Prologue: The Stranger's Last Card.
Don't assume you know the geography here. This America is bigger than the one you're used to, with more roads and cities, each one with a story you've never heard before. In this world, the first generations of traders and fur trappers making their odyssey across America from the settled havens of the colonial powers set up a special outpost as close to the heart of the unclaimed territory as they could manage. There, on the banks of the Mississippi, they traded with the huge population of Native Americans there for fur, and slowly the outpost grew into one of the first major settlements outside the East Coast.
In time, the settlement would become the main way station for travelers making the long westward trek in search of prosperity, and the city that rose up there took its name from what they called it as they passed through: Central. Its fortunes would rise, and fall with the prosperity of the country as a whole (currently it was just beginning what would prove a long, slow, decline), but its place in its mythology was fixed. Charles Sage, building his railroad empire at the height of the gilded age might have tried to fool everyone that the place his lines intersected was the hub of the United States, but no one was fooled; Central City was the heart of America.
Where better, then, for an agent of fate seeking answers to a baffling and malevolent puzzle to begin his investigation? He appears on the street corner of an old borough of the city, stepping out of an alleyway that dead-ends behind him, glancing around as if he can hear a faint siren calling to him. Rain pours down on the streets, flooding the gutters, but where he steps the water doesn't so much as ripple and when he passes under a faded awning, his black trenchcoat appears bone dry.
"Please sir…" says a rough voice crowded into the doorjam. A disheveled body huddles there, palm outstretched.
He kneels. His eyes remain hidden by the brim of the fedora he wears, but somehow the begging man senses warmth there and looks at him hopefully as he reaches into his pocket to pull out a silver coin. For a moment it appears to shine with an ethereal glow before he slides it between his gloved fingertips and holds it up to the homeless man. Whatever stamp or insignia it once bore has been worn smooth, but there is no disguising its value.
His speech is strangely antiquated to the beggar's ear, but its meaning is clear. "This is all I could give you," he says. "But I am cursed to carry it forever. If you take it, it must pass back to me eventually, and before it does every person who touches it will suffer some great misfortune for having held it."
"Bah!" cries the homeless man and snatches it from his grasp. His greed has transformed him from a tame panderer to something more feral. He contemplates lunging at the wealthy passerby, but before he can, the stranger lifts his fedora slightly and the man catches the briefest glimpse of his eyes.
He will never remember what he saw there, only that it was enough to convince him of the truth of everything the stranger has told him. He sees suddenly the broken bodies, the lost loves ones, all the death and tragedy of those who cling to the silver the stranger carries in his pocket. He leaps backwards, hands raised up in front of his face to block out that fearful gaze. He whimpers.
Without another word, the stranger stands and turns from the beggar.
"Wait…" comes the small voice.
He turns. The beggar holds up the coin, now begging him to take it back. The stranger reaches down and deftly plucks it from his grasp. The he vanishes into the rainstorm.
The beggar sighs in relief. He knows he has just passed through some terrible trial, but not what the end result will be. He does not yet realize that deep inside him, some terrible demon has been shaken loose from its grip on his soul. Tomorrow, when the storm has passed, he will go visit his sister who he has not spoken to in over four years, and begin the long journey to healing from his life on the streets.
All this the man in the trenchcoat knows as he walks through the storm. A streak of lightning cracks the sky simultaneously with a boom of thunder. He glances up underneath the brim of his fedora and smiles, for he knows that this thunderstorm is perhaps the most significant the world will ever see. He thinks on his time spent talking to Noah, trying to reassure his doubts as rain blanketed the world outside the wooden walls. Everything greatly changed after that, with goodness given its first fighting chance in millennia. So may it be again, if events are allowed to proceed as they should.
This thought spurs him to urgency and he wastes no time letting his instincts lead him to an old shop door set along a row of broken and abandoned fronts of Christy Street. This is the only one that remains undisturbed. The sign on the door has no name on it, only three words. He understands that every person who stands in front of this door will see something different written on it. His oracle reads: Doorway to Nightmare.
But nightmares lost the power to frighten him long ago, and he opens the door and steps inside.
The parlor abounds in strange scents. The candles in the room are made from the tallow of beasts that exist only in dreams, and crammed into mason jars laced with ill-smelling preservatives are shriveled organs belonging to creatures Dante would have recognized from his tour of hell.
What strikes him most every time he comes here are the books. In between the mason jars, piled on the floors, stacked up some places to the ceiling are bestiaries and grimoires written in forgotten, eldritch languages. He has bargained much, at other times, for a peak at just a single page from one of these books, but that is not why he has come here now.
The owner of the establishment looks up from the table where she has laid out an elaborate arrangement of cards. The pattern spirals towards the center of the table, seeming somehow unbalanced and precarious. Sure enough, only the center card is flipped up, and it reveals no. 16, the Tower ready to crash to the earth. On every side the tower is beset by lightning, but it is not the lightning that worries her, it is the darkness in the sky behind the lightning.
"Welcome, Stranger," she says. Her voice has a Celtic lilt to it that any Welsh or Irishman would pronounce a theatrical embellishment.
When she calls him "Stranger," it is clear that it is the only name the man in the trench coat is known by, here or anywhere else.
"Nimue," says the Stranger.
I should point out that neither of them is speaking English.
She shakes her head. "When you meet me here in the parlor, you will call me by the same name as every person who wanders in off the street."
"Very well," he says. "I greet you, Madame Xanadu, and seek from you a reading of my fate."
"And what a fate that is!" exclaims Madame Xanadu, the soothsayer. "Bound up as it is in the fate of everything. Time, and space, and heaven and hell, all share your fate."
He moves closer to the table while she speaks. He will not sit unless invited, to do so would be perilous even to one such as him.
"Normally such a read would beyond even my capabilities," she says. "But the cards have been waiting for you it seems."
With a random pull from the configuration she produces a card and flicks it at him. It floats through the air and he catches it and flips it around. It is the twelfth major arcana, the Hanged Man. Even upside down, the figure's eyes remain hidden in a shadow that has somehow crawled up the branch of the tree.
He scowls. "That isn't funny."
"The cards have their own sense of humor, but that's still you." She says. "Caught forever in the upside-down, in the transition between the personal and the cosmic."
She gestures for him to sit. Once he is seated across from her the cards begin to thrum, as if an electrical charge is passing between the two of them. There are seventy-eight cards in a traditional Tarot deck. Xanadu's deck has any many cards as there are souls on the face of the Earth. She sweeps up the cards from the table; they blur in her hand, faster than any blackjack machine could shuffle them
"It is going to take me a moment to find the proper frequency," she says. "Talk to me."
"I was surprised to find your door here and not in Metropolis," he says.
She shrugs. "There's been a strong pull in this part of the country, since the sky fell in Kansas not long ago. And as I'm sure you're aware, today is an auspicious day for this city."
He nods. "The age is changing over again."
"Hmm…" she murmurs and flips the first card out onto the table. There are no minor arcana here; it's the twentieth card in her deck. A mass of people stand on the ground, eyes upraised. Above them floats a figure, arms outstretched, eyes glowing red, emanating power.
Judgement, she says. "Sometimes called the Aeon, the new age. The age of the superman has already arrived, although no one realizes it yet. He will judge humanity, to be sure, but will he find them wanting?"
"Are you saying they will only be saved in they deserve it?"
"I'm saying choices must be made, as always." She flips over a second card. A figure floats upside down inside a perfect sphere.
"The World reversed," says Xanadu. "As things stand at present, we are cut off from the infinite possibilities of the future. If the world is not righted, everything will collapse."
"I have sensed this," says the Stranger. "Something has come into the world. No, is coming, but even before its waking its dream has invaded our waking, strangling it. Changing it. What yesterday was a clear path to the future is now blocked by shadow and despair. I have never felt such power.
Xanadu nods. "The old guardians have passed on." Xanadu taps the first card again. "In their absence time is being rewritten. We are being conquered by something that comes from the dark."
The Stranger's gloved hands grip the table. "Then you have seen it. The Conqueror."
Xanadu says nothing, but her hand trembles slightly as she reaches for the third card which closes out the loop of past, present, and future. It lands upside down. Where normally the chief symbol on the card would stand in the sky, here it rises from the ground. Normally also, there would be a nude woman on the card, but here there is only an eye, red and angry.
"The Star reversed," Xanadu whispers in horror. "All hope for the future is lost. There is no guidance, only the onset of darkness. Forever."
A long silence falls over the room.
"I will not accept that" says the Stranger, finally. "I have walked hope's path my entire life, I will not allow the new world that is coming to be stifled in the womb, not if I can do anything about it."
Madame Xanadu says nothing, instead she holds out her hand. It takes him a moment to realize what she is asking. He reaches into his breast pocket and returns the card she had given him.
She places The Hanged Man on the table, in the top right corner. "You are bound now. One of four pillars that will attempt to hold up the world." She draws another card, stares at it a moment, then sets down another card opposite it. The High Priestess. The card bears her face. "I'm bound by giving you this reading."
He winces. "I'm sorry."
She hisses at him. "Don't try to deceive yourself or me, you knew this was the cost. You always count it out before you drag people into your wars."
As she says this, there is a ripping sound in the room, as of something tearing its way through thin paper.
"Now that we've set our marks, there isn't much time," she says.
He reaches into his vest and pulls out a gold medallion. It shimmers. "I can yet hold us safe a while longer. Finish the reading."
Hesitantly, she traces her hand over The Star. "There are seven minor stars here in the void, do you see them?"
He scrutinizes the card, willing himself not to break his gaze away from that terrible eye, and below it he sees them. "Seven. Always seven."
"Seven is the number of victory," she says. "Seven soldiers will be sent against the world, all riding in the name of the Anti-hope, and bearing his mark in one way or another. We will need our own seven to fight them."
Her hands blur again as she cuts the deck and snaps seven cards onto the table face down. The shelves around them rattle slightly, and it is not the thunder that is causing it.
She flips the first card over. A man holds a lightning rod high, on the table before him are the suits of the minor arcana along with lab equipment. He is clad in a red robe that swirls and shimmers with lightning.
"The Magician," she says. "Disciple of Hermes. He is reborn this very night."
She flips over the second card. A man sits on a throne, a crown of coral anoints his blonde brow. In his right hand he holds a trident like a regal scepter. His throne is carved into the shapes of a thousand sea creatures swimming in a current.
"The Emperor, the true ruler of this world, with authority over more of its creatures than any other."
She flips over the third card. This one glows the colors of emerald and jade. A man stands in a chariot that flies through the stars. In his right hand is a glowing lance of light.
"The Chariot, an ancient engine with a very green pilot." She smirks at her joke.
The Stranger screws up his face, willing her to turn the cards faster. His sweat pours down his brow from the strain of protecting them from whatever is trying to batter its way in.
She flips over the fourth of the seven cards. A gorgeous woman wraps both her arms around a lion. Entangled in her hands is a strand of light that wraps the lion up. The lion stares at her, a mix of defeat and desire in its eyes.
"Strength. Sometimes called Lust," Xanadu explains. And she flips the next card over as if that is all that need be said.
A hooded figure walks in shadow, red eyes gleam out from beneath its robed head, but they are gentle rather than malevolent. In his right hand is an hourglass filled with fine red sand.
"The Hermit. He's seen so much. Almost as much as you," she looks at the Stranger, currently gritting his teeth. "He's trying to find his way out from under the sands of time.
A crack opened in the ceiling. Instead of the storm-filled sky that should have poured down on them the seam opened up into a void.
"Hurry," says the Stranger.
It's not clear Xanadu hears him. She is thick in the throes of prophecy as she lays down the final two cards side by side.
"Old friends, this pair," she says. One of them is a skeletal figure in black armor. Horns protrude from the tip of the helm. It holds a banner with an emblem on it, a black sigil outlined with ethereal yellow light. It rides a pale horse with a green mane. The horse grins unnaturally through its blood red lips, and seems almost to be trying to buck its rider.
"Death," says Xanadu. "Always changing, always oncoming, and yet…" she runs a finger over the skull underneath the helmet. "So fragile. Just a pile of bones."
She turns to the other card. "Not like this one." On the card, rides through a field of corn. The stalks grow so high, it obscures the horse and the child appears to float. In his left hand is a red flag that flows around his body. Behind him, the sun shines. When she touches the sun, a beam of light shoots up out of the card, into the ceiling. Whatever is fighting its way into the parlor screams.
"The Sun" shouts Xanadu. "The divine sent to Earth, the ideal made flesh."
The screaming stops. The hole in the ceiling stitches itself back together.
"You hurt it," says the Stranger.
"I thought there was a chance," says Xanadu. "What these cards represents, it's the only coming together in the universe that can stop what's out there."
In that moment though, he knows It is still around then. "We must hurry. How does this team come together? Under what sign?"
Xanadu shakes her head sadly. "You still don't understand. This is no band of wizards and knights and ghosts for you to assemble. They must come together on their own."
She lays a card down in the lowest corner of the table, opposite the Hanged Man. A wild-eyed young man stands looking up at something in the sky, he doesn't notice how close his foot has drifted to the edge of the cliff.
"It will begin the way it always begins," she says. "With the Fool."
The Stranger examines the arrangement. Three cards to read the fate of the world, seven to change it, and four to anchor the story.
"There's only one card missing," he says.
She nods. She places it on the table face down. "You asked what sign they will meet under. This is the sign. The other three pillars may break, but as long as this one holds true, the Anti-hope can still be defeated."
As she goes to flip it over, the room shakes again, far more violently than before. One of the bookshelves explodes, bursting into flame and sending burnt pages and shards of glass flying towards them. The Stranger raises the medallion and the shards glance off an invisible barrier.
"You have to get out." Madame Xanadu points at the door. "While we are still connected to the world.
"What about you?" he asks.
She grins, the cards on the table float into the air. One by one they change. One becomes a dagger, another a mace. Soon a whole gallery of weapons float around her.
"This is my place of power," she says. "I can secure it, but you have other business."
He nods and strides towards the door.
"Wait!" she calls. And he turns. A knife whips past his head and buries in the door. After a moment if returns to its card form.
"The last pillar," she says.
He takes the card and opens the door and steps back onto the streets of Central City. The air thrums behind him, and for just a moment he can hear her singing a cant he hasn't heard in a millennium. As the door closes behind him he recognizes it as the Song of Merlin.
"Fight well, Nimue," he says. Above him the lightning bears down again, and this is the strike. He can hear the glass breaking as a miracle is born down the street.
He examines the final card. It depicts another brightly clad figure, neither male nor female. Somehow he knows that its robe is sewn from the colors of each of the seven cards on Xanadu's table. In its right hand it holds a sword, in its left, a pair of scales.
Despite the grim tidings, he can't help but smile as he reads the single word written on the bottom of the eleventh card in the major arcana.
Justice, he thinks. It's about time.