Maev's Chronicle: Chapter 1

The difference between Shadow Earth (our reality, according to Zelazny) and Bombastoworld has more to do with perspective than with power. Each and every individual there believes that is his or her PERSONAL responsibility to save the world, prevent forest fires, promote the color purple, whatever it is that they want. There is very little voter apathy in Bombastoworld and the natural environment is in somewhat better shape than our own, but they deal with a completely different set of problems. These include lunatics who don masks and attempt to take over the world using orbital mind-control lasers as part of a campaign to force people to brush their teeth after eating. We won't even talk about what the civil rights movement was like...Superhumans come in all shapes and sizes: extraterrestrials, magicians, guys in battlesuits, martial artists, people transformed by toxic chemicals or atomic explosions...But no mutants. Superheroes are made, not born. Except Maev.

She came to national attention when her home was leveled during a battle between TeamFantastic and The Dreaded Green Thing. Her adoptive parents were killed and twelve-year-old Maev was rushed to the hospital with wounds that the doctors were sure would kill her in a couple of days. Not only did she survive, but recovered quickly and completely. By the time TeamFantastic arrived at the hospital to apologize, she had already put together plans to minimize civilian casualties in superhuman conflicts. She charged TeamFantastic with implementing them. Most of these plans involved breaking the time-honored cycle of confrontation, battle and the inevitable supervillain escape with accompanying property damage. She became the team's strategist and over the next two years, they negotiated with captured, or killed many prominent supervillains.

During this time, Maev noted the crimes of a number of supervillains who avoided the traditional pattern, or indeed, avoided attracting any attention at all. These included super-powered people who worked in plain-clothes, who destroyed all evidence and witnesses, and who used diversions while stealing funds and technology and assasinating superheroes and other supervillains. She gradually realized that several supervillains (whose names, according to captive henchmen included Dr. Fang, Captain Coyote and the Technomancer) were really the same person. When she finally obtained a photograph of this person without a mask, she realized he was also Helios, a battlesuited person who was also a member of TeamFantastic! She nearly died in the ensuing battle between the loyal members of TeamFantastic and the two who had been subverted by Helios. She fled with Fern and Dr. Dynamo, the only survivors of their side.

The enemy (whatever his name was) had used his two years well. He had already killed most of the superhumans who he had not subverted or taken over. Maev admitted that they were outflanked and it looked like they were going to lose this one, a shame since the whole world hung in the balance. Fern realized that there was one hope, live to fight another day and the one who should do this was Maev, since she was young, hardy and the strategist. It was easy to drug her iunconscious since she was wounded. Fern and Dr. Dynamo broke into one of the Technomancer's abbatoir-labs and tossed the groggy Maev through a dimensional gate that the enemy had constructed. There was just enough time for them to destroy the gate before the legion of minions who had been alerted about the break-in arrived...

Maev landed in a hayloft and was taken in and hidden by the farm family who discovered her. While she recovered, they explained that she had arrived in The Green Lands. Well, they had been green once, but that was a long time ago. Now, they were ruled by the cruel King Boris, and he was only a regent for the evil sorceror Vargaz. Vargaz had led the humans and the orcs to these lands a long time a go and they had fought the varied people who resided here: Elves, Dwarves, Centaurs, Nymphs...There were a few left, such as the Dwarves laboring in chains up in the mountain or the Sprites, Nymphs and other magical entities in the chambers under the castle generating magical energy for Vargaz. The human and orcish conquerors were no better off. As soon as the last resistence was cleaned out, he made the humans into serfs and the orcs into slave-soldiers.

Maev began to organize resistence, first putting people, both enslaved and in hiding, in contact with one another, cell-style, to reduce the effect of informants. She even persuaded the Dwarves and other natives to accept the humans and a few of the orcs as partners in the rebellion. She recognized many of her would-be rebels as heroes and leaders from Bombastoworld, but realized that they weren't exactly the same. There was some principle of correspondance linking certain people and places in the two worlds, forming a recurring pattern. Before ordering any armed insurrection, she located most of the sorceror's portals into the world and began to destroy them. The people of the Green Lands, like those of Bomabastoworld, were brave and vigorous and very few decided to cower behind walls or sell out to Boris for the promise of safety. Within a year, Boris and his minions were dead and Vargaz tired of sending others through the gates, never to report again.

The people of the Green Lands, humans, orcs, Dwarves, etc. elected representatives to a ruling Council, set up police forces and courts and proceeded to run their own lives. They appointed Maev as Champion of the Realm and awarded her broad discretionary powers (before she simply assumed them). She went on missions to far parts of the lands where they felt a good tactician was needed. Her talents were as useful in diplomacy as in battle (although serious military decisions were necessary when her expedition came into contact with the denizens of the underworld). She convinced the remaining Elves to leave the woods they had appropriated and their war against humans and orcs. She pointed out that they could not hold the newly-freed humans and orcs guilty for the invasion 500 years ago because. Human and orcish lifespans are so short that they were more than 10 generations away from the people who originally stole the Elves' land. They had more right to be there than the Elves do (because the Elves had taken some of the Dwarves' land 5 of their generations before). The Elves grudgingly accepted the lands granted them by the Council and all the realm flourished at the return of their power. Likewise, Maev made peace with the Last Dragon, which had wearied of revenge and was willing to leave the realm well enough alone, if treasure hunters would cease to disturb the bones of his kindred.

Along her travels she met a remarkable being: a black steed (looking more like a hole in the air than a creature with pigmented fur) with fiery red eyes. It had the power of speech and it introduced itself as Hror. It had been created from the stuff of Shadow, it said, and given to the man Hathan, also known as Vargaz, also known as Helios and the Technomancer. Maev asked if these people were counterparts of one another in different dimensions and Hror answered, no, that they were the same man, who had been taught be a demonic master how, at great magical cost, to tear holes between worlds. These worlds were all Shadows, Hror claimed, of another world (thus the resemblances between them). Hror could walk between worlds (although it was easy to lose its way) and had been a valuable possession, but tired of its master's foolishness and cruelty and run away. Far better to explore Shadow and meet new people than to be a talented slave. Maev asked it to help her free Hathan's other conquered worlds and it agreed that this could be an entertaining project.

"But, you don't really need me," it said, "You also have the potential to become a worldwalker and more than that". This sort of talk made Maev immediately suspicious. It explained that it knew of a place where the Pattern that held all the worlds together had been drawn out and that if a person who were hardy enough were to walk along the pattern and learn it, they would be able to walk freely from world to world and have certain powers to protect them from the forces of darkness. Maev was the only one strong enough to do it; it knew how to tell. Maev thought about this. What if Hror was still Hathan's ally and walking along this pattern would put her in his power? What if it were very evil and walking along this pattern would cause reality to unravel? But if the choice for survival and victory was between action and inaction, Maev would choose action. The Council agreed with her and sent her with their blessing.

She rode Hror though a number of realities into a green field with a single oak tree. And there was Pattern drawn on the field. There was something very familiar about it, almost explaining to her the similarites and differences between the two worlds she had lived in and the others she had passed along the way. The walk along the Pattern was harder than she could have imagined and still felt like something she'd been born to do. Before she knew it, she was standing at the center and looking back at Hror. "Return to the Green Lands" it called, "I will meet you there." A car pulled up to the tree, driven by a red-haired man with a bag of fast-food on the dashboard. He looked out at her, rather surprised, but before she could talk to him, the field vanished and she was standing in the courtyard of what was once Boris' castle (it now housed the Council).