Wyvern's Tale

Across the long plain, he soared. The great thundering herds of wooly mammoths shook the very air with their passing, and he wondered briefly what it must be like to be on the ground during such a time.

Luckily he and his pack could soar high above, on the winds that swept the plains. But the pack were getting hungry, he could tell from their cries and growls, and he knew he had to find them some food soon. With mating season coming soon, he would be able to prove his worth as leader in battle, with snarl and snap, fang and claw. He would drive away the older males, force them to seek packs of their own. He was bigger and stronger than any of the others, his horns longer, his claws sharper. He could fight them off easily.

Until then, he had to prove his worth to the pack by finding food, close enough to the caves that were theirs. He led the pack through the night sky, seeking prey.

He swooped in the night sky, catching a quick glimpse of his pack as they too soared with him. He had seven adult females, more than any other male he knew, and there were four juvenile females who he would mate with when the season arrived. There were six males; two of those he’d have to drive off soon. They were all lean and strong, their wings broad, their horns sharp. Something very close to pride swelled in his chest, and he bellowed an attack cry, a call to battle.

An older female mammoth was trailing behind the rest of the herd.

The pack dove then. They tore the mammoth to pieces in moments. The herd moved away from the fallen one, leaving her to the predators, seeking safety in numbers. The pack began to feast.

Suddenly sharp sticks began to fall from the sky. The leader looked around, bellowing a warning. The pack turned their backs on their fallen prey, forming a defensive circle. One of the females was hit in the head with a rock and fell.

THERE. The beasts that strode about on two legs, wearing the skins of other animals. They were the ones throwing the sticks and rocks. He charged. Two of them were killed on his wide horns. Others rushed in to take their place.

The pack was surrounded. There were more of the two-legs than the leader imagined. Many of them, all with sharp sticks and rocks. And some were bringing fire.

One of the younger males fell, surrounded by the two-legs. Sharp sticks jabbed, rocks smashed, fire burned. The male screamed and died.

The leader understood the pack could not defeat them all. There were too many.

He roared out the order to take to the skies.

Those of the pack who could, turned and broke away, seeking to gain enough speed to launch themselves high enough to capture the wind in their wings.

He was the last to leave.

Back at the caves, the pack regrouped. They had been reduced to five females, a younger female, and three males. They licked each other’s wounds, washing off the blood. Soon the stone sleep would come, and they would be healed.

One of the older males snarled as the leader landed, taking an attack posture. The other two males joined him. The leader snarled and growled a warning that now was not the time for play-fighting, but something in their posture made him take a defensive stance. The first of the older males spread his wings wide and drew himself up on his legs, making himself as large as possible. The other two followed suit.

The leader was in no mood. He drew himself up as tall as he could, stretch out his wings as far as they would go - and caught the wind, soaring even higher than the other three. He folded his wings and landed on the first male hard, feeling bones crunch beneath his clawed feet. He snapped his fanged jaws at one of the other two, while his tail caught the other one and slammed him hard against the cavern rock.

The fight was over as soon as it had begun. The other two immediately took submissive postures, folding their wings behind them, curling their tails beneath them, making themselves small. The third one, remained on the ground, bleeding and broken.

The leader roared his rage against the coming dawn. He was the pack leader, not this young male. He roared again, a roar of warning. The young male was no longer pack. The females hissed warnings, telling the young male he was no longer welcome.

The young male got shakily to his feet and limped away. The stone sleep would heal him. He would find a female of his own, start his own pack.

The two young males who remained stayed out of his way, wisely hiding inside the caves.

The females came to the leader, licking his wounds and washing the dried blood away. He mated with the oldest of them, she who had known him longest, knew with the hunt and the attack and the challenge to his leadership, he would need to mate. The other females watched and waited their turn. This male was strong and fierce and cunning. He would give them strong, fierce, cunning children.

He left the pack, seeking solace on the peak of the hills they made theirs. He would enter the stone sleep alone, as he always did after a battle.

When he shook off the remains of the stone sleep, he glided down to the caves. He would mate with all the females tonight. They had fed yesterday, enough to last a few stone sleeps at least.

Inside the caves, there was nothing but rubble. Piles of rocks littered the cave floor.

His pack would never awaken from the stone sleep. There was nothing but death in the cave.

Death... and the stench of the hateful two-legs.

Years passed.

Though he met others of his kind, he never again took a mate, never again formed a pack. His life was given over to one thing.

Vengeance.

Each night, he awoke from his stone sleep, and hunted. He had one prey. The wingless two-legs that had robbed him of his pack.

Across the plains he soared the night skies, sweeping back and forth. Wherever he found the two-legs, he brought death and destruction. He smashed them, crushed them to pulp, shattered their bones and washed himself in their blood. Nothing he did would rid the world of the hateful, wingless, two-legs. If anything, there seemed to be more of them.

The stories of his attacks grew, crossing the plains, over the mountains to the lands beyond. The stories spread with the telling - he was the length of ten men, could spout fire from his mouth. His tail was tipped with poisonous barbs. If he could understand the words of the two legs, he would not recognize himself in the tales.

With the tales of the great beast of the plains came those who sought fame of their own. Over the years, he found the two legs forming packs of their own, fighting him. Hunting him, as that pack of two legs had once done to his pack.

He retreated across the plains. They followed. He retreated to the cold lands. They followed. With sharp sticks and thrown rocks, with hard flat rocks shaped like his claws that cut into his flesh, with fire. He fought them all off, smashed them to pieces, but still they came. The more he killed, the more that came.

In the mountains of the cold lands, he came across something he had never faced before. A group of two-legs, one of whom was stranger than the others, wrapped in skins of dead animals, the skull of a horned four-legger on his head. The two-legs made noises that held power, and the winds battered against the former pack leader. More noises, and fire rained from the skies. More noises, and ice frozen him where he stood. He shattered the ice and took to the skies, fleeing the strange two-legs with his hateful noises.

They followed.

Into the mountains, they followed. They were canny, these two-legs. They did not hunt him during the stone sleep, as the others did, leaving them vulnerable to his attacks during the night. These ones hunted him by star and moon, sought to face him during that which he regarded as his time. He had no pack, no longer knew where to seek his own kind.

He faced them the final time in the mountains, on a vast field of ice. In a driving snowstorm they fought, the winds battering him, keeping him from taking flight. The strange two-legs made more noises, noises that rang with power, and the ice field cracked open.

The two-legs drove him toward the chasm. He fell.

The sun rose.

The stone sleep claimed him.

Though he was unaware of it, eighteen thousand years passed.

Siberia. A month ago.

“Doctor, what exact are we doing here?” Jack asked his team leader. They had come here - or more precisely to the small nameless village a hundred miles south of here - using University funding, doing field research on Russian Inuit tribal carvings. The anthropology department was gaining considerable knowledge from the locals.

And then the old man had mushed his dogsled into the village, telling tales of a great beast trapped in the ice. The Professor had seemed most interested, grilling the old man and plying him with vodka to keep him talking. Finally the Professor had decided to investigate, and taken Jack with him to drive the snowcat.

“Doctor?”

“Hmm?” the Professor woke out of his reverie. “Oh... Jack. We’re here because of an ancient legend I discovered as a student in Prague.” He turned to his prize student. “Jack... I must tell you something, something I have told no other person. It concerns dragons.”

“Dragons?”

“This legend I discovered, it was written in ancient Aramaic. It told of a great beast that soared through the night skies. A dragon.”

“Of course, most cultures have tales of dragons. Flying serpents, fire-breathing, the whole works. The majority of academia believes them either to be morality myths or else tales told to explain the discovery of dinosaur fossils.”

“Ah but this tale did not speak of myth. The author had claimed to have found ancient stone carvings of great beasts, paintings on cave walls depicting monsters larger than a man, with wings like bats and horned heads. You know as well as I that prehistoric man did not depict abstracted images on his cave walls. They only drew and carved the things they had personally seen.”

“And?”

“So as a student I travelled to the area the author described. I have spent my life trying to find that cave.”

Jack shivered despite the snowcat’s heater being cranked to maximum.

“What are you saying, Professor? That you believe in dragons?”

“Jack... last summer... In Turkey... I found the cave. There were paintings, and carvings, of these beasts. The paintings told a tale of hunting one of these beasts... into the far North, where they killed it.”

“Professor... what are you saying? Where are we going?”

“The old man... the creature he was describing exactly matches the creature painted on the cave walls.”

“So you think there’s a dragon stuck in the glacier?” Jack was getting worried. His mentor had been acting strangely since last summer. He had pulled a lot of strings, called in a lot of favours to get this expedition approved.

“Jack... you’re the only one I trust. If we find what I suspect... This will be the biggest anthropological find since Piltdown Man.”

Jack stopped the snowcat. They had reached the glacier. They stepped out of the vehicle and stood, spellbound, staring at what they had found.

There, in the ice, was a dragon.

It took two weeks to ease the creature out of the glacial ice.

It wasn’t a dragon, of course. Despite the Professor’s initial disappointment, the find was an exquisitely preserved statue. There was no other word for it, despite it flying in the face of all established thought on the representative art of neolithic man. It stood, from head to feet, at nearly three metres tall - nearly ten feet. Its outstretched batlike wings - the only forelimbs - measured twice that long, from tip to tip.

And yet, it had human features. The torso and phallus were unmistakeably human, the face caught in an expression of terror or rage. Horns jutted out, longhorn cattle-style, from the statue’s heavy brow. Long sharp canines were the mouth’s most distinctive feature; three toes on each foot ended in sharp points, as though the carver sought to represent hardened skin rather than naturally-occurring claws.

“Here, I have it!” the Professor said, bringing forth an ancient leather-bound book. He thrust it into Jack’s hands.

Jack looked down at the opened book. There on the page was a creature, depicted in a medieval woodcut. It had batlike wings as its forelimbs, clawed feet on its hind. The gaping maw was filled with sharp curved fangs. Its body was long and serpentine, covered with scales.

“A wyvern?” Jack translated from the Old Dutch inscription.

“Yes!” replied the Professor excitedly. “A wyvern. A creature of legend... but here... Jack... here I think we may have found proof of its actual existence!”

“Professor... the resemblance is superficial at best.”

“Jack... You know as well as I that in a society based on verbal knowledge, handed down through the generations, there is every chance that the original story and the final product set down in words will bear very little resemblance to one another. What if... what if this creature, our statue... what if it is an actual depiction of an actual creature?”

“Professor... this statue is beyond the means of neolithic man to produce! It’s got to be an elaborate hoax.”

“Is it? The ice core samples came back this morning. Do you know what they indicated? The ice is somewhere between fifteen and twenty thousand years old. The statue of our wyvern has been in that glacier for twenty thousand years, Jack. Tell me that’s a hoax.”

“Twenty?... but...”

“I know. It seems impossible. And still...”

The anthropologists turned and stared at the huge statue, towering above them under the main excavation tent, lit from below by electric lanterns. The wind rippled the canvas of the tent, making the shadows ripple as well, giving the statue the illusion of movement. The uncharacteristically realistic nature of the statue only lent to that illusion.

Jack shivered suddenly as deja vu washed over him.

“This will challenge every established notion about neolithic man and his artistic representations, you know that,” Jack said quietly. “We’re liable to come under considerable attack.”

“Yes...” his mentor admitted. “But it may also bring us renown beyond our wildest dreams.”

A week later, the statue was on a cargo jet to the US. A priceless cultural artifact was easy to remove from the country of origin when you had enough money to grease the right palms. And the Professor had been very generous. Come to think of it, Jack was pretty sure their university funding had run out a long time ago. The Professor insisted they had more than enough funding... but wouldn’t speak any further on the subject.

Jack awoke, panting. He leaned forward and put his head in his hands. He pulled a couple of Tylenol out of his satchel and downed them. Outside the plane, a storm was raging.

The Professor shifted in the seat beside him. Jack looked over and saw the older man was still asleep. He reached up and turned on the overhead spotlight.

“Can’t sleep, Jack?” the Professor asked.

“Can’t get comfortable on planes,” Jack lied, not looking at him.

“Hmph,” the Professor snorted and turned away from him.

Since they removed the statue from the ice, Jack hadn’t been able to get a good night’s sleep. He’d been having the same nightmare about the creature.

In the nightmare he was a neolithic hunter of some sort, chasing after the beast. Dozens of people died from the creature’s attacks. He was the only one who could stop it. It was his life’s work. He hunted the creature for years, fought it and buried it under tons of ice... but it didn’t die.

It didn’t die... and his life’s work was never ended.

He got up and went back into the cargo portion of the plane. It wasn’t strictly speaking allowed, but once again, money had certain privileges.

Jack stepped into the unheated cargo bay. He found the crate easily... it was the largest thing in the section. He checked the straps that held it in place, made sure they were secure. Nothing had changed since he checked them three hours ago.

“You better be worth it... Wyvern,” Jack said.

The electric lights flickered and died.

Suddenly there was blinding pain shooting through Jack’s head. He fell to his knees as the pain cracked his head open, sending frozen icepicks deep into his brain.

Who?

“Stop it stop it stop it!” Jack yelled against the pain.

YOU!!!

“Curse you beast! Begone from my mind! By the spirits I command you!” Jack screamed, not knowing what he was saying.

DIE HUMAN!!

“Stop it stop it!”

Destroyer of my family/pack/tribe/pride I will KILL YOU!!

Jack got painfully to his feet, stumbling away from the crate, from the voice that pounded inside his head, so filled with hate, hate for him, for Jack himself. The owner of the voice wanted Jack dead, wanted it so badly Jack could taste it. As he stumbled away from the crate, the voice dwindled.

The owner of the voice, Jack knew... was the creature in the crate. The statue they had carved from the ice.

Wyvern.

The Professor paced back and forth in the empty hall, eager to get the unveiling underway, but their financier had been most adamant. He wanted to be the first to see the statue, and would tolerate no alterations to the deal. So the unveiling was now a half hour behind schedule, and the guests outside the hall were beginning to rumble. The Dean of the university was noticeably checking his watch.

Jack was conspicuous in his absence.

“Professor,” spoke a resonant voice from alcove at the rear of the hall.

The Professor turned and saw his benefactor. A tall man in an exquisitely tailored tuxedo strode from the shadowed alcove into the hall. Broad at the shoulder and narrow at the hip, long dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, he walked with the supreme confidence of a self-made man, one who had struggled from obscurity to be ranked among the great names of history. Their benefactor smiled triumphantly as he stepped toward the dais on which the statue had been placed.

“Magnificent,” he said quietly, as though to himself. He reached out and touched the statue, almost caressing it.

“Mr. Xanatos,” the Professor began, worry thick in his voice.

“No no, Professor,” the internationally infamous financial genius said, holding up a finger reproachfully. “I want to savour this moment.”

“Honestly darling,” a woman said, entering the room from the same door at the back of the hall. Tall and athletic, she moved with a grace that was extraordinary. Bright red hair and the blue fox-head tattoo that covered one eye were only the most obvious of her beautiful features. She wore a floor-length deep blue evening gown, and a diamond necklace sparkled at her throat. “It’s not like you’ve never seen one before.”

“Now Fox,” Xanatos chided, taking his wife’s hand and kissing it lightly. “The Professor doesn’t need to know everything.”

“Mr. Xanatos,” the Professor began again. “The university is asking questions, and...” His eyes flickered to the beautiful woman who was examining the acquisition. “Well, sir, I don’t know what to tell them.”

“You should have thought of that before you accepted my offer, Professor,” Xanatos said, still spellbound by the towering stone creature before him. “What you tell them is your business. This...” he waved a hand toward the statue “... is mine.”

“But the value to science is incalculable!” the Professor protested.

“Quite inaccurate, Professor,” said another man, entering the room. He wore a nondescript blue suit and thick glasses. “We paid you exactly what you requested... a considerable sum, I might add.”

“Owen?” Xanatos asked, his eyes still on the statue.

“Everything is arranged, sir.”

“Excellent.”

“You can’t take the Wyvern!” the Professor said, almost hysterically.

“Wyvern?” Xanatos laughed. “Wyvern... How appropriate.” He turned to face the elderly academic. “No Professor... I can. You signed the papers. I’ll allow you access to the... statue... with proper advance warning, of course... But make no mistake.” He turned to face the towering stone figure.

“Wyvern... is mine.”

Two days ago.

High atop the tallest building in Manhattan, workmen hurried to finish they jobs. Mr. Xanatos had paid them extremely well to have everything in place before nightfall, and what Xanatos paid for, Xanatos got.

Though why he wanted a statue chained with state-of-the-art restraints was beyond any of them. But then again, they weren't being paid to ask questions.

The last of the restraints were locked in place, on each leg, wing and the tail. Even the statue's neck was securely fastened. The workmen were paid by Xanatos' snooty-looking Personal Assistant and hurried on their way.

"Well Doctor?" Xanatos asked his associate.

"I believe they might hold the creature," Anton Sevarius smirked. "I have estimated his strength based on observations of the oher gargoyles. Goliath himself could never break those chains. But this big boy is a lot larger than even the largest gargoyle we've seen."

"Indeed," Xanatos agreed. "Wyvern is extraordinary. A prehistoric gargoyle… Imagine how that much power might be used… with the proper incentive."

"Yes, of course," Sevarius said, smugly eyeing his wide array of surgical tools.

"Owen, the blinds," Xanatos ordered. His aide pressed a button on the wall and the wall itself opened up to reveal the setting sun.

"Be ready, Doctor," Xanatos stated, his eyes never leaving the still form of the towering statue.

"Naturally," Sevarius answered testily.

The sun set.

Nothing happened.

"What's wrong?" Xanatos asked.

"I don't know," Sevarius said, checking the sensors on his equipment. "By all indications the procedure should have-"

The familiar cracking noise of stone breaking interrupted him.
Another crack… and another.

Suddenly the lab was ringing with a roar of pure animal rage and an explosion of rock shards ricocheted off of every surface.

"Now Doctor!" Xanatos ordered, and the scientist flipped the switch.

The huge gargoyle struggled to free himself, pulling the chains nearly to the breaking limit.

"My God, his strength in incredible!" Sevarius exclaimed.

"Time for admiration later, I think, Doctor!"

The harder the huge gargoyle struggled the greater the amount of power coursed into the restraints. The lights in the lab began to dim with the gargoyle's exertions.

"Owen, the rifle!"

Owen handed his employer the specially prepared rifle. Xanatos took it, aimed, and fired in one experienced motion. The dart flew across the lab and imbedded itself in the gargoyle's thick hide.

The raging male roared once more, shaking the room with the force of his rage. The chains began to buckle. Those on the gargoyle's tail threatened to snap completely, when suddenly the huge towering male toppled to the ground, unconscious.

"I'd say your estimations were a little off the mark, Doctor," Xanatos said wrily.

"Amazing," Sevarius said, stepping toward the unconscious gargoyle, reading the display screen on the device he carried. "His musculature and bone density are entirely different!"

"Fascinating, I'm sure," the billionaire answered. "How long before he wakes up?"

"Now that he's under, I can keep him under indefinitely."

"Excellent," Xanatos smiled. "Get the device."

Today.

The sun set, and the stone sleep was broken.

Wyvern flexed and shrugged off his remaining stone shell with a bellow of territorial pride. He looked around him and stared down at the two humans who watched him eagerly. He snarled.

“Now now,”said the bearded one. “None of that, Wyvern.”

Wyvern’s eyes narrowed suspiciously.

“Who are you? Why do your noises mean things?” he rumbled, the words unfamiliar on his lips. “Why can I... speak... your language?”

“Fantastic!” the beardless one exclaimed. “The device worked perfectly!”

“Device?” Wyvern asked through clenched teeth.

“Doctor Sevarius implanted a device in your brain that allowed us to... are your still following me?” the bearded one asked.

“Of course. I do not understand why I understand you, but continue.”

“The device allowed us to... speed-teach you our language, as well as a few other things it might be useful for you to know in today’s society,” the bearded one explained.

“And you are?”

“David Xanatos.”

“And you named me... Wyvern? The word means a hideous monster, a devourer of humans.”

“Yes.”

“Quite fitting... human.” Wyvern bared his fangs, his eyes flashing with barely contained rage. “I hunted your kind when you wore the skins of other animals.”

“Now Wyvern... Is that any way to speak to the man who freed you from the ice?”

“The ice...” the huge gargoyle felt a numbing terror fill him. “What of it?”

“Surely there might be a little gratitude in your heart?”

Wyvern stared down at Xanatos.

“And if there was? What would you ask of me?”

“Nothing... but a chance to know you. To ask you about the world you lived in. The knowledge you possess of your... previous life is of incalculable importance.”

“Is it.”

“It is, to the right people. Now... I’ve freed you from the ice, I want nothing but your friendship. I’m offering you a place to rest during the day. By night... well, I could find a use for a fierce hunter such as yourself. In exchange... I could probably find you anything you require.”

“Indeed,” Wyvern said, setting back on his haunches. The human was not offering anything for free, and the gargoyle knew it. Humans were greedy, rapacious, and selfish. They invaded territories and drove out all competition. They hunted and ravaged and burned.

They could not be trusted.

“David Xanatos... There is only one thing I require,” Wyvern said, folding his wings behind him.

“What might that be?”

“The one who cast me into the long cold dark... the word in my mind is ‘shaman.’ He lives still.”

“That’s... not very likely, Wyvern. You were stone for eighteen thousand years.”

“HE LIVES!!” Wyvern roared, spreading his wings wide.

“Now now, calm down my boy,” Sevarius placated.

“He lives... he touched my mind while I was in the stone sleep... within the last moon,” Wyvern snarled.

“Let’s say he lives,” Xanatos said. “What about him?”

“I must kill him. I will feast on his beating heart. The shaman must die.”

Jack walked the streets as rain poured down, soaking him through to the skin. He didn’t care.

Anyone who saw him would think he was just another homeless guy. Dirty clothes, two weeks of beard, haggard, lifeless expression. Jack didn’t care.

All he wanted was to stay awake.

In the nightmares, he was hunted, fought a great battle, then ripped to pieces by the statue they had carved out of the ice. Killed by the Wyvern.

He hated it. Hated the statue, hated the professor, hated the mysterious financier. Extreme sleep deprivation was playing tricks on him, filling his mind with paranoid thoughts, his imagination finding Wyvern in the shadows and in the sky, ready to pounce on him at a moment’s notice. He twitched as he walked, seeing things that weren’t there. He ate when he remembered to eat, drinking cup after cup of coffee, but mostly he walked to stay awake.

He couldn’t take it any more. He had to do something about the nightmares. He had to do something about Wyvern.

He broke into the Professor’s house and waited for the old man to come home from the university. When his mentor came in, Jack attacked him, beating the name of the mysterious financier out of him.

Xanatos.

Not thinking rationally, he made his way to the skyscraper the billionaire called home and walked in the front doors, demanding to speak to Xanatos. He knew about Wyvern, he knew things about the monster, knew that the beast had to be stopped. He was just about to be shown the door when the security officers stopped hitting him, listening to the earpieces they both wore. They picked Jack up and carried him to the elevator, tossing him in and sending him all the way to the castle itself.

Jack was met by a blond man in a blue suit with a distasteful look on his face.

“This way... sir.”

“Listen,” Jack explained patiently, “You don’t know what kind of monster you’ve got here. It’s a beast. It hates all mankind. It hunts us in our sleep, in the dark. It kills women and children! IT’S GOT TO BE STOPPED!!”

“Sir. Kindly unhand me.”

“Jack, isn’t it?”came a calm voice. Jack turned around and saw Xanatos standing there calmly.

“Mr. Xanatos...” Jack stumbled toward the billionaire. “You’ve got to understand... we’ve got to smash the statue to bits. It’s the only way to be sure. It’s a monster, a beast...”

“Yes, of course he is,” Xanatos agreed, escorting Jack into a large living room. A fire blazed in the huge fireplace, throwing shadows into the corners of the room. Jack twitched nervously.

“If we smash him, then he can never hunt another human... then he’ll leave me alone.”

“Naturally,” Xanatos agreed. This was going much easier than Jack had expected.

“Good... good. I’m glad you understand.”

“Of course I do...” Xanatos said. “However, I suspect Wyvern might not.”

“W-what?” Jack asked.

A low deep rumbling snarl made him turn around.

Jack backed away from the towering monster, snarling in the shadows.

“No... no... this... can’t be..” Jack stammered.

“Yes, fiend, destroyer,” Wyvern snarled, stepping forward into the light, his eyes balzing with hatred and revenge finally at hand. “Hunter of all my kind... merciless predator... MONSTER!!”

The gargoyle lunged forward, spreading his wings wide.

“Sir, should I do something about this?” Owen asked his employer.

“Not yet, Owen,” Xanatos waved his assistant off. “I want to see where this is going.”

Jack narrowly dodged the gargoyle’s lunge and ran to a corner of the room. Wyvern, hampered by the confines of being indoors, was unable to turn in time, and awkwardly found himself facing the stone wall. He turned around and faced the anthropologist, stalking toward him slowly, body held low to the ground, wings spread out low to the ground to keep his prey from fleeing.

“You hunted my kind across the plains... You tormented my every waking moment... You chased me onto the icelands... Locked me in ice, in the long cold cark, for EIGHTEEN THOUSAND YEARS... and NOW, HERE!! I HAVE MY REVENGE!!”

“No...no... NO!!” Jack screamed, and deep inside him, something awoke.

Power flooded his every muscle, every cell, exploding through him, like a drowning man’s first breath, filling him with the life energy of the universe. And with it, came memories of four hundred lifetimes, each lived hunting for purpose, for direction, unable to quell the unease that filled his empty soul, as his purpose had been untimely ripped from him in the great field of ice so long ago, his quest unfulfilled, his goal unattainable seemingly forever.

The shaman of the prehistoric plains looked out from Jack’s eyes, and saw his quest could finally be completed.

“So, beast,” he snarled back, “at long last we can have done with it!”

Wyvern roared once and lunged at his prey. Jack raised his hands and called upon the spirits of the air to beat back his foe. Wind rushed into the hall, forming a whirlwind of such force that Xanatos and Owen were forced to find shelter under the billionaire’s heavy oak and stone desk. The wind was strong enough to batter even Wyvern’s massive frame back away from Jack, who soared up into the air, carried by the spirits.

Wyvern roared again and took to the air, carried aloft by the raging wind. Jack smiled and called down the spirits of the storm. Lighting crashed through the high-set winows and stabbed through Wyvern’s body. The gargoyle roared once more, this time in agony as the lightning pierced him. He fell to the ground, steam and smoke rising from his body.

Jack floated down to stand over his fallen enemy.

“Now beast... now I will finish what I began so long ago... and then I too will be able to rest,” he said, his fists crackling with long-suppressed magical power. “Now... you will die.”

“Not so fast,” Xanatos said from the corner. In his arms was a high-powered automatic rifle, aimed right at Jack. “Back away... now.”

“Xanatos, you fool,” Jack laughed. “What makes you think you can stop me?”

“This rifle is a custom job I had made up,” Xanatos explained patiently. “It fires nearly three thousand rounds a minute. That’s about fifty bullets a second. The accuracy isn’t all that great, but if there’s a hundred bullets flying through the air after two seconds, I figure there’s a pretty good chance one of them will hit you, don’t you think?”

“The spirits will protect me!” Jack spat at the billionaire.

“You sure they can stop that many bullets?” Xanatos brought the rifle up to his shoulder and sighted along the barrel.

“This... BEAST does not deserve to live! It hunts humans! It eats children!”

“Yes, yes, we’ve all heard the bedtime stories. Now. Out.”

Jack’s eyes flicked from Xanatos to Wyvern lying prone at his feet and back to the rifle.

“This isn’t over,” Jack promised, then flew out the shattered window.

Owen came to stand beside his employer, straightening his tie and wind-blown hair.

“That rifle’s rate of fire isn’t nearly that high,” Owen observed.

“He didn’t know that,” Xanatos answered, a smirk playing on his face as he placed the rifle carefully back in the hidden panel behind his desk.

Wyvern dragged himself to his feet. He looked over at Xanatos.

“Why?” Wyvern asked simply.

“Why what?”

“Why did you save me?”

“I could say you represent a sizeable investment, and I always protect my investments,” Xanatos replied. “Or you could say I did it because it’s the right thing to do. Which you choose to believe is up to you.”

Wyvern thought about that for a moment, then nodded sharply once.

“My thanks, David Xanatos,” he said grudgingly.

“For the record, I wasn’t going to let you kill him, either.”

“Standing between me and my prey is a dangerous place to be, David Xanatos.”

“I’m sure. But you’ll soon learn, things aren’t as simple as they were... back in your time.”

“Perhaps. But perhaps things are not as complicated as you humans prefer them to be,” Wyvern said, leaping to the shattered windowsill.

“Going somewhere?” Xanatos inquired as Owen set about straightening up the mess the battle had caused.

“My enemy flees before me, David Xanatos,” Wyvern explained. “I may be too injured to engage him in battle for now... but not so injured that my brains have been addled. I will seek a place to rest during the stone sleep.”

“Why not stay here? I have plenty of guards.”

“Because, David Xanatos... I do not trust humans.”

With those words Wyvern took to the night sky, letting the updrafts of the concrete canyons of Manhattan bear him aloft. He glided through the night, revelling in his freedom.

Inside Castle Wyvern, Doctor Sevarius found his Xanatos.

“Yes Doctor?” Xanatos asked, watching Wyvern’s departure.

“Well sir,” Sevarius said. “It’s the tracer we implanted. That lightning bolt... it was fried.”

Xanatos’ eyes narrowed in displeasure.