The Hero and the Thrall  •  Act 3

“Samantha Kristen Cliffords, where were you?” Krissy’s mother said, rushing into the living room when she heard the front door slam. Krissy nearly jumped out of her skin. Not even a car-eating monster was as terrifying as her mom addressing her by her full name in that tone.

“I g-got lost,” Krissy stammered.

“Ai, mija—”

Uh-oh. Here came the Spanish. It was about to get worse. Her mother’s mother tongue was usually only for special occasions—like putting the fear of God into a certain teenager.

“I’m sorry, Mom! My phone died!”

“Do you have any idea—” Mrs. Cliffords began plaintively when the front door burst open again.

“Krissy!” said Mr. Cliffords. He barreled into Krissy and scooped her up in a ferocious hug. Krissy warmed instantly, even though she knew she was in deep trouble. Her dad didn’t hug her enough anymore.

“I’ve been looking everywhere for you!” he huffed. “We almost called the police!”

“I’m—I’m sorry,” Krissy managed, taken aback at the stress in both of their faces. “I just got turned around—”

“Krissy, why didn’t you wait at the school?”

“And what was this about detention?” Mr. Cliffords said.

“Uh,” Krissy fumbled. She’d forgotten about that. “There—there were bullies, Dad! So, I…I kinda hit one of them with a soccer ball,” she said sheepishly.

Her father’s expression shifted from concern to pride. “You used that kick I taught you, didn’t you?” he asked eagerly. Mrs. Cliffords stared at him.

“Uh, actually, I threw it,” Krissy said. “Two-seam fastball pitch—kinda difficult with a soccer ball, but I got some pretty good speed.”

“That’s my girl!”

Mrs. Cliffords slapped her husband’s shoulder with the back of her hand and scolded him in Spanish. Krissy wasn’t quite fluent in Spanish, but she was pretty sure it translated to something along the lines of “Don’t encourage her! She broke the girl’s nose!”

Mr. Cliffords looked even more elated, but quickly stifled his grin in an attempt to be stern. “Krissy, don’t you ever scare us like this again! Oh, and next time, aim for the gut, not the nose. Just as effective, but less messy—”

“Robert!”

“Ahem, Krissy, we don’t rearrange our classmates’ faces, OK? And don’t just take off from school like that!” Krissy’s heart pricked at the worry in his voice as real guilt set in. It partially flattered her that he’d dropped everything to drive around town looking for her, and partially horrified her for the same reason.

“I’m sorry, Dad. I didn’t mean to get home so late!”

That was true.

“I just got lost…”

That was also true.

She left out the part about the fight to the death with the three-story hellion that had clawed its way out of the Rosetta Public Library.

Nor did she mention the djinni.

An hour later, Krissy closed her bedroom door and leaned against it with a weary sigh. That had been quite the grilling from Mom and Dad over dinner, but she hadn’t cracked! She’d had to bend the truth a little here and there, but it came with the superhero territory, right?

Speaking of secrets…

“You can come out, now,” Krissy said to her backpack.

A plume of scented smoke wafted from the lamp within the bag, swirling in on itself and forming into the shape of the djinni. Krissy’s breath caught, and she had to fight to suppress a little squeal in awe.

“Ohmanthat’scool,” she said, staring at him wide-eyed.

He didn’t have the same air of mystique in the bland incandescent lighting of her room that he’d had in the darkness outside the dismantled library, but she could see him more clearly now. He looked like he’d just stepped out of a movie poster—a visual study in kingly luxury and roguish edge. Richly-dyed silks sewn with coins layered with tattered linens. Choppy, disheveled hair contrasted with his neatly trimmed beard and framed his cat-eyed gaze. He was fairly short for an adult man, about 5’6” if Krissy had to guess, but he held himself with a sleek poise that emanated with power. Krissy’s imagination ran wild, picturing him as a pirate, or a gypsy bandit, or a desert vigilante—but, no, none of those were cooler than what he really was: a djinni!

He returned her staring with his own judging contemplation.

He did not look impressed.

“Ahem! Well, this is my room,” Krissy said, hitching up a smile and gesturing around. “Sorry it’s a little…heh-heh…cluttered.” She stepped past him to edge a partially emptied moving box out of the way. “Uh. I’ll clear a place for you to sleep—”

“That won’t be necessary,” said the djinni. “I don’t sleep.”

Krissy paused in her hurried attempt to stow her dirty laundry out of sight before he noticed.

“Don’t sleep?” she repeated. “At all? Oh.” She looked down, sifting this idea over in her mind in bewilderment. “Well, what do you usually do at night? ’Cause I HAVE to sleep. I’m beat.”

The djinni crossed his arms over his chest. “I can keep myself…entertained,” he said, diverting his eyes to his hand and running his thumb along the pointed nail of his ring finger.

“Oh. Good. Well, turn around. And don’t look until I tell you!” she said, collecting her pajamas from the floor.

The djinni frowned, but turned obediently on the spot to look away. Krissy checked to be sure, and then began to wriggle out of her outfit and into the Arrowman shorts and T-shirt she always wore for bed while the djinni stared around at the walls.

Masked eyes stared back at him from almost every inch of the room in the form of posters, action figures, movie cases and books. He shifted uncomfortably, and found that a large face was staring up at him from the rug as well. Krissy may not have unpacked everything yet, but she’d made sure her collection was her priority.

“You have…many gods,” he said.

Krissy popped her head through the neck hole of her shirt. “Huh?”

The djinni gestured at the shelves before him, absolutely packed with action figures. “Are these not idols?”

“Wha-no!” Krissy spluttered. She padded over to him. “I mean, I guess they’re my idols, but I don’t, like…pray to them or anything. I just really like superheroes. I’ve always wanted to be one. And, thanks to you, now I am!” she squealed, clenching her fists under her chin. “Did you see the way I blew up the monster?! I mean, of course you did, you gave me the powers—and stellar ­job, by the way—and I was like, ‘kuh-PKEWHHHH’ and then—”

The djinni narrowed his eyes at a figurine of PurpleX. Something about it looked familiar.

“What is a ‘superhero?’” he asked, as if he didn’t really want to know the answer.

“Oh, well, they’re like…a hero—but with super powers and cool costumes and secret identities! You know, like a comic book?”

He gave her a blank look. Krissy scanned her room. “Ummm, oh, here! Look! THIS is a comic book.” She collected Valor Patrol Issue 12 from her desk and flipped through the glossy pages. “See, this guy? This is Arrowman! He can fly and shoot laser arrows out of his hands!”

She turned from the image of Arrowman locked in combat with Dr. Discord to another illustration of the superhero in his citizen attire.

“But when he’s not fighting bad guys, he pretends to just be a normal guy named Flint Fletcher,” she explained. Her excitement dropped to a more serious tone, but she still smiled softly at the drawing of her hero.

“Superheroes have to have alter egos so that the people closest to them don’t get hurt,” she said, running her fingertips over a panel featuring Flint Fletcher’s wife and children. “That’s why they wear masks and have two names.”

Krissy blinked. “Hey, I just realized that I didn’t ask you what YOUR name is!”

The djinni shifted his gaze away. “It doesn’t matter,” he replied in a cool voice. “I exist only to serve you, Mistress. Call me whatever name you see fit.”

“Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaat? C’mon, you must have a name! What do people usually call you?” Krissy said.

“Whatever they care to.”

“Well, do you have a favorite or something? I can’t just call you ‘djinni.’ That’s lame!”

His lips twitched, but whether in a smile or a scowl, she couldn’t tell. “I’m yours to command. Thus, yours to name.”

“Ugh,” Krissy said, scratching her head. “I’m going to have to sleep on that.”

“Sleep?” the djinni chuckled, though his expression showed affront. “But, Mistress—ah, Spark—we’ve only just met. Surely you have more wishes to ask of me?”

Krissy was halfway through a giant yawn when his reminder struck her. “Oh my gosh. I have two more wishes, don’t I?” she gasped, though her voice was distorted by her yawn.

“Well, one more, since you commanded me to ‘cooperate,’” he smirked.

Krissy looked crestfallen and aghast all at once.

“That counted?!”

The djinni snickered. “No, no. I just wanted to see the look of despair on your little face,” he said. “It’s a good look for you.”

Krissy’s brow furrowed, and she flicked her eyes over him with scrutiny. The hype of the day was giving away to bone-level fatigue now, and with it, dawning suspicion.

“Well, that wasn’t creepy at all,” she said.

“You’ll have to forgive my manners. I’ve been living alone in a dark pit for…gods only know how long.”

Krissy considered this. “Yeah, all right, I guess that would make anyone a little weird,” she decided. “Maybe you just need some social skill rehab.”

The djinni made a choking sound—a barely stifled laugh. “Your wisdom belies your age, Mistress.”

Krissy shrugged affably. “Eh, it happens. My social skills used to be lame, too, believe it or not. I had to have therapy and everything.”

“You? I’d have never guessed.”

“Hyuk hyuk,” Krissy feigned, rolling her eyes. “We’ll work on your niceness as part of our superhero team training montage…tomorrow. I’m going to keel over dead if I don’t sleep.”

She reached past the djinni to hit the light switch, plunging the room into semi-darkness. The cardboard junkyard was now lit only by the soft bluish light coming through the window and a superhero nightlight near Krissy’s nightstand. The djinni’s eyes gleamed as he watched Krissy yawn and turn to crawl into bed. She loosened her ponytail as she lay down.

“So…you’re just going to hang out? You sure you don’t need anything? Water? Snacks?”

“I’m certain.”

“OK,” she sighed. There was something queer about the djinni watching her sleep, but she was too exhausted to give the thought any more consideration. The fight with the monster had taken more out of her than she’d realized. “Well…g’night…” Krissy mumbled.

The djinni smiled. “Sleep well, little one.”

Investigators and emergency personnel bustled around the crumbling Rosetta Public Library. Onlookers clustered in pockets along the yellow police tape, trying to glimpse the destruction. A few individuals were relaying what they’d seen to police, media, and anyone who would listen.

“Looked like a monster out of a movie, I swear—”

“—so, anyway, I came running out—”

“Call me crazy, but I’m telling you—”

“There were a bunch of explosions…”

“Y’know, at first, I thought the building was on fire, but then the fire moved—”

“Next thing I knew, there was this girl on my car!” explained the man that had very nearly become monster food. He still had blood plastered along the side of his face and glass shards from his shattered windshield embedded in his clothes. The paramedic treating him frowned and checked the dilation of the trembling gentleman’s eyes as he rambled on and on about a metal beast and a superhero.

Unnoticed, Vesper assessed the scene from a window on the library’s second floor. Her view was largely obscured by her own reflection in the glass—that of a wasp-waisted knight clad in jagged chitin armor. She puffed the smoke from her blaster before holstering it. She’d had to shoot her way out of the caved-in Manuscripts and Records room that held the portal from Metapolis.

Vesper touched an electric green jewel dangling from her ear as she set off across the room to find an exit.

“Elweyn, I’m here.”

{Did you find the apocrypha?} asked a soft voice that carried a surreal echo.

“Aye. Dead. There was only a scrap of it left—paper of some kind. Might have been a scroll.” She kicked a chunk of paneling out of the path of the stairs. “The entire place is wrecked, Elweyn. Whatever came through here was big.”

{Hm. Any clues?}

“There was a marquee that said, ‘Middle Eastern Literature Exhibit.’ That mean anything to you?”

{‘Middle Eastern’? Well, that’s descriptive.}

“That’s what the oculus said.” Vesper’s lip curled mirthlessly. “Isn’t this Canon round? What would count as ‘Middle Eastern?’ Seems like it would just depend where you’re standing…”

{Well, it’s not a lot to go on, but it’s a start. Are there any denizens around?}

“Looks like there’s a response crew, trying to clean up the damage.”

{Mm…might as well see what you can find out. See if you can find a librarian. There might be a copy of the apocrypha. The libraries in this canon often keep back-ups. Digital. Sometimes film.}

“Film,” Vesper snorted. How…archaic. Still, the medium didn’t matter, so long as the story was intact.

Portable floodlights illuminated the street while a repair crew from the electric company hastened to fix the crushed power transformer. The floodlights cast long, eerie shadows across the ground, warping the shapes of the responders and witnesses into Slenderman silhouettes.

Vesper stepped from the cavern of the Aarne-Thompson Tale Type Museum out onto the street, adding her own distinctive shadow to the others. She received a few double-takes as she passed bystanders. It was hard to know how denizens would react at the sight of her. She bee-lined for the woman who appeared to be giving orders and tapped her on the shoulder. When she turned, she and the man she’d been speaking with swore loudly and stepped back.

“You in charge, here?” Vesper asked dryly.

“What the—who are you?” said the police chief, visibly floundering to reconcile Vesper’s humanlike form with her unnaturally tapered proportions and otherworldly armament. Vesper tolerated this for all of two seconds before plowing on.

“Name’s Vesper. I’ll be taking over this investigation,” she said, adjusting the strap of her gauntlet in a manner that suggested that this was not open for negotiation. “I understand this library has suffered some manner of supernatural incursion—”

Her eyes darted over the chief’s shoulder at a flash of movement. A familiar flash of movement. Instantly, she switched from inquisition to attack.

“Get down!” she snapped, grabbing the police chief’s head and forcing her to the ground as she drew her blaster with the other hand and fired. The crackling beam jolted toward the south face of the Rosetta Public Library, where a dark, hulking creature had just emerged from the shadows. It was thrown back against the wall with a hiss and melted into boiling ink and shreds of curled, yellowed paper. Another creature like the first launched onto a nearby paramedic, drawing screams.

Vesper dashed forward, drawing a second blaster and levying another shot. Responders scattered in confusion and alarm. Cops reached for their weapons; emergency personnel threw up their arms to protect bystanders from whatever was coming. Vesper started barking orders, and whatever distrust the officers had toward her dissolved in the urgency.

“You, get these people out of here! You, with the gun, come with me! The rest of you, be on your guard! There, behind you!” She directed her new comrade’s attention to his side, and the shaken, but blessedly quick-witted officer turned on another incoming gliar.

The gliar was vaguely rodent-like in form, yet comprised entirely of a writhing mass of ink and paper. Its body seemed to jolt like a bad satellite image, and Vesper and the surrounding responders buckled under waves of vertigo. Vesper shook the head-sickness out and fired a few more rounds into the darkness.

{Vesper—} came Elweyn’s tense voice through Vesper’s oculus.

“Not now,” Vesper grunted, more harshly than she meant, as she vaulted behind a crushed car for cover. “Gliars. Big ones.” She leaned around the bumper and unleashed a barrage of shots into one of the otherworldly creatures.

{I think I know what the apocrypha was,} Elweyn said urgently. This couldn’t wait. Vesper could hear a frantic flip of pages. {It’s the Azharian Epic, Vesper.}

Vesper flinched as she heard an officer cry out in pain. She took aim at his attacker and fired, but missed. A second shot connected, and with the immediate danger vaporized, Vesper had the wherewithal to process Elweyn’s words.

“The Azharian Epic—” she began, but broke off with an obscenity as understanding ignited. She rounded on the officer who had taken shelter beside her. “You, what did the witnesses say about the thing that came through here? What did it look like?” she pressed, having to shout over the din of gunfire and screams and monstrous hisses.

“Said it was some kind of big animal made out of metal and rock!” he shouted back. “Ate a car, but then it blew up or something—ach!” A gliar lunged at the pair over the top of the car. Vesper scrambled out of its wake, dragging the police officer with her. She dispatched it with a quick shot and reached for her oculus.

“Elweyn, I think the stranger might have been Ali Sahin’s Guardian!” she rasped. “But they’re saying it was destroyed. I can see pieces of it everywhere,” she said, kicking a twisted piece of metal out from under her feet. It was part of an Azharian breastplate. It had no doubt been incorporated into the Guardian’s body when the monster had consumed its wearer.

{But if it’s dead, there wouldn’t still be distortion—oh, Yggrds…} Elweyn interrupted herself with a slow, dreading oath in her native tongue.

“What? What is it?”

{Vesper, I don’t think the Guardian came alone…}

While the girl slept, the djinni brooded over his mistress’s wish. He’d lost track of the number of wishes he’d granted, but most had been his idea, and therein lay his power. He’d developed an expertise for watching his masters, looking for any little desire he could turn against them. With patience, feigned concern, and an artful turn of phrase here and there, he’d coaxed everything from greedy ambitions to seemingly innocuous dreams into cruel and calamitous punishments. It was the one loophole his contract afforded him: if he influenced a wish, he could control how it manifested.

However, he could not control what he didn’t understand, and this “superhero” wish was beyond anything he’d ever known. His new mistress had soundly thwarted him by getting exactly what she wanted.

This vexed him.

Unable to do anything about his mistress for the time being, he took advantage of her slumber to explore his baffling surroundings. His wanderings gradually led him to the base of the stairwell leading up to Mr. and Mrs. Cliffords’ room. The wall was lined with unbelievably lifelike images that appeared to depict Krissy and her parents throughout the years. The djinni crept up the stairs, pulled with intrigue by the photographs of the little family. Each showed his mistress in increasingly charming and silly poses as she grew from a chubby infant to a quirky child and into a twiggy teen. There was one of baby Krissy sitting on her dad’s shoulders and blowing a kiss. There was one of 2-year-old Krissy hovering beside her dad on the edge of a soccer field, mimicking him as he shouted instructions to his team. There was one of her and her dad wearing matching superhero shirts and flexing their muscles, flanking a life-size standee of Arrowman. There was one of her standing over a completely annihilated piñata, still blindfolded and holding the stick like a Major League batter. Her father, almost obscured in the background, beamed with pride.

The djinni understood nothing of soccer or piñatas, but there was one repeating element in the pictures that he easily recognized. He trailed his fingertips along the last photo, depicting Krissy and her parents on a gondola ride along the banks of San Antonio’s River Walk. Krissy had her arm around her dad.

The djinni started to smile, his eyes narrowing.

He found himself on the landing at the top of the stairs now, right outside the door to the parents’ room. He held his breath and eased the door open a crack, just enough to see into the space beyond, and then sublimed to smoke, passing effortlessly through the inch-wide opening. He rematerialized at the side of the bed.

The bizarre little girl might have surprised him with her first wish, but he thought he knew how to force her hand for her second.

“Poor little Spark…” he whispered softly to himself in a cloying tone. “I’m afraid a secret identity won’t be enough to protect those closest to you.”

A knife formed in his hand, and he raised it over Mr. Cliffords with relish.