Issue #67 – Emet
Part 4
Unlike other inugami breeds, the new one that had appeared didn’t have its orihalcite armor grafted onto it. Instead, the golden hued plates were strapped to it along its back, haunches and head. There was also a harness of nylon webbing across the back, from which hung a number of strange, cobbled-together looking devices.
Its rider also clung to the webbing as the monster hurled itself full speed into the golem. She was wearing a close fitting suit of slick, dark red material with long sleeves and a high neck. Over that, she wore a black vest covered in zippered pockets, black combat boots fitted with metal plates the same color as her suit, a silver belt, segmented with compartments, and a black cowl that covered her head and face to her nose with eye holes cut into it. A long braid of orange-red hair emerged from the back of it to her waist.
The golem went down under the weight of the inugami, shattering against the asphalt. The great wolf didn’t let it end there, seizing the thing’s head in its jaws and grinding it to powder.
“Attaboy, Shuck. A dynamic entrance is a key element to successful super-heroism.” the inugami’s rider cooed, scratching it behind the ears.
Lucian looked at Chaos, who, along with the others, was looking to him askance. “The wolf is Shuck and the young lady is my newly appointed squire, Damsel.” The girl made a disgusted noise and the Ape Knight smiled, “I gave her the name to encourage her to never become one.”
Scowling at him and then at the next wave of golems both coming up the slope and being thrown into the parking lot, Damsel did some quick mental calculations and shoved her hands into two of the things hanging from Shuck’s harness. Bladders inside quickly inflated, fitting the pieces securely to her forearms.
“Believe me, I’m never going to be.” She pulled the devices free and leapt off Shuck, who was busy keeping the golem he’d taken out form reforming. The items on her arms proved to be boxy contraptions with two ports, one above the other on the ends facing toward her hands. When she started to walk purposefully toward another golem starting to form up between two cars, a segmented metal tentacle emerged from each port with a ratcheting, mechanical sound.
The golem started to rise, but Damsel lashed her arm around, sending two of the tentacles out to wraps its arms and hold them at bay. Then she thrust her other arm forward, directing those two tentacles to spear the thing through the chest, shattering it.
“These aren’t so hard.”
“Wait for it…” said Occult, who was closest to her. She was barely done saying it before the golem started to reform.
“What.” Damsel said flatly.
Codex left Alloy to fill the gap for her and ran over to Damsel to hand her a comm while Chaos did the same for Lucian. “We’re not sure how to destroy them for good yet. We’ve got more help on the way and people researching it, but what we’re trying to do now is contain them until we know more.”
There was a metallic groan behind them and they looked to see that the golem whose clay had mixed with metal after Ape Knight shattered it was getting back up, its body now a conglomerate of clay and steel.
“And that’s proving to be a chore by itself. Do you know how to use a comm?”
“I grew up using them.” said Damsel. “Even when I wasn’t supposed to.” She put the bud in her ear, ignoring the questioning look on the woman’s face.
After a few moments dispatching more newly arrived golems and making sure both Damsel and Ape Knight were patched into the comms system, Darkness laid out the new plant. “Basically the same as before: Alloy, seal the marina off so we can concentrate elsewhere. Zero, you’ll be in charge of keeping them from throwing themselves up and over the wall Alloy’s going to make. Chaos and Facsimile, I want you in the air playing spotter. I’ll rendezvous with the MPD squad and make sure they’re kept in the loop. Everyone else, fan out and wait for the spotters to direct you to the golem. Residential areas and anyplace with a lot of villains are the priority. Everyone got that?”
“I got my part.” said Alloy.
Isp and Osp suddenly snapped out and gave a mighty shove to four golems coming up the slope at once, sending them tumbling back down.
At the same time, the cars in the parking lot started to tremble and melt, starting with those nearest to him, then expanding outward across the entire lot. A few car alarms started to sound, but cut off as their circuits were reduced to metallic slurry as well. A low tide of liquid metal started slithering past the heroes, rolling over and pulling along pieces of broken golem as it went.
“Any way we can figure out who sent these things and why?” Chaos asked. He called up small whirlwinds to pick up other bits of broken golem and blow them back out over the river.
“We don’t even know how they’re being controlled yet.” said Occult. “Give them time.”
“Well actually,” Kay’s voice suddenly broke in. “Um… Sidekick One here. The Magi Club and I have found a bunch of ways to destroy constructs, but they’re all pretty type specific. But the bad news is, since there’s so many types, it takes a ritual to figure the type out.”
“Any good news to go with that?”
The tide of metal reached the edge of the slope and started to gather up into an upright plane that spanned the space between the walls surrounding the parking lot. Golem pieces were expelled form it on the downhill side as it rose and solidified, angling slightly outward to prevent the golems from getting a solid downward blow on it.
“Somewhat.” admitted Kay. “We’re lining up the best candidate for a destruction spell for you to try out in rapid succession. We’ll keep looking, but hopefully, you’ll get lucky early. I’m sending the rituals to you digi-book now.”
“Thanks Sidekick One. Wish me luck.” Occult pulled out her digi-book and thumbed to the first ritual. “Okay guys, I’m going to stay here and work on the ritual. Call me if I can help.”
Meanwhile, the wall topped out at nine feet high and six inches thick. Alloy looked up at it with a critical eye. “Still not enough.”
“You think they can still punch through that?” asked Facsimile. A ringing blow from the other side indicated that the golems, at least thought they had a shot at just that.
“Eventually.” said Alloy. “I’m going to have to beef it up.”
The golden heroine looked at the wall, trying to estimate how big it was. “That’s a lot of metal. You’ve never done this much at once.”
“I never tried to push it at all before.” He said, not so certain himself. “But hey, if I get a nosebleed and faint or something, you’re right here, right?”
She was all too used to his comic book logic to even make a snide remark, especially when all too often, it turned out to apply to their real lives. “Yeah. I’m right here. I’ll keep an eye out for you.”
“Did you just say you were going to transmute this whole wall?” They glanced over to find Damsel standing behind them, an excited expression on her face. “Can I watch?”
Facsimile leered at Alloy, then grinned at Damsel. “”Fangirl?”
“He’s one of my absolute favorite heroes.” Damsel replied, bobbing her head before turning to Alloy. “So: can I watch?”
Isp and Osp slithered out to examine the tentacles emerging from her arm mounts, only to recoil in obvious horror and hide behind Alloy when they realized that they were just machines.
“Uh… sure, I guess.” he said. There was a waiver in his voice. Celebrity status among normal, everyday people was one thing, but with a fellow prelate? That had seemed unthinkable and more than a little awkward. Trying not to give it any further thought, he turned and pressed his armored palms against the wall.
In his metal sense, the wall was already under immense strain as at least six golems were now lined up along it, punching in unison to bring it down. He pushed back, pressing his will into the wall and concentrating on the sensation it gave him in his metal sense.
The basic rigidity of steel wasn’t enough. He needed resilience and give, like how a tire could bounce back against hitting a pothole with tons of force behind the impact. Luckily, he’d been experimenting.
Sparks started to leap off the wall around his hands, and black flakes started to form and slough off in a parody of snow or, more accurately, dandruff. At a basic level, iron atoms broken their bonds with carbon, and in come cases, broken down and built together into other elements entirely. New molecules were formed in violent, energetic bursts of hot and cold.
Inside his visor, Warrick’s eyes blazed with white light as the entire wall warped under the power brought to bare on it. New sheans of color appeared; silver and copper without being either of those elements, and a greenish tint as well.
A final pulse of Warrick’s power rippled along the metal, smoothing it out. And with that, the armored prelate slumped against the wall, breathing hard.
Facsimile was there to catch him before he went down the whole way. “Whoa. You alright?”
“Little weak at the knees.” He said. “But this stuff… this’ll hold. I don’t care how strong these things are.”
Damsel was suddenly beside both of them, beaming with giddiness. “That. Was so awesome! What did you turn it into anyway?”
“Now you know how Whitecoat feels.” Facsimile whispered to Alloy, making him shudder.
All the same, he managed to regain some semblance of composure. “No name yet. Just an,” He made an effort to try and slow his breathing, “an idea I had. A matrix of eight different metals and alloys that make something that’s pretty much a non-Newtonian fluid. It’s a soft as lead normally—you could sink your fingernail in it right now, even, but hit it with a truck, or in this case, a golem fist, and it’s stronger than anything short of orihalcite.”
Facsimile suddenly glared at the girl. “And speaking of orihalcite, where the hell did you get an inugami?”
Damsel’s back suddenly straightened, and for the first time, they realized just how tall she really was; taller than both of them easily even though she was clearly younger than them by a few years. “Hey! Don’t call Shuck that! Maybe he’s from the same stock as them, but he is not an inugami. He’s sweet and loyal and I’ve had him since he was a puppy the size of a prize pig. He’s the best dog a girl could have and he came a very long way to be here with me, okay?”
Something hit the wall and was followed by the sound of shattering pottery.
“Ha.’ Alloy said, looking to the wall. “Punch harder, you bastards. Break a few more pieces off.” His Brooklyn accent was in full effect. He then looked at the two women. “Let’s head out and find those others.”
Evidently, robbed of her fervor, Damsel slouched once more and gave a little salute. “Yes sir. It’s just so cool getting to work with you like this.” With that, she whistled and Shuck ambled over to her. She easily pulled herself up onto his back and together, they headed out to patrol for more golems.
“A ride like that makes her look more like she’s on her way to ambush the people of Rohan on the way to Helm’s Deep.” Alloy said, tiredly. “But the cowl is better suited to going in against Sicilians when death is on the line.”
Facsimile groaned. “So she’s just as geeky as you.” She thumped him on the back. “Maybe you can take her as a sidekick all your own, huh?”
***
The gates leading from the parking lot opened onto Riverfront Road, a four lane road that ran perpendicular to the south bank of the river, allowing access to not only marina traffic, but traffic at the docks, the city’s riverside parks, and the ferry stops. A wooded median partially hid and dulled the noise of the street on the other side, Hornsby Avenue, from the largely scenic Riverfront.
The median was just dense enough to conceal Warpstar and Augustus as they watched the Descendants and associate heroes split up to hunt the golems.
To the west of them, horns blared, but no longer were they the horns of impatient motorists discovering a police partition in their path, but the panicked squawking beeps of drivers who somehow hoped leaning on the horn would scare away the giant clay men who had climbed up from the river with orders to destroy anything they came across.
The sounds of vehicles being smashed under clay fists reached them and Augustus blanched. “My god… what did you do?”
Warpstar shrugged. “Distraction, misdirection, assaulting a holy man. But the important question, Auggie is ‘what did you do’?! You honestly just handed over one of the greatest sources of power in this age to one of these—“ He gagged dramatically, “Heroes? Do you not understand what you’re trying to give up? Of course you don’t because otherwise, you would know that you can’t give it up.”
Augustus stared at the heroes, silently trying to will them to notice them. “But I did. It tried coming back to me, but it’s stopped. I don’t want it.”
“Too bad.” said Warpstar. “Because it wants you. And that’s what puzzles me: a completely craven coward like you being the Chosen of Passions. Passions is about ambition, commitment, deep and abiding desire—if you have any of it, you hide it seamlessly.”
“It made a mistake.” Augustus almost cried. “I’m just a guy. I’m an artist, and not to make money or anything. I just want to be left alone!”
Warpstar tsked at him. “Auggie, you should understand by now better than anyone: that’s never, ever going to happen for you. Not til you’re dead and these being the Books we’re talking about, probably not after—and that’s if Passions would even allow that. Now: tell me which of them has it.”
“Codex.” Augustus said instantly, then almost bit his tongue. If he’d had more wherewithal, he could have at least directed Warpstar toward one of the more dangerous Descendants. At that thought, however, he balked. Warpstar could steal people’s powers, so that would have been an even worse decision.
“But Occult was there too. She might have it now.” he added quietly.
Warpstar pursed his lips. “One of those two is the Chosen of Reason. Probably the sorceress. We’ll go after the one in blue first.”
Augustus swallowed a lump. He was going to be forced into a life of a criminal. Worse than a criminal, some kind of super-criminal with magic spells who had to answer to a madman with rocks embedded in his chest. And somehow, it was because he’d rejected the life of… well not a hero. He didn’t know what the Book wanted from him, but it couldn’t have been worse than what he was looking down the barrel of now.
He didn’t want any part of any of it. But what could he do?
It dawned on him as Warpstar started to head out, following Codex as she rushed up the street toward the sounds of honking: He could stall. Maybe he couldn’t do much, but he could talk. And more importantly, Warpstar loved talking, especially about magic.
“Wh-what does all this chosen business mean anyway?” He forced the words out of him before he could think better of it.
Warpstar stopped short and regarded him for a moment. Then his head snapped back in the direction Codex had gone. “I already explained to you the first time what the Four are. Once we get the Book of Passions back, you’ll learn by doing.”
And with that said, he grabbed Augustus by the arm and dragged him after Codex.
About Vaal
Landon Porter is the author of
The Descendants and
Rune Breaker. Follow him on Twitter
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