This is the third story in my Mary&Sue series, dedicated to pulp fantasy novels. The author mentioned does not actually exist, it is more like a collective image. That's why I didn't know where else to place this chapter.
I strongly recommend that you read the first story (you can find the link in my profile) before reading this one for better understanding of the plot.
That day the garage looked like a household appliances' graveyard. The remains of washing machines, vacuum cleaners, refrigerators and, of course, PCs covered the floor. Mary sat among all this splendor, fiddling with some spare parts and a soldering iron. Every now and then she rose her eyes to feast them on her sister grinding her teeth in the back corner – and on her new, handsome, masculine and, most importantly, real boyfriend!
Martin, Mary's groupmate, was a tall sportsman. He had fair hair, a muscular torso, expensive sneakers and very inflated self-conceit. He wouldn't even have glanced at the skinny girl if she hadn't sat next to him during a lecture and demonstrated from under her skirt... a jewel-strewn handle of some artifact dagger. She had wormed out that Martin had a weakness for fantasy.
And now the guy was standing near the shelves, on which artifacts from a multitude of worlds met. His mouth agape in amazement, he gazed at the swords and crowns, crystals and statuettes, rings and charms, and also locks of different colours and lengths, carefully tied with ribbons. There were also trophies of more personal nature in the collection, but they were kept in locked drawers, far from outside eyes.
- Is it working? - Martin inquired, making elaborate passes with some magic wand.
- Only in it's own world – Mary sighed, not without regret.
- And how do they get into our world, if the rest of the inventory...
- The machine transports without changes everything that isn't in its database, – Mary said, not distracted from her work. She was in a hurry to make a transportation chair for her new friend. - I haven't yet devised male models, but if you wish... In theory, you should arrive there as you are here. You will certainly defeat any dragon as you are. - you could put her voice into tea.
- Have you made wings as you promised? - Sue unceremoniously broke the idyll.
- Even in black. - Mary answered in a yes-darling-your-auntie-has-brought-you-a-treat tone, plugging wires from the new chair somewhere under her monitor. Having finished the work, she dusted her hands carelessly and got to tuning. - Sue, lift your ass, load the book!
This oeuvre of some less known writer was teeming with knights, princesses, dragons and other pleasures of trivial fantasy. The main characters were young, strong, handsome, unordinary and described with such relish that the gray, bleak shrimp of a world looked a mere set on the background. Sue was familiar with this novel and decided, that Marty had brought it because he dreamed of outdoing all those pretty boys and get the princess himself.
So, the tattered book was sent into the tray of the scanning device, the guy was carefully seated in a chair, the models were adjusted. Electricity buzzed through the wires, the garage lit up with a flash that looked like a miniature supernova, and the chairs went empty.
* * *
The untrodden forest resounded with such a scream that even vile walking trees in the pitch-dark thicket tried to stuck their hollows with their twigs.
- Haven't you promised I'd remain the way I were! - nearly cried a long-legged, big-bosomed lass in the default amazon-like outfit – she had short fair hair and a broad, somehat rough face.
- That means it works without changes only backwards, – a sapphire-haired she-seraph stated gloomily, sporting a halo of slowly whirling gold yellow crystals and clad in shining armor: plated bra and plated panties.
- Then transport me back! - the creature that had been a guy five seconds ago yelled, stomping its foot. The creature lost its balance on thin spikes, beat the air with its hands and plopped on its buttocks.
- Like hell I will! – the seraph snapped out, growing bolder in view of such faint-heartedness. - It's good for a guy to live in a woman's body for a while. The program does not allow periods and pregnancy. So relax and enjoy yourself!
- And won't you... tell everyone on the campus? - the beauty with a football player's jaw inquired, blushing a little.
- If you'll behave.
Suddenly – whizz! - a silvery flash crossed the green bush wall, and a knight stepped out of the rising leaf whirlwind. Everything shone on him: the gilded armor with an elaborat coat of arms on the chest, the shiny-polished longsword, the mithril shield with little stylized wings in the upper corners, the sunny curls cascading down his shoulders – and the dazzling smile, right from an "Orbit" commercial.
- Hold on, fair lady! Give up, you merciless villain! Sir Stuart will save the innocent victim! - he declared solemnly.
- You've probably got the wrong address. I'm St. Mary, a heavens' messenger, and it is me who shall aid you! - the divine creature declared to the noble sir, who was quite taken aback.
- Then whose shriek was that? You can hardly hear anything like that even in a torture chamber, - went a merry voice, and a man came from behind the knight's back, wearing simple travelling clothes and a long gray cloak. He had a lean build, dark-blond shoulder-length hair, a sly, tomcatty smirk and a lute on his belt.
- Oh, it's my squire, Martha – she has seen a snake, - Mary said while the valiant sir was helping the "innocent victim" back on her feet.
- Damn!..
That was the only printable expression that escaped the strawberry-sweet lips of a succubus. Slim and swarthy, wearing a tiny strap bikini and fine leathery wings, with tar-black and tar-thick hair, she was sitting in a fetid puddle and cursing the whole world. In particular, her awry-handed sister and the buggy machine that had dared to fling her into a swamp.
The magnificent seductress Susie plodded on through the marsh, chased by herds of toads and frogs, vying with each other in begging for a kiss. Her charming legs bore green tights of dryed slime. Once in a while she slipped and fluttered her wings to regain her balance. They were no good for flights: Mary had never been good at physics and had messed up the calculations.
The Sun was sending farewell rose rays through the weave of branches. Nightingales sang in the shadow of fragrant jasmine bushes. Mary was sitting on the moss cushion of a stump and elegantly waving her snowwhite wings (keeping off mosquitoes, encroaching on her amenities). She was listening favourably to Sir Stuart, who, kneeling in front of her, was reciting a grandiloquent ode and pressing his lips against her hand after every stanza.
A fire was cracking merrily on a nearby glade. The minstrel was sitting on a log in a half-unbuttoned shirt and strumming some serenade. He was singing about starry eyes, rose lips ad silky cheeks and at the same time shamelessly gazing at Martha's breasts. The owner of said breasts was sitting nearby and diligently staring into the flame, trying to ward off unfamiliar and most annoying thoughts. But with its every wave the imaginary fan sank deeper and deeper in the sickening hormone haze, and the insolent flies "If only he completely took off his shirt..." and "I wonder how hard his abs are" grew before her eyes and buzzed louder and louder. Such an inexperienced girl like Martha had no chance to stand before the overfree charisma, unshaven masculinity and the specialty charm song of minstrel Maurice.
Minstrel Maurice, sir Stuart's squire, was a confirmed drunkard, a desperate gambler and a great womanizer. Legends circled among tavernsfolk about how (and in what positions) he made love with half of the kingdom's women (quite often he spread those legends himself). Besides, he was not at all squeamish: during long campaigns he did not disdain harpies and gorgons.
To cut a long story short, five minutes later the nightingales in neraby thickets went shyly silent: out of the bushes, hanged with clothes, stuck two pairs of bare feet.
No one knows whether it was after a long or short while, but Sue came upon a forest stream frisking between interweaving roots of venerable oaks. She recalled that somewhere nearby there was a camp of noble highwaymen, who, according to the plot, would show the main characters the way to the necromancer's castle through thickets familiar only to them. Sue was screwing her eyes with joy, washing off the swamp dirt and looking forward to a meeting with their leader, nicknamed Raven – half-elf, a bastard prince and the best archer in the kingdom.
The gates of the high paling were guarded by a man, large like a chest-of-drawers and just as wide, with a huge beard which even a dwarf would envy.
- I've come to Raven, – declared the demoness, looking at him as if he were an umbrella stand.
- I was told not to let anyone, – the boor answered indifferently in an unexpected tenor.
- What, even me?! - screeched the succubus, taken aback.
- Many of your kind come here, - the brigand smirked, crossing his hands on his chest and blocking the gates with his body, - but we don't welcome the dark sluts.
Swallowing with some effort the lump of offense that got stuck in her throat, Sue started to charm the bloke, chanting a spell and smoothly moving her hips in a hypnotic dance. To her bewildement and frustration, he just burst into laughter.
- There're lots of your kind here, but ol' Banjo hasn't yet let in a single one! - he repeated, beating his chest with a gigantic fist. - Don't you think I was put here for a reason? In one old brawl, by will of the Creator, I lost my manhood.
Sue hissed angrily and lassoed the brigand's neck with a sudden movement of her lash. However bull-like the neck were, the succubus also wasn't a simple one. She threw the strangled pighead aside and tore a huge key from his belt.
As soon as Sue entered the outlaws' camp, a dozen of arrows went into the ground by her feet.
Without further ado she snatched a bundle of shurikens from her belt. Picturesquely pushing off tree trunks with her legs and making various somersaults, she swept through the camp like a lightning, and deadly steel flickered in the air in a glittering cascade. Like ripe pears, archers rained down from tree crowns with blood-stained stars in their throats. The last shuriken broke the string of an elven longbow in the hands of a tall black-haired youth. Right then a long lash whistled through the air and twisted around his body, binding his hands.
- Hi, darling, - Sue murmured, in a moment appearing beside the half-elf, on a plank boarding in the twigs of a mighty oak, at a little tree house's entrance. The succubus pressed her silver skull-buckle to switch off the arrow deflecting force field generator: fighting alone against a dozen of picked bowmen, she decided to play safe.
- At last the necromancer has sent us a worthy opponent, – the noble bandit uttered, eying his dead comrades with regret. - But I shall not become his servant! I was born free and I shall die free! - he said, proudly rising his head high.
- I go by myself, - the succubus smiled seductively, – but wouldn't you be pleased to become my slave? - she grabbed hold of his shirt front and abruptly pushed him into the hut, tearing his shirt, and cracking the unwinded whip.
- Do you think I excited a rebellion, executed my tyrant father and escaped from prison to become a slave to some dark one? - smirked the youth, raising his glittering black eyes at the succubus.
- And don't you want to amuse yourself one last time? - Sue whispered in the Raven's ear, tying his hand behind his back with her whip. She snatched the dagger from his belt and cut the remnants of closing off him.
- Why should I disgrace myself by a liaison with a dark one, if beautiful houris await me in the gardens of the Creator? - the brigand responded apathetically.
- In that case I will amuse myself, – the demoness snapped, drawing a torture kit out of her purse.
Not a single muscle moved on Raven's face at the sight of vices, thongs, knives and hooks carefully laid in front of him. He looked defiantly at the dripping cuts making an elaborate pattern on his muscled shoulders, broad chest and well-shaped press. It seemed he himself was torturing Sue with pains of frustration.
- Show me your voice, darling, – the succubus hissed angrily and, snatching a vice, got down to the part of Raven's body that yet did not show due respect to her amenities.
The finely moulded features of the tanned youth twisted with suffering, he gave out a constrained cry – and nothing more. Sue was so surprised that she dropped the blood-stained instrument.
- Thanks the Creator, – Raven breathed out, fixing a calm, sorrowful stare on his torturer's face. - Not only has he granted me with unbreakable will... but also low, very low sensitivity to pain.
Sue without a word stabbed Raven's neck with a knife, and he silently dropped his head back at the trunk. She did it so that he wouldn't see the tears welling up in her eyes.
- What a man! - whimpered the fiend of Darkness.
Using the outlaw's map, Sue quickly found her way to the necromancer's castle. The said bulding, as usual, tumbledown and black as if after a fire, topped a huge rock. Not once and not twice the girl drew her breath and cursed the rock, the castle and the architect while climbing uphill.
Behind the tilted and somewhere brought down forged fence a huge black dragon sat chained to the wall. He presumably felt Sue's powerful dark aura because he waved his tail, greeting her. This puppylike fit cost an unlucky tower half its wall. Behind the massive doors with a hammer in shape of some gargoyle a liveried skeleton was hanging about. The draft reduced his livery to dust in a moment. His master obviously hadn't received guests for quite a long time.
Bertrand the Necromancer was extremely tall, thin and pale. He had an aristocratic face in considerable harmony with sharp cheekbones, sunken cheeks, bloodless thread-like lips and expressive red eyes full of boredom and contempt to everything around. White hair scattered across his shoulders as snow scatters across mountain spurs; several locks were in contrast black. The magnificent black gold-embroidered mantle sat on this anorexic like on a coat-rack.
Sue handed to the necromancer a box, carefully tied up with a pink (there was no other) ribbon. He immediately drew his bitter enemy's head out of it and laughed in a typical villainish manner, flashing his sharp fangs.
- Marvellous! I'll order to hang it on the wall together with those bearded arrogants! Revenge is so sweet, so sweet... - the decorous melancholy flew off the Dark Lord like husks. In the company of a kindred dark soul he became lively and talkative.
- What about a reward? - the demoness interrupted unceremoniously.
- Ah, well, reward... You are to receive a deserved reward... - the necromancer uttered thoughtfully. - What would you choose as a reward?
- You, - Sue snapped and dragged him to the bedroom.
But there was no bedroom behind the first door. Instead, there was a larder there. Sue peeped flung open another door. Sweetish abomination hit her nostrils and a table with a partitioned corpse came into view. The frustrated succubus went up the winding stairs with a firm step, dragging after her the necromancer, who was giggling up his goatee.
At last it was a bedroom. It was occupied by the princess, though. The princess squeaked: she was caught in nothing but a lace nightgown. But, to tell the truth, there wasn't much to look at: to Sue's pleasant surprise, this royal person turned out to be skinny, plain and spotty. The author, preoccupied with handsome men and valorous deeds, completely forgot to describe the princess. He probably set his hopes upon common stereotypes, but the embodied world had none of those and put everything in its rightful place. It is not self-satisfaction that makes the necromancer not reciprocate the princess's love. And Raven dies for her, sir Stuart weds her and Maurice takes her virginity purely on principle.
- Bertie, my cute skeleton, why do you need this plain Jane? - Sue wrinkled her nose in disgust.
- For reputation, – the necromancer shrugged his shoulders.
- Maybe we'd better torture her to death and feast on her blood?
- With pleasure.
The fireplace cracked and shadows danced in the spacious hall. The crimson (so that the stains would not be seen) tablecloth was dimly lit by candles in fanciful chandeliers. Holding a bloody cup made of somebody's scull in his hand, the necromancer twaddled non-stop. He unfolded a neverending story about how he dreamed to become a kind magician and conjure sweets to children, when he was a child himself, but he was expelled from the academy because Darkness had rooted deep in his soul. Or probably because his grandmother was a vampire. But most probably because he had carried off a black book from the top shelf of the library. They caught him and took away the book, but he had managed to read a couple of spells and gain unspeakable power, control over death, eternal youth and insomnia. And once he came back, angered and ill-slept, and took revenge!
Sue sat, resting her head on her palm and looking drearily at a candle's flame, and listened to him with half an ear. She bemoaned her naivety. Really, is it written anywhere that a charming villain must be a good lover?
The way through the forests was long and monotonous. Martha believed the had got lost: they hadn't gone through a single plot-related battle. In fact all the forest monsters were wise enough to hide as soon as they saw the formidable celestial fighter. Especially alarming was the fact that the key meeting with the hunting bandit did not happen yet.
Soon the plot got its way and lead the adventurers to the forest brotherhood's camp. The gates were suspiciously half-open, not a soul greeted the travellers. But sir Stuart, a stranger to such qualities as suspiciousness and caution, made a halt right in the middle of the abandoned camp. But even he had to admit his fault, when the company found itself surrounded by a dozen hungry zombies.
- What, goody-goodies, didn't you expect guests? - Sue's triumphant cry descended from above.
The heroes raised their heads and saw a black dragon circling above the camp. The necromancer and the succubus sat on the reptile's neck.
- That's my fallen sis, – the she-seraph stated grudgingly, grappling her huge shining sword's handle more comfortably.
- Miserable henchmen of the Light, prepare to death! - the necromancer announced exultantly. - Today I am in a good mood and allow you to make haste and accept it from your own blades!
"Because this paper-stainer K. J. Stu didn't take the trouble to describe his routine, he is so full of pathos only with foes!" - the demoness thought irritatedly.
The circle of zombies shrank slowly and inevitably, the dragon almost brushed against the tree crowns.
- Go down to the ground, you cowardly villain, and accept the battle! - the knight exclaimed fearlessly, striking a battle stance. The minstrel drew a short sword. Martha started biting her nails nervously.
- And what if they, you know... kill us? - she asked Mary in a stammering whisper.
- Nothing special, – she answered coldly. - A terribly realistic death in this world, an automatic return after the time limit is exceeded and a couple of weeks of nightmares.
Martha gulped hopelessly and hid behind the minstrel's back.
The blades flashed in flaring flourishes, hands, legs and heads went every which way. But the hands crawled back and hung to the ankles, the legs jumped and attempted to kick, the heads rolled and bit the boots. Such a view made Martha faint. Maurice's blade got stuck in the massive bulk of the recent sentry like a annoying splinter. The knight slipped on the rotten zombie goo and collapsed like a pile of scrap metal. Only then Mary, as if unwillingly, raised her sword to the skies, and the lightning blast darting from it turned all the carrion around into very stale roast. The second lightning roared from the skies and struck the dragon in the head. The last thing the fighter saw was the swiftly approaching blackness of the scaled belly...
* * *
The sisters were drinking coffe in some café during the lunch break. Mary was, as usual, elegantly dressed, neatly made-up and proudly bore an austere knot of hair on her head. Sue, clad in worn jean clothes and down-at-heel sneakers, found that all those hairstyles, outfits and make up weren't worth another hour spent under the warm blanket.
- You know, – Mary complained, - Marty has dumped me! And just imagine why – he turned gay! And there's no love lost, – she added in a "sour grapes!" tone, - all the same he's a useless whimp!
- Not so much to lose, – Sue waved her hand contemptuously. - We have someone to shag each weekend as it is.
- It's you who only wants to shag, – Mary snarled, - and I'm looking for a big and pure love!
- The keyword here is "big", - Sue remarked acidly in return.