Why Her (474 hits)
Category: NoneRating: 1.64 on 8 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Magicaddict (View user info) at 2006-09-19 12:11:37 EDT
"Why her? Oh, I think you know that already."
Since they had come for her husband, she had known nothing but rage. Every time he had shown up to mock her plight, she had descended upon his incorporeal form in a display of psychotic violence that was as disturbing in its ferocity as it was tragic in its futility. In his current form, he could no more be hurt by normal means than a wave could be caught on the beach.
She could guess why she was being given a fair chance to kill her husband's murderer, as possibly could her silent attendant. Her bodyguard, a gruff lieutenant that had protected the royal family for years, wasn't so polite.
"Humour me," he said, shifting in his armour and hefting his sword as if to demonstrate he still wore them.
"You really don't know?" His sick smile hadn't left her and seemed to grow, faced with her protector's incompetence.
"No. What kind of coward challenges a defenceless woman and not someone-"
"-who can handle themselves?" He finished the bodyguard's line, his gaze snapping from her to him. "Someone like you, for instance?"
"Yeah," he said, turning on his nastiest tone of voice. "Someone like me, for instance."
"Certainly."
The response took the bodyguard by surprise, but he hid it quickly.
"Just as soon as you tell me what you have done to deserve it."
The bodyguard paused, uncertain. The hunter continued, his voice becoming slightly more agitated.
"What have you done to deserve the opportunity I am giving your charge? What is it that you, or any of your warmongering colleagues have achieved that could possibly move me to offer you the same chance to end me as I am offering her?"
Silence followed. The hunter despised brusque fools trying to be hardcore.
"Nothing. You have done precisely nothing to merit the opportunity I am making to her," he said, pointing without looking, his finger finishing up an inch or so from her nose. "From the moment we killed her little pet, each and every one of my visits to this place has been typified by her striving with every fibre in her being to kill me." His gaze came back to her, maintaining its intensity. "Her inability to do so has neither slowed her down nor dulled her will, and if she were not being discretely held back, she'd be doing it now. From you and your counterparts, I have received ignorance, apathy and a few cheap religious insults. You are a poor protagonist, human."
The bodyguard seethed, silenced by truth.
"So why give her the chance at all? Why put your own life on the line when you don't need to?"
Now it was her attendant who spoke up in even tones. He was hand picked as someone who would maintain a calming influence in extreme conditions - between a mass murderer and the woman whose husband he killed, it was being sorely tested.
The hunter maintained his sick grin as it returned to her. Her determined expression never changed.
"I think she knows that too, but let me enlighten you."
Damn it, this monster enjoyed the sound of his own voice.
"She knows that if we were to clash using all the...skills...we possess, she would die in short order, I would not break sweat and she would have never had a chance. She could prepare for death, sure of its inevitability, and could spit bitter defiance in my eye as she died, safe in the knowledge that she had never truly been in the game. Her spirit would remain strong, and unbroken to the moment I killed her. She'd probably even be smiling at me.
It is this spirit, this will, which intrigues me. I wonder whether it could stand up in the absence of such disparity, so have contrived to remove it. Should we come to fight, she will hold in her hands the tools and the opportunity to do away with me entirely, as will I. She will have every chance to succeed, as will I. If she is successful, I will die, and deserve to. If I succeed, however, she will know that she had her chance, her one chance, and failed. I wish to see whether that seemingly indomitable spirit would be able to bear the weight of death due to failure that was hers and hers alone, or whether it would bend, buckle...and break.
Destroying her body would be trivial. I am drawn to propose this challenge for the chance to destroy her spirit."
She wore a grim smile, the look of one who had nothing whatsoever left to lose. The hunter could tell his gambit had worked. In twenty-four hours, one of them would be dead.
"Bring it on."
"Good girl."
He vanished.
User Reviews
Submitted by Merlina (user info) at 2006-09-19 18:29:51 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by TheUniter (user info) at 2006-09-19 17:31:11 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
No Comment
Submitted by Crystle (user info) at 2006-09-19 17:16:21 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
<prepares for MATCH TO UBERDEATH!!! (only, not really because of double elimination)> Good story
apparently, I'm too vagina-y, so you have a better shot. According to Judge Johnny.
Sigh
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2006-09-19 16:03:45 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
another good entries for us judges to read - just the right amount of tension, and not too wordy
Submitted by Hirilnara (user info) at 2006-09-19 13:23:56 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Got to love Ubermadness.
Submitted by Brdn_Nkd (user info) at 2006-09-19 12:33:01 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by morontian (user info) at 2006-09-19 12:19:58 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Perfect 1.5
Submitted by morontian (user info) at 2006-09-19 12:19:42 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
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