Mythlands: THE HEIST

Part Two: The Time Machine

At the very top of the former corporate headquarters of MCI, right below the roof of the part fortress, part skyscraper known as The Castle, is a space known as The Apex.

This vast area was connected to the private offices of The Tortoise, deposed CEO of the company and The Tortoise was a trillionaire many times over. He was also a wise and benevolent leader and a kind hearted philanthropist - under the good management of The Tortoise, the Domain and it's citizens enjoyed unlimited prosperity and lived their immortal lives enjoying the splendour of their fantasy land - it was something that could not go on indefinitely, because it is the nature of humans and mythical creatures to envy and to plot and to despoil.

So eventually The Tortoise fell prey to events beyond his control and the forces of evil rose. It is perhaps doubly ironic that having won the war, Loki and his coalition of evil would inevitably struggle to maintain the 'peace' that followed their conquest. Too many disparate factions wanted too many different things - while the Trickster was busy with his new obsession for infrastructure (there was a particularly thorny issue of water sanitation that pre-occupied a lot of his time), others bristled under his regime. The Zodiac wanted absolute order in their domain - i.e The Domain, others wanted to kill, rape, maim and generally be evil and beyond that dark forces of universal destruction wanted nothing less than the complete obliteration of all existence. The latter two factions certainly had no interest in such things as Loki's pet projects of desert irrigation in the Narnian/Calormine wastes or safe and renewable energy for the irradiated zones.

Realizing that the more reasonable and still somewhat human or humanoid parts of his forces still hungered for conquest, Loki had approved a plan put forward by the Zodiac to open a portal to the world of mortals. He reasoned that some 400 or more troublemakers amongst his alliance would be happy to take a few million of their zombies, minions, wraiths, monsters, demons and other anti social types who were ruining his new society with their sporadic rapes and murders of the citizenry - let the whole lot bugger off to earth and he'd be rid of them.

Of course some were content to stay in their new provinces - Jadis and her army of Black Dwarves, boggles, ghouls and the like ... no trouble there. They only entered other lands when requested and were quite useful in enforcing and gathering treasures and taxes for his infrastructure projects and then sodding off back to Narnia!

But back to the portal to earth - Zodiac were in charge of that and they had found an ingenious way of building up the power they needed. In their very own base of operations, the Castle - quite convenient that - was a power source combination of science and magic set up by The Tortoise. It ran right down the building and culminated in a very useful wide open space on the top floor - the aforementioned Apex.

The Tortoise had pumped hundreds of billions back into his society but it would have taken MCI an immortal lifetime or seven to spend ALL the money their successful economy was bringing in, so they had plenty left to pretty up the office. The Apex had bronzed floors, gold and marble fixtures - a huge spectacular working fountain in the middle and a small park one could spend ten minutes walking through. Reinforced interspersed glass windows ran the length of the building - about one half mile all in all and continued around. The views were spectacular and these included the insides which were littered with art work upon the walls and on plinths and in cabinets and display cases.

The Apex was an indescribable sight - imagine a combination of features from luxury shopping malls (it featured a few exclusive restaurants, bars and even shops and 3/4 of it were open to staff and the public), art galleries, the palace of Versaille and more.

However one overlooked but important feature was the bit just under the roof - The Tortoise had ordered an artistic array of bronze piping twisted into all kinds of displays, all along the hundred or so feet below the high ceilings - these were mixed with various gold, bronze and brass sculptures and in the centre, next to a giant hamster wheel type structure, a huge rotating clock face which could be seen from most points along the central moving walkways.

It was important for one particular reason - it was the perfect place to hide something that at first glance (if one happened to even look up, which was rare) appeared to be just another set of artistic twisted bronze piping around an art piece of Victoriana.

Except it wasn't. Over five years before, Schrodinger's Cat had sought out H.G. Wells and they had arranged for his Time Machine to be concealed in the rafters, right near the central power source, which for half a decade had been slowly charging the chronal energy intakes. George himself had expressed uncertainty that even this would make his machine work at the appropriate time - it having never been in operation since his arrival in The Mythlands - indeed it had only ever worked in the old stories and even Wells couldn't be certain that the pre Mythlands existence had been anything other than a false memory given to every inhabitant (except resurrected mortals who had become legendary) upon what could be their first day actually existing.

However SC had known a thing or two and he had been confident. For instance he knew that Zodiac would drain a succession of magical beings to gain the energy they needed to open their portal, but that every single one would burn out and die until they found the one entity whose rage would sustain her even as her enemies drew out, amplified and drained her power for years.

It was theorized that at some point the energy would become sustaining, but of course Zodiac logically concluded that unless Ariel expired, there was no reason to test that hypothesis by disconnecting her. Instead they kept her as a perpetual magic energy machine, occasionally experimenting with reality directional testing by bringing in waters from the pools in the Wood Between Worlds - they had never been able to find a portal to the mortal realm there but the waters were useful in other ways.

The Mouse himself had volunteered to use the wand of his deceased friend Bad Merlin to experiment with waters from the wood until the right frequency had been found. Unfortunately for the Zodiac he wasn't trying to open the portal to the mortal Earth in what is known as Reality. Instead he had been experimenting with waters from the most evil realm portals to find the combination to unlock the way to the realm of the Great Old Ones.

Zodiac never had a clue until he launched his coup, having found the correct set of waters on his last trip to Narnia (the best nexus to the Wood Between Worlds) - he had been returning from there, on the pretext of conducting Loki's business when a chance encounter with The Hare's group had convinced his insane mind that the omen he had been waiting for was upon him.

The final piece in his fevered brain was the capture and interrogation of a dying rabbit who had told him a strange tale about two versions of The Hare ... The Hare! The one who had started it all, who had been there with Loki's minions and who had been mentioned in his cross dimensional contacts with Lord Cthulu. A being of significance, though himself a powerless fool, destined to be a cosmic pawn. The Hares were heading here, right now. It could be no coincidence! So the coup was initiated.

But what neither The Zodiac nor The Mouse had ever considered was that if she were ever released, Ariel would not be a drained and exhausted husk ... but like a dark phoenix rising, her amplified energies had remained within her tiny frame and although she didn't know it, her power levels had reached cosmic significance!

*

The Hare popped his head up - they were a few feet from the fountain. To the right was the way to ol Tort's office and to the left, the time machine and the the hatchway to let Goosey, SC and the others in.

He made a fateful decision.