The Bone of A Dead Man
May. 1st, 2011 09:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alfvaenThis was a "decathlon" exercise, exactly a thousand words long, where every hundredth word, as well as the first one, was specified before the assignment.
Decompose more slowly, I told my body. I don't think it was listening. That was all right, as long as it obeyed my commands for a little while longer. I knew that Bruce's amulet wouldn't last forever, but as long I could finish this case it would have to do.
I limped through the trees, my spasming muscles making stealth impossible, but I was counting on my quarry being so intent on his goal that he wouldn't be listening.
Timothy Roudenis. Once one of the premiere literary scholars in the country, in the world. Before the big wave of Deconstruction on the heels of Derrida and his cronies. Suddenly Sir Thomas Mallory was passé. And then Roudenis became obsessed with actually finding the site of King Arthur's death. Began by publishing all sorts of decreasingly coherent papers babbling about intertextual clues. Sounded more like Dan Brown than Schliemann on the heels of Troy, anyway.
When he thought Ryan Bragg had the last piece of the puzzle, Roudenis killed him for it. His daughter Caroline hired me, and that's why I was here.
Roudenis was nearing the lake now. The Lake, apparently. With the Lady in it, the keeper of Excalibur since Bedivere threw it in on his dying King's command. I'd always thought it was a cute story, though there was some confusion about whether the Lady had given the sword to Arthur in the first place or he pulled it out of a stone. Hundreds of versions of the story out there, pick your own favourite. I had enough proof magic was real by now that I guess one of them could be true.
I stopped when I reached the edge of the woods. Roudenis was wearing his Merlin robe and standing on the lakeshore. "Hey, Tim! You've forgotten something!" I called out, hoping to distract him.
It worked. His head whipped around, and the light that was beginning to emanate from the bottom of the lake swiftly ebbed. He cursed and pulled out his wand. "Aren't you dead, you pathetic excuse for a detective?"
"Some would like to think so," I said. If he hadn't spotted the amulet yet, I wouldn't spell it out for him.
"Well, you won't be able to stop me," he said. He began waving his wand around in a complex pattern, probably a ward. "The Lady has been waiting for such an interlocutor for centuries. She will be easy to wake."
He had to turn away from me to complete the ward. I didn't know much about them myself, but Bruce had figured that Roudenis would be using the simplest kind. Since I was technically dead, it shouldn't stop me. If I could make it that far. I began to lurch forward. I'd lost all feeling in my extremities, and my hearing was beginning to go too. The amulet offset that a little bit, but not for long. C'mon, Bruce, I willed. Get here as soon as you can. My legs were marshmallows under me. Good thing the ground was pretty flat.
Roudenis glanced over his shoulder once after finishing the ward, then deliberately turned away to begin his ritual again. He didn't even turn back when my left leg twisted underneath me and I fell flat on my face. It felt like I'd stepped in a hole or something. I felt like the breath should have been knocked out of me, but I wasn't breathing anymore, so that wasn't it. I began to crawl forward.
I reached the edge of the wards about the time that the glowing waters of the pond--let's face it, it wasn't a lake by any stretch of the imagination--began to roil. Like something big coming to the surface. I glanced up to see Roudenis's face stretched with a grin of unholy glee. My vision was beginning to blur, so I couldn't be quite sure what it was that came out of the water--a sword, a hand, a tentacle? Roudenis kept up his chant.
Breaking the ward wasn't that hard, if you had the right materials. Luckily, the bone of a dead man was one of them. I threw myself forward and my senses flared momentarily, a pungent smell of rot and decay from the pond being the dominant sensation. The energy from the wards revitalized me for a moment, and I was able to lever myself to my feet and fling myself at a surprised Roudenis. With a faded echo of my once-mighty football tackle, I grabbed him around the waist and pulled him down.
"You fool, you've doomed us both!" he screamed. He heaved my mostly-dead weight off of him desperately and looked around for his fallen wand. My senses began to fade again, and I began to count to myself; Bruce had said that sequential numbers would keep me focused when my energy ebbed.
My perception came and went after that. Roudenis screaming as his wards flared out again, an elongated shape piercing them before they were quite finished. The sound of running feet followed by a wet squelching, slithering sound. Silence for the count of 132 or so. Then a few flashes, not from my vanished peripheral vision, but reflected from the wet grass in front of me. A final, abbreviated scream, and the slithering sound returning. It paused near me, and my nostrils were filled with the scent of decay and old sphagnum moss. Stuff kept forever in those peat bogs, I heard.
I kept losing count, but I was up to 988 when I heard voices and saw more light on the grass. Soon Bruce and Caroline were bending over me, and Bruce was doing some feverish ritual designed to restore my soul from its backup in the amulet, and heal as much of the decay as he could.
"I can't thank you enough, Mr. Hilliard," Caroline said. "My father's ghost will rest easy now."
"I don't know how you do it, Noah," Bruce added. "You're amazing."
I smiled and muttered, "Sycophant."
Sort of strikes me the ending to an exciting Dresden Files-esque novel. Not that I'm planning to write the rest of it or anything...
Decompose more slowly, I told my body. I don't think it was listening. That was all right, as long as it obeyed my commands for a little while longer. I knew that Bruce's amulet wouldn't last forever, but as long I could finish this case it would have to do.
I limped through the trees, my spasming muscles making stealth impossible, but I was counting on my quarry being so intent on his goal that he wouldn't be listening.
Timothy Roudenis. Once one of the premiere literary scholars in the country, in the world. Before the big wave of Deconstruction on the heels of Derrida and his cronies. Suddenly Sir Thomas Mallory was passé. And then Roudenis became obsessed with actually finding the site of King Arthur's death. Began by publishing all sorts of decreasingly coherent papers babbling about intertextual clues. Sounded more like Dan Brown than Schliemann on the heels of Troy, anyway.
When he thought Ryan Bragg had the last piece of the puzzle, Roudenis killed him for it. His daughter Caroline hired me, and that's why I was here.
Roudenis was nearing the lake now. The Lake, apparently. With the Lady in it, the keeper of Excalibur since Bedivere threw it in on his dying King's command. I'd always thought it was a cute story, though there was some confusion about whether the Lady had given the sword to Arthur in the first place or he pulled it out of a stone. Hundreds of versions of the story out there, pick your own favourite. I had enough proof magic was real by now that I guess one of them could be true.
I stopped when I reached the edge of the woods. Roudenis was wearing his Merlin robe and standing on the lakeshore. "Hey, Tim! You've forgotten something!" I called out, hoping to distract him.
It worked. His head whipped around, and the light that was beginning to emanate from the bottom of the lake swiftly ebbed. He cursed and pulled out his wand. "Aren't you dead, you pathetic excuse for a detective?"
"Some would like to think so," I said. If he hadn't spotted the amulet yet, I wouldn't spell it out for him.
"Well, you won't be able to stop me," he said. He began waving his wand around in a complex pattern, probably a ward. "The Lady has been waiting for such an interlocutor for centuries. She will be easy to wake."
He had to turn away from me to complete the ward. I didn't know much about them myself, but Bruce had figured that Roudenis would be using the simplest kind. Since I was technically dead, it shouldn't stop me. If I could make it that far. I began to lurch forward. I'd lost all feeling in my extremities, and my hearing was beginning to go too. The amulet offset that a little bit, but not for long. C'mon, Bruce, I willed. Get here as soon as you can. My legs were marshmallows under me. Good thing the ground was pretty flat.
Roudenis glanced over his shoulder once after finishing the ward, then deliberately turned away to begin his ritual again. He didn't even turn back when my left leg twisted underneath me and I fell flat on my face. It felt like I'd stepped in a hole or something. I felt like the breath should have been knocked out of me, but I wasn't breathing anymore, so that wasn't it. I began to crawl forward.
I reached the edge of the wards about the time that the glowing waters of the pond--let's face it, it wasn't a lake by any stretch of the imagination--began to roil. Like something big coming to the surface. I glanced up to see Roudenis's face stretched with a grin of unholy glee. My vision was beginning to blur, so I couldn't be quite sure what it was that came out of the water--a sword, a hand, a tentacle? Roudenis kept up his chant.
Breaking the ward wasn't that hard, if you had the right materials. Luckily, the bone of a dead man was one of them. I threw myself forward and my senses flared momentarily, a pungent smell of rot and decay from the pond being the dominant sensation. The energy from the wards revitalized me for a moment, and I was able to lever myself to my feet and fling myself at a surprised Roudenis. With a faded echo of my once-mighty football tackle, I grabbed him around the waist and pulled him down.
"You fool, you've doomed us both!" he screamed. He heaved my mostly-dead weight off of him desperately and looked around for his fallen wand. My senses began to fade again, and I began to count to myself; Bruce had said that sequential numbers would keep me focused when my energy ebbed.
My perception came and went after that. Roudenis screaming as his wards flared out again, an elongated shape piercing them before they were quite finished. The sound of running feet followed by a wet squelching, slithering sound. Silence for the count of 132 or so. Then a few flashes, not from my vanished peripheral vision, but reflected from the wet grass in front of me. A final, abbreviated scream, and the slithering sound returning. It paused near me, and my nostrils were filled with the scent of decay and old sphagnum moss. Stuff kept forever in those peat bogs, I heard.
I kept losing count, but I was up to 988 when I heard voices and saw more light on the grass. Soon Bruce and Caroline were bending over me, and Bruce was doing some feverish ritual designed to restore my soul from its backup in the amulet, and heal as much of the decay as he could.
"I can't thank you enough, Mr. Hilliard," Caroline said. "My father's ghost will rest easy now."
"I don't know how you do it, Noah," Bruce added. "You're amazing."
I smiled and muttered, "Sycophant."
Sort of strikes me the ending to an exciting Dresden Files-esque novel. Not that I'm planning to write the rest of it or anything...
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