literature

Fan Fiction 2

Deviation Actions

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A tall figure in a long black coat knelt atop a crevasse, his long white hair billowing in the hot air rising from the lava below. “I will not miss this world,” he said in a silky voice, “when I have destroyed it.”
A girl’s voice called defiantly from behind him. “Hold on one moment!” The slim man turned, picking up his impossibly long sword as he stood. Standing on a small rise of volcanic rock was a barefoot, blind little girl, her face smeared with ash and streaked with sweat. Her voice was loud over the grumbling of the volcano. “Not if I have anything to say about it!”
The man laughed, turning his head aside and covering his mouth daintily with one hand. “You? A little girl? You hope to stop me?”
“Hope, nothin’,” said the little girl. She stomped on the ground with one foot and a boulder lifted into the air above her. “You’re going down.” She raised an arm, then stepped forward while slicing forward with the arm. The boulder flew at the long-haired man, who dodged nimbly aside so that the boulder flew harmlessly past and smashed into the opposite wall of the crevasse. He moved forward lightly, impossibly quickly, as the little girl took another step forward, launching another boulder at the man. He dodged this one just as easily and came out from behind it with his sword poised to strike.
The little girl moved her feet further apart and raised her arms, raising a bubble of volcanic rock over herself. The long sword sliced easily through the rock, but now the girl was moving again. She punched the air and the ground rose up in pillars of rock where the man was standing, but each time he somersaulted easily away. The little girl planted her feet and pulled her arms back to her side, forearms up, and the ground beneath the man’s feet churned beneath him.
He leaped, ascending quickly until he hung over the battlefield. The girl turned her blind eyes up to him as he fell, meteor-like, toward her, his sword held in front of him. He impaled her as he landed, the sword passing through her chest and burying itself into the ground. The girl’s eyes widened in shock as the man jumped again, pulling his sword from the ground and holding her up by it, still hanging from the blade. Then he flung her casually into the crevasse and walked away.

“Frag me, I’m bored as bugger-all,” announced the man at the bar. His demeanor seemed to owe equally to punk rock and heavy metal. He was wearing a black trench coat and had gelled, platinum-blonde hair. “Go on and pour me another sodding drink, Clyde.”
The bartender looked worried. “Aren’t you going to go home at some point? It’s almost dawn.”
“Not this again,” slurred the man. He raised his red eyes to the bartender and grabbed him by the collar. Despite his obvious intoxication, the man moved quickly and his grip was solid. The bartender looked nervously at the strange black marks around the man’s eyes and beside his mouth, wondering for the hundredth time that night who this man was.
“Just pour him a drink,” said a little girl’s voice, and the bartender looked up to see the blind little girl walk in.
“Are you old enough to be in here?” asked the bartender, but he was already pouring the man at the bar another drink.
The girl jumped up on a stool and turned to the blonde man. “So,” she said, pausing for a painful moment before continuing. “You know that girly man with the white hair?”
“I hope that’s not me you’re describing,” grumbled the man, taking a long drink.
The little girl punched his arm. “I mean the one with the super long hair and sword.”
The man nodded. “Yeh, I know the bastard. What of him?”
The little girl shrugged. “He tried to kill me. Oh, and he’s going to destroy the world.”
“Oh, is that all?” asked the man, taking another drink. “Guess we’d better go save it, then.” He drained his cup and slammed his cup down on the table. They both stood and headed for the door.
The bartender squeaked something that was barely audible as a request for payment.
The platinum-blonde man raised two fingers to him. “Jog on, ya bastich.” As he stepped outside, his skin smoked for a second, then crackled and split, burning off like paper, the flesh underneath charring and blackening. “Bloody hell!” the man exclaimed. “Dawn already!” He raised his trench coat over his head, the flesh underneath knitting over the wound while simultaneously continuing to blacken and burn.

The little girl and the blonde man stood outside a massive Gothic cathedral. The stone, once grey, had blackened with age, and the windows were dark inside. One of the immense doors was decorated with angels in neatly ordered rows, the other with writhing, chaotic figures in torment.
“Enough standing around. Let’s get inside already,” said the man, whose skin seemed to be bubbling in slow-motion as it burned and healed simultaneously.
The little girl nodded and they walked through the doors. It was dark inside, and for a moment all that could be seen was the stranger’s red eyes and the light of a match as he lit a small cigar. Then his cigar smoldered like his red eyes that scanned the entire room.
“This way,” said the little girl, leading the way past deserted pews as saints stared blindly from forgotten alcoves. They made their way through an immense silence that seemed to hang in the space between them and the arched ceiling. They reached the altar, over which could be seen the body of the man the girl had fought before. He was lying on the altar like a corpse in a morgue, his long white hair spilling over one end and nearly touching the floor.
The little girl touched the man’s sleeve and whispered, “Let’s get him.” She moved forward, but the man reached out a hand and caught her shoulder.
“Wait,” he whispered, and sniffed. He sniffed again. “Something’s not right. Stay here.”
A note of nervousness crept into the little girl’s voice. “What is it?”
The man didn’t reply. He walked forward, keeping his eye on the shadows and the wall in front of them. The immense shape of the church’s black metal crucifix hung there, obscured by shadows.
The man touched the chest of the figure lying on the altar. “Something’s opened this poor sod up,” he marveled. “There’s a hole in his fraggin’ chest.” He looked down. “And there’s this.” He knelt, picking something up from the floor. It was a dead animal, a strangely crustacean thing with a long tail and no discernible head.
“Huh,” said the man, turning it over in his hands.
The little girl looked around, eyes wide. “Something’s wrong...”
The man dropped the creature and looked up. He thought he saw something like an immense shadow uncurl from behind the crucifix and move up toward the ceiling. “Huh,” he said, cocking his head to stare up into the gloom.
Then something huge fell from the ceiling, crashing down on the little girl with an impact that broke the flagstones of the cathedral and splintered the nearby pews.
“Frag!” yelled the man, rushing forward.
The creature crouching on the girl’s body was dark and reptilian, with a long, lashing tail behind it. It stood, seeming to uncurl from its crouch, until it was nearly nine feet tall. Its body seemed a nightmarish combination of biological and mechanical lines, with smoothly sculpted muscles, chitinous ribs, and strange growths like biological smokestacks or mechanical spore chimneys rising symmetrically from its shoulders. Its smooth, nearly featureless face had only a split where its maw gaped, silver teeth dripping thick clear slime. Ribbed tubing fell like hair from the back of its head, reaching as far down its back as the white-haired man’s had. One of its arms ended in a long claw that resembled the man’s long sword. It hissed as the platinum-blonde man charged it, snapping a second set of jaws forward from its mouth while raising its blade to strike.
“Ya sodding bastich!” the man screamed, leaping and colliding with the creature with such force that they both fell into a row of pews. The man grappled with the creature, the close quarters keeping the creature from using its terrifying sword-claw. They crushed pews, broke statues and shredded paintings. The creature threw the man into the lectern, splintering it. The man stood unsteadily, pulling a large spike of wood from his back where it had narrowly missed his heart. He tossed it aside, muttering “Bloody close.” He threw himself back into the fight and managed to break off one of the growths on the creature’s back. Acidic blood splashed over his arms and chest, and he screamed as it burned him. He crossed his arms over his chest as his body started to regenerate the wound.
The creature lunged at him, stabbing its sword through his shoulder and driving him into an alcove, knocking the statue of Saint Francis of Gondor from its pedestal. The sword sliced into the wall behind the man, pinning him to it, while the impact shattered the grimy stained-glass window above them. Shards of glass fell like sooty butterflies around them as the light poured in, the man’s skin once more burning in the sun. The man in the trench coat, which now hung in smoldering ribbons from his body, reached out and lifted the large statue, gripping it in both hands and smashing it down over the creature’s claw, snapping it.
The creature reared back, screeching in pain, which gave the man an opportunity to wrench himself forward over the claw until he reached the end and pulled himself free. The creature ceased its screech and grabbed him, lifting him bodily from the ground with its ruined hand while plunging the other into his chest. It then ran up along the wall, doubling back around toward the crucifix with the man hanging limply from its grip.
When it reached the crucifix, it tore the immense sculpture from the wall, sending it tumbling to the floor below, where it landed upside-down in the rubble of the fight. The creature then leapt gracefully from the wall, the smoking body of the man in its hands, and landed on top of the inverted crucifix, driving its broken base through the hole in the man’s body chest.
The man screamed inarticulately in pain and rage as his body caught fire and started to turn to ash. The creature screamed in victory, its roar echoing from the ceiling far above. Then its scream was suddenly cut off as the tips of three claws emerged from its forehead. Then the little girl perched on the creature’s back pulled her fist back, the claws coming free from the creature’s head. The girl jumped lightly from the creature’s back as it toppled over.
She helped the man pull himself from the crucifix.
As soon as the man’s lungs had regenerated sufficiently, he gasped, “Good thing it was metal.”
“They don’t make them like they used to,” the girl agreed. “Come on.”
They headed out of the church. Once they were out in the sun and the man was weakly muttering about the sun, the girl stomped down, lifted her arms, and dropped them again, and a chasm opened under the cathedral. The building toppled inside, falling into the immense blackness. The girl held her hands out to the side, then brought them together, one over the other, and the chasm closed again.
“That should do it,” she announced brightly.
“I need a drink,” muttered the man.

Neither suspected that the opening of the chasm and the dropping in of the unhallowed cathedral had been felt on the other side of the world. In its house under the sea, an abomination stirred in its aeons-old slumber....
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