by Brant Danay
The copious amounts of cocaine they ingested inspired philosophical conversation between the two soulmates as well, interspersed throughout the day between lovemakings.
"I wonder," whispered Junisia, during one of these post-coital interludes, "if love can make two souls one...can hate make one soul two?"
"That seems a wise stratagem for battle," Drelrei responded. "Or the inspiration for a pair of weapons. A handheld iron maiden and a cleaver of souls, perhaps...," he mused.
"How many souls, do you suppose, could be joined as one?" Junisia asked her twin. "Do you think it would be possible to sew and weld every living creature in the universe together, every single soul in existence from here to Hell, and then collectively achieve the Jh'a'vyraa?"
Drelrei pondered this idea for a moment. "A Siamese Infinity," he entitled the concept. "Would you add Satan to this amalgamation of souls as well?" Drelrei asked his conjoined lover.
"Perhaps, but without Satan, I believe there can be no Jh'a'vyraa. They are polar opposites, and like light and dark, or love and death, they cannot exist without one another. So, by becoming Siamese twins with Satan, be it as an individual or as a universe, you can never become the Jh'a'vyraa, and since the ultimate goal of every sentient entity is to become the Jh'a'vyraa, this union is either impossible or one that would nullify your very existence. Satan is the antithesis of everything else, of everything which is not Satan. He is the antithesis of all creation, and of the universe entire. Therefore, I do not believe it would be possible to add Satan to this all-encompassing entity."
Drelrei plucked another coca leaf from a nearby tree and began to chew. "The Siamese Infinity is physically possible, but I personally would not want to spend the eternity of the Jh'a'vyraa with every other soul who has ever existed, my archenemies, my subservients, my former lovers, and my former slayers. Nor, I believe, would any of them like to spend eternity with us. It is this natural enmity between souls which is, in part, why the apocalypse rages and we all seek to kill one another, rather than sewing ourselves together or uniting ourselves into a massive army to battle or escape Satan. Besides, if every soul in existence were to join in a Siamese Infinity, and who's to say that it never has, then this universe in which we live in right now would be the Jh'a'vyraa or an exact replica of it, and I can proclaim without doubt that this universe is no Jh'a'vyraa. The Siamese Infinity would inherently create a karmic warp, a samsaric loop from which there would be no escape without individualization. Therefore, the Siamese Infinity, though physically possible, is spiritually impossible. And a war against the omnipotent cannot, by definition of the term, concept, and properties of omnipotence, be won, no matter how great or numerous the soldiers. Googolplexes upon googolplexes upon googolplexes of the most powerful demons possible would still be unable to overthrow Satan."
Junisia ruminated for a moment upon these mind-twisting enlightenments before speaking once more. "What is the maximum number of souls that can exist in the universe?"
"There is no maximum. Satan can create as many souls as he wants, googolplexes upon googolplexes upon googolplexes, and, with all eternity and infinity in his grasp, can add further googolplexes to their number as he pleases. No matter how many souls populate the universe, Satan can always add another, and then another, and then another. Conversely, I ask you this: how many pieces is it possible to cut a soul into?"
"Either an infinite amount, I would speculate, or none at all", spoke Junisia, as she, too, partook of another coca leaf.
"Would each severed piece of soul live on, like a dissected worm? Would each possess its own personality and identity? Would each have its own consciousness? Or would they merely be clones, fragments, even aspects of the original, and therefore remain under his or her control, and never beyond his or her realms of perception?"
"Perhaps the soul is ylem, an inexhaustible supply of energy that can be infinitely combined or divided as needed. Perhaps everything in the universe really shares one communal spirit, or are each small pieces of one greater oversoul."
"Satan," Drelrei replied laconically.
"Perhaps the oversoul represents the finite energy of the universe, and as the souls are cloven again and again, that energy is exhausted until only the singularity of the Jh'a'vyraa is left, and nothing else."
"Nothing except Hell and Satan," Drelrei said cynically, then added, "whom I fear, in his omniscience, is the only one who knows the answers to these philosophical riddles."
The Siamese twin lovers then sat in silence for a time, twice filling their pornographic pipes with crushed coca leaves and immersing their minds and bodies in yet more of the chemical stimulants. As twilight began, the Tantradox counted every star in the sapphire skies and committed their locations to memory. The rush of cocaine in their heads helped them draw numerous starcharts in their brains that would be accurate for millennia. With pounding hearts and tingling extremities, Drelrei and Junisia awaited the coming of the prophesied shooting star.
The omen came just before sunset, a black and yet radiant celestial body that was much more than a meteorite, the dark shooting star that the innards of the chimeras and several other beasts had foretold. The Tantradox watched as it arced through the skies against a backdrop of nightfall and began bombarding their garden planet with fireballs and gouts of flame until midnight, when it disappeared. The falling star had descended. The shooting star had struck its target. The omen had come to pass. The prophecy was fulfilled.
The Tantradox, now standing at the very ledge of the precipice, as it had since first sighting the dark harbinger, continued to gaze out across the moonlit garden planet of Elasvai for several moments. As still and silent as outer space, the silhouette of the Siamese twin demons loomed like a giant effigy from the Cliffs of Caine. When it finally spoke, it was with a heavy and commanding voice, like that of an ancient and powerful idol that had just been resurrected.
"To the Forest of Flesh," Drelrei decreed. "The end of time has begun."
28
On the backs of Siamese twin griffins the Tantradox soared, seated atop a thronelike howdah between the spread-eagled pinions of the conjoined beasts. Drelrei held its reins, Junisia its whip, as it glided beneath the orange moon, the metal spikes of its leather bridle, harness, and saddle glinting in the starlight, silver flashes in the night skies. Every few minutes the conjoined griffins beat their two wings simultaneously, then rode upon currents of air for another several miles. Behind them the Cliffs of Caine, to which the griffins had been summoned by the call of their master, loomed like frozen tsunamis, their hundred-foot tall coca plants forming pentagram-shaped silhouettes against the horizons of midnight.
A giant battle axe rested on the lap of the Tantradox as they rode through the night. Its curved edges gleamed sharply in the blackness from time to time, the quick smile of death. Above the shimmering battle axe the glow of small fires flickered, as the Tantradox smoked coca leaves from a conjugal pipe throughout their flight, each holding a phallic mouthpiece between their lips and drugging themselves with the bounty of the pornographic sculpture. The breeze of their passage and the soft, cold winds of the night served to further numb their flesh, creating intense tingling sensations like orgasms throughout their entire body.
The Siamese twin griffins turned slowly to the southeast, their flight gradually arcing downward as they flew, gliding on a curving path through the skies. A glimpse of the Forest of Flesh quickened its wings, its destination finally in sight. A few minutes later, the Tantradox and its conjoined flying steed approached the wriggling green shell of the biodome, the leaves which were not leaves. The Forest of Flesh obediently opened a portal in its impenetrable wall for its master, hands unclasping and releasing their brethren from their grip, phalanges slithering out of the way, genitals squirming, twisting, and withdrawing from one another in order to create the entrance. The griffins soared through the irising gateway and into the Forest of Flesh. The portal immediately closed behind them, hands folding in prayer, fist
s closing like locks, fingers resettling, phalluses thrusting and raping themselves back into place, all reassuming their positions in the outer defenses of the living forest.
Over, under, and around the thick limbs the Siamese twin griffins flew, deftly navigating the gauntlet of flesh-colored branches and tree trunks. The Tantradox urged its steed onwards with a lash of the whip, raising yet another welt upon its golden lion's flesh. Deeper and deeper into the Forest of Flesh they flew, Siamese twin soulmates on a quest, Siamese twin demons on the hunt.
*
Black patience. One of the most difficult powers of evil to attain. The ability to wait in a state of dark meditation for years at a time while maintaining and even increasing one's intensity, savagery, and propensity for violence. The ability to fuel one's anger throughout that period without being consumed by it, to plot vengeance for centuries without a single quickening of the heartbeat. A state of pure evil known only by the most enlightened of demons. In its trance, Chariah perched invisibly amongst the branches, his grapnel ready, his crimson eyes glowing, his dark flesh completely camouflaged by the consuming nocturnal pitch, a shadow lying in wait, a predator hungry for prey, a sniper zeroing in on the raw stuff of murder itself.
Chariah first sensed the presence of the Tantradox with his echolocation. A few seconds later he could smell the Tantradox coming. Within moments, his Siamese twin adversaries would be in range. The time for black patience had ended.
The Necrodelic dropped silently through the branches until he was level with the approaching griffins. From a hidden perch, he watched as the Siamese twin beasts bore the Tantradox through the trees, closer and closer, until he could make out the features of Drelrei and Junisia's faces, see the protuberances of their black nipples and swollen genitals, and smell the cocaine on their breath. At the last possible second, with a sudden flick of his wrist, the pentagram-shaped grapnel whistled through the air and embedded itself in an incarnadine tree trunk. The black coil stretched tautly across the forest, invisible in the shadowy night. The griffins flew under the wire an instant later, their wings and saddle passing beneath it. The Tantradox, however, was Chariah's intended target, and the Siamese twin demons were struck violently in the throat as they were borne into the undetectable cord. Their heads snapped back with instantaneous whiplash. The stalwart coil of the grappling hook clotheslined the Tantradox, knocking it from its howdah. The griffins flew onward with an empty saddle as the Tantradox flipped over in mid-air and plummeted to the ground, bouncing and tumbling off tree branches all the way to the swampy forest floor.
All of this happened before even a droplet of blood had welled from the living flesh of the tree which had been punctured by the points of the pentagram grapnel. As quickly as it had struck, the star-shaped projectile was withdrawn, leaving behind it a sudden rush of blood and three screaming faces in the bark of the tree. Chariah caught the spinning grapnel in the flesh of his palm with a small spattering of scarlet, crouched, and then jumped from branch to branch as the Tantradox fell. The Siamese twin demons landed on their backs in the grotesque marsh of ordure and bodily fluids, splashing the brackish water onto the surrounding trunks of flesh, and lay motionless.
Chariah perched upon a branch several hundred feet above them, looming over his fallen prey. The Necrodelic looked down upon the Tantradox with glowing crimson eyes, a reaper of fallen souls. With feline grace he sprung into the air, his right hand held just above his head, his claws lacerating the sable forest gloom as he pounced. As he plummeted, he readied his gleaming talons for the deathblow, his black biceps bulging, his black triceps rippling with lethal tension, his musculature like three-dimensional shadows in the night. Chariah swung his claws in an arching strike just before he landed, aiming to impale the Tantradox through both of its hearts upon the swampy ground.
The quietus never connected. As the Necrodelic brought his claws over and past his head at light speed, the Siamese twin griffins barreled into the side of his prone and falling form like a flying battering ram. The griffins knocked Chariah from his path of descent and sent him twisting uncontrollably through the air until he crashed painfully into the wide trunk of a tree some hundred feet distant. The Necrodelic fell limply into the viscid swampwater, but retained consciousness. He rose to one knee in the dark green, semi-fluid marsh, just in time to see the Siamese twin griffins soaring towards him again, skimming the surface of the bog with their claws outstretched, each leonine head snarling and baring its fangs. Chariah kneeled directly in its path, shaking swampwater from his long hair and beckoning the kamikaze monster forward. He then rose to stand before the hurtling beast, motioning it towards him with his claws, baiting the soaring brute. Just before the Siamese twin griffins connected with another bone-shattering blow, the Necrodelic slipped liquidly onto his back to lay supinely on the forest floor, completely submerged in the shallow marsh. The only part of the demon still visible were his long claws, stabbing upwards from the water like the spikes of a pit-trap, glistening wetly and sharply in the darkness. The low trajectory of the enraged Siamese twin griffins bore them directly through Chariah's claws. Each half of the conjoined beast was sliced open from gullet to anus as it soared past. Its guts and all its organs immediately poured into the marsh. The momentum of the flying creature carried its lifeless husk onwards for several feet before it crashed into another tree.
The griffins were already dead by the time they collided with the tree trunk and fell to the ground. Their conjoined corpses lay half-submerged in the rapidly crimsoning marsh. Chariah continued to lay beneath the surface of the foul pool, bringing his claws down to his sides so that he was completely underwater, resting as though he was enclosed in a coffin. His evil was such that he had long ago replaced the need for oxygen with death-addiction, and was thus incapable of drowning. He waited with black patience. Only a few minutes passed before the Tantradox blundered into him. He could hear the Tantradox splashing towards him, feel the vibrations of its grotesque gait in the currents of the swamp. The Siamese twins were not only searching for him, but they had also come to check on their stricken pet, their fallen beasts of burden that they had made in their own image.
The Tantradox was wounded and coughing up blood, its throats purple from the vicious clothesline, its bodies scraped and bruised from the fall through the trees, but the Siamese twins were so full of cocaine that neither of them felt even a twinge of pain. They reached the hulking corpse of the eviscerated griffins, observed its demise, then retrieved their battle axe from its mangled howdah. Searching around and screaming animalistic battle-cries, the Tantradox swung the battle axe wildly around its heads, and then down into the swamp, over and over, suspecting that the Necrodelic was hiding nearby.
The Necrodelic remained still, waiting for his prey to come closer. He could feel the reverberations of the axe parting the waters and digging into the earth in his black spine, growing stronger, louder, until each blow was a thunderclap. Chariah calmly waited an instant longer, then summoned Hellfire into his lungs and breathed into the very swamp. The greenish waters immediately heated beyond the point of boiling, slime and detritus flaming along its surface, intestinal roots blackening and shriveling. The entire forest cried out at once. The Tantradox, brimming with the painkilling effects of the cocaine, could not feel the heat through its tingling numbness, and was thusly burned all the worse. When it realized what was happening, it screamed and stumbled through the boiling water, eventually dropping the battle axe into the bubbling currents and climbing out of the steaming swamp to take refuge in the branches above, where the Necrodelic was already lurking, having escaped the scalding marsh with his grappling hook before it could have any effect upon him.
The entire forest floor bubbled and churned like lava. The corpse of the Siamese twin griffins burst into flame and was cremated. The living trees of the Forest of Flesh were melting and burning, as though an entire race of demons had spontaneously combusted, their lower features disfigured and scarred. Their visceral
roots were burning out like the wicks of candles. The conflagration spread rapidly, and the Necrodelic swung through the trees on his pentagram-shaped grapnel to escape it. Faces in the trees began to cough and gag from the billowing smoke, their red eyes tearing, or closing in death. As the smoke wafted into and inside the trees through its myriad mouths and vaginas, the conjoined creatures which dwelled within their inner tunnels began pouring out through the faces and genitals at the top of the forest. Gaping mouths, flaring nostrils, and dilated vaginas vomited swarms of wasps and hornets, hordes of bats, and two-headed harpies from their depths. Amphisbenic nightworms burst through living eyeballs. All manner of winged creature flew to the forest canopy and escaped, or perished in the attempt.
The Tantradox stood upon a thick branch and examined its wounds. The skin around their cloven hooves was burned, leaving behind a sticky crimson residue of blood. Drelrei and Junisia still couldn't feel any of the pain from their wounds. As the flames of Hell once more approached, the Tantradox ascended to a higher branch. Chariah was watching them from above all the while, and as they climbed through the trees, he once again threw his pentagram-shaped grapnel, this time high into the air, where it lodged in the scrotums lining the underbelly of an upper limb. He swung through the air on the coils of the grappling hook in the direction of the Tantradox, landing a side kick to the back of Drelrei's skull. The Tantradox struggled to keep its balance, at one point leaning face-down over the edge of the branch.
Chariah swung back into view and drove the claws of his right foot into Junisia's face with a vicious front kick, knocking the Tantradox into the air. The Tantradox flailed and plummeted toward the cauldrons below. This time, the Forest of Flesh reached out with clutching hands to catch its master in a protective netlike cradle.