Chapter V - Brimstone

[TennyoCeres84]

With the motes of Hellfire clearing her nervous system, Aislinn stretched her arms over her head to and looked down at the warthog as he untied the bounds around her ankles. "Wait, I think I overheard you mentioning this guy. Aristide, right? You didn't mention he was a Voodoo priest, though," she commented.

Her previous curiosity about his former state then returned to be voiced, jutting a thumb in Max's direction. "What did Dick-For-Brains do to your root that it was acting like that? It seemed like it had completely dismissed what had happened during the ritual and decided to go back to the "good old days", abandoning what resolve it displayed then."

***

Ciaran looked down at the seemingly helpful zombie and frowned thoughtfully. "Maybe his handler's a decent sort?" he posited. "As odd as that might sound." He then shrugged. "We already witnessed Lucian become a friggin' Archmage, so a tame zombie's might just yet be another new precedent?"

He returned his gaze to Arthur, Alana, and Phineas. "I think we ought to follow him."

"I have to agree with Ciaran," Alana noted, folding her skinny arms over her chest. "If it's a trap, we can still scramble upwards. We're quicker than his type is, after all."

***

The three women did find various corners to conceal themselves in, while Meris slipped her invisibility scarf over her head. She chimed in telepathically as they waited for an opening, "That's fighting for you, regardless of the school or style. It's akin to knowing the proper steps in a waltz."

"I have to wonder if the Wachowskis heard a blurb about the Architect and used Him for inspiration for some of the characters in the Matrix films," Neasa opined casually, keeping an eye out to see if any of the footsteps or voices were drawing nearer.

[IamLEAM1983]

The warthog shook his head. "I don't remember much. I remember him bending down, whispering something in my ear - and then I'm planted in front of you with our tongues dancing," he summarized, as he moved to unbind Three. That done, he briefly paused to lift Aidan's head. A beat later, both men landed a rather decisive "Nah," in unison, likely at the prospect of any further intimate contacts. "No further kisses here, buddy," he promised, "I'll settle for something a little less intrusive..."

He then turned around and kept an eye on Swinburne for a few seconds, his hands working Aidan's shoulders in a short, if careful massage. "Dunno if I asked for Chiropractor Tom to come back for seconds, though," mumbled the human, which made the Warlock scoff in amusement. "Neither of us wants anything beyond Platonic contacts for the foreseeable future, Drake - this is the best I can do. A little dark mojo of mine to counter Swinburne's should do the trick; I just need to work it in past your core muscle groups, tweak the right nerves for the job. Aislinn had a thoracic shot in comparison; I'm giving you baby doses at regular intervals."

Their immediate enemies showing no signs of stirring, Tom looked back to his love. "I feel like myself, or at least like the version of myself that arose out of our ritual," he told her. "I think Swinburne uses the Black Speech creatively on people - I just remember getting the sense that his entire persona radiated lust the way I used to. Seeing as I'm a recovering addict, in a sense, I suppose he didn't have too much trouble partitioning what I'd spent so long trying to integrate. If it wasn't for Aidan's plan, I'm not sure I would've been able to stop myself."

A nervous sigh left him. "I see it as an object lesson: this is what the Black Speech does to demons. This ally of Sharpe's seems like he delights in exposing others to what causes them pain. I've definitely hurt Aidan, I almost hurt you - and almost losing myself is sufficient a source of anguish on my end of things."

A few moments passed, with Tom finally choosing to pick at one of the fallen soldiers' tactical webbing. Out came a pair of zip-ties, and he used them to hogtie Swinburne, wincing as he took in the Void Weaver's still-sizzling left side.

"A masochist and a narcissist," he groused, "and one who probably has the hots for me, now... A younger, stupider me probably would've been flattered."

The back yard's latch was heard working, the mixture of snow and something sickly sweet reaching their collective nostrils. An accented voice sounded out, low and smoky, sounding neither quite French, Creole or Trans-Atlantic, while mingling aspects of all three dialects.

"Tom, my friend? Is everyone alright? I hate to admit it, but I prefer these charnel house scenes to what the monster subjected me to! Some creations are always better off as drafts, eh?
- In here!" called out the warthog. "Swinburne got to you too?"

In walked a well-dressed mountain of an anthro, a silverback gorilla with the right fur highlights and facial features to make his electric blue jacket and pants work, a white shirt almost straining to contain his massive and flat pectorals. At his short and broad neck waited a charm necklace laden with miniature versions of common Voodoo curios, if not smaller analogues: a chicken's leg bone, a raven's claw, pewter sigils taken from seals dedicated to the loa, along with a small Catholic cross. As with Archie's uncle, something gave off the impression that Aristide Duvivier wasn't just a mundane anthro-turned-practitioner. There was something to his eyes and fangs that suggested it - a herbivore's tools gone sharp. He was a vampire, and from a better-conserved breed than the Freaks. In seeing Tom, he pulled a pout and a smile that was almost goofy.

"I liked your other face better, mon ami. Human genes and mutton chops worked well enough for you.
- I couldn't keep them, Ari," replied Tom. "I got attached and couldn't have the body's family ask me questions."

Another pout. "Dommage. I liked you better in your sixties, eminently preoccupied as you were with finding the next excuse to retire to your railcar for a nap."

He then approached Aislinn and flashed big and insolently white teeth. "Good afternoon, mademoiselle - someone looks a bit worse for wear, hm? Tell me Tom's not mixed up in this - if he is, I'll gladly spring to your defense," he said, winking.

Tom pulled a snarky smile at that. "Easy, Cyrano - she's taken."

Aristide rather disdainfully stuck a foot onto one of the fallen soldiers' backs. "I shouldn't be surprised, I'm sure I've read something somewhere about the peculiar magnetism of unpopular anthro breeds. Was it the permanent jaundice?" he asked of Aislinn, "or the faint scruff of hair between the spindly ears? What did it, I wonder..."

The warthog rolled his eyes in the back. It was clear, however, that he wasn't going to take that as a serious comment. "Enough social for now, we've still got uninvited guests prowling around the mansion."

He then looked back to the equally-bound Rob McMahon. "We'll get you out of this and in a secure corner. Aristide, I'll lead you to a concealed broom closet near the East wing's archway. We'll place our victim there. We'll need two of your best zombies on guard detail.+"

Duvivier moved to help the human. "He was used as bait, yes?
- Yes. Why?"

The gorilla grunted. "Personal experience. I wouldn't have been duped into falling for our common friend, here, if it weren't for my taking a desperate young mother's case, in Paris. The same things happened to me. I tried texting Bastien as soon as I felt numbness settle in, but never could send the actual message. I woke up to your Sariel and Volker pinning me to the ground, in an empty garage near the airport terminal. Swinburne used me to create genetic chimeras out of corpses he sourced from the Eastern Bloc's medical black market. He had four crates' worth of filled phylacteries in the back of an unmarked van -  a private militia of his former and deceased lovers and playthings."

Three stood up and headed towards one of the soldiers, removing the goggles and balaclava that covered its features. He stopped at the odd sight of what looked like a patchwork of racial and facial features. Mismatched eyes, hands of a different skin tone and build, interrupted tattoos...

"That, at least, was smart of Swinburne. These creatures have something around twenty or thirty distinct DNA signatures per person. It'd make it impossible for authorities to trace back suspects."


* * *

"Speaking of our being faster..."

Phineas stuck a hand on his gibus and hopped down, approaching the zombie with some hesitation. Once it was clear "Bub" meant them no harm, however, Dickens picked him up in a fireman's carry and took off towards the mansion, the zombie letting out a single yelp before distance took the pair.

"I just hope zombies don't have the urge to throw up," noted Arthur as he picked Ciaran up again. "I try not to resent the kids I've helped during Elysium's attacks, but having your best vests stained by the afternoon's pizza because I had to dive-bomb out of a careening drop pod's trajectory starts to sting after the fourth or fifth time."

He gave Ciaran a look. "You've been a good sport, for an aquatic fellow," he mused. "Either that, or you're not the type for mid-apocalypse junk food runs."

* * *

"Well, He is a bit on the dry side," conceded Lucian. "Ruthlessly calculative, however, is something he hasn't been since your Maker took the reins." 

He then fell quiet, listening as footsteps came down from the staircase. Male voices responded to one another over throat-cinching shortwave radios. "Alpha One, this is Alpha Six. No emissions present. Floor looks clear."

Another one responded. "Wait - the docs said the mound hadn't been touched. There's coal all over the place. Sweep at six o' clock.
- Roger that. Scanning now."

Footsteps slowly approached, Loren's gamble paying off as one of the militiamen walked right past him without acknowledging his presence. The Karthian looked as though he were trying to connect his mind to the soldier's, only to stop and lift an eyebrow in a show of pointed interest.

"I can't touch their minds," he told the others. "It seems as though even their brains are made up of different chunks, I'm sensing a dozen telepathic signatures in this man alone. I don't know which one I can connect to."

Lucian responded telepathically. "This is undoubtedly fascinating, but we'll have to postpone the autopsy. We attack on three - focus on the rifle-bearers in front of us. This one's our way in with their plans."

The Void Weaver nodded his head twice and then discreetly extended a hand into view, a few sigils flaring into view as the Real broke off into a narrow lancet of glass-like shards, more intended to distract than to harm. The sudden appearance of these crystalline structures obviously distracted the rifle-wielding pair.

"What the fuck is this?!" shouted one of the men, the other unloading its rifle into the cracks in the fabric of Reality which Lucian had opened. The bullets went quite literally nowhere, the usually sharp report of what had to be a standard automatic rifle with no advanced tech involved being muffled by whatever waited beyond the Threshold.

"NOW!"

[TennyoCeres84]

Aislinn displayed a snarl of disgust at the sight. "Smart or not, we might've joined them, had it not been for getting free of that drug and our bounds. Oh yeah, and Sharpe's wishes for us to remember the Halcyon Collective and just fuck with us in general," she mused, then glancing back at the Squid.

"You have no idea how tempted I am to whip up a curse of impotence for this bastard, where he can't get it up and has pain down there whenever he even thinks of doing something similar to anyone in the future. He likes pain, then he can feel his own all on his lonesome," she muttered coldly, looking to her boyfriend.

***

"Well, having some salted fish on hand would be a better option," opined the male roane, scoffing. "And sea folk generally have hardier stomachs, what the the motion of boats and all."

Ciaran then glanced at the vampire and shrugged as they headed for the mansion. "You and Alana should come by the Hall more often," he said, a ghost of a wry smile playing on his lips. "If nothing more than to occasionally needle Archie. Siblings sometimes have to remind each other of their presence."

***

Being the only non-supernaturally gifted one, Aspasia opted to attack the riflemen with her Elysium rifle and aimed at areas that would swiftly take them out. As she shot, she mused on Loren's speculation and pushed through the telepathic connection, "Might be that Swinburne is also something like Frankenstein, cobbling bodyguards together out of whatever hapless victims he's come across. It'd make for malleable soldiers, and they're also difficult to differentiate and identify." Even during a firefight, it seemed her strategist's mind was at work.

Neasa and Meris sent her mental acknowledgements, but they otherwise focused on their own attacks. The Heiress blasted the soldiers with directed electric charges meant to dispose of them as quickly as possible. Given that she didn't want to get too close to their rifles, the strongwoman used her strength to turn the seemingly harmless lumps of coal into lethal projectiles as she threw them at the more exposed areas of their armor.

[IamLEAM1983]

Tom sighed, looking wary at the idea of leaving the soldiers and their handler alone. He waited while a few half-dessicated and half-rotten corpses shambled into view from the rear, seemingly ignoring him and moving to bodily restrain the Void Weaver. One of the undead even gripped its tentacles, something in its features mirroring Aristide's for a moment, before idiocy returned to these dead eyes.

"You've gotten good," noted the warthog, as he headed for the earlier-mentioned closet. "Two centuries ago, you were lucky if you managed to reconstitute half of a corpse, from what I remember."

Duvivier shrugged and gestured for the other risen dead to keep up. "Practice makes perfect, Tom. Materials have gotten more costly to work with, so I have an arrangement with a gray market organ seller, from Singapore. They find me template organs and clone them as needed. A refrigerated shuttle ships them to me. Singapore-Paris in fifteen minutes, Singapore-Hope in seventeen, once I'll have settled in. It helps that my noncorporeal Rolodex got bigger, too. Bigger, and more efficient."

He grimaced. "I'd be impressed with my own handiwork with these soldiers, but truth is I don't so much as remember assembling them. Swinburne kept me under his spell for what feels like a good three months. I remember ducking into an alleyway in the Quatrième Arrondissement - the next thing I know, your Sariel and Volker are offering exposition to a very confused necromancer.
- And those ethereal contacts?"

Aristide eyed Aislinn and clicked his tongue. "I'm taking a page from Watatsumi and the Dragon Clan and fashioning my own Wanderers. I'm reusing souls, instead of releasing each one after a single use. The initial going is costly, seeing as I tend to work with the captured souls of dead household pets - but it's worth it. I sent Emmett out as a scout, for instance - told him to greet and direct your local shadow-walking allies.
- Emmett? Who's he?"

Aristide smirked. "My best zombie yet, at least when he's incarnate. He's very childish, I'd say. Innocent and trusting. Higher-order processes aren't kicking in no matter how much via I push through him, but he's at an interesting midpoint. Smarter than a household pet, as given to empathy and love as one, but still dumber than your average two year-old. I'm trying to brush up on cognitive therapy, see if I couldn't jog his speech capabilities. He does vocalize quite a bit, however."

Three shook his head. "I can't believe you're okay with this, Tom," he said. That made the warthog snort.

"Me, the man who had dead Russian criminals frozen and shipped to America to serve as bodies for my friends? Playing the specialized educator to an unusually sharp zombie is on the tamer end of the spectrum, as far as I'm concerned."

Duvivier shrugged. "I suppose I'm trying to make life out of a pile of dead flesh, but I'm not Rendell or Isaacs. I started with wanting to see how far Emmett could go, and now making him sapient feels like an obligation - something I owe him. He deserves to understand why he keeps waking up in different bodies, or why his bodies are never entirely perfect. Hubris doesn't so much play into it as there's a sense of responsibility."

Three looked at the other undead. "And these guys?
- They don't engage me as much as Emmett; I don't know why. I gave them the same opportunities, they're just not all that interested in the human element. They are good herd leaders, though. If Emmett's an overeager Labrador, they're headstrong sheepdogs."

Aidan sent Aislinn an uncertain look as one of the zombies side-eyed him, took a step forward and growled while looking out one of the nearby windows. It felt like being flanked by nightmarish police dogs who'd very likely take a bullet or block falls with their own bodies. Their enemies were apparently focused on the second floor, but could do little as some unseen force seemingly grabbed them and the landing's entire paraphernalia and flung them against the right wall, shattering its window.

"The Hell was that?!" the soldier said, even as the zombies managed an unintentionally overly dramatic flinch of reaction, one of them tossing in an interrogative "AWUH?!" for good measure. Tom pursed his lips together and quickly spirited McMahon inside the closet. "Alright, fun's over," he quickly blurted, "we've got asses to kick and one heinie to take a later deposition from? In here, mister McMahon - and the word's schtum until we tell you otherwise!"

* * *

"Oh, I love my brother," countered Arthur as he deftly jumped down and covered the last few meters to the mansion, his tone conversational even as he vaulted between two streetlights. "I just show it by staying away from you and your friends' world-saving antics," he confessed. "He thinks there's no management skills involved in running a brood and very likely thinks that Ringleader meets turn into cartoon nonsense in short order. I've stopped begrudging him for it a long time ago."

He shrugged and managed a smirk, having perhaps been mollified by Ciaran's approach. "You'd probably beg me to take days off after a while," he said. "The local Goth twinks think they've cornered the market on perpetuating Halloween throughout the year, and you clearly haven't stopped by my place for a coffee before. Ask Alana - I'm Martha Stewart and Gomez Addams' deranged lovechild, when it comes to indoor decorating."

* * *

Bucky and Bagley scarcely needed to intervene; the combination of blunt force trauma and ionized particles making short work of the two agents. They'd been heard screaming, however, with the ceiling above rattling with the sound of incoming footfalls. Lucian responded by racing up the stairs to the basement and swung the door open with one hand. The other was thrust forward, glowing green plane of sigils in place - and he seemingly rotated the mansion's entire ground floor, turning it on its side. Some of the incoming goons went sailing towards the lobby, most of them were thrown to the far end of the Western wing, one of them managing to hook onto one of the main staircase's paintings. He then stood on top of it, carefully righting his balance as he realized that for him, the wall now was the floor. Spying a look at the painting which depicted an agitated cliffside beach, Lucian gestured towards it. Spray shot out of the canvas, followed by the crashing of impossible waves. Large spurts of seawater sloshed forward and disturbed the gunman's footing, even as one of his colleagues lost its own grip and sailed across the corridor, effectively falling through the Western wing's living room and crashing through its Colonial baywindow. His path only seem to arc back into standard gravity once he'd shattered the windowpane, allowing him to land on the side of the mansion's snow-covered front lawn. Obviously, everything that wasn't nailed down had followed suit, with chairs, potted plants and bookcases slamming into the same wall.

The surviving militiaman kicked the overflowing painting aside and scuttled backwards, one hand moving to produce a Karambit knife. "What are you?!" he seethed. Stepping out onto the landing, Lucian's overcoat gave the impression it was confused between two competing gravitational fields, as it didn't quite move naturally. "Rather cross is what I am," he replied. "The owner of the place is right behind me, and you've had me make a mess of things!"

The soldier seethed. "THEY SAID YOU'D BE WEAK!
- They clearly talk out of their arseholes," replied Rothchild.

"THEY SAID GOD COULDN'T RESTORE YOU!"

Lucian's eyes twinkled as he noticed the fundamental mistake Sharpe's advisers had made. "God never did restore me," he replied, his patient tone every bit as lethal as a gun or thrown chunk of coal. "The Architect spoke to Earth, and Earth agreed."

He pointed his cane at the goon. "Run on back to the Collective," he said. "Speak to those like me who anointed you. Tell them the Watchtower rises again. One of the Weavers is free, and the Eye of Nodens is once again cast 'pon this world. Soon, there will be more. Thousands more. Order and balance will be restored, despite all of the Black Goat's efforts."

Stepping forward, Lucian walked onto the cluttered wall as if it were just another horizontal surface, which seemingly horrified the soldier, prompting him to rip off his balaclava and goggles. "They will require proof," he said. "You shall suffice."

Rothchild bent down and grabbed the man's wrist, his patchwork of features shifting. A blue eye turned dark brown, half of a Caucasian nose matched the other half's broader African American descent and then shifted to an appropriate shade. Something like pain made the soldier close his eyes and wince, until realization made his eyes well up: he'd been made one. A single man, a single genetic strand.

He'd been made whole.

[TennyoCeres84]

Once McMahon had been secured in the closet, Aislinn temporarily forgot her anger toward the Squid and focused on the mayhem that was increasing around them. "What's the attack plan, Mr. Warlock?" she asked him, trying to keep up a bit of humor despite the dire situation. "We don't know how close our friends are, but Swinburne's numbers might still prove difficult."

***

"Heh, I'm sure a younger version of Aislinn would've loved to see your place! Then again, she probably still would, even if her tastes have matured some!" Ciaran replied, chuckling a bit.

"Once things calm down some, perhaps we might invite them over for a drink, dearest?" Alana suggested to the Circus leader as she followed them.

***

Once the man had been transformed and made whole, Meris approached her friend. "That was quite the means of making an entrance," she complimented him, sobering up. "Want to meet up with our friends? They shouldn't be far from us. We need to see about shuffling these arseholes off, especially when we'll have bigger fish to fry soon enough."

"Need to check on them anyway, since they may have figured out how to deal with Swinburne," Neasa responded to her great-grandmother's suggestion. She reached out to her sister, Hey, what's your status, Aislinn? We're on the first floor, as we came in from the basement."

The message had the younger female selkie bound past Tom, Three, Aristide, and the zombies and hurry toward the other group. As she departed, she told her beau and the rest, "Neasa and the others are here!"

Given the odd distortion she felt in the atmosphere, she asked her sister aloud, "Um, Ness? Did something happen, and if so, mind catching me up?"

"Uh, yeah, Lucian's an Archmage now," she supplied, "We took care of the guards that went down to the basement, except for one. He looked like a mish-mash of two different people, so Lucian made him one whole person."

In something of a shocked daze, Aislinn gaped slightly, "Okay, then... A Void Weaver archmage, and friendly and helpful zombies."

Her astonishment was interrupted by Neasa. "What about Max Swinburne? Where is he?"

"Tom, Three, and I teamed up and managed to swindle him, and Tom cleared the drug from our nervous systems. Swinburne's been hogtied and incapacitated," Aislinn answered.

[IamLEAM1983]

Of the Weaver's goons, only the lone unit that had fallen essentially "down" the lobby's length remained. The others were either knocked out, dead or groggily attempting to pick themselves up after the gut-wrenching non-geometric fall down a corridor's length. That unlucky sort gave Tom and the others a look of horror and tried to scramble for his rifle. "EXFIL THE BOSS NOW!" he screamed, more than likely as an order to his now leaderless squad. Tom threw some sort of dark lancet of force at the man, but the soldier had enough presence of mind to raise the side of his gun in front of him, deflecting the shot. He tried to run past Tom, likely to recover Swinburne, but Aristide had size and torque on his side. A short tackle was all he needed, both men grunting as they impacted with the floor. Duvivier bared his teeth, a hint of bloodlust in his eyes, but marshaled his rage with a single right cross. Not having placed supernatural levels of strength in the punch, he merely knocked the chimeric man's lights out.

Seeing this, Tom resumed his interrupted dash back towards the Huntsman's Room, only to be met with the sight of a groggy Max Swinburne picking himself up, laughing. As Tom looked on, the fresh scars on the Weaver's features healed, leaving only faint marks on the right side of his face. He extended a hand in what felt like mock supplication, head slightly bowed as he busied himself with Archie's drinks cabinet.

"Now I know why mister Bagley's old video feeds as a genius loci suggested that Melmoth was the only decent poker player in these walls!" he said, shoulders shaking. He poured himself a finger of Scotch and then gestured at one of the deceased soldiers that had slumped across Archie's chair, waving it away much like a Karthian would have. He sat down and crossed his legs together. "You all care so much and would sacrifice everything if you could - to the point where escalation means nothing to you. Oh, mister Magnus schemes like the best of them when his brethren are involved - but Holden Hall? Glorified primates, the lot of you. All Sharpe will ever have to do is find a means to exhaust you."

Looking away, he briefly twitched a few fingers on his right hand. Down the hallway, those goons that were still alive picked themselves up in unison, holstered their weapons and walked right past Lucian's group, giving them the distant look of total strangers. "The same applies for our Void Weaver agents in the Collective. Amaxi acutely senses my unbelief, but these are delicate times. Her offered promises of reinvention hold potential, but Hell and Earth's own villains are squandering the message. Even the common Prelate is off-track - he misses the opportunities offered by the Many-Armed's desperation, sees it as something to quash or rectify."

Tom raised a hand, five points of Infernal light glinting into view - one for each finger. "A hedonist giving me a bad philosophy lesson," he sneered. "I feel like I'm in a crappy funhouse, stuck in front of the old Marx Brothers' fake mirror gag. Make your point, if you've got one. I'm five seconds from frying you well enough to cost Holden a lot of renovation time."

Swinburne shrugged, smiling behind his tentacles - the gesture cold and taunting. "Every side in a war needs its visionary. Hope has you, the rebels have George, the Gentlemen are going to thrill once they realize what happened to Rothchild, just as Dalarath's downtrodden have Meris - and Phineas Sharpe has me. You're the first incubus with heart and a vision, while I'm the first Squid with a Summer Mantle. Take an infiltrator, centuries of patience and a hotbed as searing as America's supernatural Conservative contingent, and little tykes like myself can be born. One-quarter Fae on my father's side, with a fine and upstanding Birmingham Squid as my carrying mother. All of that, because your ceaseless hammering at the anvils of Safety and Progress finally showed Her that total subjugation might not be in the picture."

He twitched a finger. "The problem is, it's an errant thought of Hers - nothing too concrete for now. Nothing that's exactly conscious. Everyone else is still squarely on the Worldly Destruction wagon. I had to sell the merits of restraint to the Many-Armed, of all people. I had to prove a point - and prove it I just did. As much as I love dispensing pain, nothing that happened today exactly tickled my fancy."

He drained his glass and set it on the coffee table, then standing up. "You've found yourselves a luminary - congratulations. I hope you'll appreciate it all while you can - and I sincerely hope you win against the Goat - but my job will be to expose the cracks in your utopia, and just how sour the Prelacy will be once they'll wake up to their losing hand."

With Aislinn and the others not too far off, he lightly raised his voice and a hand, which he pointed away from himself. A slit of light split the Huntsman's Room in two, Morgana's crushing tropical heat radiating forth. The air filled with cries from raptor birds that had never seen the mortal plane's extinction events and the low, ominous buzz of a swarm of insects. What little they could see of Morgana's realm was all in violent, virulent tones of green and yellow, the polar and perhaps deadlier opposite to Mab's eternal snows.

"You won the warm-up round, ladies and gents!" he called out. "We'll see each other again in the playoffs!"

* * *

"We're back to dearest, aren't we, hm?" teased the thespian. "At this rate, darling, I'm a week away from you finding another excuse to try and put a stake through my heart - or vice versa. We'll have to work on a clean-down, though, if we have guests over - but not too big of one, either. You know how much I love my cobwebs."

He then landed on one of the false Victorian foglights that lined the mansion's property, peering past the short tree line and at the dimly visible and lasting brawl between an odd cadre of white-and-black armor-wearing soldiers and a good thirty classic zombies.

Of course, being both a Freak and a voice actor, Holden settled with safely hopping down and letting Ciaran go, having pitched his voice in a bolder and clearer registry than his usual rasp - a bit like a game show's enthusiastically hammy host.

"And now, live from peril-fraught Holden Hall, Hope, Rhode Island - iiiiiit's "Holy Balls, Can We Handle Vampires On Top of Zombies?!" with your host, Bob Barker's reanimated corpse!"

"BLOODS!" immediately shouted one of the soldiers, shooting at unseen targets that had already left their weapons' range. Shadow-walking as the goons' own darkened spots and the treeline allowed, Arthur began using the pointed tips of his fingers to slash at whomsoever he couldn't simply latch on and drag to some other twilit portal.

* * *

"With pleasure," opined Lucian, his walk and clicking cane turning into a dead run once he heard Swinburne's monologue. Other goons and the need to free Aristide from keeping an eye on his knocked-out catch delayed what should've ordinarily been a brisk little jog. In seeing the Dixie Squid, Lucian had enough sense to gather his mind for a salvo of some persuasion, but obviously hadn't fully come into his own as an Archmage just yet. He was a mite too slow, Max's conjured blast of force sending him into his friends, behind him, just as his shards from the Real managed to barely nick the purple Weaver's central tendril, eliciting a short grunt and a suddenly gleeful smile from him. He ducked  into the portal to Summer's darkest and deepest glens, closing it before Rothchild had managed to lift himself away from the group.

"Drat," spat Archie, "these scheming cephalopods are beginning to aggravate me!"

He then caught himself and dusted his arms off with a bit of a self-conscious look to Lucian. "Erm, present company excluded, of course."

Gunfire from the garden still sounded, however, along with what sounded like the diatribe of a yesteryear horse-race commentator - which made Archibald roll his eyes and groan. "One bloody day," he seethed, "one sodding day to spend sipping tea while demanding exactingly precise finger sandwiches from Bagley! Can't any other man-jack have some blessed peace, for once?!"

"And there they go!" Arthur Holden rather effortlessly belted, ignoring the soldiers' cries to shut the Hell up. "Alana comes in from the curve and - oh! What a perfect sideswipe! Ciaran McConmara, the Boy in the Mist - but where is he?! Would you just look at these unconscious bodies piling up - if I were Griffin, I'd be landing a standing ovation! Phinny Dickens, the Doc of the Dead - that form's straight out of the California Dustbowl, but I'll be damned if those punches won't break a few jaws, Larry! Then here comes the man, the myth, the legend - He who is Several Orders of Magnitude More Sexy than his Brother the Toaster - Arthur Holden, ladies and gents!"

Someone else justifiably yelled "SHUT UP!", which made Art cackle in his normal delivery. "I'm making you miss your shots, nincompoops - that's the point!"

[TennyoCeres84]

As Swinburne would have left through the Summer portal, Aspasia grimaced as she looked at what she could see of the humid and dreadfully hot terrain. Once he would have left, she turned back to the others. "I don't know which of my ancestors told Morgana to fuck off, but I'm glad they did. With that heat-addled lunacy, I wouldn't want anything to do with her. I hope that the Reds never fall back in line with her; one yoke was enough for us all," she noted.

"At the very least, we know what his game is, and we'll have to counter him again whenever these "play-offs" occur," Meris commented, frowning thoughtfully. "And make ourselves less predictable, if possible."

***

Back outside, the recently upgraded selkie weaved and darted around the remaining soldiers, all while cloaked with invisibility. Sophia's boon now allowed him to disappear without disrobing, and he applied his new offensive and defensive gifts to the goons. The ones Ciaran took out were either punched or kicked until they blacked out, or others were collected in force fields that were then collided against each other and knocked their occupants out while leaving them with incapacitating injuries. The particularly stubborn and aggressive ones had energy balls launched at them.

Alana ducked and vanished in shadows, either hauling the lackeys into pools or cutting at them with her finely manicured claws. While she wasn't one to have the auditory presence as her paramour, her own mad cackles and taunts filled the snowy air of the Hall's courtyard.

[IamLEAM1983]

Bucky looked a bit confused. "Yeah, but we're the good guys! What are we supposed to do, sit down and take it while... rubbin' our hands together maniacally?!"

Archie gave his old friend an amused look. "Not quite, Shamus. There are other means of fighting back, and if Sharpe would send one of his top men to lecture us, I suspect an arrogant streak would be the least he has in common with a certain Fiend... I think a little spy work is in order, but my connections in the Southern States are scarce."

Aristide sniffed. "Another problem for another time, messieurs. Let's see to it that my fanged compatriots get to take a breather, first. Then we finish preparing and poise ourselves for the Goat's incursion."

Lucian and Eir shared a look of agreement and started for the rear sitting room and the back yard beyond. Lucian, however, didn't simply walk out the door. He opened another portal through the Real - one that led him to fall directly on top of a soldier that had been about to land a lucky shot on Ciaran, the carved tentacles of his cane's nautilus-head handle shattering the goon's right eyepiece and piercing its eye. He rode the soldier down to the ground, and using both his cane and his thighs as points of leverage, broke the man's neck.

Panting a little for a few seconds, he gave Ciaran's briefly-visible mist-lined outline a smile. "Hello, young man. Do mind your rear, hm? Holden Hall's Victorian gewgaws do result in the property's soil having a slightly higher freezing point than Centennial Park."

He stood up. "Pardon the comment, but you look like a pixie with all those beads of water hanging onto you."

Arthur's head popped out of a nearby clump of shadows. "Lucian! How nice of you to drop by. We're down to four terrified create-a-goons, and they've tried to set up a choke point near Arch's fake Green ruins. They've set up automated turrets with searchlights, and made it a tad difficult for Alana and I to safely reach them.
- So you know about their origins," deduced the Squid.

Arthur made a face. "Sort of - Alana and I got a good look at their skin; they'd set up a Demolitions unit of some kind. I ended up tossing Heavy Weapons Guy and his pocket Howitzer a few nautical miles West of here. He'll cool off, if he doesn't freeze to death. Tearing through his ballistic pads showed me a nice quilt of skin - it's all so very multicultural, very forward-thinking of Swinburne." 

Three hopped down from Lucian's portal. "So let's go stealth. The Holden Woods aren't massive - it's basically a bike lane cutting through two big copses. Past it, there's the northwestern section of the property wall. If we're quiet enough, we can spring from behind them. That's Aspasia's strength. Mine too. I just don't have a suppressor or knives on me."

Lucian gestured with both hands, stretching the air into a short and fine point, like a miniature javelin - perfect for throwing and a decent stabbing weapon. "Will this do?"

Drake took the offered weapon, marvelling at how cool it felt too the touch - like a biting winter breeze given physical form. "Perfect," he said. He looked back up and through Lucian's portal, which meant he was essentially looking straight back into the mansion, picking Aspasia from the group. "Asp," he said, "on point, like the old days. I'm recon, Arthur'll taxi us into the woods."

Arthur quirked an eyebrow. "Alana, Dickens and I might as well creep around and take care of it for you, you know.
- No, that's what they're expecting," countered Three. "They're probably scared shitless by now, staring at pools of shadow outside of the yard's fog lights. They're expecting something supernatural, not two trained soldiers. Let's keep the advantage if we can; it'll keep them from calling in reinforcements at the first sound of a twig breaking."

[TennyoCeres84]

Scoffing, Ciaran reappeared and ventured back toward them. "Could be worse," he joked with a shrug. "And thanks for taking care of that one," he added, looking at the downed soldier.

Upon Aidan's request, Aspasia strode toward him with her rifle and nodded. "Even with them not expecting two mundane types, we'll still have to watch it. I don't know whether Squids have some equivalent to Angel Time, but the one survivor among McKinley's men said that we'd lose two by the end of the day. Kramp's still alive, albeit out of the game for the time being. Let's thwart that prediction or whatever the hell it was," she observed.

She sniffed and looked back to Lucian. "I recalled a bit more info we didn't discuss while we were at your mansion, before your Ascension. Arkham seemed insistent that Shield should get Eliphas Buck involved more frequently; if nothing else, having a werewolf of his caliber to bust heads might not hurt. In this fight, every number's going to count."

The fauness pulled a couple knives she had hidden within her coat. "Never hurts to have a backup," she said, handing them to the human. "I'm ready to go whenever you are."

[IamLEAM1983]

"Hop onboard," joked Arthur. "Today's trip movie is O Brother Where Art Thou, to stay with our fine friends' provenance," he said. "Unfortunately, we're all out of complimentary peanuts."

Three gingerly stepped into Arthur's unnatural patch of shadows. "Zero out of ten," he quipped. "Worst Uber driver ever." That, understandably, earned a chuckle from the Ringleader.

A dizzying patch of pure darkness and nauseating sound later, both the soldier and Chimera stood with their backs to the perimeter wall, naked branches inches away from them. Aidan brought himself low and crept forwards.

"You call the shots," he sent to Robertson, "I'll tell you what I see. I take East, you take West."

Being on reconnaissance, Drake made sure he stood a few steps ahead of Aspasia and did his best to stay out of sight. Telepathic silence soon stretched out, which would give the Fauness time enough to be the first to break it. She'd soon come across an automated turret, its light pointed at the trail that cut through the trees and led back to the street. In the street's direction, flashing lights could be seen. The firefight had obviously been concerning enough for the cops to cordon off the area, with the distant pinpricks of camera and smartphone flashes going off being visible. Staying out of the open would be wise, as it would lead to less chances of stray bullets injuring or killing innocents. Across the path, she'd eventually spy upon two goons who seemed to be guarding point, an ammo crate with an open and ruggedized laptop resting on it. Her keen ears would obviously pick up on their banter.

"I don't like this, man," said one of them. "I died. We all died, and then this calamari-faced asswipe has us under his thumb. Why do we get to be the unlucky ones, huh? Do you ever remember who you were, before all this, A6?"

His colleague shook his head. "Nah man, I don't. I have flashes, like the rest of us. Afghanistan, I think - but it's all wrong. Not, like, your Afghanistan, the War on Terror one - but the Arthur Conan Doyle one. Britain flexing her stuff at El Alamein, all of that Colonialist shit - and then I hear the voice coming out of my mouth and I'm like Shit, man, that ain't me! That's another guy's voice! Why do I sound American? I've got this dialect sort of hard-wired in, and it's like a part of me's itching for an excuse to go for the Leeds or Belfast twang! Is that what we get for being made out of different people? Are our minds made the same way?"

The first one was identified as A5, based on the patch on his shoulder. "Fuck if I know, man. Our handler's a Void Weaver, his boss is a Summer Fae with more money than God and story goes he's being tweaked by more Squids and hasn't realized it yet. Bright Forest has a foot in space, half of our support staff is ex-Yakuza - we're just pawns being played with by morons waving their dicks around. Shit, if our trainers are ex-Oyabun, you can bet your ass Rendell has a pawn on the board.
- Makes sense, I doubt he'd just want to hand Earth over to demons, right? Plus, he'd want to be sure he'd be in the right position to shut Halcyon down and absorb it.
- But who's the pawn? It's not like the Blues or Reds we have on payroll would just wake up, go Wyldfae and collectively nuke Sharpe out of orbit. I mean, have you seen the guy? When he goes, he goes. We're talking Sauron-grade shit.
- Don't you mean Morgoth? I mean, Sharpe's the boss, isn't he?"

A5 scoffed. "All those supervillains and superheroes creeping back in, and you haven't caught on to what's going on? The only real superhero is the one the Goat doesn't have sense enough to worry about, and all of this crap is the Matrix bugging out. We're all being played by someone who's working real hard for things to come crashing down. Swinburne, Arkham - they think their little teeny deviations from Business as Usual counts for something, but they're only pushing the worst of 'em into going hardcore. Mark my words, Sharpe's friends are going to cut and run once they realize the Chamberlain knew, and that he culled all of our supporters from Dalarath.
- You're tripping, man - that won't ever happen. I seen Squids, man - they're tight with each other, the way the old supervillains used to be. Tight as steel 'cuz they know any one o' their numbers could off the entire group."

A5 shook his head. "Then answer me this, Einstein - why hasn't Chambers offed Thanos yet?"

The second one hesitated. "Because he's Amaxi's godhead and She hasn't given the OK yet?
- Wrong. He's holding off for the same reason we're being tossed at walking gods. He's setting up bait.
- For what? We already know they're going to go for Thanos the moment the world shows signs of recovery from the planar mergers completing.
- That isn't it, moron. He's baiting an opportunity. It's the same reason why Arkham hasn't gone all pre-reboot Rothchild yet."

At about that time, Aspasia would sense Three's awareness visiting her own. "I'm seeing another outpost, another turret. Eight hundred meters to your left, past the tree line. I don't get it - Swinburne's already gone. What are they protecting? It's not like they have any chances of holding this position - the rest of the team is back at the mansion  and there's six SWAT vans behind us with as many Exo teams. They're totally screwed, as-is."

Delmar's voice shyly butted in from the void. "No witnesses, no depositions. Even their genes or fingerprints won't deliver concrete evidence. They have no reason to turn themselves in, no reason to surrender, either.
- So, Swinburne wants us to move in. Why?"

With Delmar now serving as a relay between everyone ever since his reveal and the group's sojourn into the Darkhallow, even Archie managed to step in, or at least the mental idea of his persona. "To distract us, of course. Everything, down to Atticus McKinley boasting of Halcyon's plans in front of Neasa, has been a diversion-"

There was a sudden silence, Archie's telepathic connection conveying the sense that he was on the phone with Lieutenant Harry Benson, but not his words or the Bugbear's. When he returned, several minutes later, a marked sense of unease tainted his mental presence. "I've... just received word from the Lieutenant of the crash of Katherine Starr's shuttle, in the Italian Alps. There are no survivors."

Dead silence filled the connection for a moment. Three's voice felt cold, once he returned. "Was Aldergard notified?"

This seemed obviously difficult for Archie. "Aldergard... was onboard when it happened. Preliminary reports suggest a seat belt malfunction or an issue with the emergency releases on passenger doors. He could not assume his true form and break through in time to save the shuttle's occupants. Etheric forensics suggests he did attempt it, however."

Holden sighed. "There are no survivors," he repeated. "Magnus Haraldson of Wyvern's Norwegian division has already been instated as the company CEO. He... sends his regards, stresses he will fly from Oslo to here within the week, in time for Kuhn and Starr's funerals. Our current financial engagements with the company are to be maintained - and bolstered. Haraldson is a Draugr vampire, one with a personal debt to Sir Kuhn. He will want to conduct a vigil."

Three's connection felt sorrowful for a moment, and then a spark of hope was carried along with his thoughts. "Wait - we have Club Ishtar and the Thrones' new policies on the Afterlife! Doesn't that change things?"

Archie's mental presence practically glowed with pained empathy. "I highly doubt the Thrones would have allowed the truly dead to meddle so deeply in the affairs of the living. We are likely to see our friends again, on that you are correct - but as guests to our plane of existence. Ours is no longer a world they will be able to mold and fashion.
- But what about Anjali?
- She is of both planes, Aidan - but she lives, as do we all. She was a gift, and not one to be squandered. Life cannot and will not allow Death to be stripped of all purpose."