========================================================================= Date: Mon, 11 Mar 1996 22:47:04 -0500 Reply-To: "Sean A.Simpson" Sender: Highlander TV show stories From: "Sean A.Simpson" Subject: Shapes in Shadows 4/4 See part one for disclaimer and copyright notice. Shapes in Shadows by Sean A. Simpson Part Four "Now I am going. Do not follow me." He turned to Seiichi and Fei, who were standing by the table. "That includes you." With that, Angus went out the door, slamming it firmly behind him. We sat around for nearly two hours, going out of our skulls. We kept telling each other that Angus would be fine, Angus was old and powerful, Angus wouldn't lose to one such as Hughes... Our vague, half-hearted attempts at conversation came to an abrupt end when we heard a car pull up and the door slam. Fei and Seiichi both had that look on their faces that I've come to associate with the approach of another Immortal. We heard steps come up to the door, and then it swung open, with a tired-looking Angus on the other side. He was carrying a bundle which he threw towards the kitchen table, where it landed with a dull thud. Angus then walked over to the refridgerator and got out a bottle of juice, which he opened and downed without even looking at the label. Then he walked back over to the table and picked up the bundle. Noticing our pointed stare, he smiled slightly and said, "Come now, if you're curious, then come along!" Then he went down the hall to his practice room. Fei, Seiichi and I followed, exchanging glances. Once in the practice room, Angus went over to the wall and unwrapped the bundle. It was the broadsword that Hughes had been carrying. He hung it on the wall, as a tribute to Hughes. "He was far too young, you know," Angus said. "Only two hundred years old, and already hunting other Immortals simply for the sake of the Prize." Angus turned around, looking at each of us in turn. "In my life, I always tried to let the young ones live. They were inexperienced, naive. Now I no longer have that choice, and it saddens me. In the past nine months I have taken nearly twenty heads. Before that I rarely fought other immortals, usually only fighting the ones I felt I had to kill, lest they wreak havoc on humanity. It saddens me that now I have to fight indiscriminately, knowing little or nothing about the people who come for my head. "I know that this is the approach of the Gathering, and that it will end with the last few traveling to some distant land to fight for the Prize, but I wish it were not so." Angus walked down the wall some until he came to a Toledo Salamanca, a sword worth a fortune. "When I met Connor MacLeod, he gave me this sword as a symbol of friendship. He managed to recover it somehow from the police. It belonged, originally, to Iman Fasil, an Immortal Connor killed in New York in 1985, the same year he killed the Kurgan." Angus turned back to us. "Iman Fasil was not an evil man. He was not the most honorable man who ever lived, nor was he even very honest. But he wasn't a creature like the Kurgan, or Kern, or Malik, murderers and rapists, conquerors who thrived on blood and war. But now he's dead, killed by this indiscriminate force that grants us virtually eternal life but forces us to fight until only one remains, and this is all that remains to commemorate him." Angus looked further down the wall, toward an ancient-looking bronze sword. "That is a sword that I used to kill mortals in a war I cared little about. I entered that war because I believed I had nothing left. My wife was dead. I had only emptiness inside. I tried filling that void with anger, with vengeance, but I am not that kind of creature. I fought that war in a trance until one day I impaled an enemy and actually looked him in the eyes. "It was a boy. He was barely old enough to lift a sword, yet the people who were fighting that war cared so little about their own people that they used children to fight for them. Children. At that moment, I pulled my sword out of his chest, wiped it clean of the blood it had spilled, and walked away, never looking back. It was then that I saw the futility and injustice of war, and since then I have tried to avoid conflict, to avoid fighting. I studied mysticism so that I would not have to fight. I studied the martial arts so that I would not have to fight. But it is in the nature of what we are to fight. To kill. To survive until there is only one. "God help whoever that one is." Angus turned and walked out of the room. Fei, Seiichi, and I stared after him for a long time. =============================================================================== Flames, comments, suggestions etc. to stsas02@moravian.edu