Knight of Darknes, contines, part two

Should you, dear reader, be curious Part One is here.

And now for the Prologue, for they are fashionable these days, especially in Fantasy Books...

The Anthropologist: "Read out the List of Wrong."
Matilda: "List of Wrong?"
The Anthropologist: "It's for those who forget how many stupid things there are in the world..."
Pillywiggin (who is standing in for Sordan as Khe keeper of the Book) reads the list.

Medical complications, as always, requires clarification as any description of love which sounds like it's the description of a physical ailment.
Lady Miriam: "If you can name the specific disorder. You get more points."
The Chronicler: "Not if it's Lupus, surely."

The Balance reads: "It has been said by the wise that in the heart of everyman there lies a noble beast who seeks to do what is right..."
Azrael: "Medical complication. Sounds like some sort of parasite."
The Anthropologist: "Does this mean women have original sin and men don't, since women don't have a noble beast inside them?"

But before he becomes a man, he is a child. A boy.
Azrael: "Which proves girls aren't actually children thus if you rape them, it's okay."

In the best of circumstances, that child is conceived in love, and he is nurtured so that he can grow to manhood to be noble and kind, and fulfill his destiny. And then there are others. Those who are conceived in darkness and deceit.
Azrael: "Always keep the light on."

These are not noble beasts. They are fierce and angry.
They are feral lions bent on the destruction of all.
The Anthropologist: "Lions are usually far too lazy for anything of that sort. Too busy napping and having food brought to them by the lionesses."

With scorn and brutality. It is all they know. All they've ever learned.
The Balance: "By the way, this is full of 'tardedly short sentences. All these pauses are the ends of really short sentences."
Lady Miriam: "Grammar that makes me want to stab them?"

I'm one of those of beasts. Meant to be a son of light, I was born of the darkest arts. Torn between the two, I’ve never known peace or succor. Never known a gentle touch. Malice. Cruelty. Rage.
Azrael (referring to Rhage, Phury and Co. of J. R. Ward's books): "So he was brought up by the retarded vampires in the other book?"

Those are what nurtured me into what I am today.
The Anthropologist: "But they're good deep down. Character being entirely dependant on their environment... this sounds like a drunken reading of a child psychology book."

One who stalks this life in search of those like me who walk the path of evil so that I can expose them for what they really are. And once they are known to us, it is by my hand that they die.

I am fortitude. I am sinister.
Cathed: "I am legend."

Most of all, I am hatred. It is what nourishes me more than mother’s milk ever could.
The Anthropologist: "I'm seeing the mother issue flags."

I would have it no other way. For it is that darkest part of my soul that allows me to do what I must. But whether I work for the betterment of mankind or the betterment of myself is anyone’s guess.
Azrael: "Wow this is great... though we need extra hands so we can gaffer tape it to our foreheads."
The Anthropologist: "I still have the hand prop from the 3ygb last year..."

Even my own.
The Anthropologist: "This is really confusing."
Azrael: "Confusingly emo. It's copy-and-pasted out of the About Me section of the hero's MySpace page."

Chapter One...
The Anthropologist: "That was a surprisingly short prologue."

"There's a traitor among us."
With a completely stoic expression, Varian duFey looked up from the desk where he was wasting time on a Sudoku puzzle to meet Merlin’s worried gaze.
The Anthropologist: "What? Did you make that up?"
Lady Miriam: "Was that 12th century Sudoku?"
The Chronicler: "Still in a modern setting."

As always, she was dressed in a long white medieval styled gown that was trimmed in gold...
The Chronicler: "Medieval styled... spanning over a thousand years and an entire continent, is quite possibly more diverse than modern fashion."

Unlike the Merlin who'd served King Arthur, Aquila Penmerlin was lithe and young, with a beauty that was only surpassed by her intelligence and magick.
The Anthropologist: "What?"
The Balance: "Merlin is a hot chick."
Luca: "Magick with a 'K'... We should drink for that, but we would just die."

Scratching his chin, Varian merely arched a single brow at her agitated demeanor. "No shit, Sherlock. There’s always a traitor among us."
Cathed: "Isn't this something they should be working on?"

Before he could move, she waved her hand in a circle before his face, causing a mist to form a ball in the air. As the mist swirled, it began to reveal an image.
The Anthropologist (demonstrating the gensture): "Stoopid flange! ... I wonder if she needs to keep doing this to keep the image up."

It showed a man in his mid twenties lying face down in a pool of his own blood…only the blood wasn’t red, it was a dark sickly gray…as was everything in the picture. That told him that the body wasn’t in the world of man or in Avalon. It was on the “other” side—the one that was controlled by unrelenting evil.
Azrael: "Unrelenting evil is monochrome..."

He could see right where this was heading…straight down a shitty road that ended with him getting screwed over.
The Anthropologist: "Emo!"

Again.
He must truly be a masochist, otherwise, he’d get up right now, tell her to shove it, and leave.
The Anthropologist: "Emo!"
Cathed: "We don't drink for emo... And there's no sex, so we don't care."

...chain-mail armor and dark surcoat that were common for mid twelfth-century England...
(The Chronicler: "I hate saying this, but that was when they were just getting fashionable. And considering how you wear them to keep the sun off your chainmail, it would be downright stupid to make it out of really dark material.")

What made his heart stop beating...
Lady Miriam: "Medical complication."

...was the sight of where the knight's armor had been torn free of his left shoulder blade to reveal the tattoo of a dragon encircled by fire rising out of a goblet...
The Chronicler: "That's a really complicated tattoo."
Lady Miriam: "It's a Harry Potter cover!"
The Anthropologist: "All I can think of now is the knight sitting in the tattoo parlour complaining about it taking too long and the tattoo artist saying I told you so."

"A grail knight?"
Merlin nodded as she released him and stepped back. "Tarynce of Essex. Morgen's MODs..."
The Anthropologist: "MOD?"
The Chronicler: "Minion of Darkness."
The Anthropologist: "You see, I was thinking Minister of Defence. How stupid of me...."

Little wonder that.
The Balance: "WHAT? That's not a sentence."

He personally knew several of Morgen’s minions of death, and they were a hardy bunch who lived for the opportunity to kill anything...
The Chronicler: "Sorry, I misremembered. Minions of Death."
The Anthropologist: "As opposed to what? Minion of Affection, Arson, Sheep-rustling?"
Azrael: "Antisocial behaviour orders."
The Anthropologist: "Minions of Antisocial Behaviour Orders... I'm presuming they have different pay scales and the Minions of Death get paid more."

To be unleashed against an original knight of the Round Table was something they would sell their own mothers for. There was nothing they loved more than to bathe in the blood of their enemies…or their friends either for that matter.
Cathed: "That's scary."

How he hated those words. He'd long grown tired of being Merlin’s tool.
Lady Miriam: "Hurhur... tool."
Cathed: "He should just ditch Merlin and just be a tool."

She was forever asking him to ferret out traitors and information from the other side. And when the traitor needed executing, that, too, was his job. Honestly, he wanted to absolve himself from these distasteful tasks. He was tired of being caught between Merlin and Morgen...
The Anthropologist: "And we have the angst..."

"...From the way his armor was torn from his shoulder, it appears they knew to look for the mark. Someone had to tell them of it, and if Morgen has learned that, then she knows how to identify the remaining grail knights. We are all in danger, Varian. You are in danger."
(The Chronicler: "It's foreshadowing his superspecial flange, by the way, if you haven't noticed.")

Cathed: "Why don't they pick something less distinguishing as a mark..."
The Anthropologist: "It's like the chick in three musketeers who was married to someone who didn't notice her super secret mark."
Lady Miriam: "Like death eaters."

The is a brief digression here about the possibility of Merlin having hypnotic tits like Samira.

The Chronicler: "Maybe they should put the mark somewhere less obvious. Like the bottom of their foot..."
The Balance: "What if their partner has a foot fetish?"
Azrael: "You could always claim a fungal infection."
The Balance: "Fungal infection! My favourite..."

"...if they want to come for me, notify the undertaker. He’ll need to stock up on body bags."
Pillywiggin has switched sides and is drawing the Dark Mark on her arm.

There is impatience in the ranks over the lack of heroine on hero action. The Club could but soldier on. Matilda has begun reading Virgin Slave Barbarian King in tandem.

Merlin reached out a kind hand to touch his forearm. She alone knew that kindness was one of the few things that could render him weak. He’d had so little experience with it that it baffled him, and he never knew how to react.
Lady Miriam: "What?! She's touching my arm?!"
Luca: "She's going to rape me!"

Please, Varian. For me. You're the only one I trust to go inside Glastonbury and look around for information. I have a traitor who told Morgen about that tattoo and Tarynce. Only you can find out what the MODs learned before they executed him. Not to mention someone needs to bring his body home for a proper burial.
(The Chronicler: "Is she hitting on him?")
The Anthropologist: "The one thing that gets me is that... You'd think there was no way to make minions of death sound more stupid than it already sounds. But then, you abbreviate it to MOD and the 'tard quotient goes up."
Cathed: "Does that make them mods?"
Matilda: "Modsquad!"

How easy she made it sound, but Glastonbury was no place for a man like him...
The Anthropologist (in reference to all the hippies that frequent the place): "I'd have to grow a beard and shit!"

Then again, maybe it was. Back before Arthur had fallen under Mordred’s sword, Glastonbury and its abbey had been places of beauty. Now they existed in a nether realm between Avalon and Camelot.
The Chronicler: "No, it exists, like here! I've been there!"
The Anthropologist: "They're Interdimensional travellers!"

Lady Miriam shares an anecdote about the ability to ignore and rewrite the Celtic past in reference to craics and some American who believed that they were some sort of family-friendly-story-telling-ritual.

Matilda points out how some British people believe Winston Churchill was myth.
Cathed: "According to the Daily Mail, which also reports 97% of the population supporting the death penalty."
Azrael: "There's probably a very special group of people they use as their 'representative sample.'"
The Chronicler: "Like Buck Williams the reporter from Left Behind who does his research via the intercom."
Azrael: "You probably would like the death penalty if you feel your boss is about to kill you..."

Nothing with any kind of decency lived there. Nothing. It was hell, and he’d rather have his nostrils slit than ever step foot in there again.
The Chronicler: "I don't think she's been to Glastonbury... hippies and old ladies really aren't that bad."
The Anthropologist: "I'm not convinced she's ever been to the wiki page."

But before he could tell her that, the door to the lounge room opened to admit three men.
The Anthropologist: "The Round Table has a lounge room?!"
Azrael: "Well, they're not allowed to move it. So you have to make the surrounding area as comfortable as possible. Heap stuff around it. Including lounge rooms."

Ademar, Garyth, and the aptly named Bors, who was, in fact, extremely boring. Bors’s father had been a cousin to Varian’s.
The Chronicler: "You mean the staunchly celibate one, the finest knight of the Round Table. Do you mean the one who along Galahad and Percival manages to get to the Holy Grail? Does she just not like celibate men because they're not manly enough?"

"I see you've found our traitor, Merlin," Ademar sneered as he raked Varian with a lethal glare.
Pillywiggin: "Eye beams!"
The Anthropologist: "His glare is harassing Varian's gaze."

Only three inches taller than Ademar, Garyth was stout, with beady brown eyes and dark brown hair.
Lady Miriam: "A knight called Gary?!"
Cathed: "The Knights of the Round Table: Bors. Lancelot. Mordred and... Gary."
The Balance: "No. Gary-th."
Pillywiggin: "The Bastard child of Gary and Gareth, then."

That stung, but not for the reasons Garyth thought. It wasn't Lancelot's treachery that bothered Varian.
(The Chronicler: "This doesn't, as some may think, refer to the fact that Lancelot's torrid affair with Guinevere.")

"If you wish to pick a fight with me, don your armor and meet me in the list."
(The Chronicler: "I'm sure that should be plural. The lists...")

"I don't need words to goad me to kick your asses. Hell, I won't even use my powers to beat you. Be good to get blood on my hands again."
The Balance: "This guy really does have American accent."
Pillywiggin: "He also has p0wrz."

The grail held secrets and a primordial power so great that it would render the person who commanded it indestructible. That was why it [...] had more than one protector to hide it.
Each one of the grail knights held a direct tie to the power that had created the grail and each of them was entrusted with a single clue that could lead to its hiding place.
The Anthropologist: "It looks like she did some research... Not good research, mind. But she did some research. There are enough specifics to suggest that she did more research than most of this books, but it's as though she just didn't like King Arthur very much. As though she was asked to write about it for English and so starts by inventing this knight who was really kickass, not like the other knights, like Lancelot and Bors who sucked..."

But if Morgen gained the single clue from each of the six knights, then she would have the grail’s location.
Lady Miriam: "It's like the Sunday Times Crossword puzzle."

And Varian had seen enough of her magic-with-a-k to know exactly what that would mean to the world.
(The Chronicler: "Considering what's happening to Camelot, it just sounds like it'll be a bit like a more goth version of Seattle.")

Why do I care?
The Anthropologist: "It's as though she genuinely hates this setting and the only way to make it bearable is to make fun of it whilst writing it. But not in a good parody way. More like a really bad noir cop who makes fun of the other knights... Parody but not. I'm not sure it's meant to be a parody."

Glancing up at Merlin, he projected his next thought to her alone.
Lady Miriam: "So he's telepathic now?"
The Balance: "So is she."

Sadness darkened her eyes.
Azrael: "That's a rather unsubtle telepathic feed if her retinas bleed whenever it happens."

You know I can't tell you that. It's not that I don't trust you, Varian, but should you fall into Morgen’s hands, it is best that only I know the identities of the surviving grail knights.
The Anthropologist: "How has it taken Morgen this many centuries to work out that she should torture each one of the grail knights to get their clue? Surely that'd be the first course of action?"
The Balance: "The murder is happening in the 12th century..."

Ademar scoffed. "I don't fear demonspawn. I destroy them."
The Anthropologist: "There are demons in this book... I suppose there is blue man?"

He took a deep breath so that he could smell the man’s fear and sweat.
The Anthropologist: "You smell purty..."

The humor fled Varian as he met his cousin's gaze. They were family. But more than that, they were enemies. And bitter ones at that.
(The Chronicler: "Enemies not reappearing in this book. Don't hope for any of these walk-on knights to appear again. Or even have their own books, or even webpage, for that matter. They're just not hawt enough.")

The son of Arthur's most beloved knight and the son of Arthur’s most bitter enemy. Unlike the others, he had blood loyalty to both sides of this conflict. And it was a loyalty both sides didn’t hesitate to abuse.
(The Chronicler notes that he's really being overcome by emo at this point. His mother is the right hand woman of Arthur's most bitter enemy. And he really doesn't give a flying fuck to them. He might want to angst about the loyalty he owes them, but it's just that: pure pointless angst to fuel his bloated ego. The other side have no hold on him.)

Varian indicated Ademar with a jerk of his chin. "At least my mother didn’t give me a name that sounded like a bad candy bar."
The Anthropologist: "At least they didn't give him the intellect of candy bar."
Cathed: "But they called you Varian."
(The Chronicler: "Meaning 'variable', by the way, just to hammer in the whole dark/light theme.")

Honestly, he wasn't his father's son so much as he was his mother's. There was nothing in life he enjoyed more than taunting others. Nothing he liked more than feeling the blood of his enemies coating his hands—but not before he’d had ample time to torture them.
The Anthropologist: "So he's a murder and a torturer... nice."
Cathed: "An interesting twist on the whole raypist business."

Battle, mayhem, insults.
The Anthropologist: "One of these is not like the other two... can you spot the odd one out?"

Varian waved his hand over his clothes, changing them from his black shirt and jeans to the medieval attire [...] His dark brown leather jerkin was heavy, but not nearly as much as the mail shirt that whispered metallically against his skin.
The Loinfire Club recoil in a great collective Owww! due to Varian's wearing chainmail against his bare skin.
The Anthropologist: "He's wearing mail shirt under his chainmail not over?! Chaff-age!"
Azrael: "That man will have no nipples by the end of the book."
Lady Miriam: "He might have demon-strength nipples."
The Anthropologist: "If he's really lucky, he'll have waxed. If's he's not..."
Cathed: "He can magic-with-a-k away his body hair?"

He pulled into place the studded black leather vambrace that held a metal inset to protect his forearm from a sword strike...
The Anthropologist: "Stealth full plate! Though I'm not convinced it works in real life since you'd notice that that man's vambrace is about twice as it's supposed to be for no apparent reason."
Lady Miriam: "It's work if he was wearing furs. That'd hide it."
The Anthropologist: "I'm don't understand why he has to hide it in the first place."

On the human side of the veil, the abbey was nothing but ruins. Behind the veil, it was still thriving, only there was no godliness in that place. It was unholy. It was also a neutral zone where no magic-with-a-k would work.

No one was really sure why.
The Anthropologist: "I suspect that the author hasn't worked out mechanics yet and is just making shit up now."
The Watcher: "Mechanics-with-a-k?"

The speculation into the mysterious nature of Glastonbury being sucked into the eternal twilight zone continues. Pillywiggin makes a very deliberate note for "Stupid flange."

That and his willingness to ruthlessly kill anyone who annoyed him.
Oh yeah, it was good to be evil…

The Chapter ends...