Adventures of Superguy

August 19, 2010 - The Tower of Fate

Destiny

20:59:37

“Give it up, Nabu!” Klarion shouted, hurling fireball after infernal fireball. Each flew into the sky and exploded against a massive, incandescent golden ankh that floated in mid air and shielded its caster. “Order went out of style in the 20th century!”

“This battle is pointless.” Dr. Fate intoned, his voice gaining a curious, stereo quality. As if two people were speaking at once, though one had a slight distortion to it. Fate floated in mid air behind his ankh shield, arms outstretched to maintain the defense. He was attired in a dark blue body suit, with golden gloves and boots, and a broad golden belt that was decorated with ankhs and other mystic symbols. His golden cape billowed behind him in the night air as each of Klarion’s fireballs burst and threw a rush of hot air across the roof of the Tower. He glared down at the Witch Boy, baby blue eyes piercing the Lord of Chaos from the Helmet of Fate’s eye slits.

“You sought to take the Helmet before it gained a host, but you are too late.” Terra’s greatest sorcerer drawled.

“Shut it, you old fart!” Klarion barked out petulantly, before clapping his clawed hands together in front of himself, and kneeling to slap them down onto the Tower’s roof. Instantly, a massive pair of hands rose out of the surface, seemingly made of fitted stone blocks, and they stretched up to smash Dr. Fate between them. The stone hands crashed together with a thunderous report, and Fate vanished between them.

Klarion giggled with delight, but his celebration was short-lived. A glowing ankh appeared on the outside of the hands, pulsing with energy, before the construct exploded into shards of stone that rained down across the battlefield. Fate shook off dust and stone fragments with a flourish of his cape and turned his attention back to his foe.

“Brat!” He spat at Klarion, before bringing his hands together and forming a new golden ankh, this one horizontal with its bottom facing Klarion. The Witch Boy noticed his peril and threw up his arms to conjure a protective dome of his own, just as a massive blast of golden energy flashed from the ankh, a solid bar of light the width of a car. The blast slammed into Klarion’s shield.

The shadowed shield only held for a moment before it burst and the Witch Boy’s brief scream was cut off as he was enveloped in its energy blast. Klarion disappeared beneath the intensity of the blast, blown away like autumn leaves. The spell finished, and there was no sign left of Klarion.

Off to the side, Walli slowly got up from the ground, clutching her head and covered in rock dust. She had been thrown around by the mystic firepower on display, and the two sorcerous combatants had scarcely noticed her presence once Connor put on the Helmet and Fate took the reins. As she rose, she saw Klarion’s cat was padding towards her, and Dr. Fate began to lower himself back to the rooftop. 

But a swirl of dark specks twirled together on the roof behind Fate, swiftly landing on something at their center. Each speck looked like a black leaf and looked as if it landed on an invisible figure, with each leaf filling in the details until Klarion was revealed, grinning madly as he gathered more red lightning to his hands.

“Watch out!” Walli shouted, already darting to assist when the cat landed in her path and hissed far deeper than the tiny animal should be able to. Surprise alone brought Walli up short.

“What-” Fate began, starting to turn already but not before Klarion’s crimson lightning bolt smashed into his back and sent him crashing to the roof, smoking.

********

“AAARGH!” Connor cried out and fell to his knees, as his body jerked spasmodically and his muscles locked up. All up and down his body, a familiar pain of alternating heat and cold fried his nerves, and he grit his teeth at the pain.

He took in a sucking breath, then looked back up at the windows. The moment Nelson had indicated them, the familiar view had shifted to two portholes of light, surrounded by darkness. They were looking out of Dr. Fate’s eyes, through the eye slits of the Helmet. 

With MY eyes… Connor bitterly mused as he got back to his feet.

Nelson leant down to help him up, but he waved the old man off, who smiled apologetically. 

“Now you get why I haven’t put on the Helmet in sixty five years. Nabu does the driving, and feels the aches and pains in the moment, but he can retreat into the Helmet when he wants or needs to. You’re the one stuck with the broken bones and magical maladies afterwards.” The old sorcerer said resignedly, but with a touch of compassion.

“Well, why doesn’t he let me drive, then? With my powers and Fate’s magic, we could-”

“Sorry, son, but it doesn't work like that. Nabu’s been through countless hosts over the millenia, and he trusts his own magic over anything you might bring to the table. When all you have is a big, golden magic hammer…” He trailed off with a wink at Connor.

“...Everything looks like a magic nail.” Connor finished, distracted and rubbing his back.

This is getting worse by the minute. I don’t think it’s even been a minute! Time is weirdly dilated in here versus out there. It looks like time is barely passing out there while Nelson and I talk.

“Well, what am I supposed to do? Klarion’s kind of kicking Dr. Fate’s ass out there, and mine by association.” Connor pleaded, but Nelson only shrugged sadly.

“I spent plenty of time exactly where you are, kid. A passenger in my own body, while Nabu sent Dr. Fate after every sinister sorcerer and mystic monster under the sun, moon and stars.” Nelson explained, but Connor only stared at him in confusion.

“And you couldn’t do anything?” He demanded, a sinking feeling in his gut.

“Not while Nabu was in charge. But he did a lot of good, Connor. There are threats out there, like Klarion the Witch Boy, that you and your friends can’t beat. A Lord of Chaos requires a Lord of Order to defeat.”

“So, all I can do is…” Connor’s mouth fell open as the helplessness of his situation came fully into focus.

“Have faith.” Nelson said, smiling with that same sad resignation.

Bullshit. Connor thought, glaring as his eyes darted across the room he hated more than any place in this or any other universe. For a moment, he was irrationally angry that his mind palace had to be based on the hospital, and that it had to include this place too. He paced across the room before rounding on Nelson.

“I’ve tried having faith! But it didn’t do any fucking good! I still ended up here.” Connor raged, waving his hand around to indicate the room.

“Yes.” Nelson said with a slight smile. “You ended up here.” He waved the golden headpiece of his cane in imitation of Connor’s gesture.

Connor’s eyes narrowed as he stared at Nelson, or his ghost, and he saw again the twinkle in the old man’s eye. Suspicion crept into his mind as he tried to parse what the sorcerer meant. 

He’s doing the Yoda thing. He wants me to learn something, to figure something out. But he’s not gonna just tell me what it is. I have to figure it out, that’s the lesson.

Frustration bubbled up in Connor, and he took a calming breath to try to focus his mind. He appeared to be little else right now, so he might as well be a calm and focused mind. 

Of course its a lesson. Makes perfect narrative sense, but its a little fucking frustrating when Nabu is using my body as ablative armor. And crappy ablative armor, because I’m not nearly as invulnerable to magic as I would be to missiles. 

He pushed his resentments in the situation away as well. He took more deep breaths, focusing on his breathing, and pushing the distracting thoughts away. The counselors in the hospital had recommended meditation and taught him some techniques, but Connor had never taken to it. It felt like just ignoring the realities of the situation, and never seemed to help. Diana, however, was a great proponent of it and had been assigning him ‘homework’ to try it every night. There hadn’t been any grand revelations from it yet, but he had more success with quieting his mind since he had begun practicing it under her tutelage.

Does that say something about me? That I do it now because Wonder Woman wants me to, but I didn’t when the counselors tried to teach me?

That, too, was a distraction from the problem at hand, so Connor pushed those questions away and focused on the moment. Eventually, he calmed, and his thoughts no longer dashed about like they were loose cargo on a rocking ship, adrift on a wild ocean. He closed his eyes, and focused on what Nelson meant.

‘I’ve tried having faith!’

Memories rose unbidden, and he felt himself walking the corridors of the mind palace. He saw the hospital chapel, where his mother had taken him several times before operations and rounds of chemo. He remembered how young he had been then, and it had brought some comfort. He had prayed to recover, and when he beat cancer the first time, it felt like validation. Connor had kept faith, and god had kept faith with him. His mother had cried so hard at mass, clutching her rosary, when he had finally gotten to go home that first time. In that moment, a young Connor had begun to understand the depth of the grief and worry his illness caused her.

‘But it didn’t do any fucking good!’

Connor mentally drifted down the halls, finding where the genomorphs had stashed his other memories from home. He didn’t need to walk them, in this place. It was his place. In the lounge, where there was coffee and snacks for visitors, he saw his parents huddled together over cups of coffee at a table. They spoke in low voices, the tension and strain evident on their faces. This memory was much fresher. Not long after he had gotten his second diagnosis. The cancer was back, and his prognosis was much worse. Childhood osteosarcoma was a bad diagnosis, but kids who beat it had a very good chance of living long and healthy lives. But if it came back later, the survival percentages plummeted. It was possible to beat it again, but if it came back once, it was more likely to return. 

Again and again. 

Until it got you.

His parents’ marriage had been so strained by his illness. They had patched things up after he beat cancer the first time. It had felt like that, anyway. His dad definitely tried harder, for a while. But Connor could see the fractures. As he got older, he saw they weren’t going away. He knew both his parents still loved him, they both put in the effort to always reassure him. But their shortness with each other wore at him. He felt it was his fault. They had several good years after he got out of the hospital, making up for lost time.

But then the yearly check in when he was sixteen had found a mass on his right femur.

And things had spiraled from there.

They didn’t fight in front of him, much. They took it outside, and away from him. But he could see the tears in their eyes, and strained smiles, when they came back in. He knew what it meant. 

He knew it was his fault.

Church and prayer had fallen by the wayside after he got healthy again. There was too much life to experience. He had been grateful to god for having spared him, but it had seemed less important once the danger was passed. When the biopsy came back positive for malignant cancer, he had rushed to church and prayed desperately, for hours. For forgiveness, for deliverance. In confession, the father had insisted this wasn’t a punishment from god. 

It didn’t work like that.

But it felt like that. It felt like he had gotten greedy and complacent, forgotten how much worse everything could be. If only he had been a better person, this wouldn’t have happened. The counselors really tried to break him out of that mindset, blaming himself or god for the relapse. He had accepted that they were right; if he was going to blame god for the relapse, he might as well blame god for giving him cancer in the first place. That wasn’t how it worked. Not every bad thing that happened to people was god’s punishment.

When his parents told him about the divorce, it had all come crashing back. Which was stupid, because he saw how miserable they made each other. His father had been working more and more, and his mother thought he didn’t notice how much she was drinking when she thought he didn’t notice. They both still made time for him, but at seventeen, he could see how miserable they made each other now. He wanted them to end it, just so they didn’t still have that hanging over them, making it all worse.

But he still knew it was his fault.

Faith didn’t seem to do any good, anymore. He abandoned it, cast it off like a childish fable. God or religion hadn’t cured his cancer the first time; the doctors had. They worked hard, their resources were great, the science was clear. They did what worked best, and when it didn’t work, they moved on to the next treatment plan. Not every bad thing that happened was god’s punishment. He was just… unlucky.

Connor opened his eyes and looked around, finding himself back in his hospital room. 

Where everything had ended.

He looked at the coats on the chairs, facing each other on opposite sides of the small room. Even being in the same room with him had been a struggle. They had staggered their visits so they wouldn’t run in to each other. His mother couldn’t stand to be in the same room with his father after he had remarried so soon after the divorce. She never said anything to Connor, but in her tight eyes and the thin line of her lips, he read the accusation. He didn’t know if it was true, but it wasn’t a good look.

They had only consented to being in the same room for the last few weeks. And even then, they took frequent ‘walks’ when things boiled over. 

He appreciated them making the effort. They tried their best. They told stories and shared pictures and stories of the good times; the Hawaii trip, baseball games at Fenway, sleepovers with his friends. The tears in their eyes almost broke him. That was what had made him want it to end, just to spare them any more pain. But they were good parents, they wanted to be there for him. So every day they trooped in and asked how he was feeling and watched Jeoparody together, like they had every night before the divorce. Brought him snacks, ones he could still keep down, at least at the beginning. Joked about the hospital food.

His mom brought him his comics from the shop, and he watched reruns of old ball games with his dad. But he had been weaker by the day, and they all knew it was coming. He slept more and more, most of the last days were filled with tearful eyes looking down at him as he feebly grasped their hands. His father had brought his stepmother by, when his mother was away from the hospital. She was nice; she didn’t overstep. She knew the situation, and was only ever supportive and kind. They were pregnant, and asked him not to tell his mother. The situation didn’t need any more pain. They had asked, tentatively, if they could give the baby his name as a middle name.

That was a nice gesture. He gave his permission, and his father cried openly.

It was his last big regret; that he had never gotten the chance to meet his little brother. He had always wanted a sibling, but for obvious reasons, it had never worked out for their family.

Connor still worried about his mother. She had not been doing well herself; sometimes she came to the hospital glassy eyed and left earlier than normal. He hadn’t wanted to say anything about it, but he knew. He worried what she would do after he was gone. His father was building a new family, and that was fine. But he wasn’t sure what his mother would do, and that pained him.

His eyes fell on the stack of comics on the table. He reached for them, and stopped. He hadn’t actually read these before the end. They wouldn’t be in his memories, so the mind palace wouldn’t contain them. Just the image of the stack, sitting there. He  hadn’t had the energy in him to sit up and actually read for the last few days. That and the damn overhead lights gave him a headache.

Connor’s head snapped up as he had an epiphany.

“Nabu! The cat! Get the goddamn cat!”

********

Dr. Fate juked to the side as Klarion hurled a construct made of his crimson witchfire, a shrieking bat with monstrous fangs. The construct turned to pursue him, and he swiftly flew higher to evade it. The distance gave him the time to conjure a golden blast that shattered it. Klarion, however, used that same time to conjure dozens of floating balls of crimson energy that orbited him, and made finger guns to fire them one after the other. Each shot was punctuated by a delighted grin and muttered “Pew!”

Fate conjured another shield, circular this time, and crouched behind it as Klarion’s fire turned into a barrage. Each orb turned into a beam as it fired, narrow and precise, and they chipped away at Fate’s shield like ice picks. Just as he ran out of orbs, the shield shattered and Fate was sent careening back. Klarion cackled and danced forward, inhaling a mighty breath before unleashing a blast of red flames from his mouth that would have done a dragon proud. The roaring flames undulated towards Fate, who took to the skies to escape the blaze. Klarion tracked his flight and adjusted the torrent that came out of his mouth like a flamethrower. He didn’t seem to need to breathe at all.

At the same time as the sorcerous duel continued, the tabby cat advanced on Walli. With each step it took, it grew in size until it was the size of a tiger and the bell on its collar tolled ominously. Its eyes grew massive and shone with an inner light. When it hissed, Walli shuddered at the resonant sound. It pounced at her, and she zipped away, hampered by the rubble littering the tower’s roof top. The cat’s claws swiped and tore massive gouges in the stone roof as it pursued the speedster, just out of reach of those cruel claws.

“Get away from me, you mangy flea-bitten alley trash!” She shouted over her shoulder as she dodged around rubble and tried to stay out of the fireworks show on the other side of the roof.

The massive cat hissed in anger, almost like it understood the insult and it gathered itself for a massive leap that Walli only ducked at the last second and doubled back to get away from. The cat landed and slid, claws digging into the stone as it tried to arrest its drift. Its back legs scrambled desperately, trying to power itself forward to change directions. It would be comical, like a house cat sliding across a linoleum kitchen floor, if not for the hand deep gouges it tore in the mystical stone of the Tower of Fate.

Dr. Fate paused as he hovered out of the range of Klarion’s fire breath, head cocked to the side as if listening to some unseen speaker. His baby blue eyes narrowed as he glared down at Klarion. The stream of flames cut off as Klarion switched tactics, and he threw an arm up, palm up, conjuring a pillar of ruby flame under Fate’s position that reached high into the air. Fate was forced to weave around it since it could reach a much higher altitude, but then Klarion conjured a second and third pillar, each under wherever Fate flew at the time. It swiftly became an aerial slalom course as Klarion created more pillars and Fate threaded the needle around them.

Until Klarion conjured a pillar that was obviously in Fate’s path with his right hand, holding his left behind his back. When Fate juked to avoid the eruption, the Witch Boy showed his hand and conjured another directly underneath where Fate would dodge. The blast erupted under him and threw him skyward, until he reached the apex of his flight and came crashing to the ground. The Helmet clanged off the stones as he rolled and struggled to his feet in a dust cloud.

“You’re out of practice, Nabu.” Klarion mocked. “And that pathetic host body? Zero affinity for mystic arts… at least the ones from your side of the street.”

The Witch Boy raised his hands to the sky and overhead a swirling cloud formed out of the clear night air. At its heart was a scintillating nebula of star light, but infinite darkness seemed to lurk hungrily in the void between the stars. It centered itself over the tower, the swirling clouds growing in a widening gyre. Thunder rumbled overhead and there came a crash of it as bolts of red lightning lanced down toward Dr. Fate. Each was as broad as a man and they snaked off in all directions, but a continuous rain fell onto the Lord of Order.

Fate desperately cast a shield over himself, different from previous ones that formed a fractal hemisphere over him as he knelt, still recovering from his fall. As the lightning continuously poured down on it, the contact point threw off sparks and lights of rainbow hue.

“Ooh, rainbow power. Very nice!” Klarion tittered, hands on his hips as his conjured storm contained to vent its fury at Fate. The good doctor locked eyes with the smirking Witch boy, his stare growing penetrating as if considering something. Wordlessly, he touched his chest and the shield exploded outward, sending a feed back up the lightning and into the cloud that dispelled it. On the roof of the tower, a massive dustcloud erupted that rocked all the combatants back. Dr. Fate slowly stood up, a circle of golden fire around him marking where the shield had touched the ground. His eyes never left Klarion’s, and the Lord of Chaos took a wary step back.

“It is difficult for a Lord of Order or of Chaos to maintain a presence on the physical plane.” Dr. Fate stated matter of factly, as if he was delivering a lecture to a truculent student. He stood impassively in the center of the swirling golden flames, his cape whipping in the wind of the dispelled storm. 

That seemed to enrage Klarion, who burst into ethereal red flames as his face twisted grotesquely. Lines marred his seemingly youthful face, and his eyes turned solid black with red irises as his hair seemed to lengthen and harden into demonic horns. His teeth, revealed as he snarled, grew long and yellowed fangs. The cat gained a similar aura as it continued to pursue Walli, who dodged it and hurled rocks at it to distract it. Klarion’s power reached a crescendo with an inhuman cry, and he conjured massive fireballs in each hand and hurled them at Fate. Where his previous ones were baseball sized, these were beach ball sized and roiled as if they were unstable.

Fate took to the air once more, dodging each thrown fireball which detonated as he passed them. But instead of being caught in the blast, Fate rode the shockwave away and kept his flight steady.

“I am bound to the Helmet and use a human host.” Fate continued, seemingly continuing his prior line of instruction as if Klarion’s transformation and attack were of no matter. His lecturing tone seemed only to enrage Klarion further. As he dodged the last of the fireballs, he conjured another horizontal ankh around his hands and unleashed its burning bar of power at Klarion. The Witch Boy swiftly drew a wall of the Tower’s stones around himself, but it proved scant protection as it exploded from the blast. A dust cloud covered Klarion as Nabu hovered above, cape billowing behind him. “But that is not your way.”

“You’re babbling, Nabu!” Klarion shrieked as he burst from the dust cloud, hands outlined in his crimson flames as he prepared his next spell.

“Am I?” Fate asked before thrusting out his chest and unleashing a massive beam of golden energy from the pectoral there. The beam flashed instantly towards Klarion, who conjured a dome shield to protect himself. 

But the beam flashed past him and struck at the enchanted cat, blasting it broadside in the ribs as he crouched to pounce once more at Walli. The blast knocked it sprawling until it impacted the parapet, and crumpled to the ground. It quickly shrank back down to its normal size, hissing in pain.

“TEEKL!” Klarion screamed, an emotion that wasn’t anger or sadistic cruelty in his voice. He wheeled on Fate and pointed accusingly at him. “I can’t believe you would assault a defenseless pussycat!” He hissed through gritted teeth, his fury evident.

“We both know that creature is no cat, Witch Boy. And without your familiar, you have no anchor in this reality…” Dr. Fate concluded, watching impassively as Klarion began to glitch out like an old TV screen, seeming to lose coherency and grow fuzzy around the edges of his form. Klarion looked down at his translucent hands in panic before scrambling backwards, away from Fate. Klarion glared at the sorcerer as he fled towards Teekl’s small, prone form.

“Bully!” He cried over his shoulder. “Killjoy! Geezer!”

Dr. Fate seemed to grow tired of the Lord of Chaos’ childish antics, and unleashed another ankh blast at him. This time Klarion’s eyes widened in fear and he fell backwards into a sudden yawning portal with a startled “Holy carp!”

He re-entered local reality through a horizontal portal over Teekl, and landed nimbly to scoop up the limp cat in his arms.

“We’re out of here!” Klarion declared as he, and the cat, burst into a flock of a thousand blackened crows with red, beady glowing eyes that dispersed in all directions, cawing and flapping madly. They flew with a random, chaotic course and an impossible speed for real birds. They were quickly out of sight as they dove over the side of the Tower and fled into the night. 

Dr. Fate did not pursue them, standing and watching Klarion flee the Tower of Fate.

Walli slowly looked away from the villain’s bizarre escape, and looked towards the sorcerer. She could see Connor’s baby blue eyes behind the eye slits, but in those familiar orbs, she saw no recognition of her. Walli shuddered at the cold, strangely unfamiliar look in them.

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