Rated PG-13 for an attempted suicide by funeral pyre, violence, semi-angst, drunkenness, mushiness and implied snugglebunnies.
Just to get it out in the open, I am a liberal catholic (Valarist by trade) and while I am pro birth control and pro-education, I am also pro-choice (with a bit of a residual Ick factor as to the... procedure). Prevention is one thing, the best really, but somethimes women get the short end of the stick (engages in long tirade about the economics affecting pregnant women). And as the Elves only breed every 500 years or so and every child takes something out of the mother, I would expect them to be quite receptive to the vague buzzwords of the pro-life cause (until the met the real nutters of the movement, that is) because of lack of experience in modern sociologicy. And what with Noldorin traditionalism, Marriage custom and the interference of the gods, political correctness can't always take its rightful place.
Most of all, never doubt the resourcefulness of Maiar whose jobs are on the line
Now in the Undergrads section.
State U, Western NY State, April 16th, 11:24 PM, 2001 AD
The howl had come.
Students, driven by some bestial and otherworldly urge, had begun screaming at he top of their lungs. The wave of sound traveled westward across campus from Chilton Hall, triggering more and morehowls in the night. None knew exactly how it started, but in coming years it would almost unanimously be remembered as an ill omen by all who knew what had really happened, a sign of impending doom and disaster.
Crazy as it may sound, this sound had a life of its own.
Hoping to outrun this howl was a lone, cloaked figure; clad in grey, with a long bundle wrapped in brown flannel. He had dreaded this sound for years without number. The plan was for the male and female to dine together in her chambers, but when he had peeked in the window at Chilton hall, he had seen her talking with her brother, the man nowhere to be seen. He had then recalled overhearing earlier that they would be going to an apartment complex to check out a party, where the redhead had been.
The figure raced up the apartment steps, seeming to almost move through the half opened doors. The stairs seemed to be trying to hasten his ascent. 'Yes,' he thought to himself, 'things must be very bad indeed for the land itself to allow me to hasten. Mostly it tries to slow people down.' It should be said that this worlds geography was unusually stubborn in this respect, usually having almost no sense of narrative.
The door was open, and light streamed forth from inside, but this light was no comfort to the grey runner. Through the door was a party in full swing, and he began to search. He looked to the left and saw them. The man was wearing a blue denim cap with khaki bill, blue jacket, khaki pants, unknown shirt/sweater-vest combination, and sneakers. This was Parker Walsh, the one called Nitz ever since he had failed a sixth grade lice inspection.
But right now he was in a lip lock with the redhead, and though none here knew it, that kiss might mean the beginning of the end for all that was ever fair and free, the end result of misdirection and of sneering at the guiding hand of the heavens . Even though the strangers face was calm beneath his hooded cloak, he, for a moment, he could concieve a cold, cruel laugh in the depths of his mind, and felt a heart-wrenching sorrow for all those who would die and whose deaths would be in vain if he did not take action at this instant in all time.
So, with a calm born of ages, the stranger levelled the flannel bundle up to eye level... pointed the fat end at the pair...
...And fired.
Nitz could not believe his luck! First, Kimmy isn't leaving next year, and he had just found out that Mark, the Drama Major that Kimmy had been crushing on since she got here... was gay! She was his, like he had always wanted... right? So what was this nagging at the back of his mind, telling him that there was someplace that he should rather be?
But for him, there was to be no choice this night. Kimmy pulled him into a kiss... and then a blinding light shot out from behind him, enveloping them both. Nitz felt first a searching, and then a pulling as the light began to drag something out of him. What was it? It felt like every stupid plan, every bit of seemingly unfounded devotion for Kimmy was being purged from his heart and his mind.
This removal, however, did not create emptiness. It was more like thick and musty drapes being ripped from a sunlit window, or a dustcover being thrown from an old master, or strangling mistletoe being pulled out of an oak. And why was there a shrieking? Then his entire world went blank, and his love for Kimmy Burton was finally no more.
The stranger watched as the light dissipated. The two young adults had been flung on the bed, a shield of light about them that would fade with the morning sun. There was also... something where Nitz had been standing. It had a vague human outline, and had its' arms crossed in front of its eyes, for it preferred the darkness of the mind. It was a Hunter, the last of an ancient line of ghouls, the first (The Hunter) having captured Elves to mutilate into Orcs, and created out of nebulous gas and the stuff of black holes and quasars by the fallen Valar, Morgoth. This one, though, had been bred to be more of a parasite than an assassin.
Yes: evil could twist, it could poison and pervert, it could cloud and veil; but it could not create in its own right, only destroy. But anything it did manage to create would either become a parasite or die quickly. And this creature... entity... thing had been designed to break down a relationship that had been in the desired course of events for centuries, if not millennia. For five years this creature had hidden from Nitz the dreams of his youth, supplanting them with what amounted to an obsessive mania for another.
Anyway, the shot had shredded the flannel, revealing a staff of milky wood as the rest of the cloth slid off. The grey-clad one threw aside his cloak (which landed on a guy in a Marilyn Monroe costume), revealing none other than Gandalf the White in all his splendour, and watched as the creature began to turn to face him. A terrible creature of shadow and strangling mist it was, with eyes a field of dark poisonous purple and a sharp chelonian beak where a humans' lips would've been. Wisps of mist formed a mane as black as frozen tar, and claws like obsidian shone out through the haze.
The Hunter looked to Nitz, and reached out a claw to try to re-implant itself, but the light gave it a nasty rebuff. Gandalf drew the sword Glamdring, Foe-hammer of Gondolin from its sheath and set it ready in his right hand, his staff in his left, and announced to the thing: "Shadow of Udun, Spawn of the Void: Time For Round Two!"
The Hunter, enraged at being denied his prey, lunged at the Maia, knocking them past shocked onlookers and out of the door. Soon the grappling had turned nasty, Gandalf whacking the apparition on the head with his staff and trying to free his sword from under the ghouls' arm, while trying to bear the scratches and kicks from its' claws as they free-fell down the stairs and out the front door. They went sprawling into the street, where they got up on unsteady feet to continue.
"I should have destroyed you properly when I had the chance, wizard!" hissed the ghoul, "But then again, being inside the girls mind was so entertaining, twisting and funnelling her emotions, her hopes, her fears, don't you think?"
"You'll never again harm another living thing; it ends here!" spat the wizard, wiping blood from his mouth.
"Well, you're right about one thing..." grinned the Hunter, just before it charged Gandalf and knocked the wizard a further thirty feet down the street, Glamdring clattering onto the sidewalk, "It does end here." Its' claws then grew in length and wickedness, and it charged again, prepared to deliver the killing blow.
But as it got within five feet of the fallen wizard, the creature seemed to slam against some form of crystaline wall, from which it received an enormous shock, and was thrown back into a smoking heap, its essence beginning to escape. "No, Hunter, it doesn't!" Said a new, feminine voice, accompanied by a pale floating woman with wild blue hair, a nose ring, and glowing white eyes. She was wearing some manner of high tech gloves and boots. "Not by a long shot!" Using the gloves and some low vocalizations, she began to construct restraints for the ghoul, binding it to the street. Gandalf began to stagger up, and the new woman urged him to skewer the demon... thingy.
He listened, and with a yell, embedded the end of his staff in the creatures chest, and when the light began pouring, the ghoul began to monologue. "Fools. I've a bond with every creature I've ever called home, and if I die, they mourn and grieve, not of their own making but as a failsafe. They sink into despair so deep that only Death itself could break it. And you both know what can happen to the elven-kin when in too much despair." The light was almost all encompassing, but the ghoul got in one last threat. "If I die, I'm taking them down with me!"
And then it was gone, and Gandalf fell to the ground, exhausted. His staff gave one, last, feeble glowbefore it splintered and smoked. Melian (the other Maia) retrieved the sword with an energy barrier acting like a stretcher, and slid it underneath Gandalf too, allowing him to levitate. As the College bus was coming, she settled to the ground and her eyes stopped glowing. She pushed Gandalf onto the bus and waited to get back to Tekerson Tech (her school), so she could finish packing and he could hopefully sleep this off.
From then until the breaking and re-forging of the world, no one who had attended that party ever spoke of what they had seen that night, for fear of being labeled insane.
Only Death itself... with a capital D.
This was the opening fight seen. The rest will be in upcoming chapters.