Episode 10: Shadows in Paradise
The riverside park in Rhino Valley was cordoned off by emergency services within the hour. The crew slipped away under Nathan's illusions before the real authorities arrived, following Devonte through winding backstreets and hidden park trails.
Devonte's safehouse was a spacious loft above an old record store in the quieter arts district. Vinyl covers lined the walls, and the scent of incense and coffee replaced the usual mildew and gun oil the crew had grown used to.
"This place is wired with a few tricks I picked up from some off-grid Glimmer runners," Devonte explained as he locked the reinforced door. "Signal jammers, false identities in the building's system. Should buy us a night or two."
Kevin dropped onto a worn couch, the Mythical Matrix's circuits dim but still faintly glowing. His body ached from the fight with Gillan Dahmer. "They're turning innocent people into disposable weapons… just to get to me."
Wyatt sat beside him, wrapping a bandage around his burned arm. "It's not your fault, Kev. The Pillar's desperate."
Peter leaned against the wall, arms crossed, his super durability letting him shrug off the worst of the damage. "Desperate means sloppy. We use that."
Nathan was quiet, staring out the window at the glittering city skyline. Devonte placed a hand on his cousin's shoulder.
"You good, Nate?"
"Not really," Nathan admitted. "Gillan said there are more batches coming. If they're flooding the city with potion-born hunters…"
A heavy silence fell.
Derek (Volt) was tinkering with a small device at the table, blue sparks dancing between his fingers. "I can try to tap into the city's power grid. Look for unusual Glimmer spikes."
Ferrum Ironfist stood like a statue near the door, his armored presence making the loft feel smaller. "In my timeline, this is how it started. The Pillar creates an army of broken souls, then opens the Garden. Everything ends in hunger."
Devonte pulled out a hidden laptop and started typing. "I've been tracking weird shipments into Rhino Valley for weeks. Crates labeled 'medical supplies' coming from East Hollow. Probably the potion ingredients."
Midnight – Rooftop Overlook
Kevin couldn't sleep. He stood on the roof of the record store, wind whipping through his hoodie, staring at the peaceful lights of Rhino Valley. The Rampager mantle felt heavier, like it was pressing him toward something inevitable.
Footsteps approached. It was Devonte.
"My cousin says you didn't want any of this," Devonte said, offering Kevin a soda. "But you're carrying it anyway. That takes guts."
Kevin took the can but didn't open it. "Every time I use this power, it feels less like mine. Like the Rampager wants to break everything."
Before Devonte could reply, the night shattered.
Multiple rifts of unstable white-blue energy opened across several rooftops. Out poured a new wave of potion-born hunters — at least a dozen this time. These ones were stronger, more stable than the park batch. Their bodies glowed with forced Glimmer mutations: one with bladed tentacles, another whose skin had turned to living glass, and a third that floated with telekinetic fury.
Leading them was a hooded lieutenant of Gillan Dahmer — a woman with pale skin and glowing veins, holding a fresh vial of shimmering potion.
"The Pillar's will be done!" she screamed. "Bring us the Rampager's heart!"
The attack hit hard and fast.
Kevin activated the Rampager mantle, circuits blazing bright white-blue across his chest and arms. He leaped from the roof, slamming into the lead hunter with a destructive shockwave that cratered the street below.
The crew mobilized instantly.
Peter charged out of the loft like a battering ram, his super durability letting him tank glass shards and telekinetic slams. "Come on, you fake-ass monsters!"
Nathan created a massive illusion field across the district, making entire buildings appear to shift and confusing the potion-born. Devonte surprised everyone by revealing his own minor Glimmer — Echo Pulse — sending disorienting sound waves that disrupted the enemies' coordination.
Derek and Ferrum worked in deadly sync: Volt supercharging iron constructs that Ironfist launched like guided missiles.
Wyatt stayed close to Kevin, pipe now reinforced with scrap metal from Ferrum. "We got you, man!"
The battle raged across rooftops and streets. Kevin moved like a storm of destruction, shattering potion-born one after another. But the new batch was tougher — they adapted, healing minor wounds with unstable energy.
The female lieutenant drank her own potion mid-fight. Her body elongated horrifically as she grew six extra bladed arms. She lunged at Kevin, screaming.
"You will open the Garden for us!"
Kevin roared and met her head-on. The Rampager mantle surged violently. For a terrifying moment, his eyes glowed pure white-blue. He grabbed two of her bladed arms and shattered them with raw kinetic force, then drove a devastating palm strike into her chest.
The lieutenant exploded in a burst of unstable Glimmer essence.
As the last of the hunters fell, the crew regrouped, breathing hard. But Devonte suddenly pointed toward the river.
White-blue lights were rising again — larger this time. Pillar enforcers, drawn by the massive fight.
And in the distance, a familiar sickly-sweet scent mixed with chaotic laughter echoed faintly.
Applehead? Or something worse?
Nathan's face went pale. "They're not just hunting us anymore. They're turning the whole city into a trap."
Kevin clenched his glowing fists. The Mythical Matrix burned with purpose and fear.
Rhino Valley's beauty was about to be stained with war.
**Somewhere beyond the Half-Seal's broken edges**
Khaos Hyde was in the middle of tearing a city block in half purely for the satisfaction of the sound it made when Nathan Moya appeared sitting cross-legged on a overturned bus, looking for all the world like a man waiting for a late friend at a café.
"You're new," Poison said, green mist curling warily off his shoulders, two white slits narrowing. "Or stupid. The two aren't mutually exclusive, in my experience."
"Illusion. Projection. The real me's somewhere considerably more comfortable." Nathan examined his own fingernails, bored. "I came to do you two a favor, which I don't do often, so take notes."
Khaos Hyde's red eyes flared with delighted menace, chaos energy crackling black and gold around his knuckles. "A favor from a ghost in a bus. How generous."
"There's a man coming for you." Nathan's tone didn't change, conversational, almost gentle. "Sensei Wu Tang. Born in Bhutan, still calls it home, hasn't left in forty years except to kill people who needed killing. He doesn't do it for the Pillar. Doesn't do it for coin. He does it because the world occasionally produces something it can't digest, and men like him exist to be the world's teeth."
Poison went very still. "I've heard the name."
"Then you know I'm not exaggerating." Nathan finally looked up, and something almost like pity crossed his projected face. "He's three days out. Maybe less, if he's motivated, and you two breaking half a dimension open tends to motivate him."
Khaos Hyde laughed, loud and multi-layered, chaos rippling the air around him in visible waves. "Let him come! I have waited a thousand broken timelines for a worthy fight!"
"You won't get one." Nathan stood, brushing invisible dust off his coat with theatrical care. "You'll get a correction. There's a difference, and you're about to learn it the hard way whether you listen to me or not." He paused at the bus's edge, already fading at the fingertips, projection thinning. "I'm not telling you this because I like you. I'm telling you because chaos that gets snuffed out in three days is boring, and I'd rather watch you make it interesting first."
He was gone before either of them could answer, leaving only the faint, lingering scent of ozone and the first real flicker of uncertainty either madman had felt in years.
---
**East Hollow rooftop, minutes after Nathan Moya's departure**
Casper had stopped hyperventilating, mostly, though his translucent hands still trembled faintly where they rested on his knees. He was staring at the boy across from him — Alaric, pink-and-yellow still bleeding faintly at the ends of his hair, looking deeply embarrassed about the whole collision.
"So," Casper said, voice carefully, deliberately calm, the tone of someone actively talking himself down. "You're a horse."
"A unicorn," Alaric corrected, gentle. "Technically. There's a difference, apparently, though nobody's ever fully explained it to me and I've stopped asking."
"You had wings."
"Pegasus-unicorn hybrid manifestation, I think. My Glimmer didn't come with a manual." Alaric rubbed the back of his neck, sheepish. "I awakened in a stable, if that helps explain anything. Horse trauma, I guess. Horse-adjacent trauma. It's a long story and most of it's humiliating."
"You flew into me at full speed."
"I'm working on steering."
Ignis, still bristling from Nathan's visit, finally found his voice. "Can we focus — we just had a guy casually threaten to end us and tell us a monster that eats dreams is loose in the city, and you two are talking about horse logistics."
"I process fear through small talk," Casper said, with real, fragile honesty. "It's a whole thing. I've had six years of being dead to figure out my coping mechanisms and this is one of them, so please let me have it."
Lancelot, still simmering with the cold aftershock of nearly watching Ignis die, said nothing at all, blue flame guttering low and thoughtful around his knuckles as he stared at the horizon in the direction Nathan Moya had walked.
*Sensei Wu Tang,* he thought. *A name meant for someone else's ears, and I still heard it. That's not an accident. Nothing about that man is an accident.*
---
**Beyond the gateway — the cracked-moon city**
Bandile had been walking for what felt like hours through streets that didn't obey distance properly, buildings leaning in to watch him pass with windows like empty eye sockets, and the Screecher's words still rattled loose somewhere behind his ribs.
*You shouldn't have come.*
He found a plaza, cracked and vast, centered around a dry fountain carved with symbols that hurt to look at directly — the same symbols from the gateway behind him, he realized, except here they weren't carved. They were *scarred*, like the stone itself had been wounded into bearing them.
A voice spoke from everywhere and nowhere, old and patient, utterly unbothered by his presence.
**"You carry a gift that doesn't belong to this plane. Moving things without touching them. Interesting."** Something vast shifted in the cracked red light overhead, vague and enormous, more felt than seen. **"The Screecher called you a mistake. I disagree. Mistakes don't walk through sealed doors on purpose."**
"I didn't know it was sealed," Bandile said, carefully, telekinesis humming low and ready around his hands. "I was curious."
**"Curiosity killed considerably more than cats, in my experience."** The vast presence seemed to consider him, weighing something. **"This city died when the Primordial Pillar did. We were the overflow — the parts of reality that didn't fit anywhere else once the lock cracked. You're standing in a wound, telekinetic. Most things that wander in here don't walk back out."**
"What would it take," Bandile said, steady despite the cold crawling up his spine, "for me to be the exception?"
Silence, long and considering.
**"Prove the gift is worth more alive than consumed,"** the voice said finally. **"The gateway behind you is still open. Barely. It will not stay that way long. Walk back through it before it closes, and perhaps we speak again. Linger, and you become part of the overflow permanently."**
Bandile didn't need telling twice. He turned and ran, telekinesis dragging broken stone and shattered rubble out of his path on instinct, the gateway's light flickering weaker and weaker ahead of him with every step.
He made it through half a second before it sealed shut behind him with a sound like a held breath finally releasing.
Wing caught him as he stumbled out, face white, legs barely holding. "Bandile — Bandile, you were gone for like four minutes, are you—"
"Four minutes," Bandile repeated, hollow. "It felt like hours."
Lloyd, for once entirely without a vain remark ready, just stared at him. "What did you see down there."
Bandile looked back at the sealed, ordinary-looking coffin, at the merman still curled shaking in the corner of the chamber, and said nothing for a long moment.
"Something that's still watching me," he said finally. "Even now."
---
**New York, the wrecked safehouse, same night**
Elise was alive — barely, five wounds cauterized shut by whatever strange mercy Nathan's projection had built into its own violence — and Nick hadn't let go of her hand since she'd stopped talking, since the apology had died half-finished in her throat.
He didn't get to sit with it long.
The door didn't explode this time. It simply opened, calm and deliberate, and a man stepped through who looked entirely, almost offensively ordinary — mid-thirties, grocery-store casual, except for the glow still faintly visible under his skin and the terrible, absolute certainty burning behind his eyes.
"Nick Parklands," Oliver Olsen said, like he was confirming an address. "I was told you're going to doom the world."
Nick didn't even look up from Elise. "Wrong house, buddy."
"No." Oliver's hands clenched, and something in the air around him *tightened*, pressure building like a held breath the size of a city block. "I watched a man die giving me this power. Last thing he said was your name. I don't know you, I don't know what you've done, but I believe him, and that's apparently enough for this—" he flexed his glowing fingers "—to work."
The Psoglav rose between them with a low, grinding growl, single eye flaring hot, reading intention the way it always did — and for the first time in days, it didn't stay silent. It barked, sharp and furious, a warning aimed squarely at the man in the doorway.
"Your dog agrees with me," Oliver said, grim.
"He's not agreeing," Eli said slowly, rising, gravity coiling dangerous and ready around his shoulders. "He's telling you that you believe what you're saying completely, which honestly, pal, might be the most dangerous thing about you right now."
Oliver didn't wait for permission. He just *moved* — fast, faster than a man his size should, conviction alone closing the distance in a blink, fist already swinging with the weight of absolute righteous certainty behind it.
Nick barely got Elise's limp body clear before the punch landed where he'd been standing, close enough to feel the wind off it, close enough to realize with grim, exhausted clarity that this fight hadn't even technically started and he was already in serious trouble.
"Okay," Nick said, curses already building low and ugly in his throat, years of afterlife-honed cruelty rising to meet a man who had absolutely no idea what he'd just walked into. "You want to do this on the worst night of my entire life? Fine."
He smiled, and it wasn't a kind one.
"Let's see how strong your will is when I curse the certainty right out of you."
End of Episode 10