With This Ring (Young Justice SI) (Thread Fourteen)

17th February 2013
16:56 GMT

Molten rock starts at 700^oC. Kon can take brief contact from material of that temperature without any problem. Longer contact is uncomfortable but not particularly dangerous itself, otherwise he'd burn out his eyes whenever he used heat vision. The problem is that he has no innate flying ability and his kinetic belt can't take that sort of temperature. If it gets damaged then the only way for him to get out would be to wade to the edge of the magma field and climb out. And he can get by on less oxygen than a human but he still needs to breathe.

Frog hearts are structured quite differently to human hearts. Three chambers rather than four, and no separation between oxygenated and deoxygenated blood. It's a poor design, like human eyes compared to the superior squid eyes and it means that I don't really know what sort of heart that woman is supposed to have. But assuming that this is mostly magic anyway, that we build our gods and monsters in our own image and that I'd probably want fully oxygenated blood given the choice, I'm going to go with a mostly-human design.

She stamps on the magma patch.

She can take the heart she gets. My boosters blaze and-. And I've left Cernunnos behind.

"Sorry!"

I grab him with a construct X-15 and accelerate it to match my speed, wincing slightly as I realise that I'm going to have to thank Lantern Jordan for that one. Okay, optic scans of the woman's interior show the location of the veins and arteries that would be connected to her heart so I can roughly guess the size, so that there, that there, and then the runes for health and life and… Blood? And earth. Overall configuration… Since I don't know what her natural mana flows are like I can only guess 'human but bigger'.

I move the heart to the canopy.

"Alright, it's done."

He uses his right thumb claw to cut the tips of his right index and middle fingers and then reaches up. I pop the construct canopy and he presses his hand into the flesh of the synthetic heart, his blood staining the closest 'blood' rune.

I can dimly feel it as something changes, and given that we're nearly in heart-insertion range I hope-.

The woman turns her head our way and I generate a crumbler ram and hope that-.

A rock spike erupts from the ocean and I block it with the ram. Another follows but we're already past it.

"Ready?"

"Yes."

I dismiss the X-15 construct, expand the crumbler ram and position the heart behind the head. Rotate the heart so that it's the right way around and lunge. The woman lowers her posture slightly and swings her fore claws at my construct. Dodge down, accelerate slightly and her claws just clip the rear of the construct. Dismiss, shove the heart into her chest and bind her flesh to it-.

Warning: power expended.

My rings blinks out and I start falling.

What?

No, I mean obviously I know what, I-. Her chest drains my guuuh!

Armour's flight system failed, but the armour itself stopped me from braining myself on the shore.

Ah.

I need to run because this armour isn't magma-proof.

But it does have power assistance, so I thrust my legs out and just avoid one of her leg-claws slicing through me! I try to get my legs under me but can't quite manage it, instead getting my left knee under my chest while my right leg is still stretched out. I bounce, twisting to the side and grabbing at the ground with my hands because she's swinging again!

"Any of your animal-"

The leg comes down in front of me and I-

"-parts burrowing?"

-slam face-first into her ankle.

U-gh.

Need to work on this armour.

Okay, use the sudden obstacle to lever myself upright-. She's lifting and there aren't any handholds but with her limb arrangement she can't stamp on me with her other leg when its that close. Drop to the ground. Is there any cover at all, and where's Kon?

Glowing ground was over that way but I need to run and jink!

I stagger sideways as her foot comes down again, but the ground seems to have stopped glowing which means-.

Semi-solid rock explodes outwards as Kon bursts through the surface!

Back to running!

"Out of power! Help!"

"Huh-?"

Kon looks down at me as I head for the cliff face, then the monster woman backhands him into the sea-.

Ah, hits him anyway? Oh, he managed to grab on, but I don't think she's noticed.

"Cernunnos, is the heart working?!"

He's flying as high as the sky extends overhead, careful to maintain enough space to dodge.

"It does not beat!"

Oh, of course.

"Kon! Get her heart beating!"

"How?!"

"Get in her chest and push it!"

I make momentary eye contact with him over her thumb claw, and he doesn't look convinced. But as long as she's distracted I can try recharging and not just running away and trying not to die. She finally spots him and brings her hands together in a huge clap, but Kon's had time to brace himself and is just about able to catch the incoming limb. Again, there's no pain reaction from her, but if she-.

She lifts the higher hand away and he holds on for a moment, then pushes off towards her exposed ribs. And I've lost sight of him, but now I've got the cliffs to my back I've just got to hope that she was having so much fun trying to stamp on me that she doesn't drop me in magma. Face her, and be prepared to dodge.

No, Kon's got her attention. She's trying to claw at her own chest, but her claws are thrown back as Kon punches them away. Okay, let's just hope that I didn't have to transmute some blood for her as well.

Now, recharging. I take a look at my rings… Right ring, Larfleeze's ring, the first ring, looks completely fine. If anything I'd say that it's glowing more brightly than usual. Left ring, Hinon's ring, is… Dull. Faded, and almost translucent. Almost like it's not really there. Makes sense. Hinon's ring is new and created by a race of materialists, while Larfleeze's ring has been exposed to the Ophidian for millions of years.

Lantern.

Nothing. Looks like subspace isn't available in this place. Darn. There are other things I could do, but they all require more attention than I can-

"AAaagh! What did you DO!?"

-spare.

Kon throws himself free and the woman folds her arms over the hole in her chest. Her head-mouth snaps closed and she looks around… There's a certain intelligence in her gaze that wasn't there before.

"Human! Explain or I will kill you!"

Still an improvement.

 

17th February 2013
16:58 GMT

As the only full human on the shore, I should probably field that.

"When we first found you, oh glorious one, your heart was missing from your chest! You attacked us quite vigorously!"

"What do you mean, my heart was missing?!"

"Looked like someone cut it out, magnificence!" I start walking closer as she stares down at me. "We could see your lungs!"

"My heart is in my chest."

"No, that's a new heart I made! I've got no idea where your original one is!"

Her unusual facial structure makes it a little hard to decipher her mood, and she's clearly having a nasty shock. But she isn't smashing me for my lies, so I'm going to assume that she's at least accepting it as plausible. I could ask her what made the wound in her chest, as that would help with the sheeda and the creatures assailing Themyscira. But that's probably a bit confrontational.

"Might I ask your name!?"

"Do you think I am some minor goddess, whose name can just slip your memory?!"

"I worship the gods of Olympus, divinity. I am far from my homeland, and their place of power. I probably never learned it."

"Then know that I am Tlaltecuhtli! Goddess of Earth and all the life that springs from it!"

I roll my eyes at that-. And Kon catches them and shakes his head. Yes, I had realised that now isn't the time for comparative theology. This blood-fuelled earth goddess might be the Aztec version of Demeter but she certainly isn't Gaea. I just realise that calling her out on her creative advertising wouldn't help the situation.

She crouches slightly, her right arm dropping down to tear rocks from the ground, a load that she pushes into the hole in her chest. The rock then spreads across the injury, merging with her flesh to create a patch. It's not the same colour as the rest of her skin, but it appears to be functional.

I wonder. If we accept that the Olympian mythos survives so well because they're drawing power from the chained titans, who are too fundamental to the human part of the Dream to ever fully fade, that makes them more powerful and more coherent than the gods of other dead or dying religions. As for the rest… I don't know. I remember reading in Hellblazer that the gods of dead religions don't get weaker, but Bast herself said that her realm was in decay without humans at least thinking of them. Maybe it's the realm? Or the human-comprehensible parts of the god rather than the core self?

Or maybe Hellblazer was wrong, or John was dishonest?

No, can't be.

"Do you require our assistance any further, oh Goddess of Earth?"

Might not have been wise to draw attention to the fact that she needed mortal help, but unless she feels like sharing what happened to her there isn't anything she can do to help us solve the case.

I think she's thinking about it, but then she spots Themyscira on the horizon.

"Why is that here?"

"Don't know. We were about to find out. They're being attacked by humans who have had their hearts torn out-."

"I will deal with them."

She stamps towards the misty sea, the stone causeway which Kon obliterated reforming to take her huge footfall and weight.

Kon ambles over, careful to keep Tlaltecuhtli in view.

"It worked."

"Good work with the heart massage."

He snorts. "Good work with the heart."

"That wasn't the hard bit." I look around. "Cernunnos? Are you around?"

There's a faint shimmer at the tree line and Cernunnos stalks out, keeping an eye on Tlaltecuhtli.

"You may have saved her from enchantment, but she still eats hearts."

"I haven't forgotten, but we're in the land of the Aztec gods. They all do it, and we're going to have to deal with them. Would you mind flying to Themyscira and letting them know we're here?"

"What's wrong with you?"

"Ring's dead. Kon, what's your damage?"

Kon pulls the melted remains of his kinetic belt off his suit. The suit is thin enough to be protected by his organic force field, but the belt extends outside of that.

"Fine, apart from the belt. Are you having trouble recharging?"

I raise my left fist and tap it against a personal lantern that isn't there.

"Yes. I'll need a moment. Please keep watch."

He nods, doing a quick check of our perimeter.

"Oh, and in case you missed it, her chest could absorb the orange light, so there's probably another-."

"One of your clones-" He nods. "-with its heart cut out."

"Just so. Okay."

This should be doable. I recreated Larfleeze's ring from pure avarice because it had existed for so long that it imprinted on it. My personal lantern has only been orange for a couple of years, but the orange light fountain has existed about as long as his ring. Not sure if Hinon dismantled it as part of building the Orange Central Power Battery, but the imprint should still be there.

I make a fist with my right hand and raise it slightly, contemplating the ring.

And it should be tied to this ring.

Just outside the-. Ooooh. It's actually a little easier to see things here without straining. No, no, not the desires of individual people. I want to see the distortion left by an object, things not tied to a particular person or mindset. A device that used to cage the Ophidian. There are Kon's desires and Cernunnos's desires and Tlaltecuhtli's desires and pull out pull out pull all the way out. There's the whole of the orange but it doesn't all flow from the desires of individuals. Behind that, there's the desires of groups, species, things existing beyond the individual. But aside from that, there are structures which emerge from the thing itself…

I reach out with my right hand and touch my ring to the structure.

This is my cause, this is my fight,
Shine through the void with orange light,
I've claimed all within my sight,
To keep what is mine, that is my right.

Something moves, and the previously empty ring becomes full again as I return to the realm of the gods and toss Kon a replacement kinetic barrier.

"Is it lava proof?"

"Try swallowing it."

He snorts, then we both rise into the air and head after Tlaltecuhtli.