Title: Legend: Segue
Author: Zath Chauvert
Summary: At the end of the movie, Darkness merely lost a battle, not the war. He can never be truly defeated. Now, he makes plans for the future.
Rating: PG
Feedback: Yes, please! Any and all feedback would be greatly appreciated. Anything you have to say can be sent to "zathita AT hotmail DOT com", using common sense to put the "@" and the "." in their proper places, of course. Also, please include "FIC-FEEDBACK" somewhere in the subject line, because I get tons of spam and this makes the worthwhile stuff easier to pick out of the heap. :) Or, you could just hit the Review button at the bottom of the page.
Disclaimer: Neither the movie Legend nor any of its characters belong to me.
Author's Note: Please feel free to skip down to the story if authors' notes bore you. You won't miss anything important. I just wanted to say that I wrote the original version of this for an assignment for a high school creative writing class way back in 1998 when my teacher made us watch Legend and then told us to write a story about it. Yes, my teacher had us to write fanfic. No, I have no idea why she made us do it. The story then proceeded to sit around in a dark and dusty corner of my hard drive for 5 years. Then, I found it, spruced it up, and posted it here. Anyway, the point that I'm getting to in a roundabout manner is that this fic is the absolute oldest piece of fan fiction that I will ever post, here or anywhere. Older pieces exist, but for the good of humanity they will never see the light of day. I just thought that someone out there might find that to be interesting. Now, on with the show...
By Zath Chauvert
THE END.
"Crummy happy endings," muttered the Lord of Darkness as he strode through the eternal void, looking for the gateway back into the universe. He was tall, with horns that were big enough to make any bull jealous and a massive bulk that even the strongest and bravest mortals found intimidating, but he was just an insignificant speck when compared to the vast expanse of nothingness. Any mortal and most of the lesser immortals as well would have been either paralyzed with fear or struck dumb with awe when confronted with true infinity (and, in the case of a mortal, this would quickly be followed by being struck dead because at the same time they were confronted with true infinity they would also be confronted with a very immediate lack of oxygen), but to Darkness it wasn't particularly special. He had been there before and knew that once you got over haw big it was there wasn't anything else to hold one's interest. An infinite amount of nothing was just as dull as merely a lot of nothing. And unless you were really into silent meditation, that was very boring indeed.
The universe was the exact opposite of the void. True, the universe had large stretches of empty space that were quite similar to the void, but it also had land, and water, and air. It had food to eat, music to hear, minions to rule, and people to torment, control, seduce, and corrupt. Everything of interest, all the fun stuff, all the action, lay in the universe, and hidden somewhere in the void was the way to return there. The gateway was tiny and infinity was not, but that was no deterrent to a determined immortal. Darkness continued striding through the void. Sooner or later, he would locate the object of his search.
The void was just a whole lot of inky black space with the occasional faint specks of pseudo-starlight that existed for the sole purpose of highlighting how big and empty infinity could be. A complete lack of light would have been the proper way to go if one wished to attain a genuine void, but in truly total darkness the pathetically finite confines of a broom closet look exactly the same as the endless reaches of infinity, which would diminish the psychological effect of it all. An experience cannot be mind-blowing if the victim does not realize that the scope of their situation. There is no point in having infinity if no one can appreciate the fact that it is infinite, so there was pseudo-starlight. It was not real starlight because there weren't really any stars.
The light itself might really have been fake, but it still served its purpose, providing just enough illumination to show that the void was very very big and that there wasn't actually anything physically present to stride across. However, the complete lack of anything underfoot, or in this case underhoof, did not deter Darkness at all. The lone figure just kept striding anyway. He was, after all, the Lord of Darkness, evil personified. He could get away with that sort of thing. The only alternative would be to weightlessly drift from one place (non-place?) to another, but striding felt better, more decisive, less silly. Even if he wasn't supposed to be able to walk on nothing, it wasn't like there was anyone around to stop him. However, the fact that no one was around to complain about him doing the impossible also meant that he was stuck talking to himself. "Why does Light always have to win? I was here first after all."
Darkness sighed. Chaos had been so much fun before Light had to come along and ruin it all. He had tried to fight back, of course, but unfortunately the fun-loving party-animals he tended to hang around with didn't make the best warriors. Most were so uncoordinated that they could be beaten by even the most inexperienced of Heroes, and their alcohol-clouded minds made it almost impossible for them to follow anything but the simplest orders, so it was the same outcome every time. He'd gather a massive army that had vastly superior firepower and outnumbered the forces of Light by at least 5 to 1, and then he'd always be completely defeated in less than a month. This last time, the Heroes, who were nothing more than a handful of fairies and a scrawny boy that had probably been raised by wolves, had triumphed in just a couple of days, that's how bad his troops were.
Oh well, his moronic henchmen were still more interesting than those stuffed-shirts who went around calling themselves "The Champions of Goodness" and similar inanely self-important titles. The only member of this last batch of goody-goodies that seemed to possess a tiny scrap of a personality had been the girl, Lily, and she had probably just been faking it to get his guard down. The Lord of Darkness made a mental note to not bother trying to seduce the next heroine unless she had horns. Cute little hooves would be good, too, but he's settle for just horns.
The Lord of Darkness continued searching for that elusive passage between the universe and the void. It had to be around here somewhere. He absently scratched the stump of his right arm. The darn thing seemed like it was taking forever to grow back. At this rate it would be months before he could do a nice two-handed strangulation again, but he could wait. He had gotten very good at waiting. What really annoyed him was how much it itched. He didn't remember it being this bad the last time he got something cut off, but then, the last thing he had had cut off had been his head, so he had missed most of the healing process by virtue of being temporarily dead.
Suddenly, something caught his eye. The Lord of Darkness stepped closer and grinned when he saw what it was, moonlight (real moonlight, none of that fake just-there-for-psychological-impact stuff) filtering into the void through a small crack in reality. It was a thin crack, barely wider than a hair or two, but it was big enough. The Lord of Darkness slid his claws into the opening and pushed, forcing his left arm through up to the shoulder. He grunted, shifted position, and then pushed what there was of his other arm through. It was more difficult with only one hand, but he managed to get a good grip on the fabric of space and time. Lowering his head, he squeezed through horns first, and once more the void was completely empty. On the other side of the crack, the Lord of Darkness slid out into reality with a slight squelching sound and landed in an undignified heap on the ground. He stood up, dusted himself off, and began looking around to see if he could find a nice dark cave before dawn.
Once upon a time...