Author's Note: If such a thing asThe Dark Tower can belong to any one person, it belongs to Stephen King, not me. I do not claim to be a better writer than sai King. I am not. Nor do I believe that the Dark Tower series has some grievious error, some horrible flaw in its canon that only fanfiction can cure. I am not going to save your favourite characters from the ka they have been given.
Fun is fun and done is done, if sai King says so, let it be so.
So why write fanfiction, then, if done buns can't be undone? The answer is the same as for any other endeavor man undertakes that isn't just about survival.
The answer is that to break is divine.
Rule Discordia! The Tower Falls!
19
REFUSAL
Show me your banner
Come show me your sign
The Crimson King's eye
Is the mark to reveal you are mine
I am your master
I will make your dreams come true
I'm your messiah
A twisted one as you may know
"Touched by the Crimson King"
Wizards & Demons
1st Stanza: Here I Stand At The Door And Knock
ONE
We have seen the tower many times, you and I, in countless visions and prophetic dreams of our beloved ka-tet (which is about to be broken, say sorry), and always, we have seen it in the light of sunset. It is a pretty picture, no man can deny that, but now I would ask you to see it at another time. See it, I beg.
Here is the Dark Tower at midnight.
TWO
Gone is the field of red. Below the perfect starry sky, the roses have closed up for the day, and the dark has siphoned off their color. The Tower merely hints at itself rather than showing its presence to the world. There is the suggestion of the Tower, the shape of the Tower, the promise that a Tower will be there in the morning. There is a hole in the crystal field of stars that whispers of finished quests, a vertical gash that promises the end of the journey.
The ka-tet of 19 is yet on the other end of End-world, in a region known as Thunderclap to those that live in other places but still fancy a scary story or two. For now, the Tower remains unfound, unlit.
And then a red light shines at the very top, and all I have said is put to the lie. For the Tower is not unfound and not unlit. There is a man, trapped at the very top, and he is insane, say true, crazy lik-a de fox is how some would put it. It does not help that he is immortal, it does not help that his powers are – not beyond imagination, certainly, for there is no such thing – but without a doubt beyond the comprehension of ordinary folken such as you and I. See him, and thank ka he does not see you in return.
Seeing him is easy, even in the dark, for there is a terrible red luminescence to his form, one that seems to be only partially connected to his physical body. See his face. It is a shade of healthy pink,
only his eyes are burning red
in fact despite his clearly advanced age, his long white beard and flowing white hair, the man appears to be the very picture of health, brimming with life.
If it seems monstrous that one who has done as terrible things as he should appear to be so healthy, that one who slew himself to go beyond the realm of death should seem such a bastion of vitality…I can only say that monstrous is what the Crimson King is all about.
Yet for all the health he may exhibit, the King is not alright. The King is crazy lik-a de fox.
THREE
The Crimson King threw himself against the door of ghostwood leading to the balcony again, howling with outrage and frustration as he bounced of its smooth surface without even rattling its hinges. Then he stood back and flung curses and spells at it, tears of blood gushing down his flushed pink cheeks in irregular streams as he willed it to open. He knew it could open. Had it not opened for him when he grasped the handle? Ram Abbalah the door had said, and the drawing of the eye upon it had convinced the Crimson King that this was the door leading to the very top of the tower, and that the room atop it was not only empty but actively greeting its new resident, commala come-come.
"FOOLISH DOOR! EEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" he screamed, his mouth opening so wide he seemed to have no lower jawbone. "AM I NOT OF THE ELD? AM I NOT OF ARTHUR ELD'S LINE, MAY HE WANDER IN TODASH FOREVER?" He shielded his eyes theatrically with his long pink fingers, his long red robes fluttering in a missing wind, the symbols writ upon them pulsing with charge. "I WILL HAVE THEE OPEN, DOOR, SO I WILL!"
When the Roi Russe had finally embraced the Red, his power had grown immeasurably. Now he directed that power at the ghostwood portal before him. It sprang from the red glow around him and rushed toward the door like lightning, leaving dark shadows hanging in the air in its wake, gaps in the otherwise crystalline starlight. For it had ever been only the White and the Red, never the Black, which was nothing but carrion and refuse left from the Red's ravaging.
Impossibly, the door withstood the barrage. The Crimson King howled in frustration anew, "EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!", then plunged a hand through the wooden cover of a box of Sneetches (the Slytherin model, of course), the splinters tearing the skin off his hand. He paid it no heed; blood was after all the dye his robes had always been colored with since time out of mind, and his fury had awoken – he could scarcely think as it was.
Turning the Sneetch on with a practiced flick of his bleeding, skinless fingers, he flung it at the door which stood but feet away from him.
There was a piercing flash of light that seemed to pass through matter as if it were nothing but vapor. Shrapnel hit him, then a blast of gas and fire. It flung him at the railings of the balcony, taking off his face and vaporizing half his chest. It eradicated the hand that had thrown the Sneetch and deducted a finger on the other. Above his upper lip, only smoke rose from where there had once been piercing red eyes.
He stood there in the dispersing smoke, ribs poking into the cool night air and the gap that had once been his chest, charred and dry. Thin trails of smoke rose from his mouth. The remains of his right arm fell to the floor with a wet thud.
Then, the destroyed corpse smiled an equally destroyed smile, and began to flow together. The red glow intensified and, bathed in the glow of the Red, the Crimson King regrew his body with ease and clear pleasure.
Within strange eons even death may die, the Abbalah-doon thought, feeling calmer than he had in a long while. Got thee in the end, my dear Alhazred, did I not? Such sweet palaver we held. Thee did scream so sweetly toward the end. Now there is another I mean to hold palaver with-
FOUR
In Thunderclap, the battle of Algul Siento is over. Paul "Pimli" Prentis, its last and final head, lies dying in the corpse-lined street. Dying, aye, but not weak enough to raise his gun and let loose one more shot.
Eddie Dean snaps backwards and falls! Eddie Dean of New York falls and rises nevermore! Can you say John F. Kennedy is dead, the Ka-Tet of 19 and 99 is dead, the world grows darker?
FIVE
Had he not felt so calm from his reconstruction, the Crimson King might have – no, I can not say what he would have done. Say sorry, but some things are hidden even from the eyes of the fanfiction writers of the world. I can cry your pardon, and you may give it or may not, it changes naught a single thing.
I can not know what a thing such as the Crimson King felt when he saw the ka-tet break at the very moment of their triumph. he may have been human once, aye, and indeed he is of the line of Eld, may indeed even be the Eld himself in some way (for I tell you true, I look upon the tapestry in the Dixie Pig and shudder) but many things he once was, he has since renounced.
And surely, you would not send me hunting for his thoughts within his mind. I'll try to snatch what I can when he looks away, so I will, but sai…
…if you've learnt naught else in the reading of King's books, you ought to know the Lord of Casse Roi Russe does not treat his servants well.
Not even when they write his song.
SIX
The Beam of Shardik and Maturin may be safe, yes. The Beam may never be fair, but it may yet heal. All may yet be well. All this the Crimson King knows, but finds himself unconcerned. May, he knows, is a weak word, a very weak word indeed. A thing may be…or it may not. And even as he feels new strength pulse down the path of the beam, toward the blasted lands of Discordia and Thunderclap, he realizes just how convenient the salvation of the Beam is to him.
How can he not laugh? How can the Crimson King not laugh, when even his failure may yet bring about his total victory?
He holds out his hands and End-World bends, and grabs hold with both his arms.
He sends a message to Mordred down the path of the Beam.
Come, Mordred Deschain of the Red! Come to the King, he of Maine, come stand in ka's way! Come commala keystone come!
SEVEN
And Mordred? Not that he had much love for his big red ka-daddy, but he obeyed him just the same. He did it because he had simply had enough of Thunderclap. True, he had little trouble finding prey even in that blasted land so that even when Morderd was a-hungry, Mordered was not a-hungry for very long.
He saw, however, that the word was spent, winding down at an ever increasing pace. And even in his sated hume shape, when the spider was only a whisper of thoughts at the back of the head (…KILL…RAPE…FEED…) he knew that this world could no longer hold much in the way of entertainment. Murder was done and raping was done here, and what was left was carrion. The keystone world, ah…that sounded sweet and ripe for the picking, did it not? His hume daddy would be going there, and would it not be good to keep an eye out for him?
Yes, it would.
Also, he wanted to meet this sai King, the namesake of his red father. In some ways, he might be Mordred's third father, as if he had not enough of those already.
Yes, he would meet sai King, he decided.
Meet him and more.
Blue Heaven was in chaos. The streets were filled with Morks, and no one paid him any heed at all.