Changeling

(113): Chaos Demon

Monday

The reporter smiled at the camera after a short, vain attempt at seriousness. In the background, police searchlights and drones illuminated the three wings of the Museum of Art of Philadelphia, beige stone and columns offering a neoclassical gravitas to the scene. The contrast of pre-Incursion glory and post-apocalyptic resilience was almost more of a distraction than a setting, but the reporter seized back the attention with a well-paced introduction.

“In what appears to be the most high-profile case of reverse heist in history, two new paintings appeared in the museum’s Rodin collection today during opening hours. Despite the criminal nature of the operation, it appears that no persons or exhibits were harmed in the process. Curator Abele had this to say about the two new items.”

The camera switched to drifting images of the museum’s interior while a conversation played, clearly a second-hand recording given the poor quality of the audio.

“Yes, well, we have two pieces tentatively named ‘Sunrise over the Capital’ and ‘The Channels’. I’m saying ‘tentative’ because the script used appears to be an extremely rare language only discovered in a B-class portal near Bogota. The brush marks match the rest of the painting.”

“So those are portal artefacts?” the journalist’s voice replied.

“No, that’s the thing,” the curator continued with mounting excitement. “Pigment analysis reveals two things. First, those paintings are both over a hundred years old!”

“What?”

“I am entirely serious, miss. Those paintings are old, an impossibility for portal artefacts as you well know since those appear to be generated, or rather materialized on the spot. Moreover, the pigments themselves exhibit an anomalously high amount of residual mana, especially for a work that old, and finally, chemical analysis does not match any known Earth pigments. Do you understand what this means?”

“You can’t be serious,” the reporter whispered.“I am entirely serious, and the evidence is undeniable. Those are actual otherworldly cultural artifacts! And not lizardmen artifacts as far as we can tell, but something stranger, something more distant.”

“The value of this must be... pretty high?” the reporter said, throwing it out there to get a reaction.

The curator chuckled. He was obviously in a glorious mood.

“From a xenoanthropological perspective, hard to say. The scientific consensus on the existence of many more civilizations beyond the lizardmen was well established. Those paintings are only undeniable evidence of an agreed truth. As for the cultural aspect of things, we have now ascertained that art was, if not universal among sapient species, at least present in all of those we have confirmed to exist.”

“So all three of them?”

“All four! As for the monetary value, why, it is quite simply incalculable because there are no markets for a type of good that we were not aware existed just eight hours ago.”

The curator laughed good-naturedly.

“We will let the finance department argue over that. I’m more interested in the paintings, to be honest. My only regret is that there are only two. Hold on, I’ll be generous and send you pictures.”

The first painting appeared on the screen. It was a warm city landscape in red and ochre, a rising star lighting what might look at first sight as some medieval city until the architectural impossibilities surged to the foreground. There were flying figures in the sky too. Although the picture itself had been taken hastily, the level of detail was simply too much to take in quickly.

“So this one is Sunrise over the Capital. Interestingly, we don’t know the name of the capital itself, a sign the civilization considers it so recognizable that writing the name itself becomes redundant. We’ve already spotted flyers and buildings that ought to collapse, but there are other elements a picture cannot show like changing colors over what we presume are defensive enchantments on the walls of important buildings. I’d wager the painting will be quite popular once we transfer it to the main building!”

“You will exhibit it?” the reporter asked.

“If we can! Now, for the second one...”

The other painting was much darker, clearly painted to reveal underground water canals of some sort. The center of the painting was a shining gondola covered in festive lights, shadows of revelers visible behind drawn curtains. It almost eclipsed the rest until the eye inevitably found a corpse floating in the dark water.

“That painting is darker and, shall I say, ominous. The body in the water wasn’t drowned as.... you probably can’t see it but he has some sort of blade in his back. The contrast of life and death in a culturally meaningful liminal space suggests a bittersweet composition that offers both a promise and a warning. And it might not be entirely clear but the shapes in the second window from the right are, well, we are quite certain they are engaged in coitus. It’s a very sensual painting.”

“I, uh, I see.”

“Not the most scandalous piece we have exhibited.”

“So would you say those are, uhm, major contributions to the museum?”

“That is a massive understatement, yes.”

“Then why not go through official channels?”

Curator Abele tutted, though it lacked bite.

“I believe the reverse theft was done for advertisement and shock purposes. Hold on.”

A new image appeared, this one showing a wall of the Rodin collection. It had been shamelessly defaced by a dark gray graffiti, some of the paint dripping a little but otherwise with a suspiciously clean calligraphy.

‘Nestra was here!’ it said.

There was also an emote of a darkly laughing demon face.

It was a bit ridiculous.

“The fourth confirmed alien species you seem to have forgotten,” Abele said with joy. “Or third, chronologically speaking. I believe the police are after her?”

His voice made it clear he wasn’t rooting for their success.

“She’s welcome to burglarize us again.”

***

Tuesday

“And here we are, the Liberty Bell! A symbol of freedom and a rally point for protestors throughout the ages: abolitionists, suffragettes, free raiders, many are those who took it as a symbol, but it didn’t start that way!”

The guide pointed at the bell which was honestly not that impressive, Andrew thought? Although the kindly black old man sounded enthusiastic. The bell was old and cracked, and not that big. The red bricks of the Independence Hall visible through the frameless glass behind at least could be visited. It was crazy how flat all those old buildings were. He guessed there was a lot of room at the time so there was no need to stack high, with no monsters around.

“The Liberty Bell started as a State House bell designed to call legislators to work, and announce declarations to the public. It was commissioned by the Speaker of the Pennsylvania assembly in 1751, and brought all the way from the Whitechapel foundry in London.”

“In England?” Cassy asked at his side.

“That’s right! Unfortunately, it cracked on the first test ring.”

Yeah no wonder his ancestors declared independence, Andrew thought. Getting that thing across the entire Atlantic only for it to break like that? What a scam. Andrew shook his head. The guide went on about how it became a symbol of freedom much later but Andrew noticed something strange. A dark shape suddenly appeared on the white roof of the Independence Hall. With one mighty jump, the shape resolved itself into a demon woman who landed on the separating glass with a surprisingly quiet bump. She was smiling maniacally.

It was her.

Andrew recognized her from the news. There was a 25 million credits price on her head, not that it mattered. Not one of the guilds had managed to bring her down yet. The woman knocked on the glass. She was strangely colorless, like they were bleeding away from her. Black scales covered her chest, shoulders, shins, and forearms. The guide turned away, aware of the shift in attention.

She made a ‘go to the side’ move with her hand. The guide obliged, mostly because he was surprised but it was probably a good idea anyway.

The woman punched. The glass exploded, showering the ground with slabs of cracked crystal, some of which bumped harmlessly against Andrew’s shoes. The woman jumped on the bell.

“Since you don’t appear to be using this...”

Then she was gone, and the bell with her, leaving a shockingly bell-shaped imprint in the remains of the glass wall.

“What the fuck?” Cassy asked.

Andrew took out his smart glasses to end the recording. He immediately uploaded the video to his cloud storage.

“Internet glory, here I come,” he whispered.

***

“Close in. No choice, close in.”

Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

The raid leader jumped after the cacodaimon woman with all the mana her legs could take and it was barely enough. She and her team couldn’t use arrows, or large spells, or any of the more disruptive weapons they had because this was Center City and there were civilians everywhere. She met the cacodaimon’s abyssal gaze, her powerful body barely slowed by the massive object she was dragging behind her. The alien smiled.

Fuck was she annoying. What was even her goal? At this stage, the raid leader wouldn’t be surprised if that Nestra character sent a demand asking for ‘one MILLION dollars’ before laughing maniacally. Nothing made sense. And now her team was sprinting on a street where she’d bought a chai latte just this morning (and it had been expensive too).

“Now!”

The raid leader charged, with her lancer and archer on the other side. The cacodaimon twisted on herself, using the bell as a hammer. It clocked her lancer on the flank. Her archer dodged it, but didn’t see the leg tripping her. She stumbled. Then the raid leader was facing the bell again after the cacodaimon twisted once more. The two wrestled with the massive object until the raid leader realized she was being pushed into a traffic light. She disengaged.

The bell slammed against her with a dreadful ‘clank’. Instead of slamming against the traffic light, she was sent to a bank’s outer support pillar. She was going too fast, and was half airborne so she failed to slow down.

The raid leader crashed against concrete. On the other side of the street, her lancer ended his run in a parked car’s windshield while her archer continued her tumbling course. The cacodaimon veered sharply to the left, another B-class team joining the chase. Someone with a nature affinity was attempting a restraining growth spell. Good luck with that.

The raid leader extracted herself from the small indent she’d made. Unlike her dignity, her body was fine.

“God dammit she’s just one woman,” their contact at the city’s Ops center screamed in her earplugs.

And the raid leader would agree, but they were attempting to capture an insanely good B-class close-quarters master with several mobility skills. And the way she moved was just... the raid leader had seen it in her own mentor, he used his body in a way that transcended its human origin. The cacodaimon had been trained by someone who understood what B-class bodies were capable of.

It was very frustrating. With a grunt, the raid leader returned to the chase, the rest of her team behind her. The street in front of her was filled with stopped cars and swearing commuters. No damage though. At the end of it, her keen sight found the cacodaimon leading a dozen raiders on a merry chase. The cacodaimon suddenly accelerated, however, leaving her followers in the dust. The raid leader immediately spotted the final destination at the end of the street: Rebirth’s Philadelphia political headquarters. Anticipation crawled up her back with icy fingers.

The cacodaimon blurred, leaving only black bolts of false electricity behind her. With a furious roar, she hoisted the Liberty Bell above her head.

She slammed the entire relic into the building’s facade. It shook from the impact, cracks crawling over the surface of the red bricks. The raid leader thought she might have damaged it but a black veil withdrew at the last moment: the bell had been coated with mana, leaving it intact. The lower part was firmly embedded in the building, but the upper one jutted out alongside its message.

Proclaim Liberty thro' all the Land to all the Inhabitants thereof.

The cacodaimon slipped through the stone, then she disappeared from view. The chase stopped while several teams surrounded the building. The raid leader knew they would find nothing.

Her lancer stopped by her side.

“I can’t even be mad,” he said.

***

Wednesday

A blaring alarm rang through the operations center. Immediately, two dozen operators dropped their coffees in their haste to return to their seats. Voices erupted left and right. Teams were called. Drones took off from roofs.

“Target sighted on 9th street exiting a bakery! Heading north.”

The main screen replayed a dark form slamming the door open. The now familiar form of Clytemnestra Palladian’s alien form rushed away, needle teeth voraciously tearing into a kouign amann. The rest of the package disappeared into what they had now identified as a pocket space under her control. With two thirds of the pastry sticking out of her face, the woman rushed north.

“Teams 4 and 6 are converging on her. Seventeen drones on the way.”

The first drone fired soon after. It was equipped with needle projectiles filled with enough tranquilizers to knock an elephant out in seconds. The projectile hit her flank, guided by the drone’s advanced targeting system.

“No penetration.”

“Aim for her face,” the ops chief said in a calm voice.

His self-control extended to his subordinates. Commands erupted from a dozen implants. The drones repositioned, but so did the woman. She moved erratically, sometimes teleporting ahead and to the side such as way to force the drones to reacquire her. More sedative bullets hit the ground, the trees, and a couple of cars.

“Hold fire. We’ll need to overwhelm her,” the ops chief said.

By then, two teams were racing after her. Another moved to block her or at least channel her towards the Delaware river, away from the city’s center. She reached a crossroad. The path was clear.

All the drones fired at once. The target brought her armguards up to her face. For a moment, it was as if she’d sprouted red ‘feathers’ from the bullets’ stabilizers, but then the projectiles all fell to the ground, then she teleported through a bus, and then she was among the third team. Their tank stopped her sword strike, but she dodged under a razor-thin spell and pushed a shortsword shadow wielder away by kicking him in the head. A twist to parry a sword lunge, a dip below a hammer strike, a passing ‘no parking’ signal torn and slammed into the archer’s face, and she was through. Everyone else gave chase.

“Don’t panic. Bide your time. Team six?”

“We’re under but we can’t match her speed in the tunnels,” a gleam said.

That was the issue with trying to cover the tunnels. Most underground facilities were isolated in clusters when they were even functional. It made following a surface-sprinting gleam close to impossible. Fortunately, they had many teams, and the ops chief intended to make it count. Against all odds, the target... moved into another bakery.

The move was so unexpected, the rest of the teams stopped. For about twenty seconds and as other teams converged, the ops chief wondered if he had a hostage situation on his hands, but then the target came out with a wicker basket (probably decorative) filled with cannoli.

She grabbed one, eating it in one go.

“Do you surrender?” Team 3’s leader asked.

The target smiled. A long gray tongue cleared her needle teeth of sweetened ricotta.

“I do not.”

The race continued. A dozen restraining spells surged forward but the target teleported to the side, then threw parked cars in between. The B-class raiders were not incompetent, far from it. Some of their spells were scattered, others clustered. Some of them tried to get between the buildings and the target. Others lay traps under her feet. Tactics evolved as the team leaders attempted a variety of measures but the target was impossibly slippery. It wasn’t just speed, she had power, precision and a devilish array of utility skills meant to get her where she was needed. It would be a different story in a portal world where the B-class could deploy the full power of their city-shattering spells, but here everyone was playing with needles and she was a great needle player indeed. Cutting across a few buildings, she reached another store first.

The ops chief’ heart filled with horror as news drones joined the pursuit, much higher than his own. The alien jumped out of the back of the store this time with her hands filled with pound cakes and peanut butter brownies. She was chewing with frantic speed, but the net was closing around her. By the time she exited the last bakery loaded with cookies and sourdough bread, the trap was shut.

Rather than staying in the streets, the target suddenly jumped up, easily clearing and reaching the roof of a random office building. Fifty drones and half as many B-class raiders slowly closed in on her including some rushing into the building itself to cut off her escape should she phase through the walls yet again. She was surrounded. The raiders were still concerned because the target showed no signs of fear.

“And for my next trick!” she screamed, voice strangely carried by mana. “I’m going to make all your drones... disappear!”

The ops’ chief blood froze. EMP bomb? Surely not, and yet...

The target spread her hands. One instant, the roof was empty. The next, there was a generator plugged to a rather large white half-sphere from which emerged a stubby black cylinder. It was... his brain froze. But his implant filled him in.

Touhei MkIV-C Close Interception Defense Cannon, also know as Threshold’s Cid-cannon. A weapon specialized in taking down flying monsters up to C-class with missiles and rockets as a side possibility. The thing whirred to life before anyone could really react. With a sound like a really, really loud fart, the gun fired.

The ops chief lost the feed. Everyone had as well. In his ears, the gleams converged on the target, those who could tank rubber bullets in the face without problems. A fire spell took out the cannon within a second and half, but by then it was too late. The target had rushed down in a bolt of black electricity, dodging two air gleams on the way. The ops chief heard reports of her avoiding an earth and nature gleam to break through a metal gleam’s fortifications using a mix of false electricity and false water. The target’s understanding of metal’s limits were terrifying. As for the B-class nature user, he was fine besides a bloody nose. The target had then disappeared down into the basement, and presumably to the utility tunnels underneath.

The raiders swarmed the nearest buildings in case she resurfaced, with three teams closing in on the tunnels, yet even with team eleven approaching from passages to the north, it was too slow a maneuver to close the net on the fast-moving alien. Fifteen minutes later, the last team confirmed they’d found nothing. A sigh of embarrassment spread through the room. The ops chief’s phone rang. He checked the caller ID.

He considered that he might be out of a job very soon.

“I’m waiting for good news. Any good news,” he grumbled.

An intern raised a shaky hand.

“Hmm, it appears that she paid for every transaction so no new crime was committed. Technically.”

The ops chief’s attention focused on the intern’s face with laser intensity. Most of the team cleared the path as if the glare would suddenly turn into a weapon that matched its owner’s incandescent rage.

“She did cut the line though,” the intern continued, completely oblivious. “Villainous behavior.”

Thursday

Ahmed’s fingers drummed against the upholstery of his seat. He’d left the AI to pilot the car, which was much more relaxing when there was a jam. Today was looking to be excessively frustrating. To top it off, the ‘Cooking with Crescent’ account had promised ‘mixed signals’ after yesterday’s live bakery run which already topped seventeen million views. He tried to return his attention to his work but he was as prepared for his presentation as he could reasonably be. The plans for the new office building were all but approved. This was more of a formality.

He might be forced to make that presentation in his car.

In front of him, the light turned green for exactly five seconds before reverting to red.

He frowned. Opening his social media account meant biting the bullet of procrastination, but he might not have a choice.

The truth hit him with the first post, an official city announcement that they were ‘looking into disturbances negatively impacting the traffic’. In front of him, three cars managed to squeeze through before the light turned red again.

“Al’ama, I’m not making it to the meeting.”

***

“What do you mean, you can’t regain control? Can’t you reboot the system?” the mayor hissed.

“See for yourself, sir.”

The police officer stoically turned the camera towards the command room of the Traffic Control Center.

It was empty, empty but for a small black box with an antenna connected to the room’s fiber optic cables, like the deceptively small heart of a tentacular being. Everything else was gone up to and including the chairs.

“What the hell? Where is everything?”

“It’s not on site, sir.”

“What do you mean it’s not on site?”

“Exactly that. The hardware is gone.”

The mayor took a deep breath. Losing his temper would be useless here. And it wasn’t the police’s fault. They were not equipped to face that hellion.

“What if you unplug that... thing?”

“Then all the traffic signals over the city fail simultaneously.”

“Can we ask a neighboring TCC to take over?”

“They don’t have the protocols, sir. I asked one of the techs.”

The mayor would have been very vocal had he not remembered he’d advocated for a ‘strong, autonomous city’ so throwing the shit bucket around might lead to a pair of brown shoes. Breathing hard, he closed the call.

That black box couldn’t possibly handle all of the traffic in the Greater Philly area. It was not a control tool, but a relay. He first made a call to a friend in Washington regardless of the risk. His second call took a while to connect. Eventually, it did.

“This is Mayor Kim speaking.”

“I suppose you think you're funny!” the mayor erupted despite himself.

There was a three second long pause during which the mayor realized he was shooting himself in the foot.

“Was there a purpose to this call?” Kim asked.

“I apologize for the outburst. It has been a very long week.”

“I understand, my dear colleague,” Kim replied in a mellifluous voice that told the mayor he’d been identified, vetted, and approved in the brief time it had taken him to connect.

“There is the matter of traffic control I would like... resolved.”

“But of course. It has been... an hour and twenty-two minutes. I will make sure everything returns to normal while you recover your hardware, which is stored on Ramona Street, so not too far. I will send you the exact address.”

“Thank you,” the mayor replied, filled with relief.

But now there would be a demand.

“Was there anything else?” Kim asked.

“Not at the moment, unless...”

He left the door open for further discussion, but Kim was, despite his title, the leader of a nation. The mayor was outranked.

“Nothing for now though I will make sure to keep your number. Have a great day, colleague.”

***

Friday

“We are now at the Philadelphia City Range where the National Marksmanship championship was supposed to start two hours ago. Supposed to, as it appears that all the approved bullets have been replaced with disguised blanks.”

In the background, a recording of the opening round played with all contestants firing only to look aghast as none of the shots registered....

Saturday

Center City’s protective wall extended along the Delaware river as a low-budget protection against possible tides coming from the bay, far to the south. It wouldn’t stop a kaiju — it wasn’t designed to — but it would slow down a tide before it could reach the many shelters there. As far as walls go, that one wasn’t so bad though old and in dire lack of a coat of paint. Unfortunately, a new one had been provided in an eye-watering bonbon pink. Letters dozens of yards high screamed a rather plain message.

REBIRTH STINKS.

Reporters came to the site to cover the news though it paled relative to some of the previous days’ stunts. The demon emote was entirely unnecessary. News channels commented on the PG-13 and frankly childish word choice, and the garish color, and the organic washable paint. Public opinion ranged from furious to amused with a significant group that was just appalled. All those reports only had one thing in common, a question rather.

When would it stop?

When would the authorities do something to halt what was cartoon-level villain behavior, yet remained thoroughly uncontested despite quite a few drones and raider guilds? Was the government content to be reminded every day of their failures? Although Threshold remained silent on the issue, major foreign media agencies, influencers, and humorists mercilessly thrashed the lack of effective response. How could America hope to win a war when it couldn’t even stop one obnoxious B-class idiot on their own home turf?

What if the B-class stopped playing? What if a missile caught her sister? What if the rubber turned to tungsten, the pranks to full on terrorist attacks? The infiltration into targeted assassinations? What then? Something had to be done.

***

The man sighed, terribly burdened by a rapidly worsening situation. ‘Complex’ didn’t begin to describe it. And the shenanigans of Threshold's alien only made it worse. The urban landscape simply offered too much cover, too many avenues of retreat. It limited the power and intensity of the spells his people could use without risking casualties. The city could not muster a proper response as it didn’t have the tools to do so. He had to intervene. His fingers touched the implant at the side of his neck.

Only one category of gleams could solve this issue.

“Sir?”

“Get me Vanquisher. No, get me Cross herself.”