Post by Wizard on Nov 8, 2005 1:48:37 GMT -5
BOOM.
The minute hand moved.
"Only five minutes 'til midnight!" crowed Spakkle. "Better make a decision!"
Callian angrily turned his glance from the devil. "Time's a ticking, old man!"
It was true. Time was ticking. He was old.
Swords, he had to think.
Lorraine Ellicent Sen-rugo was born at the stroke of midnight, in the High Tower, to Hero Czelur, surrounded by the best of midwives---for after all, what does a princess deserve but the best?
A spectacular party had already been planned for her birthday. When you're a royal child, there's a kingdom-wide party for your birth. When you're the only child and daughter of the royal parents, other nations may hear of it.
But when the father is Callian Irris Sen-Rugo, and the mother is Hero Czelur, other nations close down to throw their own parties.
While there have been individuals---both royal and common, rich and poor---more influential upon the course of history, it is hard to find a couple more well-known---and well-loved---than Callian and Hero, the two paladins who drove the Master's forces back into his swamp, finally defeated him at the seat of his power, then rode back triumphant, the dead laid to rest. When wise King Sturmgard named Callian as his heir, there was little dispute---and when Callian wisely chose Caelith Tineniel of the Spiral as his First Minister, all were in assent.
But fame draws evil as darkness surrounds a candle, and no child born of a union as unusual as Callian and Hero could ever live a completely normal life.
"Push, Milady, push!"
Hero nearly snapped at the midwife---what did she think she was doing?---but bit back the retort and turned her attention back to her body.
Callian sat in the next room, praying to Heironeous that all would go well. Nervous, he got up and moved for the door to check on Hero's progress.
"Almost there, Milady, almost...there!"
"Oh, it's a girl! Just what I always wanted!" a mocking voice laughed from the shadows.
Hero, panting for breath, looked up as Callian turned toward the voice. The midwives were motionless, perhaps frozen in terror.
"Oh, they're quite alright. Just as ugly as they ever were! Promise!"
A tall, naked...man? No...this was definitely a devil, Callian thought. It stepped out from behind a full-length mirror, seven feet tall and grinning. With red, scaly skin, folded wings on its back and large, pointy ears, it could hardly be mistaken for anything else.
"We're just sort of...in between moments, here. They don't see a thing, or even notice time passing! But it doesn't really pass if I have to pass it with trivialities like this..."
The devil paused for a moment.
"You two have been very bad. Or GOOD! Hilarious! I love that one!" The devil cackled. "It's old, but it'll never go out of style! Now, I'll need you to be very...still..."
And with a flick of the devil's fingers, Callian couldn't move. He'd been held by magic before...the only thing to do was to keep trying. So he did.
It didn't help much.
"I wouldn't make that face for too long...it might get frozen that way! Hilarious! Oh, and and pardon me, Milady, for barging in on you like this. Was this a bad time?"
Apparently Hero had been frozen too, because she didn't move.
"Now, if I could get a look at the CENTER of all this attention, I'd be just tickled."
He grabbed a small pill out of mid-air. "Not many of these left in the Underworld..."
The creature took Lorraine, now cooing a bit, from the arms of one of the frozen midwives. She immediately began screaming and kicking.
"C'mon, don't you like Uncle Spakkle? No? TOO BAD, BRAT! HERE'S YOUR MEDICINE!"
Spackle dropped the pill into her mouth, held her nose, and waited until she swallowed it.
Callian tried to lunge, but he still couldn't move. He thought he saw a flicker of the same feeling in Hero's eyes, but it was hard to be sure when even her eyelids stayed motionless.
"Alright! The instructions are on the bottle! Have a nice life! Life...HILARIOUS!"
And after placing Lorraine in Hero's unmoving arms, he disappeared.
Instantly, Callian and Hero were unfrozen. The midwives started fussing over the baby, obviously unaware of what had just transpired.
Callian was in the middle of checking to see that Lorraine was free from injury or mark, when Caelith threw open the door, his hands already forming a ball of fire.
"Where is it? I felt it from three floors down!"
Callian pulled Caelith aside and quietly told him the story.
"Well, have you read the directions yet?" the elf asked.
"What directions?" asked Callian.
"The ones on the bottle over there," said the evoker, motioning to an end table in the corner. He hefted them and read the cursive script:
"Take once per lifetime. If you're still alive when you're sixteen, the world explodes! Everyone and everything on the Prime---dust! HILARIOUS!"[/i]
Sixteen years passed.
They always do.
Caelith performed every magical experiment he could think of on the girl without her knowing, but he couldn't find the...source of the problem.
"It's like it's part of her!" he told Callian one night in frustration "I could get rid of it, but it would kill her!"
Lorraine grew up full of life and laughter, the proverbial perfect child. She fit every characteristic ascribed to princesshood: kindness, curiosity, and a touch of the mischievious. Callian and Hero never told her of her ill-portented birth, deciding that such a burden was too great for the girl to bear.
Hero put it into words: "She'd volunteer to die. Just like that. If she knew what it would mean, she'd go without a single protest."
As Lorraine's sixteenth birthday approached, Callian grew more and more desperate. He and Hero prayed to Heironeous for hours at a time for guidance. Each time, they were more confident of the oaths they'd sworn---but they still came away with no help, just the feeling of peace.
A week before Lorraine's birthday, Caelith came to Callian with a solution.
"I'll put her in another plane," he said. "One no one cares about. Like one of the Hells."
Callian stared at his First Minister. "Caelith Tineniel e'Quis'norai mar Ilduroth. Are you contemplating sending my daughter to Hell?"
Caelith stopped, a bit uncertain. "No...I guess that wouldn't work after all. What about Mechanus?"
"No," said Callian. "This is our own problem. We must deal with it."
"What if I put her in stasis?" asked the mage. "Just for the night?"
"I suppose...but there's no guarantee it would stop...the other...from happening."
"It's all we can do," said Caelith. "We have to try."
And so they prepared. They announced an extravagant birthday party for the princess's sixteenth birthday, to commence on the stroke of midnight. After all, though Callian darkly. If it doesn't work, no one will have to clean up.
The night of the party, the princess was taking a nap in her room, readying for the celebrations. At 11:00 PM, Callian, Hero, and Caelith entered her room. Caelith kept her sleep deep with a word, and then began the ritual while Callian and Hero looked on at their slumbering daughter.
Caelith was about to speak the final word, ten minutes before midnight, before time froze again.
"Well, we're all a bit grayer, aren't we?" cackled Spakkle, stepping out from behind a curtain. "Well, except for me, and the elf, and the girl...you're a bit grayer, aren't you, Callian? Sorry to interrupt him and his mumbo jumbo," the devil said, jerking his head at the frozen wizard.
Callian realized that he'd been mistaken in thinking time had stoppped---rather, only he, Spakkle, and Lorraine were still moving.
And so was the clock.
"I don't like that old antique," said Spakkle, following Callian's line of sight. "How about THIS?!"
Instantly, the ancient grandfather clock grew to ten times its size. The bedroom floorstones disappeared, as well as the walls and ceiling, and Callian found himself---and the whole scene with him---standing on a giant hand.
"Get it? It's ARM-ageddon! HILARIOUS!"
Instantly, the scene changed. Instead of standing on a giant hand, he was back on the floorstones. But where the walls and ceiling were, there were instead...stands Thousands---millions of devils---more than the eye could take in---were seated on bleachers around the "room." They jeered his name, vile things about his parents, even Galdren and his other old companions.
"Tsk, tsk, mustn't disturb concentration!" said Spakkle. With a wave of his hand, he muted the crowd. They stll made rude gestures and looked as if they were yelling things at him, but Callian didn't hear any sound from them.
"Now, what a pre-dic-a-ment we find ourselves in! The Blonde Bombshell! The Ticking Timer of Terror! Seven minutes, and it's the end of every man, woman and child! And don't get any clever ideas because we're in Hell...she'll take out the Prime, don't worry! HILARIOUS!
"Of course, there is one other option..." said Spakkle, and suddenly he was holding Callian's old sword, Truestrike. "I seem to remember specifying on the bottle something about her being alive...now, how would she stop being alive, I wonder?"
And he tossed the sword to Callian.
"Let's see...your daughter, or the world? Surely a paladin like Callian Irris Sen-Rugo, 'He Who Drove Back the Dead' wouldn't be so selfish as to kill everyone just so he wouldn't have to kill his daughter! 'Look at me! I'm Callian the hero! Everyone loves me, but they won't know I'm the reason they died!'"
"But they will know if you save them..." Spakkle lazily pointed at Caelith's eyes, then at Hero's. They blinked their eyes and looked around, but that was apparently all they could do, for neither of them so much as twitched a finger.
"They'll bear witness! Not like they can do anything else right now...HILARIOUS!"
Callian stirred, staring at the sword in his hand. "I swore never to shed innocent blood," he said thickly.
"Oh. Well then, it's solved! You'll just let me do your dirty work for you and destroy the world! Oh, Callian, that's so no-o-o-ble of you, not shedding innocent blood!"
BOOM.
The minute hand moved.
"Only five minutes 'til midnight!" crowed Spakkle. "Better make a decision!"
Callian angrily turned his glance from the devil. "Time's a ticking, old man!"
It was true. Time was ticking. He was old.
Swords, he had to think.
"That's right, don't face me! Turn away from the problem! You're a true paladin, you know that? Never better! HILARIOUS!"
He turned back to face Spakkle. "I will not compromise. I gave my word. And I would give it again, right now. Evil is never the answer."
Spakkle's whole demeanor changed. He no longer grinned, but glared. "That's what I hate about you people. You think everything is so cut-and-dried, that you can follow your silly little Code and everything will turn out happy with rainbows and sunshine. How do you think I got to be HERE? I was like you, once. What's "Evil," after all, but the other side in the war? What separates killing your daughter from killing any one of the countless orcs you diseboweled?"
"They were trying to kill me," Callian said. "She wouldn't hurt a fly. She's innocent."
"Welcome to reality, Smite Knight. We care about results here. And your choices are---your daughter dead, or EVERYONE dead. Even your daughter! Now, tell me, who will be helped by your incompetent inability to do anything?"
The clock struck one minute to midnight.
Please Heironeous, spare me this, prayed Callian. I do only what you've commanded me to do.
"None of that! I think a certain godly Someone wants you to have some gumption! Decide for yourself! Are you so subservient that you can't see your god wants you to see how you fare without him? Have some backbone! Make a decision for yourself for once! Or...don't!"
And with that, Hero and Caelith were suddenly released from their paralysis.
"Do it, Callian," pleaded Hero. "It's her or her and the world. You know she'd assent! Do it for me, if nothing else!"
"Don't waste your time with him, woman," said Caelith, a ball of fire already in his hand. "I'll do it myself. I never thought I'd see the day that a paladin was too weak to save the world..."
The clock had fifteen seconds left till midnight. Callian threw himself at Caelith, distracted as he was with his spell, and wrestled the elf to the ground.
"Callian, you fool! You'll kill us all!" screamed the mage.
The king knocked him out with one punch.
"Ten seconds left!" chuckled Spakkle. "Catch!"
He tossed Callian his sword. But it was too late. Callian turned to the devil.
"I swore an oath. Should every man, woman, and child die---so be it. Death is but a new beginning. There's an afterlife for a dead body. Not so for a dead soul."
The clock struck midnight.
BOOM!
Callian opened his eyes. He was standing in Lorraine's bedroom, just as before. Caelith was just about to finish the ritual---only it was now 12:01, according to the giant grandfather clock in the corner.
"Stop!" cried Callian. "Look at the clock!"
And they did. Caelith stopped the invocation, then looked at Callian, as if for explanation.
They got it.
"I can't believe I acted like that," said Caelith. "I don't remember a thing!"
"I don't think you did," mused Hero. "I don't think you'd have acted like that even if...well, even if the world were ending."
Caelith looked pleased, but didn't say anything.
"WHY?!?!" screamed Asmodeus, no longer looking like Spakkle. "What a spineless, passive...MORTAL! No initiative at all! It's like he's a slave!"
Heironeous looked at the Lord of the Ninth, usually so calm and collected.
He tried to hide a grin. "I prefer to call it...faith?"
Note: Callian can't actually knock out Caelith with one punch.
The minute hand moved.
"Only five minutes 'til midnight!" crowed Spakkle. "Better make a decision!"
Callian angrily turned his glance from the devil. "Time's a ticking, old man!"
It was true. Time was ticking. He was old.
Swords, he had to think.
* * *
Lorraine Ellicent Sen-rugo was born at the stroke of midnight, in the High Tower, to Hero Czelur, surrounded by the best of midwives---for after all, what does a princess deserve but the best?
A spectacular party had already been planned for her birthday. When you're a royal child, there's a kingdom-wide party for your birth. When you're the only child and daughter of the royal parents, other nations may hear of it.
But when the father is Callian Irris Sen-Rugo, and the mother is Hero Czelur, other nations close down to throw their own parties.
While there have been individuals---both royal and common, rich and poor---more influential upon the course of history, it is hard to find a couple more well-known---and well-loved---than Callian and Hero, the two paladins who drove the Master's forces back into his swamp, finally defeated him at the seat of his power, then rode back triumphant, the dead laid to rest. When wise King Sturmgard named Callian as his heir, there was little dispute---and when Callian wisely chose Caelith Tineniel of the Spiral as his First Minister, all were in assent.
But fame draws evil as darkness surrounds a candle, and no child born of a union as unusual as Callian and Hero could ever live a completely normal life.
* * *
"Push, Milady, push!"
Hero nearly snapped at the midwife---what did she think she was doing?---but bit back the retort and turned her attention back to her body.
Callian sat in the next room, praying to Heironeous that all would go well. Nervous, he got up and moved for the door to check on Hero's progress.
"Almost there, Milady, almost...there!"
"Oh, it's a girl! Just what I always wanted!" a mocking voice laughed from the shadows.
Hero, panting for breath, looked up as Callian turned toward the voice. The midwives were motionless, perhaps frozen in terror.
"Oh, they're quite alright. Just as ugly as they ever were! Promise!"
A tall, naked...man? No...this was definitely a devil, Callian thought. It stepped out from behind a full-length mirror, seven feet tall and grinning. With red, scaly skin, folded wings on its back and large, pointy ears, it could hardly be mistaken for anything else.
"We're just sort of...in between moments, here. They don't see a thing, or even notice time passing! But it doesn't really pass if I have to pass it with trivialities like this..."
The devil paused for a moment.
"You two have been very bad. Or GOOD! Hilarious! I love that one!" The devil cackled. "It's old, but it'll never go out of style! Now, I'll need you to be very...still..."
And with a flick of the devil's fingers, Callian couldn't move. He'd been held by magic before...the only thing to do was to keep trying. So he did.
It didn't help much.
"I wouldn't make that face for too long...it might get frozen that way! Hilarious! Oh, and and pardon me, Milady, for barging in on you like this. Was this a bad time?"
Apparently Hero had been frozen too, because she didn't move.
"Now, if I could get a look at the CENTER of all this attention, I'd be just tickled."
He grabbed a small pill out of mid-air. "Not many of these left in the Underworld..."
The creature took Lorraine, now cooing a bit, from the arms of one of the frozen midwives. She immediately began screaming and kicking.
"C'mon, don't you like Uncle Spakkle? No? TOO BAD, BRAT! HERE'S YOUR MEDICINE!"
Spackle dropped the pill into her mouth, held her nose, and waited until she swallowed it.
Callian tried to lunge, but he still couldn't move. He thought he saw a flicker of the same feeling in Hero's eyes, but it was hard to be sure when even her eyelids stayed motionless.
"Alright! The instructions are on the bottle! Have a nice life! Life...HILARIOUS!"
And after placing Lorraine in Hero's unmoving arms, he disappeared.
Instantly, Callian and Hero were unfrozen. The midwives started fussing over the baby, obviously unaware of what had just transpired.
Callian was in the middle of checking to see that Lorraine was free from injury or mark, when Caelith threw open the door, his hands already forming a ball of fire.
"Where is it? I felt it from three floors down!"
Callian pulled Caelith aside and quietly told him the story.
"Well, have you read the directions yet?" the elf asked.
"What directions?" asked Callian.
"The ones on the bottle over there," said the evoker, motioning to an end table in the corner. He hefted them and read the cursive script:
"Take once per lifetime. If you're still alive when you're sixteen, the world explodes! Everyone and everything on the Prime---dust! HILARIOUS!"[/i]
* * *
Sixteen years passed.
They always do.
Caelith performed every magical experiment he could think of on the girl without her knowing, but he couldn't find the...source of the problem.
"It's like it's part of her!" he told Callian one night in frustration "I could get rid of it, but it would kill her!"
Lorraine grew up full of life and laughter, the proverbial perfect child. She fit every characteristic ascribed to princesshood: kindness, curiosity, and a touch of the mischievious. Callian and Hero never told her of her ill-portented birth, deciding that such a burden was too great for the girl to bear.
Hero put it into words: "She'd volunteer to die. Just like that. If she knew what it would mean, she'd go without a single protest."
As Lorraine's sixteenth birthday approached, Callian grew more and more desperate. He and Hero prayed to Heironeous for hours at a time for guidance. Each time, they were more confident of the oaths they'd sworn---but they still came away with no help, just the feeling of peace.
A week before Lorraine's birthday, Caelith came to Callian with a solution.
"I'll put her in another plane," he said. "One no one cares about. Like one of the Hells."
Callian stared at his First Minister. "Caelith Tineniel e'Quis'norai mar Ilduroth. Are you contemplating sending my daughter to Hell?"
Caelith stopped, a bit uncertain. "No...I guess that wouldn't work after all. What about Mechanus?"
"No," said Callian. "This is our own problem. We must deal with it."
"What if I put her in stasis?" asked the mage. "Just for the night?"
"I suppose...but there's no guarantee it would stop...the other...from happening."
"It's all we can do," said Caelith. "We have to try."
And so they prepared. They announced an extravagant birthday party for the princess's sixteenth birthday, to commence on the stroke of midnight. After all, though Callian darkly. If it doesn't work, no one will have to clean up.
The night of the party, the princess was taking a nap in her room, readying for the celebrations. At 11:00 PM, Callian, Hero, and Caelith entered her room. Caelith kept her sleep deep with a word, and then began the ritual while Callian and Hero looked on at their slumbering daughter.
Caelith was about to speak the final word, ten minutes before midnight, before time froze again.
"Well, we're all a bit grayer, aren't we?" cackled Spakkle, stepping out from behind a curtain. "Well, except for me, and the elf, and the girl...you're a bit grayer, aren't you, Callian? Sorry to interrupt him and his mumbo jumbo," the devil said, jerking his head at the frozen wizard.
Callian realized that he'd been mistaken in thinking time had stoppped---rather, only he, Spakkle, and Lorraine were still moving.
And so was the clock.
"I don't like that old antique," said Spakkle, following Callian's line of sight. "How about THIS?!"
Instantly, the ancient grandfather clock grew to ten times its size. The bedroom floorstones disappeared, as well as the walls and ceiling, and Callian found himself---and the whole scene with him---standing on a giant hand.
"Get it? It's ARM-ageddon! HILARIOUS!"
Instantly, the scene changed. Instead of standing on a giant hand, he was back on the floorstones. But where the walls and ceiling were, there were instead...stands Thousands---millions of devils---more than the eye could take in---were seated on bleachers around the "room." They jeered his name, vile things about his parents, even Galdren and his other old companions.
"Tsk, tsk, mustn't disturb concentration!" said Spakkle. With a wave of his hand, he muted the crowd. They stll made rude gestures and looked as if they were yelling things at him, but Callian didn't hear any sound from them.
"Now, what a pre-dic-a-ment we find ourselves in! The Blonde Bombshell! The Ticking Timer of Terror! Seven minutes, and it's the end of every man, woman and child! And don't get any clever ideas because we're in Hell...she'll take out the Prime, don't worry! HILARIOUS!
"Of course, there is one other option..." said Spakkle, and suddenly he was holding Callian's old sword, Truestrike. "I seem to remember specifying on the bottle something about her being alive...now, how would she stop being alive, I wonder?"
And he tossed the sword to Callian.
"Let's see...your daughter, or the world? Surely a paladin like Callian Irris Sen-Rugo, 'He Who Drove Back the Dead' wouldn't be so selfish as to kill everyone just so he wouldn't have to kill his daughter! 'Look at me! I'm Callian the hero! Everyone loves me, but they won't know I'm the reason they died!'"
"But they will know if you save them..." Spakkle lazily pointed at Caelith's eyes, then at Hero's. They blinked their eyes and looked around, but that was apparently all they could do, for neither of them so much as twitched a finger.
"They'll bear witness! Not like they can do anything else right now...HILARIOUS!"
Callian stirred, staring at the sword in his hand. "I swore never to shed innocent blood," he said thickly.
"Oh. Well then, it's solved! You'll just let me do your dirty work for you and destroy the world! Oh, Callian, that's so no-o-o-ble of you, not shedding innocent blood!"
BOOM.
The minute hand moved.
"Only five minutes 'til midnight!" crowed Spakkle. "Better make a decision!"
Callian angrily turned his glance from the devil. "Time's a ticking, old man!"
It was true. Time was ticking. He was old.
Swords, he had to think.
"That's right, don't face me! Turn away from the problem! You're a true paladin, you know that? Never better! HILARIOUS!"
He turned back to face Spakkle. "I will not compromise. I gave my word. And I would give it again, right now. Evil is never the answer."
Spakkle's whole demeanor changed. He no longer grinned, but glared. "That's what I hate about you people. You think everything is so cut-and-dried, that you can follow your silly little Code and everything will turn out happy with rainbows and sunshine. How do you think I got to be HERE? I was like you, once. What's "Evil," after all, but the other side in the war? What separates killing your daughter from killing any one of the countless orcs you diseboweled?"
"They were trying to kill me," Callian said. "She wouldn't hurt a fly. She's innocent."
"Welcome to reality, Smite Knight. We care about results here. And your choices are---your daughter dead, or EVERYONE dead. Even your daughter! Now, tell me, who will be helped by your incompetent inability to do anything?"
The clock struck one minute to midnight.
Please Heironeous, spare me this, prayed Callian. I do only what you've commanded me to do.
"None of that! I think a certain godly Someone wants you to have some gumption! Decide for yourself! Are you so subservient that you can't see your god wants you to see how you fare without him? Have some backbone! Make a decision for yourself for once! Or...don't!"
And with that, Hero and Caelith were suddenly released from their paralysis.
"Do it, Callian," pleaded Hero. "It's her or her and the world. You know she'd assent! Do it for me, if nothing else!"
"Don't waste your time with him, woman," said Caelith, a ball of fire already in his hand. "I'll do it myself. I never thought I'd see the day that a paladin was too weak to save the world..."
The clock had fifteen seconds left till midnight. Callian threw himself at Caelith, distracted as he was with his spell, and wrestled the elf to the ground.
"Callian, you fool! You'll kill us all!" screamed the mage.
The king knocked him out with one punch.
"Ten seconds left!" chuckled Spakkle. "Catch!"
He tossed Callian his sword. But it was too late. Callian turned to the devil.
"I swore an oath. Should every man, woman, and child die---so be it. Death is but a new beginning. There's an afterlife for a dead body. Not so for a dead soul."
The clock struck midnight.
BOOM!
* * *
Callian opened his eyes. He was standing in Lorraine's bedroom, just as before. Caelith was just about to finish the ritual---only it was now 12:01, according to the giant grandfather clock in the corner.
"Stop!" cried Callian. "Look at the clock!"
And they did. Caelith stopped the invocation, then looked at Callian, as if for explanation.
They got it.
* * *
"I can't believe I acted like that," said Caelith. "I don't remember a thing!"
"I don't think you did," mused Hero. "I don't think you'd have acted like that even if...well, even if the world were ending."
Caelith looked pleased, but didn't say anything.
* * *
"WHY?!?!" screamed Asmodeus, no longer looking like Spakkle. "What a spineless, passive...MORTAL! No initiative at all! It's like he's a slave!"
Heironeous looked at the Lord of the Ninth, usually so calm and collected.
He tried to hide a grin. "I prefer to call it...faith?"
Note: Callian can't actually knock out Caelith with one punch.
