HaikuPrajna
Incinerated,/ applied overexertion,/ unsustained exhausts.
(Hector Blake)
Preface:
Sharing a short story I wrote called "Hector Blake" while I was working on my first novel. This is a 5000 word superhero science fiction story about a pyrokinetic Thor-like who fights off embodiments of sloth and torpor. I published "Hector Blake" independently in "SM-SARA, Poems and Other Stories" on January 31st 2021, and for Patreon subs on December 8th 2020. I had begun writing the story in February 2019, I drafted the script between March 19th to April 16th of the same year, and I had started editing at the beginning of that May. "Hector Blake" is a story I worked on here and there for about two years, and I have a plethora of HaikuPrajna based on his story which you can find anywhere you can find me.
Summary:
" Hector Blake, a retired and renown superhero, wakes up to adversaries who are replaced at an endless rate by the dark room, which has walls that are inert to his pyrokinesis. He incinerates the being that was flooding the room, leaving himself exhausted. Hector is lulled back to sleep by an enemy made of smoke, only to be snapped awake again. Hector continues to exhaust himself to ward off the embodiments of sloth and torpor. In the end, he fights his own applied thoughts in a sustained attempt to hold onto his conscious life. "
"Hector Blake" can also be read on Medium and Wattpad here:
https://link.medium.com/7KxDOcfoPdb
https://www.wattpad.com/story/258575971
Or through the HaikuPrajna Collection: https://haikuprajna.blogspot.com/p/sm-sara.html
Thank you for reading.
Until next time,
Allen W. McLean
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...
Hector Blake
Allen W. McLean
Hector Blake placed his boot on his foe’s abdomen. He unwedged the searing hammer-spike from where he had struck the giant’s chest. He pushed down and then pulled up on its heavy handle. The chains which wrapped around the giant’s arms, and which were slung over their shoulders, clanked against their body as it was laid back on the lifeless floor of the room.
Brilliant fire danced around Hector and Ajax, his warhammer. Hector was concentrating thermal energy into the hammerhead, fed by the unobtainium handle he held in his hands, so that he could strike his foes with his pyrokinetic abilities. Hector drew the energy he had stored in one of the six metallic-colored hydrogen powersinks on the chestplate of his full-body suit of armor--the ignited powersink near his left shoulder.
Having the power of just one conduit coursing through Ajax had made easy work of the latest of enemies Hector Blake had faced in the room. He stood in the middle of the pitch dark room, of which the ceiling, walls and floor were covered in a flame-resistant solid blue material. He never discerned an entrance nor an exit. It was as if the room had absorbed him in its darkness. The tendrils of orange light struck at the nothingness and kept it at bay.
The chain-bound giant was easier to defeat than the last, he thought. He regarded the body of the three-headed chimeric canine, along with the near-dozen other bodies he had left strewn across the floor. They shared only one thing in common; Hector had to crush the monsters an innumerable amount of times as they repaired their broken bones and charred skin.
As the dancing flames around Hector dissipated, as the circular powersink in his chestplate ceased to expend its bottled energy, he noticed how the floor was beginning to flood. He watched the gored bodies being submerged in a dark liquid. It rose to his ankles. Ajax’s continued glow reflected a glistening bronze light against the liquid’s surface.
He turned around. In the light of his hammer, Hector saw, hovering above the surface of the water, a woman. She was laid out on her side, resting her head in the palm of one of her hands. Her tangling and matted hair was draped over her shoulders while the ends floated in the water around her and covered only her bare chest and face. A pale nose had parted her flowing hair so her cold purple lips could be seen. The lower half of her body, from below her hip bones, were not that of a human’s. Twisting vines and squelching ropes of moss ran out from beneath her, which was cast out like a net over the surface of the flood.
“Stranger,” she spoke with a strange gurgling sound; Hector noted that swamp water was pouring from her mouth, “What is the name of the man who wields a power such as yours, having blown through the forces that lay at our feet with your weapon? Please, tell me--I must know. I have been so starved of thought that I feel like I have been trapped in a waking deep sleep. Where were you born? How did you get here? Surely you, with a hammer like yours, have a story that you could share--first to last--with me, yes?”
Hector was struck by surprise. He had not shared words with any of the other foes that the enclosed room had manifested--all who had appeared out of nowhere and out of the sight of the T-shaped visor of his winged-helmet.
“Aye,” he said with caution, wanting to keep the room as the sole focus of his concentration, “Having crossed the Sol system, I suppose I could tell a story or two. But here, on a battlefield such as this? Why don’t you tell me who you are, and where we have found ourselves? I can tell you all about my life, for I know it and have lived it myself. But, this place, I know nothing of--not even of the walls that surround us both.”
The lady rolled lethargically from her side, onto her stomach, and groaned an inhumane purr that rippled the plants and sludge excreting from her. Her hair, which dangled in front of her, moved with the same tar-like pace as the woman as it flowed and drained off her. “My name is Athina, but I have no patience for any such questions,” she said, “I would rather listen to a story than take the effort of telling one, being fated to waste all my time here. Please, rest that mighty warhammer, and tell me your story--the last, I’m sure, to hear.”
Not wanting to further press the topic, he said, “My name is Hector Blake,” while resting his hammer on its head with the handle perpendicular to the ground so that Hector could apply some of his weight against the adamant pole, “I am a Titan, born and bred. I worked at a company founded by the renowned nuclear physicist Doctor Henry Parker. While I was there, I developed and manufactured the six powersinks on this ‘Hephaestus’ armor I’m now wearing. I designed them to be conduits for my ability to manipulate heat energy. I stole the armor from Doctor Parker when I left, where I fled toward the warmth of the inner Sol system, wearing only my Hephaestus armor, and settled on Venus.
“Over the following decade, I avoided the dangers of idleness and lassitude by applying myself to the underground farmer’s plights. Often, one of their above-ground life support systems, for their underground residential units, or components of their innumerable nuclear fusion auto-facs; something would break down and send thousands into despondency. Parts rarely needed replacing, jobs tended to only require me to weld something with my own two hands. Had I not, had I stayed in my own unit to rest in utmost comfort until I was found on Venus, whole communities would be dead or unwell today! I united those communities! Surface travel upon the sulfur-stained rock was not only dangerous, but inconvenient due to the pressurized suits which needed to be worn. I helped raise their now-iconic diamond tunnels between all of their surface hubs. I even defeated a colony of giant, burrowing, mole-like worms that not only escaped previous discovery, but also threatened to sink the settlements into uninhabitable and inescapable depths within the mantle. All of this before Ajax, my hammer, was forged! I was considered a hero there. I still, to this day, love the farmers and their fast-paced work with sympathetic joy; but like all good things, my time there had to come to an end.
“On the cusp of my eleventh year, Hank Parker spotted me, working on one of the autofacs, from above the surface of Venus. He had arrived by himself, wearing his own infamous power-armor, and we fought within the planet’s blanketing atmosphere. His graviton suit rendered my flames ineffective, but, at the same time, had made that fire and plasma prevent his attempts at subduing me. But then--”
He ceased speaking. Hector noticed, while his eyes burned unwholesomely with the passion for his own tale--because Athina wanted to break his sustained focus and place it on another object--that the water level had risen to the middle of his thigh.
He jumped out of his sloth-like torpor. His gaze darted toward Athina--having been staring off into the captivating darkness of the rest of the room. She was resting, as before, above the surface of the thick and still-rising liquid. It stuck to Hector and did not flow how he had expected it to; it sloshed around him like a thin paint as he sprung into action.
As he refocused his concentration, Athina melted away into the liquid as if she had been a solidified form of the water-like sludge. Hector snapped for Ajax but he felt the liquid rushing behind him, between and around his legs--his back was then struck by a wave and he was knocked forward.
The room was flooded by more sludge than there had been before; Hector was swept up and was shoved into the ceiling before he splashed down onto the liquid. He was absorbed inside.
He tumbled head over heels an innumerable amount of times under the overpowering wakes. Hector worked best in a fast or spontaneous environment such as the flooded room. He hated how he had his pace halted, hated how he had succumbed to Athina’s slothful request in the first place. But he appreciated her surprise because, now, Hector could react and make up a plan as he continued to be pummeled by the rolling waves that pushed him further down, down. Besides, Hector Blake loved being the center of attention, and could not be completely upset over a chance to talk about himself.
The base of his head hit the wall and the back of his neck was pushed against the floor. Over a metric ton of mossy swamp water pounded itself again and again against Hephaestus’ chestplate which shoved Hector over and over into the bottom crevice of the room. His mind and body felt numb under Athina’s weight. He was having a hard time sustaining focus or even seeing in the dark depths, but he could make out the stiff visage of an agape screaming face that barreled down each time the wakes crashed upon him, where the face exploded into rising brine and foam.
He looked at the two columns of powersinks that were arranged on his breastplate, and saw that he only had one of the six charged. Hector manipulated the molecules within the pockets of air inside each cylinder of metallic hydrogen--increasing their molecular motion until the minute amount of oxygen combusted. All six circular powersinks--and Hephaestus as well--began to glow brilliantly under Athina’s darkness while absorbing the heat born of Hector’s natural-born ability. Ever since he was a small boy on Titan, he had been able to ignite tinder in his family’s fireplaces and keep people within his general vicinity warm. His power was considered uncommon among all of the other telekinetics. Now, as an old and retired man, he had channeled enough heat to match the surface temperature of the Sun.
Hector had never dared to store, let alone release, such pyre while anywhere near a planet’s atmosphere. He had not any idea what would happen within an enclosed room.
The heat was intense. Hector was roasted as the power sinks finished charging, as he laid under the blanket of liquid. For a moment, Hector Blake considered slipping into a slothful sleep; he considered letting his efforts go and enjoy, for one last time, the pleasure of sleep.
“No,” he croaked. He recited these words to himself, “May nothing remain but skin and sinews and bones; may flesh and blood dry up in the body! Not before having achieved what can be achieved by human strength, human energy, human exertion shall my energy subside!”
Having quoted his teacher thus, Hector Blake let the cylinders embedded in Hephaestus rise out of the chestplate. Enough plasma was unleashed to compete with a solar flare.
Hector threshed against the neverending assault of tidal waves only once--only for a fraction of a moment--and vaporized everything within the room at the speed of light.
For some time, the room was consumed with nothing but light.
Hector basked in intense heat until the white-hot walls began to dim in hue, through a pale yellow to a rich orange. He laid against the floor, his legs outstretched in front of him, and his head was propped against the wall with his neck bent into the crook where the two surfaces met. Having absorbed Hector’s heat energy, the ceiling, floor and walls were illuminating the room. Hephaestus shone like a star; the armor, too, had withstood trial by fire. Ajax, shining just as radiant as his armor was, still sat upright near the opposite corner of the room; Hector rolled onto his stomach and, with effort, pushed himself to his feet. He felt exhausted. His whole body was stiff and sore from the flare. He stumbled across the now-dim room to retrieve his hammer.
A collection of the living sludge was crawling up and away into the corner Hector had been sitting beside. It built itself in mass like a non-newtonian fluid as its peaks collapsed into themselves, while simultaneously sizzled away on the cool-red surfaces of the room. As Hector approached the transparent mass--the burning in his knees, and in his forearms through his elbow and biceps into his shoulders, Hector could feel it in his teeth, this fiery elation kept Hector focused and awake--he hypothesized that Athina was feeding off of the room, or rather that the room was rejuvenating Athina like she was its spawn. Maybe, Hector thought, these monstrous beings, and the room itself, were all one in the same, where the continuous flow of enemies was the room’s way of subduing whoever it had absorbed.
Hector swung Ajax from behind himself, over his head, and fried the sludge on the mallet’s flat face with a smoking thud.
Nothing else was in the room. The bodies of Hector Blake’s adversaries had all been incinerated. He wanted to find out where he was, and to escape, but Hector would admit that he enjoyed fighting each new foe. He had retired years ago. He longed for his old adventures and was enjoying himself with this new one.
A haze permeated the returning darkness. Steam, Hector thought while holding Ajax at his side, from the flare and from Athina being seared away. Without anyone in the room, Hector began to slip into a state of torpor. He felt its tingle creep into his arms and, without anything to apply his thoughts on, into his mind. The hypnotic smoke grew into a dense fog that surrounded him on all sides.
A dreamlike voice spoke, which sounded hollow like an echo that reverberated from the dark clouds of the room. "You must be tired, Hector Blake." The man's voice came from all around Hector, as if it came from the dark clouds themselves, “Why don’t you take a moment to catch your breath?”
“I won’t rest until I get some answers,” Hector resounded. Although, he said to himself, a rest would certainly be welcome.
Hector walked through the dark fog, in an attempt to rouse the energy to stay awake. An imprisoning sight revealed itself to him, a sight that he could not resist being drawn toward. He dropped Ajax and clambered onto the framed, pearly white, plush and neatly fitted bed with matching bedskirt. He lost focus on his attention to his exertion and on why he had been imprisoned. The bed looks and feels divine, Hector thought, even in my Hephaestus armor.
Listless, Hector Blake sprawled upon the bed on his stomach. His arms and legs were outstretched, his winged-helmet laid on the fluffed pillow. By sluggish degrees of faltering attention, Hector was ensnared under a deep sleep.
A man manifested from the shadows, which flowed around him like a long flowing dress. A crooked smile crept upon his pointed and lanky face, under a large nightcap that covered his brow. He produced a dagger from one of his drooping sleeves with the methodical pace of contemplation. He crept to the side of the bed and stiffly elevated the knife until he held it above his head--then he struck down onto Hector’s side.
The blade broke through the unobtainium plating and became lodged between his right ribs. It had missed tearing through his lung and rending Hector of his life breath.
The man removed his dagger with the same vigor and speed he had used to make the wound. Hector, screaming as he awoke, swung out at him. But the man dissipated into the fog as Hector struck him. Tendrils danced into the air as the man’s visage warped and contorted away into the indolent fog.
Jolting at the man was what had awoken Hector, and he would have stayed fully conscious if he had been in the open air, absorbed in the light of the sun, or maybe even if he had been sharing a conversation with a friend. Since Hector Blake was in the dark, the gouge in his ribs only made him want to go back to bed.
Hector rolled off of the mattress and collapsed on the floor. He clutched his wound. Hephaestus had sealed itself off around the wound to prevent any other compromises, but his exposed flesh was searing away in the room’s atmosphere.
He sat against the side of the bed and managed a chuckle through his drowsiness. To the room, Hector said, “I didn’t get to finish my story.”
“Sleep, Hector Blake,” the fog reverberated, “take a long deserved rest.”
Hector fixed the breach in his armor by heating the metal around his wound until the seal became a putty-mold that began the work of being transmuted into plates of unobtainium. He hissed as the metal was drawn over the gouge in his side and his muscles tensed as his mind was consumed by--in reaction to--the pain. He would not let himself fall back asleep, he would not let torpor creep back over his awareness. He stayed focused on his cauterized wound, and decided to return to his story--not for the man, or whatever the room was--only for himself. He had to stimulate his mind.
Hector groaned, then said, “Hank Parker and I put aside our game of cat and mouse when I broke away from our conflict to seal a breach in one of my surface tunnels. Nobody was harmed, but travel between the two settlements had to be halted. He did not understand until I had completed the job, but the Doctor resonated with ending a greater suffering over my own, and ceased to attack. He used his graviton generators to assist me with the repair.”
Ajax, on its hammerhead, rest within reach with its handle perpendicular to the ground. Hector grabbed hold and dragged the mighty hammer nearer. Ajax absorbed the remaining heat energy that was held by Hephaestus and shined with a red-hot glow.
“This hammer was forged by Hank Parker, long after we moved to a facility on Mercury where Hank employed me once again. For over a decade, I helped transform the planet so that I could then operate humanity’s only stellar harvester--The Solar Forge!” Hector pushed himself to his feet and supported himself on Ajax’s handle for a time, before standing straight on his own.
The fog’s dark greys were hypnotic and swirled around lazily, its only effort was put toward luling Hector back to sleep.
“Hank forged and gave me Ajax, as a gift to symbolize our friendship and our mutual respect, before I returned for the Jovian system to fight against the Kuiper belt’s Infantry.” Hector continued the story of Ajax’s creation, while holding the symbol of that friendship paralel to his waist with both hands, to keep his focus off his torpor, “He used the forge’s lense himself to carve down a spire of unobtainium into a cube, with the pointed tip of the spire left alone to jut out of one of the faces of the hammerhead. The remaining five were inscribed with suttas which we had chosen.”
Hector let his hammer graze the side of the bed, igniting and engulfing the mattress in a raging pyre that snapped at the darkness and kept it at bay, which created an area where Hector could safely be in.
A dagger flew out toward Hector, but missed its mark and became lodged in the side of the flaming bed. He swung his hammer overhead, from behind, to strike the flat of the head against the ground in front of him, and send a wide fiery shockwave that raced against the floor in the direction the dagger had flown from. The fire shoved the fog away in every direction to make a temporary clearing in the smoke in front of Hector, but the dagger-man was not seen. The fog refilled the clearing. Another knife grazed by Hector’s shoulder and breastplate, from the right of where the clearing had been. The knife had flown through the pyre over the mattress, and back into the fog, as though trying to draw Hector’s mind back to the fog’s indolence and drowsiness, back to bed, or to otherwise keep his concentration on the dull knives.
Hector dragged Ajax against the floor. The hammer created sparks as he swung, sweeping from one corner of the room to the next, in the direction the second dagger had come from. Again the fog burst away--half of the room had been cleared--and, again, Hector Blake failed to see his foe before the fog refilled the room.
Daggers flung themselves, one at a time and for every direction, from the smoke. Without the same weight as the man had put into stabbing Hector, the knives scraped or deflected off of Hephaestus and never penetrated the armor. But the barrage made his concentration stay focused on the useless and inert blades. Ignoring the thoughts of indolence, keeping his mind stiff and concentrated on the reality of the fight, Hector swung Ajax over his head and knocked away another wave of lamely thrown daggers to strike the bed dead centre with the hammer’s spire.
The pyre exploded, its shockwave-blast traveled across the floor and up the floor walls. The room was once again alight, but Hector saw that his assailant was still nowhere to be seen.
Two daggers ricocheted off the ground. Hector’s attention snapped upward. A cloud of smoke hung in the air, the only volume within the room left untouched by Ajax’s pyre.
Hector stretched his hand toward the cloud, then clenched his fist. A pillar of fire shot out of his hand. The cloud swirled around the column and burst. The man screamed. As their ignited body fell through the air, Hector gripped Ajax in both hands--having still been lodged in the flaming bed--and swung in a curved overhead arc. He caught and silenced the dagger-man mid-scream. Hector used the momentum to spin back around so that the spire carried the man and struck the same spot it had begun--in the center of the room.
Fire crackled and poured from the charred head’s mouth, which rested in the smoldering ashes, having been the only surviving part of their body. Hector finished the story the room had requested him to say, “I left Venus and used Ajax as a solar-sail to soar toward Jovia. I had to re-plot my course multiple times, either to stop to rest or to help relieve stress from the worlds of misery. I snuffed the thieves who were terrorizing a colony on Phobos. I made a parasite-ridden giant roach species go extinct, which had distrubed some independent asteroid farmers; the Queen had spread an infectious disease to the farmers, so I helped the United Nations of Earth distribute medicine; it was months after the eradication of the infestation before the farmers were allowed to see their families and resume their farming operation. I could go on about the past rounds of existence for ages. After many events like these, I reached the gaseous giants and helped fight the unspeakable horrors of the Kuiper belt. Ajax and I were instrumental in the detonation of the Infantry-Division’s facility, and we were responsible for the slaughtering of dozens of building-sized monsters through the Jovian moons. I roamed the mountain ranges of my home moon in Hephaestus, becoming something like a wandering hero for the suffering frontier, before finally--begrudgingly--retiring on Titan. After all this, I had awoken here--I still do not know where.”
He lifted Ajax in his left hand. The man's head broke into two parts. The room had fallen back into its darkness. With his story finished, and with no foe to strike for, Hector Blake felt the emptiness of the room flowing through him, he saw it ebb around the edge of his vision. He wanted to keep describing his adventures, but Hector realized that each part had an end.
He thought about how nice it had been to fall asleep on that bed, just for a moment, before he had woken back up. He was trapped, imprisoned by the room. Hector now noticed how sore and tired his shoulders were, how stiff and weak his joints felt. His back ached, but Hector was resolved to keep his concentration until the last. He did not focus on the pain, he focused only on his breathing, and on unifying his thoughts.
A foolhardy mistake, as his sluggish mind failed to be aroused by such meditation; bringing his mind to the energy and rapture of his body would have kept Hector Blake lucid and awake. Instead, he had continued to give his attention to his tiredness. Hector stumbled through the darkness, as if with--or bound to the room by--heavy links of chains. He stiffly ignored his slothful thoughts.
Hector felt the patch that covered the breach in Hephaestus tear open--the scabbed wound had been left untouched. Hector sidestepped to the left and turned to his right to look behind him.
He saw a pole run by at rib-height. The spearhead attached to its front had sliced through Hephaestus. Its wielder was close behind to propel the pole under their arm forward and the runner did not stop until they were a foot ahead of Hector. They then pivoted on their front facing foot to carry their momentum and step into a forward thrust. Hector had barely deflected the tip of the spear by raising Ajax to his chest, but he stumbled backward from the weight of his opponent.
From behind Ajax’s hulking mass, Hector pushed through his thoughtlessness and stole a good look at the newest form of his adversary. They stood tall and held a spear which was close to twice their height. The suit of armor they wore was identical to Hephaestus--with its six powersinks, its winged helmet and its plated armor--except that theirs did not have a gouging hole in its right rib.
Still pressed behind Ajax, Hector asked, “Who are you? Where are we?”
“Vi-Takka,” they said with a metallic, hollow and machine-like voice. “It does not matter where we are; what matters is, why do you continue to suffer and fight the drowsiness and indolence that has been dealt to you? There will be no overcoming. Even if I am defeated, there will be another.”
“To-day,” Hector said, “the effort must be made. Who knows if tomorrow death will come?”
He lowered Ajax so he could rub his bicep with the palm of his free hand. He thought himself to be something like a body of water that had been unstirred for some time and which had become clouded and swamped with algae, moss, fallen leaves and pine needles that now floated through the water, and as a result had made it hard to see their reflection upon its otherwise clear surface. So Hector had come overwhelmed by sloth and torpor, no longer able to know and see what was for the good of himself. He continued to try and rouse his energy to exert himself, but it was clear to Hector that he was no longer the shining idol of applied thought.
He charged at Vi-Takka, believing the sensible thing to do was to close the gap between them. Hector whiffed an uppercut for his foe with the blunt end of Ajax, while Vi-Takka--as fierce as a swift wind--had stepped to Hector’s left so that their spearhead was within range to strike. At the same time, they slashed across Hector’s back. He heaved the heavy hammer above his head and, turning to face Vi-Takka, let it slam onto the ground between them. Once their spear had reached the highest point of its sweeping arc, Vi-Takka cut straight back down and scraped Hephaestus’ chestplate before retracting and readying the spear at their side.
They held their weapon parallel to the ground and pointed toward Hector. They stabbed forward and tapped on Hephaestus two, three, four times. Anticipating a fifth, Hector had raised Ajax to his chest so that when his prediction came true, he was knocked backward to roll over his shoulder and land on his knees. He lost Vi-Takka in the darkness. Hector groaned as he used Ajax to push himself from his knees to stand on his feet.
“I do understand,” said the abyss, in Vi-Takka’s robotic voice, “I, too, possess a sense of the dangers of idle sloth; the lassitude, indolence and thoughtlessness of torpor. But I, unlike you, refrain from indulging in the enjoyment of reclining--in the enjoyment of sleep!”
With that, Vi-Takka struck Hector multiple times from the darkness. Hector, hiding behind Ajax’s hulking hammerhead, could not keep up with Vi-Takka’s continuous exertion. Ajax shielded the breach in Hephaestus, the sole focus of Vi-Takka’s assault.
Hector craved to be in the open air. But he, too, would not give up his efforts. He refused to give his attention to the thoughts that his tired mind produced, and instead went over his story. He shook his head and raised his eyes to the sky. Hector Blake perceived an inner perception of light, and filled his consciousness with brightness. Ajax became engulfed in flames. Hector stiffened his arms and legs and he sprinted forward.
But Vi-Takka, more nimble and tactful with their thoughts, had rolled into Hector’s blindspot--on his left, behind Ajax’s head. Hector stopped dead in his tracks when he realized his strike had missed his foe.
Hector turned to look over his shoulder, where he saw Vi-Takka thrust their spear. The iron tip pierced Hector’s exposed side--into the wound that he had been protecting with stubbornness--to shred his lungs, sever his major arteries and tear out his left shoulder-blade. Hephaestus' back had blocked the tip from clearing any further. Hector choked as all of the energy in his body had stiffened around the stone cold spearhead.
The spear was pulled out the way it had entered, and vanished as Hector Blake collapsed on top of his hammer. Black death burst from his wound, and a dark maroon mist began to cloud the room.
As blissful as his sleep had been, Hector now dreaded being unable to reap the pleasure of exerting himself. Vi-Takka's applied thought had dispelled Hector Blake, dead in his torpor. They claimed their adversary's hammer and stood over him as the darkness swirled over his eyes.
END
