One shot stories Options

[Kell-Reevor]

Just a short piece I put together out of boredom. Hope you like it.

*************

It is dark. Two figures traverse a well trodden path out of Suran. The first is a swordsman. The second... his would-be killer.

The swordsman knows of his follower's presence. He listens attentively as the assassin follows. He is clearly untrained, and this may be his first mark. There is no rattle of quarrels or arrows. It is likely the swordsman need not fear a ranged attack.

The swordsman has made an enemy in the Nobles of Suran, and was aware that eventually they would seek his life. But he is not afraid. As a swordsman, death has followed him as a companion he has developed a deep respect for.

His trained ears pick up a sound... a soft and smooth "whif" as a dagger is pulled from a belt.

Spotting a shrine by the road, he approaches. He has no love of the Dunmer, nor has he a love for their Temple, but he is a spiritual man and pays his repects nonetheless as his killer moves in.

He moves his thumb for the guard of his sword. Years of oiling grant it silence as he nudges it from his sheath.

In a flash, he grips the weapon. Rips it from its home. Then thrusts it back, cutting into the assassin's belly. Turning, he frees the weapon with a horizontal slice, then brings the weapon up for a finishing downward cut.

The ordeal is over in a mere span of two seconds. The swordsman flips his sword to remove any blood, then returns it to it's home. He kneels in respect to the life he had just ended. If the nobleman had hired a killer even a tad more competant, the outcome would have been drastically different. If his foe had been equipped with a bow, or maybe armor, or perhaps knowledge of magick, HE would have been the one to die tonight.

He closes the dead man's eyes, mutters a short prayer... then is on his way.

This post has been edited by Kell-Reevor: Mar 2 2006, 02:01 PM

[jack cloudy]

That looks like solid reasoning to me, Griff. Now I hope you don't mind, but I'm going to butt in on this thread for a bit. It's not TES though. Heavens forbid, it had better not be. The characters I use here are way over the top.


Unknown location.

Then, in that short moment, it was over. The man who only knew himself as a number, 547, realized he had succeeded in the sole task he had been meant to do. But at a great cost. His armour still smouldered, now little more than a paper-thin shell, cracked and punctured in a myriad of places. Beneath it, his body was slowly losing a second battle, the battle for survival. His lungs were barely functional, everything below his abdomen had been devastated by a humongous lance of destruction and his eyes had been seared into a gory mess. He could no longer feel the familiar thumping of a heart in his chest.

All he could feel was the essence of his power, still blazing with a cold fury, and the passive essence of his opponent, now harmless yet still with staggering potential. A potential that had now been lost. As had his. Yet, despite the knowledge that he was going to die, he was satisfied. Satisfied with the knowledge that a dreadful weapon such as he and his foe would never exist again. The power needed for that was here, beyond the reach of those who knew how to put it to use. The only thing that made him still wonder was just why he had been victorious and managed to survive till this point. Weren’t they both of equal strength, equal essence? Why had he been stronger? It didn’t matter. What had happened, happened, there was nothing more to it. Content, his mind receded into the darkness that loomed, now numb to the pain of his wrecked flesh.

A tingling sensation made him struggle to survive just a bit longer. Had it been an illusion, or was it real? Where was it? He focussed, straining to press the last breath he had to use. There it was, a brightness, touching the fury within him. So powerful, so dreadfully powerful as he’d only felt once before. The new knowledge shook him to his very soul. There had been two of them! Two, essence divided evenly between them. The first had crippled him, now the second one was coming to clean up the remnants. He had to fight, yet he already knew he couldn’t. His injuries were too severe, and his foe was still out of reach. Half an hour, then it would arrive. Half an hour too late. He would already be dead by then. There was only one thing he could do. Warn his people. Give them a chance, however slight, to escape. As his consciousness faded, he hurled his final message into the void. It would never arrive.

Onboard SLS Salvation, command deck.

Grand Chief of Core Operation and Coordination Paul Armand, GC Armand for short, stared at the holographic reports with bloodshot eyes, in exactly the same position he’d maintained for six long hours. Fists resting on the table, feet planted wide. One could have imagined him to be a statue, an incredibly realistic statue. But he wasn’t, as his steady breathing and fluttering eyes showed.
,,Core has reached target location. No hostiles detected.” Armand’s gaze shifted to the source of the report. To him, it was just the backside of the head of an anonymous person, yet he still watched and waited for the remainder of the report.
,,Report of two essences, both inert.”

Armand closed his eyes and let slip some of the tension that had been holding him. So the original plan had succeeded, though it was a pyrrhic victory at best. The civilization he’d left behind was now in ruins as the sole means of interstellar travel and communication had been disbanded in order to create the two living weapons. Now one of those was destroyed, yet the other, the one they couldn’t finish on time, had become operational last week. He could only imagine that his lifetime foe was in ruins as well. But unlike them, he still had a weapon without equal. Oh yes, he had a weapon, but no one to use it against.

,,Recall the Core.” He ordered. It had been an unnecessary order. The communication was one-way only. Only one seer remained to accept the message, only one seer in two galaxies. While capable of transmitting himself, he could never pass on a message across half a light-year, let stand half a million. His order would go unheard, which had been gnawing at him ever since the plan had first been proposed, sixty years ago. He was used to having his weapons operate out of reach, but this time it was different. This time the weapon’s capability for destruction was completely beyond any known scale. The chance of it going berserk was negligible, but it was still there. And if the impossible happened, if it went berserk, there would be no way to stop it.

,,Core detected. Shift in at docking port three. Navigational error of two millimetres.” Another voice reported. Two millimetres off target after traversing half a million lightyears in less than a moment. It was an error, yet so small it was supposed to be impossible. He’d been told this very morning that the absolute minimum would still be on the order of a dozen lightyears.
,,What kind of monster have we created?” Armand asked himself. He then got another thought.
,,I told it to perform multiple shifts and lower the distance gradually with the last shift ending at a lightsecond away. To perform a single shift directly to its destination, we didn’t plan for that kind of independent thought.” He noted and vowed he would keep a closer eye on it from now on. But since it was actually standing on the outside hull of his ship now, he could give orders and expect them to be carried out.
,,Lock all available weapons on it and issue Case Damocless.” He spoke and pulled his eyes back to the board. He did not want to see who would first issue the inevitable complaint.

,,Sir, it’s friendly.” Armand’s eyelids twitched slightly.
,,I know it’s friendly. I watched it’s every living moment! But can you prove it will remain friendly? Think of what we’re telling it to do! It’s hard enough just to order someone else to do it, but to actually have do it yourself, it could drive even the Core crazy! So lock weapons and issue Case Damocless. The moment that thing does as much as bat an eyelid the wrong way, blast it to pieces and hope it doesn’t have a barrier up!” He spoke much sharper.
,,Yes sir…Weapons locked, Case Damocless issued. No negative response. Beginning countdown.”
,,Good lads. They don’t like it, but they would go through hell for me. And they will, we all will.” Armand thought.
,,Good, proceed to the next stage. Mass shift to location and prepare for immediate salvage.”

SLS Salvation, outside.

The Core, standing on the circular platform, watched at the tiny pinpricks around it. Each of them was a collection of countless stars, yet it didn’t realize. Its imagination was sorely lacking for it. Even the galaxy it had come from simply didn’t exist. It only knew that it begun in a room and then wound up in a black void next to the salvation after a single shift. How was it to know that it had passed stars, worlds and collapsing civilizations?
,,Commencing shift.” It intoned passively. The pinpricks leapt to different locations, the only sign of the mind-boggling distance it had just travelled, together with the Salvation.

It looked down at its feet that were planted on the steel hull. The Salvation was huge. Not just as all the people it had seen which were always huge, but this thing was really huge. In the Core’s imagination, it must be as big as a hundred people. It wiggled a toe and watched one of its pitchblack boots slide to the left, till the edge of the tiny platform. No, not as big as a hundred. Twohundred, more likely. The first pang of pain shot through its skull.
,,Thirteen minutes till breakdown.” The seer on Salvation reported. The Core sent a neutral reply and then ascended from the deck, without a single flicker of a thrusters nor a single push of a foot. It simply rose as if the wind had carried it. But there was no wind, not in the vacuum of intergalactic space.

Ahead of it were the two inert Cores it had found, still two dozen lightyears away. The Core jumped ahead and landed less than a metre from one of them. The one that was still…warm? The Core held its head sideways as it pondered this new observation. What was half a people doing there, coated in the shell of an active Core? Or was it…..a Core? Were Cores people? A new thought entered its mind. Doubt. It shook its head violently. No, Cores weren’t people. People were huge, Cores were not. A second pang of pain. There was no report this time, but it didn’t need one. There would be a pang each minute. Then the mental self-destruct would occur, whatever that was supposed to mean. It probably wouldn’t be pleasant, though.

The Core rose its hands and cast a tendril of its essence at each of its two inert siblings. The essence of the dead Cores reacted and gathered around the tendrils which it drew back, inside itself were the new essence mixed with the old. It then wasted no more time and shifted back to Salvation’s platform.
,,Salvage complete.”

SLS Salvation, command deck.

Armand got his latest report and checked the time. Little more than eleven minutes remained.
,,Eleven left? It was supposed to do this in less than a minute. It’s beginning to hesitate and think thoughts it isn’t supposed to think.” He realized with a shock.
,,Change of plan. At this rate, the Core isn’t going to last. Commence final phase of the operation. Tell it to do it snappy and not rest till after it is done after which it should return to Salvation.” He ordered and with creaking joints, he moved. He moved to his seat where he sat down.
,,Now all we can do is wait.”

SLS Salvation, outside.

The Core received its new instructions and went to work. The idea was simple, though they were odd. Why did it have to jump to several preset locations and then fire a maximum-sized lance at one of those little lights? Why? The third pang came. The Core decided to think about it later and pointed a finger at the first light. An invisible wave of pure annihilation burst out of the skintight black shell that served as the Core’s armour, racing out towards its target at lightspeed. It would arrive in little over twohundred years.

Ten more times did it repeat this action. Shift to location, then fire at the light it had been told would be there. Only at the last point did it stop, before firing the twelfth lance. It had noticed that there were a lot more lights around it than there had been at Salvation. Why? Why did the lights gather here? It waited till the next pang came before thinking any further. Nine minutes till breakdown.

What if it tried to get closer to the light and take a look at it? That wouldn’t be bad, would it? It could easily come back here and finish the job in a heartbeat. Yes, there was time enough to look. It felt for where the light really was and shifted.

A raging fireball, as big as a thousand Salvations. It was beyond huge and it was hot, unbelievably hot. So hot, it heated even the Core’s shell to near melting point, something a dozen of Salvation’s lasers couldn’t achieve together. The Core absentmindedly intensified the tendrils of essence that formed the shell and gawked at the sight. It was so….beautiful. And it had been destroying these beautiful lights? It shivered. Impossible! It was a bad Core, a bad destroyer of beauty. Bad, bad, bad! But people told it to do this. So people were bad, bad, bad!

All of a sudden, the Core yawned. It was feeling tired. Another pang. Which one? It didn’t know. Shocked as it was by the nearby light, it had forgotten to count. What should it do? Continue to destroy the pretty lights? Or go back and tell the people they were destroying the lights? It worried about the next pang also. What if it would be the last? There was no time left, it had to go.
,,Bye bye, pretty light.” The Core said and shifted, back to Salvation. At least this light would be spared.

SLS Salvation, command deck.

,,Core detected, off the bow at a distance of fivehundred metres.” Armand nodded to show he had heard the notification.
,,So it has been done. Two galaxies, each now englobed by six blasts of a Core holding the power of these two galaxies. Perhaps there will be a seer we missed, somewhere. Perhaps this seer will pass on its strength. Doesn’t matter. By the time a seer would detect the destruction vectoring in from all directions, it will be too late. There will be no escape. And so the endless war with Cores shall come to an end.” He thought.
,,Tell the Core to wait outside. We’ll let it burn out its brains before putting it into a pod and firing it off, far away from the third galaxy. I will not let our colonists be tempted with such power.” He spoke, looking at the head of the one who maintained contact with their seer who in turn maintained contact with the Core. The man’s head bobbed up and down, then froze.
,,Sir, negative response! It’s negative!” Armand’s eyes flew wide open.
,,Negative?!” He repeated. He then remembered the last report. Off the bow, fivehundred metres. It had not jumped to the platform where the point-defence lasers could shoot at it, as it had done each time before moving to its next firing position. Why? Perhaps because….
,,Lock on with planetbusters and all lasers! Take the damn thing down before it goes insane!” His last thought was one of irony.
,,The most powerful warship ever built, capable of razing planets into smouldering hulks. And it can’t beat a mere child. A child that has inherited the power of two galaxies, and I was the one who made it all happen.”

SLS Salvation, nearby space.

The Core watched with interest as the space surrounding the massive starship was set ablaze with all the fury countless lasers and anti-matter explosions could cause. All of that blaze was focussed on it, into a sphere less than two metres wide. The Core shrugged off the assault with utter nonchalance. It had the power to annihilate entire galaxies from thousands of lightyears distant, in a single shot. Next to that, the firepower of a single warship was absolutely nothing. A billion warships wouldn’t compare. So it merely strengthened its shell with a tiny fraction of its strength as it pointed a finger at the opposing hulk. Again it yawned.

,,People are bad. They tell me to destroy the pretty lights. Therefore, people must leave. People can’t fly, but get thrown out if there are holes from inside to outside. People won’t move if outside. So must make holes.” Tendrils of essence leapt towards Salvation, hungrily carving their path through the fury that still pounded at the Core in an helpless act of defiance. Through the bulkheads they slashed and cut, slicing the ship into tiny ribbons. People came out, but not whole. Parts of people they were, cut into countless pieces by the same tendrils that cut up Salvation. Explosions rippled through those areas were the containment of volatile elements had been breached. In the blink of an eye, the carnage was over and as the Salvation ceased firing, so did the Core. A pang of pain shot through its brain. It had been the last, the one that made it go into a coma from which it would never wake up again.




OOC: Why is it that whenever I imagine ultimate power of destruction gathered into a single being, I see that being in the form of little child? Am I just weird? Or maybe I just like the irony. You've gotta admit, the size difference between a huge warship and a child makes it quite funny if the child swats it out of the void with the ease of cracking a bug beneath its heel.

This post has been edited by jack cloudy: Nov 24 2007, 09:19 PM