extinguished

"ARMOR OF RAGE!"

Bloodwing's aura of flame swirled around me and coalesced into a spiked crimson carapace resembling the o-yoroi of the samurai of a lost age.

"GLAIVE OF VENGEANCE!"

Twin jets of white-hot flame erupted in opposite directions from the origin point of my connected fists, resembling a staff twenty feet long with jagged sword blades flaring angrily from each end, the Founder's preferred weapon for aerial meelee. I must have been the brightest object in the night sky, between the blooms of exploding hiveships.

While the Founder's fury cut a swath through the hive, I did my best to steer our shared body towards the huge portal glowing like a red flattened sun. It seemed too easy. And indeed it was.

I swatted at a cannonball that whistled as closed in my trajectory, and it exploded in a white cloud of liquid nitrogen that extinguished both my armor and weapon. This body that wore flames as a mantle felt burning agony from the cold as webs of frost spread across my unprotected wings. Ice collected in growing layers over my horns, blinding me momentarily as my heat was leeched from my body.

They know my weakness. These drones have a clever General...

I could do nothing but fight the blur of unconsciousness and watch the skies invert and spin from behind my faceplate.

An Anxious Answer, a Dreaded Discovery and a Vesprium Vendetta

Several moments of terror and exquisite agony, and the transformation was complete. I was as much Bloodwing as I was Jeremiah Mason. Imagine all of your emotions...pride, lust, wrath... amplified a thousandfold. That is the burden of sharing the soul of a fallen Demon Prince.

There was a question that lingered in the back of my mind that I dared not ask, but now all answers were laid bare.

If the family lore is true, how can a Sixth Son be a Host? Did the Founder lose track? Is there some secret...

No. The Legacy of the Seventh was a precaution on my part, not a binding rule of the Curse. I have wandered this Earth as an incubus for four thousand years. No chart of lineage could track how many Seventh Sons there are. A cousin ten times removed means nothing to mortals. Do you remember the incident when I resided in that Frenchwoman? Half the Steamlands could well be my spawn. And I would protect them all.

Reassuring, in some sense. We...I...remained long enough to close the ritual circle properly, thanking Papa Legba and delivering the sacrifices. The spirits (alcoholic) and the cigars (Dammit boy, that was my private stock!) vanished in a puff of smoke.

I stood guard over my son as glimmering clusters of eyes stared at us from the swamps. I knew Amarantis was on her way.

She landed with a reverent bow. I knelt beside her and gave her a fatherly embrace as I gestured for her to rise.

"There is no time for formalities. Darien will awaken soon. He is once again mortal. Under no circumstances is he to inject himself with the formula again."

I took a few steps back and spread my wings to hover. I invoked a spell to fold space around me. Darien, Ama, and the bayou of New Toulouse blurred away.

Sky surrounded me, clouds beneath me. These were the coordinates...

The buzzing of flying armies engulfed my ears. I saw the heat of the Vesprium soldiers swarming around me and their lines of airships stretching for miles from the vertex of the greatest portal even the Founder had ever seen. I spun in place scanning in every direction. Where was my ship?

A cluster of the drones were carrying scraps of airship salvage. I climbed steadily, spotting two soldiers flying slowly, straining to stay aloft while holding the weight of a tarred and curved planks between them.

I conjured a ball of flame in my hands, which startled the pair. Upon the removed ribs of the ship's planks I clearly read in an archaic font the word REVENGE.

"The Revenge is no more?"

And that is exactly the urge that overcame me as my flame enshrouded me in a white column of searing hellfire.

"Aleister? Qlippothic? Koen? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE!!!"

I wrapped my arms around the planks, which immediately caught fire from the tar. The drones tugged in opposite directions, trying to retrieve their prize until the flames spread down either side and caught their wings, sending them tumbling to their doom. With a roar of unbridled rage I hurled the flaming fragment of the airship's hull into the airbag of the nearest Vesprium ship. The balloon erupted with the beauty a newborn star, drawing a bright trail in its wake as the sky-hive plummeted through the cloud to the open sea miles below.

The fools are using hydrogen to lift their ships! Far more combustible in this dimension than in the Underworld! Have they no alchemists? This will be too easy!

As the ships began to rotate towards me, the drones journeying on orders between ships halted in mid-flight and drew their shining weapons. The battle was joined.

"HAVE AT YOU!!!"

the Founder returns

I sat up and watched quietly as the crimson light erupting from my unconscious son's eyes and mouth coalesced into the translucent spirit of might floating above him. I knew the form all too well. The burning eyes and chalk-white skin striated with ancient black battle-scars. The distinctive facial markings of an Ereb'ai prince, copied by Japanese actors centuries ago in their plays. The arc of defiant horns. And of course the majestic red expanses of skin that stretched from his broad shoulders across batlike wings. The very being that wrapped his hand around my throat and, through those burning eyes, held up a mirror to my corrupted soul.

I swallowed, trying to gether the strength to address him. "Darien...he lives?"

"Yes," rumbled the demon, "he shall recover...and I am freed from his toxic prison."

I turned my gaze to the grassy soil of the marsh, which I expected would soon be a barren circle from my instant cremation.

"At least I did something right."

"Jeremiah," he said calmly. "Gaze upon me." Either he was getting larger or he was drifting towards me. "Yes, in your chemical madness you tried to conquer the world. As a vengeful ghost, you and the other Fallen of your kin tried again and failed. Twice resulting in the death of your own grandson."

"WE REMEMBER THAT!", shouted Vortex from the portal above the altar.

I nodded slowly. "That is true, Founder."

"However, you did save this world from the Fires of Apollo." He was referring the nuclear weapon I tried to disarm with Professor Antfarm. "In addition, you repaired this son after your other son stole his body."

"I remember that, too!", laughed the Vortex. I caught a telltale maniacal giggle in his voice.

"Marcus?" I turned to stare at the composite being leering at me from the depths of Hell. "What have you done?"

"Koen abandoned the Vortex collective, and Marcus took his place," Bloodwing explained with a note of disgust, "and in so doing defeated the Hydra. He...they...have earned the throne."

"Indeed we have, Father! And since you're not challenging our will to power I'm willing to invite you to..." Vortex paused as a buzzing drone grew in intensity from from his side of the portal. "Wait Poppa Legba what do you mean 'look behind me'? GYAAAAH!!" The portal instantly snapped shut in a flash of light and a lingering sound that pierced the eardrums as it slid beyond human range.

Bloodwing grimaced as he held his ears, continuing to suffer lightly from the broken portal. "What was that, Poppa Legba? A giant wasp, you say?"

I was startled again by the screech and squawk of the portable radio-wave receiver that lit up from where it lay on Darien's knapsack, placed just outside the summoning circle. Through the interference I could easily discern Qlippothic's slightly metallic voice, clear and measured even in her obvious distress.

"Mayday-mayday, invasion fleet intercepted at following coordinates..."

regeneration

As best as I can remember...

One minute I am disarming a nuclear device. Then Mr. Antfarm's magic rucksack bites off my hand. Death came so fast I wondered how I survived the atomic fire. That is when I realized I did not. The sack, however, did. And part of my soul was still in there. This is what has survived. This is why I am here.

Where am I?

Nowhere. Where do you want to go now?"

Home. Just home...

I was swatted across time and space like shuttlecock in a game of cosmic badminton. A felt a moment of comfort on the carpet of my room in Miss Burton's barn. How long was I going to live like this? Another second or two? She burst in.

She thought Antfarm was me. She was the landlady. She declared it his home, not mine. The spell backfired.

Your previous home was New Erebus.

But it's gone!

Old Erebus, then!

The very damn center of what used to be the Empire. The Throne of Hades, shredded as it was. I grabbed the tail to keep from getting sat on. Marcus and the Vortex shoved me into a lead box. When it reopened I leaped and grabbed the first thing I could...

I couldn't let go. The rush of reanimation serum, a thousand times worse than when it warped my mind. Pain screaming through every nerve as stretched and knit around bone and organ and muscle and skin.

My body was complete...almost. My hair was a bit shorter. My nails as well. That means I didn't overdose at least. I look down at the body...a splitting image of myself.

"Darien? DARIEN! You had enough reanimation fluid in you to regrow me from just a hand? Damn Founder, boy! I was never crazy enough to...Darien?"

I heard the Vortex's voice from a glowing portal behind me.

"Ha! You killed him after all!"

I knelt over him, compressing his chest. My shouts of DAMMIT BOY LIVE drowning out that cat-demon's taunts. All my work seemed to do was drive him deeper into the swamp mud. Without warning he let out a sharp gasp, drawing in the stifling damp air.

"That's it, boy. Breathe. Just breathe."

His eyes opened, glowing so angry of crimson in the darkness I had to look away. I knew that glow. It was the last thing I saw in New Erebus. I fell back, too weak to fight. I collapsed in the mud, waiting for Bloodwing to smear blood over the last line of the tragedy of my life.

If he bellows let him wail

The thunder of horns greeted the Vortex he descended the concrete steps built into the crater. He adjusted his resplendent spidersilk robe that matched his crimson fur to avoid an unfortunate rip from being pinned to his footpaws, and ensure it was hanging correctly around the hole cut for his slowly writhing tail. Two dwarfish demons waddled hurriedly behind him, taking quick jumps to reach the following step.

When the demon prince reached the floor of the crater, he flexed his paws to feel the red velvet stretching out all the way to his new throne. He admired the avant-garde design of the strips of black metal that were re-welded to again form the Throne of Erebus, albeit in a form unrecognizable from the original rococo design the Ereb'ai were infamous for.

"I especially like the red particle effects," he muttered to his advisers as he adjusted his collar before continuing. The advisers stared at the patches of magic radiating from the center of the throne like shimmering rubies. They looked back to each other each other and pointed back and forth, shrugging in bewilderment. They looked back to the throne nervously in the stoic silence shared by all of the neko-demon's servants.

Vortex gazed straight up at the names engraved on the flanges of steel, hammered out to abstractly resemble the Hydra he slew, just enough to remind the residents of this faded province of Hell of his mythic feat without reawakening racial memories of stark terror. The names of his collective self were inscribed on the nine metal ribbons that hung closest. One of them had to be twisted at the end to hide the name "Koen" (whose name was now shorthand within the capital walls for "coward") and etch in the name "Marcus" (now whispered outside the Imperial Sector as a synonym for "opportunist") on the reverse of the leaf in its place.

Vortex sighed happily, and in a fluid twirl of his gold-trimmed robe sat down upon the down cushions.

And promptly jumped high into the air howling in outrage. As he shredded the silk with his claws he roared GET IF OFF GET IT OFF as his diminutive servants fell over each other circling their master, trying glimpse the trouble without being eviscerated by a flying claw. Like that one just did.

(I'm sorry, I seem to have gotten some gore on the camera.)

"WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?!?"

"It seems to be a..."

"YES I KNOW WHAT THE HELL IT IS! It's...oh...what? You're kidding!"

"Sir! We've got the axe! Hold still!"

"GET AWAY YOU IDIOTS! Can't you see it's my...!"


TO BE CONTINUED

blasting doors and opening windows

This Headburro chap isn't as slow on the uptake as I thought. I've convinced him that using atomics to break down a dimensional portal is a bad idea. We'll be using good old-fashioned TNT and a Ward Seal instead.

I've been monitoring Darien's aether transmissions. No trace of Marcus. Marion went berzerk and had to be put down. I was apprehensive recruiting her for the escape plan from Erebus, but she served her purpose.

I took several steps into the jungle from wear Headburro slept. The foliage hid the meager light of the campfire. I made out the shine in her eyes as she watched me from an overhanging branch.

"Shall I follow you on your journey, Master?"

"I am no longer anyone's Master. And no," I said, "this is far too dangerous. Stopping the Old Ones must take priority. Even over our mission." I took a deep breath. "Mrs. Hilra has apparently discorporated the Ereb'ai soldiers. I believe it is time for you to reveal yourself."

"This will change everything."

"I know. I pray for the better." I wiped the beads of sweat from my face. The choking humidity and heat...

"No tears, Jeremiah."

"I know. I know..."

Rendezvous

Meeting with Mr. Antfarm. I am not sure where he found Atomic Age weapons, but they may make the situation worse. I will try and convince him to use more conventional demolitions.

((Note: The role of the elder Dr. Mason will be played by Mr. Antfarm during European hours, for the purpose of recording this mission for prosperity. You may read on here: http://headburroantfarm.wordpress.com/))