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Chapter 7 - Heart to Hart

Ms. Hart, The Hell Hart, that was what she was called over two hundred years ago. Two centuries ago, no one would have believed she would be tending someone near to death, praying for their recovery. Then, her reputation as a swords-woman, in an age where women did not use a sword was legendary. Her skill with it, impeccable, her dueling record, perfect. After a time, her travels would make her master of many weapons and nearly as many enemies. If you saw her standing over the body of someone, it was to watch the light go out of their eyes in that final darkness.

Driven regularly from her home, partially from her strange, ageless and impertinent nature, partially from the fear and responses her enemies had, she acquired a number of names over the decades. In civilized lands, she was The Lady Hart or Frau Hart. In places where she was a warlord, she was known as The Red Hart from her standard, a large deer on a red standard. In places where she killed her enemies indiscriminately, she was called The Butcher. For a time, she was a revered as a warrior-queen.

Those were different times, her Light, her power kept her outside of Time. Forged of the stuff of cacastrom, the random forces of dark Chaos and bound by illiaster, the stuff of Order, direct by her will, she carried it inside her body. It suffused her bones, wrapped itself inside her skeleton and appeared as both weapon and armor. Her House carried this artifact and different members were able to do different things with it. Few had her strength and mastery. Ever fewer survived. Now, she was the last of her House. And as she knew it the last of her kind.

Her charge, a woman of extreme age, was still physically imposing but the power that fueled her body was all but gone. She held on by force of will, hoping relief would be coming soon. That relief needed to arrive soon, or all would be lost. Hart remembered the first time she met her, this once extremely powerful and now fragile woman who held the fate of the world in her trembling hand...

* * *

My best name was less than seventy years ago; Kathrin Hart. It was the late 1940's, and I had been in Paris during the World War II, when I met him, the man who I would call the Sergeant. He was a G.I. working in a small town and our initial actions together had been to repel a super-weapon created by the Germans. At the time, I was a weapon of the Reich as well, but my memory fled me until I died. I died protecting him. I had no regret. There was something about him. Something dark. I instinctively knew then what he was, but could not bring myself to accept it.

He did not know. He could not see the other lives he had lived. Like rings in a tree, he had many lifetimes, each of conflict, and of suffering. He had many, each renewed by his dark connection to his power. Our powers were complementary, so we were drawn together, time and time again, our lives mixed sometimes as lovers and other times as deadly enemies. This time we started as enemies and ended as lovers. When the war ended, I found my way to him in the States and we married. Again. It was the beginnings of a mistake. Small at first, but it grew over time.

My presence, my Heart, my Light, triggered his Shadow and soon we had to move This would become a recurrent theme. Each time we grew comfortable, misfortune would follow us and people died. As his power grew I realized he was not just a child of Shadow. He was a Power. A repository of the Great Gift. As great as my power had been, it would be as nothing once his fully awakened. His power was a named one. And as I watched it grow, I refused to recognize it. And the danger it would pose.

During the sixties, we resisted the oppressive governments wherever we could go. We pretended we were just like the people around us. We let our hair grow long, let our responsibilities lapse and got on the road, traveling as the people did. His powers were already nearly as great as my own. He could walk between two shadows anywhere in the world. He could hear his name mentioned anywhere there was darkness. But in a desperate attempt to hide we went to Woodstock. At Woodstock, we laughed, got high, traveled in a broken-down VW bus with half a dozen other hippies, made our way through history until we met her.

She was beautiful. Her hair was an afro, full like the head of a dandelion. Her body, perfect, full, exuding sexuality, everywhere she moved, carnality erupted. She wore a simple halter and shorts and I remember her legs were the most amazing I had ever seen. Her body was brown like mahogany and her smile was a thing of warmth and sunshine. We were both drawn to her and we spent the days getting high and just enjoying the perfect weather.

We danced, sang and it was as if we had always known her. We lost our hippy friends during the weekend, so we spent the nights parked, making love till the dawn. When he and I woke the last day, she was gone, but both of us were more at peace than we had been in years. After Woodstock, things changed in the world. Suspicion and fear became the order of the day. But for us, things seemed good. We were happy for a time able to enjoy our peace until she came back to us, nearly a decade later.

Her second visit was nothing like her first.

She came to us on a farm in Iowa. We had moved there hoping for a cessation to the slowly increasing attacks. These were strange things, they started as simple things, racists with an axe to grind. I was a blond haired, Caucasian woman and he was a powerfully built African American. And things were often hostile when we came to new places. But the tempers did not cool. Their ire and their attacks increased. Soon a supernatural taint could be seen. Entities, not of this world rode the bodies of those racists and eventually attacked directly. Our farm, built and reinforced, protected us from their attacks and became both home and fortress.

And then she came.
 

It was during a terrible thunderstorm, where lightning flashed, tornado-like winds howled. Both of us were on edge. The storm sang of the supernatural and we began our preparations. We renewed our wards, loaded weapons and meditated to bring our powers into balance. The storm grew worse and after a time, we sensed it approaching our farm. As the wind howling increased, we could sense her. She carried the storm with her. Her knock on the door was powerful, able to be heard above the storm. When we opened the door,  we recognized her immediately. She had not changed, as if less than a second had past between when she left us then and now. She was carrying a child with her.

She came in from the driving rain and staggered into the living room. She handed me the baby, roughly as if she could barely maintain her awareness. She dropped to the carpet as if she were dead. He caught her and laid her gently on her back. Hidden by the baby were terrible slashes in her belly. Deep cuts, with razor precision. He looked at me and knew whatever was coming was of a nature more fantastic than any threat to date.

He picked her up and struggled as if she were a great weight. He placed her on the sofa. I slashed away her jacket and opened her shirt and saw her body had been terribly savaged and the injuries were across her thighs and back as well. Whatever did this was powerful and large. The claws were the size of his hands. He rewrapped the child while I tended her wounds. We both had significant experience with injuries and often worked as doctors or paramedics depending on where we lived. The child was about six months old and in perfect condition. After checking him out and satisfied to his health, we made ready. Whatever drove her here would follow. Soon.

When they came we saw them slowly approaching the house. They were wolves the size of horses. Their mouths showed their razor sharp fangs, already bloody, each drip accented by the flashes of lightning, growing steadily more frequent, lasting longer and the crashing of thunder indicating the storm was directly overhead, no time between light and noise. With all the noise the strangest thing was the fact the child did not make a sound. As if lightning was something he was used to hearing.

My crazy husband walked out onto the porch with a shotgun, filled with a mix of silver, lead, iron and salt in one hand and a rune-carved machete in the other. "Stay here. Keep them safe. I will be right back."

He walked out there and the three giant wolves strode up to him within twenty feet and stopped. They were easily nine feet at the shoulder. It was simply impossible they should exist.

"We don't want any trouble." As if talking to giant wolves was something he did every day. I sat with my Winchester rifle pointed out of the window.

"Give us the woman and the child and we will leave."

"Can't do that."

"Then, there will be... trouble."

My husband said nothing, but his body tensed imperceptibly, waiting for them to gather their courage. They seemed to sense his power and were in their way, cowed by it.

The wolf to his left bared his fangs and hissed. "Is that your final offer? Would you make her trouble your own? You already have many."

"Yep."

"Then die." As the wolf lunged, both barrels of the shotgun were shoved directly into its mouth, went off. It howled as it threw its head back, and smoke rose from its mouth as it fell into the rain.

"You, first." 

He turned exuding a crazy menace, smiled and asked to the remaining wolves, "Who's next?" Dropping the shotgun into the rain, he turns and faces the remaining two.

The second wolf, as large as the first lunged forward and my .380 caught it cleanly in the eye. Ensorcelled, it tore through the creature's ironhard flesh and ground its brain into mush as the round scattered inside of its skull. It dropped dead without a sound.

While the second wolf was falling to the ground, he leapt out of the way of the dying giant and his machete flashed against the hardened fur of the third wolf. Its stiff, iron-like fur blunting the force of his blow. Blood came away on the blade, just the same. The wolf surprised, bound backward.

"Die, mortal man." The last wolf braced itself and howled in his direction, focusing its sound like a weapon. The force of the sound shattered all of the glass in the house turning it instantly into the room as shrapnel.

I moved. Time slowed for me, directed by my power, I could see the glass, each shard of it as it moved into the room. My Winchester fell from my grip and my spear appeared, a function of my will. I could perceive those that would be a threat and struck them from the air with my spear, which had appeared in my hand, extending my reach. The wide bladed tip swatting away each projectile. I was struck by dozens of them, each of them trying to gain a purchase, most deflected by my armor, a few penetrating, but nothing stopped my focus, nothing stopped my execution. I did not know this woman but I knew it was important to save her. 

He had thrown himself to the ground at the last second, so the wave of sound passed over him, but even a glancing blow had been deadly enough. He was stripped nearly bare by the sound, lacerations crossed his entire body. Only tattered rags remained. I was put in mind of when he found me, walking away from a plane crash, I must have looked like that to him. He stood up, and snatched his machete out of the ground.

He touched the Nordic runes and raised the blade to the heavens. Lightning flowed down to him and connected the sword, casting light everywhere and dark silhouettes. He disappeared from sight, and reappeared in the shadow of the beast. Lightning redirected itself between where he was to where he now stood. The wolf was in the path. Jumping into the air, he stabs the sword into the side of the beast as the lightning finds them both. He is thrown away from the explosion.

The lightning abruptly stopped. The rain subsided soon after. The woman lay quietly, her breathing slowed, the child lay next to her, blissfully unaware of what happened. I got up, after removing shards of glass from by body and walked to the window. I could see my husband getting up, smoke still rising from his body. He turned and began to stagger toward me. I flew to him. He was still hot and he shone with a quiet luminescence. While we walked back to the house, the door opened up and the woman was there holding the child in her arms.

"We cannot stay here. Others will follow."

"Who are you, what did they want, and why is it every time we meet, I end up naked." His words were jocular, but his tone serious. These were questions he wanted answers to, now.

"My name is Gaia. And this," holding the baby out for a second, "is your son."



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