Welcome to Gaia! ::

He woke up with his head pounding, gagged and blindfolded and chained to a chair. God only knew how long it had been since the tire iron had come down and splintered his skull into unconsciousness -- it couldn't have been more than six hours, could it, not when they were supposed to meet with -- meet with Alex the next afternoon. Could it? Sensory deprivation closed in like claustrophobia and Hector tried to spit his gag out, move his blindfold, free his arms, break or knock over his chair, all to no avail. He was trapped in darkness and mute, with no company and no idea where he was. Or for all he knew he had company and they were just watching him make a fool of himself like a crippled animal on the other side of the room. Sensory deprivation was like a straitjacket.

At some indeterminate point, sometime in the next eon or two, he heard footsteps around him. They circled him once and then came to a halt next to him: then, instead of reaching to undo the blindfold or the gag, a hand came to rest on his shoulder. A moment later he felt the now-familiar lurch of teleportation and they were somewhere much brighter.

Wiseman undid his blindfold and unchained him from the chair a few seconds later and he was hauled, blind, to his feet, eyes burning with the new light and legs unsteady from not having walked. "Nice view up here," the magician remarked. "Too bad you can't see. All right, down we go."

They teleported again. A few steps late Hector surmised they'd been on some kind of rooftop, flat and concrete, and now they were standing somewhere gravel with odd shapes as his eyes adjusted -- the statue garden. Jesse Alvarez had never been to the museum, not even on a school trip, but he had enough brains in his head to put two and two together like any other person. His head hurt. There was probably a huge sore lump on it, if he was lucky and there wasn't a crack in the bone. It was messing with his balance, with his steadiness -- even if he did detransform (and wouldn't that be suicidal) to get Devourer again, there was no guarantee he'd be able to use it. The prospects were grim, but he assessed them anyway. A Cavalier never went quietly to his own execution.

Yes, they were in the statue garden. The sun was only just starting to set. To their left was an abstract statue of a mother and father and ringing their arms overhead a small child with outstretched arms to the heavens. Wiseman had backed them both up against a great block of twisted black marble.

"Where is your brother?"

But Alex would've gotten there early, wouldn't he?

The first surge of hope in Hector's chest, there. If there was one thing Hector knew it was Alex. If Alex ever set a rendezvous point he camped out there first for five hours like a sniper in a hotel room waiting for a politician to come by in a parade. He had endless, particular patience for planning ahead, so if you let him he'd dedicate endless hours to making sure he got the drop on you. This wouldn't be any exception, would it?

Hector kept his mouth shut, afraid that an answer, any answer, would somehow blurt out all his thoughts to the magician and Alex's advantage would be lost. But just as Wiseman opened his mouth to say something again, "What in Sam Hill gave him the idea I feel like waiting --"

There was the shift of gravel and Wiseman very nearly yanked Hector in front of him in time, but not quite. A black arrow thudded into the wizard's thigh with a thunk. Hector might've bolted, but wretched curiosity and disbelief compelled him to see what deadly apathy would be wrought on him -- was it really over this fast --

Blood started to leak from where the arrow was embedded. That wasn't right.

Wiseman put his arm around Hector's shoulders and did pivot him so he was in front of him, and put his hand on Hector's throat. (Why didn't he threaten his starseed, Hector wondered vaguely; it was what others did, wasn't it, and he had no way to know it was walking around in Aphrodite's chest. The things you wondered.) He reached down and yanked out the arrow and tossed it aside, which poured out more blood.

"Very funny," he said. "Let's try this one again, shall we, Highness? Put your toy down."

Silence and no response, but Hector could see Wiseman was staring at another statue, and a moment later he could see he was staring at the tip of an arrow just edging out from behind that statue.

"You don't seem to understand how hostage negotiations work," said Wiseman, digging his fingernails into Hector's throat. "Namely: quickly. Put it down."

Alexandros dropped Kore, and a moment ago it was thrown aside by some unseen force.

"Out here. Hands up."

Alexandros complied, against Hector's every half-second prayer, and he looked between Hector and Wiseman for a moment or two, stonefaced. None of them said anything for a while, but as Wiseman shifted his feet and cleared his throat to say something -- one of his boots squelching from the blood puddling in it -- Alexandros interrupted him.

"I want to know that this is my brother and that he's come to me unharmed and untouched," he said. "And I want it out of his mouth."

"As you wish," said the wizard, and ripped the gag from Hector's face with his free hand.

Out of Alexandros's reach, Kore rose from the ground -- Hector willed Alexandros to dive for it, but instead it snapped back through the air and into Wiseman's hand. This was why, when they talked strategy, his brother's grimmest words were reserved not for teleportation but for telekinesis. Imagine telekinesis as the power to send multiple copies of your body to do anything you like, Dylan had said, in the blink of an eye -- because it might as well be.

Alexandros didn't move during all of this. He had his eyes trained on Wiseman, on Wiseman's eyes maybe, anticipating what he might do based on where he was looking; but Wiseman did nothing, just held Hector where he was. He tossed Kore aside and put Hector in a proper headlock in the next moment, but left Alex untouched and silent on the other side.

"Hector," said the Crown Prince, queerly low-voiced. "When we tried to change places for a day when we were seven, do you remember who it was who found us out?"

In fact, he should've brought backup. It was strange he hadn't. Alex always thought ahead. Alex always planned. Alex never charged in alone when there was someone else for the job: but Alex never would have broken bond with Selene, no matter how strange and sudden a falling-out they had, Alex never would have let her, and in a situation like this he would have fallen to appealing to Gaia or Aphrodite if nothing else. There was absolutely no way Alex would have come here alone.

But he had. Hector didn't understand.

"Hands in the air," said Wiseman when Alexandros's hands faltered. The wizard's voice was a little tight. Hector wondered what with until he realized, pain -- yet another signal that their adversary could be wounded like a man, bled like a man, had a network of nerves under his skin that pained him like a man. Was he a man possessed by a thing, or a thing shaped like a man? Or neither. None of it would help them now. Whatever he was, he would hollow them both out and leave them desiccated with the Pyrite Crystal in his hands. The Captain who made himself a victim and the Prince who went after him, the two Princes of the Imperium who could not ******** walk away.

He was crying loud enough for the other two to hear now. It didn't matter any more.

Alexandros took a ragged breath. "Hector. Recall what I told you when the Persians and the Mamluks had us penned in."

That was a long time ago, when they were thirteen and with Father quelling a rebellion --

"Walk forward," said the wizard.

One step closer, then another step: unhurried, which only made it worse, until Alexandros was standing in front of the two of them a scarce five feet away. He didn't meet Hector's eyes.

"Good," he said, stiffly, and looked onward, standing straight.

In Hector's peripheral vision he saw Wiseman grin like a hungry animal, and then he lurched to one side as Wiseman shoved him to the ground into the gravel and kicked him down, incorporeal hands keeping him struggling in invisible restraints again. Alexandros spared only a brief glance for him and Wiseman none at all. His brother was a bit shorter than their enemy, smaller, definitely -- and younger, younger by far. He still didn't look menaced. He looked proud. Alexandros had his chin in the air -- when Wiseman took his final steps forward to meet him he merely stood there and met his blue eyes.

The setting sun cast creeping shadows from the irregular shapes around them. They were both waiting for something. After a moment, Alexandros closed his eyes briefly --



-- and he was Crown Prince Alexandros of the Imperium, in black and in gold, as he had ever been. Of course.

Hector tried to struggle to his feet, failed, felt panic and heartbreak seize him up -- the magician smiled and stepped up to his brother and reached out a bandaged hand, and Hector felt like he could see the Pyrite Crystal materialize in his hand, like it had with Nehelenia, like it had with the other Princess, like --

Alexandros caught Wiseman's wrist with one black-gloved hand and gripped it, his own fingernails digging dimples in the man's skin. He was staring straight into the glowing blue, and his face was blank, and his hand was shaking: not with withdrawal, his aim had been true, but with, with -- with adrenaline. With what Hector realized was the black tide of contempt, of -- anger?

And then there was his right hand, and he had the Pyrite Crystal in it. And Hector knew.

"Pyrite Crystal Power."

And the Pyrite Crystal sent out its wave of quiet, painless, final death, and Hector knew nothing else.


But that wasn't exactly what happened.

The Pyrite Crystal was, at its strongest, a swathe of extinction, a single anti-personnel mine which with the sacrifice of its keeper could put to death a city -- it was the threat that the Kings of the Imperium held over those they waged war against, which more often than not spread surrender before it. This, of all things, was Oblivion: the final oblivion, the silent final sleep which Kore's sting gave only the barest taste of. But it was not the only oblivion the Pyrite Crystal was capable of producing.

Across Destiny City, people fell asleep. In their homes, schools, on the street, at the post office and on the subway, people collapsed in their places and fell into a sudden, deep, unwakeable slumber.

The two schoolboys and the bleeding schoolteacher were three afterthoughts when the emergency vehicles started to respond, and they were piled in and their exact circumstances forgotten as soon as they were taken to overworked Destiny City Memorial. Because whatever had hit Destiny City had hit it thoroughly and it had hit it devastatingly -- and the sleeping people slept on.