Warren Murphy: Prophet Of Doom

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Esther had looked forward to seeing that old fossil again. She wanted to teach him a lesson that would never let him contemplate again blackening both all-seeing eyes and impacting her holy sinus cavities.

And it was just fine with her if her loyal acolytes did all the maiming and bone busting for her.

The old man was quickly surrounded. He disappeared under the bigger and taller bodies that closed in with slow, steady menace.

Esther Clear-Seer smiled. This would be worth waiting for.

When the bodies of her Truth Church acolytes began dropping around the feet of the old man, she changed her evil mind. It might be better for her own personal safety if she watched the proceedings from an even greater distance, after all.

In a blind panic Esther Clear-Seer turned and ran after the last remnants of the fleeing crowd, and her ears filled with the ugly, too-familiar sound of bones breaking and shattering.

Chapter Twenty-One

first the blackness was complete.

But then slowly, almost imperceptibly, scenery began to resolve from the darkness around him. Shades of gray appeared as the ink of total blackness bled away, illuminating some areas, highlighting others.

The flickering mirage congealed into a familiar setting.

It was the expansive plain on which the two warriors had battled. As the lighter shades of gray took hold in the lowering sky, Remo knew now that it was no longer the scene of his tortured visions, but the actual field itself. He didn't know how he knew this.

As he walked along, Remo felt the solid earth beneath his feet, breathed the air of the strange perpetual twilight.

Were he to walk a hundred yards or a hundred years, he would never be able to tell.

The plain was perfectly flat and bare. He detected no vegetation, no animals. As far as the eye could see, there was not even a solitary stone. Just more of the same bleak, barren expanse stretching limitlessly off to the unreachable point where land met sky.

And the sky itself seemed nothing more than a va-

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cant extension of the land. It was a sky without sun or stars or moon. Without life.

Remo walked on to a point that he knew instinctively to be the center of the plain. He had no idea from where this knowledge came, but when he reached the middle, he stopped and turned.

And there behind him was the weird figure who had struck down the helpless combatant of his thoughts.

Remo could see the warrior clearly now, though his mind still couldn't reconcile the image. A creature dressed in yellow smoke, the foul exhalations of the pit. Remo knew it to be the Pythia.

Their roles now were reversed. Remo could see the giant looming shape of his prior visions floating at some indistinct point in the distance. He realized on some primal level that this was where he should rightfully be. Apollo had assumed control of his body, and the Pythia now stood guard against the threat from within.

That threat was Remo.

The figure of the Pythia raised its hands and took up a menacing posture.

"Night tiger of Sinanju, you continue to fight." It was a statement of fact.

Remo stood his ground. "I do," he replied.

"That which you consider your soul should have fled into the Void when my master assumed his predestined place in the world of mortals. If you fail to leave of your own volition, Sinanju, it is within my power to destroy your essence for all eternity. You will know neither pleasure nor pain nor hope nor sorrow. You will not be wept for, for you will not have existed. Is this your desire?"

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This creature had mocked him in his thoughts, usurped his mind, spirited him from the physical world into this hellish twilight. And now it threatened to rob Remo of his soul if he didn't go peacefully into the Void.

It offered him a simple choice...but Remo was prepared to make neither. He instead chose that which the Pythia did not offer.

In the vision in his mind, Remo forced himself to smile.

"Take your best shot, smoky."

And a deadly hand lashed out at Remo's indomitable form.

Esther Clear-Seer was breathless when she burst into the Pythia chamber. She began gagging on the thick sulphur smoke as she tried to suck down lungfuls of air.

"That old Sinanju guy is in town," she panted to Kaspar, repressing her gag reflex at the noxious stench.

Kaspar, poised expectantly at the apex of the Pythia platform, was indifferent to Esther's report. "It does not matter," he said with a wave of the hand.

"Like hell it doesn't," Esther said, mounting the stairs. She noticed Lori Cole sitting off to one side of the platform. "When I took off, he'd already taken out at least a dozen of my crack acolytes. It took me three years to build my following back to this level, and you've got jne sacrificing all of them like lambs in one afternoon. Plus I think Cole got away."

This news nearly got a reaction out of Kaspar, but at that moment the eyes of what had been Remo Wil-

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Hams fluttered open. The head moved around, as if testing the bones and muscles of the neck for the first time. The eyes this time seemed more focused than those of the others who had straddled the wooden tripod.

Kaspar appeared to be fascinated by every movement the man on the stool made. Esther realized that she wasn't going to get any sympathy out of him for the great setback the Truth Church had suffered that day.

"So he came back after all, huh?" she said, nodding to Remo.

When Kaspar looked back at her, his eyes were moist with barely containable joy. "He has indeed come back," he said reverently.

"Yeah, well...right." Esther shot a baffled look at Buffy Brand, who was still manacled beside the crevice. But the young girl was staring fearfully at the man on the stool.

And what had once been Remo spoke.

"I live," Remo pronounced to Kaspar in a voice that was not his. "East has met West. The prophecy is fulfilled."

And the eyes of Apollo incarnate looked with fiery satisfaction on the modern world.

Though the smoke of the Pythia's body appeared insubstantial, Remo's hands felt as though they were striking solid flesh and bone.

It was not as it had been in his mind.

Here, in this netherworld of his own thoughts, unencumbered by distractions of the natural world, Remo stood on an equal footing with the Pythia.

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More than equal footing.

A fist snaked out with lightning speed from the cloud's left node. Remo deflected the blow easily. His own hand shot out, connecting sharply with the creature's midsection. The sound of expelled wind came from the Pythia, and Remo didn't know if in this strange ethereal plain he was seeing things as they really were—or fashioning in his own perception responses that were easier for his mind to understand.

He only knew the Pythia was injured.

The thing had been attempting to block him from passing over toward the spot where Apollo resided, but it now staggered to one side.

Remo's hand snapped out once more, and again it landed where the thing's belly should have been. Another gasp for air, and the Pythia weaved farther to one side. It raised its hands defensively.

It was almost too easy. Remo brought the side of his hand in a chopping motion against the temple of the Pythia.

The creature dropped to the plain, gasping for breath in a desperate, feeble gurgle.

Remo stepped beyond the stricken form. Apollo waited beyond.

Kaspar-s delight was boundless. Esther stood dumbly behind him. They faced the new Pythia.

"Your humble servant waits breathless to perform your earthly bidding," he said obsequiously. "I am eager to rule this land in your name."

The thing within Remo gave the appearance of looking down on Kaspar even though, seated, it was a good foot below the little man.