- 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
“What the hell was that?” Chaos demanded into the comm; not just to Darkness (because her comm had gone offline), but to the entire team.
“No idea, but it can’t be good.” Facsimile replied. Further commentary was cut off by the sound of another shriek by Gospel. When Facsimile came back,s he was speaking through grit teeth. “But we’re not so good here either. That distraction would be really nice!”
Chaos rose into the air, but his focus was divided. In one direction lay the battle where Gospel was keeping everyone topside at bay and the two remaining tanks would be coming to reinforce soon. In the other lay the pillar of solid, black flame and his fiancee, clearly out of her mind and doing things with her powers she’d never been capable of before as well as the rest of the team, apparently still incommunicado.
His head and his heart said to go to Darkness. She his heart. She was also now a very potent threat if her odd rant was any indication. But his conscience said that he couldn’t abandon the young people he still thought of as ‘the kids’ or Grand Dodger to Gospel and the remaining Adriel army.
There was a reason, he thought, that he was neither the overall leader, nor the field leader. When in doubt though, he always fell back on doing what Codex would do.
“Distraction coming up, Fax.” His voice was tight and he wondered if they could tell. “Vamanos, break off and get to the mound. Find out where everyone else is and get them back in the fight.” Then he remembered hearing Codex earlier and switched channels to call her privately. “Codex, where are you?”
“I was on my way back to the jet for medical supplies and food.” she replied. “But that’s on the back burner now. I’m trying to figure out what happened.”
Summoning a gale to launch him toward those part of the team engaging Gospel, Chaos grit his teeth. “What do you see? What’s wrong with her, L?”
“Not sure.” Codex admitted. “When we went in, there was magical entity down there made to look a lot like she does now. It was some sort of defense mechanism that said that the Adriel’s ‘power would be turned against them’.”
“So this magic thing is… what? Using Al… Darkness to take out the Adriel?” Chaos had to force himself to stay on course. Along the way, he filled his palms with more water to create a pair of Chaos Novas.
“That’d be me guess. It might let her go when it’s done, but…”
“We’re not going to take chances on that.” Chaos cut her off. “I’m going to help take care of Gospel, then we’re going to find some way to get her back.” The noise of the wind around him was deafening by now, and the treetops whipped violently below him even as they blurred past.
It wasn’t hard to find where the fight with Gospel was. The tree Facsimile knocked down at the start of the battle had torn down branches and limbs from all the trees around it, leaving a visible wound at the edge of the treeline.
Gospel was standing on that same fallen tree, sending sonic bursts at anything that moved and wasn’t dressed like one of the Adriel foot soldiers This included Chaos when he appeared overhead.
Seeing the hooded man turning in his direction, Chaos threw a Chaos Nova down at him and barrel-rolled off to the side. The wall of sound hit the nova dead-on, detonating it in a riot of light and noise. It provided perfect cover for Chaos to launch the second nova from a different angle.
Not perfect enough, as Gospel ad just enough time to notice the orb of water, its core shining like a distant star, coming trough the smoke and snap off another shriek.
He did not, however have time to react as a golden-striped tiger leapt up on the fallen tree from his left, and certainly not enough time to block when Grand Dodger broke from cover and hurled one of his kali sticks at him. Ears of practice throwing what should have been a weapon unbalanced for throwing made his aim true and it crashed perfectly into Gospel’s jaw. Facsimile finished the take-down by pouncing, knocking him off the tree and onto the cold ground below.
With their super-powered cover fire suppressed, the Adriel were immediately subject once again to sniping from the trees that encased them in foam or stunned them with noise and light. Grand Dodger and Facsimile joined in on the clean-up. The tanks didn’t come to reinforce the foot soldiers: they instead turned toward the new threat represented by the pillar of solid flame.
***
The pain was easing. That was the first coherent thought Alloy had had in a while. Between the screaming pain, the creeping cold, and the twins panicking in his head, his world had been chaos for the last… however long it had been; he didn’t know.
Less pain was small comfort against the nasty, somehow aggressively bland taste of whatever had been crammed in his mouth.
“Blugff?!” He said eloquently.
“I understand that it is bad, but you need to chew and swallow. As you know, healing takes a great deal out of you, and this is the most nutritionally dense food available.”
Kareem’s voice, he recognized. Well, Ephemeral since they were on the job. The ‘nutritionally dense’ line rang a bell too, but he was too muddled at the moment to think about it. He remembered the mental attack, going after the two Adriel, then… anger spiked… Richter had shot him in the gut as a distraction.
He swallowed, more to clear his mouth then to get rid of the taste, which he feared was going to linger. “Thou shalt not kill, remember? What kind of church man are you?” His father had gotten a part in the revival of that one and that was his favorite line.
“…what?”
Oh right, he’d said that out loud. “Ugh. That guy shot me.” That was better. Not like that hadn’t been abundantly clear. Somewhere in his pain-addled mind, he was trying to remember if the talk of an All-Cutting Sword was a thing that had happened or something from a project his father had also worked on.
Another square of awful was shoved in his mouth. “In a very difficult to heal place.” Ephemeral informed him.
In the stomach. He remembered that. He also remembered from movies the damage that could do: the torn stomach lining, the acid leaking out into the rest of the torso… no wonder his mind was scrambled from pain.
…and then came the wake-up call. Not from the memories starting to surface: the angelic yet sinister figure standing on an anvil, the second shot that certainly his someone else, or Alexis—Darkness’s–voice spouting insane nonsense with the Voice of Legion. No, it came from his taste memory in a moment of totally misplaced outrage.
“Blech! This is L… Codex’s Complete Loaf!”
One of the problems with having a super genius around was that sometimes they did things smart instead of right. Codex’s ultra-emergency rations were like that, a preserved biscuit of bran, ground beef live, kale, sardines, blueberries, garlic seaweed potatoes and a fistful of vitamin supplements designed to give a full day’s necessary nutrition in a form that could be carried anywhere on a costume. They tasted exactly like one would imagine.
“I can’t carry a dozen bags of chips in my chest cavity like Facsimile.” Hope’s voice snapped from somewhere nearby. “Don’t complain, we’ve got to eat the same thing.”
Alloy’s thoughts cleared some at that, and he craned his neck to find Hope kneeling beside Occult, who was lying back against the chamber’s wall, trying to read the Digi-book of reason.
“Occult? You okay?”
She nodded. “Better than you. He just got me in the leg.” A small smile crossed her face, “But complaining about the food is a good sign for you.”
“Just glad we’re all alive.” said Alloy, allowing the twins to help him sit up. “Where’s the woman Richter came in with?”
“Injured.” Ephemeral supplied. “I am keeping her mind unfocused until we can do more to subdue her.”
Alloy groaned and, with the twins’ help, got to his feet. “Let’s get to the subduing. Whatever she does to you there’s no fighting back against it. All that training to defend from Astral attack and it’s like she didn’t even go at me from the Astral side.” He rubbed the still-tender new flesh under his ripped shirt and armor. “I’m not sure what’s real and what I hallucinated… what was with that angel thing?”
“Trouble.” said Occult. “it’s Avalon’s defensive mechanism. The Book’s pointed me to the component spells that make it up, and it looks like it’s possessed Darkness. The intent is that it can force a possessed mage to cast spells they know against their enemies, but it looks like it works just as well to make people use their powers.”
“More than use their powers.” added Ephemeral. “Darkness was using abilities I’ve never seen her use.”
Hope frowned. “Me neither. And I doubt she’s been holding back all these years. The way she… it… talked, it sounds like it can use your powers in ways you can even if you don’t know it.”
“That’s a scary thought.” Alloy mumbled.
“Indeed.” said Ephemeral. “And now that you’re healed and Occult soon will be, we need to get topside and find out what’s going on.” He turned to Occult. “Are there ways to break a possession by something like this?”
The mage shook her head. “There are ways to break demonic possessions, ghostly possessions, and control from any number of faerie and fey creatures… but nothing for this. In fact, it seems like the Book is leaving that out on purpose.”
“On purpose?” Hope scoffed.
“The Books do what they want.” Occult said, shaking her head. “If it doesn’t want us breaking the possession, nothing I can do will convince it to tell me.”
Alloy shifted the piece of armor that the tentacles ripped off him into a crutch to help his still-shaky steps as the made his way over to where the mind-altering Adriel member crashed through the quartz earlier. Sure enough, he found her still trying to sit up, covered in superficial cuts.
Before she even noticed him there, he jabbed his makeshift crutch in her direction, causing the tip of it to melt off and wrap around the woman’s mouth turning the veil into a gag.
“There. Ephemeral, you got zip cuffs on you?”
“I do.” Ephemeral came over, producing the requested items and making to bind the Adriel woman’s eyes.
In the meantime, Alloy looked around the room, both his eyes and metal senses settling on something lying behind the anvil. “It that a sword hilt?” Having made his share of swords alongside armor and jewelry to sell online, he knew it was, but an empty hilt seemed out of place.
Occult took a moment to swallow the piece of Complete Loaf forced on her by Hope. “It was on the anvil. If what the Angel said is true, that’s Caldabolg, the All-Cutting Sword.”
Osp snaked out and retrieved the weapon before Alloy could ask it to, delivering it into his hand. “Why did it just leave it here if the whole point is to protect it? Especially with Richter’s friend over there still down here?”
“No idea.” said Ephemeral. “But I’m not sure you should touch it—we don’t need more wrath from the guardian of this place.”
Alloy considered the hilt. There was no slot for a sword’s tang to be threaded through, only a slight indentation between the four prongs extending fro the pommel. “That, or this might be the only weapon around here that works against it. I mean, if it’s going around taking people over against their will, it’s the kind of thing we go up against, right? Occult, got any idea how this works?”
He gave an experimental thrust and a burst of light flared into being. Between the prongs, there appeared something like a bright, blue flame, only flattened into two dimensions. Said flame was only about as long as his index finger.
“… answered my own question. This is seriously the all-Cutting Sword? It’s not even a dagger.”
“That would probably be because you do not actually know how it works.” Ephemeral couldn’t help but laugh. “But regardless, we need to leave now: Occult is healed, and we’re of no help to anyone here.”
***
Chaos didn’t wait any longer than it took to make sure his distraction was enough to defeat Gospel. As soon as he saw the villain go down, he turned in air and sped off toward Darkness.
The pillar of black heat remained, marking the location of the mound. Only now, he was able to make out a cage of the same substance slowly expanding over the entire mound—and the winged woman directing it into being.
As if sensing his presence, Darkness looked back over her shoulder at him. Even at a distance, he could almost feel the malevolent glare just before a series of black heat sickle blades peeled off one of the Celtic designs on her back and hurtled toward him.
A blast of air tore the attack apart in mid-air and Chaos surged toward his fiancee. “Darkness!” He shouted, “Talk to me! What’s going on here?” His answer came in the form of another storm of black heat blades, each of which he once again destroyed with more concentrated blasts of air.
One more surge, and he closed the space between them. “Darkness, come on. I know it’s cliché, but… but snap out of it!” He put his hand on her upper arm, but in a blur of motion too fast for his eyes to follow, she whirled, grabbed his own arm in turn, and used it to throw him into the black heat pillar.
His cape and the ballistic cloth of his costume took most of the impact, but before he could bounce off it, or slide down the side, Darkness slammed into him, a web of black heat snaking out to bind him to the pillar.
Normally green eyes blazed silvery as Darkness glared at him. “You will not interfere. Those who assault Avalon will be destroyed for the sake of this world’s defense.”
Chaos glared back. “If this isn’t Alexis, then who am I talking to?”
The glare didn’t lose any ferocity as she stated, “I am First of Twelve, the Fallen Angel, Guardian of the Forge and the Forged. As put forth by the cunning folk of ages long gone by to ensure that the Forged do not fall into the hands of the wicked. ‘Alexis’ interfered with the dispensation of justice and now her power will be turned against those who would take the All-Cutting Sword for frivolous purposes.”
Trying hard to keep his voice steady, Chaos asked, “Did she volunteer for this?”
“She interfered. It was meant to be the man, Richter.”
“Is she alright with it now?”
“That is irrelevant. The power is needed to defend Avalon.” the Angel replied coldly.
Chaos narrowed his eyes at her. “No. It. Is. Not.”
A twist of his wrists emptied the entirety of his water reservoirs, the contents of which, he quickly worked his will over, just like his brother had once shown him. Blades of solidified water lashed out, cutting away the web of black heat while at the same time, he pushed off from the pillar.
He knocked her glaive aside when she raised it to block him, then threw his arms around her in a bear hug that pinned her arms to her sides. “I’m going to give you one chance here: leave Alexis now, or I’m going to make you—and don’t think I can’t because we’ve got a mentalist here with us.”
That cold glare stared back at him, and the Angel replied, “Then you are also an enemy of Avalon.”
The words were scarcely out of her mouth before the first blast of black heat exploded around her.
To Be Continued…
I find it interesting that the ‘ultimate weapon’ prepared against Maeve is Caladbolg, which in the Irish mythology was wielded by Fergus mac Róich, who was a lover of Maeve.
Much like Arthur, Fergus’s legend was co-opted into clues by the Cunning Folk, then corrupted by years of oral tradition.
Ooh, that invites speculation about what the different elements of Cattle raid of Cooley refer to in the Descendants mythology. One could maybe surmise that Conchobar mac Nessa, Maeve’s first husband with whom she ended up warring with, could be the same character as Erolking. And of course the ‘fords’ where Cú Chulainn held Maeve’s army at bay start looking like portals between worlds when considered in this kind of light.
I do love speculation!
Typos & oddities
thing on he anvil,
the
made he too tense
her
around occult who
around Occult, who
“Then you quest
your
4 Books
four Books
ensorcerelled
ensorcelled
arrived while it
arrived, then it
Aside from that, she was wearing tactical webbing
She’s wearing a face veil, tactical webbing and nothing else? Really?
paragraph starting Something cold and insidious
Technically correct but too many its for clarity.
he unsummned them
unsummoned
It really is ‘4 books’
Also: wow, nothing but tactical webbing. That’s a whole new fetish.
Typos
Chaos go his
got
toy you boy have
boys
panic and fleet
flee
deflect to rounds
two
“Indeed that are.”
Could be they are , we are or that they are.
on Adriel member
one
The raises up your
He
resource that make war over
that they make
At the bequest
request
Caldabolg
Caladbolg
was dull and plain
it was dull and plain
The construct seems to change voice from formal to colloquial in this chapter. I’m not sure if that was intended. Also the Dodger still sounds more archaic than the construct; again, not sure if that was intended.
Actually, it’s just the one comment by the construct – “Did he now?” – that made me think that it sounded colloquial. The rest is still formal as it was before.
The construct is supposed to sound more weird than archaic because it’s learning (modern) English out of their heads.
No excuses for Dodger. New character, trying to pin down voice and I guess the more formal Silence’s voice is bleeding into his.
Typos and a few comments
Ephemeral too, there’s apparently a mentalist here too.”
One too many too’s IMO, I’d drop the second.
The Dodger’s sounding like a Brit from this century, that’s good.
pressing chaos against
Chaos
tightly compacted burst
Um. Focused? Compressed or concentrated?
lower half g his
of his
out to covered the wound
cover
through grit teeth.
gritted
to say nothing for the defense of this world
Maybe save instead of ‘say’, or of instead of ‘for’, or not instead of ‘to say nothing’. It doesn’t quite make sense as written.
A glaive is to quote wikipedia “a European polearm weapon, consisting of a single-edged blade on the end of a pole”. A double-edged blade is probably some variety of spear.
Richter tried to wriggled free
wriggle
One more the glaive
Once
Maybe I’m thinking ranseur. I need to look it up. The original character of Darkness had a ‘lance’ that was really a spear, so… I’m bad at this.
“…came back,s he was…”
Misplaced space.
“She his heart.”
Missing the predicate.
“…bran, ground beef live, kale, sardines, blueberries, garlic seaweed potatoes and a fistful of vitamin supplements…”
Missing some commas and the r from liver.
“…Caldabolg…”
Caladbolg.
there was magical entity
was a magical
Adriel foot soldiers This
missing a full stop after soldiers
Gospel ad just
had
Ears of practice
Years
extending fro the
from
bind the Adriel woman’s eyes.
With zip cuffs?
Certain things are looking familiar from the forums…
Anyone else find it odd that someone who used mind control to get a powerset immediately has names for their attacks with those powers?
Maybe Alexis always thought them but didn’t say them?
>_>
<_<
The commas came back
comms
controlled by rogue guardian
by a rogue
issued out of every opening in seam of the vehicle,
Maybe ‘the seams’ instead of ‘seam’? Or ‘and’ instead of ‘in’?
weapon’s ax head
An axe now? – a glaive is like a single edged knife or cleaver, on the end of a stick. Is it morphing? That seems sort of reasonable considering what it’s made of, but it might be worth mentioning it.
raised the glaive on guard.
to guard.
& yes, it’s nice that someone has obviously been sending anime comic books or shows to King Arthur’s tomb.
I had forgotten it was a glaive (and yeah, I finally settled on glaive after looking at some pictures) and wrote ‘halberd’ in this chapters, which is where the ax head came from.
Typos
The one flew true
Might be ‘This one’ or ‘The second one’ or something like that
before its crashed
it
non-too
none too
grunt f exertion
of
Codex b the arm,
by
capture limb painfully
captured
did it one the
on
whether or not the possessed by of Darkness
Lose the ‘by of’ I think.
orange being peels,
peeled,
lift her n his
in
jeopardize her healthy.
health.
I’ve often wondered when reading superhero stories (web or comic), why the absolute, unrelenting opposition to killing? I know it’s not something you want to encourage, but cops shoot to kill, and so do soldiers, but as soon as you get super powers and fight people that can destroy entire cities, NOW it’s un-heroic? What will they do if they ever come up against a case where it is literally ‘Them-or-us’? Sacrifice their life or the lives of innocents so they don’t have to kill? Or will they never face a situation like that because it will never be written that way?
Soldiers and cops have public mandates, accountability, and TRAINING. Superheroes are private citizens with (largely) secret identities. You really don’t want random private citizens getting away with tons of murders without any of the discipline and training to tell when and where to apply it or how to handle it.
Also, frankly, given the past two years, its time for the cops to dial back on the killing too and soldiers aren’t being properly cared for when it comes to dealing with it.
Plus, given superpowers and the massive resources some of these people have, they have no excuse for not at least looking for alternatives. A cop or soldier isn’t bulletproof or the equivalent. And the likes of Batman or Ted Kord have more advanced armor than public funds will get and thus don’t have the self defense justification most of the time.
Finally, I am not sympathetic at all the killer ‘heroes’ like Punisher of Cable. They’re villains who happen to kill people society is cool with murdering.
Nothing to add. I just think you’re right.
I think there’s one other reason to be opposed to superheroes killing, related to everything you said. Because they are essentially private citizens who put themselves in harm’s way of their own free will without oversight, the entire nature of “self-defense” is a murky concept with superheroes. If someone breaks into my house with a gun and I kill him to survive, I think that’s morally okay. If I get attacked while walking to the subway, it’s the same thing again. If I go out looking for trouble (no matter how well-intentioned I might be) then it changes the situation drastically, because life-threatening dangers are not being imposed on me against my will. The dynamic is different when you SEEK OUT dangerous situations actively, with intent and forethought.
I totally agree with everything you said, though. I also think it’s worth noting that saying “superheroes shouldn’t kill” doesn’t necessarily mean “a single death causes me to judge a superhero to be a bad person.” If Batman knocks someone off of a roof to stop him from pressing the trigger that would set off a bomb, I wouldn’t be happy about the death, but I wouldn’t write him off as a bad guy, either. I think some people assume that anyone who wants superheroes not to kill is applying ridiculously judgmental standards, which is just…not true.
note: Not directing that as a barb at you, Kobin. Just observing something I’ve seen when the question came up in the past.
Anyway, to me the central question of any super-powered story/setting is: People get power. How do they use it? It’s one thing to kill in war or self-defense, but superheroes are operating on their individual (or small-group) ideologies. There’s a difference between a person or small group killing someone and a court system killing someone (when the courts work, at least).
Narratively, I also believe that stories tend to work better when death isn’t cheap (unless death being cheap is part of the point). If a “superhero” kills too often or a story contains too many deaths, then it ceases to hold the same dramatic weight. So, there’s that.
If random people can get away with killing you end up with an horribly dysfunctional society. For example, see Stone Burners where the author took that idea and ran with it.
There’s other options where heroes can get some sort of sanction for killing, but the stories either ignore the consequences or have some sort of oversight which you don’t normally associate with superheroes. Drew Hayes’ Super Powereds springs to mind.
It goes all the way back to golden age Superman and the very roots of the superhero genre as a twisted justification fantasy where the schoolyard bully beats up whoever they like and that makes them a hero. You see, they only beat up bad people (like those who think they’re so smart or like wrong things), and they don’t kill. Clearly heroic, right?
When your heroes start killing when necessary, it shifts the whole genre. You no longer have heroes, you have benevolent tyrants whose judgment you can’t opt out of and who answer to nobody. Note how this is the only difference between, say, JLA and the Authority.
Actually, in the Golden age, they Looooooved killing. Batman killed a dude by punching him into acid in his very first comic. Flash let a bunch of villains get gassed, then ran the other off a cliff. Thou Shalt Not Kill only really came into effect during the Silver Age when superheroes got a retool into gee-whizz sci-fi stories with an undercurrent of the betterment of society (as a contrast to the Golden Age’s tendency to kill their way out of their problems.)
Also, Superman was invented by two Jewish kids as an outlet to dream up someone who would protect them from the many, MANY people who bullied THEM. The people he beats up in Action Comics 1 are: a wifebeater and some dudes who kidnap Lois. Now if you want to get into the kidnappings he commits (binds and gags a murderer to take her to the governor in order to prevent an execution, picked up and carries the governor’s butler when he isn’t allowed to see the governor, picks up and carries away a lobbyist who is implied to be trying to legally trick the US into entering WWII on the Axis side)… I have no idea where he was taking that last guy. Massive, festering corruption isn’t illegal in congress.
Sorry Mazzon, but your analysis is incorrect.
Also, it’s weird that this is the story that triggered this conversation because the Angel attacked those dudes out of spite. This was a villain killing other villains.
Unless the issue is the Descendants working to save them. In which case, this isn’t any different from what police (are supposed to) do. If you shoot someone and they’re down but alive, you call an ambulance. You don’t for example, leave them in the middle of the street for four hours while you go make up some story about being attacked by the Incredible Hulk and warding him off with your standard issue Gamma bullets.
>expanding mas of black heat
No mas! No mas!
Typos
hard to breath
breathe
expanding mas of black
mass
Not a typo – but it’s amazing Alexis never experimented enough to find a basic limit like that. Well, I guess she isn’t a guy.
From the constructs the Angel created though, assuming it wasn’t part of a spell, accounted for enough
Either lose ‘From’ or change ‘accounted’ to ‘there was’ IMO. Or something like that, it doesn’t quite scan.
just to get help thin
Lose ‘get’ or ‘get help’
Chaos ‘s
Chaos’s
To be continued when I’ve dealt with an overexcited puppy.
Choas noted that it
Chaos
place staed its hand.
stayed
Hucking this sword
Chucking
you cold find
could
I attack them almost ten minutes ago.
attacked
others got into gar,
gear,
An rested his chin
Ian
Just finished a full binge through your archive, and man, what a place to wind up. Excellent stor(y/ies), completely baffled how you keep them all straight. I’ll be adding The Descendants to my reading list, keep up the great work!
Typos-
“The one commands”–> should be “This”
“E didn’t care”– > should be “He”
Also, not in this chapter, but this is sorta a recurring one throughout the archive, “bought”- – > should be “brought”