Omens and Demons  •  Act 2

Spark shrieked when she felt teeth sink into her arm. Just as they clamped down, a loud report shook the air, and the beast dining on Spark’s arm exploded into green foam. The black shapes around Spark scattered, caterwauling furiously.

Two unfamiliar personages had joined Spark in the fray. One was crouched wolf-like on the ground, holding a wound in his side with one hand and firing a weapon into the battle with the other. The second was a woman mounted on the back of a creature Spark could best compare to a horse and busily engaged with a firearm of her own.

“Easy there, little darlin’!” she grunted to Spark. “Ain’t much inclined to see a filly like you mauled today. I don’t know where ya came from, but you best be skedaddlin’ back as fast as you can, ya hear?” She swore and kicked at the monster that was trying to swipe her right out of her saddle. “We’re plum near outta ammo ourselves. We can’t hold ’em off much longer.”

Spark flushed. She was supposed to be the hero here!

“I’m here to help you!” Spark said, jumping into the air. She spun an explosive between her palms and arced it toward the edge of the tightening circle of demons, blasting them back.

The woman let out a bark of laughter. “Much obliged, then, missy! What’s the plan now?”

“Uh—” Spark began in a panic, shooting her glance around for signs of her compatriots. Through the chaos, she again glimpsed that flash of maroon, and suddenly, the djinni appeared, hurtling through the air atop the mat he’d worn rolled up on his back. Were she not in mortal peril right then, Spark would have squealed with delight. A magic carpet!

The djinni jumped from the carpet and skidded to the defense of the injured man crouched on the ground. Smoke congealed under each of his hands and morphed into a curved scimitar in one and a long bullwhip in the other. The monsters screeched at him. He replied with an inhuman battle cry of his own and launched into action, killing with such brutality that the monsters reacted with a scramble of alarm.

Nearby, the sound of a deep bell toll accompanied every stroke that Chronos made with a massive, ornate claymore. His movements were jerky and erratic, as if they weren’t quite in sync with the normal flow of time. At points, he was so fast that Spark couldn’t track him, and at others, he moved impossibly slowly.

And yet, despite the supernatural might of Chronos, the liquid ferocity of the djinni, the synchronized marksmanship of the two newcomers, and Spark’s own detonating projectiles, the demons still thronged. With every burst of green spindrift, another demon appeared, more horrible than the last.

“Put yourself to good use and clear us a path, little lady!” the woman on the “horse” said.

“I’m on it!”

Spark swung around and hurled an explosive into the knot before her. The woman yelled to her companion, who staggered to his feet and allowed his friend to yank him up onto the saddle behind her. They followed Spark at full tilt. Chronos cleaved one more demon before following at a bizarre pace of high speed interspersed with brief pauses of immobility, as if his Wi-Fi had to buffer. The djinni took up the rear on his carpet, lashing out at the predators with his whip to keep them at bay.

It took all of Spark’s effort to cut a path while trying to ignore the efficacy with which the djinni was disemboweling their pursuers. The woman on the horse was making it her full-time job to keep her comrade in the saddle with her while the horse darted and charged. Chronos’ form flickered in Spark’s peripherals. The beating heat, the nauseating green foam, and the throbbing of the distortion threatened to relieve Spark of everything she’d eaten for dinner the evening before.

At last, the ragtag group broke through into open air. They hurtled up the ridge. Spark swung explosives at stone pillars as she passed them, simply hoping that her followers would be able to clear them before the stones fell and crushed their pursuers. It was a close call on the final hoodoo, but the djinni pulled off a home-base slide just as it crashed down onto a swarm of flying demons.

“Cave…up ahead…” said the injured man.

Spark looked around wildly. An urgent discomfort was growing in her gut. “Oh, over here!” she called, spying the narrow opening that the man was gesturing to. Spark shot into the gap, and the others followed.

The gap led back into a small chamber. An opening at the top allowed a stream of sunlight to drift in. Chronos heaved a deep, weary sigh, sinking against the stone wall. The horse cantered a few paces before slowing and collapsing from exhaustion. The djinni darted forward to catch the injured man before he hit the ground, and the woman jumped from the saddle immediately to rush to her mount’s aid.

“Easy there, Blitzer, you done good. There’s m’boy,” the woman said to the horse—or, whatever it was. Spark didn’t take the time to look at it closely. She found an out-of-the way nook in the chamber and promptly retched. She powered down at once, abruptly an underwhelming, twiggy teenager again.

“Ugh…” she groaned. Apparently, being a superhero didn’t make her any more immune to throwing up from fatigue and revulsion and heat than her regular self. It was like her mortifying first day at soccer camp all over again.

She took a few steadying breaths before she could bring herself to her feet. She swayed a little, taking in all that had transpired. Everyone appeared rather the worse for wear—even Chronos. Nicks of glass and gold were missing from his armor, and his pendulum seemed to be swaying more slowly. His breathing was deep and sedate. Was he in pain? It was impossible to tell.

At a loss, Krissy made her way over to where the injured man slumped against the cavern wall with the djinni hovering over him. The djinni’s rich clothing was scuffed and torn in places. Krissy suspected that she’d dragged him partway down the bluff with her before he’d managed to get the magic carpet situated.

If he begrudged her for it, he didn’t show it. He held his hand clamped tight against the man’s injured side, clearly trying to stem the flow. Krissy might have been alarmed if she weren’t so tired and woozy herself.

“Well, now that I’ve barfed up my guts, how are yours? Your guts, that is. Still inside?” she asked the man.

“Still inside,” said the man dizzily, but Krissy wasn’t sure if it was a confirmation or if he was just repeating the last words he’d heard.

The woman scuttled over with a saddle bag, looking harried. She didn’t even comment on Krissy’s change in appearance. “Hang on, now, Laru. Don’t you leave me.”

“I cannot leave. I cannot move,” the man, Laru, grunted.

“That’s right, just keep talkin’, buddy.”

The djinni pulled his hand away from Laru’s wound, and the woman lunged into action with bandages and ointments. Krissy squirmed and looked away to keep from retching again at the sight, but happened upon an even more disturbing view.

The djinni had drawn his hand back from Laru’s side bloodied. As Krissy stared in horror, he regarded his hand, held it close to his lips, and caressed his palm and finger with a long, forked tongue.

He grimaced as he withdrew his hand and squinted at Laru. “You are not human,” he said.

“Kindly do not eat my blood, friend,” Laru grumped.

On closer inspection, Krissy could see that the djinni was right. Laru’s forehead sloped directly into the bridge of his nose, giving him a nearly beak-like profile. Scaly patches ran alongside the edges of his jaw and up into his hairline. Quills swept back into his hair behind his ears. His eyes were almost entirely iris and pupil with very little white.

“He’s an Ahoote,” said the woman, shaking a gourd-like bottle. “A sky-kind. Never dreamed we’d find other people up here. Figgered anyone who didn’t tunnel musta drowned when the floods came. They’re survivors, though, I tell you what,” the woman muttered reverently as she tied down Laru’s bandage.

The djinni surreptitiously wiped his hand off in the sand.

“So, who does that make you, ma’am?” Krissy asked the woman.

The woman doffed her hat, and Krissy saw that she was not as human as she’d first thought, either. She looked like Laru, but the quills arcing back from her face were shorter and more rigid, and her eyes were completely glossy black.

“Friends call me Cyrus. I reckon yer as close as kin after that rescue, so that’ll do for you.” She sat back with a groan and fanned herself with her hat. “And you? You got names to go along with your dashin’ heroism?”

Krissy perked at the mention of the stunt she’d just pulled. “I’m Spark!” she piped. “That’s Chronos, over there. His majesty something-something-or-other. And this is…uh…”

Her voice sputtered out as she gestured at the djinni. “Um, what did we decide on? Gene? Oh, Lock, I think…”

“Her slave,” the djinni wearily told Cyrus and Laru, as if this would clear up everything.

Krissy blanched at the term. “Slave?! Let’s stick with sidekick. That sounds…less awful.”

“I will be whatever it is that you require of me,” he said flatly.

“Sidekick it is. Name TBD.”

Cyrus and Laru exchanged puzzled looks.

“Well, whoever you are—and whatever you are—I’m mighty glad we didn’t have to watch those hellions eat ya alive. A train tried to run through the gorge this morning—”

“Cyrus, spare them…” Laru said.

“They oughtta be warned before they go divin’ in again!” Cyrus insisted, looking fierce. Laru frowned and turned his face away.

The intensity dropped out of Cyrus’s voice. “Point is…no survivors.”

“We have barricaded our village against this legion the best we can, but time runs short,” Laru said, grunting as he tried to sit up. “Our people are racked with umbra fever. The shaman is returning from the Nwara nation with a cure by rail, but if we cannot get trains through the valley…we are lost. Killing the demons seems futile. They just keep coming, endlessly, from that dark gate.”

“A dark gate? Oh!” Krissy started. “Oh, oh, oh, Chronos! Is that the apocrypha thing we’re supposed to be looking for?”

“Could be,” Chronos said, his tired voice echoing grandly around the cavern. “Stories can take many forms…”

“What’s this ‘bout a story?” Cyrus asked.

Krissy chewed her lip. “It’s kind of hard to explain. I’m still wrapping my head around it. I guess the thing to know is, these demons had to have come from a story about another world. Like a book or something.”

“What kind of book would be lyin’ in the middle of the desert?”

“The pole,” Laru said. The others looked at him. Cyrus perked with understanding and dug through her bag while Laru continued. “It is told that long, long ago, the Ahoote and the Nwara were a single nation that occupied the surface world, back when it was lush—not at all like the desolation it is now. But, then, the floods came. The forbears of the Nwara people took sanctuary underground, and the Ahoote took to the tops of the mountains. Nothing on the surface survived—nothing but the stories, that is. You see, this surface tribe inscribed their lore into tall pillars, where the gods could look upon them and be pleased. The poles are the only evidence that anything once lived on the surface.”

Cyrus withdrew a tattered journal from her bag and flipped through it. She passed the notebook over to Krissy and indicated several sketches of a pillar carved with animalistic forms. The creatures were stacked and entwined with one another in intricate patterns, and the longer Krissy stared, the more figures she saw. The drawings were surrounded by cramped notes in a language Krissy had never seen before, but even without knowing what they said, she could detect that the pole depicted elements of a story—one that had a terrible end.

“There’re poles like this scattered all over the valley,” Cyrus said, flipping the pages to show Krissy even more sketches of pillars of all different kinds, packed in with more notes and drawings of desert fauna, flora, and topography. “This first one, though—that one’s down near the tracks. Or it used be. No tellin’ if it’s there now.”

“That must be the apocrypha, and the gate itself is the stranger,” said the djinni, leaning over Krissy’s shoulder to examine the page. She tried to ignore the tang of blood on his breath. “Look, the creatures in the valley match the forms on the pole.”

“You’re right! That’s it, then—we just have to get to that pillar, activate the oculus, and send the slimies packing before the Shaman Express arrives!” Krissy said, slapping her fist into her upturned palm.

“I may be able to thin the horde just long enough to let you get there,” Chronos said to Krissy. He sighed deeply and shook his head. “It’s quite a risk, though, and you’d have to manage the banishment alone…”

“Pass the A1, because I love those stakes,” Krissy said, clapping her hands together. “What’s the idea?”

“We drown them.”

“What?”

In reply, Chronos collected a handful of sand. He ran his thumb over it, sifting it through his fingers. As the others watched, the tiny particles became wet silt, flecked with seashells. The silt dribbled from Chronos’ hands, reverting to dry red dust as it sprinkled to the ground.

“The flood you spoke of receded fairly recently. A few centuries, no more,” Chronos said. “I may be able to cycle time back far enough to fill the valley with water.”

“But if we flood the valley, the trains won’t be able to get through, and our people will die anyway,” Cyrus protested.

“The shift won’t persist long. I can shape the effect to allow you a passage to the pole. The demons will still be able to emerge from the gate itself, but the thousands that are down there now will be at bay. All you need to do is get close enough to the pole that your oculus begins to glow,” he said to Krissy. “A lorecircle and sigil will appear on the apocrypha. Trace it with the beam of your oculus, and let the portal do its work.”

Krissy fiddled with Flicker. “That sounds easy enough…but what about you?”

“I cannot move as long as I’m holding the time-shift.”

“What if the demons attack you?” Krissy pressed.

“You have us,” Laru said.

“And let this filly fight her way to the pole alone?” Cyrus frowned at Laru.

The djinni sighed and tugged at the collar. “She’s not going alone. If you two guard Chronos while he floods the valley, I can keep those monstrosities off Spark.”

“Up for another round?” Cyrus asked Laru as she stood. He gave her a determined nod.

“It may be my last, for good or for ill,” Laru confessed. “Either we finish them or they finish me.”

“I got you, buddy. We’re in this together,” Cyrus said. They clapped each other’s forearms so that Cyrus could help Laru to his feet. As Krissy watched, she felt a sudden pang of awe mixed with jealousy. Cyrus and Laru were a great team and, clearly, great friends.

She glanced over as the djinni got to his feet as well. As if detecting her thoughts, he summoned a mild smirk and held his hand out to her.

It was still stained with crimson.

Krissy hesitated.

She had never met anyone so off-putting. He was somehow servile yet threatening all at once—like a chained animal, she realized. He saw her as his captor, and baring his teeth (literally, at times) was perhaps the only way he gleaned any sense of autonomy.

It was a bizarre and uncomfortable dynamic, and it irked her. This wasn’t what superhero and sidekick alliances were supposed to look like. They were supposed to be friends: bosom buddies, chums, dos amigos, pals, best mates, and thick as thieves—not whatever this was. Unfortunately, he had missed that memo.

As far as Krissy was concerned, that left it up to her to send the message.

She gripped his hand firmly and met his gaze without wavering. His smirk faltered. He curled his bloodstained fingers around her hand and soundlessly levered her upright, still staring at her. She smiled at him. He didn’t smile back, but he didn’t scowl or sneer either. He just looked at her.

At last, he averted his eyes and turned to follow the others toward the mouth of the cave. Krissy looked down at her own hand, now tinted red.

Truth be told, she was far more afraid of her own sidekick than the whole valley full of demons.

Blitzer nickered anxiously as Cyrus and Laru saddled up. Cyrus patted him reassuringly, but her expression was grim. “After you, then,” she said. Krissy looked at the djinni and nodded curtly, then socked her fist into her palm, transforming with a rush of energy. She vaguely noticed that something felt a little odd this time, but maybe it was just her queasy stomach.

Chronos charged. Spark shot over the ridge after him, flanked by the djinni on his magic carpet. Blitzer whinnied and pursued.

They stampeded down into the valley. Demons bayed at the sight and rushed to meet them. Chronos drew his claymore and a second, shorter sword and began to spin them from chains attached to their hilts while he ran. With a final flourish, Chronos skidded to a stop and slammed both blades into the sand. The deafening toll of a bell rang out, and in the shockwave of sound, walls of sea rose from nothing. The howls of demons were swallowed up in roaring water. An impossible corridor of desert stretched right through the center of the sea toward the dark horned gate far in the distance. The demons that hadn’t been swept into water swarmed the path.

Cyrus and Laru jumped from Blitzer’s saddle, putting their backs to the immobilized form of Chronos and deploying shots into the surviving horde.

“Go!” Laru said.

Spark and the djinni needed no telling. They were off, blazing through the corridor as fast as their powers could take them, dodging and parrying demons that lunged after them.

It was the pounding headache that told Spark she was close to the gate. The corridor opened into a sort of chamber that hummed with nauseating distortion and glittering green mist. Spark’s oculus flared on her finger, and through the flurry of demon forms, she saw a glimmer of matching orange light against a carved pillar.

“There it is!” Spark gasped, swiping out of the way of a demon. The djinni answered only with a battle cry, turning his attention to an all-out brawl with the monsters. Spark kicked a demon that tried to grab her hair and elbowed another in the face as she tried to flit close enough to see the sigil.

“Almost—there—!”

It was nothing but fighter’s intuition that saved Spark’s skin. She instinctively jerked to one side as a black arrow zipped past her, missing her by a breath. She spun and saw a familiar masked young woman standing over her in the air with a bow at the ready, scowling.

“You again?” Serenadē said. “It seems the loretreaders will hire anyone. They must really be desperate these days.”

“Hired? I take out villain-snobs like you for fun,” Spark retorted. She hurled a bomb at Serenadē and darted away. Serenadē dodged and pursued, running across tiles of shadows and firing from her bow. Spark squeaked and pulled up her legs just in time to avoid a distortion-arrow to the knee.

The orange glimmer caught her eye again. She was close enough now to see the distinct shape of the lorecircle’s sigil. She raised her fist, and a faint beam flickered from the oculus in her ring toward the pole. She just had to trace the shape, Chronos had said—

But then, she saw Serenadē conjure a snare of shadows and decided that this was exactly the moment to trick Serenadē into her villain spiel. Spark resisted her instinct to dodge and instead allowed the shadowy mass to clamp around her.

Being touched by distortion hurt worse than she remembered. Spark gritted her teeth and let out a muffled scream. The djinni glanced up wildly from his battle and nearly lost his head for it.

“Why are you doing this?!” Spark said, trying to sound anguished. She didn’t have to try hard. The queasy, fatigued feeling had increased ten-fold.

Serenadē made a show of gathering her skirt out of her way and stepping down a stair of shadows toward Spark, smirking behind her mask.

Yes, yes, yes, c’mon… Spark willed.

“Why? Well…”

Serenadē drew her bow, prepared to put an arrow through Spark’s throat at point-blank.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” she said, and released.

Spark’s fight reflexes jolted into action not a moment too soon. She swung her leg up and kicked the bow, forcing Serenadē to misfire over her head. It was evidently enough to jar Serenadē’s concentration, and the shadowy snare holding Spark withered. She hurled a shot at the Distortioness, and Serenadē dodged and shot back. The two spun and chased in the air, sending fireballs and arrows in all directions.

“What is wrong with you?!” Spark yelled, genuinely frustrated by Serenadē’s failure to follow basic villain protocol. The nerve! She hurled a two-handed explosive overhead—and realized her mistake the moment it left her grip.

Serenadē sneered and casually swept to one side, letting the explosive sail past her and right into the pole. The pole cracked from the explosion, sending splinters flying. Flames swallowed the sigil.

The light in Spark’s oculus went out.

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