by Brant Danay
Several moments later, the Necrodelic spread his arms out like the wings of a dragon and floated gently to the forest floor, miles below. He landed astride the Tantradox, its chest afire with the flames of Hell. His taloned feet dug themselves into the parched ground, now dry and full of fissures and cracks like the sides of a volcano, the swamp that had previously coated the forest floor having completely evaporated from the massive Hellfire. Chariah balled his clawed hands into two open fists and raised them to his lips, one before the other, forming a narrow tunnel with his palms. He inhaled, and for a moment the flames flickering on the Tantradox' chest drew together as one and were sucked into his hands. Chariah breathed in for several minutes, and then exhaled through the long thin shaft in his curled hands while slowly rotating in a complete circle. Thousands of tiny flaming pentagrams blew forth from his lips, soaring and gusting to all parts of the Forest of Flesh in every direction and at every possible angle, flying away like small creatures that had been set on fire, burning moths, butterflies, doves, and bats on a mission from Hell. The living forest, which had only recently ceased its flight and begun to regenerate its dead parts, once again burst into flames, much worse than before, and this time took off running like a pack of pinioned, screaming banshees.
Chariah dropped his soot-covered hands to his sides and admired his pyromancy. He breathed in the smoke of burning flesh as the forest blazed, inhaling and rekindling his dark inner energies. As the smoke of the forest fire billowed around him and sparks flew through the air while the trees burned, Chariah inhaled again, this time to heal the massive, bleeding wounds in his skull, chest, and abdomen with the necrodelia surrounding him. His chest expanded as he attempted to smoke the entire forest like a gargantuan living drug. His eyes fluttered shut as he drew in the healing smoke and regenerative heat, sucking the pyromancy and the necrodelia into his charred lungs. His flesh began to tingle as the first wave of healing energy flowed through his wounds, but then, just as suddenly, all the breath was driven out of the Necrodelic's body with one enormous blast. Cumulus clouds of black smoke were belched forth from his fanged mouth, combining with the torrentially hailing cinders and ashes to completely obscure the form of the demon and everything around him for several seconds.
When the smoke dissipated, the Necrodelic was on his knees, with the enormous, deformed, combined middle leg of the Tantradox buried in his groin. The Siamese twin demons had regained enough strength to unleash one mighty blow, and with the force of a feral stallion had driven the large, iron-shod, cloven hoof of their third leg into the Necrodelic's testicles.
Chariah knelt in a crumpled heap, coughing and then vomiting blood along with the smoke and ashes still issuing from between his lips. Exhausted, the Necrodelic momentarily fainted, falling face-first to the ground beside his screaming adversary, who was too immersed in its own universe of pain to even notice.
Meanwhile, the Forest of Flesh continued to burn, and fled frantically across Elasvai like an insane behemoth, bouncing and rolling the unconscious forms of the Necrodelic and the Tantradox along with it, ricocheting their limp bodies from its knotted roots and thick tree trunks as it ran. The Forest of Flesh trampled entire gardens, temples, and herds of Siamese twin dinosaurs in its path, its thousands of legs churning as its trees screamed in pain, desperately seeking sanctuary from the conflagration that would condemn its multiple conjoined souls to Hell. One hour and several miles later, the living forest finally found its haven in the form of a lake, in which it gratefully immersed itself, doused its fires in the crystal waters, and began the slow process of healing and regeneration.
30
Mandalas of bubbles swirled like strange amorphous haloes around the heads of the Necrodelic and the Tantradox. The demons awakened simultaneously, all six sets of eyes blinking open in perfect synchronicity. Below them a garden of anemones blossomed in the pure waters of the lake bottom. Around them was the Forest of Flesh, its skin pink and irritated with various degrees of burns, oozing black pus into the water. Its intestinal roots were laid out in clear view before them, many severed during its flight. Many miles above lay the surface of the lake, obscured by tons of floating ash.
Chariah's first reaction upon regaining consciousness was to slash the Tantradox with his razored claws. His blows were not slowed at all by the waters and their currents, his black rippling muscles so powerful that he attacked with all the speed and strength he possessed in any other environment, from planets of the densest gravity to moons with virtually none at all, from the deepest vacuums of space to complete submersion beneath an ocean. His claws raked the Tantradox across both of its faces, releasing little red pearls of blood to float in the water and accumulate like coral. The Tantradox flew backwards through the water as if caught in a strong undertow, eventually slamming gently into the trunk of a sunken tree. The Necrodelic moved to attack, but his wounded head spun beneath the pressure of the water and darkness descended over his open eyes. The jagged, bloody clefts in his face and skull still hemorrhaged, burning now with salt and pounding with the heavy water pressure and the lake's underwater currents. His torso was still torn open, as well, the black tips of his entrails waving in the water like jellyfish.
Chariah's healing sorceries, reliant upon pyromancy and necromancy, did not work underwater. He began to swim for the surface, his claws cutting the water like swords. The Forest of Flesh attacked him as he did so, seeking vengeance for the fires he had unleashed upon them. Mouths bit and tore at him as he swam by. Hands grabbed at him by the hundreds, trying to drag him down further, to capture him in their grasp and hold him underwater until the end of time. Branches pummeled him about the head and back. Severing limbs, Chariah ascended in circles around the living trunks and branches, swimming a violent gauntlet to the surface. As he rose higher, the ashes grew thicker, invigorating him and restoring his strength.
Upon reaching the odd canopy which served as the exterior of the Forest of Flesh, Chariah cut a large hole in the writhing mass, using his long talons like scythes and sickles. The integument reformed itself immediately, however, keeping him trapped beneath the surface of the lake. Worse yet, he had angered the many entities which comprised the treetops, and found himself assaulted by striking cobras and bludgeoning fists, knocking him further below the surface. Chariah flew upwards through the soot-filled waters once more, placing all ten claws together to form the giant Hellsword. He opened a large gash in the green hordes, large enough to swim through. Chariah kicked out with his rippling thighs and tried to shoot through the hole, but the fingers and phalluses caught him before he was halfway through, biting and flogging him and pummeling him back down below the surface again.
The Necrodelic cursed, for it was his own attacks that had strengthened the strange living integument of the Forest of Flesh, had forced it to evolve and now, like a mutated virus, it was immune to him. Chariah tried one more time to rend the violent mass asunder. This time the coils of a boa constrictor-like phallus grabbed him around the throat and began to strangle him.
The Tantradox began ascending toward the surface of the lake, wielding once again the ceremonial dagger with which it had attempted to sacrifice the Necrodelic. Chariah watched the Siamese twins, swimming upwards like conjoined mermen, the black mark of the pentagram still burned into their chest. He kicked Junisia just beneath the chin as she drew near, and her head jerked back in a jetstream of blood. Chariah freed himself from the serpentine noose, only to be stabbed in the side by the curved dagger of the Tantradox. He lashed out with his claws, but the Tantradox ducked by simply floating downwards through the water, then rapidly countered with its dinosaur tails. Drelrei's stegosaurus tail came flying from one side like a morning star, catching Chariah in the left cheek and twisting him sideways in the water. The Tantradox reversed its battle spin and Junisia's ankylosaurus tail bashed his right cheek like a club. Chariah contorted sideways and floated backwards, his head lolling limply upon his chest like that of a corpse. Like a piece of living de
tritus the currents dragged him through the water in long, slow, circular patterns.
The Tantradox dragged Chariah to the bottom of the lake, where the garden of anemones beckoned hungrily for his flesh, their tentacles writhing, their mouths dilated and rimmed with poisonous fangs or barbed tongues. Drelrei and Junisia inserted the right hand of the Necrodelic into one of the irising maws. The carnivorous polyp immediately clamped down and tried to chew Chariah's hand off. Its sharp, hooklike teeth severed the veins in his wrist, and then, instantaneously, the feeding frenzy began. Anemones of every color, shape, and size clashed their fangs together and lurched through the water to bite off pieces of the Necrodelic's flesh. Hideous round gullets dilated to partake of his blood. It was like a thousand set traps had been triggered simultaneously, a thousand animal snares snapping shut at once.
Semi-consciously, Chariah fought back, hacking the anemones from their seabeds and slicing them to ribbons. The Tantradox was poised over him now, smiling sadistically. It had retrieved its battle axe, and was already bringing it around in a whistling arch that would decapitate the Necrodelic. Chariah called upon the one spell of fire which would work underwater. He closed his eyes and pyrokinetically heated the entire lake to a temperature beyond the point of boiling. The sea anemones wilted and died. Some of them exploded. Drelrei and Junisia cried out in agony, bloody bubbles streaming from their mouths as they swallowed the incandescent water and it scalded their digestive system. The pentagram carved upon their chest blazed anew with the fires of Hell, which were capable of burning underwater. The Siamese twins flailed about in the roiling lake, looking upwards as if to escape through the Forest of Flesh. The sentient trees, however, did not react in any desperate manner to the boiling water. The heat painfully seared their skins, but it was fire, not heat, which was capable of destroying the Forest of Flesh, and the sapient trees, still traumatized by their burnings, were not about to leave the sanctuary of water.
The Tantradox whistled for one of its subservient beasts. Moments later, Siamese twin sharks appeared at their sides, already saddled. The Tantradox climbed onto the conjoined selachian steed and steered it eastward.
Meanwhile, the hot water had helped cauterize Chariah's wounds, stopping the incessant bleeding and restoring some of his strength. He still had no conceivable means of departure from the lake and its deceased anemone garden, and was too weak to battle the Forest of Flesh underwater, where his powers were severely diminished. Chariah determined that the Tantradox knew of an alternative escape route as it rode off upon the back of the Siamese twin sharks, and swam after them, trailing in their wake like a slipstreamer. Chariah's theory proved correct, as the Tantradox rode the sharks into a hidden underwater tunnel in the eastern side of the lake.
The Necrodelic continued to swim behind his nemesis and their slaves, following them through several twists and turns until they finally emerged into a dank grotto. Chariah climbed from the water into a cavern of moldy rocks, where he immediately began to heal. He gathered some moss into a pile and blew on it, lighting it on fire and drugging himself with the deaths of the tiny souls trapped inside. Meanwhile, the Tantradox realized their adversary had been trailing them and pulled upon the leather reins of their steeds, jerking the heads of the sharks to the left and circling back into the grotto. Chariah greeted them with a fireball, lobbed like a slow comet into the water around them. The Tantradox deftly steered the conjoined sharks around the flames and sailed for the moldy bank where the Necrodelic stood. The rocky shore was narrow, and the sharks leapt out of the water and snapped their jaws at the Necrodelic. Chariah brought an elbow down upon the top of one of the shark's skulls, caving it in and dislodging one of its eyes. The Tantradox swung its battle axe at the Necrodelic's side, but he twisted and caught the weapon's handle under his arm. The Tantradox tugged with both hands, but could not pull the weapon free. An instant later the battle axe was snapped in half by Chariah's powerful biceps muscle, its metal head clanging to the mossy shore, its broken staff still clutched tightly in the cloven hands of the Tantradox.
They battled for several minutes, causing small avalanches in the grotto and its surrounding caverns and opening minor wounds upon one another. After a sustained period of the sounds and vibrations of combat, something beyond the grotto had been disturbed, awakened by the irregular rhythms and loud battle cries. A pervading rumble echoed through the subterranean caverns, shaking the ground like an earthquake and causing the underground river to ripple with unseen tides. Both of the warring factions halted as the fanged head of a giant worm burst through the walls of the cavern.
The blind, segmented beast wriggled forward, devouring whole chunks of rock, splashing through the murky water and then drinking the entire underwater spring with its circular, tooth-ringed gullet, swallowing the Siamese twin sharks whole. The Tantradox jumped free of the conjoined sharks as the helpless creatures succumbed to the undertow of the worm's enormous maw, leaping to the shore as their steeds were sucked into oblivion behind them.
The Necrodelic, however, was waiting. As soon as the Tantradox' cloven hooves clattered upon the mossy promontory, the Necrodelic spun out of the shadows with a devastating roundhouse kick, his foot-talons raking their faces as his black heel knocked them into the air and sent them flying into the far distance, directly into the waiting mouth of the vermian behemoth. The fated demons would do battle again, but for now, the fight was over.
Chariah escaped into a small network of caves beyond the grotto, leaving the worm to thrash about, searching blindly for its escaped prey and causing avalanches as it did so, until finally it retreated back into the rocks and whatever subterranean lair it had come from, taking the Tantradox and its pet sharks with it. Its vibrations grew fainter and fainter as Chariah climbed, squeezed, wriggled, and slid his way through the caves. Hours later, the Necrodelic found a large patch of psilocybin in a lightless cavern. He lay his weary, battered body down upon the soft, dream-inducing mushrooms, and at last allowed himself to slip into the unconsciousness he had been fighting for so long.
31
When Chariah awoke, he found the cavern filled with a strange, gemlike illumination. Psilocybin bloomed all along the floor, a garden of mushrooms, some as tall as he. They grew in alcoves along the curving walls and dangled from the ceiling like stalactites, dripping their psychedelic syrup onto the small forest below. It was from the mushrooms that the ethereal glow emanated, tinting everything it touched the color of lapis lazuli, jade, and amethyst. Chariah arose from his bed in the soft mushroom meadows, psilocybic dreams still playing in his brain. He walked slowly through the curved heads of the giant fungi, which seemed to bow down in response to him as he passed.
There was another light in the far corner of the cavern, the flickering of a fire flashing against the wall. It drew the Necrodelic pyrotropically in its direction. Amongst the mushrooms Chariah found an ancient demon with a blazing hookah. The elder creature was seated in the black lotus position. He was bald, and for that matter, completely hairless, his wrinkled skin pitch black, as dark as Chariah's. His eyes were open but he was blind, seeing nought but the same deep milky blackness that was the color of his eyeballs. In one hand he held a totem staff of shriveled heads. The other held the hookah, filled with old, stagnant cavewater and piles of psilocybin. He gestured toward the Necrodelic with the water pipe as he approached, offering to share his feast of psychedelic mushrooms.
Chariah sat next to the demon yogi and inhaled from the hookah, falling deeper into a psilocybic trance. The elder spoke, and in his mouth were fangs, and his voice was the whisper of spiders crawling through shadows.
"You have suffered many wounds. Come, partake of the healing mushrooms. They have kept the Cacoshaman alive for many eons."
Chariah smoked the psilocybin from the hookah. When it was gone, the Cacoshaman offered him a syringe full of mashed mushrooms, which Chariah injected into his arm. His pain began to fade, his wounds to slowly heal. The Cacoshaman offered him a skull
full of blue mushroom wine, which Chariah imbibed. Meanwhile, the Cacoshaman had replenished his hookah, and was smoking from it once more.
"Elasvai is a beautiful planet," said the Cacoshaman.
"I don't believe in beauty," Chariah replied, accepting the hookah once again and inhaling more of the burning psilocybin.
"Still, it shall be a shame to see it die."
"Tis a matter of perception, ancient one. Your sentimentality will serve you ill in this universe." Chariah handed the long pipe back to its owner.
"What brings you here...Chariah?" the Cacoshaman asked.
Chariah sat in silence for several moments before hissing threateningly at the elder, "How do you know my true name, Cacoshaman?"
"The Cacoshaman knows much, my child. He knows where the black holes lead. He knows where Satan's weaknesses lie. He knows, perhaps, who will become the Jh'a'vyraa..."
"Who?" Chariah demanded, his interest suddenly aroused, but the Cacoshaman had passed into a state of incoherence and semi-consciousness. The demon yogi was delusional.
The Necrodelic cursed and grabbed the hookah from the Cacoshaman's limp fingers, smoking yet more of the sorcerous fungi. The Cacoshaman came back to awareness and felt around blindly for his missing hookah. Chariah placed it back in his withered hand.
"Thank you, demonling," the Cacoshaman spoke, as Chariah raised his gleaming claws into the air.
"Drelrei and Junisia, I warned their mothers of such abomination when their souls began copulating in the astral plane, even as their embryonic bodies had yet to develop within their wombs."