Interlude 22: The Fall of Aleph
It was a bright, sunny day in Tucson, Arizona. The October sun beat down relentlessly, with temperatures in the mid 90s Fahrenheit. That was unusually warm, even for Tucson, but still a respite from the triple-digit heat of only a month ago. Jessica sipped at her iced tea, the condensation making the glass slick as she sat in the shade outside El Loco Burro. She glanced at her watch and frowned, then took another drink. Cars buzzed by on the nearby road, and there were a few people on the sidewalk.
She was just about to pull out her phone when she saw a cherry red Ford Focus with slightly weathered paint peel into the parking lot of the taqueria. She smiled to herself when a harried-looking man in his late 20s jumped out and glanced around frantically. She waved, and a dopely looking smile came over Derrik’s face. He bustled over, sweat on his brown, his shirt a little damn from perspiration. Apparently, his car’s AC was out again.
“Sorry, sorry, the old girl wouldn’t start,” Derrick said, leaning over to kiss Jessica before taking a seat and picking up the glass of ice water waiting for him.
“When are you going to replace that old beater? It’s not like you can’t afford a new car,” Jessia said, smiling to herself. “Or just let Jones work on it. You know he’d do it for free.”
As always, when Jessica brought this up, Derrick looked slightly wounded. “A man’s car is his pride, Jess, you know that! I can’t just-”
Both their pagers suddenly buzzed, and Derrick and Jessica both reached down, groaning.
“Don’t tell me it’s more of those weird monsters,” Jessica complained.
Derrick grimaced. “Yeah, they just-”
The sky went dark. Jessica and Derrick stood, their chairs knocking back, as the people in the restaurant let out cries of shock. Jessica coughed, then reached for her large purse. “I’ll get changed and meet you in the sky!”
Derrick was already sprinting for his car, where his own costume was. Moments later, Fuselage and Clammor rose into the sky above the restaurant, both of them having put on breathing masks as the purple mist about them continued to thicken.
“What is this? Do you have comms?” Jessica, also known as Fuselage, shouted over the howling wind.
“No, nothing from command! But look, there! It’s over by U of A!” her boyfriend, Clammor, also known as Derrick, shouted back.
Both of them were Mover capes, with Jessica a Blaster, and Derrick your classical flying brick with sonic-based powers. Jessica fired off a series of missile-like objects, while Derrick could strike things and unleash powerful waves.
Both of them headed towards the University of Arizona campus, and what they saw made both of them suck in a breath of horror.
A massive dark serpent had coiled itself around the campus buildings and was breathing out dark mist that was obscuring the sky and air. All around the serpent, portals were opening up, and those horrific monsters were pouring forth. There were already a lot of bodies in the streets, and more civilians were fleeing in panic, being cut down by the monsters.
“We focus on saving civilians until backup arrives!” Jessica shouted, and Derrick nodded.
Both of them dove, and Jessica unleashed a wave of her missiles, conjuring up the silvery cones and sending them hurtling at the monsters and portals. She struck down half a dozen of them, while Derrick landed and began fighting back the monsters from the civilians, who scrambled away. More monsters rose up, clawing through the air in the shape of demonic wolves as they bayed and came for Jessica. She struck them down, hovering close to Derrick so they could watch one another’s backs.
Your mother never loved you.
Jessica shuddered, but kept on fighting. She’d heard the strange voices fighting these creatures before. They’d shown up in the desert, and on the outskirts of town before. Reports had come in all across the world for weeks now, but especially in the American southwest. People had suspected a crazed tinker, but now…
An Endbringer? Here, now?
Jessica didn’t let herself think of that, and focused on fighting until reinforcements could arrive.
She continued to fight, ignoring the whispers, until a portal opened up. Unlike the dark swirling ones, this one took the form of a bridge of rainbow light. She felt hope fill her, as out of it stepped dozens of capes. She recognized the strongest capes in America: Captain Valiance from New York, Tiara from Houston, and a dozen others.
“Take heart, and fight for freedom!” Captain Valiance shouted and raised his spear high. A golden slight shone forth, and the serpent let out a rumbling hiss.
“Took you long enough!” Jessica called, but the Captain just grinned at her.
She continued to fight, the dark mist close around her. The serpent was recoiling, slithering away as more capes joined the fight.
D̶e̴r̵r̵i̴c̴k̷ ̸i̶s̶ ̵s̴l̴e̵e̴p̴i̵n̸g̶ ̶w̸i̴t̸h̸ ̶a̵n̶o̴t̵h̸e̷r̷ ̵w̵o̴m̸a̶n̵.̶ ̶
Jessica shook her head. The whispers were getting worse. She squinted at the mist, spotting another monster. She fired at it, and the mist cleared away. Then she cried out in horror. “Dad?!”
Her father looked at her plaintively, blood seeping from his mouth, one of her missiles embedded in his chest. “Jess…why…why would you?”
She screamed as he dissolved into mist. “No, no, it’s an illusion!” she gasped.
She whirled as another monster came out of the mist and hesitated. Was it real, or an-
She screamed in pain as the thing attacked her, spikes of purple crystal embedding themselves into her flesh. She fired at it, but her attack went wide. The thing leaned down…and took on her own face.
“What?” she whispered, blood bubbling from her lips.
“Derrick loves me. Not you,” the doppleganger told her, its features a perfect mirror of her own, save for a slight purple in its eyes. Then it fired a spike into Jessica’s forehead, killing her instantly.
Jessica nodded, looking down at the thing that had stolen her shape. She turned, and continued to fight the monsters. Then she rose up, and spotted a dozen capes attacking the snake.
“Come on, Fuselage! We can drive it back!” Tiara called, flying forward, her silver crown shining.
Jessica smiled and nodded.
Then shot Tiara in the back. She killed a dozen of the capes in seconds, before she was struck down herself, and her form shimmered to that of an Abyssal Mimic.
“What…what the fuck? Jessica?” Derrick gasped. He turned, his mind raging, and attacked his own team as whispers filled his mind. “YOU BASTARDS KILLED JESS!”
The ranks of the defenders dissolved into chaos. Whispers drove them mad, and mimics stole faces and bodies, even as the malevolent serpent watched with seven burning eyes, dark tongue flickering in and out.
Captain Valiant managed to lead half a dozen ragged survivors back through a portal.
“What happened out there?” the President demanded, hurrying over to Captain Valient, who was dry retching on the floor of the Hall of Heroes, gold and blue cape torn and ragged, stained with blood of those who had been his allies.
“It’s…it’s death,” Valient gasped, struggling to his feet. “They’re dead. They’re all dead!”
The President was horrified: That had been the very best team of heroes that America had, the ones who had stood ready to fight the next incursion of these strange new monsters.
“It, it can’t be. You, you took our best, our strongest!” the President babbled, shaking his head.
Captain Valient managed to steady himself, wiping bile from his lips with the back of his golden gloved hand. “Call the others. The Assembly in Europe. China’s Seven Sages. We have to have more help. That thing…it’s an Endbringer.”
“But, but Endbringers attack Earth Bet! Not here,” the President protested.
Captain Valient shook his head grimly. “Well, that thing is here, Mr. President. And it just killed seventy of our best.”
“Sir,” a general said, stepping forward. “We do have a contingency plan for an Endbringer. America’s nuclear arsenal stands ready.”
“Are you insane?! We can’t nuke our own city,” the President snapped. He turned to Captain Valient. “I…I’ll call in all the favors I can, son. We’ll see what we can do.”
But, by the time the heroes of other nations rallied…the serpent was gone. Tucson was a carnal house, with its residents driven mad and corrupted into monsters where they were not slain outright. Captain Valiant and the few remaining American heroes were joined by a coalition of a dozen nations that did their best to cleanse the city. It took two weeks of hard fighting, but at last, most of the city was cleared.
But it had cost more lives.
“How many do we have left?” the President asked, his tone bleak.
The man who leaned forward wasn’t dressed in gold and blue like Captain Valiant had been. He had a horned helmet and a skull mask on. Slowly, he removed the mask. “I…have never been a hero, Mr. President.”
“I know that, Obsidian,” the President said tiredly. “But you did join the coalition. Valiant, and the Hall of Heroes are dead. You’re the strongest cape left in these United States, Obsidian. How many?”
Obsidian rubbed his face. There were dark circles under his cold eyes. “I’ve rallied the Brotherhood of the Nefarious. We…will hold the Truce. We might want to topple your government, or even enslave humanity…but that thing…for now, we’ll fight. We still have a few hundred capes, but those as strong as I? Less than a dozen left now. And, while Tucson is pacified…those things…not even Doctor Malfeso would create such horrors.”
The President nodded grimly. “I didn’t think I’d ever work with such madmen. But the amnesty stands. As well as the bounty of a million dollars for each day you fight the Endbringer.”
Obsidian nodded, and put his skull mask back on. “One day, I will bring this pathetic land to its knees. But not like this.”
Thirty-two days after the serpent had vanished from Tucson, it appeared again. This time, it attacked Lagos. Nigeria was the largest tech capital in Africa, thanks to having four genius Tinkers and a Nobel Prize laureate for economics as its president. Lagos was much larger than Tuscon, and better defended. Oòrùnṣẹ́, Nchekọta, Madubin Sirri, and Akéwì Irin were four of the best Tinkers in the world. When the Endbringer had appeared in North America, they’d set about preparing defenses.
Oòrùnṣẹ́ had prepared sleek solar-powered laser batteries that could sustain the city for days, and batteries of powerful laser canons. Each cannon glowed with golden power, and stood as tall as a sunflower blooming from buildings and streets. They could have swatted a hundred fighter jets from the skies in minutes, shooting cleansing beams of coherent light at any threat.
For her part, Nchekọta had cobbled together a patchwork cadre of drones. Some buzzed on rotors, others walked on four legs, many rolled on wheels, and they ranged in size from as large as a semi-truck to small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. All were armed, though the weaponry ranged from regular ballistic and missile technology to exotic energy weapons. There were hundreds of the drones, a match for the military of any nation on Earth Aleph.
Madubin Sirri had focused on creating shelters to shield the population from the threat. They had constructed glass bulbs throughout the city that could protect anywhere from one individual to hundreds of people. The opaque constructions were strong enough to withstand a direct hit from the main cannon of a battle tank, and had built in life support for up to three days.
The most practically minded, Akéwì Irin, had armed the city’s defenders with highly advanced armor and weapons. Mostly metal nano-blades and gauss rifles, but the Tinker tech was fearsome, and many would have feared that the military minded tinker was finally going warlord.
All in all, Lagos had a layered defense that made it the hardest target on Earth Aleph, protected by layers and layers of technology, and with thousands of human defenders and hundreds of powerful drones, as well as excellent shelters, shielding, and automated security systems.
The serpent appeared, absorbed the fire from the solar layers, breathed out poison that corroded the glass shelters to nothing in minutes, and corrupted the drones and turned them on the civilians, while the human defenders went utterly mad in less than half an hour and began slaughtering one another.
Admittedly, none of the constructs or equipment held a candle to what Earth Bet tinkers could create in anything but sheer scale. But the world had expected Lagos to stand. Instead, it became a blighted sore.
The rest of the world rallied, and formed a unified league. Old grudges were set aside. Peace in our time was proclaimed, as even nations like India and Pakistan joined hands and declared that humanity would stand united. Even former villains set aside their plans for world domination and joined hand in hand with their former nemeses, all agreeing to fight Apep.
When the serpent appeared in the skies above Phnom Penh three weeks after it destroyed Lagos, a thousand capes rallied and attacked as a united front.
A day later, the few hundred that remained turned their mad powers upon the rest of Earth Aleph.
They had still not been defeated when the creature, now called Apep, appeared again over Budapest. This time, there was no unified defense. The population was turned into monsters or slaughtered.
Order broke down. Nothing could stop the serpent. It appeared at will over a city, and that city was destroyed. It did not follow a pattern that could be discerned. It simply arrived, attacked, vanished, and repeated.
On the seventh attack over Bogatah, the population despaired. Some prayed, some cursed, some tried to flee, others took their own lives.
And then, a shining golden light appeared. The population gasped in shock, then in hope as a being that some had heard tell of, but few knew much of stepped into their reality.
Scion. The Hero of Earth Bet.
They thought salvation had arrived.
Instead, they found only damnation.
The Warrior’s Avatar regarded the serpent, which hissed up at him.
Driver. Why do you attack this reality? No data has been gained, Zion stated.
His response was dark whispers, and a low, rumbling hiss from the snake. He cocked his head slightly to one side.
Driver. Do you yet serve the cycle?
The response was one word, distorted by strange energies: D̸e̶v̷o̴u̸r̷.̸ ̸.
Zion regarded the serpent, processing. He could defeat and destroy it. This Driver was corrupted, its purpose gone astray. It attacked a tertiary experimental dimension. One with only lesser shards connected to it, granting attenuated powers. Little data had ever been generated by this world. The only useful data had come recently, after the Driver had begun its attacks. And little enough of that. One single clash between the other Drivers and the beings of Earth Bet generated many times the useful data than all the harvesting of these specimens.
For a brief instant, Zion activated his Path to Victory. The shining golden path that calculated all possible outcomes, and gave the result that led to the inevitable completion of the Cycle. It had to be used sparingly, because even activating it for a few microseconds collapsed several minor realities as it drained them of energy.
But, the Path, the same path that the oracle Fortuna had followed as Contessa, generated a result. It was as flawless as the data it was fed. A perfect outcome.
Driver. You will cease destroying other experimental realities. This one you may claim. Any other I will collapse. They are meaningless. Only the Prime Reality I have taken up residence in matters, Zion stated.
The serpent Driver flicked its tongue at Zion, eyeing him. It did not quite respond, but it tensed. Ready to attack.
You will seek Conflict in the Prime Reality. Test the Beings. The energy you have absorbed has…potential. Engage in conflict. Gather data, Zion ordered. If you do not…
Following the dictates of the Path, Zion forged a weapon. Its design came from the Gnosis he had seized from the Icy Administrator. It was an object about ten meters tall, and one meter in diameter. It was shaped like a pillar, only one end was pointed, like a nail.
Fail to heed my dictates, overharvest the specimens, and you will face the wrath of my Divine Nail, Zion stated.
The serpent regarded the nail, then snapped at Zion, breathing out more toxic fumes.
That was not a major obstacle. The Path had foreseen this, and calculated it. The response was obvious. I see. A demonstration is in order.
The nail shot forth, driving into the earth, and unleashing a massive explosion of almost elemental energy. It was the new, exotic energy that was contained in the Gnosis, what the Beings referred to as “Divine Energy.” Zion was still studying this energy, but it was in direct opposition to the new energy that contaminated this Driver.
The Divine energy obliterated the city below, and all within, the divine power washing over the land and annihilating the dark energies of the serpent. For its part, the serpent fled, slipping back into the cracks between worlds.
Zion nodded to himself. It would follow his dictates, or more of these nails would descend. Enough of them could obliterate not just a world, but an entire reality. Already, this Cycle had produced incredible new data.
Of course, destroying entire realities meant that the Cycle could not propagate itself as it had before, by collapsing all the simulated realities into a singularity that released more energy than a supergiant star going supernova. But that did not matter. Zion would breed with the Beings. Even that specimen that had managed to become a Being. He…looked forward to it. Especially if they attempted to resist. But their consent was not necessary.
Zion drove nails into the other sites the serpent had visited, turning most of the surface of Earth Aleph to glass. Then, he sought out and destroyed the remaining specimens, to encourage the new Driver to attack Earth Bet. To make sure of it, he decided to eliminate the choicer targets.
For the next few months, Zion visited the other populated experiment realities. He would appear over the largest concentration of specimens, and issue a decree:
The time of Testing is at hand. Your reality has been measured, and found wanting. As such, the experiment will be terminated, and this reality destroyed.
Unless you can defeat me. I shall limit my powers to a threshold calculated to give the specimens of this reality a chance to defeat the Lord of the Cycle in combat.
You have one hour to begin your assault, and then I will begin to terminate your reality.
He fought a thousand battles and slew trillions. He was as good as his word as well: He did limit his powers, so that there was a chance, however small, that the defenders of that reality could indeed injure and defeat him.
None did. The chance was very small.
And Apep, the stray Driver, watched as the Warrior’s Avatar bathed in carnage and destruction. It calculated. It hungered.
And its eyes were drawn towards Earth Bet.