Chapter Twenty — Tyrant
The fate shift hit like a punch to the gut.
Mocker didn’t need his patron whispering in his ear to feel the sudden roil in the currents of destiny, the hammer of an impending event of terrifying magnitude. Nor did he need a diviner to tell him it affected the entire world; everyone even slightly sensitive had to have felt the change in fortunes. Something very profound was about to happen, and it didn’t take a genius to know what – and who – it involved.
“I felt that.” Lia spoke before Mocker could, the strange moon magic shifting and flowing around her as runes exerted their influence on reality. She was probably more sensitive to esoteric energies than he was, and given how much of a trial it was to read the currents of magic at the best of times he had no idea how she could stand to have such a sensory net out with the upheaval he was feeling.
“Something big is coming,” Mocker confirmed, turning to Ike. They had only just gotten to the debriefing room after Endymion had dropped them off at Star Central, without even time to go over what had just happened — or what they planned to do now. “A confluence point has formed in the near future, and we are hurtling toward it. Mechaniacal must have found what he wanted.”
“I shouldn’t have let Endymion back off,” Ike said, his perpetually sour face hardening into an expressionless mask. His fingers went to toggles on his chair, and a moment later alarm lights started flashing. “How bad is it?”
“It’s big,” Mocker said. “World-affecting or more. My patron sees it as a potential disaster no matter which way it turns out, but I think it’s a nexus. We must have a chance to ensure it turns out for the better.”
“I concur. And the physical location…” Lia tilted her head, then lifted her arm to point upwards, beyond the bounds of Earth.
“The Orrery,” Ike said, not needing Lia’s help to know where the supervillain had to be. “The old space station.” He was one of the few active people still around from when Mechaniacal had been stopped nearly a century ago, so he knew the most about what remained of the tinker’s old projects and what he’d been after. And if Mechaniacal was truly trying to control The Cosmic Orrery, things could be dire indeed. Even the most esoteric practitioners could barely touch on its existence, let alone comprehend and influence its effects.
While the world wasn’t exactly controlled by the Orrery, it did set guiderails and provide impetus for the workings of fate and destiny, of higher and more ethereal powers. Just as gravity pulled things down and the sun made them warm, the Orrery made sure things continued. It didn’t have any structure in physical reality, but that was obviously not a problem for Mechaniacal.
“I’m activating Aegis Protocols,” Ike said, typing in an authorization code on his chair, the alarm taking on a new and strident tone. “Can we count on The Bellringer? I know you have some way to get in touch with it.”
“I don’t believe so,” Mocker said, suppressing a shudder. That particular sovereign was rather intense, and had not much liking for Mocker’s patron. “Mechaniacal may not be from this dimension, but he isn’t from completely outside reality. The Bellringer is only allowed to deal with those kinds of incursions.” Ike grunted, but didn’t waste time complaining.
“Glorybeam, we might even need Blacktime for this one,” Ike said into his microphone darkly, manipulating his intercom buttons. “And Vilmonica, prep the Foirastar.” Mocker winced. Star Central’s only starship with a functional capability to slip through the empyrean crystal, relied on a type of relic fuel and there was no way to make more. Once they were out, it was just inert metal and glass.
“I’ll call up the practitioners I know,” Mocker volunteered. “Given the severity of the threat we might be able to gate you out there.” If the currents of destiny were all converging to somewhere outside the Earth, magic might be able to reach that far without the usual associated costs.
“Do so,” Ike said, as people began to arrive in the briefing room. Captain Bulk, of course, with Machine Head tagging along behind. Stop and Sparkle Motion, and even Lunar Bolt who probably wasn’t specifically invited, but really it was an all-hands-on-deck situation. Aegis Protocols allowed everyone and everything to be used, so even supers off-duty or those otherwise engaged would be heading in.
“Lunar Bolt, get James Miller and The Honorable Sally Miller,” Ike ordered, and Lunar Bolt stopped, startled. “Vilmonica will get you the details,” he continued, and she did an about-face, almost colliding with Makebelieve on her way out. “We’ll need every hook we can scrounge up to pry Hartson and Miller loose from Mechaniacal,” he said, partly to himself and partly to the room at large.
“What happened to Isaac?” Machine Head blurted, the tinker blinking owlishly.
“Wait one,” Ike said, lifting a hand as more personnel shuffled into the briefing room. It only took another minute at most to fill up, and Ike pressed a few buttons to put up images from their brief foray down to the Deep Kingdoms on the wall.
“The supervillain Mechaniacal has absconded with the super-of-interest Isaac Hartson and his companion, one Sarah Miller.” The briefing room screen showed images of the pair on raptor-back, seen from Endymion’s cameras. “Endymion could not bring the full power of his mecha to bear due to potential collateral damage. That seems to have been a mistake, as there has been a sudden and serious warning from diviners and psychics. How many have we gotten already, Vilmonica?”
“Six warnings from verified diviners throughout the Five City Alliance. Four more from unverified individuals who just felt compelled to warn us that something was happening.” Vilmonica’s cool voice sounded over the room audio.
“Such a shift indicates transtemporal or higher-dimensional effects,” Ike continued, looking around at the gathered supers. “Since Mechaniacal’s previous schemes didn’t manage to create this kind of echo, we are forced to assume that some compounding effect from Hartson’s power is at play.”
“What is Hartson’s power, then?” Captain Bulk raised a very good point, and sadly they only had the conversation with Machine Head to go on.
“While his recorded power is a strength-type booster, it has become apparent that his true power is an ability to change inertia, both physical and metaphysical,” Ike said. “We don’t know his limitations or quirks, but he was able to affect a large scale of action in the Deep Kingdoms. It has elements of mind control and reality manipulation, but seemingly as side effects rather than as a direct manifestation of its use. Consider him to be at the strategic level with the potential for more, but the greatest concern at the moment is how his powers are used in conjunction with others.”
The older supers in the room were reasonably impressed, though some of the younger ones looked skeptical. Mostly the kinds with strictly physical powers, or who were fundamentally combat-minded. If a power didn’t need much imagination to use, usually a super didn’t make a habit of trying to extend it or see how it interacted with others.
As Ike outlined what they’d been able to garner from both Hartson’s conversation with Machine Head and subsequent observation, Mocker withdrew a series of coins from an inside pocket and arranged them just so in the air, held aloft by eldritch energies. Each coin held the likeness of a fellow practitioner, one that trusted him enough to allow such contact, and he used them to enact a brief, polite communications request. Some of them were no doubt anticipating such a call, being able to read the winds as well as he, but others simply had different specialties.
He might be powerful, but for something like this working together was the only way to get ahead. Most supervillains were lone powers, with few if any people truly willing to help them, so collaborative efforts between heroes compounded into something that could take down even a sovereign. A few of his contacts relied on a notable interaction with Glorybeam, since the shadows cast by her light had their own potency, but even without that, giving someone like Captain Bulk a temporary teleportation charm or astral phasing could make him into an incredible force.
What Mechaniacal could do with such a force-multiplier staggered the imagination.
Less than five minutes later, four of his fellow practitioners had joined him in the back lot, standing well back as it split open to allow the Foirastar to the surface. The bulbous, bronze-and-glass construction held itself aloft through skyhooks, floating gracefully above the concrete as what super-team Ike could conjure filed in.
Nor was their team the only one. Moonblast was en route already, along with some of her fellow lunarian runecasters, and Endymion was not far behind. Blacktime hadn’t deigned to join them – for the best, really – but Malevoca had, the witch looking distinctly uncomfortable among all the more positive-aligned magic-users.
Most of the other countries and sovereigns didn’t have the capacity for crossing the empyrean crystal spheres, which was a distinctly more difficult problem than simply venturing into space, and required more than just brute force. That wasn’t even to mention the difficulties of coordinating with them on such short notice over such distances. Perhaps when Machine Head’s devices had more time to proliferate, but for now there was only the lines of communication they already had established.
Mocker chanted under his breath as he drew glowing lines in the air, serving as the centerpoint for a long-distance targeting spell. The ship could propel itself, Van Rijn’s technology still potent after all this time, but finding the proper destination in the vast void of space was another matter entirely. The other masters of mystic arts added their own efforts, boosting the spell with elements that Mocker didn’t have access to. With effort, he closed the last line and the spell took to the air, launching upward from the crystal he held in his hands and leaving a glittering rail nailed to space.
“Thank you,” he told the others who had helped with the ritual, most of whom looked like they’d just sprinted a half-mile race, and hurried to board the Foirastar himself. Clambering up the ancient rail to the lavishly appointed interior, all aged wood and burgundy silk, he tossed the focusing crystal to the speedster Blinkbulb, the only one rated to fly the ship.
“Alright,” the speed super said, putting flickering hands on the wheel. “Let’s go stop Mechaniacal.”
***
Sarah Miller, aka Scheherazade, eyed Mechaniacal’s contraption with more than a little skepticism. It was being overhauled astonishingly quickly, the tinker working more like a machine than a man, though that might be a distinction without a difference for Mechaniacal. Either way, she wasn’t too excited to see her boyfriend risk himself in there, even if there didn’t seem to be much of a choice.
Astoria’s hot breath huffed against the top of her head, ruffling her hair under her illusory hat. She reached up to rub the underside of her raptor’s jaw, unable to help cracking a smile. The Deep Kingdom mount was somewhere between a cat and a dog, and definitely knew when Sarah was worried. Both Astoria and Shay had gotten tired of the carpet after a couple minutes and wandered over, though Isaac seemed too preoccupied with his thoughts to do more than scratch at Shay’s jaw.
“Are you sure about this?” She finally asked the question, putting her hand on Isaac’s arm.
“No,” he said with a sigh, turning to face her and putting a hand over hers as he offered a wry smile. “But I think I have to do it. Even if it weren’t for the alternative — how could I turn down the chance to make things better for everyone? Or at least head off a disaster. It’s not like I’ll get another one.”
“You never know,” Sarah half-disagreed. Isaac wasn’t wrong about the potential in the chair, but Dad had stories from his younger days that absolutely beggared belief. If Mom hadn’t kept the articles that reported on the incidents in question, she probably would have thought he was making it up. Now it seemed to be her turn for it, since most people wouldn’t believe she was hanging around in space, helping argue a supervillain out of taking over the world.
“Maybe it’s just a hope.” Isaac sounded more exasperated than upset, shaking his head as he watched Mechaniacal make completely incomprehensible changes to the chair. “Things have gotten pretty wild since I started trying to use my powers in earnest, but I really want it to settle down after this.” He raised a hand to forestall a comment. “And yes, I know how much we have to deal with, but a man can dream, can’t he?”
Sarah giggled. It helped that he sounded more like he’d been asked to clean a toilet than corral a legendary supervillain. In his place, she probably would have been terrified, not that she’d ever admit it, because she’d never felt so helpless. Trapped on a space station far from earth, with no way to escape and no help that could make it on time, surrounded by tinker work she couldn’t even begin to mimic with her illusions. The chair and its surroundings rumbled against her smoke, the feeling of restrained power overshadowing even Blacktime’s. There was something very ominous there, even beyond the look of the thing.
At least she could hide her frown and the faint tremor in her voice, for his sake if nothing else.
“I just wish he’d get on with it, then,” she said instead, since it wasn’t clear to either of them how long Mechaniacal’s overhaul would take. At high levels, all tinkers were practically doing magic to people without a technical background. Or even with one.
“Just another moment,” Mechaniacal called back. “And none too soon, either. We’re about to have company.”
“Company?” Isaac replied before she could, and Mechaniacal waved in the direction of the far screen, the one that didn’t have the Orrery on it.
“It seems some people caught wind of what we’re doing. Irritating, but I have yet to find a good way to deflect the magical arts in their entirety.” Despite Mechaniacal’s words, he sounded unbothered even as a flicker of pseudo-movement pulled her attention to the screen as a ship appeared in the starfield outside. One that Sarah recognized from textbooks and documentaries. The Foirastar, which looked like it was more at home in the ocean than the vacuum of space.
The heroes had arrived, but possibly a bit too late. She exchanged glances with Isaac, seeing the same thought in his expression. It might be possible to stall, and let the heroes take care of things. But she’d seen what Mechaniacal could do in the Deep Kingdoms, and if Isaac refused to help he might simply carry on with his original plan — and they’d suffer the consequences. Everyone would.
“There, all done.” Mechaniacal spoke before either she or Isaac screwed up their courage enough to try and back out, which was possibly for the best. The tinker wiped oil from his hands with a rag, closing a maintenance panel with a click and stepping back from the refurbished chair. The armillary sphere that surrounded it was more glass than gear now, long phlogiston tubes humming with energy as they met and meshed with cogs and springs.
“So, what, do I just get in?” Isaac eyed the chair skeptically. He could squeeze in past the surrounding bands of glass and metal, but it looked a bit precarious.
“Optimally, I’d run tests and ensure that everything worked as planned, but it’s difficult when dealing with something like the Orrery.” The tinker ducked under one of the rings as he stepped out of his workspace, stopping by the parts cart long enough to recapture his hat, and waved Isaac toward the chair. “And we have a limited timeline regardless.” Sarah glanced at the viewscreen, where the Foirastar was rapidly growing large. There was another flash of light even as she watched, and a lunarian cruiser appeared, the big silver rune-marked vessel swimming through the vacuum like a manta ray.
“Be careful,” Sarah told Isaac, squeezing his arm. He pulled her close for a kiss, which she clung to until he reluctantly released her.
“I’ll do my best,” he said, and climbed in past the rings, toward the chair at the center. Mechaniacal guided his tool trolly away, the pull of a lever making a full monitoring station unfold from the wall opposite the special viewscreen, on the other side of the armillary sphere. Past the glowing glass tubes and the dense clockwork, she saw Isaac take a seat in the chair, and Mechaniacal turned to smile broadly, his grin stretching wide on his narrow face.
“This ought to be edifying,” he said, to her, and then raised his voice. “Pull the lever!” Mechaniacal called, and Isaac reached down to the side of the chair, causing the footrest to pop out and the machine to start.
***
Isaac sat down carefully in the chair at the center of Mechaniacal’s creation.
It was just an ordinary armchair, an old recliner actually, simply repurposed for the role. He settled in gingerly, putting his hands on the arms where thin metal pipes wound their way through the wood and transferred the vibration to his skin. In front of him, framed in a circle where the bands of the armillary sphere met, the Cosmic Orrery glowed, ghostlike, on the viewscreen.
“Pull the lever,” Mechaniacal said cheerily, and Isaac reached for the only lever the chair had, which shifted it into a reclining configuration even as the nested spheres of banded machinery began to turn with a deep rumble. The celestial pole stayed fixed, looking down upon the sun and the Earth, while the rest turned into an illuminated blur as it settled into a steady rotation. For a moment, nothing seemed to happen, and Isaac wondered if it just didn’t work.
The universe fell away.
Isaac had been braced for some sort of overwhelming surge of power, an unrestrained firehose that he would need to wrestle with. Instead everything became simpler, easier, closer. The Cosmic Orrery unfolded itself to him in all its infinite complexity, and even with his brand new perspective there was more there than Isaac could have understood in a dozen lifetimes.
What he did understand was that he was connected to the Cosmic Orrery, and so was everyone and everything else on Earth. He touched it, and it touched them; thus his power could reach them all. Through the Orrery he could see and sense the Deep Kingdoms and the great Kings ruling them, the Sunken City and its aquatic priests, Star City and it’s people, and the assemblage of heroes that had arrived to stop what he was doing, speeding through space toward Point Archimedes.
Every point touched by the Orrery was open to him, all the hidden places and secret things, on Earth and beyond. The vaults of Tinkertown, the endless catacombs beneath the Sunken City, the terrible sea-beasts that swam the ocean depths miles below the surface. The world-straddling rainforest of Venus, the chandelier cities of Saturn, the dark and quiet ice-libraries of Neptune, the frozen prison of Pluto.
He reached for his power and found it to be far greater a thing than ever before, as if he had been living his whole life with weights on and now they were suddenly lifted. It took little more than a thought to summon it, inspect it, feel its ebb and flow. To understand its new reach from the summit of Point Archimedes.
Every moment and mechanism, every place and person was change. Was choice. A choice he could make; to stop it or to allow it, to leave it alone or accelerate it. Uncounted moments, uncounted opportunities. All throughout the Orrery, from the greatness of the sun down to just himself, where he could see the changes he’d put on himself, reminding him that he had a task to do and limited time to do it.
Mechaniacal’s machine was by nature a temporary thing. He could tell it was already fraying, the limited minute of use ticking away second by second, but it occurred to him that it didn’t need to end. It was the nature of his talent, that he could ensure that something set in motion did not end.
Isaac could make the changes permanent. Etch them in stone, cast them in time and space. The expanded understanding, the incredible power, the connection with the Cosmic Orrery — all of it could be his forever. He’d never have to worry about someone using him for his power ever again, because nobody could.
Resistance to change was a difficult concept in many ways, and while on one hand it wasn’t reality alteration at whim, at the same time it was everything. Every decision, every action, every coincidence depended on change. Like some great conductor, he could change things here and there, making tweaks to the symphony of life. He could draw channels of least resistance, for those who were idle or uncertain, and set up barriers to make certain types of changes very difficult indeed.
He could be a tyrant, the Tyrant of Change, and all things would proceed according to what he desired. No more super-fights, no more pursuits, no more kidnapping or coercion. From his vantage he could simply reach out and stop Mechaniacal, freeze him in time and space so nothing would ever change. The same with Blacktime, or indeed any of the supervillains. Or superheroes.
Isaac was tempted. So very tempted, lingering on the precipice of the decision. Any one of a thousand changes was only a thought and a flicker of will away. All he had to do was commit to it.
Yet, he hesitated.
To hold such knowledge, such power, was not without its cost. If he knew something, and could act on it, then it was his responsibility. It wouldn’t give him freedom; if anything, more power seemed to mean less freedom. If he were to be a Tyrant over others, he would be just as much a Tyrant to himself. He would be his only master, puppeting himself in an endless cycle that might have no end, ever, just cycles of his power turning around and around.
Even so, it was tempting.
If he changed himself, that would be just as permanent as it had been in every case. Just like how Sarah’s power wasn’t exactly the same even after all his tweaking, even if he tried to undo that change later, he’d be different no matter what he did. Should he discard the power, the perception, and the reach of his own accord, it wouldn’t be the same as if he let it fade when the machine had finished its job. After his experience with Ravdia, he knew what it was like to be trapped in his own endless cycle, and with that forewarning he was more than a little wary of anything like it.
Then there was Sarah. What would he be, what would they be, if he crossed the line to make himself the Tyrant? If she wasn’t comfortable with the new him, how tempted would he be to make it easier for her to change her mind and adapt? He wasn’t sure how much he’d be able to resist it, when only the most minor of thoughts could make it so.
For several long, long seconds he teetered on the brink, wanting to seize the chance to make himself completely free from anyone who might try to control him, but fearing he would just end up enslaved to himself. Wanting to use the chance he had to do some real good, make some real changes in the world, but knowing that it wouldn’t be the same world he knew. He was half-terrified of how easy it would be, like any truly bad idea.
Slowly, bit by bit, he wrestled himself back from the brink. The better angels of his nature beat down the fears and dark desire that made him want to seize control, realizing that he wouldn’t be himself anymore if he did it. Would be discarding everything he had worked for – what he had found he wanted in life – and that was something that he couldn’t sacrifice.
Over half the time was already gone by the time he managed to get himself under control, judging by the very crude sense he got from Mechaniacal’s chair, and he hadn’t even started on what the entire endeavor was meant for; the Orrery, and ensuring that nothing undermined it — and by extension, that no calamity upended the world. Gathering his power, he reached out to touch the Orrery directly.
He couldn’t tell if it was alive, but it was certainly active, a moving thing that was probably more complex than most living beings. All his newfound clarity gave little insight into the actual meaning and purpose of the mechanisms, wound as they were through time and space, probability and possibility, distance and desire. But he didn’t need to know everything about it, just needed to add to its already considerable ontological inertia, give it protection from directions and influence that might yet touch it.
It was horrifyingly easy. From his throne as the not-yet Tyrant, all it took was a thought. A simple effort of will, no more trying than flicking a finger. He didn’t have to focus on the precise nature of the Orrery’s own existence, on the myriad directions his power might go. It was all there, ready to hand. A moment’s work and done, the Orrery reinforced, amplified beyond mortal or immortal reach by Mechaniacal’s work.
And yet, he wasn’t quite done.
From his perch, Isaac, not quite the Tyrant, could reach down through the Orrery and find one place where his power had been wielded, but not by him. Down on earth, millions of miles away, in an office deep in Star Central, sat Glorybeam. Her powers, suppressed, permanently shifted and locked away as they resisted any attempt to change.
Even Isaac couldn’t change that himself, that was not what his power did. But another flicker of thought removed every barrier to Glorybeam’s gifts changing back to what they were. Exactly how fast that happened, or what form it took, was up to her, but with that he had done his duty in cleaning up after himself. Part of him was tempted to pull out all the power he had put into the world, but that was the old Isaac, the one who hid what he could do.
The new Isaac couldn’t do that. The world didn’t work that way; a bell could not be unrung, as Sarah would say. Better to use his power as he could, the best that he could, than hide it from some fear of the unknown future — and at the moment he could use his power very well, indeed.
The person who refused to be the Tyrant turned his gaze, through the Orrery, to look at Sarah. There was a patchwork of impressions from the tweaks he had made with his power. It would be simple to clean up the rough edges, alter things just here and there to smooth things out. Why not, while he was here?
Or he could deal with Mechaniacal. Or Blacktime. Neither of them were exempt from the Orrery’s grasp, despite their powers. He could reach out to touch them now, and it would be easy. The Tyrant held a throne at the pinnacle, and while he couldn’t mimic anything of what they did, his authority was absolute.
Then he blinked, pulling away from that set of thoughts. Despite his own convictions, he’d nearly succumbed to the temptation. The slow drift into someone else, only here it was even easier. It’d just take one thought, one extra action, and he would be the Tyrant, not just Isaac. Every change he made changed himself, too, and just one more thing might move him irrevocably.
He shuddered and drew back from the Orrery and all those encompassed by it, instead turning his attention to himself and to the chair, as it wound down to an inevitable conclusion. Just because he was not the Tyrant now did not mean he could not become it in the future, should circumstances or malevolent forces conspire to push him just so, and that was something that could not be borne. A flicker of a thought set the guardrails in place, resistance to a very particular kind of change, to make it harder to become the kind of person he should not be.
Then it was time for things to end, to remove the power before he made any decision he might regret in the future. Isaac drew a path of no resistance between the point where the machine was now and its inevitable end, where everything wound down to nothing and all the potency it lent him was spent. The chair sighed and sputtered, and Isaac blinked as reality returned. Around him, the phlogiston tubes were dark, the intricate gears loose and rattling as they ground to a halt. Whatever arcane power fueled it was spent, all the miniscule bearings and teeth deformed and destroyed. The rotation stopped, the armillary sphere canted at an angle around the powerless recliner chair.
He felt like he was waking up from a vivid dream, all the core components fixed in his mind but the details already slipping away. The impressions of the Orrery, the basic chain of thought, those he could remember, as well as the effortless feeling of comprehending and applying his power. But how he could do that vanished like so much smoke in the wind.
The Tyrant’s throne was no more. Isaac was himself once again.