Spoony the Pussy One: Life is in the Render Queue

Whine and Bitch about people long after they become interesting to talk about
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wulfenlord
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Re: Spoony the Pussy One: Life is in the Render Queue

Post by wulfenlord » Wed Jul 21, 2021 8:24 am

~ THE HOG TIMES ~ MOTIVATIONAL OF THE DAY ~
"Even the mightiest warriors experience fears. What makes them true warriors is the courage that they possess to overcome their fears". - Wedgeetah
Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn! Ph'nglui mglw'nfah Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl muh'fugen bix nood

Whenever you feel down :3
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Re: Spoony the Pussy One: Life is in the Render Queue

Post by Guest » Wed Jul 21, 2021 8:44 am

wulfenlord wrote:
Wed Jul 21, 2021 8:24 am
~ THE HOG TIMES ~ MOTIVATIONAL OF THE DAY ~
"Even the mightiest warriors experience fears. What makes them true warriors is the courage that they possess to overcome their fears". - Wedgeetah
Stunning and brave. I personally like her other quote as well:
You're one of my closest friends, Theresa. You've always been so kind to me even when I'm having a horrible day and feeling like tearing a new asshole on someone.

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Newhalf
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Re: Spoony the Pussy One: Life is in the Render Queue

Post by Newhalf » Wed Jul 21, 2021 9:19 am

"Iron will"
Can't even take a walk around the block without tripping and having a nervous breakdown.
It's a trap!

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wulfenlord
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Re: Spoony the Pussy One: Life is in the Render Queue

Post by wulfenlord » Wed Jul 21, 2021 12:24 pm

Highlander: Pariah - pt.3

CHAPTER TEN: DEXION’S REWARD ( note: No, I don't know why he has no system with his chapter spellings. And yes, Noah is about 25 at this time, but there is no reason to give him a toddler bonus. Most artists of any merit are the most productive in their 20s and/or blow their brains out at 27)
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The Palace of King Ptolemy XIII
Pelusium, Egypt
September 30, 48 BC


The acrid stench of fresh vomit wrenched at Dexion’s lungs as he stood before the chambers of Achillas the Eunuch. The sound of his armor must have given him away, for he heard an insistent grunt behind the door, and shuffling as he moved to open it.

“A moment,” Achillas croaked, his voice hoarse. He cleared his throat with a deep-chested gurgling noise, spat, and said again, “A moment, Roman. Wait.” The door opened, and the foul stench leapt from the room as a rushing wind from a bellows. Achillas emerged, looking sweaty and emaciated, but in a jovial mood. “Ah,” he exclaimed, clapping his hands, “Artorius Dexion. Is it time at last?”

“It is,” said Dexion. He noticed that Achillas’ smile was a fearsome thing, his bared teeth brown-black, pitted and shrunken as volcanic rock. He motioned his head down the hall. “I am bidden to bring you with me. Your king summons you to be with him when Caesar arrives.

“Of course,” Achillas said. “I thought as much when I saw you’d made yourself presentable for court.” Dexion was not sure if he was being condescending or patronizing. Maybe neither; he’d often noted that the eunuch enjoyed hearing himself talk, particularly when the subject centered on his own ideas. Dexion wanted to get away from the room, so he stood to the side of the door and gestured for Achillas to lead the way. Perhaps he expected a laugh from the centurion. He hesitated to fix his clothes, then walked alongside Dexion.

Word of Gaius Julius Caesar’s arrival had spread long before his ships had pulled into port. Dexion had moved his century south of the city with the others. He feared the rumors of Caesar’s cruelty and the stories told by Septimius, and thought that his men might be slaughtered even if they laid down arms immediately upon Caesar’s arrival. It was unlikely, but Dexion thought it prudent to remove them from the situation altogether. News of their impending surrender was poorly received by his men, and many of them had a foolhardy desire to see battle at least once before returning home. He had remained silent on the subject of Pompey’s death, but surely they’d heard news of it. He nearly fled back to the city after giving his last orders, thinking that at any moment his men would discover that he had taken Pompey Magnus’ head and kill him as a traitor.

None of it mattered now. It was done. Dexion resolved that he would return home and speak of nothing that happened here ever again. Even the promised rewards meant little to him, as long as it meant solitude and peace. He was no great warrior or politician. He was certainly no hero and felt that surely the gods would strike him down for his hypocrisy if he made any such claim. It was incredible how he missed the simple hardships of fatherhood, and longed for the tedium or a simple life. Everything he had done, he had done simply to hear his wife humming to herself as she prepared a meal, and to bounce his little daughter on his lap.

“What’s this? A smile?” teased Achillas. Dexion’s thoughts of home must have been written all over his face. “No it’s all right, Dexion. I’ll tell no one of this.”

Septimius awaited them near the audience hall. He waved for them to approach. “I told you to hurry,” he chastised.

“Calm yourself,” Achillas said with an authoritative air that almost carried a threat. “For a king, Caesar will wait.”

Septimius had his back turned to the Egyptian before he’d finished speaking and opened the doors. The audience chamber was a bustle of servants, most attending the boy-king Ptolemy with food or drink served in silver, or fanning him with garishly-colored exotic feathers and palm fronds. Others tended the lamps. Dexion noticed a close circle of four other men dressed and groomed much like Achillas. Their eyes were lined in black and they wore dark, expensive clothes of rich colors. All of them were shaved to their bare scalp. Achillas departed from his side and joined the other advisors, who barely seemed to notice his presence.

The king—what little Dexion could see of him through his coterie of attendants—was a boy, aged no more than twelve. A pudgy, lazy-looking child, he kept his lower lip thrust out in a pout in a frozen expression of displeasure and annoyance. His eyes were half-closed and drooping, head propped on his fist as though he could fall asleep at any moment. He was a spoiled creature of such sloth that Dexion felt ashamed and angry to be anywhere near him. Ptolemy tossed his finger at one of his servants, who responded by cramming a grape into the king’s waiting mouth. Dexion exhaled with distaste and glanced around the room for Salvius, but could not find him.

A rush of air swept into the chamber as the large double-doors opened. His skin prickled sharply at the sensation, though the air was hot and smoky. He stared into the hazy distant hallway now revealed and saw the familiar shapes of armored Romans approaching. In their center strode a shorter but powerful-looking man, with narrow, bright eyes that Dexion could see even from where he stood. He was tanned and had clearly weathered many battles, but where some soldiers seemed frayed and worn, Gaius Julius Caesar seemed instead tempered and hardened. Dexion felt cornered, suddenly confronted with a man rightly feared by hardier men than he. Caesar’s eyes were not unlike a hawk’s, he thought, reflecting a soul of deadly efficiency.

As Caesar and his men approached, Dexion slowly realized that the room was still, and he no longer felt the presence of Septimius nearby; almost everyone in the room had drawn back towards the wall, leaving Dexion somewhat orphaned. Even Ptolemy’s servants had parted so that they all might look upon Caesar; only two slaves carried on as if nothing had changed, waving their colorful feathered fans with precision time. They seemed asleep, their eyes flat and dreamless.

Achillas’ sandals slapped loudly against the floor as he rushed forward to greet the Romans. He stooped and bowed in a humiliating show of obsequiousness “Welcome, sir, welcome! We—“

“Greetings.” Caesar’s eyes remained fixed on the king. The word was a harsh, sharp reflexive thing, at once an acknowledgement and a dismissal. Achillas wavered and tried to continue his practiced conciliatory speech, but before he could start, Caesar spoke again. “King Ptolemy.” He gave a slight nod of his head.

Ptolemy seemed uncertain what to say, but he looked confounded and angry that this foreigner did not stoop and scrape for his favor. He spoke, and his voice cracked shrilly. “Welcome, Caesar. I had been waiting for your arrival.”

“With much anticipation,” Achillas completed the thought. “I’ve made all the necessary preparations to assure that you and your men are made most comfort—“

“Pompey Magnus,” Caesar said, enunciating each word like the pounding of a war drum. His eyes turned for the first time on the eunuch, and Achillas shrank from his powerful gaze as if confronted with the naked sun. “Bring him to me. I want to see him.”

“Ah,” the eunuch searched his mind for the words. He was the sort used to dictating the conversation. When interrupted, he was forced to search for the most diplomatic way to begin a new thought. “But of course. He arrived with several ships no more than a week ago.”

“He is here?”

“Yes! Yes,” Achillas laughed, his hand reaching out as if to clap Caesar reassuringly on his shoulder. He pulled his hand back at Caesar’s stony scowl.

“Pompey Magnus is an honored guest in my house!” Ptolemy grinned. The boy-king leaned forward in his throne. “And he would like to see you again as well.” Caesar looked weary, but focused. He said nothing, simply stared with an expression that brooked no absurdity. Ptolemy’s grin slipped, but he clapped his hands, determined not to break the festive spirit. “My gift to you, Caesar, in the name of peace and friendship between Egypt and Rome.”

The doors behind Dexion swung open, and Salvius strode inside with theatric grace. He bore in his hands an elaborate wrought bronze serving tray, as one might serve a hog at a feast. “And we, loyal Romans who wish to return to your service, bring this gift to you, sir.” He smiled to Dexion as he passed, then placed the tray upon a small table brought by servants.

Septimius put a hand to Dexion’s back and pushed him forward, whispering “Step forward, boy, now we can return home.” Dexion did this, standing in the center between his fellow centurions. He shared a smile with them, but soon has gaze was drawn to Caesar, who tore the cover from the tray and cast it aside. The cacophonous noise silenced all laughter, and everyone stared at Caesar. He was so tense that he looked brittle. Caesar’s teeth were bared in a seething look of horror, and it looked like he’d stopped breathing as he gazed upon the contents of the platter.

The head of Pompey Magnus, waxy and white, tipped lopsided against a pile of vegetables. His eyes were open and rolled back into his head. His mouth was forced open, a fruit wedged in his teeth. There was blood gathered amongst a carpet of greens, but it was old and viscous, now black with rot.

“He is…shorter than I thought,” Ptolemy cackled. He leaned back in his throne.

Caesar’s head snapped back up. “Do you know what you’ve done?”

Ptolemy’s was barely paying attention, his mouth open and awaiting a grape to be placed within. “Hm?”

Achillas tried to explain, his tone soothing. “We’ve brought you the head of your enemy. The man you’ve hunted across the sea. You are displeased?”

Ceasar howled with a fury such that Dexion could feel it reverberate from the stone walls. He struck Achillas with the back of his fist. The shattering of the eunuch’s nose could easily be heard, and blood gushed from his nostrils as he fell. Ptolemy pushed himself off his throne and brought himself to his full, diminutive height.

“How dare you? I will not be in—“

“He was a consul! He was my friend!” Caesar raged. “He was the greatest of us, you coward.”

“But…” Ptolemy shuffled in fear at the sight of Caesar’s anger. “But you went to war with him. Why would you not seek his death?”

“Silence!” Caesar shouted down the king in his own palace, and the boy was hushed. He paced along the line of centurions, scrubbing his hand across the light stubble on his face. He spoke again to the king, “He was a loyal Roman. A good man. A true patriot. And you,” he pointed a finger squarely at the Egyptian king, “You have made the gravest mistake of your brief life.”

Ptolemy gawked, and for a time the only sound was of Achillas weeping as he crawled away to tend to his broken face. “I…but, but it was not my plan. These centurions! It was their plan. They came to me! They told me that you wanted Pompey dead!

Caesar looked to the centurions for the first time. He looked as if he wanted to spit at the sight of them. “Is this true?”

The centurions looked between each other, unsure of whom should speak. Septimius brought himself strict attention and spoke. “It is not, sir. It…”

Caesar silenced him with a quick wave. “It barely matters. Murderers and cowards. All I want to know is which of you swine struck the killing blow.”

“It was Quintus Artorius Dexion, sir,” exclaimed Salvius without hesitation.

Dexion shot his head over to look at Salvius in shock, mouth agape.

“It was Dexion, sir,” agreed Septimius. He stepped to the side to distance himself from Dexion, and soon Dexion found himself alone once again. Dexion looked between his comrades and eventually realized that all eyes were on him, and Caesar had been staring at him for some time.

“Well?” Caesar asked.

Dexion could not bring himself to muster a rational excuse. “I…we thought it would earn your favor, sir. I wanted only to return home.” Caesar exhaled at the first sound of Dexion’s voice and turned away, visibly nauseated. Dexion wished he had said nothing.

“On your knees.”

“Please. I have a wife. A child. I didn’t know. We heard—“

Caesar’s hands locked around Dexion’s throat. Quintus looked desperately for help. He gripped Caesar’s wrists, but the man was impossibly strong and driven with wrath. He could hear the sound of snapping bone and the tearing of his esophagus. He felt the rolling, fiery sensation of blood sliding down his throat and coating his insides. He felt his knees strike the stone floor, but the sensation was distant and unimportant. His arms burned and went limp, and he could see little more than the black pupils of Caesar’s eyes inches from his own. Dexion coughed, but his crushed windpipe allowed nothing to escape his lips. Soon, Quintus found himself drawn inside the blackness of Caesar’s eyes, their dark centers his portals to the underworld.

All sounds faded except for the low pulse of his heart. It shrank. Slower. Fainter. After a long time it was gone.
Chapter Eleven:Codename Heimdall
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Watcher Enclave Kokabiel-1
Near Rockland, Maine
October 31, 2004 – 7:00 PM



“Miss, this is private property. I’m gonna have to ask you to turn around right now.”

Kelli clicked her gum in annoyance and propped her arm against the lowered glass of the car’s power windows so he could see her Watcher tattoo. She barely heard him over the sound of the car’s cheap stereo and the roar of the cheaper heater venting raw exhaust into the cab, which swirled in the crisp Maine air and swept right back outside. She didn’t know what he was saying but guessed rightly he was asking for identification.

The guardsman, dressed in the fatigues of a private security firm that had a logo but no name, emerged from the gatehouse booth with an annoyed tug at the zipper of his Gore-Tex coat. “Miss, please turn your radio down.”

Kelli gave an outraged “God!!” and rolled her eyes. She swatted the volume down. “The F***, man? It’s F***in’ cold out here.”

“Miss, I’m going to need your clearance code.”

“Again??”

“It’s regulation. I’m afraid I don’t recognize you.” The man bent down to peer inside, and saw the car’s other occupant. “Jack?”

Donahl craned his head down into view of the driver’s window. He pulled the cap from his head, grinned, and stuck his hand out the window. “Nah but Oi recognize an ugly arseface like you even with that ridiculous thing you call a moustache, Rick!”

The guard’s face lightened and he stepped forward to grasp Jack’s hand. “Hey Jack. Thought it was you. Who’s this?” He jerked a thumb in Kelli’s direction.

“Oh that’s Kelli. Picked her up a couple months back in Texas of all f***in’ places. She’s still Grigori. She’ll be doin’ me file ‘n’ log for a while.”

“Right. Sign in, please.” Jack took a proffered clipboard and scribbled on it briefly. “What’s your business?”

Jack tugged his cap back on and took a moment to rub his hands in front of the heater. “Here to see Mr. Champley.”

The guard gave a hesitant glance back inside his booth. “I think I would have remembered seeing you on that list.”

“I’m not on the list. Call it in, lad. He wants to see me.”

“I’m rolling the godd*** window up,” Kelli griped.

“Kelli for f***’s sake—“ but she’d already done it. Donahl dropped the act as soon as the window whirred shut. “Well done.” The guard had gone back inside his booth to summon a higher authority on the radio.

“Jack this place is a fortress.”

“The hardest part is over if he lets us inside. And he will.”

“What’s a Grigori?”

“It’s an apprentice Watcher. Someone vetted and cleared but still needs a few years learnin’ tradecraft. They do s*** work, logging and transcripting tapes, filing, data entry.”

“Oh. You sure about this? I mean—“

“Positive. Once you’re inside the assumption is that yeh belong. Jus’ remember. I’m wired for sound. Wear your headphones, make like you’re listening ta music. Just act like you belong. You’re bored and pissed off that Oi’m makin’ yeh work on Halloween and everyone will believe it and nobody’ll glance at yeh twice. Yeh remember the codes I taught you?”

Kelli nodded, and was about to speak but the guard rapped his knuckles on the window, and she jumped. He gave a thumbs up and the heavy steel gates retracted on rails. Tire damage strips dropped back into their metal housings beyond this. The road wound into a dense, jagged wood of needled trees that made off-road travel impossible and blocked anyone’s visibility to a few yards past the treeline. She could see no buildings from here; the road veered left after forty yards and was swallowed by the woods. The failing sunlight gave the place a stygian look, its stretching shadows reaching like claws for the car. Kelli told herself that she was finding reasons to be nervous, that it was just stress and the notion that it was Halloween night that gave her these thoughts. She nudged the accelerator and turned on the high-beams, watchful for the Blair Witch.

They drove perhaps a mile, taking sweeping but perilous turns that required Kelli to drive slowly. The road was slick, sometimes patched with small mud-sludge piles of dirty snow, marked with tire tracks. She thought she saw slender metal spikes along the road at irregular intervals—perhaps a dozen on the way—that resembled highway mile markers but bore no ornamentation or signs. Perhaps they housed some kind of tracking electronics, and idly she wondered if the road itself through the woods served some defensive function. Did the Watchers have enemies willing and able to attack this place? Jack had said nothing on this matter, other than the idea that few knew of the Watchers’ existence.

This also troubled her. How could any group this size maintain secrecy when the subjects of their voyeuristic hobby tended to leave blood, heads, broken katana swords, and enough broken glass to fill a garbage truck. She asked earlier, but all Jack would say was, “We’re very careful with who we choose. Think about it.” Just as she was thinking of a wiseass thing to say about how Jack got his Watcher tattoo, he shot her a stern look and she decided not to pursue the matter.

She flexed her cold hands on the steering wheel. “What happens if we get caught?”

“Don’ get caught.”

“But what—“

“Don’. Get. Caught. One dark secret we pride ourselves on is our skill in disposin’ of bodies. And they’re not all Immortals, girl. There’s nae due process on this side of the lookin’ glass.”

“Rousseau-- the dead man in my dorm room,” she exclaimed, “you took it away?” Donahl met her stare but only frowned.

Their car cleared the treeline on the other side, and before them stretched a large estate that reminded Kelli of Wayne Manor, but only because it was the only type of mansion she was familiar with. It was clearly old, 19th century architecture, she guessed. The walls were limestone, the bottom story ringed with stout pillars. Several chimneys extended from the red terra cotta roof five floors above ground level. A field surrounded the estate for perhaps a full eighth of a mile, clear of any foliage except neatly-maintained grass. The only thing that decorated the lawn were tall light poles, with four bright floodlights aimed downward in opposite directions. They were off at the moment, but Kelli imagined that the night shift would turn them on any second now that the sun was down. It didn’t seem to have a holographic cave wall, but this place did look much more fortified than Wayne Manor ever did.

. “S***. S***, this is stupid.” Kelli knuckled the stiffness from her wrists.

“Yeah,” Jack agreed. “But who wants to live forever?”

***************************************************

“Jack, thank God,” said Erik Champley. He leaned his cigar against a stone ashtray and stood. He was a hard, tight-faced man, with a slightly-reptilian appearance that made him look much younger than he was. In reality, he was probably in his mid seventies but still appeared tough and hearty—one of those old CIA dogs of war that neither burned out or faded away, they just got craftier and awaited Satan to come up himself to collect their souls. Donahl reckoned that Champley wasn’t immortal, just too smart to die.

“We heard about Jason Vaughn, and we thought…”

Donahl stuffed his hands in his coat pockets and made no effort to conceal his suspicious look.

“Why didn’t you report in, Jack?”

“I’m here. Aren’t I?”

Champley grabbed up his cigar and sat on the edge of his desk. “You know what I mean. Rousseau’s dead. Vaughn’s dead. Three dead swordsmen in black who boarded an Alaskan tour ship in a rowboat. Do you have any idea what it’s like trying to kill a news story that has a headline like ‘Ninja Pirate Massacre’?” It was a feeble attempt at a joke, but Jack’s scowl didn’t break.

Donahl sighed and tossed open an oaken humidor on the desk and took up a cigar. He idly searched for a trim and a light.

“What happened, Jack?”

“I’m jus’ gonna sit here and smoke until yeh stop treating me like a F***in’ child and start givin’ me some answers. Maybe check out all these fine paintings you got.” Donahl gestured around the room with the end of his cigar at the artwork that adorned the wood-paneled walls. Baroque art, mostly, the kind that would seem at home in old English manors. A gigantic Persian rug swept across the floor in front of Champley’s impressive oak desk. The weight of the thing was such that it must have taken six men to haul into the room.

“Where is Quint, Jack? Why aren’t you with him?”

Donahl smacked his hand against the desk and gave Champley a manic grin. “At’s the spirit, that’s the question you really want the answer to, isn’t it? Where is Quint? Maybe it’s best that I don’t know, eh?”

“Jack,” Champley said after a pause, “I can’t help you if I don’t understand why you’re upset. All we know is that Quint took Rousseau’s head and has left a trail of bodies in his wake. And Rousseau’s Watcher—“

“Tried to kill me, Erik. Not only that, he tried to cover it up by making it look like a hit by the IRA. The Semtex was a nice touch, mate. After all, we Irishmen love a good grudge and nobody would doubt that I had it coming.” Donahl withdrew his pistol from his coat and cocked it.

“What are you—“

“Now,” Donahl knuckled out an itch on his forehead, “You were the one who turned me into the Watchers. And you’re one of, what, seven people who have full access to my records? One of the few people who knows that dying with a homemade anti-personnel device shoved up his arse is a fitting end for Jack Donahl. So…”

Champley had paled and frozen stiff. Ashes fell unheeded from the end of his cigar to the rug. “So?”

“I’m listening.”

Champley wet his lips and set his cigar down once again. He stood to face the window that overlooked the west side of the estate. “I was outvoted, Jack. I asked them not to have you terminated. The Watchers’ Council, I mean. I told them they could trust you, that you’d understand.”

“Understand?”

“They wanted someone absolutely reliable to shadow Quint. Someone answerable only to the Council. They couldn’t reassign you because they thought you’d get suspicious and poke around into it. They couldn’t take the chance.”

Donahl exhaled and tried to sound patient, but his stomach felt uneasy. He felt more and more like he didn’t want to hear this, that he should just run from the room and hide. It would be smarter, but he had to know. “The Immortals aren’t playing by the rules of the game anymore, Erik, and neither are the Watchers. I need to know why.”

Champley turned his head to look sidelong at Donahl, his voice monotone. “Oh, but this is part of the game, Jack. The endgame. Quintus Artorius Dexion must die. And the word is out to almost every Immortal around the world.”

“Why?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Oh yes you can.”

“You can’t leave this place. You’ll warn Quint. You’ll drive him into hiding. That can’t happen.”

Donahl pushed forward and stuck the barrel of his gun under Champley’s jaw. “What makes Quint so special? Hm? Why him? I’ve watched him for the better part of a decade.”

Champley’s throat was dry, and he was beginning to sweat. But his voice was steady, considering the circumstances. “You don’t know who Quint really is. You’ve never had full access to the file. There were…sections…expurgations, so to speak. It’s done for most of the eldest Immortals.”

“Quit stalling. Talk.”

“The files are available only to the Watcher’s Council. Archived under code names. In the last year we uncovered records from our agents in the Vatican. Ancient records, you...” he gave a weak laugh, “you have no idea. We spent months analyzing and verifying it. When we were done, Quint’s file was reclassified and codenamed Heimdall.”

“Heimdall, huh. You’re not telling me anything, and I’m getting antsy, mate.”

“Heimdall is the Norse god of light, guardian of Asgard. The sounding of his horn signals the coming of Ragnarok. The final battle of the gods.” Champley stepped around Donahl and slumped into his leatherback chair. He plucked the cap from a large glass decanter of scotch and poured himself a glass.

“He’s—wait.”

“Have you never wondered how all this would end? The killing? How can there ever be an end when new Immortals are found every few months? How can there be only one if that’s the case? Quint is the catalyst.”

“You can’t possibly know that,” Donahl said, pacing the room. “You can’t.”

“Quint’s death will usher in The Gathering: the final battle between the Immortals.”

“And all of yeh just decided to say bollocks to your non-interference policy and usher in your own little Ragnarok, eh?”

Champley stared into his drink. “What are you going to do?”

“Gonna get far away from here.” Donahl swung his arm back and crashed the butt of his gun into Champley’s head. The man raised an arm to block it but lost his balance and fell, only to be hit again. Donahl backed toward the door, pocketing his gun. “The lot of yeh are completely out of your bloody minds. Anyway, thanks for the cigar.”

It took Champley a minute to even realize where his chair was, and a couple more before he could sit up without wanting to vomit. He tossed back the rest of his drink and punched some buttons on his phone. Donahl was gone. He coughed, searching for a handkerchief to press against his bleeding head. “Security checkpoints, this is Erik Champley. Close the gates. Put all patrols on alert and detain Jack Donahl. He’s armed, repeat armed and a well-trained soldier. Exercise caution.”

Various patrols and checkpoints acknowledged the order. Finally, the speakerphone crackled to life again. “This is the main gatehouse,” Champley heard. “What about the Grigori?”

“The Grigori?”

“With Donahl. The one who said she was going to the computer archives to log some file footage.” He could hear the guard flip a page on his clipboard. “Yeah, here it is: Kelli Green.”

Champley threw his glass across the room, shattering it against the heavy doors. Donahl had an exit strategy or he never would have come. And worse, he’d just sent someone into the Watcher archives with his access codes and about ten minutes free reign. “Kill them both. They can’t leave the estate alive.”

He felt, rather than heard, a sudden thump deep in his heart. The shock of an explosion shook the glass as it shattered the tranquil night air. Champley spun around to look out the window, and saw a distant point in the dark treeline blossom into a fireball. The gate had been destroyed.

Champley poured himself another drink.
Chapter Twelve: Reawakening
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Somewhere south of Juneau, Alaska near the British Columbian border
October 28, 2004 – 8:13 AM



He was not cold. And after a long time, there came a point when he stopped feeling pain. He did not notice the abyssal blackness or feel the tearing, wrenching spasming of his own muscles. He felt nothing, thought nothing. He merely continued, aware only dimly of that thing in the center of his soul that dangled at the end of the darkness at the end of the tunnel. The voices of the Others pleaded for his death. But soon even they grew silent, waiting.

His heart contracted, fluttered, and wrenched itself open. He screamed, and thought it must be because of pain. Each pulsing beat dragged him wailing back from the edge of Hell, and he realized that he cried out because he longed to embrace his final end. But he could have stopped moving. He could have fallen and refused to continue. Mud would cover his body, burying him forever away from his never-ending battles. It would be easy. Yet he crawled on, and he did not know why.

“Hey mister, are you—“

“Is that guy all right?”

“Mister?”

“My god, look at him. Would someone stop him?”

“I got him. Someone help me over here!”

“What do we do?”

“I don’t know. Does—he’s thrashing! Hold him down! Does anyone have a cell phone or something?”

“I got one.”

“Get him in a car!”

“Blankets, we need blankets.”

“Not in my car.”

“Oh come on, Ty.”

“He won’t stop shaking.”

“He’s barely got a pulse. I don’t think he’s going to make it.”

“You’re not checking the right place.”

“I’m f***ing—I’m checking the right f***ing place, now would you call an ambulance?”

“Why did he tear his hair out? It’s all in his hands.”

“I dunno, maybe to try and keep from convulsing.”

“I can’t get a signal out here.”

“Okay put him in the back.”

“But—“

“Dude, just drive the f***ing car back to town so we can try to find a hospital or something.”

His eyes could not open; they felt frozen shut. His fists were clenched, pinned under his armpits. He knew, because he could feel his blood circulating through his numbed limbs. The feeling all over his body was a fiery rush a million times worse than sleeping on his arm all night.

“Hold his head steady; he’ll break his own neck!”

“Put the sleeping bags back over him!”

“I know but look at the scars all over him. Eeew, look at that one. Look!”

“Mister?” Someone was shaking his arm. “We’re taking you to a hospital. Just hang in there, okay? We’re gonna warm you up.”

“No doctors,” he groaned. “No doctors.”

“What did he say?”

“Do you speak English?”

“Maybe he’s Cucknadian.”

“So?”

“So maybe he speaks French.”

“Do you speak French?”

“No.”

There was a pause. “He got ID?” Someone started rifling through his clothes.

“Yeah. Dexter Quint from New York.”

“New York?”

Dexter Quint. That was his name now. Dex Quint. He must have regressed to speaking in his old Latin tongue. It was the language he often spoke in his dreams. Sometimes he found himself thinking in his old language and wondering why the words still felt so fresh to him.

“No doctors, please,” he repeated in English. His teeth rattled together and he only barely mustered the strength to speak the words clearly before the spasms took over again. He pulled his arms tighter around his body.

“Just lay back.”

Quint’s head shot back and forth. He’d lost his swords. He’d lost everything on that ferry. His Walkman was gone. He groaned and fell back against the seat to tremor a while.

“What happened to you out there?” the driver asked. He was a clean-cut collegiate, driving his parents’ car and probably attending school on their dime. He looked the type, at least.

“Why do you have scars all over you?” peeped the boy’s companion in the passenger seat—a meek young lady who seemed fresh out of high school. She made no effort to mask her wondering stare at the half-frozen man in the back seat.

“I’m a hunter.”

“What,” laughed the driver, “like bears?”

“Big game, yeah. Listen,” Quint clenched his jaw, summoning his strength to learn forward. With much effort, he did so. “I don’t need a hospital. You can drop me off somewhere before town. I have someone I can call.”

The four others in the car looked at each other doubtfully. “You look like sh**, man,” said a frazzled, unshaven student that sat next to him. Another girl, probably his girlfriend, huddled against the door enveloped in a bulky coat. “You sure?”

He nodded. “I’ll also need some clothes. A coat, shoes, anything. I’ll pay you.”

“He does look a lot better,” observed the girl in the front seat. “Except his hair is all messed up.”

The driver shrugged. “We’ll stop at the next place I see and talk about it.”

“As long as it’s got an ATM,” Quint mumbled, deciding to spend the intervening time passed out. “And coffee.” He closed his eyes.

But the Others would not let him sleep.
Chapter Thirteen: Cinders, Ashes, Dust
SpoilerShow
Adelphi Theater
Boston, Massachusetts
November 9, 1872 – 6:35 PM



She eyed Quint with a curious amusement, as one might condescendingly stare at a young child attempting to lie about eating sweets before dinner. She bit her lip and seemed on the verge of laughing, but held it back to spare his feelings. Finally Quint could stand no more and he turned his head to look at her as they walked.

“What?”

“Nothing.” She faced forward and they turned east, roughly in the direction of their hotel. The crowd from the theater headed elsewhere, their raucous laughter soon fading behind them. Boys ran the streets, illuminating the gaslight poles before it grew darker. Soon the streets were quiet, aside from the sound of their own quiet footfalls. Few horses and carriages clattered down the streets; horse flu had been a great trouble lately. Quint didn’t mind the walk.

Her eyes were on him again. He could see her head turn, her wide brown eyes gazing at him with that damned annoying look with one eyebrow cocked upward. He tried to hate it. “What? What is it?”

“Nothing!” She tried to bluff a straight face, but her voice broke into a tittering laugh. She slipped her arm around his and gently stroked his forearm with her finger. She probably didn’t even know she was doing it, but he noticed it almost with a note of alarm. He wasn’t used to company, and she knew that.

“I thought the show was quite good,” he grumbled. “I admit we were a bit over-dressed for the occasion.”

“Oh indeed?” she teased. “I thought burlesque shows required formal attire.”

“It wasn’t burlesque. There was a fellow who did a rather good recital of scenes from ‘Richard III’…” Quint trailed off miserably.

“With puppets.”

“Marionettes,” he corrected. “I didn’t know the theater had changed its format so radically. And besides, we didn’t have to go inside. You saw the type of people milling about outside. You saw the posters with the…um, well the show playbill. We could have gone elsewhere. Don’t blame me.”

She leaned against his arm and squeezed him close. “And miss out on—how did you put it?—‘taking in a little culture?’ Never.”

Quint stopped. He dipped his head down and sighed. “I’m sorry, Constance. I’m not any good at this.”

Constance put a hand to his cheek and turned him gently towards her. She just looked at him, searching his eyes, “How old are you, Quint? I mean, really.”

“About 1,800 years. I’m not certain.”

“You always look so sad all the time. You’re a good man, Quint. I’ve known you long enough to know that. I’ve seen you laugh. But sometimes I can look at you and see you get lost in those centuries of memories you keep bottled inside of you. It almost looks like you’re drowning.”

“I’m not a good man. I’ve done things…things…you can’t—“

She scowled, suddenly angered. “I can’t understand? Was that what you were going to say? Maybe I should tell you just how much more alone and afraid it feels to crawl out of your own grave, a hunted woman with no weapons and no training to use them. What I had to do…” she turned away to glance down the street so Quint couldn’t see the tears welling in her eyes. “Don’t ever say that I wouldn’t understand. I have six hundred years of my own regrets.”

Quint felt his face beginning to flush. He scratched his ear for a moment in consternation. “I forget sometimes that you come from the sort of upbringing that doesn’t take kindly to contradiction.”

“I’ve had men hung for less in my old life,” she smirked, blinking away her tears. He wasn’t sure if she was joking. That was why Constance frightened him. She had her own coldness about her sometimes. Quint didn’t doubt that her survival thus far was earned in blood bitterly fought for.

“I’m sorry,” he stammered, “I’m...It’s hard to live with some of the things I’ve done. I guess we all have our regrets.”

They looked at each other for a long while, frozen in time and unable to think of anything fitting or proper to say. Neither was able to make a move, too proud and fearful to act. Quint laughed, gazing to the sky for aid.

“How many times have we been standing together just like this?”

Constance quirked her brow again and made a wry face. “Altogether? Nine. Six of those ruined by you.”

“Six?” Quint gawked, “You’re not counting the fox hunt in 1552, are you? Because that was not my fault.”

“You are such a bullheaded, lying fool.”

“Technically we weren’t standing. I was on a horse, and I fell off.”

Constance scowled.

“You spooked the horse,” he insisted. “I hit my head on a stone.”

“I should have just finished you off right there!” She crossed her arms and tried not to smile. “I could have. I tell that to everyone who knows you. Makes them terribly envious.”

Quint sighed. “I should have stayed with you in Calais the first time we met.”

“I should have asked you not to go. One more regret for each of us.”

He took her hands. “No more regrets.” Constance flowed into his arms and pulled him close. Her body was warm and muscular, her embrace strong but comforting. They kissed hungrily—a longing kiss to make up for uncounted years of lost time. When they finally came up for air, they nuzzled each other close. Quint was nearly dizzy; his heart raced. He closed his eyes and stroked her hair, relishing the feel of her hot breath on his neck.

“So are you going to ask me to stay?”

She gave his face a playful swat. He could scarcely believe that eyes so perfectly blue could exist in this world; he had never seen a color so deep and regal in his life except on the sea. He kissed her again before he got lost in them.

“Take me home, Quint.”


Constance sat cross-legged at the foot of the bed with Quint’s swords across her knees. She stared at Quint for a seemingly interminable time, whose breathing was shallow and gentle. He was so drugged now that a child could have finished him. She dragged a hand through her hair, face burning with horror and humiliation. The moonlight caught the edges of the paired makhaira blades and flashed painfully into her eyes. She crushed her eyes shut to keep her tears from escaping.

Her skin prickled as if she had been doused in cold water. Constance expected them sooner. She looked to the window, her attention drawn by impulse to the approach of other Immortals. Quint stirred, but would be unable to move under his own power when they came. A scratching came up a drainage pipe outside, and Constance saw a strange furry white face appear through the window. The monkey smacked its palm against the glass. A second later, a man’s gloved hand pulled the window open.

“I understand that you love this one,” he said as he perched on the windowsill. He was garbed and hooded in black, a headband with a silver medal in the center glinting white in the intense light of the moon. His narrow eyes were shadowed and dim. “It is why Quintus was chosen for you.”

Constance threw the Greek-styled smallswords to the wooden floor and buried her head in her hands. The man in black entered the room, unperturbed by her reaction. The monkey chirped quietly and scurried up the bed’s headboard to peer down on Quint’s body. It nibbled on the ends of its fingers, running back and forth as the man stood over Constance. “You have killed dozens, Constance. The very purpose of this exercise is to prove that this man is no different.”

“Not this one, Kage,” she insisted, “Not this one. I’ll kill anyone else.”

Kage picked up her sword and placed it next to her. “You don’t get to choose. None of us do. Again, that is the purpose of your initiation. Finish him.”

“No.”

He kneeled down to look in her eyes. “Think on this carefully. You are a magnificent weapon, beautiful and deadly. You have grace and skill. You have shown that you are a survivor. We chose you because we believe you can be worthy of fighting for the Prize when only we Dragons remain.”

She took her sword and stood to face the man in black. Kage folded his hands behind his back. “Suddenly the idea of trusting a desperate pack of assassins doesn’t appeal to me.”

Kage’s laugh was like the sound of broken pottery, hoarse and jagged. “We’re offering a chance for order out of this chaos. When the Gathering begins, we will sweep the land clear of our enemies as one force. Until that day, you would have protection. Money. Comfort. Power. When we are the last, then we will have a grand tournament to decide the Prize. We settle it as intended, with honor and humility. You don’t have to be afraid anymore, Constance.”

Both turned at the sound of a gurgling low in Quint’s throat. He looked delirious, glassy eyes searching for his weapons. Kage laughed and pulled him upright by his hair. Quint tried to raise his hand to free himself, but the effort it took to even consider it made his head swim so much he nearly fainted.

“What about you, hm?” he breathed into Quint’s ear. “Maybe you’d like to kill her yourself now? You are a far older and more powerful Immortal by far.” Kage angled Quint’s head to look at Constance, “I think that I made the offer to the wrong person. But I’ll make it now. I know you’re too weak to grasp a sword, Quintus, but you can take her place with us. Just ask, and I will take her head in your name. Unlike her, I think you have the intelligence to recognize opportunity, and the will to seize it. Strength and honor, Roman.”

Quint’s eyes rolled back in his head. He strained to focus on Constance, who stood at the back of the room, listening, but she could not meet his gaze. He shook his head. Kage covered Quint’s face with his hand and rammed the back of his head into the headboard. He pulled Quint upright again, anger entering his voice for the first time.

“Is it a fair fight you want with her? Is that it? I can let you have that. She betrayed you. She tried to murder you in your sleep, just like so many other Immortals that she’s fooled.”

“Stop it, Kage,” she shouted, “He doesn’t need to hear this.”

“She’s very good at being a black widow. If you only knew how many men came before you. She had their fun with them, let them ravage her body again, and again…”

“Stop it!!”

“…and again.” Kage threw Quint trembling to the floor. “You were lucky to escape her trap for this long. Constance isn’t even her real name, did you know that? Nobody knows what it is.”

Quint smacked his fist against the floor, moaning like a dying animal. Constance—whoever she was—rushed forward and knelt down before him. She touched his arm and tried to hold him.

“Everything she ever told you was a lie,” Kage persisted. “Had I spoken to her a few years earlier, she wouldn’t have hesitated to kill you.”

“I remember…” Quint whispered dreamily to Constance, “falling off my horse. You tried to help me up and fell in a creek…”

Constance took up Quint’s swords and stood. She pointed the point of a blade at Kage. She could see the corners of his mouth turn up in a smile through his black mask. He leaned with his back against the wall and held his arm out to the bed as a perch for the white-faced monkey he kept as a pet. It scurried up to his shoulder and peeked fearfully at Constance, shrieking in alarm.

Constance suddenly felt a panicked, primal urge to flee. Every nerve in her body felt as if it were being scrubbed raw. Immortals were coming, more than she ever thought would congregate in one spot. She looked at the door, the windows, and Kage. “What is this?”

“No single warrior can stand against the combined might of the Six Dragons,” he reminded her. “We fight as one.”

The door swung open. The glass from the windows broke inward as grappling hooks snared the sills. Three figures clad entirely in black, harsh shadows against the moonlight, strode quietly into the room on padded feet. Two more vaulted through the window. They all bore identical straight blades and silver emblems on their headbands. Their vestments and weapons were Japanese in nature, but Constance could see that not all of the men and women that formed their ranks were.

Constance tossed the makhaira blades in her hands to test their weight. The six black-garbed figures reached back over their shoulders in unison and unsheathed their swords. They sank low into their battle stance. She flipped the blade in her left hand into a reverse grip.

“You can’t be serious,” scoffed Kage.

“Quint? I’m sorry.”

Constance whirled away from Kage and threw one of her swords sidearm into the circle of Dragons. It crashed awkwardly into the ribs of one man, buried to the hilt like a cleaver in a flank of meat. The stricken Dragon stumbled to the side from the force of the blow, staring in shock at his grievous wound. The circle closed immediately, all moving in for a thrust to skewer her in the center of five swords. Constance took a two-step running leap and swung around the bedpost. Her shin connected with the back of a woman’s head. She landed behind the group, hacked her sword down into the woman’s spine at the base of her neck, and reached back to wrench her sword from the other Dragon’s torso.

The female Dragon dropped to her knees, head lolling unnaturally forward because of her severed spinal column. Constance sidestepped the clumsy thrust of her wounded attacker, gripped his arm and pivoted on her leg. She threw him sidelong into the group just as they were regrouping. Her blades scythed down together at the woman’s neck, easily severing the thin bones and connecting tissue that still kept her head attached.

Storm clouds began to gather outside, in what used to be a clear starry sky. They were black and thick, the sort that marched at the head of hurricanes. Ice and hail began to rain through the broken windows. There would be no quickening yet; the battle was still ongoing. For every Immortal slain, the furious storm would continue to grow more dangerous, more damaging and terrible. The final quickening would only occur when the fight was finished. Until then, destruction would reign. It was called a godstorm among those unlucky few who had ever survived to witness one. Constance had only heard of one from Quint’s old stories. He was a king in those days, he had said, and the godstorm wrought by the eight slain immortals that night left an entire castle and the surrounding lands in ruins. A king…she’d never know what he’d meant by that.

She spat on the corpse and gave them a mocking grin. The other Dragons shouted for blood and rushed forward to attack, just as Constance had hoped. She ducked out onto the edge of the window and scurried up to the roof from the top floor of the hotel. Her nightgown was soaked through instantly. Hail clattered against the flats of her swords. She swung her leg up over the angled roof and rolled up. The Dragons were close behind, and she hoped they had forgotten Quint and left him alone in the room.

A masked face peered over the edge of the roof, so she planted her heel between its eyes and sent the man screaming four stories down to the stone streets below. The scream choked off with an abrupt, wet splatter. The others emerged from the building and the other windows. Constance hurried to the top of the wedge formed by the roof’s opposing slopes. Small decorative glass spheres lined the edges of the building and the central brace, rattling uncertainly in the growing storm winds. They housed lightning rods. She could see the jagged white arcs clash between the thunderheads; soon they would be upon the building itself.

The Dragons surrounded her again, taking careful, planned steps up the steep shingles. Kage shouted over the howling air, “Many will remember this night!”

It was a ruse to draw her attention. She turned and crossed her blades low to deflect a thrust to her abdomen. Two more moved in to flank her. She swung a leg back between the legs of one Dragon, halting his charge. Despite her attempt to drop beneath the attack of the third, a sword raked across her shoulders. She was down, but there were six legs around her and she hacked at them all. Her swings were reckless, but one fell howling with a severed calf muscle. He slid down the roof and scrabbled to catch himself, losing his sword in his desperate attempt to get a grip.

She spent too much time in one place; one of her arms erupted in pain that reverberated through her bones like a tuning fork. Kage tore his sword free of her arm. Constance rolled to her back and wheel-kicked him under his jaw. The Dragon leader’s body snapped backwards and fell, crashing atop one of the glass globes. It collapsed like thin paper under his weight, the lightning rod within blooming through his sternum like a grotesque bloody rose.

The two standing Dragons—a man and a woman-- looked at each other uncertainly and hesitated, allowing her to stand. Constance’s wounded arm still gripped a sword, but it hung useless at her side. Kage made senseless gurgling cries, unable to extricate himself. They ran to either side of him and tried to pull him free of the lightning rod.


The man with the wounded leg crawled back to the middle of the roof, so intent on avoiding the fall that he didn’t notice he’d crawled right to her feet. Constance angled the edge of a sword against the back of his neck and gave the blunt edge several brutal kicks. His head rolled off one side of the roof, the rest of his body down the other.

Thunder clapped so hard that the noise made her double over to cover her ears. A sword dropped from her bleeding hand and fell away, out of sight. Lightning rampaged down all around them. It struck the glass globes one at a time, blasting them outward in sprays of tiny shards like dandelion spores amidst charred splinters. Each strike created a flaming hole in the wooden shingles, which spread rapidly into the building below. The wind whipped savagely like a tornado around the hotel, causing the flames to grow despite the hail. The Dragons lifted Kage from the spike, but at that moment a blinding pillar of light coursed through his chest and arced into the central lightning rod. The Dragons shrieked and fell back, weaponless and numb. Kage’s clothes were sheathed in flame; he groped blindly for aid, and Constance could see bubbling milky fluid gout from hollow sockets in his face. His eyes had burst in his own head. .

Half-blind from the lightning, Constance felt her way across the roof, following the smell of scorched meat and burnt hair. Kage’s plasma-encrusted hand pawed at her leg. His moaning was airy, asthmatic and dry. She ended his pain as quickly as she could.

A wind stronger than any gust before it took out her legs from underneath her, and she fell. It was all she could do to grab some debris to keep from falling. She’d lost track of the other Dragons; the flames and lightning and spoiled her night vision completely. Shouts came from the awakening hotel below. She saw the fire leap to a nearby warehouse building. On the other side, a restaurant began to burn. The building trembled beneath her knees, but Constance could no longer tell if it was really the building or her own trembling body. Now she understood why Immortals made it a rule to battle one-on-one—why many saw it as one of the few crimes that still applied to their kind. The devastation seemed like divine retribution.

She backed up the roof, surrounded on all sides by the blaze. She thought about leaping from the roof when she felt a sword enter her back. Someone gripped her by the hair and pulled her head upwards to slice her jugular. Constance threw her elbow back to hit her attacker, but she was too slow, too weak. A snapping sound accompanied a sharp kick to the side of her knee. The Dragon behind her took her arm and wrestled her down with a martial arts throw. He bent her arm backwards to break it at the elbow.

She heard more footsteps. The numbers had caught up with her at last.

“Drop your sword,” she heard beside her. The voice was feminine with a strange mixture of eastern accents. “It is over.”

She struggled, and the stronger man craned her arm further back. She refused to release her weapon, screaming defiantly as she felt her joint snap away. The woman barked out a kiai and sliced into her shoulder. Another blow sundered her arm apart. The sword clattered from her severed hand, which the male Dragon dropped before her. Unsupported, beaten, she sagged limply to the ground.

“There,” the man gloated, “Was that so hard? Be still, now. Accept your death with honor.” Constance gave him a final defiant look and spat blood on his leg. The Dragons raised their swords in unison to strike her down.

Out of the fire, Quint crawled, each dragging push forward accompanied by a guttural grunt of exertion. The Dragons turned too late; Quint hurled himself headlong to tackle the surprised Immortals. They hit the roof hard in a tangled mess of limbs, and slid in a tumble towards the perilous drop below.

She saw Quint wrestle them in shadow against the flames. He fought in a delirious frenzy, hacking, biting, kicking even though the left side of his body was covered in flames. Constance tried to call out to him but one of her lungs had collapsed. She reached out a hand to touch him. He was too far away to help.

The roof creaked ominously for a second, trembled, and collapsed beneath them like a house of cards.



Quint could barely breathe for all the ash that choked the air; it drifted like gray snowflakes in front of him. All around him, all he could see were flames. The wind blew like a gale, strong enough to knock him down at times. The hotel was a charred pile of timbers, sticking up from the ground like the broken ribs of a dinosaur. But the city of Boston was not finished burning; it had only just begun.

He called out for Constance again, his gait hampered by the treacherous underfoot and a leg he was sure was broken. Nobody else lived. The Dragons had fled or were buried beneath the wreckage, and the mortals had since run for safer ground or gone to help the fire brigade.

A hand brushed his leg. It was coated in dark blood, crusted by the fire to a black scabby stain. It was missing several fingers. Quint knelt down and threw aside everything he could to unearth her. She had been pinned beneath a heavy crossbeam that had supported the roof, now fallen across her abdomen. Constance’s eyes were unfocused, bloodshot from smoke and trauma.

“My name is Marie,” she said. “It’s the only thing I’ve ever told you that was true.”

Quint tried to lift the beam from her body and saw how badly she had been harmed as he cleared the debris away. “Your arm…”

She made a smiling face as if she’d misplaced a hairpin. “Gone now…maybe it’ll turn up.”

Another gust sent a cloud of ash to cover them. Lightning pealed across the sky. Quint stared up at it. “The godstorm hasn’t stopped. Why not? The fight is over.”

“Is it?”

“What are you saying? Consta— Marie? Marie?”

She frowned at him. “Look at me. I can’t fight anyone anymore. I’m useless.”

“Don’t say that. Come on, we can still leave here. I can—“

“It won’t end. You know that, Quint. It never ends. I won’t be protected. Just…just understand that this is what I want.”

Quint glanced at the sword he’d found on the street and set it aside. “No. You don’t deserve that. You can’t believe that.”

Marie tried to sit upright but could only elevate her head slightly. “I won’t be your pet, Quint. I won’t beg. I am asking you now, and that should be enough. Make it clean. Then walk away.”

Quint shouted down at her, “I’ve killed enough to damn my soul ten times over.”

“Then what’s one more?”

“No!!” He tried to walk away but he stopped himself before he’d gone more than two paces. He pushed the heels of his hands into his eyes, crying out in anguish. He looked back at her, “Why do you want this? We could be happy. We could be together. There’s no end to this. This life is forever.”

“Do you remember the poem I read to you by the river?” Marie smiled, “‘I long to believe in immortality. If I am destined to be happy with you here-- how short is the longest life. I wish to believe in immortality-- I wish to live with you forever.’ This way, I can be with you. I can still help you.”

The godstorm seemed to pull back, holding its breath. The clouds churned overhead to converge high above the hotel. Smoke plumed from the burning skyline and was pulled into the center of the maelstrom. Marie. That was her name.

Quint took up the sword.
Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn! Ph'nglui mglw'nfah Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl muh'fugen bix nood

Whenever you feel down :3
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Newhalf
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Re: Spoony the Pussy One: Life is in the Render Queue

Post by Newhalf » Wed Jul 21, 2021 12:42 pm

Love this bit from the Spoony story on women's restrooms:
Men didn’t know what went on in there. Men didn’t want to know what went on in there. They probably imagined it to be some kind of elaborate spy network, with linked computers in the mirrors so women could talk to each other globally like in the Batcave. Although in some cases, it wasn’t far from the truth. They still knew that something plain weird was going on in there—something that filled them with fear. It’s hard enough for most boys to master hygiene for their own set of parts; even thinking about the differences in washroom behavior between the genders confused and frightened them. Only centuries of evolution had taught man to avoid sticking their fingers in their ears and shouting “La la la la!” at the top of their lungs at the mere mention of menstruation.
Clearly he has always been a bitch. And he's always loved his pop culture references.

Keep it coming, I'm having the best Spoony-related laughs in a long time with this stuff.
It's a trap!

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Re: Spoony the Pussy One: Life is in the Render Queue

Post by wulfenlord » Wed Jul 21, 2021 3:51 pm

Happy to help you through dark times :3

Highlander: Pariah - pt.4

第14 章 : 昔見し面影もあらずおとろへて鏡の人のほろほろと泣く*
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The Sanitarium Club
Kabukicho, the red light district of Shinjuku Eastmouth
Tokyo, Japan
November 3, 2004 – 1:03 AM


((note: this is Spoonys gospel on the nihongo moonspeak, but I'll rather take Voices' Hentai-wisdom for it) * "Byōchū Taikyō" ("Invalid Facing Mirror"), a haiku by Masaoka Shiki, translated by Janine Beichman. It translates to “The man I used to meet in the mirror is no more / Now I see a wasted face. / It dribbles tears.”)


The entire district was a migraine headache made manifest. It wasn’t a red light district, so much as it was a neon light pi**hole that stank of sex and rat sh**. There wasn’t a safe place to direct his eyes; the neon lights were everywhere and all vying to catch the eyes of apathetic wanderers. The lights that worked sported clashing colors, too bright to look directly at and searing terrible afterimages on his retinas when his gaze lingered. The other lights never failed completely, but buzzed and flickered, giving the entire alley a mind-twisting strobe effect of battling primary colors and a disharmonic aural drone that set his teeth on edge.

The street was based entirely on catering to the impulse-buy. Beer, cigarettes, a cheap f*** and entire stores choked to the ceiling with dirty mags and porn on DVD. This wasn’t the kind of place anyone went to enjoy themselves; it was more a place to merely subsist and sate one’s urges. A pit of vices lit by neon, paced by hollow-eyed wraiths looking for a sign amongst all the throbbing icons that might trigger some genuine emotion that hadn’t been burnt out long ago.

The air was hazy and warm with oily steam from the roadside open-air ramen carts and roaming weather fronts of carcinogenic secondhand smoke. Quint had never seen so many people smoking cigarettes. He had one dangling from his lips in an effort to blend in; most people took him for a slumming American. He passed The Sanitarium again, an inconspicuous little corner crushed under the urban sprawl. The entrance was nothing more than a jagged, steep stairway wedged between a couple charge-by-the-hour no-tell motels. The stairs led down into a deeper level of the Japanese underworld, a choking tunnel that ended in an aura of sickly fluorescent lights that cast an off-green glow instead of white. It made the place look coated with mildew.

The Sanitarium was a nightclub made no effort to advertise other than a small white sign with the international symbol of the red cross. It wasn’t the kind of place people wandered into or waited in line to pay a cover charge; knowing that The Sanitarium existed was proof enough that you belonged there. And if you belonged there, that meant you were a special guest of the friendly neighborhood Yakuza clan—in this case, the Three Immortal Dragons. Most figured the name was strange and even a little redundant, but few knew the truth of the Dragons’ leadership: Immortals who pooled their resources and talents to organize an empire of crime and assassination.

They were brazen scum, flaunting tradition and breaking all the rules. They were almost untouchable because they had no compunctions about hiding behind their mob of mortal triggermen. Who would tell them otherwise? Quint wasn’t aware of many Immortals willing to start a war in an attempt to enforce an antiquated code of civilized murdering conduct. Quint wasn’t here to deliver a public service announcement either; he’d just stopped giving a sh** completely. By now, the Dragons certainly knew that their attack on the cruise ship had failed and probably figured Quint would go to ground and hide. It was the smart thing to do. But hiding wouldn’t work without any safe havens and he didn’t consider himself that smart anyway.

A lone Japanese man stood under the sign at the top of the stairs, arms crossed and wearing sunglasses, even at this time of night. In his tailored suit, his position and posture had all the subtlety of an American Secret Service agent as he scanned the crowds. He stuck out like an Indian statue in a cigar shop, a proud Yakuza soldier doing his part by looking badass with all the confidence a .45 under his jacket can bring.

He walked up to the bouncer. “You speak English?”

The Yakuza peered at him with a strained face, bugging his eyes out to see him through his shades. “English? Yeah.”

Quint flicked his cigarette against the man’s chest and threw him down the stairs by his collar. He rolled end over end, tried to throw his arms out to catch himself, twisted into a handstand, and fell with his collarbone against the edge of a stair. The man let out a choked scream and oozed to the alley below. Quint followed him down, then kicked him over to his back. He took the gun out of the gangster’s jacket.

“You’ll live. You got a radio on you?”

“Y..Yeah!!”

“Call for help.”

Confusion replaced panic on the injured fellow’s face. “Call for help?”

Quint stalked down the alley towards the automatic doors of The Sanitarium. He was sick of doing the right thing. “Tell that ninja b***h and her friends I’ve come to kill them all.”

The doors, mocked up to resemble the doors of an emergency room, slid open on their tracks. They released the pulsing bass beat of house techno—the kind that sounds the same from two blocks away regardless of the song. He walked into a bizarre coat checking room, covered in industrial tile with another set of sliding doors ahead of him. The place looked like a converted prison shower, but it was more of a place the bouncers used to relocate the comatose addicts who passed out in the club. Several zoned-out junkies splayed in the corners gaped at the overhead lights with blown pupils, sleeves rolled up to reveal abscessed heroin tracks. A drug pusher near the door saw that Quint was armed, threw his hands up and edged out the door behind him.

To his right was the window to the coat check, crewed by a trio of suited gunman who were just now receiving the news of his arrival. They looked up at the door, all three with their fingers stuck in their ears so they could better hear their earpiece radios. They reached for their weapons but Quint was already firing. His aim was still good, even though it had been years since he’d really had to fire one. Not since his last war, he reckoned. In a way, it felt good to be a part of a new one; things were much simpler tonight than they’d been in years.

The Yakuza men fell quickly; only one had even managed to free his gun from his jacket. Quint tossed his gun aside and collected the others, stuffing the third in the back of his pants. He also collected a clean earpiece from the one man he hadn’t shot in the face. The radio was alive with voices asking what was happening and giving status reports. He never learned Japanese, but somehow he understood it. The same nervous chill racked his nerves every time he realized something like that. It made him think of the voices inside him, just when they’d started to quiet.

He didn’t have much time. From the voices on the radio there were at least a dozen men farther inside and a single phone call would bring just as many in a few minutes. There wouldn’t be any police until much, much after the fact.

He walked through the second set of doors into a much larger dance hall. Colored lights angled from high-wired electric rigs angled down onto a central floor where a dancing crowd undulated to the rhythm of the music. The floor was ringed with elevated platforms, on which stood glass cages, each containing a stripper writhing around an industrial shower head. Booths circled the hall, shadowy corners to get laid, get high, drink, or any combination of the three. Quint could see some booths occupied by makeshift hookahs fashioned from old oxygen tanks, where tweekers had their faces strapped by plastic masks and huffed massive amounts of pure O2. Almost every booth had such tanks. Many others also had IV stands, hooked up to stoners freebasing God-knew-what straight into their veins.

Someone on the radio shouted that he had a clear shot. Quint squatted low, scanning the electric rigs through the sight of his gun. The lights on the dance floor shifted to blue, backlighting a sniper lying prone on the rig. Quint kept moving for cover, firing into the lights. He got lucky; the radio squawked in distortion as the sniper screamed. The crowd barely reacted to the sound of the gunshots; they could barely be heard over the pounding bass. But when the sniper fell twenty feet from the ceiling to crash in a heap amidst the crowd with half of his jaw missing, the dance floor cleared as if a mine had gone off.

He was close to the bar now, a long stretch of stainless steel that dominated the east wall. He dove into a booth just as another gunman took a firing position behind the beer taps. Buzzing submachinegun fire shredded through the thin metal seats as if they were tin foul. Quint rolled to the floor, away from the burst fire. The panicked crowd headed for the only exit, and they only ran faster when they saw what remained of the coat check staff.

He tried to make a move but the gunman pinned him back down with another burst. Tiles shattered and sprayed in chalky triangular shards inches from his face. Quint could hear that backup was coming any second on the earpiece. He jumped the booth seat and came out firing at the bar with both guns. The gunman ducked behind cover, but Quint kept firing down through the flimsy metal. He heard the man cry out as he levered himself over the bar and saw that he’d perforated the man with at least eight rounds; the exit wounds were hideous sucking holes left behind by the hollowpoint rounds loaded in his .45s.

More shots came from the booths. Quint traded fire with them but didn’t expect to hit anything at that range in the frenetic lighting. Suddenly the speakers cut to dead silence; and everyone instinctively dropped behind cover at the sudden change in conditions. For a moment, the only sound Quint could hear was the leaking of shattered liquor bottles and the scattered footfalls of people running. A bloody Scorpion submachinegun lay nearby, clutched in the dead man’s hand. Quint took it and frisked him for magazines.

Silence now. They were waiting for help before flushing him out. He wasn’t going anywhere. Quint slapped a new magazine into the Scorpion, a tight crack sounded through the room. He exhaled slowly. He caught a glimpse of his face in the stainless steel surface of the cabinets. It was blurry, but as he turned his attention it seemed to become clearer, as if in a mirror at the edge of his peripheral vision. It was not his own face, he thought; he saw dusky skin and hair coated with sweat and dirt. His face held the slack expression of a man long dead. Blood streamed in wide rivulets down his face from the top of his head, down into his eyes like tears.

He knew that he hadn’t imagined it. Sometimes the voices within himself could speak through his waking vision. The Others would taunt him with such images, or make him confused with strange thoughts in his head. Sometimes he would look into a mirror and find for a long moment of panic that he didn’t recognize his own face, or couldn’t remember the name he’d chosen for the current thirty years. Once, he found that even his birth name seemed alien and wrong. They took great pleasure in tormenting him, or else they would have stopped long ago. But they had never shown him that face before. He didn’t know who it was supposed to be. His own blurry visage replaced it when he looked again.

**We’re coming in.**

And they’d come in shooting. Suppressing fire came again to cover their entrance, but by now they had no idea where he’d moved to. Quint stood just as the western doors opened. He swept the barrel of the Scorpion across the entranceway back and forth until nothing moved except a mess of tangled bodies and a spreading pool of blood. He turned his attention to the shooters in the booths. His shots struck the two oxygen tanks that served as fixtures for each table, and they erupted into fireballs. He exchanged his last magazine into the Scorpion and advanced on the slaughter, weapon raised to his shoulder. They were all dead. Quint was too good at what he did.

Beyond the façade of the dance club, the hallway beyond the doors took on a much different look than the hospital gimmick of The Sanitarium. The true wealth of the Dragons was only hinted at by the opulence of the furnishings. It resembled a mixture of modern office fixtures and authentic Edo-era design. Further inside, the place dropped all pretense of being a legitimate business and revealed itself as part dormitory, part training dojo for ninja and kunoichi. These rooms were lined with tatami mats, walled with translucent washi paper on wooden frames. None of the artwork or symbols on the weapons seemed to indicate that the Dragons fashioned themselves a particular historical clan, but Quint guessed that their usage of the ninja imagery was simply a convenience. It gave them power, pawns, anonymity, and maybe even a religious mystique among their followers. After all, a group of men and women who had transcended death must surely teach their ninpo secrets to their most favored agents.

Quint knew where to go; he felt their presence shortly after entering the building. They were waiting for him. The halls were abandoned, which Quint found puzzling. He thought he would have to kill his way every inch of ground the he crossed. An indistinct sound halted him. He paused to listen. Laughter? He tore aside the shoji door and entered a dining room. In the center stood a low table surrounded by kneeling cushions. The smell of tea and incense was rich in the air. Three of the seats were taken by the surviving Three Dragons, two men seated on either side and one woman at the head of the table. One spot was left open for him. The women stared at him under low eyelids, stirring a finger in her teacup with slow deliberation.

The Immortals were garbed in loose silk kimonos. The woman wore an elegant black silk dress patterned with an intricate silver snowflake design so closely wound together it resembled the workings of a spider with an eye for fashion. Her black hair was bundled up in an elaborate bun, held together with a silver pin. She was perhaps the only authentic Japanese there. The laughing one, Nizmar El Shanawi was a man Quint recognized from long ago, when the British occupied India. The other man was unknown to Quint, with very dark, nearly black skin. He wore an angry expression, almost as if Quint had just interrupted an argument between them.

“A gun, Dexter?” El Shanawi teased, “That’s hardly fair, is it?”

Quint shot him about a dozen times. “Don’t tell me about fair. I should have made it my mission to wipe every last one of you a**h***s the night you killed Constance Dequenne.”

The other man snorted out a laugh, “The night you killed—“ but Quint finished the sentence for him with a barrage of searing lead to his chest.

“The sheer ego of you guys is what annoys me the most, Kitsu Tomie.” Quint turned his weapon to the woman. She continued watching him with her level gaze, little droplets of her partners’ blood sprayed across her face. “Now that we’re finally alone together, we can talk.”

“Your disrespect in my house insults me,” she said.

“Did I leave my shoes on? Where are my manners?”

“Where indeed.”

“Fine,” Quint snapped, “You want to talk about insults, it really hurt my feelings when you didn’t come to take my head personally in Alaska. You sent mortals.”

“You would have sensed our arrival,” she shrugged. “You would have been ready, and you might even have won. Doubtful, but…”

“That doesn’t make any sense. You wouldn’t have gained anything if they’d killed me. The quickening—“

“We don’t care about your polluted soul or the taint of dishonor your quickening would have given us. All that matters is that you die.”

“Why? What did I do? Is it personal? What?”

Kitsu Tomie sighed, folding her hands in her lap. “You’ve hidden the truth from the rest of us. Hidden it well for a long time. But the one person you can’t hide it from is yourself. Don’t be a fool.”

“I’m this close to blowing your head off with this gun and finishing this game of yours once and for all,” shouted Quint, “if you don’t answer me!”

She pointed at him. “That scar on your hand. When did you get it?”

He faltered for a moment, looked at his hand and tried to remember. “I…it was a long time ago. An arrow wound. In Dunkirk, I think. I was—“

“And the scar along your throat?”

“I don’t remember.”

“The scar over your heart?”

“You gave me that, what the hell is the point?”

“Your scars. You have them. You keep getting them.”

Quint lowered his gun. “So?”

“Look at me closely, Dexter Quint.” Tomie stood, and turned in a circle so that Quint could see her body. She traced a slender finger across the side of her face, down the nape of her neck, and trailed it along her bosom. “You could check me all over, if you like, and you wouldn’t find a single scar.”

“Very cute. Get back.”

“Tell me, Quint. Why is it that our wounds heal as if they’d never been inflicted, and yet your skin is marked with every last wound you’ve received for millennia? It’s because you’re special, Quint. Well,” she amended, brushing her hair back, “perhaps ‘special’ isn’t the word. It’s because you are marked. You. You’re fated to die.”

“Marked how??”

“You can never win the Prize, Quint. You have to die before the game can end. And now you will.”

Tomie’s hand flashed out from her hair, throwing the silver hairpin that held her hair up. It sank into his chest, burning like it was coated in napalm. Quint grunted and staggered back. The kunoichi kicked the gun from his grasp, wheeled, and roundhouse kicked the pin deeper into his chest. He fell, fingers gripping at the pin but it was stuck firmly in his body.

“I called the others away because I wanted to kill you myself this time,” she said. She unwound the small belt around her waist and pulled away its silk sheathing, revealing a strange weapon consisting of a long slender wire with a thin dagger tied to the end. “It’s only a shame you didn’t bring a real weapon with you.”

“Long story.” Quint reached to the back of his jeans and freed the gun he’d kept there. Tomie lashed the wire-whip out, sending the dagger point through his forearm. She yanked the wire back and the blade was torn from his flesh. The gun dropped from his hand. A stiff kick to his sternum sent him crashing through the paper wall into another room, almost empty except for various cushions on the floor, perhaps used for meditation. He threw one of them in her direction to disrupt her weapon, but the wire sliced it in half as she swung, filling the air with feathers.

Quint rushed up to overbear her with strength, but she sidestepped his clumsy rush and drove the point of her elbow into the back of his neck. A kick to his kidneys sent him crashing bleary-eyed through the table. He coughed blood, crawling for the sword carried by one of the men he’d shot. His fingers brushed a black scabbard just as Tomie wound the narrow wire around his neck. It cut into his skin as she put a foot to the small of his back and pulled his body up with the weapon. He gagged silently, unable to make a sound or put his fingers under the wire to relieve the pressure. He thought he could feel blood vessels in his eyes exploding as panic gripped him.

She bent down to his ear. “And her name was not Constance. We know her name, and it was Marie. Goodbye.”

Quint wrenched the hairpin from his chest with both hands and slammed it over his shoulder, squarely into her eye socket. She dropped the weapon, shrieking in horror. He gulped stinging lungfuls of air, crawling forward to grab the sword he’d found near El Shanawi.

With a berserk yell, Quint felt Tomie’s weight drop down on his back. She gripped both ends of the wire in her hands and yanked with all of her strength, trying to slice his head off with it like a hunk of cheese. He reached back and pulled her down over his shoulder by the hair. The Dragon kunoichi kicked to free herself from his grasp, but Quint had unsheathed the katana enough to drive its edge down across her throat. She croaked an airy, hoarse curse, groping blindly for him. He watched her for a moment, gingerly removing the wire from his neck. She’d drawn herself up to her knees. He cut her head from her body before allowing himself to stop for breath.

“Goodbye, Kitsu-sama.”

The lights flickered and failed as the power of the quickening was released from her body. Her corpse became cloaked in a shimmering ether, rising from the ground. The teacups began to boil, the blood on the floor steamed. Quint had to finish the others quickly before the entire place was consumed in a storm that would cause even more innocent death. He turned and saw the black-skinned Dragon had somehow moved to where he’d dropped his submachinegun. The man angled it, braced against the floor in his direction.

Shots rang out from the doorway. The man crumpled to the matted floor again, a half-dozen new bullets shredded through his body. Quint looked astounded at the shooter, a young lady who held the gun in trembling hands. Her hair was different this time, but still dyed a criminally garish color. She gave him an uneasy grin, shouting over the rising noise of the timbers groaning overhead.

“We’ve got to stop meeting like this, Quint.”
Chapter Fifteen: When the Flood Waters Rise
SpoilerShow
Shinjuku District
Tokyo, Japan
November 3, 2004 – 1:25 AM


Sound and thoughts melded together with his inner voices, forming a smoky miasma that clouded his consciousness. He was dimly aware of his surroundings, but his senses were overloaded. All feeling came to his brain filtered through a tinny feedback noise, which Quint dreamily thought was strange—how could his eyes register a high-pitched tone? Tinnitus squelched out the other, much more important sounds that he knew he should try to focus on, but the Quickening left him sluggish and disoriented. For now, he saw the world through a long tunnel, feeling a little like a disinterested security guard watching his own life through a bad monochrome monitor on the fritz.

Someone was pulling on his arm rather painfully. He knew this because it was by far the most annoying sensation battling for priority in the complaint line in his brain. Unfortunately, there was only one window open at the moment and the clerk didn’t speak English. It took a number and shuffled to the back of the queue.

He heard a peculiar noise. It was a comparatively small, pleasant noise that reminded him of breakfast, like the gentle hiss of sizzling hash. He drew his focus to look at his shoulder. The noise again. And again. He looked up to see what was causing it, and a raindrop punched him violently in the cornea. He laughed. It was beginning to rain! He watched in wonder as raindrops evaporated into wisps of steam off his shoulders. Why were his shoulders that hot?

“Would you get in??” Hands clapped him behind his neck and pushed him down. He cracked his head on a wedge of fiberglass and got muscled into the backseat of a car. He howled angrily and sat upright; that didn’t help the waiting room in his head at all. The clerk said “screw it” in Tagalog, put up a sign that said “NEXT WINDOW PLEASE” and went off to smoke. Did he know Tagalog?

“Jaysis Christ,” remarked someone nearby, “Oi think that Quickening knocked out power on the ‘ole street. Are you all right?”

“Yeah, you shoulda seen it from where I was standing,” Kelli said as she swung into the driver’s seat.

“Kelli?” Quint guessed. Nobody paid him any attention; he was too far behind in the conversation and neither of them was willing to bring him up to speed.

“How many?”

Kelli hesitated as she put the little Japanese car in gear. Quint craned his neck around to look out the window, but didn’t see much. Instead of glass, the window was constructed of thick, streaky translucent plastic that Quint had only seen as the windows in American public transit. The car accelerated with a laughable whining sound—the engine must have been a two-cylinder, tops—and all he could see through the window was aura and shadow. This was wrong. He knew for a fact the Japanese made better cars than this. This thing was one step up from those Matchbox cars you pulled back across a smooth surface and released. He bet that if you put this car onto shag carpeting it would spin its wheels helplessly. He put it as eloquently as he could.

“This car is a complete sh**box!”

Kelli scowled back at him. “We’re on a budget, okay?”

“Here,” the old man next to Quint in the backseat tossed him something wrapped in crinkly white cellophane. “Have a Snack Cake.”

He stared blearily at the half-flattened pastry package with kanji characters and said simply “Okay.”

“What happened in there?” asked the old man, “How many dead?”

“All of them. All the eh, the Immortals at least. Wasn’t hard to find him.”

Quint latched onto that idea and spoke through a mouthful of cherries and bullet-resistant carbohydrates, “Hey how did you find me? And why? And who the f*** are you,” he looked at the old man.

“Slow down mate, and put your sword down, eh? Me name’s Jack Donahl. Been watchin’ yeh for years now. An’ the reason I found yeh is because I knew you’d do the stupidest bloody thing possible instead of keepin’ a low profile like any smart man would.”

Quint was about to retort and was surprised to see that he did still indeed have a bloodied katana resting across his lap and pointed rather dangerously across Jack’s stomach. He wolfed down the rest of the Snack Cake, wrestled the window down, and threw the sword out onto the sidewalk.

“Wait—‘
“What the hell are you doing?” Kelli exclaimed, “Now you don’t have a sword at all!”

“Katanas aren’t my style,” he muttered, but saw that that explanation didn’t satisfy either of them. “Literally not my style. I never trained with those things. I’d hurt myself sooner than anyone else with one. I’ll do all right with what I’ve got.”

“Thought you assumed the knowledge of every Immortal you kill.”

“Sort of. It doesn’t work like that. It’s…” Quint searched his thoughts for the right words but was also trying to battle a migraine that hadn’t left him for days. Finally he conceded, “Maybe I could use one, but it wouldn’t be…it wouldn’t be me. It would be someone else’s will behind the movements. Someone else’s voice.”

“What?” Donahl looked at him with interest.

“Their voices. I hear them.” Finally he met Donahl’s stare. “So what do you want?”

“I want to warn yeh. There’s a secret group of people around the world who dedicate their lives to watching and recordin’ the activities of Immortals through history. They’ve put out the word somehow that killing you will trigger The Gathering.”

“That’s what Kitsu Tomie said, that I was fated to die. The Gathering? I’ve heard rumors of that for so long I scarcely believed it could happen. Why do they think that? Why me?”

Donahl shrugged. “They think you’re special somehow. Marked, maybe. It’s got somethin’ to do with your past. I thought I had complete access to your file. Oi mean, records are sketchy in some places but we know you returned to Rome after your execution—“

“How far back do these records go?”

“All the way. The quality up until recently was crap, mostly hasty notes in journals. It’s only in the last decade or so that the Watchers have really started to digitize all their information. Runnin’ it all through scanners and OCR equipment. Now we’ve got video, phone logs, everythin’. Hell, for the last two years I been trackin’ your movements on a map through a GPS device. Up until you lost it. The only reason I found yeh is because I knew yeh’d finally go after the Dragons. Especially after--”

“And just who decided my life was any of your f***ing business, huh?”

“You’re the most powerful beings on the planet. Everything yeh do has historical relevance that echoes down through the centuries. It’s the whole world’s business if one of you wins the Prize. And besides that, you ought to be thanking us for what we do for you.”

“Thanking you.”

“Yeah. Back in the Dark Ages I bet it was a piece o’ :):):):) loppin’ each other’s heads off, happy as ya please. But it’s the 21st century, mate. The age a-camera phones and people who can post pictures of your silly ass explodin’ a city block on their blog in about two seconds flat. We’ve got contacts in the press, the police, and the Internet whose mission is to suppress that sh**e, and keep you free to do your bloody work. I was the sorry bastard who had to clean up all the headless corpses yeh leave in your wake.”

“Guys,” Kelli raised a hand from the steering wheel, “Just figure this thing out, okay?”

Donahl sighed. “The point is, there’s a portion of your file that was expurgated and kept classified even from me. Codenamed Heimdall. Supposedly it explains everything, but when we copied it, the whole thing was encrypted all to hell. Since Oi pistolwhipped one of the only people around who knows the key, I figure we’re rightly f***ed. Then I figured I’d just ask you.”

Quint blinked between Kelli and Jack. “Ask me what? Why they think killing me is going to cause The Gathering? I don’t know.”

“Come on, Quint,” Jack pressed, “You must have some idea.”

“Like what?” he shouted, “I’ve done terrible things, it’s true. But I can’t think of anything that…that would drive everyone rabid with a desire to kill me and disregard every rule of honor we keep. I can’t think of anything that terrible.”

‘Oh yes you can.’
‘And now it’s caught up with you, hasn’t it.’
‘We remember. Oh yes.’

“Quint?”

Quint felt feverish. He thought he saw a face in the window again. Dark skin, dark hair, dark blood. His head hurt. He pressed his hands against his temples. He remembered dust, blood, and the setting sun. But the memory fled from his grasp like a feather in the wind. “Kelli, drive us to the airport. We need to go to London.”

Kelli glanced over, “I thought we were going to go hide out.”

“We still might,” Donahl mused, “But London might work out too. I have some mates who might help with that encryption in British Intelligence.”

Quint gave him a look, “You do?”

“Yeah. Wasnae t’always a Watcher, y’know. What do you remember?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted, his voice dreamy. “I have a cache there, in a vault. Weapons, money, antiques. In case things ever got rough or if I wanted to settle down again. Just now, when I closed my eyes, I saw someplace. But I’ve never been there. I would remember. Why can’t I remember?”


‘But you can.’
‘You don’t want to.’
‘We remember. Shall we tell you?’
‘But we can’t, can we.’
‘Oh no, we can’t.’
‘Some corpses can never be buried deeply enough.’
‘Some memories can never be buried deeply enough.’
‘When the flood waters rise, up, up they come…’
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Figment
SpoilerShow

Pelusium, Egypt
September 30, 48 BC
Midday


In the moments just before dreaming, or sometimes after a nightmare, Quintus Artorius Dexion would experience the sensation of falling. It was as if the ground crumbled under his body. His guts would leap up against his spine, and his nerves would scream electric. A panic would rise in his body for a brief second, until he opened his eyes and realized he was safe. These moments had only started to come after Dexion had left his wife in Rome—gone to join the legion and become a citizen of the Republic.

His sleeping calm was snatched away, and he felt himself drop down. Only this time, Dexion did not awaken. His arms would not move, nor his eyes open. He could not hope to cling to the safety of his bedroll, his mouth would not scream. His innards trembled as he fell, and frantic, Dexion scrambled inside the confines of his comatose body for strength.

Then, even worse than falling, he hit the bottom. His heart exploded within his chest, pounding a defiant pulse that burned his cold veins. His muscles clenched from his stomach, spreading outward to his fingertips, pulling back against his bones so hard that he could hear them creak in his own ears like a tree falling. His back arched upwards, involuntarily sucking in musty, fetid air through his mouth so hard his throat was stripped raw. He flung his hands up to his neck. He could still see the hate in the eyes of Gaius Julius Caesar, feel his choking fingers. Instinctively he scrabbled backwards to get his back against a wall, but in his haste he clumsily struck his head against it. He pulled his legs up to his chest and pinned himself to the wall, his frenzied breaths still labored and painful.

A new wave of nausea racked his body. His skin prickled and his fever was quashed like he was doused with a bucket of icy water. Quintus found himself staring up at a man seated across the room from him on a small table. The room was windowless, lit only by the daylight seeping in from under the door and a small oil lantern on the table. Sawdust was thick in the air, with heavy chips littering the floor so deeply that the stone beneath it could not be seen. The room smelled of old blood and feces. It was with shock that Quintus realized the smell was himself; he’d lost control of his bowels and he’d been stripped naked. Now he was sheathed in his own filth and sweat. He was still uncertain whether or not any of this was reality or the mad dreams of a mind clinging to death.

“The sensation you are feeling is the Quickening,” said the man. He leaned closer, and Quintus saw that he was Roman, dressed in the striped toga of a senator of Rome. He looked down at Dexion with a calming turn to his lips, and tossed him some loose rags.

“Do not be afraid. Here, clean yourself.” The man pushed a pitcher across the floor to Dexion with his foot, a gentle splash of water spilled over the edge when it stopped. “You’ll have a better opportunity to bathe later.”

“I thought I was dead,” Dexion cried out, louder than he’d intended. He tried to moderate his tone and find the right questions to ask. Instead he could only stammer, “I thought—“

“Dead, yes,” the man nodded. But he hopped from the table and squatted down near Dexion. “But you are not of a mind to hear everything yet; it will only upset you. Let us simply say for now that you are alive. My name is Gaius Cassius Longinus.”

“I…Quintus Artorius Dexion. You…”

“I am the tribune of the Plebs. Or I was. I’m not sure what will become of me now.”

“The others spoke highly of you, but I remember only a little,” Dexion said slowly. He gathered up the rags and stood on shaky legs. “I heard that you commanded the fleet of Pompey Magnus.”

“Yes I did. The fleet was smashed and I was overtaken, and made to surrender without condition.” Cassius turned away from Dexion and went to collect a small bundle of clothes on the table as Quintus cleaned himself. Cassius laughed quietly, “I’m harmless enough that I’m allowed to wander freely, so long as I take up arms against Caesar no longer. You are the man executed for the murder of Pompey Magnus?”

Dexion could only lower his head in shame.

“I’m unsure how to feel about you,” Cassius admitted. He smoothed the clothes in his hands. “But I’ll not judge you today. We will have to speak of it later, to be sure.”

“What is to become of me? Am I to be executed?”

Cassius looked down at him for a long time before answering. “You have been executed already, Dexion. You are alive, but Caesar—everyone—thinks you are dead. You have been granted life anew by divine purpose. You are destined for great things, it seems. In that regard, you and I are the same. We are brothers.”

Dexion took the clothes from his countryman. They were dun-colored and baggy, little more than plebian castoffs of heavy wool. His skin continued to prickle in the presence of the other Roman, as if he were a wolf who had caught the scent of a rival predator. “So I’m to live? But how do you know this? How do you come to be here at this moment?”

Cassius sighed and reached out to put a hand on Dexion’s shoulder. “You must trust me now. We have nothing but time ahead of us, but if we’re found here…Get dressed, Dexion. Please. I promise you’ll have your answers.”

“Where will we go?”

“We’re bound for Rome within the week. No doubt you can accompany me under the guise of a freeman or maybe even one of my cousins.” Cassius smirked a little, “I can barely keep all my distant relations straight. Who’s to challenge my word on the matter?”

Cassius Longinus turned for the door. Dexion took his arm. “And your price? For your answers? Your word? And your protection, I assume.”

The tribune nodded, his expression one of understanding and even pride. “Good. You’ll do well, I think. As for my price, it’s your protection that I need.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Follow me. For now, I’ll make you this bargain: Once we’re asea, I’ll answer any questions you have. And you’re free to go anytime you like. And in return, all you have to do is listen to something very important I have to ask you. Just listen, nothing more.”

“Very well,” Dexion agreed, “What is it?”

“Not now.” Cassius Longinus opened the door and looked in both directions. Sunlight flooded the room so heavily that Dexion was forced to shield his eyes. “Follow me to the docks at a distance,” he said as he left the room, “I’ll see that you’re fed and clothed properly. For now, you shall pose simply as a man in my service. Agreed?”

“Yes.” Dexion waited for a short time after the man had left and contemplated his options. He could simply leave, he supposed, disappear anywhere he wanted. He wondered if the answers that Cassius promised would bring him any peace. Indeed, he doubted it very much.

He decided that Cassius could not be trusted. He could never return home; it would not be safe for his wife. She never saw him again.

He was a traitor to his country. He never returned to Rome. He never rejoined the legion. He went north, into Gaul and eventually into Germania. He lived in Britannia for many years as a simple fisherman.
Chapter Seventeen: Old Spies (note: LAWL, u get it? So punny, much hilar! XD)
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Rúla Búla Irish Pub & Restaurant
London, England
November 6, 2004 – 12:05 PM


“And so the prodigal son returns.”

Jack Donahl turned at the sound of the voice and raised a pint to his guest as he sat across the table from him. The weather outside was so vengefully cold that both men were wearing several layers of wool, even inside the pub. The man groaned to cover the sound of his creaking knees as he sank into the chair. He breathed through his mouth because the crud in his nose had frozen up three seconds out the front door. Donahl was surprised at first that the man had dressed down for the occasion, but it was good tradecraft. It made Donahl feel a little more secure that he hadn’t been arrested already, but with spooks they might be trying to work him for information before they nab him.

“I started without yeh,” Donahl says, taking a sip of his drink. “Been a while since I’ve had a proper drink. Hope yeh don’t mind.” Donahl motioned to the barkeep for another round.

“You’re looking well, Jack.”

“Bollocks.”

“All right, you look terrible. Dare I say, you look pickled. Living rough, are we?” The man excused himself for a moment and shamelessly cleared his nose on his handkerchief.

“Jet lag. Been doing a lot of traveling.” Donahl finished off his glass, setting it down beside a laptop computer. It was closed, and it took up much of the available space on the table. Donahl had relocated the small bowl of peanuts to his lap, where he munched on them contentedly.

“How frightened should I be that you’re here after all these years asking for a favor?”

“Frightened? Not at all, Harry. I just want to talk.”

Harry Whitehall sighed. He crossed his arms over his barrel chest, looking at Donahl with a strained expression on his face. It was as emotional as Harry ever got, who by necessity was able to mask the strongest emotion. He was as carefully unremarkable as an MI-5 spook could ever hope to be: clothes that looked like they’d been in his wardrobe for years, a scratched wristwatch, the unimaginative haircut of a lifelong chartered accountant. “You want a lot more than that, Jack. I don’t know why you came back, but you should have stayed where you were. I have every reason to bring you in.”

“Then why don’t you?”

Whitehall stared at him for a long time, until his reverie was broken by the arrival of the drinks Donahl had ordered. Finally, he took a sip of the deep oaken-colored beer. It seemed to relax him. He leaned back in the chair. “Curiosity. Why are you here?”

“You don’t really want to know that.”

“Yes, you know I really do.”

“I’m here to help a friend. I wouldn’t be here if there was any other way. I hope yeh believe that.”

The spook’s face hardened, “That always was your problem, Jack. Sentimentality. You never could put your loyalties in order.”

“They’ve always been in order. I just realized that some things come before queen and country. Family. Friends.”

“I guess we weren’t family enough for you,” Harry asked dismissively.

“I made my choice.”

Whitehall’s fist crashed down on the table, nearly upsetting the drinks. He tried to keep his tone quiet, hissing the words through clenched teeth. “You chose your f***ing mick bomber buddies over two agents of the service. Every favor you might have had burned up with their bodies in Belfast.”

“I tried to stop it. Don’t you think I tried?” Donahl leaned forward as well, whispering insistently in an attempt not to cause a scene. “They didn’t listen to me. If I’d done any more I’d have been compromised and you would have never—“

“Don’t feed me that line of sh**. You used to be a good agent until something changed you. I wish to God I knew what, but instead of coming home you dropped off the grid completely. Do you have any idea how that looked? We didn’t know if you’d snapped, if you’d gone rogue, or…or whatever. You stayed with them, Jack. I don’t say it lightly, but you provided aid and comfort to our enemies. You can say whatever you want about honor and loyalty, but you’ve still got a lot to be held accountable for.”

Donahl slumped, looking into his glass for a long moment. “Then maybe we can both get what we want.”

“What do you mean?”

Donahl spun the laptop around and pushed it towards Whitehall. “The hard drive on this computer contains a number of archived files, most of them heavily encrypted. I’m interested in one in particular, name o’ Codename Heimdall. I need you to open that file for me.”

“What’s in it?”

“Don’t know. Historical records, I suspect. Now I won’t lie to yeh, I’m guessin’ the encryption on those files—on that file in particular—could be out of your league.”

“Out of our league,” Whitehall scoffed, “I’m bloody MI-5, not some cybercafé clerk.”

“The people this file belongs to,” Donahl insisted, “place a very high value on their information security.”

“Who?”

“I can’t tell you that. But I won’t be surprised if you come up empty. All I’m asking is that you try. Come here tomorrow, same time with my computer. No copies. No one else sees that information.”

“And where in all of this do I benefit? What could you possibly offer me?”

Donahl stood up from the table, pulling on his cap. He looked to the door, to the pedestrians walking stiffly outside and started to prepare himself for the cold. “Yeh ask what changed me, and all I can say is that I lost my faith. I spent twenty years in Ireland. Fightin’ the good fight, whatever yeh may think of me. I got married. Became a widower. Been a friend and brother to me mates. Felt more at home there than I ever have anywhere else. And I’m responsible for the deaths of your agents and many more besides, I’ve nae doubt of that. You do this for me, Harry, and I’ll confess to all of it. I’ll turn meself in. Ye’ve my word on that, if that ever meant anything to yeh.”

Donahl set the bowl of peanuts on top of the computer and left, throwing a wave to the barkeep as he stepped out the door. It was then that Harry Whitehall came to a sudden realization.

“That Irish bastard just stuck me with the check again.”

Chapter Eighteen: Незнакомец (note: again with the quirky moon runes, this time russki)
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Near Uvs Nuur Lake, Siberia
January 14, 1874



Filip Petkin scowled at the stranger from his vantage point behind the wet bar. The man had seated himself in the corner of the room with his back facing the hearth and demanded another bottle of vodka, though it sat unopened on the table next to his first. Filip suspected the stranger was destitute, filthy and half-frozen as he was. Ice still clung to his stringy brown beard. Likewise, the man’s hair was filthy, a grimy knotted mop of hair unkept and untended for what seemed like a year or more. He probably had no money to pay, and judging from the melancholy slouch to his shoulders, didn’t much care what the barkeep did about it.

Petkin had seen enough lost souls waste away in his common room to recognize the hollow, ragged determination chiseled into his eyes. They were sunken into his skull, surrounded by dark rings. His gaunt face and haunted stare spoke of a man who was already dead inside, he was only drinking so that his body would die along with his soul. His yellowed eyes welcomed Hell, because the devil could do no worse to him, whatever had happened to him in life.

Filip watched him for a time, wondering if he needed the stout length of wood that he kept under the bar. He drank with a slow, deliberate pace, lost deep in his own thoughts. The man was out of shape, but still looked big enough to be dangerous if angered. But he doubted that much could break him out of his melancholy. Filip suspected that he would simply leave if he asked.

The stranger seemed to sense Filip’s gaze and looked at him through his downcast hair. The fire snapped, making the innkeep jump under the stranger’s intense stare. Petkin looked embarrassed and stepped from around the bar. His footsteps thudded hollow over the old wooden floor planks, the nails within creaking so loudly that Petkin tried to drag his feet in order to stay quiet. It felt wrong to interrupt the beautiful, irregular crackling from the hearth’s flame.

“I am sorry,” Petkin said, motioning to Anya, the serving girl. She was headed up the narrow stair with quilts that his wife had sewn. “She should have told you that—“

“I have money,” the stranger said simply. He scattered some coins on the table, uncaring of how much it amounted to. Filip saw that it was more than enough, but busied himself collecting only what was due. The man picked up the second bottle and stuffed it into a knapsack that he kept beside the hearth. He seemed to have already forgotten that he and Filip had spoken, and looked surprised that the barkeep was still standing there, looking at him when he’d finished closing the bag.

“I am sorry,” Filip repeated. “It’s rare that we have strangers to our village. Would you care for something to eat?”

“I don’t need to eat.” Something struck the stranger as being miserably funny about what he’d just said. He set his bottle down and whimpered out a weak, desperate laugh that was more sorrow than mirth. His eyes glazed over with tears, and Filip’s heart ached with pity for the man. But he knew nothing of the stranger and had no idea how he could help.

“Are you all right?”

“Sit with me a moment. Will you do that?” The barkeep did this; the inn would not be busy for hours yet. The man tipped the end of his bottle and offered Filip something to drink. He surprised himself by grasping the bottle and pouring himself a glass.

Filip saw old scars crossing the stranger’s hands. They were rough and strong: the hands of a laborer, perhaps. Now that he was closer, Petkin saw something in the stranger’s face that unsettled him, though he couldn’t put a finger on it. An aged burden carried on the young man’s shoulders, reflected in his eyes. Time seemed to wrack his spirit terribly, making him seem somehow ancient within. Filip’s mother would have described him as an “old soul” were he a child. It made him uneasy to see this quality in a grown man.

“I’m looking for a man,” the stranger said at last. His voice was strained and creaky with disuse, though he sounded like he’d asked this question a thousand times before and didn’t expect a satisfactory answer. “He is smaller than me, but strong. He has long black hair and a beard. Perhaps a rich man. He’s fond of poetry.”

Filip knew many men with beards, but nobody wealthy or who read much of anything. “I don’t know. Do you know his name?”

“Oh yes, but perhaps I think you would not.” Filip looked at the stranger queerly. He sighed, “I knew him as Myrddin, but his birth name is Lailoken. He hails from the west, from England. When we left there together he took the name Gregory and—“

“Wait, yes…this man sounds strange, but I have heard of such a man.” Petkin set his glass down and stroked his beard thoughtfully. “Although I would not put much hope in my word. He could be anybody.”

“Tell me!”

“I know of a man who lives in a village called Pokrovskoye. An old man, but looks like you said. I remember him because he passed through here at one time, claiming to be a monk, but he looked like no monk I’d ever seen. Sat in that very chair, in fact. We all thought he was mad from the way he spoke of miracles and angels, and magic. He said his name was Grigori, but that’s all I remember.”

The stranger stood, his chair kicked to the side with the sudden motion. He gathered his belongings and scattered some more coins on the table. He looked hopeful, and Filip thought that perhaps this stranger was mad, too. He seemed to be in many places at once, as if he were looking into the past while walking in the present. A man lost in his own memories. Drowning.

“Please,” he said, “Tell me how to find this village. I’ll pay you.”

Filip’s asked only the stranger’s name as his price. Odd, he thought. For an American, Arthur Quint spoke remarkably good Russian.
(edit: forgot to highlight some artistic inner monologues in Ch.15, be sure to re-evaluate your immersive experience after this)
Last edited by wulfenlord on Wed Jul 21, 2021 4:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn! Ph'nglui mglw'nfah Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl muh'fugen bix nood

Whenever you feel down :3
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Re: Spoony the Pussy One: Life is in the Render Queue

Post by wulfenlord » Wed Jul 21, 2021 4:17 pm

We're reaching the Endgame

Highlander: Pariah - pt.5

Chapter Nineteen: Here Lies One Whose Name Was Writ in Water
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Kensal Green Cemetery
London, England
November 8, 2004 – 2:11 AM


“Shouldn’t we have shovels for this?”

Quint put a hand on Kelli’s shoulder to draw her attention and held a finger to his lips. Sound carried easily in the early morning air, and while holy ground had been proven to be no bar to an attack by other Immortals, Quint’s real fear at the moment was the night watchman. He doubted there was one, but he didn’t feel like meeting one nonetheless. Together, he and Kelli vaulted the low stone wall that marked the boundaries of the old English burial grounds.

Frost clung to the pitted stones of the century-old grave markers, giving them a dimly glowing, ethereal quality in the waxing moonlight. It was enough to see by—barely—which was good because Quint had forbade Kelli to use the bulky security guard-style aluminum alloy flashlight she’d brought all the way from the trunk of her car in Bellingham. She was very proud of it, insisting that when loaded with a half-dozen D-cell batteries it would be a worthy match for any “chop-socky” sword Quint’s enemies might bring. She’d had to leave her gun behind before flying for Great Britain, something she’d been loathe to do considering their situation. Along with the gun went much of her peace of mind, and so the flashlight had supplanted it as her security blanket.

Kelli was dressed in an ugly mix of clashing colors, from clothes both old and new. Quint had spent all of yesterday in London by himself, leaving Kelli to ‘hold down the fort’ while the boys did their Immortal-business. They’d learned how much of a domestic goddess she was when they’d returned to discover she’d only ordered take-out for herself, leaving for them a pile of napkins and a couple of bags of pretzels from the hotel vending machine. Kelli thought that revenge must have been a strong motivating factor in Quint waking her at midnight. She’d been asleep for an hour and awoke to the sound of her toilet flushing and that damned Immortal demanding that she get dressed.

She dressed in the dark, throwing on the nearest articles of clothing at hand in the furious, shouting delirium of the unjustly awakened. When Quint emerged from the bathroom, mouth clamped around her toothbrush, she was wearing different socks, her pants were inside-out, and she was just putting a bra on over her shirt. It made her look irresistibly cute, and Quint had told her so between bouts of toothpaste-spraying laughter. She’d finished dressing in the car, after angrily telling Quint to go f*** himself and demanded her own room in the future. This is what having older brothers must be like, she thought.

“Shovels? No. I don’t think so.”

“I wish you’d tell me what we’re doing here,” Kelli hissed, her breath steaming from her nose. The air was shockingly cold, and despite her best efforts Quint could hear her back teeth rattling together. “Why I gotta be here at the ass-crack of the morning…”

“Because I need you here,” Quint said. “I’m not entirely sure what I’m looking for. I feel—“ but he stopped himself short. He didn’t like speaking of the Others, the voices that prodded him onward into this misty graveyard.

“You feel what?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore. But I feel like I should. The voices—The voices, they know. It’s as if I’ve forgotten something, but they remember. Something prevents them from telling me. It feels like a word on the tip of my tongue, but always out of reach. Does that make sense?”

They’d stopped walking. Kelli lounged, hands behind her back against a leaning stone Catholic cross and quirked her eyebrows, giving him a comforting smile. “Not much has, lately. But I think I understand as much as we mere mortals can. I just don’t see how I can possibly help.”

“You have a fresh perspective. I don’t know if I can trust my own anymore. And I think you have a right to know what’s going on. And—“ Quint looked away, his eyes tearing up a little, “This isn’t easy for me to admit but… I need someone to help carry all my stuff back to the car.”

Kelli swung the flashlight at his face and stalked after her chuckling companion. “Oh bullsh**. That’s classic avoidance, you know. The sad thing is I’m the closest thing to a friend you got and you know it.”

“You got me. This was all part of my evil plan to lure you here for a romantic tryst in a cemetery in below-freezing temperatures.”

“What is it they say about real friends helping you rob graves?”

“Move bodies. And it’s not technically grave-robbing if the grave belongs to me. Look—“ Quint pointed to a high structure about thirty yards away, near a small stand of naked trees. It was a tomb of dirty, overgrown stone, surrounded by large angelic statues facing inward like heavenly sentinels. There were eight in all, of regal, knightly figures with swept-back wings, brandishing swords to the sky at one focal point above the center of the tomb. They too had weathered the last century badly, probably a victim of the erosive elements and vandals. The tomb itself was round, unusual considering so many other structures were squat, boxy affairs with strong Gothic-style accoutrements. In fact, this tomb looked rather like a place for visitors to sit instead of a resting place for the dearly departed, or perhaps a fountain. They walked there together.

“It belongs to you?”

“It belongs to the late Arthur Quint,” he replied. “Poor man died of pneumonia and left a sizable estate to his bereaved son, Julius.”

“Hell of a way to go.”

“I thought so.”

Quint threw his small knapsack over the high edge of the circular tomb and pulled himself up smoothly. He offered his hand down to help. Kelli gave him a withering look, but took his hand and clambered atop the tomb. Quint shook his head and turned to root around in his pack. “What’s the problem?”

Kelli hesitated. “How long have you been alone?”

Quint withdrew a pair of metal items from his pack. One was a black crowbar, and the other looked like a heavy iron key. “It’ll take me a little while to open the sepulcher. It’s locked, but it’s also sealed over so I’ll have to do some hammering. Hand me that rag.”

“Don’t do that,” Kelli insisted, “Don’t you f***ing do that. All your life you’ve been doing that, I bet.”

“Doing what?”

“Keeping everyone at a distance. Answer my question, Quint. How long?”

Quint wouldn’t look at her. Instead he wrapped the end of the crowbar in the rag and took out a large mallet from the pack. “A long time.”

“Why?”

“It’s safer that way.”

“Safer for you, maybe.”

Quint stopped what he was doing and glanced angrily up at her. “Kelli, I like you, but right now you don’t know what the f*** you’re talking about.”

“Oh, right. And I guess I never will, unless Jack decides he wants to tell me what he knows from researching you. But that’s not the same, is it? It’s all between you and the voices in your head.”

“If I didn’t want you to know anything, I wouldn’t have brought you here, would I?”

“You don’t know what you want.” Kelli took her ski cap off and sat cross-legged. “You been without friends for so long you made some up, and even they don’t like you that much. That’s why you dragged me here. You’re desperate for some human contact but you don’t know what to do when you’ve got it. The only way you can make friends anymore is by accident.”

Quint started striking at the stone in the distance. Kelli couldn’t see what he was doing in the poor light, but she could hear the low thumping of the dampened makeshift chisel and the rough sound of chipping stone. “You followed me, kid. I wish to God you were anywhere else, but I realized there wasn’t any point in trying to leave you behind because you’d have followed after me anyway like some schoolgirl with a crush.”

Kelli recoiled, looking stunned. “A crush?”

“You heard me.”

“Listen, you egocentric prick—“

Quint threw the crowbar down so fiercely it rang off the stone like a clock chime. “No, you listen. I’m tired. I’m so god damn tired that every day I wake up is another day earned with blood. And I don’t deserve it. My wife didn’t deserve to hear that her husband was a traitor to the republic. My child didn’t deserve to grow up with my shame looming over his head—a child, by the way, I will never know for sure was ever truly mine because Immortals can’t father children. The people who died fighting with me, the people who died fighting for me, they didn’t deserve that, either. They died thinking that the world is better off with me in it, and even I don’t believe that anymore. All I do is kill, and make misery for others.”

“And if you’re right, if what Jack says is right,” Quint threw down his hammer, “then this stupid game will never end as long as I still live. How pointless does that make my existence, then? All I can do anymore is to stay away from other people’s lives because everything I touch, I break. So don’t tell me I need to let people into my life, because I don’t. You don’t deserve that.”

Kelli was silent for a long time while Quint resumed his work on the sepulcher. It began to rain, as the weather in England was oft wont to do, and she huddled miserably there, watching him as the rain escalated. She wondered if it was part of Quint’s curse, if bad weather followed him to match his mood. Or perhaps his fate. Soon they were both shivering and soaked. Kelli stuffed her trembling hands into her pockets and spoke through chattering teeth. “Then why did you bring me here?”

“To give you what you said you wanted.” He took up the heavy iron key and positioned it over the stone. Presently it sank halfway into the tomb. Quint grasped the end with both hands and twisted the key. A heavy mechanism turned within, as if many tumblers fell into line and a great weight shifted aside. Kelli heard the stone hatch he was working on fell away and crash hollowly inside the tomb.

Quint extended his hand. “I’ll lower you in. You’ll see.”

Kelli squirmed down over the edge and peered down into the heavy shadows within the tomb, and could not see the floor beneath. Quint took her hand and lowered her down until her feet touched hard rock, and she let go. She used her flashlight to pierce the darkness around her, and saw that all around here were low shapes, all covered with coarse, heavy cloth to keep the dust away. The dust was thick, and plumed up twin twin clouds around her feet. Rain fell straight down into the square hatchway above, the first moisture the chamber had seen in decades.

Kelli walked slowly out of the rain, so as not to raise too much of the dust in the air, and knelt beside the nearest object. She pulled aside the cover, covering her mouth and turning away from the inevitable cloud of particulates that came off the burlap cloth. Beneath it sat a wooden trunk, banded with black iron vertebrae. It was long, and Kelli almost mistook it for a casket at first. It was unlocked, but held shut with a pair of thick bolts bracing it shut. Using the end of her flashlight, she punched out the bolts. Quint landed heavily behind her.

“Kelli?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m going to take what I need from here and leave you. Do you understand?”

“What?”

“It doesn’t matter why the other Immortals want me dead so badly. Maybe it was just a matter of time before holy ground stopped being a safe haven. At first I thought things were different, but now I realize that nothing’s really changed. Either I survive this or I won’t. But let’s be honest, it’s just a matter of time before they wear me down.”

“Don’t say that, Quint.” Kelli pointed to the chest. “You can’t give up now. You’ve been led here for a reason. You just need to remember what was so important here.”

“Maybe,” he conceded, “But regardless, I’m leaving you both behind tonight. You can’t be near me when they come. And they will. I brought you here to tell you that all this is yours. The money, everything.”

“Quint—“

“The minister at the church where you met me has power of attorney over my estate. I sent him a letter. He’ll handle everything, if he’s still alive. If not, well I’m sure you’re smart enough to live well on what’s here. If you play your cards right, you might even be able to get that interview with Jane Pauley.”

Quint brought out his own flashlight and walked away from her to investigate another part of the room. Kelli stared after him, realizing that even if she refused his offer, he was abandoning this place, abandoning her, and had made it clear he would never return.

“You’re not even going to try and hide anymore, are you?” Kelli asked with horror. “You want them to find you now.”

“Like I said,” Quint said quietly from the darkness, “I’m tired.”

“You’re going out there to die.”

“I’m going out there to face my death like a man. It’s time I stopped running. Time I paid for my sins.”

Kelli scrubbed at her eyes, telling herself that the tears she felt were because of the dust. She opened the trunk and found that inside was yellowed, oily flakes of rotten cloth. atop more bundles wrapped heavily in cloth that had fared the ravages of time little better. At her touch, most of the wrappings disintegrated or pulled apart into frayed, dry strands like gauze. She counted a half-dozen small bundles, but she saw another that made her recoil momentarily.

Blood. At one end of the trunk lay a pair of objects, their cloth wrappings both soaked through with brown, dried blood. One was long, nearly six feet in length, and she reached down to pull it out.

“Kelli, get over here.” Quint said. She’d heard that tone from him once before, when the Frenchman, Rousseau had come for him at her dorm room.

“Quint? I think I—“

Kelli saw more blood inside the trunk, but this blood was fresh. New. She saw more, saw it falling on one place. She reached out to touch it, and saw that her hands were covered in it. She tried to call out for Quint, but found that she had no voice with which to speak. Quint grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her away from the trunk, so that she was lying on the dusty ground. He looked frightened, and she saw that he was calling her name, but all she could hear was a distant low crashing in her ears, like the ocean. She felt warmth in her breast, and the rain felt surprisingly good, cool against her skin. It fell through the hatchway above her, and Kelli saw that it was no longer nighttime outside, but there was a radiant, heavenly light.


“Here lies one whose name was writ in water,” Quint heard from the hatch. The man who quoted Keats called down to him, the barrel of his gun still steaming in the chill rain. “It’s written on your tomb, here: this line by John Keats. A fitting tribute to a man such as you, whose name is as inconstant as the ocean waves. When I first saw it, I developed a love for the man’s writing. Truly a poet after my own soul. Oh, dry your eyes, Quintus. No doubt this is hardly the first mortal pet you’ve watched die, nor is she fated to be one of us. You can tell that as well as I.”

Quint touched Kelli’s face, watching the life bleed from her body. She still clutched one of his old trinkets to her breast, over the gunshot wound that had just destroyed her heart. She looked peaceful, as if what she saw above her was not her murderer, but a long-missed parent. Her eyes tried to locate him as he called her name, but she couldn’t focus.

“Why…” Quint seethed.

“You gave her the treasures within this tomb,” Keats said. “And she is certainly not your rightful heir.”

Quint spun around, grabbing up the ancient Roman blades that he’d uncovered. He howled up at the gloating old man in rimmed glasses over him. “Who are you?”

“I’m hardly surprised that you don’t remember,” he replied, “But I had hoped that you would. How many wars have we fought together? I was ever your trusted friend. I helped you weather the millennia. Such counsel we shared; I thought some vestige might remain after what I’d done.”

“I’ll kill you, you hear me? I’ll kill you!”

“You’re welcome to try, but first, I think you’d better bring up your son’s inheritance. It’s time you remembered what you asked me—what you begged me—to help you forget.”

Keats withdrew a small crystalline pendant from his pocket, and dangled it beneath the threshold of the hatch. The pendant hung there, suspended by a spender golden chain. It cast a prismatic light, refracting brilliant colors from Kelli’s discarded flashlight.

“Watch carefully, Quintus, and believe. Open your mind.”

“What the hell is this?” Quint shouted.

Keats laughed. And suddenly Quint recognized the man. He no longer wore his long beard. His hair was short and neat. He wore glasses. But he would know that mad laugh anywhere. Myrddin. Lailoken. Or the last time Quint had spoken with him, he had taken the name of Grigori. Rasputin saw the recognition dawn on his face and laughed again, swinging the pendant in a gentle arc from side to side. “Just what I told you the first time, Quintus: it’s a kind of magic.”
Chapter Twenty: СвятейшийЧеловек
SpoilerShow

Pokrovskoye, Siberia
January 21, 1874



“It is an abomination that you ask of me. It defies God’s will. Pain is what defines us. What shapes us. It is what makes you strong. Arthur—“ Myrddin reached over and touched Quint’s arm, a gesture that made him jump slightly. He felt a chill pass through his arm and resisted the instinct to pull away. Myrddin was trying to help him.

The cold was such that he thought Myrddin must be mad for demanding that they speak while taking a walk outside instead of the boarding house Quint had found him in. But then, Myrddin had long been mad ever since Quint had found him, naked and screaming prayers to the moon in CaledonianForest. He was raving, throwing himself headlong into trees, and clawing at his own flesh with jagged fingernails in an attempt to end his own life, and giving glory to God at the marvel that he could not die. He called himself Lailoken in those days, and claimed to be a holy man, a healer, and a man blessed by God.

Quint had recognized Myrddin almost instantly. He still had the same untamed muddy bird’s nest of hair, full of mange and grease accumulated from weeks without bathing. His beard was stringy and split with negligence, clumped together with filth and frost. He looked exactly the same as when they’d parted ways, only Myrddin now wore modern woolen clothes under his furs. His head was covered with a squat blue hat of felt or dense wool that covered his ears. It was almost conical in shape, something Quint found a queer irony in considering who Myrddin had always claimed to be.

A rush of wind swept in from the north, carrying a chill that cut through their woolens like a razor. It took his breath. Quint had to close his eyes against the brutal freezing burn that the Siberian air brought with it. Myrddin seemed not to be affected by it; his mind was such that ignored the temporary discomfort of his corporeal form, and being immortal, to him everything was temporary. Quint knew that he could not truly freeze, any more than he would die of thirst in the desert, but he still felt these sensations acutely. Myrddin had always been an ascetic sort, wearing robes of coarse hair that chafed him terribly.

He did it at the urging of no religious or monastic order. Quint was horrified to see the levels of flagellation and mutilation that he had inflicted on himself. For years in his court, Quint could hear his tortured howls in his tower. He cut himself in the side with knives, drank poisons that sent him into bone-racking convulsions, and even threw himself from the tallest spires of the castle. But at no time did the madman appear to enjoy this self-imposed torture; it was simply his role, his duty. There was no pleasure in it. Quint had thought that Myrddin was testing the limits of his immortality, charting the physiology of “our kind,” as he put it. It made sense; over the years his escapades grew even more daring. At the last, he covered himself in oils and was about to burn himself had Quint not intervened, forbidding the lunatic to make further spectacle of himself.

Quint pointed onward, to the villagers walking the snowy streets of Pokrovskoye with bowed heads, each to their appointed tasks. “I carry the pain of thirty of their lifetimes. I have enough. Do you really think it’s God’s will that we continue this mad existence, Myrddin?”

“Call me Grigori, Arthur,” he said patiently. Together they walked across the frozen, hard-packed road, away from the town. Across this windswept tundra they could see for miles in all directions with little more to see than ice and scrub brush that somehow eked out a stranglehold existence on the nearly lifeless plain. “I have begun my new life here. That’s what you need, old friend. To use what you know now and make for yourself a better life. We have time enough all for redemption, Arthur. Even you. In time, the pain you feel will pass.”

“I can’t forget her face,” Quint wept, the tears stinging hot on his pale cheeks, “and every time I think of how peaceful, how accepting she looked as I took her life, the pain is worse. If you can’t help me, I know that I won’t be able to go on. I would rather that Marie hate me, to look at me with judging eyes that curse my very soul instead of with the love I saw there. I was never worthy of such love or trust.”

“You think little of your own worth,” said Grigori. “Your knights and I loved you, and would have ridden against the very gates of Hell, such was the trust we placed in you.”

“It was misplaced.”

“Then you insult their memories and me,” the madman snapped. He almost seemed on the verge of violence in that instant, the pupils of his eyes tiny black pinholes in the glaring light reflected up from the frozen white snow. But as quickly as the rage had come, he laughed a tittering mirthful laugh that went on too long and made him seem all the more insane. “But you have ever needed me to bolster your confidence. You can’t see your own strengths. Yet your humility is what makes you a great leader of men. It is why I served you as my liege.”

“Then serve me now,” Quint said, on the verge of dropping to his knees before the man and begging him outright for his aid. “You’ve said that you can perform miracles. Or magic. I don’t know whether I’ve ever truly believed that you can work magic, but if we are truly immortal, then I’ll take a chance and believe that magic is possible as well.”

Grigori dismissed Quint with an angry wave of his hand and started walking back to the village. Quint called after him, but the man did not slow.

“You don’t truly want what you’re asking for, Arthur. You don’t get to pick and choose the memories and experiences you keep with you. They are all part of God’s tapestry!”

“Rasputin!” Quint threw his coat away and drew his swords, making sure that Grigori heard them leave their sheaths.

The man stopped walking and turned his head a bit to speak over his shoulder. “What will you do, my lord Arthur? Stab me until I agree to cast a spell on you?”

Quint took a step forward, then halted with a hoarse curse. He flung his weapons into the tundra, falling to his knees in abject frustration. Rasputin sat beside him quietly while his friend gathered control of his wits, busying himself studying bits of stringy grass plucked from the soil.

“Shall I tell you my secret, Arthur? Would you like to know how to face eternity?”

Quint snorted, “You want to give me advice on how to stay sane?”

“You think me mad, yet ever have you come for my counsels. You come to me because I have a clarity of thought that you do not. You come to me because I’ve never lied to you. I’ve sworn to be loyal to you until the end, and to that oath I hold. That’s why I can’t help you with magic.”

“This is the last I’ll come for your help. And I’ll do anything you ask in return. I swear it. Just please, if there is any way you could drive Marie from my mind—“

Grigori removed his cap. His hair blew into his eyes and mouth, but he seemed not to notice. “You have this enormous gift, and you have done much with it. You’ve raised a nation, started wars, crafted legends in your name. You did this because you had a fire within you. You had desire. Your motivations are still unclear to me, whether it be glory to God or glory to yourself, I can’t say. But that time has passed, Arthur. Or Quint, or whatever you want to call yourself now. You’ve no fire, no inspiration. And now you stagnate, dwelling on your failures when you’ve accomplished so much. When you have so much more to accomplish. So I ask you, Arthur, friend, a simple question: what do you want?”

Quint was taken aback. “What do I want?”

“Yes,” Grigori nodded eagerly. “Your Marie is dead. What do you want? Revenge?”

“I have my revenge already. Now there’s nothing left for me.”

“Then what do you desire now? Power? To lead men as you once did? To help people? To acquire knowledge? What of the Prize? The time of The Gathering will soon be at hand, when the few of us who remain will battle to the last. What do you want?”

Quint knuckled his brow in consternation. “I don’t know! I’m tired of this game. I’m tired of being forced to kill because I’ve been told it’s in my nature to do so. Why? Who told me that? How do they know there’s any end to this? How do you know there’s a Prize? Why was I chosen? Why were you chosen? Who did the choosing? God? Do you think God chose us to slaughter each other for his amusement? I want to know these things, and those are the questions I can never find answers to.”

“Can’t you?” Grigori looked to the rising sun, stroking his chin thoughtfully. Finally he spoke again. “Before you found me, I was court bard to my lord. I watched him die on the battlefield, a victim of my cowardice and treachery. I saw such blood that day, it did indeed drive me mad. The horror of what I’d done, shame at what I’d not done, and the powerlessness I felt as I saw thousands fall drove me to fall upon my own sword. But I did not die.”

“One of God’s saints spoke to me as my heart grew still and quit. There on the plain between Liddel and Carwannok, surrounded by the dead and dying—all victims of my folly—I saw a luminous being clad in silver and white. He reached his hand down to me and bid me rise. And so I did. And there, Saint Kentigern judged me guilty of my sins. His punishment was just, the souls of the dead served as jury. He condemned me to wander the Earth forever to eternally seek absolution.”

“When the saint left, I roamed the forests keeping only the company of beasts. I felt unworthy to rejoin the company of Man, such was my shame. Shepherds recognized me, and they took me as a traitor, where I died deaths triple. They beat me with clubs and stones, drowned me in the river as a witch in league with the devil, and there was impaled with a stake.”

“When you came upon me, still dangling from a spike of wood, frozen in the water, you freed me despite my cries that I was unworthy of salvation. I confessed my sins to you then, and you freed me anyway. I realized then that even one so wretched as I can find forgiveness and kindness. Even one as wicked as I can do good in this world. You gave me this knowledge, a belief in God and a belief in myself. I believe that my immortality is a gift from God, who sees in me the potential to earn my place in Heaven through the Prize. I can better myself. And when I speak my advice to you, it is to better you. That is what I believe I am here to do.”

“Perhaps you can’t find the answers you seek. But it’s a worthy quest, don’t you think? It’s worthy of you, Arthur, that quest which many might think impossible. Like your quest for the Grail, or the Spear. You should go, and find your answers.”

Quint shook his head. “What good would they do? They won’t bring Marie back. They won’t erase my failures or my shame.”

“Neither can I,” added Rasputin. “I can only erase them from your mind, which you must realize is hardly the same thing.”

“It will do!” Quint cried. “Her voice speaks to me, and she’ll not be silent! I want her gone! She should be at rest, not trapped in my memory.”

Grigori shrieked in laughter. Quint looked at his former advisor in a mixture of horror and confusion, and when Grigori tried to meet his eyes, he was unable to hold his look and leapt to his feet. Soon Myrddin’s laughs were breathless, teary spasms so intense that he leaned forward with his hands on his knees until he’d recovered.

“Why are you laughing? You always claimed to be a mystic but I’ve never seen any proof of magic. Can you do it or can’t you? Why do you laugh?”

“So, we’re both mad now, eh?” Rasputin mocked. “Voices and torment? Little wonder you sought me out.”

Quint gathered up his swords and turned to leave. “This was a mistake. I knew you were a fraud.”

“You thought that 1,300 years ago too, when you asked for the exact same thing.”

Quint stopped. “What?” But Rasputin only smiled at him knowingly. “This is the first time I’ve ever asked you this.”

“Oh no, Arthur, it isn’t.”

Grigori Rasputin withdrew an object from his coat pocket, a small glimmering pendant from a thin golden chain that shone like fire and ice in the orange glow of the sunrise. “You came to me after a nightmare, begging me for a spell that would purge you of a painful memory. Knowing that you did not believe in magic but praying that you were wrong. And you were wrong, Arthur. I made the mistake of granting your wish that night, a mistake I’ll not repeat.”

Quint stared at the crystalline pendant, enraptured by the fiery rainbow of colors trapped within it. “What did I ask you to help me forget?”

Rasputin drew close to Quint, chuckling quietly. “I think you begin to see now why you were a fool to come here. You don’t want to know, but now that I’ve told you this, you have to know. And once I’ve told you…” he swung the pendant gently, a private smile crossing his lips. “…well, such are the frailties of the human mind. It’s time you forgot about me, now. It will save us both this embarrassment a third time.”

Quint swayed on his feet, as if held aloft by an invisible string connected to the top of his head. His voice was dreamy, and came from high in his throat. “Forget you?”

“Yes,” Rasputin nodded. “It saddens me to know that you will never remember how much I’ve helped you, but I’ll keep my end of the bargain. I will keep the memories you first asked me to remove buried. But your love for Marie, you will always remember. When I count to three, you will awaken and leave this place for America. I wish you luck on your new quest, Artorius Dexion, my liege. Perhaps later I’ll seek you out and help you to remember why your other quests were in vain. You should get a good laugh out of what happened to the Holy Grail and the Spear of Destiny, eh?”
Chapter Twenty One:Stitches
SpoilerShow
Rúla Búla Irish Pub & Restaurant
London, England
November 8, 2004 – 11:50 PM




Champley folded his coat over the back of the chair and sat with Donahl. The look on his face was irrepressibly smug, the smile of a cat toying with a dead mouse. He was about the last person Jack wanted to see, but the sight of crisscrossing black stitches covering two wide lacerations on his head put a smile on his face. It’s not often one gets to club his boss in the head with the butt of a pistol, and it still felt good.

“Hullo, Erik.”

“Hello, Jack,” Champley said. “Expecting somebody?”

“Not anymore.”

Champley gave out a brief chortle. “Well put. Come with me. There’s a car waiting for us outside. Time for us to take a ride. I’d rather not settle this publicly with so many witnesses, but if you try to run or make a scene rest assured that nobody will look too deeply into a wanted terrorist being killed with a sniper’s bullet to the head. In fact, I think your friend with MI-5 will rather enjoy the irony.”

“Just got my beer,” Donahl said icily. He lifted up the glass bottle to take a swig.

“Take it with you. Far be it from me to deprive a dead man of a last drink.”

Champley led him out the front door of the pub, where a sleek limousine sat waiting, a bulging gorilla of a man holding one of the rear doors open for the man. Erik climbed inside, but the bodyguard stopped Donahl with a hand to his chest before he could follow. He proceeded to pat Jack down for weapons from collar to ankle, caring little that he was doing it in the middle of the sidewalk. He removed the straight razor Jack kept in his pocket along with everything else he could find, including his money clip, wristwatch, cellular phone, and palmtop computer. Then he ushered Donahl into the car and sat next to him. Champley sat opposite him on the bench seat, his face shadowy and sunken in the weak yellow glow of the running lights in the back of the car.

As soon as the bodyguard shut the door, the car rolled forward and pulled into traffic. The streetlights washed through the tinted windows at regular intervals, casting everything in a sickly purple glow every few seconds. The bodyguard handed over Donahl’s possessions to Champley, who gave them hardly a glance and set them aside.

“Did you really think you’d lost us? We’re everywhere, Jack, and it wasn’t exactly hard to track Quint down after he decided to develop a death wish and attack the Three Dragons directly.”

Donahl sighed and took another sip of his beer.

“And you should have known better than to think the encryption on the Heimdall file could be broken. It would have taken them centuries to decrypt files classified three security levels lower than that.”

Jack quirked his eyebrows up knowingly, still taking a long pull of his drink.

Realization began to dawn on Champley’s face. He pulled his glasses off and folded them in his lap. “You knew that. Of course you knew that.”

“Of course I knew that. The file is useless to me. There’s no decryptin’ it. An’ no point in trying. Even if Oi did, what could I possibly find out that would save Quint? For a while I thought maybe yer story was a loada sh**e. Thought maybe if I cracked the file I’d find somethin’ that would clear everythin’ up. Make it safe for him. But there isn’t, is there?”

Erik shook his head. “Dexter Quint is a pariah among his own kind, Jack. If you knew what was in the file, you’d want him dead, too. But you’re right; it’s not important. Soon Quint will be dead and the Gathering will begin. It’s already begun. The word has spread: every Immortal in Europe is headed here, and more beyond. That’s how hungry they are for his blood, Jack. Even if he escaped here today, he can’t run forever. None of you can.”

Donahl nodded again. “He knows that. It’s all over, Erik. You’ve won. You’ll have your war.”

“Why the deception, then? Why come here and give the file to a man you knew had no chance at reading it? We’re going to recover the computer anyway as soon as he comes to your meeting. I still don’t understand why you involved him in this. You know what we’ll have to do with him.”

“Because I don’t think Harry will have much of a problem reading what I put on that hard drive.”

Erik Champley’s smile slipped. “What…” he smacked his lips, which had suddenly gone dry. “Jack, what have you done?”

“I just gave MI-5 my journal. My notes, videos, and all my records. I gave them names. I gave them the addresses of every Watcher enclave that I know. I may not know everything, Erik, but I know where the bodies are buried.”

“You know we have safeguards against that kind of thing,” Champley scoffed. “We can burn every hard drive on the premises at a moment’s notice. Everything is deniable. There’s nothing that ties me or the rest of the Council to anything incriminating.”

“There are two things, actually.” Donahl slowly reached over the seat to grab up his palmtop computer, across the lap of the poleaxed Watcher. “See, I made sure he had a copy of our little recording in Rockland.” With that, he touched the screen a few times until the little device started producing the sound of Champley’s voice.

“I was outvoted, Jack. I asked them not to have you terminated. The Watchers’ Council, I mean. I told them they could trust you, that you’d understand.”

Champley gave a nervous laugh, “That won’t hold up. Doesn’t prove anything. Everything we talked about in that office sounds like something out of a movie anyway. Nobody would take it seriously.”

“Oi thought so, too. Which is why my friend at MI-5—the one yeh just said you were going to kill—is listening to this entire conversation right now from the black sedan that’s right behind us.”

Champley started to shift in his seat, looking more and more like a caged animal. Donahl lifted one of the lapels of his coat to reveal a small dime-sized gray circle affixed to the fabric. “Wasnae t’always a Watcher, Erik. Oi’ve still got some friends from the old days.”

“You’re—you’re insane. You’re not gonna walk away from this, Jack. You’ll burn for this, too.”

“Wasn’t it Nietzsche who said ‘In Heaven all the interesting people are missing?’ Never liked to quote the son of a bitch but I bet he was a f***in’ laugh sometimes.” Donahl raised the bottle to his lips. “Cheers.”

Champley’s eyes drifted to the right, to the bodyguard seated next to Donahl. The old man was waiting for a signal like this: an imperceptible affirmative glance. Champley wasn’t going to wait any longer; he was getting froggy. He probably still figured he had the connections to disappear somewhere. Donahl could see the bodyguard’s hand slip into his jacket, and wasted no more time.

Jack turned his head and spit a mouthful of beer into his would-be killer’s eyes. The man dropped whatever it was he was holding, something slim and metal that clattered hollowly to the carpeted floor of the limousine. Champley backed up against the door, reaching into his jacket for his own weapon, but Donahl knew that he was no killer. Champley fumbled in his panic, and before his gun had come clear Donahl smashed the bottle across the side of his head, almost directly where he’d struck him with his pistol a week ago. The bottle split into a jagged, knifelike shard with a crude longneck handle.

The bodyguard was leaned over, groping blindly for his weapon. Jack took him by the scruff of his hair and raked the edge of the glass across his neck with one cruel twist. The big man gurgled, hands immediately seeking his neck. He looked up at Donahl in horror and sank into his seat, pressing his hands into his throat in an attempt to staunch the bleeding. Maybe he could, maybe not; Jack didn’t care.

“Stitch that, Jimmy.”

Champley moaned, his hands covering his eyes. Blood from his ripped stitches and the broken bottle ran slick down the side of his face. His gun lie forgotten between his legs. Jack crossed over to the other seat and took it.

“Tell your driver ta pull over and lie face down on the ground.”

“You hit me in the same place, you son of a—“

“I know. There’s just something about that face. Do it.”

The car slowed to a halt. Champley was breathing fast. Clearly the sight of the dying man in the other seat and his own pain had him terrified, and Jack had to use it while he could.

“Can you call this off?”

Champley turned to Donahl, eyes twitching around as if he were looking for escape. “What are you going to do to me?”

“The situation with Quint. The Watchers are helping Immortals find him, right?” Champley nodded. “Can you call it off? Remove this death mark you’ve placed on him?”

“I don’t know!” Champley pleaded. “I…I can try. I can make some phone calls, but our secrecy is compromised. How will we—“

“Do it! You hypocritical little sh**e. You’ve ruined us. You and the rest of the Council broke our cardinal law. If it’s the last thing I do I’ll see every Watcher who was involved in this punished, Erik. The Watchers are going to be rebuilt without you.”

Champley retrieved his phone and started dialing, but something prevented him from pushing the final button to connect his call. He looked fearfully at Donahl. “Jack, even if I do this, it’s too late. Artorius Dexion and Rasputin have already gone to confront him—“

“What?” Donahl gaped at him in confusion. “What are you talking about?”

“Rasputin found him, Jack. Found Quint’s son.”

“That’s not possible. It can’t be possible.”

“Firstborn sons of the time took the same name as their fathers. Maybe he’s a bastard son. Maybe Rasputin got in his head. I don’t know. But as we speak they’re on their way to kill Quint and the girl with him. To them, this is personal on a level few of us will ever understand.”

Donahl almost kicked the door open and backed out into the sidewalk. Harry Whitehall kneeled over the driver, handcuffing his arms behind his back. He looked to Jack, who nodded anxiously towards the car. “Take him in for me, will yeh? I have to go.”

Whitehall stood up, calling after him, “Jack!”

But he was already climbing into Harry’s car. “You know I’m as good as my word, Harry.”

Champley staggered out of the car and onto the sidewalk, blood trailing onto the sidewalk from his forehead. “They’re going to kill him, Jack! You can’t stop it! They know everything. Who do you think gave us the files on Quint in the first place?”

Donahl sped off into the London night in his commandeered vehicle. Harry Whitehall slapped a pair of handcuffs on Champley with a prolonged sigh. “Now that Irish bastard has stolen my car. Again.”

“He hit me!”

“Shut up. Wanker.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: PARIAH
SpoilerShow
Golgotha, near Jerusalem
33 AD
Sunrise


The orange twilight flared blindingly up from beneath the hill of Golgotha, making the soil and everything on it look black and surrounded by fiery halos that burned the eyes with their terrible majesty. The light caught the ends of the Roman guardsmens’ spears as they stood sentry, flashing with each subtle shift in their weight and movement in their arms. A few of them, particularly a vulture-necked armsman named Gallus amused themselves by angling the points of their weapons so that the light shone into the eyes of the mourning crowd that had gathered around the hill.

Beneath his armor, Gallus was a stick-armed skeletal bird of a man, with a high-throated laugh that made Dexion want to rip out his lungs. He was making that laugh now, a nasal hyena laugh that cut through the heavy, dusty air as he tormented the mourners. His friends amused themselves thusly for a time, but soon grew bored of such childishness. Gallus never failed to see the humor in it, though, and continued for an hour after the others had stopped. Dexion knew this, even though he could not see Gallus, because of that damnable laugh.

Finally Cassius had had enough. He turned to Dexion, his teeth set with annoyance that bordered on impending violence. “Let us quit this place, Quintus. I hate this place. I hate Jerusalem, I hate these grimy beggars, I hate this heat, and I tell you I hate that man most of all.”

“Don’t whine, Gaius. It’s good that we see this.”

Cassius tore his helmet off and mopped his brow with his forearm. “This? Crucifixions? I’ve seen them, Quintus. All the time. It’s boring, and this armor…” Gaius Cassius complained as he fussed with the straps, “…it’s beneath me. It’s beneath you. We could be living as princes, but instead you insist on sweating your immortality away in this wasteland like some rat because—why, you think it builds character to toil like a plebe?”

“You can leave any time you want. I’ve no hold over you.”

Cassius spat into the dust and worked his helmet back down over his sweaty head. “Maybe I shall.”

They stood their post in silence for a time. Cassius did little but observe their long, pointed shadows shorten as the sun began to rise over the hill. Dexion watched the crowd of spectators gather as the morning grew. Most watched silently, their faces sullen or angry at their powerlessness and the injustice of the executions they could only see through a haze of wind-blown dust atop the hill. Quintus could see one woman in particular, near-hysterical in her grief as she circled the crowd, looking uselessly for a place to get through their perimeter. She tried begging each man in the line, but they could no more let her pass than they could every other mourner.

Cassius sighed, “Why are we really here? If you tell me what I’m meant to see, I’ll look, but I cannot think you asked me to come so urgently so that we could watch a crowd of Jews all day.”

Dexion shrugged and pointed carelessly into the crowd. “Ask them why they’re here. It matters a great deal to them. You should take an interest into matters such as this instead of indulging yourself as time passes unnoticed outside your ivory tower.”

“Ahh,” Cassius breathed, “you’re teaching me the way of things now?”

“Is such a thing beneath you?”

Cassius laughed, “Quintus, don’t be so bitter.” Something drew his attention and he nudged Dexion’s shoulder. “Quintus, look.”

Dexion looked into the crowd to see a tall, haggard man with a slight but tough build shoulder his way through the crowd. Dexion crossed his spear in front of his chest and held the man at bay. “Stay back,” he commanded.

“Please,” the man said, “my name is Simon. You spoke to me earlier on the road to the hill this morning. You told me to help him carry the cross and—“

“I remember. Step back.”

“On the other side of the hill,” Simon insisted, “one of the Romans has allowed some men through to the top of the hill. They throw stones and spit on the men on the crosses. Please, will you not stop them?”

Dexion looked up at the hill and swore under his breath. So Gallus had found some other way to be cruel after all. Simon caught his arm. “Sir, would you lay these things at his feet?” He thrust a small cloth-wrapped bundle that smelled of flowers and incense into Dexion’s hands. “We would honor our lord but we cannot get any closer than here.”

Dexion looked and saw that there were indeed flowers and small treasures collected there. He saw the glimmer of gold and silver, and heard the clack of wood within. Simon placed a great deal of trust in him not to simply steal these things, as little as it all might be worth. But Dexion nodded to him and carried the bundle under his arm. He ran up the hill, urging Cassius to follow. Simon had spoken the truth; there Gallus sat on a rough stone making much sport of three men hurling rocks and spittle at the men suffering on the wooden crucifixes. None of them offered more than low, breathless moans of misery, even as the stones cut into their flesh and drew fresh blood. One struck a condemned thief in the head, making a wet, ugly sound. The man didn’t move and might already have been dead.

“See now,” called their leader, a swarthy Roman called, probably an off-duty soldier, “do you think I can :):):):) on that one up there from here?”

Gallus shrieked in mirth, “I’ll wager half a dinari you can’t get it in his mouth.”

“Impossible,” joined a third, “but try anyway!”

Dexion clubbed him in the head with the shaft of his spear. “If any man here tries I’ll cut off your manhood and shove it down your throat. Begone! All of you.”

They backed down the hill and departed, one looking scornfully at Dexion while covering a swollen eye. Gallus leapt off his seat, his fun ruined. “What does it matter, Dexion? Longinus? He’s soon dead.”

“And how would you feel were you in his place?”

“Ah, but I’m not, am I?” Gallus grinned. “But I’ll play, Dexion. Intense pain? Stupidity? Embarassment? Why, I’d be outraged! I’m the king of the Jews! I’d take him down from that cross right now if he would but command me. Oh, but I forgot,” Gallus pointed up to the man hanging in the center, his body decorated with seeping wounds and a crooked crown of thorns kicked into his eyes, “he could call on his God to pull him from there. Or perhaps he could call on God to strike me down with lightning from Heaven for my impertinence!”

The man on the cross groaned feverishly. Gallus jumped in surprise, his face flushing with embarrassment. “Some king he’ll look by the end when he chokes to death on his own blood and he sh**s himself. Dexion, if you care so much, break his legs so he can’t pull himself up. You’ll spare him hours.”

Dexion scowled as the soldier somehow found humor in the prospect. “Go to your post, Gallus.”

Gallus rolled his eyes, “This bores me anyway.” He headed back to the perimeter in a pout.

Now that they were again alone, Cassius urgently shook Dexion’s arm. “Quintus, up there. This man being crucified, Jesus of Nazareth. He’s one of us.”

Dexion nodded. Somehow he knew the bare few mortals who had the unkindled spark of immortality in them. He didn’t know how it was possible, or what it was about such people that betrayed the secret, but it plain to see who among them who was an Immortal. Or who could become Immortal.

“No,” Quintus frowned, “he’s not.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I mean that he’s not one of us. And he’s not going to be.”

Cassius’ confusion was plain. “What?” Then realization dawned on him, and his face grew bright again. “Ah, I see. You think that if he dies on the cross as he is, he won’t rise again. Rather ingenious thinking, Quintus. I’m impressed. Crucifixion is slow—very slow, and painful, hardly the sudden end needed to fan the flame within us. So what do you want to do?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? But he’ll die.”

“Yes.”

“Then why are we here?”

“Because this is the way he wants to die: a martyr. I made him a promise not to interfere.”

“Don’t talk nonsense, Quintus,” said Cassius, “I’d no more let this man die than I’d have killed you where I found you. Such a waste of potential.”

Quintus raised his hands defensively. “It isn’t what he wants. It’s not my place-“

“He doesn’t know what he wants. All of us are chosen to lead and to struggle. It’s our destiny, and you would deny him that? I’ve heard of this Jesus, Quintus. I’m not entirely clueless. Look at those people,” he gestured to the gathered masses far beneath them, “we could give them their savior back. A man who dies for his people and returns from the grave to lead them again? Think of the power he could wield. They believe in him already, and to witness such a miracle, they’d think him a god on Earth!”

Cassius looked dizzy imagining the possibilities, “If they knew the truth about you or I, they’d destroy us. But him? Him they’d worship. We could be a part of that.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Quintus shrugged, opening the bundle given to him by Simon and arranging the objects he found within at the bottom of the cross. “But it’s not our choice to make.”

Quintus withdrew a smothered handful of wildflowers from the cloth and did his best to make them look presentable before laying them down in the bloody dust. He took out the last item, a crude wooden cup, nicked and scratched from long use. He thought it a strange thing to lay at the feet of a dying man, and found himself examining it closely. He turned it in his hands.

Something hot landed across his arm and the back of his hands. He looked and saw that his hand was covered in blood. More fell onto his hands and into the cup he carried, and he dropped it in surprise. He looked up to see Gaius Cassius Longinus wrenching his spear from between the ribs of the crucified man, the sun over his shoulder making him look mountainous and black, and the blood falling from the point of his spear glistened like dark rubies. The man on the cross, Jesus, made no sound except perhaps the imperceptible escape of his breath between lips sticky with blood.

“What you don’t understand, Quintus, is that it is our choice. We are gods among insects, answerable only to ourselves and to the steel of our enemies. We are no common people.”

Dexion fell back in horror, then scrambled to his feet and tore the spear from Cassius’ grasp. “What have you done? I made a promise!”

“Giving this king a chance to rule. Waste not.”

“I gave him my word of honor, Gaius. We are finished, you and I. You’ll have my protection no longer. When next we meet, I hope you’ll have learned to defend yourself.”

Cassius laughed, but only momentarily. “You’re serious.”

Dexion turned his back to the Immortal and signaled to some of the other men to come hence. “Good-bye, Gaius.”

*****

Together the two men stood at the bank of the river, and Dexion felt fearful despite knowing that the man he was looking at was unarmed. He had eyes that held power and a smile that could put joy into the hardest hearts. Seeing him here in the moonlight, he understood why people followed Jesus of Nazareth with but a gesture. He didn’t believe in Jesus’ god, but even he thought that he would follow if Jesus asked him, simply to be near his radiance. There was something right about being near him.

“I tried to find you, to explain,” said Quintus, “but the tomb was guarded. When I next came to look, the tomb had been unsealed and you had gone. I didn’t know what to think.”

“I heard you speaking, you and your friend. And for a time I was afraid. I doubted. And when I rose again, I thought perhaps…I thought…” but he trailed off, looking sadly towards the flowing water. “I have tried living your life here on Earth, but the temptation is over. I will be immortal, but not as you are. I ask you now to keep your word to me and make my message truly eternal.”

“I don’t know if I can.”

Jesus laid a comforting hand on his shoulder, and together they walked into the cool waters where he knelt. The water circled around his chest, and he bowed his head. “It is fitting that it ends here, where it began in this beautiful river. Don’t you think?”

Quintus unsheathed his blades.
Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn! Ph'nglui mglw'nfah Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl muh'fugen bix nood

Whenever you feel down :3
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VoiceOfReasonPast
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Re: Spoony the Pussy One: Life is in the Render Queue

Post by VoiceOfReasonPast » Wed Jul 21, 2021 4:21 pm

Newhalf wrote:
Wed Jul 21, 2021 9:19 am
"Iron will"
Can't even take a walk around the block without tripping and having a nervous breakdown.
It's the thought that counts.
Newhalf wrote:
Wed Jul 21, 2021 12:42 pm
Love this bit from the Spoony story on women's restrooms
This was really an ominous warning of things to come. It's like in Current Year if one of his remaining braincells hits the inner wall of his skull and he starts having these long-winded hobo ramblings which he probably thinks are deep and unprecedented in their ingenuity.
Autism attracts more autism. Sooner or later, an internet nobody will attract the exact kind of fans - and detractors - he deserves.
-Yours Truly

4 wikia: static -> vignette

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Re: Spoony the Pussy One: Life is in the Render Queue

Post by wulfenlord » Wed Jul 21, 2021 4:32 pm

Oh boy, we did it. Now all we need to is agree on a cast and we can film the Spoony movie ourselves :lol:

Chapter Twenty Three: Ascension
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Kensal Green Cemetery
London, England
November 8, 2004 – 2:20 AM


“And now you die, Quintus. Oh yes. Now you die.”
“They’re in here with us, killer.”
“But not for long, oh no.”
“Coward. Liar. Murderer. Heretic.”

Quint tore his eyes away from the talisman, released from whatever spell Myrddin—Rasputin—had held him with. He knelt down and covered Kelli with his jacket to keep the rain off of her, but it was pointless. She already lay in water and blood, eyes sightlessly gazing at some distant point in the sky. He closed them as he pulled the jacket over her face.

“You involved her in this, Arthur,” Myrddin called from the square hatch of the sepulcher. “No different from a soldier in your war. No different from the thousands of men who followed you to their deaths in the past. If it makes you feel better, she died in service of your cause. There is honor in that.”

“Honor. You shot an unarmed woman in the back.”

“You cut a crippled woman’s head off. Do I win?”

Quint gathered his swords. “You’ve got the gun. Looks that way.”

Rasputin glanced at his hand, as if he’d forgotten that he held a pistol. “Oh! This. I’m not going to shoot you, Quintus. That’s the last thing I want to do. Come up with me. There are some people here who would very much like to speak with you.”

Quint could feel them. Two others, awaiting him atop the tomb. He recognized one of them, and suddenly things made much more sense to him. He stood on a trunk to reach the lip of the hatchway, and as he climbed, he realized that he’d carelessly stepped over Kelli’s body. I’ve stepped over bodies my whole life. Even when I try to set things right it seems I can’t win, and people like her suffer. Is there any use in denying my purpose? Is killing all I’m meant to do?

Hands grasped his wrists and helped him outside. Quint didn’t bother struggling. If they wanted him dead they’d had him trapped in a stone tomb with a gun trained on him. No, all of this, everything that had happened was about more than simple murder. It was about delivering a message hundreds of years in the saying.

Quint backed away from the three Immortals standing around him to avoid being surrounded. They made no moves for their weapons, even as he put his in hand. Rasputin stood between two men, wearing a soaked-through fur coat—probably a designer creation and incredibly expensive, but now ruined—over a tailored suit. The others he heard better than he could see. The pouring rain made loud sounds against their jackets. The only light came from the shrouded moon and the distant lamp posts spread irregularly through the cemetery, shining off their bodies wetly as if they’d been dipped in molten silver.

“Ave, Dexion.” The man on the right clapped his fist across his chest and saluted him in the old Roman style. He would know that voice anywhere.

“You look exactly as I remember,” said the other, stepping forward. He also gave a salute, and as he did so, Quint could see the weapons the man wore under his long leather coat: two gladii slung alongside his legs, much as Quint had done when he still wore his blades openly. The man stopped a short distance from him and folded his hands. “But of course you don’t recognize me. My name is Artorius Dexion.”

“But I’ve taken to calling him Mordred. A sort of ‘life-imitates-art’ gesture,” said Rasputin.

Quint started to laugh at the absurdity of it but found the spirit lacking. The man before him looked older than he did, but Quint of all people knew how little that meant to an Immortal, whose faces stayed frozen in an ageless lie, their bodies arrested at one point in time forevermore. He had a son once, or thought he had. But since his death at the hands of Caesar at Pelusium, Quint had never fathered another child and had heard that such things were impossible for all Immortals. They were not meant to produce offspring, something Quint thought was fitting and right. But Quint wondered if it had always been so, before he’d been cursed. When his life was simpler.

Quint looked to Rasputin, whose eyes were masked behind the glare of his spectacles. “What have you told him, Myrddin? It’s a lie. It’s not possible.”

Rasputin tittered with laughter. “I have never lied to you, Quintus. Your wife, on the other hand, was never honest with you at all. She admitted as much to dear Cassius in the last moments of her adulterous life.”

Cassius shook his head, “When you mentioned having a son, I couldn’t bear to tell you. But neither could I let such a grave hurt to my friend go unavenged. Oh, don’t look at me like that, Quint,” he paced towards him, shouting over the rain, “At the time you would have done the exact same thing to an unfaithful wife.”

Quint turned back at the man who called himself Artorius Dexion. “Even if this is true, I was never…if this is about revenge for my not being there—“

“What? No!” Mordred laughed, looking at Quint as if he were being ridiculous. “You did what you felt was right. And I think it was the right thing to do. What else could you have done, return home as if nothing were wrong? Explain this extraordinary thing that happened to you when none of us understood? I came to terms with the death of my parents a long time ago. Mother and, well, and you. Cassius and Grigori told me everything in time. Really, father. Quint. Whatever you think I should call you. I don’t think you need your swords here tonight.” Mordred motioned calmly for him to lower his weapons.

“I don’t understand any of this!” Quint cried. “There are people following me, hounding my every step. I’m hunted everywhere I go, and it’s all because of you three, isn’t it? I have nowhere to go that’s safe anymore. You’ve killed my friend. You—“ Quint choked back his own tears. “Am I being punished for what I’ve done in the past? Am I supposed to learn something out of all this?”

Rasputin considered, “Have you?”

“Have I—“

“What you take away from this experience is what’s important,” Rasputin said.

“Why are you doing this to me?” shouted Quint.

Rasputin and Cassius looked hurt at the accusation. They looked at each other, until Grigori spoke with a somber tone, “I’m sworn to fealty to you, something which I’ve taken very seriously. We’re not ‘doing’ anything to you, Quintus. We’re trying to help you.”

“Help me.” Quint was incredulous.

“Yes, help you. Look at what you did to the Dragons in Japan, Quintus. Do you remember that? You emerged from there blazing with power, still drunk with it. Dizzy from the quickenings of your enemies. Why did you go there? Hm?”

“I…” Quint tried to explain properly, “I didn’t want to run anymore.”

“You did there to do murder,” Cassius grinned. “Brutal, terrible murder to everyone in that building.”

“Just like you’d done when you’d first met me,” Rasputin joined in, “You were a king in those days! You crushed the Saxons, and together we rode—“

“It was butchery!”

“It was glorious!” Rasputin screamed over him. “And what changed? You! What was it, guilt? I took your guilt from you, and you found more. Was it your precious Marie that turned a conqueror into a worm?”

“Damn you, Myrddin, for even breathing her name to anyone. You were the only one I spoke her true name to, weren’t you?”

“I did what I had to do to awaken what was sleeping within you for so long,” Rasputin growled.

“I don’t think you ever understood what we’re meant for on this Earth,” said Cassius. “Understand this, Quint: you’re not human anymore. I don’t know how you’ve gone for so long still feeling so much for people whose lives are so short. You’re older than most of the trees they’ve ever seen. Doesn’t that change your perspective at all?”

Mordred approached Quint with open hands. “We needed the real you. The king. The man you’ve spent centuries denying.”

“Stay back,” warned Quint, raising his sword.

“And you’ve done so well,” Rasputin said soothingly, “Calm yourself. You’ve proven that you still have the spirit, the drive, the skill to become the conqueror you once were! That’s why we’re here, Quintus. We are here to join you.”

Thunder rolled overhead, accompanied with a rapid series of lightning flashes. Quint stared at them, horrified into muteness. He looked between them, wondering at once who among the four of them on this tomb had gone the most insane.

“I never asked you to do any of this,” Quint said at last.

“Of course not,” Mordred smiled, “But the three of us are in complete agreement. We love you, all three of us, as comrade, friend, and father. If there’s one thing in this world you can count on anymore, it’s that we would die for you in the days to come. The Gathering—“

“Forget the Gathering!” Quint roared. “It’s all bulls**t, isn’t it? All of it! More of your lies, Rasputin? There’s no way you could possibly know any of this, no matter who I might have killed.”

“You are the Gathering,” Rasputin declared. “You’re tired of all this. We’re all tired. Whether they believe or not the stories I’ve told them, they will come for you. You offer a hope that there is an end. A light at the end of the tunnel. I know this because I believe in our purpose. I believe in God, and I believe in you. You were chosen to assume the power of our Lord within you, and take it with you to victory.”

“I suppose you know what the Prize is, as well.”

“No,” Myrddin scowled, “But have you ever considered that the Prize will only be won by the fittest warrior among us? Have you ever asked yourself why? God has some purpose for that last warrior—the best warrior. Some task, some enemy beyond what we can conceive, that only the One can defeat. You, Quintus, are that man. Let us help you. Cassius and I, and Mordred, are willing to accept that we are not destined to survive this. But we will fight this war against all the assembled Immortals together.”

“You have the power to influence nations,” Cassius said, pointing down into the tomb. “You have the spear that I used to take Christ’s life. You have the cup that caught his blood. Think of the power of those symbols in your hands. We could cast off the veil of secrecy that we hide behind and rule openly as we were meant to.”

“You mean, I could rule.”

Cassius blinked in confusion. “What?”

“I could rule. Not we.” Quint quirked his eyebrow at Cassius, who gaped at him in surprise.

“Yes, of course,” he said. “I was—“

Quint held up a hand to silence him. “It’s all right. I just have one question: what happens if I refuse?”

It was Mordred who spoke now, his voice low and laced with intent. “Then you are not the man I hoped you were, and I’ll happily take your place.”

Quint saw both men circle around to flank him, hands moving to rest on the grips of their swords. “Don’t be such a fool that you don’t recognize when you’ve won,” Cassius said, his last attempt to sway the situation. “Your only chance at the Prize is with us. Even if you killed us all, you’ll never be able to stand alone against the others. Not all of them.”

Quint spun his swords around in his hands, letting a gallows smirk cross his lips, “John Keats once said ‘I never can feel certain of any truth, but from a clear perception of its beauty.’ I’ve never been a poet. I have no doubt that you meant everything you said. It’s probably true. But inside you’re the ugliest people I’ve ever seen. I’d rather die than become one of you.”

Rasputin nodded in understanding. “So be it.” He raised his pistol and fired. Quint made a move towards Cassius, but the bullet tore through his side. His left leg collapsed beneath him, and he fell, dropping one of his swords to clutch a hand protectively against the wound. He lurched back up to try and stand, but Cassius had long since moved away. Quint felt another shot shatter his kneecap, heard himself screaming as Mordred kicked away the arm that was holding him up.

He groaned as he fell to his back. Rainwater filled his mouth. Blood surged up from his throat, giving the water a coppery, thick taste. Hands gripped his arms and hauled him to his knees. His ribs howled in protest, and he felt muscle shred and pull against the broken bullet inside him. Mordred lifted his chin up to look at Rasputin, who knelt down with his gun across his knee, still smoking. The smell of cordite stung through the night air, steaming off the barrel of his gun.

“Hardly the storybook ending I’d written for you, Quintus,” Myrddin told him sadly, “I hope you realize that I do this out of mercy.”

The voices of the Others rejoiced deep within him, their wish finally fulfilled. One voice rose above the others, quieter by far. Calmer. But he heard it. Focused on it. It was a soothing voice, one that made Quint wonder why he ever tried to block it out. “How short is the longest life . . . I wish to live with you forever.”

Quint laughed, as much as his ravaged body allowed. He decided to break his own rule; he spoke back to the voice. “Forgive me.”

“Come home. It’s time to rest. Have faith. I can still help you.”

Quint smiled up at Mordred, finally at peace. He bowed his head, closed his eyes, and felt no pain when the end came. His son had made it clean.
Chapter Twenty-Four: Where Airy Voices Lead
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Bellarmine Hall Dormitory, Seattle University
Seattle, Washington
August 18, 2002 – 8:30 AM


Kelli closed the gate behind her and could hear Stace sigh. She knew why, and when she turned around to look at her car, Kelli couldn’t help but do it too. Her car was overloaded with all of the crap she’d collected over the course of 20 years, including the couch she’d basically stolen when she moved out of mom’s apartment. It was almost bigger than her piece-of-sh*t Pacer, pendulously balanced atop the car’s roof and held there with nylon rope, ten yards of that bungee cord stuff with hooks on the end, and her prayers. Covered with a scavenged blue tarpaulin, it looked like some great plastic parasite come from space to siphon the gasoline out of their puny Earth cars. Either that or it was humping her car from behind. Either way, she thought she’d better take it down.

“Jesus,” Stace breathed, pulling a stocking cap on over her frazzled hair. She plucked at the tangle of bungee cords, looking for a weakness to this modern Gordian knot. “Where do we even start?”

“I got it.” Kelli dove in through the back window and turned to her back, legs jutting awkwardly outside. She started undoing the knots, trying not to worry about the next phase of this plan: getting the calico monstrosity up to the second floor. There were no boys around to help this time, so she decided that if she and Stace couldn’t do it, they’d leave it on the sidewalk—establish a beachhead in front of the dorm until some passing dudes saw them in distress.

“Um, it’s moving! It’s uh…capsizing?”

“Doesn’t matter, this car is a piece of anyway. The couch too.”

Stace tried to wrestle the couch down onto the asphalt without crushing herself. She was pretty cool about helping her move into the dorm, but she wore false nails that made her almost useless when it came to heavy lifting. Watching her try to set down a couch using only the palms of her hands was like watching a magician spin plates. Kelli decided to bail out of the car and rescue her. Her hands were already cut up from loading the stuff into the car anyway.

“This is never going to fit in the room,” Stace said doubtfully. “Have you seen it?”

“Small?”

“Ever been to Japan?”

“Let’s just take it through the gate. Maybe I can sell it or something.”

It wasn’t as hard to move as Kelli thought, although she nearly dropped it laughing at the sight of Stace turning purple, straining and grunting like she was having contractions. Kelli went to get her key while Stace recovered from the ordeal and got something to drink. When she returned, Stace knuckled the kinks out of the small of her back and gathered up a garbage bag full of clothes from the trunk.

“You okay?”

“Yeah!” Stace nodded. She looked confused that Kelli hadn’t even broken a sweat. “You?”

“Yeah, no problem. Used to play soccer, and whenever we lost a game we had to run laps. Turns out I’m a sh*t soccer player but I’ve run so many laps I can probably destroy Thighmasters.”

Stace laughed, “I’ll be sure to mention that to anyone who asks. I think you’ll be popular around here.”

Kelli got her television from the back seat and together she and her new acquaintance plodded heavily up the stairs to the second floor of rooms. She could see that Stace was right; the doors to her right were spaced almost within a yard of each other. There was no way that the couch would have even fit through the door. It was about the size of her closet’s door. She jimmied the door open by leaning against it and working the key in the lock with the television wedged under her arm and propped against the jam. She held it open by using the TV as a doorstop and went back down to the car for another load.

Stace was feeling daring; she took two garbage bags this time. “What’s your major?”

“I don’t know. I don’t have one yet. I just started here.”

“Yeah, me too.”

“I’ll probably go into engineering like my dad.”

Stace crinkled her nose. “Engineering? What kind?”

“Yeah. City planning. It’s…”

“You don’t sound very fired up about it.”

“I’m not, but I’m good at it, you know? I’m good at math. I mean my mom was a teacher, and I guess I could do that, but I hate getting up in front of people.” Kelli set down her bags and paused to take a look around the dorm room. The air smelled slightly moldy, tinged with the scent of freshly-dried paint. She resolved to be organized, to develop an orderly system of unpacking and cleaning in defiance of every law of college life but knew deep down that the room would never again look as clean as it did now.

“Well come on,” Stace insisted, “this is college. I mean, you can do like, anything you want now.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“So what do you want to do?”

“Nothing. I don’t know.” Kelli frowned, having already had this conversation with herself several times. “I’m only here because I’ve been told all my life that I should be here. You know, all those career advisors that came down to our junior high and high schools that basically told you that without a college degree, you’d be flipping burgers for the rest of your life? They f***ing jackhammer that sh*t into your skull until even I think that without a degree I’ll be condemned to a life of sewing wallets in some Bangkok gulag and b***ing coal miners on weekends to make rent.”

Stace grinned, “I remember those drug resistance programs, when cops would come to us in the sixth grade all the time. They’d bring kids up and put on like, the worst mini-dramas with fake prop drugs? Thanks to three years of that I’ve been well and truly indoctrinated in how to say ‘no’ to erasers and sticks of chalk.”

“I remember once when the policeman brought his dog into the class and it went straight to Mrs. Marconi’s desk and started barking. Best homeroom ever.”

They unloaded her car and did little more than throw the sacks through the door before going back to Stace’s room and doing everything the cops spent three years of homeroom visits teaching them not to do.

“Nobody’s happy with what they do,” mumbled Kelli over a joint. “Unless you’re lucky enough to get discovered by an agent or something. I mean, would I like to be a major movie actress? Sure, but that’s the kind of one-in-a-million, more-likely-to-get-struck-by-lightning jobs that you have to be realistic about, and know it’s never going to happen. It’s all about paying billth. Everything that people really want to do isn’t worth getting paid for.” Kelli reconsidered. “Unless you really like to s****, then you’ve probably found an easy niche in the porn industry.”

Stace lounged on a beanbag chair, looking baked out of her skull. “I want to take care of animals. I always wanted to be a vet. I could be happy doing that.”

“Sure, it seems cute now until someone brings their roadkilled cat into your office and you gotta give Fluffy mouth-to-mouth or something.”

“Gross!”

“I think I want to be a trucker.” Kelli said at last.

Even Stace brought herself out of her stoned, slouching reverie. She brought herself up on her elbow and looked at her like Kelli was insane. “A trucker?”

Kelli exhaled a thin column of smoke. “Sure. I like to drive. I like to travel. I hate people. Love eating out. And from what I hear the pay’s not bad.”

“,” Stacy marveled, “You don’t need a college degree to do that. Are you serious?”

“Yeah. No…” Kelli shook her head. “I don’t know. I’m just full of it. I need to get a job pretty quick to pay for my room, and it’ll probably be flipping burgers or jockeying some counter at a record store.”

“You’re not full of it,” Stace said, rolling onto her back. “But you should think about it. Gotta follow your bliss, as my mom always said. Right?”

Kelli didn’t speak, instead staring into the smoldering end of her joint for a while. She reached for the ashtray on the floor between them and crushed the end into the ceramic. “Everybody’s the hero of their own story,” she said. “But I look at my own story, and I don’t like what I see. It’s a boring story, with a boring hero. If I was watching it on screen I’d want my money back.”

Stace got up and pulled Kelli to her feet. “Come on. Enough of that stuff for you. We need to get out, meet some guys, have some drinks, go dancing. See if we can do something about boring old Kelli and get you some inspiration.”

Kelli let herself be pulled along. “I guess you can’t get hit by lightning if you don’t go outside.”
Chapter Twenty Five: Daylight
SpoilerShow
Kensal Green Cemetery
London, England
November 8, 2004 – 2:28 AM


The air grew dry in an instant. Like a valve had been turned, the rain stopped, plunging the area into a sudden crushing silence, broken only by the dripping of water from the edge of the tomb onto the grass below. Somewhere an owl hooted a question to the night and took wing away from the cemetery as fast as it could fly. And there, over the body of Quintus Artorius Dexion, three men waited.

Mordred knelt and laid a hand on his father’s back, head bowed in reverence. He closed his eyes, mumbling a prayer beseeching God for the strength to carry the power soon-to-be bestowed upon him with dignity and honor. He prayed that Dexion would find an end to his pain at last. He raised his face to the sky and opened his mouth, tasting the charged air on his tongue. He waited.

But nothing came. Cassius and Rasputin glanced at each other. “Be patient. He was old, and took many heads in his day. The power within him was considerable. No doubt the quickening will be the most profound you’ve ever experienced.”

“No…” Mordred breathed, drawing himself up to his feet, still looking up at the sky. Something felt foul, a sickness in his belly, a sting in his marrow. “Something is wrong. Can you feel it?”

Cassius opened his mouth to speak, but soon realized that he could feel something. A tremor, resounding through the stone beneath their feet. It was gentle, just tickling their bones. But it grew. They could hear more birds take flight. Dried leaves rustled on the ground. Pebbles dropped from their resting places and tumbled quietly down small inclines all around them.

“Cassius?” Mordred looked frightened. At once he felt trapped, as an ant pinned beneath the savage whim of a child with a magnifying glass. “Cassius, what’s happening?”

“It’s coming!” shouted Rasputin with mad glee. “Prepare your soul!”

“No,” Cassius said, backing away. The tremors made their knees ache. A headstone toppled noisily to the ground somewhere in the distance. “No! We…what have we done? We should never have done this on holy ground.”

“Don’t be a coward! It’s only superstition!” Rasputin yelled over the sounds of the earth.

Mordred started walking toward his companions, when the tremors surged. All three fell back, their knees buckling as the earth leapt. The stone split beneath Mordred’s feet, and his foot became wedged, then crushed beneath two planes of rock. He screamed, unable to free himself. Cassius tried to help, but it was no use without cutting his foot off. He looked at Mordred, asking the question with his eyes.

“No, don’t!” Mordred pleaded. “There has to be another way. What’s happening?”

Thunder clapped so hard that the sound of it threw them all to the ground. Rasputin fell from the tomb entirely, and disappeared from sight. Cassius blinked uncertainly, his vision blurred and split. He touched his ear and felt blood trickling down his face. Mordred was speaking, but Cassius was unable to make out the words.

A wave of heat came up from the tomb, a sulfurous, disgusting pain that scalded them just to be near it. Cassius saw that Mordred had started to glow a hazy silver-blue. Energy and heat made them sweat, their teeth ached. Cassius looked up to see the sky was black, the storm clouds laced red with hellish fury.

“Help me, please!”

Cassius tried to run, but the tremors were such that he couldn’t get his feet beneath him. Instead he crawled, finding himself unable to breathe the toxic, scalding air. A column of lightning fell from the sky, huge and terrible. It smote Mordred instantly, atomizing his body before he could even scream. It tore through the tomb of Arthur Quint, and it exploded in all directions.

Deaf and near-blind, Cassius realized that he didn’t remember hitting the ground. His back and legs felt burned, and a glance at his hands showed horrible black char where once was skin. His own fat bubbled brown on the backs of his arms, and he realized that he was burned to the point where his nerves were destroyed and he felt no pain. The quakes had stopped, and Cassius found himself searching for the tomb, or any sign of Rasputin or Mordred.

What he saw made his heart race with panic. The tomb was reduced to a pile of burnt stones, the biggest no larger than an apple. The ground was glossy black soil burned to a glassy sheen. Standing in the middle of it all, covered in her own blood and carrying an ancient Roman spear that still smoked with the heat of the lightning strike, was the girl Quint had brought with him. She swayed on uncertain legs, but walked towards Cassius.

He looked for his sword, and realized that he still bore it on his hip. Cassius drew it and held it in front of him to ward her off. “How is this possible? You weren’t destined to become one of us! This is wrong!”

“Funny joke,” she said. “A guy walks in on his wife having sex with another man. So he grabs a shotgun and blows the son of a bitch away. The wife tells him, ‘ya know, if you go on like this, you won’t have any friends left’.” Cassius stared at her dumbly. Kelli shrugged. “The look on your face reminds me of that one, that’s all.”

“Put that away, girl,” Cassius sneered. “You don’t want to fight me.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I really do.”

The Roman surprised her by springing forward to attack, thrusting forward with his long blade which Kelli parried barely in time. She felt a moment of panic when she realized she’d never used any kind of weapon before in her life, but it soon vanished as Cassius pressed the fight. She found that instinct guided her arms, unheard voices that urged on her motions. It was eerie, but she trusted it. But Cassius was coming on strong, exercising his advantage in strength. He nearly knocked the spear from her grasp, and Kelli found herself retreating back into the ruins of Quint’s tomb.

The boxes containing the old treasures and relics stood covered in soot and rubble. She leapt back over one and ducked low, pushing her spear for the man’s gut. He swatted it away with his sword, the steel ringing low from the old wooden shaft. Kelli wondered how the weapon was able to withstand this abuse at all, even more than she marveled at how she was able to use it.

Kelli stood on one of the low crates that looked like a long casket to try and seize some kind of height advantage, but Cassius swung for her legs, and dropkicked the crate away when she leapt to dodge the blow. She landed awkwardly on her ankle and fell backwards over the crate. Cassius grunted, eyes wild with bloodlust and sent his sword arcing down to split her head in two. Kelli raised the spear over her face to block the attack. The sword wedged itself into the wood and stuck there. Cassius dropped to one knee, using his weight to press the blade down towards her. He gritted his teeth, using all his strength to overpower her. The blade dipped down towards her throat.

“Stupid bitch,” Cassius sneered, “I’m a hundred times your age and killed men you’ve only seen in movies. Dexion taught me everything I know.”

Kelli shifted to the side, releasing one hand from the spear. The sword slid down into the soil, but Cassius was quick to recover it. She grabbed up her flashlight from where she’d dropped it and turned it on, directing the beam of light squarely into the Roman’s eyes. Cassius hissed, suddenly blinded by the intense glare. His stroke fell astray. Kelli lashed out with the flashlight, smashing the dense aluminum tool into the man’s jaw. Teeth and blood sprayed from his mouth, and he dropped his sword to clutch in horror at the ruins of his face.

Kelli hit him again, this time in the side of the head. And again. And again. She hammered his skull until she’d caved it into a valley, sticky with brains and hair. Cassius’ hand twitched feebly for his sword. She took it away and hacked his head off with three wild strokes at his throat.

A gun cocked behind her. Kelli dropped the sword and stood to face the gunman. There stood the man in soiled furs called Rasputin, wearing a conical fur cap, now burnt and full of holes. His spectacles were shattered, the frames bent awkwardly over his nose. “The day is gone, and all its sweets are gone,” mused the old madman. “Sweet voice, sweet lips, soft hand, and softer breast. Such a pretty abomination, I almost wish I didn’t have to—“

Rasputin’s chest burst red as a shot rang out. He stumbled forward, putting his hand to the fresh wound. He turned around so that he might see his attacker, only to be hit twice more. Kelli could not see the gunman either, but she didn’t trust that the bullets would put the monster down. She grabbed up her spear and threw it. The point ripped through Rasputin’s breastbone and punched through his body. The Immortal man lurched, the pistol dropping from his numb grasp until he fell against a stone crucifix.

“Did yeh ever think the f***er was ever goin’ ta shut up?” said Jack Donahl, who stepped out from behind a tall headstone topped with a statue of a trumpeting cherubim. He kept his gun trained on Rasputin as Kelli rushed to join him. “Quint?”

Kelli shook her head, setting her jaw firm to keep from crying now. She would let it out later, away from Jack, away from everyone.

“Are you all right, lass?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted, “But I think Quint’s all right now. He’s…he’s finally at peace. And I think I finally know what to do with my life. For the first time.”

Rasputin vomited blood. He tried to claw his way back to his gun, but he couldn’t drag himself free of the cross-beam of the crucifix he was splayed over. “This isn’t right,” he moaned, “This isn’t what I’d envisioned. You aren’t the one I wrote to end this story…”

Kelli cut his head down into the lawn. “I always liked surprise endings.”

The lightning struck again, this time into the sword Kelli bore in her hand. It lifted her up by the blade, helpless as power surged through the weapon, through her arm, charging through her body. Fire coursed up from the earth and consumed the bodies of Cassius and Rasputin, forming a circle of white flame around her. Leaves spun at her feet, caught up in an invisible column of wind that soon rose to engulf her, as though she were being taken into nature’s bosom to protect her from the heat. Donahl covered his ears and hid, unable to tear his eyes away from the awesome forces at work that fueled the girl with divine power.

Kelli plummeted to the ground, unconscious. The sword tumbled away from her grip. Donahl scurried to her side and brushed the hair away from her face. “My God,” he whispered, “it’s a miracle.”
Kelli groaned, her voice weak, “Didn’t know you were a religious guy, Jack.”

“Might have to start goin’ ta church now. Can you walk?”

They went back to Kelli’s rental car, where Donahl let her sit and recover. He looked down the road and saw the woods lit with the flashing blue, lights of oncoming police cars.

“Kelli, you need to drive away from here. I have to stay.”

“What? Why?”

“I have a promise to keep, lass. Don’t know if you’ll ever see me again, but I’ll do my best to make sure whatever was left behind in that tomb is kept safe for you somewhere. Oi think the Watchers are going to have to make some major changes if they want my silence about this. I’ll make this part of the price of that silence. At the least I’ll send a letter to your flat back in Seattle.”

“Thanks, Jack,” she reached up to hug the old Irishman. “Somehow I don’t think there’s a prison built that could contain a tricky old fart like you, but in case I don’t see you…well, take care of yourself.”

“And you, lass. Good luck out there. Ain’t gonna be easy for yeh.”

“I know.”

Donahl closed the door. “Go on, now.”

Kelli went a half-mile before realizing she was on the wrong side of the road. She drove until she saw the first rays of the sun creeping over the horizon, where she pulled over to sit and watch the sun rise. There she stayed, crying until she fell asleep on the gentle grassy slope. When she awoke, there was no sign of rain, nor clouds, nor misery. There was only daylight and the day ahead. And the light felt good.
Epilogue: May It Be
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University Christian Church
Seattle, Washington
October 22, 2005 – 11:30 PM


“That was some of the worst singing I think I’ve ever heard. Honestly.”

Watching this, Brian wondered whether or not it was worth buying the complete series DVD. It didn’t have the same impact when he already knew who won. So much of it just seemed like stall tactics. His finger punched the chapter-skip key again.

A knock came at the front door, making Reverend Brian Forster almost leap out of his skin. He turned the television down, wondering if he’d just been imagining things, but the knock came again after a few seconds. Then he realized what day it was and rushed down the stairs, scrubbing at his mouth with a napkin and dusting snack remnants off his shirt. Quint kept cutting it close; he’d almost missed his appointment again.

He opened the door and was surprised to see a young woman there. She wore a heavy coat with a hood, which she pulled down when she saw the minister. She had short, unbound black hair, streaked with purple like the kids seemed to enjoy for some unfathomable reason. She wore thick, almost raccoonlike eyeliner that made her look ghostly in the streetlight.

“Hello,” he said, unable to come up with anything else in his startled frame of mind. He smiled at her. “I’m sorry, I was expecting someone else. Is there something wrong?”

“Hi. I know it’s late, but this is important. Dex Quint sent me,” she said.

“Oh?”

“He wanted me to thank you for all your help, and keeping the church open for him on this night every year. But he won’t be coming back. He sent me to tell you that, and to give you this.” She extended her hand, holding a simple brown cardboard box bound with a slim red ribbon.

Brian took it with a trembling hand. “He’s dead, isn’t he? When I got his letter, I knew that he was serious. When I was a kid, there was a fire, and he pulled me out. Ran through the fire, just like it wasn’t even there. No other man would have, or could have done that. I just expected to see him again, just like every other year, and—“ he broke off, tears welling in his eyes.

The girl seemed distracted for a moment, as if listening to a voice in her ear. Then she grinned. “He says to cook up a bag of pizza rolls and not to worry about him. Open it.”

Brian pulled the ribbon off and slid his finger under the edge of the box. He opened the lid and saw that the box contained only a battered and burned hunk of wood. He upended the box, emptying the thing into his hand and examined it. It looked vaguely like a cup, scarred with fire and age. It was small, and looked worthless.

“What is this?” he showed her the thing with an incredulous quirk of his eyebrows.

“Can you keep a secret?”

Brian nodded.

The girl drew close, covering her mouth with her hand so that anyone who might be passing by on the street couldn’t read her lips. “Magic.”

Brian laughed at the girl’s mysterious smile. She started to turn back to the road. “Hey, do you want to come inside? Maybe you could tell me…”

She shook her head. “I have to be somewhere. Don’t dwell on the past. What’s important is what we do today.”

Brian waved at her. “Bye.”

She returned his wave and pulled the hood back over her head. She turned and strolled down the sidewalk, soon blending into the living, breathing city and shrinking out of sight.

Brian chuckled briefly and brought his attention back to Quint’s strange gift. He walked back inside and closed the door behind him, still pondering the meaning of it. He finally decided it might be a decent set piece for a communion ceremony, and went back to his room to watch the last of his television show. He’d see if he could clean it up in the morning.
Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn! Ph'nglui mglw'nfah Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl muh'fugen bix nood

Whenever you feel down :3
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casual pleb

Re: Spoony the Pussy One: Life is in the Render Queue

Post by casual pleb » Wed Jul 21, 2021 6:20 pm

No need to do anything, when you can just feel good about yourself by reposting "motivational" quotes.

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