FA+
Shop
1867
Views
Views
92
Favorites
Favorites
Category
Artwork (Digital) / General Furry Art
Species Snake / Serpent
Size 1280 x 546
File Size 51.5 kB
Report this content
★
More from Amethystine
Listed in Folders
GE: Whispering Statues - art by TheAzimuth, story by Ame
Art by 
TheAzimuth, go praise their art, here: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/34604588/
~
An Ames Sond 'screenshot' from 1995's GoldenEyessss. I'm posting this tonight because November 24th is the 25th anniversary of the original (human)movie's general theatrical release across the UK and a number of other regions!
This is the pivotal confrontation and revelation scene between hero and villain, Ames Sond and Kalicster Sevelyan, a former MI6 agent who was in line to become 00S, alongside Sond. Sond got the job, but does he really know why he was chosen over his old Kalic?
Of course, Kalic is also meant to be dead, having been gunned down 9 years ago, in the opening scene of the film, the pre-title sequence.
~
As with a handful of previous Sond villains, Sevelyan is meant to be a dark reflection of Sond himself. The role is played by the famous Russian pythonic actor of stage and screen:
Python_Yuanty! (He and I co-commissioned this picture, of course. But I have to thank him for doing all the work in communicating with the artist. :}===< )
Here's the original screenshot, as well: https://www.dropbox.com/s/dhqpjk7uh.....nshot.png?dl=0
~
Below is the 'Statue Park scene' in its entirety. Enjoy!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
GoldenEyessss - Janus, Revealed - transcribed by Amethystine
~
~~
~
On the outskirts of Saint Petersburg, just before midnight, a car's tyres crunch softly and slowly over gravel, before coming to a gentle halt.
The headlights of the black Mercedes-Benz illuminate a series of tall, dark shapes. Rather than trees, it appears for a moment as though statues grow wild and unkempt in this particular field.
It is a dumping place and a memento of a period in the past: the Soviet era statuary and iconography in its own little graveyard. Hammers, sickles, red stars, and 'great men' of various species loom up out of the darkness at anyone who draws near.
Ghosts of history itself.
Within the car, a suit-clad male figure in the back keeps a pistol trained upon his impromptu chauffeuse, a golden-haired woman with chocolate-hued skin. Her lupine ears are folded back in clear frustration, gleaming yellow eyes glowering.
"This is it?" asks the man, with a hint of sibilance upon his Ses.
Her lips curling with disdain, the wolf-woman spits out her flat reply: "Yes." She sighs, turning to look out her driver's side window.
The upset so evident within her demeanour is due to her failure: she had attempted to subdue the man in the seat behind and to her right. She was going to bring him here either way, but she had wanted to prove herself against him. Her employer had spoken so laudingly about him, even if it had been with a certain hatred, it was clear that her boss also respected this reptile's abilities.
Their meeting - the woman and the man she had hoped to best, if only to prove her value to her superior - had been clandestine, intimate, sexually charged, violent, and painful.. for both of them.
Ultimately, the lycanthropic lady had been forced to yield, her bestial side beaten before it could even fully emerge.
The gunman, Ames Sond, glides forward in the back seat, poking his snout up near to the head of the driver: Xhebia Onatopp. Sond smiles magnanimously, but keeps the gun on the woman's neck.
"Farewell my dear. Whenever I smell wet dog, I'll think of you," Sond says, recalling their meeting and eventual fight in the hotel pool. As he speaks, he switches his gun from his hand to his tailtip. The serpent could not effectively aim the gun in combat with his tail, but with it already pressed to the body of the target, he can effectively keep her still. His hands work to tie the thick jumper cables around her and her seat, binding her, as she replies.
Remarking upon the faint whiff of death that the large serpent carried with him, Onatopp observes, "And the stench of corpses will surely conjure your coils to my mind." While talking, she twists her head to glare at him with those intense golden eyes, a manic grin stretched across her lips, although her face remains wholly malevolent, despite the superficial smile.
"I suppose you'll have to give up your habit of hedonistic homicide, to avoid thinking of me," Ames reasons, pulling the cables tighter. The thick, rubber-lined bindings compress her ribs subtly, under the more prominent portion of her chest.
With shallow breathing and a slightly sultry rasp, the lycan shoots back: "There's nothing wrong with enjoying one's work, Mr Sond. If circumstances were different, I would have ~enjoyed~ you, mmm, very much." The emphasized word drips with passion, expressing Xhebia's love of combining carnal acts and killing.
Sond, hearing the sudden change in his companion, pauses, listening.
Onatopp raves on: "The feel of your squirming against me, the sound of your hissing rasps as you - a python! - ran out of air.." She pauses to lick her lips lasciviously, and the snake can clearly picture her more wolven self doing much the same, although with the hunger in her eyes gaining a wholly different context upon that more feral visage. "The taste of the blood from your throat--!"
A whipping motion from Ames' hand that is once more holding his Walther brings the breathy speech from the woman to an end. She's out cold.
Sond hisses, "Down, girl."
-
Slithering smoothly out of the car and pooling his coils on the gravel, Sond straightens his necktie, considering the darkened field of statues as he draws last of his length out.
No one in sight, but there is still a light. It comes from behind a rise, a number of statues backlit by it.
With a snap of his tailtip that closes the car door, Sond decides there's nothing to do but proceed. He had successfully arranged this meeting with the unknown, unseen head of the Janus crime syndicate. There were only vague, contradictory descriptions from observing parties that had not had good looks at the silent figure who tended to stand back and let others speak for him, or her. Even the figure in the shadows may well have been a proxy, given the way the varying reports had told a different tale from various surveilled meetings of Janus and their clients.
MI6's current interest in Janus is thus: As an organization, they had stolen access to the pair of Soviet-era Russian-developed weapons known as the 'GoldenEyes', and had detonated the second to help cover up the theft of the first. Sond needs to know if the leader of the group had planned it or if perhaps it was a rogue element within the top-flight arms-dealing cabal.
Of course, whoever the leader is, they wouldn't know that's what 00S was here to discuss.
Sond hopes they don't, at least.
A hope and a prayer and a PPK is all he has.
Well, that and his Brioni suit.
Gliding into the eerie silence of the windless night, Sond's smooth slither gives rise to soft rustling sounds behind his forward-leaning snout.
Twisting around at the head of his long body, the naga slowly reaches into his suit jacket and withdraws his pistol from his shoulder holster, scanning around himself once more as he did so.
He had expected guards. There seems to be none. None he can smell with the rapid flicks of his sensitive tongue, and none he can see, with his excellent night vision.
Are they just that good? Or are they just not there?
Cautiously, the constrictor continues, flowing forward further into the haphazard assortment of defunct, discarded displays of demagoguery. Huge heads of heads of state made from stone or metal peer off sightlessly into the gloom. The serpent is forced to meander through the maze of monolithic masonry as midnight moves nearer.
The further he goes, the more the unreality of his isolation creeps into his mind. He must not be alone, surely. And yet he is constantly met with further silence and innumerable immobile sculptures. The head of Janus and at least two bodyguards MUST be here, somewhere. No one would be foolish enough to come to a meeting with an unknown party, alone.
Except Sond himself, of course, he ruefully admits.
More than once, the serpent's unblinking gaze catches sight of a full-body statue and he nearly darts into cover or whips his pistol to point at the imagined enemy in the night. The python pauses and sneers at himself for almost jumping - or shooting - at shadows. Danger is never an issue for Sond, but prolonged tension, the eternal threat of it, that is another beast entirely.
The untamable unknowable.
Once again, as he moves forward, the snake twists his torso around atop the still-gliding length of his undulating form, looking around, fingers on his Walther twitching in readiness. He opens his mouth, considering he might call out, to ask if the meeting is going to happen or not.
He shuts his snout and shakes it a bit, untwisting and proceeding.
A soft sound of stone on stone comes from one side and the naga is a blur of motion, whipping around to face it, both arms raised to sight down the barrel of the handgun, his coils snapping into a defensive posture. A thick section of serpentine body with less vital organs within is wrapped around the front of the pythonic pile.
And yet, there is nothing. Nothing Ames can see, anyway. His heart pounds against his ribs.
Around him, the steely, petrified faces of a prominent Soviet bear general, an important avian philosopher and a human leader look on impassively. Sparing a glance at the nearby vulture statue, Sond slowly loosens out of his firing stance and resumes his search, heading in the direction of the sound. As best he can determine.
"Hello, Ames."
Caught off-guard once more, Sond snaps his arm out to his right, his gun and his eye zeroing in on the source of the voice at the same time, his tail shifting once more into the shooting 'stance.'
A doorway, a light shining through it. No, it's a gap within a large carved facade, as if the artistically rendered wall of stone had been split in two for transport to this hellish reminder of the cold war.
Within the flood of light in the gap, a completely back-lit figure in a long dark coat advances, through the neatly split panels of granite. The voice had been male.. and familiar.
Sond's mouth opens slowly, his jaw going slack in disbelief. The swagger of the slither - for the other male is serpentine - is unmistakable.
His mind races. It can't be. All the years of self-recrimination, the hopes for revenge, the wishes to go back in time and change things..!
If Ames is right, he's looking at a ghost, gliding forward, a spirit departing his crypt.
The other serpent flows a few last feet, and there is finally enough light on his face to reveal it.
Kalicster Sevelyan.
An extensive patch of scales had, at some point in the past, been burned away upon the right side of his snout, marring the otherwise handsome serpentine visage. The skin under the destroyed scales is a craggy field of misshapen ugly flesh, sinuous ridges of scar tissue thrown into high relief by the harsh lighting from behind.
But alive, alive! This is the man who had died, nine years ago, in the Arkangel chemical weapons facility. He had been gunned down by a dozen shooters, a makeshift firing squad of Soviet soldiers - before Sond's very eyes.
Ames' heart soars and sinks all at once. Half of him is overjoyed to see his old friend alive, even while the analytical mind knows: This is wrong. So very wrong.
Kalic had to have been complicit in the faking of his death, it's immediately clear. And now, he is either leader of Janus, or an important part of it. The organization had not existed until the last five years or so, after all.
Sond keeps his PPK up, but his arm loosens slowly, the barrel of the short handgun lifting marginally, aim askew. "Kalic..?" It is not a question asking if it's truly the same python Sond had known for so long. It is a question of 'What have you done?'
"Sseemss we can both cheat death, after all," he states with a smirk on his scarred snout, twisting his burns into something even more grotesque. "I feel bad for the building workers at MI6. Will they need to take down my anonymous star from the memorial wall now? I'll do them a kindnesss and fill the gap with another dead agent, I ssupposse."
Despite the hardly veiled threat to himself, Sond is silent - struck dumb, slowly lowering his pistol, staring in disbelief at Sevelyan. His eyes, his knitted brow, they ask a thousand questions of the green-eyed snake across the darkened space. They are only perhaps 10 feet from one another, and yet an incalculable gulf yawns open between them, expanding more each second.
"What's the matter, Amess? No sibilant sarcasm nor cynicism? No biting banter?"
Sond's tail loosens out of the gunplay-ready arrangement as his Walther finally droops entirely to dangle in his hand by his suit-clad side. 00S' quiet is broken by the most fundamental of questions: "Why?"
A cruel laughter, pitying the other python, curls up from the one in the long black leather coat. "Of coursse you're sstill as blind to it as you were back then."
Ames' look turns from one of shock, hardening to one of expectation. He suddenly feels like a pawn in a greater game he was not aware of. Perhaps his presence in this darkened park was pre-ordained, by Kalic. "Lift the scales from my eyes, old friend," he requests, his natural armor coming back to him, slowly. Clearly, the other constrictor was holding all the cards.
"He picked me, Ames. Me." Kalic's voice is suddenly soft, as though to break some forbidden truth gently, to Sond. Before the question of 'Who?' can be posed by 00S, Kalic goes on: "Your predecessor. The cobra. I wass there when he died. You weren't."
"I remember the mission, you were assisting him with--" Sond begins, but is cut off.
"--with a prisoner trade, yes. Meanwhile, you were probably gambling in London. We could have used you. Things could have been so different. The great ~Ames Sond~ might have saved the day, even then," Kalic spit out the praise like poison in his mouth, his hatred for the other python palpable. "Things went sideways, he was wounded. But _I_ got him back to the safe house. So he could at least die in peace - and so he could tell me his dying wish: That I should replace him, as the new 00S."
"Kalic, there's more to--"
"NO!" Kalic shouts, his voice carrying out into the misty silence of the night. "I know, there ISss more to the 00 selection process, in this case specifically. More that you, the slithering encyclopedia does not know. You don't know that he was like a father to me, that he thought of me as the son he never had. Hmm? I can see it in your eyes, you never knew."
Sond had indeed not. His relationship with the 00S before him had been strictly professional. He had tutored both younger snakes.
"But M knew, the old battleship bee. He and the other selectorss. They all knew, and they still would not advance me. My combat scores, higher than yours."
In a flash, Sond's PPK was up, aimed accurately at the space between Kalic's eyes. "Is that so?" hisses Sond, silently pointing out that he's the one with the gun, while Kalic stood there, hands in his pockets.
"Oh put it away, it's insulting to suggest I haven't predicted your every move. You don't want to know how many snipers are out there."
The unscarred snout opens to ask about, but Kalic is already answering Ames' question-to-come: "The scores, though: I snuck into records, after the decision was made in YOUR favour. That alone proves my infiltration skills were superior - which they were, by the way. I saw it there, in black and white."
"So, you're perfect?" Ames asks, with a whiff of incredulity.
"You--" Kalic laughs, "--you, my dear Ames, were more charming. That's all. A prettier face, a more appealing smile. Now, more than ever, I know." He remarks, gesturing at his own scarred snout, before the constrictor across from him could comment on that. Kalic knew Sond would want to, before even Ames thought to do so. "And you weren't the child of Lienz Cossacks, either," he finishes.
"They knew?" Sond balks.
He had only just discovered, earlier in that day, that the head of Janus was a Cossack. The Cossacks were a group of Russian anti-communists living in the Soviet Union, who had allied with Hitler in WWII, as the Germans were the only ones to stand against the Soviet rule. History, of course, knew better. After WWII, the Cossacks attempted to flee Soviet persecution for taking up arms against the Union. British troops were responsible for a pocket of Cossacks in Lienz, Austria - who sought asylum in the United Kingdom. Instead, the troops were to use force to ensure transport of the Cossacks 'back where they belonged.' They beat any who wouldn't comply nearly to death, to place them in trucks destined for a Soviet-occupied prison. The prison was a slow death sentence for all but a few.
The married couple named Sevelyan were two of those lucky few who managed to survive, to escape, to flee to Britain.
"Of course they knew. My up-bringing wasn't paid for out of the good of Her Majesty's government'ss heart, after all. When an asset is available and only time and a meager amount of money to develop it is needed, why not take it? I was born in England, ssame as you. But by the age of ssix, my father could no longer go on, wracked by ssurvivor's guilt, and ended his story and my mother's, with a pair of bullets. A far cry from the comparatively pleasant climbing accident that befell your parents. The both of us fell into the funnel that herds young men into the military."
A slow sneer builds upon Sond's snout.
Kalic continues, "I was to be a soldier, a disposable asset from beginning. No one expected me to reach the lofty height of employment at of MI6, though. In their eyes, I should have been just another piece of cannon fodder in the rank and file. They expected me to have forgotten what happened when I was ssix, but they never forgot. It was there in my file, with a summary that may as well have read as 'Not to be trussted.'"
"And so, your closeness to our mentor was viewed with suspicion," Sond states, slithering subtly nearer to the naga he had once held so dear. Sympathy for this new devil, before him.
"Looking at that file, seeing the cold, unfeeling bureaucracy of it all, a betrayal that had begun before I was even born, which had gone on my whole life, had taken my parents from me, had taken my rightful chance at being a double-oh agent, as a penalty of a history I wasn't even to know.. it had even taken that dream from me. I no longer wanted to serve."
"But at that point.." Sond murmurs.
"Already in too deep to stop, yesss," Kalic hisses, a rueful tone gracing his words. "Sso, I was the lowly 'S', who would so often assist you, while you never let me forget who was in charge, who was 'better.' It was so tempting to tell you, then. But I knew, I would take over from you, if anything ever happened to you. But nothing ever did, of course. I'm still not sure how I feel about that, old friend. As much as I hated you, I still respected you. That's why you're still alive, even now, instead of being shot the minute you slithered into the park, here. Back then, I even considered asking you to join me..."
With his eyes locked on the green gaze of his former comrade, Sond asks, "And why didn't you?"
"Oh, but I did, just not with useless, inarticulate words. You haven't had a chance to think back to Arkangel, of course. Do sso now, like a good little tin ssoldier."
Casting his mind back, Sond recalled the last things they had said to each other, before Kalic's apparent death.
A number of things come to Sond, out of order, and he mutters his deductions to Kalic: "The men who fired upon you, blanks.. you were already in league with the blue marten, Ourumov. You wanted to be a hostage, to see if I would save you. You actually advocated that we give up, take a holiday.. That was you asking, that was your test. You, or the mission."
"And what did you do?"
"I tried to have both, I altered that timer."
"Thankss for that, by the way," says Kalic, with a gesture at his face and a snoutful of sarcasm.
"Q made them so they couldn't be disarmed, Kalic, I couldn't do anything."
"Nor could I. Ourumov only played along for so long. When his patience ran out, he ordered my 'death.' I couldn't blame him, you seemed to be unwilling to give up. Of course, when you left, I tried to disarm the charges, and found what your dilemma had been."
Sond sighs, shaking his head. He still never takes his eyes off the python across from him, as if looking away might let the ghost vanish, while unseen. "You're not waiting for an apology, are you?"
Chuckling, Kalic shakes his head as well, also never taking his eyes off the other snake. "Ssame old Ssond. You always arrive just in time, right when you're needed."
With a falsely-sweet lilt to his voice, Sond inquires, "And what do you need from me now, Kalic?"
"I need you to die."
Lightning-fast, Sond's sidearm is up, but just as quick, a dart is in his neck.
His claws clap down around it, but it's too late, the serum - whatever it may be - is already beyond his scales, in his bloodstream. His coils go limp under his torso, and he topples to the ground, gun still extended outward, toward Sevelyan.
The green-eyed python slinks slowly nearer to his old friend, looking down upon him, while a raven dressed all in black moves into the light, his special dart-rifle held skyward.
The next part of the plan could proceed.
~
Amethystine/Ames Sond 00S and related IP © to his owner.
Kalisster Ssin/Kalicster Sevelyan © to his owner, Python_Yuanty.
Sheba Windstorm/Xhebia Onatopp © to her owner, Amaranth Dench.
James Bond 007 and related IP © to Ian Fleming, Albert R Broccoli's EON Productions and MGM.
.
TheAzimuth, go praise their art, here: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/34604588/~
An Ames Sond 'screenshot' from 1995's GoldenEyessss. I'm posting this tonight because November 24th is the 25th anniversary of the original (human)movie's general theatrical release across the UK and a number of other regions!
This is the pivotal confrontation and revelation scene between hero and villain, Ames Sond and Kalicster Sevelyan, a former MI6 agent who was in line to become 00S, alongside Sond. Sond got the job, but does he really know why he was chosen over his old Kalic?
Of course, Kalic is also meant to be dead, having been gunned down 9 years ago, in the opening scene of the film, the pre-title sequence.
~
As with a handful of previous Sond villains, Sevelyan is meant to be a dark reflection of Sond himself. The role is played by the famous Russian pythonic actor of stage and screen:
Python_Yuanty! (He and I co-commissioned this picture, of course. But I have to thank him for doing all the work in communicating with the artist. :}===< )Here's the original screenshot, as well: https://www.dropbox.com/s/dhqpjk7uh.....nshot.png?dl=0
~
Below is the 'Statue Park scene' in its entirety. Enjoy!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
GoldenEyessss - Janus, Revealed - transcribed by Amethystine
~
~~
~
On the outskirts of Saint Petersburg, just before midnight, a car's tyres crunch softly and slowly over gravel, before coming to a gentle halt.
The headlights of the black Mercedes-Benz illuminate a series of tall, dark shapes. Rather than trees, it appears for a moment as though statues grow wild and unkempt in this particular field.
It is a dumping place and a memento of a period in the past: the Soviet era statuary and iconography in its own little graveyard. Hammers, sickles, red stars, and 'great men' of various species loom up out of the darkness at anyone who draws near.
Ghosts of history itself.
Within the car, a suit-clad male figure in the back keeps a pistol trained upon his impromptu chauffeuse, a golden-haired woman with chocolate-hued skin. Her lupine ears are folded back in clear frustration, gleaming yellow eyes glowering.
"This is it?" asks the man, with a hint of sibilance upon his Ses.
Her lips curling with disdain, the wolf-woman spits out her flat reply: "Yes." She sighs, turning to look out her driver's side window.
The upset so evident within her demeanour is due to her failure: she had attempted to subdue the man in the seat behind and to her right. She was going to bring him here either way, but she had wanted to prove herself against him. Her employer had spoken so laudingly about him, even if it had been with a certain hatred, it was clear that her boss also respected this reptile's abilities.
Their meeting - the woman and the man she had hoped to best, if only to prove her value to her superior - had been clandestine, intimate, sexually charged, violent, and painful.. for both of them.
Ultimately, the lycanthropic lady had been forced to yield, her bestial side beaten before it could even fully emerge.
The gunman, Ames Sond, glides forward in the back seat, poking his snout up near to the head of the driver: Xhebia Onatopp. Sond smiles magnanimously, but keeps the gun on the woman's neck.
"Farewell my dear. Whenever I smell wet dog, I'll think of you," Sond says, recalling their meeting and eventual fight in the hotel pool. As he speaks, he switches his gun from his hand to his tailtip. The serpent could not effectively aim the gun in combat with his tail, but with it already pressed to the body of the target, he can effectively keep her still. His hands work to tie the thick jumper cables around her and her seat, binding her, as she replies.
Remarking upon the faint whiff of death that the large serpent carried with him, Onatopp observes, "And the stench of corpses will surely conjure your coils to my mind." While talking, she twists her head to glare at him with those intense golden eyes, a manic grin stretched across her lips, although her face remains wholly malevolent, despite the superficial smile.
"I suppose you'll have to give up your habit of hedonistic homicide, to avoid thinking of me," Ames reasons, pulling the cables tighter. The thick, rubber-lined bindings compress her ribs subtly, under the more prominent portion of her chest.
With shallow breathing and a slightly sultry rasp, the lycan shoots back: "There's nothing wrong with enjoying one's work, Mr Sond. If circumstances were different, I would have ~enjoyed~ you, mmm, very much." The emphasized word drips with passion, expressing Xhebia's love of combining carnal acts and killing.
Sond, hearing the sudden change in his companion, pauses, listening.
Onatopp raves on: "The feel of your squirming against me, the sound of your hissing rasps as you - a python! - ran out of air.." She pauses to lick her lips lasciviously, and the snake can clearly picture her more wolven self doing much the same, although with the hunger in her eyes gaining a wholly different context upon that more feral visage. "The taste of the blood from your throat--!"
A whipping motion from Ames' hand that is once more holding his Walther brings the breathy speech from the woman to an end. She's out cold.
Sond hisses, "Down, girl."
-
Slithering smoothly out of the car and pooling his coils on the gravel, Sond straightens his necktie, considering the darkened field of statues as he draws last of his length out.
No one in sight, but there is still a light. It comes from behind a rise, a number of statues backlit by it.
With a snap of his tailtip that closes the car door, Sond decides there's nothing to do but proceed. He had successfully arranged this meeting with the unknown, unseen head of the Janus crime syndicate. There were only vague, contradictory descriptions from observing parties that had not had good looks at the silent figure who tended to stand back and let others speak for him, or her. Even the figure in the shadows may well have been a proxy, given the way the varying reports had told a different tale from various surveilled meetings of Janus and their clients.
MI6's current interest in Janus is thus: As an organization, they had stolen access to the pair of Soviet-era Russian-developed weapons known as the 'GoldenEyes', and had detonated the second to help cover up the theft of the first. Sond needs to know if the leader of the group had planned it or if perhaps it was a rogue element within the top-flight arms-dealing cabal.
Of course, whoever the leader is, they wouldn't know that's what 00S was here to discuss.
Sond hopes they don't, at least.
A hope and a prayer and a PPK is all he has.
Well, that and his Brioni suit.
Gliding into the eerie silence of the windless night, Sond's smooth slither gives rise to soft rustling sounds behind his forward-leaning snout.
Twisting around at the head of his long body, the naga slowly reaches into his suit jacket and withdraws his pistol from his shoulder holster, scanning around himself once more as he did so.
He had expected guards. There seems to be none. None he can smell with the rapid flicks of his sensitive tongue, and none he can see, with his excellent night vision.
Are they just that good? Or are they just not there?
Cautiously, the constrictor continues, flowing forward further into the haphazard assortment of defunct, discarded displays of demagoguery. Huge heads of heads of state made from stone or metal peer off sightlessly into the gloom. The serpent is forced to meander through the maze of monolithic masonry as midnight moves nearer.
The further he goes, the more the unreality of his isolation creeps into his mind. He must not be alone, surely. And yet he is constantly met with further silence and innumerable immobile sculptures. The head of Janus and at least two bodyguards MUST be here, somewhere. No one would be foolish enough to come to a meeting with an unknown party, alone.
Except Sond himself, of course, he ruefully admits.
More than once, the serpent's unblinking gaze catches sight of a full-body statue and he nearly darts into cover or whips his pistol to point at the imagined enemy in the night. The python pauses and sneers at himself for almost jumping - or shooting - at shadows. Danger is never an issue for Sond, but prolonged tension, the eternal threat of it, that is another beast entirely.
The untamable unknowable.
Once again, as he moves forward, the snake twists his torso around atop the still-gliding length of his undulating form, looking around, fingers on his Walther twitching in readiness. He opens his mouth, considering he might call out, to ask if the meeting is going to happen or not.
He shuts his snout and shakes it a bit, untwisting and proceeding.
A soft sound of stone on stone comes from one side and the naga is a blur of motion, whipping around to face it, both arms raised to sight down the barrel of the handgun, his coils snapping into a defensive posture. A thick section of serpentine body with less vital organs within is wrapped around the front of the pythonic pile.
And yet, there is nothing. Nothing Ames can see, anyway. His heart pounds against his ribs.
Around him, the steely, petrified faces of a prominent Soviet bear general, an important avian philosopher and a human leader look on impassively. Sparing a glance at the nearby vulture statue, Sond slowly loosens out of his firing stance and resumes his search, heading in the direction of the sound. As best he can determine.
"Hello, Ames."
Caught off-guard once more, Sond snaps his arm out to his right, his gun and his eye zeroing in on the source of the voice at the same time, his tail shifting once more into the shooting 'stance.'
A doorway, a light shining through it. No, it's a gap within a large carved facade, as if the artistically rendered wall of stone had been split in two for transport to this hellish reminder of the cold war.
Within the flood of light in the gap, a completely back-lit figure in a long dark coat advances, through the neatly split panels of granite. The voice had been male.. and familiar.
Sond's mouth opens slowly, his jaw going slack in disbelief. The swagger of the slither - for the other male is serpentine - is unmistakable.
His mind races. It can't be. All the years of self-recrimination, the hopes for revenge, the wishes to go back in time and change things..!
If Ames is right, he's looking at a ghost, gliding forward, a spirit departing his crypt.
The other serpent flows a few last feet, and there is finally enough light on his face to reveal it.
Kalicster Sevelyan.
An extensive patch of scales had, at some point in the past, been burned away upon the right side of his snout, marring the otherwise handsome serpentine visage. The skin under the destroyed scales is a craggy field of misshapen ugly flesh, sinuous ridges of scar tissue thrown into high relief by the harsh lighting from behind.
But alive, alive! This is the man who had died, nine years ago, in the Arkangel chemical weapons facility. He had been gunned down by a dozen shooters, a makeshift firing squad of Soviet soldiers - before Sond's very eyes.
Ames' heart soars and sinks all at once. Half of him is overjoyed to see his old friend alive, even while the analytical mind knows: This is wrong. So very wrong.
Kalic had to have been complicit in the faking of his death, it's immediately clear. And now, he is either leader of Janus, or an important part of it. The organization had not existed until the last five years or so, after all.
Sond keeps his PPK up, but his arm loosens slowly, the barrel of the short handgun lifting marginally, aim askew. "Kalic..?" It is not a question asking if it's truly the same python Sond had known for so long. It is a question of 'What have you done?'
"Sseemss we can both cheat death, after all," he states with a smirk on his scarred snout, twisting his burns into something even more grotesque. "I feel bad for the building workers at MI6. Will they need to take down my anonymous star from the memorial wall now? I'll do them a kindnesss and fill the gap with another dead agent, I ssupposse."
Despite the hardly veiled threat to himself, Sond is silent - struck dumb, slowly lowering his pistol, staring in disbelief at Sevelyan. His eyes, his knitted brow, they ask a thousand questions of the green-eyed snake across the darkened space. They are only perhaps 10 feet from one another, and yet an incalculable gulf yawns open between them, expanding more each second.
"What's the matter, Amess? No sibilant sarcasm nor cynicism? No biting banter?"
Sond's tail loosens out of the gunplay-ready arrangement as his Walther finally droops entirely to dangle in his hand by his suit-clad side. 00S' quiet is broken by the most fundamental of questions: "Why?"
A cruel laughter, pitying the other python, curls up from the one in the long black leather coat. "Of coursse you're sstill as blind to it as you were back then."
Ames' look turns from one of shock, hardening to one of expectation. He suddenly feels like a pawn in a greater game he was not aware of. Perhaps his presence in this darkened park was pre-ordained, by Kalic. "Lift the scales from my eyes, old friend," he requests, his natural armor coming back to him, slowly. Clearly, the other constrictor was holding all the cards.
"He picked me, Ames. Me." Kalic's voice is suddenly soft, as though to break some forbidden truth gently, to Sond. Before the question of 'Who?' can be posed by 00S, Kalic goes on: "Your predecessor. The cobra. I wass there when he died. You weren't."
"I remember the mission, you were assisting him with--" Sond begins, but is cut off.
"--with a prisoner trade, yes. Meanwhile, you were probably gambling in London. We could have used you. Things could have been so different. The great ~Ames Sond~ might have saved the day, even then," Kalic spit out the praise like poison in his mouth, his hatred for the other python palpable. "Things went sideways, he was wounded. But _I_ got him back to the safe house. So he could at least die in peace - and so he could tell me his dying wish: That I should replace him, as the new 00S."
"Kalic, there's more to--"
"NO!" Kalic shouts, his voice carrying out into the misty silence of the night. "I know, there ISss more to the 00 selection process, in this case specifically. More that you, the slithering encyclopedia does not know. You don't know that he was like a father to me, that he thought of me as the son he never had. Hmm? I can see it in your eyes, you never knew."
Sond had indeed not. His relationship with the 00S before him had been strictly professional. He had tutored both younger snakes.
"But M knew, the old battleship bee. He and the other selectorss. They all knew, and they still would not advance me. My combat scores, higher than yours."
In a flash, Sond's PPK was up, aimed accurately at the space between Kalic's eyes. "Is that so?" hisses Sond, silently pointing out that he's the one with the gun, while Kalic stood there, hands in his pockets.
"Oh put it away, it's insulting to suggest I haven't predicted your every move. You don't want to know how many snipers are out there."
The unscarred snout opens to ask about, but Kalic is already answering Ames' question-to-come: "The scores, though: I snuck into records, after the decision was made in YOUR favour. That alone proves my infiltration skills were superior - which they were, by the way. I saw it there, in black and white."
"So, you're perfect?" Ames asks, with a whiff of incredulity.
"You--" Kalic laughs, "--you, my dear Ames, were more charming. That's all. A prettier face, a more appealing smile. Now, more than ever, I know." He remarks, gesturing at his own scarred snout, before the constrictor across from him could comment on that. Kalic knew Sond would want to, before even Ames thought to do so. "And you weren't the child of Lienz Cossacks, either," he finishes.
"They knew?" Sond balks.
He had only just discovered, earlier in that day, that the head of Janus was a Cossack. The Cossacks were a group of Russian anti-communists living in the Soviet Union, who had allied with Hitler in WWII, as the Germans were the only ones to stand against the Soviet rule. History, of course, knew better. After WWII, the Cossacks attempted to flee Soviet persecution for taking up arms against the Union. British troops were responsible for a pocket of Cossacks in Lienz, Austria - who sought asylum in the United Kingdom. Instead, the troops were to use force to ensure transport of the Cossacks 'back where they belonged.' They beat any who wouldn't comply nearly to death, to place them in trucks destined for a Soviet-occupied prison. The prison was a slow death sentence for all but a few.
The married couple named Sevelyan were two of those lucky few who managed to survive, to escape, to flee to Britain.
"Of course they knew. My up-bringing wasn't paid for out of the good of Her Majesty's government'ss heart, after all. When an asset is available and only time and a meager amount of money to develop it is needed, why not take it? I was born in England, ssame as you. But by the age of ssix, my father could no longer go on, wracked by ssurvivor's guilt, and ended his story and my mother's, with a pair of bullets. A far cry from the comparatively pleasant climbing accident that befell your parents. The both of us fell into the funnel that herds young men into the military."
A slow sneer builds upon Sond's snout.
Kalic continues, "I was to be a soldier, a disposable asset from beginning. No one expected me to reach the lofty height of employment at of MI6, though. In their eyes, I should have been just another piece of cannon fodder in the rank and file. They expected me to have forgotten what happened when I was ssix, but they never forgot. It was there in my file, with a summary that may as well have read as 'Not to be trussted.'"
"And so, your closeness to our mentor was viewed with suspicion," Sond states, slithering subtly nearer to the naga he had once held so dear. Sympathy for this new devil, before him.
"Looking at that file, seeing the cold, unfeeling bureaucracy of it all, a betrayal that had begun before I was even born, which had gone on my whole life, had taken my parents from me, had taken my rightful chance at being a double-oh agent, as a penalty of a history I wasn't even to know.. it had even taken that dream from me. I no longer wanted to serve."
"But at that point.." Sond murmurs.
"Already in too deep to stop, yesss," Kalic hisses, a rueful tone gracing his words. "Sso, I was the lowly 'S', who would so often assist you, while you never let me forget who was in charge, who was 'better.' It was so tempting to tell you, then. But I knew, I would take over from you, if anything ever happened to you. But nothing ever did, of course. I'm still not sure how I feel about that, old friend. As much as I hated you, I still respected you. That's why you're still alive, even now, instead of being shot the minute you slithered into the park, here. Back then, I even considered asking you to join me..."
With his eyes locked on the green gaze of his former comrade, Sond asks, "And why didn't you?"
"Oh, but I did, just not with useless, inarticulate words. You haven't had a chance to think back to Arkangel, of course. Do sso now, like a good little tin ssoldier."
Casting his mind back, Sond recalled the last things they had said to each other, before Kalic's apparent death.
A number of things come to Sond, out of order, and he mutters his deductions to Kalic: "The men who fired upon you, blanks.. you were already in league with the blue marten, Ourumov. You wanted to be a hostage, to see if I would save you. You actually advocated that we give up, take a holiday.. That was you asking, that was your test. You, or the mission."
"And what did you do?"
"I tried to have both, I altered that timer."
"Thankss for that, by the way," says Kalic, with a gesture at his face and a snoutful of sarcasm.
"Q made them so they couldn't be disarmed, Kalic, I couldn't do anything."
"Nor could I. Ourumov only played along for so long. When his patience ran out, he ordered my 'death.' I couldn't blame him, you seemed to be unwilling to give up. Of course, when you left, I tried to disarm the charges, and found what your dilemma had been."
Sond sighs, shaking his head. He still never takes his eyes off the python across from him, as if looking away might let the ghost vanish, while unseen. "You're not waiting for an apology, are you?"
Chuckling, Kalic shakes his head as well, also never taking his eyes off the other snake. "Ssame old Ssond. You always arrive just in time, right when you're needed."
With a falsely-sweet lilt to his voice, Sond inquires, "And what do you need from me now, Kalic?"
"I need you to die."
Lightning-fast, Sond's sidearm is up, but just as quick, a dart is in his neck.
His claws clap down around it, but it's too late, the serum - whatever it may be - is already beyond his scales, in his bloodstream. His coils go limp under his torso, and he topples to the ground, gun still extended outward, toward Sevelyan.
The green-eyed python slinks slowly nearer to his old friend, looking down upon him, while a raven dressed all in black moves into the light, his special dart-rifle held skyward.
The next part of the plan could proceed.
~
Amethystine/Ames Sond 00S and related IP © to his owner.
Kalisster Ssin/Kalicster Sevelyan © to his owner, Python_Yuanty.
Sheba Windstorm/Xhebia Onatopp © to her owner, Amaranth Dench.
James Bond 007 and related IP © to Ian Fleming, Albert R Broccoli's EON Productions and MGM.
.
Category Artwork (Digital) / General Furry Art
Species Snake / Serpent
Size 1280 x 546px
File Size 51.5 kB
My version of Xenia is shown on the poster: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/39185444 (She's on the right.)
That's 'Sheba Windstorm': https://www.dropbox.com/s/6hih7epew.....Sheba.png?dl=0
I can assure you that they're both equally insane. (Also, the lycan has thighs of steel, just like Onatopp does.. especially when she goes into her bigger and stronger werewolf form! O: )
Also, thanks for the fave! :}
That's 'Sheba Windstorm': https://www.dropbox.com/s/6hih7epew.....Sheba.png?dl=0
I can assure you that they're both equally insane. (Also, the lycan has thighs of steel, just like Onatopp does.. especially when she goes into her bigger and stronger werewolf form! O: )
Also, thanks for the fave! :}
Thanks! I hope you had also gotten to read the scene that accompanied the poster, they really are meant to work together, to show the two sides of 'Janus'.
GE is high on almost every list of Bond films, I think! I recently decided that my top 3 are Skyfall, GE and Casino Royale, but not in any order. A nebulous cloud of 3 floating around at the top, undefined, aside from being at the top together. Haha!
Also, I always say "my fave Bond film is the one I'm currently watching, if I'm currently watching one" so there's that too. :}===<
GE is high on almost every list of Bond films, I think! I recently decided that my top 3 are Skyfall, GE and Casino Royale, but not in any order. A nebulous cloud of 3 floating around at the top, undefined, aside from being at the top together. Haha!
Also, I always say "my fave Bond film is the one I'm currently watching, if I'm currently watching one" so there's that too. :}===<
Oh hey! Thanks so much for saying that! I had no idea you were reading my works. I'm sure you'll get better and better with your English, though, and be able to enjoy reading in English all the more. And not just my work, but anyone's! :}===<
Thank you for the favourite on this submission, too. :>
Thank you for the favourite on this submission, too. :>
The words 'the spy who loved me' are in the lyrics of 'Nobody Does It Better', though. It's just not titled that. But you know that.
I think if they had simply put that phrase into the chorus or used it a few more times in the verses somewhere, it could easily have been used as the title. But it's not like Bond themes NEED to have the title of the movie in them, nor do they need to be named after the film. That thinking is what gave us the song 'Thunderball' instead of the song 'Mr Kiss Kiss Bang Bang' as the title theme for Thunderball.
I think if they had simply put that phrase into the chorus or used it a few more times in the verses somewhere, it could easily have been used as the title. But it's not like Bond themes NEED to have the title of the movie in them, nor do they need to be named after the film. That thinking is what gave us the song 'Thunderball' instead of the song 'Mr Kiss Kiss Bang Bang' as the title theme for Thunderball.
I haven't watched The Spy Who Loves Me in a long time. For some reason that one just never really resonated with me. Hmm, well, Thunderball was early enough in the franchise they could have gone with something different. It's just that the Bond formula was well established by the time of Roger Moore that makes the two I noted seem odd.
Dominus tecum
Dominus tecum
This picture is awesome! Maybe Sevelyan has a bunch of statues on his half of the image, but Sond has the deer statue, that's gotta count for something. The composition of the whole thing is terrific: how the light is cast from Sevelyan's side (he's the one sharing information) yet he's looming in shadow and not all of him being in frame; while at least Sond's torso and tail tip are shown, paralleling how Sond is the vulnerable one in the situation despite his gun-readied stance. It's great work.
The writing is also great! I like how you describe Sond seeming to waver with his intentions in regards to their history and the current situation between him and Sevelyan. Character backstory is great, and you've done well in how they've delivered their dialogue.
The writing is also great! I like how you describe Sond seeming to waver with his intentions in regards to their history and the current situation between him and Sevelyan. Character backstory is great, and you've done well in how they've delivered their dialogue.
Yes, Sond's body position, with his torso behind his curled tail, that kinda makes him look like he's on the defensive (as if he slid backwards/recoiled in fright), despite his gun-wielding. :}
Thanks for the fave! This one is a bit exposition heavy, and I can see it being a scene in a book, but not really a scene in a movie, haha. Perhaps this is from the novelization, with the deep lore on Kalic's backstory and all that. >___>
Thanks for the fave! This one is a bit exposition heavy, and I can see it being a scene in a book, but not really a scene in a movie, haha. Perhaps this is from the novelization, with the deep lore on Kalic's backstory and all that. >___>
Thanks for the fave on this! :>
I'm fairly certain that line isn't used in this scene. It appears at the beginning, and is only called back again, in the final confrontation, in Alec's penultimate moments.
The line that ends this scene in the statue park, just before Bond gets hit with a tranq dart, is 'Closing time, James! Last call.'
I'm fairly certain that line isn't used in this scene. It appears at the beginning, and is only called back again, in the final confrontation, in Alec's penultimate moments.
The line that ends this scene in the statue park, just before Bond gets hit with a tranq dart, is 'Closing time, James! Last call.'
Comments