barsoomcore
Unattainable Ideal
What A Woman's Got To Do: 18
Arrafin screamed for the second time in twenty minutes.
Elena's death had stunned the young Naridic girl and she'd had no time to process the terrible demise of her best friend when they began the tremendous ritual of restoring the soul of the Blood Mother.
She watched in renewed awe as Yuek Man Chong, the Demon Goddess, the most powerful being in Barsoom, her lover, worked the raw deadliness of Shadow with an ease and strength Arrafin knew no mortal could possess. Even the explanations of the ritual had left Arrafin uncomprehending. Madame Yuek's mind was capable of operations Arrafin could not conceive of, and worked with a will and an unyeilding rigidity that frankly terrified the girl. As Shadow's relentless power fountained out of the goddess (no other word could describe what she was seeing) standing before her, Arrafin scrambled to recall her tiny part in the whole affair.
"We have to drop the Thadorik points in a staggered sequence, hold them temporarily while we assign the link to the next shard, then restore the points and make sure the link's embedded. It may take a couple of tries, but I think it's the best way. Finally we have to generate a matrix into which we can insert the linked shards. Collapse the matrix and we'll have a soul."
It was impossible, but Arrafin managed to find the portion of the swirling, roiling sorcery that required her attention and began the calculations that would bend that energy to her will. Working within the mammoth power of her lover was like standing beneath a dark and threatening sky, but a sky she knew would never allow any harm to come to her.
The shards drifted together, nudged in a metaphysical matrix by the currents of Shadow until they began to align, revealing patterns and complexities Arrafin had no sight of before as they began to arrange themselves in shifting arrays. Arrafin tried not to be awed by the experience, tried to keep her focus on the job at hand.
Gral helped, as terrified as the little owl was at the earth-shattering energies whirling around them. He pulled her back on task whenever her concentration threatened to waver, and his love and constant devotion beside her kept her from getting so scared she couldn't function.
It was like designing and assembling a great temple, watching all the blocks fit together and the craftsmen labour in their thousands, but this temple was a living person, a soul with all the infinite richness and complexity of a real person, and changing, fluctuating all the time. As Arrafin got more used to what was happened, she became fascinated by the process and lost her fear. She realised she could FEEL the soul, as though she had met this person before. The sensation was so strong she laughed, delighted as though greeting an old friend.
And then the Shadow pulled away, sucked back into the towering potency of the Demon Goddess, and Arrafin had just a sense of how Farouk had described her.
"A gate. A great pillar of Shadow, a raging wind of darkness, a hollow hunger wide enough to swallow all of Barsoom."
But there was an old woman standing there, a Tianese woman who face Madame Yuek with a look so fond and loving Arrafin was startled by a rush of jealousy, especially when the elderly lady put her hand on Yuek's cheek and spoke in Tianese.
"My love. I knew you would bring me back. And I am sorry."
Arrafin wanted to speak then, she wanted to scream as a sudden realisation struck her -- that this had all been planned, planned by the Blood Council. Planned somehow to destroy the woman she loved.
But she had no chance to speak. The world exploded around her in a sudden blast of electric green flame and her lover snapped backwards across the pagoda's floor, slamming into a pillar hard enough to shake the entire structure around them. The bizarre green tongue of flame buzzed and crackled beside her and with stunned eyes she watched the old Tianese woman produce a knife and advance on where Madame Yuek lay pinned and writhing in agony.
Arrafin screamed and started after the old woman, no idea what she was going to do, just be there and stop it stop it stop--
Shang appeared in an explosion of Shadow, cackling and pointing and at that moment Arrafin understood everything that had just happened. The depth of the trap and the betrayal that the Demon Goddess had just fallen into.
And it was all Matai Shang's fault.
Isaac stood just in front of the old bastard's bizarre arachnid construction, still stunned and unable to process what was happening. Arrafin shrieked over the deafening cacophony already filling the air inside the pagoda.
"Isaac! Stop him!"
She hurled her newly heavy satchel towards her friend. It didn't fly very far, but on the polished marble of the pagoda floor it slid effortlessly across to crash right into the myriad legs of Shang's weird contraption. The Naridic girl pointed and Shadow erupted around her, twisting into wild arabesques for a second before sucking back into the ground.
And the bag heaved, twitched and erupted.
Isaac backed away from Shang, stumbling in his haste to get out of the range of those metal legs, but he stopped suddenly in confusion as Arrafin's satchel ripped open.
And out came dozens of tiny figures made up out of bundles of twigs. Moving quickly, if stiffly, the figures immediately began clambering into Shang's mechanism, stuffing themselves into gears and hinges and pulleys. Twigs snapped and metal squealed, and suddenly Matai Shang looked a lot less happy.
"I don't believe it."
Without wasting any more time, Isaac leaped at the ancient sorcerer and aimed as heavy a blow as he could muster with his enchanted blade, Magreb.
*****
Etienne rushed over to the two Blood Council women. Kimiko Torokan stood braced, the emerald-tipped staff in her hands, her face tense with concentration as she did whatever she was doing to keep the Demon Goddess screaming like that.
The other, older woman, the one they'd rescued in Luc'Davarionne, stepped up to block the Kishak youth.
"Don't, boy. Don't even think about it or I will turn you inside out."
Etienne swore.
"Do you not see MATAI SHANG standing right there? He's going to kill every last one of us. You have to do something!"
"This is bigger than you. Keep out of it."
"Okay, that's it."
Etienne punched the elderly Lohanese woman in the face.
*****
Nevid drew back behind a pillar, his mind numb with terror, when Shang appeared. He tried to remember the calculations in the spellbook that he'd borrowed from the Demon Goddess' bookshelf, but his mind stammered and shook and he knew it needed to be precise. Relaxed.
With a gasp, Nevid drew a deep breath into his lungs, and stepped out onto the pagoda floor. Matai Shang's contraption appeared to be spasming and jerking and Isaac stood amidst the steel limbs, just winding up for a heavy wood-cutting stroke on the ugly man seated before him.
Somehow, the sight settled Nevid's mind and he stared as everything seemed to slow down. His heartbeat stilled and between one contraction and the next, something inside him opened and to his horror, Nevid felt the dark terrifying kiss of Shadow rise up inside himself. Tendrils of inky blackness spun out around the Saijadani youth as he attempted the most complex calculations he'd ever come across.
*****
The bag cast at Shang, the spell cast, Arrafin forgot all about him and her friends. She threw herself after the old Tianese woman, pushing aside screaming civilians as she tried frantically to interrupt the Blood Mother's murderous advance on the Demon Goddess. As she slowly gained ground on the old woman, Arrafin realised her quarry was singing.
"Exalted! Exalted in Bliss!
Ye who know the Goddess,
the Supremely Blissful One."
"What is wrong with you?"
At last Arrafin managed to grab hold of Tsin Kwan's robe and yanked the old woman backwards. The Blood Mother looked around in shocked dismay.
Arrafin managed to position herself between her still-screaming, writhing lover and the knife-weilding Blood Mother.
"No. No. She's changed. She's. No!"
The old woman smiled with crinkly eyes and a kindly grandmother's air.
"So thought I, once. But she cannot change, child. I love her, too, and this I do out of love. It is for the best. The Goddess must die."
"No!"
Arrafin lunged forward and the two women struggled, even as just behind them, the object of their dispute thrashed and shrieked, helpless as the emerald flame poured into her. Shadow rippled off her in all directions, slashing great gouges in the stone and blowing apart pillars. The whole structure began to shiver above everyone, adding its shrill tearing noises over the ongoing screams and terror filling the air.
*****
Kimiko Torokan hung on. This moment. This was all that mattered. Delivering the world from the greatest terror it had ever faced. The Demon Goddess fought and screamed, but Shang's weapon worked as he promised it would, tearing away at the layers of sorcery that had bound the insane young girl for so many centuries, ripping at the very fabric of her existence.
She was unaware of Shang's presence, unaware that Etienne stood pleading only a few steps away, aware of nothing but the titanic forces battling over the Demon Goddess.
More came away. Enormous tracts of the vampire's power ripped from her, until there was almost nothing left. The gate within her narrowed, collapsing in on itself. The hollow shrank to a point, impossibly small, only just barely holding itself in existence. Torokan poured on the power, determined.
This moment.
*****
Isaac lifted Magreb up high. She seemed eager, hungry in his hands, and with the loudest, bravest yell he could manage, Isaac whirled the blade downwards, fully expecting the weapon to simply bounce of some sorcerous protection.
But instead, the steel slammed into the old man's chest like a cleaver into a joint of beef, snapping bone and and spraying blood with a hiss of gore.
Matai Shang screamed, and only then did Isaac realise the Lohanese sorcerer had brought an entourage; half-a-dozen yammering sycophants scrambled towards him from all sides. Isaac made no effort to flee. Instead he wrenched on the sword, roaring in triumph as the blade tore and ripped deeper wounds in his ancient foe's body. Blood and organs spilled across the polished metal of the spidery chariot.
Shang was dying. A twisted arm reached up and the old man snarled, blood frothing on his lips, and Isaac felt that hair-raising sense of Shadow erupting around him. A very great deal of Shadow.
"Oh, right. Sorcerer. Crap."
*****
Nevid took one more breath. He'd raised both hands in front of himself, reaching towards Matai Shang, but without conscious intent. Only his will acted of its own accord, compelling his mind to run in exact and sophisticated patterns that conducted the Shadow around him in just the right structures.
What had not been became. What was evaporated. And Nevid's will ruled all.
He reached out towards Matai Shang with his will, found the great burgeoning eruption of Shadow the Lohanese sorcerer had pulled into existence, and yanked on it.
It came.
*****
Isaac didn't worry about why nothing had happened. He just swung again. And again and again and again, chopping Matai Shang into grotesque pieces as he hacked in a wild frenzy.
*****
To Arrafin's surprise, Tsin Kwan fell backwards. There was a nasty crack as she hit the floor, and the old woman arched in pain, slashing out wildly with her knife.
"You don't understand! There is no other way!"
Arrafin jumped backwards, ignoring the frenzied woman and turning to face her screaming, convulsing lover.
Who collapsed as the emerald power suddenly winked out. Arrafin ran towards the slumping figure.
"Man Chong!"
She ran right into somebody who hadn't been there a second ago. Someone tall and dark and... very very handsome.
"Farouk! You have to help us! Elena's dead! Help us!"
"No."
"What?"
The impossibly heroic man backhanded Arrafin across the face and the girl sprawled backwards to crash down next to Tsin Kwan. Both women stared as Farouk tenderly lifted the stunned and helpless Yuek Man Chong.
Without a word or backward glance, he set out for the exit to the city. With a Demon Goddess over his shoulder.
*****
For just a second, not even a heartbeat, Nevid understood power. He held within him not only the reckless amount of Shadow that he himself had called up, but all that Matai Shang had just planned to make use of.
For the briefest moment, Nevid's soul soared on a column of dark energy so vast he could see all of Barsooom spread out beneath him.
And then something slipped. His mind lost track of a value, he forgot the next step in the iteration, he stuttered.
Where Nevid had once been, there only dust.
Arrafin screamed for the second time in twenty minutes.
Elena's death had stunned the young Naridic girl and she'd had no time to process the terrible demise of her best friend when they began the tremendous ritual of restoring the soul of the Blood Mother.
She watched in renewed awe as Yuek Man Chong, the Demon Goddess, the most powerful being in Barsoom, her lover, worked the raw deadliness of Shadow with an ease and strength Arrafin knew no mortal could possess. Even the explanations of the ritual had left Arrafin uncomprehending. Madame Yuek's mind was capable of operations Arrafin could not conceive of, and worked with a will and an unyeilding rigidity that frankly terrified the girl. As Shadow's relentless power fountained out of the goddess (no other word could describe what she was seeing) standing before her, Arrafin scrambled to recall her tiny part in the whole affair.
"We have to drop the Thadorik points in a staggered sequence, hold them temporarily while we assign the link to the next shard, then restore the points and make sure the link's embedded. It may take a couple of tries, but I think it's the best way. Finally we have to generate a matrix into which we can insert the linked shards. Collapse the matrix and we'll have a soul."
It was impossible, but Arrafin managed to find the portion of the swirling, roiling sorcery that required her attention and began the calculations that would bend that energy to her will. Working within the mammoth power of her lover was like standing beneath a dark and threatening sky, but a sky she knew would never allow any harm to come to her.
The shards drifted together, nudged in a metaphysical matrix by the currents of Shadow until they began to align, revealing patterns and complexities Arrafin had no sight of before as they began to arrange themselves in shifting arrays. Arrafin tried not to be awed by the experience, tried to keep her focus on the job at hand.
Gral helped, as terrified as the little owl was at the earth-shattering energies whirling around them. He pulled her back on task whenever her concentration threatened to waver, and his love and constant devotion beside her kept her from getting so scared she couldn't function.
It was like designing and assembling a great temple, watching all the blocks fit together and the craftsmen labour in their thousands, but this temple was a living person, a soul with all the infinite richness and complexity of a real person, and changing, fluctuating all the time. As Arrafin got more used to what was happened, she became fascinated by the process and lost her fear. She realised she could FEEL the soul, as though she had met this person before. The sensation was so strong she laughed, delighted as though greeting an old friend.
And then the Shadow pulled away, sucked back into the towering potency of the Demon Goddess, and Arrafin had just a sense of how Farouk had described her.
"A gate. A great pillar of Shadow, a raging wind of darkness, a hollow hunger wide enough to swallow all of Barsoom."
But there was an old woman standing there, a Tianese woman who face Madame Yuek with a look so fond and loving Arrafin was startled by a rush of jealousy, especially when the elderly lady put her hand on Yuek's cheek and spoke in Tianese.
"My love. I knew you would bring me back. And I am sorry."
Arrafin wanted to speak then, she wanted to scream as a sudden realisation struck her -- that this had all been planned, planned by the Blood Council. Planned somehow to destroy the woman she loved.
But she had no chance to speak. The world exploded around her in a sudden blast of electric green flame and her lover snapped backwards across the pagoda's floor, slamming into a pillar hard enough to shake the entire structure around them. The bizarre green tongue of flame buzzed and crackled beside her and with stunned eyes she watched the old Tianese woman produce a knife and advance on where Madame Yuek lay pinned and writhing in agony.
Arrafin screamed and started after the old woman, no idea what she was going to do, just be there and stop it stop it stop--
Shang appeared in an explosion of Shadow, cackling and pointing and at that moment Arrafin understood everything that had just happened. The depth of the trap and the betrayal that the Demon Goddess had just fallen into.
And it was all Matai Shang's fault.
Isaac stood just in front of the old bastard's bizarre arachnid construction, still stunned and unable to process what was happening. Arrafin shrieked over the deafening cacophony already filling the air inside the pagoda.
"Isaac! Stop him!"
She hurled her newly heavy satchel towards her friend. It didn't fly very far, but on the polished marble of the pagoda floor it slid effortlessly across to crash right into the myriad legs of Shang's weird contraption. The Naridic girl pointed and Shadow erupted around her, twisting into wild arabesques for a second before sucking back into the ground.
And the bag heaved, twitched and erupted.
Isaac backed away from Shang, stumbling in his haste to get out of the range of those metal legs, but he stopped suddenly in confusion as Arrafin's satchel ripped open.
And out came dozens of tiny figures made up out of bundles of twigs. Moving quickly, if stiffly, the figures immediately began clambering into Shang's mechanism, stuffing themselves into gears and hinges and pulleys. Twigs snapped and metal squealed, and suddenly Matai Shang looked a lot less happy.
"I don't believe it."
Without wasting any more time, Isaac leaped at the ancient sorcerer and aimed as heavy a blow as he could muster with his enchanted blade, Magreb.
*****
Etienne rushed over to the two Blood Council women. Kimiko Torokan stood braced, the emerald-tipped staff in her hands, her face tense with concentration as she did whatever she was doing to keep the Demon Goddess screaming like that.
The other, older woman, the one they'd rescued in Luc'Davarionne, stepped up to block the Kishak youth.
"Don't, boy. Don't even think about it or I will turn you inside out."
Etienne swore.
"Do you not see MATAI SHANG standing right there? He's going to kill every last one of us. You have to do something!"
"This is bigger than you. Keep out of it."
"Okay, that's it."
Etienne punched the elderly Lohanese woman in the face.
*****
Nevid drew back behind a pillar, his mind numb with terror, when Shang appeared. He tried to remember the calculations in the spellbook that he'd borrowed from the Demon Goddess' bookshelf, but his mind stammered and shook and he knew it needed to be precise. Relaxed.
With a gasp, Nevid drew a deep breath into his lungs, and stepped out onto the pagoda floor. Matai Shang's contraption appeared to be spasming and jerking and Isaac stood amidst the steel limbs, just winding up for a heavy wood-cutting stroke on the ugly man seated before him.
Somehow, the sight settled Nevid's mind and he stared as everything seemed to slow down. His heartbeat stilled and between one contraction and the next, something inside him opened and to his horror, Nevid felt the dark terrifying kiss of Shadow rise up inside himself. Tendrils of inky blackness spun out around the Saijadani youth as he attempted the most complex calculations he'd ever come across.
*****
The bag cast at Shang, the spell cast, Arrafin forgot all about him and her friends. She threw herself after the old Tianese woman, pushing aside screaming civilians as she tried frantically to interrupt the Blood Mother's murderous advance on the Demon Goddess. As she slowly gained ground on the old woman, Arrafin realised her quarry was singing.
"Exalted! Exalted in Bliss!
Ye who know the Goddess,
the Supremely Blissful One."
"What is wrong with you?"
At last Arrafin managed to grab hold of Tsin Kwan's robe and yanked the old woman backwards. The Blood Mother looked around in shocked dismay.
Arrafin managed to position herself between her still-screaming, writhing lover and the knife-weilding Blood Mother.
"No. No. She's changed. She's. No!"
The old woman smiled with crinkly eyes and a kindly grandmother's air.
"So thought I, once. But she cannot change, child. I love her, too, and this I do out of love. It is for the best. The Goddess must die."
"No!"
Arrafin lunged forward and the two women struggled, even as just behind them, the object of their dispute thrashed and shrieked, helpless as the emerald flame poured into her. Shadow rippled off her in all directions, slashing great gouges in the stone and blowing apart pillars. The whole structure began to shiver above everyone, adding its shrill tearing noises over the ongoing screams and terror filling the air.
*****
Kimiko Torokan hung on. This moment. This was all that mattered. Delivering the world from the greatest terror it had ever faced. The Demon Goddess fought and screamed, but Shang's weapon worked as he promised it would, tearing away at the layers of sorcery that had bound the insane young girl for so many centuries, ripping at the very fabric of her existence.
She was unaware of Shang's presence, unaware that Etienne stood pleading only a few steps away, aware of nothing but the titanic forces battling over the Demon Goddess.
More came away. Enormous tracts of the vampire's power ripped from her, until there was almost nothing left. The gate within her narrowed, collapsing in on itself. The hollow shrank to a point, impossibly small, only just barely holding itself in existence. Torokan poured on the power, determined.
This moment.
*****
Isaac lifted Magreb up high. She seemed eager, hungry in his hands, and with the loudest, bravest yell he could manage, Isaac whirled the blade downwards, fully expecting the weapon to simply bounce of some sorcerous protection.
But instead, the steel slammed into the old man's chest like a cleaver into a joint of beef, snapping bone and and spraying blood with a hiss of gore.
Matai Shang screamed, and only then did Isaac realise the Lohanese sorcerer had brought an entourage; half-a-dozen yammering sycophants scrambled towards him from all sides. Isaac made no effort to flee. Instead he wrenched on the sword, roaring in triumph as the blade tore and ripped deeper wounds in his ancient foe's body. Blood and organs spilled across the polished metal of the spidery chariot.
Shang was dying. A twisted arm reached up and the old man snarled, blood frothing on his lips, and Isaac felt that hair-raising sense of Shadow erupting around him. A very great deal of Shadow.
"Oh, right. Sorcerer. Crap."
*****
Nevid took one more breath. He'd raised both hands in front of himself, reaching towards Matai Shang, but without conscious intent. Only his will acted of its own accord, compelling his mind to run in exact and sophisticated patterns that conducted the Shadow around him in just the right structures.
What had not been became. What was evaporated. And Nevid's will ruled all.
He reached out towards Matai Shang with his will, found the great burgeoning eruption of Shadow the Lohanese sorcerer had pulled into existence, and yanked on it.
It came.
*****
Isaac didn't worry about why nothing had happened. He just swung again. And again and again and again, chopping Matai Shang into grotesque pieces as he hacked in a wild frenzy.
*****
To Arrafin's surprise, Tsin Kwan fell backwards. There was a nasty crack as she hit the floor, and the old woman arched in pain, slashing out wildly with her knife.
"You don't understand! There is no other way!"
Arrafin jumped backwards, ignoring the frenzied woman and turning to face her screaming, convulsing lover.
Who collapsed as the emerald power suddenly winked out. Arrafin ran towards the slumping figure.
"Man Chong!"
She ran right into somebody who hadn't been there a second ago. Someone tall and dark and... very very handsome.
"Farouk! You have to help us! Elena's dead! Help us!"
"No."
"What?"
The impossibly heroic man backhanded Arrafin across the face and the girl sprawled backwards to crash down next to Tsin Kwan. Both women stared as Farouk tenderly lifted the stunned and helpless Yuek Man Chong.
Without a word or backward glance, he set out for the exit to the city. With a Demon Goddess over his shoulder.
*****
For just a second, not even a heartbeat, Nevid understood power. He held within him not only the reckless amount of Shadow that he himself had called up, but all that Matai Shang had just planned to make use of.
For the briefest moment, Nevid's soul soared on a column of dark energy so vast he could see all of Barsooom spread out beneath him.
And then something slipped. His mind lost track of a value, he forgot the next step in the iteration, he stuttered.
Where Nevid had once been, there only dust.
I got back online after the holidays execting to have lots of stuff to read here. Now I'm sad.
