Heretical Edge

We were in London. I was with Miranda and Tabbris and we were in London sometime in the past. I wasn't exactly certain how far in the past, but it was at least after Big Ben had been built. Maybe I should have paid more attention to stuff like that so I would know when we were. But on the other hand, how could I ever have guessed something like this would happen? This was kind of a big deal.

And speaking of a big deal, Tabbris and Miranda were both still clinging to me as tightly as they could, while I returned it. But we were starting to attract attention. Thus far, no one seemed to have noticed that we had just appeared out of nowhere or anything, but I wasn't sure if that was more because the Ankou had covered that, or thanks to the Bystander Effect fixing the situation.

Either way, even if they didn't notice anything supernatural going on, this little reunion was definitely attracting some interest from people passing by. Especially since we weren’t exactly dressed for the location and time. I was probably relatively okay, but the other two were standing out. Randi had jeans and a purple tee shirt, while Tabbris wore a denim overall skirt over a long-sleeved black and white striped shirt.

We needed to find a more private place to talk. So, I turned a bit while setting my sister down. My voice cracked. “This place is too crowded. Come on, let's find some place a little more quiet. I can explain everything.” Belatedly, I amended, “Well, maybe not everything. But I can explain a hell of a lot. And it might take awhile.”

I could tell the other two wanted to bombard me with questions. Without any interruptions, they probably would have stayed out there taking turns asking everything under the sun. But they knew I was right about needing someplace more quiet. The three of us started walking together down the sidewalk. I did my best to ignore the smell of horse manure in the nearby street. That really wasn't something I had ever thought about when looking at romanticized pictures of this time period. But seriously, the horses pulling all those carriages really pooped a lot.

That was another reason to get away from the street. It was a little overwhelming. I had no idea how people could stand around out there and even think straight. Maybe they were just accustomed to it. I, on the other hand, definitely wasn’t. Yeah, it was time to go up away from it. That or--oh right. Summoning a few clean air spell coins to my hand, I passed them out as we went. Soon, the three of us were breathing much more easily. So that was one problem taken care of, anyway.

Leading the other two down a narrow alley, I looked around to make sure the coast was clear. Granted, the Bystander Effect probably would have allowed us to do this out in front of everyone as long as they were human, but there was no way of knowing for certain that they all were. Someone could have been watching us who would actually retain what they saw. And right now, doing anything to stand out was probably a bad idea. Especially if it risked attracting attention from people who could possibly live all the way into the present and remember us. Yeah, bad.

Okay, Extra, I sent inwardly, let’s make a little set of stairs up to that roof over there.

My hand rose under her control, and the air in front of us solidified. It sort of looked a bit like a mix between clear ice and glass, an almost but not quite invisible stairway you had to squint to see very well. The moment I did, however, Miranda jolted. She gave me a quick look, but before she could do anything, I realized the problem. “Randi, I know what you’re seeing right now. I’m not an Alter posing as me. I just used an active power and set off your Boscher sense, right?”

“Yes,” Miranda confirmed flatly, clearly suspicious.

While Tabbris gave a soft gasp and looked quickly back and forth between us, I spoke carefully. “It’s a really long story, like I said. I’ll explain why that happened when we get to it. But I’m really me, I promise. For whatever that’s worth. Something happened to me while I was out with Ehn that makes me register as an Alter to the Boscher sense. I’m going to prove it right now. Here.” Extending my hand off to the side, I summoned Seth and Grover, as well as Jason, Kaleigh, Chas, and Emily. The six of them vouched for me, and Miranda finally relaxed. She and Tabbris both started trying to stammer even more questions.

“Uh, yeah,” I assured them, “we’ll get to all that too, cross my heart. But for now…” Under Extra’s renewed attention, my fingers twitched to make the solid air form itself into a set of stairs once more and hold itself like that. Then I gestured with my other hand. “Go ahead, up to the roof. It'll hold. I’m right behind you. Then we can talk about--you know, everything.” No matter how long that would take to get through.

Tabbris went first, with Miranda right behind her, both still giving me searching looks for that whole Boscher sense thing. They tested the invisible stairway before heading up quickly. Glancing around once more, I followed them, while the sound of clip-clopping horses passing one another in the street faded just a little bit. On the way, I sent Seth and the others to scout around a bit.

There we were, on a rooftop in old London sometime in the far past. Staring out over the huge city for a second, I took it in before hearing a throat clear behind me. Turning, I faced my sister and my best friend, both of whom were paying more attention to me than to anything else.

“Flick?” Tabbris started, sounding equal parts amazed, confused, and happy, “what’s going on? Why are we here? When is here? I mean when are we? I mean where’s Ehn? Did he bring us back to help you? Why does Miranda get the Stranger Danger alert from you? What--why--umm…” She paused, looking toward Miranda for some help.

“I think ‘what’s going on’ covers it,” the other girl decided, her gaze still centered on me. “Don’t get me wrong, Flickster, we are super-happy to see you. Seriously. But what is all this?”

Oh boy, this was going to take a bit to get through. But at least we had the privacy I had wanted. Or at least, we had privacy. But at the very second that my mouth opened to start explaining everything, a loud and terrifying screech filled the air. It was coming from above and behind me. I spun around, staff appearing in my hand as I stared up at the source of that terrible scream. Already, I was cursing myself for not sending out even more ghost scouts the second we arrived here. I usually had spotters out and about, but the whole rift thing had screwed that up, and I’d been distracted. Too distracted.

Immediately, I saw that it wasn't just one thing. There was an entire swarm of creatures descending toward us. They were all screaming, that horrible screech making me cringe backward reflexively. It had to be some sort of power. They chorused that scream together, in perfect unison. Behind me, I could feel the other two staggering a bit as well.

At first, I thought they were harpies, like the one I’d gotten my blood-tracking ability from. But these were different. They did look sort of like the harpies I’d seen before, female humanoid figures with bat-like wings and beaks instead of noses. But the human parts didn’t all look like old women. Some were quite young, actually, maybe my age or even a bit younger. And they didn’t--well this was a bit hard to explain, but they didn’t look natural. No, even in that immediate glimpse, I could tell there was something horribly off about them. Although the human parts were superficially beautiful, they were also unnaturally pale and just… wrong. Hell, it sort of looked like they were an assortment of different parts sewn together. My first instinct was to say they were dead, but no, these things were very much alive. They were just--there was something--

“Flick!” Miranda’s voice cut through my confusion, as one of the girl’s duplicates appeared beside me, grabbing my arm to yank hard just as three of the incoming harpy-like things opened their beaks to send a trio of concussive blasts that tore through that bit of the roof. The Miranda duplicate hauled me to the side, where we fell together just out of reach of that blast. Meanwhile, a different Miranda created a ball of air in one hand before hurtling it that way with a grunt. As soon as the little orb reached that trio of bird-women, it exploded into a tornado that sent them careening in every direction, crashing into more of their sister-creatures before they could attack.

Rolling over, I muttered a quick thanks to the other girl before hopping back to my feet. That had to have been another power of theirs. Or maybe it was connected to the scream itself. Either way, leaving me standing there flat-footed, just thinking about what these creatures were and what they looked like while they came swooping in for the kill was some sort of supernatural gift.

My staff had gone rolling across the roof after Miranda yanked me away from the blast, but it had only been a couple seconds, so I summoned it right back. “Extra, we need some quiet!” Even as I gave that instruction, I was converting my staff into a bow, sending a quick energy arrow toward the thickest cluster of the creatures. That arrow exploded, sending two of them slamming down into the roof while several more sailed off in different directions, their screeches becoming deafening.

And then the screeching got much quieter, at least for us. Extra had followed my instruction, using her power to make any sound louder or quieter for individual people. She had made it almost basically silent for all three of us, which was a very welcome relief. With that horrible screech becoming barely more than a whisper in the background, I could actually think straight again.

Unfortunately, that was when I realized that the power within that screaming hadn’t only made me stand there thinking about them while they attacked. It had also been distracting me from their true target, a target several of them were already wrapping in their hands. Tabbris, they were grabbing Tabbris. Her energy wings were already out, having sliced through what looked like five or six of the creatures, killing all of them. But she was still young, and there were so many of these things. They didn't seem to care how many of them died as long as they fulfilled their mission. As the wings flickered and faded, she cried out for me. Two of the creatures grabbed her arms and began to fly upward. But I was there. A simple thought put me right on that side of the roof. My bladed staff cut the head from one of the creatures in a single swipe, while I sent a blast of concussive force out the other end to make the second creature holding onto my sister careen off the side of the roof. Three more of the things were coming in, until a handful of nearly-invisible ghosts slammed into them from the side. In that time, I’d recalled Seth and the others, and summoned a full swarm of my helpful assistants, matching the numbers of these creatures. All around us, throughout the sky, my ghosts were fighting the harpy-things, ripping them apart.

Three of the Mirandas joined us, panting from their own exertions. “Flick!” one of them blurted, looking my way with a visible grimace, “what the hell is going on? What are those things?!”

“I’m not completely sure,” I admitted, “but I have some ideas. Too much to get into right now.” With that, I glanced toward Tabbris. I had no idea why the things were apparently so intent on grabbing her, but I definitely didn’t like it. Not one little bit. We had to get out of here and regroup.

That, of course, was when the troll appeared. Or, no, it wasn’t just a troll. That would’ve been too simple. This thing leapt from the ground up to land on the opposite side of the roof, cracking it somewhat and nearly knocking the rest of us over. It stood ten feet tall, but no more than a foot of that was from the same body. Like the Not-Harpies, it was very clear that this monster had been stitched together from a bunch of different bodies, probably different creatures altogether. The skin was different, with visible stitching where it had been sewn together. There were spikes in some parts of the body and scales in other parts, both of which immediately stopped without rhyme or reason. Its shoulders were at slightly different heights, and it had two very different arms, one more gray and muscular, while the other was furry and a third again as long. The hands were the same as one another, but different from both of the arms, kind of scaly and lizardy in appearance, with six fingers. And those were just the arms that were supposed to be there. The thing had four more arms, all of which were just as clearly different as the first two were, extending from its back. Both of its legs looked like they’d come from a very tall, very heavy elephant, and its face… well, its face looked like that of three different human men all stitched together at slightly different angles. It had a single mouth in the center of its face, shared by all three faces. Two eyes set at an angle to the left, with a nose just under them. Two more eyes and a nose set at an angle to the right. And, naturally, a final two set of eyes and a nose upside down where its chin should have been. On a clockface, the first two eyes would have been at ten o’clock, the second set at two o’clock, and the third upside down at six o’clock. With the mouth dead center. A mouth that was twisted in a horrible parody of a smile, or maybe it was a terrible, pained grimace. Hell, from the upside down face’s perspective, it was a frown.

I had just enough time to take in the horror of the thing before it raised its foot and stomped down as hard as it could. Before I could shout a warning or focus on anything else, the roof caved in under us. We all fell together, amidst the debris from the collapsed roof. I had a flash of fear both for anyone that might have been in that building, as well as for Tabbris and Miranda. Fortunately, I wasn’t alone in my head. Extra was able to solidify the air just enough in that instant to make a slide under all three of us, which we went down through all the way into the pile of wreckage that had once been the building we had been standing on. It wasn’t exactly graceful, but at least we didn’t plummet straight down. It would’ve been a much rougher landing that way, to say the least.

Nor did we have time to recover from that. The next thing I knew, one of that mismatched monstrosity’s hands was grabbing me. I was flung sidelong into what remained of the demolished building’s walls, hitting hard enough to knock the wind out of me while Tabbris and Miranda both shouted my name. Three Mirandas appeared in front of the creature, two of them being instantly batted away by one sweep of its other forward-facing arm while the third held her shield up, creating a forcefield from it which its other hand slammed into with enough force to make the shield crack and fade a second later. That Miranda immediately had to leap away as two of the arms extending from its back grabbed chunks of debris and hurled them at her. They would have slammed right into the ground where Tabbris was, sending a flash of fear through me even as I started to shove myself back up. But my little sister managed to dodge backwards away from the debris, moving much more gracefully than she had when she’d first begun emerging from me. Her Seosten gifts--hell, Olympian Seosten gifts, had definitely more than made up for all the years she’d spent barely doing anything in her own body. She jumped backward away from the first projectile, flipped into the air to avoid the second before planting her feet against a random bit of still-standing wall, then bounced off that to flip forward, landing on the third chunk of bricks and stone before leaping off that so the fourth and last bit would go sailing under her. Still in midair, she extended her left hand and something appeared on it. It was a glowing light at first, before resolving itself into what looked like a glove with a miniature crossbow attached to the back of it. Wait, no, it was more like a mix of a crossbow and a glove. The ‘arms’ of the pistol crossbow piece extended out from either side of her closed fist, while the ‘string’ was made of glowing blue energy. It was sort of like when I used my own weapon in its bow form, in a much smaller scale and attached to her glove. And without her doing anything else, while she was still leaping over that third chunk of bricks, the energy ‘string’ on her glove crossbow stretched back all the way to her elbow, before three energy bolts appeared on it. They were sent that way, two striking the monster in its chest while the third narrowly missed, sailing off the side of the building. All of which she managed in just a brief couple of seconds while I was getting up.

The bolts weren’t enough to kill the sewn-together creature, but it did stagger back a step, howling in anger before starting to go after Tabbris again as she landed. It was my turn to interrupt it, however, as I pointed my staff that way and used a stored spell on it to summon something. In that instant, a coffin came down out of the sky and slammed so hard into the ground, it shattered apart to reveal its occupant: Penny Dreadful, my very empowered little girl golem zombie. It was an almost comical mismatch in size, this tiny dead eight-year-old girl with light brown hair standing there amidst the shattered remains of her coffin, staring up at the ten-foot-tall monster that was clearly put together from several different bodies (yet definitely alive in a way my Necromancy couldn’t do anything about). But while the visible differences between them were obvious, they were more closely matched in strength. Which was shown quite effectively when the monster reached out for Penny Dreadful, only for her to snarl and leap onto his extended arm, running up it to slam her fist into the side of his head, right next to one of his three faces. The blow knocked the monster onto his back, where three of his hands caught him just a couple feet off the ground. But PD was on his chest, hissing and snapping with her teeth while wailing away, her sharp fingernails cutting through his face while her fists pounded into his head again and again. His forward arms grabbed for her, but she was entirely too quick, scrambling animal-like all over him to evade those grasping hands while continuing to hit and kick him everywhere she could reach. Meanwhile, the harpy things were all being held off by my ghosts. Well, mostly anyway. A few were slipping through, but the various Miranda duplicates were dealing with those.

And just like that, as suddenly as it had started, the attack was abruptly aborted. That swarm of harpy things went flying off in different directions, while the giant Frankenstein thing literally vanished right out from under Penny Dreadful. They were… they were leaving?

Then I heard them, voices coming from just beyond the building calling out to surround the place and not let anyone or anything get out. The voice was very familiar, sending a brief shock through me. Katarin. That was Ulysses Katarin’s voice. Which meant the people surrounding the pile of debris that used to be this building were Boschers. Fuck.

Without wasting a second, I shifted instantly into my male form, summoning the appropriate clothes before rising the rest of the way to my feet. A quickly hissed spell while pointing my staff toward Tabbris and Miranda rendered them invisible.

Then I was standing in the middle of the broken building as Katarin and several more Heretics came into view through the cloud of dust. They saw me standing there like that, the tail of my long coat drifting a bit in the breeze while I faced them in the wreckage of this collapsed building. Penny Dreadful crouched at my feet, snarling darkly that way while my small army of ghosts filled the air around and behind me. Off in the distance, I heard Miranda and Tabbris both gasp. “Right,” I started, “I know this looks--”

“Jacob,” Katarin interrupted, face twisting a little as he stared--no glared at me. The other Heretics all raised their weapons.

“Put him down.”