London, 2nd September 1666
As the portal closed behind them, the light in the room was reduced suddenly to near darkness, pierced only by a couple of pinholes of light escaping through the ceiling and along the top of the walls and of course from the glowing red eyes of the four vampires surrounding them.
They had escaped the fiery conflagration surrounding the Chapterhouse (at least temporarily if Mace’s assumption about the date was correct) but were they now about to become ‘lunch’?
With what limited light was available, both Akira and Banshee were convinced that once the surprise of their arrival in the dank, dark chamber wore off, the vampires would attack. Banshee wasn’t going to wait and give them first advantage. Behind them, knocked to one side by Mace and her bike were Prince Drakul, Dracula as he’d eventually be known and Boire, in front of them were the creature known as St. Germain and the Fisher King, Bron Pelles, or should they call him Khalid Al-Zhedma?
Banshee immediately unleashed a terrorising shriek at the two creatures facing her and was rewarded as both of them immediately ran passed to join the others though she was sure the scream had only managed to distress St. Germain as he was obviously terrorised by the unholy sound of her scream.
Behind them, Drakul seemed about to rush towards Akira who fired off a mystical blast at him. In the near darkness the blast missed, just, but it did succeed in driving him back with the others. Mace used the opportunity to good advantage, spinning round she fired off a series of baton bolts. Without time to shred their protective covers the tips wouldn’t pierce but given Boire was wearing Kevlar and Drakul a breastplate, it probably wouldn’t have done much good anyway. Her first bolt flew true, hitting Boire in the forehead even as she saw that he had a small glowing green blade in his hand. Drakul dodged the next bolt with inhuman speed as did the courtly fop they knew as St. Germain but she was rewarded with hitting the Fisher King in the throat.
There was just enough light to see Drakul raise his arm in their general direction, followed seconds later by an ever increasing squealing coming from the far wall, then they heard creaking and cracking as literally hundreds of large, black rats began to break through the walls and ceiling. Drakul had summoned his ‘children of the night’. For a couple of seconds the chamber filled with emerald light as Boire expanded his pendant and sliced through the reality of the same mirror used to create the portal to the Chapterhouse and stepped though into what looked like a well-lit warehouse. On the ground by the opposite wall the unconscious Locker was meanwhile being surrounded by the angry rats who were cautiously advancing on him.
Boire was immediately followed through the mirror by the other three vampires before the portal snapped shut again reducing the light. Thankfully the enlarged holes was allowing some illumination in though what might be causing the light did give them pause especially as smoke was also beginning to stream through the gaps with the ever increasing number of hungry rats. Soon the floor of their chamber would be completely covered and yet still more and more of the flea-ridden creatures were trying to enter. As they watched, the most courageous of the four legged little fiends were attacking and taking bites out of Locker’s prone body. The several that managed to bite skin did cause a moan of pain to escape his lips, confirming that he was still alive at least.
The increasing smoke made Mace pull out her rebreather and put it in her mouth as she ignored the creatures running over her feet and began feeling the walls trying to find a way out of the apparently underground chamber. The options if they didn’t escape appeared to be drowning under rats or burning to death, neither choice sounded particularly appealing. She stumbled against some barrels as she tried to felt her way round the room, her fingers feeling a sandy-like powder around the bungs.
Meanwhile Akira elected to erect his force cage round Locker forcing the rats away from his body despite the fact that by doing so he was unable to place a shield round himself. He shuddered; he had never been a fan of rats.
Hundreds more of te creatures were blindly flowing through the gaps, following the summons. Banshee suddenly substantialised, changed back into Mary and raised her palm towards the ceiling calling upon the Blessing of the Dawn – a spell better known to Akira as the illumination of Abbridon.
Light suddenly filled the chamber revealing Locker in his protective cocoon, buried under several layers of rats, a large mirror stood upright against the wall behind them and a wooden shuttered hatch half way up the wall, apparently barred or bolted from the other side as well as half a dozen barrels in the room, seemingly filled with black gun powder. Ok, a barrel of brandy would have been nice, even some rum but black powder in a city burning down was not Banshee’s personal choice of contents.
On seeing the hatch, Mace pushed and kicked her way through the rats towards it and mentally measured it up. Yes, her bike would fit through there. She raised her gauntlet and switched the grav field to attract, then to full power as she placed her palm close to the trapdoor. A second or three later she was ‘rewarded’ as the entrance shattered, showering the room with hundreds of tiny fragments. Most sliced through the rats around and behind her but some splinters bouncing off her costume as others unknowingly cut into her and her companions’ arms and faces. Through the gaping hole where the wooden barrier had been, she could see bright dancing lights and hear the screams of people fleeing the fire. Seems that the ‘seconds’ it had taken to portal across from the Chapterhouse to this chamber must had actually taken several hours in the real world as it was definitely now daytime above. Even more smoke surged down the now open staircase as she returned to her bike, kicking away the rats trying to scramble on.
Seeing their escape route appear (and feeling the sting of the splinters as they sliced his bare skin) Akira started to try and expand his cage around Locker’s unconscious body a little even as he kicked and screamed to try and scare the rats closing in on him from taking that final attack. He then turned and jumped on top of one of the casks and climbed onto the wooden steps before Mace.
Mary risked the bites and swarming vermin to cross over to Locker and signalled to Akira to drop the cage even as she reached down through the mass of rats and grabbed his arm. There was nothing either of them could do about bites but Mary only had to endure it for a few seconds. She reverted to Banshee’s insubstantial form with an unconscious Locker in her arms causing the rats that had been swarming on top of his body to fall through onto the suddenly empty ground. Akira slowly made his way up the rickety wooden steps as Banshee flew with the unconscious body towards Mace, dropped him across the rear seat as she headed up and out. Banshee then followed the others, floating up and away from the room now drowning in a tsunami of rats.
Akira risked a look back and seriously considered blowing up the casks of gunpowder to make sure the creatures never left but resisted the temptation, though he couldn’t stop himself shuddering and muttering “I hate Rats!” He then realised that Mace was coming up the stairs behind him on her bike at speeds totally unsuitable for such a narrow passageway, intending to get Locker clear so she could check on his condition.
With a sudden intake of breath at the unavoidable and imminent collision, Akira was forced to teleport back behind her onto the top of the stairs where he almost fell backwards into the rats as he reached out and tried to grab banshee’s insubstantial arm to steady himself and the fingers went through. Instead, he had to scramble at the door frame to stop himself falling backwards. It was only after that he remembered he could float! He muttered to himself again about Mace being a “bloody menace, don’t know why she always insists on bringing that bloody bike with her everywhere…” as he floated up the staircase and almost crashed into Mace’s parked bike which she had parked just outside in the alley as she checked on Locker’s condition.
She felt his pulse; it was shallow and slow but regular. Almost unbidden she checked his neck and whispered a small prayer when there was no scarring over his jugular. He was however in a deep trance, one she was unable to break for the moment at least.
Akira felt something touch his feet as he saw that some of the rats had managed to get onto the steps and were now clawing their way up and out beside them. He kicked out in disgust and hurried outside, passed the bike to see the sky bright orange with flames lighting up most of the skyline.
They were still on the northern bank of the Thames with the fire nearby in full burn.
People were fleeing to nearby boats or trying to cross London Bridge as others used leather baskets to dampen down the buildings or long hooks to pull the blazing buildings down to try and create a firebreak. The extent of the fire across the horizon did confirm that it had to have been at least half a day since they’d left the College of the Darkened Son.
Every so often someone would run towards the riverbank and ‘bounce back’ as though they had hit an invisible barrier. Banshee wondered if this was due to the Clockwork Queen’s mystical barrier designed to keep vampires in the city as it burned. His theory was confirmed as a woman in a heavy shawl ran towards the edge of the riverbank and bounced back revealing a face of pale skin, red eyes and fangs as the skin began to burn under the overcast sky and she hissed in pain and again draped herself in the shawl and began running along the side of the river looking for some way to get to safety.
Akira meanwhile was taking in the reaction of the fleeing people to Mace’s bloody bike. Were they ready for another round of ‘shoot the witch?’ He gestured and cast an illusion on the bike so it looked like a donkey, better make that a fast donkey he thought as he tried to keep up as Mace set off again towards the bridge with Locker draped across the back seat.
With hindsight he should have altered Mace’s appearance as well as some people recognised the strange ‘blackamoor’ in the unholy clothing as fitting the description of the witch that had supposedly started the fire that was now threatening them.
As they tried to cross the bridge so many people tried to move aside and away from the ‘witch’ and her strange donkey with its unlikely armoured figure flung across its back that they were not paying attention and a young girl, about eight years old was accidentally knocked over the side. With all the crying and hysteria no-one saw her fall or heard her screams, except for Banshee and Akira. Banshee immediately ran to the side, turned insubstantial and invisible as she dived over the side after her. Akira tried to use his theurgical-kinesis to slow her down as Banshee turned substantial and tried to grab her only for Akira’s TK to bring them both back up. The young girl was understandably hysterical and screaming about witchcraft, forcing Akira to pull her back over onto the walkway of the bridge and lead her away before anyone realised what she was saying. It was bad enough that several people claimed to recognise Mace as the ‘witch’ and claimed that she had to have been responsible for the fire now destroying the city of London opposite. Mace ignored the prattle and tried to push her way through with her ‘donkey’ and unconscious passenger. Meanwhile, having found a quieter spot on the bridge, Akira was trying to calm the rescued young girl and find what had happened to her parents. With frightened tearful eyes and a stuttering voice she explained that as she was now eight she’d been apprenticed to a dressmaker and that her family’s home must have burnt down and her family forced to flee. She had no idea where they would have gone assuming they had survived. Akira knew he couldn’t risk changing the timeline but, surely one small act of kindness wouldn’t hurt? He got her to sit and when she wasn’t looking manifested the Compass of Ahgrazul to try and locate the girl’s parents. It was a pathfinding spell, designed to guide the caster to their desired destination.
Surprisingly, instead of showing him where the parents were, he found himself looking up as a middle-aged looking couple in their mid-30’s suddenly ran out of the crowd and grabbing the girl hugged her. Seems the spell could also allow others to find you. He heard the girl start to talk about being saved by witchcraft and elected to disappear back into the crowds following Mace rather than have to explain. Thankfully the parents were too full of joy to actually hear what the girl was saying.
Mace meanwhile had decided enough was enough and decided to end the harassment that was about to break into a ‘hue and cry’ from the crowd gathered around her. She accessed a smoke bolt but did not unleash her wristbow. She pulled the bolt free from the sheath and proceeded to activate it while it was in her hand. Suddenly a curtain of smoke surrounded her as she began shouting that the bridge was on fire. The panic of the billowing smoke and the choking fumes that surrounded her caused her accusers to hurry back from her as she dropped the first and activated a second bolt again in her hand and pushed her ‘donkey’ through the crowd with shouts of ‘my donkey’s on fire, let me through’. She used her bike and the smoke to push her way through and head down towards the riverbank out of the path of the fleeing citizenry.
Akira and Banshee had taken the lead and tried to speed up her exodus from the bridge as fast as they could but when they looked back they saw in the wisps of smoke trailing behind her the outline of an insubstantial monster. It was like a large, beaked beast but it seemed to have multiple eyes and its front paws was almost human. In the gaps between the smoke there was nothing to see and it appeared to be invisible to everyone else, including Mace. Akira shuddered, there was something familiar about the creature, then it howled and two other howls replied. No one else apparently heard the cries, so they assumed it had to be mystical in nature but did that mean it could only attack the mystically-attuned? Somehow they doubted that. A billow of smoke from Mace caused them to revise the creature’s size, it was at least half again as large as the largest man and yes there was a second beaked face in the smoke confirming it didn’t hunt alone. Hurrying, they made their way off the bridge as they tried to figure out what to do now. Without Boire they were exiled, trapped in the past and unable to either return to their own time or prevent him from altering their timeline. That’s assuming they somehow survived the creatures trailing them.
Looking at all the boats below unloading passengers on the riverbank Akira had an idea. Danni had said that people who had previously ben exposed to time travel should be able to spot temporal anomalies. He hoped that meant that time travellers could recognise other time travellers because they gave off some sort of signal.
What if they fled through a mirror – hopefully they might be able to track Boire and escape the unearthly hounds trailing them at the same time. The problem was that they had only seen the one mirror large enough to travel through and that was in the cellar with all the rats. Mirrors were extremely expensive in this time period so where might they find one large enough to travel through (and take that ruddy bike as he was sure Mace would refuse to leave it behind)?
The Palace would undoubtedly have one but that would mean going back across the river and through the advancing fire. As though to prove a life lesson about always moving forward they heard a massive explosion and turning saw a stream of smoke emanate from the building they’d escaped from. The fire had obviously reached the gunpowder.
The thought of the invisible or psychic hounds catching up with them unprepared made Akira have a very off-the-wall idea and it required the use of one of the boats below and their sail.
He explained to Mace his idea and she quickly zoomed down to the nearest large dinghy below as Banshee and Akira tried to think of some way to stop the advance of the hound-like beasts. There was something very familiar about them thought Akira but couldn’t figure out why. The hairs on the back of his neck rose at the very thought of them.
Meanwhile Mace had manifested her hypnotic gyroscope and was explaining to the skipper and his two crew that she needed their assistance and could she come aboard? Her hypnotic gyroscopic device was spinning in the palm of her hand as she began to ask them to, “take down your sail and lay it out on the deck as my ‘donkey’ is on fire as you can see good sirs, in agony with the pain from the fire causing all the smoke. I need your sail to wrap him in and put out the fire. You will of course be rewarded most handsomely for your kind act but you must act now.”
Before the hypnotic device stopped spinning, the crew had dropped the sail and was quickly detaching it from the mast and boom and spreading it on the deck.
Akira rushed over even as Mace was flying her ‘donkey’ onboard and reached over to touch the cloth. Instantly it transformed into a reflective foil material as he reached for his topaz pendant blade and unclasped it from around his neck. Suddenly the blade grew until it was full size and he sliced through the silvered sail revealing a red pulsing tunnel through the cut even as something like a psychic scent suddenly caught his mind and gave the portal direction.
He couldn’t say what it was exactly, just that the ‘scent’, unnatural though it felt, was coming from somewhere a few miles away, in the direction of what would one day become Lewisham.
No time, the beasts hunting them had to be close. He peeled back the edge of reality and gestured to Banshee and Mace with her bike to head through before he leapt through himself and allowed the sail to return to being cloth. He did hope that the cut he’d caused could be easily repaired.
‘Tunnels’ branched off the main corridor in every which direction and unlike the red they’d ‘seen’ from outside the organic-like pathways were pulsing with every which colour and seemed filled with a liquid-like substance that didn’t affect their breathing.
The psychic trail he’d felt moments before still felt strong and had a sort of purple ‘taste’ to it. Before they could follow it though they saw two creatures step out in front of them, even as a low growing behind confirmed that the predatory beasts were capable of following them through to this place. Three very solid shapes, an unholy marriage of beast and human merged.
In the tinge of lights pulsating from the walls, they could see standing in front of them Abyss, obviously resurrected or could he have actually have existed this far back? The other was a man-like figure dressed in tattered robes.
Akira’d seen that figure twice before; at Claremont’s, hunting for two pendants when old and young were somehow separated and again later when he had his scapegoat copycat body stolen and he was left trapped in the astral realm to die. As though in confirmation, the hooded figure dropped the robes which immediately vanished to reveal his true reptilian form. This was Og, last of the Rephaim; king-sorcerer of Bashan and High Priest of Yig.
Banshee was aware this could not be right. Abyss could not have existed in 1666 since he only came into being through an unholy alliance between her hell bound, cross-dimensional nephew Shamus and the family’s Bhean Sidhe in 1919. While he seemed capable like Akira of creating portals, there had never been any mention of an Abyss before that point in time so what was he doing two and a half centuries before he was created?
Still he could see that they stood between them and the psychic scent. To his surprise Mace pointed beyond the two figures and muttered over their commdots, “Boire, he’s that way, I can feel him.”
So two enemies in front and three demonic hounds behind, they had to respond or he was sure it would be too late. Akira’s retort was an immediate blast at Abyss. The bolt hit true against its chest but to his utter surprise, it apparently did no damage. He unleashed a second bolt and again was surprised to see it have no obvious effect on their hellfire-covered opponent. Abyss answered the attack with a blast of hellfire that Akira managed to dodge but which hit the walls of the corridor between them and the slowly advancing hound-like beings and caused the whole tunnel to spasm, driving the beasts momentarily back from their quarry.
Banshee had the fanciful notion that perhaps they were in the arterial system of an unconscious and forgotten God. The idea vanished as the giggly whimpering’s of the three hounds reached their ears as they slowly advanced again. Banshee responded with another terrorising scream. In the close confines of the organic-looking tunnels, it created a concert of hell-inspired sound around them driving the advancing hounds back once more as it also drove Abyss back and seemed to impair it – though its demonic healing allowed it to repair itself in mere seconds. That was surprising, impossible really. Abyss was like her, a merger between a mortal and a banshee but while her merger had been chosen and accepted by both parts, Abyss’s had been an assault and kidnapping of its once-human host. However, that should not have affected its immunity to another Banshee’s attacks. It had no effect on Og though, which surprised her.
Mace felt trapped and jumping off the bike, which had now reverted to being just that, she unleashed a dazzle bolt behind her at the three advancing hound-like creatures. It hit the wall just in front of them and erupted into a brilliant light that caused the creatures to stagger back, whimpering. Ok, it didn’t hurt them but they definitely didn’t like it as their hand-like front claws ripped at the light as though it was a physical barrier to pierce. Then to her horror, she realised that was exactly what was happening, the light was being shredded leaving nothing behind except tatters of illumination.
Banshee was saying, “I think these are somehow mental reflections of ourselves, what we might have been had we travelled a different path, though thinking about it Abyss did fire hellfire at us and that’s not something I can do myself.”
As he was speaking, Og gestured behind him and the ‘tunnel’ behind him shrunk in width until it was impassable to someone of their size, blocking their passage to the temporal trail they had been trying to follow. Meanwhile the hounds to their rear seemed to be trying to work their way round the remnants of the lights to get to them.
As they watched Abyss manifested a long fiery whip covered in blue hell-flame and lashed out against Banshee. For a second it wrapped around her arm and she felt the pain course through her veins and the intense pain in her arm as the fire burnt her flesh before it unwrapped and curled back. She felt dazed and slightly charbroiled by the attack.
To everyone’s surprise she seemed to not respond, just standing still with a faint smile on her lips staring at Abyss. What they could not know was how intensely she was concentrating on not believing that this was Abyss or anything for that matter; she was creating a barrier of disbelief. To everyone’s surprise except banshee’s, Abyss suddenly staggered back as though hit. A broader smile immediately crossed Banshee’s face.
Og gestured but his movements were interrupted as Mace charged down at him on the bike, jumping off at the last second (which caused Locker to tumbled uncontrollably to the ground) landing on top of the reptilian figure, her grav gauntlet raised for a strike as she amplified the blow with a full 8g’s of downward strike. Og vanished in response to the repeated blows from the French Valkyrie.
Mace stood up and looked around for a second before hauling Locker’s entranced body back on top of the passenger seat. She needed to move as she was now, way too close to Abyss if he elected to attack her rather than ‘family’. She was glad to see that with the removal of Og the ‘artery’ in front of them had resumed its original size.
Seeing this, Akira smiled even as he tried to throw a force cage round Abyss. It was the small things that reveal the most. Mace was technically ambidextrous though she favoured her right hand and wore the gauntlet on her left. But since they had stepped inside this dimension the gauntlet had been on her right hand. Og, possibly because he inhabited a corrupted duplicate of his body, should be left handed like him yet had been gesturing with his right hand and he was himself unconsciously using his own right hand to cast the force cage – a force cage that Abyss was now shattering in a display of power. This was in some way a mirror dimension and the longer they stayed here the more it tainted and changed them. Could they have been in a mirror dimension since they had first walked through Boire’s portal? No time to think, they needed to find Boire and get away from here. Instead of attacking he focused and created a portal in front of himself which would exit further up the pulsing corridor as far away as he could see. He just had to hold it open for long enough for the others to jump in first.
Banshee ignored the glowing portal beside her and again concentrated on mentally unravelling the reality of Abyss existing in the here and now and was rewarded seconds later with Abyss vanishing even as his hellfire splattered into her face and vanished also. Job done, she stepped through the portal and reappeared 100 metres away. The temporal scent was stronger here but she could feel the desire emanating from the three massive hounds slavering as they stalked their prey now that the dazzle bolts charge had dissipated. If she could feel their hunger from here what were the other two feeling so close to them?
To her surprise she heard Akira mutter over the commdots, “When I turn the walls you hit it with a flare, understood?” Mace nodded and flew her grav-bike round to be beside Akira as she readied a bolt. Akira leant over and touched the wall. It suddenly changed all around into a band of white silver-like material and with sweat on his brow, he nodded and shouted “Close your eyes”.
Even as the first of the creatures leapt at them, Mace fired the bolt at the white transformed band on the opposite side on the passage from Akira and was blinded as the band suddenly flared into brilliant light and burnt through the corridor wall. Akira had changed the wall material into magnesium and Mace’s bolt had ignited it. Unfortunately for Akira as soon as he let go it would transform back into its original material which might not be flammable. He gestured and Mace, her bike and her passenger scrambled through the portal to appear beside Banshee even as the white flames reached his side of the corridor and threatened to burn his fingers and hand into ash. He pulled his arm back, glad to see that it was only slightly singed and jumped through the portal closing it behind him.
Behind then the corridor severed and burnt, trapping the hounds on the other side of the cauterised passage.
They followed the path as fast as they could travel and was happy to discover that the ‘scent’ led through a transparent window into what seemed to be some sort of factory – a factory that appeared to make or repair mirrors. Akira portalled through to the other side just in time to witness Boire, alone this time, slice through an ornate mirror and jump through. No time to question their decision, they rushed over and jumped through themselves even as the portal threatened to close.
They appeared in a dark alley, standing in front of an ornate wardrobe with a cracked mirror. The air was cloyingly foggy mixed with smoke from coal fires creating a near toxic mixture. It was night but there were street lights though the fog blanked out nearly everything else. When they looked closer the lights were little flames that flickered. Gas lit street lamps, where the hell were they?
Then they heard a woman’s piercing scream, followed seconds later by a Police whistle and a window opened above their heads and a man with a walrus moustache looked out and asked, “What is it? Has the Whitechapel Murderer stuck again?”
To be continued.
Superhero Adventures, UK Style 