Second cloak - "But how to do this, functionally ? Everyone we send ... "
Cloaked - "Gather the nine. We are to do it ourselves. And we do it, tonight."
As
the nine cloaks gather before the hollow statue, fire ignited at their
center, a wind growing above and a mist calling all around. In ceremony
their forms reach out as haunts, spreading across the world, then a
sudden burst of power.
pa-Drek leans back in his chair, hand on
sword's hilt as it strikes. Stretches his neck to shake it off and
smiles. In his eye it tracks back to the source. "Found you."
Lightning
strikes the hollow statue cracking it as he rises from their fire,
holding the power they sent in his hand, he lashes it back. Their
spirits fight as they do, weaving through reality to miss but it's as a
harmonic feedback to their own spell, working its way back up the
string.
Their bodies start to fall. Five down and four hurt.
Knocked
back to the real world while they tend to their wounded, pa-Drek
watches unseen before disappearing into their surrounding woods.
pa-Drek - Voiced over as he examines the sword, "And that brings us to today. Their wounds are mortal. Their circle, broken. What they were, will never be again." Sheathes.
_________
The King - In bed as though struggling for the strength to meet his anger, "It was a trap. And we fell for it, the basest of traps."
The Prince - Holding his hand, "He insulted our god. In the most dishonoring of ways, you had no choice."
King - "Our god ?" Struggling to get up, "Our ? God !?"
Prince - Easing him back down, "I know." A tear, "I know."
King - Looks at him with the soft gel eyes of aged near, "Our god is dead."
pa-Drek
- Standing in the room unseen, voiced over. "Literal fucking plague
beast and always at the core of it all. Name your evil.
"If
evil were a tacky warehouse store, the crown would be its aged
greeter. But the truth is and I swear it by honor and tales, I had no
idea who would turn up in that circle of nine.
"But before you call that
an apology, I laughed my ass off when I found out."
"But this is only fit for an opening scene. I've told you what I think of them, so now one what we do, which have nothing to do with goddamn hollywood clowns."
Looks at the bed, "Nor even this tacky circle of aged old slavers." The kings eyes follow him in disbelief, pa-Drek smiles back. "Who believed themselves the most powerful men in the world."
________
At another time, he stomps an unknown corridor pissed about something, passing sanctuary soldiers before entering the cannon room.
Gijo - "Um." Casually flips off the monitor, "Okay ... " Gets out of the chair.
pa-Drek sits and cycles from Atlantic side to Pacific.
Gijo - Leaning in, "Ooo ... that's gonna be really hard. They don't get a lot of ... "
pa-Drek - "No it's not." Clenches his fist and an underwater volcano pops off the Pacific shore with a quake to the land.
Gijo - "Um." Backs away slowly.
Diver Deep - Still talking, "So she was like 'The nocturnal one ?' and Mom beat the Fuck out of her."
Gijo - "O My God."
________
He lands in Sanctuary before his hut and looks around. Not a
particularly large island, though the woods and ways all seem to stretch
infinitely inward, leading elsewhere entirely.
As described in
the tales the only prominent feature which would be seen from the center
would be the school temples strung entwined with the great tree's
roots, crossing the falls with stone walkways with a proto-Sumerian
sense.
"A peaceful
place, as we've killed all enemies who would dare. If this is in your
foretellings old seers, It was indeed the twilight of the gods, the
story of my life."
He turns to the gates now open, showing the battles of the past on the other side, as though the myths of every pantheon were storming it.
pa-Drek - Walking toward it, "They all claimed right to this place, by some entry in their obscurest of tales. Some of them may have even been right."
At the gate looking them over, aloud. "Fuck you."
Voiced over as the battle rages, "These were the glory days."
The scene fades with the gods as wisps and skulls being sold at the marketplace, where once were the distant plains of har-Megiddo. "But today ... these are the days of righteousness."
"My enemies are right about me. I do intend to take this world. Where they're wrong is thinking it's to rule it. Nor even to destroy it."
Smiles as the field returns to battle, aloud. "Probably."
"Let's find out. Because that's exactly what I was hired to do. So it gets done."
"For Weed. Women. And Luck. Now She thinks it will require the absolute destruction of human civilization. But I think we can do better than that."
Inside the Dyson grid, the corridors begin to shorten as it slowly descends around the world. While from the world life reaches out in vines to accommodate it.
Gijo kicks cheering in her chair as she approaches the Earth ~
Along the grid's underside facsimiles of the world's cities begin forming over their counterparts, while the vines reach up wrapping around, pulling them closer. The beasts of the woods creep out to fields overlooking the cities to see, birds flock to the descending towers.
They twist like XO structures as they close, twisting the vines into and pulling in until the structures merge, on the sphere's outside nothing at all, as though the world had been taken.
An asteroid tumbles through the emptiness ...