Salem -- Fate's Watchtower

[doctorfatejsa.livejournal.com]

Hector Hall sits alone on a throne of stone in his tower, blood pulsing through his temples. The Helm of Nabu whispers dark things at him, but he pushes the skittering voice aside. He will not fall to chaos. Doing so is unthinkable.

So why don't you just cast off the helm? says the voice. He has no answer. The misery has gripped him since he returned from Bete Noir. His magic is wild, now. Sloppy. Things do not happen with the precision to which he's become accustomed.

"My soul is imperiled," he whispers to no one, and as he speaks, he realizes that they are the first words he's spoken in hours ... maybe all day.

Rose Psychic left them to seek assistance. She believes she has an answer for him. And Gemma ... Gemma has surely become concerned, by now. His absences and solitude are nothing new, but there is a shadow fallen over this tower. He doesn't know how to find the light again.

Comments

[gemma-masters.livejournal.com]

She is worried, and she isn't the kind of person to leave him alone with all of this. After all the tower likes her and tends to help her out so asking it to lead her to where he's brooding is easy peasy.

"If you're already talkin' to yourself then might be more of a toys in the attic sort of thing Hector." It's a mark that she's feeling strongly about all this that more of that backstreets of London accent is showing through. She doesn't realize how much she sounds like her uncle when she does that.

"Might be better t'hang out with someone and keep centered an all."

[doctorfatejsa.livejournal.com]

Hector laughs bitterly, but underneath the helmet it sounds hollow, echoing.

"I can feel it gnawing at me, Gemma," he says. "The voice of Nabu is silenced. There's something dark shouting it down. It wants Fate to itself. It wants me gone."

[gemma-masters.livejournal.com]

She holds out a hand to him and wishes that Lyta were here.

"Touch m'hand Hector. Feel it, you're still human under there an we won't let you give in ok?"

[doctorfatejsa.livejournal.com]

Fate clenches her hand. Lyta's in Los Angeles on a job for a few days -- Hector hasn't called her. Stubborn man.

"Rose Psychic says she has an idea, but she needed to summon help. I don't know who Dr. Fate calls for help."

[jla-goldenage.livejournal.com]

"Why, the Justice Society, of course," says Rose Psychic's no-nonsense voice. Beside her stand the young Jakeem thunder and the senior Flash, Jay Garrick.

Who may be confused, because when they left, it was Dr. Occult who was beside them.

[gemma-masters.livejournal.com]

"Well he can call on me for one." She unclenches his hand long enough to strip the glove off, he's human under all that and that's what she's trying to remind him of.

"Uncle John in a pinch, Rose an Occult some of the time. Bunch of bloody heroes in capes that like Hector quite a bit. They're out there, sometimes they might not seem like help like when we took Zard along for the ride."

[jay-garrick.livejournal.com]

"In short," Jay adds, stepping forward to place a hand on Hector's shoulder, "you call on your friends."

[doctorfatejsa.livejournal.com]

Fate takes Gemma's hand and rises unsteadily to his feet.

"Jay? Jakeem?" he says, sounding a little surprised and a little grateful. "It is good to see you."

[jay-garrick.livejournal.com]

"And you," Jay smiles. "What is it you need help with?"

[doctorfatejsa.livejournal.com]

"Then it is settled. We will travel to Atlantis at once. Everyone stand close, and remain alert."

Fate gestures, and light emenates around him ... not forming the customary ankh shape, but instead the form of hawk wings. He seems unaware ... or at least indifferent ... to the change.

Colors cascade around the heroes, and reality blurs and spins, until suddenly, they are in a golden orb, underwater ... with the magnificent city of Atlantis before them.

[jla-goldenage.livejournal.com]

"Atlantis," says Rose, awe on her lips. "A nation underneath the seas ... the heart of magic in this realm."

[gemma-masters.livejournal.com]

"Smashing." Hector's magic is feeling all over the map and she's keeping tied closely into it for now since she doesn't know any water breathing spells.

[jla-goldenage.livejournal.com]

A small globe of light emerges in Rose's hands, flitting effortlessly through the barrier.

"This will lead us to the temple, to retrieve the amulet we are in need of."

[doctorfatejsa.livejournal.com]

"The sooner the better," growls Fate. "I feel uneasy maintaining this level of power right now."

But with the aid of the other mystics, his capsule holds.

[jay-garrick.livejournal.com]

"You'll do it," Jay says surely. "We'll make it."

[jla-goldenage.livejournal.com]

"Indeed, Mr. Garrick," says Rose, a serious look on her face. The golden orb floats through the water, drawing their bubble toward it to a shrine on the outskirts of Atlantis ... a stone, coral-covered temple in the shadow of the lost city.

"There," says Rose, her tone of voice clearly disbelieving things would be as easy as that. "The amulet is there, in the shrine where it was placed centuries ago."

But even as she speaks, the waters darken, and a shadow looms over the city.

Above them, a ghastly visage ... a woman in a white veil, her hand extended toward them ... long, gnarled fingernals adorning withered fingers.

"You reach from the past to prevent my future says an icy voice that seems to cut through the water. Fate is mine. You will not take him from me.

[jay-garrick.livejournal.com]

"He was never yours to begin with," Jay says matter-of-factly. "And you won't take him as long as he has friends standing by his side."

He's not standing as though he's ready for a fight. If one breaks out, though, he'll be ready in a flash.

[violeteyedmage.livejournal.com]

While he cannot place the voice or understand much about the situation...there's something in this that nags him, and as Atlantis's defender, he can't just take a chance the voice is lying about attacks on his people.

What he can sense is this: The voice, while sounding alien, also has a certain half-remembered dream quality to it's magical resonance - and that the guardian of order is very, very not himself today.

"Fate! Stand down. You are not making this go any faster and people - my people - may well be dying while we debate this. Present your case, Rose - quickly."

[jay-garrick.livejournal.com]

Jay, however, feels he is losing in the battle with the maelstrom. "Whatever you're going to do... do it fast...!"

He's doing his best to hold onto the medallion...

[doctorfatejsa.livejournal.com]

And Fate is blasting at the Witch Queen, whose visage looms large over Atlantis and whose laugh is now cackling throughout the ocean.

"This abomination seeks to control the power of Fate, Garth of Atlantis. And Fate is no mage's slave!"

The ankh-shaped bolts of mystic energy fly from his fingers with devestating force.

[jla-goldenage.livejournal.com]

"Oh, this is going to hell in a handbasket," thinks Rose Psychic, stretched to the limit of her mystic abilities. One wrong move, and they're dead. She can feel this in her blood. But a completely different wrong move, and Atlantis is destroyed, and that won't do, either.

And then there's the force speaking to them, drawing them toward the unknown.

She needs to make a decision. She needs to think. And then it dawns on her.

"It's about Atlantis!" she shouts in desperation to Tempest and Fate. "What's at stake is not the city, but what it represents! The city at the heart of Magic! That's what the Witch Queen's seeking!"

And there's more ... there's more ... something the woman's not seeing. An unknown.

And in that moment of understanding, a decision is made.

"Tempest and Flash, use your powers to create a torrent ... wash Fate and us toward the vortex! The voice is correct ... if we battle here, all is lost!"

And then the voice chimes in, ringing in Tempest's head.

"Listen to her, Garth. Atlantis needs a champion at this moment. Will you stand as that hero? Can you trust in the unknown?"

[violeteyedmage.livejournal.com]

He can trust a lot. Has trusted much. It's been a poor investment of faith growing ever more in debt. Dealing is Atlantis's power structure has been that trust into something very dark and sharp to the touch these days. Gods help him, he doesn't trust his own wife - or his son to be near him these days.

Everyone wants a piece of him - for years...since birth. Normally the piece they seem to want is the head off his shoulders. Fate adds himself to that list.

He uses his rage to summon a vortex the likes of which he has not managed in ages.

And now, he thinks ruefully. The JSA bear mistrust and will sow more descent. What has the world come to?

[doctorfatejsa.livejournal.com]

The waters surge and pound, forcing Dr. Fate away from his enemy.

Fate is crazed now, manic.

"I will not be the puppet of mystic forces" shouts Fate, but even his great power can't resist the tide. Oh, but he's trying.

Above him, the Witch Queen screams as he combatant is the battle torn from her. Indeed, it seems this turn of events is not making her happy.

"Give me Nabu's pawn, she says, in a blizzard-cold voice. Fate is mine!"

[jla-goldenage.livejournal.com]

The heroes in the mystic sphere tumble, knocked by the vortex.

Oh goodness gracious this has gotten out of cotnrol thinks Rose Psychic, but as enraged as Fate is right now, this isn't their battle, and she can see that. And she's starting to get a sense of why The Witch Queen wants them to fight it.

She curses under her breath, and prays that Jay Garrick and the young Jakeem thunder can finsih the job, and see them safely away. To whatever's on the other side of that portal.

And she prays that the young Tempest is hero enough to handle the burden she's just placed on him. He's going to have to be.

[violeteyedmage.livejournal.com]

"What is that thing and what weakens it?!"