Previous Post #339: Untold Tales of the Parodyverse: Going To Extremes Go to Part One: The Inner and Outer Limits Go to Part Two: Not Meant To Know Go to Part Three: Crucibles of Decision Go to Part Four: Rise of the New Pantheon Previously: Elementalist Liu Xi Xian, Chiaki Bushido the Psychic Samurai, Anna the android and Lara Night, energy-manipulating visitor from another multiverse were trapped on the dead alien world of Shee-Yar Prime to battle the population of zombies somehow created there. After their struggles they were found by Dark Thugos who has sent three of them back to the undead world to investigate further. The staff of Extraordinary Endeavour Enterprises and their headquarters firehouse were propelled towards the mad elder being Azafroth at the centre of the Parodyverse. Archscientist Al B. Harper and a team of specialists have borrowed the SPUD helicarrier to retrieve them. Fear of a Dead Planet by Killer Shrike Untold Tales of a Dead Planet by Manga Jason The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom Who's Who in the Parodyverse Where's Where in the Parodyverse ***     The ancient Shee-Yar Imperium spanned ten thousand worlds and four hundred thousand years and it died in a day and a night at the hands of the Carnifex, a man sent to destroy the Parodyverse.     Somehow the Carnifex did not only kill every living being on each Shee-Yar world but eventually managed to animate them all as zombies. He set the undead denizens of Shee-Yar Prime to destroy some Earth heroes for his amusement.     Now the Carnifex was destroyed and Shee-Yar Prime was back.     The sun rose over the horizon, reflecting over the steel and glass capital of the venerable galactic empire. The Imperial Palace sparkled as the light caught its iridescent archways and graceful spires. Citizens thronged the beltways, the monorails, the grav-paths. The commerce and industry of the greatest city of the Imperium continued its daily routine.     The massive explosion came from a violent temporary time/space rip called a Doom Tube. There was a blast of hellfire heat, a localised gravity anomaly, and the exploration party from Apocalyspe tumbled out onto one of the capital’s arboreal plazas.     Anna was first on her feet but Chiaki Bushido wasn’t far behind. Neither were Large Lana, Emmazon, or Morbid Mary, the three Apocalysian Battling Bitches detailed to accompany the Earth heroes in their investigations. Liu Xi Xian was the last to pick herself up because the elemental forces of the timespace tear affected her the most.     The Chinese girl forced back her nausea and looked around. “Where are we?” she asked, puzzled. “I thought we were going back to Shee-Yar Prime?”     Large Lana powered up her Omni-Rod till it crackled with black bubbles of nega-energy. “This is Shee-Yar Prime. But it was supposed to be devastated. That sun up there was snuffed out!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It is snuffed out,” Anna the android reported. “Outside the atmosphere sheathe that we’re equipped with there’s no heat, no radiation spectrum associated with a Class-D star. But was can see it.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It’s not real,” Chiaki Bushido said sadly. She walked over to a crocodile of schoolchildren riding the beltroad with their teaching drones. She reached out and touched them. They blurred like floating oils then faded away. “They’re just ghosts.”     As if that one touch had disrupted a house of cards, the illusion of Shee-Yar-as-was rippled out of existence. Bright buildings transformed back to burned-out ruins. The shining city became a scarred black charnel pit.     Some of the citizens still walked about, though. The zombies yet shuffled about their daily business. A queue of dead men patiently waited for a shuttle flight that would never come. A daily data seller silently hawked his wares on a bombed-out street corner. Skeleton avians winged overhead, their flight impossible because their feathers and wing membranes were rotted away.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Horrible,” shuddered Liu Xi. “Why are they doing this?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That’s what we’re here to find out,” declared Large Lana. Lana was all about getting the business done.     Morbid Mary examined one of the shambling corpses more closely. “This isn’t technological,” she reported as she checked a pinging sensor box. “I interned with Professor Pandemonium when he seeded Alviar-Durassum IV with necro-animators. Fascinating experience. He got the whole world up and worshipping Dark Thugos. He was ready to move on to convert other Imperium holdings – but this isn’t that.”     Anna frowned. “Dark Thugos was planning to raise other worlds as undead anyhow? Before he claimed all the zombies here as his own?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Thugos isn’t bothered that the Carnifex reanimated the Imperium as undead,” Chiaki clarified. “He’s bothered that the Carnifex managed to do it before him.”     Large Lana grabbed a zombie and snapped its spine over her knee. “These zombies are weak and inferior,” she decided. “We should recommend the necro-animation programme for them anyway.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“They didn’t seem that weak when millions of them were trying to kill us,” Liu Xi objected. “Although seeing them moving around like this, following the domestic routines they had in life, cloaked by ghost images of the world they once lived in, that’s almost spookier.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“They would probably seem like a challenge to you Earth creatures,” Emmazon sniffed dismissively. “Fortunately you had an Apocalytian war-droid to aid you. That must be how you survived.”     Anna knew the Bitch was speaking of her. “I’m not Apocalyptian,” she insisted. “I was made on Earth, funded as part of a metahuman containment process under Joint Special Resolution 1066 and designed by…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It’s okay,” Large Lana interrupted. “Your cover is safe with us.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Anna isn’t Apocalyptian,” Chiaki intervened. “Even if she was, we’d value her for who she is, not what her origins are.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah, it’s good to have a droid in the squad,” Emmazon agreed. “I used to copulate with a warbot back during the conquest of Neravat II. They have good staying power. And if you break something off them they can usually get a replacement.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Perhaps we should get on with the mission?” suggested Liu Xi. “I’m getting creeped out here.” She didn’t clarify whether it was the undead world or the conversation that bothered her. She wished that Vinnie De Soth was present. She couldn’t help but imagine how the acting sorcerer supreme would react to an entire planet of zombies.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We should proceed,” agreed Chiaki. The Psychic Samurai examined the ruined cityscape, looking for landmarks she’d noted in her previous struggles there. “I don’t want to leave Lara alone with Thugos for too long.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Your elemental is blessed to have the attention of Lord Thugos,” Morbid Mary declared.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I think she’d prefer not to be blessed,” Chiaki responded. “Now, see that silhouette over there? That’s the ruins of the Imperium Palace. When we were fighting the zombies before they always battled that much harder when we tried to get near there.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“So that’s the place we need to look,” concluded Large Lana approvingly. “Move out.”     The Psychic Samurai held her back. “That’s the place we need to look,” she agreed, “Quietly.” ***     The streets of GolGotham were crowded too, full of shrieking Growlies and lowly Humblies and armoured Factions and steaming Warbots and all the other denizens of the crowded spaceport city of Apocalyspe. Giant shunt engines towered over the decaying tenement mazes, their metal cooling through cherry red back to black as the forces that had lashed a whole planet across the stars powered down for now. The buildings were gunmetal grey. The alleys were shit-and-blood brown. The people were terror pale.     The crowds pressed aside in unrestrained panic to allow their absolute ruler and god to walk unimpeded down the busy street. Dark Thugos strode amongst them, the horror and power of Apocalyspe made flesh.     Lara Night walked beside him. “Do you enjoy their terror?” she demanded angrily as the people cringed.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yes,” replied the granite-faced tyrant. “I bring them the gift of fear.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The problem with scaring people is that sooner or later you’ll find someone who’s not scared, someone who’ll push back.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Indeed. That is my hope.”     Lara looked around at the cold muddy streets, the ragged desperate people, the crude massive machineries thrumming over their heads. “It wouldn’t take much to turn this all against you,” she warned. “One leader, a hope for the oppressed, enough power to give you pause.”     Dark Thugos regarded the visitor from another reality “You?” he challenged.     Lara realised she was being provoked, tested. “Somebody,” she answered. “Maybe sooner than you think.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“If I am not strong enough to hold Apocalyspe then another should arise,” Thugos agreed. He clasped his hands behind his back and strode off towards the High Temple of Forbidden Science.     Lara was forced to keep pace with him. “Why am I here, seeing this?” she demanded. “Why couldn’t I go with the others on your exploration mission? Why can’t I just go home?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Your powers should have recovered sufficiently to leave any time you choose,” the tyrant pointed out.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Not without Liu Xi, Chiaki, and Anna.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That is your choice, your weakness. But since you elect to stay then I can learn more of you.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Why me? Why single me out?”     Thugos chuckled. “Good. Like a true survivor you seek information. You search for data you can use to your advantage, turn against me.”     Lara didn’t like conceding points to the new ruler of the Shee-Yar Imperium. “Give me something to work with then. Why do you want me here? Why do you want the undead Imperium?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I want you here, Lara Night, so I can decide if you are my foe, and know how to destroy you if you are.” Thugos reached the door of the Temple and laid his palm on an opening plate. “What do you know of me?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I know you’re the cruel ruler of a bloody, brutal world where mercy and kindness are outlawed. I know you’re a worshipper of death, revelling in wanton destruction. I know you’re a son of the Hooded Hood…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I am not related to the Hooded Hood,” snapped Dark Thugos. “That aberration was deleted from reality. I am an eternal principle, a new god, personification of the survival of the fittest alone. I bring war, for war brings progress. I bring destruction, for destruction foments change. I revere death, for she is the mechanism by which all becomes perfect. I am Death’s champion, Lara Night, and that is why we may be adversaries.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Because I don’t want people to die?”     Thugos led Lara into the Forbidden Sciences building. The architecture here was of black marble, engraved with twisting luminous circuit lines that pulsed and thrummed. “You were called and chosen by your multiverse’s guardian spirit of life. You may be a champion of Life. If so then I need to know it.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“So you can destroy me.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“So I can corrupt you.”     Thugos and Lara emerged into a vast chamber filled with the technologies of a thousand plundered worlds. Identical bald scientists with black eye-visors scurried like ants tending unfathomable computers, a grandmother net of thinking machines set to one single calculation for half an eon.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What makes you think you can corrupt me?” Lara asked they tyrant. “So far you’ve only managed to disgust me.”     Thugos gestured to the vast omniscopes that charted the furthest edges of the Parodyverse. “Travel far enough in the right aspects of this multiverse and you will reach an edge,” he instructed his guest. “Reach beyond even that and if you are not erased, or driven mad, or transformed into something beyond imagination, you will find a wonderwall. Written on that wall is an equation, a great formula which some believe is the question that this Parodyverse was created to solve.”     Lara glimpsed at the work being done to record and understand that question. It took her breath away. She felt herself stagger.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yes,” agreed Thugos, “it is amazing. I have made it my task to understand this question and to seek its answer. Life is a key component and I have served evolution. Death is a vital ingredient and I have courted her favour. But there are many elements yet missing from my researches. Some will require blood, and some sacrifice. Some will require murder and war. Some will need an outside perspective.”     Lara caught her breath. “You think I… because I’m not originally from this reality I might see…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“There were several candidates,” Thugos answered. “On Parody-Earth alone Mr Epitome, Killer Shrike, Silver Aegis, Keiko, Deathstar Druid and others would qualify. But all those worthy of use have been… denied me. Save for you. And you may even be a champion of Life.”     Lara was energy sensitive. She could feel the shapes and concepts of the equation drilling into her brain. “I won’t help you,” she insisted.     Dark Thugos chuckled again and reached out for the elemental. “You will,” he promised. ***     The Mark III transwarp beta particle conversion shunt engine was roughly the size of a car and was linked by cables, chains, and armatures to a series of gravity manipulation nodes and a collidal unification shaping modulator – a force field generator. The shunt engine was steaming right now as its lepton translation grid glowed red hot and the temperature transfer buffers gave up one by one.     The shunt engine’s engineer was steaming too, in part because she’d been constantly patching the machine for the better part of a day by now in the face of a whole repair manual’s worth of cascading symptoms, in part because she was manually holding the melting lepton translation grid in place with her fingers.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Where’s that stub-bolt sprocketer?” she shouted. Amy Aston was immune to heat but while she was holding one bit of the machine together she couldn’t fix the six other things that were going wrong. And it was only the increasingly stressed machineries of the Extraordinary Endeavour Enterprises workshop that was preventing their firehouse headquarters from tumbling down into the maw of Great Azafroth, the fairly great old one who gibbered and cavorted at the centre of the universe.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I think it’s in Kara’s room,” called Cody Harper, dodging shrapnel from an exploding inertia zone expositor. “She was probably using it recreationally.”     The firehouse shuddered as the mad violinists fluttering around the elder god tried again to breach the logic wards that Cody and Kara had bickered into existence around their home.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Some of us don’t need sex aids,” Kara shouted back as she input the next set of n-dimensional calculations to keep the creatures at bay. “We don’t need to smuggle furry animals into our rooms.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Right,” snapped Miss Framlicker, EEE administrator. “Find that gadget Amy needs then somebody get me a shotgun.”     Annastassia, the Banzai Kitten who’d kept Cody company overnight after his birthday party, looked around helpfully for heavy weaponry.     The lepton translation grid melted under Amy’s hand. “Damn, it’s gone!” she cried. “Someone yank the proton screening frame from the chronal distortion buffer and get me a really large mallet!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Is the chronal distortion buffer this shiny pretty yellow thing?” Annastassia asked.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah, and the large mallet’s probably in Kara’s room too,” Cody offered.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Soon it’ll be Cody’s skull though,” Kara clarified helpfully.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I really need that shotgun now,” growled Miss F. “For reasons of discipline and morale.”     The secondary phase waveform quantumiser exploded with an actinic flare, sending a spray of fireworks out over the lab. A bonsai kitten shrieked.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It’s okay, Stassi,” Cody assured her. “Stuff blows up all the time around here.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It’s so pretty!” Annastassia beamed, her big blue eyes sparkling.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Quick update,” Kara called, still jabbing two different keyboards with different hands. “We’re no longer keeping those mad violinist things at bay. We’re no longer maintaining our distance from Azafroth’s maw. Cody is an ass. His cat-girl is a bimbo. And I really need a 22nd century reinforced-caffeine heavy duty zappachino right now.”     A series of middle-sized detonations sent Amy spinning for cover as the disfunctions cascaded right through the intertangential matrices. “Forget the hammer. Get me a bottle of vodka now!” she called. “We’ve got less than two minutes before we’re elder godded and I’d really like to be drunk by then.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We’re not finished yet,” Cody called. “Um, Stassia, those claws are just a bit tight there. Miss F’s got that look on her face that she gets when she’s really pissed with dad.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Damn right I have,” Miss Framlicker declared. “I activated the narrative enhancer five minutes back and there’s still no…”     The firehouse shook as the demon violinists pressed through the logic barrier. Their mournful sanity-wrenching screechings began to penetrate the sound insulators.     They exploded as they took an opening barrage of air-to-air missiles from the SPUD helicarrier.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Drury to EEE guys,” a gruff voice came from the communications array. “Wah-hoo!” ***     The Imperial Palace had been the jewel of Shee-Yar. Now it was a burned out wreck, part-demolished when the Carnifex had invaded it to murder the Emperor. Some of the people he had impaled were still pinned to the walls. Their animated corpses wriggled.     The Psychic Samurai led her small troupe through the shadows of the Hall of Many Conquests, avoiding the shattered fountains and the holes in the crystal floor that revealed the levels below. She moved more stealthily than Emmazon or Large Lana but not as quietly as she could; there was no sense in revealing her full capabilities.     They were half way towards the Emperor’s private quarters when the monsters broke cover. The creatures came at them through the walls, spraying them with shattered masonry and howling for blood. The guardians were shaped like wolves but the size of horses. Their spines were ridged and their talons were of metal. They were quite dead but very fast.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Ambush!” shouted Lana redundantly, deflecting the first attacker with her omni-rod and felling the second with a skull-smashing fist.     Emmazon caught one in her nega-net, neutralising the forces holding the beast together until it melted into a foul-smelling soup. “What the hell are these things?” she demanded. “There’s no creatures like this native to this planet!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Do I look like Morbid Mary?” Large Lana shouted back. One of the monsters closed its jaws around her forearm so she yanked it round to pound the others with then activated her omni-rod to blow it apart from the inside.     Chiaki Bushido didn’t say anything. She somersaulted over the first attack and used the backs of the creatures as a platform. These attackers were co-ordinated, which meant there was a controller somewhere.     The creatures snapped at the Psychic Samurai but were distracted by the Battling Bitches. Chiaki caught an exposed rafter and hauled herself hand-over-hand above the combat zone.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Aaagh!” cried Emmazon as one of the beasts worried her like a rat. “These aren’t normal undead. They can hurt us!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“They’ve got a touch of myth in them,” warned Lana. “Smear them well. Save me a pelt.”     Chiaki spotted it then, a tiny floating eye with a gory streamer trailing behind it, watching the proceedings: the controller.     She twisted down from the roof and sliced the thing in two.     The beasts went frantic but they lost all co-ordination. The Apocalyspians made short work of them.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Do you know what these were?” Emmazon demanded of Chiaki as she pounded the last one into paste.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“No. But they were powerful in life and they died hard. They were brought here from a very long way off. Deliberately set here.”     Lana examined the cleaved eye. “We’ve got somebody’s attention, anyhow,” she noted. She didn’t add that that was exactly what they wanted. Whoever was watching them wasn’t watching Liu Xi, Anna, and Mary.     As if on clue a final wolf-thing bounded from the shadows.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Don’t!” Chiaki called as Emmazon sliced it open with her wrist-blades; but it was too late.     As the creature was carved, livid red bands of arcane force slithered out from its belly. The Scarlet Bands of Saggeroth were released to hunt. They coiled around Lana first, enmeshing the warrior despite her immense strength. Emmazon’s ferocity proved useless against the arcane holding spell.     Chiaki lasted longest, intuiting the red ribbons’ movements and slipping out of their path. The bands replicated again and again, filling the space around the Psychic Samurai until there was nowhere else to dodge.     Chiaki felt the cold magic bonds folding around her, pinning her. She made a final defiant move and tossed her katana directly at the man she sensed had originated the attack.     The blade was a Masamune. It sliced through the first and second layers of her enemy’s magic defences before being turned aside by the third.     And then the three women were captured. ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Why would I help you?” Lara Night asked Dark Thugos. “I despise everything you stand for. And it’s not as if you’ve asked politely or given me much reason to co-operate.”     Dark Thugos held out his hand to gesture to something behind the visitor. “Because you are curious.”     Lara turned around and saw that she was no longer in the Hall of Forbidden Sciences. Somehow the gallery on which she and Thugos stood was now hovering on the extreme edge of the hyperspace curve, above the silver surface of the Parodyverse itself.     Lara almost asked “Where are we?” then didn’t. She knew.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You’ve coasted this place,” Thugos noted, “A necessary waypoint when jumping between multiverses. Twist in one direction and you traverse the Heart of Souls, realm of the Omnisoul, the artificial place between all realities, and from there back to your home or wherever you will. Don’t twist and you move across growing oblivion to the wonderwall.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It’s out there,” Lara sensed.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Few of those who make the journey to the wall survive. Fewer return. Some remain lodged forever, a part of the wonderwall itself, giants like the Space Robot Celestians. Others are dissolved to nothing, smeared across Comic-Book Limbo to be forgotten forever. Many more fall to horrors, for every realm no matter how abstract has its predators.”     Lara could feel the wall. It called to her. “Why are you telling me this?” she demanded.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And a few, a very few, go to the wall and come back with knowledge. They return changed. They return reborn as new gods.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What… what do you want of me?” Lara asked, clutching her head.     Dark Thugos laughed. “Go to the wall.” ***     Daemonic musicians exploded into green slime as eighty thousand tons of helicarrier swooped over the writhing surface of Azathoth. The greater guardians began to notice the disruption in the eternal scratchings of the inhuman violinists. The Conductors and the Critics began to claw their way over to the carrier.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Make sure not to shoot at Azafroth,” Vinnie de Soth warned Dan Drury as the Earth ship smeared creatures across its prow like bugs on a windshield. “If the big daddy of all elder beings wakes up then the stars change and all the Fairly Great Old Ones return.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That’d be the big tentacled blob we’ve got blacked out on all the viewscreens,” the Director of SPUD noted. “Yeah, okay. He’s in the no-fire zone. But I can nuke these little &£%&ers, right?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’ve got contact with the firehouse,” Hallie reported. “I’m receiving a message for Al from Miss Framlicker. Um, I don’t think I need to relay it just now.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Miss Framlicker is very clever,” bubbled the Shoggoth; or at least that part of him that still remained on the command deck. The rest of him was coating the helicarrier to protect it from the assault geometries of the violinists.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“She sure knows a lot of words,” Hallie admitted. “At least a lot of words for Al.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“She is ensuring that the ambient verbal content remains on a human level rather than bending to the song of Azafroth,” the Manga Shoggoth explained. “By expressing passionate views with mortal language she drowns out the droning madness of the Fairy Great Old Ones for now.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Or she’s really pissed at Al B,” Hallie considered.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Does it have to be one or the other?” wondered Vinnie.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Okay, we got incoming whatever the hell those are with the feelers and the hundreds of screaming baby faces,” Drury called out. “I’m guessing that a couple hundred megatons of neutron bomb can only improve ‘em.”     The carrier shook as the first of the Critics latched on and began to deconstruct it. The Shoggoth rolled over it, screeching something long and alien that included his response to the latest reviews about Higurachi When They Cry.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Right, we need to get close enough to hook the firehouse,” Al B. calculated. “Then I’ll need to drop across the space between us to latch on some tow-cables.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That’s going to require quite a bit of calculation to prevent the carrier and the firehouse from being overwhelmed by the alien physics fields that are battering us,” Hallie said. If she seemed distracted it was because she was running the entire halicarrier computer network hot with repeated operations proving that matter existed.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah, but someone has to do the jump,” the archscientist pointed out. “It’s not like we have Nats or Ham Boy or Manny to do the dumb stuff.”     The carrier shuddered as an Art Lover tried to mount it. The Shoggoth censored the vast blubbery entity, sending it tumbling back into the crowd of Traditionalists that hooted and gibbered behind the conflict.     Hallie flickered too as she had to ramp up the calculation rate. “I’m really going to need you here, Al. We’re going to have to match our existence algorithms to whatever Kara and Cody are using over there or we’ll just cancel each other out when we link up. And I don’t want to be cancelled out right now. I have plans for St Patrick’s Day.”     Vinnie raised his hand. “Um, I guess I could go,” he offered. “I mean, I’m trained so I don’t go instantly insane when I see elder stuff. I just vomit a lot, and get hives. But I could, um, jump through the hot seething reality-warped space between us and the firehouse and attach a lead or something. I guess.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You’re the sorcerer supreme,” Al B. pointed out. “You’re supposed to be not there when it happens.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’m the acting sorcerer supreme. And I’m really bad at it.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Enough talk,” Drury growled. “Someone get De Soth in an evac suit and toss him outta an airlock, willya. We got maybe five minutes to do this rescue and get outta here before we’re all concerted to death so let’s move it!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Did I mention I don’t like things covering my face?” worried Vinnie.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You’d prefer going into hard vacuum without a helmet?” checked Hallie.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Next time we call the AAA,” promised Al B. Harper. “For now we need you to attach this tow line.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And also ask Miss Framlicker what the following list of words mean,” Hallie added.     Drury told her.     The Studio Agents broke free of the surface of Azathoth, trailing bloody tendrils of elder gore as they rushed forward with their contracts. The helicarrier tumbled over and over as the Shoggoth boiled away under the legal barrage and the shmoozing. Al B. Harper launched Vinnie De Soth into space towards the EEE firehouse.     The firehouse launched a Banzai Kitten back towards Vinnie.     When the two met there was the inevitable timespace implosion. ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“They’re fighting something,” said Anna. The vibrations of battle warned that the Psychic Samurai and her party had found the enemy.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That’s the idea,” hissed Morbid Mary. “Your own assassin said so. We miss out on the killing but we find the secret of how the dead here walk. Keep moving.”     The smoke-stained hallway led off into Emperor K’Ben’s suite of bedrooms. It was clear that the last Imperator of the Shee-Yar had enjoyed a rich and varied social life.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We’d have been better if Chiaki had come with us,” Liu Xi worried.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Like we were going to let you three wander off on your own to find the great weapon, whatever it is,” Mary scorned. “Don’t worry. I know far more about death than your assassin anyway.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“She’s not an assassin,” Anna defended Chiaki. “She’s a samurai. A warrior with a code.”     Morbid Mary shrugged. “It’s not as if I care at all.” She paused to look through a shattered window down into the throneroom below. “That’s where K’Ben died. The rest of the Imperium fell within a solar cycle, but K’Ben screamed for three days before he finally met his end.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Is that how the dead rose, then? Some kind of final curse of the royal line?” Liu Xi speculated.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That’s what we’re here to find out,” Mary declared. “So let’s get on.” Liu Xi didn’t follow so she called back, “I said get on, Earth wench.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Are you alright, Liu Xi?” checked Anna.     The young elementalist looked worried. “I thought I heard something, Someone. Calling.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Calling what?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Calling for me.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Low level psychic assault,” Mary speculated. “I’m reading some massive necromantic signatures here. More than you’d expect even for the torture of the last king of a dead race. More than you’d expect even for the animation of an empire of zombies. Thaumaturgic energies that go right off the scale.”     Anna examined a wall. “Did the call come from over here? Only there’s a shielded energy mechanism behind this wall. It’s damaged or else even I couldn’t have picked it up on sensors. I think it’s a hidden door.”     Chiaki suddenly didn’t want that door opened.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Open it,” commanded Morbid Mary. When Anna hesitated she added, “Our comrades may be dying to buy us this time.”     Anna prized the hidden door back to reveal a dark corridor carved from ancient basalt.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“A tunnel.” Liu Xi generated a small light in the palm of her hand to peer into the shaft.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Writing,” Mary noted, spotting the runes carved along the sides of the wall. “I’ll program the grandmother box to…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It’s ancient Shee-Yar,” Anna interrupted. “I downloaded it when we were making preparations on Apocalyspe. This is a very old dialect, dating back to the very start of the first dynasty. This whole area was constructed right back then.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You can read this?” Liu Xi asked. “What does it say?”     Anna assessed the glyphs. “It’s some kind of agreement. Very complex. A pact, I think.”     Morbid Mary’s technology caught up with Anna. “It’s an infernal pact for the success of the Shee-Yar Imperium. Payment is due when the Imperium finally falls.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Is that what caused those undead then?” Anna speculated. “I thought it was that agent of the Carnifex…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Somebody triggered this,” Liu Xi sensed. “The pact was dormant, waiting. Somebody came here and… set it going again. For the Carnifex.”     Morbid Mary shook her head. “Wouldn’t work. The pact was defunct. The deal was off.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What do you mean?” asked Anna.     Mary tapped the side of the wall. “Look who the pact was with. He’s destroyed.”     Anna translated the runes. “The Dread Dormaggadon, Lord of the Dreary Dimension. The Legion killed him. Twice.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“No wonder Shee-Yar fell soon after,” considered Morbid Mary. “But without Dormaggadon there was no power left to cause those undead to rise. It makes no sense.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Unless somebody found a new battery,” Anna considered.     Liu Xi suddenly turned and began to run forward. She vanished into the shadows, deeper into the ancient complex.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“After her!” cried Mary.     A heavy door of solid stone blocked Liu Xi’s way. She shattered it with a gesture.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Liu Xi, what’s wrong?” called Anna. “Liu Xi!”     The elementalist caused the braziers in the room to burst alight. Their lurid flames illuminated the sacrificial chamber where the first Shee-Yar Emperor had surrendered up his firstborn and made treaty with Dread Dormaggadon. The orange light played over the bloody stone slab and the corpse chained out across it: the new power source of an undead empire.     Liu Xi raced forward to embrace the dead man. “Exu!” she cried. ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Listen to her cry,” admired the man who had murdered the god of murder. He turned away from his scrying glass and the mourning Liu Xi Xian and licked his lips. “The weeping of women is music to be savoured.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“So’s the sound you’ll make when I rip off your arms and stuff them up your ass!” shouted Emmazon, struggling against the mystic bonds that restrained her.     Her captor negligently gestured and a mystical ball-gag clamped her mouth. “Liu Xi Xian was a chosen bride of the Parody Master – and she managed to convince his own Doomherald to defend her. They escaped together into the nothingness of Comic-Book Limbo and rebuilt themselves with nothing to draw upon but each other. So many secrets, these two, so intimately linked.”     The Psychic Samurai didn’t bother struggling against her bonds. She knew the magic couldn’t be overcome. She chose a different battlefield. “You wanted Liu Xi here on Shee-Yar Prime,” she accused. “It was no accident that the Carnifex had us sent here!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Of course not, my pretty little warrior-wench. It was all part of the bargain. The Carnifex released me from my captivity and provided me with the Void Scholar’s grand-daughter. That plot was sufficient to attract the attention of Exu, the GatewayTraitorGalaxyTraveller! – and specifically that fragment of him which had once been split off by the Hooded Hood to become the Parody Master’s Doomherald.”     Large Lana also knew the mystic chains were unbreakable but she struggled all the same. “You used the herald’s weakness for the girl.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“He knew that the Doomherald would be provoked and empowered by the mass murder of the Imperium,” Chiaki surmised. “Add in the motivation to come rescue Liu Xi when she was fighting for her life with us against the Carnifex’s trap…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You set the two aspects of Exu at war with each other, the greater chaos manifestation and the dormant god of murder,” snarled Lana. She tried to shatter her chains again, sweating and heaving to no avail except her captor’s amusement.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Until they separated once more, yes,” he agreed. He leaned upon one of the vast undead ravengenjbeasts that served as his personal guard. “And whilst the Doomherald was weakened by his divorce from his greater aspect and distracted by the delectable little Liu Xi I arranged a little ambush.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Nobody should be able to murder the god of murder,” Chiaki objected. “In fact the Doomherald tried to provoke the Parody Master to try once because of how powerful it would make him.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The Parody Master had nigh-infinite power,” conceded the enemy. “But he was not a god. One god may kill another. It’s practically the rule. I’ve killed many in my time and I’m planning to slaughter a good deal more.” He brushed his fingers admiringly over Lana’s cheek. “You will make a fine addition to my undead cohort,” he promised the Apocalyspian warrior. “All of you will.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Over our dead bodies,” said the Psychic Samurai. “I think I know who you are now.”     The gaunt black-mantled necromancer raised an eyebrow. “Do tell, toothsome little samurai girl.”     Chiaki shrugged. “I don’t think so. Play your games with someone who cares.”     Her captor squeezed his hand into a fist. Emmazon screamed behind her ball-gag as she was wracked with agony. She began to cough and choke as maggots welled from her nose and ears.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Leave her!” Chiaki called. “There is no honour in torturing captives.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Only amusement. Name me, my fragile toy.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You know him?” Lana asked. “Speak his name, so I can properly say whose head I’ve spitted on my omni-rod.”     The Psychic Samurai summed up. “Powerful necromancer, self-proclaimed deity, served by undead Ausgardian monsters, and a penchant for tormenting female captives. This has to be the former Lord of Miserablegitheim, Donar’s foe, the dark mage Slithis.”     Lord Slithis was mildly impressed. “Donar’s doom,” he clarified. “And do you know how I am going to accomplish the death of the hemigod of thunder, his people, his realm, and everything he ever held dear, including your ridiculous little Middlinggard?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’m sure you’re going to gloat about it to us.”     Slithis told her. Slithis showed her.     That was when Chiaki really began to be afraid. ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What are you doing to me?” demanded Lara Night, clutching at her head. “Stop it!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’ve done nothing other than bring you here to the edge of reality,” the tyrant of Apocalyspe replied. “The rest is between you and that edge.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It’s calling to me!” Lara gasped. “Promising to me…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It expects a decision,” Dark Thugos told her. “Here, on the cusp of all things, where your patrons may not interfere, may not restrain, where you are finally left to make one choice all by yourself.”     Lara turned her face towards the blistering darkness of nothingness and the secrets that called her there. “So dangerous… so beautiful…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Like you,” Thugos told her.     Lara began to perceive his trap. “If I go out there… whatever happens you win. If I’m destroyed then you’ve eliminated a potential foe. If I’m absorbed into the wonderwall you gain a new clue to solving its puzzle. If I return changed then whether I’m your ally or your foe your evolution through conflict agenda is served.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And if you die or simply go insane then I’ll finally have a suitable empty shell to host my Lady Death should she consent to visit me,” Thugos leered.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I could just stay here. Turn back. Never go to the barrier.”     Dark Thugos chuckled. “You could run away and hide. You could return all the way back to that pale other world you escaped from, to the man who hurt you, to the life that killed you shred by shred in its daily mundanity. You could cower back to Parody-Earth and slink on the edge of the superhero community, hoping to be noticed and patted on the head once in a while when you do something useful to them. You could continue to be nothing and to mean nothing until you fade to pointless oblivion. But you will not.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It’s not like that. I’m not a champion of life that you have to destroy me.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“How could you be a champion of life without ever having lived?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’m not your enemy. There are ways we could co-operate together, things we can do for the benefit of your people…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Sounds mundane, Lara Night. Sounds like something you might do to avoid facing what really matters.”     The wonderwall called to Lara. It’s tug was stronger now.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“If I go there then I’ll be committed,” she realised. “Forever bound by the knowledge I gain to be a part of the Parodyverse. Sundered from my home, from those who care about me there.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“If you are reborn as a newer god then that will no longer concern you,” Thugos told her. “If you go insane, it will no longer concern you. If you die it will no longer concern you.” He leaned forward so his burning dark eyes could lock Lara’s gaze. “This is the crucible of Dark Thugos, elemental. All is burned away in conflict until nothing remains but the pure essence.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“No,” objected Lara.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You are powerful, but you cannot challenge me yet because you limit yourself.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“No. You wanted to know what I am? Well if I’m anything it’s a champion of balance. I don’t need your extremes. I don’t need to go to the wonderwall. I don’t need to change.”     Thugos sneered. He pointed away from the edge of the Parodyverse, back into the shimmering silver interior of the multiverse. “Perhaps you need one final spur?” he suggested. “So how events cluster around your friends. See how close they are to their deaths and to the birth of abomination.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I can help them. I can go to them.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You aren’t strong enough to help them yet. You are not pure enough.”     Here on the edge of all things Lara knew that Thugos spoke the absolute truth. “I cannot help them… unless I go to the wall and destroy myself to become something else.”     Dark Thugos folded his arms and awaited Lara Night’s decision. ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Exu!” Liu Xi Xian cried, tugging at the lifeless corpse on the alter. “Exu!”     Morbid Mary checked the body. “He’s dead,” she noted. “It happens.”     Anna checked her Lair Legion database. “This is the Doomherald!” she realised. “He kidnapped Liu Xi Xian then later courted her. When she rejected him he elected to merge with an avatar of chaos and be consumed.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Exu!” screamed Liu Xi.     Anna hurried to her friend. “I am sorry,” she said. “I do not know how he came to be here, in this chamber, in this condition. But if that is really him then somebody has done the impossible and killed him.”         Ã¢â‚¬Å“It was an insult trauma,” Mary observed. “Something thin and metallic and sharp, but flexible too. He was stabbed just once, right through the heart.” She glanced over at Liu Xi ironically.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“He’s the Doomherald!” Liu Xi objected. “He can’t be murdered. He is murder!”     Anna looked around, worried. Anything that was powerful enough to do that was a serious tactical problem.     Morbid Mary looked at the carvings around the altar and shuddered. “I can’t follow even half of this runecraft. It’s sophisticated stuff, and very ancient. Someone’s adapted the old Dormaggadon pact to something new and deadly.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“They’re energy flow calculations,” Anna supplied. “I don’t understand the forms of energy described but the math remains the same.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What - what kind of energy flow?” Liu Xi was still clutching the lifeless form of an enemy, of a friend, of what might have been the love of her life. “There are forces passing through these walls, through this whole structure, through this world and beyond, but I don’t understand them. They’re beyond the elements – but familiar somehow. I’ve encountered them before.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Show me the calculations, warbot,” Morbid Mary demanded. “Let’s see what someone is trying to accomplish here.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’m not a warbot,” Anna denied. “I’m more than the sum of my parts.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Justify your pathetic existence later,” Mary snapped. “The calculations.”     Anna bit back a retort and scanned a summoning circle beside the sacrifice stone. “This was used to bring the Doomherald here,” she reasoned. “Some small part of his DNA was placed into the circle and then the forces of this temple were channelled to activate the summoning.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“He’d have to allow himself to be brought here,” Mary clarified. “Why would be consent to come into a trap?”     Anna glanced over at Liu Xi but did not answer.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Interpret the rest of these arcane engraving,” Mary demanded. “Quickly.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Say please.”     While Anna was unhappily conferring with the Apocalyspian technowitch, Liu Xi shattered the chains that had bound Exu to the altar. She scanned his body with her elemental skills but found only gross matter. Whatever spark she’d always felt inside the Doomherald was extinguished now.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You were gone,” she whispered to the body. “It was over between us. Why did you come back? Why did you let yourself die?”     Across the room Morbid Mary burst into a long stream of GolGotham obscenities. “That’s not possible! No-one can make that happen! It’s not… it can’t be done!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The math says it can,” Anna pointed out logically. “The released force of the god of murder’s death has animated undead across the Imperium. That in turn has made the psychic essence of the murdered Shee-Yar available to be bound together into one powerful entity.”     Liu Xi looked up. She suddenly felt very cold. “We’ve encountered a gestalt creature bound from the life forces of an entire planet before,” she gasped. “We called it a Singularity Rider. A Doomwraith.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Somebody’s been studying the Parody Master’s formula,” Morbid Mary noted. “No wonder they used the Parody Master’s Doomherald as the trigger.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Ten thousand murdered worlds?” Anna said, her voice quiet and worried. “Ten thousand Singularity Riders?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Or one immensely powerful one,” said Lord Slithis, appearing in the doorway. He released the Scarlet Strands of Saggeroth again, catching Mary before she could muster a defence, pinning Anna despite the robot’s resistance protocols.     Liu Xi seared the red-hued snakes as they slithered through the air before her.     Lord Slithis smiled thinly and released a Doleful Haunting of Dormaggadon into the young elementalist’s mind. The foul psionic entity burrowed right past the girl’s defences and plummeted deep into her secret memories.     And then Liu Xi was a prisoner of Exu the Doomherald, spending long evenings talking in his alpine chalet hideout.     And then she was cowering next to him, weak and naked in the soul-numbing chill of comic book limbo.     And then she was kissing him.     And then they were arguing, and Liu Xi couldn’t even remember why.     And Exu was departing forever, rejected, forsaken, despairing so much that he surrendered his very essence back to his ancient namesake.     And then he was back, to save her, to die for her. A dark figure with a familiar blade was stabbing him. And then the Doomherald died.     Liu Xi broke free of the psychic fear attack and unleashed her full elemental fury on Lord Slithis.     Nothing happened. In the seconds it had taken the girl to relive her choices and remorse, Slithis had managed to craft a spell of inhibition. Liu Xi could no longer access her gifts.     The scarlet bands smothered her, jerking her up to hang like a marionette.     Lord Slithis gestured to float Chiaki, Lana, and Emmazon into the chamber. He arranged his trophies in a circle around him where he could admire them. Now he had the full set and the entertainment could begin.     Anna attempted to activate her remote assault options. Somehow the magics prevented it. She stared across at the Psychic Samurai for a lead. Chiaki seemed to be meditating quietly in her bonds.     Morbid Mary tried to speak a counterspell and found herself choked off. The god of necromancers was a long way out of her league. Emmazon still thrashed at her shackles, her own blood running down her wrists and ankles where she’d tried to tear loose. Large Lana had ceased fighting for now and glared at Slithis was a killing fury.     Slithis enjoyed the sight of so many attractive captives at his mercy. “Some of you will join my personal staff,” he told the women. “You will have to die first, of course, to ensure your loyalty; but I shall make certain that you retain your wits so that you will remember who you were and be aware of what you will do as my slaves.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“An Apocalyspian will never be your slave!” shouted Lana.     Slithis wasn’t impressed. “Apocalyspians are slaves from the moment you are born,” he scorned. “Pathetic, savage creatures little better than the ravengenjbeasts that pad at my heels. None of you interest me half as much as these creatures from Earth: the construct of steel and lightning, the warrior with the shining soul, the grand-daughter of the void, who should not even exist any more.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What do you mean?” Liu Xi frowned. “I don’t…”     Slithis cupped her chin and admired her tearful face. “Your lineage was never conceived,” he noted. “Therefore you are an anomaly, a cosmic accounting error. Some day the Parodyverse may recognise its mistake and simply reset so that you no longer exist. But until then you are… unique and fascinating.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Get off her!” Anna shouted. She tried emergency-detaching her limbs to break free of the scarlet sashes but somehow even those mechanisms were locked in place.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Something stalks you, little elemental,” Slithis went on. “It moves in the void you believe you manipulate and it creeps ever nearer. You do not see it but it sees you and it has such… purpose for you. I can save you from that terror.”     Chiaki was ahead of Slithis. “Liu Xi Xian, don’t accept his offer,” she called out.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What offer?” Liu Xi asked. Slithis’ touch was cold and sticky on her skin.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Exquisite,” Slithis admired.     He room became colder as he smiled.     He looked back at the Psychic Samurai. He closed his fist to wrack Chiaki with agonies. He liked the way she squirmed when she was seared with pain. “Your clever friend has discerned the bargain I will offer you.”     The elementalist was suspicious. “What bargain?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I am Slithis, Lord of Miserablegitheim, god of necromancers. I have raised the dead of this Imperium. I shall use them to forge the greatest Doomwraith ever conceived. I shall loose its lethal fury against Augard and the Nine Worlds and naught will stay it, not the Oldman himself. I shall slay all while Donar Oldmanson watches and weeps. Nothing can gainsay this now, for I have triumphed.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That’s what so many say before the roof comes down on them!” Anna shouted.     Slithis ignored her, obsessed with the smooth innocence of Liu Xi’s face. “I have slain your man, my beauty, your faithful Doomherald. You have no protector now. What is his becomes mine, the spoils of victory.”     Liu Xi bit his hand. It tasted stale and poisonous. “I wasn’t his. I’m not yours.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You will be mine forever,” Lord Slithis promised. “Donar stole my bride. Now I have found another.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Always with the bride!” Anna wondered. “Always Liu Xi! I really need to upgrade my socialising protocols.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I won’t,” Liu Xi spat at the god of necromancers. “I wouldn’t bow to the Parody Master. I wouldn’t let my grandfather mate me with Danny Lyle. I’m not going to yield to you, kuh-ooh duh lao bao jurn!”     Chiaki spasmed in agony again as Slithis took his revenge.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’m a man of simple pleasures,” Slithis told Liu Xi. “Contract marriage to me or I’ll take my pleasures out on your comrades. Slowly, methodically, painfully, as only a man who has studied the application of cruelty for millennia can. I will destroy each of them before your eyes then raise them as my undead slaves in eternal tormented servitude.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Don’t do it!” Anna called. “Don’t… tzzzzzzzzz!” Her plea was cut short as Slithis gave her pain.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“How fascinating that your creators gave you the capacity to experience agony,” the god of necromancers mused.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Leave them alone!” Liu Xi pleaded. “You set this trap to catch me. I’m here. Let them go.”     Lord Slithis smiled a worn ancient smile. “Very well, my bride. Wed me and I shall allow the mechanical girl and the spirit warrior to go free. Deny me and they shall serve in my undead retinue for eternity.” He sent spasms of agony through all his captives again just because he could. “Choose now.” ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It looks as if your friends need help,” Dark Thugos observed to Lara Night. “From this distance there is nothing you can do to save them – except go to the wall.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You set this up,” accused Lara. “You knew about Slithis all along. Those undead he raised obeyed you! Someone had to give him the Doomherald’s DNA for the summoning.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Slithis is adept at striking bargains,” the tyrant of Apocalyspe owned. “I get an empire of undead slaves, the full resources of a powerful Imperium ready to sweep across the galaxy and bring death in my lady’s name. He gets his chance to create the greatest Doomwraith that ever was with which to destroy the old lesser gods.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I should destroy you now,” Lara snarled.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You may try,” Dark Thugos granted her. “You may assault me. You may threaten or plead. You may do nothing. You may leap beyond the edge to try and gain what you need to save your friends.” He folded his arms behind his back with a grim satisfaction. “At last we shall find out who you are, Lara Night.” ***     Annastassia floated through the soft atmospheric force-sheath that maintained a breathable environment in the Extraordinary Endeavour Enterprises firehouse and doffed her spacesuit helmet. “Look what I caught!” she called excitedly, dropping Vinnie de Soth on the grating. “Can I keep him?” ***     Lara Night turned away from the wonderwall. “One day, perhaps,” she told it. “But not today. Not at Dark Thugos’ behest.”     Thugos seemed disappointed. “So you are a mere keeper of balance,” he sniffed. “And you would rather let your friends die than allow yourself to change.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“There’s nothing ‘mere’ about keeping all in due proportion,” Lara answered. “One day you might learn that, but by then it may be too late for you. As for my friends, you’re missing the point there.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And that is?”     Lara smiled. “They don’t need my help to get out of your trap and defeat Slithis. I believe in them.” ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Don’t,” hissed Chiaki. “Don’t make a pact with Slithis.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Wed him,” Morbid Mary advised. “He has great power and would give that power to you!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We don’t want you to sacrifice yourself, Liu Xi!” Anna cried. “I’m sorry we can’t help you but you mustn’t surrender to him.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Decide,” Lord Slithis told the young elementalist. “Living bride or broken bondslave. Two allies saved or all damned. My will be done!”     The despot of Miserablegitheim threw back his head and laughed. His dead monsters howled.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Let me out of these shackles,” Liu Xi told Slithis. She gestured to the blood-red magical bonds suspending her. “I won’t answer while I’m chained like a slave.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Your gift remains inhibited by my magics,” the necromancer warned as he released his bride to be. “Now, your consent. Or shall I begin my works on your comrades?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“If I agree to wed you then they all go free,” Liu Xi insisted. “The Bitches as well as Chiaki and Anna.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What?” demanded Large Lana. “Why would you do that? That makes no sense at all!”     Slithis shook his head coldly. “The three she-beasts from Apocalyspe are already forfeit. The offer is for your two Earth companions. Agree now or I shall slaughter one of them before your eyes.” Frost began to form on Anna.     Liu Xi blinked back tears. “I’m sorry,” she told Lana, Emmazon, and Mary. She held out her hand to Slithis. “I agree.”     Slithis clasped his hand to hers to seal the bargain.     Liu Xi seared his hand to charcoal with her elemental gift of fire.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Aaaagh!” screamed the dark mage. “What? How…?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You think I haven’t had a spell of inhibition put on me before?” the girl cried out. “Xander did that to me long ago! And I learned how to bypass it! Do you think I’m stupid?”     Slithis cradled his blackened skeletal claw and hissed. “Oh, you are stupid, Liu Xi Xian! You shall be mine and regret your stupidity for a howling evermore! Your friends shall suffer to the uttermost of my devising.” The god of necromancers dismissed Liu Xi’s follow-up assaults and pinned her to the wall with the Searing Spines of the Seraphus.     Liu Xi found her powers blocked again. Slithis hit her across the face with his good hand.     Chiaki managed to reach her toes to the wall and used them to push herself away. She floated slowly into Lana and Emmazon, then dominoed into Mary until they were all more distant from Slithis.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Powerless and faithless,” Lord Slithis said, looming over Liu Xi. “But pact-bound mine now! And nothing can save you.”     At a signal from the Psychic Samurai, Lana planted a boot to shunt Chiaki in the opposite direction again. Chiaki rolled her magic-bound form into Anna and shunted the android towards the summoning circle that had brought forth the Doomhearald. Anna twisted so her mystic shackles touched the runes to complete the arcane circuit once again.     The magics holding the android shorted out, grounded into the summoning ring. Anna sprang free, only to be pinned down by Slithis’ ravengenjbeasts.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That circle was created to summon the Doomherald,” Slithis told her. “Nothing else.”     The reactivated circle began to glow.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That was before I transformed the sample of Exu’s DNA that you used into someone else’s,” Liu Xi spat. “I can’t usually do that but I know Exu very well. Better than almost anybody. I’ve healed him and… and loved him.”     The ancient enchantments of the Shee-Yar crypt groaned into use one last time and summoned yet another being to the dark vault circle.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And I know his DNA very well too,” Liu Xi grinned madly as Vinnie De Soth came to her summons.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hello,” said the acting sorcerer supreme of the Parodyverse. “What’s all this then?” ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Maximum warp shunt!” shouted Al B. Harper. “Over-ride the quantum vector inhibitors and route the lepton bus through the narrative phase derectifier!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I guess that means Al is glad to see us again,” Amy Aston guessed. ***     The Shoggoth bubbled away from the gory inverted remains of another of Azafroth’s mad fiddlers. His gelid globules ignored Newtonian physics and recomposed into one roiling biomass. “I’d like to thank all the little people who made this massacre possible,” he told the minor elder servitors. “You know who you are. Well, those of you still in existence.”     The demon violinists decided it was a good time to perform on the other side of Azafroth. ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Explain to me again why every gadget on this bucket is exploding all at once,” demanded Colonel Dan Drury as his command deck burst into showers of sparks around him. He found a burning console to light his cigar on.     Hallie processed another set of calculations and overwrote the helicarrier operating system for the seventeenth time that second. “I think it’s only one explosion for every dimension we’re falling through,” she comforted the one-eyed masterspy. “We’re just falling through an awful lot of dimensions.” ***     Lord Slithis tangled the young Earth occultist in the Scarlet Sashes of Sagarroth. “Fool! Mage you may be but I am the god of necromancers! No power you possess can even begin to harm me.”     Vinnie caught the sashes, folded them into his pocket, and took one careful step back.     The EEE firehouse crashed through the roof and fell on Slithis. ***     The SPUD helicarrier shimmered into view in the dark skies above Shee-Yar Prime. It really needed a new paint job.     Hallie piloted a shuttle down to find Vinnie and retrieve the others.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You have efficient backup,” approved Large Lana.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We call them friends,” Anna explained to her.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Nobody goes anywhere until we get this firehouse winched back out of this evil undead temple,” Miss Framlicker insisted. “Harper!”     Morbid Mary checked beneath the structure for Slithis’ remains. “No body,” she said, disappointed. There had to be some good ingredients on a dead god of necromancers. “Only these slippers.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Vinnie!” Liu Xi cried. She buried herself in Vinnie’s arms and sobbed on his shoulder. “I didn’t know if you’d come. He killed Exu!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Wow, look at the arcane engineering in this place,” Al B. Harper whistled. “It’ll take some serious defusing to, well basically not create Singularity Riders. Cody, get to work on the inscriptions. Kara, I want the n-space arcane interfaces calculated to at least ninety thousand decimal places. Amy, get me my golf bag, but unplug it first. And don’t tip it more than three degrees. Or shake it much. Stassia, any chance of a black coffee?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“There are billions of troubled souls pinned here,” the Manga Shoggoth gurgled angrily. He twisted in an eye-watering manner and folded round on himself. He hissed and steamed slightly. “And now there are not,” he continued.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The dead are still walking around,” Hallie worried.     There was a crash of Doom Tube as Dark Thugos appeared with Lara. “Those dead are the property of Apocalyspe, Lair Legion,” he warned. “You trespass now upon my domain.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We’ll be going as soon as we’ve got this winch attached to my headquarters and the Shoggoth’s done whatever mind-sickening thing he’s doing to prevent Doomwraiths,” Miss Framlicker told him.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And we’re taking Exu’s body,” Anna insisted; but the Doomwraith’s form had faded back into chaos.     Chiaki looked at the brooding heavy bulk of the absolute ruler of a realm of undiluted cruelty. “I believe we should take our leave now. Today hasn’t worked out quite how our host expected. We have fulfilled out duty to him. Now we go.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’ll be glad to get home and relax for a while,” admitted Hallie. “I could use a nice peaceful day at the Lair Mansion catching up on admin.”     Dark Thugos didn’t detain them on their way back to the helicarrier. He paused only to make a tiny bow to Lara. “Your body would have made an exquisite housing for my lady,” he told her. “As for your test at the wonderwall… that will only be truly over when you face that barrier.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I can balance until then,” the strange visitor from another multiverse answered him. “Long after you fall.”     Drury waited until the carrier was loaded, filed away the aerial satellite photographs of Shee-yar Prime for later tactical evaluatio,n and gave the order to go home. ***     Lord Slithis was in pain. Growing new bodies itched. “That didn’t work out too well,” he snarled as the Earth helicarrier transwarped away. “My beautiful Doomwraith…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It went well for me,” Thugos approved. “I have worlds of undead minions for Professor Pandemonium to upgrade. I have the entire resources of the Shee-Yar Imperium. I have learned the nature of more of my adversaries.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But I got squashed,” the god of necromancers hissed. “Had you not taken me to the wonderwall and brought me back transformed into a new deity I would have been destroyed; destroyed by those maggots.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Their time will come, my ally. The fall of the Carnfex has been good to me. The strong prosper as the weak fall.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But the Night woman will not be joining the New Pantheon.”     Thugos frowned. “Not at this time. She is not yet ready. Despair has not yet hollowed out her soul and left her ready for the future. Give her time.”     Slithis hadn’t been that keen on the candidate anyway. “There are other, better potential recruits. The New Pantheon rises.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It rises,” agreed the master of the entropy eyebeams. “Rises to Resolution. Today is not a defeat. Not even much of a setback in the larger experiment. Earth’s defenders remain strong so Earth may survive a while longer yet.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I suppose I do still have a lien on the little elementalist girl,” conceded Slithis. “And I managed to extract what I needed for the godplague before that horrible Shoggoth wrecked my laboratory specimens.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Then our work can continue,” proclaimed the tyrant of Apocalyspe. He raised a clenched fist. “To the destruction of the old deities! To the end of the age of heroes! To the rise of the empire of blood!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“To the doom of Ausgard and the fall of Donar Oldmanson!” added Slithis.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“To the destruction that will cascade from the breaking of the chaos champion’s lineage!” added Thugos. “The Doomherald’s death was but the beginning of those consequences.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“To the ravaging of the Mythlands and the devastation of Faerie!” anticipated Slithis.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“To the secrets of the Parodyverse, and its dissection to discover them!” added Dark Thugos.     The third man present, the man who’d killed Exu, the new god of murder, crossed his arms over his blood-stained armour and nodded. “What you said,” agreed the Chain Knight. *** Next Time At Last: CrazySugarFreakBoy! and the Lair Legion versus Aryan Ideal and his Pogroms of Purity! – but which side is the government on? Which seven members will Herbert P. Garrick allow to stay on the LL? What are the Lair Legion Protocols and who will survive them? All this plus Citizen Z vs Silicone Sally in Untold Tales #340: Clear and Present Danger *** Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2010 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2010 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.

An interesting sojurn into the Shee-Yar palace. From your description of the monsters I thought they might be Apocalyspian War Hounds, but odds are Emmazon and Company would have recognized them. It seems they do have a mystical master though: could one of the Dead Hell Lords be returning? Or maybe even worse: the Chain Knight? He was Death for a while, as I recall. Quite a surprise revelation at the end as well. Poor Liu Xi. I won't say poor Exu because he was kind of a knob.

The stuff in the Center of the Universe was fun too. I noticed besides evil violin players, the heroes had to face Agents and Critics as well. Anything metatextual going on there?

Looking forward to the next part.