(Oh my good ford, I have now officially scared myself. I counted up all the words for all the chapters I've written and finished for one fic or another since January, and the total came to, wait for it...
103,125 words...!
*faints*)
Anyway. Back to business. Just to prove I can finish a fic when I choose to put my mind to it, here are the last two chapters of "Dark". It'd be nice to know people's thoughts on the finished article, (ie whether I wrote semi-understandably or whether I just confused them) but hey. *shrugs*
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Oh. Well, I would post something, but my computer has decided to fall out with every single word processor I own and not let me open the damn thing. I'll try restarting...
O-kay, so now it's crashing EVERY programme. Hm. *hits reset*
Bzzt.
Edit: Trying again...
Aha, Word is happy again. So, here we go...
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Chapter 8
Rek just gawped, for a second. Then choked out. “My… my son…?! My son is the raving psychopath that’s been murdering everyone…?!”
Bea shook her head, leaning her weight back onto her crutch. “No. Your son is possessed.”
He staggered backward, stared at her. “You… you know…? You’ve known all this time and haven’t told anyone…? Bea, how… how could you do this…?!”
She sighed, sadly. “I’m sorry, Rek… I knew someone was possessed but not who. And I daren’t breathe a word, for fear he got wind of it… If he suspected I knew it was him doing the killing, he’d start to swap bodies every few days, and we’d have been chasing shadows while he waltzed about and killed who he liked when he liked.” She started for the door. “Come on, we’d better go and find him, before he has the chance to figure out we know who he is…”
He pursued her. “But… what’s going to happen, Bea? You said he was possessed? Will he be killed when the possession is dropped…?”
She shook her head. “Probably not. Things are a little different to normal possessions.”
“They are…? How so?”
“Your son,” she said, making her way as fast as she could over to the main square, “Is possessed, yes, but not in the usual manner… the mudokon who has taken command of his mind has been dead for a hundred and eighty years.”
“He-… dead-… what? Are you sure? How can it-… no, that can’t be right…!”
Drek joined them. “Saw him headin’ that way,” he said, out of breath, and pointed towards the outskirts of town, then jerked his head in a follow-me gesture and headed off in that direction.
“Was he looking worried at all?” Bea asked, following him.
“No,” Drek glanced back, watched as Aalu and two of the medical staff – Xar’s Second, and a mudokon – joined them. “Just looked bored. What we goin’ to do, Bea?”
She had a resolute look on her old face. “I’m going to do something I should have done many years ago.
“Bea…? If we destroy him…” the mud asked. “Will the sleepers wake up?”
Bea shook her head, solemnly. “No. For that someone will have to find my old tutor, and learn The Healing… He was an old mud when I was young, maybe he’s finally died, but I somehow doubt it… Someone will have to go and find him.”
“How? And where is he?” the other medic asked, looking up at her.
“I don’t know,” she admitted, sadly. “He never stays in one place for very long. Last I heard he was somewhere south of the Great Forest, but that was a few years ago now… he leaves clues to his whereabouts, though, if you know where to look, and his attendants tend to spread themselves over a large area round where he is… I would try to find him myself, but it would take too long. Besides, I have something I need to do…”
“There he is,” Drek interrupted, softly, nodding at a little figure ahead of them, walking lazily down the broad main street towards the forest.
Bea narrowed her eyes and hobbled a little faster, trying to catch up. “Hey!” she called, “You there! Stop!”
Dren startled, turned to face her, and offered up a friendly smile upon seeing who it was. “Hey, auntie Bea,” he said, brightly.
“Please, don’t try that tactic any more,” she said, quietly, halting a few feet away from him. “I know who you are, so you can stop playing the games.”
He cocked his head. “What…? Games? Of course you know who I am, auntie, you’ve known-”
“I know who you are,” she repeated, firmly. “I know the mind that’s inhabiting the child’s body.”
Dren laughed, and it was like someone had pulled a mask from his face – the grin was one of utter cruel insanity. “Oh, lady, you took your time finding me…” the voice said – it was thinner than Dren’s mild tones, and whiney. “I’m ashamed of you,” he sang, dancing round her.
“Ashamed? Ashamed that I’m still strong, and that I’m still in command of all my faculties, Renetheska?”
The possessed slig paused his bobbing, turned to look at her, curiously. “What was that?
“So you don’t remember your name…” Bea shook her head, sadly. “I doubted you would.”
He resumed his can’t-stand-still dance round her and her entourage. “What does a name matter?” he asked with a giggle; that thin, insane laugh that had so many times struck fear into the hearts of his victims… “Lady lady, my dear sweet Lady of the Light,” he crooned, weaving about her. “Are you tired yet, Lady? Tired of living that life you can never end without me…?”
Drek had drifted closer to her by now. “Bea…” he asked, worriedly. “Bea, what’s he on about…?”
“He’s right…” she replied, softly, looking suddenly strangely haggard. “I am tired…”
“Bea…?”
She managed to summon up a tiny smile for him. “Hasn’t it occurred to you just how old I am…?”
He shook his head, baffled. “But… Bea, yer a queen… didn’ yer say that queens always-”
She cut in with a soft laugh. “Oh Drek, if only you knew. I’m nearly two hundred years old…”
He took a visible step backwards; she could very nearly see him mouth the words, stunned. Two hundred… two HUNDRED…!
She turned her attention back to Renetheska. “And all because I cannot die until he does.”
Renetheska giggled, thinly. “That’s right, me dear lady… how does it feel to have been wrong? Nearly a hundred and eighty years ago you and your cronies split my body from my mind and imprisoned me, thinking I would fade and die, and you could die as well, but no, I didn’t fade, did I? The body withered but the spirit went on, couldn’t fade, couldn’t die, just went a little mad with the solitude…” another giggle. “And now here I am, a mistake returned to haunt you…” He put his face up close to hers. “And now I can do what I wanted to do all those years ago. I’m as strong as ever, lady, and you? Weak, and frail, and withered…” he giggled and span away.
She stared at him, and drew herself up straight. “I’m not so frail and powerless as you like to believe,” she said, proudly. “The world has changed, and so have I; I am no longer the young, foolish child you could confuse without even trying…”
“Bea…” Drek folded a hand round her arm, worriedly. “Bea, who is he…?”
She shook her head. “He’s an old nemesis of mine. Used to be a very close friend, and a powerful shaman; we studies together, and our spirits were somehow linked by the most powerful of our tutors… We were destined to be mates, until he started to dabble in the dark arts… Soon we were so different from each other we were like opposing poles of a magnet, and we hated each other…
“We should have destroyed him. Instead we freed his spirit from his body and imprisoned his mind in a tomb where we thought it would wither and fade and eventually die… but it didn’t. It got weak, yes, faded, yes, but it did not die – couldn’t die, not while I still lived. And I couldn’t die while his spirit lingered on in its own silent hell…”
“Silent hell, oh yes, you don’t know half the meaning of that insignificant little statement…” Renetheska drew his lips away from his teeth and snarled, softly. “Do you know what it feels like, lady? To be imprisoned in darkness for nearly two centuries? Unable to do anything except think? Where there are no distractions from the most horrible thoughts you can imagine, chipping away at your sanity…?” Then he giggled, and danced round her. “But then, some thoughts were nice… dreaming of us…” another giggle. “You should have taken up my offer all those years ago, Beatrice…” he sang. “Partnered me and ruled as we should have done, and saved all this trouble.”
“I didn’t want to rule with cruelty,” she replied, stiffly.
“Oh lady Bea, I’m ashamed of you, you don’t remember your old saying… where there’s darkness, where there’s shadow, there’s always light, remember that one? And where there’s Light,” he stared her in the eye, pausing that bewildering bobbing around he was doing. “There’s always Dark…” his voice ended on a thin, snarling note, and she realised with a sudden shock that all this talking and bewildering bobbing had been a distraction from what he was really doing… Preparing himself, gathering his strength, ready to attack and to try and defeat her before she had a chance to defend herself…
He snapped both long dark arms in front of himself and discharged the power that he’d been building up in his hands all this while.
Damn, he’s strong, too… Bea thought with a sense of hopelessness as a shockwave of dark, sparkling fire ripped through the air toward her. He may not be able to kill her but he could certainly send her into the same silent oblivion he’d sent Xar… Barely milliseconds before it hit her, though, something rammed into her side, briefly knocking all the air out of her lungs and staggering her sideways, well out of the way…
It was Drek; the fire tore straight through the elderly slig’s chest. He managed a somewhat startled exclamation, gazed downward in startled surprise, then tottered forwards…
Bea caught him as he went over. “Oh Drek, oh you stupid…”
“Hey…” he wheezed, with a faint grin. “I couldn’ let ‘im get yooouuuuuuuuu…” and went limp in her arms.
“Drek…” she whispered, one hand over her mouth, as one of the two medics dropped to his knees alongside, touched fingers to Drek’s throat…
Bea knew what his answer would be before he’d even spoken. “He’s dead,” the medic rasped, faintly.
Dead. Dead. All those attempts on his life that he’d survived, and yet… in less than a heartbeat he was gone, simply snuffed out like an unwanted candle, never again to smile or laugh or cry or… it was like a knife in her heart. She never realised it would affect her so much, or hit her so hard, but… it did, it hit hard, and it hit deep.
She looked over to the possessed slig, who was grinning at her, insufferably pleased with himself, dark fire pooling at his hands, sparkling at his eyes, and knew what she had to do. A hundred and eighty years ago she’d known the same thing, but she’d been young, young and foolish, and had let this evil creature live, reasoning some punishments were worse than death… And had let him grow bitterer and bitterer, cooped up in his tiny prison, hoping for the time he would escape… And now he had escaped, escaped and ruined not only one young life, but so many lives, had torn apart the fragile peace in this town… And Drek’s untimely death had been the last straw…
“You’ve had your fun, Renetheska…” she said, softly, rising to her feet and closing her fingers round the pendant she always wore at her throat, the pendant with its pure white stone. “Now it’s time to send you to the oblivion you deserve.”
“Oblivion? Who’s going to do the sending, hey, old lady?” The dark one sneered. “While I just get stronger, you get older, and weaker…” he scoffed. “You were too weak and afraid to do it back then, and while I stay in this pitiful little creature’s mind you’ll never do it…”
She smiled, sadly, pulling her pendant off over her head. “I may surprise you yet,” she said, softly. Now she knew what she had to do, a remarkable sense of calm had descended upon her. “Now take your best shot at me, if you dare…”
The grin twisted into a snarl, and Renetheska lifted his hands, sending out another of those savage beams of black fire toward the old lady.
No one watching was ever entirely sure whether the bolt of brilliant white fire jolted from the white stone at her palm or from the elderly lady herself. What they were sure, however, was that when the two bolts struck there was a deafening boom and the ground quivered.
When the smoke cleared and they’d blinked away the afterimages in their eyes, Dren was himself again, at last, a huddled little bundle on the floor, sobbing and shivering, scrambling backwards and trying to get as much space between himself and the old lady as he could… A tall, ethereal figure seemingly composed entirely of dark mist stood before him, facing Bea.
The old queen looked like she was standing a lot straighter than she had for weeks, as well, her crutch lay discarded to one side, and she held up the white stone in front of her. An aura of faint, pulsing white power beat in time to her heartbeat around her. “Now we’re even,” she said, calmly. “If there’s any sense of fair play left in that twisted black mind of yours, you’ll play it fairly, and leave that poor child alone.”
“Fair?” Renetheska scoffed. “There’s only one way you can defeat me, old one…” The dark one sneered, his mist-form twisting, coiling. “You weren’t prepared to do it back then, so why would you be prepared to do so now…?”
Bea just smiled. “It ends,” was all she said.
Onlookers found it hard to follow the events of the next few seconds. The aura of power around the stately old queen seemingly coalesced into a column of brilliant white mist, burnt onto the air like an afterimage – her body crumpled silently, as though discarded.
The dark-mist figure suddenly twisted in on itself, began to writhe like a snake through the air, as though desperately searching for another body to inhabit, almost attempting to flee, but the column of white lanced out like a cobra and was upon it…
They spiralled together and lanced up into the clear blue of the morning sky in a violent movement that seemed to warp time itself. The world bowed outward, almost as though looking through a fisheye lens, then snapped back straight and with an earsplitting boom! the air exploded.
When everyone picked themselves up off the floor, the two columns of mist were gone, leaving only an ugly black scorch mark in the grass. Xar’s Second crawled over to Bea, gave her a brief examination, and shook his head, sadly. “She’s gone,” he said, softly.
The other medic sat down, hard. “Gone,” he repeated, faintly, and bowed his head. Aalu gave a sob and gathered her son into her arms; Rek joined them barely an instant later.
“It’s over…” he whispered, faintly, hugging his shivering mate and child close as he could, feeling the tears stabbing at his eyes like hot needles. “Oh Odd, please, let it be over…”
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Nine
It had been a few days since Bea had destroyed the Killer, and the town was in mourning, slowly coming to terms with what had happened.
Dren lay on a tree-branch outside his home, and wondered how he could have been so stupid as to go out exploring on his own…
The place was big; he wasn’t sure how he’d managed to get here, as the place looked deserted, overgrown, and probably hadn’t been visited for years… Maybe he’d managed to activate an old well, somehow, or maybe he’d missed a sign, or…
The floor crumbled away under his weight. With a yelp he fell, landed on his back and slid… he landed with a whump! on a heap of sand and stones at the bottom. Wincing, he picked himself up, and looked around himself for a way out.
He appeared to be in an antechamber, of sorts, with a high, vaulted roof and long thin windows on the far wall, looking out over the forest below… On the opposite end of the room to him was a massive stone slab, covered in tiny, intricately carved glyphs, a hole like a gaping wound at its centre. Curious, he padded closer.
There was an odd metallic tang on the air, he noticed, as he got closer to the hole, and wondered what it was… The hole was just big enough for him to have climbed through, if he’d been that way inclined; as it was, he hoisted himself up and put his nose into the opening-
Something wet hit him smack between the eyes – he gave a shriek and fell backwards, and the wet thing that had struck his face lunged for his open mouth, snatched out with long wet fingers for his nose… It was like being suddenly plunged into an unexpected bath of icy water, every last square inch of skin suddenly chilled, and the Thing was plugging his nose and mouth and effectively stopping the screams that were boiling in his throat…
It was like someone was filling him with water, his mouth and nose, his throat, all his airways and his gullet, even his stomach, every tiny part of his insides, pumping it in until every last tiny airspace was taken up by it… He was trying desperately to scream, eyes bulging, hands curled into claws, back arched against the floor, trying all he knew to get the fluid out but it was no good, he was dying, slowly being suffocated by something that he somehow knew wasn’t even there…!
But… Suddenly it was gone, just like that. He lay on his back on the icy stone of the antechamber floor, gasping hoarsely for breath, baffled and scared, wondering what in frack had just happened… Maybe it was a ghost, he’d heard about them from Bea, when he’d made her tell stories to him and his sister on late blustery autumn evenings…
He sat up, blinked, rubbed his nose with one hand. Then, for no reason he could see, picked up a rock and slammed it down on his opposite hand, giving voice to a soft hiss of pain.
Ah good, it all still works, a soft voice said in the back of his mind.
Dren froze. All still works… what the…?!
No need to be concerned, my boy, you’ve just taken up a lodger.
A… a lodger? He pressed a hand to his temple, as though it would be possible to feel through his skin the other intelligence suddenly in his skull…
That’s right. I’ll be living here in your mind for the next few days – or weeks, or however long it takes…
But I… frack, I don’t want-
I don’t care what you want. The voice had taken on a dangerous, hard edge. I am here, and here I shall stay until I see fit to give you control back.
What?!
A laugh. Oh, don’t be scared. I won’t harm you. I just needed to borrow your body, as mine seems to have got lost in transit.
But I don’t want-
You have no choice in the matter. I am in control now, and I will stay in control until such a time as I get bored of you.
And with that he’d felt himself pushed to the back of his brain – the other, the thing, it had taken control – like he’d been relegated to passenger status, he could shout and scream all he liked but the glass window between him and the front was closed and soundproof…
Dren watched as the children played in a somewhat more hesitant manner than usual down on the far side of the square below, his dark eyes shining with tears. All he wanted was to be normal again, to run and play and shout and fight and get into trouble like any normal child…
But… in spite of knowing what had happened, the adults were understandably a little wary of him, and gave him a very obvious very wide berth. And the other children were openly scared of him, would run away if they saw him…
He couldn’t handle it, had tried to endure the torment for a week, but there were pointing fingers, pointing fingers and whispers and cruel stares… And every time he heard a whisper or felt someone’s eyes on the back of his neck, one of Renetheska’s victims – one of his victims – would stamp themselves onto his conscious… Their screams, their horrible anguished cries, they reduced him to a shrieking, sobbing bundle on the floor and gave him the most horrible nightmares… He remembered every second of every day that Renetheska was in his mind, and knew it was driving him mad…
And yet… and yet, what was possibly the most terrifying was, well… he had to admit it to himself eventually… he’d enjoyed a good part of it. Not the killing, or the screaming, but the thrill of raw power in his hands, the intoxicating sense of being near-on invincible, of knowing he was strong, he was dangerous… And what if… what if he wanted to feel that heady power again…? What if he himself chose to dabble in the same dark arts, and had them overpower him, just as they had overpowered the ancient shaman? What if, when he was older, he became the same as the dark one that had possessed him…? Or worse?! And there was no Bea to stop him??
He couldn’t let that happen – wouldn’t let that happen. Which left him one option.
Dren got to Medcentre relatively easily, even though he knew his mother had got worried and followed him… He went round to the back of the hospital – it had been built just back from the edge of a cliff, as it was easier to defend – and gazed out over the landscape, at the trees below and the river gleaming off in the distance.
Then looked down. The cliff was high, so high he felt dizzy, staring down into those wicked stone teeth below, the frost-shattered rocks forming a vanguard of spikes at the bottom… And he could hear his mother, running for him, screaming his name, screaming Dren, no…
Dren didn’t look at her, couldn’t look at her, not now…
…just stepped out from the cliff edge, and into eternity.
When Rek found him, his son was still alive, although only barely. He collapsed by his side, scooped Dren’s broken body into him arms, and sobbed. “Oh Dren, oh you stupid boy, why…? Why, Dren?”
Dren managed a faint smile. “I’m sorry, Dad…” he rasped, in a cracked voice. “But I couldn’… couldn’ go on… *cough*… not with what I’ve seen… not… not with what I did… what he made me do…”
His father just rocked back and forth, shaking his head, almost helpless with grief. “We could have helped you Dren, we wanted to help you…!”
Dren coughed a laugh, and a fine trickle of blood drew a dark line through the dust on his skin. “I’m sorry, Da…”
“You don’t have to be sorry…” Rek gulped out, between the tears. “You don’t have to be sorry for something that wasn’t your fault… Oh Dren… why did it have to be you…?”
Dren coughed, wheezingly; his breathing was getting strained, and bubbling as his lungs gradually filled. His obsidian eyes were dimming. “Tell mum… I love… her. And tell Aura I… never wanted… to hurt… her… and that… I’m… sorry…” he coughed again, a sobbing wheeze. “I’m… sorry, Da…”
“Stop keep saying that…” Rek hugged him gently, feeling the first spots of rain on his back, and a faint roll of thunder echoed in the distance. “There’s no need to be sorry…”
Dren reached up a heartbreakingly weak hand and closed it on his father’s arm. “I… I love you, Dad…” he managed, in what was scarcely more than a whisper, then his grip went lax, and his body sagged, and he was gone.
Rek nodded, and sobbed his heart into the rain that fell in curtains around him.
The ceremony was small, barely more than twenty attending it; the Guardians were there, of course, an honour guard for their fallen Alpha – even Hak, massive and silent, his dead arm bandaged across his chest, but his head was up and his shoulders back. The more important councillors and Hunter Ch’ekk were there as well, Arrik and Ben apparently having set aside their differences.
Bea was laid out in state, swathed in a stunningly embroidered shawl, her pendant back at her throat, although the pure white crystal was admittedly a little blackened, now. And Drek lay beside her, just as any queen’s consort should, in full hunter regalia, and the councillor’s cloak he’d worn so proudly in life was back around his bony old shoulders.
And nearby they laid the shattered form of a half-grown male slig, with skin the same blue as midnight sky and eyes like polished black marbles. And the carved stone plaque they lay above his head read, simply:
“In our hearts, always.”
~end
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[ October 08, 2001: Message edited by: Teal ]
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