Saturday Super Stories - Mythology 109 Part 4

My name is Mercedes Whitman and I'm a hero on a foreign world. I am the daughter of two heroes, and was trapped on this Earth during an Event that sealed the way back home forever. They call me Black Sapphire when I’m out patrolling, and these are my Blogs.

Sapphire’s eyes snapped open and she gasped for breath.  She looked around wildly and her hands lashed out to try and grab anything solid just to prove to herself that she had awoken in the real world.

Her fingers dug deep into the stone of a side table and it cracked under the pressure of her strength, bits crumbled to the ground and rested quietly.  Then the screaming started from somewhere outside and she forced herself to stand.  Her legs held her wait and she pulled herself out of the room, bumping into the tables, chairs and walls and eventually the door.

A man in a top hat appeared in front of her.  She blinked at him and kept walking avoiding his gaze.  “You know what you must do Mercedes Whitman, save the Hunter, the Woman in White must not break free of this prison.”

“Shut up, you aren’t real, I’m sick and you’re a hallucination.”  She fell to her knee’s and continued moving toward the screaming.

“I am the Black King and it is my job to watch the Woman in White and keep her contained within the Hollow City which itself is the Black Room and her prison.”  His image flickered and he was in front of her again and this time his chest was glowing slightly illuminating his rib cage.  “I was once a man named George and my friend Clarissa asked me to watch over the void reborn, and I agreed because I am very powerful, if I wanted, even in this place I could rip the Earth apart with little effort.”

“I guess its good you’re a hero then.”  Sapphire paused and vomited all over the cobblestones.

“I never said I was a hero.”

Mythology 109 - Part 4 “…of all Trades”

The Woman in White carved Wynn’s chest slowly and she watched as the tattoo’s reflected his future and they always ended with him dead, and this pleased her.  The skin was flayed and she watched the muscle twist and turn as Wynn struggled against his bonds.

She began to laugh and watched as the Orrery twisted into a new position overhead.  Her freedom was at hand.

*******

Mercedes turned to look at the Black King.  “Then stop her.”

“Not my place, she is your responsibility.  Mine is making sure she does not leave this place, and she will not leave for it is her duty to choose a vessel to carry her special plague into the universe, and that door is quickly approaching us.”

Sapphire wretched one more time and forced herself to stand straight up.  “Okay chuckles I can save the universe once more with feeling.”  She clenched her hands at her side and steeled herself as another wave of temporal chaos pulled at her soul.  She took a breath and released and walked towards the continued screaming and broke into a run as it started to break off and start again.

She slide around the corner and to a stop as she saw the cities center for the first time and the fountain that Wynn was tied to, blood poured from the gaping wound in his chest, the flesh had been pulled back, the muscle lay loose around the edge and the woman in white had begun to crack the ribs open and tear them loose, casually dropping them to the ground at her feet.

Sapphire growled and ran, her speed augmented with her abilities and she leapt instantly releasing the speed and pumping up her muscles and strength to deliver a blow that tore through the shoulder of the woman and smashed it like porcelain.  She screamed and spun away as the force drove her from Wynn’s side.  The knife clattered across the cobbles away from them.

“You whore!!”  The Woman screamed at Sapphire.

“Been called once,” she smirked, “But I really need to ask what your deal is.  You seem to be leaking all over the place.”

The Woman grabbed her shoulder and the white energy pouring from the wound slowed to a stop and the shoulder regenerated before Sapphires eyes.  “He is the vessel to spread my divine word, he is perfect and you brought him to me in your pathetic quest to save your false father.  You cannot purge the darkness of the seed within him.  He is Death, and his goal is to claim the universe just as mine is its obliteration.”

“I would call you mad but everyone has a purpose, just like mine is to beat your ass and leave you stuck here and make sure the mystic society back on earth knows to never come here again.  You lose bitch.”  The Orrery overhead clicked into place and the energies of the Hollow City coalesced into another portal.  In a second Sapphire was slamming back into the woman and send her hurtling through the walls and across the city away from them. 

Sapphire smiled.  “It’s always nice to be able to hit something with full force and not have to worry about it dying.”  She pulled a blade from her pack and sliced the leather straps holding Wynn to the fountain, already his wounds were healing, the bones re-growing as the muscle shifted back into place and the flesh knitted the hole closed.  “Come on chief lets go home.”  She picked him up and started to leap into the portal.

His eyes snapped open and he pulled away from her as she passed into the event horizon of the mystic opening that pulled her back into reality, she managed a glimpse back before she was gone.  Wynn was sad and reaching into the healing hole as he fell back to the cobblestones and ripping his heart from the open wound which was glowing white, Sapphire could hear the Woman roaring in anger.  Wynn managed to mouth the word Sacrifice before she was gone and the heart exploded.

She slammed into the ground of Sham’bala and the Proctors were waiting, each had a different look of sadness on their face.  “Victory always comes at a huge price young one.”  Thaddeus said as he helped her to her feet.

“You won this day and lost an ally but the universe lives on.”  Kimalia spoke from his side.

“He lives on in you now,” Annelletta whispered, “but not literally.  Go home now, you’ve earned it.”

********

She finished her story of the last few weeks and waited for Walters to comment.  He stood up from the chair and his cane clicked on the stone floor.  He paused and glanced back over his shoulder at her.  “So you did all of that and accomplished nothing in the end.”

“I found out I can’t save Alex and stopped a god from destroying all of reality, so I would say I accomplished enough to keep me from getting fired.”  Sapphire retorted.

“Who said anything about getting fired?”  He replied.

“You did on the phone last week when you called to bitch at me for not watching the city.”

“I never called you…” He was interrupted as reverb from all of the speakers in the Avenging Cave turned on at once and a voice spoke a single word.

“ONE,” Walters turned to her and started to run as the first explosions shook the foundations and were quickly followed by secondary and tertiary Sapphire screamed as the flames overtook Walters and the concussion ripped into her.

YEAR ZERO coming this November, barring any unforeseen circumstance that is…

TBC in Stand Alone 10

Saturday Super Stories - Religion 108 Part 4

My name is Mercedes Whitman and I'm a hero on a foreign world. I am the daughter of two heroes, and was trapped on this Earth during an Event that sealed the way back home forever. They call me Black Sapphire when I’m out patrolling, and these are my Blogs.

Black Sapphire stood up and set down the book she had been reading.  “Jerusalem Walker really wrote down every single thing he ever did.  This is really, really boring.”  She rolled her head back and forth and listened to the sounds of the bones popping.

“That’s really gross you know.”  Wynn’s voice filtered through the stacks.

“Bruce Lee did it, makes it automatically awesome.”

“Yeah not so much, only a couple of hours left before whatever happens, happens.  So they want us to sit through a ritual for luck for whatever journey is going to take us and we need to head down now.”  Wynn finally appeared around one of the bends.

“Okay, let’s get ready.”

Religion 108 - Part 4 “The New Testament”

‘Let there be Light, and there was Light.’

‘But with Light there must be darkness.’

There once was a man from Chicago and he was a regular man with a regular life and lived quite the normal existence.  But one day he fell into the muti-verse and was lost for quite some time.   He shared in the adventures of heroes and villains until he landed in a dark world far in its future.  This place gnawed at his soul and a shadow took root deep inside of him and as they say ‘absolute power corrupts…’.

So in this black place his rose in power and became a Dark God, an echo for the three lights that burned in the heavens, the Light Gods that watched over this world.  A plan began to form and he realized with a growing intensity that he needed to extinguish those lights and when they were gone he could truly rule.

He gathered followers, like minded individuals, and together they formed an army, and they traveled into the past to kill Those Who Came Before.

The Spider watched as one of stars burned out moments after Andreas Darkk and his men left the future and traveled into the past.  Already the future was changing and as soon as it began it stopped.  Twin Stars burned in the heavens and no further changes occurred.  He turned to his pregnant wife and laid a hand on her belly.  “They must have stopped the invasion and sealed away his evil somehow.”  She smiled at him and rested her hand over his.

Behind them the Spider’s Legion roared in approval.

-------

The ritual finished as the moon reached its perfect fullness, and for a moment nothing happened, and then a portal rips open above the fountain that rested at the center of the nine points of the ley lines.

“I am so going to be fired.”  Sapphire grabbed Wynn’s hand and pulled him along as she leapt through into the unknown.  The portal snapped closed and the world was still for a moment before Thaddeus spoke up.

“I suppose that’s my fault.”

-------

Zero stood alone on a rooftop and waited for Sapphire to stumble upon the next number.  He smiled to himself as he thought over the plan and looked up as the plane from Europe flew over head as a massive power outage revealed the number two in the remaining lights.

His earpiece chirped as his informant on the plane signaled him.  “Sir she wasn’t on the plane as you expected.”  The brief burst fed through the speaker and gave him the readied message.

“Well shit, just where the hell is she?”

TBC in Last Legends of a Dying Earth

Saturday Super Stories - Religion 108 Part 3

With this post I am at 50, more than a year has passed since I started the SSS, I started these months before my mother past from this plane and into the next, and the first post went up two days after her untimely passing.  I chug along slowly as ideas trickle in from wherever it is that ideas come from, but there is a plan, a long term goal and a plot.  With todays post, which is a day late because a dog ate my internet, we finally have some answers and a hint at the future.

We burn towards the Event, followed by the Year Zero and culminate in the Coming Darkness, trust me there is a plan, and we will get there together.

My name is Mercedes Whitman and I'm a hero on a foreign world. I am the daughter of two heroes, and was trapped on this Earth during an Event that sealed the way back home forever. They call me Black Sapphire when I’m out patrolling, and these are my Blogs.

With this post I am at 50, more than a year has passed since I started the SSS, I started these months before my mother past from this plane and into the next, and the first post went up two days after her untimely passing.  I chug along slowly as ideas trickle in from wherever it is that ideas come from, but there is a plan, a long term goal and a plot.  With todays post, which is a day late because a dog ate my internet, we finally have some answers and a hint at the future.

We burn towards the Event, followed by the Year Zero and culminate in the Coming Darkness, trust me there is a plan, and we will get there together.

Sapphire sat down hard on a bench in the main temple then sighed loudly.  Wynn was off talking to the Proctors and she was being confined to the temple to ease the transition of a non-magickal entity into their city.

She looked around the temple and looked at the stain glassed windows lining the walls.  There were many more here than there were in Carcass, and all of them were intact.  The largest of them all was of Jerusalem Walker.  He was flanked with Discord at his right hand and Pandemonium at his left.  These reliefs were more detailed that the others and she found herself drawn to Pandemonium and she mind kept returning to the last moments of the event.  She frowned at the reflection and a tear rolled down her cheek.  She turned away to take in the rest of the building and the other windows.

One drew her eye almost immediately and confused her at the same time, a black room with a man made out of white and rays bursting forth from him.  It was labeled The Beginning of The End is The End of the Beginning.

“Destiny,” a voice said behind her.  Sapphire turned and watched a older woman walk across her field of vision and vanish behind one of the shelves of book that filled the temple.

“How do you mean?”  Sapphire asked in response.

“All journeys are the same journey; it is just the road that is different.”  Was the response from another female voice, this one was younger.

“I don’t understand,” Sapphire responded.

“You wouldn’t.  You aren’t one of us.  You do not have the magick within you,” a final male voice spoke from directly behind her.  She turned to face the older man, his hair grayed by age.

“I’m also from another universe if you wanted to take your comment a step farther.  I am almost unique, but there are others from my world trapped in the universe.”  Sapphire met his eye and held it, it was almost as if she was talking to Walters, without the uncomfortable darkness hidden behind the eyes, the stain of his soul bleeding through.

The man nodded.  “I am Thaddeus, Master of Arms and this is my wife Kimalia the Judge, and our daughter Annelletta the High Priestess.  We are the Proctors of Sham’bala the Mystic City and you are welcome here until the prophecy has come to pass.”  Sapphire nodded.

“Can I ask another favor?”  She asked.  He nodded at her.

“Do you mind if I read through some of these texts?”  He moved his head to the side and it was his wife who responded.

“Yes,” and then the three of them were gone.  Sapphire shook her head and grabbed one of the first books that called to her and opened and began to read.

Religion 108 - Part 3 “The Book of Revelations”

‘And lo there came of a beginning’

‘They were of the count of three, a Trinity’

‘One Angelic, Heavenly, and Good’

‘One Dark, Hellish, and Evil’

‘The Last was of a strange sort, Neutral’

‘These Three became one in Voice and Power’

‘And From the White Sprang Forth the Universe’

‘Built upon the Ashes of the Stars Twin and the Prime’

The Ballad of Jerusalem Walker

“We made a mistake coming here.  We should have started with a clean slate.  This dead world…it should have stayed that way.”

“We three were of more power than the universe we were born in was capable of handling safely.  So we decided to leave that place and a find a universe that we call our own, or change into one that we could thrive in.”

“It took much time but we soon found ourselves in universe claimed by the void, wiped clean and perfect for our purposes.  We felt the remnants of the world before, the ashes of a world much like our own, but it had been touched by the Primes.”

“In our arrogance we decided to start here and rebuild this Twinstar and make it our own, add things we liked from our pasts and forge a new future.  Each of us sacrificed a portion of our raw strength and a new universal constant was born.”

“Let there be light, and there was light.”

“We realized that our lives were finite, and decided to craft the first being, the guardian of this universe, our watchdog.  More of our strength was lost and the first being was awakened.  We quickly realized our mistake and the first being uttered one sound, a scream and the power inside of it was warped inward and it exploded and imploded at the same time, ripping a tear in the face of space/time, one that echoed into the past and far into the future.”

“The Kaleidoscope Cascade was born; the tear in which we had come into this universe was something we had created after we had arrived.  But as the past had caught up with the present we were able to see the echoes surrounding the tear, echoes of other universes.”

“We contemplated reversing the Cascade but soon realized that the power needed would weaken us before we had even begun, or kill one of us should we require the sacrifice so the Cascade remained.”

“The thought of one guardian was discarded and we decided that more power taken from each of us could be crafted into an army of watchers, so we purged the emotions that we felt would impair our future tasks and the entities were formed into the ether.”

“This was also a mistake, the War of Sorrows ripped at the heart of the universe and lasted many long eons, and when it was finished the universe was a darker place.  We had failed again.  So we retreated to our home worlds echo and tried one final time to guide the universes hand.  Few of the entities lived and several were wounded beyond the capacity to live long, so we took love and hate and crafted them into the soul of Earth.  So the cities were born, I founded Sham’bala and lived there to guide humanity as a wise mystic, Pandemonium took the opposite side and the city that would become Carcass was unearthed, and in between them Discord watched from the Hollow, the final prison.”

“This worked for a time.”

The Lament of Discord

“When we crafted this world we pulled upon our own personal memories and added them to the mix that was already here.  In my past I was in love with a man and I lost him to a great monster that destroyed world after world.  In the end I had to slay my love and this broke me.”

“But Scott soon found me and told me his plan to start anew, somewhere else, some place that we could make ours, and if I wanted I could bring my love back.  He would not be the same man I had fallen for, only an echo.”

“I agreed.”

“So when we started anew the man I loved was reborn, crafted into a position that would suit him.  He would watch the universe and document all that he saw and commit that Knowledge for any who wanted to gaze upon its splendor.”

“I could not see that I brought that same darkness with me when we began and that same evil claimed my love again, and tainted him and his new master further tainted the Knowledge he had gathered.  I was the only one in the universe that knew his true name and I would take that with me in the end, but the evil that was A’gon would be left in the world as a corruption, but just as he fell in my universe so too would he fall in this one, I only regret that I will not be there to witness it.”

Some time ago…

Spectacular watched as the Cataloger purged his name from the Knowledge, the corruption taking any trace of his identity and that of the prior scions and any future scions as well.  It was a brilliant plan, but he was smarter.  He wound back time to learn the name of this traitor and smiled with a cock of the eyebrow at symmetry of it all.

“Who names their child after Jason’s boat?”

The Torment of Pandemonium

“I had one job where we came from; I was the one who stopped the Man in White and sealed the Black Room, I failed in this task.  His avatar was unleashed at our universe was lost.  Scott and Clarissa do not know that I failed in my only job.”

“Always I am in turmoil, my emotions ruling my abilities and my focus.  It was during one of these episodes that the Void was unleashed and the universe was lost, once unleashed the void cannot be stopped.  Though I believe that the void has a counter, something or someone that can halt its progression, but I have never located or managed to confirm this theory.”

“Thus I have failed, the void inched its way across reality consuming everything in its path and it was then that I decided that the three of us needed to leave and start anew.  We three aberrations shifted through a crack in the universe and fled as the void consumed searching for a universe to begin anew, finally settling on a universe scoured clean by a void avatar in the past.”

“Mercedes?”  Scott inquired.  I turned to take him in, my shame hidden from my face even though it tore at my soul.  “Is this a place to start?”  I nodded at him.

“If we are to be the caretakers of this new universe perhaps we should rename ourselves?”  I asked Clarissa and Scott.  They nodded, for they knew that true names held power.  It was in that moment that Scott became the Jerusalem Walker, Clarissa became Discord, and Mercedes Whitman became Pandemonium.

EPILOGUE

At the very center of the universe sits a room, and in that room sits a man in white surrounded by the black, just waiting for the perfect moment to announce itself.

TBC in Religion 108 Part 4