Post by Duke Bippwatt on Aug 9, 2013 23:30:31 GMT -5
(Just a story to wrap up one of my characters)
The man walked alone down the night-darkened street, reading the book silently, the stanza's flowing through his mind.
'Once upon a Midnight Dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door--
Only this, and nothing more."'
The man stopped muttering the poem under his breath and kept walking.
A dozen steps later, he stopped and threw back his head, yelling the next verse for all the silent, dark city to hear.
'Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore;
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door--
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door--
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.
Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
"Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no craven,
Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the Nightly shore--
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!"
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."'
This line was proclaimed, for the world to hear. And then silence fell. The man closed the book and shook his head.
A fool, Torunescru. That's all you are., the man thought bitingly.
He walked silently, when he heard a scream. A high, shrill scream of terror. He instantly went still, manifesting several powers at once. All around his body, air stiffened and became firm. On his right arm, a disk of focused power formed, creating a shield that could not be pierced. And on his left fist, power swirled and a long blade of energy coaleced.
The man sprang down the hill and moved as the wind.
Another scream rang out and he shifted his course. He sprang over a garbage dumpster and landed on his feet running.
"Alastair..."
The man braked hard. He turned. "Rahedi? What are you doing here?"
"A warning...death approches you, Alastair. My augrey shows me this. You will not live to see the next falling sun."
"Damn. I hate divination."
"Go quickly. You must prevent another's death first."
Alastair spun again and ran. He pounded out onto a parking lot and saw the source of the screams. A woman in a car...and the car under assault by a bevy of...demons?
He charged. "TORUNESCRU!" he bellowed.
With a psionically boosted leap, he fell upon them. With a swing of his mind blade, he felled three of the lesser demons.
The rest realized they were under attack and shifted their focus. With a roar, they took swipes at him. His defenses blocked their attacks. And his mind blade took another three unholy beasts.
Alastair suddenly found himself surrounded by a platoon of the hidious things.
"Wow. You guys need to take a shower. Here, lemme help!" He thrust out a hand and sent half of them flying into a nearby pond.
The other half fell quickly to his combo of mind blade and bursts of various psionic power.
Finally, he was alone. A boom thundered behind him. Or not. He turned slowly. There was a huge giant of a demon standing there. Of course.
"Goddamn, do you guys ever know when to give up?"
"No, we never give up. We never surrender."
"Galaxy Quest referances? Well, I'll be damned." Alastair leapt up and drew his steel blade, scoring the demon's left shoulder. With a backleap, he removed the left arm.
"Graaaahhh! Puny human! Die!" The right hand came up and brought a massive hammer down. Alastair rolled to the left and scowled.
"Idiot. I just took your arm off!"
"This? Bah! Just a flesh wound."
"Monty Python now?", he muttered.
"You shall not pass!"
"Good god! Now Lord of the Rings? What's next? Matrix?"
"I am the one!"
"Goddamn...why did I say anything?" During their banter, Alastair dodged another pair of slams from the hammer and cut several shallow cuts along the legs. "I should shut up now, but I imagine you're going to move on to...Terminator!"
"Run from me if you want to live!"
"Oh, now you're just pulling my leg. Time to finish this." Alastair leapt forward, pushing his sword ahead of him. He fell past and landed hard on his feet.
He stood tall as the giant's head slid off it's shoulders. He flicked the sword and sheathed it, dismissing his manifested defenses. "Now, let's get this car op-"
The spines took him in the side. Agony lanced down the left side of his body, but he retained enough sense to see a sniper demon slide into view. The pnematic valves on the sides of it's head hissed and the ejecta valve spat out the squishy casings from the three spines now sticking out of the side of Alastair's body.
He scowled. Why hadn't Rahedi said he wouldn't live to see the dawn? That would have been more helpful.
Then, as he fell to his knees, feeling the poison weaking his body, he saw the car door open.
"No! No! Get back in there!" he screamed. Or tried to. What came out was a hoarse whisper.
He saw the woman raise her hands. Before he could translate the object in her hands as a gun, the .50 Caliber Hand Cannon boomed once, twice, three, four, five, six, seven, eight times.
His vision darkened and he remembered nothing more.
He floated back into wakefulness. He felt a soft bed beneath him. Heavy blankets covered him. He tasted...juniper berries. The natural cure to hellcur poison, the most common poison for sniper demons to use on their spines.
Someone had cured him. And tended his wounds. The way he felt...
He sat up, slowly, carefully. The way he felt, it had to be at least four days since the attack. So...Rahedi's prophesy had been wrong. Surprise, surprise. Either that, or he had been tended by one badass cleric. In which case, that meant the woman he had saved (at least, he really hoped he'd saved her) had brought him here. Else, she would have smote those demons with divine power, instead of shooting at one with a handgun. A Hand Cannon, to be sure, but still a handgun.
He opened his eyes. A woman was bent over a desk about ten feet away. He tried to speak, but moaned instead, his dry throat cracking on him.
She turned at the sound and flashed a dazzling smile at him.
"Hello, there. Gave me quite the scare there. Couldn't figure out what was wrong with you for a bit. Then I smelled the sickly sweet smell from the spines. I took a guess." Then she translated his motions and started. "Oh! Sorry! I imagine your throat is probably pretty dry." She grabbed a cup and filled it with water from a Sparkletts water cooler.
Dropping a straw into it, she held it for Alastair while he captured the straw between his lips and began to slowly sip the water. A few minutes later, he had drained the cup. He brought his hands up, fingertips on each hand pressed together, then tapped the two groups of fingertips to each other twice.
The woman nodded and smiled. She got up and filled the cup again. The process was repeated again. When Alastair finished this time, he brought his left hand to his mouth, fingers pointed up toward his nose, thumb tucked behind his palm and pulled it forward once.
She mirrored the gesture and said "You're welcome. Can you speak, now?" When the wounded man nodded, she went on. "What's your name?"
"Alastair, mi'lady."
"'Mi'lady? No, no. That won't do at all. You saved my life tonight. You should call me by my first name, since you have given me yours. I'm Ivanava.."
"Ivanava. It's a good name. Strong."
She laughed, a clear chime of sound. "I guess. You can call me Ivy, though. It's a bit cumbersome for everyday use."
"Thank you for healing me, Ivy." Something of her wording before struck him like a bolt of lightning. "Tonight? It's still the same night?"
"Yes....uh. Why?"
"Just...seems odd. I feel a lot better than I should for having my side pumped full of hellcur poison less than half a day ago."
"Hellcur, is it? I was wondering...."
"Yes. A common poison for sniper demons. It causes intense pain and locks down the mucsles while a slower acting reagent eats away at your cells, essentially the biological equivlent of a computer virus." He c*cked his head. "How did you heal me so fast? Are you a cleric? A druid, perhaps?"
"No...I'm a doctor. A medical doctor." she clarified.
Alastair smiled softly. "I suppose that might be it,", he said softly ",but I expect there is more to you than meets the eye."
"Well, I'm not a robot in disguise...that I can assure you."
"A Transformers referance? Nicely done." His smile grew into a boyish grin.
Ivy smiled back and Alastair's heart skipped a beat. It had been far too many years since a woman had smiled at him like that. It made him feel very young again, which, while he wasn't that old, he had lived more in his thirty-two years than most men lived in sixty-four.
He gazed up (still being in the bed and her sitting on the side of the bed, looking down at him) at Ivy, into her eyes. Green. Endless green.
"Your eyes are beautiful..." The comment so paralleled his own thoughts that he jerked, startled by the apparent mind-reading. She felt the motion and her expression fell and was replaced by one of professional detachment, obviously misinterpreting the reason behind the movement. "I am sorry. I presume too much.", she said.
Alastair reached out a hand. "No, no! Not at all. It just...surprised me, for I was thinking the same thing."
"Indeed? You do not jest with me? That would be in bad taste."
"I swear it."
"Good." She straightened the coverings on the bed and felt his forehead with the back of her hand. "You feel a bit warm..."
"I am a bit warm. This is a bit too much covering for mid-August here in Red Blood City..."
"Oh! Durp. Here, I'll take the comforter and heating blanket away. You got the chills shortly before you woke up, so I had to cover you up with lot's of stuff."
He felt instantly better once the heavy comforter came off, but his relief was palpable when the heating blanket vanished. The lesser weight also allowed him to shift a bit and get a feel for his injuries. Not too bad. Seemed like she had managed to pull the spines, leaving nothing behind. The way his side felt, she had also managed to avoid the barbs snagging and ripping his flesh open.
"I have to say, for someone with no magic, you faired well against demon wounds. Especially ones with a demonic poison in them."
She smiled at him as she brought more water over. "Here. Drink up. You need to hydrate your body."
"Yes, mi'lady...", the Soulknife replied. This time he held the cup while slowly sucking down the water. When it was empty, he held it aloft triumphantly. "As you commanded, mi'lady, so has it been done. The delicious water hath been slain.", he said in a knightly voice.
"Good. Now you have my everlasting praise and love, Sir Knight.", Ivy said in her best aristocratic lady voice. She sobered and continued. "You certainly have my everlasting thanks, Alastair."
"Nonsense! We're even. I saved you, you saved me!"
"I hardly did anything..."
"Ivy...you did everything. If not for you, I would be dead now. Or worse..."
"What's worse than death?"
"Being a hellhound..."
"Oh...sh*t . Hellcur poison...that's what it changes you to?"
"Yeah. It's not pleasant."
"Okay...good to know." She shook herself. "Let's change the subject..."
"Okay. How about that local sports team?" He said deadpan.
She looked at him for half a second, then started laughing, rolling onto her side and cluching her ribs. He began to chuckle, and soon they both devolved into laughing messes.
Almost instantly though, Alastair's wounds objected slightly to the humorous mood. He sucked in a sharp breath as a muscle spasmed.
"Ouch...that kinda hurt."
"Where?", Ivy asked. When he put a hand near the area, she inspected the area Alastair's hand was pointed to.
Her hands were soft and deft, unbinding the bandage and looking at the problem.
"Seems alright..."
Alastair closed his eyes as her hands flickered over his skin. Crap. Crap. Baseball! Think about baseball. Red Sox were looking good this year...
David Ortiz would give them a good foot up, but if they didn't get some good movers in left field, they were as good as dead. Maybe if they threw some curveballs?..Speaking of curves, Ivy's were very distracting.
No! Bases empty, bottom of the third, three to zero against, very, very unsexy!
"Alastair?" He heard Ivy's perplexed voice.
"Uh...yeah?"
"Are you okay?"
"Uh, yeah. Totally. Yeah, pssht. Completely fine. I'm as fine as...as. Fine as frog's hair!" He opened his eyes and focused on the popcorn celling. Suddenly, Ivy appeared directly above him, her long black hair falling down, tenting around his face.
"You, sir, look guilty." She said with a smirk.
"Uh...you look...beautiful..."
"Ah, flatterer."
"It's not flattery if it's true...or maybe it is, but it's good."
"Good, eh?" Ivy moved and curled against him. Her voice whispered next to his ear. "How do you feel?"
"Good. I figure I'll be 100% before dawn."
"Good...I want you, Alastair. I want you to be mine."
He turned around to face her and his breath caught. "I...we...we shouldn't."
"Yes. Yes, we should." She smiled and rolled on top of him...
He awoke slowly, langerously.
Alastair opened his eyes and saw a back door, morning light streaming through the curtains on it. He swung his legs off the bed, slowly and quietly extricating himself from the bed.
He stood, found his shirt and pants. Putting them on, he opened the door and stepped out onto a balcony. He smiled as he looked over.
About an hour later, Ivy stepped out onto the balcony, fully cloathed. "Hey...I need to run some errands. You gonna be alright?"
"Yeah. I'll just chill here."
"Okay. I love you."
"Love you, too..."
She left and he looked down, waiting. Sure enough, he saw her distinctive sky blue hybrid car roll out onto the street.
He looked back up. He lost track of time, scanning the horizon.
Alastair turned around and began to sit on a chair. Some sixth sense warned him and he spun around again.
The bullet took him high in the left shoulder. The second one took him in the throat. It missed his arteries, but not his windpipe. Then he heard the distinctive crack, crack that a high-powered supersonic sniper rifle makes at long ranges. The analytical part of his mind processed the imput dispassionately.
Between the angle and the sound, he scanned the area he figured the shot had to have come from. Three kilometers away, his eyes locked with those of the sniper, who froze.
As Alastair fell to his knees, he forced his way into his killer's mind, utterly devastating the woman's sanity. He found who had hired the assassin and withdrew.
With his last thoughts, he drew in all of his psionic power. All of it. Every last dreg. A couple of times, he had drained himself so badly that he fell unconscience. This was worse. He was draining himself so much that he would kill himself. But he was already dead. All that mattered was his death curse.
His face siezed in a rictus of pain and victorious revenge.
Despite his lack of breath, he still managed to speak. Roughly and not loudly, but speak he did.
"I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desart. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."
He snarled. "I look on your works and I do not despair, Theodréd Kingkiller. I feel neither pity nor mercy. I curse you with Ozymandias' Curse. You shall fall to ruin and none shall remember you save as a single paragraph in a history text..."
And then, he fell silent, slumping forward, crumpling under his weight. His straining lungs pulled taught, then slackened. His laboring heart beat once, twice...then froze forever.
His blood pooled about his body and the slight smell of sudden, violent death hung over the balcony. The swirl of power he had summmoned flashed outward, shattering the glass on the balcony door. It tore across the planet and struck thirteen men, killing them painfullly by tearing their hearts apart.
Two Hours Later
Finally, she thought. Home again. I can't wait to see how he's doing.
The bags in her hands from her grocery shopping, she pulled out her keys and opened her door. The moment the door opened, she knew something was wrong. She wasn't sure how she knew. Maybe it was the fact that the kitchen was still pristeen. Maybe it was that Alastair's sword and bow hadn't moved even an inch...
She couldn't explain it.
She deposited her load of groceries in the kitchen, then moved to the bedroom. Not there. Was he still out on the balcony? That had been three hours ago! She looked at the door and gasped. The glass was shattered. Was someone in the house?
She drew the .45 she had holstered on her hip and moved slowly, already fearing the worst.
She opened the door to the balcony, bending around the doorframe. She let out a strangled sound and looked around. She might have screamed, but the shock was too great and she'd already half-feared it.
She moved to his side, careful to avoid the pools of blood. She tried to put a pair of fingers to his throat, but when she saw the mangled mess of said throat, she abandoned the effort. Based on what she had felt, he had been gone awhile now.
She was clearly able to identifiy two bullet wounds. One in the shoulder, one in the throat. High-caliber by the looks of it. Angles suggested...she glared out across to the one building that had a similar height to where her floor was. Sniper.
Nothing she could do, though. Time to call the police.
"Ma'am, can you explain what happened?"
The way the officer said ma'am reminded her of how Alastair called her mi'lady. She clamped down hard on the emotions that boiled up at that thought.
"I wasn't actually here. I was shopping. But when I came home I found the balcony door shattered and Alastair dead."
"Is anything missing, ma'am? Did the intruders take anything?"
"No. Nothing's missing. There weren't intruders. He was killed from range is my guess. Extreme range. I would check on or near the roof of the apartment building at First and Vinewood."
"Ma'am? What leads you to belive that?"
Ivy arched an eyebrow at the officer. "Do your forensics if you don't belive me. I'm a ER Trama Surgeon down at Red Blood Memorial Hospital. I've seen plenty of gunshot wounds and seen the results of the investigations. I think I can identify a sniper shooting when I see one. Unless I miss my guess, you'll find that the gun was a .50 caliber. Probably going to be a Berrett M107. You know, those really nasty rifles that US Marines typically use?"
The officer nodded. "Okay, ma'am. Thank you. Make sure you stay in town so we can ask more questions later."
Translation: So we can throw you in jail if your guesses turn out to be terrifingly correct...
Please, she thought. Amatures. She needed to talk to the detective...but that wouldn't happen.
Oh, well. She would survive.
Two weeks later
Ivy sat impatiently in the exam room. The case regarding Alastair's murder had been succinctly wrapped up when a half crazed woman had been found next to (surprise, surprise) a Berrett M107 sniper rifle, set up to make perfect shots on Ivy's balcony. The two spent casings next to the weapon had pretty much summed it all up.
After Balistics had their fun, the perp's confession was almost surpurfluous. The obviously insane woman had almost gotten off on an insanity case, but when her psychiatrist took the stand and said she had met with her client less than a week before the crime and she had been perfectly mentally stable...?
After which the cities foremost psionicst expert examined her and said the insanity was one hundred and ten percent caused by psionic assault of her mind. Then Ivy herself took the stand, verifing for the jury that Alastair Torunescru was, in fact, a potently powerful psion.
At that point, the woman was doomed. She was sentenced to forty years without parole. But she never served it.
Unlike whoever hired the woman to kill Alastair, Ivy wasn't afraid to get her hands dirty. Calling in a favor or two with a mage, she was able lift the M107 from the evidence locker.
The one bullet she had took the woman in the heart. Revenge was served.
Her face was a tight snarl of rage...until the door opened and Doctor Snorry Yotersonn, a distinguished looking man that smelled of wolf and raw meat, walked into the room.
"Well, Ivy. I've got some good news for you." he said, his beard bobbling as he spoke.
"Okay. What's that?"
"You're pregnant."
"What." she asked, dumbfounded.
((DONE!!))
Sent from my OG Droid using Proboards Mobile App.
The man walked alone down the night-darkened street, reading the book silently, the stanza's flowing through his mind.
'Once upon a Midnight Dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door--
Only this, and nothing more."'
The man stopped muttering the poem under his breath and kept walking.
A dozen steps later, he stopped and threw back his head, yelling the next verse for all the silent, dark city to hear.
'Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore;
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door--
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door--
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.
Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
"Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no craven,
Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the Nightly shore--
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!"
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."'
This line was proclaimed, for the world to hear. And then silence fell. The man closed the book and shook his head.
A fool, Torunescru. That's all you are., the man thought bitingly.
He walked silently, when he heard a scream. A high, shrill scream of terror. He instantly went still, manifesting several powers at once. All around his body, air stiffened and became firm. On his right arm, a disk of focused power formed, creating a shield that could not be pierced. And on his left fist, power swirled and a long blade of energy coaleced.
The man sprang down the hill and moved as the wind.
Another scream rang out and he shifted his course. He sprang over a garbage dumpster and landed on his feet running.
"Alastair..."
The man braked hard. He turned. "Rahedi? What are you doing here?"
"A warning...death approches you, Alastair. My augrey shows me this. You will not live to see the next falling sun."
"Damn. I hate divination."
"Go quickly. You must prevent another's death first."
Alastair spun again and ran. He pounded out onto a parking lot and saw the source of the screams. A woman in a car...and the car under assault by a bevy of...demons?
He charged. "TORUNESCRU!" he bellowed.
With a psionically boosted leap, he fell upon them. With a swing of his mind blade, he felled three of the lesser demons.
The rest realized they were under attack and shifted their focus. With a roar, they took swipes at him. His defenses blocked their attacks. And his mind blade took another three unholy beasts.
Alastair suddenly found himself surrounded by a platoon of the hidious things.
"Wow. You guys need to take a shower. Here, lemme help!" He thrust out a hand and sent half of them flying into a nearby pond.
The other half fell quickly to his combo of mind blade and bursts of various psionic power.
Finally, he was alone. A boom thundered behind him. Or not. He turned slowly. There was a huge giant of a demon standing there. Of course.
"Goddamn, do you guys ever know when to give up?"
"No, we never give up. We never surrender."
"Galaxy Quest referances? Well, I'll be damned." Alastair leapt up and drew his steel blade, scoring the demon's left shoulder. With a backleap, he removed the left arm.
"Graaaahhh! Puny human! Die!" The right hand came up and brought a massive hammer down. Alastair rolled to the left and scowled.
"Idiot. I just took your arm off!"
"This? Bah! Just a flesh wound."
"Monty Python now?", he muttered.
"You shall not pass!"
"Good god! Now Lord of the Rings? What's next? Matrix?"
"I am the one!"
"Goddamn...why did I say anything?" During their banter, Alastair dodged another pair of slams from the hammer and cut several shallow cuts along the legs. "I should shut up now, but I imagine you're going to move on to...Terminator!"
"Run from me if you want to live!"
"Oh, now you're just pulling my leg. Time to finish this." Alastair leapt forward, pushing his sword ahead of him. He fell past and landed hard on his feet.
He stood tall as the giant's head slid off it's shoulders. He flicked the sword and sheathed it, dismissing his manifested defenses. "Now, let's get this car op-"
The spines took him in the side. Agony lanced down the left side of his body, but he retained enough sense to see a sniper demon slide into view. The pnematic valves on the sides of it's head hissed and the ejecta valve spat out the squishy casings from the three spines now sticking out of the side of Alastair's body.
He scowled. Why hadn't Rahedi said he wouldn't live to see the dawn? That would have been more helpful.
Then, as he fell to his knees, feeling the poison weaking his body, he saw the car door open.
"No! No! Get back in there!" he screamed. Or tried to. What came out was a hoarse whisper.
He saw the woman raise her hands. Before he could translate the object in her hands as a gun, the .50 Caliber Hand Cannon boomed once, twice, three, four, five, six, seven, eight times.
His vision darkened and he remembered nothing more.
He floated back into wakefulness. He felt a soft bed beneath him. Heavy blankets covered him. He tasted...juniper berries. The natural cure to hellcur poison, the most common poison for sniper demons to use on their spines.
Someone had cured him. And tended his wounds. The way he felt...
He sat up, slowly, carefully. The way he felt, it had to be at least four days since the attack. So...Rahedi's prophesy had been wrong. Surprise, surprise. Either that, or he had been tended by one badass cleric. In which case, that meant the woman he had saved (at least, he really hoped he'd saved her) had brought him here. Else, she would have smote those demons with divine power, instead of shooting at one with a handgun. A Hand Cannon, to be sure, but still a handgun.
He opened his eyes. A woman was bent over a desk about ten feet away. He tried to speak, but moaned instead, his dry throat cracking on him.
She turned at the sound and flashed a dazzling smile at him.
"Hello, there. Gave me quite the scare there. Couldn't figure out what was wrong with you for a bit. Then I smelled the sickly sweet smell from the spines. I took a guess." Then she translated his motions and started. "Oh! Sorry! I imagine your throat is probably pretty dry." She grabbed a cup and filled it with water from a Sparkletts water cooler.
Dropping a straw into it, she held it for Alastair while he captured the straw between his lips and began to slowly sip the water. A few minutes later, he had drained the cup. He brought his hands up, fingertips on each hand pressed together, then tapped the two groups of fingertips to each other twice.
The woman nodded and smiled. She got up and filled the cup again. The process was repeated again. When Alastair finished this time, he brought his left hand to his mouth, fingers pointed up toward his nose, thumb tucked behind his palm and pulled it forward once.
She mirrored the gesture and said "You're welcome. Can you speak, now?" When the wounded man nodded, she went on. "What's your name?"
"Alastair, mi'lady."
"'Mi'lady? No, no. That won't do at all. You saved my life tonight. You should call me by my first name, since you have given me yours. I'm Ivanava.."
"Ivanava. It's a good name. Strong."
She laughed, a clear chime of sound. "I guess. You can call me Ivy, though. It's a bit cumbersome for everyday use."
"Thank you for healing me, Ivy." Something of her wording before struck him like a bolt of lightning. "Tonight? It's still the same night?"
"Yes....uh. Why?"
"Just...seems odd. I feel a lot better than I should for having my side pumped full of hellcur poison less than half a day ago."
"Hellcur, is it? I was wondering...."
"Yes. A common poison for sniper demons. It causes intense pain and locks down the mucsles while a slower acting reagent eats away at your cells, essentially the biological equivlent of a computer virus." He c*cked his head. "How did you heal me so fast? Are you a cleric? A druid, perhaps?"
"No...I'm a doctor. A medical doctor." she clarified.
Alastair smiled softly. "I suppose that might be it,", he said softly ",but I expect there is more to you than meets the eye."
"Well, I'm not a robot in disguise...that I can assure you."
"A Transformers referance? Nicely done." His smile grew into a boyish grin.
Ivy smiled back and Alastair's heart skipped a beat. It had been far too many years since a woman had smiled at him like that. It made him feel very young again, which, while he wasn't that old, he had lived more in his thirty-two years than most men lived in sixty-four.
He gazed up (still being in the bed and her sitting on the side of the bed, looking down at him) at Ivy, into her eyes. Green. Endless green.
"Your eyes are beautiful..." The comment so paralleled his own thoughts that he jerked, startled by the apparent mind-reading. She felt the motion and her expression fell and was replaced by one of professional detachment, obviously misinterpreting the reason behind the movement. "I am sorry. I presume too much.", she said.
Alastair reached out a hand. "No, no! Not at all. It just...surprised me, for I was thinking the same thing."
"Indeed? You do not jest with me? That would be in bad taste."
"I swear it."
"Good." She straightened the coverings on the bed and felt his forehead with the back of her hand. "You feel a bit warm..."
"I am a bit warm. This is a bit too much covering for mid-August here in Red Blood City..."
"Oh! Durp. Here, I'll take the comforter and heating blanket away. You got the chills shortly before you woke up, so I had to cover you up with lot's of stuff."
He felt instantly better once the heavy comforter came off, but his relief was palpable when the heating blanket vanished. The lesser weight also allowed him to shift a bit and get a feel for his injuries. Not too bad. Seemed like she had managed to pull the spines, leaving nothing behind. The way his side felt, she had also managed to avoid the barbs snagging and ripping his flesh open.
"I have to say, for someone with no magic, you faired well against demon wounds. Especially ones with a demonic poison in them."
She smiled at him as she brought more water over. "Here. Drink up. You need to hydrate your body."
"Yes, mi'lady...", the Soulknife replied. This time he held the cup while slowly sucking down the water. When it was empty, he held it aloft triumphantly. "As you commanded, mi'lady, so has it been done. The delicious water hath been slain.", he said in a knightly voice.
"Good. Now you have my everlasting praise and love, Sir Knight.", Ivy said in her best aristocratic lady voice. She sobered and continued. "You certainly have my everlasting thanks, Alastair."
"Nonsense! We're even. I saved you, you saved me!"
"I hardly did anything..."
"Ivy...you did everything. If not for you, I would be dead now. Or worse..."
"What's worse than death?"
"Being a hellhound..."
"Oh...sh*t . Hellcur poison...that's what it changes you to?"
"Yeah. It's not pleasant."
"Okay...good to know." She shook herself. "Let's change the subject..."
"Okay. How about that local sports team?" He said deadpan.
She looked at him for half a second, then started laughing, rolling onto her side and cluching her ribs. He began to chuckle, and soon they both devolved into laughing messes.
Almost instantly though, Alastair's wounds objected slightly to the humorous mood. He sucked in a sharp breath as a muscle spasmed.
"Ouch...that kinda hurt."
"Where?", Ivy asked. When he put a hand near the area, she inspected the area Alastair's hand was pointed to.
Her hands were soft and deft, unbinding the bandage and looking at the problem.
"Seems alright..."
Alastair closed his eyes as her hands flickered over his skin. Crap. Crap. Baseball! Think about baseball. Red Sox were looking good this year...
David Ortiz would give them a good foot up, but if they didn't get some good movers in left field, they were as good as dead. Maybe if they threw some curveballs?..Speaking of curves, Ivy's were very distracting.
No! Bases empty, bottom of the third, three to zero against, very, very unsexy!
"Alastair?" He heard Ivy's perplexed voice.
"Uh...yeah?"
"Are you okay?"
"Uh, yeah. Totally. Yeah, pssht. Completely fine. I'm as fine as...as. Fine as frog's hair!" He opened his eyes and focused on the popcorn celling. Suddenly, Ivy appeared directly above him, her long black hair falling down, tenting around his face.
"You, sir, look guilty." She said with a smirk.
"Uh...you look...beautiful..."
"Ah, flatterer."
"It's not flattery if it's true...or maybe it is, but it's good."
"Good, eh?" Ivy moved and curled against him. Her voice whispered next to his ear. "How do you feel?"
"Good. I figure I'll be 100% before dawn."
"Good...I want you, Alastair. I want you to be mine."
He turned around to face her and his breath caught. "I...we...we shouldn't."
"Yes. Yes, we should." She smiled and rolled on top of him...
He awoke slowly, langerously.
Alastair opened his eyes and saw a back door, morning light streaming through the curtains on it. He swung his legs off the bed, slowly and quietly extricating himself from the bed.
He stood, found his shirt and pants. Putting them on, he opened the door and stepped out onto a balcony. He smiled as he looked over.
About an hour later, Ivy stepped out onto the balcony, fully cloathed. "Hey...I need to run some errands. You gonna be alright?"
"Yeah. I'll just chill here."
"Okay. I love you."
"Love you, too..."
She left and he looked down, waiting. Sure enough, he saw her distinctive sky blue hybrid car roll out onto the street.
He looked back up. He lost track of time, scanning the horizon.
Alastair turned around and began to sit on a chair. Some sixth sense warned him and he spun around again.
The bullet took him high in the left shoulder. The second one took him in the throat. It missed his arteries, but not his windpipe. Then he heard the distinctive crack, crack that a high-powered supersonic sniper rifle makes at long ranges. The analytical part of his mind processed the imput dispassionately.
Between the angle and the sound, he scanned the area he figured the shot had to have come from. Three kilometers away, his eyes locked with those of the sniper, who froze.
As Alastair fell to his knees, he forced his way into his killer's mind, utterly devastating the woman's sanity. He found who had hired the assassin and withdrew.
With his last thoughts, he drew in all of his psionic power. All of it. Every last dreg. A couple of times, he had drained himself so badly that he fell unconscience. This was worse. He was draining himself so much that he would kill himself. But he was already dead. All that mattered was his death curse.
His face siezed in a rictus of pain and victorious revenge.
Despite his lack of breath, he still managed to speak. Roughly and not loudly, but speak he did.
"I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desart. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."
He snarled. "I look on your works and I do not despair, Theodréd Kingkiller. I feel neither pity nor mercy. I curse you with Ozymandias' Curse. You shall fall to ruin and none shall remember you save as a single paragraph in a history text..."
And then, he fell silent, slumping forward, crumpling under his weight. His straining lungs pulled taught, then slackened. His laboring heart beat once, twice...then froze forever.
His blood pooled about his body and the slight smell of sudden, violent death hung over the balcony. The swirl of power he had summmoned flashed outward, shattering the glass on the balcony door. It tore across the planet and struck thirteen men, killing them painfullly by tearing their hearts apart.
Two Hours Later
Finally, she thought. Home again. I can't wait to see how he's doing.
The bags in her hands from her grocery shopping, she pulled out her keys and opened her door. The moment the door opened, she knew something was wrong. She wasn't sure how she knew. Maybe it was the fact that the kitchen was still pristeen. Maybe it was that Alastair's sword and bow hadn't moved even an inch...
She couldn't explain it.
She deposited her load of groceries in the kitchen, then moved to the bedroom. Not there. Was he still out on the balcony? That had been three hours ago! She looked at the door and gasped. The glass was shattered. Was someone in the house?
She drew the .45 she had holstered on her hip and moved slowly, already fearing the worst.
She opened the door to the balcony, bending around the doorframe. She let out a strangled sound and looked around. She might have screamed, but the shock was too great and she'd already half-feared it.
She moved to his side, careful to avoid the pools of blood. She tried to put a pair of fingers to his throat, but when she saw the mangled mess of said throat, she abandoned the effort. Based on what she had felt, he had been gone awhile now.
She was clearly able to identifiy two bullet wounds. One in the shoulder, one in the throat. High-caliber by the looks of it. Angles suggested...she glared out across to the one building that had a similar height to where her floor was. Sniper.
Nothing she could do, though. Time to call the police.
"Ma'am, can you explain what happened?"
The way the officer said ma'am reminded her of how Alastair called her mi'lady. She clamped down hard on the emotions that boiled up at that thought.
"I wasn't actually here. I was shopping. But when I came home I found the balcony door shattered and Alastair dead."
"Is anything missing, ma'am? Did the intruders take anything?"
"No. Nothing's missing. There weren't intruders. He was killed from range is my guess. Extreme range. I would check on or near the roof of the apartment building at First and Vinewood."
"Ma'am? What leads you to belive that?"
Ivy arched an eyebrow at the officer. "Do your forensics if you don't belive me. I'm a ER Trama Surgeon down at Red Blood Memorial Hospital. I've seen plenty of gunshot wounds and seen the results of the investigations. I think I can identify a sniper shooting when I see one. Unless I miss my guess, you'll find that the gun was a .50 caliber. Probably going to be a Berrett M107. You know, those really nasty rifles that US Marines typically use?"
The officer nodded. "Okay, ma'am. Thank you. Make sure you stay in town so we can ask more questions later."
Translation: So we can throw you in jail if your guesses turn out to be terrifingly correct...
Please, she thought. Amatures. She needed to talk to the detective...but that wouldn't happen.
Oh, well. She would survive.
Two weeks later
Ivy sat impatiently in the exam room. The case regarding Alastair's murder had been succinctly wrapped up when a half crazed woman had been found next to (surprise, surprise) a Berrett M107 sniper rifle, set up to make perfect shots on Ivy's balcony. The two spent casings next to the weapon had pretty much summed it all up.
After Balistics had their fun, the perp's confession was almost surpurfluous. The obviously insane woman had almost gotten off on an insanity case, but when her psychiatrist took the stand and said she had met with her client less than a week before the crime and she had been perfectly mentally stable...?
After which the cities foremost psionicst expert examined her and said the insanity was one hundred and ten percent caused by psionic assault of her mind. Then Ivy herself took the stand, verifing for the jury that Alastair Torunescru was, in fact, a potently powerful psion.
At that point, the woman was doomed. She was sentenced to forty years without parole. But she never served it.
Unlike whoever hired the woman to kill Alastair, Ivy wasn't afraid to get her hands dirty. Calling in a favor or two with a mage, she was able lift the M107 from the evidence locker.
The one bullet she had took the woman in the heart. Revenge was served.
Her face was a tight snarl of rage...until the door opened and Doctor Snorry Yotersonn, a distinguished looking man that smelled of wolf and raw meat, walked into the room.
"Well, Ivy. I've got some good news for you." he said, his beard bobbling as he spoke.
"Okay. What's that?"
"You're pregnant."
"What." she asked, dumbfounded.
((DONE!!))
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