Author's Note: Long time, no see. 'Sup all, and welcome to 'The Call: Part 3,' the explosive final chapter!
Sorry this has taken so long. I took my first vacation home in over a year, and I was having way too much fun to do much writing.
But I'm back, so let's get this ball rolling.
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The Call: Part 3
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Interlude
'In Sleep of Death…'
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Dead.
They were all dead.
And it was all her fault.
The blonde super-heroine, still in shock from the horror of the slaughter, stared impassively as the hooded figure moved amongst the bodies, checking here and there for some object he must have dropped in the scuffle. The waves lapped lazily at the shore of the impossible island, gallons of water disappearing into it's impossible angles. With a dis-interested grunt, the figure tossed an arm aside and continued his search. The limb struck the wall with a sickly WHACK and hit the ground. Clotted with blood as it was, she could still make out the flawless orange skin.
Star…
With what little strength she had, the girl turned her head and forced herself to look back at her captor. He was still sifting through the mounds of body parts, now muttering to himself. She could hardly even make it out. Something about a trophy?
"Ah ha!" He cried suddenly standing up straight and holding the found object over his head. Her mouth opened in a silent scream as the 'trophy's' dead eye met hers. Blood matted the normally glowing white hair, and the surgically attached eye-patch had been torn away, but she still recognized his face.
Slade…
The hooded man laughed as he inspected his prize, shifting it from hand to hand before tying it to his belt and closing the robe around it.
She couldn't be silent anymore. She had to find the strength to speak. "Y…You…"
The hooded figure tilted his hidden face in her direction.
She was about to finish her sentence when another face came into view, this one belonging to yet another body on the floor. At first she thought it was simply another victim of the hooded man before her. Another victim of the man who called himself Brother Blood.
But the face she saw belonged to Blood himself.
Brother Blood lay amongst the bodies, dismembered like all the rest.
So, who was the hooded man before her?
As though to answer her question he turned to face her fully, and this time she did scream.
"GAR! NO!"
The face of her love grinned widely, the blood of their former team-mates still spattered on his face.
It was all coming back to her now. The Titans had arrived not long after the Ramano's Revenge. There had been a confrontation, and for a moment it appeared the Titans were going to win…
And then the blood had started to spray.
Gar had shifted into his Tyrannosaurus form and crushed Blood in a single bite, and before the Titans could celebrate their victory, he had turned on them. The sound of his blood-crazed roars had mixed with their death cries, their breaking bones, and the splash of their blood upon the rocks. Once the screaming had stopped, he'd returned to his normal form and donned Blood's robe for himself.
"Gar… why?" She whispered.
His smile grew. "They were all in the way, Terra. Not just Blood, but all of them. Now that they're gone, we can finally be together. Just us. Forever."
He reached out a palm and stroked her face and she pulled away too late. Blood streaked her face, filling her with almost as much revulsion as his touch had.
His smile faded into a snarl as he pulled Slade's head from the robes. "Why do you think I took this? I know, Terra. I know about all of it. Everything you did together…"
"No! He did it to me. I didn't want him to… at first…" She forced herself to look at him and swallowed the bile in her throat. "I love you, and only you."
His face changed again, this time to hope. "You do?"
Terra nodded and forced herself to embrace him. He returned the gesture, dropping the head with a THUD in the process.
"It doesn't matter anyway." She whispered.
"Why's that?"
"Because you were all too late."
Her words chilled him to the bone and he broke their contact to look into her eyes.
They closed sadly, and he knew she was telling the truth. Five minutes was all Blood had needed to force Terra to open the tomb.
He turned to look into the gaping cavern that had just materialized from the mist, it's arch so high up it was almost impossible to see, and heard the deep growl from within. It carried a foul odor of age and decay. His animal instincts flared and he caught the feeling in the air; triumph. He turned back to Terra and extended his hand to her, in a gesture of pleading.
He never saw the lightning fast tentacle that shot forth from the blackness.
It wrapped him tighter than any lover ever could and squeezed the life from him in an instant. Terra watched his dead eyes as they faded into the tomb, the tentacle pulling it back to whatever voracious mouth it served.
It was quiet for a moment… and then she heard it.
The deep, reverberating thump of massive foot-steps.
The smell grew stronger, and Terra tried to take her last breath of fresh, sea air. Alas, it was too late, and she gagged on the putrescence that flooded her nostrils. Doubled over, she took one last look at the pile of body parts that had once been her friends, allies, and enemies, then stood straight and looked into the tomb.
She had a fleeting glimpse of the mountain-sized thing as it shambled wetly from it's rest, then surrendered her mind to total and all-consuming madness.
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Terra's eyes flashed open and she sat up in bed, barely holding in the scream that tore through her, the final image of the dream burned into her retinas. As the shock subsided, she took deep breaths to calm herself.
The dream had been so damn real…
She suddenly felt very cold, and drew the blankets of her cot back around her shivering form. Since Blood had taken her off the drugs, he set up a mock-cabin for her in the cargo hold, complete with a bed, food, and water. Her wrists still felt sore from the ropes, but there was no permanent damage.
Just like there was no reason for Blood to still worry about her escaping. After all, they were somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
Where was she going to go?
Her thoughts drifted back to Blood. He'd promised to reveal everything to her in the morning, and then left her to herself. Through the whole ordeal, he had been oddly… paternal towards her. It only made her fear him more.
The thoughts of Blood lead to thoughts of his revelation to her; that Star, not her, was the key to the Great Old Ones return. She thought of the others, charging after her… to rescue her… and all of them heading unknowingly towards their doom.
"Gar… I'm sorry." She whispered as sleep claimed her once more.
Dead.
They would all soon be dead.
And it would be all her fault.
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Author's Note: I was looking for a way to start the story off right and why not a nightmare? If the details and dialogue seem a little sketchy, that was on purpose. It was a dream after all.
The next chapter is… MORE EXPOSITION! YAY!
Chapter 1: 'The Ballad of Brother Blood'
So until then, remember; a little review never hurt anybody.