Yup- here it is. All of the rest of WAR, 1 hour and 25 minutes of it. The Heaven series is done. I’m rather numb.

I thank you profusely within the audio file, and will have a more well-thought-out blog post in the future. For now, take this and enjoy, and know your support means the world to me.

[private]

War Episodes 15-Epilogue

[/private]

Visible for subscribers on Oct. 10; visible to Inside Story members now.

[private]

Daniel and Kate meet Morrigan at last, and one other unexpected person.

War Episode 14

[/private]

Going live for everyone on October 3. Inside Story members get it now!

[private]
So why was Gamma called back to The Sheridan, anyway?

War Episode 13

[/private]

[private]

Episode 10

Barris was unsure of where he was. He just knew he was far, far away from where he should be. He last remembered the ideas and the rubbish bin. Now he was feeling nauseated and claustrophobic, sweat beading on his forehead, tossing from side to side in a small room with no furniture and no adornments except for a puddle of watery vomit in the corner, one he felt the need to add to every once in a while.

He thought he should get up and demand his freedom. Demand to know where he was. See if there was someone he could talk to. Either bargain his way out or flex his divine power and force his way out.

But he couldn’t even sit up. And the general “gotta get out” feeling was the only coherent thought in his head.

There had to be some sort of mistake. Perhaps he was in a hospital. But didn’t hospitals have beds? And people?

Barris lay on his back and stared at the green glass ceiling. The room was fairly large. Why did he feel so confined? Beyond the green glss seemed to be another ceiling, much higher up, Beyond that, so far away, a tiny disk that shimmered, nearly imperceptible. The sun.

Gods, beyond Kate and Daniel, who were older than time, had no oaths. No god would swear upon the genitals of other gods. And since they didn’t excrete, they didn’t have the same feelings of shame, disgust, and secret childhood delight regarding excrement, so they didn’t even consider, “Shit.” So when Barris realized he was trapped with millions of cubic feet of water between him and the open air, he blurted out, “turtle tits,” and passed out again.

He awoke in a puddle of spittle and bile. Something buzzed in his ears and he shook his head, strings of ropy mucous sticking to the side of his face. He was going do something. What was it? He struggled to sit up and scoot himself over to prop himself up against the wall. The effort was monumental; He panted hard by the time he got upright.

His limbs shook. H wondered if the sensation was pain. He remembered water, then, slicing into his body through his pores like needles. It invaded everywhere, and he still felt its presence, unwanted, in his body. Had he drowned? How in the hell had he gotten to the ocean?

But more importantly, how was he going to get out? He could barely sit up straight. Moving beyond the room, finding his way out of the city, passing through that deadly water, it was all too much to consider.

Barris slumped to the side until he was wedged into the corner of the room. They wouldn’t come looking for him. No one liked him. They just wanted him to keep the sun in the sky. They didn’t care about him, his likes, his dislikes.

An idea he once had, involving innovation and independence, tickled his memory, and was gone. Barris leaned his head against the wall on his left and let the hot tears stream down his cheeks.

The door creaked open and two guards armed with spears walked in first. They were followed by a tall man who grinned down at Barris.

He stood tall and well muscled, his blue-green skin blemish-free. His black hair hung to his shoulders, and he was naked except for a small loincloth, orange coral armbands, and a necklace made of woven seaweed and blue stones.

He spread his arms wide, orange coral armbands contrasting with his skin. “Barris, I didn’t know you wanted to visit me so much that you’d kill yourself trying! Welcome to Leviathan City!”

Barris’s eyes narrowed and he swallowed back tears. “Hello Ishmael.”

#

Professor Burns removed his top hat and mopped his forehead in cool afternoon air. Daniel cocked his eyebrow.

“You doing OK, professor?”

“Certainly, my boy,” the man stammered, not looking at him. “While where I’m going isn’t the safest place ever, the company that I keep is unparalleled, so my safety is nigh insured, correct?”

Daniel thought of the various ways he and Kate had been kept from their power that had once had the ability to cause worlds to grow from nothing but blood and emotion.

“Obsolutely,” he said, clapping Professor Burns’ shoulder.

Kate, Daniel, Professor Burns, Gamma, and Fabrique waved at Alicia and the sulking Prosper to go belowdeck to a small doorway. It opened to the hanging sub, and Daniel reached out and unscrewed the hatch. He climbed from the door through the hatch, calling behind him, “Don’t look down!”

Kate snorted at him and followed, then helped PRofessor Burns in. They settled into small seats bolted to the floor, Fabrique taking the controls.

“Strap yourselves in,” she said, flipping switches and squinting a gauges.

“All of us?” Daniel asked.

“Even you, trickster god,” she said. “You should know by now that you don’t really know what is going to happen around here, even if you are a god. And seatbelts are just a wise idea. What if you smash into poor Professor Burns here?”

The professor’s dark face had paled to an unsettling gray color and he gripped the edge of his seat as the sub lurched. They started to descend toward the water.

They bumped gently as they hit the water, and Fabrique lifted a lever that disengaged the sub from the airship. “And we’re away. I figure maybe ten minutes till we reach Leviathan City.”

The interior of the hatch grew dark as the only lights came from the console and the reflection of the headlamps of the sub as they submerged.

“Fabrique, you know the most about this energy that people use to trap gods. What can you tell me about it?” Kate asked.

“It’s the only kind of energy I can’t actively manipulate,” the goddess said, staring out the porthole in front of her. “I have to treat it as if I was an ordinary tinker. I always thought it kept me honest, making me work harder to make things.”

“And you never thought about why you, the goddess of devices, couldn’t master it?”

Fabrique glared over her shoulder momentarily. “Of course I did. But as I said, being trapped inside a house didn’t give me much ability to go out and research. And since my freedom I’ve been a little busy with other people’s projects to work on my own.”

Kate flushed and looked away from the irritated goddess. “I’m sorry. You’re just the most likely person to understand it. It’s dangerous and I want to know what it is.”

Fabrique shrugged. “It’s chaos energy, its origination is The Dark, what you call the Wasteland. It’s what makes the area around Meridian and Lathe so volatile.”

Daniel frowned as something teased his memory, something so large it was hard to fathom. He couldn’t grasp it.

“But why does it counter divine power so well?” Kate asked, leaning forward.

“That much is easy,” Fabrique said. “Gods are creatures of order. Even Daniel here has to rely on others’ order so his own chaos will work. The thing that combats this order is chaos. Why do you think so many gods were imprisoned here? Here is where we are the least potent.”

“Wonderful,” Daniel said. “As much as I’d like to keep talking about how we’re not all-powerful as we’re heading into a hostile underwater city, shouldn’t we come up with a plan? They don’t like outsiders, and according to Sam, that includes outside gods. They have two of our own imprisoned there. What are we going to do?”

Gamma smiled, the green light shining off her teeth. Daniel shook his head. “No, we’re not going to turn to slaughtering them right away. You can protect us, but you’re not going to just blow the place up.”

Gamma lost her smile and glared at him. “I was not there when Dauphin fell. Now that I’m with you, you’re beyond city razing.”

“Good lord, Gamma,” Kate said. “I’m sure you’ll have plenty of violence before we’re done. Do you remember that we need you all to help us fight a war when we’re done with all this rescuing?”

Gamma nodded stiffly. Daniel suppressed a grin. It was tempting to just set her free, but he knew they had to enter the city with their wits. A plan tickled his mind, and he looked around at his companions, the dark-faced Fabrique, Gamma, and Burns, the lighter shades of his and Kate’s skin. He grinned.

“I think I have an idea,” he said. “Fabrique, can you make us some shackles from what you have in your bag? It would be best if they can look like they’re powered by chaos energy, but aren’t.”

Kate gasped as a large glowing dome appeared several hundred meters in front of them.

“And preferably fast, too,” Daniel added.

Fabrique kept her eyes on the portal as she rummaged around in her bag and tossed three pair of handcuffs to Daniel. Glowing blue wire ran through the hinges and he admired the craftsmanship.

He scratched his chin. “Oh, I’ll need some goggles to hide my eye, too.”

“What are you planning, Daniel?” asked Kate.

“If the Leviathan City people want to hunt gods, that’s what we’ll bring them. You and I are pale enough to pass for Leviathan City citizens, this can work.”

“How in the world can we pass for citizens when we don’t know much about these people, even their sub design?”

“Leave it to me, I have a plan,” he said.

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” she muttered, but accepted the shackles and began sliding them around the wrists of their companions, leaving Fabrique one hand free so she could continue piloting the sub.

“How big is it?” Kate asked in a hushed voice as the city loomed closer.

“No one knows exact size or population, but I can say with some confidence that there are seventeen thousand tinkers or craftsmen,” Fabrique said.

“And an army of thirty thousand,” Gamma said, her fists balled on her lap.

“Relax, Gamma,” Daniel said. “You can break out of those at any time.”

Her hands fell open on her lap and she took a deep breath.

Kate closed her eyes. “There are seventy thousand people there. Give or take.”

Professor Burns snapped out of his stupor. “That’s impossible! Meridian is the largest city in the world at fifty-five thousand!”

Kate shrugged. “That’s what I can sense. Sensing souls is kinda what I do.”

“Man. What are they going to do with all those people? Surely overcrowding is an issue. And they can’t exactly leave from what Sam said.”

“Doesn’t seem like we’re heading into a very happy city,” Kate said.

Daniel snorted. “And understatement of the year goes to…”

Gamma smiled at him again. “Have you reconsidered your previous comment about razing the city?”

“No, I haven’t,” Daniel said, watching the subs drift around the city like parasitic fish around a whale. “But I might.”

Ishamel laughed, the sound assaulting Barris’ ears. “A prisoner? What in the world gave you that idea?”

Barris managed to lift his eyes to the greenish god. Ishmael had ordered a table and chairs brought into them, along with tea and sandwiches. It was almost civilized, despite the vomit that still pooled on the floor.

“We were all imprisoned. Me, Gamma, Fabrique, Prosper. We assumed you were too.”

“The god of the sea, living underneath the waves in a glorious city, surrounded by worshippers? And you thought I was eager to leave?” Ishmael laughed again, the sound bouncing off the wall like waves. “Where in the world would I go that is better than here?”

Barris shuddered, still feeling horrible. It must have been the effects of the water in his system. “I don’t know.”

“Exactly. Now, they treat gods right here. They will take good care of you.”

Barris stared at the table miserably. “But what do they want with me? How did they catch me? And why?”

Ishmael toyed with the blue stone on his necklace. “The report is a submersible surfaced by accident, they aren’t sure why. They found you floating in the sea, about to drown. They saved you.”

He leaned forward and looked appraisingly at Barris. “The crew are confused, though. We think it’s a case of madness due to exposure to the air, or perhaps your proximity caused them to hallucinate, but the crew claims you were a winged creature of heat and flame. Not what you truly are. When they came home this morning, they seemed terribly confused to see you in their infirmary. But they knew they had someone special, and sent me to check you out.”

“But what do they want with me?” Barris asked again.

Ishmael frowned briefly, looking far into the ocean. He returned shortly and smiled again. “You are a god, my friend! What city doesn’t want you as a figurehead?”

#

The sun, still quite warm and strong in the sky, slid closer to the horizon. Alicia was relaxing at the helm, keeping an eye on the wind, correcting from time to time. Connie approached her mother, the chicken gun ready on her shoulder. Air whales were less of a threat at sundown than sunup, but she never took chances.

“Mother,” she asked, her eyes surveying the sea under them. “What happens if they don’t come back?”

Alicia frowned. “I don’t know. I can’t imagine they wouldn’t. They’re gods, after all.”

“Sometimes they seem nothing more than humans,” Connie muttered.

“Hush your blasphemy, Connie,” her mother said. “It is an honor to serve them. THey’ve done so much for us.”

Connie nodded. “Like burn down our home and stowaway on our airship and demand we take them wherever they like?”

Alicia adjusted the helium valves. “That, and gives us notoriety, business prospects, and lodging in Meridian.”

“You said you’d never go back there, not since Daddy died.”

Alicia’s brown eyes fixed on the horizon. Connie bit her lip, afraid she’d said too much. Alicia finally sighed and said, “It’s not a good idea to vow things you can’t control.”

“I just hope we get a chance to return to our lives at some point,” Connie said.

“HOnestly, I do too,” Alicia said. “But they’re gods, Connie. What are we going to do? Deny them?”

Connie shrugged. She glanced back at Prosper, still hunkered at the back of the ship beside his pot of moss. “I wish they hadn’t left him.”

“You and me both, honey. I wish James had some more caution.”

#

Fabrique, Gamma, and Professor Burns stood at the submersible hatch, waiting for Daniel to exit before they did. Kate would bring up the rear. Daniel blinked through his goggles. Whatever Fabrique had done to them was amazing. If focused correctly, he could see through walls. Another turn of a lens and he could easily view electrical currents. Best of all, a third flip of a lens gave him the illusion of having both eyes functioning. Fabrique said it was just fooling his good eye that he had his perspective back, but Daniel didn’t care. His brain reveled in the feeling of two visual inputs.

Currently he had it so he could see through the walls, and noted that the Leviathan City guards had gathered inside the airlock to intercept the strange submersible. He cursed himself for not thinking to disguise the obviously non-Leviathan=City created submersible. But it was too late to fret about that now.

“This is totally not going to work,” he muttered to himself as the airlock opened and eight muscular white warriors- five women and three men stormed in with spears.

“Good idea,” Kate said.

“It’s all I could come up with,” he said, then, louder, “We have returned with heretics! I think these might be of use to us! Our leaders will be so proud!”

Fabrique, Burns, and Gamma walked forward dutifully, showing their shackled hands.

The woman in front, wearing a padded tunic and green pants, raised her spear. “Who are you? Entry into Leviathan City is forbidden for all heretics from above.”

“We’re not heretics!” Daniel said. He thought the obvious comparing of skin color wouldn’t outweigh clothing, accent, and submarine differences. “We just had some individuals we thought you would be interested in seeing. We are sure at least two of these are not human.”

The woman’s eyes narrowed. “The only one who can determine power is the queen. She can decide.”

The warriors behind her shuddered, two of them exchanging sidelong glances.

This can’t be good, Daniel thought.

With a word from the woman, the warriors surrounded the gods, who allowed themselves to be herded into the underwater city.

#

“We see the coolest places in the weirdest situations,” Kate whispered, craning her head back.

“Tell me about it. How many heavens and hells would have been cool to explore if we hadn’t been running from gods or looking for souls or, uh, running from other gods?” Daniel said, following her gaze.

The green dome glistened dully over them showing black water beyond. The streets within the dome ran in circles, with smaller houses on the perimeter and larger buildings in the smaller concentric bands. Straight roads went toward the center like spokes in a wheel. Near the center were tall skyscrapers, which nearly touched the top of the dome. Most were created from glass of various opacities, the more private areas were made from black glass, shining slightly from interior lights.

In the center of the city the tallest building actually seemed to be made out of the same glass as the dome, melding into the ceiling seamlessly. As they took a direct route toward the center, Kate realized they were heading toward the biggest building.

“Is that a temple to Ishmael?” she asked, pointing. She received a grunt from the man at her side, and he said nothing more.

“You should know that, shouldn’t you, if you were native?” asked the woman, sneering.

“Oh come on, if you saw through our clever trick, then why keep acting like you just figured us out?” Daniel said. Kate hid a smile. The fact that the guards had no idea who they were was still their strongest weapon. She could see Gamma’s ropy dark arms flexing in the shackles eager to get out. She could probably destroy each guard simply by turning their weapons on them.

As they passed houses, pale, frightened faces peeked from windows, lighter glass set into opaque walls. When they met Kate’s eyes, they slid behind curtains. She smiled and openly waved at them.

“Leviathan City citizens are not permitted contact with heretics,” the woman said.

“What makes us heretics?” Daniel asked.

“Yeah, that’s a good question,” Kate said. “We never said Ishmael wasn’t a god, or Cotton wasn’t a goddess. Why hate us?”

“You worship the other gods,” the woman said, looking straight forward. “Kate the false. Daniel the weak.”

Kate couldn’t read Daniel’s eye behind the goggles, but she knew he was looking at her. He gave a small, suppressed smile.

Unfortunately, the woman kept talking. “The minor gods are recognized here, but not worshipped on a high level as they are wrongly done on the outside. My people retain a brand of Gamma the Warrior, but she is not reverd by anyone else. The tinkers honor Fabrique on holidays, and the farmers Prosper. Barris gives his power to our goddess, Cotton, so we acknowledge him, but no one is higher than Ishmael the sea and Cotton the moon.”

Gamma and Fabrique stiffened at the insults, but said nothing. Daniel made a big deal of counting on his fingers. “Wait, you only named eight gods. What about Persi, the goddess of dinosaurs?”

The guards did not answer. The buildings got taller and taller, and they finally approached the one in the center, a round building with no windows. Two guards stood at the door, but opened them when they saw the group approach.

“Five to see the queen,” their head guard said.

The door guards’ eyebrows shot up. “Five? But the king has already taken someone to visit.” One of them said.

“These are heretics, they cannot be trusted elsewhere,” she said. “It’s possible the eight of us could already be tainted.”

One of the other guards swore softly and a ripple of panic went through them.

“You have less courage than Daniel’s testicles!” the leader said. Daniel coughed, trying to hide an outburst of laughter. “

The leader shoved them all through. They stumbled into the room, and she followed them, snarling, “I’ll take them through myself!”

The interior showed the building was like a doughnut, with a small circular wall in the center of the room and holy symbols depicting a naked man, an erect phallus, and waves decorating the exterior wall. One more guard stood in front of double doors that looked like an elevator hatch.

The guard marched up to the startled looking woman. “Five to see the queen. Do you have objection?

The man was clearly a lower rank than the woman, as he trembled but did not look away from her angry eyes. “No ma’am. Five to see the queen!”

He pushed a button in the wall and clockwork snapped into motion, whirring and clicking. Fabrique cocked her head to the side and listened, then nodded. The elevator opened and the guard pushed five of them inside.

“Aren’t you coming with us?” asked Daniel.

The guard laughed. “One faces the queen alone, heretic. Now’s the time you pray your meaningless gods are with you.”

Daniel shrugged as the doors closed. “Done.”

Kate stumbled as the elevator went into motion, but not up. It went down, into the rock.

Gamma flexed once more and her shackles fell from her wrists. “Great idea, oh Lord,” she said.

Daniel shrugged. “They don’t know who we are, and they’re intrigued enough to take us to the top. Or, uh, the bottom, as the case may be. I say we’re still doing OK.”

“This is an excellent elevator design,” Fabruique said. She listened briefly again and smiled. “Innovative use of springs. I approve.” The creaking outside the elevator ceased and their descent increased speed.

“Did yo ujust bless them?” Daniel asked. “These people who don’t give a shit about us?”

Fabrique frowned at him. “They may not honor me with prayer, but they honor me with their inventions. I also wonder what keeps the dome’s air breathable.”

“Must be a kind of recycler,” Kate said.

They kept descending, Professor Burns looking more and more ill as they went below the ocean floor. “D-does anyone know how far under the city we are?” he asked in a papery voice.

Fabrique looked thoughtful. “At the rate we’re descending, and for how long we’ve been descending, I’d say about two hundred fifty feet so far.”

They lapsed into silence, Fabrique updating them from time to time with, “Three hundred… three fifty… four hundred…”

When she reached five hundred, Kate asked her to please stop. It turns out she didn’t need to, as the elevator stopped instead.

It opened into a cave dimly lit with torches. The air was surprisingly fresh; the cause of which became obvious when Fabrique zeroed in on a small generator the pumped fresh air into the cave and through vents in the cave wall and up the elevator shaft.

“It’s so small,” Fabrique said. “This is master-level work. There have to be others in the city, but this one can provide at least half of what they need.”

“Yeah, impressive, but why keep it in a cave below the sea floor?” Kate said.

“Dude, why keep their queen in a cave below the sea floor? Isn’t that who we’re here to see?”

“And the king,” Gamma said.

The cave looked simply like a cave, an odd pocket of air with a pool at the end opposite the elevator shaft. Kate figured it had to be like an S bend in a pipe, allowing one end to be dry and the other to hold water. While here the other end was the ocean and this end was a small pocket of fresh air.

The cave was dank and inhospitable, with no human luxuries.

Kate frowned. “I’m starting to think that “going to see the queen” means “tossing into a jail that’s impossible to escape from.”

“I’m sure you could escape from it, my lady. Myself, however…” Burns trailed off.

“We’re not leaving you were, Professor,” Daniel said.

A voice at the edge of the pool called to them, calling from a shadowy alcove they hadn’t noticed. “More visitors to my queen! How wonderful! Come and meet her!”

Daniel and Kate exchanged glances and moved tentatively forward. “Think it’s a trick?” she asked.

“I’m supposed to know those things. And I’m not sure,” he said.

As they approached the pool, a green man stepped out in front of them, welcoming them with open arms. “My friends! Welcome to Leviathan City! I did not expect so many divine visitors today! I am Ishmael, king of the city, god of the sea. I welcome you, Fabrique, Gamma, Kate, Daniel, and…” he looked at Burns for a moment, frowning, “and human. We are awaiting the arrival of the queen.”

Kate blinked stupidly. “We?” was the only thing she could think to say.

Ishmael gestured to the wall where Barris sat curled in a fetal position, back against the wall. Sweat dripped from him despite the dank air, and he shuddered. “Barris the sun god. He is feeling poorly from almost drowning. He’ll feel better soon. Everyone feels better once they meet the queen.”

Daniel took a step back, his lip curling, doglike. “What’s up?” Kate whispered.

“HIs necklace. It’s got that energy on it. I can smell it now. Barris has one too.”

“That’s not good,” Kate said.

“And that’s not drowning he’s experiencing,” said Professor Burns, brightening now that he had a role. “He’s suffering withdrawal.”

“Hold up,” Daniel said. “Let’s see if we can get him out of here without nuking him first. How long does he have before he gets the DTs bad?”

Burns watched the sun god shudder and moan. “Not long.”

Kate laced her fingers together, thinking. She inored the eager sea god, bouncing from foot to foot. “Well. We have everything we need. Gamma? Can you escort Ishmael and Barris out of here? We’ll figure out how to get everyone out of here safely.”

Gamma stepped forward and put her hand on Ishmael’s arm. “Are you going to resist?”

“We have to wait. She’s almost here,” Ishmael said, and focused on the pool.

Daniel put Professor Burns behind him. “I Have a bad feeling about this,” he said. “Why do I think the queen is not human?”

A gray tentacle, dotted with pink suckers, rose lazily out of the water and probed the air. Ishmael took it in his hand and rubbed it on his cheek. It wrapped gently around his neck, and then again around his torso.

“Oh she’s so much more than that,” Ishmael said, his eyes misty with adoration. “Why do you think we call this place Leviathan City?”

Kate backed up, bumping into Daniel, who bumped into Burns. “Oh shit,” she said.

Burns, finally, was looking as together as he always did. He was rummaging in his waistcoat.

“Is it really time to look for a smoke right now?” Kate asked.

“Fuck, is she Cthulhu or something?” Daniel said.

“No no, I finally have an idea.” Burns held up one of the ideas he’d gotten from his shop.

“Oh really? What’s it say?” Daniel said. “Don’t go see the tentacle queen?”

“No.” Burns paused. “It says to respect and listen to royalty. Our leaders know more than we give them credit for.”

Daniel stopped. “You’re kidding. Professor, that’s not a queen. It’s a tentacle.”

“It could be the queen is on the other end. You don’t know.”

“So you really think we should just stand here and wait for… the rest of her to arrive?” Kate asked, staring at the tentacle that caressed Ishmael in a most distressing way.

“You’re gods. You can escape any time if things get troublesome, can you not? I’m the one in true danger, and I can wait to see what she has to tell us. Can’t you?”

Daniel bristled at the challenge, but Kate nodded. “YOu have a point. Although I really don’t think that thing can talk. We can wait it out.”

Daniel continued to back up, thought, and Kate raised an eyebrow. “Tentacled things freak me out,” he said through clenched teeth.

“Oh!” Kate said. “I had no idea.”

Daniel nodded, his face green in the torch light.

“Okay. I’ll see what she has to say. Or, uh, squish.”

“That’s not funny,” Daniel said.

Kate hid a smile behind the guise of rubbing her cheeks to steel herself. The water in the pool was churning now, and more tentacles had emerged, probing and tasting the air.

“Here she comes,” Ishmael said, his voice quiet and reverent. Gamma stood at the edge of the pool, defiant, and Barris huddled, oblivious to them all.

Kate swallowed and took a step back involuntarily as the green mass filled the room. The Queen looked like a cross between an octopus and a seahorse, with the long tentacles encircling her torso. Only part of her  surfaced; she filled the cave, at least twenty feet tall with her longest two tentacles looking to be around forty feet. She grunted low in her throat and eyed them all with pearly, cloudy eyes.

Gamma looked back at Kate, her eyes wide, just as Kate realized it too. Fabrique had been rummaging in her bag for something, crouched beside Barris, but she looked up at the leviathan. Even Barris raised his head, sensing it.

Daniel was the one who said it. “Holy shit, Kate. That’s a goddess.”

The greenish gray monster burned with a divine light that all of the gods recognized. She reached a tentacle out to each of them, touching them lightly, recognizing them, too. Even Daniel allowed it, making only a small disgusted noise as she touched his shoulder.

“It’s not only a goddess,” Kate said, nodding. “It’s Persi.

Daniel looked at Barris. “I thought you said she was in the south, trapped in a dinosaur’s body.”

Barris looked at Daniel through lidded, tired eyes. “She was in the south at the time. She swam north.”

“But you said a dino’s body!” Daniel said, gesturing at the bulk that was Persi. “We were thinking a stegosaurus or something! Not a hug leviathan!”

“A leviathan is a dinosaur,” Barris said, dropping his head to his knees again. He shuddered again.

Kate was reminded that he didn’t have a lot of time left, but the new wrinkle of Persi made things more complicated. All of the gods they needed were right here; if she could figure out how to get them all out of there, their total quest would be over and she and Daniel could finally focus on the siege on Heaven.

Of course, a detoxing sun god, a zealous sea god who was in love with a tentacled monster, who happened to be a trapped goddess, didn’t seem like easy sheep to herd.

“She’s so beautiful, no?” Ishmael said.

“Oh, yes,” Kate said, thinking fast. “Do you swim with her?”

Ishmael looked sad. “No, they don’t permit me to. I can’t get into the water this deep.”

“Hey, wait,” daniel said. “You can’t swim this deep? Aren’t you the god of the sea?”

Ishmael stuck his chin out, defiant. “I am. You have no right to challenge me. We all have our limitations, even as gods.”

“Not really when it concerns our area of expertise. Is there clockwork too deep for Fabrique to swim in?” Daniel asked.

The goddess looked at him, her eyebrows raised. “I’d never considered swimming in clockwork. I expect it would be too pointy.”

Daniel waved his hand at her impatiently. “You know what I mean. When it comes to clockwork, you’re the master. I have a hard time believing that there’s water that a fish can conquer but the god of the sea can’t. What’s going on here?”

Ignoring Persi’s groans and growls momentarily, Daniel walked up to get a closer look at the green man, who glared at him. Daniel reached out with his left hand and nearly touched Ishmael’s necklace. He pulled his hand back quickly and growled deep in his throat. Kate took his arm and tugged on it.

“What’s up, Daniel?” she asked.

“He can’t swim because he’s wearing one of those necklaces. They’re controlling him.”

Ishmael snorted. “Preposterous. I have worn this my whole existence.”

“Uh huh,” Kate said. “And how many times have you gone swimming?”

Daniel hesitated to reach out again,and Kate realized he was remembering his time in the cage as a coyote. She reached past him and grabbed the necklace, whipping it over Ishmael’s head.

In the chaos that followed, Kate had trouble following the events. The first think that happened was Ishmael seemed to explode in a torrent of water. Kate was blown backward into Daniel and they both hit the cave wall. She scrambled to her feet, wiping her sopping hair out of her face to see Ishmael disappear into the pool, diving deep.

Barris screamed as he frantically batted at his arms to sluice off the water that hit him. If he’d drowned, he’d automatically be afraid of the water, but the movements were crazed, his eyes wide.

Persi bellowed and lashed out a tentacle grabbing wildly. Kate ducked, not realizing that put Daniel in her reach. The tentacle wrapped around him and he shrieked, lifted high into the air.

“Gamma!” yelled Kate, running forward. Sadly, it turned out that the warrior goddess was gone. Kate blinked in confusion, realizing that something had to have called her. And the only thing that could have called her would have been Alicia needing her back on the Sheridan.

“Shit.” Kate said.

Burns was scrabbling with an idea and as he opened it, Barris let out a howl. This one was not of panic or fear, but of insane longing. Oh, right, great idea to bring cocaine to a narcotics anonymous meeting, Kate thought as he lunged for Burns.

“Chain the queen, chain the quee-” Burns managed to get out before the puny sun god tackled him, taking him down hard. Barris sat on the taller man, rifling through his clothes, grabbing at the ideas.

Fabrique ignored all of this and continued rummaging through her bag.

Kate figure the first thing to do would be to stop the rampaging leviathan. Burns seemed to have the right idea, but she had no chain. She looked around and then realized she still held the necklace she’d torn from Ishmael’s neck. She could feel it sapping her energy and would have liked to drop it, but instead she threw it at Persi, who was hammering Daniel against the roof of the cave as he swore loudly.

The necklace settled around one of Persi’s flailing tentacles, and the power-dampening effects were instantaneous. Instead of holding the shapeshifted form, she fell to the edge of the pool, a young girl swathed in seaweed, lying unconscious.

Daniel fell into an undignified heap and Kate rushed to his side. “‘M fine,” he mumbled, the blood streaming from a cut on his brow already slowing. “What the hell happened?”

“I think we’ll have to figure that out later. There’s still a lot of shit going on. You handle Persi, I’ll take care of Barris.”

Daniel looked at the unconscious girl, her wet dreadlocks covering her face. He sighed. “I think I can take her.”

Kate ran over to Barris and Burns. Barris had ripped Burns’ coat off and the discarded ideas lay around him like used crack vials. He was giggling as he took his final prize, the blue vial, and uncorked it.

“Don’t let him,” Burns croaked, doubled up in pain. Barris was smaller, but junkies could apparently pack quite a punch when jonesing. “We can still-”

He stopped when Barris upended the idea addiction antidote to  his mouth. The sun god sucked greedily at the contents of the bottle and then his eyes went vacant. His pupils dilated and he toppled over, still staring at the cave ceiling.

“Kate’s wrinkled nipples,” Burns said, sitting up and holding his head. Kate cocked an eyebrow at him. He looked down. “Sorry. Habit.”

She shruged. “No problem.” She helped the old man to his feet, her touch healing his injuries as he stood.

Daniel picked up Persi-she didn’t look older than fifteen-and placed her beside Barris. “I don’t think we should call this one a win, Kate,” he said. “Two gods lost, two out of commission.”

Kate shook her head. “I don’t understand what happened.”

“It’s obvious,” Fabrique said, assembling her brass doorway. “He had never experienced power before. He was a sea god feeling his true power for the first time. He became rather drunk on it.”

“And the kid?” Daniel asked, pointing at Persi.

“Her power was keeping her trapped in the leviathan form. The necklace stopped that.”

“Huh.”

“And Gamma was clearly called back to the Sheridan,” Fabrique added, snapping the final corner onto the doorway.

“Right, I figured that.” Kate went to the edge of the pool and looked in. She was splashed with water again as Ishmael leaped out, exultant.

“The power! The thrill!” he said, grinning broadly at them. “Have you felt such glory?”

“Yeah. Every day,” Daniel said flatly. “I’m guessing this is your first time?”

“I always knew what I was but I never knew what it felt like! This is glorious! It’s amazing! Its-”

“Divine?” Daniel asked.

“Exactly!” Ishmael finally looked around the cave. “What happened here?”

Kate rolled her eyes. “Fabrique, can that door thingy take us back to the sheridan?”

The goddess fixed goggles over her eyes and grinned. “Anywhere.”

“Then we’d better see what’s going on up there.”

Daniel picked up Persi and Kate lifted Barris’s slight form over her shoulder in a fireman’s carry. Fabrique turned on the doorway and it shimmered. Kate saw the form of the Sheridan wavering in front of them, and Fabrique walked through confidently.

Kate gave a glance at Daniel, who shrugged. “Can’t be any weirder than anything else we’ve done today.”

She looked at the grinning sea god and Professor Burns, who was picking up his tattered coat and tutting at it.

“Come on, Ishmael. We’re going to take you somewhere where you can learn all about your divinity. You hold onto Daniel, And Burns, you hold onto me. We’re not sure how this thing works,” she said.

With that the six of them entered the portal. There was a worrisome twanging sound.

And then they emerged far from the deck of the Sheridan.

[/private]

Kate, Daniel and crew enter Leviathan city, find Barris and Ishmael, and prepare to meet the queen.

[private]

Inside Story 01 – State of the Mur

[/private]

Prosper’s temple was in the first floor of the stacked temple, and therefore the largest. Unlike Kate’s, which was spacious, white and church-like (which frankly irritated her), Prosper’s was more like a greenhouse mixed with a children’s nature museum. The sun shone in through glass walls to create a greenhouse effect, and a wooden roof honored their god.

Within the temple, priests tended holy plants honoring their god. Vegetables, vines, flowers, grasses, trees (Kate was amused to see a grand bonsai collection), and even carnivorous plants grew from elaborately painted plots.

Kate choked as the humidity of the temple assailed her and took a moment to compose herself. One of the priests saw her standing in the doorway and approached her.

“Goddess, it is a sad day you grace us with your presence,” he said, leaning his hoe against the glass wall.”

“Is he really no better?” Kate asked, frowning.

The priest shrugged and wiped his hands on a dirty rag sticking from his back pocket. “We managed to get enough wine into him to calm him last night. But he has been in captivity too long; he doesn’t know what to do now that he’s free.”

“Is his physical form any better? What was he supposed to be like before he was caught?”

The priest winced. “I admit we do not know. He’s always been depicted as a god with barklike skin and vines for hair. We do not know if that is his corrupted form or his natural.”

“Take me to him.”

Prosper’s temple had no rooms, just areas separated by trellises and vines. The priests slept in a back area with an honest wooden floor. Prosper had been placed directly onto the dirt of a somewhat private area near a breathtaking orchid display.

Kate looked at the orchid roots and swore she could see them visibly growing, inspired by the proximity of the divine. Smart of the priests to put him near plants with roots that got moisture and nutrients from the air, and not the soil. Or the body of a god.

The plants all faced the god, sitting cross-legged on the dirt floor and glaring at Kate. He didn’t look much better. His skin still looked to be made of bark, and vines grew from his head where hair should be. His chest had healed where the vines had sprouted from him, at least, and kate silently thanked the priests who had put a loin cloth on him. She hadn’t even realized he’d been naked when she’d rescued him.

All in all, he was much less craggy and chaotic than he’d been when she’d found them. Sadly, he didn’t look much happier.

“Take me back.”

She blinked, then knelt in front of him to look into his golden eyes. “You… want to go back.”

“Take me back. This is not my home, that was my home. You took me from my home.”

Kate glanced up at the priest. “Prosper, these are your priests. They worship you. They are your people – if you’re not home, then at least you’re as close as you can be in your current state. They’ll take care of you here.”

He opened his mouth again, showing her his yellowed, fibrous teeth, and screamed again. She winced, but waited patiently until he stopped.

“Are you done?” she asked. He glared at her. The orchids began to shudder and strain as they grew, then, bursting from their pots. Thick, white roots sought Kate and began to wrap around her again.

“No,” she said, willing her skin temperature to searing temperatures. The priest swore and fell backward as the orchid roots burst into flame. “Not this time, Prosper. I’m not as powerless here as I was there.”

She stood, still white-hot, and put her hands on her hips. “This isn’t going to be easy.” She turned to the priest, who hovered at a safe distance, gripping a shovel. “Give him a robe, a large pot full of soil, and some seeds. He can choose which ones. Have him ready in ten minutes, or we’re coming in to get him, ready or not?”

“Where are you taking me?” Prosper demanded.

Kate glanced back at him. “Does it matter? You seem to be happiest as a slave, so you’re going to do what we say.”

He pursed his lips, then blurted out, “And what if I don’t?”

Kate incinerated another orchid, this time with a glance. “I don’t want to hurt you, Prosper. But the things we’re trying to achieve are so much bigger than a petty god’s tantrums. You’ll help us. You have no choice.”

She strode out of the temple, not looking back. “Fucking gods,” she muttered.

#

Daniel whistled as he and Professor Burns entered the Idea Emporium. “I see you’ve made some changes.”

“The blessings of the sun god do much to help my business, I will admit,” he said, locking the door behind them.

He went over to a case and pulled out several small boxes and slipped them into the pockets of his purple waistcoat. “I take it where we’re going is dangerous?”

Daniel squatted in front of a display case, fascinated by the intricate origami. “Oh, did we not tell you? We’re going to Leviathan City to save Barris and Ishmael. We’ve not had the best of luck with people from there.” He straightened. “Well. We’ve only met one person from there, but it didn’t go very well.” He rubbed his wrist absently.

“Leviathan City?” Professor Burns turned white, but did not protest. “We’ll be needing diplomatic ideas, then.”

“Hey, I’ve wanted to ask you. Why do you sell the bad ideas. Why not just toss them?”

“You can’t destroy an idea,” Burns said, handing Daniel several small scrolls tied with red ribbon. “Someone will find it. This way I can tell people they’re bad, and sell them as novelties. If I throw them out, then they’re released into the world and you don’t know who’s going to get them and follow through.”

“Huh. I see your point. So what are we going to do about Barris? Are these for him?”

Burns looked surprised. “Goodness no, sir. These are for us. Battle ideas, diplomacy ideas, and culinary suggestions- in case the food in Leviathan City is unpalatable.”

Daniel laughed. “You think of everything.”

The tall man bowed. “It is my job. Now, for Barris, we need to get him to drink this.” He held up a crystal vial of blue liquid. It shone the same blue as the energy that had trapped Daniel, who involuntarily took a step backward.

“What is it?” Daniel asked, trying to keep his voice steady.

“It’s a distillation of the energy that comes from the Dark. Since the ideas are formed from a chaos battery, then so does the antidote come from the same stuff.”

Daniel managed to laugh, a short barking sound. “Like how snake bite serum is made from snake venom?”

Burns pocketed the vial and smiled. “Something liek that, yes. It’s rather strong, though, and could… damage him.”

Daniel grabbed his arm. “Whoa, wait. What do you mean? This is the sun we’re talking about. We lose him, we are pretty much screwed. The whole planet.”
Burns nodded. “I understand that, but the damage will come mentally. He won’t be able to ever hold another idea. He won’t get the high from the ideas, but he won’t think for himself very well.”

Daniel frowned. “Is there no other way? Weaning gradually?”

“Normally, yes. But we would have to hope he’s getting his fix in Leviathan City of ideas. And I don’t like to brag, bu I invented the Chaositron Idea Generator. It’s one-of-a-kind. If they have one in Leviathan City, I’ll frankly be shocked.” Burns closed the blinds down, darkening the interior of the shop. He pulled out a “CLOSED TO SAVE THE WORLD” sign from beneath the counter and replaced the sign on the door.

Daniel read the sign. “Is, uh, that a sign you have to use often?”

They exited the store. “Only once before,” Burns said as he locked the door. “I like to be prepared.”

“Good idea,” Daniel muttered, wondering how they were going to prepare thmselves for the tasks ahead. Allies were good. Allies not hopped up on weird drugs would be better, but they’d take what they could get.

#

Kate felt absurdly like a CEO being addressed by her nervous vice presidents.

Fabrique was first. She put her carpet bag on the conference table and opened it. “What I wanted was access to my house. I could make tools out of just about anything, but really I am more efficient with my tools. However, even though I’ve expanded the interior of this bag, I still don’t have enough room for everything I want. So I created a doorway.”

She pulled a flimsy series of linked brass tubes that reminded Kate of a weapon she’d seen in martial arts movies. When Fabrique removed it, it looked like a chain with large links, but when she got it out she shook it once, like airing out a towel, and it snapped into place to form a brass rectangle about three feet wide and five feet high, with a small square battery on the top right hand corner.

Fabrique flipped a switch on the battery and the brass rectangle began to hum, and the interior of the rectangle shimmered. The space beyond faded, and Kate saw what was clearly a workshop, littered with tools and wires.

“It’s still untested, but I think it will be useful if I need something my tools. Just pop over to my workshop for whatever we need.”

“Wow,” Kate said. “But, uh, untested?”

The sword across her back trembled, interrupting her, and she drew it. The divine energy that was Gamma poured out of the tip, and the warrior goddess faced her. “The Sheridan is prepped and ready to go. I took the liberty of loading the traitor into a locked room as Daniel requested. Captain Alicia has procured a submersible for the trip to Leviathan City.”

Kate blanched. How could she have forgotten that? She would have to remember to thank Alicia, captain of The Sheridan, for realizing that they’d need a way into Leviathan City. Kate was pretty sure she and Daniel could divinely worm their way in, but she didn’t like to assume, especially here.

“Good,” she said. Now can we test that doorway thing before we-”

“No time,” Daniel said, appearing in the doorway. Professor Burns followed him, combing his mustache with his hand. “We need to get there as soon as possible. Barris needs us. When withdrawal sets in, that guy is going to be hurting. And the antidote isn’t pretty.

Kate stood. She took a deep breath. “OK, then I guess we’re going. Let’s go downstairs and get Prosper and then head out. Anyone need to pee or anything?”

#

The one true goddess spoke to Sam, deep within the urn in which the broken false god had trapped him.

His back had been on fire, giving him a constant agony. The urn was stuffy. He trembled with the thought of the loss of Prosper, his vineyards, his casks of wine, and the second god he’d captured. He had no idea what the god wnated him for.

But now, deep within the urn, unable to move, barely able to breathe, he felt her presence.

“Goddess? Cotton?” He blinked and thought he saw a glowing orb in the complete blackness within the urn.

An amused, muffled voice answered him. “Not anymore. But no one has visited me before. Either they come to stay or don’t come at all. Why are you on the border of life and death?”

“Am I dying? Or dreaming?”

“You would have to tell me, my child. Who are you?”

“My name is Sam, Goddess. I’ve been most horribly wronged by the false broken god Daniel.”

She was silent. He whimpered. “Goddess? Are you there? Please don’t leave me alone!”

“Daniel is not false. He’s quite powerful. But you must have a great grudge against you if you hate him with such force.”

“Yes Goddess!” He began to weep. “He took everything from me, and then imprisoned me. I can’t escape.”

“Shh, if you can pledge yourself to me, become my first priest, I can free you come nightfall.”

His heart leaped. Was she serious? Would she give him such an honor? “Yes Goddess.”

“Good. When you get free, I will have a mission for you. Fulfill it and I will reward you. Fail or change your mind, and you will wish you’d stayed in the urn.”

“I would never turn from you, Goddess.”

“Wonderful. Now, my priest, listen…”

#

Kate and Daniel’s favor, along with Fabrique’s upgrades, had clearly benefitted Alicia and The Sheridan just as Barris’ favor had benefitted Professor Burns. Alicia and her children wore new clothing, tight fitting brown leather, helmets, goggles, and warm jackets. On their backs, their jackets each held an intricate etched image of The Sheridan.

The ship itself glowed in the dim setting sun, humming with its upgraded engine, touched by the goddess of clockwork and ingenuity herself. From the hull hung a small circular metal orb with portholes and propellers, tubes and mechanims.

“What is this, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea?” Daniel whispered to Kate.

She shrugged. “It’s for everyone else. I think you, me and Gamma would be fine without.”

“How fast do you think she can get us there?”

Kate glanced at the emerging face of Fabrique, her copper curls tamed somewhat by her goggles, only to explode from under her ears. She came up from down below and proudly reported to Alicia that the ship was ready to go.

“That’s her call,” Kate said, pointing. “I imagine we’ll probably be the fastest ship around. What’s the rush again?”

“We need to help Barris out. He’s in big trouble. Burns said he could wean him with ideas to get him off the junk, but if he goes into serious withdrawal, the only thing we can do is essentially wipe his mind of the ability to hold any thought in his head.”

KAte’s jaw hung open. “Are you seirous> Won’t that kill him?”

Daniel shook his head. “No, he’ll still be a sun god, and supposedly still be able to keep the sun in the sky, but not much of a conversationalist. Ever.”
“Well that’s just great. I guess we shoudl get the hell out of here.”

They watched Alicia’s kids bustle about the ship, checking things. Connie waved to the controller at the tower dock and he waved back, allowing them to cast off. The ship lurched once as the souped-up engines started, and then they were off.

The airship gradually gained speed, but Kate soon realized that was for safety. If it needed to, this zeppelin could turn faster than any ship of its kind, possibly defying the laws of physics. Good to know.

Alicia had the wheel and piloted according to Gamma’s coordinates, sending commands to her children, namely James, who manned the engine controls and Connie, who held the chicken gun, a bazooka-like weapon that shot frozen chickens at air whales to distract them from damaging the ship. The younger kids were below deck.

Fabrique came to stand beside them. “I upgraded it as much as I dare. The pilot being mortal, and mortals aboard, I couldn’t make it any faster without putting them at risk.”

Kate pulled a windswept strand of hair out of her face and grinned. “I’m guessing your own airship is going to be something legendary.”

“Without a doubt,” the goddess said. Fabrique stuffed her hair into a helmet and fixed her goggles on again. She fixed her eyes on the horizon, the shimmering sea that approached quickly.

“I checked the submersible too,” she said. “It will easily take six. Seven if we have to.”

Kate counted on her fingers. “So that’s me, you two, Gamma, need to leave room for Ishmael and Barris, and Burns. Alicia and crew will stay on the airship.”

“What about Prosper?” Daniel said, pointing at the miserable harvest god who sat against the back railing of the ship beside a heavy pot full of soil and a foul-smelling moss.

“Shit. I forgot about him. Well, we’ll need someone divine to protect the ship, I guess. We need Gamma with us.”

Daniel raised an eyebrow. “You really think he will do that?”

Kate frowned. “You’re right.” She gestured to Gamma, who stood with her arms clasped behind her back, facing the wind. “Gamma will need to think of something.”

The caught the warrior goddess’ attention and told her the problem. She nodded somberly. “I will tune myself to Alicia’s boot knife. If they have any problems, she can tell me and I will know and be here immediately.”

“I guess that will work. Good idea,” Kate said.

“Anyone else feel like we’re walking into a snake pit?” Daniel asked.

“Asps. Very dangerous,” Kate said, and snickered. “Yeah, but what can we do?”

Daniel looked back at the pouting harvest god. “You know Kate, only we would make a world where all the gods were imprisoned. We have to save this world before we can save our first one.”

She nodded. “We don’t have a choice though. We need them.” She and Gamma then went to talk to Alicia to inform her of the plans as The Sheridan entered the airspace over the ocean, heading toward Leviathan City.[/private]

[private]
Kate opened her eyes, awake immediately at the sound of screaming.

Daniel grunted under her. “What is that?”

“Prosper,” she said, sliding out of the huge bed the priestesses had provided them in her temple and pulling on her robe.

“He sounds like a bear,” Daniel said, sitting up.

“More like a very angry tree,” she said, cinching her belt. She tossed him a fresh robe and filled him in on the more gruesome details of Prosper’s existence.

“Dude. That’s harsh,” he said, shuddering.

“I know. And I don’t know if he is naturally like that or just has been like that because of what these people have done to him over the years. He wasn’t really up for a discussion on the subject.”

“What are his people like? Pious like yours? Rebellious like mine?”

Kate thought about the people who ran Prosper’s temple. “They’re farmers. They didn’t say much, and they’re not surprised by much. They just kinda took him in and nodded to me. They said they knew how to take care of him.”

“Well it was farmers who caught him to begin with, right?”

Kate groaned. “Farmers and tinkers, yeah. Shit. Let’s go.”

The scream resonated through the temple again, causing the walls to shudder. Kate and Daniel burst from the room to find her priestesses gathered together, whispering, their eyes wide.

“Anyone know what Prosper’s going on about?” Kate asked. They shook their heads quickly. She sighed. Her backpack lay on a chair next to her bedroom; she rummaged through till she found a dagger with a white hilt. “Gamma, I need you.”

The thin muscled warrior goddess appeared in front of her, bowing.

“Gamma, Daniel and I are going to go to see Prosper now. I need you to find Barris and Fabrique. Get one of the priestesses to make sure that the Sheridan, the airship we arrived in, is ready to go today. Alicia is the captain. And, uh,” she looked at the slightly rocking urn in the corner, then at Daniel. “Have I forgotten anything?”

He sighed. “Have that loaded on the ship. If the guy inside manages to break out, kill him.”

Gamma smiled, her teeth glittering. “My pleasure, Daniel.”

Kate and Daniel headed for the door and to the stairs that wound around the temple exterior. “You sure that’s the best plan?”

“I’d rather have him nearby than out of sight. And if we’re going to put all the gods on one airship, wouldn’t we want him near the people who can handle him or not?”

“Point,” Kate said, squinting at the sunrise. She’d been to LA once and saw the sun rise through smog, beautiful and smudged, and decided this morning was reminiscent of that. “Does the sunrise look weird to you today?”

“Huh. Do we have smog here now?”

“That’s what I thought,” she said. “I hope this doesn’t mean-” Kate’s thought was interrupted by a tall, top-hatted man on the stairs below them.

“My Lord, my Lady!” he bowed in front of them, mustache twitching. “I have a matter to discuss with you, of some great importance.”

“Well, it’s not the best time,” Kate began.

“Oh but it is very important,” he repeated.

“Hey, you’re that Professor Burns guy, aren’t you?” Daniel asked. “The Idea Emporium.”

Professor Burns smiled and bowed again. “I am honored to be remembered, sir.”

“Oh, right!” Kate said. “What’s wrong, professor?”

Burns grimaced. “It’s about the sun god, Barris. I fear he is in real trouble.”

#

Kate paced around the high priestess’ office, arms crossed. Daniel still stood behind the desk, his eye wide.

“Wait, wait. Barris is a junkie?”

Professor Burns sat in a chair facing the desk, his top hat in his lap. “Ideas can be addictive, especially if you don’t use them.”

“And Barris doesn’t do a goddamn thing,” Daniel said, rubbing his chin.

“I have only a few clients who have problems with this, and I do not usually interfere, but I realized this client’s addiction could harm others.”

“Yeah, like everyone else in the world. And the world,” Kate said. “Goddamn, Barris, can you fuck up any more? Really?”

Gamma stepped through the open door. “Apparently he can,” she said through clenched teeth.

#

“I looked in all the usual places I see him. On the temple roof, in Lathe, on the airship deck. I couldn’t find him anywhere. I attuned myself to every weapon I could touch, then, and found a place I’ve never visited. Leviathan City.”

Kate stopped her pacing. “How in the hell did he get there?”

“I don’t know. I saw him imprisoned by seven guards. He looks, well, weaker than usual.”

Kate felt her grip on reality slipping. “So he’s a junkie and he’s imprisoned under the ocean by a race of people who pretty much hate any god who’s not Ishmael or the moon. Anything else? Did he knock up a nobleman’s daughter while he was at it?”

“Not that I know of,” Gamma replied.

“There’s one more thing,” Professor Burns said.

Kate groaned.

“At his level of addiction, there’s going to be a nasty withdrawal coming soon,” Professor Burns said.

Prosper howled again, and the walls shook. Kate held her head in her hands. Wasn’t there something else to worry about? Like all of Heaven and Hell under seige? A big scary entity that killed her?

But she needed these gods on her side.

“Gamma. Get Fabrique and get The Sheridan ready. Daniel, go with Professor Burns back to his Emporium and try to figure out how to deal with this addiction and withdrawal and stuff. See if they have a clean needle program or something. And everyone-” she included Burns with a look, “Meet on The Sheridan by noon.”

Daniel smiled slightly. “What will you be doing?”

She sighed and stood up, smoothing her robes. “I have to deal with Prosper. He’s coming too.”

<<<<>>>>
[/private]

Kate and Daniel have a not-fun trek through the improbability storm, Kate finds a lost god. Stockholm Syndrome, anyone? (Bonus geek points to whoever can tell me who this episode is in homage to.)

Click for the full-size image (pretty darn huge).

The complete intro, the whole tragic story up to now, is done by the talented James Melzer, author of The Zombie Chronicles: Escape.

Thanks for your support in making this a thrilling series to develop!

[private]
Episode 9 (pt 2)

Morrigan did not know who he was, but her instinct had taken her to the ocean, one of the places where she felt her power most purely, as the water did her bidding. A creature of fire would not be happy in the water, she reasoned, and once she had shoved him under all of the fight had gone out of him.

But as she stood on the beach, water sloshing around her robe hem, she felt a great weakness strike her. She looked up at the moon for her validation, and the light began to fade.

That would be why she felt great strength even as the man had grown hotter and hotter in her grasp. She swore and tossed her mask aside, gripping the burned skin as she held her head, trying to will the dizziness away.

Why had the sun been so abysmally stupid to fly over the water? Now with his power dying, he would doom not only himself, but he would rob her of the power they shared, and the world itself would freeze.

Morrigan straightened, determined. She didn’t much care for the sun god, but for her to continue existing, he had to continue existing. She set her teeth and concentrated.

The moon in the sky regained some of its luster, showing a waxing moon close to full. The water began to churn violently as she forced the tides to conform to her will. She had to do more than get him to the surface; he needed attending.

Leviathan City was nearby, and their submerisbles patrolled the waterways. She had seen them frequently when hanging above he ocean, or when seen through the eyes of albino, deep-swimming fish. The riptide Morrigan created caught one of the submersibles and dragged it to the floating body of the drowning sun god. She could feel the engines fighting as they tried to correct their course in the water, but she was too strong for them. She lifted the heavy submersible despite its efforts to stay deep, and presented the god to them.

The hatch opened and two pale faces peeked out, shouting in alarm. One woman with glittering hair and a bald man leapt out of the hatch and ran down the length of the sub to catch Barris’ outstretched arms. They pulled the unmoving god into their sub, and Morrigan relaxed at last.

As for the goddess, she collapsed on the beach, utterly spent.

[COTTON DOESN”T STEAL THE MOON UNTIL REDACTED]

#

The sub did not dive yet, though. The two pale faces appeared again after dragging Barris to the ship’s medic. They looked at each other and then at the glowing body.

“She would want us to take that one too,” the man said.

“You reckon they’re two of the same kind?” the woman asked.

“He’s got wings. She’s glowing and has a mask and a weapon. I know the heretics in the open air have their odd ways, but I hadn’t heard they were like this. And one of them altered the tides, you can’t tell me that was normal, Portia.”

Portia nodded slowly. “One problem, though. She’s on land.”

The man blanched, as much as his pale skin was able. “She… doesn’t need to know. She’d want us to break the rules to get this one too.”

Portia laughed, a short barking sound. “Tim! Are you insane? You’re willing to risk exile to test that?”

Tim’s eyes narrowed. “You’d report?”

Portia held up her hands. “Of course not, not me. But you know I can’t stop anyone else from coming up and peeking out. And we’d have to lie about how we got her, keeping our stories straight.” She turned from him back to the white beach that shimmered in the moonlight. She shuddered. “I wouldn’t risk having to live here in the open for whatever that one will get us in glory.”

Tim pursed his lips and stared at the inert form. “I’m going for it. You can lick Ishmael’s balls, I’m doing this.”

“No, wait, it’s too dangerous!” Portia said, grabbing for his arm. But they were both still damp from rescuing the winged man, and her hand slipped off and he scrambled out of the hatch and ran along the length of the sub before he dove in.

“The fool!” she whispered. She didn’t want to see Tim commit heresy by putting his feet on dry land, so she climbed back down the hatch to check on the winged man.

The medic was a young man with skin so pale it was almost translucent; his dark hair and eyes contrasted strongly. His out of water beauty often made Portia’s breath catch in her throat. She composed herself by reminding herself of the rules against fraternizing with the crew.

The cot in the infirmary was soaked, water seemingly to pour out of the man as the doctor put pressure on his lungs and forced air into him to try to force the water out. But the water that came from him streamed from his pores, his ears, his nose, as well as his mouth.

“Ishmel’s foreskin, but this godfucker is a like a sponge,” Doctor Isaac muttered as he compressed the man’s chest. Water dripped off the cot and pooled on the floor. Portia smiled at the foul words coming from the doctor’s mouth – it was always a thrilling shock to hear such language coming from a beautiful man – and knocked on the door jamb.

Doctor Isaac looked up. “I don’t know what you’ve got here, but it’s not human.”

Portia nodded. “Yeah, we got that much. Will he live?”

Doctor Isaac paused to pinch the man’s nose and blow into his mouth. More water streamed from his skin, nose and ears. The doctor resumed pumping on his chest. “I have no fucking clue. He’s like a sponge, which is not physiology I’m familiar with. But I do know if he doesn’t start breathing in a moment, he’s not going to plant his seed in any winged women.”

The man stiffened for a moment, then vomited a gout of water. Ignoring the mess, Isaac reached out and turned his head so he couldn’t choke further, but pulled his hands back quickly, shaking them.

“The water is hot!” He stood back from the man, who had now begun to steam as he coughed up more water. Sweat immediately started to pop out on Portia’s forehead as she backed out of the room, watching over the shorter doctor’s head. Isaac just stood there, staring at the man, who had rolled over to better express the water from him.

The man finally opened his glowing eyes and flexed his wings, finding that they filled the room when he tried to expand them. He looked at them both and then slipped into unconsciousness.

The heat subsided. Doctor Isaac glanced at Portia and then said, “I think we need to let the captain know. And I think we need to get back home rather quickly. The Queen needs to know about this.”

Portia grimaced. “The problem is, the captain is currently trying to secure another one of these creatures.”

#

Captain Tim’s confidence was waning as he swam toward the shore. While touching the sand under the ocean was not forbidden, getting out into the open air fully was. The other creature lay with the tide lapping at her.

The open air world was so large! He looked around, grateful for the darkness to hide how much open space was around him. The ocean was so much bigger up here, and the sky was a nightmare of exposure. The moon, while the source of the tides and a minor deity to his people, was still a naked glaring orb. And the stars pinpricks of fear, millions of eyes staring at him.

For their own safety and sanity, his people – even the submarine captains – were not permitted to surface during the day. The Queen said they could not comprehend the vastness, but Tim had always wondered. If they exiled people, did they throw them from their home and sentence them to madness? Or did the people learn to deal with all this space, this wind? Portia would say people could deal with it, that they could deal with anything. He had chosen his first mate for her pragmatic common sense, which usually tethered his more radical ideas. She hadn’t stopped him this time, though. But he was sure he’d be all right.

He knew he was splitting hairs, but Tim reasoned that if he stayed with his feet wet the whole time, he would be safe from The Queen’s wrath. Facing exile was one thing, but presenting Her with this creature could be worth the risk.

The tide was going out; Tim’s time was limited. He felt a wave push against his knees and took his chance. He lumbered through the surf, the open air giving a sense of loss and agoraphobia. Gasping and trying to focus only on the figure in front of him, and not the itching feeling between his shoulder blades that anything could come up behind him, he stood ankle-deep in water beside the body.

The shape beneath the rough robe implied female, but he could tell nothing more. The mask was soot-stained and looked ot be made from bone. Curiosity shackled him for a moment, and instead of taking the body and dragging it into the ocean, he reached for the mask.

His fingers had time only to brush the mask before a bony hand shot up and trapped his wrist. He gasped and stepped backward, but she kept him in her grip. She sat up, seemingly not noticing her prey. He heard a muffled voice from behind the mask.

“So he lives. And is returning to power. That’s something.” The mask then turned to face him. It lacked any facial adornments, not even eye holes, but Tim could feel her eyes on him.

“Leviathan City citizen on land?” she asked. “How brave. What other brave things did you have planned, little brave man?”

“I- I- I-” Tim struggled as he stammered, but her grip remained unchanged.

She chuckled. “You wanted two prizes. But I think your people will have enough to deal with when Barris returns full strength.”

His own predicament forgotten momentarily, Tim looked back toward his sub, floating silently off the shore. “B-Barris? That was Barris?”

“Yes. Your people just saved the life of the sun Himself. And if I am right, you’re going to be in a world of trouble.”

“Why?”

“Well. Your people will be. Not you. You’re coming with me.” She rose to her feet and picked up her weapon.

The strike was serpent-swift, and didn’t hurt at all. She must have missed. Tim’s hand finally slipped from the deathly grip of the monster in front of him, and he tried to stumble back into the surf to return to his sub, and then home, but his feet no longer stood in the water. He had no feet.

Tim’s spirit was quickly losing his corporeal form, and he flailed in panic, watching the wisp of his being dissolve.

The woman’s mask was cocked to the side, watching. Tim’s last thought was to warn Leviathan City about the new monster in the open air, but his spirit blew away with a wisp of wind.

#

Morrigan looked with interest at her weapon. It was no longer as wicked as it had been, getting fatter as the moon waxed, but it had done its job of removing the man’s soul from his body. What she hadn’t expected was the shredding of the soul. The man had simply blown away with the night air, unlike her companions in the Underworld who managed to retain a bit of human form.

With one more glance at the submarine, and her enemy that she had to keep alive, she swung her weapon and split the air. The open, cracking wound beckoned her, and she returned home.

The boy, James, was back on her mind.
[/private]

[private]
Episode 9 (pt 1)

The lethargy, the drug, the weakness, the self loathing, the gnawing addiction, they all sloughed off Barris as he launched himself into the sky, the power from the sun returning to him in a rush that felt as if he’d been punched with something glorious.

He reflected that his earlier vow to lay off the ideas had apparently amounted to nothing, as he was still covered in refuse from the rubbish bin. He grimaced and concentrated briefly, his skin heating to hundreds of degrees to burn off the foulness.

Ash floated from his skin as he climbed higher, aiming for the underside of Meridian, dancing between the massive cables that anchored it to the ground that refused to let it rest upon it. Clouds always coalesced on the underside of the city, the moisture drawn to the mass of the buildings. Tendrils of cloud whirled around as he broke through them, his heat evaporating the water droplets immediately.

Barris paused underneath a tower on the outskirts of the city. He was tuned to all of the divine powers of the city: the founts of power that were Kate and Daniel, Fabrique and Prosper, both formerly imprisoned in Lathe, and Gamma, who had been imprisoned in the tower right below him for aeons. But now there was a new presence, and he tried to remember what he had seen when his power had been stored in the sun.

There. Right above him. The power radiated strongly female, intense hatred, and seemed to, unlike the other gods in the world, to represent two things instead of one. Very curious.

Barris left the underside of Meridian and climbed higher, eager to meet this new goddess, to see if she was like him, unknown to the others, recently freed, and in love with her own power.

The nighttime lights of Meridian caught a flash of white, and Barris persued. She was in the shape of a bird, a large white crow. Persi was the only other goddess he knew of who could fly, and she always did so in dinosaur form. Kate didn’t shapechange. Gamma traveled via weapons, and Fabrique would sooner build a flying machine. Who was this woman?

She left the lights of Meridian and flew south, with Barris behind her. He quickly caught up with her, but she closed her wings and dropped, missile-like, and pulled up a hundred feet below him. He nearly pulled up in surprise, but grinned and followed.

She turned on a wing and headed west toward the ocean, climbing as she went. He put on a burst of speed and caught up with her.
He was faster than her, and she knew it, relying on quick changes of direction and altitude to evade him. He relished the game, his burning fingers nearly closing on sooty tail feathers more than once.

The crow glanced at him once, clearly irritated, and dove again, skimming the marshlands closer to the ocean. Barris had no problem following, and gouts of steam rose from the swamps as he neared the water.

At this point he didn’t want to catch her; the chase was too much fun. He let her gain a bit of a lead, climbing again and heading southwest. He stayed under her, admiring her strength and speed. He just wanted to talk to her, why did she run away?

The ocean glittered under the TK MOON as they neared, and Barris put on some speed to end up right under her. He shot upward, then, with the intention to catch her by surprise and grab her, make her talk to him.

His fingers closed around feathers, but feathers nearly as big as his hand. He plowed into the soft feathery breast of the crow, and her now-massive wings closed around him suddenly, trapping him.

He struggled against the prison, but feathers were everywhere and he couldn’t move. He tried to increase his skin’s temperature, to burn the crow, but she grabbed his leg with her talons and sank in deep. The hotter he got, the tighter she held him.

In his panic, he didn’t realize if she held him in her wings and talons, she was no longer flying, and they hit the ocean with a massive splash and hissing steam. The crow flailed in the water, her talons dragging him under.

The dull, stifling feeling was nothing like he’d felt before, even during the day when his power had to go into the sun. His fire went out, the water clogged his pores, his eyes, his ears, his nose. He opened his mouth to scream and the water rushed in. Cold water seeped into his very bones, and he became only dimly aware that the crow had let him go, and was gone.

His waterlogged wings beat once under the waves, and then were stilled.
[/private]

[private]
Episode 8

The kids in Meridian assumed that James was the luckiest kid around. He had lived a life of excitement, true. He had been placed as a hand on his mother’s airship when her crew had either died with his father in a pirate attack, or died when they had escaped the firey fall of Dauphin.

The escape from Dauphin had been very exciting, true. Terrifying, as well. What the other kids didn’t know was that when they had fled in his mother’s signature airship, The Sheridan, two gods had stowed away aboard, taking control of the ship and ordering his mother, Alicia, to take them to Meridian, where his father had died.

James had had further adventure when he was appointed guide to the god Daniel when he visited Lathe for the first time and had to save him from the enraged goddess Fabrique. And then, as if that wasn’t enough, he accompanied the gods into the Dark to fight air pirates.

And he was only ten.

James was lucky to call the god Daniel a friend. He was lucky to have the god’s blessing on him as a reward for saving him. And he was lucky to be an able crewman to his mother’s airship.

But the times when he missed his father, he didn’t feel so lucky. And the times when he missed his home in Dauphin, and his friends.

And the times when his stupid big sister, Connie, tried to pull rank on him.

Connie had done so this night. He had wanted to go into Meridian; he’d been so bored staying on The Sheridan, waiting for the gods to need transport somewhere. But Connie said that they needed an able crew member to be alert at all times, and tonight was his night. She got to go into the city with their mother to check on, oh he didn’t know. Or care. Supplies. Find out what the gods were up to. What did it matter?

The Sheridan docked at a tower in Meridian close to the central temple, but still had to be on the outskirts of the floating city. If he looked over one side, he could look into the city. The city glittered in the twilight as people began turning their lights on. The gondolas and lifts ferried people home to their gleaming tower apartments, or took them to restaurants and theaters. They went about their lives, living in the sky, with no idea what was going on around them, without realizing the gods were among them.

James didn’t like looking over the city. He preferred to turn his back to it and stare over the barren land below, into the hills and the Dark. He hoped if he looked far enough into the dark, he would see where the moon had run off to and he could find her and convince her to come back.

Being able to watch the skies had been his favorite part about flying. He had spent his allowance on books about the heavens, learning about the constellations of Fenrir, the Diving Mother, the Big Rock Candy Mountain, and Kate’s Heart. He had been amazed to meet Barris, the sun god, and was disappointed to say the least.

He still hoped that they would meet Cotton, the moon goddess, and wondered why the moon had been gone these many days. The ground had rumbled when it had left, something he’d heard instead of felt, as he’d been in the air when it happened. The hint of ocean he could see to the west did not gleam as it once did, as the tides had ceased. He wondered how the animals were faring.
The moon had been his favorite, and he missed her terribly. She had waxed and waned like him – crushing blows and huge excitements, being treated like a kid and being given airship crewman responsibilities, getting to meet the gods who created you and then learning they had as many flaws – maybe more – than you did.

James sighed, longing for the moon, and stared into the Dark as night fell. A large, soot-smudged bird landed on the railing a couple of feet from him. It looked like a crow, only it was white. He frowned at it.

“Hi,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

The crow opened its wicked beak and cawed once, loudly. James winced at the sound.

“You wont find any food here. My sister would kill me if she found me feeding the chicken gun ammo to a crow. Go away.” He waved his hand half-heartedly at the bird.

The bird didn’t spook, but just hopped about six inches toward him on the railing and cawed again.

James squinted at it. The bird cocked its head and ruffled its feathers. It fixed its eye on him, and he was astonished to see it wasn’t beady and black, but white and luminous. Its eyes actually glowed in the shadows.

“What…?” asked James, still staring at the eye and relaxing against the airship railing.

The bird took another hop closer.

#

The boy was gorgeous. Morrigan had not had much experience with men – she knew the sun was male, and had longed to meet him, as she was the sole person who could see his true form at night, and reflect that beauty back onto the world. But she had never met him.

The lost souls in the underworld had flavors of male or female, but none had become a companion, a friend, or lover. The loneliness of captivity had been stifling to the goddess, but now that she had her freedom, the barriers raised by her disfigurement were maddening.

This boy, however, looked at her with curiosity. Interest. His eyes were a warm brown, bright and intelligent. His face was round, innocent, and complimented by a beautiful mouth. His skin was a dark brown that you commonly found in Dauphin, not Meridian, and she wondered where he had come from. Why he lived on an airship, and why he seemed to hold himself with more confidence than other boys she’d seen.

This boy would understand her. This boy would listen. He would curl up in her lap during the day, and be her servant and right hand man at night. When he became a man, he would be her lover.

But first, to join her in her new home, he would have to die.

Morrigan let him watch her, captivated, for a moment more, and then she took flight, spiraling up and up, ignoring his pleas for her to return.

#

As the sun dipped low, the rare rays touching the glass and metal buildings of Lathe, a voice groaned from behind inside a rubbish bin tethered to the rear of a grocer.

Sewer and trash issues were not discussed in Meridian and Lathe. Meridian residents paid a great amount of taxes that went toward the creation of machines to transport or transform their trash, and a year of tax revenue had gone toward the huge water cleansing building, where all waste water from the city ran through for purification. The waste collected was also transformed by some of the better tinkers. The upper class snobs of Meridian joked that the waste was transformed into bricks that Lathe residents used to build, but no one really knew.

Barris knew, but he wasn’t going to tell anyone. Secrets were all he had.

Well, secrets and a massive idea hangover.

He was planning on using one idea to take the edge off, and save the rest in case Daniel and Kate wanted to drag him off on another ridiculous rescue.

Unfortunately the second bad idea was, “To fully experience something it is best to consume all you can at once.” That one blew his mind to the extent that he stumbled for the nearest place to hide to consume the other three ideas, and was out for the day. Now, with the great fireball that was the focus of all his power ebbing, he stood shakily in the bin, rotten vegetables dropping off him. He clutched his head, too full of ideas to comprehend any of them, and wondered what day it was.

The sun slipped below the horizon at that moment, and Barris transformed.

[BARRIS AND THE MOON FIGHT] [/private]

[private]
Episode 7

It was not a triumphant entrance, but it certainly stopped everyone in their tracks.

Kate, Barris, Fabrique, and Gamma were talking intently to the head priestess, discussing the details of landscape below to determine a good way to search for Daniel. Barris didn’t see him, but with the system of caves and Sam’s winery, that wasn’t a surprise.

“Look, I say we just go straight into the house,” Gamma said. She stood while the others were seated, bouncing from foot to foot. She made Kate tired.

“If he had somethihng to trap Daniel, who’s to say he can’t trap us?” Kate said. “The scientists down there create robes to squash our power, we might as well be mortal.”

Fabrique pulled at a copper curl. “But that wasn’t their goal, correct? The scientist created the robe to protect from the improbabilty storm. Did it do that?”

Kate shrugged. “For the most part.”

“This implies that the power that we have as gods, and the power of the improbability storms, are the same energy.”

Kate stared at her. “That’s… obvious. Why didn’t we see it before? Why didn’t you see it before? You are the one to work with the energy!”

The goddess stiffened. “When you’re imprisoned for years and years, your mind turns to how to use energy to release yourself, not from where it comes.”

“Well OK, if it’s the same divine energy that we have, what god generates it?”

They were silent.

Kate slammed her hands on the table. “Well that’s just great.”

“Can we focus on the task at hand?” Gamma asked. “Trading one god for another wasn’t the deal. And why didn’t you take us?”
Kate sighed. “I told you. We were trying to figure out who in the hell that flying fire guy was. No one around here has seen him before. Got caught in the improbability storm, then got the lead on Prosper.” She ran a hand through her tangled hair. She really wanted a bath and a nap. “How is he, anyway?” she asked the presitess.

“His priests are looking after him. They were… nonplussed to receive him.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

The woman didn’t look at Kate. “He is unwell. He is weeping, asking to be returned to captivity, and apparently in great pain. The high priest, Ramboz, is feeding him wine to placate him.”

“Great,” she muttered. “Now he’ll be drunk AND whiny.”

“I could stand a drink, but make it beer,” came a voice from the doorway.

Daniel stood there, covered in blood and a sticky green substance. He leaned against the doorway of the temple, holding a large urn in his arms.

Kate threw herself at him immediately. He dropped the urn to receive her, and staggered backward. “Are you OK? We were just tryring to figure out how to rescue you? What happened?” she said into his ear.

He hugged her back tightly and then gently pushed her back. The urn had fallen over and was making muffled complaining noises.
“I’ll tell you everything in a bit. For now I need to sit down. It was kind of hard to get him here.”

Kate looked closer at the jug, about half her height. Massive, white clay, with vineyards depicted twinning around it, it was sealed tightly. She smiled. “He’s in there? Like Ares?”

Daniel gave a tired smile. “I learned from the best.”

#

Kate took his hand in hers, studying the wrist closely. “Are you serious? You chewed it off? There’s not even a scar!”

Daniel shrugged. “I know. I have no idea what happened. I didn’t even expect to get it back.”

She released his hand and looked at him. “But dude, why did you just wait on us? You had to know I was going to come back for you!”
They sat alone in the preistess’ office, Kate demanding to get the story from him first. Daniel’s eyes were hollow and he slumped in his chair, but he seemed fine physically. He stared at her.

“I- I don’t know. I guess it was pretty extreme, huh?”

“Daniel. You chewed your own fucking hand off.”

“I guess I didn’t know where you were. I didn’t know if he had you too. And I was stuck in coyote form. My thinking got a little wild there for a bit.” He paused and stared at the wall, unfocused. “Or maybe I was given a test.”

He told her about the disconnect during the storm, when he was on trial in front of the other trickster gods.

“You think they orchestrated this?” Kate asked.

He shook his head slowly. “I wouldn’t say exactly that. I just mean that they were watching. And what god sits around and waits for people to rescue him?”

“What god chews his own hand off to get out of a cage?” she replied.

“I do,” he said.

She stared at him, then blinked once. “I guess you do.”

“So what happened with Prosper? Did you find him?”

Kate smacked herself in the forehead. “Crap, I totally forgot. Yeah, I got him. He’s not really in good shape. The whole orchard was growing out of him. He tried to kill me, and he might have done so if I hadn’t taken off that coat. But I got him back here. He’s in his temple now, and drunk, as far as I know.”

“Yeah, we need to talk about those coats,” Daniel said. The coats and the cage Sam had me in and the vat Fabrique put me in. What the hell is that?”

Kate sighed and twisted her robe her in her hands. “We determined it’s got to be another divine foce. That’s the only way we could explain it.”

“But who?” Daniel asked. “I thought we knew all the gods here.”

“Clearly we don’t,” Kate said. “There’s that flaming guy from last night, we have no idea about him. And then there’s whatever this chaos energy stuff is. People learned to harness it and now they can trap gods.”

Daniel stood up. “We need to bring the others in on this.”

“I gave them some time off. Barris wanted to visit Lathe and Fabrique went with him. I think we’ve earned some rest. Why don’t you get some rest?”

He smoothed the hair away from her face. “Just do me one favor?”

“Anything.”

He bit his lip momentarily. “Stay with me?”

She kissed him. “Of course.”

#

Improbability storms were once described in Meridian as cries of joy from lovemaking gods. In Lathe they were more crudely described as godfucking. Regardless, Kate and Daniel did not force an improbability storm as their innocent, exhausted cuddling led to stroking, fumbling, undressing, pinching, giggling, biting, sweaty, loud activities. They had wrestled, each wanting the on top position, and Daniel won, trapping her roughly beneath him, losing himself in passion that bordered on animalistic.

Kate moaned beneath him, his rough handling driving her to match his passion. She stopped trying to force him off her to get the upper hand and accepted the frantic pleasure he offered her.

After their first time, they lay together, whispering things to each other, dozing, and wrapped around each other. Kate roused Daniel from light sleep, insisting to him with little nips that she wasn’t quite done. The second time was slower, more tender, and took much more time.

When they were done, the ground did not shake, but the temple swayed in the sky as if pushed by a very hard wind.

Kate pillowed her head on his shoulder. “I see what you mean,” she said, panting.

He stroked her hair. “What do you mean?”

“The animal. Coyote. That was different. And amazing.”

“I haven’t felt like that before. It was… primal. I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

“Oh hell no,” she said, wrapping her naked legs around his. “You can do that any time.”

“Good,” he said. Her eyes closed, but his remained open, staring at the ceiling and wondering.

[MAKE REDACTED]

#

“I don’t know why you wanted to come with me,” said Fabrique. “What does Lathe hold for you?”

“Oh, I don’t get to see it very often,” said Barris, looking around the main street of the city beneath Meridian. “It’s in Meridian’s shadow most of the day. I like to visit…” Something caught his eye and he trailed off.

Fabrique raised an eyebrow. “All right. I need to get some things from my house, do you want to come in?”

“I think I’ll do some shopping,” he said, starting forward without looking at her.

“There goes the source of all life,” the clockwork goddess said softly. “Help us all.”

She went back into her house, what was until recently, her prison. She had only supplies to help during an airship battle with her, gathered swiftly upon their last exit from the house. Now she looked around and tried to figure out what she would need for air or water travel.

Airtanks, mechanical wings, jetpacks, swimming fins, laser weaponry that worked underwater… there was just too much. Even her modified bag could only hold so much.

She smiled slowly to herself. How had she not thought of this before? She gathered her tools, a disused chaos battery, and a sketchpad. She left everything else in her house and then went back outside, sat in the street, and began to sketch.
[CREATING A DOOR BETWEEN HOME AND WHEREVER SHE IS]

#

Professor Burns’ Idea Emporium was changed since Barris had last seen it, but that was not a new thing. Every time he went into the store to buy a little box that contained an idea, he paid the proprietor in blessings. So every time he came back, Burns was a little richer, a little healthier, a little younger, and his shop was a little nicer.

Now it occupied a swaying two story building made out of dark green glass. The pegs that tethered it to the ground – as the ground rejected anything built upon it – looked recently hammered in, so the building was new.

Professor Burns’ weathered face lit up as Barris walked through the Idea Emporium’s front door. “Ah! Your excellencey! Welcome back! It’s always an honor to see you!”

Barris’ lip trembled and a sheen of sweat glazed his forehead. He stared at Professor Burns with wide eyes and said, “I may be going on a trip soon. I need to stock up.”

The Professor inclined his head, nearly bird-like. “Understood, sir. Should you be in need of a weapon or military idea? Or perhaps …” he trailed off as if he knew what Barris needed.

Barris took another step forward, putting his shaking hands on the counter. Burns frowned.

“I- I don’t care. Just give me some.”

“Your excellency, I am but a mortal, and-”

“I’ll take five. Give me three regular and two bad, or four bad and one regular. I don’t care.”

Burns choked and sputtered. “Five? Surely you don’t mean-”

The sun god’s eyes went wide. He shook his head; an irritating buzzing sound had begun to distract him. “F-five. Yes. I need five. IS that a problem? I can pay for it.”

Burns’ eyes flitted to the green windows, where the morning sunlight had dimmed even moreso than usual, being underneath the shadow of Meridian.

“No, of course not, excelency,” he said smoothly, unlocking the display case in front of him. The light ouside brightened a bit.

Barris shifted from foot to foot, wringing his hands, as Burns pointed with long fingers. “I might suggest a political idea, perhaps two war, and two bad?”

“Perfect, sure, whatever,” Barris said, willing his hands not to shake.

As Burns’ establishment and person had gotten fancier with the repeated blessings by the sun god, so had his ideas. Before they were contained within boxes, but now they consisted of carefully folded paper, cloth, or even metal. Most of the ideas were folded into the shape of something-dinosaurs were common-but he did keep the old favorite idea boxes around. Burns handed the god a piece of blue silk folded into the shape of a judge’s tunic, two tiny pterodactyls folded from hammered-thin sheets gold and silver, and two small wooden puzzle boxes.

Barris accepted them with shaking hands. He stashed the origami in pockets inside his robe, slipped one box into his breast pocket and turned away from Burns, hunching over the last one.

His fingers flew as they manipulated the puzzle box, the hidden catches and pressure panels no match for his eagerness and familiarity. Once open, he held it to his ear.

Developing trade relations with TK CITY would be a simple matter of visiting them and bearing gifts. They are eager to hear from the cities above the air.

As the idea wormed its way into Barris’s head, he let out a great gust of air he hadn’t realized he’d been holding in. As he pondered the implications around the idea, he straightened and smiled and Professor Burns, who watched him, frowning.

“Thank you so much, Professor Burns,” Barris said. “It’s always a pleasure.”

He turned and leapt lightly out of the front door, dropping the 2 feet down to the ground, and walked back toward Fabrique’s House of Mysteries, whistling.

#

Professor Burns pursed his lips and drummed his fingers on the now-locked glass case. He walked quickly across the room and closed the door behind the sun god, locking it and putting up a TEMPORARILY CLOSED: USE YOUR IMAGINATION FOR 5 MINUTES sign.

Barris’ blessings always came; Burns wasn’t concerned that the god wouldn’t pay. He had paid in odd ways – everything from the new building to the fact that he no longer woke up with his joints aching. But the most surprising result of the blessings was the upgrade to his Chaositron Idea Generator.

Burns prevously would feed in small boxes, and the idea generator would place a vacuum-sealed trapped idea into the box, only to be released when the box was open. It was a brilliant piece of machinery, and Chaositron had given the professor a promotion and a hefty bonus. These are what he thought of as the glory days of Meridian.

Everything crashed when Chaositron had gone bankrupt soon after it started the idea business. Unfortunately, the idea generator created one very bad idea out of every ten good ones. They had no way of knowing which were good and which were bad, and after a particularly tragic airship crash connected directly to a bad idea that Chaositron sold the airship pilot, the company folded. Professor Burns’ boss took “the quick trip to Lathe” (how people in Merdian refered to suicidal jumpers), leaving Burns penniless with nothing but a corrupt idea generator.

Luckily people in lathe are more open to machines that only sometimes work, and he was able to build a somewhat thriving idea business there. He became familiar enough with the machine to be able to identify the bad ideas, and sold them as novelties.
One thing he noticed as his business grew was that his customers seemed to be in two camps. Some of them came to honestly need the ideas. They would purchase what they needed, use them, and only come back when they were stuck again in whatever they were working on.

Then there were the addicts.

Some people used ideas just for the thrill of the potential of it, the possibility was limitless and made them feel powerful. One addict likened it to being poised at the zipline in Meridian, about to let gravity sweep them down the line to Lathe. But they never actually took the step to fulfill the potential. They just went back for more ideas.

Burns had not seen anyone as addicted as the weak-willed sun god. Cutting him off had been a bad idea- the god’s wild eyes had begun to burn with a fierce light. (BARRIS CANT AFFECT THE SUN IMMEDIATELY- EDIT THAT) If he could bless Burns so well, Burns was sure he could curse as easily.

Burns stood in front of his idea generator, upgraded by the divine blessing of the sun god to make more intricate ideas – even though it still produced bad ones. Burns rarely used the machine himself, he felt it was best to be the middle man. But this time he felt it was important.

The machine hummed to itself in the corner, small finger-like jointed rods whirred as they deftly folded another idea and dropped it into a basket.

Burns went and picked it up. Folded from a heavy linen cloth in the shape of a swan, the idea formed in his head as he shook it free of its shape.

Only the other gods can deal with one god’s problems. [SOMETHING ABOUT EIGHT MINUTES]

Professor Burns sighed and dropped the idea linen into the used pile to be recycled later. He hadn’t been to Meridian since leaving it in disgrace years earlier. He guessed it was time to go home again.

[MAKE THE EFFECTS ON THE SUN VISIBLE IN 8 MIN - DRIVES BURNS TO ACTION]
[/private]

[private]
#
I really am not looking forward to being human again.

Daniel lay on his right side, panting. His left paw lay beside him, gnawed clean off by his strong jaws. The bone had been the worst part, but he had broken it clearly, desire to be free stronger than the maelstrom of pain that engulfed his leg.

The animal had almost completely taken over, ignoring the pain to heave himself to three legs. He held the left leg high, blood still dripping. He took his paw in his jaws and flung it through the bars. It soared through them without touching and landed with a wet plot about six feet beyond the cage, slightly behind a wine vat. He lay down again, not minding the tacky blood on the floor of the cage that got in his thick coat. He could only hope now.

He was licking his wound when Sam finally came to visit him.

“One god is lost, one god is gained. I am not sure I made out good on that,” the big man said conversationally, not looking at Daniel. He checked on the vat closest to the door and adjusted a knob. “And I got the weak cripple. Do you know what we did with cripples in TK CITY?”

Daniel didn’t pay attention to him, just kept licking. The wound had stopped bleeding, and it was more of a comfort rather than cleaning.

“We tossed them out the airlock and watched them drown,” Sam continued, checking a figure on a clipboard. “You need strength to live under the sea, and the weak could have caused problems. It’s why my parents were exiled, see. I wanted three gods, and I’m stuck with the worst one. And you can’t even talk – by Ishmael’s lost foreskin, what happened here?”

He had finally looked in the cage and seen Daniel lying in a pool of his own blood, licking his stump. Daniel regarded him calmly, then went back to licking.

“You idiot!” Sam raged, bringing both hands down on the cage in a mighty thump. “I really did get the worst god. You don’t even know enough to realize that chewing off a leg doesn’t get you anything in a cage like this! You’re thinking a bear trap! Oh you fool!
Now my god is even more of a cripple! What am I going to do with you now?”

Daniel’s heart leaped. Weak? Worst? Stupid? Words that once would have hurt him now bolstered him. If Sam thought he was these things, he would underestimate Daniel. And that’s what Daniel wanted.

He opened his mouth and panted, giving a doggy smile with blood coating his muzzle.

Sam groaned and turned his back, holding his head in his hands. “I’ve lost Prosper, my vines are dead, what am I going to do?”

He stopped groaning and turned, his eyes narrowing as he regarded the cage. “You may be an idiot, but you’re still made of godstuff.”

Daniel forced himself to keep casually licking, but he didn’t like the new focus in Sam’s voice. “And there is godstuff all over the floor of that cage.”

Daniel looked down at the blood that still coated the wooden floor of the cage. He realized Sam was right. His paw, his blood, maybe even his piss were all divine, and would have power outside this divine-stultifying cage.

Sam ran from the room and returned with a wooden board. Blue wires ran around the board and connected to what looked like a battery case on one end, and the whole thing glowed. Daniel bared his teeth and backed into the corner of the cage.

“At least you know enough to stay away from this,” Sam said, opening the door to the cage and inserting the board in first. Daniel would have to push against the board to get out, now, and he obediently held back.

With his left hand, he held Daniel at bay with the board, and with his right he carefully mopped up Daniel’s blood with a rag. “Got a scientist, James Melzer, who will know what to do with this,” he said. “Powerful stuff, I’m sure.”

He pulled the rag and the board out of the cage, slamming the door quickly, and sat back on his heels. His eyes narrowed again.

“Wait a moment. If you gnawed your foot off, where did it end up? Did you swallow it?”

Crap, thought Daniel.

The big man dropped the board and stood, stashing the rag in his back pocket. He looked on the floor around the cage and then further into the room. Daniel held his breath as Sam went behind the barrel where he’d thrown the paw.

Sam got to his hands and knees and pulled out the rag. Daniel whined low in his throat. Sam did something with the rag and put it back in his pocket.

“Well, broken god, I will see what I can do with this. But I will find that paw before I’m done. At worst, it looks like I might be able to cut you up and sell the parts to a tinker. You’ve got to be as powerful as chaos energy.”

With that he slammed the door, and Daniel heard a key turn in the lock.

Now what?

“What” turned out to be a movement that caught his eye. A shadow danced on the wall beyond the wine vats, the dark sibling to a sunbeam peeking through the trees. It took a humanoid form and skipped around the wall, playing with light, hiding, teasing, having a grand time leaping in and out of shadows. It twisted and contorted, actually making a series of shadow puppets that had Daniel amused even as he was annoyed.

Yeah. That’s definitely part of me.

Daniel barked once, relieved, and wagged his tail. Let Sam think he was an idiot. His plan was working.

As the shadow cavorted, Daniel realized he had no control over it. It hadn’t been his idea for a piece of him to turn into a playful shadow; he hadn’t known what would happen.

Odin knew there was power in the loss of a body part, he reflected. This has got to work.

The shadow danced around the room until it got to the heavy wooden door. There it paused, then collapsed into a circle. It quivered for a moment as if gathering energy, then it burst from the wall and landed on the floor, a three-dimensional shadow, a dark imp that stood about six inches high.

Daniel limped to the door of his cage and stood expectantly. But the imp paid him no attention and instead pranced forward, still leaping and dancing, until it stood in front of the wine vat in the back corner of the room.

It paused briefly, then leaped up and slid udnerneath a seam as if it were a wide doorway. The vat shuddered on its stand and then rocked back and forth once. The faucet then flew off with incredible force and the green, bubbly wine spewed into the room.

The wine gushed toward Daniel’s cage, but had turned into a slow trickle by the time it lapped at the edge.

What is it doing?

The shadow imp had ridden the torrent out gleefully like a kid at a water park. It hit the floor, stood a bit carefully, then skipped to the next vat, and then the next, forcing each to belch out its contents onto the floor. The hundreds of gallons of wine were creating a green, bubbly lake on the floor that rose steadily, getting into Daniel’s cage at last and coating his paws in the wine.

The blood that still stained the wood floor mixed in with the wine, causing little black rivulets to swirl around Daniel’s paws. It spread out like a spiderweb, instead of dissipating in the wine, it seemed to get stronger. It stretched out to the bars of the cage where it wrapped around, sliding up and out of the wine. Like the shadow imp, it sank into the wood and Daniel heard the distinct BZZT of an electrical short.

The effect was instantaneous. Daniel could feel his divine power returning to him, the dampening power of the weird blue wires no longer holding him back. He walked through the bars as if they were made of smoke and shook himself. With a thought, he reclaimed his human form and staggered back as the pain of his bloody stump hit him. He stumbled back and fell into the wine.

The shadow that had been his severed paw was finishing draining the last of the Cmar wine. It staggered toward him, and through his red pain haze Daniel thought, the thing is drunk!

He stared at it dumbly as it leaned briefly against his knee. His ruined arm rested on his thigh. The imp waved feebly at him and then flowed into his arm.

The pain ended immediately, and daniel stared in wonder as his hand reformed, fingers flexing. After a moment, he couldn’t even see the scar where he’d gnawed.

“Goddamn,” he murmured, as the waves of pain were replaced by waves of drunkenness. “How much did my hand drink?”

With a bit of effort, as he was still treating his new hand gingerly, he managed to get to his feet just as the door flew open, shoving a wave of green wine toward Daniel, which rebounded quickly and rushed out to soak Sam’s boots.

The big man’s face had time to register shock and fury at the draining of his last supply of wine, and then the escaped god, before Daniel narrowed his eye and flexed his divine, drunken will once again.[/private]

This is a premium podcast until June 1. If you are not yet an Inside Story subscriber, then check out the benefits here, and you can register for the site and pay through Paypal all in the right hand sidebar. Handy, huh?

For Inside Story members, to subscribe to the podcast, you need to log into the site (at right). If you’ve paid me money for an Inside Story subscription, you are already in the system as a Member. After you log in, you will see “Your Profile and Custom RSS Feed”. Follow that link to the RSS feed that will work for you and ONLY you. It’s your very own! Yay!

Did I end it on a cliffhanger? You bet I did.

[private]Miss the earlier PDF?

War V .02[/private]

Remember, this is rough, unedited stuff.
—
[private]
Meridian shone in the early morning light, the buildings glinting and swaying in the light wind. It seemed to have survived the improbability storm much better than Daniel had. Daniel, who currently sat in a cage like an animal, trapped in his coyote form.

When Kate had left him, he went for Sam, heading in the direction from where the net had come. He had tried, briefly, to manipulate some matter around him, but he had been stifled by the cloak. Unlike Kate, he figured it out right away and dropped it, braving the storm’s dangers.

He slipped into coyote form, and immediately found himself somewhere else. He sat in a room full of coyotes, each representing a different trickster god. Hermes was a tail-wagging dark red coyote, Loki was closer to black, and watched him with no humor in his eyes. Daniel didn’t recognize all of the gods there, but he could taste their power as similar to his own. He sat on a dais in the middle of the room, and they surrounded him.

Am I on trial?

Daniel whipped his head around, looking for an exit to the room. Guys, I’d be glad to talk about this any other time than now, but it’s not really a good time. I’m kinda trying to stop a guy who’s hunting me. How’s next week? Guys?

The barks and howls that greeted him indicated that they were not on board with the next week plan.

Coyote, the original, paced in front of him, grinning. She opened her mouth to speak, but at that moment Daniel felt burning ropes surround him. The courtroom dissolved around him and he struggled under a blue net that surrounded him. He tried to shapechange but couldn’t, he tried to bite the ropes and was rewarded with a burnt tongue. Whatever blue substance the net was laced with that was able to incapacitate him was also draining his strength. He struggled and fell on his side, growling. He snarled at the man who approached him who grinned at him as the storm whirled around him.

It was only as he lost consciousness that he realized that the storm didn’t seem to be bugging Sam at all.

#

Trapped like a bad stray dog. I was even caught with a big net like on the cartoons. Sheesh.

Daniel paced his cage as well as he could, which consisted of two steps in either direction. It looked like simple wood, about twice as high and long as he was. Something he should easily be able to break out of, but thin blue wire glowed from where it had been pressed into the wood, and he eyed it warily. As he was unable to use his shapechange ability here, it was pretty clear that whatever current ran through that wire was the same as what made the net able to catch him.

Why is it so easy to catch a god in this place? Either we’re still really ineffective in the whole god department, or there’s some pretty fucking amazing power sources.

He’d thought only a god – Fabrique, goddess of clockwork, for instance- could create a device to trap a god. She had trapped him quite well when he had broken into her House of Mysteries. But apparently anyone good at tinkering could harness this stuff.

He sniffed at the wire and shook his head in disgust. It filled his canine nose with acrid, sharp, overwhelming smells. His mind filled with a sense of something very large distilled into something small and concentrated, a power with no rhyme or reason, a power like a storm, throwing tornadoes and lightning at one house and not another. But if you could harness and focus a storm’s power, you’d be pretty damn difficult to stop.

Daniel wondered offhand if there were weather gods here.

The room beyond his cage was rather large. He guessed, with the vats and barrels that surrounded him he was in the winery. Beyond the smell of the wire, which now dominated his senses, he could sense slightly an alcoholic odor. On the far wall up high was a tiny window. That, plus the cool, heavy, dank air made him think he was in a basement.

Course, I could be in full sunlight on a roof and I couldn’t get out of this cage. He amended the thought with the realization that his friends could find him if he were in full sunlight; down here no one could see him.

The urge to lie down and put his head on his paws and pout was a strong one. He couldn’t break out, contact his friends, or hell, even form human words to talk himself out of this situation. Some trickster god.

Oh shut the fuck up. He thought angrily. You’ve done the feeling-sorry-for-yourself thing. Got you nowhere. You are a god, for Christ’s sake. Screw Christ, actually. You’re a god for YOUR sake!

He remembered with a start the trickster gods that had distracted him sufficiently enough for Sam to get the net around him. Why had they done that? Had it actually been a trial? And how had they done that, if they were all back in Heaven?

Coyote had led him through the Wasteland to learn about his power, making it possible for him to bring Kate back to life after her sacrifice to defend Heaven. The trickster god clearly wasn’t trapped, or if she was, she wasn’t without power.

Like me.

He thought of what he had at his disposal. He paced the perimeter of the cage, sniffing at the floor, the bars, the joinings between them, looking for a weakness. The bars were narrowly spaced; he could only shove his snout through, not the rest of his head.

No weakness found, he flopped down and put his head on his paws. But despair wasn’t on his mind. He closed his eye and breathed deeply, attempting to hit a trance, some sort of state of being to get inspiration, bring coyote back, even welcome back the trial.

The other tricksters remained absent and silent. But a plan began to form in his mind, a plan worthy of a trapped animal. The human part of Daniel winced and wondered at the logic of it, but the coyote part of him nodded in cold certainty.

He opened his eyes and regarded his left front paw. Daniel couldn’t bring himself to do it, so he consciously retreated and allowed the animal part of him to settle down and begin to gnaw.

#
[/private]

REMEMBER- This is rough, unedited stuff.
—
[private]
The wall of fire seemed to be doing a good job of holding back the storm, but it was clear they had to get out in it.

The eye seemed to be about half a mile wide, with the wind swirling around them. Even though it was still dark, they could see the wind, solid here, gaseous there, even liquid and blue as it devoured the air around them.

“How do we move through that?” Kate yelled.

“We’re gods, right?” asked Daniel.

“No, dude, that won’t work!” she replied, squinting through the flames as sputtered as a wave of water hit them. “Did you forget that our powers are at best unpredictable in this shit?”

Daniel grimaced. He had forgotten. What was the point of being gods of this world if he didn’t have any power when he needed it? He remembered a story Kate had told him one night after they’d made love – they’d discussed their godly limitations and Kate had said that once Titans had stuffed the Greek god Ares into an urn during a battle, where he stayed until the other gods let him out. She’d always wondered how a god didn’t have the power to get out.

Daniel thought it had made for good narrative, but really, what god had omnipotence? All of the gods he’d met had had powers, sure. He and Kate had created whole worlds. But neither of them could heal his eye, which had been taken by a god. If other gods could mess with their powers (as someone clearly had with this wall of fire), then they were not omnipotent.

And what were these improbability storms but tools of chaos that pushed gods’ powers to the edge of uselessness?

Something teased at Daniel’s mind then, a whisper of Odin, a name. Something like “Gagap.” He tried to chase the thought, find the information that the old god had left in his head, but it was gone as the scream of the storm drowned out all thought.

“Hang on!” came the yell behind them. Scott Von Rothelsgeschitemeirson came running down the hall, waving two black robes. They flapped behind him like wings.

Daniel took a step back from the hell outside the door and turned to meet the panting man.

“If you’re determined to go out in that, you’ll want these cloaks,” he panted. “I don’t know why you would want to, but if you do, you’ll have these.”

“What are they?” Kate asked softly, still staring into the roiling horror, which had started turning into billowy, black smoke that battered at the flames as if it were great fists.

“TK Cloaks,” was Scott’s answer. Daniel looked at him blankly. “They’re designed to protect you from the improbability storms.”
Daniel ran his hands over the thick black wool. A power cell about the size of a D battery hung at the hem, spreading circuits through the cloak. “How do they do that?”

“I took some chaos energy and tamed it with my Order Magnifier. It resonates through the cloak, forcing any chaos surroiunding it to actually charge the battery. As long as chaos forces are at work, the cloak gets stronger and stronger.” The scientist’s eyes were wide with delight.

“That doesn’t seem logical,” Daniel said, trying to remember the conservation of energy laws he’d learned in high school.

“Or probable,” Kate said,, breaking her gaze from the storm. “We’ll take them.”

“Oh good!” Scott said. “Please, if you survive, let me know how they work, will you?”

Daniel paused with the robe poised over his head, ready to fall. “Wait, you haven’t tested them?”

Scott looked sheepish. “Well, no one will go into the storm to test it for me. And I certainly can’t go.”

Kate grimaced. “Of course you can’t.” She smoothed the black robe over her white acolyte robe and said, “how do we turn it on?”

Scott leaned over and switched both of their robes on, and they came to life, humming quietly around them. Daniel felt decidedly odd- a little heavier, a little less confident. Which was odd, he figured, since the cloak was supposed to help keep him safe.

“Good luck!” said the scientist, beaming at them, his eyes wide through his glasses.

Daniel smiled at him and took Kate’s hand. She frowned and opened her mouth, but then they stepped outside and any protest she had was lost in the screaming storm.

Stay Tuned for the next installment! [/private]

This is a premium podcast until June 1. If you are not yet an Inside Story subscriber, then check out the benefits here, and you can register for the site and pay through Paypal all in the right hand sidebar. Handy, huh?

For Inside Story members, to subscribe to the podcast, you need to log into the site (at right). If you’ve paid me money for an Inside Story subscription, you are already in the system as a Member. After you log in, you will see “Your Profile and Custom RSS Feed”. Follow that link to the RSS feed that will work for you and ONLY you. It’s your very own! Yay!

Previously, in Heaven…

[private]
The group of Kate, Daniel, their airship crew, and the new gods Barris, Fabrique and Gamma, had survived a battle with airship pirates. During the battle in the wasteland, known locally as the Dark, they discovered that their divine powers don’t work as well in the raw chaos energy that is the Wasteland, but also that the Wasteland is a path they can take to return to Heaven and Hell to free the places from the otherworldly beast’s siege.

They return to the temples in the floating city of Meridian (that floats above the mad city of Lathe) in order to make a battle plan. In this episode we learn something startling about Barris, the sun god, who is developing a little too much liking for the ideas sold below in Lathe…

War V.01[/private]