Hallie and the Selpuchre of Destiny, Chapter 3

Chapter 3

I have had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn't it.
--Groucho Marx

“Are we ruling the world yet?” asked Chompvski.

“Shut up,” said Rasputatius.

“I was only asking because it feels more like we got our asses kicked by the sorcerer supreme.”

“We didn’t get our asses kicked,” sulked the leader of the Ghouls Under St Petersburg. “It was… a tactical withdrawal.”

“Well, we had the true Necronastycon, boss, but before you could do anything but look at it those mortals came with that Abyssal Greye from Gothametropolis and took if off us,” Buggerov pointed out.

“We could have so eaten them,” Fingers grumbled. “Everyone knows Xander has no magic powers. And that Librarian’s got to have a big juicy brain.”

“And how many times has Xander actually been beaten?” Rasputatius demanded. “And how many of his enemies are still alive?”

“Um…” Chompvski began pedantically.

“Or still undead,” his leader corrected himself irritatedly. “Anyway, we don’t need the Book of Rude Names now. In the brief time I had the true Necronastycon in my hands I was able to learn something. A secret. A big, nasty, powerful secret, that will make all our dreams come true.”

“Here it comes,” sighed Chompvski.

“With this secret we will rule the world!”

“Again?” Buggerov winced.

“Yes,” the Abyssal Rasputatius promised.

Just find the tomb and open it the new voice in the ghoul’s head told him. Find the tomb of Visionatus Improbablus.

“Okay, I’m game for an official explanation of what the hell just happened.” Amber St. Claire stated reasonably.

“I’m pretty sure Hell did just happen” Fleabot offered. “Or a reasonable Primordial version of it.”

“From what I can gather looking over the various fuzzy data we’re able to get in, one or two major landmasses appeared in the Pacific, one of which promptly went up in some kind of nuclear blast and then subsequently sank back into the sea” Hallie explained helpfully. “We’re getting reports of squid-headed people and worse from various points of the globe, though they seem to have mostly disappeared or gone underground following whatever it was that happened. Then there’s the weak, mostly garbled deep-space signal from Amazing Guy that says it doesn’t look like the universe is going to end right now, but he’ll hang out for a bit and keep an eye on it just in case.” She looked over the latest report coming in. “Oh, and apparently irradiated fish bits, the sight of which make people slightly queasy, are raining on Japan.”

Amber sighed. “What does any of that mean?”

“That you should avoid disreputable sushi restaurants for a while” Fleabot suggested. “And likely that the home team won.”

“But how does any of this relate to this Caphan warlord who was holding the world hostage with advanced weapons of mass destruction?!”

“Well, he did kidnap Kerry.” Fleabot noted. “I mean, that pretty much guaranteed at least one exploding land mass before this was all over, especially once the rest of the Juniors got involved. Just be thankful it was one of the new ones.”

“I swear I made it very clear to the Juniors to stay out of this” Hallie noted with a growl.

“Apparently not clear enough” Amber noted with irritation. “I’ve got SPUD reports that place them at the suspected location of one of the Transnuclear devices in Australia. I thought this Junior program was supposed to teach them responsibility.”

“So they disobeyed orders to risk their own lives in an effort to rescue one of their own who needed help…” Fleabot countered. “If the LL wanted them to learn a different kind of responsibility, they should have assigned them a different teacher.”

“Relax Amber…” Hallie advised, putting on her most confident face. “I’ve sweated through plenty of these. We should just sit back and wait for word to come in from the field. Everything will be fine now that things are winding down.”

“Is it safe now?” the Librarian asked Xander the Improbable and the Abyssal Greye.

The three of them stood with Dr Olivia Hastings outside the security vault of Arkham’s Miskatonic University Peabody Annex. Behind them workmen funded by anonymous donation were repairing damage done by Vaahir’s previous assult. “It will do for now,” Greye adjudged. “It will take some time to properly restore every one of the occult precautions that keep the Necronastycon quiescent.”

“And to convince the faculty that this Book of Vile Names is the same in essence as the one that was stolen,” Olivia added with a sigh. “Explain again about how the true Necronastycon can possess other copies of itself.”

“In a few weeks it’ll look just as it always did,” Xander the Improbable predicted. “Now while the Abyssal sees to restoring the arcane defences we’ll need to keep a special guard on the book. Rasputatius was an idiot, but that other one you encountered when you conducted the locator ritual, he’s anything but. If he’s going to make his move we cannot afford to take it anything but seriously.”

“I agree,” said the Librarian, who had been informed of the identity of the silver-haired man from the past. “But we have the true Necronastycon now. Without that, how much trouble can anybody cause?”

St Antony’s Cathedral, overlooking Paradopolis’ Off-Central Park, had very little graveyard now. The great bonefield had been levelled for new housing in the 1930’s, and now only a few exclusive mausoleums and Victorian-era graves remained around the old gothic house of worship.

But the grave that interested the Ghouls of St Petersburg was still there.

“I don’t like this,” Chompvski complained. “This graveyard is consecrated. I’m allergic to consecrated soil. It gives me hives.”

“Just dig,” Rasputatius told him. “We haven’t got all night, you know.”

“He’s worried that the Gothametropolis ghouls might smell us,” Buggerov explained. “And then the Abyssal Graye would come and be sarcastic to us.”

“I’m not scared of they Abyssal Greye,” Rasputatius said hotly. “He’s on the list.”

“Greye dated Urthula?” Fingers wondered.

“Greye did not date Urthula!” Rasputatius insisted. “But there are all kind of powers and principalities in this miserable town. Trolls, I heard, and folks from the far fair lands, and at least one gargoyle. Vampires of course, and a couple of lycanthropes. Witches, warlocks, high priests, Desmond Djinn, lots of things we don’t want to trip over. And Xander’s shop is nearby. So dig faster.”

“Relax,” Chompsksi advised the ghoul lord. “We’re in. Here are the bones. Nothing left to gnaw on though.”

“She’s been down there for nearly a hundred and fifty years,” Buggerov pointed out. “The worms have long since done their work.”

“Bring the bones,” Rasputatius ordered. “That way we can bind her spirit and she can’t bother us as we carry out our plan to find the tomb we need.”

And on the gravestone was written: Marie Murcheson, 1842-1860, “And with no language but a cry.”

“Have you heard anything yet?” Fleabot asked Hallie as he entered the kitchen.

The former A.I. looked up from the carton of Neapolitan ice cream that she was digging through with a spoon. “Sir Mumphrey got some fuzzy signals from Al B. All the Legionnaires, senior and junior, are accounted for and okay. Vaahir turned himself in, and the Fairly Great Old Ones went back down in defeat to sleep it off.” She went back to scraping the bottom of the carton. “He promised he’d call again when Lemuria was finished shifting back into whatever non-place it normally resides in… provided he could find a few more coconuts and some copper wire to boost the signal on the transceiver he made.”

“All’s well that ends well, then.” He said, hopping up onto her shoulder. “Not a big fan of strawberry, I see.”

Hallie glanced to the carton, where she had cleaned out the chocolate and vanilla, leaving a perfectly untouched block of pink ice cream right down the center. “I have the refined palate of a 5 year old” she admitted gloomily.

“It’s pretty obvious that something’s bothering you” the tiny robot said casually. “Especially considering that one serving of that stuff is supposed to be a half cup.”

“I’m sure that’s just a misprint” she theorized, returning the uneaten portion to the freezer. “I guess I was kind of hoping to talk to Vizh… It looks like the team won’t be able to make it back for a while. Ebony says it’s far too dangerous to travel right now… They have to wait until all these dimensional rifts and eddies from new continents shifting into existence and such settle down. I… Well, I said something to Vizh before he left. I guess I just wanted to talk with him about them.

“So you thought you’d compensate by eating yourself sick.”

Hallie gave the little pest a sidelong look. “Don’t you have somebody else to hass…” She froze as a chilling feeling shot through her entire body, draining the blood from her face and leaving her pale and shaking. “Oh no” she managed as she recognized the sensation.

“What?” Fleabot asked, suddenly concerned. “You really can eat yourself sick? Should I call Uhuna? What’s wrong?”

But Hallie wasn’t paying any attention to the miniscule robot. Instead, her entire being was focused on the sudden image of the ghost of Marie Muchenson, the Mansion’s sole defender against the worst that creation could throw at it, as the woman reached out to the former A.I. for help before her pale image was bound in invisible restraints and pulled into the black depths beneath the island.

“We have to warn the others…” Hallie managed as her stomach churned in dread. She had gone through the gambit of human emotions since she was reincarnated as a human, but she had only felt something like this one other time in her brief life… and it was at what was both the end and the beginning. “We’re not safe here.”

Take one corpse, preferably of a man hanged for murder or blasphemy. Sever his left hand and pickle it in brine mixed with the blood of an unbaptised infant born in shame. Render the tallow and thread a wick behind the fingernail of the middle finger and so down through the flesh to the wrist to make a candle. Take it into a house where all are sleeping and light it so it burns with a thin blue flame. The occupants cannot wake from their nightmare slumbers whatever happens while the Hand of Glory burns.

Don’t try this at home.

“See,” the Abyssal Rasputatus crowed, “It works! The occupants of the so-called Lair Mansion above are all rendered helpless, their powers of no use while they are enthralled by the necromancy of the Hand!”

“I thought most of those people were still stuck on Lemuria, boss,” Buggerov pointed out.

“Most of them, yes,” Rasputatius admitted. “But we’ve still managed to enchant whoever’s up there.”

“And we can eat their brains?” Fingers grinned. “Now?”

“Later,” his leader promised him. “For now we have a mission.”

“Also we need to find a way up into the house itself from these old tunnels,” Chompvski pointed out practically. “I mean, these must be part of the original foundations or the Hand of Glory wouldn’t have worked, but there are still physical barriers before we can chow down on the Lair Legion and their minions.”

“A minor detail,” shrugged Rasputatius. “The spell has already flung open all the doors of their mansion, whatever scientific wards they might have put upon them. And the banshee that would normally protect against occult invasion is bound because we have her bones. Besides, once we have discovered the hidden tomb of Visionatus Improbablus and recovered the items of power entombed within, we will be able to do anything we like to anybody we want.”

“Even Urthula,” snickered Fingers.

“Oh yes. Even Urthula,” Rasputatius grinned. “She’s got to be impressed when I rule the world.”

“Is it me, or are these tunnels spooky?” wondered Buggerov.

Rasputatius turned to him. “You’re a ghoul, Buggerov. Spooky tunnels is what we do. We live in the dark, carving charnel passages in the squirming underbelly of the Earth. But, um, let’s keep moving anyway. But it’s not spooky. I’ve seen a lot spookier. Keep moving.”

“I thought these tunnels twisted their dimensions so nobody could find the tomb of Improbablus,” Chompvski objected. “It makes sense that the Ancient Confraternity of the Improbable College would take steps to protect the vault of their martyred founder. If people could just stumble across it they’d have stumbled by now.”

“But I have a deeper knowledge than ‘people’,” Rasputatus commented. “I have learned secrets from the Book of Rude Names. I am filled with dark lore.”

“Filled with something,” muttered Chompvski.

“What?”

“I said maybe we turn right here?” the ghoul replied innocently.

No the dry voice in Rasputatius’ head said. Turn left.

“No, no, no, no…” Hallie said in despair, gently shaking Sir Mumphrey Wilton with increasing agitation. “You have to wake up… you have to defend yourselves… Something has gone horribly wrong.”

“I’ve checked upstairs” Fleabot reported, hurrying back into the communications room where they had found Mumphrey and Epitome slumped over in their chairs. “Asil, Uhuna, Flapjack and Amber are all in the same condition. What’s worse, the Mansion’s defence and alarm systems are completely unresponsive. There doesn’t seem to be any cause, either… they’re just not working.”

“What about you?” Hallie asked. “Are you picking up any kind of signal? Something that would be part of an attack?”

“No” the robot admitted with a grimace. “I thought this might be some kind of Lovetoad revenge plot, but if it’s technological it’s well beyond my ability to detect it.”

“It’s not” she said with certainty. “It’s magic.”

“Great” he replied without enthusiasm. “Why is it that Xander is never around when you need him? How the hell are the two of us supposed to counter magic?”

Hallie approached Mr. Epitome, whose head lolled peacefully over the top of his backrest. Placing a hand on each cheek, she leaned down and kissed him deeply and desperately.

“You’ve been spending way too much time around Flapjack” Fleabot noted when she finished inappropriately infringing on the unconscious government agent’s personal boundaries. Still, she caught him hopefully looking for signs of returning life in the sleeping prince as well.

“Worth a try” she noted in a small voice.

“How did you know we were under attack anyway?” he pressed her.

Hallie swallowed. “Remember what Xander said about my resurrection?” she asked. “He mentioned how the mansion defends itself by taking those in hopeless situations and recreating them, pressing them into service to guard against cosmic level threats... That like Marie, I died here helplessly, unable to fight back or even cry out…”

“Yes… but even he wasn’t sure that was what was behind you being made human” Fleabot pointed out. “After all, it turns out that Marie didn’t need a replacement after all… She’s still on the job.”

“Not tonight” Hallie said. “Tonight, something has her bound and helpless again.” She looked around the room. “If I were still a part of the computers, I’d be shut down with the rest of the systems. If I were like the others here, I’d be asleep as they are. I’m something else.”

Fleabot looked at her speculatively. “So what are you going to do?” he asked.

She looked down, past the floorboards, her focus well on into the unseen caverns beneath the mansion. “What I can” she decided.

Footnotes and Epitaphs:

Marie’s Tombstone features a quote from In Memorium liii, by Alfred Lord Tennyson: “But what am I? An infant crying in the night: An infant crying for the light: And with no language but a cry.”

Post By From Visionary and the Hooded Hood Fri Apr 01, 2005 at 11:26:41 pm EST	Subject Hallie and the Selpuchre of Destiny, Chapter 3

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