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Post By The Hooded Hood uses up the last of his pre-written chapters. If he wants to post more he'll have to go write them now Sat Dec 18, 2004 at 08:13:08 am EST |
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#197: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: Diabolical Plots | |
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#197: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: Diabolical Plots What Has Gone Before: The Hellraisers, a powerful group of extradimensional marauders sponsored by demonic entities known as the Dead Hell Lords have begun a reign of terror on earth. After defeating the Lair Legion they have gone on to slaughter the support staff at the Lair Mansion and almost kill the Juniors. Now they are attacking the Phantomhawk Memorial Hospital where Grace O’ Mercy the Night Nurse, Goldeneyed, Reverend Fleetwood, Laurie Leyton, and Beth Shellet are making a last stand. However, the Lair Legion have not been passive, and have slain the only still-living member of the Dead Hell Lords, Frightmare, Lord of the Nightmare Realms, although this has led to them being dropped onto the edge of oblivion. Visionary has returned to the devastated Lair Mansion to discover that Hallie has somehow survived the carnage, albeit now as a human female, and he has summoned help from friends and associates of the team. Meanwhile, Cleone continues to lead Messenger and Sorceress to Xander in the remnants of the Nightmare Realms where the Dead Hell Lords meet and draw power from their captive Resolution Prophecy. Keiko has remained behind in the Hellraisers’ Fortress of Darkness in the interdimensional void. Killer Shrike has sacrificed his life and been absorbed by the Fearwalker, a dark creation of the Hooded Hood’s. Lady Madge Wilton, Asil, Lisa, and Dancer are loose in Herringcarp Asylum but have just been found by their tormentor the Chain Knight. The Hooded Hood is somehow restored to health and power and wishes to speak to the Knight. As for how…. There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat. And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures. Julius Caesar, William Shakespeare In the deep places of the Parodyverse the tides of narrative clashed together, rising in spuming paragraphs as paradigms collided. “How much are you willing to stake upon that, Hellraiser?” asked the cowled crime czar. “How high do you want to raise the stakes? I will go all the way!” The Hood reached out with his gifts to retrospectively alter continuity, rendering tiny changes he had long prepared, and like a tiny pebble beginning a landslide the course of the story shifted. And the Prince of Fibs? He should have been destroyed right there, gone forever like his father before him, for demons have no souls and face no afterlife. “What is happening,” demanded Mefrothto, Prince of Fibs, as he felt the currents of casuality change. “Who is interfering? Something is amiss.” “Did you expect the Parodyverse to fall without a struggle?” Mr Lucifer demanded scornfully. “Even with the power of the Resolution Prophesy harnessed to our will there are certain forms that must be observed. A confrontation. A final struggle. A victory.” “I understand,” answered the Hooded Hood; and the moment he had foreseen and dreaded had arrived, when his appalling weakness was revealed. “Keep them safe as we have agreed, and from this moment I will yield to you.” “But I was killed!” objected Frightmare, former Lord of the Nightmare Realms. “That pure thought being rode the faith and affection of his comrades and stabbed me!” “All of us are dead,” the Dread Dormaggadon pointed out. “Only the immense power of the Resolution Prophecy we have enslaved keeps up from the pull of oblivion.” “But I was different!” Frightmare complained. “I was alive.” “Yes,” agreed Blackheart, Prince of Fibs. “And while you were alive you were of use to us.” “The artist formerly known as Lord Resolution,” cackled Frightmare. “Now his power is at our bidding. His third and greatest attempt to bring about the Resolution War that ends the Parodyverse was to have been accomplished by subverting the Mythlands and conceptual realms as his new army.” “What do you mean?” demanded the creature of dreamers’ terrors. “I am one of you, one of the Dead Hell Lords.” “You were,” Mefrothto admitted, “but everyone here has to pull their weight. When you were still able to interact with the mortal realms as a living concept you were of use to us. Now…” “You just don’t make the cut,” suggested Blackhurt, grinning with too many sharp deadly teeth. “The tides of fate are being disturbed. Someone is trying to resist the patterns we have established,” Mr Lucifer pointed out. “We really don’t have time to carry along dead weight.” “But I’m not!” Frightmare squeaked as the four Hell-Lords surrounded him. “I’m one of you, I’m…” “Very tasty,” noted Dread Dormaggadon. “Although he could have used some sauce.” “Sponsors?” Nosferos sniffed the air. “Who?” “What about up there?” Blackhurt asked, gesturing back to the little knot of mortal dimensions where the Dead Lords’ plans were rolling out. “The resistance?” “That’s why we arranged for the release of the Hellraisers,” Mr Lucifer pointed out to them. “So long as all our actions serve the promotion of the Resolution War we can accomplish any other goal we please with the power now available to us. And the Hellraisers are making a wonderful first act to the Last Battle of the Parodyverse.” “They have some style,” Dormaggadon conceded. “I like how they have decimated the friends and family of the Lair Legion.” “Where are the Legion now?” Mefrothto demanded. “I don’t see most of them.” “In oblivion,” gloated Mr Lucifer. “It doesn’t get much deader than that.” There was only one way for Lisa and Dancer to be saved. “You will vow, all of you, a binding Pact, that if I… if I yield to you they will not be harmed in any way, by omission or commission. That they will be safe from any harm by you or yours, or by your neglect.” “Then who is trying to shape events?” frowned Blackhurt, wiping bits of Frightmare from his chin. “Who else?” hissed Mefrothto. “The Hooded Hood!” The Prince of Fibs had been cast down due to the manipulations of the cowled crime czar, and he knew how to hold a grudge. “The Hood,” growled Dormaggadon. “I thought he was broken, blind and impotent to do aught but suffer as our revenges unfolded?” The former Lord of the Dreary Dimension had likewise fallen to the plots of the archvillain. “Oh, really,” scorned Mr Lucifer. “As if he was going to make it that simple. Look!” Dancer looked around the dim filthy cell. “Escape?” she asked. “Without our powers from some mediaeval dungeon into a stronghold filled with enemies?” “That was it?” Blackhurt seethed. “As simple as that? He worded the pact he made with Lucian so that if any harm befell the captives then the retcon he did at his last moment would cut in and all his hurts would be undone? The advocatrix wench discerned this at last and worked the trick? The very power the Resolution Prophecy used against him twisted to restore him? He is free, and empowered?” “And then the course of the narrative shifted,” Dread Dormaggadon discerned. “From that moment the Chronicler dragged Visionary from oblivion, and Visionary in turn arranged for the rescue of his children and called in more champions. The little vampire who guards that hospital found her courage, and the healers amongst the humans discovered a means of resisting the plague. Because the Hooded Hood interfered with the course of our story!” “And he’s got the Hellraisers split and distracted, while the heroes have regrouped,” Mr Lucifer pointed out. “Not bad for a mortal.” “The Lair Legion took down Frightmare,” Mefrothto reminded them. “And there are other intruders where they shouldn’t be, in the Hellraisers’ fortress of darkness and elsewhere.” “Good,” Dormaggadon said. “I’m still hungry.” “Ohhh,” breathed Blackhurt, back from oblivion like his fellow Hell-Lords for one final challenge. “This is going to be good.” “But the heart of the matter is this,” Mr Lucifer pointed out the Dead Hell Lords who clustered around the scaffold where the Resolution Prophecy hung. “That we control the game. That we have the downhill battle, the home field advantage. That already the forces that oppose us are crippled, exhausted, desperate, heartbroken. That we have taken few significant losses while they have given their all merely to survive.” “Just a little more, one last push,” Dormaggadon agreed. “And all our enemies will be our playthings for eternity.” And the Dead Hell Lords bent their will towards the Parodyverse. “Very well done,” the Chain Knight applauded, appearing to join the others. “I’m genuinely impressed. Your reputation is deserved.” The Chain Knight laughed at the frail coalition of intruders who dared oppose him. “You’re dead on your feet, Hood, and your powers are exhausted. I’ve already captured your women once before. I appreciate the bravado and bluff but it really is a feeble last stand.” “But it is a stand,” Asil Ashling told him defiantly. “We don’t give in to bullies, no matter how scary or powerful they are. We stand up and we fight them!” “Jolly good,” approved Lady Wilton. “That’s telling the unpleasant fellow!” “Lucian, you really have exhausted our patience,” Dancer warned the Chain Knight. “Now might be the time to think about a serious life change.” The Chain Knight was still amused. “Perhaps I could reform and join your little group? Help you bury your servants and children whom I have slaughtered, and wear a gaudy costume to fight crime?” “He killed everybody at the Mansion,” Asil accused. “Everybody except Amber. I think she got away.” “Not for long,” the Chain Knight promised. “And now that Lisa and Dancer have stepped beyond the protection of our pact I have a full harem for my amusement. “I’d prefer to think there’s a group of women you really can’t cow ready to kick your ass,” Lisa suggested. “Oh, and by the way, the Hooded Hood doesn’t bluff. I summons Fearwalker!.” The cowled crime czar watched as his dark creation oozed from the black broken earth of Herringcarp. “Good evening,” he bade the gestalt being drawn from pain and terror and bleak betrayal. “I assume you have now acquired a suitable soul?” “I freed that being, you fool” Sir Lucian pointed out. “He serves me!” “Like &$%* I do!” said the Fearwalker slamming into the Chain Knight and seeping black cold tendrils beneath his armour. “You’re the crapbag that tortured me after I died! All you get is the payback special!” “Very good, Mr Maddick,” the Hood approved, guiding Lisa and Dancer round the melee of shadow tendril and flailing chain. “Proceed.” Marjorie Wilton stepped back from the confused tangle of shadow and chain and continued to prepare the Chronometer of Infinity for the complicated reversal of the damage it had caused the Portal of Pretentiousness. “The Portal wants to be restored,” she told Asil, “so causality’s working with me. I just need to get the temporal strands in line to give it the right push.” “What then?” Asil asked anxiously. “Will this bring Sir Mumphrey back?” “I rather expect it to, yes,” agreed Marjorie. “Mumph did somewhat plan for this kind of event, not trusting that cowled nasty further than he could throw him. I imagine this will peel back that retcon the Hooded Hood prepared to do away with him.” “I would never have used so crude a device to eliminate Wilton,” the Hood pointed out. “I merely prepared the contingency for the Hellraisers to utilise.” The Chain Knight ripped into Fearwalker with a mounting rage, his savage chains feeding torture and torment into his foe. The black creature filled with Killer Shrike’s soul fought back, drawing upon memories of pain, fear, and hurt it found lodged within Sir Lucian to give it power. After all, it had been designed for this purpose. “If you bring back Mumphrey, won’t that mean that you’re… gone?” Asil asked Marjorie. “I’m afraid so,” agreed Sir Mumphrey’s wife. “But then again, who wouldn’t lay down their life for somebody they love?” “Mumphrey wouldn’t want you to do that.” “That’s because he’s a man, my dear, and they always want to do all the interesting heroic bits themselves. Don’t let them. As for me, I’m his wife, and I’d die a thousand times to see him restored. I love him.” She glanced at Asil, Lisa, and Dancer. “And you need him. Even that archvillainous gentleman there needs him right now.” The Chain Knight made a supreme effort, unleashing the powers of his stolen role as Death to sear through Fearwalker. Simon Maddicks saw the black horizon rolling towards him. “Does this mean I don’t get paid?” he asked before he finally died at last. Lisa had retrieved her bullwhip from the rubble where she’d dropped it a day earlier, and as the Chain Knight rose triumphantly but unsteadily she curled it round his neck and dragged him off his feet again. Then suddenly Dancer was spiralling through the air and improbably managed to land a double-footed kick to rip off Sir Lucian’s helmet. “Eh,” scorned Lisa. “Dr Doom is uglier.” And she laced her adversary’s face with another deep red gash. Angry chains lashed out as the two women, and only Dancer’s improbability powers allowed them to evade them. But that left Lucian open to Asil rolling in with a discarded ebony shard of the Hood’s throne and plunging it between the Chain Knight’s bloody red eyes. Lashing links hammered Asil away. Dancer somersaulted over them to snatch the young Lisa-clone from destruction. The Chain Knight wrenched free the spike of stone that had plunged deep into his skull and rose in wrath. “Lady Wilton,” the Hooded Hood said to the Keeper of the Chronometer of Infinity, “make it so.” Marjorie Wilton nodded solemnly. “Tell Mumphrey I… Never mind. He knows.” She glanced at Asil. “Take care of him.” Then she swung the pocketwatch at the frame of the shattered Portal of Pretentiousness. “Oh dear,” Xander the Improbable noted, shuffling onto the black spit of dreamstuff where the Hell Lords That Should Not Be were observing the tangle forming in their plans. “You’ve rather messed this up, haven’t you?” Four of the most evil and powerful beings in the Parodyverse turned their attention to the sorcerer supreme and his companion. “I’m just here for the view,” ManMan told them hastily. “You can see my apartment building from here.” “Xander the Improbable,” Mefrothto recognised. “And the mortal who slew me.” “And the sleek, smallish but wickedly sharp knife he did it with,” Knifey pointed out. The talking blade preened a little, then added darkly. “You know me You know what I can do.” “Xander!” hissed Blackhurt, who had likewise been slain because of the interfering mage. “You dare come here, now, to set your power against ours?” The master of the mystic crafts looked up at the tattered Lord Resolution, personification of the Resolution Prophecy, as it hung upon the scaffold leaching its narrative energies. “Well, I had a few minutes to spare before I had to regrout the bathroom,” he replied. “And also I thought now was a very good time to divert your attention.” “By amusing us with your screams?” Dread Dormaggadon suggested. ManMan reluctantly placed himself between Xander and the Hell Lords, Knifey in hand, and wondered how he got into these things. “If you want him, you’ll have to come through me,” he heard himself saying. “Xander, if you’re going to do something sneaky and clever please pretty please with buttons on do it now!” “Sorry,” the sorcerer told him. “I’m out of options.” Blackhurt began to cackle. “Nah, just kidding,” Xander the Improbable went on. “I brought this.” And he threw the lump of goo straight down Blackhurt’s throat. Then the Shoggoth began to grow. A lot. And Blackhurt stopped laughing. And Blackhurt burst. “An elder being! You brought an abomination here?” Dormaggadon flexed one powerful hand and the Shoggoth was sprayed apart into thousands of droplets. But inside him were some slimy and rather angry heroes. Yo drew his/her rapier. “Lair Legioning, be to be lining up please!” Nosferos lunged forward again, and once more Mac Fleetwood’s faith was sufficient to hurl the elder vampire away from the entrance to the Phantomhawk Memorial Hospital. “You know,” said Grace O’Marcy, the Night Nurse. “That’s got to sting!” “Very well,” seethed the Undying. “My minions, let us teach these insolent mortals a final, lasting lesson. If we may not enter the building let us make them come to us. Burn this place down!” “Uh oh,” worried Goldeneyed as hundreds of undead moved forward with torches and kindling. Then every one of the torches was extinguished or gone – in a Brown Streak. “You guys know this is a no-smoking zone, right?” “Foul dwimmerlaiks begone!” thundered a voice from above, and a baseball-bat-with-a-nail in it swept a dozen of the night carrion to oblivion. “What he said,” agreed NTU-150, flying above and strafing the attackers with a toothpick-firing artillery cannon of his own design. “Nobody can compete with Donar’s entrance lines, so we don’t even bother. Just assume what he said goes double for the rest of us.” “See most people think fern and assume leaves and stuff,” spiffy pointed out, dropping from Banjoooo’s giant shoulder to mix it up in the middle of the mob. “They don’t think nice strong tendrils wrapped round stakes of wood of wood spearing out to… oops, well I guess you get the point.” “Hey, these Hellraisers must be using cosmic forces!” the King of the Sea Monkeys exalted, towering over the battle scene. “Look, I’m manifesting inexplicable and random powers again! Eat laser-vision, corpse-breaths!” “Excuse me,” G-Eyed said to Beth Shellett and Laurie Leyton. “I may be half-dead from that plague we had earlier and blood loss and stuff, but there’s no way I’m not going out there to join in this.” “Hey, Beth wouldn’t love you so much if you didn’t.” Laurie quipped ruefully. “Go do heroey things,” Beth instructed him. “Don’t die, and try not to get cloned.” “You think I’m real-Bry then?” Beth and Lisette exchanged glances. “Who else would be this dumb?” Nosferos jabbed one finger towards Banjooooo and the lightnings of the storm above discharged through the giant Sea Monkey, toppling him onto the hospital parking lot. Banjo tried to stand but a second discharge dropped him cold. The undead lord cackled. “Foolish mortals, I shall…” Then the storm was torn from his control by a seething demihemigod of thunder. “Mortals, sayest thou? I art no moral but a deity born, lord of the lightnings and scion of the Oldman! Prate not thy corpsish maunderings at me, harmer of mine son! Have at thee!” NTU-150 hovered above the battle emitting a hypersonic signal that confused the swarms of bats summoned to help the undead and hammered instructions into the keypad on his epaulette. “Okay, let’s see, sixteen Bautista Enterprises global satellites, plus the LL ones, realigned in specific pattern, each reflecting sun from the other side of the world onto the next in sequence, trim the orbital angle to refract the light downwards by say 117 degrees, activate solar collector mirrors, and…” Suddenly a new star flared in the heavens above, and the Phantomhawk Memorial Hospital was bathed in pale sunlight. Hundreds of lesser vampires were seared to ash. Older, more powerful undead fled for cover. “And tonight’s weather report,” Enty pointed out, “Sunny with occasional showers of exploding vampire.” And then the satellite erupted as Maladomini concentrated from afar with her dimensional lash. At the same moment the Bloodreaper leaped through the air and impaled his scythe through Enty’s chestplate. “Die!” Phleglethor the Pestilent told spiffy, spawning dozens of diseases in the young fern-wielder’s biosystem all at once. “But slowly,” the corpulent monster instructed him. He coughed up a wad of caustic phlegm and hocked it at Mark Hopkin’s groin. Hounddog jumped in the way to accept the injury that would have dissolved his master. The super-powered dog yelped and rolled over as his fur burned. The Bloodreaper kicked him and the injured dog vanished over the horizon. “Now,” the scythe wielding maniac grinned, slashing through spiffy’s feebly-thrashing fern, “let’s see what you’ve got inside.” De Brown Streak blurred in and whisked spiffy away from Bloodreaper’s adamantine blade. He got half a block before the highly infectious plagues infecting Mark Hopkins caught hold of him too. “You shouldn’t have done that,” spiffy pointed out as Josh Clement whizzed him to Dr Whitwell. “Now we’ll both die.” “Are you kidding?” Josh told him. “You know how fast my body can adapt to fight disease? And now I’ve got that fat guy’s whole catalogue. You know how fast I can restore lost blood as well, when I donate serum for other people to get antidotes? And how I can speed your metabolism the same way? Doc, do your stuff.” He coughed up blood and dropped to his knees. “Soon would be good,” he admitted. “Watch your back, big guy!” Goldeneyed called out, teleporting in to plant a boot in Maladomini’s face as she brought her lash round to try and slice off the hemigod’s head. But then Bry Katz’ debilitation caught up with him and the dark mistress caught him with a sharp backhand that tore jagged gashed down his side with her wrist-brace. G-Eyed gasped and tried to teleport out before he realised he was in a could of some toxic emission from Phleglethor. The Bloodreaper came in for the kill. Donar smashed the Hellraiser half a mile back through every building in between. But Goldeneyed was down, just like NTU-150 and Banjooooo. spiffy and DBS were too weak to intervene any more. That left Donar alone in battle. The four Hellraisers surrounded him and took turns to attack, slashing and slicing, lashing and searing. It was a while since they’d killed an immortal. “Do something!” Ham-Boy called as he watched the battle in an enchanted pool from Emoh Sranod, Donar’s ancestral castle in the far fields of Ausgard. “We have to get down there and help him!” “They’re killing him,” agreed Fashion Accessory in a very fetching fur and metal-cones valkyrie outfit. “Lady Annj, you’re his wife. You have to help him!” “I wish I could,” the Queen of Ausgard admitted. “But by decree of the Celestians the Oldmanpower is limited on Middlegard, and the ways to help Donar are closed!” She swallowed hard. “I can only watch.” “Then get us back there,” Kerry Shepherdson demanded. “He needs help!” “Already my stepson and your brave companion Glory lie stricken in our Halls of Healing, tasking even the arts of sage Visioneery,” Annj pointed out. “I cannot allow you to go to the fray, though my heart yearns to rescue my husband.” “If you can get me a laptop I can try and see if they’ve got the SPUD helicarrier off the ground again,” Zack Zelmitz offered. “Because laptops are the number one Ausgardian export these days,” Lindy Wilson scorned. “We can do nothing,” Queen Annj warned the children in her charge, gripping the stone arms of her chair to stop herself screaming, “Save watch and hope.” “Hoki? How do you do? I’m Elizabeth von Zemo, Fourteenth Baroness of Saxe-Lurkburg and Shreckhausen. Can we talk?” “I don’t care that we can’t get this bucket off’a Herbert Garrick’s lawn,” warned Dan Drury, Director of SPUD, as he kicked the fallen helicarrier. “Git out every flying buggy we got on this piece’a junk and pile every guy and gal who knows which end of a blaster ta point and tell ‘em ta saddle up and get after me to Paradopolis.” “Gotcha, boss,” grinned Pigeon. “I got me an appointment with the dame what sank my boat,” Drury declared. Hallie looked very fetching in Visionary’s yellow coat. “I think I know what happened,” the now-human former artificial intelligence suggested. “About me becoming, you know, a real girl.” “You were real before, dammit,” growled Visionary. They continued to work on reconnecting the Lair Mansion’s communications systems. “When the Hellraisers attacked, Marie awoke and did her banshee bit on them,” Hallie remembered. “But according to those tapes we played back, the Chain Knight has some power over death, maybe has become the personification of Death…” “Which is so not good,” interrupted Visionary. “And used that authority to destroy Marie. Or maybe to capture her, since he talked about saving her soul for later.” “And the list of reasons for us to smack down the Chain Knight just keeps getting longer.” “Marie was the guardian of the island, adopted to be part of the defences left by the Celestian Space Robots back when the Secret of the Parodyverse used to be hidden here. So when she was neutralised, the mansion looked for another… protector.” “It adopted you?” Vizh speculated. “Marie died unable to speak or protest, murdered in this place, and her ghost became our supernatural guardian. I… I think I died the same way,” suggested Hallie. “Except I’m extremely practised in creating hard-light bodies for myself using my virtual reality technology, so instead of becoming a banshee or some kind of spook…” “You used the power to form yourself a flesh and blood form,” the possibly-fake man concluded. “Whoa.” The panel they were working on sparked to life. “Hey, I’m getting a feed from Enty’s chest camera!” Hallie called. “I can see what’s… oh no!” The injured Chain Knight retreated through Death’s domain then shifted back to his stronghold, his Fortress of Darkness in the eternally-spinning interdimensional vortex. The katana found a chink in his armour between shoulder and back and slid smoothly in to stab where his heart had once been. That was how he knew Keiko was waiting for him. “What now?” he growled, flexing his chains to beat back the young woman who’d been lying in wait. “You again? Excellent. I’m in need of some light entertainment.” “You get one chance to stand down and surrender,” Keiko told him. “Take it or suffer.” “I define the meaning of suffering, insolent wench,” Sir Lucian told her, turning upon her with her blade still protruding from his back. “But I shall define it upon your flesh!” Keiko backflipped away from the chains. “Overcompensating much?” she asked, because it seemed to irritate her opponent. She reached the shimming portal back to Herringcarp only to find the way was locked. “Yes,” noted Sir Lucian. “I have a way with locks. It looks like you have no way out.” Keiko shrugged. “Then that’s two of us,” she noted, and hurled herself through the stained glass window into the swirling maelstrom of dimensional vortex beyond. Then she thumbed the detonator, and the explosives she’d borrowed from Messenger went off at strategic points all around the castle, shattering it and the rock it stood on into spinning seething fragments. “Hey,” complained Trickshot as he saw the trio of Hell Lords standing on the jagged black rocks before the Lair Legion, “didn’t we already spank these guys before?” Dormaggadon snarled and cast the Vermillion Vipers of Vastorr at his enemies. Twisted ribbons of confining energy squirmed out to squeeze the heroes to pulp. Cressida transmuted bands to hands and dozens of prosthetics rattled down the mountainside. Nats and Falcon took point, shearing forwards on oblique spiralling trajectories that confused the former Lord of the Dreary Dimension. Then the ground beneath him pyrokinetically detonated while he was speared with a tazer line and dragged from his feet. “These guys are mega-powerful,” Hatman called, dragging on his bishop’s mitre, “but they’re not used to up close physical combat. Bless ‘em.” Mr Epitome took him at his word and hauled a fist into Mr Lucifer’s face. The white-suited fallen angel glared at him and the paragon of power burst into flame. The Shoggoth rolled over both of them, dousing the flames and enveloping the demon. “That wasn’t nice,” the elder being concluded. “Now I’m going to have to gel you.” A thousand torments projected into the Shoggoth’s brain turned out to merely be of mild interest to the elder being, so Mr Lucifer teleported from within the roiling biomass. The nature of the loathsome spawn proved more complex to transport through than he had anticipated, so Mr Lucifer vanished from the battle for ten minutes. “Idiots!” Mefrotho, prince of fibs screeched, but whether at his enemies or his allies he didn’t know. “Overbear them. Rend them, Make them bleed! Like this!” And suddenly the battlefield was filled with hundreds of shrieking, clawing demons. “No, I don’t think so,” Al B. Harper frowned, jabbing deep into a mechanism in his pocket with the end of his bubble pipe. “He’s gating those in on a subharmonic on the Day-Wrichards scale. Just let me set up a counterwave and I’ll soon get them out of here.” CrazySugarFreakboy! bounced from one monster to the next, toppling them down the scree slopes and working his way towards Mefrothto. “Soon would be good,” he admitted. “Every time Frothy looks at them they just get more powerful.” Below, the Dread Dormaggadon rose wrathfully and pounded Hatman, Yo, and Falcon away from him. Shining red strands enmeshed them, and then he picked off Trickshot, dull thud, and Nats in rapid succession. “Dolts!” he shouted. “You have the arrogance to dare…” Then Mr Epitome hammered a punch through his chest, into the searing flame that was his being. “Aaagh!” both of them screamed, rolling backwards. “Keep going,” Hatman called as the magics tangling him faded away. “Cut and switch tactics.” “Beware of uncute-Blackhurting though!” warned Yo. “He is to be reforming!” “Never mind those fools,” proclaimed Mefrothto, “beware of me!” And his ultimate attack lanced into the minds of the intruding heroes, dredging out the worst pain each had ever suffered and making them relive it.” “That’s not nice at all,” complained the Librarian angrily. Lee Bookman reached forward and brushed against the blood-red carcass of the Prince of Fibs and used his ability to transmit the contents of any volume he was storing in his mind to download the Bible into Mefrothto. The Prince of Fibs’ screech echoed over the black expanse of the devastated Nightmare Realm. “Now, while he’s distracted,” Knifey told ManMan. “Relax,” Joe Pepper told his blade as he jumped at the writhing Mefrothto and plunged Knifey into the demon lord’s chest, “I did this before.” “Why do you think I brought you along?” asked Xander the Improbable. He leaned over with an iron tentpeg and pinned something dark and fluttering that was escaping from Mefrothto’s stricken body. “No, I think you should just stay there for now, thank you.” “Father!” snarled Blackhurt, literally pulling himself together by force of will after being popped by the Manga Shoggoth. It wasn’t clear whether he was happy or sad to see his progenitor destroyed. Falcon emptied a payload of timed high explosives into the space where Blackhurt was reforming. Shortly afterwards he needed to start reforming again. There was a smell of burning circuitry, the sound of Al B. trying to put his smouldering hair out, and the host of demons vanished from the battlefield. “Ow. I really have to write a paper on this. Ow!” “Can I get a copy?” the Librarian checked anxiously. “Yo is thinking is to be time to be getting of Resolution Prophesy out for chains, yes?” “Sounds good to me,” agreed Hatman, reaching for his Jets cap. Dormaggadon rose into the air, blazing with fury. “Enough!” he thundered, and suddenly every human present was straight-jacketed in confinement magics, except for CSFB!. Yo likewise bounded free, the Manga Shoggoth appeared to eat his. Xander regarded his confinement thoughtfully and brought out a roll of watchmaker’s tools. “I’ll keep him occupied!” CrazySugarFreakBoy! promised, letting yet more magics slide off his Impossibilityium silly suit and spraying the Dread Lord with fizz-bang whiz-bangs. “Yo, help the others to urk!” At that point Dormaggadon had reached out and slammed Dreamcatcher Foxglove into the mountainside. Yo dropped on the Dead Hell Lord and plunged a rapier into the burning mass of his head. The rapier melted. Dormaggadon blasted Yo with the Searing Spears of Saggaroth, smashing the broken thought being back onto the slippery black rocks. Yo slumped and didn’t move again. “That was unsporting, and the rules committee will probably want to speak with you about it,” the Manga Shoggoth complained, rolling forwards. Dormaggadon formed an elder sign with casual ease and sent it searing into the elder being. “I learned to pin your kind when I was but a boy!” the Dread Lord spat. Blackhurt reformed again, standing over the black fluttering soul-thing of Mefrothto. With evil relish he unpinned it then swallowed it whole. Mr Lucifer finally completed the Byzantine dimensional travelling required to free himself from the Shoggoth’s additional dimensions and joined the two surviving Dead Hell Lords to survey the captured Legion. “Now for the entertaining part,” he suggested. “Just what I was thinking,” Xander agreed, folding away his toolkit, stepping free of his confinement, and whispering something into the ear of the imprisoned Resolution Prophecy. “Now.” Once again a dimensional rift opened on the black outcrop, and this time Cleone tumbled through, with Messenger and Sorceress. Then the Sorceress saw Blackhurt, Prince of Fibs, and Messenger saw Mr Lucifer, and each of them knew why they had been summoned. For one moment Sir Mumphrey Wilton and Lady Marjorie Wilton coexisted in the same fragment of time. Then reality asserted itself and the eccentric Englishman was left holding the Chronometer of Infinity, and alone. “Madge,” he whispered. “Mumphrey?” Asil asked softly. “Asil,” the old man recognised, and clutched her to him. “Where did the Chain Knight go?” Dancer demanded. “Did we just kick his ass?” “He has departed because he recognised that we were distracting him from co-ordinating against the wider offensive prepared against him and his comrades,” answered the Hooded Hood. “He realised we were a diversion. He’s quite clever really, for an insane monomaniac.” “I can summons him back here,” Lisa scowled. “Round three. The decider.” “No, I fear that would be rather helpful to him,” the Hood replied. “He has returned to his stronghold intending to go from there to take command of his troops in the field. But if my previous preparations have proved effective he may find himself facing an angry vengeful young woman who will go to any lengths to inconvenience him.” “That Keiko lassie?” Sir Mumphrey surmised. “I rather thought you’d got your hooks into her.” “Really,” said Lisa flatly. “Of course,” said Dancer coldly. “So what’s the plan?” Asil asked oblivious to the undertones. “Now that my supposed defeat has gained enough time for the pieces to be put in place…” the hooded Hood began to answer. But Asil interrupted him. “I was asking Sir Mumphrey, actually.” The cowled crime czar glowered. “He is our glorious leader,” Lisa pointed out mischievously. “And when the time came to choose between surrendering to preserve your life, whatsoever the personal cost, or to fight the enemy and abandon you to your fate, which of us valued you enough to sacrifice ourself, and which cared only for duty?” asked the Hooded Hood. “Very nice point, Winkelweald,” snapped Sir Mumphrey Wilton. “Dashed clever. And getting’ Miss Waltz and Dancer as hostages to involve the Lair Legion never entered into it, what?” “The Hood said this wasn’t one of his plans,” Dancer noted. “Hood, did you lie?” “He said it wasn’t one of his plans,” Lisa pointed out. “This is several of your plans working together, right Ioldobaoth?” “Isn’t it always?” rumbled Sir Mumphrey Wilton. “Chap can’t think in a straight line to save his life.” “But at least I can think,” suggested the cowled crime czar. “Guys, can we do this later?” Dancer suggested. “After we, you know, save the universe?” “Indeed,” rumbled the Hooded Hood. “Are you ready to fight the Hellraisers on a level playing field, Sir Mumphrey? Or at least as level as I have been able to make it?” The eccentric Englishman checked his almost exhausted Chronometer. “Miss Ashling stays here, and you take care of her until I return,” he told the cowled crime czar. “Your word on it.” “Sir Mumphrey!” protested Asil. “My word,” agreed the Hood. “Keep an eye on him, Asil,” Lisa told her clone. “He’s tricky.” Then, in undertones she added, “And he’s dead on his feet. Look after him. Please.” “Then we’re ready to give the blighters the thrashing they so richly deserve,” Mumphrey told the Hooded Hood. “Make it so.” Ioldobaoth Winkelweald moved up to the restored Portal of Pretentiousness and stroked its glassy surface as if it was a lover. “It’s time, old friend,” he whispered to it. “You know what to do.” Keiko fell into Vortex, the maelstrom of possible futures and pasts in which the little narrative spheres of reality spun around the Nexus of Unreality. And she realised that here she would only exist as long as she was able to believe in herself. She had no idea how long or short a period she was tossed like a leaf in the hurricane, only that she was losing her grip, becoming more tenuous, struggling for her survival in a place where human life was never intended to endure. She wondered if this was how it ended, and if anyone would ever know what she had done. She wondered about Sean, and what would become of him. And then someone grabbed her round the waist and hauled her upwards, and there was a chord like the destruction of universes and she found herself elsewhere, in a calm quiet place filled with haze and tiny glimmering threads of interwoven light. “You okay?” asked Chronic, the guitar-wielding undead servant of the Hellraisers. Keiko reached for her sai. “Hey, I just rescued you! Could you please not carve me into briquettes?” “Why?” demanded the assassin. “Why save me? Who are you working for now?” “I’m not real big on working for anybody,” answered the undead anarchist. “The Chain Knight bound me to do some stuff for him, and that’s pissing me off big time, but when he’s not giving me orders I’m my own man. Plus I got a big power upgrade during this Crisis thing we had a while back that the Hellraisers don’t know about. And I saved you because… well, you blew up their castle! That was totally awesome! Can I have your autograph?” Keiko couldn’t help but grin at the musician’s enthusiasm. Chronic glanced around. “Okay look, we’ve got to book outta here before the Chronicler or somebody gets all ‘you can’t tresspass’-y or something. I can drop you off back home in your galaxy far far away if that’s what you want, or I can get you to the really big fight with Blackhurt and his merry band of nasties. Which is it?” “Home?” Keiko savoured the word, could see the orderly streets of Garden City. But she hadn’t yet completed her mission. “Let’s take down Blackhurt,” she said. “Rock,” grinned Chronic, unslinging the devil’s guitar and turning the volume dial up to Sturm und Drang, “and roll!” Donar struggled to rise as the four Hellraisers took it in turn to pound him. The hemigod was a mass of wounds, little better than Harlagaz had been after his ambush by the same villains earlier. And like Harlagaz, he didn’t know when to lay down and die. “Are you watching, humans?” Maladomini demanded of the terrified observers pressed to the windows of the Phantomhawk Memorial Hospital and the housing beyond. “Behold and tremble as the last of your champions falls!” That was when the reverse neutrino blast caught her in the stomach and pounded her off the pile of wreckage she perched on and into the shattered sewer. “Put down the Ausgardian and back away,” Visionary bluffed, hefting an NTUmatic force projector that was getting alarmingly hot. “The Lair Legion’s back, and this time it’s personal!” For a moment the Hellraisers laid off their beating of Donar and cast around for new attacks. “The fake one is bluffing!” the Bloodreaper declared, sniffing the air. “He and the wench stand alone!” “Wench?” Vizh puzzled. “What wench?” Then Hallie caught Phleglethor in the belly as the plague demon turned round to see who was attacking them now. The particle accelerator winded him for a moment but then he swelled up and reddened in anger at the assault. “What, you thought I was going to let you take on these people on your own, Visionary?” Hallie demanded of the possibly-fake man. “What were you thinking taking them on solo, by the way?” “They hurt my friends. I was hoping they might think the whole LL was back and decide to retreat. My bad. And it’s one thing to do a famous last stand on my own, another entirely to drag you into it.” Vizh and Hallie found themselves back to back beside the fallen shapes of Goldeneyed and Banjooooo. “This would have been so much better if I was still an AI able to project holograms,” Hallie worried as the four Hellraisers surrounded them. “Don’t let them catch me alive, Vizh.” Visionary looked around and calculated the odds. He wondered if he had time to shoot himself as well. Maladomini’s lash whipped the weapon from his hands. “Now,” hissed Nosferos. “Let us see if we cannot kill the maiden and the jester more satisfyingly thiss time.” “You!” shouted Messenger as he saw his deadliest enemy still clinging to shreds of existence after all he’s sacrificed to destroy him. “You don’t get to live!” “As if you could ever stop me, Zauriel Brokenwings!” Lucifer replied. And as the two of them clashed together the black skies above them seethed with lightnings, and the shadows they cast of the struggle showed nothing even remotely human. Sorceress ignored all that, focussing on the young Prince of Fibs, renewed to his full strength through the consumption of his father. “You can’t believe that you can hope to prevail against me,” Blackhurt boasted as he grew in size to tower over Whitney Darkness. He black chitinous carapace clicked and crawled as he swelled. “I am a Demon Prince of the Abyssal Plain. I am commander of hosts! I am the Dark Things that Seethe in Your Brain!” “Very nice,” said Whitney. “And I’m the girl that’s here to kick your ass.” She smiled unpleasantly. “That’s what witches do.” Dread Dormaggadon rose up behind her, a lethal spell on his fingers. Xander the Improbable tapped him on the buttock. “Excuse me,” the sorcerer supreme told him. “You’re facing the wrong way. Your enemy’s on that side.” Then the dimensions rifted again and Chronic spilled through to land in a dramatic album cover pose on the peak of the jagged black hill. “That?” sneered Domaggadon. “A little knot of undead carcass of a human derelict?” Xander ducked down behind a rock and stuck his fingers in his ears. Chronic strummed the Devil’s Guitar, and for once he was its master: “Please allow me to introduce myself I'm a man of wealth and taste I've been around for a long, long years Stole many a man's soul and faith.” Dread Dormaggadon’s blazing eyes widened. “That instrument? That was destroyed! That was forbidden! That was…” Then Chronic took it to the bridge. The black rock shuddered and shattered, tumbling spell-bound Legionnaires off on different fragments spinning wildly in the void. Sorceress and Blackhurt seemed not to notice, hanging as they were in nothingness, staring at each other. Of Messenger and Lucifer there was no sign, except sometimes the beating of mighty wings. Dormaggadon staggered up, his flames ragged but still flickering, and stared at the exhausted Chronic. “Is that the best you can do?” he demanded. “Good, but not good enough. I am…” Keiko didn’t wait for the full proclamation. She just stabbed Knifey into the back of the Dread Lord’s blazing skull now that Chronic had the enemy’s full attention. “Like I didn’t warn you people,” the talking blade declared as he was twisted round in Dormaggadon’s head. Dormaggadon popped like a soap bubble, his flames seething outward in a final sphere of fire before he disperse into nothingness. Blackhurt was oblivious to the fall of his fellow Hell Lord, because he felt himself overcoming his own enemy, this arrogant human Sorceress that dared oppose him. And once she fell there was so much he wanted to do to her. “Your power is nothing,” he gloated. “Your will is nothing. For a screaming eternity I will prove that on your flesh and your soul. You cannot triumph over me. You are mortal, and I am the new ruler of infinity. That is the difference between us!” “No,” Whitney told him triumphantly through gritted teeth, “The difference is that I have friends.” That was when Blackhurt learned that the Sorceress had also been unpicking the spells that bound the Lair Legion. Hatman in his rockets cap literally flew through the Prince of Fibs’ head. Trickshot followed up with an admantine arrow through the heart, Epitome with a carapace-cracking gutshot, and Nats with a pyrokinetic flare in the belly. The Prince of Fibs tumbled down, collapsing into millions of black crawling cockroaches. Then the Manga Shoggoth rolled over them all, and the insects vanished into his translucent gelid midst. The skies were lit white as the Messenger/Lucifer battle concluded, and then the charred, scarred postman fell from nowhere and landed in an exhausted crouch clutching a melted bloody razor letter. “Did we… just win?” asked the Librarian tentatively. “Hey, it was only four Hell Lords,” shrugged Trickshot. “Are they really gone?” dull thud asked. Al B. Harper checked his ectoplasmic wave monitor. “I’m not picking up anything from them,” he admitted. “They’re gone,” Knifey proclaimed, back in ManMan’s grip once more. “They were clinging on to existence anyway. We pushed them off the edge. And good riddance. Now if we can just do Chronic’s guitar…” “Hey, I helped out,” the undead musician complained. “This is all very well,” CSFB! interrupted, “but who’s the hot Electra-babe and why hasn’t anybody introduced us?” Keiko looked round to see where she’d dropped her sai. “Whitney,” Hatman called, rushing over to the Sorceress. “I found you at last.” “Hello Jay,” Whitney Darkness smiled. “Rushing to my rescue as usual?” “I guess old habits die hard, eh?” She touched her ex-lover’s hand affectionately. “I guess. But this time I had to save myself. This time it was all me. I did it. And at last I’m me.” “You okay?” Mr Epitome asked as he helped Yo to his/her feet. “Yo is to be being fine,” the pure thought being told him. “And Yo is to be being very happy that you are thinking to be asking.” Cleone stroked the pitted cheek of Lord Resolution, hanging on a frame of magics that bound him to servitude. “Do you understand now?” she asked him gently. “It’s not your time yet. That’s why you’ve had so much pain, so much trouble. Your moment hasn’t come. We’re not ready for the end.” The personification of the Resolution Prophecy didn’t move, but when the swanmay unbuckled his shackles he quietly dissolved away. Cleone found Xander looking at her. “Hello,” she bade him. “Hello,” he replied with a little pleased smile. “I missed you.” And the Dead Lords of Hell were gone at last. There was a shriek of rending dimensions and the Chain Knight stalked from the realm of Death to join the others. “We have some problems,” he warned them. “The Hooded Hood is free. The Fortress has been destroyed. And I can no longer sense the Dead Hell Lords.” “Too bad,” said Visionary, trying to drag Donar’s bleeding hulk over to guard with his other fallen friends. “It’s not too late for you to run away, you know. The Legion will give you a head start before we hunt you down and wipe you from the face of the Parodyverse!” “Silence him,” the Chain Knight roared, his temper finally flaring. The Bloodreaper surged forward and sliced off Visionary’s head. Hallie screamed. And then time reversed, as the Chronometer of Infinity wound things back for a replay. A lash that wasn’t Maladomini’s tangled the Bloodreapers arm and spoiled his aim, and a lithe girl with a cloud of wildly-flying midnight hair grabbed Visionary back and threw him to Hallie. “Hi guys!” Dancer called. “Did you miss us?” “Yes,” admitted Visionary. “Quite a bit.” “Wilton!” the Chain Knight snarled as he recognised the eccentric Englishman with the two interfering women. “Can’t you Legionnaires simply stay dead?” “Nay,” muttered Donar, feebly trying to rise. “There art smitething to do.” “What he said,” Vizh agreed. “Hey, Maladomini,” Lisa called out to the dark mistress at the Chain Knight’s side. “Top this one!” Then the Portal of Pretentiousness shimmered and the rest of the Lair Legion appeared flanking the little knot of beleaguered heroes. Yo, Hatman, CrazySugarFreakBoy!, Trickshot, dull thud, Nats, the Manga Shoggoth, Falcon, the Librarian, and Al B. Harper ranged out around the fallen. “And do you know what two word catchphrase we’re going to shout out now, kiddies?” Nats asked, just before the final battle began. “Then let me add this. I’m damned proud to have had a chance to work with each one of you. A great privilege. Now we go to fight an uphill battle on a prepared enemy at a battlefield of their choosin’. They may think this is going to be an easy win. I think it’ll be their hardest test. I think it’ll be our finest hour.” Next Issue: The no-holds-barred high-stakes blood-drenched conclusion, featuring the rematch between the heroes and the villains with everything at stake. Death and glory in Untold Tales of the Lair Legion vs the Hellraisers Again: Once More With Feeling. Of course, I haven’t actually written that yet, so for the first time in over a year the stories have caught up with me. Ulp. Beware the Jabberwock, My Footnote: The fragments of narrative used at the beginning and end of the story all come from various previous Untold Tales. Chronic's song is Mick Jagger's Sympathy for the Devil. The only other thing to record is a clarification required by Nats in a follow-up comment. I'm obviously failing in the exposition recently. Nats: ...what happened? I noted a lot of spectacular battles and a few twists and all that darling Watsar prose, but how exactly did the twist work out, again? HH put in a retcon at the last second that would restore him once the Chain Knight's hostages were freed, or... something? And did he also cause the formation of the Hell Lords? And if so, um, why? HH: When the Hood surrendered to the Hellraisers he did so under a binding demonic pact, but the twist was that he was the one choosing the words carefully. The Hellraisers agreed to that pact - that the Hood would surrender as long as no harm came to Lisa and Dancer, but that the pact was void if it did - and the Hood used a final retcon as the bargain was sealed. This retcon turned the power of the pact, and of the Resolution Prophecy behind it, against the Hellraisers if the pact was broken, and it allowed for the Hood's restoration to the way he was before. The Hood gambled that Lisa would figure out the loophole - she is an evil lawyer, after all. So when Lisa slugged Dancer the pact was broken and by then the Hood's other preparations were in place for him to exploit. The Hood had nothing to do with the formation of the Dead Hell Lords. That was down to Lord Resolution, the personificatin of the prophecy, who recruited the demons that would otherwise have slipped into oblivion to act as his lieutenants in his third and greatest bid to bring about the Resolution War. But his lieutantants turned on him, enslaved him, and harnessed his power. Then they woke the Hellraisers as their agents back in the living worlds. The Hooded Hood knew that someone or something was bending the narratives against him and the LL, but he couldn't directly counter it. So he used the "defeat" ploy to learn what he was facing and to get his enemies looking in the wrong directions. Nats: I just hope the Hellraisers don't turn out to be pushovers in the final battle. The Hell Lords were all big and scary but taken down pretty easily, when you look at it. Then again, they were all over-the-hill demon kings, the mooks. HH: Perhaps I should have emphasised that they were attacked on their weakest points quite deliberately, as Xander had set it up. In effect, each of them was killed in a repeat of the way they had originally fallen, and in most cases by the same person's hand; a kind of chink in their defences. The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom Who's Who in the Parodyverse Where's Where in the Parodyverse Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2004 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2004 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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