Here it is, the last installment on Dr. Indestructible... a Defunct Character from a yet-to-be-released game, using a long-since-scrapped qualitatively-described character creation system. I still like him though, and this short story was pretty good, at least to my eyes...

ANECDOTE 2 [Part 2 of 2] CONCLUSION OF THE DR. INDESTRUCTIBLE FICTION

Doctor Indestructible tried to run up and kick him while the sword was deeply planted, but had to withdraw his leg hastily as Cawdor whipped the blade smoothly from the ground as easily as one would draw a kitchen knife from its sharpener. I'll just have to try to disarm him somehow. I've never seen him fight without Sarum, so it's possible that without it he is near-powerless. Changing tactics, the Doctor dropped his density from x2 back down to normal, even though he could probably keep up a mere 200% density for an hour if he needed to.

Cawdor leaped at him with a brutal slash, and cleaved right through his stomach from on side to the other. The blade passed through unresisted, causing no visible damage. The attacker swung Sarum back the other way and diagonally upwards, such that it should have sliced through and come out where Doctor Indestructible's neck met his shoulder, but once again the grey-skinned hero reduced his density low enough to become incorporeal, allowing the steel (or whatever metal the magic sword was forged out of) to pass through without affecting him. In actuality, the energy surrounding its edge caused sharp pain like a searing hot wire piercing the Doctor, but he managed not to show it - remaining impassive as he so often did.

Now it was Cawdor who fell back several paces, unsure how to deal with this defense. Doctor Indestructible took this chance to press his attacker, launching a lunging haymaker punch at the villain's head. He was forced to turn his arm incorporeal at the last instant to avoid a defensive sword slash, so his fist passed right through Cawdor's head and out the other side. But with a quick move he elbowed back in the other direction, striking the side of the head with his now-resolidified arm.

The blow wasn't exactly crushing, but it was his first hit of the fight, and it smashed Cawdor's sunglasses out of shape, such that they were just hanging on by their arms, with one lens gone and the whole frame at an angle which barely covered the other eye.

The revealed eye was dark, and almost grotesque... because it wasn't there. The eye cavity was empty - hollow, such that you could see the veins and scarred nerves at the back and sides. The flesh around the eye socket, including the lid, had been cut back somewhat, further adding to the impression of a deep hole in the man's face.

"I forget," the Doctor lied, "just what did happen to your eyes, anyway?"

"A grenade sand-blasted my torso with brick fragments, including piercing my eyes. They got infected, and the worthless watery sacs had to be removed. The quality of hospital care is abysmal in India - or at least it was back then, in the 1930s!" Retelling the story out loud only made Cawdor angrier, and he lashed out, unexpectedly pulling his left hand off Sarum's hilt to palm strike the Doc right in the face, which stung just from the surprise, then went for a slice at his opponents legs.

I knew the story, but I'd never heard the date before. Could he really be over 80? He must have just been trying to throw me off... That surprised him, as did the hit in the face (although the latter was quite harmless to him beyond its shock value), but he never stopped watching Sarum. When Cawdor struck at his legs, the hero de-densified them into incorporeality, but kept his upper body solid and grabbed the swordsman's wrist. He had to perform all this manipulation, and still keep his feet solid so that he wouldn't start sinking into the ground. This level of precision was really pushing his limits, but when the situation is worst, one does what one must to survive.

This was the perfect opportunity because punching him had left Cawdor with only a one-handed grip. Doctor Indestructible had the sword-wrist in both hands by the time the blue-ringed blade passed out the far side of his insubstantial legs. And that is when the 'master of density' bumped his entire body back up to double his normal mass for the extra strength and stability he needed to take what was left of the momentum and off-balance position from Cawdor's attack and throw him. The medieval throwback's shoulder-length brown hair was flung out wildly as he was vaulted over Doctor Indestructible's shoulder. As the final touch, as soon as Cawdor was off the ground, the Doc deftly twisted the wrist back in the direction opposite the rotation, and slid his knee underneath so that the wrist was bent back and snapped using the leverage of the entire thrown body. Cawdor's fingers lost their strength and fell limp, so that he no longer clutched Sarum's hilt.

Cawdor grunted in pain, but quickly used his good hand to help prop himself up and stumble forward into a five-step sprint, from which he leaped fourty feet almost straight up to land on top of a tree, causing the tree's crown to bend over precariously. But he kept his footing and pivoted around to stare down at the Doctor with his crater-like sockets portraying a hatred that would be hard to match with the softness of white, human eyes.

Well, disarming him didn't cost him the ability to leap... wait, WHAT? Doctor Indestructible was struck by the unexpected and disheartening sight: up on top of the tree, with his wrist broken and dangling limp, Cawdor still had the sword. Sarum dangled from his fingertips, like a screw hanging from a magnet-tipped hand-driver. I suppose I should have guessed that they weren't so easily separated, but if he can keep fighting - and I'm sure he isn't through quite yet - how am I going to beat him?

"Alright then", the swordsman panted, "You got me - although I doubt you could repeat that move. Now you will get what you tried to taunt me into... I'll let Sarum take over so he can use his full strength and finish this. Fortunately, I still get to watch."

He grabbed his glasses in his left (undamaged) hand, tossed them away into the brush below him, and stood up straighter. A shiver passed through his body. Then his fingers curled around Sarum's handle once more, and with a gruesome little snapping sound he straightened his broken wrist, lifting the blade up to hold it with both hands again. Though his Doctorate was not medical in the practicing sense, the 'Indestructible' man still flinched at that movement - even from down here, he could see that the wrist was not healed in any way, but was simply being forced to work in an unnatural (and unhealthy-looking) manner.

The blue glow around Sarum's edge now expanded, growing to encompass the entire blade, and from that blade now began to form a number of protrusions. A pair of foot-long pincer-like curved blades sprung out from near the hilt, each of them with a 1/4 size spur facing backwards from where it met the straight part of the blade. Further along the shaft, three quarters of the way to the point, a set of four one-inch long serrated teeth sprung out, with an identical pair growing perpendicular to the blade's cutting plane - the overall effect was of a menacing and twisted looking weapon, which should have greatly reduced usefulness due to all the superfluous (and in most cases counterproductive) extraneous parts.

I've seen him do this a few times to destroy reinforced targets such as tanks and hardened bunkers. I know that thing is as nasty as it looks, rather than being as ineffective as the shape should dictate. I also know that when the sword is like this, he has given it conscious control of his body, and that it is a more instinctual - almost animal - intelligence. What I don't know is how powerful they really are - as he proved with his agility, he wasn't going all out on the missions we used to go on. It was going to take more than double density to block Sarum now.

Cawdor - now controlled by Sarum? - leaped off the top of the tree towards the Doctor Indestructible, and although the latter was able to leap clear, it seemed very much that the attacker plummeted two or three times faster than gravity should have allowed for. The blue energy surrounding the sword was far more obvious now, and the semi-circle traced through the air by his pre-landing slash pierced two different trees. Both of them began creaking, and slowly tipped over, falling away from him - the first was severed in a razor-clean cut, whereas the second was cut nearly all the way through, leaving a small connection between the trunk and the tall stump, which snapped off rough, peeling the bark along a strip.

Before the mighty trees had fallen halfway to the ground, the artifact and its wielder began their attack. Their movement speed had increased, but not insurmountably - the Doctor 'I' was still at least as agile. But the power behind each blow was far greater than before, making it vastly more difficult for the hero to even deflect the blade with his arm.

Doctor Indestructible had changed strategy once more to deal with the new offensive. This is make or break time, and while I can't keep myself at full toughness for the entire fight if it goes too long, I also don't want to find out how much that energy aura burns passing through me, considering how it stung when it was only a thin strip. So with each slash made at him, he increased his density by about five hundred percent just before slapping away the flat of the blade with his forearm, and let his density fall back to normal between blows, because even though there was usually less than a second between Cawdor's strikes, it was easier to 'flex and unflex' the density control 'muscle' than to hold it continuously for any serious amount of time at this density level. Because there was a visible flash whenever his mass changed this much, the Doctor was flickering continually as he fought.

Parrying attack after attack in this way was straining him though, and it was not even that easy. Under Sarum's control, Cawdor's attacks were even more effectively chosen to be unpredictable and difficult to block, alternating sides and heights, including some blows aimed at the feet of their target, such that he could not block them but in fact had to jump to avoid having his ankles severed. Furthermore, even hitting at the flat of the blade was made more difficult by the extra bits jutting out (which threatened to catch at his arms) and particularly the metal teeth projecting at right angles to the blade in places - sticking right out of the flat in a way that would prevent a mundane blade from functioning well at all. The only upside was that although the entire sword (except the hilt) was glowing now, that glow did not seem to be harmful except at the edge.

The status quo was not good enough either; the hero was expending a lot more effort in defending than the attacker was - despite Cawdor having one wrist damaged so badly that it shouldn't have been useable. Doctor Indestructible was already starting to be pushed back by the incessant flurry of blows, when Cawdor twisted the blade in the air just before one block. Even though the Doc was able to jerk his arm back rapidly and stumble backwards to avoid being struck more directly, still the sword sliced into his right arm nearly an inch deep, causing sharp pain despite the rock-like 'flesh' which prevented bleeding from even so deep a wound.

But as he was falling back, Sarum/Cawdor did not relent, but rather continued pushing the attack. Doctor Indestructible managed to catch the end of the sword between his palms once more (this time further from his head), but even as he tried to pin the weapon there, he felt new serrations budding out beneath his grasp - new metal teeth rising, forcing themselves into his hands. He had to release the weapon and push himself further backwards into an almost-clumsy roll which got him back to his feet and on balance. But the attacks were still coming... I have no choice, I need some time to recover!

So as Sarum struck out for his midsection, Doctor Indestructible reduced his body density to insubstantiality. Cawdor was by now a little over-extended himself from his efforts to land a solid blow on his off-balance opponent. As such the blade only passed through about 5 inches of the waist... but where it did pass through, the Doctor's body was re-solidified, so that it was striking as though he were fully corporeal. He felt it tear at his side, sinking just deep enough to effect his insides. Although he was in effect solid where it struck, the mystic blade cleaved through with no resistance whatsoever.

The unexpected pain caused the doctor to fall backwards onto his back, as a spray of blood erupted from his midsection. The amount of blood was far less than would be drawn from a wound of similar depth to an ordinary person - his rock-skin ran two inches deep in most places, and even beneath it the structure of his body was more robust than that of a 'regular' human. Still, it was the greatest single wound he had suffered since the destruction of Marroth's palace years ago, and larger than any other he had suffered since before his adolescence.

In that moment he was vulnerable, lying on the ground, and Cawdor should have finished him. But it was the sword, Sarum, in control, and it was distracted.

"Soooo... the golem does indeed have blood. Gooood..." The voice was Cawdor's, but it was a semi-whisper, and the accent was far different from his usual faint British one.

"Haven't you already fed enough?" gasped the prone hero, still somewhat stunned by the damage he had suffered.

"Your blood is superior." Cawdor's obedient body extended the sword, holding it over the spot where the blow had been struck. Each drop of the Doctor's blood on the ground leaped up to the sword, creating for an instant a strand like those the make up a spider's web. Dozens of these red rays jumped between the ground and the sword in seconds as Sarum sucked up all the blood from the ground, wandering closer and closer to Doctor Indestructible. "The blood of base creatures is thin to me, although any sentient beast is better. Like the unfortunate Chinese schoolchildren in the woods - so recently released from Warlord Marroth's tyranny, they stumbled across a sword which had been flung clear by the sacrifice of the Masters of Pain. It took several such children, in twos and threes, but I was finally able to resurrect my host."

Cawdor's possessed body bowed slightly in perverse deference, and then lunged forward to strike the deathblow. But Sarum had allowed itself to be distracted for too long, and Doctor Indestructible had regained his composure... as the blade came down, his lying form went incorporeal and sunk rapidly into the ground. The attack had been made without thought to this defense, and sunk only a foot into the ground, so Cawdor rapidly pulled the sword up and stabbed it downward so far that even the metal teeth of the hilt were submerged. Sarum's hunting senses knew that he had not connected, and he pulled the weapon out and leaped up back to the treetops.

The Doctor had already sunk down below the depth the sword could reach, and had started moving through the dirt and stone, out of sight. He couldn't see through the ground, but he had a good sense of direction, and headed off in a straight line. I have to find a safe place to come up... I am nearing the limits of my endurance, so I have to get away from him to dress my wounds and rest. I can't see any way to win now.

After moving what felt like a mile, insubstantially through the dark ground, he knew from experience that he had in reality traveled only thirty or forty feet. Cautiously, he pushed himself upwards to poke his head out of the ground for a look around. He was deeper into the trees, with the thinner vegetation behind him, a steep bare cliff ahead and the island's village (he remembered) about thirty degrees to the left. Turning back, he didn't see Cawdor.

Doctor Indestructible flinched back just in time to avoid Sarum's blade plunging deeply into the ground - this time, with the added force of gravity, it actually blew out dirt in a narrow crater, such that the pommel of the sword was at least a foot below ground level. The Doctor swam down as quickly as he could to get out of range of the next attack, but the next attack didn't come.

Remaining incorporeal, he chose a direction at random and set out again through the ground. He moved as quickly as he could, and after fifty-some feet he stuck just his face upwards out of the ground - his red eyes glowing faintly, particularly in the increasing darkness. He could see well enough at night, but what stood out to him right now was the bright blue glow bolting right down towards his head. Doctor Indestructible put up his hands above his head (and out of the ground), made just the hands solid and used them to swing himself forwards out of the earth, legs first. He flipped his incorporeal body out of the ground and back along the surface just in time to dodge the attack (and faster than he could move when totally insubstantial) then dropped himself back into the ground a few feet over, desolidifying his hands last.

Cawdor leaped back up into the trees. He still seemed to leap up and down these heights as easily as one would hop up two steps on a staircase. This time he called out in the unplaceable accent of Sarum:

"You flee... but I can sense you. And now that I am in control, I can hit you - my touch makes your flesh real. If I hit you when you are in the ground, you and the dirt will occupy the same space. Very unhealthy. What I can't tell is how long you can stay down there... but it is not forever, and we can go without sleep for weeks."

If you are trying to intimidate me: mission successful. My guess would be less than three minutes, and if I wait that long I'll be completely worn out when I surface. There was only one more approach he could think of... as he considered it in his head, it rapidly grew into a concrete plan. It would either work, or it wouldn't. So he started making for the natural stone wall that rose up from the ground, now only about seventy feet away.

He made relatively rapid progress through the ground - assuming he hadn't gotten himself turned around in his last dodging maneuver. While he couldn't see it (or anything, really), he knew now that Cawdor and Sarum were far up above, leaping from treetop to treetop, shadowing the Doctor's moves against the palor of the dusk sky.

He could feel when he reached the rock - just a slight increase in the density around him: a feeling akin to dipping yourself from air into water. He moved further in to make sure he got into the cliff (not just the stone roots, if it had any), and deep enough in not to be vulnerable to the 4-foot clean-cutting sword. Then he started moving upwards. With his PhD in Revolutionary Genetics, specializing in protogenetic mutations like himself, he had theories about why his body remained together when not solid, and approximately zero idea why when incorporeal he could 'swim' through dense matter when his density was so low that he could pass through it. But it worked, and it allowed him to 'climb' upwards through the rock face on the inside. As soon as his arm breached the surface into clean, hollow-feeling air, he pushed hard to get out of the ground onto the surface and solid as fast as possible. He was up on top of the rough protrusion of volcanic rock, about a hundred feet above the treetops, and it was very windy.

To his profound surprise, Cawdor wasn't there yet. But it only took a couple seconds - without the wind he might have heard the swish of the posessed swordsman clearing the height in three bounds, the last landing him on top, only a few feet away from the Doc.

"Getting tired of running? The smart ones always run, but the wise know when they can run no further." Sarum began glowing even more brightly in anticipation.

"If you were so smart, you would find something more productive to do with your time." I'm as ready as I'm going to be.

"I have no shortage of time..." And the man/artifact duo unleashed their attack. The first wide, sweeping slash, and the return slash were each dodged by Doctor Indestructible leaping back, but then Sarum made a heavy overhead smash.

Doctor Indestructible twisted aside to avoid the blow, and when the sword struck into the ground, he kicked the flat (twisting the blade over so the flat faced the ground) and pushed down on it with his foot. Now he threw all his cards on the table, expending a huge effort to increase his entire body's density to eight times normal in a bright flash of light. Maybe they can see us from the village - a blue star moving around, battling a sudden white one...

Before Sarum could grow new bladed teeth into his foot, the Doctor pushed the weapon back with his foot, dragging Cawdor down as though his arm were attached to the artifact, then lifted that foot off the blade to push with his left (other) foot which was still on the ground. Giving a huge shove with first the left foot and then the right (finding the ground again with it) he collided with Cawdor and bowled him over with more than 1000 lbs of adjusted mass.

Grabbing him under the arms, Doctor Indestructible dragged his opponent back, launching them both off the edge of the plateau. As they started plummeting down through the air, he cut his density back to normal so that he could maneuver better, got his feet up between him and Cawdor's chest and pushed himself off, hurling them apart. Tumbling spinning through the air, the latter lashed out with one last strike which barely missed the Doctor's foot as they tumbled downward on their now-separate paths. The ground seemed to thrust up quickly towards them...

Cawdor smashed into the ground on his back with a brutal bounce, while Doctor Indestructible dived headlong through the ground, having turned incorporeal at the last instant.

That's it...

Doctor Indestructible dragged himself back out of the ground - now that the adrenaline was already leaving his system with a post-activity low, the wound to his side was becoming increasingly painful. Blood from it was already drying on his rocky 'flesh' and staining his ragged pants. Struggling to his feet, he lurched over to examine Cawdor's body. Sarum was still glowing, though more dimly now. Cawdor's neck was twisted at a bad angle, looking at least as bad as the broken wrist, and his armor (though made of flexible space-aged materials) had cracked all along the side like the crumple zones of a car.

The Doctor kicked at the sword, but it remained stubbornly attached to one hand, much as before. "He must still be alive... I can't believe this. It has to end..."

Breathing heavily, Doctor Indestructible kicked the fallen man's neck, but at normal density and utterly fatigued, it didn't achieve the result he desired, so he elbow dropped the man's throat in a matter-of-fact killing blow. I can't have him keep coming... I can't have him free to steal lives for blood, and I certainly don't have access to the resources to heal him right now, let alone imprison him. Better that I end his misery - and the risk. Sarum's glow faded, and the bizarre extra blades and spikes sunk smoothly back into the blade, as it resumed its ordinary appearance. Even the glow from the edge faded to nothing.

Doctor Indestructible stood up once more and kicked the blade aside, and this time it skidded a couple feet, leaving Cawdor's grasp. He picked it up, and wandered - as though falling asleep - back to the makeshift camp where his supplies and trenchcoat were.

You aren't a hero... you are a survivor.

The sword was speaking to him - in his mind. As he grasped it its edge was lit once more by the faint blue glow.

You have the will to live, and the power to live... claim me and you will gain the power to attack, to crush your foes. I can extend your life, and your senses - should you fall I can bring you back...

"I don't want to be damned by your power. Maybe I'm not very heroic - I might kill when I have no choice, and I will fight hard for my own life: perhaps I'm not worthy to recreate the Masters of Pain. But I don't kill schoolchildren to save myself, and I don't need you!"

Doctor Indestructible convinced the midsized research vessel to take him back to the mainland, from which he would get to an airport and re-enter civilization. This is no longer a peaceful place to me. I need to move on.

His moustache and black hair needed a serious trim, and although he was now wearing a shirt and his sedate black trenchcoat again, he still had enough of a wild appearance - subjectively, above and beyond his physical abnormalities - that the crew of the ship stayed away, not even willing to endulge their curiosity by asking about his red eyes and marble-like skin. He stayed near the railing until long after they left the shore: until they reached a deep area in the water, where diving to the bottom would be impractical, if not impossible. At that point, he picked up the long, cloth-bound package from his feet, and unceremoniously tossed it over board, where it sunk rapidly.

That should silence you - you've been whining and taunting me for near three days, just by virtue of being near me. I've got a migraine, but you will have a lot of time to think about what you might have said to change my mind. I hope you can feel the cold....

The ship continued on, not noticing the burden lost. Freed, he felt, of the ominous responsibility, Doctor Indestructible wandered off deck to the bunk they had provided him.

Back on the island, far from any human being, Cawdor's corpse had been found by a pair of komodo dragons. Competing over the food, neither had the opportunity to devour him whole, and so they ripped large chunks of flesh off to devour, even swallowing plates from his armor - not used to prey with parts that would not be dissolved by months in their hostile digestive systems. But even as they destroyed his eyeless form, and the scent attracted another great lizard, miriad insects and other small creatures: far away the patch of water where Sarum had been abandoned began to bubble violently.