DISCLAIMER: Spiral is Marvel's. I'm using her without their permission, but I am using her with her permission [if I didn't she'd get really ticked]. I am making no money off of this. PLEASE don't sue.
FEEDBACK is heartily welcomed at bkittle@creighton.edu
NOTE: I'd like to thank Sabia for giving me the heinous idea contained within. You're just evil. ;) All pompous speech is on purpose. And finally, there are some end notes at the [duh] end.
Climb That Mountain High - Part 7
By: Beverly McIntyre
White clumps of frosted hair danced in front of Spiral's burning eyes as she lurched her way through yet another snowdrift. The incessant prattling inside of her head continued, but she used it as background noise, something to let her know she was still alive. Something she would make Mojo pay for after she ripped Hecate's spine out and did a merry little dance on it.
Spiral lurched forward on frozen legs to pull herself free of the snowdrift. Stumbling forward she continued on. She had to get somewhere. Somewhere out of this nowhere. Squinting at the horizon, or what she thought was the horizon, the six-armed woman searched for anything that stuck out.
Her eyes had nearly missed it. They had been so used to the pervading whiteness around her that the small black bump in the otherwise dominating bleakness was almost missed. There was something out there other than snow and clouds.
Spiral let out a gurgled whoop through chapped lips as she stumbled more quickly. Her six arms pulled away from her body and grasped out toward the little black spot. Pulling her arms back to her body as a cold zephyr whipped about her body, she plowed into another snow drift. She threw her body forward and lifted her numbed knees as high as they could go to get through the drift. She floundered through the drift as the little black dot got closer and more distinct.
It looked as if the black shape on the horizon was a ramshackle hut. Spiral pushed herself harder. There was a flicker of human hope inside of her. Instead of pushing it back down, she grabbed onto it with all the tenacity she could manage. She used the energy given to her from that hope to speed up her stumbling gate. Somewhere inside of her she expected the clouds to part and the sun to shine down onto that little hut. For the first time in her existence, Spiral thought there could be salvation.
Salvation came for her. It came in a blinding flash of light. She fell to her knees as seemingly the clouds did part and the sun shown down on the nearly pristine snow. Struggling with snow-blindness, Spiral looked to the sky with two hands partially in front of her eyes. Looking away from the dazzlingly white snow, Spiral noticed something strange. The clouds had not parted but the sun had come below them. Eyes watering, Spiral watched the ball of golden light hang in the sky for a second before arcing toward the ground.
She followed the ball of light with her eyes for as long as she could, but when it got to close to the snow-laden ground, she had to close her eyes against the dazzling brightness. The light flashed once, intensely. It was so bright she could she the veins in her eyelids. Then the ground roared underneath her legs. A wave of concussive force knocked her on her back. She gritted her teeth as she slid across the white snow, the chill biting her skin. She slid into the snow drift she had just exited from mere seconds ago and became enveloped in the white cold.
She just lay there for a second, entertaining the thought of giving up. A brief flash of memory flashed before her eyes. He was smiling at her. He was reassuring her that they could do this. Mojo would fall. His blond hair and glowing eye marking who he was. Spiral opened her mouth to scream. He was her enemy. She hated him. She HATED him.
Her scream never got very far as when she opened her mouth she got plenty of snow in it. Gagging, Spiral used all six arms to fight her way out of the drift. Emerging triumphant and a bit whiter, Spiral pulled herself to her feet.
She squinted toward where the ball of light would have crashed into the ground. There was a gigantic crater where the comet had made landfall. Spiral felt her heart stop when she looked beyond the crater and was unable to see the ramshackle hut anymore. She stumbled over toward the crater. It had to be there. She wouldn't accept it not being there. Maybe she was still dazed from the snow-blindness or her eyes were just playing tricks on her.
Spiral stopped at the edge of the crater. She held two hands under her eyes to try to cut down on the glare from the snow. Her eyes watered as she squinted so hard just to see the debris of the hut strewn on the far edge of the crater.
She growled. Somebody was using her as a punching bag. Her first inclination was that the fat blob was playing tricks on her to get higher ratings, but she pushed that idea aside. He was already giving her a headache, and he would be satisfied with that for a little while. The voices in her head became louder in protest.
Shut up.
Chastised, the voices went back to their dull roar in the background.
So if the spineless idiot isn't playing with me, who is? She had a list of people who would want to torment her. The list was too long for her just to stand there in the freezing winds and figure it out. So she revised the list. People who wanted to torment her and were powerful enough to do it. One name blazed at the top of the list: Hecate.
The Titaness, it appeared, was not done with her. No, it was not enough to take all of Spiral's mystical powers away from her, including the energy she had accidently siphoned into herself atop Mount Olympus. Now, the malevolent being was playing games with her, forcing Spiral to latch onto things like hope that she had no need of before.
Spiral glared down into the crater but wiped the glare off of her face when she spotted something at the bottom of the crater. There was a glowing, golden person lying at the bottom. The corners of Spiral's mouth turned up. Looks like somebody fell off of her stolen horse.
Spiral launched herself down the slope of the cliff. The sooner she got down and ripped her power out of the Titaness, the sooner she could leave this hell. She slid down the side of the crater on the flats of her booted feet. Her sense of grace fully returned by her rising sense confidence. Sliding like an assassin's knife across a throat, Spiral reached the bottom of the crater.
When she stopped sliding, the Mistress of the Wildways sauntered toward the stirring human-shape, confidence fully restored. She stopped next to the body, noting that Hecate seemed to have lost her bone shard armor and was now clothed in a toga, a pair of sandals, and a golden, laurel leaf crown. Spiral sneered at the prone Titaness as she kicked her in the side with a snow-encrusted boot. The Titaness rolled with the kick and quickly got to her feet. Spiral leveled a deadly gaze at-
"LONGSHOT?!?" The being standing opposite of the six-armed former human was definitely not the Titaness of Magic. The blond man standing across from her was tall, blond, and achingly beautiful. As Spiral stood slightly stunned by the appearance of her nemesis, 'Longshot' got a good look at her.
"Kali," he hissed. Spiral just raised an eyebrow. This was not the first time she had been called that. "You're the one responsible for this. You shall learn not to trifle in the affairs of the Greek gods."
'Longshot' gestured and a golden bow of exquisite beauty appeared in his hands. As he raised it to aim at Spiral, she dove for his knees, hoping to knock them out from under him. The golden man leapt out of her way with speed entirely inhuman. He landed gracefully behind her. He turned and fired in one fluid motion. The arrow passed through the prone Spiral and stuck into the frozen ground.
Apollo smirked at the dead goddess of death. "Hades is a better god of death. He would never have been so foolish."
Apollo's smug expression fell faster than a shooting star when he saw Spiral stir. He became even more dumbfounded when she pulled herself off of the ground with the arrow still stuck in the ground.
"Well, I'm impressed." Spiral muttered as she dusted off the snow off her legs.
Apollo couldn't believe it. There was not even a mark to show the arrow had even touched her let alone run right through her. "This-this is impossible. The bow knows my thoughts. You, Kali, should be dead."
Spiral had thought about a witty rejoiner but decided against it. This 'Longshot' had already tried to kill her once. She wasn't about to give him a second chance.
Spiral launched herself at the stunned god. She latched onto him with her six arms. Bringing a knee up into his groin, she heard him give an inarticulate grunt. She released him and watched him stumble backwards bent over in pain. He looked up at her just in time to see a nasty uppercut coming his way. He tried to dodge out of the way, but Spiral effortlessly changed tactics and used her silvery bionic arm to land a smashing blow against his temple. Apollo's head snapped to the side, and he crumpled to the ground.
But Spiral was not done with him. She had been through hell today and somebody was going to pay for it. She walked over and grabbed the back of his toga just as a golden glow enveloped him. The glow spread like wildfire over her body, and before she could release Apollo's body, both of them disappeared.
The cold winds of Siberia died down as a lone figure clad in bone shard armor glowered down into the crater.
End Notes
[1] Yes, I am saying that the Greek pantheon has knowledge and relationships with other pantheons.
[2] Yes, I heartily believe Apollo does not get along with deities of death, no matter what pantheon they come from.
[3] Yes, when I first dropped Spiral into the frigid wasteland, I called it the Middle of Nowhere. But some parts of Siberia can be classified as the Middle of Nowhere.
