Annabel forces her eyes open. What had happened? She had gone out for the afternoon with Franqiel and Elrondäv, and they had had a fairly good time (excepting a few spats by the twins), but when they went to go home via the Transport Cylinders, she had blacked out. She tries to turn her head to the side, but an enormous pain shoots through her neck. What is going on here?
"Ah, good. You're up." The voice sounds vaguely familiar, and Annabel violently racks her brain for its source. Suddenly, he steps from the shadows.
"Mel!" she hisses, but immense pain prevents her from saying anything more.
Carmelotto smiles and shakes his head. "Sweet, innocent Annabel Lee."
Annabel fixes him with a pointed stare that reads, 'Get on with it.'
Mel laughs. "I just came to wish you a good morning."
Fighting back the agony, Annabel demands, "Where are Franq and Däv?" she wants to know. "And what sort of drugs am I on? And what the blazes is going on here?"
"Questions I can not answer, not yet." He pulls out a syringe and fixes a needle to it. "Now, you sleep it off." He rams the needle into her neck and shoves down the plunger. "Pleasant dreams, sweet Annabel," he says. The last, fleeting look of his face shows Annabel that he is taking way too much pleasure from his new preoccupation. Then, she sees nothing.
Franq feels a bit woozy as he staggers to his feet. He feels like a ton of Styroplex fell right through him. He braces himself against a rough, stony wall before trying to shake off the feeling. "Where the he-" he stops himself and corrects, "blazes am I?" he wonders. He can not see anything, but something flashes in front of him. It darts towards his head, and he ducks, feeling the cold edge of a steely knife fly above his head.
"Coward!" he cries, ducking to the ground and rolling to the knife after it ricochetes off the stony wall. "Let me fight you like a man!"
A familiar chuckle floods Franq's senses, and he rolls to his feet. "That would be too easy, though!" Mel's voice declares.
"Councilman?" Franq asks, perplexed. "What's going on here?"
"Your term of Training has ended a bit prematurely," Mel's voice replies.
Suddenly, without warning, an intense pain floods Franqiel's body. He feels as if he has submerged beneath the depths of some great mass of water, and strangely has become too heavy for his own good. He crumples to his knees, his hand creeping to the knife protruding from his chest, his life's blood pulsing from the wound. His eyes widen, he gasps, and he catches a glimmer of maniacal laughter echoing through the walls. Then, he sees no more.
In a mass of regrets and fear, Franqiel begins to die. Alone except for his assassin in some unknown, desolate hole. Getting some sort of morbid satisfaction that he did not die on a hospital bed as an invalid, Franq surrenders his life to the Pale Rider, and relinquishes his soul to Death.
Elrondäv had been wandering for a spot of time, amazed that whatever drug had been used on him did not kill him of an allergy. He had stumbled through the weaving corridors of the labyrinthine system in pitch blackness - which he couldn't help but note was a silly expression, especially given that pitch had not been used since the days of Earth.
Suddenly, the wall on which his hand had been dragging falls away. So, he notices to his dismay as he bends down to check, does the floor. Grumbling, he turns on his heel to return down the corridor he had been following. However, a large mass of resistance blocks his path.
"Däv, say your prayers," Carmelotto's voice commands.
"What's going on here, Mel?"
"I'm simply following orders."
"Ah, the Nurenburg Defense. Nice try. What's going on? Where am I? Where are Franq and Nabel? What are you doing here? Why is it dark? Why aren't I at home where I'm supposed to be?"
Carmelotto sighs audibly and probably rolls his eyes before speaking. Däv simply thinks this is a logical reaction. "If we let you live, you would probably try to save Annabel."
"She's in trouble?"
"When is she not in trouble with someone? Anyways, Annabel must be eliminated if World is to survive, and if you got in the way, well, I know what you and Franq would do. I'm sorry, but I simply can not allow you to do that, Däv." He pauses. In this lapse of monologue, Däv can not help but note how cheesy that last bit was. "So, of course, you understand what I must do. Anyways, it was really swell getting to know you. Perhaps, had you been a bit luckier and drawn a different Master, we could have let you live, and you and I could have been friends."
"What are you saying, Mel?" Däv demands, his voice quavering with fear.
"It's been nice knowing you. You've outlived your usefulness. Say 'good-bye,' Däv."
Those words said, a firm hand shoves Däv backwards, and he stumbles over the edge of the cliff. He screams as he falls before landing on a flat-enough outcropping.
When he lands, he knows his spine has broken, for the numbness that surely would not have been there any other time belies his injuries. He must be bleeding, too, he reasons, for he is becoming vaguely less aware of his surroundings. Up above, he hears Mel say "Close enough," before his footsteps tell that he is walking away. Thankful that he is spared the pain of his death, Däv closes his eyes and resigns himself to the inevitable.
Death. Slumber. Peace. Evermore.
"Hear the tolling of the bells -
Iron bells!
What a world of solemn thought their monody compells!
In the silence of the night
How we shiver with affright
At the melancholy menace of their tone!
For every sound that floats
From the rust within their throats
Is a groan
And the people - ah, the people,
They dwell up in the steeple,
All alone
And who, tolling, tolling, tolling,
In that muffled monotone,
Fell a glory in so rolling
On the human heart a stone -
They are neither man nor woman,
They are neither brute nor human,
They are Ghouls:
And their king it is who tolls;
And he rolls, rolls, rolls,
Rolls
A paean from the bells;
And his merry bosom swells
With the paean of the bells,
And he dances and he yells,
Keeping time, time, time
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the paean of the bells,
Of the -"
"Begging your pardon, sir, but your will has been fulfilled."
Tirival Hend looks up from the book he had been reading and glares as Carmelotto steps out of the darkness. "Never interrupt me when I am reciting Poe," he cautions.
"O-of course, sir. You told me to come report to you once I had fi-"
"I know what I told you!" he shouts, rising to his feet. "Then Annabel is dead?"
"Dead. Yes."
"Good. Then you no longer serve any purpose to me. Say good-bye, Mel. It was nice knowing you."
Carmelotto takes a step back. "What do you mean, sir?"
Hend draws a weapon, one of the few missile-range ones on World, and probably the only one not locked up in a museam.
"You're not going to kill me, are you, sir?"
"Well, Mel, yes, I am. I had been de-"
Suddenly, a klaxon of sorts whines, and a huge Pholiograph before them shows Annabel stirring from her alleged death. Hend glares at Mel. That is all he needs to do.
Carmelotto shies under the scrutiny of his master. "I swear! I injected her with the serum you prescribed!"
"Evidently not!" Hend spits before cuffing his bungling assistant upside the head. "We do this the right way! Come!" That decided, he stalks over to a door and palms it open. He waits for Mel to follow, and then they make their way towards the infirmary in which Annabel had supposedly died.
"No! Not that one!" Charleton screams as Lucifer tries to loosen one of the wires from the chair that confines their savior. "The green one! The green one!" Lucifer starts pulling on the white wire. "Are you color-blind, deaf, or simply daft?" the older minotaur demands, putting his hands on his hips and tapping his hoof - rather, putting his hooves on his hips and tapping his foot. Charleton never had become accustomed to the reversal of his Satyr form, despite the large amount of time since the change.
"You wanna do this?" Lucifer asks rhetorically. "Everything looks green in this light!"
"Let me see what I can do," Charleton admits and jumps on a button. Annabel's feeble life signs disappear from the main monitor and the floodlights turn on. "Better?"
"Green! I got it!" the younger minotaur exclaims, yanking the wire from its housing and stumbling backwards with the force of exertion.
Charleton smacks his forhead and reads the label of another button before jumping on it. It compresses, and the instructions for reviving their savior appear on the screen. He reads through them and jumps on another button. Annabel's body spasms violently, and she falls from the tabletop in a heap, gasping for air.
She coughs, and Lucifer gives Charleton a thumbs-up. Charleton returns the notion with a wink, and both teleport to Annabel's shoulders. They wait until she gets her bearings and stands up, searching the room for something, before they speak.
"Good mistress Annabel! We've waited a long time!" Charleton declares.
Annabel turns her head, wide-eyed, to the tiny minotaur sitting on her shoulder. She staggers, and catches herself on the table.
"We'll explain later. For now, though, go palm open that door there," Lucifer commands, pointing to the incriminating door.
Annabel sighs and does as she is told. She moves her hand around subtlely until the door hisses open. They enter into a cave-like hall, devoid of lighting units.
"Where are we going? Who are you? What are you?" Annabel finally asks, a bit dazed.
"We're going to see the great Seeress, Corliss. She's much in store for you, good Annabel. Turn left," Charleton declares.
"Okay, we're going to see Corliss. That doesn't explain who and what you are!"
"I'm Charleton, and he is my young brother, Lucifer. We are - were - Satyrs. Now, though, we are simply minotaurs, cursed, wretched creatures forced to shun our beloved daylight and travel amongst Hend's fortress like shadows of death."
"Death? Don't you think you're being a bit dramatic?"
"You think he's dramatic, wait til you meet the gorgons," Lucifer explains. "They used to be beautiful Seraphs, but now, they are hideous creatures! Like our own sweet sister, Corliss. Poor Corliss."
"Okay. You two are minotaurs, Corliss is a gorgon seer. Anything else?"
"Go down that middle corridor," Charleton commands. "Yes, there is one other thing."
"Oh? And what's that?"
"You, good Annabel, have been chosen to save World and free her from the wretched clutches of Tirival Hend. We pray you can, for you are the only chance World gets at redemption."
The passageway leads into the blue-hued sunlight, and Annabel raises her arms to block her eyes from the sudden brilliant burst of light. A cheer goes up from the tiny people of the maze, the citizens of Gehena. And then, Annabel collapses, Lucifer and Charleton teleporting off of her just in time to avoid being squished.
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