For those who wish to read the earlier parts, they can be found here: One, Two, Three.
Chapter three! Sex!
Narishka came through the wall of Morgen's chamberswith the air around her crackling from her fury and her powers.
The Balance: "She walks through walls, apparently."
As was typical, Morgen was naked, entwined on her bed with her latest paramour. An evil Adoni like herself, Brevalaer...
The Anthropologist: "He's a toastie maker!"
Cathed: "It's his name just Latin for short and a good lay but together?"
Azrael: "She hit keyboard see what come out."
...was a trained courtesan and thus far had lasted longer than any of Morgen's previous lovers.
(The Chronicler wonders if she means this in terms of stamina or survival in the court.)
With no embarrassment whatsoever, Narishka approached the dais where the large, carved bed rested and parted the bloodred silk curtains.
The Balance: "That has to be a bad metaphor! Blood-red silk curtains..."
Morgen lay with one hand entwined in Brevalaer's dark hair while his head was buried deep between her spread legs. Morgen's large breasts were covered by a sheer red gown that Brevalaer had pushed up to pool at her waist...
The Anthropologist: "I'm still picturing it as a toastie maker!"
Pillywiggin: "Now, even cheesier sex scenes..."
His tanned, rippling body...
(The Chronicler: "Eeeww... fake tan in the land of eternal darkness!")
...was every bit as bare, but unfortunately Narishka could only see his well-shaped buttocks and back. How she wished she could join them, but unlike Morgen, she believed in business before pleasure
The Chronicler produces a picture of the character from the author's website
Pillywiggin: "Why is he badly photo-shopped?"
Morgen turned her head toward her slowly, but she didn't stop Brevalaer. Little wonder that.
(The Chronicler is intrigued that the internal monologues of both the hero and the heroine are identical. There can't be that many people who use the expression "Little Wonder that.")
It was said that his tongue held more magick than the whole of the fey court...
Cathed: "They should cut it off and sell it on ebay..."
Pillywiggin: "Even better than incubus-possessed rings."
"I have no idea. He's grotesquely abnormal, which is why I sent him to live with Lancelot when he was a child. I've never understood him. He's not motivated by greed, lust...."
Sordan: "He's not motivated by anything that makes sense!"
"...we can pretty much guess that Galahad and Percival are grail knights, but neither of them will ever be foolish enough to fall into our hands..."
(The Chronicler: "Either she's really smart or really stupid...")
"There has to be something that entices him. Something he reacts to without fail." Narishka paused at those words as she remembered the little fat mouse trailing behind her...
Cradling Tarynce's body in his arms, Varian entered the tombs of Avalon...
The Anthropologist: "Where did he get that from?"
Cathed: "We don't care. It's not sex."
And Varian had sworn to him that he would spend his life protecting those who couldn't protect themselves.
The Chronicler: "Something tells me that torturing prisoners doesn't come under protecting those who couldn't protect themselves. In fact, some may say it's quite the opposite since the prisoner is completely at your mercy."
The sarcophagus was plain except for the gold that Bors and Galahad had insisted on in direct contradiction to Arthur's wishes
"I need no fancy crate for my remains. Spend the gold on those who are still living. Where I'll be, for better or worse, it'll do me no good. But if it'll feed one hungry child, it'll be much better spent than on a dead man's grave." Arthur truly had been a great man.
(The Chronicler: "He's a man in the middle ages. That runs against just about every single belief of that age to not care about where your corpse is after you die... Oh! And let's not forget what Varian has been risking his life doing: saving Tarynce's cold, dead corpse. Isn't your time better spent feeding hungry children?!")
(The Chronicler: "Oh, and paying a guy to make a live-size stone statue of you has to be comparable to paying a guy to gild your casket.")
The Loinfire Club has decided on part-skimming at this point, Cathed is in charge
Cathed: "Varian buries the body. Merlin turns up. She's incompetent at him and he has to correct her a lot... And Bracken's a demon. Apparently. And there'll be a confrontation."
Maybe he was being stupid by fighting his mother and her wants. Maybe he should switch his allegiance. Really, would there be a difference?
An image of the hapless crone in the abbey being bandied between the men flashed in his mind. Along with the sight of her gratitude when he'd picked up the goblet and handed it to her. She was the reason why he fought alongside Merlin.
The Anthropologist: "But... but... time paradox!"
The strong should never prey on the weak.
The Chronicler: "Coming from the guy who loves torturing his enemies and beating the shit out of the 'strong' in pubs."
The Anthropologist: "Clearly he only tortures strong people."
Pillywiggin: "They last longer."
He moved back, out of reach. "It's all right, Merlin. Dealing with assholes is my specialty."
"Assholes are one thing. Insane demons are another."
"Maybe in your book. In mine they're the same. Both cowardly bastards who come at my back."
Cathed: "Are demons just assholes with leathery wings?"
Pillywiggin draws picture:
The Balance: "They're made of assholes not ass!"
Now she bore the face that she'd been born to. Gone were the scars and the twisted body of the crone. She now stood upright with no hump, no pain. She was beautiful...
The original terms had been for her to remain ugly only for the cycle of the moon. But Narishka had failed to tell her that here in Camelot there was no moon cycle at all, and so she'd been trapped for eternity.
Cathed: "That's a good contractual omission. Good demons, not fail!demon like Samira."
She turned to find Magda standing behind her. Old and gnarled, she'd been one of the few people who had befriended Merewyn during her centuries here.
(The Chronicler: "Appearing here only for the purposes of being plotdumped at. She has three more mentions after this scene. The last one on page 93. Which goes to show you should never bother befriending the heroine because she'll forget you the moment the hero shows up.")
Varian's service to Morgen. She had three weeks to turn him to their side. Three weeks...
Cathed: "Three weeks to turn seduce him with her virginity. And then go free."
"Give up hope, child. This is your fate. You're one of us now. Grayling in form, you will never again be the beautiful woman you were."
Pillywiggin: "Except for the fact that she's all pretty in front of you right now."
"I can't give up hope, Magda. It's all I have. I was stupid once, but I know that someday I'll have the chance to be free. [...] I want to be my own person again. Not a twisted crone, but a woman."
The Chronicler: "I like how she equates beauty with freedom."
"So who will you destroy to be beautiful?" "Varian duFey [...] Tell me, have you ever heard anyone say anything good about him?" "Only you." Merewyn looked away as pain filled her. It was true, he'd been kind to her. But one act of kindness couldn't erase all the cruelty he'd committed in his lifetime.
The Chronicler: "Ugh."
"You're just jealous that you're trapped here while I've been given a chance to earn my freedom." Nothing but silence answered her, but it didn't matter. She knew the truth. There were no decent people left in this world. None.
The Chronicler: "Not even the nice woman who was trying to convince you to grow a conscience. None whatsoever."
Closing his eyes, Varian took himself from Avalon to the dark back halls of Camelot...
Pillywiggin: "He never has to walk anywhere!"
But the sharoc pulled back…no doubt going to report his presence to his mother or Morgen.
The Chronicler: "This world really does just revolve around him and his bloody mother."
On the southern tower where he was, it was the domain of the MODs. "MOD," pronounced mode, was an acronym for Morgen's minions of death.
The Anthropologist: "Because calling them Minions of Death just takes too long to say... I thought the only way to make Minions of Death sound more stupid was to shorten it to MODs, but no, pronouncing it mode just makes it worse."
Legend said it was his grandson Lugh who'd done the actual murder, but that'd been a lie perpetuated by the gods who didn't want it to be common knowledge that Balor's servants had that kind of power.
But! Before! For fuck's sake... Before her! LKAjgrgdkht;k abour to kill.
(The Chronicler had descended into angry incoherence at this point. This is quite possibly the most unimaginative retelling of Celtic myth ever.)
Under a death warrant that'd been issued by the entire Tuatha Dé Danann group of gods, the MODs had been hunted to virtual extinction until Morgen had offered them refuge in her shadowy realm.
Lady Miriam is growling at this point. Her rant deserves more time than we have space for right now. But let it be known that she is angry. Very angry.
(The Chronicler will, however quickly note that the MODs are based quite on Fomorians, who are the gribblygods as Pillywiggin put it. The Dagda and the Morrigan are in a completely different pantheon which came afterwards.")
Since they weren't exactly civilized and disdained even the dim light that was found here, they'd decided to live beneath Camelot, in a cold, damp hole. The stone walls oozed some effervescent green muck that smelled like rotten limes.
(The Chronicler gets it. Evil people have no hygiene standards. And Good people exude an aura of cleanliness.)
And in true MOD form, they lived in a commune environment. Bracken was the only one of them who had private quarters.
The Chronicler: "Like just about everyone else for most of bloody history."
The rest fed, slept, ate, and fornicated out in the open.
There were probably a hundred of them strewn about the open area, but only a small handful even bothered to look at him as they went about their business, which included eating the flesh of Adoni victims scattered about the floor.
Pillywiggin: "I can't get this mental image out of my mind: this giant plate with little imps bouncing up and down..."
One of the MOD females looked up with a speculative gleam in her eyes as he walked past. He gave her a look to let her know that he wouldn't die easily.
More to the point, he wouldn't die alone.
(The Chronicler is really, really sick of this. The entire bloody world wants to kill him or fuck him. We get the point. And he's really, really hard. We get it already!)
All in all, he had to give the MODs credit. Like the Adoni, they were beautiful. Golden and fair with wings that were black and amber, they were more akin to the angels attributed to heaven.
(Azrael: "Evil is always either very beautiful or very ugly. I suppose it's consistent. She probably thinks pretty evil is the subtler and more insidious of the two.
The Chronicler: "It's not. She just runs out of hyperbole."
Azrael: "With added reader hatred through jealousy.")
He'd expected to meet the demon lord on his own terms. What he hadn't expected was to meet Bracken while the demon was nuzzling Varian's mother
The Anthropologist: "That's just wrong on so many levels..."
That action was wrong on so many levels that he couldn't quite sort out which one disturbed him most.
Pillywiggin: "This author has a bit of a clue."
One thing was certain, he'd never call that bastard Dad.
Cathed: "Why would he want you to?"
Bracken pulled back from his mother's neck before he raked Varian with a sneer.
The Balance: "Everyone carries around farming implements for this very purpose."
"You are ever a pain in my ass." "Good. I've spent the whole of my life aspiring to hemorrhoid status. Nice to know I've finally attained it."
The Anthropologist: "You achieved that many, many pages ago. Now stop."
Bet you're hell on the other contestants at a freak party contest, huh?
The Anthropologist: "What the hell is a freak party?"
The Balance: "It has contests for who's the bigger freak..."
Pillywiggin (looking around her): "Like this. This is a freak party."
Bracken and the hero growl at each other to prove how manly they both are. Narishka inexplicably comes between them...
How nice of his mother to help him for once. Not that it mattered.
(The Chronicler notes that it's really very nice of him to be so very hung up about his mother.)
"He didn't say much. Pietra tore his tongue out after he refused to tell her his clue."
In a very fucked-up sort of way, it was nice to know that the fine art of torturing someone for information was lost on the MODs.
Cathed: "They're the most rubbish torturers ever!"
The Chronicler: "Why need we ever worry if the side of evil is so incompetent?"
Varian forced himself not to react even though inside he ached dearly for the poor unsuspecting man who'd been up against Morgen's pets.
The Chronicler: "I'm not convinced. He's an all powerful Grail Knight. There's nothing weak or poor about that."
The fact that MODs held no compassion for anyone was what had enabled them to turn on their own parents.
The Chronicler: "Or their parents were EvilSlutBitches like yours."
"How did you capture him?"
One corner of Bracken's mouth quirked up. "I can't be giving away our secrets, turncoat."
The Anthropologist: "You've already given all the secrets away."
"Come, Varian. You visit me so seldom that I don't want to waste our time down here with the MODs."
The Balance: "Drink! Dodgy comments!"
He froze in the middle of the hallway as her words went through him like acid.
Lady Miriam: "Acid? That's a medical complication."
"And you also told me that you'd see me dead, which makes me wonder if this person is the one you'd have kill me."
The Anthropologist: "Why is the 'tardmonkey following her again? Can't he just zap himself away?"
Yet before he could move, he felt her snap something onto his wrist. He looked down at the small gold bracelet that was heavily etched with the fey words—Era di crynium bey. Freedom is an illusion [...]
She stepped forward to whisper, "You can no longer travel through the veils. You're stuck here, Varian. More than that, your magick is neutralized so long as the bracelet is on your wrist."
Pillywiggin: "That's flangy!"
The Anthropologist: "The GM has probably realised that it's just fundamentally broken to have him zap everywhere like that."
The Chronicler: "It's remarkable that the paranoid man who has lightning reflexes managed to not evade that silly bracelet."
Even though he continued to fight, they clapped a chain on each wrist and chained his arms to opposite walls so that he was standing in the room with his arms spread wide.
Pillywiggin: "Kinky."
There was no missing the satisfied gleam in his mother's eyes.
Pillywiggin: "Even moreso."
"Peel his armor off."
The Anthropologist: "It's probably been embedded into his skin by now."
"It won't come off." [..]
Shrieking, she struck him hard against his back, forcing him forward so that his arms were wrenched by the chains.
Pillywiggin screams long and hard.
The Anthropologist: "Do not want!"
(The Chronicler is really sick of shrieking women. She has this mental image of the banshee-like EvilSlutBitches and it really, really annoys her.)
"Fine, then, fetch us two mandrakes and sledgehammers."
Varian forced himself not to react to that. He had to give her credit. Even in armor, a sledgehammer would hurt.
The Anthropologist: "I thought they were just about to insert the mandrake into the armour..."
He locked gazes with her, but there was no compassion to be found there. Not that he'd expected it. No Adoni had ever possessed an ounce of maternal instinct. It just wasn't in their genes.
Lady Miriam: "Fay have genes?!"
The Balance: "Well, if they can interbreed with humans, you'd assume they have some..."
She ran a cold finger down his cheek and eyed him as if measuring his strength.
Pillywiggin: "Not potatoes for eyes."
And as the first mandrake slammed his hammer down on Varian's shoulder and he felt it all the way to the marrow of his bones, he knew this was going to be a seriously long day.
(The Chronicler and The Balance debate about whether or not Varian is wearing plate or chain. He was previously described wearing chain, but plate is the traditional image and it makes little sense trying to sledgehammer chain off.)
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