23 [Horus] And unfanned fire will devour him

  After a brief conversation with yet another sister, in which I agreed to keep her existence a secret in return for regular reports on our other sibling, I decided to move on to the first step of my plan.

  Before I could create my legion, or take over the continent, I needed a place to call home.

  A place of Africa, but not a place I would have to constantly work to keep.

  There was a cluster of tiny nations all around Wakanda, some of them allied with the secretive country, while others were just vile. Vile, and right next door to one of the most powerful nations on Earth, whose king chose to do nothing about the suffering happening right next door all in the name of ‘International relations’.

  I noted the name of those countries as part of my phase three plans, but for now I needed a place to call my own. Scanning my copy of the files Doom had left for me reminded me of things from reading comics back in my first life that were not know even to him, or rather more then likely had just been beneath his notice.

  There are seven secret cities on this world, part of Earth, but sort of out of phase to it, and all of them are linked together. Kun-Lun, birth birthplace of the supernaturally empowered martial artist Iron Fist is one of these, while Z’Gambo in Africa is sort of like it in that it can only be reached by magic except when it reconnects with the real world once every few years. Fifty to eighty eight years for Z’Gambo, once every ten for Kun-Lun due to winning some sort of regular tournament between the champions of the seven hidden cities.

  I don’t know much about Z’Gambo, except some overly complex Celestial device had been hidden there in secret until a group of explorers had somehow reached the place a century or so ago, and one of them later returned to the place, probably the next time it became reachable, and then for reason that somehow made sence to him, proceeded to kill everyone there.

  All to protect the device of course, not became the guy was a psychopath. Which he totally was.

  The guy didn’t even bother to bury anyone, in fact, he collected their bones and laid them out as some kind of open air ossuary. Yeah, that’s perfectly reasonable and sane.

  Then he somehow split the Celestial device into three brass frog statues, you know, one of those standard martial art skills, hid two of them outside Z/Gambo where people could, and did, find them while he guarded the other one in a secret city only a few people cold reach. At least until the Defenders found one of the frogs, then the Prince of Orphans emerged from Z’Gambo and killed a couple of heros, to “protect” the device.

  The Defender did some time travel shenanigans to undo the deaths, so as far as I known John Aman is back to just lurking in that hidden city, surrounded by the remains of his victims.

  Several hours of work later, I decided to find out as I walked through the magical portal I had made to the hidden city, followed by a few dozen cloudy silicon duplicates of myself with runes carved into their surfaces to allow them to operate as simple mindless golems.

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  The guy found me pretty quick and stared at my green glowing transparent form in confusion.

  “Doom? Are you dead?”

  “Thoth. Thoth Von Doom. I can’t say I like what you did to the place. Did any of these people really need to die, or did you just live so long you forgot how to be human?”

  He shifted his weight smoothly into some sort of stance, “Yes. Their lives had to be sacrificed to protect the world. As does the life of anyone who comes here. Do not be so confident of whatever power you are using making you untouchable. I have fought ghosts before.”

  I shook my head at him. “A sacrifice is when you give up something you care about that belongs to you. These people’s lives did not belong to you. This was not a sacrifice, it was just a spree killing. And don’t concern yourself about getting to kill anyone ever again. Your death was assured the moment I came here, and striking me will only hasten the process.”

  The Prince of Orphans, a name I wasn’t even going to bother to ask about since someone like this shouldn’t get to share their backstory, narrowed his eyes at me. “You know nothing.” and then attacked, flying foot first though my energy form without harming me in anyway despite him calling up mystical energy to strike my disembodied soul.

  My soul was embodied just fine in my human shaped form of electromagnetic radiation which had been shooting out invisible gamma rays in all directions from the moment I had arrived.

  The martial artist, whose best power was turning into a cloud of croaking green mist, had taken a lethal dose of radiation in the first few seconds we had talked. Jumping through my body had only given another even stronger dose.

  Turning to face him as he landed behind me, I turned to thermal energy and blasted him with it in a cone of ignited flame, which he easily dodged, but hitting wasn’t what I was up to. I wanted him tired out and too busy to pull some mystic technique out of his butt to save himself from radiation poisoning.

  Sorry ‘Prince of Orphans’ but you’re a near one shot character from an Iron Fist comic or something, you fought the Defenders in your biggest appearance. You are not the hero of the story, you’re barley an entry on a fan page.

  A few minutes of me shooting various energies at him, with me missing every single time, not for a lack of trying, and then he got a clue that something was wrong as he coughed up some blood. Looking at the red specks covering his open hand, he looked up at me. “How?”

  “You killed all of these people instead of finding somewhere that already didn’t have any people in it to hideaway and guard your precious little brass frog. Oh right, that was actually why, not how. But I would rather you die in ignorance... and I hope you burn in hell.”

  At least until someone decided to bring him back, possible to face me again… Which didn’t sound all that bad. In fact, I kind of looked forward to getting to kill this man again someday.

  He turned into a green cloud and fled. I watched him bounce off the borders of Z’Gambo that I had sealed behind me as the cloud began to slow down and break up until his already decaying body fell to the ground.

  My mask showed no vitals signs in the corpse as I walked up to look at it, but his eyes still slowly cracked open as he whispered, “Please…”

  As I stared down at him and watched his eyes go still while not saying a word, I wondered how many people here had pleaded with him the same way.

  Then I burned the corpse to ash.

  My glass duplicates set to work digging graves and scanning the traces of DNA in the bones in order to put everyone's remains back together. I’ve had killed nearly every plant in the place with radiation so I had plenty of material for coffins, and for a grave marker, silica is easy enough to make.

  I figured the four sides of the monument could all contain the same epitaph in different languages, “Here lies the people of Z’Gambo. May they know peace.”

  It would probally get smashed dozens of time during super fights in the future, so I figured that I might as well keep it simple to make sure it’s easy to reproduce.

  I found the damned brass frog that he had been so concerned about protecting to keep anyone from using it and tucked it under my arm. It will make a nice paperweight, or perhaps a nice addition to a ornamental fountain.

  Now, what other treasures does a hidden city hold?