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Post By IW Sun Feb 13, 2005 at 11:48:02 am EST |
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Avengers: Underground #7 | |
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| Previously: Pursuing a possible plot to wipe out all superheroes, the Black Knight (Dane Whitman) and Princess Crystal of the Inhumans were two of a small team of ex-Avengers who confronted the magician Astrid Mordo. Baroness Mordo admitted acting to eliminate the Black Knight at the behest of "the Lady", then triggered a prepared transport spell which sent Dane and Crystal to the Lady's realm. This story is part of a collection of fan-fiction stories assembled by Ozbot at Avengers Anew. Previous chapters can be found at on the Avengers: Underground Archive Page. The principal characters in this story at the property of Marvel Comics, and this isn’t a challenge to their legal rights. Avengers: Underground #7 The soft touch on his chest woke Dane Whitman from a troubled dream. He sat up with a start, not recognising his surroundings. The room was decorated in silks and satins, lit with rippled from light beneath the crystal pool no more than four paces from his canopied bed. The woman beside him on the swans down mattress was also clad in gauze that shimmered like the surface of the water. “Crystal?” Dane called, looking around frantically. “I am not Crystal,” his companion said, her face narrowing a little. Her eyes were bound tight by white damask ribbons but she seemed to be able to see the Black Knight. Dane knew her, of course. “My Lady? The Lady of the Lake?” “I am Viviane,” she agreed. “Your true Lady.” The Knight looked around. “Where am I?” He saw the ornate marble walls and the glittering illuminated pools. It was dark beyond the narrow slitted windows, but the bed chamber was a rainbow swirl of pastel hues. “Is this Avalon.” “It is Avalon,” the Lady agreed. “You have returned to the enchanted isle, as I promised you would when I bestowed upon you the weapons of light and darkness.” “But the sword of light and the shield of night stopped coming when I called them,” Dane puzzled. “I didn’t know why.” “You fell from grace, and were no longer Pendragon,” Viviane warned him. “There is a… a shadow about you, the curse of the Ebony Blade that I sought to save you from, but its pull was too strong.” The Knight noticed the black sword was not beside him. “It’s evil cannot come here,” the Lady assured him. “Now you are safe forever.” “I was with Crys, and the others…” Dane remembered. “Baroness Mordo did something, called some golden ribbons of light…” “Yes,” agreed the Lady of the Lake. “And then you died.” Dane Whitman blinked. “I what?” “You died,” Viviane repeated. She ran cool affectionate fingers over Dane’s unshaven cheek. “Poor champion, your time was done. You died, and so did the wench Crystal. But I was able to bring your spirit here.” The Black Knight didn’t feel dead. He felt his flesh and tried to come to terms with what he was being told. “And Crystal?” The Lady shrugged. “She has no association with this place. And she is not yours.” “I know that,” Dane frowned. “And I’d never come between her and Pietro. I couldn’t. I mean.. I wouldn’t…” “This is a shock for you, my champion,” Viviane understood. “Rest a little more, and then we shall talk. But do not grieve. All your long labours are at an end, and now you have come to rest in Avalon forever, to receive your just rewards.” She smiled at him and blushed a little. “My dear champion, what favours could I withhold from one so brave?” The Knight looked around in bafflement. “Dead?” “I have duties to attend to, Sir Dane. Gather your strength and make peace with your past. Now only eternal delight awaits you.” She slipped from the bed, her translucent garments shimmering as they shifted around her. “I shall return shortly.” The bucket of ice-cold dirty water and the kick in the stomach woke Crystal from her unconsciousness. She rolled to avoid a second blow but the heavy metal chains fastening her to the oubliette wall constricted her movements. “Wake up, trollop!” a harsh voice told her, and she twisted round to see a woman in mediaeval silks bending over her. The woman’s upper face was covered by a tightly-wound scarf that obscured her eyes. “Where am I?” the Princess of the Inhumans demanded. “Where are my friends?” “Your lovers aren’t here,” Viviane assured her, kicking her a third time with a savage malice. “Nobody can save you from my wrath.” Crystal willed the elemental powers granted her by the gene-altering mists of Attilan to burst her free. Nothing happened. “I am mistress here,” the Lady of the Lake told her. “And your meagre gifts are denied to you.” “You’re… the Lady?” the Inhuman captive reasoned, remembering the last things Baroness Mordo had said before unleashing those shimmering golden ribbons. “The one who ordered the Bonewalker be set upon us!” “Events are cascading now,” Vivian answered, sneering down at the woman at her feet. “Certain players must be removed from the board early. It was given to me to remove the Black Knight and his Ebony Blade.” Another piece clicked into place for Crystal. “You’re the Lady of the Lake! The one who gave him that shield of night and sword of light or whatever they were. So he wouldn’t go looking for Merlin’s Ebony Blade.” “Yes,” agreed the woman, staring as though her eyes were not swathed in silken bandages. “And I provoked the curse of that damned weapon whenever I could. But though it doomed him and betrayed him, though it made him mad and turned him to steel, though it slew his kin and transformed them to monsters I could never wean him of his addiction.” Crystal thought back over the many and varied effects the Ebony Blade had had on its wielders, including the transformation of Dane’s “squire” Sean Dolan into the murderous Bloodwraith that had stalked the dead nation of Slorenia until but lately. “You arranged for the murder of Victoria Bentley!” she accused. “A slut,” Vivane spat. “Sir Dane’s mistress. She deserved worse.” She glared down at Crystal. “You deserve worse.” “You arranged for the Ebony Blade to steal her very soul,” Crystal accused. The Lady smiled slightly in happy remembrance. “And for Proctor to find his way to your dimension to destroy the bitch Sersi,” she added smugly. “Dane is mine, only mine.” “When he finds out what you’ve done he’s not going to be yours, you insane cow,” Crystal pointed out, and received another kick for her efforts. “Dane is mine. All the Black Knights are mine. As I corrupted his uncle so shall I take Dane Whitman. The Ebony Blade is denied him here.” She paused and drew a slender black dagger from her bodice. “But the Ebony Dagger, made in secret from the remnants of the material that made the Blade, to slay the knight who carried the sword…” Crystal knew nothing of the Dagger, or of the times before that it had been used to murder a Black Knight. “So you’re going to slaughter Dane to keep him with you. I guess that’s your best chance!” The Lady’s face flushed with anger. “When he is truly dead his spirit will serve me here forever!” she retorted. “Merlin’s quest shall go unfulfilled, and the Zodiac’s agenda shall prevail.” “Merlin forged the sword,” Crystal remembered. “But… he was just a legend… like the Camelot the original Black Knight was supposed to dwell in…” “Camelot never existed,” agreed the Lady of the Lake. “The order of women who bequeathed Excalibur to Arthur never existed. Merlin le Diable never existed. Not anymore.” She leaned down to gloat. “We eliminated that generation of heroes too, so thoroughly that they were carved from history.” “So you’re not the real Lady of the Lake,” Crystal scorned. “You’re a sham.” “I was one of their Order,” Viviane hissed. “The greatest of them till they cast me out and took my Sight from me. But I returned, with the Zodiac behind me, to sear them from time; and thus I was avenged. Avenged!” Crystal butted her head forward and impacted her forehead on Viviane’s nose. “Only one Avenger here,” she said, as the Lady toppled backwards. But her chains restrained her from following up. “Dane’s going to see right through you, you know.” Viviane felt her face and her fingers came away bloody. “Shameless trull!” she screeched at Crystal. Her face twisted into a cruel grin. “Yes, a whore you were and a whore you shall be.” She turned to the guard captain who had dashed into the cell at her cry. “Take this slut and give her to the men,” she commanded. “Tell them from me that there is no need to use her gently.” Dane Whitman was a scholar as well as a swordsman, so his first instinct was to find a library. His chamber door was secured with a complicated mechanical bolt that took the scientist less than a minute to bypass. He strode down the hallway beyond and found his way to the scholars’ turret by the simple expedient of asking the first guard he found in tones that assumed obedience. Years spent displaced in time to the Crusades had taught the Black Knight a few lessons. The old sage who tended the tower was disconcerted to have a visitor other than the lady Viviane herself. “This is irregular,” he quavered as Dane looked over the high shelves. “Irregular.” “I’m a guest of the Lady,” the Black Knight assured him. “But I’m still a little confused. This is Avalon?” “Yes,” the scholar assured him. “One of them.” “One? Then it’s not the same place I defended with Amergin the Druid against the Fomorians?” The sage looked panicked. “I don’t think so,” he admitted. “There are several iterations of the Isle of Apples, from several strands of myth, and they don’t all relate exactly.” The Black Knight nodded, a theory confirmed. “There’s quite a few Merlins knocking about as well,” he remembered. “I think the one I met, the one who forged my sword, was the same guy that arranged for Captain Britain to rule Otherworld and set up all kinds of dimensional shenanigans. Any idea why?” The wide eyed sage shook his head. “Okay then. What about the Pendragon? A library on the Isle of Avalon should have some stuff about that, right? Legendary King Arthur was the Pendragon, right? But also others have been leant that title and authority and power, and some have come claiming to be Arthur himself…” “There’s a prophecy trying to manifest,” the scholar answered. “It keeps probing, trying different ways. It’s hard to keep bottled up.” “Who would want to bottle it up?” Dane wondered. The librarian’s reaction was telling. “The Lady? Why would she…?” “I don’t know anything,” the sage quivered. “Please…” The Black Knight frowned as he considered the anomalies. “There’s more happening here than I’ve been told.” He looked around the shelves. Mouldering books and parchments had been stacked in sections. Many of them were court rolls and battle tallies. Some of them bore the names of his ancestors. “The Lady has a special interest in my line, doesn’t she?” Dane Whitman noted. A thought occurred. “Do you have an account of an ancestor of mine who fought a creature called the Bonewalker on Wundagore Mountain?” The scholar’s eyes instinctively flicked to a shelf before he denied everything. Dane stalked over and examined the volumes, but his Eton Latin wasn’t enough to comprehend their crabbed mediaeval script. “Is this the account?” he demanded. “What is the Lady hiding?” “Why Dane, my Knight, from you I can conceal naught,” Viviane told him in a soft, seductive voice. The Avenger hadn’t heard her come in. “I need a few answers,” he told the silk-blindfolded woman. “You have an eternity here to explore your curiosities, my love.” “Then indulge me,” Dane urged her. “Tell me about Sir Percy of Scandia and the Bonewalker.” “The first Black Knight,” Viviane recalled. “Brave Sir Percy, shining Sir Percy rode out against the Tartar tyrant Baron Grigoriy Russov, who was slaughtering peasantry to fuel his researches into the meaning of the vile Darkhold.” “The sentient book that holds the secrets of Cthon and the other Elder Gods,” the Black Knight remembered. “The same Book of Sins. When the Black Knight triumphed over Russov’s many defences the Baron called upon Cthon for aid, and was… transformed.” “Into the Bonewalker,” Dane guessed. “Its forerunner,” Viviane answered. “Only after the Ebony Blade had sundered Russov’s soul did that creature truly become the monstrosity you faced.” “Russov was buried there on Wundagore Mountain, in the shadow of Cthon’s earthly prison,” the Black Knight surmised. “Until summoned in due season to serve the Dark God’s will, yes,” the Lady admitted. “But this is hardly the talk we two should be sharing, bold Sir Dane. Let us turn our minds to pleasanter matter. Avalon is a realm of heady delights.” But that brilliant mind was still at work. “You seem to have a real passion for my family history,” the Black Knight observed. “Shelves of documents that don’t even exist in the mundane world, all accounts of my line.” He glanced to the end of the shelving. “Even court transcripts of my Uncle Nathan’s trials, and clippings of my scientific publications and press articles.” “Your family has been my special interest for many generations,” the Lady answered. She pressed herself up against him. “But such scholarly pursuits are hardly a fit pastime for a great hero. Now come, my lord, my love, and let us…” “But Sir Percy of Scandia, whose spirit used to come to me through an enchanted brazier, never mentioned you,” Dane noted. “Sir Percy was a man of his time,” Viviane answered dismissively. “He had little regard for women, save for that insipid maid he finally wedded, and would not think to…” “I think I need to get more answers,” the Knight interrupted her. “I’m not sure I’m dead. I’m not sure Crys is, either. There’s more going on here…” “Oh Dane,” the fallen Lady of the Lake sighed, embracing him even as she slipped the Ebony Dagger into her hands as they traced across the Black Knight’s back. “Trust me.” Dane Whitman relaxed into her kiss and she drew back the weapon to slay him. Crystal hurled a slops bucket into the back of her head, stunning her to the ground and topping Dane off his feet to the tower floor. The Ebony Dagger clattered on the flagstones and spun into Dane’s view. “She’s not one of the good guys!” the Inhuman princess warned. Dane looked over at the filthy Crystal, her clothing torn and her body bruised. “Crys! What the…” “She gave me to her soldiers for their sport, having first taken my powers from me to leave me their helpless prey! Helpless. Hah!” She leaned over the Lady. “The first villain who tried taking my powers to make me helpless was Doctor Doom! You think you can top that?” “Crys,” Dane swallowed. “Those soldiers, did they…?” Crystal glared at him. “Oh please. I was trained by Karnak and Gorgon, and taught martial arts by Captain America himself! You think I need elemental powers for a few hairy soldiers?” The Black Knight caught her up in his embrace, hugging her close with a fierce delight. “Crystal, I think you could do anything!” The Lady of the Lake arose and her face was reddened with wrath. “So you choose her over me, and disdain the eternal joys of the Avalon I have created to die in torment with your slut! So be it. Die then, Dane Whitman, as all your kin have before you. So ends the line of the Black Knight!” The door splintered open and they marched in, walking corpses, victims of the Ebony Dagger; every one of them clad in some variant of the sable and red livery of the Black Knight. Dane reached for his sword. It wasn’t there. “I have denied you your damned weapon, even as I took your whore’s powers,” the Lady gloated. “And now you shall join your kin, as my undead slave forever.” Crystal dropped to one knee and held out her hands; but she wasn’t pleading to the Lady. “During one of those confused pointless curse-events you provoked,” she told Viviane, “I learned a little trick. When Attilan was under Morgan le Fey’s spell and the Ebony Blade was the magic’s key.” She reached forward and pulled the Ebony Blade to her through far dimensions, just a Dane usually did. “I have also carried this weapon,” she proclaimed. And Princess Crystalia Amaquelin Maximoff handed the Ebony Blade to its rightful wielder. The Black Knight grasped it with a savage delight and rounded on the undead who hedged him in. “No!” cried the Lady, for her sundered sight had already warned her what was to come. She lunged forward, her hands laced with lethal magics that could destroy the Black Knight with but a touch. Dane was facing his attackers, scything through those ancestors who had already fallen to the Lady’s ploys and never saw her coming. Crystal picked up the Ebony Dagger and buried it into Viviane’s chest. Then things began to fall apart. Continued… Footnotes for the Anxious Archivist: The Lady of the Lake is, of course, a staple of Arthurian legend. Even back in the days when Sir Thomas Mallory was writing Le Morte D’Arthur he was implying that the Lady of the Lake was a title rather than a single person, and that there was actually an “order” of Ladies, of whom one was pre-eminent. The Lady was variously named Viviene or Nimue in various sources, or occasionally something entirely different. The Lady who appears here first debuted when she came to Dane Whitman in the Heroes for Hire series, and is described at The Appendix to the Marvel Universe – Lady of the Lake. The decision to make her into a villain is entirely mine. Curse of the Ebony Blade: The curse as originally described was triggered if ever the sword drew blood – a rather comprehensive curse to put on a sword, really. At various times the curse has been depicted as causing bloodthirsty rage in its wielder, stealing souls (writer Roy Thomas was a big Elric fan), transforming its wielder into a razor-sharp block of steel  , causing its wielder to revert psychologically to a medieval mindset and speech pattern, transforming its (unrightful) wielder into a sorcerous Bloodwraith, and more. The Ebony Blade has also had the power, when prodded by other sorceries, to shatter the Well of Worlds, to enchant Olympus and transform all the gods there to glass, to enable psychic time travel, and to ensorcel all of Attilan. It can usually teleport to its owner’s hand at need.To complicate matters, the Black Knight’s evil extradimensional counterpart Proctor also has an Ebony Blade, which had been “fed” many souls and which granted immense power to the wielder. Poor Sean Dolan, Dane’s “squire” who had first become corrupted to the Bloodwraith by using the Black Knight’s Ebony Blade then became corrupted to be the Black Wraith by using Proctor’s sword. Then he got Dane’s Ebony Blade back and reverted to being the Blood Wraith, only now magnified to giant stature by all the deaths in decimated Slorenia. Sean’s whereabouts are currently unknown. Clearly there’s a real challenge trying to make sense of these diverse effects. I elected here to attribute most of the weirder ones to the Lady prodding the curse in an attempt to cause Dane’s downfall. She didn’t cast the curse; she merely tried to use it against the Black Knight, to prevent him using the weapon for whatever reason Merlin originally forged it. Lady Victoria Bentley, originally introduced as a Dr Strange love interest, later transferred her affections to Dane Whitman. This long-time character was somewhat casually murdered “by accident” when Sean Dolan took up the Ebony Blade. The consequences of this tragedy were never really depicted. The Ebony Dagger made its only comics appearance in the modern Black Knight’s first solo story, wherein it was described as “the only thing that can slay the wielder of the Ebony Blade”. Now we know where it went. Merlin has a complicated history in the Marvel Universe, not least because there have been several “pretenders” – most revealed long after the fact as retcons – whose behaviour has been far from consistent. Those who really need a thorough timeline are referred to the comprehensive Appendix to the Handbook of the Marvel Universe – Merlin/Merlyn . Suffice for our purposes to say that there are several Merlins, several versions (or aspects) of the magical isle of Avalon, and several different initiatives to manifest the destiny of the Pendragon. Lady Viviane’s somewhat slanted attempts to use one of the line of Black Knights for the purpose was but one such initiative. Baron Grigoriy Russov is new for our story, but some might speculate on the modern day lineage of the late Eastern European Baron Russoff, who had lycanthropic tendencies, and his estranged son Jack Russell, the Werewolf By Night. Crystal and the Ebony Blade: Avengers Unplugged #6 features the story of Sean Dolan taking up Proctor’s sword to become the Black Wraith, and how that weapon transported Crystal to Attilan, despite it then being surrounded by a Negative Zone Barrier, to discover Dane’s Ebony Blade lodged in a stone being venerated by Inhuman Alpha Primitives. In drawing this weapon free Crystal apparently became their queen. However, Crystal has wielded both versions of the Ebony Blade and has somehow avoided being cursed or transformed. She felt her fate, that of the sword’s, and that of Attilan were linked. More than meets the eye? |
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