KYRIE ELEISON
A Fanfic of the Clone Wars
THE LONG ROAD TO WAR
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Another blast from the past from the wayback machine…this story is coming up to twenty years old, but it still holds up fairly well. Inspired by "Future Tense," this is from a circle of tales made by some friends and I about our characters in the time of the "Clone Wars."
Bwa ha ha...here we go...loooong list of credits...
The Clone Wars Timeline was created by Amy K. Cyrway and Jennifer DeSalme. Thanks for letting me play in your world... "Nice war, can I play too?"
Arin MacDuff, the Black Sword, Caligo, Eddie, Stiletto, Joshua Lawerence and Elly are the creation of Amy K. Cyrway.
The Outklaws (Mauser, Winchester, Colt, Claymore, Smith, Wesson, Magnum, Demonika) are the joint creation of Amy K. Cyrway and Donika Doyon.
Chimura and Mercedes are property of Jennifer DeSalme.
Clan Winslow-Sam, Pippen and Alexia-belongs to each of the Clan Winslow members respectively.
We'll give this a PG-13 for violence and language...now...LET THE GAMES BEGIN!
THE LONG ROAD TO WAR
"I wanna live! I wanna love! But it's a long hard road, outta hell!"
-Marilyn Manson
Chapter the First
19 December 1999
Schloss Adler
Bavaria, Germany
The coral-coloured gargoyle let her hand travel lovingly over the shell of her first-born egg, marvelling at the life stirring beneath her fingertips.
She was more than a hundred years old, an age often beyond childbearing in gargoyles. Her twin eggs had been conceived during her fourth and final cycle. For so many years she had struggled to accept that she would never have a child...
...and now the miracles lay before her, ready to hatch.
Aldrich, the moss-green second-in-command of the Iron Clan of Bavaria, turned his gaze away from the unusually small egg to look at his Chancellor beside him. "Who's the father?"
Chancellor Bismarck glared at him.
"I'm sorry. It's none of my business. You do realize, however, that the clan is going to be wondering."
She nodded, knowing it was true.
But how could she tell them who the father was?
"Tell them that Patriot is the father," she answered.
Aldrich fidgeted. The fact that his Chancellor had a human lover had never sat easily with him, regardless of the fact that the scrappy blond human was as much a Renegade hero as Bismarck herself. "Patriot's human. That egg is full gargoyle."
"Patriot is the father," she said flatly.
He sighed. "I hope the clan will take adoption as an answer..."
Departing, he wondered who the real father was.
Bismarck may have been a hero, but she certainly wasn't much to look at. Her facial features were not humanoid like most of the Iron Clan. She had a long rectangular muzzle, like a cow's, with hooked nostrils and velvety lips. Folded bovine ears hung from the sides of her face, and her cinnamon hair was a mane down the back of her neck. The Illuminati had considered killing her at birth, as they killed most 'degenerate' gargoyles-the web-wings, the animal-featured, the half-breeds. Rumour had it that her family connections had saved her life; she was supposedly the daughter of a high-ranking Illuminatus gargoyle named Bach, though she bore little physical resemblance to him. However, Bismarck had no fur or feathers, and her physical structure, while short and somewhat dumpy, was normal enough.
Briefly, he wondered if Bismarck's twin eggs were the product of rape, by one of the Illuminati gargoyles, before Bismarck and the Renegades had overthrown Mephistopheles von Sturm and the Bavarian Illuminati. Perhaps that was why she was so close-mouthed about it.
Surely, though, the Illuminati would have known better than to attack her during her cycle. Those degenerates not killed at birth were forbidden to reproduce...
He shook his head. None of his business, indeed.
31 December 1999
Schloss Adler
The two Bavarian gargoyles looked at the human with disapproval, barring the entrance to the rookery. The man was dressed in ceremonial green birthing robes, but they could not camouflage his Caucasian-peach skin, his booted feet, or the fingernails on his left hand. His right hand clutched the robe closed, hidden in the folds of fabric.
"I was invited," the stranger said softly.
The two gargoyles looked at one another uneasily.
"By Chancellor Bismarck," he pressed.
One of the guards cleared his throat. "You must have been mistaken."
"Humans are not allowed in the rookery during the hatching ceremony," the other gargoyle said.
A bronze flash lit up the interior of the hood.
Then the rookery doors swung open from within. A moss-green male with musk-oxen horns stood in the open doorway. "Greetings, Patriot," said Aldrich, despite the reserved expression on his own face.
"Thank you," the blond human replied, nodding curtly to the guards, and entering.
"But..." one of the guards protested.
Bismarck, standing at Aldrich's side, gave the guard a look that silenced her immediately.
"Do you have any weapons?" the male guard called after Patriot. Weapons of any sort were forbidden in the rookery.
The man paused, then handed the guard a Walther PPK handgun before proceeding alongside Bismarck and Aldrich.
It was birthing season. The rookery was on twenty-four hour watch. Midwives tended the eggs in rotating shifts. Attendants passed up and down between the rows of wooden cradles stuffed with straw, each one bearing an egg. While there were always at least two designated witnesses present, the gallery was more often crammed with eager relatives and friends. Tonight, the place was oddly deserted due to the turning of the millennium. Aldrich and his mate were the only ones who would agree to be witnesses. Despite the expected birth of the
Chancellor's children, the rookery was on skeleton staff-two assistants and a rookery mother.
The human flanked Bismarck down the row of cradles to 4D and 4E, the ones that held Bismarck's eggs. "How are you doing?" he whispered to the pink gargoyle.
She looked at the mottled eggs, her eyes wide. "I never thought I'd be here," she murmured.
"You were rookery mother for Rommel's generation," he teased, knowing what she meant.
She poked him in the ribs. "I mean here. Not as a midwife but as a..."
"Mother," he whispered. He took her arm in his and looked over at the eggs. "They're something, aren't they?"
"You were never present for a hatching either, were you?"
His eyes darkened. "That wasn't my choice."
"I know," she murmured, half sorry that she'd mentioned it. She rested her head on his shoulder. He stroked her hair. Aldrich clamped down on his teeth, struggling to silence the voice inside him.
The egg in 4D rustled.
An attendant hailed the rookery mother, who came down the aisle at a quick trot. The egg rocked back and forth, trembling. The Gargoyle Chancellor and her human companion caught their breaths in anticipation.
A peach-coloured hand smashed through the top of the egg. The eyes of the witnesses were glued to the scene of the rupture, watching new life breaking free. A tail flickered through the gap. The arm returned, then another arm, flailing madly.
Suddenly, a squeal. A red line appeared across the hatchling's wrist. Blood graced the razor-sharp point of the eggshell.
Swiftly, the rookery mother stepped in, ensuring the hatchling did not injure itself further. She broke back the rim of the eggshell and lifted the hatchling free, carrying it to a nearby table. An assistant brought over gauze to bind the wound.
Outside, the millennium turned. Bismarck and Patriot did not even notice.
Bismarck and her companion were about to approach the table when the smaller egg, 4E, thrashed suddenly and cracked clean around the center. It wobbled frantically...
...and a little coral-coloured head thrust itself out of the hole, gasping for air.
The witnesses murmured.
Bismarck's old training took over as she picked up the hatchling and cradled it in her arms. Decades ago, when the Bavarian Illuminati had ruled the Iron Clan, Mephistopheles von Sturm had decreed that a degenerate creature like the muzzled, animal-featured Bismarck was
suitable only for menial jobs and rookery duty. She had held generations of hatchlings...
But this one was different.
He was her own.
He had skin a shade lighter than her own, more of a peachy-colour than her own pink skin. His features were humanlike, but he had Bismarck's double-pointed eye ridges toppedwith her rounded giraffelike horns, her split wings. Those wings, however, were black, topped with his father's five fingered wing hands; he also had a hard spade on the tip of his
tail. His hair was cinnamon as Bismarck's had been before age had shot it through with grey.
She heard her companion asking the rookery mother if the child would be all right.
"She'll be fine," the rookery mother assured him.
Aldrich leaned over Bismarck's shoulder. "Handsome little fellow, isn't he?"
Freyja, Aldrich's mate, left the table where the rookery mother tended the firstborn hatchling and sidled up to the moss-green male. "A little female," she murmured in a voice Bismarck was not intended to hear. "She has that muzzle...such a shame..."
Bismarck ignored the remark. Years of the Illuminati's "racial purity" teachings would take years to undo. As long as the Iron Clan obeyed her, she didn't give a damn if they thought she was the ugliest thing on earth...
A pang shot through her heart. In the depths of her soul, she did care.
Patriot had also overheard. His eyes flashed warningly but he made no move, simply squeezing Bismarck's hand in his.
She smiled then, remembering that her mate did not think she was ugly at all.
Aldrich got his first clear look at the little peach hatchling. She may have had Bismarck's face, with that unfortunate lamblike muzzle, folded bovine ears, and a fleshy black spade at the tip of her tail, but the rest of her evidently came from somewhere else. The hair was golden blond; the wings hanging behind her back were black and batlike, tipped with five-fingered wing hands. A crest rose up from between her eyes, running down the back of her head to the crown, where a V-shape rose like the tail of a stealth fighter. The prongs of the V were rounded giraffelike horns like those on her mother's forehead...
...but the crest...
...peach, crested gargoyle, with black wings...
Why did that association make Aldrich's blood run cold?
Then the cozy little scene fell apart in a matter of seconds. If Aldrich's blood had been cold before, it was now frozen to pure ice.
The assistant at the table suddenly snatched up the female hatchling. She raised her right hand, which held a Luger handgun. The barrel nuzzled the child's tender head.
The doors of the rookery swung wide. The guards marched in, each carrying an assault rifle, and slamming the doors behind them. The rifles swept over Bismarck and her entourage.
The second assistant, terrified, ducked down under a cradle at the far end of the rookery and lay still, praying they would not notice her.
The rookery mother pressed in a frightened huddle with Aldrich, Freyja, Bismarck, and Patriot. Aldrich reached for his Luger and Bismarck fumbled for a stiletto before they suddenly realized that their weapons were not there; weapons were not permitted in the rookery. Unless, of course, you were a guard.
Patriot's left hand rose and gripped the little bronze penknife that hung on a chain around his neck.
"What's the meaning of this?" Aldrich hissed with false bravado.
"The reclaiming of Schloss Adler by its rightful owners," the traitor assistant replied. "The Bavarian Illuminati."
"Grendel," Bismarck snarled. The Renegades had overthrown the Illuminati in 1989 in the uprising known as Gotterdammerung-the Twilight of the Gods. Grendel and some of the others had escaped and started their own revolutionary group, the Insurrectionists. Evidently the assistant and the two guards were members.
Bismarck looked at the gun barrel pressed against her daughter's head and clung tightly to her son in her arms. "What do you want?" Bismarck asked, her mouth dry.
The female guard leered. "Grendel wants her castle and her clan back."
Grendel. One of Von Sturm's Old Guard-his former second in command.
"The days of the Illuminati are over," Bismarck said slowly. "You cannot bring them back."
"We can, and we will," said the assistant. "Or your hatchling will die."
Bismarck caught Patriot's eye. He nodded slowly. Wordlessly, she passed her son to Aldrich.
Freyja thrust her hand into her pocket and pressed three times on an encoded transmitter. Trouble in the rookery. Proceed, but with caution.
"Put down your guns and we can bargain," Bismarck offered.
"Why should we do that?" the assistant sneered.
"As a gesture of your good faith," the clan leader replied. "You have both advantages now-your weapons and my hatchling. For all I know you intend to kill us all. Prove otherwise."
The Insurrectionists looked at one another.
"We don't need to bargain now," the assistant said, as if she knew about Freyja's signal to the rest of the guard force. "We have our bargaining chip right here." She jolted the hatchling. "We'll be in touch." Her head swung towards the two guards. "Wotan! Take our little ace in the hole."
The male guard slung his rifle over his back, stepped forward, and took the hatchling from the assistant. He looked down at the baby, stared for a second at Bismarck, and ran his hand over the little gargoyle's crest. "You know who this kid looks like?"
"Shut up, Wotan," the female guard muttered. "Just take the kid and go."
"But ma'am, she looks like that Illuminati hero. The Master Assassin. What with the crest and the black wings..."
"GO!" the female yelled.
All hell broke loose again.
One moment, Patriot was holding his bronze pendant in his left hand as a Catholic might cling to a crucifix. The next, his left hand encircled the barrel of a great bronze assault rifle, his right hand clamped on the trigger.
Patriot fired a steel curtain of bullets that ripped through the middle of the female guard. Bismarck flung her body between Wotan, who still held the hatchling, and the armed female assistant. The female growled, preparing to shoot.
Then Patriot's rifle abruptly became a Walther. It barked once and a hole appeared in the female Insurrectionist's wrist. Her weapon fell to the floor. She whirled around in time to receive a second bullet between the eyes.
The female baby squalled in fear. The male hatchling burrowed into Aldrich's arms, hiding its face.
The Insurrectionist male went down on one knee, dropping the hatchling, scrabbling to get his gun off his back and bring it to bear.
Patriot sprang into the air, black wings flaring from behind his back. As gravity pulled him back to earth, the bronze handgun changed form once again, this time to a bronze engraved sword. Its lower edge was curved like a cutlass and toothed with four wicked, back-curving serrations...
The Assassin's Blade.
Patriot's eyes glowed a deadly bronze and his mouth opened in a fanged scream that sounded like a falcon's cry.
Aldrich and Wotan both realized with a sickening certainty who the hatchling's father was, as the great bronze blade descended.
Wagner pulled the blade free of Wotan's corpse and scooped up the squalling hatchling, checking her over. Aside from a few small bruises and the bandaged arm, she seemed unharmed. He murmured a few words to his daughter and then turned on his heel to Bismarck and Aldrich.
Bismarck's heart chilled as she saw that both Wagner and the hatchling
were splattered in blood.
"It's not ours," Wagner replied, as if reading her mind.
The coral female reached out her arms for her daughter. Wagner, meanwhile, stared defiantly at the moss-green gargoyle who held his son. He rested the bloody tip of the Assassin's Blade on the floor.
"Mein Gott," Aldrich breathed.
Wagner, former Master Assassin of the Bavarian Illuminati, who was also the Renegade hero known as Patriot, stood as if frozen in place.
Bismarck looked up from her newly-hatched daughter and focused her gaze on Aldrich and Freyja. "I trust you'll be able to keep quiet about this." The two nodded jerkily.
Wagner approached them. They looked at the humanlike gargoyle as if they had never seen him before. Their condescending arrogance towards "Patriot" had been replaced by fear. Their eyes were wide.
He held out his hands.
Aldrich stared until he realized what the blond gargoyle wanted. He handed over the coral hatchling. Wagner took the baby with a smile and turned away. Bismarck nodded and returned her attention to her daughter. Wagner furled his black wings, resting his five-fingered wing hands on his shoulders, and produced a soft cloth which he used to wipe the Insurrectionist's blood from the little female's skin.
Baptized by blood...
An irrational thought crossed his mind.
What has my daughter inherited from me?
A disturbing thought. He banished the idea, walling it in with the other Things Not To Be Thought About in a barricaded corner of his brain. It was relatively easy to do, for Wagner was not a gargoyle who believed in prophecy.
3 January 1999
Schloss Adler
Curled side by side on the sofa, Bismarck and Wagner watched their children at play on the floor. Both were somewhat stunned by the magnitude of what had happened to them-the years of loneliness, the despair of ever seeing their own hatchlings or watching them grow, the
miracle they had found in one another, the strain of the hatching night's traumatic events.
"What are we going to call them?" Bismarck said at last. "It's awful that we haven't named them yet."
"Since when did we ever follow conventions?" her mate smirked. His face grew serious. "Well, if you don't mind, I'd like to name the male Meckler."
"After your human friend in the war." She smiled. "Meckler it is. And the female?"
The hatchling in question crawled by their feet. Suddenly, she reared up and planted her hands on Bismarck's knee spike, flaring her wings and letting her eyes light up.
"I don't know about this little valkyrie," Bismarck said, scooping up the blond-haired girl who, after only thirty-six hours of life, had firmly established herself as the terror of the rookery.
Wagner tilted his head, amused. "That was Aashlee's original name. Valkyrie."
"I suppose she likes her American name better."
"She still answers to Valli, but I know she prefers the name the New Orleans clan gave her."
"Well, then, is the name up for grabs?" Bismarck looked down at the child in her arms. "I think it suits."
"I should be able to keep them straight."
"We'll make it easy. For short...we'll call her Kyrie."