Superpowers In A World Gone Mad
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Among The Shadows, Issue #003

July 9, 2013 in Among The Shadows Tags:

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Issue #003 – – – – – controlled by Ewan Farris – – – – – Credits 8

“I want you to understand something,” Dark Star said.  “You need to pay attention, because if I am not convinced that you understand I will kill you.”
Chu Kwai quailed before him.  “Yes, yes,” it said, desperate, supplicating.
“Do you understand how easily I defeated you today?”   The demon nodded.  It did.
“If you come back here, to those children, I will destroy you utterly.  Do you understand that?”  Again, the monster confirmed that it believed him.  Dark Star nodded, pleased.  It seemed the creature was terrified enough to listen.  Dark Star didn’t get this tough too often, but he really didn’t like demons.  In his view, they had no redeeming features.

“Now,” Dark Star said, “I may let you live.  But this relies upon you answering the next two questions quickly and truthfully.  If you do not, do you know what will happen?”
“You will destroy me utterly?” Chu Kwai acknowledged, fearfully.
“Indeed,” Dark Star recognised.  “So, first, who is this Coven of which you spoke?  The people who have created the True Gate?”
Chu Kwai rumbled and Dark Star wondered if he might think keeping this secret of more importance than his life.  But the creature was thoroughly cowed and did answer the question: “They are five sorcerors of this world.  They have used the power of Five to cast a spell greater than any individually could achieve.  They have opened the True Gate.”
“Why?”  Dark Star said.  “Why would human beings do something so stupid?”
“They believed they were only allowing one demon in, who would serve them.  But the deal struck was clever.  The contract was very well observed.  One of the Old Ones has fooled them into this and now they are fully ruined by their actions and bonded to their fate.”

“How can I find this gate?”  Dark Star asked.
“You must go to where the river flows out to the sea.  There is a place there, an old church, now disused.  This is the location you seek.”
“Do you mean The Port?” Dark Star asked.  “We are already in The Port.”
“By the river,” Chu Kwai said.  “This truth is for you, human.”
“Okay, an old church.  What is its name?”
“I do not know human names,” the demon told him.  “It is by the wooden platform that points at the moon.”
Dark Star thought about this for a moment then said: “You mean the Old Pier?  The moon rises on the bay so I suppose that points at the moon.”
“As you say,” The Demon agreed.

“Okay,” Dark Star commanded.  “Go.  But trust me to my word, monster, if I see you here again near these children I will end your evil life.”
Chu Kwai rose to its full height and for a moment Dark Star thought it might try him again, but then it turned and scurried off into the darkness.
Dark Star looked back at the door.  Lily was there, terrified.  “Don’t worry,” Dark Star told her.  “Keep the house locked up, you’re safe now.  I’ll be back as soon as I can.  I have to check this out!”  The young woman nodded her understanding and, for a moment, looked like she might say something else.  Finally she settled for a brief: “Be careful” and then she closed the door.

Dark Star didn’t doubt the craven monster’s fear, but he’d had a run-in or two with demons in the past and he knew that you really couldn’t trust a word they said.  Or, for that matter, a word they wrote.  They always found some way to twist the words back on you or to claim some different meaning.  Which is why this Coven had been utterly foolish to attempt some sort of pact.  Dark Star hurried after Chu Kwai, following the creature as stealthily as he could.  As he did so he pondered.  The fact that this coven had tried to make a deal was evidence of their naivete and inexperience.  But then they had been able to open what appeared to be a very advanced gate – and you couldn’t do that without a lot of power.  Dark Star didn’t like the sound of this at all.  It had the ring of an amateur with a lot of natural talent.  Which was terrifying.

Dark Star was very agile, but he wasn’t particularly quick.   Luckily, neither was Chu Kwai and the demon proved easy to follow as it lumbered through alleyways and quiet streets – keeping carefully to the darkness in precisely the same way that Dark Star himself usually did.  The chase came to an end outside a used car lot emblazoned with the name Jack Bennett.  A sign proclaimed, “You’ll always come back if you deal with Jack!”  Chu Kwai wasn’t going into the building though.  He hefted the manhole cover in the street outside and dropped silently into the sewers.  Dark Star sighed.  He hated the sewers.

It didn’t take a very great deal of thinking to decide to let Chu Kwai go.  He didn’t appear to be heading towards the bay and Dark Star was of the opinion that this True Gate business was the first order of importance in tonight’s festivities.  So he regretfully turned his back on the manhole and padded off in the direction of the old pier.  Ten minutes later he was standing by the river.  Helix City was almost on the coast.  The ocean gave way to a wide bay which in turn become a huge river and it was here, a few miles inland, where the water met the city.  It was a perfect inlet for maritime trade and pleasure craft alike, though the former was more common than the latter except in the heights of Summer.  The Old Pier was no longer in use.  Ten years earlier it had been set on fire during a battle between several abnormals and nobody had yet managed to repair the ruin that was left.  Apparently, nobody could quite agree on who owned it and no benefactor stepped up to pay the hefty bill for repair or demolition.  So there it sat, blackened and festering, forgotten for all but a few drunks who slept under it and a handful of wild teenagers who occasionally partied on what was left of it.

The Church the demon had spoken of was easy to find.  Almost directly opposite the pier’s entrance it stood, dark, forboding, silent.  The main sign that hung outside had been fly-postered so extensively that it was impossible to read.  Even the posters were so faded as to be illegible.  Dark Star peeled them away and looked.  The name that was revealed was “City of Hope Family Worship”.  Dark Star thought that sounded evangelical.  But who knew?  Could be anything really.  He crossed the overgrown lawn and peered into one of the filthy windows.  It was utterly dark inside.  He couldn’t see a thing.

“Oh well,” Dark Star muttered.  “No time like the present.”  He walked around to the rear of the building and carefully, quietly, he prised open the door there.  His superhuman strength made this a fairly simple task, though it was nowhere near as quiet as he would have liked it to be.  “Just as well I’m a good guy,” Dark Star muttered to himself.  “I’d make a terrible burglar.”  Once inside the church he found that it was not as dark as he’d thought.  What had seemed black from the outside was quite different within.  Shafts of silvery moonlight sliced down from the skylights and from the high windows, lighting patches and areas of shadow.  The place was a wreck.  The pews were smashed and broken, the victim of time, neglect and vandalism in equal measures.  The altar was gone, though a dark patch on the ground marked where it had been.

“Hmm.  No True Gate here,” Dark Star muttered.  Then, he heard a sound to his left.  A sort of scuttling sound over there in the darkness.  He didn’t like that sound at all.  Didn’t like the way it made him feel.  It had a chitinous quality about it which left him  unsettled.  Seconds later the sound was repeated on the right.  Then again.  And again.  Dark Star brought some spectral energy into his hands.  Not enough to do any harm, but enough to bathe the room in his starry ambience.  He swallowed.  Every inch of the darkness was now populated by cockroaches.  Not normal cockroaches.  Oh no.  These were the size of a house cat.  Dozens  of them scuttling over one another, crawling on one another.  Dark Star knew these could be mutated by radiation or the abnormals gene.  They could be the result of some mad scientist’s insane experiment.  They could be illusions, or robots, or aliens, or any of a host of other weird stuff.  This was the world he moved in.  But Dark Star didn’t think these fat insects were any of those things.  He had a hunch – just an hunch – that they’d come through the True Gate.

This was good news in a way.  It meant that the gate itself was close – which meant he didn’t have to waste days searching for it.  Perhaps he could handle it quickly, before the problem escalated?  But it was bad news because it meant that this couple of hundred giant cockroaches that were – even now – beginning to quest hungrily towards him weren’t just really nasty-looking party-sized bugs.  They were demonic really nasty-looking party-sized bugs.  As they surged towards him, Dark Star just had time to think: “Could this evening get any worse?”  Unfortunately for him, it could.  And it was going to.


4 Responses to “Among The Shadows, Issue #003”

  1. Keith Nixon Says:

    Hey – Demon roaches. Do they act as comic foils like the ones in OOTT?

  2. False Bill Says:

    Keith!! Firs OOTT comic reference in Abnormals, thou if that Steve inspiration, I don’t want to know what lurks in the shado with the umbrella.

  3. Sarah Saunders Says:

    Demonic giant cockroaches! ! ! Eeew!

    Boy am I glad that’s not me – give me a nice straightforward angry vampire any day.

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