Operation: Pacifica,  A New Breed
by Fleet Commander Samhain [midnite@iastate.edu]


 Samhain continued his path through the maze of corridors that made
  up this level of Charn'El's castle.  The halls here were dimly lit, which
  suited him fine, but paranoia so gripped his soul that he turned at the
  slightest sound; even the tiniest echo from his own footsteps in the silent
  hallway gave cause for alarm.  At the end of the hall burned a violet torch,
  offset slightly from the center of the wall.  Odd, yet not really out of
  place.  Nonetheless, he approached the intersection with unrivaled caution,
  then peered down each section of hallway looking for some hint as to which
  direction to head.


 As he stood, looking from one hall to the other, he reached for the
  torch, seeking to extinguish its obnoxious flame just as he hoped to do to
  the Lyran Mage who had built this damnable dungeon.  Suddenly, before his
  fingers could grasp the torch, there was a slight rumbling sound and the
  section of wall beside the torch ground its way to the side.  Samhain
  flattened himself against the wall and waited.


 Nothing.


 Carefully, he peered around the corner into a room the likes of
  which he had never imagined, let alone seen, during the course of his many
  lifetimes.  The large room had been painstakingly carved from an odd pastel-
  lavender marble that could only be appreciated by the Lyrans.  The rough-
  hewn walls contrasted sharply with the floor, which had been polished with
  such vigor that it could almost have been used as a mirror.  Overhead hung a
  ceiling of marble blocks.  Cubes approximately 4 yards on each side hung
  suspended, touching eachother ever so slightly on their corners...*only* on
  their corners... that he couldn't help but wonder as to how they  could stay
  airborne at all.  As he stood, surveying the chamber from the intersection
  where he stood, a B'harni-knocker slither-hopped into the room from the
  opposite corner.  "This must be the way," he thought, "if I have to go past
  some new breed of 'knocker..."


 B'harnii and the Lyrans had been breeding and genetically altering
  these creatures for years.  Grimace only knew what these pets of the one-
  toothed wonder were capable of now.  Years ago, in New Zealand, they had
  even stooped to mutating children into these sad beasts!  He drew his katana
  and wakizashi and strode towards the center of the room, readying himself
  for the coming battle.


 Once inside the room, he noticed the bizarre lighting pattern
  crisscrossing the floor around him.  Above the corner he entered and the one
  diagonally from it burned blazingly bright suns.  Meanwhile, in the other
  corners were stars of darkness, casting inky blackness rays rather than
  white.  Shining through the overhead cubes, the 4 stars created a pattern of
  criss-crossing lines of brightest white, darkest black, and grayest gray.
  He stopped his advance in a field of darkness to await his adversary so that
  he might dispatch the horrid perversion of nature, ending its timeless
  suffering.


 At last, the B'harni-knocker noticed his presence and shuffle-
  hopped into the room, taunting him as it came.  "Don't you think those
  blades are a tad misplaced?" it chided.  "Shouldn't they have been used to
  sever that pathetic head of yours for mounting in a Lyran Toilet?" it
  sneered.


 Samhain paid the insults no heed, and instead mounted his attack as
  he responded in kind, striking out at the 'knocker with blazing speed yet
  remaining cautious of the mammoth claw extending from a front paw and
  supported with the other.


 The 'knocker blocked the attack with the claw, which was obviously
  harder than steel!  Showing incredible dexterity for its species, it jumped,
  pivoted on one foot, and brought the massive claw screaming downwards
  towards Samhain's skull.


 Samhain rapidly raised his wakizashi to parry the blow away from
  his head.  He raised his katana quickly, pushing the claw away from his
  vulnerable head.  "You poor, twisted creature!  You don't even know what you
  are!" he bellowed.


 "At least my existance is my own, perverted creature!" came the
  guttral retort.


 "Your existance is nothing but a mockery of evolution!  I have my
  own soul and am my own master, unlike the bloated pet that you've become!"
  he exclaimed, swinging his katana at the beast's legs as he did so.


 The B'harni-knocker hopped over the blade and lunged forward at to
  meet the challenge, its claw sliding across the wakizashi.  It used its
  position for leverage, drawing its attacker off-balance and shoving him
  backwards.


 Samhain, standing in a patch of bright light, was unable to
  maintain his position.  He fell backwards to the floor, rolling with the
  blow.  Once on the floor, he made a broad sweep with his legs, spinning on
  the polished floor to knock the legs out from under it.  The 'knocker fell
  and landed in a roll, crossing a light patch.


 Samhain sprung to a handstand, then back to his feet in a squatting
  position as the knocker hit the floor.  "ENOUGH!" he yelled.


 "DIE!" it bellowed as it rose, standing now in a black patch, then
  charged at him as the larger one had done not so long prior.


 Samhain hurled his wakizashi at the 'knocker, embedding the blade
  deeply into its upper torso.  Black flames rippled and burned on its body as
  purple blood oozed around the weapon.


 Astoundingly, the 'knocker grabbed the sword and yanked it out of
  its shoulder.  "Want this back?" it growled, a toothy grin spreading across
  its face.  It returned the blade to its owner, hurling it with a slight
  spin.  As it spiraled towards its target, it turned into a whirling column
  of blades  exactly like the original.


 Samhain's eyes went wide in astonishment. He leapt from his
  crouched position, seeing only one real option in the storm of flying
  blades.  He batted several blades away, opting to accept a minor wound in
  his thigh as one of them slid across it, slicing it open.  He cried out in
  pain as he landed in a dark square.  "Aaarghh!"


 The 'knocker, seizing the opportunity, rushed forward and slammed a
  knee into Samhain's chest, knocking him across the room and into a corner,
  directly beneath one of the black suns.  He vanished from sight, giving the
  beast cause to hesitate.


 "You want to play rough?  I'll SHOW you rough!" gasped Samhain as
  he whipped his arms forward, sending a murky column of blackness along the
  black diagonal and smashing into the chest of the 'knocker.  As it was sent
  flying across the room, the massive claw broke free of the front paw,
  obviously due to the loss of support from the other forepaw.


 "Oh really?" responded the creature as it rose from where it had
  landed.


 "REALLY!" answered Samhain, stepping from the blackness into a gray
  area.  His eyes were blazing red, with black flames crackling around their
  edges.


 Suddenly, the 'knocker disappearred into a storm of flame, showing
  some of its other inbread abilities and hurled fire across the room.


 Samhain, who had flipped forward to kick the broken claw out of the
  room lest it be reused as a weapon, managed to knock it out into a stairwell
  where it clattered down several flights.  However, he never heard the sound
  as he tried to raise a shield of blackness against the waves of fire and
  heat.  He was knocked around like a rag doll as fireballs exploded, laying
  him out lengthwise in a grey square.


 He shook his head a bit to clear the cobwebs as the 'knocker hopped to a gray 
square of its own for a better attack angle, and rage began to build within him.  
Toungues of black fire began to dance around the border between the gray and 
black lines.  He tossed aside his blades, raising his hands in front of him.  
Shadowy plumes of smoke rose from his fingertips,  stopping nearly nine inches 
above his finger tips, where they solidified to reveal massive Claws[tm] that 
sparkled in the gentle gray light of the square.  "DIE NOW, YOU WILL, KNOCKER!"


 "HOW _*DARE*_ YOU?!?!"


 "DARE I?  MAENAD I AM[TM]!  NYAR!"


 With that, the 'knocker flexed its paws.  Flaming tendrils
  solidified into mock-Claws[tm].  "Maenad?  Mwah haha!  Your perverse ilk is
  *nothing* compared to a Maenad! NYAR!"


 "NYAR!"


 The two charged headlong at each other, BlackBlood pulling his arm
  back for a massive claw swipe.  The 'knocker sizzled across the floor in a
  ball of flame, leaving molten marble in its wake and swinging with its own
  right claws, blocking with its left.  BlackBlood's arm swung forward, intent
  on ripping open the Maenad imposter's chest cavity and his own left hand in
  a block against the counterattack.


 As they met, the attacking fingers of one meshed exactly with the
  blocking fingers of the other, passing between eachother in an elegant Danse
  Macabre.  BlackBlood suddenly found the joints on his fingers bloodied as
  the hands passed in perfect sync.  His right Claws[tm] ripped across his
  opponent's chest as his foe's fakes tore lines across his own.  Purple
  stripes appeared on the wall as BlackBlood's claws sprayed 'knocker blood
  from their impact yet failed to rip deeply enough to kill.


 Knocker and Maenad alike screamed in agony.


 The knocker was first to recover and swung its left claw awkwardly
  at BlackBlood, hitting him on the temple with the back of its hand.  The
  Feral staggered backwards into a black square, where he flared in blackness
  around his head.  He healed enough to continue the battle while his opponent
  staggered backwards into another black square, then fell to one knee in a
  white one.


 BlackBlood drew power from one of the black suns, swinging his arm
  with brutal power as his claws grew solid, shadowy-black extensions nearly 4
  feet long.  They traced lines across the beast, but with little effect due
  to the white square the 'knocker now made its home.


 The fire-knocker launched itself through the air off it's powerful
  rear haunches, now resembling a creature less and less, and smashed into
  BlackBlood dead-on as a bolt of fire.


 BlackBlood reeled backwards under the blow of the burning 'knocker,
  his flesh scalding from the intense heat, but maintained presence of mind
  enough to shove his Claws[tm] upwards through the gut of the monster as it
  landed on top of him.  The knocker, bleeding profusely now, rolled off the
  Maenad, but not before slamming his palms to the floor and ripping his side
  open with its own claws.  It then fell to the floor and rolled away, finding
  it unwise to put so much stress on damaged stomach muscles.


 "Die at my Claws[tm], you will!" cried the knocker, preparing to
  spring at the Maenad.


 BlackBlood rose to a sitting position, then a kneel, clutching his
  side with a great clawed hand.  He moaned in pain, then leaped at the
  'knocker with a great "NYAR!" escaping his throat.


 As the two bodies collided, BlackBlood's extended hands hit the
  'knocker's shoulders, his fingers going over their tops and only his thumb-
  claws digging deeply into them.


 The 'knocker, on the other hand, embraced BlackBlood, dropped down
  on one haunch, and smashed his tailbone on a locked knee.  It then lashed
  out with its free paw, sending him flying.  He flipped mid-air and smashed
  into the wall upside down and backwards, then slid down to the floor where
  he tried to catch himself with his hands.  Finding his strength starting to
  fail, however, he failed and found himself instead looking at the wall which
  was now marked with great streaks of blood.  He looked at the B'harni-
  knocker again.  It clutched its useless shoulder, then dropped back to its
  more typical all-fours, blood  spilling out everywhere.


 "Destroy you, I will!" it snarled as BlackBlood attacked yet again.
  He swung his right arm in a broad arc towards the 'knocker, which rocked
  backwards, digging his claws into the shoulders yet again, then ripping
  bloody tracks down its fore-paws.


 Fire exploded from the 'knocker as it fought to survive.


 BlackBlood reeled and slid backwards, pain punctuating his every
  movement as the heat burned away parts of his flesh.  He slammed into a
  wall, slid down it, and fell, splayed into a broad band of brightest white.


 The B'harni-knocker, now exhausted, crumpled backwards to land hard
  in a solid black square.


 BlackBlud watched as the darkness started to close in around him,
  struggling to maintain consciousness as he heard a sound like an earthquake.
  He was unable to turn his head or eyes, but could hear the insane cackling
  quite clearly from around him.


 A thanatin laughed Merrily.  "Well, looks like out two *spit*
  Maeands here saved us all the trouble!"


 A second followed suit, chiming in with glee.  "We will enjoy
  adding your hides to our collection!"


 BlackBlood struggled to comprehend the events transpiring around
  him, blinded by the light of the bright sun shining down onto him.


 "So look at each other, already!" teased still another, grabbing
  his head and turning it forcibly.


 Realization slowly dawned on BlackBlood.  "oh... great...
  Grimace... no..." he uttered slowly as his head was lifted for him, allowing
  him to see his fallen comrade.


 "no..no....no.." sobbed BlackBlood.  His arms felt like lead
  weights, yet he struggled to swing at his captor anyway.  The feeble attempt
  was stopped short, his arm stepped on by the Spiral.


 "Aww ... they can almost kill each other, but don't have the
  *balls* to look at their own dirty work..." teased one.


       "I don't suppose you recognize us, do you?" leered the lead
  thanatin, looking at each of his victims in turn.  He clacked his Claws[tm]
  together, mocking laughter coming from his deformed throat.


       "Clive?" asked DeadLock, not believing this could be one of
  the three Maenads who disappeared during Operation: Phoenix.


       "None other," he giggled, "and my fellows: Torquemada and
  Slaine."  BlackBlood and DeadLock groaned, the defeat too much to take.


 BlackBlood watched the thanatins prepare for the killing blows and
  closed his eyes, anticipating his fateful demise.



...
TBC!  [Massive cliffhangers suck, don't they!]  :)=

"A New Breed"
Copyright 1996
David R. Hibbs