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Post By The Hooded Hood with another of those standard double-sized plot-disrupting infernal epics Tue Oct 03, 2006 at 09:02:45 am EDT |
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#290: Untold Tales of the Parody War: A Cold Day in Hell | |
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| #290: Untold Tales of the Parody War: A Cold Day in Hell Previously: Nats (Bill Reed) accidentally became a hell-lord, ruler of a vast tract of infernal real estate. Sage Grimpenghast, Teacher of Deceptions, a much older and nastier hell-lord, wants it. Regret, a demon temptress, has been assigned as Nats’ leman to betray him to Grimpenghast. Regret engineered the death of Nats’ former fiancée Uhuna (Uhunalura Amalandriana Excelsior!) and arranged for her soul to fall into the possession of Grimpenghast. Meanwhile, Nats has recruited allies of his own in Chronic, an undead anarchist musician playing the Devil’s Guitar, and Dead Boy, a scientifically animated, um, dead boy. They have alerted Nats to the threat of invasion from the powerful armies of the universe-conquering Parody Master, who intends to march his legions through hell as a route to conquering Earth. The Librarian (Lee Bookman) has escaped from the Central Headquarters of the Interplanetary Order of Librarians bearing the only edition of the whole collection of documents belonging to the IOL in his mind. He has rejoined his Lunar Public Library staff – robot major domo A.L.F.RED and computer personality D.D., and acting Librarian Blay-Kee – and their guests – attorney/PI Arnie J Armbruster, his secretary Snookie, and alien frog scientist Dr Blargelslarch – only to discover that due to a technical hitch the library has been transported into Nats’ domain in hell. And things are about to get worse… Previous chapters at The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom Character descriptions in Who's Who in the Parodyverse Location descriptions in Where's Where in the Parodyverse  “In naked beauty more adorned More lovely than Pandora.” John Milton, Paradise Lost, VI.713 It was late summer in hell, and the first of the cherryblossoms were starting to drop off the trees. The leaves were starting to turn brown. The evening sun cast mild shadows across the walled garden and glinted on the surface of the ornamental koi pool. “More tea?” asked Sage Grimpenghast politely, raising the willow-pattern pot towards Uhuna’s cup. “Thank you, no,” the princess of the Abhumans replied politely. “A ginger biscuit?” “No more, thanks. Explanations would be nice, though.” The fatherly old scholar nodded and placed the teapot back on its stand. “I trust you won’t object if I indulge myself in a second brandy snap? It’s a terrible weakness, but then again this is the place for giving in to temptations, as I always say.” Uhunalura looked uncomfortable. “So this is hell? It’s not how I expected it to be.” “A place of screaming and wailing and burning brimstone?” Grimpenghast looked amused. “My dear, you’ve allowed yourself to be misled by your prejudices. No need to apologise. This is the place for prejudices as well.” Uhuna pulled the silk kimono wrap he’d given her closer. She’s arrived from Comic-Book Limbo into Grimpenghast’s summoning pentagram naked – nobody takes anything to hell with them but their sins and their horror. She’d expected all kinds of things, but not evening tea. “You’re confused, of course,” Grimpenghast understood. He bit delicately into the end of the sticky rolled confectionary he’d selected and patted her guest’s hand comfortingly. “If answers are what will put you at your ease, answers you shall have. Ask your questions, dear child.” “I remember dying,” Uhuna began. “The Lair Legion was in a terrible battle. They were going to be overwhelmed. I needed to save Dream – CrazySugarFreakBoy!, and through him maybe save the others. And Regret came…” “Regret of the Damned,” Sage Grimpenghast recognised. “Ah yes, I know her. She’s mistress to your former lover Nats, is she not? The one who came to your wedding and took him away.” “Yes,” answered Uhuna tightly. Hell was a place of resentments too. “Regret came then and wrecked my life. She came this time to end it. We made a bargain. I was able to extend my Abhuman health-transference powers to help Dream. She took my soul. It was the healing of CSFB! that actually killed me, I think. I… don’t remember that part very well.” “So is your question how such a valiant act of ultimate sacrifice has damned you to the abysm?” Sage Grimpenghast wondered. “I’ve heard many such complaints from valiant souls who might have expected better from a supposedly-loving God.” “That’s not where it ends,” Uhuna persisted. “When I died I found myself… still alive. Or as alive as didn’t matter. Just like I am now, in my own body, with the same bio-field as I’ve always had. Only I was in a strange place called Comic-Book Limbo with two other people who’d been lost.” “Comic-Book Limbo is the… recycle bin of the Parodyverse,” Grimpenghast supplied. “One is neither in nor out of creation, waiting to either be reinstalled or deleted. People sent there fade in time, or are devoured by the Hero Feeders that lurk there. Or they are broken down for parts and recreated in different ways as altered concepts. Or rarely they are rescued. There is no way for beings sent there to escape by themselves.” “So I’m rescued?” the Abhuman princess asked warily. “Does that I mean can do something to get Cody and AG out of there? And maybe Finny and Dan Drury?” “Alas, such a thing is beyond your power, my dear.” “But not beyond your power?” Uhuna checked. Sage Grimpenghast carefully brushed the crumbs from his fingertips. “I was only able to retrieve you from that terrible place because you were already being summoned to hell,” he replied. “You were lodged in Comic-Book Limbo for a time because you were something of a special case. But it was inevitable after you signed your pact with Regret that sooner or later you would end up here.” “So you… diverted me from Regret?” “If you like. You are hardly the only one that Regret has betrayed. She has turned on me in her time also. I do not believe you deserve the torments she would inflict on you.” Uhuna swallowed hard. “What about Bill?” she asked. “Isn’t he here? In hell? With her?” “William Reed, also known as the former superhero Nats,” Grimpenghast considered. “Do you still want to save him after all he has done to you?” “Save him? From what?” Grimpenghast rose and extended a polite hand to his guest. “Walk with me. I enjoy exploring the paths of this garden in the cool of the evening.” He led the obedient princess off the verandah and down onto the lawns. “Mr Reed is as much a victim as you are, Uhunalura. In his case he was victim of a conspiracy initiated by Xander the Improbable and the Hooded Hood to deny any of the existing hell-lords the infernal territories vacated by a consortium of beings of power who were destroyed for their adventurism.” “Bill went on a delivery mission for Extraordinary Endeavour Enterprises and ended up accidentally becoming a hell-lord,” Uhuna understood. “Hell-lords can’t live on Earth very long without twisting reality round them, so he had to abandon me and come back here to… to his kingdom. And to her.” “Regret is a temptress,” supplied Sage Grimpenghast. “She’s as good at what she does as you are at what you do. Nats accepted her as his leman, which by the rules of hell binds them to each other. She’s the power behind his throne.” The old scholar turned to Uhuna. “Tell me, why do you think Regret wanted your soul? Wanted you dead and damned?” “Because I’m her rival?” Uhuna considered. “There was this one time when Josh and I ended up in hell and Bill and I kind of ended up in bed…” “You are also very good,” agreed Grimpenghast. “Nats has closed the borders of his infernal domain. No souls, no demonic beings, are allowed in all the territory from the Agony Mountains and the Gorge of Regret to the Disharmony Spire and the Yearning Bridge where the Mewlips dance. Since hell-lords draw their power from the torments of their damned, Nats’ power is waning and will eventually be gone. And Regret’s power wanes with it, and her star will fall.” Uhuna looked up. “Does that mean one day Bill could come home?” “It means that one day he will be too weak to prevent some ambitious hell-lord from destroying him and seizing his domain. Belaziel, Lord of the Moral Wastes, perhaps. Or Vesperine of the Torments. And Regret cannot allow that.” “What has that to do with wanting to get me?” “Oh, dear sweet Uhuna, it has everything to do with it. If you are damned to hell then in hell you must reside. If Nats forbids all souls from his domain then your accommodation must be elsewhere – and likely far less pleasant than in William Reed’s bed. If Nats changes his policy and opens his borders once more, he would find it almost impossible to keep out others if he has accepted you.” “Then I could be with Bill?” Uhuna asked. “At the cost of Nats finally becoming a true lord of hell, presiding over the torment of the fallen, becoming the kind of fiend that Regret is shaping him to be.” Uhunalura shuddered. “I see.” “You do, don’t you?” Grimpenghast said, cupping the girl’s cheek and smoothing away a tear. “That is why I brought you to me instead. You’re welcome to stay in these gardens, occupy yourself for a time, while I try to sort this out with Nats. I’m a much older and more experienced denizen of this place than Mr Reed, long past petty ambition and unseemly squabbles. If I can but get him to see some sense we might yet be able to save him from becoming an absolute avatar of evil. If you’re willing to help save him, that is?” “I want to save Bill,” agreed Uhuna. “I’ll help.” Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who could not hear the music. John Milton, L’Allegro 97 “Here you are,” Regret of the Damned told Snookie Takahashi. “You know how hard it is to get something like this in the eternal abyss?” The half-Asian woman accepted the little box and unwrapped a white stick. “I’m guessing you don’t have a lot of 24-hour drug stores. But thanks. Arnie told me we’d just be making a quick afternoon trip to the moon. Back in time for his evening bar crawl, he said.” “And instead you found yourselves in the middle of the Parody War, then transferred with the Lunar Public Library to the wastelands of one of the hells,” Regret sympathised. “And not a tampon machine in sight.” “Right. Arnie better damn well be paying me overtime for all this. Not that I ever seem to actually get paid at all.” “Arnold J Armbruster is a lawyer,” Regret noted. “We get a lot of them down here.” “Well, sometimes he’s a lawyer,” Snookie admitted. “Other times he’s a detective. Or a sheriff. Or an astronaut. Or a witch-hunter. It varies. The drunk part pretty much stays constant.” Regret looked at the little box of sanitary towels with nostalgia. “It’s been a while since I had to worry about things like that,” she admitted. “What? Periods?” “Not since I was mortal,” the red-skinned bat-winged temptress answered. “After a while you forget the details.” Snookie looked at her hostess more carefully. “You were human once? I mean…” “There’s all kinds of ways of becoming a demon,” Regret said. “I won’t bore you with the theology. This place doesn’t really care about most of the rules anyhow. Only those that are enforced. But yes, I lived, I died, I was damned. Then a powerful being called the Teacher of Deceits adopted me as his pet and trained me up as a temptress to corrupt Nats.” “You admit that?” “Sure. Bill knows. The Teacher of Deceits, Sage Grimpenghast, specifically picked me from the billions of souls at his disposal because I was the one most likely to appeal to Nats. I was tutored for a long painful time in everything there is to know about Bill, so that I was perfectly suited to seduce him to evil. Then I was sent to subvert Nats from his mission, to prevent him from denying this infernal territory to Grimpenghast. To damn him.” Snookie shook her head. “I thought I’d had bad dates.” “But Grimpenghast has never been human. He doesn’t understand anything about… about love.” Regret’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I’d learned all about Nats’ shameful secrets, his hidden thoughts and lusts, all the things he’d done that he regretted or shouldn’t have. Everything I needed to bring him down. But you can’t look at a man’s life like that without seeing all the other things too. The times he’s overcome his baser instincts and done good things. The bravery, the caring, the self-sacrifice.” Regret closed her eyes. “Bill doesn’t even know how good he is. But I do. So I fell in love with him.” “You’re in love with Nats?” Regret snorted. “A wonderful hellish joke, isn’t it? My job is to destroy the man I love. So I helped Bill against Grimpenghast, helped him secure the power that Grimpenghast wanted for himself, helped him become lord of this whole realm from the Agony Mountains and the Gorge of Regret to the Disharmony Spire and the Yearning Bridge where the Mewlips dance.” “That’s, um, very helpful of you, Regret.” “It was suicide,” answered the temptress. “Except that suicide here only brings you back deeper down. Grimpenghast doesn’t take betray kindly. There are things he can do to you… things he can have done…” “You’re still here,” Snookie pointed out. “Bill saved me. He made me his leman – his demon mistress. I run his demesne for him, and so long as I have that authority Grimpenghast can’t touch me. So we’re all at an impasse.” “Nats can’t leave because Grimpenghast grabs this land and you. You can’t leave because Grimpenghast is waiting and because you love Bill. Grimpenghast can’t take this territory while you look after it for Nats.” Regret nodded. “Except that it can’t last forever. The longer Bill seals his borders the more his power wanes. And then there’s the politics.” “You mean the alliance between those rival hell lords and the Parody Master to drive an army of conquest across this territory and then on to Earth?” Snookie guessed. “Hygiene products will become really hard to find at that point.” “That’s what I mean,” Regret admitted. “And just now, just when he needs me most, Bill shuts me out. Doesn’t trust me. Just when he needs me he turns instead to that drug-addled musician and that revenant of science!” “Under the sooty flag of Acheron, Harpies and Hydras.” John Milton, Comus 604 The drug-addled musician and the revenant of science peered over the top of the ridge and watched the armies gather at the Gorge of Regret. “Well that can’t be good,” said Dead Boy as he watched the red and black armoured Avawarriors test the barrier at the edge of Nats demesne. Behind them a phalanx of Parody Cultist Priests wove their incantations and prepared an arcane cannon to begin tearing through the warding. “Not so much,” Chronic agreed. “All that big talk the hell-lords had about the Parody Master not understanding that this is not just another alternate dimension and when the conquerors armies arrive they just step aside and let him march right through.” “They want him to march through,” DB reminded the anorexic-looking guitarist. “Their pact specified the proportion of humans who’ll get given as tithe to hell. And souls are currency here.” Steve, Chronic’s infernal guitar, hummed a dark chord of agreement. “They specifically let the Parody Master breach the barrier at a point where his invasion would have to march over Nats’ territory to reach Earth,” Chronic complained. “Question is, how do we stop it? And should we bother?” “Bother?” Dead Boy frowned. “What do you mean, bother? Of course we can’t let that horde get to our home.” “Pfeh! It might be where we came from, but does that really matter now? I mean you died, whoever you were, until some secret science group decided to animate your body as their secret agent. I killed myself and Steve kept me going. Neither of us owes Earth anything.” Dead Boy denied this. “That doesn’t matter. Nats is the only thing between that uncountable army – and we both know that host down there is just the vanguard – and the planet of our birth. We can’t abandon it, even if it abandoned us.” Chronic shrugged. “I reckon I could manage it. But… Steve hates authority figures, and you can’t get much more authority than the freakin’ Parody Master. So I guess we…” Then both men jerked like puppets and began to shamble down the slope towards the waiting army. “What the f…?” Chronic demanded, struggling. “We’re being controlled!” Dead Boy gasped, trying to force his undead limbs to resist their own motion. “But how?” Across the gorge they finally saw the blood-purple robes of the necromancer who summoned them. His hands were crooked into claws as he mouthed ancient rites to conjure the dead. “Who is he?” Chronic demanded, trying to prevent his feet obeying the arcane call. “Not one of the Parody Cultists,” Dead boy judged. He probed deep into his own conflicting desires, his natural instinct to resist and the overwhelming compulsion to do the will of the spellcaster. “I’m… getting the name Slithis. I think he’s from Ausgard, or one of those realms.” “Miserablegitheim,” Chronic sensed. “He’d been locked away by Donut until Ausgard got stolen. Then he busted loose and signed on with the Parody Master to restore his fortunes.” “And he’s a major league magician,” Dead Boy recognised. They were less than a hundred yards from the perimeter of Nats’ domain now. The Avawarriors were waiting for them, watching them arrive. “This is very bad,” declared Chronic as they marched the final distance to captivity in undead bodies that betrayed them. “We can’t resist.” Dead Boy glanced at the enspelled musician and elected a desperate gambit. “Oh sure, give in,” he mocked. “All that big anarchist talk about hating authority, but as soon as a big wizard twiddles his fingers you go dancing attendance.” “It’s not that I want to go…” argued the musician. “Anarchist or excuse maker?” DB challenged. “Big man carrying the Devil’s Guitar can’t even break a little enchantment. Well Slithis will know what to do with your precious guitar even if you don’t.” “Slithis can’t have Steve,” Chronic denied. His pale face darkened. “Slithis can’t have Steve!” His feet kept him moving forward. His hands unslung the black Stratocaster from his back and flicked the on switch. “Oh cr…” Dead Boy was able to get out before the first chords of Children of the Grave hammered out over the landscape. “The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n.” John Milton “Did you hear something?” the Librarian asked, standing up from the toilet bowl. “Apart from the retching, you mean?” A.L.F.RED, Lee Bookman’s robotic major domo asked. “I didn’t think you ever ate carrots, by the way.” “I thought I heard something,” asserted the Librarian of the Moon Public Library – currently the Displaced Accidentally Into Hell Public Library. “ Kind of discordant music, far away. Like a scream.” A.L.F.RED shrugged. “You really have to find a way of shifting that Master Repository data out of your head, boss. It’s driving you screwy.” “Screwy?” argued Blay-Kee, the Intergalactic Order of Librairies auditor who’d been dragged along for the ride. “He’s breaking more IOL rules just standing there with that stuff in his head than any Librarian in the history of the Audit!” “You could always share some of the stuff that’s jammed into his head,” the robot major domo challenged. “Can’t you see the man’s hurting?” Blay-Kee backed away a few steps. “I never got the training for that sort of thing. Not at that level. It’s not allowed,” he excused himself hurriedly. “Well somebody’s gotta do something,” A.L.F.RED growled. “Look at him!” Lee Bookman shuddered like a man with a fever. A few days earlier, back on the homeworld of the Intergalactic Order of Librarians, he’d absorbed the entire contents of the central database that his organisation had been maintaining for millennia. IOL senior librarians had the trick of transferring data from one place to another and storing it temporarily in their heads as they did so. This particular transfer, made possible by the covert co-operation of the Head Librarian to prevent the knowledge being plundered by the parody Master, was several hundred orders of magnitude larger than anything Lee had ever endured. His body wasn’t enjoying it. “D.D.’s working as fast as she can to restation the information,” Lee repeated. It was his lifeline, his hope that the pain would stop sometime soon. “We’ve got the buffers working at full, and we’re loading into every scrap of memory storage the Lunar Public Library has.” “And meanwhile we’re sittin’ in the middle of a plain of hell waiting for an army to march over us.” A.L.F.RED didn’t sound unhappy at the idea of bloody conflict. “We can’t shift the Library back to the moon without Nats dropping his defensive barriers and us opening up exactly the kind of portal the Parody Master needs to get him to Earth.” “We can’t fend off that amount of invading Avawarriors with the defences of the Library,” the robot major domo countered. “And bear in mind this is me saying this.” “We can’t let the Grand Collection fall to those barbarians, either,” Blay-Kee snorted. “It would be the end of the IOL.” D.D.’s face – or the graphic the sentient computer used to express her face – flashed onto the nearest reader pad. Right now she didn’t have the memory capacity to generate a hologram. “Sorry,” she told them. “That’s it.” “It?” Lee Bookman asked her. “What’s it?” “That is. We’re full. We’ve stored everything the Library systems can hold. We’ve stored every single scrap of data we can on every medium we possess, over nineteen centillion bytes. And that’s it.” Lee Bookman winced. “But I’m still holding over half of this in my head!” “Yes,” agreed D.D. “It’s very impressive. It raises amazing questions about how you Librarians are actually able to do that with those Second Oldest Race bio-modifications.” The Librarian wiped more blood from his nose. “I can’t go on doing this,” he noted. Then he collapsed. “Here at last We shall be free; the Almighty hath not built Here for his envy, will not drive us hence: Here we may reign secure, and in my choice To reign is worth ambition though in Hell: Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven.” John Milton, Paradise Lost I.678 “Quick assessment,” Nats asked Dr Blargeslarch. “Just how much trouble would you say I’m in?” The exiled scientist from Frammistat Eight looked over at the black marquee of bones that had just grown out of the scorched soil of the designated neutral ground beyond the Yearning Bridge, the place where the final summit was to take place before war engulfed the hells. “Quite a bit of trouble,” the toad-creature judged. “All this hell stuff is enough to almost make a man stop drinking,” Arnie J. Armbruster, attorney-at-law proclaimed as he watched the pillars of the impromptu pavilion scream. “Almost.” “Okay, last minute reminder,” Nats told them. “We’re under very ancient pact here so they can’t physically hurt of, psychically coerce us, any of that crap. But they’ll be looking for weaknesses, trying to psyche us, trying to get us to break the truce so they can fall on us and shred us.” “I’m missing Celebrity Survivor for this,” Arnie complained. “A genuine hell summit,” Dr Blargelslarch anticipated. “Fascinating.” Nats led his tiny contingent forward to take his place at the table. “Can we do away with the distracting visuals?” he asked his neighbours, the assembled hell lords. “We all know you’re badass. No need to be crass.” Belaziel, Lord of the Moral Wastes, made a rather annoyed gesture and the architecture became black marble rather than screaming souls. “Can we get started, then?” he muttered sulkily. “Do I need to take minutes?” checked Arnie. “Does anyone have a pen I can borrow? I should have brought Snookie. She’s much better at writing stuff down.” Dr Blargelslarch tried to identify the fifteen or so entities around the table with limited success. Belaziel, a transparent horned shadow, was easy to spot from Nats’ scathing description. Likewise the Lady of Torments, Pale Vesperine, was distinctive with her tears of blood and barbed wire costume. Sage Grimpenghast eschewed the fashionable excesses of demonic appearance and resembled a small humble scholar habited like a monk. “Hey, what’s Donald Pleasance doing here?” Arnie asked, looking at the Teacher of Deceptions. The rest of the beings at the table were unknown to Blargelslarch; other infernal powers with an interest in seeing Nats fall. Their lieutenants stood back in the shadows, each watching the others for signs of treachery. “Well,” Nats challenged Grimpenghast, “you called this shindig. Make your threats and let’s get on.” “No threats,” the Master of Ignorance promised Bill Reed. “Only a generous offer. We have become quite fond of your stubborn misguided ways during your time here with us, young Nats.” “And now you’re giving me a party?” Nats snorted sceptically. “With cake?” “Cake?” AJA asked hopefully. “Now I’m giving you a chance,” Grimpenghast replied. “I’m offering you an escape. In the next twenty-four hours, probably less, Lord Slithis of Miserablegitheim and the Parody Army he leads for the Parody Master will hammer through your defences and destroy your domain.” The Teacher of Deceits opened his hands to demonstrate generosity. “I am willing to buy you out.” Nats shook his head. “No deal. Those forces don’t get to Earth across my back lawn.” “Earth is doomed anyhow,” Grimpenghast pointed out. “The only question is whether you escape first. You and Princess Uhunalura Amalandriana Excelsior!” That got Nats’ attention. “Uhuna?” “She is my guest,” the demon lord smiled. “She died, you know.” “I know,” Bill Reed snarled. “But she didn’t come here. I’d have found her, brought her safe…” “She has spent some waiting time in Comic-Book Limbo. But before she died she signed over her soul,” Grimpenghast went on. “I am the legal owner now. Her legal owner.” “I’ll need to take a look at that paperwork,” AJA noted. “You have Uhuna,” Nats repeated through gritted teeth. “I have her quite safe,” Grimpenghast agreed. “You and she, you can retire to some little corner of the netherworlds of your choosing. Anywhere that a living soul and a dead one can cohabit for eternity. Or you could try leading her out of hell back to life, although I should warn you that that option rarely ends happily. Ask Orpheus. But I’m offering you your happy ending, Bill Reed. You save the girl and you ride off with her into the sunset.” “And Earth falls to the Parody Master,” Dr Blargelslarch pointed out. Vesperine shrugged. “There is no altruism in hell.” She turned to Nats. “I’ve claimed second turn on your princess once Grimpenghast has finished with her. Assuming you turn down his offer.” “And I third,” smirked Belaziel. “It should be quite a contest.” “But we can all be winners here,” Sage Grimpenghast added persuasively, “if Nats makes the proper choice.” “Give me Uhuna,” Bill Reed answered, gathering his will up and dredging the powers available to him from the bottom of his soul. “Now. Then we’ll talk.” “Um…” worried Arnie, “is the sky supposed to be turning black? And boiling?” “The princess is on the table,” Grimpenghast answered Bill Reed. “As opposed to, say, the rack. All you need do is accept my generous offer.” “Now,” Nats warned through gritted teeth. “Hey, what was it he said about truces and stuff?” worried AJA. Then Dr Blargelslarch picked up a chair and clobbered Nats from behind, knocking him senseless to bounce off the conference table and slump to the floor. “He’ll think about it and get back to you,” the scientist promised the hell-lords. “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.” John Milton, Samson Agonistes 560 “Where are we?” Marion Nightshade asked in a worried voice. The grim rocky horizons, the terrible stench, the sticky outcrops with lifelike faces carved in aspects of agony were all unsettling clues. Xander the Improbable handed over a packet of fig biscuits to the ferryman who’d brought them across the dark waters and looked around. “Where I said we were going,” the sorcerer supreme told the woman Donar believed to be his missing wife. “Hell.” “It wasn’t a metaphor then.” “Well that’s a fascinating question,” admitted the master of the mystic crafts, “but perhaps best left for another time.” “I’m not sure I believe in hell,” Marion told him. “Just so long as it believes in you,” Xander encouraged her. “Anyway, this is only one aspect of the place. A mask, if you like. The real thing is much nastier.” He shuddered. Marion’s life was becoming a surrealist nightmare. She stared over the broken ground to the greasy smear of activity on the horizon. Ragged skin tents were erected round green bonfires. Captives had been pegged out around the encampment as a living fence. “Can I go home?” she asked quietly. “Not right now, I’m afraid,” answered Xander. “Your enemy – Donar’s enemy – has loosed some very nasty things to find you, to do harm to those around you, and to fetch you to him.” “This Lord Slithis you mentioned.” “He was the wizard king of Miserablegitheim, one of the nine Ausgardian realms. He was due to marry Princess Annj of the Ausir when Donar Oldmanson turned up and carried her off, leaving Miserablegitheim in flames. It’s a Norse thing.” “I’m not her. Not Annj. I’m Marion.” “Slithis thinks differently, so you can see why he’d want to send for you. And if he has you, he can get Donar.” “And we can escape Slithis by… hiding in hell?” Marion asked sceptically. “Oh no,” the master of the mystic crafts scoffed. “You can’t hide anywhere. You can only make sure that the horrors and pestilences Slithis has sent after you do their worst on deserving targets.” “So where are we?” Marion asked again. “In hell, I mean.” “Where do you think we are?” Xander challenged. “Is that Slithis’ camp over there?” The little mage beamed mischievously. “Shall we pay a call?” “Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.” John Milton Uhuna walked the garden of desire. She avoided the fruit trees. “This is ridiculous,” she told the young lost soul who had been appointed to tend to her. “Abhumans don’t even have any concept of the afterlife. We believe that our genetic inheritance gets recycled into the better future of a new generation.” “Yes, mistress,” the wispy young woman in the housemaid’s outfit trembled. “I mean, the whole idea of individual souls is alien to us. The Abhumans aren’t a race, although we’re often described as such. We’re an entity, each part a portion of the greater being. Like a swarm of insects is all part of the same thing. We’re no more separate creatures than the skin cells of a human body are.” “Yes, mistress.” Uhuna paced across the well-manicured lawn. The roses were red and gorged. “Unless my separation from my family has truly sundered me forever,” the princess worried. “If I really am no more part of the genetic web, sundered forever… if I’m truly cast out, my genetic lineage expunged from our people’s future…” The lost soul watched her uncomprehendingly with dark-ringed eyes, uncertain what to say. “I thought I’d be tormented forever,” Uhuna confessed to her. “Fire and pain and things. Spiders, maybe. I don’t like spiders. I thought it would be horrible, but it didn’t matter if I could just do the right thing for once and save my friends. I didn’t think it would be this complicated.” The afternoon sun shone down, dappling the garden with light. It was always mid-afternoon in this garden. “Now I think I made a mistake,” the Abhuman confided. “I think that Grimpenghast man is going to try and use me against Bill in some way. I don’t trust him.” The lost soul watched. “Yes, mistress,” she said obscurely. Uhuna realised that she had a companion. “Oh, sorry,” she replied. “I didn’t mean to dump on you. I was just… worrying out loud.” “Yes mistress.” Uhuna looked over at the pale thin girl. “Who are you? What’s your name?” “I don’t know, mistress. Names are not allowed here.” The princess frowned. “You’re in pain,” she realised. “You’ve been hurt.” The soul shuddered. “Yes, mistress.” Her voice broke at the end there. Uhunalura reached out instinctively and touched the girl’s cheek. “Let me help you,” she asked, and shifted the first of that burden from the lost soul into herself. And screamed. The lost soul urgently pulled her from the floor and revived her, terrified of the consequences should any harm come to Grimpenghast’s special project. “Oh, you poor thing!” Uhuna sobbed, pulling the lost soul to her in a tight hug. “You poor, poor thing!” Uhuna couldn’t save her. Uhuna couldn’t absorb all the torments of hell. Uhuna was helpless. Uhuna knew that now. Uhuna knew one other thing, and only one. “I have to save Bill.” “Some cursed fraud Of enemy hath beguiled thee, yet unknown, And me with thee hath ruined.” John Milton, Paradise Lost IX.904 “Bill,” whispered Regret of the Damned, “I have a confession.” “Another one?” Nats sighed. His head was still ringing from being stunned by Dr Blargelslarch and from the lengthy subsequent apologies, explanations, and advice he’d received about not losing his temper and getting himself slaughtered by Grimpenghast. “I don’t have time right now. I already know who’s been sneaking down to the pain cellars to try out the equipment on herself.” “Not that,” the temptress spat. She pushed her hands hard onto Nats’ chest. “You jerk!” “Ow!” Nats tried to struggle up from his big blood-red bed where Arnie and Blargelslarch had laid him. “Look, Grimpenghast’s got Uhuna. I don’t have time for…” “I know how you can save her,” Regret blurted. “Uhuna. I know how you can beat Sage Grimpenghast and set her free.” Nats frowned suspiciously. “You do?” “I always have. That’s the confession.” Bill Reed finally took a serious look at the red-skinned demoness who was kneeling on his bed. “What’s going on?” he demanded. “What game is it this time?” “No game, Bill. Deadly earnest. I know how you can stop Grimpenghast, save your sex-princess, and probably turn aside that Parody invasion. “You heard Chronic and DB say there were over three million Avawarriors there, right? And that’s only the vanguard. Lots more are coming.” “Even so,” Regret shuddered. “I know how you can stop them. I think.” “And Grimpenghast has his demonic horde on our other border, waiting for the Parody forces to pop our defences and crush us, waiting to march in eat up the pieces when the Avawarriors have passed by?” Regret nodded. “There’s a way, Bill. But I’ve never wanted to tell you about it before.” She looked miserable. “It’ll make what you wished of me happen. You can be reunited with Uhuna forever. You’ll have the power to stop your enemies.” She looked away. “It’s your destiny.” “I’m sensing a ‘but’.” “But you won’t need me anymore. Not afterwards.” “Regret, there’ll always be a place for you here. You know I don’t love you, not like I do Uhuna. I’ve never lied to you about…” “Yes, there’s lot of aspects of being a lord of hell you’ve yet to master,” the temptress chided. “Anyhow, Bill, this is what you have to do. I learned this when I was being… trained… by the Master of Deceptions. Beneath his palace he has a door.” “How can I get to Grimpenghast’s palace?” Nats asked. But Regret pushed a finger to his lips to shut him up. “Behind every demon lord’s place of power there’s a door. A door to deeper down. A door past the façade of the abyss that we all live in. Down to the real thing.” Nats found himself trembling. Somehow he already knew on some subconscious level that there was worse below. “I don’t really know what’s down there, Bill. Even Grimpenghast was terrified of it. The Fallen, he said. It’s not even the Parodyverse hell past that door, its something… else. Older. Nastier. More serious. But…” “But?” “But there’s a Power there, Bill. And it’s a Power that won’t like this little corner of hell being invaded, even by the Parody Master. If you wake that Power, tell what you know, make a bargain…” “I could get what I want, including having the PM’s armies wiped from this realm,” Nats understood. “I could save Uhuna.” “Yes,” agreed Regret, turning away. “So this door?” Nats asked. “Where is it?” “You’re sure you want to go through, Bill? Nobody sees infinite evil and comes away unchanged.” “I need to do something to save the day.” So Regret told him. He kissed her on the cheek and he flew off to brief the others and to make the decent. Regret closed her eyes. Well? Sage Grimpenghast demanded in her mind. He’s doing it she answered with a sob. “Joking decides great things, Stronger and better oft than earnest can.” John Milton, Horace “Okay,” A.L.F.RED told the others assembled in the Main Repository of the Lunar Public Library. “All the tactical simulations show it’s best if I go nuclear as soon as those bozos break through Nats’ perimeter wards. If I can get something in the thirty megaton region I can hold them off for about two hours, maybe three.” “And then we all get slaughtered just the same,” Snookie pointed out. She was feeling crabby just now. “Not the same,” AJA corrected her. “We get ripped apart by pissed radioactive galactic storm-troopers.” “This is all Bookman’s fault,” Auditor Blay-Kee snarled. “I don’t know how yet, but it is.” “We still have a few hours I think,” Dead Boy advised them. He wasn’t sure where his military assessment acumen had come from, but it was undoubtedly there. “There’s been some trouble in that necromancer’s camp. Weird lights and black smoke and stuff. And a little earthquake I think.” “And a rain of blood,” Chronic added. “That was pretty gory. It still had the entrails in it.” “That kind of thing doesn’t happen all the time round here?” D.D. asked. “The blood rains?” “Well no,” DB answered as if it was self evident. “Not in this climate. Maybe up north.” “So they’re in disarray,” A.L.F.RED noted. “All the more reason to go start slaughtering them now.” “We have to defend this library,” Blay-Kee agreed. “It’s IOL property, you know, whatever Dr Blargelslarch and his local committee are claiming by some obscure ancient statute that should have been struck from the books millennia ago.” “The Parody Priests are still working to bypass Nats’ perimeter wards,” reported Dead Boy. “Even with information from that Sage Grimpenghast and the souped-up power their boss sends them they’re going to need a little bit longer. Maybe that’ll be long enough for Nats to get back with the reinforcements?” “That’d be the reinforcements of utter evil?” Arnie reminded them. “Calling 911 here doesn’t get you the ambulance service.” “But does anyone have a better plan?” challenged Dr Blargeslarch. “Or do we all just ‘tool up’ and take on a million Avawarriors each?” “Now you’re talking, Doc,” approved A.L.F.RED. “I call the guys in the middle.” “Maybe the Librarian has a plan?” Snookie suggested. “Where is he anyway?” D.D. looked unhappy. “He can’t join us,” she replied at last. “He’s dying.” “No mighty trance, or breathed spell Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell.” John Milton, Hymn on Christ’s Nativity 173 Lee Bookman writhed on his pallet and vomited blood again. The agony in his head was almost unbearable now. He could hardly think because of the words that pressed into his mind. But they were books. He couldn’t abandon them. He was the Librarian. He couldn’t last much longer. “What need a man forestall his date of grief, And run to meet what he would most avoid?” John Milton, Comus I.362 It was a jet black door and it lacked any kind of carving or sign or other decoration. Nobody had written “Abandon hope all ye who enter here” above it. Nobody needed to. Nats braced himself and began the complex job of unlocking it. Only a lord of hell or equivalent power could will it open, and then only be extending their power to its limits. Nats prepared to descend into the belly of the Beast. “Nor jealousy Was understood, the injur'd lover's hell.” John Milton, Paradise Lost V.499 “Pardon me if we don’t shake hands,” Regret said to Uhuna. “I imagine you’re carrying your usual set of diseases and I really don’t want to find out which ones I’m resistant to and which I aren’t.” “I imagine you’re quite capable of getting diseases on your own,” the princess of the Abhumans replied. “So what do you want?” Regret settled down on one of the white wrought iron lawn chairs in Grimpenghast’s garden of delights. “Now there’s a big question,” she admitted. “Let’s start with saying I want to talk with you. About Bill.” “Big surprise,” Uhuna spat. “Bill’s about to be destroyed,” Regret announced. Uhuna looked sharply at the temptress. “Well that’s your job, isn’t it? Destroying men.” “Just something else we have in common,” Regret shot back. “But in this case I’d rather he wasn’t destroyed.” “Because you’re secretly a lovely person and love has changed you,” the Abhuman mocked. “Yes,” agreed Regret. “And yet,” reasoned the princess, “you’re Bill’s leman but you can come unopposed here to his enemy Sage Grimpenghast’s demesne to talk to me. Bill took you in to save you from Grimpenghast’s revenge, didn’t he? And yet here you are, in Grimpenghast’s back yard, completely unrevenged-on.” Regret nodded. “In hell things are set up so that whatever you choose you lose. I seemed to betray Grimpenghast so Bill would take me in. I seem to serve Grimpenghast because otherwise I’ll be destroyed. After a while the lies make it impossible to do anything for good reasons, or to make any sense of any of the things you do.” “You studied Bill, probably studied me too, so you know I’ll find a lot to empathise with over what you’ve just said.” “That’s true. As true as anything ever is here. But we do have a lot in common, princess. Especially when it comes to Bill.” “We’ve both kept him happy in bed, I suppose,” Uhuna conceded. “But otherwise I don’t see any real connections.” Regret paused. “Actually,” she said, “Bill and I have never… We’ve not coupled, Uhuna. He won’t. And it’s not for want of trying on my part. He’s still waiting. For you.” Uhuna was sceptical. “You expect me to believe that.” “If it’s true love why wouldn’t a person stay faithful?” Regret asked, twisting the knife a little. “Can we get to the end of this conversation?” Uhuna asked sharply. “I’m sure you have many other people on your list to seduce and betray.” “Fine,” scowled Regret. “This is it, then. Grimpenghast had me show Bill where the Infernal Doorway is in Everrue Palace; the doorway to the deeper hells. He had me tell Bill that through there is a deeper devil, a Power that can wipe the Parody Master’s minions from this land. And all of that’s true.” Something about Regret’s expression made Uhuna’s heart lurch., “But?” “But nobody comes back from meeting that evil unchanged. If they come back at all. Do you know what makes a lord of hell into a lord of hell?” “Having this infernal psychic real estate?” Uhuna checked. “When Bill accidentally took over the realms of Mefrothto, Blackhurt and…” “Having access to a door like that,” answered Regret. “Owning a wellspring of evil like that allows you to harvest the souls of the damned for your own empowerment. But even then you’re not a true, irrevocable hell-lord until you’ve… met your boss.” “Behind… behind door number one?” “That’s what Grimpenghast wants, Uhuna. He’s set up this whole situation so whatever Bill does he’ll be destroyed. If he does nothing, the Parody armies will crush him and Grimpenghast wins. If he enters the portal and faces whatever’s there and he’s not evil enough it will devour him, and Grimpenghast wins. If he meets that Power and pays homage to it then what comes back out from there isn’t your Bill or mine, it’s a full-blown demon lord with no conscience or kindness left, and Grimpenghast gets a fine new ally and wins. Whatever happens, Grimpenghast wins and we lose.” “But you set Bill up for this!” the Abhuman accused. “Of course I did! It’s what I do. I’m really good at it. And it’s literally a hell of a lot better than my alternatives. But… There’s one thing Grimpenghast doesn’t understand. Can’t understand.” “What?” Uhuna demanded. Then she looked into Regret’s face again. “The power of love,” she realised. “Regret, do you really love Bill? Truly?” The temptress nodded miserably. “And I made him a promise. And I have to keep it.” “What promise?” “That he’d be happy. With you.” “Why?” “Because… when you love somebody their future is more important than yours.” The demoness spread her wings. “So we have to break out of here. I have to get you to Bill. You have to save him from the Devil. Then Bill has to stop Sage Grimpenghast somehow or we’re all doomed for eternity.” Uhuna looked at the demoness’ outstretched hand. “You want me to trust you?” “Nobody else will,” Regret replied. “And in all this place only you alone can have faith. Only you can forgive.” “He that has light within his own clear breast May sit i' the centre, and enjoy bright day: But he that hides a dark soul and foul thoughts Benighted walks under the mid-day sun; Himself his own dungeon.” John Milton, Comus 381 “Curses,” hissed Lord Slithis, tyrant of Miserablegitheim. “A brace of powerful hexes, identical to those I crafted against my future bride’s defenders, reflected back on my own camp. Only one of demonic cunning could have twisted my own magics so!” “So you say, necromancer,” Sage Grimpenghast replied. He seemed distracted. “Before you begin accusing any infernal ally of treachery you might do well to check your own tents for unexpected intruders. I’m starting to see the annoying fingerprints of a certain master of the mystic…” He turned away urgently. “Regret! Uhuna!” “A mystic regret uhuna?” Slithis puzzled. “What does that mean?” But Grimpenghast’s attention was now fully elsewhere. “Betrayed!” he thundered. Suddenly the monkish scholar’s guise was cast asunder and he rose in his ruined glory, black tattered wings beating with a small of scorched feathers, rising into the air, swelling as he rose. “Regret of the Damned! Billions of tormented souls will quiver and count themselves blessed in their tortures when they hear of your grim fate!” From the smouldering tents beyond Marion Nightshade watched the demon lord rise with a sick horrified fascination. “Can I go home now?” she asked. “By the long route,” Xander agreed. “Come on. We need to find how Slithis got his forces from the Mythlands to hell. I’m guessing a Tiend Gate. We’d better go find it.” “And I’m supposed to ask what a Tiend Gate is, aren’t I?” sighed Marion. “It’s a doorway,” Xander answered promptly. “Between Hell and Faerie.” “What about Nats? And the Parody Master’s invasion of Earth?” “Anything we could have done there’s already been done long ago,” the master of the mystic crafts replied. “Now we have to rely on the power of love.” “But wherefore thou alone? Wherefore with thee Came not all hell broke loose?” John Milton, Paradise Lost “They’ve broken through!” Dead Boy warned. “The barriers are down.” “I’m tracking a major incursion from the Parody Master’s forces over by the Gorge of Regret,” D.D. warned. “I think there’s animated dead at the front, but my sensors are really no good about magic and things.” “Undead,” snorted A.L.F.RED. “They’re no fun to blow up.” “Anyone have Buffy the Vampire Slayer on speed dial?” Arnie J. Armbrusted checked. “Anyone?” “Perhaps they’ll let us live if we give them Bookman?” suggested Blay-Kee. “How long until they get here to the Library?” Snookie asked. “At the rate they’re pushing forward, less than an hour,” D.D. warned her. “Also, now the realm’s defences are down I’m tracking a major arcane event moving towards Everrue Palace very fast.” “Grimpenghast,” guessed Dr Blargelslarch. “This is really not going well.” “For never can true reconcilement grow, Where wounds of deadly hate have pierced so deep.” John Milton, Paradise Lost IV.98 The locks were proving more complicated than Bill Reed had expected. “Damn,” he swore as he burned his fingers again despite his pyrokinetic abilities, “Nobody said that being a hell-lord required aptitude at math!” Everrue Palace shook above him as something large and angry impacted with it. Tied as he was to the fabric of his realm, Nats was dropped to his knees as if he’d been sucker-punched. “Grimpenghast,” he sensed. “So you’re bringing it at last.” Sage Grimpenghast was a heavyweight. Bill Reed knew he wasn’t going to walk away from a fight with the Teacher of Deceptions. Not without an edge. “Open, damn you!” he told the door; and at last it did. Maybe desperation was a component for unlocking it. The deeper hells awaited him behind the cold black rectangle. Nats had peered into the endless night of the Black Galaxy and hadn’t experienced such desolation. A tiny part of him liked it. The door to the secret chamber burst open. Nats braced to leap into the Pit. “Bill!” shrieked Uhuna. “No!” “Regret, that’s not going to work…” was Nats’ first response; but then he saw the temptress beside the Abhuman; and then Uhunalura was in his arms. “Bill, don’t go in there,” Uhuna told him. “It’s a trap. You’ll die in every sense of the word if you face what’s down there, and what comes back will only look like you for a while. That’s what Grimpenghast wants.” “Uhuna, is it really you?” Certainly the tongue felt right. “There, you’re saved,” Regret told him. “You have your sex-princess like you wished. Now you have to get out of here. Cede your domain to me and I’ll head into the Pit.” Nats looked at the demoness suspiciously. “Is this what it was about?” he asked. So near the doorway all kinds of thoughts and ideas were whispering in his head. “Arrange Uhuna’s murder, drag her soul to Grimpenghast, put me in a situation where I get to save myself and Uhuna by giving you what you’ve always wanted? No choice that doesn’t lead to disaster?” Regret was looking fearfully into the portal. “I don’t want to go in there,” she whispered. “But somebody has to. It’s the only way.” The chamber entrance evaporated in a flash of hellfire. Sage Grimpenghast ducked through the hole and stood before them. “It is the only way,” he agreed, mantled in a dark flame of despair. Nats bundled Uhuna and Regret behind him. “Says the Teacher of Deceptions,” he snarled at the demon lord. “Ask your treacherous leman, Bill Reed,” Grimpenghast suggested. “Ask your simpering lover.” “Bill, don’t go into the Pit,” Uhuna begged. “Anything is better than that.” “Really?” mocked Grimpenghast. “Your misguided attempts to heal that lost soul that attended you gave you but the tiniest glance at the sufferings available to me to bestow on you, fallen princess. It will be my pleasure to allow you and Nats to watch each other’s torments for as much of eternity as you still have any shed of affection for each other, before there is nothing left but pain. It will be my joy to instruct each of you in the arts of hurting the other – the wounds you have already given are merely the work of amateurs.” The Master of Deceits leaned forward. “You will be my special project.” “Bill, give me your domain,” Regret begged him. “I’ll sacrifice myself to save you. But I can’t survive the lower hells without your power.” Nats turned round and slammed the door shut. “There. That settles that.” Grimpenghast laughed. “You really are as stupid as you look!” he proclaimed. Nats bunched his fists, telekinesed himself forward at a thousand miles an hour, and ploughed into the demon lord. “Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image, but thee who destroys a good book, kills reason itself.” John Milton “We’re in serious trouble now,” AJA shouted as the proton rifle he’d been shooting ran out of charges. “That psychotic robot’s just vanished under a dogpile of action figures and I don’t like the sound of tearing metal coming from in there.” “I’m getting multiple integrity breaches all across the Library,” D.D. warned, her computer image flickering. “Landing pad Chaucer, landing pad Wordsworth… I think they’re trying to burrow into the main power core. Primary defences are down. Secondary defences are failing. There’s a force breaking through the dome into the Main Repository…” “Aren’t we in the Main Repository?” Snookie asked unhappily. The glass roof-dome shattered and two dozen crack Avawarriors dropped onto the Library floor. “Vandals!” Blay-Kee shouted at the intruders. “This is a Library, you know! Show some respect, you Visigoths!” “Don’t let them take us alive,” Dr Blargelslarch advised. “Where’s Chronic?” Dead Boy asked as he fell back seared with laser fire. “He’s slipped out on us! He’s run!” “Smart guy,” admired AJA. “I wish I’d thought of that.” The Avawarriors surged forward. “Excuse me,” Lee Bookman challenged them. “Do you have a ticket?” “Lee…” warned D.D. The Librarian shushed her to silence. “Well?” he demanded of the invaders. “What business do you have in the Moon Public Library? How dare you distract people from their work here?” “Execute him,” the Avaleader instructed. The Librarian winced as another spasm of pain rippled through him. The Avawarriors grabbed his arms and forced him to his knees. Another raised a molecule-thin Avawsord to sever his neck. “Right,” spat Lee Bookman, blood running from his nose and eyes. “You leave me with no choice. This is a Library after all. Learn!” And he released all the knowledge from the master repository that was burning out his mind, released it through the Avawarriors holding him to all the ones beyond. Billions of words flooded into their brains, too much for any of them, too much for anyone. And still the data kept coming. Across the plain fifteen million Avasoldiers ground to a halt as their minds were overwritten, any thought seared from their brains to be replaced by irreplaceable data from the IOL’s horde. No single mind could hold that information. Fifteen million minds could contain it for a while if they had no other conscious thoughts. Lee Bookman looked at the fallen Avawarriors twitching around him. “Now I feel better,” he said. “Copy from one, it's plagiarism; copy from two, it's research. John Milton, Iconoclastes XXIII Sage Grimpenghast swatted Nats away again. The flying phenomenon was battered and broken, little more than a moving pulp, and still he kept coming. Every time he fell that annoyingly good Abhuman girl raised Nats to his feet once more. “I can keep this up for millennia,” Grimpenghast pointed out. “Can you?” Regret of the Damned came at his eyes, screeching like a harpy. Grimpenghast seared her with hellfire, sending a livid twitching blob to the ground. Uhuna grabbed the scorched spirit, pulled the burns from her, and channelled them back into Grimpenghast. The Master of Deceptions was hurt more by the touch of that innocent than by all the pains she flooded him with. How could such a lust-stained adulteress have such a shining loving soul? Nats flew through Grimpenghast’s brain. It didn’t stop him. The demon lord just reformed angrier than before. He breathed a hail of hungry cockroaches and raised up a horde of tenebrous worms to drag his enemies to their living graves. Then something distracted him. “The whole invasion…?” he mouthed. Nats flew through his head again. So intense was the conflict that nobody noticed the undead musician strum a few low chords on the Devil’s Guitar, open the door, and slip inside. “What boots it at one gate to make defence, And at another to let in the foe?” John Milton, Samson Agonistes, 560 “What did you do?” demanded Dr Blargelslarch as he examined the twitching Avawarriors. “Bookman, what did you do?” “Do?” A.L.F.RED retorted, picking through the piles of comatose soldiers to retrieve his missing limbs, “The boss kicked their asses is what he did. Way to go, boss.” “You’ve wiped their minds,” D.D. told Lee. “Made them living extensions of the MPL!” “Well it’s not like they’re going to be asking for wages,” AJA pointed out. “You’ll have to find somewhere to stack ‘em though.” “You overwrote their very consciousnesses!” Blargelslarch declared in horror. Lee Bookman nodded. “They were threatening the Library,” he replied. “Now we’ll have time to synthesize additional data storage facilities for more permanent preservation of the data,” Blay-Kee enthused. “By the time these mindless creatures fade away we’ll have been able to preserve almost everything that Bookman brought back from the Central Library!” “I could probably manufacture additional holding in the next few weeks, yes,” D.D. considered. “I’ll need considerable materials and assistance but we could save the Grand Repository! This is marvellous!” “Nobody’s really doing a big victory celebration,” Snookie pointed out to the AI. “We’re all too busy being a bit creeped out by your boss.” D.D. was about to defend her Librarian’s actions when another sensor warned her of the next threat. “Uh oh! We have an incoming demon horde from the Yearning Bridge! I think these must be the joint forces of Grimpenghast, Vesperine, and Belaziel coming to pick over the remains.” “We can’t allow that,” the Librarian said urgently. “We need to protect the data in the Avawarriors’ heads.” “Sure. Good luck with saving fifteen million helpless coma cases from the endless horde of ravening demons,” Arnie told him. “Unless you got more of that stuff cluttered into your head?” “Not any more,” Lee admitted. “But we have to…” And then the darkness welled up and claimed them all. “Uh oh,” said Xander, hurrying Marion through the Tiend Gate. “Keep moving. Best to not be here when this happens.” “When what happens?” Marion asked. “Just move!” “Retreat,” Lord Slithis told his minions. Without the massive Parody army he was no longer strong enough to march his forces across hell. “We shall regroup with the forces of S’Chen the Empty in Alfheim and take our vengeance on the denizens there.” He looked over at the horizon where Everrue Palace was being engulfed in an ever-expanding darkness. “Now,” he added quickly. “I will enjoy your screams for eternity,” Sage Grimpenghast told Nats, sinking his claws into his enemy, tearing into Bill Reed’s essence. Regret and Uhuna were already tangled and writhing in dark thorned coils of infernal magic. “I’m going to be inspired.” Nats would have told the demon-lord where to go except he was already there. “Bill…” called Uhuna. “I love you!” And then the darkness swelled out of the abyssal portal and everything was lost to shadow. “Time to go,” decided Lee Bookman. “Really. Now.” “Peace hath her victories No less renown'd than war.” John Milton There was a wrenching of timespace and the Lunar Public Library shifted. It didn’t use the conventional dimensional jump engines that were the last resort of every IOL facility; those one-use machines were still half-melted from their previous emergency jump. Instead Lee Bookman triggered the massive defences woven by many generations of Head Librarians around the data of the Grand Repository itself. There was a flare of energies first harnessed by the Second Oldest Race of the Parodyverse. Lee, his Library, his staff, his guests, and fifteen million Avawarriors that were currently part of the filing system were all shifted from the abyssal plain to the silence of the Mare Ingenii, the Sea of Imagination on Earth’s moon. The Librarian was back. “What though the field be lost? All is not lost; th’ unconquerable will, And study of revenge, immortal hate, And courage never to submit or yield.” John Milton, Paradise Lost I.105 And an inferno away, in the darkness that welled out across the abyssal lands, from the Agony Mountains and the Gorge of Regret to the Disharmony Spire and the Yearning Bridge where the Mewlips dance, and then beyond, a mad musician howled with the Devil’s Guitar and struck chords that had played when the angels fell. And the Devil came to have his due… “Abashed the Devil stood, And felt how awful goodness is, and saw Virtue in her own shape how lovely; saw And pined his loss.” John Milton, Paradise Lost IV.1.846 “Where are we?” Bill Reed asked as he looked around a familiar room. “This kind of looks like our room at the Lair Mansion.” “It kind of is,” said Uhuna. “I think it’s been made to look like that.” “But it’s not,” Nats said, rising from the bed. His injuries were healed but Uhuna didn’t look any the worse for wear. “So where is it? What happened?” “I don’t remember much,” the princess replied. “I don’t think anyone can experience that much pure evil and keep it in their head. We’re given that blessing. But I do remember you calling out to me, reaching for me. You wouldn’t let me go.” That triggered a memory in Bill’s head. “Yeah. And… you reached for me. You said you loved me.” “I do love you, Bill.” Uhunalura smiled a little. “I think maybe that’s what saved us.” “From that Power?” “It couldn’t tear us apart. It tried so hard, just like the world did to us. But I love you.” “And I love you, Uhuna. I never said it enough. I should say it all the time.” The Abhuman girl folded herself into his arms and gave him a kiss. “That would be very smart, Bill Reed.” “So where are we?” “That evil thing couldn’t destroy us. I don’t think it has the power to do that when its faced with love and self-sacrifice and… and love. I think it got indigestion.” “So it spat us out?” Uhuna puzzled. “I think it encapsulated us. Made us a world where our love wouldn’t annoy it any more.” She kissed him again. “So… we got our happy ending?” Bill couldn’t believe it. “Did everyone else get out okay? Lee and DB and the staff? Did Regret?” “I think the Librarian and his people escaped, from what I could sense,” Uhuna judged. “I don’t know about Dead Boy or Regret. Or Chronic. Sorry. But I don’t think we can do anything else for them now. They have their own stories to survive. Good luck to them, even to Regret.” “She also showed self-sacrifice at the end,” Bill realised. “And love.” “Let’s hope she gets another chance as well then,” Uhuna said. She snuggled into Nats’ arms more. “But there is still one problem.” “Which is?” “Only our love is keeping us safe from that ultimate evil,” the young woman warned her lover. “We have to keep loving each other. Or we might be doomed.” “We do, do we?” Nats replied. His hands found her catsuit zipper. They didn’t need any further instruction. “Doomed,” Uhuna assured him. “We really have no choice. None at all.” “Well damn,” grinned Nats. Sometimes people have to find their own heaven. “From morn To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve,— A summer’s day; and with the setting sun Dropp’d from the Zenith like a falling star.” John Milton, Paradise Lost I.742 Regret woke up cold and naked on a trash pile in a desolate alley. She dragged herself painfully to her feet and looked around. Her back hurt as she moved, where her wings had been wrenched from her. Gothametropolis York, she recognised. Earth, the between realm. Regret of the Damned had been cast out, cast up. She had no idea what would happen next. Next time: A different kind of hell, as we delve into the darkness of the robot internment programme. Join Fleabot, Hallie, Yuki, and a metallic host as they debate the ethics of compulsory detention! See Hatman wince at the logic of Citizen Z! Gasp at the evil of Wexford the Dissected Man! Discover the fatal flaw in the Lair Mansion’s security cordon! Fateful, life-changing decisions to follow in Untold Tales #291: Homeland Security Blues (and Greens). So is this the end for Nats and Uhuna? Will they be forced to blissfully copulate in some kind of faux-paradise for all eternity? Or will they be back later for new and complicated adventures? What’s happening in the hell-realms? Will Nats be back as demon-lord of all the lands from… well, you know where by now? Or has Steve got Chronic another upgrade? What about Dead Boy? Is he dead, without even getting a full origin, or is he too back on Earth and looking for some answers? Well, the answer is I don’t know yet. I needed to resolve the hell arc and give the PM’s forces a reason to turn back to Faerie. I needed to get Lee home to be around for the next bit of the LL’s struggle. I needed to find a suitable rest point for Uhuna’s story. But whether any of the situations we’ve set up in this chapter are final or just another spin of the wheel I can’t tell you. I’m certainly open to feedback from posters, and especially from the posters of characters I’ve so uncollaboratively jerked around this issue. Time will tell. Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2006 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2006 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. |
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