Acadian: I picked a battle in a supermarket for exactly the ignobility of it all, especially the fall through the cans of peas. Every action scene in a supermarket has an obligatory crash through a display of some kind of canned goods. That they were peas - perhaps the most downtrodden of all vegetables - just rubs it in even more.

Isaac finally got to play with his mech. When I wrote the chapter introducing him and his unfinished Numidium, this was always on my mind. He was always going to get to this point.

This is going to get much, much bigger. The battle is still only in the very beginning. The real heavy-hitters (aside from Blood Raven and her Natthrafn) have yet to show up, nor the dozens of other heroes and monsters.

As ever, thanks for finding those nits so that I can fix them.


Renee: If you look back a few posts you will see pictures of the entire island, and where it lays within the rest of the landscape of Detroit and Windsor. It is also on the Stormcrow Map of course, as are all the locations in the story.

Isaac is the guy who built all the junk bots, and Archimedes. He is also the one whom January and Blood Raven got the parts they used to create their Abyssal Summoning early warning poppets.

Isaac built the mech for the best reason. Because he can! Who wouldn't? There are people who have done this IRL. Like this guy. He's not the only one either. I think someone else in Japan is building them for sale.


RaderOfTheLostArk: Needless to say, Isaac was scared to death as he was checking, and rechecking, and re-rechecking everything. That was him trying to find anything to do, in order not to think about how he was probably going to get himself killed.

I love that ad! I would totally vote for that guy, even knowing nothing else about him. Democracy in action!

I don't know how I forgot about Liberty Prime. Probably because my neighbor and I watched the Transformers movies in order last summer, so Optimus Prime is still in my mind. "Autobots, Roll Out!"

The production values are going to get a lot higher soon. Much bigger players than Isaac and his 50-foot mech are going to appear soon.

There are going to be a lot of POV shifts. This is the crowning point for the last 10 books. Everything leads to this. So I decided to lean into this and make it truly ginormous. I broke it up into about a dozen or so key points, where something major happens, or simply where I can show what is taking place on each front of the battle. So we can see it from every angle. There was no way to adequately show all that from January's POV. So I switch from character to character for each part of the fight. We will getting future chapters from people like Blackhawk, Lighthammer, Silverlight (whom we have yet to meet), and Blood Raven again.

The Sea Lamprey is one of the things I had in mind when I was describing that monster. Those things are just squicky! The other thing was a giant Decepticon in one of the transformers films (I think the second?), that had a similar giant spinning maw of doom, which almost devoured the Great Pyramids of Egypt.

A conjure woman who doubts, is a conjure woman who fails. So Riven is absolute in her certainty.


WellTemperedClavier: Isaac is a cool character to write, especially in a story with all these youngins. He's a regular guy, mech and robots notwithstanding. I wish there were more places I could fit him into events. So I really wanted to make the most of his appearance here, and make sure he is proper awesome.

The Detroit River is really not much to look at. It is a really narrow strait, only about a half mile or so wide in average I think. But it has 3 Great (and one not so Great) Lakes above it draining their water into it. When it gets compressed into that narrow space it picks up speed and force, and creates unpredictable undertows. Because of all that drainage from the lakes, tons of silt are swept down into the river, making the visibility in the water terrible. It is like thick soup. Because of the silt the bottom is not very deep, only about 40 feet or so at the most. But it is a mire of all that mud, and anything that gets dragged into it is not coming out again, at least not without a crane.

I think the Army Corps of Engineers dredges it on the regular to keep the shipping channel open. Even still, the space navigable by freighters is really narrow. A few years back one lost engine power and drifted sideways. It ran aground, and blocked off the entire shipping channel. No big ships could go up or down the river for days. They were all stacked up in Lake St. Clair until they could get the grounded ship free and going again. (I might use this as a story hook. It sounds like something a team of supers might be able to help with).

Once and awhile crazy people try to swim across it. It is not very wide after all. Sometimes they make it. Sometimes they get caught by Border Patrol. And every so often they drown and get sucked into the mud at the bottom. Ironically there is a beach on Belle Isle. It is shielded from the main force of the river flow by a piece of land that juts out from the island to the north. Which might be why it is safe to swim there.

Vortex has more to do in events to come. In fact, she has a big role to play at the very end. That was always my intent from when I created her. I was always looking forward to her moment in this battle. It is why she has the powers that she does. The same is true to a lesser extent with Lighthammer, Isaac, Gola, Calypso, Viuda, and all the others. Especially Blood Raven. From the very first book I knew they would all be here for this moment.










The James Scott Memorial Fountain

The James Scott Memorial Fountain is huge

Belle Isle and Downtown Detroit (the main divided highway just left of the Ren Cen is Jefferson Avenue, the main battleground in this episode)

January's Downtown Battleground 01

January's billboard (moved to a new location from RL so it could be featured here)

January's Downtown Battleground 02 - Looking down at the tunnel entrance

January's Downtown Battleground 03 - The Armenian Genocide Memorial (Hart Plaza is across the street behind it)

Cartier Buffs


Book 10.14 - Alliance

"We need people on the bridge," Cray's gruff voice rumbled in January's ear. "The Abyssals are making a push there."

"Is there anywhere they're not making a push?" Lighthammer murmured. The former bomber pilot skimmed in the air over January's head, blasting monsters below with his lasers. Then a tentacle swept up from out of nowhere and wrapped around his waist. It lifted him higher for a moment, then dashed him down to the parking log. Concrete shattered under his armored frame.

January leaped over the heads of a dozen goblins in an attempt to reach him. But another tentacle slammed into her while she was in mid air, and sent her careening backwards. She tumbled head over heels, and only stopped when she hit something hard. Cool water coursed over her back, and she felt stone beneath her.

She looked around, and found herself plastered against the James Scott Memorial Fountain. Near the south-western end of the island, it bordered a huge three-sided pond that sat within the triangular outline of the isle's tip. It was simply gigantic. It was not a single fountain, but rather a vast sea of interconnected basins and water spouts. Made of white stone, the lowest basin spread out over five hundred feet. Within that rose up a wide, two-tiered pedestal. Staring in each of the cardinal directions from this level was the statute of a lion, each spouting water from its mouth. Above that rose up a short, wide tower with a basin of its own, and an even taller spire and bowl rose up from that. From this ultimate height water sprayed over a hundred feet skyward, only to rain back down into the multiple basins below.

January shook her head, and tried to get back to help Lighthammer. But a trio what looked like four-armed trolls were on top of her in no time at all. Samhain gloried in her hand with each limb she hacked away. The raven sword may not have been made for slaying Abyssals in particular - as Blood Raven's other sword Y Ddraig Aur had been - but it certainly stepped up when it was time for creating mayhem.

So too did her wings, which hacked through stony flesh just as easily as they did cinderblocks. Likewise with her fists and feet, which she had long since honed into magical weapons. As Blood Raven had noted before, she had made herself a magical armament since junior high school. She was not really sure that she needed the sword. But it certainly helped.

By the time she had dealt with the Goro impersonators, a new wave of Abyssals was coming in. A glance back to the north showed that Lighthammer had extricated himself with the aid of Gola. Even now the pair winged back and forth across the big parking lot north of the fountain. But it was mostly back. As much as all of them tried to push north, they were fighting against a tidal wave of Abyssal flesh.

Then before her eyes the northern horizon lit up with blue-white fire. Plasma just like that from Gadget's new suit of powered armor streaked across the island there. Everywhere those glowing fingers lanced, Abyssals vaporized. But a glance sideways showed that Gadget stood nearby, fighting a mob of buggane on the ground.

That made her smile. She had been waiting for this for months. She had known that eventually her best friend would be suiting up himself. Now it was finally a reality. He had always been her hero, her rock. He was the one thing in life that she could always count on, no matter what. The rest of the world would finally see that as well.

Lighthammer had been right however. The Abyssals were pushing everywhere, pushing them back. She, Gadget, Lighthammer, Ôkami, and Gola represented nearly the entirely of the Alliance. But they still could not hold them back just here in the south. They tore the monsters to shreds one on one. But they were facing far more than one to one odds. It was more like a hundred to one, or a thousand to one.

Everywhere she looked, the tides of the Abyssals were advancing through sheer weight of numbers. At least that was everywhere but the south-east. The interdimensional monsters did not seem to be too interested in that direction. There was only a thin strip of land between the portal and the river there, and all of it had long since been overrun. But the Abyssals did not appear to be interested in trying to swim the Detroit River to the Canadian shore beyond. They looked to be far more intent upon the nearer American side. That was no surprise. The bridge there was the only way on or off the isle without gills and fins.

Or without wings, January mused as a flock of what looked like two-headed and twin-tailed pterodactyls gouted from the bubbling surface of the portal. If that were not strange enough, they had four wings, like a dragonfly. When one pair of wings rose up, the other swept down, in a constant opposite motion. If she remembered the Bestiary correctly, those were Dídymo Ptérygas, or "Twin Wings" in Greek. She also recalled something about them having penetrating tail stings.

They were followed by a halo of flaming skulls. Yes, there was no other way of describing them. January definitely knew these. They were kanontsistonties, Blood Raven had fought one recently at the Cinco De Mayo parade. That had been before January had joined the team, at the second Abyssal summoning that they knew of. The flaming heads lanced overhead, and headed out over the river. January's eyes followed their course, and saw that it led directly to the heart of Detroit, two miles down the river.

"We've got airborne heading Downtown," January leaped skyward and gave chase. Her wings snapped out and caught the air.

"I'm with you Crowgirl," Gadget's voice was in her ear. His powered armor was a blue light beside her, and left a glowing trail of ions behind him. January raised her sword hand skyward, and swept it down. The sky tore open at her command, and long chain of lightning ripped down among the Abyssals. Two of the pterodactyls were incinerated in mid air, their bodies fading from existence before they could plummet to the river below.

The Abyssals split apart then, looping around to the left and right, while a third group continued straight ahead. January stayed with those going straight. She had to stop them before they reached land. Gadget peeled away to follow those who went to the left, toward Canada. She knew that the final group would thusly be free to do as they willed. But she suspected that they would simply come around to attack her from behind. It was basic air combat after all. She knew, a literal bomber pilot had taught her.

"Stormcrow, you've got bogeys on your six," Cray's voice warned her a moment later. "Lighthammer, Gola, you two fly high cover around the portal. Slow down any more flyers coming out. If they slip though don't pursue them. Gadget and Stormcrow will pick them up. Ôkami, you head to the bridge. Keep your head low, it looks like our junkyard friend is there and he's putting out a lot of fire."

"Got it," Lighthammer's voice came over the comm. "Its zone defense. Me and the raven lady are linebackers, Gadget and the Crow are the safeties."

January didn't know anything about football, but she got the gist of what Lighthammer was saying nonetheless. Then twin bolts of flame gouted past her, closely followed by another pair, and she had other things to think about. A third set of fiery bolts engulfed her legs. But if she could stand up to the salamander at Montserrat, she could take this. She glanced back a moment to see that it was the flying heads. They were literally shooting fire from their empty eye sockets.

It felt so much like a video game that she had the urge to laugh. But this was deadly serious. She ignored her pursuers, and instead poured on the speed to catch her prey.

She did just that over a white band shell that sat next to a small park that lined the shore. She found Samhain a true blessing here. Punching and kicking were not ideal while airborne. But the leaf-shaped Celtic blade hacked Abyssals asunder just as effectively in the air as it did on the ground. She finished off one there, and followed the pack as they dove into a massive red brick parking structure that rose up nine stories in the sky.

They swooped through one of the many horizontal openings that stretched across each floor of the structure. January had to concentrate to follow. Unless she was perfect, her wings would catch either the top or bottom of the brick wall. She darted between with at least a foot to spare in each direction. One of the pterodactyls was not so deft, and its wings caught the top of the window. It spun in mid air, bounced off the ceiling, and then careened across the concrete floor below. Thankfully it was late at night, so the structure was empty. January caught up with it a moment later, and hacked it in two with Samhain before it could regain its bearings.

Then they were through the other side of the parking structure, and out into the open sky once more. The back of a giant billboard came right up in front of January. It towered as tall at the parking structure, and higher than most of the buildings immediately around it. She banked hard to one side to avoid it. But two of the flying heads crashed into her from behind, and pushed her right into the sign.

The next thing she knew, she crashed through the rear of the billboard. Iron shattered and dimpled out underneath her. Then she and the Abyssals tore right through the sign, and debris rained down into the empty side street at its feet. January twisted in mid air, and off-handedly noted that the billboard was painted in white, blue, and pink, and declared that trans people were sacred. That brought a smile to her face. She lashed out with Samhain, and one of the kanontsistonties evaporated under the Damascus steel of the blade.

But the other Abyssal was still with her as she winged out over Jefferson Avenue. She was at the point where the divided highway turned north to become I-375. But they were going in the opposite direction, parallel to the river off to her left. That sent them directly into the heart of the city. Detroit Mercy Law School rose up on one side of her, and another giant parking structure to the other. Dead ahead was the elevated platform of the People Mover. Beyond rose up the forest of skyscrapers, monuments, and arenas that made up Downtown Detroit.

She swatted at the flying head, but it dodged underneath her and sprayed her belly with flames. But the heat did not bother her. She rolled up into a ball around it, bringing her wings in close to encase them both. It slammed against her makeshift cocoon, but to no avail. There was nowhere it could go now.

January now began to fall, rather than fly. But her momentum still carried her forward. She spun end over end as she tumbled through the air. Each time she turned, she saw the upraised track of the People Mover loom nearer. Worse, a pair of conjoined train cars was coming down the elevated rail line from Greektown to the north, and looked to run right into her and the Abyssal when it made the turn over Jefferson.

But for once gravity was on her side. Thanks to her steady fall, she was too low to hit the track now, or the cars. She abruptly let go of the flaming skull, and snapped out her wings to slow her descent. That was like putting on the brakes, and she nearly stopped in mid-air. The skull continued forward however, still spinning end over end. An instant later it slammed into the concrete support pillar of the elevated railway.

The impact did not harm the creature. January knew from the Bestiary that only magic could do that. But it did bounce straight back at her. She lanced out with Samhain and met it point-first. The monster shattered into a haze of dust. A moment later even that was gone, as its remains winked from existence. January was thankful to see that the People Mover structure itself was merely scratched by the impact.

She beat her wings furiously to gain momentum once more, and found herself landing atop the roof of one of the train cars as it made the turn to come into the Renaissance Center station. She used it as a springboard, and leaped skyward. That sent her rocketing up the face of one of the Ren Cen's side towers.

One of the Dídymo Ptérygas sideswiped her, and the two of them went pitching off to the side. They slammed against the glass tube of an external elevator shaft, and slid along its surface. January noted an elevator coming down just as they scraped past, and gave a little wave to the security guard inside.

Then she had air beneath her wings again, and found herself chasing the same Abyssal through the Renaissance Center complex. The compound's heart consisted of five glass towers that rose up high into the Detroit skyline. Of these a single round tower in the center rose up over seventy stories into the air. This was surrounded by four smaller, octagonal skyscrapers at the cardinal points. Finally a pair of even lower towers rose up like an afterthought, back the way January had come from alongside Jefferson Avenue.

They darted around the first corner tower that January and the pterodactyl had slid off of, and banked inward toward the central spire. The Abyssal turned straight up along the skyscraper's side, and January raced it to the top. Then it dodged to one side in an effort to lose her. But January was able to react quick enough to head it off, and slammed into it.

They tumbled between another two of the corner towers, and fell toward the entrance to the Detroit-Windsor tunnel. It had an irregular shaped administrative building, with a single low tower that rose up from a wide base that was just a few stories tall. The road to the tunnel itself snaked around behind it and passed through a wide row of toll booths. Then the road curved around and down out of sight beneath Jefferson Avenue, and vanished into the earth below.

The border crossing was open 24 hours. But it was late, so there was only a single car pulled up at a booth. January and the Abyssal crashed to earth beside the car, and dug up a long trench in the concrete. Its twin tails snapped at her, and she noted that each ended with a barbed tip. She brought up both of her wings to push them aside, and lunged in close. Samhain led the way, and skewered the beast.

Its body fell to the broken driveway below and vanished a moment later. January flashed a smile at the car, and the customs agents beyond. Then she leaped into the air once more. A pack of the flying heads came in after her, and she led them to Hart Plaza, which was right next door. Thankfully that was completely deserted at this time of night.

She came down with her feet atop the twisted pylon that rose up from the plaza's north-eastern corner. Over a hundred feet in the air, that left plenty of space between her and the cars on Jefferson Avenue below. She noted that some of those began to stop, as people got out to not only stare at her, but also at the brilliant lights that bathed Belle Isle, miles upriver.

She twisted and twirled as the kanontsistonties swirled around her. Once again, her wings became weapons when the monsters came too near, and she sliced several in two that way. Finally she leaped straight up to skewer one that had made the mistake of flying directly over her head.

The last one turned to flee, but she caught up to it down in the narrow strip of land between the two divided roadways of Jefferson Avenue. To one side of the major thoroughfare lay Hart Plaza, the tunnel entrance, and the Ren Cen. On the other was the plethora of skyscrapers of Detroit's Financial District. Finally, off to January's left rose the squat enclosed arena of Cobo Hall.

That put her at the Armenian Genocide Memorial. A dark bronze statue of a slender man with a balding head rose up on a granite pedestal. His name - "Gomidas" - was spelled out below in gold letters. Underneath was a plaque explaining that the monument was dedicated to the million and a half Armenians who had been murdered by the Turks in 1915.

It was here that she finished the last of the flying heads with a roundhouse kick. She took a moment to regard the statue of the long dead martyr.

"Rest in peace..." she breathed somberly.

That was when she was blindsided by a final Abyssal. It was one of the Twin Wings. Even as one of its heads clamped down on her throat, the other snapped at her face. Its body pressed against her torso, and its momentum sent them both tumbling into the street. January felt the dual spikes of its tail slice through the armor on her shins. But the titanium of her new armor was just for show. The otherworldly stingers just skittered off her flesh underneath, which was far stronger than any earthly metal could hope to be.

Thanks to years of gymnastics, she easily rolled back to her feet. With her left hand she reached up over her shoulder and clawed at the long, sinuous frame of the Abyssal. Her fingers found purchase around the base of its leading wing, and she whipped her arm forward. The creature came with it, and she smacked its back down upon the concrete of the street below.

She followed with Samhain, and brought the longsword down in a great, overhand blow. The Twin Wing rolled aside however, and the Damascus steel of the Celtic sword vainly hacked a long gash through the cement below. The monster replied with another stab from its twin tails. January saw it coming and slipped to one side. She responded with a thrust from Samhain, aimed at skewering the Abyssal.

The Dídymo Ptérygas bounded out of the way however. But it had not been paying attention to the cars and trucks that it shared the road with. A car that had stopped just up Jefferson suddenly squealed its tires in fury, and barreled back in reverse. It was just in time for its wide bumper to crash directly into the two headed monster.

The Abyssal was flung back and down by the force of the blow. But the car did not stop. It kept right on going, and ran straight over the pterodactyl-like creature. First its rear tires - then its front tires - crunched over the beast. But when the car finally came to a halt, the monster still rose up in the wash of its headlights.

The doors flung open and young men spilled forth. They wore an assortment of hoodies, baseball hats, and black knit caps. One sported a Pistons shirt, another was decked out in Adidas gear, and more wore simple tees. Tattoos, shining chains, and glittering rings girded their bodies. One even wore a pair of Cartier Buffs sunglasses, even though it was dark out. Out came pistols, a sawed off shotgun, and even an AK-47. The gang leveled their weapons on the Abyssal, and opened fire.

It rose into the hail of gunfire. Then it staggered, and fell back to the pavement. The monster jerked and spasmed with each bullet that slammed home into its hide, and there were a lot of them. The gang members continued to fire until their guns ran out, except for the man with the AK. He had a much larger magazine than the others. January was obliged to step up and lay one hand on the assault rifle to get him to finally let up.

The Abyssal was literally shredded into paste. Then as with all the others, it faded away into nothingness right before everyone's eyes. All that remained in its wake were flattened bullets and spent shell casings.

"Thanks guys," January said quite honestly to the young men. "If you want keep helping, head to the Belle Isle bridge. Just be careful who you are shooting at, my friends are out there."

January did not stick around. There was no time. She launched herself skyward and headed back toward the embattled island.

WOW look at that giant robot! 🤖 I wonder what the laws are for that sort of thing. Like, are those giants considered to be vehicles? Can they even move? *watches video* Yup, sure can. What would happen if one of those walked out into a street, and then accidentally crushed somebody's car somehow, I wonder. How would the insurance work? It's not like a car hitting a truck. Would it even be possible to walk that monster into a street where traffic (light traffic, of course) runs? This is one of those things which will happen eventually.

Funny thing is, that bot in the video is sort of what I was picturing as Isaac moves it around. Except I'm imagining Isaac's bot isn't as colorful. It's more industrial-looking, more old-school Detroit.



Sweet. You've been working on this since 2019 too, maybe even 2018 or 17.

Question: Would any of this huge battle been happening if the Hierophant hadn't tried to summon? Was the Hierophant somehow influenced by Natthrafn from beyond the grave? Well, that's two questions.

Yeesh, tentacles. What the heck could this be? Methinks the heroes are losing this battle, hate to say.

Aw, it's a trans billboard! That's gotta be a sign (har har). A sign that things will turn around for the better.

Sounds like aren't any people on the People Mover. Phew. I like how even at this chaotic moment, she's able to consult the Bestiary in her mind about whatever malice she's attacking.

Here's a pic of the People Mover. Got curious what it looks like, I was picturing one of those giant people-moving walkways we see in airports. I like how the art on the side of that trolley looks like well-done graffiti.

These flying head thingies sound awful. Seems also like Jan has been pushed away from the main battling area, right?

NIIIIIICCEE!!!!!!! Wow, so some gangbangas just showed up! Word, yo! This is awesome. Finally, these guys are making a difference in our world for the better, instead of merely doing drive-bys at rival gangs! Peace!

Your warnings about the growing scale of this battle were not overstated! Superheroes or not, they face what seems an endless tidal wave of magic beasties apparently intent on eating Detroit.

"Maverick Stormcrow, you've got bogeys on your six,"
- - I can imagine you grinning as you wrote this.

’… the billboard was painted in white, blue, and pink, and declared that trans people were sacred.’
- - As are we all. You, me, Boo. . . hamsters and rangers everywhere!

More help is definitely in order. Bless that gang with poor ammo discipline’s heart but I’m thinking we need more supers.

And it keeps getting bigger!

First, thanks for the explanation of the Detroit River. One of the things I'm enjoying about these books is that they kind of double as a travelogue for a city you clearly love. While there are tons of media based in NYC and LA, there's not that much in Detroit, so it's good to see the place get some attention.

So far the heroes are holding their own. But the sheer quantity of Abyssals is still a problem, and I don't see any way out. The arrival of the gang certainly helps though. Reminds me a bit of the line Rick told the Nazi officer in Casablanca, something about there being neighborhoods in New York you wouldn't want to try and occupy.

I liked how Lighthammer used football terminology to describe the situation. And how January thinks in terms of video games. Years and years ago, I read an account of an aid worker who survived the Haitian earthquake. They said that they ran from one location to another to try and get to safety, and they thought of the stops on the way as save points. Just shows how our minds draw from our interests and put them in other contexts.

Some interesting new monsters as well. Looks like they're drawing from all across the Abyss. The good news is, the Alliance is drawing from all over Detroit... and beyond.

Renee: I am not sure if there are any laws or regulations around mecha. They might be like flamethrowers, which are completely legal, because no one ever thought to make laws restricting them. I know people IRL own tanks. I don't think they have to get license plates for them. OTOH, they don't drive them down the street every day either. Usually those people have land out in the country and they drive them around the fields.

A Gundum, or Voltron, or a battlemech from Battletech is what I based the Fred Hampton on. It's a classic. It never goes out of style.

None of this would be happening if not for the Hierophant and Julian. Julian found the Rauðskinna because his blood brought it to him, like Blood Raven and January he is a descendant of Nátthrafn after all. The Hierophant knew how to put it to use. Without them it would have been impossible for Nátthrafn to return to the world and open this gateway. So the Hierophant's pursuit of power and immortality, and Julian's grievance over, well everything, made all this happen.

I had originally considered that Nátthrafn might be influencing things from within the Abyss. That was the case in the story that inspired this plot line: The Case of Charles Dexter Ward by HP Lovecraft. But the more I build my world, the less I think that is possible. I don't think that Nátthrafn can reach across from the Abyss to do that directly. Instead he relies on the unique enchantment in this world that he created which puts the Rauðskinna into the hands of his descendants.

I was surprised to find that the trans billboard was real. When I first wrote that, I thought it would be a fun irony if she went crashing through a sign that said something positive about Trans people. I googled it without really expecting to find anything, and there it was. The real one was just in a different location in the city.

The People Mover is sort of a joke in Detroit. It is not a real subway or elevated rail system like New York or Chicago has. The People Mover does not go anywhere! It just runs through Downtown Detroit in a circle.

January has been pushed two miles away from the main battle zone on Belle Isle. I wrote that to show that the entire fight was not concentrated just there. There are flying Abyssals, and they can range far beyond the front line on the bridge to the mainland. I also just wanted to get some variety in scenery, and a fight through Downtown gave me plenty of local landmarks to show off in the process.

This being Detroit, I felt that I had to get some gang-bangers in the mix somewhere. They spend a lot of time shooting at one another. Now they have the chance to step up for their city.


Acadian: We are close to half way through the battle now. But we are still on just the first wave of Abyssals. There are several more coming. The battle will have an ebb and flow to it, as each side pushes back and forth in major reversals. One of those will teased at the end of today's post.

It was good to get some air to air combat with January. She mostly uses her flight simply for transport, to get to where the fight is. Given that she is an avian, it was nice to actually put the fight into the sky itself.

Lots more supers on the way. But we will be seeing more mundanes first, and they will make a huge impact on the battle.


WellTemperedClavier: One reason I set this in in Detroit is that you almost never see the city in movies or books. Even Robocop, which was set in Detroit, was filmed in Dallas-Fort Worth. So it looks nothing like Detroit. The other reason is that I could never lavish such attention on LA or NYC, since I just don't know those places.

Lighthammer probably played football in high school. Does the air force have a football team like the army and navy do? Maybe there too. He definitely watches it. Though living in Cleveland, being a football fan must be more an exercise in masochism than of actual fun. Like in Detroit. Likewise, I am sure Gadget is thinking of racing from one save point to another. He is the OG after all, the Original Gamer. That is why when he puts a marker in his electronic map, he thinks of it as a quest marker.









Portuguese Man O' War

Clocking Roulette Wheels

Bartolomeu Português was real, and he created the Pirate Code

Michio Kaku - Physics of the Impossible

Gandalf's Lightning Sword Power Stunt

For the Honor of Grayskull



Book 10.15 - Alliance

"This is Stormcrow checking in," she said to Cray. "Downtown is cle- what the frell is that?"

Words failed her when she saw the newest abomination. It floated high in the sky, as tall as any building in the combined Detroit and Windsor skylines. Its body was a large, transparent blob. It looked for all the world like a giant plastic bag filled with water. A ridge or sail rose up from its back like a crest. Again, this was as crystal-clear as the rest of creature's body. Dangling down from its underside however, was a forest of long, curling tendrils. These were dark purple in color, and dripped with an ominous looking goo.

"Oh snap, that's an aerzoan," January finally regained her speech. She remembered it from the Bestiary, probably because it looked so much like a flying Portuguese man-o'-war.

"Yeah, sorry about that," Lighthammer's voice came over the comm. "That one sort of got away from us. Watch it! Those tentacles paralyze you, even through armor. Blood Raven had to come over and fix me up after that..."

January pushed herself higher into the sky. Soon she soared up to the central spire of the Renaissance Center. At roughly seven hundred feet it was the tallest point in the Detroit skyline. The circular roof was a veritable forest of antenna and satellite dishes. She had to weave her way through them to find a spot near the edge, where she set down upon the top of a boxy air-conditioning unit.

From here she could look directly across at the monster's body. The Abyssal was coming right for her. Even now it slowly drifted across the sprawling parking lot that lay east of the skyscraper complex. She saw it catch hold of one of the few cars in the lot, and effortlessly pull it upward.

January took a moment to stretch out with her astral sight to search within the car. Thankfully it was empty. But using her spiritual awareness so near to an Abyssal made her cringe. The wrongness that it brought with it was so much more palpable - and repugnant - in the astral. There was no mistaking the malignancy of the thing. It made her skin crawl, as if it was a floating conglomeration of cancer cells.

She allowed Samhain to hang low in her right hand. She held her free hand up to the stars, and entreated the sky. It answered her with a rippling sheet of lightning that cracked down and hammered into the aerzoan. The sail-like structure along its back snapped and glittered with electricity. Yet in moments the energy dimmed, and the Abyssal continued on its course as if nothing untoward had occurred.

A pair of glowing blue energy bolts sizzled out from the south. But the twin beams of plasma likewise splashed ineffectually against the side of the creature's bag-like body. As with January's attack, it just continued on, as if nothing had happened. A longer stream of the same plasma bolts followed, stitching a glowing line across the monster's frame. Yet still, to no effect.

January followed the energy beams back to their source, and saw Gadget in his new powered armor flying in from the Canadian side of the river. Once again, her heart soared at the sight. That was her oldest friend in the world, and he was standing tall as ever. As silly as it was, his simple presence lent her a feeling of safety that no suit of armor ever could.

"Did you win any money?" January nodded to the white and blue towers of the Windsor Casino. The massive hotel and gambling complex rose up behind her friend, on the far side of the Detroit River.

"I put it all on black, and the Abyssals went bust!" January could imagine the young man's grin underneath the full-faced helmet that he wore. Then he nodded toward the massive creature that floated toward January and the Ren Cen, and his voice turned more serious.

"I think we might need to clock the wheel for this one though."

January watched as the aerzoan pulled the car up to the underside of its body. Now she could make out movement, some sort of mouth at the base of the tentacles. The tendrils fed the vehicle into this maw, and the car's steel body disintegrated with each bite. Metal and plastic rained down across the parking lot below in tiny, shredded pieces.

Something about that tickled a memory in the back of her mind, one that she could not quite put her finger on. There was something about that particular creature that she should be recalling. But try as she might to summon the knowledge, she could not quite dredge it up from the depths of her brain.

She brought up Sága, and punched up the Bestiary on the miniature computer's screen. The electronic tome was a treasure trove of information on magical creatures - both Abyssal and otherwise. Blood Raven and Cray had assembled it from not only the elder heroine's personal experiences, but also from such sources as the notorious Scripta Mortis. It was the be all and end all of information on their foes.

January had spent long hours perusing its contents. During the week that she had been sidelined due to her brother's death the Bestiary had been her constant companion. There had not been much else to do after all, at least aside from hovering empathetically over her mother. She practically knew the book by heart. Not that she needed much impetus to read. Books were her life after all.

"I knew it!" she proclaimed triumphantly after she scanned the entry on the monster.

Gadget zoomed up beside her, his body wrapped in a halo of glowing ionization. He clomped down to a landing on another air conditioning unit and looked to January. She met this gaze and pointed to the Abyssal's maw with a finger.

"The mouth is its Achilles Heel," she insisted. "Every other part of this critter is armored, but not that. The Bestiary has a record of a Portuguese pirate named Bartolomeu Português killing one with a barrel of gunpowder. He and his crew set the barrel out as bait. The aerzoan pulled it up into its mouth and Boom! No more Abyssal."

"Where is a van full of ammonium nitrate when you need it?" Gadget mused. He raised one hand, and took long moments to line up a shot at the Abyssal's maw. Then he cut loose from the plasma emitter in his palm, only for the energy bolt to ineffectually strike one of the creature's numerous tentacles. He tried again, and again, but he just could not get a shot through the curtain of tendrils.

"No joy," he shook his armored head, "there's no getting through those tentacles."

"I can't get my lightning in there either," January murmured. "It's on the bottom of its body. But even if I could, those tentacles would still be in the way."

"We'd have to come straight up from below, and fire at point blank range," Gadget observed.

"Which sounds like a great way to get paralyzed," January bit her lip. There had to be some solution to this. Nothing was truly, completely, invulnerable. Even Blood Raven had her weaknesses, as did January herself.

"Pretty clever to put your only weak spot in the one place no one can reach, at least no one alive," Gadget mused. Then he snapped his fingers with delight.

"Eureka!" the meta-inventor crowed. "I read a book by Michio Kaku about impossible physics. He said we ought be able to create force fields in a plasma window. I just have to trap it within an electromagnetic field. I'm already using the same idea in other ways. I just have to use it to create a barrier, rather than to fly, or fry things."

"You think that will keep the poison out?" January made a face.

"I don't know, I guess we'll find out," Gadget rubbed the back of his neck with one armored hand. "Just, you know, blow on the dice for luck before you try."

"Me?" January's eyes goggled. "I'm the one who doesn't do so well with poisons, remember?"

"Yeah, but here's the thing, I've never done this before," he admitted. "I've only thought about it. I'd have to fly, shoot, and do a power stunt to create this force field for the first time ever. To be honest, I'm still getting used to doing just the first two of those."

January sighed. He was right. He had always been the voice in her ear on every one of her missions, quests, or whatever they were. But he had done it behind a keyboard, not right beside her. It was easy to forget that. I had always felt like her friend had been right beside her. She thought back to her first time actually wearing the suit, and wanted to cringe once more. Her first attempt at flight had ended with her falling through a skylight. He was already way ahead of her on that score.

"You're right," she nodded. "Besides, we are always stronger together."

"Teamwork makes the dream work," Gadget replied smoothly.

January gripped Samhain tightly in her fist. If this worked, it would mean one more Abyssal was scratched off the board. If it failed, she was going to get eaten. Time to blow on those dice for luck...

But maybe she could weigh them in her favor. She looked up with a smile, and remembered something from a movie she had first seen as a child. She raised the raven sword high into the sky, and brought forth another bolt of lightning. But this time it was not directed at the monster. No, this was directed at herself, at her sword to be precise.

The world flashed white and blinded her for a moment, as the lightning slammed into her sword. She felt heat, and power, bathe her. When her vision did come back she saw that Samhain glowed with brilliant white energy. Sparks cracked and sizzled across its surface, waiting to be unleashed. January smiled. She would smite her enemy's ruin upon the mountainside.

"For the honor of Grayskull!" Gadget laughed, invoking a different source, but still a prescient one. January leaped off into space, wishing she had a winged horse like She-Ra did. But no one was perfect after all.

It was only when she winged her way down beneath the Abyssal that she stopped to wonder if Gadget was ready. She prayed that he was, for she was just seconds from running into one of those tentacles. Before she did however, she felt a warm hum around her. Then she noted that she was glowing. No, the field of energy that now surrounded her was glowing. It was a transparent sheet of soft blue illumination. It was a light that came from everywhere and nowhere in particular.

Then one of the tentacles of the monster slithered across the face of this force field. It reacted instantly, and brought up more of the limbs to gain further purchase. It coiled around her in moments, straining and constricting to encase her in its grasp. Yet the tentacles could not reach her through the energy field.

Thanks to the transparency of the force field, she could see that the inside of those tentacles were lined with upward-tilted spines. From the tip of each dripped ominous slime. This venom quickly became smeared across the surface of Gadget's force field. Up close, she could see that it was slightly luminescent, with a violet tinge. Thankfully the force field held for now. But the tentacles and their poison were still just inches from her body. She hoped that Gadget could hold them off long enough for her to do what she needed to.

Sure enough, the tentacles lifted her up and up. She had to hold her hand that clutched Samhain as far away from her body as she could. She did not want to waste her borrowed lightning on the tendrils. She needed to land it in the creature's softest spot, the mouth.

She saw that maw a moment later. It was a beak, with two massive mandibles that worked like a pair of scissors, one sliding in beneath the other. They chomped together as the tentacles drew her close, and she could literally hear the bone of the mandibles scrape against one another. It reminded her of a chef sharpening his knives.

Then she was right up to it. The next chomp would be against Gadget's force field. January did not want to test just how strong it really was. Now she was close enough for Samhain.

"The ravens come for you," she breathed.

With that she thrust Samhain deep into the creature's mouth. She rammed it straight into the larger of the two mandibles. The instant the Damascus steel touched Abyssal flesh, it unleashed January's borrowed lightning. Electricity stormed through its body from the inside out, tracing out fractal patterns everywhere it went.

In an instant the monster glowed bright white. Then it exploded in a shower of charred flesh. The entire sack of its body just rent apart and went flying in all directions. Tentacles, now cut loose from their moorings, plummeted down toward the street below. In the middle of it all January hung in mid air, Gadget's force field holding her untouched and inviolable.

As with all the other Abyssals, the monster vanished from reality moments after its death. January began to fall, and the force field winked out of existence. She snapped her wings out to hold herself aloft, and turned to see Gadget standing with one arm still out. He slid the other across his forehead in a gesture of relief.

January now noticed that while most of the surrounding spires of the Renaissance Center complex were empty and dark, the windows of central tower were bright and filled with people. That was the hotel, while the others were the offices of General Motors. Even now hotel guests stared in wonder, clapped, cheered, and above all, held their cameras up to record. January gave them a quick wave with her sword arm.

Then she pushed up with her wings to get above the skyscrapers. Gadget rose into the air beside her. Both trained their eyes upon Belle Isle, and the battle that still raged there. The point where the MacArthur Bridge met the island was brightly lit by plasma and other forms of energy. It was clearly where most of the Abyssals were now concentrated, the focus of their push.

Even though it was two miles distant, January could pick out Blood Raven dueling with her father Nátthrafn above the bubbling mass of the Abyssal portal. Beyond them she saw lights in the sky, a lot of lights. They came from over Lake St. Clair, north-east of the island, and a low roar filled the air.

"We've got incoming A-10s from out of Selfridge people," Cray's mellow tones said in her ears. "Everyone get down and under cover, now!"

* * *

A giant car eating jellyfish – and lightning doesn’t hurt it. Ahah, but it has an Achilles mouth if the heroes can figure out how to get something up there without getting paralyzed or eaten.

Between Stormcrow and IronManGadget, the pair figure out a risky plan – and it works! Whew! Very creative of Stromcrow to make her ‘storm’ work for her by channeling it through the family sword.

It’ll be interesting to see how effective conventional air power from the Air Force at Selfridge will be in this fight.


Nit: ’It floated high in the sky, as tall as any building the combined Detroit and Windsor skylines.’
- - This seems to be missing something. Perhaps changing it to something like '...any building found across the combined...' or '...any building featured in the combined...'.

Lol about People Mover. It's nice when regions have their own inside jokes. Like, nobody in New York City goes to the Statue of Liberty. If someone says they've been there, guaranteed he/she's a tourist.

That's a good point about the giant robots. There's no laws yet revolving around potential accidents and such. Laws will get written when mishaps occur. 🤖

And yes, that's what I'm getting at. The fact that Natthran is out and about, it almost seemed like it was destined to happen, or was it? There's a bit of a question there. I mean, you just explained you don't think Branwen's father was able to influence from his other plain of existence.

Actually, direct quote is "But the more I build my world, the less I think that is possible. I don't think that Nátthrafn can reach across from the Abyss to do that directly." But Natthrafn also placed some magical objects into our world, which I would consider as "influencing", though not as directly as doing so from beyond our plane. It's just a longer-drawn-out version of what I was thinking of. Without those magical objects, Nátthrafn would not be able to cross over.

Aerzon??? Yikes! How are they going to defeat that??? Pretty sure there was something similar in our DnD Manual. 🕸



Wicked awesome, the way that's written. The part when she sees Avery (and he doesn't see her yet) also is touching.

Ah-ha. So the giant jellyfish has just one weakness. It's like the Death Star. Eventually they figured out there's that one portal they can fire some beams into, to blow up the entire sphere.

I remember when she fell through that skylight! That was in that mall, I think. "Teamwork makes the dream work!"

Yeesh, she's being sucked into this damn thing. Wow, she really did it. The Abyssal is toast! .... Man, Natthrafn's gonna be pissed about that. Oh well. Be pissed, you freakish 16-century douchebag.

Can't resist a couple additional comments based, in part, on Renee's. I'm glad she mentioned the teamwork / dreamwork bit from Gadget since I didn't really catch that it rhymed until she reposted it - very clever.

Also, the bit she quoted when Jan could feel the wrongness of the abyssal reminds me of a line by the almost paladin adventuress Mazzy Fenton in BGII that goes close to, "Evil has seeped into the rocks and trees. You can feel the wrongness here."

I looked it up, and it seems that the Air Force Academy, at least, has a football team: the Falcons.

That's a weird abomination. You did a great job with the description, too. I was thinking: "That sounds like a giant Portuguese man o' war," before you even described it as such.

Okay, glad Lighthammer got patched up.

"...floating conglomeration of cancer cells..." Great description!

And I liked January's reaction to seeing Gadget. She's in a scary situation, and it's always good to see an old friend when you're in one of those.

Okay, sounds like they have a good plan here. Nice to see they're utilizing popular physics as a weapon.

Also good how you're bringing up January and Gadget's past history in gaming. Fighting evil (even fictional evil) side by side with a friend does create a unique bonding experience, of sorts, and I can see how it'd translate well to this kind of situation.

Oof, this is a noxious approach that January has to take. Good (if revolting) sensory details.

And a triumph! But I don't know if bombers would be good right now. They're usually none too specific in the damage they inflict, and this is still a crowded metropolis...

Acadian: It was nice writing that little piece, because it gave me the chance to showcase January and the new and improved Gadget in action, side by side. A taste of things to come. I also just wanted to show that some of these Abyssals - being bosses - cannot be killed through the normal means of just doing a lot of damage. You have to figure out a puzzle to defeat them.

From the very first Abyssal, I have always striven to get across the deep wrongness of these things. In part it is because this is superhero fiction. The capes don't go around killing things as a matter of course. The stakes need to be really high for that. OTOH, I suppose I just cannot resist a good Cosmic Horror in the Lovecraftian vein. This whole Summoner/Hierophant/Natthrafn storyline was inspired by a Lovecraft story after all: The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.

Mazzy's quote is exactly the feel I go for with the Abyssals. They are not just greedy, or amoral, or hateful. Evil might be seen as a virus that infects humans, and leads them to commit the most horrific acts. But the Abyssals go beyond that. They are the virus of evil itself, with no cloak of humanity around them at all.

As ever thanks for finding that nit. It was from a last minute edit. I always worry about those.


Renee: I got the Aerzoan from Real Life. I saw an ocean documentary a few years back that had a Portuguese Man O War in it. I took one look at it and did the Pointing Leo Decaprio meme. I rushed to my computer and wrote down the idea for the Aerzoan. I even got the name from RL animal, which is a marine hydrozoan.


WellTemperedClavier: I might go back and edit the Hammer Down book a little to add in some football-based touches to his house now. Right now I am thinking he might have been a cornerback, or even a linebacker. Someone swift, but not a big star who could have a career in professional football (otherwise he would not have gone into the Air Force to begin with).

I just checked my notes, and Lighthammer did not go to the Air Force Academy however. He went to Bowling Green and got a degree in Aeronautical Engineering, before joining the Air Force, and then going to Officer Training School. Granted, he could have played college ball at Bowling Green as well.

From the very first Stormcrow fic, I have known Gadget was going to be suited up. So it feels really good to finally get here, and write him and Jan smiting evil side by side. They are boon companions.

I know what you are saying about bombers. Back in WWII they were lucky if they even hit the ground! Granted, they have gotten better. I went back and changed the word "bomber' to "A-10s" to be a little more specific. These are not big buffs just dumping bombs across the landscape. They are close air support craft with a lot more precision.






The High Yo-Yo Maneuver

A-10 Warthog/Thunderbolt

Maverick Missiles

Mark 77 Incendiary Bomb

The 107th Fighter Squadron really is based out of Selfridge


Book 10.16 - Alliance

Lighthammer stared in amazement as Blood Raven rose from his formerly paralyzed frame. Just a moment ago he had been unable to move, thanks to the venom of that giant, floating Portuguese man-o'-war. But just by passing a glowing red hand across his body, the elder heroine had purged the toxin from his body.

Golden energy lanced out from somewhere on the island north of them. Before it could strike, Blood Raven raised a bubble of what appeared to be similar yellow energy. The bolt fizzed out ineffectually against her shield. She dropped it a moment later, and sprang away after the source of the attack.

Lighthammer used to think that his life had gotten weird after he had met Stormcrow. No, that was normal. It had not really gotten weird until he had met Blood Raven. Here he was, an ordinary guy - meta-human powers notwithstanding - fighting an army of extra-dimensional demons led by a thousand year old lich who just happened to be the father of their witch queen leader. Could this get any weirder?

But he did not have time to muse. Blood Raven's exit left him alone at the south-western tip of the island, where both sides of the landmass narrowed to the point of a "V". A large pond lay to the north-east, leaving only a pair of narrow causeways of land to either side between it and the Detroit River. That causeway was wider where Lighthammer sat. He imagined that it might have been a public restroom, given the rows of broken pipes that jutted from the concrete foundation below, and the shattered porcelain all about.

A crowd of Abyssals was closing in on him even now, coming down either shore of the island. Only the water around the isle, and within the large pond that sat within the island's tip stopped them. Apparently these particular creatures could not swim, unlike that oniare Stormcrow had fought at Jobbie Nooner.

He took a moment to send a volley of hard light down each of the causeways. That sent the monsters flying like bowling pins. But then he caught sight of a flight of those two-headed dinosaur things overhead. He rocketed up to intercept them. His job was air superiority after all, not ground attack.

He followed the winged beasts toward the Canadian shore, and was able to pick off two of them with his lasers before the rest turned and came around to meet him. Both of their heads breathed fire as they came near. That was a new one. But he was able to create a screen of hard light with one forearm to deflect the flames. At the same time he finished off a third monster as they passed head to head.

He banked sharply and looped around to go back after the remaining fliers. That briefly brought that flying Portuguese man-o'-war in his view. It was farther downriver, drifting toward the heart of Detroit. He sent a few lasers its way. But as before the energy beams had no effect at all upon the polyp of its body.

Gadget and Stormcrow would have to deal with it. They were the safeties after all. He was a linebacker. He had to stay in his zone and deal with the Abyssals there. Otherwise the entire defense would break down.

The flying dinosaurs had a tighter turn radius than he did. That was a new feeling for him. Back when he drove an A-10 he could fly literal circles around any fast mover. Now that he no longer needed a plane to fly, he was even more acrobatic than ever in the sky. But these Abyssals were something else. They were fast, nimble, and obviously lived in the air in a way even he never could.

Soon they were closing in on his tail, rather than the other way around. Then he remembered something he had learned at Officer Training School. In Vietnam the F4s could not turn with the Migs. But they had a solution to that, which took advantage of the extraordinary engine power that their interceptors possessed.

He took a page from the history books, and shot skyward. That bled off his speed, and nearly took him into a stall. Then he rolled over in a turn that was much tighter than he could have managed at full speed. He let gravity pull him back down, and hit his metaphorical afterburners. That put him above and behind the twin tails of the Abyssals. First one, then the last of the monsters vanished under the flashes of his lasers.

"Downtown is cle- what the frell is that?" He heard Stormcrow exclaim in horror over the team-wide comms. His eyes searched the skies for her, but the crow-themed heroine was nowhere to be found. "Oh snap, that's an aerzoan."

"Yeah, sorry about that," Lighthammer's said sheepishly. Clearly she had just met the same bizarre flying Portuguese man o' war that had so recently laid him low. "That one sort of got away from us. Watch it! Those tentacles paralyze you, even through armor. Blood Raven had to come over and fix me up after that..."

"Lighthammer," Cray's voice came over the comm on a private channel. What he said next instantly distracted him from whatever reply Stormcrow might have made. "We've got A-10s inbound. But they don't have a target. Can you help them out?"

"Roger that," Lighthammer nodded. "Patch me into their frequency."

With that the tone in his ear changed, and gained a slight undertone of static.

"Do we have a spotter yet?" A new voice came over the link. It bore the familiar electronic alteration of someone speaking over a radio, rather than a phone.

"I'm Lighthammer," he spoke up. "I'm not tied into your system, so I can't feed you the targeting data directly. But I can light it up old school style."

He zoomed down around the portal, and banked around the island north-east of it. He came to a stop there, and thrust out both of his hands. It took a moment to modulate the light they emitted so that they were not hard light, nor a standard fighting laser. He had to dial the intensity way down so that it was not damaging. At the same time he widened out the coverage, so that in the end he emitted a long cone of brilliant green light from each of his palms. He set these up so that they covered the ground between the bridge and the portal, where the majority of the Abyssals were now piling up.

"Where is- I got it! I see green light." The fellow pilot's voice came over the radio.

"Roger green light," Lighthammer echoed back to him. "Expend all your ordinance on target. You might not get a second chance. There are friendlies on the bridge. I say again; friendlies on the bridge. All other ground targets are hostile."

"Tell your people to keep their heads down, this is going to get hot," the pilot warned.

Cray echoed the warning over their regular, team-wide frequency, his voice crisp and clear as if the elder hacker was standing right next to him.

But Lighthammer could not move. He had to hover in place and continue painting a target for the bombers. A spear - of all things - came hurtling up from the ground. But his Armex steel breastplate turned it aside. Still, that caused him to lurch slightly, and with him, his laser designators. He rushed to get them back on target, and keep them there, as more missile weapons pelted him from the ground.

Next came something much larger. It was a giant of knobby gray flesh and equally iron-gray hair. It raised the biggest axe Lighthammer had ever seen, and it was coming right for him. Given the creature's height, he was staring at it eye to eye, which was an uncomfortable sensation for a pilot.

Then a bubble of shimmering energy popped into existence around him. A moment later the giant's axe struck it. Multicolored streams of light sprang up and ran the length of the shield in response to the blow. It reminded him of an aurora, with the way the colorful energy flowed across the sky. The axe bounced away harmlessly, and Lighthammer noted that he had a companion.

It was Blackhawk. She wore her banded steel armor and seemed to simply stand on the air with no visible means of support or propulsion. She gestured with one hand, and the metal head of the Abyssal's axe flowed like water. It ran down the haft of the weapon, up the monster's arm, and then neatly decapitated it.

Lighthammer heard the roar of jet engines behind him, and the hiss of missiles. He did not turn back to look however. He remained fixed on painting the target. Then a combination of Maverick missiles and Mark 77 incendiary bombs came streaking past. One, two three... he soon lost count of their number. The missiles were a storm of angry darts, tails lit with fire. The bombs on the other hand, were ghostly streaks of silver in the night sky.

Then a chain reaction of explosions lit up the darkness. One after another, the missiles struck their targets, and went up in great gouts of fire and force. This just served to spread out the modern day successor to napalm that the Mk 77s carried. This witches' brew of kerosene, phosphorus, and God knew what other chemicals incinerated all that it touched. The ground between him and the pond near the south-western tip of the island vanished under a blanket of fire and explosive force. It had become an absolute inferno of destruction in which nothing could exist, whether from this world or another.

Then the A-10s went roaring past, already banking into a hard turn that took them toward the Detroit shoreline. Most people would call them fat, ugly planes. But to Lighthammer's eyes, there were no more beautiful aircraft in the world. He noted from the markings on the engines - which hung out from the sides of the fuselage rather than being built into it - that they were the 107th "Red Devils".

"Hooah!" he cried in a combination of amazement and relief as the planes streaked past. That was what ordinary people could do, even in the face of extraordinary circumstances.

But his elation was dashed nearly as quickly as it had risen. A human form leapt up into the sky, clad in what looked like armor of black metal and white bones. He literally hacked through one of the bombers with a giant battle axe. He seemed to hang there in mid air as the plane disintegrated in a storm of fire around him.

That could only be Nátthrafn. Blood Raven's father, and leader of the Abyssal hordes. There had been no pictures or drawings of him in the Bestiary. But who else could that be? Lighthammer still remembered the history lesson that Blood Raven had given them all, along with the warning that he was not one to face alone.

Then it really got weird. What looked like a torrent of bats literally sprang out of his body. These creatures were featureless. They were pure black voids, as if they were made up entirely of darkness or shadow, and nothing else. They scattered across the sky, each homing in on one of the bombers.

One after another, these shadow bats sliced through the wings and fuselages of the aircraft as if they were made of butter. The planes could not outrun the monsters. That came as no surprise to Lighthammer. The A-10 Warthog did not have much in the way of engine power. It could not even break the sound barrier. That was not a drawback for what the plane normally did: rain missiles and 30mm cannon rounds down on a ground target. In fact it was a bonus. Their lower speed gave their pilots more time to assess the situation on the ground and react to it.

Usually the Warthog could out maneuver anything it came up against however. Lighthammer had never encountered a jet that could out turn him. Though granted, with no afterburners he always had to be a lot more careful with his energy management than they did. But even still, he had flown rings around everything else in the sky back when he was in the cockpit of an A-10.

But these shadow creatures were on an entirely different level than any mechanical craft. They turned like bats or birds. Nothing man-made could compete with that. As Lighthammer had already discovered with the twin winged Abyssals, these shadow creatures were not only insanely fast, but even more maneuverable. There was just no contest when it came to air superiority.

Parachutes began to blossom in the night sky, as one plane after another plummeted into the river. The shadow creatures did not spare the pilots any more than they had their aircraft. As Lighthammer looked on, one swooped in on a pilot who now wafted helplessly down toward the river below. In moments it would slice him in two.

Well not on his watch. His lasers streaked across the night sky, and punched through the body of the creature. The light seemed to not just cut through the material of the bat. It vaporized it, cancelled it out of existence. It was like when one wave of energy met its opposite. They both nullified each other.

With that he hit his own afterburners. He soared across the night sky to gather up the pilot in his arms, before another of the shadow bats could come swooping in. He saw Blackhawk doing the same, along with that weird raven woman Gola. Even Gadget and Stormcrow had come back from downriver to join in on the rescue mission.

He sliced through the pilot's parachute wires with a low power laser, and dropped him off on the roof of a high rise apartment building on American side of the river, below Belle Isle. Then he jetted back skyward to deal with more of the shadow bats, and save whoever he could.

He saw a curious thing then. One of the shadow creatures was about to cut through an A-10, when a black disc appeared in front of it. The bat could not change course fast enough to avoid the barrier, and the shadow monster flew right into it. The monster did not bounce off of it, nor crash through it however. Instead it just disappeared into the darkness.

Out of the corner of his eye, Lighthammer saw that another disc had formed in the air right down on the concrete river walk below him. What he imagined was the same shadow monster shot out of that and crashed head-first into the sidewalk, shattering the concrete under the impact.

Clearly, the two discs had been opposite ends of a gateway!

That did not kill the monster. But the man who appeared to be made of living fire did. A single blow from his incandescent fist obliterated the thing. Lighthammer blinked. Where had he come from? An instant later, this new man stepped through another of those black portals, and disappeared from view. But he turned up a second later. It was hard to miss him after all. He was a seven foot tall inferno. Only now he stood on the end of the bridge to Belle Isle.

"That was Helios!" he crowed over the comlink. "Folks, looks like the Sentinels are here!"

With that he was back in the sky and soaring toward the bridge. Now he saw the rest of Chicago's super team down there. In addition to Helios, there was Zero Point in his glowing white powered armor. His eyes next picked out the werewolf White Fell, and of course the leader of the team, the Veil. He knew that she controlled elemental darkness, which covered her from head to toe in what looked like a set of black cloth robes. She must have been the creator of those gateways he had just seen. Finally he imagined that Stinger must have been in there somewhere as well. But being that shrinking was one of her powers, Lighthammer did not expect to see her.

You did a good job of painting this episode from Lighthammer’s perspective – complete with pilot talk and think.

"Where is- I got it! I see green light." The fellow pilot's voice came over the radio.”
- - Nice touch here too, having the pilot call the color of the light. Grunts used to mark targets or their own position using smoke or smoke rounds. The pilot would respond by stating the color of the smoke to make sure that if bad guys were listening and also popping smoke to sabotage the mission, it would (mostly) foil such efforts. Just kind of second nature for close air support pilots to call a color like that to confirm.

The A-10’s acquitted themselves well with their initial strike but, damn, their foes sure exacted a surprisingly high cost.

And the Chicago coven of supers joins the fray. Surely an all star cast here.


Nit: ’Clearly she had just me {met} the same bizarre flying Portuguese man o' war that had so recently laid him low.’

The way Lighthammer sums up his relationship with Jan and Raven in one paragraph, now that's something. He thought his life was weird. No, that was nothing.

Hey, he's back in action. Ooorah! -- Wait, that's wrong. Oofah! Nope. I can't remember his battle cry. 🦸

Yeesh. Poor guy's getting pelted. There's so much going on in this scene. Cool, Blackhawk is here. Whoa. So are some armed forces. Hey, it's about time.

That's a good question, actually: how much time has passed since the onset of Natthrafn breaking through? I'm guessing not much more than a hour, huh? If that. It's like when someone has an accident, time speeds up but also slows down in a way.

A10s are here. I looked at the wiki article above, and here are some more pics. I agree. I know nothing about fighter jets, but those don't look so sleek, or pretty!

The armed forces are losing. This ain't going so well. What is Helios? Hopefully there will be some sort of breakthrough!

A-10s make more sense for this (from what I know).

Lighthammer's back in action! And his thoughts reveal something interesting: January's helped bring Detroit's disparate meta-community together. It's because of her that all of their contributions and powers are being so focused.

This man o' war has a pretty thick skin...

I like how Lighthammer's bringing in his knowledge of aerial combat. Does a good job of showcasing his personality and intelligence.

I love it! Using the old school ways to call in an airstrike. Fits so well with Lighthammer, too.

And now, Lighthammer has to hold his position as the forces of Hell attack. He's in a pretty vulnerable state, being up in the air. While the armor protects him from harm, it wouldn't take much to move him since he's not grounded.

Oof, no kidding!

Blackhawk to the rescue! And the A-10s right after that. Good descriptions on the fireworks. But the Abyssals have powers of their own, as that bone-armored guy shows.

What's this? Seems like someone's thinking with portals...

All right, the reinforcements are going to change the tide. Right?

Acadian: I originally pulled up a manual on radio operation, and inserted all the "Over", and "Copy", etcs... But in the end it read out as being clunky. So I took almost all of that out, and wrote the pilot speak in a more normal conversational tone. I am glad it still kept enough of the "piloty" feel to be recognizable as such.

I remember that old fashioned way of throwing smoke and the pilots calling the color from a zillion war movies and TV shows. I actually tried to look up the official procedure, but the best I could come up with was an Army manual for smoke battalions, detailing how to do things like create smoke screens on the battlefield. So I am thankful that my memory of those movies proved their worth.

Natthrafn and the Abyssals have never seen airplanes before. So were completely unprepared for the A-10s attack. However, dear old dad is a quick learner. So he won't take the vertical element for granted again.

At this point I counted 18 supers at Belle Isle. So it is the equivalent of the Avengers, X-Men, and Fantastic Four all joined up. And the Justice League and Teen Titans are still on the way...


Renee: The thing I like about Lighthammer is that - super powers notwithstanding - he is a regular guy. That gives him a perspective very grounded in "normal" reality. Magic and liches, and witches, and cosmic horror monsters are not part of his normal day to day, as they are with people like Blood Raven and January. January spends her off hours reading up on magical theory. Lighthammer has a six pack and watches football.

Each of the US service branches have their own war cry. The Marines have "Oorah". The Army has "Hooah", the Navy and Coast Guard have "Hooyah". The Air Force has "This is hard..." Well, that is how the joke I most often hear is told. Seriously though, the Air Force just uses the Hooah of the Army. So that is Lighthammer's war cry too. I think they all go back to the Civil War, when the Union Army's battle cry was a deep and manly "Huzzah!"

I am not sure of the exact amount of time that has passed. It is not very long though. Probably less than an hour for sure. This all happened very quickly, with no time for anyone to prepare.

I think the official designation for the A-10 is the Thunderbolt. But its other name is Warthog, and I think that is just what everyone calls it, because that is what it looks like. OTOH, it makes up for its looks with its performance. It is a really good ground attack aircraft.

Helios is one of the Sentinels, a super with fire abilities (that is actually about all I have on him myself!)

As we shall see, the Air Force took heavy losses in that one attack. But they gave much, much better than they got.


WellTemperedClavier: A-10s are dedicated close support, ground attack planes. I think it is the only plane made just for that one purpose. So they don't just dump bombs out from thousands of feet up and hope they hit the ground. They are made to fly low and slow, and pick out specific targets like individual vehicles or hard points. So they can do this sort of job without blowing up the rest of Detroit and Windsor at the same time. However, the planes that do that are on the way as well...

You called it exactly on how January is the reason that all these people came together. Blood Raven is definitely the leader. She is the shot caller on the field. But January is the heart of the team. She is why they are there to begin with. Lighthammer is there because she looked past their initial fight, and chose to cultivate a relationship with him. The same with Isaac, and Gola, and Hungry Ghost. The Great Lakes Alliance exists because of January.

I enjoyed showcasing Lighthammer's profession as a military pilot. That is a foundation of who he is, even though he's not in the military any more. I liked how it gave me the opportunity to show that supers don't have to rely on their powers all the time. They can use skill and training and experience as well to solve their problems.

The bone armored guy is Nátthrafn. I am going to go back to make that more clear, since it has been a while since he was introduced and described.

The A-10s have already turned the tide, as we will see once today's post begins. With the Sentinels, it is time to attack.





The Siege of Petersburg

Voltron

Kaelin's goth 'super suit'

Cops Got Better Things To Do Than Get Killed

Two Steps From Hell - Myth


Book 10.17 - Alliance

"The Air Force is bugging out," Cray's voice sounded dejected in Blood Raven's ear. "They lost nearly an entire squadron in that one pass over the island."

"They have done their part," the elder heroine said over the team-wide frequency. "They have gained us valuable breathing space on the bridge, and opened the way to the portal. Now that we have reinforcements, we shall counter attack."

Blood Raven cast her gaze out over the bombers' handiwork. The south-western tip of the island had been wiped clean of Abyssals. It had likewise been swept bare of everything else. Not a single tree remained, nor blade of grass, nor buzzing mosquito. It had been reduced to an empty moonscape of mud, ash, and dust in which nothing lived or moved. Her aetherial senses confirmed what her eyes beheld. The aircraft had utterly annihilated everything beneath their wings.

At first it reminded her of the Siege of Petersburg, where she had served in the Iron Brigade during the Civil War. That had been her first real war; the first that she had seen up close, and taken part in. But there had been some trees and brush at Petersburg. No, she had not seen anything such as this since the First World War.

That brought back memories that she would rather not revisit. Her mind reverberated with the screams of the wounded that had clogged her aid station, between the hammering thunder of the artillery. Just like that the smell of the blood came back to her, along with the sights of young men torn into shreds. She remembered their hands, pressed into hers as they bled to death. She remembered those who lives she had wrested from oblivion's dark embrace, by commanding their blood to march back into their bodies. But so too did she recall those whose eyes had turned to cold glass after passing death's door, those she could not save. The living and the dead, all passed before her mind's eye as she involuntarily turned her gaze to the past.

Blood Raven pushed those thoughts down with effort. This was not the time to take strolls down memory lane. She had to keep her focus within the here and now. She had much to do, and could not spare herself the luxury of sentiment.

She looked back to the team. It had grown tremendously since she, Stormcrow, and Gola had faced the first of the Abyssals on their own. Now Isaac, Archimedes, and Ôkami stood with her on the bridge, while Gadget, Blackhawk, and Lighthammer patrolled the skies overhead. Also on the bridge was her old student Riven and her husband Thunderbolt. With them was another protégé of hers, the wayward Vortex, along with that young woman's father: Hungry Ghost. Finally the entire team of the Sentinels had just joined them as well: The Veil, Zero Point, Stinger, White Fell, and Helios.

It had to be one of the most powerful groups of meta-humans and magicians ever assembled. Three entire teams all joined in common purpose. Surely such a thing had not happened since the Second World War. Blood Raven hoped it would prove to be enough.

"Tell me you have a plan." The Veil approached her while the rest of the Sentinels stood watch over the blasted no-man's-land that had once been Belle Isle. The leader of the Chicago team was a woman seemingly clad in a series of robes. The multiple layers of cloth covered every inch of her body, and left her face hidden in a veil of shadow. It was all elemental darkness of course, and constantly shifted and flowed around her, as if blown by a non-existent wind.

She drew the darkness back from her features, though still leaving the rest of her head shrouded in a hood of the elemental material. Now her brown eyes stared out from a mask of Blackwood's meta-material, and the tan skin of her lower face lay bare. This softened her appearance, and made it clear that she was indeed a living, breathing human, rather than the wraith-like impression that her fully armored form presented.

"I do," Blood Raven looked from her to the portal. The magical gateway to the Abyss had grown since she had last set eyes upon it. That it continued to do so did not bode well. They could conceivably defeat every army that issued forth, only for the gateway itself to still engulf the world in the end. That must not happen.

"That portal is the key, we must destroy it."

"Well then, what are we waiting for?" Helios swelled to a towering ten feet in height. A giant ball of fire formed from between his hands, and he spent a long moment winding up to throw it. He hurled this blazing sphere much like a baseball pitcher. It hurtled across the island, and struck home against the face of the portal. But the flames merely sank into the bubbling shell of the gateway, and vanished without effect.

"No mortal weapon can touch it," Blood Raven explained. "It was made by magic. It can only be unmade with the same. We must undo the weave of its design, one thread at a time if need be."

"But you can do that, right?" Stinger spoke up next. She was a tiny dot standing on the armored shoulder of Zero Point. But the scientist's voice was loud and clear. "I mean, you're a magician, right?"

"I am, but I cannot do this alone," Blood Raven turned her eyes from the other heroes and back to the portal. "This was created by a sorcerer far more powerful than I. All of our magicians must work together in a ritual team. Only then may we yet prevail."

"And let me guess, while you do that, you will be unable to defend yourselves?" the Veil chimed in once more.

"Exactly." Blood Raven pointed to the gateway. "We must advance to the foot of the portal. There we mages shall join in power - much like Voltron - to contend with it. While we do so the rest of you must protect us from the next wave of Abyssals, which is sure to sally forth at any moment."

"Right," Blood Raven heard Cray's voice over the comm even as a few of the team members vocally marveled over her knowledge of anime. "That means Blood Raven, Riven, Stormcrow, Ôkami, and Gola are team wizard. Did I miss anyone?"

"Yeah us!"

Blood Raven spun her head at the sound of a familiar voice. Coming up the bridge behind them was none other than her protégé Kaelin, and her lover Harper. Kaelin was clad in a black goth outfit that glittered with silver rings, buckles, and chains. A black cloth stretched across her nose and lower features at an angle, leaving only her eyes to stare forth from beneath a waterfall of blue hair. A small black purse or bag was slung across her torso, to rest at her opposite hip. Emblazoned on its wide flap in silver was the alchemical symbol for Mercury.

Harper was clad in a black tuxedo with tails, complete with a top hat and a cane. A black domino mask outlined their eyes, and white paint decorated their features in a phantasmagoria of Vodun veves. Blood Raven sensed power in those painted symbols, just as she did within the blue dye that colored Kaelin's hair. Clearly the pair were making the most of Kaelin's alchemical abilities.

Both of them were perched atop rental scooters, which might have looked humorous under other circumstances. But at the moment, they appeared as nothing less than a godsend to Blood Raven. She needed every mage she could get. She did not know if seven magicians would be enough. But she would learn.

"Well met my friends," she greeted both with open arms and a smile. Kaelin did not hesitate to leap into her arms and give her a short, but sweet hug. Harper was more reserved and merely nodded in return.

The deep thumping of rotors filled the air, and their authors appeared a moment later. They were military helicopters painted with green camouflage. The Black Hawks began to land in the park that stretched out on the Detroit River's west bank, to either side of the bridge's terminus. Uniformed soldiers boiled from their interiors, only for the helicopters to immediately lift off once more and zoom away.

The soldiers appeared to be armed with rifles and other light armaments. They rallied together and sprinted up the far end of the bridge. Blood Raven noted that ordinary people joined them from the nearby streets. These were armed with a hodge-podge of firearms: pistols, shotguns, and rifles, of all manufacture. Just like their weapons, they were a rainbow of ages, genders, and sizes. Men and women, young and old, rail-thin to rotund, they all stepped up to the line.

She even recognized some as local criminals, from gangs such as the Black Mafia and Latino Counts. They were among the better armed, though certainly not the best. She even noted a one-eyed doomsayer, still clutching a sign in one hand which proclaimed that the end of the world was nigh. In his other hand he gripped a makeshift spear that looked like nothing more than a broom stick whose brush had been snapped off, and the end beneath whittled to a jagged point.

Waiting at the western end of the bridge were several police cars that had blocked it off to traffic, red and blue lights spinning in the night. Blood Raven noted that while the military and civilians streamed past the barricade and onto the bridge, none of the police followed suit.

"I guess cops got better things to do than get killed," Gadget noted sourly as he landed beside her.

Harper's phone rang, which made everyone jump, including Blood Raven herself. Someone laughed at the sudden relief of tension, once they all realized what it was. Harper fumbled for the device, even as Lighthammer made a dry remark about saving money on their car insurance.

Harper murmured something into their phone, then put it away. A moment later they created a gateway of their own. As before in the Aura, they did so by executing an intricate dance, and drawing out a veve with magical energy. Blood Raven's heart soared once more when she saw who stepped through. First came her old student Calypso. She had transformed into her aquatic form, and carried her staff of elemental water Bagua with her. Next came her friend Viuda, clad in her arachnid-themed suit of powered armor. Unfortunately Harper's portal was too small to bring Viuda's flying spidercraft Charlotte with her.

Harper closed the portal after that. They were only two, but a welcome two. Blood Raven made sure Calypso knew it when she greeted her former student with a relieved hug. So many of her students were here today... Nearly all of the magicians in fact, were Daughters of the Raven. It made her heart soar with pride.

"Blackhawk," Blood Raven turned to Toronto's resident superhero. She pointed to the non-super reinforcements that now streamed up from the far side of the bridge. "Take command of them and hold the bridge. Venture no farther onto the island. We are likely to be surrounded in no time, and will be unable to protect them. That shall be your mission. With luck, we shall be able to draw most of the Abyssals to us. Especially once we begin the ritual. You must prevent any from slipping through to the mainland."

The First Nations heroine frowned. "You expect me to babysit a bunch of civilians while you-"

"I expect you to lead," Blood Raven cut her off in a low voice. She clapped a friendly hand onto the other woman's shoulder, and once more gestured to the mundane reinforcements now coming forward in dribs and drabs. "You have experience, and you have a reputation - one I cannot match. People respect you on both sides of the border. They will follow you."

She leaned in closer, and lowered her voice to a whisper. "And should we fall here, then it shall be upon you to find victory this night. I trust you to do this, and to keep them safe while you do it."

The Canadian said nothing. She still frowned, but she did finally nod in agreement.

"I have a gift before you go," Blood Raven breathed. She gathered up her aion, and sang in Gaelic to center herself. A circle of magical energy appeared around her feet, and began to slowly turn around her and the First Nations heroine.

Blood Raven clapped her hands down upon the other woman's armored shoulders. She felt the Armex steel under her fingers, cold and unyielding. She sent her magic through it, deep down between every atom, until it filled the armor to the brim. With her power, she burned away every impurity within the metal, even of the tiniest in nature. Then she rearranged the molecular latticework of the steel that remained, leaving it far stronger, and more flexible, than any mortal metal could hope to be.

"With this steel, I give you the blessing of Earth," she intoned gravely.

Then Blood Raven now craned her neck over her shoulder to behold one of her many apprentices.

"Stormcrow, lend me your lightning!" she cried.

The young woman appeared surprised for a moment. But to her credit, she understood soon enough. The sky tore itself open, and a great, jagged bolt of lightning ripped down through the air. It slammed into Blood Raven's hands in an inferno of heat, and light, and force, threatening to throw not only her, but also Blackhawk, from their feet.

But Blood Raven was ready for it. She reined in this wild elemental power, and channeled it into her spell. The electricity ground down into Blackhawk's armor, side by side with the rivers of aion that flowed through it. It became a part of the enchantment she was weaving.

"I grant you the power of Air," Blood Raven solemnly intoned in English.

"Calypso!" she cried next.

Her Haitian/Bahamian protégé followed without hesitation. She held out her staff Bagua, and the river below answered its call. A great column of water rose up and formed into a loop that peaked over the bridge, then came crashing back down. Like the lightning, it slammed directly into Blood Raven and Blackhawk.

Again, they held on during the deluge, and Blood Raven continued her work. As before, she channeled the elemental power directly into her enchantment. She made it part of the magic, and part of Blackhawk's armor itself. After several moments, the water did not flow away, so much as vanish into the lacquered metal.

"I grant you the boon of Water." Blood Raven intoned once more.

"Heli-!" Blood Raven began. She turned to one of the Sentinels, whose tall frame was wreathed in fire. But he cut off her words before she could finish.

"Yeah yeah, I get the point," Helios nodded. He gathered up a brilliant globe of fire in his hands, and then hurled it like a baseball. It slammed home an instant later against Blood Raven and her charge. Again, they weathered the elemental assault. Again, she absorbed it into the fabric of her magic.

"I grant you the gift of Fire." Blood Raven once again intoned.

Finally she allowed a claw to spring from one of her fingers, and thrust it deeply into the palm of her other hand. Blood flowed hot and potent from the wound. It filled Blood Raven's nostrils with that sweet, sweet scent of life and power. Her stomach almost growled with anticipation of a feast.

But she was not here to feed, certainly not upon her own blood. She was here to give of herself. So she clapped her bloody palm down upon the breast of Blackhawk's armor, above the medicine wheel that emblazoned its center. She sent her blood into the metal, and with it, a piece of her life force. As with the other elements, she wove this into the makeup of her spell, and stitched it through the deepest layers of its fabric.

"I grant you the benevolence of Spirit." Blood Raven finally intoned.

With that she stepped back, and let go of her magic. She felt tired, for she truly was drained. It was not just from effort, or of aion, but from the store of life energy that gave every vampire not only their power, but their very existence. She would have to feed again, and soon.

She suspected that there would be numerous opportunities for that soon enough...

"What was that," Blackhawk held up her hands, and stared at the soft illumination now clung to armor plates that girded them.

"I think she just gave you +5 banded mail armor," Gadget noted dryly.

"With a +5 to hit," January added. "You can definitely harm magical creatures with that steel now."

Blood Raven tried not to laugh at the gamer speak. Trite as it may seem, they were entirely correct. She was not sure how long the enchantment would hold. She was working much faster than usual. Her work had not been as complex or careful as she would have liked. Yet the elemental energies bound up within it were powerful. For all she knew, the enchantment might just outlast them all.

Then Kaelin was there, holding up a vial of liquid before her eyes. It glowed soft gold in the night air, and Blood Raven could feel the power held within. Without a word she took it, pulled the stopper, and upended its contents into her belly. She instantly felt aion suffuse her body with its warm embrace, filling her to the brim with energy.

"I brought plenty more magicka potions," the alchemist declared loudly. "So don't any of you hold back. I can top you off again."

"You are a blessing my childe," Blood Raven smiled at Kaelin, yet another of her protégés. It seemed that all of her ravens were coming home to roost this day, so to speak.

Some old news. We were talking about sensing the wrongness of the Abyssals an episode or two ago. Since I’m currently playing BGII and just joined Mazzy, I pulled the little knight’s exact quote -
”You can. . . feel the wrongness in such a place. It has seeped into the very rocks themselves.”
- - Mazzy Fentan

*

Very cool returning to Blood Raven’s perspective for this episode.

The old heroine’s poignant and haunting memories of the horrors of war were spot on – you nailed it. It is one of life’s cruelest ironies that the only real way to stop war is with. . . war.

"And let me guess, while you do that, you will be unable to defend yourselves?" the Veil chimed in once more.’
- - Such is the basis for many rpg quests!

"I think she just gave you +5 banded mail armor," Gadget noted dryly.
"With a +5 to hit," January added. "You can definitely harm magical creatures with that steel now."
- - AD&D Rules! Neat series of spells Blood Raven used to buff up her ally.

What really pulls this episode together is the reinforcement of the team that the Blood Raven / Stormcrow coven has built. And that it will take all of them to defeat Nasty Nate.

Yeah, the heroes are all gathered here but it still isn't enough. Military's down. Where are all the gangbangers? C'mon yos, it's time to represent!

Wow, Chicago's team is here. Maybe some others from cities which aren't too far. I'd ask where Baltimore's heroes are, but I get the feeling we haven't had the fortune to breed our own!

Is Raven the oldest of all present here (besides her father)?

Wow, that part when Helios has that growth spurt and throws fire. Seriously, why would any violent type of criminal even bother? You'd think that Chicago would have lower crime than Japan.

Stinger reminds me of one of the little insect-sized people in His Dark Materials, which my brother got me hooked on this past holiday. What role could this little bug-person play here in the midst of the Abyssals? Yet there must be something Stinger can do. As Raven says, they all need to work together somehow.

Harper and Kaelin, not sure if we've heard of these two yet in the story. My gosh they sound all decked out and stylish! - That's one thing: if you want to be a superhero, you'd better be good at what your forte is, but you'd also better have your own identity. It's like the opposite of a police force or the military, where the idea is everyone's dressed up the same.

Why are they on scooters, though? Guess they can't fly. Ah, here come the citizens. Not gangbangas; actual, ordinary Belle Harbor urbanites. It's like the modern version of a country village whose residents all grab torches and pitchforks. 🫓

Whoa, Calypso and the spider woman are here. 🕷 They've come up from way down south.



Ha ha!

I have a prediction about what's to come toward the end of this giant battle. Something really sad, actually. Probably I won't say what it is though, unless it comes true. I have a feeling.

I like that the A-10s turned the tide. Shows that the normal humans can still play an important part. Though that's been the case in your story thus far, one of the elements I like most about it.

So the Air Force is on its way out, but you said in your comment that they played a decisive role. Hopefully the GLA can finish up the rest.

The bit about the island is a good reminder of how much damage this battle is causing. Definitely not a good day for the city of Detroit. Also makes an effective segue into Blood Raven's thoughts. This is an ugly thing she's seen many times before, and probably many times again.

Okay, so it looks like we have a defense mission here. The rest of the team has to make sure Abyssals don't break the magic users' ritual.

Heh, I like how Kaelin and Harper show up on rental scooters. Sometimes you have to improvise.

I guess it's nice that the doomsayer's finally been validated.

And some Caribbean reinforcements! Should definitely help with the ritual.

Okay, it looks like the pieces are in place for the final confrontation (or the final part of the final confrontation). Let's see what happens next...

Acadian: Mazzy always was one of my favorites from BG2. She is a cheerful, boon companion.

Blood Raven will get a couple more episodes from her POV, as her experience and knowledge of the battle is central to it all.

I wanted to describe the devastation caused by the battle, and since Blood Raven is 250 years old, I realized that I could equate it with some of her own personal memories. I know she was a member of the Iron Brigade, so that put her at the Siege of Petersburg, along with Gettysburg, and several other major battles. But mainly Petersburg, since it was a long siege, and is often considered the beginning of modern warfare. Looking at the pictures from it, it is barely distinguishable from WW1. I did not have her movements mapped out for the First World War. I know she was in Egypt shortly before it to fight the original wearer of the Nitokris armor. So I decided that she went back to one of her other professions during the war, as a nurse for the French Army.

Blood Raven was in a bit of a pickle when it came to leaving someone behind to defend the bridge and lead the mundane troops there. On one hand, she needed all the mages with her to take down the gateway. But on the other, there are some Abyssals that can only be harmed by magic. So she came up with the compromise of enchanting Blackhawk's armor on the fly. I was not really sure how to do that. So I fell back to the tried and true 5 elements, and had Blood Raven infuse the armor with the essences of them all.

It was originally going to be Lighthammer on the bridge, due to his military experience. But I decided to change it to Blackhawk. For one to add another person's point of view to the battle. Also because it provided an opportunity to reveal more about who Blackhawk is through her thoughts. Finally she is a lot more versatile than the Hammer, and she can do more to set up a defense and protect the mundanes thanks to her magnetism. Also Blood Raven was right, in that she has a sterling reputation on both sides of the border. People will follow her.

All of the ravens are indeed coming home to roost for this. It is one of the things I enjoyed most about writing this piece.


Renee: There already are gangsters on the bridge. Blood Raven noted the Latino Counts and Black Mafia (who are both real street gangs here). But the ones you are thinking of - who helped January on Jefferson Avenue - they will show up again too. Keep your eyes peeled for the AK-47 and Cartier sunglasses.

A lot of the world's heroes are sitting around watching this on TV, wishing they had an invisible jet to fly them to Detroit in time to get into the action. But because this was a surprise attack, only those nearby are able to respond in time.

Stinger is a shrinking hero, like the Wasp or Ant-Man. She is mostly inspired by Bumblebee from DC Comics and DC Super Hero Girls. She is a scientist who built a suit of powered armor that shrinks, gives her flight, and quantum stings, etc... (Yes, I just put the word 'quantum' in front of that to make it sound cooler).

Harper and Kaelin were in Book 9: Ashes. They are the ones who run Detroit's magic club, and Harper is the one who created the gateway to send January to the Caribbean and back. Neither one is a superhero, so they don't have actual super suits. They are just magic users who live their lives running a nightclub. They are stylish, because they just are IRL. This is just how they dress normally, sans the mask and facepaint.

They are on scooters because Detroit has rental scooters throughout the city. They don't have special travel powers, aside from Harper's gateways. So they took the scooters.

I don't really plan on killing Blood Raven or January, if that is what you are thinking. So don't worry.


WellTemperedClavier: Just as it is important to me to show that January is not a one-woman army, dealing with everything on her own, I wanted to make it clear that the same was true with supers overall. They are not the be all and end all. They cannot save the world from Climate Change, or nuclear war, on their own. As much as they might try. Nor can they save the world from the Abyssal invasion on their own. It is always about people from all walks of life working together for common purpose. Showing that is one of the things I always make an effort to do.

So the regular people in the Air Force did what the supers could not. They cleared the way to the gateway, and gave the supers the chance to win the battle. Granted things won't be that easy. Because they never are.

If you go back to where Harper and Kaelin were introduced in the last Book, January and Blood Raven had to walk past several rental scooters to get into their magic nightclub. I originally put them in the description just because those rental scooters are a regular facet of the Downtown landscape these days. When it came time to get Harper and Kaelin to the battle, it just seemed perfect for them to use the same scooters.

I put the one-eyed doomsayer back in as a way to remind everyone that yes, he was there predicting this all along. I was originally going go with a Black Dog. In English and American folklore there are a lot of Black Dog myths. In some the dog is an oracle of doom. You see it when you are out traveling. The third time you see it, you die. In others it is a guardian spirit that protects innocent travelers. They see it and it just hovers in the distance. But when robbers or the like attack the travelers, the Black Dog comes and defends them. In the second case it is a lot like the sending wolves that Okami is named after.

I was thinking of putting the Black Dog in January's life because I knew her final encounter with the Hierophant was coming up. One of them was going to die, no matter what. The Dog was going to be there to prophecy that with its presence. But I changed it because the Black Dog is a little obscure to most people. So I changed it to something more closely tied to January and her beliefs: a bearded old man with one eye, with two ravens, and two wolves for companions. With this final appearance he gets his spear. There was no way to work in an eight-legged horse however.









Laminar Armor

Walking the Belle Isle Bridge video (this is going from Belle Isle to the mainland)

Apache Gunship

Two Steps From Hell - Riders of the Apocalypse


Book 10.18 - Alliance

Blackhawk wrapped herself up with the thrumming stream of power that was the Earth's magnetic field. She bent it and wrapped it up around her body, and used it to lift her skyward. She turned away from the ruined landscape of Belle Isle, which was now blessedly free of monsters thanks to the American air strike. But the First Nations heroine knew that would not last. Soon enough new tides of Abyssals were certain to spew from the great gateway. Even now the portal glowed and hissed like a cankerous sore upon the skin of the world.

Blood Raven - did that woman ever make her wish she was not an atheist, if only so that she could curse in the names of all the gods and spirits and powers both high and low - led everyone else forward onto the island. At the same time Blackhawk made her way in the opposite direction. For her Detroit counterpart had been right about one thing. Someone had to lead the wave of regular people - soldiers and civilians alike - who now swelled to defend their city and homes.

She had no idea what to make of the other woman. Throughout the years Blood Raven had rebuffed every attempt Blackhawk had made at alliance, let alone friendship. The only times the other woman had ever worked with her came from begrudging necessity, rather than amity.

Blackhawk remembered that time a villain team themed on natural disasters had fled from Detroit to Windsor in an attempt to escape Blood Raven. The other heroine had been forced to accept her help then. But the scarlet-haired woman gave nothing but a curt acknowledgement of Blackhawk's efforts after the villains were defeated, and then she simply turned and left without even a word of goodbye.

How Stormcrow, Lighthammer, and the rest could put up with it, Blackhawk had no idea. Granted, she seemed much more amenable of late. Was that a thaw in her behavior? Or was it simply a bow to the reality that she could not deal with this threat on her own?

Granted, by Blood Raven's own admission, she was two hundred and fifty years old. What did that manner of longevity do to a person? How did it affect your relationships, when everyone you had ever known and loved was dead and dust? How did it change you when you knew that every person you met in the future was destined to end as nothing but a broken tombstone in a forgotten graveyard, while you went on without them?

And now, Blood Raven had enchanted her suit of armor for her? Damn, could she at least pick a lane and decide to be friendly or not? That was the most exasperating thing about it all.

The others had called it a +5 weapon, whatever that meant. It sounded like Dungeons and Dragons to her. Blackhawk knew that banded mail was certainly not a real thing, though laminar armor such as she wore was. In any case, she still was not sure what to make of magic. Plenty of supers claimed to be magicians. But were they really? Or were they just meta-humans like herself and all the others, who merely called themselves wizards and witches because that fit their cultural or personal narratives better?

Blackhawk shook her head. She should not be letting that woman invade her thoughts, especially not at a time like this. She had her own work to do. She needed to focus on that. Lives were in her hands, a lot of lives. As she had once said herself, she was here to save lives, not take them, easy peasy lemon squeezy.

She brought herself down upon the concrete surface of the MacArthur Bridge right in front of the first trickle of mundane reinforcements. It was a small knot of military men and women. They looked young, as young as those in all the pictures in the history books she had written of people who had gone to war. Like so many of those men had been at the start of their careers in the past, these new warriors were clad in uniforms that were clean and crisp, their faces were freshly shaved, and their skin clear and unblemished by dirt, scars, or powder burns.

Also like so many of those men in the past, their uniforms fit a little poorly, with a sea of names stenciled over their chests, alongside the denotation that they were with the U.S. Air Force. Their weapons were held awkwardly, as if it was not something they did every day. Their eyes darted here and there with ill-concealed apprehension, as if they were unsure of what they were supposed to be doing, let alone how they were going to do it.

Blackhawk could relate. She felt the same way. She just knew better than to show it.

The newcomers came to a ragged halt when she touched down in front of them. Their leader was a sergeant, given the chevrons on his shoulder. He was older than the others, at least in his thirties. His waist was wider too, and the skin of his face sagged. He was no Wolfstone the Barbarian, or Jet Gladiator the space hero. Those were fictional ideals of heroism. This sergeant was an ordinary man, like every one of the veterans she had interviewed in her own career as a historian.

"Sergeant Newman," Blackhawk extended her hand. "I'm here to take charge."

She made sure to put on a look of calm certainty upon her face and frame. She had learned long ago to always convey a sense of confidence whenever she was suited up as Blackhawk. People wanted to see someone who was not afraid, who met danger without flinching. On the other hand, she had also learned that showing that you were just as scared and confused as everyone else was contagious. It led to panic. Then everything always got so much worse. She could not allow that to happen, especially not here.

She breathed an inward sigh of relief when the airman took her hand and shook it. "Boy am I glad you're here!" he declared loudly. The rest of his unit nodded their heads in agreement, and Blackhawk saw smiles and looks of relief wash across young faces.

The sergeant leaned in closer, and next spoke in a whisper that only Blackhawk could hear.

"Please tell me you know what to do," he confided in her. "We're not infantry. We're loadmasters. We put cargo on airplanes. All the others coming in behind us, they're just clerks, and cooks, and mechanics, and security guards; whoever they could scrape up from Selfridge."

"Just follow me, and everything will be ok. I know exactly what to do." Blackhawk confided in an equally low tone. Granted, it was all lies. She had no idea what to do either. But she was not going to let any of them know that.

"Ok people, form up on me!" She waved her hands in the air and shouted to get the attention of the next wave of soldiers that was coming up. No, not soldiers, these were Marines. She had learned the hard way not to call them the "S" word. The only thing that could appease a US Marine after addressing them as a soldier was to feed them a box of crayons...

"We are going to hold the end of the bridge, where it meets Belle Isle." She explained. "That is all we have to do. We will fortify the position, and drive off all comers."

"Are we really fighting monsters?" A young woman asked.

"Yes," Blackhawk did not sugar-coat it. They would see the reality soon enough, when the next wave issued from the gateway. "They are called Abyssals. They come in all shapes and sizes, but all of them are absolutely lethal. They do not take prisoners, and will never surrender. So when you shoot, shoot to kill, and hold nothing back."

Blackhawk could not believe that she had said that. She remembered how she had balked herself when Blood Raven and Stormcrow and first explained what Abyssals were. But she had seen it all herself by now, up close and personal. This was not simply people from another nation being pressed into fighting a war they might not even believe in. Those might be people who under other circumstances would be the first to share a beer with you at the pub. This was completely different. It really was a matter of the survival of the planet.

"You will know they are dead, because their bodies will disappear." Blackhawk went on. "Don't be alarmed at that. They aren't turning invisible. They aren't from our world, or from our universe. So they cannot exist here without help. Once they are dead, their bodies fade back to where they came from."

Or something like that. Blackhawk was not really sure if they went back, or simply disintegrated. She did not claim to be a master of arcane lore, like Blood Raven. Not that it mattered. Dead was dead, and that was all there was to it.

"Some of them can only be harmed by magic. Don't worry about them. I'll deal with those." Blackhawk continued. She stared down at her armor, which still glowed softly in the moonlight. Being Glow Girl would take some getting used to. "Most of them die just fine by bullets, or fire, or lightning."

By now a large crowd of military and civilians alike had gathered. With this little army of her own in tow, Blackhawk turned back to Belle Isle, and led them down the bridge toward the island. The span was long, longer than it looked from the air. She guessed it was half a mile from end to end. That was quick enough to travel driving or flying, but walking was a slower business.

She led the men and women across the bridge and toward the enemy that she knew was waiting somewhere ahead. She could not help but remember all of those veterans she had interviewed for her books. Some talked about how they were utterly terrified. How their mouths were dry, their palms wet, and their guts tied in knots. Others said they had no time for fear. That came later. They just focused on doing their jobs, and did not think of anything else. Death was something that would happen to the other guy. Not to them.

Blackhawk did her best to quash that empty, falling feeling that resided in her own stomach, and that desert dryness in her throat. She had to focus on her own job. She had a duty here, to these people, and to the world. There was no time for being afraid. That could come later.

With her job in mind, she looked from side to side at the span they crossed. Five lanes of concrete stretched from the American shore to Belle Isle. Two led to the island, and the other three provided an exit back to land. A low wall of concrete dividers separated the roadway from the wide pedestrian pathways on either side of the bridge. Finally a thick steel railing girded the very edge of the span, preventing anyone from falling into the river below. Wrought iron lampposts cast into the likeness of fluted Greco-Roman columns sprang up at regular intervals along the railed edge, providing soft electric light to the scene.

She reached out with her power, and felt the steel reinforcements that wound their way through the concrete below her feet. She ignored that, and felt her way up to those concrete dividers that separated the road from the walkway. The metal was putty in her fingers, and with merely a thought, it sprang up from the surface of the bridge, and dragged the concrete that encased it along for the ride.

She gathered up one divider after another as they marched forward, and held them floating in the air in front of them. Finally they came to the end of the bridge. From side to side, one entire section of its span had been shattered here. She could see the ruined pieces of it down in the river below, right against the shore of Belle Isle. Other wreckage had been thrown in atop the rubble. Broken bricks, splintered panels of wood, even wrecked boats and smashed cars made up a makeshift ramp that the Abyssals had built up there to try to bridge the gap. Thankfully they had not finished their task, and there was still a drop of at least a dozen feet beneath them.

Blackhawk brought her load of concrete and steel down at the broken end of the bridge. She arrayed the dividers into a wall that faced the island, and curved backward in a "U" shape along each edge of the bridge. She had leftovers, so she set them up in successive lines behind the first, leaving gaps for people to move through.

Then she remembered something else a Canadian veteran had told her recently. "The Germans liked to set up a defense in depth," the old man had explained. "So you would not just be fighting the trench right in front of you. You'd be fighting the machine gun nest a hundred yards behind it, and the anti-tank gun a half mile back, and the artillery position a mile away, and so on. These lines all supported one another. So when you attacked one, you took fire from all of them in return. That really made it a bear to crack them all."

"Okay, we're going to set up several lines of defense." Blackhawk declared. She waved her followers forward into the new positions she had created. "We will man them all, and support each other from each line. If it comes to it, I will give the word, and we will stagger back from one line to the next. That won't mean we are losing! It will just mean we are trading space for time. Because help is coming! We are not alone out here."

As if to underscore her words, the low thumping of helicopter blades came to her ears. She turned to the north-east, and saw a line of Apache gunships roll into a long a line that ran parallel to Belle Isle. A cheer rose up from the ranks of people around her. But Blackhawk frowned. She could not help but notice where their guns and missiles were pointed.

Without a word to her ground command, she rose up into the air and flew over to the helicopters. She hovered in place in front of the nearest, and tried not to react when the crew within almost jumped out of their seats in surprise. Instead she once more called up her power and reached into the electromagnetic spectrum. She moved below visible light, through the infrared and microwaves, and stopped in the longest wavelengths, those of radio waves.

With just a thought she transmitted a signal directly to the radio set in the cockpit of the helicopter in front of her. She turned her head, and extended that signal to each of the aircraft in turn. Finally she was patched in to all of them.

"This is Blackhawk," she introduced herself through the radios. "I am taking command here. I'd like you to look at where you are set up to fire."

She turned around, and faced back toward Belle Isle. Before her was the now blasted, blackened, and tortured moonscape that had once been a vast park. Beyond it lay the skyline of Windsor. Tall apartment buildings and low houses lined the far green shore directly opposite the island, along with a few glass and steel office towers.

"Every shot you miss, is going to kill dozens of people, maybe hundreds." she declared.

"We're here to fight a war, not..." One of the pilots retorted, but was cut short when Blackhawk literally seized control of the airwaves.

"Instead I want you to come around with me," she declared. With that she rose up above the helicopters. She reached down and took hold of the aircraft. The metal in their frames was like soft butter in her metaphorical hands. She was careful not to break or distort them. Instead she simply lifted them up, and brought them all with her as she flew south-west, over the bridge, and only came to a halt near the south-western tip of the island.

"I want you to post up here." She insisted. She turned to look back. The island was a narrow, irregular rectangle that ran from south-west to north-east. From this point, she stared down its length from end to end. Beyond lay the empty expanse of Lake St. Clair. She waved one arm down the length of the island for effect.

"Now you'll have enfilading fire when the Abyssals attack the bridge," she explained. "You also won't have civilians in your sights."

"I, uh... roger that Blackhawk," came a reply over the radio.

"Good," Blackhawk said. "Now watch for friendlies on the island. Look there, near the gateway. That is them. The Alliance, the Sentinels, Thunderbolt and Riven, and more. They are all there. Keep your fire clear of them. Instead I want you to support the bridge. Keep your fire on the Abyssals as they stack up against the shore of the island and funnel into the head of the bridge. They should be like fish in a barrel."

"Oh," she added as an afterthought. "Don't get too close to the island. They have their own air assets. If you get their attention, they will destroy you. You cannot go toe to toe with them."

She did not wait for a reply. She dropped the radio link, and sped back to the bridge. She found the defenders setting up there, and joined in as best she could. She noted several civilian paramedics, and called them over to her.

"Let's set up an aid station for you." She reached out and pulled up more of the concrete dividers and metal side rails that ran the length of the bridge. She formed these into a makeshift bunker that would shield the occupants from attacks coming from the direction of Belle Isle.

"I want you to stay here under cover," she explained. "I don't want you running around and getting killed. You're too important. I'm going to set up a system of stretcher bearers to bring the wounded back to you."

"That's not going to work," one of them - a middle-aged woman with brown hair - complained. "At least one of us needs to be out there for emergencies that can't wait even that long, like a femoral bleed, or for spinal injuries that can't be moved."

"Very well," Blackhawk sighed. "You work it out. Just remember, if you get yourself killed trying to be a hero, that's dozens or more lives lost because no one was there to care for them."

"You!" Blackhawk's eyes set up on a new group of people coming up. It was a pack of young men dressed in a variety of clothing such as Adidas gear, Pistons shirts, and plain tees. Tattoos decorated their bare skin, bright gold chains hung from their necks, rings glittered from their fingers, and one wore a pair of Cartier sunglasses. They looked suspiciously like a street gang. Especially given the plethora of guns they sported. One was even carrying an AK-47.

"You are all hospital security. I want you set up here. Your job is to protect the medics and the wounded, nothing else."

"The fight's up there!" the man with the AK cried, waving his weapon toward the island for effect.

"The fight is going to come to you," Blackhawk explained. "I guarantee you will get your taste of it. Now I want most of you set up around the aid station. Ignore the rest of the battle, only shoot at Abyssals who come for the wounded, and they will come."

"I have a special job just for you." Blackhawk laid an arm around the broad shoulders of the AK-toting gang member. She turned back to the medical staff and asked if they had decided who would take that job of traveling medic. A slender man wearing round glasses raised a hand, and Blackhawk led the gang-banger over to him.

"You are going to be the personal bodyguard of our roving paramedic. You stick to him like glue, you understand?" Blackhawk insisted. "Protect him with your life."

"This is Priya O'Neill, reporting live from the MacArthur Bridge to Belle Isle," a woman's voice now came to Blackhawk's ears. Blackhawk turned to see the very same reporter who had been at Gull Island walking up to her. She was the one with the great waterfall of indigo hair. The young woman was dressed in a sport coat hastily thrown over a T-shirt and tights. Following her was a towering cameraman with a flowing red beard.

"Blackhawk!" she heard the reporter cry. Then the other woman turned back to the camera to narrate. "Toronto's preeminent superheroine is here on the bridge with me. She seems to be in command. The situation is tense, as everyone is waiting for the next-"

The reporter was cut off by the popping sound of gunfire. Blackhawk snapped her head around toward Belle Isle. She rose skyward to get a better view, even as she zoomed out to the broken edge of the bridge. She could see that a new wave of monsters now issued from the gateway, and drove directly to the little fortress that Blood Raven and the others had set up in its shadow.

She lowered herself down, and admonished her troops to hold their fire. Like the Americans at Bunker Hill, they did not have an endless well of ammunition. She knew that soon enough, the fight would come to them, and they would need every round.

* * *

So Blackhawk is thrust into trying to take command of and deploy a diverse hodgepodge of forces.

First up is an Air Force platoon of loadmasters, cooks, bakers and candlestickmakers – oh my, this could be tough. . . . Ah, followed by some Marines – whew, much more promising. Then some Apaches that needed a little orientation to the task. Finally some EMTs and gangbangers. In each case, she managed to gain their followership – a challenging task in its own right that she handled well.

As she crosses the bridge, I see she is beginning to form a concrete plan. Sorry, couldn’t resist.

One thinks of supers as tending to be loners but Blackhawk certainly proved up to the task Blood Raven asked of her at least as far as organizing the most effective defense she could given the assets she had to work with. Well done, Blackhawk!

And kudos for acknowledging that the forces she commands each depend on an ammo supply limited to what they are carrying with no known plan for resupply.


Nit: ’This was not simply people from other nation being pressed into fighting a war they might not even believe in.’ - - I suspect you wanted ‘other nations’ or ‘another nation’.

Raven leaving just after that scenario without saying goodbye is actually what I'd expect! She's not personable. Sounds like Blackhawk did not expect that coldness at the time.

Anyway it sounds like Blackhawk is a little .. hm... what's the word? Insecure??? Naw. Jealous? Hmm... She is having some trouble with her thoughts about the elder heroine though. And at a time like this. I mean, Blackhawk herself is quite capable on her own most of the time I'm sure. All of them are getting right into it.

Whoa, she's a historian? (oops) An historian?

I'd imagine a lot of these military kids might be thinking they'd never see combat in their young lives. Certainly not on their home turf. Oh wow. Helicoptors.

Ha here comes the street thugs. Word. I bet they fire their guns sideways too, one-handed instead of using a proper stance. Are there Bloods and Crips (or some equivalent) in Michigan? If so, I wonder if this would be one of those rare instances during which they come together. Because in real-life they sometimes do put aside their rivalries. Same thing with Hell's Angels and Mongols (I think Mongols are the rival to Hell's Angels). There are times they put aside their hatred here and there.

Okay, so in this case it's the Latino Counts and Black Mafia. Are they rivals IRL?

Ha heh, Bumblebee. Awesome! Okay, that's right. Harper and Kaelin were in that special room. I just forgot their names over time.



Nope, that's not my prediction. Let's see what happens next.

Good call on the Doomsayer. I'm familiar with the Black Dog myth, but I'm not sure I'd have picked up on it unless you'd made the dog's purpose quite explicit.

Some interesting thoughts that Blackhawk is having on Blood Raven. Also emphasizes January's uniqueness, since it doesn't seem like Blood Raven works with others very willingly. Given her longevity, I can understand this. It'd be hard for her to really get close to anyone. January at least had an in by virtue of being family.

Heh, also like her confusion about the +5 weapon. Our terminology can be rather opaque to those not in the know.

So these troops are the Air Force Infantry?

Nope, they're support! Which really makes their stand all the more impressive.

I can also empathize with Blackhawk's need to project confidence. It's something I've had to do from time to time. Doing so does actually help boost your confidence a bit, but you still know all the ways it can go wrong.

Good use of her powers in reshaping the infrastructure. That can do a lot to delay the opposing force.

Interesting use of the gangsters. Tough though they are, most of them don't have anywhere near the kinds of training that the airmen have, so it is probably better to have them as a reserve force.

And the battle is on again! Good think Blackhawk was organizing the available forces. They'll need all the help they can get.

Acadian: I wanted to do more than just have Blackhawk line everybody up at the edge of the bridge and say "Get Ready!" So I looked at pictures and videos of the bridge to see what was there for her to work with, and thought about how she could use her powers on those things. From there I just considered basic battlefield tactics, and threw in the defense in depth. Creating the aid station was just natural, as there had to be someone for the wounded to go, etc...

Most of all it was Blackhawk showing that Blood Raven had been right. She has a reputation, and people will follow her. And her concrete plan...

As ever thanks for pointing out the nits so I can fix them.


Renee: Blackhawk is a little frustrated and annoyed at Blood Raven acting like an asshole. That is really all there is to it. Blood Raven can be very cold and impersonal. This is the result of that.

One reason I put Blackhawk on the bridge was so I could reveal more about her character. I always knew that she was a historian from the first time I introduced her. But there had been no real way to show that. This was the perfect situation for her to fall back on what she had learned writing books about Canadian history and warfare, and put it to practical use.

I don't think there are Bloods or Crips here in Michigan. Are they even a thing anymore? I am not really up on the gang scene. The Black Mafia was called the Black Mafia Family IRL. They were old gang that does not exist any more. They are all in prison. I don't know much about the Latino Counts. They are called the Latin Counts IRL, and are an offshoot of a Chicago gang that basically set up a franchise here in Detroit.


WellTemperedClavier: You called it on January's relationship with Blood Raven. The only reason Blood Raven is so warm and personable with January is because she is family. Granted, given their family history that also meant that January was a prime suspect of hers as well... But even still January and Blood Raven often lock horns, and January is often left feeling frustrated. Blood Raven is a difficult person to get along with. She can be a great friend, and the best teacher and mentor you will ever have. But she has strong opinions on pretty much everything, can be quite inflexible when she is certain she is right, can quickly discount the feelings of others, and often deliberately behave negatively in order to intentionally drive people away from her, in order to avoid creating attachments.

This is essentially a sneak attack, with neither side really able to prepare ahead of time. Though by default the Abyssals have an advantage, as all they need to do is shove bodies through the gateway. They don't need any other preparations. Because of that the Humans need time to bring in the actual front line troops from elsewhere. I am not aware of any infantry or armored divisions stationed in Michigan. Selfridge is the biggest base in the southern part of the state. It is technically an Air National Guard base. But in reality it is one the largest joint services base in the US, if not the largest. So it has people from all branches of service. But as you noted, they are mostly support and clerical types. The A-10 squadron is stationed there IRL. So far as I know, those are the only real combat troops there.

Honestly though, I like this better. It is in keeping with the theme I have been trying to keep that common people can make a difference when they step up and act together. As Blackhawk noted when she saw the first airmen. They did not look like heroes. The looked like real people.






Autobots, Roll Out

The Colossus

Y Ddraig Aur

Hypersonic Weapons are real

B-2 Bomber

B-1 Bomber

B83 nuclear bomb

Nukemap projection of one nuclear bomb dropped on Belle Isle

Two Steps From Hell - Red Tower



Book 10.19 - Alliance

Blood Raven watched as Blackhawk rose up into the sky and flew down the bridge to meet the mundane reinforcements that now streamed onto its far end. Then she turned back to face the others, just as Gadget raised his voice.

"Alright then," the meta-inventor said. He spoke in an overly-dramatic tone. It felt as if he was imitating a specific person, but Blood Raven could not place whom. "Autobots, roll out!"

Blood Raven had the sense that something of tremendous popular cultural significance had occurred. But she could not imagine what. Many of the assembled heroes laughed or snickered. But they all moved forward with her across the broken span of the bridge to the tortured ruin of the island beyond.

She saw that the gap which had been created by someone blowing out a piece of the bridge had been partially filled. Someone - she would guess the Abyssals - had thrown a jumbled mass of materials into the river there. Aside from the general rubble, her eyes picked up the broken hulls of boats, the twisted bodies of cars, and even piles of concrete road dividers were all heaped up down there in an attempt to fill the ersatz moat.

Some needed aid to cross the gap, notably Isaac in his mech: the Fred Hampton. The great, lumbering machine was not built for nimble leaps. But the assembled fliers - including herself - helped the multi-ton machine by all lifting together and carrying the humanoid machine across the artificial rift. It reminded Blood Raven of the old game "Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board" that she had played as a child with the other girls at Mrs. Gibson's School for Proper Young Girls. Granted, they had never played it with a subject quite so large.

Then they were off across the no man's land that now took up the south-western end of Belle Isle. Buildings, pavilions, and monuments had ceased to exist. So too had trees, streets, and even grass. The land was nothing but a churned up sea of impact craters, shattered stones, charred earth, churned up mud, and dust. Even the narrow creek that had bisected this section of the isle had dried up entirely, its water having long since evaporated under the heat of energy beams and the airstrike. Now it was nothing but a shallow gully that the waters of the Detroit River had yet to reclaim.

They came to this trench at the remains of a shattered bridge that had once crossed it near the island's western edge. The ruins of a small complex of public works buildings tottered beside it, now reduced to low piles of bricks. Only a sea of concrete highway dividers all stacked up in neat rows behind the ruins hinted at the area's former use. Blood Raven glanced back at the partially filled gap in the broken bridge. Clearly some of the rubble that now filled that opening had originated from here.

She glanced back to the north along the shoreline. There too, gaped another ruin. The former white-stuccoed bricks and red roof of the Belle Isle Boat House lay in a tumbled down wreck. More than just a place for storing water craft, the century-old building had been an event space that had hosted rowing events, parties, weddings, and other celebrations. A beer fest had even recent taken place there. Now it was yet another landmark of her home that had been cast down into dust by the Abyssal hordes.

Her astral senses detected no life within either set of ruins. Not even of mice or birds. Had any people been there before the battle had begun, they were now either dead, or fled. She prayed for the latter. The struggle had not begun until long after the park had closed. That explained why she had not seen any civilians at all during the fight. She was thankful for that. Had the Hierophant struck at midday, it would have been a slaughter.

Perhaps that had been his original intent? But January had been with her friends during the afternoon and well into the evening. It had been his desire to kidnap her and use her for the sacrifice. He must have waited for her to leave, and be alone, before taking her. Thusly his time table had been pushed late into the night. That role-playing game by a group of teens may have saved the lives of hundreds, if not thousands of people this day.

They followed the dried out gully deeper into the island. Beyond it to the south lay the wreckage of what had once been a vast parking lot. Now it was a sea of shattered concrete, dust, and ash. The land on their own side of the narrow defile was little different, except that without all the broken concrete, it was instead a barren moonscape of mud and impact craters.

They moved quickly, and in no time at all they stood before the flowing and bubbling surface of the portal, which now loomed larger than ever. Blood Raven knew better than to betray it to the others - lest it cause their conviction to waver - but the thing filled her dread. Her heart gaped like a pit at the sight of it, and some part of her wanted to weep with the horror. This was what the end of all life looked like.

"Very well, let us fortify ourselves." Blood Raven indicated the area around them in a voice that did not betray the trepidation which coursed through her veins. "We may begin by using the edge of the creek as a barrier. That can be the anchor of our defense. Build from there. Magicians, to me, we must prepare for our ritual."

With that they went to work. The riverbed did not run directly broadside to the face of the portal. Rather it stretched out away from it at a diagonal, and would only afford them partial protection from a frontal assault. So Isaac began by positioning the Fred Hampton at the nearest edge of the gully to the portal. After him the Abyssals would have flat, open ground to come around the flank to his left.

The other heroes pitched in. Several collected the wreckage from nearby pavilions and shelters. Then the Veil created a gateway back to that public works complex. Soon she and the others were carrying concrete road barricades back through and building up a fortress around themselves. Kaelin reached into the bag at her hip and pulled out a sea of potion bottles, which she passed out to the others. There were far more bottles than could have fit into such a small purse, which led January sense that there was more to the satchel than met the eye.

Blood Raven turned when she felt a disturbance in the aether behind her. This was of course beyond that of the festering boil of putrescence which the Abyssal portal created in the aether. It was something more, something worse. To their credit, the other magicians noted it too, for they all stopped what they were doing. As one they all turned their gazes with hers to face the gateway to the Abyss.

From it emerged a colossus, of a kind not yet witnessed before. It towered hundreds of feet into the sky, and its tremendous bulk stretched out hundreds more feet behind it. Its hide was covered in thick, overlapping armored plates of horn or bone. A tall row of these scutes elongated out to points, and ran the length of its spine like a jagged ridge. A pair of smaller ridges or horns flanked this, framing the sides of its back.

Its head alone was larger than Isaac's entire mech, and was crowned with another set of these chitin fins or horns. It stared out at the world with two crimson eyes that glowed brightly in the dark. It had no nose, and the lower half of its skull was taken up by a gaping maw. Three distinct mandibles stretched out from the head. The widest one in the center and bottom of the skull was filled with teeth the size of telephone poles. Two smaller mandibles flanked this to either side, and were tipped with even larger tusks.

Its two arms widened out into great, crab-like pincers. Its torso below trailed away into not legs, but rather a forest of tentacles that held its body aloft. These bent under the weight of the monster's body, then curled back up into the air. They stretched up skyward nearly as high as the creature was tall. These tentacles waved about, and occasionally smacked down to crush everything beneath, and gouge out great rents within the earth.

"What is that?" Stinger asked what everyone must have been thinking.

"I know not, its kind has never been recorded in two thousand years of lore," Blood Raven admitted. "We shall call it the Colossus."

Isaac opened up with Fred Hampton's railgun. But even traveling at Mach ten, its projectiles merely shattered upon the creature's armored plates. He switched to his quad plasma cannons as the Colossus turned and advanced upon the heroes' makeshift fortress. At the gargantua's feet a new wave of lesser Abyssals swarmed. In the air above them all loomed her father: Nátthrafn.

"We must defeat this champion of the Abyss before we may begin," Blood Raven noted. "Else it shall simply crush us while we perform the ritual. Fliers, to me! The rest of you hold the fortress, and concentrate your fire upon the smaller Abyssals."

With that Blood Raven leaped skyward. She prayed that the others would follow suit. A jagged bolt of lightning lanced from the heavens and hammered into the creature. It had no effect upon it, but it did tell Blood Raven that Stormcrow was at least with her.

"Valhalla calls..." the younger heroine murmured in her ear.

They swept over the Colossus like a hurricane. Laser light, plasma, electricity and even more exotic forms of energy such as quantum stings and pure magical power hammered the Abyssal in the form of beams, bolts, balls, and explosions. It would have been more than enough to annihilate any skyscraper, aircraft carrier, or battleship. Yet the Abyssal seemed unperturbed by all of it.

Blood Raven landed atop the ridge of armor above the monster's maw and brought Y Ddraig Aur around. The Dragonspeech runes that etched the black steel of the blade glowed brilliant gold in such close proximity with the Abyssal - its ancient enemy. A brilliant geyser of sparks shot up at the weapon's contact with the monster's armored plates. But even the draconian blade failed to pierce this creature's hide.

That did get its attention however. It turned from its path toward the fortress her companions had thrown together on the ground, and swiveled its head this way and that to find its antagonist. Then its eyes crossed, and set upon Blood Raven's form between them.

It lifted an armored forearm larger than a house even as Blood Raven was set to strike again. But a hand grasped her armored collar, where the back plate of her cuirass ended at her neck. She felt herself whisked aside by this firm grip, even as the Colossus' massive pincer swept through the now empty space which she had occupied just an instant before.

Blood Raven did not have to turn to see who had come to her rescue. She could hear the croaking of the crows in the aether, and smell their feathers in her nostrils. She and Stormcrow came down upon the spiny projections that ran the length of the creature's back. She did not turn to face her protégé. She simply struck again with Y Ddraig Aur. Half-swording now, she drove it point down into the monster's armor plate like a lance. Beside her Stormcrow did the same with Samhain.

But neither sword found purchase against the great beast's armored hide. Once again, golden sparks flew skyward when her sword struck the monster. Again the Colossus whirled about to try to lay hands upon its foe. Yet it was unable to do so. Instead its tentacles whirled about, crushing great swathes of the lesser Abyssals underfoot.

"Blood Raven," Cray's voice came in her ear. A light on her wrist computer showed that this was a private channel, not being sent out to the entire team. "I've got the Pentagon on the line."

"Very well, put them through," Blood Raven sighed. The last thing she wanted to deal with were generals, especially given that her hands were filled with a titanic monster from outside of reality. But she could also imagine what they might be thinking, and knew that their responses could be as catastrophic as the Abyssals themselves...

"This is General Millar, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff." A male voice whose rasp betrayed decades of bourbon and cigars grated in her ear. "I have the rest of the Chiefs with me, and I'm in contact with both the President and NORAD."

Blood Raven nodded briefly, then joined in with Stormcrow to try once more to drive their swords home into the creature's body. This time her student called down a bolt of lightning to infuse Y Ddraig Aur with even more power. But once again, it was all for naught. Except that the release of all that electricity served to garble their communications for a moment, and blot out part of what the general had been saying.

"... 82nd Airborne Division and 75th Ranger Regiment are on the way, but I am told it will take hours for their first elements to reach you." His gruff voice finally came back loud and clear. "Likewise the Michigan and Ohio National Guard are both being mobilized as we speak. But again, you cannot expect them until even later than that."

"So what do you have for me general?" Blood Raven asked as she swatted aside a small, flying Abyssal and sliced off one of its three heads. As all the Abyssals did upon death, it vanished into nothingness a moment later.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw that Stormcrow was again calling one lightning bolt after another down from the sky. But she was not training them upon the Colossus. Instead she directed each into her friend Gadget. The young man's new suit of armor soaked up every blast of electricity like a sponge, and glowed brighter and brighter blue with each strike.

Blood Raven did not need to be a technophile to understand that he was absorbing all of that energy. Finally he turned it all loose at once in a blinding torrent of plasma. The superheated energy lanced into the gargantua, but did little more than cause its armored plates to briefly glow under the impact.

"I've got an experimental hypersonic missile being loaded aboard a B-2 bomber right now," the general declared. "I am told it's the biggest punch we have in our arsenal that is non-nuclear. It will be there in ten minutes. I've also got a flight of B-1s loaded with conventional munitions that will be there in fifteen."

"We lay betwixt two cities," Blood Raven argued. "Even in the center of the river, using either of those shall cause untold numbers of civilian causalities."

"And if you fail, what then?"

Blood Raven was silent. A pack of shadows had come up from the ground, and now swirled around her and Stormcrow. The two of them had their hands full fending them off. Thankfully Stinger came by for an assist, slicing two to ribbons with her quantum stings. Blood Raven never saw the tiny heroine of course. As was her wont, the Chicagoan had shrunk down to the size of an insect. But Blood Raven certainly felt the other woman in the aether, and could not fail to miss her handiwork.

"That's what I thought." General Millar spoke again after the long silence. "I should also note that I have been authorized to use nuclear weapons, should these... Abyssals are they called? Should these Abyssals reach land."

"Do not do that," Blood Raven said through clenched teeth.

"Don't make me do that," the general responded coolly. "A flight of B-2 stealth bombers armed with B83 nuclear bombs are already in orbit over the city. If you cannot stop this, I will give them the green light."

Then her father landed atop the spine of the Colossus, and Blood Raven had no more time for generals. Nátthrafn dragged his axe behind him, and it kicked up a long line of sparks as it scraped across the massive Abyssal's armored plates. He was on her in a heartbeat, bringing the weapon down in a great overhand chop. She blocked with Y Ddraig Aur, and for a moment they locked blades.

Stormcrow took that moment to stab in at his exposed armpit with Samhain. But Nátthrafn twisted aside, and unleashed a kick into her midsection. She went tumbling through the air, completely off of the monster's back. Stinger came in from the opposite direction. But her quantum attacks found no purchase at all upon the Dark Lord's new stony flesh. Instead he swatted her aside as if she really was an insect.

"With whom do you speak?" Nátthrafn leaned in close to Blood Raven now, baring his teeth in a snarl. "Your king? Your emperor? Tell him to surrender and I shall be magnanimous. I shall make your deaths quick."

Blood Raven ended the sword lock with a front kick that sent her father somersaulting backward. But he landed atop another of the Colossus' spines, and charged back for her. Blood Raven turned and ran away, toward the monster's head. She could not defeat both the Colossus and her father at the same time. It was not certain that she could defeat either alone either. But clearly she needed to separate the two if she was to have any hope.

She tried to dig her sword into the gargantuan Abyssal's hide as she went. But the dragon blade still found no purchase upon its armor. Not even between the angled plates was she able to drive its point home. The Colossus appeared to all the world to be as invulnerable as it was unstoppable.

"Oh, do not leave me again dear daughter," Nátthrafn mocked in his rich baritone voice. "I so would like to... catch up with you. I think it is time you joined me, in the grave..."

"The only grave I join you in will be one of utter annihilation," Blood Raven thought of the nuclear weapons that might soon be unleashed. Would even they be able to stop her father, or his Colossus? She suspected not. She had to find another way, and soon.

A pair of shadows swept out from her father's chest, and zoomed around in front of her. She was obliged to pause to destroy them both. That gave him time to come to grips with her once more. Again, axe and sword clashed. Again, neither found purchase upon the flesh of their foe.

"Face it daughter, you have lost," Nátthrafn boasted. "You cannot defeat me, or my army. This is my finest hour, the culmination of lifetimes of work. I shall drag this world into the Abyss and devour it. Then the rest of this universe shall follow. You will all feed my Darkness."

Blood Raven's heart did fall then. Try as she could to be brave through it all. She knew he was right. She could not find victory this day.

Yet she knew of one that might still do so.

"You shall rue you words father," she growled. She made sure that she was on the team-wide channel before speaking next. "Allies, retreat from the Colossus. Stay as far away from it as possible."

She leaped away. In the instant she was free of her father, she did the unthinkable. She took Y Ddraig Aur in both hands, and snapped the blade in two over one knee. Then she hurled the shattered steel from her hands. But she did not fail to note the drops of golden blood that ran from its runes. The blood that was those runes etched upon the meteoric iron of the blade.

Her father laughed uproariously. Perhaps he thought she had given up? She neither knew nor cared. She flew far, far away, in order to distance herself from the Colossus, and what she knew was coming next. The Abyssal flailed behind her, tying to swat her from the sky with its two massive pincers. But she effortlessly soared between the gigantic arms of the beast, and did not stop until she was well beyond its reach.

Below her, she saw the broken pieces of the sword strike the earth below. She saw the drops of blood hiss into the blasted and tortured concrete and mud a moment later. The golden fluid ate through the ground like acid, giving up an audible hiss. A faint cloud of mist rose up in its wake, creating a low haze that stretched across the ground in all directions.

"Your sword is broken my daughter!" Nátthrafn bragged from across the distance.

"Nay father," Blood Raven crowed. "It is resurrected!"

As if summoned by her words, a gigantic, reptilian foot shot up from the earth below. It was soon followed by another. Both were covered in golden scales, and ended in talons larger than automobiles. The dragon's head burst from the ground next, followed by its long, sinuous neck. Its bulky body came behind, and it unfurled its great wings as its back legs and tail finally emerged from the earth.

The dragon was not only covered in golden scales, but it radiated brilliant yellow light. It was as if a sun had taken the form of a winged beast, and towered hundreds of feet above Belle Isle. It was so bright, that it literally turned night into day, not simply around the island, but across both cities to either side.

"Witness Y Ddraig Aur in her true form!" Blood Raven crowed in triumph.

The dragon took a moment to regard her. It had been many years since Blood Raven had last laid eyes upon the great guardian in Wales. Over a millennia would have passed from the dragon's perspective, as Y Ddraig Aur had been left to plod the slow road of time to reach the present. Blood Raven however, had taken the quick route through the paths of time to return to the here and now, in the manner of travel pioneered by her friend and mentor Keziah. It had been all those years since she had petitioned the Great One for aid, and since the dragon had relented with the gift of her blood.

Now here Y Ddraig Aur was, fulfilling her ancient duty. Not to Blood Raven, but to the multiverse. For the dragons existed for only one purpose: to combat the Abyss. Blood Raven did not have to ask for Y Ddraig Aur's aid, though she did so out of courtesy in any regard.

The dragon turned to the Abyssal Colossus before her. The monster clearly recognized its ancient enemy, just as did the dragon. The horror brought a great pincer forward to snap at one of the dragon's forearms. Y Ddraig Aur replied by backing away, out of reach. Then she snapped her head forward, and let loose a torrent of energy from her mouth.

This was not the classic fiery breath weapon that most dragons of folklore possessed. Nor even a more exotic form of energy such as lightning or acid or even poison. This was cross between sunlight and a laser, and was comprised of pure arcane might. That the Colossus was not utterly annihilated under the hurricane of power was stunning. As it was the monster recoiled, and the armored plates that sheathed its body hissed and melted under the assault.

Then the dragon lunged forth, and the two were locked together, pincer to claw, fang to fang. They bit, slashed, and snapped at one another. The tentacular lower limbs of the Colossus smashed to and fro, inadvertently sending more of its smaller kin to oblivion with each crushing blow. The dragon's own tail was also a weapon that whipped around, and took off one of the tentacles of the Colossus with a single slice.

Then Stormcrow was at Blood Raven's side once more, and for long moments they observed the fight from where they hovered in mid air. It was the manner of thing one only read of in novels or saw in films, never in reality. Until this very moment, Blood Raven herself could have never imagined bearing witness to such a battle of titans. Yet here she was. The world was indeed a wider, and stranger place than she had ever thought.

Then her descendant handed Samhain to her.

"She's a lovely sword to be sure, but you can put her to better use than I," the other woman said.

Blood Raven smiled back at Stormcrow. As ever, Samhain felt right at home the instant she set her palm to the leather-wrapped hilt. The voice of the Morrigan spoke in her ear, whispering that death came to her enemies that day upon wings of night and fire.

"Come, let us not stand here and stare," Blood Raven said, and waved for the other woman to follow. She led her around the battle zone created by the two titans, and the two of them flew down to the makeshift fortress still being manned by their ground-bound counterparts. There they joined in the fight to hold off the rest of the marauding Abyssal army.

* * *

Lol, he actually says "Autobots, roll out!" Yeah, I bet Branwen is pretty confused about that one.

Okay, I have to link to this if I can. Light as a feather, stiff as a board. Okay, I see it can be a child's game, or it can be featured in more of a magical way, as per The Craft. Hard to say which version Raven played as a child, since she's magical herself.

They really tore up Belle Island. Buncha bastards. But that's crazy to think of the timetable, you are right. Perhaps Higherpants had been wanting to capture January much earlier than he did. And because he had to wait, all of this is taking place at night. Would've been mayhem even worse had he gotten his way.

And I totally get the way Raven's feeling dread at this moment. Because think about it: That's her FATHER's doing.

Yees, and there he is. Nátthrafn. Gee, thanks dad, at getting me involved in this mess. What an embarrassment, too. "Yeap, all of this is my dad's fault."



That's a great image. This monster's so big and important, it doesn't matter that it's destroying a bunch of smaller monsters!

And here's the Pentagon. Yes, I can totally see how all of this has attracted their attention. I don't think the Pentagon and our armies can do it. Maybe not even Chuck Norris could.

Whoa, she broke her weapon! Wht the?? This is crazy. I can imagine what a light show this is creating. The whole world must be stunned.

Well maybe this'll hold off any possibility of nukes being used. 💣 Or Chuck showing up long after his glory days.

---------------

Yes, Bloods and Crips are still a thing, although I think they're mostly still on the west coast. From what I've understood, both gangs are multi-state. They've expanded into Nevada and Colorado and other states in the past, and so on.

That role-playing game by a group of teens may have saved the lives of hundreds, if not thousands of people this day.
- - See? Gaming saves lives!

That Colossus is pure evil. It, of course, cares nothing of collateral damage, but goes a step further and takes no steps to avoid friendly fire on its own.

Blood Raven rescued by Stormcrow! That was an unexpected and symbolically potent moment.

"With whom do you speak?" Nátthrafn leaned in close to Blood Raven now, baring his teeth in a snarl. "Your king? Your emperor?"
- - Nasty Nate really needs to update his geopolitics by a few centuries.

Enter the Dragon! What an awesome force that dragon of light is. I love it when dragons are portrayed as good.


Nit: It had no nose, and the lower half of it{s} skull was taken up by a gaping maw.

Heh, for all Blood Raven's wisdom, it's hard for her to keep up to date on nerd pop culture.

Good work on ferrying the Fred Hampton across. That kind of firepower will make a difference.

Lucky that the attack happened after the park closed... especially since the delay may have come about from a game! Let no one ever say role-playing isn't useful!

The colossus's head is bigger than the 'mech?! The bigger they are, the harder they fall. Hopefully. But that armor will probably give it some real durability.

This will make it much harder to hold off the Abyssals. Plus, the size and endurance of the colossus means it'll draw a lot of fire, letting the smaller Abyssals move forward.

Oof, and now the military's setting up a time limit.

Whoa, snapping Y Ddraig Aur in two? This better be one helluva plan that Blood Raven has.

And she does! Sorry if you mentioned this earlier, but does Y Ddraig Aur mean "the golden dragon" in Welsh? At any rate, if they bad guys summon big help, the answer is clearly to summon some big help of your own.

Okay, while the giants fight, the heroes can hopefully finish the job.

Renee: For a woman her age (250 years) Blood Raven is comparatively well-versed in pop culture. But still some things like Transformers do slip through her cracks. At least she knows that kings and emperors are not really a thing anymore, except ceremonially.

I was thinking the child's version of light as a feather, stiff as a board. Doing it the other way in 1760s New England would likely get you burned at the stake...

This whole thing has been a family affair. Nátthrafn, Blood Raven, January, Julian. They are all from the same bloodline. Blood Raven was not far off the mark back when she was suspicious of January possibly being the Summoner.

Well, Chuck Norris probably could handle this. Even Hitler was afraid of Chuck Norris!


Acadian: I could not resist throwing in the nod to role-playing games, given that January, Avery, and Ryo are all gaming nerds. Their gaming afternoon saved countless lives.

The Colossus destroying the creatures on its own side without even noticing was a deliberate choice on my part. I wanted to show that this is what the bad guys do, and the amount of loyalty they possess for one another. While at the same time we see January whisking Blood Raven out of danger. The good guys are there for one another. The bad guys just destroy everything in their path.

Nátthrafn is indeed woefully behind the geopolitical times. He just barely missed the American Revolution. He died a few days before Lexington and Concord, and missed everything afterward. So the very word President would have no meaning to him, and the term "Prime Minister" would just be an administrative functionary. His last time on earth was one of kings, and emperors, and tsars.

I do love me a good dragon as well. They make some of the best ultimate boss characters. That is why in the Stormcrow-verse I made them a cosmic level force that forever stands against the Powers of Darkness.


WellTemperedClavier: At least Blood Raven knew what Voltron was! She probably even knows who Fred Sanford is. But she definitely has no idea who Taylor Swift or Beyonce are. OTOH, she does know who the real Fred Hampton was. Her hatred of the police is well-earned.

I am not really sure about what the proportions of the Colossus would be. It is so big I have trouble understanding how large each individual bit would be. I just know it is hundreds of feet tall, so Godzilla scale.

Y Ddraig Aur does mean the Golden Dragon in Welsh. I got it from the battle standard that Owain Glyndwr used in 1401 in the Welsh Revolt against the English. Unlike the traditional red Welsh dragon, this one was golden (as the name says). I saw that, and knew I had my dragon.

It will be a while yet before they can get to finishing the job. We have a couple more fronts to visit on the battlefield before this phase of the battle is over, and then the next begins.








Thirty Seconds To Mars - This Is War

Thrones are Biblical angels

Size of a 30mm round

Blackhawk's use of the minigun rounds was inspired by Sypha's use of ice bolts from Castlevania



Book 10.20 - Alliance

Blackhawk hovered just above the front line of her troops, at the very edge of the break in the bridge. Down in the river in front of her, she could see the shattered pieces of the span that had collapsed when that man in the mech had blasted it all out. That gap in the bridge turned out to be her best defense, for now the Abyssals were forced to leap, fly, or literally climb atop one another to get across the break in the roadway.

But that defense was steadily shrinking, as ground-bound Abyssals brought forward a constant stream of rubble to fill in the rift. Broken concrete dividers, bricks, roof tiles, even cars and boats were all hurled down into the gap. This slowly brought its surface higher and higher. Eventually it would be high enough for them all to stream across unhindered.

She would have liked to have fixed all of her attention on those sappers. But that was simply impossible. For even as they set about their crude siege craft, more of their cousins were indeed leaping and climbing over their comrades to get at the people who defended the bridge. Monsters that looked like twin headed and tailed pterodactyls flew down from overhead, along with literal flying heads. She recognized the latter from folklore.

Usually myth was just stories. She should know, she wrote stories for a living. In her case they were true stories, but still stories nonetheless. Being a historian was not just about throwing out names and dates, fact and figures. That was as interesting as watching paint dry. She had learned long ago that for people to be invested, you needed to present history as the human story, and fill it with the narratives of real people, who had real lives, real dreams, and sometimes real deaths.

In this case, she wondered if the people who had recounted the stories of the flying heads in the past had actually faced these things, or learned of them secondhand through others that had? Or was it just pure coincidence? After all, a head was a part of anatomy that all humans knew. And flying, well that was an ability humans had often envied. It would not have been extraordinary for a person to combine the two in order to tell a story about bravery and persevering against evil, without ever facing or hearing of a specific monster from outside of time and space.

Creativity was one of humanity's finest traits after all. The last thing people needed were actual monsters to create stories. We could invent them well enough all by ourselves.

There she was, being an academic in the middle of a battle. Everyone told her that there were no atheists in foxholes. Maybe they were right though. After all, she was not in foxhole was she? She was standing right up in front where everyone could see her.

One of those flying heads shot fire from its eyes, and splashed it down across her chest. The flames burned away the blue and green paint that decorated the steel. Even the medicine wheel that had emblazoned her chest was incinerated by the blow. Thankfully Blackwood's meta-paint was not so easily destroyed. She knew from experience that it would regenerate and return her armor to its original appearance in a few minutes. But it was still annoying. That was her drip, as the kids liked to say these days.

The bloody handprint that Blood Raven had pressed into her chest, that remained however. No amount of fire or heat or other energy could wipe it away. Blackhawk took hope from that. It meant that the other woman's magic remained, as strong as ever.

Before that fire could vanish, she wrapped up the flames in a field of magnetic power. So bottled, she flung it up at one of those two-headed flying dinosaurs. It caught the creature full in the chest, and burned a hole straight through its frame. In moments it dissolved to nothingness, not even leaving ash to float away in its wake.

She followed by releasing several of the steel plates from her arms. They flew out into space and reformed themselves into long darts. Each possessed wide, sickle-shaped wings on either side, with razor sharp edges. These spiked into those flying heads, and sliced them into ribbons. Like all the Abyssals, they vanished into nothingness a moment later, and she recalled the now magical steel weapons back and reformed them into her armor.

Below her the combined military and civilian defenders manned the barricades she had created. As she had instructed, the first line at the very end of the bridge fired directly at the Abyssals charging them. Those in the line directly behind concentrated their fire on the monsters who made it to the top of that first barricade. Those farther back concentrated on the airborne monsters all around.

So far it was working, so far. The Abyssals had not been able to break the first line from dead ahead, at least not for long. The fire from the helicopters to the south cut them pieces as they came up, then the combined small arms of her ersatz infantry took care of the rest.

The flying Abyssals, those were the worst. They breezed right past, over, and sometimes even under her defenses. Then they came at the defenders from all sides and angles. It was just as dangerous being in the rear as it was being in the front. Blackhawk did her best to concentrate her own personal efforts on these creatures. They would be her greatest threat.

This was made terrifyingly clear as a creature of nightmare appeared over the end the bridge. It looked like a series of concentric rings. Each twisted and spun in a different direction, one layered beneath the other. Each ring was filled with glowing eyes that stared every which way. Deep within the heart of the creature glowed a formless protoplasm that shifted and flowed chaotically. Within that in turn, rested a single, massive eye.

She recognized this from the Bestiary that Blood Raven had provided to all of their team. It was a Throne. She searched her memory for its strengths and weaknesses, but could only recall that those eyes were dangerous, and that it could only be harmed with magic.

The latter was made clear by the soldiers below who shot at it with their assault rifles. Yet their bullets had no effect upon the eyes and rings of the monster. Several of those eyes turned down to the defenders, and brilliant light flowed from them. Blackhawk reacted by creating a force field of magnetic energy between the defenders and this new Abyssal. But the light from its eyes streamed through her energy screen without the slightest abatement.

It bathed the men, and in just a few moments their skin seemed to turn not just pale, but white as bone, white as salt. A grinding, cracking sound rose up from each, as their motions slowed, then finally ground to a complete halt. At that they froze in place looking to all the world like stone statues from a museum.

Blackhawk replied by sending a bolt of electromagnetic energy directly at the center of the monster. But as with the bullets, this had no effect at all. Except that now those hundreds of eyes all fixed upon her. She saw that light stream forth from them once more, and bathe her body with heat and illumination.

The glow that now suffused her armor hissed to brilliant life in response to the Throne's attack. So too did the bloody handprint imprinted upon her chest pieces. She felt it create a field of energy between her body and whatever magical power of petrifaction that the monster was employing. The Throne flew nearer, and its eyes literally bored into her. But Blood Raven's enchantments did not waver or falter. They held true, and remained inviolable through it all.

Clearly, +5 Armor was a good thing.

Blackhawk looked down to the backs of her hands. The bands of steel plates that protected them obeyed her mental commands, and flew out into space, directly at the Abyssal. She reformed them into the razor-winged darts that had been so effective against the flying heads. She sent both right at the central mass of chaos that shifted and tumbled within the heart of the monster. But it stretched and twisted its body so deftly that the two magical weapons flew right through it unharmed, and emerged from behind it without having made a scratch upon the Abyssal's flesh.

The Throne turned some of its eyes from her, and fixed them upon more of her troops on the bridge below. Those eyes began to glow again. But this time Blackhawk was ready. More bands of metal flew out from her legs, and spread out in wide shields between the people below and the eye beams of the Abyssal. The magic that infused the steel turned aside every Abyssal attack, leaving those below unharmed.

That gave Blackhawk an idea. Now she sent every steel plate of her armor forward across the air. That left her wearing nothing but the blue and green undersuit of meta-material that Mr. Blackwood had created for her long ago. Like her steel armor plates, this was also decorated with a medicine wheel across the chest, as well as a mask that protected her features.

The Throne responded by refocusing all of it eyes upon her, and again unleashed their petrifying attacks. But she was able to shift her steel plates to block her body from those assaults. She thinned and widened each plate, and transformed them into large rectangles and squares. She locked each to the next, and sent them closer and closer to the Abyssal.

Now the monster appeared to sense the danger it was in, for it tried to back away. But it was already too late. The steel plates that Blackhawk had sent behind it came rushing forward to meet those on her side. In a moment they all clamped together into a single, solid mass that completely encased the Throne in a hollow sphere.

The monster within crashed against the steel an instant later, attempting to burst out of the trap. Blackhawk felt the metal warp and dimple under the assaults. It took every ounce of her willpower to force the steel back into shape, and hold it firm under each successive assault. Sweat beaded her brow, and she felt her body tremble with the effort. But still the Abyssal fought back.

She had to end this. With one last effort of will she brought all of that steel together, crushing it down into a single, compact mass. She felt the Throne trapped within strain against the pressure for long moments. Then she felt something like a popping or bursting sensation within, like a zit being pierced.

With that all resistance stopped, and the Armex steel of her body armor simply fell into a single, solid mass. She felt no empty spaces within the block of metal, nothing left to strain against it. That could only mean one thing. The Abyssal was dead, and its body had dissipated or evaporated back to the benighted realm which had spawned it.

Blackhawk a breathed a sigh of relief, and pulled that single mass of steel back to her. As it floated through the air, she willed it to separate into distinct pieces once more, and shaped them into the familiar forms of her armor plate. One by one, they all snapped into place around her frame, until she was back to her normal, armored self once again.

She found that she had been correct about the Abyssal. No trace of it remained after she pulled the last of the steel apart. That was easy peasy, lemon squeezy.

She set herself down beside the two men who had been petrified by the Throne's initial attack. She saw that one was a member of the US Army, given his uniform. The other was clearly a civilian, given the shorts and airbrushed Stormcrow tee that he wore. Their bodies were white as salt. She could not tell if they were still alive under it all, or dead. Blood Raven or Stormcrow might know how to counter such magic, and return them to normal. But she certainly did not.

So Blackhawk waved the roving paramedic forward, and corralled up a few more defenders nearby. She had them take the petrified men back to the aid station, to be set aside for later. With any luck after the battle was over one of the magicians might possess a spell or potion that would revive them. If not... well, there was nothing else she could do for them in any case.

Afterward Blackhawk rose up high into the sky to get a good view of the situation. In spite of all the mayhem around her, she and her bridge detail faced only a fraction of the monstrous army. She could plainly see that the Abyssals who assaulted her position were just an afterthought. The true brunt of their attack fell upon the makeshift fortress that the other metas had created in the center of the island, in the shadow of that strange gateway.

The sound of metal screeching came to her ears, and she jerked her head around to its source. One of the helicopters off the south-western tip of the island was belching smoke, and had begun to turn in a lazy circle. She reached out with her mind, and caught up the gunship as if it was a child's toy. That prevented it from dropping into the dark waters of the river below.

She saw what had done the deed. A creature that was all thorns and wings had landed atop the helicopter's fuselage, just beneath the spinning rotors. It was reaching into the engine and ripping out huge chunks of metal. Electricity sparked, and set fire to the oil and other fluids that now spurted to and fro.

Blackhawk grabbed up the rotors with her mind, and peeled them off the fuselage of the broken helicopter. Then she sent them down upon the spiky monster on top of the engine. She had no idea what it was called. It hardly mattered now. The metal blades sliced into and through the hide of the Abyssal, reforming into razor-sharp scythes as they went. The Abyssal disintegrated under the assault, and pieces of it began to rain from the sky along with those of the helicopter.

She finished it off by gathering up all the flames from the burning aircraft in another magnetic bottle, and loosed them onto what remained of the monster. Its fried and seared flesh vanished a moment later, disintegrated as all the Abyssals did upon death.

She still held the helicopter airborne with her other metaphorical hand. She pulled back, and drew it across the sky to the bridge. She set it down near the aid station, so the two man crew could be seen to if they had been injured. In the meantime with merely a thought she ripped out the missiles that remained on the craft, and flung them at the Abyssal horde with a great swell of explosions.

She followed by pulling out the ammunition for the chain gun. She arranged the rounds into a long, serpentine chain, just like cartridges within a machine gun belt. She brought one end of this belt up to the level of her eyes. Then she turned herself into a living machine gun, and used her power to magnetically accelerate each cartridge one at a time down into the oncoming tide of Abyssals. With each shot, she brought the rest of the rounds in her imaginary belt up to replace the last which she had fired.

All too soon however, she was out of the massive 30mm rounds. So she reached down and lifted up the veritable snow of spent shell casings that now littered the bridge. These too became deadly projectiles when she fired them down at the monsters at terrific speeds.

Once more, she took stock of the situation. It was touch and go, but her ersatz fighting force was holding the bridge. A glance back showed that more helicopters were bringing in fresh troops from Selfridge: the nearby American Air National Guard Base. Even more civilians streamed up the bridge on foot, and threw themselves into the fray alongside those already there.

But when she looked back across Belle Isle, Blackhawk's heart sank. The massive Colossus that towered there threatened to blot out the stars with its bulk. There was no stopping it. Not even the railgun of Isaac's mech seemed to have scratched its armored hide. Let alone the assembled might of the other three teams worth of superheroes. How they were going to defeat that, she had no idea.

She shook her head, and turned her gaze back to her own defenses. A new wave of flying creatures had soared over her front line, and she peeled off metal plates from her armor to slice them to ribbons. That Colossus was a Blood Raven problem. She had her own issues to deal with right now.

Blackhawk continues managing her limited defensive assets to very good effect. Just as importantly, she does not allow her focus to be drawn from her mission of defending that bridge.

’Clearly, +5 Armor was a good thing.’
- - And clearly, Blood Raven did a great job!

Hope one o’ them mages has a stone to flesh spell!

Finally she has a moment to glance at the main battle – enough to be concerned about how her fellow supers were going to defeat this aptly named ‘Colossus’.

Gaming can save some of us from falling into habits we shouldn't fall into, since gaming IS quite an addiction in itself, gaming also helped Lopov learn English, German, and some Italian in a more casual way, and so on. Dang, the Queen of Off-Topic strikes again.

Yeah, that's true about the child's game. Back then if you did something "wrong" you'd be branded as witchcraft. Forgot about that. I was just thinking that since Branwen has magic inside of her. But then, when would she have become fully aware and able to use this magic? I'm now assuming not back then, not when she was a child, or at least not in front of too many others.

These abyssal monster-things now are coming across as a colony of ants, as they are now blindly climbing over each other. They are also like the demonic monsters we'd see in a Bosch painting. There are even flying ants mixed in with the drones and soldiers. 🐜

So true when Blackhawk thinks 'being a historian is not just dates and facts'. The best history teachers bring the art of story-telling into the classroom.

Blood Raven put a bloody handprint onto Blackhawk's chest? Her actual chest?? Or just armor?

Yeesh, oh my god. This Throne monster. Ah, thanks for posting a link. It doesn't even look like a monster; it's like a flying symbol of some sort.

Sounds like they're going to need Cure Paralyzation on those two fellows.

I can relate with struggling the proportions. Every time I sit down and try to figure something out like that, I start drowning in the details.

This battle's definitely giving me a Zerg rush feel. My impression is that there are more Abyssals than there are bullets on Earth, so delaying them will only work for so long. And if the ritual doesn't work?

Then things go south, fast.

Are the flying heads penanggalan? I've come across those in stories.

One good thing about Abyssals: disintegrating on death saves a lot on cleanup.

While it seems like the troops have a decent hold on the ground Abyssals, the defenders don't have as much against the flyers. Blackhawk and some of the other metas doing a lot of the heavy lifting here, and I don't know how long they can keep that up.

Loved how she used her armor as a flying shield (and later a prison). Clever use of her powers.

All right, think she's making a good tactical decision in focusing on what's in front of her. You can't manage the entire battle when you're in the thick of it, you just have to fight and hope your buddies are fighting just as hard. Onto the next front.

Acadian: I wanted to create a real challenge for Blackhawk and the bridge defenders, and show that the Abyssals were making a real push against them. I also needed to have at least one creature that could only be harmed by magic, for that +5 Chekhov's Armor to pay off. I am glad it all worked.


Renee: A colony of ants is a really good comparison. The monsters are being driven in a horde, most to their doom. But they never stop or tire.

Everyone has magic in this world. It is just a matter of whether or not you embrace it and cultivate it within yourself. Blood Raven herself did not start using magic until she became an adult, and then only in small ways. It was not until she became a vampire that she really embraced her magic.

The hand print is on the chest pieces of Blackhawk's armor. If you go back you can see where she put it there as part of her enchantment on the armor, the blood being a physical component of the element of Spirit that she placed in the armor.

The Thrones are one of the weirdest of the Biblical angels. The Seraphim being the other bizarre one with six sets of wings and multiple eyes. There is a good reason that whenever angels appear in the bible, the first thing they always say is "BE NOT AFRAID!" I have drawn from a lot of cultural inspirations for the individual Abyssals. Native American, European Pagan, etc... I wanted something from the Abrahamic religions as well, to keep things well rounded.


WellTemperedClavier: At some point one of the characters does describe the battle as a Zerg Rush. I think Avery, since he is the OG - Original Gamer. You are right, there are more Abyssals than there are bullets on the Earth. All they have to do is keep coming forward to win in the end.

I know the Penanggalan. They are in my Monster notes for future use as a form of Undead/Magical Creature, but of Earthly origin. These flying heads come in two varieties. One are the Kanontsistonties from Native American folklore. The other are the flaming skulls straight from the Doom games.

I take a lot of my inspiration for Blackhawk's use of her armor from the Legend of Korra. They have Earth Benders who have specialized in Metal Bending, that do the similar things, if on a smaller scale. I just took that and turned the volume up to 11.

On to the next front.









Marble Grave Stele

The Goddess Selene

Lunar Ferroan Anorthosite


Book 10.21 - Alliance

Eleni stared for long moments at the still picture of an ancient grave stele that glowed upon her computer screen. It depicted a little girl holding a pair of pet doves, with a somber look etched upon the fine features of her bowed head. She marveled at the exquisite workmanship of the child's hair, which depicted the strands as they curled around her head, to be gathered up in a bun, only to allow a narrow line of curls to drop down the nape of her neck. At the same time her practiced eye noted that the girl's peplos was unbelted, allowing it to fall in a waterfall of cloth around the back of her legs, which would have been otherwise hidden beneath their folds.

"Somebody loved you," Eleni sighed. She was staring at a picture of a slab of rock. But in her mind's eye, she stared beyond the carven stone, to see the real girl it represented. Had that real girl also said goodbye to her favorite pets, before she died some two thousand and five hundred years ago? Had she said a prayer to Artemis with her last breath, beseeching the protector goddess of young women to guide her in the afterlife? Had her family been there with her?

Who had she been? What had been her life's story, before her so untimely end?

Discovering that and telling that story was the job of cultural anthropologists like Eleni. She looked from this one picture, to the other still pictures that scattered about the floor of her cramped home office. They likewise depicted sculptures and carvings of Ancient Greek women. They were young and old. All of them going about their daily lives: weaving, drawing water from a well, kneading bread, playing a flute, and so on.

The pictures competed with 3D printed toys from the period, smaller stele, and even statuettes. And of course there were the books. Books everywhere, stacked up in every available space. Her cat Hekate perched upon one stack. The feline looked up at her expectantly, even as her tail waved to and fro against the spines of the volumes beneath her.

Eleni leaned down to pet her, but the cat meowed loudly and darted off in a flash of indigo fur. Books went flying beneath her paws, and turned the organized mess into a decidedly disorganized one. Eleni bent over to pick one up, when the sound of voices came to her ear from another room.

That was odd. It was late, and she lived alone. She narrowed her eyes, and gathered her magic around herself out of reflex. Did she have an intruder? She did not expect that in Georgetown. It was about as upscale as things got in Washington DC. Art galleries, waterfront parks, outdoor streatery restaurants, clubs, and more made up the neighborhood. It was a nice place, for nice people, with a nice amount of money.

A little too nice if you asked Eleni. But at least it was within walking distance of her job at the university. She owned a car. She was an American after all. But the less she had to use it, the better.

Still, it might be some drunk college student who had wandered into the wrong house at the end of long evening of partying. Or maybe it was an actual burglar? That would be quite a change of pace. Usually trouble did not come looking for her so blatantly. Normally she was the one seeking it out.

In any case, Eleni would have to be careful not to reveal too much, in case it was an intruder. As such she did not call up the suit. That would really be tipping things off. She had to pretend to be normal, just in case.

She padded from the room on quiet feet, only to stop herself. The witch bottles she had planted in the walls would have instantly warned her of any intruders, natural or otherwise. With that in mind, she stretched out with her aion, and touched the nearest of the apotropaic devices. It lit up at her touch, a glowing island in the aether. From it her consciousness traveled through the web of power that linked one witch bottle with the next, and sheathed her home in the net of their protection.

There was nothing in the house except her and her cat Hekate. Well, there was that spider that lived up in the upper corner of the living room windowsill. But Gwen hardly counted. Not in this case at least. She also sensed a centipede crawling down under the couch. Ick! She would have to deal with that later.

Then the voices became clear, and Eleni breathed a sigh of relief. It was the television in the living room. She recognized the sound of the Nathaniel Creed of Worldwide Network News. His reedy, New England accent was one she would know anywhere. If someone had told her that he was a time-traveler from the 1920s, she would have believed them, given the timber and cadence of his speech.

"We are being told by reliable sources that this... incursion is of an extra-dimensional nature." Creed explained in a somewhat incredulous voice. "The massive energy field that has formed on Belle Isle is actually a portal - a tunnel if you will - to another universe. Not another planet, but an entirely different universe, with different laws of physics than our own."

"From her immortal head a radiance is shown
from Elysium and embraces the Earth;
and great is the beauty that ariseth
from her shining light."

Eleni concentrated upon the ancient prayer. A glowing circle of silver light sprang up around her feet, outlining the same words in Ancient Greek script. Aion rose up from within her, stretched out into the aether, and bent reality to her will.

In an instant her clothing vanished, to be replaced by the white and gray meta-cloth of her super suit. She felt the skin of her face and body transform into marble as solid and white as that of the Parian stele she had just been looking at. A hood covered the rest of her head, and trailed down to her ankles in a billowing cape. A crescent moon diadem now rode upon her brows, and glowed softly with silvery-white light. She knew that her eyes had likewise transformed into shining silver. She was Silverlight now, the epitome of the moon goddess, even if not the goddess herself.

She paused a moment to check the belt of enchanted moonstones that rode her hips, and the similar bracelets that sheathed her forearms. Behind her, an added glow filled the room as a pair of wings made of moonlight sprouted from her back.

Silverlight stretched out her hand, and a moment later her staff Mene took shape there. It was made of the same white marble that her flesh had transformed into, as if she and it were an unpainted and unadorned statue, like those so commonly found in museums. Growing from the peak of the staff was a rougher white stone of lunar anorthosite. It was shaped into the form of a half moon. The same phase which the real moon wore for a face somewhere high in the sky overhead.

For a brief moment Silverlight considered the vast gulfs of space and time that the stone headpiece must have traveled from its origin in the highlands of the moon, to find itself a part of her staff: Mene. It was a long, and winding, and certainly unexpected path. One involving men from Ohio riding in a lunar lander and returning with the stone to Terra Firma half a century ago. But just as her old mentor was wont to say, the world was far wider and stranger place than any of us imagined.

Then the voice of the Worldwide Network News anchor brought her head around, and she forgot about such trivialities as the literal moon rock that adorned the top of her enchanted staff. She had far more important things to concern herself with in the here and now. Chief among them were the misshapen creatures that flowed from the magical portal in Detroit. They came in all shapes and sizes. There was no uniformity to them at all. Some she did recognize from the Scripta Mortis. Goblins, bugganes, djieien, dídymo ptéryga; they were all Abyssals. Others were just beyond description, let alone recall.

How a portal to the Abyss could have been formed was beyond her. According to what she had read, it should not be possible. Summoning individuals temporarily, yes, that could certainly be done. But the barriers that the ancient guardians had constructed between the worlds long ago prevented permanent, lasting tunnels from one world to another. Or so she had thought. Clearly, something very powerful was at work here.

But she did not need to know how this had happened. Blood Raven would know. She always knew. All she had to do was get there, before it was too late.

Silverlight did not know how far it was from Washington DC to Detroit. But it had to be far, too far for even her magical flight. The battle was sure to be over before she even got there. That made her wonder how many other supers were watching this right now on the news, aching to join in the fight, yet unable to do so for lack of transport? Thankfully, she had another option.

She laid down upon the couch and closed her eyes. Once again, her hymn to the goddess slipped from her lips. She glowed with light, and a moment later her aura detached itself from her body, and stepped free of the bonds of flesh.

This aetherial form was made of light and magic. It cast its glow down into the mortal realm, just as the moon above shone its benevolence upon the earth. That light reflected in the eyes of her cat Hekate, who stared at her silently from one of the armrests of her couch. Her physical form still lay there, stretched out as if asleep. She watched for a moment as the cat leapt upon her body. The feline stepped lightly up to her lap, curled up into a ball, and lay her head down there.

Silverlight smiled for a moment. Then she turned away. Out of habit she had materialized upon entering aetherial space. It was a trick that had taken a long time to learn. As such, it was good to practice it whenever she projected. But at times she would rather not be seen by mortal eyes. This was one such occasion. So she took a moment to pull back on the echo of herself that she cast into the physical world. Instead she lapsed back into the default state of all aetherial beings: invisible and unknowable to those in the mundane world.

Her identity thusly secured, she looked up, and shot through the ceiling of her multistory townhouse. The floors and roof were no hindrance to her. She was no longer a part of the physical world. Inanimate objects such as houses had no solid presence in the aether. She rode the winds of the higher realm of magic now, filled with the currents of power and echoes of faded emotion that pervaded the aetherial realm.

Below her buildings and roads in the real world were vaguely sensed shadows. They were but dim outlines in the world of magic and life. Trees, grass, and other living things however, glowed with brilliant power here. So too did the people who scurried about their lives below, or slumbered in their dimly-sensed domiciles. Their emotions rose up like odors, allowing Silverlight to sense joy and sorrow, fear and delight alike.

She reoriented herself to the north-west, and shot out across the sky. She passed over the Appalachian Mountains in mere seconds. Soon the lights of Pittsburgh flowed by under her wings. Then Cleveland came and went, and finally the smooth waters of Lake Erie. She knew the latter would be black as glass in the physical world. But in the aether the water glowed with the wealth of life, a veritable paradise of aion.

She was back over land again moments later and soon enough the city of Windsor passed by beneath her feet. Detroit lay beyond, split from the Canadian side by a narrow curving river. Within that strait sat a long, narrow island that now glowed with unearthly power. The gateway there was a rotting pustule within the aether, a corruption that had somehow extruded itself into our world. From whence the portal had originated Silverlight could still not guess. Nor did she care too. Wherever it was, it was nothing any healthy person should ever lay eyes upon.

A pair of titans clashed in the shadow of this terrible gateway. One was a colossus with crimson eyes that had never looked upon sun or moon before. She could sense little else of the monster's corrupted frame for certain. Physical objects could be difficult to discern in the aether. It was auras that were painted with full, vibrant life here. The aura of the monster showed it to be a towering mass of tentacles, fangs, and pincers. It made her stomach sick just to bear witness to it. Looking at it in the aether felt like swimming in vomit, and she quickly shielded her awareness from the Abyssal.

As horrific as the colossus was, arrayed against it was a being of pure, magnificent beauty. Silverlight could only imagine what it must have looked like in the physical world: a long serpentine body, with four legs, massive wings, long tail, and great head. That was hard for her to grasp however. For in the aether she was not a bonfire, but a literal stellar mass of power. It was as if a sun stood upon the planet, given the tremendous light and energy it radiated in the magical realm.

She was a dragon, simple as that. Silverlight knew how silly that sounded. Dragons were supposed to be the stuff of folklore and role-playing games. Not denizens of the real world. Yet the Scripta Mortis had whispered of such beings. They had fought against the Abyss long ago, and sealed it off from the rest of the multiverse. She had never been sure how much of that to believe. Well, clearly all of it had been true.

Here was a dragon, Y Ddraig Aur. The name was simply in Silverlight's head, as if the dragon herself had planted it there. To be honest, no fictional depiction of such creatures could hold a candle to what lay before her. For what she beheld in the aether was simply beyond her senses to describe. She only knew that it was powerful, so much more so than anyone or thing she had ever encountered in her life. Not even her old mentor Blood Raven possessed such arcane might.

She was glad it was on their side. For it dueled back and forth with the unclean colossus, matching claw to pincer, fang to fang. The earth beneath the titans was gouged and torn asunder. The air rang with their bellows. It was a truly apocalyptic struggle between beings beyond human comprehension.

Boiling at the feet of the gargantuas was that army of alien horrors she had seen on the television. They tried to stay as clear of the giants as possible, but sometimes a dozen or more were simply stomped from existence with a single step of the dragon or colossus. Those who survived made their way beyond the titans, toward the Detroit side of the island.

The majority of these congregated around a makeshift fortress erected near the pulsing mass of the gateway. This was a nexus of power. Were it not for the dragon, it would have been the greatest assemblage of might Silverlight had ever witnessed firsthand. Plasma, lasers, railguns, lightning, fire, water, and more ripped through the air about the heroes centered within. They even had a giant robot!

Many of these worthies were meta-humans. But she sensed more than a fair number of magicians like herself within their midst. More than was common, that was for certain. Most she could not place. But one stood out. She was a Celtic raven, practically a goddess herself, dripping with the blood of battle and screeching the doom of mortals within the aether.

It was Blood Raven. Silverlight smiled. It would be good to see her old teacher and friend again. It was not under the best of circumstances. But one made the most of what life offered. When she had begun this life with a cape, Silverlight had known that it might end suddenly and violently. If that was to be the case tonight, it least would be with someone she held dear.

The smell of terror mixed with resolute courage came to her magical nose from nearer at hand however. She looked directly down, and saw that the faint outline of a metal ship cut across the aether. It floated amidst the flow of life that was the Detroit River, just south and east of Belle Isle. From the vessel's general size and shape, it reminded her of a large tug, or perhaps an icebreaker.

There was something written on the side of the ship, but as she was in the aether, she could not understand the words. They had no living presence, and so made no clear impression within the magical realm. She did feel some faint stirrings of pride when looking at them. So clearly they meant something to someone, for that emotion was tightly bound up within the words.

Racing back and forth upon its multiple decks and within the compartments below were dozens of people. Their auras were bright with fear and exertion. From the stances of some who were on the various decks, she could tell that they were firing small arms such as pistols and rifles. Except for two separate pairs, who seemed to be crewing full-blown machine guns.

Their foes were simple enough for Silverlight to note. Even in the brilliant stream of life and energy that was the Detroit River, these things stood out. They were suppurating abscesses upon the living skin of the Earth. Just sensing them made her non-existent stomach churn once more. They were a palpable wrongness, a corruption that had oozed into the healthy flesh of the natural world.

Silverlight did not hesitate. Blood Raven and the others could deal with the creatures on the island. There was no one to stop those in the river, save for this single ship. Or was it a boat? She had no idea. But she did know that they would not stand alone.

In the blink of an eye she shot down through the sky to hover directly over the waves of the river. That put her just off the side of the ship, between it and the oncoming tide of monsters that flowed from the shores of the island. At the same time she materialized, and projected part of her essence back into the physical realm. She knew that this would create a ghostly image of herself there which could be seen by all. More importantly, it allowed her to interact with the physical world, at least to a certain extent.

She raised her staff over her head, and gathered the light of the moon within it. Here in the aether that was no actual light of course. There were no photons in the magical realm. It was pure magical energy that shone down from the moon goddess above, and rose from the living planet below. She poured this aion through the lunar head piece of her staff. Mene focused it, refined it, and finally sent it lancing forth in bolt after bolt of power.

The arcane bolts cut across the river and drove into the oncoming monsters. Whether cast directly from the physical world - or from a manifestation such as Silverlight's current form - the effects were the same. The aion tore through the fabric of the monster's auras. While it had no initial contact with their physical bodies, the energy ripped and tore them asunder in the magical realm. Given that the magical realm was a reflection of the physical one, that meant that the harm done there grounded down into the mundane world, and replicated the wounds within their bodies.

As above, so below. It was an age old saying amongst magic users for a reason.

Moments after each assault their mangled forms vanished entirely from existence. Again, this was exactly as she had read. Abyssals could not maintain their existence within the natural world once dead. They were from Beyond, and to Beyond they returned with no will or force to maintain them here.

Soon this wave of attackers had been annihilated. They had not retreated, or wavered. But by coming forward, they put themselves directly into the path of her arcane bolts. The crew of the ship took their toll as well. For Silverlight witnessed more than one Abyssal disintegrate without the aid of her power.

She felt a surge of emotion from the crew members behind her. It was relief, wrapped up with courage, and hope. She vaguely sensed that they were shouting something. But as with the writing, she could not make out any specific words in the aether. Only the feeling behind them filtered through the realms.

She had heard that some mages had learned an advanced form of materialization that allowed them to read and even speak in the physical world. But as of yet that eluded Eleni. It was certainly something to strive for in the future.

A second wave of monsters dove into the water and swam toward the boat. Again, she could not tell what they might have looked like in the physical world. She could only sense their spirits. So far as she could tell, they came in numerous races, for no two were alike. That was the case with humans as well of course. But the differences between one person and another were subtle. In the case of the Abyssals however, it was the equivalent of comparing leopards to serpents. There were such vast and fundamental disparities between them all.

As with the others, they came forward in a rush. They seemed to have no concept of self-preservation. She sensed something behind them. It was an all-pervasive and all-oppressing will, which drove them like a lash. They were compelled forward by this dark intent. Even yet, Silverlight sensed that without this dominating influence, these creatures would not have hesitated to attack. Their auras were writ large with cruelty and corruption.

She thought back to her training, and rather than once again meeting the monsters with individual bolts of aetherial might, she took a different approach. She gathered up her power, and instead loosed it in a wide field before her. It did not take the form of a bolt or lance. Instead it became a wave that rolled forth. Where it met each monster, it pushed them back. Not back in physical space, but back from this reality.

"I command thee begone!" she intoned in an archaic manner that while grandiose, felt appropriate to the occasion. She spun her staff in her hands, and thrust it forth sideways, to once again reinforce her will to bar their passage.

She felt the monsters stop under her banishment. Their spirits quivered in the aether, as her power tore at their existence. But that will behind them flared up. It anchored them to the Earth, and prevented them from being exorcised from reality. That will outlasted her own attack, and remained as strong and unassailable as ever afterward.

Clearly, banishing was not going to work. Silverlight wanted to plant the palm of one of her hands into her forehead. Well of course not. If that had been possible, Blood Raven would have done so already. After all, it was she who had taught her the art of banishing spirits in the first place.

I really enjoyed meeting Silverlight and simply love the fact that seems pure mage, using only an arcane staff to help focus her magic. I view Blood Raven as a hybrid mage who augments herself with actual weapons when it suits her. Since Silverlight is a disciple of Blood Raven, I conclude that Silverlight's power is almost all magic. Again, I really enjoyed learning about her and how she relies on 'detect life's, her own form of stealth, and pure arcane power, augmented by the moon.

I'm glad she's there and certainly is a potent force multiplier. It will be interesting if we learn how/If she is able to communicate with the other capes. I suspect Blood Raven and Stormcrow will be able to detect Silverlight's aura in the aether.

Ah, so there are some superheroes living somewhat close to me. 🦸 Georgetown is really upscale. She wouldn't have much to do there as a superhero, but GT is also right next to some really nasty neighborhoods.

This chapter reminds me of the one in which we got to see Avery's entire process of getting involved. Started in his grandma's basement if I recall correct. He got his suit together, had to evade grandma (so she wouldn't freak) and then he was off. Main difference is, Eleni is a brand-new character for this show. And she's also been in this game for a while. She's competent. She doesn't fly off into trees and such.

But she's also too far away. Wow. It must be irksome to not be involved in the Greatest Supervillian Event of the 2010s! 🦹 Pretty neat that she's there in spirit, at least.

"I command thee, begone!" I also love the part when it says As above, so below.

So if I've got this right, is Silverlight dealing with the "below" part, right? Is she able to make some sort of difference? Seems like she's making it so that the monsters aren't able to respawn.

Interesting start here with Eleni studying ancient Greek art of women. And nice touch naming the cat Hekate.

And we're in D.C.! Was not expecting that.

Heh, I can now perfectly imagine Creed's voice (basically, I'm thinking of the announcer from Legend of Korra).

Interesting that Silverlight even looks like a statue. I'm guessing that her hero mode gives her skin strong like stone.

Now that is how you travel.

Definitely good that the heroes are getting more help. I do wonder how many heroes can transport themselves as quickly as Silverlight can. Also loved getting her perspective on the dragon; how wondrous and fantastical it must be to actually see such an entity (particularly for someone as steeped in mysticism as Silverlight).

Banishing the Abyssals won't work, but I bet Silverlight has some more tricks up her sleeve...

Acadian: Silverlight is definitely a pure mage. She even has a staff! I made an effort to make Blood Raven's current crop of proteges as diverse as possible in their magic use, so each is unique in their own way. Riven is pretty much a pure weapon master, using her magic for fighting. The exact opposite of Silverlight. Calypso is mostly a mage, but also has her aquatic form with its water-appropriate strengths and weaknesses. January is mostly a fighter who also uses magic to make her a Valkyrie. Kaelin is an alchemist, who can do some standard magic spells if really pressed. But her love is potions. Okami is a fighter/rogue, using his magic for stealth and combat. Even Xochitl will have her own specific niche, as we will learn in the future when Blood Raven and January finally have the chance to start teaching her. And of course Blood Raven herself is basically the Morrigan on earth.

I had to do a lot of work on the Crowverse's magical theory to make Silverlight work, specifically on astral space. I honestly never really did this much work on how magic works until now. Except perhaps way back when January got her first magic lesson, and Blood Raven was pulling out quotes from people like Plato. Thankfully I have been playing table top RPGs for ages, so I am well versed in ways to make a magic system function. I drew a lot from Shadowrun's system to create my astral space rules.


Renee: I figured Georgetown had to be upper class due to the rents there. When I go looking for character homes, I usually start with checking out the apartment finder and house renter apps to see what is there, and what they cost. It is right next to the University, so I figured it would be a lot like Ann Arbor (which has the University of Michigan), which is definitely an expensive place to live.

I saw what you said about the rougher neighborhoods in DC. So I did some Googling. Guess what came up as one of the worst neighborhoods? Georgetown! Riiight. More googling showed exactly what you said, that it's an upscale neighborhood, and one of the safest places in the city. But this sort of thing is one of the reasons I set this story in Detroit. I know the neighborhoods here, in ways I never will about any other city.

Silverlight is 35, that makes her the second oldest of Blood Raven's current proteges (with only Riven being older). So she has been at this whole magic thing for a long time, at least two decades, if not longer. She's really high level. That is why she mostly works alone. When she needs help, she simply summons some up, as we shall see soon enough. Though I am sure she also has alliances with heroes from nearby cities like Baltimore and Philadelphia where they all help each other out when they need it.

As Above, so Below really is one of the foundational statements in RL Western Magic. It goes back to the Emerald Tablet if I remember correctly. It means just what Silverlight intimated. Things in the higher magical worlds ground down to the physical world. Things in the physical world resonate out into the higher realms. Everything is connected.

Silverlight is killing the Abyssals the same as anyone else. She is just doing it from Astral space (what she calls Aetherial space because that is how she personally envisions it). Because of that the physics simply work a little differently. She attacks their auras in the astral. The damage done there grounds down into their physical bodies, because of the As Above, So Below rule. What happens in one realm affects the other.


WellTemperedClavier: I was originally going to name the cat Selene, but I thought that might get too confusing with Selene the goddess. So I went to the next goddess of magic in Greek myth: Hekate. Silverlight is very much a Greek-head, being a daughter of Greek immigrants herself. In fact, her name - Eleni, is the root of another name you might be familiar with - Helen, of the Thousand Ships fame. The "E" in Eleni is usually pronounced with a heavy aspiration, so it sounds more like "Eh-Lon-Oy". Or at least so I have heard it said by Bettany Hughes.

The radio announcer from Legend of Korra is perfect! My actual inspiration - outside of the standard 20s radio announcer voice - is Andrew Leman. Among other roles he plays in the HPLHS Dark Adventure Radio Theater shows he does, he is Nathan Reed, of Worldwide Wireless News (which is where I got my own Worldwide Network News from). Here is an early example of his work as Nathan Reed

I was originally thinking that Silverlight would use ye olde standard arcane shield spell for defense, being a pure mage. But when I was looking at her hero form (mainly sculptures of the goddess Selene), I suddenly realized that she ought to look like a living statue in hero mode. So she forms what the old Marvel Superheros table top RPG called Armor Skin. It is a thin layer of incredibly tough skin that acts as armor. But it leaves your innards as squishy as normal. Of course she knows that statues would have been painted. But since most people don't, she sticks to the bare look of Parian marble, which was the most prized in ancient Greece.

I only now just realized that I did go with her using the Arcane Shield still. So I might make that her primary defense, and the stone skin might be just for looks. Or she could simply be layering multiple forms of protection. Or I could go back and strip out the references to the Arcane Shield, and make her stone skin her only defense. I will have to think about it. Edit: Ah ha! I just realized that her armor skin would be of no help in the astral plane. So she would need to use an arcane shield there. I just had to add a sentence to explain. That settles that.

As I mentioned to Acadian, when I was working on the rules for astral space, I leaned heavily on the tabletop RPG Shadowrun. In in astral travel is insanely fast, near instant. So that was her preferred mode of travel in this case, when every second might count. Though she can fly in her physical body, given her wings of light. But not nearly that fast.









Lernaean Hydra

Mishipeshu (The Underwater Panther)

Mishipeshu's D&D stats

Mechwarrior 2 Soundtrack - Arkham Bridge



Book 10.22 - Alliance

Silverlight felt that tenebrous will stir somewhere beyond the shoreline ahead of her. Apparently she had gotten its attention with her attempt at banishment. That dark mind reached out and washed over her. She recoiled at the touch of the being. While wholly vile, unlike the other creatures, it was not entirely alien. There was something distinctly human in there. Or perhaps something that had once been human, that now had been warped into something far more sadistic and vile.

Then the probing will looked away, its intent once more focused upon the battle taking place on the island itself. But as if in afterthought, the massive gateway bulged for a moment. Then a new perversion erupted forth from its surface like pus squeezed from a pimple.

This new darkness did not join the vast host of its comrades in attacking the allied stronghold on the island. Instead it set its own will specifically upon her. Silverlight could feel it instantly, charging at her like a bull across the aether. The intent was clear. This monster had been brought here solely to destroy her.

As with the others, she could only guess what it might have looked like in the physical world. In the aether, its aura was a forest of giant serpents, all sprouting from a massive bulk behind it. It reminded her of a multi-headed dragon, if such a thing ever existed. Then another word came to her mind from her own Greek studies: Hydra Lernaia.

The Hydra was massive, bigger than a house. It disgorged itself into the river and snaked across the water. It ignored both the strong current and depth, fully at home within the waves. Silverlight did not wait for it to close the distance. She immediately raised her staff and called down the power of the moon. With the goddess Selene's might so focused, she sent forth a great blast of aion.

The magical energy burned into one of the heads, and the strands of the creature's aura simply disintegrated beneath it. The entire creature recoiled for a moment as Silverlight's magic spread its destruction across more and more of the targeted skull. Then the monster lunged forward once more, even as the last vestige of that one head vanished entirely from reality, utterly annihilated.

It snapped at her with its remaining heads. She dodged one, two, three, and more. Several of those that had missed impacted the hull of the ship behind her. Even though she was not looking that way, she could still feel it rock in the aether, and all of the auras of its crew along with it. She had to move this to another location.

She darted upriver, in the direction of the wide expanse of Lake Saint Clair to the north and east. The Hydra pursued, even though the crew of the ship left behind continued to fire their weapons in its wake. She was vaguely aware of water being splashed and churned up in great waves beneath the body of the monster. The water itself only resonated faintly within the aether. But the various fish, plant life, and algae within it were bright lights of energy. That allowed her to more easily intuit the motion of the only dimly sensed waves.

The Hydra stuck again, and this time there was no getting out of the way. Here in the aether, the marble skin which sheathed her physical form would be of no use. So she brought up a shield of power in the aether, and two of the monster's heads struck it, and bounded away. She was alarmed at the crack that had formed within the pattern of her spell however, and was forced to pour more aion within it to rebuild its structure.

That is when she realized that the Hydra was bifold in nature. Unlike herself it was not projecting its consciousness from the physical world to the aether. Nor was it like elemental or nature spirits, which could move their entire selves from one realm to the other at will. This creature existed fully in both worlds at the same time, with the same permanence. A part of it was always active in the astral, and a part always in the physical.

As she mulled this over, another head came at her from the left, and a second from the right. She bent her arcane shield back around her, and turned it into a bubble of power that warded off all attacks. The Hydra batted her around then, like a cat playing with a ball. One head after another assaulted her, and it was all she could do to maintain her defense as she was slammed in one direction to the next.

Where was Iolaos when she needed him? Thankfully the head she had destroyed had not seen two more sprout forth to replace it. So at least she did not need to burn the stump to prevent it from regenerating. Then again, her arcane bolts were purely of energy here in the aether. In the mundane world, they were part physical, part magical. But in the magical realm, they were all aetherial energy, that attacked the aura directly. That might indeed be as good, if not better, than a torch applied by a demigod's companion.

But one head down was not enough. There were far too many more remaining. Too many for her to keep track of, let alone counter. As it was every time she thought to marshal her power for an attack of her own, another of the heads snaked in from some unseen angle and struck her shield. They had yet to break through. But each time rocked her, and broke her concentration upon her own counters.

She could only last so long like this. She needed to get out, and change the odds somehow. She tried to push upwards, away from the surface of the river. But another of the heads batted her back down once more. In no time at all she was under the waves, and being shoved down toward the muddy quagmire of the river bottom.

The water was no problem of course, not in the aether. It was not like she needed to breathe here, nor did she feel any pressure from its weight. It had no substance or force to exude in the aether. Here it was only the magical reflection of its physical self. In that sense, it was little different from the air which she had previously flown through. The largest contrast was that the greater amount of life within the deluge of water tended to obscure her aetherial senses more than that of the open air overhead. But with the Hydra right there in her face, she was not much concerned with seeing what lay in the distance. She had enough to worry up right up close.

Again and again the Hydra hammered down upon her. Again and again her shield held, barely. Each blow sent shivers and cracks through its surface. Each time she was obliged to divert more and more of her power into regenerating it. The monster attacked from multiple directions, probing for weakness. Then it turned to coordinating its assaults, in order to strike from all directions at the same time.

Now she felt her shield waver, and nearly wink from existence. It took everything she had to keep up the defense. The rest of reality slipped away from her mind. There was only her aion, the Hydra, and the shield between them. For however long that lasted.

"Selene, hear your daughter's prayer," Silverlight was not too proud to entreat the moon, which still shone somewhere high above in the aetherial sky. "Send me your light this night, that I might break the darkness. Send me a champion worthy of this foe."

Clearly, she was not going to defeat this creature on her own. She needed help. It was time to summon some. Silverlight considered where she was: the river. Naturally a water elemental immediately sprang to mind. Yet perhaps that might not be the ideal counter for her opponent, which seemed as at home in the sea as on land. She needed something with a little more bite.

Then she considered where she was again. It was not just any river, but the Detroit River. That was in turn part of the Great Lakes. There was a great deal of lore associated with the lakes, going back for thousands of years. Among all the tales one name stood out above the others. There was one being that mortal and immortal alike bowed their heads to out of respect, if not fear.

"Mishipeshu!" she called out across the aether. She sent her aion out through the name, and filled it with power and intent. Her compulsion was laid within it, her call for aid. To be honest, her desperation went with it as well, for she could not be certain how long she might be able to withstand the Hydra's attacks.

Her will made the call a reality, an echo that traveled instantaneously through the waves. It sped through one lake after another, bounded across the straits between them, reverberated through the underwater mansions along their bottoms, and danced atop the caps of the waves above. It filled the water with her call, from the farthest tip of Lake Superior, to the end of the Saint Lawrence Seaway.

Her answer came quickly enough. She felt it in the aether, even through the froth of life within the river, and the chaos of the Hydra's many darting heads. It was a shadow within the magical realm, a cloud that crowded out all other life and power with it tremendous bulk.

She could feel enough of the aura to know that it was not physical at all, at least not at the moment. Rather like her, it dwelled purely within the aether. At the most a mundane might perceive it as a shadow within the waves, like a school of fish somewhere deep below. But she knew better. Here in the aether, there was no mistaking it.

Silverlight felt it ground down into the physical world then, leaving only the echo of its former self within the aetherial realm. It was the same echo that all physical beings cast into the higher plane, one with some essence there, but not substantial enough to see or act in the aether.

Just like that it had transitioned into the material world. As with the other magical beings this night, Silverlight could sense enough from its aura to at least generalize its size and shape. It was massive. It could have had the body of a panther, or a lynx, or a dragon. One could take their pick. Its head was crowned with either horns or antlers, and a row of spines ran down its back and along its tail. Thorny claws sprouted from its four feet, and its maw shone with sword-like teeth.

Silverlight had not been sure what to expect when she had made her call. She had seen illustrations of course. But those were just the various imaginings of different artists, separated by time and cultures. None of them did the spirit justice. How could one reproduce such a divine being with only pencils or paints? It was impossible. Like love or hate, one could only experience it for oneself, then fumble for explanations afterward.

There was no mistaking it. This was indeed Mishipeshu, the underwater panther, or as some would say, the great lynx. It was the guardian and lord of the Great Lakes, and truly not one to gamó̱ with. Silverlight only hoped that she had done the right thing in calling it. For as much as her spell had compelled it to come. She knew full well that she could not control such a being. All she could do was ask nicely, and hope for the best.

The sudden appearance of the underwater panther in the river thrust the waters out from its great bulk in all directions. This created miniature tidal waves that rolled out toward either shore, as well as up and down the river. They were enough to rock the nearby warship violently, and Silverlight felt its crew members stagger to their knees, or fall from their feet entirely.

The Hydra halted its assault upon Silverlight, and turned its massive frame to face the newcomer. But it was too late. The underwater panther was upon it. It set on the otherworldly monster with a fury that only a hurricane could match. Its great head shot forward, and its jaws clamped shut upon the base of one of the hydra's necks. It violently snapped its head from side to side like a dog with a chew toy. The Abyssal's head and neck were rent clean off, and vanished from both the aether and physical world a moment later.

But in just seconds, a new head began to slowly grow forth from the stump of the severed appendage. So it was just like the legends of old. It was not just any ordinary creature of its type, but truly a Hydra Lernaia, the same as which mighty Herakles had battled of old. If one believed such stories...

Silverlight wasted no time. The Hydra had ignored her. She would see to it that it regretted that decision. She raised her staff and gathered up her power. Her eyes were fixed upon that regenerating head. But before she could loose another arcane bolt, the other heads of the beast blocked her attack. They were not attacking her directly, but they were still in the way as they all darted toward Mishipeshu.

She moved in closer, right up to the forest of heads. Then she darted within their swirling ranks, even as they snapped back and forth at the underwater panther. Mishipeshu was right up in the monster's many faces now as well, trading blows with both its fangs and claws. Silverlight took care to dodge these. For this close, even her own champion could easily lay her low by accident, especially given the speed of the blows and counters that the pair of titans traded back and forth.

Then she was upon the stump of the newly severed head. She could see the horns and scales of a new skull slowly beginning to poke forth from the protean flesh at the end of the bare stump. In no time at all, in perhaps a minute at most, she imagined it would be fully regrown. She could not allow that.

She struck out with Mene as if it was a sword, and hacked at the fresh stump. The staff still brimmed with gathered might. This power burst forth at the moment of contact, and burned through the unearthly flesh of the monster. She heard its scream across the aether, even as its great bulk recoiled from the blow.

As with her initial attack, her arcane assault burned through the monster like fire, destroying every part of its aura that it touched. It spread out from there like acid, annihilating even more of the Abyssal. Then finally it had run its course, and only a charred and forever mutilated stub in its wake.

Silverlight danced away through the air as the Hydra struck back with several of its heads. One connected, and crashed against her arcane shield. It felt like being struck by a freight train. But her magical defenses held, even if the force of the blow sent her skittering even farther across the aether.

Mishipeshu took advantage of the Abyssal's divided attention. Momentarily turning from the heads that beset it, the guardian of the lakes lashed out with its claws, and lopped off the very same head that had just attacked Silverlight. She immediately followed by marshalling her own strength, and sent forth another arcane bolt down into the fresh wound, and magically cauterized it for good.

This set the tone for the ensuing battle. Silverlight let the underwater panther carry the brunt of the fight, and face off directly with the Abyssal. Every time the nature spirit struck, she followed with one of her arcane bolts. That short-circuited the alien monster's ability to regenerate. These were not all great decapitating wounds of course. The panther was not always lucky enough to land such a massive blow. Some were only minor injuries. But Silverlight knew well enough that every one of those would count in the end. Whether it was death by thousand paper cuts, or death by a few titan blows, it would all be the same in the end.

The trio ignored the waves as they battled within the river. But those swells - kicked up by the behemoths - did not ignore everyone else. They battered against the other Abyssals foolish enough to venture near the shores of Belle Isle. Many were literally crushed under the titanic waves of force, or swept deeper inland. Some were even thrown back into the very gateway which they had issued from.

The tidal waves also rocked in the other direction. The ship that had been battling the monsters when Silverlight had arrived was likewise dashed and battered. She now imagined that it must be a Coast Guard vessel. From what she could gather of their auras, the crew ceased trying to shoot their weapons. Instead they simply held on for dear life to whatever was around them, or desperately tried to fight with their controls to keep the ship afloat.

Soon enough, that point became moot, as the ship was thrown up against the Canadian shore. Its steel hull ground through the rocks that lined the river bank, and gouged out a trench across the grass deeper inland. Given the wide open space around it, Silverlight thought it might be a park. A row of high rise buildings rose up beyond, and brimmed with mundane auras that shone brightly with excitement and fear. Some of those auras dared to venture into the open space of the park, but not many, and thankfully none near where the vessel beached itself.

Silverlight did not have time to spare for the crew while the Hydra yet lived. She was too busy just keeping up with Mishipeshu, and insuring that every one of the wounds it inflicted became permanent. In time their tactic of gradually whittling down the monster proved its worth. With the last of the creature's heads dispatched, the bulk of its body likewise disintegrated into the aether.

She took a moment to address Mishipeshu. Not with words. It was her experience that most spirits cared little for human speech. Instead she communicated with her feelings and ideas. These were things that carried real weight within the magical world. They were the forces that affected the aether, enough to literally change it, given enough power behind those ideas and emotions.

She sent her heartfelt thanks to the guardian, and also made sure to bow to its might. She was not here to challenge it to a genital measuring contest, but to implore its aid. Ask for aid she did next, as she entreated the underwater panther to stand guard over the waters of the river, and ward them against further incursions by the unearthly beasts.

Mishipeshu acknowledged her entreaties with its assent. Silverlight suspected that she needed not have asked at all. It was a spirit of nature after all, a living part of the Earth. The Abyssals were not just aliens. Their very presence was a poison within the body of the planet's aura. They were like the cells of a virus, that slowly but surely assimilated its host. They could not be allowed to persist. Else the world itself would perish, and be corrupted into something else, something far darker and more terrible than Silverlight cared to imagine.

The underwater panther darted away, and bore down upon a new group of lesser Abyssals that had been swept away from shore, and sent downstream. As it tore them to shreds and sent them back to the universe they had originated from, Silverlight finally turned her full attention to the ship.

In an instant she zoomed across the aether to hover over its deck, which was now canted at an angle to one side. The crew members now clambered to their feet, or cautiously navigated its tilted surface. She flew to what looked like its bridge, and stepped through its steel walls. Not being a living creature, nor imbued with magical power, the metal posed no real barrier within the magical realm after all.

She picked out one of the people within and laid a hand upon her shoulder. A confused bubble of thoughts and emotions flooded into her from the other woman. But Silverlight sorted them out in no time at all. She had plenty of experience in using her telepathy after all. She found that this woman was named Roberta, but preferred Bobbi. She was the first officer on the vessel, which was indeed an American Coast Guard ship: the Bristol Bay in fact.

"Bobbi," she pushed the thought into the other woman's mind. "I am Silverlight. I need you to tell your captain not to fire upon the underwater panther within the river. It is Mishipeshu, the ancient guardian of the Great Lakes. It is here to protect us."

"You're a ghost, and you're talking in my head," the other woman - Bobbi - spoke both aloud, and of course in her mind.

It was a common enough reaction, and Silverlight had expected it. She simply nodded along and explained.

"I am not a ghost, I just look like one right now. I am a white hat superhero, and telepath, among other things," she said. "Now please relay my message. You should see to your wounded, and gather yourselves. I don't know if you will be needed again. Just don't try to go back out in the water. Defend this shore in case any of the monsters find their way past Mishipeshu. And again, stay out of its way!"

The other woman nodded. With that Silverlight let go. Her telepathic link vanished the instant her fingers slipped away from the other woman's aura. While her telepathy brought with it many gifts, she had yet to master the use of it at a distance. She had to connect her aura with those of others to use it. So far that meant physically touching, or using her moonstones as a bridge. Perhaps someday that would change, but not today.

Silverlight turned and stepped through the walls of the vessel. She zoomed up into the sky, and soared across the narrow band of the Detroit River. Below her the underwater panther continued to hunt within the waves. But few prey presented themselves now. It appeared that the monsters had lost their taste for swimming. So Mishipeshu clearly no longer required her aid.

She passed over the shores of Belle Isle and headed inland. She knew that Blood Raven would be there somewhere. Her old mentor would have answers, and hopefully a strategy for defeating this incursion into their world.

* * *

I fully enjoyed this second Silverlight episode as much as her first. With her mighty arcane shielding in jeopardy, she asks for help - and is not disappointed. So the hydra necks do require cauterizing after thr head they host is severed. Silverlight's task becomes clear as she deftly cleans up after the water panther. Even better, her ally agrees to continue its valuable assistance. No surprise that Siverlight next checks on her Coastie allies. Great presence of mind and tactical awareness to ensure that the crew does not engage or piss off the water panther.

As you recall, Buffy could empathically heal and assess someone's spirit via a physical laying on of hands bond. So we can appreciate Silverlight's ability and its limitations. Her more recent paladin detect evil ability has provided some range to reading someone's aura and, by focusing her healing through her magical staff, she can also now range out with her healing. I hope that Silverlight is somehow able to similarly continue to evolve her magic.

Apartment finder, wow. You really do some research, Rosa.

Georgetown has some colleges, which means r4p3s on occasion. That'd be the worst thing Silverlight would have to deal with in her current hometown. There's probably some vandalism, plenty of thefts (auto and personal). That's about it. Murder rate is low, assaults aren't common. Assaults would equate to bar fights between frat brothers at the most. Nothing ordinary police can't handle.

But go into some neighboring neighborhoods and *bam*, there's your more serious crime. That's how D.C. is. Some of the richest live there, it's where laws get made, but it's also got lots of bad neighborhoods, as well. That's why whenever we go to D.C. (mostly to view the museums) we always drive to a park 'n' ride, then we take the Metro! No ghouls down there yet, thankfully. 🧟 But you basically skip all the badness up above (traffic included).

Yes I know "As above, So below". I remember that phrase from my New Age studies days. 🪄 I was a reader at the Tarot Card Hotline back then. Remember Miss Cleo? Amazing how times change.

Ah, so SL is high in level, this explains how she can sustain being in that alternate plane for such a long time, and she's also able to f*ck up a few abyssals. Ah, so she IS pwning them. Very nice.

She's combating the hydra! Broke off one of its heads Ooooh, Natth is gonna be pissed. Too bad she can't tie one of the monster's heads around all the others. Cool, a Mishipeshu has been summoned. Ha, you've also got its tablegame stats. Don't remember that creature. Maybe that's from a later edition of D&D though. We only played when the original edition was out, in the '80s. But see, that's one of the cool things about D&D: its rule systems may have been gonky at times, but D&D did draw a lot of its monsters from real-life myths and cultures. In a way, this helps kids who play the game also study world history.

I can only imagine how cool this fight is gonna look as it's no-doubt being filmed by drones and satellites.

She communicates through feelings, wow. See, and I think Mishipeshu is going to be impressed by this. Or at least, surprised.



That's so neat.

Andrew Leman definitely has that voice down!

It's funny how much RPGs have watered down the hydra from its origins. They usually just get treated as a big beast with multiple attacks, but games don't usually take into account how tricky they actually are to kill. I'm guessing this is an old-school hydra, which means Silverlight has her work cut out for her.

Oh, looks like the head isn't growing back. Maybe the blast cauterized the wound? Or the magic did it. In which case, good thing Silverlight's the one fighting this creature.

Hm, so if the hydra's in two realms at once, that might mean Silverlight can take the hydra out of action by doing enough damage to it in one realm?

(This weirdly reminds me of the ancient Christological debate on miaphysitism vs Chalcedonianism).

Oh, so she didn't burn it off! But rather, the aion removed it from existence. A potent weapon. Regardless, good thing that it's not regenerating since she has her hands full as it is.

Definitely smart for her to call in some (metaphorical) bigger guns.

Ah, okay, so the hydra's heads do grow back if they're removed through regular means. Guess you have to raise the challenge level if you bring in Mishipeshu.

Good tactic in double-teaming the creature.

I'm actually a little surprised there aren't even more nature spirits joining the fray. Seems like they'd have ample reason to want the Abyssals out.

Looks like she handled the Coast Guard situation well. Makes sense that officers in this world are trained on how to deal with metas getting involved.

Editorial Note: I have decided to go back on my previous ideas for the Technocracy being Austria, and the Technocrat being Werner Heisenberg. It just felt a little too uncomfortable for me to use real places and people for both. I don't want to seem like I am puffing up or glorifying either. So I decided to make the Technocracy to be a new, entirely fictional country named Avarica that takes the place of Austria in this universe. In this timeline the Avar Khaganate never quite fully collapsed. Instead it's eastern parts were swallowed by the Magyars when they created Hungary. But its western part held off the Carolingian Empire, and over time transformed into a Medieval state with little to do with the Avars except the name. I have the full history written out. Mostly it went from being a vassal/client kingdom of the Hungarians, until the Ottomans conquered them. Then it became a client kingdom of the Habsburgs, who in this world are based out of Prague. The place is a melting pot of Slavs, Magyars, Bulgars, ethnic Germans, Czechs, Slovaks, etc... and a tiny remnant of ethnic Avars (whose dna traces back to Manchuria). It did not really gain its independence until after WW1, only to be annexed by Germany in WW2. After that it became a neutral in the Cold War, under the leadership of the Technocrat, who is now named Janos Heisen, who is the inventor of Quantum Physics in this world. That is when Avarica became the Technocracy, the most technologically advanced nation on the planet.




Acadian: A couple of times now January and company have had to face off against summoned or wild spirits. I wanted to finally bring in the other side of that equation, a white hat who summons spirits for the good guys. I briefly considered just making it an elemental. Then - like Silverlight - I considered where she was. I already had the Underwater Panther on my list of monsters, since it is unique to the Great Lakes. It became the perfect choice.

Silverlight is extremely powerful. She has been at this for at least 20 years. So she needed some disadvantages to keep her from being over-powered. Having her telepathy being limited to touch only was a good one. It might always be that way. But she does have some work arounds, as we will learn in a few more books. But most of all I wanted to get across that even as much as she knows, she still has a lot to learn. So does Blood Raven for that matter. No matter how powerful someone is, that does not make them omnipotent.


Renee: That sounds exactly like what I expected from Georgetown. My only personal experience is with the super mutants that infest the place, and occasionally a Talon Company patrol if I fast travel there...

I do love how D&D uses not just purely original monsters, but also creatures from folklore. Heck, that is what goblins, and wraiths, and trolls are. They even had the stats for Real World gods in the old Dieties and Demigods sourcebook. I was still surprised to find that the Underwater Panther was part of D&D lore. I did not realize that it had any sort of popularity beyond the Great Lakes region. I guess it has a good PR agent!

I am also imagining what this battle will look like from porch cameras, and smartphones, and drones, as well as TV reporters. I must be truly spectacular. At this point there are 27 supers in the fight, including a dragon. And that number is going to get a lot higher before it is done. In the very least I am imagining that some sports teams might start renaming themselves after dragons.



WellTemperedClavier: Andrew Leman is a tremendous voice actor. I love his audiobook readings and the radio dramas he is part of that the HP Lovecraft Historical Society puts out. He's good on screen too. He had one of the funnest little parts as Charles Fort in the Whisperer in Darkness movie that the HPLHS made some years back.

It is absolutely the old school Hydra, the kind Herakles and Iolaus fought. It turns out that in this case Silverlight is Iolaus, and Mishipeshu is the demigod.

The way I am working astral space is that damage done to the aura there transfers down into the physical world. So if you lop off someone's arm in the astral, the same happens in the physical world. Or if you kill someone's aura, it kills their body. The reverse is also true of course. As Above, So Below.

The real danger of the Hydra being Bifold is that it is fully aware of everything around it in both worlds at all times, and can attack in both realms as well. While other creatures like elementals or Silverlight can move back and forth between realms, they still have limitations. Like with the way Silverlight cannot read physical writing while she is in astral space. And while she is projecting into astral space, she have almost no idea of what is happening to her meat body in the physical world.

It is funny you mentioned that about more nature spirits. You are about to get more. The longer this goes on, the more and more magical creatures are going to notice and get into it. Whatever they feel about humans and superheroes, they will all attack the Abyssals on instinct. It is purely a matter of survival.

Reading what you said about training in dealing with supers, I am now imaging a training video of Captain America walking into a room, spinning a chair around backward, and sitting down. "So, you've got yourself an encounter with a super. What do you do?"






January's Fight Theme - Two Steps From Hell - Never Back Down


Book 10.23 - Alliance

January followed Blood Raven to their ersatz fortress in the shadow of the gateway. She had come to think of it as Fort Alliance. It was beset by Abyssals. But they were not an unstoppable tide as before. The Colossus and Y Ddraig Aur saw to that. They were so gigantic that each footstep or sweep of their tails or tentacles sent dozens of lesser monsters to oblivion. January found that ironic. Clearly Nátthrafn had brought forth the Colossus to tip the battle in his favor, and for a while it had done just that. But now it might be unintentionally killing as many - if not more - of his own army as the heroes were doing on purpose.

Still, the horde of monsters that beset Fort Alliance was nothing to scoff at. Goblins, djieien, bugganes, Átahsaia, shadow monsters, flying heads, and more beset the makeshift fortification. They clambered over barricades, and hammered at ad hoc walls. The Fred Hampton was the linchpin for the defense, as the mecha's quad plasma guns incinerated Abyssals by the dozen-full with each volley.

Perhaps because of this, Isaac's mech was drawing more attention from the Abyssals than any other part of the defense. Goblins swarmed across its frame, and hacked and stabbed at its armor plates and weaker joints wherever they could. Archimedes tried to keep them away from his creator, but the single floating robot could not be everywhere at once when it came to a fifty foot tall mech.

January caught the eye of Gadget, and pointed to Isaac and Archie's difficulties. "I'm going to call some lightning," she said over the comm. "Think you can make a force field around Fred?"

"Does an owlbear spleck in the woods?" The meta-inventor laughed. He flew over to the towering mech. He sort of botched the landing, and half crashed into one of the Fred Hampton's legs. He picked himself up and pantomimed brushing himself off. A goblin darted at him with an axe of black stone or metal. But the armored hero simply grabbed the creature by the head with one hand, and literally dashed its brains out against the giant mech's leg.

Gadget went back to what he was doing as the Abyssal faded from reality. He raised both hands, and a shimmer of heat and light flooded the air around him. He twisted and turned his fingers as if he was manipulating invisible controls. With that the shimmer of light around him moved away and flattened into a distinct plane before him.

January hoped that he was ready. She looked skyward, and tore loose a great torrent of lightning bolts. She sent them straight down at Gadget, trusting him to guide the electricity to where it needed to go. The master of nuclear plasma did just that. Her lightning bolts struck the particle field that he had created, and streamed off it like an electrical waterfall. Even as the energy snapped and hissed, he sent it snaking around the surface of the mech. Yet the electricity never actually touched the Fred Hampton, nor Archimedes. However, the Abyssals were not so fortunate. Goblins and other monstrosities were obliterated one after the other as the river of lightning washed through them. In moments the Fred Hampton was once again clear, and the last of the electricity ground down into the earth below.

January set down at the feet of the mech, and went to work preventing more of the smaller Abyssals from inundating it all over again. That left Isaac free to concentrate his fire on the larger monsters. She guessed that he had run out of ammunition for his railgun, for he had ceased to use that terrible weapon. Instead he sent volley after volley of blue plasma through the ranks of the oncoming horde, turning everything they touched into vapor.

She stood shoulder to shoulder with Gadget. Soon enough they teamed up to perform the lightning ball trick she had so recently perfected with Lighthammer. Only this time it was Gadget hurling bolts of plasma, and January calling down lightning into them. With every dual strike the energy of each scattered over a wide area in great explosions of light and force.

Riven was a whirlwind with sword and shield, sometimes sword and sword, or sword and axe, or just one large blade or spear. Her armaments changed from moment to moment, depending on what she happened to need at that instant.

Her husband Thunderbolt was doing much the same as January and Gadget had just done. He both emitted and controlled electricity, and used it to create both killing barriers and deadly bolts of power.

Vortex was... Damn, January did not want to think about her. It had been what, an hour at least since she had last done so? How long had it had been since she had woken up in that summoning circle? It felt like forever. But she suspected that very little time had passed at all.

Vortex's father Hungry Ghost was present as well, as he had been at Gull Island. He may have been an international thief and mobster, but he certainly was stepping up. Maybe he was more than just a bad guy? Or maybe he just needed the proper motivation, like the end of the world staring in his face?

The Sentinels showed why they were the Midwest's premier super team. The Veil was amazing as ever, using elemental darkness to create gateways, barriers to defend with, weapons to strike out with, and even simple machines. She had been one of January's idols growing up. Zero Point and Stinger were everyone's favorite science couple of course: masters of powered armor, shrinking, and quantum spaces. White Fell was a real life werewolf, with claws and fangs that could shred anything they came across. Finally Helios was a little piece of the Sun, a man of fire who grew in size when he wished it, and incinerated all who opposed him.

January knew Calypso and Viuda from personal experience. One was the ruler of the waves, and the other of spider silk. Even Kaelin and Harper were pitching in, though not superheroes themselves. Kaelin was the mistress of potions, and ran to and fro with bottles to either heal wounds or provide buffs. She was also handy with an arcane bolt or shield when pressed. She reminded January of a cleric from any role-playing game. Harper was likewise her wizard counterpart from the same games. They were always ready with a bolt of fire or frost, a levitate or counterspell, or even just turning the ground to grease under the enemy's feet.

Of course the rest of her own team - the Allies - were there as well. Blood Raven was pure, unadulterated awesome. Samhain stabbed and sliced Abyssals to ribbons when they came too near. While from a distance she tore the blood from their bodies, turned it solid, and then transformed it into fragmentation bombs, shredding dozens at a time. Ôkami was his regular high tech samurai/ninja self, and Cray was the cool, calm voice of reason ever in your head.

Lighthammer jetted around the fortress, blasting with hard light or incinerating Abyssals with standard lasers. Archimedes - or Archie as Isaac usually called him - floated around his maker and helped keep the Fred Hampton clear of monsters with lightning blasts and lasers of his own. Gola too, though no more officially a member of the team than Isaac, remained in the fray as well.

Even Blackhawk - while back with the troops at the bridge - was not sitting things out. From the fort January caught occasional glimpses of the other heroine. She usually hovered over the bridge. She held up a force field there across the width of the span, and led the defense. Against her and her troops went wave after wave of Abyssals. There were fewer than those that now beset Fort Alliance, but the attacks were formidable nonetheless. Perhaps it was even worse there, for Blackhawk was the lone super among the defenders, who were otherwise ordinary people.

A miniature tornado swept across the battlefield. It annihilated every Abyssal it touched, yet it was careful to avoid striking the heroes. January felt power resonate from within it through the astral, and realized that it was an air elemental. So far as she could tell, no one had summoned it, for she could sense no ties or binds from it to one of the magicians. The zephyr was simply there, fighting for the world.

Soon the ground bulged up in what reminded January of a miniature volcano. Spilling from it was a creature that was quite familiar to her. It was a salamander, just like the one she had fought on Montserrat. Clearly it could not be the exact same one, as she and Calypso had placed that individual into a deep torpor. But this brother or sister of it looked the same: like a lizard made of obsidian and lava. Like its kindred air elemental, it immediately set about destroying the Abyssals.

The planet itself had joined the fight.

Ever since she had started her career as a superhero, January had been meeting people. She had been making connections among both allies and foes. Now here they all were, standing together. It was a good feeling.

A new player entered the chat, yet again. This was a transparent figure who glowed with soft, white light. She came flying in from the Canadian side of the river. She was clad in a light gray outfit of loose cloth, with a cloak that billowed out behind her. Her features were literally chiseled stone, like a statue come to life, and a silver diadem with a crescent moon rose up from her brow like small horns. A belt of moonstones hung from her hips, and similar bracelets circled her wrists. A pair of wings made of pure white light sprang from her back, which lent her a distinctly angelic appearance.

Finally, she carried a staff of smooth white marble. It was crowned with a shining moon of rough and weathered white stone. It was shaped in a half moon, which struck January as odd. Usually artists used a full moon or a crescent to depict the moon. Then she noted the actual moon in the sky above, and saw that it was the exact same phase as that represented on the staff. January suspected that was no coincidence.

"Silverlight!" Blood Raven cried. "Well met my friend."

January remembered that name. Blood Raven had recounted her in the list of her recent students. Silverlight was one of her Raven Sisters, as it were. The newcomer zoomed down to meet her mentor, and they likewise briefly embraced, at least after a manner. January quickly surmised that Silverlight had no physical form. Yet her hands did not pass through the body of her teacher. Instead they seemed to rest upon the barrier of Blood Raven's aura.

January had to partly shift her awareness into astral space in order to perceive the other woman's reply. Her voice was not a physical thing at all, but rather a wave that washed across the magical realm, and tingled down into her aura. The exact words were fuzzy in her brain. It was more the ideas and feelings they carried that made an impression on her mind.

"I am present in my aetherial form alone," Silverlight explained. "It was the only means by which I might reach here with alacrity. So my powers are somewhat limited."

"Your powers are exactly what we require," Blood Raven smiled. "Very shortly we shall need your magic, all of our magic. We only await Y Ddraig Aur to finish its business with the Colossus there."

As if in response to Blood Raven's words, the golden dragon landed a claw upon the Colossus' neck. The ancient guardian's brilliant talons sank into the gap between two of the Abyssal's armored plates. An instant later it tore one of them loose, and sent the house-size hunk of chitin flying.

It came hurtling directly toward the hero's fortress. But before it could strike, the Veil stepped forward and created a gateway of black energy in front of it. The hunk of chitin hurtled through, and went barreling out of a second gateway that had formed just outside of the camp. Now the massive chunk of armor plate went careening horizontally across the ground, and obliterated a long line of Abyssals in its path.

Then the fighting stopped everywhere. Both Abyssal and hero alike turned their eyes upon the titans that dueled overhead. Their every scream and roar reverberated through their bodies as a physical force. Their every step shook the earth below. They were like gods of old dueling for the soul of the world.

The Colossus reared back in agony, while the dragon pressed her advantage. Her head darted in toward the flesh now left exposed by the missing armor plate. But the Colossus batted her skull away with a backhand blow from one pincer. Y Ddraig Aur continued to push however, and grabbed up both of the monster's arms with her own forelegs.

Then her head snaked in again. She did not bite the unprotected flesh, but rather loosed that laser breath weapon once more. This time the energy burned directly into this now unprotected spot in the monster's hide. Abyssal flesh incinerated under the brilliant assault. In moments January saw beams of light begin to seep out from between the joints in the Colossus' other armored plates. All around its body, the Abyssal was rent with brilliant cracks of light that burst from within its frame. Brighter and brighter this grew, until it was nearly blinding. Finally the light engulfed the monster's entire frame. Then it exploded in an even brighter flash of illumination.

January was still blinking the spots from her eyes when she saw the charred remnants of the Colossus' annihilated body fall to the earth in pieces. As with the other Abyssals, these sometimes massive chunks of flesh faded and vanished from reality in moments. That left the golden dragon standing alone at the southern end of the island.

She roared her triumph to the sky above. It was a sound that not only buffeted January's body with pure physical force. It also ground down into her spirit as well. She felt it invigorate her. It filled her with power and confidence. Her aches and pains all fell away with the dragon's call. She saw cuts and bruises upon her teammates vanish. Even the dents and dings in Gadget's armor disappeared. In its wake she felt stronger than ever, faster than before, like she could do anything.

Afterward Y Ddraig Aur stopped, and literally froze in place. Even from hundreds of yards away, January could hear a brittle, cracking sound, like ice forming. The dragon's movements slowed, and finally ground to a halt as its body appeared to stiffen. It's skin and scales brightened, and became translucent. It reminded January of crystal, or the hard light that Lighthammer generated.

Something passed from the dragon then. Some vital spark - some ineffable power that had once animated the great spirit of magic and light - was just gone. It had disappeared, and the implosion that was created in its wake was not only clear to January in the astral, but even in the physical as well.

A great wind was whipped up from all sides, only to sink down into the body of the dragon, like water running down a drain. Hair, capes, and clouds of dust and dirt were caught up in the rush of air. But these soon fell to earth once more, and the scene stilled.

With it went Y Ddraig Aur, or the living, breathing manifestation of the dragon at least. In the wake of the ancient guardian's passing stood a ghostly image of the being, from which golden light still emanated. It looked like a statue of glass or crystal. Again, January was reminded of hard light. It was like a piece of the Sun had solidified, and plopped down upon Belle Isle.

January still felt magic there in the astral. But not the stellar mass of power she had felt just moments before. The essence of the dragon was now gone. Only the aftermath of her presence still reverberated through reality. It was like a shadow, or an echo, that still cast through both the astral and physical world. But this shadow created light, and even yet radiated some energy.

January thought she understood. It was the blood, the dragon blood that Blood Raven had forged into her sword, and then released upon the earth. That blood was just a piece of the real Y Ddraig Aur's essence. Once free, the dragon had animated reality with her inhuman will, and transformed it into an avatar of her former self. Not her full, real self, but just a projection of her power. Now even that gargantuan will was spent, and once that essence faded, so too did the avatar. One moment it had been a dragon. It had been Y Ddraig Aur. Now it was just a cicatrix in reality that remembered her.

That was enough for the Abyssals. The sight of their champion's ruin took all the wind from their sails. They went from being suicidal beasts one moment, to frightened sheep the next. They fled back to the Abyss, with only a few shots from the heroes to send them on their way. Everyone was just a little too overawed by what had taken place to do more. Even among superheroes, it was not every day one saw a dragon annihilate a god of dark magic.

* * *

A welcome run down of the large assemblage of superheroes that had converged upon this crisis as we return to January’s perspective.

After learning what we have of Silverlight in the last couple episodes, it was neat to ‘see’ her from January’s perspective as she greeted her mentor, Blood Raven.

You continue to more than do justice to what a dragon should be as Ddraig Aur destroys her foe and departs in spectacular fashion.

Nasty Nate has hopefully been isolated enough that Team Blood Raven will be able to finish him once and for all.

Little monsters trying to attack the mechanized robot! 🤖 They must not have very high IQ if they're merely attacking it because of the noises it makes. And then Gadget crashes into the darn thing!

Pretty wicked when they sizzle a bunch of baddies with natural forces from the sky.

Oh yeah, Hannah is here. Nothing we can do about that. Hey, at least she's trying to help. Her father is a greyhat, I guess. A bad guy, unless he needs to do good.

They've even got a dedicated cleric. My Skyrim gal Claire Voyance would like to join in.



Whoa. And I see Silverlight has been spotted.

Oh my gosh. What the ... so now the monsters are giving up! Yeah, Natth's gonna be furious.

Is this the end of the battle? Funny thing is, with everything that's going on, everyone who's joined in and lost their lives or gotten hurt, and so on, the one main thing which makes me nervous (IF this is the end of the battle) is that awkwardness between Jan and Hannah.

---------------------



Gary Gygax grew up in somewhere in Illinois, and I bet he had good knowledge of any mythologies of the Great Lakes area. I remember Wyrd grew up on the same lake where the Gygax family had a cabin, something like that.

It's only logical that the nature spirits would rally.

January's thoughts bring up a good point: having an enormous entity can be useful, but it poses a danger as well. If I recall correctly, this was always the danger of having elephant cavalry in ancient and medieval battles. If the elephants got spooked, they could do a lot of damage to your own forces.

And like any good tank, the Fred Hampton will probably need some healing soon. Definitely enough MMO folks in this Alliance to realize this, I'm sure.

Yup, Gadget to the rescue!

Looks like the dual technique is being put to good use. Nice to see them build on that.

It's interesting how useful MMO/RPG terminology actually ends up being for this kind of situation. Sure, it might not encompass some of the complexities, but it gets the ideas across in a pretty effective way.

Annnddd... it looks like the tides have shifted. The fall of Colossus has broken the morale of the Abyssal force. Now I'm sure the Alliance will press the advantage... but I have a feeling Nátthrafn still has a trick or two up his sleeve.

Acadian: There are so many supers involved now, it is hard for me to keep track of them all. I had to create a list of which ones showed up at what times. In fact, here it is:

Characters at the Battle of Belle Isle:
(First Wave)
Stormcrow
Gola
Blood Raven

(Second Wave)
Lighthammer
Gadget
Ôkami
Blackhawk
Isaac
Archie
Vortex
Hungry Ghost
Riven
Thunderbolt

(Third Wave)
The Veil
Stinger
Zero Point
Helios
White Fell = 18 total

(Fourth Wave)
Kaelin
Harper
Viuda
Calypso = 22 total

(Fifth Wave)
Y Ddraig Aur
Silverlight
Mishipeshu
Unnamed Air Elemental
Unnamed Salamander
= 27 total

(Sixth Wave)
The Technocrat
Thalassa
Hammerstone
Tick Tock
Annihilator
Frostbite
+ others from Europe = 33 total named heroes (approximately 39 in all including unnamed ones)


Renee: The battle is not over yet. It has been a series of pushes back and forth. This was just one push against the Abyssals. But Nasty Nate still has plenty of fight left in him, and he's about to push right back.

The relationship between January and Hannah is a good thing to keep your eye upon. In fact, this week's episode is the entire reason I created Hannah. She is going to be very important, to January at least.

That is right, I forgot that Gygax was from the Midwest, and that TSR was based in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. They probably weren't too far from where the RL pictograph of Mishipeshu is located.


WellTemperedClavier: The Colossus is sort of like the Davey Crockett nuclear recoilless rifle. You can't shoot it far enough away to not get yourself killed by it! You are right about the use of elephants. They could tip the battle in your favor. Or they could panic and trample your own troops. In this case the Colossus did a little of both.

A while back Gadget did describe January's romance strategy with Hannah as being a Leroy Jenkins. He's more the computer gamer than January is. She really does not make time for video games anymore. But it does help that to have that handy shorthand to get ideas across quickly and easily, and some things translate across really well, such as Tanks, and DPS, and Healers.

A while back I said that this battle will be a series of offensives and counter-offensives by each side. We just saw the second Allied counter-offensive (temporarily) throw back the Abyssals. But like with the first time they did it with the A-10 bombing run, Nasty Nate is not done yet. The Abyssals have one more big push to make.












Inspiration for the Technocrat's flying wing

The ship flies using an Alcubierre Drive

Nátthrafn's Theme - Gustav Holst - Mars



Book 10.24 - Alliance

The spell was broken by a hum of power overhead. January looked up with everyone else, to see what looked like a meteor falling from the sky toward them. Fire blazed across its underside, and sent a long, blazing tail out behind it. But as it neared, the fire cooled, and January saw that it was not a falling stone. Rather it was an aircraft descending through the atmosphere from higher above.

It was a flying wing. Instead of being shaped like a boomerang or wedge, its gleaming white central hull possessed a lozenge shape, and the wings sort of stretched out from two opposite sides of the diamond design. The ends of each wing were painted red and curled up, reminding January of the paper airplanes that Avery used to make as a child. A silvery glass canopy filled its rounded nose, but no other features stood out within the craft's sleek hull.

This aircraft flew through no obvious means. It did not use jets or propellers, nor did any sound issue from it. Not even an electric hum. Rather the air seemed to shimmer around its hull, like the heat-haze on a highway. January wondered if spacetime had been altered there, and it flew by literally warping reality in its presence?

Then a series of lines appeared within the previously smooth and featureless hull. These met and turned into hatches, which slid open a moment later. Out of these openings spilled forth yet another team of superheroes. Even as these worthies leaped forth from the flying wing, the aircraft zoomed off, to vanish beyond the Detroit skyline.

"Must have made a sub-orbital flight to cut down on the travel time," Gadget murmured offhandedly. "Probably only took a few minutes to cross the Atlantic. Very cash money."

January recognized the Technocrat in the lead. Everyone in the world knew Janos Heisen. Well beyond a hundred years old, he was the Avarican scientist who had fought for the Nazis in World War Two, only to turn pacifist and help found a new Avarica afterward. His new Technocracy led the world in science and education, and held to a policy of strict neutrality in world affairs. He himself had not only personally visited the Moon and Mars to perform scientific exploration, but he had just recently returned from Jupiter.

He stood some seven feet tall, in what was either a suit of powered armor, or a fully robotic body. Many people whispered it was the latter, with only his brain left of his real flesh. It was painted white with strips of red, like the Avarican flag. It had a cape not of cloth, but some form of metal that billowed and flowed with the wind. His helmet was crested with wings, and its eye pieces glowed with blue-white light.

January only recognized a handful of the other heroes with him. Those she did know were all from Europe, such as Hammerstone. He was decked out in Scottish plaid, and carried a massive hammer made of stone. There was the Greek aquatic heroine Thalassa with her trident. January also recognized Tick Tock, the martial artist who reputedly could see a few seconds into the future, enough to counter any opponent's move before they even made them.

Some of them were not even heroes. She noted international supervillain Annihilator in his anti-matter based suit of powered armor. She also recognized Frostbite, the Polish supervillain she had so recently traded barbs with at Blackwood's villa. So apparently Hungry Ghost was not the only bad guy to turn their hat white, at least for one night.

Unfortunately, along with the reinforcements came a new wave of Abyssals. Even as the Europeans came to ground to stand shoulder to shoulder with January and the others, Nátthrafn led a new army forth from the portal. This time he actually did lead them. January wondered if it was only the force of the Dark Lord's personality that kept them going at this point?

Obviously she was not the only one to think that, for a fusillade of ballistic, energy, and magic attacks were all loosed upon him. He swatted bullets aside with his axe as if they were flies. Lasers, plasma, and the like merely sizzled upon his armor. Magic was simply absorbed into his frame like water into a sponge. With a single gesture a horde of shadow monsters flew from his body to assault the heroes. Then he lifted his axe and sent it crashing to earth with a titanic blow. A shockwave of power rippled forward through the ground, seeming to turn into liquid for a moment. This rolling earthquake toppled makeshift walls, and sent the Fred Hampton reeling, along with everyone else who could not fly.

The Technocrat raised his hands, only to hurl them down dramatically a moment later. Suddenly both Nátthrafn and his entire Abyssal army flattened to the earth. It was as if gravity had suddenly increased tenfold, and crushed them down with an implacable grip. The ground itself sank into a depression, and the mud and dirt upon its surface compacted into what looked like sandstone.

But Nátthrafn's will was not so easily thwarted. January felt power rise from her eight times great-grandfather's body. It spread out in shadowy threads of magical energy, and wherever those threads touched, the Technocrat's gravity manipulation ceased. In just moments everything turned back to normal once more, and the Abyssals sprang back to their feet.

Heisen was not finished however. He riposted by reaching out once more with both hands. He seemed to twist them in the air, as if he was swirling water in a pool. January felt the fabric of spacetime turn with his motions. It whirled, and tore, and finally ripped apart. The Technocrat pulled a long slice through reality, and separated the heroes from the Abyssals with a void. It was not simply darkness. It was literal nothingness. This part of reality had ceased to exist, leaving no way between one side and the other.

January knew from documentaries - and of course Avery - that spacetime was not an actual fabric. It was not a physical substance at all. It was just easier to use terms like that to visualize it. Instead it seemed to be a series of equations that determined the likelihood of things such as matter or energy traveling along one path or another.

In this case, Heisen had erased all those equations from the dry erase board of reality. Now there were simply no paths leading from Nátthrafn and his Abyssal horde to the assembled heroes. It reminded January of the old saying: "You can't get there from here." In this case, it was now literally true.

She had heard of entering a black hole as being something like that. The visible universe would shrink to a point of light behind you, until finally that too vanished entirely. From that point no matter what direction you traveled, you would go to the singularity at its heart, because every set of equations governing motion led to that point.

The Technocrat appeared to be doing something similar, even if with far less magnitude as the warping of space and time caused by a black hole.

Yet once more, Nátthrafn countered this was a spell. His will was unyielding, his corruption indefatigable. Again, the Norse sorcerer stretched out with his power, and turned all of Earth's greatest scientist's workings to ashes. His smile sent ice down January's spine. He would devour her world, and nothing seemed capable of stopping him.

"Magicians, to me!" Blood Raven cried. January turned from this latest duel of titans to see that her mentor now stood in the center of the ramshackle fortress. She reluctantly left the fight and joined the others around the red-maned heroine. "This is our chance. While the others keep our foe and his minions at bay, we shall destroy his portal to the Abyss."

"How?" Silverlight asked. A relative newcomer, she had missed Blood Raven's earlier strategy.

"Join your power with mine," Blood Raven explained. "We shall form a ritual team. With our combined might, I shall undo the threads of the portal's spell, one strand at a time if need be."

"I have never done such a thing before," one of the European newcomers said in a distinctly Spanish accent.

"Don't worry, our part is easy," January explained. "Just close your eyes and bring up your magic. Let it flow into her, and she will direct it."

With that they all sat down and joined hands. It would have looked like a warm and fuzzy New Age celebration, if not for all the death and destruction surrounding them. It was hard for January to turn her back to all that, to the Abyssals just a few feet away that ached to rend her flesh and bone. But she had to trust her comrades, both old and new, to protect her from harm. It was not easy, especially given that she was used to being the one doing the protecting.

But January willed herself to shut all of that out, and concentrate on her breathing. As she had for so many thousands of hours now, she closed her eyes and felt her magic within. As ever, it was a cool river of power that ran beneath her. She raised it up, and let if suffuse her being. All around her she felt others do the same. She felt their power rise with hers. Finally that power spilled over from her hands and into theirs, and vice-versa. Her power became their power, theirs became hers. It was now one common flow, and they were merely points along that river of energy.

She felt Blood Raven in the midst of it all. That power fell into her like a waterfall. January could not only feel the mana, but everything it touched. She felt all through Blood Raven's aura. Felt her fears, her hopes, her dreams, her dread, and her sorrows. She felt the loss of hundreds of loved ones. She felt the joy of holding her newborn baby Constance in her arms. She felt the terror as her life slipped away, after the vampire Kelpius ripped her throat out. She felt the satisfaction of wearing her Union uniform for the first time. She felt the dread of watching a cannonball skip across the open fields south of Fredericksburg, and effortlessly take off the head of the man standing beside her. She felt the sorrow as she stood at attention with the rest of the honor guard at President Lincoln's burial. She felt her pride as her descendant Stormcrow strode through the flames of the Flying Dutchman to rescue others, even as the young woman coughed blood from her own seared lungs.

Finally, she felt that brilliant and complex aura of power and will that was called Blood Raven stretch out to the Abyss. January recoiled at the touch of the portal. It was like swimming in feces. She wanted to retch. But like Blood Raven - and all the others - she steeled herself for the necessary contact with the horror of Beyond.

Blood Raven became a surgeon, or a tailor. She sliced and cut at the tendons and threads that wove the portal together. She was careful, calculating. This was not a brute force attempt to overwhelm it. That would clearly never succeed. Yet her method slowly and surely cut the portal's own legs out from underneath. It severed piece by necessary piece, leaving the whole unable to sustain itself.

She felt the portal begin to collapse under the weight of its own energy. Slowly it folded in upon itself. With every moment it shrank, and gave back the reality it had stolen from the Earth. Still Blood Raven cut, and cut, and pushed the collapse faster and faster.

Then January felt it. She felt him, through the warp and weft of the portal's lattice. It was Nátthrafn, the Dark Lord himself. For this was his spell. It was connected to him, in a way, part of him. She sensed not only the loathing he felt for all life. But the sudden and direct hatred of his daughter: Blood Raven. January felt that spite gather into a spear of gleaming power, and lance out to find her heart.

They all staggered then. January gasped for air as the breath leaped from her lungs. Her eyes flew open, and she saw Nátthrafn standing over Blood Raven, axe held high. A hole had been burned through her chest, where her heart would have been. January could only imagine the force of the arcane bolt that must have caused that terrible wound. Yet the heroine remained kneeling, and continued to work her magic as if nothing untoward had happened.

The Technocrat lay prostrate nearby, armor dented and battered. One of his arms was entirely missing, and sparking wires and tortured metal sprouted jaggedly from the stump left behind in his mechanical torso. Other heroes lay scattered about as well, whether dead or unconscious January could not tell.

"No!" January broke loose from the ritual with a cloud of scattered mana. She felt their combined spell shiver at her sudden withdrawal, and begin to founder. The threads that made up the weave of its design began to shrink, separate, and wither away into nothingness. It seemed poised on the brink of disaster.

Then January felt Blood Raven gain control of the magical working once more. Even as her father loomed over her with weapon in hand, the elder heroine remained steady in her resolve. She pulled on the strands of power they had all created, all except for January now. The spell stabilized, reformed, and then continued to disassemble the portal once more.

Even as this was happening, January leaped forward with all of her might. She called upon Air to propel her with far greater speed than she had ever moved before. Without even a thought, she ripped a bolt of lightning from the sky above and slammed it into her back. This catapulted her forward with blinding speed. An instant later she came down with her elbow squarely upon Nátthrafn's head. All of that power burst loose upon contact, and sent both her and her eight times great-grandfather tumbling away.

The world spun, and January tumbled along with Nátthrafn. Both hurtled back toward the shrinking gateway. She could see little more than flashes of ground and sky as they careened along. That and the white bone and black metal armor which the Dark Lord wore filled her awareness.

She struggled to even out her tumble and regain control of her flight. Her wings beat at the air. Her body struggled to find its balance. But her great-grandfather's arms clamped around her and held her down. There was no escape from his grasp.

"If I go, you go," he breathed in her ear.

Then they crossed the boundary of the portal to the Abyss. January felt it immediately. It was like her flesh and blood was being torn apart and reassembled an instant later. Vortex's teleportation had made her mildly queasy. But this was different. It was not that she had leaped across space and time. She had leaped from the real to the... unreal horror of something else.

* * *

The Abyss stretched out all around January. It was hard, cold, and sharp stone under her, black as coal, and unforgiving as diamond. It was a roar in the sky above, screaming terror and pain. A chain of sharp, jagged hills rose to one side, and a long plain of emptiness to the other. But both plain and badlands bubbled and seethed. It took a moment, then January realized that what she saw was a blanket of monsters that clambered across field and slope. Everywhere her eye set, an ocean of horror crept, leaped, and shambled.

An earthquake seemed to roll through a line of mountains in the distance. It was a ridge of razorback peaks, all sharp angles and unforgiving expanses. What looked like stones - or were they living creatures? - fell from the slopes in an avalanche. Those slopes rose up, as if pushed by some titanic geologic force below.

Then they took one step, and another, and January realized that this was not some topographical feature. It was alive! It was a creature, a being, whose power dwarfed even that of her eight times great-grandfather. It blotted the sky with its bulk. January was not sure if that was physical, or just all in her mind's eye. It seemed to be the malign spirit or will of the very world itself, given shape and form.

Exactly what that shape and form was, January could not tell. Wherever her eye landed, it defied simple description. Its flanks were both convex and concave at the same time. What was an angle, turned into flat plane, then something else. In spite of all this chaos, January did not have the sense that it was shifting its form. Rather it felt more like whatever its form was, her brain just could not process it in a rational, logical fashion.

Clearly, it was from Outside, and imbued with Outside properties. Those properties simply could not be understood by one from her reality.

It was Choronzon, the Dweller in the Abyss. That much she did understand.

As with so many things magical, January simply knew this. It was just there in her intuition. She did seem to recall that Doctor John Dee had written about this being, and compared it to the serpent in the Garden of Eden. Aleister Crowley also claimed to have invoked it. But like most things that man purported, January found that dubious. He would not have survived the encounter.

The thing seethed with evil. That was the only way January could describe the sensation she felt from simply looking upon the creature. Evil was not a term she commonly found herself using. At best, it was like a virus that infected human beings. It eroded their ability to empathize with others, or possess a sense of ethics to restrain their behavior. In time any behavior, no matter how cruel and hateful, became normalized for them, thanks to the pretexts that they hid behind. Eventually the cruelty became the point for them, and they appeared to live for little else.

But this was something different. It was not the virus of evil cloaked in human form. It was the virus itself, pure in its malignance, unfettered by human experience. No excuses, no hypocrisy to hide behind, no justifications to manufacture. It was monstrousness in its purest distillation.

Now January was glad that she could only sense the master of this realm but dimly. What she could feel filled her with terror and dread. Her heart raced a thousand miles an hour. Her spine was an icy cold spear running down her back. The hairs on her neck stood on end. All she wanted to do was run, as far and as fast as she could.

Behind her the portal was a single, bright spark of light in that benighted oblivion. She strained for it. But even as she reached out, it grew ever dimmer. It shrank before her eyes, ever smaller and smaller. But no matter how much she strained, Nátthrafn held her back.

"You may have thwarted me this day," he growled. "But you shall suffer for this. You are mine for eternity."

"Valhalla waits for me," January crowed in reply. She turned to face the monster that was her ancestor, the horror whose blood ran through her own veins. She cocked back a fist. If she was going to die, it would be as a Viking.

Then a soft hand came to rest upon her forearm. She smelled lavender and hyssop in her nostrils. January smiled, and halted her attack. She knew only one woman in the world who smelled like that, only one whose aura painted the astral as this one's did. It was Hannah. Somehow, she was here.

Then the world warped around her in a swirling vortex of color and feeling. It felt like she was twisting down into the drain of a sink, or into the singularity at the heart of a black hole. For an instant she no longer felt the ground beneath her feet, the air upon her skin, or even Hannah's fingers upon her arm. Even the omnipresent pull of gravity vanished, and she floated in nothingness, with no idea of what direction was even up.

January knew this feeling, and a great swell of relief passed through her at its familiar touch. It was Hannah's teleportation. It had always made her feel this way. It was being not here, or there, but in fact nowhere, for just an instant. Normally it was a little unsettling, like the feeling of a carpet being yanked out from under your feet. But right now, it felt like hope.

Then everything was normal again. The ground was firm under her feet. The air was clean and pure in her lungs. The sky shone bright with stars and moon overhead, and the familiar lights of Detroit and Windsor glittered to either side of her.

She was standing on Belle Isle once more. She was back on Earth again. Before her eyes the portal to the Abyss made its final collapse upon itself. With the blink of an eye, it fell into a single, dark point. Then it vanished entirely. Behind it came a brief burst of wind, as air was sucked into the void left within its wake. With that, the last of the Abyssals still upon the Earth all vanished as well. It was like a light switch had been flipped, and they all just ceased to exist.

It was over.

* * *

Wow, look at that list! Those lists! Indeed, I knew a lot of heroes have shown up, but seeing them all on paper.

Sixth Wave hasn't shown up yet, I don't think. Haven't heard of Tick Tock. It's 2019 in the story, right? If this story happened a couple years later, Tick Tock would be getting confused with a particular Chinese social media website packed with inane dance video content which many politicians wish they could ban.

A superhero decked out in plaid! And Thalassia sounds cool. Like Aquaman, perhaps. Pretty sure there was another SH who carried a trident, as well. Technocrat sounds fascinating. He's been to other planets + the Moon, Yikes.

Oh yeah, I remember Frostbite. ❄ They got into it down in the islands, Jan and Frostbite, until Michael Caine had to get Miss Bite to cool off. Heh. Cool off.

I just found one of Baltimore's superhero: It's Captain Raven!

Even as Natth "swats aside bullets" that's still gotta be pretty distracting for all those rounds and lasers to be fired at him. But if they can destroy this portal, that would be good, hopefully it'd stop reinforcements from constantly showing up, at least. And as they commence to get rid of the thing, it seems like they're possibly sacrificing themselves.



That's really poignant, they way these two sentences are stated. Gotta ask: did he always hate his own daughter?
Probably been stated but I don't remember.

Oh no, Jan's been captured, or maybe misplaced is a better word. Whooa. Yeah, as soon as "hyssop" was mentioned.

Dude. So Hannah's here, in this world which sounds like Oblivion's planes. So does that mean Hannah is... Okay, doesn't sound like that.

I'm sorta confused. I wonder if what January's seeing isn't real. If Hannah is really part of the Dark Force and is playing a trick on Jan, too.

And the EU Brigade arrives! But so does Nate himself to lead his final charge.

The magic circle around Blood Raven was very neat – especially January sensing some of Blood Raven’s memories. Memories the older heroine would likely normally be loathe to share.

Count on the Stormcrow to bail out of the circle to protect her mentor. . . and end up moving from the frying pan into the fire.

A very foreboding and ominous feeling of hopelessness inside the Abyss that was finally resolved by the cool touch of Hannah’s hand. The pair teleported out in the nick of time it seems.

Looks like this new aerial player is making quite an entrance. Can't go wrong with the flying wing design; it's a classic for a reason.

Ah, so here's the Technocrat at last. Fits with this thing being sub-orbital at the very least. Does seem like he has a pretty checked past, however. Wonder how Blood Raven will react to him when the Abyssals are gone.

Hammerstone uses a hammer made of stone. Fitting.

Impressive as the gravity attack was, it looks like the Abyssals have a counter. Definitely amping the power levels here.

Interesting tactic that Blood Raven's using. If they keep raising the power expended, it'll never stop (and probably wreck more than the Alliance wants to wreck). Using magic to undercut the Abyssals' attacks is a more subtle approach, and maybe more effective.

Oh wow, Nátthrafn's right there!

And now into the Abyss...

This is scary stuff. We know, roughly, how awful this place is. And now Stormcrow's in the thick of it.



Nightmarish. Also shows how urgently they need to collapse that portal.

That goes double what with the Colossus's big brother here.

Good thing Hannah's there! And oh, looks like Blood Raven was able to damage the portal enough to destroy it. Though I have a feeling that Nátthrafn isn't finished just yet...

Renee: And even with that long list, the vast majority of supers on the planet were not there, because they could not get there in time/did not learn about it soon enough. People like Captain Raven.

I hate to sound all preachy, but Tik Tok should be banned. It is literal malware put out by the Chinese Communist Party to spy on people. All the social media apps are doing that mind you. But most are doing it in order to strategically target ads at you. Tik Tok is run by a hostile foreign power with a vested interest in damaging the US. Its banned for people in the military to use for good reason.

Thalassa is the Greek word for "Sea" or "Ocean". She was an early idea for the character who became Calypso. Since I wound up going the way I did with Calypso, I saved my notes on Thalassa, and decided to make her a European heroine.

And that was the same Frostbite you are thinking of, who needed to chill out...

For most of Blood Raven's life, her father has been pretty oblivious to her existence. He married her mom for the money, and then got her pregnant with Blood Raven in order to spread his bloodline. Aside from that, he could not have cared less about her, or any of his progeny. They are simply his means of reentering this world, nothing more.

At least until Jack Parsons brought Nátthrafn back in 1952. Just moments later she killed Nátthrafn by superheating his blood and causing him to explode from the inside out. He noticed her then! And he's had an axe to grind ever since.

Captured was a pretty good word to use for January being stuck in the Abyss. Nátthrafn did literally have her in his clutches.

Hannah teleports. So she teleported through the gate to get January, and teleported back out to return to Earth. So long as the gate remained open, she could do that. If she had been too slow and the gate had shut before she could get out, she would have been trapped there along with January.


Acadian: It was time for the EU to get involved. If I had developed any other international heroes, they would have appeared by now as well. This was a global event. Really, a Universe level one.

The memories of Blood Raven spilling over into the other members of the ritual was not something I planned ahead of time. It just sort of came out as I wrote, and I went with it. I like it, because it reveals a bit more of who she is, and helps humanize her.

January is January. She could not stand by while Nátthrafn finished off her mentor. Granted, she did not think of the consequences of her actions. Nor did she regret them either.


WellTemperedClavier: I spent a long, long time working on the Technocrat's super plane. I first went through a lot of artwork for science fiction dropships and other aircraft. But they all looked too military. The new Avarica is a pacifistic nation. The Technocrat would not be riding in something that projected violence.

Then I watched the old 1950s version of the War of the Worlds. They had a flying wing in there that dropped the nuclear bomb on the Martians. I knew that was the route I wanted, since Flying Wings project grace and futurism and how the fuck does that thing not fall out of the sky? So I went searching for them, and found the one I referenced. Then I just tweaked it a bit to remove the engines and the like.

I have been building up the Technocrat throughout the entire series. So now that he finally arrived, he needed to really shine. So I went with the control of spacetime as being his main power. Gravity, reality itself, are his to manipulate. He is definitely one of the most powerful metas in the world.

The threat of the Abyssals has been the main Big Bad of Season One. So I realized that now at the end, I needed to show the Abyss itself. So January had to go through the gateway and experience it first hand. Once there I went back to the old master - Lovecraft - to try to describe the indescribable. As he said: "A mountain walked."

Nátthrafn is done. He's not dead obviously. He might be unkillable. At least not permanently. But he has been defeated. With the gateway destroyed, and him trapped in the Abyss once more, he is out of moves. At least until someone else in his bloodline comes along and tries to summon him once more. I don't currently have any plans for that. So my guess is that such a thing probably won't happen for hundreds or thousands of years. If ever again. But if I get inspired, who knows? Blood Raven might decide to take the offensive, and somehow use the Raudskinna and his own bloodline against him. That might be an idea to explore in a standalone story.








Queen - We Are The Champions


Book 10.25 - Alliance

January was aware of someone holding her close. She smelled lavender and hyssop again. She saw soft brown eyes, and felt warm skin. The next thing she knew, she was kissing Hannah. The other woman returned the kiss and held her tight. In that moment January felt more alive than she ever had in her life. More than the first time she had soared on the uneven bars. More than the first time Avery had called her "January". More than the first time she had flown... without crashing at least.

Maybe it was just the adrenaline. Maybe it was the fact that the other woman had just rescued her from an ugly fate outside of reality. Maybe it was simply that Hannah's body felt so good against her own. January did now know, and at the moment, did not care. She was alive, and Hannah was here, and that was everything.

At least until another woman's voice cut through her bliss. "Stormcrow, Vortex, can you comment on what just happened?"

The voice sounded familiar. It was someone she had heard before, but could not place. Then she saw its author. It was the same reporter who had been at Gull Island: Priya O'Neill. The other woman's hair was an ebon waterfall, and she was clad in a sport coat hastily thrown over a T-shirt and tights. Towering nearby was a large red-haired man who held a TV camera trained expertly upon her.

"I... uhh... well...." January fought for words, but could not find any. Vortex giggled in her ear and January lost herself when she kissed her once more. She was not sure if it was Vortex who started it, or if she had done it herself. But in any case, it was glorious.

But there was no losing herself in the other woman's lips this time. Not for long at least. The rest of the world pressed in, and would not be denied. When her brain was able to process again, she was aware of Gadget standing between her and the reporter. The rest of the Allies had gathered nearby as well, including Blackhawk, who had apparently moved up from the bridge at some point.

"What is the name of your new super team?" Priya asked her oldest and best friend.

"Well, I don't know if we are exactly a team," Gadget rubbed the back of his head. "It's more like an alliance. We are all here for each other when we need it."

"So the Alliance it is then," the reporter went on. "Is this event connected to the recent battles at Gull Island and Ferndale Pride?"

"Yes," Blood Raven's voice cut through the night like a sword through paper. "This is the culmination of the Hierophant's campaign, its final end. He has been finished, and the Abyssals he unwittingly loosed upon the Earth thrown back."

Everyone turned to see the elder heroine float down through the sky to stand before the reporter. The terrible wound in her chest had vanished. Now pale skin showed through the rent in the Chobham armor of her breastplate, and the dragon silk that lay underneath. Even as January looked on, both layers of protection slowly stitched themselves back together as the armor regenerated.

She looked none the worse for wear. Blood Raven was a hard person to kill. Not even Nátthrafn - the Dark Lord of the Abyss - was up to the task.

"You said the Hierophant is finished," the reporter pressed. "Does that mean he has been captured?"

"He is dead," January heard herself say. "I killed him."

Suddenly she was back in the sacrificial circle. She heard the Hierophant scream, as he realized what January had done. She saw his body rip apart into spaghetti, and fall piece by piece into the summoning circle. Her own blood turned to ice, it was all she could do to keep from shaking.

Silence fell across the assembled heroes. All eyes turned to January, and suddenly she realized that she had perhaps said too much. But then again, perhaps not. She had long since determined not to play things as close to the vest as Blood Raven did.

"Can you tell me how it happened?" Priya stepped closer. Her tall cameraman turned his bulky video recorder from her to the young heroine.

"The Hierophant kidnapped me," January explained. "He tried to use me as the sacrifice for this final ritual. But with the help of a friend we had working on the inside, I was able to trick him. I reversed the polarity of the ritual. So it killed him, instead of me."

January nodded to Gola at the mention of the "friend working on the inside". She may not have intentionally infiltrated the Hierophant's group. But once she had been there, she had done the right thing, certainly the right thing by January. She owed her life to the raven mocker.

"I... see," Priya was suddenly at a loss for words when confronted with magic and rituals and polarity. If not for decades of role-playing games and science fiction, January imagined she would be just as baffled.

With that January allowed Blood Raven to finish the interview. She had certainly opened her big mouth enough for one night. She would rather use it to kiss Hannah. But thinking of the other woman also brought memories of that day on Green Island. It was the day Hannah had loosed a racist torrent upon Ôkami, not to mention other uncomfortable things about herself. As much as January wanted to reach out to the other woman once more, part of her still recoiled at the memory.

"Thank you, for saving my life," January was able to say, looking deeply into Hannah's eyes. Then she disengaged herself from the other woman, and found Gola. She repeated the same words to the old medicine woman-turned raven mocker.

"You showed me how to live again," the other woman replied.

"Hey, that's what friends - and Allies - are for!" Gadget crowed.

With that came the aftermath, perhaps the official aftermath of the battle. The south-western third of Belle Isle had been utterly devastated. Not a building was left standing, not even the gigantic fountain. Ponds and creeks had vanished, as had grass, trees, buildings, and even parking lots. It literally looked like no man's land from the First World War.

But the isle had gained something. There was now a gigantic eidolon of a dragon that rose hundreds of feet into the air. January could still feel residual power from it, and suspected that it would linger there for a long, long time. Perhaps so long as there were people to remember the Battle of Belle Isle?

Kaelin was everywhere at once, administering healing potions to the wounded. There seemed to be a lot of those, and January gathered that most of those injuries were courtesy of Nátthrafn himself. That none had died under his assaults was a testament to their endurance. January knew the Dark Lord's power from firsthand experience after all. An example of that power was the Technocrat, who stood by as his old foe Annihilator helped weld a mechanical arm back onto his armored torso.

January briefly glanced from the Avarican scientist to Blood Raven. Getting on her mentor's bad side was not difficult to accomplish. Fighting for the Nazis in World War Two - as Janos Heisen had done - was certainly a good start at that. Blood Raven had her own history in that conflict. But in spite of that she seemed to pay no attention at all to the world's preeminent scientist.

Or maybe it was because of it? January suspected that Blood Raven regretted some of her own actions in that war. Or in the very least, she seemed to regret their necessity. Maybe that made it easier for her to let bygones be bygones? Or maybe it was simply the unequivocally good things Heisen had done since? It was a discussion that had taken place a million times since the end of that war, and probably would continue long after the Technocrat's death.

Of course January had no love for Fascists herself. They were a blight upon the face of the Earth. They were that virus of evil she had witnessed in the Abyss, only cloaked in human form and hiding its power level. But at the same time, if Heisen had broken from that dark cult of hate then that was all for the better. She had no desire to visit retributive justice upon him, no more than she had concerning Gola, or Lighthammer, or Isaac. In spite of their past opposition, they had all come through for her this day. So too had the Technocrat. Even Frostbite had stepped up in the end.

January pulled herself from these thoughts in time to see Kaelin fly to the bridge with the help of Blackhawk. The mistress of magnetism sent out a piece of her armor and flattened it into a disc for the alchemist to stand upon. Then she lifted that skyward with Kaelin still atop it, just as she presumably did with the armor that she still wore herself. In such a manner they both sailed through the air to their destination.

Gadget related that some of the defenders at the bridge had been turned to stone, or perhaps salt. Ever the cleric, Kaelin had insisted that she had a cure for that. Apparently she still had some alchemical reagents left, because she had declared that she was going to use them to brew more healing potions for the worst of the wounded there as well.

Silverlight took her leave as well. The astrally-projected superheroine moved to both the air and lava elementals who had been fighting at their side, and appeared to communicate with them in the astral plane. Then all three of them vanished deeper into that realm. January knew that she could have shifted her senses to the astral to follow them, but she just did not have the energy. Silverlight was one of her Raven Sisters. She would know what to do with the elementals to keep them from harming others, even if by accident.

Soon the military moved in, and paratroopers and rangers disembarked from a fleet of helicopters that landed upon the island. Fighter jets began to crisscross the sky overhead. The wedge-shaped strategic bombers higher up were turned back however, which came as a relief to January. There was no telling how many innocent civilians they would have killed along either bank of the river, had they turned loose their bombs and hypersonic missiles. It might have been necessary. But it would still have been tragic nonetheless.

Finally, Harper suggested an after party at the Aura. January did not see anyone decline the idea. Not even Blood Raven.

* * *

Yicch: "spread his bloodline". 👿

There was a flying wing in that old movie? I wonder if that's where our military or DoD or whomever came up with the idea. Because I remember we had a real flying wing for awhile. Was supposed to be impervious to radar, or something.

And how neat, that Technocrat has been in char. development for such a long time. And that Thal was originally what became of Calypso. I'd love to see your notes on all this. I bet it's a lot of folders and files!



Goodbye, Daddy.

She's kissing Hannah NOOOOO!!!!! But ah, heck. A lot has happened. Jan's not in her right mind. She's gotta be exhausted. Because I wouldn't trust Ms. Vortex, no ma'am.

Yeah, it's adrenaline.

I can just imagine this press conference, with all of them wearing capes and helmets.

Goodbye Silverlight! I think she's my fave of all the newer supers who showed up.

What a mess the island is. But that'll become a field day for politicians and waterfront developers to outshine each other in the future.

After party at the Aura, folks! 🍷🍹🍸🍺🍻 *clink!*

’January is January. She could not stand by while Nátthrafn finished off her mentor. Granted, she did not think of the consequences of her actions. Nor did she regret them either.’
- - Or as Buffy would say, “When my friends are in need, I don’t count the cost.”

*

A celebratory kiss with Hannah – interrupted by some reporter with no sense of timing. That’s gonna make the six o clock news for sure! With Jan’s hormones and heartrate so elevated, it is good that Blood Raven came to the rescue and took over the press briefing.

I learned a new word: eidolon.

Raven Sisters! I like it!

Well, I’d say Harper’s idea of a party is a great call!

(I agree with you regarding TikTok).

Oh, so (this) fight is over!

Well that was quite a hard-won battle. There's always a certain relief in reaching the end of a fight when reading these. It's written vividly enough that the reader starts feeling like they were in the thick of it, so unwinding with the companions really does feel good.

Hm, well maybe things will work out a bit better with Hannah. It's been a while, and she's had time to grow. Hopefully she has.

Heh, "the Alliance it is" then. Not the first time the media will take a story in its own direction. I'm not sure "Alliance" on its own is quite enough. Needs a bit more. Did someone in the story already suggest Great Lakes Alliance? Or am I remembering wrong?

The bit with Priya not understanding rings true. I always wondered how news media would handle stories of events in places like this. Like can you imagine trying to read an explanation of The Snap from Avengers in The Economist or Newsweek? It'd be awkward at best, stumbling over explanations of terminology.

Okay, so January's having second thoughts regarding Hannah now that the heat of the moment has passed. Understandable.

The Technocrat's past is indeed pretty difficult. Come a certain point, I'm not sure forgiveness is appropriate without some punishment for the crimes. I guess it depends the extent of his involvement (especially since the Nazis weren't above using coercion). But maybe it boils down to the fact that he's powerful and useful to other important groups. Iffy situation, and I don't blame Blood Raven for keeping her distance.

All right, it seems like the Alliance came out of this pretty well! Sometimes that first victory is what you need to really get rolling, and it does seem like Detroit could use a superhero group. Let's see how the party goes!

Renee: The bomber in the film was real. It is a Northrop YB-49 Flying Wing. They only made two of them as prototypes. You can see it here. My guess is the filmmakers wanted a plane that looked futuristic, and found some stock footage of the plane. Or the military gave them the footage. Since I don't think they filmed any new material with them. If you look closely, you never actually see the plane in the same shot as anything else in the movie.

We do have flying wings now. That is what the B-2 Stealth Bomber and the F-117 Stealth Fighter are.

You might be right to not trust Miss Vortex. Not that she's evil or nefarious. But she is young and carrying more than her own fair share of baggage. Stay tuned for more.

The fate of the island will come up in future books. It is a State Park, so there won't be developers fighting over who gets to build new office buildings there. But it will cost a lot to fix the damage, and the question of who is going to pay for it.


Acadian: That kiss is definitely going to make the every o'clock news. Every time January kisses someone it breaks the internet.

I learned eidolon when I was writing a story a long time ago. I needed a form of undead that was not a zombie, or a ghost, or any of the standard types. These days I might have called it a draugr. But I had not come across that term yet. My researches took me to eidolon.

The Sisters of the Raven would be a great band name. Or super team name.


WellTemperedClavier: That was the biggest battle I have ever written. If you count from Nátthrafn's first appearance to the closing of the gateway it is 50,000 words. Pretty impressive. Writing the Battle of Gull Island in Book 8 really helped prepare me for doing this one. It taught me how to break up a battle into manageable pieces, and portray each portion in turn from a different point of view. That way the entire thing did not become overwhelming, and it gave me little points where I could insert pauses as I introduced new POV characters.

It has been a long time for us readers (and writers), but only a short time has passed in the story. Hannah's meltdown on Green Island was only 3 days before. So don't expect any growth.

I expect most media outlets will get the reporting very wrong, especially where the magic is concerned. I have actually been thinking about that, and January and other magic experts such as Silverlight might be making news appearances to explain the events for TV.

Back in Stormcrow 8: Blood Gilda Gadfly coined the name Great Lakes Alliance. That is pretty much the full name of the team now. But the Alliance or Allies is a lot simpler to say, so that will be the short form.

Sadly, IRL most direct perpetrators of genocide never face any real punishment for their crimes. A handful of top Nazis were executed after WW2, but the vast majority of the people who ran the death camps or participated in the genocide by bullets got away Scot free. In Asia it was even worse. Some of the perpetrators of the Rape of Nanking went unpunished, as did the head of Unit 731. Naturally the Japanese Prime Ministers continue to lay wreaths upon the graves of these war criminals. Or more recently General Butt-Naked (funny name, but what he did was horrific) likewise got away completely free for his crimes as well.

Sometimes it was the Cold War, and the rush to scoop up as many German Scientists and possible by both sides. That is how Shiro Ishii of Unit 731 got immunity from prosecution. The same was the true of the Technocrat. He was captured by the Russians, and did not escape until Stalin's death in 1953 to found the Technocracy. He was not directly involved with the Holocaust. But by fighting for Germany, he enabled those who were. In other cases like Butt-Naked, it was a conscious decision by the survivors to seek reconciliation after genocides rather than continue a cycle of violence that they feared might never end, unless someone finally stopped. I am certainly not one to say whether that is right or wrong.





Over the Hills and Far Away

Lindsey Stirling - Assassin's Creed Theme

Eminem - Lose Yourself

Bob Seger - Shakedown



Book 10.26 - Alliance

July 9th, morning

The after party was a hit. In spite of all the complicated feelings that seeing Hannah again dredged up within January, she could not deny the sense of euphoria and joy that also filled her. Right now, just being alive after all that was a treasure. She had of course read about adrenaline and after battle endorphins in a ton of science fiction and fantasy stories. She had even experienced it herself after her various encounters with supervillains and monsters up until now. But never like this.

No one had ever kidnapped her before. She had never witnessed the world's end come so near, as that instant when she had looked up to see Nátthrafn about to kill Blood Raven, and end their magical ritual to close the portal. She had never stood within another universe before, let alone one as horrific as the Abyss. Nor had she ever seen a dragon in real life. Nor had she ever seen so many superheroes together in one place and time, all working for a common cause. It had been truly the best and worst of times.

Going back to normal life after this was going to be difficult. Part of her wanted to hang on to these moments forever. To always stay on this high. But she knew it would not last. So she tried to make the most of it while she could.

Everyone was there. Even Cray showed up in the flesh. He was the odd man out, as unlike everyone else, he was dressed in his normal Mr. Rogers attire of a sweater vest and slacks. Silverlight was late. She had returned to her home to rejoin her astral body to her physical form. Then she came back in the flesh, though it took her a while to fly in from her home on the East Coast in order to do so.

Cray had brought Blood Raven's violin, and she stood upon the little stage in the back corner of the bar to play. The Veil joined in on the piano, and Harper began to sing. They played a variety of jazz and blues, along with some old folk music, such as Spanish Ladies or Over the Hills and Far Away. January thought the latter was an old Led Zeppelin song. But it turned out it went much farther back, and the original was far different from the rock version. She had to admit, she liked the original better. Blood Raven though, ever full of surprises, also managed to include her own rendition of the Assassin's Creed theme, and the music from the Lord of the Rings films.

The trio took a break, and the bar's sound system began to bark out songs by local artists such as Bob Seger, Aaliyah, Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, Eminem, Iggy Pop, the MC5, and so many more. There were just too many to count. Detroit was Motown, Detroit Rock City, and the birthplace of Techno after all.

January walked past Lighthammer and Gadget arguing about who had the greater musical influence: NWA or the Wu Tang Clan. Just beyond Zero Point and Annihilator were debating the finer points of multiverse theory. Frostbite was locked in a drinking contest with White Fell, both of them chugging one mug of beer after another. It could have been any night at the pub, except of course for all the capes.

A circle had grown around Blood Raven, which January found herself fall into, as if by the force of some mystical gravity. It was all the familiar faces: Calypso, Silverlight, Kaelin, Riven, and Ôkami. All were magicians, and all students of the elder heroine. For once, her mentor looked truly happy. In fact, Blood Raven was positively beaming, surrounded by her protégés.

"So we Daughters of the Raven are all here then?" Riven joked as January joined in the little circle of companions.

"I am not so sure our samurai friend here is exactly a 'daughter'," Calypso noted, "perhaps a brother."

"If Storm and Jean Grey can be X-Men, then I can be a Daughter of the Raven," Ôkami murmured. "It has been noted that I have many bags, but that is not one of them."

"We aren't all here though," January chimed in with a smile. "We have a new sister."

"Aye, Stormcrow and I only met her this same day," Blood Raven intoned, then glanced up at the clock on one wall. "Well, now it was yesterday."

"So what's she like?" Riven asked. "I hope she is better off than I was before we met."

"She has her crosses to bear, as do we all," Blood Raven mused. "She is a young person, as you were, as you all were. So she grapples with the same foes you all have done battle with. Who am I? What am I? What should I do with this life?"

January found herself nodding along with the others. She glanced down at her wrists. Even though her suit's long sleeves covered them, she could see the scars that marred her wrists with her mind's eye. She hoped that Xochitl would never have a low point as deep as that. But for all January knew, she may already have. Suicide was no stranger to trans people after all.

"You should bring her here," Kaelin offered, then nodded to January. "Don't wait as long as you did with this one."

"Ah, she's only fifteen," January found herself saying. "I don't know that hanging out at a bar is ideal for her. Heck, I'm only nineteen; I'm not entirely legal either."

"It's only illegal to serve her alcohol," Kaelin waved a dismissive hand. "I mean, you're here, and you're not drinking either."

"Her parents might have qualms about that. We must remember, she is not an adult. Not legally, nor otherwise." Calypso chimed in, then looked to Blood Raven. "My 'auntie' Branwen did not take me out to clubs either."

"And your parents should have skinned me alive had I even considered such a thing!" Blood Raven laughed. "Granted, you were much younger then."

"I am so glad I never had kids," Riven interjected. "I can't imagine having to make decisions like this for them. I mean, we all needed someone like Blood Raven in our lives back then. But at the same time, she had to constantly choose how much to tell our parents about who and what we were in order to protect us. I mean, not all of us had accepting families. Mine would have murdered me if they knew I was using magic, and I mean that literally."

"It is a balancing act, and I honestly still do not know how to do it," Blood Raven admitted. "I simply make it so. As you all do."

"I am going to bring your newest 'sister' to the sanctum tomorrow," she went on, then waved her hand. "Not this tomorrow, but the next tomorrow, Wednesday. There are things I must attend to in the aftermath of the Hierophant's death, such as going through his home before turning it over to the authorities. Stormcrow shall assist me in this matter. But afterward I should like you all to meet her. I know that many of you felt isolated and alone when I first met you. It might be good for her to know that she is neither, and that she instead is part of a much larger family."

"Here, here!" Riven raised her whiskey glass in a toast. The others took it up, and clinked their glasses, mugs, and cups together. "Here's to us, the Raven's Daughters!"

January felt a soft hand on her shoulder. She smelled lavender and hyssop. She felt her in astral space. She did not need to turn around to know who it was.

It was Hannah.

Her heart both leaped and fell at the same time. Just as she had been both eagerly anticipating - and dreading - this moment ever since she had first set eyes upon the other woman earlier in the night.

She followed Hannah past several of the European heroes. Apparently Frostbite had not been joking about dancing the mazurka, because January saw her actually doing it. The supervillain briefly met her gaze and smiled as she performed the traditional folk dance. But January was too overwhelmed with the nearness of Hannah to really do more than nod in reply as she passed.

Hannah sat in one of the small tables that lined the wall opposite the bar. January sat facing her. Her hand immediately reached out for the other woman's. Her heart leaped when her fingers entwined with her own.

"So where are we?" Hannah spoke first. "Is this, is us, something or not?"

"I don't know," January said honestly. She avoided the other woman's gaze. If she stared too long into her eyes, she might forget how to speak. "No one has ever made me feel the way you do."

"But I also can't forget the things you said back at Green Island." January frowned, and stared down at her hands. "It's always there, in the back of my head. I've known Ôkami since we were in the Third Grade. He's one of my oldest friends, and that's never going to change."

She could sense that Hannah was about to interject, but January raised her hand to head her off.

"I know you have your reasons for your feelings," January said. "And whatever you feel, I know that it is real. I believe you. But I just cannot have that in my life. It makes me feel guilty being around him. It's like a knife in my guts. And it feels the same when I'm around you. I can't live this way."

"So this is where you expect me to change, and forget the past and move on," Hannah's voice dripped with sarcasm. Then she sighed, and went on with a more even tone. "I'm sorry, it's just... what I feel for you, just doesn't change what I feel about people like him."

Neither of them said anything for long moments after that. January raised her eyes to meet Hannah's. She knew that she had to be strong. She had to be inviolable. She had to be Earth. But as much as she wanted to become as adamant as a mountain, she felt like nothing but jelly inside.

"So I guess that's it then." Hannah finally said.

"I guess it is," January frowned.

Hannah sighed once more. She stood up deliberately. January watched it all, as if in slow motion. She wanted to reach out to the other woman. She wanted to take her in her arms, kiss her, and tell her everything would work out in the end. That was how this all would have ended in the movie or book.

But this was not a movie or TV show. Hannah turned her back and walked away, and January did nothing to stop her.

January felt her throat close up tightly at the sight of Hannah's back. This was the last time. Their last time, she knew that. Hannah was gone, and she was never coming back.

"So, does this mean you will be in my daughter's life once more? Or not?" January nearly jumped out of her skin at the sound of Hungry Ghost's voice. The older man slid into the chair that Hannah had just vacated, a half-finished mug of beer in one hand.

"Looks like not." January stared down at the table. She was not going to cry in front of her ex-girlfriend's father. Absolutely, positively, not.

"That is... unfortunate," Hungry Ghost said. January was not sure if he really meant that or not. How did any parent feel about their daughter dating, let alone dating another woman, or a transwoman? She hated wondering that. But she also hating living in a world that forced her to think that way in the first place. "She has been very... upset... over your falling out. You meant a great deal to her. You were her hero."

"Well, I guess the old saying is true then," January said bitterly. "Never meet your heroes."

"Well, my ex-wife would say the same about me." The Ghost stared down at his glass, and traced its foamy rim with one finger. "We may be heroes to others - or villains - but we are just people in the end, and none of us are perfect."

"Speaking of heroes, what color is your hat these days Ghost?" January could not wait to change the subject. She forced herself to smile, even if she felt like dying inside. "I hear you and your daughter have been hanging out with Thunderbolt and Riven over in San Francisco."

"It seems that we are now a team," Ghost shrugged. "I think, maybe. Hannah wants to do the right thing. She wants to help people. She lives in San Francisco, they live in San Francisco, so it was inevitable I suppose. Besides, they did save her life years ago, when I wasn't around. I know I can count on them where she is concerned."

"And you?" January asked.

"I am not a spring chicken anymore," he explained. "I was so... arrogant when I was your age. I thought I was on top of the world. I thought I could do anything, have anything, without any consequences. I was an idiot. All I really did was drive away the woman I loved, and my baby girl with her. I know my ex-wife is gone forever. But I still have this chance to be in my daughter's life. I have you to thank for that my friend. I'll never forget it. Call me, any time, and I'll be there."

With that the older man rose and laid a friendly hand upon January's shoulder. Then he too walked away. That left her alone, staring at the table in front of her. She studied every little chip and flake in its surface, and every whorl and wave of the wood's grain. Anything but feel what she was feeling.