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arts / rec.arts.comics.creative / [ASH] REPOST: ASH #121 - City of Night Part 2: Sub illa Umbra

SubjectAuthor
* [ASH] REPOST: ASH #121 - City of Night Part 2: Sub illa UmbraDave Van Domelen
`- Re: [ASH] REPOST: ASH #121 - City of Night Part 2: Sub illa UmbraDrew Nilium

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[ASH] REPOST: ASH #121 - City of Night Part 2: Sub illa Umbra

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From: dvan...@eyrie.org (Dave Van Domelen)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.comics.creative
Subject: [ASH] REPOST: ASH #121 - City of Night Part 2: Sub illa Umbra
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 2021 17:31:21 -0000 (UTC)
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 by: Dave Van Domelen - Mon, 11 Oct 2021 17:31 UTC

[cover shows a group of people in winter clothing huddled around
a burning sofa against an absolutely dark night. The harsh
shadows they cast on the alley walls are twisted into demonic
shapes that seem to be mocking their plight.]

.|. COHERENT COMICS UNINCORPORATED presents ACADEMY OF SUPER-HEROES #122
--X------------------------------------------------------------------------
'|` /|(`| | City of Night Part 3 of 6 - Sub illa Umbra
/-|.)|-| copyright 2018 by Dave Van Domelen
___________________________________________________________________________

ACADEMY OF SUPER-HEROES ROLL CALL

CODENAME REAL NAME POWERS ASSIGNMENT
-------- --------- ------ ----------
Solar Max Jonathan Zachary Spacetime Control AMERICA
"JakZak" Taylor
Meteor Sarah Grant-Taylor Superspeed AMERICA
Poniente Esmeralda Colina Wind Mage AMERICA
Scorch Scott Handleman Pyrokinetic CANADA
Centurion Salvatore Napier Strength, Regeneration MEXICO
Fury Arin Kelsey Concussion Blasts MEXICO
Contact Aaron Zander Psi, Mind-over-Body DIPLOMATIC
Breaker Christina Li Telekinesis DIPLOMATIC
Essay Sara Ana Henderson Gadgeteer VENUS
Peregryn Howard Henderson Jr. Elemental Mage VENUS
Beacon George Sylvester Living Light VENUS
Geode Unknown Living Crystal VENUS
Lightfoot Tom Dodson Velocity Control TRANSIT
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[January 12, 2027 - Berlin, Germany, outside the dome]

Giselle Schatten resisted the temptation to check the time on her
gray-cell for the third time in as many heartbeats. It was time, she could
feel that in her soul more surely than any piece of technology could
indicate. She focused her goddess-granted power on the achingly distant dome
of shadow.
The dome started to twist upwards in the middle, a tendril reaching up
into the icy clear January sky. Giselle felt a thrill up her spine as the
shadow working exceeded anything she could have accomplished on her own, and
resolved into the form of the goddess. What happened next was not her doing,
but she knew she'd played an important part.
A booming contralto issued forth from everywhere at once, the dome
itself shaking like a titanic speaker. "Berlin is henceforth and forever
more the City of Night," it intoned. "The domain of Lord Ebon, under the
regency of Lady Sable!"
The message repeated several times in various languages, and then the
shadowy goddess astride the world evaporated into the wind as Giselle
relaxed. In many ways, it felt like she'd run a marathon while the power of
an electric main surged through her, but it also felt like the best sex she'd
ever had times a million.
Service had its rewards, even if it had its cost as well, a temporary
separation from the Dark Lady, her goddess on Earth. But her task was
complete, and it was time to return to the embrace of the shadows.

Much later, as night fell on the rest of Berlin, Giselle finally evaded
the last of the thin-spread police and military patrols and touched the
purity of the dome. She expected it to soften and let her pass through, but
it didn't yield to her touch, being harder than steel and as cold as ice.
"Did I displease you, my goddess?" she whispered forlornly to the night
sky. She stayed, moving only to avoid patrols, until the sky began to
lighten with the dawn. Dark tears staining her heavily kohled cheeks, she
fled the coming of dawn lest she be discovered and add betrayal and discovery
to whatever sins she had unknowingly committed.

* * * *

[January 13, 2027 - Berlin, Germany, outside the dome]

"Before we begin," Arc addressed the motley crowd in the commandeered
conference room of an evacuated office building, "thank you all for
restraining from any 'about time you asked for help' comments or passive-
aggressive looks. Europe seems to be attracting trouble beyond any nation's
ability to handle, and I suppose we should get a more formal set of embassies
and exchanges in place once this current crisis is over."
There was silent agreement from most of the room. Between Paris,
Monaco, and now Berlin, Europe's major cities had certainly seen a
disproportionate share of recent "worldbeater" activity. ASH was represented
by Solar Max, Poniente, an icon of Peregryn, Contact, and a young Academy
graduate named Daniel Tang. The other EUROPA superhumans were coordinating
patrols and the work being done to lessen the environmental impact in the
area around Berlin. A scattering of other mystic experts were also present,
but they were generally on their best behavior.
A notable exception was the Khadamite representative, who decided a smug
espression was called for. True, his nation had been the first in the modern
era to cause problems for Europe, but they'd also been instrumental in saving
Monaco. Sadi Pasteur (not his birth name) may have lacked the power to lobby
for a position among the elite of the Conclave, but his thorough research
background and scientific approach to magic had called its leader's attention
to the young French-Algerian mage. Glyph was always one to prefer the
hermetic style to the wild mage. He could barely light a candle with his own
power, but since Glyph herself was unwelcome in the Eurasian Union, he was
the best choice for this mission.
As to what Glyph herself was doing, Sadi had only suspicions, but they
included a strong desire to be outside the blast radius in case she decided
cauterization was the best cure.
"I'm guessing from most of your faces that none of you have good news,"
Arc continued, trying to avoid looking at Sadi. "Rechtigkeit tells me that
the spirit in his axe has been silent, so nothing from my team's limited
magical bench."
"I could sense nothing," Poniente shrugged. "As in, there's a hole in
the world as far as my scrying is concerned. My patron is strangely silent
on the matter, although he is somewhat geographically limited at the best of
times." A denizen of the awkward gray area between supernatural and divine,
the spirit of the west wind had survived the erection of the Barrier to lock
out the gods because he had been in a different trap, one Poniente had freed
him from in her first mission as Peregryn's apprentice. But he was still
fundamentally a spirit of a place, and Berlin was quite far from that place.
The enchanted tablet propped on the table spoke with Peregryn's face and
voice, a decided improvement over the magically animated self-portrait he had
first used to communicate beyond his exile on Venus. "I believe that Lady
Sable has altered the nature of the dome since making her announcement,
likely a response to our attempts to use Anchors to weaken it. I am too far
away to directly sense as well as Poniente can, but I concur with her
findings. Where the dome had been semi-permeable before, it is now rigid.
It no longer grows, neither does it shrink."
"Delaying tactic," Polla Hectrix, aka Terrastar, shrugged. If there was
anyone in the room that no one trusted, it was her rather than Sadi. That
she hadn't broken her promises to the world's governments yet after being
restored to her body [in ASH #113 - ed.] meant very little beyond the fact
she didn't consider the time to be right. But she was a mage with a doubly
unique perspective, thanks to her extradimensional origin and the fact she'd
been used as a pawn in one of Lady Sable's schemes. "Whatever Sable's
specific plans are, her endgame is fairly clear: she's trying to become a
god, or the next best thing. She says it's in the name of Lord Ebon, but
I've dealt with her sort before, she wants the power herself. She has a
whole city to work with, or at least a significant portion of one, but will
need time to either gain their worship or arrange a sacrifice. She must have
spent what reserves she had by now, and the grand proclamation was just to
make us hesitate."
"Mr. Tang, do you have any insights?" Arc asked the young-looking
Chinese-American at the table.
"I'm flattered to be included in this, I guess I made a better
impression at my audition than I thought. Congrats on the job, by the way,"
he nodded to Poniente. [Daniel Tang was interviewed for the position of
Peregryn's apprentice in ASH #114 - Ed.] "Whatever's blocking scrying is
definitely above my ability to get past, which in itself says something. It
feels like trying to scry back past July 1998. Maybe not as strong a block,
but in the same ballpark."
Arc noticed a distinct nervousness on Tang's face, more than could be
ascribed to just being in the same room with some of the world's biggest
magical heavy hitters. Maybe he just didn't like people knowing how easily
he could find out their secrets...hell, Claire didn't like that a whole lot,
despite assurances that the deceptively young-looking man needed a personal
connection or physical proximity to delve into someone's past or present.
Maybe he worried that being in the same room as Terrastar would make her
think he could scry her? Probably that, or Pasteur.
Solar Max finally spoke up, having kept his peace out of deference to
Arc's jurisdiction and his own lack of mystic background. "The one thing we
know for sure about Lady Sable after our encounter with her is that she
prefers no one know anything for sure about her. She takes the whole shadow
thing very much to heart. She's already made at least one attempt at
reviving one of Lord Ebon's old plans [ASH #110-113 - Ed.] and could be
trying a different one...or could be making it look like she is in order to
hide her real plans."
"This is unlikely to be a variation on one of Ebon's failed attempts at
godhood," Pasteur spoke up. "He was very much a classic mage, oldest of old
school. His plots always relied on mystic convergences, dates of special
importance, that sort of thing. And while it's true that every day is
important to some culture, Ebon never seemed to deviate from the Hermetic
traditions. He'd have launched something like this on the Solstice or
Equinox, or near the date of an eclipse, for maximum symbolic resonance. I
suppose his birthday could be coming up, we don't know what day that was."
"He never mentioned it to me, at least," Solar Max nodded thoughtfully,
drawing a few confused and concerned looks from around the table. "Um, I had
a time travel accident or two. Or three. I may or may not have met Iago
Montessi before he became Lord Ebon. [In ASH #31 - Ed.] My relationship
with the timestream is somewhat tempestuous. Let's just say that any
solution to our current problem that involves me trying to time travel would
probably leave us in a worse place than if I did nothing."
"Sable could be playing a long game, hoping to hold the city long enough
for the Equinox," Poniente suggested. "In any case, while a lot of lore was
lost in 98, I'd have thought that with all the talent in this room we'd have
something better than my 'there's a hole in the world.'"
Arc sighed and looked down at the table. "I was hoping as much myself.
Marshal Noire has been recalled from Venus and should be here soon to see if
her shadow-melding will let her in, but for now we're out of ideas. It's as
if Lady Sable has found a new trick that's unknown to the mages of two
worlds."
"Or a very, very OLD trick," Peregryn's image mused.


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Re: [ASH] REPOST: ASH #121 - City of Night Part 2: Sub illa Umbra

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From: pwer...@gmail.com (Drew Nilium)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.comics.creative
Subject: Re: [ASH] REPOST: ASH #121 - City of Night Part 2: Sub illa Umbra
Date: Wed, 3 Nov 2021 05:13:58 -0000 (UTC)
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 by: Drew Nilium - Wed, 3 Nov 2021 05:13 UTC

On 10/11/21 1:31 PM, Dave Van Domelen wrote:
> [cover shows a group of people in winter clothing huddled around
> a burning sofa against an absolutely dark night. The harsh
> shadows they cast on the alley walls are twisted into demonic
> shapes that seem to be mocking their plight.]

Sweet visuals <3.<3

> Giselle Schatten resisted the temptation to check the time on her
> gray-cell for the third time in as many heartbeats. It was time, she could
> feel that in her soul more surely than any piece of technology could
> indicate. She focused her goddess-granted power on the achingly distant dome
> of shadow.
> The dome started to twist upwards in the middle, a tendril reaching up
> into the icy clear January sky. Giselle felt a thrill up her spine as the
> shadow working exceeded anything she could have accomplished on her own, and
> resolved into the form of the goddess. What happened next was not her doing,
> but she knew she'd played an important part.

ooooooooh, love viewpoint of the bad guys :D

> The message repeated several times in various languages, and then the
> shadowy goddess astride the world evaporated into the wind as Giselle
> relaxed. In many ways, it felt like she'd run a marathon while the power of
> an electric main surged through her, but it also felt like the best sex she'd
> ever had times a million.

X3 <3 <3 <3 Love it.

> Much later, as night fell on the rest of Berlin, Giselle finally evaded
> the last of the thin-spread police and military patrols and touched the
> purity of the dome. She expected it to soften and let her pass through, but
> it didn't yield to her touch, being harder than steel and as cold as ice.
> "Did I displease you, my goddess?" she whispered forlornly to the night
> sky. She stayed, moving only to avoid patrols, until the sky began to
> lighten with the dawn. Dark tears staining her heavily kohled cheeks, she
> fled the coming of dawn lest she be discovered and add betrayal and discovery
> to whatever sins she had unknowingly committed.

Awwwww bby

> A notable exception was the Khadamite representative, who decided a smug
> espression was called for. True, his nation had been the first in the modern
> era to cause problems for Europe, but they'd also been instrumental in saving
> Monaco. Sadi Pasteur (not his birth name) may have lacked the power to lobby
> for a position among the elite of the Conclave, but his thorough research
> background and scientific approach to magic had called its leader's attention
> to the young French-Algerian mage. Glyph was always one to prefer the
> hermetic style to the wild mage. He could barely light a candle with his own
> power, but since Glyph herself was unwelcome in the Eurasian Union, he was
> the best choice for this mission.

I like this bad guy too! :D <3

> "I believe that Lady
> Sable has altered the nature of the dome since making her announcement,
> likely a response to our attempts to use Anchors to weaken it. I am too far
> away to directly sense as well as Poniente can, but I concur with her
> findings. Where the dome had been semi-permeable before, it is now rigid.
> It no longer grows, neither does it shrink."

Ahhhhh, I see I see.

> "Delaying tactic," Polla Hectrix, aka Terrastar, shrugged. If there was
> anyone in the room that no one trusted, it was her rather than Sadi.

Oh fuck yeah Terrastar. :D :D :D

> "Whatever's blocking scrying is
> definitely above my ability to get past, which in itself says something. It
> feels like trying to scry back past July 1998. Maybe not as strong a block,
> but in the same ballpark."

Oooooh interesting

> Ebon never seemed to deviate from the Hermetic
> traditions. He'd have launched something like this on the Solstice or
> Equinox, or near the date of an eclipse, for maximum symbolic resonance. I
> suppose his birthday could be coming up, we don't know what day that was."

Happy DEATHday to you!!

> Arc sighed and looked down at the table. "I was hoping as much myself.
> Marshal Noire has been recalled from Venus and should be here soon to see if
> her shadow-melding will let her in, but for now we're out of ideas. It's as
> if Lady Sable has found a new trick that's unknown to the mages of two
> worlds."
> "Or a very, very OLD trick," Peregryn's image mused.

oooooh interesting

> The mages of this world had been reluctant
> to reveal much to her, knowing she had been counted among her old home's
> worst villains, but she did know that their gods did war against each other
> here as well. That there were entire pantheons banished from history by the
> struggles of the mighty.

*Excellent* parallel.

> The new world's information technology was at once familiar and
> strange, advanced and retrograde. The new world lacked a number of things
> that had started to become familiar in the old, despite a seeming passage of
> nearly a generation, but more than compensated in other ways.

Yeah, legit. o3o

> Syncretism. Pieces of old faith buried under new. The Western African
> ways of worship seemed to resonate with aspects of M'emba's own faith, but so
> much had been lost or altered by colonial powers.

Mmmmmm yeah @.@

> The god who had ultimately rallied all other remaining gods against him,
> to empower the heroes to strike him down utterly.
> She could not remember his name, but she did know he had been destroyed
> over a year before the end of the world.
> Or had he?
> Could the god of death truly die?

:D :D :D Weirdly, I just wrote a scene that touched on this kind of idea.

> Emergency backups were reserved for
> crucial services such as hospitals and maintaining the water system...people
> could at least turn the tap and get water, so they could starve to death
> rather than die of thirst.

What a powerful line.

> One positive, Gerd mused, was that it forced people to come together.
> He'd learned more about his neighbors in the past few "days" than he had the
> entire time he'd lived in the building.

Well. >.>

> Looking out the window, Gerd only saw the flickering lights in scattered
> windows, and a few buildings looming out of the darkness limned every so
> faintly by distant bonfires. Sometimes the shadows moved in ways that a
> flickering flame couldn't explain, but he tried not to think about those....

Nice and creepy. <3

> Sara Jane Howard, also known as NAC Marshal Noire, moved carefully
> through the darkened city. None of the normal people moving about furtively
> from flame to flickering window could hope to see her, not with so many deep
> shadows in which to hide, but that voice in the back of her head was even
> more insistent now that she was on Earth and inside the Berlin dome. It was
> more of a gabble of voices, an umbral parliament holding session ever closer
> to her presence.
> She hadn't told anyone about the voices. She was needed here, no one
> else could get into the dome, and she didn't want to be benched.
> Now she wondered if that had been a bad idea.

Yeah maybe a little!! o3o;;;

> And yet, amidst the cacophony of whispers there seemed to be a lone
> soothing tone, humming in the background and making her feel...not safe,
> maybe, but protected.

oooooooh fascinating.

> She placed a shadowy hand against the surface, which felt far less
> yielding than it had from the outside.
> Then she pushed hard against it...and fell into the welcoming darkness.

Ohboy. o.o

> "Marshal Howard is still recovering, but the data she brought back at
> least confirms that people are alive inside the dome,"

Oh okay. @.@v

> "So, this is a high security state secret thing," Hesse ventured.
> "Given that even STRAFE has been kept out of the loop on this."
> "Highest security," Arc nodded. "STRAFE knows in the persons of Dan
> Tracey and a few others, but it has been kept very compartmentalized. My
> government had a similarly narrow vote on letting all the people in this room
> in on the secret, and we have notified the Chinese states as well. We were
> recently made aware of the existence of a sort of interdimensional nexus, and
> we're confident Lady Sable doesn't know about it and can't block access to
> and from Berlin via this method. So we could use it as a pathway into the
> dome. But one danger is that our use of it might alert her to its presence,
> and if she gets into it it could be bad."
> "I know the sound of a 'but wait, it's worse' when I hear one,"
> Terrastar quirked an eyebrow.
> "I think I know what they're talking about," Rechtigkeit turned to face
> her. "I've been there. It has a sort of mind of its own, and it wants to
> suborn anyone who enters, make them work for it. We've agreed to leave it
> alone and keep it secret, since the more people know about it, the more
> likely it is that someone," he turned to face Pasteur, "will think they can
> resist its power.


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