Issue #84 – Darkness Falling

The Descendants Vol 7: The New World

• Issue #73 – Give Thanks
• Issue #74 – Bit Part Bad Guys
• Issue #75 – Kaiju for Christmas
• Issue #76 – Silicon Soul, Adamantine Will
• Issue #77 – Date Night
• Issue #78 – Delved Too Deep (Une Mascarade Brisée Part 1)
• Issue #79 – Tome of Secrets (Une Mascarade Brisée Part 2)
• Descendants Special #7 – The Curtain Rises
• Issue #80 – Bitter Work
• Issue #81 – Kin, Speed and Ducks
• Issue #82 – What To Do With Your Downtime
• Issue #83 – Avalon Rises
• Issue #84 – Darkness Falling
• Descendants Annual #7 – First Frost

Codex had only spared a moment to shout to Darkness that there were wounded inside as she sprinted up the tunnel. She was too busy watching the comm indicator on the HUD in her helmet, waiting for the bars to reappear, informing her that the signal was back.

As soon as they did, she selected and opened a channel. “Hope, we need you at the mound now. Right now. Vamanos, if you can, disengage and meet up with Hope to get her here ASAP. Ephemeral too, there’s apparently a mentalist here too.”

“On my way.” Hope replied, the tension in Codex’s voice compelling her to hurry back from her position halfway between where the parachutes were landing and the mound. “Who’s hurt?”

“Alloy and Occult. Richter shot them.”

The comm crackled as another, less collected voice broke in. “What?! Is he okay?”

Codex didn’t know how to answer that, so she didn’t. “Renaissance, there’s nothing you can do right now. Hope is on the way and we need you to hold the line.”

There was a huff as the young woman on the other end of the line collected herself. “Right. Right…” She sounded slightly more sure of herself on the second repetition. “We need everyone we can; Gospel showed up and his area attack is evening the odds out here.”

“We will look after Alloy, Renaissance,” said Ephemeral, adding his voice to the channel. “We promise.”

“T-thanks.” Renaissance said unhappily. Just after that, feedback squealed in the link. “Gah!” she shouted, “He figured out where I am. I need to get to cover!”

***

Gospel’s screech blasted the leaves off the tree Renaissance had set up as her sniper’s nest and made her armored breastplate vibrate uncomfortably on her chest. Scrambling on branches, she put the tree between herself and the attack.

“Everyone okay?” She asked into the channel established for the group sent to hold off the Adriel foot soldiers.

“God, that hurts.” Facsimile growled into the comm.

Vamanos groaned into her comm before adding. “Fifty mile per hour face plant. I’m so thankful for my suit right now.” After a moment, she asked, “Dodger?”

“Hating live performances more than I ever have before.” said Grand Dodger, who was casually sidestepping bullets as he made his way from the cover of a tree to the superior cover of a boulder jutting from a hillside. “What’s the intel on this one?”

“He screams and it hurts.” Facsimile said. “That’s about it.”

She was also hunkering down, watching the uninjured foot soldiers reorganizing themselves under Gospel’s protection. The tighter formation was something she would ordinarily be able to dismantle at her leisure, but Gospel’s sonic scream hurt her almost as much as electricity; like she was being shaken apart.

“We need something to get him to shut his big mouth. Can that pre-cog thing help you get to him?”

“Unfortunately, the wide area of his attacks means there’s little I can do about it when I foresee it. What we need here is some manner of distraction.”

“Right.” Facsimile groaned and switched channels. “Hey, Chaos. Any chance we can get some air support?”

***

High above Avalon, Chaos summoned a burst of wind to throw himself back from the sweeping blade Harbonah brought to bear trying to slash open his chest. “A little busy here!” He shouted back.

He then filled his palms with water and charged a new set of Chaos Novas, launching them at the advancing swordsman. Harbonah juked to the side, avoiding one and swept his sword through the second, detonating it prematurely. Still, the pulse of heat knocked him back and off his guard long enough for Chaos to surge forward and plant his gauntleted fist in the man’s jaw.

Harbonah performed a wing-over and came back up to shoulder check Chaos in the ribs, sending the hero careening into the still-descending tank. The air was knocked out of his cape and Chaos found himself rolling off the edge of the weapon, only to catch himself on one of the mounted machine guns.

Spitting a glob of blood, Harbonah flared his light wings in a grand display. “How did you even find out about Avalon?” he demanded.

Scrabbling to get his bearings, Chaos looked up at the other man. “I’m a superhero with government connections and a hypersonic jet. The bigger question is how did you find out about this place far enough in advance to plan prison breaks accordingly? And I swear if you say it was divine inspiration, I will shave that stupid strongman mustache after I bring you in.”

Harbonah’s eyes narrowed under his cowl. “The Doctor received Guidance long ago when he had his revelation.”

Chaos got to his feet, unsteady with the swaying tank beneath him. “You guys have no idea what’s going on here for real. Whatever Tang claims to have seen, whatever ‘demons’ you claim to have vanquished, it’s something else entirely. Tang’s name isn’t even really Tang.”

“You are a fool.” Stalling over, Harbonah launched himself at Chaos, who finally took flight, allowing the sword strike the spark off the gun turret beneath him.

“Maybe. But I’m the fool with all the information.” Chaos dropped back down in a dropkick, taking the swordsman in the chest and knocking him back against the main turret. He kipped up and threw himself against Harbonah before he could recover, using his gauntlet to force the sword down.

“God is real—yes. Absolutely. But the ‘hell’ Tang saw was another world; a place called Faerie. The things you’ve been collecting aren’t imbued with the power of God, but magic.”

Harbonah pushed off from the turret and rolled along his shoulders, reversing their positions so that he was pressing chaos against the turret. “Has the Lord spoken to you personally? Said that ‘This is no Hell’ and ‘These are not Relics?’”

“Of course not.” Chaos replied, trying unsuccessfully to break free of the hold.

“Then how do you know they aren’t just Hell and relics by another name?” Harbonah put his free forearm across Chaos’s throat.

Chaos couldn’t answer, but that was mostly because his windpipe was obstructed and spots were starting to form. His mind was starting to drift and at the speed of thought, he was wondering just how sure he really was that Faerie wasn’t an aspect of hell or that the demons weren’t the same beings from scripture.

Laurel would talk about how the Faerie creatures were decidedly not metaphysical; could be hurt or killed by human hands and human weapons. She’d explain that the crossover events were detectable events and how some of the denizens of Faerie were even clearly on the side of good and working with the prelate team out of Los Angeles.

But how did he know that a few thousand years of drift, plus translation errors and creative editing while they were being transcribed hadn’t obfuscated metaphors that could clearly be identified as the same things seen in Faerie. After all, even with his limited scholarship in on the subject, he knew that ‘hell’ itself was a translation convention for Sheol, Gehenna and Tartarus and those were intended to be three different places. Maybe Faerie was known as one of them in the past. Maybe they were different regions in Faerie.

Except he didn’t believe that.

His vision was fading, but he wasn’t conceding the point even in that moment, especially as he felt Harbonah trying to bring his sword up to ram into his belly.

Said fading vision fell on the parachutes above them. He could see the treeline now—they were very close to the ground. Close enough that he could do something in confidence that it wouldn’t be fatal.

“I. Don’t.” He wheezed at Harbonah, covering up what he was doing.

A cold smile came to the other man’s face. “At least in death, you admit it.”

A moment later, all the air in one of the tank’s three chutes rushed out of it, causing it to collapse and the tank to list violently. Harbonah stumbled back, opening two crucial feet between the pair. Chaos pulled air into his lungs first, then summoned a tightly compacted burst into the Adriel member’s chest.

The blast drove Harbonah off the side of the tank, and he was too stunned to use his conjured wings before he hit the ground just over ten feet below. Impact knocked the sword from his hand and the wings of light guttered out.

Chaos leapt from the tank and took flight just before it hit the ground much too hard not to knock the crew inside around. “But I have faith that even if you’re right, you’re still responding to it wrong.” He told Harbonah, dropping down to kick the sword away from the villain.

Into the comm he said, “Fax, on my way, just as soon as I make sure the tank crew are down for the count.”

He didn’t get a chance to make good on that, as at that moment, a column of black fire rose up from the direction of the mound.

***

Hope was running flat out down the passage leading into the burial mound. For whatever reason, Vamanos hadn’t shown up to run her in, so she was forced to get there under her own power with Ephemeral not far behind.

Her heart was pounding, but only half of that was exertion—Laurel made sure everyone in the group stayed in good shape with personalized training regimens to fit into their day and help with their combat styles. It had been a while since she’d been needed for more than scrapes, bruises and broken bones for the team and she had been given every reason to believe that streak was now broken.

A few years ago, she’d been sure that being the medic was a role she could play on the team. Fighting wasn’t her thing and her powers had seemed useless. But at the time, she’d been cold and her teammates mostly just annoyed her. Putting a superhuman bandage on wounds earned through doing things she thought was idiotic should have been easy.

Then Samael had put a flechette through Warrick’s lung and proved all that wrong. It took a pep talk (given a certain definition of ‘pep talk) from an avowed villainess to bring Hope back from the brink of hysterical so she could heal that. And that was before she’d started appreciating the people around her.

Now…

She rounded almost tripped over something and came to a halt, discovering it was one of Alloy’s tentacles. It had pierced through what Codex had assured them was one of the hardest materials in existence and was slowly pulling Alloy through the arch leading into the chamber beyond.

All of Hope’s fears were realized when she got a look at her friend. The belly section of his armor had been torn open, presumably by the tentacles, along with the lower half g his helm, giving him space to breathe. Said breath was coming out in ragged gasps as dark blood oozed out of a wound in his stomach, staining the black T-shirt he wore under the armor.

“Oh god…” She muttered, dropping to her knees beside him. Her hands automatically stretched out to covered the wound as she fumbled to direct her power into it. Only vaguely was she aware of Darkness, who had only just leapt up from beside Alloy, or the looming thing that dominated the room and glowed what she somehow understood was an angry white.

Alloy needed her more than she needed to figure out what was going on, and she trusted Ephemeral and Darkness to protect her while she worked.

Somewhere above her, Ephemeral’s breath was starting to come ragged and she heard his footsteps move around her and into a defensive position. That got her attention, because as powerful as he was, Ephemeral wasn’t such a physical powerhouse that he would normally try and shield someone.

Still pouring her power (sometimes, when there was nothing else to capture her attention, she wondered what exactly it was she felt draining into the people she healed, seeing as she was, in theory, just amping up their natural healing), Hope looked up and really wished she hadn’t.

Darkness had tackled a man, presumably Richter, onto… a giant anvil?… at the feet of a giant, black-winged angel. The angel—the angrily glowing thing—was pulsing with light and seemed to be disintegrating at the edges. Pieces of it were tearing off its body and transforming into lances of light, all aimed at…

Oh god. Hope mentally repeated herself.

They were spearing into Darkness’s back by the hundreds—by the thousands even. It was made worse by the fact that Darkness wasn’t screaming; wasn’t even moving except for the struggles of Richter, who was pinned to the anvil beneath her. The same glow surrounding the deconstructing angel was starting to envelope her ex-roommate and friend.

By the time the last skeins of light were done peeling off and joining their brethren, Richter had gotten his wits back and bucked Darkness off him. She stumbled back, rubbing her eyes with the heels of her palms while Richter grabbed something off the anvil and brandished it at her.

Only years worth of facing down the insane and impossible kept Hope from thinking his aiming an empty sword hilt at Darkness was a foolish move. All the same, she put her focus back on Alloy’s wound while keeping half an eye on the fight.

Fragments of the shattered bullet were being forced out as tissues forcefully regenerated and knit together. The flow of blood ebbed as ragged blood vessels rejoined into a proper network.

“It’s done.” declared Richter. “The Doctor’s army will have taken out the rest of your friends by now and the relic is in our hands now.” He noticed Ephemeral behind Darkness and pointed the hilt at him. “And no mental tricks; I’m warning you.”

“No.” The cold voice that came from Darkness’s mouth was not her own. Or rather, it wasn’t just her own. It buzzed and overlapped with another, oddly cadenced voice that made Hope vaguely uncomfortable. “You were warned. And while you were saved from being the instrument of your group’s defeat, you will still fail.”

Darkness’s hand came up and was wreathed instantly in black heat. Only instead of firing it off in a beam as she was wont to do, the strange particulate matter formed into a clawed hand as big as her torso and reached out to grab Richter. A smaller claw then extended from one of the conjured claw’s fingers to grasp the his wrist, twisting it painfully even as he was wrenched off the ground. The hilt fell from numb fingers to clang on the chamber’s floor.

Biting back a groan of pain, Richter glared at Darkness. “Y-you’ve never been able to do this before!”

“She was unaware of the bulk of what she was capable of.” replied Darkness. The black heat exploded into being around her, twisting and taking solid shape; a pair of black-feathered wings, patterns of Celtic symbols across her skin, and a combination of a black breastplate and a flowing ebon gown that flowed around her legs.

Clutching her hand, she swung Richter around toward the archway leading to the surface. “Now you will bear witness to it. This is the power that will lay waste to your army and return peace to Avalon.”

The black wings spread wide, she took wing with Richter still her captive, flying out of the mound without a second glance to the others still left in the room.

For a moment, the only sounds in the room were the tinkle of broken crystal as someone struggled to rise from the remains of the shattered quartz crystals, and the ragged breathing and groans of Alloy, Occult, Hope and Ephemeral.

“What the…” Hope started.

“Things going from bad to worse.” Occult said, through grit teeth. She had the Digi-book of Reason out and was paging through it. “The ‘angel’ was some kind of advanced spell meant to protect the sword over there.” She inclined her head toward the anvil. “I’m not sure what it was supposed to do, but it was meant to do it to that Richter guy, not Darkness. We need to figure out a way to stop it before… well I have no idea what’s going to happen if we don’t.”

***

Darkness swept out of the mound on dark wings and threw Richter out ahead of her. A gesture caused a geyser of black fire to rise up and catch him before he hit the ground, the rising pillar carrying him above the trees while she rose steadily beside him.

At its zenith, the column solidified into crystal, trapping Richter’s legs and arms, leaving him leaning out with a view of the clearing where tanks and Adriel foot soldiers were moving out.

“Your people sought to take Caldabolg for your own purposes, to say nothing for the defense of this world. The All-Cutting Sword is not for you. And now the price for your presumption is due.”

Holding out a hand, she conjured a wicked glaive out of her black heat; a dark haze surrounding the double-edged blade and black flames playing about the serrated back edge. It was as solid and real as anything Richter had seen and more than anything else, it planted the seed of doubt in his head as to what Darkness was actually capable of.

The black wings swept out and she was about to take flight when she stopped and cocked her head. “What manner of strangeness is this?” She muttered, holding a hand to her ear. “Who is this? How do you address me without being seen?”

Richter tried to wriggled free. An extremely powerful foe was one thing, but a powerful insane one was another.

“Chaos?” Darkness asked, then her demeanor changed. The glaive and wings lost some of their cohesion and she dipped in the air. “Ian?! I… how did I get…” Then she tore something small out of her ear and threw it to the ground far below. “Be gone, distraction! The defense of this world trumps everything!”

Once more the wings blazed. One more the glaive took on terrifying solidity. The Fallen Angel was once more in control.

To Be Continued…