Home | Forum | Mailing List | Repository | Links | Gallery
 
 
Chapters
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
 
 
 

The Game of Empires - REVIEW THIS STORY

Written by Valerie Jones
Last updated: 02/13/2010 03:54:13 PM

Chapter 4

Ozymandias tapped the end of the chisel lightly, barely noticing the fine layer of stone that flaked away beneath his skilled touch. The ringing tone echoed away into the darkness, too small to fill such a vast space. Ozymandias ignored it. His mind was far away from the cavern and his eternal sentence of carving both past and future into its stone surfaces. His hands knew their task, and the images that arose from the stone around him came much more easily if he did not take note of his actions. Five thousand years ago, En Sabah Nur had thrown him into the coils of a futuristic machine, which burned the history of mankind-- past, present and future-- into his brain. It was more than his conscious mind could hold, but the imprint remained true and steady in his subconscious, emerging in the carved images that surrounded him. Ozymandias had long since forgotten his anger, his despair, his hatred of the unending labor. There was nothing left but the doing of it -- and the occasional break to attend to other business of Apocalypse’s.

His thoughts drifted to the Healer. Nightengale. She was... unexpected, to say the least, and it had been a long time since he had found himself surprised. It was a novel experience, and one he was enjoying.

Beneath his fingers, a face began to take shape, molded by his subconscious. He had known that the healer he had heard whispers of was both young and female, but he had not expected to find the shy, enchanting creature that now roamed almost freely in the halls of Apocalypse’s palace. Ozymandias had no idea what to make of her. She was obviously a mutant and raised in the United States, a country which was not know for producing pliant spirits. Yet she made no attempt to escape, nor did she seem to be gathering information to use in some later attempt. Instead, she seemed, if not content, then at least willing, to remain within the bounds set for her.

The figure beneath his hands gained definition, the angular, almost aristocratic features framed by a wealth of braids, golden chains and flowing scarves that blended back into the natural grain of the stone. One scarf, however, rose over her head, as if born on an errant breeze. Its trailing end did not return to the stone but instead expanded, becoming the bottom of something else. Ozymandias inched himself higher as he continued to carve.

At first, he had thought that there was nothing left inside their healer but a shattered spirit. The echoes of pain in her eyes were all too familiar to Ozymandias. But, as he had watched her, he realized that there was still life in her eyes. Most often, he saw keen interest, even curiosity, in her face, though she observed everything in silence. She was unlike any of the women Ozymandias had known in his long life, though those, admittedly, were few. The most notable, perhaps, was his sister, Nephri, whose fiery rebelliousness, though fueled by a love of her country Egypt, had contributed to the fall of the Pharaoh and to Ozymandias’ own defeat at Apocalypse’s hand. Thoughts of Nephri were no longer painful, the events of the past having been dulled by the passage of the millennia. He had become accustomed to the knowledge that he had used his sister for his own political gain, and, in the end, had chosen to kill her rather than acknowledge the mistakes he had made.

The scarf became a coat, worn by a man standing alone on a precipice. Ozymandias moved away from him, past a long, jagged crack in the stone face, and began carving again on the far side.

There was one thing in the healer that reminded him of his sister. He wasn’t certain what to label it. Not gentleness, exactly. Nephri had been capable of violence, as he suspected Nightengale was, as well. It was more a... a lack of ambition. Ozymandias nodded to himself. That was right. Nephri’s motives had always been completely unfathomable to him, and now, nearly five thousand years later, he had the feeling that he would understand no better what drove Nightengale. It was an unsettling feeling.

Ozymandias paused in surprise when he realized what he was carving. Faces stared back at him -- familiar, frightening. The X-Men stood united, their combined stance shouting defiance of Apocalypse and all of his plans. Slowly, his eyes traced the shapes, following his work back toward the beginning. He had been thinking about the healer. How had the X-Men become involved? He inhaled sharply as his eyes passed over the crack in the rock and came to rest on the solitary man. His face was a twin to Nightengale’s, and now that Ozymandias thought about it, he realized that he should have seen the resemblance long before this. But Gambit had never been of much interest to Apocalypse.

Ozymandias looked between the carvings. Gambit was no longer with the X-Men. That was interesting, though what it meant, he couldn’t begin to guess. The intriguing question was the nature of the link between the outcast X-Man and their healer. He nodded to himself again, this time in satisfaction. Apocalypse would be pleased by his discovery.

Renee stepped into the living room she had at least privately adopted as her own and stopped dead in her tracks. Apocalypse was seated in one of the high-backed chairs. The fireplace crackled with orange flames, and the slave who knelt beside the hearth looked up at her in surprise, the log in his hands falling to the stone floor with a dull thud. Apocalypse turned his head, and Renee could see the effort he required to make such a simple motion.

"Sit." The deep voice did not reflect its owner’s weakness. Renee’s stomach squeezed itself into a tiny, hard knot as she forced herself to walk forward into the room. She wondered if he had been waiting there for her, but then dismissed the thought. This was Apocalypse’s domain. He would sit wherever he chose. It was rather egocentric of her to think that he would particularly care where she spent the few hours she did not spend tending to him.

Apocalypse was wrapped in a heavy blanket, patterned intricately in shades of blue and black. Renee could see little of him save his face, which was gaunt and gray as always. His long hair was tied up in a rough topknot and then fell across his shoulders in a tangled mess. It was a darker shade than his skin but also gray, like wet slate. Renee settled hesitantly in the other chair, tucking the slit skirt around her legs and crossing her ankles beneath the seat. She noticed then that Apocalypse had his feet propped out in front of him, sock-clad toes poking out of the enveloping blanket to soak up the warmth of the fire. For a moment she could only stare in bemusement. It had never occurred to her that Apocalypse had toes, let alone that they might get cold.

Renee stared down at her lap, uncertain of what to say or do. She tucked her hands beneath her thighs to keep them still, but found herself tensing her fingers rhythmically against the fabric of the chair beneath her. It was a small comfort as she waited, wondering if Apocalypse was watching her. Finally, she snuck a glance in his direction, only to find him staring into the fire.

See, he’s not paying any attention to you at all, she told herself sternly.

The silence stretched, and Renee imagined that she could hear a clock in the distance, ticking away the endless seconds. She was a little surprised to find herself growing bored. Apocalypse did nothing but watch the dancing flames, and had he not commanded her to sit, she might very well have thought he hadn’t noticed her presence.

And I always thought he was so scary. Next to Sinister, he had seemed like the most frightening of the villains when she was a child. Cody had teased her endlessly about being afraid. She felt the corners of her mouth turning up in a long unused smile. He and Rachel had made up silly names for all of the mutant villains, just to prove that they weren’t scared of any of them. Apocalypse’s nickname was Uncle Pocket Lips, and she remembered clearly how hard her mother had laughed the first time Cody told her that.

It was hard to equate the man seated beside her with the terrible creature from her history classes. Perhaps it was only because what she saw now was the man himself, without his exoskeleton and futuristic weapons, and without the storm of destruction that invariably surrounded him whenever he came into contact with humans. She was not foolish enough to think he was merely misguided, or misunderstood, or anything else short of evil. He hated all of humanity and everything else he perceived as being weak with a relentless passion.

Perhaps that was the real reason she feared him -- because in his estimation, she knew, she could only be rated as one of the weak. Her life was likely to last only as long as she was useful to him.

Remy stood in front of the French doors leading out onto his balcony and stared at the sliver of moon riding low on the horizon. Almost beneath his feet, the ocean tumbled over itself as it spilled onto the sand, the foamy crests turned luminescent in the moonlight. Remy wasn’t thinking about the moon. On some level he acknowledged the night’s beauty, but there was no one there to point it out to, so the thought merely subsided, mixing into the rest of the day’s impressions.

He shivered. I’m a fool t’ be standin’ here, starin’ at de moon an’ tryin’ t’ talk m’self out o’ bein’ tired.

More than anything these days, Remy dreaded sleeping. For as long as he could remember, his nights had been haunted by dreams... nightmares. For the last few years, the dark hours had been filled with open graves, stretching across the ground as far as he could see in any direction. The bodies of those he had inadvertently helped murder lay in those graves, and they reached out of the soil to claw at him with desiccated hands.

Perhaps not so strangely, his dreams of the graveyard had begun to fade of late. The horrible things he had been party to in the past, that he had hoped so desperately to keep hidden from the X-Men, were now known. The X-Men hated him for it.

Remy sighed. Their reaction was just exactly as bad as he’d feared, but, now that it was all over the pain seemed to be ebbing some. As if the confession had done him some good, despite the fact that it had also cost him nearly all of the people he cared about.

Go t’ bed, Remy, he told himself, but he didn’t move away from the patch of moonlight in which he stood. Now that the more recent horrors were fading, older dreams were coming back to him. The images that had followed him since his youth. Those dreams were rarely coherent, and he never remembered much after waking, but the confusing impression of images always left him shivering in apprehension, filled with feelings of loss, pain and fear that he could find no source for. He figured it was all part of some repressed trauma that had followed him from the hard streets of New Orleans. Since he couldn’t remember anything about his real family or the events that had left him an orphan, the chances were good that whatever had happened was not something he wanted to remember. Sometimes he wished he could see more of his dreams, good or bad. Just so he could know.

He pushed the melancholy thoughts away and smiled. There was also the bizarre fact that Jean Summers kept showing up in his dreams. Not the woman that he knew, but a much younger version. A girl of sixteen or seventeen, whose picture he had seen many times at the mansion. And though her place in his dreams seemed to be that of a close and intimate friend, it never went much beyond that, for which he was secretly grateful. He had always cared for Jean, though never romantically, and it made him curious why she, of all the X-women, would be the one in his dreams. She seemed like the least likely candidate.

Remy turned away from the doors. Maybe Jean was just a safe topic for his dreaming. A little bit of the warmth the X-Men had brought to his life, but without the hurt and confusion that thinking about people like Storm and Rogue caused him. He padded softly to the bed and knelt on the edge to reach up and pull the covers back. If so, she was welcome to visit him anytime. As angry as the X-Men’s rejection made him -- the hypocrisy of it -- he still couldn’t help but admit that he missed them.

Which jus’ means dat you’re either entirely pathetic... or de X-Men somehow turned into family, an’ y’ have t’ love dem no matter how bad dey treat y’. He snorted in private disgust as he slid between the cool sheets. Neither option was very appealing, but he had the feeling he was stuck with them.

 

GambitGuild is neither an official fansite of nor affiliated with Marvel Enterprises, Inc.
Nonetheless, we do acknowledge our debt to them for creating such a wonderful character and would not dream of making any profit from him other than the enrichment of our imaginations.
X-Men and associated characters and Marvel images are © Marvel Enterprises, Inc.
The GambitGuild site itself is © 2006 - 2007; other elements may have copyrights held by their respective owners.