Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn Subject: [DQ] Week 17: Perfect Vision Message-ID: From: hutch@hfglobe.intel.com (Stephen Hutchison) Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1992 06:23:24 GMT References: [ADMIN] Sometimes I do post these things for myself. --------- The Plane of Shadows is a filthy place. Its laws twist and pervert anything that is unfortunate enough to be trapped by it. Magic, especially, is a sick thing there. Real power is only open to those who use pain or death as a channel. William had been Gifted with this truth by the Entity which was once the ruler of the Plane. The Dragon Questers had been trapped. Lord Raven was going to use them as ammunition for a Power Ritual. He had imprisoned the ancient 'kan cosmos-probe: the creature called Tan Ru. By long, slow torture he had caused it to shed almost all of its physical existance. Only magical matrices of power were left, and Lord Raven would use the slow, painful destruction of five victims to destroy the sentience of Tan Ru, so that he could take that power to himself, becoming the god, the Dark Master, that he lusted after being. He knew in his megalomania that he could do this, and he was completely wrong. Tan Ru would not allow its own destruction, and it had the power to twist time. This game has been played before. In an infinity of timeforks, it has been done, undone, done, undone... But this one time things are different. This time, there are seven, not the five in the pentacle. There are the two others, Alita and William. And William KNOWS the rules of magic. Something must die. To stop a blasphemy this horrible, to gain the power to break Lord Raven's spells, something must die, something that cannot die. William, the only sane man in a mad universe, does the only sane thing, the thing that everyone thinks is mad. Hope can never die. He has in his hand the essence of hope, the crystalline pure archetype drawn from his own mind by the hand of a friend, so that he will never lose sight of it. Hope can never die. But it can be murdered. William crushes it. And the power comes to him. He frees the probe. Time shatters. The timeforks are a cataract around them. Everything happens in an instant, time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once, and time has gone awry. Anything MIGHT happen - everything DOES happen. And between William and Tan Ru, in a prolonged tick of the cosmic clock, all the possible things are sorted, and all things are set to William's plan. And William (the sane man in the mad universe) is now in a sane universe, and he's not there any more. And Tan Ru is gone. And after a few moments, the Dragon Questers are returned to their proper places. This is how it looked from the inside. It all happened at once. It was possible for the five to be free. Therefore they were free. It was possible for the cages holding William and Alita to disappear. They did. As the seven moved away from their ex-prison, a small wind picked up. In a breath, Lord Raven was there, returned from mist. They retreated towards the pit. The naked energies rose, and the air became thick. The Dark Master was flustered but confident. "Nice -- but this is only a setback. You've already failed to defeat me once, what would make this time different?" It was possible that the ten-foot marble golem which was 'Raelf's current form would suddenly be able to speak. He shook his head, in reply to the arrogant ravings of the vampire lord. His voice was a silken rumble from deep in his stone chest. "You're wrong again, Raven. The last battle is the one that matters. We never failed to defeat you on any timeline but one, and that one never happened. You always make the same stupid error. You wanted a vampire, someone to shed your curse on. You wanted three lives, so that their suffering and death would give you power to command me. You wanted to use me to command the probe. You wanted it to empty its own spirit, and install your own in its place. Your primitive ritual was a botch." Raven snarled, taken aback. It had taken years to prepare the ritual. The golem continued. "Even then, it might have worked, if the probe were willing, or ignorant of your purpose. But you toyed with us. You put me inside the probe. You never thought that I might prepare for you." <> A glowing rectangular door appeared. Raven felt himself being inexorably pulled towards the door. He sank his hands into the stone floor, grasping for his last hope. "I'm not...finished...yet!" he said, struggling to free himself, and appearing to slowly succeed. He shouted in his badly accented 'kani. <> The door remained, but the pull slacked. Raven stood. In the background, BlackSilver's head rose into view on his long dragon neck, and he prepared a blast of his fiery breath, when his gaze met Kadrys' eyes. Their wills locked, and the dragon discovered that his erstwhile Dark Master with his centuries of experience was a relative newcomer to the subtle art of mental persuasion - Kadrys was MUCH older. When Lord Raven had matched skills with Kadrys in their earlier combat of wills the "Dark Master" had only prevailed by drawing on the power of the probe. But Kadrys had found something in Raven's mind - and the vampire lord had given up the secret of how he controlled the dragon, without even noticing it. TrueSilver still lived, bound in the chains of the BlackSilver persona, each impulse to kindness twisted to cruelty, each desire for the benefit of others rechanneled into slavish stupid adoration of the Dark Master. Of course he was aware what had been done to him. He had crawled farther into the dark in his skull, until something with red eyes came to him in his hiding place, and the compulsions and bindings were torn from his mind. In an eternity or an instant, he shook his head, staring at the prone figure of a giant, near his feet. "SunStorm?" He collapsed. Lancos looked around him. It was possible that his bow was still at hand, so he drew it, prepared an arrow. Then he saw 'Raelf gesture with one of the swords, throwing a glittering holy-ice blade at the vampire lord, only to have it shatter against an unseen barrier. No one could get close to Raven -- it would be the act of a madman to try. William smiled, weeping. He strode up to Raven, and with a touch, dissipated the shield. Within arms' reach, his hands twisted the air, and it gave him a stake made of wood. He lunged, striking the vampire in the chest, but the stake shattered, splintering on the second shield of frozen spacetime that Raven had placed over his heart. Raven slashed out at him, and the mage grabbed him like a toy terrier seizing a grizzly. The light in the door flared again, pulling the two to the threshold. "William! No!" 'Raelf cried, but this was all happening at once, and he had no time to stop it. Valgar had a better idea. It was possible, so he still held the stake summoned by the vampire lord in his "test of fealty" - and that was made of the same twisted spacetime, created by Tan Ru. Valgar flung the stake, and it passed through the shield. Raven brought up a hand to deflect it, but the point penetrated his hand, embedding in his chest. William grinned a manic, wide-eyed leer and grabbed him, forcing the stake into, and through, the vampire's heart. Then they were sucked through the door. It vanished. The blazing white glow from the pit changed color to blood red. The red caught fire and became a shattering non-sound. The wind intensified, spiralling into the pit. The entire room came unfurled like a tapestry and spun into the vortex. Time returned. Darkness around them. Stability. The salt breeze from the ocean. Overhead, stars whirled, the new moon barely tipping the horizon. "Close that quick!" came a cry. "No can do, dudes! It's rewritten history. We're outa there." 'Raelf struck a light from somewhere, setting a dry stick ablaze as a torch. He had returned to his surfer guise. Lancos shook his head. "This is too strange. I remember you lining us all up, one by one, to take us through the gateway back. I remember that Alita ... You left her behind. You said she belonged there." "She does." Kadrys nodded. "I seem to recall something about her being given Raven's old realm. Ack-I-Renege." 'Raelf grinned. "She'll thrive. I saw Noira. The Entity gave her to Alita as an assistant..." Kadrys matched the grin. Valgar looked around. "Where's the others?" "Over here." A muffled voice came from a nearby hillock. The hillock turned out to be SunStorm and TrueSilver - the two were still comatose. The giant remained at his full size, the dragon's head lain protectively across his body. The faintest sigh of air showed they both still breathed. "Help get me out!" The DiamondSword was under the dragon. 'Raelf pulled it free. The clearing was lit by the sword's gentle radiance. "Thank you. I had the strangest vision as we were leaving. I saw Lancos talking with Alita, and she was offering to have his baby, she turned into a woman I didn't recognize. White-blond curly hair, green eyes, red robes." Lancos blinked, and muttered so quietly that he was sure nobody could hear. "I remember now. Felira. We would have been married." He turned his face towards the darkening west. He spoke louder. "Alita tried to hold on to me with a part of my life that is over now. I refused her offer. I hope she understands. She called the mists to keep me there, and I used the medallion to escape them. I never want to see that place again." Valgar looked around. "Dragon, giant, warrior, vampire, traveller, and freeman. Where's the sculptor? What about William?" 'Raelf sighed, collapsing bonelessly into a crosslegged slouch. "I'm not absolutely sure, but I think he's gone. The probe was left without any physical supports. It was down to raw magic and old ingrained habit. Raven had accidentally come across the one way way to destroy it. Without the material matrix, the first time it tried to do any major work, it would fragment into its fundamentals and disperse along their harmonics. William was inside when it blew." "Does that mean he's dead?" "Probably. That door that Raven got sucked through, that was MY trap. I set it to dispel physical matrix of its contents. Then it was to take the spirit component and purge it, then trigger Tan Ru to select a timeline which got us all out of the Shadowlands. When the vortex formed, when it lost coherence, that was the last program running. William was already gone." "He made the ultimate sacrifice for us," 'Raelf said downheartedly. "And he didn't want to come along at all." "So where are we?" Lancos asked, uncertainly.