Tale of the Dark Harlequinn (Origins)

Marcus Talbot thought he knew what he was getting into. Like so many young, misguided students of the arcane he thought himself a master of the dark arts. Despite his Bookshelf education in mysticism, tenuous grasp of phillosophy, and limited attention span, he considered his nearly five month long odyssey into the forbidden and esoteric secrets of the arcane to be more than enough in the way of education. Like so many, too, Talbot believed that his 'old soul' and potent experiences in imagined previous lives would lend him all he needed to wield whatever forces he might unwittingly tap into.

His utter lack of tangible results did nothing to dissuade his point of view. He convinced himself that he was performing acts of magic beyond the ken of his own senses. Certainly no fireballs had shot forth from his fingertips, but this was to be expected. He imagined the nightmares he would send to the other students at his high school, never doubting that these mystic fictions reached their intended destinations. When a bully tripped in the lunch room, Marcus took full credit- clearly, he felt, he was being aided by his unseen familliars and spirits.

Typically, these pleasant fictions dissolve throughout high school in boys like Marcus. They grow up, try to forget, find a niche... heal, mentally, whatever need caused them to seek out such comfortable lies.

Marcus, it seems, was not destined for a Typical fate.

It was the Circle of Thorns who unwittingly changd the course of this boy's destiny. All too eager to take advantage of students in his situation, a CoT recruiter posing as a guidance councellor invited Marcus to a meeting in Perez park. Having heard of the circle and its actual results in magic, Marcus thought at last that his potential was to be tapped. The recruiter knew all the right words, making it appear that the circle wanted a consultation with the burgeoning young wizard.

The few nervous teens who met in the park that night stood anxiously, breaking the silence only to assure one another that they had met in the proper location. There was a flash as dark figures emerged from the woods, and then the world became a green haze of agony. The conversion ritual of the circle had begun, a ruthless harvest that made no promises and offered no explanation. Their captors were silent as the young were turned, no heroes emerging from the dread night in time to offer respite.

Marcus felt his heart slow, then stop... precious moments ticked by as he drifted toward oblivion. His captors felt it too, witihin the warp and weft of their spellcraft, and dropped his body to the loamy earth. Their energy was better spent on those who would survive the transformation.

It is impossible now for anyone to say if providence or circumstance saved the ailing life of Marcus Talbot. Sufficed to say, though he had been left for dead, a spark of life remained within the boy. Against odds, his heart began once again to beat sluggishly. Talbot could not tell when the circle had left, only that they had, and that he was alone now with the sounds of the night-creatures in the woods. He struggled, but was unable to move... slipping ever closer to the doom belied by his broken body.

There, in the dark, Talbot felt something that had been drawn to the surface... some item which had been sucked up through the very earth by the circle's repeated use of this place in their rites. He could feel it there, just beneath inches of soil, and almost within the grasp of his flaccid hands. The ritual had failed on him, but had left his senses forcibly broadened to the true arcane. He could feel it, like a second heart, beating near him without warmth or life.

Marcus could not have known the origin of this ancient thing... congealed here slowly over millenia, gathering itsself together into material form by instinct. Reconstructed, molecule by molecule, as it was never intended to be. Perhaps some seal had been broken by the circle that allowed the object to take shape. Certainly, it had been the circle's repeated use of powerful arcane energy that had caused the relic to burrow its way towards the surface...like a seed tunneling its way to the light of a fickle sun.

For Marcus, it was the promise of life...of salvation from his fate. He reached out with his fledgeling sense, grasping for it, reaching to open Pandora's box with a mixture of half-remembered techniques from his studies and raw, unnatural power forced into him by the circle. The thinnest of connections was made between the two- all that was necessary.

No glorious rebirth was at hand... the power within that shell was a being, long exiled by his own choice to save the earliest evolutions of man from death by some long-defeated menace. An eternal being it was, ancient and powerful; an almost limitless power by the standards of mortal men.

Though this was the merest shadow of that creature's memory, it overtook all that was Marcus Talbot. Mind, body, and soul were judged inferior by the entity's instincts. The shell was filled, growing to maturity and displaying the new markings of its true master. A tail...eyes that burned with pale balefire...only the merest traces of the boy's features could've been discerned. Talbot's memory and the creature's mixed as would to volatile chemicals, both being forgotten and lost in the miasma of union. Perhaps a few vague instincts from each remained, hints of personality and recognition, but nothing more.

All that was left in the reborn creature was a knowing of sorts... a desire to continue the battle against that which might threaten mankind. It remembered the blood carnival which his sacrifice had once ended... the atrocities like shadows of a fleeting nightmare abandoning his reborn mind. He was the Dark Harlequinn, the Jester without mirth, the destroyer of the amusements of the damned.

(Due to the generally positive response, I intend to keep posting the highlights of DH's continuing adventures here)

The Harlequinn stood slowly, adjusting to this new and alien form. It was haunting, this sense that he was no longer himself... that he had become something else, somehow, and in the bargain been cheated of his mind's own explanations. Everything here was new to him, these limbs, these perceptions, his very draw and release of breath.

More disquieting by far, however, was the body's utter lack of suitability for the channeling of power. This fleshy mind in its cage of bone was some crude joke of evolution to him, a shackle around his psyche compared to...something...that had been before.

He began to adjust to the simple reflex of life that humans master in infancy. The subtle interactions of bone and muscle, the interplay of nerve and synapse. A stumble became a walk, a flailing grasp became an arcane gesture, and garbled growls became words...albeit not Engilsh ones, or words in any language meant for a man's mouth.

Thorn wielders came, then... sent by the circle to clean up the evidence and dispose of the body within the maze of Perez park undergrowth. They did not even see the resurrection of the Talbot boy when they beheld the Harlequinn, only some hero who had interrupted their enterprise.

They shouted, but the words were wasted on the newformed creature. The Harlequinn knew, through instinct or the echoes still hovering at the edges of his mind, that these were evil creatures. Instinct is a powerful master.

The Harlequinn called to his ancient etherial allies, but the call was unheeded...their contract was with his old self, and most had departed this world altogether. As the thorn wielders moved in, drawing their blades, he struggled to bring to bear his reality-altering power of ages past.

At first, he was thrilled. One of the fledgeling magi stumbled back, blinded and roiling in agony. The other was covered with wounds inflicted by a rush of energy from the Harlequinn's fingertips. He smiled. At least some things were the same...or so he thought.

Moments later, the two regained their senses... and what was worse, the wounds on the second man began to partially vanish! His stomach seemed to drop to his knees... what had once been the power to alter the fabric of time and space had been reduced to a mere illusion... a trick of the mind and senses.

Threatened, defenseless, and alone...the creature fled. Racing along the unlit paths, he felt his body accellerate....putting distance between himself and his captors, searching for somewhere to regroup.

Imagine his awe when the trees broke to reveal the steel and concrete landscape of Paragon city. The cars, the multitudes of people, the buildings themselves! Mankind, it would seem, had made no small use of his sacrifice. A haunting echo of his own words, spoken long ago, drifted into his knowing...

"That which is not eternal in form, shall build to the heavens such monuments as will outlast him. These creatures will change the face of worlds and beyond."

The thugs seemed to have given up on him for the moment, and Harlequinn paused to catch his breath. Placing a hand to his temple, he leaned back against the rough brick wall of the park entrance. He noticed something on the ground, loostened by his race through the woods and dislodged when he had staggered backwards.

Marcus Talbot's wallet was an item of no small fascination. Harlequinn searched through it, seeing pictures that the echoes in his head identified as having once been his. It dawned on him, slowly, that he was not truly reborn...that he had overtaken and consumed a human life. Unintentional as it was, guilt flared. One day, he decided, he would grow strong enough to restore this lost life somehow.

In the meanwhile, survival was paramount. He began to walk, guided only by the vagueries of instinct. Here and there in the clinging remnants of Marcus' mind were clues. He carefully followed the trail; a street sign here, a familliar awning or billboard. His footsteps grew more certain as the clues became more frequent.

At last, a fire escape which lay before him was identified as the entrance to 'home'. He scaled it, allready becoming more used to the function of the body. Whatever its disadvantages in netherin power, these flesh-forms were excellent at manipulating the physical realm.

Opening Marcus' window, the Harlequinn slipped into the boy's bedroom. The place was in general dissaray, a mess of clothing and teenage debris. From somewhere in the apartment music blared; any other occupants of this home would be blissfully unaware of his presence.

Marcus' piles of clothing were shredded into strips and melded together in swirls of energy. Textbooks and occult paperbacks became an English primer for the agile-minded creature. Hints of memory and suggestion were a tutor for the subtle social interactions of human cities. A night's education; devoured by the hungering psyche.

By morning, all that remained was the Paragon city times, and its wealth of information. The very concept of these 'heroes' fascinated the Harlequinn, and more importantly, gave him a place to begin. As footsteps began to come down the hallway and the sun began to peek over the horizon, he made his decision.

By the time Mrs. Talbot opened Marcus' bedroom door, there was only the unusually clean room left there to be found. On the bed, made for the first time in months, a scrawled note was left in shaky, experimental letters.

"The Circle of Thorns has slain Marcus Talbot. Nevertheless, one day, he will live again."