VOLUME III, PREQUEL CHAPTER ONE
Visitation
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No one knows how he does it—appearing out of thin air at the mere mention of his name. Some say he comes out of the ground like he’s been spit out of the shadows. Others believe he is the shadow. That blackness in the corner of the room that’s always there, listening to the veiled conversations between crooks and well-doers alike, waiting for his moment to make a memorable appearance.
For Warden Bethany—a former heroine who’d been in and out of the front lines for well over five years now—Crow-Man’s sudden appearance wasn’t a new phenomenon. She’d gotten used to him popping in unannounced. Especially now that she was one of the Wardens working the same case Crow-Man seemed to be investigating too, which meant they’d often encounter each other in the field while following the same clues.
Bethany cleared her throat. “Are you ever going to just use the front door?”
Crow-Man glanced over his shoulder to inspect the thirty-foot high titanium double doors with their state-of-the-art security system—kinetic barriers, DNA scanners, gift suppression glyphs, magical shielding, and voice verification software—and replied, “No.”
He spent a long moment taking in the carvings on the doors’ titanium surface; a graphic depiction of ancient history’s worst moment—Gigantomachia.
“Security’s getting tighter,” Crow-Man commented in his signature gruff tone.
“Says the hero who snuck into the Crucible without alerting its defenses,” Bethany replied wryly. Then she added, “You’re going to tell me how you did that, right?”
She’d never admit it, but the former ‘War Maiden’ still got those chills that came with being the subject of Crow-Man’s piercing gaze.
“No,” he said flatly.
She raised her hand to signal the guards waiting by the murder holes along the top of the Crucible’s circular wall to lower their guns. They did so begrudgingly as they were trained not to like uninvited guests. Even if they were heroes in the top fifty of America’s hero charts.
“It’s not like we weren’t expecting you,” Bethany sighed. “But I don’t know how you knew about his request before we even picked up the phone…”
As Crow-Man stepped toward the six-foot square slab at the center of the circular landing they were on, he said, “The Court of Crows has eyes everywhere…”
“Yeah, that’s what I was afraid of,” she sighed again.
Bethany wiped at the sweat trickling down her brow—a consequence of waiting outside the Crucible where the temperature was nearly always at sauna levels—and then she followed after him. Once at the slab, she pressed her hand to its surface.
“Bethany Carlyle, Warden 2nd Class,” said the automated female voice.
Glowing sigils appeared around Bethany’s hand. They spread out like spider limbs along the slab’s obsidian surface, reshaping themselves into lines that formed the geometric pattern of an intricately designed door.
“Briareus,” Bethany said.
“Password accepted,” replied the automated voice.
The glowing door slid to the side and revealed the sleek metal elevator behind it.
Bethany gestured Crow-Man forward. “After you.”
Crow-Man stepped into the metal box without hesitation. However, he couldn’t help but glance around him and noticed that the panels along the walls and floors were made of a combination of silver and iron, two metals that were known to repel horrors and other dark things that haunted their world. Interestingly enough, glyphs originating from more than one pantheon were scrawled on the metal walls. The scent of lavender also hung in the air.
“You expect monsters to take the elevator down to the prison?” Crow-Man asked, sounding almost sarcastic.
“This elevator’s the only way down,” Bethany replied defensively. “Not even alpha-level horrors could survive the volcano’s lava pressed against the Crucible’s walls, but if they do… Well, the Crucible’s defenses are more than a match for legendary monsters.”
The Crucible—an apt name for a gifted prison forged inside the molten core of an active volcano on an island that’s not on any map hidden by both technological and magical means.
At Bethany’s instructions, the elevator zoomed past the administrative sub-level without so much as a pause.
“It’s better for you this way… the chief administrator’s a bit stand-offish with uninvited guests,” she explained.
The ding of the elevator announced that they’d just passed the second sub-level, which Bethany explained was where they kept the “low-priority prisoners.”
“Low priority,” Crow-Man repeated.
“Low-level villains with short sentences whose powers make them difficult to lock up anywhere else,” Bethany explained. Then she added, “Mr. Crimson’s on that floor.”
Bethany’s face was turned away from him so she didn’t see the frown underneath Crow-Man’s cowl after she mentioned one of his most notorious rogues.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
A few years back, there was a series of murders in lower Manhattan that confounded local law enforcement specifically because they didn’t seem to be connected despite their shared brutality. Different types of victims, and different styles of murder, all in locations that had no relation to each other—making it all seem random to even the most observant eye. At least until Crow-Man appeared on the scene to help.
He was credited for discovering the clues that eventually led to the doorstep of the serial killer, a billionaire philanthropist who went by the moniker of Mr. Crimson. It turned out that this socialite was a villain whose low-level gift of blood parasites was used to devastating effect. Like a vampire who bit into their victims’ neck, the parasites in Mr. Crimson’s saliva turned people into marionettes that murdered themselves, leaving almost no evidence that he’d forced their deaths on them.
“Crimson’s low priority?” Crow-Man growled.
“They’ve got him drugged up enough that his parasites stay dormant,” Bethany explained. “He’ll have a hard time telling people what to do without powers.”
Crow-Man hated being reminded of Mr. Crimson, not just because their encounter nearly ended in Crow-Man’s death, but also because it wasn’t actually Crow-Man who’d found the parasites in the victims’ blood that led to Mr. Crimson’s eventual arrest. This discovery belonged to his former sidekick, but she couldn’t take credit for solving the case back then as only heroes were credited for completing a job.
“Do Wardens always escort visitors to meet with prisoners?” Crow-Man asked.
“Yes, but”—Bethany frowned—“this type of assignment’s usually handled by lower-ranked wardens…”
“Not former top hundred heroes, you mean,” Crow-Man noted.
Bethany nodded hesitantly before admitting, “As you know, the prisoner in question’s a special case…”
“Special…” Crow-Man repeated. “That’s one way to describe him.”
Another ding announced their arrival on the third floor, which, according to Bethany, was where they housed, “Mid-tier villains like the Jackal.”
Crow-Man’s scowl deepened at the mention of another one of his high-profile rogues.
The Jackal, a former gamma-level hero with the proportionate powers of a jackal, was one of Crow-Man’s old colleagues who’d gone insane thanks to the dark machinations of his patron, the Egyptian god Set. He’d made a mess of Brooklyn until Crow-Man, with the help of his former sidekick and Weather Witch, put an end to the Jackal’s insanity-fueled crime spree.
As she glanced behind her shoulder, Bethany finally noticed his scowl, and she gave him a gracious smile. “A lot of villains owe their time here to you, don’t they?”
Bethany crossed her arms over her chest while contemplation flitted across her pretty face.
“I think you’ve put more people in here than Superion and Silver Heart combined,” she added.
Crow-Man just grunted. He didn’t like comparing himself to his peers. Especially those two heroes who were currently occupying the top one and two spots of the US hero rankings.
Then Bethany and Crow-Man felt a sudden tremor along the walls, forcing the pair of them to grab the elevator’s handrails.
“Volcano acting up?” Crow-Man asked.
“The lava flows around the Crucible artificially, but the volcano tends to disrupt that flow from time to time which leads to these miniature quakes.” She offered him a mischievous smile. “Helps keep the prisoners from getting too comfortable.”
A third ding of the elevator announced their arrival on the Crucible’s fourth sub-level. Finally, the doors swung open for them.
“This is our stop,” Bethany said.
She couldn’t see it behind his cowl, but one of Crow-Man’s eyebrows had just risen. “I heard the Crucible has five sub-levels.”
Bethany stepped out of the elevator before responding, “You don’t want to go down to the fifth sub-level…” Her face became visibly pale. “That’s where they keep the worst monsters in the mortal realm.”
She led him past the circular landing and its tough-looking, heavily armed squad of guards and into another set of titanium double doors that took them into a narrow corridor hewn out of sharp obsidian on all sides. What lighting there was to guide their way came from the soft glow of the molten veins running along the craggy floor and walls.
“The fourth sub-level is where we keep the criminally insane and accursed,” Bethany explained.
“Accursed,” Crow-Man repeated.
“The unfortunate gifted who’ve been corrupted by celestial influence but managed not to become horrors themselves,” Bethany answered.
“Just evil,” Crow-Man finished for her.
Crow-Man deduced that this was probably the reason the Jackal wasn’t on this sub-level too. He may have gone insane, but Crow-Man’s old friend wasn’t inherently evil.
“It’s not like they could have helped it…” As someone who’d run away from the calling of heroism, Bethany couldn’t help but sympathize with the accursed who were unable to escape their tortured fate. “Well, most of them, at least. Your guy’s different though.”
Crow-Man grunted in agreement.
A man in a lab coat accompanied by one of the prison’s guards nodded to Bethany as she and Crow-Man passed them.
“The doctors do their best to help rehabilitate the prisoners, but…” she let out another heavy sigh.
“You can’t,” Crow-Man finished for her.
She nodded. “Most of these people were driven mad by destiny’s hand… All we can do is keep them from hurting themselves and others.”
“You can’t save everyone,” Crow-Man reminded her.
“That shouldn’t stop us from trying though,” Bethany insisted.
She gave him a look that reminded Crow-Man of another young and optimistic hero who was also dead-set on saving even the worst scum of the Earth. At least that’s what Crow-Man thought when he imagined Herculean’s stubborn, naïve face superimposed on Bethany’s equally stubborn expression.
Crow-Man paused by a glowing door on his immediate right. It had a geometric design that was intricately woven into the obsidian wall. There was a plaque on the door that had a barely legible name on it; Mira Mosley.
“Pandora the 7th,” Bethany answered.
They moved on to the glowing door at the far end of the hall; a door whose occupant seemed to be in the middle of an argument with himself.
“He’ll be here,” said a man with a British accent. Although his voice seemed courser than Crow-Man remembered. “He always comes when we call.”
“No, he won’t,” the man responded to himself. “He won’t want to play with us now that we’re stuck—”
The voices stopped at the sound of the approaching footsteps. Silence ensued. It was a silence that made the gloomy atmosphere around them seem even more pitiful.
“Who is that?” the voice asked in a playful sing-song voice. “Which foolish hero would dare to set foot in this hellhole to see little old me?”
Crow-Man frowned.
“I only know one idiot who’d go that far to visit,” the man behind the door cackled. “Well, maybe it’s two people now… but the little healer must be busy. No time for me. No time to ask about the long shadows snaking up to crush his neck.”
Bethany slammed the back of her fist against the door, causing the villain inside of it to cackle with glee.
“Don’t let him get a rise out of you,” she insisted.
Bethany placed a hesitant palm on the door, forcing the obsidian door to slide open and reveal the small square room beyond. Sitting at the other end of that barely lit space, with his body wrapped in a straight jacket, was the Trickster.
“Hello, Crow, Crow, Crow, Crow-Man~~n, my buddy, my friend, my confidant,” the Trickster said delightedly. “I’ve been dying to see you again!”
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Enjoying the new volume 3? Good. Look forward to all the new chapters, rewrites, and edits as we continue Sam and the gang's journey across the Underworld!
Also, don't forget to read my new novel, The Loom of Ill Fates, here on Royal Road! The link will be on the post-author notes!
image [https://i.imgur.com/6BiyhL5.jpeg]
It's Game of Thrones meets Ready Player One and the Office!