ic Vengeance From the Grave (IC)

[Gizmo]

Midnight made a grunt of displeasure at the abrupt but extremely showy entrance of the giant. --Hope you've been studying your law books,-- he sent to Renarde as he pulled a grapple from his belt. --Could use council, if they can spare you down there.-- Turning to Wander and Cannonade he explained himself, "Will buy time. Need to find Al-Darsah." Firing the line upward at the messenger's head, he anchored on a golden hoop earring the size of soccer net and quickly followed into the air, landing on a massive shoulder.

Replacing the grapple in its compartment, the black clad detective strode toward the giant's ear, letting a trail of stygian midnight mist trail from the cuffs of his pant legs and jacket sleeves, lending him a larger, easily spotted presence not until the partially immaterial Al-Shahada. "You. Allat sends indelicate fools as messengers?" he intoned flatly, his words carrying through the winds of their altitude like a heated knife without needing to raise his voice. He made a broad gesture down to the people dotting the shoreline. "Politically tense situation. Arrive without warning, bellowing accusations?" Midnight folded his arms across his chest and glared into eyes larger many times over than his whole body. "No jurisdiction. Worse, warning murderer before investigation is complete."

Indicating himself with a thumb pointing to his chest, he continued, "Midnight, of the Liberty League. Bring me someone in charge."

[Avenger Assembled]

"I...I know you, Great One," said the giant, looking a little intimidated at the sight of the very small being before him. He seemed to be whispering, either for Midnight's benefit or out of awe, but still it carried to those on shore. "In this realm, I am only a voice that speaks the words of my masters," Al-Shahada went on. He raised a fist, but made no hostile gesture, instead spreading his fingers and rending apart a hole in space that beckoned into a dark realm lit by distant torches beyond, Midnight's eyes letting him see what looked like an ancient Arabian throne room in wild disarray. "Those I serve may not enter this realm, only dwell inside the Forever Black Stone. Save in death, as has our king below." He cleared a giant throat and added, "Would the Slayer of Entropy and his boon companions care to return within the Stone with me? I can show you the scene of the foul god-slaying murder and the captured criminal in his bonds." 

[Electra]

Erin stood back and watched Trevor intimidating the giant messenger with interest but no alarm until the dimensional portal opened up. In her experience, anytime one of those popped up, the situation could get volatile very quickly.  In seconds, she'd bounded up to the top of the corpse, then to the shoulder of the messenger. Stepping up behind Midnight, she planted herself just behind his left shoulder and rested a hand on her bat. "If you know he died there, and you caught Typhoon there, how did the body get here?" she asked. "And why even have a trial, if you're so sure?" 

[Avenger Assembled]

The giant's enormous eyes grew even wider at the sight of yet another famous citizen of the mortal realm. "I...we are not savages, my lady. My masters will try the mortal as befits the ancient laws of our people, and then give him the penalty of any god-slayer. And we did not arrest Typhoon in our lands, but in this one. My lord Al-Quam did send his shadow legions to apprehend the foul god-slayer. The Kaaba gateway was no doubt torn open by Typhoon himself as he made his escape to the realm of mortals. He has been to our realm before," added the giant fire-genie, contempt on his massive face, "and stolen from the very gods. All know his face and his works." 

[April]

--It's not exactly subtle,-- The French heroine thought to Midnight, a note of weary amusement lacing her thoughts, --Or quiet. I can assist you from here, unless you feel the need is pressing?--

Durian had the sense to leave the petite psychic alone and let her focus on the task at hand; most likely due to what Nina said, since the Blue Fox had simply tuned his existence out. Not that she would have destroyed Durian's mind-- permission from Typhoon's daughter notwithstanding--though he couldn't have known that.

--On second thought,-- she reflected, easing off on her telekinetic assistance. --Bring me up.--

[Avenger Assembled]

"Up you go," said Edge, who was never too busy to help a friend in need. When Eve had joined the group up on the giant's shoulders, the giant reached down to offer a massive finger to Cannonade. "Don't worry," Mark was telling Nina, who was practically a boiling black stormcloud herself as she glared at the giant from her position on his shoulder, "we'll get this done. This is the Liberty League, we can handle gods and goddesses. It's our style." Nina seemed to calm at that, the presence of her powerful boyfriend and his team a reassurance. Mark didn't comment on whether or not her father was guilty or innocent, but he knew his team members knew Typhoon's history well enough. Some fights they didn't need just then."  

 

"And you as well, Attican?" asked the ifreet of Cannonade. 

[trollthumper]

Cannonade knew Midnight had a reputation; he just hadn't been aware that the people who took orders from gods were afraid of him. He took a look around, counting up his options. He could stick around Socotra, a land he knew of well enough to grasp its geopolitics but not well enough to ensure his interference in potential local unrest wouldn't make things worse. Or, he could go off to the realms of ancient gods, where the ruler of Socotra was being held prisoner by being that could possibly vaporize him with a thought. The life of a hero was not without its tough choices. 

 

"I'm coming along," he said, speaking up to the ifreet as best he could. "Been a while since I've been somewhere gods called home." While he could possibly have cleared the distance to the giant's shoulder, he waited for an outstretched hand - last thing he wanted to do was land on a pressure point. If divine beings had pressure points. 

[Gizmo]

Midnight grunted in approval of the ifrit's polite deference. --Hm, the Forever Black Stone. Finally we're going somewhere nice,-- he mused telepathically. Certainly anywhere that had shadow legions couldn't be all bad; it beat a faerie castle, anyway. "Execution of duty to be commended, Al-Shahada. Will reach own conclusions." He couldn't say he was surprised to learn that Typhoon had trespassed where he was not welcome before, but theft of power was a different story than celestial murder. He didn't see what the dictator had to gain from deicide, nor would he expect Al-Darsah to plan so poorly as to be immediately captured. With a curt nod, the black clad figure indicated the group was ready to depart.

[Avenger Assembled]

A flare of light and a gateway later, and the team was inside another dimension. They'd all been to other dimensions before, of course, and to the terrible places between them - but there was something unique about this place. They stood in a gallery inside a cave, to one side a rushing waterfall of sparkling gems inside the purest water, to the other a long stairwell winding down towards infinity, the open wall opposite where the team stood showing a vast central cavern with wooden and hemp bridges crisscrossing at every level. The Forever Black Stone, despite the name, was a mountain of smoky black quartz that towered above their heads and extended far below their feet, an eternal cavern and home to the gods of ancient Arabia. Gods who were, from the weeping within the halls, and the downcast faces of men and women in traditional Arab dress, in mourning. 

 

One thing had changed for the better - for the moment, anyway, they and their host were the same size. "Come," said the sorrowful Al-Shahada, "see what works the foul Typhoon has done in this place." 

 

A bridge away and down a row of polished stairs, the throne room awaited - this place was darker than the rest, the crystal walls that had admitted light elsewhere thick enough that only ever-burning torches lit the gloom. There had been a great battle in this place, quartz columns left scarred and chipped, the iron throne itself cast on its side, and a shower of dried blood before it showing where some slaughter had taken place. The room was quiet and still save for the sound of weeping, the lamentations of souls as they passed through the murder scene of their god, basking in the presence of his replacements.

 

The heroes pushed through the supplicants and found themselves faced by three women in ancient desert dress - an ancient one who stood beside the fallen throne, a young one, looking no older than the heroes, in black and red, a wicked scimitar in one hand as she looked down at them imperiously, and another built like a bronze powerhouse - her obvious pregnancy an incongruous match for muscles like Captain Thunder. "You have brought them, good! Now mortals can see godly justice, as Manat, Allat, and I, Al-Uzza the Strong, destroy our father's killer!" 

 

"Yessss, surely we will drag him down below," whispered the one who was evidently Allat, tossing her blade from hand to hand. "But there mussst be evidence, sissters. What is punishment with no evidence?" 

[trollthumper]

Cannonade was stunned by what he saw, and yet not entirely surprised. This wasn't his first time visiting the abode of gods - the time he spent in Tian for that martial arts contest stuck with him, and would stay there for some time. But at the same time, he was awed by how... together it seemed. It was hard to put it in terms that likely weren't insulting to someone, but he had never heard of these gods - and when he thought "the Middle East," he didn't typically think "places tolerant of the old gods." For some reason, he imagined a place like this might be covered in cobwebs, filled with toppled statues. 

 

But it was still vital. Which just showed that no matter where gods went, grandeur followed. And it was grandeur where he was extremely reluctant to speak, as Midnight had established the style of rapport. So he just stood back and tried not to piss off the divine entities before him. 

[Avenger Assembled]

Eventually, a figure at once familiar and unfamiliar was dragged out from the shadows behind the fallen throne - proof positive that there was some magic behind there because no normal darkness should have been able to fool the senses of people like Midnight and Wander. Stripped of his armor, Typhoon the world-threatening juggernaut looked like just a man. Black hair and mustache had long since turned white, and his face was lined with age - but his eyes burned with intensity as he took in his divine accusers. Even without his armor, he was potentially a juggernaut even in a place like this, but didn't struggle against the iron chains on his wrist. His 'guards' were shadowy black humanoid forms that rippled like living ink blots, one of whom who formed himself into the image of a man - another man in traditional Arabian dress, but cast in black and white with black outlines almost in two dimensions, like looking at a living picture. He sneered at the heroes. "I, Al-Qaum, have the evidence! It was I and my shadow-selves who witnessed foul al-Darsah enter this very throne room and rip the heart of our king from his body!" He slammed two inky fists together, then formed one into a writhing mass of bladed tentacles. "I say we give him the eternal punishment he has so long deserved. 

 

"Al-Qaum is god of war and night," their ifreet guide was explaining to an uncomfortable-looking Mark, who was himself standing by a razor-tense Nina al-Darsah. She wasn't fool enough to start trouble here, "He is 'the people'. Once he was one among many, but now he is many among many. War and darkness remain even in the lands of our spawning even after those days. His power has been a great sustenance to us since the Prophet's Sundering." Sure enough, on closer inspection, many of the shadows in the torch-lit room seemed to move with their own special intent, as if the darkness itself was alive and watching them. 

[Gizmo]

Midnight was a stoic presence striding next to the ifrit, arms crossed and mist pooling about the hit feet, the black clad detective was lent the suggestion of a greater presence beyond his actual form. Behind the ruby lenses of his blank mask, however, his eyes darted back and forth, taking in every scrap of information presented to them to be turned over to expose every angle by a mind spinning like high performance machinery. Typhoon's accusers may have been certain of his guilt but Midnight wasn't one to draw conclusions until every fact was accounted. --For example,-- he mused across the telepathic link, --if the victim was killed here, al-Darsah would have been the same size, not attack from an downward angle. Stay sharp.--
 
He observed Al-Qaum's inky outburst with particular interest. The mortal man knew something of darkness and war himself, after all, and he doubted anyone truly content with the shadows would be quite so loud and insistent, even a god. "In shadows, as in battle, things are rarely as they appear," he spoke up, his voice by contrast the still surface of a dark, cold ocean. "Proof beyond hearsay?" His voice lacked an accusatory tone, lacked any tone at all but the way it was framed left Al-Qaum little room for dissembling.

[Avenger Assembled]

Al-Qaum folded his arms and sneered; for all that it was hard to read a face amid such inky blackness. His 'shadows' seemed to be moving of their own free will as he spoke, some scowling at the heroes, others melting and emerging from the inky blackness above and behind the heroes like a shadow of bats. One shadow in particular leaned close to Wander's ear and whispered something in her ear too quietly for anyone else to hear. 
 

We aren't who we are. We aren't who we are. STOP HIM.

before vanishing into the crowd of circling shadows, moving black against a lighter black overhead in the great rocky cavern of night. "Mortal champions or not," al-Qaum was saying, "I need no t answer to the likes of you!" 

Al-Darsah took this opportunity to sneer in return. "Is this the rage of the god of night? What a petty squall! Perhaps I should doze until you are finished with your LIES," and suddenly his eyes were bugging out as his voice snapped in an instant from an old man's to the mighty champion of Socotra. "For you know full well you saw me kill no god, al-Qaum. Feh, would I not be wearing his crown even now if I had slain him?" The assembled souls in the meeting hall went quiet at this, but the gods were watching with laser-intensity. "It was _you_ who came to my kingdom with hostile intentions, not I. Your fate will be on your own head." 

[Electra]

Erin furrowed her brow as she watched the proceedings, less attuned to the speeches and posturing than to the flickering of the shadow-figures surrounding the room's perimeter. The too-deep darkness bothered her on an instinctual level, as did potential foes whose outlines she could not make out, but there was something else as well... She caught in a quick breath of surprise when the shadow whispered to her, but it sharpened her gaze even more. Something was different here, not all of those figures were equally dark and ethereal. They looked... not familiar, but something about them was something she'd seen before. Finally, she stepped between Midnight and Edge to whisper, "Those shadows, the ones at eleven and one and nine o'clock, does that look like Terminus energy to you?" 

[Gizmo]

Midnight made an almost imperceptible sound of agreement as he focused on the umbral figures Wander pointed out, metahuman vision cutting though the gloom well enough to recognize that something was indeed different about them. Fortunately the black clad gadgeteer wasn't one to rely solely on his inherent gifts. Tapping a single finger to the side of his featureless mask brought an overlay of data streaming across its ruby lenses, sensors funneling information into heuristic algorithms adapted from Redbird's Furion technology.
 
The results were damning indeed. Al-Qaum might not have been from the Terminus himself but he and many of his shadowy minions were soaked in entropic energies, hollowed out and hideously refilled. --Tt. Erin called it, al-Qaum has turned quisling. May have to grab al-Darsah and run. I'll get his attention.--

Stepping forward a handful of steps, Midnight made a slow, methodical show of drawing forth a pair of gleaming silver knuckledusters from his belt and sliding them onto his fingers. "Loathe to agree with Typhoon," he intoned calmly before looking up from his armaments to stare directly at al-Qaum, "but anyone allying with the Terminus answers to me."

[trollthumper]

Cannonade was still trying to fully comprehend all that he was seeing. He was somewhat used to divine tableaus, but divine justice was still outside of his understanding. He'd planned to remain towards the back, keeping a careful watch until he could perceive some level of injustice, just trying to get a good grip on everything.

 

But then Midnight had tossed him a handhold. "Terminus." He didn't quite have an understanding of how a god could throw itself in with the Terminus... though he did have some sense of a "why." These gods didn't seem like the most recent bunch, and there was a chance they were marshaling what might they had in order to put this display on. 

 

He turned to Wander. "So," he said, "there a plan for this? Because I'm... mostly okay with any plan that has me punching a god in the face."

[Avenger Assembled]

Al-Qaum flinched and drew himself up, glaring down at Midnight with all the dark intensity a god of war and night could muster - against anyone else, that eyeless black face with the cold fury behind it might have been truly intimidating. Trevor knew a cornered criminal when he saw one. "What? What nonsense is this? You see how these mortals prattle with their lies?" he demanded of the other gods. "They would defend the mortal even though he is a criminal in their realm, so that _that_ one and his daughter may continue to-" Evidently Mark seemed like less of a threat than the ones who'd already stumbled across his scheme; but Al-Qaum soon had much worse to worry about. Mark wasn't the one making his shadows disobey him! Even as the shadow tyrant spoke, his darker shadows, those at the fringes of his power, seemed to break from the cloud orbiting him and settle again over the heroes like fish breaking from a school to join another. 

"Wait a minute, that's what all this is about! You couldn't do it, could you!" exclaimed Edge suddenly, shooting a look at the others as inspiration struck him like a lucky bolt out of the clear blue sky. "When people stopped worshiping you, you had to do something to keep the lights on in here! So you-" 

"Enough! You mortals will be SILENT!" Al-Qaum was beginning to lose his shape, humanoid form flowing like ink towards something less human entirely. "SISTERS! I BEG FOR THE RIGHT TO DESTROY THEM AS IS MY RIGHT AS A GREAT GOD OF THE BLACK STONE!"

 

"...you may call for their deaths, brother-nephew," said Manat in her impossibly-aged crone's voice, having turned to study her putative ally with some care. "But as _you_ well know we do not slay visitors." 

"Then...then I make the challenge!" he boomed. Facing the others (he seemed to have difficulty meeting Midnight's gaze), al-Qaum hissed, adopting more of the style of his ancient name and station, "By ancient law, I challenge you to War with me in the name of the criminal al-Darsah! If you win, his life is yours - when I win, I will destroy you all." 

[trollthumper]

Well. That happened. Cannonade was still trying to keep up with events, but one thing was clear - for a god, this Al-Quam was immensely unsure of himself. It could be that Edge had the right of it - this guy had made a deal with something horrible to keep some sort of divine prominence, and he was flying to pieces now that he was on the verge of getting caught. 

 

Or it might be he was just an asshole, some weakling so unsure of himself he'd decided to pull a cosmic frame job in order to stick himself back into relevancy. Hades had certainly made a name of himself after the invasion, after all. Either way, he really didn't like this guy, and knew what needed to be done. 

 

"Fine, then," he said. "Any god who's willing to go to the mats over something like this deserves to get kicked in the junk."