Omens and Demons  •  Act 1

Krissy wandered through the labyrinth, looking around with wonder and delight. It appeared to be constructed entirely of larger-than-life comic book panels. The images on the walls flickered with movement, and she thought she could hear snatches of dialogue and sound effects.

Toys and sports equipment clustered along the moving walls. Krissy recognized most of the items, though some of them she hadn’t seen in years. Her first T-ball bat was poking out from beneath an Arrowman doll. On the other side of the corridor, Krissy caught sight of a battered pair of cleats, far too small for her now, propped against a tower of blocks she had once constructed to look like a “bad-guy hideout.” She began to smile nostalgically, just as her footstep fell upon a hard object.

Krissy stepped back hastily and found herself staring down at an action figure of Spark. It lay face-down, its little jointed limbs sticking out at odd angles. Krissy had often been told she was all elbows and knees, and her plastic effigy, even in her glamorous super form, appeared to be no different. Krissy flexed her toes inside her shoe, grateful that she hadn’t been barefoot, and stooped to retrieve the figurine. She turned it over in her hand to look at its little face.

Its eyes had been gouged out, leaving deep gashes in the resin.

“Someone is playing with you…” chimed a little voice behind her. Krissy stood and swung around to find herself staring at a marionette of Spark. Its strings were tangled up like a noose. Its eyes had been marked out with black.

“Someone is playing with you…” echoed another voice. Krissy looked around, her stomach clenching. Toy effigies of Spark crawled from the crevices of Krissy’s belongings. The surroundings grew very dark, and Krissy could just see that the comic book panel walls all showed Spark now. Every toy and drawing had ruined eyes.

Sing-song little voices thrummed all around as the toys advanced. Krissy backed away in alarm and revulsion. The mangled figurine in her hand twitched, and she dropped it at once.

“Someone is playing with you!”

“Someone is playing with you!”

All as one, every little voice screamed, “HOW CAN YOU BE SO BLIND?”

Krissy’s back found an obstacle, and immediately, every toy and wall vanished, leaving a black expanse. Krissy spun to see the djinni smiling at her. His spicy-sweet scent filled her breath.

“I’m so sorry about the mess, Mistress,” he said. Krissy’s eyes darted all over his face, unsettled by his cloying tone.

“I seem to have a terrible habit of breaking my toys.”

He grabbed Krissy’s throat. She jolted, only to find she was completely immobilized. Her limbs had become ball-jointed and solid plastic. She’d turned into a doll!

With a wicked grin, the djinni drew a knife and slashed at her open eyes.

Krissy jerked in her bed. She levered herself upright and anxiously patted at her face. The blood she’d expected to feel seeping from her eyelids was absent. Even as she peered frantically through her fingers, her vision started to resolve itself. Her quiet, partially unpacked bedroom reposed around her in the darkness.

She almost laughed in shaky relief. She wasn’t blind—her nightlight had just gone out. Compared to that awful dream, plain old darkness was welcome. She let out her breath slowly, willing herself to relax. It had just been a dumb nightmare…

Her gaze found two little pricks of gold light, and Krissy’s heart stopped beating. The djinni’s glowing eyes were staring coldly at her. He sat perched on top of her dresser, one arm loped over his knee.

With a rush of smoke, he stood suddenly over her bed.

“Go back to sleep,” he said quietly, placing his hand against her shoulder and compelling her to lie back.

She peeped in surprise as an unnatural tremor shivered through her hand and an orange glow shone from the oculus on her finger. The djinni recoiled, backing away from the light.

{Spark, can you hear me? This is Elweyn,} said the loretreader’s telepathic voice.

“Oh my gosh! Yeah!” Krissy squeaked. She cleared her throat and tried to sound authoritative. “Uh, ahem, what’s up?”

{I have a mission for you.}

Delighted anticipation flooded Krissy’s chest, and she released an involuntary squeal as she bolted up. “O-OK! What do I do?”

{Go to the Rosetta Library. Find the lorecircle where we returned you earlier. You can activate it with your oculus.}

“Right! On our way!”

She leaped up and searched around for her shoes, her mind a battleground between the anticipation of her first loretreading mission and the lingering disquiet of the djinni’s presence. It had just been a stupid dream, right? She stole a glance at the djinni and found that he had harmlessly lounged onto her vacated bed, harmlessly watching her like a total creep. Harmless.

Right?

Krissy reached for the bedroom doorknob. The djinni stayed right where he was.

“Um…are you coming?” she asked.

“I go only where the lamp goes,” he said. He gave her a pointed look.

“Oh! Duh. Where did I put it…?” Krissy patted herself down. “Right…Mom’s fanny pack.” She grabbed the zippered pouch crammed with Chuckle bars and the djinni’s lamp from the top of the stack of boxes near her desk. He stretched himself out on the bed, and Krissy heard his joints crack. Apparently, it was exhausting to lurk gargoyle-style on a dresser all night. Who knew? Before she could make a comment on the matter, he had morphed into fluid smoke and reformed beside her, slinging a rolled-up mat over his shoulder. She almost choked on her tongue and quickly scampered from the room.

The library loomed, dark and eerie. Much of the mess from Spark’s battle with the Guardian had since been cleaned up, but scorch marks and jagged gashes emblazoned the surroundings. A newly erected fence stood sentinel around the library’s mangled corpse.

The doors to the library were unlocked. Clearly, no one had thought it necessary to secure a building surrounded by a fence—or, perhaps, they’d just seen the futility of locking up a place that had a cavernous hole in the side. Krissy used the light of her cell phone to pick her way through the creepy battleground, trying to remember the path she’d taken when Elweyn had returned her from Metapolis.

After scaling a battered flight of stairs, the oculus thrummed urgently—not with a message from Elweyn, this time, but to announce the proximity of the lorecircle. Krissy exhaled a plume of steam.

“There it is,” she muttered, leading the way toward the Records and Manuscripts room. The remains of the door creaked on its hinges. Ghostly white light snaked along the floor, thrumming in melody with Flicker. As Krissy drew closer, the white light turned orange, and the sigils of the lorecircle began to rotate until they aligned.

“Let’s hope we’re going somewhere warm,” Krissy said as she stepped into the lorecircle.

The light beneath Krissy and the djinni flared, and air rushed around them. They both gritted their teeth at the uncomfortable chill. The djinni stepped closer to move away from the torrent of wind and light, brushing against Krissy’s back. An altogether different kind of chill ran down her spine, and she clenched her eyes shut, trying not to remember that dark labyrinth from her dream.

{If it’s warmth you’re hoping for, you’re in luck,} said Elweyn.

The light pressing against Krissy’s eyelids cooled to a gentle purple. She opened her eyes and found that the lorecircle beneath her had grown much larger. Just beyond the edges, she could faintly make out the Metapolis Library. Elweyn sat before her, the oculus at her breast thrumming in harmony with the lorecircle.

{So, this is what your true form looks like,} Elweyn said, looking the skinny teen over.

“Haha, yep…” Krissy chuckled. She tightened her arms around herself before realizing that she was no longer cold. She simply felt exposed under Elweyn’s calm gaze.

{I must say, you don’t seem quite so brave now,} Elweyn said, the hint of a teasing smile in her voice. {Where’s that courage I saw earlier?}

“She’s not as brave as she likes to pretend,” said the djinni, tilting his chin and smirking at Krissy. He patted her head. “Poor little Spark had a little nightmare.”

Krissy flushed. “I’m just…still waking up!” she said. She drew herself up to her full height (which, admittedly, hardly made her more impressive) and puffed her chest out. “I’m ready for our mission, so lay it on me!”

{That’s the spirit.}

Elweyn directed their attention to a shelf, where a rough little paperback was crammed between a leather-bound volume and a ceramic vase etched with glyphs. A tendril of light stretched from it up to the enormous violet crystal suspended directly over their heads.

{You’re headed to Westerwild Gorge, and you’ll need to be prepared for a fight.} Elweyn stood and paced uncomfortably. {The canon is experiencing severe distortion. I would have liked to start you off on something a little easier, but…well, we haven’t seen an “easy” mission in some time.}

“Easy missions are for chumps, anyway,” Krissy said, lacing her fingers and cracking her knuckles. Light rippled out over her body, transforming her into Spark. “And I’m a champ,” she finished, grinning and tossing back her massive ponytail. Unnoticed behind her, the djinni flinched as her hair thwacked him in the face. “So, what do we do?”

{Your task is to find the stranger—the person, object, or even phenomenon—that doesn’t belong in the canon and the apocrypha it rifted from. You may be able to identify the strangers by looking at them. They’ll often seem out of place…}

“Like a djinni in Rosetta,” Krissy suggested.

“Or a superhero, for that matter,” the djinni added, scowling as he pulled an extraordinarily long hair off his clothing.

{Precisely. Watch for signs of the distortion. It manifests as a ripple or warp. If it’s strong enough, it can spawn into the gliars you’ve encountered. They will try to spread the distortion to everything around them, including you. You can slow the spread by killing the gliars, but the only way to purge the distortion is to destroy the strangers or send them back through the apocrypha.}

“Apocrypha,” Krissy repeated, squinting. “That’s the story, right?”

{Correct. Your oculus will react to it. It will often be at the center of the distortion activity—}

She broke off as the lorecircle flashed and spun. A large humanoid shape materialized from the ether and settled into the form of a baroque suit of glassy armor that thrummed with light. A pendulum swung slowly in its torso, ticking gently.

{Ah, Chronos, you’ve come,} Elweyn sighed with relief. She dipped her head in a bow, and Chronos returned the gesture with somber decorum.

“So long as I am awake, I shall do what I can,” Chronos said in his deep, echoing voice. The djinni visibly tensed.

{I do not believe you were properly introduced,} Elweyn said, turning to Spark and the djinni. {This is His Eminence Lord Chronos, Eidolon of Time, an Exalted One from the Mytherion canon. He has awakened from his sacred slumber to aid the loretreaders, and he will be guiding you for this assignment.}

The djinni raised a scornful eyebrow at the elaborate title, while Spark looked elated. “You’re gonna show us the ancient ways of the loretreader, then, huh?” she said, striking some pretend karate poses. “Nice. You’re like the Arbalest to our Arrowman, the Splinter to our Ninja Turtles, the Bruce Wayne to our Terry McGinnis, the Yoda to our Luke, the Mr. Miyagi—”

Chronos drew a slow sigh. “More aptly, this one’s parole officer,” he replied, clapping a heavy hand on the djinni’s shoulder. The djinni barely repressed a grunt as his knees locked from the sheer weight. It took every ounce of spite in his frame to control his expression.

“Wonderful,” the djinni said, forcing a gracious smile through gritted teeth.

{As I was saying, the apocrypha—the story—can often be found at the center of the distortion activity. You must locate it and use your oculus to send the strangers back to their canon of origin. Chronos will demonstrate how it is done.}

The djinni carefully edged Chronos’ hand off his shoulder with poorly concealed loathing. “Find the story, evict the invaders. Right.”

“Good thing I’ve got my library card,” Spark quipped, throwing a conspiring smile at the djinni. “We’ve got a book to check out.”

Rather on accident, the djinni and Elweyn exchanged exasperated looks.

Elweyn stamped her paw down on a sigil of the lorecircle. As the wind whipped up once more, the worn paperback trembled and lunged from the shelf as an invisible force tore the leaves from the cover. The pages swirled in a cyclone around the room. Their text shone and lifted right from the paper, circling in the air faster and faster in concert with the motions of the lorecircle. The purple light gleamed fiercely until it was white hot and the view of the Metapolis Library dissolved.

“Woooooowww,” Spark said slowly.

The portal stood on a small outcropping of rock, overlooking a twisting canyon. Centuries of weathering had worn the rocky terrain into rough pillars and sandy lowlands, flecked with spiny flora. The sun shone brilliantly, casting stark shadows and making the air shimmer with oppressive heat. Spark blinked against the bright light. The djinni’s pupils were each the width of a papercut.

Unfazed by the abrupt change in scenery, Chronos clanked past the pair, checking the oculus in his gauntlet as one might check a compass. “Come.”

“Yes. Let’s get this over with,” agreed the djinni.

“Of course. You’ve got a schedule jam-packed full of loafing around like a creep in my room to get back to,” Spark scoffed at him. She scuttled to catch up with Chronos (which was hardly a feat, as he trudged very slowly). “So! What do we do first, Your Exalted One or whatever? Recon, maybe? I’ll do some recon!”

Chronos may have attempted to answer, but Spark was too excited to wait for him. She turned and launched like a bullet from the edge of the cliff.

In a heartbeat, she had covered fifteen yards of distance into the open sky. There was a strangled cry, and Spark heard the jangle of chain links and the scuffling of sand across rock as the djinni was forcibly dragged by his collar. Chronos grasped the djinni’s forearm in one hand and hurtled a beam toward Spark with the other. Time halted around her, freezing her in midair and suspending the djinni in a gruesome tug-of-war between Chronos’ grip and the magical chain that stretched taut from the djinni’s collar to a space just over Spark’s hip. Though the djinni’s lamp had vanished along with her fanny pack and the rest of her pedestrian clothing when Krissy had transformed, it was evidently still on her person in some incorporeal state.

Chronos flicked his wrist, yanking Spark back onto the precipice just as quickly as she’d taken off. The chain went slack and then vanished, and the djinni sagged to the ground, holding his throat and coughing raggedly.

Spark gasped and dropped to the djinni’s side. “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry,” she wailed. “Are you OK?”

“You…need to…hack…warn me!” he glared at her, flipping tousled hair out of his face.

“Your haste is foolhardy, child,” Chronos thrummed, stepping back to give the djinni space. “Now, hush. This commotion—”

The bluff beneath them began to tremble. As one, they looked at each other, then up toward the source of the disturbance, just as they each felt the nauseating pressure of distortion welling in their heads. A sea of creatures beyond the horrors of Hell spilled down the bluff toward them in a cacophony of guttural howls. The ground shook, and the precipice abruptly gave way beneath the loretreaders.

Instinctively, Spark grabbed for the djinni’s hand, catching him just in time as the much heavier Chronos plunged down the side of the bluff.

“Chronos!” Spark yelped, straining to hold the djinni aloft as stone and sand swept beneath them after the eidolon. The freakish horde was close behind, filling the air now as they took flight, their bulging eyes wild with malice.

The djinni shot a look up at Spark, his expression a mixture of something that might have been surprised gratitude and the beginnings of a plan.

“Get Chronos!” he ordered, and he lunged out with both legs, meeting a flying demon with a savage kick to the teeth. Spark felt him vault from her grip and glimpsed a confusing flash of maroon, but in the next moment, a torrent of beasts pummeled into her. One hit her shoulder hard enough to send her spinning. She squawked and fired off explosives blindly, trying to clear the mass of darkness closing in on her. Monsters screamed, but whether in rage or in pain, it was hard to tell. She could feel, more than see, that she was being swept down the mountain, but it was all she could do to keep the monsters off her. She no longer knew which way was up or down.

She hit the ground in a hiss of sand. She had only enough presence of mind to wonder if she’d reached the bottom of the bluff when the monstrous howls around her clarified into far more terrifying speech.

“Succulent flesh!”

“A little morsel!”

Mouths and claws snatched at Spark on every side.

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