Unea sees the Fonlands stubbornly in the distance, not advancing though she is sure that her body is propelled through space by the awesome power she has amassed over unknowable time consuming existences. It does not matter how long she has to travel, Unea will step foot on the Fonlands as exactly half of Une’s consciousness and she will make the Fonlands accept her as their mother. She is getting larger as she approaches, drawing power from across the multiversal structure, from everything that travels toward her to lend their aid, taking advantage of the extra time it takes to arrive.
Uneb reconstitutes somewhere near the orbit of the planet Saturn of the Node 1 Hyperion Universe. Uneb is also improving herself. She had underestimated the home of Alia, the being who takes the name of this existence and thinks of herself as its defender. Even in the Hyperion’s absence, there are beings capable of denying her easy conquest of Earth and this only agitates her. Her anxieties are so loud, she had worked for so long to avoid this very situation, but these things had denied her. Uneb is the other half of Une’s consciousness and as Uneb’s body reconstitutes, she receives an influx of power that she demands from her Descendant and her Pito. Those closest to her commit suicide by arcana, performing a spell that relinquishes the animating force of their being in an instant to Uneb, allowing her to reform into a bigger version of herself with more power, and resulting in the deaths of nearly a third of her forces that were racing to her location across the multiversal structure to assist her.
First Uneb is singed strings floating the void, and then those strings begin to elongate and find one another, wrapping like the strands that constitute yarn into more sturdy vines that grow larger as they come into contact. When there is enough of her to propel towards Earth, the strings begin their approach, animated by a rainbow of purple, green, and yellow magic that glows like neon when it illuminates, but it is pulsing, struggling as the body does the hard work of reforming. The strange sight moves slowly at first and picks up speed as more of it forms. She casts her tendrils to nearby asteroids as she moves through and she begins to consume so that she has even more power by the time she arrives at her enemy.
Meanwhile, on Node 1 Hyperion Earth
“This mushroom lady is going to kill everything,” Wendy, the Brave Chimutengwende, says gravely.
She is at the home of Kevin Blackmon, sitting on his front porch looking out over the expansive front yard. Kyrie is there as well and he looks scared, though he would only admit to being concerned because nothing scared him, not since he lost Bernadette to the hell dimension after losing a wager with the High Daemon. He only had to complete ten more boons for the High Daemon to free Bernadette’s soul, and he wouldn’t let anything, not even a mushroom lady from space, threaten that.
Aile, Wendy’s roommate, best friend, and fellow medium, leans on the banister of the porch next to Nebuchad. She listens with a hard look on her face, trying not to think about hers and Wendy’s meeting with death after Kyrie showed up to Wendy’s house very unexpectedly. Kyrie was frantic, death had spoken to him and he sought Wendy’s help because he knew her to be a powerful spirit medium, but when he walked into their home, Aile realized that it was death’s design all long, it had used Kyrie to get to Wendy and Aile through the strong wards the two had put on their home. Death had a message for all of them, and Aile listened to Wendy restate that to the group on the porch.
“If she lands on Earth, we won’t be able to stop her, and yes, she will kill everything that she touches, but worse, she will corrupt anything she feels has potential to spread her corruption. Kevin is our best bet against her, backed by everyone here, the Druintes, and the Kazi if they’re available.”
Wendy looks around at everyone and the mood is dour. Things hadn’t been this bad before, not since the permanent colony of Druintes landed on Earth and accelerated the technology of humanity by a thousand years, lengthening the human lifespan and reducing the annual death rate of the planet by nearly ten percent every subsequent decade since their landing. Earth is a safe planet and humanity largely found peace in the convenience of technology that was offered to them by dark-skinned aliens in search of a home that would welcome them.
“Surely the druintes can help,” Halgod says from the grass in front of the porch. Eris partner Pegraf sits near erim on the lowest step of the stoop to the porch. “New Triusia can get MDDS ships through the wormhole in no time.”
“They should do that immediately,” Wendy says soberly. “We lose the game if she makes landfall, and if Earth falls…”
“So goes the galaxy,” Pegraf says. “This is an infection? A plague?”
“A sentient one,” Kyrie says. “It’s a fungus, the mushroom lady, and it can decompose anything, or just corrupt it to make it do what it wants.”
“Why is she here?” the Queen Ravelith asks. She stands next to Kal Qor who leans against the front door. Since the two met the Earthling who was raised on Druont, Maria Moreno, when the three of them worked together with the Fhet Kings to oppose the militarized Interstellar Panel, they have been good friends. Both the Queen Ravelith of the planet Oin and Kal Qor of the planet Wiis, were eager to visit Earth after the Fhetat War and they traveled with Maria to Earth, but decided to stay when she was called back to Druont. They have both lived on Earth for nearly a decade, part of a growing number of former inhabitants of the Banned Regions of the universe who were honored for their contributions to opposing the militarized IP after the Consortium of Human History was removed as Earth’s official representative to the IP and replaced by the United Nations. Earth offered refugee status to any being of the universe who could verify that they had fought in the Fhetat War, and Kal was happy to settle on a planet where he could have land to grow things. His partner, Yiel Dharle, isn’t at this gathering on Kevin’s porch, he is off planet, though expected to return soon. Kal would call him and tell him to come strapped with reinforcements.
“Alia,” Kevin says, looking between the powerful magic users on his porch, Wendy, Kyrie, the man known as Tin who had seemingly arrived out of thin air to stand behind the chair where Wendy sat. “Where is Alia? And Ivan and Clay? Do they have something to do with this?”
“Alia has brought it down on our heads,” Tin says dryly. “I can feel the power, even so far away. It is on its way back and it has one animating impulse, to destroy Alia’s home. It will bring down the full might of its ability on Earth until it is no more and it can rub Alia’s face in the destruction. We are merely pawns for powers far greater than us. The mushroom underestimated us, but we will find that a second round with it will require more than the Magician and his faithful assistant doing Kazi tricks.”
“You can overestimate that First People’s nonsense magic all you want,” Nebuchad says with a chuckle, “but it’ll be the Kazi stopping this, not some weird moon magic or whatever the fuck you got going on.”
“You misunderstand me, wannabe holy man,” Tin says to Nebuchad with derision, “I meant to insult only you who reduce the great powers of the Kazi to cheap tricks when you wield them. It’s why half of Europe is still partially possessed by demons from the hell dimension, how’s that clean up going, Wendy?”
“This is not the time for that,” Wendy says with frustration. “I know we haven’t had enough time to deal with what happened the last time we all had to get together like this, but this is worse than last time, if you can believe it. I am scared. I can’t contact Alia,” she looked at Kevin and moved to take his hand in hers. “I believe that Tin’s assessment is true, but I don’t know where Alia is to ask her about it, and she’s kind of the one you want in a situation like this.”
Kevin looks down at the floor, overcome with sadness as Wendy hugs him.
“Does anyone know where Alia would have gone?” Halgod asks.
“I talked to Clay’s sister,” the Queen Ravelith says, “but she talked to all of them the day before they disappeared and they didn’t mention anything about leaving for an extended period.”
“Death says that Alia is away fighting this very thing, but from a different battlefront,” Kyrie explains. “We have to stand in her absence. She is depending on us while she does something even more important.”
“What is happening?” Aile asks with a hint of horror in her voice.
“The most important battle any of us will ever face,” Kyrie says. “The Second Unrest, that is what death called it. And if we lose, it means the end of everything, even death, which is why it reached out to us and made me ambush Wendy. This thing is so scary that the concept of death created a voice to speak to us and warn us. If it hadn’t we would have been unprepared, we could be dead now.”
“Why the second?” Aile asks.
“I don’t know, and honestly, I don’t think that’s important,” Kyrie explains. “We need to coordinate with everyone and quarantine the threat.”
The group on Kevin’s porch talks for a few minutes longer before the crowd disperses, leaving Kyrie, Kevin, Nebuchad, Kal Qor, Halgod and Tin.
“Alright boys,” Kyrie says gruffly as he walks down the low steps of the porch and stands in the grass near Halgod. He stares up at the sky. “We have to meet her in space again. Keep her away until reinforcements arrive.”
In space, Kevin sighs. They can all see Uneb approaching them and Kevin wishes that this wasn’t his life anymore. He is well equipped for it, he has a one of a kind Druinte device in his head that allows him to make his imagination into real things, and he has had enough practice with this ability that there seems to be no limits on the things he can create with an uncanny verisimilitude that would fool God herself. But he has lived so much of his life to this point using his ability to oppose the evil things that have cropped up in his world, so much so that he doesn’t really have a life outside of heroics and monsters. He had enjoyed a life briefly with Alia, though when he looks back on that time now, he realizes that he was ignoring her omens and only pretending that the times were rosier than the reality. His childhood was fraught once he came into his ability by accident, but before that, things were nice, carefree. There was a brief time that he reconnected with Alia while she was living with Clay and Ivan and that was probably the best time of his life, the half decade or so that they were a tight knit group, a family. But that ended when he went to space to join up with the Interstellar Panel.
He met Nebuchad in New Triusia and that meeting sealed his current fate. Nebuchad had been a patient of Dr. Eakran, one the first victims of Eakran’s drugs who seemed to have lost his mind for seven years after taking one of the drugs. When he awoke, Nebuchad continued to hear the voices that had occasionally entered his psyche while he was absent and he used this ability to assist the Interstellar Panel’s Investigations Department that had been established in New Triusia following the murder of a Druinte on Earth. Nebuchad learned that the voices he was hearing were sometimes from distant places, but oftentimes he could hear what he started to call the loudest consciousness in a given space, usually the one in the most distress or under the most stress. He used this ability to discover the woman who had murdered the Druinte and he parlayed his success there into recruitment into the Interstellar Panel Corps. He eventually spent time on Eel where he studied with the Kazi and showed an aptitude that impressed the Makazi. Nebuchad recruited Kevin when he returned to Earth because Kevin’s abilities were well known by that time.
And Kevin has been doing it ever since. He was eagerly accepted into the Corps that was formed after the Fhetat War and the expulsion of Pen Nuren and the Consortium of Human History. The Corps is not a military organization, but a universe-spanning corps of volunteers who represent the Interstellar Panel on member plants. Corps members have been known to join up with the militaries of the planets to which they are assigned, but the Interstellar Panel does not give military orders. It’s a nice job, Kevin doesn’t worry about money or food and he can travel anywhere the IP is sending ships. But he knows that no matter where he goes, the fight will always be there and he will have to use his powers before he can find peace.
“Look alive, Magician,” Kevin heard through his communicator and he looked over at Nebechad who was floating in an identical spacesuit next to him. Desperation Jackson who had been coerced into the Fhetat War like Kevin, the man Yuri James who had a similar ability to Kevin but with a much shorter range, the Rhasdwiis Kal Qor, the Supreme Medium Tin, and Halgod of Druont are all floating with them, readying themselves to hold the line out past the orbit of Mars with them.
“Are you ready?” Nebuchad asks him.
“Do I have a choice?” Kevin asks with no enthusiasm, but he offers a smile.
“This should be easy,” Nebuchad says.
“It always is until it isn’t,” Kevin says.
This reminds him of the attack on the Universal Infirmary on Oin by the gang of militant Mind Snatchers originally of Oin, but banished from the planet because of their common use of mind control. The Corps sent members capable and willing to defend the Universal Infirmary in advance of the attack and Kevin was in the same spacesuit floating outside of Oin’s atmosphere, waiting for a battle that crashed into them. The Mind Snatchers are known for their mental abilities, but they also have large, muscular bodies that are honed in the many battles that they initiate across the Soulaxar galaxy, and the vanguard of that assault is ruthless. Kevin lost many of his fellow corpsmen in that battle and he struggled to fight because he wanted to save as many of his friends as he could, but he wasn’t able to save any. Though, he did hold that vicious vanguard until the Ointite Militia arrived to relieve him. Kevin was silent for many cycles as he healed in the Universal Infirmary where he was treated like a hero. But it was all so hollow to him and he only saw the faces of the suffering corpsmen who had died in space, ill equipped for the mission they had volunteered for.
Kevin had faced so many battles like that one and he trained to get better in every aspect of being a warrior Corpsman so that he could help avoid death, but death is inevitable. People died on both sides of every conflict and it all added up to waste that made Kevin mourn. It accumulated over time and when he finally went back to Earth, he’d hoped that the hardest battles were behind him, but seeing the thing that Uneb had reconstituted into, so much larger than her previous form with menacing tendrils snaking off her body that were like giant, furry spiders’ legs, made it clear that he had arrived at the hardest battle he had ever faced to that point.
“You think we made her mad?” Nebuchad asks, leaning his head slightly in Kevin’s direction, but never taking his eyes off of the approaching terror.
Kevin chuckles despite his dour mood. “I think we pissed her off.”
“The hell is this shit?” They hear Desperation over the communicator that they all share in their glass helmets that are much more durable than they appear to be. The yellow suits they wear are also extremely sophisticated and adapt to the power sets of the wearer to allow them to use their powers without restraint or fear of damage to their protection from the void.
“It’s the enemy,” Kevin says. “Kal, take Halgod and Tin and attack it from the right flank. Neb, you and Desperation get behind it when it’s distracted. Yuri and I will meet it. Go now, she’s starting to spread her tendrils.”
Most of them fly off and Yuri floats next to Kevin.
“What’s the play?” Yuri asks, hiding his fear of the tendrils that are bearing down on them, and they are long and thick like skyscrapers.
“Everyone!” Kevin says to Yuri and everyone over the communicators as they get into position. “Let loose! Don’t stop until we turn this thing to ashes! Yuri, we will make the biggest army this universe has ever seen.”
The two of them share the ability to make real their imaginations, and they bring forth forces of faceless warriors who attack Uneb and her tendrils. She makes easy work of the masses and one of her tendrils manages to swipe Yuri, hurling him backwards in space. Kevin creates a staff with powerful lasers on each end and he wields it as he attacks the furry tendril. The laser isn’t powerful enough to do any damage and he disappears it, replacing it with a sword of raging flames.
“Yuri?” he calls over the communicator.
“I’m on my way back to you,” Yuri responds.
“How is everyone else doing?” Kevin asks as he slashes at the large tendril that seems to be sentient.
“Tin is having a lot of success with his black magic,” Kal Qor says over the communicator, “but Halgod and I can’t do much. We can’t get close to the woman in the middle to attack. We’re waiting, hoping Tin can slice away more of the tendrils and then we will go at her.”
“She’s stopped in the middle,” Nebuchad adds. “The Kazi energy projection spells work well to damage the tendrils if any of you are familiar with those. Desperation is on standby as well.”
This is new, Kevin thinks to himself, and he is scared. A sentient mushroom with octopus tendrils trying to kill him to reach Earth. Kevin hadn’t ever faced an enemy like this one before.
PRL Serials 