Roanoke, Nebraska January, 1996
The big man parked his bike outside of the diner and dismounted, stretching his body to work the kinks out. He wore no helmet, and his long, red-golden hair was windblown. He pulled off his black gloves and produced a silver clasp to bind his locks back. Unzipping his jacket, he stepped into the diner.
It was a small place, one that had seen better days. The exterior was dingy, coated with a fine layer of dust that obscured the pink, corrugated outer wall. A blinking sign read: "Diner." Inside, red vinyl seats and linoleum counters greeted the Celt's gaze. The clientele mostly consisted of truckers, but the red haired man saw a pair of nervous teens in the back.
Only a few strange looks greeted his presence. Bikers were a common sight at the truck stop, even ones that were as large as he. He stepped up to the counter and settled onto a stool. A waitress in a little pink outfit took his order. She tried not to eye the white puckered scar that snaked in a vertical line down his forehead, under his ray-bans, and down his left cheek. A smile tugged at his lips, and to satisfy the haggard looking woman's curiosity, he pulled the sunglasses off, revealing two whole eyes.
The eyes were black; pools of darkness that drew the waitress in.
The man gently prodded her, and she recovered from her fascination and went to give his order to the cook.
She came back with his orange juice a short bit later, and, feeling bold, asked him, "Where are you headed, stranger?"
Bran Mac Lyr smiled. "New Orleans," he said in a voice as deep as he was tall.
Hazard parked his Lotus outside of Perseus' mansion-house and slid out of the car. He bounded up the stairs, unlocked the door, and slipped inside. Almost immediately, he was welcomed by a tackle from Nuadh, Perseus' five-year old Irish Wolfhound.
Hazard ruffled the beast behind the ears and gently pushed the animal's paws off of his chest. Nuadh dropped to all fours and looked up at Hazard with the look of trust and love that only dogs can give. Hazard scratched him under the chin for a moment, and then moved into the kitchen. The wolfhound followed docily, his heavy tail thumping.
All around the house, Hazard could hear the other dogs rousing themselves and making their way down to the kitchen. Perseus had a baker's dozen of hounds, a mismatched wolfpack composed of Nuadh, a Great Dane, three Labrodor Retrievers, a Basset Hound, two Cocker Spaniels, and a gaggle of mutts rescued from the pound. While Perseus was away, Hazard was seeing after the dogs.
He fed them and let them out to run for a few hours every night. The dogs didn't like being cooped up inside all day, but Hazard could do little about that. He set out the dog food, checked the fridge for some "people food" to treat the dogs, and then opened the back door an let them out onto the grounds.
Once that was done, he checked Perseus' mail. In the middle of sorting through the Immortal's bills, he noticed the light on the answering machine was blinking. He reached out a finger and hit the "play" button.
<MEEP> "Nick, this is Rachel. I... I've been having some pretty weird dreams lately. I think they might mean something... but I don't know what. I could use your help. I... ugh... I hate these damn machines. Just call me, will you?" <MEEP>
Hazard stopped the machine, and contemplated the message. The voice was lyrical, soft. It reminded Hazard of warmth, spring, and sunshine. He had to meet this woman. And he might be able to shed some light on her strange dreams. Hazard had a feeling that they might be related to the strange tension he felt in the air.
He rummaged through Perseus' desk searching for a rolodeck or something. He found no such beast amidst Perseus' strange filing system, and was about to give up his search when he noticed a post-it note attached to the screen of Perseus' computer.
It had a name -- Rachel Van Horn -- and a phone number. Hazard smiled and picked up the phone.
Perseus, Shelley, and Kurt sat around the card table in Perseus' room. In front of Kurt lay a demolished meal, while Shelley held a bottle of whiskey and a shot glass. Perseus' gladius lay on the table, the naked blade reflecting light from the lamp on the nightstand.
Perseus sucked on his cigarette, and exhaled a cloud of smoke. With all the smoking he had been doing, there was a slight haze in the room, clouding Shelley's vision. She shook her head as if to clear it.
"Questions?" Perseus said.
Shelley answered, "Oh yeah. I have lots of questions."
"Shoot," was the reply.
Kurt stood up. "I need some more beer. I'll be right back." As the dark man left the room, Shelley leaned forward across the table.
"You said the world is going to end. That's patently ridiculous. Nothing short of the sun blowing up or global thermonuclear warfare could destroy the planet. And I fail to see how Quickening can stop either of those."
Perseus smiled thinly. "It is in the nature of your age to question, to poke, to prod. You think that science and experimentation can unlock the secrets of the universe. And, indeed, these philosophies are useful for certain kinds of knowledge. But not everything. The world, the universe, is a much bigger than you believe. And it does not suffer up its secrets easily. Kurt and I are giving you a crashcourse, but true wisdom, like true knowledge, is not something that can just be handed out or absorbed. The only way you'll truly believe what Kurt and I have to say is to experience it yourself."
"Now, when I speak of 'the end of the world,' I do not necessarily mean it literally. Perhaps life as we understand it will cease to exist, perhaps the Earth really will be engulfed in fire and the planet will break up. The point is moot, really. Whatever happens at the End, it can't be good. It won't be.
"Even I don't have a complete understanding of the principles involved. Some things need to be taken on faith -- a skill, admittedly, my generation is more accomplished at then yours. But Viracocha's vision is a true one, and he has shown me what it means. There are things...," here Perseus paused, gathering his thoughts.
"When the End comes, something that was... banished from Earth will return. And everything that was accomplished since its banishment -- the evolution of mankind, for example -- will be rendered no more."
"What was 'banished'?" Shelley asked.
Perseus sighed. "A great evil."
Shelley waited a moment, expecting Perseus to elaborate. He didn't.
"That's it?" she groused. "A great evil?"
Perseus shrugged, and dropped some more ash on the carpet. "I can't tell you any more than that just yet. You aren't ready."
Shelley stared at him angrily. "That's the biggest cop-out I've ever heard," she said. "I'm not ready? When will I be ready?"
Perseus sucked in smoke. "We'll both know," he said. "But you need to see more, experience what the world has to offer our kind. You need to see and battle that which preys on humanity and Immortals. Then, maybe, you'll be ready."
Shelley pursed her lips. This wasn't going the way she had wanted. Perseus was holding back. She let out a breath. <Just as well,> she thought. <Quin didn't tell me everything at once, either.> Shelley filed away the question for later, and then opted for a new one.
"How did you meet Viracocha? And why does everybody think Methos is the oldest, if this other guy really is?"
"I met Viracocha in 1568. I took part in a Spanish expedition of the New World -- to South America to be exact. We landed in present-day Peru. Viracocha had just returned to his homeland after an extended trip across the continent." Perseus grinned. "The man walked from Chile to Alaska and back. He said he was following his ancestors. I had no idea what he meant at the time, but..."
"Anyway, the explorers and I plunged into the interior, mapping the land and looking for natives and gold. We were only looking for natives, mind you, because we hoped they would know where the gold was. We raped and pillaged our way through a number of Indian villages..."
"Wait a minute," Shelley interrupted. "You raped women? And destroyed helpless villages?"
Perseus was silent a moment. "I have never forced myself on an unwilling partner," he said. "And those villages were far from helpless. They knew the land better than we, and were well armed with bows and poison. We may have had gunpowder and iron, but gunpowder was still relatively new in the sixteenth century. It was clumsy, loud, and unreliable. No, they weren't helpless.
"Speaking as someone who has lived through much of the history written about today, I can tell you that many of the conflicts the 'dead white males of oppression' were involved in weren't one-sided. The Indians, at least when I was there, gave as good as they got."
Shelley looked about to argue, but Perseus spoke instead. "Do you really want to hash this out now, or shall I continue with this story?"
Shelley thought a moment. "Go on."
Just then, the door opened and Kurt stepped into the room. He had a twelve pack of Beck's cradled under one arm, and an ash-tray in his free hand. He smiled at the two Immortals, dumped the twelve pack on the table, and handed the ash-tray to Perseus. "I thought you might find this useful," he said.
Perseus looked down at the pile of ash he had flicked onto the carpet by his chair and wordlessly took the small bowl. He tipped his cigarette into it, and gestured at Kurt. "How about handing me one of those Beck's, mate?"
Kurt looked at Perseus as if the older man had asked for Kurt's firstborn. "Well, I guess so," he said reluctantly, handing over a bottle.
Perseus smiled and popped it open with his thumb. "Where was I?" he asked Shelley.
"You were exploiting the indigenous population," she said tersely.
Perseus sighed in exasperation. "Right. Well, if you ever make it to two thousand years of age, you'll realize that you won't be proud of everything you ever do." He sipped from the bottle, and looked at Kurt.
"Hey, this isn't bad."
Kurt raised an eyebrow and turned to Shelley. "Two thousand years old, and this is the first Beck's his had." She grinned.
Perseus coughed, and continued with his tale. "After three weeks of stumbling through the forest, with our eyes pealed for the golden walls of Cibola, we came across another village, one that was larger and more prosperous than the others. One of the keys to its prosperity was the presence of a god-king. It was Viracocha."
"I felt him from at least a mile away as we approached the village. He felt me too, and he came out to meet us. Now, remember, this was 1568; I was no untried pup, and this wasn't the first Old One I'd met. I waited for him to make the first move."
"He surprised me completely -- lashed out at me with the force of his Quickening. At first I thought it was a hostile assault, but as the energy flowed over me, I realized he was trying to communicate with me, bond with me in a language more... intimate than any human tongue."
"My mortal companions reacted badly to it all. When the arcs of lightning flashed from Viracocha and connected with me, they bolted in total, abject fear. They might have had muskets, horses, and forged steel, but an Indian tossing lightning bolts was too much for them."
"When I returned to consciousness, I could understand Viracocha's tongue, and why he spared me. I was one of five European Immortals he had met in his lifetime. He wanted to learn about me, about our kind in the Old World, and also pass on his knowledge. He told me the truth."
"It was much harder for me to accept than it is for you, Shelley. After all, I had two millennia to gain faith in the Game and the Gathering. It was a terrible blow to my world-view, and, as I came to believe it, I realized how little I really understood, how ignorant I truly was of the realities and constructs that guide the life on this planet. Even as old as I am now, with so much accumulated knowledge and experience, I know I don't know everything, don't understand it all."
"We're all still learning."
Perseus finished his beer. Shelley was silent for a bit, thinking about what Perseus said. Kurt asked her, "What else do you want to know?"
Shelley thought a moment. "You told me the Nine Races, and then at the end mentioned mages and golems and such. What are those? How do they fit into this... cosmology you've just described?"
Kurt smiled. "I so enjoy a curious mind," he said. Shelley smiled at the compliment. "Well, to start off, 'mage' is sort of a catch-all term for anyone who engages in the manipulation of magikal forces.
Anyone who taps into the power of ley lines or their nexuses can be called a mage..."
Shelley interrupted. "Wait a second. Ley line? Nexus?"
Kurt smiled apologetically. "Sorry. I should have discussed some of the vocabulary before launching into 'speech' mode." He took a deep breath, then coughed as some of the smoke in the air got into his lungs. "Okay," he began, after a moment, "the fundamentals of magik. The globe is criss-crossed by lines of invisible energy, called ley lines -- they're basically aligned similar to lines of latitude and longitude. The energy that the lines are composed is called magik, and those we call witches, wizards, and shamans can tap into these lines of force to fuel their spells."
"The point where two of these lines converge is called a nexus point. Nexus points are tremendous stores of energy, and it is easy to create huge effects at a nexus point, simply by tapping into the storehouse that makes up the nexus."
"Incidentally," Perseus interrupted, "some mortal mages who have knowledge about us have theorized that Quickening is a concentrated form of this energy, related to the ley lines, yet not of the ley lines. One piece of evidence that supports the idea is the violence and power of the Quickening that Connor MacLeod experienced when he took the Kurgan's head -- they were rather close to a nexus in Manhattan at the time."
Shelley nodded. "I heard about that."
Kurt continued. "At the same time, some humans seem capable of storing amounts of this magik energy within their own bodies, allowing them to create magikal effects even when they aren't near a ley line or nexus. These people are called Mages in general, though their titles and disciplines vary. There are Witches, Biomancers, Enchanters, Techno-Wizards, Necromancers, Wiccas, Shaman, and so on. You don't really need to know the classifications just now, just know that these are mortals that reach dizzying heights of power in decades that Immortals and even some Vampires will never see."
"Luckily for us, there's a catch. A mortal needs to believe in magik in order to make it work. Even a mortal with great aptitude towards magik can't cast the simplest spell if he has no faith. And what with the prevalence of science in the world today, a true-believer is hard to come by. Even among those organizations that know about and believe in magik, people who can manipulate the forces are hard to come by. Not every joe can do it."
Shelley nodded. "That makes sense. Sort of."
"Am I going too fast?" Kurt asked.
Shelley shook her head. "No, I got it. Its just... difficult to believe. It sounds ridiculous."
Perseus chuckled. "So do people who can't die."
"Yeah, well, that's sort of why I haven't bolted from the room yet. My head says what you guys are talking about is all insane, but my gut says you're telling the truth. Its still hard to swallow, though."
"Shall I keep going?" Kurt asked.
"Please do," Shelley replied.
"Mages and alchemists are usually responsible for the other 'supernatural' creatures and objects on Earth. Magik cauldrons and swords, golems, and 'unique' immortals. Mages can imbue certain objects with magikal energy, transferring it into the object to strengthen it or enable it to be used as a focus for spells. Stonehenge is a good example of this: not only is it built at a nexus, but Merlin infused the stones themselves with magikal energy. It is conceivable that a powerful enough Mage could use Stonehenge to crack open the barriers between dimensions. But I can see by the expression on your face that I should skip that for now..."
"The term golem is a catch-all phrase that encompasses all the agents and servants of a Mage that the Mage creates with magik. These include imps, quasits, familiars, and actual golems. These are usually created to serve a purpose: again, to focus a Mage's power, to protect a place, or to kill an enemy."
"Some Mages have also been known to create or come across some means of artificially extending a mortal's lifespan. An elixir, a pool, a ring, or some other item of power, can all serve to empower the imbiber, bather, or wearer with eternal life. Which means they are not related to Immortals, although they are immortal, and they do not participate in the Game. They're also difficult to sense."
"I know of three Egyptian immortals, all of whom drank from the same cup some three thousand years ago, and were granted immortality. One was known as Ramses, another is called Nyarlathotep, and the third is called Seth. All of them have become twisted and evil over the centuries, almost certainly a function of the elixir they drank. Even these immortals must pay for their extended lives." Kurt sipped at his beer.
Shelley opened her mouth to continue the questioning, but Perseus cut her off. "Its getting late, Shelley, and we have work to do. Kurt, tell me about the Gargoyles."
Kurt nodded. "There's three of them. Gorgotha tribe; surprising, too, since they normally roost much further south. Nasty mothers, too. The biggest is over seven feet tall, and ugly as sin.
"Things are likely to get messy tonight."
"Well, as long as I have the Revenant at my side, I'm sure things will go smoothly," Perseus said. Kurt gave a thin smile at this.
"Wait a sec," Shelley said. "These Gargoyles -- they're the ones that killed Quin?" Kurt nodded. "Then I'm in."
Kurt looked about to object, but Perseus forestalled him with a word. "Good," he said. Kurt saw a gleam in his old friends eye, and he was suddenly nervous about the night's activities.
<Yep, definitely going to be messy> he thought.
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