- Location
- Germany
Does that matter to Ancients?
These people seemingly have no emotional component or connection to their magic.
The human rules most likely do not apply here.
Endless Pantheon: God's Blood [Stargate/Dresden Files]
- Thread starter Todeswind
- Start date
These people seemingly have no emotional component or connection to their magic.
The human rules most likely do not apply here.
- Location
- Seattle, Washington, USA
Um, what's your point? We're not talking about ancients using it.
- Location
- Germany
We are talking about its creator.
If he were human making something that clearly into Warlock-territory would have been bad for his mental health and propably made him evil.
But he wasn't.
Neruz
Rogue Spiderbanana
- Location
- The Land of Fire and Poison
The Alterans also never saw any reason to separate magic and technology, so it's unlikely that the Ark even works the same way as 'normal' magic. While I'm sure the Council would go 'mind control = warlock, bad!' if they found out about it, that doesn't really mean anything at this point in the story. It's not like the Council can really do anything to Ha'ri after all, so being concerned about applying their extremely restrictive and rigid rules to circumstances beyond their comprehension doesn't really serve any purpose.
And given that Ha'ri is technically an Ascended Goa'uld that remembers being Human, I sincerely doubt that the standard 'human' rules of magic apply to him anymore regardless. If any rules of magic apply to Ha'ri, it would be the Goa'uld ones.
And given that Ha'ri is technically an Ascended Goa'uld that remembers being Human, I sincerely doubt that the standard 'human' rules of magic apply to him anymore regardless. If any rules of magic apply to Ha'ri, it would be the Goa'uld ones.
Judging by Anubis, a half ascended is more or less intangible, not able to physically interact with the real world. Koshcei is quite able to interact with the real world. Furthermore, I'm pretty sure if he was half-ascended, the fully Ascended Ancients would be riding him closer and not letting him Rampage around Earth for millennia.
We only have bits of the story even in canon so we can't completely say that Koschei is not partially-ascended only under different restrictions than Anubis. I would actually say that Koschei with City-Ship could do alot more damage to Earth so I imagine there are restrictions. In this fic we also get details that not all Goa'uld were punished the same.
I remember it being stated that Anubis was not just pushed to a imbetween state he was also prevented from using his abilities which I believe should have been comparable to atleast near-ascension entities yet he was forced to rely on conventional Goa'uld tactics bolstered by Ancient and Asgard knowledge. There is no telling what Anubis could have done with access to full near-ascension abilities, I imagine he could have either projected one like full ascended when playing at being mortal or simple healed a vessel from the damaged imposed by possession.
It's the rabbit of Caerbannog and it's not played for humour. Congratulations.
THe Seven Laws were made with human casters in mind.
Other races (e.g. fae, the ancients) are not necessarily affected by the Seven Laws. Fae CANNOT LIE without corruption but killing with magic isn't a problem for them.
The Blackstaff is able to massively reduce/eliminate the price of using black magic.
Ancient artifacts may often bypass or mitigate it as well, but not always-ancient resurrection technology left lying around is often NOT calibrated for humans so it drives humans insane really REALLY quickly, for instance, while the stuff used by the goauld BASED on that stuff takes multiple uses for the side effects to become apparent.
Also this.
- Location
- Greece
@todeswind you didn't post the new chapter here
Chapter 40
Todeswind
Begrudgingly thread marking.
- Location
- Ry'leth
There was a loud screeching noise like a kettle that had been left on the fire followed by three massive bangs of what might have been thunder as Ammit took the needle into her hand. The thin, iron strand turned a feverish glowing white as the banging noises continued, louder and louder. Bang - screech, bang - screech, the sounds of rending metal and howling grew louder and louder as the needle shone bright enough that it was painful to look at.
"Nobody shoot." I snarled as I connected the sounds with the only thing they really could be connected to. "We have the needle. We're in charge. He's going to try to trick us. To fool us into playing his game. Do not indulge him."
My voice had once again began to modulate, reverberating in the tones of the Goa'uld in three languages in… uh - I guess that's not stereo is it? Tri-eo? Damn it - words aren't really designed to express this sort of thing because it isn't the sort of thing normal people do. I spoke in three languages, expressing my intent fluently in each. Apparently my mantle was tired of repeating itself.
Kincaid nodded, shouldering his weapon and lifting it in preparation for violence but keeping his finger off the trigger. I suppose that's what passed for diplomatic in the mercenary's mind.
The Russians all followed suit, with the exception of Marchenko. Marchenko let his weapon hang loose on it's shoulder strap and pulled out a small box of cigarettes. He patted the box on the palm of his hand, jiggling out one of the tightly wrapped bundles of tobacco leaves and letting it loosely hang from his lips as he patted for a lighter.
"Marchenko - ready your weapon!" Hissed the Colonel as the rending sounds of metal became deafening and the screeching hiss started to form into words. The howling fury of Koschei was horrific as he screamed in incoherent rage.
"Colonel - with respect - we are in a magical city on the moon fighting spacecraft currently losing a battle to wooden ships floating on shadow." Marchenko pulled his lighter out from his pocket and fiddled with it, trying to get a spark going on the well-worn device. He puffed at the cigarette as it lit, pumping air through the tobacco to ensure it burned properly. Taking a long drag from the cigarette he closed the lighter with a loud click and held out the box of cigarettes to his compatriots. "We are standing behind two creatures that call themselves gods who've given us ample cause to believe their claims while a demon from the nightmares of children comes to kill us. I'm not going to do anything until I've had a cigarette."
The Colonel's eye twitched as his natural urge to discipline the Lieutenant for insubordination warred with the obvious absurdity of his situation. In the end absurdity won and he pulled a cigarette from the pack and took the lighter from the Lieutenant's hands.
I would have found it funny if I weren't so damn scared.
Mother Winter's bouncing baby boy ripped through the ceiling of the room we were in, the green-black light of his mordite blade tearing through the bulkhead with contemptuous ease. He'd gotten dressed since I last saw him - which was at least a small mercy - wrapping himself in the fine silks and garments that one might have expected out of a medieval lord. They billowed out around him, only managing to make him look more emaciated and decrepit as they billowed around his corpse like contenance.
His eyes were insane and there was white froth billowing out from his lips as he soared through the air, body elongating as it twisted through the skies. He spun, serpentine, landing in a haphazard mess of monster on spindly legs as his ancient jowls quivered with hatred. I could hear his arthritic knuckles popping as he white-knuckle clutched at the blade.
"You dare to come to my home?" He screeched in that petulant, grating, raspy excuse for a voice that echoed with an ancient infantile hatred. He glared at Ammit, monofocused on the needle between her fingers as he growled. "You who fled screaming into the night? You who cheat and lie?"
"Ok kidnappy McGee - how about you not throw stones into other people's houses while your kettle is still pretty darn black." I replied to him, and realized that there was now a fourth language in the rotation. It wasn't latin - I'd learned enough latin before the gift of gab to know what wasn't latin, even if I didn't recognize what it was. "So how about you stop posturing or Ammit breaks your soul."
You'd have thought I kicked him in the nuts from the expression on the man's face as I spoke in that language. His head whipped over to me in a flurry of jowls and liver spots, examining me with beady eyes. He sniffed the air twice and smiled. "Ah - AH - HAH! The other cheat… yes, yes - it finally makes sense. I finally understand. I should have guessed. Yes… yes I'm sure."
"Yeah - I'll be honest there skippy. I don't give a shit if you understand except if you understand to give us back the kids or we kill your ass." I flipped him off. It was childish and not my best insult, but I really just hated this creep too much to waste good material on him. "Where are the women you took."
"Oh, Heka." The man chortled. "Are you feeling left out?"
I blinked. "You think I'm Heka?"
"I know you're Heka." Koschei tapped his head with a skeletally long finger. "I should have realized it at first. Given your company and your capturer - yes… it has been so long that I hardly recognized you, apprentice. You have grown in power, child, but you overstep your position. I was using magic before your people wriggled out from the muck and mire - you are a pretender while I am a master."
If that wasn't a straight line, I didn't know what was. "Only a master of evil, Darth. Now, I'm not going to ask again. Show me where they are!"
Koschei's shark like grin was going to haunt my nightmares. The geriatric knelt down and reached into his own shadow, pulling upward to summon a current of billowing darkness like the currents that had borne the galleys outside. It congealed to something like a mirror before he reached into it, yanking out a woman's form. The shadows ripped away from her, discarding her on the ground - naked.
Warden Nanami collapsed to the ground as she was expelled from the shadow, legs crumpling beneath her. She crumpled to the ground, hugging her legs to her chest and shivering. There was a terrible emptiness to her. A woman who'd been so full of life and strength when last I'd seen her, the pitiful person now before me could only be passingly mistaken for the Brute Squad Wizard she'd been.
"Tell them, little pet." Koschei grabbed her by the hair, lifting her to dangle from his grip as he sing song crooned into the woman's ear. She made no effort to resist him, or even move, as he dangled from his hand. Her arms and legs waving the air gave her the appearance of a of a grotesque marionette, expressionless and mute. "Tell them about the others. Let them know about the toys I haven't played with yet."
He shook her before dropping her back to the ground, making no effort to cusion her fall as he let go of the woman's limp body. He shrugged. "Sorry - I can't seem to find someone who knows where they are. More's the pity."
Ammit bent the needle - not enough to break it, but enough to make the light emanating from it flicker. Koschei fell to the ground as she did so, kneeling in apparent pain. He dropped the mordite blade, and felt to the ground next to his victim. The goddess' voice quavered with fury as she said. "Muminah, come here."
"Milady?" Replied the priestess as she walked over to the goddess.
"Muminah, please take this from me. If he fights back or resists in any way - break it." Ammit handed the needle to the priestess. "If we have to kill him - when we kill him. I want it to be a mortal woman who killed him. I want him to know it was a mortal woman who killed him."
Brilliant viridian light shone from her eyes as she grabbed the geriatric by the front of his robes, lifted him, and drove her talons into the man's belly. Black blood bubbled up from the man's lips as he swore impotently, howling as the goddess stabbed him four times in succession. He hissed through blood soaked lips. "Hateful bitch!"
"Don't I know it." Ammit replied, twisting her claws. "There's two ways we can play this, Koschei. You can give us the women and I'll let the Warden stick you in the coldest, darkest, most terrible, forgotten scrap of nothing - I will let him maroon you for eternity in the shadow of a black hole to regret what you've done."
"Oh - how tempting." Koschei giggled madly. "And if I refuse?"
"Then we break your needle. Here and now." I replied. "That was a neat tick you used to stash Warden Nanami. Hell, I don't know if I'd be able to pull it off to go the other way but I'm willing to bet that your "sister" will be obliged to show me once I let her know that I offed the man who killed her. The Winter Queen isn't the sort who forgets that kind of insult. Killing you will slow down our recovery, but not stop it."
"You presume much." Koschi grinned insanely through his parched lips, speaking in sing-song Russian. "She doesn't know how to navigate the shadows. Even the Grimalkin only dares to wander its surface."
"No." Replied Kincaid, speaking in a voice of dangerous calm. "But Drakul does."
Kincaid's former employer was the sort of thing that one didn't bring up in conversation idly. Because he was the sort of thing that would probably hear it when you even mentioned him. It would require something horrific to get anything from the ancient monster who birthed Dracula, but for Ivy Kincaid would pay.
Koschei's eyes bulged in fury as he spat directly into Ammit's face. "They are mine!"
"Muminah." I didn't need to say anything else. We'd all pretty much had it with Koschei.
My high priestess snapped the iron needle between her fingers, dousing the light within it as Ammit released her bloody prisoner. Shadows billowed out from the man's open wounds as he staggered away from Ammit, screaming and laughing with equal madness. Power as I'd seldom felt before pulsed through the arboretum as the man staggered drunkenly over to the ancient oak. Power lashed out from him wildly, arcs of billowing shadow slicing through the ground around him with horrific potency.
I grabbed Muminah and pulled her back towards the water's edge, grounding ourselves over it as I watched Koschei's mad dance of death. His skin bulged and twisted as he reached the oak, pressing his forehead against the surface of it as his horrific cackling shook the bows of the ancient plant. And then the pit of my stomach fell somewhere south of Hades as I realized that Koschei wasn't dying.
In point of fact, he was doing exactly the opposite.
His joker-screech peel of mad laughter went from a rasping memory of what laughter had been to a deep baritone, rumbling like distant thunder on a winter's morning. His aging skin stretched taught as muscle filled into the dangling flesh, liver-spots dissolving into milky-white flesh. His skeletal finger gouged out long furrows of the tree as he howled, not in pain - but in victory.
He rounded on me, his eyes entirely mad as he crooned with horrific joy - grinning from ear to ear with dagger-sharp teeth. The young man who now faced me looked closer to fifty rather than the ancient being I knew him to be, the whispering kiss of shadows billowing from beneath his garments. "Oh - Heka. Do you have any idea how long it has taken me to trick someone into breaking my godmother's curse?"
"Oh - fuck!" I snarled, barely bringing up my shield bracelet in time to block the torrent of ensorceled lighting that cracked out from the air in front of him. There had been no word, no gesture, no apparent effort of any kind. Koschei had summoned a bolt of power with sheer, unbridled will.
The ancient horror just ignored the Russians and Kincaid as they opened fire on him, continuing his mad cackle as he summoned lightning. He leisurely walked over to his blade, picking it up from the ground before looking at the gobsmacked Ammit. He snapped his fingers while looking her straight in the eyes, summoning a wave of power. "I told you - over and over, I told you. You would come to serve me, dear demoness."
As the man's fingers met there was a sudden expulsion of power and glowing crystals of ice began to encase the men firing upon him. The Vallarin screamed, opening fire on the implacable crystals as they spread up him. The crystals only spread faster from his actions, kinetic energy seeming to empower them to greater rates of movement. The crystal extended up and over the man's head in an instant - turning him to a statue. The Colonel and Kirensky suffered little better, the ice getting as far as their faces in moments.
Only Marchenko managed to avoid his fate. The man had dropped his weapon when the ice began, choosing instead to dig a long furrow in the dirt as the ice climbed his legs - creating a hasty circle around himself. He pricked his hand, breaking the link between the ice and the man casting it. It didn't dispell the ice that had already formed, but it seemed to do a decent job of stemming its flow. He was no less trapped than his compatriots, but at least he could move somewhat.
The other three Russians were frozen into living statues. Immobile and terrified but seemingly aware of their surroundings. Their eyes darted back and forth in horror behind their icy prisons.
Kincaid smashed a bottle of something foul against the ice on his legs, and made a bounding leap towards Koschei. He pulled a long tube from his combat webbing and twisted at the tube's center, ripping the tube open and pointing the open ends at Koschei. Two concentrated beams of green flame fired out from them, tearing through the flesh of Koschei's abdomen. He screamed as they contacted him, holding out his palm and screaming a single word in reply. Blue light ran up the outline of the flames and up to the man holding them, slowing everything within them to an utter crawl. Koschei twisted off the spears of flame, black smoke pouring from his already healing wounds as the mercenary was trapped in perpetual slow motion.
I took advantage of his distraction, sending a wave of force at him - focusing my might into a dime sized point on the back of his skull. My magic just disappeared into a great, hungering emptiness. He didn't dispel it so much as his presence just dismissed it entirely.
He turned, doubtlessly to gloat, only to get my staff rammed straight into his face. He rocked back from the impact against his jaw, staggering away from me and spitting out several teeth. Confused and dazed, he jumped away from me in an effort to regain his bearings. I didn't give him the chance.
People seem to expect someone who casts magic to just hang out at a distance and fling magic missiles at them. Sure, the stereotype is at least somewhat founded in fact. There were plenty of magic users who weren't willing to get up close and personal with their enemy. There were even more Goa'uld who eschewed personal risk entirely. But there was nothing obligating either a Wizard or a Goa'uld from getting close and personal if they were so inclined. And with my Goa'uld enhanced strength - I could get damn personal.
I stomped on the ground, breaking a hole where he was trying to step back and staggering him. It wasn't much of an advantage but it was enough for Ammit to get in and slash the man's face - plucking out one of his eyes. The gorged out flesh turned to black smoke, billowing back into his skin as she tore into his flesh. She ripped, she tore, and she rendered - but ultimately it wasn't enough to overcome whatever power had earned Koschei the title of "Deathless."
There was an awful snicker-snack of the mordite blade and Ammit staggered away from Koschei, falling to her knee in a glowing pool of Unas blood. Her severed arm dissolved into ash where it hit the ground, barely having saved her from being disemboweled. She screamed in agony as she held her belly shut with the other arm.
I barely had time to scream, "Don't!" Before Muminah placed herself between the goddess and Koschei, throwing herself at the Scion of Winter with a warrior's scream. She kicked the scion where it hurt, tattoo's blazing with power as she waded through the sizzling cloud of shadow. Koschei's eyes crossed as he batted her away, backhanding her across the face.
I watched Muminah hit the tree, cracking her head against the wood hard enough to knock her senseless. She hit the ground, barely breathing as crimson blood ran down from her forehead. I put my rage and hate into a bellow of "Fuego" casting fire at Koschei. I knew the fire wouldn't do much to him, not with his apparent ability to just dismiss magic. But that wasn't the point of it.
Elements once summoned tended to follow the governing laws of those same elements. So if one summoned a torrent of fire, even fire that wouldn't burn the target, one could still rely on the brilliance of that same flame. I summoned the hottest fire I could manage, scourging a path between me and Koschei in the hopes of using it to cloak my approach. Beating Koschei with a heavy stick seemed to work well enough last time, so I tapped into my inner Neanderthal and smashed the place where I expected Koschei to be.
My staff went through the air with enough force to shatter concrete, piercing the cloak of flames and landing in a glassy pile of shattered sand as it hit with the full force of my rage and hatred. I was pretty sure I could have slain an Ogre with that hit.
Too bad it hadn't hit Koschei.
There was a sudden whoosh of of a blade through the air, a thunk of blade on flesh, and my head tumbled to the ground. I barely had time to think as Koschei drove his blade through both palms and into the belly of my decapitated body, crucifying it to the tree with the mordite blade. The pain of it was immeasurable.
I realized that the person screaming was me about ten seconds after I started. Mordite apparently couldn't kill me, but it really hurt. Koschei picked up my head, crooning in sing song as he tapped his long finger against my head. "Little god, little god, sing your song. Little god, little god, soon your friends will sing along."
There was a blur of motion from where Ammit was kneeling and a glowing, wriggling bit of what looked like intestine soared past Koschei's head. He barely had time to dodge the fleshly projectile as it spattered Unas blood across his face and my own. Koschei looked from the disgusting pile of meat that landed on the ground next to Warden Nanami and back to Ammit. His lip curled. "Pathetic."
Koschei held up his hand and spoke four words. They were skittering things, more like the sounds an insect might make with it's mandibles than human speech. A purple sphere flew from his fingertips, about the size of a golf ball - reeking of black magic. "I seem to recall someone mentioning a black hole. I think that you're right, little goddess - a black hole makes for a marvelous punishment."
The projectile moved with maddening slowness, inching towards Ammit as Koschei continued his nightmarish rhyme, increasing with tempo as the ball got closer. "Little god, little god, sing your song. Little god, little god, soon your friends will sing along."
I begged, pleased with the powers of the universe for something - anything to stop what I knew was going to happen once that thing touched Ammit. Please - someone help her!
Ammit made a rude gesture with her remaining arm, only able to manage a defiant snarl at this point. Words were apparently beyond her given the extreme pain she had to be in. She never once wavered in her defiance and spite as the spell touched her flesh, even as the extreme gravity of that pink ball collapsed her in on herself. I watched, impotent to help, as the goddess Ammit - who had survived wars and horrors beyond description - died in defiant agony.
And in that moment I, Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden, lost my mind. The Mantle of the Warden struggled to match my utter contempt and urge to destroy as I struggled against the blade crucifying me. I barely recognize the horrific sounds coming from my own lips as speech as the deep noises of the Goa'uld turned into a hissing torrent of sounds more akin to a dial-up modem that the threats of violence I knew them to be.
The Oak responded to my power, vines and boughs bending to protect their master, trapping the vengeance I would rightfully mete out to him at the first chance I got. I was going to do things to Koschei that the Old Testament would have considered "a little bit much."
But my fury only seemed to amuse Koschei. "Creature - you are not of my blood. You cannot escape my tree."
Koschei dropped my head unceremoniously on the ground, kicking it with his foot to angle it so that I had no choice but to watch as he pulled a sack from his waist. I helplessly watched as Koschei stuffed Warden Nanami back into the sack, watching as she disappeared into it head first. Her lifeless eyes looked at me without any shred of hope, her lips stained from the gore of the Unas' intestines. My eyes bulged as he walked over to Muminah, casting a spell upon her to ensure that she was conscious and aware when the bag went down over her head.
"I'm going to make you eat your own heart!" I snarled, breathing a wave of green fire up at Koschei that only dissipated across his skin.
"Heka, dear demon. You will do no such thing." Koschei clucked his tongue against his teeth. "Because you will be too occupied to even think of trying such violence upon me. For as much as you think you hate me, it is nothing compared to how much the Winter Lady hates you."
Koschei carried me over to the runs of Ammit, wetting his fingers in her glowing blood and using it to draw out a circle on the ground before speaking the three words he meant to be my undoing.
"Maeve, Maeve, Maeve."
"Nobody shoot." I snarled as I connected the sounds with the only thing they really could be connected to. "We have the needle. We're in charge. He's going to try to trick us. To fool us into playing his game. Do not indulge him."
My voice had once again began to modulate, reverberating in the tones of the Goa'uld in three languages in… uh - I guess that's not stereo is it? Tri-eo? Damn it - words aren't really designed to express this sort of thing because it isn't the sort of thing normal people do. I spoke in three languages, expressing my intent fluently in each. Apparently my mantle was tired of repeating itself.
Kincaid nodded, shouldering his weapon and lifting it in preparation for violence but keeping his finger off the trigger. I suppose that's what passed for diplomatic in the mercenary's mind.
The Russians all followed suit, with the exception of Marchenko. Marchenko let his weapon hang loose on it's shoulder strap and pulled out a small box of cigarettes. He patted the box on the palm of his hand, jiggling out one of the tightly wrapped bundles of tobacco leaves and letting it loosely hang from his lips as he patted for a lighter.
"Marchenko - ready your weapon!" Hissed the Colonel as the rending sounds of metal became deafening and the screeching hiss started to form into words. The howling fury of Koschei was horrific as he screamed in incoherent rage.
"Colonel - with respect - we are in a magical city on the moon fighting spacecraft currently losing a battle to wooden ships floating on shadow." Marchenko pulled his lighter out from his pocket and fiddled with it, trying to get a spark going on the well-worn device. He puffed at the cigarette as it lit, pumping air through the tobacco to ensure it burned properly. Taking a long drag from the cigarette he closed the lighter with a loud click and held out the box of cigarettes to his compatriots. "We are standing behind two creatures that call themselves gods who've given us ample cause to believe their claims while a demon from the nightmares of children comes to kill us. I'm not going to do anything until I've had a cigarette."
The Colonel's eye twitched as his natural urge to discipline the Lieutenant for insubordination warred with the obvious absurdity of his situation. In the end absurdity won and he pulled a cigarette from the pack and took the lighter from the Lieutenant's hands.
I would have found it funny if I weren't so damn scared.
Mother Winter's bouncing baby boy ripped through the ceiling of the room we were in, the green-black light of his mordite blade tearing through the bulkhead with contemptuous ease. He'd gotten dressed since I last saw him - which was at least a small mercy - wrapping himself in the fine silks and garments that one might have expected out of a medieval lord. They billowed out around him, only managing to make him look more emaciated and decrepit as they billowed around his corpse like contenance.
His eyes were insane and there was white froth billowing out from his lips as he soared through the air, body elongating as it twisted through the skies. He spun, serpentine, landing in a haphazard mess of monster on spindly legs as his ancient jowls quivered with hatred. I could hear his arthritic knuckles popping as he white-knuckle clutched at the blade.
"You dare to come to my home?" He screeched in that petulant, grating, raspy excuse for a voice that echoed with an ancient infantile hatred. He glared at Ammit, monofocused on the needle between her fingers as he growled. "You who fled screaming into the night? You who cheat and lie?"
"Ok kidnappy McGee - how about you not throw stones into other people's houses while your kettle is still pretty darn black." I replied to him, and realized that there was now a fourth language in the rotation. It wasn't latin - I'd learned enough latin before the gift of gab to know what wasn't latin, even if I didn't recognize what it was. "So how about you stop posturing or Ammit breaks your soul."
You'd have thought I kicked him in the nuts from the expression on the man's face as I spoke in that language. His head whipped over to me in a flurry of jowls and liver spots, examining me with beady eyes. He sniffed the air twice and smiled. "Ah - AH - HAH! The other cheat… yes, yes - it finally makes sense. I finally understand. I should have guessed. Yes… yes I'm sure."
"Yeah - I'll be honest there skippy. I don't give a shit if you understand except if you understand to give us back the kids or we kill your ass." I flipped him off. It was childish and not my best insult, but I really just hated this creep too much to waste good material on him. "Where are the women you took."
"Oh, Heka." The man chortled. "Are you feeling left out?"
I blinked. "You think I'm Heka?"
"I know you're Heka." Koschei tapped his head with a skeletally long finger. "I should have realized it at first. Given your company and your capturer - yes… it has been so long that I hardly recognized you, apprentice. You have grown in power, child, but you overstep your position. I was using magic before your people wriggled out from the muck and mire - you are a pretender while I am a master."
If that wasn't a straight line, I didn't know what was. "Only a master of evil, Darth. Now, I'm not going to ask again. Show me where they are!"
Koschei's shark like grin was going to haunt my nightmares. The geriatric knelt down and reached into his own shadow, pulling upward to summon a current of billowing darkness like the currents that had borne the galleys outside. It congealed to something like a mirror before he reached into it, yanking out a woman's form. The shadows ripped away from her, discarding her on the ground - naked.
Warden Nanami collapsed to the ground as she was expelled from the shadow, legs crumpling beneath her. She crumpled to the ground, hugging her legs to her chest and shivering. There was a terrible emptiness to her. A woman who'd been so full of life and strength when last I'd seen her, the pitiful person now before me could only be passingly mistaken for the Brute Squad Wizard she'd been.
"Tell them, little pet." Koschei grabbed her by the hair, lifting her to dangle from his grip as he sing song crooned into the woman's ear. She made no effort to resist him, or even move, as he dangled from his hand. Her arms and legs waving the air gave her the appearance of a of a grotesque marionette, expressionless and mute. "Tell them about the others. Let them know about the toys I haven't played with yet."
He shook her before dropping her back to the ground, making no effort to cusion her fall as he let go of the woman's limp body. He shrugged. "Sorry - I can't seem to find someone who knows where they are. More's the pity."
Ammit bent the needle - not enough to break it, but enough to make the light emanating from it flicker. Koschei fell to the ground as she did so, kneeling in apparent pain. He dropped the mordite blade, and felt to the ground next to his victim. The goddess' voice quavered with fury as she said. "Muminah, come here."
"Milady?" Replied the priestess as she walked over to the goddess.
"Muminah, please take this from me. If he fights back or resists in any way - break it." Ammit handed the needle to the priestess. "If we have to kill him - when we kill him. I want it to be a mortal woman who killed him. I want him to know it was a mortal woman who killed him."
Brilliant viridian light shone from her eyes as she grabbed the geriatric by the front of his robes, lifted him, and drove her talons into the man's belly. Black blood bubbled up from the man's lips as he swore impotently, howling as the goddess stabbed him four times in succession. He hissed through blood soaked lips. "Hateful bitch!"
"Don't I know it." Ammit replied, twisting her claws. "There's two ways we can play this, Koschei. You can give us the women and I'll let the Warden stick you in the coldest, darkest, most terrible, forgotten scrap of nothing - I will let him maroon you for eternity in the shadow of a black hole to regret what you've done."
"Oh - how tempting." Koschei giggled madly. "And if I refuse?"
"Then we break your needle. Here and now." I replied. "That was a neat tick you used to stash Warden Nanami. Hell, I don't know if I'd be able to pull it off to go the other way but I'm willing to bet that your "sister" will be obliged to show me once I let her know that I offed the man who killed her. The Winter Queen isn't the sort who forgets that kind of insult. Killing you will slow down our recovery, but not stop it."
"You presume much." Koschi grinned insanely through his parched lips, speaking in sing-song Russian. "She doesn't know how to navigate the shadows. Even the Grimalkin only dares to wander its surface."
"No." Replied Kincaid, speaking in a voice of dangerous calm. "But Drakul does."
Kincaid's former employer was the sort of thing that one didn't bring up in conversation idly. Because he was the sort of thing that would probably hear it when you even mentioned him. It would require something horrific to get anything from the ancient monster who birthed Dracula, but for Ivy Kincaid would pay.
Koschei's eyes bulged in fury as he spat directly into Ammit's face. "They are mine!"
"Muminah." I didn't need to say anything else. We'd all pretty much had it with Koschei.
My high priestess snapped the iron needle between her fingers, dousing the light within it as Ammit released her bloody prisoner. Shadows billowed out from the man's open wounds as he staggered away from Ammit, screaming and laughing with equal madness. Power as I'd seldom felt before pulsed through the arboretum as the man staggered drunkenly over to the ancient oak. Power lashed out from him wildly, arcs of billowing shadow slicing through the ground around him with horrific potency.
I grabbed Muminah and pulled her back towards the water's edge, grounding ourselves over it as I watched Koschei's mad dance of death. His skin bulged and twisted as he reached the oak, pressing his forehead against the surface of it as his horrific cackling shook the bows of the ancient plant. And then the pit of my stomach fell somewhere south of Hades as I realized that Koschei wasn't dying.
In point of fact, he was doing exactly the opposite.
His joker-screech peel of mad laughter went from a rasping memory of what laughter had been to a deep baritone, rumbling like distant thunder on a winter's morning. His aging skin stretched taught as muscle filled into the dangling flesh, liver-spots dissolving into milky-white flesh. His skeletal finger gouged out long furrows of the tree as he howled, not in pain - but in victory.
He rounded on me, his eyes entirely mad as he crooned with horrific joy - grinning from ear to ear with dagger-sharp teeth. The young man who now faced me looked closer to fifty rather than the ancient being I knew him to be, the whispering kiss of shadows billowing from beneath his garments. "Oh - Heka. Do you have any idea how long it has taken me to trick someone into breaking my godmother's curse?"
"Oh - fuck!" I snarled, barely bringing up my shield bracelet in time to block the torrent of ensorceled lighting that cracked out from the air in front of him. There had been no word, no gesture, no apparent effort of any kind. Koschei had summoned a bolt of power with sheer, unbridled will.
The ancient horror just ignored the Russians and Kincaid as they opened fire on him, continuing his mad cackle as he summoned lightning. He leisurely walked over to his blade, picking it up from the ground before looking at the gobsmacked Ammit. He snapped his fingers while looking her straight in the eyes, summoning a wave of power. "I told you - over and over, I told you. You would come to serve me, dear demoness."
As the man's fingers met there was a sudden expulsion of power and glowing crystals of ice began to encase the men firing upon him. The Vallarin screamed, opening fire on the implacable crystals as they spread up him. The crystals only spread faster from his actions, kinetic energy seeming to empower them to greater rates of movement. The crystal extended up and over the man's head in an instant - turning him to a statue. The Colonel and Kirensky suffered little better, the ice getting as far as their faces in moments.
Only Marchenko managed to avoid his fate. The man had dropped his weapon when the ice began, choosing instead to dig a long furrow in the dirt as the ice climbed his legs - creating a hasty circle around himself. He pricked his hand, breaking the link between the ice and the man casting it. It didn't dispell the ice that had already formed, but it seemed to do a decent job of stemming its flow. He was no less trapped than his compatriots, but at least he could move somewhat.
The other three Russians were frozen into living statues. Immobile and terrified but seemingly aware of their surroundings. Their eyes darted back and forth in horror behind their icy prisons.
Kincaid smashed a bottle of something foul against the ice on his legs, and made a bounding leap towards Koschei. He pulled a long tube from his combat webbing and twisted at the tube's center, ripping the tube open and pointing the open ends at Koschei. Two concentrated beams of green flame fired out from them, tearing through the flesh of Koschei's abdomen. He screamed as they contacted him, holding out his palm and screaming a single word in reply. Blue light ran up the outline of the flames and up to the man holding them, slowing everything within them to an utter crawl. Koschei twisted off the spears of flame, black smoke pouring from his already healing wounds as the mercenary was trapped in perpetual slow motion.
I took advantage of his distraction, sending a wave of force at him - focusing my might into a dime sized point on the back of his skull. My magic just disappeared into a great, hungering emptiness. He didn't dispel it so much as his presence just dismissed it entirely.
He turned, doubtlessly to gloat, only to get my staff rammed straight into his face. He rocked back from the impact against his jaw, staggering away from me and spitting out several teeth. Confused and dazed, he jumped away from me in an effort to regain his bearings. I didn't give him the chance.
People seem to expect someone who casts magic to just hang out at a distance and fling magic missiles at them. Sure, the stereotype is at least somewhat founded in fact. There were plenty of magic users who weren't willing to get up close and personal with their enemy. There were even more Goa'uld who eschewed personal risk entirely. But there was nothing obligating either a Wizard or a Goa'uld from getting close and personal if they were so inclined. And with my Goa'uld enhanced strength - I could get damn personal.
I stomped on the ground, breaking a hole where he was trying to step back and staggering him. It wasn't much of an advantage but it was enough for Ammit to get in and slash the man's face - plucking out one of his eyes. The gorged out flesh turned to black smoke, billowing back into his skin as she tore into his flesh. She ripped, she tore, and she rendered - but ultimately it wasn't enough to overcome whatever power had earned Koschei the title of "Deathless."
There was an awful snicker-snack of the mordite blade and Ammit staggered away from Koschei, falling to her knee in a glowing pool of Unas blood. Her severed arm dissolved into ash where it hit the ground, barely having saved her from being disemboweled. She screamed in agony as she held her belly shut with the other arm.
I barely had time to scream, "Don't!" Before Muminah placed herself between the goddess and Koschei, throwing herself at the Scion of Winter with a warrior's scream. She kicked the scion where it hurt, tattoo's blazing with power as she waded through the sizzling cloud of shadow. Koschei's eyes crossed as he batted her away, backhanding her across the face.
I watched Muminah hit the tree, cracking her head against the wood hard enough to knock her senseless. She hit the ground, barely breathing as crimson blood ran down from her forehead. I put my rage and hate into a bellow of "Fuego" casting fire at Koschei. I knew the fire wouldn't do much to him, not with his apparent ability to just dismiss magic. But that wasn't the point of it.
Elements once summoned tended to follow the governing laws of those same elements. So if one summoned a torrent of fire, even fire that wouldn't burn the target, one could still rely on the brilliance of that same flame. I summoned the hottest fire I could manage, scourging a path between me and Koschei in the hopes of using it to cloak my approach. Beating Koschei with a heavy stick seemed to work well enough last time, so I tapped into my inner Neanderthal and smashed the place where I expected Koschei to be.
My staff went through the air with enough force to shatter concrete, piercing the cloak of flames and landing in a glassy pile of shattered sand as it hit with the full force of my rage and hatred. I was pretty sure I could have slain an Ogre with that hit.
Too bad it hadn't hit Koschei.
There was a sudden whoosh of of a blade through the air, a thunk of blade on flesh, and my head tumbled to the ground. I barely had time to think as Koschei drove his blade through both palms and into the belly of my decapitated body, crucifying it to the tree with the mordite blade. The pain of it was immeasurable.
I realized that the person screaming was me about ten seconds after I started. Mordite apparently couldn't kill me, but it really hurt. Koschei picked up my head, crooning in sing song as he tapped his long finger against my head. "Little god, little god, sing your song. Little god, little god, soon your friends will sing along."
There was a blur of motion from where Ammit was kneeling and a glowing, wriggling bit of what looked like intestine soared past Koschei's head. He barely had time to dodge the fleshly projectile as it spattered Unas blood across his face and my own. Koschei looked from the disgusting pile of meat that landed on the ground next to Warden Nanami and back to Ammit. His lip curled. "Pathetic."
Koschei held up his hand and spoke four words. They were skittering things, more like the sounds an insect might make with it's mandibles than human speech. A purple sphere flew from his fingertips, about the size of a golf ball - reeking of black magic. "I seem to recall someone mentioning a black hole. I think that you're right, little goddess - a black hole makes for a marvelous punishment."
The projectile moved with maddening slowness, inching towards Ammit as Koschei continued his nightmarish rhyme, increasing with tempo as the ball got closer. "Little god, little god, sing your song. Little god, little god, soon your friends will sing along."
I begged, pleased with the powers of the universe for something - anything to stop what I knew was going to happen once that thing touched Ammit. Please - someone help her!
Ammit made a rude gesture with her remaining arm, only able to manage a defiant snarl at this point. Words were apparently beyond her given the extreme pain she had to be in. She never once wavered in her defiance and spite as the spell touched her flesh, even as the extreme gravity of that pink ball collapsed her in on herself. I watched, impotent to help, as the goddess Ammit - who had survived wars and horrors beyond description - died in defiant agony.
And in that moment I, Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden, lost my mind. The Mantle of the Warden struggled to match my utter contempt and urge to destroy as I struggled against the blade crucifying me. I barely recognize the horrific sounds coming from my own lips as speech as the deep noises of the Goa'uld turned into a hissing torrent of sounds more akin to a dial-up modem that the threats of violence I knew them to be.
The Oak responded to my power, vines and boughs bending to protect their master, trapping the vengeance I would rightfully mete out to him at the first chance I got. I was going to do things to Koschei that the Old Testament would have considered "a little bit much."
But my fury only seemed to amuse Koschei. "Creature - you are not of my blood. You cannot escape my tree."
Koschei dropped my head unceremoniously on the ground, kicking it with his foot to angle it so that I had no choice but to watch as he pulled a sack from his waist. I helplessly watched as Koschei stuffed Warden Nanami back into the sack, watching as she disappeared into it head first. Her lifeless eyes looked at me without any shred of hope, her lips stained from the gore of the Unas' intestines. My eyes bulged as he walked over to Muminah, casting a spell upon her to ensure that she was conscious and aware when the bag went down over her head.
"I'm going to make you eat your own heart!" I snarled, breathing a wave of green fire up at Koschei that only dissipated across his skin.
"Heka, dear demon. You will do no such thing." Koschei clucked his tongue against his teeth. "Because you will be too occupied to even think of trying such violence upon me. For as much as you think you hate me, it is nothing compared to how much the Winter Lady hates you."
Koschei carried me over to the runs of Ammit, wetting his fingers in her glowing blood and using it to draw out a circle on the ground before speaking the three words he meant to be my undoing.
"Maeve, Maeve, Maeve."
Todeswind
Begrudgingly thread marking.
- Location
- Ry'leth
I do have a life external to fanfiction.
- Location
- Germany
now I wonder. Will Maeve recognise Harry?
- Location
- Oblivion
Hmmm, I wonder if Ammit was actually in there when that happened?
That's not going to end well for anybody...
GiovanniBlasini
Transhumanist Nutcase from Niops IX
- Location
- San Diego, CA, USA, Sol III
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Undoubtedly. Setting aside that the Winter Queen knows, the Summer Queen knows, and the Summer Lady most likely knows, so the Winter Lady most likely knows, I don't see any way she doesn't recognize him.
Neruz
Rogue Spiderbanana
- Location
- The Land of Fire and Poison
Doubt it, pretty sure that length of intestine was hiding her symbiote inside it. Ammit is too old and tricky to have missed the opportunity, she might have been extremely attached to her Unas but Goa'uld psychology puts personal survival above everything else.
As for Maeve, yeah she's definitely going to recognize Dresden. But I sincerely doubt that calling her is going to go as well for Koschei as he expects it to.
- Location
- Argentina
This is Harry we are talking about.
subsider34
Forum Lurker Extraordinaire
- Location
- Houston, TX
- Pronouns
- He/Him
He's been publicly proclaimed to be an ally of Winter. I don't see how she wouldn't know. Regardless, what's left of Heka is currently in the custody of Winter, so Koschei's claim should immediately draw scepticism.
pbluekan
Somethin's Fucky ...
- Location
- Trumpistan
Well, the guys over at DLP noticed this gem:
Ammit ain't dead, and it looks like she continues to live in symbiosis with her host. Why else would the Unas actually save her life?
Ammit ain't dead, and it looks like she continues to live in symbiosis with her host. Why else would the Unas actually save her life?
pbluekan
Somethin's Fucky ...
- Location
- Trumpistan
It's also Maeve. She might not give a fuck. Is she infected by Nemesis at this point?
- Location
- Germany
I mean, recognise "Harry Dresden is Heka['s body]" instead of "Lord-Warden Heka"
She has already meet Harry at this point.
Summer Lady is dead, unless you mean the new one.
Summer Queen, huh, she might know "Harry Dresden's" face but might also have ignored the "human who was Heka's catspawn"
Chapter 41
Todeswind
Begrudgingly thread marking.
- Location
- Ry'leth
The Winter Lady appeared in the short of overt, wasteful, and incautious display of power I'd come to expect from Winter's heir apparent. The water of the arboretum froze in an instant, the sudden explosion of heat from the room turning the balmy climate into a subarctic snowscape. What had previously been humidity in the air coalesced into angry clouds, sleet and hail pelting the ground.
I would have expected the cold to be just one hurt to add to the litany I was currently undergoing, but I barely noticed it. Winter's touch upon my mantle welcomed the cold - the sleet upon my skin a welcome balm against the pain of crucifixion.
Maeve was as I had seen her at the battle for the stone table in fairie. Her dreadlocks were tightly bound so as to provide minimal opportunities for someone to grab them but battle had since knocked several of them loose. They hung down over the stylized, snowflake like armor - a rainbow of blue across what had once been pure white.
They were pure white no longer. Her gauntlets and breast plate were stained red with the coppery shades of frozen human blood. Lloyd Slate's blood unless I missed my guess.
It occurred to me that it was odd that Mab had been the one to have Lloyd Slate with her when the offer had been made to make me the Winter Knight. I hadn't really thought about in the moment, but it had been Maeve who hired Lloyd. That meant that he'd betrayed Maeve as much as he'd betrayed Mab. Hell's bells, probably more than Mab. Aurora was Maeve's direct opposite in Fairy.
Siding with her wouldn't just have been treason, it would have been public humiliation. She should have been obligated to mete out vengeance at a scale commensurate with that insult before her mother would even consider interfering in her daughter's efforts to balance the scales.
So either Maeve had been unable to deal with that debt of vengeance owed, or there had been an even more important debt to her than the defection of the Winter Knight.
My eyes narrowed at that, several details connecting in my head as a plan began to form. My plotting was interrupted by the literal apple that Koschei pulled from his pocket and wedged deep enough into my mouth that I couldn't bite down. My eyes bulged as he plopped my head down onto a literal, silver platter - serving me up to the woman standing in the middle of the glowing circle.
"Winter Lady, I believe introductions are in order." Koschei bowed deeply. "I am Koschei, Lord of Buyan."
Maeve's exaggerated eye roll managed to combine contempt, exhaustion, boredom, and confusion into seconds. She pulled a white cloth from her belt and wiped at the blood coating her armor, the frozen crimson melting as she ran the silk over it. "Uncle… must you go through this exhausting process with every Winter Lady?"
Koschei's lip twitched, the madness in his eyes pronounced as he clutched the silver platter hard enough for it to bend under his fingers. His voice never wavered as he talked but it held the mad tenor to it that had marked his fits back in Archangel. "Child - I tolerate that you have adopted the role of my niece, but you are not her."
"Semantics." Maeve scoffed. "I am Maeve, your niece."
"You are not my niece." Koschei snarled, unable to contain a screech of contempt. Family drama dating back to pre-history coloring his words, the Deathless one's voice went deadly quiet. "You can't just replace family."
"No? Odd that you've elected to discard it so readily then, Uncle." Maeve cocked her hips, grinning with devil may care glee. "Do you have any idea what you've taken me from? This insult will not be easily forgotten by our Queen or the Mothers. But I suppose you've made a policy of insulting them at every chance you get."
Koschei grinned wolfishly. "I had no idea that summoning you would inconvenience your mother. I wouldn't dare to involve myself in matters from which I've been excluded by Winter Law."
"You've missed your window to do harm rather than insult, Uncle." Maeve cackled. The frozen surface of the lake cracked and shifted under the weight of her malice, spikes and spires of frost rising out like serrated stalagmites. "Winter is victorious. The table is ours. And not only have we won that prissy little bitch Aurora is dead as a doornail. And once you break this circle I will return to revel in my victory before you've so much as considered doing me actual harm."
"Then, Lady Maeve, allow me to sweeten the glory of victory." Koschei lifted the platter, jostling my severed head as he held it out to her. "Consider this a testament to your victory."
"And why should I accept a present from you dear Uncle?" Maeve gestured to my crucified form on the tree. My armored body was trapped in an agonized rictus of mortal pain. Star flecked galaxies bled out from my body, seeping across my skin to turn to vapor as they touched the frozen ground. The billowing vapor shimmered, stars and planets hovering in the mist as they returned to my crucified flesh. "What assurance do I have that I will not end up positioned on that tree?"
"Maeve, I offer you a pledge of safe conduct. For the next day I will make no attempt to harm you by action or inaction as long as you stand within my arboretum." He bowed graciously. "You are my guest and will suffer no undue harm."
Maeve considered that for a moment. "And that creature - who is he?"
"Heka, my lady." I don't know if that smile could have been more creepy if I'd also been able to see the erection that I was positive accompanied it as Koschei spoke. "He who is owed most glorious torment at your hands."
It was probably the skeeviest thing I'd ever heard spoken. Or at least it was right up till Maeve replied with a single word that spoke volumes. "Heka."
The Winter Lady's pupils dilated reflexively, matching the purr of lust in her voice as she spoke that name. There are entire schools of magic that had less power to them than that word did. Obligation, rage, and the lust for vengeance played upon her frosty lips. "I would have your pledge that once you have given me him, you will do nothing to prevent me from giving him what is owed, Lord Koschei. Heka caused my predecessor great hurt. I will not tolerate any interruptions in the settlement of debts owed for old hurts upon my station."
Koschei clackled madly as he broke the circle by passing the platter over the summoning circle. "Done."
My heart raced furiously as lithe fingers grabbed me by the head, holding me up to eye level so that I could stare into the merciless pits of the Winter Lady. She disregarded Koschei entirely as she addressed my head, talons of ice extending from her armored gauntlets. She sliced away a piece of the apple in my mouth, popping it into her ice-blue lips. I listened to it shatter between her teeth, the sub-zero of her body turning it solid in seconds.
"I am not the master of torture my mother is, Lord Warden." Maeve purred, licking bits of frozen apple from her lips. "I am not fond of waiting. I have neither the patience nor the inclination to make pain last for the ages. But for the hurt done at Djer - the insult, the humiliation, I would see the one responsible suffer for eternity and a day."
She rolled my head between her talons of ice, idly examining it from all sides. I had to clench my eyes shut to stop the dizzy unnatural feeling of my head spinning independently from my body. "I have nightmares about it sometimes. Memories from the Lady who was. She was kinder than I - better in so many ways. And just to make a point - just to prove that they were a threat to Winter's power, the Goa'uld bound her in iron and violated her with the bane. A simple cut would have proved their point but they wanted to prove that they were stronger, to own her essence as much as her flesh."
Her lips virtually frothed with rage as she cut off another slice of apple. "Do you know what that's like, Warden? To be truly helpless? To have all the power in the world but only greater pain in your future. He broke her. He wounded her so deeply that the Winter Queen was forced to kill her own daughter to save her kingdom."
She turned to Koschei, her voice quivering with near sexual anticipation. "Heka is owned more violence and retribution than every favor I could add together could have bought me. The one who delivered that vengeance upon him is owed more than I could even begin to deliver."
"We can discuss obligation later - dear niece." The family word curled from Koschei's lips with contemptuous glee. "I do have a favor in mind."
Maeve looked up at her Uncle in mock confusion. "Oh - Uncle, I'm afraid you've misunderstood."
Koschei stiffened, power pooling at his fingertips reflexively. "Misunderstood?"
"Why yes, Uncle." Maeve ripped the apple from my lips. "Because this isn't Heka."
Koschei didn't have time to screech in fury before a lance of ice the length of a city bus rocketed out of the Winter Lady's hand. The baffled deathless one skittered across the ice, his tea-kettle screech of air echoing within the arboretum as he was projected back through the razor-sharp protrusions of ice.
I felt cold lips upon mine as skin the color of frozen berries met my own, an icy wave of healing cold shimmering through me before Maeve slammed my head back atop my crucified body. I gasped in shock as my neck healed in an instant, the power of Winter invigorating me with the primal need to survive. I hissed in shock as Maeve grinned at me with victory and lust in her eyes. "Maeve?"
"Yes beloved?" Maeve purred, licking her lips in a gesture would probably have been censored on daytime TV.
"Uh - thank you?"
"A debt is owed, beloved." Maeve moaned. "We can figure out payment later. For now, get yourself off this tree. I will protect you from my Uncle."
"How?" I snarled. "I'm stuck."
"Are you a god or not?" Maeve replied, a bored tone to her voice even as she protected me from a blast of caustic black light. It detonated with horrific power against her wall of frost and Maeve interposed herself between me and her Uncle as he tried to toss another spell at me.
Koschei hissed in fury, throwing foul insults at Maeve as she continued to provide a barrier between Koschei and the tree. The Deathless One's eyes bugged out in manic hatred as she did so, unable to harm her without breaking his pledge of safe passage. That wasn't the sort of thing that beings of power did - period. It would damage their power badly, and for someone who would be pissing off a Queen of Fairy in the process, damaged was as good as dead.
I struggled against my bonds, but there was just no way that I could get out of them without doing horrific pain and damage to myself. I'd have to rip my flesh to shreds to even try. It would kill me.
Wait a second.
Stars and stones, it would have killed Harry the Wizard. But I wasn't that wizard any more - was I? I was in a lot of pain but the winter power raging through just seemed to regard that power as an annoyance. Pain that didn't kill you was just noise. Focusing on that simple truth, I bent my legs against the tree.
The Oak grasped at me, flowering branches and boughs intertwining within my organs in protest to my movement. But even in the mystical world, put enough muscle into something and it will move forward. I kicked upward, casting a blast of magical force through my feet to ensure that the job was done.
If you've never forced a sword down through your abdomen and into your groin while a tree eviscerates your flesh and organs, I would strongly suggest avoiding it. Even if you have a body that puts itself back together, it's what I would describe as a suboptimal solution.
My body re-formed mid-air and I used a gust of ensorcelled air to re-direct my fall so that my foot collided with Koschei's jaw as he made a mad grab for the mordite blade still stuck in the tree. He flattened against the ground, ploughing a deep furrow in the frozen earth with his screaming face. "Cheaters! You damned cheats!"
I was blasted back by a bolt of force, tumbling up and into the tree's outstretched branches. The Oak tried to force me down, clearly intending to impale me a second time. I snarled "Fuck that!"
I crooked my fingers, pointing the ruby foci at the tree as I let the mantle of the Warden take control as I shouted, "Fuego!"
Silver-white fire spread out across the Oaks branches, igniting every inch of it in glowing flames. The oak howled, echoing with agony as ensorcelled flames ate into it. I didn't know exactly what sort of creature of construct it was, but when it doubt - burn it to the ground.
I fell to the ground painfully, groaning as my back broke against the frozen ground. Stars flashed in my eyes as my body knit them back together.
"No!" Koschei howled, turning a block of ice into water and flinging it at the oak. It re-directed itself back onto the frozen lake from a crook of Maeve's fingers.
"No, dear Uncle - not this time." Maeve cackled. "Today is the day that I take everything from you."
"Hateful slut." Koschei crowed. He moved across the ground, quick as a flash. I lifted my foci to blast him away from it, only for a cylinder to soar through the air and collide with the Son of Winter's head. He caught it in his hands, looking down at it in momentary confusion before the flash-bang grenade exploded in the man's face. I had only an instant to cover my ears and eyes before a handheld can of sensory overload went off.
Koschei screeched in pain and fury, staggering back from the blade as Marchenko whooped with glee. I'd practically forgotten the Russian was there, but the ornery Russian wasn't about to miss an opportunity to stick it to Koschei. The Son of Winter had barely gotten his bearings before another flash-bang landed at his feet and a lance of ice flung him away from his blade.
He stood up from the icy surface of the lake, utter hatred in his voice as he said. "You fools - you think you've won? You think you've proved anything? By the time you even realize your doom it will be too late."
And then, he was gone in a billowing mess of cloaks and jewelry. He soared up and into the hole he'd cut in the ceiling to enter. As he did so there was a shift in power, a taste on the air that was sickly sweet. Everything felt heavier, as though I were moving through molasses.
I looked at the Winter Lady. "What did he just do."
"He slowed down time, of course." Maeve sighed in exasperation. "It is a very practical course. The spell will increase in power as he moves away from us. We have only moments before it will be hours or even days passing for every second we are in here."
"Hell's Bells." Koschei had been a nightmare to fight even when he hadn't had advance notice to prepare wards and spells to kill me. "Can you counter it."
"No, beloved." Maeve replied calmly. "But it is inconsequential."
"It kind of feels important." I replied. "That whole time thing is a bitch and a half."
"You are not mortal, beloved." Maeve chuckled. "It is adorable how you still think in the terms of your chattel. Koschei has all but killed himself by taking your High Priestess."
"Because it pissed me off?" I walked over to the still burning oak, yanking Koschei's bade from it and considering it idly.
"Because she is your high priestess." The Winter Lady purred in amusement, emphasizing the last two words with significant implication. "And was praying for salvation."
"And her god can be summoned to her side in an instant." I replied breathlessly, almost dropping the sword. "I - I don't know… I've never summoned my entire body further than line of sight. I've just astral projected before. I don't even know if I can."
"You are incomplete." Maeve agreed, running a gauntleted finger across my pauldron lovingly. Her voice was utter sex as she crooned. "But there is enough winter in you to allow you to move once with minimal damage."
"Define minimal." I gulped, already knowing I was going to do it regardless. Damned conscience - always getting in the way.
"I know not, your mantle will protect you but there is always a price." Maeve shrugged. "I will show you how. But before you go, there is the matter of the blade."
"About that?" I hefted the green black of the blade. "Where the hell did Koschei get this much mordite?"
"He needed the protection." Maeve shifted away from the deathstone reflexively. Apparently Koschei's ability to touch the stuff didn't come from the Fairy side of the family.
I whistled long and low. "Mordite is one hell of a self defense."
"No, beloved." Maeve giggled girlishly, playing with one of her dreadlocks in amusement. "The mordite is there to prevent others from accessing what is within the blade."
I looked down at the deathstone saber - if I were looking for a guaranteed way to keep other people from messing with something I didn't want them to touch, mordite would definitely do the job. I grabbed the blade by the hilt and smashed it against the burning oak, sending a wave of magical force up it as I did so to direct the shrapnel. The stone, made brittle by the silver fire, shattered. Deathstone projectiles hammered into the scorching oak, revealing the blade beneath it.
It looked to be a blade of medieval make, designed for war rather than to impress people with the wealth of its wielder. But the simplicity of the weapon belied the power that seemed to be within it. If anything, the mordite exterior had been there to camouflage the blade within it. My eyes bulged as I read the lettering inscribed within the blade's hilt. "Is this what I think it is?"
"Clarent, the Sword of Peace." Maeve replied. "The blade Koschei stole from Mordred."
"The fucking Coward's Blade?" How was this thing fucking scarier without the mordite. "The weapon that killed freaking King Arthur?"
"It is a weapon made by Merlin's own hand." Maeve replied. "A weapon that even a Gate Builder must fear. It is no more evil than the one who wields it."
"You are going to be murder on my PR." I groaned as I grabbed my staff off the ground.
"I will be murder for many things for you." Maeve replied in a voice that was appetizing and terrifying at once. "But for now, I will simply protect your companions and free them from the spells afflicting them. I dare not leave this room. I am no equal for Koschei."
"And I am by my freaking self? He wiped the floor with me." I groaned. "Can't you come with me?"
"No." Maeve replied, her voice utter frost. "I have given you all that I may. Forget not that I am a guest within Buyan. But you are clever. I am confident that you will prevail."
The Coward's blade felt hungry in my hand as I swallowed nervously. "How do I allow myself to be summoned?"
"Why, beloved, that is the simplest part." Maeve purred. "One simply has to truly know how to listen."
I would have expected the cold to be just one hurt to add to the litany I was currently undergoing, but I barely noticed it. Winter's touch upon my mantle welcomed the cold - the sleet upon my skin a welcome balm against the pain of crucifixion.
Maeve was as I had seen her at the battle for the stone table in fairie. Her dreadlocks were tightly bound so as to provide minimal opportunities for someone to grab them but battle had since knocked several of them loose. They hung down over the stylized, snowflake like armor - a rainbow of blue across what had once been pure white.
They were pure white no longer. Her gauntlets and breast plate were stained red with the coppery shades of frozen human blood. Lloyd Slate's blood unless I missed my guess.
It occurred to me that it was odd that Mab had been the one to have Lloyd Slate with her when the offer had been made to make me the Winter Knight. I hadn't really thought about in the moment, but it had been Maeve who hired Lloyd. That meant that he'd betrayed Maeve as much as he'd betrayed Mab. Hell's bells, probably more than Mab. Aurora was Maeve's direct opposite in Fairy.
Siding with her wouldn't just have been treason, it would have been public humiliation. She should have been obligated to mete out vengeance at a scale commensurate with that insult before her mother would even consider interfering in her daughter's efforts to balance the scales.
So either Maeve had been unable to deal with that debt of vengeance owed, or there had been an even more important debt to her than the defection of the Winter Knight.
My eyes narrowed at that, several details connecting in my head as a plan began to form. My plotting was interrupted by the literal apple that Koschei pulled from his pocket and wedged deep enough into my mouth that I couldn't bite down. My eyes bulged as he plopped my head down onto a literal, silver platter - serving me up to the woman standing in the middle of the glowing circle.
"Winter Lady, I believe introductions are in order." Koschei bowed deeply. "I am Koschei, Lord of Buyan."
Maeve's exaggerated eye roll managed to combine contempt, exhaustion, boredom, and confusion into seconds. She pulled a white cloth from her belt and wiped at the blood coating her armor, the frozen crimson melting as she ran the silk over it. "Uncle… must you go through this exhausting process with every Winter Lady?"
Koschei's lip twitched, the madness in his eyes pronounced as he clutched the silver platter hard enough for it to bend under his fingers. His voice never wavered as he talked but it held the mad tenor to it that had marked his fits back in Archangel. "Child - I tolerate that you have adopted the role of my niece, but you are not her."
"Semantics." Maeve scoffed. "I am Maeve, your niece."
"You are not my niece." Koschei snarled, unable to contain a screech of contempt. Family drama dating back to pre-history coloring his words, the Deathless one's voice went deadly quiet. "You can't just replace family."
"No? Odd that you've elected to discard it so readily then, Uncle." Maeve cocked her hips, grinning with devil may care glee. "Do you have any idea what you've taken me from? This insult will not be easily forgotten by our Queen or the Mothers. But I suppose you've made a policy of insulting them at every chance you get."
Koschei grinned wolfishly. "I had no idea that summoning you would inconvenience your mother. I wouldn't dare to involve myself in matters from which I've been excluded by Winter Law."
"You've missed your window to do harm rather than insult, Uncle." Maeve cackled. The frozen surface of the lake cracked and shifted under the weight of her malice, spikes and spires of frost rising out like serrated stalagmites. "Winter is victorious. The table is ours. And not only have we won that prissy little bitch Aurora is dead as a doornail. And once you break this circle I will return to revel in my victory before you've so much as considered doing me actual harm."
"Then, Lady Maeve, allow me to sweeten the glory of victory." Koschei lifted the platter, jostling my severed head as he held it out to her. "Consider this a testament to your victory."
"And why should I accept a present from you dear Uncle?" Maeve gestured to my crucified form on the tree. My armored body was trapped in an agonized rictus of mortal pain. Star flecked galaxies bled out from my body, seeping across my skin to turn to vapor as they touched the frozen ground. The billowing vapor shimmered, stars and planets hovering in the mist as they returned to my crucified flesh. "What assurance do I have that I will not end up positioned on that tree?"
"Maeve, I offer you a pledge of safe conduct. For the next day I will make no attempt to harm you by action or inaction as long as you stand within my arboretum." He bowed graciously. "You are my guest and will suffer no undue harm."
Maeve considered that for a moment. "And that creature - who is he?"
"Heka, my lady." I don't know if that smile could have been more creepy if I'd also been able to see the erection that I was positive accompanied it as Koschei spoke. "He who is owed most glorious torment at your hands."
It was probably the skeeviest thing I'd ever heard spoken. Or at least it was right up till Maeve replied with a single word that spoke volumes. "Heka."
The Winter Lady's pupils dilated reflexively, matching the purr of lust in her voice as she spoke that name. There are entire schools of magic that had less power to them than that word did. Obligation, rage, and the lust for vengeance played upon her frosty lips. "I would have your pledge that once you have given me him, you will do nothing to prevent me from giving him what is owed, Lord Koschei. Heka caused my predecessor great hurt. I will not tolerate any interruptions in the settlement of debts owed for old hurts upon my station."
Koschei clackled madly as he broke the circle by passing the platter over the summoning circle. "Done."
My heart raced furiously as lithe fingers grabbed me by the head, holding me up to eye level so that I could stare into the merciless pits of the Winter Lady. She disregarded Koschei entirely as she addressed my head, talons of ice extending from her armored gauntlets. She sliced away a piece of the apple in my mouth, popping it into her ice-blue lips. I listened to it shatter between her teeth, the sub-zero of her body turning it solid in seconds.
"I am not the master of torture my mother is, Lord Warden." Maeve purred, licking bits of frozen apple from her lips. "I am not fond of waiting. I have neither the patience nor the inclination to make pain last for the ages. But for the hurt done at Djer - the insult, the humiliation, I would see the one responsible suffer for eternity and a day."
She rolled my head between her talons of ice, idly examining it from all sides. I had to clench my eyes shut to stop the dizzy unnatural feeling of my head spinning independently from my body. "I have nightmares about it sometimes. Memories from the Lady who was. She was kinder than I - better in so many ways. And just to make a point - just to prove that they were a threat to Winter's power, the Goa'uld bound her in iron and violated her with the bane. A simple cut would have proved their point but they wanted to prove that they were stronger, to own her essence as much as her flesh."
Her lips virtually frothed with rage as she cut off another slice of apple. "Do you know what that's like, Warden? To be truly helpless? To have all the power in the world but only greater pain in your future. He broke her. He wounded her so deeply that the Winter Queen was forced to kill her own daughter to save her kingdom."
She turned to Koschei, her voice quivering with near sexual anticipation. "Heka is owned more violence and retribution than every favor I could add together could have bought me. The one who delivered that vengeance upon him is owed more than I could even begin to deliver."
"We can discuss obligation later - dear niece." The family word curled from Koschei's lips with contemptuous glee. "I do have a favor in mind."
Maeve looked up at her Uncle in mock confusion. "Oh - Uncle, I'm afraid you've misunderstood."
Koschei stiffened, power pooling at his fingertips reflexively. "Misunderstood?"
"Why yes, Uncle." Maeve ripped the apple from my lips. "Because this isn't Heka."
Koschei didn't have time to screech in fury before a lance of ice the length of a city bus rocketed out of the Winter Lady's hand. The baffled deathless one skittered across the ice, his tea-kettle screech of air echoing within the arboretum as he was projected back through the razor-sharp protrusions of ice.
I felt cold lips upon mine as skin the color of frozen berries met my own, an icy wave of healing cold shimmering through me before Maeve slammed my head back atop my crucified body. I gasped in shock as my neck healed in an instant, the power of Winter invigorating me with the primal need to survive. I hissed in shock as Maeve grinned at me with victory and lust in her eyes. "Maeve?"
"Yes beloved?" Maeve purred, licking her lips in a gesture would probably have been censored on daytime TV.
"Uh - thank you?"
"A debt is owed, beloved." Maeve moaned. "We can figure out payment later. For now, get yourself off this tree. I will protect you from my Uncle."
"How?" I snarled. "I'm stuck."
"Are you a god or not?" Maeve replied, a bored tone to her voice even as she protected me from a blast of caustic black light. It detonated with horrific power against her wall of frost and Maeve interposed herself between me and her Uncle as he tried to toss another spell at me.
Koschei hissed in fury, throwing foul insults at Maeve as she continued to provide a barrier between Koschei and the tree. The Deathless One's eyes bugged out in manic hatred as she did so, unable to harm her without breaking his pledge of safe passage. That wasn't the sort of thing that beings of power did - period. It would damage their power badly, and for someone who would be pissing off a Queen of Fairy in the process, damaged was as good as dead.
I struggled against my bonds, but there was just no way that I could get out of them without doing horrific pain and damage to myself. I'd have to rip my flesh to shreds to even try. It would kill me.
Wait a second.
Stars and stones, it would have killed Harry the Wizard. But I wasn't that wizard any more - was I? I was in a lot of pain but the winter power raging through just seemed to regard that power as an annoyance. Pain that didn't kill you was just noise. Focusing on that simple truth, I bent my legs against the tree.
The Oak grasped at me, flowering branches and boughs intertwining within my organs in protest to my movement. But even in the mystical world, put enough muscle into something and it will move forward. I kicked upward, casting a blast of magical force through my feet to ensure that the job was done.
If you've never forced a sword down through your abdomen and into your groin while a tree eviscerates your flesh and organs, I would strongly suggest avoiding it. Even if you have a body that puts itself back together, it's what I would describe as a suboptimal solution.
My body re-formed mid-air and I used a gust of ensorcelled air to re-direct my fall so that my foot collided with Koschei's jaw as he made a mad grab for the mordite blade still stuck in the tree. He flattened against the ground, ploughing a deep furrow in the frozen earth with his screaming face. "Cheaters! You damned cheats!"
I was blasted back by a bolt of force, tumbling up and into the tree's outstretched branches. The Oak tried to force me down, clearly intending to impale me a second time. I snarled "Fuck that!"
I crooked my fingers, pointing the ruby foci at the tree as I let the mantle of the Warden take control as I shouted, "Fuego!"
Silver-white fire spread out across the Oaks branches, igniting every inch of it in glowing flames. The oak howled, echoing with agony as ensorcelled flames ate into it. I didn't know exactly what sort of creature of construct it was, but when it doubt - burn it to the ground.
I fell to the ground painfully, groaning as my back broke against the frozen ground. Stars flashed in my eyes as my body knit them back together.
"No!" Koschei howled, turning a block of ice into water and flinging it at the oak. It re-directed itself back onto the frozen lake from a crook of Maeve's fingers.
"No, dear Uncle - not this time." Maeve cackled. "Today is the day that I take everything from you."
"Hateful slut." Koschei crowed. He moved across the ground, quick as a flash. I lifted my foci to blast him away from it, only for a cylinder to soar through the air and collide with the Son of Winter's head. He caught it in his hands, looking down at it in momentary confusion before the flash-bang grenade exploded in the man's face. I had only an instant to cover my ears and eyes before a handheld can of sensory overload went off.
Koschei screeched in pain and fury, staggering back from the blade as Marchenko whooped with glee. I'd practically forgotten the Russian was there, but the ornery Russian wasn't about to miss an opportunity to stick it to Koschei. The Son of Winter had barely gotten his bearings before another flash-bang landed at his feet and a lance of ice flung him away from his blade.
He stood up from the icy surface of the lake, utter hatred in his voice as he said. "You fools - you think you've won? You think you've proved anything? By the time you even realize your doom it will be too late."
And then, he was gone in a billowing mess of cloaks and jewelry. He soared up and into the hole he'd cut in the ceiling to enter. As he did so there was a shift in power, a taste on the air that was sickly sweet. Everything felt heavier, as though I were moving through molasses.
I looked at the Winter Lady. "What did he just do."
"He slowed down time, of course." Maeve sighed in exasperation. "It is a very practical course. The spell will increase in power as he moves away from us. We have only moments before it will be hours or even days passing for every second we are in here."
"Hell's Bells." Koschei had been a nightmare to fight even when he hadn't had advance notice to prepare wards and spells to kill me. "Can you counter it."
"No, beloved." Maeve replied calmly. "But it is inconsequential."
"It kind of feels important." I replied. "That whole time thing is a bitch and a half."
"You are not mortal, beloved." Maeve chuckled. "It is adorable how you still think in the terms of your chattel. Koschei has all but killed himself by taking your High Priestess."
"Because it pissed me off?" I walked over to the still burning oak, yanking Koschei's bade from it and considering it idly.
"Because she is your high priestess." The Winter Lady purred in amusement, emphasizing the last two words with significant implication. "And was praying for salvation."
"And her god can be summoned to her side in an instant." I replied breathlessly, almost dropping the sword. "I - I don't know… I've never summoned my entire body further than line of sight. I've just astral projected before. I don't even know if I can."
"You are incomplete." Maeve agreed, running a gauntleted finger across my pauldron lovingly. Her voice was utter sex as she crooned. "But there is enough winter in you to allow you to move once with minimal damage."
"Define minimal." I gulped, already knowing I was going to do it regardless. Damned conscience - always getting in the way.
"I know not, your mantle will protect you but there is always a price." Maeve shrugged. "I will show you how. But before you go, there is the matter of the blade."
"About that?" I hefted the green black of the blade. "Where the hell did Koschei get this much mordite?"
"He needed the protection." Maeve shifted away from the deathstone reflexively. Apparently Koschei's ability to touch the stuff didn't come from the Fairy side of the family.
I whistled long and low. "Mordite is one hell of a self defense."
"No, beloved." Maeve giggled girlishly, playing with one of her dreadlocks in amusement. "The mordite is there to prevent others from accessing what is within the blade."
I looked down at the deathstone saber - if I were looking for a guaranteed way to keep other people from messing with something I didn't want them to touch, mordite would definitely do the job. I grabbed the blade by the hilt and smashed it against the burning oak, sending a wave of magical force up it as I did so to direct the shrapnel. The stone, made brittle by the silver fire, shattered. Deathstone projectiles hammered into the scorching oak, revealing the blade beneath it.
It looked to be a blade of medieval make, designed for war rather than to impress people with the wealth of its wielder. But the simplicity of the weapon belied the power that seemed to be within it. If anything, the mordite exterior had been there to camouflage the blade within it. My eyes bulged as I read the lettering inscribed within the blade's hilt. "Is this what I think it is?"
"Clarent, the Sword of Peace." Maeve replied. "The blade Koschei stole from Mordred."
"The fucking Coward's Blade?" How was this thing fucking scarier without the mordite. "The weapon that killed freaking King Arthur?"
"It is a weapon made by Merlin's own hand." Maeve replied. "A weapon that even a Gate Builder must fear. It is no more evil than the one who wields it."
"You are going to be murder on my PR." I groaned as I grabbed my staff off the ground.
"I will be murder for many things for you." Maeve replied in a voice that was appetizing and terrifying at once. "But for now, I will simply protect your companions and free them from the spells afflicting them. I dare not leave this room. I am no equal for Koschei."
"And I am by my freaking self? He wiped the floor with me." I groaned. "Can't you come with me?"
"No." Maeve replied, her voice utter frost. "I have given you all that I may. Forget not that I am a guest within Buyan. But you are clever. I am confident that you will prevail."
The Coward's blade felt hungry in my hand as I swallowed nervously. "How do I allow myself to be summoned?"
"Why, beloved, that is the simplest part." Maeve purred. "One simply has to truly know how to listen."
Last edited:
RichardWhereat
Feanor did nothing wrong.
- Location
- Australia
I whistled long and low. "Mordie is one hell of a self defense."
Mordite
The Cowards Blade? I've never heard of this before, something unique to your story? Or did I skim too much when reading?
EDIT:
Clarent – King Arthur's sword of peace. Also known as the Coward's Blade, as it is the sword Mordred, his son, stole and later used to kill King Arthur. [Source]
The Alliterative Morte Arthure, a Middle English poem, mentions Clarent, a sword of peace meant for knighting and ceremonies as opposed to battle, which Mordred stole and then used to kill Arthur at Camlann. [Source]
Mordite
The Cowards Blade? I've never heard of this before, something unique to your story? Or did I skim too much when reading?
EDIT:
Clarent – King Arthur's sword of peace. Also known as the Coward's Blade, as it is the sword Mordred, his son, stole and later used to kill King Arthur. [Source]
The Alliterative Morte Arthure, a Middle English poem, mentions Clarent, a sword of peace meant for knighting and ceremonies as opposed to battle, which Mordred stole and then used to kill Arthur at Camlann. [Source]
Because of his cowardys he keste of his atyre, 4186
Bot the comliche kyng knewe hym full swythe, 4187
Karpis to Sir Cadors þes kyndly wordez: 4188
"I see þe traytoure come ȝondyr trynande full ȝerne: 4189
Ȝone ladde with þe lyones es like to hym selfen; 4190
Hym sall torfere betyde, may I touche ones, 4191
For all his treson and trayne, alls I am trew lorde. 4192
Today Clarente and Caliburne sall kythe them togedirs, 4193
Whilke es kenere of kerfe or hardare of eghge; 4194
Fraiste sall we fyne stele appone fyne wedis. 4195
Itt was my derlyng daynteuous and full dere holden, 4196
Kepede fore encorownmentes of kynges enoynttede; 4197
One dayes when I dubbyde dukkes and erlles, 4198
It was burliche borne be þe bryghte hiltes; 4199
I durste neuer dere it in dedis of armes, 4200
Bot euer kepide clene, because of my seluen. 4201
For I see Clarent vnclede, þat crowne es of swerdes, 4202
My wardrop of Walyngfordhe I wate es distroyede; 4203
Wist no wy wone bot Waynor hir seluen; 4204
Scho hade þe kepynge hir selfe of þat kydde wapyn, 4205
Off cofres enclosede þat to þe crown lengede, 4206
With rynges and relikkes and þe Regale of Fraunce, 4207
That was fownden on Sir Froll when he was feye leuyde." 4208
Bot the comliche kyng knewe hym full swythe, 4187
Karpis to Sir Cadors þes kyndly wordez: 4188
"I see þe traytoure come ȝondyr trynande full ȝerne: 4189
Ȝone ladde with þe lyones es like to hym selfen; 4190
Hym sall torfere betyde, may I touche ones, 4191
For all his treson and trayne, alls I am trew lorde. 4192
Today Clarente and Caliburne sall kythe them togedirs, 4193
Whilke es kenere of kerfe or hardare of eghge; 4194
Fraiste sall we fyne stele appone fyne wedis. 4195
Itt was my derlyng daynteuous and full dere holden, 4196
Kepede fore encorownmentes of kynges enoynttede; 4197
One dayes when I dubbyde dukkes and erlles, 4198
It was burliche borne be þe bryghte hiltes; 4199
I durste neuer dere it in dedis of armes, 4200
Bot euer kepide clene, because of my seluen. 4201
For I see Clarent vnclede, þat crowne es of swerdes, 4202
My wardrop of Walyngfordhe I wate es distroyede; 4203
Wist no wy wone bot Waynor hir seluen; 4204
Scho hade þe kepynge hir selfe of þat kydde wapyn, 4205
Off cofres enclosede þat to þe crown lengede, 4206
With rynges and relikkes and þe Regale of Fraunce, 4207
That was fownden on Sir Froll when he was feye leuyde." 4208
Engage our middle-rank and grapple together:
He had hidden in the rear, within the wood's edge,
With a whole host on the health-woe is the more.
He had watched that clash clear to the end,
How our knights had fared by fortine in arms;
He knew our folk were fought out and fated to fall,
And he swiftly decides now to set on the King.
But that churl's son had changed his charge:
His engrailed saltire he had set aside, I swear,
And instead seized three lions of burnished bright silver,
Passant on scarlet, richly studded with stones,
So the King might not know the cunning wretch.
On account of his cowardice he cast off his garb,
But our soverign spotted him right from the start,
And spoke to Sir Cador these timely words:
"I see the traitor come yonder trotting all hot;
Yonder lord with the lions is like him exactly;
Grief will befall him, if I seize him just once,
For all his treason and treachery, as I am a true lord!
Today Clarent and Caliburn, blade to blade, shall make
clear
Which is cleaner of cut or keener of edge;
We shall size up fine steel against fine garb.
It was my great pride, so preciously prized;
It was kept for crownings of sanctified kingsl
and on days when I dubbed dukes and earls,
It was born in procession by the bright hilt;
I never ventured to damage it in deeds of arms,
But kept it ever perfect at my own pleasure.
Now that I see Clarent uncased that crown of all swords,
My vault at Wallingford I know well is laid waste:
No-one knew of that site, but Guinevere herself;
She herself had safekeeping of that splendid blade,
And of sealed coffers that belong to the crown,
Holding rings and relics and the Regal of France,
That were found on Sir Frollow, when he was felled on the
field."
Then Sir Marrik, maddened takes on Mordred
straightaway,
The alliterative Morte Arthure : a new verse translation : Krishna, Valerie : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
He had hidden in the rear, within the wood's edge,
With a whole host on the health-woe is the more.
He had watched that clash clear to the end,
How our knights had fared by fortine in arms;
He knew our folk were fought out and fated to fall,
And he swiftly decides now to set on the King.
But that churl's son had changed his charge:
His engrailed saltire he had set aside, I swear,
And instead seized three lions of burnished bright silver,
Passant on scarlet, richly studded with stones,
So the King might not know the cunning wretch.
On account of his cowardice he cast off his garb,
But our soverign spotted him right from the start,
And spoke to Sir Cador these timely words:
"I see the traitor come yonder trotting all hot;
Yonder lord with the lions is like him exactly;
Grief will befall him, if I seize him just once,
For all his treason and treachery, as I am a true lord!
Today Clarent and Caliburn, blade to blade, shall make
clear
Which is cleaner of cut or keener of edge;
We shall size up fine steel against fine garb.
It was my great pride, so preciously prized;
It was kept for crownings of sanctified kingsl
and on days when I dubbed dukes and earls,
It was born in procession by the bright hilt;
I never ventured to damage it in deeds of arms,
But kept it ever perfect at my own pleasure.
Now that I see Clarent uncased that crown of all swords,
My vault at Wallingford I know well is laid waste:
No-one knew of that site, but Guinevere herself;
She herself had safekeeping of that splendid blade,
And of sealed coffers that belong to the crown,
Holding rings and relics and the Regal of France,
That were found on Sir Frollow, when he was felled on the
field."
Then Sir Marrik, maddened takes on Mordred
straightaway,
The alliterative Morte Arthure : a new verse translation : Krishna, Valerie : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
Last edited:
Neruz
Rogue Spiderbanana
- Location
- The Land of Fire and Poison
"Heka is owned more violence and retribution than every favor I could add together could have bought me. The one who delivered that vengeance upon him is owed more than I could even begin to deliver."
Oh boy, Winter apparently owes either Lash or Ha'ri a gigantic debt, and Maeve seems to find the idea of Heka's body and divinity being stolen by one of his hosts to be an incredible turn on. +1 psychotic fairy girlfriend.
Yup, the Coward's Blade is the sword Mordred used to kill King Arthur. That sword is about as cursed\corrupted as it is possible to get, mythologically speaking.
Oh boy, Winter apparently owes either Lash or Ha'ri a gigantic debt, and Maeve seems to find the idea of Heka's body and divinity being stolen by one of his hosts to be an incredible turn on. +1 psychotic fairy girlfriend.
Yup, the Coward's Blade is the sword Mordred used to kill King Arthur. That sword is about as cursed\corrupted as it is possible to get, mythologically speaking.
Last edited:
