Issue #67 – Emet
Part 3
Augustus Roe bobbed his head along with the song in his wireless headphones and sang quietly under his breath. The elevator door opened on his floor and he adjusted his courier bag as he stepped out.
“I blame it on the world/And its dying light. Blames it on the world/Through the day and night…” he sang, happy to find that the small lounge the elevator let out into was empty. He liked to sing, but he didn’t like other people hearing it.
“I know it’s all on you/But you mean so much to me…” It had been a good day. His professor in his figure drawing class had praised his sketches, then his Statistics class had been canceled because there was some big battle with the Descendants and the professor was cut off from campus on his way back from lunch.
That meant Augustus had gotten some time to just sit on one of the benches along the campus walk and sketch. Not only was he really proud of some of the sketches he’d gotten and a trio of girls had asked to see his work. He was going to meet them at the student union for dinner.
After grabbing a cup of the fresh pot of coffee someone had thoughtfully brewed up for their floormates, he headed to his room. The door was unlocked, so he figured his roommate was in.
“And I wonder if you’re happy now/Wonder if you’re missing me. I know I shouldn’t even think of you/ Should demand your apology.” He stepped inside, not really paying attention to his surroundings, and tossed his bag into his computer chair by the door.
Then he looked up and all his good will dissolved.
After more than a year, he’d managed to convince himself that he was free of the weirdness that plagued him since the fateful summer; the strange and terrifying events that started when he borrowed a book. The book had turned out to be much more than a book—and it had taken a liking to him.
And along the way, someone that wanted the book for themselves had kidnapped him and tried to use him to make the book his: The same man that was now sitting in the middle of the room in his roommate’s computer chair.
“Hello again, Auggie.” said Warpstar as if he was talking to a passing acquaintance. He had Brian, Augustus’s roommate’s tablet computer in his hands. Brian was lying sprawled on the floor to his right and somewhere behind him, limp, but breathing shallowly.
Words wouldn’t form in Augustus’s throat. He instead flatted himself against the door behind him. His eyes locked on Brian. They weren’t friends, but they were good roommates; respectful of one another and willing to lend a helping hand on each others’ projects, given that they were both art students.
Warpstar followed his gaze to the comatose young man. “Oh, him? I knocked him out with this.” He waved the tablet nonchalantly. “He’ll be fine… I think. I hardly know my own strength now. But really, Auggie: the real concern here is you.”
Finally, Augustus got his mouth working with his brain. “You took what you needed from me. You took the book—“
“Yes, and that didn’t work out so well for me. It saw through my powers and knew I wasn’t you. It punished me for it. Have you ever been to Antarctica? It’s a terrible, terrible place: just penguins and seals, mostly and it’s horribly cold even if you take a penguin’s cold tolerance.” Warpstar held out the tablet to show Auggie the article on Antarctica he’d pulled up on Factopia.
“T-then what now? If what you wanted to do didn’t work, what do you need me for?” Augustus almost begged. He’d hoped and dreamed, and even prayed that he would never see Warpstar or the Book of Passions ever again.
Warpstar snorted. “Well I want the Book of course.”
“But you can’t use it. With to without me.”
“True.” An insidious smile crept onto the native man’s features, “But I can use you. And you can use the Book. And if you use the Book the way I tell you, I don’t have to hurt you. See how well this new plan works?” He stood suddenly, tossing the tablet onto the unconscious Brian’s chest. “Great, so come on and get the book and we can go watch the Descendants be ground down by my golem army.”
Augustus boggled at how fast Warpstar’s mind was moving. “Golem arm—wait a minute, I don’t have the book.”
Warpstar had started across the room. He stopped short on hearing that. “Wait: what do you mean ‘you don’t have it’? How can you not have it?”
“Because I never wanted it!” Augustus’s voice became a squawk. “I gave it away!”
“Y-you… You what?!” Warpstar sputtered into a roar. “What are you mad? No one lacks ambition that hard! Who did you give it to?!”
***
Codex lunged, slamming the head of her staff into a golem’s chest. By itself, the attack would have been next to useless, but the pounding feet of the golems had long since churned up the one manicured slope leading up the the marina’s parking lot into loose, slippery soil. Instead of merely bumping the creature back, the strike caused it to skid on the slope, overbalance and toppled backward to tumbled down the hill into its fellows.
Beside her, the others were adopting the same tactic of minimal effort. While many, many of the things broke apart or shattered completely in the fall, they always reformed at the bottom and resumed their climb, except for those that rolled into the water. Those didn’t resurface, but thankfully, Zero’s barrier in the seawall was holding against any trying to get out of the marina from below.
A Chaos Nova exploded at ground level halfway down the hill, throwing up clods of earth and sending five golems flying. Not far from that, a mass of metal that had once been the railing from the stairs visitors normally took to get down was slithering like a snake through the golem lines, tangling feet and tying arms together to slow down the advance. Spells and bolts of black heat lashed down as well, sweeping down swathes of golems that replenished themselves in short order.
“I’m not sure how long we’re going to be able to keep this up.” admitted Facsimile from Codex’s lefts side. She alone was fighting the clay giants hand-to-hand, and she was running out of steam.
“MPD is dispatching every powered armor officer.” Said Codex. “Superhuman intervention Unit Two is being prepped and scrambled from Norfolk. I’ve got messages in to every prelate I think can get here, and we’ve got the Magi Club doing research. We just have to hold the line until back-up arrives.”
A hollow sound boomed out from the water of the marina, low at first, then rushing out to wash over everyone present.
“What was that?” asked Alloy from beside Facsimile.
“The line breaking.” Codex said in a frustrated groan. She knocked down another golem, then pointed with the staff. At the edge of the marina, where the seawall met the land, said seawall was sporting a set of rapidly expanding fissures. As they watched, a fifteen foot section crumbled and collapsed into the river.
“Did they seriously just punch through the seawall with just their fists?” asked Alloy.
Codex kept her eye on the golems still mounting the hill. “It’s not surprising. It’s a fiberglass composite built to withstand sustained force from crashing waves, not directed attacks. Zero!” She shouted the last part, not even bothering pointing out what needed to be done.
“On it!” the girl shouted and flew toward the break. On the way, however, she suddenly veered sharply left, just missing an anchor that was hurled at her from the ground. It continued on in an arc to crash down onto a car in the parking lot.
A small contingent of golems were gathered near the point of the breech, hip deep in heavy debris and anchors, which they began throwing at Zero with impunity. She dodged the first few before erecting a screen of blue psychokinetic energy to block the rest. What she wasn’t able to do was get any closer to the hole in the wall.
“Are the rest off you seeing what I’m seeing?” Chaos asked over the comms.
“They’re covering their friends sneaking out the back way.” said Darkness. “They can think. Which means…”
“They may have a presence on the Astral Plane.” Ephemeral finished for her from where he and Hope had fallen back, near the fence surrounding the marina parking lot. Unable to directly combat the golems, they were only able to get out of the way.
He turned to Hope. “Please keep an eye on me while I project.”
“Of course.” She replied. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
“Not for myself.” said Ephemeral. “But if you can find a way to bolster the others, that may give us more time.”
Even as she assured him that she would try, he was settling into a sitting position against the fence. Once he was reasonably comfortable, it was only a matter of exerting a little will to move out of his body and into the Astral Plane.
In the rose-tinted world, the battle looked, if anything, more dramatic. The azure astral figures of his friends moves about, pulsing as they plied their powers and skills against the enemies. Every spell Occult cast kicked up a phantom wind the sent swirling eddies through the astral matter. Down below, the marina was a patchwork of color and emotion: Boats that had been homes and were now damaged to the point of being unlivable guttered and flared as if they were on fire, while the ghosts of well known and loved craft, whether they were still birthed there or not floated placidly. The water and the transient nature of boats made them all transparent and hard to keep track of with the eye alone.
The golems themselves were pillars of light that swirled around a central point near where the creatures heads would be on the material plane and stabbed upward for as far as it could go before being diffused to nothing in the rosy astral matter. The pillars were white and sparkled like cascades of diamond, but they were suffused by a sickly yellow haze that made them, on closer inspection, look diseased.
“No symbolism.” Kareem said quietly. In his experience, the Astral, being fueled by the emotions, thoughts and cultural memory of humanity tended to manifest around the astral forms of everything from people to magical effects in some form of symbolism, usually from eastern religious traditions. Everyone had theories as to why, but no one knew.
But the important part was that it was there. Only it wasn’t for the golems. It was almost as if…
“Hmm…” Living with and being related to so many scientifically minded people, Ephemeral knew the importance of testing a hypothesis. He extended his will into the Astral, gathering up matter and giving it shape from his imagination with his powers.
Usually, he would armor and arm himself with the traditional accoutrements of his ancestors when he did battle from the astral side. But if he was wrong, he wasn’t sure he wanted to be in melee range with the golems. So instead, he called up a Mayfield Police Department issue shotgun loaded with beanbag ammo; not a deadly weapon, but one he was familiar with and good enough for a test.
Taking careful aim at a golem not engaged against on of his friends, he fired. A streak of red light, the ‘beanbag’ flew from the barrel, leaving a swirl in the astral matter as it flew—and flew through the pillar of light without it or its target being affected at all.
A moment later, Ephemeral opened his eyes. On the street behind him, traffic had been stopped,by the police, but not car horns were blaring. He reached up and touched his comm. “I can report that they do show up on the astral side—but only visually. Their core energies either only exist on the material, or they reside on some other convergent plane we are not aware of yet.”
“Please don’t let that be the case.” Chaos replied. “The Astral and Faerie are enough.”
“They’re coming out of the water at a private launch!” Zero called from her bird’s eye view. “Five blocks west!”
“Damn it.” said Darkness. “Okay, we need to fall back again. Alloy, you and I are going to hold here. Use every car in the lot if you have to, They’re not getting to the street from here. Chaos, Zero, we need you up and down the river front, spotting out the golems where they’re coming up so we can direct traffic as help arrives. Everyone else… it’s a fire fight. Put out hotspots as they come.”
The others started replying with agreement when Zero suddenly yelped out something in surprise and an object thrown in her direction flew over the defensive line atop the hill and shattered in the parking lot.
“Guys?” Zero asked urgently.
“What’s the matter?” Darkness asked.
More things flew from below, not aimed at Zero at all. They crashed into the asphalt with the distinct sound of shattering pottery.
“They’re throwing golem parts.” said Zero. She dropped the screen protecting herself and intercepted one of the thrown objects, the foot of one of the golems, with a psychokinetic blast. “They’re taking other golems apart and throwing them up in pieces.”
Codex turned to find white mist already moving around between the cars. “Oh no…” Pottery scrapped loudly and an SUV was rocked on its suspension by something starting to stir, hidden behind it. “Fall back! Everyone fall back now!”
The it was too late. The rapidly reforming golem rose, lifting the SUV by the frame and clearly preparing to throw it.
Alloy directed Isp and Osp the shatter the golem coming up the hill toward him and held out his hand to the golem, or rather, the vehicle it was holding aloft. “I don’t think so, Tiny.”
With a small groan, the SUV melted into an oozing mass of metal interspersed with plastic, ceramic, glass and plush seats. The metal components ran down like water over the creature and hardened into a rigid exoskeleton that slowed the gigantic construct to a grinding halt.
Even so, it strained, matching its strength against Alloy’s powers until the armored hero’s hand was shaking from exertion. Metal groaned and buckled as it neared its sheer strength even with the supernatural backing of Alloy.
“Strike!”
Raw force struck the golem from behind, reducing its center to dust and causing it to collapse under the sudden overpressure from the metal under Alloy’s command. Clay dust mixed with liquid metal in a puddle on the ground.
And behind it was strange, but welcome sight: a rhinoceros, more sleek, long legged, and shades darker than any rhinoceros could achieve naturally. It was covered in a chainmail barding augmented her and there with bits of welded plating and a champron that had almost certainly had a previous life as the front wheel well of a motorcycle.
Mounted on its back was an orangutan of impossibly regal bearing with a foreshortened muzzle, wearing a coat of the same mail with a hubcap pectoral bearing the letters ‘AK’ in a curvy, smoke-like font. He held, still thrust toward the fallen golem, a might lance.
Lucian, the Ape Knight: created for evil by the Descendants’ enemy, Morganna, but forged into a warrior of good by his own hand.
“My apologies for not being here earlier.” He said to the surprised heroes. “We spied these constructs moving through the woods earlier and followed, but we could not follow them through the river, and Embarr and Shuck would have cause quite a stir on the main bridges.”
“It’s good to see you, Lucian!” Chaos shouted, flying down to meet the Ape Knight. “I wish it wasn’t always because of some magical chaos though.” He tilted his head, because that was about as expressive as his visor allowed. “Did you say ‘we’? Who’s Shuck?”
Not far form them, another golem finished reconstructing itself and took a ponderous step toward them, only to be borne down by a mass of snarling black fur.
The Descendants all gaped at the largest inugami they had ever seen—and the young woman mounted on his back.
About Vaal
Landon Porter is the author of
The Descendants and
Rune Breaker. Follow him on Twitter
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