 |
|
|
Post By The Hooded Hood slips in an extra for the Feast of St Valentine Wed Feb 14, 2007 at 08:56:23 am EST |
Subject
Untold Tales probably #305: Limbo Dancing | |
|
|
Next In Thread >> | |
| Untold Tales probably #305: Limbo Dancing Previously: The Parody Master’s Doomherald, Exu, former god of murder, betrayed and fought his employer to save young Chinese elementalist Liu Xi Xian. They survived together in Comic-Book Limbo through Liu Xi’s murder of an unconscious innocent and parted when they were rescued. Since then Liu Xi has been wrestling with her actions and the Doomherald has been searching for his origins. Previous relevant stories include: Untold Tales #284: Cabin Fever, Untold Tales #294: The White Gate, and Other Fortresses, Untold Tales #295: The Ride of the [Spoilers], Destination #1, #2, #3, #4, Untold Tales #298: The Adventures of Al B. Harper in the 23rd Century, Destination #5, #6, #7, #8, and #9.  Liu Xi Xian looked around the Lair Library worriedly. “I thought Dreamcatcher wanted to see me here?” she asked cautiously. “I said I’d take it from here,” Xander the Improbable told her. He was sitting cross-legged on one of the polished reading tables, staring intently at an upside-down volume on basket weaving. “You know what I’m talking about?” “About what I did in Comic-Book Limbo,” the young elementalist answered. “Are you here to punish me?” “If you need punishing there’ll be plenty of people willing to do that,” the sorcerer supreme of the Parodyverse promised her. “For now let’s just chat. But not here. I need you to fold void and take us somewhere a little bit less private.” “Less private?” Xander gave Liu Xi some very specific instructions and coached her through the complicated task of linking together two precise points of the Parodyverse so they could step between them. Xander hopped up and led the girl into a darkened classroom at the other side of the rift. “Where are we?” Liu Xi checked the blackboards but they were covered in mathematical scrawls. She didn’t recognise any numerals. “Where we need to be,” Xander answered. “Now, briefly and preferably without crying, please summarise how you came to end the life of Tienna Amurios yVancelos.” The elementalist felt as if she’d been kicked in the stomach. She’d not even known the name of the woman she’d murdered in Comic Book Limbo to save the Doomherald’s life. “We were trapped,” she explained. “Exu and me. That is, the Parody Master’s Doomherald and me. I’d been captured and he saved me. Faced the Parody Master for me, got really hurt. And both of us jumped into the void and ended up… well, in that place.” “The recycle bin of the Parodyverse, a cold frightening realm where the lost gradually blur into oblivion amongst the icy clawing mists,” Xander summarised. “And where there’s no way out. I was ill, in a temporary body it took all my elemental power to keep going. Exu had a huge hole in his chest that would have killed anybody but him. It was desperate. It was…” “Intimate?” suggested the master of the mystic crafts. “Yes,” confessed Liu Xi. “I… I’ve never been with a man, except for one time when…” “When you burned him to death for using then abandoning you,” Xander supplied. “Not the easiest of first sexual experiences.” “What I mean is, I’m not confident around men. And being lost there, maybe forever, with Exu, it was… I was overwhelmed.” “And the Doomherald was formerly a god of murder, so you’d fallen into Limbo in one of his old erased temples. And you both wondered if an act of murder might empower him enough to help him survive and get you out of that terrible place.” “Yes.” “It would have helped him escape but not you,” Xander footnoted in passing. “That would have been an interesting choice for him.” “I didn’t pick… Tienna… deliberately,” Liu Xi explained. Her voice was almost a whisper now. “She was just there, in stasis, in one of the cities the Parody master had carved away from some alien planet.” “Omdexus,” Xander supplied. “When it’s capital was removed the world capitulated soon after. Tienna was a light-sculptress in the Sienna District.” Liu Xi swallowed hard. “I didn’t want to kill her, but at the time it seemed like the only way. I wasn’t… It all made a cold hard sense at the time.” Xander perched on a desk in exactly the same position he’d been before in the library. “What about now?” he asked. “What sense does it make now?” The girl found herself shivering. “Who are you to ask?” she demanded. “I confessed before, to Hatman, to Chiaki, to… to…” “There’s no court on Earth would convict you for this,” Xander told her. “No jurisdiction, no evidence, no remit. No judge and no jury.” Suddenly his eyes became hard. “Except me.” “Have you seen Liu Xi?” CrazySugarFreakBoy! asked Clone Swanmay as he found her waiting outside the Lair Library. “She was due to turn up for us to decide how to cope with what she did in Comic-Book Limbo. I’m taking her to talk to my mom and Izzy.” “It’s too late for that,” the silver-haired woman told him worriedly. “Xander’s got her. It’s out of our hands.” “I’m sorry,” Liu Xi Xian confessed. “I think about it all the time. Cry all the time. I keep going back to it, reliving it. Sometimes I think what I did, I had to do it and it was justified. Other times I know there was no excuse good enough to… And it all just goes round and round and round until I don’t know what to do next.” “You can feel like that,” Xander told her. “You’re still alive.” “You don’t know what it was like, there in Limbo with Exu,” the girl replied fiercely. “I was so frightened, so alone…” “This would be the justified part of your cycle then?” the red-robed mage asked. Liu Xi couldn’t stop the tears now. “No. I know I did wrong. I wish I hadn’t. I know I’ve become something… unclean. All my friends think less of me now. Some probably despise me. Garrick wants me locked away for the public good.” “So you’re sorry because of what it’s done to you, not what you did to Tienna?” “No! You’re twisting things round, making me sound like… I don’t know.” “I’m carving your thoughts and feelings up so you can see each and every one of them for what it is,” Xander told her. “Liu Xi, you control the very elements around you. If you can’t master yourself you can’t master them. And a being who shapes elements with no discipline is a menace to the Parodyverse.” The fear spiked through Liu Xi again. For a moment she wondered how this little man could threaten her with all she could do. But another part of her sensed that she’d never been in greater danger, even in the hands of the Parody Master. “I know it was wrong now,” she answered in as firm a voice as she could manage. “If I could try again I’d die rather than kill T-tienna.” Xander considered this. “Well then…” he began. The Doomherald blurred into the room and slammed the sorcerer supreme to the floor, pinning his by the throat ready to snap his neck. “You back off from Liu Xi Xian!” the angry former god of murder shouted. “Or you die!” “Call for you, Dream,” Hallie told the acting leader of the Lair Legion. “Well, you or Mulder from the X-Files.” “What’s up?” CrazySugarFreakBoy! wondered, turning from Cleone to activate his walkie-talkie wristwatch. “That base you used with the Globetrotting Gangbusters back in Seattle?” Hallie told him. “It’s gone.” “Exu!” Liu Xi called out sharply. “Let him go!” The Doomherald kept pinning down the master of the mystic crafts. “Why?” “Because I say so!” the girl shouted, hitting the former god of murder across his back. “Do it!” Exu removed his hand from Xander’s throat and backed away a little. “Thank you,” the mage said hoarsely. He pulled a peppermint from his pocket and popped it into his mouth. “Good afternoon, Doomherald.” “I could kill you with a single movement,” Exu warned the master of the mystic crafts. “Well done,” Xander congratulated him. “Very impressive. Except that killing is easy. Living is hard. But you’re finding that out the hard way, aren’t you, Doomherald?” Suddenly Liu Xi felt protective towards the dark leather-clad figure who’d come for her. “Don’t hurt him.” “I don’t intend to, unless he tries something with you,” Exu assured her. “She wasn’t talking to you,” the master of the mystic crafts clarified. “What happens next depends on both of you.” The Doomherald looked around the old classroom. “What are you two doing here anyway?” he demanded. “I was looking for Dr Phobia. This is his place.” “It was,” agreed Xander. “Your informant is out of date. Oxo and the other observers haven’t been able to contact Utah to keep current on Earth doings since the Celestian barrier went up. Xeno Phobia left when things started getting rough for the Globetrotting Guardians.” “You brought me here because you knew he’d be coming,” Liu Xi accused Xander. “It was only a matter of time, yes. You see, you’re not the only one on trial.” “Trial?” scowled Exu. “Do you know who I am?” “More than you do,” replied the mage, “but right now I’m concerned about Liu Xi here. I think you share my concern.” “What do you mean?” Xander gestured to the young Chinese woman. “Your conversations with Liu Xi when she was your captive prompted you to leave the Parody Master’s service. Since then you’ve saved each other’s lives, spent a lot of time together and more thinking about each other. Your first instinct just now was to protect her from me. You care about her.” The Doomherald shrugged defensively. “And Liu Xi, she killed for you. Murdered. And that’s destroying her,” Xander persisted. “I’m sorry,” Liu Xi said. More tears ran down her cheeks. “You know all about murderers, Exu, but nothing about the murdered. About Tienna yVancelos.” “I know that some murders are necessary,” replied the Doomherald darkly. “Aren’t they, Xander? You should know.” The mage nodded soberly. “Some are necessary. Tienna’s wasn’t. And now Liu Xi faces a hard path in consequence. Two paths.” “What do you mean?” the elementalist asked. Xander pointed a finger to the right. “One way, you seek redemption. It’ll be hard and costly and it will hurt you worse than you ever thought possible.” He flicked his finger to the left. “The other way you become an outlaw, unredeemed, ever more brutal, until this murder is nothing compared to what you do after. One moral uncertainty leads to another and another until all deaths seem justified.” “I wouldn’t let that happen.” “Maybe you wouldn’t,” Xander answered. “What do you think, Doomherald? If she had your influence on her, what would she become?” “I don’t make people murder,” the former god of murder argued. “And I would never harm Liu Xi.” Xander snorted. “She’s already terrified of you. Of what you might do to her friends. Or whether you’ll kill everyone she ever loved so she’ll be with you. Of how inhuman you are, clinging to her for purpose and reason because the alternatives are too terrible for you to contemplate.” “That’s not so,” Exu argued. “Tell him Liu Xi. It’s not.” Liu Xi looked away. “You murdered people to try and make me feel better,” she said in a small voice. The Doomherald looked stricken. “I… I don’t understand.” “Of course you don’t,” Xander told him sadly. “You’re not human. You’ve never been human. If you chose to try, it would be as hard for you as Liu Xi’s redemption would be for her. You’d have to turn your back on your past, renounce your power, become an entirely new person. I wonder if you could?” The Doomherald had been ready for any kind of mystic struggle. Now he was out of his depth. Xander turned back to the elementalist. “Liu Xi, if you had to choose again about murdering someone to save Exu or yourself, would you?” Liu Xi shook her head miserably. “No. I don’t think so. No.” She knuckled the tears from her eyes. “A friend told me that I had to do good things, enough to make up for killing Tianna.” “If only it was going to be that simple,” the sorcerer supreme told her. “Unfortunately, the Hooded Hood has you where he wants you now.” “The Hooded Hood?” Liu Xi asked at the same time as the Doomherald. “What does he have to do with Li Xi?” Exu demanded. The master of the mystic crafts rubbed his forehead. “Only the Hooded Hood knows what became of Tianna’s baby. I imagine when he gets back he’ll expect a price from you to save her from her fate.” Liu Xi blanched again. “Her b-baby? Tianna was a mother?” “A good one,” Xander told her. “She loved her child very much, and was heartbroken to have to leave the babe when the capital was evacuated because of the threat from the Parody Forces. The child will face a miserable life now, motherless and unprotected. If you really want to redeem yourself by your actions I imagine you’ll have to take responsibility for her future. And that puts you in the power of the Hooded Hood.” Exu scowled. “That villain seems to be tugging a lot of strings right now. He’s been meddling in my life as well.” “Yes, he does that,” Xander answered shortly. “Still, those decisions are quite a bit in the future. For now you have to decide just three things, the both of you.” “What things?” Liu Xi asked. “One,” Xander said, “how do you feel about each other? Is this the romance of the year or a tragedy waiting to happen? Two, now you know with hindsight what it means, would you murder again to escape Comic-Book Limbo? And three, will you survive this together or alone?” “Survive what?” Exu demanded, looking round uneasily. “What have you done?” “We’ve moved,” Liu Xi realised. “This classroom, this whole building. It’s shifted.” Outside the windows the mists rose. The landscape was bleak grey desert. Cold ancient things shuffled in the distance. “Comic-Book Limbo!” Exu recognised. “Xander, what have you done?” The master of the mystic crafts wasn’t there. “Xander, what have you done?” demanded Cleone. “It was time to force a resolution,” the master of the mystic crafts told his familiar. “Do or die. Put up of shut up. Death or glory.” “Where’s Liu Xi?” demanded CrazySugarFreakBoy! “At the crossroads,” answered Xander the Improbable. “I hope she takes the right path.” He looked very tired. “I hope she’ll be alright.” It was cold and dark. Already the former Seattle warehouse converted by Gideon Book as a training base for the Globetrotting Guardians was beginning to lose some of its definition as it was eroded by Comic-Book Limbo. Liu Xi and Exu remained in the classroom surrounded by impossible equations and dusty textbooks. “I should have killed Xander when I had the chance,” complained the Doomherald. “No, you shouldn’t,” Liu Xi replied. “You have to stop doing that.” “Murder is universal, sweetheart.” “You don’t have to do it, though. And Xander… he was testing you, to see what you’d do.” “And if I’d snapped his neck?” “Then you’d have walked into his trap. I don’t know how. Xander works on the edge.” They sat in silence as the chill crept in. “It turns out I’m not who I thought I was,” the Doomherald said at last. “I might have been something else before I was the god of murder. I think the Hooded Hood had something to do with it. I think he set me up to join the Parody Master.” “The Hood’s vanished,” Liu Xi supplied. “We think one of those Narrative Bombs went off in Herringcarp Asylum. That’s what Jury said.” “There’s another Exu. He goes by the name of Xeno Phobia these days. He was one of the Janus, the race of dawn-time beings who created all the dimensional pathways in the Parodyverse. He was a great traitor to his people, something between Prometheus and Benedict Arnold.” “What’s that to do with you?” The Doomherald shook his head. “There may be a relationship. Maybe a retcon. I really need to talk with him. Or the Hood.” Liu Xi could hardly see her hand in front of her face now. “We won’t be talking to anybody, will we? Not unless…” “You boost my power through murder and I use it to get us out of here?” Exu suggested. “You couldn’t get me out,” the elementalist remembered. “You could shift to where some murderer is, somewhere in the Parodyverse. You couldn’t take me with you.” “I could bring back help,” the Doomherald suggested. “That Harper guy pulled us out before using his machines.” “I won’t do it,” Liu Xi determined. “I’ll stay here. I’ll fade. I’ll die. But I won’t murder again.” “Maybe not now,” agreed Exu. “But what about later, when this place starts closing in?” “You could probably escape,” Liu Xi realised, “if you murdered me.” “But that won’t happen either,” Exu promised. “Maybe not now,” Liu Xi whispered softly. “How long has it been?” Liu Xi asked. “Time seems to go so strangely here.” She’d conjured a small fire from the wreckage of a desk. It didn’t do much to chase away the all-pervading chill. The winds outside were filling the corners of the classroom with grey dust. “It could be a few minutes, or hours, or days,” the Doomherald admitted. “I don’t think continuity is that linear in this place.” “I’m cold.” “Come here. We’ll share body heat. We’ve done it before.” Liu Xi was reluctant. “Then you were wounded, maybe dying. I had to keep you going. Now you’re…” “Whole?” Exu smiled. “I’m not like that man who abused you, Liu Xi Xian. Come and sit with me.” She approached him cautiously. He opened his coat so she could shelter inside it, then folded it over her when she came. “You fit there very well,” he admitted. “Don’t get used to it. This doesn’t mean anything.” The Doomherald smoothed his hand over her cheek. “It does,” he told her. Liu Xi shuddered. “You scare me,” she told him. “And you terrify me,” Exu promised her. “But you are all I have.” “You don’t have me. I’m not yours. Not anybody’s.” Exu nodded. “Of course. I didn’t mean to take liberties.” “Well good.” Liu Xi could feel her heart pounding in her chest; and was that a tiny pang of regret about the liberties? She steeled herself against such weakness. The darkness pressed nearer. It wasn’t possible to tell who started the kiss. “Well you tell me,” Xander challenged CSFB! and Sir Mumphrey Wilton. “Right now Liu Xi Xian and the Doomherald are both neutralised. No threat to anybody but themselves, forever. Eventually they’ll be gone from the Parodyverse, forgotten. The significant things they’ve done will have been done by somebody different. We won’t even recall their names. Problem solved. Or…” “Or we could rescue that poor kid from Comic-Book Limbo again!” Dream objected. “What the hell were you thinking about, sending her there?” “I see the strategic thinking,” Sir Mumphrey admitted. “Makes a damned deal of sense really. Liu Xi has crossed the line and become a murderer. Now she’s unstable, potential threat either consciously or unconsciously. A target for those who’d like to get their hands on her abilities. And that Doomherald blighter is a loose cannon attracted to her like a magnet.” “Cannons can’t be magnetic,” Xander pointed out unhelpfully. “Nobody’s irredeemable,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! argued. “Nobody. Look at my sister.” “The jury’s still out on that one,” muttered Amber St Clare. “But nobody ever redeemed themselves without a chance,” CSFB! persisted. “Which is why there’s an ‘or’,” Xander pointed out. “Or we could let them loose. See what happens next. But that means accepting them, giving them that opportunity that Dreamcatcher mentioned.” Sir Mumphrey considered this. “The lass, yes. Liu Xi’s been mopin’ and miserable ever since she got out of Limbo before, but the Doomherald…” “It’s kind of a package deal by now,” CSFB! considered. “We’re talking about the principal operative of the Parody Master,” Amber objected. “This man was behind Special Resolution 1066, behind the Obedience Brands – behind my Obedience Brand and what Exemplary did…” “I’m not saying sign them up to the Legion,” CSFB! argued. “Just… give them a chance. We all need chances sometimes. It’s like Gandalf said about Gollum in LotR…” “They could escape anyway,” Xander added. “The hard way. The dark path.” “But they haven’t,” Cleone added in mitigation. “It’s a huge risk,” Sir Mumphrey Wilton considered. “That’s how we get huge results,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! replied. “So what shall we do?” asked Xander the Improbable. “It’s time for the verdict and the sentence.” The Hero Feeders gathered. They could sense a potent story from afar, and the two people huddled together in the darkened classroom were coiled in piquant narrative. They had so many possibilities for triumph and tragedy; a fine meal. “I’m running out of ways to fend them off,” Liu Xi confessed. “Each trick only works once.” “Same here,” the Doomherald admitted. “And I know an awful lot of ways to murder.” Their fingers closed around each other. “Is this the end, then?” Liu Xi asked. “I thought I’d be more afraid.” “No regrets about not killing to get out this time?” Exu asked her. The girl shook her head. “No regrets about not slaughtering me to escape yourself?” Exu shrugged. “Maybe a few,” she grinned. “Not too late. Here I am.” “Here you are,” he agreed. “Now let’s do a famous last stand.” “It’s just as well,” Liu Xi sighed. “We really have no future together. I mean what do we have in common except a dislike for Comic-Book Limbo?” “Shame we’ll never find out,” Exu regretted. “Watch out, they’re coming.” Then the Hero Feeders froze in time. “This way, you chaps!” called Sir Mumphrey. “Can’t be keeping this doorway open too long. Ms Night’s already got a nosebleed. Chop chop!” “Come on back, the two of you,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! called. “You got paroled!” “Don’t be angry with Xander,” Cleone begged Liu Xi. “He has his job to do, and it’s a hard one.” “Good job he has you to do his apologising for him,” the Doomherald noted. “Heat,” Liu Xi beamed, rushing to the window of the Lair Library. “And light. And birds!” “Well, I’ll give you a minute,” Cleone smiled at them, and withdrew. Liu Xi bit her lip and turned round. “Exu,” she said. “Liu Xi.” The girl pushed her hair back from her face. “I don’t know what to do now,” she admitted. “I mean, when we were alone in Limbo, and we thought we were going to die, then…” “Yes. This is different. Is it?” “I don’t know,” the elementalist confessed. “Exu, what on Earth do we do now?” Next Issue: The Destruction of Jay Boaz  Image by Visionary Logo at the top of the page by Dancer The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom Who's Who in the Parodyverse Where's Where in the Parodyverse Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2007 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2007 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. |
| Echo™ v3.0 beta © 2003-2006 Powermad Software |
|
|