The bright beam of purple reached to the sky, giving the clouds an ominous glow, turning the world around it into sharp edges of color and deep shadow. It had lost some of its original intensity, but otherwise remained a steady beacon. At the top of its column, a dark disk had appeared on the surface of the sky, as if night had fallen in a single spot. It could have been that the spot merely looked larger as they approached, but it seemed far more likely that it was growing, a dark bruise that crept across the dome of the world. It would have been faster to fly, but Nosedive wasn’t feeling confident enough to fly directly at it, regardless of the current condition of the Aerowing. The Migrator was gone, as the others had taken it. The team themselves had gone silent, and no one answered when he tried to raise them. The tracers in the comm system couldn’t even locate them on a map. He tried not to be concerned about that and failed.

That left a handful of Duckcyles, which were perhaps the most ridiculous of steeds to ride to battle, but when faced with imminent doom one couldn’t be very choosy.

There was silence between the three of them, that came out unease more than any determination. Winterwing didn’t complain about Nosedive’s speed like Wildwing would have, instead quietly keeping pace. Emily clung to Winterwing’s back with eyes closed tightly shut in terror, but she did not demand they slow down either. There was an unsaid understanding that Nosedive was somehow in charge coupled with the understanding that Nosedive should have never been in charge of anything. 

The road was as he recalled it at first, though as they traveled inward to the light, everything started to feel slightly wrong. The dead brush on the hills seemed to take on more sinister shapes, turning the valleys into fields of thorns and spikes. The dry dirt that had been a pale color in natural light turned a dark, deep color that may have been red, but it was impossible to tell for sure in the glow. The road was empty, as it had been before. The first time Nosedive had made this journey, this hadn’t even registered his notice. But now, upon further reflection, he realized how strange it was to see absolutely no one on a road. It was almost as if, in the process of traveling to this place, everyone else ceased to exist, and the road was there for their use only.

Nosedive spotted the Migrator and came to a halt beside it, swallowing hard. The vehicle itself was empty, but at least it didn’t appear any worse for wear. Whatever had happened had been after the others had arrived. The vehicle seemed immune, in fact, to everything going on around it, a white piece of pristine machinery in a landscape that had begun to warp. The trees that had previously given it a bit of shade were twisting in unnatural growth. The parking lot beyond was empty and cracked, though what appeared to be spines of rock were piercing through it. This close to the light, the omnipresent sound had grown louder, like that of a waterfall or strong wind. Far on the horizon behind them, a sliver of blue sky was still in evidence, and from this angle it was hard to tell, but it seemed likely that the bruise of night was traveling farther and farther outward from where they stood.

The factory was now truly falling to pieces, though rather than turning into a heap of rubble, its components had taken to drifting away like old leaves. Pipes and supports and drywall were floating upward, caught in a spiral that slowly fed from the walls directly around the beam of vertical light.

Nosedive frowned, more than a little intimidated, and realized that the other two were waiting on him to decide what they were to do. Nosedive and Emily had armor of a sort, and were at least armed. Winterwing was just in plain clothes. They had been reluctant to leave him behind, and he was unwilling to be left to the Pond alone, concerned that it would swallow him. They shared a group acknowledgment that they were all in over their heads. 

Nosedive made the executive decision to retrieve another blaster from the Migrator’s small armory, and reemerged looking far more brave than he felt.

“Okay, guys, you have to make me a promise,” he held out the grip of the extra blaster to Winterwing, with the most serious face he could muster. “If you’re going to betray and murder me, please do it after we handle this.”

Winterwing, with some forced humor, responded “Deal,” and took the weapon.

It was with trepidation that they left the roadside. Nosedive lead the way, as there was no one else around to set a better example.

The parking lot was uneven, the asphalt cracking and crumbling, resembling old paving stones now more than a single flat surface. Some of the light poles had bent and warped, though a few of them still appeared to be giving off light, burning a small yellow flame against the bright purple of the tower.

Emily took up the rear, walking without much enthusiasm, occasionally twisting around as if she suspected they were being followed. Halfway through the lot, she announced: “The air tastes wrong.”

Winterwing stopped, genuinely confused. “…Does… it?”

Nosedive stopped as well, looking at the ruined building, it’s parts flying to pieces, sinister shadows taking hold in the broken places. The column of light, now that they were up close to it, was not a single straight line to the sky. Instead it was a twisting mass of several separate lights, streams moving in a tornado up into the clouds. The sky was turning more and more dark, radiating outward from the point of contact.

He thought maybe, he could see stars in the darkness above. Bright red stars, becoming more numerous.

“Wait a minute,” Nosedive said aloud, though realized it was silly to do so, as they were all already standing still. “I’ve seen this before.”

Winterwing threw his hands up, encompassing the creeping disaster. “Where could you have possibly seen this before?”

Behind him, Emily was silent, only half paying attention, looking more nauseous than interested. 

“This isn’t Dragaunus,”  Nosedive looked to the beam of light.

“What do you mean it isn’t Dragaunus?”  Winterwing demanded.

“Well, I mean, one guy can’t cause every problem right?” They had spent the last few weeks hiding in the Pond, with Wildwing fussing over Dragaunus’ motives, Dragaunus’ plans, completely forgetting there were other things out there that were just as evil and annoying, that could bring terrors into their walls and Canard from nothing. 

Winterwing looked to Emily, who had rested her fists on her knees in an effort to remain standing. “You volunteered for this?” he accused.

Emily looked straight at the ground, her voice strained. “I’mmmm having second thoughts.”

“All right, good pep talk,” Nosedive gave the most sarcastic thumbs up he could muster, before turning away and retrieving proper weapons etiquette. “Onward, troops.”

“Are you going to be okay?” Winterwing said, in a voice that suggested Nosedive was not supposed to hear him.

She ignored the question and called after Nosedive, “What is it? Who’s doing this?”

"He called it ‘The Dark Zone’.”

“I’m not fully convinced he isn’t making this up as he goes,” Winterwing said.

Nosedive disliked the sensation as they moved towards the epicenter. Indeed, the light grew brighter, and while he could still not taste what had distressed Emily so, there was the sort of humming static in the air that made feathers on the back of his neck raise.

The walls of the factory had begun to crumble, but the steel pillars that had once held it up still remained. The three ducks climbed to the light along a path through them, though Nosedive was sure the factory that had been flush with the parking lot below before. The pillars grew more twisted and numerous as the group walked.

Winterwing began falling behind, and then stopped halfway up the hill, breathing hard. “Have we considered that we’re walking straight into the same problem the team before us did?” 

Nosedive halted, looking back down the hillside, which seemed to be taller than it should have been, as if it were a heaving giant rising from the ground as they walked on its back. “What else can we do?”

“I don’t know, call for backup,” Winterwing said.

“We are the back-up,” Nosedive shrugged.

“I just think-” Winterwing’s complaint was broken off by a shadow leaping from the dark between steel pillars, and punching him squarely in the back of the head. Before anyone else could intervene, Canard was on top of Winterwing, trying to get his hands around the surprised drake’s neck. Emily had her blaster raised and was shouting something.

 “You can’t shoot him!” Nosedive shouted.

She looked offended. “Why did you give me a gun if I’m not allowed to use it?”

“He’s off limits,” Nosedive insisted. Whatever the motive, Nosedive was unwilling to harm Canard. Their relationship had been somewhat strained by the previous year’s events, but that didn’t mean Nosedive wanted to actually hurt him. He attempted to join the fray instead, to pry Canard’s arms away and reason with him, and if Canard even noticed, he did not halt in his attempt to crush the air out of Winterwing.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Emily exclaimed, and settled for using the higher ground to her advantage, landing the heel of her boot against Canard’s head. She lost her balance and joined the rest of them on the ground, but Canard toppled over, and the improbable incline of the path beyond sent him tumbling downward. He came to a halt on hands and knees, looking back up at them blankly.

Nosedive tried calling out to him, without doing anything threatening. Canard did not react to him at all, stared as if he were looking past them, to the light, and then moved strangely, almost scuttling into the twisted pillars to one side of the path.

“I did not see that coming,” Nosedive remarked, scanning into the twisted mess. He couldn’t see anything clearly in the shadow, and any sounds of his movement were obscured by the babbling rush of the light.

“Me neither,”  Winterwing coughed, wincing as he pulled himself upright, rubbing the back of his head. “I thought that guy was your friend.”

“I did too,” Nosedive agreed. 

 Nosedive was reluctant to venture into the shadows to give chase, but also worried about leaving Canard to wander. It seemed likely he would attempt to surprise them again, and Canard himself would be hurt in the pursuit.

Emily was unmoving, still fixed in place where she landed, still clutching her firearm. “Well, what do we do now?”

“Where are the others?” Winterwing asked, uneasily regaining his feet. “Are they all going to come at us like that?”

A good question. If something had turned the rest of the team against them, they would be outnumbered and outmatched. Nosedive and two rookies were not going to be able to mount a defense. 

Nosedive stifled a shudder, and turned back up the path. It was getting steeper, he was sure of it, and as he neared the summit he began to grow concerned that he would be unable to physically climb its vertical face anymore. He gave a quick glance over his shoulder, to be sure Emily and Winterwing were still behind him. They were, though moving far more slowly than he would have liked. Behind them the road was now impossibly far below, and he had the thought that they would all simply fall to their deaths. He used a grappling puck for the last twenty feet, to be safe, and threw his excess rope down to them, hoping they had enough sense between them to work out the climb.

As they finally crossed the threshold at the top of the plateau, there was a single figure standing before them, directly in front of the pillar of light. Nosedive’s first thought was that Canard had somehow beaten them to the summit, but realized a second later that the silhouette was far too tall and lanky and angular. It was also too short to be the Dragaunus or Wraith. 

“So,” Nosedive called conversationally to the shape. “You’re something ‘very old and very angry’, I presume.”

The bright swirling light hurt his eyes too much for him to look directly for long, so it was the voice, somehow rising about the crashing tide of light, that gave him confirmation.

“Threads of fortune smiled upon me, to survey my domain of chaos between reality, and discover that your carelessness had left me a vassal! How easily one of you gave up the rest, just for the small promise of linear time.”

The unmistakable overdramatic warbling of Asteroth, immortal sorcerer and occasional conqueror of the kingdom of Anaheim. 

Up to this point, Nosedive had managed to retain the illusion of professional exterior. A minimum of quips and snark, a little bit of authority, maybe even a pinch of confidence. He forgot all that and lost composure, shouting into the noise before he could even think to stop himself: “I cannot believe you are wasting my weekend again!”

Nosedive had enough time to turn tail and pull his companions behind a collapsed section of wall before a ball of fire consumed where they had been standing.

“Who the hell is that?” Emily demanded.

“Okay, okay,” Nosedive babbled, “Okay, not a whole lot of time, so like, wizard.”

“What,” Emily said flatly.

“Wizard,” he insisted.

“See, I thought that’s what you said, but that doesn’t make any sense, so I thought maybe you said something else.” 

“Okay, but this is good, he’s a bad wizard.”

Another fireball hit the crumbling wall, blasting plaster and cement blocks skittering away from the pile. He may have imagined it, but it seemed to him that the remainder of the wall radiated heat at his back.

“That seems pretty obvious,” Winterwing remarked.

“No, I don’t mean a bad wizard, I mean, yes, okay, bad wizard, but he’s bad at being a bad wizard.”

“How many wizards do you know, exactly?” Emily asked.

“For the- you guys he’s a shitty wizard can you just pay attention before we all die?”

“Dying’s easier,” Emily said.

“Faster, too,” Winterwing agreed.

Nosedive was worried for a split second that he was going to lose a battle of wills and then be turned into ash because of it. That fear was dispelled when his next sentence was cut rather short by a screaming, distorted howl, that emanated from somewhere in the dark beyond. The afterimages of the light were playing spots in his vision, but he knew at least some of them were real. Some of them were a collection of red eyes watching from the dark, or that space beyond the dark, a layer deeper than anything was supposed to be.

“PERHAPS YOU HAVE MET MY PETS?” Came Asteroth’s voice, along with the added heat of more fire.

Nosedive watched the dark, brain grasping and stalling for a solution. Between Canard’s lurking form, the monster approaching, and Asteroth, there were simply not enough of them to handle everything.

Where were the others? Thus far he had seen no evidence of anyone else, beyond the Migrator parked down at the bottom of the hill. They were here, but he suspected that if they were also under Asteroth’s sway, he would have delighted in the irony of sending them all to tear the remaining ducks to pieces instead of a creature. Maybe they were being held somewhere. Captured was a better answer than dead.

Something was different about Canard, then. He alone somehow came to be under the sorcerers influence.

“You both still have your blasters?” Nosedive asked, and when neither objected, he said: “He’s a shitty wizard. Everything he does he needs help with. Canard showed us a piece of jewelry, it’s like a little necklace with a purple pendant. Duke said it was glass. I think that’s what we’re after.”

“A... piece of glass?” Winterwing asked, uneasily.

“Well, I mean, it’s purple glass, and,” Nosedive gestured wildly at the purple column of light.

“Solid reasoning,” Emily said, skeptically.

“Where do you expect to find it?” Winterwing asked.

“Usually he has to be carrying it,” Nosedive said.

“Usually,” Winterwing’s eyes narrowed.

“LOOK,” Nosedive said, the last of his patience evaporating. “I will take the wizard, you two keep the dog distracted.”

“What’s a dog-”

“And if you see Canard just tie him up or something,” Nosedive instructed.

“With what-”

That was all going to be their problem, because Nosedive was done wasting time. He surprised them both by vaulting over their crumbling wall, and taking off in a dead run straight for Asteroth.  Asteroth himself was not expecting this either, and was taken so off guard that his gathered fireball went wildly off course, illuminating the dark somewhere over Nosedive’s head as it crashed in the debris beyond. Nosedive did perhaps what he was best at, leaned in with his shoulder, and brought his full weight into the lanky wizard’s mid-section, throwing him off his feet.