Al did not remove his hand, but leaned his forehead against the cool surface. He suddenly felt deeply tired. He’d been pushing hard for over twenty-four hours now, but that was nothing new. The heartbeat, though….it was beckoning him to just give up….his mind filled with the terror on Magical Mystery Isle, the enormity of That Which Had Sought Entry – not only its massive physical size but the limitless expanse of the malice it brought with it, and the infinitude of the army, the horde lying in slavering wait behind it.

The structure now was an open book to him. Its size was not ornamental but functional – it was just as big as it needed to be to house the Sleeper, gargantuan, and no longer fully inert. At the pyramid’s summit they would find the top open, with the spitted Watchers gazing down into Its resting place – those that were still on the job anyway.

“Peter an’ all the apostles. What the hell ya done cooked up here fer us, Shrikester baby?”

[Morning, Thursday February 3rd, 2078??; Pyramid Metaplane…?]

Jazz looked at the pyramid with some trepidation…the matrix, and more importantly the Resonance, felt very far away here…mostly what she gleaned from her connection to her friends around her and the mesh they formed. The stone sides were shear, and although Becky was bloody strong Jazz didn’t want to risk wearing her out by asking her to help Raksha and Rama to scale this impossible thing. Instead she asked them to back away a little so that they had a ballistic arc to the top of the pyramid. Hopefully their weapons would not be needed but this was the best they could achieve in any event and she drew some comfort in knowing they were watching their backs.

Shouldering her Kalashnikov she joined the line to get boosted on to the first step, wincing only a little on touching the cold stone…

#52

* Oleg: Of course there is a monster unaccounted for
* : AAAAAAAA
* Coleman: We don’t know where the third monster is, but that doesn’t mean that it is an immediate danger

Preston stared at the stakes for a long moment, wishing he could deny the evidence of his eyes. But finally he had to say it “Three missing their inner monster. One in the goat. One probably in whatever it was in Maria’s house. And one unaccounted for.”
* Oleg: Don’t look at Sam
* : AAAAAA don’t look at SAM!
* Eliza: To look at Sam is to accuse her

Preston couldn’t help it, his eyes slid around to look at Sam.

Al stood on the penultimate tier getting his breath back. The cold of the smooth black stone seeped up through the soles of his boots. He took in the scene as dispassionatly as he could, knowing he needed to keep his wits at all costs.

Preston spoke. It made Al wish they’d had some news from Jazz’s anthroform. And then Preston’s eyes said more than his words had. Al had wondered the same thing from the time the goat had put itself back together, and he’d remembered how Noir had healed her own legs. He’d seen healing witchery and he knew it took a heap lot of it to repair damage like that – and she’d been too weak to use her sorcery to get the block off of her.

Becky must have been thinking the same thing, but she didn’t say so. Not directly. But it spoke volumes that she questioned Noir as if the PI was an expert on these things.

For his own part, he didn’t join the hacker in looking at Noir. His rifle was loaded with wood pulp rounds. But his gut still told him Noir wasn’t a threat, even if…hell, if one of those things was in her, then it must have plans to live in her world – and there had to be a world left standing for that to happen.

Or, it was up t something. Why else come back to the site of millenia of torture, the place where the people around it might want to draft it into service again.

But – assuming this crazy suspicion was even true, was Noir – the real Noir – any longer even a player? Whatever stood there with them sure as hell had her personality. He didn’t know enough about these things to figure whether they could learn and mimic someone that well…..

Which raised another uncomfortable question in his mind…with one of those things in you, what was left of the consciousness of the host? Did it die? Was it asleep? Was it a co-pilot? Or was it a conscious passenger? Looking at the forms on the spears and trying to imagine a few thousand years and he could only hope the hosts were long dead.

But then what did that mean about the pale woman standing next to them?

And still, his gut told him she was on their side. Or, if not theirs, then the world’s.

The voodoo gods were far, very far. As was She.

“Time ta make the doughnuts,” he said. He moved over to Ichante, which had the added benefit of taking him a few steps away from Noir, and facing him towards her. “I’ll turn, an’ you use that witch sight ta guide me, princess,” he said.

They got to work. As Al slowly adjusted the key, trying to sense the fluctuations in the voodoo gods’ juice, he mused aloud. “So we’s here. Now what? We supposed ta git Billy Goat Gruff there back in one o’ the meat sticks there? Any idears on how ta do that? Becky, yer thinkin’ we let it die, then see where it goes? I were it, I wouldn’t be too cooperative about that. An’ would that be even enough if we’s missin’ the other two?”

He’d lived his whole life without much of a plan. And never really regretted it until now.

“Yeah, Presto baby tipped ta the wood thing,” Al replied, flexing his fingers as he felt some of the usual juice flowing again. “What’s the score, kemo sabe?” he asked the decker. “Vamps can’t grow back wounds made with wood. Leastways not while they’s still touchin’ it. These freaks like that at all?”

Al’s attention was mostly on Noir now, waiting to see if she offered Becky an answer about how to fix this mess, and wondering whether he’d believe what she said.

But he took time to mutter out of the corner of his mouth to Preston, “‘Things dead with no traces of life’? Sheee-it, creepy apocalypse talk an’ puttin’ itself back together ain’t exactly what I’d call no traces o’ life. Now them three up on the sticks, they got no signs o’ life. These others, they got entirely too much life in ’em, ya ask ol’ Al.”

“Son of a bitch…”

Al added some voodoo hexes and jumped high and hard. Even with the weight of the Orb, he got his elbows over the lip. The Orb on his chest was getting warmer – a fact he could not forget with it slammed into his sternum as his body hit the wall – but the juice from the voodoo gods was flowing freely. More importantly, out of the corner of his eye he spotted that big white Akita – gone as quickly as she’d appeared. If She was taking an interest, this had to be bad.

An instant after he got his elbows over the lip, he swung one boot over and then he was standing next to Noir….and oh what a view…

* Monkry: What is going on? I want to see! I need to know what is going on.
* Gamma: No, I don’t need to. I went through this with Sonya — I want to feel in control, but I don’t need to.
* Oleg: I can die down here as easily as up there.
* Gamma: There is an issue that has not been addressed. Sam mentioned that the portal let’s those spirits out. Might let that big nasty out too.

“[Color=red] Ichante, do you know anything about shutting portals? Like if we wanted to lock the door behind us?[/color]“

• This reply was modified 1 week ago by  Beta.
• This reply was modified 1 week ago by  Beta.

Becky replies to Al, ”Weaknesses of the heart, at least she is a real person”. Having no expert Becky decides to act to the best of her knowledge without thinking on it too much. She impels the goat on one of the golden spheres pushing the decaying body downward. ”Al, help me saw his eyelids, but careful… his touch has paralytic effects, so we stick to business. I survived grappling it so it is no instant, and the effects decay after a few minutes. Preston, I think that your cyberarm would not be affected by the magical ability. “

To the rest, she says ”We need two more assholes… There is one roaming the farmhouse, we’ve seen its claw marks, it is clearly not a goat body. Also, can some of us stay here to watch the sleeper and prevent it from waking up? or does it have to be an asshole?

The face was clear, real, and Becky instantly feels her body fades into a more feminine and receptive state. She was conditioned to obey the person. She’ll kiss him right there, and leave this dangerous feat if only he’d really share his life with her. ”I spent my entire life pleasuring you in any way that I could… You always return to her, and every day that you chose Linda part of me dies a little bit. You are the only man I ever loved, the only man I ever knew. I am a free woman, but I am still so yours and I hate it. You are my poison, and I am yours.” Her heart pounded, and her eyes teared.

”Your wife is the one that got me, she understood my pain, and she was the one that showed me compassion.
You were never going to give me what I wanted… Your children are my age now, Mafiosi for their own right… and what am I?
I am nothing… I grow older and you will never give me a family of my own. Nobody will take care of me when I am old, I have no future – and no existence once you die. There is no future for us Roger… It breaks my heart to say that, to only understand it after twenty years together. Now get out of my mind, I will return if I survive and I will again give you anything that I am, and you will again stay with your family… Because family is everything and I am just an asset.”