From: bradkwillis@aol.com (BKWillis) Date: 19 Dec 2001 04:48:51 GMT Subject: Re: A story we can all create.. Hey, y'all Here's the first half of my next installment. The second half is in the next "Groundhog." "Excuse me?" the Doctor asked, turning to look into Kepla's scowling features. The Skyborn woman jerked her head at the nude form of Soolisa standing glistening in the light of the three moons. "Bloody groundhog," she spat. "Surface-dweller. She has the look of North Rim about her. Don't trust a word she says." Soolisa laughed, a soft siren-song. "You have a keen eye, warrior. I do indeed hail from North Rim, where we are at least taught to be civil to those who would aid us." "You're taught to grub in the dirt like Servii and rustle birds from our flocks," Kepla retorted. "And I need no renegade to tell me my manners." "Kepla, please," Gorthund pleaded. The woman threw up her hands. "Fine, then! Deal with this groundhog if you must, but remember that I warned you." With that, Kepla spun on her heel and stalked off to tend to her mount. The Doctor turned back to Soolisa, who was patting herself dry with a blanket from her saddlebag. "So Jo is safe, then?" he asked. "Where is she now?" "She is safe," she replied, regarding him with deep, unreadable emerald eyes. "She was injured slightly when we escaped from the Vale and is now resting among my people." "Injured? How?" Soolisa smiled reassuringly and clasped the Doctor's arm, a gesture that made him strangely uneasy. "It's nothing, I promise. One of the priests struck her with a knife as we fled the Low Temple. The wound is little more than a scratch, but Prak thought it best to take her to our healers first, lest there be poison." "Take us there now," the Doctor demanded. "I fear I cannot do so," she replied sadly. "Were Skyborn to approach our mountains, they would be fired on by our sentries. The plan is that we wait here until Prak returns with Jo tomorrow." "Wait?" Gorthund asked. "Out here? What of the Servii?" Soolisa laughed again, a bewitching melody of moonglow-joy. "We need not fear the Servii _here_, on haunted ground. See that stone?" She pointed at a tall, rough-hewn obelisk half-hidden among the vines and creepers. Though immeasurably old and weather-worn, a three-forked symbol etched in its side could just be made out in the gray darkness. "The Servii believe that such stones mark the domains of demons. They will not come within a half-mile of such a place, lest the ghost-eaters take their souls." She grinned impishly. "I should think, though, that demons would prefer a tastier meal than Servii. Perhaps Skyborn souls are more flavorful?" "Superstitious nonsense," Gorthund spat firmly, but glanced around at the shadows just the same. "So we spend a night in a haunted house to get Jo?" the Doctor asked archly. "I suppose if that's the only way, I'll just have to do it." "Rest easy, my friends," Soolisa soothed. "It shall not be a long nor unpleasant wait. My company is not so trying, is it?" Her cheeks dimpled in a mock pout. A grumbled curse floated over from Kepla's direction. Spinning about in a twirl that sent glittering droplets flying from her still-damp hair, Soolisa danced over to her saddlebags and pulled out a small earthenware jug and bowl. "We might make a picnic of this," she giggled, pouring a bit of deep burgundy liquid into the bowl. "Will you share wine with me?" She held out the bowl, offering. When neither the Doctor nor Gorthund moved to take it, she drew it back with a small pout. "You wish no wine? Or is it that you still trust me not? Very well, then." She turned up the bowl and drank deeply, emptying it, then refilled it. "Are you sure you'll not share my wine? Or are you too good to share drink with folk of the North Rim?" A small hint of anger flashed in her eyes. Gorthund shook his head and held out his hand. "No, I suppose I'm not so high-born as that," he said with a smile, taking the bowl. He took a small, polite sip. "It's very good, thank you." She laughed delightedly and clapped her hands together. "See, we shall yet make a picnic of this!" Gorthund passed the bowl to the Doctor, who took it and gave the liquid a dubious sniff. "Interesting bouquet," he muttered. "Not exactly a Chateau Cheval Blanc. A hint of alkaloid, perhaps?" "Come on, Doctor," urged Gorthund. "Have a taste." Cautiously, the Doctor took in a small mouthful of the wine. It was sweet, almost sugary, with a sharp undertaste that seemed to want to make his eyes water, but then didn't. Not bad. Not something he'd serve at a diplomatic function, but not bad. "Will you take wine with us, my Lady?" Soolisa called over to Kepla. "Keep your wine, and your courtesy, groundhog," Kepla snapped back. "I want neither." Rather than offended, Soolisa merely looked amused as she shrugged her slim shoulders and took back the bowl, topping it off again. "Do you wish for more?" she asked the two men. "Thank you, no," Gorthund said, a trace of a slur to his voice. Soolisa giggled again. "No head for wine, then?" she teased, then downed most of the bowl. She knelt by the saddlebags, rummaging through them. "Well, I have something else in here you might like..." The Doctor looked at Gorthund, noting the way the Skyborn's jaw was falling slack. The wine hadn't been that potent, had it? The girl, who was much smaller, had drunk quite a bit more without showing any effect, which also showed that it couldn't be poison, could it...? It struck him suddenly and without warning. A presence swept into his mind, blanketing his thoughts and driving his awareness inwards. He felt his joints go slack and loose, dimly conscious of Gorthund tumbling to the ground beside him. He struggled against the darkness that seemed to fill his brain like a drifting mist, but could not focus to ward it off. It came to him as he was swept under, that the alkaloid in the wine was not a poison, but a _pathway_, a way for the strangling fog to open his mind, invade, and smother it. He couldn't say just how he knew that, but it felt true. And then he was gone into the dark, his body crashing to the edge of the pool like a felled oak. ---- "I have something else for you," Soolisa tittered. She straightened, hefting a pair of heavy flintlock pistols in her hands. "What have you done, groundhog?!" screamed Kepla as she charged toward the fallen men, her blaster in her hand. She stopped short at the sight of Soolisa drawing a careful bead on her with the right-hand pistol. There was a snap of pan-flash and then a roar as the big black- powder weapon went off. Kepla felt the wind of the heavy ball as it passed her cheek, the acrid reek of burnt powder tainting the night breeze. Even as she noticed this, she pointed and fired her own weapon, the blaster-bolt striking the girl and searing her right shoulder to a scorched ruin. Soolisa neither fell nor cried out. She staggered back a pace from the impact, the spent pistol falling from her useless right hand, then raised the left pistol and fired. Kepla was taking aim at the girl's head when she felt something punch into her chest. She stumbled backwards and fell, landing on her rear with a smal grunt. She tried to point the blaster again, but for some reason her arm didn't want to move. She looked down to see her light brigandine tunic staining red from a spouting hole in her chest. "Well," she said weakly, unable to take her eyes from the sight. A moment later, she tumbled over and lay still. Soolisa silently regarded the corpse for a long moment, her eyes flaring a deeper green, then laughed. It was not the musical, bewitching laugh she'd voiced earlier, but a liquid reptilian chuckle that had nothing of the human in it. "You were right, Skyborn," the voice snarled, foul scorn dripping from its tone. "Little Soolisa was not to be trusted, was she?" With that, she turned back to the saddlebags and retrieved a long saber that was lying beneath them. Holding the weapon somewhat awkwardly in her left hand, her right still dangling uselessly at her side, she strode over to where Gorthund lay sprawled. Raising the weapon high, she drove its point through the man's chest, then again, then yet again, finally leaving the sword thrust upright through his lifeless body, a grave-marker of sorts. She then turned and paused over the Doctor's prone form, eyes aglow with a gloating greenish sheen, before grasping his collar in her left hand and setting about the awkward process of dragging him to one of the waiting birds. ---- Cain waited as the woman squeezed the firing stud on the blaster, grinning and savoring the look of shock on her face as absolutely nothing happened. It was really rather comical, the way her eyes widened and her lips parted slightly, the smug smirk falling away into a look of momentary dull surprise. He almost had to chuckle as her knuckles whitened on the pistol-grip in her vain attempt to force the thing to fire. In the second or so all this took, Cain enjoyed himself immensely. Then, as a dawning look of realization began to alight on her face, he punched her in the stomach with every ounce of hatred he could muster. As the redhead folded, rolling to the side, his other hand was already in motion into his coat. In the blink of an eye, his staser pistol was in his hand, pointed at the pair by the door. The two ragged figures froze, the man's blaster half-pointed in Cain's direction, the woman's saber in guard position, useless as that was at ten-yard range. "Go," the Time Lord hissed at them, "and live. Stay, and you die." The two looked nervously at each other, then at the woman coughing on the floor. The man licked his lips nervously as his partner tensed and shifted her weight forward. Cain shot the man first, the crimson staser bolt slamming into his chest and hurling him back against the wall, dead before he hit the floor. The woman had time to lunge a single step before Cain's next shot took her in the face. She spun to the floor, her sword sliding off into the corner. Cain swung the muzzle of his staser to cover the redhead beside him, who was staring up at him with a hate-filled glare. "Murdering traitor," she snarled. "That I am," he said with a jolity he came nowhere close to feeling. "And you are a murdering pawn for a bunch of spineless would-be gods." He regarded her for a long moment, studying the too- familiar lines of her face, and a quick shudder passed through him. "I take back what I said," he grunted hoarsely. "I believe I _will_ hunt down that twisted bitch Shanka, after all. Just for making me do this again." "Damn you, Cain." Her voice was a chill whisper, each word an icy shard of Hell. "How did you know that gun wouldn't fire?" He shrugged, the pistol never wavering from its aim at her head. "Skyborn blasters are all biotechnically keyed to the inhabitants of this city. They won't fire for anyone else." He smirked, taking pleasure in the deepening of her scowl. "That was always your weakness, Kali-babe. Sloppy tactical planning. That's why you were second-best then and you're second-best now." "Good enough to give you a souvenir to remember me by," she shot back. "That's true. Can't regenerate a staser wound." He brushed a hand across his eyepatch. "But I ended up killing you just the same, didn't I?" He noted a momentary look of panic in her eyes, there and gone in the space of a heartbeat. "Don't you remember?" he asked. "Or did Shanka omit that part when she put your brains back together?" "I remember everything I need to remember," she growled back. "You killed Eris and Geryon and Loki, your own comrades!" "I did," he replied with a slow nod. "Blew their heads off with a .45. I also whacked ol' Surma, but that was years later, when he came hunting me. And I killed you, too. And do you know what? Out of all the thousands of murders I've committed and all the millions of lives I've caused to unhappen, those are the only deaths I don't regret." Kali rose slowly to her feet, the pistol tracking her movement the whole way, never wavering. Her gaze fixed on his good eye, unblinking, as she seemed to search for something there. Her face fell slightly into a look of despair and she let out a soft sigh. "And to think that I loved you once," she breathed. A look of real pain crossed Cain's harsh features, but only for a second. "Nice try," he spat, "but save your lies for somebody who doesn't know you. The only thing you've ever gave a damn about is power. That's why you got off on being a Regulator. It was your chance to be a little godling, deciding who could live and who was for the chop, shaping history for those bastards you serve." "And you were the same!" she snarled back. His jaw clenched as he slowly nodded. "That I was, God help me. I believed we were right. I believed we had the duty to twist Time itself for our ends and to make and unmake lives however we saw fit--" "Spare me the moralizing, traitor," Kali sneered. "I've heard this speech from you before, the day you turned on us." "Right before you ordered Geryon to shoot me in the back," Cain corrected. Kali folded her arms under her breasts, no trace of fear on her face. "Whatever, Cain. The fact is that if you intended to shoot me, you'd have already done it. And you know I don't give a damn about anything you have to say. So why don't you just get to the point? I assume I'm still alive for a reason?" "Clever girl," he acknowledged. "I've been debating whether or not I ought to try getting information out of you." "You'd torture me?" she asked scornfully, narrowing her eyes. His answering smile was ugly, self-mocking, brimming with loathing for them both. "Why not?" he replied. "It wouldn't be the worst thing I've ever done." ---- "Majesty, I must protest your freeing of the prisoner known as 'the Doctor'! It was most unwise!" High Priestess Shanneril swept imperiously down the corridor, her small flock of Lesser Priestesses and Guardsmen trailing behind. At her elbow hovered her Captain of the Guard, Siharal, indignant agitation adding a rare abruptness to his movements as he remonstrated with her. "_You_ tell _me_ what is wise and unwise, Siharal?" she asked with pleasant irony. "Shall we trade places, then, and make a Priestess of you?" "Your Majesty knows I mean no disrespect to your wisdom," Siharal replied with stiff dignity. He was a youngish, square-jawed man who carried himself as though all the world were a challenge to his rank. "But to release a stranger without even an interrogation flies against our practices." Shanneril stopped suddenly and turned to regard her Captain with a keen, hawkish stare. "Who says I've released him?" she asked. "But... you..." Siharal spluttered, confused. "He is in Kepla and Gorthund's custody, after all. Gorthund is a bit flighty, I'll admit, but Kepla is a good girl and will keep an eye on him. We also gave him a bird-saddle with a track-beacon attached, so that all we have to do is consult the Great Monitor to know where he is." She chuckled a little at the look on Siharal's face. "I'm not so naive as you seem to think, boy!" Still, having begun his argument, Siharal was loath to abandon it without a struggle. "Even so, we should have kept him here for questioning," he insisted. "So he could tell us lies?" Shanneril asked sweetly. "Honestly, boy, do you know nothing of deviousness? Do you think a spy will tell his tale from a bit of shouting and a few good slaps in the head?" "So this Doctor _is_ a spy!" Siharal exclaimed. The High Priestess merely sighed. "I don't know _what_ he is. But I do know that the best way to find out is to watch him, rather than ask him. We'll just keep an eye on what he gets up to and we'll soon know his game. He'll not stray too far, anyhow. We have his box here, if you will recall. A box that I should like to examine before I go to bed, _if_ you are quite finished second- guessing me, that is." Siharal snapped even further to attention than he already was. "Of course, Majesty," he barked. "I apologize for questioning your wisdom." "Yes, yes," she said, irritatedly waving that aside, "I'm smart and you're intimidating." She set off down the hall again, her entourage in tow. "Now let's have a look at this box-thing so I can get on to bed," she grumbled. "We wise-women need our beauty sleep, you know..." ---- "Come on, traitor," Kali hissed. "Do your worst. I'm not going to beg for my life." "Good," Cain answered, voice flat, "because then I'd despise you even more--" At that moment, another of the ragged-looking Skyborn burst in, a look of panic on his face and a blaster in his hand. "Lady Kali!" he cried. "The guards are--" He got no further. Even as his eyes took in the sight of Kali at gunpoint and the bodies on the floor, Cain was already moving, swinging the staser around to fire a single shot into the man's chest. The Skyborn let off a choked cry, his hand convulsively tightening and triggering off his blaster into the floor as he fell back, dying. That brief instant was all the opening Kali needed. She lashed out with one shapely leg, kicking the staser from Cain's hand before he could re-orient on her. He spun away from her, bringing up his fists, while Kali advanced on him in a bouncing martial-arts stance, face set in savage exultation. "Yeeess," she drawled, "this is how it should end for you, Cain. With your putrid blood on my hands." "Come get some, babe," he shot back as she aimed a snap-kick at his face. He blocked the blow and tried to counterstrike her leg, but she was too quick to be caught so easily. She ducked past his punch and landed a palm-strike on his side that would have snapped his ribs had his trenchcoat not impeded the blow. Cain side-stepped and tried to sweep her legs, but she jumped back and away, getting clear. "You've gotten slow in your old age," Kali taunted, circling as Cain turned to keep her at his front. She aimed a kick at his midsection that he easily deflected, then reversed to aim a spin- kick at his head. Unable to block, Cain rolled with the blow, going into a shoulder-roll that brought him back to his feet in time to take another kick that nearly crushed his knee. Grunting wth the pain of the blow, he lunged forward and landed a hard chop to Kali's shoulder that almost drove the woman to her knees. Grimacing as her arm went numb, she drove a hard punch into his middle that actually staggered the much larger man. But the move was a costly one as he caught her wrist in a vise-like grip. Her free arm still weak and unfeeling, Kali stepped in closer and attempted to hoist her knee into the Time Lord's groin, but Cain, expecting the move, twisted slightly and hooked his foot behind hers, putting her off-balance. There was a quick grappling scrabble for position as he pushed her back, finally resulting in the two being locked tightly against one another, legs entangled and faces mere inches apart. As they stood there, Kali panting in short bird-gasps as she tried to break his unyielding grip, a faint glistening seemed to shine in Cain's eye. "Gotara's Holy Guts, but you're still beautiful," he husked. She looked up at him, her face a mask of baffled rage, and in that instant he slammed forward in a crushing head-butt. Kali sagged in his grip, eyes unfocussing from the stunning blow as he drew back and struck her again, their foreheads colliding with a bone-jarring shock. As the Regulator sank to her knees, half-insensible, Cain released his hold on her wrists and slipped his hands around her neck, softly brushing his fingers across her cheek in passing. His big, calloused fingers met at the nape of her neck, while his thumbs rested together over her throat, their scarred, weathered flesh standing out starkly against the silken perfection of her delicate skin. "Damn you, Shanka," he muttered, voice cracking slightly. "Damn you straight to Hell for making me do this again." Kali roused a little and began to slap weakly at his arms as Cain blinked something out of his eye. "Damnation to us all," he whispered and began to squeeze.