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MAY 09 |
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“The Shape of Things to Come”
Zendt’s Farm, Colorado; the Centenial Hotel
“Well, don’t all of you look completely out of place!” Cagliostro said, as he looked over the five individuals he had invited up to his hotelroom in the small Colorado town of Zendt’s Farm. They were indeed a colourful group of individuals, two men and three women, and they looked like they had just fought in a major battle. Of course, the reason for that was that they had.
“Well, excuse me for not bringing my tux!” one of the men said. His name was Johnny Blaze and he very much looked the part of the the lone biker. He wore a long dark leather coat over his torn jeans and simple shirt, a pair of sunglasses on his head that held back his long red hair. His clothing was damged and there was blood on the side of his face from wiping away his hair. The blood did not belong to him, but to Elsa Bloodstone, one of the women who got wounded during the fight they had just been in.
“I bet you’d look awesome in one!” Elsa commented, clutching the side of her head where an Arapaho war-axe had hit her and caused a gushing wound. She also wore the simple clothes of an adventurer living on the road, only the shoulder of her suede jacket was covered in blood, as was part of her long blond hair which she wore in a single braid.
“Can we stay on topic here? We came back here to talk about what just happened,” one of the other women said, a young blonde in a tight t-shirt and ditto jeans. She looked as out of place as the others despite her more civilised appearence, based mainly on her youth and her pleasent face. Her name was Jennifer Kale and she was an experienced witch despite her youth.
“What just happened here is that this idiot re-enacted the Arapaho massacre and killed Lost Eagle after we had surrendered!” the third woman, an Indian woman herself, said. Her name was Elizabeth Twoyoungmen and she was dressed in modern tribal clothing, strings on her sleeves, worked leather and stylised boots. Her face was harsh and beautyful in her anger and her long black hair fell to her waist.
“He saved us. Talk about it all you like, but that’s the truth…” the third men in the room said. If the others looked bad, this man looked worse, his skin pale and his eyes dark. He wore crappy clothing, a raincoat and a cheap suit, and his features were distorted by thew haunted look he had over him. “That’s what being a Vampire refusing to feed on humans does to a body,” the man named Hanibal King would say himself.
“Thank you, Mr. King,” Cagliostro said. He had not come out of the fight with the Arapaho ghosts completelty in tact, but as soon as the group arrived at his hotel suite, he dashed into a room to get out a change of clothes and to straighten his hair. His look was that of an Italian mobboss in his expensive suit, but he projected an air of danger that was infinitely greater than that of any Maffia Don.
“I invited you all here to see how the situation we found ourselves in can be adressed” Cagliostro said and the other five finally settled down, sitting on couches and chairs. “Some disruption occured and I would think that this has some far reaching concquences for those of us who travel in the supernatural world.”
“Agreed. These ghosts did not rise by themselves. Nothing regular would cause something such as this,” Hannibal King spoke.
“We are talking ghosts and we are talking regular… Nice crowd we have here,” Elsa remarked.
“So I hereby open up the floor to sugestions on how to proceed,” Cagliostro said, a disdainful look thrown at the two interuptors.
“We could do some research, get to know the area, what happened here. I’ve seen hauntings before...” Jebnnifer Kale put in.
“Jenny, I think we’re beyond that. Yes, hauntings are not completely uncommon, but you heard what that chief said,” Johnny reacted.
“He was pretty clear,” Elizabeth spoke. “He basically prophesised a mystical apocalypse”
“I think Miss Kale is refering to what happened to unleash these ghosts, are you not?” Cagliostro said.
“Yes, I am. I am a pretty powerful witch, but my magic…it was way over the top when we were out there. Normally, my magic works like a breeze, but then it was like a storm!” Jennifer answered.
“So you got magically empowered. That must be linked to what raised the ghosts…but that doesn’t explain The Godfather’s problem,” Johnny Blaze said, looking at Cagliostro.
“What do you mean, Mr. Blaze?” Cagliostro asked, perfectly composed but still tensing up.
“Cut the crap, Cagliostro! You didn’t cast a single spell back there! Not one!” Blaze answered.
“I’m not sure I understand what you’re implying…” Cagliostro said.
“No bullshit, Cagliostro! You lost your magic, didn’t you?” Blaze shouted out and all the others stared at Cagliostro.
“Unfortunately...yes,” Cagliostro answered.
Darlington, Montanna
A young man was returning from his work in a food processing plant. His clothes were dirty and, despite the fact that the company provided ample protective clothing, his atire reeked of meat and blood. He hated his work precisely for that reason. No matter what he did, no matter how long he showered, no matter how many bottles of lotion or after-shave he poured over his body and face, the smell of processed meat and the stink of blood always clung to him, as if it had sipped into his bones.
The factory where he worked was only a a few miles from his hiome, where he still lived with his parents. There, the smell of the factory was particularly strong. His father was a manager at the facility and his mother worked there as a direction secretary. Even in the offices, as clean as they were, the stench was omnipresent. There was just no escaping it, no matter how hard the young man tried.
Escaping it was exactly what the young man wanted. He dreamt every night of getting away from Darlington, away from Montana and his parents. His brother had gotten out, when he joined the army, but that wasn’t something the young man could do. He was small, extremely thin and wore glassess. No way he would ever get anywhere in the army. Nor did his brother, anyway, dying in a helicopter crash over Yemen.
As he walked into the quiet street in which he lived, he passed the house of a strange woman, sort of the town-idiot, called Eileen Stone. The woman was a new age nutter in a town that barely acknowledged the fact that Asia existed, so for all of the forty years she was a real hit with the locals. As the young man walked past her house, he saw the door flung wide open and a woman dressed in a red poncho and with a red scarf over her head stood in the doorway. He also heard a baby crying loudly. For a few moments, the young man thought he would just walk by, minding his own business, but somehow the woman in red seemed to ominius. Against is better judgement, he walked up to the porch of the house where the woman in red was standing, holding a newborn baby in the flolds of her scarf.
“Um… Excuse me… Miss? Is anything the matter?” the young man asked, frowning as he looked at the child, who seemed to be fast a sleep but at the same time hearing the wailing of the child.
“I don’t understand,” the woman said. She was strangelooking, barely out of her teens, with dark hair and dark eyes.
“What? What don’t you understand?” the young man asked without really listening, puzzling over the mystery of the baby.
“Where did all these cows come from?” the woman asked, and the young man turned around as he heard the sounds of hundreds of cows. There were indeed hundreds of cows, wandering through the streets, where everything had been perfectly quiet before. The young man looked at them and was totally confused. When he saw that the cows all had glowing eyes and that their bodies were rotting as they walked by, that confusion quickly turned to fear.
Zendt’s Farm, Colorado; the Centenial Hotel
“When were you going to tell us this?” Johnny Blaze said to Cagliostro, a few seconds after he had confirmed that he had indeed lost his magic.
“Why would I? Because we’re such good friends?” the old magician replied.
“No, because we’re sitting here trying to figure out what the fuck just happened!” Elsa said, looking pissed of.
“He has no reason to trust us…and I can’t say I disagree with that,” Hanibal King said. “Think about it: a man like Cagliostro, he lives for centuries feeding on vampires. Word gets out he’s been de-powered, he’s going to have a hell of a time staying alive. I can think of say…a thousand people who would like to end his life”
“I should think there are a great deal more…” Cagliostro said, smiling at Hanibal.
“So instea of the dead rising, we know have a magic-eater on our hands? That’s just great,” Elizabeth interfered.
“That’s jumping to conclusions…” Blaze put in.
“Oh? Why? You heard Lost Eagle…this was just the beginning!” Elizabeth responded.
“Because if anyhing, I’ve gotten more powerful!” Jenifer Kale said, proudly but still looking extremely tired and weak from the heavy magic she used to overcome the Arapaho ghosts.
“That remains to be seen…” Cagliostro said ominously to the young witch.
“You better speak up now if you know something, Wizard!” Elizabeth spoke, eyes flaring with anger. She had never liked the practicioners of dark magic, sometimes even regarding magic itself a source of evil.
“You say you got more powerful, Miss Kale…but have you really? Or is this another power flowing through you? I wonder,” Cagliostro said.
“Jenifer, if there is something you know, now is the time to come forward for you as well,” Johnny remarked as he turned to his niece.
“I don’t know, Johnny. I never experienced anything like this before. And anyway, I wasn’t here when that Red Event hit. I was back home in Citrusville.”
“Who says its localized? For all we know, every magician in the world was affected,” Elsa said, looking around at the people in the room. There was a brief silence as everybody considered what the monster-hunter had just said.
“Well, that would be something,” Hanibal King said.
“Okay, so how do we find out? My list of contacts does not include a lot of wizards,” Elizabeth said.
“Perhaps we can find out, you and I together, Miss Twoyoungmen,” Cagliostro said and went to get his coat. He reached inside a pocket and produced a perfect glass sphere that he set on the table. Elsa chuckled, as did Johnny.
“A crystal ball?” Hanibal remarked cynically.
“You’re fucking kidding, right?” Elsa said.
“I assure you, Miss Bloodstone, and indeed all of you present here, that when I joke, you will know it. This sphere will help me view other magicians and, with Miss Twoyoungmen’s aid, we will find out whether or not luminaries such as Stephen Strange or Jericho Drumm still posess their power”
“What does this have to do with me?” Elizabeth asked.
“This sphere will provide the `camera’ through which I will view a number of our coleeagues. You, with your spiritual magics, will send your consciousness through it and examine the mystical signatures,” Cagliostro explained.
“Isn’t that dangerous?” Johnny asked.
“I know a magician like Strange will have his defences against such intrusions; I know I have them and so does Dakhim. They might be lethal!” Jenifer Kale said.
“I’m sure they will. Which is why I’m asking Talisman here to use her own brand of mysticism to penetrate their defences,” Cagliostro said.
“What do you know about my powers?” Elizabeth asked.
“More than you or your father!” Cagliostro spoke as he rubbed his hands over the sphere which started to glow and floated up from the table. All those present gathered around as a picture appeared in center of the sphere of a wellknown characteristic house on the corner of Bleeker Street and Fenno Place in Greenwich Village, New York City
Citrusville, Florida
The appartment of Jennifer Kale on the outskirts of Citrusville, the town located at the center of a swamp that housed the mystical nexus of all realities, stood just as she left it. In her haste to go after the origins of the Red Event, which Jennifer sensed even though it originated in Colorado, she had left the television on and her door unlocked. Usually, leaving her home open was not a big problem for Jenifer, as her mystical defences took care of every malevolent creature or person with bad intentions that ever wandered inside when Jennifer herself wasn’t home. To the creatures she had dealt with in the past, other-dimensional demons, monsters and ancient ghosts, human locks provided no challenge greater than a piece of cardboard.
Of course, there were also those she authorized to visit. One of them was Karen Kon Kong, a girl of Chinese descent that lived two floors down from Jennifer. The girl was tiny, had long dark hair and a fantastic smile. She was also very much in love with Jennifer, who was still questioning herself. Karen didn’t mind; as far as she was concerned, Jenifer was as gay as she was and it was only a matter of time before she would finally take the plunge and admit her love for her. After all, didn’t Jennifer give her a spare key to her appartment? Didn’t they allready spend the night together a few times allready, sharing each others bed?
“Jenny?” Karen called out, finding it strange that the door was open and the television was on while there was appearently nobody home. There was no response and Karen went outside to check the ice-machine in the hallway. Again, no Jennifer. This was not what Karen had had in mind when she’d come of her nightshift at the local clinic. Her ideas had been more along the lines of snuggling up beside Jenny in bed, hopefully waking her up and then who knows?
Disapointed, Karen walked through Jennifer’s apartment once more, but there was nobody there. Her boots were missing, so Karen figured that Jenny had gone out for some reason. It didn’t sit well with her, but she decided not to do anything about it. After all, Jenny was an adult and neither had made any commitment to the other, so really, what business did Karen have checking up on her? Nevertheless, Karen did decide to spent the night in Jenny’s bed. Tired and sleepy, she took of her street clothes, turned off the television, locked the door and turned in.
As she dreamt, a vision appeared before her of a strong-featured, tall blond woman in her thirties, wearing some weird looking blue bikini that looked like the top was made of metal. The woman seemed to be talking to her, but Karen couldn’t understand a word she said. It struck Karen that the woman sort of looked like Jennifer or rather how she imagined Jennifer would look when she was in her thirties. As she thought about it, Karen recognized the strange outfit as something she had once seen Jennifer wear in a picture. Jenny and some old guy in a pointy-hat, dressed like some weird Gandalf… Yeah, she knew she had seen that before.
The woman in Karen’s dream continued her attempts to communicate but Karen called out to her in her sleep that she had no idea what she was saying. The woman started to look angry and frustrated and it looked like she lunged at her. That was when Karen woke up.
She fellt strange as she got up with a start from her bed and got up to turn on the lights. Right away, she noticed something was wrong. The room was different… smaller, somehow. For no particular reason, a horrible thought entered Karen’s mind and she leapt up to stand in front of a large mirror. Karen saw her own eyes staring back at her, but they were not the eyes that she had seen in the mirror her entire life. Her whole body had changed and she now looked exactly like the woman that looked like Jenny from her dreams. On the verge of freaking out completely, Karen heard a voice speak to her, from inside her own head.
“Now can you understand me, Lemurian?”
Zendt’s Farm, Colorado; the Centenial Hotel
Elizabeth Twoyoungmen was no stranger to the weirdness of magic. However, what Cagliostro had asked her to do this time was rather strange even for her. He had asked her to use her powers as the Talisman, the intermediary between the unseen world of the spirits and the prime reality, to communicate with the spirit of the sphere.
“I don’t see the problem, really,” Cagliostro said as he saw Elizabeth’s puzzled stare when he made his request.
“It’s not alive! It’s a construct; it has no spirit for me to reach,” Elizabeth protested.
“I’m not alive either, but you can communicate with me, right?” Hanibal King inserted himself, solliciting an angry glare from Elsa Bloodstone.
“That’s different. You’re a human soul inhabiting a dead body,” Elizabeth reacted.
“This is more or less the same, Elizabeth,” Jennifer Kale spoke. “Isn’t it, Cagliostro?”
The Italian wizard looked at Jennifer, meeting her glare but said nothing.
“Oh…Oh Great! This magical globe of yours is necromantic! I should have known!” Johnny Blaze said.
“Yes, it is…hence the fact that Miss Twoyoungmen should have no problem contacting the spirit trapped in the sphere to empower its magic,” Cagliostro said.
“Just so as you know, I’m blasting that thing to pieces after we’ve used it one final time!” Johnny Blaze said, getting up to stand toe to toe with Cagliostro.
“Oh really? Not only is that hypocrytical, but I also wonder who appointed you Boss?” the magician said.
“I did! Selfmade man, me,” Blaze answered and Cagliostro looked around at the others to see Hanibal, Elsa and Jennifer nodding in agreement.
“Very well. I cannot stop you...now…” Cagliostro said softly, but the veiled threat was not lost on Johnny. He turned toward Elizabeth again and held out the globe to her in the palm of his hands. “Now, if you would please lay your palm on the sphere and focus your concentration on the spirit inhabiting it.”
“I’m… not sure…” the usually resolute Elizabeth said as she put her hand forth hesitatingly.
“If you harm her…” Johnny said, staring intently at Cagliostro.
“Do not threaten me, it does not become you. And I would think you’d had your taste of vengeance!” the old magician answered. The atmosphere in the room was as tense as it could possibly be, but Johnny backed off. Elizabeth put her palm on the globe and Cagliostro mumbled a few indistinct words. That was when all hell broke loose.
Somewhere along a midwestern dust-road
A man was walking along a backroad as it wound it’s way across the plains. He wore gray pants, a white shirt with suspenders and a bowlerhat on his head. There was nothing wrong with his clothing, except that he looked old fashioned and was very dirty from the dust that was blowing along his frame alone in the emptyness. At a certain moment, he stopped and got a water-cannister from his shabby green backpack and pressed it to his dust-caked lips. After slaking his thirst, he sighed in satisfaction and continued his walk. Everything about the man was out of place as he walked on in the darkness, his path lit only by the moon and stars.
After walking another mile, the man saw lights appear in the distance along the road. He gave a dry chuckle and went to stand in the middle of the road as the vehicle the lights belonged with sped towards him. He could here the enigine hum and there was no mistaking the fact now that it was indeed a pick-up coming toward him. Yet, as the car approached, the man in the old-fashioned clothes remained standing in the road. When the driver of the pickup finally caught him in his headlights, he hit the breaks but it was way to late and he ran headlong into the man.
The shock of the impact threw the man twenty feet, where he landed hard by the side of the road. The driver stopped and looked out of his window without getting out. He was a man in his forties and knew better then to get out right away, in case it was a dummy he had run over. He took a shotgun from the passanger seat and aimed it carefully at the direction in which he saw the body fly.
“There ought to be some yodeling in this song…” a raspy voice sounded through the night.
“What the fuck…” the driver mumbled, as he saw the man in the oldfashioned clothing get up.
“There ought to be some yodeling in this song” the voice sounded again, in a singing voice. The driver looked on as the man straightened his neck, which was hanging limply by his body.
“Shit!” the driver said, shot at the man and drove off as fast as he could. To his eyes, a ghost had just appeared to him by the side of the road and he was scared to death. For twenty miles, he drove as fast as he could along the dust-road, before his heart rate finally slowed down and his blind terror disappeared. Then he started coughing uncontrolably. He had to stop his car and got out. The coughing didn’t let up and the driver couldn’t catch his breath as he shook violently and continuously. Over the noise he was making, he heard a voice singing once again.
“But I can’t yodel…” The voice sung and the driver saw that the man he had run over earlier, the ghost, stood right in front of him. The coughing became worse, untill finally he spat alarge ball of tissue and blood in the dirt in front of him, keeling over and dying instantly.
The man tipped it his head to the dead body before him and gave a little smile. He picked up the gun the driver had left in his car and walked along, singing softly with the same creaking voice, “...because the Dust got in my lungs!”
Zendt’s Farm, Colorado; the Centenial Hotel
Elizabeth and Cagliostro disappeared in a flash of blue flame and just like that a spectacular display of fireworks burst forth from the sphere as it dropped to the ground. For a few seconds, Hannibal, Johnny, Elsa and Jennifer stood in awe of the lightshow, untill it became clear what the lights were. Faltinian Flames, Bands of Cytorak, Fangs of Farallah, Mists of Munnipoor, all sorts of standard magical manifestations of the power of the main principalities swirled through the hotel-suite.
“Don’t get caught by the red!” Jennifer called out, but she was completely eveloped by the bands of cytorrak as they wound around her. At the same time, the mystical fangs of Farallah beset Hanibal King. The disembodied maws with horrible fangs in them bit and snapped at Hannibal, while he was getting drowsy from exposure to the mists of munnipoor. Elsa had her hands full with burst of Faltinian flame and whips of green energy she couldn’t even identify. Johnny got his shotgun out, hoping to blast at something, but how do you fight or shoot energy? Jennifer was shrieking, as the red strips of energy covered her body and face.
“We need Jennifer!” Elsa called out, as she took out pellets of Holy Water to douse and dispell the fire.
“I... know… little busy…” Hannibal said, as he raked at the mouths with his claws.
Elsa pushed past Johnny, who was a little overwhelmed and tried to duck away from rainbow-coloured streams. She reached Jennifer and took out a special ornamental dagger to cut her companion free. The moment she touched the edge of the blade to the bands of cytorrak, a jolt of pain went through her body as she was slammed back hard into the faltinian flames.
“Fuck! Shit is alive!” Elsa said, unharmed by the mystic flame due to several protections on her person.
“Burn it!” King said and Johnny shot his hell-fire gun at the completely wrapped up figure of Jennifer.
Inside the Sphere
Cagliostro and Elizabeth found themselves on an ancient sailing vessel, an 18th century clipper. The ship was sailing at full speed across a dark and forboding ocean, under black skies. The ship was magnificent, looking exactly like the ships from paintings and historybooks. Elizabeth looked around in silent wonder for a few seconds, at the rigging, the sails and the masts, until she saw the dour look on Cagliostro’s face.
“What is it, Wizard?” Elizabeth demanded.
“He’s grown powerful…” Cagliostro said.
“Who? The spirit you used to create this sphere of yours?”
“Yes. This environment, the subjective reality inside this sphere, it’s all his creation.”
“How can you be sure?” Elizabeth asked and then noticed she was wearing the red and yellow dress she used to wear as the superheroine Talisman of Alpha Flight.
“Because he is forcing his vision of what we should be on us,” Cagliostro said and then it struck Elizabeth that Cagliostro was wearing a black and blue robe, had a flowing black beard and was wearing a short but decidedly pointed cap.
“You look ridiculous!” Elizabeth said. “And yet… I hadn’t even noticed at first.”
“That’s because he is forcing his vision upon us. Just like the fact that you readily accept that you are inside the sphere and on a ship also. Nothing is right, but eveything feels natural.”
A strange distortion started to form on the frontbow of the ship as if a hole was forming in reality itself.
“That’s him, right?” Elizabeth asked.
“Yes, it is…and he is rather angry!” Cagliostro said.
“How much does he hate you?” Elizabeth asked, a sneer on her face.
“Not as much as he hates you!” Cagliostro answered.
Before Elizabeth’s eyes, puzzled at Cagliostro’s unexpected response, a figure stepped on the ship through the hole in reality. He was dressed in black leather, and wore clothing that fit the 18th century ship. In the sash around his waist he carried a great curved blade and his face was distorted in anger. His skin was sickly and brown-yellow, a stench of rotting and decay came forth from the his body.
Elizabeth recognized the figure. She had met him, years ago, and he had been responsible for the death’s of both her father, the Alphan known as Shaman, and the demi-goddess Snowbird. His name was Pestilence and Elizabeth knew she was in for the fight of her life.
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To Be Continued...
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