Yo. Not much to say today. Enjoy. –Lady PhoenixDagger *//.^*
*****
His chest heaving in exhaustion, Walker flung himself to the damp jungle ground, a column of fire shredding the air above him. An answering column of flame burst from his fingers before he even hit the ground, forcing Mortis Gour to dive for cover. A wide radius of jungle around the two antagonists had been burned to the ground, filling the air with thick, choking ash. The continuous volleys of fire, ice, lightning and pure magic had taken their toll, for both mages had been injured, though only Mortis Gour's wounds showed. Walker's simply healed over themselves as soon as they appeared due to the wonders of genetic engineering. But the process was beginning to tire Walker out, and with his limited source of energy, this was simply not an option.
Damn him! Walker's lungs screamed for air as the fire's heat sucked them dry. Exhausted, the Lord of Alaryan's Keep fired a dizzying volley of conjured daggers at his foe, only to see them be knocked casually aside. DAMN HIM!
"Just give up, mageling!" Gour shouted. Walker cursed under his breath. Even with his wounds, the bastard wasn't even breathing hard. He was leaning on his staff, burned and bloodied, but grinning nevertheless, watching with glee as Walker laboured to his feet. "You certainly are a stubborn one, aren't you, boy? You must realise by now that I'm stronger than you, don't you? Your unwillingness to submit really is quite pitiful, though I must admit it's also quite entertaining to watch."
"Eat shit and die!" Walker spat back, willing another column of fire into existence. Still laughing, Gour batted it away.
"Why are you doing this?!" Walker screamed.
Gour actually laughed harder. "Notoriety, old boy. Isn't that why anyone does anything?"
Great. I'm fighting an amplified glory-seeker. "Kiss my a-AAAGH!" Narrowly, Walker evaded a bolt of lightning. There came a small hissing sound as the stones around the very spot he was standing on melted into fluid.
It's not a fair fight, really. Walker reflected. The man has a staff. How the hell am I supposed to contend with that?
You could get off your lily ass and use yours, knucklehead, a tiny, sarcastic voice chirped in Walker's head.
Riiight. Use that monstrosity? Suuure. Although he hated to admit it, Walker feared using his staff, the Shira'an, an ancient relic passed down from mage to mage. Something about it just screamed pure evil to him. Just touching the forsaken thing was enough to send a sick feeling through his entire body. But what more was there for him to do?
So be it.
Gour had stopped hurling magic, obviously bored with the lack of retaliation and eager to catch his breath a moment. Holding his breath, Walker plunged his hands into his subspace pocket and drew out the Shira'an, forcing himself to ignore to wave of nausea that rolled over him as he pulled it out. The warm daylight, now unhindered by tree cover, reflected off the dull metal curves of the shaft as it was drawn from the subspace pocket. The cold azure glow of sullenly contained magic enveloped it, wrapping itself thickest around a deep blue orb resting on top. Walker hunkered down, readying himself for the first attack.
"Well, now." Mortis Gour also pulled himself back into a fighting stance. A serpentine smile wreathed his face. "A metal staff. How unique."
Walker grinned back, his own smile grim and humourless. "Now it gets interesting."
*****
"Heero!" Quatre stuck his head from the rocky nook he and Trowa were using to hide in. The screaming, snarling roars had ceased for the moment, but there was no sign of the Perfect Soldier. Beckoning to Trowa, Quatre left their hidey-hole to look for him.
"Heero!"
A smudge of violent pink caught the corner or Quatre's eye. His heart dropped to his feet as his brain registered exactly what it was. Heero lay there on the ground, motionless, save for the barely perceptible up and down movement of shallow breathing. The scent of burned flesh hung over him like a shroud and his shirt had been completely burned from his body, exposing a layer of seriously blistered skin. His jeans were also gone, leaving only the familiar black bike shorts, which Quatre had no idea he wore under his outer clothes, the synthetic material melted to his thighs like a second skin. Buried under the prevalent noises in the jungle, the small sizzle of still-burning flesh made its way to Quatre's ear. He fought the urge to scream, feeling now the sudden agony his friend was enduring as his mind melded with Heero's. Next to him, Trowa made odd whimpering noises from the back of his throat and was probably not even aware of them. Swiftly, Quatre's eyes darted around, looking for something, some condensation pooled within the head of a large flower, a small puddle collected in the cup of a leaf, anything to throw on the Perfect Soldier to quell the burning.
Please, Lord. Don't let us die here.
Quatre!
"Wha!?"
Oh, thank heavens I finally got through! It was Talon's voice, faint and somewhat cloudy-sounding, but it was Talon all the same. Quatre clung to the voice like drowning man to a piece of driftwood as his saviour.
What do I do!? the blond Arab cried out, not caring about the stinging desperation that seeped from his mind to that of the old man's. His eyes still frantically scanned the skies for the dark shape of a diving dragon.
Listen hard, boy. We can mend this problem together.
Quatre nodded vigorously, then remembered himself. Right. Tell me what to do.
Suddenly, Trowa grabbed Quatre's sleeve and gestured wildly at the sky. The dragon was landing again, most likely to worry and devour her newly-downed prey. Quatre started like a frightened deer and made to start running, Trowa in tow.
No, child!
Quatre froze, almost causing Trowa to run headlong into him.
Let it land. We can do nothing unless we let it land. Remember, I'll be here to help you through this. I'll be here the whole time.
The way he spoke reminded Quatre of a wizened old hostage negotiator. Okay.
The elderly voice was calm and firm as Talon gave Quatre his instructions. Do exactly as I say. Don't question. Just do it. Now, focus in on the dragon. See it. See into it. See every vein, every tissue, every molecule. The old man's voice lilted in Quatre's head. He could feel it trickling into every fold of his brain like tepid fountain water, warm and calming. Don't just look. See.
Dreamily, Quatre focused his mind. The gleaming ivory beast appeared in his mind's eye, approaching Heero's still form, unaware of the attention it was being given. He looked further. Muscles, bone and organs came into view, the throbbing of blood within them nearly deafening as Quatre delved deeper to see individual blood vessels and muscle fibres. Further still, he saw individual molecules. Dazzled by the sprightly dance of electrons, Quatre almost missed Talon's next instruction.
Focus higher, child. Look for the strongest of the muscle fibres. Look for the heart.
Different muscles shot through Quatre's mind. Muscles to support the legs, muscles used for swallowing, muscles to give birth. Finally, the muscle fibres of the heart came into view, thick and stringy and strong with constant use. The rush of blood within this organ was louder than in all the others as it went methodically through the motions of systole and diastole.
Pump…rushhhhh
Suddenly, Quatre realised his task.
Pump…rushhhhh
Focus in.
Pump…rushhhhh
Focus harder.
Pump…rushhhhh
Take hold.
Pump…rushhhhh
Don't let go, now.
Pump…rushhhhh
Squeeze hard. Don't let it shake you off.
Pump…rushhhhh
Harder.
Pump……rushhhhh
Harder!
Pump…………rushhhhh
I said harder, boy!
Pump…
Depart in peace.
Silence.
*****
"Lay him down here," Iondra instructed. Carefully, Gaelin and Declan carried the unconscious Talon to a spare room and laid him on the bed.
"Will he be okay?" Gaelin asked quietly, pulling the blanket up to the old man's chin and tucking it under. A soft, weary groan escaped Talon's lips as his body sank into the mounded contours of the straw-tick mattress beneath him, but he did not wake.
Iondra nodded slowly. "He should be alright after a while. What he did with Quatre back there took a lot out of him."
Declan sighed grimly and sat on the edge of the bed. "And Quatre?"
The ageless woman's face grew sorrowful. She and Nat thought of Gil and Belle as her own siblings and to them, the Ichara's children were like her own nieces and nephews. She thought fleetingly of how the girls were taking this gristly scene going on outside and closed her eyes a moment. "We can only hope," she said after a long while, "that Trowa stays with him. There is no way the poor boy could possibly have remained conscious after that."
The three were silent again for a while, plucking uselessly at blankets and staring into space. Finally, Declan spoke up: "Are we all going to die if Walker… y'know… loses?"
"Declan!" Gaelin shouted, causing the old wizard to moan in his bone-weary sleep. "Please!"
"I don't know." Iondra admitted. "I really don't. All we can do is hope we don't ever have cause to find out."
Nervously, Gaelin pulled a lyre from his subspace pocket and began to coax a simple melody from it. "Hope. Sure."
Declan glanced out the window at the scene begin projected below. "Yeah." He sighed. "It's been nice knowing you guys."
*****
"Now it finally begins!" Mortis Gour's face was split with a wide grin. "Let the Fates reveal the true victor." His smile swiftly grew cold. "Give my best to the angels, won't you?"
"Bring it on, shitbag." Walker snarled back.
Mortis Gour sniffed regally at Walker. "Gauche," he decided. "Effective, but gauche."
Growling low in his throat, Walker advanced. Laughing, Gour approached him as well. Suddenly, the older mage struck the ground with the butt of his staff, shattering a wide fissure into the ground.
Wary and slightly intrigued, Walker stopped his advance. "What the hell…?"
"What? Did you really expect me to do this myself?"
Ah, shit.
A deep, earth-shattering roar filled the air as a twelve-foot stone demon shouldered its way to the surface. It resembled a cross between a troll and a dragon, all stony scales and dense muscle. Deep furrows ran from either corner if its wide maw, channelled by millennia of corrosive poison dribbling from its two-foot pair of needle-pointed fangs.
Walker sighed and levelled the Shira'an at the netherworld monster, shattering it without a word.
Snarling, Gour brushed a shard of demon flesh from his shoulder. "Tacky. Very tacky."
"Not as tacky as bringing innocents into a duel," Walker shot back.
Gour grinned like a snake. "They served their purpose."
"Which would be?"
"Entertainment." The older mage laughed. Suddenly, the air around Walker was filled with cloudy images of Wufei and Duo, their bodies twisted and motionless, flanked by his two oldest sisters, covered in blood. Images of Heero, his body charred and burned, his clothing gone and his hair neatly burned away. Of Quatre, lying face up on the jungle floor, staring blankly up at the sky with unseeing eyes, and of Trowa, kneeling helplessly beside him, thin trickles of blood trailing from both ears.
"No.…" Walker's eyes widened in shock. Far within their depths, a tiny fleck of bloody red began to emerge. The soul of the Shira'an was stirring within him. "No…."
"Hurry up, boy," Gour called impatiently. "Do you plan on fighting or shall I just make it easy on you and kill you right here?"
"How dare you…." The scarlet fleck was quickly joined by another floating towards it like two autumn leaves floating towards each other in a pond of pure gold. Another fleck quickly joined them, followed by another. The process took less than a nanosecond and within an instant, both of Walker's pupils were ringed with alternating streaks of deep, bloody red and glinting gold. Around his feet, small stones began to vibrate.
Gour pulled himself yet again into a fighting stance, pulling his free hand back for a new attack. His face was aglow with vicious glee. "About bloody time!" he crowed, thrusting a newly formed spear of ice at the younger mage's chest.
It screamed through the air, only to stop dead six feet away from Walker and fizzle lamely into a puddle at his feet. Larger stones on the jungle floor began to move and hairline cracks appeared in the ground around Walker's feet. The air suddenly tasted like rusting tin as surplus magic began to leech itself into the air.
Gour took a hesitant step back, suddenly unsure of what to expect. His staff was fully extended and his feet were firmly planted, but his shoulders were slumpedand his eyes were filled with very little confidence at the sight before him. Walker's irises were now enveloped in deep bloody scarlet and tiny rivulets of blood tinged black from plague ran from the corners of his mouth. A horrid grin graced his scarred features as an unseen wind tousled his hair, evidence of currents of unbridles magic racing over and around his body. A horrible laugh echoed not from the younger mage's throat, but rather from deep within his body, bubbling up and filling the jungle around him in a voice too deep to have come from a mere man. The cracks spiderwebbing from his feet split wider and longer with every booming cackle. Slowly, Walker's tail and wings bulged against his clothes and tore free, forcing him to bend over slightly to accommodate the added weight. The spirit and soul of Walker Broman was now gone, shunted aside to make way for the soul of the ancient heirloom shackle known as the Shira'an.
*****
"What is he doing!?" Relena screamed at Nat. They were on a tiny balcony stemming from a spare room with Kari, the balcony on his own office having already being snatched away by a group of Bhaarliads not more than mere seconds before he got there. At the moment, the former Queen of the World was gripping the lapels of the elderly man's robe and was shaking him as though the answer to her question was stuck inside him. Above their heads a tiny dreamdrop hovered, showing the soon-to-be gristly scene before them.
"Girl, get a hold of yourself!" Nat roared, wrenching the hysterical girl off.
"What's happening to Walker!? Why hasn't he killed that man for what he did!?" Relena began to sob. "Why is that man still alive after what he did to Heero!?" She threw herself at the old man again, this time pummelling him with her fists and almost knocking him from their balcony perch. "Why is he still alive!?"
All of a sudden, Relena found herself sprawled on the tiny floor of the balcony, her cheek flushed deep, stinging red. Kari lowered her hand.
Forgive me, was all she said before curtly backing off.
Nat groaned and helped Relena to her feet. "I can handle this myself, Kari."
The blonde fighter shrugged indifferently. You do it your way and I'll do it mine."
The elderly wizard turned Relena's face into the light to take a better look. "At least it's not going to bruise. As for Walker, that…thing you are now looking at is no longer him."
"What?" Relena breathed, laying a hand to her stinging cheek. You deserved it, you know, she reminded herself.
"Walker staff, the Shira'an we call it, is controlling his body now."
"It's sentient?" Relena's sapphire eyes were huge as she turned back to look at Walker's body, which now oozed blood from both mouth and nose with morbid abandon.
Nat nodded. "That it is. It was owned by the mage before him and before him and so on. It was what led the last mage to his death." He shook his head. "What a waste. I was about your age when it happened. Poor Sepphyricus. The Shira'an's constant picking at his mind drove him insane and ended up stabbing himself in the chest with it.
Warily, Relena let her eyes travel down to the butt of the Shira'an. A wickedly serrated point greeted her view, half buried in the jungle turf. "So the staff is taking over Walker's body?"
Gravely, Nat nodded. "But at least there's an upside to this."
How can he be so calm? "What?" Behind Relena, Kari leaned in to hear better over the roar of the crowd below.
"The Shira'an is insanely powerful and almost as petty. Given the chance, it will instinctively try to destroy anything of power nearby out of spite." The old man's face was alight with morbid fascination. "And Mortis Gour is the only powerful thing around it in a huge radius."
*****
Thou darest invade my domain? Blood frothed from the Shira'an's host's mouth and nose. Deep within the creature's eyes, hatred burned, blazing red and terrible.
Impressively, Mortis Gour managed to stay calm. "I do," he said.
And for that, thy punishment will be brutal.
The older mage cackled wildly. "Who's to say I cannot simply banish you back to whatever plane of hell you came from and take the Keep for my own pleasure?"
The staff, the Shira'an's prison, flared dangerously. I care not for the Keep. The concerns of mere mortals are not my own. It stopped a moment, seeming to contemplate something. However, one simple fact still remains.
"Which is?"
One who is dead cannot banish.
Suddenly, the ground under its feet melted away to reveal a lake of pure, shimmering magic the colour of quicksilver. From within its depths, the snarls and screams of lesser demons shivered and ripped at the air. With blinding speed, a huge, clawed hand tore free from the quicksilver bonds and plucked the older mage from the ground, grabbing him around the head and dragging him, kicking and screaming into the abyss below.
The Shira'an howled in triumph as the man's shrill screams rent the air and then fell suddenly silent. It smiled, bloody teeth gleaming slickly in the dim light of the jungle dome. Within the monster, a man's voice cried out, frantic with fear as he felt his soul being torn from his own body.
*****
"What the hell is going on?!"
Iondra closed her eyes and let her gnarled hands on the railing support her weight. The sorceress' ageless face seemed to have aged somehow. "The Shira'an is taking over Walker's body," she said to the wide-eyed bards at her side. "He let it have too much power." A tear slipped past her lashes to land silently on her breast. "We have nothing left to do but wait until it tears us all limb from limb."
Declan looked like he was going to scream. "You mean we're just going to stand here and watch as that monster kills off everyone in the Keep?!"
"And perhaps even beyond that?" Gaelin added.
Iondra now began to cry in earnest. "Forgive me, children. We have no other choice."
*****
Is the world truly doomed? Well, not like I'm going to tell you!!! Stay tuned! (That slap was for all you Relena-haters out there, by the way. ;p)
Ja ne, minna-san!
--LPD *//.^*