Courageous

by Nicholas Olivo

  “That’s just the point,” Ela said. “The people need to see the courage we have always prided ourselves on. They need to be reminded that we should not live in fear. With this amulet, I will not be afraid of the wolves.” She finished her carving and picked up the first of the earthen pots. Her eyes flared orange, reminding me of Herb Wallenby’s specter sight. “Tericho, first of the great chiefs, he who slayed the demon boar.” She broke the seal on the pot and carefully poured out the ashes onto the amulet. Then she placed her hands over the ash-covered amulet and muttered a word in a language the Glimpse couldn’t translate, and a pulse of red light came up from her hands. When she removed them, the ash was gone, and a section of the amulet, one showing a lone figure battling what looked like an oversized pig, was now brightly polished and gleaming.

  Ela and Parkli exchanged excited smiles. Ela grabbed the next jar, her eyes again flaring orange. “Talawanta, who slayed the supay.” Again, she poured ash onto the amulet, but this time, when she channeled whatever magic she was using, the light was green. When she took her hands away, another section of the amulet shone brightly.

  This went on for another ten or fifteen minutes, Ela placing ashes of her people’s heroes onto the amulet, sending a pulse of scarlet or emerald light, until all the sections of the amulet were gleaming in the afternoon sun.

  Ela looked exhausted, but the grin she wore was nearly as bright as the amulet. “I need to test it,” Ela said, getting to her feet. “From what Allini taught me, the first fear that this gets exposed to will be made into a permanent effect, a power that can always be tapped. For that I—” She staggered and fell to her knees, an arrow in her back, the amulet dropping from her grip rolling a few feet away in the dirt.

  Parkli gasped and scrambled backward in time to avoid an arrow intended for her. Two men, dressed in leather loincloths, stepped into the clearing, bows in hand. They were each nocking another arrow when a woman’s voice called out, “Hold.” The speaker joined them in the clearing a moment later. Her face was painted with strange runes, which continued down her neck and disappeared beneath the purple robe she wore. Her white hair had a streak of black running down one side, and it flew about her in a frizzy cloud.

  “I thought Allini’s little brat of an apprentice might be behind the grave robberies,” the woman said. “I didn’t expect you to be helping her, Parkli. Frightened little girls like you should stay at the homestead, weaving baskets.”

  Parkli’s eyes were huge and she was shaking, but her gaze was locked on Ela. The apprentice had fallen face down in the dirt, and blood pooled around her. She managed to turn her face to Parkli. Her expression was one of sadness, regret, hope, and anger. “Take it,” she said, in a voice so weak that only Parkli could’ve heard. Then the light left her eyes, and she was gone.

  The woman, the priestess Cartoosh, unless I missed my guess, had continued speaking, but neither Parkli nor I had heard it. “What?” Parkli asked, giving herself a shake.

  Cartoosh rolled her eyes. “I said, give me that trinket that Ela had. Do that, and I won’t summon the demon wolves.” Parkli’s eyes widened further, showing too much of the whites. “Oh, yes,” Cartoosh cooed, stroking the amulet she wore. “I know you’re afraid of them. And it would only take one thought from me to bring them down upon you.” She held out her hand. “Give it to me, now!”

  Parkli bent down and reached for the amulet with shaking fingers. But when she grasped it, something changed in her demeanor. She still looked frightened, but now, she was confused. This delay, however, had been just enough to exhaust Cartoosh’s patience. The priestess snapped her fingers and a pair of wolves shimmered into existence. Well, “wolf” might have been too gentle a descriptor. Worgen might have been better. These beasts easily came up to my shoulder, and sported shaggy coats of black fur, matted with blood. Their eyes were glowing red coals, and acid dripped from their fangs. They lunged at Parkli who screamed, leapt back—

  —And launched herself into the sky.

  The girl hovered there for a moment, twenty feet off the ground, well out of the wolves’ reach. The warriors who had accompanied Cartoosh stood slack jawed, and even the priestess had a stunned look about her. For her part, Parkli’s eyes were huge as she looked around, trying to understand why she was hovering. She clutched the amulet in a death grip, and I could see she was struggling to get her breathing under control. After a moment, the wolves faded away. A second later, Parkli’s feet touched back down on the ground.

  I couldn’t help but smile. In the comics, Commander Courageous had always been immune to Señor Fear’s powers. It looked like that part had been true. Now that Parkli had activated the Anisa Amulet’s magic, the wolves Cartoosh had conjured from Parkli’s fear had ceased to exist.

  Cartoosh shook off her surprise and slapped the closest bowman on the back of the head. “Shoot her, you idiot!” The bowman drew an arrow and fired three shots so quickly and smoothly that he could’ve auditioned for the part of Hawkeye in the Avengers movies.

  Parkli yelped and threw her arms over her face. The arrows bounced off her skin as if she were made of metal. “Fools, grab her!” The bowmen dropped their weapons, not looking as confident as they had a few minutes ago, and rushed forward, reaching for the girl.

  Their hands passed through her as if she were made of smoke.

  That put the bowmen over the edge. They took off running, despite Cartoosh’s threats. The priestess turned back to Parkli, who now stood just a few feet from her. “Ela was my friend,” she said. “The bravest person I ever knew. This amulet should have been hers. She should have been the one to do this. The one to know what you are afraid of.”

  “I fear nothing,” Cartoosh hissed, though the slightly hysterical tone in her voice said otherwise.

  “You fear death,” Parkli said. And as the Anisa Amulet glowed in her hand, a spear of pure light appeared in the other. Parkli thrust the spear through Cartoosh’s chest, and the priestess’s mouth barely had time to form an ‘o’ of surprise before she fell to the ground. Parkli pulled Cartoosh’s amulet from around her neck, kicked the body a few times, and then went and knelt down next to Ela’s corpse.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, stroking her friend’s hair. “I am so sorry. But I will do as you planned. I will watch over the people. I will be the symbol of courage you wanted. I will let them see that we should never let our fears get the better of us.”

  She wept for a time, and feeling that I was intruding on her mourning, I ended the Glimpse.

  Chapter 8

  “Ssomething— Never mind,” Petra said. “You’ve already Glimpsed it, haven’t you?”

  I told Petra what I’d seen. “The amulet let her fly to escape the wolves. She was able to tap its magic, so I should be able to, too. I just need to figure out how to work it.” I rubbed my chin. “In the comics, there was always just this little bit of descriptive text provided by the writer, saying something like, ‘Lo, this man is afraid of fire, and thus, Commander Courageous is immune to flames!’”

  “Did they really say ‘lo’?”

  “In the Golden Age, they did. Once the Silver Age and the Bronze Age hit, they tried different ways to explain how Courageous got his powers. One writer said that Courageous could see the fears, like images of what a person was afraid of. Another reboot had him able to see encyclopedia-type listings of what someone’s fears were.”

  “How did the girl, Parkli, do it?”

  “Everything happened so fast,” I said. “One second, she’s picking up the amulet, and the next, she’s airborne, and then killing the priestess. She didn’t seem to need to think about it.”

  “Maybe because she was involved in its creation?”

  “I don’t think so. Her friend seemed to be the one with the magic.”

  “Vincent, you’re getting agitated. Take a breath.” I looked dow
n and saw I’d balled my hands into fists. It was frustrating, to have learned so much and yet still come away without an answer. I let out a breath and shook my head. “You’re right. I guess I’ll need to experiment and research some more. But later. Come on, let’s see how Herb and Albert are doing.”

  As we stepped into the laboratory, Herb was mixing some powders into the water we’d brought back. Gears was next to him, and Albert was watching the water with great interest.

  “Were you able to get the ingredients you needed from Alexis?”

  “And how,” Herb said. “That definitely beats shopping. Gearstripper showed me how to work the Alexis interface. Everything went much faster than I was expecting. In fact, the solution is nearly done,” he said as he shook the container.

  “What?” I asked. “I thought you had to test it first.”

  Herb’s grin drove most of the exhaustion from his face. “Vincent, this stuff is so pure that it’s nearly off the charts. I’ve never seen anything like it before. It usually takes hours to get a good read on an item’s purity, but this water passed all the tests with flying colors in just seconds.”

  “Finally, some good news,” I said. “So, what’s the plan?”

  “We’ll trap her in a runic circle, and then there are some incantations that need to be recited. If I’m right, that should break Treggen’s hold over her.”

  If it pained me to think of Megan as an undead force of destruction, I couldn’t imagine how Herb felt. All the more reason to get her back quickly. “Okay, you guys get the runic circle and anything else you need prepped here,” I said. “Gears, Petra, and I will grab Megan and get her back here.”

  “I’m going with you,” Herb said firmly.

  “Herb, no. You need to be here to get everything ready.”

  “He’s right, Herbert,” Albert said. “Our part is here.” Herb didn’t like it, but he went along with it. Petra and Gears followed me out of the room, and back to the main chamber, where we found Mrs. Rita kneeling on the ground, scrawling out runes with a piece of chalk.

  “Ah, Vincent, excellent timing,” she said, getting to her feet and dusting off her hands. “The runes are complete.” She gestured to a hexagon about six feet across, made up of precise, inch-tall characters that I didn’t recognize. “Portals created within this figure’s boundaries will not be blocked by the extradimensional wards in place at headquarters.”

  “Okay, that’s good,” I said. “But how do I portal back out?”

  Mrs. Rita beamed at me. “Kristin would be proud of you, Vincent. Your mind is ever sharpening.”

  I gave a weak smile at the mention of Kristin’s name. Her loss was still too fresh to think of anything other than the pain. Mrs. Rita put a hand on my shoulder. “I am sorry, Vincent. I just thought that you would want to know that. That you should know that. There are a great many people here who believe in you, a great many people who believed that you would do great things. And now, now you are doing those things.” She nodded to the hexagon. “As to your question, when you create your egress portal, place its exit point within the figure and the portal should open. If you place the exit anywhere else, it will not work.”

  “Got it.” I looked to Gears and Petra. “You guys ready?”

  “Always,” Petra said.

  “Never thought you’d ask,” Gears chirped. “But what’s the plan?”

  “I’m going to start by opening peepholes to various rooms within HQ,” I said. “Once I find Megan, we snatch her.”

  “Wouldn’t it make more sense to have Herb and Albert in here, then?” Petra asked.

  “It would make more sense,” Mrs. Rita agreed, “but unfortunately, these runes are not magically compatible with the ones the necromancers have created. They might cancel one another out, they might not work at all, or, they might explode and destroy all life within a five-mile radius.”

  “Ah,” Petra said. “That would be bad.”

  “Okay,” Gears said, “so we don’t cross the streams with the wards. Once we have Megan, what happens?”

  “Can I create a portal from this room into the lab?” I asked Mrs. Rita.

  “So long as you don’t make it within the hexagon, yes.”

  “Then that’s the plan. We pull Megan through to this side, I’ll portal her to Herb and Albert, and we’ll let them do their thing.”

  “Simple enough,” Gears said. “Let’s do it.”

  “Alexis,” I called, “patch me through to the lab.”

  “You are connected,” the AI replied.

  “Herb, Albert, we’re starting our search for Megan. I’ll try to let you know when we’re bringing her through, but I don’t know how much warning I can give you, so stay sharp.”

  “We’re ready, Vincent,” Herb replied.

  “All right,” I said and Opened a peephole in the hexagon. Sure enough, the extradimensional energy sizzled into being, giving me a view into Megan’s office. Empty boxes covered the area around her desk, the black suit she’d worn when we fought the sheepsquatch hung over the back of her chair, but her computer was off and the room was empty. I checked the lobby. Nothing. I tried the conference room where Megan and Xavier had been killed and my trip to Tartarus had begun. The scent of fresh paint had faded a bit, the chairs were neatly pushed in, and nothing was on the table.

  I looked in my office next. Drago was adjusting his bulky frame in my chair, playing with my Star Wars action figures. Son of a bitch, those are my toys. I ground my teeth and swore I’d get him back for that. I closed the portal and tried the command center where Sojin had electrocuted me.

  Jackpot. Megan stood off to the side of the room by herself. She was dressed in the same outfit she’d died in; her wool sweater had a hole the size of my fist right in the center of her chest, revealing bare flesh beneath. Her hair was wilder than normal; Treggen obviously wasn’t worried about her grooming. Her eyes were pure white, a sign of the compulsion she was under. Caulborn weren’t supposed to be able to be mentally controlled, but Treggen had done it to Megan once before, and was doing it again now.

  I rotated the portal a bit, and it looked like she was the only one here. I expanded the portal right behind her and prepared to reach through and grab her. As I did, Sojin walked into the room. He let out a squeak of surprise and reached into his jacket for his wand. Megan spun around at Sojin’s rather unmanly alarm, her eyes glowing red. Her fingernails extended into claws, and she bared her fangs at me. I slammed the portal shut, then snapped another one open to the side of where Megan had been. Petra reached in and hauled Megan through the portal. I hastily conjured another one outside the hexagon and shouted, “Petra, go!” As Petra twisted and hurled Megan toward the portal, I called, “Heads up, Herb!” Megan shot through the second portal and into the lab.

  Sparks in my peripheral vision brought my head around. Sojin’s wand was pointing right at me, jagged bolts of lightning arcing toward my chest. No, no, not again. I couldn’t shut the portal fast enough. I couldn’t move out of the way in time. All I could do was throw my arm in front of my face. I felt the electricity connect with my arm, and winced in anticipation, waiting to drop to the ground, convulsing uncontrollably.

  But it didn’t happen.

  I opened one eye and saw the lightning coiling back and forth along my arm, like an electrified snake. Sojin stared at me from across the room, his jaw hanging open. Not wanting to waste an opportunity, I called out, “Hey, Sojin, catch!” and snapped my arm forward, sending the lightning back at him. He recovered enough to throw himself to the side, but I’m pretty sure I clipped him in the shoulder as the portal snapped shut.

  “What just happened?” Gears asked.

  “No time,” I said. “We need to help the necromancers.” I portaled us from the main chamber and into the lab, where we found Megan hissing at Herb and Albert.
Albert was disorienting Megan with flashes of arcane light; eldritch flash bangs turned the room into something lit by strobe lights.

  As they faded, I saw Herb standing in a ring of runes. The necromancer held the glass bottle containing the compulsion-breaking solution in one hand, while the other traced glowing orange circles in the air. “Petra,” I called. Petra shot forward, and caught Megan by the wrists. My partner snarled at her, and to my horror, twisted in Petra’s grip and flipped Petra over her shoulder. I created a portal in front of Petra and put the exit over the bed in one of the upstairs bedrooms. She hit, bounced, and then began to pull herself back through.

  Megan meanwhile, hadn’t lost any time. She was charging forward, right at Herb. There was no recognition of her boyfriend, nothing to indicate how deeply she cared for him; she was out for blood, and worse. Herb jumped backward, surprisingly nimble for someone with such a pudgy frame, as Megan crossed the ring of runes. When she did, a column of light flared around her, and sparks exploded in the air. With a whump, Megan slammed into an invisible wall, staggering her and dropping her to the floor. She stood up and raged, slashing her clawed hands against the barrier.

  Herb ran a trembling hand over his face. “Okay, the circle worked.” The ring of runes that he and his father created were glowing with alternating pulses of blue and red light, holding Megan in place. “Now for the hard part.” Herb opened the bottle and poured the contents on the ground, walking around the circle as he did so. Each step was accompanied by a phrase in a language I didn’t comprehend, likely the incantations he’d mentioned earlier.

  When the liquid came into contact with the circle, the runes flared green, and they, and the barrier, vanished. Megan screamed and put her hands to her head. Her eyes went from white to red moments later, and she collapsed to her knees.