Image courtesy of Michael Whelan |
Image courtesy of John Picacio |
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Click here to see what author Michael Moorcock thinks about the fight
My problem with all sports is that I’ve never been able to understand why we can’t just toss a coin for who wins and then all go off to the pub for a friendly drink…
The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.
But when he arrived at the ancient killing ground–golgotha, place-of-the-skull–the gunslinger was faced with a man he knew not, a cynical, laughing stranger with bone-white hair and bitter blood-crimson eyes. At his hip was a black iron runesword, the dread Stormbringer, forged of ancient and alien sorcery.
The gunslinger rested his hands on the sandalwood grips of his guns. His right hand throbbed where the index and middle finger used to be. He said the old words to himself. I do not Shoot with My Hand; He who Shoots with His Hand has Forgotten the Face of His Father.
“I’ll kill you,” the gunslinger said.
The albino shrugged. “As soon as you like. I care not.” As one elegant, alabaster hand touched the hellblade’s hilt, the soul-rending chaos of the cursed Stormbringer tore through his fragile brain, his wretched spirit.
The cynical slayer chanted to himself the ancient and many-vowelled names of his gods but the chant was cut off: he felt a blood-drenched burning deep in his heart, a pain deeper than he had ever suffered. But it was not the sinister sword’s curse annihilating the tattered remnants of his broken soul.
It was a bullet.
“We were well met, sai,” he said, looking down at the wreck of the albino’s body. “Your world has moved on, too.”
But Elric had fallen with his hellblade drawn, and now its fiendish strength fired through Elric’s wasted form. The sword moved with a mind of its own and with a weird devil scream plunged straight through the gunslinger’s chest.
With a shiver of sick pleasure he drank in the gunslinger’s soul. He heard all of their names and each one burned through Elric and infused him with sinister hellstrength: Cort Cuthbert Eddie Susannah. The gunslinger had destroyed more lives even than Elric. It was the richest and darkest brew that Elric had yet drunk and it intoxicated him dreadfully.
And yet still, though he was bloody and broken, the gunslinger marched forward, reloading both guns with blinding speed.
And then Elric raised the Horn of Fate, slung round his neck on a silver chain, and with the last of his strength blew it thrice. The gunslinger fell to his knees, gazing at the horizon, waiting for the black silhouette of the tower to appear. “The Horn of Eld! The Tower is at hand!” At last, after all these years, he was almost there…
Elric sobbed in pain but the demon sword still swung in a black arc and plunged it into Roland Deschain’s heart. And then came a rush of such sweet sorrowing pain that Elric fell to his knees full of infinite loneliness and infinite sorrow as the last name trembled in the Bright Emperor’s feverish brain: Susan Delgado. It was no victory.
Predicted Winner: Elric
(Roland Deschain is a character from Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series; Elric is Michael Moorcock’s character from numerous stories and novels)
Thanks for answering, Elricwins. Sorry I wasn’t clearer. I imagine Elric has sword sheathed; Roland, gun loaded and holstered.
This seems balanced to me because that is the nature of the characters. Roland always has a loaded gun (unless he just emptied it into someone) and Elric (I am guessing) has his gnarly sword and the potential to do some amazing magic. So, in my mind, it becomes a question of who is faster.
Ah…just noticed the vote is closed. Guess my question doesn’t matter now.
Sigh, ok it’s a popularity contest… but this single biased* vote annihilate all the interest in the upper part of the tournament: who, but Elric, could even think to compete with some opponent from the lower part of the tournament? After a “Aslam vs Chtulu” semifinal, which character, now that Elric is gone, will try to kill a god?
*I’m sure that less then one out of ten voters for the gunslinger actually read Moorcock… just reading to the “How much time would he need to prepare a spell” part is enough to be quite sure of it.
Emanuele, I didn’t vote for anyone. I was gathering information.
I wasn’t referring to you expecially, there are many other posts in the same trend. It seems pretty obvious from many post that people were considering Elric a Mage/Swordman a là D&D, with a “casting time” and not a Gods Killer speaking in an out-of-time dimension with Demons and Gods, both helping him in the same way bees help their queen if she’s in danger.
Nothing bad about it, I don’t know many character in the list. I was just noting that now the whole upper part of the tournament is useless, whoever wins will lose against the Big C.
Emanuele, thanks for the clarification. That’s the kind of info I was looking for to make an informed vote.
I understand what you’re talking about. My two favorite series, oddly enough, are The Dark Tower, and The Elric Saga.
And while it is disheartening to think about the later rounds, what with all these god-figures running amok(:P), I try to keep my mind focused on the current battle at hand.
The problems with this fight for me, like many others, are the questions of speed and preparation.
Given the circumstances lined out in the pseudo-fight above, I had to give it to Roland, begrudgingly. Elric really would have been a force to be reckoned with in the later rounds with some of those “deity-ish” folken.
Elric does sometimes need preparation to cast spells but many of his powers come just from the duties that elementals, demons and gods have toward the present Melnibonean Emperor.
Arioch, the Chaos God, has a personal relation with Elric, and voted himself to protect him so that he can fulfill his destiny after Elric summoned him in the reality. And, you know, Arioch lives out of time, it’s not that he needs preparation to annihilate a cowboy. If the Eternal Champion will be in danger, he will just solve the problem: he’s the patron of Melniboné, the Emperor just can’t die.
Honestly I see the fight more like:
Two year before, a beautiful boy comes to Elric and say “Roland”. One month after, the earth opens under Roland, and sucks him in the earth. “Brings my respects to Grome”, are the last words of the king of Melniboné to the earth Elemental bowing to him after fulfilling his duty. Nor Elric nor Roland will ever know why he had to die.
There isn’t any chance that a cowboy can kill a person with a God devoted to his personal protection. I liked the Dark Tower cycle a lot (even if in Italian is really badly translated), but let’s face it there wasn’t any chance.
With the preparation argument, a bowman could kill the Emperor with an arrow from behind. When Elric destroyed empires and armies of men, it’s not that they didn’t thought to the option: “Hey, it’s enough to be quicker: you arrive and you shoot an arrow in his back, he’s not seeing it coming”.
Thanks for commenting! Comments are now closed on this post, but you can follow this match’s winner in the next fight, open 3/15 at 10:30 EST!