文沫回忆太太的麦夏经典作品魔王宫殿的授权英译,已在AO3上连载,现广泛征求修改意见及捉虫等,以及求beta。会在AO3更新之前先挂在这里。
文沫太太又删号了,所以没法询问她能不能同时贴出中文,如果大家觉得有必要的话可以找我。
下划线代表英文斜体
Prologue
Gunshots roared.
It was silent inside the chamber, though, only punctuated by pop from flaming firewood. Both of them stood still, their breath rising and falling against the continual cacophony of intense fighting.
Sherlock took a step forwards, looking up at Mycroft. He seemed only a 5-years-old.
Mycroft stared at him as well, in a similar young figure. Both of their side faces were dyed bloody by fireplaces.
"Give it to me. NOW."
The gloss of iron resembled a solemn pray. Sherlock aimed at Mycroft, and Mycroft aimed at Sherlock, neither of their eyes possessed of lustre that was of their ages. The words spoken heard in a childlike tone, but scarcely with an innocent meaning.
Mycroft smiled quietly.
"GIVE ME THE KEY!" Sherlock took another aggressive step forwards. Mycroft stepped backwards in alert, his eyesight filled with frozen vigilance.
He wondered why he should be smiling after all.
"…I won't." Mycroft forced himself to hold the corners of the mouth upwards.
"Mr Holmes, it is plain what predicament you are in. You know it is never a bargain." Sherlock narrowed his eyes threateningly, which looked ridiculous in a five-years-old. But targeted at by the life-threatened pistol, Mycroft couldn't smile anymore. He stared straightly into the pupils of Sherlock, pressing his lips tightly.
Booms thundered.
"Won't say that again. The key."
Said Sherlock, coldly. Mycroft made as if to speak, and then stopped. At last, he made a wry smile under his breath, with quite a few implications, yet only a tinge of extraction with bitterness revealed.
Blaze flickered. Shadows on his face blurred his expression.
Behind Sherlock suddenly appeared a man, clutched at Sherlock's throat and threw him to the ground. Sherlock struggled, but he couldn't escape, for the sake of age gap, from the fetters of the man. Sherlock's pistol was thrown feet away.
Mycroft came up to Sherlock, pressing the muzzle on his forehead.
"Spare your effort, Mr Holmes." Sherlock gave up struggling, yet laughing wildly and arrogantly. His face broadened into a grin, distorted with gasp, which made the familiar face quite queer. "You know it's impossible to kill me."
"I do." Mycroft kept his smile calmly.
Slowly, yet firmly, he moved the muzzle away from Sherlock's forehead. The gun passed a jagged half circle, across the forehead of the expressionless young man, across the doorway, across the hanging pictures in the room, across Sherlock's instruments of experiments, and its destination was Mycroft's temples.
"-!" Sherlock was stunned for an instant, and he eventually began to struggle desperately. He tried his best to pull himself away from the clamp of the man behind, but the man's green eyes had ever no blinkers. Sherlock looked a little flustered, and he screamed out, "Mycroft! Stop! Are you mad?!"
Mycroft grinned ironically, but hidden bitterness could be somewhere found at his corner of mouth.
He'd just got no choice.
"May God bless you." Mycroft faked a near-perfect smile, a sweet one, as if he were certainly a teenager.
Splashing blood dyed the flame, only scarlet dazzling and burning in the whole corner of memory .
He was a winner who only lost himself.