The team already has the Hula Hoop set up for Leah and Charles’ universe, which they’ve dubbed Multi-37 and which Charlotte’s Menagerie calls “the Pidgeverse”. Here, the Menagerie is made up of gender-flipped heroes. Medea Quill, Alistair Chin, Leah Snow, Charles Palmer, Harriet Gale, Amelia Amari, and their assorted friends and family are all here to support the effort.
“We’re not sure what to expect, so just be ready for anything,” Leah announces to her team, and to the members of the multiversal expedition. “We’re splitting into two teams. The cowpokes will be wrangling Eigendrakes, keeping them in the tunnel however they can. The wizards are gonna neutralize the soul cores, hopefully splitting the Drakes up into their component memories. If all goes well and our theory holds true, those memories will discorporate and head into the Great Beyond or whatever the fuck.”
“What if it doesn’t?” Alistair asks, all business.
“Then the cowpokes wrangle whatever’s left back into the tunnel and we go back to the drawing board.” Leah shrugs. “Listen. There’s a space-time angle here. If this works, we’ll be effectively changing the past for some damaged or even destroyed worlds. We have a shot at saving a whole planet here. So don’t fuck up.”
She gestures at the assembly. “Okay. Sort yourselves out. If you can fuck with souls and magic and shit, you’re a wizard. If not, you’re a cowpoke. Each group, get a team lead appointed and tell me who that is. I’ll be operating the hardware and I will take instructions from either lead.”
For safety, the actual portal will open in the Sahara desert. This is the most isolated spot anyone can think of, barring the Antarctic, and that would pose serious challenges to survival for much of the team. The group rendezvouses there. Organizational arrangements then commence. Charles Palmer becomes team lead of the wizards, and Medea Quill is in charge of the cowpokes.
Over the radio, the two team leads announce their readiness to Leah.
“Roger. Plasma pressure rising… we’re targeting 200%, just in case. I have my finger on the button to kill this thing,” she reports back.
The signal is given, and the portal blossoms open.
If anyone was expecting the Eigendrakes to be peacefully milling about in the tube like before, they are now very, very mistaken.
A torrential cloud of darkness and yellow lighting bolts vomit forth from the portal. Everything happens all at once, too fast for almost anyone to handle. Harriet Gale and Harold the Fleet, keyed up for danger, move with their super-speed to push people out of the way of the bolts. Amelia and Astra are ready too, and simultaneously snap together a defensive barrier around the group.
“Shut it down!” screams Alistair into the radio. “Shut it down right now!”
Though he is not the leader, Medea echoes his words immediately, seeing their sense. “Leah, terminate portal. Leah! …Leah?”
There’s silence. Whether that means something’s happened back at the Launch System, or whether something is jamming the radio, nobody knows.
If that’s how it is, there’s nothing for it. Medea begins barking orders at the cowpokes. “Concordance Crew, enclose as many Eigendrakes as you can in a bubble - shift from protection to isolation, even if we’re in it too.”
She and Alistair raise some experimental energy weapons dredged up from the depths of the Quill Compound’s warehouse, and begin raising their own kind of hell.
Amelia and Astra fly to opposite sides of the portal and pour their hearts and wills into creating barriers. But to their horror, they see the Eigendrakes doing something unexpected. They are not only passing through the emotional energy being generated - they are consuming it.
“Wizards, begin your assault! Follow my target!” Charles too is barking out orders. “If the cowpokes are in trouble, go defensive - pull them out of danger if you must. Proceed!”
Charles bends his potent mystical powers to the task of finding the soul core of the nearest Eigendrake - a writhing, formless abomination of shadow and spirit. His power pushes the component memories out of the way, creating a path for others’ attacks to follow.
But in the time this takes, four more of the ghastly ghosts descend on Medea and Alistair. Harriet and Harold are already busy trying to corral their own targets.
It is the spectral Jason Quill of Multi-25 that springs to the defense of his cognate and her partner. The green, shimmering image of Jason thrusts out his hands, and through him the massed power of a dead world’s haunted hellions flare outward. The Eigendrake is pushed away, but only for a moment.
The Charlottes focus on holding open the path to the soul core of Charles’ chosen Eigendrake. Equity is ready for the opportunity they create. She summons a sparkling spiritual javelin and hurls it with deadly precision into the gap. The soul core is struck, and shatters.
The memories, like clouds of ink floating in ocean turbulence, do not dissipate after all. They are drawn to the cores of the other Eigendrakes nearby.
“This is really bad,” mutters Alycia-25.
More Eigendrakes are rising into the sky. Others sink into the sand of the Sahara.
“Cowpokes, corral who you can,” Medea announces, already sensing defeat. “We’ve failed at containment, now we’re doing mitigation.”
A few can be pushed back. Astra and Amelia don’t use their barriers as walls now, knowing the entities can simply devour them. They push, applying bursts of intense force, and a few Eigendrakes are indeed corralled into the tunnel. But it isn’t enough.
Harriet and Harold are busy full time, just dragging people out of the path of the lightning bolts. By now it’s very apparent that these aren’t just random discharges, but some kind of sustained attack. But from where, and how they are guided, is a mystery.
Bodark is able to corral a single Eigendrake at a time, by drawing on the fear of the Wolf, but even he cannot master a whole field of these beings. Vermillion, similarly, has limited luck in manipulating one of the shadowy time-dragons.
Harold is a tad too slow, just once, and is struck by a yellow bolt. Moments later, Medea is as well. Both disappear, instantly and completely.
Three minutes feels like an eternity. But Leah’s time factor applies, and the automatic cutoff closes the portal.
The remaining Eigendrakes cease their attacks, and flee immediately. With nowhere to corral them into, the team can do little but protect themselves and each other as they do.
The mystery of what happened at the Launch System is answered when Ai and Yu, Leah Snow’s twin robot creations, come onto the communicator. “Leah was struck by some kind of lightning bolt and disappeared,” they report. “What happened? Is she there?”
“Negative,” Alistair answers in muted anger and frustration. “The same thing has taken Harold-65 and… and Medea.”
“Are they…?” Alycia-25 asks fearfully. She has already lost one Jason.
Astra shakes her head. “There’s a space-time thread. The lightning didn’t kill them - it transported them,” she declares.
“Where?” Alistair demands.
The Launch System is very definitely offline. The team put out calls for pickup, and Ai and Yu dispatch Big Belle, the flying Boeing jet liner.
Cities are going off the air. Cairo is the nearest, and the team decides to overfly it.
What they see is nothing less than a shadowy draconic figure, curled up around the entire city.
“How big is that place?” breathes Daph.
“Four hundred and fifty square kilometers,” Alycia says softly.
“We gotta know what’s going on down there,” Maury says.
Charles Palmer shakes his head. “I would not send anything sentient into that place.”
Maury smiles wryly. “I’m the queen of remote camera drones. I got this.”
With the equipment aboard Big Belle, she’s able to construct a trio of long-range drones. They’ll make the flight, take some footage, and fly back. Mindful of the Eigendrakes’ disruptive effects on electronics, Alycia, Alistair, and young Jason all contribute some anti-EMP shielding.
The rear hatch of Big Belle opens, and the drones fly out into the sudden whistling of wind, and the stinging of sand.
An hour passes before the drones are due to emerge from the shadowy space. For a few minutes after that, the team worries that they’ve wasted their time. But finally they do emerge.
Back aboard Big Belle, flying high, the team analyzes the footage.
The people of Cairo are alive and mobile. The drones show them moving about. But the way they move is disturbing.
“What are they doing?” Charlotte-65 inquires.
“It seems like street theater,” Alycia says.
“They’re playing at some kind of role. Miming actions,” clarifies Alistair.
Sure enough, there’s a citizen who’s busily mixing up some kind of stew in a kettle or cauldron. But there’s no cauldron, and no stew, and no ladle. Elsewhere, two women are both tenderly rocking imaginary children, clutched in real arms.
It’s Astra who gives an explanation. Rather than watching the footage, she is reading emotional imprints from the drones, which passed through the Eigendrakes’ zone of control. “The Drakes’ component memories are re-enacting themselves. They’ve taken control of the citizens of Cairo and are using them as puppets. And meanwhile, the Eigendrakes are feeding on their real memories. They’re growing stronger, just like they did by eating our barriers.”
Young Jason is taking stock of world events via a computer terminal, and he reports back. “London. Halcyon. Los Angeles. An’ other places, east an’ west. The Drakes are settlin’ in.”
“We did this,” Charlotte says softly.
“We will find a way to undo it,” vows Resister, next to her.
“We will not find it here,” Alistair says firmly. “Leah spoke of saving planets. Now the planet to be saved is this one. Go back to your homes, consult with your teams, return with a plan. This world’s Menagerie will do the same.”
There isn’t much else to do, Charlotte admits to herself. And it will not be easy. The Drakes will drain the world of its memories to sustain and enlarge themselves, like vampires. They’ll fight any attempt to send their memories on their way. They’ll take control of living human beings, regardless of how it hurts them.
When you’re lonely, human connection is everything. There’s nothing you won’t do for it.