Hi all, just a heads up that this is a PERIL only story with no sexual element at all
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SUPERGIRL AND THE CURSE OF MERLIN
Part 1
The man known as Evan sat in the darkened booth at the back of the small bar, staring in amazement at the warm stale lager twinkling under the only light that seemed to be working in that part of the bar. He had been known by many names in his many lifetimes, but tonight he was Evan.
Ray, the barman and owner leaned across to speak conspiratorially to one of his regulars. They had been partners on the Force together for 14 years before Ray had been injured in the line. In truth he had been drinking on the job and rashly assumed that he could make the jump into the alleyway by breaking his fall by landing on the pile of old mattresses. Unfortunately for Ray under the pile of old mattresses was another pile of old deadbeats. With no 'give' to the pile Ray had been propelled onto his right knee breaking it in three places.
He'd bought the bar and Eddie, his partner, felt obliged to drop in every night to see how he was.
"Hey Ed, see that guy back there?" He gestured
Eddie followed his gaze, squinting. "What the poor bastard you've left drinking in the dark? Just about. Jesus Ray get the electrics fixed will ya?"
"That's just it I got two wall mounts, one behind him over the picture and the two downward spots. They are all on, you can just about see 'em but they were fine until he showed up. They just like...dimmed around him. And look he ain't touched the beer..."
"Perhaps he's drunk here before..." Eddie couldnt resist the dig.
"I'm gonna see if he's ok"
"So ....?"
"So watch my back is all...This guy ...just don't feel right. Right I'm going in..."
"Got SWAT teams on standby" said Eddie with a grin, but he turned on his stool enough to take in the scene.
Evan was looking at the beer, but he wasn't seeing it. He could see his first, all those centuries ago. No glass , but a wooden tankard. No lager but honey-ed mead.He remembered licking off bits of broken honeycomb that had stuck to his teeth. But above all, he could remember the girl who gave it to him. Rosamunde. To think it had taken him 300 years to find out her name meant 'the Rose of the World'. Such a beautiful name. Such a beautiful girl. He had gone off to war to impress her. Just a boy seventeen summers old. It would be so easy, he would kill rich princes and return with the wealth. And she would be his. Rosamunde, of the golden hair.
No one ever mentioned that you might have chosen the wrong side. Single, slow tears started to form on his cheeks.
As Ray approached, he could see the guy fill up. Great. But as he neared the table the gloom seemed to part before him, he realiZed, allowing him to see the stranger's face. Yet the rest of the booth was still gloomy. Weird shit. He was struggling to think of what to say to a guy who was blubbering. But a guy blubbering who had his own laws of Physics was way beyond Rays field of reference. Time to get the hell out of Dodge.
Suddenly he felt his back against the bar.
"You showed him, huh?" Said Eddie.
"I'll just give him a few more minutes" Ray said shakily, hurrying behind the bar to fix himself a monster Scotch
In a different part of town Kara opened her eyes and was shocked to find it made little difference. The blackness was almost as total as when she had her eyes closed. She calmed herself. She was still in her student rooms,lying in bed. The thin pencil line of light around her drapes was barely visible. But this blackness wasn't the night. It was a deeper dark than that from hiding the sun. It held secrets. And horrors. But this....this was just ...a taste of things to come.
It was old. Timeless. It had a latent power, born of a moment of rage and malevolence and death. Of seeing dreams shattered and hopes destroyed. And it summoned on the powers of the Olde Magicks, from the dark times.
All this she could sense. And also that her fate was to be drawn inexorably towards this....entity. Not here tonight, but soon. Yet she also got the impression that she wasn't the focus of the rage but perhaps it might be using her as the instrument. And that was what worried her.
She had known fear before, but it had always been in response to tangible threats and dangers.
This was different. For the first time she was experiencing a fear of the unknown
Last edited by tallyho8 years ago, edited 4 times in total.
How strange are the ways of the gods ...........and how cruel.
I am here to help one and all enjoy this site, so if you have any questions or feel you are being trolled please contact me (Hit the 'CONTACT' little speech bubble below my Avatar).
"So what's he doing now?" asked Eddie, smiling behind his beer glass.
"Same as before." answered Ray
"What, nothing you mean? Tricky bastard" laughed his friend. The object of their interest sat several feet away from them but was actually several centuries.
Shrouded in dimly lit shadows , his glass of beer gleamed like a beacon in the night , directly below a spotlight over the table. He composed himself. He looked at the long bundle on the seat beside him. He could feel the old powers were getting stronger again, gathering about him as they always did when they wished to steer him a certain way. He couldn't resist it, and had long ago stopped trying.
As he had drifted the centuries he had seen such wonders and such horrors. He had seen first towns, then cities, then nations, then empires fall. Countless dead. He had seen the arrows so thick that they hid the sun at Crecy, for he had been under them, looking up. He had held Malta against the Turks in The Great Siege for the Knights of St. John (he had died and then retaken the same breached section of wall five times the same day but of course no one lived to tell of such a devil). He had marched with La Grande Armee du Nord into Russia, and chased it out again in Tsar Alexander's army, and then been in at the end, heard the cry of 'MERDE!! raised seconds before the grapeshot cut them all to pieces in that last tragic rally -square in the fields south of Brussels at Waterloo. He had fallen with all those other poor souls under Pickett up Cemetery Hill. And yet there had been times when it gathered strongly like now, that it had seemed to move him towards a glimmer of hope. He had been Galileo's recorder. Newton's henchman ( this was in the day when the term still referred to a person who looked after the horses of the young rich [and indeed the young rich themselves] when they went into town drinking). But best of all had been the times with Da Vinci. He had shared his secret with Leo, who had refused to believe so fantastic a tale , so much so that to convince him he had had to die again and again before the great man finally believed his eyes. Leo had promised to help find a 'cure' and in exchange he had been the one to test the most dangerous of da Vinci's theories. Leo always seemed delighted by the death and resurrection. And it was Leo who had suggested that he might try and control the return. Together they had experimented and explored and learned much. But not the solution.
But this time he seemed able to sense something slightly different from all those thousands of others that he had endured. Maybe this death would be a release.
"He's freaking me out just sitting there, like that. I'm gonna tell him we're closing an' he's got 10 to drink and vacate, watch me again will ya." Ray urged his former partner.
"You're closing early!" Eddie said desperately
"No you dipshit, just say that to him"
"Oh"
Eddie gave a long sigh, but reluctantly nodded, checking he could reach his back up ankle piece. Despite his jibes and jokes , the guy felt like bad news .
"Hey , hey bud." As Ray approached the gloom seemed to part again, but his legs seemed to move as if in water. His mouth was incredibly dry and as the strange man looked up from shadowed sockets beneath his forehead all Ray could manage was "You gotta go".
The strange man smiled. "I think I should like to stay. "
The next sequence of words from his own mouth terrified Ray, for they were not his own. "You can stay for as long as you wish. Spend the night , I'll leave the keys, you can let yourself out in the morning" He felt like a man possessed as he is turned stiffly away , too scared to breathe until he hit the bar next to Eddie with a gasping pant. He was white and shaking. Eddie was alarmed , concerned and completely confused.
"What was that? Thought you were gonna throw him out?" He asked.
"Fuck you Ed. And fuck him . It . Whatever the fuck it is. Fuck everything." He shakily staggered around the bar , uncorked the first bottle he found and took a hefty draft."If that guy wants to stay until fucking Doomsday he can. Who knows, maybe he is?"
Eddie shook his head. He had no idea what had happened but in fairness the guy had done nothing.
Eddie approached the booth, getting that same sense of emptiness, like stepping off the edge of the world. "Are you going to go?"
"No " the stranger said amiably
"That's fine " Eddie said. The words were his, as was the intense desire to get to the bar (though he had that most of the time each day) but the force that seemed to push him there was not his .
"If you're gonna be open late then set me up a beer an' a coupla Scotsmen to keep it company" he told Ray, who had demolished half a bottle of what had turned out to be Metaxa brandy, and had calmed down considerably.
"What am I gonna do? Call out the guys?" Ray asked. "'Come quick! There's a guy doing nothing'? Look you know its weird. I know its weird. But let's be real if .... Cousin IT there wanted to do anything we couldnt stop him. The bars insured we both need some beer. Lets stay and drink until he wants us to go. And when he does , we get outta here like greased-fucking-lightning."
Kara tried to focus on the darkness in her room. There was no threat tonight, she could feel that much. But it was unnerving. She switched back and forth between her normal and x-ray vision, trying to learn limits , what the darkness changed. She still sensed not a direct threat to herself. But it intended to user her in some way. She tried to touch it, rising from the bed , but it was just as intangible as the absence of colour usually was. But standing now, in boxer short style briefs and camisole top, with more of her skin exposed she could feel it against her flesh sense the coldness it bore. It frightened her, not for her safety, but for what it might be capable of. She sensed too that there was ...a personal element to whatever was going to happen. She hovered, just to see if she still could. Her powers seemed unaffected by it. But presumably it was because of her powers that she was needed in the first place.
There were many things that she could sense. Loss. Frustration. Anxiety. Pain. Rage. Hatred. Above all hatred. But it was not what was above all that registered the most with her. Beneath it all , like a child's voice drowned out in a crowd. There had been something else. Loneliness.
And that, that hadn't belonged to the Dark. It belonged deep in the heart of another.
Yet there it was almost hidden. As she touched upon it the room cleared, instantly leaving the normal gloom of post midnight bedroom , with light off.
She realised it was a test. It wanted her to understand what to look for, what to recognize. What to do when she encountered it again.
She folded her arms across her beautifully proportioned chest , frowning, biting her bottom lip in concentration. She absent-mindedly realised she was still floating and lowered herself to the ground. She made herself a cup of coffee. There was something else that she got from the whole experience, another feeling.
The whole bizarre experience had felt to her like an invitation.
Last edited by tallyho8 years ago, edited 1 time in total.
How strange are the ways of the gods ...........and how cruel.
I am here to help one and all enjoy this site, so if you have any questions or feel you are being trolled please contact me (Hit the 'CONTACT' little speech bubble below my Avatar).
The dream would be bad tonight Evan knew. It was always bad when the old magicks were this strong about him. He would feel every blow, sharp and real. Lucid. Vivid. Livid. He shuddered. It was strange how each night that first lifetime he had dreamt of the deed itself; of the battle; of the blow; of seeing the great man fall beneath his blade. But since he died that first time, the dream had forever changed. It would be tonight as it always was now. Not the deed itself, but him telling the tale, to those three fools in the ale house, before they killed him that first time, when he had foolishly thought that that was his end. He had lived a shunned and lonely existence, that first life, and in his naivety he thought that was the Darkman's punishment of him. But you should never underestimate the hatred of old men. The Dark Wizard had limitless depths of cruelty and he plunged Evan into those depths. The pain of the dream would be terrible tonight, he knew. But that was later. He took a day old newspaper from his coat and spread it ceremoniously before him on the table. "Supergirl Saves Stricken Airliner" was the headline, with a blurry picture of a blue and blonde streak, in a red cape, flying through the air.
He didn't know why, but he sensed the the old powers were drawing her to him. Maybe she was his release. She was not borne of man, as he understood it. She was an alien of some sort. He shook his head in wonder. What times he had seen , yet there were still wonders to behold. He remembered sailing with the Chinese admiral Chinbao around the middle east and Asia. He had seen such sights! He had sought out mystics to lift the curse but no one could help him. Chinbao. A great man. A great sailor. Somehow he had become a sex symbol and a romantic adventurer, the world now knew him as Sinbad the Sailor. Ironically, like all high officials at the Chinese court he had been a eunoch. He smiled to himself. He had seen Errol Flynn play him in the magical pictures, many years ago. Chinbao had been fat and sensible, never taking a risk with his ships or his men. Flynn had swung on chandeliers and fought countless villains. The contrast could not have been more stark. He looked at the picture of Supergirl again. She could fly . He shook his head in wonderment.
"What's he doing now?" asked Ray anxiously, deliberately not looking at the dim figure in the corner.
"Oh my god!" Eddie exclaimed. "He's reading yesterday's newspaper!" He finished sarcastically.
Ray looked at him with contempt." I can't stand this. I gotta do something. He's freaking me out. How can you sit there with your back to him?"
"Ray, looking at him freaks me out too. But sittin' here I can see him in the mirror and I can just choose to look away. If that guy is gonna do anything, I 'd rather not see it coming . Why do you think I'm still here? Because the minute I leave then I got no idea where he is or what he is doing. He terrifies me in a way I wouldn't a thought possible. But me sitting here, seeing him sitting there, its like....equilibrium. That guy is steeped in death. He oozes it - you look at him, you go near him, you can feel it, taste it. It's freaky shit and as a beat cop its fucking with my head. But all I know is I feel better knowing he's doing nothing. Not knowing what he's doing, like if I left.....I'd never sleep again. So join me this side and we'll drink until he's gone. And in the morning it will just be like a bad dream."
"Ed....I'm afraid."
"Me too man, me too. But its like I said before...we can't stop whatever the hell he wants to do."
"Do you think he's a ghost or something?"
"No...but he might be death."
In a room at the Chinese consulate on the far side of town, the head of the Chinese trade delegation was also awake. The negotiations were due to resume in the morning and he should really be getting some sleep. But he wasn't tired, more excited, which was surprising for a man of his years. He could sense a change in the night, a feeling of forces coalescing, power building. He ,too, had a copy of yesterday's paper before him on the small table before the window. He looked from the picture out into the night. The flying woman would be ...interesting. He started to think how she might be used.
"Ale keeper! Where is he?" No longer Ray's bar. A different ale house, a thousand lifetimes ago. The man nodded towards the old man at the back of the beer hall. The three young men barged their way through to stand before him. The old man didn't look up."You! You, old man! Is it true what they say?"
"What do they say?" In Ray's bar Evan shivered at the memory, as the dream came upon him, stark and fresh. He swallowed back tears.
The tall blonde ringleader continued " That you fought with Arthur at Camlann. Well?"
"Yes, I fought with Arthur at Camlann."
"More ale , ale keep! We will have the tale old man! You will tell us of the glory that was Arthur! Were you there at the end? Did you see him fall? Tell us all and spare nothing! More ale! More ale I say!"
"I would not wish to live that day through words again" said the old man.
"Nay, you will tell us ! You will tell us all or taste our steel! But come tell us in kinship, no threats between brothers. Tell us all"
And so he told them. Told how they had marched off thinking they were to reinforce the army in the south, but through treachery instead they had ambushed the returning troops, when most had disbanded and only Arthur and a small core remained. And they had not realized, until they were there in the front line, pushed on by the sergeants with their long halbeards that they were attacking their own. And he had stood next to Fursa, the blacksmiths son, as he had cried that it was not right, they should not be doing this and then the big man before Evan had disembowelled him. He then had turned to Evan, and maybe Evan's youth would have spared him, for the large bearded man simply toyed with him. Evan had never fought before and didn't know the man could have killed him whenever he chose. He was stung by Fursa's death and parried desperately with his ridiculously thin sword. The man opposite was distracted, barking orders as he beat down on Evan with the flat of his blade and then just as he would have called on the boy to surrender, fate had altered both their lives forever. As the man had stepped forward, he had slipped in the mud and blood shed by Fursa. Fully armoured, he had fallen heavily on his right side, and Evan suddenly seeing his chance had brought his sword down, biting into the helm just above the brow. He could see the pain and disbelief on the man's face. Then suddenly, there were armed men from everywhere about him and a huge man bore down upon Evan, yet the man at his feet cried "Spare him, Cei!" and strong hands had grabbed him, pinned him with a blade at his throat. And then he had seen the Dark Wizard, pushing his way through, kneeling by the dying man. In those days he was Myrddin the Black, Myrddin Dhub in the old tongue. He would become remembered by the Saxon version of his name, Merlin. He looked at Arthur then in rage at Evan, still uncomprehending.
Arthur spoke again. "Spare him Myrddin, he is not to be harmed" and in that act of mercy from the dying warlord, Evan would be forever damned. For the Dark necromancer spoke but no one realized it was an invocation, a spell. When the wizard spoke he made the casting sign, unnoticed by all. "No hand of man nor force of nature shall end the boy's life"
Such a simple sentence, such a damning conviction. But he hadn't realized at the time. He had been shunned afterwards, cast out as the slayer of Arthur. The called him king killer, though Arthur had not been the king. Cuneglas was the king, Arthur his warlord. And it was Maddolwch, Mordred in the Saxon, Cuneglas' son , who had led the ambush. He had returned to his village to face hatred and resentment. Even from sweet Rosamunde. And so he wandered the land , that first lifetime. Until the three warriors had come to him in the ale hall. And when they understood, that he had fought with Arthur, in rage they had run him through. And he had been glad. And then , some time later he had been alive again, gulping in air at the back of the yard of the tavern. He had been reborn as he was when he was 17. And so it would go on. Each time he died he would return at any age between when he had killed Arthur and that first time he died. Sometimes he would be dead a week and buried, sometimes he would be dead for just minutes. He had been burnt as a witch , he had been buried alive, he had been crushed, scalded , stabbed, speared, shot, blown up, decapitated, dismembered, eaten by creatures, he had even stepped into a volcano, only to reappear on the rim. All fates had befallen him. Yet he always appeared again, even when there was no trace of his original physical form.
As he felt the blade pierce his heart from that first death, he was back in Ray's bar. He looked again at the photograph of the girl of steel. Maybe she could end it all for him.
Kara needed to think. Superman had his fortress of solitude, she too had her own special place. Hers changed daily though, but right now it was 32.8 miles above Wisconsin. She soared up through the clouds , relishing the wind on her cheek, the chill air flowing over her thighs, the exhilaration of speed. She reached her spot and hovered relishing the moment. Here the curve of the earth meant that she could feel the Sun in her hair and yet have the moon in her eyes. She loved the contrast, the warmth at her back the chill at her front. For a few seconds she could forget everything. The darkness troubled her though. She could sense its need for her, and a dark purpose. She was an intelligent, scientific Kryptonian. The concept of old earth magic and powers was an anathema to her. She felt impotent, and resentment at being manipulated. She idly matched her speed to a small aircraft several miles away. It was easy to fly fast but harder to control her speed at such a slow rate as 225 mph. The urge was always to go faster. She hovered again, thinking. She would read what she could about such things but deep down she didn't believe in such superstitions. But whatever this threat was she seemed certain of one thing .
As day broke, she was convinced that whatever it was would happen tonight.
Last edited by tallyho8 years ago, edited 3 times in total.
How strange are the ways of the gods ...........and how cruel.
I am here to help one and all enjoy this site, so if you have any questions or feel you are being trolled please contact me (Hit the 'CONTACT' little speech bubble below my Avatar).
Kara had spent the day in various libraries and bookshops, reading an endless amount of books on the occult. None of them accurately described or explained the strange force she was encountering now. Most had offered the same trite superstitions, rolled out as dubious facts. She sensed the biggest problem was that most of the authors, being academics, didn't actually believe or truly understand what they were writing about. She didn't know what she had hoped to find, but whatever it was it had eluded her. She just had a sense of latent power when she had encountered it. Of a guiding intelligence behind it . Of a malevolent purpose driving it. Whatever 'it' was. She felt frustrated. All day she had the sense of time running out, of the presence whatever it may be moving towards its goal , of the inevitable meeting between her and it drawing near. She was unsettled by the feeling, her lack of comprehension as to what it might be, made her feel impotent, dubious that her considerable powers would be able to stop it. What upset her most was the sense of it selecting her. That it had some purpose for her, some use. She didn't know what that use was , but she was determined not to play ball. As the day turned to dusk, she had the sense that it was time. She left the college library, returning to her dormitory room. She stared long and hard into the mirror. All the while she felt the presence pulling at her, drawing her towards it, or trying to. It was time. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes briefly then turned on her heel, away from the mirror.
In an instant Kara, in her guise as Linda, had gone. The mousey brown, lank hair was replaced by shimmering golden tresses, falling just passed her shoulders. The tatty, loose beige polo neck sweater was now replaced by a skin tight , figure hugging, high cut leotard, in rich royal blue. Her jeans were replaced by a bright red short cheerleader skirt, held in place by a bright yellow belt. A long red cape, matching her skirt, fell to the back of her knees, just above her knee high red leather boots. A large 'S' emblazoned across her spectacular chest completed the transformation, together with the subtler change of her bright blue eyes from the original brown.
She used her vision to scan the corridor outside her door and seeing it was empty she sped up to the roof, her body a blue blur. She took a second to survey the city, breathing in the cold night air, slightly to her embarrassment the chill raised her nipples beneath her top. She consciously raised her body temperature, a Kryptonian skill, and they obediently receded. She had the feeling of the presence away to the south of the city , on the fringes of downtown. The fact it was drawing her that way made her do the opposite.
She soared instead to the North, up some 20 miles or more in a few seconds. There she hovered , surveying the city below her. Yes, she could sense it now, and with her superior vision almost see it - a murky, shapeless blur over that part of town. She sped towards it and it seemed to localize, shrinking before her advance, retreating until it seemed to occupy just one building, a small bar in a ramshackle street. She flew around it getting a feel for the place, and as she did so the darkness retreated before her , concentrating inside. She alighted on the pavement outside the front door, using her x-ray vision she could see two people at the bar and a third at a table in the back , where the gloom seemed to have gathered about him. She looked up at the name of the bar, taking it in for the first time. "The End of The World Inn"
Some moments before, inside, the man Evan had sat shaking at the table. The pain of the dream was still upon him, he could feel the blade still in his chest, the final twist as his assailant smiled. The contrast always surprised him. The coldness of the steel of the blade and the hot pain the thrust generated. He could feel the agony as the sword slid between his ribs, ripping his intercostal muscles apart, cracking the two ribs it came into contact with, his body screaming the agony through a million pain receptors as the wound went deeper , his breath snatched from him with the shock of it . The cold blade deep inside his body and the warm agony it created all around it. Always such pain. He had suffered it each night to a greater or lesser extent for a thousand years. It was very bad again tonight. He had sat in the booth all through the night and following day, the two men at the bar drinking themselves into oblivion and back to sobriety before heading for oblivion again. He had just sat alone with his thoughts and the dream. The owner had locked the doors to keep the public out, and as they drifted in and out of alcoholic awareness so he too had drifted in and out of his lives through the centuries trying to put off sleep knowing what would happen when it came. He had finally drank the stale beer before him, and now had another , equally stale. He sensed her drawing near, sensed a ripple of -expectancy?- in the dimness around him. He looked up at the two men, who were deep in the traditional drunks argument of 'which was better cats or dogs?' They thought they had chosen to stay here, but he knew it had chosen them. For...demonstration purposes. He wasn't sure how yet. It would guide his actions as it always had, he would just know what to do at the time. As he would with the girl who could fly. Leo would truly have been amazed by her. A woman from another world , who could fly without wings or any contraptions.
He had a sudden surge of expectancy as the locked door opened and in walked the woman from the newspaper picture.
"Dogs bring you the freaking paper, cats bring you dead fucking birds! I know which one I'd rath- holy-fucking-shit! I knew women were supposed to look like that, I knew it, I knew it!" cried Ray.
Eddie turned to follow his friend's gaze. "Yup, that's a woman alright."
Supergirl opened the locked door with minimal effort and walked confidently into the bar. She stood, her right leg rigid , her left bent slightly, with her hands on her hips as she cast her x-ray vision over the occupants. One on the stool had two guns , one in a shoulder holster, one at his ankle. He also had a cops badge inside his jacket pocket. The bar man was unarmed, but there was a .38 at one end of the bar by the till, and a pump action shotgun at the other end of the bar on a shelf, near where he was standing. The first cartridge was loaded with rocksalt, but the other three were real.
But they were not the reason she was here. She could see him , shrouded in the gloom that seemed to be tangible now about him. Even as she watched him stand it seemed to writhe and tendrils pulsated about him. He was ordinary according to her vision scan of him, just a guy in his late forties, clean shaven, with short, sandy brown hair. He had no weapons on him but her gaze was drawn to the bundle of cloths and rags on the seat beside him. It was around 4ft long and cruciform in shape.
She realized to her surprise that it was a sword.
Last edited by tallyho8 years ago, edited 2 times in total.
How strange are the ways of the gods ...........and how cruel.
I am here to help one and all enjoy this site, so if you have any questions or feel you are being trolled please contact me (Hit the 'CONTACT' little speech bubble below my Avatar).
The man called Evan rose from his seat slowly as one in a dream. He stared long and hard at Supergirl, in open mouthed silence.
"Golden hair...." He said softly . " I had thought you would be her image, somehow. It had felt destined. Yet, in faith and truth I say you are not her, you do not have her visage. You are far, far more beauteous. And she was just a farm girl.... I have seen her smile, in ten thousand dreams and yet....yet to my shame, I cannot clearly recall her. Her eyes , their colour I know not. Her voice, her laugh are both lost to me. For it is the doom of men that they will ever forget. Yet I know her smile was warm, her song, soft and sweet. And I know , golden hair apart, you are not her...." He said sadly.
When he spoke , his speech was a mess of accents, and archaic inflections, his voice like smoked glass, dark and elusive, just barely giving a hint of what might be behind it.
"Who? Who are you buster and what are you upto? Whatever it is , it ends. NOW." Supergirl said purposefully.
But the stranger wasn't listening to her. He was staring at the television behind the bar, on CNN but with the volume off. The images that flashed up were of the multinational trade delegation that were meeting on the other side of town. The head of the Chinese delegation had just bowed politely to the cameras, when Evan rushed over to stare up at the screen.
"THE BOX OF LIGHTS!" He said excitedly, before looking back frantically towards Ray. "Make them heard, MAKE THEM HEARD!!!"
"What ? Box of lights? Oh...you mean turn up the TV...."a befuddled Ray fumbled with the controls. But Evan had lost interest, as the head of the Chinese delegation raised his head and the camera zoomed in.
"No matter..I thought it was Him for a moment....but it is not...." He turned away , crestfallen.
Supergirl had heard enough. "Look, buddy, you'd best start making some sense or things are gonna start getting ugly around here. You two"- she looked at Eddie and Ray determinedly. "I suggest you get out of here, now."
Eddie stood unsteadily. "Don't worry honey, I'm a beat cop , 20 years on the force, Ray there had 14 in. We got your back" he drew his police special at the second attempt, while Ray hefted the pump action shotgun from beneath the bar.
"Your badge says 'detective'?" Supergirl queried.
"Oh, yeah I got promoted last month, I forgot." said Eddie awkwardly.
"Well, detective, given the inebriated state of you and your friend, don't you think you two should be as far away from firearms as possible?" She raised one exquisite eyebrow in query.
"Errr, I guess...."
"They are here to convince you". Said Evan.
Supergirl turned back to face the man in the dark mist. "Convince me of what?" She said grimly.
"That you will need to do all you can , use everything in your power to kill me" he said sadly.
"I have no intention of killing you , nor anyone else. But I will stop your little game, whatever it is you are upto." She said passionately.
"I hope you will try to slay me. For you see, if not my death...then it must be yours. I have come to kill you. But in faith and truth I hope you emerge victorious" tears were welling up in his eyes.
"I have died a thousand times over...but I pray that the next will be the last. That you , flying maiden, will end my torment."
"You expect me to believe you're indestructible? Thousands of years old?" Supergirl asked.
"1524, as far as I can tell"
"Ok. Something is going down here and I dont know what. Let's say I believe you. What's this all about , what are you after?"
He looked at her, long and hard. " But you do not believe me, sweet maid. You're eyes betray your words. But 'twas Destiny that it would be this way. Come , tavern keeper, and man of the city guard. Your time of trial is here." He turned and advanced towards the two drunks.
Supergirl had no intention of letting any of the three harm each other or themselves, but to her horror she found she was prevented by an unseen force. She had tried to use her super speed to place herself between the protagonists but the dark force around Evan suddenly coalesced about her, she found her movements slowed to a crawl, her legs heavy and slow , as if she were running in glue up to her waist. As Evan advanced on the two men, Eddie raised his pistol and fired twice in quick succession. He wasn't sure why, he just felt that he had to, was forced to. With a superhuman effort born of being superhuman, she managed to fight her way through the invisible force resisting her and slowed as she was, she was able to reach out and swat the second bullet from the air. But there was nothing she could do about the first shot. She could only watch aghast as the bullet took Evan high in the chest. As he screamed and reeled back, Ray, who had fired the first rock salt cartridge up in the air, fired the second lethal dose of buckshot into Evan's spinning body. He flew backwards, landing heavily on the table behind him and lay still. Silence filled the aftermath of the shooting, before it was broken, after long seconds by the corpse on the table. Taking in a long, deep gasping breath, the body shook, violently and then was still. Then slowly, the torso rose to sit upright on the table.
The face had changed. It was still the same person, but the features were younger, fresher, perhaps by around ten years.
"Sweet Mary , mother of god...." Ray said quietly, open mouthed.
Evan ignored him . " You see? It is ever thus. You must end this. Lest I end you."
Supergirl let out a heavy breath, through tight lips. "I won't be part of this. No one tells me what to do. I don't know who or what you are, or what this ...this thing here is" she gestured at the darkness now again surrounding him "....but you cannot make me harm you."
Evan hopped lightly off the table top and dusted himself down. His clothes bore no holes and any blood had disappeared. He picked up the bundle of rags that lay on the seat of the booth.
"Oh sweet maid, pray you are in error. For if indeed I cannot, then 'tis thee, not I, who shall perish" he said.
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How strange are the ways of the gods ...........and how cruel.
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Supergirl was perplexed by the stranger before her. She could sense the hatred and malevolence from the dark, ethereal smoke-like entity all around him, yet the man himself, though he had openly threatened to kill her....from him was a sense of desperate isolation. Could he really have lived for over a thousand years? She had seen him die before her eyes and then revive , clearly the same person , but younger. She was unsure what he was capable of, and equally unsure what exactly she could do to stop him, but he seemed calm , rational and the hatred in this mist that surrounded him, seemed directed at him, not her. She decided to try and reason with him, to turn him from whatever course of action he had planned.
" Wait. I won't harm you. If you have this...gift to revive, there is so much good it can be used for. You don't have to be on this....this quest for death."
"Gift? GIFT?!!!! Haaa! Gift! I suppose now you would cite the beauty of this world, hmmm? The majesty of its sunsets. The wonder of a full moon on a meadow, or a calm sea? I HAVE SEEN TEN THOUSAND SUNSETS!!!! AND FOR ALL THEIR BEAUTY, " he was crying again as he stopped shouting, and continued in a quieter tone, " for all their magnificence, they do not erase the memories of Belsen, or Dachau or Treblinka. I saw those bodies. Murder by a nation gone mad. I , I who am no stranger to madness, I who had to dig myself from the grave pits of Shiloh, buried 12 feet beneath a sea of bodies, packed so tightly I could only move an arm after two weeks when they had started to putrify, reviving again and again just to suffocate in the dark with my dead companions. I dug inches at a time , each lifetime, dying a score of times each day for 6 weeks, whilst the creatures of the earth ate me, and my dead kinsmen. That drove me mad once I reached the surface. Yet that torment is as nothing, compared with those encampments of the men who fought beneath a cross. I will not be turned by the promise of a golden sunset, aye, nor a blood red dawn." He cast his eye on a depression era photograph , framed on the wall, of a child in line at a soup kitchen. " I starved then too" he said bitterly, gesturing at the photo. "And now poverty and starvation becomes art if it is coloured in black and white . I have lived beyond my time. I saw first villages burn. Then towns. Then cities. Then nations. Then empires. I have seen too much of all things. I rode with Reno and saw Custer fall before the savage men. I drowned in a bottomless pool of mud at Mons. I ache for a death that will last. But my existence is but torments. I was born in the third month, a child protected over by Eastra, in the Saxon tongue, the goddes of rebirth, of spring." He laughed bitterly." Her symbol the hare and the egg. And this world, " he flung his arms wide, his voice and his anger rising " THIS WORLD, TURNS A MAN'S GODDESS INTO A FUCKING RABBIT WHO YIELDS EGGS OF CHOCOLATE FOR CHILDREN!!!! A MAN SHOULD NOT LIVE TO SEE HIS GODS MOCKED THUS! 'TIS WRONG!! EASTRA WAS MY BIRTH GODDESS!!!!! " He slammed his fist passionately, hard into his chest, bellowing in anger, hot tears flowing freely down his cheeks. He turned suddenly to face Eddie and Ray. " I LED THE FORLORN HOPE AT THE SIEGE OF BADAJOZ! DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHAT THAT WAS?!!! " The two drunks swallowed hard, remaining silent as he raved on. " FOUR TIMES A HUNDRED CHOSEN SOULS , ARMY CRIMINALS ELSE FOOLS WHO VOLUNTEERED, FREEDOM OR GLORY THEIR PRIZE IF THE CITY FELL, BUT BARELY ONE IN TEN WOULD SURVIVE!!!! AND I, I WHO CANNOT DIE, " he was laughing hysterically, "I LIVED!!!!!!". Abruptly he calmed down. "I would live peacefully, and aye , do good, were the choice but my own. But this," he gestured bitterly at the dark entity around him, " this guides my course. Oh, rarely as strong as ye see it now. I have lived ten, perhaps 20 years with ne'er a sign. But even when not seen, it is sensed. People knew it be near I , and so stayed away. In all these centuries, I have had but a few to call friend. Leo was one, Newton another, with his gravities. Leo taught me that I could control my revival, by mind thought at the time of death, as I did just now. And that I could think the age I would return at. Before it was all a-hazard, sometimes I would be upto a week in death, then return at any age ."
"Leo?" Supergirl asked.
" Of Vinci. A great man of the science. We were friends for 8 years of great wonder. I would try his contraptions. He would delight at my revival from death. Poor Leo." He sighed. "Long cold in the grave now."
"You knew Leonardo da Vinci? And Isaac Newton? You seemed to have a knack of knowing the famous."
He looked at her long and hard. " I could tell thee of Alun, the great fletcher of Gloucester, maker of the finest arrows. But he is as nothing to you. I have met tens of thousands in my time , child. That some achieved fame is....not noteworthy."
"No, do not try to persuade me of life, golden hair. I have lived too much. I speak some three score tongues or more, yet most words I know are of the dead. I spoke little in my isolation, from life to life, and these new times throw new words up daily. I can understand some from noting the marks of the scribes," he gestured at the newspaper on the table " but these new words do not sit well within my head. "He swept a hand towards the television. " The box of lights always eludes me. I find it fearsome magick to shrink people so, yet I know they are not inside it but 'tis their visage that is trapped." He shook his head. "Strange times are these."
Eddie angled his head towards Ray, speaking out of the side of his mouth in a low whisper "He's a fucking loon".
The words reminded Evan they were there, and he seemed to rally. "Be gone, drunkards. Destiny does not call you this day." He stepped close to Supergirl, reaching out a rough hand to touch her cheek. "The scribes say you are a maid made of steel, yet you are warm and your skin be soft. Aye, but I see now there is steel in your gaze. You are a warrior-maiden. Come , queen of war, let us fight and send me to the bliss of oblivion."
Supergirl had no intention of letting him do whatever he was about to do, yet the dark power stopped her every effort to intercede. She sought to step closer yet her feet were unmoving, as she tried to raise her arms to grab him, she found herself struggling against an irresistible force that was intent on pinning her arms to her sides.
"BUT, BUT YOU CAN LIVE!" She struggled desperately to break free as Evan continued hs reverie.
" You would speak with me on the glory of life, when I am one who saw Arthur! Now there , there was wonder and glory in a man!
Fursa fought at Mount Badon, where he said Arthur left ten thousand Saxon slain! Ten thousand!!!! Can you imagine child, ten thousand dead, when most villages could but raise 20 or 30 fighting men? !!!! Oh, we had never seen his like! He had a mind for war. He used mounted men at arms, five abreast, charging as one, cutting swathes, ten, fifteen, twenty feet wide through the Saxon ranks! No one would use cavalry in such a way for a thousand years! That man was more glorious than any sunset. And I....I ended him. So Merlin the Dark made me live and live again to regret the deed."
"You killed King Arthur?" She asked incredulously.
"He was not the king. He was the king's warlord. Arthur was his title, Bael, was his name. He took Arthur as a war title to unite the Celts and the Romano British, both who were fighting the Sais, the Saxons. 'Arth' in our tongue meant 'bear', 'Ursa' in the Roman also meant 'bear' he was 'Arth-Ursa', the Bear. And so he united two peoples, and led us to great victories. And he would have saved us, but for treachery and a slip in my friend Fursa's blood. And my blow. Before his wedding feast, Fursa's blood spilled to the ground , and before I could bury him, he was food for ravens." He was distant, reliving a moment from long ago.
"And so now maiden, you will face the Sword of Arthur." He unwrapped the bundle he held, revealing a short hilt , very old, with a leather scabbard. She had scanned the bundle earlier, seen that beneath the rags was the worn leather over the lead scabbard, but was not unduly worried, her fear was the dark power that limited her movements, she was confident that her heat vision could handle the metal blade. If she had a chance to use it.
" You have Excalibur, the Sword in the Stone right there?" said Eddie incredulously.
"It was never Excalibur. In my peoples tongue it had many names, 'the Maker of the Slain' was the most common. Excalibur is another false word of todays world. It is an error. In the Roman it was 'GLADIUS EX ALIBI", 'the sword from elsewhere'. 'Ex Alibi' became Excalibur"
"The sword from elsewhere?" Said Ray. " Sounds pretty lame"
"'Elsewhere', also meant 'from another place'. Evan gestured, upwards. " The heavens. Another realm. A gift from the gods. It fell to earth as a blazing star, that cooled to leave a core of iron, and metals and ores most strange. Merlin had the finest smiths craft a blade from it. It was never the Sword in the Stone, it was the Sword from the Stone. We have been oft separated, it and I, yet the old Magicks always unite us again . Come , warrior-maiden, give me battle." He slowly slid the ancient blade clear of its housing, holding the scabbard still in his left hand he brandished it with his right.
It was not ornate; its edge, though sharp, was chipped and irregular with age. It bore no special engravings or mystic symbols, no runes or secret coda. It was a plain, flat blade. Yet Supergirl was transfixed, her plan to use her heat vision to make him drop it, forgotten as she sensed its hidden power. The blade had a faint greenish hue, growing ever brighter as it sapped her powers. She realised to her horror that the meteorite it was made from must have come , possibly through a wormhole, from her home planet.
Excalibur, the Sword of Arthur , was made from iron, forged as steel. And Kryptonite.
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How strange are the ways of the gods ...........and how cruel.
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Supergirl's eyes widened as she finally understood the true nature of the weapon brandished before her. As the sword had cleared the lead scabbard, and the full extent of the metal was revealed, she instantly recognized the greenish tint and could suddenly feel her strength being sapped by the Kryptonite from her homeworld. She tried to back away, but the sinister force surrounding her prevented her movement. She could feel her powers being drawn from her body, all thought of her heat vision gone. She knew her powers would be sapped long before the heat ray would cause him to drop the sword, and even then, if dropped, it would still be exposed killing her slowly. She felt her legs buckle and sag as powerless to resist the dark force and the lethal Kryptonian blade, she fell to her knees, her head dropping , chin on her chest, a low moan of pain coming from her throat. Her torso pitched forward and she weakly braced herself on all fours with her palms, the golden cascade of her hair flowing down to the floor. She slowly raised her head to look up beseechingly at the man standing over her, with her death held in his hands. But to her surprise she saw only concern for her on his face.
"Star-maid, you are unwell. You have a sickness" said Evan as he stepped towards her.
"NO! Stay BACK !!!" She shouted with desperation.
His reaction was instinctive, even though immortal. " Stay back good fellows! She is plague ridden!" He called urgently to Eddie and Ray. "Fear not, girl from afar, I cannot die but maybe your ague will bring my happy end." He sheathed the sword and stepped towards her.
She instantly felt better, her powers and her strength flooding back to her. She realized that he had no idea that it was Excalibur that had caused her weakness. She rallied, standing slowly upright. "Haven't you heard? I'm Supergirl, not 'Star-maid', and you don't wanna mess with me." She said with stubborn determination. With Excalibur sheathed she was just about to use her vision when Eddie stepped forward. "You get away from her buddy!" Unfortunately, his timing couldn't have been worse, as Evan again drew the ancient sabre to meet the new threat. She shuddered and again fell to her knees.
This time Evan realized the link.
" You are not sick....'tis the warrior blade that weakens you. Then we will have at each other, you and I. He turned away, sweeping
the blade casually in Eddie's direction. The message was clear: keep away. Eddie over reacted due to the beer and fell back clumsily against the bar. Evan walked a few steps away, and facing the West began to talk in a strange tongue. Supergirl , a master of many languages, recognised it as a mix of Gaelic, Old Welsh and some elements of Brithonic, an ancient Celtic tongue. She could broadly follow it and to her surprise realized that he was praying.
"Ancient and wise Eastra, goddess mother, whose gift of the sun we cherish each day, I, who have pledged my life to you ask in return a gift of your divine power. You will be honoured in battle, and my sacrifice shall be thy offering, grant me this boon only : let me fall this day to the girl of another world."
On the other side of town, the head of the Chinese delegates at the trade conference was furious. He was dressing for dinner but his mind was on greater matters. The Star-child, weakening though she was, had understood the fool had compassion. He could not lose everything now. Not again. Not after all this time. He silently started mouthing to himself.
Supergirl could suddenly feel the darkness grow even stronger, but now with the blade still exposed and her powers draining she felt the pain it brought, crushing her under its malevolent touch, she knew she could not resist such power indefinitely...
At the bar , Eddie spun to face Ray. " Fuck this." He grabbed an open bottle of whisky on the bar and took a long swig, spraying the draught out with a splutter. "Christ I hate whisky" he said.
Ray was aghast " Jesus Ed! That's not whisky, its the bottle I been using all night cos I was too scared to leave him to go to the John!"
"That better be a fucking joke" Ed said seriously.
"Er...yeah.... 'course " he lied "Had you there...."
"I'm gonna help her Ray." Ed said and turned grimly around. Ray grabbed his elbow.
" What the hell you gonna do? It's like black smoke or somethin'"
"I can't just watch her die Ray....Destiny calls me this day afterall"
"You'll get killed!"
"I know...but I took an oath Ray, 'protect and serve'. I ain't gonna watch her die."
"But you got a wife! What about Emily?"
"Fuck her. She's been screwing Portman from Traffic for the last two years. He can keep her"
"Shit, really? You never said...."
"Why do ya think I'm here so much? Ain't the beer or your charming repartee" Eddie smiled.
He swallowed hard. "Well , 'faint heart never won fair maid' like my dad always said."
"Hold up." Said Ray, reloading the shotgun.
Ed smiled, "You keep Highlander over there busy I'll try and help her".
"You can't fight it Ed...."
"I know...but maybe if it has to deal with me it will weaken its hold on her somehow....I dunno. I ain't really got a plan. Wish me luck..."
As he stepped towards the Girl of Steel, the darkness spread in a ring around her, before bursting into a wall of flame, a blazing circle with the dying Kryptonian still visible at its centre.
The flames were an unearthly black.
"Oh shit!" said Eddie and Ray in unison.
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How strange are the ways of the gods ...........and how cruel.
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The black flame burned and crackled with an intense heat, unnaturally. Ray and Eddie, both shieding their faces could feel the blaze drying the moisture on their eyeballs, forcing them to blink repeatedly. Suddenly Eddie dropped his arms and still staring at the flame addressed his former partner.
"Ray, you know anything about magic?"
"I know David Blaine is up his own ass ."
"Yeah, I know shit too. But I seen Copperfield turn an elephant into a Cadillac and make the Statue of Liberty disappear. And all I know is neither really happened as it appeared. An' lookin' at this flame now....I'm wondering if it feels so hot , how come it ain't burning your wooden floor? And who the hell ever heard of a black flame? I'm still gonna help her Ray."
"Ed! You'll be killed!"
"We all gotta go sometime....well except Highlander over there....Wish me luck"
"Ed! ED!" Ray shouted desperately, but Eddie had already stepped forward.
The dark entity surrounding Supergirl glowed brighter, if darkness could ever glow bright. It blistered the skin on Eddies hands , melting the fat beneath so that it dripped off the bones of his fingers onto the floor. Such were the commands of its originator. Eddie would either recoil in horror or suffer a heart attack at the shock. Either way it would stop him. But illusion only works if its witnessed, and though Ray saw the horror of his friend being burned, as Eddie stepped into the flame he had his eyes clamped firmly closed. He walked through unscathed stopping just before he reached the Maid of Might, tentatively opening one eye, then the other. He was inside the black ring which seemed to have visibly paled. His body shielded Supergirl from the direct power of the sword, and she rallied, slightly. She was on her knees head down, opposite palms on her shoulders, embracing herself, trying to resist the pain as her life ebbed away.
"W-what are you doing here? Go....g-go quickly...it'll crush you...What are you doing?" She asked again as he bent down putting a sheltering arm around her.
"I'm protecting and serving honey, its what I do. "He smiled, as he helped her to stand, leading her away from Evan and the sword, towards the door, the darkness moved with them surrounding them both. With each step Supergirl was getting stronger.
"T-the sword, got to sheathe that sword" she said weakly , clinging to him.
"RAY!" He shouted. "Get the SWORD! THE SWORD, PUT IT IN THE SCABBARD"
"Will do, you mad bastard!" Ray shouted as he dramatically tried to vault the bar, shotgun in hand. The effect was somewhat spoiled as he only got one leg and ass cheek up onto it before falling back behind the bar out of sight. To his credit he leapt up instantly, and ran around the open end of the bar calling "I'm fine , I'm fine!"
Supergirl stopped suddenly, looking up at Eddie. "It's not stopping us moving...nor did it stop you entering the flame....Of course!!! This darkness is borne of hate, vengeance, spite, all negative emotions! It's the source of power for it ! That's why it manifests like this, it instantly creates uncertainty, fear of the unknown! It couldn't stop you because of your compassion! You were trying to help someone else, showing selflessness and a generosity of spirit! It can't defeat positive emotions!"
"So...you're saying love really does conquer all?"
"In a way , yes! Your love and loyalty to your friend, your care and compassion for my safety, all weaken it!" Even as she spoke the dark entity was oscillating, fading then darkening then fading again.
"We could make out, if you think it will help...." said Eddie.
She gave him a withering look that instantly softened as she saw his broad grin.
"That won't be necessary, thank you" she raised a weak smile of her own.
Ray had finally rounded the bar and was now advancing upon Evan. He had finished his prayers and now knelt still facing West, head bowed , sword held before him. As Ray approached he half rose and spun, the blade flashing out towards Ray. It struck the ribbed pump of the shotgun and the metal parted like butter, leaving Ray holding two separate halves of the gun in either hand.
"You would stand against me?" Evan asked."I , who am no great warrior, yet I have killed more men than you have met...."
Ray swallowed hard. "I guess, though when you put it like that it don't seem such a good idea...."
As Ray took a tentative step forward Evan twirled around , confusing the bar tender, before slamming the hilt down onto his
forehead. Ray collapsed with a grunt.
"I'll get the sword" said Eddie, then stopped. "You know its kinda traditional for the hero to get at least a kiss off the damsel in distress at this point..."
Despite her predicament, she smiled, and gave him a weak peck on the cheek. As he turned to face the darkness it seemed to shy back from him.
"Get out of my fucking way!" He cried before stepping into it once more. The dark entity, faded, resurged, then faded away to nothing.
On the other side of town, the Chinese chief delegate was apoplectic with rage.
It was so long since those forces had been summoned, he was at a loss as to how to reinforce or replace them. Would his dream die again at the 11th hour?
As Eddie advanced Evan faced him.
"Your friend will live. And I will spare you too."
" I can't promise to do the same" said Eddie grimly.
The blade flashed before him but as Eddie raised his revolver, Evan dropped its point suddenly so that it rested on the neck of the prone barman.
"Lay down the pistola"
"You said you'd spare him!' Cried Eddie with concern.
"I lied."
"Shit!Ray!...Shit!" He threw the gun down in disgust. "There! There's your 'pistola'!!! But for Christ's sake, put the sword away , you're killing her!"
Without Eddie's body shielding her Supergirl was again exposed to the full power of Excalibur, but no longer hemmed in by the darkness she was trying to crawl further away from the deadly power.
Evan suddenly advanced on Eddie , who tensed ready for a fight but Evan angled passed him before spinning and slamming his fist holding the sword into his jaw like a knuckleduster. Eddie fell senseless to the floor.
Evan looked at Supergirl. "Now...girl from the stars... 'tis just us." he smiled.
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How strange are the ways of the gods ...........and how cruel.
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Evan turned away from the fallen Eddie, and approached her. Each step bringing him nearer increased her pain and accelerated her weakness. She could feel the energy being drawn forth from her body, each second sapping her more. She was no longer crawling towards the door, she simply didn't have the will or the strength. She felt drained, unbelievably tired, desperate to just close her eyes and let the world and this terrific pain go away. She looked up through her bedraggled hair imploringly, silently begging him to stop her suffering with the plaintive look in her beautiful blue eyes. He could see the angst on her face and looking genuinely concerned, he stopped some feet from her. It was obvious from her reactions that it was the blades exposure that was having this effect, and Evan looked long and hard at the girl dying before his eyes. He then sheathed Excalibur, not totally, but almost to the hand guard, and stepped further away from her.
"This blade....is your undoing. Yet it does not have to even strike you....The skystone, that fell on fire ....something in the skystone is your end, is it not?"
She saw no sense in denying the obvious, and instead nodded weakly. She had sensed all evening that the malevolent entity was directed at him ,not by him, and she tried to appeal to the decent man she felt that she had sensed beneath that shroud of pain and hate.
"P-please....its gone...whatever hold it... had over you....its broken....you are free ...of its power....you can choose ...your.....own....path....." She gasped, the inch or so of the blade showing still taking her life second, by second.
He could see it too. He pushed the blade home and she instantly started to rally. She slumped, gasping, but recovering with each breath. He approached her again, carrying the sheathed blade, bending to grip her gently by the shoulders, he helped her slowly to her feet.
"They say in the scribes journal, " he gestured towards the newspaper on the table ," that you have a hot light that can be in your gaze, that can melt metals?" She nodded, getting stronger.
"And another look that can see the innermost things of people and objects? A strength to match 50 men? " To each question she nodded.
"Yes," she took a deep breath , finally feeling more herself, "I can do all those things"
"And soar as the falcon, above clouds? To the stars even?" Again she nodded.
"Yet... " he drew the blade again, a few inches.
"No! No please....!" She gasped, feeling the Kryptonite's power.
"I cannot match you without the blade....yet you cannot function in its presence....either circumstance would be a sore combat for the other."
"We don't need to fight at all! I will not kill you, and I know you don't have it in your heart to harm me willingly. That ...dark...entity...its gone now...you can make you're own... choices...
It...doesn't need to end ...in death....mine or yours....you can live....at long last...you can live."
He sheathed the blade fully , smiling. "Oh, beauteous daughter of the heavens" he embraced her.
"I have been tormented by the curse for fifteen centuries..." He pulled away slightly to look at her , his hands still behind her. "I have done nothing but think on its nature for decades at a time....do you seriously think I had not realised its nature was vile before now?"
She sensed him stiffen, recognizing a change in his attitude, but just before she could pull away she suddenly felt an intense burning pain at the small of her back, searing through her cape, her costume. He again had exposed the blade, this time some four inches or so but this close to her the effect was devastating.
Her head was angled back, mouth open in shock, eyes wide beneath a frown that spoke of her surprise and betrayal.
"Aaaaaa-aaaaaahhhhh!" She panted , barely able to raise a scream.
He held her, arms wrapped around her quivering body, as she looked beseechingly at him.
"P-please,no!"
He closed the blade up but not completely, and stepped in closer so that it was further away from her back.
"It is still with me, child. It always is. The fact that thee have realised its true nature has destroyed its power over you, not over me.
At times, through the centuries I have not seen it made manifest for decades. But it is, always , with me. It is seldom as strong as it was this eve, but even when not visible, it is sensed. I am shunned. Oh, it makes people feed me or clothe me...I never gave coin for the ale here tonight....but they never like nor trust me. I saved a child from a mill stream once, and her village allowed me to settle for a while. Yet I was never liked, never accepted. Never loved. You are the first woman I have held for a thousand years who was not a whore. Even the whores have turned away from me at times. You cannot begin to imagine my pain. No words can e'er express my awful loneliness. I am adrift, out of my time. I cannot even join armies easily anymore...they were always the last home of those unaccepted...gathering the young and the poor. And though I have fought in hundreds of armies, it is always the same. Young men march off to war with songs and high spirits, and win or lose it is old men who trudge back home in silence and broken. In the second Greatest War, they said I was...what was their phrase?-...'educationally subnormal' ....I was too much a fool to be shot through, they said." He laughed, mirthlessly. "Not stupid enough to die..." He laughed again. "I cannot even converse easily anymore, as new words spring up like summer wheat...I have to think of the words in the Old Tongue, then of what they are in the Sais, the Saxon, then put them as to Anglish, then even unto what those of America doth say. I had no time of learning, save those years with Leo. And I was not a bright learner of the letters. And these words of today have no meaning , many are just letters....so many , so meaningless.
They do not stay within my head.
I could follow the words that were created of old. They were true words and had meaning. I was even there when some were born..." He laughed again, this time with genuine humour.
"I was with the Union army that marched south from New York unto Washington, and all the whores did follow , for an army is wages to a whore, and General Hooker was joked to have bedded them all, for he was a one for womenfolk, and the scribes called them 'Hooker's Division' in jest! And so whores are also Hookers! This I understand. But a 'Book of the Face' ? On a box of letters that can send words to the other end of the earth, without herald or messenger? Tis meaningless to me."
All the while he talked Supergirl had desperately sought a solution, a means of escape. But he held her too closely, constantly sheathing and unsheathing Excalibur, sapping her strength , then letting her recover for a few moments before sapping it again. She could see now the madness behind his gaze. There was to be no reasoning with him. Death was all he sought. But as he had said, he couldn't fight her without it, and she was incapable of fighting him while he had the sword.
He held her close, in her weakness, crushing her. He gazed into her pleading face.
"I am ....so....tired of life. Life for me is but pain and torment each night. Each night to relive my friends death, my own death, my people's saviour's death!" He was crying again, shaking with emotion. "I do not know this world any longer. Please you must release me." He closed the scabbard to only a few millimeters. She could feel it burning at the small of her back.
"Could you soar, as we are, like this? As you did when you saved the craft of the air?"
"I...I...don't..know...I don't...think...so..." He edged it closer to the hilt, a thin slit of metal all that was exposed.
"And now?"
"M-maybe....but w...where would you fly to?", recovering slowly only for him to recognize it and expose more of the blade.
"A-aaaah!" She gasped
Without moving his head he looked up.
"To your domain, sweet byrd" , he pronounced it ' beard' , the old Saxon for a young girl of marrying age, " I would have you take me
to the heavens. Nay," he corrected himself,
"Unto the very stars themselves....."
At the trade conference function on the far side of town the Chinese chief delegate let out a sigh of relief. Panic over. Calm and in control once more. Chin Wah, his aide and factotum knocked politely on the door, but his voice had concern.
"Mr Lin, sir? Mr Lin are you alright? Should I call the legation doctor?"
Mr Lin. His little personal joke,, when written. A single letter away from how most of the West actually knew him. But who would ever believe that the elderly oriental man had been Arthur's adviser, friend and guide? They would be called mad.
"I am fine. I will be with you all shortly." He answered in the clipped tones of the official state mandarin. And after the scare, he was now fine after all. His plans would proceed. His dream would finally be realized. Fifteen centuries after it had been ended by a lucky blow from a farm boy. He was partially to blame, he knew. He had cast divination spells for victory, but it had never occurred to him that that rabble under Mordred would ever kill Arthur. That victory would not involve Arthur's survival. He had secretly encouraged Mordred to revolt as part of his plan, but the fool was supposed to rise up against his father, the king, then Arthur could restore peace and with Mordred dead claim the throne for himself. With Merlin's help the Arthurian dynasty would be established, uniting Britain then, over successive generations, conquering the races of Europe. To bring peace to all. But the old gods were known to twist the will of man. And they twisted his will, that day at Camlann. But now it would be different. Now he was on the verge of creating his dream a-new.
And this time nothing would stop him. No gods. No hand of man. No flying woman.
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How strange are the ways of the gods ...........and how cruel.
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Evan held her close, the pad of his thumb at the top of the scabbard, his index finger over the top of the cross guard. By slight pressure down he could squeeze the opening smaller, or by pushing in with the thumb make the gap wider, exposing more of the blade, but both actions would impact on the amount of blade exposed by mere millimetres, helping him to find the fine balance between controlling her and killing her.
"They were brave men, those two. " he nodded to where Eddie and Ray lay unconscious.
"Br-braver than you...they at least know the value of a life and risked theirs to save...me."
He looked at her quizzically. "Braver than you too, maiden. You cannot be harmed by bullets or blades...so where is your bravery in taking on armed villains? You, who cannot be injured? What courage is there in facing a death that cannot claim you? I have never said I was brave. I have seen men of true valour fight impossible odds, with no hope of victory. Yet still they fight. Mostly...mostly they failed. But many deeds lie beyond valour. There are no heroes in battle. Just those who are lucky and those who are not. That eve, after Arthur fell by my hand...we sang the laments for the dead and the brave. For heroes and cowards. It was the same song for all. The dead are just the dead. Do not talk to me of bravery.
When you face your own mortality you are reduced to crawling away on your knees. There will always come a day that you cannot win. If you face each encounter as if that day is upon you, now, then even in death you might achieve a victory. Is that bravery? Or just acceptance of the fates the gods have chosen for us all? Come. I wish to see as the falcon , or hawk. Take me up, through the vapours. To the edge of heaven. I seek but a kiss from you. " he sensed her stiffen "What we used to call 'thy Foeman's Kiss' - the kiss of a blade or a musket, the kiss of death, that waits upon the battlefield to embrace us all. Or so we thought." Shuffling, he manouvered her outside, holding the scabbard in his left hand , the crook of his arm at her throat as , standing behind her, he held the sword handle in his right.
"Now," he commanded " ascend".
With difficulty she slowly took flight. Ordinarily, his weight would be as nothing to her, but in her weak state she felt his arm drag at her throat, choking her like a noose. It took her ten seconds just to reach the roof of the bar, where she had to stop , gasping.
"I...I can't fly...like this..."
Evan accepted the obvious. "Very well. You are a woman of your word? Give it to me now that you have yielded, and the blade shall be sheathed. But I would have you obey me until I release you from your oath, yes?"
"I still won't help kill you..."
" Then it must be this way." He dropped his grip so that his arm was around her waist, the blade bared near her right hip. She could feel it there like a branding iron, searing her.
"T..too..too close!" She panted, feeling the strength drawn from her body.
He shifted his grip, holding the scabbard near its end, the blade and cross guard now in the thumb and fingers of his right hand, roughly 2-3 ft behind her, with his arm extended back, above his head.
"'Tis meeter for you, thus?" He asked. It took her a second to recognize the archaic word.
"Meeter? Uh..better, yes better that way." She nodded.
"Then on , my glorious swan! But , I mark this- when ...when we are above the clouds ...among the heavens...do we...will we...will we see the faces of the gods?" He asked earnestly.
Only then did she really understand him, and despite his power over her she felt nothing but pity. He had had no education , never taught to appreciate and adapt to the changing world around him. He was born of a simpler time, when the gods controlled the seasons and the destiny of man. All he had seen in the 1500 years of his existence, could not change his conceptual understanding. A man cursed by magic, he simply saw anything he did not understand as another type of magic. Electricity, aircraft, television, all were impossible for him to understand, so he never tried, he just accepted their existence. Isolated and outcast he had forever been excluded from society, but also from society's knowledge. He had learned only what he had gleaned from days on the march and nights around campfires with hundreds of different armies over 150 decades.
She didn't have it in her heart to crush him once more after all he had suffered. Rather than deny their very existence, she simply said "No...you cannot see the faces of the gods...."
He looked crestfallen. "No matter...but I should've liked to have met with Eastra...." He swallowed hard, obviously disappointed but trying not to let it show. "On...gold hair"
And so they flew, a slow and for her painful ascent. All the while she wondered what he hoped to achieve. He must have fallen from heights before in his time so how could he think that it would finally end his days, if he were to let go of her?
As they rose slowly the city and its lights spread out before them. Night hung over it like a blanket on a bird's cage, a dark shroud that, as they slowly went higher , yielded at its fringes to a coming dawn.
"'Tis wondrous, indeed!" He cried, his mouth near her ear.
"Each day can hold new wonders!" She tried again to persuade him on a different course. He leaned closer towards her, nodding as he spoke.
"Aye, each day can hold new wonders. But, for me, each night holds the same old terrors...."
As they flew higher it was her Kryptonian powers that shielded her and as he was in contact with her physically, him from the cold and lack of Oxygen. This extra use of her powers and the exposed blade continued to sap her strength; she realized she was struggling to fly with them both yet she knew he would not trust her to sheathe the blade completely.
She turned so that the sun was behind them.
"Don't look at the sun." She commanded.
Far away below them , lightning flashed, the thunder not carrying to their position. "Ha! Adraste and Bel are at odds! I wonder what angered her so?" He said, half to himself.
"We see the Gods after all!"
She barely heard him . She was looking for the moon. In her weakened state with her powers sapped to allow them to breathe, to shield them from the radiation, to stop them freezing and of course to fly, against the pull of gravity, she knew she couldn't carry on much longer. She needed a place to stop, to rally, to refocus on what she might do to stop him. Such a place existed, several of them in fact, but to calculate the nearest she needed to see the moon.
She desperately needed to find a Lagrange Point.
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How strange are the ways of the gods ...........and how cruel.
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Mr Lin nodded politely to the minor Saudi official as the translators completed the rather awkward task of putting the Arabs' words into Chinese. Mr Lin didn't need the translation of course, but he always found it useful to use the extra time the translation bought to compose himself and a reply. At any one time he had hundreds of spells at work, most very minor, and they were something of a distraction at times.Spells to translate, spells to speak a variety of languages, spells to make him appear Chinese, both in the flesh and on the t.v., spells of vision, spells of knowledge, spells of hearing, spells of manipulation. All required power. In the Old Times , that power had come from blood sacrifices. Animals. Goats. Sheep. Chickens. Bigger animals like cows and oxen for more power. Nothing like the power from a human sacrifice. And then he had made a discovery. It wasn't the act of sacrifice. It was the death that released the power. And death was everywhere, constantly. Little deaths, like a fly in a web, and bigger deaths like an old man with fever. And then the deaths in battle. Hundreds, thousands . All at once. And it was his spell to harness that power that gave him his longevity, and resurrected the wretch known as Evan. Battles such as Waterloo, or Ypres had given him power for a dozen lifetimes. The spell he cast ensured all lifeloss in a 10 mile radius became his life force. It made his power limitless. And it had made him complacent. He didn't pay the close attention to events that he sometimes should. And the Old Magicks liked to play sometimes. They had drawn the alien into this. He didn't quite know why. It unnerved him. She unnerved him. He laughed, politely, at the translated joke from the Arab delegate. He didn't understand it.
And he didn't understand her. The blade made her weak. That was a surprise to him. And again it was something else he didn't understand.
Knowledge was power. And he didn't like his ignorance.
Far above the Earth, Supergirl was weakening. The drain on her powers of protecting herself and Evan from the harsh conditions at the fringes of space, of flying , of the periodic agony as Excalibur was exposed , was crippling her. She needed to recuperate, to find a Lagrange Point. A gravity well , where the pull of the Earths gravity, the moon and the Sun were in equilibrium. Once there, there would be no strain of trying to fly - theoretically something at a Lagrange Point would orbit the Earth indefinitely, never pulled in any one direction by any planetary body, satellite or star. The easiest one to locate , and for her the nearest, was directly between the Earth and the moon. There were others, but her powers would fail her long before she reached them. She had a plan. To reach the gravity well, gather her strength secretly whilst appearing to falter, then surprise him by turning quickly with her super speed to face the sun, only for a microsecond, dazzling him and allowing her to disarm him. She had thought of doing this on the way up , but the risk of him baring the blade as he was blinded and him falling to Earth with her unable to stop him posed a danger to anyone below. At the Lagrange Point, he would not fall anywhere, and the recuperation of her powers would help her to achieve her goal.
As they ascended, he gazed down at the Earth, falling away beneath them.
" We have come from the America! But where away be my homeland?" He asked her quizzically.
"It's over there, just at the ....the horizon...its covered by cloud." She said , weakly.
"And that , is that then Breasal's realm ?" He pointed with an elbow.
"That's ....that's....Brazil."
"As I said! Brazil to thee, Breasal to those who found it! I was there on the Portugee caravel of Don Pedro Alvarez Cabral ! I had told tales to the crew of the isle of Breasal, the High King of all the World, away to the West, and when we found this place they did name it so! After the land of my tales! And now I see it again, after all these centuries! Oh, a good ship was she and a happy day, long ago. Good men of the sea those Portugee , best I have looked on. " he said excitedly.
He seemed almost childlike in his enthusiasm. "And look! The souls of the gods themselves!" He pointed to a twinkling light some distance away. "And another!"
She realised as they reached her destination that it was in her interests to distract him, as each second she was growing slightly stronger.
"They...they are satellites...made by man...they carry messages and the images in the box of lights..." She could feel his disappointment through their bodily contact, as his muscles sagged, relaxing a little.
She feigned weakness , slumping slightly. "I...I must rest ...a...a moment. Where...where are we going?"
He looked dour. "I ...I had wished you to take me to the heart of Bel, the Sun god. But you are...not able, I think. And besides...Bel is the daily gift of Eastra to the world. Born anew. Yet I see now the world a-spin below. And Bel does not change. He does not move. He does not rise. It was we who moved, not him. Gallileo told me those stars were but burning orbs of gas a-fire, as was Bel. But I did not think it so, until now. Bel is not a god but a blazing orb of fire. And if he does not be, then what of Eastra?" He said sadly.
She could not bring herself to turn on him at this moment when all he had believed for 1500 years was falling apart. She tried again to reason with him.
"I cannot fly on...please, sheathe Excalibur...we can go back and figure something out...a way for you to start again..."
"You...are as a Goddess. You soar, you speed. You have strength to smite dragons. And a hot gaze to melt steel. And you are most comely on the eye. Yet, you are not a Goddess. If you were , I think you would be as Branwen, the goddess of Beauty. 'The Venus of the Northern Seas' scholars named her. But you are not she. For she, and Eastra and all the others ...they do not live in these heavens. They do not live at all...it seems."
There was nothing she could say to him, and she felt only pity.
"This spot...Newtons invisible magic does not act here so well I think? I can feel ...less magic upon me. Is this where his gravities of Earth are at their end?"
She nodded. She knew she should strike now, yet he seemed to be on the verge of an epiphany.
"Then maybe...maybe the power of the Old Earth Magic ends here also...."
Far , far below them, to the south of the Caribbean, a huge tropical storm was developing. Vast swirls of snow white cloud were spiralling around in huge arms, with broken shadows and clear patches between them, as the spiral tightened on a central dark core of clear sky. It looked like a giant white flower.
"I can see her now, at last again... 'The Rose of the World'......." He said as he drew the blade fully and at the same time pushed away from her...
Last edited by tallyho8 years ago, edited 3 times in total.
How strange are the ways of the gods ...........and how cruel.
I am here to help one and all enjoy this site, so if you have any questions or feel you are being trolled please contact me (Hit the 'CONTACT' little speech bubble below my Avatar).
As Evan edged away from her, floating backwards, she turned to face him, realising to her horror that she had left it too late to make her move. She did not hear his last words. They were something that his friend Fursa had said to him, on the eve of Camlann, all those years before. He had mentioned aloud that he was afraid to die, and Fursa had smiled and said, very philosophically, words that had stayed with him all these centuries.
"For while the Sun is on your cheek and there is a wind in the heath, then life is very sweet, my brother. Who would wish to die?"
With the blade bared fully she could not go near him. She could feel her life force being sucked from her by the naked metal, appalling in its intensity, agonizing in its ferocity. With her and Evan floating further apart each second, it was going to be touch and go as to whether she would die before he edged far enough away to allow her to recover. With the entire length of the Kryptonite imbued steel exposed, she realised that she would not win this race against time. But as he inched slowly beyond the influence of her Kryptonian powers, the powers that had so far protected him from the radiation , lack of oxygen and the cold, it was Evan who suffered. Ordinarily exposure to the vacuum of space would have caused various parts of his body to explode or implode under the sudden pressures. But as he silently slid away from her protective influence, millimetre by millimetre his body instead froze, before the pressure took its toll. As the ice crystals spread swiftly over his face he wore a faint smile and a look almost of apology. But it was the layer of ice that engulfed the blade that helped her. The sun was still behind him , and the moonshadow prevented it warming him directly, so the ice smothered him like a shroud. As the layers of frost built up on the blade Supergirl at last had a faint glimmer of hope as her weakened powers allowed her to edge away slightly faster, that very act of increasing the distance between them giving her more speed and so ever more strength. When she was several hundred yards from him she finally felt herself falling away as the Earths gravity again pulled her towards the planet.
She looked helplessly on at the frozen corpse slowly disappearing. She could never get to him with Excalibur bared fully, and she suspected that was why he had drawn it. He wanted an end and here, at the limits of Earths influence, he hoped to have found it. And, in a way, she hoped he had too. She was sorry that she hadn't saved him, yet after all he had endured she hoped he was finally at peace. But as she descended back towards the city she sensed the evil that had tormented him was present still. And as she neared the metropolis she felt it drawing her, not back to the bar but to the far side of town. Towards the diplomatic quarter.
Mr Lin sat in the function suite, with a cup of piping hot tea before him. The other delegates had left for their respective hotels, but he had insisted on staying. Staff were tidying up around him, cleaners were gathering up the refuse and his own security detail covered the entrances as Chin Wah, his aide fussed around, desperate to get the evening wrapped up and his charge off to bed. Mr Lin was in no hurry. For one thing he needed to wait for his tea to cool. And for another he was awaiting a visitor.
He glanced up at the ceiling, but his gaze went far beyond. Up, through the upper storeys, through the clouds to the fringes of the atmosphere, to a small speck that was a frozen corpse holding a sword.
He sighed. The fool. Should he release him , now, after these centuries? Maybe. He had enjoyed toying with him over the years. Most notably when he had been Da Vinci. He had taught the fool to write, but he had taught him the special backward script, and the dolt hadn't even known! How he had laughed secretly at his struggles. How he had delighted in torturing the idiot. Designing devices he knew would fail and still getting him to 'test' them! Killing him on an almost daily basis! And still he came back for more! He even thought they were friends!! As if he could ever befriend a man who had destroyed his dreams, killed his friend, ruined a people. He had revelled in watching him suffer from afar, but so much more so when he had been present, as Gallileo, as Da Vinci, as Newton. Concocting bizarre tests and experiments that would either kill or maim or just cause him pain.Yet...he had tired of the game. As Einstein he had got bored of the oaf within a week, had not even begun any supposed tests. He had befriended him, laid the ground work for the future and then....then thought better of it. For it was a fact that he , Myrddin, Merlin, Mr Lin had evolved through the decades, the centuries, but Evan or Ieuan as he was when he struck Arthur down, he had not. He was a simple minded man, he even still prayed to the old Gods! Fool.
There was only so much pleasure you could take from torturing a man who didn't even realize he was being tortured. And after 15 centuries, maybe it was at an end.
Then again, maybe not. And what of this girl with god-like powers, yet crippled by merely being near the blade of Excalibur? It did not even have to strike her. He too, could sense the Old Magicks drawing her towards him. Yes, they did like to play and twist the will of man on occasion. He thought back to Camlann, so long ago. If Arthur had had Excalibur rather than a hastily borrowed sword from Cei then the boy would have fallen and Merlin's dream would have gone on. But Excalibur was still on Arthur's horse, Rhyfel, and the one thing Mordred had done right in that ambush was attack and scatter the horses first, while Arthur was at camp, unarmed and on foot. Mordred. What a fool. He had been killed that day by Rhyfel when he bolted. Run down by the big war horse whose very name was 'War' or 'Battle'. But somehow the legends had twisted the truth to Arthur killing Mordred. He sighed. What did it matter now? Now all that mattered was the flying woman. The accords would be signed in the morning, his plan would be in place. He had cast spells of future seeing and divination. He already knew that he would survive his encounter tonight with her and that with his spells of protection against her powers, Supergirl could not harm him. He, by contrast could summon that blade in the heavens at a moments notice, with but a word . And it could destroy her. Let the Olden Powers play out their game. He was ready for them and their tricks. And he was ready for her.
He went to take a sip from his tea but found it too hot still. No matter. A spell could have allowed him to swallow it, but he had patience. He would wait for it to cool.
He was good at waiting. He had waited for fifteen hundred years.
Last edited by tallyho8 years ago, edited 1 time in total.
How strange are the ways of the gods ...........and how cruel.
I am here to help one and all enjoy this site, so if you have any questions or feel you are being trolled please contact me (Hit the 'CONTACT' little speech bubble below my Avatar).
The idea was that Evan was always being isolated and never fitted in with society so didn't speak much, whereas Merlin had, so his words and speech are more in tune with current society. (This will be more clear in the last post, up next.)I was trying to contrast one who had been outcast with one who had been at the centre of things. I actually did have a paragraph in about his speach but to be honest it was pretty boring and just detracted from the story so I cut it out. (Didn't think anyone would be interested!).Plus old people dont tend to pick up the jargon of the day so whilst Evan physically might be young or middle aged mentally he was just a pissed off pensioner!
But bottom line I just like some of the olde worlde style prose and it gave me a chance to use it.
Glad of ALL comments and opinions so please keep em coming!
The end is nigh!
How strange are the ways of the gods ...........and how cruel.
I am here to help one and all enjoy this site, so if you have any questions or feel you are being trolled please contact me (Hit the 'CONTACT' little speech bubble below my Avatar).
Mr Lin smiled as a blue and red blur streaked through the door, closing it behind in an instant and then appeared at his table as Supergirl. A second later the door flew open and his aide rushed in, together with two of his security detail, guns drawn.
He waved them away casually with his hand, and in Chinese said simply "It's fine. That is all for tonight."
"But sir-" Chin Wah began, before Lin again waved him to silence.
Supergirl, trying to project a casual confidence that she didn't really feel, had sat upright, opposite Lin at the round table. Her long shapely legs were crossed, one knee upon the other, her hands with fingers laced had her palms resting upon her patella. But inwardly, she was both unsettled and confused. The dark spell seemed to draw her here, to this man. Now that she sat before him, it just felt RIGHT. That she was where she was supposed to be. Where it needed her to be. She looked at the Chinese statesman before her.
As she often did , she scanned him with her x-ray vision, checking for weapons or hidden surprises. To her shock she had the biggest surprise she had ever had. Before her sat a diminutive oriental, clean shaven, balding, perhaps 58 years old, a polite smile upon his face and amusement behind his eyes. But in x-ray she saw through the illusion. She could make out the form of a much taller man, a European, with long straggling hair that matched his beard. He redefined 'ancient' in his appearance. The contrast between the two, the apparent and the actual, openly shocked her. He smiled broadly, sipping the tea.
It was still a little too hot. He waited until Chin Wah and the security men,ushering out the cleaning staff, reluctantly closed the
door behind them before he spoke, in English.
"Hello, my dear. You are, without doubt, Supergirl." He said with a smile.
"Who are you? Why have you brought me here? " she demanded.
"I have not." He said simply. "As to who I am....I have many names, been known as many things: 'The Dark Wizard'; 'Lord of the Arcane'; 'Black Sorcerer';'The Maker of the Mist'; 'He of Dark Renown'; yet they are just titles, more than names. My name now, is Mr Lin. My name of birth was Myrddin. You would know me as Merlin. And yes, I am THAT Merlin."
Supergirl stared at him, long and hard, shaking her head to his gestured offer of tea. Finally , she spoke.
"You were behind that business with the sword, the curse, weren't you?"
He smiled again. "He deserved it. He had to be punished. He ruined my plans for a thousand years with one sword stroke." He looked at her confidently. Then he rolled his eyes up to the ceiling, reaching a decision on Evans fate. Should he end the man's suffering, now after all these years of torment? Perhaps it was time after all. He nodded to himself as he reached his decision quietly and subtly mouthed a single word spell, barely audible. He smiled again pleased with himself as he looked at her."Yes, make no mistake he did deserve his fate."
"So he deserved that torment, that endless torture of existence without ever living? No friends , no family, drifting through wars in a pointless effort to find a death that would last? Enduring endless pain, horror and loneliness? No one deserved such a fate, for one mistake, made in an instant by someone little more than a boy" She said angrily, his composure and callousness annoying her.
He smiled again. "I came upon my village in ruins. Everyone dead by Saxon hands. I vowed then, not vengeance against the Saxon, but to end all wars, all suffering. I realized that unity prevents conflict, so I dedicated my life to studying the powers to make it true, to unite my tribes, my peoples with their enemies. I sought to do that with a leader, who would conquer all, unite all. I gave him a symbol, Excalibur, a blade beyond all others, a weapon of magic , irresistible in its power, to rally those he conquered. Yet he died. And the symbol, without the bearer meant nothing. He stole Arthur from me! Stole the dream of peace , of unity! So yes, I have punished him. As he deserved. He set back my plans by a millennia! I tried great leaders, I tried magical weapons , I tried royal marriages to join nations in peace, all to no avail. And then, then I realized the truth. It was money that would unite nations. Trade. Business in todays parlance. That's why you find me here. It has taken centuries of manipulation, countless wars to end wars. To create the economic climate we have now, ripe for nations to join, to federalise. At last I will realise my dream. Oh, not immediately. But we 'Chinese' take a longer view. In three or four or more decades there will be economic union. Globally. The European Union, united with Russia, India, Africa and the humble federation I am assembling now, that will be ratified here, tomorrow..." he looked at his watch,"today."he corrected himself. "It didn't take me long to come up with a name.
The 'Chinese-American-Middle Eastern League of Trade' a little bit of a mouthful, but I liked the acronym..."
"CAMELoT...a little cheesey don't you think?" Supergirl said contemptuosly.
"The press will love it. America has the technology, the Middle Eastern Arab countries have the money and the oil, and 'we' Chinese, we provide the market and the manpower- over a billion people, gradually embracing capitalism. With a communist face of course.
The people signing tomorrow don't realise the true ramifications of the accords. The US think it let's them into the Chinese markets, and it will at first. But ultimately, these accords will allow wholesale ownership of American corporations by China, using Arab backing, little by little. It will take years, but it will be. Nations intertwined cannot wage war on each other. India will ask to join in perhaps ten years, then Latin America, each country, one by one, then Russia. Finally Europe will be absorbed. Then we will at last develop Africa, its people , its resources. They too will become a powerhouse of industry, though it may take 60 or 70 years. Unification at last. A united world.Under my guidance and control of course. No more plagues and famines. We will have the resources and the commitment to deal with them and other difficulties. There may be a few more wars necessary to hasten the process. But leave them to me. I've done a good job of starting them so far, have I not?" He said almost as an aside. "Ultimately, leading to world peace. All those Miss World contestants will have to come up with a new desire, hmm?" He smiled. "Oh, I won't be Mr Lin then, when it is completed. Some other dignitary will have risen to prominence by then, as Mr Lin will have long passed away, fading from the memory. It will be a new statesman. Perhaps an Indian, or an African, I haven't decided what I want to be yet. But it will be me, nonetheless."
" A world controlled by one man...what makes you any different from Napoleon or Hitler or any other whose dreamt of world conquest?" She asked earnestly.
"Oh, quite a bit. I am not evil. Merely some of my methods might be deemed evil. But there is purpose to it. Be content with that. You cannot stop me . You wil not stop me."
"If your goal is truly 'world peace' then why would I want to?" She queried.
The question unsettled him, clearly. "I ...I am not sure...but you will intervene, the powers have made that clear."
So he wasn't so omniscient after all, she thought. He may summon them and use them, but he did not always control them, these dark forces, not completely.
"It was not I who brought you here. I bear you no malice. The Old Powers ...they sometimes like to play. To twist the will of man. They have called you here, though I know not why. Perhaps they sought to stop me , using you?" He pondered.
"But you will not succeed. I have cast spells of foresight. I will survive this encounter. I will be alive tomorrow. My trade agreement will be signed. But alas...I did not check your fate.... And I have cast spells to negate your powers when used against me..."
Alarmed, she went for him with her super speed but in the microsecond it took to reach the chair , he was gone, standing several feet away.
"You see? Your strength, your heat vision, nothing can affect me. Your x-ray vision is harmless. I allow you that. But know this. I can summon that blade among the heavens to plunge into your heart at a moments notice, with but a word. Shall we sit?"
She slowly returned to her seat, as did he, never taking her eyes off him, folding her arms in a subconsciously defensive gesture.
He took another sip from his tea. "So you see, girl of steel, my will is all. And it will be done. You cannot harm me. And with a simple word I can end you. So whatever the Olde Magicks planned, we can use this meeting to lay down the rules as it were." He took another sip." You don't tamper with my schemes, and I will let you live."
"Live? As you did that poor fellow , up there" she looked up to the ceiling, " tormented with life, only I would be tormented with the prospect of my death at ever angering you?" She said vehemently. "No thanks."
"Oh , well. A pity." he shrugged. "Think again. I am not evil. I do not wish you harm. But I will not let you stop me taking control. Ultimately . Mortal man cannot be trusted with such power."
"Oh, but you can?" She had seen how he used his power; to maliciously torment someone who had angered him. How much more harm would he do with nations under his control if he were angered or disobeyed? She would never forget that sense of evil from the darkness, darkness that he had summoned. He thought nothing of manipulating people, moving nations into war, just for his own vision of the world. As he said himself, whatever his ultimate motives, his methods were evil. "You seek peace, yet you've killed to achieve it. Thousands dead, all for your dream-"
"Oh no, millions probably. Definitely, I should think, over the years." He corrected her, amiably.
" Millions.....Listen to yourself, to what you have become, to what you seek. You have become what you abhorred. Who are you to say your dream is right? Anymore than that of the next man or woman? How many great leaders, artists, poets, authors have you killed, albeit indirectly, for your vision of what should be? How many women, how many children? How many villages, such as your own, have you destroyed? You don't want union...you want dominion. You are deranged, as mad as Hitler was.Yet you say you seek peace." she said, appalled.
Her words angered him.
"I have given man some of its greatest discoveries, as Gallileo, as Newton, as Einstein. Yet you liken me to a monster. But watch your tongue. " he spat the words out sharply. "Remember, child , I can end you with a word...and I still might." He raised the cup to his lips again, smiling a sinister, self-satisfied smile, and paused. He would put her in her place, then when she realised she had no choice, she would be his to manipulate. He may have a use for her now and again. He lowered the cup without drinking."Don't ever forget that." He raised the two thirds full cup up to his lips once more.
But she hadn't forgotten. She had remembered. In all those seemingly pointless books on the arcane that she had waded through, there was one common factor. Spells were invoked by incantations. His avoidance of her speed and her other powers he must have obtained from spells cast before her arrival. She looked at him long and hard, debating morally if she could do what she was about to do to him, a man who thought nothing of engineering the deaths of millions. She decided that she could. In her many fights against villains she had often hurled them into walls with her strength with little thought for the damage it might do to them. This in essence was no different. Her powers were useless against him. And he could kill her, he said, with a word. But what if she didn't use her powers against him? And what if he couldn't speak?
As he tipped the cup to his lips she focussed the full force of her heat vision not at him, but at the liquid in the cup. In an instant the tea became scalding hot and she helped it on its way with a precise but powerful blow of her breath to the bottom of the cup, tipping it all the way up and pouring its boiling contents all the way down his throat in an instant, before he could react. He tried to scream but a muffled gargle of agony was all he could muster as he collapsed , falling from his chair, his hands clawing at his throat,choking.
The scorching liquid had seared his lips, his mouth, his tongue, his vocal cords, his epiglottis, his throat. The only sound he could utter was a barely audible rasping that escaped his lips. She had seen something else in her x-ray of him. An ancient man with an ancient circulatory system. Paper thin veins and arteries, that no doubt kept functioning through his powers. But they were a seizure waiting to happen. Merlin had not known true pain in centuries, and the shock at the agony as his throat burned with the boiling liquid triggered the seizure now. A massive aneurysm sent his body into a twitching , violent spasm as a stroke took hold of him. His eyes were wide and staring as the left side of his face visibly sagged, his hand becoming a useless claw, his whole body shaking. He was shocked and in pain, staring at her in disbelief as she slowly sighed, uncrossed her smooth thighs , unfolded her arms and put her palms upon her knees as she rose. She walked over to where he lay twitching, squatting on her haunches, resting her forearms on her knees, the fingers of her hands dangling towards the floor. Her short red skirt, draped over her upper thighs, curved down towards the ground, her cape covered her back , the hem gathering in rich red folds on the carpeted floor. She looked him up and down, slowly, again using her x-ray vision. The stroke was massive, the damage permanent. He would live out his days but never recover his mobility , nor his speach. She felt regret that it had come to this, but little remorse for him. He had lived his lifetimes and deliberately denied others theirs.
"Oh dear, oh dear , oh dear." She tutted, shaking her head. "Well, the good news is, you have survived this encounter, just as you foresaw, so you will get to see Camelot a-new as it were. You'll just have to take a back seat is all, let others run it."
He let out a low garbled moan, a single strand of saliva escaped his open mouth and slowly dropped ever lower to the floor. His one good eye was wide and staring , a mix of impotent rage, pain and disbelief evident, as he tried in vain to speak.
"You take it easy." She patted his arm. "Gee, if only I could use my powers on you directly we could fly to the hospital in seconds."she shook her head in mock sadness. "Don't go anywhere, I'll go get some help.I won't be long, just gotta swing by a bar first, check on some buddies of mine. Be two shakes, back in a jiffy." She smiled down at the prone man before her. "Tricky thing, this soothesaying malarky , huh?" Supergirl said casually.
Far above, as the frozen body emerged from the moon shadow into the full glare of the Sun, the ice slowly started to melt. And an eyelid flickered. For Evan, the torment would go on. To implode , reform, only to implode again. An agonizing death, lasting only seconds, yet endlessly repeated, in an orbit that would never decay, that would last for as long as the Earth spun on its axis.
You should never underestimate the bitterness of old men.
THE END.
Last edited by tallyho8 years ago, edited 2 times in total.
How strange are the ways of the gods ...........and how cruel.
I am here to help one and all enjoy this site, so if you have any questions or feel you are being trolled please contact me (Hit the 'CONTACT' little speech bubble below my Avatar).
The idea was that Evan was always being isolated and never fitted in with society so didn't speak much, whereas Merlin had, so his words and speech are more in tune with current society.
Yeah, but if he had marched with Wellington and Grant and served as Newton's houseboy, he would have had no choice but to pick it up. He had to learn English after all.
But bottom line I just like some of the olde worlde style prose and it gave me a chance to use it. !
No argument from me! I can appreciate how difficult it is to write archaic speech without sounding silly and you did that well!
And I LOVED the way Supergirl had to THINK her way around the wizard at the end! Classic!
Last edited by Centurion12 years ago, edited 1 time in total.
Finally a Supergirl story where she is both powerful and intelligent! The clever way of working around the problem was reminiscent of the old Gardner Fox stories I have read.
Thanks all for the comments glad you got something out of it.
In case anyone is interested, the historical facts quoted are legit, Sinbad was derived from the Chinese eunoch admiral Chinbao or Sinbao etc. The one stretch is General Joseph Hooker, whilst the press labelling the prostitutes 'Hookers Division' undoubtedly popularised the phrase, it did exist pre civil war, but hey, its a great story and I liked it.
The Arthurian stuff is speculation though academics are broadly in agreement that Myrddin was Merlin, and he gave his name to Carmarthen, 'Caer-Myrddin', the fortress of Myrddin in South Wales. There is no translation for 'Excalibur' its a polyglot word, so I made up Ex Alibi as it fitted my purposes.
One last point on the language -
Centurion wrote:
tallyho wrote:Thanks Centurion!
The idea was that Evan was always being isolated and never fitted in with society so didn't speak much, whereas Merlin had, so his words and speech are more in tune with current society.
Yeah, but if he had marched with Wellington and Grant and served as Newton's houseboy, he would have had no choice but to pick it up. He had to learn English after all.
The issue was never that he didn't conceptually understand modern words but that he struggled to use them. His speech wouldn't have sounded strange until the last 160 years or so, and if he'd spoken one way for 13 centuries its not too outlandish that he'd carry on. Welsh is notoriously slow to adopt modernisms, and his first language was an old version of Welsh. When t.v. was invented it took the language 20years to come up with the welsh word 'teledu' before that, the phrase used literally translated into English as 'the radio that you look at'!
:shock:
On that basis, I didn't think my phraseology was much of a stretch !
One thing I realized after I'd finished it, is that whilst I tried to demonstrate her various powers I...er...completely overlooked her Super -Strength! Oops, my bad!
Again thanks to everyone who read it and especially those who took the time to post.
Last edited by tallyho12 years ago, edited 1 time in total.
How strange are the ways of the gods ...........and how cruel.
I am here to help one and all enjoy this site, so if you have any questions or feel you are being trolled please contact me (Hit the 'CONTACT' little speech bubble below my Avatar).
Solid work tallyho. If I may offer one criticism, this story seemed to move a little slow.
Now that aside, the depth and backstory you created here was outstanding. I love the amount of detail you put into it. Overall, a good story.
Thanks very much Ksire, LG and Caniac for taking the time to post, I'm glad you all liked it.
One of the reasons the first few posts were slow was that I was typing them 1finger at a time on my smartphone, whereas if I'd had a lap top I would probably have put the first three posts in one. Because of that I was keen to re-establish the setting each time to create the sense of impending danger, as without that some of the character motivations would have seemed odd in isolation. Plus I was winging it a little in that I hadn't written this out first. You aren't alone in saying it dragged in places and its a very valid point which I accept completely. It was hard to inject pace when I didn't really have any idea as to what I was gonna say next!
So thanks to you and Centurion (via pm) for having the courage to offer constructive opinion.
Again thanks to everyone who has taken time to post and I'm pleased that its gone down so well
Cheers all.
Keep smiling, the worlds not a bad place.
T.
My latest Sg story, 'Supergirl and the Last Human' can be found here http://www.superheroineforum.com/viewto ... =9&t=20329
If you enjoy it or enjoyed this one please leave a comment and if you didn't please post a comment to tell me why.
Cheerio
T.
How strange are the ways of the gods ...........and how cruel.
I am here to help one and all enjoy this site, so if you have any questions or feel you are being trolled please contact me (Hit the 'CONTACT' little speech bubble below my Avatar).
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