Masks Seventeen: Part Thirteen

by

Rodford Edmiston

Five people from Academy Security, a doctor and two nurses and Dr. Piano were waiting when Talisman regained consciousness. Whatever Piano had done to her took hours to wear off, though Talisman had stirred repeatedly in the last twenty minutes. Finally she muttered something sleepily, yawned and tried to raise her hand to cover her mouth. Only to open her eyes in confusion when she realized her arm was being held down. She stared at the restraints, the bed rails, the people around her, looking increasingly alarmed.

"What..."

Lori Savage stepped into her field of view.

"Can you understand me?"

"Yes..."

"Renee Sowder, aka Talisman, you are under arrest for consorting with demons, soul binding, assault, aiding and abetting murder and attempted murder and collusion with a hostile agency in the recent attack on this island. You are also charged with the kidnapping and attempted murder of Denise Bolivar."

"Let me go!"

She jerked at the restraints, but this was a hospital prepared for superhuman patients.

Lori named a few other charges, and then the legal protections Talisman was entitled to under the Island's laws and the Academy's charter.

"Do you have anything you wish to say in regard to these matters?"

"I am the chosen of Dabbaddan! You will not hold me!"

She began struggling so hard that the doctor quickly prepared and injected a sedative into her IV line. During the tense minutes this needed to work Talisman cursed those around her, called upon her dark lord for help, tried to cast spells and threatened everyone in the room and some who weren't. She finally passed out, still murmuring dire warnings.

* * *

"Just what was she trying to do?" said Andrea, at the briefing on the Talisman situation right after lunch.

"Oh, sorry; thought everyone knew that," said Dr. Piano. "She was planning to use the life energy of an empowered innocent to summon her dark lord."

"Gah!" said Lori, shuddering. "That is the thing you said that giant demon was a lieutenant for? I am definitely upping the bonus to those two guards for thinking to check that old bunker."

"How is Renee?" said Andrea.

"Being kept under moderate sedation," said Dr. Piano. He was remaining on the island for a while as a consultant, to help deal with the aftermath of recent events. "I consulted with the school psychologist and she agrees with me that Talisman is currently delusional. She needs to be conscious for psychotherapy to work. However, she is still quite a potent spell caster, which means we must be very careful about letting her be too clear headed at the moment. Ettienne believes he can help the situation with some specialty healing spells, but whether that will actually work is outside my field of expertise."

"What about Denise Bolivar?"

"In roughly the same condition, though for different reasons," said Dr. Piano. "Ettienne believes that her innocence and the fact that she was unconscious and unaware for most of what happened spared her the emotional and spiritual brunt of Talisman's ritual. She's being kept in a condition of induced sleep until we can perform a thorough thaumaturgical examination."

"Who or what is this Dabbaddan?" said Eve, not quite keeping the anger out of her voice.

"I have never heard that name before," said Dr. Piano. "I'll ask around, but my suspicion is that whatever the master is called, it gave her a false name. Or perhaps that she never spoke with the master directly at all, but was deceived even in that."

"Oh, lovely," said Eve, sourly. "A gullible young woman, motivated by feelings of inadequacy, makes a deal with a devil and costs several lives and millions of dollars in damage."

"It should not have happened!" said Andrea, exasperated. "She was kidded some by other students but she wasn't being bullied, she showed no sign that she was more than somewhat dissatisfied with her life here, she revealed no clues as to what she planned..."

"The only unusual thing was her increase in power," said Eve, nodding. "Since she was trying hard to prove herself her teachers thought the change was due to greater effort alone."

"To help prevent the success of such subterfuge in the future, there are things which can be done to monitor for supernatural activity which have not been done," said Dr. Piano. "That leaves the reason for why they were not done before. Which reason is - to echo Miss Kenniman - that they should not have been necessary."

"I beg your pardon?" said Andrea.

"Until that minor incubus began causing trouble many months ago, there were no indications that this was a troubled place. Even allowing for the at-the-time-unsuspected problem caused by the zero-point generator such an imp should not have been able to enter our world here. This island simply isn't old enough to allow such things. For a while I - and the other mages investigating that situation - thought the creature must have been summoned elsewhere and brought here physically. Now I'm not so certain."

"One of the reasons we chose this place for the school is the lack of ectotheric potentiation," said Eve. She smiled at Piano's expression. "I may not be a mage, Doctor, but I have been around them and other magical creatures long enough to have a basic understanding of such things."

"Of course."

"Well I appreciated the information," said Andrea. "I didn't know about any of this."

"What are you talking about?" said Lori, looking dazed. "Ectotheric potentiation? What..."

"Human activity generates patterns in the ectothere; the basic stuff of magic," said Dr. Piano. "Certain types of activity more than others. Even praying or meditating repeatedly in the same spot can potentiate that area. That is one reason that places such as several locations in the British Isles - in fact, the entire nation to a lesser extent - and the old cities of Egypt are more prone to supernatural events."

"So, since this island was sea floor until the Sixties, it hasn't been around long enough for such activities to have a significant effect," said Andrea, nodding with understanding. "In that case, why did this happen?"

"Why were demons attracted to this newborn place? I have no idea. Even the nearest Subterran tunnel was well below and far to one side of this location. The effects created by the zero point generator alone should not have been sufficient."

"We need to find out," said Lori, speaking for the first time in many minutes.

* * *

"One bit of good news," said Junker, a little later in a short update meeting on infrastructure repair with Eve and the support staff. "On a hunch I spoke to some of the old henchfolk still living on the island. Asked them if they knew of any backup generators Pine might have used and we haven't found, yet. Three of them mentioned that he originally powered the base with a geothermal power plant, the works of which should still be in a chamber deep under the base."

"Oh, good news, indeed!" said Eve. She winced. "Well, if it wasn't wrecked by all the demonic activity."

"If it is still there, and if the equipment is still useable or repairable, we might - Might! - be able to put it back in operation," said Junker, pointedly. "Accounts vary as to whether Pine carefully mothballed it - Old George thinks it was, another of those we spoke to thinks it wasn't, the third had no idea - or just welded the door shut."

"Great," said Template, sounding tired. "Another tunnel exploration mission."

* * *

The world at large had little idea of the turmoil faced by certain small parts of it, and how nearly the recent events had come to endangering all of it. Dismissing the vague and often hysterical reports of demon attacks, two men met and talked quietly.

"Well, they took her," said Lawrence Diddlebach. "Now what? This helps my Mother but for how long? My insurance is already making noises about disallowing the expense. Why does this have to be so hard?!"

That last was a wail of despair.

Seymour Lewis had taken a personal interest in the man's case because his own - though non-super - father had similar problems. He wasn't quite as distressed over that situation as Mr. Diddlebach was over his, but realized that might change as his father got older.

"Most costumed supers don't get old," said Lewis, gently. He had done some research into the situation because of this case, and been mildly surprised at what he found. "They tend to either die with their boots on, usually by late middle age, or to be sufficiently resistant to the effects of aging not to have this problem. Those exceptions either have regeneration and stay young until something kills them or tend to age gracefully. They also usually have family in the business - or at least with powers, too - who can take care of them. Even the exceptions to that generally remain compos until the very end, or close enough that they can't cause much trouble. Having someone stay physically capable of causing superhuman problems while suffering from some form of dementia is... Well, this may be unique."

"I love my Mother," said Mr. Diddlebach, tears streaming down his face. "God help me, I can't help wishing she won't live much longer. Not just because it would help me, but because it would end her confusion."

* * *

Even though the cleanup of the various defeated incursions was still underway - and the undefeated ones were being located and dealt with or at least contained - planners were already considering their options for preventing any more such events. In most of the regions affected and many which weren't people were talking - often reluctantly - to experts on the supernatural. The answers were usually along the same lines.

"We did some research into Pine's early days," said Tiger, on the island for a definitely non-casual visit, late the day after the attempt by Talisman to summon her master. "It appears that for a while Pine collected magical artifacts of various types to examine. Apparently, he hoped to uncover that they actually worked on some yet-undiscovered scientific principle. Whatever he learned studying those - and he may have found clues which led to his zero-point breakthrough, though that seems unlikely - when he was finished he incinerated the lot. I suspect out of frustration, though those of his lackeys interviewed couldn't say. He wasn't the type to explain his actions."

Several of the others present looked worried about that. Eve looked angry. Dr. Piano was obviously distressed.

"That was an extraordinarily bad idea," said Eve, scowling.

"Insanity!" said Dr. Piano. "Destroying any sort of magical item improperly releases... well, bad stuff. Destroying multiple items, most likely made in different eras by different means for different purposes involving different supernatural creatures..."

"Just how do you permanently seal a rift in space which leads to a demon realm?" said Template, quickly and worriedly in the silence which followed that. "I heard several people suggest concrete or grout as purely physical plugs, but some of the mystics said something about ur-ectothere. What is that?"

"It's... it's like hyperspatial spackle," said Tiger, frowning hard in concentration and making vague gestures with his hands as he tried to describe something English was not meant to deal with. "That'll work for the smaller rifts. However, the biggest here - the one the lieutenant came through - will need something more like hyperspatial grout. Maybe even hyperspatial reinforced concrete."

Tiger had flown in from California with some of the Bay Area Guardians. All of those on the suborbital hopper had a good reason to come here once the immediate problems there had been deal with. In Tiger's case, his presence had been specifically requested by Eve. Perhaps because he was usually able to translate the arcane speech of the mages and mystics into something more understandable by folks who were neither.

"How do you know so much about this?!" said Dr. Piano. "I know you're a creature of magic, but..."

"My world had a similar problem, after the Gifting," said Tiger, looking sad at the memories. "We patched and repaired and mended, but eventually about half the Gifted had to leave."

"That's why you're here," said Template, in revelation. "I mean, on our world."

"Indirectly. I keep getting caught in dimensional rifts, and was dragged kicking and screaming into your world back in your Thirties. I made several more visits voluntarily, some with Tal. When it became obvious some of us Gifted had to leave our world to ease the problem, she and I and a few others decided to move here."

"Why, though, is our world being affected in this way?" said Template, distractedly tapping her pen on the conference table they sat around.

"Partially it's due to the way the congruences of dimensional planes shift over time," said Piano. "Partly to an increase in the numbers of both creatures of magic and people who have learned to use magic. Both due to the increasing human population."

"Wait... So, this is going to get worse?!"

"Yeah," said Tiger, with a casual shrug. "More magic, more magical creatures, more incursions. Fun times."

"There are things we can do," said Dr. Piano, with a scathing look at Tiger. "They won't stop any of this, but they will slow the rate of incursions and reduce the magnitude."

"What sort of time scale are we talking about, here?" said Template. "Years, decades..."

"Most incursions are on the scale of centuries," said Dr. Piano. "That is, a century or two to reach maximum, perhaps half a century or so at maximum, then a century or two of decline. With a long period of mundanity then following before the next cycle. Some cycles have taken longer - one of those being responsible for most of the ancient myths of Greece and Rome, and another long one before that those of Egypt. Some have been shorter. Those can actually be the most disruptive, because the onset is so quick."

"We have a lot of work to do," said Template, looking overwhelmed.

"Yes," said Dr. Piano, with an emphatic nod. "We do. We all do."

* * *

Thus ends the final segment of the last completed Masks story.

I made a start on Masks XVIII and occasionally work on it, but am currently focused on other projects. I hope to finish it eventually.

Anyway, I hope folks enjoyed what's been written so far.