Katena eases the living rock aside, then lashes the undead flesh of the Dark Spire with her Stone Catena, breaking through into a tunnel. Oakthorn slowly levers himself up through a vertical shaft, climbing chimney-style. Forgeheart trails steam and mist as she stalks up a spiraling ramp, holding her hammer warily in both hands. Seafixer angrily smashes a servitor in the face with his staff, then slips into the secret passage the servitor had been guarding. Skysabre vaults high across a gallery, unseen by the monstrosities milling about beneath. Forgeheart finds a ladder that resembles the skeleton of a giant snake...and may actually be one. After pausing to consider, she slings her hammer across her back and starts to climb up. Seafixer reaches the end of the secret passageway and peers out through a spyhole, clearly not liking what he sees. Oakthorn sprints along a corridor. He looks nervously to the sides and over his shoulder, apprehensive about how easy it seems to be. He's waiting for the trap to snap shut. Katena climbs a tall central shaft, her stone fingers sinking deep into the fleshy walls to give her purchase. Crimson sparks float up and down the shaft like messengers, but none come near her. Skysabre looks around a corner and sees a grand entryway. He is puzzled by the lack of guards, for there are clear posts on either side for such. Seafixer bursts from the secret passage. Katena smashes out from the spinal shaft. Forgeheart rises out of the floor. Oakthorn emerges from a side corridor. Skysabre strides in through the entryway. Tybalt spreads his arms in greeting and bows, a smile on his face. "Welcome to my parlor." @>-`-,-`-,-`-,`-,-`-,-`-,-`- \\ // -'-.-'-.'-.-'-.-'-.-'-.-'-<@ .|,Coherent Comics Presents \\ // #21 - Intro Draco --X------------------------- E }X{ ARCHS copyright 2003 by the '|` A Superguy/LNH Tale // \\ Dvandroid (Dave Van Domelen) @>-`-,-`-,-`-,`-,-`-,-`-,-`- // \\ -'-.-'-.'-.-'-.-'-.-'-.-'-<@ "You'll find these flies can bite, spider," Skysabre assumed a Florentine stance, a second sword replacing the usual main gauche dagger. "Oh, most can," the Darkknight agreed, "yet it avails them naught in the web." He gestured, and all the entrances sealed shut behind the Exarchs. "You are now trapped in here with me." "Or you with us," Oakthorn snarled, nocking an arrow. "Such a brave face," Tybalt purred, "to cover such uncertainty. You have no plants or other living things to manipulate here, archer. Feel a bit inadequate being out of your element, as it were?" Tybalt stepped over to a low dais, ignoring the weapons trained upon him, and lifted an obsidian dome to reveal an hourglass filled with blood-red sand. He flipped it over with a casual gesture, then placed its cover on the floor. "Just to make things fair, for the time it takes these sands to run I shall employ naught but my martial prowess and my keen blades," he drew paired long and short swords with liquid grace. "So long as you also restrain yourselves, of course. At the first overly strong breeze or lick of flame, I unleash my full power. Understood? The sand is running out...." Skysabre glanced to his comrades. One by one, they slowly nodded, grudgingly agreeing to the terms, yet all doubting they could trust the word of the Gentle Gift of Crimson's right hand. Skysabre rushed the cloaked and armored Darkknight, only to sidestep at the last second to let Oakthorn's shaft streak towards Tybalt's face. "Oho! Clever!" Tybalt cooed as he neatly deflected the arrow with his short sword and followed with a probing thrust at Skysabre's head. Metal met crystallized air with a bright peal as Skysabre parried. Tybalt leapt up to avoid a sweep of the Stone Catena, balancing for the merest moment on the head of the hammer Forgeheart as it was drawn back for a strike. Anna pulled her weapon down quickly, but not before Tybalt had jumped again, landing behind Oakthorn. The archer tried to spin and backpedal to get a shot off, but Tybalt laughed and kicked Oakthorn in side, sending the hero sprawling. Verdant power started to flare from Oakthorn's eyes, but Tybalt stilled him with a tauntingly waggled sword. "Ah, ah, ah! Time isn't up yet!" "Yours is," Seafixer thrust with his staff, coming within a hair's width of Tybalt's aquiline nose before withdrawing the feint and sweeping Tybalt's legs out from under him with a hooked toe. The darkknight quickly rolled back to his feet. "Ah, so the jester learned something from watching the knights spar? You think you've spotted a weakness in my technique?" Seafixer did not reply, he simply advanced with his iron staff spinning, blocking and striking at the same time. Sparks of various strange colors were hurled away by the impacts between the two weapons, iron enchanted by the sea kings and steel infused with the souls of the dead. The other Exarchs paused, uncertain whether launching their own assaults would be help or hindrance. Finally, Seafixer saw the opening he'd been waiting for, and struck savagely at Tybalt's right knee, hoping to cripple the man. Tybalt caught the staff in his free hand, having sheathed the short sword in a movement so fast the eye couldn't follow. "Tsk. You may have seen me fall to that sort of move in sparring, jester...and now you have fallen into my trap." With inhuman strength, Tybalt swung the staff one-handed, slamming Seafixer into the floor. "I'm always careful to demonstrate a few weaknesses when fighting for show, in case someone decides to challenge me in earnest with knowledge of my 'flaws'." He cast staff and wielder aside. Seafixer impacted against a twisted sculpture of a woman, smashing it to bits and slumping to the floor amidst the shards. Forgeheart rushed forward, swinging her hammer in a wide arc that forced Tybalt back and let Skysabre move to help their fallen comrade. Attempts to parry the massive weapon were barely effective, and the souls trapped in Tybalt's blade howled in pain as the hammerblows strained the steel to its breaking point. The darkknight's guard was further challenged by arrow after arrow aimed at his vitals, he barely had time to deflect them so that they would hit his armor instead of his flesh. "A hammer is a clumsy weapon, girl," Tybalt advised. "Especially a maul like that one. More a tool than a proper weapon, really. And it inevitably leaves you OPEN," he emphasized as he lunged forward and slid the thin edge of his blade between the bands of enchanted bronze that circled Anna's left leg. She let out a short yelp of pain and barely managed to stagger back before Tybalt could take her head with a followup swing. A small trickle of blood seeped through her armor. Tybalt deflected another arrow and then paused to lick the blood from his sword, a perverse smile on his lips. "Mageblood always has a particularly engaging tang to it, even when the mage...no longer has her spells," he grinned, a smear of blood marking his chin. The hourglass shattered. Everyone turned to look at Katena, red sand running through her fingers and crystal raining down about her feet. "Kat?" Skysabre arched an eyebrow as he helped Seafixer up. "We're not going to beat him this way," she frowned. "We simply can't coordinate our attacks well enough to take advantage of our numbers, and he's better than any two of us in close combat." "You're not going to beat me ANY way," Tybalt sneered, "but that's beside the point. Oh, and I'm better than any three of you, at least, but I was SO hoping to find out if it was four or even all five." Then he vanished behind a wall of flames that poured forth from Forgeheart's hammer. "Pour it on!" Kat shouted, picking up the dais that had once held the hourglass and throwing it at the inferno. On her command, the marble column splintered into a hail of razor-sharp pieces as it entered the fires, but most of the pieces seemed to be bouncing off Tybalt's armor. Oakthorn added a hail of verdant arrows, while Skysabre whipped the flames into a burning tornado. Tybalt could be seen in the center of it all, if only barely. He threw back his head and laughed. A shockwave blasted the inferno away from him and forced the Exarchs back a step. "You should know better than to think fire will hurt..." his voice suddenly deepened and roughened, "...a DRAGON!" With that, he burst from his armor, the tattered remnants of his cloak clinging gamely to his throat as his pale skin was replaced by bronze scales and he grew tenfold in size into a wingless serpentine form. A heartbeat later, the cloak's clasps snapped as well, and the fine silk fluttered away. Arrows sprouted from the dragon's hide, along his neck and in a tight cluster over his heart, but none penetrated deeply enough to do more than annoy Tybalt. Kat and Anna exchanged a glance, then struck in unison...at the floor. Already straining under the weight of Tybalt's true form, it cracked open under the combined blows of hammer and fist. With a roar of surprise, the dragon dropped half his length through the hole before gripping the edges with his ebon-taloned claws. Before Tybalt could regain his balance, Skysabre poured lightning from his swords, playing the brilliant arc across the dragon's scales, leaving a wandering, scorched line in the bronze hue. Seafixer commanded his staff to grow to immense size, smashing down on Tybalt's back and forcing him further into the hole. Roaring in rage, Tybalt slithered out from under the iron rod and lashed about with his sinuous tail, forcing everyone back from the hole. Fire seemed to dance along his hide, twisting around and flowing towards his head. He opened his mouth and started to rear back.... "Hold. Enough," a voice came from everywhere and nowhere. The dragon continued to build power for a moment, then stopped, the fire muting. Tybalt assumed a wary position. The Gentle Gift of Crimson floated up through the hole in the floor, silken robes fluttering around him like a wind-whipped pool of blood. "My throneroom may be able to heal itself, but I think enough damage has been done for now." To his credit, Tybalt made no protestations of "But I could have beaten them!" or "I only need a moment more, master!" Instead, he concentrated, and started to shrink back to his human form. Bits of ornate armor, scattered by his earlier transformation, drifted towards him of their own accord and clothed him in steel. He stepped over to stand next to the (surprisingly) undamaged throne as his lord floated to a seat in it. "You know, you don't need to fight me," the Gentle Gift of Crimson remarked, resting his delicate chin on one fine-boned hand. "We're the good guys, of course we do," Oakthorn lifted his bow. "Are you?" the Darklord raised an eyebrow. "Are you REALLY?" "What's *that* supposed to mean?" Kat frowned. "Only that you are not who...or even *what*...you think," was the smiling reply. "Except for my poor little deconstruction of falling stars," he gestured to Seafixer, "none of you is real." Skysabre shrugged. "If you mean that we're fictional characters, we already knew that." Oakthorn raised an eyebrow as if to ask, "We did?" "Our homeworld was a dream in the mind of the Writers, in many ways. And this world has its Authors, from what I've heard," Skysabre continued, ignoring Oakthorn, who had clearly not gotten a memo. "That changes nothing. We're still going to stop you." The Gentle Gift of Crimson slowly shook his head and chuckled. "No, I do not refer to that bit of Red King's Dream, nor do I particularly believe in it. I am the only red king who matters, after all. No, I mean that you are not Richard Franklins, not Anna Tanner, not Stanley King, not Kathryn Anders," he gestured to each of the four in turn. "Well, in a way you are all Kathryn Anders, I suppose." Everyone looked at Kat, who seemed just as confused as they were. "Did you never stop to think about the oddities? No, I suppose it was all normal to you heroes. Find that you don't need to breathe? Must be a new power. Hearing strange echoes of a ghostly chorus in your head? Must be an omen. Fine, then. I will spell it out for you." The Gentle Gift of Crimson slowly stood, then walked out to the center of the room. The floor repaired itself under his feet, as if the Dark Spire itself was afraid to disappoint its lord. "The transdimensional explosion you all remember did not send anyone into the Altiverses," he began. "I can read your pasts as easily as I can read your faces...and you have none before arriving in 973HONGKONGFILMS. Oh, you have memories, and you have a history...but the two do not go together. That explosion hurled a large part of the body mass of one 'Kopikat' across the dimensions, including colonies of her self-aware nanoplague-descendants. One particularly large group landed in 973HONGKONGFILMS and spent *years* trying to rebuild itself into what it remembered it was...but it remembered being a part of a team as well, so used local materials to construct... companions." He paused to drink in the stunned silence and thundering denial. "You are not real. You are copies, homonculi with false memories implanted by some unknown subsystem. You are not the good guys, you are the leftover debris of a mercenary machine, twisted by hyperspatial energies and wistful longings. You may now spend an eternity contemplating this." To their credit, the Exarchs were not totally stunned by this news. Katena practically shrugged it off as she moved to attack. But the seeds of doubt had been planted...and it could hardly have been called a battle. And then it was over. IS IT OVER? WOULDN'T THAT SUCK IF IT WAS? AND ISN'T 21 A STRANGE NUMBER TO END A STORY ON ANYWAY? Answers to these questions and more, assuming there IS a next... SUPERGUY! ============================================================================= Author's Notes: MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!