A Cry for Help

“Well… I think it’s safe to say this is the place.”

They stood before the entrance of what appeared to be an overgrown fortress of some kind. The structure had been well hidden, tucked deep into the base of a steep and winding ravine. The chiseled stone appeared to be more or less in tact, with no crumbling walls or weak points in the structure, at least that they could see from the outside, but it was covered in moss and thick vines.

Mercury cast a glance around, taking in their surroundings with a slow, keen eye. It was nice to be on her feet again, without the weight of pregnancy holding her down. The last couple months of the process had been beyond frustrating. As much as she appreciated the experience, and as honored and excited as she’d been to bring a new life into the world, she’d also felt incredibly useless. She hadn’t been able to do much more than sit around and talk, and had to be mindful of what kind of jobs she took for Silver Wolf. Most of the time, she’d had to resort to just tinkering in the labs and letting other members do the heavy lifting, both figuratively and literally. So as overwhelmingly happy as she was to have become a mother, she was all too eager to get out and be productive in a way she hadn’t been able to for quite some time.

She was dressed in a fashionable but sturdy outfit that sported durable purple pants and a white top with loose, plum colored sleeves. A dark purple skirt was held in place by a leather waist corset, and tall leather boots adorned her feet. She’d grown her hair out for the occasion, the lavender locks flowing and free. “Do you sense anything?” the queen apparent asked her betrothed as they scanned the area. The locals that they’d spoken to from the nearest village several miles out had given several reports that strange noises and even stranger beasts had been appearing as of late. They’d described gruesome and fearful monsters that had never been seen in the woods before, not even anything that matched any local legends and fairy tales. The things the natives had spoken of sounded almost alien in nature, as though they weren’t from Earthland at all. And what’s more, some of their technology had been on the fritz, a phenomenon that had begun around the same time the creatures had arrived.

Bandit announced his arrival with a shrill caw – his normal calling card – before swooping down and settling on her shoulder. Mercury idly reached up a hand to scratch the avian under its beak, used to the bird’s coming and going. “I don’t see any tracks in the area. Nothing unusual, at least.” She was certain that the footprints of the beasts would be obvious to spot, if only due to their alleged size and otherworldly shape. But all she saw were typical signs of normal critters like deer and varmints and the like.

With a frown, she conjured a dozen or so drones and sent them out to scan the ruins, and it didn’t take long for their reading to jump out at her. Her eyes went wide. “What the hell..?” Knowing that Vandrad couldn’t interface directly with the drones like she could, Mercury materialized her tablet in her hand where he could see it. The scans were off the charts, the radars and sensors warbling erratically at frequencies so high that not even Mercury’s advanced tech could truly process it. “Look at these readings. They're going crazy. It’s like… the energy of this place is… warped or corrupted or something…”

Mercury snorted, amused by the idea that Vandrad would ever choose to simply wipe the slate rather than actually enjoy his time out and about on a mission like this. Then, without further ado, the pair made their way toward the entrance and stepped inside.

The interior was about what one would expect: aged stone walls that hadn’t been maintained in who knew how long, with the general appeal and appearance of a medieval castle. There was broken and weathered furniture in nearly every room that looked several hundred years old based on the craftsmanship and the thick build up of dirt and cobwebs, but there was next to nothing of worth or interest. Looters had obviously cleared the place out long ago, leaving little more than the equivalent of bones to pick at.

“What do you think this place was?” Mercury’s voice was quiet as they made their way from room to room without any hints or evidence that anything had been through the place recently. “The village is too far away for this to have belonged to reigning nobility, and there’s nothing outside to suggest that there was a settlement around here. So, what’s this place doing out here in the middle of nowhere?” There wasn’t so much as a dusty tome lying around to give any kind of hint as to what the structure was used for, or who had used it.

They made their way through a few more rooms, finding little to occupy their attention. Some tables and chairs here, a rotting bed frame there, the odd chamberpot room or empty candelabra. The further in they went, the darker it got as the sun was not able to pierce through the thick walls. Mercury’s drones lit up as they floated around the couple, illuminating the rooms as they were explored with enough light to see by, though they were never far from darkness. Despite all evidence to the contrary, though, there was something strange about this place that was setting her hair on end. Something wasn’t right, here.

Movement in her peripheral vision caused her to turn her head quickly, only to find nothing. Yet the readings on her sensors shivered, as though something had just happened. With a frown, she slowly drew Mercy from its holster and armed the weapon, carefully approaching the area where she’d thought she’d seen the shadows shift. But as the light from her drones filled up the space before her, there was nothing. There were rows of decaying wooden tables and benches, almost like this had once served as a mess hall of some kind, with a grand hearth on one of the far walls, but that was about it.

Mercury released a small sigh and relaxed, unsure if she was unnerved or just disappointed. This place was turning out to be a dud, so far. Maybe they’d found the wrong ruins? Or maybe the villagers were just losing their minds.

It was as she was getting ready to turn to leave when she saw it, her eyes squinting in focus before widening in wonder. “Vandrad,” she called over to him softly, “Look at this.” Sitting on a table was a goblet. It was plain and unremarkable, covered in rust and indistinguishable from the other forgotten utensils strewn around the room… except that it appeared to be flickering in and out of existence. It was almost like it was shifting between the corporeal and incorporeal worlds. It seemed to fade and she reached out to grab it, only for her hand to pass through it like it didn’t exist. A moment later, it flickered and brightened, seeming to become more solid. The Xocili reached out again…

This time, her fingers wrapped around the cup, gripping it firmly and lifting it up to her face. “Fascinating,” she breathed, her mind already racing in a million different directions in an attempt to deduce what was happening. At nearly the same time, she was overcome by an overwhelming feeling of deja vu, one that caused her to look up and around at the room once more. Had she been here, before..?

The cup flickered again, causing it to slip from her hand. Before it could hit the ground it solidified again, causing the large room to fill with the rattling sound of metal on stone. The rest of the castle was so quiet that the noise echoed down the halls. Mercury winced. So much for not alerting anything that might be lurking around to their presence. The silence that followed was deafening as they waited to see if anything had been around to hear them. The seconds ticked by like minutes, her sensors stretching out as far as she could reach to see if there was any movement heading there way.

Just as they were getting ready to press forward under the assumption that they were still alone, a new sound reached her sensitive slayer ears: Thump…. Thump… thump… The slow gait of something approaching. Whatever it was, it was very large, and for some reason her sensors weren’t picking up on it at all. Bandit fidgeted on her shoulder, his own instincts kicking in to warn him of the approaching predator.

The hulking beast ambled into the mess hall with a low groan, it’s figure obscured by the shadows around them. No, not shadows… it was faded and transparent, flickering briefly in and out in the same fashion. It lifted its head where the light from her drones better caught it, revealing a grotesque figure. It was humanoid in shape, with dark purple-black skin and an overabundance of muscles. It wore a pair of pants with skull shaped guards covering its knees, but otherwise its chest was completely bare as were its feet. Its mouth was almost like a beak. But what drew her attention was the fact that it’s skull looked as though it had been cracked and pried open, leaving its brain fully exposed. Set on either side of the brain were two wide eyes that scanned the room carefully, and as its gaze turned in their general direction, the beast’s body flickered one last time.

At first, it clearly had not seen them, but when its form became solid to Mercury and Vandrad’s view, the creature’s own gaze focused on them. Then, it screamed, opening its beak-like maw to reveal large, sharp teeth as it began to charge them, breaking right through the tables and other furniture to take the most direct route to its prey.

“Uh oh.”

Mercury’s first thought upon seeing the grotesque creature was identical to Vandrad’s; it did look eerily like something Maker would have created. It’s entirely possible that it was. Maker had been on Earthland for a long time, and he had several hidden labs scattered throughout the globe, most of which had not been located before his death. There was no telling what sort of abominations were roaming the planet, or even beyond it, still carrying on after their creator’s demise.

But there wasn’t any time to think about that just now. The beast charged them without any regard to the objects in its path, and Vandrad sprang into action to meet it head on. The blast from his palm filled the room with light and smoke, temporarily shrouding the monster from their sight. But a creeping sensation started to gnaw at Mercury’s mind. For whatever reason, she couldn’t sense this beast on her radars, even when it was fully corporeal, and yet…

The monster burst from the obscuring smoke, hurling itself at Vandrad with wild abandon and incredible speed. It had clearly been struck full force by Vandrad’s attack, as its body was singed and smoking in places, yet it had continued forward with singular focus. Its injuries didn’t seem to have slowed it down at all. But at nearly the exact same moment that it had emerged, a solid wall of thick steel materialized between them – Mercury’s magic. The beast slammed into the wall hard enough to dent it, despite it being a foot thick, snarling a furious complaint. With a growl, Mercury bent the wall down, curling it on top of the creature and pinning it into the ground. In the momentary lapse that followed she stared at her hand in wonder. How.. had she known where the monster was going to appear, and when? It was like she had divined the beast’s next move from thin air. Why did all of this feel so familiar..?!

The horrifying sound of creaking metal pulled her from her thoughts as the beast displayed its horrific state by clawing itself free from its metal prison, prying inches thick steel apart with little more difficulty than one might have peeling a banana. It turned its predatory gaze on her and started sprinting once more. Mercury snapped and a mounted gatling gun materialized in front of her, loosing unending rounds of bullet fire at the beast. It slowed down as the rounds hit it, more out of annoyance than anything else, stubbornly fighting against the tide of the barrage and continuing to push forward without any effort to protect itself. And in truth, her attack was doing little to even impede its speed, like it was practically invulnerable to the damage it should have been taking.

Within little more than seconds it was upon her, throwing itself forward and opening its maw wide with the intent of snapping her head clean off her shoulders. She raised her arms, ready to cast a defensive spell… when the monster shifted back into a ghost form, falling through both her and her gun. She spun around, wide eyed, and watched as the beast stumbled to regain its footing. It, too, turned to look back at her in a frenzy, but its gaze was unfocused. “It can’t see us,” she realized out loud as she took a few steps back to regroup next to Vandrad. The monster continued to rage through the room, clearly angered at losing its prey, which it was still searching around for. “When it’s in that state, it’s like… like we don’t exist to it. I think…”

She once more consulted the readings she had taken of the area earlier, and the erratic patterns from the energy in the area. “I could be wrong, because I’ve never run into something like this before, but… I think something is distorting time in this area. It’s like this creature is sharing this space with us, but not in the same time we’re in. Not consistently, anyway.”

A loud, blood curdling scream echoed from further within the structure, distant but loud enough to be heard from where they were. It sounded like a woman somewhere further in had just had the scare of her life, the type of scream someone might have upon encountering an unexpected and terrifying monstrosity of unknown origins. The creature’s head snapped up in the direction of the sound and with a deep growl it tore off at full speed to find the source.

“Shit..!”

With Vandrad presumably hot on her tail, Mercury raced off after the thing. If there was someone else in here, they were clearly in danger. Maybe it was someone missing from the village, or someone that had been taken captive. It could even be someone that was responsible for all this. Either way, they needed to find this person, preferably before any monsters did. As they ran behind the beast, it suddenly began to flicker again until it was corporeal once more, and it was only then that the creature realized it was being followed.

It came to a screeching halt, its immensely short attention span already more interested in the prey it could see and practically forgetting about the other disturbance it had heard. It turned on a dime and threw itself back toward the pair… only to split in two as it ran, a perfect and autonomous mirror image of itself splitting away, with one bearing down on Vandrad and the other on Mercury.

“Son of a–”

Mercury quickly brought Mercy up to a blocking position just as one of the duplicated creatures charged her. It slammed into the flat of her blade hard enough to send her skidding back several feet before they both toppled over. Not interested in getting pinned beneath this monstrosity, she used the momentum of her fall, kicking her feet up into the creature’s stomach and tucking into a roll, tossing the thing over her head and beyond.

She popped back onto her feet with a wince, her arms still tingling from the impact. Gods, but this thing was strong. And fast. There was an argument to be made that she was perhaps a bit rusty, but a sinking feeling in her gut told her that wasn’t likely to be the case in this instance. Whatever this thing was, it had been engineered to be nigh unstoppable. And yes, she did believe it was engineered. There was no way something this powerful had naturally evolved with its brain fully exposed to the world. This had mad scientist written all over it.

With a growl, she waved her hand and conjured several automated turrets in a half moon shape around it, all of the weapons firing off at once. The creature howled, but it sounded more annoyed than pained. Indeed, while its movement was certainly being hampered by the barrage, it didn’t look like it was taking almost any damage at all from the bullets. Her gaze flicked over to Vandrad while she had a moment. The king seemed to be handling his own, to no surprise, having summoned one of his own duplicates and taking to beating on the creature with some new weapon she could only assume was part of the Ark’s arsenal. Like him, she was starting to suspect that conventional attacks weren’t going to be very fruitful in this fight. Mercury didn’t have access to the Ark, but that didn’t mean she was without options. Time to get creative.

Materializing a new weapon using her magic, she summoned a high powered dart rifle, one that was loaded with syringes that were filled with a lethal oil based compound. Taking aim, she fired off round after round, anticipating that it would take more than one to do the creature in. It became enraged by the attack as the needles buried themselves into its thick skin and pumped it full of poison. With a sudden surge of adrenaline that Mercury could only assume was from being backed into a corner, the beast roared and powered itself past her turrets, knocking them over in a violent clash as it charged straight for her.

She stood her ground, firing dart after dart, aiming the majority of them to go directly into its exposed brain. Just as it was about to reach her, it stumbled and fell to the ground, its body sliding the last few meters to a dead stop at her feet. Her sensors caught its dying breaths until its heart rate stopped and she knew it was gone.

By then, Vandrad had also found success with his own weapon, picking the beast’s flesh apart piece by piece while it was preoccupied with his own clone. Eventually the creature would fall just the same as its companion. As much as Mercury wanted to study them, there wasn’t any time. The sound of screaming could still be heard from another room. With a quick glance to Vandrad to make sure he was set, the pair both continued further into the base toward the source of distress.

When they found the room in question, Mercury froze in horror. It was a large space, with a vaulted ceiling and plenty of wide open room. She could only imagine it used to serve as some kind of war room or banquet hall in its heyday. Now, the space was as decrepit as the rest of the structure… except for the translucent items that she suspected were from a different time – a future time. Someone had turned the space into a large lab of sorts, filled with all sorts of high tech equipment. Some of it looked Earthland based, but not all of it was. But the place had been trashed by the dozens of monsters that were rampaging through the room. All of them were distinctive from one another, but they all shared similar traits to the creature they had already killed: large muscular bodies with exposed craniums that appeared to have insane amounts of strength and stamina. They were wreaking havoc through the room, but most of them were centered around one item in particular.

A woman who appeared to be more of a lab assistant or secretary more than anything else, had managed to secure herself inside a large plexiglass chamber that surely served some kind of scientific purpose. At the moment, however, it was the only thing protecting her from the crazed beasts surrounding her. Essentially little more than a human sized tube, the container was thick enough to resist the attacks of even these creatures, but there was no telling how much longer it would last. Already, it was starting to develop spiderweb cracks along the surface. None of them had noticed Vandrad and Mercury, the monsters and woman not in sync with their time stream.

“Who are you? What do you want with me?!” she pleaded with them through her sobs. One of the beasts hit the capsule hard enough to rattle it loose from the fixture holding it in place, and she shrieked. “Help me! Please, s-someone help me..!”

Mercury just stared, flabbergasted and at a loss. What was she supposed to do? Unless there was a shift in whatever fucking time rift was going on here, neither of them could do anything to protect this woman, who clearly didn’t know what these things were. She didn’t appear to be responsible for their existence. She didn’t want to sit here and watch this woman die… but even if there was a shift and their time streams aligned, just one of those beasts had been tough as hell for her and Vandrad to face. She was always down for a challenge, but squaring off against dozens of these at once… it would be suicide.

A familiar sense of panic started to rise up through her chest, her breath quickening and becoming more shallow. What was she supposed to do? What could she do? Science couldn’t fix this, at least not quick enough to save this woman’s life. The woman’s screaming continued, feeling louder and louder, pounding in her ears. “Gods, please! Help me!”

“HELP ME..!”

Mercury sat up with a start, her eyes wide open. It was the middle of the night, and she was in the bed she shared with Vandrad on the island of New Rhaegar. Her heart was rattling against her chest, sweat beading upon her brow. Their infant daughter, Venus, was crying loudly from her bassinet, the sound ultimately being what had woken the queen apparent from her nightmare. Closing her eyes for a moment, she drew in a deep breath to calm and center herself.

When she was sure she could stand without collapsing, she drew herself from under the covers and made her way over to the child, carefully withdrawing her from the cradle. Bouncing her a little with several soft shushes, Mercury crossed to where the rocking chair was, taking a seat and lining the child up to feed. Soon it was quiet again as the hungry girl latched on and got to work, giving Mercury a moment of peace to attempt to decompress.

She felt Vandrad stir before she saw him, her sensors detecting a shift in his vitals as he roused from sleep. It was a wonder the child’s cries hadn’t woken him, but they were both pretty exhausted as of late. The first couple months of childrearing were the roughest on sleep, or so they had been informed, as Venus woke regularly every few hours needing to be fed. Their exhaustions had both become so great that a part of her probably wasn’t as surprised as she could have been. Most days, she felt like she could sleep through the world ending. “Yeah,” was the tired response, her voice still groggy with sleep. “She was hungry. Probably needs a diaper change, too.”

Her head tilted against his hand, ever appreciative of the tender gestures of affection he offered in private. “Just a bad dream. Or at least, I think it was just a dream…” A loaded statement if there ever was one. At this point, Mercury was no stranger to nightmares. She’d been having plenty of them for a long time, between what had happened with Khelben and the trip to Omothol, the latter of which were especially vivid.

But these were different. “I’ve been having these… recurring dreams for a while. You and me out on a job, looking into some kind of disturbance. They’re not always exactly the same. We always run into some kind of danger, but the nature of that danger is different each time. Sometimes it’s environmental, or the return of an old enemy like the Nazru… this time, it was monsters. Horrific creatures with exposed brains and horrifying physical and magical capabilities. Honestly felt like something Maker would have made.”

Mercury shook her head softly, adjusting her arm to make holding Venus more comfortable. “There’s only ever three things that are consistent: You and I are there together, there’s always a time rift or distortion of some kind… and there’s always a woman in grave peril. The same woman, every time. She’s stuck in a different time, sometimes the future and sometimes the past, but she doesn’t know we can see her.”

“At first I just thought it was some weird, but random, nightmare. I’ve had repeated dreams in the past, as I’m sure most everyone does. But… something about this is different. It’s just so… so vivid. Lucid, almost too much so. And I didn’t start having them until sometime after the fight with Maker. It’s like.. The exposure to your Judge powers left a mark on me, and now something from another time keeps bleeding through. I can’t tell if it’s just a coincidence, some unfortunate consequence of being touched by your multiversal abilities… or if something is actively trying to tell me that this woman, whoever and wherever she is, is in danger, and wants us to find her.”

“I know that sounds farfetched, but… the dreams just keep getting stronger, and more frequent.” She sighed, rubbing her forehead with her free hand tiredly. “I just don’t know what else to make of it, at this point, you know..?”

“She isn’t anyone I remember ever meeting before.” Given her photographic memory, it was next to impossible for Mercury to forget a face. So if she didn’t recognize the woman during the dream, then chances were high that they’d never encountered one another before.

What she described was not outside the realm of possibility, at least according to Vandrad, and given her unique situation he wasn’t entirely sure he could reverse the effects. Mercury was equally uninterested in consulting He Who Is about the matter, knowing from Vandrad’s past experiences with the cosmic entity that they weren’t likely to get much by the way of answers anyway. Her fiance was understandably mistrustful of the man, showing a rare moment of protectiveness over the thought that He Who Is could be watching them at that very moment.

Mercury shook her head slowly. “Unfortunately, our memory files don’t work the same way for dreams as they do for waking experiences. Dreams are usually just… random brain activity, not conscious experiences. So while I can remember some details, they aren’t recorded like real memories are, and just like non-Xocili the contents and specifics of dreams often fade or get fuzzy after waking up. I remember…”

Her voice trailed off for a moment as she fought through her tired state to recall as much of the woman as possible. “She had short, white hair. Like, pixie cut short. And bright eyes, maybe… red? Or pink? And she was small, like me. Short and petite. I’d probably recognize her if I saw her, but I’m afraid I won’t be able to replicate any kind of snapshot that we could show anyone…” She tried not to let the disappointment sound too strong in her voice, but Mercury was a woman that disliked not being able to get answers. For the time being, at least, there was little she could do to help in that regard.

But, that didn’t mean they were without options. “I think if this is something we’re going to try to explore, then our best bet would be to keep an eye out for reports of weird disturbances. That’s always how the dreams start, is you and I looking into some kind of oddity… so if this woman really exists, then maybe it stands to reason that we’ll find her eventually if we just… do what we’re always doing at the start of the dreams..?”