During which immortals meet mortals...
111
Tesla, Tesla, Tesla, it brought memories to her, images. She knew his face had been oddly familiar. Something on the Discovery channel years and years ago. Or was it the Sci-Fi channel? Something about madness, obsession and a death ray, surely a death ray, some mad science fiction super weapon that had frightened her badly as she watched that documentary late one night. Or was it a movie?
A death ray, like the one that had just hit Zeus Machado square in the chest, right where his heart would be.
And just like that it rushed back in. Just like that she remembered where she was, what had just happened.
She turned frantically towards Zeus' prone body, finding it lying on the ground, motionless. The gold had somehow retreated from it, not a jewel or other precious stone within an arm's length. It had withdrawn and he lay on nothing more than cold, hard concrete.
She went to him and took his head in her hands. There was nothing to save here, nothing she could kid herself into trying to battl. It had gone clean through, it only took one glance to see that. What had once been there, what had once beaten in that great chest, was there no longer.
“I'm here partner,” she told him through the incredible sobs that had begun to wrack her own body. She tried to stifle them, to show some matter of strength, but it wouldn't stop, it just wouldn't. “I'm here... I'm right here...”
He looked at her once, his eyes clearing for just one second, his body stuck in between transformations, part black fur and part flesh.
She could see him try to take control of those trembling lips, to say something, but it never came. He went out with a
sputter, a rattle and finally a shallow gasp.
He transformed then, his body finally relaxing into it's true form. What remained in Lorelei Price's arms once that was done was the corpse of a beautiful black wolf, it's long hair glistening.
She lowered his head and stood up slowly, deliberately, her mind going blank, everything sluggish at first before sharpening.
A tunnel formed in her vision and at it's end she saw the monster that had taken the wonderful creature that lay at her feet from this world.
There was no howling this time, no fierce primal cry. There was nothing but a great sharp silence as she ran as fast as her legs could take her towards that robed figure.
Her ears caught words, a conversation, her mind told her later, but to her they were meaningless babble, nothing but background chatter.
“---and just another product of your existence. You made us, you see, back when you saw fit to murder hundreds of thousands in the mountains of the north. You gave us strength then, taught us that our race needed guiding. It needed to stray from the magical and the mystical, the way of the Earth. It was you that showed us that we needed to find a way to vanquish that old way, to slay our dragons, all from you, you see.... the last two thousand years, all the advancements, all the accomplishments, you gave us them---”
She gritted her teeth and increased her speed, making her body smaller, ready to slam it into him with all her strength, to push him as hard as she could where he needed to be.
“---- so the Amaranth became the guiding force. We who do not wither. From the shadows we have influenced man and brought him to the greatest heights of the universe, to the very stars. It is the Amaranth that drove away the Elves, slaughtered the Trolls, entombed the Dwarves. And this, all of this, we have done with the one weapon we have used time and again to crush those like you, Dragon. We have beaten back the tide of your wretched kind with the one thing you cannot fight. We have destroyed you with Science, our great and noble Sword of Truth, our Blade of Illumination---”
She was close now, so damned close. She narrowed her eyes and leaped over that last hill of pure gold.
“--- and now we brought you here, with the temptation of that silly girl, brought you here so you and your brother could finally relieve our people of your foul existences. We orchestrated the blackout and while you fought, I waited, for this is my land, North America, the land my brothers and sisters chose for me to look over. Haven't I shaped it well, Trakaan Astranax?”
“Now I finish th--- eh?”
She hit him like a freight train, ignoring the weapon he was shaping out of the gold, and slamming her body into him with everything she could muster.
He laughed a little, a chuckle really, as he stumbled those few steps that took him right where he deserved to be, his expression incredulous.
Then the Dragon let loose his inferno.
End part 111
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