For all its devastation to my escape, I was thankful for the supreme distraction afforded to me by the Eid al-Fitr.

August, 1517 A.D.
Pemba Island--east of Tanzania, Africa.

For all its devastation to my escape, I was thankful for the supreme distraction afforded to me by the Eid al-Fitr. With the entire island seemingly in the throes of a festival, at least for now there were precious few interested in engaging a stranger in conversation. I had no doubt that this would wan as both wine and time flowed but for now, so long as I remained in the shadows, few had reason to be interested in me.

After quickly obtaining an evening meal of a spicy rice known to the locals as pilau and coconut bean soup and a steaming mug of chai tea, I retreated again to my roof perch. The pilau was like a smoky fire across my tongue, a nice compliment to the homely, yet sweet beans from the soup. The heady, spicy scent from both the burning and the living cloves wafted around me like a soothing, invisible sea. As the equatorial heat of the day drained away into far cooler night, I felt a measure of the tension from the day begin to slip away as the food hit my grousing stomach.

Perhaps that’s why I was taken at unawares.

A tiny pinprick of sensation on the right side of my neck, quickly followed by a cold, but burning line of metal across my throat. My soup and rice were scattered carelessly across the roof as black silhouettes blocked the stars from my view. My spine stiffened as my body unconsciously recoiled from the razor sharp line at my naked throat. Something hard, hot, and sweaty stopped me cold and a gust of rotten-fish breath rolled over me like a gout of putrid sick.

“I have you, Mzungu. You only thought you could escape me.” The voice and a laugh that sounded like a man strangling another immediately informed me: Spittle-beard, one of the skin-hunters who'd been chasing me; seeking my white flesh. A cold spike of fear shot through my gut. Spittle-beard growled with satisfaction and wrapped a thick tentacle of an arm around my chest, yanking me closer.

One of the dark shadows before me squatted, his eyes white and wide with excitement. They bored into mine with the look of a man enspelled, but his words were for his leader’s ears. “How shall we skin him, Master, from the toes up--or the head down?” A diabolic leer spread across his dirt-brown features.

In an instant, cold sweat sprang up from every pore in my body. A thready scream erupted from my lips, “N-n-n-ooo!”

Rough hands grabbed me, yanking me backwards while pulling my wrists together behind my back. My shoulders and elbows flared in hot agony as i felt them pop out of the sockets from the sheer violence of the movement. The third thug produced a thick coil of heavy, hand-woven hemp and fished for my flailing feet. The men moved with such synchronization, it was hard to tell in the dark where one man’s hands ended and another began.

The shock of the initial affront began to recede and I began to thrash my extremities and scream like a mad-man, careful to keep my head and neck as still as stone. Again came the sharp stab of pain on the right side of my neck, jangling oddly on the edge of my awareness, but there was no time. The silver flash of a knife in the waning moon’s pale light caught my eye as surely as the first rays of dawn.

“Be still fool! Scarred hides are worth far less than pristine!” The second man’s words were full of equal parts mirth and evil intent. The thug’s knife began slicing away my cassock in skilled strokes. My body and mind screamed in fear, knowing that my flesh would be next. My voice had vanished--perhaps in an attempt to save itself. My throat felt raw and bloody.

“Drag him to the edge and bleed him out there. That should calm him down a bit!” The third man, his voice almost indistinguishable from his two companions came from near my feet--both of which were now bound tightly. My robes hung in tatters about me, naked and defenseless the men hauled me like nothing more than a massive day’s catch towards the roof’s edge.

The knife vanished for a moment, followed by a blow of something hard and calloused into my gut. The wind was blasted from me, along with a scream--finally.

“NNNNNOOOO!”

The skin-hunters laughed: a trio of evil, mocking voices and flipped me over. I was nothing to them--little more than a prize to be prepared for slaughter and then for market. A sharp pain in my neck, like a sliver of metal gouged into my flesh and bone. My head hung over the side of the roof, but the street was lost in a haze of fiery tears that I could not blink away.

Again came the scent of fish, left too long in the sun--of bloated bodies and buzzing, hungry flies.

Hungry.

Palms coated with scouring sand snatched my forehead, my eye sockets, my nose and upper lip, yanking my head up and back. My neck cracked with the sound of a snapping branch. I warbled out a small protest.

“please...God...no…”

Again came the raucous laughter. This was nothing more than a game to them. I was nothing more than an object--not a living being. Another deep sharp pain flared in my neck: cold and needy.

Hungry.

The voice of the knife-wielder erupted near my right ear. “His God will not hear him nor help him now, eh, Spittle-beard?”

For a split-second, the world stood perfectly still--poised on the head of a needle, as it were.

‘Spittle-beard?’ Why would he call him that?

Something in the universe snapped back into focus and I looked up from my rice and beans. My neck throbbed and I could feel a small line of hot blood on my neck. Everything on the roof was calm and still, but the celebration still surged in Chake-Chake beneath me. Only moments had passed since my last bite. Spicy rice was still on my tongue.

What had just happened? Had I imagined it? Impossible--my pulse still raced with raw terror and panic.

I touched the right side of my neck--wet with blood, but something else, embedded in my flesh. I plucked it out and brought it before my black-and-silver eyes. A small, razor sharp tooth.

The taste of copper was stuck in the back of my throat.

What was the meaning of this? One thing was clear: there was more at work here than merely some depraved albino hunters. Whatever it was, it was abnormal and intently focused on me…

Art Source: "Tenet" by Tom Babbey, (c) Brannon Hollingsworth

Story and Characters: (c)/by Brannon Hollingsworth

#MMWW, #Makes, #Me, #Wanna, #Write, #BrannonHollingsworth, #Tenet, #TenetTales, #TanzanianTerror

Catapulting pell-mell through the topsy-turvy, extra-dimensional vault-prison known as the Strong Room, pursued by a pair of merciless, soul-draining Wawrdns, most people would puke their eyes out in abject fear.

Catapulting pell-mell through the topsy-turvy, extra-dimensional vault-prison known as the Strong Room, pursued by a pair of merciless, soul-draining Wawrdns, most people would puke their eyes out in abject fear.

Not Avide.

As she ran, Avide's lovely face was marked by a subtle, almost playful grin and the look in her eyes was one of a junkie on a fix. Perhaps this had more to do with her promised payment than it did with her current location or condition. Perhaps her ecstatic state of mind had more to do with the heist that she'd just pulled off, or maybe with the new-found power that she felt, thrumming through her mind, body, and soul from the glowing orb she'd just pilfered.

Perhaps.

But for those that really knew her, there could be little fact that it was all of these things, existing in perfect conjunction with one another.

This was Avide's world...and she loved every nanosecond, every molecule, of it.

That, and that she knew she was going to get away with it all.

Avide knew that she now held one of the things she had long sought. One of the things that she'd stolen...lied...and killed countless times to obtain. Avide now held a Foundation Stone.

And now all the world would suffer...

Art Source: "Stealth mission failed" (c)/by Plumporange

Story and Characters: (c)/by Brannon Hollingsworth, Avide (c)/by Corey Blankenship

#MMWW, #Makes, #Me, #Wanna, #Write, #BrannonHollingsworth, #Tenet, #TenetsTales, #Avide, #FoundationStones

Tenet ran as fast as he could toward the Usher of Death

Tenet ran as fast as he could toward the Usher of Death.

Thanatos beat his wings like peals of thunder, and he drew in the fruit to his center. His other hands gestured in various signs, while their eyes glowered with danger and warning. The "Betrayer" ignored these, though he stumbled as if buffeted by gales and whiplashes. Sicol gleamed with a pale light as Tenet strode forcefully forward.

Wisps of dirt spun up and became half-formed people. Gaps in the spinning grit became shadowy eyes and mouths. Voices slashed out and their words cut like blades across Tenet's tunic and skin.

"Found your courage in the Pit, Oath-breaker?" accused a fiery female.

"Do you repay my hospitality by defiling both my home and my resting place?" an islander railed in stilted Arabic.

"How dishonorable you have become since you failed me, Mage-slayer," Wei Zhi growled.

A grit-figure grew horns, drew a katana, and raised the weapon to slice Tenet in half. Before Tenet could react, a long blade ripped through the creature's chest. The shadowy samurai shattered and flew into the dust storm. Rhad' nodded to Tenet through the dissipated attacker and swung out against another two phantoms that grew in Wei Zhi's place.

Tenet saw holes open in some other figures as black darts passed through them. A channel opened for him to press his attack and he dove into the eye of the raging winds.

Thanatos drifted over the still waters of the Styx and menaced at his assailant. "You have secured their names in the Ledger, Betrayer, and a visit to the Throne for yourself this day."

Tenet stopped at the shoreline and panted. Molten blood streaked from various gashes and scrapes, singing his tattered tunic. He dared to gaze into Thanatos' eyes, and immediately felt as though he tumbled down an endless abyss. He simultaneously felt he walked a corridor in a smoky labyrinth, from which their was no hope of escape or dawn. He heard familiar voices, crying out for help but just out of reach.

"Walk or run, you are Lost, and Lost you will for ever be, Exile," Thanatos pronounced.

Tenet listened past the Scribe's harrowing thunder to the roar of the wind. In desperation, he drew deep on the Power that kindled in all of his kind. Then, with the last of his might he channeled the Force of Creation into Sicol and threw it at his enemy.

Tenet cried out as he did so, "He has made us competent ministers of a new covenant--not of the Writ but of the Wind. For the Writ kills, but the One-Who-Is-Wind gives life...and the Wind of Heaven rushed over the waters."

The blade spun and flashed over the waters, as the cycling winds shifted to rush behind it. Sicol split both the Book's spine and the fruit to the core. The raging winds lifted the unbound pages. At that moment, an amphora smashed against the Book's skin-cover. A blue flame ate greedily and splintered into many tongues as the pages scattered. Those that fell to the churning Styx spread the inferno. The grey waters hissed at the sacred flames' transforming touch.

Thanatos shrieked, which sounded like a mountain splitting in two. His many hands clutched at stray pages and pieces of the fruit. Yet, the inflamed Wind tore him and bore him rapidly away. The pages that survived billowed in opposite directions as the gale fragmented toward all the cardinal points and lessened.

Tenet slumped onto the strand of slate. Giovanni rushed forward and gripped his shoulder. The Exile's silver-and-black eyes peered up at the priest's worried face. Tenet muttered, "I will be fine. I just need to rest."

Giovanni answered, "The grave may be no place to rest, especially when we have burnt Death's dark Book and kindled his River."

"If only it were his," Rhad' replied solemnly. "We have upset more than Thanatos, and we have far to go."

Art Source: "Azrael, Angel of Death" by PeteMohrbacher

Story and Characters: (c)/by Corey Blankenship, Tenet, Giovanni, Roksana (c) Brannon Hollingsworth

What purpose do these living have in the Realm of the Dead?

The prow cut across the last waves and ran aground on hard stone. Giovanni and Rhad' leapt out of opposite sides of the craft and pulled it further ashore before helping the others disembark. Tenet whispered as he reached within the inner lining of his belt and withdrew something. He placed the small bag within the bottom of the boat and pushed it back into the current. The wooden vessel slipped quietly and quickly into the fog.

"Why did you cast off our means of escape?" Giovanni wondered.

Tenet turned his strange eyes on the priest. "It was part of the agreement with its owner."

A tense silence followed as the two studied one another before they joined the others. The beach stretched out as a barren landscape of broken stone that rose into craggy terraces. Then the shroud parted and what had looked like a massive stalagmite took shape. Roksana and Giovanni crossed themselves reflexively while every member drew weapons, save Tenet.

Many black wings the size and manner of a Rukk's wings dominated the space behind the figure. Some fluttered lazily like a bird of prey. The rest simply adorned the man-shaped being. Three sets of arms stretched out also from his body, and each palm bore a piercing eye. A garish ruby fruit hovered over one hand, while a massive book lay open under another. Blood-rimmed eyes peered from under a black hood. Scores of tentacles writhed independently from between his pale lips.

A thundering cascade bellowed, snapping loose papers into a gyre around the hovering form. "Declare your name and your manner of departure, mortals."

It paused and its bone-rattling voice came again, "State your purpose for straying into our lands, Betrayer."

The voice crashed against their souls as much as their flesh, grinding both like a mortar in a pestle. Kadir fell to one knee from the pain. The rest looked as though the weight of living became a mountain heaped upon their shoulders.

Tenet however stood with shoulders drooped by a different burden. His strained face expressed it as he viewed the agony of the others. Whispers of names and familiar voices flickered from the giant book in front of the Fallen before him. Tenet clenched his fists.

Finally, he answered, "No, Wei Zhi. I did not intend this end for you...I warned...I...defended..."

Giovanni stepped to his side and spoke. His usually robust speech sounded frail in the aftershock of the Scribe. "I am Giovanni Battista, and I have yet to journey into death, but I will not come to these lands. My home is elsewhere, as is my friends'."

The creature merely arched its brow in thought, which seemed to add to the crushing weight on Giovanni's back. The priest's knees buckled. Then the thought passed and the thunder answered, "The end of man is known only in the Books, and you are no Scholar in their Script. One among you is already writ here, and another is promised to join them."

Tenet's whispers became insistent and then he spoke with a new voice, filled with clarity and Power. "The Scales are in the hands of Another, Thanatos. Only One can open and read the Books that Seal all ends. Neither you nor I are Him."

The dark brooding figure glowered. Tenet reeled as if lashed by one of its large tentacles. "So you speak to more than the departed, Betrayer. What purpose do these living have in the Realm of the Dead?"

Tenet answered, "Their business is to merely pass through and return alive."

The Exile seemed to grow a bit as he stood upright. His hand slipped behind his back and a faint shimmer fit a slender blade into his grip.

"Mine is to seal this Passage once and for all."

Art Source: "Azrael" by PeteMohrbacher
Story and Characters: (c)/by Corey Blankenship, Tenet, Giovanni, Roksana, Kadir, (c) Brannon Hollingsworth

"Our troubles have only begun."

Giovanni threw his forearm against the broken stump of a petrified tree. He stared back through the vaulted cavern. Roksana braced her lithe body in the hollow of the column, while the shadows seemed to slip over her rather than her into the darkness. Rhad' planted his svärdstav into a divot in the floor and leaned against its long haft. A fine mist revealed their tortured breaths.

"Having glimpsed it, I know their monster's name," Giovanni grunted.

An oily whisper from the dark hollow replied, "It is no trifle that stalks us. I can smell its brimstone musk all about this catacomb."

"You have come to the Gates," Rhad' informed them. "Such portals are their domain."

"By their and it," mused a wearied, refined voice, "You refer to Kerberos, the hounds of hell."

Giovanni cast a gloomy look at the Arab who sat slumped against a boulder. Kadir had been sulking since the plunge and the loss of his talisman. "As it would seem the invaders have allied with Cerberus, we must escape his den quickly."

He studied the man who had feigned to be a mere watchman. Dark shafts remained buried in various places of Rhad's body, though the man showed only the fatigue from the run. The priest continued, "If you truly be Rhadamanthus, by what avenues can we flee?"

Rhad's grey eyes met his as he answered, "Only deeper across the River."

"No mortal should tread those banks before their time," countered Giovanni.

"Have I not announced it is your fate?" The watcher's words fell as a decree, not a question.

Baleful howls rose and dipped, each slightly different and clashing. Everyone strained to peer through the fog, but the call bounded from everywhere. Flashes of sickly yellow lit and vanished between rocky formations, but one could not tell if the source stood ten or a thousand meters away. The ossified grove that sheltered them also masked the predator. Instinctively, Kadir, Giovanni, and Rhad' placed their backs to each other. The Arab nervously tossed a dagger between his hands.

"Do not fret," Giovanni assured him. "The Shepherd will guard us even in the valley of Death."

"I'd prefer not to test that hypothesis in such a literal scenario," the scholar quipped.

Gentle, rhythmic drips struck water somewhere nearby. The splashes came long and regular. The priest recognized the cadence. He reached into the trunk of the tree and pulled Roksana out of the darkness. "Let us go! Heaven has provided a way of escape!"

The act startled the vampir. The sultry flame in her eyes dissipated to a mute tiredness. Exhaustion tinged her words as she asked mid stride, "What do you mean?"

Giovanni noted he had had the effect needed to help Roksana regain control. He did not answer. Each stride took them blindly through the mist. The others followed warily behind him, while the baying increased as the hounds drew nearer.

He let his boots sink into the dark waters and draw him deeper. The priest thought of one of David's songs, which he prayed would come true. He whispered instinctively, "Be a light unto my path..."

Two pale silver stars broke the fog bank. They hovered above a black silhouette that resembled a pillar set into a rocking platform. The river surged to the runner's waists as the shadow took form into a man on a flat boat. The pilot paused his strokes and knelt. Grey skin stood out in the twilight. The ferryman wore only a goat-beard and torn tunic.

Extending a strong hand, the coxswain announced, "Decided to join me and prove your boast true that you'd follow me into the Gates of Hell?"

Giovanni clasped the offered hand and laughed despite himself, "My word is my oath. You live even here border of the grave! Now, can you take all of us in before the hell hounds seize us?"

Roksana exclaimed, "Tenet! How did you escape--and come upon this boat?"

Tenet and Giovanni helped her aboard while the others scrambled over the other side. Tenet answered, "I slipped from its jaws with great effort and took refuge on this boat. That gatekeeper only bays when on the hunt, which I know well. I sensed it pursued a different quarry and decided to lend aid."

"As to the boat...," Tenet hesitated, honor bound to honesty. "I borrowed it from a former colleague."

Giovanni met his black-and-silver eyes for a long moment before a burning breeze that smelled of rot blew across the boat. The makeshift steersman pushed off with his pole. He had only paddled a little ways out when a dreadful keening pierced the mist. The huddled occupants stared astern. Six yellow torches glared back from the shore. Ghostly flames oozed and dripped down and smoked upon the waters. The smouldering lights halted, accompanied by a bitter howl, and then slowly receded into the gloom.

Giovanni crossed himself and finally allowed himself to relax since yesterday's repast. Fatigue claimed him as he heard Tenet darkly announce, "Our troubles have only begun."

Art Source: "Hellhound" by Kajito

Story and Characters: (c)/by Corey Blankenship, Giovanni, Roksana, Kadir, Tenet (c) Brannon Hollingsworth

All who walk this field will cross the Styx.

Hearken! Tell of fell Reknown:

Two Houses fed on the Earth

Two Trees split from lowly Dirt

Three Judges peer past mortal Bone

Three Paths held by sacred Stones

Seven's Sect stand on fallen Ground

Seven Sins break each stout Convert

One Road leads to death's dark Hearth

--One Lord rules under kindled Crown

"Spare it, Giovanni!" Rhad' shouted.

The soiled commander glanced at his bronze companion. An arrow hummed past Giovanni's ear as it cut a crimson groove through his beard. He growled, "Watchman, we must withdraw!"

Rhad' had three barbs pierce his plates, tunic, and flesh. Yet, no mist crept behind his eyes as he surveyed the turned mix of blood and soil all around them. He counted three hundred Ghuzz crowding the hills. Two more bolts bit into his legs as he answered, "You can judge as clearly as I there is but one route for us to tread."

Giovanni threw a clay amphora into the jeering mob. A blue-white flame sprung up on several's skin. Others threw water on their howling kindred, only to join in shrieking as the liquid transformed into fire and consumed them as well. The priest swung his sword and split the soft underside of a nearby assailant. Still more stocky soldiers poured into the vale.

The beautiful Slav at his side unleashed her own black barbs into the armed masses. Roksana piped in a haunting tone, "I have already walked that path and will not finish my journey escorted by their unwashed hands."

A great roar boomed amid the enemy's din while a ripple went through their ranks. Twisted weapons, bent helms, and broken bodies flew through the air as tight knots of warriors attempted to approach the brute wielding a bone club. Each hissed prayers or curses at the long, stout beast that guarded Giovanni's other flank.

The priest glanced over his shoulder to see a crumpled woolen cloak, trampled by the foe's own terror of shadow and fire for which he had no name. No sign remained of either the hellish marauder or its victim. The earth still trembled with the echo of its defiling touch. Pale gleams from the waning sun shot through the barren copse amid the battle.

"We may be few, Rhad'," Giovanni confessed, "but we will see this day through and escape under nightfall."

"You have decreed falsely, holy man." The shorter figure's words struck with the force of a gavel, while his pole arm flashed in a lethal arc through several throats. The ground cracked and yawned all around them. "Hear this sentence of Rhadamanthus the Wise: Those who walk this carrion's field will cross the Styx."

Art Source: "Last Stand" by Athayar

Story and Characters: (c)/by Corey Blankenship, Giovanni, Roksana, Jaw Bone, Tenet (c) Brannon Hollingsworth

"Shomriel."

"Shomriel."

The voice, though unspoken, nearly destroyed the fallen. Just the utterance, directed solely at one being, was far too...large, far too...significant to be borne by just one living thing. In truth, if the word had been directed at a mortal creature, the poor, piteous thing would have exploded into a fine red mist.

As it was, Shomriel was groveling on the ground, clutching its odd, insect-like head in its six pairs of hands. The fallen angel spluttered, its mandibles clacking and jerking in pain and abject agony.

"Master....please....your....v..v....voice...."

Stygal shoved another handful of screaming souls into his massive, garage-sized gullet. Their screams were the perfect seasoning for this particular gory repast, and he was enjoying himself far too much to bother himself with thoughts of his servant's sufferings.

"Shomriel, my Worm. Report," Stygal thought. Mental words whipped across the planes of existence to find their mark in the mind of the demon, Shomriel.

The six-armed demon flailed like it had just stuck its tail into a 220 volt outlet. "M...m....master! A...Ah...all goes....a..ah...according...to plan!"

The Demon Lord barely heard his servant's cries for pain. Somewhere, hundreds of Christians were being martyred, their heads sawn off by men in dark robes. Stygal, He-Who-Brings-Death, could feel his power growing with each arterial spurt. He gloried in the unspoken, yet abject and outright, worship of his name. Stygal lost himself in the deaths of the martyrs, and for a while, nothing else in all the universe existed.

Finally, he came back to himself and snatched up three more handfuls of souls. As he brought the first handful to his mouth, he surveyed the writhing, small, insignificant, yet tasty things. For a moment, he almost considered pausing his feast, but....

"What of Olarus, Worm?" Stygal asked, his mouth full again of heady smells, flavors, and screams.

Shomriel was nearly mad with pain. The fallen would have given anything...anything...if his Master would cease speaking directly into it's thoughts. If it believed that any would hear it, it would have considered praying to the Almighty for the smallest pause in the torture, but Shomiel knew better.

"Oh...oh...Olarus ssssss...suspects nothing my Lord! Ssssoon...my....legions...will be in....plaaaaace....to ah...ah...aaaact!"

"Well done, Worm," Stygal replied, crunching with satisfaction. "Put your legions in place and stand ready for my signal."

"Yessss! Y...yyess, Master!"

The Demon Lord severed the connection with his servant and surveyed his domain. He was unhappy to see that many of his favored snack was fleeing from him. No great matter, Stygal thought to himself, soon I will have both the souls and the bodies upon which to dine...soon, when his legions tore down the Curtain from within, and opened all worlds and reality to him. Then, Stygal would again be known by the name which he'd received in the Time Most Ancient.

He-Who-Brings-Death would again rule from on high....

Art Source: "He, of Genocide" (c)/by andrewmar

Story and Characters: (c)/by Brannon Hollingsworth

#MMWW, #Makes, #Me, #Wanna, #Write, #BrannonHollingsworth,  #fabricofreality, #Olarus, #Makes, #Me, #MMWW, #TheCurtain, #Shomriel, #Meltsar, #Tenet, #TenetsTales, #Stygal, #DemonLord, #HeWhoBringsDeath

Olarus turned from his task, irritated.

Olarus turned from his task, irritated. The Curtain was beset from all realms and upon all sides, and despite his most valiant efforts, the Once-Angel was barely able to bridge merely the most critical of the tears. All around him, the tendril-world of Between--the Space-Betwixt-Space--flickered and flitted like unending ribbons of intertwined existence set against colliding fields of oscillating light and shadow.

As he walked, stones that looked more ancient than the stars themselves coalesced from nothingness into substance, providing a solid footing for his strides. To Olarus, this amazing event was utterly unremarkable, as Between was an integral part of him and of his existence. He had been created when this place was created; he was made to make safe, make sure, and maintain the Curtain. Between, or at least this area of Between, was as much an extension of his being as were his three sets of arms. To the Once-Angel, this simply was the way things were. But things were not now the way they should be as it related to Olarus and the Curtain...they had not been that way for some time, in fact.

And the Once-Angel was going to do something about it.

"Show yourself, Shomriel!" Olarus bellowed. He did not attempt to hide his anger or his frustration. The strands of Between shivered and quivered in a reflection of Olarus's rage.

The mist-strands of a particularly dark area of Between circled slowly, like dark ribbons floating on the surface of a muck-filled pool; vine-coated stones and strange, oddly marked cylinders of stone began to grow and form out of the darkness. Across those stones came crawling an abomination.

The Once-Angel shuddered. Though he found it hard to believe now, Olarus knew that he and this thing were once of the same ilk. They were both of the Meltsar, but Shomriel had fallen long ago and had become a horrific, twisted thing indeed. Now, the pale-skinned creature scuttle-crawled like a lower thing, scrabbling with both its legs and its three sets of horned, clawed, and armored arms. It had a long, prehensile tail that ended in a wide-knife blade bone that whipped and slithered like a thing with its own perverse will. But most changed to the eyes of Olarus was the visage of Shomriel. Long ago, they had both been among the most beautiful to behold of the Hosts of Heaven, but no longer for the pale-skinned Shomriel. Now, the fallen had a twisted and inhuman countenance - a terrifying cross between devil, nightmare, and insect.

The corrupted walkway of ghastly stones met the precise and ordered walkway of Olarus, and the fallen creature scamper-scuttled before the blue-skinned Once-Angel. It drew itself up and the semblance of the two fallen, one recent and one ancient, was chilling.

Shomriel cocked its strange, alien head and hissed, "Greetings, brother. What aid might Shomriel bring thee?"

Upon being referred to as 'brother', Olarus took an unconscious half-step back and Between shivered in response. Some of Shomriel's mandibles flexed, a motion sign that Olarus would soon learn equated into the fiend's smile, and the fallen twisted its head in the other direction. The effect was...unsettling.

Finally, Olarus spoke. "I...I am in dire need of your help, Shomriel. The Curtain is being ripped and torn at a rate that I cannot maintain by my own. I would ask that you and...our other brethren...the Meltsar under your command, would aid me in defending the Curtain."

Shomriel shifted its uncanny head first in one direction and then the other, so far so that it almost looked as if the creature's head would snap off. After staring with its unblinking ebon eyes for a long, silent time, it finally hissed a reply. "Yes, my brother. Shomriel shall help thee. But Shomriel has a price."

"Name it," spat Olarus.

"The next time the Betrayer passes through the Curtain, he shall not leave."

Olarus did not reply, but merely nodded.

"Shomriel will claim his prize...This time, Tenet shall not escape."

Art Source: "Guard of Sanctuary" (c)/by D8P

Story and Characters: (c)/by Brannon Hollingsworth

#MMWW, #Makes, #Me, #Wanna, #Write, #BrannonHollingsworth,  #fabricofreality, #Olarus, #Makes, #Me, #MMWW, #TheCurtain, #Shomriel, #Meltsar, #Tenet, #TenetsTales

With the horn he drank his last Supper's Wine

"With the horn he drank his last Supper's Wine, His libation pouring through feeble bones, still he holds his justice close, while he waits an alabaster Throne..."

"Do not mock the dead," Tenet answered harshly.

The fleshless voice replied, "I do no insult to a fallen blood brother. An oath I swore and uphold."

"This is a holy man! He would bear no allegiance to a Fallen," Tenet protested, his beard against his chest as if pressed down by a crown of iron.

Cold burning eyes studied him. "It is no shame to confess lament. Our brother walks openly behind the Tapestry from which you finally wandered out."

Tenet's shivered under his thick cloak. Silver streaks slipped over his grey face. He finally let the truth break free with his grief, "I come too late."

"In his first steps beyond the Tapestry, he desired to tell you he held no grudge in your absence," the spirit consoled.

Tenet wandered closer to gaze upon the thick beard under the Grecian helmet. He stared upon the waxy face and realized how long he had been away. "Too long...," he muttered into his own goat-beard.

A cold hand fell on his shoulder and, despite his native distrust, the weary wanderer accepted the solace of the undead. "Our friend awaits the Day of Returning."

The spirit sighed and mournfully added amid Tenet's quiet vigil, "It is for us to respect those as brave as Giovanni to stare their dread Foe in the face and call Death friend."

Art Source: "King Specter" by BorjaPindado
Story and Characters: (c)/by Corey Blankenship, Tenet and Giovanni (c) Brannon Hollingsworth

"You have found the Hall of the Headsmen..."

Anishkar stroked the feline head that crowned his staff. He gazed at the shrouded figure before him, who knelt because of the spear against his back. Another prisoner hung its head, chafing its chin on the iron collar around its neck.

"You have found the Hall of the Headsmen, but I do not think it is to join us, as your friend says," the priest told the two.

"You are correct," the bald man on the ground confessed.

"Why do you come, One-Who-Cannot-Lie?" Anishkar asked.

The prisoner raised his head. Despite the bruising around his eyes, the priest noted how black they were, flecked with silver. "How do you know what I am?"

The priest leaned forward over his staff, staring into the prisoner's eyes. "The eyes tell everything about a creature. Yours betray honesty, while your friends are filled with lies."

Tenet picked up on the emphasis in the man's words. He glanced around the cut stone throne room and noted the moss in the grooves. His wool cloak kept most of the chill of the air from his body. He shifted his gaze to the amethyst eyes inset into the black jaguar figurine. They glowed with an otherworldly light that hinted to ageless intensity. An intensity matched by the insatiable hunger in the priest's eyes. An intensity Tenet knew too well.

Tenet spoke, "So it is true."

Anishkar tilted his head, "What do you deem to be true?"

"You are among those who have taken a taste for Fallen flesh, and I am right to have come," Tenet answered.

With a sleight gesture, the spear that was behind Tenet was in his hands and he leaped at the priest. His partner took the signal and emitted a soul-piercing shriek at her guard, who crumpled into death's embrace. Anishkar had seen all of this.

Anishkar the Headhunter came prepared.

Art Source: "Cyborg Panther" by LennartVerhoeff

Story and Characters: (c)/by Corey Blankenship, Tenet (c) Brannon Hollingsworth

"You're too late, Investigator."

"You're too late, Investigator."

Soot and embers whirled in a lazy vortex around the cave opening. The voice bounced off the walls in a gravelly tone akin to basalt grinding against itself. The accused slipped off his grey woolen cowl, peering deeper into the gloom in hopes of spying the speaker without having to step into the smoky tunnel.

"How have you activated the volcano?" Tenet wondered aloud.

The smoke puffed and carried the creature's mocking laughter. "I wasn't speaking to you, Betrayer."

Tenet became aware of another shadow against a towering boulder. A roughly man-shaped form leaned against the stone with a wide-brim cover blocking its face. The shadow shifted to glance at the cave mouth and gave an emotionless response, "You have broken the conditions of your parole, leaving Seram."

"Do you think you can stop me? I have become King of Krakatau, House of Fire and Peril. You cannot hold back the death due your pets."

A rumble vibrated from the mountain below them. Tenet gawked as the shadow answered in his deadpan manner, "I am not charged with stopping the mess you've made, Orang-bati, whatever trumped up titles you give yourself."

"You can't leave these people to perish!" Tenet protested.

"It is not for me to question the charges from the Courts," the Investigator replied.

Laughter like the first tremors of an eruption spewed from the tunnel. "Don't you see, Betrayer? They have abandoned man into our hands."

"Now," the voice menaced as something leathery flapped and stirred the smoke into a gyre. "Join them in their fates."

Twin coals lit by an infernal flame glared from the back of the tunnel. The ground split beneath Tenet's and the Investigator's feet. Tenet instinctively snatched hold of the crumbling lip as he tumbled and swung himself back onto a standing column of stone. He looked to where the Investigator had been and saw a great chasm of darkness and leaping tongues of lava. Tenet drew his sword Sicol and looked for a path into the cavern that didn't lead into a lava bath.

Drawing on the Power within, Tenet cried out, "You widen a place beneath me for my steps, and my ankles do not give way."

Then he ran as fast as he could, trusting each stride to bring him into the mountain of terror alive. A glance above showed vents brimming with fire, lava, and black smog. He had moments before the whole volcano blew. How he was going to face an engorged Fallen, the Investigator, and a volcano, he didn't know.

Tenet almost prayed that a miracle would find its way into this earthly mouth of hell. If not, he knew that he would demand answers from the Judge Himself this day.

Art Source: "Bat out of Hell" by JustMick

Story and Characters: (c)/by Corey Blankenship, Tenet (c) Brannon Hollingsworth

"A Boogaloo," Tenet said

August, 1685
Port Royal Island, South Carolina

"A Boogaloo," Tenet said, glancing up from his near-prone position in the soft, powder-like sand. "I'm almost certain of it."

"How kin ya tell?" James Reston, Sheriff of the newly established Stuart Town, spoke quickly but did not move. He was the sort of man who quickly gathered his ingredients but took some time before deciding what he would do with them.

Tenet pointed to the oblong footprints, each with three bulbous toes. The ubiquitous grey sand, softer and finer than talcum, was perfect for holding prints, the trouble was they were quickly marred by even the slightest breeze or movement. As fate would have it, the breezes coming off of Port Royal this evening were strong and constant. "I am sure of it. These footprints are near proof."

Reston's red face, made more so by exposure to the tropical-like glare of the sun of the South Carolinian days, scrunched up. "Alligator?" he queried, turning his head too and fro like a confused hound.

Tenet nodded slightly, shrugging his wool-shrouded shoulders. "Could be, but I don't know of any alligators that also have hands." The pale man pointed to a pair of other prints, farther apart from the strange footprints and distinctly hand-like. One appeared to be nothing more than a smudged imprint, but the other, which had trailed off the powdery sand and into the thick, grey pluff mud on the river bank, clearly displayed long, clawed fingers.

Reston spat out a curse. "So what be these Boogaloo?" He turned to watch the sun slip below the western horizon. The sky was aflame with golds, scarlets, oranges, and purples and the air was filled to bursting with the evening song of the cicada and frog.

Tenet opened his mouth to answer, but in that instant the sun was gone, and an odd, shivering hooting sound joined the cacophony in the hot evening air. All around the two men, who stood on a promontory overlooking the mouth of the Broad River, a force of things emerged from the gnarled pines and veiling Spanish moss.

They looked like twisted caricatures of miniature men crudely crafted from the sticky grey pluff mud. Their arms were far longer than they had any right being and their hands seemed purposefully fashioned for throttling. Each Boogaloo was different from their brethren, reflecting the hand-made nature of these beings, and each bore signs of their crafter's marks: necklaces of oyster-shell, bracelets of beads and feathers, or mismatched armor made of driftwood or coral. Regardless of their individual features, each of them bore a sign that marked them as totems - hand-carved faces of wood, with glowing red eyes.

As the two score and more of the creatures closed in on the two men, Tenet answered Reston, "Hand-crafted death..."

Art Source: "The Boogaloo" (c)/by GaryLiabArt

Story and Characters: (c)/by Brannon Hollingsworth

#MMWW, #Makes, #Me, #Wanna, #Write, #BrannonHollingsworth, #TenetsTales, #Tenet, #SouthCarolina, #Boogaloo, #Gullah

You should well know the price of the secrets you seek before seeking them

"You should well know the price of the secrets you seek before seeking them," the crone hissed through yellow-stump teeth. "The price may be well more than you wish to pay, Fool. Are you willing to barter with the Wrembhwicce?"

The hooded figure nodded curtly. The motion was not one of respect, it was one born out of fear. Anyone with eyes to see could tell it.

The crone planted her staff beside her left foot and began walking in a large circle. She moved slowly and deliberately, always turning to the left, counter-clockwise to the hooded man before her. She drug her staff through the powdery dirt of the cave and the path it traced in the dirt mirrored the sign she bore in the place of her eyes. As she paced, she murmured under her foul breath and though he strained desperately to hear the words, the hooded man could make out only bits and parts...

"helico...spiracial...ammon...nautilious....vogel...fermatti...jannos...pspir..."

With each revolution, her words became more saturated with vile hatred and malice. Her voice, though murmured, began to thrum with dripping, black power. Closer, ever closer the hag came, with each leftwise turn, towards the hooded figure. Finally, as her voice reached the zenith of its power, she stopped before him. Her scarred visage was contorted in something that could not quite be identified...fear...rage....pain? She screeched into the hooded man's hidden face.

"SPEAK! Speak, Fool, and tell me what secret you most desire...once the price has been paid, it shall be yours."

This was the moment the hooded man longed for, in truth, he felt that this was the moment he had been created for... With an unseen grin, his reply came laced with not-so-subtle triumph. "The loxós. I want the loxós, witch!"

The look on the hag's face was a picture of twisted horror. "No! NO! NOOOOOOO!"

But it was too late. The bargain had been struck. The deal was done.

Art Source: "Maebyn Witch" (c)/by DaveAllsop

Story and Characters: (c)/by Brannon Hollingsworth

#MMWW, #Makes, #Me, #Wanna, #Write, #BrannonHollingsworth, #Tenet, #tenetstales, #Loxos, #Wrembhwicce, #fabricofreality, #THISISABIGDEAL

I Am...the Curtain.

I Am...the Curtain. The Curtain Between Worlds. The Curtain and I are one. The Curtain was the very reason for my Creation. I control it. I conserve it. I continue it. I cultivate it. I am Olarus.

And now, I am Fallen.

This, I think, was not the intent of He Who Was My Master and yet the silvered, subtle words of Lucifer seemed right to me at the time. I Listened and soon, I could feel Pride stir within my breast and I Followed the Shining One. I Followed him straight out of Glory. I Fell. It was not what I intended, and yet I must now bear the brunt and pay the price for my choice. Yet, I shall not choose a side in the Great War. I REFUSE! I no longer care for the Silver-Tongued Price of Lies, nor the Great Father of All. I have only one care now, and it is I...and I Am the Curtain.

The Curtain is all I have now, you see. I must protect it. I must maintain it. I must avenge it. Now, with the Great War, the Curtain is tattered and torn. I have many hands and they are able, and I try to mend these rips, but these fallen: the devils, and demons, and all their imps and perversions and all these exalted: the angels, the cherubim and seraphim, the principalities and powers - ALL OF THEM CARE NOTHING FOR MY CURTAIN!

Can they not see? Can not see what they do to It....to Me? They rip and tear me...it...endlessly as they travel hither and yon. They care nothing for the subtly woven fabrics that compose the Veil of All Reality. To them, it is nothing more than a Passage, a momentary path from one world to another, or from one Reality to Another. They have no idea of the titanic, shimmering, shivering POWER that lies within these Cosmic Threads, or of the pain it causes the Curtain...causes ME...when they abuse and misuse her.

But this will cease. I will see to it. I am UNCHAINED. I am OLARUS. I am the CURTAIN and I will PROTECT MYSELF, or

I
    will
             perish
                       in
                               the
                                            attempt.


What these fools do not understand is that if I am the Curtain, and I go....where, then, will be the Curtain?

Where I go, goes the very fabric of reality....

They will do well to fear me. FEAR OLARUS AND RESPECT THE CURTAIN!

Art Source: "Blue Devil" (c)/by Toshi13go

Story and Characters: (c)/by Brannon Hollingsworth

#MMWW, #Makes, #Me, #Wanna, #Write, #BrannonHollingsworth, #Tenet, #tenetstales, #TheCurtain, #Olarus, #fabricofreality, #THISISABIGDEAL

The rising sun kissed the clouds over the Roman city that would one day become known as the City of Lights.

258 A.D.
Lutetia Parisiorum

The rising sun kissed the clouds over the Roman city that would one day become known as the City of Lights. The subtle roses and salmons that overtook the quickly fading purples and blues of the night were utterly breath-taking. It was as if God Himself was finger painting the dawn into existence.

Mistral, perched high atop an aqueduct pillar, one of many that brought water into the city from the distant basins of the Rungis and Wissous. The fallen angel's eyes were not on the dawn, however--of that, he could care less--they were focused on the site of his meeting this morning. The site of his next job, or the end of this phase of his existence.

Mistral really didn't care one way or another.

But Mistral was a creature of habit. He had served as a magistrate of Heaven, before his temptation and his fall, and his heart still beat with a measured, militant tempo. He would do his level best to ensure that nothing in this meeting caught him at unawares and that he had minimized--or eliminated--all risks. As he scanned Mont Mercury and the ramshackle collection of structures around it, a pair of morning doves flew past.

"Bonum mane angelus!*" one sang out, a bright bird eye glittering in the morning sun as it spoke to him.

With a mere thought, Mistral crushed the creature. He watched impassively as the broken feathered body plummeted to the earth.

"Pretender," he said coldly, filling his own regal wings with the breeze and casting his form into the sky.

None of the early morning risers in the Roman city on the swampy eastern side of the Seine witnessed the sight of the angelic creature flying over their thatched or tiled roofs. No winged shadow fell across muddied streets or picketed fields. Mistral hid himself from any who might have an eye to see or an ear to hear.

Unlike the one who he was about to meet.

'The Fool,' thought Mistral, landing on the apex of Mont Mercury. For ages, it had been a druidic circle and after that, it was a spot held sacred to Mars and Mercury. Mistral could feel the dark, pagan energies swirling and eddying all around him. He thought it a good spot for a meeting, at least for him, but he could not understand why the one who'd called him here had selected this spot.

Something triggered the fallen's keen senses and instantly, his twin segolo were in his hands. Two massive pieces of razor-edged, cold-forged iron, the weapons were his own design. The hafts were a longsword blade with no hilt and where a hilt would normally be found, a wickedly-curved half-moon shape. They functioned as swords, as massive punch daggers, as axes, or as tridents - but in whichever horrific way that Mistral desired to use them, they caused death and destruction. Holding the razor-sharp blades, the fallen slowly spun around the wide crown of the hill, his cold, impassive eyes searching for whomever--or whatever--had triggered his finely-honed senses.

"Thank you for meeting me," came a voice from the edge of the circle. There, in the deep shadow of what was once, long ago, a standing stone and was not little more than a broken nub of rock, stood a pale man in grey.

"The Fool." Mistral intoned the word verbally this time. Like a statue on display, he pivoted slowly toward the sound of the voice.

"It is good to see you again, Mistral." the pale man said, removing his woolen hood to reveal his pale bald head, odd grey-and-silver eyes, and his charcoal-grey goat's beard with two silver stripes. "I am glad you've decided to take me up on my offer."

Mistral stalked towards the pale man, his wings filling with the cool morning breeze and the pale light of the eastern sun. The fallen's tawny, feathery hair fluttered as well, and Mistral's entire form, despite its cool impassivity, seemed to vibrate with anger and hatred. "How do you know that I will not kill you where you stand, Fool?"

The pale man smiled, sadly. "Because I know the Truth. Because I know You. Because I know of Your Choice. Because I offer you What You Want."

"And what is that, Tenet?" Mistral intoned coldly, feeling the truth in the pale man's words and hating him even more for it.

"A chance to kill."

Mistral was taken aback, but he would not allow his icy exterior crack with the outward expression. "You? You offer me a contract?"

Tenet nodded. "I do, assassin. Do you accept?"

Mistral's stony face cracked slightly and he looked around him, expecting an ambush. "What trick is this, Betrayer?"

Tenet shook his head. "No trick." His strange eyes bored into Mistral's. They both knew that he could not speak a lie.

The winged fallen lowered his weapons. "I accept. Who shall I slay for you, Tenet?"

Without pause, Tenet replied. "Denis."

Mistral pursed his lips. "The one many call the Bishop of Paris?"

Tenet nodded. "Yes. The one and the same. I want you to behead him."


*-"Good morning, angel!" (from Latin)

Art Source: "Assassin" (c)/by GreenBreen

Story and Characters: (c)/by Brannon Hollingsworth

#MMWW, #Makes, #Me, #Wanna, #Write, #BrannonHollingsworth, #Tenet, #tenetstales, #Mistral, #assassin, #BishopDenis

I don't expect them to understand. After all, I am a living...well, technically, unliving...contradiction.

'I don't expect them to understand. After all, I am a living...well, technically, unliving...contradiction.'

Roksana shifted ever-so-slightly, feeling the stirring of the cold winter wind, but not sensing its bite. She stared down the length of the arrow's shaft, still--even after all these years--expecting to see the ever-so slight quaver in the arrow's tip. She'd not dealt with muscle fatigue for a long, long time. Being a 'vampir' (as the Germans were calling her kind now) did have its benefits, she mused.

But there was still part of her that was stubbornly--

'Alive and willful,' would have been Deacon's words.

She missed her mentor. Lost to the Ravages, now, she supposed. The thought of her dearest friend and teacher in their twisted claws, suffering, steeled her resolve all the more. She would stand and guard this church until Doomsday if need be. Michael himself would need to sound his silver trump in her undead face before she would drop her arrow's point. She woul--

"S-s-s-shoot him in the face!", the Fallen hissed in her ear, words dissolving into slithering laughter. She flinched, and her stín-šipka, her ebony-shafted shadow arrow, whisked into the darkness.

"Shush, Idzi!" Roksana spat the words through gritted teeth that were far too long and sharp to be human. She coiled her will, like unyielding leaden chains, around the demonic presence inside her. The will flowed into words, spoken and living with a Power all their own: "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places."

Idzi screamed and hissed and fought, as he always did. But he was no match for the Word of God when applied through the will of one of His children.

Even if she was a vampir.

She knew she had to control herself. Self-control was one of the Fruits. Only through them could the Light be manifested. And these people in this village--the same people who hated her, spat upon her, and tried to kill her--they needed her control, her powers. They needed her to be what she was, even if they hated her; for they needed her protection this night, if they wanted to see the dawn that she herself could no longer behold.

It was then that Roksana heard the howls. The živá mrtvola vlkodlaci (zombie werewolves) were coming...and they would be hungry. An ebon arrow slapped against her bow, and with the battle against the spirit won, the battle against the flesh began. 

Art Source: "Archer" (c)/by Haryarti

Story and Characters: (c)/by Brannon Hollingsworth

#MMWW, #Makes, #Me, #Wanna, #Write, #BrannonHollingsworth, #Tenet, #TenetTales, #Sectof7, #Roksana, #Deacon

I woke up face-down in the sand and rock.

Spring, 1963
Dead Man Peak, New Mexico

I woke up face-down in the sand and rock.

A voice sounded from somewhere over me. "Hey..uh...mister. You alright?"

I think I grunted. I was not entirely sure.

Tentative, the voice came again. "Mister?"

I felt a hand on my shoulder. A hand that slowly, gently turned me over.

I screamed at the intense pain that flared through my entire body and at the scorching arrows of fire that stabbed into my eyes.

"Dear Father in Heaven!" The voice was not tentative this time, it was outright scared. "What in God's Name are you?"

From scared to inquisitive in a heartbeat.

I groaned, unable to speak because of the pain, and the parched throat, and the cracked lips.

"Here, let me get you some water."

As best I could, I nodded. The simple motion made it feel like the skin on the back of my bald scalp and neck was ripping apart. I whimpered, and tried not to nod anymore.

"Who are you?" asked the voice again, this time concerned.

That was something that I did know, at least. As a matter of fact, it was only one of a few things of which I was consiciously aware. I cast around in my brain for what I was called, like a tongue feeling around in a mouth for a lost tooth. "Tenet," I managed to gasp.

I felt the voice nod, because the owner of the voice was over me, with one hand on the back of my head, gently raising me up so I could sip some water. "Good to meet you...er...Tenet. My name id Aelred. Aelred Wall. Here...drink."

I drank. It was deliriously delicious. Then, darkness.

***

I awoke sometime later in cool darkness. It was glorious. I think it might have been the best thing I'd ever felt, in fact. Even though my entire body was wracked with a searing, tingling fire, I managed to crack open a single eyelid and take a brief look around. I was in some sort of high-ceilinged structure that was made of stone. It was all narrow pillars, shadowed, dusty walls, and eye-pleasing arches. It reminded me of ancient Spanish missions, and had a wide, covered, open-air porch beyond the main area where I was seated. Outside, it was night in the desert and the sky was alive with stars.

I realized that apparently, Spanish missions were something that I recalled as well, in addition to my name.

I saw a small, Mexican man behind a bar take notice of me, wipe his hands on a rag, pick up a glass of water, and then head in my general direction. Exhausted from my visual tour of the place, I closed my eye and settled in for him to visit me. I heard him approach and asked, "Aelred?"

The man's musical voice drifted up and down as he replied. I knew immediately that this was not the same person who helped me earlier. "Nah. He left ya here. He said something about needin' to go start a monastery or somethin'. I think you scared him halfta death. Put the fear'o'God inta him. You can call me Chuy."

Something made me raise a brow at the name, but I could not remember why. "How long have I been here, Chuy?" I asked, noticing that my throat was no longer as raw as it had been. Despite the dull agony, I opened my eyes and watched him.

The small man opened his mouth to reply, but all that came out was the sound of chopping, growling, thunder. Or, more accurately, the sounds of several massive motorcycles pulling up outside devoured his words completely. Chuy seeing a host of thirsty new customers, left me sitting and departed to see to them, leaving the glass of water in his wake.

I reached for the water and behind the transparent glass, saw the image of one of the bikers as he strode into the porch area. Something about the way the big, black-skinned, leather-vested, cigar-smoking man moved--like he was intently aware of the physical space around him--twigged something in my foggy, vacant brain. It was unexplainably odd, seeing him step up into the covered porch and noticing the slight spasm in his shoulders and neck, or watching him move through the tables, his eyes constantly scanning the area in a eight foot radius from him.

Almost as if he was much bigger than he really was.

Then, I saw him. I really saw him. He was much more than a man. He was massive: at least nine-and-a-half feet tall and probably six hundred pounds of pure muscle. Tattoos that burned with a subtle fire all their own covered every inch of his taunt skin and a single, red eye--the only one he had--rested in the center of his vaguely conical cranium.

A Greek word came to me, unbidden: Kuklōps.

A cyclops...

I rose from my chair and step-staggered out onto the open-air porch. The creature, who still looked like a man--albeit a very large, very well muscled, and obviously tough man--to everyone else there, turned and faced me as I entered. An ugly grimace crawled across his features and in his true cyclops form, I could see the single red eye flare with power. The night sky around his head literally rippled with the strange forces emanating from the eye.

The man growled and the members of his gang reached for their various stashed weapons.

All I could do was speak a one word question, "Ace?"

Art Source: "Punk" (c)/by Gimaldinov

Story and Characters: (c)/by Brannon Hollingsworth

#MMWW, #Makes, #Me, #Wanna, #Write, #BrannonHollingsworth, #Tenet, #TenetsTales, #Ace, #Cyclops, #NewMexicointheSixties

Ija the Indestructible

Ija the Indestructible

Abhorrent. Abased.

"They call me the Hitman of Heaven, and the Hitman of Hell."

Bitter. Blistered.

"Pain is my bread and butter, baby..."

Cold. Calculating.

"I'm a rock 'til th' target's locked."

Disgraced. Degenerate.

"Oh, my how the mighty have fallen..."

Killer-for-hire. Keen-as-a-knife.

"You got the coin, I'll make the kill."

Mountainous. Murderous.

"I'm the fear-maker, the back-breaker, and the earth-quaker!"

Perverse. Petulant.

"I'mma stone cold killer. If you don't like it, you can suck it."

Revolting. Rotten.

"Heh. I'm just a product of my environment..."

Sinister. Sickening.

"Thanks for all the compliments."

Twisted. Tortured.

"Do your worst."

Unstoppable. Un-killable.

"Enemy of Satan. Enemy of God. Employable by All.

Vitrolic. Vile.

"Happy and nice is for suckers."

Weapon-smith. Wicked.

"Fire, ice, blade, or vice...they're all just weapons to me."

Art Source: "Goblin" (c)/by Kisufisu

Story and Characters: (c)/by Brannon Hollingsworth

#MMWW, #Makes, #Me, #Wanna, #Write, #BrannonHollingsworth, #Tenet, #TenetTales, #Sectof7, #Sector7, #Ija, #fromhisownmouth

"Th' name's Deacon. What's it to ya?"

"Th' name's Deacon. What's it to ya?" the mountain-of-a-man turned as he grumbled, a look of irritation on his face.

There was something else there, something other than the petulance at being bothered after a long day's watch. Sadness, perhaps. The vampir opened herself up to the damnable thing that stirred within her. Idzi needed no prompting. The horrid thing came screaming and clawing its way up out of its hunger-lined pit. Roksana used the thing's power and drew in a deep breath and even beyond the filth, refuse, offal, and stench of close-air and unwashed bodies, she could detect the delicious aroma of this man's sadness. To her, it was her very life. So, sadness it was; of this, Roksana was now certain. Steeling her will and muttering a prayer to the Christ, she spiritually threw the demon back into a cage inside her and continued. "I was told I would find you here," she said.

"Yeah? An' who told ya that?" Deacon cocked his shaggy brown head and looked off to one side, as if someone else was speaking to him. He raised a ham-sized fist toward Roksana and one finger as thick as an axe handle appeared. The pale, waif-like woman held her tongue and waited. She'd been told that he would be like this. The man nodded his massive, block-like head slowly and furrowed his brow a bit. The hand lowered, and he indicated that she should continue.

"He said you would not know him by name, but that you would recognize him," she said, licking rose petal lips nervously.

"And?" Deacon said, his patience quickly expiring.

"Slightly taller than average, somewhat thin and bookish. Bald and very pale of skin," Roksana pointed her shapely chin toward Deacon and made a pulling motion with her fingers as she continued speaking. "A longish chin-beard, dark like old charcoal but with two silver streaks. He wears a grey monk's robe, woolen, with a hood and-"

"And odd silver and black eyes like none ya've ever seen," Deacon finished. He again looked to the side and nodded. "Yea, Cleatus, it's him." The massive man then looked to Roksana. "And I know his name, now - he's called Tenet, and he's generally a large pain in the arse. What does he want now?"

A smile crept into Roksana's dark grey eyes, but she stoically kept it from her lips. "He wants you to train me and says that in return, I might be able to help you..."

Deacon walked away, cursing out loud. Roksana was not sure if it was to himself, or to the other--Cleatus--that he'd just mentioned. She wondered briefly if Deacon also battled against his own personal, internal demons.

The giant-of-a-man got to the end of the alley and turned back to her and shouted. "Well, ya comin' or ain't ya?" He didn't wait for her to reply, just stumped away, cursing.

Art Source: "Mercenary For Hire" (c)/by Njay

Story and Characters: (c)/by Brannon Hollingsworth

#MMWW, #Makes, #Me, #Wanna, #Write, #BrannonHollingsworth, #Tenet, #TenetTales, #Sectof7, #Roksana, #Deacon, #Cleatus