The team had been relaxing in the lounge of the BASEment after what had been a long and extremely quiet week desperate for something to happen, when Dispatch was channelled through to the room’s primary screen by Frankie.
Instead of a call to action, this appeared to be a weather forecast warning of an unexpected storm currently listed aa a nine on the Beaufort scale, which had suddenly manifested over the Welsh Coast, intensifying all the time. Dispatch predicted that if it continued to grow at the same rate it would be a level 12, category five hurricane before very long.
Dispatch was clearly treating the storm as an intrusion into British airspace rather than a weather phenomenon and the accompanying winds and lightning as a threat to be countered, if at all possible.
It was clearly not natural, as it had already changed direction several times since it had first appeared unexpectedly and was now heading towards the Severn Valley near Brichester, just across the border from Wales. Its current path would take it over Ffrwd Dylluan, Akira’s family home soon and he couldn’t get rid of the thought that perhaps that was its intended target. It would arrive in less than half an hour unless it changed direction again, which Akira thought unlikely. That house attracted the strange and abnormal he’d noticed. “I hate when things attack the ancestral pile,” he muttered as he raced to the Crate with the other two, enroute to the Wales border.
A short will later, they were watching the sky turn a depressing grey as a very localised storm front rolled in unleashing a massive electrical storm that drowned and battered the houses and landscape below – what really caught their eye was the presence of a floating stone monolith at the very centre of the storm.
As it passed over powerlines and houses, the storm (or the monolith) seemed to drain all of the electrical power from cars, street lamps, homes and even torch batteries leaving everyone below in the dark. Its ability to absorb energy also seemed to be increasing exponentially and the team had to wonder how long before it was capable of draining the electrical energy from everything including any human bodies it passed over?
“Nasty piece of stone” said Banshee as they got as close as they could risk taking the Crate, despite its shielding it was also at risk of being drained. Akira smiled, “Very Zardoz-like” he concluded as X-Ray and he exited the craft and headed towards it under their own steam.
Banshee put the Crate on autopilot and had it hover what she hoped would be a safe distance from the malignant storm, before following the other two out into the stormy sky.
While X-Ray and Banshee tried to get to the eye of the storm and the floating monolith, Akira intercepted a static-filled message from Frankie that the storm had just passed over the Brichester Cottage Hospital and had drained it completely of all power, including back-up generators and battery-powered life support units. Akira immediately made a beeline for the hospital even as he began to manifest the First Wheel of Weyan to restore power to the hospital, repair, and revive the life support equipment. Less than a minute after the storm had passed overhead the hospital flared back into life. Akira smiled and headed back towards Ffrwd Dylluan even as it seemed the storm had begun to slow down as it approached the old mansion.
X-Ray had finally managed to fly through the storm; his force field having absorbed most of the storm’s battering and was now trying to use his gravi-kinesis to affect the monolith at its centre. He was unable to either fly it away or crash it into the ground but it was affected, rendering it wobbling and unstable. He assumed that was why the storm was now hovering above a disused and clearly abandoned property deep in the Severn countryside.
What he couldn’t explain was the weird feelings he was getting from the property below; multiple electromagnetic pulses, seeming emanating from nowhere, were being sucked towards the stone. What he couldn’t explain is how the invisible pulses were reacting, seemingly resisting and changing direction in ways that defied common sense, or science for that matter, as though they were deliberately trying to break free of the monolith’s overpowering influence. The pulses were acting more like live and even intelligent creatures than energy!
Banshee reached X-Ray and immediately flew towards the centre of the storm and the monolith before attempting to turn both herself and the stone insubstantial. It failed but it did cause the stone to vanish leaving the storm to swiftly dissipate away.
With the stone’s departure X-Ray couldn’t help notice that the energy pulses had begun to return to the house. He could have sworn he had perceived something flutter past his head at one point and heard it sigh, though that was of course impossible…
Akira arrived a few seconds later having restored the hospital and immediately headed down to the front door of the bigger of the two disused properties below. “Welcome to Ffrwd Dylluan, my ancestral home. Come inside.”
X-Ray could hear his whisper “Hello house, I’m home..” even as the front door opened for him automatically. Both he and a smiling Banshee entered and discovered that the premises were elegantly furnished and in an immaculate state of repair. The abandoned look outside had to be due to a hologram or something like that thought X-Ray as he extended his senses to get a better mental picture of the layout of the property and found himself encountering a property larger on the inside that it was on the outside… What the..?
“This is yours?” He asked Akira even as he tried to make sense of all the weird signals he was experiencing.
Akira smiled. “Welcome to the ancestral pile, Don’t spend as much time here as I’d like.” X-Ray wondered who he’d inherited this wierdling property from only to realise that the hall mirror was misting over on its own accord and the word ‘welcome’ was now etching itself in the moisture. Had to be another of Akira’s little tricks, didn’t it?
Akira approached the mirror and spoke – to the mirror!?! – “Do you know anything about that storm?” To X-Ray’s surprise Akira’s reflection in the mirror suddenly acted independently of Akira and spoke just one word; “Melinoe” then resumed its task once again as an accurate reflection. Neither Akira or Banshee seemed freaked out by this.
Melinoe, sounds like a name. A quick call to Frankie revealed that << In Greek mythology, Melinoe is the goddess of ghosts and nightmares. It is said that she granted madness to those she haunts. She is the daughter of Persephone and Hades. She lives in the Underworld. She has a pale complexion and a short temper and apparently took after her father in almost every way, except from her beauty that she gets from her mother Persephone. Melinoe has the powers to turn any mortal insane by her phantoms.
Melinoe is often depicted as a shadowy, ghost-like figure often with the ability to shape-shift and take on various forms. She is said to be able to haunt the living and cause them to experience disturbing dreams and visions, making her a powerful figure in the realm of the supernatural
Little is known about Melinoe, but ancient Greeks used to conduct rituals and acts of praises to her as a sign of devotion and to garner protection from ghosts. Melinoe is also sometimes confused with Hecate, a Titan goddess and Angelos, a god of purification who was turned into an Underworld god by his parents, Zeus and Hera. Melinoe also has two siblings, Makaria/Macaria and Zagreus.>>
Banshee stated that in reality she was most likely an Atlan, one of those who’d been born in the future, manifested as a Homo Deus; both immortal and with Meta abilities had who travelled back from the 27th Century to the distant past with their powers intact…
As X-Ray was ‘watching’, the electromagnetic pulses settled into various parts of the house, even as Frankie again patched Dispatch through to their commdots.
It appeared as though the storm had reappeared over Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain and was still growing in size and power. It had ripped the roof off the visitors centre and was threatening to pull visitors sheltering inside into the sky. There were over a hundred people at risk and emergency services were struggling to cope. A recording from one of the visitors showed people being dragged into the sky by the storm and as soon as they got closer to the monolith they appeared to vanish.
Akira ran to the Crate, screaming “it’s time to become storm chasers”. The others followed, flying up to board the hovering craft, they set off for Stonehenge as fast as they could. As they got as close as they dared to the storm they witnessed a tourist snatched up by the wind only to vanish as it got closer to the rough hued stone pillar at the centre of the storm.
They did wonder why had it vanished and not Banshee when she’d approached it, yet the opposite was happening now? It didn’t make sense unless it was responding to them differently for some reason, but if so, why?
The sky suddenly darkened and X-Ray countered by unleashing a blindingly bright proton blast at the monolith, so it erupted between the stone and its next flying victim. The blast ‘detonated’ leaving everyone watching temporarily blinded.
When their sight returned, they realised that they were ‘elsewhere’; and the ‘henge has altered in its composition but not its shape and layout and was now composed of upended and raised vehicles several high forming a ‘scraphenge’, surrounded in all sides by junk and scrap.
Hours must have past as it now appeared to be dusk (it was only later that they realised that it was always dusk in this realm). The storm itself with its central monolith had vanished as though it had never been. Despite the darkness they realised that the visitors centre had also disappeared, replaced by piles of waste and broken things. It was clear that the proton blast had somehow transported them ‘elsewhere’; they just weren’t sure where that was though Akira was starting to think that they had been sent to his garbage dimension.
Known as the Howling Dream; this was as much a place or state of mind as it was an entity. It was mad, primal chaos dwelling within the darkest depths of someone’s darkest consciousness, the stormy sea of emotions and awareness from which all thought and imagination first arose. It was that portion of the Great Collective consciousness that could not be tamed or subject to order. It was insanity incarnate. Mages calling on the power of the Howling Dream skirted the edges of madness themselves but by traversing it, they gained access to the Crying Road, a path into the realm of dreams and nightmares where they could banish their enemies for an eternity, or at least the remains of their mortal life.
As well as sending computers and refrigerated storage units here, Akira had also used it to banish a human mind and a sentient program here fairly recently and now they were here, trapped in a waking dream he assumed. After he explained to his companions where he thought they were, he muttered, “it must be karma!” under his breath.
There were several human corpses scattered amongst the garbage but they all focused on the closest body. They each saw a different person lying in the rubbish; X-Ray saw young Chris gutted like a fish left to rot amongst the garbage, Akira saw his at one time infatuation, Mai-Li from Sensei Hsi Feng’s dojo, her head severed from her body and Banshee saw his para-twinned grandniece, young Mary her limbs torn from her torso. Banshee and Akira realised almost immediately that this was part of the nightmare but X-Ray was taken in by the illusion and flew down to Chris’s body, crying at his failure to protect his adopted son… Akira tried to explain that they were trapped in a nightmare and that nothing they saw or experienced was real though if they believed in what they saw it would be as though it was real to them.
That’s when they saw a tall humanoid figure striding towards them. The figure was robotic in shape and design yet formed out of scrap and discarded parts with what looked like a transparent door in its chest. Inside were dozens of coiled cables, each with what looked like a syringe on the tips, filled with a familiar red fluid. They flexed and shuddered behind the transparent repurposed door.
It was only later that they realised that the robot had parts formed from the quarantine fridges previously sent through to the nightmare dimension by Akira when he banished the mutated MAR-V virus here months before.
The junkbot marched closer, scattering the garbage on the ground as it got within metres of them. Only X-Ray failed to realise the imminent danger, grieving as he was for Chris.
X-Ray was shouting at Akira, demanding to know if he had sent Chris here to die, to suffer like this? Akira again tried to explain that he’d sent some of the components of the junkbot here previously when he’d exiled them away, specifically the virus and the fridges, not Chis or Mai-Li (who he saw lying there instead of Chris) and that this was just a nightmare they were trapped inside.
X-Ray in his grief wasn’t able to take it in as he looked down at the damaged body. Again, Akira tried to explain that it was all in their minds, that there was nothing really there and it only looked and felt real because their minds made it seem to be real. Everything he saw and believed existed would feel real if they believed in it. They were currently trapped inside a ‘mind field’ full of deadly mental traps. He went on to explain that people could really die in this nightmare if they believed in it enough that their sleeping body switched off, if they failed to fight and they allowed themselves to die in their dreams. He, they, had to fight to win no matter how badly they felt.
As they argued, the fridge door sprung open on the chest of the advancing junkbot and the cables came flying out, heading towards the team, the needle-like tips dripping red death. Both Banshee and Akira managed to dodge but X-Ray had relied on his force field to block the needles but it failed to stop one of the snake-like cables from getting through. Its tip scratched him on the chest, dripping its liquid contents into the bloody scratch as it did so. He fell backwards but it was too late he was infected, or so he thought and as he thought so it was.
He felt his temperature rise, his eyes blur and he immediately felt nauseous. The junkbot again tried to spin round so its cables could again try for Banshee and Akira. Meanwhile Akira had cast the Eight Eyes of Ios on himself to give himself 360 vision and the ability to see what was real and what was illusion. , in this realm, illusion and reality were one and the same and the spell was unable to distinguish between the two options.
X-Ray despite the immediate onset of a violent fever, tried to sterilise the junkbot even as he envisioned the virus apparently rendering him haemophilic. He blasted the chest fridge with a radiation blast. The bot reacted by instantly cloning itself into three identical creatures as it absorbed the energy though the original was clearly damaged, the duplicated versions looked intact. Akira immediately blocked their advancing towards them as Banshee reverted to Mary, called forth her harp and began to play a healing chant. The notes flowed over X-Ray and although they didn’t immediately cure him of the effects of the assault, it did strengthen him and prevented the virus from doing any further damage. Meanwhile the two new junkbots were on the attack. Their chest cable-hydras flailed through the air towards Akira, forcing him to try to blast the tentacles with their syringe tips as they swung ever closer.
X-Ray blasted one of them with enough energy to melt its head. It immediately spawned another junkbot but this was only the size of a small man, though its chest cavity full of flailing cables was just as deadly as its larger and now disabled ‘parent’. Banshee unleashed a wail on the original bot and it shattered into a million components even as its syringes smashed as it tumbled to the ground.
Akira unleashed multiple blasts at the remaining large bot causing it to explode before it could spawn another of its kind. As the smoke cleared, they could see standing atop of a nearby scrapheap a female, her body seemingly divided equally between fair and dark skinned. Akira murmured, “Melinoe I assume? Nightmare on one side and dream on the other?” As they watched, the fair side of the female’s body changed its features finally settling on a familiar (to them) face – that of the scientist Morgane Le Corre, though the voice that beckoned them sounded more like Eva 1.0’s.
Akira had cast their minds, their essences, into the Howling Dream realm and it seemed that whoever or whatever Melinoe was, she was not happy about it.
She gestured and twenty slithering monstrosities appeared surrounding her, each was about a metre tall though they floated so their tendrils and bodies did not touch the ground. The team just hoped they were voyeurs and not participants in the fight and they weren’t about to face an infestation of them.
Banshee unleashed a shattering shriek at the remaining minibot, which was still advancing on them, its nest of cables with their deadly cargo weaving towards her. The scream tore the bot to pieces but instead of collapsing into a pile of junk like its ‘big brothers’ its armoured shell fell away to reveal a large slug-like creature composed of garbage, an almost human face smiled at them as it slithered closer. Banshee immediately nicknamed this one Junkpile.
Akira responded to its appearance from the smoking robotic carcass with a mystical blast that almost severed it in half. To their horror the massive hole through it’s body began to mend itself, its junk-covered skin and muscles elongating, reaching out strands of itself to other similar strands on the opposite side of the ‘wound’ and had begun to stitch itself back together again.
They had to find a way to wake up, to escape, before this nightmare became any more real.
Banshee meanwhile had unleashed a wail at Junkpile and had torn at its ‘skin’, but it just responded by repairing the damage even as it extended several claw-covered pseudopods towards them, the tentacles covered in sharp metal or shattered glass fragment ‘talons’ that it tried to swipe at them, clashing against Akira and X-Rays force fields.
Suddenly the creatures surrounding the bi-coloured female standing on the pile of rubbish began to sing, a song of despair and abject terror. The sonic attack washed over Akira, partially shielded as he was by the attacking Junkpile but the sonic assault seemed to affect both Banshee and X-Ray who collapsed in agony to the ground. Akira turned and tried to reassure his fallen companions that this was all an illusion, a nightmare and not real. Even as he spoke, he saw Melinoe speak in Eva’s mechanical voice declaring that, “You polluted my realm now I will pollute you in response.”
Akira had an idea. In their assault on Mannheim Industries, he had been forced to send through physical files as well as computers that might prove useful in their future investigation into them. The computers were now useless but paper files might still prove beneficial if he could figure out how to find them in this ocean of garbage and abandoned nightmares. He just didn’t know where to begin.
Meanwhile the floating monstrosities that surrounded the female cried out once more at them, their nightmarish song ripping at the team’s minds, again and again. Akira again fought its influence off as he declared that he wasn’t ready to try and leave until he’d found those files. He turned back to the female and screamed, “Look, the greatest pollution in this realm has to be us. Why don’t you let us go and we’ll even repatriate some of our things with us, the pile of files I sent through for example…”
The female turned away and the 20 or so monstrosity nightmares began to slither through the air towards them, trying to grab hold and slink all over them. Their force fields seemed unable to prevent them from touching the three of them. Akira wished they were smaller and to his surprise, they began to shrink but also to multiply as they began to cover them over, their rat-like glowing eyes merging even as they multiplied exponentially.
Banshee was being covered completely and she began to feel them peeling away at her mind with their song. The creatures covering her began to merge together forming a single Nightmare but with Banshee’s face even as the remaining brood began to try and do the same to Akira and X-Ray.
It was only a matter of time until the creatures succeeded in absorbing them all. Banshee was only the first to fall to their assault. She responded by changing into Mary and manifesting her harp inside the nightmare wrap, strumming out a blast of healing before the Nightmares could respond to the change. Akira meanwhile tried to astral project himself out of his body but was unable to do so though he wasn’t sure why.
X-Ray was using his gravi-kinesis to successfully counter the attempt to smother him though he was struggling to cope with the admittedly stalled infection in his body and the Nightmare’s psychic screams in his head.
Melinoe stood watching but not attacking as her sea of Nightmares swarmed all over them. Akira managed to shout over to her that “people respond better to carrots than sticks and if you were to free us we would leave and never pollute her realm again…” He heard Melinoe’s stolen artificial voice respond inside his head, “People travel here to experience the pain, to either punish themselves in some way or just to experience the thrill of being exposed and threatened by the unreal and unnatural. You on the other hand have dragged these two with you, further polluting my realm.”
“How would you like me to put this right?” She responded, “Die! Give up the will to survive. Stop wanting to live and you will fade away into sweet oblivion, or else remain here forever.”
“I will give up the will to live if that’s what you want but let my companions go home…” A second later he added, “and there are some files that they would benefit from taking with them..?”
“A geas on you!” Akira left his lip curl up. “Good or bad?” he replied.
He watched as the ‘Scrappy Do’ junkpile creature expanded until it was as large as the original robot had been then a window opened and it stepped through.
Melinoe replied this time in Morgane’s voice, “He will be a reminder to you to not misuse my realm again. He will be a testament of me in your wakened realm of everything you sent through to here.”
“Do we need to follow it through?”
No, I just need you to WAKE UP!!!!”
They instantly collapsed to the ground, rolled over and found themselves opening their eyes on the Lounge in the BASEment, Jeeves was standing over them having put them into the recovery position and was talking on the phone seemingly to Annie. Despite leaving the group with Young Sam, Annie was still acting as the team physician when required.
Then, as they sat up, they heard the sound of explosions overhead, it appeared they had returned as the city was suffering from an aerial bombardment of some sort…
To be continued
Superhero Adventures, UK Style 