Marcel had come to something resembling awareness a few minutes before Jan entered the room. By his perspective, the world was dark and muted, as if his eyelids were closed. Yet they were distinctly wide open. It took few minutes, for whatever effect the lawyer’s demon had him under to fully wear off, and by then, Jan had entered the room, with the transgressor. He could vaguely make out the shapes, in the light the fire in the room cast.
He watched, as the Chimera Prince quickly bested the transgressor, and turned them loose. Marcel felt a pang of hurt, seeing as one of Jan’s last allies fled. And then, the two began to speak. Marcel felt a roar in his ears. He couldn’t move, something was holding him to a chair, it had something to do with the darkness all around him. But one thing made him snap back to awareness, one thing clarified his current perspective, like a bucket of cold water onto him when he was asleep.
His own voice, speaking loud and clear into the room.
“Hey there, Jan. Care for another kiss?”
It was his voice. But he hadn’t spoken. He’d shiver if he could, in his restrained state.
Jan didn’t speak. But the Chimera Prince did.
“Marcel here was just dying to see you. The real Marcel, I mean. Not the one you’ve been around, quarreling with. I saw to it that he was freed from the enemy of mine which held him, kidnapped in some distance faerie realm.”
Jan still didn’t speak. Marcel heard his own voice again.
“I couldn’t stay after we first met. I was too close to being discovered. Aphrodite keeps a close eye on her…pets.” He could hear the sadness in his own voice. He wanted to scream. He wanted to puke.
“But I felt the love then. And I still feel it now. And I know you do too.”
Love. Love. Love.
Whoever this was, speaking with his voice, what did they have to say about his love?
His mind became a torrent of thoughts, feelings, and memories. He didn’t know how to feel. Except that this person speaking as him, for him, felt disgusting. Gross. And he and Jan had met before?
Was this what the Chimera Prince had meant, when he had said he was a replacement. Was this the real Marcel, who bore a last name?
Jan finally spoke.
“I don’t know who you think you are. Or why you’re offering this to me. But I’m not interested in a trick. Release my friend.” The comment pointed to the Chimera Prince.
Marcel hoped that friend was him. It made his heart soar with a faint flicker of hope.
“This, my boy, is a peace offering. Believe it or not, I have no interest in enemies. I simply want to bring about a new age, where my kind can exist without being hunted or destroyed. By our own, or by those like you. So, I offer you your childhood love, in exchange for you leaving, and never returning.” The Chimera Prince spoke calmly. Like any of this made sense.
“I can’t leave. I have family here. I won’t let whatever you’re doing here hurt them.” Jan retorted, sharpy. He heard him take a few steps forward.
“It won’t, my boy. When the ritual is completed, all human residents of Ostoja will be expelled, harmlessly, at my new demesne’s borders. Very simple. Not one hair on their heads harmed. Killing or hurting senselessly makes enemies. And as I said, I have no interest in those.”
“What’s the point of all of this anyways? What’s this new age for?” Jan said, a bit uselessly. He was floundering. Marcel could hear it.
“…He wants people like me to be able to escape. He wants to see that those who would take people in the night hold power no longer. He wants to make sure there are no more orphans left behind in the machinations of greater beings. He wants to make the night safe for all to walk.” Marcel heard his own voice speak these words, and it was like being punched in the gut.
There was silence, for a moment.
“You mean…like my parents…like that little girl…they were…” Jan said, his voice near deathly quiet.
“Taken by entities outside of my reach. This place, this town. It is a nexus of the power that makes up all beings like us. It attracts them, like moths to flame. And that causes…accidents. This is why I intend to seize it. If I control it, none can do that sort of thing ever again.” The Chimera Prince spoke with conviction that overtook Jan’s uncertainty.
“This is for the best, Jan.” Marcel’s voice said again. “We don’t need to hide anymore. We can be who you wanted us to be. We can kiss again, and again, or whatever you want, now that we’re together again.”
The sickness stewed with jealousy, forming a soup of disdain and hatred in Marcel’s shadowy soul.
Jan moved a bit closer to the source of Marcel’s voice.
“Why didn’t you admit this before? And who is that?”
Marcel was being pointed at.
“Because, that being in the chair was pretending to be me. A copy in my place, for years and years. My own shadow, made to be my enemy. It tricked you. It lied to you. What we have, though? That was real. That connection we forged, six years ago, still persists!” His own voice continues.
“…When did this happen?” Jan finally said, after another pause.
“I was taken from this world in my infancy. Warped by the powers of Olympus. I escaped their grasp a few times, and met you those few times. The most recent of which, being that night at the party. When you gave me your first kiss.” His own voice taking such credit.
Marcel’s hatred should have been strong enough to shatter whichever spell smothered him in gloom, and kill his double with the full force he could muster. But instead, it just tore him up inside.
“…So. The one in the chair. He’s…who I-”
The Chimera Prince cut him off.
“He was the one, unassuming in the background. The one who never did anything you remember. He was a placeholder. He is not the one you grew to love.” The Chimera Prince said, firmly, but gently, and it made Marcel want to scream so loudly the world fell apart.
“…I see.” Jan said.
“You can have the one you love. He loves you in return. All you have to do, is walk away.” The Chimera Prince’s voice had that same sickly logic to it that it always did. It made so much sense. Why wouldn’t he accept?
“I’m ready to step into the light of your life.” His own voice said, with joy that Marcel wanted more then anything in the world.
Jan took a long, hard breath.
“Alright. You know what? I know what I’m doing.” Said Jan. “It’s…all that makes sense, really.”
“Very good. Very good.” Crowed the Chimera Prince. “You may leave the way you cam-“
Jan’s movement was quick. And the sound of a gunshot was quicker.
The Chimera Prince cried out with four voices that weren’t his own, and the shadow retreated away from Marcel, instead shrinking into his chest cavity.
He saw the scene. Jan, with a strange gun drawn, leveled at the Chimera Prince, who was reeling from a wound to the chest that was hissing and bubbling. Across from Jan, Marcel saw a cruel simulacrum of himself. Beautiful and perfect, and yet snarling at the two of them. Marcel fell out of his chair, spilling onto the ground from a mishap of sudden movement.
Jan pulled the trigger again, another hissing wound appearing on the Chimera Prince. It was then that the other Marcel acted, pointing a finger at Jan.
“You weren’t worthy of my love, glamourless ingrate-“
Jan turned the gun onto the other Marcel. In that moment, the Chimera Prince snarled, getting to his feet, and literally sinking into the wall, out of sight.
A standoff, between Marcel’s evil twin and Jan. Jan gave the Marcel on the ground a look.
“You ok?” He asked, genuine concern in his voice.
“…I-think so. Why did you-”
Jan shook his head.
“I’m not settling for some faerie freak who’d probably drag me where it comes from. I don’t even know him. I know you. It’s the little things I fell in-I care about. Not some one time kiss.”
The other Marcel snarled.
“You don’t know what we share, Mendyk! I know you better than-”
“Shut up, or I’m melting you.” Jan said, coldly.
“Do it then. I’ll rip your soul to bits before I die. Make sure you never love again, if you live at all. I can destroy Jan Mendyk in all ways that matter.” The other Marcel said, a twisted smirk forming on his face.
“Then I guess we’re at an impasse.” Said Jan, unflinching. “Hey, Marcel?”
The one on the ground looked up at Jan. “Yeah?”
“It’s a big ask. Do you think you can handle the Chimera Prince? Shut this whole thing down?” His voice had hope, despite the circumstances. And it was a little bit contagious. Marcel nodded.
“I can do it.” He said, getting to his feet.
“Alright. Then go.” He said, nodding towards the opposite door. Hurried, he left the standoff behind, giving a worried look to Jan as he did.
He began to hurry up the stairs, which answered his call when he gave it. He still had some control over this. The ritual was partially his after all.
Faintly, he heard the sound of a gunshot and a scuffle. It seemed like the standoff wouldn’t last forever. He just hoped Jan would win.
He pushed that, and the complicated stew of feelings down as he raced up the stairs which unfurled in his wake, getting closer and closer to the zenith of the magic that he knew oh so very well.
He burst into the topmost chamber of the tower. It was bigger now, the art pieces more numerous and grant. The disk in the center was even further raised, and the Chimera Prince stood at the edge, glaring with all three eyes down at Marcel as he entered into the chamber. His wings were spread, and the two wounds where Jan’s strange weapon had struck him still boiled and hissed. His pained expression proof of their effectiveness against him.
“So, the little fetch comes bursting in! What do you want, Marcel? I don’t suppose you’ve reconsidered your place here?”
Marcel winced. The term fetch hurt, somehow.
“I want answers, Chimera Prince! I want to know what you actually mean to do! I don’t understand-you want this utopia, right? Then why do you hurt so many people? Why bother trying to stop Jan at all? Why couldn’t this have been talked out!” Marcel demanded, shouting up at the Chimera Prince.
“It’s like I told you, Marcel. Humans are numerous. They control this planet, quite literally at the apex of their power. And what’s off of that planet, is in the grasp of others still! There’s no way for us to win, to exist, without changing things! Excuse me if I don’t rush to give the dominant species on earth, who have taken every chance to cleanse it of everything that is not them, chance after chance to turn away from their own mistakes!” He shouted back, impassioned through pain and ideal.
“Why does that mean anything? If anything, if they’re so numerous, shouldn’t we treat them all differently?” Marcel was getting heated now too, heart pounding. “This new age you want to bring…who wins? Us?”
The Chimera Prince nodded with fervor.
“Yes, Marcel! We win. When this ritual concludes, when I claim the power that Ostoja holds, I’ll both create a new faerie realm for the first time since the sundering, and fuel the entities that make me up, returning them to full glory! We’ll have an age of gods and monsters unlike any we’ve ever seen. The blight which sends us to failure, time and time again, will be kept in check. And Olympus itself will quiver in our wake. Is that not utopia? That we live how we’d like, and the world ceases to be quite so banal?”
His words had weight. Each one chosen specifically. There were no honeyed lies here.
And that’s what made Marcel so…angry.
“So this is all for you! Just so you can have an age that suits you? So that the world will suit you? This was never about your subjects at all, was it!” He shouted with just as much fervor.
“It was always about them! Any one of the beings which make me up could easily fall amongst my subjects! I am just as much deserving of this as any of them! As you!”
A pause settled between the two of them. Each bristling.
“…I agree with you.” Marcel finally said. “These creatures deserve to exist. They deserve to be safe. But so do humans.”
“And that, Marcel, is where we disagree.”
“I guess so.”
…
…
…
The Chimera Prince took to the air, just as Marcel strung out his shadow from the wounds in his chest, wreathing them into long tendrils which lashed around the dais above, hurling himself up there in one fluid motion. Landing on the dais, he quickly reached to his shadow, still just the edges, and formed a bow and arrow, made from the stuff, liquid and fluid, yet solid as he fired them up. The Chimera Prince’s mighty wings batted the projectiles away, even in his injured and weakened state. In return, around Marcel, a great rumbling began, as pushing themselves free of the metal dais was a forest, rapidly expanding along with the dais, until Marcel was soon surrounded on all sides by a dense glade. He heard the sound of rustling in the trees above, as he allowed the bow and arrow to fall from him, and he closed his eyes to focus, casting his shadow out all around him as he did.
On his left. Marcel stepped back just in time, as the Prince dove from the trees, trying to slice him open with his talons or cave him in with his hooves. He landed a few feet away, spreading his arms, and within them, twin torrents of water gushed forward, fast enough to slice down trees and carve grooves in the still metal floor. Marcel spread his arms in turn, and put more of his shadow as fuel to the fire, pointing one finger forward.
A wide burst of cold air, colder then the harshest winters Marcel had ever felt, launched forward, freezing the Chimera Prince’s torrents and striking him, sending him flying backwards before his tough feet dug in and steadied him against the gale. He stuck one hand to the sky, and suddenly, Marcel’s wind coalesced in one of of his palms, before he closed his fist, dispersing it. He opened his maw, and screamed out, a primal and angry rage, which molded and shaped the glade around. Peeling off from the trees, from mossy stones and thick dirt patches. Each of them formed into stubby humanoids with makeshift weapons, who massed forward with a point of the Chimera Prince’s finger. Fast, too.
Marcel retaliated with his own backup. Feeding more of his shadow to the wellspring, he made a sharp gesture forward. Shaping from what the Chimera Prince hadn’t taken, trees and stones in totality, was a titanic creature, with the heads of a hydra, which released a creaking roar before bearing down on the Chimera Prince’s forces. With more tendrils, he sprung himself atop one head for a better view. The Chimera Prince had perched on the tallest tree in this glade for a similar perspective. Jan closed his eyes, and felt for his shadow.
The edges were all depleted. And he hadn’t gotten a good enough blow to end the fight yet.
He realized then, as he stood atop his monsters head, that he couldn’t skirt by this playing by the rules the Chimera Prince had laid out for him. He would need to do more.
He fed the foot of his shadow to the wellspring, and flicked his wrist.
As if sliced with a titanic blade, the tree the Prince was perched upon came crashing down, forcing him into flight. Marcel transformed the falling thicket around him into a swarm of bloodthirsty crows by feeding one of his fingers, which descended upon him in droves. The Chimera Prince spun his wings about, shaping the winds into blades which cut the crows to ribbons. A bit bloodied from that, he turned to Marcel. Feeding the wellspring two more fingers, a pair of giant wings appeared from his back, black and feathered like the crows he’d just conjured. Taking a moment to get used to flight, he then moved for the Chimera Prince. He fed the rest of the fingers on that hand, to summon another gale of frigid wind, this one greater then before. It struck the Chimera Prince dead on, as he’d wanted. and he’d move to absorb it, as he did before.
And that’s when Marcel sprung a trap. He fed his other hand, and in turn, slowed the hands of time.
In slow motion, the Chimera Prince cast his spell, as Marcel dove for him. He felt the other foot, and most of one leg, then, for his coup de grace.
Time moved again, and the Chimera Prince, with an about one meter hole in his torso, evenly carved, and the momentum of a blow worthy of such an injury. The forest fell away, an extension he could no longer maintain. Marcel’s monster and the Prince’s goblins fell to pieces.
And he fell.
Slamming to the floor of the dais, Marcel landed, before dismissing his wings.
He felt weaker. He was the shadow, after all. Looking behind him, the tapestry was incomplete. And the body parts he had given up in shadow form felt a bit numb. Weaker. All the same, he put a hand on the Chimera Prince’s torso. He’d worry about the consequences of his magic later.
“…To…the entities which…make up the Chimera Prince.” He began, weakly. Then continued. “I can’t give you the same promises he’s surely given you. Or that you’ve given yourselves. But he’s lost. I haven’t. If you disperse. End his madness. I’ll do everything in my power to help you, with the ritual that I began.”
For a moment, nothing happened, and he feared the worst. That the Prince would get up, and tear him asunder, in a fight he couldn’t possibly win. One of the Prince’s eyes settled on Marcel. His lips about to form words…
And then the entity known as the Chimera Prince ceased to be. All of his individual traits began to crumble, falling apart into what they were at their bases. Faerie. Weak faerie, but still intact for now, peeling apart into what had formed them to begin with.
The Chimera Prince was gone. Marcel stood, then was about to turn to face the ritual, when another sound filled the space.
Clapping. Long and loud. Quickly, and sharply, Marcel turned, ready for a spell.
And he saw himself standing there. It looked like a boiling knife had carved out a chunk of his shoulder, but he otherwise seemed unharmed. A sly grin on his own face unnerved him.
“Well done! Shadow of mine. Really, you’ve outdone yourself. Defeating the Chimera Prince, and being tied to the ritual? You’ve done me, and Olympus, quite the favor!” His smirk grew wider. Marcel getting defensive, shouting back down at him from atop the dais.
“I thought you wanted to be free of them! You can walk away!” He said, wincing to himself.
“Hm? Oh, no. That was a lie for the Prince. I quite like the power Aphrodite has given me. And the power I can take using that power. Did you know that a first kiss is a magical regent like no other? Even more potent then virginity, sometimes.”
The grin on his own face grew sickly.
“And now, this ritual is mine for the taking. As is my shadow-they didn’t want me to take it back, but at this point, I think the jig is up. I promise, it won’t hurt a bit, us being together again. We can even collect Jan! He’s taking a little nap downstairs.”
Marcel tensed. There was a small part of him, deep down, that wanted to say yes. But he stood firm, shaking his head.
“Come and take it.”
His evil twin shrugged.
“Suit yourself.”
He took one step forward, and regretted it, as the butterfly knife found his neck, spilling the blood from his throat forward onto the floor, as Tres withdrew their blade. A massive grin on their face, as they spun the blade around.
And, climbing the stairs into the room, was a very tired Jan Mendyk. A large red slap mark on his face, as he held his pistol in one hand, advancing on the other Marcel. The wound in his neck healed in an instant, but he was soon pinned to the ground by Jan, who stuck the gun in his face.
Fear spread across his doubles face.
“Wait! Wait wait-don’t-“
“If you were going to tear my soul apart you would have done it. That was a bluff.” Jan said, coldly. “If you put me to sleep, Tres will grab the gun. It’s over.”
“What do you want! I’ll give you anything!” The duplicate said, with a nervous smile. “I have power! Real power. I just need time. And to be alive to give it!”
Jan seemed to consider.
“Anything?”
“Anything the faerie can grant.” Marcel Jurek said, with a fervent nod.
“I want my first kiss back.”
Jan remarked, as the pistol melted his own face. Marcel winced. Creepy. He turned his head away. He spent his effort, rather then considering implications, focusing on the magic of the ritual. He was only trying to tune into part of it, so it wasn’t too hard. The dais lowered to the floor. Jan looked over at him, as he stepped away from the body. Tres fell into step with him, grinning like an insane person.
“I didn’t know you were friends with another mighty warrior, Jan Mendyk!” They said, excitedly. “He seemed to have felled the Chimera Prince.”
“It’s complicated” Marcel said with a sigh.
“Right. Well, is it all sorted?” Jan asked, looking at him with an eyebrow raised.
Marcel was about to answer. And then the room, began to shake violently. Threads of the edge of the tower coming undone like unwinding threads, the faint signs of the clock tower’s existence behind it.
“…Not quite. The ritual needs to be helmed, or it’s gonna undo itself the violent way…and we don’t want to see the violent way” Marcel said with a wince. “You two should go. I can handle things here.”
“Are you sure?” Jan said, concern spreading across his face.
“Yeah. I can handle this. I started it, let me end it.” Marcel said with determination.
Jan nodded, and slowly turned to leave. Tres simply vanished. Marcel turned back to the center of the dais, then stopped.
“Jan?” He said, turning back around, and walking straight for him. Jan paused, waiting for him. “One more thing.”
“Hm?” Jan asked, giving him a curious look.
“…I have a lot of power. But I can’t do what you wanted.”
Jan gave him a confused look. “What’re you…?”
“I can’t give you your first kiss back. The asshole probably used it for some stupid magic thing.” Marcel said with a sigh.
“Oh. I didn’t think you coul-“
Marcel reached forward, grabbed Jan’s arm, and pulled the solider into a kiss.
The moment lasted for long enough. And then Marcel pulled away. Jan was redder then blood, and Marcel was grinning.
“But I can give you mine.”
He said, before turning around, and sprinting towards the center of the ritual with all of the jealousy gone from his heart.
Kindling And Miscellany 