Heart of Darkness The Conclusion!!! - Tales of the Parodyverse

Previously in Heart of Darkness: Well, honestly, this is the last chapter. It’s kind of late to be jumping in now, isn’t it? But still, it’s been a while, so I suppose a refresher is called for:

When we last left our heroes, Visionary had shown up at the Willingham Lighthouse to face the Necromancer General and rescue Kerry. Fleabot succeeded in spiriting away his captive young ward by shrinking her, although he was not able to enlarge either of them back to full size. Meanwhile, more of Visionary’s friends sought to rescue him by finding a mystical back way into the undead sorcerer’s stronghold. Things looked grim as Visionary was captured and about to have his heart removed and turned into the unstoppable horror Nyarlurkhotep when Lisa and Dancer arrived to save the day. Or at least to argue that Visionary’s heart wasn’t up for grabs… it already belonged to another.

“Wait… what?” Visionary managed from his position tied down to the surgery table.

“What he said” the Necromancer General grumbled irritably, looking over the Lair Legion’s counsellor warily. One didn’t survive multiple centuries without picking up an appreciation for just how dangerous a well-prepared lawyer could be. “I’ve got the fake man captured, his friends held at bay by my unholy legions, and the means to extract his black heart in a dark ceremony to shepherd in the next coming of the Fairly Great Old Ones. I’m pretty sure I’ve already won here.”

“Yes, but that’s why we read the fine print” Lisa noted professionally, looking over her documents. “The deal was that Visionary came here alone to trade his own life for that of Kerry’s, and in return you could have his Heart of… Are we really calling it that?” she asked, looking up. “It’s kind of cheesy.”

“Ahem…” Dancer coughed delicately, adding under her breath “…Parodyverse.”

Lisa sighed and rolled her eyes. “Oh, alright… In return you could have his Heart of Darkness. But unfortunately, it seems there are a number of outstanding claims on it at the moment. I’m afraid we’ll have to settle these before possession can rightfully be awarded.”

“One, I made no deals with the fake man” Bogdan Vladivock pointed out evilly. “Two, I already have possession of him, ergo possession of his Heart of…, er… his heart. And Three, as for whom else claims to have rights to it, frankly I just don’t give a flying…”

“Well, there’s the problem” Lisa countered. “As a wannabe big-league type magician, you should probably know that these kinds of reality reordering, soul-devouring, ultimate-victory-by-darkness-over-light prophecies always demand that everybody adhere to the rules. Be they ritual sacrifices, deals with the devil, resurrection of loathsome elder gods… the statutes are really strict. Everything needs to be on the up and up. Even with the cosmic realignment being just right, the sacrificial alter being prepared just so, and the steaming blood of a virgin goat to wash things down, we still have to get through the messy details of heart ownership if you want to get the credit for bringing about the utter destruction and defilement of the universe.”

“It’s probably not too late to give the whole idea a second thought…” Visionary prodded the undead sorcerer. “I mean, is that really the kind of epitaph you want on your tombstone? Defiler of the universe? Or rather, assistant to the defilers of the universe?”

“I already wrote the epitaph on my tombstone four hundred years ago” He noted, raising his hands in grandeur. “Death is but a door, Time is but a window… I’ll be back. In fact, the stone itself is in the guest bedroom. It makes a nice headboard.” He turned his attention back to the intruders. “And just what makes ownership of his heart in question?”

“Um… does the fact that I’m not done using it count?” Visionary asked.

“Not really, no” Lisa pointed out helpfully. “Mainly, the bone of contention is that Mr Visionary there has been going around pledging his heart willy-nilly since the end of his marriage. Completely irresponsible behaviour, leaving a string of claims of emotionally invested men, women, children, aliens, machines and animals in his wake.”

“Ugh” the Necromancer General noted, eying Visionary with distaste while trying to decide if he’d need his dissection table specially sterilized after this. “Not terribly particular, are you?”

“Well, the reports in the papers are a bit exaggerated…”

“You left out corpses” Dancer pointed out to Lisa helpfully. “Urthula said her date with him was the ride of her afterlife.”

“Oh really?” Vladivock growled, glaring at the man who had just spent the night with his niece. “Perhaps I should remove some lower organs for practice…”

“Ermmmm…” Lisa made a face. “Yeah… there’s at least 5 Caphan claims on that one too. Apparently, there’s this whole right of refusal line in pleasure slave traditions working down from Miiri’s most honoured slave position and… Well, it’s really best not to think about it.”

“Indeed. But back to the point… So I can’t lay claim to the fake man’s heart because he’s spread too much love…” the undead sorcerer spit with sarcasm. “Oh, please… do I look like someone who cries over Hallmark cards? Is that the best you’ve got?”

“He also checked the organ donor box on his driver’s license…” Dancer added weakly.

“Well, yeah… there’s that…” Lisa conceded, drawing out a signed document from the folders she was carrying. “But more importantly there’s the notarized lien that his fiancé took out on his heart already.”

Bogdan Vladivock smelled a trap. “Took out with whom?”

“Funny you should ask…” Lisa smiled evilly, producing the Book of Law from behind her back. “And luckily for all involved, I’m authorized to arbitrate this case.”

“So what is this place again?” Asil whispered with distaste as the weeping walls of the passageway pulsated around them in livid wet reds and purples and far less pleasant colours.

“An ecto-vent” Ebony whispered back. “Vladivock set up shop at the Willingham Lighthouse because it is at an infamously thin juncture in realities. Lots of Necromantic extradimensional energy to harness and play with… among other power sources. Many gods be praised if he hasn’t been fool enough to mess with the full range of energies concentrated there.”

Urthula nodded. “Of course, you let too much of any energy build up and…” she made a bursting motion with her hands. “These vents channel the waste energy out between the dimensions.”

“To where?” Liu Xi asked, as intrigued by the concept as any student on a fascinating field trip might be.

“Someplace with considerably lower property values, love” Johnstantine suggested. “That’s how waste disposal works in all industries.”

“Okay” Asil said, nodding. “Now why are the walls seeping pus?”

“All options considered…” Hallie suggested, her disgust not affecting the bright glow she was giving off to help light their way, “…I think we should be glad it’s only pus.”

And then a legion of horrors burst through the walls to agree with her.

“Well, this sucks” Kerry noted bitterly, looking up at the giant figure of her sister and her guardian, who had now taken her place strapped to the table. “Great rescue plan… Hey, let’s shrink the Irish chick and then have her father figure carved up into little bits while she watches! Genius!”

“Like you make it easy on the rest of us…” Fleabot responded, taking advantage of their now equal sizes to look her directly in the eye. “Wait… father figure? You think of Visionary as your…”

“Don’t even think about repeating what I just said…” the Junior Legionnaire growled. “It’s been a long few days since everything went all pear shaped, and I’ve had to deal with the knowledge that Fake-O and my sister went at it, that they’re getting married or I’m looking at deportation otherwise… not to mention lobotomy at a correctional school. And then I find myself being bounced around from foster creep to foster creep because the only guy who’s ever believed that it was worth giving a damn about me was deemed too much of a reprobate to raise me as a decent person!” She crossed her arms and sniffed defiantly. “I’m tired and I misspoke, that’s all. He’s stupid and useless and fat and embarrassing and doesn’t have the self-preservation instincts of a sea-slug to know when to cut and run and give up on a hopeless case like me.”

Fleabot looked at her carefully. “Life’s a whole lot less scary when you can’t be more of a disappointment... To others is bad enough, but finding you could even still disappoint yourself....”

“I hate him” Kerry sulked.

“I understand” Fleabot noted. “So should we go save him now?”

“Damn straight.”

“A wager?” Visionary asked, confused. All in all, the negotiation for his body parts was leaving him a little worried… something that wasn’t helped by the fact that nobody seemed to be moving to release him from the operating table. “We’re going to gamble for the fate of the world?”

“It wouldn’t be the first time…” Lisa noted reasonably. “More importantly, if all the parties agree, the outcome will be enough to resolve this whole thing” While she obviously tried to sound optimistic, she didn’t seem very happy. Her haggling with Bogdan Vladivock had gone on for a good fifteen minutes in hushed but animated discussion across the room while Dancer and Vizh waited.

“So what kind of wager? Odds and evens? Rock, Paper, Scissors?”

“Umm… no” the First Lady of the Lair Legion admitted uncomfortably. “More like gambling on sports.”

“Football?”

“Uglier.”

Visionary pondered that. “A Tyson fight?”

She grimaced. “Odds are some biting will occur, yes…”

“So we’re talking…”

She sighed. “A fight to the death.”

Visionary looked over to the animated corpse that held him prisoner. “Isn’t he already dead? I don’t suppose that means he forfeits?”

“Not a fight between us, you great simpleton!” the Necromancer General growled from where he was preparing his spells. “You’re the one keeping Nyarlurkhotep from fully reforming. You’re blocking the way, spiritually. Stand aside and let him pass, and we can skip to the ending and find out who wins.”

“Right. And I would do that… why?”

“Well, he has made some generous concessions…” Lisa argued.

“To get me to just give up?! Like what?”

“Oh… How does the lives of your would-be rescuers sound?” Vladivock asked casually.

“Wait… what?”

“One doesn’t plan to abduct one such as yourself without coming up with a few contingencies to deal with your friends.” He gestured to the far wall, where a system of elaborate interconnected circles, triangles and dials were inlaid into the stone surface like odd hieroglyphics. “I’ve reset the dimensional locks that ground the lighthouse in the Parodyverse, temporarily removing us existence… Including your little friends in the ecto-vent. This is the work of the Fairly Great Old Ones themselves, and operating it requires a code key…. Part of Nyarlurkhotep himself… Something not even the Shoggoth, or that little void-prodigy of his can bypass.” He smiled evilly. “Should I lose the heart, I can at least content myself with taking you all into oblivion with me.”

Visionary looked to his lawyer, who could only nod. Resigned, he glared at the twisted old sorcerer. “Fine. I’m in. So what’s the deal?”

“You let Nyarlurkhotep loose. I get the credit. Your friends in the Ecto-vent get the opportunity to try to stop him and save the world. They win, they can return the lighthouse to Willingham with the proper bit of Nyarlurkhotep. You all go free, happily ever after. They lose, Nyarlurkhotep brings back the Fairly Great Old Ones and nobody lives happily ever after ever again. But admittedly, some of us dead people do pretty damn well.”

“And if I don’t accept this, then instead the heart bursts out of my chest and tries to defile the world anyway?” Visionary double checked weakly.

“Um… yeah… ” Lisa agreed with an encouraging pat on the shoulder. “I should note that you’re not in the best bargaining position here. Turns out in these cases that possession is nine tenths of the law.”

“Don’t I have possession of my own heart?”

“You’d think that… but not for the immediate future” she responded sickly. She watched with concern as the Necromancer General approached, chanting in some appropriately dead language.

“Hey…” Vladivock said magnanimously upon finishing his incantation. “I agreed to throw in a perfectly good new heart to appease your fiancé should you win. I have a bunch in the back room… I’ll pick you out something nice. But if things don’t go your way, well… You really should be proud…” the undead sorcerer argued. “Your anatomy will rise up and dominate all of humanity, subjugating the pure to it’s horrid will.”

“We’re still talking about his heart, right?” Lisa asked. “Because otherwise… Ew.”

“His fate is inevitable” Vladivock shrugged. “It’s best to accept and welcome the dark glory that is to come. There is no improbable escape for you all… Something one might wish to tell your friend in the leg warmers, who has been casually trying to avoid my attention and alter the probabilities of my victory since she arrived…”

“Urk…” Dancer responded sheepishly. “Ah… You caught that, did you?”

Lisa sighed. “Even the dead sit up and take notice when she gyrates. What I couldn’t do with that kind of talent…”

“Like your lovers don’t miss enough rest when they’re alive…” Visionary muttered.

The Necromancer General ignored the Regulars to gloat over Dancer. “Unfortunately, your gyrations will go for naught. As I said, I knew what I’d be up against by abducting that fool. I’ve cast a negation spell to specifically affect you probability witches upon entering my domicile. You’re incapable of using your powers against me…” he turned an oily smile towards Lisa. “Something which, I must say, should sour your decision to agree to gamble away the oaf’s heart, eh Ms. Waltz?”

Lisa’s eyes narrowed by she didn’t respond.

The undead magician grinned evilly. “Face it… There’s no one left to save him now! Undying evil shall wash over...!”

“Ghostbusters!” Visionary suddenly called, snapping his fingers.

“Er… What?” Vladivock blinked in confusion.

“Um… Vizh?” Dancer asked with concern. “Do we need to go over the differences between reality and movies again?”

Visionary ignored her. “Your epitaph… It’s been bugging me ever since you said it. It’s from “Ghostbusters”, isn’t it?”

“What?” the sorcerer repeated nervously. “It is not! It’s… ah… That is to say… they stole it from me!”

“Really?” Lisa asked. “We might have a case there… when did you carve your tombstone?”

“Well, I can’t really be expected to remember the exact date…”

“Actually, come to think of it…” Visionary continued, “It was really from Ghostbusters 2, wasn’t it?”

“Ouch” Dancer noted, with a pitying look towards their host.

“I… you…” The Necromancer General stiffened. “It was a much underrated film” he snarled petulantly. “You may have a few moments to say your sappy goodbyes while I finish the spells that will begin the wager” He turned on his heels and stalked across the room to a large brazier against the far wall.

“Touchy” Dancer observed.

“Butthead” Visionary sniffed in resentment. “Like I was going to give him the satisfaction of ranting.” He looked to his teammates and sighed. “If this doesn’t work out, could you go with something from one of the better Bill Murray movies for my epitaph? I always did enjoy Stripes…”

“How about “You can’t go… All the plants are gonna die”…” Dancer suggested with a small smile.

“Nice” he nodded. “Of course, it’s a bit inaccurate, since all the plants in the mansion have been fake ever since we found out what Space Ghost was doing in the real potted ones…”

“It’s the thought that counts” Lisa assured him. “Um… look, about this deal… You realize that I’m kind of constrained by my office in all of this, right? I mean, I’m not here representing you… I’m forced to arbitrate according to the Book of Law if we’re to get out of this mess and save the universe…”

“Are we going to get out?”

“There’s always a chance” Dancer assured him, darting forward to kiss him gently on the cheek, making his skin tingle. “For luck” she said softly.

Visionary picked up on their worry and swallowed. “That bad, huh?”

The undead sorcerer returned to loom over him, shrugging and smiling evilly. “Well… This will probably sting a bit…” he admitted, hefting a huge, twisted black dagger. “But it really is the fun part.” With that, he slammed the blade into Visionary’s chest, killing him instantly.

“This whole thing could be going better!” Asil yelled as she clubbed back the pressing hordes of hell with the rotting femur of one of their own.

“No reason to get negative, pet” Johnstantine countered, shaking the gooey remains of some unfathomable nightmare off of his coat sleeve and lighting a cigarette. “Things are just getting a tad interesting is all.”

Hallie grabbed a hold of two bolts sticking out of a shambling corpse’s neck and channelled electricity into them until its flattop caught on fire. The creature didn’t seem to notice. “I’m with her… This isn’t getting us anywhere!” She switched opponents with Chiaki and found that excessive voltage had a much more impressive affect on the dry skull of an animated skeleton. “Ebony!” she called, wincing despite herself as she was showered with bone fragments. “Any chance you can get tall, dark and gooey there to do… well, anything?!”

The High Priestess used a staff to brain a scaly, misshapen thing that had lunged out of the throbbing walls of the tunnel. “I’m quite sure that the Shoggoth has its reasons for allowing us to engage these lesser… and notably messier… horrors.” she assured them all, although it seemed as if there was a pointed tone directed at her god in there somewhere.

Indeed the Shoggoth gurgled. There is a menace approaching beyond all mortal comprehension… A creature of such unrelenting madness and misery that its very existence is…

“Aw…” Yo noted happily, pulling back his rapier in surprise as he swung about to face what emerged to ambush them next. “Is being a cute and fuzzy pink gerbil!”

There was a horrific, screaming rush of noise as the mass of the Shoggoth exploded from its bandages like water from a burst fire hydrant, roaring forth to engulf the tiny mammal as it likewise lunged forward. The two mighty creatures rolled and struggled in an angry, boiling fury before folding in upon themselves and disappearing, leaving the stunned dead and alive alike gaping stupidly.

Yo shrugged and skewered a festering, maggot-ridden corpse. “I suppose you are being cute enemies also…” he assured the gaping undead, with a bit of disappointment. “In your own ways.”

The Darkness surged outward from the dead man’s chest, coalescing into a writhing black mass hovering in the center of the room. Dripping energy rained down from it like pitch, while arcs of angry red lightning raked the upper walls of the chamber.

“Dark soul of madness and evil!” Bogdan Vladivock cried out over the growing tempest which swept the chamber, sending papers and books swirling along the edges of the room. “Listen to my voice! I am your deliverer, and I offer you this world to…”

“GAAAAAAAAAHHHH!” Visionary screamed, seriously freaking out. “What the holy hell is wrong with you!?”

“Eh?” the Necromancer General asked, pausing long enough to cast a curious glance towards the man on the table. “You’re not dead?”

“No thanks to you, you great spaz!” Visionary cried out. “You cut my heart out! What about all that stuff Lisa said about having to follow the rules?! You can’t just go around cutting the hero’s heart out! Ask anybody!!!”

Lisa coughed embarrassedly. “Um… actually, there’s technically no rule against that in this situation…” she observed apologetically.

“YOU’RE NOT HELPING!” Visionary yelled.

Dancer was trying to apply pressure to the wound with a stricken expression on her face. “Does it hurt much?” she asked sickly.

“He cut my freaking heart out!!!” Visionary pointed out again, in case anybody had somehow still missed that point. “Of course it…” he paused and blinked. “Um… actually… Huh. All things considered, it could be worse.”

“Why aren’t you dead?” the sorcerer asked, sounding slightly perturbed. “I really thought you would be.”

“You mean having an undying evil living in his heart isn’t a good enough reason?” Dancer asked pointedly.

“I lanced the boil that was the source of his condition, and the undying evil is gathering up there, in case you hadn’t noticed” Vladivock pointed out, gesturing to the churning ball of darkness above them. “And I didn’t even fully cut out your heart, so quit your whining already. I just stabbed it completely through. So why aren’t you dead?”

“He’s a zombie” Lisa noted.

“Impossible!” the Necromancer General spat.

“Hey, I’m a hardcore Romero fan…” the lawyer pointed out calmly. “I know my zombies.”

“How did that happen?” Dancer asked curiously.

Lisa looked over the man strapped to the table. “Were you bitten by any living dead recently Vizh?”

The Regular thought on it. “Um… I suppose Urthula might have gotten a little frisky in the cab on the way to the Willow…” He blushed when he caught Sarah’s raised eyebrow. “Sorry. I was kind of out of it and I, uh… have a weakness for women nibbling on my ears…”

“There you go” Lisa told the sorcerer. “You’re average cursed hickey leading to the creation of a mindless zombie.”

“Hey!” Visionary objected. “Wait… so I’m undead now? Cripes, this day just keeps getting better, doesn’t it?” He sat up as Dancer undid the straps that were holding him to the table and put a hand over the gaping chest wound. “Aw… I was too young to die. I was on a diet! No crullers for a full week on doctor’s orders! The last week of my life! How fair is that?”

“If you wanted some last requests, then you should have negotiated for them” the Necromancer General sniffed.

“HOWABOUT NOT GETTING STABBED IN THE HEART!?” Visionary yelled back. “Oh… There was so much I wanted to do… I never climbed Mount Everest…”

“Kind of hard to do with your ass constantly planted on a couch” Lisa suggested.

Visionary waved a hand dismissively. “I hear Sherpas are real good at carrying all sorts of stuff…” He sighed. “I never got around to having any kids…”

“Um… yeah… about that…” Dancer began.

“If you idiots are through blathering…” the Necromancer General growled impatiently. “I thought maybe we’d get on with the point of all this!” He turned back to the swirling mass of pure evil. “Come forth, great and mighty Nyarlurkhotep! By sacred dagger and my hand you are freed of the constraints of the mortal shell, able to once again walk the Earth in all your dark…”

“Yes, yes…” a malevolent voice echoed in all of their heads as the dark energy began to coalesce into a humanoid shape. “I’ve heard the speeches before. You shall be properly rewarded for your role in my resurrection, I assure you.”

“He played his part just as you said he would…” Vladivock sneered with a glance back to Visionary. “He jumped at the chance to let you free when his friends were on the line.”

Visionary set his jaw and stared back at the evil that had resided inside of him for so long. “That’s because I know they’ll be all to ready to kick your sorry ass” he insisted.

“Indeed?” the dark harbinger of the Fairly Great Old Ones replied with malice. His form shifted into the image that had stared back at the Regular from Sarah’s bathroom mirror. “Well then, maybe we should see just how ready they are to kick yours.”

“Gah!” Hallie screamed in frustration, fighting through another skeleton. “Just how many dead people are there in the world?!”

“Death is a very popular lifestyle choice…” Urthula argued, slamming an Italian stiletto heel into the eyesocket of a zombie. “Sorry Earl…” she winced. “Uncle’s being a bit of a jerk today. Say hi to Sally for me when you get back to hell…”

“Okay, fine…” Hallie conceded as Ebony’s staff swung through her holographic form to take out a lunging ghoul. “But what are they all doing here? Some kind of rotting corpse convention?”

“No… That’s held down at the airport Marriott” Johnstantine muttered out of the side of his mouth, being careful not to lose his cigarette despite grappling double-fisted with the undead. “I’m thinking of going to get Benjy Franklin’s autograph for Shep. She finds him sexy.”

“I didn’t need to know that” Asil noted, shrinking down to the height of a 5 year old to escape the clutches of a wraith. Chiaki’s sword cut through the creature’s rotting cloak and made it lurch back with a shriek.

“Yo is thinking we are making good headway!” the thought being announced, pressing the advantage and chasing the wraith back into the dark reaches of the mystic vent. “Where is semi-cute Shoggoth being, and when might it be being here again?”

Liu Xi incinerated a dried out cadaver with a gesture, but her eyes betrayed the veneer of calm about her. “I cannot feel him moving anywhere throughout the void or the surrounding spaces. I… cannot feel much of anything beyond this corridor. Not even void, as I know it. It is… quite disconcerting.”

“Yes, that’s what’s disconcerting…” Hallie grumbled from within a press of headless corpses.

“Don’t worry about the Shoggoth…” Ebony called out. “It can take care of itself. As, apparently, can we…” She stood upright, breathing heavily as she watched the undead gather up their limbs and allies and slither back into the pulsating walls of the vent. “We must be close…” she noted, then paused.

“What is it?” Liu Xi asked, feeling the approach herself.

A pale yellow form staggered out of the darkness ahead of them. “Please…” he croaked, falling to his hands and knees. “Help me…”

“Vizh!” Asil cried, rushing forward to help the great man.

“Wait!” Ebony called. Instinctively, Liu Xi reached out and pulled the young clone back through space to the safety of the rest of the group.

“No… she’s right…” Visionary gasped, clutching his chest. “You have to stay back… I can’t contain it any more… You have to stop it…”

“Vizh?” Hallie asked, pale and horrified. “What… what’s happening? How can we help?”

“Nyarlurkhotep…” he gasped. “You have to stop him…”

“How?” Yo pleaded.

The man in the yellow coat looked up with haunted eyes. “Kill me” he croaked, as black writhing tendrils spilled out of his sleeves.

His friends could only look on in horror, even as he lashed out and slammed Asil into the wall.

“Ha! Beautiful!” the undead sorcerer cackled. “Played that one perfectly, he did.”

“They’re not fighting back…” Visionary noted sickly, watching the conflict in the Necromancer General’s scrying pool. “Not like they could be....”

“Don’t you get it yet?” Vladivock sneered. “The mighty Lair Legion was the key to his undoing last time… And you’re the key to their undoing. The soft spot… Their affection for you, used as a shield by the one who would destroy them. You were never good for anything but being sheep’s clothing.”

Visionary watched in dismay. “The others… the rest of the Legion…”

“Won’t be enough” the sorcerer crowed. “Too many will fall here and now, lured by the bait of rescuing you. The Shoggoth, the Yo, the Dancer, the Lawyer, the Amanuensis… The heart and soul of the Legion will be gutted today, and the confused and heartbroken body that remains won’t know what hit it when Nyarlurkhotep rains madness down upon the world.” A thin, cruel smile split the man’s desiccated face. “This attack was genius… knowing just where to hit to break the spirit of his enemies, and luring them to the ideal field of battle to crush them utterly. Your Legion never had a chance against such perfect evil.”

Visionary cast his haunted eyes about the great chamber under the Lighthouse, too pained to watch what he had brought upon his friends, until his eyes fell upon the intricate symbols of the dimensional locks. “There’s always a chance…” he whispered.

“Cut his bleeding head off!” Johnstantine was yelling at Chiaki as he dove to avoid a whiplike attack by Nyarlurkhotep. “Use your bloody pigsticker already!”

Chiaki rolled low to her left and sprung into the air, raising her sword above her head as she descended towards the man in the coat.

“NO!” Hallie screamed, raking the samurai with a lightning bolt. The discharge wasn’t enough to do more than throw the psychic’s balance off, allowing the monster to easily brush her aside.

“Burn him!” Ebony yelled to Liu Xi as she tried to shield the young girl with her staff. “You have to summon up all the elements in your power and finish him, now… before he gains his full strength!”

“I… This… this isn’t the way…” the Elemental argued. The fires she summoned burned back the groping tentacles instinctively, but they didn’t progress any further in towards the man at the center of them.

“Visi!” Yo yelled, distraught. “You are still being the hero! Fight uncute Nyarlurkhotep with us!!!”

Asil rolled onto her side, clutching her ribs where her hero had crushed her against the wall and watching the events unfold around her with complete dispair. She felt like sobbing. All that they had done… it couldn’t end like this. “That’s not Vizh…” she moaned to herself. “It can’t be…”

“Give the gal a Kewpie!” a voice with a slight Irish accent called out from within her head. “You gotta get up and get to the buttkicking already, clone girl!”

“Kerry?” Asil blinked, recognizing the annoying voice of Visionary’s ward easily, despite the odd audio levels. “Where are you?”

“We’re in your ear canal…” Another voice, Fleabot’s, answered. “And we hitched a ride on squiddy over there. Incidentally, you’re right… That’s not Vizh. At all.”

Asil’s eyes narrowed as her mind sprung into overdrive. “Who else knows?”

“I’m telling Hallie right now…” the miniature robot explained, after that, it’s just a hop, skip and a jump to everyone.”

Mumphrey’s amanuensis nodded. “Perfect. Here’s what we’re going to do…”

“I can’t believe the world is going to end…” Visionary moaned. “And I never even got to have my wedding night with my fiancé.”

Dancer blinked. “That’s your big concern right now?”

“Hey, you read the papers…” the Regular shrugged. “I’m a love machine. I’m easily distracted by sex.” He glanced at Lisa and then back to Dancer. “You should know, after all we had that torrid coupling in Off Central Park… Now I’ll never get to recreate that with my Sarah....”

“Yes, yes…” the Necromancer General answered dismissively, his eyes glued on the scrying pool. “Life’s short and then you die. That’s when things get interesting…”

“Wait…” Lisa asked dangerously, turning on her female teammate. “You slept with Visionary? Visionary?!”

“Um… I’m not really sure that’s all that important at the moment…” she responded nervously.

“Visionary isn’t for sleeping with!” Lisa noted with offence. “What the hell is wrong with you? That’s just all kinds of messed up!”

“Ladies…” the sorcerer tried to cut in with a hint of annoyance.

“Look, not that it’s any of your business, but we might have had a bit of an unexpected dalliance last year when we weren’t quite ourselves…”

“Last year?” Lisa snapped incredulously. “Last year, when I’m busting my hump to get him over the heartbreak of his lifetime, you’re preying on his stupidity for a cheap, meaningless, and thoroughly unsatisfying roll in the hay? Visionary is not for sleeping with!” she reiterated. “That’s not why we have a Visionary! There are rules about keeping one in the house, dammit… and that has to be number one!!!”

“It actually wasn’t all bad…” Dancer admitted with a little cough.

Lisa simply blinked in shock. “I am not hearing this…” she said, shaking her head in denial. “I am going to have to scrub out my eardrums with sandpaper…”

“Ladies, would you both please shut up!!! Bogdan Vladivock roared. “I can hardly hear myself think with your argument, which, by the way, has to be the stupidest one in the history of all mankind. The last thing I want right now is to be distracted by the antics of… of…” He trailed off as he realized what he was missing. “Where’s the idiot in question?”

Visionary stood before the great inlaid dials of the dimensional locks that took up the entirety of the far wall. Before the Necromancer General could stop him, he reached up and spun one of the tremendous bronze dials, which moved with ball-bearing precision through a dizzying combination of alignments with its fellow markings, all of them acting as gears upon each other through mathematical combinations that made Visionary shudder just to witness them.

“What are you doing!?” the undead sorcerer screamed, aghast. “You idiot! There are untold billions of combinations to decipher! You’ll send us crashing into a star, or into the heart of the next big bang, or simply skittering off the edge of oblivion!”

Visionary thought of his friends and the horrors they were facing for him, and of the others that waited, unknowingly, at home, and gave up a little prayer. They needed some help… They needed the cavalry… They needed to change the battlefield. “C’mon…” he said, swallowing hard. “Big money, big money…. No whammies… STOP!”

There was a sickening lurch as Visionary halted the gears. The Lighthouse fell through the known dimensions to come to a sudden halt with a tremendous thud followed by an eerie silence. They all waited to see if oblivion indeed came skittering.

“So…” Lisa noted, finally breaking the unease. “You didn’t really sleep with Visionary, did you?”

“Be staying back!” Yo demanded as he, Hallie, Asil and Liu Xi faced off against Ebony, Johnstantine, Chiaki and Urthula. “Poor Visi is not being himself, and you are not to be killing him!”

Nyarlurkhotep hid his satisfied grin. Destroying one’s enemies was an artform that few humans could really appreciate. It took something far beyond mortal to truly savour the twisting satisfaction of leading them into betrayal and damnation. The trick here was to remain just threatening enough to keep tensions up until someone did something they would forever regret (not terribly hard when they all had so little time left to live, but it’s the principal of the thing). But one couldn’t become such a danger that his “protectors” were forced to give up hope. Hope is the ultimate knife to twist into a human’s soul… and playing with it took centuries of skill.

Still, it was time to ratchet this encounter up a notch… He reached out through passageways unseen by mortals to wrap corrosive black tentacles around the hearts of his adversaries. A little nudge towards violence should be all that it takes…

The explosion into action surprised even the Harbinger of Undying Horrors, as without prompting the two sides suddenly rushed towards each other with murderous intent. Nyarlurkhotep was so delighted by this turn of events that it took him a moment to register the blade sticking into his back and through his chest. “Eh?” he asked, turning to find the Japanese swordswoman pulling back on the blade and swiftly striking again upwards across his neck, cleanly severing his head from his body.

Already his wounds began to stitch themselves back together, but new ones formed. Fire burned into his left side, lightning into his right. A blade of pure thought energy punctured his chest, and incantations seared into his being, ones of both life and death. He was suddenly surrounded by his enemies, and all of them were laying into him with undreamt of ferocity. The Void Witch, he suddenly realized… she had rearranged the pieces on the board in the blink of an eye.

“Enough!” he roared, ripping them away from him with hate-fueled savagery. They writhed in the clutches of his unseen grasp, burning at his touch, until he dropped them gasping to the floor. “So, we’ve passed the moment of doubt, have we? Well, if I’m to be deprived of the pleasure of practicing on your simplistic affections, then let’s fall back on the usual pain, suffering and torment. Not nearly as exotic a flavour, mind you… but I like to think of it as comfort food.”

“Yeah?” the scruffy Englishman answered through clenched teeth. “Well I got something you can eat right here” he offered with a gesture that was rude even back before the moon had fully cooled.

“Very well… You’ve seen through my disguise. Perhaps I should let you see my true face then?” And with a thought, he shifted his visage to one of such soul-shredding insanity that no mortal could withstand to look upon it.

“He needs a little more upturn to the nose” Ebony suggested, unfazed. The others were sneering at him in open contempt.

“What?” Nyarlurkhotep blinked his many maggot-ridden eyes. How could they..? And then he sensed it. The holographic female… it was cloaking his shape in some form of light construct, making him look like…

“Is that Tinky-Winky, or Po?” Urthula asked darkly.

“Does it matter?” Hallie replied. “I hope nobody has a problem with beating on Teletubbies…”

From the look of things, no one did.

“Idiots!” the Crawling Chaos sneered as they regrouped for another attack. This time he was prepared, and the pitifully amateurish void tricks didn’t phase him in the least. Still, they were a persistent bunch, and again and again he found himself receiving a wound that instantly mended itself. “You cannot harm me… All of your efforts are a mere annoyance.”

“Lucky that some of us are so good at that kind of thing then” Johnstantine argued, dropping a sliver of the true cross down the back of his enemy’s yellow topcoat. Nyarlurkhotep snarled where it singed his flesh.

“He’s not at full power” Ebony advised them. “Fleabot says his fate is still tied up in the Book of Law… Until that is resolved, he is not fully back… he’s just a temporary construct, still in flux.” She scrawled some protection equations in the blood of the ecto-vent floor. “We still have a chance…” She was interrupted as the entire vent shuddered and slammed into an unseen ground, sending the heroes scattering like tenpins.

“Whores and fools and those who wound worship such a pitiful thing as a Shoggoth have no chance against me!” Nyarlurkhotep roared, letting his hatred explode outward from him. The body of the holographic witch was sent crashing into the samurai, putting them both down into a heap. Black, writhing masses leapt from his yellow coatsleeves to strangle his opponents once and for all. “No chance at all.”

“What did you do?” Bogdan Vladivock wailed, rushing up the spiralling steps of the lighthouse tower with Dancer close behind him. “Where did that fool put us?” He opened the door at the top and sprinted up the last half flight of stairs to the top of the lantern room. “Oh thank God!” he gasped upon seeing the Willingham shore out the southeast windows. “Er… I mean one of the evil ones, of course…” he added, slightly embarrassed. “Still, how did that fool manage to return the tower to its rightful place? It’s impossible! Completely impossible!”

“Improbable, at least” Dancer noted clinically. She took a look out the northwest windows. “Highly improbable, all things considered” she added. “Has that always been there?”

“Has what always been…” the undead sorcerer began, then stopped when he saw the panoramic view laid out behind the Legionnaire. “Urk!” was the most he managed after that.

“Look, I can see my house from here!” Dancer cooed, pressing her forehead against the glass to look down. “Well, not my house per se, but you know what I mean…”

The Necromancer General just stood there and twitched as he mentally tried to take in the towering skyline of Parodiopolis.

“I think Nyarlurkhotep is growing annoyed” Fleabot noted.

“Indeed” Ebony agreed, winded by the battle. “This fight must be quite the embarrassment to one of the truly great horrors of this or any other universe.”

“True… and the fact there there’s now a tiny voice in his head calling him all sorts of rude names in a slight Irish accent probably doesn’t help much. I need to bounce back and pick up Kerry before he thinks to gouge out his own eardrum…”

“Help!” Chiaki called out from across the vent, well away from the distracted Herald of the Fairly Great Old Ones. “It’s Hallie…”

Ebony and Urthula rushed to her side and helped her roll the body of the Lair’s artificial intelligence off of her. The Priestess sucked in her breath as the emerald woman’s body slid off of Chiaki’s sword with a sickening sucking noise.

Fleabot grinned from ear to ear. At least he would have, had he had any. “Perfect!” he noted with satisfaction. “Er… sorry” he added when Hallie cast a pained and irritated look towards him. “It’s just that now we’re going to win.”

The attacks came again, with renewed vigour, and still the great horror sent them all tumbling away from him. Nyarlurkhotep sneered as he fended off flames from the elementalist and engaged the pure thought being with the full force of his fury. The shining rapier danced it’s way through the weaving tentacles of the attack, scoring hit after hit to no noticeable effect. “Is this the best you can think up?” he scoffed. “There is no blade on this Earth that can harm me…”

“Yo is thinking that there might be one…” he countered, dodging the counter attack gracefully. “What’s more, Yo is thinking that being on Earth is being very important right now. Right cute Shoggy?”

Nyarlurkhotep turned to find the Shoggoth bubbling up to fill the passageway behind the heroes. “Finally come to face me again, eh?” he sneered at the former slave to the Fairly Great Old Ones. “Or do you plan to hide behind your little collection of mortals until the bitter end? You know there is nothing one such as you can do to me.”

Perhaps the Shoggoth gurgled. But I can pop this ecto vent easily enough. And with a twisting snap, the oozing red walls blinked away, sending them all tumbling onto the sandy shores at the base of the towering Willingham Lighthouse.

The evil in the yellow topcoat simply laughed. “Too little, I’m afraid…” he sneered. “None of you will make it into the lighthouse alive. You cannot win.”

“The lighthouse isn’t what’s important” Hallie noted, clutching her weeping chest wound. The rising sun cast the shadow of the lighthouse across her body, up the hills behind her to finally fall upon the walls of the Lair Legion Mansion. “You’re in my front yard now… And you really should have stayed off the grass.”

“Eh?” he asked, sensing for the first time where they actually were. It was just enough to distract him from the dripping wet Samurai sword before it cleaved into his shoulder, splitting him all the way down to his lower rib cage. “Urk!” he hissed as the green blood on the blade ate into his body. The mathematical formula designed to dissolve the dark magic that made up his very existence was quite thorough, and made short work of liquefying his temporary form.

“As last words go, I’ve heard better…” Johnstantine noted, helping Ebony and Urthula to their feet. “Wanker.”

The Shoggoth and Hallie watched in satisfaction as Nyarlurkhotep himself became a puddle of goo, bubbling and boiling like hot tar before simmering away into nothingness.

“That” the now-human hologram said with more than a bit of smugness, “Is for picking the wrong heart to mess with.”

“So…wait… What happened again?” Visionary asked, standing on the shoreline under the morning sun. “I remember playing roulette with that big gear thing on the wall, and then everything went kind of wonky and things got really confusing after that.”

“A few magical contingencies kicked in” Xander explained. “By an extremely improbable coincidence, you managed to stop the Elder God dimensional locks on a setting to return the lighthouse to where it belongs… give or take a few quirks.”

“Like it being in two places at once” Lisa noted. “That’s a pretty neat trick.”

“Who says it’s just in two?” Xander asked mildly. “But yes, it’s currently existing in both Willingham and Parodiopolis. Parody Island always wanted a lighthouse of its own. It seems more than happy to share with Willingham… anything to one-up Herringcarp.”

“Er… yeah” Visionary agreed, not wanting to think about the desires of pieces of real estate right now. That could be somebody else’s problem. “So how was this a good thing?”

“Because the mansion has defences against the encroachment by cosmic types like the Fairly Great Old Ones” Xander explained. “One lovely green skinned one especially. By dropping Nyarlurkhotep onto the island, the Mansion’s defences kicked in and Hallie was transformed back into a human. Only, as we learned before, the mathematics that make up her body are seriously incompatible with the magics of loathsome elder gods…”

“I hate my powers” Hallie noted, looking at the back of her simulated hand as she flexed it experimentally. Soon after the threat had passed, she had found herself growing sleepy, only to wake up restored to her holographic form. “Why do I always have to get turned into a bloody pulp to win a fight?”

“There’s power in martyrdom, I suppose…” Fleabot offered with a sigh. “I don’t suppose you’d want to trade places with Marie, after all?”

Hallie thought of the banshee who was trapped haunting the halls of the mansion as the first line of mystic defences. “No… No, I’m thinking maybe I got off easy after all.” She looked at the tiny robot flea earnestly. “So were you able to do as I asked, before I faded away?”

He nodded. “Two vials of blood, tucked away for safe keeping.” He looked at her speculatively. “Is there a reason we need to keep them such a secret from everyone?”

“Yes” she noted firmly, though she didn’t elaborate.

Visionary stood staring up at the elaborate system of dials and gears that grounded the Willingham Lighthouse in reality. “How long would it take me to learn how to use this?”

That amount of what you call time hasn’t yet existed in your universe the Shoggoth gurgled.

“There’s really that many settings to it?” the Regular asked with a gulp.

The dials extend through 12 dimensions that you cannot perceive. The largest dial is itself orbited by a binary star system.

“So… a whole lot of settings then.” Visionary nodded. “If you excuse me, I think I’ll go have a nervous breakdown…”

A sensible course of action the Shoggoth agreed, returning to his plans to relocate the arcane inlaid controls to a more secure environment of his choosing.

A shaky Visionary went outside to find Dancer and Kerry standing on the beach. “I think I nearly turned the universe inside out” he noted. “And I don’t think it’s meant to be worn reversible.”

“Has a plaid lining, does it?” Sarah asked, unfazed. “You did just fine Vizh. I knew you had it in you. Besides, it’s not like you didn’t have a little help…”

He blinked. “So… it was you? Or you?” he asked, looking at the two Probability sisters. “You’re the ones who made it all work out okay?”

“Don’t look at me…” Kerry said. “I was too busy being shrunk and powerless, thanks to your genius rescue plan!” She punched him hard on the arm before hugging him tightly. “You’re an idiot, you know that?” she asked.

“Yeah, I really do” he admitted, hugging her back. Then he stiffened as a painful though occurred to him. “I’m probably not allowed to do this… I think there’s a restraining order keeping me away from you…”

“*%*&^ Child Services!” Kerry exclaimed vehemently. “Did you hear where they sent me? If they want to try and do it again, they better have enough flame retardant foam for everyone on the eastern seaboard…”

Visionary thought on it a while, and his face darkened. “You know what? You’re right… *%*&^ Child Services.”

“I can’t imagine why they had any issues with your parenting abilities” Sarah teased. “But in this case, I think we can agree that they’re well and truly *%*&^ed anyway. After all, we’ve met all of their conditions.”

Visionary and Kerry blinked. “We have?” they asked.

“Certainly” the waitress answered with a shining smile. “First, Vizh needed to hold down a steady job with no help from his rich superhero friends… Well, with the evidence posted in the Daily Trombone about the various levels of corruption involved in the smear against Vizh, Parodiopolis University has called begging to reinstate him at full salary, and promising to put him up for tenure next year. I imagine the massive civil suit that Lisa hinted at might have had something to do with that…”

“Tenure?” Visionary asked, blinking.

“It would mean it would be almost impossible to remove you as head of the Juniors” Dancer noted happily. “You’d essentially be their teacher for life.”

“Er, that’s… great” he noted with questionable enthusiasm.

“Isn’t it though?” Sarah continued brightly. “As for the second condition, finding a suitable living space for yourself and Kerry, well… Ta Da!” she gestured to the vaguely creepy ancient lighthouse behind her. “It seems that old Bogdan was willing to negotiate quite fairly once he figured out that he wasn’t going to be assistant to the defiler of the Universe after all. Lisa figured he owed you a bit, what with the the unlawful imprisonment and elective surgery and whatnot.”

“What did he get out of the deal?”

“He didn’t get thrown to the Manga Shoggoth. I gather it was more than a little perturbed at old Boggy.”

“Especially after he went and unleashed that Doom Gerbil on everyone in the vent” Kerry noted.

“Doom Gerbil?” Visionary asked, getting lost again.

“Long story” Kerry explained. “But it’s not the kind of thing a guy takes lightly. Just ask Richard Gere.”

“Wait…” the Regular said, shaking his head to clear it. “So Lisa got me assigned to the Juniors for life, and got me a house to live in that’s been the focal point of the Fairly Great Old Ones and lord knows whatever other weirdness exists on the edges of reality ever since it’s was first built.”

“Pretty much” Dancer noted happily. “Oh, and she got you a replacement heart, and had the Necromancer General bring you back from the undead.”

“Replacement heart?” Visionary asked weakly.

“You kind of passed out when Chiaki chopped up your Heart of Darkness. Urthula’s uncle patched you all back up under Xander’s watchful eyes, and Uhuna gave you the once over to declare that you were both officially alive and that you almost probably certainly didn’t have a baboon heart in you like Lisa had guessed. Urthula even took on the wounds left over as a kind of apology for everything. And she left you her phone number for the next time you want to have a night out like this one. So all’s well that ends well.”

Visionary felt his chest and couldn’t even find any evidence of scarring. It’s not that he wasn’t generous, but he somehow doubted he’d be looking for another night out like that one for a very, very long time. Single life was far more hazardous than he had remembered.... “Wait… What about that last condition?” he asked, the final provision coming back to him in a rush. “About you and I… The two of us… We… We didn’t get married while I was unconscious, did we?”

“Yes Vizh” Sarah answered flatly. “My dream wedding is to walk down the aisle dragging an unconscious, gutted man to the alter. Of course we didn’t get married! What a thing to suggest… Especially now that I’m your sister.”

“My… what?” Visionary asked. He’d been dead just this morning so he was struggling a bit, but it still seemed to him like an awful lot of information to cram in at the end of an adventure.

“Sister” Sarah repeated. “The last provision was that you had to be family to be accepted as Kerry’s legal guardian again. So Ma adopted you.”

“She what?” Kerry asked, aghast. “Are you telling me that dork-face here is now…”

“Your big brother” Sarah answered. “Mine too.”

“I… that… wait, what?” Visionary managed again.

“Your parents aren’t alive any longer, are they?” she asked him.

“Well, no but…”

“There you go. You were a lonely orphan boy.”

He blinked. “I’m in my early thirties.”

“Nonsense… you just had your sixteenth birthday last year.” She grinned. “Lisa’s really good with the loopholes in that Book of Law. So now you’re Visionary Shepherdson.”

“If you *ever* call yourself that to anyone I know without immediately adding “I’m adopted!”, I will officially go nuclear.” Kerry warned.

“Ma’s just thrilled” Dancer told him. “She’s wanted a grandchild for the longest time... Well, dreading one from Kerry, but otherwise… and she was not passing up the chance after reading about Miiri’s condition in the papers. She figures green skin just makes her more Irish.”

“Um… you did tell her that all that stuff in the papers wasn’t true, right?” Visionary asked.

“Yeah, about that… Um… Actually, I think you’ll need to wait until a whole other epilogue for that one. But you’re officially family, and Kerry is your responsibility for good now. Oh! And that’s why you were able to affect the probabilities in bringing the lighthouse to Parody Island.”

“He did it?” Kerry asked.

“Sure. I can pass my powers to family members, remember? That’s how you got them when I had to go away and you were put into Vizh’s care originally.” She smiled at the baffled Regular. “Incidentally, do you mind if I have them back now?”

”What?” Visionary asked, completely lost. “Oh… um… sure.” He hesitantly leaned forward and kissed his sister on the cheek. He felt the odd rush leave him and return to where it belonged with a certain mixture of disappointment and relief.

“So how did he do it?” Kerry asked. “I mean, I use fire, you dance… what did Fake-O do?”

They both looked at him expectantly. “I just was really worried about everyone” he admitted.

“So… he was a Probability Fretter” Kerry summed up. “Are you sure we’re legally related to this guy?”

“Wait…” Visionary noted, a thought suddenly occurring to him. “I’m legally your brother now? With all rights and privileges thereof?”

“Er… I suppose…” Dancer answered, unsure where he was going with this.

“Excuse me… I need to go find Con Johnstantine for a moment…” he gave them both a quick wave and disappeared around the lighthouse.

“Things aren’t quite going to go back to normal after this one, are they?” Kerry asked when it was just the two of them again.

There was the sound of a loud smack from around the building, followed by some quite colourful swearing. “Ow! What the bloody hell was that for?!”

“Normal?” Dancer asked, astounded. “Just what family have you been living in?”

Next: A Miiri epilogue, among others!

Post By Visionary with an extra big closing chapter. Sun Dec 04, 2005 at 04:15:54 pm EST	Subject Heart of Darkness The Conclusion!!!

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