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**Schazer** · 08-25-2014, 09:43 AM

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A hearse, at least, Jetsam thought. A Victorian carriage.

Anything less incongruous unnerving in dissonant normality than this.

The offending silver hatchback - driverless, in decent condition (reupholstered, even) other than some water damage, changing gears in hot-headed cliff-clearing teenage time to the classic rock-esque noise on the car radio) was about as far as you could get from "thematically appropriate", not that the rest of the city seemed willing to meet Jetsam's expectations.

Dr. Octavius, for all her aristocratic trappings, didn't seem to mind the transport. One of her toe-bones clicked in time to the music, and she seemed to find amusement in her companion's flailing whenever their ride rounded a corner too fast.

"Thank you, Michael," said Atlas, sitting contrastingly prim and proper as they screeched up to their destination. The doors sprung open and Jetsam's seatbelt almost took his wrist off as it snaked back into place. "I'll be the usual forty-five minutes." She gave Jetsam a pointed look to get out of the car, then fished currency from her wallet and left it in a tray full of coins beside the gearstick. The hatchback's engine roared in appreciation.

"Michael's a very nice boy," Atlas had explained, once "Michael" drifted off out of sight (though not out of earshot) around a corner. "Isn't one to gossip, and the longer I can keep tabs on who knows you're in town, the better."

"He's a car," Jetsam said weakly, the hypocrisy of his protest forcing him to trail off. Atlas shrugged.

"We're beings of 'non-discrete negative energy', legally speaking, and Michael's a poltergeist. I don't see why there's any difference between your calling yourself a lich and Michael calling himself a car."

"Forget it," growled Jetsam. The offhand comment about keeping tabs had him glancing down alleyways, alert for the others. "Can we just get inside and-"

"Help! Someone help! I need a medic!"

---

"Four lifesigns detected on ultra-wideband scan. Five hundred-plus unidentified energy signatures detected. Zero lifesigns detected corresponding to GB-007."

Shit. Firmly crushing the guilt, Tengeri requested another scan.

"Scanning for energy signatures resembling GB-007-M-1."

She resisted the urge to break something, but the panic she felt was a vicious throwback to the start of this battle. She'd convinced Cendil she couldn't return home yet, and she'd almost convinced herself, but it was clear she still had no idea what she was doing.

Transcripts trickled past one trio of eyes, the other watching the flickers of motion beyond the textured-glass inset in the storeroom door. Velobo had gone with a task force to retrieve Jetsam and (if necessary) dispatch the bear. The task force had been separated from the pair when the bottom of Ruinam destabilised, and... then what? She couldn't see it in Jetsam to engage in heroics, perhaps both of them had been crushed to death in the same place? Tengeri shuddered at her own line of thinking. How could two deaths be more palatable to her than one?

Oh, right. If Jetsam had survived, she'd have to find out from him what happened. The Leviath could already see how that conversation would go down, whether or not he'd actually- no. Stop

For the second time in about five minutes, a bell sounded, and Tengeri heard the crowds trundling past her hiding space fade, those strange energy signatures disappearing with them.

"Zero matches detected."

Dejected, Tengeri slipped out into the corridor, uncertain which way to go. Her sensors were getting disrupted by all of the strange unlifeforms, who she supposed must've been the dead the Fool had mentioned. The door at the end was of some handsome hardwood, unlike the more modern affairs along the hallway, and her scans showed it led to a large, mostly-empty space.

Beyond, it was all vaulted ceilings and high windows, vaguely cathedralic and closer to the Typhran style of architecture (of which she'd only seen the embassy on Levia). The halls' dimensions would've been comfortable, albeit still spacious enough to show you could afford to think and build big, for someone ten times the Leviath's size. The regular-sized furniture outside the adjoining- "Scan complete" -lecture halls, huh, they made no impact in this cavern of a hall. Fripperies and dust in the corners of a giant's manor. Nothing to fear, until the giant deigned to clean.

Tengeri balked for just a moment, before reminding herself she had bigger gods to kill. In some tiny defiance, she swam up the middle of that cavernous hall, dead centre and without apology. Double doors, again, the proportions better suited to Kryesan morphology than hers or a human's, which someone had thought to leave half-open. The dim glow of an overcast midday drew Tengeri out into a courtyard. Something much, much larger than a Kryesan was sitting out there, reading a book; or, at least, giving that impression from the book hovering in front of its face.

It was a dragon, flayed down to scaled skin and bone, a too-large Kryesan in all respects but the batlike wings folded to its sides. Without anything on Tengeri's scans, it had startled her badly, but more for its macabre form than out of fear for her safety. The reptilian resemblance unnerved her more than anything, but it really only registered as an ostentatiously nightmarish art piece. She supposed, for the city's inhabitants, it was as normal an aesthetic as you could expect.

"May I help you?" asked someone in her head. Tengeri frowned, thinking her HUD's voice modulator was on the blink, when her scanners blazed a warning. An unliving energy signature, blooming into the space ahead like a haze of blood in the sea. The certainly-not-a-statue's eyeless sockets spat a spark of electricity, which arced down the dragon's spine.

Tengeri considered fleeing, but the book snapped shut with a tone of finality. She watched it plummet to a stack at the dragon's feet, something invisible slowing its fall at the last second to rest it gently on the pile. The monster cricked its neck, staring her down.

"Yes, actually." Tengeri managed, before trying to raise her voice some. "My name is Doctor Tengeri Nyoka. I've been transported to your city with four, possibly five others, in a fight to the death."

She was expecting some disbelief on the monster's part, but it merely lowered its head and motioned with a foreclaw as though hard of hearing. "Go on."

"Only one among us poses any real danger to the city, a human male named Scofflaw. The only other would, perhaps, be Jetsam, a shapeshifter. He's confused and uncooperative, but he's not actively trying to sabotage us like Scofflaw." If he's alive. Tengeri heard a swish behind her, and spun about, but it was just the dragon's tailbones readjusting. When she looked up again, the beast's eyes sparkled with an infernal interest you just knew you shouldn't get mixed up in. "I need to confront the Fool, the being responsible for this battle, and bring an end to this before anyone else is killed." The dragon clacked its teeth at that, a derisive chuckle-substitute, but Tengeri didn't notice.

"I'd appreciate any help in finding the other contestants and making sure they're safe. The Fool said the locals might fear the living, and none of us bar Scofflaw would want to incite panic. Also, and this may be a stretch, but if you know of anyone researching the existence of other universes, I have to find them."

"Another universe," intoned the dragon. Tengeri's HUD gave a cautionary trill, as several intangible waves washed about her. The thing had sensors of its own, perhaps? It lowered its head, the fire in its eye sockets crackling levelly at the Leviath. "To have brought you to this city. This 'Fool' - what incomprehensible power does he hold?" With a fetid rush of air, the dragon rose to its full height, wings unfurling. "No immediate matter. I'll send a missive to, what's her name, head of the Extraplanar Studies department. She, if anyone, would have a postdoctoral to interest you."

"Chancellor!"

A ghoul waved from across the courtyard, brandishing an envelope. He mostly stared at at Tengeri as he approached, only remembering to shove his dangling jaw back up into place when the dragon motioned for the letter. It turned the envelope in its disproportionately large claws, before slicing it open and squinting (Tengeri assumed that's what its eye-flames were doing) at the fine print.

"Loki, was it?"

Lachlan, the ghoul, mumbled something incomprehensible, before remembering to tug his jaw down again. "Egh. Yeah, close enough."

"Do guide Dr. Nyoka here to Professor Hedley's department." Noting the slightly carnivorous look Tengeri was suffering, he added, "they're my guest here." And with a wave of a claw to banish his books to some unknownable dimension, the great skeleton rose to its haunches. "I shall check in on your progress at a later date, Doctor. I will make inquiries as to the whereabouts of your companions."

"Thank you. Chancellor...?"

"Lord-Chancellor Zerthier-Cerveau L'écuyer," nodded the dragon, nearly knocking the pair down as his wings hauled him into the air. "Good day, Doctor."

---

Jetsam didn't recognise the voice, though he could be excused for having lost all the fleshy parts of himself since he'd last got an earful of it. He didn't notice Huebert until he'd noticed Dr. Octavius noticing, by which point she was too distracted to read too much into his reaction.

"Oh, fucking-"

Atlas was already whipping out a pen-sized length of metal, drawn from her bolero sleeve with a swish and a clack as it telescoped into a doctor's pointer. It hummed between her fingers, twin sparks of necromantic energy leaping off her fingernails and swirling about the wand. An intangible wave swept over Jetsam, a wafting suggestibility that would've chilled him to the bone for a third damn time if he'd felt it. A ghost wailed in consternation, the sound breaking the initial stunned shock and dragging more monsters out into the street.

"Ugh, look at it dripping, someone's going to have to clean that up-"

"What the Styx is that thing?"

"Dude, there's like old ladies here, you can't just drop the a-bomb in public-"

"No way that's, y'know-"

"Uh-uh-UNDEAD!" screamed the ghost.

Huebert almost, but not quite, dropped TinTen to unhook the plasma projector. He instead swore, turned to retreat back up the alley, only to be cut off by a swiftly-rising palisade of (not-quite-tomb)stone.

The gawkers, drifting by curious design into an encircling crowd, parted smoothly for the lich doctor. Jetsam hung back, avoiding eye contact with anyone.

"Amvlýno. You said you need a medic?" The pointer in Atlas' hand twirled a slow circle, the caducean sparks struggling to hold their orbit about the silver. The hubbub faded, colors beyond the lich seeming to mute. Huebert took a step back.

"I- my friend." He tried to give her a better look, but his arms didn't quite seem to want to relinquish TinTen. Wand poised, the skeleton reached forward and took a step.

"I'm going to perform a contact spell," it declared, a fingerbone tracing the edges of the burn up TinTen's throat like fineprint. They found a place to press, "Zoiragi," hissed something cold and dank and beyond the physical confines of the skeleton before him. Huebert had no clue if TinTen was deader or better for it, but this rather horrifying excuse of a medical practitioner seemed satisfied. It pulled a slip of paper from its pelvis and waggled the pointer at it, before hwoomfing it (barely-legible scorch-scrawls and all) out of immediate existence.

"What species is it?"

It? "He's a Meipi." Atlas nodded, quietly glad she'd lost the facial musculature to betray a lack of confidence. Or excitement. This was all very new and exciting for her, and until she figured out how she felt about that it was best to stay professional.

"You'd qualify as a significant other. Extenuating circumstances and all." The lich fished out a bird skull from what would have been her cleavage once, its orbital sockets stoppered with wax. She crushed it underheel and lowered the isolating barrier, the hum of the crowd crashing into the alley like it had been all piled up and waiting. Ichor snaked out, incinerating whatever city filth stuck to the ground and preparing a sterile surface for teleportation. Atlas kept the crowd at bay with her pointer in one hand, the other extended back out to Huebert.

"Come on. I can't teleport you without consent."

Had TinTen been in less of a lich-induced hibernation, he might've objected to magic circles and sorcerous assistance. Huebert took the lich's hand, and the three vanished off the street with local spacetime's death-rattle.

Jetsam got a faceful of ash and negative energy as the missive unfurled from thin air. He'd already gotten the gist of the message by the time he'd finally caught it in his clumsy, ventilated skeleton-hands:

stay out of trouble.

Doable. Before the crowd could lose interest in a now-deserted alley, the lich slipped into a side-street of his own.