Post by zimraphel on Dec 17, 2008 22:53:04 GMT -5
Note: I wrote this story back in 1997. It was my very first fan fiction, and one of the first pieces I'd written ever. Even though my style and such has improved dramatically, and I am now published, I chose to preserve the original story as is.
He-Man felt the miasma before he ever saw it, and now it was stronger than anything he'd felt before. Cautiously he slid from Battlecat's back and crouched on the ground beside him. The na'dani was somewhere close by, somewhere....
A shadow rippled--there! Less than a stone's throw up ahead. So close. He-Man shivered and tried to shake off the fear that threatened to overwhelm him.
"It's not moving," said Blackstar. Sword blazing in hand, he crouched just a few feet away.
True, it wasn't, but that could change at any second. How fast did it move? Was it even aware of them? During the night, He-Man had gone over in his mind what he would do if--no, when--the na'dani attacked; he'd struck upon two or three sound ideas that might work if he could only remember them. Darkness gripped his mind; he felt paralyzed.
A shrill neigh rent the air. Blackstar's horse pawed the ground, nostrils flaring in terror. It threatened to rear, to trample its rider under its flailing hooves, but bolted instead.
In response, the shadow wavered and seemed to edge closer. The na'dani had seen. It was aware of them. Battlecat growled a warning.
"Get back!" He-Man shouted, half-afraid his friend would pounce.
Battlecat's tail thrashed angrily. "It's moving."
"I see it." He-Man was compelled to order him to run, to get away, but knew very well that Battlecat wouldn't. Damned stubborn cat....
The Sword of Power was burning now with an angry flame. Shadows flickered at its edges; the na'dani was already trying to siphon away its light. He-Man felt its pull. Too much. He stumbled back. There was no getting close enough to strike and yet somehow he had to.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw a flash of silver; a spear of white flame shot forth from his right. The flame spread out toward the na'dani, but was swallowed whole by the darkness before it could do any real harm. He-Man turned and saw Blackstar's look of surprise, then alarm, as the na'dani wavered toward him.
"Well, that's not going to work," he said.
Pain suddenly lanced through He-Man's arm; the Sword of Power was now a glowing iron in his hand. He had to quench it now, before he lost control of it. Adjusting his grip on the hilt, he raised the sword and plunged it knife-like into the earth.
The unexpected concussion almost threw him to his knees. From the flash-point, the ground rippled outward with a power so intense it shuddered up into and through his body. A scream echoed in his ears. Darkness once again veered toward him, pressing upon him with a heart-stopping chill and he could not move fast enough to get away.
As he struggled to his feet, a second concussion heaved him face-down into the dirt. Lifting his head, he saw a blinding flash of white that could only be the Starsword, thrust upright in the earth to keep the na'dani from escaping. His eyes teared and he had to look away.
Where the two streams of power met, the na'dani shrieked and went on shrieking for what seemed like an interminably long stretch of time. He-Man braced himself against the quaking, crackling ground and held on through the chaos of the na'dani's cataclysmic death.
The stillness which followed was almost as loud. He-Man shakily pushed himself to his knees and stood. The two swords were quieter now, the shadow utterly still. The na'dani was dead. Somehow it didn't feel like much of a victory. A fine, falling mist brushed against his face. He lifted his eyes skyward; the storm front was almost on top of them. And night would be falling soon. Not much time, then. "The rift must be somewhere nearby," he said. Of that he felt certain, yet wasn't so sure exactly where to start looking.
It was Battlecat who finally found the rift, in a cave some two hundred yards up ahead. He-Man paused at the entrance to peer into the dim interior; if Battlecat hadn't been there to point it out to him, his eyes would have missed the rift entirely. The far wall writhed with darkness. Like a mouth. The thought of what lay within paralyzed him with horror.
Battlecat nudged him sharply, and he shook himself out of it. "Yes, I'm all right, Cat. Thanks," he gasped. He pulled his scattered wits together and went to get Blackstar.
"Looks like you found it just in time," the other man said when He-Man told him. He reached into his cloak for the vial of thanna.
"Don't you think you've had enough of that?" Blackstar truly did not look well.
"No." Tipping his head back, he appeared to drain the vial.
"It hurts that much?"
"Yes, it does." Blackstar pulled his sword out of the ground and told He-Man to show him the way to the cave.
Blackstar couldn't feel his arm anymore. Not that it mattered now. His blood was rioting with the power of the falas that was like poison to him; his heart thundered from it. Too much.
It was a stupid thing he'd just done, he knew, to tamper with a power for which he had no training, and a drug for which his human blood had no natural defense. Were she here, the Lady Marralassë would have railed at him for his recklessness, his utter stupidity, and this time she'd be right. Only that didn't matter now. It was too late. He was already dying.
He wondered how much time he had left before his heart burst.
The moment he lifted the Sword of Power, He-Man's world became a cosmos of golden fire. It encompassed him, moved through him and turned his paralytic fear to dust. He no longer belonged to his body and the Sword of Power was no longer an object he held, but himself. Time lost its shape and fell away from him, allowing him to move freely beyond the limits of his own existence.
He saw himself now across a hundred-thousand light-years, back to the tumbling asteroid with its iron core that yet cradled him unborn. And now that same asteroid, thrust by hands like the rose-and-gold spirals of a nebula, the hands of the Ancients, into the heart of an exploding star, where the death of one fire was the first breath of another. He saw himself being fragmented, born and reborn in the blade of every sword the Ancients forged of that metal. He learned their names, and felt the heartbeat that pulsed in each one.
He saw beyond himself, into the darkness, vaguely remembering he had seen it once before. He peered into the world of night, his eyes passing over a sea of writhing black forms. A hundred thousand of them, each one ravenous for light, for life, for freedom. With hands of fire, he found the frayed edges of the fabric of night; the torn threads turned to liquid gold at his touch, and he drew them into long skeins. The rift became a loom over which he stretched a warp of fire.
Tendrils of quicksilver thread began to curl through the gold. Warp and weft interlocked into a glittering mesh of power, tightened and became one fabric.
A hundred-thousand voices rose up from the darkness in a single howl that was abruptly cut off by the last closing threads.
As the fabric stretched finished above him, he felt the silver presence of the Other begin to fade. It flickered once, like a dying candle, then sputtered out, and where it had been he now felt only emptiness and cold.
Blackstar crumpled, his sword slipping from nerveless fingers, and He-Man wasn't fast enough to catch him.
There was only darkness now, and the mingled sounds of rain and his own frantic breathing. On hands and knees he fumbled his way to Blackstar's side and tried to rouse him. Nothing. He tried again, running his fingers down the other man's neck to the place where the carotid artery should be beating. But where there should have been a pulse, there was now only still, cooling flesh.
"Battlecat!" He-Man cried into the darkness.
The great cat's voice breathed warmly in his ear. "I'm right here."
"He's got no pulse, he's not breathing." He-Man heard the quaver in his voice, and felt the oncoming rush of panic. He had to fight it. "There's no light, Cat. I can't see."
"I'll try to find something."
He-Man heard him pad away. No, don't leave me alone! he thought, and in the very next breath told himself to stop it. If he gave in to panic he wouldn't be able to help anyone. He had to calm down, to think.
His mother had once taught him what to do when someone stopped breathing. You had to breathe for them, work their heart for them, until they could do those things for themselves--or until so much time had passed that you had to acknowledge they were beyond help. He was exhausted, still in a haze from the working. His body didn't feel like his own and as for his mind...his memory yielded the precious information piecemeal. What he did remember he tried, painfully aware there was something he ought to be doing and yet wasn't. Nothing happened. How long was he supposed to go on? How long before hope ran out? He didn't want to have to give up, because giving up meant defeat. Giving up would mean he was now truly alone on a strange world with a corpse and all around him was death, nothing but death.... He needed Battlecat, and his need was panic, fueled by the irrational belief that Battlecat wasn't coming back, that the darkness had swallowed him the same way it had swallowed Blackstar.
"Breathe, come on--breathe!" he shouted at the body he couldn't see, then hammered at its chest. Once, twice. Blows that could easily snap a man's ribs.
There was a sound. Not the crack of bone, but the faint wheeze of someone trying to breathe. And then, a gasp of air and a weak, choking cough.
Something warm prodded his back, followed by a breath of hot air. Fur brushed against his cheek and shoulder, and then something tumbled against his knees. A stick--no, a bundle of sticks. He-Man gathered them up with a sense of renewed hope.
"More of them in the back," Battlecat rumbled.
Thank the Powers. "Yes--yes, bring everything you can find." As Battlecat once again padded into the depths of the cave, He-Man piled the wood on the ground beside him and searched his pockets for the tinder box.
"It's all right," he said to the gasping sound that was Blackstar. "We're going to have some light--just give me a moment here. We'll get you warmed up and then everything'll be all right." His hands were shaking so hard he could scarcely strike the flint. Somehow he managed to do it. A spark, then a tiny flame, kindled under the wood. Only a small fire, but enough that he could at last see Blackstar's face, ashen and pain-stricken.
Bewildered eyes sought out his. A voice was trying to speak. "I saw you and...myself." A frown. Blackstar squeezed his eyes shut as if trying to remember something. "And--the strangest thing--a bird."
"A bird?"
"Bird--a woman. She said I couldn't leave."
Zoar? The Sorceress had been here, in this cave, and yet He-Man hadn't sensed her presence. The omission left him feeling empty. "I understand," he said. "Try not to talk anymore. Just rest."
Battlecat soon returned with another mouthful of kindling and He-Man was able to build up the fire. From the leather pouch the Sorceress had given him he pulled out the blanket and tucked it around Blackstar, who had begun to shiver violently. He-Man felt his forehead. Fever. From an overdose of painkiller (was that why he'd gone into cardiac arrest?) or possibly an infection? His arm? He-Man knew very well how painful a sprain could be, but he'd long since stopped believing that Blackstar had sprained his arm. What, then? A badly-set broken bone? An improperly cleaned wound? Either one could result in an infection.
He thought hard for a moment, then got up and went to Blackstar's side. Even before he touched the sling he had a problem; the other man saw what he was doing and wouldn't cooperate.
"I need to see how bad it is," said He-Man.
"Leave it alone."
"You've got a fever and I'm willing to bet it's because of whatever you did to your arm. Look, I don't know what you're hiding or why, but it's time to stop this foolishness and let somebody help you."
"There's nothing you can do," Blackstar insisted, but didn't fight as the layers of leather, wool and the linen bandage were peeled away.
As the last covering was removed, He-Man flinched back in horror. The arm was mottled purple and black, like a bruise, but it was swollen in places and felt hot and dry. No sign of gangrene, yet still.... "The na'dani did this, didn't it?"
Blackstar nodded weakly.
"Then why didn't you tell me?"
"It was already too late....when I knew. If I said anything, the Lady Marralassë would've kept me at Kal'en Haran. I couldn't have helped you then and...and you wouldn't have had the Starsword....wouldn't have been allowed...you couldn't control it."
All of it made perfect sense, of course, and none of it made He-Man feel any better. He replaced the bandage, sleeve and sling as gently as he could, gave Blackstar some water from his canteen and went off by himself to think. The knowledge that he could offer only the crudest first aid gnawed at him, as did the eventual realization that even if he could get Blackstar to a physician, the medical facilities on this world probably weren't sufficient enough to be of much help.
Until a hundred and fifty years ago, Eternian doctors had treated infected limbs by amputating them. He-Man understood Blackstar well enough by now to know he would choose death--had chosen death, in fact--over losing his sword-arm. If only there was some other alternative....
He-Man chided himself for overlooking the obvious. An infection could be treated with antibiotics. Most likely, the Sagarese hadn't yet developed the technology, but the Eternians had. And if Eternian antibiotics couldn't purge the poison of the na'dani, then the Ancients surely had had remedies which the Sorceress might know. She had helped Blackstar once before, coaxing his spirit back into his body when he would have slid farther into death; she might help him again, if He-Man could get him through the Portal to Castle Grayskull.
But when He-Man drew the Sword of Power and tried to call open the Portal, nothing happened. The blade was dark and cold in his hands; the battle with the na'dani and the sealing of the dimensional rift had exacted their price. Until its energy was replenished, He-Man and Battlecat were stranded. And powerless.
Crouching once again by the fire, He-Man put his head in his hands and clawed at his scalp. Never before had he felt so helpless, so hopeless.
Battlecat nuzzled his shoulder. "It's not your fault," he said.
But it was, it was.
He-Man felt the miasma before he ever saw it, and now it was stronger than anything he'd felt before. Cautiously he slid from Battlecat's back and crouched on the ground beside him. The na'dani was somewhere close by, somewhere....
A shadow rippled--there! Less than a stone's throw up ahead. So close. He-Man shivered and tried to shake off the fear that threatened to overwhelm him.
"It's not moving," said Blackstar. Sword blazing in hand, he crouched just a few feet away.
True, it wasn't, but that could change at any second. How fast did it move? Was it even aware of them? During the night, He-Man had gone over in his mind what he would do if--no, when--the na'dani attacked; he'd struck upon two or three sound ideas that might work if he could only remember them. Darkness gripped his mind; he felt paralyzed.
A shrill neigh rent the air. Blackstar's horse pawed the ground, nostrils flaring in terror. It threatened to rear, to trample its rider under its flailing hooves, but bolted instead.
In response, the shadow wavered and seemed to edge closer. The na'dani had seen. It was aware of them. Battlecat growled a warning.
"Get back!" He-Man shouted, half-afraid his friend would pounce.
Battlecat's tail thrashed angrily. "It's moving."
"I see it." He-Man was compelled to order him to run, to get away, but knew very well that Battlecat wouldn't. Damned stubborn cat....
The Sword of Power was burning now with an angry flame. Shadows flickered at its edges; the na'dani was already trying to siphon away its light. He-Man felt its pull. Too much. He stumbled back. There was no getting close enough to strike and yet somehow he had to.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw a flash of silver; a spear of white flame shot forth from his right. The flame spread out toward the na'dani, but was swallowed whole by the darkness before it could do any real harm. He-Man turned and saw Blackstar's look of surprise, then alarm, as the na'dani wavered toward him.
"Well, that's not going to work," he said.
Pain suddenly lanced through He-Man's arm; the Sword of Power was now a glowing iron in his hand. He had to quench it now, before he lost control of it. Adjusting his grip on the hilt, he raised the sword and plunged it knife-like into the earth.
The unexpected concussion almost threw him to his knees. From the flash-point, the ground rippled outward with a power so intense it shuddered up into and through his body. A scream echoed in his ears. Darkness once again veered toward him, pressing upon him with a heart-stopping chill and he could not move fast enough to get away.
As he struggled to his feet, a second concussion heaved him face-down into the dirt. Lifting his head, he saw a blinding flash of white that could only be the Starsword, thrust upright in the earth to keep the na'dani from escaping. His eyes teared and he had to look away.
Where the two streams of power met, the na'dani shrieked and went on shrieking for what seemed like an interminably long stretch of time. He-Man braced himself against the quaking, crackling ground and held on through the chaos of the na'dani's cataclysmic death.
The stillness which followed was almost as loud. He-Man shakily pushed himself to his knees and stood. The two swords were quieter now, the shadow utterly still. The na'dani was dead. Somehow it didn't feel like much of a victory. A fine, falling mist brushed against his face. He lifted his eyes skyward; the storm front was almost on top of them. And night would be falling soon. Not much time, then. "The rift must be somewhere nearby," he said. Of that he felt certain, yet wasn't so sure exactly where to start looking.
It was Battlecat who finally found the rift, in a cave some two hundred yards up ahead. He-Man paused at the entrance to peer into the dim interior; if Battlecat hadn't been there to point it out to him, his eyes would have missed the rift entirely. The far wall writhed with darkness. Like a mouth. The thought of what lay within paralyzed him with horror.
Battlecat nudged him sharply, and he shook himself out of it. "Yes, I'm all right, Cat. Thanks," he gasped. He pulled his scattered wits together and went to get Blackstar.
"Looks like you found it just in time," the other man said when He-Man told him. He reached into his cloak for the vial of thanna.
"Don't you think you've had enough of that?" Blackstar truly did not look well.
"No." Tipping his head back, he appeared to drain the vial.
"It hurts that much?"
"Yes, it does." Blackstar pulled his sword out of the ground and told He-Man to show him the way to the cave.
Blackstar couldn't feel his arm anymore. Not that it mattered now. His blood was rioting with the power of the falas that was like poison to him; his heart thundered from it. Too much.
It was a stupid thing he'd just done, he knew, to tamper with a power for which he had no training, and a drug for which his human blood had no natural defense. Were she here, the Lady Marralassë would have railed at him for his recklessness, his utter stupidity, and this time she'd be right. Only that didn't matter now. It was too late. He was already dying.
He wondered how much time he had left before his heart burst.
The moment he lifted the Sword of Power, He-Man's world became a cosmos of golden fire. It encompassed him, moved through him and turned his paralytic fear to dust. He no longer belonged to his body and the Sword of Power was no longer an object he held, but himself. Time lost its shape and fell away from him, allowing him to move freely beyond the limits of his own existence.
He saw himself now across a hundred-thousand light-years, back to the tumbling asteroid with its iron core that yet cradled him unborn. And now that same asteroid, thrust by hands like the rose-and-gold spirals of a nebula, the hands of the Ancients, into the heart of an exploding star, where the death of one fire was the first breath of another. He saw himself being fragmented, born and reborn in the blade of every sword the Ancients forged of that metal. He learned their names, and felt the heartbeat that pulsed in each one.
He saw beyond himself, into the darkness, vaguely remembering he had seen it once before. He peered into the world of night, his eyes passing over a sea of writhing black forms. A hundred thousand of them, each one ravenous for light, for life, for freedom. With hands of fire, he found the frayed edges of the fabric of night; the torn threads turned to liquid gold at his touch, and he drew them into long skeins. The rift became a loom over which he stretched a warp of fire.
Tendrils of quicksilver thread began to curl through the gold. Warp and weft interlocked into a glittering mesh of power, tightened and became one fabric.
A hundred-thousand voices rose up from the darkness in a single howl that was abruptly cut off by the last closing threads.
As the fabric stretched finished above him, he felt the silver presence of the Other begin to fade. It flickered once, like a dying candle, then sputtered out, and where it had been he now felt only emptiness and cold.
Blackstar crumpled, his sword slipping from nerveless fingers, and He-Man wasn't fast enough to catch him.
There was only darkness now, and the mingled sounds of rain and his own frantic breathing. On hands and knees he fumbled his way to Blackstar's side and tried to rouse him. Nothing. He tried again, running his fingers down the other man's neck to the place where the carotid artery should be beating. But where there should have been a pulse, there was now only still, cooling flesh.
"Battlecat!" He-Man cried into the darkness.
The great cat's voice breathed warmly in his ear. "I'm right here."
"He's got no pulse, he's not breathing." He-Man heard the quaver in his voice, and felt the oncoming rush of panic. He had to fight it. "There's no light, Cat. I can't see."
"I'll try to find something."
He-Man heard him pad away. No, don't leave me alone! he thought, and in the very next breath told himself to stop it. If he gave in to panic he wouldn't be able to help anyone. He had to calm down, to think.
His mother had once taught him what to do when someone stopped breathing. You had to breathe for them, work their heart for them, until they could do those things for themselves--or until so much time had passed that you had to acknowledge they were beyond help. He was exhausted, still in a haze from the working. His body didn't feel like his own and as for his mind...his memory yielded the precious information piecemeal. What he did remember he tried, painfully aware there was something he ought to be doing and yet wasn't. Nothing happened. How long was he supposed to go on? How long before hope ran out? He didn't want to have to give up, because giving up meant defeat. Giving up would mean he was now truly alone on a strange world with a corpse and all around him was death, nothing but death.... He needed Battlecat, and his need was panic, fueled by the irrational belief that Battlecat wasn't coming back, that the darkness had swallowed him the same way it had swallowed Blackstar.
"Breathe, come on--breathe!" he shouted at the body he couldn't see, then hammered at its chest. Once, twice. Blows that could easily snap a man's ribs.
There was a sound. Not the crack of bone, but the faint wheeze of someone trying to breathe. And then, a gasp of air and a weak, choking cough.
Something warm prodded his back, followed by a breath of hot air. Fur brushed against his cheek and shoulder, and then something tumbled against his knees. A stick--no, a bundle of sticks. He-Man gathered them up with a sense of renewed hope.
"More of them in the back," Battlecat rumbled.
Thank the Powers. "Yes--yes, bring everything you can find." As Battlecat once again padded into the depths of the cave, He-Man piled the wood on the ground beside him and searched his pockets for the tinder box.
"It's all right," he said to the gasping sound that was Blackstar. "We're going to have some light--just give me a moment here. We'll get you warmed up and then everything'll be all right." His hands were shaking so hard he could scarcely strike the flint. Somehow he managed to do it. A spark, then a tiny flame, kindled under the wood. Only a small fire, but enough that he could at last see Blackstar's face, ashen and pain-stricken.
Bewildered eyes sought out his. A voice was trying to speak. "I saw you and...myself." A frown. Blackstar squeezed his eyes shut as if trying to remember something. "And--the strangest thing--a bird."
"A bird?"
"Bird--a woman. She said I couldn't leave."
Zoar? The Sorceress had been here, in this cave, and yet He-Man hadn't sensed her presence. The omission left him feeling empty. "I understand," he said. "Try not to talk anymore. Just rest."
Battlecat soon returned with another mouthful of kindling and He-Man was able to build up the fire. From the leather pouch the Sorceress had given him he pulled out the blanket and tucked it around Blackstar, who had begun to shiver violently. He-Man felt his forehead. Fever. From an overdose of painkiller (was that why he'd gone into cardiac arrest?) or possibly an infection? His arm? He-Man knew very well how painful a sprain could be, but he'd long since stopped believing that Blackstar had sprained his arm. What, then? A badly-set broken bone? An improperly cleaned wound? Either one could result in an infection.
He thought hard for a moment, then got up and went to Blackstar's side. Even before he touched the sling he had a problem; the other man saw what he was doing and wouldn't cooperate.
"I need to see how bad it is," said He-Man.
"Leave it alone."
"You've got a fever and I'm willing to bet it's because of whatever you did to your arm. Look, I don't know what you're hiding or why, but it's time to stop this foolishness and let somebody help you."
"There's nothing you can do," Blackstar insisted, but didn't fight as the layers of leather, wool and the linen bandage were peeled away.
As the last covering was removed, He-Man flinched back in horror. The arm was mottled purple and black, like a bruise, but it was swollen in places and felt hot and dry. No sign of gangrene, yet still.... "The na'dani did this, didn't it?"
Blackstar nodded weakly.
"Then why didn't you tell me?"
"It was already too late....when I knew. If I said anything, the Lady Marralassë would've kept me at Kal'en Haran. I couldn't have helped you then and...and you wouldn't have had the Starsword....wouldn't have been allowed...you couldn't control it."
All of it made perfect sense, of course, and none of it made He-Man feel any better. He replaced the bandage, sleeve and sling as gently as he could, gave Blackstar some water from his canteen and went off by himself to think. The knowledge that he could offer only the crudest first aid gnawed at him, as did the eventual realization that even if he could get Blackstar to a physician, the medical facilities on this world probably weren't sufficient enough to be of much help.
Until a hundred and fifty years ago, Eternian doctors had treated infected limbs by amputating them. He-Man understood Blackstar well enough by now to know he would choose death--had chosen death, in fact--over losing his sword-arm. If only there was some other alternative....
He-Man chided himself for overlooking the obvious. An infection could be treated with antibiotics. Most likely, the Sagarese hadn't yet developed the technology, but the Eternians had. And if Eternian antibiotics couldn't purge the poison of the na'dani, then the Ancients surely had had remedies which the Sorceress might know. She had helped Blackstar once before, coaxing his spirit back into his body when he would have slid farther into death; she might help him again, if He-Man could get him through the Portal to Castle Grayskull.
But when He-Man drew the Sword of Power and tried to call open the Portal, nothing happened. The blade was dark and cold in his hands; the battle with the na'dani and the sealing of the dimensional rift had exacted their price. Until its energy was replenished, He-Man and Battlecat were stranded. And powerless.
Crouching once again by the fire, He-Man put his head in his hands and clawed at his scalp. Never before had he felt so helpless, so hopeless.
Battlecat nuzzled his shoulder. "It's not your fault," he said.
But it was, it was.