Sacred went in. Rangers weren’t made to fight but his enhanced agility and endurance kept him safe while he pummeled the possession victims with regular human strength. Keith was jiggling his keys, distracting the enemies as if he were doing something much more impressive.
The battle against the war archon remained a stalemate, the iced floor keeping the creature slow but the armor barely chinking.
Theo had no illusions about being useful in a fight. He was an artist and making new seals took time.
There was premade art, though. The “church windows”. Could he repurpose one as a vessel to seal one of the Ghoul’s possessing muses?
A long shot but he looked around and- The windows’ designs were largely abstract shapes and colors, not like a real church would look like, at least not a little one in the middle of farmland. Had they been heavily reshaped when pulled into a demiplane? Where they… custom?
“Cor,” Theo said. “Does that window look like if Mondrian painted a cat?”
“Fucking what?” Coralline said with exhausted bewilderment.
“And those splotches are a stalk of grain and I guess the one with sharp angles could be jewels.”
Coralline’s eyes went wide. “Guys! The Ghouls are puppets. The *windows* are the vessels. Dawn, shoot them.”
Theo had made it close to the possible “jewel” design window. Runic patterns and spirals had been etched into the glass, subtle and random. Atlas glyphs to invite Outsiders.
He gave the window an untrained kick which accomplished nothing. The glass was strengthened by the jinn that claimed it as a home from which to take over corpses.
Dawn extracted herself from the management of the undead and loaded a glyph covered bolt. “Sparrow Two, give me all you’ve got.”
Theo hurried away, unsure if he was safer near the three zombies chasing Sacred or the chipped knight slipping on Fulin’s trail under Godrick’s whip snaps.
He retreated to the giant rosette behind the altar.
The bolt cracked the window, smears leaking out like hot air. The jewel jinn’s victim collapsed, the crown deflating into its skull.
Godrick traded positions with Sacred and took a superhuman leap onto the zombie’s back, a seal ready. “Fucking die!”
The jittering feline and the wheat undead closed in but Godrick backflipped out of reach.
While more windows shattered, Theo and Coralline both examined the rosette.
“It’s a vessel, too,” Theo said. “But not one we need to worry about, right?”
The illuminated art piece was ringed by glyphs but only wisps inhabited them, passing through the etchings, slowly draining them of magical meaning. It was where all those dream wisps lived when they weren’t needed – being part of the plane’s defense system.
“No, we *do*,” Coralline said and stepped back. “You’re just seeing the frame. The whole giant window is meant to be a vessel. See those glyphs? They’re so dense with meaning I can barely read them but…”
“It’s supposed to house a god,” Theo said. “Voluntarily? Or capture it?”
“Dunno,” Coralline said. “Keith! We found the god vessel.”
“Smash it!” the Asian shaman shouted back and came jogging. The walking corpses were down.
A bolt came flying but was stopped by the dream wisps sucking the motion out of it.
Theo shook his bottle. “Ah, Sliver? Can you give it a go? From glass to glass?”
The bound wisp flickered as light did underwater and transferred itself into the rosette. It couldn’t find purchase among the interfering defender wisps.
“We’re in but we need power,” Theo said.
Rosamunde perched on the altar, back in crow form. “I’m drained, as is Dawn. Godrick pulled his own Vigor for the last seal.”
Keith slithered up next to them. “Mel thinks she can do it but I really have to level up the Veneration for a while. Step aside.”
The semi-possessed man stood with arms spread, legs firmly planted, eyes closed.
The window started cracking, then shattered. Shards rained over Keith and shattered further to sand raining past him.
The whole demiplane ruptured. Church-barn walls bent and creaked. The foggy fields outside became visible through the holes where windows had been.
Figures appeared behind the rosette’s jagged remains. Brighter and brighter light backlit them.
“They’re making an exit,” a woman outside shouted. “Now.”
“On it,” answered a man.
A giant snake of pure sunlight poured into the demiplane. Fino, the roaming muse of Hierarch Greyson. It focused its radiance on the war archon. All ice underneath the creature evaporated instantly, steam climbing up its armor.
Police officer Knox Porter and delta team mentor Juniper Upatham reached through the window. “Come on. Out of there.”
Theo helped Coralline climb, then was hoisted up by Fulin who’d skated over within a second. Sacred pulled Godrick along.
They all stumbled across rugged, upturned earth in fog that had cleared slightly since they’d gotten trapped.
Fino was last to leave the demiplane and curled around the Sunlock Greyson White. The female Hierarch Brielle Boyd was tending to the exhausted Godrick, Rosamunde fussing in his lap.
Juniper did a headcount and talked into his phone.
Theo felt his water bottle jiggle. Sliver was back.
The barn crumbed slightly — a wall and half the roof sagging. Fairly unspectacular. Nothing hinted at the demiplane they had just damaged, or destroyed.
Sacred stood awkwardly at the rim of their group, hands on his knees, panting.
Knox hummed his way. “Now who might you be?”
### ### ###
Juniper drove them back into town. The Hierarchs wanted to talk to them some more but Paris had insisted on being with Theo after having nearly lost his boyfriend to a pocket dimension full of demons, Cain was obviously not going to be separated from them, Fulin insisted on being Theo’s bodyguard and the van’s remaining seat was claimed by Keith, riding shotgun.
Theo sat in the middle back seat, snuggling Cain’s slim frame while Fulin’s legs were pushing into his.
“Binding a god is crazy,” Keith said. “I hope shattering their special vessel is setting them seriously back.”
“Must have,” Juniper said. “But we don’t know their time table or if they have spares. I think the hierarchs are calling Washington for help. A god doesn’t stay in a vessel forever. They have to have some goal.”
“Like what?” Fulin asked.
Keith twisted around toward them. “Make all of Harpersfield fall asleep for a day? Or invade the dreams all over Concordia for a few weeks? Or just very specific dreams, of people they want to influence or harm.”
“Or,” Paris said, “that god of dreams is just easy to feed. People sleep, you know. Maybe it’s easy to Venerate it on a grand scale, then trade for power to do anything a god can do.”
“Spooky,” Cain said, monotone.
“Apropos,” Keith said. “I mean ‘apropos Washington’, not ‘apropos spooky’, but that, too, I guess. Some of the big names are really interested in a stable corpse vessel with a fairly human mind and forbidden knowledge of voidzones.”
Theo frowned. “That corpse vessel has a name.”
“And it’s Cain,” said the boy in question, his affect making it impossible to tell if he was making fun of Theo, Keith, neither or both.