Able didn’t respond, instead just charging at her with a burst of 
lightning speed and headbutted her so hard she went flying 
backwards a good fifty cubits. 


Landing with cat-like grace, she checked to make sure her phone 
was alright. 


"Hey careful! This is a Samsung, it could have exploded!" she 
shouted. "Still beats Apple with their stupid face ID. Do they not test 
those things for Clowns?" 


Once again Able came charging for her, but this time she was 
prepared. She skirted to the side at the last instant, smoothly 
switching the phone with the sword and sliced Able’s right leg clean 
off, sending him tumbling to the ground. Despite now only have one 
leg, with his hands almost falling off and his arms tangled up in his 
cape, he managed to rectify himself and resume his attack, hobbling 
towards her on his left leg. 


“Oh look at that, you’re hopping mad now!” Lolly taunted. “Oh, | 
should make A Monty Python and The Holy Grail reference! Ah... 
hold on. Give me a minute, it will come to me.” 


Though his screams were horrifying, in his current physical state it 
was comically easy for Lolly to evade him, ruminating aloud over 
potential Monty Python quips as she did so. The humiliation finally 
started to become stronger than his anger, and he reluctantly 
stopped hopping and hung his head in defeat. 


“| yield,” he growled through his teeth. 


“You what now?” Lolly asked smugly, cupping her hand to her ear 
as if she hadn’t heard him. 


“| yield!” he spat at her. “You said you wanted a sword fight. We’ve 
had it, it’s over, you’ve won. Return the sword to me.” 


“No. If | won, then this is my prize. I’m going to give it to my friend 
Iris. She mentioned she wanted something like this.” 


And then, perhaps suggesting he was actually a Zack Snyder fan, 
Able went all Batman Vs Superman at the mention of the name Iris. 


“Why would you say that?” he demanded. 
“Huh?” 
“That name! Why would you say her name!” 


“| — she’s just someone | know. She’s awesome. She’s a paratech 
expert, a cyborg sorceress, kind of a badass, but also kind of 
snooty.” 


There was an awkward moment of silence. 


“| don’t think we’re talking about the same person dude. There’s 
more than one girl in the worlds named Iris.” 


Nonetheless, it seemed the mention of the name was enough to 
throw Able into his rage state once again. 


“| will not endure this indignity any longer!” he bellowed, finally 
mustering the strength to break free of his cape. He could not a 
wield a sword, nor could he run, but using his remaining leg he leapt 
into the air straight for her, ready to crush her like a poodle (he once 
crushed a poodle by falling on it, but that’s another story). 


Instead, Lolly raised her sword and he landed upon it, the blade 
impaling him through the chest and coming out the other side of his 
back. She lowered him to the ground so that he was supported by 
his remaining knee, as he was very heavy. 


“| Know you respawn like a video game character every time you die, 
so let me give you a tip for your next playthrough,” she said. “If you 
ever come across a circus that feels like it’s not quite real, head in 
the other direction.” 


He tried to raise his arms to defend himself, but she twisted the 
blade and the agony was unbearable. He looked up and saw that 
she had bent down so that they were face to face, eyes like a shark 
and a terrifyingly serene smile staring back at him. 


“Because this is what | do to people who try to fuck with my Circus!” 


The cuckoo bird popped out of her head again, plucking out Able's 
remaining eye. 


Lolly ripped her sword out, leaving Able's entrails to spill all over the 
ground and his body to putrify. 


Wiping the blade clean with a giant clown hankie, she placed it in 
her hammerspace pocket. 


"Happy April Fools Mister!" she shouted as she happily skipped 
back to the Circus, merrily singing nonsense to herself. 


The Warrior And The Dragon 


Able paced towards the towering monstrosity casually, nonchalant in 
his motions, swaggering and grinning as he did so. A massive two- 
handed claymore was held in place over one of his shoulders, the 
whirring gears and saws that covered its surfaced trundling away 
noisily, while the many small blades that made up its jagged edge 
slowly slid across the rim contentedly, purring like a cat. The beast 
in front of him was a monolith in the sparse landscape, a monument 
of destruction, the waves of hatred and anger radiating off of its 
frame palpable, rivaling even Able’s lust for bloodshed. 


It simply stood there, a mass of heavily plated carapace and flesh, 
small black eyes in its mammoth skull like holes into the void, resting 
malevolently above thick serrated fangs, slick with drool. Even as he 
approached it, it was steadily changing, its tissue warping, the plates 
and armour growing thicker, mounds of muscle and sinew and bone 
sliding over each other incessantly, all in a bid to reform into 
something that would better stand this coming assailant. 


Truly, this was a Godhead of annihilation, a being that embodied the 
primal destruction of existence. He could hardly contain his glee. 
After all this time, after the wait of centuries, he would actually meet 
a being that could surpass his capacity for violence. Maybe. 


He walked until he was mere feet from its colossal form, and, after a 
moment to savour this wondrous anticipation that he was feeling, he 
spoke up. 


“| have heard tales of creatures like you. Glorious beasts of scale 
and flesh, talon and fang, a prowess in battle even greater than the 
immense intellect hiding behind those bestial eyes. They said your 
kind once ruled the Earth from enormous stockpiles of treasure, 
killing and eating all who displeased you. But you were knocked 
from your throne, one by one, by the great warriors who walk this 
world no longer, until there were no more, and you became but mere 


myth,” he whispered breathlessly. 


“Even | had thought you to be nothing but fairy tales, but yet, here 
you stand before me, a living dragon...” 


There was a rumble from the beast, and its mouth began to move, 
cracking open slowly, as a statue come suddenly to life. 


“Pathetic...” It grumbled, its voice thick and heavy, like a mountain 
collapsing into itself a thousand times over. 


“A dragon? You simple little pile of rot. You understand nothing, as | 
would expect of a well-trained lapdog” 


At this, Able’s expression darkened, and the sound of the sword on 
his shoulder began to pick up as the blades twirled ever so faster. 


“....What?” he said slowly, in a low voice that spoke of rage barely 
contained. 


“That is what you are, is it not? A trained and broke mutt, bound with 
a collar and all,” it murmured, gesturing slightly towards the thick 
metal choker around his shoulders and neck. 


“| chose this,” he replied stiffly, his face contorted into scowl. 


“Whether you chose it or not, you are still a dog of those things. The 
only difference being that you eat from their hands, rather than a 
bowl,” it sneered, the expression almost visible on its inhuman face. 


Able’s face twitched, and he tightened his grip on the handle of his 
weapon, the revolving blades now turning at a considerable speed, 
protesting with a dull screech. 


“At least | can choose my fate,” he roared angrily, launching his 
sword with a downwards swing at the beast’s head like the almighty 
wrath of some obscene god. 


But.... 


The creature responded in a way Able had never before seen in all 
his millennia of fighting. 


It head butted the weapon. The top of its skull and shell shattered 
into bulky fragments, its eyes bulging as the inside of its cranium 
was pulverised. One of its eyes burst with a wet pop, and torrents of 
thick, viscous fluid gushed from its mouth, chunks of meat and 
tissue pouring forth like a fountain of blood and gore. 


But in head butting the blade, Able was thrown off balance by the 
force of it, recoiling from the attack automatically, leaving his 
stomach wide open. In that split second of defencelessness, his 
sight was filled with the gargantuan fist of the monster, a boulder 
sized bulk of bony plate, ploughing into his entire torso, smashing 
into him with the force of a hurricane and knocking his sword from 
his hands. He was flung over ten metres away like a rag doll, 
demolishing innumerable obstacles in his way. His body skidded 
heavily against the ground, shredding the cloth and skin from his 
back, until he finally came to an abrupt stop, half embedded in a 
large boulder. 


He hung there limply, streams of blood pouring from his eyes, nose, 
mouth and ears, his face slack in a stunned expression of 
amazement. 


And then he laughed. He laughed long and hard, smiling and baring 
his pointed teeth in a bloody smirk that made it appear that he had 
just finished a gruesome meal. 


He spoke up in a language long dead, but the meaning of the words 
he said were unmistakable. He was issuing a challenge. 


But to his surprise, the lizard looked like it was having some kind of 
seizure. It was repeatedly sucking air in heavily through its nostrils, 
puffing itself up even bigger than it was normally, and consuming the 
viscera soaked dirt quickly, its huge claws scrabbling away at the 
ground, and stuffing clumps of it into its toothy maw. 


And then something amazing happened. The wound, which had 
warped the creature’s skull into a shape reminiscent of an overripe 
tomato, began to undo itself, the beast’s head shifting back into its 
regular shape, the broken plates buckling and falling off to be 
consumed once more, and revealing a shiny wet carapace formed 
under the old, even thicker than the last. 


“Fate? What would you understand of Fate? Fate is life, and you... 
You and all of this is death,” the creature bellowed, beginning to 
charge towards him. 


At this, Able chuckled. 


“Well, | can’t argue with that,” he replied gleefully, pulling an 
enormous mace out of the shadows of his ragged cloak, its handle 
well over six feet in length, its head nothing more than a mass of 
whirling spikes, screaming obscenely as they spun in an intricate 
pattern of death. 


The beast lumbered towards him quickly, its mighty footsteps 
causing the earth to shake, clods of dirt torn up in its wake, bearing 
down on him with the force and inevitability of an avalanche. 


Able pulled back, standing sideways, moving his arms back behind 
him and grinding his feet into the ground. He turned towards the 
impending disaster, swinging his weapon idly with a seasoned flair. 


And then, the beast was upon him, and he swung, time seeming to 
stop as his weapon once more collided with the creature's head. 
There was a deafening crunch as its head was crushed again, 
splattered into pieces, its spine impacting, the monster becoming 
visibly shorter as the unstoppable force propelling it met with the 
immovable force colliding with it. 


The sheer amount of chaos generated by those two immense forces 
meeting launched the reptile several dozen meters away, spinning 
like an errant missile, lumps of it flying off as it sailed through the air. 
It hit the earth with a boom, bits and pieces of its frame dotting the 
landscape around the impact crater like raindrops during spring 
showers. 


Able cracked his neck, ignoring the blood streaming down the thick 
gash in his leg, or the three along his chest, gained when his 
opponent slashed at him as he swung. Instead, he discarded the 
now bent and still mace behind him with an uncaring toss, popped 
his shoulders back into place with a jerky, awkward shrug, and 
started to reset his shattered elbow. 


The creature pushed itself up, eating everything around it, growing 
heavier, thicker and more rocklike in appearance. It shook off the 
excess blood from its form like a dog, droplets of the thick dark liquid 
spattering the earth around it, and began to clump out of the crater. 


It lumbered over the lip of the fissure it had created, only to be 
greeted with a large chakram shredding into its flesh, the ring 
digging in as the exterior saw blades spun and forced it ever deeper 
into the wound. Several more followed suit, flying from Able’s hands 
as he drew them out of the shadows, running towards his opponent. 


He threw himself into the air, unleashing a monstrous axe from the 
folds of his cloak, and hammering down onto his opponent like a 
bomb. 


It shrugged off the attack as a horse does a gnat, trying to swat Able 
with its huge clawed hands. He dodged and weaved around its 
sailing fists, planting drill like daggers into its thick hide, leaving them 
to rip and tear into its flesh. Whenever an attack would come close 
to landing on him, he would pull himself aside using an embedded 
knife close at hand. 


Still, the creature showed no sign of slowing its attacks, or even that 
it felt any pain at all. It was single-minded in its assault, with only 
one objective in its sight. 


KILL. 


Suddenly, a stray claw caught Able across the shoulder, causing 
him to stumble. He was rewarded for this action with another 
crushing fist to the gut, pinning him solidly to the ground. The beast 
lifted its other claw to deal the finishing blow, an executioner's axe 
raised for its unsightly purpose, then descending in a flash of light 
and shadow. 


It raised its hand again to crush whatever remained of Able, but was 
mildly surprised to find that its arm suddenly ended at the elbow, a 
river of molten blood flowing freely from the wound. 


The other arm quickly followed suit, snipped off at the joint by a 
gigantic mechanical pair of scissors held by Able, the inner blades 


spinning feverishly, fresh gore spraying from their moving teeth. 


The monster attempted to consume the fallen limbs and replace 
what it had lost, only to meet the bladed boot of Able, kicking it 
directly in the bottom of the jaw and knocking it onto its back. 


Able fell onto the prone creature like a jackal onto its prey, laying 
into the creature with an animalistic ferocity, screaming incoherently 
in his berserker blood rage. He kept pounding on the beast with his 
weapons, pulling out a fresh one each time another got too deeply 
lodged to pull out, or broken from the sheer strain. 


Eventually, he pulled back, his breathing heavy, drenched 
completely in vile smelling crimson liquid, a bloody, hellish 
apparition. He watched it still struggle to breath, its body still trying to 
reform itself. 


And that was when he saw it. A pulse emitted from the creature, a 
shockwave that forced aside the very fabric of reality, the world 
warping around the beast as a shock of electricity quickly ran across 
its mutilated body. 


But whatever it was, he did not care. It expected no quarter, and he 
would give it none. 


It looked at him weakly, blatant disgust and hatred still as strong, still 
as Clear as it had always been. He pulled a last long sword out of his 
shredded cloak, and intended to deliver the final blow. 


The beast bared its fangs, and shot up as his sword descended. His 
blade buried itself in the roof of the creatures mouth, travelling 
straight through its brain and out the top of its head, the blades still 
spinning as they ripped through the pulsing grey matter. 


Still the monster lived, its toothy maw wrapped around Able’s arm. It 
eyed him smugly, and gently, almost reverently, bit directly through 
his arm, ivory teeth effortlessly slicing through muscle and bone to 
meet together with a light click. 


Able staggered back in surprise, and the creature reared back, head 
butting him in the skull with a piercing crack, knocking him onto his 


SCP-978: Desire Camera 


Item #: SCP-978 
Object Class: Safe