looked back and forth between them before taking my mother’s hand. She squeezed it, offering a faint smile before giving her a tug. And just like that, she pulled Mom over to join the embrace. And now we were finally all right there, hugging one another tightly for the next few moments. There were a lot of things to worry about, of course. But this… this was important. It was worth taking a second to enjoy. 

Soon enough (all too soon, really), we had to separate. There would be more later, but for the moment, there was still too much to do. After all, we were still out here in the middle of nowhere. And there was no telling how long it would be before the Whispers found their way back. We had to get out of here while we had the chance. 

To that end, the others hadn’t just been standing around doing nothing, apparently. Athena had already sent Mercury and Sariel back down to the bridge to get the ship moving again, while Persephone had gone with Cerberus and Apollo to bring the slide-drive back online now that the Whispers were gone and we had control of the ship. 

Of course, there was still one more person who needed a hug. My eyes found him immediately after separating from the others. “Uncle Al,” I found myself murmuring while stepping over that way. 

“Hey there, kid,” he greeted me with a broad smile. “Can I get your autograph?” 

“Only if you give me yours, Uncle Hercules,” I shot right back before embracing him tightly. In this case, I didn’t hold back any strength. He could take it, and a hell of a lot more. 

From there, a whole lot of introductions started to be passed back and forth, and I gave a double-take when they introduced the Native American guy who had been quiet up to this point. “Kutattca? As in–wait.” 

The elderly man gave a simple nod, head bowing. “Yes, actually. My sister is Litonya. If you’d like, I can apologize for her. I have been doing so for quite some time.” 

“Okay…” My mouth opened, before I stopped, realizing I had no idea exactly where to go from there. “I have so many questions. But right now, I’m pretty sure we should focus on getting back to the station so we can meet up with Puriel and those kids again and make sure everyone’s okay.” 

“Yes,” Theia spoke up in agreement. “I would very much like to speak with my father when he is not… distracted. We have a great deal to talk about.” 

“One thing, Felicity,” Athena started, with a slow, deliberate glance my way.

“Are those Elemiah’s rings you have?” 

Previous Chapter / Next Chapter

At Last 16-12 (Heretical Edge 2)

Previous Chapter / Next Chapter

On the heels of Invidia’s announcement, Athena was already moving. In fact, she had been moving even before the evil creature finished talking, lunging that way with her sword slashing upward. Yet Invidia met the incoming blade with her own, its ghost-like wispy form somehow still blocking the other sword as though totally solid. She gave Athena a smirk, raising both eyebrows before the two began to exchange blows with blinding speed.

In the next instant, the rest of the Whisper-Ghosts fell in on us from all sides. Or, rather, they would have. But I had already snapped both hands up and out, summoning all the power I could to force the Olympian ghosts to stay back. Strong as they were, aided by the Tartarus energy and the fact that they were being controlled by these other creatures, it took absolutely everything I had just to make them stop moving forward. Controlling them or pushing them back was completely out of the question. I stopped them several feet away from us, and that was the extreme limit of my capability. Even that was almost too much, as I could feel them pushing against my control. 

“If one of you guys could do something to stop these fuckers right about now,” I managed through gritted teeth while struggling to maintain any sort of grip, “that’d be super-great!” 

Because it sure didn’t look like Athena was going to be done with Invidia any time soon. Just like her fight with my mother, the pair seemed perfectly matched. I had a feeling that the Whisper possessing Charmeine’s ghost was getting stronger and better with each passing moment, more attuned to working with the ‘body’ she had taken over. Every time she fought with it, she got more capable at using it. Worse, I was pretty sure that whole thing went for all these guys. All the Whispers were controlling incredibly powerful and skilled Olympian Seosten, even if they weren’t bridge crew. The longer this went on, the better they were going to get at actually using those powers and skills. We had to end this before we were totally overwhelmed. 

Oh yeah, and before they managed to take over Puriel and force him to open a portal to unleash a bunch of universe-destroying monsters. That would be nice too. 

To one side, even as I spoke those words about asking someone to do something, Sariel was drawing back her bow. But she wasn’t focused on any of the Whisper-Ghosts who were still trying to lunge at us. Instead, her gaze was on Puriel himself. In that moment, I had the sudden realization of how angry she must still be deep down for everything that had happened to her and her family. Not to mention the simple fact that her missing daughter was trapped inside Puriel himself, and as far as anyone knew, the only way to free her was for Puriel to die. 

“Sariel!” Apollo called, his hand reaching out that way, though he didn’t actually touch her. “If he dies–” 

“I know,” she interrupted, voice flat. “If he dies, they can possess him.” Still, she loosed the arrow anyway. It shot through the air, flying right between two of the Whisper-Ghosts, over the head of one of the cowering children, and struck Puriel right in the–no. At the very last instant, just before the arrow would have gone clean through the thoroughly-distracted man’s throat, it broke apart. The shaft fell away, while the arrowhead exploded into a… a cocoon of glowing reddish energy that surrounded the man. A forcefield. Sariel had put a forcefield around him. 

A sudden rush of motion just as the woman had loosed that arrow made my gaze snap over to where Theia had almost launched herself in the air after the shot. Seeing what happened, the girl froze in mid-motion. From the look on her face, I was pretty sure she was more surprised by her own reaction than she was about what the arrow had actually done. In the instant where she had thought that her father was in danger, she had very nearly thrown herself in the path of the arrow. Sure, her power meant it wouldn’t be a problem, but what she was feeling in that moment had clearly left the girl reeling. 

And speaking of reeling, I couldn’t keep this up. My control over keeping the ghosts away was already starting to falter. Honestly, the fact that I’d kept it up this long against so many of them was almost a miracle. Especially when I didn’t have Tabbris with me to provide any extra boost.  

“Everyone get to Puriel,” Sariel announced firmly while drawing another arrow and giving me a quick, somewhat reassuring glance that said she knew just how close I was to losing it. “There are already Anti-Whisper Runes all along the floor around him, but they’re running out of power. Those things have him too distracted to recharge them. We have to get over there and do it ourselves.” 

She was right, I realized. That was our best shot at stopping these things. If we could recharge the runes to drive the Whispers away from Puriel long enough for the man to catch his breath and orient himself, maybe he could deal with them for good.  

“Flick!” Miranda was right next to me, shield held up protectively. “This feels like a rainy day situation, you know? I think it might be time to use th–” 

She was abruptly cut off. Not by me losing control of the ghosts I had been shoving away from us, but from something reaching up from underneath me. It grabbed my foot, and I barely heard Miranda, Avalon, and my mother all shout my name before I was suddenly yanked down through the floor, a yelp of surprise escaping me. 

At least I wasn’t being physically slammed through solid metal. My body had turned almost ghost-like itself as soon as whatever it was grabbed me. I had no control, however, as I was pulled completely helplessly downward. 

I didn’t just get yanked through one deck either. Three full decks passed me by in a quick blur before I landed hard on the floor of the fourth one. Only then, lying on my back, did I see the glowing tentacle wrapped around my ankle. A tentacle that was attached to the outstretched arm of yet another clearly-possessed Seosten ghost. He wasn’t an especially large man, standing only a few inches taller than me. His skin–or what was supposed to have been his skin if he had been alive, was black, with intensely green eyes and a very aristocratic face. He looked almost more beautiful than handsome. Well, aside from the fact that one of his arms had transformed into a tentacle that had stretched up through four full decks to grab my ankle, turn me intangible, and yank me away from everyone up there who needed me. 

“Okay,” I grunted while jerking my leg free. As soon as I did, my form solidified once more, and I rolled backward to my feet. “I’m getting really sick of you people, and sick of getting dragged away from my family and friends. That’s double-sick, so if I was you, I’d get the fuck out of my way.” 

Unfortunately, the Whisper-Ghost wasn’t impressed by my words. He gave me a simple smirk while transforming the tentacle back into a regular arm, head cocking to the side a little. “You’re the Necromancer,” he drawled. “We have a few things in common, you and my people. We’re all quite good at controlling dead things.” 

“Is this gonna be the ‘join us and rule the universe at our side’ spiel?” I spat back at him. “Because it’s kind of surprising how seldom I’ve gotten that, considering everything I’ve been through.” Even as I said the words, I was calculating the best way to get around him and back to where I needed to be. Was it time to use the–no. No, I could wait for that. I couldn’t use it just to deal with one guy. Not when I still didn’t know for sure just how bad this whole situation was going to get.

So, I instead held my staff out to one side, activating the next ghost-fire spell so I would actually be able to hurt this piece of shit. “If so, save your breath. I’ve got much better options for that if I wanted to rule the universe alongside actual competent megalomaniacs.” 

A deep, rumbling chuckle escaped the ghost figure. “If you are so dismissive and in such a rush, why not force me to move? Surely a strong, capable dead-puppeteer like you could manage such a thing.” His teeth gleamed as he smiled. “After all, it’s just you and me.” 

I wasn’t stupid. This was bad. This whole thing was bad. I had no idea what was going on up there, how the others were doing, if they had managed to save Puriel yet or if he was–well, clearly we weren’t at the place where these guys wanted to open the rift, because the ship was still moving. But we were still on our way there. Dad and Tabbris hadn’t managed to stop the ship. I had to get through this guy and go help the others. And yet, the way he was talking…

Fuck it, I couldn’t wait around and what-if myself all day long. Since he had literally asked for it, I snapped my free hand out, forcing all the strength I could into grabbing control of the ghost the Whisper was possessing. I was throwing everything I had into making damn sure I–wait. 

At the very last possible instant, I realized my mistake. Just as my power was latching onto him, I was already releasing it, spinning around while lashing out with my staff. 

It struck home, slicing right through three different ghosts who had been silently rushing up behind me. They used the fact that the guy in front of me had grabbed my attention, letting him manipulate me into throwing everything I had into grabbing hold of him, which would leave me vulnerable to attack from behind. And it had very nearly worked. It had worked, right up until the last possible instant. 

The good news was that my wild swing caught the ghosts who were right behind me before they could carry out their sneak attack. The bad news was that they weren’t the only ones. I had just enough time to catch a glimpse of something coming toward me from the side, before it smacked into the side of my head with enough force to knock me sidelong so that I stumbled a few steps over to the nearby wall. It made me see stars briefly even without having a nearby viewport. 

Shoving myself away from the wall and spinning back that way, I found myself surrounded on all sides. The guy with the tentacles had been joined by half a dozen friends. All of them spread out, making it clear that they had no intention of allowing me to get past them. 

Then I saw what had hit me that hard. It was… a ball, like one that a kid would play with. Actually, it probably had been played with by a kid before now, one of the Seosten children who were on the ship. But the way it had hit me, the force…

Hula hoops. That was my first impression when I saw the two rings floating in the air a few feet apart. Both black on the side facing me and gold on the side facing away. They really were about the size of hula hoops, hovering roughly midway between me and a Ghost-Whisper who was standing with her hand outstretched. She was fairly tall, just over six feet, and quite thin, with narrow silvery-blue eyes and short dark hair at odds with her pale skin. I was gonna guess that she was the one who had thrown that ball. 

Even as I had that thought, she smirked at me before hurling another ball. It passed through the hoops and–fuck! The moment it passed through the first hoop, the ball’s speed doubled, before doubling a second time as it passed through the second hoop. The ball hit me before I could even hope to dodge it. The best I could do, even seeing her throw it, was twist aside enough that it slammed into my shoulder. 

The hoops flew back through the air to her, as the Whisper-Ghost laughed and caught one on each arm, spinning them. They shrank rapidly, turning into bracelets on each wrist. As they did. she punched the air a few times, her arms moving about twice as fast as they should. 

Right. This… this was gonna be a problem. Maybe I could have done something to these guys, at least enough to shove them aside so I could run past, before exhausting myself upstairs keeping all the others away from everyone. But I didn’t have that in me right now. Not when these ghosts were both powered by Tartarus and possessed by the powerful Whisper creatures. I just couldn’t muster up the strength to shove enough of them aside. Not without taking a break. And there wasn’t time for that. 

“What’s the matter?” the Whisper-Ghost who had dragged me down here in the first place taunted, already transforming his arms back into tentacles. “Feeling a bit weak? Maybe you should take a little nap.” 

“You know,” I retorted, “that’s not a bad idea. Right now, I think we’ll just kick your asses and go upstairs.” 

His eyebrow rose, while the rest of his companions slowly began to move in closer, tightening the noose they believed they had caught me in. But it was the one with the hula hoops-turned-bracelets who spoke. “We? You are alone, child. You do not even have your usual companion riding… what is the term, copilot? Your friends and family are quite occupied, and even she is no longer with you. We all know the truth. You have no one standing behind you.” 

“Behind me?” I took a breath and then shoved everything I could into pushing all the ghosts back away from me. It wasn’t a lot, and it wouldn’t hold them for long. But it gave me the time I needed to speak. “Nah, I’ve got no one behind me. But you guys might want to look behind you.” 

Most of them saw that as a very obvious and pathetic trick. But two turned, looking that way. At first, they saw nothing. Then their eyes found the small metal ball I had summoned to my hand and tossed just before getting punched in the face to knock me over to where I now stood. It was about the size of a baseball, with intricate runes all over it and a single button on top. A single button that Gus, my cyberform mouse, was holding both paws against. As soon as they saw him, he gave a single, defiant squeak, then pushed the button. 

Instantly, the ball blew apart in a blast of blinding energy. When it faded, two figures were standing there. A beautiful white-haired woman with very tanned skin and a deep blue bodysuit, standing next to a three-headed mechanical dog bigger than she was. 

A three-headed mechanical dog whose entire purpose had been to hunt and kill undead things. 

“Cerberus!” Persephone called, voice echoing through the corridor, “ghosthunt!” 

The moment she said that word, each of Cerberus’s three heads rose a bit, showing their teeth as they growled. Blue-white ghostfire played over those teeth. Simultaneously, five holes appeared along each side of the robot dog’s back, allowing ten metal coils to emerge. Each had a small camera and laser cannon attached to it, wildly pointing in every direction as though checking for threats from all sides. 

Ghost-fire filled the air, produced through every metal tooth in all three heads. Nearly two hundred teeth all-told, each a small dagger that was now capable of driving its way into intangible forms. Such as the forms of the seven Whisper-Ghosts arrayed in front of him, as Cerberus glared and growled low. The laser-holding coils, mistaken as snakes millennia ago, turned as one to focus on their targets. 

At the moment they had appeared, as he caught sight of the ghosts in front of them, Cerberus’s brand new addition had started up. It was not a weapon. Not exactly. No, what he’d had added right at the front of his body, where his three heads joined, was a speaker system. A speaker system which had begun to play the opening notes of “Welcome To The Jungle” by Guns N’ Roses, filling the air as the assortment of Whisper-Ghosts stared in shock and tried to comprehend what had just happened. And in the very moment about thirty seconds in, just before the first word of ‘Jump’ came, Persephone spoke the next command. 

“Sic ‘em, boy.” 

He was on them an instant later, ghost-fire powered teeth tearing through one of the ghosts while a paw slapped at another and actually managed to knock him backwards. At the same time, those laser cannons opened up, driving even more of them in either direction away from him. And into Persephone and me, a fact they realized just as my empowered staff slammed into one, and her ghost-fire covered fist ripped through another. 

Yeah, those guys didn’t stand a chance. Even if they had been able to stand against a giant metal dog specifically built to destroy everything Manakel could have thrown at him, between him, Persephone, and me, they were dead before they knew what hit them. Or redead. Or–they weren’t a problem for the moment. We tore through their ghost forms and scattered them. They tried to reform, but we hit them hard enough to basically turn them into dust. It would take time for the Whispers to regroup and gather that much ghost energy once more. 

Soon, only the hula hoop ghost was left. She was already retreating, but Cerberus got there first, lunging in the way while breathing out a line of ghost-fire that made her recoil. Persephone, in turn, actually grabbed onto her, shoving the intangible figure to her knees while calling to me, “Felicity, picture a hard candy shell around her, squeezing very tight with your gift!” 

Ooookay then. Focusing hard on my Necromancy power, I imagined it creating a… well, hard candy shell around the ghost while she struggled. Honestly, if it wasn’t for both Persephone and Cerberus keeping her there, I wouldn’t have had time to focus on that, given it took several full seconds of concentration where I couldn’t do anything else. I was picturing more of a net, or saran wrap, totally covering the figure from head to toe. As I did, her movements grew slower and more subdued. 

“Now, Felicity, the blade!” Persephone urged. 

So, I drove the blade of my staff right through the motionless ghost form. That time, as I did, she screamed out loud. The Whisper appeared as an air ripple in front of my face before vanishing an instant later. 

Not that I noticed really, because I was too busy doubling over from the rush of… of pleasure that went through me. Pleasure that made me gasp and stumble, eyes widening. “What–what– I just–that just–” 

“It is possible to eliminate the ghosts so that they cannot recover,” Persephone calmly and flatly informed me. “You must simply trap them within a layer of your own ghost energy so that they cannot push their own outside of it. I would not suggest attempting to do so in open combat until you are far more experienced.” 

“I… uh huh…” Breathing hard, I stared at the spot where the ghost had been. Then I looked to one side and focused for a second. Sure enough, those two gold and black hula hoops appeared, hovering in the air. 

“Her name was Elemiah,” Persephone helpfully announced. “Her gift created those two rings, which she could control the size of down to fitting on her wrists and up to about twice what you see. She was able to mentally manipulate them, and anything passing through from the gold side would be doubled in speed for a few seconds, with the effect stacking if both rings were passed through in rapid succession. Anything passing through from the black side would be slowed to half its speed, or stopped briefly if that effect was doubled.” 

Okay… okay that was pretty… A thought made the hoops jump to my wrists before shrinking down to bracelets. Quickly, I punched the air just as the Seosten ghost had. And just like when she had done it, my fist moved about twice as fast as it should have. This I could get used to. 

Except I was going to have to get used to it later, because it was really time to go. Even as that thought occurred to me, I was already pivoting to face the white-haired woman with a blurted, “Nearest elevator! We need to get back to the sealed cargo hold, the one the Seosten don’t let anyone else into!” 

In response, Persephone immediately turned, beginning to move down the corridor. “It is this way, Felicity!” As we ran, with Cerberus bringing up the rear, she added, “I am glad that I was able to assist you, as promised. But I did not see Kushiel there.” 

“Yeah, I guess she’s not involved in this bit,” I murmured. “So keeping you hidden until she showed herself wasn’t really gonna work anymore. But don’t worry, there’s plenty of other Seosten ghosts for you and our friend there to deal with. We have to–” Abruptly, the ship jerked around us, enough to make me stumble. 

“The slide-drive has been de–” Persephone started. 

We did it! That was Tabbris, in my head once more. I could tell she wasn’t actually fully here, just partially recalled. We shut it down! But–but the bad guys are still trying to restart it. We have to drive them off. We can’t leave. I can’t– 

Stay there, I put in. Stay with Dad. We’ll take care of the rest of this. Just make sure they can’t start those engines again. 

That said, I looked back to Persephone and gave her a quick summary of what we were dealing with. “And now we have to get up there and stop them from taking over Puriel, before they open a portal into Tartarus and let out a bunch of monsters to destroy everything in the universe.” 

Giving a short nod, the woman replied, “Andromeda says that if you like, she can transfer herself from the other ship to this one and assist in resisting the Whisper’s control of its systems.” 

I started to nod, before catching myself. “Wait, you’re still in contact with Andromeda?” 

With a bright smile, Persephone confirmed, “Uh huh, our connection is very special. She is still in the other ship, remaining at a distance just as you requested.” 

“In the other ship…” I opened my mouth, then shut it. My eyes widened. “No. Tell her to stay there. Don’t transfer over here. 

“I have a better idea.” 

******

A short time later, the three of us burst through the doors back into the cargo hold I had been so unceremoniously dragged out of. A quick glance around showed that the situation had not exactly improved that much. But by the same token, at least it hadn’t gotten worse. Everyone was still fighting, and the Whispers had not yet taken control of Puriel. I could see where the others had boosted the runes protecting him, yet it wasn’t enough to keep them away for good. It was a delaying action at best. What we really needed to do was bring the man under the protection of Liesje’s spell. That combined with his own strength would probably be enough to keep them out of his head. But we couldn’t do that from here. He had to be back at the Star Station for it. For now, we had to do something to end the stalemate. And I was pretty sure I knew what that something was.

Cerberus was already going to town, clearing a path through the Whisper-Ghosts (and yes, he had started the song once more) as I raced alongside Persephone right back to where everyone had formed a ring around Puriel and the children. Grandmaria and Popser were there too, being protected by Avalon and a couple Mirandas. 

Two of the Whisper-Ghosts tried to move into my path, but I thrust my arms out, willing the two bracelet-sized rings to fly forward and turned so that their gold side was toward me. As soon as they were in position and just large enough, I hurled my staff, blade out. It passed through the two rings, quadrupling in speed so that it cut into the two ghosts before they had any idea what had happened. An instant later, a thought recalled the staff back to my hand. 

Another ghost was trying to come at me from the side as I passed the rings, but I made them grow to their full size and pivot in the air to put the black side toward the intangible figure. He passed through them and froze instantly, the double-black rings halting his movement entirely for a moment.

Between that and my Persephone and Cerberus escort, it was enough to clear my path. “Boost the runes!” I shouted while running up to join the others. The rings had come spinning back, shrinking down once more to take their spots on my wrists.

My reward for the words was a simultaneous look of disbelief from basically everyone there. Theia was the one who found her voice first, speaking plainly. “We have already been taking turns doing so. It has been our entire strate–” 

“No, everyone!” I blurted. “Everyone boost the runes right now with everything you’ve got! Shove the Whispers back as far as we can, just for a few seconds!” I focused on my mother, eyes meeting hers. “Trust me, we only need one quick boost!” 

Mom gave a short nod, turning to look at Athena. “Do what she says.” 

Athena, in turn, spoke up. “Everyone do it. Touch the runes and put everything you have into them, one more time.” 

So, we did. With the Whispers regrouping and coming straight at us, everyone crouched to touch one of the runes. And in that moment, we shoved every bit of energy we could muster, supercharging the spells to fill the room, driving the Whispers backward to the far corners. As expected, it would only last for a few seconds. That was as long as it needed to.

“Felicity,” Mom was saying, “any plan you’ve got, you need to–”

“Everyone get down!” I shouted, grabbing Avalon on one side and the nearest Miranda before hurling us forward and to the floor. Thankfully, the others followed suit immediately, everyone hitting the deck quite literally. 

It was just in time, as something filled the space we had just been in a moment later. Something large, long, and roughly tube-shaped. Like a shuttle. Or like–

“The prototype ship?!” Miranda blurted from behind me as I rolled over to look that way. Sure enough, the ship was right there, its back doors open and facing not us, but Puriel and the children. Because that was the ship I’d asked Andromeda to take and follow us with, just in case.

“Mom!” I shouted, pointing. 

She got the point instantly, trusting her hands outward. An invisible force hit the kids and Puriel, throwing them onto the ship as it perched there. 

“Andromeda, go!” My voice filled the air, even as the Whispers regrouped and began to descend once more, screeching in fury. 

She didn’t have to be told twice. The doors of the prototype ship snapped shut, and with a flash of energy, it was gone. It had jumped not only out of the Olympus, but all the way back to the Star Station. Far from any Whispers. It had worked. Puriel was safe. He was gone. Now there was no way for those fuckers to open the portal to Tartarus. 

Now all we had to do now was find a way to survive their reaction to that fact, and take back the Olympus for good. 

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At Last 16-11 (Heretical Edge 2)

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Things were even worse, if that was possible. It turned out there were protection spells that the Whisper-possessed Seosten ghosts had put up around the Slide-Drive core. Which, of course, we didn’t have time to break through so we could disable the jamming. Not with Puriel already about to be taken over by those bastards. Every second we spent down here was too long. 

In the end, we only had one choice. My dad, despite his worry about his parents, agreed to stay behind and use the spells that he knew (and what Apollo and Aletheia showed him) to break through that protection so he could disable the jamming. It wasn’t perfect, but he had Mercury’s power. Which meant he could both speed up his own magic and make the protection spells run through their own duration much faster. He just had to do so carefully to avoid setting off any bad reactions. 

Tabbris was staying with him too. That was harder, but I convinced her that if I couldn’t stay and protect our dad from any of those Whispers that might come back, she needed to. She had her wings and knew all the ghost control magic I did, even if she didn’t have the same Necromancy power. I was trusting her to keep our father safe right now, and once they were done getting through the protections and were able to shut down the jamming, she would be able to recall back to me. 

Obviously, she felt guilty about leaving me ‘on my own,’ but I was able to convince her that it was for the best. We embraced briefly before separating so the rest of us could start running. 

Through my connection to Grover, I was able to describe exactly where Puriel and the others were both in appearance and in relation to our current location. Using that, Apollo and Aletheia figured out that they were in one of the special cargo holds. It was separate from the regular hold, intended to keep sensitive cargo that the Seosten didn’t want just anyone on the ship to have access to. The place was sealed behind high-level protections, which would have been a real problem if we hadn’t run into Aletheia already. Because she had actually been traveling on the Olympus already, and was trusted implicitly by Puriel, the Seosten woman already had access to the place. If it wasn’t for her, we probably would have had to spend way too much time finding a way to get through the security defenses. More time than we had right then, judging from how many of the Whispers I had seen doing their level best to get into Puriel’s head. 

As we raced back through the engine deck toward the elevator, Avalon complained, “This Puriel guy is supposed to be one of the strongest Seosten out there. I believe the exact words were ‘master of all energy, including magic.’ Shouldn’t he be able to wave his hand and blow these things away? It should be him saving us.” 

Aletheia’s voice was flat. “Ever since the… incident with the banishment orb, his mind has not been the same. Between that and the trauma he experienced at the orphanage when the Fomorians attacked, he has moments where he zones out and is incapable of reacting to the outside world. Spark is normally good at pulling him back from those moments, or simply taking over. But it seems that these Whispers are interfering with that.”

I gave a quick nod. “That’s what it looked like to me. I mean, from the outside.” Grimacing a bit, I added, “Whatever the reason, I’m pretty sure we don’t have much time. Things were looking pretty desperate up there.”

Thankfully, we wouldn’t be alone once we got there. Hopefully, at least. First, Miranda had already jumped back to her original body (it was with Athena and Dare) and was going to give them a detailed explanation straight up. As for the other two groups, I sent several of my ghosts back out to let them know what was going on as well. Between all that, it would hopefully make them meet us on the right deck so we could all do this together. That was the plan, anyway. 

By that point, we had reached the elevator, and I scrambled on before shifting my focus so I could look through Grover’s eyes once more to check what was going on. Things aren’t any better. It looked like Uncle Al, a Native American man, and my grandparents were all surrounding Puriel and the kids, protecting them from the ghosts that the Whispers kept summoning. Worse, I could see Invidia there, already in a duel with Uncle Al. Needless to say, he was holding his own. After all, he was Hercules. 

Even my grandparents were… doing something useful. It looked like Grandpartie was using a console to direct internal security weapons to fire on the ghosts, which were actually doing some damage to them. Probably shouldn’t have been surprising, considering how much experience Seosten would have with ghosts and other intangible beings, but still. And Grandmaria was… uhh, as best as I could tell at a glance, using magic to create a forcefield to hold the majority of the Whispers and ghosts off. 

I wasn’t sure which was more surprising and impressive to me, my grandfather being able to manipulate the ship controls like that, or my grandmother having a strong enough grasp over magic to create that forcefield. Or–wait, was she using magic or some power? Had she bonded to something? And come to think of it, Popser was barely touching the controls. It was more like his hands were resting on it, fingers twitching now and then. What–

Shaking that off, I focused on what was important right then. Namely, the fact that they were sort of holding off the attack. But still, things weren’t great. More Whispers kept getting through to add to the pile that were doing their level best to get into Puriel’s head, and the man himself still wasn’t moving or reacting to anything. He was just standing there with his head cocked to the side. There was clearly an internal struggle going on, and if we didn’t hurry up and get there, we were going to end up having to fight a Whisper-controlled Puriel. Which basically sounded like the exact opposite of anything approaching a good time. None of us were ready to deal with something like that. Hell, we weren’t enough even if we all joined together. This was Zeus, for fucks sake. We had nothing that could challenge him if he went after us. Especially on his own ship. Between that and all the other Whispers, including the Whisper-Possessed Charmeine, we would be completely fucked, in no uncertain terms.

Instructing Grover to tell my grandparents that we were on the way, I jumped back into my own mind in time to feel the elevator rising. It was going pretty quick too, and I could see Apollo messing with an open computer panel to one side. Apparently he had disabled the safeties or something and sped the thing up. Now we were flying toward the right deck. I just hoped we would make it in time. And, of course, cursed the fact that the Whispers’ jamming included blocking transportation powers. We had to do this whole thing the long way rather than just teleporting up there. Because, of course, this had to be as hard as possible. 

One day for a party to celebrate a victory. That was all I’d asked for. But did we get that? Of course not. And we still didn’t understand why the Whispers were here trying to pilot the ship into Tartarus to begin with. What did they think they could gain from that? Hell, what even were they? There were so many questions around this entire situation, and the only creatures with answers didn’t seem inclined to explain. But hey, maybe we could beat it out of them. 

Or maybe I was just looking forward to beating them in general. It was possible that I was slightly annoyed by this entire situation. Terrified too, of course. But also annoyed. 

The elevator finally stopped at the right deck, and the rest of us exchanged quick glances before stepping off together. The room beyond was shaped like a half-circle, with a line of elevators, including the one we had been on, along the flat line part. To the left and right were corridors, with several open doors along the curve part of the half-circle ahead of us. The main doors, straight across, apparently led to the primary cargo bay. But that wasn’t where we were supposed to go. Our destination lay to the left, down that hall. 

We were cautious, even as we stepped out of the elevator, weapons at the ready considering we had no idea what sort of traps or problems the Whispers might have left to slow us down so they would have time to take over Puriel. There could be anything waiting for us up here. 

And yet, despite having that thought, I still wasn’t prepared for what I immediately saw. Coming off the elevator, my eyes immediately fell on a single, lone figure standing with their back to us, staring through the doorway toward the main cargo hold. They showed no reaction to our arrival, and I took a quick second to size them up. They were solid, not a ghost, and seemed either human or Seosten from this angle. Probably the latter. A man, several inches under six feet, though pretty well-built. His brown hair fell to just above his shoulders, and he wore gray cloth pants and a simple white shirt, his feet bare. 

Even as I took that in, the man turned to look at me. Now I could see his face. He had a neatly trimmed beard and his eyes were a brownish-green. He looked, on paper, like a completely average guy of no particular power or importance. And yet, when I met his gaze, I felt myself shrink back reflexively. A lump had formed in my throat, as an inexplicable sense of danger and power filled me. He had made no threatening move, said no threatening words, had done nothing other than turn to look at me, but I still felt his power like a crushing weight. 

Abruptly, Apollo spoke up. “I’m not picking up any surprises.” He was holding a stone in one hand, enchanted to detect traps. “Doesn’t seem right.” 

“No surprises?” I found myself blurting. “What about–” Then my eyes flicked from Apollo, back to the strangely terrifying man by the cargo bay. But he wasn’t there. In that time, in that brief instant where my eyes had moved off him, he had vanished. “Wha–what?” I stammered, completely thrown off. I shouldn’t have been, given all the incredible powers I had seen. Yet something about that guy, something about… yeah. It threw me off, to say the least.

The others were all looking at me uncertainly, and I raised a hand to point to where the man had been, quickly explaining what I had seen. But none of them had caught a glimpse of the man. Even though he had been standing in plain view as far as I was concerned, they had not seen anything. A quick check with Seth and Rahanvael, each standing beside me, revealed the same answer. I was the only person who had seen him, or sensed anything at all. None of Mom’s powers, and none of Aletheia or Apollo’s magic, had picked up the man’s presence. 

And, come to think of it, I had not sensed him with my item-detection power either. He had definitely been in range of it, but I hadn’t sensed his clothes or anything. He had looked completely solid, but wasn’t detected by anything. Except by my own eyes, and only my eyes. No one else had picked up any sense of him at all. This was… weird. And it certainly wasn’t doing anything to make me feel better about the situation we were walking into. 

Mom and the two Seosten spent a tense moment focusing on that spot, but even after I pointed out exactly where the man had been, they couldn’t pick up anything at all. It was like he’d never been there in the first place. Which, again, was more than a little worrying. Unfortunately, we didn’t have time to focus on any implications of that. Not with the problems we already had to deal with. We still had to get into the other room before the Whispers got through to Puriel, so any thoughts and worries about the man I had seen were just going to have to wait. All I could really do in that moment was hope that it wasn’t something that would come back and bite us in the ass before we were done with this specific problem. Hell, for all I knew, that figure was working with the Whispers. 

On the plus side, there didn’t seem to be any defenses here blocking our way. Which in and of itself was a bit surprising, but we weren’t going to dwell on that too much either. Especially not when two of the nearby elevators arrived in the next moment, with Larissa, Haiden, and Mercury emerging from one, and Sariel, Theia, and Pace from the other. With their respective Mirandas, of course. The ghosts I had sent to get them rejoined me, fading from view for the moment (though ready to be summoned back as soon as I needed them). 

“You guys okay?” I asked, thoughts of the man I had seen fresh in my mind. Much as I tried to set that aside, I couldn’t entirely dismiss his face. The way he had stared right through me, the power I had felt, it was too much to ignore. 

Theia waved. “We killed ghosts. And fuzzy-ghosts.” 

“Whispers, she means,” Pace put in, voice tense as she glanced around as though expecting to be ambushed at any second. “And we didn’t kill them so much as… make them go away for the moment.” 

“Yeah, and I’m pretty sure we know where they went to,” Avalon muttered, eyes on the left-hand corridor leading toward the special, extra-secure cargo hold. “They’re throwing everything they have into taking control of Puriel. Or at least turning him against the rest of us. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I don’t fancy our odds if that happens.”

“Which is why we need to get in there right now.” That was Athena, speaking as she and Dare came off another elevator. Her attention was laser-focused ahead, a silvery-gold sword in one hand that was still glowing from ghost-fire. “Worry about specifics later,” she instructed while still walking. “Right now, all that matters is driving these creatures away and giving Puriel time to collect himself.” After a brief verbal pause, she added, “And hope that Lincoln and Tabbris break those protection spells so they can stop this ship before it’s too late to matter.” 

Oh, right, of course. We had that problem to worry about too. Even if we did manage to get the Whispers away from Puriel and the others before they turned him into a monster who would annihilate us all, it would all be for naught if this damn ship managed to take us straight into Tartarus. But, you know, it wasn’t like we were under any pressure or anything. 

Pushing aside those thoughts we started to move, I told Athena and the others what I had seen, and the fact that no one else had sensed anything. She and Sariel exchanged brief glances, before the latter spoke. “When this is over, if it is alright with you, I would like to take a look at that memory and see this man for myself. It would be better than a description.” 

I agreed easily, hoping it would lead to an actual answer. Then I pushed the thought as far from my mind as possible, focusing on the here and now. As we ran, Dare gave me a quick look, silently asking if I was all right. I gave her a thumbs up, but made it waiver a little. Between that and the look on my face, I was pretty sure she understood just how uncertain I was about the whole thing. She, in turn, took a moment to touch my shoulder in mid-run, squeezing it firmly to let me know she was there. Which was nice, but also reminded me yet again that she still couldn’t tell my mother, her own daughter, who she really was and why she cared so much.   

It was just another thing I had to push out of my head so I could focus on the problem at hand. A problem that was right in front of us, as we reached the door leading to the special cargo bay. Aletheia had already input the code, the door sliding open to reveal the same room I had seen through Grover’s eyes. And a situation that had not gotten any better in the time since I had last checked. The kids were still huddled into an even tighter circle, though Spark wasn’t visible. My guess was that she was inside Puriel, trying to keep as much control as possible away from the Whispers, who were basically flooding over his body so much that there were constant distortion waves all around him. The rest of the Whispers, and the ghosts, were being desperately held back by Uncle Al, my grandparents, and that Native American man. But they were, unfortunately, fighting a losing battle, constantly having to pull back closer to the others as the attackers continued to flood into the room. There were so many Whispers. Obviously there weren’t as many ghosts for them to control, given–well, there weren’t an unlimited number of Seosten on the Olympus who had died, even counting ‘ordinary’ crew members. Still, they were all here, and they were making a huge push. Probably because this was as much a do-or-die moment for them as it was for us. 

Seeing us enter, Grandmaria raised a hand, the other held out to reinforce the shield she had erected around them. “Good to see you, kiddo! Wish I had time to have cookies ready.” 

“Later, Maria,” Uncle Al cheerfully replied even as his fist slammed into a ghost. It shouldn’t have done anything, yet the incorporeal figure still blew apart from that single blow. “There’ll be time for cookies once we remind these bastards they’re supposed to stay gone when they die!” 

“Hurtful,” Seth remarked beside me. “But considering the situation, fair.” 

Before I could respond to that, Sariel had taken a step that way, her eyes on the huddled children trying to make themselves even smaller. Specifically, on a small boy who was peeking up to stare right back at her. Omni. He was right there. 

Unfortunately, that single step was as much as she was able to take, before a familiar form coalesced right in front of us. Charmeine. No, Invidia. Her colored-in ghost form appeared, already smirking. “Oh, you people got through those traps even faster than we thought you would. That’s surprising. And annoying. But I think that’s about far enough.” Pausing, her head tilted before she raised both eyebrows. “Ah. It seems my host here has complicated feelings about seeing you, Artemis. How interesting.” 

Traps? What traps was she talking about? There hadn’t been any traps. Huh? A moment of confusion passed through me, as I exchanged a quick glance with the others. They looked just as uncertain. 

Sariel, on the other hand, manifested her bow and drew back an energy arrow before pointing it that way. Her voice was tight. “You and the rest of your kind need to get out of here right now. Why do you even want to take this ship into Tartarus in the first place? What could you possibly hope to get out of that?” 

“A fine question,” Athena put in, stepping beside the other Seosten woman, sword at the ready. 

Invidia, in turn, glanced between them before giving a slow, audible chuckle. “Taking this ship into Tartarus?” She echoed the words as though they were the silliest thing she had ever heard, shaking her head. “Oh dear. I believe you’ve made a very dangerous assumption. We have no intention of taking this ship, or anyone on it, into Tartarus. You see, in moments we will have control of one of the most powerful and instinctive magic users in this entire universe. But even more importantly, he has a direct connection to Tartarus itself. After all, it is the source of his power.

“Once we have him in hand, we will use that power to open the portal into Tartarus. Of that, you are correct. But we will not be going inside. No, quite the opposite. When the portal is open, we will be releasing the creatures which dwell within that universe into this one. Then our people will fulfill our destiny by taking the creatures for our own use. 

“And together, we will erase everything in existence.” 

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At Last 16-08 And Patreon Snippets 23 Concluded (Heretical Edge 2)

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Okay, something really fucked-up was going on around here. First we had found the Olympus seemingly abandoned when Puriel, my grandparents, and the others were supposed to be on it. Not to mention the fact that recall wasn’t working the way it should, cutting us off from getting any information from them at all. And now, shortly after we had transported over here to check things out in person, the ship was suddenly moving again? Someone else was in control, and they were sending the ship… somewhere. We had no idea who, and no idea where they were directing the ship. 

Apollo was already using his communication spell to call up to where Mercury, Haiden, and Larissa were. They answered immediately. Unfortunately, they didn’t know anything more than we did about what was going on. According to Mercury, he was totally locked out of the controls. They weren’t responding at all. He was going to try to get to the bottom of that, but it would take awhile. 

Worse, the connection was really faint. We could barely hear them. Mercury said something about interference, and that we should try to find the source of it because it was coming from somewhere on our level. 

Then the communication cut out entirely. We tried again, but got no more response from Mercury, or the other two. Nor did any of the other groups respond when Mom tried for herself, using multiple powers. Finally, she grimaced and looked to the rest of us. “It’s like he said, they’re being jammed somehow. Not just communication, but transport-type powers too. At least, within the ship. I really don’t like this. I hate to say the obvious, but this seriously feels like a trap of some sort. A trap that we just walked right into.”

“We can’t use the escape spells yet,” I immediately insisted. “We don’t know what happened to the others. If we transport off the ship, we might never find it, or them, again.” 

Dad’s hand found my shoulder, squeezing it. “If my parents and the others are on this ship, we’ll find them. And figure out what’s going on around here.”  

Mom sighed softly, nodding once. “Yes, we will. But if this gets to be too dangerous, I want both of you to use the escape spells. You too, Avalon. And–I know you’re not the original Miranda, but I want you to jump back to your original self and tell everyone there to get off the ship too, if it comes down to it. I mean it. If we have to, Apollo and I can keep the search going without you.” With that, she drew Clarent from its place at her hip, the black blade giving off that strange light in the process. 

Valley and I exchanged glances, but didn’t argue. It wouldn’t have accomplished anything right then. But I knew for certain that the last thing I was going to do was run away and leave my mother on a ship that was going who the hell knew where, controlled by who the hell knew who. Or what.

“So, we find the source of that jamming?” I finally asked. “Mercury said it was coming from somewhere on this floor. Uh, deck, I mean. That’s the ship term, right? Anyway, it’s coming from somewhere around here. And if the jamming is coming from around here, I bet we could find answers about the rest of what’s going on.” I made a show of turning in a circle with my hands out. “There’s gotta be something helpful around–” 

In my head, Tabbris piped up, Flick! Look to your right, over there in the corner next to the elevator doors. I–I just saw… There was something there, but I need to see it better. Not the A&M, something else. It’s down low.

Confused, but trusting her, I pivoted promptly and took a step that way before leaning down. At first, I couldn’t see what she was talking about. Then my eyes found it. A symbol etched into the metal, almost invisible. I was surprised she had noticed it at all as I had spun in a circle. But now that I had a closer look, it was immediately familiar.  

“Uhh, guys?” I spoke up, raising a hand. “Look at this thing. It’s the same sort of rune they used to drive away the Whispers back on the Quietus. And on Doug’s colony world.” 

Clearly taken aback by those words, Apollo moved closer and leaned down to look for himself. Frowning immediately, he ran a finger along them and murmured, “These are fresh. Someone put them here recently. I’d say at least within the past day. Probably less.”

Dad shook his head, having stepped over to look for himself. “Okay, but who would have put them there? Puriel?” 

“Him or Aletheia, maybe,” I pointed out. “Or maybe Uncle Al. They said he’s pretty good at magic, I think. But I don’t know if any of them know these spells. Wait, does that mean that it’s those Whisper things that are controlling the ship right now? Maybe they showed up and whoever knew these spells used them to try to protect Grandmaria and Popser, and the kids.” 

“That doesn’t explain where any of them are now,” Avalon pointed out. “Unless they’re holed up somewhere else in the ship and that jamming stuff, whatever it is, is stopping them from reaching out or responding. Or even knowing anyone’s here.” 

Apollo’s voice was grim. “I don’t want to think about what these things could be capable of if they’re enough to make Puriel hole up instead of blasting them off his ship. But that sounds like the best explanation we’ve got so far.” He pivoted. “We need to find the source of that jamming. And keep an eye out for more of those protection runes. They might lead us to answers too.” 

Mom gave a short nod, glancing around once more. “You take the lead. You know the ship. I’ll stay at the back, just in case.” Giving Dad, Avalon, Miranda, and me a brief look, she gestured. “Like Apollo said, you guys watch for more of those runes. I don’t know who put that one there, but I doubt it’s the only one.” 

“Yeah,” Miranda agreed, leaning in close to stare at it. “I just wish I could communicate with the other me’s to share information without poofing out of existence here entirely. It’s a one-way trip, and I can’t jump right back here to tell you guys anything they know.” 

With that, we started to move once more. It was basically the same as before, when we were searching each engine-connected compartment, only now we were moving faster, and we had specific jobs to do. Dad, Avalon, and I were checking each square inch of surface we passed, looking for more of those runes. Mom and Apollo were watching for threats and using various spells to scan for the source of that jamming. 

On the way, I spoke up. “So hold on. If those Whisper things are here, do you think we can’t hear them because of Liesje’s spell? I mean, the anti-Whisper stuff on Doug’s hat sort of protected against Seosten. Okay, not completely, but it let Pace and Theia both control her body at the same time. So if it works one direction, maybe it works the other way. The spell protects us from possession and might be shielding us from the Whispers too.” Even as I finished saying that, I found myself blanching. “Which means–” 

“Which means they might be somewhere around us,” Apollo finished, voice grim. “Possible. I don’t think so, but possible. I’ve got detection spells going and they haven’t picked up anything. Then again, I don’t want to stake anyone’s life on the idea that they’d be able to pick up these Whisper things.” Pausing briefly, he sighed. “Just keep your eyes open, I guess. For those marks, for any sign of these Whispers, or… anything else.”

So, we continued on like that through the engine deck, watching for anything that stood out. If there were Whispers around, we didn’t see any sign of them specifically. Nor did we find my grandparents or anyone else. On the other hand, we did find more of those runes. Hidden as they were, I was pretty sure we didn’t see all of them. But we found enough to let us know that they were all over the place. We checked a few more and all of them were quite fresh. This was definitely something new. And it made me even more intensely curious to find out what had actually happened here. Not to mention what was happening now. Why had the ship suddenly turned on? Where the hell was it taking us? How had whatever was responsible locked Mercury out of the system like that? And on and on the questions went. They kept replaying through my head while we walked, even as I forced myself to focus on watching for anyone.

On the other hand, maybe it was that slight distraction that ended up helping in the end. My thoughts were drifting slightly as I leaned around the edge of yet another doorway to scan it for any runes, when I felt something. It was very faint, but made my head tilt as the rest of me froze.

Avalon noticed immediately, stepping over to put a hand on my arm. “What is it?”

Everyone else had stopped to look at us, and I held up a hand for them to wait before closing my eyes so I could focus. That sensation had been at the very edge of my perception, almost too faint to catch. But it was there, barely. With my eyes still closed, I tried to stretch my senses that way to pick up more of it. Or even pull it closer. But it was like trying to grab liquid soap with splayed fingers. I felt a bit of its remains, even as the rest simply slipped away. And what little I had managed to grab faded before I could pull it back to us. It wasn’t the best metaphor, but close enough. The point was, I couldn’t keep hold of it. 

Did you… I started, needing someone else to verify what I felt. 

It was there, Tabbris assured me. She sounded just as frustrated as I felt. But I couldn’t get anything else. It was right there, like… like seeing something out of the corner of your eye.

With silent agreement, I looked to the others as they watched me expectantly. Taking a breath, I explained, “Ghosts. Or something like them, I’m not sure. I can sense something, just… sort of on the edge. I can’t get hold of it. Like… like it’s only partially here or something. It keeps fading out whenever I reach for it. But there’s definitely something. It’s just… faint.” 

Mom’s voice was flat, as she glanced around us with that black-bladed sword held out, its glow illuminating the nearby walls. “Does it feel like Kushiel did?” 

I hesitated slightly before offering a helpless shrug. “Not exactly, but similar I guess? I need to get closer, but I can’t even tell exactly where it’s coming from. I can’t sense a direction, just that it’s barely there at all. I just…” Heaving a sigh, I muttered, “I’m sorry, it’s not really helpful.” 

“Yes, it is,” Dad assured me. His hand found my back, squeezing it. “Just knowing there’s something out there is helpful, isn’t it?” 

“Something,” I agreed, “but we still don’t know what. Maybe the–I don’t know.” Something about that feeling was bugging me. Which wasn’t exactly a useful feeling, considering I had been feeling bugged about this whole situation from the start. Still, even that faint, fleeting sensation of something at least ghost-adjacent was enough to send a shiver up my back. 

Pausing, I murmured, “Hold on a second.” Then I reached out, stretching my power toward not the feeling I’d just had, but to someone else.

It took a few seconds, but I felt the response just before Seth coalesced in front of me. His ghost form appeared, the man immediately speaking. “Right, this better be important. We have parties too, and I was right in the middle of teaching–” He stopped, blinking a bit while looking around to take in where we were and who was around. “I ahh, I haven’t been everywhere on the station, but… this isn’t the station, is it?” Focusing on me once more, his eyes narrowed. “Let me guess, you couldn’t even take one damn day off without–” 

Mom spoke up. “Seth, it’s Lincoln’s parents. And the others.” He looked to her and she gave him a quick rundown of what was going on. Only a few sentences worth, but enough that he immediately muttered a curse. 

“Yeah, pretty much,” I agreed. “I need you to come with us, and if we do find any ghosts, or anything like them… well, use a ghost to fight a ghost.” 

He regarded me for a moment, before giving a short nod. “You’re worried that they’ll be like Kushiel, that you won’t be able to control them yourself.” 

Shrugging, I replied, “It’s a possibility. And if I can’t affect them, maybe I can at least boost you enough to punch them in the face really hard.” 

“I do enjoy punching,” he agreed. “Okay, fine. I’m with you. But we better get back before the party’s totally over. I don’t know about you living people, but the haunted mansion is hopping.” 

“I don’t think it’s ending anytime in the next couple days,” I pointed out flatly. “Now come on, we’ve still got a lot to search.” 

So, we kept going. If I had been by myself, I would have had to try to split my attention between watching for more Whisper runes, and stretching out my senses to check for any sign of that ghost sensation. But I wasn’t alone. Tabbris was here, so we split the duties. She took control of my body, making me walk after the others while looking for the runes, and I devoted everything I had toward trying to detect anything I could as far as spirits went. Or anything else that tripped my Necro-senses. I was barely paying any attention to the world around us, trusting Tabbris to navigate and let me know if anything stood out. I had to put everything toward the single task of sensing for ghosts. 

In the end, it was a good thing I did so, otherwise I would have missed the tickle at the very back of my mind several minutes into our search. Even focused as I was, I still barely picked it up, almost dismissing it before stopping myself. I strained even more, like stretching up on my tiptoes to reach for something on a high shelf that I could barely brush with my fingers. Almost… almost… there. There it was. I could feel it, and that time when the presence withdrew, I was able to make my senses follow it. 

And with that, as soon as I kept my grip on that faint sensation long enough, I was finally able to figure out what was going on, what was really happening. As soon as I did, I stopped short, grabbing control of my body once more before holding my hands out for the others. “Wait, stop. Hold on.” 

Tabbris, who could already read my mind and had realized the truth right alongside me as soon as I had, gasped inwardly and immediately muttered a couple words in my head that she probably wouldn’t have said aloud. 

Everyone else was looking at us expectantly, and I took a breath before raising my hand and turning to point. “We need to go that way.” 

Without actually looking, my mother simply replied, “Honey, there’s a wall there.” The others gave assorted nods of agreement. Again, without looking. 

“Is there?” I insisted. “Mom, you trust me, right?” 

“With my life, and everything,” she confirmed without hesitation, meeting my gaze. 

“I know it’s going to be hard,” I informed her, my gaze laser-focused on my mother. I had to break through to her. “But that’s okay. You’re accustomed to doing hard things. You do them all the time. You survived everything this universe could throw at you. You did what you had to do. You won every time, no matter what it was. You saw what you had to do and you did it. Nothing else could have stopped you, and neither will this. So, please, I need you to do one more thing for me. For me, Mom. No matter how hard it is, no matter how much you don’t want to. You have to do this. Please. For me, for Dad, for the rest of your family. You have to do this one thing.” Letting out a breath, I finished with a firm, “Turn around and look at where I’m pointing.”  

She almost didn’t. The effect was that strong and that difficult to push past. But in the end, after several long moments of silence, Mom finally, with great mental effort, turned her head. She followed the sight of my finger first, every muscle within her clearly fighting the effort. Her eyes were downcast, one last effort not to see. And then… oh so slowly… they rose. 

That was enough. With a gasp, Mom jerked as though something that had been holding her was abruptly broken. “Door!” Her voice sounded like someone who had been deep underwater for too long and finally broke the surface, that almost violent exhale, that gasp. “There’s a door!” 

With effort, the others did the same, helped by Mom’s reaction as it broke through the effect. Everyone finally turned to look and saw the door there. When his own eyes found it, Seth cursed out loud, much more colorfully than Tabbris’s silent mutterings a few moments earlier. Finally, he ended with, “–the chocolate-coated fuck?” 

“It’s the Whispers, I think,” I quickly put in. “The anti-possession spell helps, but it doesn’t completely keep them out. They’ve been able to do a little bit, like stop us from noticing this door. Or the fact that we keep going in circles in this small area. We’ve barely gone anywhere on this floor. We keep turning around. Probably because you need to go through this door to get anywhere else.” 

Apollo, who seemed as shaken as anyone by the realization that something had been affecting his mind like that, spoke up. “Yes. We can’t get anywhere else on this deck without passing through that hatch. They’ve been running us in circles. I… I didn’t even notice.” 

“Fuck, dude, I didn’t notice either.” Miranda was clearly reeling, pivoting in place as she pointed one way, then the other. “We must’ve gone through this area… God damn it, how many times?” 

“None of us noticed,” Dad pointed out, his voice proud as he looked at me. “Except Flick.” 

Flushing a little bit despite myself, I waved that off. “I would have missed it too. I did miss it, repeatedly. Every time we passed this spot, I felt that little brush on my mind, but it wasn’t enough to figure out what was going on. Not until I really focused on it and let Tabbris control me. I just–even then I almost missed it. I almost ignored it, because it told me to ignore it.” 

Avalon gave a little shudder, head shaking. “If they can make all of us completely ignore a door and walk in circles for ten minutes, even with Liesje’s protection, what could they make people do without it?” 

“Very bad things,” Mom answered, already striding that way. “And now I, for one, want to find out why they were trying so hard to stop us from going in here.” 

“Mom, wait,” I interrupted, holding out a hand before looking toward Seth. “Could you…?” 

He gave a short nod before floating that way with a casual, “Sure, what’s the worst they could do, kill me?” Pausing briefly by the metal hatch, he looked back to me. “Seriously, they better not be able to erase me, I’m just getting the hang of this ghost thing.” 

With that, he pushed through the hatch, and I sent my senses into him, watching through his eyes as he came out the other side to a narrow corridor. There was nothing there aside from a second hatch about ten feet onward, so he kept going, passing through the next one. 

Now there was something. An octagonal-shaped room with doors on every side, including the one Seth had just passed through. In the middle of that room was a smallish black woman in a dark red suit, who stood in the middle of a circle of those Whisper runes. All around her were… distortions in the air, even as the woman herself seemed calm and collected, almost like she was ignoring them. But I could feel the runes around her starting to lose power. They wouldn’t last much longer.

“We have to get in there,” I blurted immediately as I snapped my focus back to myself, moving to the door while explaining in a rush what I had seen. 

We could all feel the Whispers trying one more time to divert our attention away from the door, but now that we knew what their influence felt like, it was much easier to shrug off. No doubt largely thanks to Liesje’s spell. If we hadn’t just finished that before doing this, I had no idea how this whole thing would have gone. Poorly, no doubt. 

As it was, we pushed through the effect and made it into the other room. The moment we did, I could feel the Whispers all around us. They weren’t exactly ghosts. Well, maybe they were. They were something akin to them, at least. Either way, I could feel a lot of them filling up the room. Immediately, I shoved hard with all my power while snapping, “Get out!” 

They vanished promptly. I wasn’t sure how much of that was from my power, and how much was because they chose to. But the point was, they were gone. Which gave us time to look at the woman standing in the rune circle. 

“Aletheia?” Apollo immediately put in, stepping that way. 

“Hello, Apollo,” she greeted him simply, turning to face us. “I’m glad you’re here. We have to find the others and stop this ship. 

“Before the Whispers finish piloting us straight into Tartarus.” 

*********

Patreon Snippets 23 – Concluded

A Short Time Earlier

“We’re here!” The excited cry came from the small, six-year-old dark-skinned girl with bright green eyes as she bounced up and down, hands tightly clutching Maria and Arthur Chambers’ hands. She’d had no name in the facility she had been kept within before being rescued alongside her fellow… experiments, but had since been dubbed Zahd by one of Puriel’s household staff. It was the word for laugh within the language of the woman who had named her. “We’re here, we’re here!” 

Her cry heralded much more excited chattering from the rest of the assorted children, all of whom were staring intently at the viewscreen, which showed the planet Earth directly ahead, taking up much of the view. It was zoomed in, of course. They weren’t that close to the planet. Still, they were close enough that it would not be long at all before they would finally truly be there. After all this time and all the close calls they’d had, the Olympus was finally at Earth. And everyone on board who had family waiting for them were about to have their reunions. 

Needless to say, Maria and Arthur were just as excited as the children around them. They even did a bit of their own bouncing, though theirs was considerably more restrained. Still, they exchanged smiles with one another, before Maria turned fully to look at Puriel by the captain’s chair. He wasn’t sitting in it at the moment. That honor, in this case, had been reserved for Spark. Which, yes technically she wasn’t actually sitting there. She was still inside Puriel’s body, using a tiny portion of his power to manifest a solid-light image of herself. An enchanted stone kept within the ‘head’ of the magical hologram provided all the sight, hearing, and other senses she needed, and allowed her to speak. It was as close as they could get to giving the girl her own body, so long as she was trapped within Puriel’s thanks to her own condition. 

“How long until we can contact them? And… and how long until we can be there?” Maria asked the man himself, unable to keep the anxiousness out of her voice. She wanted to talk to her son and granddaughter. And, now that she knew the whole story, even her daughter-in-law. There were many things she needed to say to that woman, most of them apologies for the things she had thought and said over the past decade. But she wanted to do it in person. After everything, she owed her son’s wife that much. 

Puriel glanced over from the screen, meeting her gaze with a soft smile that told her he knew what she was thinking, and how badly she wanted to be with her family. His eyes, meanwhile, showed that he had his own assortment of apologies to give. “Technically, we could contact them over coms now,” he replied. “But we are still far enough away that they would likely be picked up by other Seosten forces around the planet, including the outpost on the moon.” 

“There’s a Seosten outpost on the moon?” Arthur turned that way, suddenly interested. “What are they doing, spying on the planet with telescopes or something? Can we see them from here?” He turned his attention back to the monitor, squinting toward the small speck where the moon was, as though attempting to pick out the outpost for himself with his naked eyes. 

Chuckling softly, Puriel shook his head. “No, you would not be able to see them. They are very well-hidden. Particularly since your people began to truly study the place with their technology. And they are not spying on the planet. My people have agents down there to do that. They are standing guard over–” 

Before the man could finish what he had been saying, there was a whooshing sound as Alcaeus entered at a jog. “Did I miss it? Did we call them already to let them know we’re here? Tell me I didn’t miss it!” He was looking around rapidly, arms full of various colorfully-wrapped packages. 

“You didn’t miss it,” Maria assured him with a small smile before nodding to his packages. “What do you have there?” 

“This?” The large man smiled broadly, his attention centering on the assortment of children surrounding Maria and Arthur. “These are just a few gifts I wanted to hand out before we get there.” When there was no response from the kids, he cleared his throat. “Ahem, time to come get your presents!” 

That did the trick. The children, who had been entirely unaccustomed to receiving anything throughout their time as what amounted to medical experiments, had learned what ‘presents’ were throughout their time on Puriel’s island and then this ship. Arthur and Maria had made certain of that. Hearing the magic word made their eyes light up, as they stampeded that way. 

Laughing cheerfully, Alcaeus handed out the presents and watched as the children began to unwrap them to reveal various jeans, skirts, shirts, jackets, and shoes. 

Seeing that, Maria’s eyes widened. “Al, what did you do?” 

The man’s voice was fond. “If we’re going to be on Earth, I thought it would be a good idea for the kids to have some Earth clothing. Just used a little magic to turn the designs I drew from memory into the real deal.” 

“That is…” Maria shook her head before stepping over that way to embrace him. “You are a good man.” With that, she turned back to the kids, starting to address them, before her eyes fell on Spark, still seated on the captain’s chair. One other person hadn’t approached the gift opening either. Omni. He was standing by his sister, both silent. 

Before Maria could say anything else, Al was already stepping past her. He held two more gift packages, one of which he handed to Omni, before pointedly setting the other in Spark’s lap. “You should both open these together,” he informed them in a low voice. 

The siblings did just that, opening the gifts together. Both contained more clothing, similar to what the others had received. 

“I know you can manifest your… hologram to look like anything you want,” Al informed Spark. “But that doesn’t mean you don’t deserve real clothes that you can put on, just like everyone else. And when we get you into your own body, you’re going to need them.” 

For a moment, it looked as though the girl was trying to find the right words to respond to that. Her mouth opened and shut, staring up at the man from the seat. In the end, she simply managed a soft, “Thank you.” 

Before Al could respond to that, Maria spoke up. “Puriel? What is it?” 

Turning, Al saw the man in question moving to the doorway leading out of the bridge. His voice was distracted. “Do you all hear that? Who– Aletheia?” 

Arthur, Maria, and Alcaeus exchanged looks. Whatever Puriel had heard, it wasn’t the woman in question. She was on the far side of the ship, taking care of a few extra things before they arrived. 

The three followed after him as he stepped out into the room beyond the bridge. They were trailed by Spark, Omni, and the rest of the children. Maria thought about telling them to remain there, but decided it was better for everyone to stick together. 

Spark had already transported herself to appear next to Puriel, as the man stood in that trapezoid-shaped room outside the bridge. He turned one way, then the other. “Someone was talking,” the man murmured. “Someone was whispering right outside the bridge. No, more than one. People. They were whispering. I… heard them. It was just on the…” He trailed off, a frown finding its way to his face as his head slowly turned to the side, as though listening once more. 

Abruptly, Spark did something none of them would ever, in a millennium, have expected her to do. She pivoted, lashing out with a hand to smack across Puriel’s face with as much force as she could muster. His head snapped to the side while everyone else gasped. 

“Spark!” Maria blurted. “What are you doing?!”

Puriel, however, held up a hand. “Stop, she was right. I was… losing myself. Those whispers, they were telling me to… oh.” His gaze snapped up. “Whispers.” 

“Whispers?” Arthur echoed. “Who’s whisp–” 

“Whispers!” That was Kutattca, the Native American man approaching from one of the elevators. His face was covered in sweat and a bit of blood. “You’re right, it’s those creatures. They’re here on the ship. I don’t know how, but they are.” 

“What creatures?” Arthur demanded. “What are you–” 

“We need to find a safe place to defend,” Puriel announced abruptly. “We’ll use the protective runes and block them out, before they have a chance to affect the others.” Even as he spoke, the man focused, using his power to cast a spell that would give him a communication line with Aletheia. “Whispers are on the ship,” he informed her. “We do not know how many, but… enough that I have been affected. I’m contacting Aur–Athena now.” 

“Oh, no, I don’t think you are,” came another response. This was from the doorway leading into the bridge crew conference room, across from the bridge. And it was more than a whisper. It came as a full voice, along with a figure who moved into view, visible to everyone. 

“What–” Puriel started, before his eyes widened. His communication with Aletheia had stopped, cut off from his distraction. “How are…

“You.”  

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Patreon Snippets 22 (Heretical Edge 2)

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Finally leaving the chaotic rush of yet another school day behind her, Abigail Fellows said goodnight to Miss Handsy before heading out of the office, satchel full of files over one shoulder and a cup of steaming hot coffee in the other hand. She was walking briskly down the hall when a voice spoke up from behind, calling her name. Abigail slowed and turned to see the dark-haired Athena approaching. Waiting for the Seosten woman, she asked, “Didn’t you have something going on over with the… what was the name of that group again? The ones who want to build an elevator to the moon.” 

“The Kalsteren,” Athena reminded her. “And not yet. They want me there for a special holiday, but it doesn’t start for two more days. They’re still setting things up. Also, the elevator thing is a bit of a misnomer. What they actually want is a stable, permanent portal to the moon. Which is a phenomenally bad idea, given… well, you know. But try telling them that.” Pausing, she murmured, “Right, I’m going to have to actually try to tell them that. We’ll see how it goes.” 

Curious, Abigail asked, “Actually, I don’t know. Why would a portal to the moon be a bad idea, exactly?” 

Athena’s mouth opened to answer, but they were interrupted as a new voice called out, “Abigail!” It was Theia, popping out of a nearby doorway. She was giving the wide smile that only ever seemed to appear that genuinely when she was talking to very few people, including Douglas Frey, Pace, Koren, Miranda, and most of all Abigail herself. 

“Hello, Theia,” Abigail greeted the girl with a smile of her own. “What can we do for you?” She didn’t outright chide her for not acknowledging Athena at all, simply choosing to point the other woman out by very slightly stressing the ‘we’ part of the sentence.

“Oh, hello, Athena,” Theia promptly greeted the other woman, voice making it clear that she hadn’t actually noticed her at all. That done, she promptly turned her attention right back to Abigail once more. “I found this.” Raising her hand, she showed both women the large, blue-and-violet seashell that took up most of her palm. “It’s lucky. You should have it on your desk.” 

“Aww, why thank you, Theia.” Accepting the seashell, Abigail nodded. “It’s very pretty.”

“It’s lucky,” the Seosten girl reiterated. “You can’t lose it. It has to go on your desk. You have to keep it safe.” Her voice was oddly urgent as she stared at the woman intently, as though expecting her to walk right back with it at that very moment. 

And that was exactly what Abigail did. With a glance toward the woman next to her, she gave a short nod. “Well then, I wouldn’t want it to accidentally get put somewhere else. Why don’t you show me the best place for it? Athena, you’re good with tactics, perhaps you’ll have a thought or two.” She gestured, inviting both of them to follow as she pivoted and walked right back to the other room, passing Miss Handsy once more with a pleasant greeting. 

Theia followed, of course, with Athena behind. Though the Olympian gave no real input on the placement of the shell, she did watch with curiosity while the other two positioned it just so. Only once she was satisfied that the shell was in its proper place, did Theia nod with satisfaction. “Good, you will have luck now,” she announced. “You need it. The job you have taken on is very difficult, and you will probably fail without a lot of luck.” With that blunt pronouncement, she offered another smile. “And now you have it, so I will leave.” Abruptly, she spun on her heel and began to walk away. 

“Oh, Theia, you’ll be over for dinner tonight?” Abigail quickly put in. “Koren wanted your help with some sort of vegetable dish she looked up. Apparently she thinks you’re better with a knife then she is.” 

“It’s true,” Theia agreed, “I have cut many things. And many people. And many things off many people.” With a bright, cheerful smile, she added, “I will be there to help cut more things.” 

And just like that, she was gone again, exiting through the door with only a belated, “Goodbye, Athena!” 

Only once she was sure the girl had left through the outer office, did Athena close the door and step over to where Abigail was. “Do you have any idea what you’re going to do about that?” she asked while nodding toward the sea shell. 

Abigail, in turn, blinked. “The shell? Well, unless you’re about to tell me that it’s actually a monster that will eat me the first chance it gets, I was planning on leaving it right there. I mean, she’s not wrong about us needing luck to pull this whole thing off without ending up in a full-scale war against your people. Though I like to think our odds aren’t quite that bad.” 

Shaking her head, Athena looked to the shell briefly before turning back to Abigail. “That is the shell of a Kaula Mehyian. They are an incredibly rare creature, whose shell only turns that color once the animal itself has passed away of old age. Which only happens after ten thousand years. The same general life span as a normal Seosten. It’s part of why our people came to see them as lucky. The shell itself is proof that the Kaula Mehyian lived a full life and died naturally. If the shell is taken early, it doesn’t turn that color. Once the animal dies, the shell falls away and changes to what you see there. For Theia to have one means she either paid… an enormous fortune for it, or experienced what for almost anyone would be a once-in-a-lifetime find, and was able to pick up one of those shells on her own. That shell by itself would be considered…” She shook her head, trying to find some sort of comparison. “Your people have your four-leaf-clovers and horseshoes and such. But you have nothing like this. There is nothing even remotely similar. A Seosten with a Kaula Mehyian shell would never give it away, save for a true fortune, or… to someone incredibly important to them.” 

“Someone incredibly important…” Abigail echoed, glancing toward the shell itself once more with new understanding. 

“Yes,” Athena confirmed. “That’s what it means. Do you see the way she smiles at you? She does not smile at others that way. When she smiles at most people, it’s… awkward. Something closer to predatory. It doesn’t look quite right. And yet, with you, she’s perfectly natural about it. And one other thing, did you notice that she left without saying goodbye to you? Twice, in fact. First she announced that she was leaving and began to walk out. The second time, she specifically said goodbye to me. Not once did she say it to you.” 

“Well, I wasn’t going to bring it up,” Abigail murmured, “but I assumed she was just in a hurry. Or didn’t think it was worth saying, considering she’ll be around to help with dinner in just another hour or so. Hardly worth reprimanding her for, or even talking about, really.” 

“That’s not my point,” Athena informed her. “She isn’t saying goodbye because she doesn’t want that level of separation. It’s a… subconscious thing. If she never says goodbye to you, then you’ll never be apart from her.” She paused, then gestured with a sigh. “Sit down, please, Abigail. I think we should talk a bit more about this.” 

Her words made the school principal pause before nodding as she sat down. “You’re not about to tell me not to get so close to one of your people, are you?” Her tone was mostly light, but there was something more behind it. She would not have reacted well if the other woman actually pulled anything like that, no matter how unlikely it was. Theia meant too much to her. 

Taking the seat across from the desk, Athena shook her head. “No, Abigail, of course not. What I want is to ask you precisely how close you’re planning on being. You know how badly that girl’s mother treated her, how… rejected she was. Now I’m fairly certain she has latched onto you as… a replacement. You named her. You treated her like a real person. You… you are much more than a friend for her, and if that’s not… if that’s something you don’t want, we should find a way to take care of it before it goes too far.” 

Abigail leaned back a bit in her seat, watching the woman intently. “You mean if I don’t want Theia to see me as a mother, we should stop being so close.” 

“What I mean,” Athena clarified, “is that I think it would do her a lot of good if she didn’t have to tiptoe around the situation because part of her is afraid you will reject her if she brings it up any more directly than she already has. She needs to be accepted, fully accepted, if she’s going to move completely beyond the person her mother and our society turned her into. I think you can help with that–I think you have helped with it, more than anyone could have asked. But here I am, asking you for more. I know that’s incredibly unfair.” 

“What’s unfair,” Abigail retorted, “is what that girl went through for so long.” She exhaled, dropping her gaze to look at an unrelated folder on the desk while various thoughts ran through her mind. “She deserves a stable home, and people she can count on to be there for her. She’s had that, around here, to an extent. But you’re right, she needs more. She deserves more.” 

Both women went quiet for a moment then before Athena spoke. “As I said, I believe she has come to see you as a mother. But that leaves the question of whether you can see her as a daughter. But I think I had my answer to that when I watched your expression when you thought there was even a chance that I was going to say you shouldn’t be so close to her.” 

With a small, self-deprecating smile, Abigail admitted, “If you did try to tell me to stay away from her, I might have been thinking of throwing myself over this desk at you. You know, as effective as that would have been.” 

“Hey, you certainly would have had the element of surprise,” Athena pointed out with a smile before chuckling softly. She glanced away for a moment, seeming to think about what was next before turning back to the other woman. “My point is that what Theia needs is something more official. Something that can feel… firm to her. Something tangible, so she doesn’t need to wonder anymore about just how far your acceptance goes.” 

“Kushiel.” Abigail spoke the name with a harsh, spitting tone before shaking her head. “That woman treated her daughter like…” She trailed off, exhaling long and slow as she collected herself. “Whenever I think about how Theia was treated, it just… I want to… It makes me want to hurt people the way I’ve only ever wanted to hurt them when my… when Koren was hurt. I want… I want to be everything Theia needs. I want to be a better everything for her than her… than Kushiel was. I suppose I was just afraid that pushing on that too hard would make her think I was trying to replace her actual mother.” 

“Good,” Athena pointed out. “Kushiel should be replaced. An overfull lint trap would be a better mother than she was to that girl. The sort of upgrade you would be is just…” She coughed. “Abigail, she needs you to make it official. She needs you to be her mother. That means more than just hanging out. That means treating her the way you would Koren. It means making her part of your family, in every way. But only if you’re up for that. You can’t go halfway on it. Not with this, not with that girl. If you accept her, you have to accept all of her. Which means you’ll have to be ready to help her through some tough times. She’s been through more than either of us know, and I think there’s a fair bit she still has bottled up from the time she spent under Kushiel’s experiments.”

“And I want to be there to help her through that,” Abigail confirmed, in a soft, yet certain tone. “I want… I want to give her everything she never had the chance to have when she was with your people.” Pausing, she gave a very slight grimace. “I’d say no offense, but you know.” 

“You wouldn’t mean it,” Athena replied. “And it’s deserved. My people have a long way to go on a great many things.” With another sigh, she straightened, extending a hand. “I know there’s no real… court system for adoption up here. But I think it should be more than randomly telling her how you feel. She deserves something bigger than that.” 

Abigail accepted the hand, rising from her own seat. “Oh, don’t you worry, one word to Koren and she’ll help plan a party the likes of which you have never seen. And as for the official part, I think I can make up some papers and a certificate just fine. After all, I was a lawyer in a previous life.” 

“Well, here’s to previous lives,” Athena noted with a thoughtful gaze. 

“And the lessons we take from them.” 

*********

“You remember when we took Lincoln on that road trip across the country?” Arthur Chambers asked his wife while the two of them stood atop a hill overlooking a wide valley between a pair of silvery-red mountains whose peaks rose clear out of sight into the purple-clouded sky. The grass beneath their feet was a faint orange color, tinged with white on the tips. Before the pair, the field itself was full of enormous herd animals that looked like a cross between elephants and giraffes, with incredibly long, thick necks, tusks, and big floppy ears. They stood ten feet tall at the shoulders, the necks extending the heights of their head at full extension to nearly double that. It allowed them to reach their favorite food as it grew within crevices in the surrounding mountains. Their tusks were used to break open smaller holes to reach the moss that filled intricate cave networks throughout those mountains. And the sound whenever one of those creatures reared its head back and slammed forward to break into those caves, or simply to break apart boulders to get at the moss growing within, echoed like thunder across the field. 

“You’re thinking about the buffalo, aren’t you?” Maria replied. Her own gaze was focused on the Seosten children, who were running through the field, laughing and playing with one another. She could see Omni, pulling his sister’s hard-light form right along with them. From what Puriel had said, the two had quickly become close as soon as they met. And by now, they were all-but inseparable. 

“I’m thinking about the buffalo,” Arthur confirmed with a small chuckle at the memory. “Do you think he’d chase these big fellas?” 

“I think he learned his lesson with the buffalo,” Maria murmured before glancing that way. “You always did like going on trips. This whole thing must be your dream come true.” 

Arthur, in turn, offered a slight nod. “Hey, in more ways than one.” Tugging his wife closer by the hand, he squeezed it before putting his arm around her. “Having you here for my Star Trek adventure makes it so much better than my boyhood dreams. If Linc and Felicity were here, that’d make everything perfect.” Belatedly, he added, “And Joselyn.” That was still new, getting accustomed to the fact that the woman who had apparently broken his son’s heart and abandoned her family wasn’t the horrible person she had appeared to be. He owed that woman a lot of apologies for the thoughts he’d had over the years. 

“And Joselyn,” Maria confirmed, clearly having the same thought. Reaching out then, she pointed toward the spot where the children were running in circles. A moment of focus created a small, red ball of energy in the middle of them. The ball floated there until they had all noticed it, before abruptly zipping away from them. With a collection of squeals, the children suddenly started to chase the ball, laughing with delight as it led them on a run through the field. 

From behind the pair, Puriel spoke up as he approached. “I notice your little game there happened to lead them away from that nursing Ceurth.” He nodded toward a pair of the large animals lying together near where the kids had been moving their game. 

“No reason to interrupt a busy mother,” Maria noted without looking at him. Her attention remained on making the glowing ball lead the children on a chase. “How are the others doing with the hunting?” Alcaeus and Kutattca had gone off to get food to restock the ship’s stores. That being the main reason for this stop, aside from allowing everyone to stretch their legs. They were all down here except for Aletheia, who was still up on the ship itself as it waited for them in orbit around this unoccupied moon. 

“You think this’ll be the last stop we need to make before Earth?” Arthur added. They were far past the barrier by that point, in an area of space where livable worlds were even fewer and farther between than usual. It was Aletheia who had remembered this particular moon and ensured it would be part of their trip. 

Puriel stepped up beside the pair, watching the children below. “Yes,” he confirmed. “This is the last one. Soon, we’ll be at your home. And you can rejoin your family.” Belatedly, he added, “You are becoming quite proficient with your gift, Maria.” 

A small smile played over the elderly woman’s face as she made the ball fly straight up in the air, then down again. “It’s nothing compared to the sort of things you can do with it. Making a glowing ball of energy isn’t exactly helpful in a fight.” 

“You can be far more helpful than you realize,” Puriel informed her. “And not everything needs to be about being useful in war.”

Maria and Arthur exchanged glances then, before the latter spoke up. “From everything we’ve learned about your people, they’d really take that as a sign that you’ve lost your mind.” 

Puriel was silent for a few long moments, his gaze staring down at the children while his mind was elsewhere. “Yes, well, perhaps I have, at that.” 

Arthur cleared his throat. “He’s right about one thing, you are getting better. Almost makes me jealous that you took that gift.” 

“Don’t you start,” Maria teasingly chided. “You made your choice and have your own powers. And, the last time I checked, you were having a grand old time playing with the children with them.”  

“Yes,” Puriel agreed, “and yours have been quite useful already, even if they are still in their infancy stages. You will get better with them. But we will need to pay careful attention to that growth, and ensure there are no unwanted side effects. The DNA of that particular creature has always been a bit… unique in many ways.

“I, for one, am very interested to know whether the Djehuti gift will remain, as it is now, solely the same manipulation of technology as the woman who calls herself Gaia, or if you will eventually also manifest the same biological expertise as the man who now calls himself Seller.”

******

The house where Vanessa and Tristan lived with Sands, Sarah, and several others was dark as the blonde twins approached with Theia between them. The three were chatting about ways that they could potentially find out more about the Whispers and that whole situation, if Cahethal refused to play ball. Theia, of course, had her own ideas about good sources of information, and was just in the middle of explaining a plan that involved rigorous use of Flick’s ability to summon dead people and talk to them, when they reached the front entrance. 

As he unlocked the door, Tristan pointed out, “Hey, at least we don’t have to worry about being quiet. Even if everyone’s asleep in here, they’d all be in their soundproof roo–” 

That was as far as the boy got. Because in that moment, as he turned the knob and pushed the door open, his words were interrupted by a loud squeal. Or rather, several loud squeals, as a handful of party horns were blown all at once, to varying effectiveness. On top of that, the entryway just beyond the door was filled with people, all of them shouting something. 

Theia reacted instantly. Shoving the other two off to either side, she threw herself through the doorway and caught hold of the nearest ‘attacker’ by the arms. Her head slammed forward to crash into the person’s face, turning what had been a shout into a yelp of pain. In the next moment, she pivoted, hurling the dazed figure past the group before snatching two knives from her belt. One flew in the direction of the person she had headbutted and shoved, even as she pivoted to choose her next target with the other. 

All of that took place in what would have been a blink for most people. At her full boost, in fight or flight mode, Theia had done all of that before the average person could have even started to react. 

Which also meant it was only then that she actually took the time to see what she had thrown herself into. The people here were… Sands, Sarah, Koren, Ejji, Felix and her sister Triss, Columbus, and several more people from their classes. None were holding the weapons she had expected to see. Instead, they held balloons, whistles, and other party favors. 

“… what?” Theia finally managed, stopping short just before she would have thrown herself at the next person, blade in hand. 

“Hey!” Vanessa, poking her head in from one side of the door where she had been shoved, blurted. “What’s going on?” 

“Yeah.” Tristan joined his sister, head poking in from the other side of the door. “What gives?” 

“Uhhhhh…” The groan came from a low, wheeled table that had been brought into the hall behind the group. Jazz lay there, one hand holding her face where Theia had headbutted her. In her other hand was the blade that had been thrown, snatched out of the air before it could do any damage. Less spared, unfortunately, was the large cake that had been sitting on that table. A cake that was entirely destroyed by Jazz landing in it. 

“Happy birthday, you two?” the cake-covered, groaning girl managed, focusing somewhat bleary eyes on the twins in question. 

“And whoever’s job it was to tell Theia about the surprise, I’m gonna kick your ass.” 

********

“Fick, Fick!” The excited cries from the tiny, four-year-old Sahveniah filled the hallway. Within an instant of laying eyes on the older blonde girl, the dark-skinned blur raced across the distance separating them and hurled herself that way. 

Reacting quickly, Flick caught the girl in mid-leap and straightened, pulling her into a hug. “Hey, Savvy. Long time no see.” 

Holding on as tight as her little form was capable of (which was a surprising amount, given how quickly Seosten developed their physical prowess), Savvy didn’t respond at first. She simply clung to the older girl for several long moments before finally murmuring, “You were gone for a long time. They said you had to fight the bad guys. But you shouldna gone by yourself. You coulda beat the bad guys more easy if you wasn’t all alone.”  

Swallowing hard, Flick held the girl tighter against herself. “You’re right,” she murmured, “I shouldn’t have gone by myself. I’ll remember that. But hey, I brought my mom back.” 

“Yay!” After that initial cheer, Savvy leaned back to squint at the girl. Held up in this position, they were eye to eye. “I didna know you had a mama.” 

Flick gave a small chuckle at that before lowering herself down. She set Savvy on the floor in front of her while taking a knee right there in the Starstation corridor. “Oh yes, I definitely have a mama. You should meet her. I think she’ll like you.” 

“I’m a pirate,” Sahveniah informed her solemnly. “Does your mama like pirates?” 

“I think she’ll like one as adorable–” Flick started before amending, “Ahem, I mean as fierce and adventurous as you.” 

Her words made the younger girl give a brilliant smile, the entire hall around them seeming to light up. “When I get bigger, I’mma go on a ship, an’ take the ship, an’ go fight the bad guys, an’ steal all the bad guys’ booty. Fick? What’s a booty?” 

Coughing, Flick leaned back to sit on the floor with her back to the nearby wall, tugging the girl over. “Ah, in this case, it means their treasure.” 

Savvy cooed happily while climbing into her lap, nuzzling up against her shoulder. “What about other booties? Is there other kinds o’ booty?” 

Flick, in turn, simply hugged the girl tighter to herself. “Oh, don’t worry. You’ll find out all about every kind of booty. I’m sure you’ll grow up to be the most successful and dangerous pirate queen the universe has ever seen. Entire worlds will quake at the sound of your name.” 

“Only the bad guys,” Savvy insisted pointedly. 

“Only the bad guy worlds,” Flick agreed, moving her hand to gently stroke the girl’s hair. “You’ll steal all their treasure and make them walk the airlock. And your crew will sing all sorts of songs about the dreaded and beautiful pirate captain Savvy.” 

Giggling, Sahveniah gave a nod of confirmation, still leaning against her shoulder while making soft noises of contentment in her position. Eventually, she murmured, “Fick? I missed you.” 

“I missed you too, Savvy,” came the soft, gentle response. 

“I missed all of you.” 

*******

“Alright, all of you line up!” The order came from Larian Mondo, a two-hundred year old Heretic who had been brought in to take up the position at Crossroads that Virginia Dare had so loudly vacated when she left with the rest of the traitors. He was a deceptively small-looking man, barely five-foot-seven, with wire-rimmed sunglasses and long dark hair. He wore a dark blue suit, and carried a construction mace in one hand similar to the one used by Sands Mason. 

Sands. Thinking of the girl, Zeke Leven felt a sharp pang run through him. Fuck. He liked that girl. He’d liked her for years. Then that Chambers bitch had to show up and totally screw their whole society over, and confuse Sands and her sister so much they and their mother ran off with her. Just because her mom was a crazy, deranged traitor. 

And now here Zeke was, on another student hunt just a few days before Christmas, because almost nobody was allowed to leave the school to go on holidays thanks to this war draining all their resources. 

There were two teams assembled in front of Larian in this narrow alley in the outside world. Zeke, of course, along with Malcolm Harkess, Summer Banning, Freya Sullivan, and Laila Kassab (their sixth member, Erin Redcliffe, had disappeared during their previous hunt) for one team, and Gavin Rish, Stephen Kinder, Russell Bailey, a tall Latino boy named Martin Gutierrez, and two girls named Noelle Starson (a dark-haired, light-skinned girl with light green eyes and a wide mouth) and Tracy Faulk (a deeply-tanned blonde who was almost always laughing at inappropriate jokes) for the other.

The eleven students stood in front of Larian, while three other adult Heretics were lined up behind them, along with both team’s older student mentors. Crossroads was taking no more chances with their student hunts. Not after Erin’s disappearance. The two teams would each be accompanied by two of the adults and their student mentor.

Larian looked the group over. “Okay. Behind me and through that alley, there’s a hotel. Our info says it’s infested with some real nasty pieces of shit. The leader’s a Marakeya, so don’t let him get his hands on you or you’ll regret it. We’ll be right there with you. We start at the bottom and work our way up. One team at the front entrance, one at the back. They’re all monsters in there, so don’t let anyone escape.” He paused before adding, “And yeah, I know you’d all rather be hanging out for the holidays. Three days before Christmas and all. So thanks for coming along on this. Sometimes saving humanity means not getting a full vacation.” 

With that, he split the groups up with a few muttered words and waved hands, then pivoted, taking Zeke’s team along with their mentor (the Native American girl Namid) toward the front. One of the other Heretic adults brought up the rear, while the remaining two would escort the other team to the back of the hotel.  

Unfortunately, even as the group approached the hotel, they found their way blocked by a figure standing at the end of the alley. A figure who, by that point, was familiar to everyone. To Zeke, especially, despite never seeing her in person. He had the memory of her appearance seared into his brain from the research he’d done to find out exactly who was responsible for the society he had grown up in being torn apart not once, but twice. Seeing her, he felt a sudden rush of anger. Worse than what he felt whenever he thought of Chambers herself. 

“Joselyn Atherby,” Larian snapped, snapping his mace down before giving it a flicking motion that made a handful of steel spikes rise out of the ground, angled that way. 

The other Heretic adult abruptly disappeared from behind the group and reappeared next to Larian. Where he had disappeared from, a water-shaped version of himself was left behind before splashing to the ground, and where he appeared, a burst of flame shaped like him filled the air, then dissolved into the man’s physical form. He was holding his own weapon, a long claymore sword that could shift into a musket-like gun. “You shouldn’t be here, Atherby.” 

“Someday, I’ll tell enough of you that my last name is Chambers now, that it’ll actually stick.” After muttering those words, the blonde woman focused. “I need you to back off for a few minutes. We’re… busy. A girl’s life depends on it.”

Larian snorted, shaking his head. “I knew you were stupid enough to defend these monsters, but I thought you had some standards. Defending the things in that hotel, that’s a new low, even for you. But hey, why don’t you try your lies on someone else, like say…” He trailed off, pausing before his eyes narrowed. “You’re blocking communication back to Crossroads.”  

Joselyn, in turn, flatly informed him. “Of course I am. I’ve done this rebellion thing before, remember? And I’m not defending any of the people who willingly live in that hotel. But as I said, we’re in the middle of something. The life of a girl who is not in that hotel depends on us getting information out of the ones who are. So back off for a few minutes, then we can both… go about our jobs.” 

Larian and his partner seemed to consider that for a moment, before the first man’s eyes narrowed. “No. You know what? I think you’re stalling for something. Giving them time to get out.” With that, he waved a hand back toward the students. “Get in there, wipe out everything in your path. We’ll deal with her ourselves.” 

The next thing Zeke and the others knew, they were enveloped in a rush of energy, before finding themselves deposited in one of the side parking lots with the hotel itself visible in the distance. 

“What–what do we do?” Freya demanded. The tall, red-haired girl was looking around in confusion while holding her warhammer in one hand and shield in the other. She turned toward Namid for help. 

Rather than wait for their mentor to speak, however, Zeke was already pivoting, stalking toward the hotel. “We do what the man said. Get in there and kill everything in our way.” 

“Gonna need you to stop right there, dude.” The new voice came from a figure who rose from behind a nearby car and moved to block their path. 

“Koren?” Summer blurted. The black girl was staring that way, mouth agape. “Wha-what the hell are you guys doing? You can’t seriously think this is right. Those are bad guys in there!” 

Rebecca Jameson, moving up beside Koren, gave a short nod. “Yeah, you’re right. Those are bad guys. But we’re trying to help a girl who isn’t a bad guy. And the only way to do that is to find her in there before you guys kill them all or make them run away. Or at least find out where they took her. Mrs. Chambers told your teacher guy that, but he wouldn’t listen.” 

Malcolm, enormous sledgehammer in hand, took a step closer while tapping the head of the weapon against the ground a couple times. “You guys really need a better excuse. Now either get out of the way and let us do our jobs, or we’ll go through you. Neither of you could match me in training last year, you really think you can do it together? Let alone all six of us.”  

Heaving a heavy sigh, Namid finally spoke up. “He’s right, you two need to get out of the way. Believe me, I really don’t want to hurt either of you. This whole situation is fucked beyond belief, but we’ve got a job to do. So move.” 

The two girls exchanged glances, before turning back to the six Crossroads students. Koren spoke first. “Sorry. We can’t do that.” 

Rebecca added, “I guess you’ll just have to go through us.” 

There was a brief pause before Namid gestured. “No killing, just make them stay down.” 

Immediately, Malcolm lunged that way, already swinging his hammer. He moved so quickly, his form was a blur. Koren, however, smoothly twisted aside, pivoting on one foot like a ballet dancer as the hammer swung past her to slam into the ground. As soon as the head of the weapon hit the cement, three blunt concrete ‘spikes’ erupted from the ground right where the girl was. But Koren had already flipped up and over, landing behind the boy. She lashed out with a kick, which collided with his back, knocking him forward into the concrete slabs he had raised. Except they weren’t concrete anymore. In that moment, with a quick look, she had transformed them into a gooey, sticky, tar-like substance that gripped the boy tightly. 

Malcolm immediately used his hammer’s ability to send himself back to any of the last ten spots he had hit with it in order to teleport to where he had been standing a moment earlier. But he was still covered in tar. Tar that was rapidly solidifying, even as he blurted, “The hell is this?!” 

“Just get rid of it and focus!” Zeke snapped. The boy was already going at Koren from the side, lashing out to bash her with his shield while simultaneously creating three glass-like balls behind her, which exploded with concussive force meant to throw the girl forward into his swinging shield. 

Koren, however, wasn’t there. She had already tossed one of her Hunga Munga throwing axes into the air, teleporting herself up to it before pivoting in midair to face the boy below. A moment of focus made a wave of concussive force slam into the back of Zeke’s legs, knocking him slightly off-balance. 

He, of course, reacted by snapping his gaze up to where she was. The front of his shield shifted, producing two gun-like barrels from the middle, which fired twin bolts of electricity, powerful enough to put a bear on the ground. 

But Koren wasn’t there anymore either. Just before teleporting herself up to the first Hunga Munga, she had dropped the other one. In the instant where Zeke was shooting his electricity at her, she teleported herself down to that one, appearing in a kneeling position right next to the boy while he was facing upward. Before he could adjust, Koren lashed out with her fist, which collided with the boy’s stomach with enough force to double him over. 

Malcolm, by that point, had gotten enough of the tar off himself to come lunging to help his friend. But Koren had already torn the shield from Zeke’s grasp and pivoted, Captain America-ing the shield that way to take the charging boy’s legs out from under him. He turned the fall into a roll, coming up nearby while swinging his hammer. 

At the same time, Zeke had recovered from the punch, and swung around to clap his hands together, creating a focused sonic blast that would have burst the girl’s eardrums, staggering her just long enough for Malcolm’s attack to put her on the ground.

Would have, that was, if Koren hadn’t already made a wall of earth rise out of the ground behind herself in a semicircle. The wall caught the sonic blast, shielding her from its effects. Which allowed the girl to thrust both hands forward, hitting the charging Malcolm with a telekinetic shove that halted his forward momentum and sent him flying backward to crash into a nearby wall. 

Zeke, stumbling backward from the wall, shot a look toward Malcolm, then over to where Summer, Freya, and Laila were clearly having their own problems with the tiny waif Rebecca. “The fuck?!” He blurted the words in confusion. “You two weren’t this good last year.” 

“Things change,” Koren informed him flatly, flipping her Hunga Munga around in both hands before facing him. “You’ve been in class. We’ve been in a war. So, you guys gonna walk away?” 

In answer, Zeke made a growling noise deep in his throat, glaring at her. “You know what?” he snarled, already readying himself. “I think it’s time to shut you up.” 

“By all means,” Koren replied. 

“You’re welcome to try.” 

Wanna see more of this conflict and how it all resolves? Check out the end of arc interlude coming up in a few more chapters!

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