DISCLAIMER: Oh for God's sake, I don't own the newsies! Let's make this easy, though. I only own Runner Conlon, Morning Dew, River, Malakai, Micah, Jeshua, Ahdi, Neeko, and Father Romanik. ^_^ Newsies are owned by Disney; everyone else owns themselves. Oh, and the song lyrics featured in some chapters don't belong to me but rather are the property of various artists.
A.N: IMPORTANT! Please read! Especially the first two notes.
*This is the last chapter in the pre-1900 eras! No more going centuries back in time. *frowns* Ah well, there's always flashbacks. Also, the premise of this story has somewhat been changed. Still the same basic storyline, but some more pertinent issues will be thrown in to make it more significant and thus prompt my will to write it, lol.
*Also, I'm going to start re-arranging the major/minor roles of the characters based on who's actually reading the story, lol. I just don't think it's fair to those who faithfully review to be reading about the characters of those who don't all the time. ^_^ w00t w00t! Thanks to everyone who is reviewing, though. *huggles* I love you all! ^_^ So based on who reviews this chapter, and who's been reviewing most devoutly since EA first came out, I'll make some adjustments to better accommodate the faithful, hehe.
*The lyrics in this chapter are from "Holy" by Nichole Nordeman. Great song! Download it!
*Skittery and Pie-Eater have switched roles in the story. The former boy will play the part of the demon, whereas the latter will now be the revolutionary from the 1900's.
Sapphy: Ah yes, the tragedy that is Bumlet's and Lyf's relationship. Don't worry, though, we'll have more of them eventually. And guess what! Your role doth approach! Ha, excuse the Elizabethan English. *grins* But anyway, since this is the last chapter that is pre-1900's, you'll be featured more in the chapters to come, being a mortal and all. Thanks thanks thanks!
Ember: Here's another update coming your way. I'm glad you're liking the story so far. ^_^ You and Mush as angels will be making an appearance soon, don't worry. Sorry to keep you waiting so long, though. I just had to write out the background story first, haha.
Fantasy: Ah, glad to see my knowledge of Shakespeare wasn't flawed, hehe. I actually had to do some research for that certain scene, just to get a good idea of what the master playwright was up to during that year. *grins* Anywho, thanks so much for reading my stories and reviewing! I love faithful readers! *huggles*
Goldstranger: Yea, the Huge jump in time last chapter wasn't really supposed to happen; I think I had originally planned to have a middle scene or something but I was hurrying to get the chapter out to everyone. ^_^ In any case, after this chapter, the year is pretty much set in stone for the rest of the story, hehe. Thanks so much for you review! Hope you like this chapter!
Dreamer: Haha, I was a bit hesitant about the whole Shakespeare changing the ending of Romeo and Juliet because of Snitch but then I thought it was a pretty good idea. After all, you just can't resist Snitch! He's so adorable and repentant. *grins*
Sita: You flatter me, Sita-beans darling sweetheart! But I'm uber glad you're loving the story. You're like, one of my biggest fan and I'm still dazed by me even having fans in the first place! Hahaha. By the way, reading Angelsight inspired me to start this baby up again. *grins*
Raven: Raven! I have to introduce your character into this story soon! ^_^ Thanks so much for loving EA, but I assure you I'm no literary genius. : P In any case, here's another chapter for you, love! Enjoy!
Lute: I was writing the last chapter and thinking to myself, 'I bet Lute will like this scene'. lol. I'm glad you noted the quote from Midsummer: "what fools these mortals be!" Ha, I love Puck. But anyway, just so you know, your character will be entering this story soon enough. Maybe even next chapter! Thanks for the reviews!
Geometrygal: Aw, your reviews are always filled with nice compliments. *smiles gratefully* Thanks so much for the kind words! They really make my day and I'm glad you enjoy my writing so much. Enjoy this chapter!
Cici: Heya! I was thinking about our RP today, hehe. I think I may use some of the ideas in River. Especially the conflicts between Spot and Dewey. W00t w00t! I'm still waiting for an update for your story. . But don't worry, I'll wait. *grins*
Chipper: YaY! I finally got your character written in last chapter. That was like, my major accomplishment of the last chapter, lol, introducing new characters. In answer to your question, I don't write professionally, lol. It's just a hobby for me. But I would like to be a novelist someday. ^_^
Lyf: I'm writing, I'm writing! *grins* Wow, you seem addicted to this story. Hehe, just kidding. But I'm glad you like it so much! The elves should be re-appearing within a few chapters so your character will be coming back again. Thanks for the reviews, darling! Hope you like this chapter!
Matches: 'Ello, love! Just so you know, you and your friends will finally come into the story next chapter! : D
~*ETERNAL AVENGER*~
Chapter Five: A Ghastly Reminder
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Somewhere in Eastern Europe; 1792
How many deaths did I die before I was awakened to new life again? How many half-truths did I bear witness to 'til the proof was disproved in the end? And how long, how far? What was meant to allude only shadowed me still. And all you ever wanted was only me, on my knees, singing 'holy'…
"Your lover is a coward."
"And you the spineless sycophant of a Dark Prince."
He hissed at her and then masked his lips with a most detestable smirk, tall frame seconds earlier rigid now relaxed as he calmed every last muscle in his mortal incarnation, ripples expanding along his flesh as the skin momentarily shuddered and then drew tightly back around his bones, like a blanket of wax laid upon a burning entity. "He won't withstand the temptation, you know. The wraiths of his past are far too many."
"You obviously know nothing of Runner Conlon." She wasn't deterred in the least by his negative perspective no more than she was by the monstrous countenance he then took upon himself, as if he truly believed staring into the blister-marred face of hell's own would wake in her heart a primeval fear of the 'living dead'. Then again, he was neither living nor dead, but an ill-fated spirit ever to wander aimlessly throughout the barren wasteland of damned immortality. And she knew this well.
"Oh, I know plenty, riverland nymph. Volumes more than I would care to quite frankly." He cast away his demonic fascia and switched back into the manifestation of a young man. "I like this appearance far better. It's rather handsome, wouldn't you agree?" He came to a halt on their tread through the cemetery and looked at her, thin lips lengthened into a grin and eyes a darker shade of brown than the dirt covering the decaying carcasses under their feet.
She glanced at him no longer than three seconds before continuing through the mist-laden shrubbery at the middle of which they were entrenched. Under the lavender moon, her eyes sparked with the finest hue of gold, her hair a wild mass of curls under the hood of the cloak she bore. "No less sickening than your sullied heart, I'd venture to say."
"Morning Dew, your words are much too harsh!"
"And your intentions the very venom from which they spring."
She at last terminated her march when they happened unto a mausoleum of imperial structure, its stone door slid fully open and the tomb within, festering with cockroaches and rabid mice, void of a corpse. Her face lacked the shock it would've otherwise entertained had she not been in this ghastly business for the better part of her immortality. Bringing forth a polished stone she'd been holding tightly in her palm, she opened her fingers slowly and let the blue light radiating from the rock wash its luminosity upon the cracked walls of the burial chamber, exposing the blemishes of its constructors.
Aside her, the demon sneered. "My lord has resurrected this particular body to speak a language long dead." He watched the girl carefully, and then looked past her toward the entrance to the mausoleum where a famine-stricken woman covered in puss-smeared decomposing rags staggered forth, insects slithering across her tarnished flesh and pupils large with an unworldly possession. The runes of an archaic tongue were etched across her forehead by what Dewey assumed to be a dagger's means, for the profuse outpouring of blood from the wounds was not the work of a mere scratch, and as the girl beheld this hellish transfiguration, she couldn't help but back away with a gasp, her fingers instantly reaching for the large cross about her neck.
The would-be corpse of the woman held out her arms, the skin steadily peeling from her limbs to expose bloody bones and deteriorated muscle tissue. "You have failed, young exorcist," spoke the possessed in a dialect born from the vernacular of Ancient Egypt. "Come, be one with me." She took a step forward as a shrieking laughter emanated from her scalded lips.
The demon who had joined Dewey on this vain mission lounged against a stone wall and spectated with delight. "I don't believe that cross is big enough to rid you of such a beast as the one now pursuing you," he laughed.
"Woe to you, Skittery," the girl replied easily, gathering her courage and strength once more as to not appear daunted by this new feat, "for it is not an object from Whom I draw such powers." And then she gave the haunted woman a fierce look born from her rage and uttered in the Egyptian tongue of old, "In the name of God, in the name of the Lord, I order you back to the very gates of Hell!" Seeing her foe waver in the slightest brought a string of hope to her soul, and thus she proceeded on, repeating the words continuously and implying various other languages as well should the demon play on its foolhardiness. In Gaelic she screamed the demand…in Aramaic, Latin, and any other translation that befell her expeditious musings, she screeched the syllables and fully expected favorable results.
Her expectations were met. The ribcage of the walking corpse suddenly collapsed inward, the bones within snapping like sapling branches, and from the shredded flesh of the woman sprung a horrid grey beast that crashed to the ground in a ball of scales, hissing most irritably at the prospect that there were yet orders to which it had to succumb. Flapping its torn wings, it snarled once at Dewey and then dove into the cement ground screaming profane curses as it furrowed a tunnel deep into the earth to return to its damned home. The corpse it had occupied crumpled into its rightful tomb, and returned to the rest of the dead.
Dewey heaved a sigh of relief and wiped the beads of perspiration from her forehead. "Counter that, swine." She smirked at Skittery in accomplishment and exited out the mausoleum's passageway, her soul fatigued by the spiritual warfare. The night air was stagnant but far more pleasing than the atmosphere of a vault touched by hell, and she breathed in its manure-scent with a yearning to return to the motherlands of the Irish, where she'd been born.
"Let's hope your lover mirrors your same fortitude, milady," was his only reply, as he crossed his arms and stared at her with sheer hatred. "You know not what he goes through. Spot has taken him to the caverns of the undead, where his nightmarish memories will at long last come to life."
"I know of his nightmares, bloody guttersnipe. You've yet to enlighten me."
He drew closer to her, beaming with malevolent pleasure. "Oh? Then you're acquainted with the incest he bred on the bed sheets of the Conlon Dynasty, succumbing to the desires of not only his bloodlust, but a drive for abomination as well. Your dear Runner wasn't always as sanctified as he's turned out to be. On the contrary! He was a libertine debauchee who would with wanton desire watch the immoral acts of his older cousin, and wakened to a life that slew integrity with the dagger of the damned, became unrestrained in all things.
"More callous and volatile than Spot was he once! He massacred not for need or honor, but for the reeking pleasure of clutching a dying mortal with his indifferent arms. His hot-temper and indecorous deeds eventually exiled him from his very family, and driven by a sense of betrayal and murderous frenzy, he headed a bestial revolutionary brigade that saw to the assassination of his own father. Spot was intrigued by his cousin's lascivious behaviour and began to foster it, filling the boy's mind with a wickedness born from the underworld. In the year 1388, on his twenty-first birthday, he drank from the toxic wine that would cause his body's aging to expire.
As a gift, he received from Spot a band of concubines, not all from the female gender either. The two cousins shared in the mirth and in drunken carousal, excessively indulged themselves with cursed acts, the flesh of their bodies joined in a way that birthed the madness of their namesake. The next morning, half the whores strewn across their camp in a pool of blood, Runner on his lonesome climbed a nearby mountain to gaze at the sunrise as he daily did. You know well he's only half demon kind and thus isn't fazed by the light of the Great Star; though his father was a vampiric sire, his mother was a deranged harlot from the filth of man.
Spot wasn't in his company, as the elder had long vanished to save his hide from the sun's bitterness, and lacking the evil beckoning of his brethren, Runner was for once left to his own peace and contemplation. It was then that he met a priest, the man who would show Runner what he had become and how it had made the Lord weep."
Dewey's eyes widened at the vivid relay of information. Though she so wanted to deem it all fallacious, she knew the demon spoke truth. "Father Romanik," she whispered, finally able to connect the jagged pieces of this confounded puzzle together. "It was through Romanik that Runner and I first met. I remember Runner was always so distant back then, his eyes always shifting nervously as if searching for something they had long ago lost…"
"Purity, perhaps," replied Skittery, before going on with the tale. "He'd been led to believe he could never again reclaim it, and so with a twisted mindset, it only caused him to delve deeper and deeper into defilement. Father Romanik told him otherwise, and when he learned of a rank he might undertake in place of his adulteration, he was both curious and elated. He forsook the ways of the Conlon Dynasty after only a morning-long talk with the mysterious man, and thereafter he learned the trade of exorcism. Disgusted by the besmirched trail of grime which he left behind, he vowed to never again become a slave to the devil's works and now tries to redeem himself in the sight of God by ridding the world of malice."
She swallowed hard as to prevent the tears from cascading down her face, shattered by the reality Runner had for centuries kept from her. She parted her lips to speak, but only a heart-broken whimper sounded, and wishing the demon to not know of her pains, she covered her mouth with a hand and turned away from him. Skittery stepped forward, almost as if to comfort her, but suddenly a thunderous boom tore throughout the cemetery like the bellow of a gargantuan beast, the lands shaking vigorously and ripping apart where some patches were dead of greenery. Thunder rolled in the distance like colossal stones clashing against one another, and before the pair there opened up in midair a vortex, edges undulating with electricity.
A young man was shoved through the vortex harshly and fell onto the lands just as his mode of transportation burst into oblivion and became no more. The cemetery ceased in its shaking, and the wind was once more still. The young man climbed to his feet with much difficulty and showed himself to be Runner, face masked with ions of pain as was evident through the hot tears his glistening eyes shed.
With gaping mouth, Skittery stepped toward his adversary in awe. "You…you withstood the temptation?" It was an inconceivable achievement! Spot, Jack, and their unruly band of mentally diseased vampires had been adamant in their avowals to bring about the fall of the younger Conlon, and yet…they had failed?
Runner nodded several times, losing count at some point or another, and seized Dewey's hand in a blatant hurry to leave the dreaded location of his final test behind. Yanking her on, they hurried through the shrubbery until well on their way down the cobblestone streets nearby where a distant horse-coach offered the only noise to preoccupy their minds.
After some time, Dewey could stand the silence no longer. "Skittery told me everything, Runner. About your past."
He glanced at her in sheer bewilderment and made an action as if to defend himself, but realizing it was quite in vain seeing how all was true, he retreated back behind his guards and shoved his hands down the pockets of his trench coat self-consciously. It was bad enough knowing first hand the madness he had birthed in his youth…but for his love to know of them as well?
"Runner, why didn't you tell me?"
"Sincerely?" He stopped in his tracks and regarded her with a solemn disposition. "Because you would've surely despised me. You were born of the church, and I without. I was everything you were raised to deem an abomination, and I was afraid that sharing my past with you would only serve to keep you away…" Sighing, he diverted his gaze to the ground. "I understand if you want nothing to do with…"
She quite surprised him when she playfully smacked the side of his head and laughed. "You are an idiot, milord. But I wouldn't have it any other way." With a grin, she grabbed his face in her hands and kissed him hard; it was her way of showing him no barrier born of earth or hell would ever separate them. "Now what shall we do now that you've passed your test?"
He sighed again, a chill running down his spine at her words. The test. So simple it was to let the words roll of one's tongue, but to actually live through it…to vehemently declare to the very face of the dragon that you would no longer be its puppet… "I'm going to reestablish the Immortal Confederacy. I plan to gather the half-bloods together once and for all; wherever Bumlets has led them I must go, encourage them to join my cause. And Kitten, with her spell-casters and half-blood slaves, I'll be needing them as well. The pirates who drank of the fountain of youth will be very much resourceful to me. But we'll need more.
"Dewey, you must get back in touch with the other elementals, and it's of the utmost necessity that we gather the Seekers of the Zion Sect, as we will be traveling to the New World recently established out west to start life anew. There's revolutionaries out there seeking change, and we shall give it to them. Aside from this, the Healers of old must be contacted; I'm in dire need of their assistance…"
They continued down the street discussing these imperative matters. The dawn of a New Age was breaking.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Review! ^_^