Wheel! Of! FISH!

A Banner Day

2004-05-26 - 12:13 a.m.

Ahoy-hoi, True Believers. Let's give the CIA a rest from printing out copies of my diary to add to my file and go back to that delightful yarn we've been writing lately.

Incidentally, be sure to refer to The Planetary Guide to the New College Invisibles and catch up if you're lost or confused. It's a long story,but an excellent one. Read up.

On with the show.

---

Old Hebrew magicks made Wheel feel all farmisht.

But he shook it off with a shiver as the dapper mage drew away the unbearable thanoptic attentions of Ghede.

"Good day to you-- Wheel, isn't it? We went to Uni together, I seem to recall."

We did., Wheel thought quietly, immediately neuroprocessing this questing magic-strong entity and matching ta with the image of someone previously just known as the Arcanologist. A student of the Sumerian demon Professor's, he recalled, and a favorite of the ghosts in the Old Hall. A cyberthaumic search engine in the lower left corner of his field of astral vision turned up a name from the acknowledgements section of Tobin's Spirit Guide. Xanith Epicoene.

"You savvy this nasty cache'?" Ghede snapped. "Him what done--"

"Papa, with all respect, you can save that sort of talk for the old chicken and goat routine; I've spoken with you as Azrael, and I don't follow the patois so well."

Wheel chuckled and conjured away the bananasouls he'd brought for Legba. He hadn't known that the loa played the Game of Aspects. Made sense, though. As much as anything else did in the astral plane.

As the mage conversed with the looming specter of death and sipped rum - REAL rum, Wheel thought, and not some cheapjack conjured spirit of the spirit. A neat trick. - Wheel caught his breath and let his eyes roam. There was much to see at the Crossroads, but he found it hard to look at anything other than the hexwire running through the kindly old man Wheel knew as Papa Legba and into the ancient black bark of the gallows tree. Deep as the night and cold as the grave, the wire quavered as the nonlight of the astral plane razored across its edges. They reminded Wheel of something he'd seen once on one of his many fictionautical journeys ... something about a vale ...

His attention was snapped back as Xan approached him. "All right. I don't know much about you, but the fact that you were bringing bananas tells me you didn't already know Pere Legba was, er, indisposed, nor did you have any intent to harm him. So why don't we start with what you do know? And where in the infinite worlds are these bleeding strands coming from?"

Wheel gazed at Xan through the endless swirling colors of his spectacles.

"Good questions, magicker. I know that it’s no easy task for me to find these Mage’s Roads, so I had to invest a great deal of effort to get here through non-hermetic means. I know that I walooking for dear old Papa Legba to ask him why I was getting gravechills from the citymind in New Orleans … although I think I have an answer to THAT, at least. The city must be terrified without Legba to hold the gates shut."

"Hmmm," Xanith pondered. "That IS a bit troubling."

"You ain’t just whistling the Unholy Tune of the Blind Idiot God. And this probably goes a long way towards explaining the massive conflagration of weirdness going on there right now, actually. As for WHAT these things are …"

Wheel blew anothing flaming wisp of alito di vitae across the hex, shuddering at the low tearing sound as the phoenixfire was tattered into wisps. "They’re not nice. And I have no idea where they’re coming from. They’re not out in the Carrollian wilds, but they’re cobwebbing the hermetic roads."

"Curious. There’s an impressive amount of power going into their creation, that’s certain." Xanith ran teir hand in a few swirling passes near the dark crystal hexstrand, strange burning red sigils solidifying around it. The symbols blazed for a moment and then shivered into black dust.

"That’s bad?"

"That’s bad."

"Bad juju is what that is, petit cachés."

The two graduates of the Invisible College turned with a start to find Ghede, the looming specter of death they had momentarily forgotten, at their shoulders. He reached over with one bony finger and ran it just along the outside of one of the scintillating edges of the black thing. There was keening sound like a wet wineglass being polished on bone. Wheel’s astral teeth chattered, and Xanith shuddered. There was a piercing howl from back towards the Way. Ghede hissed, long and slow, and slowly drew back his finger. A single, smoking black scar was scorched into his immortal fleshlessness.

"REAL bad juju."

Xan whistled softly through teir teeth.

"Oh, dear," murmured Wheel. "But WHERE are they coming from? They remind me of SOMETHING … but not enough for me to search for an effective mnemonic match. It’s driving me bloody gonzo. Something about a vale, and … mice? Slugs? Hell and damnation, it’s all these damn fictional trips! They … GACK!"

Wheel gacked as Xan rolled teir eyes and plunged two fingers of teir left hand into Wheel’s astral forehead, straight through the anja chakra.

"Keep talking about it," te muttered, gritting teir teeth with effort.

"A vale … somewhere past the flat world, in a place from which I drew a great deal of verbal magic … I don’t remember it all that well … that was only one of the many occasions on which I died … an experience which … gads, that’s strange. I think you’ve put your fingers into my harpsichord lessons. Mind the butterflies … "

*POP!*

Xan slowly drew teir hand from Wheel’s forehead, and Wheel staggered back against the gallows tree. "You must’ve taken advanced psychiatry classes from Dr. Reich at the College … because you got RIGHT into my head."

Xan chuckled softly and slowly opened teir fingers. There, lying still and gleaming on teir palm, was what te had drawn from Wheel’s memories. A small vermiform spiraling creature, waxy white and with a gleaming red tip. Wheel peered down at it with a cocked eyebrow.

"Ah, yes. Now I remember. A nascent vole."

Xanith raised an eyebrow. "As far as I’ve heard, voles are rodents, Mr. Wheel."

"Most of the time, certainly. But in certain other places … or at least ONE certain other place … "vole" is the name widely applied to a vast family of strange creatures, smallest of which is this … the common wiggle."

Xan looked dubious. "And exactly how did this little bit of fishbait remind of you of these perilous vestiges of dark magic infesting the greater reality?"

"Because …" Wheel plucked the memory of the creature from Xan’s palm and swallowed it, and then held up his left palm, on which formed the gleaming golden image of a tall pine tree. "When wiggles travel, they … to put it colloquially, they ‘zzap’." He wiggled his right fingers and a tiny fiery vole appeared, hovering in the air by the tree. It paused for a moment, and then there was a blur of illusory movement, and the image of the wiggle was hovering on the other side of the great tree … which slowly collapsed with an inaudible groan, puffing into sparkles as it fell off of Wheel’s palm. "They create a vacuum wherever they go, traveling without obstruction through whatever’s unlucky enough to be in front of them."

"Dese t’ings are NOT what done dis. We don’t have no worms here … ‘ceptin’ my happy little diners in de graveya’ds … kekekekeke." Ghede snickered nasally, his aura of unearthly menace drawing back as his rage abated and he slipped comfortably into his traditional aspect, his grave robes flickering away as his ratty tux and battered top hat faded back in like someone was adjusting his reception.

"No, those little beasts aren’t what’s done it …" Xan pondered, "... but the idea of unobstructed travel is certainly an intriguing one. Almost all forms of magical travel are long and involved comparatively to other spells because they involve safeguards of some kind …"

"And even super-vernesian science fripperies like tesseracts and dimenjaunters operate on principles that prevent any sort of lasting damage to reality," Wheel added.

"Someone’s not followin’ de rules." Ghede concluded, witchfire lighting his hollow eyes.

And, with the traditional excellent timing one comes to expect when living the synchronicitous life of an Invisible, there was a dull thrum and a sizzling sound and a new gleaming black tubule zzapped into existence between the three of them.

Xan crossed teir wrists and crouched down, gazing after the fading end of the hexprism. "Dear gods, it’s a teleport channel. It’s headed straight into one of the Shamballa temples …"

Wheel grimaced and made a sweeping gesture with his left hand. A cloud of purple and gold fractal lunar moths flooded down the way the hex had come, shrinking away into a spray of prismatic glitter. Wheel's eyes flickered like fluttering wings behind his spectacles. "It’s coming from New Orleans. Crumbs of the Christ! I was just there! I’m STILL there."

Ghede hissed in the back of his throat and snatched at the fizzing air around the thing. "I’ve got it now. Nasty lil’ thing, Guede’s gotcha now." Dangling from his palm was the ghostly image of some sort of ornate spiraling amulet, rife with black stones and power.

All three of them spoke simultaneously. "I'll take care of this."

Xan snapped teir fingers, and Strindberg bounded out of the astral darkness. Te grabbed onto the scruff of his neck and held on as he plunged through nothingness after the receding spell while Xan shouted a quick incantation that carried them after it.

Wheel laid a finger aside of his nose and vanished in a twinkle, back to his physical body in the Crescent City.

Ghede stalked off through the astral night, clutching the fading image of the amulet.

Flickering, eventful moments passed.

... in the depths of the bleedship sunk into the Himalayas that the ancient, twisted clonelings called Shamballa, Strindberg lunged at a towering monstrosity, keeping it at bay while Xan knelt next to a dying alien monk bleeding black crackling ichor from a dozen wounds, and listened to it whisper the name of the man who had killed it and taken a sacred artifact from the ancient ship.

... at a seedy New Orleans dock, Wheel roared up the gangplank and through the richly appointed offices of the riverboat Gojira in a speeding blaze, skidding to a stop in a cloud of city dust in front of the desk of Weaver Black, staring intently at the yellowed daguerrotype Black was wordlessly holding up, picturing a man in an opera cloak taking an ornate medallion from a beautiful shopwoman.

... in the plane of Leng, Ghede held up the dessicated crackling spirit of one of the twisted librarians of the dead world, grinning a skeleton grin as he drained what little essence remained in the terrified ghost. He dangled the fading specter of the amulet in front of the thing, and as it began to flicker out of existence, it hissed a name in the weirdling tongue of Leng.

Three voices spoke one word. A word of Latinate root by way of middle English. A word, ironically enough, not easily forgotten. A name.

"Oblivion."

...

Still later.

Wheel sat on a bench in a cemetery under the bright afternoon sun. He idly tossed candied peanuts to the pigeons, some of whom were CIA-operated biomachines, and others of whom were magically altered in bizarre ways. One burst into green flame. New Orleans was getting stranger. He was watching the image of Xan Epicoene in his spectacles, and talking to ta through traditionally Invisible means.

"And he seemed like such a nice boy," murmured Wheel. "Dr. Faustus at the College will be so disappointed. Oblivion was always a favorite of his."

"He's a bloody power-mad Pict if he thinks he's destined to get away with this." Xanith spoke bitterly. Te, more so than any of the Novum Collegian Invisibles, was quite serious about magic.

"Oblivion's a strange egg," the Psychedelic Illuminate mused, "but he's never been whatcha might call 'super-villainous'. He's generally more interested in acquiring power and following the dark college's agenda than in destroying all reality. Still, you're quite right. Even if he's not aware of the consequences of his actions, he'll probably have to be quite firmly convinced to turn over that gewgaw of an amulet ... and, of course, we'll have to disrupt whatever scheme he and the Estrodome were concocting in the first place."

"Hmm. And I was rather hoping I wouldn't get drawn into a full-fledged caper. Ah, well. Sticks and stones. You're already in New Orleans, so I suppose you've ..."

"... already called all the resident shadowfolk for an Entmeet tonight at the witching hour. And by George Harrison, there's a bloody lot of them. A whole yearbook's worth. Ajax and Heph showed up from somewhere. Weaver's in town. Even Eclipse is sailing in."

"And since you're in New Orleans, and we're dealing with forces which increasingly seem beyond even our considerable control ... you may want to consider talking to Dr. Curare."

Wheel did a psychokinetic doubletake.

"THE BASTARD?!"

"It takes a bastard to fight a bastard, Wheel. And he's a graduate of the College as much as the Monkey or Archimedes. And his grasp of old Mesoamerican magic is unparalleled on this plane."

"Yeah. And he's a creepy motherfucker, too. You should see him playing solitaire in the dark. And there was that time with the floating knives ..."

"Regardless, Wheel. I'll see if I can get in to the old city by sometime near midnight. There's one or two matters to tidy up first."

Wheel sighed heavily, and flicked a candied peanut with a hyperkinetic charge from his lightning-sigil gambit ring, sending it rocketing into the upper atmosphere. "Fine and fettle like heavy metal. Catch you on the flip side."

...

Time flutterbies, and a handful of our heroes and anti-heroes find themselves in Dutrey's, besieged by the lightning ninji in the service of AAM.

Curare was cutting a swath with his primeval green whiplash through the crowd around the towering hulk of Ajax Crowley. The gritting of the half-ogre mage's teeth crackled in the dusty, blood-drizzled air as he struggled to maintain the shielding spells over his Invisible associates, all that stood between them and the cursecrackling weapons held by the ninja. Actionhero, meanwhile, was carving his way towards the beleaguered Archimedes Lochs, who was back to back with Mariposa, driven into a corner by the half-mad eighty-eight best warriors of the Yellow Lightning clan. Ocelot hit the floor with a yelp, four shuriken decoratively lining her arm, and Flamenca, one leg bleeding and useless, fought furiously to defend her. There was a crunch of floorboards as a cybercotta warrior, heavy enchanted clay over a T-500 endoskeleton, stomped through the shattered window and immediately turned, lunging at the two wounded women with its massive sword held high.

There was a blurring rush and the earthen robotic samurai was snatch by the flanges of its helmet and its sword sheath, whizzing along at dizzying speeds.

A brief sonic boom shattered the air of the tiny cafe.

"Allow to me show you an incredible demonstration of physics!" laughed Wheel, the aloha shirt flaring out in lashing tentacles as he blazed along on his Garrick Impulse speedsoles, toting the warrior, which jerked feebly as it tried to cope with the sudden change in velocity.

"Newton's First Law of Motion. An object in motion ...tends to STAY in motion." Wheel grinned, braking his short hypersonic run with the kinetic dampeners in his toecaps. The cybercotta warrior continued on at the same speed ... and the dozen or so ninji between it and the wall were not enough to significantly slow it. There was a tremendous, and rather wet, crunch.

Wheel chuckled. "Flash fact." He whirled around, his golden lightsaber scattering away a descending wakizashi in a shower of sparks.

Heph swiped his massive cutlass diagonally through the hefty warrior in front of him, and reached his guitar case. He kicked it open and fluidly brought his massive boot down on the floorboards, sending the gleaming Robert Johnson six-string guitar hurtling into the air. He snatched it by the neck and spun it into a rock-god stance with a fluid Chuck Berry move, and brought his hand down.

A moment of pregnant silence burst into an expanding sphere of bardic fury, tossing ninji aside like seawater at the feet of a prophet. Actionhero reached the two beleaguered martial artists and tossed two pairs of panther-claw nunchaku to them. Curare scattered the ninjas besieging Achlis with a shower of blood-red razor-edged shaman's leaves. Wheel did a neat handspring over another cybercotta warrior, moments before Flamenca neatly cleaved its sparking clay head from its shoulders, and snapped his fingers, summoning his cane, which blitzed through the air, spitting prismatic lightning. The Invisibles were pushing the agents of AAM back.

"Oh, pooh. That's enough of THAT, nonsense, then."

Circe snapped her fingers, and Achlis roared and reeled back, black blood dripping from his nose. The shields around the Invisibles flickered out. There was a metallic rush as 'Pet barreled into Ocelot from behind, sending the grenade she had just primed bouncing over by Holte, where it detonated, blinding him long enough for a sword to cut deeply into his left shoulder. Kai grinned and toyed with her jewelery, teleporting in a series of puffs of brimstone over to Actionhero. She landed astride his shoulders and reached down, raking her sigil-painted and circuit-traced nails across the liquid sword bracers, causing them to run in rivulets to the floor. She teleported away again as Mariposa flashed through the air with a swirling kick. Wheel's independently-minded cane and Curare's expertly-slashing glittering whiplash were all that were holding the cursed weapons of the Yellow Lightning ninja back now, flashing in a chaotic maelstrom.

Wheel tried a hypersonic rush at Circe, but was cut off by 'Pet tackling him in the knees from behind while Kai Girl caught him in the chest with a shining wizard knee out of another teleport. His saber went clattering to the floor, and faded out. Wheel spiralled to the floorboards and hit hard, the aloha shirt chittering and bubbling hues in alarm. He looked up, grimacing behind his flickering spectacles, at the three smug women, and his beleaguered comrades.

He had a lot of tricks left, but only a few that would be helpful here.

And one that was absurdly dangerous.

But you don't get to be the world's most successful madman with caution as your watchword. And, as a pop culture shaman, he had a certain obligation to take the most spectacular option. He whispered an Erisian epithet that scattered prismatic dust in a roiling cloud, and rolled away from the shattering hammerblow dropped by 'Pet and the swords of the ninja. He hit 'Hero with a thoughtsend.

"'Hero ... it's not easy being green."

There was a furor of renewed activity by the Invisibles as Wheel spun numbers on an invisible safe-dial in the air in front of him, and opened a door of nothingness, pulling out a big glowing green syringe. With only a picosecond's hesitation, he hissed and drove the needle into his abdomen, tears leaking from his eyes behind his spectacles as the sickly gleaming fluid sank into him.

He immediately kipped to his feet with a huff, and intercepted a boken swing with his left hand, knocking it aside. His customary wide grin was locked in a rictus. He felt ... some unusual emotions. He batted aside some more shots from hapless ninja henchmen, rare strength flowing through his limbs, and strode face to face with Kai Girl.

The chaotic chick giggled and stuck a monoedge switchblade into Wheel's left shoulder. He stopped short and looked down at it. He very carefully folded his spectacles and put them into the pocket of the aloha shirt. His eyes flooded the room with blazing green light.

"You're making me angry," he said.

"I don't think you'll like me when I'm angry."

Outside in the relatively calm weird night sky of New Orleans, flocks of pigeons scattered into the stars, black against the moon, as the bayou calm was shattered with a long, raging roar.