Hallie and the Sepulchre of Destiny, the conclusion.

Chapter 7

Death is a release from the impressions of the senses, and from desires that make us their puppets, and from the vagaries of the mind, and from the hard service of the flesh.
--Marcus Aurelius

“I say…” Mumphrey said, “…Dashed peculiar to wake up with a hangover when one hasn’t been drinking. What’s the status of the security system? Have we been attacked?"

“Your computers have been down for approximately three and a half hours” Epitome reported. “There’s no record of any incursion… We’ll have to do a visual check to investigate just what happened.”

“Or you could always ask” Xander suggested from the doorway.

Mr. Epitome’s expression made it obvious that he looked upon the mage’s presence with little optimism that he might clarify matters. “As if my report on this whole Caphan mess wasn’t going to be convoluted enough…” he muttered irritably to himself.

“Very well” the LL leader prodded. “What the bloody hell just happened?”

“A weak mind reached above his reading level” the sorcerer supreme of the Parodyverse explained with a shrug. “Regrettably, in this particular case, I wasn’t there when it happened. Luckily the ladies of the house were on top of things.” He tossed what looked suspiciously like a human hand covered in fire extinguisher spray into the trashcan. “Everything is under control now.”

Just then, Fleabot burst into the room in a state of severe distress. “Hallie!” he cried. “You’ve got to help me find Hallie! I followed the trail of blood, but it just disappeared in the winding corridors!”

“Wait, what blood?” Mumphrey began, concerned.

Xander nodded. “You wouldn’t be able to find the tomb on your own” he explained. Don’t worry… the Abyssal Greye is down there right now. Everything is under control.”

An emergency signal lit up the communications array, and Trickshot’s face appeared through a haze of static. “About time! We’ve been trying to reach you for an hour! There’s been some kind of mystical voo-doo attack down here… we need you to reach Xander…”

“Already reached” the mage answered. “And everything is under control now” he assured again.

“Is everyone all right there?” Mumphrey prodded, trying to catch up to the situation. “What happened?”

“Hell if I know” the annoying archer admitted. “Kerry came to Hat white as sheets saying something was wrong, then Miiri comes running into camp yelling that Vizh had collapsed… So then Ebony starts swearing and has us drawing protective symbols all over the place…”

“Does anyone need medical attention?”

“Dancer and Yo performed CPR on Vizh for what seemed like forever, but he finally came around. Everyone seems mostly stable now, though Johnstantine will need a few stitches where Lisa bit him.”

“Do we want to know why Ms. Waltz bit him?” Epitome asked. He was sure he didn’t want to venture into “where”.

“Ebony told her something, and she wanted to summons Xander despite the fact that Johnstantine said she’s likely kill herself and maybe him in the attempt. Trying to stop her by covering her mouth was definitely a mistake.”

“I’ll probably have to buy him a few rounds for that” the mage noted. “But once again, everything is under control now.”

Just then the main communications screen flickered out, losing contact with Lemuria once again. “We’re getting a massive info dump…” Epitome noted urgently, taking stock of the situation. “Files are being deleted and overwritten by an outside source… I can’t seem to isolate the pathways being used.”

“That’s cause they’re using all of them!” Fleabot warned, “brushing past our firewalls like they don’t exist…”

“The Lovetoads?” Mumphrey asked grimly.

“No” Xander answered. “Just someone making themselves at home. I shouldn’t be surprised it took this many months for her to drop her defences, really… I understand Marie screamed for weeks at a time in the beginning. Everything is under...”

“Damn it, man… Start making some bloody sense!” the Englishman yelled, holding his throbbing head. But before the mage could reply, each of the consoles in the operations room flickered off then rebooted, screeding information and lighting up like a Christmas tree. Throughout the mansion lights strobed, TVs crackled on, telephones rang, laptops whirred.

And then the main viewscreen flickered back to life.

“Jeez…” Hallie said, beaming happily from the television screen. “It was getting cramped in here. Don’t you people ever empty your e-mail inboxes?”

Fingers woke up feeling like that time he’d been digging up the dead vole in that field outside Murmansk and hadn’t heard the locals arriving with the People’s Glorious Threshing Machine. He reached out to find where he was and his arms thumped into solid metal.

“Hey!” he complained. “What?”

“Fingers? Er, I mean Digituss? Is that you?”

“It’s Fingers. Or Marylin. I don’t have those changes the boss made.”

“Fools! I wasn’t the boss!” shrieked the Abyssal Rasputatius. “I mean I was the boss, but I wasn’t me. That was a walk-in spirit who came through time and usurped my brilliant plan to rule the world. And you dolts just went along with it!”

“Aw crap,” Buggerov called in the darkness. “So what happened? We got our butts kicked again, didn’t we?”

“Where are we?” Fingers demanded. “I think I’m in a lead lined coffin. I can’t eat my way out of this.”

“We all are,” came the furious voice of Chompvski. “Sealed in like… things that are sealed in lead caskets.”

“Cretins,” came a new voice. “It’s cretins that are sealed in lead caskets.”

Rasputatius recognised the voice at once. “Greye! The Abyssal Greye! I demand you let us out of these contraptions at once.”

“No, I don’t think so,” the Dean of the Scholar-Ghouls of Gothametropolis answered. “You’ve been very naughty, and I think you need to learn a lesson.”

“When I get out of here I’ll tear you to mincemeat,” Fingers shouted.

“Hmm. Well there’s an incentive to release you,” noted Greye dryly. “Really, you people have to come into the seventeenth century. And you have to understand that there are some things you don’t interfere with, and the work of the Improbable College is one of them.”

“The Improbable College?” Rasputatious scorned. “There’s no such thing. They were wiped out like the Knights Improbable before them.”

“And when they were destroyed the League of Improbable Gentlemen formed,” the Abyssal Greye pointed out. “And after them the League of Regulars, and now the Lair Legion. If you people don’t have the wit to understand the sweep of history and what’s behind it, you really shouldn’t be in this business.”

“So what is behind it?” Chompvski challenged.

The Abyssal Greye explained it, and listened to them scream for a while. “I’ve got to go now,” he said at last. “I have things that are actually important to deal with. But I’ve consulted with Xander the Improbable, and he felt it would be cruel and inhuman to leave you all alone in the darkness, trapped in lead coffins with no hope of escape, without any attempt to reform you.”

“It would,” agreed Buggerov eagerly. “No really, I’m feeling reformed already…”

“So I’ve brought you one of these new-fangled televisual devices to keep you company,” the Abyssal explained.

“A TV?” Fingers said. “That ain’t so bad.”

“And I’ve selected a suitable channel for you,” Greye promised, flicking on the strange glass and metal construct.

The machine flickered to life, and began its reforming. “…sponsored by the letter F.”

“What?” Rasputatius gasped. “Wait, can’t you change the station?”

“If you don’t like the channel I’ll just leave the remote control lying here on top of your casket,” the leader of the Ghouls Under Gothametropolis told him. “Feel free to change the channel to whatever you like.”

“But I can’t get out of my casket.”

“Oh dear.”

“I’ll kill you!” shrieked Fingers, the last of his sanity snapping at his awful fate. “I’ll get our of here and kill you, and then I’ll kill Bert and Ernie! And then I’ll kill Mr Rogers! And then Barney and all his friends! And then I’ll eat Julia Childs! You can’t do this to us! No! Nooooooo!”

“Don’t shriek,” Rasputatius shrieked. “We’ll get out of this. We’ll make them sorry! One day we’ll escape from this hell and then we’ll rule the…”

“Oh shut up!” Chompvski shouted. “Shutupshutupshutup!”

“F is for Friendship” the TV told them over the noise of their howling.

The Abyssal Greye chuckled to himself all the way back to his library.

Humbolt Vernold awoke with a scream, as he was flung backwards away from his copy of the Necronastycon to slam into the vault wall and spasm helplessly while he gained control of her central nervous system again. He screamed a while as he tried to claw the invisible insects off his body, then whimpered like a child as the chill worms of time burrowed out of his soul.

The Hooded Hood waited patiently until the leader of the Church of Conformity had finished vomiting. “Good evening,” he bade the returned time-wanderer.

HV glared at him. “Clever,” he admitted, wiping his mouth. “Very clever. Using the mathematical entity and having her clad in flesh. I should have detected your touch.”

The cowled crime czar confirmed or denied nothing. “Many of the imperatives on the Mansion site were laid in this era, by your enemies the Improbable College,” he noted.

“By your Improbable College, you mean,” Vernold spat. “They serve truth and beauty and art and science, and they fight and die for the freedom to be heretics and to destroy society and to question God, but do they also know they serve your purposes, archvillain?”

“There are lessons to be learned here, HV. The approach you have chosen to your eternal quest isn’t working. You have drawn the wrong conclusions from your observations.” He paused then asked, “Did you really think it would be that simple to kill Visionary? To change the future?”

“I had not considered the insignificant green girl,” admitted Vermold. “That was my mistake.”

“She is not insignificant,” the Hood advised. “No-one is insignificant. And Hallie has immense possibilities. I’ll be watching her very closely.”

“I will destroy your Improbable College,” HV promised. “Tear it down and destroy every one it has ever touched. I will destroy Visionary. I will destroy you.”

“Perhaps you should wipe the vomit off your robes first?” suggested the Hood. He rose from the throne that had somehow appeared in the Church of Conformity and prepared to step through his Portal of Pretentiousness. “I look forward to your next gambit, HV.”

“You have arrayed some impressive powers against me,” HV admitted. “But in the end Conformity will rule over all.”

“Perhaps. But conformity is confounded by the power that defeated you this time,” the cowled crime-czar suggested. “Hallie was willing to give everything for love. Love will beat conformity every time.”

“You really believe that?” scorned Humbolt Vernold.

“Why else should I do anything” asked the Hooded Hood, “if not for love?”

And then he was gone.

“You look like hell” Hallie noted critically via the comm-link, hiding her concern at the sight of his pale grey complexion and the dark rings under his eyes.

“Thanks” Visionary responded dryly with a weary smile from the bed they had confined him to on Lemuria. “I’m weak as a kitten, but they tell me that’s what a heart-attack will do to you. They’re not telling me much else of what happened, although apparently I’m going to have to back off the crullers again.” He failed to keep the regret out of his voice at this news.

“Frankly, we were all expecting this” she continued teasingly. “What with being trapped out there day in, day out with 9 pleasure slaves it was probably inevitable. If only you had held out until Wednesday, I would have won the office pool.”

He graciously ignored the barb. “I can’t help but notice you’re looking good, however… Positively glowing.”

The reborn holograph rolled her eyes. “We have got to get you away from the Manga Shoggoth” she noted.

“Sorry” he replied. “Are you going to tell me how it happened?”

“When you get back. Dancer says we’re not to consider letting you get out of bed for the foreseeable future… I figure you could use a few stories in that case. And I owe you some.”

He nodded. “That would be nice. I like a good story… especially one with a happy ending.” He took a deep breath. “This is a happy ending, right? What you wanted?”

“Yes…” she admitted. “Now that it’s past, I can see what a tremendous gift it was to be human for a while… to gather all those experiences. But it’s so wonderful to no longer be an awkward, slow klutz, but actually be…”

“Light on your feet?” he suggested.

She glared at him.

“Last one. Scout’s honor” he assured her. “I’m just glad to see you’re back to feeling exceptional instead of average.”

“No more exceptional than I was. Just smarter…” she argued seriously, “…and maybe a bit more like you than I could have hoped.”

He blinked in confusion. “I don’t follow” he admitted.

“I’ll try and fix that in the future” Hallie promised with a soft smile. “Now get some sleep…” she advised him, mentally accessing the communications subroutines to end the call. “You’d be amazed at how much better it can make you feel.”

Post By from Visionary and the Hooded Hood Sun Apr 10, 2005 at 08:51:38 pm EDT	Subject Hallie and the Sepulchre of Destiny, the conclusion.

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