Viper's Strike: The Further Adventures of Vanguard

[This story was originally written in 2008 under the name "Dixie Primate" for my friend Becca. Banner is one of her characters. You can also find it in the story section of her site.]

In all of my struggles against the evil Viperine, nothing could have prepared me for what I saw when I finally found Defender. In my thoughts, my fantasies, even as I surmounted Viperine's many traps, even as I defeated her foul, reptilian beasts, even as I forged forward despite hunger and injury and fatigue, I always imagined finding the object of my search fighting as fiercely as I was, strong and defiant.

That is not how I found her, and my horror at seeing the mighty superheroine in that condition caused me a moment's pause. Perhaps that was the moment that made the difference, in spite of all I had done. Perhaps the moment when I did nothing sealed her fate.

Defender lay on the cold granite of Viperine's lair, in an alcove off one of the many halls in that serpentine labyrinth, lit by a torch mounted on the stone wall. Her hands and feet and legs and hips and chest were bound with what looked like leather ropes. Another cord wrapped around her neck and yet another passed through her mouth in an effective gag. Defender's eyes were closed. She lay very, very still.

They weren't ropes or cords at all. As I drew closer, I saw the heroine's bindings move. For a moment, I thought it was Becca struggling with her last gasp to free herself. However, when I held the ties in my hands, hoping to free her before it was too late, I discovered that the cords themselves were alive: long and thin snakes which only gripped stronger as I tried to force their release.

With my dagger in hand, I tried to cut through the serpents' bodies, but their hides were tougher than cold steel, impossible even for my dagger to puncture or slice.

There must be a way, I thought. I might even have spoken it.

Slowly and carefully, I rolled the heroine-turned-damsel onto her stomach and thoroughly examined the woman and the snakes. At last, I found a weakness. Just behind the snakes' heads, just where they joined to their bodies, there was a razor-thin gap between scales. Perhaps I could slice here, though there was every chance the headless snake would only tighten its hold. Yet, there seemed no other way.

When I brought my knife into position, though, I saw yet another deadly complication: the viper suddenly struck at the blade, for an instant displaying tiny, sharp fangs. In a moment, a yellow ooze dripped across the steel of the blade, down onto the snake's coils, and down onto the floor.

Poison.

Of course.

There was still a chance, though my reflexes and my constitution would be tested to their limits. I hoped the poison wasn't as deadly as it looked.

I freed my blade, cleaning it against the stones of the walls.

Selecting a snake coiled around Defender's ankles, I poked at its head quickly with my left hand. The adder struck with considerable speed, but my speed was the greater. I yanked my left hand away and simultaneously sliced with the dagger in my right. My aim was true, the serpent's head fell to the floor. My luck was true as well; the headless snake instantly fell away from its grip on Defender, harmlessly foundering and slashing on the floor. I tossed the dead thing away so as not to complicate the dispatch of the next.

The next snake I chose was the one coiled around Becca's neck. It was important that I killed it cleanly, before it had the chance to strangle her more. My concern for preventing that may have made me hesitate with the dagger a moment, and the rope-snake very nearly got my finger with its strike before I decapitated it.

I continued with the other snakes. As each one fell away, Becca poured more limply across the floor. Her neck, back, buttocks, and legs were freckled with tiny bite marks. She must be saturated with poison. Only her boots and impenetrable costume seemed to spare her from the snakes' bites, but soon I saw tiny punctures even there.

The snake which was gagging Defender was the last I beheaded, and perhaps I had grown somewhat weary or anxious to be finished, but I did not pull my left hand back fast enough and felt a tiny scratch as one of the snake's fangs found the very tip of my index finger before it, too, fell to my blade. I could only hope that I could withstand whatever small amount of poison it had administered before its death.

I rolled Defender onto her back. I shook her shoulders and shouted her name, but her only response was the movement of her body, head, and hair under my force. I put my ear to her chest and heard no pulse, no breathing. I felt at her neck and found a pulse, though. It was faint, but it was regular. There was hope.

I placed a hand under her neck and titled her head back. I swept my fingers through her mouth and found no obstruction but her tongue. I covered her lips with mine and tried to breathe life into her. Her chest rose, and then fell. I blew into her mouth again, and again, and again.

After a dozen breaths from me, her lungs jerked into life and she coughed out and sucked in. Her eyes fluttered open.

"Van," she whispered, "my hero."

Then, her eyes closed again, her lips parted and she fell into sleep, her breaths now regular and deep.

And then the poison took hold upon me, and I saw her body cloud and fade in my eyes. I felt sweat form on my forehead, chest, arms, legs. In a moment, I saw and felt nothing at all.
 

*******

I awoke to the sight of a soft, pretty face framed in dark hair, the soft warmth of her lap beneath my head. The woman was gently caressing my face, her eyes compassionate and worried.

But when I regained enough of my sensibilities to recognize who she was, I pulled away from her, scrambling across the floor.

"Viperine!" I cried.

She sat where she was, clad in her green scaled sleeveless, legless leotard with a red "V" on her chest, shaped like a fang. Black boots covered her feet, which were folded beneath her. Yet, her head remained bowed and her voice fragile.

"Please don't call me that," she said. "I'm Brenda. Viperine is ... gone ... for now."

Defender lay just behind Brenda/Viperine. She was softly breathing.

"What do you mean 'gone'?" I asked.

"You killed a great number of her ... its servants," the woman said quietly. "Each death weakens it, but so many... She withdrew from me."

"You want me to believe that," I said.

"Yes," she said, "but it doesn't matter if you don't. I want you to kill me."

"What?" She surprised me again.

"Viperine is gone now, but it will come back. I can't fight it; I've tried. She left for a time when Defender destroyed many of her minions before you. I thought I could keep her away. I was wrong."

She sounded sincere, but Viperine was known to be convincingly deceitful.

"I cannot kill myself," she continued. "It would return and prevent me. I need you to kill me."

"It's a trick," I said, but I heard some uncertainty in my voice.

"It is not," Brenda said. "If I die, it will have nowhere to go. It will search for centuries for a suitable host."

Desfender's head moved a bit, turning left and right. She'd be awake soon.

"Here," Brenda said, and she lay on the floor next to Defender, her legs together, her hands at her side, her face to the ceiling. "Take your dagger, Vanguard, and pierce my heart. Hurry, I feel her approach."

If she was telling the truth, then I must do as she said. If she was lying, if it was indeed some sort of trap, then, with Becca so weak and so close, it must be better to spring it cautiously, and deal with what came.

I knelt beside Brenda and raised my dagger.

"Vanguard," she whispered," my hero, please do not leave my body here... after. Bury me someplace peaceful and good." She placed her right arm on my waist.

I forced the dagger into her left breast, past her ribs, and into her heart. I withdrew it quickly. Her hand fell from my waist, she sighed and her eyes closed. She would be dead very soon.

But not soon enough.

"What have you done, you warm-blood beast?" The words came from the air itself as much as from the woman beside me.

I saw Defender's eyes snap open, then closed again. She was playing possum, waiting to see how this played out.

I leaped back, dagger at the ready.

Brenda's body began to slither across the floor. Her eyes were still closed and her face and body were still slack. She moved as if pulled on a string. In a moment, serpents and lizards, and all manner of reptiles, squirmed in from all directions, even from cracks in the walls and floor and ceiling, over my feet, over the still Defender, over and beneath the dying Brenda, lifting her passive form up.

The reptillian mob swarmed over and around each other, so that soon the mass formed into a giant serpent, its component parts writhing in a complex choreography. Brenda, face down now, rode atop its hooded neck. The hissing was deafening in the small alcove.

The serpent of serpents rose to strike at me, and I desperately searched for options. I could certainly dodge the head on its strike, but even a near miss would certainly subject me to hundreds of venomous bites.

At that moment, Defender lept to her feet, two of the slain snakes which once bound her in her hands. She whipped them at the Viperine monster, and turned to run.

The impact did no harm to the great serpent, but it did distract it.

It was blindingly fast, and Defender, still weakened by the remains of the poison, was just a tiny bit slow. In moments, before she could take more than two steps, it fell on her, engulfing her in reptile hell. She screamed, and then the scream was suddenly silenced as snakes and lizards poured into her mouth.

A moment later, before I could cross the distance to help, the snakes and lizards suddenly stopped their attack and dspersed again, disappearing down the hall and into the walls and floors and ceiling.

Brenda was finally dead. Her body lay face down atop Defender, who writhed and moaned and shook beneath.

I took Brenda by the shoulders and pulled her off Defender, then held Defender's trembling, struggling form in my arms.

I do not know if I was any comfort as the heroine fought her last battle, against the venom coursing through her veins.

She tried to speak. "I.. I.." but then collapsed in a long sigh.

A few more times she shook in my arms, but then she lay limp and lifeless against me.

I wept until there were no more tears.

I carried her lifeless, but still lovely body out of the lair. I returned and took Brenda's body out as well, carrying her also in my arms and madly speaking to her, even though she was past hearing.

"You are a hero, Brenda," I said. "A beautiful, brave hero who's life and death shall be the stuff of legends. Your memory will live even when all else is gone."

Defender's body was interred in a glorious mausoleum, a place of pilgrimage and honor and solemn reflection. I followed Brenda's last wishes and buried her in a peaceful and good place, near a tree which will give her shade and in which beautiful birds will nest.

Brenda was wrong about one thing, though. Viperine did not search for centuries for the chance to return.

An excellent host was found without waiting nearly sssssssssso long.

​

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