Delicate Essence
by Tim Fletcher, 1999
dungard@yahoo.com
This one’s for Ostercy. It uses the Marvel, Heinkel and Smashed fonts. Sorry if you don’t have them. It might look a little funny. I’m pretty sure most of y’all will have those three though.
‘
AAAAAballahakoopar!’The lone buyer in the cloak stopped in his walking and addressed the street seller.
‘What have you got?’
‘Welllll, my good citizen, I have the widest variety of product you will ever see under the lights of sky, only the finest, only the best.’
‘Yes, yes, I’m sure. Show me one.’
‘Well, good citizen, here is an excellent one. Young, strong, and filled with the sorts of qualities that are highly valued.’
The street seller proffered a small glass orb to the buyer, who took it and stared into its apparently empty depths. There was a pause.
‘No, this one is not to my liking. Do you have another?’
‘Ah, try this one, citizen. Strong in spirit, but workable.’
The buyer swapped the sphere for another apparently identical one. He stared deep into its centre, where he witnessed...
* * *
Grunting, Lara pulled herself over the lip and into the rocky cleft. She had avoided devious traps, slaughtered and escaped from terrifying beasts, scaled impossible climbs and solved recalcitrant puzzles to reach this point. Now the Stone of Etimol was within her grasp. Somewhere within the-
Her train of thought was cut off as a thunderous roar announced the arrival of a very large Chinook helicopter, which chose this precise moment to majestically loom over the top of the mountain. And those green things dangling down would be-
She was cut off yet again as she hurled her body into the rocky cleft just as the automatic weapons fire started cutting into the cliff face. Cursing herself for not hearing the low drone of the rotors above the howling winds here near the summit, she tried to squeeze her way through the tiny entrance to the Etimol complex. Quickly hurling her backpack through, and reasoning that the thing about cats had better be true for her too, she stuck her head into the rock.
Grunting and huffing, she pressed the weight of her bosom into the cleft with her shoulders. Not an easy task. The joint tuneless cacophony of the gale, the chopper and the assault rifles bit into her ears, but she resolutely heaved herself through, scraping her breasts painfully.
With a pop more imagined than produced, she emerged on the other side, legs protected by the thick trousers she wore. The air in here was more protected than outside, but she could hear whatever thugs Speckled Egg had sent after her had landed outside. Spinning and drawing her Desert Eagle, she aimed back through the gap. There was no way she could have made it through there, surely...
The first soldier’s head appeared marginally before his gun, but he never got a chance to fire as the hole blossomed in his face and he was hurled backwards to dangle on his wire below the helicopter. Lara fired a couple more shots to keep their heads down and retreated. At least they couldn’t follow her.
Looking back, she saw that the short, claustrophobic passage she stood in terminated in a chute of some kind. That was the way to go...
She was brought back to the gunfight by the sight of a small dark object being hurled into the narrow gap. That could only be one thing. Rapidly spinning, she leapt feet-first into the hole, snatching up her backpack as she left. Behind her the force of the explosion sent a fair-sized shockwave chasing after her trailing ponytail, which only added to the speed of her descent.
She slid out from the chute, which had rapidly flattened out such that she did not injure herself dramatically upon exiting, and got to her feet in a somewhat larger chamber. This was it! There, in the centre, was the Stone. Running quickly across, she scooped up the engraved plaque and, after a brief inspection, stuffed it into her backpack. She had no time to delay. The soldiers would be after her any-
The grenade bounced down out of the chute rather gently. Were they insane? How was blowing it up going to help recover the Stone? Diving for cover, behind the dais on which the Stone had been mounted, she wondered where the Egg got these goons.
Briefly, she thought back to the man at the hotel. She thought of the sweet taste of his lips, the feel of his hand on her skin... and how she probably would never see him again, even if she did make it out of here.
The first soldier came crashing and thrashing out of the chute. If he hadn’t been trained and prepared to kill her, it would have been humorous. Before he could get to his feet, two poorly-aimed shots from the direction of the Dais snapped his body in two. It wasn’t long before the next one arrived.
Lara ducked back behind the rock and prepared to take as many of them as possible.
* * *
The buyer lowered the glass orb. The screams of the dying and the dead echoed in the background. All around them, the pandemonium of the city street swelled and bustled.
‘She is strong, but she has fallen in three. Excellent. I will take this one.’
‘Ah, wonderful citizen, wonderful,’
said the street seller, ‘Shall I wrap it for you?’‘No, I will take it as it is,’
replied the buyer, ‘You do not need to name a price.’The buyer produced and shook out an archaic purse onto the seller’s table. An object of completely obscure origins fell out. It looked like a small chunk of shrivelled skin wrapped around something. The seller snatched it up in his long, red, clawed fingers and cackled.
‘That will be acceptable, fellow citizen. It has been a pleasure doing business with you. Tomorrow I should have a new batch of them. I have a contact who runs jobs into the Echo Side, but don’t tell anyone I told you.’
‘I am sure that you do,’
replied the buyer, smiling grimly beneath his robe, knowing that come the next day this trader would no longer exist and would never have existed. No-one traded with the Echo Side in his domain.* * *
‘Lord Morningstar! Where have you been?’
exclaimed the majordomo.The buyer shook back his black hood, revealing his angelic features and mane of blond hair. He held up the glass sphere he had appropriated.
‘Obtaining this, Azazel,’
said the buyer.‘Ah,’
said the majordomo, understanding, ‘Would you like a drink, Lord?’‘Advocaat, naturally,’
replied the buyer, ‘You know, it is a very fragile thing, a soul. Held so tenuously. Delicate, almost. Delicate essence - hey, that isn’t bad.’‘Yes, Lord,’
said the majordomo returning with the thick yellow drink, ‘I’m sure it is. Very funny.’fin