Chapter 20 The Overlord's Secret
author: Overlord - red , Veyanne - yellow , Temptress - orange , Blackguard - violet
The man-machine chuckled, but before he could reply, the little boy stepped next to his sister and without taking his eyes of the man, he said:
"It's alright. This is something that I have to do."
He clearly shivered and he felt scared. Yet he took a step forward to the man. Thenna frowned and looked at her brother, not sure if she should let him go. Then her eyes fell on his shoulder and she almost yelled when she saw how the blood droplets seemed to sink into his skin like they were being absorbed. That was too weird.
"Who are you?" asked the boy.
The overlord kept his smile in place, nodded and looked around as if somebody else asked the question. Then he returned to the boy...
"You really want to know who you are!" There was a long silence and then the man continued:
"I guess this is as good a start as any, so... let me tell you about myself. I'm the past. I clean-up what has been. I give back to chaos so things can come from chaos. Without me there can be no future. I devastate order and I destroy what is fixed. I serve endless possibility."
"What a load of crap.", Kendra muttered to herself. "Give a man a little power over time and he thinks he rules the universe."
The little boy seemed to suck up the words as he stared at the man without blinking. Then the overlord continued:
"Now it's my turn to ask you a question: are you something from the past? Or are you the future?"
The boy immediately responded:
"Those are two questions!"
The overlord laughed and looked at the Temptress.
"Okay, so I ask two questions. Is that too much for you?"
He once more looked the boy in his eyes and waited for his reply. Henos looked back and licked his lips. He knew much depended on his answer. He knew what the overlord wanted to hear and he also knew how he would answer those questions. Yet he felt it wouldn't be right this time to answer. Mostly because he didn't know why he knew the answers at all. So he whispered:
"That's for you to find out."
There was a long silence and then the overlord laughed once more.
"That will do for now, my son, that will do."
He got up to his feet and turned towards the Temptress.
"Never expected to see you with children. But then again, I wasn't even sure I would ever see you again at all."
He took another step closer, ignoring the kids. His smile was suddenly gone.
The Witch Queen reached into a pouch and pulled forth a handful of golden kernals. Her hand turned black as pitch and flames formed around it. Soon the little kernals exploded one by one. They lept out of her hand. She caught them out of the air in her mouth. She kept watching as she snacked.
Henos and Thenna backed up against their mother as if to protect her. The temptress called out to the remaining vixens.
"Take the children back to my lair and guard them with your lives."
They got as far as the stairs when the children refused to go further. In an attempt to carry out orders, one of the vixens picked up Thenna. She thrashed herself around enough to cause the vixen to almost drop her. The temptress was amused with the children's obstinateness.
"Just keep them right there for now."
Her attention returned to the overlord.
"Now what I really would like to know is, how it is possible that I suddenly hear from a little bird in a tree that I have two children with you. Why did you keep this from me? And who told you you could have my children?"
She took one step closer to the overlord and caressed the only remaining skin on his face.
"It was not my intent to keep it from you, my lord. I realized my condition just before you pushed me through the portal. You really didn't give me a chance to tell and I too assumed that I would never see you again when the portal closed."
She looked up at him... her eyes filled with pain, her voice low and soft..
"I can only assume at this point that you would have preferred that I terminate your legacy, dear. Well, I couldn't. It would have terminated mine as well and I really do prefer to bare children the way I did in contrast to the self-reproduction that would have killed me."
The tone in her voice changed suddenly; indicating extreme anger..
"Now, if you will excuse me.. I have MY children to attend to, Sir!"
She had never been so angry with him before. How dare he question her in this manner. He had definitely changed.. in more ways than one. She glared at him for a moment longer...
"Have a nice day, SIR!"
.... and turned to walk away.
Ninety percent of the overlord didn't care. It was just machine. The remaining ten percent cared only a little, but a little was enough. The thought of her leaving him made him feel uncomfortable. He yearned for her return. His weakness showed through for an instant. Hypatia's program started running again. It began to erase his memories of the temptress.
Years of wonderful memories between them flashed before his eyes and vanished into nothing. The good feelings were being erased. They were making him hesitate. That was not good for an instrument of war. The bad memories were left intact. The love between them was disappearing.
The worst memory was when their bond had been broken. He'd left her on a hilltop with the sorceress. He thought she'd be safe. He was wrong. The sorceress had betrayed him. The sorceress had cast a spell on her. It had broken the bond between the overlord and temptress. He thought she had been killed. It had weakened him. It caused him to fall to defeat.
Those memories were being erased too. The program was running deeply into his mind. It caused him to dream...
Henos and Thenna looked up at the machine who claimed to be their father. They thought he was going to fly into a rage at the temptress for talking back to him. Instead he just stood there motionless. The temptress grabbed both children by the arms and dragged them out of the room. Thenna was happy to leave. The big machine scared her. It's human parts made her more scared. Henos didn't want to leave. He wanted to be with his father. He knew his true father was somewhere inside that hideous thing. He took one last look at the machine fearing that he would never see his father again.
The overlord looked up into eyes of the sorceress. He was sitting comfortably on the couch once again. She knelt on the couch with her legs on either side of his facing him. She smiled down into his eyes and gently caressed his face. She ran her fingers through his hair.
"Hair!" he exclaimed to himself, "I have hair!"
His cyborg body had no hair. In his dream he did. He'd forgotten how it felt to have hair. It felt wonderful. He closed his eyes and felt the coolness of her touch against his scalp. He let go and went with the dream. He felt a tug at his shoulder. The sorceress had grasped the metal plate on his arm. She started to pull on it. It began to peel away from him. The overlord looked down expecting to see his robot inner parts revealed. Instead he saw skin. The sorceress stripped away the metal covering. A human arm was underneath.
The overlord's arm was muscular and strong. It was covered in coarse black hair. He looked down at his hand. It was soft and pink. The sorceress pulled away the covering from his other arm. He touched her waist. It had been so long since he'd touched anything. His cyborg hands were weapons. They felt nothing. His dream hands felt everything. She was so soft. He ran his hands up her back. She let out a sigh of pleasure. He explored her body with his hands. He ran them all over her black dress. He loved the feeling of the silk dress on his skin. He loved how it felt to have hands again. He loved how it felt to touch and caress someone else. It had been so long. He couldn't even remember the last time. It had been so long ago.
He pulled the sorceress tightly against him. He felt her warmth. He wanted to pull her inside of him. He wanted them to be even closer together. He looked up into her eyes. Her lips smiled at him. Her eyes smiled at him. Her whole body seemed to smile at him. It filled him with a feeling that he hadn't felt in years.
Then the doubts came back into his mind. He remembered that he could never have her. They only got this close in his dreams, never for real. He looked up at her and asked the question he had wanted to know the answer to ever since they met.
"Do you love me?", he asked sincerely.
"Yes.", she replied. He didn't believe her.
"Prove it.", he demanded.
"I will.", she answered with a smile.
She stood up still smiling at him. Then she turned around. She walked away from him. He watched her go. He wondered what she was going to do. She slowly walked up to a stone table on the far side of the room. She lay down on it. She turned her head to face him. Her smile still glowed warmly at him.
Then the overlord saw a figure dressed all in black standing on the other side of the table. The figure wore an executioner's hood. The overlord saw the figure draw forth a red sword and hold it over the sorceress' neck. The overlord felt alarmed but couldn't move. He could only watch helplessly.
The figure in black lifted the sword high in the air.
The sorceress' lips formed the words, "I love you."
The sword came down. Her head fell. The overlord's eyes grew wide.
"Not again.", he thought. The feelings of joy were siphoned from his body in an instant. Feelings of loss clogged his mind. He was filled with despair.
The dark robed figure pulled back her hood. She shook her head. Her white hair flowed around her shoulders. The overlord stared at her face. It was that infernal Witch Queen.
Kendra lifted the sword to her mouth. She licked the sorceress' blood from the blade. Then through gritted teeth she uttered the words,
"You're next."
The overlord woke up. Hypatia's program went to work on the dream.
Blackguard had seen none what had transpired between the temptress and overlord. After realizing that the Overlord was an agent of Chaos, he had cut a hole in this reality and stepped into a nightmare.
The nightmare was a dimension of madness. A madness maybe envisioned by H.P. Lovecraft while writing about the city of R'lyeh. The city defied reality, common sense and any concept of Euclidean geometry. Needless to say, unless your mind worked on a different level, you would go mad. Blackguard, by virtue of his demonic heritage was immune to it's power. He walked through it all as easily as an ordinary man would walk down the street.
"I did not summon you Blackguard. Why are you here?" a booming voice, one seemingly coming from everywhere, asked him.
He looked around in irritation. "I came Lord Chaos since I need to know the truth about the Overlord. My duty to you and the coming Armageddon requires it. So unless you want me to possibly ruin your plans, I suggest you tell me."
There was a pause and suddenly Blackguard was transported to a different place, a great hall of sorts and Lord Chaos sitting at the end on his dark throne. Next to him stood a man holding two human hearts in his hands. Blackguard knew him too well, and at that he wasn't really a man in the actual terms. He was a full blooded demon, and Blackguard's father at that.
"Now Blackguard, what is it that you need to know about the Overlord?" Chaos asked.
"Is he working for you willingly or is he a pawn?"
"A little of both. He's working willingly for me, but he's a pawn in the greater scheme of things. But even a pawn can acheive greater rank should he prove himself useful, " Chaos answered.
"Very well, is he the same Overlord that I worked with before?"
"Again, he is and yet he isn't. Parts of him are the same, but there are parts that I have added. Programming shall we say, that turned him into a puppet."
"Is he sane? Can he be trusted to carry out your objectives?"
Chaos laughed, something that no mortal should ever have to hear. "Blackguard, you ask too many questions of the wrong type. No, he is not fully sane after all parts of him are from this dimension and they have a detrimental effect on humans. His mind is slowly being warped by them, but he will retain enough control to take care of his objectives."
"Thank you my Lord. That should be sufficient for now. But one question before I leave, do you have any instructions?"
"For the moment no. You and Kendra are doing a marvelous job so far. Keep up the good work."
Blackguard once again took out his dagger and cut a hole in reality. Walking through the rift, he was possibly more troubled with what he now knew than when he had started.
With a zipping sound the rift closed behind him.
Lord Chaos turned to the demon next to him. "Did you ever tell him?"
"No, I felt it was better this way, " Blackguard's father replied. "Children can sometimes get in trouble if they know too much. It's best they don't know it yet," he replied.