Heya! Before we begin, I wanna thank you all for the warm reception last chapter received! I was admittedly pretty apprehensive about reintroducing the magical elements I need for this arc to the rewritten story, but I'm happy to say that I both really like this new version, and y'all seemed to enjoy it as well!
Now, on to the bad-ish news: this is likely to be the last update of the year for this story (though not for the Kryptonverse, I hope to put up at least a couple more chapters before December's done). I'm going on holiday with the family soon, and though I should have a lot more time to write, I do have several ongoing stories that could really use a continuation, as well as a handful of new projects I've been working behind the scenes that will start to be published soon. Unfortunately, this will leave you guys in something of a cliffhanger, but I promise I'll be working hard to write through this arc - I'm super excited for the next two or three chapters, as they'll open up the way for me to include some franchises near and dear to my heart that were difficult to integrate to the Kryptonverse before this arc. They also contain some of my favorite moments in Kara's story in particular - they've been bouncing around my brain for years by now, and I can't wait to finally get them down on paper.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy! If I don't see you back here or elsewhere in the Kryptonverse before the year is done, I wish you happy holidays, and a happy new year :D
"So...ghosts are kind of a crapshoot." –Ellie asks, floating at the back of the group. "What about...vampires?"
"All but extinct." –Strange says, at the front of the group, holding the loom in front of him. The red string chases after the correct path like an excited puppy. "They were systematically exterminated throughout the centuries by monster hunters, and they practically lost the quote-unquote war when Professor Abraham Van Helsing destroyed their king in the late 1800s."
"...wait, so Dracula was real?" –Bruce asks, baffled.
Strange hums. "Real indeed, and quite a bit more dangerous than the novel named after him would suggest. Professor Van Helsing sacrificed his life in a final confrontation with the vampire lord, however, and the others were either hunted down or killed each other in a bid for the vacant throne. There remain only a few 'families' hidden around the world, if you can call them that, and they are obligated to hold themselves to certain laws in order to be allowed to live in modern society. The vast majority of modern vampires primarily drink animal blood, too, so you don't really need to worry about running into one."
Ellie rolls her eyes. "What, like in Twilight? Do they shine in the sun, too?"
Strange blinks, utterly confused. "What...is Twilight?"
The son of Hades snorts. "Bet no one's ever asked that question in the Minotaur's Labyrinth before."
Kara steps over the legs of an ancient human skeleton, randomly shackled to a nearby wall. "Speaking of Twilight, what about werewolves?"
"Depends what kind of werewolf you're asking about." –Strange says. "For some, lycanthropy is a curse. For others, perhaps a blessing. Werewolves are quite a bit more varied than the stories would have you believe."
"But are they hot?" –Ellie asks with a cheeky grin.
Strange shrugs. "I believe their body temperature is significantly higher than a human's, yes."
"No, I meant-" –she begins, then sees the smirk on the Sorcerer's face. The half-ghost narrows her eyes. "Oh, wow, you do have a sense of humor. Could've fooled me."
"And me." –Nico adds.
Kara has to agree with the teens. Strange rolls his eyes. "Regardless, werewolves are among the more common monster archetypes, and perhaps the most difficult to keep track of, considering their many types and the fact that they are only arguably a danger to society during a full moon."
"So vampires, werewolves, and zombies." –Kara lists off. "Three for three on the monster archetype list."
"Those weren't zombies we faced back there. As I told you, they were inferi." –Strange reminds her. "Zombies are actively controlled by a necromancer, inferi are left with instructions. Besides, there are no zombies anymore – they were outlawed decades ago."
Ellie hums. "I did notice they were pretty distinctly not, y'know, rotting and stuff."
Strange rolls his eyes. "You're thinking of Romero zombies, from movies and TV shows. Real zombies don't rot. They're not contagious, and they don't moan or seek to eat brains – unless, of course, they are commanded to. You could even hold a conversation with one, if you wanted to. The soul is held hostage by a necromancer, their minds controlled to do the dark mage's bidding. An inferius, on the other hand, is nothing but a corpse enchanted to perform a task – little more than a macabre, fleshy marionette. There is no life in their bodies, no force of will but that of their master."
"Am I the only one who thinks it's kind of bizarre that there's some sort of magic bureaucracy that can outlaw zombies?" –Bruce asks.
"There are several governing bodies for the various branches of magic on Earth." –Strange says. "Some are akin to mortal governments, such as the International Confederation of Wizards. Others, like the Olympian gods and the magical laws that bind them and their world, are a bit more...esoteric. But they all work in concert to ensure a tentative peace between each other, and between the mundane and magical worlds."
Kara steps on a loose tile, and the stone ceiling suddenly drops. She catches it easily, though, before anyone can get crushed. "...all things considered, your world seems kinda deadly." –she notes, lifting it higher so everyone can continue without having to hunch over.
"No more dangerous than yours, Supergirl." –Nico counters. "Ours is just a little more overt about it."
The team continues on in silence, Kara holding the ceiling aloft as she goes on, leaving vaguely hand-shaped imprints in the stone, until they reach a columned archway, leading into a sort of rotunda, empty save for what seems to be a few hundred Greek jars. Once everyone walks in and she lets the ceiling go, Kara picks the nearest one up, adorned with those distinctive Ancient Greek stylized figures.
Pretty quickly, though, she realizes that it doesn't depict some ancient myth or hero; the small man on her jar is dressed rather conservatively for Ancient Greece, and moreover, he doesn't remain small for long – Kara watches in quiet awe as he is exposed to gamma radiation, and becomes a musclebound monster, feared and hunted by men with assault rifles.
Simply put, this jar depicts the story of Bruce and the Hulk.
She drops it, and it shatters. "Kara? You alright?" –Bruce asks, raising an eyebrow.
"What in Hades...?" –Nico mutters, before she can answer. "Thor, isn't this you?"
The demigod holds up another amphora, which does indeed depict the Norse God – his miniature self holds the distinctive hammer aloft, calling thunder and lightning to him as he strikes a series of giant, bare-chested humanoids adorned with red eyes, long beards, and pointed ears.
Thor frowns as he sees the jar. "Aye, it is. My rampage on Jotunheim – the crime I was exiled to Midgard for. Not a moment I'm proud of, and certainly not one I'd want immortalized as such."
Doctor Strange scowls. "We need to keep going. Every minute in this place gives the Labyrinth more of a chance to figure out how to kill us."
"You realize this is kind of bizarrely specific, though." –Ellie points out.
"This room likely draws upon our memories to torment us." –Strange surmises. "Fortunately, and as Kara has already proven, these jars are eminently breakable."
The Sorcerer Supreme claps his hands, and then projects a sonic wave that shatters every jar in the place. He then sweeps his arm as he turns in place, and the shards become nothing but sand. Strange looks smug, like he's got one over the maze, but the sand then shifts and runs up the walls of the rotunda, painting a sort of glowing, golden mural on the off-white marble walls. Kara looks on in distress as Strange crashes his car and destroys his hands, Ellie steps off some kind of futuristic pod and begins to melt down into ectoplasm, and Nico looks on as a bronze giant collapses and kills a young woman that looks like him.
Her distress turns to outright panic as the mural shifts to depict her, twelve years old and running through the ruins of Argo City, dead and dying Kryptonians lying by her feet, her homeworld collapsing in on itself. "Oh, Rao." –she mutters, dread filling her core. She blasts her heat vision at the walls, but this only succeeds in carving grooves into the stone underneath, the golden sand swiftly reforming and continuing the story, her younger self bawling as her mother forces her into the tiny shuttle that saved her life, and only hers.
"Kara." –Strange says, softly. She turns to him, her eyes glowing in fury and sadness still. "We are not trapped in this room. We can leave at any time."
She blinks the heat out of her eyes as he points out the exit. "R-right."
Thor offers her a sympathetic shoulder pat as they exit the room, Krypton exploding once more behind her.
The next few rooms are largely uneventful; the first is rather silly, set up like an art gallery and containing about two dozen famous Ancient Greek sculptures, perfect copies of the originals but complete and colored like they would've been in ancient times. Ellie blushes green at most of them – they're almost all naked and rather explicitly detailed, after all – which Nico teases her about.
The second room is the largest yet, and seems to contain an honest-to-goodness battlefield; skeletons of two different factions – Spartans and Athenians, according to Nico – in rusted out armors completely cover the floor of the room. Strange says that the remains are genuine, which means that, somehow, a skirmish from the Peloponnesian War made its way into the bowels of the Labyrinth of Daedalus, which in turn transplanted itself under America.
The implications are fascinating, but it's not super fun to hear the ancient, brittle bones splintering with Thor's every step. She floats through the whole room, thank you very much.
Room number three is a much smaller arena, which Nico actually seems to recognize; he says some guy named Antaeus held gladiatorial competitions here once, pitting monsters and demigods against each other in fights to the death. Nico himself never participated, but one of his friends did, and ended up killing the monster that hosted the competitions. It's clearly been abandoned for some time, but skulls and bones from former competitors, human and otherwise, still litter the place.
No more dangerous than yours, Supergirl, Nico said. Right.
Eventually, they make it to a room that resembles an old Greek temple, columns and all. The place is already occupied – and judging by Nico and Strange's tense stances, they probably won't be too friendly.
To Kara, they look like normal humans; six of them look kinda like teenagers with cruel smiles, and another, a freakishly tall woman with a harsh, stony facade, seems to lead them. "The kids are storm spirits." –Nico mutters. "And that's a Manticore, I think."
"Excellent assessment, Son of Hades." –the alleged Manticore compliments.
"You realize you stand no chance against us." –Strange claims.
"Mmm. A foreign god, a son of Hades, and the so-called Sorcerer Supreme himself." –the woman recounts. "I can't imagine we'll last too long, no. But we don't need to." –she says, and much like Bruce's transformation into the Hulk, she bursts out of her skin and becomes a monster with the face of the woman, the body of a lion, and a massive scorpion's tail with multiple barbed stingers. She is easily twice as large as a normal lion. "We just need to buy some time for the boss." –she growls.
Beside her, the teenagers also shed their human forms, becoming miniature storm cells that kick up the stale air in the room into gale force winds. Thor laughs in derision, holding Mjolnir up and countering with his own storm powers – though this only succeeds in making the winds all the more chaotic. The Manticore charges, roaring as she closes the distance; Kara rushes forward to meet her halfway, dodging a swipe of her fearsome claws and delivering a punch that would easily kill a man. However, the Manticore is largely unfazed – it's the strangest thing, but it looks as if her jaw breaks, then instantly mends itself. It bats her away with her freaky scorpion tail, then launches a few barbs at her for good measure.
Kara almost rolls her eyes – she's bulletproof, after all, what good could some fancy quills do against her? – but then the tips actually bury themselves into her skin. The shock wears off quickly, as the venom inside them courses through her bloodstream and sends her entire nervous system into overdrive, pain shooting through her whole body. The Manticore prepares to pounce on her, but Ellie swoops in, delivering an ectoplasm-charged punch and sending the monster hurtling away. The half-ghost then touches Kara and turns them both intangible, the barbs falling off her body and the venom ceasing its effect.
"Damn it..." –Kara pants. "What the hell just happened?"
"Well, you just kinda...stood there and took it, Supergirl." –Ellie says, evidently confused.
"How did those things break my skin?" –she wonders, inspecting the small holes in her costume, the wounds beneath already sealed back up. "I'm not feeling woozy, so it can't be Kryptonite..."
Ellie hums. "Well...maybe it's like ghosts and electricity." –she suggests. "Ghosts are immune to pretty much everything that isn't ectoplasm-based, but strong electric currents will hurt a ghost, even if there's no ectoplasm involved. Maybe your powers don't work so well against magical creatures?"
Kara scowls. "Kinda wish I'd known that before I descended into a mythical maze filled with magic crap." –she says, though on further reflection, she should've known; after all, Victor was able to effortlessly paralyze her with a spell that, according to Strange, was 'the simplest of curses'. He spelled it out for her back during the all-hands meeting, honestly – she was just so eager to get the bastard that she completely blanked on her newfound weakness.
She does that a lot, doesn't she? Charging in headfirst without much thought as to her next move, or the capabilities of her foes? She should probably stop doing it.
A bunch of barbs whistle her way once again, bringing her out of her reverie, but this time, Strange places a barrier in front of her that stops them. "Focus, Supergirl." –he chides. "Raw strength will not kill these monsters, but creatures of magic are typically vulnerable to focused energy. Your strange eye lasers may suffice."
The Sorcerer Supreme creates a shimmering blue circle of frost with his hands, and launches it at a nearby storm spirit; the circle washes over the monster, and it instantly becomes a lifeless pile of light, fluffy snow. Thor blasts powerful lightning from Mjolnir at a trio of storm spirits, but this only seems to make them angrier and stronger, so he instead absorbs lightning from them, and they're reduced to nebulous, silver clouds, which seem to dissipate moments later. Nico fires at the Manticore with ethereal purple flames from the palm of his hand, but the chimeric monster shrugs it off with only minor burns, lunging at the demigod, who expertly dodges out of the way and even nicks the side of the Manticore with his cursed blade.
Kara sees her opening, and dives in, this time with a plan; the Manticore is clearly agonizing from the cursed cut on her side, so she doesn't see Supergirl come from behind and grab her arachnid tail, careful to keep the barbs facing away from her body. The monster roars, trying to claw at her, but she easily keeps out of harm's way, floating and lifting the Manticore so she's helpless. She then blasts her heat vision at the base of the segmented tail, and though there's definitely some resistance, and the Manticore thrashes desperately, the horrible limb is severed, sending the monster plummeting to the ground.
Nico gestures for her to hand the tail over; she raises an eyebrow but does as she's asked. The demigod then takes the appendage and leaps on top of the dazed Manticore, stabbing it's multi-pronged tip into the back of her mane-covered neck. The hisses and yowls of pain are, to be honest, kinda disturbing – a mix of human anguish and animal agony. But the monster is paralyzed, and Nico fearlessly kneels by her head as the last of the storm spirits are vaporized by Ellie's ecto-rays and portalled out of the battlefield by Stranger, respectively.
"...well, you guys did great." –Bruce compliments, hiding behind a nearby column. "10/10, top marks for everyone."
Kara shoots him a smirk as Nico levels his blade at the monster. "So, what do you think? Did you buy enough time for your masters?"
The Manticore shoots him a death glare, but doesn't answer. "'Masters', so...more than one." –Kara surmises. "Who do you work for? Doctor Doom? Who else?"
"I think she works for them." –Strange mutters, looking ahead.
Kara follows his gaze, and she can almost hear boss music from one of Winn's games starting to play in her head. At the exit of this temple-like locale, a large group has assembled; by Kara's count, two dozen men and women in light, white robes with pharaoh-like masks wielding strange white staves, short wand-like instruments, and curved bronze swords.
But it's their apparent leaders, standing in front of the small army, that she's most concerned with; one is a woman that constantly shifts between three distinct appearances; a young, pale girl no more than ten years old with pitch-black hair and purple eyes, dressed in a simple white chiton with violet accents, a beautiful woman in her mid-thirties with dark skin, lush wine-tinted robes, curly, chocolate-colored hair, and toxic green eyes, and finally, an old, hunched crone, older than 70, with strange, transparent skin, faint wisps of white hair, a black shawl-like garment, and burning orange irises. All three of the female forms hold torches in each hand, and they're accompanied by a large she-dog and a polecat at either side of her. An intense aura of eerie green light and ethereal shadows constantly surrounds their body, too.
And then there's the tan, almost bronze-skinned man; he stands tall, about as tall as Thor and equally as chiseled, his bearded face like a solid, unforgiving sheet of stone. His curly, raven-black hair is close-cropped, reminiscent of the hairstyle on the marble busts of Roman emperors. He wears purple robes under a full set of Ancient Roman armor, sans the cape and helmet – and instead of a sword or shield, he wields a massive, wooden club with a leather handgrip, studded in bronze. The man oozes strength, in a way that seems to give even the mighty Thor pause.
Honestly, in a way that gives her pause.
The Manticore hisses a pained laugh as they take in their new foes, so Nico drives his sword into her chest. The monster is drained of all life, and crumbles into faded, golden dust. Still, the demigod looks, for the first time in this adventure, like he's afraid.
"Who are they?" –she asks, readying herself for a fight.
"Hecate, Goddess of Magic, Crossroads, Necromancy, and Ghosts; Queen of Witches, and Keeper of the Mist." –Strange replies, almost like a hymn, nodding at the shape-shifting woman. "And..." –he trails off.
Nico rises, his blade held nervously before him. "...and – Styx, I can't believe it." –he curses, shaking his head, far-off thunder betraying the power of their new foes. "That, Supergirl, is the greatest demigod of all time: Hercules."
So, there you have it! Alongside Doctor Doom, this arc's secondary antagonists will be Hercules, Hekate, and a collection of supernaturally powered mooks, starting with this group of rogue Egyptian magicians. If you don't mind a minor spoiler, Kara won't actually participate in this fight - Hercules is all for Thor and Hulk to deal with, while Ellie and Nico will have their hands full with the rest. Kara's battle will be a lot more...psychological in nature. Very excited to write that :D
I trimmed down the Labyrinth a bit - I planned two more rooms in there, but they were honestly dragging down the chapter and accomplishing very little other than showcasing the place, which could of course be fun, but to me resonates of the worse aspects of the original version of this story too much. I think you get a pretty good sampler in this chapter of how weird and fucked up the Labyrinth can be, and to be fair, our heroes were never gonna be in there for too long, as their only goal was to find Victor. If it had been a quest on the scale of Battle of the Labyrinth's, I definitely wouldn't have skimped on more and more rooms. I also let a bit of Infinity Train DNA influence the random rooms.
Kinda like it was with Namor (though I obviously didn't kill Hercules off), I've never been a huge fan of Hercules' portrayal in Marvel stuff, so I decided to change things up a bit with the framework given by the Percy Jackson series; Hercules' life was filled with many grand victories, of course, but on the whole, it was a *miserable* existence. He's understandably bitter at the gods, and his experiences with the Seven have now soured him on most demigods as well. Given Gaia and her Giants failed to really punish the Olympians, Hercules is now trusting Victor von Doom to at least stick it to 'em. Don't expect him to have a friendly rivalry with Thor, either; as far as Hercules is concerned, the fact that the Olympians treat a foreign god (who's arguably not really a god by Earth standards) better than their own children - better than him - only pisses him off more. Hekate, on the other hand, while also permanently a little bitter at the Olympians, is in this fight because she's curious; Victor von Doom holds the kind of magical power that no mortal should ever have, and *she* didn't grant it to him, so she wants to figure out what he's up to. A lot more details in the chapters to come, but that'st he gist of it!
Stuff I picked up on the final pass:
-Dracula joins the major villain graveyard - he's dead for realsies, I have no plans to write him. I just wanted to nod at his previous existence. If I were to write Blade, I'd have him face the few vampires who still feed on humans.
-Monster hunters include the Forever Knights, who indeed helped hunt down the vampires, but there have always been others out there. Van Helsing himself wasn't a Forever Knight, for example.
-I really recommend Overly Sarcastic Productions' video on werewolves from last Halloween - the history of werewolves in folklore is so much more varied than modern depictions would have you believe!
-I. Hate. Zombies. So I threw the concept back to its very origins in Haitian folklore, which while decidedly creepy, isn't as grotesque and nauseating as modern zombies. Sorry if you like them, Zombie Earths still exist out in the Multiverse, just not here.
-If you wanted to know, I think the Spartans vs Athenians skirmish was happening atop a section of the Labyrinth that caved in during the battle. Not really a reference to anything, just thought it would be cool and a little messed up.
-I like to think this now-dead Manticore was related to the one in Titan's Curse
-Here it's showcased why there's a need for a magic-focused team of superheroes; a mortal (which Supergirl technically is) devoid of magical weapons or abilities will rarely be able to fully kill a creature of magic. There are ways around it, of course - such as Supergirl using her heat vision - but Black Widow, for example, likely couldn't have taken down the Manticore on her own. That's why Nico's team has to exist, why the Forever Knights employ Celestial Bronze and silver swords on top of their Akiridion tech, and why SHIELD is interested in developing defenses that can actively counter magical threats.
-Embarrassing, but I actually forgot Strange had already told Kara about her weakness to magic. I worked it into a character moment, though, haha.
-Hekate's appearances are based on kind of witch archetypes - the spooky child witch, the exuberant adult sorceress, and the gnarly crone. The constant shapeshifting is an homage to DP's Clockwork, though there's no relation. It's also a nod to her Roman name, Trivia - three ways/roads.
-I straight up stole "unforgiving sheet of stone" from Uncle Rick :P
That's it from me! Hit me up here or over on tumblr (darthkvznblogs) if you have any comments. Until next time!