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

It was instinct more than anything that had Chaos calling up a wall of wind. Just in time, as it turned out; a whirlwind of black heat began forming up on the Fallen Angel, a wave of air hot enough to make it hard to breath preceding it.

Sterilize. To destroy microorganisms, usually with high temperature. To make a land barren or unproductive.

Part of his brain was trying to cope by being completely analytical. It wasn’t helping. It wasn’t if it he needed to run down the dictionary definitions to know that the expanding mas of black heat was meant to kill everyone on the island. He didn’t even need to notice how the mud at their feet was baking to brick and the grass nearby was withering.

All he really needed to put into his mind was that he needed to dissipate the black heat—or dark matter if Codex was right—faster than the Fallen Angel could generate it. He threw his powers against the mass, forcing its density down while directing a whirlwind of his own against hers. The atmosphere saturated with the particles almost instantly, casting them in a dusky haze that was warm instead of oven-hot.

The analytical part of his mind, however, continued to not be helpful, noting that no one—not even Alexis—knew her actual limit. It hadn’t come up. Blasting beams of it, using it to reduce the weight of people and objects (including her mode of flight), and cloaking herself in it were esoteric but limited uses of the stuff and there’d never been any reason to see how much she could produce.

From the constructs the Angel created though, assuming it wasn’t part of a spell, accounted for enough to easily fill a stadium and she didn’t look like she was nearing the bottom of the barrel.

Chaos on the other hand had a limited range where his powers would work, and eventually, he wouldn’t be able to keep the black heat diffuse.

Luckily, he wasn’t the only one there, and now that the distraction plan was a bust, they weren’t attacking one at a time.

Renaissance charge from the left while Codex arrived from the right with her tonfas at the ready. The black heat was still pouring out of the air around her, but the Fallen Angel didn’t try to use it offensively any more than she already was with the spell. Instead, she reached up and pulled the scarf from around her neck.

Operating what looked like a decorative brooch on the scarf, she whipped it around low toward Renaissance’s legs. An electrical current traveled along the length of what looked like cloth, transforming it into a slightly flexible staff that easily tripped Renaissance into the mud.

As she turned to block Codex, however, she was hit from behind by Grand Dodger and his kali sticks, breaking her form and sending her on the defensive.

Chaos knew he should try something—anything–besides just keeping the black heat from concentrating, but his mind was elsewhere. Namely, on the scarf-turned bo staff. The media barely knew about the thing Alexis used it so rarely. That the Angel knew suggested…

…except it didn’t; not what he was hoping it did. Thinking back, he remember the structure she conjured to lift Alloy. It was the basic frame he used for his powered armor designs. According to Codex, the Angel spoke modern American English from the start. It had pounded on Zero’s defenses to drain her.

“It’s stealing thoughts right out of our heads.” he said into the comm. After a half dozen variations on ‘what?’, he expanded. “The Angel… thing. It’s using skills and knowledge we have that it couldn’t possibly know. Maybe that’s by design: to make sure it can react appropriately to whoever shows up looking to stop Maeve. It can’t be targeted though, because it still fell for the distraction plan, and we’ve been able to catch it by surprise.”

Grand Dodger ducked under a thrust from the Angel’s staff and watched as she parried and knocked down Codex. “Brilliant. But how can we use that?”

“No idea.” Chaos admitted.

What had looked like mud at the Angel’s feet burbled before extruding dozens of ensnaring tentacles that grabbed her and lifted her bodily. “How about we just keep surprising her?” Facsimile’s voice asked, though highly distorted hanks to her faux-mud form. A set of tentacles took the staff from the Fallen Angel and flung it away before binding her arms behind her back. “Hey Z! Got this idea from those movies you think no one knows you have on your laptop!”

Zero’s ‘eep’ was drowned out by the enraged screech of the Angel. Some of the black heat twisted around her and began to cover her body like it did when she used it to fly. Only where where Darkness’s flight mode wasn’t any warmer than body temperature, where the particles spread this time, Facsimile’s skin blistered and burned, prompting the shapeshifter to yelp and let her go.

The Angel hit the ground in a roll, black heat still rolling off her in waves. The diffused particles were becoming less so as Chaos’s wind was now only pushing them into more particles. The temperate Avalon climate was now oppressively sweltering.

A different kind of wave came in moments later. The remnants of the aluminum wall Alloy tried to block the burial mound with was now in liquid form and extending pseudopods in an attempt to engulf the Angel. When she tried to dodge, Vamanos slammed her from behind, pushing her into the descending wall of liquid metal. It folded over and around her, becoming a thick shell shot through with air holes.

That didn’t last long, as black heat poured from those holes, and the heat built rapidly, causing the attempted prison to melt and run like wax until the Angel flew up and out of it.

Using her powers to fly and defend herself was stemming the flow of new black heat, but even the trickle was helping with the build-up and Chaos was resorting to compressing some of it at ground level just to get help thin its presence in the air. The particles themselves didn’t hinder breathing, but the heat was steadily climbing, especially for those physically engaged.

Chaos was weighing his options as to what to try next when a lance of blue energy stabbed into the sky after the Angel, splitting into arcing branches that then closed around her in a spherical cage. At the same time, the encroaching heat ebbed a degree or two and Chaos wanted to slap himself for forgetting that one of their team converted heat energy to psychokinetic.

While the Angel raged and attempted to break free with the Black Drill, Zero rose into the air, pouring energy into the cage freely, as the particulate-choked air fed her a continuous stream of power.

“O-okay, I’ve got her.” Zero said over the comms. “But what do I do with her if we can’t exorcise the thing in her head?”

“The Book isn’t giving me anything new.” came Occult’s concerned reply. “I had to search for the exorcism page by page, so… I don’t know what else we can even try.”

Heedless of how it was being used against her, the Fallen Angel continued to exude black heat and rake the psychokinetic cage with her glaive to no avail, screaming curses. Choas noted that it called Zero a ‘gob head’; the only person on the team he knew used that dated anti-Brazilian slur without even knowing that it was a racist war relic was Facsimile. He wondered just how much the Angel picked up, if the component ghosts’ rage could force it off task and Cyn’s mere presence had it spewing juvenile insults.

“Some restraints would be helpful.” Grand Dodger said dryly. “And enough tranquilizer to put a whole village under.”

Codex watched as Zero lowered the cage back to the ground. “Ephemeral, do you think you can do anything?”

“The minds overlap too much for me to latch on to any one.” He replied. “And they overlap on the astral plane as well. Any damage I do to the construct could easily do harm to Darkness.”

Codex started to say something to that, but her attention was drawn to the blue-glowing cage, where the cursing and attacks had suddenly stopped.

Hands gripping the near-frictionless bars, the Fallen Angel was breathing hard from her outburst, and her eyes were fixed on Chaos.

A sinking feeling hit the man, even before the creature possessing the love of his life addressed him. “Release me. Or I will stop her heart.”

***

It wasn’t a real silence. The wind was still roaring, still doing its best, in conjunction with Zero, to keep the temperature down. The stream still trickled over its bed. It was just the people that had fallen silence. All their eyes were on Chaos and the Fallen Angel.

How is it that she’s the one that died and somehow he’s the one that doesn’t have a life anymore?

If he hadn’t just had a long discussion about it, Alloy wouldn’t have remembered that bit from his conversation in the alternate future. He remembered mention of Richter being involved too, which meant that Alexis was going to die…

…And retire to teach full time? He remembered that part too. It seemed like everyone had been taking the ‘death’ part more lightly than its effect on Chaos, but who knew what caused her to stop being dead? Other parts of that future had been altered or averted, so it was possible that Alexis wouldn’t come back. And even if she did, there was what it did to Chaos and others to think of. Even with the visor, he could see Chaos ‘s expression and it was heartbreaking. The man—a man he admired for his strength, was actually shaking.

Wouldn’t it be better to make sure no one died in the first place?

“I will count to three.” The Fallen Angel declared. “One…”

“Hold it!” Alloy almost flinched from the sound of his own voice. Like shouting into a thick fog, the black heat in the air made strange echoes.

The Angel glanced his way. “Two…”

“I said hold it! You want Maeve defeated?” He couldn’t bring himself to say ‘dead’. “Well a lot of stuff from Faerie’s allergic to metal from what I hear. Cold iron and all that good stuff? We’ll I’m your guy for that. You’ve already seen me run you down with aluminum, right?”

Now the Angel threw him a glare. She obviously thought he was stalling. “thr—”

“Plus I’ve got this.” Alloy held up Caldabolg, its meager glow managing to pierce the gloom of the black heat fog. As if driven by instinct, the Angel lunged at him, slamming ineffectually against the bars of her cage. “Yeah, I thought so.”

He tossed the sword into the air, where Osp caught it. “And now that I got your attention: I just figured out how to use this thing to beat you. Listen up.” Something deep inside him, the same ‘something’ that honestly and truly thought that ‘light come forth’ might have worked to operate the glowy sword, wanted to add ‘you primitive screwhead’, but the part of him that knew time and place staed its hand.

“You think we need this to beat Maeve? Well if you know stuff about us, you probably know how strong Osp here is. Osp can throw me across a city street without really trying. Hucking this sword into the ocean from here won’t be an issue. I doubt you cold find it if we did that and neither could anyone else.”

The Angel hissed like a cat, or a vampire seeing the first light of sunrise. Her breath was starting to become labored and her eyes lost focus periodically.

“But that only happens if you hurt Darkness, or if you don’t let her go right now.” He was pouring it on with his accent, probably verging into ‘offensive stereotype’ territory. Whatever it took to disguise the giant-sized case of nerves he was coming down with.

“Imbecile!” the Angel screeched, slamming into the bars again. “You would sacrifice the greatest weapon against Maeve?”

“Wouldn’t have until you took over our friend and tried to kill everyone. That’s on you.” Alloy pointed out. “But yeah. We’ve got other options when it comes to this new Big Bad, but only the one Darkness, got it? Or do you want me to count to three?”

Osp reared back, tensioning its entire length in preparation to throw the legendary sword.

“Maeve must be destroyed.” the Angel said, more to itself than Alloy. “What she had done; what she intends to do… vengeance must be paid.” that last part came out in a snarl, followed by a long exhalation. There was a certain glassy look to her eyes now and she was swaying on her feet. To Alloy directly, she added. “You are no knight.”

“Believe me, Alloy, if you read the history books, that’s a complement.” Chaos moved up beside the younger man, his eyes never leaving the Angel. “But he’s right: If we can’t defeat Maeve, we’ll just lock the door and you’ll never have your revenge. Your only chance at that is letting us leave peacefully. With Alexis.”

He knew he shouldn’t be using her real name in front of Grand Dodger, but he needed the Angel to hear the name if his idea was to bear fruit. It wasn’t as if that wasn’t the biggest security breach he was going to commit in the next sixty seconds.

The Fallen Angel was swaying on her feet and the dark fog of black heat was starting to fade back to wherever it sublimed to when Alexis released it from her power.

“I’m not going to count to three though: you’re going to make a choice. Right now. Let go of your revenge; or let go of her.” With that, he reached up and undid the hidden catches on his visor, pulling it and the attached cowl off his head so she could see his face. Ian’s not Chaos’s. “Zero, let her go.”

“W-what?”

“Trust me. I’ve kept the air about as thin as your average mountain top since Alloy challenged her. She’s not going to do anything to me—look at the black heat.”

Zero did, and found the area under more of a haze than a fog and even that was starting to lift. With a nervous glance at Ian, who didn’t even look back at her, she stopped generating the cage, leaving the Angel standing unsteadily on the baked earth.

Ian stepped forward and caught her shoulders, steadying her while forcing her to look into his eyes. She tried to lean around; to see if Osp was still poised to throw Caladbolg, but he held her firmly and leaned toward her, filling her vision.

“You know things Alexis knows. You know things I know. And you knew enough to threaten her, right? Well think about that. Think about what Maeve did to you and what you’re doing to me.” Ian squeezed her shoulders gently as the cold gaze wavered. “What’s the point of revenge on Maeve for taking the people you loved if you’re just going to take other people’s loved ones to get it?”

He moved his hands up her shoulders until he was cupping her face. “Use whatever you used to get my frame design. Look right into my mind. Then tell me whether or not what I feel for Alexis is any less than what you feel for those Maeve took from you.”

The Fallen Angel looked made eye contact and stared at him; a long, emotionless stare that made his skin crawl to think that Alexis’s eyes could ever look like that. Without warning, her pupils dilated, green irises shrinking to mere rims of color just before she started spasming wildly.

The motion was so violent and caught Ian so far off guard, that she shook completely out of his hands and fell to the ground, back arching, arms flailing. Ian dropped down beside her, unsure of what to do, but determined to do something.

He didn’t blame Codex—Laurel; they were a bit beyond codenames now—for bulling him aside. She was the one who knew what she was doing after all. And what she was doing appeared to be placing stickers of some kind on Alexis’s (could he hope it was Alexis now?) temples.

“What’s going on?”

“Seizure.” said Laurel. “Or it looks like a seizure. I’ll know in a second. Maybe it’s letting her go… maybe it’s still trying to kill her out of spite. If that’s what it’s trying, we’re not going to make it easy.” She pulled out her ‘work’ palmtop and called up a program evidently connected to the sensors she’d just attached.

“Definitely a seizure of some kind. Ephemeral, what’s going on on the astral plane?”

The comms crackled, a sign of the transmission coming in via the astral plane instead of a regular comm. “I… do not know how to describe it. The astral bodies overlapping Darkness seem to be imploding—folding in on themselves. What this means, I couldn’t tell you. It isn’t like any astral phenomenon we’ve seen before.”

“Do we know if it’s good or bad at least?” Hope had made her way over and was standing over them. “Is there anything I can do?”

Laurel shook her head. “We have to wait the seizure out. Chaos, get her on her side, please.”

Ian did as directed, ignoring the urge to demand someone do something because there was no way Laurel wasn’t already doing everything she could. “Aren’t we supposed to hold her down or put something between her teeth?”

“That would only hurt her.” said Laurel. “Just wait it out and then we can deal with whatever comes next.”

They waited for what felt like an hour, but could only have been a few tense seconds. Ian was vaguely aware of other members of the team surrounding them, but all he could do was watch Alexis and feel helpless.

However a seizure normally ended, Alexis’s probably didn’t. One moment she was shaking, eyes crossing, back twisting, and the next she gasped, long and loud. Unrestrained as per Laurel’s orders, she rolled onto her back and sat up so fast that she almost headbutted Laurel.

For a brief, wild-eyed moment, it looked like they were going to have to fight the Fallen Angel again, but the gasp strangled off into ragged breaths and Alexis sagged forward, grabbing Laurel’s arm to keep from going all the way over.

“Oh god.” she rasped; her throat raw from the screaming the Angel had been doing. “We… I…” She squeezed her eyes shut as if trying to force everything in her head to solidify into something that made sense. “It. It almost killed you all. I saw the whole thing, but… but it was like trying to run while people are holding you back.”

Her eyes flew open and she looked around until she found Hope. “The people in the tank. I… please tell me no one died.”

Hope didn’t meet her gaze. “No one’s dead.” she said quietly, leaving out the ‘yet’. “I did what I could.”

“And there’s a medical transport enroute as we speak. Just took care of that and a few prisoner transports myself.” Grand Dodger had only just now rejoined them. Mercifully, he didn’t mention why he was only then making the call. “ETA, thirty minutes.”

Alexis shook her head. “Not fast enough. I attack them almost ten minutes ago. The Karasu no Yūrei could get them to a hospital faster than a medical transport could if it left now even if the transport was here when I first attacked. “Codex, why didn’t you take them already?”

Laurel shook her head, what Ian bet was a small, fond smile hidden by her helmet. “L, I know this is going to sound unheroic of me, but I wasn’t about to leave you.” She leaned Alexis in Ian’s direction, making sure he had her before standing. “Now on the other hand… “Zero, Vamanos, Hope; you’re with me. We’re getting the injured back to the mainland ASAP. Everyone else who’s able to, make sure our prisoners are secure for the British government and that they don’t have any surprises on them. We’ve had more than enough of those.”

Vamanos blurred away while the others got into gar, even Grand Dodger.

Soon, Ian and Alexis were alone, sitting on the bank of the stream, the latter firmly held in the former’s arms. An rested his chin on Alexis’s shoulder and sighed. “Thank god this is all over. I thought I’d lost you. I thought we’d… lost period.”

“I think it was closer than any of us really wants to look to closely at.” Alexis agreed, leaning into him. “And the scary thing is, it isn’t over. Maeve is coming. We don’t know when or how, but she’s still on the way. We’ve got the sword, but we don’t know how it works. I wish we were able to question that thing before it went crazy.”

“Hey.” He said, leaning back so they could see one another. “I meant what I said back there: we’ll find a way. That’s what we do: find ways. Ways to take down Tome. Ways to stop a mad sorceress time and time again. Ways to rescue certain people from ninja clans. We’ll find a way this time. Same way we do it every other time: Together.”

On the isle of Avalon, the island of plenty, where the mists concealed the treasures of a bygone age, Chaos and Darkness—Ian and Alexis—shared a kiss and faced the coming future.

To Be Concluded in Descendants Annual #7