Archive of Our Own ^beta

                                                                                                                                                                                      Rifts Earth

                                                                                                                                                                                            1
     Erin Tarn, where are you now?
     Lee Barrett flies over the wilderness, scouting a passage, recalling the writings of Earth’s finest Rogue Scholar. “The presence of a champion can mean the difference between death and survival for a community.” This community, this place called America, is tearing itself apart in her absence.
     Lee’s father was a champion of the Nebraska Territories. Custodian of a power from another age, he wandered the land protecting the people from monsters. He had imagined that he would one day pass this power on to a worthy successor, as it had been passed down to him. When his daughter Emily was born, her mother died in labor, and he was forced to raise his own child, wishing for a son, he shortened her name to Lee. He raised Lee harshly, perceiving a loss of options, knowing he must one day pass his ancient power to her. Maladjusted to sedentary life, he levied a tribute from the town in which they had settled. When he finally died, Lee ended the tribute and roamed the land as the new champion in a long line. Perhaps her wandering was seen as a loss of stability, perhaps demons and bandits had increased in number; when the First Apocalyptic Cavalry moved into Nebraska and set up Fort Prospect, they became the new champions of the people. The First Apocalyptic Cavalry specialized in hunting down D-Bee bandits. Though composed of humans and D-Bees, the mobile vigilante army mainly avenged ‘crimes against humanity’ and were of a similar ilk to the Coalition States. People just want to feel safe, thought Lee, oppression can give that to them, and protectors can be more oppressive than they realize or intend. That was my father’s failing.
     Lee scans the terrain for the path of least resistance, free of obstacles and dangers, searching in an equilateral triangle drawn across the general direction she means to go. Lee tracks the time as she flies; at ten minutes sharp she cuts power to the jetpack. In freefall, Lee jackknifes her body, turning precisely one hundred twenty degrees, her orientation confirmed by gyrocompass before reengaging the thrusters. Accelerating once more, she regains altitude and flies for another ten minutes. The gut-wrenching acrobatics are not necessary, Lee pushes herself at the harsh insistence of an inner voice speaking from a scar in her childhood, sometimes her own, mostly the disapproving voice of her father. Waste nothing, not a moment, not a motion. Efficiency can be the difference between death and survival! The strain Lee puts on herself feels to her like personal sacrifice made on behalf of the people, it makes her feel more like a champion, like she might atone for her father’s lack of forfeit. Seek heroism through humility – a quote of Erin Tarn’s. Returning to her starting point, Lee snatches a red flag from the top of a tree as she lands. She is always confident that she’ll find her armor again, yet she is always afraid to lose the ancient artifact. The homing beacon she uses likewise does nothing to allay this worry.
     Reunited with the source of her livelihood, the enabler of her life’s purpose, Lee grimaces at the damage to her armor. Gouges and scratches, scuffs and burns mar the reflective surfacing; accumulated from a Devil Unicorn here, a Rhino Buffalo there. Since her last overhaul eighteen months ago Lee has been protecting a string of Fade Towns in Missouri. Now that they have phased back out of the corporeal realm, they are safe from the dangers of Earth and no longer in need of a champion. Lee was secretly happy to be away from the Fade Towns and alone in the wilderness once more, she had never cared for civilizations. Especially backwater weirdos cooped up in astral space for years at a time. Individual people can be likeable in her opinion, but the more there are in one place the worse off they all are. Human civilizations are the worst: cults, killing sprees. You don’t see Fenodi or Cactus People torturing one another. There is evil in us, just look at the Coalition. Lee finds dealing with towns to be messy, fighting monsters in the free spaces between settlements is more straightforward and preferable to her. Anyone reliant on technology, however, will periodically need to repair their equipment and replenish their ammo. For that one must turn to the worst byproduct of sentient life: big cities.
     Before the rifts, before the Dark Age, before the Great Cataclysm there was a Golden Age of Man. The pinnacle of human progress was still a troubled and violent era in which governments slaughtered their rivals with deadly war machines that were playfully dubbed ‘Glitter Boys’. Those great nations eventually destroyed themselves, triggering cataclysm and turning the age from golden to dark in a single day. But the Glitter Boys endured the test of time, the coming of the rifts, and the dimensional clusterfuck that followed. Through the centuries, the unique power armor and the people who piloted them stood between the helpless and the monstrous, earning reputations as protectors and heroes. Each individual suit was responsible for a list of great deeds, like a scroll of pedigree, stretching back through the chaos. Withstanding the Dark Age, passed from pilot to pilot, through her father and down to her, this particular Glitter Boy belongs to Lee now: a four-hundred-year-old paragon of technological excellence called Daybreak.
     Glitter Boys represented the greatness of the Golden Age: ideal, and beyond current capabilities, unmatched for centuries. Suddenly, Free Quebec unveiled an army of Glitter Boys produced in secret. Though they were used to gain independence from the other Coalition States, Lee felt personally threatened by this outpouring. Like I’ve been cloned against my will! A dwindling rarity becoming mass-produced was not like saving a species from extinction, Lee thought it a perversion of her kind, not preservation. It hurt Lee’s pride that they had improved the design as well, their ‘classic’ model was stronger and better than Lee’s Golden Age original. Adding insult to injury, Quebec also produced a weaker version that they named Glitter Girls. That’s some old bullshit. Lee told herself these replicas were not special like the original relics, that Daybreak was authentic, singular, and irreplaceable.
     “Daybreak, disable self-destruct.” The legendary armor’s onboard computer ran a voiceprint analysis confirming Lee’s authorization. “Passcode: knockitthefuckoff.” Secluded in the wilds, this precaution was not needed, yet it made Lee smile as she imagined her father’s disapproval. Better scrap than stolen. She stowed her scouting gear in hidden compartments of the power armor – all Wilk’s products, Lee believes their equipment to be superior. As she regularly entrusts her life to these items, she will accept no less than the best. Why would you gamble with the quality of your jetpack? The Northern Gun model has similar speed and altitude capabilities, offered for cheaper, but the range is less, and Wilk’s Industries has a reputation for reliability. That matters when you’re alone in the wilderness.
     With knowledge of the terrain ahead, Lee plots a course for the closest city with high-tech facilities where she can find a decent Operator and have Boom Gun rounds made. Securing herself in the pilot’s compartment, Lee runs toward the place she least wants to go. The city of Kingsdale would soon see Daybreak.
                                                                                                                                                                                 ***
     Post Apocalypse, my foot!
     It’s 112PA and the Coalition is winning. They completely destroyed Tolkeen. Fort El Dorado is theirs. Worth is in ruins. Racism is everywhere. Every Juicer who was in the Uprising is dead. The End Times are nigh. Apocalypse now! You think the Dark Age was bad? The age of the Post-Apocalyptic Calendar is getting worse every day. When chaos settled and bureaucracy took root, an accounting of time began, all of it belonging to the Coalition States. Bringing order from chaos is only accelerating the end of the world. Oli Minnesota drew on his cigarette and toyed with the credit card in his pocket, newly filled with fresh pay. He would keep his hand on his money until he left MercTown.
     MercTown. Oli mentally scoffed. Buncha’ loonies who actually want war. They don’t care who they fight for, or against. How can you trust people like that? They built this town smack between the Magic Zone and two Coalition States, then advertised their availability to everyone with credits and a grudge. MercTown is nothing but a muster of yahoos sitting in the middle of a warzone calling out ‘will work for scraps!’
     Oli didn’t want war. War had come to his doorstep. Tolkeen was in the crosshairs, sandwiched between the Xiticix – alien insects mercilessly expanding their territory – and the Coalition States – human supremacists mercilessly expanding their territory. The CS was the worst of the two, they made it personal, they hated us. War was threatening Oli’s home. He was going to die. He decided to die resisting bigotry. That’s why he got juiced up. It didn’t help. Tolkeen was levelled. Even Freehold, the dragon city, could not survive the Coalition war campaign. But Oli had lived, though in his nightmares he was often not so lucky. Fleeing south, he had become a sport gladiator. Not much choice for folk with a juice-noose. People think that Juicers are prone to get distracted or flip out in the workplace, and they’re not wrong. The only work available to someone who has undergone The Process is combat related, Juicers can be assassins, bodyguards, gangers, or athletes. Mercenaries and gladiators, all. Even the Wilderness Scout Juicers are just expendable mercs. Disposable people who are already doomed, with no place in regular society. Death is a major feature of Juicer sports, but for Oli Minnesota the choice between assassin and sportsman was easily made.
     A passer-by called out to Oli, “Good game, shorty!”
     His mind elsewhere, Oli replied distractedly. “Yah, you betcha. Thanks a bunch.” Speaking had opened the cut on his lip, Juicers feel no pain, but Oli felt blood run down his chin. He wiped it away, freeing flakes of dried blood from his beard. The halting motion of his arm was Oli’s only indication that robo-knitters were still at work, the costly medical nanobots deployed automatically. All his wounds would be healed by the end of the day.
     Deadball is a savage game of hot potato, but it’s still better than running a Murderthon or fighting in the Grand Melees. Oli had liked playing Juicer Football, he was dropped from the team when the Coalition States applied greater pro-human pressure on the Texas League – Oli could also blame the deadheads for ending that chapter of his life. He smoked his cigarette, still fuming over the sign on the walls of Fort El Dorado that read, ‘NO DEE BEES’. Fort El Dorado had been home to Oli when he played for the Hurricanes, now he was not allowed to enter the city at all. Most D-Bees don’t want to be here, my parents sure didn’t. But they made the best of it, had a baby here, lived their lives here. They assimilated as best they could, taking the name of the region where they had been stranded as our family name, and giving me a traditional dwarvish first name that conformed with local language. Oli was born on Earth and lived in Minnesota for over a century, he failed to see how he qualified as a ‘dimensional being’.  D-Bee, my foot!  It is understandable that humans try to reclaim their planet, but the Coalition States outlawing all non-humans only made more enemies where they could have found allies.
     Before the war, Oli had worked in construction, using old-world dwarven skills learned from his parents, his artistry, and his psychic talents to stand out from other contractors and make his living. Oli misses that life. He misses Tolkeen. Risking death and suffering injury for the entertainment of strangers is no way to make a living, no way to keep your self-respect. Oli snuffed his cigarette and drained his glass, both objects were made from high-durability polymers meant for use by ‘Borgs, Juicers, and others with great strength. Bless the folks who make Mega-Damage brand name cigarettes with synthetic fibers woven into ultra-tough filters; they knew it was in everyone’s best interest to figure out a way to let Juicers get their nicotine fix.
     “Slick slide, tanker!” Another dingbat. “We salute you-who-are-about-to-die!” He and his buddies salute Oli. Bracelets and chokers connected by ornamental wires identified them as Juicer Wannabes. The leader of the phonies slaps Oli’s injured shoulder as they walk away, it does not hurt, but because Oli’s dispensary system is real and not a decorative fashion statement, the harmless strike triggers a surge of adrenal steroids and other combat drugs. Fighting down the chemically induced urge to strike back, Oli remembers to keep ahold of his credits. This rush of drugs and impulses costs Oli some of his money, and some of his dignity.
     By the time he regained his composure, Oli had decided to retire. He’d had enough.
     Oli had hoped to earn enough money to Detox before Last Call, but refills of designer drugs and replacement nanites aren’t cheap. Steep entry fees to rigged games don’t help either. At this rate, I’ll never save up enough. Oli clapped his hands with finality. Nuts to this! He got up and left the bar carefully – doorknobs and everyday objects all felt like they were made of cardboard and tissue paper since he got juiced-up. He was glad to leave MercTown, the sports circuit, and this whole way of life behind him. Even giving up on Detox felt like a relief. He accepted his fate. Oli Minnesota decided to die as he had lived: building and creating artwork and architecture, contributing. Or he’d die trying. Oli had heard of a sizeable dwarf community in Kingsdale, he hoped someone there would be willing to take a chance on hiring a Juicer.
                                                                                                                                                                                    ***
     Life is simply amazing!
     The power of organic chemistry, the intricacy of cellular biology, the brilliance of genetic coding, also the organisms themselves and the relationships between life forms. Fascinating, thought Doc Aevox while speculating upon the symbiotic nature of the interaction between the walled Coalition States and their surrounding ‘Burbs.
Drawing the inhabitants of the surrounding area to the Coalition’s doorstep allows them to fasten the region under totalitarian control. Powerless, desperate, unhealthy people flee from harsh, predator-laden environs to shelter near security and prosperity. Even if they are not admitted within the walls of the city-states, they still receive a measure of protection from monsters by simple proximity to CS military. However, during a supernatural attack, the ‘Burbs serve as an expendable buffer of sacrifices, kept by the Coalition like a herd, they are a prey population where individuals find safety in numbers. Human refugees are allowed to petition for citizenship and are routinely kept on a waiting list, these gathered masses of hopefuls provide the Coalition with a growing crop of potential recruits and indentured laborers from which they can select desirables. As squatter communities build up, opportunities for success arise among the undesirables, and survival, although precarious, is possible for non-humans. Criminal elements among denizens also provide a training ground for the Coalition’s Internal Security Specialist ‘Peacekeepers’ and ‘Specters’ to sharpen their skills. Xenophobic mass-executions occur with depressing regularity. The Coalition ISS Division includes Nonhuman Tactical Strike and Eradication Teams. Arriving at the Chi-Town ‘Burbs shortly after a purge by NTSET brute squads, Doc Aevox’s skills as a Body Fixer were widely needed. This was how she became acquainted with the uneasy coexistence between Coalition society and its remora civilizations.
     Despite persecution, the ‘Burbs are extremely diverse. On that day Doc Aevox encountered more species unknown to her people than she had since their first day on this planet. She met them as they lay mutilated and dying. Aevox treated everyone to the best of her ability, learning much as she worked. Triaging the hopeless, as doctors must in a crisis, patients were treated based on urgency, species and vocation were irrelevant; this was tragically rare for them. After resuscitating a patient that she would later learn was a Coalition Dead Boy, the revived soldier drew an energy pistol and tried to murder Aevox, seeing her not as a healer, only as a hated alien. That was the first Coalition citizen she met. It is truly a shame that the Coalition States should be so oppressive and discriminatory, they have done much good as well, saving millions of lives and advancing many sciences. If only their fear and hatred did not equal their drive and ambition, they would benefit to accept and embrace the dimensional castaways, and exotic magics of their fantastic world.
     Magic! How delightful to learn that reality is built from the bizarre. Aevox came from a pragmatic, no-nonsense society with zero notion of magic. A terrifying and unprecedented rift event suddenly transported her people to Earth along with a sizeable portion of Ixion City. Like fish studying the world around them one day realizing that there was this thing called water that they had previously overlooked. As a scientist, Aevox was intrigued. Her people, the Cyber-Horsemen of Ixion, were horrified to learn of the existence of magic, alien lifeforms, and other dimensions. Like all sentients, they had examined the stars and been faced with the probability of other lifeforms; the confirmation was shocking. Becoming aliens on a foreign planet in another dimension was overwhelming. That would have been bad enough, but this planet was plagued by monsters too, and the natives themselves were unsettling; the first humans they met were on horseback, they had never seen either of these two creatures and the bodies of the Cyber-Horsemen incorporate elements of both. To them, ‘horsemen’ is not a compound word, it would be like humans encountering an animal called ‘hu’.  Imagine seeing autonomous legs with their own head, and an upper body with… profoundly freakish lower appendages. Since arrival, Aevox has recreationally dissected dozens of humanoid legs and feet. Her people shunned Earth, stopped exploring, and domed their city in every conceivable defense, sealing themselves away from the dreadfully magical realm in which they were marooned. Doc Aevox was interested in their strange new world, she dove in.
     Life is measured by one’s experiences. With technology, experiences can be synthesized or enhanced by expanding sensory perception. What is life like when one can see infrared and ultraviolet wavelengths? How is life improved by amplified hearing and extraordinary strength? Is life more full with such additional input? Science can give us these answers and experiences. Cybernetics are a cornerstone of Aevox’s people, ninety percent of males in their society have undergone at least partial reconstruction. Conversely, breeding is a priority, and social pressures force the majority of females to abstain from more than minor implants. Males are free to do what they like with their bodies after procreation. This inequality repulsed Aevox. When women do become full-conversion cyborgs, strength is withheld, their armor and speed is less than what men receive. Is this retribution for defying social expectations, or simply contempt? Their race is called Cyber-Horsemen, women are secondary considerations at best.
     Aevox took what her society had to offer and left them behind, seeking new experiences. Crossing the Rocky Mountains, Aevox had emerged from the Great Barrier near Calgary. Demons infesting the area around a super-nexus forced her to go south, she lost an arm in the encounter and found bionic replacement in America’s New West. Introducing alien materials and technology into her body and existing systems was a thrilling risk and a forbidden taboo. Her discoveries on Earth have been compelling, demanding further exploration. An entire world of new lifeforms awaited; a magical world that draws in matter from foreign dimensions. Aliens comingling, interbreeding, crosspollinating, mutating. Unique reactions without name that no one has seen or studied, happening nowhere else in the megaverse! New frontiers, both scientific and spatial.
     The ‘Burbs melting pot has been enriching, new physiologies, biochemistries, languages, customs, viewpoints, thought processes. Absolutely magnificent. Now it is time to move on. One can never learn all there is to know of a place, but another purge is imminent, and unimaginably fantastic things are happening all around. So many samples to take and so little time! Doc Aevox has been kept extremely busy by demand for a Body Fixer near Chi-Town, particularly one who treats D-Bees and could be trusted not to be a Coalition spy. Lucrative: no. Rewarding: yes. Unfortunately, her efforts were not appreciated by the official government, who would eradicate her on sight, even though she had saved them from at least one viral epidemic. Time for a change of pace and scenery. Kingsdale is said to have the opposite values held by the Coalition States. Just what the doctor prescribes.
                                                                                                                                                                                             ***
     Freedom is a lack of orders and a lack of observation.
     Lupe knows she is pursued. Hunted. Not as a renegade soldier Absent Without Leave, not as a deserter, but as a Runaway, a term reserved for children, pets, and slaves.
     And Dog Boys, who are regarded as all three by their Coalition masters.
     The CS created a sentient hybrid species, then gave them a demeaning name, and treated them like shit. Dog Boys are mostly human, with select animal genetics incorporated into more than seventy percent human DNA. Initially dogs were used to gain that perfect blend of bloodthirsty and obedient, pack hunters who would follow commands and eagerly roll belly-up in submission. Thousands of years of selective breeding imbedded these qualities into canine genes. The hard work had been done; the Coalition picked up from there. Born and raised in Lone Star, Lupe knows that a variety of animals are experimented with now. Always tinkering with the genetic code, seeking the optimal fast-growing, expendable, psionic soldier. Bred in litters, Dog Boys, or Psi-Hounds, were meant to die in place of humans. Scientists have learned not to become attached to lab animals whose deaths they would eventually cause, soldiers were not as mentally conditioned; to avoid the average Dead Boy treating Dog Packs as talking pets, the Coalition States all but officially encouraged disdain for them as disposable sub-humans and soulless chattel.
     Psionics have always been at the core of Coalition hypocrisy. Psychics are tolerated while magic is not. Due to the magic-rich environment of Earth nowadays, one quarter of humans develop psionic abilities – ten percent are major psychics, fifteen percent are minor psychics – these powers are beneficial, with no down-side, unless your society hates you for them. The roundups would never end if these lesser psionics weren’t allowed, so, citizens must register their abilities and submit to inspections, but they are allowed to go about civilian life. Master psychics cannot be civilians, they are considered living weapons, they join Psi-Battalion or they die. Psychological conditioning and cortex bombs ensure their loyalty. Psionics are useful yet feared, a part of human nature, yet a product of magical excess. Like psi-stalkers. A human subspecies adapted to the magic climate, Lupe views psi-stalkers as the next step in human evolution, having mutated the rest of the way from scavenger species to apex predator. The Coalition belittles them as mutants, not true humans, impure. They are given second-class citizenship and assigned unenviable duties puppy guarding Dog Boys and other psychic riffraff. To a tyrannically intolerant government, psi-stalkers are valuable as predators of the supernatural, not voters. The Coalition needs master psychics, but scorns them, claiming ‘pure’ humans to be superior to these mutants and the other animalistic beings they breed and rely on. The CS outlaws D-Bees, but Lupe lived in the Lone Star facility, she saw Xiticix Killers and smelled them, she knows they were made with otherworldly DNA. The CS hates magic but employs its byproducts, claims to promote civilization but employs barbaric methods. They pose as the saviors of Earth, but they wage war with any way of life other than their own.
     The Coalition propaganda machine celebrates human lives being spared by the use of subhuman personnel for hazardous tasks. Skelebots are preferred for mine detection, demolition disposal, perimeter patrol, extermination. Thinking beings are required for any mission requiring discernment: mining and salvaging, ferreting out Mind Melters and Bubble Weavers. They know we can think but deny us the rights deserved by all sentients. Mutant animals, especially Dog Boys, are engineered and conditioned by the Coalition to have no complaints, to delight enough in following orders to ignore hardships. Not Lupe. She was born of an experiment using wolf DNA to breed tougher shock troops without the patterns for increased docility and obedience to humans that dogs possess. I don’t crave the masters’ attention. This experimentation caused an unforeseen fluke in Lupe’s genetic makeup, she developed none of the psychic sensitivity for which Dog Boys are known. She was regarded as disabled, the Coalition declared her a failure without ever imagining that diversity might be advantageous. Lupe allowed herself to be overlooked and relegated to high-risk operations. These dangerous assignments taught Lupe many technical skills unknown to most Psi-Hounds. The Dog Pack just learns to hunt, I was born knowing that, now I know all kinds of shit. Including how to read, most CS citizens are kept illiterate. These skills, along with certain psionics she had kept secret, and the disregard they had shown her were useful in Lupe’s escape.
     Possessing divergent psionics and an independent spirit, Lupe is unlike other Dog Boys. No longer among their ranks, she can drop their designation. Neither a dog nor a boy, she thinks of herself as a She Wolf – a term she heard somewhere, Lupe makes it her own by giving it new meaning. Fleeing the Lone Star facility had brought her to Comanche Territory west of Texas. An elderly woman named Autumn sheltered her from discovery, became her friend, and helped her choose the name Lupe. Before then she had only been known by an alphanumeric designation: DPW-2607-X2. This is how the Coalition thought of her, as one experiment in a series, not an individual, but an item. Lupe has no loyalty to the Coalition States or their military. Or humans in general. But she feels for the thralls in their service.
     Lupe knows her pursuer will be a psi-stalker, it is their task and their talent to hunt down psychics. A common tactic when tracking Psi-Hounds is to fire rail guns in the suspected direction the Runaway has fled and wait to sense psionics in use, this will not work on Lupe who has no sixth sense to trigger. Lupe pities this slavecatcher, the brainwashed tool of an evil government that will never respect them, unable to question orders or wrestle with unpleasant truths. Before this pursuit could threaten her friend, Lupe left Autumn’s house. She had learned of the Mutant Underground, a group that facilitates Dog Boy breakouts and aids escapees, that seemed to Lupe like a good way to pursue her own passion while using the skills she learned from the Coalition against them. She was informed they might have operations in Kingsdale, a non-conformist thorn in the side of the Coalition States.
                                                                                                                                                                                                ***
     What is magic? What is its source? What is its role in nature?
     What is the shape of the megaverse?
     Diego Delgato ponders the fundamentals every day. He studies magic; in a mystic sense as a spellcaster, also as a researcher examining the properties of the energy and its forms. His focus is on ley lines and their functions. Diego’s analyses are shared with other scholars in the Magic Zone and around the world, mostly Ley Line Walkers like himself who can travel great distances instantaneously, his mentor was part of this scientific community until recently becoming unwell.
Because the ley lines of today are in the same places they were in the Age of Wonder – as evidenced by their alignment with pyramids and other geomantic structures built in that era – the long-standing theory is that ley lines are similar to fault lines or ocean currents, that they are the areas of activity and interaction between larger regions of stability, like the continents, they change locations only on geological timescales. A growing idea is that ley lines manifest to regulate imbalances of magical energy between locales, moving it from areas of high energy to where it is scarce. Ley lines flow in a particular direction at a set pace: about walking speed. Severe imbalances can cause ley line storms which disperse the energy more rapidly and violently. Clearly, Earth has an overabundance of magic, perhaps rifts are a method of expending energy, burning some off by creating the event, maybe even siphoning some off into another dimension. Like pores opening when we sweat, or a dog panting when it’s hot. According to reports, there are ley lines and rifts underseas and in outer space, but I’ve never heard of one of these connecting to a rift on land. If the global ley line network and the rifts created at their intersections were harmful, then the planet would have been destroyed by now. Exposure to hard vacuum or the interior of a star would do it. Whatever is happening seems to be beneficial to the health of the planet, if not always to its inhabitants.
     Diego hovers on a ley line overlooking the famous Devil’s Gate, a super-nexus with a rift that never closes. The ruins of Saint Louis are heavily patrolled by Coalition containment troops and blanketed in crisscrossing blue energy from the intersection of many ley lines, each half a mile to a mile thick. To Diego it seemed like the arteries of a vast circulatory system converging at the heart of the world. The rift here sits inside the Gateway Arch, conforming exactly to the metal arc sweeping upward from a field next to the Mississippi River. A monument of ancient Americans, many today find the name ‘Gateway’ to be suspicious, and believe the arch was constructed as a means of reaching other dimensions, assuming that pre-rifts scientists were dabbling with technologies or arcana that got away from them. The Great Cataclysm may have been triggered right here. It’s possible that some mad scientist or cult conspiracy engineered doomsday on this spot. Diego was more inclined to believe that the people who built this arch were able to sense the dormant magic energy here on some subconscious level. It would have been faint in those times, but this is a huge super-nexus.
     Humans have been known to develop sensitivity to magic energies. The irrefutable evidence is seen in the Rift Control Study Group, where Coalition scientists working closely with nexus points consistently gain the ability to open themselves to ley lines and to levitate along them. I’m sure their superior officers love that. This development can happen quite rapidly as the pace is based on willingness. Within a hundred years of the Great Cataclysm some humans had evolved the capacity to sense and feed off of magic energy, this promptness implies conscious decision on the part of the psi-stalkers. Diego recalls, as a child in Mexico, his first time glimpsing magic energy flowing through the city of Tula, swirling around practitioners and pooling in the pyramids. He remembers the Master Vampires debating the perceptiveness and skills of the Mayans and Aztecs, their mocking praise for the ancients in preserving the country and people for their own use.
     Geomantic structures like pyramids, dolmens, circles, mounds, and other megaliths prevent ley line storms and random rifts, they had spared the areas around them from the worst of the catastrophes when the ley lines erupted during the Great Cataclysm. Death fuels magic. Ask any psi-stalker, the life energy of their prey doubles at the moment of death. The Great Cataclysm was a cycle: magic resurging, rifts opening, monsters and ley line storms and natural disasters killed people, releasing the magic potential of their life energy’s, which opened more rifts and fueled more disasters, causing more deaths. The cataclysm settled when there were no longer enough living beings to sustain the cycle with their deaths. This correlation between death and magic was one of the ways humans clung to their power after the Age of Wonder ended. The Maya built their pyramids when magic was abundant – as Egyptians and Atlanteans did elsewhere – after the Atlantean Cataclysm, magic faded, and these early civilizations declined. Animal and human sacrifice became the most readily available source of magic energy. Many people volunteered, patriotic Aztecs and Celts willing to sacrifice themselves for the collective good. Megaliths were a way of storing magic and focusing it into healing, farming, and other beneficial uses.
     Some think that energy being released by death is the reason why the Magic Zone is so potent, being ‘downwind’ of Coalition slaughter campaigns. Crackpot fundamentalists that Diego has met told him that they think magic is an anti-technology balancing force that nature used to destroy Golden Age technologists, and that it provides power to those who oppose modernization. Diego has also heard theories that Earth’s magical field is partially conducted by precious metals and gemstones within the planet, and overmining disrupted the flow causing a ‘short circuit’ that made magic go haywire, killing everyone. It doesn’t matter what started the apocalypse. People always need to blame. The important thing is what we can learn.
     Without closing, the rift inside the Devil’s Gate changed the dimension it links to Earth. The scenery glimpsed through the hole in the universe changed from toxic-looking purple sands under swirling orange sky to dense jungle in heavy shadow. The Coalition containment blockade bristled with readiness to defend against whatever alien horrors emerge. Diego leaves them to it; he takes notes on the D-shift and checks for sympathetic rifts opening at other nexus points along the ley lines. The heart of the world beats and Diego takes its pulse. He wonders, where does that go? He could fly through on his wing board and check, but recklessness was more his mentor’s style, not Diego’s. Is it another dimension, or another place on Earth? Could it be another point in our own history, or Earth in a different timeline? How is the destination determined? What forces are at play? Can they be manipulated? Can we control where the rifts lead? Diego has been at it for weeks, alone in the wild, monitoring reactions among the local network; he is ready for a break. After making his observations, Diego has strength left for one last teleportation today. Diego decides to drop in on his former mentor while he’s in the neighborhood; one of the ley lines here runs through Kingsdale. He can phase into the Monolith and check on Menelaus, and also add his notes to the old Atlantean’s journal. A life’s work which Diego now takes upon himself.

                                                                                                                                                                                             2
     The forest grew sparsely where the ancient highway ran through it – the broken remains of a thin layer of pavement smeared across the planet long ago. Slapdash and impermanent, like a Juicer’s biochemistry, smooth running at first, then nature takes its course. Oli Minnesota skims his hovercycle low over the road because flying above the treetops would draw attention. The electric engine produces a humming whine, Oli chose that over a roaring combustion engine which would draw attention. Plus, liquid fuel is smelly and flammable, and some places just don’t have it. Most Juicers seek attention, Oli prefers to be ignored as the innocent traveler he truly is. But he does like the wind on his face. You only live once, don’t deny yourself pleasures that hurt no one, all our days are numbered. Top speed for the Northern Gun Rocket is 340mph., it is the fastest civilian model, but the handling is poor. Fine by me. I need to get from place to place, not pull tricks like some hotshot.
     Leaving MercTown, Oli went far out of his way to the south, swinging wide around the Coalition State of Whykin to avoid patrols, he saw one anyway; their reach expands every day. New states are given the oldest military equipment at first, but any Sky Cycle could catch him easily. It is, however, the Spider Skull Walker that troubles Oli’s thoughts. Who came up with that? What sick mind? Monsters cannot be intimidated by aesthetic motifs, so they must be designed to scare people. And not just D-Bees, everyone who sees that is meant to fear their death at Coalition hands. Their own soldiers are also continually reminded that their purpose is to slaughter and to control through fear. Without specific orders to hunt him down, the drones continued to guard their hive from obvious threats, and they let Oli be.
     At the eastern gate of Kingsdale, Oli told the guards that he was looking for work. They saw the Juicer collar and made some assumptions. Kingsdale gets a lot of Juicers. Of the remaining cities that accept us, it’s the most beautiful. A vivid blue ley line, visible during the day, runs through the city’s variety of architectural styles, the buildings were spaced by wide avenues, plazas, and parks. Reminds me of home. Beware the fate of Tolkeen, Kingsdale. You may be next. Oli lit a cigarette as he idled his bike into town. The merchant plaza was dotted with Juicer bars, rowdy places with customers spilling into the streets. Dozens of Juicers stared at Oli in confusion as he drove cautiously at minimum speed. Deciding that the only reason for Oli to be driving slowly was to gain more attention and show off his harness, they cheered for his bravado. Simple-minded yo-yos. Oli waved but did not stop, he wanted to avoid getting drawn into old habits; there are great pressures among Juicers to go with the flow, if groups of Juicers do not keep agreeing with each other, a fight will result. Oli wandered farther into Kingsdale searching for construction sites or a dwarven quarter.
     He was midway through the city when he heard a commotion start up.
                                                                                                                                                                                          ***
     Lupe could smell her pursuer on the wind, he had gotten closer. Were it not for him, she would feel true isolation for the first time, foreign and dangerous as it is. With Eye Killers, Fury Beetles, and Spiny Ravagers all around. There had always been a psi-stalker, or a human scientist tasked with monitoring Lupe, being hunted now felt to her like just another day. In Lone Star, while she plotted her escape, Lupe had learned to maintain patience and composure under scrutiny. They did not catch me then, and this tracker will not catch me now. Her pacing and countermeasures had worked so far, Lupe was very close to Kingsdale and escape. The Coalition soldier would not be allowed into the city, and if he snuck in, he would likely be killed by one or more of the thousands of people there who would love to catch a Dead Boy alone.
     Approaching on foot from the wilderness, Lupe knew when she had crossed into held territory. As a trained soldier, and as a wolf, she knew to announce herself as a friendly when entering guarded ground, to ‘sing out’ her position. Without comms and unable to whistle, Lupe actually sang. Not a song she had learned while with the Coalition, she would never sing those again, not a song heard among the Comanche, she had no right to those. That left advertising jingles. They were short, so she sang a few before she got to the western gate. First, she sang Speak-Um by Manistique Imperium, a catchy earworm about their knockoff of the Wilk’s Language Translator. Next was Wellington Industries, Wonder Emporium. Then she sang Northern Gun Is The One. Lupe was halfway through E-Clips Eclipse when she got to the city wall. Unembarrassed, she finished the song before approaching the guards.
     One guard was human, one was a canine species that Lupe immediately knew was not a Psi-Hound, his scent and his look were different. New. This was Lupe’s first interaction with a D-Bee outside of a Coalition context. He must be one of the wolfen, coyle, or kankoran that call Kingsdale home. Wolfen, she decided by the size of him. The wolfen guard had a sizeable potbelly. No Dog Boys were fat, no soldier she had ever met was overweight. In the Coalition States only wealthy people could afford excess food, and only the most powerful and influential would publicly flaunt their licentiousness. To Lupe, the potbelly seemed an indication of success and status. Her attraction to the alien was bizarrely assertive.
     The western gate was not the main entrance to Kingsdale, and this side of town held the poorer districts. Lupe went directly to the poorest neighborhood. She needed affordable lodging, food, and clothing while looking for signs of the Mutant Underground. The new sights and smells fascinated her as she walked through the city, but nothing was more thrilling to her than anonymity. Just another person on the street! Except for this Dog Pack armor. Lupe was eager to buy clothes for herself, she had only worn CS-issue until meeting Autumn; they had made a dress for Lupe, but they had to burn it when she left so it would not be evidence that she had been among the Comanche. By now, the Dog Pack armor chafes in more ways than one.
     A kankoran tailor named Left-Side Wound was just finishing up Lupe’s new outfit when they heard an awful wailing.
                                                                                                                                                                                         ***
     Cities might be deliberately placed with defensive considerations, premeditated and well laid out at first, but buildings accumulate as people do. Like sticks floating down a river, some get hung up on the mud and rocks, mired, others join, and the first ones there get dug in. Then the soggy mess dams up the whole river, changing everything, until it all gets washed away again. Kingsdale was built on a river of magic that attracts monsters, subject to a scouring cyclonic system that is the Coalition States. But, like a dam or a shipwreck, certain benefits can be drawn from cities, gourmet food and live music are among such treasures.
     Lee Barrett scanned the other guests dining in the fancy restaurant. They are staring at her, so she is staring back. It was her military fatigues that drew the attention of the well-dressed patrons. Suspicious, Lee feels vulnerable without armor. There are no weapons allowed in The Silver Fork, so she only has her derringer. Don’t these civilians understand that they’re safer when I’m around? The restaurant has balcony seating overlooking a band onstage in a nightclub below. Lee tries to enjoy the music and the food, ignore the people, and stop worrying about Daybreak in the hands of that roguish Operator.
     Carter Killigan used to be a Juicer, the stunt driver type, then he Detoxed and became a full conversion ‘Borg with pilot’s interfacing. He now runs the largest garage and armory in Kingsdale, the Gunnery Trading Emporium, and has the best employees available. But this is a guy who trashed his body and got a bionic replacement to house what’s left of his brain. How good can his judgement be? He did say he was honored to work on a legend, and of course he should be, but you still can’t let just any wrench hand work on a Glitter Boy, the best demands the best. Daybreak is an ancient marvel, like that mythical sword… Exhaliburton. Cities like Kingsdale would not exist were it not for Daybreak and other Heroes of the Dark Age. Lee felt perfectly justified standing over the shoulders of the tech crew and pointing out every damaged circuit and bent rivet. Killigan insisted they knew their business, before banishing her from the shop for the next eight hours.
Surrounded by questionable types, without thousands of pounds of metal swaddling her, Lee had felt unprotected and made for the safest-looking place to kill time. Situated between the Precinct House and City Hall, a sturdy brick hotel with an exclusively upscale restaurant drew her to it. Suspicion is the lot of the protector, Lee told herself as she fled from the people she wanted to save.
     Failing to relax, Lee was nonetheless starting to enjoy herself when she heard trouble.
                                                                                                                                                                                        ***
     The Kingsdale Enhancement Clinic was bustling with a party atmosphere. As an upgrade facility – as opposed to a hospital – the patients were there voluntarily, often fulfilling a personal aspiration that day, or at least taking a big step toward achieving their goals. The customers were upbeat and optimistic, often cavalier and confident. The staff were also relaxed and cheerful because they were offering elective procedures that they could refuse for whatever reason, rather than emergency care compelled by necessity and personal or professional oaths. Among a crowd, Doc Aevox watched a M.O.M. conversion, her first time witnessing the process. An operating room with theater seating?! Marvelous.
     Mind Over Matter implants were installed directly into the brain with nanotechnology. Robotic bacteria swarming into the brain and reproducing. Controlling electrical impulses, these devices stimulate neural pathways, improving motor skills and granting psionic abilities. The downside is inevitable cerebral degradation which produces mounting neurological disorders. Aevox admires the recipients’ conviction. Prioritizing mental power over stability. Most people are not aware that M.O.M. implants are entirely internal, unseen within the brain, the metal rods commonly protruding from the skull are purely ornamental. Crazies – as these insane psionic super-soldiers are known – demanded that they be noticeably different from ordinary people, visibly identifiable, and their Cyber-Docs readily complied. As if their obvious madness was not warning enough.
     Are Juicers not crazy, Aevox wondered, trading lifespan for vigor? The doctor diagnosed that they are driven to extremes by their threatening environment. Earthlings crave the bolstering influence of foreign bodies just as their planet does. Drawing in a cocktail of extradimensional elements, Earth itself is a Juicer/Crazy. How long does it have until Burn Out?
     Many in the Clinic had enhanced hearing. A disturbance was developing in the streets.
                                                                                                                                                                                        ***
     The first step in Ley Line Phasing is to open oneself to the line, to become one with it, this takes a minute of concentration, the second step is instantaneous. Opening yourself to a ley line is to extend your consciousness along its length, sometimes hundreds, or thousands of miles. You know the line like you know your own body. You would know if there were fires, or earthquakes, or storms anywhere along the length of your body. You know if it crosses other ley lines, where those nexuses are, and if they have open rifts. Effectively, the Ley Line Walker, or other adept, is the ley line. They exist in every location along the line. Aware of every location, they pick a spot and collapse their consciousness into that spot. The ‘teleportation’ occurs without fail because they were already there. Their bodies do not dematerialize, they just move, but an observer would see them appear or disappear suddenly. Diego Delgato’s awareness went from St. Louis to a long section of the North American landscape – including a swath of Kingsdale, Chi-Town, and the ‘Burbs – to a single room in a single building within the line where it crosses through Kingsdale.
     The Kingsdale Magickal Guild has its headquarters in a building called The Monolith, an enormous cube of unidentified black stone, there they engage in advanced magical research and operate The Guild Store. There is a specific room that receives incoming teleporters, with a being called the Keeper who assesses if they pose a threat, and either admits or eliminates them. Appearing as a tall human mortician from the nineteenth century, the Keeper is a terrifying creature who can rip apart young dragons and gods with his bare hands. Diego utters no greeting and does not identify himself; he simply removes his goggles and gas mask very calmly while enduring the Keeper’s scrutiny. The receiving room changes in appearance every time Diego visits, but he kept his eyes fixed steadily on the Keeper’s eyes. It is this extraordinary mental endurance that impressed the master vampires when Diego lived in their livestock pens. After several tense seconds, the Keeper announced in a voice from beyond the grave that he may enter. Sentiments such as “thank you” and “have a nice day” were meaningless to the Keeper, so Diego merely nodded. As Diego took his first step, he noticed the ankle-deep water stretching into infinity, reflecting only the brilliant starscape overhead, not Diego, not the Keeper, and not the circle of stone slabs rising from its surface; the door was embedded in one of these megaliths.
     Menelaus Clotho was one of four leaders of the Guild until his mishap. As a Ley Line Rifter – a subset of Ley Line Walkers – his specialty was Teleportational Hitchhiking. Which is exactly what it sounds like: a bad idea. When a being uses a spell or a natural ability to teleport themselves, a Rifter can piggyback on their power. Only after the being arrives at their destination do they realize they have a stowaway. Some react unfavorably. That’s how we met. The Rifter gets a free ride, but they have no idea where they are headed. Hitch a ride from a demon and you might end up in hell. Or worse, R’lyeh, like Menelaus did. Spell after spell failed as he tried to escape the realm of the Old Ones. Finally, he was able to rift himself to Limbo where he was lost in time and space for a subjective eternity. After fifteen months in Diego’s timeline, Menelaus reappeared in the receiving room of the Monolith. That was four years ago. He had changed. Mood swings, paranoia, irrationality. He retains his membership in the Kingsdale Magickal Guild, but Diego suspects that they keep him around to study, either as another curiosity or a cautionary tale. Whatever, thought Diego, as long as they take care of him.
     Menelaus had kept a journal of ley line observations for over a century, as Diego added his notes to the log, the True Atlantean laughed and cried, raged and cowered, accused and apologized. The man that formerly mentored Diego, that helped him escape vampire-ridden Mexico, was not gone, but he was not sane; present but scrambled. But he never forgot Diego’s name. They remained close. Diego told him about his life in the past few months and listened to Menelaus explain his latest “research” writing nonsensical new spells and concocting potions and techno-wizardry inspired by insane connections between unrelated texts.
     Diego still kept a small chest of personal items in Menelaus quarters, he had just changed out of his Ley Line Walker outfit and into city clothes when he heard a ruckus outside.

                                                                                                                                                                                       3
     Angry shouts filled the streets of Kingsdale. Each person screaming in outrage drew more people who also began to shout. Moving through the growing uproar, drawing onlookers behind and scattering those ahead, was a hostage situation. A Coalition soldier had captured a member of the Kingsdale City Guard at the gate, threatening his life to gain entry and keep his enemies at a distance. The sight of a soldier in Dead Boy armor was enough to enrage some people, seeing one abuse a D-Bee angered even more. Some onlookers were simply eager for violence. Whatever their personal motivations, Dead Boys roughing up D-Bees was unacceptable in Kingsdale. The crowds, including squads of City Guard and adventurers, were unable to intervene due to the captor’s chokehold on his hostage, jostling around each other ineffectually. They orbited the pair, drawn by the gravity of the situation.
     ‘Dead Boy’ Armor, like most Coalition vehicles and robots, bears a fearsome skull motif. The new-style CA-Series armor was designed by Senior Engineer Vince Martin and utilizes a large, polarized visor in place of the narrow eyeholes featured by the old style. In addition to increased visibility, the new armor offers better protection and mobility. The Coalition States manufactures several varieties of new-style armor for their various occupational classes; ‘Borgs, Commandos, Juicers, all had their own model. CA-3 Light Model ‘Dead Boy’ Armor is a weaker version providing substandard protection, it is issued to Psi-Officers and female soldiers of any rank. Though lighter, CA-3 looks identical to standard CA-4 new-style armor, traditionally the Coalition has employed helmet ornamentation to designate soldier types, spikes for Psi-Officers, horns for Juicers, etc. Ponytails are attached to the armor of women and Wilderness Scouts, serving only to single them out in a crowd and get in the way of their duties. Used only by the military and not yet on the black market, new-style armor indicated that the wearer belonged to the Coalition and was not somebody merely wearing secondhand CS gear. Most psi-stalkers are issued old-style surplus, the sight of sleek new-style armor bristling with spikes was virtually unknown, and another source of agitation among the crowd.
     Official qualifications for Dog Pack Squad Leader are similar on paper to Animal Control assignments, in actuality they require opposite traits. Where tact and mutual respect are useful in commanding thinking beings, animals may respond to empathic affinity or primal dominance. Named by the Coalition at birth, ID-tagged and bar-code tattooed with that name, the psi-stalker known as PSI-7682-364 possessed more animal magnetism, more vivacious physicality, and violent tendencies than he did persuasiveness, respectfulness, or sociability. Successes with solitary duty such as scouting and tracking, coupled with multiple instances of excessive brutality have earned PSI-7682-364 official commendations for zeal, also the medal of valor, allotment of new-style armor, and promotion to Psi-Battalion Retrieval Division. Now Corporal PSI-7682-364 works alone, hunting down and rounding up criminal escapees. Gentleness is not a job requirement.
     CSDPE-216, the Rope Pole, also known as the Strangle Rod, can allow the user to choke people and animals into submission, limiting the victim’s mobility while staying out of their reach. Put into production by the Coalition States in the early days of the Dog Boy program, the weapon is ubiquitous at the Lone Star facility. The fat wolfen gate guard yelped pitiably as the noose tightened and he was forced to the ground, the leverage applied expertly to his neck. The crowd roared in response. PSI-7682-364 jerked on the pole again, using the crowd’s volume to gain the attention of his quarry. When their outcry subsided, Corporal PSI-7682-364 shouted his commands. His words were heard and repeated, propagated by the crowd, rippling outward through Kingsdale.
     “DPW-2607-X2! Come out! Surrender yourself! DPW-2607-X2!”
     The soldier alternated between screaming those words and abusing the wolfen guardsman. The Coalition had come to town. “DPW-2607-X2!”
     “That is not my name, corporal.” A mutant wolf with brown and grey fur appeared from the crowd wearing a long black linen skirt that had a rose embroidered on the left side, a slot admitted her tail. A loose white shirt with billowing sleeves was cinched tight by a black vest with floral stitching in red and green. No shoes, but she wore a large black hat at a rakish angle to accommodate her ears, white trimming ran around the wide brim, its white band bore a rose as well. She removed the hat, revealing flat, deadly eyes, she dropped it, her duffel bag, and her rifle on the ground, spreading her hands to the sides and kneeling. “I surrender. Let him go.”
     PSI-7682-364 drew a pistol and fired. The Coalition soldier did not hesitate to gun down the unarmed woman in the street. He knew there was no way of leaving the city without pursuit, he was sacrificing himself to kill a dissenter, someone who had rejected his way of life. Following the Runaway into Kingsdale had been a suicide attack on her. PSI-7682-364 acted to protect the interests of his government, to prevent military secrets and property from escaping. He was conditioned to view his own life as expendable, the purpose of it to serve a nation that undervalued his kind. The C-20 laser pistol fired silently, producing no recoil, the beam was invisible. Only the target indicator – added after issue by PSI-7682-364 at personal cost – could be seen as a red dot over the heart of the She Wolf.
     A dwarf leapt from the crowd into the path of the beam. He was unarmored, clad in a red flannel shirt, blue denim overalls, and yellow suede work boots; his blonde beard and hair were trimmed short, his skin was tanned from travel and crossed with scars. The laser effortlessly burned through his clothes, striking flesh. The dwarf hit the pavement, chest smoldering. Through the burnt slash in his clothes, tubes and chest-banger were revealed, the drug-dispensing system of a Juicer. Back on his feet in an instant, the Juicer revealed his type. Only two Juicer variants can survive a direct energy discharge. Dragon Juicers are made in Kingsdale, they are well known; lacking the yellow eyes and darkened veins of someone who is jacked-up on dragon’s blood, this dwarf was a Mega-Juicer.
     A second laser beam lanced out from the crowd shortly after the Juicer leapt. It struck the Dead Boy in the faceplate, knocking his head backward. Immediately, the wolfen guard began to levitate out of the psi-stalker’s loosened grasp.
     Relieved of his hostage, a cyborg behind the soldier was able to attack him. She pivoted gracefully on her forehooves and delivered a double-hoofed horse kick with bionic strength into the armored back of the soldier, propelling him forward, off balance. The alien woman had an equine lower body that was mostly reconstructed with metal musculature, her upper body was humanoid, the left arm and part of her torso had been cybernetically replaced with different cybertechnology, and the eye on that side was obviously mechanical. Her cinnamon-colored hair ran in a strip down the middle of her head and neck, down her humanoid spine, terminating at the waistline where her mane met horsehair. What little fur remained between bionics was chestnut, her skin was the color of a peanut shell. She was dressed in silk; sashes, skirts, sarongs, and saris were draped across her seven-foot, six-limbed form in shades of pink, peach, and salmon. Her fingernails were painted hot pink, even on the cyber-hand. After her kick, she was turned away, glaring at the soldier over her shoulder.
     PSI-7682-364 landed on his face, skidding forward from the power kick. The Juicer in overalls quickly dove on top of him, grappling, the Dead Boy’s armor all that prevented him from being crushed by supernatural strength. The dwarf relinquished his grip when others piled on, mostly other amped-up Juicers at first, then City Guards took the soldier into custody. The Coalition Psi-Stalker’s future held imprisonment and interrogation, or the detonation of a cortex bomb. The dwarf Juicer began to offer a hand to the kneeling wolf woman, but thought better of it, and offered her his bent elbow instead, holding himself stiffly while smiling bashfully. The mutant wolf rose smoothly on her own but thanked the dwarf for the timely save. He lit a cigarette and offered her one, they smoked while a human woman sidled up to them silently.
     Still gripping her laser derringer, the human had dark, smooth skin and rumpled, olive clothes. Her military fatigues were complete with a forward-brimmed cap and worn, black leather boots; her backpack was a field radio with storage compartments. She had the wiry build of a distance runner or a pole-vaulter. Her dark eyes scanned everyone and everything, missing nothing. With a nod for each, she said, “Nice timing,” to the dwarf, and “Ma’am,” to the wolf, then she said, “Hell of a kick,” and took off toward the cyborg, leaving them to follow if they would. As the three of them approached, the wolfen was freed from the strangle rod and set back on his feet, he broke the rope pole over his knee and followed his comrades as they hustled away his tormentor.
     The spellcaster who had aided the guard floated down on his wing board, once grounded, he hopped from the techno-wizardry device and smiled with a prominent underbite. The young Latino human wore matching black satin pants and shirt, with silver stripes on the arms and legs and opal buttons, silver fringe ran across his shoulder blades. Heeled black leather boots had metal ornamentation hinting at spurs, his black hat had a flat brim and crown. Silver rings and the bola tie he wore featured turquoise prominently among them. He was not tall, but broad shouldered, with inquisitive eyes and a bowlegged stance – the better to ride a wing board. “Mucho gusto!” he began in Spanish, “My name is Diego.” He shook hands with all except the dwarf, who refrained claiming that there was a reason they called non-Juicers ‘squishies,’ and the cyborg who brushed his hand aside in favor of a hug.
     “I am Aevox.”
     “Oli.”
     “Lupe.”
     “Lee.”
     Aevox hugged everyone and they returned it, except Oli. She had knelt to embrace the dwarf because he stood half her height. Pumping him twice with her arms, Aevox commanded in her alien accent, “Hug back.”
     “Sorry,” Oli said, blushing. “Heck, I don’t mean to be rude. Can’t hug, don’tcha know? Super strength and all.” He chuckled, embarrassed.
     The Body Fixer took the Juicer’s cigarette from him and stood to her full height, presenting the molded extradimensional metal where a horse’s chest or a human’s pelvis would be, she said again, “Hug.” While Doc Aevox smoked his cigarette and stared into the sky savoring its flavor, Oli embraced the durable cyborg and hugged her as though he had gone far too long without positive physical contact.
     When the awkward moment ended, Diego said to Oli, “Aye, tío, que malo.” Parting the burnt edges of his clothes to peer at his harness. “I didn’t even know dwarves could become Juicers.”
     “Oh yeah, well sure! Not everywhere does it, of course. Gotta have a special chemistry, but it’s pretty much the same as for humans. We even get a few more years too.”
     “But you’ve given up so many.”
     “YOU!” thundered a human male in an armored uniform, pointing his finger accusingly. Lowell Grant, officer in charge of the Kingsdale Police Department was recognized by Lupe from his wanted poster as a Coalition renegade. “A FEW QUESTIONS, PLEASE.”
     “Now, now,” a tall woman spoke softly in a tone of authority, “I will see to them.”
     “Yes, Senator,” said the officer, turning immediately to other business.
     As she swept her eyes over the crowd, every person there turned away and found elsewhere to be. The senator radiated an aura of command that required no words. It became clear, as she turned steely blue eyes on the five who had confronted the soldier, that the tall, platinum haired woman in the gunmetal suit jacket and white dress was much older than she appeared. “Welcome to Kingsdale,” she said with an enchanting smile. “My name is Arcadia. If you would, please join me in my office, there is a matter of importance for us to discuss.”

                                                                                                                                                                                          4
     Senator Arcadia’s heels clicked an unfaltering rhythm on the marble floors of City Hall. The tallest building in Kingsdale, it was an imposing gothic structure with stone gargoyles around the exterior and the interior decorated with statues, carvings, and tapestries featuring heroic and historical depictions. The group lost cohesion immediately upon entry. Oli lingered to examine the stonework, Aevox stopped to stare at an unfamiliar species of office worker, Lee and Lupe veered off toward the front desk to surrender their weapons. The desk clerks waved them off and indicated for them to keep following the senator who kept walking deeper into the building and out of sight.
     When they regrouped, Diego explained the lack of concern. “Weapons won’t work in City Hall. There is a spell preventing ignition and other energized reactions, it suppresses everything from pocket lighters to nuclear warheads. But the building’s electrical systems still work!” He pointed at the lights overhead with childish glee. “A powerful enchantment known only to the Magickal Guild.” Senator Arcadia slowed her steps to turn an arched eyebrow on the young wizard. Diego clarified smoothly, “My mentor is one of the Guild Masters.”
     Now Arcadia stopped fully with both eyebrows raised. “Indeed? Who, pray tell.”
     “Menelaus Clotho.” Diego said the name with familiarity and pride, but concern showed in his eyes.
     Arcadia looked impressed. “Regards.” As she led them a short distance toward a wooden door, the senator said, “Menelaus Clotho helped make this city what it is.” Opening the unlocked door, Arcadia entered her office first and stood to the side while the others followed her in. She took off her blazer, setting it on a coatrack by the door, she also stepped out of her shoes. A departure from the stonework in the hall, her office had lush carpets and wood paneling, wooden bookshelves and couches lined the walls, a massive oak desk had a wide, cushioned chair behind it and two identical ones in front, wooden window frames and shutters, and a wooden mantle over the fireplace. Diego and Lupe removed their hats on the way in. Lee kept her hat and backpack on. Once the door to her office was closed Arcadia continued. “A remarkable man, I lament that Menelaus is no longer well.” Diego gave a small nod and a small smile of thanks. “Now. I believe introductions are in order, please state your names and occupations.” As the senator moved toward her desk they responded in order of initiative.
     “Oli Minnesota. Juicer… sportsman, I guess. Used to be an architectural consultant.”
     “Lee Barrett, Glitter Boy Pilot.”
     “Lupe.” There was a pause while everyone filled in the blank.
     “Doc Aevox, how you say, Body Fixer.”
     “Diego Delgato. I’m a Ley Line Walker.”
     “Thank you. I am Arcadia, senator of Kingsdale this last century, previously of Olympus.”
     Only Diego recognized the name-drop. He sat on a couch by the window, leaning back, legs extended, crossing his arms and ankles. Diego raised his eyebrows at her in return. “Olympus?” He saw now that her sleeveless white dress would not have been out of place in some ancient Greek forum.
     Arcadia nodded. “I am a demigoddess from another plane.” She remained standing next to her desk.
     Pronounced slowly and heavily accented, Aevox repeated, “Demigoddess.” She had, of course, remained standing as well. “I do not know zis word.”
     Before Arcadia could explain herself, Lee answered flatly, her eyes scanning the bookshelves as she prowled along them. “More powerful than mortals, less than gods.” Spotting the collected works of Erin Tarn, she nodded in appreciation.
     Equally indelicately, Lupe clarified. “Crossbreeds.” She turned one of the large chairs around and sat facing the group. Aevox raised her remaining eyebrow at the term, but not nearly as archly as the demigoddess raised one of hers.
     “Scions,” corrected Arcadia. “Born of gods and mortals.”
     "Ze creatures of magic?” Doc Aevox had studied cell samples.
     “Sometimes,” said Arcadia patiently, “Supernatural beings in the main.”
     “What’s the difference?” Oli sat on the stone step in front of the cold fireplace. The laser beam had cut a line through his clothes, he now wore his overalls by one strap, his flannel gaped open to reveal muscles and tubes.
     “Ah!” began Aevox excitedly. “It has to do wiz ze process of energy conversion taking place wizin zeir cells. Creatures of magic have a sort of specialized chlorophyll which allows zem to absorb ambient magic.”
     “Like psi-stalkers?” asked Lupe. Eyes on Aevox, Diego pointed at Lupe to indicate that he had the same question.
     “No. Different organelles. Zeir mitochondria - -”
“     If we might,” interjected Arcadia with a raised finger, “stay on topic, please. There is a matter of some urgency to discuss.” She paused, equally to compose herself, and for dramatic effect. “Houstown is under siege.”
     Diego grunted.
     Oli made a flatulent sound.
     Lupe shrugged, unsurprised.
     Aevox slowly shook her head.
     Lee noncommittally asked, “Texas?”
     “Texas,” Oli confirmed. “Home of the Titans. Football team.”
     “Pecos territory,” said Lupe darkly.
     “Gulf coast,” supplied Diego. “East of the big San Antonio to Rapa Nui line.”
     Aevox continued to shake her head, now checking a pocket computer’s database.
     “A city some six hundred miles to the south has come under attack,” continued Arcadia determinedly. “A call for help has been sent through the aether, broadcasting both on radio waves and the Astral Plane, Lord Mayor Orpheus begs for aid. I received this message shortly after dawn today and have been gathering resources to send a party, as I cannot go personally. After your heroics this afternoon, I felt compelled to approach you. I have been around long enough to spot a burgeoning adventure group. I view your foundation today as serendipitous.”
     “Helping is my business,” said Lee. “But ‘lord mayor’ sounds like an asshole’s title.” She crossed her arms in preparation for a hard decision. “And six hundred miles will take time. If they’re being attacked right now, we might not be any help by the time we get there, especially if something happens to us on the way.”
     Arcadia nodded with each valid point. “There is time. The message speaks of taking shelter and holding against a persistent attack. Orpheus the Titan was elected Mayor after an incident with sea serpents, he was the best person for the job, and when the people decided to make it a permanent appointment, Lord was added to his title in the classic tradition. With his help, Houstown became the jewel of the Pecos Empire: the only city that doesn’t raid the others. I have known Orpheus since the Peloponnesian War; he is a good man. There is a supernatural community of sorts that utilizes this aetheric frequency in emergencies, I suspect he was hoping to reach his friends Enkidu Longhair and Gilgamesh the Wanderer. Regardless of Orpheus’s personal character, civilians are imperiled. Are any of you familiar with the Splugorth?”
     “Dios mío.” Diego looked as if he had a bad taste in his mouth.
     “Bio-wizards, yes? I have seen a Chest Amalgamate,” Aevox held her elbow to her sternum and fluttered her fingertips. “Symbiotic augmentation zat is truly fascinating.”
     “They’re slavers,” spat Lupe bitterly. “Monsters.”
     “The worst kind,” agreed Diego. “Alien Intelligences. Leaders of armies. Each one commands an empire. Whole species belong to them, cultures…” He passed a hand through his dark hair. “Conquerors of thousands of worlds, entire dimensions. They have a foothold on Atlantis now, which they’ve turned into a dimensional market.”
     “Mmmm. No doubt you learned this from your Atlantean mentor. Time is pressing and I urge you to depart with haste, yet I happen to know that we have a while before the repairs to Miss Barrett’s Glitter Boy are complete.” To Lee’s look of surprise, Arcadia said, “Yes. A figure of Daybreak’s renown entering my city always gains my awareness. The work will be covered by my expense account, and I will give you access to the remainder of the funds so that you may equip yourselves for the journey. For now, I am curious, Diego, as to how you and Menelaus met.”
     “Like this. A magical message from a stranger in need. I was born in Tula, Mexico, a city controlled by vampires. I was a blood slave, picked out from the other livestock for my composure. Just like Splugorth, their rivals, Vampire Intelligences squat in their pyramids and empower servants with fragments of their essence. That’s how Master Vampires are made, and I had been selected to become one of them. I was doomed. They had already started grooming, conditioning me, when my magic began to manifest. I heard a voice calling for help, it was a Ley Line Transmission, my first. I responded and, through these communications, he taught me how to phase, to teleport myself to his location.” Diego sat up, starting to chuckle. “Okay. So, he"d gotten himself trapped by a Dream Snake – giant magical snake – he hitched a ride with it trying to get a wish granted or something. He hid in a log when the thing attacked him, and the log got caught in its jaws.” Diego began pantomiming with his hands. “It’s shaking the shit out of him, so he can’t concentrate for long enough to phase out.” He laughs. “So, I show up, twelve years old, and I have to get the snake to follow me along the ley line for long enough to let Menelaus concentrate on phasing out of there. That’s how we met. We rescued each other.”
     Senator Arcadia rested a fist over her heart. “Thank you for sharing your tale.”
     “Right.” Oli clapped his hands louder than he intended. “Call through the aether. Lemme see here.” The dwarf lay back on the floor and closed his eyes. To become a Mega-Juicer, one must possess either a minimum of magic potential, or psychic powers. Astral Projection is an ability that Oli had used frequently in construction work to assess foundations and interior supports, sending his consciousness through solid matter. Now, Oli’s mental-self passed through that state of coexistence with the material world and through a bright portal onto the extradimensional cloudscape of the Astral Plane. There, now that he knew what to seek, Oli could scan for the emergency frequency that Arcadia spoke of, and access Orpheus’s beacon.
     From the infinite horizon, the image of the lord mayor grew from infinitesimal to life size – about thrice the height of Oli. Orpheus had a bacchanalian look to him, like a man interrupted from a party. Hair tousled, wild eyed, he had been fighting, wounded and grimy, his toga was ripped and stained. He looked like a Texas-tanned Greek god, white hair and dark eyes, Oli recalled the stories his parents told of titans in their home dimension Palladium. His stentorian voice boomed through Oli’s consciousness.
     “Houstown is under attack! This is Orpheus the Titan, calling for help! We are besieged by Splugorth slavers. They are abducting the populace. We are falling back with as many civilians as we can rescue to a secure location beneath the lord mayor’s estate. We cannot hold forever. Aid must come to us soon. As this message is being sent, today marks the eighteenth day since the last full moon. I repeat…”
     Oli followed the thread of astral projection back to his physical body and returned to consciousness in the senator’s office. Strangely he could still hear the distress call echoing tinnily from the wood-paneled walls.
     “I repeat… Houstown is under attack!” Oli identified the point of origin as the handheld portion of Lee’s long-range radio as she waggled it at him with a chiding expression. Duh. They had listened to the audio portion of the broadcast while he was out-of-body. The volume fell rapidly as Lee twisted the knob to the Off position and returned the speaker/mic to its place on her shoulder strap. Oli blinked around the room to find both Lupe and Aevox staring at him, the man who had suddenly rolled over and lost consciousness in the middle of a conversation. Lupe rose and crossed the room to him.
     “Let me try that.” Not knowing what she meant, yet sensing no harm, Oli shrugged. In escaping from the Lone Star Facility, patience, timing, and familiarity were almost as useful to Lupe as her ability to mentally possess others, carefully kept secret. She had taken over the mind of a lab tech who was attempting to enroll her in the breeding program, and wheeled her own body out on a stretcher, commandeering a vehicle that she later abandoned. Now, she sat cross-legged next to Oli against the wall, she placed her hand on his and took possession of Oli’s body from his willing mind. Possessing him, she used his psychic ability of Astral Projection and found her way to the Astral Plane and Orpheus’s signal. Lupe returned from astral space to Oli’s body, which she then released, and returned to her own. They regained consciousness at the same time.
     Lupe found Doc Aevox staring at her with multi-optics and heard a recorder click off. “Now do me.” Aevox, always craving new experiences, was eager to see where her own mind would be shunted to during possession.
     Lupe smiled, which always came across more predatory than she intended, so she softened it with a wink. “Later.”
     “Are we doing this?” asked Lee. Unaccustomed to group deliberation, she laid her cards on the table. “My top speed is sixty miles per hour. In a straight line, that would be ten hours of continuous running to get there. In reality, it will take us three days at least.”
     “I can’t fly that far on a wing board. I can phase most of the way, but I can’t teleport any of you. Does anyone have a vehicle?”
     “Hovercycle. I can fit one more.”
     “Mine will fit us all,” said Aevox. “We may even be able to affix ze hovercycle and glitter armor to ze top wiz magnets. Taking turns, we could drive continuously.”
     “Perhaps such magnetic attachments could be found or fabricated in town. You have a few more hours to do some shopping, I will arrange for your access to my credit line.” Arcadia gestured a salute that was equally a dismissal. “Many fortunes go with you.”

                                                                                                                                                                                           5
     Oli Minnesota had spent a lot of time among Juicers, he knew how easily a group could evaporate. During his football years, one of the greatest challenges was getting from place to place with his teammates. Between cities, they were fine, once they arrived however, getting to the stadium, getting from bar to bar, was like herding floopers. When leaving City Hall, he used all of his wiles to maintain group unity. “All right then,” he said, drawing eyes toward him. Oli pulled at the burnt edges of his flannel. “Lemme go get my bike and a change of shirt.” He jerked his head to the side and pointed with his thumbs, indicating that they should come with him. His cues worked to lead them, either through social conditioning or sheer curiosity. Oli kept chattering, engaging them, trying to keep everyone together and part of the conversation. He and Diego had been to Kingsdale previously, Lupe had questions, Aevox had more. Lee said little, responding only to direct questions. She kept watch over her new companions and their surroundings, halting traffic for them at intersections, pausing for straggling members, acting the shepherd as much as Oli. Together, they went to the various shops and specialists that supplied to each of their interests, until Lee’s armor was ready; arriving as one, an hour before sunset, at the parking lot that held Aevox’s vehicle.
     “Is that a Triax Wilderness Cruiser?” asked Lupe.
     “A ‘knockoff’ as zey say.”
     “When the Coalition States made contact with the New German Republic, the CS and Triax traded a bunch of tech specs over the radio,” Lee told them. “Eventually the Coalition sold some blueprints to public manufacturers. Other than the CS Skull Patrol Car, the Scarab Car, and the Command Car, all strictly military, this is the only hovercar model that I have ever seen. Lots of hovercycles and hover tanks, wheeled all-terrain vehicles, but this is the only hovercar available to the public and the only one big enough for a group to travel in. It’s a total oversight in the market.” Lee shook her head disapprovingly, the Glitter Boy’s iconic three-horned helmet swiveling. The others were surprised, this was the most they had heard her speak, they sensed Lee was at home in her power armor, and able to open up.
     “Indeed. Ze car I started wiz was so exotic in ze Chi-Town ‘Burbs zat I was able to trade for zis and have ze interior modified for my needs.” Aevox unlocked the entrance and storage bays. “Welcome to my home and my clinic.”
     The pilot’s seat of the Wilderness Cruiser had been replaced with a long, low bench pointing to the steering column. Kneeling, Doc Aevox rested her bionic underside on this with a dull clunk as she began the vehicle’s start-up sequence. The other six seats were conventionally shaped for humanoid occupants, laid out on the right side of the craft in a triangle with the copilot seat at the apex. The vehicle’s midsection held cabinets across from the hatch. Two platforms in the rear section were capable of rising from the floor, serving both as examination tables for patients, and a bed for the doctor when lowered. Medical laboratory equipment crowded the available counterspace.
In her armor, Lee stayed outside alone, as she preferred, attaching magnetic clamps to the roof while the others stowed their gear. Following Aevox, Lupe snorted and recoiled at the powerful scent of antiseptics and disinfectants overlaying barnyard odors. Before she could become accustomed to the smell, which reminded her of Lone Star, Lupe was hissed at by a furred creature with sharp fangs and furious eyes. Unfurling atop a cabinet, the animal rapidly transformed from a disk to an arch to a blur as it leapt down and disappeared.
     “What the hell was that?” Oli held very still. Spiky Mega-Juicer armor made him a hazard in close quarters.
     “Cat,” Lupe reported sourly before exhaling forcefully.
     “Just so! I do not know what dimension zey come from, but cats are all over ze ‘Burbs, hunting verminous pests and faerie folk wizout pity. Truly remarkable specimens. People in ze ‘Burbs would make recordings of zeir activities and compare zem, zeir amazing feats and adorable moments.”
     Diego named the phenomenon. “Cat videos.” Oli nodded.
     “Indeed,” said Doc Aevox brightly. “I have dozens of hours I can show you later. I call zis one Nzz - - Ntz,” Aevox struggled with her pronunciation, “Nth. You know zis word? Nth? ”
     “Enth,” Oli repeated blankly.
     Lupe replied without looking over, scanning the vehicle’s console and sensory equipment, familiarizing herself with the controls. “It means ‘I don’t know how much, but a lot.’ A high level of something. Scientists say it all the time.”
     “Earth scientists do,” amended Aevox. “Such a marvelously imprecise word would never have been allowed where I come from. Ze American language has truly perfected vagueness.”

                                                                                                                                                                                          6
     Outside the well-trodden surrounds of Kinsdale, the forests grew thick around the foothills of the mountainous plateau known as the Oz Arks. Despite its name, Aevox’s vehicle struggled with the greenery, the Wilderness Cruiser had a maximum altitude of five feet. The hovercar performed well over grasslands, swamplands, mountains, rivers, and lakes, but dense woodlands and thick undergrowth were problematic. A large bumper on the front was used for ramming through where possible, they resorted to blasting with the roof-mounted cannon as needed. To make their passage less destructive and laborious, they followed the remains of old highways. Oli had driven to and from Kingsdale for sporting events and knew of a pass through the mountains, he led them to the roadways of old, scraps of ancient pavement that nature was steadily eroding. These fragments grew longer and closer together as the party gained elevation. Pre-apocalyptic people were obsessed with paving roads in every direction. Even where earthquakes and landslides had obliterated the cement, there remained passes from ancient engineers blasting through mountain ridges to quicken the conveyance of goods in a golden age.
     The rocky, uneven incline was no trouble for the hovercraft, the Glitter Boy however, had difficulty climbing the mountains. Jet-assisted leaps were frequently necessary. Eventually, they attached a towline between the power armor and the hovercycle to extend these leaps, Daybreak would jump, and Oli would open the throttle. As night fell, the tow cable faded from sight in the glare of the Rocket Bike’s engine, its pull was like the gravity of a nearby star. Compelled by darkness to stop at night, they traveled for another day in this manner.
     Wilderness encounters were random, both in nature and difficulty, yet painfully frequent.
     “All I’m saying that it’s like this every time you travel overland.” Most of the time Diego successfully kept quiet about the superiority of magical travel, but, as a young man accustomed to teleporting hundreds of miles in an instant, he occasionally lamented mundane transportation.
     “Well, anytime you want to magically whisk us all to Houstown, that’d be great.” Lee, who spent most of her time alone, found any amount of whining detestable, even if infrequent and innocuous. Her voice transmitted to them over an open channel. Through the patter of debris raining down on the Cruiser’s roof, Daybreak could be heard stomping around outside, dispatching attackers.
     Diego sighed, lying back, comfortable inside the hovercar. “I wish. Honestly. But that’s really advanced magic. To move all of us and the vehicles? The highest level of spell. Let’s say… if it were level fifteen, then I can cast level four – tops – out of fifteen.”
     “Fifteen doesn’t sound very high.” Lupe stood by the door, ready to emerge. Her battle armor – the Northern Gun light exoskeleton, Gladius – had been modified for canine bipeds, who were common in Kingsdale, and painted to her preference: dark with bright flowers. Raised by the Coalition, Lupe found such open discussion of magic to be disturbing, yet fascinating.
     “It’s an arbitrary scale.” Diego came to join her by the door, stepping onto his wing board, ready to fly as a comrade in arms. As an academic, he conceded the point. “Okay. Say instead then, that I’m a level one caster, and you’d have to be level twenty, on a scale of twenty.”
     A clattering bang sounded on the roof. “Okay,” said Lee over the intercom, “That’s the last of the big stuff.”
     Lupe opened the pressurized hatch and darted out, e-rifle shouldered and firing. She had bought several heavy weapons with Arcadia’s credits, anticipating their need, but Lupe preferred her standard-issue C-12 old-style heavy assault laser rifle. Though she wanted to move away from all things Coalition, her familiarity with the weapon was an asset. It was also energy efficient, especially in low-power mode, and she liked that every shot was single and aimed, not inaccurate pulses. Diego mentally willed his wing board into the air – the Turbo model worked when not on a ley line, but it had no weapons – he wielded a techno-wizardry sidearm. Aevox closed the hatch behind them with a switch on the pilot’s console.
     Witnessing Diego’s shots land as skillfully as Lupe’s, Oli commented, “I don’t see how twenty is much higher than fifteen, but you don’t look to be ‘level one’ with that sorcery-shooter of yours.”
     “Eh,” replied Diego easily while flying in a vertical loop. “Fighting is on a separate scale from spells. Different from skills too. Sorry, I don’t mean to sound like a know-it-all, it’s just that studying the way of things is kind of my obsession.”
     “Mine too,” said Aevox operating the drop-down periscope for the ion cannon, which was snagged on a branch. “I agree zat skill proficiencies are inconsistent with other aspects of life. Let us say zat my knowledge of all paramedic skills was sixty percent, zat does not mean zat I should fail at forty percent of my emergency care.”
     “Right? I think I can identify fifty percent of plants and flowers, but it’s a one-in-a-hundred shot every time I need to recall a fact about plants, and I’m wrong half the time. There is no modifier for rarity.” Diego was able to attack several times in fifteen seconds. “But weapon proficiency adds three to a necessary score of twelve, or higher, out of twenty, according to my observations.” He shot another moving target, then bulls-eyed a stationary goblin in the head. “It’s like, to get around in this world, it pretty much has to be a hack-and-slash campaign. Like the world is designed that way.”
     “Like a gladiator arena?” Oli suggested.
     “I zink zis world is certain proof of a lack of intelligent design.”
     “Yeah, I seen some crazy shit.” Lupe vaporized a goblin with an invisible beam.
     Lee casually twisted another goblin to death and dropped it. Apparently, the goblins had climbed a tree in the path of the Wilderness Cruiser and waited for it to drive under them to launch their ambush. Ordinarily, goblins pose little threat to high-tech travelers, but these had acquired modern weapons and mining equipment from somewhere. Lee had acted quickly, first warning Oli to speed out of range of the sonic event for which the ‘Boom Gun’ is named. Every Glitter Boy pilot knows well the cautionary tale of The Deafened Town. Daybreak fired upward into the bole of the tree, scattering ejecta and goblins upwards of a mile into the air, debris was still falling. “If the world had a creator, they fucked up.” Goblin blood dripped from robotic fists. “Like a drunk recording voice-to-text and not reviewing before sending. Offensive ravings committed to a saved file.” She pulled free the branch that was obstructing the Cruiser’s roof cannon. “Too many inequalities, inconsistencies, and outright contradictions. Conflicting rules. Power discrepancies. It’s like, what has been decided previously is unknown and irrelevant when making new decisions.”
     “Maybe each world had an author,” Oli mused, “Or each dimension, I suppose. The writers didn’t really consult each other, and where these Dimension Books overlap, they’re incompatible. Different rules of physics coming through the rifts.” He piloted his hovercycle one-handed while firing on targets from above. Juicers called the Forearm Integrated Weapon System – F.I.W.S. – ‘phews’ for their handiness as a fallback weapon.
     “If there were a book of the world, a World Book as Oli says, describing this planet, I imagine the authors were total shut-ins who had only heard about life from second-hand accounts. Eager to write a new reality for their own amusement, they got carried away with their enthusiasm and overdid it.” Diego became ardent about his passion. “To continue the analogy: they wrote too many books. Multiple books for each world. World books, dimension books, sourcebooks, compendiums, and monthly supplements; each filled with flawed settings begging exploration by problem-solvers. But keeping up with reading and buying them all is beyond any reasonable expectation. If they did, their house would fill up with books. Where their content reiterated, there would be too many errors for a meaningful campaign of investigation to carry over, or for a solution to be possible at all! What we’re left with is an infinite number of ways to die, as described by a collection of disjointed articles which are littered with problems and sensational in tone. The kind of hype that is spattered with exclamation points until they’ve lost all meaning!” Diego waved his hands and pistol in the air to indicate pure chaos.
     Oli laughed while the young wizard vented his frustration with ‘the big questions.’ “I know whatcha mean about the exclamation points. Juicer buddy o’ mine used to write Julian Amici fanfiction. Fuckin’ garbage. Exclamations all over. He had to add more and more as he went to give ‘em value.” He shook his head, chuckling. “Dickhead.”
     Most of the goblins were now dead or fleeing, and the travelers began to regroup. “Anyway,” Diego returned to their original topic, “even if I knew how, and had a super-nexus to draw from, I wouldn’t have the magical capacity to cast a superior teleportation spell.”
     Lupe asked for clarification as they reboarded the hovercraft. “You mean P.P.E.?”
     Diego looked at her in confusion. “What? Who’s Pee-Pee-He?”
     Lupe enunciated. “P.P.E. Magical energy. They say it in Lone Star all the time.”
     “Yes, I have read zis term in medical texts. Potential Psychic Energy. No?”
     “Oh, yah, sure.” Oli spoke too loudly into the mouthpiece, his adrenal boost still dissipating. “Heard that a bunch gettin’ The Process. Had to have enough of that, or those ‘strength points’ to get the Mega-Juice.”
     “Inner Strength Points. I.S.P.,” supplied Lupe again. “Psychic energy.”
     “Points?” Lee cut in skeptically. “I know P.P.E. as Personal Protective Equipment. But are you sure you don’t have that backwards?” She stressed certain words significantly with sarcasm. “Wouldn’t the term ‘Potential Psychic Energy’ be used in describing psychic power? Making ‘Inner Strength Points’ for magic?”
     Lupe was sure. “Positive. Everyone has P.P.E. Only psychics have I.S.P.”
     Diego said in bewilderment, “I’ve never heard those expressions, and I study magic energy. Magic-users I know don’t… use those terms.” He laughed in consternation that a discussion about the basics of his area of expertise could confuse him like this. “I’m sorry, but that sounds like… pinche charla loca – fucking crazy talk.”
     “You betcha. But that’s the Techno-can lingo of the times, don’tcha know. When I did construction work, we’d talk about things having a structural damage capacity – S.D.C. But high-tech and supernatural stuff has mega-damage capacity – M.D.C. Kids these days love to abbreviate stuff. You shoulda heard the Juicer lexicon, stuff like ‘doing a double-J’ and ‘B T W, squishy A F.’ Like a stuttering crypto-code breaker using a lot of slang and profanities.” Oli was already helping Daybreak to descend the mountain.
     Doc Aevox powered up the forward drive and began moving out. “Magic is new to my people. A fundamental force of nature entirely unknown to a scientific culture. It showed us how much more was possible zan we had ever dreamed. Ze nuances of experience are my passion, and I prefer psychology to physics, so I find psionics to be much more interesting zan magic, psychic powers expand what is possible for a person to sense. I find zat to be ze difference in studying ze two phenomena; magic shows what is possible in ze megaverse, psionics show what is possible for a mind.”
     Traversing the wilds, they encountered bandits, bugbears, and bad weather. They passed prehistoric plants and animals, alien creatures and even more alien vegetation. Newtown was the next island in the archipelago of civilization dotting North America; the city where Juicers seeking Detox had once been turned into Phoenix Juicers, the undead slaves of extradimensional invaders. After the Juicer Uprising was won, Newtown stayed a small and simple city, the rescue party from Kingsdale stopped only shortly for supplies before continuing with their travels and their conversations.
     “These Sploogies are slavers from Atlantis, right?” asked Lupe. “Isn’t that pretty far away? How are they getting back and forth with captives?”
     “Houstown has a nexus just offshore,” Diego said. “Splugorth have gear to store high-level spells for their Minions’ to trigger at need. They can just rift over. They do it all over the east coast.”
     “And you know all this because your mentor was a True Atlantean,” Oli recalled. “So, what are these Spluggos, Fake Atlanteans?”
     “Totally. Goddamn colonizers. True Atlanteans were from Earth, they had one of the first advanced civilizations. An island-nation of humans with mystical sensitivities which they developed into tattoo magic, stone magic, and pyramid technology. In the Age of Wonder, they became interdimensional explorers, building pyramids in other universes for quick and reliable transportation. Experimenting with magic, they accidentally ripped open a rift that was way too big – like continent sized. It stretched, so the legend goes, from the pyramids of the Maya to the pyramids of Egypt. Thousands of miles long, connecting to hundreds of worlds at once. The First Great Cataclysm. Death and disasters and demon swarms and all that. The Atlanteans eventually closed it, but it cost them their island. Many were able to evacuate, spreading across the megaverse. The collapse of the super-rift sucked Atlantis into a pocket dimension and drained most of the magic from the world.”
     Diego sighed. “That was the end of the Age of Wonder. As magic faded, people resorted to blood sacrifices to power their pyramids and cling to their former glory. The Old Ways were forgotten, and everything fell apart. Enlightened civilizations fell to war and ignorance, religions began selling salvation, patriarchy spread to every corner of the globe, and oppression became commonplace. The world was driven into darkness with violence, greed, and sexism.” Riding atop the hovercar in her power armor, Lee nodded approvingly of Diego’s disdain for the record of men’s rulership. Diego went on. “Basically, Earth went to shit and the Atlantean survivors blamed themselves. A kind of racial guilt they’ve carried for millennia. It’s why they’ve never reformed their empire and live scattered through the cosmos as nomadic scholars and Undead Slayers, doing good where they can, fighting evil like the Splugorth and the Vampires. Menelaus belonged to a group that was charting the ley lines, graphing the magical output of the planet, trying to find a way to stabilize us. A task that I’m now trying to help with.”
     Everyone took a moment to absorb the story. Oli recovered fastest. “Heck, we got a legend like that among dwarves too.” He recited in a comically dramatic voice. “The dwarves of Sarpadia will one day return to defend Dwarvenkind against a deadly peril.” His chuckling buzzed with static over the radio. “What’s bonkers to me is all the crossover between Earth and the Palladium world, not just now, also way back when: titans, dragons, faeries, centaurs, you name it. What about you, Aevox, do your people remember dwarves and elves, or centaur history from their days on Earth?”
     Aevox bristled while driving, jerking the wheel so Oli was in view. “No, and we do not use zis word. We do not call ourselves centaurs,” she sneered the word, her alien accent growing sharper with every word of what she said next. “My people are ze Cyber-Horsemen of Ixion.”
     Lee’s laughter was loud enough to cause feedback.
     Lupe joined in. “Yeah, Oli!”
     Diego continued awkwardly. “Uh, so, that happened in the Age of Wonder, Oli, another time rich in magic, lots of rifts and crossover. Why we seem to open rifts to Palladium and some dimensions more frequently than others is exactly what I’m interested in. I couldn’t tell you which age was more magical, that’s hotly debated in the magical community. I don’t think it really matters, but let me tell you, if it was anywhere near as potent as our time, I can see why historical records of the Age of Wonder were taken as myth and superstition by later peoples.”
     “Ish cray.”
     “There are a lot of people around nowadays who were on Earth during the Age of Wonder, like Arcadia and Orpheus and others, so that’s actually one of the periods in history which we know best. Records of the technological eras are what we only have fragments of. Doc Aevox,” began Diego respectfully, “I heard a legend, a Greek myth about a king named Ixion. If your people kept the name, there must have been a juncture in our histories. Maybe centaur is a Greek word put into use after your people had visited and left.”
     “I see.” Aevox was interested, but there was not much to say to that, and a lot to unpack. She kept driving, processing.
     Lupe filled the silence with humor feigning anger. “Well, centaur is stupid. Nevermind that if there were, like we said, a World Book of Canada, the two would definitely be listed together. It’s Cyber-Horsemen of Ixion, goddamnit. That’s the name of their race. That’s what’s normal. Like Vanguard Brawlers or Quick-Flex Aliens. You know, one of the many normal names that races call themselves. Everybody, get with the fucking program.”
     To avoid an outflung arm of the mountains and pick up speed over the plains, they moved further west as they traveled south, keeping the ranges of the Choctaw Nation between the Wilderness Cruiser and the Coalition installations in Arkansas. They let the Spirit Warriors and Cyber-Knights stand between them and the Coalition States, facing instead the lesser dangers of Neuron Beasts and Mind Slugs. In Oklahoma, they were forced to evade or endure encounters with Dragon-Apes, Demon Bears, and Devil Sloths. As the travelers neared the Kingdom of Worth, Lupe and Oli told the story of a Pecos Warlord who had gathered people and power to himself until he finally drew the wrath of the Coalition down upon them all. Worth was crushed. Today a broken remnant of denizens fought over the scraps. Passage though their gangland required numerous shows of strength and assurances of non-involvement in their clannish struggles. But the wealth their miniature convoy displayed was irresistible to the destitute. It was a matter of fact that messages would be sent to larger nations of Pecos, and bandits would soon be upon them. To stay ahead of them, the travelers veered back eastward, closer to the haunted ruins of Dallas.
     “Zis Pecos Empire is a buffer ze Coalition States maintain between zemselves and ze vampires Diego says are so dangerous. Coalition war campaigns intentionally leave enough resources behind to lure such peoples. Just as Chi-Town uses ze ‘Burbs as a buffer between zemselves and ze Magic Zone. Always zey use non-citizens as shields against ze world.”
     “Destroying only groups large enough to threaten them,” Lupe continued the chain of thought bitterly. “I always wondered why the CS never finished them off. The threat of bandits also kept settlers close to Lone Star. All under their control. Bastards.”
     “And,” Lee added, “hero groups like Reid’s Rangers do their dirty work for free.”
     “And now us too.”
     “Okay.” Doc Aevox loved this word, one of the best in the American language, so flexible, usable in many contexts to convey a wide range of emotions. She used it now to alter the topic. “Tell me of Simvan Monster Riders.”
     Oli cut in. “Sorry to interrupt. Do you happen to see that dark cloud on the left, there?”
     The optics package of the Glitter Boy gave Lee an enhanced view. “Doesn’t look good.”
     The ley line nexus east of the city was a violently electric blue, spilling energy into an atmospheric maelstrom. Diego’s experience told him more than his senses at this range. “It’s a ley line storm inside of a thunderstorm.”
     “And inside are the Storm Riders.” Lupe put down her binoculars and told the tale of another Pecos Warlord leading a party into Dallas, seeking treasure among the ruins. They were slain by spirits guarding the place, and all of the thousand bandits joined with their own killers in a vendetta against the living, reappearing as ghosts during the worst storms.
     “Uhhh. That sounds an awful lot like the Wild Hunt,” Oli worried. “We should run.”
     “Yes,” said Diego calmly. “Let’s go before a syphon entity possesses one of the vehicles, or a tectonic entity builds itself a body from our corpses.”
     Turning sharply south, they followed the river Brazos toward Houstown. Circumnavigating a herd of ostrosaurus, Aevox was delighted to see simvan dino-riders migrating with them. Evading outriders of the Silver Dagger Gang from New San Antonio, the doctor was fascinated by the Brodkil – beings with natural invisibility and supernatural strength whose obsession with cybernetics degraded their innate abilities. Considered to be demons, brodkil are lazy beings with no technology of their own, their tendency toward bionic modification is another mysterious non sequitur among many in the megaverse.
     “Why do zey say ‘D-Bee’,” Aevox complained, “like it is our fault. We did not choose to be here. It is humans who have ze faulty planet. Earth is like a cell zat strips enzymes from its neighbors zen dies because zis action has perforated its own walls.”
     “I sometimes think of Earth as a whirlpool in the megaverse, drawing everything in.”
     “Oh yah, folk get drawn into this dimension and hated for it. The Coalition is like a kid that steals a sip of your beer, then whines about the taste.”
     “Then the kid tries to outlaw booze because they think that everyone who drinks is a dangerous degenerate.”
     “Earth isn’t the problem.” Lee’s voice sounded hollow through the speakers. She had slept in her armor overnight, clamped to the top of the Wilderness Cruiser as they drove through the Texas flatlands along the edge of the eastern forest. “Humans are the problem. We did this. Humans in the Golden Age fucked up the planet just like Atlanteans did in the Age of Wonder. Technological advancement means a certain mastery over the environment. That sense of control allows us enormous freedoms, like researching how to rip a hole in the universe. Then there is a total loss of control and humans scramble to regain control. So, you get crazy laws and despots and shit, and let’s not pretend that the Coalition States are the only bad guys among humans. It’s in our nature.”
     “Maybe so,” said Aevox reasonably. “Perhaps zat is your function on zis planet.”
     “A destiny we are doomed to repeat?”
     “No.” Aevox chopped the air in firm denial. “Destiny and doom belong to philosophy and religion. I speak of linkage. Interwoven evolutions. On my world, we learned how important biodiversity is only after we had obliterated most of ours. Ze wellbeing of ze planet’s systems and its inhabitants depends upon it. Coral reefs and zeir inhabitants form a system. Trees in a rainforest induce cloud formation to ensure rainfall. Zese systems are forms of life. Lifeforms are bigger and smaller than commonly believed. We tend to consider only plants and animals when zink of lifeforms, not individual cells, and not ecosystems. Yet we are each a biome wiz bacterial cultures living inside us, helping us to survive, and we are all dependent on each ozer. Your body – your person – includes many small lives as one. Earth is exactly ze same. All life on ze planet, collectively we are Earth. Planet Earth itself is an organism, a self-regulating lifeform. Perhaps one which increases it’s genetic diversity by producing beings who are compelled to seed it wiz dimensional crossover by way of cataclysms.”
     While Aevox considered her next words, there was a digestive silence. Lupe steered the Wilderness Cruiser around a stand of purple pines, an alien species of tree that has been spreading across Texas for several decades. Diego corroborated Aevox’s theory with the Gaia hypothesis using a simplified example of a planet covered in a single lifeform: white flowers. The flowers reflect sunlight, cooling the planet below temperatures at which flowers can survive, so, in order to survive, the species mutates, and black flowers grow, they absorb sunlight, and a balance is formed between black and white flowers that maintains a temperature hospitable to life. This manner of regulatory adaptation is observable in nature. This evolutionary process need not be conscious or spiritual, simply an automatic function, like blood cells leaping into action, or plants releasing insect repellents. With a greater variety of lifeforms there are more ways to provide what is needed for the greater living system that they compose. Life on any scale always strives for self-preservation. Diversity is a strength and nature encourages it.
     Doc Aevox continued to apply her analysis like a stinging balm that soothed human guilt. “It sounds like your Age of Wonder was a rich period in Earth’s history, perhaps ze rifts are simply a way of increasing biodiversity and cataclysms are part of a natural cycle. Humans could have grown into ze necessary evolutionary niche of cataclysm catalysts.” Diego laughed at the sentiment, Oli at the tongue twister. “Cyber-Horsemen believe zat technology is a natural product of biological minds and zerefore a part of nature. When our biosphere waned, we replaced certain systems wiz artificial substitutes, in effect we made our world a cybernetic organism just as we did to ourselves. Who is to say zat our actions and yours are not natural defense mechanisms of our homeworlds? You say, Lee, zat humans have severe reactions to ze fear of chaos, you are not alone in zis. All lifeforms feel at risk from ze enormity of ze megaverse and fight to survive in it. Species zat were not innately contentious died out upon contact wiz ze rest of us.”
     “Heck. One big gladiator’s grand melee, after all.”
     “Survival of ze fittest is omnipresent. So, why not ze planets zemselves? Or dimensions vying for supremacy? Universal-scale beings.”
     “The Omega Point, where the universe becomes self-aware.”
     “Sheesh. Do you have a theory for everything?” Oli asked Diego.
     “I hope not! I mean, that’s what I’m going for, yeah. So, what would I do with my life if we had everything figured out already?”
     “If the Omega Point is possible,” Lupe said thoughtfully, “that should be our goal.”
     “You want the universe to come alive?”
     “It’s already alive. This is all connected. Look, if there is a Gaiasphere, and all life on Earth is united as a whole, then it is our duty to help support this network. We have to accept our role as… guardians, as the stewards of nature. That’s how the planet survives: we become caretakers of a system that is greater than ourselves. We use our sentience to see what needs doing and then do it. Once Earth is whole and healthy, we might live long enough to join a galactic community of other worlds who have also gotten their shit together. Then the Gaia principle applies to that network also, we work together, and we have until our galaxy collides with the neighboring galaxy to form a functioning galactic ecosystem, or commonwealth, or whatever. And on and on. When all the galaxies work together, maybe the universe will wake up, or hatch, mature, and join a community of universes working together.”
     “Aww. We are in ze larval stage! Zat’s cute.”
     “All we have to do is help out. Help nature. Help people we meet. That’s it.” Lupe continued to drive them toward a city full of people in need.
     Oli often acted as a forward scout, he had been to Houstown multiple times and knew how to find it. “We’re not far now. I recognize this area. I played here just last year.”
     “Yeah,” Lee drawled, “I saw that game.”
     “You did? Well, shoot! Why didn’t you say so? We’ve been on the road together for half a week!”
     “I had money on it. Lost fifty creds when you ran that TD.”
     “Ha! Well… shit. Sorry.”
     “S’fine. When a town gives gifts to its protector, gambling is a good way to give back the money. It seems less like charity to those who’d resent it. They think I’m a reckless adventurer. But town elders and leaders usually get it. The dumb see foolishness and the wise see cleverness. I can live with that.” The comm was silent long enough for the subject to be considered dropped, but Lee revealed more. “The truth is, Oli, that I didn’t mention it earlier because I didn’t want to get close to you. Trust isn’t easy for me. A man whose strength is a danger to those around him is even more difficult for me to be comfortable with. But you are a good guy, Oli. I like you and I’d like to call you my friend. If we weren’t driving right now, I’d look you in the eye and shake your hand.”
     Oli laughed over the radio connection. “I appreciate it, friend. Tell you what: let’s try not to die today, and we’ll revisit this.”
     “Am I your friend?” Diego asked Lee with exaggerated concern.
     They all laughed and arrived at Houstown as friends.

                                                                                                                                                                                          7
     Houstown once had perimeter walls with defensive emplacements. The city’s classical architecture had featured many terraces with wide, marble stairways and columns. There used to be businesses interspersed with residences, village greens, personal gardens, and shady groves. Some of these features still survived, largely the city was in ruins and showed evidence of explosions; smoking rubble, scorch marks, and corpses were everywhere. Among the pulverized structures, giant monsters lay dead in equally giant pools of blood. Houstown had changed from a neoclassical metropolis to an urban battleground. These sights were accompanied by odors: fire, chemicals, dirt, death, and alien unknowns. Through the atmosphere of destruction, the sounds of screams, energy discharges, battle cries, and cannon blasts carried to the group from Kingsdale.
     The fight for Houstown continued.
     Having discussed strategy on the way, the travelers decided on a charge directly toward the mayor’s estate. Rather than a roundabout path attempting to avoid combat, they agreed to take the shortest route possible to the largest refuge shelter, assisting any defenders in crisis along the way. Oli stayed in the lead, gaining altitude to scan the once-familiar streets for a passage. He brought them to a fallen section of the outer wall and gave directions to sections of clear road, one after another, with Daybreak’s robotic strength helping to move obstacles. On this path to the manor, they would pass a knot of fighting from which they could see flashes of crossfire.
     “Heads up,” called the Juicer sportsman. “I can see… something.” Oli’s vision worked perfectly. “We got a… monster? Or a vehicle, maybe. Geez, what the heck am I looking at? Is anybody else seeing this? It looks like the stage at a rock concert floating around with a bunch of eyeballs and backup dancers. It’s nuts… The lead singer there, in the middle – looks like he’s got a microphone stand – he is fused to the stage from the waist down by slimy machinery. Reptilian. No eyes. He’s got, like, eight tentacles coming out of his back… writhing. It’s gross, whatever it is. Somebody else please take a look at this thing, I feel like I’m taking crazy-pills.”
     “Yeah. Nearly there.” Lee made a jet-assisted leap to a rooftop. “What. The. Fuck. Why do those women not have pants? Why are they wearing… turtlenecked swimsuits and skullcap sunglasses? That is not an alien rock band. Those are sex workers and a demon pimp!”
     “Must be the Blind Warrior Women of Altara and a Slaver’s Barge,” Diego supplied.
     “Barge? Not even. That’s a platform at most. Standing room only. Where would you even put slaves?”
    “Huh. They must have companion vehicles somewhere. Those are Eylor Spheres floating around it and on the Minion’s staff. Bio-wizardry. Pinche chingaderos sucios. It sees through those. The eyeballs actually come from a living planet-being, just like--”
     “These outfits are outrageous!” Lee was still seething, spitting into the pickup of her helmet transmitter. “An insult to women and warriors. Goddamnit. This is one of those situations,” her tone shifted from fury to disgust to despair, “where it just doesn’t make any fucking sense.” The legendary power armor shook its fists in frustration.
     “The erratic writers of reality?” Lupe worked as gunner inside the Wilderness Cruiser. “Oh yeah, I see ‘em. Sure. In the unending book series describing the megaverse, that shit would be on the cover of, you know, the Main Book. The common thread throughout the universes is that women are trivialized as sex objects.” She slapped the periscope chassis making Aevox hiss an inhalation of air in reprimand. “For cryo’s sake! Why do I have humanoid breasts and not half a dozen teats on my stomach? Why? Male dickishness.”
     “And,” Aevox’s scientific curiosity persisted, “ze eyes?”
     “The women don’t seem to need eyes. The demon has too many, but not in his head, they’re not attached to him. Oh. I get it. Remote eyes to monitor squads of warriors in the field. It does seem to be directing the swimsuit soldiers.”
     “Probably telepathically.”
     “Ugh. Okay. So, we have a slaver demon pervert and what are obviously slave soldiers pressganged into service in skimpy outfits. Right?”
     “They’re being sent into battle with their asses hanging out. Let’s assume it’s not a healthy relationship. So, spare them if we can, and take out the tentacle monster, right?”
     “Right.”
     “Right.”
     The Slaver Minion, called ‘The Eylor Barge’ by beings with alien perspectives and a certain disregard for precise language – perhaps stemming from telepathic inclination – the platform was built for observation and defense. It possessed heavy shielding but only light weaponry, relying on the Slaver’s Staff of Eylor and Altarain troops for offense. The warrior women fought extremely well, with radar-like senses and unknown martial arts, they were difficult to subdue, but a combination of restrained punches and something Diego failed to describe any better than ‘carpet of adhesion’ allowed several to be overcome without fatality. The Minion platform, however, had to be hammered with munitions and mysticism before its Armor of Ithan projectors renewed every fifteen seconds. After several barrages, with assistance from the city’s defenders, the bio-wizard monstrosity was reduced to slag. The out-of-towners’ new allies were Houstown deputies who had been protecting a group of civilians. They had bunkered down at an advance warning from a family of psi-stalkers who had sensed the approach of supernatural monsters.
     Moving at the walking speed of the deputies surrounding it, and loaded with captive Altarain warriors held in restraints, the hovercar was packed with rescued civilians who filled in the newcomers on the events of the past few days. Splugorth slavers had boiled out of the nexus with various monsters in tow, sweeping through the harbor, they had overwhelmed the defenses, and poured into the city. Psi-stalkers, Dog Boys, and other psi-sensitives in town helped people to run and hide while police, militia, and adventurers held the slavers off. Through radio, psionics, and magical communication, they knew this to be the case citywide. The siege went on because the Minions of the Splugorth seemed to be determined to root out and capture every psi-stalker in town. Urban concentrations of psi-stalkers are rare and Houstown had seemingly been targeted for that reason.
     Many psi-stalkers make their home in Houstown because its people are understanding of their ways and provide for their needs. In town, psi-stalkers tend to keep to themselves and generally interact with others only when they need to feed. They eat by draining the life-energy from creatures. The process is not lethal or painful and a brisk trade is done where people allow a portion of their essence to be consumed for a small fee, the energy is regained by the donor after a night’s sleep, and Houstown consequently has very few beggars on the streets.
     Their next encounter as they crept through the battle-damaged city involved a smaller group of blind warriors who had been transmuted through parasitic symbiotes and microbial bio-wizardry to become Bio-Borgs, far deadlier than the average Altarain woman, only the most loyal are awarded these permanent alterations. Two were the alien magical equivalent of Juicers, though their augmentations differed wildly from each other. The other pair had undergone reconstruction that made them analogous to power armor. Aevox was intrigued by these beings who used biochemistry and organisms instead of electronics and mechanics. Rather than a Minion platform, the Blind Warrior Women had a mollusk creature with them. It looked like a bladed hovercar with clustered sensor lobes and, deplorably, tentacles which appeared from behind retractable shell plates. Diego identified it with two gibberish words: Murvolva Metztla. The fight was won thanks to the early warning given by the psychics among them.
When the travelers from Kingsdale saw how useful it could be to sense approaching supernatural beings, they thought about how many times it could have helped on the way down and realized that it is a standard Dog Boy ability which Lupe does not possess. Lee, Diego, and Oli were conscientious to avoid casting unintentional aspersions on her with careless glances or comments. Doc Aevox on the other hand, once she had collected samples from the fallen, practically interrogated Lupe about her genetic fluke, calling her a ‘mutation among mutants.’
     Fighting had been intense at the mayor’s estate and the manor was mostly destroyed. White marble, now scorched black, suggested Greco-Roman design. The garage attachment had been obliterated, a single tentacle-monster platform floated over the wreckage, the Slaver held its staff aloft and summoned repeated lightning strikes upon a massive hanger door that stood slanted against a tunnel sloping underground. Blind warriors assailed the armored door between thunderbolts, weakening it with plasma and explosives. They had developed a rhythm, and seemed to have been at it long enough for their fellow minions to seek captives elsewhere.
     The convoy stopped to allow Lee to take up a position several hundred feet away from the vulnerable eardrums of her allies. When ready, she signaled them to prepare for a simultaneous attack and triggered her suit’s firing sequence. The long cannon barrel flipped over her shoulder and Lee Barret aimed it at the underbelly of the platform creature. As she did, laser drills bored holes in the ground for anchoring pylons to extend into, telescoping out from the armor’s heels while toe hooks dug in as well. Every joint of the Glitter Boy locked up with robotic strength. The thruster pack that propelled the suit’s jet-assisted leaps performed its primary function as recoil dampeners. While the anti-sway systems engaged, ammunition accelerated rapidly along magnetic rails, reaching twice the speed of sound before leaving the muzzle, producing the ‘BOOM’ for which the gun is known. The shell casing broke apart in the air, two hundred slugs of one-inch long flechette tore into the flying monster-machine before it could hear the shot. Daybreak did not budge an inch. Absolute suppression of recoil is what allowed the weapon its two-mile range. Standing perfectly still among the swirling dust kicked up by the thruster pack, she fired a second time into the belly of the beast. Lee’s allies saw the platform buck in the air before they heard the sonic boom, firing a laser barrage which crossed the distance at lightspeed to strike the Minion at the same time as the second Boom Gun blast.
     While energy beams continued to batter the Slaver platform, the Glitter Boy remained stationary and moved only its helmet, the rail gun cannon, and the arm that held it, all swiveling with mechanical precision as Daybreak took aim at the rubble between Lee and the Altarains. Marble fragments peppered the Blind Warrior Women of Altara between successive shockwaves of sound that deafened and disoriented them. Shortly after the alien soldiers fell stunned and their assault on the bunker door ended, the reinforced slabs parted, and a small strike force emerged from the underground tunnel. One, in well-worn Buffalo riding-armor, used a repeating grenade launcher to hurl an armor-piercing salvo at the reeling platform, doing damage comparable to the Boom Gun.
     Wellington Industries made a weapon that hit as hard as the Boom Gun without the pesky recoil or deafening hazard, it could strike multiple targets in its blast radius, and its ammo could be found easily. Like the Quebecois reproductions of the Glitter Boy, this auto launcher threatened the calm, stable center of Lee’s universe that was her armor’s reputation. The Glitter Boy was known for its toughness just as the Boom Gun was known for its power. What was unrivaled has been surpassed. Perhaps it is the nature of progress to revise fact, but Lee saw in these broken constants the inconsistency of reality, the madness in its authors. Although the megaverse vacillates with change, Glitter Boys are as reliable as ever. Her ancient rail gun had better range than any grenade launcher could ever achieve. Lee’s universe may be spinning out of control, but the axis it revolved around was sure and stable, immovable as a Glitter Boy.
     The flaming wreckage of the Slaver fell from the sky, and its deafened compliment of blind warriors were put into restraints. Plumes of smoke and ash swirled around Daybreak, creating moving patterns of shadow and sunlight on its mirrored surface while the anti-sway systems disengaged. A victorious cry went up among the bunker’s defenders, beginning with the woman wielding the Wellington auto launcher. She removed the bushy, buffalo-maned headdress to reveal utterly bald, pale white skin streaked with war paint. Clearly a leader among the fighters, she led another cheer for their savior before approaching the shimmering armor.
     Lee pointed the barrel of her Boom Gun safely into the sky, which also happened to be a heroic pose, and activated the loudspeaker. “Somebody call for a rescue?”
     The psi-stalker laughed. “You found the right place! Glitter Boys are always welcome in Houstown. We could hear that goddamn cannon all the way underground! Hoowee, I can tell this ain’t no Coalish copy neither, you got yourself one of the real ones!” Lee began to like this woman, and to warm over her dislike of the grenade launcher. While the Altarain captives were bundled into the shelter, the fighters kept a watch on their surroundings, their leader stood relaxed in front of the towering power armor. “Hope you don’t mind us taking custody of your defeated, we try to separate the humanoid warriors from their masters when we can.”
     “I agree,” Lee said as the Wilderness Cruiser and its police escort arrived. “Let’s get these people secure and talk inside.”

                                                                                                                                                                                                 8
     The leader of the strike force was called Topaz of the Long Knives Tribe. A town councilor and community guide among psi-stalkers in Houstown, she was known to have once run with the She-Devils, a Pecos gang, where she acted as a lieutenant for Lianna the Wild. Sealing the doors behind them, Councilor Topaz brought the reinforcements, and the rescues, and the prisoners down the hangar chute and into the secure bunker. It was a large, subterranean space holding several robot vehicles, power armor, and other crafts, also many people, and a surprising number of animals. The incoming deputies went to find an officer to report to while the civilians they had saved mingled with the other evacuees. A giant excused himself from a small crowd and approached, many followed to greet the newcomers. Orpheus the Titan, Lord Mayor of Houstown, had swapped his toga for chainmail, ancient European style, complete with a plated skirt and a giant-sized sword. He stood twice the height of a tall human and smiled down at them with his arms spread wide.
     “Welcome, friends. Unhappy is the land in need of heroes. I am Orpheus. Thank you for coming to our aid. Our debts of gratitude make us yours to call upon.”
     Lee stepped up to him, the Glitter Boy a few feet shorter than the titan, and held out Daybreak’s clawed, robotic hand. “Happy to help.”
     Orpheus used a forearm grip to shake with her and repeated the act with each of the responders to his distress call. Lupe and Diego were at no risk from his grip; unlike Oli, Orpheus was born with supernatural strength and was accustomed to it, restraint came naturally to him. The lord mayor knelt to greet Oli Minnesota. “By Jove, one of the Mountain’s Children! From where do you hail, my friend? Share we a homeland?”
     “My folks were from Palladium. I’m from Tolkeen.”
     “Then we know a shared pain.”
     Introductions were made between everyone who was integral to defending and caring for the gathered refugees. A rumpled, yet amused-looking human with a handlebar mustache, wearing a Branaghan armored duster, the Sheriff was originally from Texas in the pre-rifts nineteenth century. Time is a dimension every bit as much as Palladium or Wormwood, and he was rifted here involuntarily, much as Orpheus was, a fact the two had bonded over, becoming involved. Orpheus’s wife is waiting for him in Hades, and while he lives, she allows him only male companions. The Sheriff’s name was Sundance, and like Councilor Topaz, he had once been an outlaw with a gang called the Wild Bunch run by Butch Cassidy. Now reformed as a lawman, he relayed the report of the heroes from Kingsdale and their tactics from the deputies who had arrived with them.
     Glad that they had been taking Altarain prisoners, a tall, tattooed woman said that the Blind Warrior Women were believed to be acting under compulsion. Oli was able to confirm this by performing a psychic ‘object read’ on the confiscated weapons of the warriors in custody. The Altarain were being held by the Sheriff’s people in the hope that they would defect from Splugorth servitude after the battle was won. Lupe found the underlayer of optimism and freedom in their planning to be refreshing. There were no Blind Warrior Men of Altara, the women reproduce asexually in a natural cloning process that Aevox vowed to find out about. The Metztla were a psychic race of monsters with a strict hive-like caste system. They are truly alien, sharing little in common with humanoid lifeforms, inscrutable, their presence here is presumed to be for sadistic amusement. The three types accompanying the slavers were the Murex, Volute, and Murvolva, the more autonomous breeds. The tall, tattooed human supplying this information was not a citizen of Houstown, she was another hero who had responded to the distress call; like Senator Arcadia, she was an old friend of Orpheus’s and familiar with calls through the aether. Her knowledge of Splugorth minions was due to many lifetimes of opposition to their influence as one of the legendary True Atlantean Undead Slayers.
     True Atlanteans are often taller than other humans because they continue to grow throughout their adulthood, and their average lifespan is five hundred years. Due to time warps caused by dimensional travel, and the passage of time differing in each dimension, Atlantean lives can seem to stretch over thousands of years from the subjective viewpoint of Earth’s linear time. Many live today who remember Atlantis of old and once longed for its return, their dreams had become a nightmare when their homeland reappeared and their hated enemy the Splugorth claimed it. The woman answering the call for help with a small group of her fellow heroes was known as Brimo Cybele, she had lived on Earth more than ten thousand years ago during the height of the Atlantean Empire. Born in Anatolia, she was known to the Phrygians as ‘Mountain Mother’. Greek myths remember Cybele for her love of chariots and wild music, in their language Brimo means ‘angry’ or ‘terrifying’. She returns to Earth from her megaversal travels periodically to assess the situation and help where she can. Lately she has been in Texas with Reid’s Rangers, patrolling the Río Grande. After recurrent tragedies in their history, the marks of heritage given to children involves tattoo magic that makes all True Atlanteans adept at hunting vampires, Undead Slayers specialize in it.
     Out of her power armor for the first time in two days, Lee Barrett was smelly with old sweat and stiff in body and demeanor, grunting words. “Where is Atlantis?”
     The Eye of Mystic Knowledge was visible, tattooed in a pyramid on her throat, as Brimo Cybele lifted her chin to regard Lee. A spear was inked in black over one brow, and her eyes twinkled like fire. Wearing a polyester robe with many wrinkles that indicated the garment’s frequent use and storage in a pocket, Cybele sauntered wordlessly to a satchel lying on the ground and rifled through it, returning with a rolled parchment. On the hood of the Wilderness Cruiser, she unrolled a large map which depicted the entire Earth with continents and oceans overlayed by ley lines and many tiny notations in Greek. The size and detail of the map drew everyone closer, none faster than Diego. A hand tattooed with a flaming shield beckoned to Lee and snaked around her shoulder while a hand marked with a black sun pointed due east of Houstown, at an island-continent sprawled across the Atlantic. Cybele pointed out the Azores and Bermuda Islands at either tip and noted that Atlantis lay closer to North America than South America, its opposite shores nearing Europe and Africa.
     Aevox tapped a neon pink fingernail on a colored patch overlapping the western tip of Atlantis. “What is zis?”
     “The Bermuda Triangle. Demon Triangles are regions of dangerous magical activity; random rifts, ley line storms, time dilation, that sort of thing.”
     “And zese,” the Body Fixer’s hand darted around the map, “are similar?”
     “There are six major magical triangles and a scattering of smaller ones.”
     “Zey are connected by zese lines which have numerous intersections.”
     “Those are ley lines and the super-nexus points.”
     “Do zey look familiar to anyone?” Doc Aevox’s eye whirred mechanically as it scanned the conference around her car.
     “Sure,” said Diego Delgato. “This is the best map I’ve ever seen, but all Ley Line Walkers know the major nexus points and triangles. Anybody phasing long distances needs a chart to plot a course. These notations remind me of Menelaus’s map.”
     “Ah!” The fire in Brimo Cybele’s eyes blazed. “Where is the old warlord?”
     “Compromised.” Diego nodded acceptance of her pitying look.
     Impatiently, the Cyber-Horseman cocked her neck and hips in opposite directions as she drew a handheld computer from a purse. Holographically, she displayed a network of colorful strands and blobs. “Behold ze immune system.” With curved lines instead of straight, the bloodstream and nervous system looked similar to the ley lines on the map, glands were super-nexuses. Aevox compared the major and minor triangles to swollen lymph nodes and lymphatic vessels, looking around for confirmation and seeing stunned faces. “Looks like we have a sick patient here.” The doctor concluded her prognosis matter-of-factly. “I suggest zat, to reduce inflammation in zese triangle areas, find ze analogies of enzymes and cytokines wizin zis system and regulate zeir flow.”
     Returning to immediate matters, through multiple sources and many questions, the group was able to form a timeline of recent events and use observations of the Splugorth’s actions to guess at their goals. It was clear that Houstown had been targeted for its psi-stalker population, presumably Splugorth spies had visited. Abductees were being teleported to containment barges stationed near the offshore nexus; these were little more than floating cages guarded by robotic drones, they were apparently waiting for the raiding teams to portal back to Atlantis together. The forces assembled to defend Houstown would divide into two, a rescue party and a war party. To make ready, matters such as communication, coordinating specific tactics, treating the wounded, and other logistical details had to be resolved. Everyone got busy where their skills applied. Among the issues at hand were a group of Juicers who were restless while waiting. Oli offered to speak with them and pass out cigarettes.
     “Egad! A dwarf Juicer.” Orpheus gasped. “But then… how long…?”
     “I got a few years left.”
     The titan from Palladium said sadly, “The Mountain’s Children should endure centuries.”
     “Yah, I got one century under my belt,” Oli said lightly, chuckling. “It was war, don’tcha know? Heck, we were all gonna die. The way I see it, I got four extra years outta The Conversion.”
     The advanced warnings of approaching supernatural menaces that had saved most of the people in the bunker were not provided solely by psi-stalkers, many mutant animals were involved in this conference. Dogs and rats were the most common among them, both runaways and freeborn, but there were bats, cats, simians, and others who could only have come from Lone Star. As the psychics discussed how best to spread out and protect the battlegroups, Lupe circled among them feeling closer to these people than any mutant hybrid or psi-stalker in the Coalition. They treated her as one of them without reservation, even though she lacked their psionic senses and would perform a different role in the fight to come.

                                                                                                                                                                                                9
     Doc Aevox did what she could for the sick and wounded, now she removed her own bionic arm. The articulated humanoid limb was easily detatched from the modular socket of her shoulder that she had acquired in the New West along with the bulkier multi-tool arm she would use for combat and field surgery. The Wilderness Cruiser was too cumbersome for urban combat, Aevox would be fighting on hoof, relying on her cybernetic speed and bionic body armor. She was partnered with Lee, Aevox’s cybernetic sound filtration system made her immune to the deafening effect of the Boom Gun. The two of them would be focused on disabling the warriors of Altara, a task suited to the Ixion Sensory Deprivation Web. Zapper Guns, ultrasonics, concussion grenades, gases, and other stun weapons would also be used by the war party for this purpose. Flanking them on the ground would be Orpheus, Sundance, and Topaz, along with psychic spotters, and many others. Lupe, Diego, and Oli would be joined by Brimo Cybele and three others on the rescue party flying out to sea.
     Diego smirked when he saw Orpheus casting a spell to grant himself a charismatic aura before addressing the troops. “Time is short. People are in peril. Be swift.” The brief, magically enhanced words inspired those who heard them with feelings of trust and friendship. They were ready. Instead of leading the charge, Orpheus created a Mystic Portal that would transport the war party to a point up to two thousand feet away. A place was chosen that would allow them to surprise some Splugorth minions who had pinned down a group of survivors. The Juicers passed though first, eagerly hurling themselves into combat.
     As they did, Diego, on his wing board, drifted closer to Lee and Aevox who were waiting their turn, saying, “See? He must be a level twenty Mystic, and that’s as far as he can portal.” The Body Fixer made a comment about length being very important to young males which made the RPA Pilot laugh. Lee Barrett was not nervous at all, this is what she did, protecting a city was just another day on the job for her. Uneasy, Doc Aevox did not hesitate, she hefted her energy glaive and galloped through the portal when her turn came, with Daybreak close behind.
     As Orpheus cast Mystic Portal, the hanger doors were opened for robot power armor and other large and flying conveyances to emerge. Exiting in order of speed, the Icarus Flight System was the first out, piloted by a Phaeton Juicer named Bex. Next were Oli and Lupe on the Rocket Cycle together. Then the ‘Sidewinder’ SAMAS flown by Ruqti, a Machine Person from the Three Galaxies called “Rusty” by fellow Reid’s Rangers, Rusty was the last remaining of the group that came with Brimo Cybele. She followed on a leatherwing, an animal conjured from a tattoo on her chest. Beast riding in any form always thrills psi-stalkers and simvan, and a cheer went up at the sight of the Undead Slayer flying on a saddled dinosaur in her Greek hoplite armor and bristle-topped helmet, tattoos accessible for activation, waving her glowing bow. Last of the rescue party was the craft that would carry all the prisoners back home, and it made Oli nervous. The Death Bringer APC looked like a flying black candy bar with a skull on the front and skulls on the side, it was an iconic weapon of the Coalition States, used in most of their military actions over the past century, including the war on Tolkeen. Now the Death Bringer would bring life as a rescue vehicle. The armored personnel carrier was piloted by Bluto, the Dog Boy who stole it and would act as their lookout against monsters, Diego rode inside. Slower robot vehicles and tanks followed them up the ramp.
     Civilians and critically wounded defenders remained inside the bunker; after the portal elapsed and the hanger doors closed, they were safe and secure.
     To the minions of the Splugorth, who had teleported to North America, a sudden magical appearance was less surprising than the people that lived there. Certain archetypes were found only there, and among them were incredible individuals. The American Gunslinger for instance, exemplified by Sheriff Sundance, a culture as prevalent in the New West as it was in the Old West. Blind Warrior Women often fired from behind total cover, relying on their ‘radar’ sense for targeting, it is this ability that made them uniquely able to appreciate the technique used by Sundance to penetrate their defilades. His sharpshooting skill allowed him to ricochet projectiles around corners. Though he could perform this trick shot with lasers reflected from mirrored surfaces such as a Glitter Boy, Sundance preferred hard ammo and a satisfying kick. Traditional bullets were his specialty; as he was fond of saying, he could make lead fly like a homing pigeon. Altarains were humanoid with mortal vulnerability, to protect them from attacks they relied on their armor which did not cover their arms and legs. “I feel bad kneecapping you ladies,” called Sundance. “I’m trying not to kill y’all. If’n you’d kindly vamoose, skedaddle, and scram, I’d be much obliged.” Paired Colt .45 revolvers were his weapons of choice, but, when in need of greater range and damage, Wilk’s-Remmington offered a line of high-tech modern weaponry with Old West styling like the ‘Big Man’ and ‘Kingdom Come’ pistols.
     There were many American technologies that were as proven and unique as the people, some equipment gave individuals a chance at greatness, such as Lee Barrett and her Glitter Boy – a weapon the Splugorth were not expecting. Juicer tech is not exclusive to North America, but Juicer Jump Boots are. Absurd aerial stunts made possible by these rocket shoes, and the reckless acrobatics of the wearers allowed them to get the drop on fortified positions and reach airborne monsters. Fiery bursts from the jets were used to kill one Metztla by jumping on it repeatedly. People who willingly undergo combat augmentations have traded normal lives for lives of combat and adventure, and it shows. Each Juicer fought with the wild abandon of one who has resolved to die and feels no pain. Similar to a Juicer’s shortened lifespan, recipients of M.O.M. implants develop cumulative insanities that make the future less bright and the present vital. Mind-Over-Matter nanotechnology can be found worldwide, but each Crazy is an undeniably singular individual. The madman wielding the flamethrower in the battle for Houstown had succumbed to a delusional sense of invincibility and a battle-frenzied bloodlust, he was also immune to pain while under the influence of his power-by-association food: tequila. He was inexplicably known only as The Admiral. “I can hear your thoughts, and I can smell your fear!” He screamed this at the fearless minions of the Splugorth. “It smells like bacon!”
     The peoples and the cultures of North America also produce Preachers, a calling that persisted through cataclysm and dark age with hopefulness and wrathfulness in equal measure. The Preacher fighting with the war party was the ‘Fire and Brimstone’ type, of the other defenders, he was the most comfortable with The Admiral, often found nearby knocking down foes with his Bandit BigBore Sawed-Off he called “The Mule” and sermonizing about life’s origin in fire and life’s return to fire. Orpheus and Sundance kept a watchful eye on the two of them. “Try not to burn down the rest of the city, boys.” The Sheriff reminded them of this repeatedly, but he also kept shouting, “Remember the Alamo!” which no one did.
     If psi-stalkers evolved elsewhere on Earth their numbers are not as great as in North America. Continuously foiling the efforts of the slavers who had come for them, the psi-stalkers’ value is obvious to their allies. As thralls, they would make outstanding hunt guides or cannily elusive prey, surely introducing such a valuable commodity on the dimensional market would earn prestige among peers and rivals for the Splugorth master of Atlantis, Splynncryth. Able to subsist on ambient magical energy, psi-stalkers prefer to hunt for the ‘flavor’ of live prey, they are predators of the supernatural, born to hunt things more powerful than they are. Wild daring, intense focus, sharpened senses, human intelligence, empathic cooperation, psychic coordination, these were their advantages, though they often had modern weaponry too, and animal companions that provided them with unique tactical opportunities and superior mobility. The deadliest examples on the battlefield were two Grigleapers, alien insects with devastating pounce attacks, that would not be controllable were it not for the psychic bond they shared with a superior predator: Councilor Topaz.
     North America is a hotbed of dangers, a smorgasbord of conflict where one is always sandwiched between enemies. The Xiticix and the vampires squeezing inward, the Magic Zone and the Coalition States pushing outward. The continent is pincered by two super-nexus points, and the bizarre is commonplace. Where there is always something stronger, it is the clever who survive. Americans face the hazards of a thousand worlds, all who live there have endured the harshest trials. From a population of hardened survivors emerge warriors who can be measured against any foe on Earth and beyond, because they already have been. The war party showed their mettle to the Splugorth who had come to their land.
     The invaders fought back with fanatical drive, alien detachment, and the cold-blooded sadism of the truly evil. Some defenders of Houstown were tormented before death, their suffering intentionally prolonged. Others were abducted to be forced into slavery, teleported away by Staves of Eylor. The war party was mutilated with psionic Bio-Manipulation and flesh-eating bio-wizardry, dismembered by enchanted blades and supernatural blasts, boiled and crushed in their armor, driven mad and eaten alive. Losses they suffered were offset by rescued cells of resistance joining the push.
     Also joining the fray, the rescue party made a flyby attack. A rainbow of variously colored beams struck a Volute Metztla – a floating tower of chitinous plates, sensor lobes, webbed vanes, and spidery claws – a meteor shower of mini-missiles rained down next. The rescuers could be seen afterward, speeding by on their way to other objectives; the Death Bringer APC high above like a skull-faced nanny watching over unruly children.
     The Icarus Flight System is a jet plane without a cockpit, without armor, without landing gear or aerodynamics; it barely had wings, just a skeletal frame between thrusters bristling with lasers and missiles. The pilot strapped into this with only their personal body armor for protection, speed is their primary defense and superhuman durability is a requirement to withstand the G-forces of maneuvering. Phaeton Juicers are specially calibrated and conditioned for such extremes, gaining the ability to ‘push the envelope’ of their vehicles, driving them to peak performance. Bex sped the Icarus Flight System toward a Slaver Minion at nearly eight hundred miles per hour, gaining the monster’s attention with lasers and speeding away again. She performed a corkscrew loop in the air and returned to fly circles around the platform.
     To keep the monster off balance and prevent it from harming Bex, Rusty launched a spray of grenades to hold its attention. Called the ‘Big Bang’ assault rifle, the Bandit 6000 is the standard weapon carried to compliment the shoulder-mounted ‘Toaster’ launchers of the Sidewinder SAMAS. Produced by Bandito Arms alongside the Wild Weasel, these knockoffs were built using designs scavenged from the defunct military base at Area 51. No one knows what the acronym SAMAS stands for, it was not in the records, and the Coalition will not comment on what they consider to be their proprietary technology, most people call them Sams.
     While the Slaver was distracted, Oli silently coasted in behind it, decelerating from top speed. When he was close enough, Lupe jumped from the hovercycle onto the platform. Hundreds of feet in the air, the She Wolf threw herself at the monster, diving between its flailing tentacles to land on its back. Lupe immediately attacked the creature’s mind with her super-psionic power of Mental Possession.
     When fear is insufficient, Splugorth Intelligences control their minions with psychic domination, accordingly they do not engineer servants that are especially resistant to psionics. Two minds grappled for control of the hybrid bio-machine body. Lifetimes were hurled against one another. Both were soldiers of fascism; one defiant and self-motivated to seek liberty, the other a willing pawn resigned to abuse from above in the hierarchy as long as it can abuse those below itself. In an instant Lupe seized control, suppressing the will of the Minion and turning slaver into slave. The woman who had freed herself from bondage shuddered at this oppressive use of power, and at the hideous monstrosity she now inhabited. Tentacles writhed. Her own comatose body slumped over onto the platform to which the creature was grafted, Lupe used the tentacles on the Minion’s back to secure her mindless form as she flew the platform into the waiting Death Bringer, the Eyes of Eylor linked to the Minion followed along. Rusty and Cybele joined Lupe and Diego in the hold of the armored personnel carrier with the captured Slaver. Bluto flew out over the Gulf of Mexico with Bex and Oli in the lead.
     Passing the harbor, they noted the deliberate destruction of aquatic vessels; the slavers had tried to eliminate the possibility of a rescue such as this one. The rescue party dropped low over the water and made for the end of the closest ley line, hoping to approach under cover of the neon blue emanation. The tip of the ley line was a gradual build of color, strands of magic coalesced from the air and water into a flow of energy thousands of feet thick and many miles long across the surface of the gulf, molding to the waves. They entered the line, traveling with the flow, though at a much greater speed. The glowing blue coruscation permeated armor, bulkheads, flesh, and bone, passing through solid matter and illuminating the interior of the hold in eerie, shadowless sapphire. Silent, intangible filaments bathed every molecule that they touched in magic. Bluto, the Dog Boy pilot, began replenishing spent psychic energy more rapidly, as did Lupe’s unconscious body, likewise, the Minion platform she inhabited and its Eyes of Eylor increased recovery of their magic stores. Cybele and Diego did as well, they also gained increased awareness of the ley line and its surroundings.
     Diego’s connection to the line and to magic itself allowed him to sense sources of psionic and magical energy along its length, he knew the exact location of each captured psychic and magician, as well as the positions of the guards and magical devices that held them. Three slave barges were stationed within the line in order to recharge the bio-wizardry that would rift them home, and to nourish the captive psi-stalkers. Diego sent one-way mental messages of reassurance to the prisoners without any chance of being overheard by the enemy. He then told his allies what to expect.
     They brought the APC to a halt one mile from the nexus, the barges sat just on the other side. Oli and Bex brought their vehicles in for a landing as Lupe flew out of the hold in the body of the Slaver. Leaving her own body behind, Lupe would go first and yet not be there. Encircled by prosthetic Eylor symbiotes that acted as her eyes, she was both accompanied and alone. She went boldly incognito. The spirit of the She Wolf willed the monster body toward its cohorts. The top speed of the platform was that of a moped, a pitiful 53mph or 85kph; apparently the Splugorth used the metric system. As Lupe moved through the ley line, the fantastic phenomenon that was an expression of pure magic became boring to her, the luminous wisps wavering hypnotically became nothing more than repetitive static, ignorable visual interference. At the intersection of ley lines, their blue threads of magic were more densely packed and crosshatched, the color doubly bright, but the energies passed through each other without effect; the nexus was dormant for now. A rift could open at any moment, but Lupe trusted Diego to warn her if one began to form.
     The slave barges were little more than floating rectangular cages, each more than half-filled with captives, monitored by an Altarain Bio-Borg on the roof, and four robotic gun emplacements. The Kittani-built Spider Defense Systems were computerized mechanisms, like quadrupedal cannons, that were invisible to Diego’s senses. The Kittani are primates with seven fingers, two thumbs, and exposed brains; a species of geniuses enslaved for the infrequent engineering needs of a culture steeped in bio-wizardry. Splugorth minions used technology so rarely that the micro-transceiver Lupe wore in the ear of the tentacle monster did not need the scrambler and encryption she and her allies used, the interdimensional slavers did not monitor radio frequencies. Lupe used an Eye of Eylor to signal her approach telepathically, to the Blind Warrior Women, it seemed that this Slaver Minion was the first to return from Houstown, and that all was proceeding according to plan; they had no reason to suspect that this platform was possessed by the enemy, and no license to question their superiors.
     In preparation for this ruse, Brimo Cybele had told Lupe many things about Splugorth protocols and society. Their internal hierarchy was rigidly structured, a simple chart was drawn showing rank in a vertical line and equals in horizontal lines with boxes around classes. Lupe had trouble understanding how Slaver Minions such as the one she currently possessed were members of the elite class and rated above dragons. Cybele explained that dragons were respected, but independent and self-governing, like cats. They revere dragons, but Splugorth civilization depends upon subservience. Unwavering obedience was bred and conditioned into their minions because servility benefited the masters. Just like the Coalition States and their Dog Boys, thought Lupe. Their asset would be their undoing. Lupe planned to weaponize their chain of command.
     Arriving at the rally point in the body of the Slaver Minion, Lupe was the ranking officer. The blind bio-borgs guarding the captives complied immediately when commanded to deactivate the turret ‘bots. They also shut down the stasis fields keeping the prisoners immobilized and boarded the platform without question. When Lupe carried them out to sea, they simply waited to see where they were going. The augmented Altarains did not complain when the creature’s tentacles entwined them, a scan of their minds would show a litany of such abuses, enough to warrant that their entry in whatever World Book described the Blind Warrior Women of Altara would include a picture of a Splugorth Slaver Minion licking their face while they stood blankly enduring it. They showed only moderate surprise and no displeasure when Lupe plunged them all into the waters of the gulf.
     Waking in her own body, Lupe reported that the captives were now unguarded. Diego and Cybele immediately phased down the line, teleporting themselves among the abductees with flawless precision, they gave comfort to the prisoners while the rest of the rescue party came to free them. Once everyone was aboard the Death Bringer – over one hundred people – they destroyed the barges and flew back to Houstown with Oli in the lead. Bex raced back in the Icarus Flight System to rejoin the war party in the battle on land.
     The last Metztla lay dead on top of the Titan Combat Robot – a giant mechanical linebacker trapped under a massive demon oyster. Doc Aevox was working to cut the crew free from the robot vehicle with laser welders and a diamond-bladed chainsaw housed in her multi-tool arm. Altarain warriors lay unconscious in many places, support teams gathered them into confinement, other warrior women lay dead, having fought to the end as their service demanded. The psi-stalkers and mutant animals that had been the targets of the Splugorth were used as bait to lure the slavers into various ambushes and traps that laid waste to the monsters and incapacitated their humanoid slave soldiers. Now, three Slaver Minions were all that remained, abandoning the Blind Warrior Women as they flew their hybrid platform bodies in tight formation toward the nexus and escape. The people of Houstown attacked the fleeing monsters without mercy.
     It is not commonly known who Ithan was, nor what form the famous armor took, but the Armor of Ithan spell creates an invisible force field of magical protection. The Minion platforms each had four organic mechanisms – bio-wizard organs – that each projected the Armor of Ithan in quarter-sphere sections and rapidly renewed them. To maximize their defense, each platform spun in the air, spreading damage across multiple sections. The three Minions also turned in a circle together to shield each other, pinwheeling out to sea. Their attackers could only target the group, not individuals, and they could not damage any one of them fast enough to destroy it. The Slavers coordinated their maneuvers telepathically; keeping their circle tight, they lost little speed as they traveled. Pirouetting in unison around a moving central point, the Slaver Minions withdrew from Houstown in a monstrous ballet. The Eyes of Eylor orbited each revolving Minion in slower counter-spin, threading in between each other like clockwork, keeping watch, providing extra sensory information, and increasing telepathic coordination, the eyes also attacked. Everywhere, deadly lightning bolts fell from the sky. Energy Disruption spells blocked sensors and communications of the war party. Interwoven auras of fear and befuddlement surrounded the Slavers, slowing and disorganizing attacks on them, robbing them of the synchronicity necessary to penetrate their defense. The shielded nucleus of spinning platforms was surrounded by an electron cloud of terror, confusion, and destruction.
     The defenders of Houstown were dismayed when a Mystic Portal opened in the path of the fleeing enemies, promising to whisk them away from reprisal. More than vengeance, they needed to send a message back to the Splugorth masters, a message of silence and loss: no one will return to you from this place, there is nothing to gain from attacking us. The war party desperately attacked to prevent escape, missiles screamed in protest and incantations were shouted in opposition. Neither Mind Bolt nor particle beam could stop them, no sorcerous conjuration nor poisonous gas could slow them. Plasma and profanities poured out from the people of Houstown. Smoke and explosions filled the sky around the Minions as they drew closer to the portal. Near to it, the dark clouds of violent effort were parted by a visage of death. An enormous black skull pierced the smoke and terror, glinting with dispassionate solidity. The prow of the Death Bringer rammed full speed into the trio of Slavers. The bio-wizard hybrids of the Splugorth broke apart on the face of the Coalition war machine, the massive bulk of technology was adamant against the alien invaders. The Slavers shattered and fell, with them went the schemes of their masters. People aboard the aircraft roared their victory over their abductors.

                                                                                                                                                                                                10
     Six people were needed to carry the bloody form of Orpheus the Titan into the bunker under his destroyed home. The Lord Mayor had repeatedly protected others from harm by shielding them with his own body. Teary-eyed, Sundance hovered nearby. “He did that when he first came to town too, God bless ‘im. Folk was fighting hard against them sea serpents, and here he come, wading in, taking the worst of it on his self. He brought hope in a tough spot, and everybody was happy to do things his way. In time, we built this manor together… Look at it all now.” Tears flowed and the Sheriff broke off. “Aw, heck!”
     “Is he…” Diego searched for a word other than dead.
     Following those carrying the fallen hero, Aevox used a portable bio-scan. “He lives.”
     “Yeah, we’ll be living in the bunker for a spell,” said Sundance. “Suppose plenty of folk will. We’ll house everyone who needs it. Blind Warrior Women too, I reckon.”
     None of the Altarain prisoners had spoken until the defeat of their Splugorth masters, now their demeanor had changed entirely. They readily defected, disavowing allegiance, confirming that they were slaves who knew no other way of life. Freedom was an entirely new prospect for the Blind Warrior Women of Altara, as foreign to them as peace. Living in Houstown, they would learn both. Of course, after proving themselves nonviolent toward their jailers, the women were free to go. The Altarains were thankful to be alive, and almost all of them declared a new loyalty to Houstown, or in many cases, to the individual who had spared them in battle. While their friendship and devotion to protecting the city from further attacks were appreciated, the newly freed warriors were encouraged to live for a while with nothing to do but care for themselves and find their own interests and desires, to look within for purpose. There would be plenty of time to help rebuild the city if they wished and to join society.
     “I’d like to stay and help rebuild,” announced Lee.
     “Glitter Boys are always welcome in Houstown,” said Councilor Topaz again.
     Lee, out of her armor, sweaty, and surrounded by Altarains, looked to Lupe who was shaking hand after hand receiving thanks and congratulations. “What about you? You mentioned looking for the Mutant Underground.”
     “You have found it,” said Topaz, gesturing around her. “Houstown is a final haven for many. We send aid to hidden communities and help people on the run. You are a great hero, Lupe, many here would be your ally. Help us restore this place as a refuge and find yourself a home here as well.”
     “I’d like nothing more,” Lupe answered honestly.
     “And you, my dear,” said Aevox to Oli, “let us see if we cannot get zese wires off of you. Hmmmm?”
     “Detox?”
     With otherworldly confidence she took his hand and said, “Count on it. I am called a Body Fixer for a reason.” They followed behind the procession carrying the mayor toward the infirmary when Doc Aevox turned back suddenly. “Oh, Diego. I was zinking of Cybele’s map. Yes, zere you are, Brimo darling. What your system needs is a tonsillectomy.”
     “What?”
     “Your planet’s energy flow has numerous unhealthy inflammations. One of ze energy centers is being treated as a foreign body and attacked. You must find ze offending organ and remove it. Reroute and revitalize.”
     Diego slowly repeated, “foreign energy center,” while he and Cybele looked at each other. Their eyes widened in revelation, and they spoke in unison.
     “Atlantis.”
     “Shunt it back to the pocket dimension it fell into when the super-rift was closed.”
     “That drained most of Earth’s magic last time,” the Ley Line Walker’s mind raced, “maybe we can find a way to D-shift the island and keep a useable amount of magic, open rifts only when we want them…”
     The Undead Slayer gripped his arms. “A New Age of Wonder!”
     “Maybe we can delocalize the triangles somehow. Or use their surplus to trigger the rift. I need to check my notes. My mentor taught me to monitor and catalogue ley line output and rift activity. Menelaus was part of a network of scholars doing the same thing. Maybe I can get in touch with them. We’d need some really powerful Shifters.”
     Brimo Cybele laughed and picked up Diego in a spinning hug. “Menelaus was one of us! Those ley line chroniclers are True Atlantean Scholars and their students.” She set him down and looked into his eyes. “Students like you. Come with me, Diego Delgato, I will take you to Stonehenge and introduce you to the Court at Camelot. Together we will save the world.”
     Diego’s life’s work had new purpose. Ejecting the Splugorth stronghold was just a side benefit. He was excited to regulate magic and make it dependable. He felt proud continuing not only the work of his mentor, but also that of his Mayan ancestors. There was much work ahead, but it could be done.
     “Fix the world, Diego.” Oli Minnesota planned to live here for a while longer. “Rewrite this crazy reality of ours, and when they make a Revised Edition of the Main Book, there’ll be a picture of you on the cover.”
                                                                                                                                                                                               

                                                                                                                                                                                                             The End