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Post By Unpleasant adult content from... the Hooded Hood Sat Mar 10, 2007 at 10:41:01 am EST |
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#306: Untold Tales of the Parody War: The Destruction of Jay Boaz | |
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| #306: Untold Tales of the Parody War: The Destruction of Jay Boaz Previously: Hatman (Jay Boaz), leader of the Lair Legion, was captured after devastating battle with the Parody Master. Rabid Wolf (Zvesti Zdrugo, Zdenka Zarazoza) and Sorceress (Whitney Darkness), Hatman’s current and former romance interests, have joined together to free him. Previous chapters at The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom Descriptions of cast at Who's Who in the Parodyverse Locations explained in Where's Where in the Parodyverse  The Parody Master’s torturers knew just how to beat a man, where to hit to hurt him the most without causing permanent harm. When they’d finished with Jay Boaz they dropped him onto the rough stone floor for a moment so he could retch then dragged him over to chain him to a chair before Grand Inquisitor Flay. Flay was a tall, gaunt man whose bald head shone with perspiration. He smiled at his prisoner. “Hatman of the Lair Legion. It’s an honour.” Jay glared back at him, still catching his breath. “Let me out of these shackles,” he offered, “I’ll sign some autographs.” Flay ticked something off in a large leather-bound ledger before him. He used a quill for a pen. “We have had many of the contestants of the Transworlds Challenge through these chambers, of course. Heroes whom a world selected to represent them in that great contest are likely to be sent again to resist the Master. But none have caused so much excitement and anticipation amongst my staff as you have.” “I don’t need more groupies. Really.” Flay gestured round to the half dozen inquisitors who’d just beaten Hatman to a pulp. “These are your personal correction operatives,” he explained. “You wouldn’t believe the levels of competition there have been to get a place on your work-team. I was sent some very fascinating proposals, some really top-class torture plans. You’re bringing out the best in my people.” “Tell ‘em to line up in order of evilness and I’ll kick the crap out of them one by one,” Jay offered. Flay leaned forward and spoke to his captive confidentially. “This is going to be the stuff of textbooks. It’ll become the standard training work.” “You’re first in line for the beatdown when I escape,” Hatman answered him. The Grand Inquisitor gestured back to the tome in front of him and ran his fingers over the rust-red calligraphy. “This was the winning proposal,” he went on. “There were some really imaginative work-plans, cruel and disgusting and very clever, but in the end I’ve decided on a rather traditional method of breaking you. You strike me as the kind of man who’d appreciate a traditional approach.” “Oh, I’ll be striking you all right.” “There are all kinds of ways we could reprogramme you, of course. Drugs therapy, psychic surgery, techno-organic experience implants, soulworms, a hundred methods that would have the desired effect. But for the great and famous Hatman, hero of the Transworlds Challenge, it seemed only fair to come up with something… heroic.” The utter calm and relish of the inquisitor chilled Hatman. He tried not to show it. “I don’t break easily,” he warned. “When it comes to people like you, I do the breaking.” Flay ticked another item off his list. “Now the purpose of this orientation is fairly simple. I wanted you to meet your inquisitors – and to meet you myself. As you’ll have guessed, I’m a fan. I’m going to outline the course of treatment we’re going to use on you. And I wanted to inform you of our goal.” “You people are sick to the core,” the capped crusader told them. “You make me sick just looking at you.” “Inquisitor Maarn,” Flay began. “He specialises in nerve cluster torment. Some ground-breaking work there. He literally wrote the book. Inquisitor T’Zur, whose background is in endurance. Inquisitor Ashbelan, specialising in psycho-social conditioning through peer torment. She won an award for her work amongst the survivors of Dumondis. Excellent stuff.” “Don’t you have a brochure?” Jay growled. “Inquisitor Lok. He’s a real pioneer in insult trauma. No better man with a scalpel in the whole Parodyverse, myself included. Inquisitor Tuuro, who made his reputation working on small girls but who can doubtless bring his talents to bear on you for the purposes of this workplan. And Inquisitor Vespalin, our foremost theologian. We find he’s very effective with subjects who cling to some faith belief system, such as yourself.” Grand Inquisitor Flay smiled again. “Quite the team we’ve assembled in your honour, Hatman.” “I can see I’ve got my work cut out taking every one of you down,” Jay replied, glaring at the men and woman who’d just delivered his beating. “Now as to method,” Flay went on, “I suppose I’d better explain how this will work. Our primary objective is to break your spirit and remould you into a fanatical follower of the Parody Master. A secondary objective is to cause you as much pain and humiliation as possible in doing so, since there is a punitive element in your treatment as revenge for your previous defiance of the Master. We don’t need to rush, so we can take time to make sure you appreciate every nuance of your programme.” “I’d hurry if I was you,” Hatman told them. “Before the Lair Legion take your bully of a Master down once and for all.” “Death is not an option for you,” the Grand Inquisitor explained. “These chambers are equipped with mystical soul-catchers. If you manage to die your spirit will be detained and reinvested into one of a number of perfect replica clone bodies we are preparing for you. There is literally no escape from what we will do to you.” “I like a challenge,” warned the capped crusader. The work-team around him chuckled ominously. Flay checked his notes. “Oh, there’s one other thing,” he read. He glanced at Lok and Tuuro. “Bring in the victim, please.” Jay watched in horror as they dragged a wretched emaciated skeleton of a man into the room and dropped him to the floor. He’d have been too weak to walk even if his legs weren’t dislocated. Hardly any part of his flesh was unmarked. “This is training subject 7339274,” Flay explained to Hatman. “He’s been one of our torture practice dummies all his life, since he was two years old. By Earth standards I imagine he’d be in his late fifties by now. A real testimony to the skill and care of our staff here.” Hatman looked at the whimpering wreck with horror. “You bastards,” he breathed. He couldn’t look away. “Kill him,” Flay told Inquisitor Maarn. “Be creative.” Hatman was chained to his chair. He could do nothing but watch and shout threats for the forty minutes it took for the victim to die. “Don’t be so upset,” Grand Inquisitor Flay advised the capped crusader. “You’ll need to save something for later. We’ve not even started yet.” Jay swallowed down the surge of fear. How long before the bloody creature on the floor was him? Lok moved close to subject 7339274 and used a sharp scalpel to carve a neat strip of flesh from the dead man’s forehead to his crown. He held up the gory half-scalp and checked it was trimmed neatly. Ashbelan took the skin and carefully glued it to Hatman’s skull. “You’re welcome to use your gift to take on the properties of any material your head comes into contact with,” she told the hero. “We have been very careful to ensure that the only associations you can exploit with this headgear will turn you into the perfect torture victim.” Hatman could feel the years of agony bubbling just under his consciousness. He had to force them back or he’d be lost already, a broken wretch. “Our intelligence gathered during the time your Earth placed its heroes under Obedience Brands suggests that you can only assimilate the powers of one item of headgear at a time,” Flay pointed out. “We felt it best that we determined which headgear you could utilise.” It was true. They’d found a way to turn Hatman’s power against him. “You hold all the cards just now,” Jay Boaz admitted, “but I’m still going to take you down.” Another tick in the register. Banter, threats, now defiance, just as the plan suggested. “And now to explain the goal we’re all going to be working towards with you, Hatman,” Flay moved on. “I generally like to explain the workplan outcome to subjects. Some believe it adds to their resistance, but I find it makes their inevitable eventual surrender all the more piquant.” “I’m never going to serve the Parody Master. He’s a bully, a coward, and a mass murderer.” “You will serve him,” the Grand Inquisitor promised. “You will serve him with all your heart and soul, with all the passion you currently bring to the cause of justice. You will love him more than life, obey him with every fibre.” He gestured to the carefully-written ledger on the table. “And in the end,” he explained to Jay, “you will be proud to be called his new Doomherald.” “Okay, so who the hell are you again?” demanded Whitney Darkness. She stood in the devastated village square of a small Mythlands hamlet that had barely survived the passing of the Parody War and stared at the russet-haired shapechanger who’d just torn the throat out of a rakshasa noble. “I am Zdenka Zarazoza. In my native Candia they call me Zvesti Zdrugo, the Rabid Wolf.” “Nice of them.” “Rabid wolf is sacred to my people. I am goddess of the north.” “Oh,” Sorceress breathed. “And you’re here selling some kind of tracts?” “I am here because I need help from Whitney of the Darkness Clan,” Zdenka explained. “To rescue of Jay Boaz, the Hatman.” “Yeah, I got that bit. Jay’s in some kind of trouble. Or you say he is.” “I know he is. I can feel his pain. Can you not?” Sorceress frowned. “You also said you loved him.” Rabid Wolf nodded. “We both do. He has spoken to me many times of you. I know something of your history with Jay.” “Do you now. How wonderful. So you and Jay are… dating?” Zdenka shook her head. “It is not possible. It is not permitted.” “But you can feel his pain. I see.” “Good,” nodded Zvesti Zdrugo not catching the other woman’s snarkiness, “Then let us go rescue of him. There are gateways from these Mythlands that take us beyond the Celestian barrier to the far world where Jay is imprisoned. You have the magics that could bypass the wardings placed by…” “Hey, hold on!” Sorceress objected. “We’re nowhere near the bypassing wardings stage yet. We’re still at the can-I-trust-you stage of the relationship, maybe at the should-I-kick-your-ass stage.” Zdenka blinked in puzzlement. “But Jay needs us. I have told you.” “And if Hat is in trouble I’m there to help him,” Whitney agreed. “But I’ve never even heard of you. You could be a trap.” Rabid Wolf considered this. “That is what my friend Party Animal said too, but I would never do that to Jay.” Sorceress found herself off-balance again. “Hold on. I think maybe you’re straying from my central theme here, honey.” “Comrade Borin, he and the Directorate hoped that I would betray my vows to my husband Dmitiri and mate with Hatman to breed new heroes for Glorious People’s Crime Apparatchik. But I would never betray Dmitiri or Jay like that, so when they think I am pregnant it is really that I am too long gone from Candia so the crops do not grow properly. And then when they make me to marry Party Chairman I am running away because I know Jay is needing of me.” Rabid Wolf looked over at the baffled Whitney. “And so I am here.” “So you have two husbands,” Sorceress tried to keep up. “Plus Jay.” “It is not so simple,” Zdenka warned. “Perhaps you will let me explain on the way as we rescue Jay from being destroyed?” “Wait… that was the simple version?” The niche in the rock was five feet long, three feet deep, two feet high, just slightly smaller than a coffin. Jay could only fit inside it with difficulty, turned on his side in a half-crouch. When they sealed the alcove up with a metal door he was confined in that tiny space in total darkness. At first it was a relief. He’d spent the last three hours being toured around the inquisitors’ facility. He’d seen what they were doing to other prisoners. Some of them were captives from Earth. He’d not been able to save them. Hatman lay in the chill blackness, his legs and arms still bound by the deliberately-heavy leaded shackles that prevented him reaching up to test the bloody scalp pasted to his head. The stone beneath him sucked the warmth from his naked body so soon he began to shiver. The temperatures in the confinement vaults were only a little above freezing. The captured leader of the Lair Legion tried to occupy his mind with other things. The last he remembered the team was battling the Parody Master. The very fact that Hatman was here, captured, beaten, was a sign that the battle hadn’t gone well. Were other Legionnaires also caught in the complex, likewise buried under tons of pressing rock, trembling in the darkness? What had happened to them all? After an hour the cramps began, painful spasms that wracked Hatman with an agony he couldn’t relieve. He had no way of measuring time except by counting heartbeats. He wondered if he’d ever see light again. Hatman began to plan. He tried to think through all the things he’d seen and heard in the inquisition dungeon. He forced himself to concentrate on developing escape scenarios. Every one of them involved getting out of this confining stone box under the oppressing mountain. Two days passed. The way from the Mythlands was sealed by the will of the Oldman. Reinforced by the power of the Celestian barrier the gateways that would otherwise lead to mortal realms beyond Earth were closed so tight that only the full will of the Parody Master himself could force them open. “Sure, I can get us through,” Whitney Darkness agreed. “At least from this side, I can fool the wards into thinking I’m an Ausgardian. It’s a one-way trip through.” Rabid Wolf dropped the last of the Avawarriors from her jaws and shifted back to human form. The defenders of the warded gate had been no match for a witch and a goddess. “All that matters is that we rescue Jay,” Zdenka replied. “I’m not sure I trust that homing instinct of yours,” Sorceress admitted. “It’s all a bit too much Lassie Come Home for me.” Zvesti Zdrugo didn’t get the reference. “I think there was a time when your soul and Jay’s were as one and you would know as I do.” Whitney flinched. “Maybe. Once.” She surveyed the ancient rune-carved stone that was the breach to another world. “There’s no way of knowing where this comes out, you know. And there’ll be no way of opening it again from the other side.” “He needs us, Whitney. He is hurting.” The Sorceress sighed. “Right,” she said. “I guess I’d better start getting the ritual set up. I’ll make out the circle, you find us some arkelberries and a sprig of woundwart.” She didn’t need arkelberries or woundwart for the spell but at least it would shut Rabid Wolf up for a while. “Ah, Doomherald,” Grand Inquisitor Flay greeted Hatman as the subject was dragged into his office, “All hosed down and fed, I see. How nice to see you again.” “I’m Hatman,” Jay answered through cracked lips. “I’ll never be what you want me to be.” Flay shook his head. “There’s a new rule I need to tell you about. You’re not allowed to speak your former names any more. You can’t cling to your old identity.” The pins and needles in Hatman’s limbs prevented him rising from the floor. “I’m Hatman,” he spat. “Twice now,” Flay noted. “A stubborn learner. Time for the object lesson. You see, Doomherald, every time you say your former names we will torture to death one of the captives from your Earth army. Now you get to watch what your defiance has done.” They pinned Hatman down while a pair of soldiers were brought in. Over the next two hours Inquisitors Maarn and Lok demonstrated their expertise in bringing about horrible deaths. Inquisitor Vespalin kept up a professional commentary for Jay so he’d not miss the nuances. “Still feeling defiant?” Flay asked as the mess was being cleared up. Hatman didn’t answer him. “What is your name?” Flay demanded of the capped crusader. “Doomherald,” replied Jay Boaz. “It is hard for you, I think,” said Zdenka Zarazoza. Whitney wasn’t asleep. She was just huddled with her eyes closed. She hated space travel. She missed the biofields of living planets. “What’s hard?” she responded. “Going to rescue Jay like this. With me.” The two women had escaped the Mythlands to an ancient holy site on Platraxis IV. Their current transport was a survey ship belonging to the Cosmic Remnants Archaeological Partnership. Whitney’s acquaintance with Dr Blargelslarch, former CRAP president, had hitched them a lift to the Draumid Clusterport. The CRAP cargo hold was hardly luxury travel though. “Jay and I are just good friends now,” Sorceress told Rabid Wolf. “What he does with his personal time and who he does it with – or doesn’t, apparently – is no business of mine.” “Jay loved you very deeply, and still does,” Zdenka assured the other woman. “The choices you both had to make drove you apart, made a future between you impossible, but…” “Choices?” snorted Whitney. “You mean when the Hooded Hood made Jay decide between a future where he and I were married and having a baby or saving the world? And Jay chose saving the world, of course.” “And the bargains you made to bring Jay back to you before that which set the situation up, yes.” Whitney frowned. “He discussed that with you? My stuff?” “He was hurt. He needed to talk.” “Sure. Jay gets a goddess and I get a stay in Herringcarp Asylum and exile to Faerie,” Sorceress growled. The survey ship shuddered as it shifted course for the final approach to the Clusterport. The women didn’t have much gear to gather but they began to assemble it. “I knew it was hard for you,” Zdenka concluded. “But you are good person. You came for Jay anyway.” The Sorceress wasn’t letting the conversation conclude like that. “What about you then?” she challenged. “You ran away from your husbands, present and future, abandoned your home and people – and worshippers or whatever. You gave up everything to save Hat. So what will you do if we somehow manage to get him free? Are you going to stay with him at last, or break his heart again?” Rabid Wolf blanched as she considered the options. Whitney allowed herself a satisfied smile and hefted her rucksack. Even though he knew he faced pain and injury, Jay was just glad to be out of that terrible stone box again. He blinked as the torchlight hurt his eyes. His chains seemed so heavy he could hardly shuffle. He’d lost track of time. The irregular feedings and beatings had destroyed his body clock. The growth of beard and the fuzz of hair on his scalp suggested some days had passed. He wanted to ask about his team-mates but he knew he couldn’t trust anything the inquisitors told him. He didn’t want to ask them for favours. “Ah, Doomherald,” Flay called as he saw Hatman had been dragged in. “How are you today?” “Surviving.” Flay nodded approvingly. “You’re holding out wonderfully,” he agreed. “We’re all very impressed. You’re not disappointing us.” Hatman shuddered. “Now I want to demonstrate one of our training aids,” the Grand Inquisitor explained. “We’re fortunate to have Inquisitor T’Zur on your team, as I believe he was one of the designers of the electrode needle human interface system. Perhaps he would be kind enough to demonstrate the fruit of his genius?” For a moment Hatman feared they were going to strap him on that metal frame and set the computer-controlled robot arms to work with their pinpoint-precise electrode tines. Then in horror he saw that another captive was being dragged forward to show how the machine worked. Jay stifled back a plea for them to spare the victim. He knew it wouldn’t work and it was just what his torturers wanted. An hour later the body was dragged away for recycling. “A fascinating device, no?” Flay asked Hatman. “In the interests of brevity we haven’t shown you its full range yet. An expert like T’Zur can keep a subject in agony twitching and screaming for hours. For days.” “It’s obscene,” Hatman replied. He could taste the blood in his mouth as his parched lips cracked when he spoke. “You’re obscene.” Flay gestured for the next victim to be brought in. Hatman recognised the young girl. “D’Rothy?” Flay beamed at his victims. “Oh, I’m so glad you’re paying attention, Doomherald. Yes, it’s Slave D’Rothy, who was the stake offered by the Lovetoad Consortium of Frammistat Eight in the last Transworlds Challenge. Such a beautiful, innocent, talented child, shining with potential.” He looked the terrified child up and down. “The Lovetoads certainly seem keen to give her as tribute to whoever is terrorising them at the moment.” D’Rothy looked at the dead man on the floor and at the pale dirty chained captive between the inquisitors and stifled a scream. She’d learned that only brought worse punishments in a place like this. “Whitney saved her,” Hatman mouthed to himself. “We’ve been reserving D’Rothy,” Flay confided to Jay Boaz, “for a really special occasion. Tuuro’s been hardly able to contain himself.” There was no way to avoid saying it. “Let her go,” Hatman pleaded. Flay glanced at the trembling girl, and at the electrode machine, then back at Hatman. “Are you offering to take her place, hero?” Hatman shuddered as he saw the trap. “Yes,” he replied. “Torture me and let her go.” Flay looked over at Ashbelan with a pleased expression. “Excellent behavioural modelling,” he congratulated the woman. “Strap him in. Tuuro will have to work out his frustrations on the Doomherald.” “But any time you want the pain to stop,” Ashbelan explained to Hatman as they strapped him onto the frame, “You need only ask and D’Rothy can take your place.” “We have a programme planned for her every day from now on,” Tuuro sneered. “How many days do you think you can take before you’re begging us to do her instead?” “Let’s find out,” suggested T’Zur, reaching for the remote control. “Shankaru’s second moon, in the Tallardian system, in the constellation of Vulpecula,” the grey-skinned retailer answered quickly. “Keep that thing away from me!” That thing was Rabid Wolf, in her primary animal form, a snarling horse-sized fury of matted fur and frothing jaws, barely restrained by the Sorceress from tearing the shop-keeper’s head off. “And how to you make your deliveries to this ‘re-education’ centre of the Parody Master’s?” Whitney demanded. Merchant Shondar supplied very specialist ironmongery to the Inquisitors’ stronghold. He was able to describe the thorough security features that kept the prison dungeon impossible to escape. But even in the face of the snarling mad feral predator looming over him his fear of the Parody Master was strong. “If they find out I told you…?” he gibbered, “You heard what he did to Astrovidia? Everybody dead! Every single Astrovidian across the Parodyverse. You know what he can do!” “Then don’t let them find out you blabbed,” suggested the Sorceress. “In fact I’ll be putting a little curse on you to keep you quiet. You won’t tell anybody how you smuggled us aboard your next supply run to Shankaru. You don’t what to know what’ll rot and fall off you if you don’t co-operate.” She smiled down at the trembling Shondar’s amazed expression. “What, you thought Rabid Wolf was the scary one?” Hatman lay in his own filth, in the darkness of his stone coffin, staring at nothing. The stale urine-tainted stew they’d pushed in beside him remained untasted despite the gnawing hunger in his belly. He felt sick. They were destroying him, bit by bit. His hands still had D’Rothy’s blood on them. “We’re not interested in surrogate torture any more,” Vespalin had explained to him. “One way or another, the girl is bloodied today. A flogging, to start with. All you have to decide is who administers it. Shall it be ten lashes from you, Doomherald, or thirty from Tuuro? I can advise you on which would be the kinder.” “I won’t do it,” Jay had snapped. “You’re not making me into your damned torturer.” Tuuro had enjoyed his chance to make Slave D’Rothy scream. Hatman felt as if he’d caused every stripe on the child’s helpless flesh. “Remember that feeling,” Ashbelan had advised him. “Tomorrow we’re going to let Tuuro loose on her. Really loose, him and a dozen of our more sadistically-inclined colleagues. Anything goes. They’re planning a real party. But first we’ll be offering you the opportunity to just kill the girl, quickly and cleanly. Be sure to consider your choice very carefully.” For the first time Jay recognised that the torturers were eventually going to win. He was going to become what they wanted him to be. He was going to become the Doomherald. Hatman lay in the claustrophobic stone box with the weight of the mountain pressing on him, alternately numb and cramp-wracked, starving but sick to his stomach, sometimes shivering from the cold and other times too weak even to spasm. He wandered in and out of delerium, losing his sense of time and reality. He knew he was close to the edge of his endurance and willpower. In the frozen darkness Jay Boaz wept. “Oh gods,” Whitney Darkness gasped, forcing the bile back down her throat. She couldn’t afford to be sick here on the viewing gantry of the Inquisitors’ correction centre. “How could people do this to other people?” “Do not let this overwhelm you,” Zdenka Zarazoza warned her. “Keep up the spell that hides our natures from the electronic sensors about this place, or we will be joining those poor souls in the display cages below.” “I know,” Sorceress agreed, swallowing hard, “but their pain…” Her face darkened. “I’ve faced all kinds of evil, seen devils and concentration camps and Hellraisers up close, but this is… this makes the list as well.” “We are supposed to be privileged visitors cleared to inspect,” Zvesti Zdrugo reminded her companion. “We cannot react, as much as our hearts reach out to these crying souls. We must remember why we came to this terrible place.” “To find Jay,” Sorceress reminded herself. “Yes. He might be down there somewhere, in one of those numberless torment pits. You felt him suffering.” Zdenka nodded. “But here, with so much pain around us, I cannot hear him over all the others. How shall we find him?” “This close I can try a divination,” Sorceress suggested. “But I’ll have to be careful. There are mystics here amongst the Inquisitor staff. I can feel them.” She looked around her at the grey stone architecture. “I hated how much time my grandmother spent drilling craft discipline into me, but I sometimes have to admit it’s taught me how to work around enemy conjurations very effectively.” “Your grandmother is… a strong character,” Rabid Wolf admitted. Whitney dared another look into the punishment pits. “What about all these people?” she demanded. “How can we just save Jay and leave the rest?” “How can we save them all?” Zdenka countered. “Sometimes we can only solve the little problem, but that does not mean the little problem is not worthy of being solved, I think. We came for the man we love. Let us save him and take him safe home. If any man can find a way to stop the Parody Master and all his evil…” “It’s Jay,” agreed the Sorceress. “Okay, I’m sold. So we need to find a way to…” She fell silent as the observation platform filled with Avawarriors. They trooped in with precision discipline and flanked the doorway, then swept down the walkway pushing back the half-dozen privileged visitors to clear the space. For a wild terrifying moment the women thought that had been detected, but then they saw that everyone was being herded to the far end of the gallery with them. Then the Parody Master strode onto the observation deck and looked around. “Well met, my conquered foe,” the Parody Master greeted Hatman. “The gloating phase,” Jay croaked. He was so weary he could hardly look up from the floor where they’d tossed him at his enemy’s feet. “I guess it was inevitable.” “His treatment goes apace, Master,” Grand Inquisitor Flay assured the conqueror of the Parodyverse. “He is a fascinating subject.” “Do not rush him,” the Parody Master advised. “I want him to suffer.” “At every stage, Master,” Flay assured him. “I have explained to the subject exactly what is being done to him, so he appreciates every nuance of his destruction. His own heroic ideals will be the tool that mines out his soul and leaves him hollow for us to fill him with what we desire. His faith, his principles, his nobility are all being used against him, until we shatter every one. Only then will he become your slave, your new Doomherald.” “Very good,” the Parody Master approved. He nudged Hatman with his metal boot. “I am very close now to taking your world,” he promised. “Weeks at the most. Your comrades will be joining you here. By that time I imagine you will be broken enough to help with their torture.” “Go to hell,” Jay managed. “But of course. I shall in time conquer every aspect of the Parodyverse, including its theological realms,” the Parody Master promised. “In fact I expect the storming of hell and heaven to be simple once I have the entire mortal population under my control. As below, so above.” “The Legion will stop you.” “The Legion took their best shot. They failed. You fell.” Hatman knew that it was now or never. He reached up and pressed the strip of rotting flesh tighter to his skull. “This was prisoner 7339274,” he whispered. “They made him a victim all his life and gave his hide to me to make me like him. But I’ve been doing this serious matter conversion stuff for a long time now. And do you know what his secondary aspect was?” Inquisitor Flay looked puzzled. “What is this?” he demanded. “Rage,” answered Hatman. He suddenly found the strength to spring up and grab the Grand Chief Inquisitor. He’d been clinging to his strength, saving this last stand up for today’s session with D’Rothy, but when better than now? Before anyone could react he’d snapped the torturer’s neck. The Parody Master swatted Hatman down with a casual gesture then seared him to unconsciousness with a bolt of electricity from his palm. “Very good,” the villain approved. “He will make a fine Doomherald.” “I’ll see about clearing Inquisitor Flay away, Master,” said Inquisitor Vespalin. “And then we’ll get back to work on the subject.” “Good. I’m glad to see things are progressing so well.” Spacefarers from the planet Earth were often amazed at the prevalence of bipedal vertically-symmetrical humanoid lifeforms across the universe. Some scholars held that there was natural evolutionary convergence because that was the most effective form for higher-intelligence species to adopt. Others suspected genetic seeding by the Celestians for some purpose of their own. But those humans watching the skies for aliens might have been better occupied lifting their floorboards and considering the creatures skittering beneath. 80% of all planets with life upon them were also infested with cockroaches. They ran within the walls of the Re-education Centre and fed on the sores of the victims there. They grew fat on the flesh of the dead and were a source of survival food for the living. When they skittered over Hatman he had no way of brushing them away. But one cockroach was especially glad to see him. She clung to him as the Inquisitors dragged him from his coffin cell to began his daily beating. “I trust you’ve been thinking about your actions,” Inquisitor T’Zur told him as he crumpled from a sharp kidney punch. “Inquisitor Flay will take weeks to adjust to his new body. He’s not happy.” “And that means we don’t have his restraining influence,” Inquisitor Tuuro noted, stamping down on Hatman’s groin. “Oh dear.” And then the cockroach shifted shape, and Rabid Wolf ripped the Inquisitor’s arm off. T’Zur dived for the alarm panel. Zvesti Zdrugo bit off the torturer’s head. Hatman lay huddled on the floor, gasping. “Another hallucination?” he asked. He so wanted it to be real, but he no longer trusted his senses. “Jay,” said Rabid Wolf, and kissed him. “I am here.” She shifted to a kind of werewolf form and hefted him in her arms. “Zdenka?” “Yes,” agreed the goddess of the north. “You called. I came. And not alone.” “The Legion is with you?” The beast shook her russet locks. “Only one of them,” she answered, “but the one you’d want the most.” She touched the little talisman round her neck. It was little more than a lock of blonde hair and a scarlet cord. “Whitney, I’ve found him. Now we need the distraction to get him out.” “Distractions are us,” the Sorceress answered through her conduit. “How is he?” “Whitney?” Jay recognised the voice. “Whit? I’m okay. Or I will be. If… if only this is real.” “It’s real, Hat,” the Sorceress assured him. “Do you think we’d ever do something this stupid in your imagination?” Her voice turned cold. “Get him to safety, Zdenka. I’m summoning the distractions.” Rabid Wolf felt her hair stand on end. “This way, Jay,” she called. “We might still need to fight our way to freedom.” “Wait!” Jay called out. “We can’t just go. We have to rescue everyone.” Zvestri Zdrugo smoothed the bloody patch on his head where the dead man’s scalp had been ripped from him. “We can’t, love. I wish we could, but this is not our place of power. We have to get you away safe.” “No,” Hatman insisted. “If we can’t save everybody, well… there’s one person at least I’m not leaving for Tuuro to reincarnate and destroy.” Jay Boaz wasn’t leaving without rescuing Slave D’Rothy. The alarm bell tolled through the stone dungeons of the Inquisition. Avawarriors and torturers alike came to alert, aware of potential intruders, or potential escapees. The Sorceress spread her hands wide and opened the gateway to the demon dimensions and let the monsters well through. “They wanted to give these prisoners hell,” Whitney Darkness said in a deep gravely voice, “now they can have hell themselves.” “What’s going on?” demanded Ashbelan. She looked up from her desk where she was mapping the gradual deterioration of Jay Boaz’ moral perspectives as she heard the alarm bell. Zvesti Zdrugo swarmed over her in the form of ten thousand irradiated hungry dung beetles. “Where is the child D’Rothy?” the goddess demanded. “Speak or be devoured.” The inquisitor gasped as she saw Jay Boaz holding onto the door frame. “You escaped? How?” The capped crusader saw his hatility belt lying on the desk and staggered over to retrieve it. He pulled out a plain blue cap with a simple H on it and pulled it over his head with a sigh of contentment. “Because I am Hatman,” he said. “And you are going down.” “Soul catchers,” noted Whitney Darkness as he occult senses stretched out over the complex. The power sang through her now, payment from the demons for their brief license to ravage the mortal world. They had been generous despite the pact that prevented them from harming the captives in the complex. “Trying to imprison victims even after their flesh has died. Very nasty.” There were mages in the complex, shamen and necromancers mostly, working against her. The Sorceress located them and smacked them down hard. “I don’t like soul catchers,” Whitney declared, and released her will to shred them. She felt the angry spirits of a couple of inquisitors as they were dragged away by the escaping souls. T’Zur and Tuuro were no longer candidates for reincarnation. Then Sorceress felt another power clamp down over her own, a stronger force that shut down her efforts as if they were nothing. Every demon in the dungeon screamed and burned. The Parody Master laughed. “What, you didn’t think my seers could predict your coming? You didn’t wonder at the timing of my visit to Boaz, to provoke you into action? You didn’t think I could plan a trap like this?” He’d returned just in time to claim his brides. Hatman used his demolition cap and ripped away the doorway to D’Rothy’s cell. The frightened child screamed until she recognised the capped crusader. “It is alright,” Rabid Wolf told her. “We are here to take you from this place.” “You don’t understand,” the girl told them. “They saw you coming. They are waiting for you.” “What do you mean?” Hatman asked, gathering the child gently in his arms. She was still bloody and sore from her torture yesterday. “Who’s waiting?” “The bad man,” D’Rothy said. Like so many of the planetary avatars used as stakes in the Transworlds Challenge she had precognitive gifts. “The Parody Master. He’s still here. He was waiting for your friends.” A chill ran through Jay. He felt as if he’d been punched again in the stomach by Inquisitor Maarn. The idea of Zdenka and Whitney captives in this place at the mercy of the Parody Master… “We need to leave quickly,” Rabid Wolf called. “There is a teleport gateway in the control centre which we believe could be used to take us away from this place. To another world. That is our way out.” “The teleport gate is closed,” D’Rothy told them. “They saw you coming.” “Whitney shielded us.” “Nothing can shield you from the Parody Master when he focuses his will,” the child replied. “I’m sorry, Hatman. Thank you for trying to save me.” Whitney felt the will of the Parody Master clamp over her like a suffocating blanket. In an instant she knew his plans for her, his desires, his revenge. “Nu-uh! I don’t do the bride thing any more,” she resisted. “It got old after the Demon Lover.” She could sense the Parody Master getting nearer to her place of concealment in one of the disused interrogation chambers. Soon her would have her in his grasp physically as well as psychically. The wall of the chamber burst apart. Hatman stepped through in his steelers cap. “Time to go, Whitney,” he called out. “Jay! You’re okay!” Sorceress had to catch an urge to kiss him; an old habit. “It is a trap for us,” Zdenka warned. “We have been expected.” “The Parody Master has seers in his priesthood,” explained D’Rothy. “He has them searching out those he has chosen as brides.” “I have no wish to marry this Parody Master,” Rabid Wolf replied. “The Party Chairman was enough.” “What?” asked Jay. “No time!” D’Rothy almost screamed. “He’s coming!” The Parody Master had trapped them. There was no way to use the teleport gate to escape. He was going to catch Rabid Wolf and Sorceress and take them as his brides. They and D’Rothy would all be destroyed, slowly and horribly. Unless Hatman killed them all, now, with the soul catchers broken. “Jay?” Zdenka asked. “Why are you looking like that?” Hatman kissed her again. “I’m sorry we couldn’t be together,” he told her. “And Whit, you have no idea what you coming for me means to me. I’m sorry it had to end like this.” “Like what?” Sorceress asked. “Hat, we stand and fight. It’s what we do. How powerful can the Parody Master be?” “Powerful enough,” D’Rothy sensed. “Jay, what are you doing?” asked Rabid Wolf. “I have no choice,” answered the capped crusader. “I can’t let you fall into the PM’s hands. I won’t.” “Jay, you’re almost dead,” Whitney reminded him. “Only your power is keeping you going, drawing strength from the hats you wear.” “I’ll die happy if I can save you three,” Hatman told her. “And hey, Dream would be proud I made a famous last stand.” “What are you doing?” Zdenka demanded. “You are scaring me!” “They gave me the choice between being a victim or being a killer,” Jay told them as the Parody Master approached. “But I choose to be a hero!” He pulled out the floppy velvet trilby and looked at it for a moment. The brim was still slightly gooey where it had fitted on the Manga Shoggoth’s head. Hatman put it on. Dimensions twisted, reality fell away like a child’s toy, Hatman felt his mind splinter into hundreds of new dimensions. His sanity burned away like the morning mist under sunlight. When the Parody Master burst into the interrogation room, Hatman, D’Rothy, and his brides were gone to impossible far horizons. Next time: The ballad of Ohanna and Kiivan reaches its conclusion – but is it a happy ending or a tragedy? Hacker Nine and Danny Lyle have to decide which side they’re finally on. Kerry discovers just what happens when she uses her powers to their fullest extent. The Hooded Hood’s plans unfold without him. Five surprise guest stars - and one unexpected guest villain that we’ve not seen in Untold Tales for over a hundred issues. The Juniors finally tie up all things Caphan in an explosive conclusion: The King’s Slave, or Caph Betrayed. Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2007 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2007 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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