I've done exactly no checking on this. This is right out of my editor,
and straight to you. I hope the formatting works okay. Comments are
always welcome, and are, indeed, encouraged. I'm taking my filters off
briefly so that I can read C&C, so please, make it worth my while. :)

This story is an original idea that came to me one night. I told a
friend of mine about it, and she agreed to pencil it, if I could write
it out in comic-book-ish format. This does occur on earth, and
actually slightly in our future. The magic may seem a trifle
anachronistic, but I'll explain that all in time, when I explain what
The Opening and the Way are. :)

"Hopeless"
by 
Jan Sacharuk
All characters property of me.

Chapter 1
=======================================================================

She's laughing at us.
I mean, not that people haven't done it before. But it's a lot
different, now.
We're three of the most powerful beings on this planet. At least,
that's what they tell me.
Actually, when you get right down to it, I think she's laughing at
me. My two companions are still in the shadows of the alley. I look
back at them. As close as I am, I can still only barely make them
out. That's okay, though. I know what they look like. As long as I can
see the glow of their eyes, I know I'm okay.
I nod to the taller shadow. He's a weird one. He used to be a pretty
normal guy, but after The Opening, he got a little psycho. Went to a
nanodoc, and got his body rebuilt, from the cells up. Now, he's a 7
foot tall talking Tyger. To make things worse, he's constantly quoting
old movies and cliches at us. Everyone needs a vice, I suppose.
He grins back at me, and I see his teeth. At least they aren't covered
with blood, this time.
I shift my eyes to the smaller shadow. Her gaze is down, but when I
look at her, her eyes lift to look at me. Her cowl hides her face, but
again, I know what it looks like. She doesn't make a sound, of
course. That's just her Way. After The Opening, every one of us picked
up something like that. Morthan, the big shadow, quotes things. Mute,
well...she doesn't say anything. Ever. And I won't bore you with what
my Way is.
I look back to the task ahead. She's been feeding, again. She's
holding two of her victims by the tops of their heads, dragging their
bodies on the ground behind her. She raises her arms, and shows me
their faces. I look on, impassively. She's trying to shock us now,
testing how much effort she's going to have to put into this. I light
a cigarette, and look on. I tell her that she's going to have to put a
lot into this.
She hisses, and tosses the bodies to the sides. She's stopped laughing
now, thank the Mother. She's got a laugh that would raise the
dead. "Probably did that in advance," I mutter to myself, and take
another drag.
I tense myself, and nod my head, almost imperceptably. There's a rush
of air from behind me, and my hair whips into my eyes. Morthan streaks
towards our target, almost silently, trying to catch her off guard.
No way we'd be that lucky.
He strikes the ground in front of her with a force ball, and it
crumbles into dust. She leaps back, and hisses. I hear the russle of
Mute's sleeves behind me, and prepare for her attack. I see Mute's
words float before my eyes, and hear the whisper of her mind inside
mine. "Demon Hands!" she invokes.
A portal about five hundred meters in diameter opens up above the
witch opens up, and I see two large hands streak down out of it. The
witch has a chance to scream, once, before the hands crush her into
the ground. The hands grab her and a large chunk of the earth, and
start to retract into the portal that they came from.
I feel Mute's eyes open wide, and hear her stumble backwards, against
a wall. I look back to see her hands clutching her head, before she
collapses to her knees. I see her eyes flash brightly, and the hands
dissapear.
"We're facing something quite a bit out of our depth, Gash," she
signals to me. "Morthan is preparing his next spell, but unless she
dies on her own in the next few seconds, nothing's going to happen."
I look back to Morthan, and see that Mute is right. He's created
another sphere in front of himself, and is weaving the spell inside of
it. 
I subvoc into the mike at my throat. He's got a reciever built into his
ear, something that he said he always wanted to do. I think it's
strange, but it does come in handy from time to time.
"Back away, Morthan. I don't think any force spells are going to work
on her. Even Mute thinks we're in trouble."
He grunts in response, and releases the spell prematurely, buffeting
the witch with a light force to cover his escape.
He makes it back behind me, and kneels to check on Mute. She takes his
hand, and leans on him while she comes back to her senses. 
I frown. The laughing has started again.
I lift my hands, and sweep them down, leaving meter-long glowing lines
in the air. "Gash!" I command. "Blades!"
The two lines flare and solidify into curved swords. I've got it down
now, so they glow with this neat black light. I hear Morthan shake his
head. "Showoff," he says.
I grin to myself, and drop my cigarette on the ground. I grind it out,
and walk forwards, hands at my sides. The blades hang there in the
air, and then move to follow me.
The witch cackles at me as I move towards her. "Give up!" I call. "The
three of us will eventually overwhelm you! Turn yourself in, and the
Council may be lenient!"
Her laughing stops, and she frowns. "The council? They are nothing to
me! *You* are nothing to me, powerful as you are! I will devour your
souls, and feast on your blood!"
"This is your final warning!" I reply. "We are permitted to use lethal
force in pursuit of you! The killing will end here!"
She laughs again, a short, mocking laugh. "Fool! The word 'lethal'
doesn't apply to me! You can't kill me!"
She drops her hand to her throat. She puts her nail to her skin, and
slowly draws it down, over her jugular, and across her windpipe. Blood
pours from the cut. "You can't kill me, because I can't die!"
I have no idea how she manages it. That isn't a shadow in front of me,
I'm sure of it. For all that I can tell, that's actually *her* in
front of me. 
Now, I'm a pretty powerful guy, by all rights. I'm an Arch-level
gash-class mage. There's only one of me, and I haven't been killed
yet. Of course, I haven't cut my throat. Not even I could survive that
for very long. But there she stands in front of me, blood streaming
down her front.
I charge at her anyway. She's more powerful than anything that I've
met yet, but that never stopped me. I'm kind of dumb that way, Morthan
often complains to me about it. I suppose I do tend to rush into
things before I should, but hey, that's what I get paid for.
I send one of the swords in in front of me. She deflects it, but it
manages to take a large chunk of one of her arms with it. As expected,
though, it doesn't slow her down at all. She doesn't even cry out in
pain. I run in and slash at her, calling my other sword in. It leaps
to my hand, and I slice upwards. She dodges my first strike, and
counters the second with a blow to the chest that makes me grunt in
pain. For such a skinny thing, she sure has a lot of power behind
her. Funny how it's still suprising, at this point.
I release my swords back into energy, and cast one straight at her,
and one slightly to the side. Both miss, and she kicks me in the
face. I keep my teeth in, and call both of them back to me. 
The swords strike her full in the back, and this time she screams,
though more out of suprise than anything, I think. I create another
blade of energy and point it at her head, my foot on her
shoulder. "Yeild. You may be strong, but if I put this through your
head, I think even you would have a tough time shaking it off."
She grins at me, the blood of her kills still staining her
teeth. 
"You'd be wrong, hero," she says, suddenly behind me.
I spin around, and there she stands, not a mark on her.
"500 years ago," she starts, "I was murdered. I was buried, and my
soul screamed in pain for the wrong that was done to me. For years, my
soul sat in limbo, watching over my body, hoping that some greater
power would take me or destroy me or *something*. But nothing
happened. My rage grew stronger, and I destroyed other souls like
myself, that were waiting. I grew more powerful, and in time, I
ressurected myself. You can't kill me, hero. Not only am I undead,
risen from the grave, but I raised myself. I am nothing less than a
godess, hero. Beware of me."
I take several steps back, and take stock of the situation. She's
right. The amount of power that it takes to raise yourself is
unprecedented, and by all rights, she is a goddess. 
She smiles at me. "Today, though, you have bested me. By all rights, I
should kill you and devour you here, but you're being protected by
something at least as powerful as me. But beware of me, mage. At some
point, I'll be back for you, and your blood will be mine."
She hops back, and laughs again, and fades away.



 ****   ****  ===========================jan@cs.ualberta.ca==================
**   ***   ** GCS d- s++:-- a--- C++++@>$ UISX++>$ P L>++ E>++$ W++ N+ o? K-? 
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   **v.y**  The optimists say this is the best of all possible worlds.  
    ** ** The pessimists are afraid that they're right.
      *               -Dunno