“Maybe the criminal status you’re referring to is true of Stealy and Player, Victor, but the rest of us?”
“Trust me, the beast and I are getting quite used to seeing things about people they’d just as soon not see themselves. With time, your ability to psychically mind meld with the rest of them will have you seeing into the well-sealed Pandora’s boxes of their minds as well.”
Naomi sighed. “I suppose with the greater access I have now to Cosmos’ mind, I can’t deny my own criminal past. But in this lifetime…? I must have buried that pretty deep to not… Even if you’re right, you sure you’re not confusing a guilty conscience over misdeeds that all of us regret doing, for a true criminal past?”
“I’ll let you decide for yourself when you stumble onto these little gems hidden away in everyone’s minds. For right now, you know enough to certainly add me to the list of known criminals. Working with the beast alone necessitates at much. And now that I’ve ensnared you all within our latest black magic…”
“The Zone Magic? Surely you won’t utilize that again.”
“I think you know I’ll utilize damn well what I have to in order to make certain all souls remain free across the reaches of space-time from the likes of the Fenquin queen.” Finished stuffing the latest box, he set it aside, grabbed another and continued where he’d left off.
“Doing bad in order to do good…”
“Maybe. I suppose if there’s salvation for any of us, it’ll be because there’s something to that strategy. But how long before we’re doing bad for bad’s sake? The black magic… It’s so easy to get caught up in it, to forget that it’s simply a means to an end.”
Naomi lowered her eyes. “I know.” She could tell with her closer affinity with Cosmos now that Cosmos’ rule-bound, law and order above all else, refusing to cut anyone some slack persona—that there was a back story there Cosmos was hiding from her, and from herself. No doubt Cosmos had paid a steep price once for her own criminal enterprises before her psyche pulled back on itself like an over-stretched rubber band to avoid popping.
Soren finished stuffing the latest box of broken pieces belonging to one device, and shoved it in a corner. Huffed as he took a look at her. “It’s good to see you coming into yourself, finally. The mousey you was getting on my nerves.”
She smiled ruefully. “Yes, well, access to the oversoul—however brief—came with some perks. It helped me to realize that if I wanted to gravitate to something, it didn’t have to be what I was evolving away from; it could be what I was evolving toward.”
“I gather you’ve made more progress than the rest of us in that department if you’ve become a host to Cosmos. She would have left to find a better vessel for herself if she didn’t think you had what it takes to harmonize with your oversoul even more readily than a future life incarnation of yourself.”
“Maybe. I’m not sure I’m entirely clear on what all her motivations are except that…”
“Except what?”
“It wasn’t the Fenquin queen she retreated from when she possessed me. But she was running from something every bit as scary.”
“Oh yeah? What?”
“No idea. But when I reach out telepathically to Vima’s mind; I just see her staring back at me, her face filled with warning. And I feel Cosmos shiver inside me.”
“Yes, the beast is aware of the danger Vima poses.”
“Care to share?”
Soren broke rhythm from his box stuffing. “He believes she will use what insights she gleaned from the Zone Magic to run afoul of the rest of us. She will break away from the team. She’ll be the next cosmic wizard we’re tasked with hunting down.”
“But surely…”
“Her mind couldn’t be powerful enough? The beast thinks she’s found a very interesting workaround. She used the Zone Magic to extend her womb magic about the entire cosmos.”
“Suggesting…?”
“That all souls, wherever they are, will become increasingly lost to the influences of the black magic. Their psyches in aggregate will give her mind the power she needs to function at the level of a cosmic wizard.”
“Soren! How the hell are we to get around that?”
“I guess we’re going to find out.”
“So, our next adventure sounds like it will be entitled, Frankenstein – Reaper.” With each step along his character arc, Soren grew deadlier still at the art of vanquishing others, she thought.
Soren just lowered his eyes and sighed. It troubled her that there was less guilt etched on his face, and more resignation.
Victor soared in on his mandala bridge, entering in through the skylights, shattering the glass panes above. He hovered inches above the ground before them. “Why, Soren, you’ve found our next cosmic wizard already? I do declare the sidekicks are getting better at drawing them out than I am.”
Naomi sucked in a torrent of air and held it. All it had taken was a flash of fear in Soren’s mind, regarding the road he was heading down toward his next target, for his mind to be excited enough for Victor to read it from clear across town.
“It’s nothing to celebrate, Victor.” Soren let the thud of his latest box filled with one of his broken apparatuses trumpet his point.
“Au contraire, my friend. My heart swells with the knowledge that you will not rest until each and every soul is set free from a menace even more far-reaching than the Fenquin queen.” Victor’s smile grew vague with all the mounting emotions competing for attention on his face. “And I, well, I’ll be there to reap the benefits as always; the insights and empowerment gained getting me one step closer to sitting on that throne chair as King of the cosmos.” He laughed his mad laugh as he sailed out of the room on his mandala bridge, healing the shattered glass behind him by outstretching his hand, barely looking back.
“He sounds madder every day,” Naomi said.
“Yes,” Soren conceded, sighing and picking up another empty box to stuff. He was becoming as reconciled to Victor’s fate as he was to putting a lot of his failed experiments behind him inside of the boxes. Victor might well be the one soul he could never save, no matter how many times he tried.
Naomi felt guilty for being mind-linked with him; she could tell that those reflections were meant to be private, and that he was ashamed of them.
The earth shook beneath their feet. “Oh, my God!” she exclaimed. “The ticking clock. Don’t tell me we saved Earth from an impossible enemy just to be done in by overlooking one minor detail.”
Soren smiled ruefully at the “minor detail” crack. “Relax. It’s just the Yellowstone volcano settling back down. The End Times sequence started with the desecration of the crypt in Antarctica has stopped, for now. I suspect it’s why the savant left the husband and the child in cryogenic stasis. They’re the ones who can interrupt the sequence if need be. But they can only do so from the altered state fostered by their hibernation.”
Naomi gasped relief, her heart still pounding through her chest. Soren had already returned to his box stuffing. He was playing the emotionally-numbed card. She wasn’t new to dropping that one on the table herself. After all they’d been through, she supposed he deserved the poor man’s vacation. Still, she wasn’t having it. She would keep interacting with him until she brought him out of his shell. She knew what it was like to withdraw into one, too.
She tried to lighten the air. “I suppose Natura kicked you out of her nature preserve so she could ready her Halloween makeover for the kids of the district.”
“Can’t blame her for not brooking any distractions. Hard to scare kids raised in a district with werewolves and vampires; she’s throwing this party as much for Shelley’s take on London as our more pedestrian take on Victorian London in this district, and presumably anybody else who cares to attend. I expect there’ll be quite a few from Swank Town as well; they can afford the best in entertainment, but no amount of money is going to outdo Natura’s haunted forest. But she’s definitely going to have to bring her A-game with
that many snobs in attendance.” He had finished filling another box as he talked, slid it against the wall, and folded another one from two dimensions into three to make a cavity he could fill.
“So for now, everyone be damned, we’ve earned a break, is that it?”
He smiled. “Something tells me if she can make the black magic in her forest a laughing matter, it might just provide us with our first key for unlocking Vima’s secrets, and her stranglehold on all of creation.”
“So, what shall we call this next adventure?” Her tone was more upbeat this time.
He grunted. “How about Frankenstein Redacted? Considering all the black ink that will be looking to overwrite my soul and anything that’s good about me.”
“Careful. What did we learn from the dragon morph except that there is a lot of magic in a name?”
Soren smiled halfheartedly. “Ah, the magic of words. Perhaps writers wield the greatest magic of all. Maybe that’s how we shall release me from my burdens one day; you’ll just write about them.”
She wanted to cry but she smiled. She wanted to bleed for him, agonize for him, cry out for him, just to save him all the pain she knew was ahead for him. Of all of them, he always bore the greatest brunt of it; she never let herself forget that, for all his downplaying of his role in things. But did he really have the strength for what he was positing?
She guessed he was right; they were about to find out.
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