"Rags" Part Two
Dr. Fate emerged from a thick wall of fog on the edge of a great rampaging river. At his side, Blue Devil held onto his arm, making sure that Fate stayed near him at all times. They had been walking for hours through the unnaturally dense fog and Hector was unable to see his own hand in front of his face. Walking blind was extremely unnerving to Hector who was without the Helm of Nabu to grant him sight. Although he had regained the lost Amulet of Anubis, he was incomplete and at a decreased state without the helmet. "This river wasn't here before," Blue Devil proclaimed as he knelt down to touch the water on the bank of the river. "It was in the opposite direction when I was coming to get you." "I shouldn't be surprised I guess," Hector said. "Rivers changing directions and locations is probably the least bizarre thing I've seen today." "On a good day you can get to one place from another without having to cross some damn river," Blue Devil said as he tasted the water on his finger tips. "I guess this is one of the bad days," Dr. Fate answered. Blue Devil looked at Dr. Fate with a frown. "Now that you're here, the bad days are only gonna get worse." "I don't like the sound of that." Blue Devil hesitated for a moment then stuck out his tongue as if to protest the tastes in his mouth. "You know where we are, don't you?" he asked as he spat the contents of his mouth back into the river. "I think so," Hector replied, thinking back to the young girl with her brains leaking from her exposed skull. "We're in the Blood Gem." Blue Devil smiled and shook his head. "I wish we were in the Blood Gem," he said. "That'd be a frickin' vacation resort compared to this joint." "Then where are we?" Dr. Fate asked. He honestly had little clue to his whereabouts, his only conclusion proven false. "I can't say exactly," Blue Devil said as he stood to contemplate the contents of the river's water. "But it's bad. Bad enough to reduce the Sentinels of Magic to yours truly and a few others that are pale comparisons to their former selves." "Where are the others?" Fate inquired. "What happened to all of you in Feithera?" Blue Devil frowned again, a gruesome contortion of facial muscles. "I can't say exactly," he answered again. He looked as he desperately tried to recall how he had gotten to where he was but it was obvious that he had tried before and lost. "What about Faust? And Ragman? And Madame Xanadu?" Blue Devil shrugged in ignorance. "Beats me, but we could sure use them now." "Do you know anything?" Hector asked, growing into frustration. "What about my helmet? You said you knew where I could get it?" "Oh, that I know," Devil replied. "But we have to cross the river to get to him." "So?" Fate asked. "It's just a river. A river that moves around but still just a river." Blue Devil shook his head again, enhancing Fate's frustration while unaware of his own. "You first then," Devil said as he pushed Fate toward the embankment. As Hector stumbled and fell into the water, the last thing he saw was the red eyes of a grotesque blackbird perching itself onto Blue Devil's shoulder as the demon smiled. "You have come to save me," a raspy voice murmured into Lyta Hall's head. "I have saved you so that you can save me." Lyta could barely keep her bearings as she stood in the landscape of flowing rags. All around her, her eyes tried to focus on anything substantial but she could not differentiate the ground from the sky. She had narrowly avoided being pulled into the scenery but had been saved by this rasping man adorned in flowing, multi-colored patches. "I am the Ragman," he said. "A Sentinel of Magic. I have been here so very long." His words were slurred and quiet, his demeanor sluggish and defeated. "You have come to bring me back." Lyta considered for a moment. She did not know where she was nor did she know how to escape. "Where are we?" she asked, almost hesitant to bother the ragged man with her questions. "We are inside of me," he said. "Inside the rags where the bad men go when I get them. It is a place that makes bad men wish for death and good men…" he trailed off. "How do we escape?" Lyta asked, hoping for a more understandable answer. "I thought I was doing good," he said, ignoring her question all together. "Now I know that I was wrong. I thought I was a good man but I am a bad man and this place makes bad men-" "Wish for death. Yeah, I got it." Ragman's absent eyes darted to her as she spoke, growing large at some unheard noise. He looked as if in a panic as he hid himself behind her. "We must hurry," he muttered. "You have to get us out of here before she comes to get me again!" She looked around her, seeing only the interlineate landscape that defied her logic. Only she and Ragman existed for as far as she could see. Ragman breathed heavily on her back, his breath condensing on her clothes. She nudged him to get him to back away. As she did so, he yelped and fell back. She turned to apologize for knocking him down; she sometimes had trouble gauging her strength but discovered that he had fallen for a different reason altogether. A little blond girl looked up at her and Ragman scurried away from her feet. The girl's fawn-like eyes were wide in wonder as she licked a lollipop. Ragman whimpered in fear, obviously not the man that had been a fearsome legend of the dark for years, ridding the scum of the earth from the underbelly of society. He was horrified of this girl. "I met your boyfriend," the girl said to Lyta as Ragman hid. "He broke my head." Lyta kneeled down to touch the girl, enamored by the innocence that the girl projected. She touched the girl's head gently and felt the warm soft spot that had regrown over her broken skull. "He's not my boyfriend, he's my husband," Lyta corrected. "I'm sure he didn't mean to do such a thing. It must have been an accident." The girl frowned as she touched Lyta's wrist. It was evident that her head was still tender and it was discomforting to be touched. "It wasn't an accident," the girl said. "He was trying to steal something from me." She moved her hand into her pocket and pulled out the red gem and showed it to Lyta. "He wants this now. He already stole my golden saucer now he wants my Blood Gem." She looked as if she wanted to cry as she hugged the Blood Gem as if it were a furry little kitten. As a tear sprouted from the corner of her eye, the girl began to change. "He won't have it!" she cried. "It's mine! MINE!!" She pushed Lyta down and, lightning fast, jumped on her chest. The girl's eyes had changed into cold slivers of blazing anger, irises slit like those of a cat and her cloven tongue hung from her mouth as she cried. Lyta tried to defend herself, sweeping the girl's legs with her arm across her chest. The girl effortlessly hopped over the swing and landed with incredible force on Lyta's ribcage. As she grunted in discomfort, Lyta looked around to Ragman, who had balled up into the fetal position and quivered in terror. "Ragman!" Lyta pleaded. "Help!" Ragman peeked up to watch as he shook. "I am not…" he tried to blather a sentence but lurched back into a ball. He was not fit to help her whatsoever. The girl pounded her foot once again into Lyta's chest, this time met with a meaty crunch of broken sternum. Lyta's eyes opened wide as she attempted to scream in pain but the blood in her throat buried all sound. The girl, confident in her fatal blow, dismounted Lyta Hall and walked casually to the cowering Ragman. "On your feet, sniveling Ragman," the girl shouted, her voice a growling low that did not fit her miniature form. "Get up and show me your true face." Ragman slowly dragged himself from the ground and grabbed his patched hood. He pulled it free from his face, revealing his receding black hair, his hollow blue eyes and his beak-like over-sized nose. Raina smiled as she realized Ragman's true identity. She clapped her hands in jubilation over Lyta Hall's fallen body. The unmasked Ragman began to cry as Raina touched his arm, clasping to it as she began to lead him elsewhere. "Dr. Fate will be soooooo happy to see you, Dr. Stoner," she giggled. "So happy that he might just die." Upon contact with the icy water, Dr. Fate was bombarded with the same terrible visions that had plagued him earlier. Skinned humans, buried body parts, parts of brains all over the place, etc. Fortunately this time, Fate had the Amulet of Anubis and therefore a portion of his power. As quickly as he could, pushing through the disconcertion of the images flooding his mind, he took to the sky. The visions subsided as he gained altitude and surveyed the riverbank for Blue Devil. The behemoth had sat on the side of the river surrounded on all sides but the waterside by blackbirds, each one three times the size of a normal blackbird. He was grinning as he sat, feeding the birds from his palm. As Dr. Fate swooped down to accost Blue Devil, he noticed that the Devil was feeding the birds hunks of his own innards. Through a self-inflicted wound in his belly, Blue Devil had opened up his own gut to feed these monstrous avians. Momentarily shocked, Dr. Fate landed farther away from the scene than he had originally intended. Cautiously, Fate approached Devil through the flock. "What are you doing, Dan?" Fate asked, using Blue Devil given mortal name, a name scarcely used since Blue Devil demonic rebirth. Blue Devil turned to Fate as he asked. He looked as if nothing were amiss. "Don't sweat it, Hector," he said. "This is the only way to get to the other side. Plus, I know this guy. He's been here forever." "What guy?" Fate asked. "Doesn't that hurt?" "You ask a lot of questions, Fate. You sure you're Dr. Fate?" Hector was further frustrated by Blue Devil's uncooperativeness. He felt at least one of them should explain something. "I don't have as much power without the Helmet. I can't just know things without it. So, who's this guy you're talking about?" Blue Devil turned back to the birds and scooped a flesh gob of innards out of his stomach gash. As he held it out to the birds, he smiled as they pecked. "I don't know his name," he said. "I know that he has your Helmet and I know he likes his birds well fed." "I won't disembowel myself to get my Helmet back," Fate assured. "Then somebody else has to," Devil stated. "Since it doesn't hurt me, I figured I'd volunteer. I've been though tons worse than this." "When will we be taken across the river?" Hector asked, after having been in the water he knew that it was un-crossable. The birds started to rustle around in a calamitous roar, flapping their wings and squawking their indecent call. One by one they took flight and quickly formed a black cloud as they merged together in the dark sky. "Real soon," Devil said as he looked at the remaining guts in his palm that had not been eaten. He contemplated them for a few seconds and then ate them himself. "Real soon." In a burst of terrible agony, Lyta Hall coughed her way to consciousness. Her sternum had shattered and caved into her heart, piercing it fatally. As her body stopped working, something began to take its place. Sluggishly, her mangled heart and battered bones were healed back into working order, restoring her to as she was. Expecting to see nothing but the flowing of the patchwork reality when she opened her eyes, she was pleasantly surprised when she saw a regular ceiling above her and a mundane room surrounding her. The room's sole occupant sat in a creaking rocking chair, asleep and snoring loud enough to wake the dead. Lyta rose from the matt she was revived upon and inspected the sleeping man. His disheveled hair was matted to his sweating head, his black sunglasses covering his closed eyes. Thinking with difficulty after so much recent disorientation, Lyta eventually recognized the man. "Wake up, Faust," she demanded. Sebastian Faust was the son of the evil sorcerer Felix Faust. His father had, in a desperate attempt to gain power over realms not akin to man's comprehension, sacrificed Sebastian's soul. In a twist Felix Faust could never have anticipated, his son was granted the power that the father had sought. Sebastian Faust had fought ever since to regain his missing soul. Faust's eyes fluttered open and he gasped in surprise as he gained full consciousness. She smiled at him reassuringly as he regained his composure. "I'm sorry," Faust said in his thick British accent. "I have terrible dreams when I perchance to dream. It's this damn place." "I have a million questions for you," Lyta said to prepare Faust for the inquiries that she had collected. "How did we get inside of Ragman's cloak?" Faust straightened himself in his rocking chair. "Oh," he said. "We're not inside of Ragman's cloak, Susan. We're somewhere else entirely." "I'm Lyta, Faust. Lyta Hall. Not Susan. I live in Susan's body now," Lyta explained. Had she been able to see Faust's eyes, she would have noticed his aversion of his line of sight. Faust put his hand on Lyta's shoulder and smiled into her eyes. "I'm sorry," he muttered. "It's not a problem," she answered. "No need to apologize. I imagine a lot of people will get mixed up, especially if they've ever had the misfortune of meeting Susan Jacobs." "I'm not sorry about that," Faust corrected. "I'm sorry that you don't know." "Don't know what?" "You're not Lyta Hall." To Be Continued... Previous Issue | Next Issue |
