I rose from a kneeling position with slight difficulty; the process of being summoned has become painful since my recent transformation.

The usual clouds of smoke and incense were dissipating, my summoner stood before me wearing a look of smug satisfaction. He was very young, not past thirty by appearance or aura.

“Having conjured thee from the bowels of Hell, I abjure thee to obey my commands, with the power of the Names granted to me by the holy scripts of…”

Ah, he had used the Books of Uld. A complex and difficult ritual written by a pedophilic priest in the early fifteenth century who claimed to receive visions from the Christian god. I had spoken briefly with Uld during his painful and elongated death; his visions mostly involved cherubs and demons and I never did discover the source of his power.

“…and do firmly bind thy will to my bidding with no chance of rebel or dispute. Further, I chain thee to the altar of the great and all-knowing…”

The ritual of Uld had not been used in some few hundred years, I believed his writings had all been destroyed, but if there is one thing that secret cabals of wizards do well, it is the resurrection of dead knowledge. There always seems to be some secreted parchments or ghostly wizard willing to pass on the clandestine teachings.

“…Rasthuseus of Aramathea and the sacred texts of his followers.” He paused for breath, the rite called for the next part to be spoken in one sentence. “Here be the powers and bindings that hold thee true and with the strength of divine authority granted me by…”

The last time the Uld rite had been used, I was imprisoned in the sword that I later became; he who wielded me had been pulled through as well and was not amused by the situation. The details of that incident were hazy, as most of my memories of that time, but I remember drinking deeply of lifeblood and being sheathed uncleaned. I did not think that this time would be much different.

“Why have you summoned me?” I interrupted him. I have to give him credit, he did not pause in his speech. I stepped out of the pentacle of blood and asked again, “Why have you summoned me?” This gave him pause.

“You…you are bound to my will and must obey my commands.” His adams apple bobbed as he swallowed.

“You should consider carefully before binding Death to you, mortal. I will ask once more. Why have you summoned me?”

“My brother,” he pointed toward a metal gurney where a young boy lay, attached to convoluted medical equipment, blinking and beeping quietly. “I command you to…” His eyes flicked to the blood pentacle I had stepped out of. “I ask that you spare him. He’s too young to die.”

“Nothing is too young to die.” I concentrated on the boy for a moment. “It is his time.”

“No. I offer many in exchange for him. He gestured to a window through which moonlight streamed. Outside, I could see two hundred people standing in straight lines, all wearing white robes. “I offer you these in place of my brother.”

“That does not suffice. In the time that we have been speaking, ten times that number have died. Your kind always thinks in the same way. The lives of many can buy the life of one. No doubt you believe that immortality can be achieved in the same manner.” I waved a hand toward the window, “These already belong to me, all I need do is wait. It is your brother’s time, to change that would take effort and would not be without repercussion.”

The young man crossed his arms over his chest to hide the panic rising in him. “You desire something more precious then? Something unique? I have a matchless collection of…”

“Baubles,” I interrupted him. “Trinkets and gadgets that humans use in vain attempts to elevate themselves beyond what they are. You have summoned me, believing that summons infers control. You will waste no more of my time.” I crooked a finger toward him, feeling his life snag on the tip.

“Wait!” he choked, hands flying to his throat in a hopeless attempt to hold his life in.

Before he could make the offer of his brother’s life for his own, I said, “You will tell me where you found the ritual of Uld, and how many others know of it. You will cease all practice of magic and never again meddle in my affairs.” He was beginning to turn gray, his heels began to tap the floor as I lifted him. He fell to the floor with a thud as I released him.

One hand to his throat, he pointed with shaking hand to a corner desk behind me. Glancing through the papers there, I saw nothing.

“Where?” I asked.

He pointed again, more urgently, at the computer monitor on the desk. I suddenly had a bad feeling about this. The monitor turned on with a click and there on the screen was the ritual of Uld. The top of the page read ‘Newsgroups/Magic’. There was a line of skeletons dancing up and down one side of the page, tipping their top hats as they danced.

I would have to speak with Donner about this.

NY Times headline: New Computer Virus Has Deadly Effects

Terminus versus Lady Chance

They were magnificent. They fought like rabid tigers, each one the center of an expanding pile of twitching casualties and corpses. Their swords spun and danced in their hands, spilling lifeblood to the ground in gouts.

I watched from a hilltop, seated on the black gold throne that they had created for me and considered. These three were the very best that I could make of them, being merely human to begin with. It had taken a century of precise breeding in the harshest conditions imaginable, ruthless culling of the weak and continuous challenges, but I believed that they were ready.

I threw a pair of die to the ground and called out her name. The dice came up six and three and she did not appear. I sighed inwardly, picked up the dice and tried again. It took seven tries before they came up six and one, then she appeared.

Lady Chance’s appearance has always annoyed me, the constant fluctuation not only between meetings, but especially in the way that while you speak with her, her hat blows off, constantly replaced with another, carried by the wind. This is particularly aggravating when indoors.

She looked down into the field, where my creations were finishing off the tribe of berserkers and asked, “You are ready to try me again, then?” Her smirk of amusement made me want to throttle her.

“Yes.” I said.

“Very well,” she said, looking about the area. “A moment while I summon my warriors.” She made a series of brief, complicated movements with her hands and a blue shimmer appeared in the air, through which three creatures walked. One was a Roman Centurion in full battle dress, the second was an elderly woman from the late 16th century by the look of her. The third was a rabbit. Small, floppy of ear and bushy of tail.

“Hmm. A different set of champions you have this time, Lady.” I said.

“Yes,” she replied, sitting down among the dandelions and short grass beside me.

At a word from the Lady, the Roman Centurion moved down the hill toward my champions and engaged them in battle. My men were at first cautious, sensing some sort of trick due to the ease with which they could dispatch their opponent, but after a few moments of testing him, Shur’koth, the leader, gave the signal and Roth, second in command, batted aside the Centurion’s sword to deliver a swift death.

The bronze sword shattered from Roth’s blow, and I watched as two almost identical slivers of metal winged through the air, the first spinning through the Centurion’s eye and burying itself in his brain. The second of course did likewise to Roth.

“Rather predictable, don’t you think, Lady?” I asked.

“Poetic, I prefer to think. A certain harmony or synchronicity,” she replied.

The remaining two warriors looked up the hill to me. I indicated the two champions of the Lady and said, “Kill them.”

The old woman spun on her heel and dashed away. She had a surprising turn of speed for someone as aged as she was. Shur’koth gave chase, the speed of his passage whipping the long grass past us as he ran.
He caught up with her almost instantly and she shrieked in terror as his iron boot lashed out to trip her, then pinned her to the ground. His heavy short sword spun once in his hand, the sharp point plunged downward. At the very last second, just before the blade ended her life, the old woman twisted, the blade went awry and Shur’koth sliced open his palm to the bone, his blood mixing with that of his victim.

I turned to look at Lady Chance, “I believe that your failed attempt leaves you but a single champion.” The rabbit sat paralyzed with fear near the Lady.
“We shall see what we shall see,” she said.

My warriors moved toward us, Shur’koth giving instructions to Tab’l as they circled, swords held defensively before them. Without warning, the rabbit sprinted toward the blue shimmer through which it had appeared with the others. Tab’l darted forward, a thin throwing dagger appearing like magic in his hand as he ran. The dagger flipped end over end toward its target. And there it should have ended, and in a way it did.

The dagger sliced easily through fur and skin, just behind the base of the creature’s skull, severing it’s spinal column and ending it’s dash for freedom. At the same moment, a bowler hat spinning like a UFO in a bad science fiction movie, whirred past Tab’l’s face, ending its flight atop Lady Chance’s head to replace the fedora that had been there a moment ago. I didn’t need to look to see that the bowler had neatly slit Tab’l’s throat.

I rose to my feet, a feeling of vindication like a fine wine warming my stomach.
“You lose, Lady. And I believe that last move of yours was…questionable within the rules that we have agreed upon.”

“No, milord,” she said, rising with me. “It is a tie, and my moves are completely fair, though perhaps unorthodox from your point of view.”

I pointed to Shur’koth, “My champion still lives, Lady, while none of yours do.”
“The old woman carried the Black Plague in her,” said Lady Chance as she walked through the shimmering blue portal.

“Dammit.”

Terminus speaks

“I didn’t understand what the problem was, it was just a dog. Countless creatures have died at my hand; it is part of the definition of who I am. And yet. And yet this mongrel stared up at me, one of its eyes a bloody mess. Gore from the battle it had just fought with the other dogs spattered across the snowy ground and its fur. It didn’t whimper, even though it was in obvious pain.”

“I’d stopped to watch them fight, attracted by their natural ferocity, no quarter asked for and none to be given. Men call other men animals, but the truth is that men stopped being animals some thousands of years ago and have become something altogether unnatural. The ferocity of mankind is a hollow, empty thing driven by their emotions, most usually hatred or its sister, fear.”

“The dog deserved my gift, but I stayed my hand. For some time, the acidic loathing that drives me through my existence had been becoming more demanding, I had a broad feeling that I should be doing something more sweeping, something that would allow me to carry out my duties in a more automated fashion.”

“I looked more closely at the dog, stripping away the veil of mortality that clung to it like the caul of a newborn and considered what the philosophers call its soul. I deemed it a worthy vessel. Reaching out, I collected the death that was slowly spreading through its body and clenched it into a hard ball, holding the ball over its quivering form. A moment of concentration and the dog’s death crumbled into a thousand droplets which I scattered across it. The fleas on the dog were suffused with its death, each one a warrior in my cause. I turned and left.”

I finished my glass of wine.

“And that’s it? That’s how the Black Plague got started?” She asked me, pencil scribbling furiously across the cheap notepad.

“Yes.”

She stopped writing and looked up at me with the suspicion that only a ten year old can muster. “That’s not how it says in the books I read.” She looked down at what she’d been writing. “How do I know this is right?”

I dropped the wineglass to the floor, where it shattered. “I’ll prove it,” I said, and did so.

Death - Session 1

I awake.

Something is very, very wrong. I do not sleep.

My eyes open to darkness, there is at least comfort in this. I am confused, and thus angry. I take a moment to calm myself, pulling my thoughts inward, but … there are few thoughts to gather. I do not know who I am, where I am or why. Flashes of memory skitter away like cockroaches from light.

With a growl I pull myself from the long steel cabinet in which I lay and sit up. A brightly lit room smelling of antiseptics and cleaning solutions, the overhead florescents make me wince. The gape-mouthed attendant is unable to answer any of my questions, I am not sure why I allow him to live.

I leave the building and walk out onto a crowded street, stumbling as I am overwhelmed by the sensation of life. I can feel it pulsing in the hundreds nearby, a reverberating bass pulse with innumerable rhythms. A red haze passes before my eyes, I feel an insatiable desire to wave my hand and snuff them all out. My lips stretch in a thin smile as I straighten, arms spreading wide in preparation for …what? I am not sure and perhaps it is better that I did not find out. A wrenching sensation and I was gone from there, pulled like a fish on a line to somewhere else.

A colliseum. No, some sort of museum. I stand in an open air atrium and suddenly there is a sword in my hands and the confusion is wiped clear. This, this is right. A man stands across the square from me, flipping a long fighting knife casually in the air. We speak briefly and I begin to remember things about him. Discussions we have had about the feel of a blade as it slides into flesh, sparring sessions and battles. But the things that he says are madness and he thinks that he is going to kill me. I turn to leave, tiring of his posings and knowing that he will attack. We fight. He causes the blade of my sword to disappear and I curse myself, knowing for some reason that I should have expected this. I can feel power gathering behind my eyes but I am helpless to do anything with it. Frustration builds and I begin to make mistakes. The man, Cerny Krizova, Baron of Knives, makes none. For some reason, the idea of dying, especially here, seems particularly ironic to me.