by Brant Danay
Chariah rode the plummeting crucifix as gracefully as a dragonrider, guiding it toward the fallen, broken body of Morpheus Rex below. The full weight of the giant iron cross crashed into Morpheus Rex, splintering one leg, shattering a hip, dislodging vertebrae, and causing the already rapidly spreading pool of blood upon the temple floor to spread even faster. Debris rained down from everywhere while dust clouds rose into the skies. Morpheus Rex was pinned beneath the length of the gigantic crucifix, trying unsuccessfully to slither out from under it. Chariah crouched above him upon the ancient, bloodstained altar of sacrifice where he had silently landed. He caught Morpheus Rex with his crimson eye contact, snarled, and looked off to the west through a gap in the ruined temple. The crimson sun Tyterviax was lowering itself like an embolus. The Necrodelic gazed meaningfully upon it, then back to the prone body of the Dreaming Predator.
With a gleaming snarl that now contained the hint of a smile, Chariah raised his claws and began slashing himself apart, raking his own claws diagonally across his chest with savage glee, opening gaping wounds in his abdomen and torso. He growled in pain as he lay himself upon the altar of sacrifice and repeatedly dragged his claws over his own body, drenching the table with crimson rivulets that runneled like the blood of baptisms and sacrifices past. The Necrodelic ripped his own flesh to shreds, incapacitating himself. Like Morpheus Rex had been just an hour before, the Necrodelic was now his own trap, his own bleeding flesh the bait. Lying limp in a dripping pile of self-mutilation, in a semi-conscious state upon the altar, the Necrodelic waited with the black patience of a demon and the hungry patience of a vampire.
Morpheus Rex eventually dragged his battered body from beneath the crucifix. He had watched the Necrodelic's ritual self-mutilation, wondering if he had been driven mad by his flesh-smoking addictions and death-smoking rituals, or perhaps by the serpent venom which had saturated his body. Regardless, the Dreaming Predator did not question the methods by which he attained his prey, and raised the Darkprism in his hand to absorb the Necrodelic just like any other victim. A flash of black later, and the Necrodelic was trapped inside the pentagram pendant. The Omnibeast watched all this stoically from above, but made no move to attack or defend its master. Perhaps, thought Morpheus Rex, it had no will of its own once its possessor had been defeated.
Morpheus Rex limped through the debris and into the evening. He did not notice the pair of black eyes watching him from within the remaining statue of Serpentikal, shifting to follow him as he exited the temple ruins and made his way across the desert.
The Darkprism swung gently against Morpheus Rex's chest, with the Necrodelic trapped inside, and inside the Necrodelic, the purple droplet containing the coded, hypnotic instructions of Mother Chaos, instructions which had just been carried out to perfection; a trap within a trap within a trap.
7
The Oneirophage slithered through Phantasmagorika on crepitating bones. The broken leg he had suffered when the iron crucifix fell upon him had translated into a half-shattered tail when he made the metamorphosis from the bipedal Morpheus Rex to the serpentine Oneirophage. His twisted tail crackled as it dragged across the floor, his skeleton sounding like a hundred small explosions with every movement. With several dislodged vertebrae, his spine felt and sounded like a saw, digging into the flesh of his back and torso with tiny ridged teeth, carving at his flesh. Serpentine crepitus breaking the night air like glass, the Oneirophage pulled the Darkprism from its obsidian chain around his neck. Inside were Morpheus Rex's diurnal prey, with which he would heal his wounds by eating and drinking their dreams. As always, the Oneirophage's memories of the day were hazy and surreal, just as Morpheus Rex's recollections of his were-serpent alter ego's nocturnal activities were typically vague and incomplete. The concussion he had suffered made his memory even more murky than usual, an indecipherable kaleidoscopic whirlpool churning at the bottom of his brain.
Hissing a sibilant incantation, the Oneirophage held the Darkprism over his head and bade it release his prisoners. Black beams of light reflected and refracted from the prism walls, floor, and ceiling for an instant. What followed was a virtual shower of mutilation. Instead of whole bodies, the Darkprism rained severed limbs, extracted organs, and coils of entrails. Decapitated heads thudded upon the floor and rolled off in all directions. Hearts, livers, and brains splattered upon the ground with loud wet noises, or were flung into the walls where they stuck with brief sucking sounds. Intestines were left in piles upon the floor like defecation. Limbless, headless, vivisected torsos crashed down from all around. Gruesome barrages of castrated genitals were spewed and spat through the air. And then it began raining blood, the Darkprism spraying several series of ruby droplets around the chamber like an intricate fountain, in mandalic patterns at rhythmic intervals, then in spouts and arches, geysers and jetstreams, then bursting like a stormcloud, drenching the entire room in crimson.
The blood-soaked Oneirophage cast the Darkprism furiously across the gore-strewn room, where it continued to spurt copious amounts of red ichor. His three forked tongues hissed angrily while his prismatic eyes gazed upon it in mesmerized shock. After a few minutes the bloodflow began to slow, so that the Darkprism now hemorrhaged like an artescerated heart, its ebony surface gleaming with dripping scarlet.
The Oneirophage's bedchamber was completely covered in gore. Every last inch of the room was crimson. The ceiling dripped blood. Blood runneled down the walls. Blood flooded the floor. His bed was soaked through like a thousand bandages. The Amputator had been painted red. And everywhere around him were body parts and organs. The Darkprism lay like another severed head in the corner, another ripped-out heart, another dismembered genital. Slowly it began to glow black from beneath its coat of blood, creating a dark shade of crimson never before witnessed in the universe. The Darkprism pulsed, the Darkprism spasmed, and with a flash of scarlet-tinged sable, the Necrodelic emerged from its tenebrous depths.
The Oneirophage's sentient chains reacted instinctively, lashing out at blinding speed from their sconces in the wall, to bind and shackle the creature that had just been dispersed from the Darkprism. The Necrodelic was faster, raising his black claws over his shoulders and slicing the chains into small pieces behind him without looking back. Chariah loomed over the black jewel, which now lay beneath him like a discarded womb. The Death Addict appeared just as he had earlier in the day, his body ripped open with hundreds of slashing wounds that glowed like infrared light against his dark skin. Deep diagonal gashes had flayed his chest open from shoulder to hip. He had come dangerously close to eviscerating himself, small pieces of bleeding entrails peeking out from his open abdomen. Cuts spiraled up and down his arms and legs. The array of wounds covering his body looked at times like mandalic artwork, at times like the external circulatory system of Satan. His hair was soaked with blood, his claws maroon with coagulated scabs. Blood dripped into his eyes and down his face from a deep gash in his head. He had slit his own throat and ripped chunks of flesh from his own back. He had mutilated himself for his own sinister purposes, and he stood now before his arch-enemy, snarling, living death in black and red.
Memory assaulted the Oneirophage like another concussion. The diurnal battle of Morpheus Rex and the Necrodelic played itself over and over in his mind like a phantasmagoric reverie. The flesh-smoker had wounded himself so that Morpheus Rex would think him defeated and dying. He had been sucked into the Darkprism, and while inside its black hole realms he had murdered and dismembered all of Morpheus Rex's prey. The Necrodelic had stolen his victims like a scavenger, ruining his feast of dreams, and for that, thought the Oneirophage, he would unleash Hell and a billion nightmares upon him.
Crimson eye contact met kaleidoscope eye contact from across the gore-filled room, holding both of them fast as though two double-pointed spears had been driven through their eyeballs, binding them together. The Oneirophage hissed vengeance and the Necrodelic snarled victory.
"You'll not escape me at sunset any longer
. At last, I have found your lair, and it is in your own lair that I shall slay thee. Now, we fight to the death, and I'll not leave this planet until you are boiling in my Bloodbong, or sucking the dreams from my corpse with your Umbilicus."
The Necrodelic loomed, the only darkness in the crimson bedchamber. Blood was another of his natural habitats. Blood was his environment, his territory, his den. Blood was his terrain, to be used to his advantage. Blood was his home.
Chariah flew across the chamber in one mighty leap, spinning once in mid-air and backslashing the Oneirophage as he landed. The edges of his claws opened four cuts on the Oneirophage's face, staggering him as Chariah splashed down in the foot-deep pool of blood immersing the room. The Necrodelic slid on the wet floor, gliding towards the Oneirophage to deliver a second strike. Chariah pulled his right arm back, and then, like five bolts of black lightning, his claws flashed through the air, hurtling forward to impale the Oneirophage against the wall. The dream-serpent dodged the blow with one sinuous, sigmoid motion, slithering vertically, curving his chest and torso to one side to avoid the claws. The Necrodelic's talons drove into the wall behind him, cutting through the prism as if it were flesh. As he struggled for a moment to pull them out, the Oneirophage rammed his skull with a cobra strike, sinking his fangs into the side of Chariah's face and head and injecting a stream of venom. The blow sent the Necrodelic reeling, pulling him from the wall to slide backwards along the wake of blood he had left behind. The Oneirophage struck again, shoving more toxins into the Necrodelic's jugular vein and carotid artery with his hypodermic fangs. He paused to wait for the poisons to take effect, but the demon only shook his black mane as if to clear his head.
"Your venoms no longer hurt me." Chariah spake in a soft susurrus, his crimson eyes glowing. "You'll have to find another way to kill me, slitherer."
The Oneirophage raised his right hand in the air and twirled it in an oneiromantic conjuring gesture. "If I cannot poison your blood," he hissed, his three forked tongues twitching, "then I shall drain it from your flesh."
The Umbilicus appeared suddenly in his hand like a weapon, twisted like a labyrinth, with tubes jutting out everywhere. The Oneirophage swung it like a whip towards the Necrodelic. The Umbilicus unraveled and mutated in mid-air, instantly binding Chariah in its clutches and driving its tips into every one of his bodily orifices. Coils bound his arms and legs, wound themselves around his torso and throat. Straws jabbed themselves into his eyes, his nostrils, his mouth, his ears, and the tip of his penis, raising red rims upon the flesh around them and leaking blood from beneath their nearly hermetically sealed edges. The Oneirophage held the other end of the straw in his hands. He raised it to his rainbow lips like a calumet, then began to suck the Necrodelic's blood from every one of his bodily orifices at the same time.
Chariah felt as though he had been attacked by his own Bloodbong. The large mouthpiece and nasal tubes were suffocating him as the Oneirophage imbibed his blood, and then his dreams, as the serpent demon sought to replenish his strength. Chariah allowed himself to slip into a brief meditative state, slowing his breathing nearly to a stop, heightening both his awareness and his necromantic sorceries. A minute later he too was inhaling through the respiratory insertions, reclaiming the blood he had just lost, battling the Oneirophage through the conduit of the Umbilicus. With extreme prana/bindu body control he began sucking with his eyes and ears, and with his mastery of higher tantric powers his penis did the same. The Necrodelic reversed the momentum of the Umbilicus and now used it to his advantage. Likewise, the Oneirophage now found himself at the wrong end of the convoluted tubes, and it was his blood, his air, his flesh, and his soul that was simultaneously imbibed and inhaled from his every bodily orifice.
Through the twisted straw the Necrodelic sucked the cannibal vomit from the Oneirophage's stomach, the venom from his glands, the blood from his veins, and the dreams from his head. The Oneirophage thrashed in agony, then grasped the bulk of the straw's nexus, lifted it over his head, and used it to bodily hurl the Necrodelic through the air. Straws disconnected with wet sucking noises as Chariah was flung from their grasp, to land sprawling atop the rapidly rusting Amputator across the room.
The Oneirophage tore the Umbilicus from his lips with a small spattering of crimson and cast it down into the pool of blood on the floor, where it lay half-submerged like some sort of leviathan tapeworm. As the Necrodelic gathered himself upon the slick roof of the Amputator, the Oneirophage joined him atop the limbing machine.
Clawed feet and serpent's tail alike skidded in the slippery blood. Chariah slashed and chopped with his claws while the Oneirophage bombarded him with tattooed fists. After several minutes, the Oneirophage captured the Necrodelic by wrapping his tail around his feet and dragging him down with a loud splash, sending blood and rust flying through the air. The Oneirophage's tail wrapped its way up Chariah's legs, until it held him in its spiraling boa constrictor grip from feet to waist. The broken bones in the Oneirophage's tail blazed with agony as they were twisted under the severe pressure of their own flexing muscle, the sounds of crepitus abrading the air like grindstones. They lay this way for a long time, Chariah struggling to free himself, the Oneirophage squeezing with all his strength, trying to break the bones in the Necrodelic's legs. Some time later, the Oneirophage bent himself over double, so that he lay prostrated across the prone Necrodelic, his tail tying his legs up beneath them. Thus knotted together, they traded more blows, fists, claws, bites, and headbutts. With prism eyes locked into crimson eyes, eye contact drawing blood from both, both hands around each other's throats, the Oneirophage inched their entangled bodies to the edge of the Amputator, and then dangled Chariah upside-down over it, bracing himself with his hands behind him while his curled tail held the Necrodelic fast, hanging him upside-down by the legs.
The Necrodelic raised himself on torn abdominal muscles to strike at the Oneirophage with his claws before his stomach collapsed and he fell back. The next time he rose up, the Oneirophage caught him with a fist to the face, knocking him back down with such force that it nearly carried the Oneirophage with him. The dream-eater braced himself again, and then began to lower himself from the roof of the Amputator, twisting in mid-air as he did so to grasp its edge with his fingers. His lower body tensed as he thrashed his tail, picking the Necrodelic up with it and then slamming him on his back upon the surgical table inside the Amputator. Practically holding on to the edge of the Amputator by his long, painted fingernails, the Oneirophage was barely able to gesture to the Umbilicus. He made the attempt, however, and succeeded in summoning it forth from the floor where it had lain, half-submerged in the shallow sea of blood like a burnt-out eel. Resurrected, the Umbilicus launched into the air and flew to its master. The Oneirophage caught the end of it in his mouth, then used his prehensile forked tongues to spin it into a three-dimensional pentagram within a circular frame. This configuration fit perfectly into the grinding wheel upon the side of the Amputator, which the Oneirophage then bade the Umbilicus attach itself to while he clasped the other end in his mouth. Moments later, as the Oneirophage inhaled, the wheel began to turn .
The surgical table lurched and began to move along its conveyor belts. The Necrodelic was splayed prone upon the device, still trapped in the Oneirophage's coils. The Oneirophage slowly lowered himself even further from the ledge of the Amputator's entrance. His arms were now fully extended above his head. The muscles of both demons were stretched nearly to the point of shredding and ripping apart. The first time the guillotines fell, Chariah reared up to avoid them, and remained in mid-air to further dodge them as they returned to their holders. The table continued to move along as the Necrodelic and the Oneirophage continued to twist and writhe, Chariah trying to dodge the whistling guillotines, and the dream-eater trying to position him so that he could not. All the while the Oneirophage continued inhaling through the Umbilicus, grinding the wheel of the Amputator from afar.
They wrestled thusly until the dawn, which
Chariah witnessed through the eastern window. The Necrodelic watched the red sun Tyterviax rear itself like a bleeding death's head over the horizon, and knew that he need only endure the Oneirophage's death-grip for a few moments longer.
At the exact instant of sunrise, the Oneirophage began his were-transformation. His tail thrashed itself in half, tearing apart into two snakeskin-tattooed legs. As the Oneirophage's lower half metamorphosed, Chariah was freed from the constriction of his tail. He dodged the guillotines one last time, then rose to his feet atop the moving surgical table.
The Oneirophage was transforming into Morpheus Rex while hanging from the edge of the Amputator. Chariah grabbed his dangling legs and ripped him from the ledge, then turned around upon the conveyor belt and, holding the Dreaming Predator's legs against his sides, began driving him backwards through the Amputator, mere inches from the four guillotines. The Umbilicus had remained in Morpheus Rex' mouth both during and after his transformation, and as the quartet of blades fell he blew a forceful, guided pneuma into it. The rush of air sought out the wheel which controlled the Amputator, bringing it to a halt and then, like a gale-force wind, blew it in the opposite direction.
The guillotines merely nicked his shoulders as they dropped. As the surgical table lurched in the opposite direction, the Necrodelic's equilibrium was briefly disturbed, and Morpheus Rex took advantage of this moment by kicking the Necrodelic in the solar plexus with both feet. The blow was tremendous and sent the Death Addict flying through the air and into the crystal, blood-coated, dawn-lit eastern window. The window shattered with his impact, disintegrating into sparkling shards that opened up thousands of cuts upon the Necrodelic as he hurtled through it. Chariah flew backwards for a few more feet, then dropped and fell into the psychedelic moat below.