Frailty.



He has seen many a soldier fall, tracked man and beast with his hounds across shear plates of rock. He’s seen it all, monster’s called men, as heartless cold and brutal as any red soldier acting under Ambala’s command. Still though, he has never seen the likes of the black haired demon woman with the razor sharp sai’s, cutting through his hell hounds with surgical precision. He had never in his wildest dreams expected his maker to bear her face, so when her large friend Ajax appeared out of nowhere, Tholos was caught unaware and totally unprepared for what would transpire next.
“Give me shelter from this cold life.. I cannot not breathe in so brilliant a light.”
He looks forward and finds himself in much the same dilemma as had Morganna when she stood to face off against Sil. His adversary on one side and the exit from the cave ending in a vertical 150 foot drop strait down the side of the mountain, on the other side of him.
He studies the massive form of Ajax for a moment before he addresses the situation.
“For all of time, for eternity, we have moved in and out of shadows, to avoid physical contact with your kind.. I never fully understood why until now. I have no magic in this physical body, it is weak and frail, in these we are no match for man, if I do not return with the stone.. With this necklace. . Our cause here is lost.”
Unmoved by his words, Ajax moves forward, his eyes fully focused on the necklace around Tholos’s neck. And for the first time Tholos feels fear.
“ You don’t understand.. If I am to fail.. Here and now.. I may very well be the last of my kind!!”
Further down the caves corridor, Sil is finishing off the last of the devil Dogs. And as she cuts through the last piece of flesh of the final hound, she can hear Tholos’s screams echoing through the walls of the cave. Still though, Sil worries about the well being of her comrade Ajax and hurries along the caves corridor to see what has transpired with he and the demon tracker Tholos. When she arrives, she is almost surprised by what she sees. Ajax standing at the edge of the cave, on the edge of the cliff face. In his bloody
fist he holds the necklace with the third piece of the stone. At the bottom she could see the body of Tholos. Strange she thought.. How could the angel Morganna survive such a fall and not one of Ambala’s minions?
“I punched him a couple of times and he fell.. Landed on his back I think..”
Ajax tells her.
She smiles up at him.
“We make quite the team don’t we AJ?” she asked him with a sly smile.
He looks down at his little friend.
“Did you kill all of the bad doggies Miss Sil?”
Again she smiles up at him.
“Yeah.. They’re Alpo now.”
They share a laugh and then a hug before returning to meet up with Samantha Bliss and Priss.

Arise..



The members of team Alpha reunite at the site of the mountain village where they had found several bodies of men, women and children earlier. Samantha Bliss finds that the other members of the team led by Klinger have given the mountain people proper burials. The hillside lined with crosses in the wet mountain soil. All the while though, Samantha Bliss had been mentally chewing on Ajax and Sil’s story. She sits quietly thinking while staring into the campfire made by Klinger and the others. In her mind Samantha Bliss goes over every word that Ajax told her. Morganna arrives at her side, she too seems puzzled.
“What do you think he meant by that?” she asks Morganna.
The Angel silently shakes her head.
“Why would he say that he was the last of his kind?” she pauses to study Morganna’s reaction, and it tells her that she too is as puzzled as anyone by Tholos’s last words. And when Lifeguards voice begins to crackle to life in her earpiece her confusion grows. Morganna leans forward in complete interest. It seems as though all eyes present are now on Samantha Bliss, as Lifeguard completes his transmission to her. She rises to her feet slowly with a stunned looked across her face.
“Team Alpha.. Assemble.. Threshold is sending a transport to pick us up at the bottom of the mountain. We move out in five minutes”
Everyone assembles knowing full well that something unexpected has occurred, and yet Samantha Bliss continues to keep her thoughts to herself as they make their way back down the mountain to rendezvous with the waiting transport. The Members of team Alpha, and even Morganna herself. all walk in silence and make it to the extraction point unchallenged by any hostiles. Once safely aboard the transport and on their way back to Langley she finally addresses the team.
“I received word from Lifeguard, Threshold is reporting that field operatives in Cann’s Landing.. Capers Island.. Southerland.. Mordes Keep.. And key areas all along the Jericho straits, have reported to headquarters that the red army in those areas as of four and one half hours ago went into a simultaneous retreat of those areas.”
Klinger leans forward.
“Retreat??.. As in… Elvis has left the building??”
Samantha Bliss’s eyes do not blink.
“As in retreat Klinger… they left their weapons.. Personal belongings.. Everything behind.. Just dropped everything and left.”
Even Morganna is stunned by this latest revelation.
And as the members of team Alpha silently watch as the sun begins to set
Each is left to ponder if this is the end of a terrible struggle with an enemy as old as time itself.. Or simply a new beginning.

~Scratch.. ABT.. Copyright © 2007.

I found some really at Doobix.com