The Stormcrow, A Superhero's Tale Options

[WellTemperedClavier]

It's only logical that the nature spirits would rally.

January's thoughts bring up a good point: having an enormous entity can be useful, but it poses a danger as well. If I recall correctly, this was always the danger of having elephant cavalry in ancient and medieval battles. If the elephants got spooked, they could do a lot of damage to your own forces.

And like any good tank, the Fred Hampton will probably need some healing soon. Definitely enough MMO folks in this Alliance to realize this, I'm sure.

Yup, Gadget to the rescue!

Looks like the dual technique is being put to good use. Nice to see them build on that.

It's interesting how useful MMO/RPG terminology actually ends up being for this kind of situation. Sure, it might not encompass some of the complexities, but it gets the ideas across in a pretty effective way.

Annnddd... it looks like the tides have shifted. The fall of Colossus has broken the morale of the Abyssal force. Now I'm sure the Alliance will press the advantage... but I have a feeling Nátthrafn still has a trick or two up his sleeve.

[SubRosa]

Acadian: There are so many supers involved now, it is hard for me to keep track of them all. I had to create a list of which ones showed up at what times. In fact, here it is:

Characters at the Battle of Belle Isle:
(First Wave)
Stormcrow
Gola
Blood Raven

(Second Wave)
Lighthammer
Gadget
Ôkami
Blackhawk
Isaac
Archie
Vortex
Hungry Ghost
Riven
Thunderbolt

(Third Wave)
The Veil
Stinger
Zero Point
Helios
White Fell = 18 total

(Fourth Wave)
Kaelin
Harper
Viuda
Calypso = 22 total

(Fifth Wave)
Y Ddraig Aur
Silverlight
Mishipeshu
Unnamed Air Elemental
Unnamed Salamander
= 27 total

(Sixth Wave)
The Technocrat
Thalassa
Hammerstone
Tick Tock
Annihilator
Frostbite
+ others from Europe = 33 total named heroes (approximately 39 in all including unnamed ones)


Renee: The battle is not over yet. It has been a series of pushes back and forth. This was just one push against the Abyssals. But Nasty Nate still has plenty of fight left in him, and he's about to push right back.

The relationship between January and Hannah is a good thing to keep your eye upon. In fact, this week's episode is the entire reason I created Hannah. She is going to be very important, to January at least.

That is right, I forgot that Gygax was from the Midwest, and that TSR was based in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. They probably weren't too far from where the RL pictograph of Mishipeshu is located.


WellTemperedClavier: The Colossus is sort of like the Davey Crockett nuclear recoilless rifle. You can't shoot it far enough away to not get yourself killed by it! You are right about the use of elephants. They could tip the battle in your favor. Or they could panic and trample your own troops. In this case the Colossus did a little of both.

A while back Gadget did describe January's romance strategy with Hannah as being a Leroy Jenkins. He's more the computer gamer than January is. She really does not make time for video games anymore. But it does help that to have that handy shorthand to get ideas across quickly and easily, and some things translate across really well, such as Tanks, and DPS, and Healers.

A while back I said that this battle will be a series of offensives and counter-offensives by each side. We just saw the second Allied counter-offensive (temporarily) throw back the Abyssals. But like with the first time they did it with the A-10 bombing run, Nasty Nate is not done yet. The Abyssals have one more big push to make.












Inspiration for the Technocrat's flying wing

The ship flies using an Alcubierre Drive

Nátthrafn's Theme - Gustav Holst - Mars



Book 10.24 - Alliance

The spell was broken by a hum of power overhead. January looked up with everyone else, to see what looked like a meteor falling from the sky toward them. Fire blazed across its underside, and sent a long, blazing tail out behind it. But as it neared, the fire cooled, and January saw that it was not a falling stone. Rather it was an aircraft descending through the atmosphere from higher above.

It was a flying wing. Instead of being shaped like a boomerang or wedge, its gleaming white central hull possessed a lozenge shape, and the wings sort of stretched out from two opposite sides of the diamond design. The ends of each wing were painted red and curled up, reminding January of the paper airplanes that Avery used to make as a child. A silvery glass canopy filled its rounded nose, but no other features stood out within the craft's sleek hull.

This aircraft flew through no obvious means. It did not use jets or propellers, nor did any sound issue from it. Not even an electric hum. Rather the air seemed to shimmer around its hull, like the heat-haze on a highway. January wondered if spacetime had been altered there, and it flew by literally warping reality in its presence?

Then a series of lines appeared within the previously smooth and featureless hull. These met and turned into hatches, which slid open a moment later. Out of these openings spilled forth yet another team of superheroes. Even as these worthies leaped forth from the flying wing, the aircraft zoomed off, to vanish beyond the Detroit skyline.

"Must have made a sub-orbital flight to cut down on the travel time," Gadget murmured offhandedly. "Probably only took a few minutes to cross the Atlantic. Very cash money."

January recognized the Technocrat in the lead. Everyone in the world knew Janos Heisen. Well beyond a hundred years old, he was the Avarican scientist who had fought for the Nazis in World War Two, only to turn pacifist and help found a new Avarica afterward. His new Technocracy led the world in science and education, and held to a policy of strict neutrality in world affairs. He himself had not only personally visited the Moon and Mars to perform scientific exploration, but he had just recently returned from Jupiter.

He stood some seven feet tall, in what was either a suit of powered armor, or a fully robotic body. Many people whispered it was the latter, with only his brain left of his real flesh. It was painted white with strips of red, like the Avarican flag. It had a cape not of cloth, but some form of metal that billowed and flowed with the wind. His helmet was crested with wings, and its eye pieces glowed with blue-white light.

January only recognized a handful of the other heroes with him. Those she did know were all from Europe, such as Hammerstone. He was decked out in Scottish plaid, and carried a massive hammer made of stone. There was the Greek aquatic heroine Thalassa with her trident. January also recognized Tick Tock, the martial artist who reputedly could see a few seconds into the future, enough to counter any opponent's move before they even made them.

Some of them were not even heroes. She noted international supervillain Annihilator in his anti-matter based suit of powered armor. She also recognized Frostbite, the Polish supervillain she had so recently traded barbs with at Blackwood's villa. So apparently Hungry Ghost was not the only bad guy to turn their hat white, at least for one night.

Unfortunately, along with the reinforcements came a new wave of Abyssals. Even as the Europeans came to ground to stand shoulder to shoulder with January and the others, Nátthrafn led a new army forth from the portal. This time he actually did lead them. January wondered if it was only the force of the Dark Lord's personality that kept them going at this point?

Obviously she was not the only one to think that, for a fusillade of ballistic, energy, and magic attacks were all loosed upon him. He swatted bullets aside with his axe as if they were flies. Lasers, plasma, and the like merely sizzled upon his armor. Magic was simply absorbed into his frame like water into a sponge. With a single gesture a horde of shadow monsters flew from his body to assault the heroes. Then he lifted his axe and sent it crashing to earth with a titanic blow. A shockwave of power rippled forward through the ground, seeming to turn into liquid for a moment. This rolling earthquake toppled makeshift walls, and sent the Fred Hampton reeling, along with everyone else who could not fly.

The Technocrat raised his hands, only to hurl them down dramatically a moment later. Suddenly both Nátthrafn and his entire Abyssal army flattened to the earth. It was as if gravity had suddenly increased tenfold, and crushed them down with an implacable grip. The ground itself sank into a depression, and the mud and dirt upon its surface compacted into what looked like sandstone.

But Nátthrafn's will was not so easily thwarted. January felt power rise from her eight times great-grandfather's body. It spread out in shadowy threads of magical energy, and wherever those threads touched, the Technocrat's gravity manipulation ceased. In just moments everything turned back to normal once more, and the Abyssals sprang back to their feet.

Heisen was not finished however. He riposted by reaching out once more with both hands. He seemed to twist them in the air, as if he was swirling water in a pool. January felt the fabric of spacetime turn with his motions. It whirled, and tore, and finally ripped apart. The Technocrat pulled a long slice through reality, and separated the heroes from the Abyssals with a void. It was not simply darkness. It was literal nothingness. This part of reality had ceased to exist, leaving no way between one side and the other.

January knew from documentaries - and of course Avery - that spacetime was not an actual fabric. It was not a physical substance at all. It was just easier to use terms like that to visualize it. Instead it seemed to be a series of equations that determined the likelihood of things such as matter or energy traveling along one path or another.

In this case, Heisen had erased all those equations from the dry erase board of reality. Now there were simply no paths leading from Nátthrafn and his Abyssal horde to the assembled heroes. It reminded January of the old saying: "You can't get there from here." In this case, it was now literally true.

She had heard of entering a black hole as being something like that. The visible universe would shrink to a point of light behind you, until finally that too vanished entirely. From that point no matter what direction you traveled, you would go to the singularity at its heart, because every set of equations governing motion led to that point.

The Technocrat appeared to be doing something similar, even if with far less magnitude as the warping of space and time caused by a black hole.

Yet once more, Nátthrafn countered this was a spell. His will was unyielding, his corruption indefatigable. Again, the Norse sorcerer stretched out with his power, and turned all of Earth's greatest scientist's workings to ashes. His smile sent ice down January's spine. He would devour her world, and nothing seemed capable of stopping him.

"Magicians, to me!" Blood Raven cried. January turned from this latest duel of titans to see that her mentor now stood in the center of the ramshackle fortress. She reluctantly left the fight and joined the others around the red-maned heroine. "This is our chance. While the others keep our foe and his minions at bay, we shall destroy his portal to the Abyss."

"How?" Silverlight asked. A relative newcomer, she had missed Blood Raven's earlier strategy.

"Join your power with mine," Blood Raven explained. "We shall form a ritual team. With our combined might, I shall undo the threads of the portal's spell, one strand at a time if need be."

"I have never done such a thing before," one of the European newcomers said in a distinctly Spanish accent.

"Don't worry, our part is easy," January explained. "Just close your eyes and bring up your magic. Let it flow into her, and she will direct it."

With that they all sat down and joined hands. It would have looked like a warm and fuzzy New Age celebration, if not for all the death and destruction surrounding them. It was hard for January to turn her back to all that, to the Abyssals just a few feet away that ached to rend her flesh and bone. But she had to trust her comrades, both old and new, to protect her from harm. It was not easy, especially given that she was used to being the one doing the protecting.

But January willed herself to shut all of that out, and concentrate on her breathing. As she had for so many thousands of hours now, she closed her eyes and felt her magic within. As ever, it was a cool river of power that ran beneath her. She raised it up, and let if suffuse her being. All around her she felt others do the same. She felt their power rise with hers. Finally that power spilled over from her hands and into theirs, and vice-versa. Her power became their power, theirs became hers. It was now one common flow, and they were merely points along that river of energy.

She felt Blood Raven in the midst of it all. That power fell into her like a waterfall. January could not only feel the mana, but everything it touched. She felt all through Blood Raven's aura. Felt her fears, her hopes, her dreams, her dread, and her sorrows. She felt the loss of hundreds of loved ones. She felt the joy of holding her newborn baby Constance in her arms. She felt the terror as her life slipped away, after the vampire Kelpius ripped her throat out. She felt the satisfaction of wearing her Union uniform for the first time. She felt the dread of watching a cannonball skip across the open fields south of Fredericksburg, and effortlessly take off the head of the man standing beside her. She felt the sorrow as she stood at attention with the rest of the honor guard at President Lincoln's burial. She felt her pride as her descendant Stormcrow strode through the flames of the Flying Dutchman to rescue others, even as the young woman coughed blood from her own seared lungs.

Finally, she felt that brilliant and complex aura of power and will that was called Blood Raven stretch out to the Abyss. January recoiled at the touch of the portal. It was like swimming in feces. She wanted to retch. But like Blood Raven - and all the others - she steeled herself for the necessary contact with the horror of Beyond.

Blood Raven became a surgeon, or a tailor. She sliced and cut at the tendons and threads that wove the portal together. She was careful, calculating. This was not a brute force attempt to overwhelm it. That would clearly never succeed. Yet her method slowly and surely cut the portal's own legs out from underneath. It severed piece by necessary piece, leaving the whole unable to sustain itself.

She felt the portal begin to collapse under the weight of its own energy. Slowly it folded in upon itself. With every moment it shrank, and gave back the reality it had stolen from the Earth. Still Blood Raven cut, and cut, and pushed the collapse faster and faster.

Then January felt it. She felt him, through the warp and weft of the portal's lattice. It was Nátthrafn, the Dark Lord himself. For this was his spell. It was connected to him, in a way, part of him. She sensed not only the loathing he felt for all life. But the sudden and direct hatred of his daughter: Blood Raven. January felt that spite gather into a spear of gleaming power, and lance out to find her heart.

They all staggered then. January gasped for air as the breath leaped from her lungs. Her eyes flew open, and she saw Nátthrafn standing over Blood Raven, axe held high. A hole had been burned through her chest, where her heart would have been. January could only imagine the force of the arcane bolt that must have caused that terrible wound. Yet the heroine remained kneeling, and continued to work her magic as if nothing untoward had happened.

The Technocrat lay prostrate nearby, armor dented and battered. One of his arms was entirely missing, and sparking wires and tortured metal sprouted jaggedly from the stump left behind in his mechanical torso. Other heroes lay scattered about as well, whether dead or unconscious January could not tell.

"No!" January broke loose from the ritual with a cloud of scattered mana. She felt their combined spell shiver at her sudden withdrawal, and begin to founder. The threads that made up the weave of its design began to shrink, separate, and wither away into nothingness. It seemed poised on the brink of disaster.

Then January felt Blood Raven gain control of the magical working once more. Even as her father loomed over her with weapon in hand, the elder heroine remained steady in her resolve. She pulled on the strands of power they had all created, all except for January now. The spell stabilized, reformed, and then continued to disassemble the portal once more.

Even as this was happening, January leaped forward with all of her might. She called upon Air to propel her with far greater speed than she had ever moved before. Without even a thought, she ripped a bolt of lightning from the sky above and slammed it into her back. This catapulted her forward with blinding speed. An instant later she came down with her elbow squarely upon Nátthrafn's head. All of that power burst loose upon contact, and sent both her and her eight times great-grandfather tumbling away.

The world spun, and January tumbled along with Nátthrafn. Both hurtled back toward the shrinking gateway. She could see little more than flashes of ground and sky as they careened along. That and the white bone and black metal armor which the Dark Lord wore filled her awareness.

She struggled to even out her tumble and regain control of her flight. Her wings beat at the air. Her body struggled to find its balance. But her great-grandfather's arms clamped around her and held her down. There was no escape from his grasp.

"If I go, you go," he breathed in her ear.

Then they crossed the boundary of the portal to the Abyss. January felt it immediately. It was like her flesh and blood was being torn apart and reassembled an instant later. Vortex's teleportation had made her mildly queasy. But this was different. It was not that she had leaped across space and time. She had leaped from the real to the... unreal horror of something else.

* * *

The Abyss stretched out all around January. It was hard, cold, and sharp stone under her, black as coal, and unforgiving as diamond. It was a roar in the sky above, screaming terror and pain. A chain of sharp, jagged hills rose to one side, and a long plain of emptiness to the other. But both plain and badlands bubbled and seethed. It took a moment, then January realized that what she saw was a blanket of monsters that clambered across field and slope. Everywhere her eye set, an ocean of horror crept, leaped, and shambled.

An earthquake seemed to roll through a line of mountains in the distance. It was a ridge of razorback peaks, all sharp angles and unforgiving expanses. What looked like stones - or were they living creatures? - fell from the slopes in an avalanche. Those slopes rose up, as if pushed by some titanic geologic force below.

Then they took one step, and another, and January realized that this was not some topographical feature. It was alive! It was a creature, a being, whose power dwarfed even that of her eight times great-grandfather. It blotted the sky with its bulk. January was not sure if that was physical, or just all in her mind's eye. It seemed to be the malign spirit or will of the very world itself, given shape and form.

Exactly what that shape and form was, January could not tell. Wherever her eye landed, it defied simple description. Its flanks were both convex and concave at the same time. What was an angle, turned into flat plane, then something else. In spite of all this chaos, January did not have the sense that it was shifting its form. Rather it felt more like whatever its form was, her brain just could not process it in a rational, logical fashion.

Clearly, it was from Outside, and imbued with Outside properties. Those properties simply could not be understood by one from her reality.

It was Choronzon, the Dweller in the Abyss. That much she did understand.

As with so many things magical, January simply knew this. It was just there in her intuition. She did seem to recall that Doctor John Dee had written about this being, and compared it to the serpent in the Garden of Eden. Aleister Crowley also claimed to have invoked it. But like most things that man purported, January found that dubious. He would not have survived the encounter.

The thing seethed with evil. That was the only way January could describe the sensation she felt from simply looking upon the creature. Evil was not a term she commonly found herself using. At best, it was like a virus that infected human beings. It eroded their ability to empathize with others, or possess a sense of ethics to restrain their behavior. In time any behavior, no matter how cruel and hateful, became normalized for them, thanks to the pretexts that they hid behind. Eventually the cruelty became the point for them, and they appeared to live for little else.

But this was something different. It was not the virus of evil cloaked in human form. It was the virus itself, pure in its malignance, unfettered by human experience. No excuses, no hypocrisy to hide behind, no justifications to manufacture. It was monstrousness in its purest distillation.

Now January was glad that she could only sense the master of this realm but dimly. What she could feel filled her with terror and dread. Her heart raced a thousand miles an hour. Her spine was an icy cold spear running down her back. The hairs on her neck stood on end. All she wanted to do was run, as far and as fast as she could.

Behind her the portal was a single, bright spark of light in that benighted oblivion. She strained for it. But even as she reached out, it grew ever dimmer. It shrank before her eyes, ever smaller and smaller. But no matter how much she strained, Nátthrafn held her back.

"You may have thwarted me this day," he growled. "But you shall suffer for this. You are mine for eternity."

"Valhalla waits for me," January crowed in reply. She turned to face the monster that was her ancestor, the horror whose blood ran through her own veins. She cocked back a fist. If she was going to die, it would be as a Viking.

Then a soft hand came to rest upon her forearm. She smelled lavender and hyssop in her nostrils. January smiled, and halted her attack. She knew only one woman in the world who smelled like that, only one whose aura painted the astral as this one's did. It was Hannah. Somehow, she was here.

Then the world warped around her in a swirling vortex of color and feeling. It felt like she was twisting down into the drain of a sink, or into the singularity at the heart of a black hole. For an instant she no longer felt the ground beneath her feet, the air upon her skin, or even Hannah's fingers upon her arm. Even the omnipresent pull of gravity vanished, and she floated in nothingness, with no idea of what direction was even up.

January knew this feeling, and a great swell of relief passed through her at its familiar touch. It was Hannah's teleportation. It had always made her feel this way. It was being not here, or there, but in fact nowhere, for just an instant. Normally it was a little unsettling, like the feeling of a carpet being yanked out from under your feet. But right now, it felt like hope.

Then everything was normal again. The ground was firm under her feet. The air was clean and pure in her lungs. The sky shone bright with stars and moon overhead, and the familiar lights of Detroit and Windsor glittered to either side of her.

She was standing on Belle Isle once more. She was back on Earth again. Before her eyes the portal to the Abyss made its final collapse upon itself. With the blink of an eye, it fell into a single, dark point. Then it vanished entirely. Behind it came a brief burst of wind, as air was sucked into the void left within its wake. With that, the last of the Abyssals still upon the Earth all vanished as well. It was like a light switch had been flipped, and they all just ceased to exist.

It was over.

* * *

[Renee]

Wow, look at that list! Those lists! Indeed, I knew a lot of heroes have shown up, but seeing them all on paper.

Sixth Wave hasn't shown up yet, I don't think. Haven't heard of Tick Tock. It's 2019 in the story, right? If this story happened a couple years later, Tick Tock would be getting confused with a particular Chinese social media website packed with inane dance video content which many politicians wish they could ban.

A superhero decked out in plaid! And Thalassia sounds cool. Like Aquaman, perhaps. Pretty sure there was another SH who carried a trident, as well. Technocrat sounds fascinating. He's been to other planets + the Moon, Yikes.

Oh yeah, I remember Frostbite. ❄ They got into it down in the islands, Jan and Frostbite, until Michael Caine had to get Miss Bite to cool off. Heh. Cool off.

I just found one of Baltimore's superhero: It's Captain Raven!

Even as Natth "swats aside bullets" that's still gotta be pretty distracting for all those rounds and lasers to be fired at him. But if they can destroy this portal, that would be good, hopefully it'd stop reinforcements from constantly showing up, at least. And as they commence to get rid of the thing, it seems like they're possibly sacrificing themselves.

She sensed not only the loathing he felt for all life. But the sudden and direct hatred of his daughter: Blood Raven.

That's really poignant, they way these two sentences are stated. Gotta ask: did he always hate his own daughter?
Probably been stated but I don't remember.

Oh no, Jan's been captured, or maybe misplaced is a better word. Whooa. Yeah, as soon as "hyssop" was mentioned.

Dude. So Hannah's here, in this world which sounds like Oblivion's planes. So does that mean Hannah is... Okay, doesn't sound like that.

I'm sorta confused. I wonder if what January's seeing isn't real. If Hannah is really part of the Dark Force and is playing a trick on Jan, too.

This post has been edited by Renee: Feb 11 2023, 02:15 PM

[Acadian]

And the EU Brigade arrives! But so does Nate himself to lead his final charge.

The magic circle around Blood Raven was very neat – especially January sensing some of Blood Raven’s memories. Memories the older heroine would likely normally be loathe to share.

Count on the Stormcrow to bail out of the circle to protect her mentor. . . and end up moving from the frying pan into the fire.

A very foreboding and ominous feeling of hopelessness inside the Abyss that was finally resolved by the cool touch of Hannah’s hand. The pair teleported out in the nick of time it seems.

[WellTemperedClavier]

Looks like this new aerial player is making quite an entrance. Can't go wrong with the flying wing design; it's a classic for a reason.

Ah, so here's the Technocrat at last. Fits with this thing being sub-orbital at the very least. Does seem like he has a pretty checked past, however. Wonder how Blood Raven will react to him when the Abyssals are gone.

Hammerstone uses a hammer made of stone. Fitting.

Impressive as the gravity attack was, it looks like the Abyssals have a counter. Definitely amping the power levels here.

Interesting tactic that Blood Raven's using. If they keep raising the power expended, it'll never stop (and probably wreck more than the Alliance wants to wreck). Using magic to undercut the Abyssals' attacks is a more subtle approach, and maybe more effective.

Oh wow, Nátthrafn's right there!

And now into the Abyss...

This is scary stuff. We know, roughly, how awful this place is. And now Stormcrow's in the thick of it.

...a blanket of monsters...

Nightmarish. Also shows how urgently they need to collapse that portal.

That goes double what with the Colossus's big brother here.

Good thing Hannah's there! And oh, looks like Blood Raven was able to damage the portal enough to destroy it. Though I have a feeling that Nátthrafn isn't finished just yet...

[SubRosa]

Renee: And even with that long list, the vast majority of supers on the planet were not there, because they could not get there in time/did not learn about it soon enough. People like Captain Raven.

I hate to sound all preachy, but Tik Tok should be banned. It is literal malware put out by the Chinese Communist Party to spy on people. All the social media apps are doing that mind you. But most are doing it in order to strategically target ads at you. Tik Tok is run by a hostile foreign power with a vested interest in damaging the US. Its banned for people in the military to use for good reason.

Thalassa is the Greek word for "Sea" or "Ocean". She was an early idea for the character who became Calypso. Since I wound up going the way I did with Calypso, I saved my notes on Thalassa, and decided to make her a European heroine.

And that was the same Frostbite you are thinking of, who needed to chill out...

For most of Blood Raven's life, her father has been pretty oblivious to her existence. He married her mom for the money, and then got her pregnant with Blood Raven in order to spread his bloodline. Aside from that, he could not have cared less about her, or any of his progeny. They are simply his means of reentering this world, nothing more.

At least until Jack Parsons brought Nátthrafn back in 1952. Just moments later she killed Nátthrafn by superheating his blood and causing him to explode from the inside out. He noticed her then! And he's had an axe to grind ever since.

Captured was a pretty good word to use for January being stuck in the Abyss. Nátthrafn did literally have her in his clutches.

Hannah teleports. So she teleported through the gate to get January, and teleported back out to return to Earth. So long as the gate remained open, she could do that. If she had been too slow and the gate had shut before she could get out, she would have been trapped there along with January.


Acadian: It was time for the EU to get involved. If I had developed any other international heroes, they would have appeared by now as well. This was a global event. Really, a Universe level one.

The memories of Blood Raven spilling over into the other members of the ritual was not something I planned ahead of time. It just sort of came out as I wrote, and I went with it. I like it, because it reveals a bit more of who she is, and helps humanize her.

January is January. She could not stand by while Nátthrafn finished off her mentor. Granted, she did not think of the consequences of her actions. Nor did she regret them either.


WellTemperedClavier: I spent a long, long time working on the Technocrat's super plane. I first went through a lot of artwork for science fiction dropships and other aircraft. But they all looked too military. The new Avarica is a pacifistic nation. The Technocrat would not be riding in something that projected violence.

Then I watched the old 1950s version of the War of the Worlds. They had a flying wing in there that dropped the nuclear bomb on the Martians. I knew that was the route I wanted, since Flying Wings project grace and futurism and how the fuck does that thing not fall out of the sky? So I went searching for them, and found the one I referenced. Then I just tweaked it a bit to remove the engines and the like.

I have been building up the Technocrat throughout the entire series. So now that he finally arrived, he needed to really shine. So I went with the control of spacetime as being his main power. Gravity, reality itself, are his to manipulate. He is definitely one of the most powerful metas in the world.

The threat of the Abyssals has been the main Big Bad of Season One. So I realized that now at the end, I needed to show the Abyss itself. So January had to go through the gateway and experience it first hand. Once there I went back to the old master - Lovecraft - to try to describe the indescribable. As he said: "A mountain walked."

Nátthrafn is done. He's not dead obviously. He might be unkillable. At least not permanently. But he has been defeated. With the gateway destroyed, and him trapped in the Abyss once more, he is out of moves. At least until someone else in his bloodline comes along and tries to summon him once more. I don't currently have any plans for that. So my guess is that such a thing probably won't happen for hundreds or thousands of years. If ever again. But if I get inspired, who knows? Blood Raven might decide to take the offensive, and somehow use the Raudskinna and his own bloodline against him. That might be an idea to explore in a standalone story.








Queen - We Are The Champions


Book 10.25 - Alliance

January was aware of someone holding her close. She smelled lavender and hyssop again. She saw soft brown eyes, and felt warm skin. The next thing she knew, she was kissing Hannah. The other woman returned the kiss and held her tight. In that moment January felt more alive than she ever had in her life. More than the first time she had soared on the uneven bars. More than the first time Avery had called her "January". More than the first time she had flown... without crashing at least.

Maybe it was just the adrenaline. Maybe it was the fact that the other woman had just rescued her from an ugly fate outside of reality. Maybe it was simply that Hannah's body felt so good against her own. January did now know, and at the moment, did not care. She was alive, and Hannah was here, and that was everything.

At least until another woman's voice cut through her bliss. "Stormcrow, Vortex, can you comment on what just happened?"

The voice sounded familiar. It was someone she had heard before, but could not place. Then she saw its author. It was the same reporter who had been at Gull Island: Priya O'Neill. The other woman's hair was an ebon waterfall, and she was clad in a sport coat hastily thrown over a T-shirt and tights. Towering nearby was a large red-haired man who held a TV camera trained expertly upon her.

"I... uhh... well...." January fought for words, but could not find any. Vortex giggled in her ear and January lost herself when she kissed her once more. She was not sure if it was Vortex who started it, or if she had done it herself. But in any case, it was glorious.

But there was no losing herself in the other woman's lips this time. Not for long at least. The rest of the world pressed in, and would not be denied. When her brain was able to process again, she was aware of Gadget standing between her and the reporter. The rest of the Allies had gathered nearby as well, including Blackhawk, who had apparently moved up from the bridge at some point.

"What is the name of your new super team?" Priya asked her oldest and best friend.

"Well, I don't know if we are exactly a team," Gadget rubbed the back of his head. "It's more like an alliance. We are all here for each other when we need it."

"So the Alliance it is then," the reporter went on. "Is this event connected to the recent battles at Gull Island and Ferndale Pride?"

"Yes," Blood Raven's voice cut through the night like a sword through paper. "This is the culmination of the Hierophant's campaign, its final end. He has been finished, and the Abyssals he unwittingly loosed upon the Earth thrown back."

Everyone turned to see the elder heroine float down through the sky to stand before the reporter. The terrible wound in her chest had vanished. Now pale skin showed through the rent in the Chobham armor of her breastplate, and the dragon silk that lay underneath. Even as January looked on, both layers of protection slowly stitched themselves back together as the armor regenerated.

She looked none the worse for wear. Blood Raven was a hard person to kill. Not even Nátthrafn - the Dark Lord of the Abyss - was up to the task.

"You said the Hierophant is finished," the reporter pressed. "Does that mean he has been captured?"

"He is dead," January heard herself say. "I killed him."

Suddenly she was back in the sacrificial circle. She heard the Hierophant scream, as he realized what January had done. She saw his body rip apart into spaghetti, and fall piece by piece into the summoning circle. Her own blood turned to ice, it was all she could do to keep from shaking.

Silence fell across the assembled heroes. All eyes turned to January, and suddenly she realized that she had perhaps said too much. But then again, perhaps not. She had long since determined not to play things as close to the vest as Blood Raven did.

"Can you tell me how it happened?" Priya stepped closer. Her tall cameraman turned his bulky video recorder from her to the young heroine.

"The Hierophant kidnapped me," January explained. "He tried to use me as the sacrifice for this final ritual. But with the help of a friend we had working on the inside, I was able to trick him. I reversed the polarity of the ritual. So it killed him, instead of me."

January nodded to Gola at the mention of the "friend working on the inside". She may not have intentionally infiltrated the Hierophant's group. But once she had been there, she had done the right thing, certainly the right thing by January. She owed her life to the raven mocker.

"I... see," Priya was suddenly at a loss for words when confronted with magic and rituals and polarity. If not for decades of role-playing games and science fiction, January imagined she would be just as baffled.

With that January allowed Blood Raven to finish the interview. She had certainly opened her big mouth enough for one night. She would rather use it to kiss Hannah. But thinking of the other woman also brought memories of that day on Green Island. It was the day Hannah had loosed a racist torrent upon Ôkami, not to mention other uncomfortable things about herself. As much as January wanted to reach out to the other woman once more, part of her still recoiled at the memory.

"Thank you, for saving my life," January was able to say, looking deeply into Hannah's eyes. Then she disengaged herself from the other woman, and found Gola. She repeated the same words to the old medicine woman-turned raven mocker.

"You showed me how to live again," the other woman replied.

"Hey, that's what friends - and Allies - are for!" Gadget crowed.

With that came the aftermath, perhaps the official aftermath of the battle. The south-western third of Belle Isle had been utterly devastated. Not a building was left standing, not even the gigantic fountain. Ponds and creeks had vanished, as had grass, trees, buildings, and even parking lots. It literally looked like no man's land from the First World War.

But the isle had gained something. There was now a gigantic eidolon of a dragon that rose hundreds of feet into the air. January could still feel residual power from it, and suspected that it would linger there for a long, long time. Perhaps so long as there were people to remember the Battle of Belle Isle?

Kaelin was everywhere at once, administering healing potions to the wounded. There seemed to be a lot of those, and January gathered that most of those injuries were courtesy of Nátthrafn himself. That none had died under his assaults was a testament to their endurance. January knew the Dark Lord's power from firsthand experience after all. An example of that power was the Technocrat, who stood by as his old foe Annihilator helped weld a mechanical arm back onto his armored torso.

January briefly glanced from the Avarican scientist to Blood Raven. Getting on her mentor's bad side was not difficult to accomplish. Fighting for the Nazis in World War Two - as Janos Heisen had done - was certainly a good start at that. Blood Raven had her own history in that conflict. But in spite of that she seemed to pay no attention at all to the world's preeminent scientist.

Or maybe it was because of it? January suspected that Blood Raven regretted some of her own actions in that war. Or in the very least, she seemed to regret their necessity. Maybe that made it easier for her to let bygones be bygones? Or maybe it was simply the unequivocally good things Heisen had done since? It was a discussion that had taken place a million times since the end of that war, and probably would continue long after the Technocrat's death.

Of course January had no love for Fascists herself. They were a blight upon the face of the Earth. They were that virus of evil she had witnessed in the Abyss, only cloaked in human form and hiding its power level. But at the same time, if Heisen had broken from that dark cult of hate then that was all for the better. She had no desire to visit retributive justice upon him, no more than she had concerning Gola, or Lighthammer, or Isaac. In spite of their past opposition, they had all come through for her this day. So too had the Technocrat. Even Frostbite had stepped up in the end.

January pulled herself from these thoughts in time to see Kaelin fly to the bridge with the help of Blackhawk. The mistress of magnetism sent out a piece of her armor and flattened it into a disc for the alchemist to stand upon. Then she lifted that skyward with Kaelin still atop it, just as she presumably did with the armor that she still wore herself. In such a manner they both sailed through the air to their destination.

Gadget related that some of the defenders at the bridge had been turned to stone, or perhaps salt. Ever the cleric, Kaelin had insisted that she had a cure for that. Apparently she still had some alchemical reagents left, because she had declared that she was going to use them to brew more healing potions for the worst of the wounded there as well.

Silverlight took her leave as well. The astrally-projected superheroine moved to both the air and lava elementals who had been fighting at their side, and appeared to communicate with them in the astral plane. Then all three of them vanished deeper into that realm. January knew that she could have shifted her senses to the astral to follow them, but she just did not have the energy. Silverlight was one of her Raven Sisters. She would know what to do with the elementals to keep them from harming others, even if by accident.

Soon the military moved in, and paratroopers and rangers disembarked from a fleet of helicopters that landed upon the island. Fighter jets began to crisscross the sky overhead. The wedge-shaped strategic bombers higher up were turned back however, which came as a relief to January. There was no telling how many innocent civilians they would have killed along either bank of the river, had they turned loose their bombs and hypersonic missiles. It might have been necessary. But it would still have been tragic nonetheless.

Finally, Harper suggested an after party at the Aura. January did not see anyone decline the idea. Not even Blood Raven.

* * *

[Renee]

Yicch: "spread his bloodline". 👿

There was a flying wing in that old movie? I wonder if that's where our military or DoD or whomever came up with the idea. Because I remember we had a real flying wing for awhile. Was supposed to be impervious to radar, or something.

And how neat, that Technocrat has been in char. development for such a long time. And that Thal was originally what became of Calypso. I'd love to see your notes on all this. I bet it's a lot of folders and files!

Nátthrafn is done. He's not dead obviously. He might be unkillable. At least not permanently.

Goodbye, Daddy.

She's kissing Hannah NOOOOO!!!!! But ah, heck. A lot has happened. Jan's not in her right mind. She's gotta be exhausted. Because I wouldn't trust Ms. Vortex, no ma'am.

Yeah, it's adrenaline.

I can just imagine this press conference, with all of them wearing capes and helmets.

Goodbye Silverlight! I think she's my fave of all the newer supers who showed up.

What a mess the island is. But that'll become a field day for politicians and waterfront developers to outshine each other in the future.

After party at the Aura, folks! 🍷🍹🍸🍺🍻 *clink!*

This post has been edited by Renee: Feb 25 2023, 05:40 AM

[Acadian]

’January is January. She could not stand by while Nátthrafn finished off her mentor. Granted, she did not think of the consequences of her actions. Nor did she regret them either.’
- - Or as Buffy would say, “When my friends are in need, I don’t count the cost.”

*

A celebratory kiss with Hannah – interrupted by some reporter with no sense of timing. That’s gonna make the six o clock news for sure! With Jan’s hormones and heartrate so elevated, it is good that Blood Raven came to the rescue and took over the press briefing.

I learned a new word: eidolon.

Raven Sisters! I like it!

Well, I’d say Harper’s idea of a party is a great call!

[WellTemperedClavier]

(I agree with you regarding TikTok).

Oh, so (this) fight is over!

Well that was quite a hard-won battle. There's always a certain relief in reaching the end of a fight when reading these. It's written vividly enough that the reader starts feeling like they were in the thick of it, so unwinding with the companions really does feel good.

Hm, well maybe things will work out a bit better with Hannah. It's been a while, and she's had time to grow. Hopefully she has.

Heh, "the Alliance it is" then. Not the first time the media will take a story in its own direction. I'm not sure "Alliance" on its own is quite enough. Needs a bit more. Did someone in the story already suggest Great Lakes Alliance? Or am I remembering wrong?

The bit with Priya not understanding rings true. I always wondered how news media would handle stories of events in places like this. Like can you imagine trying to read an explanation of The Snap from Avengers in The Economist or Newsweek? It'd be awkward at best, stumbling over explanations of terminology.

Okay, so January's having second thoughts regarding Hannah now that the heat of the moment has passed. Understandable.

The Technocrat's past is indeed pretty difficult. Come a certain point, I'm not sure forgiveness is appropriate without some punishment for the crimes. I guess it depends the extent of his involvement (especially since the Nazis weren't above using coercion). But maybe it boils down to the fact that he's powerful and useful to other important groups. Iffy situation, and I don't blame Blood Raven for keeping her distance.

All right, it seems like the Alliance came out of this pretty well! Sometimes that first victory is what you need to really get rolling, and it does seem like Detroit could use a superhero group. Let's see how the party goes!

This post has been edited by WellTemperedClavier: Feb 25 2023, 04:09 AM

[SubRosa]

Renee: The bomber in the film was real. It is a Northrop YB-49 Flying Wing. They only made two of them as prototypes. You can see it here. My guess is the filmmakers wanted a plane that looked futuristic, and found some stock footage of the plane. Or the military gave them the footage. Since I don't think they filmed any new material with them. If you look closely, you never actually see the plane in the same shot as anything else in the movie.

We do have flying wings now. That is what the B-2 Stealth Bomber and the F-117 Stealth Fighter are.

You might be right to not trust Miss Vortex. Not that she's evil or nefarious. But she is young and carrying more than her own fair share of baggage. Stay tuned for more.

The fate of the island will come up in future books. It is a State Park, so there won't be developers fighting over who gets to build new office buildings there. But it will cost a lot to fix the damage, and the question of who is going to pay for it.


Acadian: That kiss is definitely going to make the every o'clock news. Every time January kisses someone it breaks the internet.

I learned eidolon when I was writing a story a long time ago. I needed a form of undead that was not a zombie, or a ghost, or any of the standard types. These days I might have called it a draugr. But I had not come across that term yet. My researches took me to eidolon.

The Sisters of the Raven would be a great band name. Or super team name.


WellTemperedClavier: That was the biggest battle I have ever written. If you count from Nátthrafn's first appearance to the closing of the gateway it is 50,000 words. Pretty impressive. Writing the Battle of Gull Island in Book 8 really helped prepare me for doing this one. It taught me how to break up a battle into manageable pieces, and portray each portion in turn from a different point of view. That way the entire thing did not become overwhelming, and it gave me little points where I could insert pauses as I introduced new POV characters.

It has been a long time for us readers (and writers), but only a short time has passed in the story. Hannah's meltdown on Green Island was only 3 days before. So don't expect any growth.

I expect most media outlets will get the reporting very wrong, especially where the magic is concerned. I have actually been thinking about that, and January and other magic experts such as Silverlight might be making news appearances to explain the events for TV.

Back in Stormcrow 8: Blood Gilda Gadfly coined the name Great Lakes Alliance. That is pretty much the full name of the team now. But the Alliance or Allies is a lot simpler to say, so that will be the short form.

Sadly, IRL most direct perpetrators of genocide never face any real punishment for their crimes. A handful of top Nazis were executed after WW2, but the vast majority of the people who ran the death camps or participated in the genocide by bullets got away Scot free. In Asia it was even worse. Some of the perpetrators of the Rape of Nanking went unpunished, as did the head of Unit 731. Naturally the Japanese Prime Ministers continue to lay wreaths upon the graves of these war criminals. Or more recently General Butt-Naked (funny name, but what he did was horrific) likewise got away completely free for his crimes as well.

Sometimes it was the Cold War, and the rush to scoop up as many German Scientists and possible by both sides. That is how Shiro Ishii of Unit 731 got immunity from prosecution. The same was the true of the Technocrat. He was captured by the Russians, and did not escape until Stalin's death in 1953 to found the Technocracy. He was not directly involved with the Holocaust. But by fighting for Germany, he enabled those who were. In other cases like Butt-Naked, it was a conscious decision by the survivors to seek reconciliation after genocides rather than continue a cycle of violence that they feared might never end, unless someone finally stopped. I am certainly not one to say whether that is right or wrong.





Over the Hills and Far Away

Lindsey Stirling - Assassin's Creed Theme

Eminem - Lose Yourself

Bob Seger - Shakedown



Book 10.26 - Alliance

July 9th, morning

The after party was a hit. In spite of all the complicated feelings that seeing Hannah again dredged up within January, she could not deny the sense of euphoria and joy that also filled her. Right now, just being alive after all that was a treasure. She had of course read about adrenaline and after battle endorphins in a ton of science fiction and fantasy stories. She had even experienced it herself after her various encounters with supervillains and monsters up until now. But never like this.

No one had ever kidnapped her before. She had never witnessed the world's end come so near, as that instant when she had looked up to see Nátthrafn about to kill Blood Raven, and end their magical ritual to close the portal. She had never stood within another universe before, let alone one as horrific as the Abyss. Nor had she ever seen a dragon in real life. Nor had she ever seen so many superheroes together in one place and time, all working for a common cause. It had been truly the best and worst of times.

Going back to normal life after this was going to be difficult. Part of her wanted to hang on to these moments forever. To always stay on this high. But she knew it would not last. So she tried to make the most of it while she could.

Everyone was there. Even Cray showed up in the flesh. He was the odd man out, as unlike everyone else, he was dressed in his normal Mr. Rogers attire of a sweater vest and slacks. Silverlight was late. She had returned to her home to rejoin her astral body to her physical form. Then she came back in the flesh, though it took her a while to fly in from her home on the East Coast in order to do so.

Cray had brought Blood Raven's violin, and she stood upon the little stage in the back corner of the bar to play. The Veil joined in on the piano, and Harper began to sing. They played a variety of jazz and blues, along with some old folk music, such as Spanish Ladies or Over the Hills and Far Away. January thought the latter was an old Led Zeppelin song. But it turned out it went much farther back, and the original was far different from the rock version. She had to admit, she liked the original better. Blood Raven though, ever full of surprises, also managed to include her own rendition of the Assassin's Creed theme, and the music from the Lord of the Rings films.

The trio took a break, and the bar's sound system began to bark out songs by local artists such as Bob Seger, Aaliyah, Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, Eminem, Iggy Pop, the MC5, and so many more. There were just too many to count. Detroit was Motown, Detroit Rock City, and the birthplace of Techno after all.

January walked past Lighthammer and Gadget arguing about who had the greater musical influence: NWA or the Wu Tang Clan. Just beyond Zero Point and Annihilator were debating the finer points of multiverse theory. Frostbite was locked in a drinking contest with White Fell, both of them chugging one mug of beer after another. It could have been any night at the pub, except of course for all the capes.

A circle had grown around Blood Raven, which January found herself fall into, as if by the force of some mystical gravity. It was all the familiar faces: Calypso, Silverlight, Kaelin, Riven, and Ôkami. All were magicians, and all students of the elder heroine. For once, her mentor looked truly happy. In fact, Blood Raven was positively beaming, surrounded by her protégés.

"So we Daughters of the Raven are all here then?" Riven joked as January joined in the little circle of companions.

"I am not so sure our samurai friend here is exactly a 'daughter'," Calypso noted, "perhaps a brother."

"If Storm and Jean Grey can be X-Men, then I can be a Daughter of the Raven," Ôkami murmured. "It has been noted that I have many bags, but that is not one of them."

"We aren't all here though," January chimed in with a smile. "We have a new sister."

"Aye, Stormcrow and I only met her this same day," Blood Raven intoned, then glanced up at the clock on one wall. "Well, now it was yesterday."

"So what's she like?" Riven asked. "I hope she is better off than I was before we met."

"She has her crosses to bear, as do we all," Blood Raven mused. "She is a young person, as you were, as you all were. So she grapples with the same foes you all have done battle with. Who am I? What am I? What should I do with this life?"

January found herself nodding along with the others. She glanced down at her wrists. Even though her suit's long sleeves covered them, she could see the scars that marred her wrists with her mind's eye. She hoped that Xochitl would never have a low point as deep as that. But for all January knew, she may already have. Suicide was no stranger to trans people after all.

"You should bring her here," Kaelin offered, then nodded to January. "Don't wait as long as you did with this one."

"Ah, she's only fifteen," January found herself saying. "I don't know that hanging out at a bar is ideal for her. Heck, I'm only nineteen; I'm not entirely legal either."

"It's only illegal to serve her alcohol," Kaelin waved a dismissive hand. "I mean, you're here, and you're not drinking either."

"Her parents might have qualms about that. We must remember, she is not an adult. Not legally, nor otherwise." Calypso chimed in, then looked to Blood Raven. "My 'auntie' Branwen did not take me out to clubs either."

"And your parents should have skinned me alive had I even considered such a thing!" Blood Raven laughed. "Granted, you were much younger then."

"I am so glad I never had kids," Riven interjected. "I can't imagine having to make decisions like this for them. I mean, we all needed someone like Blood Raven in our lives back then. But at the same time, she had to constantly choose how much to tell our parents about who and what we were in order to protect us. I mean, not all of us had accepting families. Mine would have murdered me if they knew I was using magic, and I mean that literally."

"It is a balancing act, and I honestly still do not know how to do it," Blood Raven admitted. "I simply make it so. As you all do."

"I am going to bring your newest 'sister' to the sanctum tomorrow," she went on, then waved her hand. "Not this tomorrow, but the next tomorrow, Wednesday. There are things I must attend to in the aftermath of the Hierophant's death, such as going through his home before turning it over to the authorities. Stormcrow shall assist me in this matter. But afterward I should like you all to meet her. I know that many of you felt isolated and alone when I first met you. It might be good for her to know that she is neither, and that she instead is part of a much larger family."

"Here, here!" Riven raised her whiskey glass in a toast. The others took it up, and clinked their glasses, mugs, and cups together. "Here's to us, the Raven's Daughters!"

January felt a soft hand on her shoulder. She smelled lavender and hyssop. She felt her in astral space. She did not need to turn around to know who it was.

It was Hannah.

Her heart both leaped and fell at the same time. Just as she had been both eagerly anticipating - and dreading - this moment ever since she had first set eyes upon the other woman earlier in the night.

She followed Hannah past several of the European heroes. Apparently Frostbite had not been joking about dancing the mazurka, because January saw her actually doing it. The supervillain briefly met her gaze and smiled as she performed the traditional folk dance. But January was too overwhelmed with the nearness of Hannah to really do more than nod in reply as she passed.

Hannah sat in one of the small tables that lined the wall opposite the bar. January sat facing her. Her hand immediately reached out for the other woman's. Her heart leaped when her fingers entwined with her own.

"So where are we?" Hannah spoke first. "Is this, is us, something or not?"

"I don't know," January said honestly. She avoided the other woman's gaze. If she stared too long into her eyes, she might forget how to speak. "No one has ever made me feel the way you do."

"But I also can't forget the things you said back at Green Island." January frowned, and stared down at her hands. "It's always there, in the back of my head. I've known Ôkami since we were in the Third Grade. He's one of my oldest friends, and that's never going to change."

She could sense that Hannah was about to interject, but January raised her hand to head her off.

"I know you have your reasons for your feelings," January said. "And whatever you feel, I know that it is real. I believe you. But I just cannot have that in my life. It makes me feel guilty being around him. It's like a knife in my guts. And it feels the same when I'm around you. I can't live this way."

"So this is where you expect me to change, and forget the past and move on," Hannah's voice dripped with sarcasm. Then she sighed, and went on with a more even tone. "I'm sorry, it's just... what I feel for you, just doesn't change what I feel about people like him."

Neither of them said anything for long moments after that. January raised her eyes to meet Hannah's. She knew that she had to be strong. She had to be inviolable. She had to be Earth. But as much as she wanted to become as adamant as a mountain, she felt like nothing but jelly inside.

"So I guess that's it then." Hannah finally said.

"I guess it is," January frowned.

Hannah sighed once more. She stood up deliberately. January watched it all, as if in slow motion. She wanted to reach out to the other woman. She wanted to take her in her arms, kiss her, and tell her everything would work out in the end. That was how this all would have ended in the movie or book.

But this was not a movie or TV show. Hannah turned her back and walked away, and January did nothing to stop her.

January felt her throat close up tightly at the sight of Hannah's back. This was the last time. Their last time, she knew that. Hannah was gone, and she was never coming back.

"So, does this mean you will be in my daughter's life once more? Or not?" January nearly jumped out of her skin at the sound of Hungry Ghost's voice. The older man slid into the chair that Hannah had just vacated, a half-finished mug of beer in one hand.

"Looks like not." January stared down at the table. She was not going to cry in front of her ex-girlfriend's father. Absolutely, positively, not.

"That is... unfortunate," Hungry Ghost said. January was not sure if he really meant that or not. How did any parent feel about their daughter dating, let alone dating another woman, or a transwoman? She hated wondering that. But she also hating living in a world that forced her to think that way in the first place. "She has been very... upset... over your falling out. You meant a great deal to her. You were her hero."

"Well, I guess the old saying is true then," January said bitterly. "Never meet your heroes."

"Well, my ex-wife would say the same about me." The Ghost stared down at his glass, and traced its foamy rim with one finger. "We may be heroes to others - or villains - but we are just people in the end, and none of us are perfect."

"Speaking of heroes, what color is your hat these days Ghost?" January could not wait to change the subject. She forced herself to smile, even if she felt like dying inside. "I hear you and your daughter have been hanging out with Thunderbolt and Riven over in San Francisco."

"It seems that we are now a team," Ghost shrugged. "I think, maybe. Hannah wants to do the right thing. She wants to help people. She lives in San Francisco, they live in San Francisco, so it was inevitable I suppose. Besides, they did save her life years ago, when I wasn't around. I know I can count on them where she is concerned."

"And you?" January asked.

"I am not a spring chicken anymore," he explained. "I was so... arrogant when I was your age. I thought I was on top of the world. I thought I could do anything, have anything, without any consequences. I was an idiot. All I really did was drive away the woman I loved, and my baby girl with her. I know my ex-wife is gone forever. But I still have this chance to be in my daughter's life. I have you to thank for that my friend. I'll never forget it. Call me, any time, and I'll be there."

With that the older man rose and laid a friendly hand upon January's shoulder. Then he too walked away. That left her alone, staring at the table in front of her. She studied every little chip and flake in its surface, and every whorl and wave of the wood's grain. Anything but feel what she was feeling.

[Renee]

Thanks for that movie clip, I don't think I've ever seen WOTW before.

Hannah needs to explain herself, at least. Maybe there's a reason why she did the things she did, right? Maybe someone cast a spell on her from some other plane, and she didn't know it (that's not it, of course, that's just an example). Because: think about it. Hannah was really cool during the first chapters she appeared in, right? And then out of nowhere she did this dovetail.

It is a State Park, so there won't be developers fighting over who gets to build new office buildings there.

This is America, though. They'll bring their lawyers, at least make an attempt.

Eminem, nice! 😎

That's right, she was kidnapped. A lot has happened, seems like you've been writing this part of the story since fall.

... Poor Jan. I know she's a fictional character, but I really think she needs to take a nice vacation. Go to Vermont, or something. Of course, that would make for a sleepy set of chapters. Never mind.

No kidding, Cray is here! His attire is just as much a fixture as the capes and skin-tight clothes most superheroes wear. Like, tweeds and sweater-vests are his "super outfit".

Interesting that both of our stories this week have parties in them. 🎈

Yes, MC5! -- Superheroes chugging beer! This is a great party. I almost feel like I am there.

Uh oh, it's Hannah. I'd better come back to this... Wow, Hannah's acting as though nothing has happened. "So, where were we?" Like nothing happened, no racist comments were made. Good. Jan is resisting the temptation to just fall into the Vortex.

I mean, it is a tough spot. Seems like January (as inexperienced as she is) has trouble possibly seeing that there are others out there who could be more compatible. Because this is her first love. But yeah, doesn't sound like Hannah's views have changed.

But she needs to take time away from being a superhero if she's serious about trying to pursue an actual relationship with somebody. Which might be impossible, of course, since she's virtually on call at all times. But that's what she needs to do. Take time for herself for awhile. Which might be impossible.

My suggestion: Jan, put your info on Instacram or Facecrook or Cindr. "Trans lady ISO X" .. Gotta be others out there who'll dig you, and aren't racist piggies.

This post has been edited by Renee: Feb 28 2023, 02:59 AM

[Acadian]

A wonderful opportunity to try and decompress some after that world-saving epic battle. So Blood Raven is a musician – and a good one at that. Wonderful to see her relaxing some and clearly happy to be surrounded by her coven of Raven protegees.

I understand January feeling on top of the world after surviving that battle. Those feelings are dashed however, as Hannah reenters the scene. It is a shame that Hannah does not see the illogic of blaming everyone of Asian descent for the wrongs inflicted on her by Asians. It is a gulf too wide for the two women. I know that Jan made the right call, but being right doesn’t make her feel any better.

Nice closing scene with the Hungry Ghost. I’m glad he had that chat with Jan and it is encouraging to know that the color of his hat seems to be lightening.

[WellTemperedClavier]

It's interesting that you mentioned Operation Paperclip, because I'd been watching this earlier that day:

Wernher von Braun, by Tom Lehrer

Now this is a party! Great music, great (mostly) people. Though I think that Cray's the star of the show, what with just going in wearing street clothes.

At the very least, this feels like the start of something bigger. People from all over coming together for a greater cause. And a lot of that has to do with January reaching out and making connections. She is really at the center of things in a lot of ways. It's quite a start to her career.

Ah, got a little mixed up between real-time and book-time. Definitely hasn't been long enough for Hannah to turn a new leaf. But the involved parties handled it well. Maybe Hannah can overcome her bigotry, but that's something she has to do with her own.

I also like the ending dialogue with Hungry Ghost. Thinking back to my twenties, I marvel at how stupid and ill-informed I was. Yet I kind of hope that, when I'm in my forties, I feel the same way about my thirties. Otherwise, I'm not learning anything.

[SubRosa]

Renee: War of the Worlds is a classic sci fi story. HG Wells wrote it back at the end of the 1800s, and he imagined a Martian invasion of Earth. The man was really a visionary.

It has been a long time since we first met Hannah, so I am not surprised her face-heel turn comes as a shock. But if you go back and reread, there are plenty of red flags, especially concerning Okami/Ryo. From being kidnapped by an Yakuza assassin when she was a child, to simply the horrific things that Japan did to China and everyone else in the first half the 20th Century. Look up the Rape of Nanking or Unit 731 if you want to be depressed. To this day there is a tremendous amount of rancor between China and Japan, and Japan just insists upon throwing grease on the fire every chance they get, by doing things like lay wreaths the graves of genocidal war criminals, and insisting that they did nothing wrong.

If January went on vacation I would be obligated to find some way to turn that into an adventure. I will have to think of a good place to do something like that! Maybe she could visit Viuda and Calypso down in the Caribbean and have another adventure there. Or maybe go to Europe and meet some of the supers over there?

I love your names for dating apps. Especially Cindr. What does ISO X mean though? I am not young enough to be hip to all the lingo the kids use these days.


Acadian: If you go waaay back Blood Raven did play the violin before. I believe it was when they had the first official meeting between Blood Raven, Stormcrow, Cray, and Gadget in the Raven's Nest.

It has a been a long time in real time since that book, so I am not surprised the particulars of Hannah's issues faded from memory. She is Chinese-American (well Chinese-Australian). It is only the Japanese in particular that she hates, because of history. Will she ever move past it? Maybe, maybe not. I really do not know myself. We probably have not seen the last of her. Exes have a way of returning to our lives from time to time.

Hungry Ghost is indeed one of those many Heel-Face turns that January has helped to facilitate. I wanted that scene to show his own growth, which stands in stark contrast to his daughter's. It is ironic that January first met Hannah because she was fleeing from the Ghost. Now he is the one she is on better terms with.


WellTemperedClavier: That learning how to speak Chinese line at the end of that video is especially prophetic these days...

I was pleased with how I was able to weave January so tightly into events, without them being truly led by her (Blood Raven has always been the Allied Commander in Chief). But as you pointed out, January is the one who brought all these people together through her empathy and desire to make the world better for the people in it.

As I said before, one reason I like writing January is because she is so much kinder than I am. Hungry Ghost was definitely an author stand in during that scene, though in different ways. We can always learn to be better people.










Cyndi Lauper - Time After Time

Marvin Gaye - What's Going On?


Book 10.27 - Alliance

But she could only distract herself from herself for so long. In the end, she was left there with herself. That empty pit in her stomach widened and widened, and down into it fell all the light and joy in her being. Once more, her throat tightened, and she felt her eyes water. She sniffled hard to keep her nose from running, and abruptly rose to her feet.

She was not going to be some silly protagonist from some teen melodrama, who had just broken up with her boyfriend and went running off to cry as Time After Time by Cyndy Lauper played in the background. Nope, that was not her at all. She had just broken up with her girlfriend, and it was Marvin Gaye playing in the background, asking What's Going On?

She walked through the Aura in a daze. She was barely aware of all the supers assembled around her playing beer pong, dancing, throwing darts, and debating philosophy and video games over foaming mugs of beer. She pushed through the swinging metal door to the kitchen. Once inside and finally alone, she sagged against a wide stainless steel sink. She stared down at the faucet through bleary eyes, and finally she could not hold it back anymore.

She began to cry. No, she began to weep. She felt her chest wrack from the effort, and doubled over above the sink. Her fingers rose to cover her face, but that of course did nothing to dam the tide that poured from her heart. It felt like her world was ending. Like she was empty, cold and alone, and would be forever.

A hand gently draped across her shoulder. She turned to find Blood Raven standing there, her face drawn with a mixture of worry and empathy. The other woman did not say a word. She simply folded January within her arms, and held her tight as her body was wracked with the sobs.

She had not really cried before, after Hannah's outburst at Green Island. Somehow January always thought that somehow things would work out. That was how it always happened on TV after all. The writer just said so, and the world arranged itself to fix things. The gods leapt from their machines to make it so.

But not today. Real life was so much colder, and darker, and dingier than fiction. January no longer had to wonder why Blood Raven was so standoffish. Was the secret to simply never reach out to others, so you never endured this pain of loss? At that moment January really wondered if that were so. She never wanted to feel again.

But, as all things do, eventually her tears passed. She wiped the mucus from her nose, and the tears from her face. Thank Freyja that the sink was there. She used it to wash her face and hands. Blood Raven then produced a hand towel for her to wipe her skin, and even motioned for her to do so a second time, to wipe the makeup that had smeared from her eyes.

She still felt empty. She still felt dark, cold, and alone. Well, maybe not completely alone. Blood Raven was there. The sound of voices and music wafted through the door from the club's main floor beyond. The world was alive with hope and joy, even if she was bereft of those things at the moment. Life went on, as it always did.

Sága rang, and January nearly leaped from her skin. The ringtone told her that the call was being forwarded from her normal phone. She looked down at her wrist computer's screen, and saw her mother's name and phone number displayed in its interface.

"Hi mom!" she chimed. It was her perky phone voice. It seemed nothing could dampen it. Not the literal end of the world, or the end of her love life.

"Honey, are you ok?" There was no concealing the worry that lay under her mother's voice. "I've been trying to get through to you for hours, but there's been no answer."

"Oh, I'm sorry," January's brain began to race for excuses. Sorry Mom, I was too busy fighting the Dark Lord to pick up? Oops, couldn't afford the roaming fee on calls from the Abyss? "It must be all the craziness tonight, with what happened on Belle Isle. I'm over at Avery's. We've been watching WNN from here."

"Oh, that is such a relief," her mother sighed. "I was so worried that you...."

"I'm fine, Avery's fine, we're all fine," January insisted. She glanced at the time listed in Sága's display. It was so late that it was now early. "Since you're still up, why don't I come over? We could have breakfast."

"Are you sure?" Barbara fretted over the other line. "I don't want to keep you."

"I think it would be great," January forced herself to smile. "I'll be there in a few minutes."

"I love you hun," her mother breathed through the phone.

"I love you too Mom." January replied. That was not performative. She really did. Even with the emptiness she felt, she knew that was real. Maybe she really could feel again after all?

So she made some quick goodbyes, and excused herself from the after party.

"Are you really going to duck out on hanging with the world's preeminent superheroes?" Lighthammer asked her incredulously.

"Well, yeah," January explained. "She's my mom after all."

That got not only Cleveland's superhero, but a number of the others to muse about how long it had been since they called their mothers. Even Frostbite went fumbling for her phone to make a sudden call. So January had no regrets as she flew across the night sky to retrieve her motorcycle from Avery's back yard, along with her helmet and gaming backpack. From there she rode to her mother's apartment like a normal person.

She briefly considered flying straight to her mother's place, and just telling her that she was Stormcrow right there. But this might not be the time for that after all. She was self aware enough to know that she had been on an emotional rollercoaster. Making more giant, life-altering decisions could wait for another night. Breaking up with Hannah for good was plenty.

She and her mother made waffles from scratch and watched the coverage on what was already being called the Battle of Belle Isle on both Worldwide Network News and the local stations. January smiled wryly at the sight of Priya O'Neill. Just a few hours before she had spoken to the local reporter in person. Now she was she was watching Priya interviewing herself on TV. That was strange.

Lighthammer liked to say that his life had gotten a lot stranger since he had met her. He had a point. Regular life was strange sometimes. Super life got even stranger. Thanks to who and what her eight times great-grandfather was, her life would never even by normal by super standards.

January shivered just thinking about it. Nátthrafn was still out there, in the Abyss. So too was Choronzon, the Abyss itself if some legends were to be believed. Even now they were undoubtedly plotting their return. She remembered her eight times great-grandfather's arms clamped down around her, pinning her in place as the portal closed before her eyes. She remembered his smell, musty, and rotten, like a dead thing. She heard his voice in her memory.

"You are mine for eternity."

She shivered again. She would rather be dead.

"Are you ok January?" her mother Barbara broke her from her reverie.

"I'm fine," January forced herself to smile. "I was just thinking about... everything that's happened. But I'm still here, and you're still here, and Avery, and all my other friends, and that's all that matters."

"Speaking of that," Barbara began. "All day today I have been thinking about something you and your Aunt Branwen suggested a while ago."

"I want to make that podcast," she declared.

"Barb Reads Comics?" January smiled. "That sounds great!"

"Well, that is not exactly what I had in mind," Barbara explained. Her voice took on a slow, careful tone. January knew that tone. It was the one where she was trying to walk the tightrope between explaining something that was inherently complicated, and reducing it to something that could be easily understood. As a writer, January walked the tightrope all the time, often not as well as she would like.

"Your brother's death, and this... whatever just happened tonight... has got me thinking about our world, and how it got this way. Mostly it has gotten me thinking about how I haven't been seeing it. It's been a wakeup call, and it's been a long time coming. Too long."

"So I want to do a podcast where I do a deep dive into the people and movements that have shaped our world. Where we do it, if you still want to be involved. I am thinking of calling it Heroes and Villains, with the caveat that most of the subjects will be both. None of us are perfect. That's important for me to get across. I don't want to whitewash historical figures or events. But I also don't want to just castigate them either. Well, maybe some. I want to show how people are just people, rather than statues or icons. I want to talk about how both alone and in groups their decisions change the world, and are changed by it in return."

"Wow," January breathed. "That sounds, ambitious... a lot more than just reading comic books. Count me in! To be honest, I was a little uncertain about the comics. I don't like the idea of critiquing living authors. I mean, I really don't want to say someone's creations are crap."

"So, I've listened to a few podcasts lately, to take my mind off... things. I've noticed that there are two basic ways it goes. By two of course, I mean three, because I am a terrible person." Barbara laughed.

"You have the ones where you have one host who writes a script and reads it out. Then you have those where one host does that, and a second host or guest comes in cold, not knowing what the subject will be. That way you get someone's honest reaction to what's being said, and a person who can be a stand in for the audience. That way feels more like a conversation rather than a recitation."

"Finally you get the old-fashioned interview style show, where the host brings on a new guest every week to explain some topic in long form. Sometimes people even mix up this one with the second format of two hosts."

"I like the idea of the second one best," January said. "We could alternate, and each week one of us research a topic and present it, and the other come in cold. Or we could split up each episode, so we each research and present half of it. I know an archaeology podcast that does that really well."

"So who are you thinking of covering?" January then asked. "Karl Marx? Aristotle? Florence Nightingale?"

"Something like that," Barbara explained. "I definitely want to do something on Margaret Sanger, and talk about not only how she championed women's reproductive rights, but also got pulled into the Eugenics movement. Speaking of that, Eugenics would be a good topic too."

"I think I see what you mean," January said. "It's like when that one person at the book signing asked me who my heroes were, and I told them that a lot of them were... complicated."

"Exactly!" Barbara said. "I want to get into those complications, because real people are messy. Even Princess Diana pushed Rain Legs down the stairs."

"But I also want to do the opposite, sort of," the librarian continued. "I would like to get into the people who really were not so great, but are hailed as heroes by some, and villains by others. Napoleon, Atilla, Andrew Jackson, George Washington, etc..."

"Washington? The wooden teeth guy?" January raised an eyebrow in Spockian incredulity.

"They weren't wooden, they came from slaves," Barbara explained. "That's not all. He was known as 'The Town Destroyer', thanks to the genocide he did on the Iroquois. He called himself that too, because, you know, it's something to brag about."

"I love American history," January sighed.

"Wait until you hear about the British Empire..." Barbara murmured, "It's no accident that everyone around the world celebrates their independence from them."

"Maybe we could do some genuinely good things too?" January offered. "It would be a nice counter-balance."

"Yes," Barbara agreed quickly. "I was thinking covering the Jane Collective would be nice, and maybe the Detroit Walk to Freedom."

"The what?" January wondered aloud. "I have never heard of either of those things."

"That is why we should cover them," Barbara insisted.

With that they began to discuss the ins and outs of recording a podcast. They would need software, and microphones, and an engineer, and so forth. January was quick to volunteer Blackjack - or Mister Jack as she was starting to think of him as. Or Ryo, after all, he had collaborated with Jack in creating the video for Crazy For This Crow. Either one of them could probably handle the technical side, though of course they would have to ask.

Then they were off into discussing things like using crowdfunding like Jumpstarter, or running ads to pay for it all. Soon enough January completely forgot about the end of the world. This was her world, right now, and she was going to make it shine.


* * *

[macole]

War of the Worlds, the 1938 Orson Welles Halloween radio broadcast caused a panic when people tuned in late and didn’t hear the introduction. After a intro stating that it was a presentation of the H. G. Wells novel, the program sounded like a live news broadcast covering a Martian invasion.

That is a good version of Over the Hills and Far Away.

And then there is the two edged sword called history. There are few books that I’ve read more than once. One is Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. Puts a whole new perspective on playing cowboys and Indians when I was young.

[Renee]

My dad told me long ago about Orson Wells' radio broadcast (edit: ninja'd! ), in which listeners actually thought an invasion was occurring!

Damn, Hannah was kidnapped. Sheesh. I don't remember that. But I think it sucks she has to take racist attitudes out on Ryo. Oh well. Jan's better off without her.

Oh, I'm not young! We're close in age, I think. ISO means "interested (in) seeking out" and X is just whatever. "TWF iso SBF" (trans white female interested in seeking out single black female). Those were the acronyms used way back when we all read Personal sections in newspapers, way before apps even existed! So I have no idea if those acronyms are still used these days. Because with newspapers the text had to be condensed so all those words could fit.

Time After Time, yeah, that's a breakup song Jan's weeping. Yeah, I get it. Been there so many times.

Uh oh, phone call. I wonder if it's going to be another mission. 🦸 It's mom. And mom has no idea that her daughter just took part in saving the entire world.

Nice, she's back on her bike, back where it all began. So much has happened. I like that all the supers began calling their moms!

She's doing the right thing, I think. Not giving Hannah anything. Leaving the party, to return to what's comforting. And mom's got some really great ideas for this podcast. Margaret Sanger, a real champion from back in the days when it was tougher to do those sort of things.

Such a double life our heroine leads. And mom has no idea.

This post has been edited by Renee: Mar 4 2023, 11:31 PM

[Acadian]

Thanks for the refresher on Hannah. I recalled she had some racial history but forgot the specifics of who was Chinese and who was Japanese.

*

Great job of painting January’s despair for us. Jan is so far removed from 'the girl next door looking for the boy next door' that finding a potential mate is a real challenge. Someone who can love and accept everything about her - from her sexuality to her superpowers - is a tall order. And Hannah actually filled much of it. A hard loss for Jan indeed. Finally, she breaks down a bit and lets some out. And sure enough, just as Blood Raven was there outside a burning building to hold Jan’s hair out of her vomit, she is there now to hold Jan and let her cry.

I smiled when Jan was able to muster her perky phone voice for Mom. Jan shows us her priorities (no surprise) as she goes to see Mom. And being Jan, with her uncanny ability to influence other supers, I was not surprised when others began calling their mothers.

I was glad Jan debated telling her mother about her super identity – because I debated the same thing internally while Jan was on the phone with her mother. Pros and cons but, Jan’s right: now’s not the time.

Sounds like an interesting concept for podcasting. I look forward to ‘Lighthammer – hero or villain?’

[macole]

The trope that Moms and Dads are always the last to know is really not true. They know, they just don’t want to believe. To believe could destroy all the hopes and dreams of a lifetime.

Make it easy on your mom, Jan. Fess up so she can hope and dream a new.

[WellTemperedClavier]

Lehrer always stays relevant, somehow. He's actually still alive, though it's been decades since he last performed. Apparently he didn't like performing so he switched to teaching and was pretty happy with that.

It always hurts when things don't work out. January's reaction is relatable and believable. And it's so frustrating that things can't be more like a TV show. Glad Blood Raven is there for her.

Heh, in all the chaos, I'd sort of forgotten that she still has a masquerade to maintain. Always one of the hardest things about being a super.

Aw, sweet that she's going back to her mom. And this podcast sounds interesting. I wonder if her mom's starting to suspect that January's Stormcrow (or at least a super of some kind). January and Barbara also have a good point about people being complicated. Ultimately, people do both good and bad in their lives. Obviously, there are those who've taken bad to such an extreme that any good they did is kind of irrelevant, but most don't go that far.

Sounds like January's in a good place!

[SubRosa]

macole: I discovered recently that the whole War of the Worlds panic was a hoax. It was created by the newspapers, who felt threatened by the rise of the new medium of radio. They were afraid it would put them out of business. So they they tried to create a moral panic by claiming that the country was terrified by the War of the Worlds broadcast. Basically what they had done in the lead up to the Spanish-American War. I think I first learned of this on a history podcast, maybe The Constant? It was It's Probably Not Aliens. But you can also read about it here.

John Tams played a character in the Sharpes Rifles series of made-for-TV movies. He sang bits and pieces of Over the Hills and Far Away in the show, which where I first heard that version of it. I think it was afterward that he recorded the full version in that video. He has a great voice.

I hear you with playing Cowboys and Indians when I was a children. The Lions Led By Donkeys podcast recently had a very good series on King Philip's War, which per capita, was the most genocidal Settler-on-Native war in American history. The numbers of people involved were relatively small by today's standards. But the percentages of the populations involved were just staggering.

I expect that January's mom will probably eventually figure out that she is Stormcrow. Probably at the end of Season Two. I almost had January reveal it in the previous post. But it just did not feel right for her to do it then, for the reasons she gave when she talked herself out of it. She had been on an emotional rollercoaster, it was not the time for more life-changing decisions.

Keeping her identity a secret from Barbara (her mom) is a sort of a double-edged sword for January. On one hand, it is really confining to keep the secret. Not to mention how disingenuous it is. It is like being back in the Closet all over again. But on the other hand, because Barbara does not know, when January is around her, she can just be her normal, non-super self. She can have a normal life in those moments. All that goes out the window once mom finds out, because then she will always be both January and Stormcrow around her. So January has some very selfish (even if also healthy) reasons to keep her mother in the dark. Just like the whole point of the Heroes and Villains podcast, it is messy.


Renee: As sad as January is, she is indeed better off without the toxicity that Hannah would bring into her life. Not that it still does not hurt.

I think Cyndy Lauper got paid a royalty every time a teenage girl broke up in the 80s and 90s, because that song always played in the background. OTOH, her song Time After Time always played when a teen girl met a new romantic partner. So she must have gotten a royalty for that as well.

The double life is the classic situation of most supers, at least in the comics. In some ways it drives January crazy. But in other ways, it can almost be a comfort.


Acadian: January is definitely "not like the other girls", which is in itself a standard trope these days. But this just goes to show that she is indeed, just like the other girls where her heart is concerned.

January does have a wonderful form of "soft" influence on the other supers that she has met. That was always my intent with her, and I am glad it is working so organically. She just has to be true to herself, and it inspires others. I got a lot of that from watching the recent Supergirl TV show. The version of Supergirl portrayed in that was a gigantic influence on how I created and envisioned January.



WellTemperedClavier: The podcasting is an attempt to make the story feel current. Everyone has a podcast these days. Especially since Covid. I keep wanting to get an Instagram influencer somewhere in the mix as well, and a Tech Bro villain. But so far those are just not working out. Plus it feels right for her mother to do, as a natural evolution of her character. It is not the only way she will be stretching and branching out in her life in the future. Season Two is going to be pack full of that.

Most real people really are really messy. None of us deserve to be put on pedestals. I think we should either not make statues of people and try to make them heroes. Or we need to put out all the crappy things they did right alongside the good ones. Because otherwise it creates impossible standards that no real person can ever live up to.

This was originally going to be the end of the Book, with that good note for January to end on, with her realizing that she is in a good place after all. But as I began working on the next Book, I realized that some of the stuff there deserved to be in this book. So there is a little more to go concerning the clean-up and fallout of the Battle of Belle Isle before Season One can come to a proper conclusion.











As always the James Henry Thornwell house can be found on the Stormcrow Google Map


Pic of the Thronwell (Hierophant's) house

Fairy Star

Solar Wheel

Pentacle

Eye of Horus




Book 10.28 - Alliance

July 9th, morning

January tried to stifle back a yawn, and failed miserably. She held up a hand to cover her mouth, lest she get any bugs in there. That was always a real possibility while flying. Thankfully she had already separated her wings from her body. Otherwise she would have probably smeared herself across the four lanes of the boulevard below her.

She saw the red brick walls of Michigan Stadium before her, along with the rows of blue seats that filled the Big House to the rim. The place was gigantic. Even the Abyssal Colossus and Y Ddraig Aur could have fit within its expanse. Less grand was a smaller, round arena that sat next to it. This one was enclosed, so she could not see what sport it was for. But it was quite futuristic in appearance.

She swerved to the left, away from the twin arenas. That put her over the finely manicured lawns of a golf course. Each hole was separated from the next by lines of green trees. She swooped over the crowns of the oaks and elms. It was certainly a nice view. The grass was soft and perfectly smooth, the sand traps pale eggshell white, and the single dark pond that she flew over looked cool and comforting. A person could do a lot worse in choosing such a place to spend their morning.

Speaking of which, she did have a worse place to be. She glanced over at Sága on her forearm. Her map app showed that she had overshot. She banked harder to her left, until she was traveling back the way she had come from. Things looked different from up here. It still took getting used to looking down at the world, instead of around at it.

She did not have to work hard though. The red and blue beacons of police lights glowed in her eyes, leading her straight to her destination. It was a two story house that sat just across the street from the golf course. It was flanked by a short row of two story homes, and a slightly taller apartment building. It was the only house that was black, which certainly stood out. Granted, that was hardly shocking in a college town like Ann Arbor.

January came down upon the lawn in front of the house, behind a row of police cars and television vans parked along the street. Almost immediately a rush of reporters and their camera operators tried to close in upon her. But a wall of police officers held them back. That was a relief. January was not really in the mood to deal with the press. She was too tired to pick and choose her words with care. That was a dangerous situation for a cape who found themselves in front of a camera.

She found Blood Raven waiting at the door. None of the cops or reporters stood anywhere near her. Clearly, the ominous reputation she had so carefully cultivated for the past half century had benefitted her in this case. Few people possessed the nerve to ask her for a selfie or autograph, let alone an interview.

The house behind her mentor was alive in the astral. January shifted her senses from the physical to the magical realm, in order to better perceive it. She instantly saw that a cocoon of magical energy had enveloped the building. It reminded her of a mummy wrapped in shining yellow gauze. The mana filled not only every window and door, but even cloaked the walls and roof. Nothing was going to get into there. Not without a serious magical battering ram at least.

"Have you availed yourself of any sleep since the previous evening?" Blood Raven asked as January strode up to her.

January shook her head. "I was up all morning with my mom." She fought hard to resist another yawn. Fought, and failed. That was going to look good on television tonight.

"I understand," the other heroine nodded. "Come thither, this cannot wait. We must complete this final task before we can truly rest."

"We should probably talk to the Attorney General," January said, "maybe the Governor too."

"I suppose it should shock you greatly to learn that I agree," Blood Raven said. "After this, we shall deal with them. Cray, please contact them and arrange the meeting."

"Roger that Raven," the elder hacker's voice came over January's communications link.

"Do your senses spy what I have done here?" Blood Raven turned to gesture to the house. "I have used my power to form a blanket around the house. It is a variation of a standard Arcane Shield spell. It merely requires more power and fine control, and finally setting it to endure beyond one's concentration."

"So it's like a 10th level perk or power stunt," January nodded. "I understand. This is how you kept the cops and the press from poking their noses inside."

"Indeed, there may yet be dangers that lurk within," Blood Raven intoned. "The Hierophant possessed a fondness for leaving torpedoes in his wake. We must uncover and destroy any that may await inside."

"I think they call those land mines now..." January noted dryly.

She heard Cray snorting with barely contained laughter over the comm. Blood Raven merely shook her head, and turned to face the house. She raised her hands, and January saw her power reach out in the astral and connect with the mana that formed the barrier around the house. It was only a slender thread of magic that she used to connect her aura to that of the spell. But she felt the elder heroine's will flow across that link. That caused the spell to change to conform to her mentor's demands. In a moment the barrier that had sheathed the front door melted away. But the rest of the magical walls remained firm.

Blood Raven led her within, and paused a moment to restore the magical ward behind them. January looked around, and saw a completely ordinary living room around her. There was a big TV, a couch, chairs, and so forth. But it was all spare, minimalist. It reminded her of a hotel room. It had all the requirements for life, but none of the truly personal touches that made it feel lived in.

"We can speak freely now," Blood Raven explained. "No magical or physical devices can penetrate the ward."

January stifled another yawn, successfully this time. "Do you really think there are any more monsters or traps in here?"

"Nay," Blood Raven shook her head. "Surely I would have encountered them previously. But one never knows."

The elder heroine reached into one of her belt pouches, and withdrew a small, green vial. "Here, drink this, it is one of Kaelin's."

January took the small vial and pulled its stopper. A clear liquid lay within, betraying no odor. But in the astral, it hummed with energy that felt clean and invigorating. She was not going to argue with her teacher. She lifted the drink to her lips and allowed the cool liquid to slide over her tongue. It tasted vaguely of lime, and fizzled a bit like pop.

Just like that, the need for sleep that had dragged at her eyelids like leaden weights vanished. So too was that need to yawn that had continually blossomed within her throat. Instead she felt sharp, awake, and filled with energy. If she had not known better she would have imagined that she had woken from a good night's sleep, rather than having spent the last day and night awake.

"Nice, a restore fatigue potion," January nodded. She handed the empty vial and its stopper back to Blood Raven, who tucked them away within her belt.

"It is commonly referred to in the community as a Wide-Awake potion," Blood Raven explained. "They can be very useful for long surveillance missions. Kaelin can teach you how to make them."

"I thought you were my teacher?" January asked.

"It will be good for you to spend more time with your sisters," Blood Raven said. "In any event, Kaelin is a far more accomplished alchemist than I am. This is her realm."

"But didn't you teach her?" January wondered.

"I did," Blood Raven nodded. "But she surpassed my alchemical abilities long ago. Remember, the hardest part of teaching someone magic, is that no one can teach you magic. You must learn to learn on your own. All a teacher can really do in the end is show you that you can do so."

January mulled that over in her head. She had heard much the same before, from Blood Raven no less. As she did, she moved through the first floor of the house. The rest of the furnishings were again plain and minimalist. A few paintings hung from the walls, but there was nothing special about them. They did not speak to the personality of the owner. They might have been bought in bulk from a closeout sale.

The same was true for the rest of the house. There were no family pictures on the walls. No little knick knacks from old vacations. No books on the coffee table. Again, it reminded January more of a hotel room than a home. A small office showed a few personal touches, such as framed diplomas on the wall, and a few pictures of Thornwell and what January took for other members of the university staff. But even this was businesslike. It was an artifact of his job as a professor, not his life as a person.

The upper floor was as Spartan as the lower. Most of the rooms were plain and unadorned. The master bedroom showed some signs of life, in the form of a tall bookshelf. It was packed from top to bottom with what January took for being rare volumes of folklore, myths, and various occult tomes from around the world.

None of it was anything magical however. January was careful to study everything in the astral, just to be sure. Granted, the Hierophant had shown a talent for masking his magic. Which is why they were careful to not only look at everything, but also investigate further, leaving nothing unturned.

None of their searching bore any fruit however, at least not until they reached the basement. At first it seemed no different from that of any house. Washer, dryer, furnace, and so on were all represented with dings and dents and chipped paint. Cobwebs hung in far corners that were rarely trod, and the usual junk of decades had piled up in old boxes and crates. Here was an ancient bicycle with dried out and flattened tires. There was an old ironing board, and so on. January wondered how much if it was even the Hierophant's, and how much of the junk might have been from the house's previous owners.

The open doorway to the sanctum however, begged attention. The secret panel fit in perfectly with the rest of the wall paneling, and January doubted she would have noted it had it not already been opened. The only thing she did see out of place was a dusty shelf with a mounting bracket that had been twisted to one side. She imagined that might have been the trigger for the door.

Blood Raven led the way within. It was your standard priest or wizard's lair. Stone altar, another bookshelf, worktable scattered with arcane implements and so on. There was even a seven-pointed star inscribed on the floor, and more magical symbols upon the walls, such as an Eye of Horus and a sun cross.

Now January understood why the rest of house had been so sparse of personality. That was just a space Thornwell moved through. It was not the place he truly inhabited. This was where he lived. This was the reflection of his personality. This was his life, and in the end, his death.

January heard the Hierophant scream, as he realized what she had done to him. How she had reversed the effect of his ritual. The high-pitched sound tore into her body like a spike, sending ice down her spine.

In her mind's eye, January saw his body rip and tear apart, as it was torn into spaghetti. Blood and body parts went everywhere. The gore left a long stain behind him as he was dragged closer and closer to the summoning circle, and the Dark Lord that waited to take form there from his blood and bone.

January blinked hard, and pushed that memory from her mind. Still, her heart raced, and she felt goose bumps race across her skin. It was like she had been there, like it had been happening all over again. It had been so very real.

Thankfully Blood Raven had been too busy pulling out the bookcase to examine the wall behind it. So she had not noticed January's distress. She did not need to worry her mentor with some jangled nerves. They would pass soon enough. All she really needed was a good night's sleep, and she would be herself again. January was sure of it.

January reminded herself why she was here, and pitched into the search. She flipped through the pages of a book laid out on the altar. She noted its title - The Scripta Mortis - but could not make out any of the Latin within. It was the old style, with all the letters cramped together and no space between individual words, let alone punctuation marks or letter cases. As usual, it made her head hurt to stare at it for too long.

"That appears to be an extremely early copy."

January nearly leaped from her skin when Blood Raven's voice filled her ears. She turned to see her mentor standing beside her, one hand gesturing to the ancient tome. The elder heroine went on, as if she had not just scared a decade off her pupil's life. "My estimation is that it dates back to the First Century. It may have graced the library of Tacitus or Suetonius."

Blood Raven reached out and turned the book shut. Then she held it up to January. "Perhaps it should now grace your library?"

"I can't even read it," January begged off.

"Learn," Blood Raven said plainly. "As I have noted before, this book details many dangerous magical creatures and spells, both Abyssal and Earthly. It also explains how to defeat such things. It is a foundational volume to any occult library."

"Maybe I'll just get the EPUB version." January quipped.

"Speak to your sister Silverlight," Blood Raven said quite seriously. "She has indeed reproduced it as such an electronic book, and performed her own translation into English."

"I thought there already was an English version?" Now January was serious, "The Ars Necomantia, by Borellus?"

"Yes, he translated it into both English and French in 1671," Blood Raven nodded. "But sometimes one wishes to do things for themselves. Silverlight loves books, and is quite astute in Classical Latin and Ancient Greek. I would wager far more so than Pierre Borel ever was. Her version is more accurate. I also wager that she learned far more from the effort than she would have from simply reading it alone."

"Yeah, it was an optional quest requirement that gave her a bonus 200 experience points," January murmured. "So her version gives you more mythos points, and a higher loss if you miss your sanity roll?"

Blood Raven leaned back her head laughed.

"Your role-playing games have gifted you with a unique perspective on the world," she said.

"You should try playing some time," January said. "It's fun, you might actually like it."

"I have been playing roles for two and a half centuries." Blood Raven shook her head, and her voice suddenly sounded old and tired. "Student, teacher, innkeeper, mother, nurse, private investigator, soldier, spy... They all grow so tiresome."

January noted something under her feet. At first she had thought it was a stain. But when she poked it with the toe of her boot, she found that it seemed to be thicker layer of dust, with a few hairs and what looked like bits of rotten cloth thrown in. She even thought she saw something brighter in there, like a tooth, or piece of bone.

"What is this?" she wondered, her attention diverted from Blood Raven.

"That was the guardian of this place: a wight." Her mentor explained from behind her. "It set upon me when I first entered last night."

"So that is why you don't think there are any other guardians," January mused. "You already killed them."

"So it would appear," Blood Raven said. "Were there more traps or hidden monsters, I am certain we should have encountered them by this time."

The elder heroine reached into one of her belt pouches and drew out what looked like a square patch of cloth. She unfolded it, again and again, amazing January with just how big it was after all. It reminded her of those road maps from old movies, that folded out from a slender pamphlet to a square dozens of times in size.

It turned out to be a bag. Blood Raven opened it up and stuffed the copy of the Scripta Mortis within. She added several of the other books from the shelf afterward. Yet somehow the bag did not seem to deform from the addition of so many books within it. When she was finished, the elder heroine folded the cloth back up into that little square, and once again tucked it into her belt pouch.

"You have a bag of holding!" January exclaimed.

"Of course," her mentor said. "Unless you plan on adding a backpack to your suit, I suggest you create one yourself."

"How do I do that?" January asked.

"Here," Blood Raven handed her the folded up bag. It was no heavier than an ordinary square of cloth. "It is my gift to you. Study it, and in time, you shall learn to create one of your own. Perhaps you shall then pass it along to one of your own students some day."

"Um, wow, thanks!" January beamed. She stared at the piece of cloth. It felt rough, like a sturdy piece of burlap. She turned it over in her fingers. Again, it was no thicker than the folded square of cloth that it was. Yet clearly, it held volumes within. In fact, it did so literally.

It was like the sanctum in the Witch House. It could not be measured in standard units of space. It continually adapted to whatever size it needed to be. January wondered if by learning more about the sanctum, she might also learn more about the bag of holding? That was something to put on her To Do list, once she got around to spending her experience points. Saving the world must have given her enough to level up quite a few times after all.

They went on to study, poke, prod, and look behind and beneath every piece of furniture in the Hierophant's basement. But it had no more secrets to yield up. No monsters leaped from the shadows. No hidden messages were taped to the bottom of tables, no hidden panels lurked behind the bookcase.