Broken Scepter: Part Three
The two of them proceeded with more caution from that point on. They knew that as they got closer to the crash site, Alex’s forces would become more prevalent and more organised. That was how they navigated; they simply went wherever the reavers were running toward. It was hard not to see them, as they smashed through branches and tore up the forest floor in their haste.
Evelyn stopped Elizabeth and crouched behind a bush as they came upon the edge of a swamp. The water here was opaque and milky, and a dense mist roiled above its surface, cutting visibility down to almost nothing. Flowering lily pads and kelp drifted about, scattered among fronds growing from where the bog was shallowest. Silently, she gestured at the cadaver of a reaver hanging from a tree, suspended among vines. The metal was dented and compressed in places, like an elastic band had been wrapped around its body and tightened until its organs had been compressed into a fine slurry.
Elizabeth glared at the corpse and turned back to the water. “Evelyn, how much do you trust me?”
“Yes,” she replied. “I mean- a lot. Why? What are you going to do?”
She kept her eyes on the water as she looked at her reflection. “There is something here and I’m gonna get it to leave us the hell alone.”
Elizabeth took off her trench coat and gave it to Evelyn. “I’m gonna need you to back me up if my idea goes south.”
Elizabeth looked over at the Abigail, her eyes being an ocean blue.
“Tell me Evelyn. You believe in sirens?”
“Alarms? I’ve heard plenty.” The Abigail looked up at her quizzically.
“Deep sea sirens,” the witch sighed. “Like the ones from The Odyssey that wanted to lure Odysseus into the ocean. Nowadays we call them Twitch streamers. Anyway, stay right here, love. I’m taking a dive.”
Webbed crests formed along Elizabeth’s forearms and legs, the latter of which elongated and gained striated bands of extra muscle. Her hair grew much longer and thicker, while her skin gained a ridged, scale-like appearance. Her eyes became ocean blue and her fingers and toes grew into long talons connected by moist membranes. She rose to her full height, a good seven feet. There was a monstrous beauty about her. This form was primaeval, the counterintuitive yet perfectly shaped confluence of deep sea life and humanity. Her eyes were deep and alluring, rimmed by salt crystals. When she spoke, it was with a sonorous, resonant melody. “I’ll be back in a second. Stay on the lookout, okay?”
The witch would dive into the water with the same grace as a trained olympic swimmer. She would swim gracefully under the murky water.
She thought that she would reach the bottom quickly but she was surprised how deep the swamp really was. She could have sworn that she went down several metres already, with no end in sight.
The siren would see tiny translucent fishes and jellyfishes. Small bug-like creatures with translucent shells swimming around, catching microscope prey with their mandibles that spring out like a bear trap. Coral shoals grew out of the mineralised edges of the swamp, playing host to cuttlefish and white pearly squids.
There were pillowy jellyfish being carried along by the currents down there, and ribbons of interconnected phosphorescent siphonophores that resembled Christmas lights. But most notably of all, there were tremendous coils of shaggy kelp hiding under water, rising from some unknown depths far below. Their bodies were sumptuous, about half a metre wide and formed out of densely packed black fibres, to which dead vegetation was adhered, forming a cloak of loose biomass. The coils turned their heads toward Elizabeth as she swam toward them. They were surrounded by a fine suspension of blood and broken plastic.
The siren stopped as she sensed that getting any closer would be unwise. The siren instead opened her mouth and let out a sonic cry at the mass of black fibres to see if it would react in any way. The tentacles pulled back, flared their coats, and angled to retaliate if she were to pose any further threat. There was anger radiating from them; territoriality.
The witch had her hunch confirmed. The coils were sentient and were territorial.
The siren would begin to sing a song under water. It was a song meant to pacify the coils. One so it won’t attack her and second so she can allow herself and Evelyn safe travels through the swamp.
Slowly, begrudgingly, the coils retracted and sank back into the depths, leaving behind a field littered with the debris of drones and reavers that they had killed in minutes prior. Their message was clear: Evelyn and Elizabeth should not interfere with their feeding.
The witch smiled as she began to swim up.
It would take a few minutes for Evelyn to see the water’s surface break as Elizabeth emerged. The siren would shake her head as her hair whipped around and released water droplets everywhere around her, some landing on the Abigail.
“I dealt with the problem we had. We were intruding on the territory claimed by an ambush predator. I convinced them to leave us alone.” she explained as she kept her head and shoulders out of the water.
“So long as we don’t get in the way of their feeding we are in the clear.”
“Perfect!” Evelyn was outwardly chipper, but her smile was triangular with how tense her facial muscles were. She was right to be anxious. With every passing moment, the odds that they could get Alex out dwindled. Elizabeth grabbed Evelyn against the Abigail’s own protests and carried her through the water, holding one hand while the witch swam beneath the surface. Every now and then the light of a drone’s headlamps would pass overhead. But, so long as they kept their heads down, they were hidden by the water’s opacity and by the most above.
When they reached the other shore, the stench of burning plastic and shredded metal was immediately apparent. A VTOL had crashed nearby. The bulk of its wreckage was in the water. The cockpit was aflame but the windshield was open; the pilot had gotten out. Evelyn stumbled onto dry land and retched, suddenly overcome with vertigo. “Null field,” she explained, waving Elizabeth away as she tried to help. “It’s a kind of radiation that suppresses supernatural powers. Makes metahumans feel sick.”
She put a hand to her radio. “Raven-3, do not approach. Null field is active, Ravens 1-2 are seeking the source. Out.”
Elizabeth looked at her with confusion. “I feel fine.” she told her. The witch was still in her siren form as she looked down at her before looking at the wreckage.
Evelyn coughed, swallowing a handful of meclizine pills to beat back her nausea. “You’re not from this dimension. I guess you would be immune.”
Elizabeth looked at her hand. “No. I don’t think that’s it. I think I’m immune because I’m not entirely human, let alone a meta one.” she sighed.
“This happened back in Japan too. I was still able to use my powers even when restrained by those cuffs.”
“Retherford? What are you doing here?” A reaver stepped out of the mist. She took off her helmet, whereupon both Evelyn and Elizabeth recognised her. Evelyn reacted with fear, immediately holding up her hands like she was warding off a rabid dog and beginning to babble. “Hex! I am so so sorry about what happened at Trawsfynydd, I didn’t mean to cause so much trouble. You’re here with the Thaumarch, right? N-nevermind; obviously.”
Hex looked at Elizabeth. “I read about you. You solved the Fames killings, huh? Wish you hadn’t beaten me to it. The hell are you doing here? I wasn’t informed that you had been hired.” The reaver maintained a level tone. She knew better than to lay all of her suspicions on the table at once. Plus, Evelyn had shown herself loyal by saving the Thaumarch’s daughter at Trawsfynydd. If it had been anyone else, Hex probably would have shot her in the head by now. So for now, she kept her rifle close to her chest and her baton in its casing. The reaver had the same wrist-mounted grappling gun as Evelyn, too.
Elizabeth stood her ground in defiance but in her mind she was terrified. Why the hell did her suspicion have to be confirmed like this!
She looked down at Evelyn and she was hoping that the fear on her face would tell her that they were screwed.
“There’s a plot to kill the Thaumarch!” Evelyn started. “We were just down here trying to find them. We tried to warn you but official channels were locked down, and- and-”
Hex shushed the Abigail. “Okay, I just need to tell Command about you two. So stay put, I’ll make the call.”
Elizabeth looked down at Evelyn and then back at Hex. She wasn’t sure what to do now.
She opened her mouth to make a song but she found her voice was stuck. She tried to sing but found only gurgling coming out.
The witch was too scared to make a sound.
Hex reached for her radio and took it off of her belt. Evelyn instantly drew her pistol and fired through the receiver. Hex pulled her hand away, reacting faster than Elizabeth could register, but by then the radio already had a gaping hole through the front and was spitting static.
Hex looked at the radio, looked at Evelyn, and then flung it at her head. Evelyn blocked the projectile with her elbow while the reaver paced forward, drawing her stun baton, a metre-long rectangular club covered in blunt electrified spines. Her pace was deceptively fast. Almost as quickly as Elizabeth could comprehend the situation, Hex was practically on top of them.
The fear she had instantly evaporated as now she was thrusted into a life and death situation. The siren would let out a loud scream.
The scream was deafening. For most it would have shattered their ear drums. If the windows of the craft weren’t already shattered then they would do so because of the vibrations caused by the scream.
Besides the intense amount of pain it would cause the scream was made to disorientate targets hit by it.
Elizabeth would stop screaming and begin to move her arms in an elegant and flowing manner. Water would rise from the swamp in a whip-like tendril and as she moved her arms forward it would latch out towards Hex.
The reaver grabbed the tendril with her spare hand and severed it near the tip with her baton. The water boiled upon contact with the powerful electrical current produced by the weapon, producing a blast of steam and boiling rain which Hex used as cover, charging through and grabbing Elizabeth by the throat. Evelyn jumped on the reaver’s back and stuck a knife into the meat of her shoulder, but the blade could hardly penetrate her skin. Hex slammed Elizabeth into the trunk of a tree, driving her into the wood before pulling back for a punch. Elizabeth ducked under the blow just in time for Hex’s fist to tear straight through the trunk, cutting through with hardly any resistance.
Elizabeth was taken aback by the speed and strength of the woman. She was clearly trained against metahumans as she was having a hard time trying to remove her.
But that wasn’t too surprising. Her siren form isn’t the strongest one by physical strength.
Elizabeth would take a deep breath and once more let out another ear piercing scream directly at Hex to force her off the witch.
Evelyn drew her rifle and snap-fired at Hex’s head while she was reeling from Elizabeth’s scream. Inhumanly, the reaver tilted left just in time to avoid the bullet, which merely flicked the hairs on the side of her head. Evelyn fired again, and Hex caught the bullet before flicking the crumpled round like a coin over her shoulder.
Hex drew her sidearm, a pump action shotgun, and discharged it into Elizabeth’s stomach without even turning to face her. The blast would cause a pinkish red mist to erupt from Elizabeth as her stomach was blasted open, pieces of scales and shredded organs sprayed out. The siren collapsed on the ground, coughing out and wheezing for air as she laid on the dirt in a growing pool of her own blood.
Evelyn fired her grappling hook into Hex’s wrist, pulling her weapon down before she could fire a second, more lethal volley. In annoyance, Hex fired her own grappling gun into Evelyn’s shoulder while she was still recovering from the recoil of the launch, dragging the Abigail in and slamming her fist into her chest mid-air. Evelyn flew away as a tremendous chunk of meat was dragged out of her arm, landing thirty feet away in a muddy ditch. She scrambled to sit upright. Her vision, and thoughts, were slurring.
Elizabeth would try to move but she fell back once the pain shot through her body. All she could think was how much everything hurts.
She was feeling her body getting colder and her vision darkening. She was sure that she was dying. She can feel her energy fading away quickly. As she let out laboured breaths a puff of smoke existed in her mouth. Her blood was slowly developing frost.
Evelyn dug deep into her rucksack and clutched a syringe of Sieker. She used her teeth to grab onto the protective seal and tear it off, not caring how the tip ripped through her gums and left holes in her lip. She plunged it into her neck, applying a quarter dose - already bordering on unsafe levels of exposure.
Heat flared throughout her entire body. The pain, the confusion, evaporated. Every physical and mental faculty was activated and directed towards the means of her survival. She shook with full-body tremors and turned toward Hex as she came to finish her off. Hex swung her baton at Evelyn’s head. The Abigail put one foot behind the other and drew her sword in an arc, parrying the blow. The impact shook both of them, leaving Evelyn’s wrist limp and bent at a lopsided angle, her teeth chattering, and her joints popping one after the other, squirting synovial fluid. Hex, though barely moved by the strike, was clearly surprised at how her attack had been averted.
Hex swung again. Rather than attempting to block it, Evelyn deftly leaned out of its trajectory. She moved with unbelievable spontaneity and speed, reacting to Hex’s attacks before they could even occur, and controlling her body with such precision that it seemed as if she could nullify her own inertia at will. Her senses were screaming at her, informing her about perceived dangers, real or not. It was up to her higher functions to determine whether an attack was really incoming, and to make decisions about how to react. The input was overwhelming. To an outside observer, she appeared to be a mirage, melting away before Hex’s blows could land.
Still, the reaver was every bit as instantaneous as her, and many times stronger. Her body was designed to handle more stress, more torsion, more punishment. Evelyn could hardly even deflect one of Hex’s strikes without losing an arm, while Hex could take the worst of Evelyn’s punishment without so much as flinching. As if to prove that point, Evelyn slithered under a jab of Hex’s stun baton and buried a knife in her ribs, whereupon the reaver dragged the blade out of her chest, trailing viscera, and crushed the blade in her palm.
Evelyn’s brief stand could not last. Hex’s spindly, arachnoid build allowed her a superhuman range of motion and conferred almost twice the reach that Evelyn had. Fighting her wasn’t like contending with a human being, it was like fighting the wind; it could come at any angle, and didn’t have to care about your own attacks at all. After just a few seconds, Hex swatted Evelyn’s weapon away and jabbed her in the chest, shattering her ribcage and sending her sprawling in the mud. Evelyn propped herself up on one elbow. She couldn’t feel the pain from her injuries, but she was acutely aware of every other sensation in her body. Blood was welling up above her diaphragm. Stomach acid was dribbling down the front of her abdomen, weeping from a gash in her pylorus.
“That was nonlethal for a reason.” Hex warned. “Sorry about your friend, but don’t do something you’re going to regret.”
As Evelyn heaved for ever air she could get in she would find white mist being exhaled out. The temperature would plummet as the two would feel a strong and chilly breeze hit them.
“I agree with you. You already made one mistake.” without warning massive icicles would form around Hex’s legs, binding her in place as they continue to grow.
“You didn’t check to see if I’m dead.”
Snow began to fall down.
The two women would see Elizabeth had arisen but now she was completely different.
The woman shrunk down slightly in her height. The webbed hands, long fingers, and claws were gone. Snow white evening gloves covered her hands and arms now. A gauntlet of ice covered the gloves by the forearms up to the elbow. Elizabeth wore a long and flowy strapless dress. It was white with the bottom having feather-like patterns. Yet by the torse it was sky blue,
The dress had ice crystal particles and mist trailing off. But another source for the particles and mist was the massive wings of crystals that resembled the arms of a snowflake. A veil made of ethereal sparking mist covered her face and the upper half of her body. The veil seems to be connected to a crown of ice which had crystalline antlers growing from it.
Her hair was now a bluish white colour, almost like it was trying to mimic the colours of winter. Her hair was much shorter and she had bangs covering her eyes. The woman was floating in the air. From under the dress black elk-like hooves were visible.
The being was ghostly, almost ethereal. It projected an aura of majesty and grandeur that combined with its diaphanous and elegant form they were almost convinced it was nothing more but a hallucination.
Evelyn felt an impossible cold spreading through her body, starting not from the extremities but from the heart. Her heart was pounding, skin burning up with metabolic waste heat, and yet she was freezing. There was white frost in her breath, ice particles as large as snowflakes. Even the moisture in her eyes was clouding over and turning solid. She put a finger to her lower eyelid. It came away wet with saltwater. Tears. She… couldn’t stop weeping.
Elizabeth was this terrible, elegant thing. Like an angel on the horizon, dressed in a gossamer veil, surrounded by silken sheets of snow. Thoughts of annihilation entered Evelyn’s mind: visions of endless frozen plains, covered in snow so thick and so soft it was like being swaddled as a baby. She could taste ice on her tongue, and frozen particulates pricking the insides of her mouth and her lungs. Green lights danced in the sky. A borealis, lush with cosmic limelight. She was dimly aware that one of her hands was trembling over the other, dragging the blade of a knife across her wrist. Not deep enough to sever the artery… yet.
Hex coughed up frozen saliva. She held the barrel of her pistol against her upper palate, peeling back her lip with the trigger. Her hands were shaking. Eyes locked on Elizabeth.
Both Evelyn and Hex were resisting Elizabeth’s effect on their minds, but only insofar as a person could consciously “fight” an infection. They were not consciously aware that they were in danger. What was preventing them from ending their own lives - at least for now - was sheer cognitive inertia. Strength of will, isolated from intention and divorced from awareness.
Elizabeth’s form vanished before them as an intense blizzard would spring up, creating a whiteout.
White was all they could see. It would remind the two of the endless frozen plains they saw in their mind.
Hex would feel a cold hand grab her wrist and pull the gun away from her lips. She would see the white part slightly to reveal the ethereal being floating in front of her.
“I know you.” The chilling voice of the being rang into Hex’s being. It was thought she was hearing the heart of a blizzard. It surrounded her from all sides, yet it also felt as though it was inside of her as well.
“I knew a version of you and she quite frankly terrifies me, same as you. But even though I wouldn’t mind seeing you two disappear I can’t have it be like this.” She moved her face closer.
“We need you out of the way to save the Thaumarch. You will be awakened when the time is right.” The bangs moved over slightly to reveal a lone goldeneye.
“Now, rest dear hunter. Your hunt is now over.”
Hex’s vision would white out again before it would become black.
The blizzard would begin to slow down until soon it was gone and regular snowfall was occurring.
Evelyn would see Elizabth floating in front of a large ice crystal containing Hex. The reaver was stuck, reaching out from within her cage. Her hand twitched, the only part of her body not within the block.
Evelyn caught her breath. She took a moment to fill in the puncture in her shoulder with polyurethane foam and to straighten her wrist. “What did you do? Are you sure she’s dead?” She shivered.
Elizabeth began to float back down as she was slowly changing again. By the time she touched the ground she was back to normal. Elizabeth refused to look back at Evelyn as she put on her coat, the witch taking it during the whiteout.
“No. She is very much alive. I just put her in cryogenic stasis.” Elizabeth kept her gaze away from Evelyn.
“As for what happened that I’m sorry for. I should have told you to close your eyes but I had to transform before I died.”
Evelyn rubbed her temple. Her head was pounding. “But what was that just now? What did you do to me? Us?”
Elizabeth let out a sigh, her shoulders slumping. When she turned to finally look at Evelyn her eyes told her how exhausted she was.
“I will be honest Evelyn. I have been holding back all of my transformations. If I didn’t you, the twins, and everyone around us would have suffered tremendously.`` She took out her lighter and one of her cigarettes.
“A good deal of the entities from my world come from other worlds. Their nature produces many anomalies just by their existence when they appeared in my world. One of them is this memetic effect they produce passively most of the time. It’s called Cogito.” She took a drag on her cigarette.
“It mostly affects the mind. But sometimes the body can be affected and even the soul, other times it does strange things to people. But in general the things I deal with are so strange and alien that they cause reality to break down and can damage people's psyche and spirit just by seeing them or even knowing about them. I always had to be careful whenever I summoned anything or changed into my other forms.”
She returned to smoking from her cigarette as she pressed her back against the ice block that contained Hex. Placing her head right next to Hex’s twitching hand.
“That’s why you told me to close my eyes on the roof.” Evelyn whispered.
“Yep. I couldn’t let you see my true form since you would have died if you did.” she gave her a small grin. “You had a small peek of it back when we dealt with Yurika.”
Evelyn tapped on Hex’s ice cube. There was valuable equipment on her. Likely beyond recovery. She turned her eyes toward Elizabeth. “It’s not my place to judge you I guess. We should keep moving.”
