In the Hall of the Mountain King

By Asso

Chapter Six

(The sixth after the Prologue - The seventh counting the Prologue)

Author's Notes

Oh well! This time, it is not too much the time that passed since the last chapter has been published. Maybe - thank God - those who were kind enough to read this story, have not forgotten what happened and are still interested to know what's going to happen.

But I warn everyone: plenty of water must pass under the bridges before it reaches the sea.

My hope is that my wonderful Beta - Linda - doesn't get tired of seeing this water flow.

In the Hall of the Mountain King

Chapter Six

It's strange. We are here, in need to be finally aware of what we have to do, and, even in the urgency of the situation, we can't help but greedily listen to what His Excellency is telling us. We, sure; and greedily, because even Mal, with all the impatience he justifiably has, is listening to His Excellency's words with the greatest attention. And I don't think this is only because what the Bannerda tells is the premise for our line of action. Actually, there is in this narration a tragic attractiveness that powerfully grabs our attention.

An evil and invincible entity… defeated by the love of a woman. He is sleeping a sleep of death, but he is waiting. Waiting… for what? No, not for what but for whom. For… a woman? As a woman, for what we can understand, has been the cause of his perdition, so may a woman be the cause of his resurrection?

But this is worst than a feuilleton, no, worst than a pot-boiler. Yeah, sure. But... but that book... that book about which we know yet nothing... it is true, and if it is true, if really it means what its existence per se means... in this case... as His Excellency is saying, and... and as even my pragmatic Mal seems to believe... so... in this case... this entity, this King was... is real, just as real as the woman who lost him.

So, maybe a woman may really reawaken him. Right? Right.

And... oh my!... All began with T'Pol! A woman! A woman! The... the woman the King was waiting for?

I shake off my cerebrations. His Excellency's voice calls me again to the world.

"Our people were strong and our Monarchs powerful. But the King was more. The forces of evil can be crushed, but they always resurrect, feeding themselves off the evil which is in us; and every time they seem defeated, they reappear, stronger than before, because their ranks get swollen by new recruits, attracted by the false light of the blandishments of darkness. And so had happened with The King. Three times he had been driven back into the abyss from which he had been spewed up, and he has always risen, each time stronger, each time more powerful, each time smarter, each time more treacherous. Each time with greater forces. And at last, the endless war seemed to be at its end, after all the time it had been fraught with combat; but it was not a good end for us."

We listen to His Excellency's words in bated silence. Regardless of anything, his narration is fascinating; there is such a force, in it, such a vehemence. It is as if the Bannerda were talking with the strength of his heart.

It's Mal who interrupts him, but without punity. He gives body to my thoughts.

"But there was a woman, right, Your Excellency?"

His Excellency nods. "Yes, there was. A woman of our race, a young and splendid woman, who had fallen prey of the infernal legions of the King, during their pitiless forays. She was fated to be a slave, in a harem of one of his disgusting and hellish henchmen, damned to serve this one in his seraglio, to do with him and for him the only things that the abominable horde of The King thought that women can do, the only things for which the women would be born. Those godless people, both those belonging to the breed of the King and those recruited from other races and fallen in the darkness of evil, didn't wanted weak females nor sick children nor disabled people or those inapt for combat. They had to be fierce and ruthless masters, without the palest shadow of weakness or mercy; only that. So those who were judged not able to be or to do what this hotchpotch of black-hearted beasts has thought it was proper for them, were suppressed; and the females when they were newly born. They used our women and the women of any other race in order to be perpetuated, killing them after they had served the pleasure and the needs of their abject masters."

That's a legend. A legend. A legend. It cannot be true. It cannot. No. Mal, say something, talk! But my Mal doesn't speak. He holds tightly my hand; he knows that I need this. It's... it's hard to bear the Bannerda's story. I know that he is simply telling tales which, distorted by the people's fantasy, narrate facts, events and persons that are merely the pale reflection of the reality that is behind them; but, more or less, this reality exists - the book, and what happened, testify to that – and it is a dark reality. And the way His Excellency is telling it makes it so… so real!

"This would have been the destiny of that woman, of Lil, the daughter of the greatest prince serving under the Ancient Monarch. This she was thinking, trembling, in that dark and large hall, jam-packed with vociferous males, mocking all the females, anxiously waiting their fate, like her, after their husbands, parents, children had been slain by those heartless demons in shape of living beings in the service of the one who to all intents and purposes should have been called the demons' Sire. Alone, with death in her heart, under the greedy eyes of her conquerors, she was waiting, in chains, to see who would have taken possession of her."

His Excellency seems enthralled by his narration itself, as well as us. He seems unable to speak differently, more normally. And we are unable not to be prey of his recounting.

"Just then, the doors of the hall were opened. Surrounded by guards armed at all points, a tall man entered the room. The miserable captive felt her blood freeze in her veins; she had never seen him, but she recognized who he was. In the sudden silence that had descended in the hall, he advanced, grim-faced and puissant, walking scornful between his subjects, without deigning to pay the least attention to anything and anyone. The crowd opened at his passage; he reached the empty throne towering in the middle of the high wall at the bottom of the vast lounge and sat on it, on what belonged to him. While all looks were aimed at him, he raised his eyes, looking disdainfully at the throng of his acolytes and almost absent-mindedly noticing the multitude of young women in abject fear, now holding their breath, aware of being in front of the living source of the nightmare of their lives. His eyes alighted upon the maiden."

I precede His Excellency's conclusion.

"Lil had found her possessor."

As a wind, strong and wild, words that are thoughts run in Trip's mind. They have neither language nor sound and still they speak.

Behind the glacial eyes without sight, T'Pol is again quivering in pain. Any thought, any soundless word rumbling inside her, are stabs into her brain and her body. Her heartless ruthless dominator doesn't loosen his grip on her essence and he knows that her man sees and feels her suffering.

And the bodiless dark mind enjoys this.

Trip feels any stab as a stab inflicted on himself, even more harrowing because they are the signs of T'Pol's pain.

But he must hold on. He can't fall prey to this trap. As much as he feels like dying in seeing and in feeling the atrocious tortures which are shattering T'Pol's body as well as her mind, he must stay stony.

Reason is back in his brain; he has understood. God knows by what kind of miracle, he managed to come here, to provoke the piqued vanity of the nameless and monstrous entity.

Unexpectedly his crazy challenge, born in the insanity of his desperation, has opened a breach, undreamt-of and unthought-of, that mustn't be wasted.

He doesn't know if he has unconsciously looked for this outcome, because it is evident that he can't fight, mentally or physically, against this monstrous being; but the challenges can be of various kind, and the bitchy souls take a malignant pleasure in testing those who they know are without hope against their strength.

Testing, yes. The challenge was accepted and will be a test. An ordeal, maybe more than one. That's an old story, occurring so many times in the past, and that will happen yet again, many times in the future. What a delicious delight seeing the poor and hopeless inferior creatures that dared defy those who have power of life and death struggling vainly in the mortal ordeals that can't have any other ending than the ludicrous and laughable death of the miserable worms that ventured to issue the challenge. Crushing them without enjoying their futile floundering would be too simple; better, much better relishing their hopeless fight, observing from far and without dirtying the hands, the harrowing sufferings they have to endure until the inevitable ending. And then, there is some sort of honourable nobility in this, although plainly double-faced and mealy-mouthed: after all, a chance is offered, and it is not the fault of the genteel sirs if the street that the foolish defiers have taken is fatally one-way.

The obscure and still understandable words that are silently resounding, unsubstantial, through Trip's mind as well as in that of T'Pol are telling just that. Ordeals, difficult and hard; that's what Trip has to endure and to get over to have T'Pol again in his arms. Evidently there has to be something universal in the way of thinking and in the attitudes of those who think to be the masters of everything, regardless of whom or what they are. Evil always repeats itself, it has no fantasy, regardless of who is the villain. Trip knows this; he already met evil, and now his unconscious - almost unthought - plan has achieved its unplanned aim.

What will these ordeals be? How many? Will he be able to face them and, above all, to get over them? And in this case, what might it be, the value of the words of such an abominable and alien and powerful entity?

Questions without answer, that mustn't even be postulated.

There is only one matter which now counts: the narrowest of the interstices has been opened; it is needed to throw himself inside headlong and enlarging it, and running along the road hidden within until its end. And hoping. Only that. Nothing other than that. Nothing more.

Fighting and hoping.

With the blind strength of despair.

Ignore her pain, man. Ignore it.

Don't let her pain cloud your reason!

Pay no attention to her imploring eyes. Not to fall in this trap. This… this Thing wants this, wants to put you to the test; if you cede, you will be destroyed, and T'Pol... and T'Pol...

Hold on! Hang on! Listen to what you have to do!

He clenches his fists, sticks his broken fingernails in his fleshes.

Don't let, don't let, don't let!

His harsh voice resounds loud in the unshaped void.

"I am listening. Tell me."

"Oh... hum... well... very grabbing, Your Excellency. Really. Honestly I am persuaded that the Greek tragedians of our past would be nothing more than simple dabblers in comparison with your passionate and vivid way of telling." - I must speak in this way, before I become totally prey to this damned Bannerda and of his damned way of recounting his more or less true story about what the meaning is of that damned book. But I am stammering also, bloody hell! I hate to be stammering, like a stuttering child! Damn Bannerda! Damn! – "But now, what do you think to tell us just what we need in order to do the job we are here for without reciting to us, line by line and word by word, from most to least your marvellous epic in its whole extent?"

Hoshi watches me as if she were reawakening from a dream. And, if I have to be honest, that's what's happening also to me. And the Bannerda seems to do the same.

He shakes his head. And - can you believe? - he stammers, just like me. "Oh...ah... sure. Sure Lieutenant. So, where... where were we?"

I snort, maliciously. "At the reason why we are here."

The Bannerda nods. He speaks quickly, beckoning at the book lying on the table. "You are here because we must retrieve the lacking pages of the book and interpret what is written on them."

I don't say a word to my Hoshi. The Bannerda goes on, looking intently at Hoshi. "It's true that Lil had found her possessor, Ensign, but not only that. Love is a strange thing. Lil fell in love with The King. The fascination of evil? Who knows, but she became the woman of The King, sure. And the matter is just here, because when I say the woman of The King, I mean the woman not the sex slave. The impossible had happened; in fact, someway, The King wasn't insensitive. He wasn't able to know what love was, but Lil gave to him something he wasn't able not to relish, and that wasn't devoid of effect."

The poignancy of His Excellency's look heightens. "The pressure of his armies got slack, like they were losing the primary source of their strength. Was this because of Lil? May be possible to imagine that the fount of every evil might have been diverted in some way from unrelentingly pursuing his aim - the purpose that had been his obsession through his whole existence and that now he was so close to achieving - for the sweetness of one woman's caresses? The Ancient Monarch, whose eyes and whose ears were able to see and to hear very far, wanted to think it was possible, and decided to play the last card. It was the latest opportunity, and he didn't want to lose it. With the greatest of efforts, the most powerful of armies that had ever been seen has been made ready, collecting the forces coming from every part of space, taking advantage from the unhoped-for slackening of the hammering of the King's legions. Proud spaceships, crested with the armorial bearings of our Empire, sailed off for what was the ultimate mission, a mission from which could come only victory; or the final destruction. They would have brought the fight in the core itself of the King's dominion."

Images of great combat starships, armed with unimaginable weapons and sailing the dark gulfs of the seas of space, start to unfold in my mind; of planets, of lands, antique and unknown, trembling under the blows of appalling and destructive energies. And of big armies, of men, lost in the remoteness and in the darkness of a past immensely distant, on the march to bring death among the flares of dreadful fires. To bring death; and to win. Or to cause the end of everything, if they had lost their ultimate desperate fight. Their shouts, the clash of their bodies against the enemies, the blood, the mortal wounds, the pain, the smell of the sweat of fatigue and of fear... By the Bannerda's words all this comes to us, reliving again from a dead past. Or maybe from a past still well alive.

"The universe caught fire, burst into flame. The superior forces of The King were caught by surprise attack, but the dark spaceships of the Empire of Darkness were too many, and the silver starships of the Ancient Monarch met their destruction for the most part. Nevertheless, some of them managed to escape the powerful reaction of their adversaries and to reach the heart of the Black Realm. And there, under the command itself of their Monarch, the troops of the ultimate hope were landed, and started their last battle. Stunned enemies observed the sky of their homeland becoming inflamed by the fire of the bombings; and the foes they had believed by now bent, marching neatly and threateningly against them, against the city itself that was the emblem of their strength, the Capital of the Black Realm. The dwelling of The King. And of Lil."

"Three ordeals?"

The threatening rumble that speaks in the brain resounds powerfully even in its silent way. It fills the mind and is perfectly understandable.

The man frowns. His voice gets husky again from his throat, repeating his previous words, like he were attempting to be well sure to have understood, because the stakes are too important. No mistake is allowed.

"Three ordeals."

He listens to the speechless response, clearly sensing a malevolent pleasure meandering through it.

Unbelievably, a sneer crops onto his lips, a bitterly sarcastic snigger. The habit of a whole life can't be thrown to the winds in a flash, in spite of how dangerous and foolish this may be, in spite of how sharp edged may be the razor blade on which he is dangerously trying to stay in balance without getting cut; even in spite of this frightening world of unreal insubstantiality into which reality appears to have been transformed. And then, that's what's needed, so as not to completely lose reason, to maintain some sort of feeble link with that reality that looks so far, distant, lost. But there still must be reality, somewhere. There must still be this reality, this true reality, one where he and his T'Pol may be able to live happily together, as it seemed that finally it were possible, in the end; the reality where there are no ensouled forests, nor malicious mountains which within conceal unnatural frost and dark burrows; nor places-not-places made up of nothing; nor silent voices threateningly resounding in the brain, and demanding that you have to face terrible ordeals to free the woman of your life; nor any obscure and demoniac and unreal entity enjoying sucking souls, to kill your soul, by torturing the soul of your soul.

And so, almost by their own will, words full of pungent taunt, almost derisive, become free to spread through the dead air. "Three ordeals, uh? Well, you know; I was persuaded that only the devil could love this kind of babyish challenge, if this name may mean something for you."

The words get lost in the air; then the mind gets filled again with a silent hubbub; but there are no soundless words, this time. There is… there is a laugh. Unmistakably, a laugh. Wicked and smug. Deep and long. Pleased. Allusive. And malignant. Malignant... So malignant!

That's... That's impossible!

This sudden thought spins whirlingly in the stunned mind of the man, chases itself, as if unable to find coherence.

Impossible, impossible, impossible...

A lash of unbearable pain contorts his being, stopping abruptly the twisted convoy of garbled thoughts. T'Pol's pain! T'POL'S PAIN!

T'Pol! T'POL!

Trip's mind rushes to her, after the moment of blindness it has been engulfed into by the incredibility of the idea aroused by that disembodied laugh.

The laugh! The laugh! THAT DAMNED LAUGH! It is still there; it keeps on, and reverberates through the whole being of T'Pol, scourging her with whiplashes ripping out the skin of body and soul.

His eyes watch with horror the jolts that her body makes, hanging from her painful chains, under the billows of the mental hurtful lashings that seem submerging her.

His arms snap upward. "Stop! Stop! STOP! I won't speak ever again! I will do everything you want! I swear! Stop, please! Stop!"

The vociferous and still silent laugh ceases, bit by bit, and silence reigns again, within and outside the brain.

There are only the sobs of the woman who collapses once again on herself, stretched between the chains that imprison her wrists and her ankles, now tried to such an extent that she is barely capable of breathing, that she is not able anymore to understand if she is alive or dead.

Gnashing his teeth, the man lowers his arms, caressing his love with eyes filled with weeping despair. The only thing he can do, to alleviate, if that's possible, the pain of her torture; to make her feel his closeness; to help her.

The only thing, besides...

He inflates her lungs, gathering all the residual strength that remains to him. He shouts loud, with the force of desperation. "There is no need to torture her again. You accepted my challenge and I accept your conditions. If I go under, I will die by any death you will want to give me, and my woman – my T'Pol - will be yours, body and soul."

Trip's voice becomes stronger. "But, if I pass the ordeals, whichever they are, my woman will be free, and will be allowed to come back to our world."

Even stronger. "Irrespective of the destiny that you will decide to reserve to me."

A feeble puff blows in his mind; feeble, because T'Pol has no longer any strength, but it resounds strong, though, in Trip's soul. And clear: clear and filled with all the weak protest her Katra may have.

He straightens, as much as he can, and he repeats more loudly what he has just said, so as to make it vanish every possible doubt in the averse mind.

And in T'Pol's mind. To make her aware that this is the bargain, and no other road is allowed. And to caress her with the mellow breeze of his indefectible love.

"If I win, my destiny will be in your hands, but in any case my woman will be free, and it will be guaranteed that she come back unharmed and intact to our reality, in the care of the friends who love her."

Even… even… Even the devil must have honour!

Then, ignoring the doleful look of despairing refusal that shines in the eyes of his T'Pol even through the tears of total exhaustion are misting, the man raises proudly his chin and throws his last defiance.

"I am ready. Shoot your first request."

The two soulless eyes that replenish the sight seem to sparkle with a savage amusement. Some sort of underground thrill seems to reverberate in the brain. There is a meaning... it can be understood... it is a devilish fleer that speaks... that says... gibingly… "Devil's honour!"

A fierce and powerful wind begins to blow; it assails both Trip and T'Pol, who starts to oscillate between the tethers that enchain her. The wind brings something with itself, together with some pieces of shadows of unexpressed words. "… Devil's… honour..".

Nothing can be clearly understood, but the something the wind brings with itself... Yes! It can be understood!

A new strength starts to run through Trip's body; thirst and fatigue, weakness and exhaustion, evaporate like dew in the sun; under the incredulous eyes of the speechless man, his wounds start to shrink, more and more quickly, until they disappear totally; no blood, no dry throat, no remnant of what he had had to endure.

His astonished eyes leave his own body and go to his love. She is still hanging by her chains, nude and helpless, but now she no longer looks like as an enervated doll, gray and ill, trying to keep her life with a wisp of breath. She appears valid and strong, and her hands seem as endeavouring to fight against the chains that imprison her. She is beautiful and marvellous, as marvellous as her eyes, shining with strength and wonder; the wonder coming both from her own unexpected retrieved vigour and from the retrieved wholesome and strong appearance she sees now in her man, who is watching her with the same wonder in his eyes.

The wind fades away, it vanishes. As the alien eyes. They too disappear. It remains only Trip and T'Pol. They look at each other, trying to understand. The man to the feet of his enchained love; the woman looking down at her man from her invisible cross of duress.

And the explanation resounds in their minds.

They are fragments of concepts, once again words without sound, that ring in the depth of the mind, intertwined with a kernel of evident perfidious pleasure.

"Honour... Devil?... Interesting... Inferiors... Let do... Pleasurable... Vain fight... Enjoyable... Delicious... Crush them... Illusion..."

A dumb rage mounts inside the man. Come what may, it's time to put an end to this play.

He turns all around, lifting his arms aloft and looking upward. He yells to the void. Stupidly, idiotically, foolishly. But, after all, what can there be if not stupid, not idiotic, not foolish in a stupid, idiotic, foolish, absurd situation like that one? What can be done if not acting in the most foolishly bold way against the blind power of the obtuse evilness?

"I am not a funny toy! And I am not unwarlike! Did you enjoy enough! Now it's my turn! THE FIRST TRIAL!"

The void trembles. There is like a perception of restrained beastly wrath. Then all ceases. One moment of bated expectation.

Then a scream, that gets lost rapidly in the farness.

"TRIIIIIIIIIIIP!"

The man turns around in a flash towards his T'Pol. She is no longer there where she was before. He follows the echo of her shriek. He sees her. On high. A small figure that draws away swiftly, until it becomes a point that vanishes into an horizon that there is not.

Petrified in dismay, he stays motionless, unable to think, to understand, his wide open eyes locked on the far inexistent horizon where his reason of life is faded away.

Then, powerful and deafening, the by now well-known soundless sound explodes in his mind, with a strength almost unendurable, that forces him to bend on his knees.

There are words, now, clear and loud. Absolutely comprehensible.

"FOLLOW HER. FIND HER. REACH HER. FREE HER."

The dazed man stands up with effort, and stares at the imaginary point where his hapless woman has disappeared. He inhales sharply, and he makes as if he were to snap forwards, but the silent sound in his brain blocks him abruptly.

Words. Again. Ominously sibilant.

"DEVIL'S HONOUR."

He frowns, trying to understand; then, suddenly... his tattered uniform disappears. He finds himself… stark-naked. Except for something he feels on his head.

He brings his right hand at his head and grabs this something. He gazes it. Fixedly. He turns it over, before his eyes, trying to figure out, to be uncaring of his nakedness.

A hat; a broad-brimmed hat.

And just then, in his brain, again, the same words. Plainly amused.

"DEVIL'S HONOUR."

And in his left hand appears a military flask, heavy, clearly full.

What does this all mean? What?

One more time. The loud buzz in the brain. The same words. The same scary sense of malign amusement.

"DEVIL'S HONOUR."

And, right after… Heat, strong, on the skin. The eyes snap to look upward. They can't. On high an incandescent disc appeared, that cannot be watched. An enormous sun that enlightens everything with a merciless light, irradiating a scorching warmth. And just then, just while he is starting to understand, a new soundless noise replenishes his mind. It is again a laugh; it begins slow and low, then increases until it becomes an irrepressible guffaw, bad and malevolent, so sonorous that it hurts. It decreases bit by bit and two words can be plainly sensed at its end.

"DEVIL'S HONOUR."

Then silence again, tense and bated, until, at last, the environment changes.

Aloft, a sky white by heat, with the red-hot sun burning in the middle.

All around, the brown and the gold of dunes swept from a warm wind, that get lost in the distance, endless, in the vision oppressed by the blinding light that is reflected on the infinite expanse of sand.

The man looks straight forward.

Naked; the hat in his right hand; the military flask in his left.

Devil's honour. Yeah. Sure.

The honour. The honour of the devil!

He observes the sandy sea which extends in front of him, behind him, in every direction; which burns beneath his bare feet. He watches the air trembling by the intense heat.

Deserts.

He hates the deserts.

I am unable to shirk the fascination of His Excellency's narration. The scene of the tragedy is ready, now. It is perfectly staged. I can feel its tart taste on my tongue.

I stay absolutely silent, hanging on the lips of His Excellency, waiting for him to keep on telling.

And Mal - even with all the British self-control he has, even with all the fierce impatience that he is feeling, like me. On the other hand - he too doesn't say a word, clearly displaying the way with which he is stuck into the storytelling of the Bannerda, like me; waiting, like me, for knowing the destiny of The King. And of Lil. And - I can't help but unconsciously shudder under the sharp blade of a fear that goes beyond the mere impression the narration exerts over me - of all those who were marked by their destiny.

Like us. Like Trip and T'Pol.

As a deep and unfathomable breath that blows through and over all things; that is the reason for all that there is in this place, only because he exists, The King; as a breath of renewed and incognizable life; as a breath that takes from an immemorial past the vigour for a new future… the nearly born again Sire watches attentively the game played on the chessboard of its will.

He sees, looks, observes.

The King is back. He is really back.

The knowledge is back, now; not only the awareness.

Now he knows who he is. The power he had; and he has. And he might have.

Where he is. Why he is here. And the way.

And what he has to do.

Now he is capable of comprehending what that man means for him, not only by means of the rebirth of an unreasonable conscience, made of blind rage, of beastly lust for blood and revenge, of longing for a lifeless life obtained through life of sacrificial victims offered to him to keep him in that larva of existence where his mortal enemies had been able to imprison him.

The King is back. And back is his cold capability to reason with the icy blade of his keen intelligence.

The woman...

Useful, sure. And it's delicious being able to feel again the delightful pleasure of exerting the power of life and death over such a beautiful creature; to experience again the enjoyment of wielding his immense power to torture, to crush between the force of his mind the powerless soul and the defenceless body of the lower creatures.

Yes, that splendid woman was what he needed. Because she is who she is and because she brought to him, to the King, the man who would give him again the breathe of true life.

Oh yes, the King is back; with all the cognizance he had and has; and, especially, with the cognizance of what he - himself! - was able to plan to one day regain his essence. His whole being.

That woman... perfect! Just the woman that it would have to be in order to awaken his memory and his cognition. He had known that such a woman would have been, one day. It was a statistical matter, it would have been enough being capable to wait, keeping himself alive with the vital substance of those women who would have come first; and, in addition, taking revenge in this way, even in his unconscious life-non-life, on those who had reduced him so, of the race and of the women themselves - The women! The women, sure! - belonging to that race. The women who had deprived him of his Lil.

Lil...

Lil.

Would it be possible that that woman, that T'Pol, that... Vulcan? Vulcan, yes. - Such a young race, born evidently very long after his... falling asleep. - Would it be possible that she may really be his Lil, back to life in the body of another woman?

Strange thought, this one; strange. Or, maybe not that strange. After all, if in the end he became what he became before his foes - the so called Great Monarch - were able to entrap him, this was just because he lost his Lil, the unthought-of... the indispensable... spark of her love; the warmth that he had never known. To deny this would be deceive himself, falling prey to the same errors of the inferior creatures, whose incapability of comprehending the reality and whose obstinacy in wallowing in the self-trickery, were and are the cause of their inferiority and of their obvious fate to be dominated by him, the King, the only bearer of truth.

So, nothing strange this desire to see - to find - in this woman his Lil, came back to the land of the living. As him.

But Lil was not him, the King. She... she cannot come back from where she has gone.

There... there has been neither time nor way to arrange for such possibility.

A breath of annoying irritation runs through the essence of the one who was able to acquire the most immense power that may exist. He chases away this fastidious thought. Lil has given to him the miracle of her love, but he cannot allow himself to be contaminated by her dangerous diversity. And then... she accepted - she wanted him - for what he was. For what he is! The King! The pitiless - The soulless! - Lord of evil! Or rather, of what the inferior creatures name: "evil", thinking it's evil the natural destiny of total domination of the one who was born to possess everything and everyone, whose indisputable superiority gives him the right to do all; all he wants, without caring about anyone.

This desire from his part, this irrational wish that the female could be his reborn Lil... it is understandable, but it doesn't matter. What matters is that this woman - this Vulcan female - was able to give him, The King, what he needed; by means of her marvellous appearance, so similar, both outwardly and inwardly, to the one of Lil that it has been able to pull him out from his limbo of nothing; and by means of the man she has tied to her. A man of another race, a race even younger than hers.

As time has gone!

But even that doesn't matter, not even a bit.

He is The King. He has all the time of universe.

And he had known that, sooner or later, his time would arrive; that this woman would arrive, and even the man able to make him again... the King. The reliving King.

Even that was a statistical matter. He had been aware even of that. Sooner or later, even this would happen. The probability was infinitesimal, but there it was. It was a mere matter of waiting, a matter of time. But he - The King - had and has… and will have… all time of universe. Even time belongs to him.

And the facts proved him right. What he wanted and awaited for, here it is. Here is the woman he awaited for, and here is the man whose mind will be annihilated by the puissance of his will, imprisoned into his own mind, and whose body will become the new powerful casing of his immortal essence; the man who will put him in a position to take his full revenge and to realize - finally - his destiny.

An infinitesimal chance? Of course, but it has existed, and he had planned all.

When such a woman would appeared, he would know. What – and those - he had left behind him, would know. And would have made sure that the woman was brought to him.

She should have the force to push him to come out from his condition. This wouldn't be enough to restore his true life, but would give him the chance to search for a body and a mind able to give him this chance.

But evidently, his plans had worked even better, because the woman able to be the one he awaited for, was also the woman able to bring to him the man whose body and mind were those he should search for in the short time he would have before he should cede again to his bestial necessity, loosing himself one more time.

This one was not even an infinitesimal probability; he hadn't even thought it might occur. And, though, even this has happened, and what counts at present is to accept it without futile cerebrations, taking advantage of it, with expedient pragmatism.

And what - and those - he had left behind him, had realized that this unexpected circumstance had come true.

And have acted.

"What happened to the King? And to Lil?"

Malcolm gives life to my questions. And his voice... it resounds leaden, and strangely calm, as if he were totally forgetful of his previous impatience, because..

"Because, it's evident, Your Excellency, that if, as it seems, we have to believe in the King's existence, the destiny that they met - he and his Lil - are the key to understand the destiny of ourselves. Of T'Pol. And, consequently, of Trip."

I snap my eyes at Mal. It is as if he were speaking with my inner thoughts, as if he were saying my exact unspoken words. He has even completed the phrase I was pensively saying to myself.

Maybe... maybe there is not only the Vulcan Bond, the one that ties the two Commanders. The Bond... - It was Trip who told me this - ... it is the alien and strange way with which Vulcans reveal their being in love. But it is still love; and I am in love with Mal. And he with me. Maybe the Bond is something that occurs between lovers; special, for the Vulcans; but, in some way, universal. Maybe it is nothing more than the strength of love, expressing itself with the language and the ways proper to each breed.

His Excellency draws me out from my wonder. He talks. He talks with a dead voice.

"In that day of ferocious hate, our breed - the one that should have been the beacon of good - lost its honour. Evil had defiled us. In the space of only one night, we slew - atrociously - every member of that abhorred race and its sordid allies, those who had had the misfortune to be there, in that night of darkness. Their blood replenished the furrows of the land, in an orgy of massacre."

I cannot restrain myself. "And the King, your Excellency? The King? And... - my voice trembles - ... and Lil?"

The old Bannerda watches us with a weird look. "As far as it may sound unbelievable, the King wasn't present at the final battle. The Great Captain of the Imperial Escort of the Great Monarch swore that he had been seen, for some instants, and that his mere presence had been capable of throwing into chaos our troops, but suddenly he was not there any more. He had disappeared. And his soldiers had been plummeted into panic by that."

The Bannerda lowers his tone. "While the tragedy was happening, the Great Monarch decided to face the demon. His life or the one of the Black Sire. His own death, or his."

His Excellency makes a short pause. Then resumes, gravely. "He gathered his most trusted and powerful warriors and marched to the King's palace. They didn't meet any resistance. They broke down the doors and entered the lair of the devil."

The Bannerda lowers his voice even more. "And silence and emptiness welcomed them; and slowed their steps."

I can see it. The night, the flames, the blasts, the yells. And the silence of the empty palace, where the Great Monarch and his warriors could hear on the cold floor their muffled footfalls, suddenly restrained in their impetuous run by the unexpected and tense sensation of the lack of people and noises that they met in the residence of their unnameable adversary.

They had necessarily slowed down their precipitous run, were forced to do it by the unnatural atmosphere they found there, by the hushed void that had received them.

They had to break their rushing out of breath toward the revelation of the destiny of the King.

And of Lil.

A sort of evil smile seems to run across the non existent being of the one who exists yet again.

Yes. They have acted. They obeyed his ancient orders. His devices, connected with his own vital essence, had noticed the fated woman's existence and had launched the signal, as his still operating will had ordered. And his concealed henchmen, his worshipers, had found her and had brought her to him.

The wicked smile made with the nothing deepens. It is beautiful to be fully aware of reality, instead than having the fogged vision of a lifeless life. Yes, it is beautiful and invigorating perceiving and examining the mess of data that his devices poured out in him; and knowing – exactly - the way things have happened; and how the living creatures of this time are the same as in the past; ready to fall prey to the envy and of evil; of him! Just like in the past. Like that male, that Vulcan male, who helped his fellows with the Vulcan woman who reawakened him. With her, and with her Human man. The Vulcan male who indicated to his followers the woman that they had to find and who suggested to them the right idea to bring her to him; and that is to suggest his hated enemies to ask those humans for finding out what was the signal, so that the woman and her man were brought to him. By their own free will. Thrusting themselves into the lair of the wolf.

The malignant delight that is crossing him again, the perfidious pleasure to be able again to play with the lives of those who are under his heel, it grows a little more yet.

It is priceless being able to feel again such a delicious pleasure.

The evil unsubstantial smile broadens.

Now he has full perception and knowledge of all that happened, of every thought and deed and purpose and intention that were spread on the path that the female had to walk along to come to him; and if she has fallen in his hands, this was due to the envy and to the resentment of that Vulcan male. Koss. That's his name.

These Vulcans... bizarre people. What he found in the brain of the Vulcan female has revealed to him that this breed tries to suppress emotions and feelings so as to attempt to live…to live justly, as they would say. Poor worms, poor little insects. Like all the inferior creatures, even this breed seeks what it cannot have, and falls in the eternal trap of the self-deception.

Trying to separate the reason from emotions. In the name of what they call logic. Once again another - the umpteenth - self-deception of these poor, inferior living beings, always incapable of understanding their inner essence, unable to draw from it the balance they need to rise above their weaknesses. Unable to realize their inferiority.

They deserve the existence of him, of the King!

His ancestral foes, the Bannerdas, were the only ones who deign to be his rivals; they were made with his same matter, they were the other horn of the primeval flame that had generated both him, with his progeny, and the Bannerdas, with theirs. But all the other species, the ones born from their seed… stupid and foolish little creatures, unworthy to be considered. And the species born lately, after his apparent and momentary defeat… weaker and more stupid than the previous, it seems. Most likely because they have received the same silly characteristics of the Bannerdas, being all of them the unaware sons of them. But, fortunately, though much diluted, the seed of him and his breed appears to be still well operative even now, judging from what he was able to see in the brains of the Vulcan female and of the Human man. It was too powerful to be lost, even in the abyss of time passed since the extermination of his race.

The wrath stirs deep down in the infernal essence.

The extermination of his breed, by the hand of those who affirmed to be better than him, the face of light of the universe.

A really luminous breed, sure!

But they had the force to counter him. At that time, though. Certainly not now. Certainly not now that they have lost their true essence, and have forgotten all the science and the knowledge they had.

Yes, his time has really arrived. Once he has conquered his new body, nothing and nobody will be able to oppose him. Neither the shadow of those who were the true Bannerdas nor these abysmally inferior species that live now. Like these Humans, under the thumb of their emotions, or - even worse - like these Vulcans, so stupid that they try to deny the engine itself of any thought and any action, the emotions and the feelings. So stupid that they are incapable of understanding that, just at the moment that you think or act, you do it under the pushing of an emotion, of a feeling, regardless of how much you are able to control your brain.

This is the best way to fall prey of the most sordid impulses at the first occasion. As it was with this Koss. When a man is a caitiff, who tries to reach his abject aim by hiding his ignoble conduct under the mantle of a false magnanimity, this man will be always the same. Always. And there will be no more or less stupid logic able to conceal his true essence, the time someone will make him see a possibility of having what he hasn't been able to have or - without anyone being able to have an inkling of the reprisal he is perpetrating - of making some kind of retaliation against those whom he didn't want to or was able to openly thwart. Such kind of creatures are easy prey of the deception, because they are in the habit of deceiving themselves, even unconsciously; and these Vulcans seem to be very capable of deceiving themselves. More or less unconsciously.

This species - these Vulcans - will be a very useful species of slaves. Their logic - this weird myth of them, only useful to make them more vulnerable to the savage strength of their true being, when their shields get broken - makes them perfect to be perfect slaves. They are unable to rebel against a master they recognize stronger than them: logic would prevent them from doing what logic suggests being illogical and fruitless. It was a great luck for them to meet the Humans. Their blind mentality can be well offset by the powerfully emotional behaviour of Humans, as, on the other hand, the volatile emotional behaviour of Humans can be very well offset by the rigour of Vulcans. But it is too late. It seems that this female - this T'Pol - is the first Vulcan woman who tied herself to a Human; there are no other couples. And now - from now on - the only couples that there will be, it will be those that he - the King - will allow them to be. But he won't allow a force coming from the union between these two races to come true, a force that might be a possible resistance against his power in this new universe made of wretched breeds, as it seems to suggest the strength that, coming from love of the Vulcan female, there is in this Human man, who has challenged him. From now on, nothing will be allowed. Nevermore. Nothing that won't be wanted by him. The King.

From now on, there will be only him. The King.

From now on, the Vulcans won't have any more need to deceive themselves, with the foolish mirage of their futile logic. There will be other deceptions, able to fully enslave them, and Humans with them; and all the other races that are living now.

The evil smile becomes a grim and self-satisfied subtle laugh.

Other deceptions, sure. Like he is about to demonstrate to this defiant creature, to this Human man, who thought that he, the King, may in regard to the honour the same behaviour of the inferiors beings.

After all, is not… the Devil… the Lord of deceptions?

TBC

The… DEVIL? - And of chapter six