Episode 3: First Arms: Part 8
MOUNT JUSTICE, RHODE ISLAND
JULY,8, 2010 15:00 AM
How could this happen? And more importantly, how can I assure it will not happen again? How can anything like this not happen ever again?
My steps echo along Mount Justice's hallways. I don't run, I'm still too weak for that, the power who healed my flesh after my spat with Superman has taken its toll on my strength. Still I make haste as I can. I know their state but I'm driven to their side. It's the least I can do even it's useless. And I don't know yet how useless or not I will be.
When I arrive M'gann and Superboy lie in beds in the infirmary. According to the charts on their brains' activities, they sleep peacefully but Red Tornado explains to me it was far from the case when I was in the Hall. The responsible of this sits merrily on the robot's shoulders, for a moment he seems to have the good sense to jump and hide as I approach. A G-gnome, of course, looking at me and at them with dog-like eyes. I feel a great desire to destroy the creature but I relent. As I understand a G-Gnome alone has the intelligence level of a well-trained parrot so we can exclude any malevolence on its part.
He must come from CADMUS but how the hell has it come to this place? I thought the Cave warded by science and magic. Don't tell me the League has neglected our defenses. I mean, I know these gnomes can hide in the smallest nook and cranny and evade instinctively most sentries but still it's mighty strange. Well I don't know the details of the wards the League has built to protect their youngest members.
Because there's wards, technological, magical or others, there must be defenses to protect the place against intrusion. I will check that in a minute after I'll have the details of what battle they were fighting in the recesses of their minds
I ask Red Tornado what happened. He didn't seem distressed and neither was Wonder Woman when she woke me from my post-training stupor to send me here. The android looks at me and declare in monotone.
"Superboy and Miss Martian were training together when they crumbled on the floor. I was looking at the cameras of the place and found the Gnome. Our monitoring apparels signal they were battling heavily in their thoughts before they abruptly stopped and fell to sleep." He pauses: "They were mumbling about the Joker's attack which caused the League to forsake this place."
What? The League abandoned this place because the Joker found it? And they send us here without even warning us the psycho clown knows about the base. Well that's not worrying at all. I have the reaction all people would have and asks about defenses. He candidly informs me the place is not warded against magic and if the passageways Joker used last time has been redrawn (Thanks Green Lantern), security measures rest in the fact none know the base is once more in activity.
I nearly fall on an infirmary bed laughing myself to death when I hear that. I understand secrecy can be a mighty shield but still it's not what I would call enough to protect a whole team. Sooner or later, someone will find our location and we must be ready to defend ourselves. I send a thought down the depths of my mind:
"How powerful would be the best warding I could conjure and what it would cost me in time and energy?" The answer comes, not in words, but in a vision.
I see the mountain brimming with its own energy. The whole Mount Justice claimed as a sacred place by the power of this world, consecrated to the service of justice. In addition to provide us with sanctuary, the mountain could reinforce my comrades if they offered the proper sacrifices to it. I see in the depths of the cave another stone claiming this place as sacred and offering other strength. I see ornaments of seashells and wooden masks claiming this place as tapu, sacred and forbidden. By three pantheons special gifts I can claim this mountain as our unassailable fortress. And that's not even counting all application by the gods of guardianship and defense, the jealous rulers of the underworld who can grant me a portion of their vindictiveness to defend their home to safeguard my home.
But it's not only my need to be safe, but also my ambition Vergil is flattering for I see now the hallways and the rooms glistening with runes of power and talisman of protections. I see band of lesser spirits as I employ to tend our gardens patrol the corridors for the price of meagre food offerings. Not only then but all the lesser immortals of the forest who can come to the call of one who masters fertility. Dryads and Naiads and all their cousins could serve us as defenders and advisors.
Of course this establishment would have its price, a heavy price. First to consecrate the place I would need time for at least half my patron should be consulted to aid to my great work. Some I would have to mantle and use all my energy to inscribe the signs of warding. The second price would be all these creatures great and small will ask for sacrifices. I for myself am not opposed to this idea. I mean, according to Vergil, it would be enough of a beef or two sheep by month to content every lesser and greater power, and most of the meat would be ours to eat as in every sacrifice ever. It would basically mean slaughter our own meat but I'm not sure how the Team or the League would consider this.
It's the third and final consequence that frightens me a little. For all I'll do to protect this place will mark it as a sanctuary for the forces of death. The images in my head show me a place where ghosts will be able to manifest at leisure, where the scenery of the Underworld would be visible at the edge of an eye. It would be holy ground where even the Team and I would have to pay our respect. A secret temple to death and justice. Not the most reassuring comparison for my comrades.
Still I'm satisfied with what Vergil show me. While I'm not sure the League will approve of the whole, some of these things cost nothing I can't pay myself. Also it will be a great design for temples and sanctuaries I will build elsewhere, great complexes where each of my patron would receive its due. I smile because that brings me to another decision.
I don't know the result of my spat with Superman but I will lose nothing by ceasing to wait. When Superboy will wake up, I'll talk to him of the gods. Not only of my patrons but of everyone from Zeus cloud-gatherer to Agni of the burning fire. The inspiration he asks of Superman he will find it in myths and legends of heroes. Or at least he will have the occasion to pledge himself to people who will care about him.
After all dedicating an orphan to the gods is a long and tried tradition.