The Concarnadine Chronicles #035 -- "Sixth Sense"
Title: "Sixth Sense"
'Fandom': The Concarnadine Chronicles
Claim: General; Characters
Prompt: #035 :: “Sixth Sense”
Word Count: c.1000
Rating: PG-15
Summary: The last chapter(s) continue(s), up to the fence.
Author's Notes: This is what I'd been working to from early on. Props to those of you who are still keeping up with the plot twists.
“Sixth Sense”
His thumbs might not have been pricking, but Concarnadine was under no illusions: a fight like no other was now imminent.
The difference was that, in this case, he had been able to pick the time of the conflict, rather than have it sweep over him, as had happened to so many others. This time, Jovimort, despoiler of so many worlds, would have to face someone ready for him, and someone who had (Concarnadine sincerely hoped) thoroughly disrupted the activities of the pawns Jovimort had so far tricked into helping him.
The hired car had dropped him and Elizabeth at the top of the rise. He’d paid the driver, and they’d waited until he’d gone, before they, each, listened to the aether.
“It’s that way, I think,” Elizabeth said, cupping her jewel in her hand. She was pointing north of west, towards the setting sun. Frankly, Concarnadine agreed with her - the disruption in the psychic field across North London did indeed some from that direction - but he needed to be sure of the basis of her belief.
“What can you feel ?”
“It’s the same as what Ilona Comeyn had round her, the day she came to the theatre,” she said: “A smell, like rotten meat, like a fur-coat gone bad.”
That sounded … disgusting … enough.
Concarnadine nodded. “Any idea how far ?”
Jovimort was a devourer - he obtained his sustenance by consuming the life-force of others. He had ravaged the realm that was his, and tried to expand to others. In some cases he had succeeded, and the realms had been reduced to shadows, to side-plates in his cosmic gluttony. In others, the denizens had fought back. Generally to little effect, since Jovimort suborned dupes among the populations of his targets, offering them power and promising them positions of authority in his new order (although this was generally so that they would harvest life energy for him as he machinated to seize a realm, and would thereafter serve as his choicest morsels). In general each realm was left to defend itself, because of a principle that realms did not “interfere” with one another. Concarnadine had interpreted “interference” slightly more restrictively than had others, and led a counter-movement resisting Jovimort’s advances. And, in several cases, doing enough to stave off the immediate threat.
And now Jovimort had turned his attention to Concarnadine’s home-world. And, inevitably, all those whom the magician had helped in the past, were too busy with their own concerns to offer his reciprocal assistance. So, it was Concarnadine (and Elizabeth) on his own. Still, he had cut off most of the support Linkletter had been arranging - there would be no sudden inrush of power to Jovimort, when they triggered one of his dark rituals.
“It’s in there,” Elizabeth said. Concarnadine did not hesitate, but nodded his agreement.
They had come to a housing estate on the very outskirts of the metropolis - a housing estate which seemed to have been built round a series of industrial sites. A wood-yard stood on the corner opposite to where they were, with semi-detached houses filling the streets beyond, but the local shop was cheek-by-jowl with a refrigerated meat store, and one row of houses was punctuated by a broad gate apparently belonging to an I.M.Foreman, who described himself as a General Dealer (which, in Concarnadine’s mind, made him a rag-and-bone merchant, something he had thought had died out years before).
It was the last place that, rationally, he would have looked for an extra-dimensional entity seeking to take the world over - which probably made it the logical place for Jovimort to have based himself.
He remembered one world - a place of canyons and semi-subterranean seas - where Jovimort had offered a prospect of greatly increased fertility in return, essentially, for worship and sacrifice. This was one of Jovimort’s contradictions: so long as he (or it) was being fed enough, it (or he) could manipulate life-energy: the barren could be made fertile, the injured healed, the dead resurrected. The catch was that all of these were merely transitory: so long as Jovimort managed the energy-flows in just such a way, they continued, but once he withdrew his beneficence the effect ended, and, in most cases, the energy could actually be withdrawn so that whatever life-energy had accumulated apart from his contribution was sucked away in the instant.
What had swung the argument had been the fact that, within that realm, Concarnadine had been able to teach himself to manipulate life-energy. So he had been able to duplicate almost everything that Jovimort’s covert dupes were promising. More, he had found two youngsters sensitive enough to do the manipulation for themselves.
Of course, Jovimort’s patsies hadn’t been happy when their peers had decided to reject Jovimort’s advances, but Concarnadine had used his talents to sever Jovimort’s link with them. Deprived of their patron’s influence, their self-confidence turned to smoke and they quietly withdrew.
Linkletter’s people hadn’t, frankly, been as easily to neutralise. But, given that Concarnadine (with some help) had been able to remove Linkletter himself from the equation without too much trouble, gave him hope that, in this instance, Jovimort had relied on broken reeds.
“I’d say ‘You cannot be serious !!’, if I didn’t think it would sound clichéd.”
“Well, it isn’t what I’d expected, either.”
They were at the heart of the housing estate. The houses had parted (almost as though they were apprehensive of getting too close), to leave room for a chain-link fenced space, surrounding a ramshackle carnival, which was, according to the faded, and poorly-painted, sign, owned by Honest Edgar Merridew, Master Showman and Purveyor of Fun and Merriment to the World. In truth, it looked as though Merridew had probably been there when the houses had been built. Equally, it looked as though his carnival hadn’t been open in some years.
“We’re certain ?” Concarnadine queried.
“That’s where the taint’s coming from,” Elizabeth confirmed. She paused, as if listening to the jewel she held. “And there’s a gap in the fence, just along there,” she added.
'Fandom': The Concarnadine Chronicles
Claim: General; Characters
Prompt: #035 :: “Sixth Sense”
Word Count: c.1000
Rating: PG-15
Summary: The last chapter(s) continue(s), up to the fence.
Author's Notes: This is what I'd been working to from early on. Props to those of you who are still keeping up with the plot twists.
“Sixth Sense”
His thumbs might not have been pricking, but Concarnadine was under no illusions: a fight like no other was now imminent.
The difference was that, in this case, he had been able to pick the time of the conflict, rather than have it sweep over him, as had happened to so many others. This time, Jovimort, despoiler of so many worlds, would have to face someone ready for him, and someone who had (Concarnadine sincerely hoped) thoroughly disrupted the activities of the pawns Jovimort had so far tricked into helping him.
The hired car had dropped him and Elizabeth at the top of the rise. He’d paid the driver, and they’d waited until he’d gone, before they, each, listened to the aether.
“It’s that way, I think,” Elizabeth said, cupping her jewel in her hand. She was pointing north of west, towards the setting sun. Frankly, Concarnadine agreed with her - the disruption in the psychic field across North London did indeed some from that direction - but he needed to be sure of the basis of her belief.
“What can you feel ?”
“It’s the same as what Ilona Comeyn had round her, the day she came to the theatre,” she said: “A smell, like rotten meat, like a fur-coat gone bad.”
That sounded … disgusting … enough.
Concarnadine nodded. “Any idea how far ?”
Jovimort was a devourer - he obtained his sustenance by consuming the life-force of others. He had ravaged the realm that was his, and tried to expand to others. In some cases he had succeeded, and the realms had been reduced to shadows, to side-plates in his cosmic gluttony. In others, the denizens had fought back. Generally to little effect, since Jovimort suborned dupes among the populations of his targets, offering them power and promising them positions of authority in his new order (although this was generally so that they would harvest life energy for him as he machinated to seize a realm, and would thereafter serve as his choicest morsels). In general each realm was left to defend itself, because of a principle that realms did not “interfere” with one another. Concarnadine had interpreted “interference” slightly more restrictively than had others, and led a counter-movement resisting Jovimort’s advances. And, in several cases, doing enough to stave off the immediate threat.
And now Jovimort had turned his attention to Concarnadine’s home-world. And, inevitably, all those whom the magician had helped in the past, were too busy with their own concerns to offer his reciprocal assistance. So, it was Concarnadine (and Elizabeth) on his own. Still, he had cut off most of the support Linkletter had been arranging - there would be no sudden inrush of power to Jovimort, when they triggered one of his dark rituals.
“It’s in there,” Elizabeth said. Concarnadine did not hesitate, but nodded his agreement.
They had come to a housing estate on the very outskirts of the metropolis - a housing estate which seemed to have been built round a series of industrial sites. A wood-yard stood on the corner opposite to where they were, with semi-detached houses filling the streets beyond, but the local shop was cheek-by-jowl with a refrigerated meat store, and one row of houses was punctuated by a broad gate apparently belonging to an I.M.Foreman, who described himself as a General Dealer (which, in Concarnadine’s mind, made him a rag-and-bone merchant, something he had thought had died out years before).
It was the last place that, rationally, he would have looked for an extra-dimensional entity seeking to take the world over - which probably made it the logical place for Jovimort to have based himself.
He remembered one world - a place of canyons and semi-subterranean seas - where Jovimort had offered a prospect of greatly increased fertility in return, essentially, for worship and sacrifice. This was one of Jovimort’s contradictions: so long as he (or it) was being fed enough, it (or he) could manipulate life-energy: the barren could be made fertile, the injured healed, the dead resurrected. The catch was that all of these were merely transitory: so long as Jovimort managed the energy-flows in just such a way, they continued, but once he withdrew his beneficence the effect ended, and, in most cases, the energy could actually be withdrawn so that whatever life-energy had accumulated apart from his contribution was sucked away in the instant.
What had swung the argument had been the fact that, within that realm, Concarnadine had been able to teach himself to manipulate life-energy. So he had been able to duplicate almost everything that Jovimort’s covert dupes were promising. More, he had found two youngsters sensitive enough to do the manipulation for themselves.
Of course, Jovimort’s patsies hadn’t been happy when their peers had decided to reject Jovimort’s advances, but Concarnadine had used his talents to sever Jovimort’s link with them. Deprived of their patron’s influence, their self-confidence turned to smoke and they quietly withdrew.
Linkletter’s people hadn’t, frankly, been as easily to neutralise. But, given that Concarnadine (with some help) had been able to remove Linkletter himself from the equation without too much trouble, gave him hope that, in this instance, Jovimort had relied on broken reeds.
“I’d say ‘You cannot be serious !!’, if I didn’t think it would sound clichéd.”
“Well, it isn’t what I’d expected, either.”
They were at the heart of the housing estate. The houses had parted (almost as though they were apprehensive of getting too close), to leave room for a chain-link fenced space, surrounding a ramshackle carnival, which was, according to the faded, and poorly-painted, sign, owned by Honest Edgar Merridew, Master Showman and Purveyor of Fun and Merriment to the World. In truth, it looked as though Merridew had probably been there when the houses had been built. Equally, it looked as though his carnival hadn’t been open in some years.
“We’re certain ?” Concarnadine queried.
“That’s where the taint’s coming from,” Elizabeth confirmed. She paused, as if listening to the jewel she held. “And there’s a gap in the fence, just along there,” she added.