Gunslingers and Dragons and Amazon Queens, oh my!!

Stacy, who'd only recently gotten back from a strange, pun infested land by basically highjacking a truck (after knocking it's laconic, unhelpful driver out) and storming the castle, as it were.

She'd basically gunned the truck and nearly drove down the owner of the mansion (Charle's Mansion) and driven through a shimmering doorway to end back here. The doorway had closed behind her, and she somehow knew (though she didn't know just how) that she'd barely gotten back in time.

There had ben something very....malignant just underneath the surface of that land she'd just left, and her very instincts had cried out against it. It had made her desperate (she usually didn't go about highjacking other people's trucks) to leave.

She'd spent the next few minutes panting heavily in reaction, then come back to find this....scene.

"Ma'am," Roland says softly, coming over to her, "If you could, I would have of you what you know of Randal Flagg. It's vitally important, you see."

"And just who are you?" Dana Scully asks, rather rudely (very much put out of sorts by people just appearing out of thin air like that).

Roland just gives her a look, and despite herself she felt herself drawing back a little bit.

"Roland of Gilead, son of Steven, and lord of ancient lands," Roland said quietly, "and in direct lineage from Arthur Eld who'd come out from his pyramid to rule and restore order to my land."

"Roland the Gunslinger?" Scully barks laughter, remembering the book she'd read just recently (Wizard and Glass wasn't it?).

Clark Kent (aka Superman) is about to ask a few questions of his own (like what the $%^#$ was going on here) when Betty spoke up, giggling in an most unhealthy manner.

"Childe Roland To The Dark Tower Came" 
-Robert Browning

I

My first thought was, he lied in every word, 
That hoary cripple, with the malicious eye 
Askance to watch the working of his lie 
On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford 
Suprpression of the glee, that pursed and scored 
Its edge, at one more victim gained thereby. 

II 

What else should he be set for, with his staff?
What, save to waylay with his lies, ensnare 
All travelers who might find him posted there, 
And ask the road? I guessed what skull-like laugh 
Would break, what crutch 'gin write my epitaph 
For pastime in the dusty thoroughfare, 

III

If at his counsel I should turn aside 
Into that ominous tract which, all agree, 
Hides the Dark Tower. Yet acquiesingly 
I did turn as he pointed: neither pride 
Nor hope rekindling at the end described, 
So much as gladness that some end might be. 

IV

For, what with my whole world-wide wandering, 
What with my search drawn out through years, my hope 
Dwindled into a ghost not fit to cope 
With that obstreperous joy success would bring,- 
I hardly tried now to rebuke the spring 
My heart made, finding failure in its scope. 

V 

As when a sick man very near to death 
Seems dead indeed, and feels begin and end 
The tears and takes the farewell of each friend, 
And hears one bid the other go, draw breath 
Freelier outside, (since all is o'er, he saith, 
And the blow fallen no grieving can amend;) 

VI 

While some discuss if near the other graves 
Be room enough for this, and when a day 
Suits best for carrying the corpse away, 
With care about the banners, scarves and staves: 
And still the man hears all, and only craves 
He may not shame such tender love and stay. 

VII 

Thus, I had so long suffered in this quest, 
Heard failure prophesied so oft, been writ 
So many times among The Band- to wit, 
The knights who to the Dark Tower's search addressed 
Their steps- that just to fail as they, seemed best, 
And all the doubt was now- should I be fit? 

VIII 

So, quiet as despair, I turned from him, 
That hateful cripple, out of his highway 
Into the path he pointed. All the day 
Had been a dreary one at best, and dim 
Was settling to its close, yet shot one grim 
Red leer to see the plain catch its estray. 

IX 

For mark! no sooner was I fairly found 
Pledged to the plain, after a pace or two, 
Than, pausing to throw backward a last view 
O'er the safe road, 'twas gone; gray plain all round:
Nothing but plain to the horizon's bound. 
I might go on; naught else remained to do. 

X 

So, on I went. I think I never saw 
Such starved ignoble nature; nothing throve: 
For flowers- as well expect a cedar grove! 
But cockle, spurge, according to their law 
Might propagate their kind, with none to awe, 
You'd think; a burr had been a treasure trove. 

XI 

No! penury, inertness and grimace, 
In some strange sort, were the land's portion. See 
Or shut your eyes, said Nature peevishly, 
It nothing skills: I cannot help my case: 
'Tis the Last Judgment's fire must cure this place, 
Calcine its clods and set my prisoners free. 

XII 

If there pushed any ragged thistle-stalk 
Above its mates, the head was chopped; the bents 
Were jealous else. What made those holes and rents 
In the dock's harsh swarth leaves, bruised as to balk 
All hope of greenness? 'tis a brute must walk 
Pashing their life out, with a brute's intents. 

XIII 

As for the grass, it grew as scant as hair 
In leprosy; thin dry blades pricked the mud 
Which underneath looked kneaded up with blood. 
One stiff blind horse, his every bone a-stare, 
Stood stupefied, however he came there: 
Thrust out past service from the devil's stud! 

XIV 

Alive? he might be dead for aught I know, 
With that red gaunt and collapsed neck a-strain, 
And shut eyes underneath the rusty mane; 
Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe; 
I never saw a brute I hated so; 
He must be wicked to deserve such pain. 

XV 

I shut my eyes and turned them on my heart. 
As a man calls for wine before he fights, 
I asked one draught of earlier, happier sights, 
Ere fitly I could hope to play my part. 
Think first, fight afterwards- the soldier's art: 
One taste of the old time sets all to rights. 

XVI 

Not it! I fancied Cuthbert's reddening face 
Beneath its garniture of curly gold, 
Dear fellow, till I almost felt him fold 
An arm in mine to fix me to the place, 
That way he used. Alas, one night's disgrace! 
Out went my heart's new fire and left it cold. 

XVII 

Giles then, the soul of honor- there he stands 
Frank as ten years ago when knighted first. 
What honest man should dare (he said) he durst. 
Good - but the scene shifts - faugh! what hangman-hands
Pin to his breast a parchment? His own hands 
Read it. Poor traitor, spit upon and curst! 

XVIII 

Better this present than a past like that; 
Back to my darkening path again! 
No sound, no sight as far as eye could strain. 
Will the night send a howlet or a bat? 
I asked: when something on the dismal flat 
Came to arrest my thoughts and change their train. 

XIX 

A sudden little river crossed my path 
As unexpexted as a serpent comes. 
No sluggish tide congenial to the glooms; 
This, as it frothed by, might have been a bath 
For the fiend's glowing hoof- to see the wrath 
Of its black eddy bespate with flakes and spumes. 

XX 

So petty yet so spiteful! All along, 
Low scrubby alders kneeled down over it; 
Drenched willows flung themselves headlong in a fit 
Of mute despair, a suicidal throng: 
The river which had done them all wrong, 
Whate'er that was, rolled by, deterred no whit. 

XXI 

Which, while I forded,- good saints, how I feared 
To set my foot upon a dead man's cheek, 
Each step, or feel the spear I thrust to seek 
For hollows, tangled in his hair or beard! 
- It may have been a water rat I speared, 
But, ugh! it sounded like a baby's shriek. 

XXII 

Glad was I when I reached the other bank. 
Now for a better country. Vain presage! 
Who were the strugglers, what war did they wage, 
Whose savage trample thus could pad the dank 
Soil to a plash? Toads in a poisoned tank, 
Or wild cats in a red-hot iron cage- 

XXIII 

The fight must so have seemed in that fell cirque. 
What penned them there, with all the plain to choose? 
No footprint leading to that horrid mews, 
None out of it. Mad brewage set to work 
Their brains, no doubt, like galley-slaves the Turk 
Pits for his pastime, Christians against Jews. 

XXIV 

And more than that- a furlong on- why, there! 
What bad use was that engine for, that wheel, 
Or brake, not wheel- that harrow fit to reel 
Men's bodies out like silk? with all the air 
Of Tophet's tool, on earth left unaware, 
Or brought to sharpen its rusty teeth of steel. 

XXV 

Then came a bit of stubbed ground, once a wood, 
Next a marsh, it would seem, and now mere earth
Desperate and done with; (so a fool finds mirth, 
Makes a thing and then mars it, till his mood 
Changes and off he goes!) within a rood- 
Bog, clay and rubble, sand and stark black dearth. 

XXVI 

Now blotches rankling, colored gay and grim, 
Now patches where some leanness of the soil's 
Broke into moss or substance like boils; 
Then came some palsied oak, a cleft in him 
Like a disturbed mouth that splits its rim 
Gaping at death, and dies while it recoils. 

XXVII 

And just as far as ever from the end! 
Naught in the distance but the evening, naught 
To point my footstep further! At the thought, 
A great black bird, Apollyon's bosom-friend, 
Sailed past, nor beat his wide wing dragon-penned 
That brushed my cap- perchance the guide I sought. 

XXVIII 

For, looking up, aware I somehow grew, 
'Spite of the dusk, the plain had given place 
All round to mountains- with such name to grace 
Mere ugly heights and heaps now stolen in view. 
How thus they had surprised me,- solve it, you! 
How to get from them was no clearer case. 

XXIX 

Yet half I seemed to recognize some trick 
Of mischief happened to me, God knows when- 
In a bad dream perhaps. Here ended, then, 
Progress this way. When, in the very nick 
Of giving up, one more time, came a click 
As when a trap shuts- you're inside the den! 

XXX 

Burningly it came on me all at once, 
This was the place! those two hills on the right, 
Crouched like two bulls locked horn in horn in fight; 
While to the left, a tall scalped mountain... 
Dunce, Dotard, a-dozing at the very nonce, 
After a life spent training for the sight! 

XXXI 

What in the midst lay but the Tower itself? 
The round squat turret, blind as the fool's heart, 
Built of brown stone, without a counterpart 
In the whole world. The tempest's mocking elf 
Points to the shipman thus the unseen self 
He strikes on, only when the timbers start. 

XXXII 

Not see? because of night perhaps?- why, day 
Came back again for that! before it left, 
The dying sunset kindled through a cleft: 
The hills, like giants at a hunting, lay, 
Chin upon hand, to see the game at bay,- 
Now stab and end the creature- to the heft! 

XXXIII 

Not hear? when noise was everywhere! it tolled
Increasing like a bell. Names in my ears 
Of all the lost adventurers my peers,- 
How such a one was strong, and such was bold, 
And such was fortunate, yet each of old 
Lost, lost! one moment knelled the woe of years. 

XXXIV 

There they stood, ranged along the hill-sides, met 
To view the last of me, a living frame 
For one more picture! in a sheet of flame 
I saw them and I knew them all. And yet 
Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips set, 
And blew. Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came. 

"What's with her?" Special Agent Mulder asks, munching on something he'd gotten from a vending machine while all this was happening.

Something soon became apparent to Queen Astra, after a brief talking with him and Special Agent Fox. The refused to believe the carefully explained facts presented to them. Clark Kent looked worried, but he at least looked like he was getting it (and also getting spooked by it). One up for Superman, but.....

"Jeeze, you guys are slow on the uptake!" Eddie finally says, exasperated with the FBI agents, "The truth may be out there, but it's sure safe from you two!!"

The FBI agents looked rather put off by that one, but Dragon Synizn interrupts before more could be said.

1. "Be that as it may, I believe something must be done for this poor woman here," the dragon mage says, pointing at the daffily smiling Betty, "Her mind needs healing, and I can do just that through my magic." 

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