by Zack Archer
Overhead, the wave sleds flew past, Atlas and Aurora doing what they could to provide air support.
I watched Atlas unleash a series of hellacious punches with his expand-a-fist, smashing rows of soldier drones to pieces while Aurora fired down on the mechanized fighting machines.
Lyric and Liberty were soon next to me, and we screamed while rushing forward to batter our beleaguered attackers.
The bodies of the soldier drones fell in twos and threes. The initial attack by the machines was chaotic and emphasized frenzy over coordination or strategy. My gut told me it was a way for the villains to test us, before joining the battle.
We cut a path right through the middle of the bad guys, blasting our way toward the hole that the Polymath had made for us. In seconds, most of our attackers were lying strewn across the pumice in smoking heaps.
Atlas swung down in his wave sled and shouted at us: “WE’VE DONE IT! WE’VE CARRIED THE DAY! EVERYBODY BACK ONBOARD!”
We raised our arms in triumph, and that’s when two things happened: (1) I heard the sound of metal on metal, and (2) Atlas was hit in the chest by something that ripped him off of his sled.
I looked up and caught sight of the object that had torn Atlas away.
It was silver and incredibly fast.
And shaped like a judge’s gavel.
27
“THE BARRISTER!” Aurora shouted, powering her wave sled back and down to the ground.
The acoustic motors on Aurora’s sled kicked up dust devils as the vessel dropped to the pumice, obscuring visibility.
I watched Atlas fly through the air and crash to the ground, his body skidding for fifteen feet and then falling still.
Splinter and Liberty ran to him while Lyric stayed by my side. “They’re coming, Quincy! The Barrister and the rest of the Morningstars are coming!” she shouted.
Through the haze, I saw a tall figure in a silver tracksuit hidden under a short duster that came to his waist. Rippling from his back was a red cape studded with what looked like brass buttons. He had the stone-cold look of a predator, his chiseled features were screwed up in anger, and his blond hair was coiled on top of his head in one of those annoying man-buns.
My heads-up display blinked:
Name/Moniker: The Barrister
Status: Supervillain
Feats: Thorium-Infused Gavel & A General Ability To Kick Much Ass
Notes: He’s A Dick, But Do Not Fuck With Him!!!
The guy ran toward us faster than any human had a right to and when the gavel swung back in his hand, I knew the info on my display was right.
It was the man himself.
The Barrister!
The personal hitman for the other villains.
The Barrister alighted onto a mound of pumice, sliding the gavel into a sheath he wore across his back. He put his hands on his hips, turning his glaring eyes and granite jaw in our direction as the other bad guys fanned out behind him.
“Look at Mister Fancy Pants,” Lyric said in her puppet’s voice.
I was shocked to see that she had her finger puppets out. Beatrix and Barney were on either hand, and she was manipulating their tiny little arms. I wanted to scream that now was not the fucking time for a puppet show, but her antics had given pause to the villains. They seemed both perplexed and amused by the whole thing.
“What do you think about Fancy Pants, Beatrix and Barney?” Lyric asked.
“I think he’s a shit-eating turd burger, Lyric,” she answered in her puppet voice.
“Whoa! Watch the language, Beatrix,” Lyric replied in her human voice.
“And it looks like he’s got a tiny dick.”
Lyric stared at the Barrister with slitted eyes. “I think you’re right about that.”
The Barrister was not amused. “Steel yourself, bitch,” he said.
“Right, because it looks like you might have a little trouble in the getting some steel department if you know what I mean,” Lyric said with a broad smile.
The Barrister screamed, unsheathing his gavel, and dropped down the mound to reveal Madcap, The Showstopper, and two dark-skinned women that I assumed were Dolly Dagger and Rockets Redglare.
“I won’t go down without a fight!” Lyric said.
Rockets Redglare and Dolly Dagger hopped up onto a promontory and summoned up what looked like whirlwinds of fire in the palms of their hands.
They compressed the mini-clouds into orbs that they threw up into the air.
“TAKE COVER!” Kaptain Khaos shouted, looking over.
We ran as the orbs split apart, two fireballs becoming ten as—
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The fiery balls crashed and smeared across the ground, setting anything they touched on fire, like napalm.
We ran laterally, following a path laid out on the eye-mask’s heads-up display, trying to buy Liberty and Splinter some time to rescue Atlas who appeared to be bleeding and unconscious.
Aurora picked up Liberty and drove her sled up until it was next to the now pilotless sled that Atlas had been torn away from. Liberty dove into Atlas’s empty vehicle and the two zoomed over and set down on the ground next to Atlas.
Splinter picked the big man up and pulled him into Liberty’s wave sled, signaling for us to run for cover.
Splinter behind the controls, Liberty exited the sled and rejoined us as we clawed our way up over a hill and slid down an embankment that ended at a forest of dead trees, the Morningstars hot on our tail.
Plunging into the forest, I looked back to see the Barrister standing at the top of the embankment, his cape billowing in the breeze.
He pointed at me and heaved his gavel.
“GET DOWN!” I screamed.
Planting my feet, I created an energy field that extended around Liberty and me as—
BAROOM!
The gavel hammered into the energy field.
The gavel ricocheted off, but the blow, more powerful than anything I’d ever felt before, pushed me back ten feet, my boots trenching the ground.
Holy shit!
The Barrister was a powerful sonofabitch!
I grabbed Liberty’s and Lyric’s arms and we ran with Kaptain Khaos into the middle of the dead trees that rose up out of the pumice like the horns on some great beast. A whining sound echoed overhead and Liberty screamed: “INCOMING!”
Fiery explosions rocked the ground and the trees, sending them up in flames. Without looking back, I knew it was the gruesome twosome, Dolly Dagger and Rockets Redglare. They were shooting fireballs at us, trying to create a wildfire in the perfect place for one: a forest of dead, dry wood.
The breeze fanned the flames and in seconds, the entire forest was engulfed in a firestorm.
“BOOTS!” Kaptain Khaos shouted. “USE YOUR BOOTS!”
We activated our boots and did the only thing left to do.
Exploding forward, we sprang up the trunks of the dead trees, hurtling above the flames, struggling to find a way out of the death trap.
We hopped from trunk to trunk as the timber collapsed behind us, the fire spreading fast, smoke everywhere, clouding our visibility.
More fireballs rained down, and we bounded up onto a massive, fallen tree and looked back.
Visible in the middle of the fire was one of the women, Rockets Redglare, who threw out her hands to create a pillar of fire that was rotating and spinning toward us.
Liberty lifted one of her swords over her head and flung it like a dagger.
The sword flew through the field of fire, spinning end over end before—
WHAM!
Ramming into Rockets Redglare’s chest with enough force to pin her against one of the dead trees.
“You did it!” Kaptain Khaos shouted.
Rockets Redglare trembled and shook and then—
Her body atomized in a fiery maelstrom that spewed what looked like molten lava in every direction.
We dove from the tree, falling down through the brittle branches, searching for any
hint of movement.
There was a light at the end of the forest, a hole that signaled the end, a safe way out. It was twenty or thirty yards away, but we could make it if we hurried.
Liberty and Lyric grabbed my hands and we followed after the Kaptain, blazing a trail through the bone-dry timber.
I saw movement peripherally and realized it was Madcap and the Showstopper, galloping parallel to us through the dead wood, fighting to cut us off.
“COME OUT, COME OUT, WHEREVER YOU ARE!” one of the brothers shouted.
Suddenly, the trees all around us began changing.
The fires went out and the wood started to shimmer and shine.
Because it was being changed into something else.
The four of us stopped and stared, not believing our eyes.
Madcap had turned the wood into a forest of glass.
“Not cool,” I said.
And then The Showstopper brought his mighty arms down, spawning a cyclone that he unleashed on the newly transformed trees, filling the air with an explosion of glass shrapnel.
“COVER YOUR FACES!” Liberty shrieked.
We did, as a wall of glass shards swept over us.
My armored singlet stopped most of the glass shrapnel.
I say most because some of the jagged pieces found their way into my arms and legs. I cried out and dropped to the ground, curled up in a fetal ball.
In seconds it was over.
I rolled over and plucked out a few pieces of glass that had lodged in my ankles, wrists, and calves.
Liberty, Lyric, and Kaptain Khaos did the same.
We were all wounded, all down, but definitely not out.
“We’re cornered,” Kaptain Khaos said, removing a two-inch sliver of glass from his wrist, gesturing at the ground outside of the forest.
We could see the other villains visible along with what was left of their robotic army.
Aurora, Atlas, and the others were nowhere in sight.
“What do you think?” I asked the others.
“Mutually assured destruction,” the Kaptain hissed.
Lyric pulled out her puppets and whispered, “Bring the fucking house down.”
Kaptain Khaos stood, his eyes rolling back in their sockets. His mouth dropped open and his fingers bent back as the ground began rumbling, the soft pumice fissuring, splitting open.
Huge segments of earth suddenly lifted up, throwing everyone to the ground. The remaining glass trees were sucked down into the ever-expanding trench that separated us from the villains. The Kaptain urged us to run for it and we did, but the hole in the ground widened, and Liberty tripped and fell back down.
I spotted her sliding down and ran and jumped, managing to latch onto her wrist as we were sucked screaming down into a hole in the ground.
28
The next few seconds Liberty and I experienced were like sliding down the backside of a rollercoaster in the darkness.
The blackness gave way to a kaleidoscope of colors as we flew down through the hole at an alarming rate of speed.
The hole, which was more like an earthen chute, was barely big enough to contain us but was smooth so that we couldn’t stop our descent.
My eye-mask was ripped away as we rocketed through the darkness, following the curves of the chute as it swerved to the left, then the right, then plunging down.
We gave ourselves up to gravity, my shouts mixing with Liberty’s, my guts doing somersaults as I spotted a pinprick of light far down below us, expanding rapidly.
“WE’RE ALMOST AT THE END!” I shouted.
I allowed myself the faintest of smiles, and then my mouth pulled back in a scream as everything dropped away under us.
We were shot out of the chute and went sailing through the blackness as if we’d just dropped off the edge of the world.
My guts seized a final time, and we did a hundred and eighty-degree spin in the air before—
WUMPH!
Crashing down into a soupy mix of water that was the color of root beer.
I dropped down through the water, which tasted like vinegar.
My feet hit the ground and I push up, scissoring my legs, breaching the surface of what looked like a sprawling, mist-shrouded swamp.
Liberty was bobbing in the water, twenty feet from me, waving her hands. I swam to her and grabbed her wrist. Pulling her free from the water, she fell on top of me.
We lay there for several seconds, exhilarated by the fall down through the hole.
“Your hands, Quincy,” she said.
“What about them?” I asked.
“Look where they are.”
I looked down to see that both of my hands had somehow found their way around Liberty’s apple-shaped ass. I smiled sheepishly, removing them as she stood and whipped her wet hair back like a swimsuit model at a photo shoot. Her nipples were erect and I looked away before she caught me ogling them.
“What in the name of the Elect just happened?” Liberty asked me.
“Well, we just finished fighting against the world’s greatest villains, and then fell down a hole into the center of the planet that apparently contains a hella-scary swamp. You know, just an ordinary average afternoon in Fiasco Heights.”
I helped her up and we peered around. “Where are we?” I asked.
“You want the new name for this place or the old name?”
“The new one.”
“The Great Swamp of Stygia,” she said.
“What was it before?”
“The Fen of Woe.”
“Let’s stick with the new name,” I said.
Liberty unsheathed her sword. “Legend has it, that it’s populated by nameless monstrosities and ruled over by the ‘Wench,’ an old crone, a wolf witch in league with the Morningstars.”
“Any other good news for us, Liberty?”
She was silent, and we surveyed the shoreline that ascended to a sand dune-like formation, peaks of what looked like volcanic slag that we hiked up.
The dunes provided a view of what appeared to be another valley that was perched inside yet another cavernous, underground space.
The landscape was lit by blobs of light (I couldn’t tell if the lights were natural or manmade) that tinctured the ashen sky, giving it the appearance of perpetual dusk.
I searched for the roof, but couldn’t find it, although I did spot a wall behind us and the opening that we’d shot out of after falling down through the hole. It was located more than thirty feet off the ground, which meant, even with our boots, there was no way we’d be going back up the way we came in.
When Kaptain Khaos had created the tremors overhead, he’d opened up some passageway that brought us down to a lower level of what I reckoned was the Empty Quarter. My thoughts returned to Aurora and the others and I wondered if they’d been able to fight their way to safety.
“You wondering the same thing I am?” Liberty asked.
“Whether they escaped Madcap and the others?”
She nodded. “I guess you guys have probably faced way worse before, right?”
She shook her head. “Nope, actually that was probably the worst situation I’ve ever been in before.”
“You’re not helping my anxiety levels here, Liberty.”
“Okay, sorry, so this will probably be the worst situation ever.”
“Nope, still not helping things…”
She reached down and gestured to the ring on the belt fixed to our singlets. “If they made it out of there, and my gut tells me they did, they’ll find us, Quincy. The most important thing we can do now is get out of here.”
I surveyed the ground before us which sloped to a coil of red, putrid water that fed the remainder of the swamp dotted by small hillocks, tufts of material that bobbed in the amber water, partially veiled by the mist.
It looked like we’d have to cut a path directly through the swamp, jumping between the hillocks.
I threaded my way down the slope, the ground spongy underfoot, the air incred
ibly hot and damp, tanged with the scent of rotten eggs.
Liberty shadowed me, clutching her sword, glancing about for any hint of trouble.
“I never did thank you for saving me back there, Quincy,” she said.
“Just doing my job.”
“I have to admit that I doubted your abilities when first you arrived.”
I stopped and looked back. “And now?”
“Seeing is believing.”
I smiled, and Liberty inched closer to me. Our faces were separated only by a few inches. “How was she, by the way?”
“Excuse me?”
“There’s no reason to be embarrassed, Quincy. I know you and Lyric enjoyed each other, and that’s to be expected. This world is freethinking when it comes to matters of the flesh.”
“Which is probably the thing I love most about the place.”
She smirked. “Greylock was what you might call a…sybarite, a pleasure-seeker. We’ve taken after him, especially Lyric.”
“She’s something else.”
“She should be something else. I taught her everything she knows.”
She stared at me, her neck roped with beads of sweat that highlighted her tanned, toned flesh. Several droplets of swamp water meandered down between her two ponderous breasts. She smirked, and I turned away because I was starting to get aroused. The air was heavy, and my mind was reeling from everything that had happened. Liberty licked her lips, I moved in close to her, and then it happened.
Somebody screamed.
A woman’s voice.
Coming from somewhere out in the swamp.
“HELP!” she screamed. “PLEASE HELP ME!”
Without thinking, we hopped onto the first hillock, which was little more than a tiny island of saturated debris studded with a few dying weeds, but it held firm.
Balancing ourselves, we moved forward, jumping from hillock to hillock, traversing a sodden path that led through the heart of the swamp.
