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Post By The Hooded Hood tests whether this midweek episode-posting thing is viable Wed Aug 11, 2004 at 01:40:12 pm EDT |
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#164: Untold Tales of the Hellraisers: That Old Gang Of Mine | |
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| #164: Untold Tales of the Hellraisers: That Old Gang Of Mine The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom Who's Who in the Parodyverse Where's Where in the Parodyverse Warning Note: This episode contains some graphic unpleasantness. Once Upon a Time… It was a year and a day since the Fortresses of Light fell, betrayed to the Black Wizard and his undead hosts. In that time the shining halls had been transformed, twisted in ways the Princess Amaralyn could hardly comprehend. The clear blue skies of Crystalia had gone, and now the fragments of the High Citadel hung on a barren rock twisting and falling through blood-purple mists. The white gems from which the stronghold was carved were blackened and gore soaked. The land was fallen, and everything reeked of death. It was a year and a day since the invaders were let in past the Virtue Barriers by Amaralyn’s own brother, a traitor who had been the first to die when the Black Wizard took power. That terrible night was when Sir Lucian had been taken in his sleep, captured and bound in unbreakable chains, dragged away for unspeakable tortures. Princess Amaralyn knew what torments her betrothed suffered. Every night the Black Wizard took her to see what they had done to Crystalia’s champion, and her heart was racked by the ruin they had wrought. What screamed in the barbed chains now was barely recognisable as human, sutured and blended with shadow and grief as a living sculpture of the destruction of goodness. Every night for that year of horror, the Black Wizard had made Amaralyn the same offer: come freely to his bed, surrender to his lusts and to his will, and Sir Lucian would be spared. And every night Amaralyn had denied the necromancer, horrified by her choice, knowing it was as Sir Lucian would have wanted it had he been himself. The Black Wizard always accepted her decision, although she was in his absolute power. His games were long and subtle, and he could afford to wait. Amaralyn’s whole family, and Lucian’s parents, were still held somewhere in the dungeons ready for his games. On that first day after the anniversary of Crystalia’s ruin, the Black Wizard came to the princess by night as was his custom. She was braced for his presence, swallowing down the fear that clutched her throat, clinging to that shred of honour that allowed her to resist. “Well my dear, a whole year has passed so very quickly, has it not?” the Black Wizard whispered. “For me at least. Not for poor Sir Lucian, I suspect. He has endured every torment the devils I have raised to hurt him could conceive.” “Then let him go. He can do you no harm now,” pleaded Amaralyn. “But of course. Only consent to my conqueror’s rights and his pain will end tonight. You know that, my dove.” Crystalia shook her head defiantly. “Never. If I gave myself to you it would legitimise your rule, consolidate your hold on Crystalia forever. And it would betray Lucian’s love for me. Ask me for a thousand years and my answer will be the same.” The Black Wizard smiled thinly, his reddened eyes looking the princess up and down appreciatively. “I think not,” he answered. “You see, I have waited a whole year, and I am not known for my patience.” The princess backed away, terror washing over her. “What… what do you meant to do?” “I mean to show you brave Sir Lucian again, of course,” the Black Wizard hissed triumphantly. “But you will find that my forbearance has reached an end. Tonight his tortures truly begin.” He shot her a smug little smile. “I do not believe your resistance will last out the night, my angel.” The shambling zombie guards accompanied Princess Amaralyn to the torture pit. She couldn’t hear Lucian’s screams tonight, and that chilled her. Even after they had sliced out his tongue he had managed to keep shrieking. “Behold Crystalia’s paladin!” mocked the Black Wizard, gesturing down into the blood-stained chasm. Sir Lucian was… unpacked. That was the only word for it. His body had been sliced open, and cruel hooks attached to every organ. The chains had been hauled away by the pulleys and engines, carefully tearing him apart even as the magics in the shackles kept him from dying. Every nerve in his body had been unpicked and separated for individual torture. Beneath his ruined face his skull was carved out, his pulsing dismembered brain twitching from the nightmares it was being fed. The waves of psychic torment that were being fed into that dissected ruin were strong enough to set Amaralyn shivering from the top of the pit. “Interesting, isn’t it?” the Black Wizard noted wickedly. “And this is not the best of it.” He glanced at the princess. “Shall I demonstrate the nasty part, or have I your word?” Amaralyn swallowed and clung to the guard-rail atop the pit though it was slick with gore. Her legs felt weak and she could barely stand, barely breathe. “You are… we have no words vile enough for you!” she told the Black Wizard. “Is that a ‘yes, take me’?” the necromancer smirked. “No!” the princess defied him. Then with her last courage she vaulted over the edge of the torture pit and tumbled the thirty feet down into the pulpy mess that had been her true love. The fall hurt her, but the cat’s cradle of chains that bound Sir Lucian kept her from serious harm. She scrambled up from the pulped flesh spread over twelve square yards of dungeon floor. Her only thought now was to put Sir Lucian out of his misery. “Ah,” declared the Black Wizard in his sibilant whisper from the gallery above. “It seems as though the princess is keen to see the rest of our little experiment.” There was the sound of a great lever being thrown, and black lightning pulsed along the hundreds of chains. The bound man convulsed. Amaralyn was thrown back, slamming hard into the sharp-stoned wall. Lucian made some inhuman sound from dismantled vocal chords as the pulleys reversed and his shredded organs locked back together again, folding up like a puzzle box. The chains and the additional black organs and the midnight lightning were wrapped up within him, creating a bizarre amalgam of flesh and demon and iron. The chains around Sir Lucian broke, and impossibly the twisted creature sat up. “Beg to me now, my beauty, and I will save you from your love,” the Black Wizard called down. Princess Amaralyn watched in horror as the paladin stood in his ruined majesty. “L-Lucian?” Chains lashed out from the prisoner, hammering right through the dungeon stone to her left and right. But more chains threaded off in all directions, hammering through the minions that had been torturing Sir Lucian, shredding them with vicious abandon. And seven fast-moving strands of iron shot through the Black Wizard, shredding his mystic defences, lashing through his body, ripping him into the air, writhing through him as if they were alive. The Black Wizard screamed once as his flesh failed him, then abandoned it and flew free as a dark shadow flitting to the new body he had prepared elsewhere. More chains streaked upwards, impossibly seizing the dark soul as it fled, dragging it down, down, until it fluttered before the risen knight. Sir Lucian reached out with his own hands and slowly, methodically, tore the Black Wizard into oblivion. “And,” Sir Lucian declared to the discorporating soul stuff, “Don’t do it again.” Amaralyn took a step towards him then halted, unsure. He stood tall and triumphant, but his scar-laced body was covered with blood and wounds and a dozen black iron chains still dangled from lesions in his flesh. “Lucian?” “Amaralyn.” She knew the voice, the inflection. “Lucian!” she breathed, and ran to him. The chains lashed out and caught her at wrists and ankles, ripping her off her feet, holding her spread and helpless in the air before him. “Amaralyn,” the knight repeated. “I want to thank you for retaining your virtue while the enemy was torturing me relentlessly, day and night.” The Princess screamed then, as the Chain Knight dragged her to him. She was still screaming a year and a day later, having witnessed the slow deaths of everyone she loved; her father and mother, her remaining siblings, even Sir Lucian’s parents, all destroyed by the creature that had risen from the torture pit. She screamed as the Chain Knight demonstrated upon her the horrors he had endured, and she screamed as he showed her how limited the Black Wizard’s imagination had been. And after countless time when even the magics that bound Amaralyn to life could no longer maintain her after all that had been done, the Chain Knight discarded his sole pastime and turned his face to a universe ready for conquest. California night fell over Sunny Valley, and as the shadows fell the sleepy small town changed into something more dangerous and sinister. The children who defended it from undead assault fought quite bravely, and the last of them to die survived for almost a minute before the Chain Knight squeezed off her head with iron links that could crush a skyscraper. After that it was easy enough to locate the tunnels under the North Street Graveyard, and from there pass into the older workings far beneath. Descending through strata of pilgrim and Indian burials then past the bones of earth reptiles and elder things, the Chain Knight found the cavern the undead guarded. The creatures that attacked him were poor excuses for vampires, but a few years past life, weak and still thinking and acting like mortals. They lasted less time than the children had. There were wards on the inner chamber, but they were designed to keep evil in, not prevent it from entering. The Chain Knight passed inside, and called out: “Nosferos!” The master-vampire was laid in a pool of blood amidst a forest of old bones. Bald and corpse-white he woke to greet his visitor, rising from his rest as if hinged at the heels, stiff as a board. His arms were still crossed and folded over his shoulders. His fingers were preternaturally long, and ended in curved talons. And he answered: “Lucien. I didn’t expect you.” The Chain Knight looked around, his red eyes glinting from beneath a blood-stained helm. “And I didn’t expect to find you fallen so low,” he responded. “What happened to you?” “I’m trapped here,” confessed the master-vampire. “Stuck in some dimensional wrinkle like a monkey with its paw in a jar. I can only leave when the stars are right and the rituals are done in due season.” “I thought by now you would have harvested the world, Nosferos. I expected you would have established your kingdom of the night, where humans are farmed like kine and all hope is crushed.” Nosferos shrugged. “I’ve been busy.” “Busy being trapped like a fly in amber,” hissed the Chain Knight. “Oh, no need for excuses. I was bound too, by that damned mage. We all were.” “But you got him in the end?” Nosferos grinned ferally. His two front teeth were needle-sharp. “I got him, even as I was captured,” Lucian assured his old ally. “Lucius Faust won’t be bothering us any more.” Nosferos snorted. “So you came here to be trapped with your dear friend rather than be lonely in your Prison of Souls. How touching.” “I came here to release you,” the Chain Knight replied. “I’m assembling the Hellraisers again. We have work to do.” “We had work to do before. We failed.” “We were divided and conquered. We won’t make that mistake again,” Sir Lucian promised. “I’ve had lots of time to analyse our failure and lay new plans. And this time we have sponsors.” “Sponsors?” Nosferos sniffed the air. “Who?” “The Hell Lords That Should No Longer Be,” the Chain Knight announced. “A coalition, consisting of Mr Lucifer, Mefrothto, Blackhurt, Dread Dormaggadon, and Frightmare, harnessing the captured might of the personified Resolution Prophesy. You’ll be amazed how much power they have accumulated.” “I’m amazed they still exist,” Nosferos admitted. “But yesss, I could see us doing well with such patronage.” The Chain Knight nodded. “Now we need to fetch the others.” “Except we are now both trapped here in Sunny Valley until the stars are right and the rituals…” “Pah!” snorted the Chain Knight. “The forging and breaking of bonds is my special gift, and I could have sundered these bindings even before I slaughtered Death and took her office.” The 9 am news the next day broke with the story of the minor quake in California that had swallowed a whole town with no survivors. Of all his mistresses, the Sultan K’Charn liked Maladomina the best. Perhaps it was her flawless beauty, or her wild passion, or even her liking for the giving and receiving of pain. Or perhaps it was because she was bound by bonds of magic to be his abject slave, his absolute plaything against her screaming will, and that he knew if she could overcome the cosmic geas that bound her she would slay him in an instant. Whatever it was, she was the pride of his collection, the greatest of the treasures he had salvaged from the Stronghold of Black Pearl after the destruction of the Astral Khan. She brought him great prestige amongst the other Djinn-Lords, for who else amongst them commanded the bed-services of one of the Hellraisers themselves? He walked through his collection, admiring the rich and beautiful things he had gathered over many lifetimes, making his way towards the Pleasure Tower. The graven guards of carved moonstone opened the brass doors for him alone, and he entered into the most fabulous of his hedonistic chambers ready for sport. But the women here were dead, every one of them. And each of them had died a different way. Some were flayed, or skinned, or cut to pieces. Others were missing parts of their bodies, gutted like fish, slashed into grotesque artistic patterns. Even as he shied in horror, the Sultan K’Charn saw a bizarre gruesome beauty in the devastation. It was a statement, art that could only be rendered by the destruction of the most beautiful of flesh. “I’m so glad you like it,” said Maladomina. She tossed the slave collar at the Sultan’s feet and stepped forward, as dazzling as ever. K’Charn didn’t even try to speak. He just turned and fled, back towards the moonstone guard-statues that could protect him from the dark mistress who was now somehow free. The Hellraiser lashed out with the barbed whip at her hip and the first of the guardians shattered like glass. “Stop her!” the Sultan panted at his other golem, not even stopping to pause. He ran for the bronze gates. If he could only seal the bronze gates he might be safe. Behind him he heard the shattering of more stone. Sweating, convulsing at the unfamiliar exercise, K’Charn heaved the portals of the Pleasure Tower closed, babbling prayers to the gods as he strained. The great bronze doors clicked shut, their complicated internal tumblers making their familiar sequence of thunks. Sultan K’Charn wheezed, hands on knees, until he could find enough breath to stand upright. Two strangers were watching him. The first was a knight, garbed in steel smeared with seeping blood, and swathed in rusting chains that trailed behind him. The other was a pale thin creature with red eyes and parchment skin stretched over a too-large skull, and he reeked of the grave. “Please…” begged the Djinn Sultan. “What do you want? Don’t harm me!” “For now?” declared the Chain Knight. “For now we want only to watch. We are interested to see what she does to you.” And he gestured to the brass doors. The first hairline crack blossomed across them from top to bottom. Another joined it, and another. K’Charn imagined he could hear the lash of that adamantine-flecked whip as it raked across the interior. “Help me!” he pleaded to the strangers. “I am wealthy and powerful, great amongst my kind.” “The dead own nothing,” whispered Nosferos. “And you are very near to death.” Then the portal shattered and Maladomina strode through the wreckage towards her former master. “Lucien,” she said, never taking her gaze from the one who had dared abuse her. “I thought I sensed your touch when the slave collar fell loose. I take it you’re calling the old gang together.” “It’s been a while since we had a date, Domina,” the Chain Knight replied. The dark mistress looked down at the quivering Djinn Sultan and smiled viciously. “I’ll be with you in a while, boys,” she promised. The herbalist’s shop in the old quarter of Shanghai hid at the centre of a tangle of alleys too small for even the hand-pulled rickshaws to navigate. Past the crowded market streets were darker paths with red paper lanterns over doors where personal services could be sought. Deeper still were the opium hells and gambling dens and fight clubs where there was no law except muscle and money and blood. And like a spider in the centre of the web, Master Li sat behind the counter of his shop and listened to the pulse of his hidden city. The dream chimes hummed discordantly, and the door opened. The motion set the jade dragon mobile tinkling and spinning. A young woman, a Westerner by her clothes, but of swarthy complexion had entered the shop. Perhaps a quadroon, or some exotic blend of Negro and Spaniard? Mister Li wondered how she had survived the streets to make it this far. There were a dozen places within a hundred yards where a desperate man could trade her for enough wealth to last a lifetime. “Mr Li?” she asked, and her voice was husky and alluring. “Yes,” admitted the old man. “I have heard some things,” the woman declared. “Strange things.” She spoke Cantonese well, but her accent was unfamiliar. Her shoes alone must be worth five hundred dollars, thought Mr Li. “They say that you can do many things with your potions and charms,” she went on. “Make men mad and make men evil, bring disease and death to an enemy, even extend life if the recipient is willing to feast thereafter upon human flesh.” “Who says such things?” Mr Li demanded. “They say,” the woman replied. “Don’t they always?” She leaned forward, and her perfume tantalised and promised. “They say you have a paste that can poison a whole town when dropped in water, and a salve that makes a man see demons until he claws out his own eyes. Do you?” “Tell me what you want,” Mr Li said, “and I will tell you what it will cost.” The woman’s eyes were sometimes green, sometimes violet. “I want a slice of your best meat, Mr Li. The special product. The one that can do all those things. The secret of your success. That is what I want.” Mr Li was worried at how much this stranger knew. “And what will you pay?” he asked. “Why, whatever you ask me, Mr Li,” the woman promised. “Anything. Anything at all. Just say it, and I will give it to you, do it for you.” She leaned forward and for a tantalising moment he thought she might kiss him. But then she pulled back. “But first, the flesh.” Mr Li swallowed hard. It was a long time since his old body had been aroused by a woman. “I need to go get it,” he told her. “It has to be fresh.” “I’ll come with you,” the visitor told him; and although he never took anyone into the cellar he found himself leading the woman down the rotted wooden steps. She heard the screaming but she didn’t seem frightened. The bellowing was rage and agony, and it never stopped. Mr Li took an old key off his chain and turned the lock into the special cellar. That was where the meat was stored. A huge, bulbous red-fleshed creature was chained to a slab, eyeless, tongueless, lacking fingers and toes and with great strips of its flesh handing loose. “It always grows back,” Mr Li explained. “There is always more meat to carve.” Then he took his knife and sliced a prime joint for the lady. She accepted the bloody offering in her hand, not caring that the $300 glove was stained with gore. She touched her pink tongue to the meat. “Yes,” she said. “This is him. Phleglethor the Pestilent. I’d recognise that gamey taste anywhere.” “And now…” breathed Mr Li, “Our bargain.” “Ah, yes,” agreed Maladomina. She leaned towards the shopkeeper and pressed her lips to his. He screamed as her teeth closed upon his tongue. She jerked her head back, ripping his tongue from his mouth and spitting it aside. Mr Li screamed wordlessly in agony. “Our bargain,” the dark mistress prompted. “Tell me what you want and I shall do it.” Mr Li made incoherent noises and tried to scrabble away. “No requests?” Maladomina pouted. “Shame. I hate to see wasted opportunities.” She reached out casually and gouged Mr Li’s eyeballs. “You won’t see any more of them,” she promised. The quivering corpulent bulk on the carving slab had fallen quiet. Maladomina hurled the meat back at him, the meat she had kissed, and Mr Li’s tongue and his eyes. Phleglethor farted in ecstasy, his methane emissions clouding the cellar with corrosive fumes. He ripped the bindings from the sacred imprisonment stone and broke himself free. “Feeling better?” Maladomina asked him. “Hungry,” growled the red-streaked monstrosity. “So hungry.” Maladomini prodded the blindly-flailing Mr Li towards him. “Here,” she suggested. “There’s plenty more where that came from.” The World Health Organisation posted a level one epidemic warning over Shanghai two days later, but by then the pestilence had hold. The final death toll was a little over fifteen thousand. They met in the High Citadel as it spun and twisted in the interdimensional vortex. Of all the things that moved within the blackened former Fortress of Light they were the only ones that had free will and semblances of life. “I like what you’ve done with the place,” Maladomini told the Chain Knight. “I wanted it to feel like home,” the new personification of Death replied. “Just so long as it has enough to eat,” growled Phlegethor, gnawing on a raw human thighbone. “We can go raiding later,” answered Nosferos impatiently. “It’ll be just like old times.” “It will be better,” the Chain Knight promised them. “This time, we will win.” “Your new sponsors,” Maladomini supposed. “And the ability to learn from past errors, yes,” Sir Lucian agreed. “Before we move this time we make sure the guardians who stopped us before are already disposed of.” “The Celestians are in shambles, and the Triumverate can no longer interfere in the Resolution conflict,” Nosferos reported. “Do you wish to eliminate more of the Family of the Pointless?” “Gradually we shall replace them, one by one,” the Chain Knight agreed, “but for now I want us to concentrate on the more mortal guardians, in the current prime reality.” “The Bog Thing,” snorted Phlegethor. “The Earth Maiden. The minor office-holders.” He spat his last suggestion, “The Sorcerer Supreme.” “All of them,” agreed the Chain Knight. “But also the champions the mortals look to as their heroes. The fellowship is called the Lair Legion.” “Mortals?” asked Nosferos. “For the main part,” Sir Lucian told him. “Mortals make such useful undead servants, and are so very easy to turn,” the master-vampire approved. “No overconfidence this time,” the Chain Knight chided. “This time we use guile, test them, weaken them. When we fall upon them I want them destroyed utterly.” “I get so hot when you talk that way, Lucian,” Maladomina purred. “But when Nosferos mentioned old times I couldn’t help but notice we seem to be one Hellraiser short. Where’s the Bloodreaper? It’s not a proper massacre unless we can unleash the killing machine.” “True,” agreed Phlegethor. “He’s an annoying mad bastard but he’s damned useful in a fight. Where is he?” “He’s our next major goal,” the Chain Knight assured his team. “All of us were bound by that damned mage in ways that made it hard for us to escape, but he made double sure of the Bloodreaper.” “So where is he?” demanded Nosferos. “A place called Herringcarp Asylum,” the Chain Knight answered. “Prisoner of the self-proclaimed archvillain called the Hooded Hood.” “Hood,” moued Maladomina. “He’s a major player.” “Can we not bribe or suborn this mortal?” demanded Nosferos. “Certainly he dare not stand against us and those behind us.” “He’s tricksy and devious,” Phlegethor warned. “He won’t favour our cause, and may even ally with the heroes against us. But he has weaknesses that can be exploited to bring him low.” “Which is why we take him out early,” the Chain Knight ordained. “Our first orders of business then: the fall of the sorcerer supreme and the destruction of the Hooded Hood.” The Hellraisers raised their glasses. “The destruction of the Hooded Hood.” “So,” grinned Maladomini gleefully, “when do we start?” The Chain Knight laughed. “I’ve already started.” Next Issue: Time to catch up on that rascally Confiscator. More clues, more mystery, and yet another damsel in distress – can’t do a Villainous Intentions arc without them, I’m afraid. Look for the hidden secrets in… Untold Tales of the Confiscator: The Badripoor Agenda. Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2004 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2004 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. |
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