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Post by Dante on Sept 12, 2018 9:00:24 GMT -5
You sure know how to keep your readers waiting, Jacques, but it's a pleasure to once again be immersed in the strange, rich, intertextual world you have created, as strange and rich and intertextual as the style you've written it in. I take a natural interest in your character of Alighiero; and am also intrigued by the device of hiding something not in space but exclusively in time, not moving forwards.
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Post by Foxy on Sept 13, 2018 8:26:10 GMT -5
I love how you put all kinds of stories together, although I am probably not recognizing even half of them, as I don't read a whole lot of fiction or watch a whole lot of television or movies. But I recognize the portkey, and I have seen maybe two episodes of Dr. Who and know about the TARDIS. I like your characters!
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Post by Jacques Snicket on Sept 26, 2018 15:52:54 GMT -5
Deleterious Diagnosis 07
A bright whirlwind surrounded the pair as they traversed the environs of spacetime. Sound was wooshing backwards and time seemed to go taut, stretching everything into infinity and snapping back into nothing all at once. It was a trillion lifetimes, and it was no time at all. An eerie sky rushed within and without, with dark stars emblazoned on a field of stark white. Existence shrunk and expanded as one living leviathan sustaining the cycles of all.
Heraclitus had been correct, as had Thales: all was fire and water and all states of form in between them, dancing energy, pulsating, moving forever, spiraling and rising and falling, simmering and condensing, forming and dying, amassing and dissipating. Life itself was a mere bubble in the ordered chaos of the Flux, which the Greeks had named Rhea, the Ever-Flowing One, Mother of Gods and Men, Nyx, the Night, and the Babylonians had named Tiamat, the Great Deep. Out of the Flowing arose a Spinning Star tapering itself into a panentheistic diamond. This was the First Sun, the Pythagorean Heart of the Universe, the Goddess of Which Faraday had seen glimpses of in his visions, and was now experiencing first hand with an almost-as-legendary Alighiero Mallahnson. They were in Her Realm now, silently, passengers on the Great Barque of Ra sailing through the Cosmic River of the Birth of Light from the Great Womb of the All-Encompassing Darkness. It was a Darkness reminiscent of the aura of menace surrounding the higher villains involved in the war against V.F.D., and its schism into "pro-water" and "pro-fire" sides. Yet this Darkness was not threatening, and neither was the Fire that arose forth from it. Both Fire and Water were "gentle", and sustained one another in their great dance.
Countless histories streamed past like a melody, its notes arranged in the symphony of cause and effect, interrelation and reciprocity, a grand orchestra conducted since before the ardent yearning of the first stars themselves. From Light burst Fire, and from Fire burst Warmth, and from Warmth burst Life. And Life begot Death, Death begot Life anew, and the Waters came forth from the furnace of Fire, and the Water was condensed from the supernal quantum Darkness out of which Light was made. And they sailed through the birth of the universe, a tale of balance and imbalance, and alighted upon an open area on a cloudless night, and the universe contracted in a flash of light.
In the deep, he dreamed of Kit Snicket. Only, Kit Snicket was not Kit Snicket, and the Black Cat Coffee shop was deserted in the afternoon, a dry musk of coffee beans in the air, and somebody tied up within a secret compartment behind the cupboard. He dreamed of fire, and of Kit Snicket running from that fire as it consumed the V.F.D. Library along with the rest of the Headquarters, and he dreamed of question-marked eyebrows that were laughing as the fire and smoke rose. He dreamed of Count Olaf in the underwater catalog of the Hotel Denouement. He dreamed of the blue police box, and of Alexandra Radzinsky who had taken it and left him for dead. He dreamed of the Mortmain Mountains, and the great snows of winters past. And he dreamed of an indomitable and elegant woman clad in purple, wielding a cane with its gem aglow in a strange battle against sentient pumpkins whose eyes burnt with the unholy flames of Israphel the Dark Lord, and of a foreboding house with a clock in its walls, ticking back to —
He gasped like a fish out of water when he woke. A haze clouded his vision, and he had an acute coughing fit when he tried to stand up. “Easy there, lad,” Alighiero Mallahnson bent in his view, looking over him. “Quantum dislocation is a common side-affect to the method we have just used. Take a moment.” Faraday nodded weakly, still disoriented, staring blankly into wherever they were now, his breathing subsiding to a more manageable state. “We are here.” They were along a road in a clearing, with the smoke of a tiny hamlet close by, edging into view. Mallahnson stretched his arms, enveloping the day in a theatrical sweep. “We are heading to a very good establishment. A quaint little stop-off.”
“The Horse and Crown?”
“No. The Leek and Bong. I’m good friends with the proprietor.”
“Oh my days...”
——————————————————
Ellington Feint glowered in her disguise. That fool of a boy was not coming. She realized it might come to this, that he’d found out who she really was before she’d intended. As it was, he was now a liability to her plans. She could take no chances. In the days of her son she’d taught him to always have a contingency plan. She wondered about Fitzgerald and what he was doing now. She had a funny feeling, but pushed it down. The air crackled with demented intensity and black void. The shadows deepened and the lights quailed for fear. This was the heat death of the universe. Quintus Dellegaarde was here.
“Your son is dead, Feint.”
She nodded, blankly. “You killed him?”
“Indeed. He was too dangerous to be left alive.”
“Dangerous?”
“Yes. A trait he acquired from you. You are unfathomable, Feint, and Lord Israphel abhors a vaccuum. You seem to play both sides like a saxophone, but I know where your heart truly lies. In the wild. With your dead father. With Lemony Snicket. With the Bombinating Beast.”
“He hurt me. He ruined my life.”
“And so you set out to ruin his sister. It all began in that train cell. Impressive, Feint.” He laughed, a dark echo of things to come, when the Dark Lord arose once more with power and might to enslave all to his will.
“Why are you here?”
“Why am I here, indeed,” Dellegaarde was made of stone. He drew a poison dart from the inside of his coat, seething with the insanity of pure evil.
“You will prove to me that you are useful, or you will meet your son’s fate.”
Unnatural hatred glowered from within the depths of an ancient hunger. The hate was swelling in Ellington now, fed by this eldritch source beyond the stars. Her eyes began to flame black purple and her skin began to decay. She was flushed with death, yet she did not die. She felt him jab the poison dart, and a riotous fury erupted as she burned the poison out of her system. She hissed like a snake, basking in her anger and the utter power it gave her.
“You dare...”
“Yes, I dare, Feint. I dare because I alone am worthy to dare. You have proven yourself up to the task.”
“And that task is?”
“I have a new mission for you. You will find Florence Zimmerman and incapacitate her. Subdue her magic.”
A flicker of fear passed her face as if she remembered something. “She is very powerful.”
“Yes...indeed. Deal with her, Ellington Feint, and you shall have your revenge.”
“Where will I find her?”
“Your puppet and Mallahnson will lead you to her.”
“That boy is no longer my puppet. He is a liability.”
“Are you blind, Ellington Feint? Have you forgotten the face of your father already?”
Ellington wavered, and said, “No, I have not.”
“Do not lie to me, Ellington Feint.”
Dellegaarde regarded her with one last, icy look, and turned away into the black mist to utter one last thing:
“I shall remember this.”
Ellington Feint waited, and at last she was alone.
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Post by Dante on Sept 27, 2018 3:17:01 GMT -5
A rather poetic sojourn into the cosmic, Jacques. I also sense from an offhand allusion that you are still weaving fresh material into your grand tapestry. It's certainly a far bigger picture than ever its raw materials dreamed.
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Post by Foxy on Sept 28, 2018 6:51:33 GMT -5
I like when you talk about the "pro-water" side of the schism - I never thought of it that way! I also enjoyed your saxophone simile.
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Post by Jacques Snicket on Oct 13, 2018 13:21:18 GMT -5
Deleterious Diagnosis 08
“Harold, they’re adorable.”
The Leek and Bong was a rather peculiar inn as it was built and financed from the coffers of one of the laissez-faire Duncans from Mistral City across the Sargasso Sea. The place was meant to be in competition with the Horse and Crown elsewhere.
“Listen, Ethel, how many times have I told this to you, we’re adorable too.”
“We are not, Harold, don’t be ridiculous!”
“Well, it’s what we’re doing now. Being adorable.”
“Is not.”
“Is too.”
“Is not.”
“Is too.”
“Is not.”
“Is too!”
“Is not!”
Mallahnson’s eyes were twinkling at the overheared argument between what surely was an old married couple who were arguing over another couple who were also assumed to be married despite the fact that they were both women.
The two were at another table, staring into each other’s eyes. The taller blonde was an elegant ghost of the past come to life, hair like soft sunlight, pearl earrings like stars, lips like rouge, eyes like icy blue. The other woman, a bit shorter, brunette, looked as if she had been newly born out of some cosmic wish the other woman had wordlessly spoken one night in the lonely confines of her sophistication, and it was as if she had had her wish granted, flung from space like a burning meteorite only to land at her feet, scorchless and immaculate, behind a busy shop counter in the middle of a glistening winter.
The two sat like that for what seemed to be an eternity as some unheard melody wafted between them like the scent of the finest perfume that only they could smell, a song that only they could hear. The ache of a thousand lifetimes spent without each other, or just one. Just one lifetime would be enough. Just one lifetime without the warmth of her touch, her smile, her laughter, her eyes. It was like a nightmare neither of them could wake from had been their lives before they had met each other.
“Therese, darling, whatever is the matter?” The soft voice dripped with concern like fresh dew off the morning breeze. Therese almost sobbed.
The older woman grabbed her shaking hand and lightly squeezed it, looking into her turmoiled hazel eyes, pleading grey into storming brown.
“I- I don’t know who I am anymore. I - I’m being torn apart,” quiet sobs gasp through her speech, and she wished more than ever than to disappear, to not burden her with yet another foolish outburst of emotion. The other woman could only look heartbroken as she continued in between her flowing tears. “I begged for you to come back to me after you left, everywhere I walked I could only see you, and my old life was cast away to some other era of which only faded photographs remain because I lost the only person who didn’t make me feel like I was a chore to be done, or something to be brought out when it was suited to somebody else, and for the first time I felt like I mattered, because you came into my life like a dream that was too good to be true.” Therese was shaking all over, a bitterness and a grief beyond words sizzled through her, and the other woman was powerless to do anything but watch her suffer.
“You broke my heart, Carol, and I know I should hate you for hurting me, but I can’t. I can’t deny my feelings for you, not anymore, not after what you put me through, and I know I should have never forgiven you for it, and I know I should never have agreed to meet you here in this strange…place…but ever since I’ve had the time to myself to sort out my selfish feelings for you, and I realized that I should never have gone with you in the first place, and my heart would not be broken, and your life would be happier without me in it!” She was sobbing wholly now, a crushed hope like a dampened sunrise.
Carol was stunned, her grey eyes brimming with unshed tears and a maelstrom of emotion brewing across her face. “Please don’t say that, dearest. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I never should have left you like that. I never should have left you at all. I can’t stand you like this, Therese.”
“I want to be free of this pain,” Therese whispered. “I am so in love with you that I can’t bear another moment without you. I would have died for you, Carol, had you wanted me to. I would do anything for you.”
Carol dropped the cutlery in her remaining hand and rushed over to her, grabbing her into a desparate embrace, tears flowing down her ivory cheeks, and kissed her hard. “God damn you, Harge,” Carol breathed to herself as she kissed Therese’s tears away. “I love you, Therese,” holding her close, caressing her gently as if she were the last rose in existence. “I will always be here for you, I’ll never leave you again, my beautiful angel, I promise you.”
“I am yours forever, always and forever. I’ve been so selfish and you don’t deserve that, Carol, you don’t deserve me. I took your family from you. I took your life from you.”
“It’s not about deserve. I took what you gave willingly. And I gave of myself to you willingly. I love you, my darling, and I will never stop loving you. Besides Rindy, what I had before you was hardly what anyone could call a life. I would do it all over again, Therese, in a thousand cities, a thousand houses, in heaven and in hell, to be with you.”
Therese was gazing at her. The pain still welled in her eyes, but there was something else there, too. It was like the eye of a damaged hurricane, steady, yet fragile. “Oh, Carol -”
She regarded Therese warmly, a fire of protectiveness blazing in her grey eyes. “You’ve done nothing to make it up to me for. It is I who need to make it up to you, my darling.”
Therese softened.
“What was this place again?”
“This? The Leek and Bong. Isn’t that awful.”
Away from that secluded spot in the corner, Alighiero Mallahnson looked on wistfully. He turned to Faraday. “I knew I was right to come here. I just knew it.”
“What was that all about?”
“A little experiment of mine. You see, before I found you, I had gone to this very establishment sometime in your future and placed something there. A slip of paper with the words ‘one mint julep’. Isaac Newton once theorized about ‘spooky action at a distance’ when it came to gravity’s effects. He had stumbled upon what we now know as the curvature of space and time. It is the same with the sub-atomic. In my line of work, distances and times do not matter at all. It is instantaneous. Previously when I ran this experiment, I had left a scarf here, and when I went back in time to this place, they had a terrible fight and they never reconciled. They were over. But something changed. I don’t know what, but something changed in space and time.”
Faraday was mystified by this. He knew that his adventures had been unusual and fraught with trials and tribulations. And his heart had been tested just as surely as had the hearts of the two women at the corner table. But had he come out better for it, as they had for what seemed to be this time around? Then a surge of unpleasantness washed over him when he thought of Mallahnson’s “experiment”. It rankled him. Love wasn’t something you could run tests on. It was personal and subjective, ineffable and undefinable. “Don’t toy with their hearts,” he said to Mallahnson with finality, thinking of Theodora. Thinking of Kit.
“They deserve to be happy, in each other’s arms.” Faraday felt lost as he said this.
Mallahnson had the decency to be ashamed, at least it showed on his face. “I’m sorry, Daniel. I was never good at this, you know, emotions.”
“But why else are we here?”
“Oh. I’m waiting for a contact. You see, I left another message, this time in the past but not too far, telling her to meet us here.”
Faraday suddenly had an image of a woman in purple. He shook his head slightly, as if in half-remembrance. He’d seen her before. Somehow. It eluded him.
“Her name’s Florence. Florence Zimmerman. She’s a magician by trade, having lost her family in the war. I hear she’s made a new friend. Jonathan Barnavelt. Another magician. Eccentric fellow. But then again she’s eccentric herself, so it was bound to happen sometime.”
“What was bound to happen? Alighiero, you sly fox, is that you?”
Faraday turned, and there she was. Elegant and stately, clad in purple carrying her purple umbrella, she smiled cheekily, eyes dancing with curiosity. “Who’s this, Dante?”
“A spitting image of his uncle.”
“Hello there, young man.”
“Hello.”
“Do you like magic?”
“I’m not sure.”
“I’m sure you’ll like it when I do this.”
When he finally turned, what Faraday saw made his blood run cold.
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Post by Dante on Oct 14, 2018 8:38:20 GMT -5
It's increasingly difficult for me to tell apart your original characters from your borrowings, Jacques; you integrate them seamlessly, or rather, your world has expanded to contain multitudes. That cliffhanger is a dramatic change in tone; the suspense has been increased.
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Post by Jacques Snicket on Nov 8, 2018 23:08:47 GMT -5
Deleterious Diagnosis 09
They were all dead. The once-inhabited foyer of the Leek and Bong as now a pale reminder of its former joie de vive. Dark mist hovered over tables, arched backs arranged by the sudden and inexplicable throes of death dotted the scene. Misplaced limbs dangled carelessly over ridges, railings and floor rugs. It was as if a manic painter had used the corpses for some macabre masterpiece, utilizing the environment surrounding to create an unholy mise en scène for a play no one dared to name aloud for fear of blasphemy.
Willing himself not to regurgitate, Faraday took a deep shaky breath. He slowly looked around. An aura of danger and imperceptible doom floated just beyond the tip of his tongue. He recalled faintly a similar feeling when he’d woken up outside the charred Baudelaire mansion. Jacques Snicket had warned him to flee, and so he had, on the wings of a destiny more convoluted than he had ever imagined. That destiny had led him here. He felt sick. Again, the urge to vomit came upon him, but he stifled it for the second time. He glanced over to the far table, where the two woman had sat mere seconds ago. Alive, well, and together.
There was an arresting silence now. It was as if the glow of a light had lost all intensity, despite remaining lit. The two women resembled sculptures in death. Their hands stretched out to reach the other, barely touching each other’s fingers. Slumped forward as if in crushing despair, tears still visible on their pale alabaster cheeks, eyes shut forever closed. They were dead. And nothing Alighiero Mallahnson did could bring them back, no quantum trick, no trip back into the past, no hope for the future. This is what will happen should you fail…
He whipped his head around. The whisper had come from nowhere, yet it seemed to him to emanate from his own mind. It had been distinctly feminine. He could not place whom it belonged to. He shook his head and took another measured look around. Dried blood caked the surfaces of the room. An acrid stench wafted to his nostrils, causing him to gag in revulsion. Find Diophantus Diogenes, the voice spoke again. Faraday started. Who was Diophantus Diogenes? Before he could think more, the atmosphere began to dim.
Dreary, dreary, dreary, dreary, dreary, dreary.....
The lamplights flickered. A cavernous pause bellowed like a cave troll. An eerie chorus mounted as the dark mists saturated the room, lending a magenta penumbra to the horrifying masque playing out in front of him. Black-robed figures materialized out of the shadows amongst the tables. Garroted voices intoned a morose dirge to a morose god. Drawn cowls hid their profiles in menacing silhouettes. A lightless fire spurted above them, purple like the hue of Florence Zimmerman’s accoutrements yet somehow more malicious.
An imposing figure, thick-set and full of power, stepped into the center of an invisible circle. He raised his big hands and called out to the Dread Darkness, eyes black as obsidian mirrors. It was an Elder Language he spoke, given to nocturnal soothsayers since the dawn of human consciousness from beyond the stars. Sound rang out, rattling the foundations of the world and upsetting the course of the planets in their celestial solar circumambulations. Heavy waters gushed outward from the middle where he stood, an infernal lightning post for the Netherworld to coalesce its writhing energies. Obscure tentacles of dark energy flailed wildly against the human circle, inky blackness suffocating the air like an oppressive curse.
Gemstone eyes flared in the darkness and an eldritch laugh thundered from the depths.
———————————
Coughing suddenly, Faraday awoke. Florence Zimmerman’s anxious face hovered above him, flanked by a discomfited Alighiero Mallahnson. “You were out for quite a while.” Florence’s voice was tinged with fear. Faraday rose slowly to his feet. They were in another room in another place. “What...what was that?” he asked her. A glimmer of horror in her eyes, she shook her head. “I transported us out of there. I shouldn’t have done that, knowing you haven’t gotten used to the way we travel. Dante here experienced an extreme bout of seasickness the first time we met.” Mallahnson stiffly turned away, ignoring her. She laughed softly at the memory, yet her face grew ashen. “I saw darkness rolling off of you, darling. What did I put you through?”
He recalled everybody dead in the Leek and Bong. The robed figures. The mist. The despair. “Everyone was dead.”
Mallahnson whipped his head around. “What?”
Faraday repeated himself. “Everyone was dead. I saw it as I see you now, Mrs. Zimmerman.”
“Florence, my darling, call me Florence,” she corrected abruptly, caressing his cheek. He continued.
“I saw them all dead. There were others, though, appearing out from the shadows, chanting a strange hymn.”
Florence paled considerably. “A strange hymn?”
Faraday nodded. “I heard only one word, though.”
“What word was that, dearest?”
“Dreary.”
“Darling, you are in danger.”
“Any more danger than I’m usually in?”
“This is worse,” interjected Mallahnson. “My experiments have been turning out...odd results. Broken time loops. Disappearances. And the diminution of Florence’s magic.”
“Which is why I’ve told you to be careful, Dante,” Florence lightly admonished him. “I won’t be there to help you every single time. You know that.”
“Does the name ‘Diophantus Diogenes’ mean anything to you?” Faraday asked.
Florence regarded him again with her concerned eyes. Mallahnson paced about in thought.
“Yes, it does,” Mallahnson finally answered, “he’s a doctor. Works at the Belled Cat Sanitarium. Or he used to. Why?”
“I was told that if I did not find him, everyone would be dead.”
“But he perished in a fire set by one of the Snickets.”
“No, you timey-wimey nitwit, it was Ellington Feint.”
“How do you know that, you old hag?”
“Well, Dante, since when did Kit Snicket suddenly acquire a taste for jazz music?”
“Point taken.”
“Ellington Feint?” Faraday asked. Where had he heard the name before? Then it clicked. The headquarters! A Fitzgerald Feint was the resident coffee brewer. He inwardly smacked himself for overlooking that. “There was a coffee brewer named Feint, but he disappeared sometime before the headquarters —” he stopped himself, the guilt rising in him anew. He bowed his head.
Florence went over to him. “What’s wrong?” she said, as if she could feel his pain. He was trembling. She cupped his face in her hands, lifted his head up, and brushed her thumbs at the edges of his eyes, opening them, and she tentatively held his gaze like the most fragile glass work. “Darling,” she pleaded.
“I helped her set so many fires...I thought it was for the greater good...I thought I was noble enough...” His face was haunted by guilt and sudden realization of the truth. His look was the epitome of defeat. “I was wrong. I was wrong about all of it.” He willed himself to be swallowed up by the ground beneath his feet. Finding himself still existing, he cursed mentally.
“I’m here, dearest, I’m here,” Florence whispered into his ear as she held him for some time. He melted into her embrace, hungry for the solace she offered, unaware of anything or anyone but her holding him close, her scent divine. His heart fluttered, punching a hole of hope through his despair. She kissed him softly and they turned to find Mallahnson conspicuously looking away from their general direction.
“I, uh, was just over here,” the physicist said, facing them at last, embarrassment on his scientific face. “Are we done with the kissy face, Florence?”
“Oh, don’t mind him, my darling,” she whispered to a red-faced Faraday, “he’s never been in love before.” She smiled at him warmly. He nearly swooned but for her steady hand.
“Not true! My first love was Newton’s Principia Mathematica.”
“And you wonder why I tell you to get out more.”
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Post by Dante on Nov 9, 2018 5:56:43 GMT -5
Well, unless Florence Zimmerman is yet another villain in disguise, I take it from this that she did not actually mean to put poor Mr. Faraday through yet more horror and suffering. I guess that's just his lot in life! At least he seems to have come out of things with a better understanding of the situation.
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Post by Foxy on Nov 9, 2018 7:53:52 GMT -5
Is "dreary" a nod to the Gothic Archies? I enjoyed the humor at the end; it gave me a chuckle.
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Post by Jacques Snicket on Nov 9, 2018 13:12:11 GMT -5
Is " dreary" a nod to the Gothic Archies? I enjoyed the humor at the end; it gave me a chuckle. Yes. I've had in mind a particular post in an old thread called "Fortunately Unfortunately" where the Baudelaires have been sent back from the Death Star (Return of the Jedi), (no one knew the Star Wars references) and find themselves at the charred remains of their home, with a robed choir slowly emerging singing "Dreary, Dreary" from the Gothic Archies book songtrack, like a scene in a play. Well, unless Florence Zimmerman is yet another villain in disguise, I take it from this that she did not actually mean to put poor Mr. Faraday through yet more horror and suffering. I guess that's just his lot in life! At least he seems to have come out of things with a better understanding of the situation. She does have a past with the enemies of the series, yes. Yes. I've had in mind a particular post in an old thread called "Fortunately Unfortunately" where the Baudelaires have been sent back from the Death Star (Return of the Jedi), (no one knew the Star Wars references) and find themselves at the charred remains of their home, with a robed choir slowly emerging singing "Dreary, Dreary" from the Gothic Archies book songtrack, like a scene in a play. Actually, to correct my past self, it was a thread called "Persnickety Pick Your Own Adventure" I was thinking of. Or another thread like it.
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Post by Jacques Snicket on Jan 8, 2019 16:45:48 GMT -5
Deleterious Diagnosis 10
Daniel Faraday was running for his life as usual, a phrase which here means “he had been separated from Florence Zimmerman and Alighiero Mallahnson and was now trying to hide from the relentless pursuit of the Inhumane Society’s reckless and unscrupulous minions”. He had run from his enemies before, but he had always been alone. He had been alone ever since his adoptive family the Humes had perished, leaving him nothing but a charred inheritance. Theodora had found him and trained him in the ways of V.F.D., and then she had disappeared, never to be seen again. That was when Alexandra Radzinsky had taken a sinister interest in him and the ersatz sugar bowl that had once been in his possession, believing it to be the real sugar bowl. That was when he’d met Ivo Hardrada, the man who would later betray him, an act which would have led to his certain death had a time-traveling Count Olaf from the future of another timeline not selfishly intervened in the villainous squabble. Faraday had escaped with his life again, but that time there was something else at work, something else Mallahnson and his physicist uncle were at the center of. He had not died from Alexandra Radzinsky’s poisoned bullet. He ought to have been dead, yet he had survived, inexplicably. Somehow, time travel had made him an exception to the rule. But he was not alone anymore. He ran quicker. He was not alone. Florence. Florence was in danger. Mrs. Zimmerman, Florence: kind and elegant and beautiful and smart and pained and magnificent and indomitable —
He stopped. Listening for footsteps, the creaking of shadows, he settled for a brisk walk. They had been heading for the site of the TARDIS, hidden in the past in which they were in now. They had been trailed. The TARDIS was not there. Someone had taken it. But who? To when? Before they could figure it out, a massive army had swarmed them, the leader the same person he had seen in the vision, evoking a sad and dreary god who feasted on living nightmares.
Florence had wielded her umbrella both as shield and blaster. Mallahnson had pulled out what he called a “sonic screwdriver” that he’d borrowed from a friend of his a very long time ago. Faraday had not known what to do, or how to defend them, having no weapons on him, save his mind and his heart.
Assailed thus, they had been scattered, and now here he was, hiding like a coward when she was no match for the darkness he had awoken by traveling back to the burnt remains of the Baudelaire mansion. If anything happened to her, he would to the astonishment of all sound logic always hold himself responsible no matter what anybody else would try to tell him. Florence was his second chance. His redemption. He felt that if she were to die, it would be over, quantum exemption or not. Dellegaarde would win. Love would be for naught. The world would certainly grow more quiet, but not in the way he wanted. This quietude was dour and imposing, bereft of hope and the will to fight.
He looked back. The swarm of Inhumane Society members grew into focus, the silver I.S.’s on their robes glinting in the night like discordant cicadas. They chanted gloomily, dark magic flowing from them. Scream and run away, they said, daring him to scream and run away. Run, run run run run run run run, or die, die die die die die die die die die die. Their leader swept them aside, parting them like wisps of smoke. Yellow eyes glowed, framed by tawny hair. “Well well well, dearie. Look what we have here.”
Daniel blanched. He had heard of this man. Pyratinus Gold, known for making deals with prices and princes. “I told old Severus that the game would begin, and so it has.” Gold filed before his army like a general.
“So. Daniel Faraday. Pleasure to make your acquaintance. Shake my hand?” The dealer held it out. A crooked grin leapt from his face, and Daniel remembered the vision he’d had in the Leek and Bong where death was everywhere. And the thought came to him that it would be just like that crooked grin to shamelessly and seamlessly rise in response to the deluge of carnage — the rites of a dreary god. He refused.
Pyratinus Gold glowered. “You dareth to refuseth me, thou foolish child?” A snarl as fierce as the Tasmanian dust storms spurted forth. “I am the one who single-handedly overthrew the great Empire of Septimania, I upended the fortunes of the city of Agrabah and left it a heap of dusted ruins and mausoleums, I stole the Blue Apples of Hyperborea, I led V.F.D. on the false trail of the sugar bowl, ever so hidden in plain sight, so secret and so covert and so mundane, that I was able to get them to trip over their own shoelaces on a wild arsonist chase. Yes, I set the schism into motion, and all schisms before and afterwards. I was taught by the Dark Lord Israphel himself and you, young fool, shall perish.” Lightning cackled from his eyes and his fiendishly laughing mouth, spreading to his fingertips. “Attack,” he said to his army, and withdrew out of sight in a crackle of dark energy.
The faceless Inhumane Society members drew flaming amethyst swords forged from the core of the deepest volcanic abscess under the surface of the crust, melded with the sparking meteorites from beyond the Kuiper Belt. They were feral creatures, slaves to an inhuman will, silhouettes of their former selves. They grinned in anticipation of battle. Lunging forward, they sped at Faraday, who whirled aside and took to his feet once more. They chanted dark psalms and firestarting folk songs, hymns to a villainous William Shakespeare.
They were gaining on him. A firestorm of fury raged in them. They were drawing dark powers from the flames of infernal prophecy, silent Janissaries before the spring. They pirouetted and gamboled like a festival of omens, giving launch to their inner atavistic impulses. Sleek and fleet of foot as could be, they put on a show of horror. The infernal rite had begun. Daniel Faraday stood, transfixed by the darkness. He was fading and the beast within him wrenched against its chains, waiting to be unleashed. The eyes narrowed as a purple flame shone about him. The grip was relaxed on him, and the Inhumane Society fled. “Come on, darling,” cried a very familiar dulcet tone. Florence had saved him.
————
He watched from the darkness as she had thwarted his attack on the boy, one with the shadows. His servants had fled before her. A dark sneer grew across his visage, firmly dour in its inhumanity. Florence Zimmerman had been a thorn in his side for far too long. Still, he would have Daniel Faraday, and he would make him into what his destiny demanded! The Master was calling. He would conceal himself until the time was right. He disappeared in a cacophony of lightning, scorching the earth around him.
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Post by Dante on Jan 9, 2019 5:03:08 GMT -5
The mini-recap at the beginning of the chapter is much appreciated. Scream and Run Away as the evil chant of occult villains is an amusingly-deployed allusion. Our hapless protagonist is starting to look distinctly underpowered in comparison to his increasingly numerous foes; poor chap just can't catch a break, which is why this is ASoUE fanfiction, I suppose. Thanks for updating!
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Post by Foxy on Jan 9, 2019 9:23:31 GMT -5
I too enjoyed the reference to the Gothic Archies. And the sonic screwdriver! I had a student who was obsessed with Dr. Who, so I know about the sonic screwdriver. I probably missed this as I am new, but is Daniel Faraday the character from Lost?
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Post by Jacques Snicket on Jan 9, 2019 13:47:16 GMT -5
I too enjoyed the reference to the Gothic Archies. And the sonic screwdriver! I had a student who was obsessed with Dr. Who, so I know about the sonic screwdriver. I probably missed this as I am new, but is Daniel Faraday the character from Lost? He is very much inspired by him. He is also inspired by another 667er's ("Mr. erm", as he is known as now as he once went by "Mister M.") character David Faraday in his works here (AnotherSOUE, The Man Who Tried To Kill Dante, and The Rise).
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