by Brant Danay
Morpheus Rex maintained his sideways stance and began to drift to his right. He was just out of the reach of Drelrei's Soul Cleaver, writhing to keep his tail free of its whistling path. He twisted and flailed with the Prismsword, but Junisia held him at bay with subtle pushes of the iron maiden, and she too was deft enough to keep her tail from being severed. The combatants spun atop the parapet for several moments, with none gaining an advantage.
Far below, after sliding for several minutes through the fresh mud of the Cliffs of Caine, the gigantic cross suddenly came to a halt at the clawed foot of the Necrodelic. The supernatural strength of the Death Addict brought the iron tonnage of the crucifix and its miles worth of accumulated momentum to a dead stop. Beneath the cross lay the mangled corpses of dozens of cocaine demons, their backs broken and bodies mutilated. The Necrodelic reached down and lifted the enormous cross in his hands, the veins in his black biceps bulging, his chiseled muscles pressing against his skin as though they might break completely of his skeleton. He waited for the Megafiend to soar overhead, then hurled the iron cross directly upwards into the skies, through the clouds, where miles away he heard the satisfying thud of the crucifix striking stone. When the crucifix fell back to the ground, it took a chunk of the Megafiend with it. As the citadel flew past again, Chariah once more hurled the cross. The crucifix flew directly upwards, broke through the floor of the Megafiend, caught more of the edifice in its crossbar, then fell directly down on the same vertical path to stick upright in the gelatinous mud. A moment later, a hailstorm of debris and bodies dropped heavily around it.
Finally, the Tantradox directed the Geryon Baal'Striga to drop beneath the clouds, and for the first time Chariah beheld the Megafiend. Its bottom story was its abattoir, for the Fiendfarms had always been terrestrial, and thus the abattoir had never been equipped with any type of floor. The meathooks dangled from its underbelly, some with living beasts impaled upon them. Short stairways led to the level above the abattoir. Chariah swept his gaze from the Geryon Baal'Striga to the crackling Stormtower. He watched as Morpheus Rex and the Tantradox dueled atop the Megafiend's anterior parapet, circling one another incessantly. His eyes flashed as the slaves of the Tantradox began dropping wrecking balls from the windows like nightmarish, boulder-sized hailstones.
As Chariah dodged the wrecking balls, the clouds began to spark and thunder. A rapid succession of lightning bolts gouged a labyrinth of fissures and abysses in the ground. Avoiding the deadly barrage of wrecking balls and lightning, Chariah ran to the base of the crucifix. He crouched like a panther, then jumped straight up into the air, hundreds of feet, and landed atop the crossbar. From there, it took one more demonic leap to board the Megafiend. The Necrodelic soared through the rain and alighted on the steps leading to the second story. He flipped the charging Siamese twin minotaurs, which had been posted there as sentinels, over his shoulder to the ground thousands of feet below, then infiltrated the flying citadel.
Chariah made his way to the parapet where Morpheus Rex and the Tantradox battled. The Dreaming Predator remained caught in the handheld iron maiden by his left arm. The Tantradox was still unable to get in striking range, yet was reluctant to relinquish the iron maiden and let the ophidian one slip from their clutches. Chariah appeared in the doorway like a shadow, as suddenly and silently as a spider drops through the night on a single strand of webbing. He slashed Morpheus Rex across the back with his claws, opening five diagonal lacerations from right shoulder blade to left hip. The Tantradox then released the handheld iron maiden out of necessity, for the Necrodelic's left hand was chopping downwards with claws extended to sever Junisia's hand at the wrist. Morpheus Rex stumbled backwards as the Tantradox released the handheld iron maiden.
The Tantradox raised the Soul Cleaver over its heads with both hands, then brought it crashing down in a sweeping arc over the Necrodelic's skull. To the shock of Drelrei and Junisia, the Necrodelic did nothing to avoid the blow, just stood stoically with his hands at his sides as the crimson blade throttled toward him. To their even greater shock, the Soul Cleaver passed right through the flesh of the Necrodelic as if he weren't there, to clatter loudly against the floor.
The Tantradox looked up with astonished eyes, then brandished the sword diagonally, sideways, and overhand again. Each time, the crimson blade of the Soul Cleaver passed through the Necrodelic like he was an apparition, or an entity composed of black amorphous fluids, leaving behind neither scratch nor scar, nor even a ripple while it penetrated him. The Tantradox swung the Soul Cleaver wildly then, with blows that would have decapitated, eviscerated, impaled, castrated, and split from skull to crotch a lesser demon. Again, however, the Soul Cleaver had no effect upon the mysteriously impervious Death Addict. The Tantradox gazed upwards, eyes wide with fright, and the Necrodelic's igneous eye contact knocked them backwards, sprawling across the parapet on their dinosaur tails and cloven hands.
"I'm indivisible, bitch," the Necrodelic snarled. "Pure fucking evil."
Drelrei roared with rage and leapt to his feet, dragging Junisia with him. This time he dropped the ineffective Soul Cleaver and lashed out with his fist. Chariah casually blocked the blow and grabbed Drelrei's arm in a death-grip around the wrist. He pulled the Tantradox closer and unleashed a quintet of claws upon them like a thousand machetes, a fusillage of guillotine blades, over and over, until the only thing keeping the Tantradox upright was Chariah's left hand around Drelrei's wrist. The Siamese twin demons staggered limply in his grasp, the skin of their chest hanging in large flaps and folds, their faces slashed as if by violent scarifications, a rapidly expanding pool of blood flowing out from around their cloven feet.
Chariah pulled on Drelrei's arm, trying to hold the swooning Tantradox upright. As the Necrodelic struggled to balance his adversary for a killshot, Morpheus Rex silently crept up behind the Necrodelic's back with the discarded hand-held iron maiden in his hands. A reversal of fate had resulted in the Dreaming Predator wielding the weapon/torture device instead of suffering its torments. He squeezed the lever inside the handle with his black widow hand, and the iron maiden slammed shut around the Necrodelic. The flesh-smoker's black hand protruded from the opening, but his radius and ulna were shattered and he released his grip on the Tantradox, who stumbled around in their own blood on cloven hooves not made for feats of balance and equilibrium. The Siamese twin demons toppled backwards over the ramparts of the parapet and disappeared from sight.
Morpheus Rex reclenched the eight spider legs of his black widow hand around the handle of the iron maiden and it swung open. A few seconds later, the body of the Necrodelic fell out, covered with crimson puncture wounds on every part of his body, head to toe, front and back. He landed limply in a spreading pool of his own blood. Morpheus Rex was looking at the handheld iron maiden like a madman, his kaleidoscopic eyes gleaming, a psychotic smile on his rainbow lips.
Chariah writhed and twisted amidst his pouring plasma, raising his dripping head to glare back at Morpheus Rex through the falling rain. The Dreaming Predator was bearing down upon him again with the deadly contraption. The Necrodelic reached out and grabbed the black hilt of the Soul Cleaver, which still lay on the floor where the Tantradox had dropped it. He swiveled and parried with the crimson blade, driving its point between the hinges of the handheld iron maiden. Morpheus Rex continued to squeeze its handle, but the Soul Cleaver was jammed into its gears and it would no longer open or shut. Chariah gripped the black hilt of the Soul Cleaver with both hands, one healthy, one broken, and then jerked the sorcerous broadsword upwards with all his might, tearing the iron maiden from Morpheus Rex's hand and sending it spinning high into the air. The Necrodelic pirouetted suddenly, and as he spun around he brought the Soul Cleaver down with a two-fisted, overhead blow on the crown of Morpheus Rex's head.
There was a thunderclap and a flash of blinding rainbow lightning the instant the sword struck the Dreaming Predator. The eye-searing light faded just in time for Chariah to witness two bodies falling unc
onsciously onto their backs with a splash of bloody rainwater. One was the body of Morpheus Rex. The other was the body of the Oneirophage.
The handheld iron maiden clattered like a distant echo as it landed somewhere on the rooftop. The pouring rain was washing the blood down the Necrodelic's body, lathing a hundred different dripping open holes of impalement, and streaming in sanguine runnels to the roseate puddles below. The Necrodelic stood silently in disbelief, looking upon the sundered bodies beneath him and not knowing which was real. Both Morpheus Rex and the Oneirophage lay as still as corpses, directly next to one another. Chariah found himself completely devoid of any means of comprehending the sight his crimson eyes were conveying to his blackened mind. Suddenly, truth was a force that did not exist.
Wrapped up in his philosophical vertigo, the Necrodelic left himself vulnerable to attack. The Tantradox had landed atop the back of the Geryon Baal'Striga and grabbed on to one of its chains as it slid down the rain-slickened feathers. The Siamese twin demons climbed back up to the rooftop, pulled themselves over the parapet wall, and kicked the Necrodelic in the testicles from behind with the cloven, iron-shod foot of their disproportionately powerful middle leg. Chariah fell face-first into the puddles of rain and blood and did not move.
At the exact moment the Necrodelic's skull crashed onto the floor, both Morpheus Rex and the Oneirophage sat up. The Tantradox stared with the same disbelief that had gripped the Necrodelic. Like mirror images, Morpheus Rex and the Oneirophage rose. The Tantradox had seen enough, and attacked the Oneirophage rather than Morpheus Rex, for no reason other than he was the closer of the two. The Siamese twins leapt at him and clawed at his face, tried to dig out his eyes with their sharp black claws and fingernails. The combatants traded blows with their tails. The sounds of wet serpent, stegosaurus, and ankylosaurus tails colliding with sodden flesh were like the cracks of whips striking mermaids.
Morpheus Rex squatted over the prostrate Necrodelic like a simian assassin and began to rain blows on the back of his skull. His black widow hand chewed upon the open wounds along his spine. Chariah growled, raising bubbles in the foam of rain and gore around his face. He surged to his feet as Morpheus Rex retreated, turning around with a wild back-handed slash that whistled through the air and didn't come within three feet of anybody. He shook blood and rain from his eyes and his hair. Morpheus Rex gathered up the Prismsword and brandished it with blinding speed. Chariah looked up with blazing eyes to see razor-bladed rainbows cutting red spiderwebs across his flesh. Like a berserk taurean demon, the Necrodelic charged Morpheus Rex, driving through the flashing colors and the expertly swung blade and running right through the Dreaming Predator as though he were a locked gate at the end of a deadly labyrinth, a gate for which he had no key in a labyrinth whose walls were rapidly closing to crush him to a pulp, a gate to be rammed and splintered from its hinges. The force of his charge lifted Morpheus Rex off his feet and knocked him backwards through the air. Chariah went from a complete standstill to a supersonic speed in less than a second, then just as quickly came to a complete halt. Morpheus Rex sailed through the air as though shot from an arbalest. He made one futile attempt at reaching down below his back for the edge of the parapet wall as he soared, but Chariah had knocked him too high into the air. An instant later, he disappeared over the rim of the Megafiend. Unlike the Tantradox, he missed the Geryon Baal'Striga and her chains entirely, and plummeted to the ground below.
The Tantradox had pummeled the Oneirophage relentlessly with its spiked and clublike tails, driving him up against the crenellated walls, and with one mighty, combined, spinning blow of both tails knocked him backwards and over the parapet ramparts. He flipped over the tower wall, but managed to grab onto its edge with both hands during the backwards somersault and hang on as he righted himself, to dangle precariously from the top of the turret, his belly pressed against its wet marble side. The Tantradox unleashed a furious assault with both its tails upon his fingers in an attempt to make him lose his grip and fall. Junisia's ankylosaurus club shattered long painted fingernails, phalanges, and knuckles alike. Drelrei's stegosaurus mace drove stigmatas through his right hand, as though from crucifixion with giant nails. The black widow of his left hand panicked and detached itself from the arm of its master. It crawled from the crenellation and scurried several feet down the parapet.
The Tantradox had witnessed the Necrodelic's furious assault upon Morpheus Rex as they pounded the hands of the Oneirophage, and continually looked over their shoulders to apprise themselves of his whereabouts. When they saw him pick up the Soul Cleaver and glance in their direction, however, the Tantradox panicked and chose to fling itself over the top of the Megafiend to the gardens far below, rather than face the Necrodelic's wrath and risk being torturously sundered from one another again.
Chariah watched the frightened Tantradox flee his presence with blazing eyes. The rain was coming down in torrents now, and he was severely wounded, mostly from the impalements of the handheld iron maiden that now lay lifeless on the ground. He needed fire, smoke, and ashes, burning flesh and immolated corpses, to heal his massive injuries. He needed pyromancy and Hellfire to unleash his full assault upon Elasvai. He had to find some way to stop the infernal rain. With Soul Cleaver in hand, the Necrodelic turned towards the Stormtower.
42
Chariah walked along the white parapets of the Megafiend, stepping carefully from cube to cube, navigating the wet and slippery ramparts. To his right was an artificial lake which covered virtually the entire rooftop, from the anterior turret upon which he, the Oneirophage, Morpheus Rex, and the Tantradox had battled, to the Stormtower looming at the rear of the fortress. The rain poured down on the Necrodelic like a fusillade. Blasting winds blew his drenched hair around his face. There were flashes of lighting and thunderclaps every few seconds as the storm intensified. Rainwater collected in his puncture wounds and stung his exposed tissues like libations of salt. Having long ago been lathed of blood by the pouring rain, these spherical marks of impalement were now windows to the jet tissues, gleaming sable organs, and ebony bones lying beneath his flesh, with just a hint of crimson blood dripping through and scoring their rims. It was like an alveolated oracle for an aspirant vivisectionist, revealing the inner workings of the body in pieces, or a sexual display for a voyeuristic interniphiliac, to gaze through drilled eyeholes upon vital organs, viscera, and physical processes, and then fuck those eyeholes one by one.
The Geryon Baal'Striga was flying the Megafiend whimsically and erratically now that its master no longer controlled it, and the giant pool upon its rooftop churned violently, dashing the Necrodelic with ten-foot waves. While the waters were heaving, Chariah detected the presence of something incubating in the lake. The pool itself was expanding to accommodate its maturing inhabitant, having extended its boundaries several stories down through the guts of the Megafiend, as well as raising up the very parapets Chariah traversed, growing taller even as he walked across them, bearing him higher and higher as he made his way to the flickering Stormtower.
The Necrodelic focused the crimson lasers of his eye upon the green mass ascending through the lake. As it rose, the mass grew larger and larger, and when the Siamese twin krakens, fused together at the back, emerged from the amniotic pool, it was even more enormous than it had appeared through the reflections and refractions of the water. The dark green leviathan arose in a chaotic tsunami that swelled over the parapets and cascaded to the ground below. The Necrodelic braced himself as the wave passed over him, sheathing the Soul Cleaver in the stone of the fortress and jumping into one of the cubical valleys between the parapets, seating himself in the black lotus position, spread-eagling his arms and digging his claws into the white marble. As the crest of amnion roared and rushed over him, Chariah held himself fast between the parapets. When the wave had passed, Chariah looked up to see the Janus Kraken looming over him, more than one hundred feet tall. Still in the black lotus position, the Necrodelic joined his fingers together at hi
s knees and spoke a dark and susurrating mantra. He levitated as the Janus Kraken charged, lifting vertically into the air until he was face to face with the furious leviathan.
Chariah stretched his arms out cruciform, uncrossed his legs, and unleashed a barrage of claws upon the monstrosity, carving its scales from its flesh with a frenzy of talons as he descended back to the parapet. The Janus Kraken, its face bloody and torn, scales flaking from its chest, suddenly rotated within the lake, presenting another side which was a complete replication of the first. This side was unharmed, however, and again the Janus Kraken charged, again the Necrodelic levitated, and again the Necrodelic shredded its scales rapid-fire lacerations as he fell.
The Janus Kraken spun again, presenting the side Chariah had first attacked, completely healed while its conjoined twin had taken its turn with the demon. Apparently, the Janus Kraken possessed a few strands of hydra DNA, a product of the Tantradox's experimental sorceries. The Necrodelic removed the Soul Cleaver from the parapet, held it for a moment, but then, remembering the way it had turned Morpheus Rex into two separate entities, was assailed with visions of the Janus Kraken becoming fourfold if he struck it with the spirit-sundering blade. He embedded the sword in the marble once more, then leapt at the oncoming Janus Kraken.
The Janus Kraken swung at the Necrodelic, swatting him from midair. The Necrodelic back-flipped and landed on the rim of the Megafiend. He jumped again, and this time, as the Janus Kraken swung at him with the opposite arm, Chariah buried his claws in the webbing between its half-formed fingers with his right hand, while simultaneously driving the claws of his left hand into the flesh of its palm. The Janus Kraken roared and tried to shake him loose, then began raising him towards it head and open, fanged mouth. Chariah looked over his shoulder as the Janus Kraken's face drew closer. Pushing off with his taloned feet, he catapulted himself from the Janus Kraken's palm, flew through the air in a high arcing backwards somersault, and alighted atop the creature's skull. The Necrodelic landed, bent on one knee, and drove his talons through the eye of the Janus Kraken. The Janus Kraken roared and reached up with both hands, but this time from the opposite direction, as the leviathan's arms apparently shared a triple-jointed socket. As he turned to meet the attack, Chariah noticed that the creature only had palms, for the backs of its hands had been fused together, just like its spinal cords.