Through a character's eyes | |
by Nancy Schultz | |
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Monster vs. Monster | |
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With a sigh, he turned away from his Berlin home. It was a wonderful place, with many
wonderful memories, but he would not be coming back here again. He had gotten his... well,
orders wouldn't exactly be the right word, as he was the sort of person who didn't really
take well to authority beyond his own. Perhaps it was better so say he was assisting a long
time friend, who just happened to be the woman in charge of the resistance cell that was
currently using the remains of his French estate as a base of operations. But the war was finally coming to an end, which meant it was time to say good bye to Berlin, and to say a personal good bye to the beast that claimed to rule the crumbling city. Not Hitler. Dangerous as the demented little megalomaniac was, he was not the threat that Robert was off to deal with. The Russians would deal with him soon enough, if the Americans didn't get here first. This beast was one of his own kind, and one he knew far, far too well. He paced through the dying city to a music he knew all too well, even if the tempo and the instruments had changed much since the first time he had heard it. His adversary was, as he had in that first siege where they had met, holding court. The setting of that court had, of necessity, changed. What was once the grand hall of a Norman keep was now a secret chamber off of the Berlin sewers, a bunker better hidden than that of the Fuehrer, and better protected as well. That was why it had fallen to Robert to see that this beast did not survive the city's impending fall. Why Robert had returned to Berlin and to the service of a man he now prepared to betray... again. That time, it had been vengeance. This time it was justice, or so he told himself. As he started down the steps, the echoes of his footfalls ringing out in deliberate announcement of his approach, he refused to think long on those days. The fog of memory did much for that. Nine hundred years of survival had its cost, after all. But despite misty time and force of will, glimpses of that day when she was turned over to the witch-hunters, she who had done no harm and indeed was hardly even capable of malice. That night, when the monster seized him, made him one of its own in a tragic case of mistaken identity. And the next, when he had unleashed the army of hell upon the keep. Such thoughts had to be pushed away. They would not serve him well now, and he could not afford such distractions. Passing through the doorway, Robert looked around the hall. Only a few were here. The court was even more a mockery now than ever before. Those here were those still in denial of the inevitable. Too young to understand that some things could not be changed, or too old to understand that some things had to change. And all of them unaware that he was tonight's instrument of that change. With practiced ease, Robert strode forward and knelt before the man he was forced to call Leige. The man on the throne sneered. "You are late, Sir Robert." "I beg your forgiveness, my lord, but I received an important message for you, and wanted to be sure I had it right before I came." "Very well, what is the message?" Robert's smile turned cold as he produced the gun with the magnesium bullets. "Gweneira sends her greetings, my brother." | |
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