Bear the Mark or Bear the Crown

"Why have you come, Bridge-Builder?" Jan asked.

The armored woman smelled his fear, which was as strong as the piss that soaked his wood-rot hovel.

"You have staked your claim within the Duke's lands," she answered.

"We're a desperate people in these dark days," he whimpered. His hands clutched something behind him.

"You have well heard the price to live among the Free." Her cold blue eyes bore into his fidgeting gaze.

"It-it is too high. Spare us this curse! Have mercy, Inrisa Hel-Herald!" Jan begged.

Her left hand lit with a pale blue corona. Inrisa peered deeper into the man's gaze and beyond him. "You have no right to that name and defame my order, Jan Water-Stones. I see you, child. Step forth into the light."

A voice as coarse and shrill as a raven's answered from the dark corner behind Jan. "It is too late for the light to touch this one. Her coward father gave her as a bride."

"These lands will bear no betrothal to the foul and the fallen," Inrisa commanded. She planted her burning hand on Jan's shoulder and he crumpled to the dirt.

A small waif stood with her head down and hair in shambles. The inky blackness seemed to flow and weave through her tangled locks. Inrisa felt the girl staring at the heavy mace she held as if a light trifle in her right hand. The craven voice screeched once more, "You have come to bring torment to a withered exile, doomed to haunt gran's tales and children's dreams."

"I have come across the realms to remove your blight," she replied.

"Yes, world-walker, you have come far, but these lands have darkened. You come perchance too late," it hissed. "Many feed us in these Dark Days."

Something like a sickly cross between leech and eel wormed around the base of the girl's head and through her hair. More slimy tendrils flowed from other parts of her head. The pale gleam in Inrisa's eyes and hand grew. She drew back her mace and outstretched her flaming gauntlet.

"You have ruined enough ages and innocents, Apsinthos. Bear the Mark or Bear the Crown."

Art Source: "A Cleric" by yigitkoroglu
Story and Characters: (c)/by Corey Blankenship

"Damn you, Deacon," Rachel growled through clenched teeth.

"Damn you, Deacon," Rachel growled through clenched teeth. She had no idea how the man did it, but somehow her partner had a knack for getting her into the worst situations. Soaked to the bone, stalking a psychotic murderer outside an abandoned meat packing plant, this time was no exception.

The man--Deacon called him "a fiend" and refused to refer to him as anything else--had already murdered seven homeless people and an entire family: three little girls no less. He had to be stopped. The man seemed to have a penchant for torture. All of his victims had been found in positions of subjugation and terror, mouths frozen in silent rictus screams. What they'd not been able to figure out what exactly how they had died, none of the victims had a mark on them, but that didn't make them any less dead.

Rachel was pretty sure that Deacon had an idea of how they'd died, but he wasn't giving anything up. They'd been partners for a long time: going on seven years, or was it eight? She could not remember, but she'd spent enough long, tension-filled nights with the man to know a thing or two about him. The first was that if he didn't want to give something up, you were wasting your time trying to break or make him. She'd never seen a will so strong in another human. She said will to herself, but she'd never admit that to Deacon, if he were here, she'd call it thick-or-hard-headedness. Despite her mounting terror at what she was about to do, Rachel allowed a small smile to peek out at the edge of her mouth.

Rachel wished that he was here with her.

"Damn you, Deacon," she said, getting a tighter grip on her Glock 22, she flung herself away from the single street light and into the shadow of death and darkness.

Art Source: "Red Light Heat" (c)/by Benef

Story and Characters: (c)/by Brannon Hollingsworth

#MMWW, #Makes, #Me, #Wanna, #Write, #BrannonHollingsworth, #Deacon, #Fallen, #Imran, #TenetsTales, #Sector7, #Sectof7, #Cleatus, #Rachel

All I could see was Rachel’s face: blood-spattered, pale, and still.

All I could see was Rachel’s face: blood-spattered, pale, and still. It was the stillness that gives a body the feeling that someone has driven a spike of frozen iron into your lower back. The kind of stillness that is simply NOT natural. All things move, even when they are still, if you get my meaning. If you don’t believe me, try staying crouched and hidden sometime--you’ll quickly begin to waver and tremble, your body making tiny, subtle movements as you try to remain still.

I bet Rachel had crouched somewhere in the dark, trying to hide from the Imran. I bet she’d shivered and trembled, legs and body quaking. I bet she’d stifled her cries. Hand over her mouth, snot running out of her cute pug nose, pushing back the gasps, tears streaming out of her bewitching hazel eyes.

I bet the Imran--that was the old name for it--had lapped up her fear. They’re known by many names: Popobawa, Khalid Khanzada, Zain Haiders--I had my own name for them, but it was the sort of name that isn’t used in polite society. Regardless of what you called them, they were sadistic, sinister, and sick-and-twisted fu… -- sorry, again, old habits, you know. In the Grand Scheme, they were roughly classified as Mid-listers among the Fallen; they feed off of raw fear and they delight in the causing of it among mortals. Metaphysically speaking, they are the wine-snobs of fear: they know how to make it, and the love everything about its production and consumption. And the sonufa… --sorry...it...it...it had gotten my girl.

I closed her eyes with one hand and with the other, pulled Donkey, my custom built .500 Linebaugh, and mechanically dropped out its normal load (my 385 grain “Mulekickers”). I crossed her still-warm arms across her chest while simultaneously popped in six rounds of my hand-made 535 grain “Derailers” with my speed-loader. My old, steel grey eyes drooped shut, and I bowed my head, whispering some soft words and wiping some water off my gritty, stubbled cheeks.

Like I said, my eyes are old. They leak sometimes.

I felt the thrum of the Power slide into me. It’s an ambient thing--like standing too close to highly charged power lines. I had a pretty good idea where the Imran had gone to hide. It would be waiting for me, in the place where I’d first encountered it, three days ago. If only I hadn’t been so stupid and so damned cocky. If only I had burned the old meat-packing plant to the ground. If I’d’a done that, then maybe the Fallen would not have been able to gain strength, take on a mortal form, and cross-over into our world.

It was on me - all of it. Rachel; the homeless folks downtown; that poor, unsuspecting family. It was all on me. Sign me up, teacher, and put my name on the board.

‘Deacon did it, Teacher! It’s Deacon’s fault!’

With a flick of my anaconda-thick-wrist, I snapped Donkey’s chamber back into place and slipped it into its well-worn holster in the hollow under my left arm. It felt good there, a reassuring and constant weight--and old friend beckoning from beneath my threadbare trench coat.

Yea, it was my fault; my mess.

I grinned sardonically.

But that meant I got to clean it up, too.

Art Source: "Horror Art" (c)/by Jan Ditlev

Story and Characters: (c)/by Brannon Hollingsworth

#MMWW, #Makes, #Me, #Wanna, #Write, #BrannonHollingsworth, #Deacon, #Donkey, #Fallen, #Imran, #TenetsTales, #Sector7, #Sectof7, #Cleatus, #Rachel

"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

Ten faces populated the rail car around me, each lost in their personal revelry

Ten faces populated the rail car around me, each lost in their personal revelry. I watched each sift through their personal thoughts and plans, awaiting the much distant destination. As a mother and her two children adjusted their warming blanket, I closed my eyes and slipped into Dreamscape.

The train lights flickered and each particle in the air glistened. I stood in the back of the rail car, right behind my own wide-brimmed form, which sat motionless and asleep. I scanned the unemotional faces around me. None registered my mirror image standing against the far wall. I leaned into the gut feeling that told me seven of the ten were passengers. Three were stowaways from another realm. This realm.

Three porcelain masks with painted smiles and slit eyes stared at me in the corner. They shared the same black shroud. I knew it. The family wasn't as benevolent as they had appeared. Too bad this was about to get messy in both worlds. My slumbering form half-opened its eyes as both right hands slipped to twin hilts.

I drew my katana and went to work.

Art Source: "Train Station - Episode 5" by Hideyoshi
Story and Characters: (c)/by Corey Blankenship