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Issue One

"Library"

By Doc Fiction

 

THEN: FROM THE CHRONICLES OF THE NINTH AGE OF MAGIC:

There is much to chronicle concerning the last day of the ninth age of magic. In the days and years and ages to come, more will be revealed about that day, of that there is little doubt.

For this short record, the writer chooses to focus on the sacrifice and artifacts of Nabu, last Lord of Order of that age, who gave his own life that so many others would live.

That day Nabu floated through the ether, looking for the spirit of vengeance, the Spectre. Nabu was alone with his thoughts, knowing they would be among his last. To honor the memory of his departed servants, he chose a form recognizable as the Doctors of Fate as his appearance for combat.

- He thought of how Kent and Inza Nelson had given their lives to his service.

- He remembered the Strauss children, what he had taught them and what they had taught him in return.

- He thought of Jared Stevens - not the first to challenge servitude, but in the end he played his role also.

- He was happy Hector Hall had already gone to his reward, that the young man did not have to face the full fury of the old ghost's might this day.

This last day of the ninth age of magic.

This day Nabu had chosen to die.

Nabu floated through the ether when a spiritual vibration from one of the dead gray areas of energy caught his attention. It was an area the Spectre had already cleared of magic, before destroying T'Charr and Terataya, lesser lords of Chaos and Order, conduits of power to the human champions Hawk and Dove.

Nabu cast himself to the dead gray area and spoke to the Spectre as he allowed his chosen form of golden helmet, gauntlets and robe to appear.

"Where are you off to now, Spectre? Not sure who to kill next? Confused again, without Eclipso's manipulations?" Nabu asked, each question sounding more weary and tired than the last, rather like a father hoping his errant child will learn that his actions are foolish.

The Spectre turned, not angry, simply bothered. But Nabu continued to press him with questions, taking on the role of the smarter and wiser being, purposefully driving the Spectre to rage, then to mystic combat to fulfill Nabu's larger plan. The last surviving Lord of Order fought the Spectre in the fullness of his Vengeance role - driving the old ghost past the pretense of working for something higher and greater and into the role of an enraged berserker. The clash brought them back to the human plane over Senegal, where they destroyed half a town before Nabu could bring them to another realm, one of the many indigo areas outside of normal time and space. Nabu pushed at his adversary with overwhelming magics and philosophy and logic until the Spectre's only points of reference were anger and fury.

When powerful beings battle with the oldest spells, neither is untainted by his attacker's weapons. A human physician would say that Nabu was "infecting" the Spectre with each ancient spell, just as the Spectre was "infecting" Nabu.

Their battle again spilled over into the human plane and the oceans cried out with tidal waves while the earth shook with dread as spells unheard for millenniums were used in furious succession. Again, Nabu sacrificed energy to move the combat to another plane, orange this time, and he pressed the Spectre with the truth: That he was now a "diseased and maddened dog - set loose to foam and howl and rend and tear at the crumbling structure of the universe."

That knowledge loosed the Spectre's little hold on reason. The old ghost grasped at all the magic of the planes and realms at once, simply to silence Nabu.

"Die! Die! Die!" was screamed from his undead spirit lips, and the Spectre used magics beyond his age, beyond his authority to undo the fabric of Nabu's creation.

He Who Rules All saw that breach of authority and took the Spectre away then and imprisoned him once again in human form on planet earth.

Nabu was dying and he fell through the planes behind the Spectre, back to the reality of the humans, to the newly-rebuilt Rock of Eternity. There, the Phantom Stranger and the newest incarnation of the Shadowpact had gathered with Shazam's mortal champion, the mighty Captain Marvel. The Rock of Eternity was swimming with wild magics, barely kept in check, but Nabu's sacrifice has guaranteed the Spectre would not attack it again.

Nabu knew his moments were few and he handed the helmet of Fate to - of all things - an enchanted monkey, with orders to use it to choose a new Doctor Fate.

Nabu was no longer connected to the helmet, or the cape or gauntlets that so many had worn as Dr. Fate during these last dark decades. His connections to the helmet were all but burned out by the Spectre's vicious attack, but Nabu said there was still power there and this chronicle confirms that is so. The mystical palmprint of Nabu and more than a small amount of the Spectre's power had imprinted itself there, too. A wise man willing to do good in the human world would find the helmet to be a valuable tool.

With a final thought and proclamation of "goodbye," Nabu moved from the human plane and on to his reward.

With his passing, the final sunset fell on the ninth age of magic and the early light of sunrise for the tenth age began to shine the next instant. As Nabu's sprit left the Rock of Eternity, it saw Shazam's champion, Captain Marvel, hurl the golden helmet of Fate into the great unknown using his magical strength of Heracles.

The helmet flew beyond Shazam's younger champions, beyond the sorceress Amethyst, and into the upper atmosphere. Captain Marvel's magic and that of the Rock of Eternity, mixed with the spent energies of its wizard, Shazam, joined with Nabu's mystical palmprint and the traces of the Spectre's powerful wrath in the helmet's energy.

After Captain Marvel hurled the helmet, it not only traversed distance. It entered the obsidian plane and then crossed time itself.

(The above scenes took place - minus some added elaborations here - in DC's "Day of Vengeance Infinite Crisis Special No.1" Mar. '06)

The helmet re-entered time and space on planet earth in the ancient past, an early time when most men could trace their ancestry to the First Ones. That great knowledge had not kept them from filling their thoughts with evil and perpetrating ever-growing violence on each other. The helmet fell to earth as a formless, golden molten liquid of great mass. It fell to a desolate patch of earth and would not cool, the magics within unwilling to surrender the warmth of heat.

Soon after the golden molten mass reached earth, the oldest surviving good man on earth passed away at an incredible age. As the ancient man breathed his last, He Who Rules All loosed layers of atmosphere as torrential rain from the skies. Rivers that had always run underground exploded to the surface of the earth. For forty days and forty nights the earth was flooded until the evil and violence of men were wiped from its face. The divine waters cooled the great golden molten mass and then churning mountains of muddy earth buried it from all sight.

The good men and women who were spared the fury of the flood repopulated the earth. Many, many generations later, during the early days of empires, the vein of gold was discovered and mined for man's wealth. The gold still contained the mixture of mystical imprints it beared when Captain Marvel had hurled it beyond time and space.

 

NOW:

The old man was driving at least 35 miles over the speed limit on the expressway, swerving right or left depending on the cars in his rear view mirror.

His heart pounded in his chest like an angry caged bear.

Memories of himself as a younger man in the late 1930s and 40s flew into his mind like arrows held to the string a bit too long, happy for their freedom.

The driver, Reverend Edward Scanlon, smiled: The Almighty had given one last big story to "Scoop Scanlon, the Five Star Reporter" decades after he'd left the mess of the news business for the higher calling of the church. Sweat poured off his forehead and blurred his vision as he patted his hand on the brown thick cardboard box in the passenger seat.

The box was labeled simply. A white index card with big black ink letters, framed on top of the box with packing tape.

To: ETHAN SZECHWICZ

BIBLE STUDY DEPARTMENT

FAITH CONGREGATION CHURCH

"This thing's too dangerous for another magician. Gotta lose them, somehow," he muttered.

At that moment, the brown box began to pale in color. The paleness changed into a glow and the box began to grow warm. Reverend Scanlon removed his hand as an arc of light and energy passed through the front seat, rear seats and the trunk of his car. In his rear view mirror, the two cars that were following him suddenly veered off the expressway and onto the emergency shoulders, sending showers of sparks and broken glass when they hit 25-foot high concrete walls.

"Great Godfrey's Ghost!" the old man shouted. Then, looking forward at traffic again, he started to laugh - "hoo hoo hoo hoo, boy, hoo hoo hoo," not the laugh of someone responding to something funny, but rather a controlled, subdued laugh some people use to calm their nerves when something scares them.

He glanced down at the box again - just a normal box, just as it was as he placed it in the car. No damage to the seat, all was well. No more glowing, nothing to indicate anything out of the ordinary had occurred to slam two heavy SUV's that had been trailing him into cement embankment walls along the Interstate. The old man checked his speed, slowed down to the posted limit, saw the exit sign and moved to the right lane.

Ten blocks of additional driving brought him to the parking lot of Faith Congregation Church. His church, yes, but not his church. He'd taken the retirement package along with the Pastor Emeritus title ten years ago. The new kid was good, if a bit too anxious to please and a bit too fond of the new music. Reverend Scanlon wasn't too happy with changing the church's name from "St. Mark's" to something as vague as "Faith Congregational" either, but the church was functioning fine without its old pastor, attendance and offerings were up, even. But this box wasn't for the new Pastor... he wouldn't be able to wrap his brain around what it meant, what it would require.

"Ethan though, he'll do the right thing," the old man thought.

Reverend Scanlon checked his watch, 12:45 p.m. The Sunday morning service had ended nearly an hour ago, less than a dozen cars left in the lot.

Nervously, heart still racing, the old man grabbed the box and bolted out of the car. Memories of himself as a younger man, Scoop Scanlon chasing down the lead of the month, flowed like sweet honey. The old man's aged legs and back groaned against the exercise, but nonetheless he plodded and reached the church doors. He pushed them open and rather than turning to the sanctuary, he headed for the stairs to the upstairs Sunday school classes. He had not used the stairs since Alice died... in fact, that was when he resigned himself to the Senior classes on the first floor. Now, however, he was headed to the second floor at a full sprint.

Something pushed on his chest like a lead weight when he rounded a turn in the stairwell.

"Dying now, maybe," he thought to himself, "I won't get to finish the story. No matter - I played my part. Just a little longer old man," he pleaded with his aching legs and pounding chest and Lord above. The box was getting harder to carry.

He reached the second floor, out of breath, his face sweaty, ruddy and slightly bloated. He stumbled into a connecting hallway and started to pass doors. He paused at the first door, then the second. "There, third on the right," he thought.

He pushed the door open with his shoulder, let his weight carry him into the room and he collapsed in a heap on the dusty old linoleum floor.

The cardboard box began to glow again. It loosed itself from the wrinkled hands of its deliverer, slowly floated through the air and settled on the floor under a simple wooden desk, hidden from view. It stopped glowing and regained its normal color.

The classroom hosted a modest mission-style desk for the teacher, some old padded chairs for students and cheap plywood bookcases caked over by several coats of decades-old paint and filled with a wide variety of papers and texts. The walls not blocked by stacks of books and paper were covered by chalkboards filled with drawings, historical dates and names and Biblical passages.

The old man summoned his last ounce of strength and rolled over on his back.

"I'm ready, Lord," he thought to himself.

A woman in her mid-sixties in a proper blue dress and hat walked through the doorway and gently knelt down beside him. She leaned over and moved his thinned hair to one side, kissed his sweaty forehead with tenderness. Immediately his legs stopped hurting and his chest no longer caused him pain. He felt refreshed and invigorated. She held his hand and helped him up off the dusty linoleum floor. He looked at her again, and the woman was now in her early thirties. Together they walked out of the room and down the hallway, which was now radiant with the lights of a thousand brilliant church candles.

"I did it, Alice. I pray Ethan's up to the task. He was the only one I could think of that would do the right thing," was the last thought Reverend Scanlon had before his spirit fully departed his body and he died.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

THE FOLLOWING SUNDAY

Ethan Szechwicz had to use his key to enter the church's side door at 7:15 a.m.

He was early. Classes didn't start for another two and a half hours. The Pastor wouldn't be in for another 30 or 45 minutes but Ethan needed time to look over the classroom, check over his notes. No one had gone inside his classroom since Mrs. Smallgrass discovered Brother Scanlon lying on the floor there last Sunday evening. After the ambulance took his body to the hospital, Pastor Tommy shut the door and locked it to keep the youth department kids from exercising their curiosity.

Ethan told himself he was there early for his notes and the classroom, but deep inside he knew it was about Meade.

When Meade woke up at 5:30 a.m. feeling ill again, Ethan had brought her the medicine, soothed her with words of comfort and waited until she returned to slumber. He had trouble getting back to sleep and finally shaved, showered and dressed for the day.

He left a note: "Gone to church, took my cell. Call if you want me to bring you or if you need anything. Love, E."

Her illness spells had become more frequent. She was in bed most of the time now, days when she was up and about for more than six hours were rare. The doctors had their ideas, but nothing was certain. Surgery was in the picture, that much they knew, but the trip to the hospital was weeks away.

Ethan said yet another small prayer for his wife and opened the church's side door. He reached over and hit a light switch. Tired and cheap florescent fixtures flickered in protest before providing a constant glow.

The dining hall was still a wreck. Ethan frowned at the mess, but then smiled. Brother Scanlon's memorial service had brought in more people than Pastor Tommy had counted on, and the elderly kitchen ladies had worked themselves into a frazzle scraping enough food together for the unexpected number of guests. Ethan guessed that after the meal, the kitchen ladies were simply too tired to stay behind and clean up. He spent the next thirty minutes moving tables and chairs into something resembling the room's regular setup, brought plates and utensils to the kitchen sink, hit sticky table tops with a damp cloth and brushed the floor with a broom for awhile.

"Not perfect, but better," he said to himself when finished. Then he headed for the stairwell. Already, his mind was going over the lesson in Exodus.

He put his key in the lock to his classroom. He thought of Brother Scanlon: Smart old bird, still had it upstairs, didn't miss a beat. A great guy who'd introduced him to a lot of good writers. Sad for him to go, and here in the classroom of all places.

"I wonder what he wanted to see me about?" Ethan asked himself for the seventy-seventh time as he turned the key.

Ethan noticed the light peeking under the door as he turned the knob, instinctively thought it had been left on by the paramedics and pushed the door forward...

...and suddenly he was pulled into the center room, the door shut behind him and his world went completely upside down.

His classroom normally had more books than the others, a source of good-natured ribbing from the other teachers at church, but now massive bookcases climbed up, up, up - as far as the eye could see! The shelves were filled with books, yes, but also rolled parchments and artifacts from ancient civilizations in glass and ornate wooden boxes! The room was much larger, too. The cheap linoleum floor was now polished marble, so well cleaned he could see his own reflection. Where the room had once been illuminated by utilitarian florescent tubes it was now better lit by tall candles generously scattered about the room. His poorly-painted bookcases were now replaced by expertly-crafted shelves held in place by wildly ornate brackets.

Ethan recognized occult items such as crystal spheres on pedestals and charts that were astrological, astronomical, or possibly both. Hand-to-hand combat weapons bearing lightning-bolt designs and decorated with the carved images of skulls and ancient hieroglyphs were encased in glass and wood boxes, placed on the shelves, mixed in with the books and other items. An open armoire was filled with rich silks in black, blue, red, green and gold.

The only item in the room that had not changed was Ethan's simple mission-style desk. His head spinning with the unexpectedness of it all, he gravitated to the one piece of furniture he expected to see in the room.

On top of the desk, Ethan saw the cardboard box with his name on it. The box started to glow, and suddenly the entire room was filled with blinding white light. The light didn't scare Ethan... no, it seemed as natural to him as the wooden desk.

The light slowly faded. The box was gone, and instead a large open book sat on top of the desk with two blank pages facing the open air. Ethan's clothing was different, too - he was dressed in a loose-fitting dark green ceremonial robe, similar to the ones the liturgical priests wear, but this one had a golden lightning bolt design descending from his neckline to his abdomen. His forearms and hands were covered by long golden gloves, and the weaving in the gloves created tiny patterns of hieroglyphs, lightning bolts and skull designs. And around his neck - what - some golden rope attached to a golden cape?

Ethan was speechless. He had no idea what to do next until he looked down at the book again. He touched one of its blank pages with his index finger. As soon as his gloved finger touched the paper, handwritten words started to appear:

"Sit and read. There is much to learn and not much time."

Ethan quickly lifted his hand from the book, and the words quickly faded from view.

Startled and needing to clear his head, Ethan walked around the room and tried to find the door. After twenty minutes of searching behind books and bookcases, he realized there was no door out.

So, at the book's earlier suggestion, he sat down.

Slowly, he lowered his hand to the blank page again.

- TO BE CONTINUED IN FATE NUMBER 2 -