Post by hawksmoor on Nov 30, 2014 15:55:48 GMT -5
Hong Kong, China
“I’m calling up a Meet,” Traci said. Her back was pressed against a cold and slightly damp wall in a Hong Kong alleyway. Light rain was falling around her, and her Gillet hood was pulled over her black hair, the right side being the side with long, shoulder length hair, collecting the water, the other side, cropped close to her hair, collected only the cold air.
Her breathing was ragged and her clothes still stained with melted tarmac and oil. Sticky fingers had managed to dial the correct number for the group chat, but that was as far as their abilities went. Pulling a small spray can from her Gillet pocket; Traci drew a tiny window on the wall opposite her, which quickly became a portal to view the others available.
“This it?” Traci asked.
Around her own her reflection, Traci could only see two other girls, staring back at her, as though they were all sat around a table.
“This is all that could be bothered to appear for a meeting?” Traci hissed.
“Not our fault,” Lori said, putting a hand on her chest. Lori’s slumped figured was leaning against a desk, her head turned to look out a window, but actually into Traci’s line of sight. “You’re not following the rules, 13.”
“Sod the bloody rules, Lori,” Traci said. She clenched her fists, “The Tower of Eternity just exploded in my face, and I’ve had to run away from a woman who was about forty eight feet tall and wanted to punch my soul out of my face.”
“Dramatic,” the other girl said.
“Don’t even, Zee” Traci said. She held up her hand.
Zatanna eyes bored through the space between the two women, with her thick, glossy dark hair hanging in a completely straight cut from her head to her shoulders, sported a thick, luscious blunt fringe, stopping somewhere just after her eyebrows. The perfect blackness of her hair was a stark contrast to her pale features. Traci looked away. Zatanna was the oldest of the trio, but only by a few months.
“Don’t call me Zee,” she said.
“What are we going to do? There are…things out here. I can feel it. The City feels different. Alien. Almost…possessed?”
Traci glanced over her shoulder, almost convinced something was moving within the wall.
“I think you need to take a moment,” Lori said, leaning back in her chair and adjusting her bunched hair. Like the other girls, Lori’s hair was black, only it matched her Gothic looks. She deliberately attempted to emulate Goth culture, her arms covered in black bands and beads, fingernails dipped in Crimson paint, and clothes flashed with leather, and silver chains or spikes. “You’ve had a weird day. We all have.”
“Oh, have we? Have we all been stood outside a building as it detonated from two gods having a punch up inside it?” Traci asked, “Have we all had to throw ourselves into a concrete womb to hurl ourselves across an ocean and the majority of a Slavic country to avoid getting out face smashed in by an Amazonian Giantess?”
Zatanna sighed, and closed her eyes. Through pursed lips she let out a tiny whisper and then stared directly at Traci.
“You’re connected to cities, buildings, right?” Zatanna asked.
“You know that’s right,” Traci said.
“Listen, the Tower of Eternity, in physicality, was a totem to you, but what about the rest of us? It contained most of the old books of magic, all the old medium of my abilities. I felt them all burst into flames when it exploded. Lori?”
“I felt it through all of you,” she said quietly, “I felt it through cities, and books, and through my body and my heart. It...”
Traci looked down at the ground and shuffled her feet in embarrassment.
“Sorry,” she said, “I…I forget sometimes. I forget we’re all connected not just because of power, but because of…we’re all new at this and we’re all new to the world of magic.”
Zatanna waved a hand at the portal between the three of them.
“It’s OK. I felt it, but you saw it, you lived it. It’s just been a rough day, just don’t think you’re the only one who suffered. What are we going to do about it? This leaves an opening, this is something…we need to do something, don’t we?”
“Like what? Step into the breach? Is that even possible? Is the world ready for Eternity to topple, but Finality to step in its place?” Lori said. Traci cocked her head to oneside.
“Finality?”
Lori nodded slowly.
“Magic is eternal, right? The Tower of Eternity has been around in some form or another since the year dot, so, like…if we’ve only been around for a short time, and our magic is dependent on things like…Cities, and Books, and Mimicry of people, then we’re new concepts, and new concepts that’ll probably get over written. So…Finality.”
Zatanna sighed audibly and ran a hand through the back of her hair.
“Such a Goth,” she said.
“Such a prim little princess, bitch,” Lori replied.
“Pleasure to see you all getting along,” a voice said from behind Traci. She swallowed loudly and froze in place. She closed her eyes, and willed her petrified body to turn around.
"Your little Red Man didn’t survive very long once you’d left,” the voice said, “He broke just as everything does. The Third World breaks all.”
“Go,” Traci whispered. The “window” into Lori and Zatanna’s life disappeared, leaving Traci with a blank wall. For an instance, she almost saw a face in it. A gasping, wide mouth, as if trying to warn her. Traci sucked in a deep breath, and twisted around on the balls of her feet. The lights around them immediately went out, as he stretched out her fingers. Traci rolled her fingers, the tiniest hint of the light which had once lived within the street lamps, now coiled up in the inside of her palm.
“What?” the giantess asked.
Traci closed her hands, and threw them underneath the huge womans face. Opening her fingers again, she released the light she’d gathered into a tiny pinprick between her fingers, in a dazzling, blazing globe of energy.
The tall Goddess screamed and stumbled backwards. Traci, seizing her opportunity, ran forwards, and threw her feet into the woman’s stomach, using her as a spring board onto the opposite wall. From there, she defied gravity, pulling the magic from the city itself, to continue her escape by running towards the top of the building.
The angry thrashing of the woman below was enough to give Traci an additional boost to her speed, and once at the top of the five story block of flats, she leapt with all the power in the legs, and magic in her blood, across the rooftops. Only seconds later, the woman had leapt from the bottom of the alleyway, and onto the rooftop behind Traci, tossing a golden rod towards the young magician. It collided with the backs of her legs, knocking her off balance and onto the gravel of the rooftops. Traci felt something pop in her knee, and immediately, several patches of warm stickiness across her exposed skin.
“Nnnfff,” Traci grunted, hitting the ground. She rolled onto her back, looking up at the towering woman standing over her.
“They call me the Tender Mercy,” the Goddess spoke, “My Lord Gog, tells me that the gift of violence is a mercy to a being such as you. A mercy that released you from your mundane and horrid world. Is this true?”
Traci sniffed in defiance.
“No,” she said, “Violence is for the weak in our world.”
Tender Mercy smirked.
“Poetic. Where I am from, Poets are considered to be the most beautiful of the bards. Do you know where I am from?”
Traci shook her head, pushing herself up to her elbows. Tender Mercy crouched down. She was almost eight foot in height, her frame that of a professional wrestler, and her clothes hanging from her as though they were sheets of metal, riveted directly into her flesh.
“Hell?”
Mercy smiled this time.
“Your mouth is quick, little Mage. I am from a world were Magic is a disease passed by sex. Intimate contact, physically at least, on my world is an aberration. We are beings of light, of life, unbridled by things like biology and time, yet here, on this world of matter, flesh and…tiny spirals of chemicals; we are bound by the laws of your world, your time. We are bound.”
Mercy drove her fists into the rooftop around Traci, sending the pair of them tumbling through the roof, and into the apartment below. They landed on in a front room, Traci on a Television, fracturing two of her ribs, and Mercy landed on the balls of her feet, as though she had yet to experience the movement.
“Ohh, God,” Traci moaned. Mercy got up, lifting the sofa over her head.
“I hate being bound by anything, which is why I am this. I am violence personified, if I have a physical form, something which my Brothers and Sisters are so pleased to wield, yet I find to be….so…tiresome, it is that of violence.”
Mercy licked her lips, throwing the sofa at Traci, and ploughing the girl through the apartment dry-wall. The sofa shattered around her, but the force and momentum, took Traci through the wall, into the Kitchenette of another apartment. Traci spat blood over the floor, and tried to pick herself up. Her side bloomed into white hot heat, knocking her to her knees. Mercy exploded through the wall, her fist pulled back and a look of ecstasy on her face.
“No,” Traci said quietly. The pipework which made up the plumbing of the kitchen exploded free, a twisting whirlwind of pipes which wrapped around Mercy’s arms, and neck, attempting to pull her back in restraint. “Go somewhere else.”
With another brush of her hand, Traci forced the floor of the apartment building to invert itself, the boards underneath Mercy simply sliding away. The Goddess, already bound by the tubing, fell another floor, into the apartment beneath. To add insult to injury, Traci, already on her hands and knees aimed her fist at the apartment below, and flexed her fingers twice. The Electrical cables of the apartment sprung free from the walls, still live with power, and wrapped themselves around the Goddess.
Mercy screamed a combination of glee and pain which sent shivers down Traci’s spine. Rolling onto her side, the Urban Magician forced herself to get up, and to hobble, as quickly as she could. She didn’t know where she was headed, but she knew she needed to get away. The kitchen behind her exploded into a spray of water, and plastic fragments, once again knocking Traci off her feet and sprawling into the living room of the apartment.
She turned slowly, pulling as much of her will into her fist as possible, to deliver a last push of magical abilities, only to find that Mercy wasn’t there alone.
Another woman, taller than Mercy, threw her sledgehammer sized fist into the other woman’s stomach, lifting her off the ground. Mercy grunted, spittle dripping from the corners of her down turn lips. Her helmet shattered into fragments of metal, which fizzled in contact with the world, exploding like magnesium on water. The second woman, without missing a beat, dropped an elbow with such force, that the connection shattered the floorboards underneath the duelling pair, sending them both and the majority of the apartment clattering down into the third story apartments below.
Traci, along with the remains of a coffee table, an arm chair and some used books, followed shortly after the pair. She landed hard, on her shoulder and was peppered with the spines of the tumbling books. She lay, covered in paper and debris from the juggernauts fighting and attempted to focus on her breathing. Anything else would have been devastating.
The wall of the building, a few metres to the left of Traci exploded in a spray of brickwork. Mercy hit the side of the other building across the road, and smashed through the wall into a showroom. Her velocity was finally halted by two cars, which buckled and sprang into animation, launching at opposite sides of the show room, one car dancing on its bonnet, the other skidding on its side. Traci’s rescuer, in torn clothing, aimed her own Golden Rod at the building and unleashed a blast of energy that blew the first three stories of the building to pieces, and forced gravity to oblige her strategy, by raining the next four stories on top of the Goddess.
“Are you alright, Child?”
“Grnnn,” Traci said, gritting her teeth. The woman smiled, and gently scooped Traci from the debris and literature.
“My name is Barda Norman. My husband sent me. He has been watching you.”
“..Creepy…” Traci managed. Barda, stomping forwards quickly, with the manner and care of a bulldozer, passed through a wall, leaving an almost cartoon like outline of herself as she did so. Traci on the other hand, was less robust, letting out short, sharp screams of pain.
“Hush. You are coming with me.”
Traci’s vision blurred for a moment, and then refocused with bizarre clarity on Barda’s features. The woman had a strong, but feminine chin. Piercing blue eyes looked down at Traci occasionally, but were focused on the road ahead.
“You have met a God of the Third World, Traci Thirteen,” Barda said quietly, “This is an achievement very few humans have ever reached. You have battled a God of the Third world and survived, your exclusivity can now be counted on a single hand. You have my respect.”
“You have pretty eyes,” Traci said, her head lulling into Barda’s chest.
“Yes,” Barda said with a slight smirk, “You seem to match the sparkling conversational majesty of my Husband, Traci. Please, dazzle me with your world play and wit.”
“S’funny,” Traci muttered before ultimately nodding out of consciousness.
----*S*----
“Oh, God,” Traci opened her eyes slowly. She tried to sit up, but was met with more than a little resistance by her bruised body, and broken ribs.
“Shilo, for Izaya’s Sake, will you?”
A grumbling noise came from just outside of Traci’s admittedly damaged and ringing hearing range. She could see Barda at the end of a small room, apparently talking to a wall.
“She fought off Mercy, the Violencer. Yes, I realise that the name sounds pretty stupid in terms of human dialect, but you need to understand it, the Third World…the history of it, it comes off the back of the First and Second Worlds. Third World is energy, it is conceptual. They inhabit areas of context that humanity is not ready to admit is real, and you…your brain is shying away from such a concept even now, as you…are.”
“As he is what?” Traci said, sitting up. She clutched her chest tightly, breathing heavily. “Where is Shilo?”
“Everywhere,” a voice said. Traci narrowed her eyes.
“You,” she said, “You’re in the walls aren’t you?”
“Amongst other places, yes,” the voice said. Traci closed her eyes and looked properly. Within the specialised magical plane she inhabited, one of the first things she ever managed was her “Industrial Sight”. It allowed her to see the structure of things within the city, the tuning forks of magic, the eldritch sinks of parks and ponds. Now she could see, within the walls, there was the face of a man, the outline of a personality.
“How did you?”
“I was attacked,” Shilo said, “On live TV no less. Barda tried to save me but we had to do something reasonably drastic to actually prevent death. These third world things are impossible.”
“Tell me about it,” Traci said.
“In due time,” Barda replied, without a hint of sarcasm.
“Yeah,” Traci said, cocking her said to one said, “While Austima, the beautiful saviour here did manage to drop a building on that woman, I assume that she’s not down and out?”
“Far from it. She’s attempting to track you at the moment, but I am doing my best to disorientate her,” Shilo said.
“So, let’s just take a moment. You’re inside Hong Kong. My City. Your…personality is?”
“We like to refer to it as Conscious in more learned circles, Traci,” Shilo said, “But yes. I am, amongst other things, an escape artist. While other people perfect the poetry of illusion, I am a writer and I re-write the rules of reality with my whims.”
“Oh, here we go,” Barda said, rolling her eyes, “Shilo, yes, is talented, but he is not a God. Nor will he ever be. Humility is required for this. I am surprised this city can comfortably hold his ego.”
“To put into terms you might understand, during my death, in inverted commas, I dumped my entire consciousness into this city, using a metro-synaptic feedback loop, my own will power, and a huge jolt of energy from Barda.”
“And now you’re using my city to distract a goddess. Rearranging streets etc?”
“Exactly,” Shilo said. His voice was smug and cocky.
“Well, stop,” Traci said. Shilo’s entire aura within the building changed. A few bricks shifted uncomfortably against each other.
“You’re not practiced as this, you’re not an urban magician. You’re an escape artist who somewho managed to drop yourself into a city, and you’re using it as a play thing. If I dropped myself into you, and made your arm come out of your knee would you be happy about it?”
“But…” Shilo said.
“No, no, please. Go on, Traci,” Barda said.
“Stop it now, you’re hurting the city.”
“But it’s just a city…”
“Yes, because that’s what parasites think about you,” Traci said. She stood unsteadily on her feet and coughed into her fist. “Mercy might find us, but it’s better than the damage you’re doing. There are rules, and controls, and you have none.”
“Fine,” Shilo said, “Then we need to move up to the next step, Barda.”
“Next step?” Traci asked. Barda moved over to Traci.
“Shilo cannot come with us, and I need you to promise me something,” Barda said. Her grip was tight on Traci’s arm.
“OK?”
“When this is said and done, I need you to put Shilo back in his body.”
“I’ll…” Traci shrugged, “Sure. I’ll give it a go, I guess.”
Barda nodded slowly.
“Word is our bond,” she said. She crouched down to one knee and laid her battle staff on the ground. The short, thick rod vibrated with power. A point of light appeared on the wall, barely bigger than a pinprick. Slowly it expanded, to cover the entire wall.
An explosion rocked Traci on her heels, the concussive wave of hot air pushing her against the bed. Another boom of power forced Traci to clamp her hands over her ears.
“BLOODY HELL!” she yelled. Barda nodded once.
“Please, follow me,” she said.
“WHAT?”
Barda shook her head in dismay, and pointed towards the tube, then to Traci.
“GO THROUGH? NO WAY.”
Barda grabbed her arm tightly, and leaned in close to Traci’s ear.
“We’re going to meet the Wizards of Eternity, Traci. There, away from the threat of Mercy, I will tell you to story of the Worlds. Please,” Barda’s eyes were wide, “I need you to save Shilo.”
Traci swallowed visibly and straightened her back.
“Better go and meet the Wizards, then, Barda,” she said, “and then save your Husband.”
Barda nodded and led the girl towards the hole in space and time. Traci closed her eyes.
Next Issue: The Wizards of Eternity, and The History of the World