Talon charged at Gretchen and swung the blade, opened up a small cut, swung again. She blocked with her arm, which he saw turn to stone at the moment of impact. An instant later Scott slammed into her. She took a single step backwards that somehow took her across the room—and took Talon's hand with her. He stared at the stump in shock for a moment. She tossed it down to the floor; things began to grow out of it. Thunderbolt tried ice; she sidestepped but the edge caught her, and half of the room was covered in thick frost. Something like a giant preying mantis that was growing out of Talon's hand paused in its growth, shattered free of the sudden ice and stepped free, although it did not look unharmed.
    I made a snap judgment, dove across the room and laid a Protection from Evil on Talon. He could heal himself from this particular wound, but we needed him alive to use the Eye, and a couple more exchanges like that one might not permit that. After which he of course did heal himself—he could feel the Eye pulsing weirdly—and his hand grew back.
    Gretchen looked disgusted, but being still deafened didn't say anything. Scott snaked across the room and grabbed hold, strove with her for a moment without result. It felt as if her entire body had turned to stone. He wrapped another tendril around her head and took her down, face to floor and golem arm to the back of her head. Then thing that had grown from Talon's hand—a vroc—jumped on Scott, slashing and biting. The back claws ripped through his silvery substance. Gretchen got back up to one knee and slammed her hand into the ground; radiant energy burst from it, ran along the floor over toward Talon and myself, where it seemed to explode.
    Chaos Hammers hurt. I could barely keep on my feet, and the ringing in my ears was going to make further spellcasting a challenge.
    Thunderbolt threw a lightning bolt at the vroc, which didn't hurt it but did help Scott. I gritted my teeth against the Hammer and followed him up with a Chain Lightning directed at Gretchen, then Scott. Phoenix Talon advanced slowly, then stepped sideways across the dimensions to attack her from behind, and just because he could, to goose her. Scott came at her again, ignoring the vroc for a moment; she flipped over completely, landed in a crouch, but she wasn't looking nearly as good as she had. The vroc leaped again, claws and teeth raking the golem.
    Gretchen stood up, and apparently regained her hearing. "It's your energy that I always find so exuberant. But there's simply no point in this." She folded in on herself.
    
    And I was standing in the observation dome of the cloud fortress. We were just about ready to attack...
    Someone grabbed me from behind.
    "You have always been more of an irritation than anything else. I never want to see you again," Gretchen said crisply.
    I wondered if I ought to feel flattered, and then I stopped existing.
    
    * * *
    
    Scott and Phoenix Talon were waiting just inside Gretchen's tower; Thunderbolt ran to join them with the command staff for the castle in his hand. They all had the sense that something... something had gone very, very wrong.
    The castle rotated 180 degrees, and Thunderbolt felt someone struggling to take control of the castle from him. Needle was supposed to be up there... he stopped moving and fought for control. The cloud began to tip, and he returned it to level.
    "Thunderbolt, are you coming?" Talon yelled as a horde of daemons approached.
    "She's in the control room!"
    Quiet, you, said a voice in Thunderbolt's head. I never met you before, and that gave you a certain degree of novelty, but this... that's overkill.
    The others watched in horror as Thunderbolt seemed to age a hundred years in mere moments, then crumbled, and then the wind blew away the dust that remained.
    "Time to move," said Scott, snapping out of their shock first. "Where is she?"
    "She's out on the ship."
    "Not her."
    "Upstairs." Somehow he just knew it. Knew there was something waiting to attack from the side, and leaped over it, removing its arm on the way. Scott greased the stairs to keep the little daemons from following. Talon knew which door it was immediately. He took the fly through the watery room, where nothing reacted to them.
    They smashed through the door on the other side to find Dawn encased in crystal. Undefended. They paused and looked more carefully. Talon slipped across dimensions and ended up next to his daughter.
    Laughter echoed through the room. "I have the strangest feeling we've been here before."
    Something invisible hit Phoenix Talon and bore him to the ground, claws raking at him. He could only see parts of it by virtue of it being covered in his blood. He reached for the Ebony Fly; it erupted into full size and lifted up toward the ceiling with the hellcat on top of it.
    Scott slammed into the crystal that encased Dawn; it was worth a try, but didn't seem to have any effect, except maybe a very few small cracks. At the moment of contact he felt something working its way up his body; he wasn't sure what it was, but then felt himself being forced into solid form by his contact with the stasis spell.
    Talon got half upright and felt two more of the things attached him, this time sinking in their fangs to hold his arms. Another one of the invisible cats slammed into Scott; he was pushed back across the room, into the table, bits of flotsam scattering. His gaze fell on bits of spellcasting equipment, sacrificial knives, and a piece of that same crystal, much smaller, with four malformations in it. He was now fully solid, keeping the table between himself and the cats.
    Another door opened. Gretchen strode in, with two gnolls and two humans in clerical finery in tow, and stopped in front of Phoenix Talon.
    "I suspect you have some sort of hideous artifact that you're going to use to destroy me. That was your plan, right?"
    Talon said nothing.
    "You've done a very good job so far, been very irritating while keeping me from seeing exactly where you are. But you notice that once I lay my eyes on you... I don't blink. You can't win this." She leaned toward him. "You know what the worst part is...?"
    Talon struggled heroically but failed to free himself.
    "We were linked once. You could come back, into the pack. You could," she whispered. Then she turned toward Scott. "You, I don't have quite as much use for."
    "See that's a shame, because I like him a lot," said one of the acolytes, and stabbed her in the back, dragged the blade through her flesh.
    She took two staggering steps forward.
    "Well do something, boss!" Larry prompted, taking a few quick steps away from the gnolls.
    Scott grabbed the crystal from the table and leaped. Gretchen staggered some more and fell, and then there was a flash of light and her wounds were gone. She spun around to see who had so hurt her.
    "You!"
    "What? You didn't actually think you'd killed me, did you?" Larry said innocently. "I mean how hard can it be to impersonate a high priest, and work my up through your chain of command in twenty-four hours to be the person standing right next to you at this moment?"
    "You have the exuberance of youth. Be a child," she commanded fiercely; he shrank down to an embryonic state, then seemed to waver back and forth through time as her concentration went elsewhere.
    Scott landed near the bigger crystal, looking for some sort of keyhole, and finding none settled for smashing the small one against a hellcat's head. It shattered nicely, staggering the hellcat as well. Talon freed himself from the remaining cat's grip, and they heard the sound of stone breaking.
    After fifty years pent in stone, an armored woman, a gorilla, a vampire, and a man who appeared to be in mid-flight were freed. Kane simply collapsed, but, "Prepare to face scientific wrath, evil-doers!" intoned Astro-Man. Unfortunately, none of his powers worked in this universe, and he paused with a confused expression.
    Gretchen did not look happy about this development.
    Judging this to be the moment, Talon brought out the Eye and placed it on his forehead, at his own Third Eye; it adhered there. "I can see you!" The room was bathed in daylight. The hellcats were invisible, but growling and hissing their discomfort.
    Gretchen staggered back. "To me!" The doors on all four walls burst open and poured into the room. Scott found himself able to be liquid again. He slammed Gretchen into the crystal pillar and wondered if Larry was going to be okay. The pillar rocked slightly backwards under the impact.
    "No! Damn you!" she gasped, struggling.
    Argus and Adam placed themselves back to back and cut loose with their machine guns as daemons staggered forward into a rain of silver-plated lead. Wounds opened and then closed once again, but much of Gretchen's concentration was going into keeping her minions in this world.
    Talon walked up to her, where Scott was holding her. "It ends here," he told her, and kissed her gently, and pressed his forehead against hers.
    She screamed. "No!!!" A burst of energy hurled him back from her; the right half of her face was gone, and large chunks of her body were missing. She still staggered up to her feet. "To... me." She waved a weak hand; the daemons compressed and flew into her.
    But they could all feel it, somehow; the sense that a very large door was being swung very slowly shut... and slammed.
    
    * * *
    
    In Detroit:
    "Agh!"
    "Did it work?"
    Panting, "We just closed the Daemongrid in there."
    
    * * *
    
    Gretchen was left in the room, alone, with her daemons gone and the power source she had called upon for fifty years now unavailable. Scott coiled up again and launched himself vengefully, sent her staggering back several feet.
    Adam took aim and jerked the trigger. Argus was in the mood to get a bit more personal, with silver-plated nunchuks. Gretchen backed up against the wall, propping herself up against it; the werewolf queen's wounds were still trying to close. And then something moved up the wall beside her, as if she was growing a second shadow.
    "Of course only something with your monumental ego would let a vampire this close to you, even bound," Kane remarked softly. And not just Kane; he seemed larger, broader, his shadow stretching back into time... Sutha had been waiting fifty years for this.
    But Gretchen wrenched herself free of his fangs, staggered away. "You don't realize... she's still under my control!" she wheezed. The crystal holding Dawn began to glow, as the wolf-witch tried to rewrite history—again.
    Phoenix Talon prayed. Oh master we have come far and suffered much. I ask you one thing, how is it we may break the hold that the sorceress has over the dawn? He felt Da'an flowing through his body, and he knew that all he had to do was hold her hand. He walked over to the crystal and pushed his hand into it.
    Reality was being rewritten all around him. Kane ceased to exist as the concept of vampirism was removed from the world. Sutha went away. The Daemongrid was reopening. Gretchen's wounds were healed.
    
    * * *
    
    In Detroit:
    "Oh crap! Start again!"
    
    * * *
    

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