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#1
DEC 11 |
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“It Takes Two to Make a Thing Go Right”
Dr. Fate appeared instantly, concentrating fully on reigning in the energies that were produced as an aftereffect of his teleportation; the last thing he needed was to be seen. Quickly, he headed for the shadows of the eerily lit corridor, the blue glow hiding unseen potential opposition. He slowly worked his nerve within him, despising every second of his first task as the new Dr. Fate.
“I’m in,” he whispered almost inaudibly. “Looks empty in here, but it feels like there’s bad stuff all around me.”
“Good,” a voice answered from within his helmet. Fate cringed at the sound of his advisor’s voice. What had Dr. Fate done to deserve this? “Keep following the progression of torches; it should lead you to the bridge.”
“Any chance I could get a cloaking spell while I’m at it?” Fate asked as kindly as his disgust could muster. “I’d feel more comfortable with a bit of invisibility.”
“No can do,” was the reply. “These people need to know that they’re dealing with Dr. Fate. Invisibility would make it difficult to see you.”
“That’s the point, Hector,” Fate said, his anger elevating the volume of his voice a little too much. As he finished his words, it was apparent that something had heard him. Quiet shuffling began to draw in on his position and he immediately regretted his slight outburst. “I’ve got incoming,” Fate announced, once again barely whispering. “Are you ready?”
“Don’t worry about me, Stoner,” Hector replied from elsewhere. “Everything is connected on my side. You have nothing to worry about.”
“That’s what I’m worried about,” Fate said as he saw the creatures approaching him. The slowly shambling mummifications rocked back and forth as they approached, tottering as their lipless mouths screamed in silent horror.
Dr. Fate raised his hands to form a protective barrier. Tension rose within him as his heart beat escalated. With hands outstretched, he waited for his faraway partner to cast the spell.
“Any time now,” Fate growled into the helmet. Nothing happened as he thought he heard Hector Hall chuckling quietly in his ear.
Hector Hall paced leisurely through the stone halls of the Salem Tower that was the home of Dr. Fate. Until recently he had been the sole occupant. Now he had to share both the tower and the power and responsibility of Dr. Fate with a man he hated…a man that had worked tirelessly to ruin Hector’s life.
Hector paused in front of a window that showed a beautiful view of the Dreaming. He adjusted his ocular headset as he viewed what Dr. Fate saw from Fate’s perspective. The technologies were mingled with several spells to relay Fate’s perceptions into Hector’s senses so that Hector could access Fate’s power. Benjamin Stoner, the only man that could wear the vestiges of Fate, could not operate the power; Hector was the only one that could make that possible, hence the reluctant team.
“I see them,” Hector smiled as he raised his hand to match Fate’s gesture. He silently moved his wrist and manifested a golden shield around Dr. Fate’s body. “Let me look up what you’re dealing with here and I’ll get back to you in a minute.”
Fate was yelling on the other end of the communication link. “Hurry!” the hollow voice beneath the helmet chirped. “I’m going to run away just in case.”
“Don’t run, you idiot,” Hector replied calmly. He was not the one in danger but, then again, he had courage while Stoner did not. “We can’t let these things know the limitations of our little arrangement. Just bide your time; that shield isn’t going anywhere.”
Through his eyepiece, Hector could tell that Fate was fleeing and he grew tired of working this way immediately. “Dammit, Stoner,” he cursed as he took to the air, hovering a few inches from the cold stone floor. “I suppose I’ll have to assert my dominance.”
Fate rose from the ground to mimic Hector’s will. “Holy–!” Stoner yelled as he was spun around against his will to face the oncoming things. He sat within his own body as it lashed out against them.
“I hate this!” Stoner said as he struggled uselessly against his own limbs.
“You think I don’t?” Hector asked rhetorically as he motioned his arms and legs into an elaborate showcase of spell casting. Through his link, Dr. Fate was the one to manifest the spells. “I’m not a big fan of the multitasking that I have to do right now.”
“Whine some more when you get me out of here,” Stoner replied gruffly, his anger doing nothing against his enemies as Fate went to work through him.
“What we’re looking at is the Sisterhood of the Blood Mummies,” Hector said as he controlled Fate’s actions and accessed the libraries of information stored with the Helm of Fate. “You’re not going to like anything I have to say from here on out.”
“I had already assumed,” Stoner replied as he engaged the Blood Mummies. It was like watching a film at the planetarium, strapped to a seat as something terrible was happening on the screen around him. He was immersed in a nightmare and he was counting on his old enemy to keep him alive. “Tell me anyway.”
Stoner had known he was in trouble and he learned of the level of such as Hector Hall explained. “These ladies have a circulatory system on the outside of their bodies that is protected by their wrappings,” Hector explained as he worked from afar to protect Fate.
“Stupid mummies,” Fate replied as his arms projected a variety of offensive ankh spells at the female mummies. “You seen one, you’ve seen them all.”
Hector stifled a laugh. “Their wrappings are created from spider silk. Can’t you see the spiders all over them?”
Fate looked more closely, admittedly having paid little attention to his surroundings. The mummies were covered in spiders, skittering all about their bodies, repairing the damage that Fate caused them as soon as it was inflicted. “Jesus,” Fate muttered as he watched the tiny spiders work together. “What do you suggest?”
Again, Hector stifled a laugh. At least this arrangement was serving as a bit of comedy to him. “That’s nothing,” he continued. “Whatever you do, stay away from their weapons.”
As soon as Fate heard Hector mention weapons, the Sisterhood of the Blood Mummies, in unison, unsheathed their blades from between the folds of their silken wrappings. They raised them to the sky, close to touching the ceiling of the corridor, where the blades morphed into the shape of the moon.
“What the…?” was all that Fate could muster before, silently, the mummies rushed at him. He allowed his limbs to take control as Hector worked his body.
“The blade works in unison with the phases of the moon,” Hector resumed the lesson. Fate considered the aptitude involved on Hector’s part as Hector finagled the spells that kept Fate alive while simultaneously spouting such exposition. “The shape of the blade matches the shape of the moon in the sky.”
“I can see that,” Fate said as his hands danced with offensive spells. “Tell me something positive.”
“Not likely. Each change of the phase of the moon gives the blade a different effect. With twenty-eight phases, who knows what one would do to you?”
Fate blasted a hole clean through the torso of one of the oncoming mummies but the spiders worked to fill the injury instantly. Benjamin Stoner sat back within his own mind, resigned to indifference, realizing that he knew that he had to survive. He was the only person that the Fate pieces worked for, so it was impossible to contemplate his demise.
“I’m done listening, Hector,” he said. “Tell me when you’ve saved me.”
As Stoner’s apathy, a near super power in itself, grew to affect Hector on the other side of the link, the Blood Mummies drew blood. Stoner had taken his mind off of the business at hand for a single second and, with the slicing of the confusingly surreal blade, he would forever suffer its effects.
He yelped in pain as the blood flowed from his ribcage. Hector was yelling into his mind through the helmet. “Christ! Pay attention!” Hector yelled. “We both need to do this.”
“I’m hurt,” Fate said with surprise. Injury was not something he had considered; it seemed being Dr. Fate was above such things.
“We won’t know of the side effects until they start to show,” Hector said, his intensity growing. “You might forget how to read, or you might suddenly know how to count cards at the casino. There’s no way to tell what the after effects of the injury will be!”
Fate continued to protect itself, Hector working tirelessly. “Once we get you out of there, I’ll check you out,” he said, accidentally showing a hint of concern. He hated Stoner with all of his heart and soul. Compassion was surely inadvertent.
It was Stoner’s turn to laugh. The helmet made the laughter ring hollowly throughout the blue-hued corridor, strangely echoing. “You’re not a real doctor,” he chided. “You’ve called yourself Dr. Fate for so long that you’ve forgotten that you aren’t an actual doctor.”
“Four years of medical school before I became the Silver Scarab and tried to join the Justice Society, buddy,” Hector defended himself, surprised that it had been so long that he had brought up his past.
“I think the blade has caused me to dislike you even more, if that’s possible,” Stoner muttered into his helmet as the Blood Mummies had him surrounded.
“You might be right,” Hector replied, “because I already hate you more than I did a minute ago.”
As if controlling the magic of Dr. Fate while providing extensive intel to Stoner was not difficult enough, Hector’s cell phone began to ring. Jerry Was a Racecar Driver erupted from his pocket, giving Hector quite a start, considering he did not own a cell phone.
Hesitantly, Hector considered his approach. “Um, not to put you on alert or anything,” he said slowly, “but I have a cell phone ringing in my pocket.”
“Good for…you…” Stoner grunted as he fought the Blood Mummies.
“Well, you see, I don’t have a cell phone,” Hector said as he contemplated putting his hand in his pocket. “I have no idea how it got into my pants.”
“Ha!” Stoner guffawed despite his obvious preoccupation. “Don’t you have enough experience in all of this junk to know that you should expect to have cell phones spontaneously appearing in your pockets?”
“I’m going to answer it,” Hector replied as he pulled it from his pocket. He was impressed that it was a newer model smart phone; at least the inexplicable had good taste. He put the phone to his ear, expecting a conversation pulled from a horror movie. Far away, Dr. Fate’s hand moved to his ear, holding an invisible phone.
“Who is this?” Hector asked, masking his confusion with faux annoyance.
“Pull your man out of the Stronghold,” the deep voice responded. “We have agents in place.”
“I’ll ask again…Who is this?”
“I’m not at liberty to discuss that. Get your man out of the Stronghold or our people will be forced to treat him as a hostile.”
“Who is it?” Fate asked. “Tell him to call you back! I’m doing all I can to not wet my pants.”
“Shut up,” Hector whispered then redirected his attention to the man on the phone. He still fought Fate’s foes as he balanced two conversations and a horde of Blood Mummies at the same time. He was an Agent of Balance, after all. “I don’t have time for this, Mr. Ominous Caller. We have a job to do.”
The caller remained insistent. “There are agents in place,” he repeated, “not only within the Stronghold but also within your impenetrable tower. Pull your man.”
Hector suddenly felt that he was not alone. “You may be unfamiliar with the fact that I serve the Omniversal Balance. ‘My man’ is not going anywhere.”
“Then you are hereby considered hostile,” the man answered as the connection went dead.
“Sure,” Hector said as he tossed the phone to the ground. “Stoner, you’re about to get more company.”
“What kind of more company?”
Hector began running through the halls of his tower as he prepared further spells that Fate would need in the near future. “The kind of company that can sneak into the Tower of Fate and plant a phone in my pocket.”
Dr. Fate floated back to give himself some space, a momentary breather before resuming the seemingly endless scuffle with the Sisterhood of the Blood Mummies. The plan was simple on paper but had turned pear shaped almost immediately. All he had to do was get into the Stronghold, find the control bridge and crash the floating fortress into a mountain. All he had accomplished so far was obtain the knowledge that he hated mummies.
Within his helmet, he felt Hector running, heart rate accelerating. Fate began to get nervous, having relied on his reluctant partner to remain the calm one in these situations. The caller had obviously spooked him. The mummies silently pursued him as he mustered all that he could into his slow flight as he had embarrassingly low control over the powers he contained. He found himself breathing hard as he moved, out of breath from the exertion of Hector’s sprint. Fate had had no idea how much of a bond Hector had with the Helm of Fate until that moment.
He was pleasantly surprised to discover that Hector had not forgotten about him as the eyes of the helmet let loose beams of eldritch energies into the small crowd of mummies. “Take that, ridiculous monsters!” Fate exclaimed, realizing that he was not skilled in the arts of witty repartee.
He slowed his flight and set his feet on the ground, now farther away from his original target than he had been when he had first arrived. So far the mission was a smashing disappointment. His eyes continued the assault as it must have been easier for Hector to cast while running. Finally, Fate began to see the mummies falter.
Accumulating a small amount of confidence, Fate began to think that the arrangement he had with Hector might work out. His confidence was for nothing as the walls around him began to explode. As he hoped for a defensive spell to protect him from the falling debris, he received no response. His connection to Hector had been severed.
Just as Stoner was limited in his capabilities, so was Hector. While the Helm was occupied, his magic was otherwise incomplete. He had never considered the idea of an intruder in the tower; he was ill prepared to defend himself properly. Fortunately he had something in storage that could turn the tide to his favor, he just had to get to it.
An alternate Helm from an alternate universe had rested unused since it was acquired, collecting dust in what was supposed to be an impenetrable safe. Hector’s mind raced while he rushed, contemplating future upgrades to the tower’s security. Truth be told Hector had forgotten about the other helmet; his mind had been elsewhere until recently. He secretly hoped that he remembered where the thing was and could properly navigate the confusing layout of the tower to get to it.
Finally, he reached the door he hoped housed his objective, sliding to a stop as he snatched the handle. The hinges creaked as he pulled it open. Within the cobwebs of the small closet there was nothing on the shelves. Hector cursed as he discovered his mistake. “Where the Hell did I put it?” he said to himself, combing his memories with a mild magical tickle to his brain functions.
He turned, thinking that the helmet might rest in one of his inner sanctums. He was met with a gunshot to the chest, splaying the muscle and ribs as it tore into his lung. He dropped to the floor, awash with the realization that the other dimensional helmet was currently being stolen by someone or something completely unrelated to what was happening presently.
Quickly blacking out as his blood filled his mangled lung, he saw his attacked stroll to him as he collapsed. The clicking of her platform boot heels on the cold stone floor seemed unnaturally loud in his ears as his decelerating heart gushed his fluids to the ground. Through his haze of oncoming probable death he was not sure if the woman had four arms or not, although her green pallor and white streaked beehive hair led him to recognize her. She looked like the Bride of Frankenstein.
“You should have listened and pulled you guy out of there,” she said, her voice cold and dead. “I would say I’m sorry but stupidity doesn’t deserve an apology.”
Hector lost consciousness, leaving Stoner helpless in the belly of a terrible citadel. Their makeshift attempt to work as Dr. Fate was ended before it began.
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To Be Continued...
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