by Brant Danay
Morpheus Rex knew that he would die moments after the Necrodelic withdrew his claws. He had to muster an attack before that. With prismatic eyes spinning hypnotically, spiral mandalas beckoned Chariah inward, downward. Like a cobra with its prey, Morpheus Rex paralyzed the gaze of the Necrodelic and through that fixed stare paralyzed his body. The demon stiffened as though with rigor mortis, ceasing to twist his claws, blink his eyes, or even think. Morpheus Rex brought forth a toxin to his fangs that would leave the Necrodelic paralyzed even longer, then sunk his venom-drenched incisors into the death smoker's jugular vein and carotid artery. A moderate amount of blood was injected, too, from both the blood he had been regurgitating and the blood which had seeped into his venom because of his internal injuries. Morpheus Rex struck twice more, until the Necrodelic was temporarily as motionless as a statue upon him, his claws like stone within his chest.
He embedded his fangs within the demon's black throat one final time, pumping him full of a nerve toxin that would leave him in excruciating pain once the paralysis wore off. Morpheus Rex called forth the Umbilicus. Using it as a basic, singular straw, Morpheus Rex plunged the Umbilicus into the Necrodelic's forehead and through his skull, deep into his blackened brain. Coughing up blood, Morpheus Rex imbibed the burnt dreams of the Necrodelic, suckling upon the taste of scorched memories and necromancer's meditations.
The violation of his mind, however, brought the Necrodelic back to life. He ripped his head free of the umbilical cord-like straw, leaving a jagged crimson gash above his eye. Snarling, the Necrodelic began to chew Morpheus Rex's face off. Then the pain toxins kicked in.
Writhing in agony, the Necrodelic withdrew his fangs from Morpheus Rex's orbital bones. Incapacitated by the extreme torment, Morpheus Rex was able to shove and peel and leverage the Necrodelic from his decimated body, casting him into a corner to twist in his own suffering. Morpheus Rex himself collapsed against a wall of stone, four sucking wounds in his chest opening and drooling blood with every heaving breath. Staggering onto his hands and knees, Morpheus Rex again grasped the Umbilicus and plunged it into the wound in the Necrodelic's skull. The Dreaming Predator drank more dreams from the Necrodelic, ingesting the raw, brutal suffering of his own nerve toxins as they coursed through the death-smoker's system, as well. Immune to his own poisons, he enjoyed feeling their effects upon his prey with a strange empathic masochism, sympathetically experiencing the torture without the suffering, just like Satan himself, the all-seeing voyeur, the omnipotent sadist, reveling in the torment of the universe he had created.
As he imbibed the burnt dreams of the Necrodelic, his wounds began to close and heal, until finally he had the strength to fight once more. The Necrodelic still lay upon the ground as though in the throes of death, spasming with paroxysms of pain. Morpheus Rex raised his Prismsword to finish his wounded prey. He struck a decapitating blow that should have separated the demon's head from his body. Instead, he found the Prismsword between the fangs of the Necrodelic, who had summoned enough strength to lash out like a rabid werewolf and catch the blade in his teeth. Morpheus Rex struggled to free the Prismsword from the Necrodelic's mouth. The edges of its blade carved holes in his mouth and throat, and its multicolored laser beams opened precise cuts all over his face and chest as he thrashed. Still, the Necrodelic would not release his animal grip on the weapon.
With his left hand free, Morpheus Rex gathered up his Spectrumhammer and began to rain blows upon the Necrodelic's head and ribs. The sound of bones cracking split the air asunder, yet somehow, they seemed to be empowering the Necrodelic. The pain toxins rendered the smashing blows of the Spectrumhammer ineffective; he could not even feel them through the intensity of the agony he already suffered. His crimson eyes glowed and fixed upon the kaleidoscope eyes of the dream-eater. The Necrodelic wielded eye contact like a weapon. Like blood-red gravity wells, they held the eyes of their victim fast in their sockets, then began to sear them with blinding heat, intensifying until Morpheus Rex felt his eyeballs burst into flame and begin to melt down his face, leaving red scars like the paths of boiling teardrops on his cheeks.
Blinded, black smoke curling up from his eye sockets wherein his eyeballs blazed with Hellfire, Morpheus Rex was easy prey for the slashing blows of the Necrodelic. Two successive strikes flayed his chest open again, and he narrowly avoided a third strike to the throat before using his serpent's glands to dodge the blow and guide him, fleeing, from the cave.
Morpheus Rex exited the cave, but instead of leaping to the valleys below or seeking distant shelter, he immediately climbed onto a small ridge above its entrance. Here he doused the fires that ravaged his eyes with his three forked tongues and a splash of venom. When his serpent's glands detected the vibrations of the Necrodelic leaving the cavern, he crouched above its entrance, a predator in waiting. His vision was damaged, so he relied on his other senses to locate his prey, and then vomited all the venom in his body forth in one violent paroxysm, to pour upon the Necrodelic below in a cataract of poison and pain.
The Necrodelic felt the presence of his attacker too late, turning just in time to feel the tsunami of toxins strike his face and douse his entire body in acids. His black skin melted and peeled away, revealing black muscle, black tissues, black organs, and black bones. The neurotoxins seeped into his bloodstream and nervous system, spreading paralysis and agony. A chain reaction of venom went off inside his body, bringing terror, blindness, fever, seizures, hallucinations, and nightmares. Organs failed, vital fluids changed their composition, his entire body chemistry was disrupted and destroyed, leading to an infinite barrage of torture. Morpheus Rex possessed hundreds of types of venom in his serpentine glands, and he had vomited every single one of them upon the Necrodelic in one ultimate assault.
Chariah stood fast as poison drenched his body in a bath of death, delivering a counterattack within the brief moment that he was still capable. Channeling the powers of pyromancy Chariah again called forth the Hellfire, which would render the day's combat a deadlock. An instant later, Morpheus Rex spontaneously burst into flames, and, having used up nearly all of his bodily fluids in his venomous attack, burned like dry kindling, a living immolation, fires raging through his flesh as though he were alive upon his own funeral pyre.
The Omnibeast released several of its black tentacles to retrieve its master, bearing him back to the ship blinded, excruciated, paranoid, fevered, convulsing, lost, hallucinating, and nearly comatose, his flesh half-eaten away from the libation of venom. His adversary, Morpheus Rex, had to travel for miles across the desert, his entire body aflame, to the nearest oasis, where he doused his burning flesh. As the crimson sun began to set, Morpheus Rex dragged himself back to Phantasmagorika, burnt beyond recognition, raw red wounds dripping hot pus, pieces of his flesh dripping off and left sizzling and smoldering upon the ground in his charry wake, coughing ashes from his blackened lungs, his eyelids, nostrils, earslits, and twin penises cauterized shut, and smoke rising from every single inch of his scorched body into the twilit, crimson skies.
6
The caliginous tentacles of the Omnibeast carried their unconscious master into his meditation chamber, then gently set him down and guided him into the black lotus position. While one of the tendrils removed the umbilical cord which had been serving as a lifeline and respirator from his mouth and replaced it with the mouthpiece of his pipe, two other tentacles simultaneously pulled down the skeletal levers that released flesh from above and Hell from below, activating the Bloodbong. As the bodies started to fall and the flames began to rise, the myriad tentacles withdrew in a dark mass through the irising doorway, looking for a moment like the blossom of the black lotuses their master emulated, then shrinking away into the inner darknesses of the Omnibeast.
The Necrodelic's crimson eyes were shut as though he were sleeping, a weakness he had forsaken long ago. Black sweat drenched his body. His flesh looked as if it had been immersed in acid and then dried by coriolis storms. Snakebites covered his shuddering
body, and his mouth continually bled from having clenched the razor-sharp Prismsword in his fangs. His head had been split to the black brains in a wound above his left eye. Chariah looked and felt half-devoured, his flesh eaten by corrosive acid, his dreams imbibed through the hole in his skull by the Oneirophage. With venom coursing through his arteries and veins, agony in every nerve, and countless afflictions resulting from the myriad poisons of Morpheus Rex, the Necrodelic smoked death to bring himself back to life.
The Necrodelic breathed in, and his crimson eyes opened, burning like the bubbling volcanoes in Hell. He breathed in a second time, without exhaling, and every snakebite closed like a sphincter muscle. Chariah inhaled again, and the cuts in his mouth healed themselves while the red tunnel in his forehead grew smaller and smaller until it disappeared. For a full hour, the Necrodelic drew one continuous breath, smoking the flesh off of hundreds of skeletons, gesturing towards the bone lever and telepathically pulling it whenever he had finished one hecatomb and was ready for another. Over the course of the hour, his acid-eaten flesh repaired itself, growing, healing without scars, restoring the Necrodelic's demonic body to the perfect incarnation of evil which it had been.
Only after inhaling for an eternity, after all his physical wounds were healed and his strength restored, did the Necrodelic finally breathe out, and when he finally exhaled, all the snake venom was expelled from his body in one acrid cloud of green smoke. Chariah watched the venomous mist dissipate amongst the roiling black smoke of the chamber as he exhaled for another hour, releasing all the toxins from his body and using his powers of necromancy to build anti-toxins within his glands and bloodstreams to render the Oneirophage's venoms less effective in the future.
After completing his hour-long exhalation, the revitalized Necrodelic resumed his normal breathing patterns. All the flesh he had smoked had left him in a deep, tranquil trance, reflecting upon the battle that was and pondering the battles yet to come. His crimson eyes closed peacefully, this time of their own accord, and Chariah drifted downward into the astral plane, where Mother Chaos embraced him and kissed his black lips, speaking even as she kissed him, even as her tongue sought out the smoothness of his fangs and its own black counterpart.
"...you grow stronger every day, my demon lover...your soul darkens as your mind deepens...like death itself you are, my pet...my champion of the apocalypse..."
Mother Chaos caressed Chariah's long hair with her purple fingernails and pink fingertips as she slid her vagina over his engorged penis. The flaring opening on the tip of Chariah's phallus glowed with a crimson light. Mother Chaos healed the damage to Chariah's soul with her sex, absorbing the wounds of sorcery and the karmas of war, bestowing hitherto unknown powers and enlightenments upon his darkling spirit as they made love.
Chariah could feel himself melting into Mother Chaos with every movement, further and further with every thrust, twisting until he had turned around and lay within her astral body as though he were floating on his back in a pool of water. He kissed her mouth from the inside out, his penis protruding now from her purple vagina as he made love to her from within.
"...frustration I sense in you, my love...frustration in your war with the Oneirophage..."
Mother Chaos' voice came from all around him, from every ripple and wave in the pool of her essence, where he floated like a fetus in a womb, a womb which was the size of the entire mother, which stretched, in fact, through the mother's entire body, a labyrinth womb, a pleasure womb...
"...a womb for a demon prince... " Mother Chaos whispered, "...my demon prince..."
Chariah drifted inside Mother Chaos as though she were a cosmos unto herself. Galaxies floated by outside her translucent body as Chariah watched through the windows of her flesh. Infinities later, the two soulmates slowly flowed in and out of each other until their spirits had separated. Just before Chariah ascended to the physical plane, Mother Chaos cradled him to her pink breast, and bade him drink a droplet of purple elixir from her nipple, within which, she whispered, were the battle plans he craved. Chariah swallowed the tiny bead of liquid amethyst, which tasted at once like perfume made from milk and wine made from roses, and then the Necrodelic found himself rising through the astral plane, with the purple droplet inside him the way he had been inside the soul of Mother Chaos, and the hypnotic instructions of Mother Chaos inside the purple droplet the same way; a womb within a womb within a womb.
*
Morpheus Rex awaited the Necrodelic upon a revolving crucifix hundreds of feet tall, his tattooed arms draped over the giant cross as it spun above the abandoned temple of Serpentikal the snake demon. He had completed his hunting in the early morning and been waiting ever since. After another rigorous night of dreams, surgeries, and parasitism within the scintillant Phantasmagorika, he was once again completely healed, and he knew instinctively that the Necrodelic was, as well. He had left his weapons on an altar of sacrifice below, amongst the looming ophidian stone effigies of extinct religions. The only sentient creature in the entire wastelands, his tattoos gleaming in the sunlight as he rode atop the enormous crucifix like a piece of meat being turned on a spit, Morpheus Rex used his own flesh as bait, displaying his brightly colored body on a crucifix in the barren expanses of vermilion badlands to attract his nemesis.
The dry winds of the desert howled around his head, his prism-plaited hair writhing and twisting around the top of the cross like a sandgorgon's scalpful of rattlesnakes. His three forked tongues flickered in turns from his tilting head as it lolled back and forth, rising and falling with his tattooed chest as he breathed the labored breath of the crucified. The ancient cross revolved from an axis within the temple, allowing Morpheus Rex to spy upon the entire desert for hundreds of miles around. With the black patience of the demonic and the cold patience of the reptilian, the Dreaming Predator waited.
The Necrodelic found Morpheus Rex with ease, just as the Dreaming Predator had intended. The Omnibeast rose from the distant red horizon like the black antithesis of the sun Tyterviax, growing larger and larger as it flew closer and closer, until Morpheus Rex could see the outlines of the Hydratowers arising from its carapace. The crucifix turned, and when it had borne Morpheus Rex around again, the two flanking figureheads of the insectoid War Mantis and the mammalian Scythetooth could be seen jutting from its sides. Another revolution of the cross, and Morpheus Rex could detect the ubiquitous waving tentacles of its underbelly. The spinning crucifix revolved again, and when it finished its next rotation, the Omnibeast was upon him.
The mammoth vessel stopped just short of its target, hovering over the decrepit temple, its heavy shadows quickening the decomposition of the ruins, felling walls and statues and breaking chunks of stone into rubble. The shadow of the Omnibeast fell upon Morpheus Rex as the crucifix once more spun in place. It was as though a heavy blanket composed of antimatter had been draped over him, contouring around him, its gravity palpable and magnetic. The Omnibeast lowered itself from the skies and landed on the roof of the crumbling temple. More pillars and serpent statues toppled and burst into dust as the bestial spaceship nestled in. When next the crucified form of Morpheus Rex faced it, the living figurehead of the Darkworm was mere inches from his face, its black segments glistening around its rings of fangs, its mouth wide open. Morpheus Rex gazed into its seemingly bottomless scarlet gullet, at the end of which he caught glimpses of the spaceship's inner corridors and chambers. Morpheus Rex revolved again while the Darkworm hovered and hissed in mid-air. The crucifix turned, and Morpheus Rex spun back to the Darkworm's abyssal maw, this time finding himself face to face with the Necrodelic, who had emerged from the vermian figurehead's throat, and stood now upon the tip of its black tongue, its rings of fangs surrounding him like a circular iron maiden.
Morpheus Rex lashed out with his clawed feet even as the Necrodelic leapt from the mouth of the Darkworm. His muscular legs wrapped around the Necrodelic's torso like a boa constrictor, catching him in mid-flight and squeezing him in mid-air as t
he giant cross revolved. Morpheus Rex flexed his thighs like anacondas, breaking the Necrodelic's ribs and forcing the air from his lungs with a spray of blood. Chariah struggled and twisted in Morpheus Rex's viselike grip, and unleashed the painful eye contacts which were part of his demonic arsenal. Morpheus Rex's eyes began to bleed as though daggers were being repeatedly driven into his eye sockets. Chariah buried the talons of his index fingers in Morpheus Rex's palms, drilling them into the iron crossbar and crucifying Morpheus Rex with his claws. The looming crucifix spun onward, with Morpheus Rex's hands impaled by the Necrodelic's claws and the Necrodelic, in turn, caught in the constricting grip of Morpheus Rex's legs. Chariah could see his opponent readying a cobra strike, which he countered by pressing his face against his, their close quarters preventing the assault. As the crucifix turned the Necrodelic unleashed a barrage of rapid-fire headbutts, smashing the back of Morpheus Rex's head against the cross and fracturing the Dreaming Predator's skull like stained glass.
Chariah's forehead split open, splattering the temple roofs with crimson. The blood lubricated the flesh between the Necrodelic and the Dreaming Predator, allowing Chariah to slither free from his serpent-thighed grasp. Dangling limply now upon the cross, Morpheus Rex could only watch as the Necrodelic wriggled free of his crushing embrace.
With one graceful motion, Chariah pulled his claws from Morpheus Rex's palms, leaving behind torn and gaping stigmata which began to rhythmically spurt crimson arches of blood into the air. The Necrodelic leapt onto the crossbar and gathered up Morpheus Rex's prism-dreadlocked hair with one hand. He dragged Morpheus Rex from the crossbar and held him dangling in the air for a few seconds, then hurled him from the spinning crucifix to crash through the stone temple roof hundreds of feet below. He then reached towards the sky with one dark hand and brought it down abruptly in a pyromancer's gesture. The base of the spinning crucifix simultaneously exploded as he dropped his arm, Hellfire weakening the iron and sending the giant cross hurtling down toward the temple ruins.