Firestorm (Complete)

[Jacob Foley]

The question was once again rekindled, but before it could even take shape on his lips it was snuffed out by the sight of the demonic wing. Jake, for all his mustered courage, retreated a step or two at that. Aidan remained steadfast, and bought them a moment with his quick thinking, but for Jake, who had just been informed he was expected to manipulate interdimensional gateways, there was little to be had in the way of relief. The Astral Plane, a world of psychic energy. He was just Jake, from Detroit. Deep breaths, not because he needed them, but because it was a familiar practice prior to trying something dangerous and new - and Jake needed something familiar. When he closed his eyes, the floor seemed to tilt and, his centre of gravity gone, he dropped to one knee.

"Oh, Jesus..." he muttered, "Here we go."

[Aidan Fox]

"You can do this, Jake," Aidan said, hoping desperately that he was telling the truth. "Just... just think of it as a bad day. Try to calm it down!"

Something snarled and muttered from the far side of the portal, and it was answered by a banshee howl. Whatever was down there, there were a lot of them, and it sounded like more were on the way.

[Jacob Foley]

It started off, faint at first, like the quiet murmur of several sentient minds cloistered together in a small group. A low hum, lacking form or structure, the signal called out to him; he approached, his consciousness bobbing tentatively closer, like a fishing boat cresting in the wake of an oil barge. On the rim of the void, he hovered, transfixed. Below him churned a primordial soup of energy, throbbing with the pulse of some titanic beast, and although filled with dread at the sight of such a vertiginous abyss, Jake found himself powerless, and was pulled inside.

The Astral Plane expanded in every direction, all encompasing, like a vast ocean, and Jake had been deposited upon its floor. What had been a distant murmur was at once a wild tumultuous roar; the psychic was paralysed beneath the weight of this remote netherworld, and at the same time found himself swept up in it. Tossing and tumbling like a leaf in the wind, Jake struggled against the current, desperate for escape. All around him, the Astral Plane warped and shifted with such seismic violence that any sense of place was lost, and all that remained was shadow, and shadows within shadows.

They swarmed on the periphery of his vision, and one by one they lashed out with a piercing screech and a seething boil of activity, like bullets zipping through water, before vanishing back into the gloom. Each attack was stronger than the last, and as he was sent spiralling out of control, Jake felt a hot suffocating panic rise up in him - he was going to die. Then, a glimmer, a distant shimmering pin-prick of salvation from deep within the dark. But it was so far away and he was powerless to resist the whims of this nightmare world. And then there was Aidan's voice; it was distant, but not a memory. It was like listening to someone speak underwater. Bad day. Bad day, that's what he said.

That was when the music came; soft, low warbling notes invaded the forbidding place, penetrating hostility and chasing fear with their soothing warmth. Jake relaxed in its familiar presence, and so, it seemed, did the Astral Plane. His moment of opportunity went unwasted, he kicked and fought his way towards the speck of light, tethered to the music in his mind. The circle of light grew, as did the sound of Aidan's voice, within moments he was upon it and he broke the surface. It was with a great choking heave of air that he seemed to suck himself back into his body, he lurched forward, planting a hand on the floor to stop himself falling.

He was exhausted, and surprised to not find himself dripping in some kind of ectoplasmic goo - how real the ordeal had been - but he was sweating and panting nonetheless. The Astral Plane was real, and it was indeed made up of psychic energy, and he, well, perhaps he could...

"A bad day, huh? Aidan, you just won the prize for Understatement of the Year."

Aidan had come to help him to his feet, and Jake took his hand with the hint of a smile, such was the relief of his survival. But the smile quickly faltered. An enormous black shape rose up slowly out of the ground, its scorched flesh glistening like wet leather, it took a long rasping breath and heaved itself aloft with a chalkboard scratch of claws to at last birth itself into the world.

[Aidan Fox]

The monstrosity reared up like a posturing swan and shook the mists of the Astral Plane from its wings, feeling out its newfound corporeality, then crashed back down to the factory floor on its knuckles. It turned its eyeless face toward the two mutants and opened its dripping jaws, and hissed, and whether the word was in the hissing or whether it was pressed forcibly on their minds like a hot iron on flesh, they both heard it:

INTERLOPER.

Aidan pulled another comet of flame from the walls like a Chinese dragon and sent it spiraling into the creature's side. It shrieked and slipped backwards further into the portal, but other than an ember glow around its ribcage there was no sign of injury.

"Keep doing what you're doing, Jake, we've almost got this thing licked!" Aidan said. And then he added, "I hope," as the monster clawed at the fracturing concrete with a bubbling snarl.

[Jacob Foley]

Jake retreated on leaden feet. The fear invoked by the nightmare beast was primal in its nature, harkening back to the dawn of time, when neanderthal men were stalked by fanged predators - indeed, that was the image that sprung to mind when he saw Aidan, dwarfed in the monster's shadow, hurling fireballs like ineffectual rocks. Mankind had evolved, and yet it remained shackled to the instincts of its most far-flung ancestors, driven by the most primitive emotions, like fear, and anger. It was anger that boiled up inside of Jake as he took in the full scope of the creature before him. That such a thing could exist in his world - it was obscene. And, arming himself with the kind of righteous zeal that would make his mother proud, he took a knee and vowed to vanquish the abominable threat.

When he closed his eyes, his awareness of his surroundings magnified dramatically. At the forefront of his perception was the beast, a loud, nebulous jumble of sound, much like radio static. He pushed himself beyond its shadowy presence until he was in position above the void. Again, he had a very distinct impression of a seething, pulsating abyss, which rang with the clarion cries of its demonic inhabitants. Cautiously, he pushed himself closer, seeing without seeing the phantom limbs that rose from the mist and snatched with horny claws, before dispersing once more into vapour. Over the otherworldly din, Jake remembered the music that had so often saved him in his moment of need; it stood to reason that those same comforting notes would make short work of the Astral Plane if they had the power to calm the chaos in his head.

But the music never came. Jake faltered, and plunged into the maw. The Astral Plane closed around him like snapping jaws, ravenous for the morsel that got away. The world moved like wind, and he with it, a lone voice swept away upon a chorus of wild howls. In his panic, he could no longer recall the pensive sounds that transformed chaos into peace; or was it that the music was simply lost to the storm? Or was the storm within him? Above all things, he longed to be rid of it, his torment. He longed for the solitude of his bedroom when the pale morning light started to peak through the treetops into his window. That was when the morning was at its best, sluggish from sleep and draped in silence. On the floors below, beds were full and still, and the house was pregnant with possibilities. Later, there would be voices, and bare feet, and the groaning of chairs and scraping of plates, and the rich smell of coffee that would climb the stairs and slip through the cracks beneath his door to remind him, everyday, that there was an empty chair waiting for him. But before all that, there was that exquisite moment of solitude, teetering on the brink of a new day, and it reminded him of a song.

His newfound serenity crystalised, more tangible than a few placid notes strummed from a guitar; it was something solid, and within his grasp. The Astral Plane moved no more. What once raged like a storm and surged like an ocean was as steadfast as steel. Skywards, or perhaps earthwards, there was a halo of light that shone like the sun from beneath the sea. As Jake sped towards it, he noticed it was starting to fade, and when he was at last upon it, there was little of it left but a pale wreath of smoke to pass through.

Back once again in the warehouse, Jake was tired and quite disoriented. He fell clumsily on his ass and waited for the room to stop spinning. It was an effort not to be sick. When at last his aching eyes were able to make sense of his surroundings, they focused upon the spot of concrete on the ground that was, indeed, a spot of concrete and nothing more.

[Aidan Fox]

"Jake!"

Aidan rushed toward his fallen friend, but rather than helping him to his feet, he seized Jake under the arms and dragged him back several yards as if he'd been in danger of a spreading fire. Aidan stopped when he saw that the concrete had solidified. All it had left behind was a scalded husk of the creature that had been attempting to crawl out, and even that was disintegrating before their eyes, crumbling to dust that scattered on the cool breeze gushing in from the ruined factory window.

The scenery had changed slightly since Jake had plunged back into the Astral Plane. What had been a malignant blaze consuming the walls of the factory had settled down to smoldering patches, and most of them had faded from electric blue to dull yellow, meaning they'd burn themselves out naturally. Here and there in the factory floor were glassy streaks of crystallized concrete that still gave off smoke, evidence of Aidan's battle with the monster while Jake had been fighting his.

Aidan collapsed next to Jake, breathing hard. "You were walking toward it," he said. "I thought I was gonna lose you for a second. Look, it's gone. You did it. It's over."

[Jacob Foley]

"I was walking?" he said, tongue-loose like a woken drunk, "Remind me never to do that- that on a bridge or a... rooftop. Nothing with a steep drop. Okay?"

Jake eased lazily onto his elbows, he might well have been reclining on a poolside sunlounger. His breathing was steady, but deep, in his head it sounded like rowing strokes. The concrete floor was just a concrete floor. The portal and its monsters were gone. They had done it. Tension splintered in every muscle and dispersed until it tingled like sand in his fingertips and toes. His head rolled back with a sigh of release. But the respite was to be short-lived. High above, in the jagged remnants of window panes flashed veins of steely blue light.

"Aidan, we really oughta haul ass."

[Shield]

"Detective! Detective Duquesne! Are you all right?"

His first thought was that he was waking up at home after a brutal ten-hour shift, and he really wished Laura would turn the TV down.

Then he felt the gravel under his back and the crumpled-up jacket he was using for a pillow, and he saw a cluster of worried faces hovering above him, lit in strobing red and blue against a dull brown sky. One was the veteran sergeant he'd met just minutes ago, and the other two were paramedics cradling his head and shoulders from either side.

"Detective, do you know where you are?"

It was like squeezing cement from a sponge to remember, but the flashing lights brought Duke back to reality. "The factory on Francisco Street," he rasped. "What happened?"

"You just had a seizure," one of the paramedics said. "Lasted about two and a half minutes. Sir, do you have any history of epilepsy?"

"What? No. What's our situation--"

Detective Duquesne tried to scramble to his feet, but the paramedics stopped him from getting any farther than sitting up.

"Detective, you need to take it easy."

"Like hell. The fire--"

He squinted into the blast furnace that used to be a factory, only to find it much dimmer than he'd remembered. The flames were orange now instead of blue, and the plumes of water arcing from the hook-and-ladder barricade were finally beating them into submission. But the building, as much as he could see, was a lost cause. The northern wall had collapsed in on itself, bringing half the roof down with it. Ash lay over the whole neighborhood like a fine dusting of snow.

"Fire Chief says they've got it under control now," the sergeant said. "No more survivors have come out in the last ten minutes, but the way that building's falling apart, we can't send anybody inside."

"Let me up," Duke grunted. "I can take in a search party, put up a shield around us."

"Sir, I don't think that's a good idea," the paramedic replied. "We need to keep you under observation. Do you recall anything before the seizure?"

"I was giving orders. Walking the cordon with Sergeant Reyes. There was this..." Duquesne ground the heel of his hand into his temple as a lance of cold, throbbing pain split his head from one side to the other. "This howling sound. Deafening."

The look on Sergeant Reyes's face quite plainly said he hadn't heard it. "Detective, whatever was fueling those flames, it's gone now. You can relax. The worst is over."

Detective Duquesne grit his teeth and stared back into the guttering flames, from whence had come the howling noise, and also a strange and unholy voice, saying something about a dragon, and a mother about to give birth. It was the stuff of ghost stories and superstition, nothing that belonged in a police report, but he couldn't push it out of his mind.

"Are you so sure about that, Sergeant?"