by Brant Danay
By now, the Forest of Flesh was an inferno. It tried desperately to regenerate its lost limbs, but the Hellfire burned too fast and too strong. Arms and legs fell like bodies to the broiling waters below, leaving behind bloody stumps and sticky, cauterized wounds. As whole sections of the Forest of Flesh toppled in conflagration, Chariah and the Tantradox began scrambling in opposite directions, seeking the writhing green barriers of fingers and phalluses.
The Necrodelic opened a dripping exit in the living walls with his claws, slashing and castrating and dismembering his way to freedom. As he escaped, he noticed that the Tantradox had retreated deeper into the Forest of Flesh, and the Forest of Flesh itself was fleeing the fire on burning legs, transforming and rearranging itself so that it could run along its own living trunks and branches to a safe haven. It bore the bloody and battered Tantradox in its limbs, carrying their master off into the distance. Chariah observed that the sentient forest still held his spaceship as the trees disappeared over the horizon.
Somewhere on Elasvai, the Forest of Flesh would take root again, with the Omnibeast as its prisoner. Somewhere on Elasvai, as well, the Tantradox would survive. Chariah stood serenely amongst the flames and the ashes, tranquilly pondering the wet bloody remnants of the death and destruction he had wrought. His demonsight then zeroed in on his adversaries and he began to walk slowly through the smoking ruins in pursuit. With the burning taste of Hellfire still in his mouth and throat, the Necrodelic stalked his prey with a calm, even stride, hunting his victim step by step, by blackest step.
29
The flaming Forest of Flesh fled with an odd, tangled, effeminate gait as it frantically attempted to outrun its own conflagration, its thousands of steps falling in a broken rhythm across the grassy steppes and plains, leaving an uneven spoor of ashes and brushfires in its wake. The Necrodelic pursued his massive, wounded prey with the unwavering red gaze of his demonsight, tracking it along the burning horizons where smoke rose like spirits and ashes fell like bodies. Chariah hunted with deliberate strides, a black lion stalking his victim, ashes filling his pumping lungs as he began to breathe faster, inhaling the raw heat of Hell and the scent of its fires, of immolated flesh and wet ensanguined smoke, deeper and deeper with each quickening breath, delivering him into a trancelike state of tranquil necrodelia as he accelerated to greater and greater speeds across the plains. Like a wormhole, the powerful and heavy black aura of the Necrodelic warped and folded space, allowing him to traverse several miles with a single step, bending reality to his indomitable will. The Necrodelic was a caliginous blur, a spark of sable electricity, the brief shimmer of obsidian illumined by a bolt of lightning, the final shadow of light before being sucked into a black hole, an event horizon unto himself, the entire darkness of all outer space concentrated into the size and shape of a single demon. The midnight that only lasts a second, the death which only takes an instant, Chariah flashed across the garden planet like one of Satan's neurons, the ultimate predator, invigorated and empowered by breathing in the charred and burning flesh of the injured monstrosity he chased, sucking the smoke into his expanding and quickening lungs as he ran, growing more and more evil at exponential rates.
For one brief nocturnal moment the Necrodelic ran blindingly through the gardens of Elasvai, leaving tall grass rippling and giant leaves and flower petals stirring in the black breezes of his darkling passage. A shadow on the edge of a blade, cutting a swath through the night, visible only as an ephemeral silhouette to the eyes of the unenlightened, Chariah covered entire miles in mere seconds, gaining ground on the frenetic Forest of Flesh and then launching the pentagram-shaped grapnel from the palm of his right hand into the midst of the panicked trees, where it lodged itself with a loud sucking noise in the flesh of a sentient trunk.
The Necrodelic traveled the last few miles on the adamantium thread of his grappling hook, a light-speed spider in the night. As the iron rope recoiled into the sheath of flesh beneath his wrist, Chariah was borne upwards through the dark skies to the treetops of the stampeding forest. This time, it was the Tantradox who awaited the Necrodelic. Lurking high amongst the branches, hidden in the shadows, smoking a concoction of cocaine and opium from a hookah as they leaned against the sanctuary of a thick tree trunk and contemplated the karmic implications of their role reversals, Drelrei and Junisia watched with drug-heightened vision and fascination as the Necrodelic hunted with demonspeed, covering the miles of distance between them in moments. They heard the whirring, slashing sound of his adamantium pentagram-shaped grapnel as it flew past their heads, and the slapping sound of spikes landing gorily in muscle and tissue a moment later.
As the Necrodelic hurtled at supersonic speeds through the Forest of Flesh on a barely visible cable, the Tantradox peered around the side of the whimpering tree trunk they were hiding behind. Drelrei and Junisia waited with tantric patience, letting time accumulate like sexual energy before being released in one powerful sorcerous orgasm. As the ebon demon neared, the Tantradox leapt straight up and caught an overhanging branch in its clawed and cloven hands, from which it then hung with arms outstretched, as still as Siamese twin vampire bats. When Chariah passed into their boundaries, their circle, their orbit, the Tantradox twisted its conjoined bodies violently in the air, one swift, savage, spinning attack that shook the branch from which it dangled. Both of its armored tails lashed out like whips, a pair of deadly, weapon-tipped flails tearing the night.
The mace of Drelrei's stegosaurus tail struck first, catching the Necrodelic in the guts with its spikes amidst an explosion of blood and a crashing, ripping noise. The Necrodelic doubled over in mid-flight with the force of the blow, the spikes of Drelrei's tail tearing the flesh of his stomach and half-eviscerating him in the process. The ankylosaurus tail of Junisia trailed just inches behind its mate, and struck almost within the same instant. As Chariah's body bent over the living mace burying itself in his guts, his head was automatically whiplashed forward and downward at a speed which superseded even the blazing fastness of his predatory flight. It was into his whiplashing skull that the club of Junisia's ankylosaurus tail struck, connecting with tremendous impact as it swung with full-force into Chariah's face at the exact same moment his head was being jerked violently forward by the blow to his abdomen. A second explosion of blood combined with the first to form a bursting supernova of crimson. Chariah's black skull shattered like broken glass, with a sound to match as the solid bone splintered and cracked. The resultant concussion was instantaneous, and it was an unconscious Necrodelic that concluded his flight through the Forest of Flesh, black entrails reaching like tentacles from his torn abdomen, his severely hemorrhaging head lolling limply from side to side, up and down, back and forth as he swung directionlessly from the cable of his grapnel.
Chariah ricocheted from branches and tree trunks as he hurtled deeper into the Forest of Flesh, raising indigo bruises on his sable flesh and scraping his skin with deep crimson scratches. Finally, the adamantium coils became tangled and knotted, and the dazed and wounded demon was left dangling loosely from a tree branch like a corpse from a noose, twisting in the breeze.
The Tantradox climbed through the trees until they came to the protruding grapnel. There the Tantradox loomed victoriously. Portions of the Necrodelic's entrails were impaled upon the spikes of Drelrei's stegosaurus tail. Blood was splashed all the way up the back of the Tantradox, in mandalic drip-drop patterns not dissimilar to the starburst-like explosion of vermilion that had briefly filled the dark air like constellations of red stars a moment ago.
The Siamese twin demons smiled wickedly. Together, Drelrei and Junisia dislodged the grapnel from the tree. A severed artery in the branch began spurting blood in bright red arches across the forest. Slowly, they dragged the limp form of the Necrodelic back through the trees, jerking the line when necessary, bouncing his body from branch to branch. When the Necrodelic had been retrieved, the Tantradox used the Death Addict's own rappelling wire to string him up, binding his wrists
and ankles together with the coils and, thusly bound, to a pair of parallel branches, stretching his prostrate body tautly between the two, doubly hanging him upon a Siamese twin gallows. There, the unconscious and bloodied Necrodelic hung, suspended prostrate in mid-air.
The Tantradox beckoned for one of its servile creatures in the ancient, goat-like language of Elasvai. Several minutes later, one of the Tantradox's conjoined monstrosities, a vampire bat and a nighthawk sewn together, flew into the still-creeping Forest of Flesh with a ceremonial dagger betwixt its hooked claws. The beast alighted upon the outstretched arm of Junisia, where it remained perched as Drelrei gently took the bloodstained blade from its clutches. An instant later the conjoined winged mutation fluttered away into the distance. The Tantradox began sharpening the large knife upon the horns of its own head. The glint of scraping steel flickered in the night, small sparks showering the Tantradox as they used their horns, and then their cloven hooves, as whetstones. Finally, Junisia sharpened the ceremonial dagger on Drelrei's very member, grown rigid for the purpose, as hard as any grindstone in existence, creating an edge so fine that it could sunder atoms. The knife was so sharp it glowed. The Tantradox raised it over their horned heads together and slowly, meditatively stabbed the Necrodelic in the sternum. A series of liquid rubies ran in succession along the arete of the blade. The Tantradox gently inserted the ceremonial dagger deep in the black flesh of the Necrodelic's chest, and then began gradually drawing it toward his half-exposed guts, in that perfectly straight line of vermilion which they had carved so many times before.
*
The astral plane was an avalanche, crashing down around Chariah like the thousand fists of Satan, each gripping a neutron star tightly in its palm to multiply the concussive force of the blows. Shards of reality fell in broken pieces around his battered soul. Fragmented perceptions bombarded him like boulders. The Necrodelic fell violently into his astrosome in much the same way one was often jerked back into their physical flesh from the spectral dimension. Shocked and disoriented, the astral plane formed in fusillades around him, like a form of extremely fast water torture from every possible angle, where the drops of water were successively replaced by morning stars, wrecking balls, and asteroids hurtling towards him at the speed of light.
The Necrodelic awoke into the open grave of the astral plane, but it would be his physical corpse in a similar tomb if he did not act quickly. His mortal flesh was in extreme peril, and his very soul was at stake. Hell and Satan beckoned below, and the open grave of the astral plane was rapidly closing. Chariah flew in astral form to the garden planet of Elasvai, to the shimmering silver Forest of Flesh, to the side of his incarnate self. Mother Chaos was already there, sexually joined to his suspended underside and blowing healing energies from her purple lips into the open rim of his phallus with an interdimensional fellacio. Chariah focused on the Tantradox, the conjoined incubus and succubus simultaneously raising a ceremonial dagger to the breastbone of his physical body. The blade passed through the scintillant back of Mother Chaos like the wraith she was, just below her beating wings.
Purple drops of blood spattered the currents of the astral plane. Chariah hovered above his Siamese adversaries, haunting them with his vague black presence. Floating upon the vibrations of the spectral plane, Chariah aligned his astral body with that of the Tantradox. His ebony spirit was a shadow pouring itself into their flesh, settling like nightfall between their bones and organs, filling their inner chambers and orifices like ink. Chariah slipped his right arm into Drelrei's, his left arm into Junisia's, immersing his own arms in theirs, all the way to the fingertips. Their hands became his living gloves. His legs he placed within theirs as though into a suit of armor. He draped their torso, chest, and back over his own like a sentient robe. The Necrodelic adorned the Tantradox like a dead skin costume. Their faces became his mask, their flesh his cowl. His fangs dropped like a portcullis into their teeth. His scorched mouth swallowed their six smaller mouths in a grotesque pantomime of a food chain. His eyeballs incubated within theirs, like larvae in egg sacs. His black heart beat painfully inside both of their red hearts. Animal lungs were filled to bursting, choking upon his own. Their abdomen grew swollen with his entrails. His black penis he inserted into Drelrei's own and wore it like a condom of incubus leather. Slowly, like a crown or helmet, the Necrodelic pulled their brains down over his own. With the sorcerous benedictions of Mother Chaos and his own evil powers, the Necrodelic infiltrated the flesh of the Tantradox, invading his enemy like a disease, wearing their bodies like living garments. The possession was complete.
*
The Tantradox caught drops of blood on their tongues as they began the ritual evisceration of the Necrodelic. Deliberately, they slit the demon open and dragged the ceremonial dagger down his chest. The pure, meditative slowness was a vital aspect of the ritual. Their hands barely moved as they slashed the Necrodelic asunder with motions so slow they could not be detected by the eyes of the unenlightened, so slow that the Tantradox itself did not even notice when the dagger came to a complete halt. After several moments, the Siamese twins sensed the cessation of the blade. Disturbed, the conjoined lovers tried in vain to restart the gradual gashing of their sacrifice's underbelly. Disturbance turned to panic as the Tantradox then attempted by turns to slice, stab, twist, wrench, and withdraw the blade. The ceremonial dagger was stuck fast in the Necrodelic's chest, as though the demon were made of stone.
When the blade did move again, it was not by the Tantradox' volition. Suddenly, the dagger removed itself from the flesh of its intended victim, seemingly with a sentience all its own. The Siamese twin incubus and succubus could only watch in horror, helpless observers of their own bodies, as their arms drew down the dripping weapon. Their limbs were not their own, but had been turned into broken doll parts, prosthetics controlled by an external force. The Tantradox couldn't even use its own throats to scream as their hands turned the ceremonial dagger inwards and plunged it into their conjoined chest.
The knife buried itself in their right breast, then slowly drew a complete circle from ribs to abdomen and back again. When it reached its point of origin, it slashed quickly downward toward their conjoined navel at a sharp angle, then upwards once more, diagonal, horizontal, and diagonal a second time. As the knife tumbled from between their fingers, the blood welled forth from the continuous wound, revealing in bright crimson the perfectly drawn form of an upside-down pentagram within a circle of containment.
The Tantradox could not control its body, but it could still feel the pain that had been wrought upon its flesh. The pentagram of blood unleashed an unnatural form of agony, a suffering beyond imagining, a burning, throbbing mass of excruciating torment, as if they had been forced to bear the pain of every surgery ever conducted since the origin of the universe, as if they had suddenly grown a billion more nerves in rapid succession, each one twice as sensitive as the one before, until they could literally feel the wrath of Hell itself their very bodies.
By the time the black soul of the Necrodelic had discarded the flesh of the Tantradox like a garment of furs and animal skins, the pain in the Tantradox' chest was so great that they could do nought to reclaim control of their bodies. The pentagram of blood hemorrhaged profusely, in strong surges that soon superimposed their own crimson designs over the ancient sigil, runnelling down their thighs and legs and over their genitals, and raining upon the forest below.
The Tantradox stumbled drunkenly along the branch, hoping desperately to cling to the bloodsoaked skin of the tree with cloven hooves ill fit for such feats of balance and dexterity. Somehow, the Siamese twins managed to keep from falling and finally regained enough control over their own muscles to reach out and grab hold of the Necrodelic, who hung unconsciously between the branches above. Using his body for support, they clung to his dark flesh with scrabbling claws and battled the collective vertigo of their shared consciousness. They grabbed at his long, thick hair, drove talons and fingernails under his skin for
leverage, seized his genitals like a lifeline and held on with every last piece of strength they could muster.
The Necrodelic opened his eyes.
The Tantradox stumbled backwards beneath the palpable force of his eye contact, their grips loosening on his hair, his flesh, and his sex. Chariah's crimson gaze refocused immediately upon the bloody pentagram carved into their dripping chest. His eyes blazed with an igneous red. An instant later, the portals of Hell were opened and the pentagram of blood burst into flames. This time, the Tantradox lost all control over its clutching fingers and tightly fisted hands, releasing their grip on the Necrodelic and falling backwards from the tree branch, a burning pentagram blazing in their flesh. As they fell, they left behind a trail of oily smoke which perfectly replicated the shape of the pentagram branded upon their chest.
The sigils of smoke rose high amongst the treetops and wafted into the Necrodelic's charred lungs, giving him the power to rip free of his bonds and drop silently to the ensanguined branch below. Blood poured in sheets over his head and face, from lacerations in his skull, from each nostril of his broken nose, from between split lips and broken jaws. His long black hair was drenched with viscous crimson, sopping with blood, and plastered to his back. The entire right side of his skull had been shattered by Junisia's ankylosaurus tail. His abdomen was torn open and parts of his black entrails dangled from the ragged wound left by Drelrei's stegosaurus tail.
Chariah stood bleeding upon his vertiginous perch, too weak to fully heal himself from the injuries he had suffered. He cast aside his grapnel and its shredded adamantium coils with a curse, throwing them far into the depths of the Forest of Flesh and rededicating himself to the forces of black patience, dark serenity, eternal evil, and immortality of the soul, and simultaneously shunning the forces of demonspeed, berserker rage, battle fever, and kamikaze tactics.