1994...
Anastasia di Cobray-McCullen hated her husband. Sure, they lived in a 'magical' castle overseeing one of the wealthiest principalities in the modern world. Sure, he was a man considered "handsome" by most, in addition to an outlying intelligence and devotion to civilized culture. And sure, he'd been worthy of marriage in the first place. But... whatever he was now, all she saw was a brute. A zealot. Nutball. Sociopath.
That was why the decision had been so easy.
It was about eleven-thirty when she heard the noise. She was in her bedroom, reading some CyberVerse article about international tensions. The thunder outside had always been a sort of comfort, like white-bolt scepters of plasma she would someday wield. Initially, it was inseparable from the thunder; gradually, it gained rhythmic qualities, became some sort of pounding. Hard pounding. Like [the intercourse she and her husband had had once - only once, two nights after their wedding]. She corrected herself: like something knocking on the front door. Something very loud.
No servant would get that; her husband had long since relieved all the maids and manservants. "A logistical waste," he'd called them. She'd just gotten to like one of the housemaids in particular, a stout old woman named Jo with a scathing vocabulary.
So she set the tablet down, got into some shoes, headed down the heavy stone stairs - all three flights of them, plus two long carpeted corridors - each step clacking as heels touched stone. Like Mr. McCullen would answer a door for anyone. At least she'd get farther from him by going to answer this late-night wanderer.
The door was six times wider than she was, and four times taller. Wood, fancily-molded steel, faded emblem of Clan McCullen. The banging grew more intentional, even as she approached it. If she were lucky, the thing - not the person, the thing - would shatter the door with its fists.
Hesitantly, grinning at the thought, she gripped the door handle in both hands. Slowly, the giant thing groaned and squealed ajar. The rain's volume doubled in an instant. Gave her goosebumps.
So did the thing that had knocked so diligently.
Imagine, if you will, a giant: huge, lumbering, human in almost every way minus stature, perhaps a little anatomy.
Now, forget the human part. Throw a night-grey hood over the thing, and give it ruby-red eyes poking out from a needlessly large hood while you're at it. The thing stands maybe seven or eight feet tall, has shoulders (almost) a yard across, hunched-over slightly so these abnormalities feel like tricks of delirium. Anastasia was by no means delirious, mostly just curious.
"Pardon me, Noble Miss," the giant hissed. Husked. Exhausted. Modulated. A weary traveler? One of those angels who came to people in this way? "Could you spare a room for a weary traveler?" Guess I got at least one of those right.
"This isn't a hotel," Anastasia replied. Unlike most people here, her accent was more Slavic than Germanic or Brittonic. It threw most people off the first time or five. "It's Castle McCullen. You don't live in Saerpinstein with knowing about this place." The giant hunched itself even further forward. A bow? I'm flattered, she remarked flatly.
"Please pardon me, Noble Miss, but it seems I am not from around here - "
"Obviously." He resumed after a short beat, refusing to have his chain of thought broken.
" - But it seems I must call upon your hospitality for one instance, to be repaid when and how you see fit." He extended one hand to the ground - not a human hand. Silvery, blocky, cobbled together like a clockwork skeleton. She gazed upon it far longer than she'd intended. As was intended by this visitor. Under the shadows and greyed cloth, fangs widened into a triangular grin.
"You're metal." He was quick to respond.
"You're flesh. More alike than you might think." He flexed fingers, exposing wire tendons as they subtly thickened and thinned. It was sickening yet so enticing to watch! "Even metal may be brought to life."
"So it seems. Come inside, you'll rust out there." Using what force she could muster, the large door came open - not much, but a metal arm could pry it the rest of the way. The tiles clicked, chipped, threatened to buckle. But they held. Finest Scottish craftsmen in three centuries - style plus function.
"I'm sure we can find a spot somewhere in this house for you - possibly the garage. My husband isn't in there."
"'Twould be much appreciated, Mistress." She immediately noted when people changed their address towards her.
With something like haste, they strolled across the floor. This giant wasn't exactly quiet, but she didn't count on him needing to be. James was far too busy summoning demons, or whatever he called them these days. Angels, something more French-sounding along that line. In other words, not listening.
She should've.
"MY ANA," the monotone loomed, annoyed, agitated. "You know how I feel about your midnight guests, especially the loud ones." She rolled her eyes to herself.
"And you, my James, what would you do to stop these visits?"
"Nothing."
"Exactly," she whispered to the metal giant. And her husband subsided to his Crowley-esqueness.
"If I may be so bold, I suppose you'd be looking for a solution?"
"Oh, no," she replied. "He enjoys it. He'd probably enjoy that too."
He winced with... Humor? "Indeed. But nothing can be enjoyed forever." That was not just a statement, Ana realized, but a promise.
A pact was formed. The declaration would come later, but this visitor was quick.
"What do you need?"
"That can be discussed later. For now… What do you need?" Anastasia now led this visitor into a new room: the kitchen. Knives everywhere.
"I need my husband away from me forever." She was grinning now. So many things that would now happen all at once! She'd never thought these things were possible, yet they were all here, brought by… Who? "And I need your name."
The visitor hissed, his footsteps stopped. Ana turned, seeing him frozen where he stood. As if thinking this was the right time, he threw off his hood.
Kitchen lights are quite revealing - a requirement of preparing food. And the metal grey form underneath those clothes was now shedding them like an old skin. Fitting, since under the robe had been a silver-purple giant… with the yellow and green tattoos of a serpent running across his whole body.
He hissed again. Picked up a knife, examined it as if passing the time.
"Sssst…. I have no name, kind Mistress," he shot, and she could tell he was lying and could not care any less.
Some time had passed, and the din was persistent. How could two people make that much of a racket!?
Then the old wood-and-iron door squeaked open.
"Ana, I said - " He decided to speak no more. The man's Celtic accent could be heard more clearly in this smaller space.
McCullen couldn't have chosen a better spot for his rituals, either, Starscream decided. Stone walls, loads of really erotic-type candles, dried runes everywhere painted in what appeared to be black blood. And the man himself, kneeling at the center of it all in some fancy human business suit. His head did not move in any direction to examine the intruder.
"I am the Arm!" he quoted, inhaling. Starscream had heard that somewhere before, because he recognized it. One of these days, he'd use that. True, after all.
"Through your existence, you've been a greater service to the Emperor than you could ever know," he told the human. "And you will continue to be so."
The walls, stretching out some twenty feet in every direction and already swallowed in space-black shadows, seemed to close in on them. Candles focused their glows to points the size of a fingernail - sources of light without illumination.
"I have been so," McCullen agreed complacently. "What will be done with me?"
"Not much. Only, you will be trapped, just as your wife feels trapped to you." The Celt scoffed - he knew what that would mean in Decepticon terms. "She has a greater part to play in our mission yet."
"I am aware. Get on with it."
"Very well." The diminutive giant, in a single step, hoisted the nobleman up from under the arms, and dragged him like a sack of dead potatoes from the room.
Candles went out as the Decepticon prosthetic passed them. McCullen weakly blew at a couple of them, first grinning, then chuckling, then cackling like some mad medieval wizard. His loafers squeaked against the floor. Deciding he didn't care much for the sound, he slowly kicked them off his feet. The sound must've caught Starscream's attention, because he stopped, briefly turned his head.
"Pesky things," McCullen told the Decepticon.
"Indeed," he agreed. "Pesky…"
He continued to drag the man: out into the hallway, across the sprawling carpet illustrating a grandiose purple dragon, 'round another corner to Anastasia's bedroom. She stood just in front of her bed, arms crossed, smirking. Starscream pulled McCullen around so that he faced his wife.
"Drop him," she ordered the giant. Hesitantly, after a moment, he did exactly that. James McCullen had no apparent problem with his face meeting floor - nor his nose meeting brokenness. Blood flowed freely and in grand gushes, but he didn't seem to mind one bit. Not exactly his blood by this point.
"Do you know what I expect to happen to you, my James?" He chuckled, pulled himself to his feet. Blood ran like water down the front of his shirt, working out a river in his right pant leg to rejoin both his socks and the ground. He grinned.
"Aye. Like I've already told your Decepticon lackey, just get on with it." His wife seemed to not understand that the purple giant was a Decepticon, but comprehension took hold, and it was as if she'd known well before he'd had any inkling.
"Then we will. To the dungeons!" she ordered with mock-enthusiasm… or was that sincere? Neither James nor Starscream cared much either way, and were happy to oblige regardless. The Decepticon picked up the human again, and carried him off. Ana followed closely behind.
Down a flight of stairs, which James was happy to walk himself. Starscream did not carry him again, merely escorted like a death row warden. There were no more words, except that Anastasia continued to smile the whole way down another few flights of stairs.
They were now perhaps a hundred feet underground. As part of the McCullen family's modernization, the Medieval torches had become orange streetlamp bulbs. That, at least, was one change the current McCullen Prince's wife had been happy about, and appreciated especially now. He'd even thrown in some roadsigns in the narrow corridors, ensuring that his place of imprisonment would never be hard to find.
No bother trying to remember how they'd arrived here, those arrows and labels served their purpose well. They arrived at some of the cells the early McCullens had used to hold high-treasoners. The great Michel de Nostradame had even spent a stint here. These had not been updated. There were, however…
Starscream saw the large vat waiting for them, exactly as he'd left it. This would be fun, even if completely consensual in all parties' accounts. The current McCullen knew exactly what was in that vat.
Ana was not far behind. Just waiting for this, she was!
Starscream shoved him to the great cobble floor.
"Now," he began, "comes my favorite part!"
McCullen said no more, simply accepted as the living metal was poured over him. No questions, no protest, only the searing sound as liquid Angolmois bonded with static flesh cells.
In enveloped him, silver mercury-like substance not drenching his entire self, clothes and all, but knowing to crawl along his body, raising a little steam as it did as both groups of cells began changing, adapting to one another. Starscream knew how the process worked. At the very least, he'd done the part in his duty to his Emperor. James McCullen was becoming a Decepticon.
Sort of.
To his wife, it was catharsis, perhaps with a purpose, perhaps not. Still, after this, she'd consider herself ready for whatever this traveling stranger asked of her. And it's not like it'd be all that hard.
She wondered if James would ever scream. Already, she saw the inhuman thing inside settle into a perfect mask of itself on the outside. Where his head once was, a roughly head-shaped dome of sculpted silver, with the rough outlines showing the beginnings of facial features. Discolored eyes. She couldn't tell from her position whether he still had teeth or not. But he had no hair, the hereditary McCullen jawline was gone, his forehead a different bearing to it.
Already, her world had been changed forever. Maybe he hadn't been that actively bad of a husband, but she'd hated him, just as she still hated him - except he was no longer himself.
Starscream saw this in her.
"Now, about our little agreement…"