This chapter contains input by Sarah Frost and is roughly 50 hers, 50 mine. Standard disclaimers apply. Reviews and concrit are appreciated.
Chapter Nine: Forms.
Location: Earth, Conestoga Hills
Date: 13/08/07
Nothing else was happening. Had happened. Fighting Kilobyte, Fred, not the other minions, one little thing in favour of Fear's presence threatening everyone else in the Sixth Dimension--fighting to a draw, staggering back to the Thunder Tower and collapsing in exhaustion. No defences against any of this, no friends--he passed over Mark's and Chuckdude's houses, and saw their families' images, the haunted, dark look in their eyes.
Without friends...
He had emotions now. And they hated.
Every defeat from Kilobyte. Every day without his friends. Every day without her.
The unwanted other driven to fear...as they all. As he/it still searched for him.
He was here now.
There was a voice.
And there was a world, and a storm that consumed itself. Dream, nightmare. He was all of it. Named for him once--no, he had no name. In him was everything.
It all crashed after him in bright waves, bright typhoons. No way to hide from it; not wave after wave, but all waves at once--unceasing. Time without time without space without depth.
The voice was his, and he was screaming.
Location: The Haunted House
Date: 14/08/07
Sparx woke up to the sound of minions screaming. Again. And absolutely no sign of Fear when she looked around. He was probably outside already, trying to deal with whatever it was making all that Zoardamn noise.
Except that the noises were louder this time than the minions usually were (there was only so loud anything could be when it's vocal cords were rotting, she supposed). It sounded more like there was a fight-fight going on, than just another random skirmish-fight. By the time she got down into the courtyard (stupid dresses, she never thought she'd miss her uniform so much) pretty much everyone was there. She could see the boys peeking out from the courtyard where they were keeping Random, Random himself stood behind them like some kind of iron giant (whoa, too many human movies) and to her left side, the Lady.
Sparx didn't say anything about that.
The screaming she could hear came from the zombies alright, Sparx realized after a moment, and when she looked up, she saw them, cast in huge green spider-webs (like hers, disturbingly like hers, maybe Fear had taught her how to do that in the first place? Maybe there was no Lady Illusion before she came to him…) presumably coming from Lord Fear. She watched as their limbs broke away and disintegrated as they were sucked deep into the wall of energy surrounding the Haunted House.
Oh. So that was where he'd been getting all the power to keep those walls up.
'As you can see,' Lady Illusion said, plainly, sounding almost like her old self. 'We just ran out of Zombies. I wonder what he's going to destroy next.'
'What're you talking about? They're not alive.' Sparx muttered.
'No? But we are, and he just used up the last of the NPCs.'
Sparx blinked. 'The what now?'
'A computer term, apparently,' Lady Illusion shrugged nonchalantly. 'I heard it from your friend back there.'
Sparx glimpsed over her shoulder. Mark was whispering something to Chuck. She couldn't tell what from here, and the two of them disappeared back into the house before she could yell to them and ask. What were they creeping around like that for anyway? Sparx scowled.
'Things are becoming rather desperate.' Lady Illusion commented. 'You don't think that maybe it's time we suggested he find another way out of this mess? As thrilling as it must be to have the entire Sixth Dimension under the throes of his power again, t won't be much good to anyone before long.'
'You don't tell me what to do.'
'Then consider it advice. In respect of our agreement,' she said evenly. 'Don't forget, I am incapable of doing anything which might bring harm to the mortals.'
Oh, yeah. Their agreement. Sparx remembered that now. Which means I could order her back to her room and tell her to shut up, if I made up a good enough excuse about it being for the kids sake, she thought. Then didn't do it. 'What're you out here for, anyway? I never said to leave your room.'
'You expect anyone to sleep with that racket?' Lady Illusion asked.
The zombies were almost gone now. They were certainly screaming a lot less, and as Sparx watched the last of them seemed to fall strangely quiet. If she listened, she could almost image she heard a few warbled mutterings of music. The last the zombies singing about 'Clementine's and oranges' or something like that. And then they were gone, the deep green of the sky faded slightly and began to fade back to its previous gold.
Sparx shivered. Lady Illusion pushed a strand of hair away from her own face, watching the now empty sky with continued interest.
All of a sudden, Sparx wanted Ace. She had no idea why exactly, she just wanted him here so he could say something about Zombies getting what they deserved, or come up with some way in which they could deal with all of this. She'd never felt trapped here before. Not since this whole thing started, anyway. In the old days when the carnival had still meant her being caught and sliced inside some creepy giant crystal ball? Sure. But that was then and this is now and…
…Being in the Haunted House shouldn't scare her anymore. It didn't scare her it just…
No. It didn't bother her at all, she told herself. Not really. She's destroyed Zombies before.
'Well that was creepy,' she said. 'I didn't figure that was how he did it.'
'You weren't aware of it? This has been happening for a while,' Lady Illusion said, pushing the boundaries of their agreement. 'Where else do you imagine all his power comes from while we've been trapped here?'
'He does what he has to do. You should be grateful, lady, if it weren't for him…' Then we'd probably all be as wiped out as those zombies.
Still. No more zombies. A part of her was kind of disappointed about that. They had always been there. Just like those birds that used to hang around the Thunder Tower back on earth. Their sudden absence now was…weird.
'It won't last,' Lady Illusion said. 'There is little left to draw from now. The wall itself will turn against him. It's part of the power as well, after all. Odds are it will become our downfall.'
Sparx snorted. 'No one asked you.'
'No one needed to. It's obvious enough for all to see what's going on. The god of his own, insular domain can't prevent the demon child,' she said. Sparx didn't ask what she meant by that. Lady Illusion was insane, after all.
He wasn't himself.
He knew that. He was something else. Yet it was him; he couldn't deny his own responsibilities--the scream inside, the violence of the unravelling, above all the bitterness--so much hatred. Feelings he knew from himself.
And he saw. The worlds of the Sixth Dimension, everything he once hated about the evils who had tried to kill his friends. Canary Mines, crushed and ruined and shattered, black splinters flying like needles into the air--what Kilobyte had done to the House of Illusion, barren grounds almost healed by the green mould that swept across them, pieces breaking and falling into an almost-beautiful swirling vortex.
the world of the sixth dimension. Destroyed. Crumbling, because he willed it to be so. And...
He wasn't certain where he was precisely. If it's the human world, or the sixth dimension itself, or somewhere locked between them, in the middle of everything that ever was and ever would be. It hardly mattered in the end. All that mattered was his actions. All that mattered was the destruction of the world that had created him.
And his friends... his friends were there somewhere, their bodies tangled in the remaining mess of the worlds. He would find them, maybe, dig them out if he could. Pull them away and leave them elsewhere. But they were gone now, just as he too would be when this was all over. As would Kilobyte be. As would Lord Fear. As would the remaining fragments of the master programmer, sprawled out across the DataStream.
From artifice hero to destroyer, he thinks, and would laugh at the amusement of it all, were he that sure he still had a mouth with which to do so.
This was what he wanted.
Location: The Haunted House, Study.
Date: 14/08/07
Ridiculous, honestly.
As if he hadn't already noticed precisely what those darned mortals were up to. Stealing the amulet pieces from right under his nose, indeed. as if they assumed he no longer thought them of any importance.
Well. Perhaps they weren't. But their disappearance said something about what the mortal children were planning.
Still, they were nothing which could not be dealt with efficiently, if necessary, Lord Fear thought, as he cradled the final piece in one boned palm and gazed from the tower window, observing the consequences of his earlier work. Zombie death did not a particularly attractive scene make, but it was certain better than having the shield disintegrate. It had been foolish of him to allow it to weaken so greatly without strengthening it, honestly, but there had been... distractions.
In actual fact, this was his domain now. That was something which Lord Fear had been dwelling upon quite recently, when not being distracted by his angel's seemingly endless desire for attention (not that he was unhappy to oblige, per se, but his organ playing was suffering). This was the entirety of all the Sixth Dimension's remaining stable land. All that remained of it now fell under his rule and control, its citizens dependent on his powers for their survival, subject to all his whims and choices. And with no interference from Lightning.
It was simply a shame that there was not much of it left to speak of.
It was indeed ironic.
'If one might say as much, m'lord.' Staffhead said, grinning from where he had perched himself regally on the ledge. 'That was one very lovely piece of spellbinding work you did on those Zombies this morning. Why, to capture so many of them in but a single shot. Genius it was. That's what I've been saying all along, I have. We've been so very limited by that silly mortal world and all its rules.
'Quite, my Staff,' Fear replied. He was content to leave their conversation at that, but Staffhead had been most irritatingly chatty of late. In fact, the Zombies had been a remarkably simply target. That was why he had allowed so many of them sanctuary: feeble, flimsy creatures to be used as power sources for the shield once the time came, as it had that morning. There as perhaps a zombie or two bustling about the grounds, but they would be nothing much to speak of.
'Happens that if this one weren't fallin' to bits around our heads,' Staffhead went on, cheerily. 'Then this "game" of theirs might not've been such a bad place to command.'
'Would it indeed?' Lord Fear felt amusement prickling with irritating. True enough. This had been the world he so desired command over, at one time. And now he had it, not that this was proving to be as glorious as he had imagined.
'Well, it's what you wanted in the first place after all, is that not so? The minions act real enough, and what with the old rule of "I think therefore I am," bein' what it is... Shame, honestly. About the fallin' to pieces thing.'
'Indeed. Quite a shame,' Lord Fear said, and found to his surprise that he almost meant it.
Staffhead shuffled, clearly unprepared for the silence. 'Then uh... I would be wondering, my Lord Fear. How, exactly are we planning on getting out of here? Strengthening that shield up and up is all very well but sooner or later, we're going to run out of stuff to drain and throw into it. Y'can't make magic outta thin air, after all.' Staffhead blinked and suddenly looked hopeful. 'Ere! Can we throw that kid into it?'
'I hardly think such an act would benefit us,' Fear muttered calmly. 'He is a mortal. Their connection to this world is a vague one at best, and they exist amongst us as mere ghosts of another reality. The amulet however...' he ran his bony fingers against the hidden compartment of the organ (he honestly should've thought to change the musical pattern for that thing before deciding to use it as a storage compartment all over again.) 'Much power still remains within it.'
'And that's what we're needing here, right, Milord?' Staffhead asked. 'And that toe rag of a mortal, pinching them from right under your nose when we wasn't looking. It's a disgrace is what it is. Not to mention incredibly ungrateful of them. You should track 'em down and make those brats show their pittance, Milord..'
'There is no need to be hunting anyone down at the moment.'
'Why not? 'Ere, are you gonna get him up here and wring them out of him again or what?' Staffhead shook his head, seeming bewildered. 'I honestly don't know what you're planning here, Lord Fear. Something within your typical genius, surely, but still...'
'Be patient, my loyal staff,' Fear said, uttering that phrase spoken again and again so frequently. 'We still hold this one fragment, after all. The child will come to us.'
'And what –pardon me m'lord– makes you so sure of that?'
'Call it an Evil Overlord's Hunch,' Lord Fear said plainly, curling the final amulet piece tight within one hand.
Ah yes. Irony. Nothing could be more familiar to an ancient living corpse than that.
Location: The Haunted House, Lady Illusion's Chamber.
Date: 14/08/07
When Sparx returned to the room to fetch her clothing, she found a neat, small pile resting on the chair, and Lady Illusion just...sitting there calmly, with her hands folded on her lap, an almost anticipatory gleam in her eyes.
"It's finished," she said.
"Thanks," Sparx said flatly, putting a hand down on soft green material. "You mean that's all..." Not exactly a wardrobe full, not that she'd wanted dopey hand-me-downs anyway.
"That's all," Lady Illusion said calmly. "I do morph, you know." She stood up, quickly and gracefully. She'd morphed her clothes into something like her old battlesuit, like she was ready to fight once again.
"All right," Sparx said. "So…what're you going to do now, laundry?"
"I'm going to find Ace," she said, and the way she was saying it reminded Sparx of some old mortal movie about crazies, the sort of crazies who saw things that weren't there and did stuff mortals shouldn't have been able to do, like used a really tiny razorblade to cut people into a thousand little pieces before Ace made her turn off the television on grounds of excessive depiction of violence.
"Got a bright idea for getting here to the mortal world? Share," Sparx said.
She shook her head. "No. He's here," she said in that same calm tone of voice, and her eyes were almost glittering like she wasn't flesh and blood any more, made instead of something that shimmered inside her. "I owe you that much, so I'm bothering to tell you."
Sparx really didn't like it.
"You should believe me," she said. "I can…feel it. Illogical or not. Goodbye, Sparx."
And then she reached across, and took Sparx' hand, and that was such a weird thing for Lady Illusion to do that Sparx didn't object at first.
"What—"
And there was light, the bright shiny rainbow bits around her hand that always turned up when Lady Illusion was using her powers, and Sparx could feel it, little parts burrowing straight into her skin where she wasn't wearing gloves any more (though Zoar, she wished she was), and though she was trying to pull away she couldn't. Green mottled bits were appearing on her, going up her arm like leaves growing on her, like Lady Illusion was reaching inside her, running her through with her own sword like Googler, not a sword, her hand, her body like a claw, and it was—
Like Lady Illusion was morphing into her, arms joined and then their bodies meeting and changing, more intimate and strangely distant than anything she'd managed to do with Fear, alien and wrong, and she couldn't think any more as her brain started seeing colours as well, and they weren't two people anymore and she could feel it all, both of them Sparx and so they could get out of there, and she felt herself stepping out the door, her doubly heavy fist striking down the guard.
I could stop your heart from here, she heard the whisper with her lips forming the words, the Lady her, inside her, seeing things from just the wrong height, perspective jumbled as a kaleidoscope puzzle, powers dancing in their minds and the shape too-much-there for their size.
Mortals said, she vaguely remembered in the brain-not-her-brain, that inside every fat man there was a thin man struggling to get out, and though she wasn't fat, a part of her wanted to say in annoyance, she could feel the other body inside her, waiting for the chance to rip her open and step out of the falling-apart blue-bleeding halves—
But I'll just let Lord Fear work through this instead, she said, and Sparx felt her moving inside her, the cells and blood and face not her own, marbled-green on her chest and arms again as she stepped out from her. Numbed, her abandoned body letting itself go; and falling, knitting back into herself as the Lady left her, alone, falling into darkness as she made her escape.
