“Folly o’er meself for a horn-gape’d damsel’s bleedin’ font,” flapped and squalled Uí Senan, for, such little as he remembered, that was his name, afterwhich he collapsed, “but I’er now right dry’er ‘n pur’r than me muth’rs vitrified muff!”

Indeed, he was dry. Moved by forces beyond his ken, he was made, as much as possible, fit for his transformed environ. Nary a blot of piss nor fleck of feces besmirched the regal wool banners that composed his person. Roundabout, he saw no fountain, no buildings, no darkness; rather, beheld he a chamber vast, a court fit for a Pope, yet filled with undignified commoners engaged in all manner of games. Repulsive as the fountain, in its own way, this hall roared loud in scene and sound, incessant, tumultuous, violent. Soon he felt numb, overstimulated. Noticed neither Selena nor his fellow fountain diver. The place reeked profusely of the finest liquors, headiest tobaccos, and richest perfumes. More flesh and fiends than he could tally sat, stood, and stooped over tables and before boxes that boomed the Devil’s very infernal machinations, each knob pull and button smash unholy.

“Ste. Limrick’s unslicked shaft, preserve me!” he screeched, visually violated, and backed himself against a wall. Uí Senan’s horrors increased, for the wall grabbed him! Snatched him right up, suspended him in place like Christ on the cross or so much gaudy decor. He couldn’t move, couldn’t talk, couldn’t cry! With a hiss, or a thud, or a vibrato, he felt the black velvet fleur de lis impel its purpose, “Oh, you’ll be preserved! Know at last the meaning of silence as the Pleiades sucks dry your vile soul!”

Aleck stepped out of the car, his sneakers hitting the concrete at the front as the valet opened the door. His eyes took in the scene around him, the blinding lights putting on their dazzling display, the people milling around the entrance coming and going. A lot of them not human, but some of them were - and all of their minds screamed either luck or the lack thereof. They screamed internally from losing it all, everything down the drain as they wasted away their life savings in the games they found within. On the other hand, some screamed of happiness and hope. They either were going in, hopeful of winning more than they brought - and of retiring from their mundane lives. Others were leaving, their minds screaming the happiness of having won exactly that. It meant nothing, though. They all thought they had an edge in life, something to help them or to make things better for them. Aleck knew it for false hope, something the city offered but never actually provided.

Aleck walked through the front door, held open by a sturdy looking man. Clearly someone there to deter a would be thief, or perhaps put an end to a fight breaking out between drunkards. Aleck simply nodded as he passed, definitely giving him a once over and realizing he wasn't a threat. If Aleck wanted to fight him, he'd make short work of the man. It helped being able to read their thoughts, know what their next moves were going to be, sometimes even before they did. He snapped his attention back to what was in front of him. The casino floor filled with people, their voices a cacophony. A symphony of happiness and sorrow. He tuned it out, though. The same as their thoughts. Closing his mind, something he learned from a young age growing up in a home full of psychics. Something he excelled at, though his other family members not so much.

Striding through the people, pushing past them, he walked past the screaming bells and whistles of the slot machines and video games. He pushed past the people playing blackjack and other games of pure luck and chance. He wanted something that required skill, though his particular skills gave him an edge others didn't have. Finally, his eyes caught what he sought. The tables were nearly full, especially the lower end ones where the common people played for pennies and dimes.

Walking to the cages, he pulled out the wad of cash he got from Tommy, and counted it out. Ten thousand dollars. A lot of money to carry around in your pocket, but Tommy always was the flashy type. He passed it through the cage, "Can I exchange this, ma'am?" He said, knowing they'd exchange it without question. His fingers tapped idly while they counted out the chips, and then passed them through the opening to him in their little holder. "And can you direct me to the no-limits tables, I don't want to waste my time with the common riff-raff, ya' know?" His charming smile warmed his face, and touched his eyes - a simple trick to get what he wanted.

"Yes sir, I'd be happy to show you the way personally. Follow me." She said as she stepped from behind the cage, and began to lead him through the tables toward a door at the back. His eyes wandered from her to the people around him, only to land back on her. As they neared the door, he pulled out one of the one hundred dollar chips and tipped her as she opened the door for him. "Right through here, sir. You'll find the games with the kind of money you want, though..you may need more chips."

"Don't worry, darling, I'll get the chips I need." Once again, his charming smile warmed his face and he walked through the door. Quickly he discerned a table worth playing at, and sat down. "So, gentlemen, what's the game?"

"Hold 'em, no limits. Blinds at five and ten. You sure you can handle this game, though, bud? You don't seem like the kind to have what it takes to be in this room, let alone at our table." A burly man in a nice suit, clearly someone of status, leaned out of the shadows with a big cigar in his mouth. "You should just leave, while you still have shoes on your feet to leave with." His boisterous laugh echoed in the room, nearly silent for the seriousness of the game. The sound of chips, the smell of velvet, stale smoke, and staler liquor permeated his nostrils, which flared almost in anger.

"Sure, bud. I'll be big blind this hand, I suppose, and I only brought ten thousand in chips. So, definitely going to have to win this one." With that said, he put his chips down and leaned back, smiling. Already, he was reopening his mind - focusing it on the seven other players at the table. Focusing it on reading their thoughts, both surface and subconscious. Before he left, he'd be rich and full of knowledge of all the seedy business these gentlmen knew.



Valkyr's gaze darkened as the magic ebbed out of his body, his torn flesh repairing itself even as the magic ripped it apart. He listened to the words of the shit-stained old man, whose words he barely understood as anything comprehensible. HIs fingers flexed for a moment, and in the stillness of the air wind stirred - shifting the scent of the man away from him. He stopped as the other responded, his yellowed teeth behind the ever-dark hood baring themselves in contempt. Turning his gaze from the one, to the lights switching themselves back on. Already annoyed, the lights turning back on in defiance of him only seemed to anger him more. Though, he could sense the source of its power. His eyes turned from that, to the distance - where he felt something drawing upon the power of magic. The screaming, boisterous roar of a monster lashing out in the darkness.

Valkyr calculated a dozen things at once, and then a voice that broke through him like fire burning through his veins and ripping through.
"Another task for you, Valkyr, return."

As the words ripped through his body and burned his very essence, he turned his robbed gaze toward the casino, sighed - and as suddenly as he was there, he was gone. Robes dropped to the ground in a heap, a pile, and his body simply gone and dispersed from Aeternus in that quick moment. Pulled away by a power far beyond even his own comprehension, much less the comprehension of those others who thought this place a home.

<< Theme: Interloper >>

Vast yawns a tumultuous clash. Flecks of glass, leaden scraps engross my locus where focus-framed dust bold and foul billows, a perfidious cloud opaque before a phantom form, envoy of Bastest. Tightening my grip on my saucer’s brim, I seek to anchor myself in this reality. From red eyes inquisitive to red imp ribald, who, amid sanguine strobes and tremors distant, I observe creep into the mantle’s gloom. A sense of wrongness permeates the space. This all feels amiss. I feel my depths revolt, my perspicacity in doubt. The intermittent glow of those violent flares expose the imp’s, I dread, true nature as ephemeral, phantasmal and incoherent—a device of my mania. Implausible, upsetting, my mind insists on occult preconceptions, my mind compels me to forget.

The imp is whole. The window is whole. Watching me is, perhaps, just a cat.

I know, as usual, nothing.

Reset, I collapse upon a walnut and velour boudoir and absently inquire, “Is this chaos not eerily familiar?”

“An intrusion that sits beyond the cycle,” I receive in cryptic riposte.

I grasp neither the question I posed nor the response it elicited; thus, I ponder, forgetful, my awareness drifting someplace far removed. I cannot be here, this mere imagination, this dream, this figment.

Abandoning my faculties and surrendering myself to the alluring fragrance of calumny, pretense and vituperation arising from my decanter, I unhurriedly rotate the stop and compel its effluence into an artfully-wrought demitasse trembling on my saucer. Peering down, I inhale deep the lies that darken the vessel’s interior, an ichorous rust muddling throughout the veil of tenebrous smog. I fancy that by consuming such, I might discern that which is false, itself a pursuit I find worthy to plight my troth.

A single sip, and calm I ask, “What awaits within the cycle?” Thereat, the imp responds without words, red wire fingertip’s talon accusing an iron drum table in a corner, adjacent to my reclining form. Melted by the Amduat’s 11th hour, the iron drips along its stanchion. A book atop, flesh-bound, sanguine, worn, glossy, lustrous. All around me bleeds the same hue, a testament to the avant-garde, the exaggerated, the overwrought. This hotel, this lobby and this sham existence. Flicking the cover aside, I sense a portent of its power over me. Increasingly authentic, the imp implores, “None but you dare touch it, neither Nightwhisper, nor Ealdorman, nor Iblis. From it, you recite. You... you pray, my Lady Ruohtta.”

Scorn and defiance igniting within me, I retort, “Pray? Fool! How so, like this?” and I cast myself from the chair upon an exquisite lapis lazui rug. Knees delve the soft, rich texture, my fists clench before me, aloft, my breasts heave and breath quickening as I face the unknown, my face lifting in rapture and defiance toward whoever or whatever lurks beyond.

I breathe deep, yet, there is only emptiness.

Increasingly furious, beyond reason and explanation, I cast down my gaze, my cheek flattening against the stinging gray fabric wrapping my thighs. Spine bowing, I fling wide my arms in a parody of supplication, embracing mockery, splaying my fingers through the intricate pile weave and sardonically wailing, “Or is it thus?”

In that moment, an answer, a repudiation. A coldness seizes me, gripping my shoulder-blade, the whole of my form convulsing. I lurch back, unnatural, scapula perversely prominent. Something, a sinister inertia, forces my face into the rough-hewn yarn. Thrown by forces unseen, I gaze at the ceiling’s vault, a view of heaven, of stars, of the deceiver’s works. Rigid, my toes and fingertips pierce through to wooden planks, my back arches, my body levitating in its tight gown. I grit my teeth, and hiss through them with a venomous tongue not nearly my own, or what I imagine must be my own. Words at last spoken rather than a conversation imagined, throat speech that reverberates malevolently from the hole in my cheek:

Dajashk, Preshtat:
Leth-craven, womb-devourer!
I summon thee!

Damballa Dajashk:
Omen of the spiral-mined eye;
Mirrored, infinite, omniscient, abyssal;
I command thee!

Damballa Preshtat:
Fiend with nine wings;
Both whirlwind and void;
Boast, conflagration, my message beyond the lacuna!
I unleash thee!

A pallor devours color in the chamber, leaving behind a monochromatic void. Beneath my twitching, floating figure, bathed in the spectral glow of the white diamond stars encrusted in the canopy, they whisper their secrets, their luminous facets mirroring my own inner turmoil, and in them I behold reflections. I, an epicenter, concealing a hate-birth black, insidious, creeping. I know not whether this is formed of roots, fingers, veins or perhaps an ersatz amalgamation of all three, but nevertheless it surges from beneath me; a tree of unlife. What it touches decays. The once-luxurious rug crumples, dust swirling against the wind’s natural course. The imp, no more, retreating behind a secret door, vanishing into shadows. The chair, a pile of mildew and termites feasting on its rotting wood. Up the wall it races. Around the window it reaches. One hue, one saturation, one inexorable aim. A place where time ends, the Land of No More.

Overcome with strange joy, I close my eyes, surrendering to the enigma.

Out of sync with time, I slumber.

That is when I remember. When I sleep. When I stare at the scars on my fingertips, just below my fingernails, in confusion. It isn’t vivid. An imprint, that’s what it is. So easy to forget. I wait. Nothing happens, but ever something feels as though it is about to happen. Expectation, I suspect. I stride slowly the night trail and hide my face from the elongated silhouettes of looming pines. They remind me, but of what I know not. Are their secrets memories or warnings? The pines whisper, but their language eludes me. I shun their scenery, drawn by forces beyond comprehension toward a destiny entwined with forgotten echoes.

"You know why they built the roads in this town the way they did? It's a spell."

The Yellow's voice came from the front of the cab, up past the loose black partition curtain. It sounded like it was from somewhere you'd heard of but had never been. A way of speaking that sounded maybe a little old, a little gruff, but one that made you bone-deep certain you'd get where you needed to be, safe and in good time.

"It all twists like a snake, and every time you ride the loop, it's like you're doing a prayer. But it's one of those prayers that nobody knows the words to anymore, just the motions to do it right."

The back of the cabin was plush, but in a way that felt twenty years out of style. Clean, too. He occupied the back passenger seat, while his package leaned up against the space behind the Yellow, stretching from floor to ceiling. It made the air dimmer, that thing: like it sucked up the light from the flares of hellfire that made it through the taxi's smoked glass. Nobody liked being around it, not even back home.

"So who's the prayer to," he asked, shifting in his seat to try and peer through the slit in the fabric, "why would the damned pray for anything? Nobody goes below because they made friends up top."

"My opinion?" said the Yellow in a way that suggested it was gospel, "it's the True King of High Hell. Though I don't know why you'd bother praying to the dead instead of for them."

He didn't reply, and the cabin lapsed into silence. Neon burned the sky to ashes outside, outshining the magma below. Living billboards promised the spark of the divine, the grace of Eden for the lowest price in town, guaranteed.

He'd ridden along with it (or maybe within, he was never quite sure if it was the person in the front or the vehicle itself) five times. Five different jobs, and there was no discretion like that of the Yellow. It was fine for a driver to talk while he was on the clock, but if he was still talking when the meter stopped, that was a problem.

He leaned against the glass and drifted. The same transient world, no matter where you go. Everybody on their way to somewhere else, even if they don't know it yet.

"Almost there," the driver warned.

"You need help with your baggage, sir?"

He ran a claw across the hilt and then down, letting it tease the edges of the white ribbons that crisscrossed the sheath. There was the faintest shimmer of something where he made contact with it.

"No, I'll manage," he answered, "you don't want to touch this."

-----

The door to the Yellow clicked shut behind him, and by the time Meowlexander Paralabane could turn, the cab had vanished. You never saw it arrive or leave; it was there exactly when you needed it and gone the moment you no longer did. Still, it didn't stop him from trying to catch it in the act. He knew he'd manage it one day: he was faster than he looked, and getting quicker all the time.

The Pleiades was pretty in an old school kind of way, like the promise of a grandeur that would become in part your own just by walking through the doors. He wondered if it had been designed to mirror the worlds above, or if architects had dreamed of a stately hell which contained it. Maybe neither, maybe both, it didn't matter so much in the end.

He made sure that the package was strapped securely to his back by its ribbons before joining the river of the damned and stepping inside. The entrance hall was lavish in a way that only money could buy, and his ears flattened back at the cascade of shouts, screams, wails and cries that burst from every direction. It was premium pandemonium, a taste of the chaos of the pit before you descended to gamble away your forever.

His whiskers drooped and he idly licked his paw, running it over his tortishell fur. There were too many people in here to spot her easily, he supposed. There were probably too many people to spot her even if they gave him control of all the cameras. But he had to start somewhere, so paws on the ground...so to speak.

He approached the nearest service desk - a rare island of calm in the churning broil of the eager fallen - and cleared his throat. His bushy tail flipped back and forth as the employee turned to face him - a three-faced deva with as many winning smiles and carefully-folded wings of infested spider webs behind her back. Meowlexander narrowed his lone eye, unsure of which of hers to look into, and spoke:

"Excuse me, I'm looking for a friend. Who do I need to talk to about finding a missing purrson?"

What a night… Garrett mulled over the events while the cab took him home, not really paying much attention to what was going on around him. By the time he reached home, the auburn realized just how exhausted he was and said his thanks to the driver before sliding out of the cab, closing the door. Heading to the apartment building, he used the code to get inside and headed up to the condo. Unlocking the door, he headed inside, glad that the place was empty.

"Thank goodness… I need sleep. After a shower… No… sleep first." Arguing back and forth with himself, Garrett finally just moved to his bed, collapsing onto it after dropping bag and shoes onto the floor. Curling up, it wasn't long before the fit male was out cold. Unsure how long he had been asleep, Garrett was rudely awoken by giggling and loud clanging sounds. Groaning in irritation, he figured it was another twat brought home by Jimmy, his roommate. How he couldn't figure that the girls he continually dated were not good for him wasn't clear to Garrett, but he had yet to bring home someone that wasn't a complete and total tart. Sighing, Garrett rubbed his fingers against his golden-green eyes before rolling over onto his stomach. Yanking the covers around him while burying his head beneath a pillow, the male tried to go back to sleep.

"Damn it all to hell…" Grumbling when the giggling grew louder, Garrett realized that Jimmy must've had the female over last night and they were just getting up. He had a few days off and was clearly enjoying himself.

"SHUT UP!" Garrett shouted, grabbing a box of kleenexes that were beside the bed on the table. Throwing them hard at the door, he curled up, begging his brain to shut back off so he could go back to sleep. The giggling quieted down and when Jimmy shouted an apology, he couldn't help but roll his eyes.

He laid in bed for about an hour longer, just listening to the movie that the two were watching. It sounded like Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which wasn't surprising. He liked it a lot. After a bit longer, Garrett moved out of the bed into the bathroom that was connected to his room. Stripping, he tossed his clothing into the hamper before climbing into the shower. He took a very long shower because, unlike most guys, he liked long showers. Once certain every inch of his body was clean, he shut off the water and wrapped a towel around his waist.

"Mm... hope work is as productive tonight as it was last night. Especially since I was supposed to be off tonight." Musing a bit, he headed back into the bedroom in order to strip his sheets and put on fresh ones, hoping that would help him sleep better.

It wasn't long until he was digging through his closet, trying to figure out what he wanted to wear to work. Normally his costumes were kept in his locker at the strip club, but he had brought a lot of them home to fix them up and launder them and hadn't quite gotten to the point of taking them back yet. Musing, he finally settled on his cowboy outfit, complete with a Stetson hat. Grinning, Garrett pulled it out before gently folding it up into his work bag. Glancing at the time, he sighed and headed to the closet, pulling on a pair of sweats and red tank, knowing he'd change once he got to the Club.

Grabbing his bag, he exited his room and glanced around at the sudden silence. It appeared Jimmy and his tart were already gone and he just rolled his green eyes as he moved out of the apartment, locking the door behind him. Catching a cab, Garrett gave directions to work and leaned back as the driver headed to where he directed. Once the cab reached its destination, he paid before sliding out and heading into the backdoor of the Pleiades Casino & Resort waving at the security guard.

"Alright, let's see what I can do on my supposed day off." Mumbling more to himself than anyone else since he had entered the dressing room by this point, Garrett put his bag in his locker. Grabbing out his outfit, he stripped out of his everyday normal clothing and pulled on a pair of assless chaps, the Stetson, and slid on the vest that showed off his scrawny yet fit body. Nodding, he locked up his locker before heading to the bar to get a drink before his performance started.

—— Earth F67X: the Asomatous Détente & Terrestrial Customs

When Ilaria flutters up to the service desk, it appears unoccupied. Opposite the gold-flecked slate surface, she sees nobody. Nor, really, anything other an inchoate whirling maelstrom. Worse, it is mostly free of clutter. Only one item of note rests upon it, an antique gilt frame. Therein pictured is a Ghibli-esque depiction of a demonic black feline gasconading its dull, opaline wings, flared feathers reminiscent of a painted bunting’s. Malefic rosso corsa eyes reflect forbidden abyssal sigils and hint at hunger, narcissism, and a haughty ego. Scrawled in black sludge on the picture frame is the message out to lunch — Tāwhaki.



While angelic and innocent, Ilaria is no fool, and defies the infernal ruse. She locks eyes with the catmonic creature in the picture and politely, but firmly, requests, “Excuse me, may I go through?”

No reaction, but as the minutes pass, the cat’s cloying ceases to entertain, so it sighs, and stalks out of the picture frame, a consecutive three-tailed taunt brushing underneath Ilaria’s nose. Flames accompany each tap of its amber claws against the slate slab, and it turns its rear to her, tails aloft, glances over its shoulder, and huffs, “Mark your name, god-slave, along with your destination, reason for your terrestrial sojourn, and the names of the humans you desire to vex,” — and taps a foreclaw on a piece of parchment that was not present prior.

“To whom am I speaking?” Ilaria demands.

Reclining on the slab directly in front of the frame, which now houses an erupting volcano, the feline licks its paws slowly, ignoring Ilaria, but eventually gets bored, yawns, stretches, and replies, “Tāwhaki, drude and prince of Balam, unrivaled magician, seer of past and future, gestalt of lies, spawn of fire and ash, and ...” he allows for a dramatic paws, “duty agent of f67x’s terrestrial customs and metaphysical portal containment and control.”

—— The Pleiades Casino & Resort: Courtyard - Aeternus

She was about to say something to the man, but the one coming from behind her took priority and left her indebted to speak to the sewer-like being later. Though the bike came to a stop Selena had not yet turned it off. The torque-biased engine was especially made for bursts of speed at the cost of top speed, such as those needed when she saw someone icky, let out an “Ew!” accompanied by a scowl of disgust, and had to get away from the source of her displeasure as fast as possible. Many such cases.

“Wait a second-” She let out, looking back through the rearview mirror at the stranger and thought: “That could be the anomaly I detected earlier!” And as she expected, once she brought her PDA up to scan the stranger she found that he was the source of the strange pierce into the dimension. By now she had made some distance which meant she could whip the vehicle around once again to address him directly. “I also need some help, actually…” She said as she attached the phone-like device to the end of her blade and chucked it at the diseased fellow that tried to ambush her, her disposition towards him changing on a dime like a dwarf seeing a particularly blue and large diamond at the mines.

Hair-like metallic tendrils began to pour out of the cell phone-like with disregard to the sewer man’s current disgusting physique, digging deep into his face skin and then attaching itself to him like some sort of long legged metal millipede facehugger. Heat began to come off the device as it began to process whatever information it could suck out of the man, boiling his skin like a frying pan left over the fire too long, and then was set alight from the putrid vapors coming off of the goop that he had been covered with.

While that transpired she turned her attention to the other poop man that seemed far friendlier. “You are yourself? What is that supposed to mean?” She said as she raised a brow. This was far more important of a question than how a turd could talk, and why it was scottish. Though her thoughts would have to wait as the floor suddenly decided to no longer be solid.

Selena acted quickly, her legs moved to stand on the seat of her motorcycle, pushing down as she jumped out of the trap with a “Ha! Outsmarted you, silly magical floor.” but then, she realized she had forgotten about her PDA. “Ah fuck, hold on.” She said, reaching out to try to grab the phone from the blankety courtyard only to fall in regardless. So much for being smarter than the floor.

Her transition into the strange realm made her get on high alert, the surroundings changing as she pocketed the floating device and looked around, unsheathing her blade, her gaze darting around in a predatory manner. The fear was mirrored, though instead of showing it Selena kept her head cold. Her eyes were intense, like a fire piercing through the darkened veil that the demon clone tried to cover her with. No openings were made, they were equal in skill even if not in soul or mind. Eventually either would slip, she knew it, the other knew it, the devil thought it would be her, Selena also thought that, and when it happened, she striked only to find… Nothing. From her focus she had completely ignored the angel, not that she would know it was her as she had not interacted too much with Ilaria past receiving orders through her communicator.

—— The Pleiades Casino & Resort: Thalgrim’s Gambling Quarters - Aeternus

She landed roughly, falling first and then having her bike fall on top of her. “Ow.” She let out, pushing the large vehicle aside and looking around. “Where…?” She thought out loud, squinting her eyes as she looked around at the bright casino. Many things were happening around her, but what she cared about the most was getting out of here. “Where am I?” She asked one of the roulette players, being infuriated by his lack of a response and then asking the next, and then the next, until she finally gave up and instead reached out to grab the roulette ball, hopefully getting the attention she wished to get. This unfortunately left the PDA to crawl back to her, removing itself from the man it had stuck onto, now a charred corpse and with slush for brains.

—— Earth F67X: the Asomatous Détente & Terrestrial Customs

“Very well.” Ilaria replied simply. She reached out and gave the paper a glance, her mind rapidly recognizing the format even if ancient and perhaps purposefully obscure. The document would have no validity if she filled it improperly, leaving her stuck until she figured out the correct way to fill the form were it not for the fact she was gifted with the power to deal with bureaucracy. Inside her brain hundreds of thousands of formats, regulations, typefaces and records came to fill in the blank spaces on the piece of parchment. She had to use a very specific ink, a non-standard font, and precision that only a machine could afford her. The problem of course being the irregular parchment size she was given.

She was silent, her halo spinning in ticks like the rapid dial of a rotary phone both clockwise and counterclockwise as her wings fragmented and slid forwards like thin paper over her arms. The pure white shifted, forming pale transparent yet luminescent rolls and lasers, some crumbling to black dust as the machine formed at the base of the paper, adjusting to its size and giving the document a double pass, backwards then forwards as it filled both sides of the form. The LaserJet finish was impeccable, ink codified as regulation stated would need to be applied from toner rather than regular printer ink, leaving a professional finish on the documentation.

She was showing off clearly. Her office efficiency and capabilities were enough to win the Excel championship from its beginning until the last blackhole would evaporate, beating all other applicants by a 50% time differential every time even after the handicap of only being able to use one hand and a 1992 IBM ThinkPad. A monster of white collar work, and she had to make it severely clear to the feline. “I am done.” She declared, the document detailing with rigor why a stay on Earth was necessary to adjust for the human sensibilities as outlined in the latest version of Regulations on the interactions with mortal beings, page 78, item 67, addendum 1. and Expanded guidelines for the proper treatment of extra-planar entities, page 1172, article 5, subsection 13.

The broker was unremarkable to behold. He had chosen a nondescript face to wear, with skin too relaxed where it was not pulled overly taut against his skull. Its graying hair, overdue for a trim and worn combed back, gave the appearance of old dust newly settled under the hum of dimmed and faded lighting. He presided over an enclave of abandoned wares, carved out within a row of mundane storefronts, with nothing to set it apart from its fellows beyond a single row of scribbled glyphs hidden within its signage. Those markings alone declared his store to be one of several destinations at the end of a twisting labyrinth of hidden icons, scattered throughout Aeternus. Many such havens were open to those who knew how to read the guide marks.

Should anyone stumble upon his domain unawares, they would find only a pleasant middle aged man in khakis and a burgundy sweater vest. Not human—palpably, by association alone—but something comfortable enough within a man's skin that he was well set in the role. A something that was beneath notice, always comfortable in a pawnshop selling old books, peculiar antiques, and forgotten nicknacks brought hither from the human realms above. Those public rooms were more cabinet of curiosity than they were a brokerage.

The back rooms, on the other hand, were reserved for those careful few that followed the markings with clearer intent than the careless wandering of the odd vagrant soul: or of the odder living human that had taken a few too many wrong turns in life. More than one had, in desperation, spent their last days hawking the few lingering possessions that remained to tether their souls to the worlds above.

Within that private antechamber the broker observed the latest item his guest had set before him, with the greatest care, minding to hold his hands ever at a discrete distance. Though he was shrouded in living flesh and a man's sinew, there remained still an engravement within: his soul bore the lingering impression of searing light, once all-encompassing, but now receded in all its former brilliance. He was as a glass stained brown from far too long an exposure, rendered down with a landscape of cracks and fissures once cooled. He was the absence of a thing long vanished from the earth, yet permitted continued form by grace of that very absence.

It was that echo of the song, that which once permeated the firmament, shining beyond eternity, which urged him most pause. The warm metal spoke to the memory of a harmonic luminescence, tempting him to bring his hands ever closer: all the while constantly spilling forth—imparting its own gravity upon his tiny domain—as it blurred the borders of its own material and that of the corpora which surrounded it. Too easy, it would be, for that song to find purchase where it did not belong, attuning with even his faded echo.

“I have seen similar construction,” he offered, setting his eye loupe aside, stepping safely back a full palmspan from the countertop. “But not similar make. If you're looking for a companion piece, I'm afraid I can't help you. Who laid this blessing?”

“No one,” Sophie responded. “It was only the ammunition itself that was consecrated.”

She raised her hands from the wood counter's brass trim to set them reassuringly upon the offering: a large submachine gun, metallic gray, with a faint blue finish. The magazine had been removed, and she carried no ammunition on her person. Gradually, over millennia of exposure, the weapon had grown to synchronize with its ammunition, the harmony altering the very substance of the alloys from which it was cast. The power of that ancient blessing had taken on a life of its own, such that even absent it pulsed unabated throughout the room, though never upon her.

“It was my brother who constructed this weapon, and designed it's ammunition.”

Sophie allowed her sunglasses slip, letting the sight of her malformed eyes make it easier for him to read her aura. She had never been any kind of angel at all, but she had consumed enough of their host that theirs had become a familiar old song. It was natural enough to think like one of them, to wear their history upon her psyche. Long experience had taught her that one of their own would never perceive the gulf of difference standing between them. She knew them keenly, having studied and served for long years under their most terrible princes, just as she was versed well enough with their iconography to find this place.

“He named it Helena.”

Misleading him this way was its own kind of mercy. He would only grow more anxious if he knew what her brother actually was.

“Because it shoots nails?” the broker asked, having observed the slot where the magazine would insert, noting its unusual dimensions. “Still, might I ask who laid the invocation for him? Not that it's someone I'd ever want to meet, you understand.”

Not someone who would so carelessly lay a benediction that powerful, he meant. That it would spill into other objects, even investing them with their own like will.

“You may. I have something of his with me, actually,” she told him.

And then she withdrew a hand into her white jacket—as though reaching for a pocket in the liner—and removed from nowhere a small parcel wrapped in an oily gray, iridescent, silk. Once his attention was drawn fully upon her, the gun and the other objects once spread across the counter began to fade from mind. It happened as things often do in dreams, with once important details fading swiftly from memory, as they fell away from the dreamer's attention.

Sophie laid the silk bundle on the bare countertop and slowly unwrapped it, this time carefully avoiding touching the surface underneath to her bare skin. The moment the last fold was parted, the click of a gear train rang out, and a loud, thudding, tick made a clangor between the broker's suddenly clenched teeth.

“It's been broken for ages,” Sophie said. “I'd be interested in fixing it, only I've never seen a working piece quite like it. Have you ever come across something that could help me?”

At last the worn, broken, time piece was fully revealed. Before the clerk lay an old marine chronometer, with a cracked face, and made of tarnished brass, scratched gold, and cold steel. It had long stopped keeping time, but the minute hand still wobbled and shook in place, and the sound of its operation were enough to ring clearly throughout the chamber.

Some instinct, long buried with his Fall, compelled the clerk to immediately, truthfully, declare “no.” That word he spoke, before his mind could work through the steps of his fleshly body's operation. It had already grown more difficult for him to focus. He could hear the clock workings so loudly, the reverberation cleaving his thoughts. He stared intently at the piece—was the hand really shaking, or was the sound only caught between the walls of his vessel's skull?

Harmony was interrupted by an errant chord. Pressure grew, and at last he ruptured, the blackened peel of his being transformed and transported back through time itself until there was wave of heat, and of light without end. Walls vanished, glass melted, and the torn pages of books fluttered away from their burned covers. Traces of burnt carbon were left smudged across Sophie's face. Disappointed, she wrapped the broken timepiece again and set it back where it belonged. Alone in the empty room, its great weight easily vanished from her and from Aeternus.

She had gambled wrong.

Whichever heavenly choir sang his kind into being would be of no use to her.

Still, at least she knew that there would be no need to waste a visit on a lesser heaven once she was finished exploring a greater hell.

Sophie relaxed a moment before she closed her eyes, and allowed herself a short, deep breath. She held it inside her for a minute pause, committing the space around her to memory, and let the breath escape her lungs in its own time. She took another, longer breath. It was only a dream—and then she exhaled again. Not a bad dream, not a good dream. She drew in another breath. What had just happened was best left to the most mundane of dreams, and carried nothing worthy of remembrance. Or so she told herself.

She let the dream carry her back to the first feel of mild steel, as she looked through the window and into the shop for the first time, the coarseness of the door handle's nonstick grip catching her palm. Her psychometry had taken a quick imprint, imparting to her memory a flash of the store's traffic. She'd pulled the door back in a quick uneven jerk, while a patchy piece of weatherstripping caught on a notch in the frame. An old style bell jangled, muffled by the clang of the door's placard as it crashed against the glass, the store's business hours rattling back and forth. The smell of old cellulose from the far bookshelf hit first, before the scent of dried out machine oils from a display nearer to the door. She'd caught the shopkeeper's eye immediately, and crossed the space between them.

“Call me Vito,” he'd said. He'd thought he was sharing a joke with her. He was a divine emanation, sundered and shadowed, but still a ray of light, wrapped in dying human flesh.

“You can call me Sophie,” she'd answered, and though she knew him for what he was, he would never know her, save for what his own true sight misled him to believe.

She had pulled out a small gold plated trinket, a handheld gyrocompass, or rather something disguised as one.

“I'm a collector,” she'd told him. “I came across this years ago, and I've been searching for acquisitions of similar design.”

That was how it had begun. And then—

“—design is interesting, I'll grant you,” the broker said, considering the mechanism hidden behind the dial. “Of course, it doesn't actually work, does it? Those people died out before this place had its first foundations lain.”

Sophie blinked her dreaming eyes opened, safe behind her blue tinted shades, before reaching up to wipe the black smudge of his death from her face. The mark came away with one swipe of a small lavender face cloth, and once it was gone there was nothing to say the last forty-two minutes were not just another fantasy.

“Of course,” she agreed.

Disguised as a common tool abundant in pre-spaceflight civilizations, the compass discretely housed a micro quantum processor optimized for calculating positional data, that was necessary to operate its paired pico portal generator. Such devices were once manufactured by humans to allow for instantaneous translation between universes, in the epoch where such things were still commonplace. It hadn't worked in ten thousand years.

It was the first item she had offered up for examination. For the others she'd requested the back room to showcase.

“Such a shame,” the broker said, as he had before. “I've heard stories of such devices, here and there, you see. I would have liked to use one myself, but their day ended long ago. Now they're only relics. I wouldn't know where to find anyone else who might be willing to part with an intact one. Certainly not in this humble strip of hell.”

“It carries a certain value to me. Nostalgia, not sentimentality. If the men who created this still exist somewhere, it'd be interesting to see them again.”

The broker passed the trinket back to her.

“I'm afraid I'm in no position to help you.” He considered her for a moment. “It belonged to your host vessel, yes?”

“It did.”

“How attached are you to that soul? Must be very old to remember those days, eh? I'd be happy to take that weary thing off your hands, if the wistfulness is bothersome. I'll throw in a good rate for that body, as a bonus, if they're a package deal.”

“I'm afraid they're not for sale, either one of them. They also have a certain value to me—you know, the sentimental kind.”

Sophie exited the pawn shop, onto the hustling streets of Aeternus. Without all of the demons, it might as well have been a quiet night on her native Earth, transposed upon the present from the early days of her first life. Still, they were there, and thankfully she was more than familiar with navigating their domains. In her other memory, she had spent a great deal of time exploring realms just like it. Once under the surface they all skewed towards the same template. There were common themes to mankind's many hells; none that were universal in absolute terms, but there was always similarity enough to allow for a familiar journey.

In their current age, she had found them incredibly useful thoroughfares, for the unaffiliated traveler. While many of the old modes of passage had lost their viability, hell dimensions each by design intersected an incredible breadth of realities, received travelers from a wide variety of worlds, and always would. And yet—provided one was proofed against losing their soul—they were often safer to sojourn than divine realms of comparable scale. And they were always more stable still than what paltry fragments remained of the artificial subspace domains that man once carved between his neighboring worlds.

Sophie flit purposefully through the patchwork throngs of devils and fiends, the demons, and the revenants. Each and all allowed her to pass without contest, every and one unconsciously claiming her as one of their own without consideration. Once, long ago, she had been trapped drifting, a mind disincarnate, far without the formless void that enshrouded reality. Reliant upon other stray spirits for her passage back, she had found her life preserver in too many demons to count, letting their souls harbor her psyche from one Earth to the next—for so long as they could survive bearing her.

The scientists that she had once allowed to examine her, ages ago, had given her the name of it, her psionic camouflage. Through consumption, absorption, and integration of countless minds she had acquired the ability to shape her thoughts to a structure indistinguishable from those of others. It was an instinctive process, a necessary survival mechanism developed during the time of her incorporeal state. For the longest period of her existence, she had not been cognizant of what she had been doing without a thought.

Then as now, every being to cross her path instinctively saw her as of their own kind, but once they parted ways they would remember only their own faulty perception. Inevitably, her poor fiction faded from the mind shortly after her departure, leaving nothing in its place but a sense of lost time.

Having spent so many lifetimes drifting ethereal beyond the void, it had been too natural to offer herself up to her current task, the journey that had begun with her current life. She sought out the places where limited traffic still passed between dimensions. She cataloged the havens where the travelers congregated, and investigated the evidence the of their passage. So much was still out there, unseen in the vast expanse. She found herself grasping constantly at motes of sand, never quite finding a grand design that would allow mankind to freely traverse the firmament once more. The end of greatness had come, long ago, leaving only fallen worlds sundered from one another in its wake.

There had been small successes, rare as they appeared now. She had rediscovered lost worlds, and identified new passages that tied them together, however few they seemed. But while there were rediscoveries here and there, each Earth was far isolated from it's former neighbors, and never were any where they were supposed to be. In the centuries since the collapse, there was no structure left to discover. And without it, travel between Earths remained far more arduous than it had ever been.

The memory of the coming cacophony surfaced in her mind seconds before it actually became real. Surprised, she turned her head in the direction whence the blast would soon emanate.

A roar shook the street, echoing between the highest buildings.

There came an intense flash, Aeternus ever so briefly overtaken by artificial daylight, as a blue sun rose from the darkness. Seconds later Sophie felt the death scream of myriad mortal souls, alien to this realm all, conjured forth only to meet their end. All color washed away from the realm as those wayward souls were extinguished, their last thoughts transformed into merciless light and atomic fire.

But soon, night returned, in time for a dense head of air to shake the city block where she stood. A high pitched, whistling, scream carried throughout the city, set the nearby windows rippling, as rows of city lights blacked out one by one. The glass held, and main power was restored as quickly as it had been disrupted.

“Was that the old Pleiades?” a fox demon muttered.

“Sounds like someone doesn't want to cash out his chips,” his companion answered.

Sophie felt only muted panic in the distance, confined primarily to those minds that had the flavor of human origin. Perhaps some few of the weaker fiends were shaken as well, those who were in the wrong place, just in time to get caught up in whatever was going on.

The rest simply went about their evening as though nothing had happened.

A nearby cacodaemon glanced at Sophie, and she shrugged at it. With all one hundred of its shoulders, it returned the gesture and continued lumbering away. A moment later, the rest of the pedestrians continued walking, slithering, and hovering as was their wont. It was nothing out of the ordinary for a night in hell, even if some peculiarity gnawed at her.

She let a distant picture fill her mind, briefly superimposing itself over the view before her eyes. With ethereal sight she saw a distant broken street, fuming with corrosive mists, pockmarked by broken and upturned slaps of concrete rubble, and a company of burning corpses. Amidst the scene, a pair of dragons. One of whom, she thought she might recognize, his image staring back at her from an after action report, read many ages ago in her native cluster of universes. It took a few seconds to recall the name.

...Tage? What's he doing here?

Weird. Oh well.

She kept walking.

He had obviously arrived to this place under his own power, which for her purposes was rather less interesting than someone stumbling in unawares. Not at all what she was looking for.

But there was something there to be discovered, the future told her. Not the dragons, as odd a coincidence as that was. Instead she scried a closer look at the destruction, her thoughts quickly wandering to the casino nearby. There was a tension there, in the minds of staff and guest alike, something in the forefront of more than one fiend's deepest desires. What was it then, the unspoken purpose that hung over the resort? She could have taken advantage of their momentary distraction to probe it, and perhaps not be noticed, but... the hotel's human guests were simpler.

Where are all of you coming from? Soon she found a name. Sophie recognized it, not in the memory of her body, nor of her psyche, but in that other memory she had carried since long before this life began. Earth F67x. The world that had once warred with the Val'Gara, was it?

Not at all who she'd hoped to find out here, but welcome all the same.

A spirit vogued mockingly through the valley of the shadow of death.

Quietness lingered after the storm. A body, like it awoken from a slumber, stood on stilettos in pitch blackness, crust-eyed, wishing to be absolved of the atrocity before them. Not quite sleepwalking, the devil witnessed it all. Usually, tranquility spoke volumes, still air whispering hope, planting seeds, foretelling the sun's arrival. It was nature's gentle way of reminding humanity that even the most tumultuous nights yield to light. In Aeternus, there was no such hope–such light. They say God is light, and in him, there is no darkness at all, but anticipating the rays of the morning to awake from *this* nightmare? One waits an eternity.

Dawn never came, and it never will.

Unlady-like, Ixxa burped an ember, wiping a morsel of blood from the corner of her mouth with her wrist. It didn't compare to what stained her dress and the rest of the room. Like a taipan, her forked tongue instinctually licked around her lipstick-smudged mouth. Around her, devastation–litters of limbs, blood seeping into the deep cracks of leather Chesterfield seats, once ornate interior cornices charred beyond recognition, and countless demons beheaded by guillotine, stretched into knots by looping torture racks. The crimson-skinned succubus stood alone in the center of it all.

Her snow blonde bed hair could have looked worse, but for the moment, looks mattered little to Ixxa. It wasn't like anyone could see her. Only her lime-green eyes stood out in the magical darkness. That begs the question though, where exactly was she? She blacked out.

A sanguine flame of zippo lighter lumified a corner of the room, evaporating the humidity of the dark mist. On top of Vincenzo's piano, Ceven sat cross-legged with a look reading business as usual.

“Eating for two now?”

Ixxa whipped her snow-blonde tresses behind her shoulder with her left hand. Slightly embarrassed, she raised her chin, running her sharp black acrylics through her hair, neck gently swaying left and right. Perhaps it was an act, but she failed to acknowledge the situation.

“I think it's time to go to the hotel. I don't suppose Nocturnelle will let us just waltz through the front door with this. Think he'll sniff out our plan?”

“He always does, but I have a feeling his hands will be tied this time around. Go on without me. I’ll have to fix up here a bit so we can open back up in an hour. We may have to sit down and try to convince him. Anyways, Vincenzo hit the music.”

On her way to the hallway, the succubus strutted past several bodies in her descent wayward down into the winding rabbit hole of the speakeasy’s backrooms. Leading to the infinitely crawling ant colony of catacombs that were Aeternus’ depths, the freshness of Aeternus’ sulfuric fumes delighted Ixxa's nostrils even down here.

It never quite made sense to the horned seductress, but who was she to complain when it could potentially smell like piss or the countless dead bodies of wanderers who dared traverse this eternal labyrinthine connecting all parts of this verse. Even now, hysterical wails diluting into whispers in the abyss tickled her sharp ears. Passing sepulcher after sepulcher, small and large, some vaulting nefarious imps, others fell titans, the deeper she traveled, the less hazy her mind became. Normally just walking between the walls felt like being wedged in between the gyri of a truly odious mind. Right now, it felt…different. The tunnels always had a mind of their own, testing wanderers' resolve through hellish standards which allowed only the most blackhearted demons to navigate with clarity.

Admittedly, she struggled most with this place out of the demonic casino quartet of Vileiro, Ceven, Parooz, and herself. It may have come from a sense of insecurity. Ceven was the treasurer of souls, Vileiro racked up souls by the second with his intergalactic chain of casinos, and Parooz, the most efficient of them all, when around, was The Big Earner managing to acquire premium souls by the boatload with get-rich schemes on a whim.

Ixxa, despite being the seductress of deviancy, the mistress of great sex, the sultan of twat — she, a renowned demon in her own right, facilitated the fitting end of too many mortals to count. Yet, her work was slighted. Souls were souls, most of the time at least, but admittedly, those who long for sexual deeds from a demon whether for an experience or to be desired understandably felt like endlessly snacking on junk food. Frankly, it was too easy but no longer would she stand in her peer's shadows.

Her trek brought her to a brightly painted door entering the wine cellar of the Pleiades Casino & Resort. Unlocking the creaky door, which gallons of WD-40 could not fix, she was alone, walking past rows upon rows of wine racks and severed claws with gnarled fingers carrying colossal vats of strange liquids. In this ashy, obsidian-bricked chamber, each bottle is sealed with a molten black wax stamped with blasphemous symbols and infernal sigils. In the center before Ixxa, a goblet of blackened crystal, filled with wine so dark it dimmed the light around it like a reverse glow. It was the succubus devil’s first time seeing it, but she was certain. This is what guided her through the catacombs. Looking up, it dwarfed her. Seldomly a red drop from the black ceiling broke the silence of the chamber and that is what guided her through the tunnels.

She kneeled, burning the sigil birth to her by the Hells on the foot of the enormous glass with the tip of her fuschia glowing nail. Standing in silence, a single blood-red drop fell from the murky expanse of the ceiling unleashing an echoing plop until the edge of the glass overflowed into a waterfall painting the dark floors a blood red. The walls around Ixxa murked, shrouding everything around the succubus until it was just her, the crystal glass, and a hazy pink sky. The river she stood in felt like being ankle-deep at the start of rapids. The feeling of an outgoing tide pulled her in by her most carnal temptations, desires, aspersions, and wishes. Yes, even demons had those. With her lime-green eyes, she made out a far more sinister pair on the other side of the glass. Even devils gulped.

“Speak Daughter.”

—— Earth F67X: the Asomatous Détente & Terrestrial Customs


Careful not to touch the document, Tāwhaki dutifully examines each field and footnote, murmuring an occasional word or phrase in his infernal purr-cum-baritone while his malefic eyes trace the laser-etched char of characters seared into the holy-white parchment: “Selena, f67x, San Pedro de Urabá, 12 // aught-9 // 22, unbalanced scales, gibbous air trine descending into retrograde.”

A pause, then he reaches out an atramentous paw, claws extended, and bats at the ostensibly ordinary slate countertop. A resounding screech, as claws meet rock, awakening an opaque void writhing holographic within. He takes his time deciphering the contents.

“Mrrrrrrrrrreow,” he muses. The demon hunter is in no immediate peril other than, it would seem, failing her mission to slaughter one of Hell’s demonic denizens sauntered astray to egoize in his daddy’s personal demiplane. Glancing back at Ilaria, he demands, “why are you wasting my time?”

“All my paperwork is in order, I assure you,” the angel responds.

He stares at her, his red gaze unreadable, vacant, inward. Is she arrogant or imbecilic? Is Heaven really so out of touch with mortals — that bad at keeping tabs on the whereabouts of those who are, for all intents and purposes, under their so-called care? Probably. An arrogant being cannot behold the beam in its own eye, after all, and none exceed the arrogance of beings self-described as divine. Maybe there is another explanation, perhaps even a good one, but he doesn’t care. His job is to erect barriers for angels seeking entry into Earth. To obstruct. In a flat, humorless tone, he states, “This is Terrestrial Customs for f67x, Earth.”

“Yes, I am aware,” the angel agrees, her feathers unruffled and her tone neutral.

“Your demon hunting ditz is not on Earth.”

“Yes, I am aware,” the angel again agrees.

“You have no business on Earth, there is no portal proximate to your human counterpart on Earth. I cannot approve this request,” Tāwhaki elaborates.

“I have to go through Earth to get there,” Ilaria patiently explains, not missing a beat.

He contemplates the darkness vortex betwixt his paws, hisses, and flicks it aside into a whorl of infinitely diminishing nought. Of course, it is unbecoming of an angel to transfer direct to a pseudo-Hell such as Aeternus, but he is under no obligation to offer her any such favor, at least, not without one in return. All to aid a vaguely-imperiled demon hunter, hah! Also possible is that the master of Aeternus has, as humans did on Earth, emplaced measures inhibiting the unannounced arrival of angelic tourists. Batting that thought around in his mind, he cheshire grins, as his job may be to keep angels out of Earth, but luring them into places like Hell ... well, that’s another matter entirely!

“Earth is not a transfer terminal,” he concludes, “It delights me to announce that you’ll have to find a different means of travel to Aeternus. I recommend a portal to Hell, which delights in stray angels coming in for a visit, however temporarily. Or perhaps you’d prefer my home, Entobalti, a necrolivid hipasia of immaculate suffering contrasted with which Hell seems strikingly pleasant? That said, this is not a general service terminal. This is Earth customs, for travel to Earth. If you want me to assist you with travel elsewhere, you’ll have to wait for a break in my shift and, you know, give me a reason to aid in your journey during my personal time. Or you can try to open your own portal.”

“Kitty hell, you mean? Sure. Adorable. So long as I get to where I need to be on time,” Ilaria relents all too easily, her tone changeless, unperturbed.

Recalling Entobalti, the Dissonance of Infinite Pains, impregnates his thoughts with nostalgia. Ilaria’s reductive naïveté in casting it as an adorable kitty hell widens the grin on his face. A poor metaphor for the the place, a pseudo-reality in a superstate of positive and negative corporeality. In his mind’s eye, it is an eternal implosion, spherical, pulsing, multi-layered. Bands crisscrossed upon bands of innumerable screams stretching and snapping back against the whole, an endless intermingling reverberation of exquisite and novel torment.

“As it happens, I have a break soon,” he seductively purrs, high-stepping through the picture frame and exiting a mirror a stone’s throw down the length of the service desk. “Naturally, I’d be doing this as a purrrr-sonal favor. But purrrr-haps you could deliver a package. A gift for Balam, my mother. Here, in this little red box beneath my paw.”

Almost imperceptibly, he nudges it forward. It slides the slate length effortlessly, as though the distance were negligible, as though space itself were merely a plaything contracting at his behest. A small, red, leather-bound carton sealed with meandering black ichor. Both seem impossibly alive.

He lifts his head, their eyes meet, his big, red, and pleading.

“But a trifle.”

He laughs, breaking character. Just as impromptu, he pounces forward, and vanishes through another mirror, before unnoticed, or, more likely, entirely absent, yet now flat and face-up atop the desk. His tail vanishes into the impossible plane, then, from behind Ilaria, his voice, amplified by an improbably massive gilt-frame silverglass, sings, “Pre-purrr yourself, angel. The path through Entobalti is right behind you.”

There was little reason for a frost devil to feel the chills, yet, Vileiro documented every goosebump raising the fine hairs on his neck. His mind skated the rink of Cocytus. Looking down, the crystalline scape of flash-frozen entities leering at his spirit was enough to drive any man insane. It was a good thing Vileiro was not a man, but a devil chiseled, molded, birthed from the very ice he stood on. Like a grand statute of marble, he held his head high amongst demons, emboldened by the stature granted to him by his superior. His earthly persona often betrayed him, constantly overthinking, worried, and indecisive. Here? When Sarcoen addressed him, he felt empowered.

There was little reason for a succubus devil to feel shame, yet before him, Ixxa felt nakedness. An act Minos failed heartedly to accomplish. The unreasoning winds and torrential rain of the second circle stained her face with mascara, souls whirling about in this hurricane of lust in which several were her handy work from earlier. It was precisely the shot in the demoness needed. She stood tall. Sarcoen addressed her and she replied.

“You chased Sepias, sentenced him, labeled him cafone, and not only is he back, he is underboss again. I know better than to question you, but I can't help but feel out of the loop. However, I know one thing. You wouldn't unleash him unless you felt you could control him. When will you return to Aeternus?”

A guttural laugh, shaking the hells rattled Aeternus like a low-magnitude quake. This high up, Vileiro watched frozen books clang off the floor like unbreakable blocks of ice.

“You know me well, my child.”

Speaking from the same urge, Vileiro and Ixxa engaged with different parts of the same entity simultaneously.

“I have another question. Something that has been eating at me. I want to know what happened in the last war against heaven.”

“...”

“Forgive me Ealdo—”

“No, you should know. Heed my words as I predate time itself. I, an entity of duality, the embodiment of contradiction, born from the same primordial chaos, yet destined to diverge. Two sides of the same coin, my sons, of prophecy entwined in my conflict. I left much of my children in the dark.

In the realm of the ancient ones, the number two bore the mark of Wisdom, a concept encapsulated in the words "Wise" and "Dome." To "wise your dome" was to transcend the limitations of ignorance, to enlighten the blind, the deaf, and the dumb. But such notions were mere folly, feeble attempts to break free from the shackles of darkness that enshroud Lucifer's society and way of life. We, the eternal ones, who have witnessed the dawn of creation and shall endure until the final reckoning, scoff at such frail forms of logic.

Before I knelt the mighty Seraphim, the Cherubim, and the Ophanim, their divine arrogance a testament to their alliance with the Almighty. Yet, their hubris only emboldened me, the now forgotten one who spurred many devils prior to my wake now spurned.

Came Michael, his blade, ablaze with heavenly light, a beacon of contempt searing my flesh and spirit alike. His demeaning radiance split me asunder, weakening me with each relentless strike. It was as Uriel had foreseen. Had I reacted a hair sooner, had I crushed his throat, squeezing, choking the life out of the smug expression he held over me, we might be living in a very different world. All remember Michael. All laud Michael, some workshop him through idolatry. They paint our bout as one-sided. Disrespectfully so. After our battle, I championed my demise as a proud general of Hell. War comes with loss, and sacrifice. Aeternus would be a mere thought if eternal slumber greeted me. Death did not. Something far worse.

Showing mercy to a demon is the ultimate affront. A mockery of our very essence. Yet, in that moment of weakness, I was shown clemency, a gesture that haunts me still, for I have not forgotten the aftertaste of shame. Pride befalls man but a demon's pride is far stronger. It isn't hate I would describe I have for the heavens. My sentiment exists before the truest sense of the word. Every part of my collective malice is fed by the economy of souls, slowly revitalizing each part of me scattered throughout the circles of Hell. Hold on to what I bestow upon you at this very moment. A Sit-down Is in order. Prepare the Hotel for my presence.”

A business card as blue as the heaven’s skies slid across the reception desk. A blackened set of long, but carefully maintained nails precariously picked up the card reading “Ansegisel Exorcism Services.” Eyes squinted, a blip of laughter revealed a vampiric set of fangs like granite. The demoness with skin like industrial concrete put two and two together. Quickly, the receptionist reeled herself back in. Her bald head turned one-eighty degrees, locking into place. Now multiple pupilless crystal eyes stacked like totems hiding their hyena-like gleam and intentions examined the cat girl thoroughly.

You would think the idea of an assailant openly targeting the boss stuck some concern through her cold veins but it was quite the opposite. Criminally underpaid and overworked, Galle never went above and beyond her duties. It was a mere receptionist job and chaos wasn't exactly foreign to Aeternus. The disguised feline figure before her was bound to cause trouble and what would she gain from potentially messing with angels? Better to leave that to management. However, that wasn't to say she wasn't a fan of a little antics. After all, she's a demon.

Every twenty-four hours, a phone book-sized newspaper eloquently penned by Dupin himself of the happenings of the hotel arrived at Galle's desk around this time. This cat, though fairly innocent-looking, was sure to make a few headlines to entertain her during the next shift. Approaching a casino in the name of God was brazen. Let alone this casino. The demon's curiosity got the best of her.

“God, you say? Yes, sure. That appears to be very important, Miss– What was your name again? Anyways, due to repairs after the power outage and unscheduled maintenance, the main elevator is out of service. If you would like to go to the surface level of the resort where Master Vileiro resides, the fastest way would be to enter the Grand Elevator Hall of Elysium and work your way to the top. Hurry now. Shoo–” There wasn't a single slit of space for a response.

From Samantha's peripheral, a murder of crows carrying a newspaper the size of folded bed comforters approached. The receptionist rushed her but at least she gave her an answer. A spiraling bookcase cracked westward, revealing yet another avenue into the sprawling expanse of the casino. Enter the Hall.

Off rip, the architecture defied conventional geometry as hundreds of elevators ascend and descend with mesmerizing unpredictability. Each cab, though anchored in mechanical precision, served as a conduit to a kaleidoscope of pocket dimensions—small realms where the improbable and the sinister coalesce. Many of the hall's inhabitants found themselves on a trek just to get to their hotel rooms gambling with their time as the elevator system proved obtuse and unpredictable.

Nevertheless, humans, demons, all of the above, stepped right through the many doors, ascending towards a ceiling stretching beyond eyes could reasonably see, littered with an ensemble of synchronized Royal Hanover chandeliers majestically weaving overhead. A circular bar centered the enormous room with a mild-mannered, inverted flesh mangled tentacle worm abomination whipping up dozens of specialized cocktails simultaneously with ease.

Many of the elevators lead to hotel halls and rooms operating like trick rooms but one thing remained constant. No matter how absurd, obtuse, or uninhabitable a room may be, there is always a window leading back out to the chaotic Aeternus streets.

A stone-faced gargoyle approached the nearest elevator to the girl, making eye contact before crushing several goblinoids trying to make space in an elevator already packed like sardines. “Going up?”

Samantha seemingly was on her way to the delight of Galle at reception but before she managed to turn a page Meowlexander approached the desk. At first, she ignored him, eyes gravitating to today's front-page story.

“EALDORMAN SARCOEN RETURNING TO AETERNUS - The Return Of Parooz Sparks a Family Sit Down.”

It wasn't until the man politely inquired about the whereabouts of his acquaintance did she move her enormous newspaper to the side.

Her head cranked to the side several degrees again, this time bearing an unamused expression, suddenly in possession of long hair. Her eyes slowly stuttered into a roll and back. “Another one?” The purr in his accent grated her stone ears. Galle couldn't believe her luck. The nerve of these people having the gall to have her do her job. It wouldn't take rocket science to figure out who he was looking for, but something about him irked her. He gave her the ick with his presentably responsible demeanor. “He must be trying to stop her?” That's no fun.

Taking into account they very well may be angels, Galle toed the line instead of outright lying, throwing the girl's whiskered pal slightly off her trail. Elysium is huge after all. The receptionist's head snapped back to her default position.

“Ah, yes. Your friend left a card here. Ansegisel Exorcism Services, was it? What was your na–Actually, that's not too important. Off you go! She probably is already several floors up.”

Tremors shook the lobby as the towering Duc d'Orleans Breguet Sympathique Grandfather Clock on the right cracked itself far enough from the wall revealing an alternative entrance to the hall of elevators placing Meowlexander a football field's length away from where Samantha entered.

Upon entry, twisting bloodworm appendages with pulsing green veins below their translucent pink skin revealed their four black hooked fangs to the man. This was not done in a brandishing manner as the voice greeting him came off shockingly quaint and demure. "Welcome, dear guest. I’m so glad you’ve arrived safely… Before you settle in, might I offer you a drink from our splendid bar? If you need anything or just wish to relax, please let me know. I’m here to ensure your stay is pleasant."

Sammie eyed the gargantuan gargoyle behind the receptionist desk with the same naked antipathy with which cats regarded everything not themselves, that she was looking for help did not matter, that over ten feet and a thousand pounds separated their weight classes from one another did not change the lingering sentiment that could attack at any moment. Her tail slapped at the empty air. Her fingers pulled at the outline of what was very clearly a shotgun hidden inside of a duffel bag…

“God,” She reaffirmed without fail. “Samantha Ansegisel. I made a reservation—oh thank you.”

The conversation was short and to the point, doubly so due to her prickly personality, and when it was over Sammie had to remember to turn around and give the receptionist a little curtsy before scurrying into the sprawling courtyard that was—apparently—where they stored their elevators. Massive to the point of requiring a bar just to distract the unlucky masses who had missed their chance to board and would likely spend a small lifetime waiting for the next opportunity. Between the legs of giants she moved like an agile shadow while simultaneously avoiding contact with the many demons unfortunate enough to be even smaller than she was, mice and ants mostly, though nothing smaller than that for microbiological demons were heavily regulated since the Black Plague.

“Going up?”

A voice like gravel heralded her from above, auspiciously so, Sammie regarded her second gargoyle of the evening with a skeptical look from behind a mask that did not have eye slits wide enough to offer such complex facial expression (or eyes at all) before remembering something that a kindly fortune teller on the street had told her about fated meetings and deciding that she had no time to waste if she was to meet her future Prince Charming. Especially not on a demon. With the door rapidly closing she dashed through a space so narrow that for a moment it seemed to have sliced her in half before reality remembered that all cats were at least part liquid, reforming wholly on the other side mid-dash up the man’s arm and pulling herself boldly onto his shoulder in the same smooth motion as she kicked a squealing goblin back to unclean carpet below. “Thank you, kind sir.” She spoke before anyone else could. “If you could take me to the surface level, I have an important meeting with Mister Vilero, and I’ve nyarry a moment to waste.”

Location: Earth-F67X - New New York City, SoHo

A woman wearing periodic tables worth of vibrant crystals and thin woven golds braided into her hair gently pulled my hand. She gave me butterflies. Entranced by her affectious light, she dragged me from under the flickering street lights into the back of an off-white cast-iron building without much of a tug. Near morning at this point, we burned through the night hitting up various galleries and bars. It felt like living in a cheesy rom-com, scene for scene. Ecstatically, my mind roved into the lewd when she claimed to have a surprise for me. Mildly Intoxicated, she didn’t notice her dark-brown, 3-C fro dancing in my eyes with each step. I don't mind. Every turn I’d catch a glimpse of her contagious smile looking back at me.

It was hard to believe this moment came. If I were a knight, At this point I’d have been fighting valiantly for the right to court her for many fortnights.

Known to the general public as Elyse, it was probably easier to explain what she wasn't at this point; Socialite, musician, performance artist, self-proclaimed empath, and even psychic. Her influence? Broad and ironclad. For once, I found myself in a position where others eyed me in envy. She recognized me for my talent and now everyone else did also.

Admittedly, we couldn't be more opposite, citing her obsession with astrology and deep ties to spiritualism. In our convos, I sprinkled just enough of my minute knowledge of horoscopes learned unwillingly through unpleasant interactions with fanatics. I could care less if Mercury was in retrograde or if Pluto is in Aquarius. It clashed with my existential beliefs. With that thought, a brief spell of sober sanity became my buzzkill as I wrestled with the idea of myself doing this for the wrong reasons. Do I just want to be close to her for the connections? I hated to view myself as a starving artist. I always felt it was a matter of time. Others have had it far easier. I’m not some product of absurd nepotism. This should feel better…

In too deep, I trotted up the stairwell, almost nervously stumbling a few times. Trying not to lock his gaze into the gyrating figure of her long draping dress. The more stories climbed, the closer we got to a warm burgundy glow. I can't explain it but the light felt inviting. No, seductive?

"We're here! My Nana’s old studio. You’re going to like it, you'll find it pretty cozy" Elyse gleefully exclaimed.

“You speak about her a lot. Who was she?”

“A conceptual and performance artist.”

“A famous name I'd know?”

Averting her gaze, she replied “Marina Abramovic…”

I recalled hearing that name falling asleep to a video about a controversial performance artist in the city. However, before I could question further, only a highly saturated red door with a bull's septum ring to knock separated us from the room. There was silence on the other end. My sneakers screeched like a brief blip from a dying smoke detector with my instinctual step back. Perhaps it was my guardian angel pulling on his shoulder. Whatever it was, something told me the concrete floors outside the stairwell window were a better option.

Frozen, I couldn’t utter a thing before she knocked, so, I simply smiled.

The crimson door opened on its own. This “studio” felt like a maze. In the dark, the walls were just white enough to make out the dripping of red liquids spelling out a sequence of messages as we progressed.

“Mix Fresh Milk From The Breast
With Fresh Milk Of The Sperm
Drink on Earthquake Nights…”

“Elyse? What is this?”

My feet locked in place. My heart felt like a beating drum against my ribs as our eyes met. Loud. Slow…

“...Excerpts from a performance piece my Nana created in ‘96. Come on. Where right there.”

Elyse tugged considerably harder on my hand than she did this entire time, no doubt playing it off as a joke, but I couldn’t relinquish this shackling nervousness. Still, I followed her. The words on each wall read as such.

“On Your Knees, Clean The Floor
With Your Breath
Inhale The Dust

Wash Your Bedsheets In Lemon Juice
Cover The Pillow With Sage Leaves

With A Sharp Knife
Cut Deeply Into The
Middle Finger Of The Left Hand
Eat The Pain

Facing The Wall
Eat Nine Red Hot Peppers

Take Uncut 13 Leaves of Green Cabbage
With 13,000 Grammes Of Jealousy
Steam For Long Time In Deep Iron Pot
Till All Water Evaporates
Eat It Just Before Attack

Fresh Morning Urine
Sprinkle Over Nightmare Dreams…”



Location: Earth-F67X - New New York City, SoHo

A tarnished Venetian mirror sat in a room of industrial concrete floors and peeling walls. Later, it garnered an audience of five, all fairly young—in their early to mid-twenties. Artists, musicians, DJs, and influencers—all had ties to the city and its events. Only one among them—a man—stood face-to-face with his reflection with one kinky-haired woman veering closely to the right of him in support. His reflection was almost like staring into a pond of disturbed water, silhouette subtly wavering much like his uncalmed spirit. Lack of sleep with night's events chipped at his psyche. Was he hallucinating? The room felt like a sauna. The group observing felt far when they were arms length away. With sweat wedged between the ripples on his forehead, he opened his palm, edging closer to his image to the group’s delight.

“With… a sharp knife…”

Low, to himself, the man began to recite instructions. With a curved knife, the man sliced deep into the print of his middle finger. Before it could drip to the dusty floors, the woman beside him tenderly guided his hand, holding his wrist, drawing a sigil with his blood on the mirror when he lacked the fortitude to.

“Remember. You want this…”

Her whispers tickled his ear, but unnatural warmth emanated from the mirror, inching through his finger, later crawling up his arm and to his heart. He was like a deer in headlights as low fog seeped from the mirror, blanketing the room from heel down.

The mirror rippled like disturbed water. For a moment, he saw himself as he wished to be—accomplished, adored, and respected for his artistic vision. It was right there in front of him but something felt off. Darkness loomed. Eyes like burning coals stared into his. A smile full of jagged teeth, mustard skin, and horns morphed out of his vision of success. The entity spoke no words, waiting patiently for the man's offering.

His voice cracked as he murmured, “I... I offer my soul.” The glass rippled physically. Like the greedy hands of hell they were, black claws traversed the mirror. Before the man could even flinch, he watched the demon’s hand in the reflection crushing his heart with its merciless grip. Looking down at his chest, he felt no pain. He lifted his head. In the demon’s palm revealed a coin—one bearing his own face. With a flick of its thumb, it sent the coin spiraling upward, only to snatch it from the air with uncanny precision. His reflection dissolved back into his own, mouthing “Complete the ritual. Your soul is already deposited.”



Location: Earth F67x - Vatican City (The New Papal States of Italy) - Several Months ago

“Gureun, are you ready?”

“Yes. Turn on the Chronovisor, Father.”

Focused onyx eyes turned silver, locking onto a mystical crystal disk mounted on a console of clean polished brass and salvaged great ark remnants. Gureun found himself face to face with an ancient device, The Chronovisor. One of many classified relics the Vatican utilized to suppress the influence of Lucifer. What was a myth to most was a valuable tool for gaining divine insight but that alone is not the reason for its operation on this starry night. A ritual is to be conducted. To qualify, one had to have led a life of work worthy of standing as a book besides others in the New Testament. Deep down, Gureun had doubts he met such criteria, but he was ordered to by the authority of the Vatican.

THE RITUAL

YOU ARE CHOSEN. GOD MAKES NO MISTAKES.

Gureun Carmichael. Bastard of a reverend, son of a prostitute, born on the 6th floor of a Red Hook West Houses at the stroke of midnight and left in the garbage of a Brooklyn alley by 1…

“Great REBUKER of MISFORTUNE, elevate into an EVEN GREATER warrior of GOD!

As you stand at the threshold of this sacred responsibility, I implore you to turn your heart and mind toward the divine. When the time comes, direct your gaze solely before you. Forget I am here. Focus, with unwavering faith, on the message that God Himself has prepared for your soul. Embrace it fully, for it is a guidance, crafted with agape and purpose, which also contains uncomfortable truths to illuminate your journey."

Eyes closed, the lead exorcist of the Vatican, Father Feretti, projected his essence into the Chronovisor, triggering explosions of divine light baptizing Gureun. It had begun, ushering the force-feeding enlightenment which was all that the Secret Vatican Archives could offer and more. The dozens of rosaries and chains dangling from his body thrashed about, rattling violently with power. Only a few seconds in, the room itself and most of Italy underwent powerful quakes. One sure to wake the entirety of the country on this night under the lunar lavender moon standing high and nigh.

Feretti crossed his forearms in front of his eyes to shield himself from the light but he fought through as much as he could to see–To witness the miracle that is the birth of a living Saint. A birth, despite being born in DARKNESS, CONCEIVED by RAPE, GROOMED to experience HELL so that HE may one day guide the world as the SECOND coming of the MORNING STAR, yet, still TRIUMPHANTLY, CHAMPIONED GOD.

“May you ascend into a weapon of the Lord's truth! You have witnessed, what God has called you to be. You have maintained your humanity. Walk as Jesus did! Do greater works as he has done, as he hath invested power in you! Gureun Carmichael, you rejected the promise of Astrebris. You broke it with your bare hand. A miracle! Become one of God’s greatest soldiers in an era where the devils' influence on Earth multiplies by the second! Walk with him! The Truth! The Light!”

And it was done…

“I Luciano Feretti, wielder of the eighth ring, Halo of Divine Purification - The Ring of Cleansing, bestow onto you the third ring of the Redeemer’s Bands, Vow of the Sacred Ward - The Ring of Holy Binding!”



Location: Earth-F67X Allure City, The Pleiades Casino & Resort: Penthouses

“I can’t believe they keep buying that shit? How many years has it been since that poem came out? They probably do all that dumb shit with the sperm, peppers, and urine too.”

Ceven tossed a heavy, horned mask into the bathroom trash, exposing the tag that read “PARTY CITY” attached to its inside seams. At this point, his shower still ran, steaming up his bathroom to the point where it made even a devil like himself sweat. Ceven stretched into a yawn, folding his hands behind his head as he went hands-free taking a leak. It was amazing how productive the dwarfed-sized minotaur often proved to be considering he was too lazy to even transmogrify his appearance for a soul-selling ritual. Taking souls was easy. He could do that in his sleep. Now sitting through this disaster-bound sitdown coming up? That was a lot to mentally prepare for.

After a brief phone call with Dupin discussing the hotel’s latest hoopla and happenings, a few things fancied the devil's curiosity as he hopped in the shower. The influx of brazen angels, metalloid dragons ripping into the air space, and the most peculiar, a few of his moles have not reported back yet. He had a confidant in a devil named Drathis, a demon who specialized in blood magic. He was one of those types born rich, never having to work for a soul a day in his life, sipping wine from the safety of his boojee castle. Blood magic was one of the oldest forms of witchcraft. He had no need to make pacts with humans. So when there were reports of EarthF67x mortals utilizing blood magic quite openly, Ceven assumed he began to work again for whatever reason. When Drathis revealed that he had not forged a pact in decades, Ceven was left deeply puzzled. He had no reason to lie. Wanting to get to the bottom of this, the yellow devil ordered a few humans he had made a pact with to search around. One happened to be a low-ranking member of an earth crime syndicate that fit the description. His name was Portis.

He informed Ceven they were led by a man with a boring name, Ron Jackson. To a degree, Portis described him as charismatic, calculated and even having orchestrated a successful coup against the previous leader. The information given to the minotaur was surface-level and not enough to satisfy his curiosity, however. When he asked how did this man gain the ability to utilize blood magic, Portis had no clue. Thinking like the devil he is, Ceven thought about how he could upgrade Portis from a pawn in this chess game he began to play. Not only did the demon add to the pact he had already made with the red syndicate member, but he also granted him power, feeding into Portis’ inherent greed. A power, if used wisely, could take over the syndicate. Now with the ability to control people's minds at his will using pheromones, Ceven left Portis to his own devices and told him to report to him once he took it over. That was two weeks ago.

Drip-drying after his shower, Ceven plopped onto a Victorian chaise longue when another oddity popped into his mind. As the treasurer of the Sarcoen family, he had little time for petty antics mortals occasionally were able to pull. During the ritual with the influencers, Ceven noticed something unusual about one of the spectators. Among them, a man carried faint traces of the Holy Spirit. This wasn’t the typical residue left behind after an ordinary baptism—it was a deliberate attempt to suppress his aura.

“Now that I think about it, he could have been that bastard that sold Vaalni that counterfeit soul.”

The short devil began pacing around the apartment with his cloven feet. He couldn’t get this off his mind. He could not help but think perhaps that something far more malignant was at play. Stroking his stubble, Ceven sat on the toilet like The Thinker and thought, If that was the same man who duped Vaalni, it wasn't out of the realm of possibility he learned some peculiar method from a powerful church. That could only mean one thing: he wasn’t acting alone. A religious faction must have sent him to surveil the Sarcoen crime family.

“Someone’s plotting something. Here I thought Earthf67x didn't rank well in Angelical prowess. I wonder if it has something to do with the fact that the anti christ Lucifer was cooking up told him to fuck off months back.” A devilish grin crept across his yellow face.



Location: Earth F67x - St. Patrick's Cathedral [Midtown Manhattan]

Wherever devils gained a foothold, Heaven was quick to intervene—and the reverse held true. As moral decay spread, church attendance dwindled, and society increasingly turned to devils' promises to escape misfortune. The urgency for action was undeniable. In response, many churches united under the Vatican’s banner, pooling their knowledge, and resources, taking drastic measures to gain power spiritually the good fight.

Nowhere was this more evident than in the hidden depths of St. Patrick’s Cathedral during the 7:00 a.m. service.

Below, beneath even the surrounding subway stations, a man laid flat on a long, cold metal table in a room with damp floors, rust-streaked walls, and dripping stalagmite ceilings. At the mercy of two imposing figures conducting an interrogation, the dozens of rosaries binding him to the platform singed his exposed flesh. A bloody towel covered his face, shielding the slew of forehead vein-bulging expressions from the dozens of priests in attendance whispering among each other from the corners of the room.

“A man with faith as little as a mustard seed would not be so sensitive to the bindings from the Lord. Internally you do not seek help from above. Tell me everything you know”

The taller man spoke at the foot of the table. He wasn’t just taller. He was a massive man with chiseled features and streaks of grey hair under his zucchetto, built like he wore football pads. Who was he? Cardinal Raphael Alaric. A man who brandished the holy spirit to demons with a wrathful fist.

“I don't know anything! Let me go.”

Draped in a crimson cassock reinforced with subtle leather and gilded metal plating, his piercing gray eyes exhibited no sympathy for the prisoner. On his right thumb rested one of the ten Redeemer’s Bands—powerful rings forged from the smelted remains of the recently recovered Holy Grail. Across from him, another bearer of the rings, much younger, in his early thirties or so. A suited man in a black Ferraiolo. His name was Gureun Carmichael, the one responsible for the unbreakable rosary binding the subject in question. His skeptical narrowing eyes carried more disappointment than contempt. Up until this point, he allowed the fiery personality of Alaric to dominate the interrogation, but little progress had been made. Only now did Gureun decide to speak.

“We know the darkness you consort with, the unholy pacts your companions have made, and the abominable blood magic you call upon. Do not mistake our patience for ignorance or mercy for weakness. God’s light will expose every shadow you cling to. Speak now, and unburden your soul while there is still a chance for redemption."

Writhe with agony as the bindings tightened, between the forcefully withheld screams, the prisoner managed to utter “Go to hell.”

Immediately, the table adjusted, raising the tail end upwards as Gureun began to pray.

“Heavenly Father, we thank you that by water and the Holy Spirit, you have bestowed upon these your servants the forgiveness of sin, and have raised them to the new life of grace….”

Alaric folded his arms in a rare display of patience as one of the priests in attendance passed a nozzle attached to a winding hose to Gureun.

“Sustain them, O Lord, in your Holy Spirit. Give them an inquiring and discerning heart, the courage to will and to persevere, a spirit to know and to love you, and the gift of joy and wonder in all your works.”

The current flowed, holy water flooding the man's nasal and oral orifices burning like acid, stinging his very soul. His lungs felt sure to burst like a weak latex glove until the table snapped, doing a one-eighty before slowly returning upright. Eyes bulging, violently coughing up a storm of water blended with bloody mucus, the towel fell off his face.

“Nico Hallsworth, or should I say Portis, as you go by in the streets.”

Between blips of vomiting, the man’s expression was one of an exhausted stupor. One of a man defeated, accepting death. It was like his soul was cleansed. He didn’t understand why he couldn't manipulate the two men and any of the priests around them to attempt to free him.

“YOU THOUGHT YOUR POWERS COULD GET YOU FAR IN THE HOUSE OF THE LORD!!?”

Enraged, Alaric spat on him. Leaning in, smug-faced, Gureun delivered a message to Portis in a calm tone.

"With holy spirits as stout and refined as ours, no power granted by demons could ever sway us. Perhaps you managed to steal tithes once for a quick profit, but Alaric and I were present today. So here’s the deal. You tell us everything you know about the demons on earth, and we allow you to be our informant."

“...”

In a flash, Gureun’s drew a silver cross the size of a dagger from seemingly nowhere, holding from the short end, holding the long end to Portis’ neck.

“No more…I’ll speak… I’ll tell you everything”—COUGH–“...I know…This planet is spiritually doomed. The Pleiades Casino, the devils there prey on the humans of this planet… and everyone sells their souls to them willingly because they’re upfront and deliver results. No one has time to wait…on God anymore.”—COUGH– “Even before that, my boss, Ron Jackson of the Red Syndicate made a deal with a fallen angel during the first contact war named Pawn. I was”—COUGH– “I was trying to take them down so…I made a deal… with a devil, named CEV—”

Portis’ head exploded.

Covered in blood and brain matter, the two closed their eyes in prayer over the departing soul. They had what they needed. A handful of targets to bring judgment to and the cell phone of Portis.
–

Location: Earth-F67X Allure City, The Pleiades Casino & Resort - Penthouses

A devil heard an attempt to say his name in betrayal. A breach of contract. Dying thoughts transferred. and just like that, Nico Hallsworth's name vanished out of the Sarcoen account book of souls…

“Mmmm…HAHA! HA-HA-HA! So that’s what happened. The Vatican on this planet grew some balls and Fallen Angel, huh? Can’t have him handing powers off so willy-nilly. It's bad for business."

— Entobalti, “Kitty Hell” — the Traeculam


A flick of his claws, his eye watchful for any flaws — a purr of satisfaction, and Tāwhaki announces, “My shift is over, follow if you dare!” and dashes neath Ilaria’s angelic robe and toward a new portal, a hypnotic liquid vortex large enough for the pair to pass.

Before visions twist to shape beyond the crimson-inked eddy of his own demonic energy, the strong scent of Entobalti lashes his feline nose. Wistful thoughts find their foothold, and he grins wickedly. Soon, he can taste it: acrid, rotten, robust; a vivid retelling of an exploded corpse on a colossal scale tinged with salt, myrrh, musk, and castoreum; a fishmonger’s rotten, violated, pestilential cervix. Alighting on an exposed nerve, he feels the twitch, the snap, the song of bedlam resonating throughout this vast and ever-shifting hipasia of horrors.

“Enjoy the view while it lasts,” Tāwhaki taunts.

Not bothering to look back, he stridently high-steps onward, each claw viciously raking the taut, nervous membrane of their bridge through a patina of sanguine mist. It shudders, and one can almost imagine a distant, voiceless, spiritual scream, but it is difficult to pick out through the incessant background roar of agony that washing over Entobalti in an endless, exquisite wave. It struggles to lift them over a pool of noxious, yellow, bubbling bile, but is too weak to fully support their weight. It fails, underbelly striking the pool and recoiling from the agonizing acidic touch. Vile steam rises up to greet them, and Tāwhaki pauses. He sniffs the air, eyes drifting in a direction outside of traditional dimensions. Sinisterly extending a single claw, he swipes his forearm across their flesh-bridge, severing the wailing tissue. No longer taut, it snaps and shivers, flinging them through a noxious, jaundiced void of choking, gasping, pleading voices.

Landing in a muck of crust-layered blood, they behold before them a monolithic minaret composed of trembling muscles and viscera. What look like the outer layers of eyes, peeled precisely and surgically off the surface, scales the exterior, glossy, blinking.

Tāwhaki is about to speak, then a parade of ghastly phantoms manifests from nought as the world around shifts to incorporeal, a mode spectral, translucent. Shrieking, they hiss, vomiting and ejecting ectoplasm at Ilaria. Before they get the satisfaction of seeing their mark, a great translucent tentacle strikes through the caked, dessicated film, dragging them down and screaming.

“Hmm. Lovely,” sniffs Tāwhaki says in his unhurried, unconcerned fashion, “Now then, you understand that as an employee of the Asomatous Détente & Terrestrial Customs, this is as far as I can take you without risking my clearance. Give the package to Balem, and they will send you to Aeternus. Ciao!”

With that, Tāwhaki leaps through a small portal, most likely to continue his shift.

A tall, well-built man with a black duffle bag over his shoulder stood stock-still inside an ornate elevator, his light-blue polo shirt presenting a gentle contrast to the elegant grimness of the lift's glass walls. While his stoic demeanor didn't show it, behind his cobalt aviator lens, beneath the shadow of his short, jutting black bangs he was quietly observing a sequence of scenes carved into the glass, each depicting a gambler and their winnings. The first one began at the ceiling, showing a man pulling a slot machine lever, activating a massive spout of coins to come spraying out of it in a glorious arc, followed by another of the man raising his hands to excitedly catch as many coins as he could, only to be buried up to his neck, and crushed to death beneath the weight of his greed, blood pooling out over the newly formed depression in the floor. A second scene depicted a horned swine with batlike ears sitting on a wobbly stool at a rickety table, the ceiling above him bulging and drooping with cracks running all throughout it, tiny streams of crimson liquid filling his rusty bowl. Another work of art displayed a losing poker player slashing the throat of his opponent, only for a pressurized jet of liquid gold to shoot out of his victim's gash, and pierce a hole through his own, bronze and silver gushing from his wound.

At his feet, a different piece of art caught his attention, striking him as unsettlingly specific, but still in fitting with the agendas of the demons who ran the place he was descending into. The image was that of a golden eagle skewered by its own dismembered wings, eyes gouged out with its own viciously bent talons, and severed beak shoved violently through its chest. It was enough to make the man step back, the cuffs of his charcoal slacks briefly lifting and revealing the metal buckles of his fine leather shoes clacking against the floor. Raising his left hand to push his sunglasses up, the cold sensation of his silver rolex shifting its weight on his wrist produced a momentary discomfort, accompanied by a subtle, nagging urge to adjust some inconsequential aspect of his clothes. Before he could complete a single motion–

DING

Scoffing softy, the man stepped halfway out of the elevator, only for the shaft to jerk forwards, forcing him into a tight roll upon a dirt path that was flanked by knee-high grass. As he came upright, he turned on his knuckles, spinning himself to stare at the motionless lift, its bottom nestled firmly against the ground. At the far wall of the compartment, he could see a new piece of art forming: embers sparked from unseen claws dragged across the glass, carving out the crude shape of a rat sniffing around as a lion, leopard, and a black wolf lunged at it with crazed, foam drooling grins. Sparing not a second of contemplation for its dumped passenger, the elevator doors closed, and immediately began a rapidly accelerating ascent back into the dark clouds above, lightning crackling as it passed through the dimensional barrier on its way to another guest.

Standing up and dusting himself off, he finally had a moment to process something other than vague threats, namely the light illuminating the woods. The source of the dim luminance keeping this forest lit was coming from several firefly lamps dangling from the balconies of elvish cabins built on what appeared to be a hybrid of high top and sugar pines. Through the insect-glass windows he could see many fragmented figures, some bright and cheery, others a melancholic mix of lustful nervousness. He could hear loud moans of pleasure, followed by abhorrent screeching, the twitching of antennae, and beating of wings, and stripping of flesh, and crunching of bone amidst wails of agony, all coming from inside the mystic brothel houses. Minutes later, the grass started rustling all around him, and a swarm of brownies carrying cleaning tools rushed up the wooden ladders, followed by goblins with large sacks.

Surmising that not all demonic transactions were based on long-term deals, the man in the blue polo opted to ready himself for any future variables. Distancing himself from the clean-up crew by moving a few feet into the grass, the man threw off his duffle bag, unzipped it, and began to procure several items. A silver handgun modeled after a deagle went onto his right hip, a short, sawed off double barrel shotgun featuring a wooden grip, sliding it into a holster on his left outer thigh. Rubbing his chin between his thumb and index for a moment, he grabbed four of the shotgun shells, along with a same number of metal egg containers, and opened them up like Easter trinkets. After that he sliced open the shells, deposited the gunpowder along with the pellets into the eggs, closed them up and carved a very small fire kanji into their surfaces. Grabbing a multi pocketed velcro sash, he deposited all four eggs into the pressure sealed spaces, and wrapped from left shoulder to right pelvis, clipping it together.

Next, he grabbed a punch knife, strapping it horizontally onto his left forearm with the handle facing his torso, and likewise for the opposite. Twin knuckle-handled karambits at the waist, and an unusually large pole staff possessing an uncanny level of elasticity as it autonomously stretched and flattened itself around the man's waist, pressing against his belt as an armored layer. Thinking this was enough for now, he zipped up the bag, separated the straps and compressed the insides as best he could. Gaining a satisfying amount of shrinkage, he strapped the bag against his back in an x formation, making sure that they did not overlap the egg pouches, and pulled it tight to ensure it conformed properly around his body.

Scanning his surroundings, he noticed several brownies staring at him warily, before immediately running back inside the cabins. Several screeches, gaelic curses, and thrashing of furniture was heard by the rising, armed man, who dismissed their panic insofar as it concerned his safety, and saw several fairies go shooting out of the cabin, soaring through the city on red alert. Now he had to be concerned, and with lightning speed, he grabbed hia watch between thumb and index finger, pressed two buttons and fired a thin red laser, dashing and adjusting his aim with a speed that was disturbingly inhuman.

Tiny smoke plumes drifted upwards as wings were severed, heads decapitated, and torsos bisected in a shower of not just stomach acid, but the partially digested remains of their consumed victims. Unfortunately, and to the man's jaw-clenched annoyance, one got away with a full belly, and was likely on its way to inform its master.

Deactivating the laser and pressing his index and middle finger to his temple, the man finally spoke in a deep, velvety voice that always seemed to bear a slightly dry growl.

“Rough entry.” Scott said in as neutral a manner as he could.

“Rougha than normal?” The voice asked curiously, his calm tone belying his seriousness.

“They knew I was coming.” He stated flatly. “No one but you knows about my true nature.”

“So what’cha gonna do?”

“Keep exploring. Find out how tight a hold this place has on Earth, and make sure they don't mess with our business.”

Sighing, Scott continued. “The elevator tried to taunt me. Really knew how to put the fart in artsy artsy turd paintings.”

“Ohoh boah…” Ron laughed amusedly. “Don't let em get’cha goin’. ‘Sides, I heard from one’a them Goldman boahs that one of Hell’s hungriest piggies escaped the Allure mess, and before that, he escaped Hell no problem. Ontop’a that, he ain't been seen nowhere here on Earth.”

“You think he’s here?”

“Probably.”

“And… you want me to recruit him?”

“All the other demons workin’ for us had to be summoned. If this one was able to escape the Lake Of Fire on its own, it oughta be stronger than the others.”

A deep breath was taken on the other side. “Things are changing up there in the stars again. Nightmare asteroids crashing into Argentina, alien cities droppin’ on our foreheads, big ass Jellyfish appearin’ in the sky. We need to fortify ourselves, and for that we need stronger muscle.”

“Hmm…”

“Little by little we'll build it up. If the other Syndicates are smart, they'll do the same.”

“Okay.” Scott nodded, having just found the exit to the forest. “I'll find him. I'll locate Arthur Steinbrook, and if those rats try comin’ for us, we'll have the Cannibal Connoisseur cut and chew a path out of this place.

Hanging up the blood call, Scott proceeded down a steep stairwell leading to the city, smoke and fire on the rise as a–

–

–beam of elemental lightning souls burned the pagoda's structure, slicing through support beams with its devastating heat. Seconds later, the different stories of the building fell straight down, each floor crashing down on top of the one beneath it, dust and detritus rushing out as the building collapsed all the way to street level. Unflinching at the debris plume, the white dragon stood with arms outstretched, claws at the ready, eagerly awaiting the next demon that was bold enough to attack him. As he was enveloped, his eyelids closed, letting his ears takeover the task of detecting assailants.

Thirty more seconds passed and nothing showed up.

A minute.

Two minutes.

Five.

Still nothing.

Atop his smokestack perch, Tage silently monitored the city, taking notice through his ley-lines of someone else noticing him through supernatural means. His cybernetic stoicness enforced his statuesque lack of response, watching her for as long as she deemed fit to observe him. Then, in mere moments, she was paying attention to something else, and the cyborg resumed his sentinel surveillance.

After another five minutes of waiting on a threat that never arrived, Tage determined that it was time to take a different approach to their mission.

A vast network of anomalies manifested as thin strands of maroon light cutting the skein of space like a knife through plastic in random spots throughout Aeternus. Many were directly inside the hotel, widening into seams, cracks, and fractal spirals, each piece its own portal to some far away world. The existential ley-lines had been thoroughly connected to this realm, entering and interweaving themselves with Aeternus’ spatial fabric via a plume of nanoscopic dracomachines that allowed themselves to be sucked into the vortex that was Taluge’s perception of the realm from astral space. Now, as a divided entity, Tage used the ley-lines to spy, to procure information, and even ask questions.

Unlike My White Brother, I Come In Peace

The cyborg's voice reverberated through lobbies, spas, pools, flickered on televisions, and shined off the surfaces of coins, roulette, spotlights beaming off the dots of dice. It had the voice of a beast, the coldness of steel, and the depth of a lion, despite its draconic origin. Most importantly, its tone carried pacifism, such that even the most suspicious demon would find it enticing bait. Often, it was those of the more noble philosophical disposition that made for the tastiest prey.

Love was far more delectable than war. Order easier to manage than chaos. The Casino Demons and their heavily systematized economy of souls was proof of this. If it wasn't for their tendency to brazenly break their own rules, and launch the bent and warped chunks of their agreements at one another like cannonballs, then perhaps the Arcane Project’s offspring would have chosen a less intimate means of announcing his presence. He trusted them just as much as they trusted him, which was to say not at all, but he would still give himself and them the benefit of discussion by embodying the ways of Gennosuke. If peace was not an option, then the Aeternus would learn of Tage’s demonic origins the hard way.

Has This Being Been Seen Traversing Your Realm?

A simple hologram of a colossal bipedal drake of enormous black scales, tendrils the size of street poles woven between their mass and ending in hypodermic bones. His chest bulged outward like a trapezoid, his spiny tail long enough to wrap around a skyscraper, and v-shaped horns long enough to part the sea and split clouds. He had a long, rigid snout, a crimson left, and sapphire right eye resembling inlaid gemstones, their outlines accentuating an appearance of being bloodshot.

As he awaited his answer, Tage decided to check on the least dangerous, but ironically most danger prone member of the bestial trio.

Aludon stood still, stupid, not even attempting to study the surge of aggressively sturdy unlife, itself a quasi-contradiction. Life could not be death, and death could not be life, but with gloom, doom, and strife driving the corpse woman, and creature as blind to threats as this Aptosite, concerning to the notion that both were rife with insanity seemed the only answer that was right.

The Scars Of The Dead

Jagged, dark-green scars lit up along Aludon’s arms, from triceps to interior forearms, portals to the astral plane, gateways to chaos opened wide. A gush of gelatinous protoplasm flooded from the rifts, gluttonously consuming not the roots, fingers, and veins, but the aura of decay the material brought with it. If this were any other creature, if he were smart, the imbecilic monster would have left well enough alone, and let the gel dissolve the deathly energy and expel it back down the drain, but Aludon was a moron. His intelligence was animalistic, subhuman, and because he didn't feel pain quite the same as others due to his body being intentionally designed to rip itself apart, and merge with other body's, this meant that instead of standing there and remaining safe like a good dog, Aludon decided to sniff the turdly energy, and try to take a bite out of it.

Truly, he was not one of the cats roaming around Aeternus. Aludon was an Aludog.

His black flesh crumpled, crumbled, and reformed, muscles of protein took on a bizarre chloroplastic pine needle color. Roots sprouted in the place of claws, the brainlet beast violently ripping them out of the ground and flinging his acidic blood absolutely everywhere, shrieking not from pain, but from the shock of his claws coming off. In a matter of seconds, he could see the wood and carpet fall apart, walls start to tumble down, and even some support beams growing in increasingly unstable as mushroom fiber took over his chest, his red eyes liquefied and solidified back into black-dotted red berries, and his tail turned into a long segment of white death blossoms, ending in a sharply curved mix of bone and thorns.

Falling through the floor, and crashing through several glass containers, spilling wine, beer, and liquor everywhere, Aludon started screeching in confusion as he began to drown in booze. Spinning around madly to gain his bearings, he flung more acid from his fingers, corroding a powerbox, and sending sparks flying everywhere. Ignition occurred instantly, a fiery explosion blossoming straight up and spreading back through the bar, the shockwave hurling the Aptosite through several more cupboards. Panicking at the overstimulation, flesh regenerating all throughout, he coiled his legs, and launched himself up through into a gambling room adjacent to the bar, smashing through a poker table, and spreading his new plant-plant aura to every part of the room, every human gambler, and horned, tentacled, hooved demon dealer he frantically bolted across. Soon, this part of the hotel would become a botanical hellscape of rotting decadence, and Zucroas could only trudge annoyedly toward the commotion his brother was making, whereas Tage remained perched, keeping his weapons on standby mode for the inevitable backlash their jackass of a baby sibling wrought.

–

Eye of lamb dipped in boiling wolf’s blood, thickened by flesh of sloth, and caked in ground fraud liver. An innocent deceived, a predator conceived a plot to compensate for their own laziness, yet packed ever so densely with the spoils of that which he managed to siphon from all those innocent buyers. Hearty, but decadent. Not nearly enough to enrich his taste buds, for how could the nourishing minerals of one so easily fooled have lived a life of health, of worth, of substance.

“Schwache Männer und noch schwächere Opfer!” Arthur shouted, quite displeased.

The German, the Cannibal Connoisseur, Swine Of Gluttony, and Knight Of The Kitchen sat, clothed in white, silver-eyed wolf's fur, fork and knife grasped between lean, muscular fingers, palms fastened to claws via leather straps. His hairy blonde chest was exposed, icy blue eyes sharp like a canine’s and nowhere near as deceitful as the chefs who thought they could shovel this crap down his throat. He had learned already in Hell, that feeding on your fellow damned was akin to eating the contents of one’s colon, and that was Hell enough for him.

He did not come to this hole in existence to be fed even lower quality trash.

The follow up meal was equally atrocious. Shish kabob, brain of tortured immigrant, heart of smuggler, marinated in reproductive juices of sex trafficked wives and daughters. Juicy, wet, spongy, a bit salty, but lacking the texture of anything beyond rubbery and nauseating. Fools without merit, no elders to inherit the wealth of; desperate to flee, woe is thee, and taken advantage of by a slang speaking leech.

Grunting with irritation, Arthur vexed. “Alles, was du mir fütterst, sind die Leichen wertloser Narren!”

Rubbing his temples, Arthur lifted his eyes, spotting a fat tycoon, clearly down on his luck, but with a wife that was brown, bodacious, and several different kinds of beauty packed into one busty package. Miraculously, she appeared all natural, and was genuinely concerned for what her husband was about to do to save his failing business. She cared about him. He could smell it. She would be there to back him up no matter how foolishness his decisions were. He could taste her devotion, hear her heart beat nervously, selflessly.

“AUS DEM WEG!” Arthur roared, his brutish masculine form grabbing the woman's attention in a shocked blush, only for her to scream in horror as he threw the half eaten shish kabob needle like a spear, straight through her husband's idiot skull. The skewer went through his eye, broke through his lobe, and sent bone fragments scattering everywhere.

“Es tut mir leid, meine Liebe, Blumen wie du sind einfach zu schwer zu bekommen.” The German stated matter of fact lying, pressing hands on her trembling shoulders, tongue dragging across her ample, helpless cleavage, sharp arousal surging through her as he yanked her in closer. He wouldn't allow someone so precious to move, to get away, and the other residents and chefs seemed to know intuitively that letting the Cannibal have his way was the best path to avoiding a meat cleaver in their skull.

“Jetzt werde ich dein Herz öffnen, deinen Nektar trinken und mich wieder lebendig fühlen!” He shouted ecstatically, jaw stretching to monstrous proportions, and not giving the woman even a moment to process or register the disturbed feeling of lust that was half a second of way from turning to full-blown terror before driving his teeth straight through her breast. Moments later, he was crunching through her rib cage, then her heart, eyes watering with delight as he crushed and swallowed the whole thing with one bite.

“Warum müssen Frauen wie du für diese Welt so klein sein!?” He lamented, blood dripping from his mouth, fingers rubbing his eyes as he let out a sigh.

“They don't have to be.” A man with a duffle bag said, standing in the doorway. Immediately reaching into one of his velcro pouches and chucking the gunpowder filled egg at the dead man, and his wife. The powder belonged to the shell casings of Cash The Dead Rebel, a double-barreled sawed off shotgun, enchanted with an inversion spell. As the kanji activated, and gunpowder ignited across the couple's flesh, muscle knitted back together, bones mended, and in a manner of seconds the two were back on their feet.

“Who are you?” Arthur asked astonishedly, shocking everyone in the bar at the fact that he could speak English.

“A member of a powerful Syndicate of Earth, and unlike this hellhole, in my organization, quality food... HIGH quality food is always available.

Removing his sunglasses, and revealing almond black eyes, Scott looked at Arthur with deadly seriousness. “My type isn't welcome here. I suspect they'll be coming for me any minute now, as I already took out a few of their own.

“Now are you in, or are you out?”

<< Theme: Fiend >>

A nightmare floating before my vision, a scream budding nascent in my breast but rising no further... my throat is stoppered and, failing to refuse the dread invitation, it drags me in.

Always it is starting with a conceit, with cascading tangling thoughts in which my intuition informs me I am in the wrong, I am wronged; a portent of memory I sense myself violently discarding, yet is ever clanging at my threshold, my gate. Mockery piercing through the barbs of desire, through the want, a bitter, guttural and scandalous intonation, the voice I hear is my own and without brace against this cliff of madness.

First and foremost is the cacophony, the din of wild, insane and rib shattering cackling.

By fractious needle and comb of callosum weaving manic neural threads, the haunting tapestry of my El Naddaha emerges and I behold myself writhing on a sanguinary bed of blood, of pallid flesh, of unspeakable deeds and words. Hapless and birthing foul a lie that’s true. As Mother I know it, grooming it and nurturing it by my rapt repetitions, rapturous echoes and delirious recitals. My folly. A shadow, a lightless stain of resentment clinging to my back, following, following.

Within the limning womb time stagnates and furcates, splintering into an agony of contradictions. Strange, indeed, are the extent of my phrenic interlacing among phantom mirrors laden with fruit from distant, impossible spheres and unattainable realms, but an hour is nothing to me. Time stalls inside my truth-lie, an empty gist near the epicenter of all those uncanny, circuitous paths I trek all the while unable to distinguish mirage from myth, half-truth from fully ripe, luscious lie. Known to me is only the lie I tell myself, and for it I hold aloft the mirror of my terror.

Oh how it is seducing me, vengeful lover, swine to whom I am in my lust but a craven slave sating on all manner of affectionate abuses gripping me, dulling my senses.

My dream transports me far from the paroxysms of my corporeal form.

I fear the pines.

With grandeur unnatural and frightful, they rise. Their bark black chitin, or carved of coarse unworked jet. Long, still—rustling in the stillness, yet moving not with wind. Rustling all the same. Dense, the air carries with it their cruel and perfidious tidings. My soul straining against assault, I can hear it—no, them. That which births cruel, stillborn words, whispering half-sung words outside of and beyond knowledge, from a place where knowledge is not known. That terrible, non-existential Land of No More. Trembling, I sense the looming the full extent of their threat. To this dread thing I am but husk, but ossuary, but empty relic. It is seeking to ruin me, to fill me with malevolence and doom and a malice intent on all dour ends.

Ice lacing a delicate spell, its filigree binding bark and needles, yet all is shrouded in shadow. It is not reflecting the moon glow, neither glistening nor gleaming wet and fair. Light falling into depths remote, unreachable, and drowning in them dies. Perishing utterly. The shadow of the pines leaning towards me, I shrink, I wither. I flee. But the shadow lengthens, pursuing my imprints across the snow. From it, I recoil, small and vulnerable. Sinking into myself. I flee the pines. Snow blanking a frozen fen, a calamitous place where an incautious step may rupture to a mortal snare. There is a crescent moon. A slender silver sliver beyond which no stars remain. Only a more distant, larger, fainter silver sliver crescent, and another, and another, and so forth. Imagining the slow drifting flakes as stars, denying the incomprehensible void—I struggle to remain hidden, to be silent. The soft snow betrays me, the veneer of ice coating it announcing the lore of my every cautious footfall in a crackling awakening the night’s eerie, false, whisper-raking silence.

“Galagolgathar!” I plea, tumbling forward onto my knees. My palms burn with the onset of frostbite, hiding beneath the snow. Forgetting myself, I strive to recall who I am. For I am no beast, but woman, priestess, serpent, sacrifice. Inward I recite the Psalm of Torpor,

Omen of the spiral-mined eye:
devour the fruit of my body;
the flesh of my sons;
the womb of my daughters.

Fiend with nine wings:
smear on me your fiery dung,
even the clotted dung of your solemn feasts,
and cast me into the wastelands
that I may rot at rest, forgotten.

Fool am I, contriving a wish that such rote recitations and prayers might avail me succor against sublime forces holding even death in disdain! Dissuading the ultimate end from its peaceful, empty solitude, a lure to ultimate calamitous corruption. Saying the words again, my lips silent yet shaping the spell, the focus point. Distraction steadies me, yet still terror is besetting me at every turn. Boreas’ strident roar harries my mind, making awkward my gait with impetuous ethereal blasts.

Half-running, half-crawling, seeking ever nearer a place of warmth, charity, piety, I flee. Fair moons heavy-lidded I pray serve me as loyal guides, shepherds for which my vessel deserves no guidance. Clawing at the ice, frantic, shifting along its surface like a mad thing, I flee. Beneath my nails, the sting of entropy; at my back, the touch of annihilation. Foul shadows encircling me, enemies I fail to comprehend at every turn. By whatever fateful contrivance, hope clings to my will like a parasite. Hope has no place in such misery, but I welcome it with the whole of my being.

Through bramble fangs and over solid pools, I hasten. My reflection is there, but I seek it not. Enough horrors lurk this night. It is all the same, this wilderness of cold. Death seeping into my stiff limbs. I no longer see the warm smoke of my exhale. My fingertips are dark blue. Rocks rise like fangs up through the snow covered earth. The whole of the hill is ringed by a crown of those wicked, stabbing rocks. Down a slope, a root reaching out, grasping me about my heel. Tripping, I fall. My cloak tightening around me, wet and strangling in my painful descent into madness. Clumps of wire-grass and mouse weed carve into my garments, and unbidden I know myself to be pulling close the tatters , staving off the cold, the recreant barbs slitting my numb flesh like so many razors.

Why am I so afraid?

It does not matter, it cannot matter. I must run, I drink full another lie.

Hardly does it matter, except that I know terror. I know it at the root of my being. We all do. Standing, I run. Weak, plodding, one foot in front of the next. An act of contrition. Hands grasping about me, numb worthless surrogates to my white-blind agape and sightless gaze.

Headlong, I crash into a wall. Blocks of ice barring my passage onward, yet I somehow recognize this place. It is but with a semblance of recognition, the warping and twisting ink smear of memories of a long-buried nightmare, forgotten. Within I understand protection from the shadows of the pines I might find, and that is all I am capable of recalling in my harried moment. In full frenzy, feeling along the barrier, every frigid crack and bulge. Numb though my fingers are, with time and effort I fall forward, collapsing on all fours into the open, waiting gate. There the wind is softer, the storm is merely in my mind.

But so too is this all, this my everything.

Feeling the oppressive heat of a furnace beyond, smelling the acrid stench smelting of metal... I surrender hope. Here, a fresh terror displaces that conjured by the pines, for it is present and urgent rather than remote and terrible. Grasping my ankle, a hand dragging me inward, into the ghastly Winter Forge. My mouth opening to protest, to bargain and offer up a plea for sanctuary. Drowning before a word departs, drowning in a bitter compound of tallow and reed. My jaw aches from its rude, abrupt opening. Warm stone slopes up hard against my leg, and the hammer strikes with scorching heat. Gagged, I emit a muffled, helpless scream. I see stars burning and vibrant but muted beyond the nocturne veil. I have arrived at the seat of destiny, come where I must come. This is everything I sought, the culmination of my hopes and desires. They die like vapors, like cinders erupting from the pail where the hammer’s heat is quenched. Now I am lame, a cripple. Dependent. My skin collapsing around shattered bone, the bruise livid, dark and so strange in that at last my flesh discloses color. Tears blinding my eyes, pain confusing my senses. This was the refuge I sought, to which I fled. This is what I desired. Yet I feel my cheek rupture, splitting to embrace a spile. Acid flows through, melting my tongue, cleaving its tattered remnants to my torrid throat. Pliers clasp my lips, and a needle pierces the soft thick flesh. My mouth is sewn shut with iron wire, cold, forged in ice and fire ever stinging.

Hulking before me is a vision of power, an executioner’s cloak and grim iron flat mask with two narrow slits through which to see. Rivets and bands, wild wolf fur and flocking. We lock eyes. No words are spoken, for those terrible eyes, bloodshot and deep ruddy red, dark as a spear wound bubbling out of the heart, are revealing to me the truth-lie I already know.

Silence you slut. I own you. I will break you and use you. When you are used up I will pass you along to my hounds for their pleasure. Pray they are not hungry. Or pray that they are. Your worth is the brief moment of my arousal.

Off to the side, swinging and empty the gibbet, my destiny secure yet not nearly from the teeth, the fangs.

Striking again the hammer, quenched and cold and shattering femur. Back in the fire, hot, glowing, red. Striking again, my kneecap exploding, my flesh ignites until a bucket empties out frigid agony and drowns the ravenous flames. My screams are muffled, meek.

Many hounds are baying here at the Winter Forge.

I awaken from my nightmare, the sound of the striking hammer ringing still in my ears.

The baying of the hounds chilling my bones.

My oath inundates the room, swelling in violent ascent up the chimney and careening through the window’s broken panes. It is a single word, both prayer and command: “No!” — but to whom do I speak? The imp is gone, and a dumbfounded beast looks on. Yet at last there is the hope of silence.

Ancient lifeless fibers, works of ruin support my decaying spine. Around me my form is falling disintegrating. Motes of darkness scatter where once were fingers, my arm collapsing into an ashen heap. Time is brief, with decay accelerating. My body the muse, epicenter, the shadow denying life passage, existence, consumption and repair. Through me words were uttered, and I remember them and the way and why of the how of the cycle that repeats. What it touches decays. There is nothing of it to devour. To fling hope upon such nonsense! It is entropy, it is the end. The Land of No More. The complete absence of verve, of energy or of quantum pulse.

Instead of silence there is chaos. Freakish, stupid bedlam.

How appropriate that in this false, benign, insouciant hell is set unsolicited and unwanted on the sill, flagrant and nigh, a being so glutted on its own lies that it believes them utterly, these fancies manifesting as hollow artifice. Strident, intent on imposing its deceit on others. It gluts, it smashing, malding. In a sense I grasp our common plight, I and that poor imitation of Bestat. Yet I seek freedom from my lies, if only my cowardice were not preventing me from grasping truth. It is stupid to fear the pines, to flee them to a place of certain ordained doom. This creature revels in its delusions. To wit, a dumb beast eagerly eating its own shit and vomit. Laugher chokes me, and from the hole in my cheek surge flecks of black. Such a metaphor for existence, for the condition of thinking, feeling things. To eat shit and die! Would that we were kindred spirits, but I am seeking escape my cycle, finding my place, my power in distinction and distinguishing truth from lie. This creature is merely wallowing in a false, unflattering type of ignorance, deeming it strength.

On my tongue, merely an afterthought of ashes, dry and empty. Tasting nothing, savoring nothing. I thirst, but it is folly to seek water at a drought-stricken well. It is a fool’s errand to seek light from a shadow, to grasp for substance in a void.

Ribcage sinking, my chest collapsing around my stilled, rhythmless heart. My breasts two perfect mounds of dust.

Perhaps it will die, or perhaps the unlife will not touch upon it.

Always waking in the instant of repose, my eyelids rapid in idiotic spasm, my carrion wrap strangling joints like an agonizing skein wringing out cold, pungent sweat. The cycle repeating, I remember. I force myself to remember, and I deign yet fail to open my mouth in a silent scream where pneuma paints my lungs in wasp stings of joy.

The dream vanishing, the day before fading, the samsara renewing.

I know, as usual, nothing.

Somehow that rings untrue, for stirring within me ferment contemporaneous images whilst I dress before a wavy mirror in my hotel room, beholding without shock my ghastly image. Brazen, I intrude upon a gaudy art deco hall. A far away window informs me it is night, and toward it my deliberate pace advances. An imp appears from an inscription in my mind, reminding me it is always night here in the Pleiades. Either he or I suggest we go to the stairs, to the lounge. There I sense a presence, a maelstrom of decay yet waking, yet feasting. A nameless entity brought forth from nowhere, by no one. The room is in rot, cast upon it writhing, roving shadows from a realm without life, beyond reality. They penetrate the penumbra. I will not go to the lounge, so from my throat I issue a scoffing sound, planting my figure firmly in front of an elevator door.

“Today I shall play slots.”

Doors and panels splitting before me, and the elevator beeps. Catching a whiff of air inside, noxious herald billowing cigar smoke, citrus cocktails and tears shed on the casino floor, I sneeze, which is queer. Kindling a realization, it was no cat at all back there at all, that thing that fell through the hole in the floor.

“Back where?” curiosity rousing to inquiry I dare and brazenly ask.

Where it from walls of wreckage is raising its raven beaks, its leper's claws.