The United States of Erebus

"Arr? A strange name for an empire, that is if ye don't mind me sayin' Prince Rengent!" The captain of the Midas, a demon named Simull, was a scaly creature, its natural pattern a deep midnight blue. His smooth features were nearly indescernible except for the bright orange rags he wore.

Marcus did not respond immediately, as he was concentrating on assembling the salvage of a dozen factories into a massive device. The howling wind pulled at his his black toga, which was covered by an ill-fitting jacket borrow from one of the more humanoid members of the crew. He needed no tools, as his mind manipulated the pieces and screwed and locked each into place, seemingly of their own accord.

"It is one the citizens of this current empire are more likely to accept." His voice was measured and calm, despite the dangerous winds and the monsters that surrounded him. He climbed the rungs that were spaced precisely apart for his small frame, and slipped into the machine. Levers and dials shifted and spun without his touch. A series of greet glass lenses held together by a web of struts and cables stacked to bring vignette of a city to the foreground. "This is their capital, just south of here."

"A mighty palace that is, my Prince!"

"No, that is the Capitol building, where the people send quislings to speak for them. That small white house is where the ruler lives."

"EH? That lil' white house? How poor is this ruler?"

"His hold is rather week...I would build a palace across the river there. It would be the largest building on Earth, with five sides and a courtyard in the middle. I would call it...the Pentagram." A botton sank into the console, revealing a vellum diagram of an encircled star-shaped structure.

"Five sides? Aye, much harder to destroy. Very wise, Young Prince."

"The Treasury is right next door to the White House. Their vault is underground. That is where you will find a grand share of their gold."

"Buried or sunken, floatin' or flyin', the Midas will find it, Lad!"

"These are where the treasures I care for lay hidden. That castle is called the Smithsonian. Ancient talismans are stored there by collectors who have no idea of the power of what they possess. Their rivals for arcane knowledge hide in this other building...the Library of Congress. The secrets behind both shall be mine."

Simull muttered to the shorter avian humanoid who waddled by his side. It was a nauseating mix of badly arranged feathers of vile colors and a malformed beak that could barely close. "This kid's a sharp one, Braxius."

"Cap'n?" Squawked the First Mate. "Face jes' fot' unnya nye po' sai!"

Marcus leaped down from his platform. He stared at Braxius and furrowed his brow in confusion. "What did he say?"

"He sez we got company, Lad!"

The bird pointed some rotting feathers towards the port side. Simull and Marcus peered over, and the boy floated a few feet above the deck to get a better view. He saw spots of shining helmets and a circle of small dirigibles spread out from where a burst of energy was fading by the coast. A handful of boats with silver metal jutting from the sides cut throught the currents to aim jets of water through the windows of factories burning below. Formations of brass helmets traced through the blackened streets.

Marcus squinted. "Those ships...they bear Caledon colors..."

your city lies in dust my friends

The boy gently landed on a pile of rubble to get a ground view of the devastation he had caused. Infernos raged throughout the city of Baltimore from where the airships fell. Brown columns of smoke rose and floated towards northwards. He pulled the fabric of his black burial shroud closer to his cheest. His thumbs idly flipped the pages of the almanac he had found back and forth.

"Betrayed...and revived after twenty-five years...nothing left to inherit...no one left for revenge..." A voice echoed from above, a deep rumbling pitch that strained for a higher register in its eagerness.

"Ahoy, Young Prince! Come aboard!"

Marcus watched in stunned silence as a black ship the size of a city block floated slowly downwards to nest in a pile of shattered bricks the was once a building. The profile resembled a trireme as depicted on ancient vases, but built on a frightening scale with an alien, sinister ingenuity. A Rows of oars rotated upwards and locked in place.

"We be the Midas! Last of the Founder's Fleet!" He stared upwards at the yellow banner high above the mast. The demon wings gules upon a ziggurat sable on a field or. "Ye did all this, didn't ya boy? Ye cut a swath from Mason Hill clear to port while wearin' the Black Toga of the rightful heir! We saw ye!" A figure leaned over the bow, head covered in a resplendent bronze helmet. Other figures lined the deck, a gleaming row of brass. "We'll be yer revenge! We'll be yer floatin' Foundation! Let us serve ye with the scrap of honor we got left and the choicest plunders of this orb we'll share with ye! Lower the gangplank, boys!"

The protesting squeal of ebon-stained wood and gears accompanied the platform that stretched from the deck, which suddenly dropped on one end to hit the ground with a thunderclap, leaving a footpath at a steep angle directly up to the demonship. Blue eyes stared upwards at the collection of monsters waiting for him on deck. Quietly, he nodded, and planted his bare feet on the edge of the plank. The timbers reacheted upwards, carrying him towards his crew as the monsters roared and cheered, their inhuman voices echoing through the ruined city.

Why you never look in a young woman's purse

I was ready to knock on Miss Burton's door when I noticed the ticking sound behind me.

I sighed and and asked "Sir Edward?" as I turned.

A manicured hand wrapped around my wrist. Her ruffles brushed against my hand. I stared into clockwork pupils that rotated into jade as I gasped.

"Not quite. Let's talk."

I tries to pull my hand away, but her magenta sleeve pulled back, drawing me closer. She smiled, baring porcelain fangs.

"Now now, Cousin! My new Daddy said I should play with my cousins..."

Her grip tightened like a vice, and I winced.

"...and I never play with my food."

I gulped. "Fair enough..."

"And don't even think about taking off, Junior Birdman. You'll scare the fish."

"What?" I looked up and saw a school of pink salmon swimming over the Steelhead Sky.

"Babbage has air kraken, Steelhead has air salmon. Koen and Kira are too busy fishing off the rooftops in Boomtown to notice us. Maybe the air kraken eat the air salmon? That would make things interesting, wouldn't it? When's the last time we saw a giant chicken or steampowered elephant around here, anyways? This place isn't as wild as it used to be, that's for sure..."

"So what's your game, Gematria?"

"I figured you would come crying to Genie when you realized your bag of tricks hadn't dropped yet, along with your..."

I looked away. "DO YOU MIND??"

"Do you?" she asked sweetly. She twisted my wrist until I looked back at her again, and she swatted me across the face with a small black leather handbag. She then tugged me across the street and sat me down at the steps of where my Steelhead home had once been. She drew me down to sit with her.

"Here, hold this." She pulled her arm back. Her wrist clicked as her hand detached from her forearm, staying clamped to my wrist. I stared at the hand, and when I tried to pull it off it squeezed hard enough to make me scream.

As I flailed my arm in protest, she unlatched her purse with her remaining hand. She slid the stump of her arm inside, and after a series of fast clicks she withdrew a new hand, this one pale porcelain that contrasted the flesh tone of ther current frame. The white hand already clasped an envelope sealed with wax and a ribbon.

"My friend Alice passed this to me. This is a new contract from Novem."

I looked up in stunned silence, and the hand relaxed its crushing grip on my wrist.

She unsealed the envelope and begna to read it, giggling to herself. I tried to grab it with my untethered hand, but the I felt the fingers dig their nails into my flesh.

"Get this thing off of me!"

"You keep struggling and you won't have a hand left to sign! Now behave!" She spread the paper out on the flagstone and fished a mechanical pen from her purse. "Sign here." The mechanical hand dropped to crawl like an insect onto the document, holding it down as a breeze carried the shadow of a salmon school overhead. As I signed in the best handwriting I could muster with a sore arm. she fished a bundle of satin and lace from her purse. "Your handwriting for prescriptions is worse."

"That's supposed to be illegible."

"Then how does the pharmacist read it?" She squeeazed the bundle, and steel rods expanded upward and spread to form a parasol shielding us both as well as the contract from errant fish droppings.

"It's in code or something. I can't really remember right now."

"Of course, Sweetie." She patted my wrist with her porcelain hand, and I flinched and held it to my body protectively. "Aww...poor baby. Since the contract doesn't kick in for another week, I'll host the next event for you."

I stood up and stamped my foot in protest.

"NOW HOLD ON A SEC...OW!!"

Her parasol telescoped downward and wrapped around my head like a claw, pulling me down to a prone position. The scent of cloyingly sweet perfume assaulted the back of my nose.

"I said behave!"

I had a narrow tunnel of light and air edged with lace, through which I saw her purse tip over. The porcelain hand crawled back in as I heard her original hand reattach. The purce tipped back upright and a daguerrotype rose from the opening. She snatched it from the pale manicured fingers and held it in front of my laced aperture.

"Do you know these people?"

I frowned. I hated to look at family sepias, especially when features repeated themselves exactly from one generation to the rest. The stern man with the handlebar mustache had to be Jeremiah, dressed to the nines with the family crest in the background. Two children stood emotionless at his feet, flanking him. They both looked exactly the way I do now, minus a year or two.

"Who...?"

"One of them is you. The other is your clone-brother, Marcus."

"WHAT?!?" I sat up with a start, and the parasol retracted to give me a dizzy view of the world again.

Gematria smiled sweetly again as she adjusted her auburn curls.

"Story-time!"

TO BE CONTINUED

Esau

The salty Chesapeake breeze runs cold over the barren farmland atop Mason Hill. Past the scorched timbers of Jeremiah's mansion lay a grove of twisted trees, shrouding the sight of a mausaleum from the outside. The sky darkens, painting blood red across the canvas of clouds as the stars awaken to behold the pulsating green light growing deep within the grove.

Hidden behind the marble and cast iron, life pours into dessicated flesh. Dark blue eyes open in confinement and see images of betrayal in his mind projected onto the inside of the casket lid. Forgotten pneumatics squeal and scrape as a panel lifts up. Gears crank as the boy is drawn out on a platfrom into the chapel area within. Like the machinery, he groans as well from being awakened. He opens his aching eyes as the glowing green muck sliding off of his pale body, his only illumination. He convulses as his lungs expel more liquid light then seize their first breath of stale sepulchral air tainted by acrid chemicals. Without warning the platform hinges downward, dropping him onto the cold floor with a wet splatter from the spilled chemicals coating the mosaic tiles. The sharp pain against the back of his skull shakes him into angry wakefulness. He gazes up at the image embedded in mausaleum roof.

At one time it had been painstakingly removed tile by tile from another chamber of death uneathered in the remains of Pompeii and carried across the sea. It was reassembled and restored to dark magnificence. An albaster face marked with black and red features shrouded by flowing red locks and burning eyes stared down at the boy in silence. Wings of blood unfurled behind marble-white shoulders, revealing inhuman details of demonic anatomy that an artist must have directly beheld.

Ancient fresco crumbles as the boy shrieks. Pigmented stones and plaster fall on his soaked and unkempt hair as he depserately searches his confined space. The glint of brass a foot from his face catches his eye. The letters trigger a new level of terror.

RACHEL FELICIA MASON

He hears the hinged lid above him begin to rotate upright. He wraps his fingers around the metal edge, and lets the iron pull his untested legs up to a stand. His legs quiver as they struggle to remember their purpose. The blood rushing through them stings like liquid fire. As the illumination from the reanimation serum begins to dim, and he chokes down the last gulp of breathable air in the crypt, he makes out his own name on the lid as in slams back into place.


MARCUS GABRIEL MASON

On the other side of the river, two men sit on a bench on the pier. The older man, his grimy face tanned and wrinkled from a life on the river, cracks open a bottle cap and passes a beer to his son, who just became of age. They both turn their heads as they see the ball of flame rise in the thickening darkness. A split second later they hear the echo of the explosion at the top of the hill.

"That was the Mason house, Son! There's more monsters diggin' out from the ground tonight!"

"Quit yer tales, Pa! Ain't nobody livin' there no more, Hell ain't nobody been up there since them wierd Caledonians came a'huntin..."

"Caledonia? I heard it was one o'them cat-people lookin fer 'is kin!"

"They was in the inn, Pa! I saws 'em! They was this black cat-boy and a lady with a metal wig and a machine runnin' on her..."

The psychic wave radiated from the Mason estate, racing at the speed of though across the water to bowl the two spectators end over end. The foam of the bottle spilled onto the grey weathered wood of the pier and fell between the planks onto the gently lapping water.

A young man levitated above the burning trees, surveying the destruction by the light of the inferno. The smoke lingered in his nostrils as he folded space around him like a cloak, vanishing from the carnage.

and the calliope crashed to the ground

The boy emerges from beneath the shadow of the airship overhead, slipping behind the staircase. The envelope wedged between the cracks of the stonework stops him in his tracks. He slips out of his rocket harness and unfastens his head gear before he opens the letter.

Dear Master Mason,

We, the proprietors of Novem: The Muses Playhouse regret to inform you...

The letter falls into a puddle of acidic rain at his feet.

An Incubus can't be Sheriff. I'm going to have to take your badge back.

A jet of flame singes the edges of the paper that haven't yet darkened and blurred.

Even if I could separate the Science from the superstitious BABBLE in your equations your CONCLUSIONS are far too dangerous, doubly so if there's the slightest SHRED of truth in them!

The dial on his equipment quivers towards the red line as he barrels through cloud after cloud.

...and the Deadly Ringer incident proved it once and for all, Captain. The top brass doesn't even want to know how a demon got into the Capper Brigade, let alone why! Don't even bother to salute! Just take these discharge papers and GET THE HELL OUT!

He touches down in Steelhead. He walks straight ahead, never turning his gaze to the left as he passes the property that was once his.

If ever you find a situation that your Science or Magic cannot solve, you need only ask me for a wish...

Tears well inside his goggles as he closes the gate behind him and approaches the door of the farmhouse.

disgruntled

Arcana Base Security Override - BROADCAST

BEGIN TRANSMISSION

I served you faithfully for FORTY-FIVE YEARS, Jeremiah Mason! And THIS is how you reward your loyalty? Decree of torture followed by execution? One mad scheme after another I followed you without question! I was your damn BUTLER! I raised your BOYS while you went searching for your damn FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH!

*sounds of metal smashing against metal rhtymically, growing louder*

YES, I witheld the attack on the Wulfenbach ship to protect the scrap of your precious Founder. Are you going to erase all memory of me like you did your son Marc...

*smash and a clatter*

ARE YOU LOOKING FOR THIS, MY TRUSTED KNIGHTS?

*shouts of "GRENADE" followed by the sound of explosion*

*distorted metallic voice*

HULL BREACH! EVACUATE! EVAC...

END TRANSMISSION

Tonight - INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

Lounges? We don' need no steenking LOUNGES!!

Tonight at Novem rock out to the industrial mayhem of DJ NOVA SAKIGAKE at 7pm!