Arjunas Descent Ch 06

Far down beneath the Earth, past miles of rock standing between you and the Tyrant-Lord of the Sun and the Lunatic-Deva of the Moon, in the deepest reaches of the Spirit Realm

You awaken - or more accurately, the fragment of your consciousness you'd forced into the vessel is ejected back into your body. As always,

PAIN

is your waking companion, the ice-fire spreading from the surface of your skin down into your very muscles. Your flesh sears, blistering and blackening and healing as you skirt the edge of death a hundred times a minute, as you have for the passage of elder aeons.

Belaboring your breathing, you rise on all fours, paws burning marks into the rock that pilgrims from your descendents will seek and worship. You raise your head, tilt your proud chin upward and defy the

AGONY

that would have crippled and felled lesser beings - lesser Gods - but through your SIZZLING HATRED

sheer nobility

you stand tall. A pelt of white-hot silver had replaced your divine mantle, payment for a defiant sin by which you yet glorify yourself; for a thousand years you'd rolled around on the cavern floors, thundered through lightless halls howling and ranting in excruciation, but now it has sunk into the metaphysical pattern of your being and makes you potent.

You walk with perfect beauty in a dark where none may see you. Your claws - so elegantly sharp they flay the very air - tack upon the sunless stone, following the sound of rushing water through halls filled with stalagmite and crystal. They were twisted and barbed things now, the sheer

TORMENT

molding your ancient Hunting Grounds in your higher image...you ruminate, wordless imagery of a purity beyond crude language blossoming in your massive consciousness.

It had been by sheer chance, a miniscule one at that, by which the remnants of your direct descendents had been found up there in the jungles of Bhārata; like a tincture distilled through generations of carefully controlled marriage - and pruned and flayed where necessary - the Embodiment had been made manifest in the Flesh World. Long before the vessel could be properly delivered at the doorway of your divine manifestation, however, he'd been absconded away across the Great Western Sea. Such failure had spurred you to fury matching the Earth's molten blood, and you'd emerged from your subterranean domain to Hunt those Elders whose foresight had failed you.

You wore their flayed skins yet around your shoulders as a mantle; none had died, but they'd not forget the revelations your blessed sadism had wrought

The vessel's sheer physical and metaphysical distance meant you couldn't simply manifest through him in one of the sacred spaces that could contain the vast, ideatic complexity of your Divine presence. The Yahodim of the Domain of Ishvara, however, had manifested their God-Thing within the flesh of a virgin woman, and (appropriate for such savage outsiders) sacrificed him to their own hubris. If they could do it, so could you...and you

had

. Where your crude brother

Huzuruth

had failed, his champion laid low by servants of the Moon-Demon, you had prevailed - clawing your way up the Silver Ladder of Purity at the exact moment he had Changed.

Of course...you hadn't managed to stay ensconced within his mind for long; only for the time that his Rage had prevailed, the pure perfection the Vessel's mind in that state worthy of habitation by a fraction of your magnificence. That den of disease and iniquity, of intoxicants and utter disrespect for the sacraments of proper breeding...it couldn't tolerate the sheer breadth of your being IT MADE YOU SICK TO SLAUGHTER AMIDST SUCH SPIRITUAL EXCREMENT and when the Change had run its course, you'd been forced to recede from the tiny space you'd carved in his soul.

Your journey takes you to a long bridge of slender stone, curving above a whirling vortex of liquid metal. The heat-stink burns the insides of your sensitive nostrils; the pressure of your sheer existence distorts the cascading, molten silver. You hadn't made this place, but it resonated so intensely with your Nature that you'd been unable to resist its pull. A single stone dais stands far above the terrible gyre, balanced upon an impossibly thin stem of rock. The winds of this place whip your hellfire-pelt about your skin. You drool white-hot acid

SUFFERING

and withstand it.

Down there, trapped within the nightmare flow, you'd cast the souls of those truly unwise werewolves who'd betrayed you, or who'd dishonored your creed. They were the truly bereft and damned, and to see them boil for eternity brought you something nearing relief.

There, Hengist Thrice-Risen clung to a hot rock, the blackened bones of his hands scraping along granite as he desperately sought to escape - he was washed back beneath the fiery liquid with a howl of despair.

Stuck in the edge of the whirlpool, spun at dizzying speeds, Aiysha the Apostate-Lover tumbled and turned and smoked and gargled; her traitors eyes regrew and popped a hundred times a second.

Quram the Bandit King had kidnapped a princess from Sarawaghiya who carried your blood, carefully tended for thousands of years; by sullying it with his unclean seed, your Tribe had ensured his soul was yours to impale on a spike down below.

There were hundreds of them, their screams enlivening this glowing place. Here, light could be found outside the arrogant glimmer of the Lunar Bitch-Goddess, and you relished this grand defiance for after all she'd cast you down as if you were nothing and banished you beneath the Earth like a PRISONER;

you

were the victorious one, yes...as soon as all the pieces came together.

For that to happen, you required a messenger.

Bound to your Will, inescapably so, any of these wretches would do; moments of freedom from the hellish mayhem? Yes...they'd do

anything

you commanded with relish. Your perfect tail swishes back and forth along the bare stone, burning it to obsidian as you considered and then, finally, slowly reached down; you can almost, if you focus your godlike will, forget your Curse for a moment. The stink of your blackened gums fills your nostrils as you grin with savage mirth, the Damned reaching up from the maelstrom for salvation, utterly absorbed by a single hope; that your mighty talon would pierce them and lift them from the lake of silver.

You enjoy your little game, toying with their desperation...lowering that dread sickle toward a petitioner only to withdraw it as they passed by, until finally you hook one of them. Fishing the sobbing corpse from the lake of fire, you shake it off where it lands before you unceremoniously. She lies in a pool of her own roasted effervescence, cringing and howling through entirely new pain as flesh long melted away regenerates under your sneering gaze.

It's nothing compared to your suffering, every second

every day for eternity and JUST BECAUSE YOU DARED TO FIGHT BACK -

"M...master..." She mewls. You'd almost forgotten about her but now she was unavoidable;

disgusting

. The disgraced member of your Tribe shows you her throat, her silvery eyes wet with tears betraying the purity of her lineage. You remember her; utterly merciless in your disappointment, you snarl her name as your fangs drift over her malformed throat.

"[

TÉSPAXTEHÛA

]" and your voice is the howl of a Wolf taller than an Oak tree / the ugly yowl of a hate-filled mob / the deathscreams of entire impure nations. Your descendant cringes pathetically and whines wordlessly for mercy, offering herself to you however you may see fit to use her. You could drink down her flesh and soul...you could rut her unto a torturous final climax...but none of those things were at the forefront of your desires.

Outside of the utterance of names you do not favor the primitive verbal language; it is far more natural, a far purer thing when you assault her sensorialy overloaded brain with images and revelations carrying your will.

You show her complete lack of worth, how her betrayal of your Sacred Law of the Hunt was only doubly damned by the taint of her former affiliation with the Tribes of the Moon.

She grovels and weeps when you promise pain far greater than even the Lake of the Damned, that you could subsume her entire being into such heightened agony as to erase her identity, her history.

More quietly, you offer her this moment of succor, to run forth from your sunless abode and deliver your command directly to the Elders of the Argent Triad: to apprehend the Vessel and bring him to one of your Holy Places, to scourge the Lunar Yoke from his soul and prepare him to carry your vast spirit.

The traitor has risen to her knees, shaking and spasming with little control to speak of; if she'd eaten in the last century she'd have soiled herself before you. You simmer with contempt as she

dares

to turn her gaze upward at you...and some small measure of curiosity. She's willful.

"Master, I can be of far more use to your grandeur than as a simple messenger," she begins and her audacity gives you cause to push her onto her back with a massive paw - she bites down a scream at the way your touch sears her skin. "PLEASE! WAIT, wait please, I know I'm tainted in your eyes but hear me, I know the Forsakens' ways - "

You drag her toward the edge of the stone platform, dangling her head over the edge of the glowing pit. She screams on the edge of Frenzy as your acidic spittle pockmarks her face, frantically shaking her head. "I can make him come willingly! The Triad doesn't have to be pulled from their Sacred Hunt, and you'll have what you want Master! Please, just let me AGGGGHHHH!" She keens sweetly as you dig your crushing claws into her, popping organs and scratching at the edge of her spirit. You demand to know her mind's inner workings, and so you simply barge your spirit in

It's like opening fleshly prey with your teeth and digging through to find a prized organ or your favorite cut of meat. The viscera of her thoughts is inconsequential until you taste the part aligned with her present-most fears and desires. You tug and tear it free, and at the core of her need is

his

face...it looks just like hers, almost as feminine. In her memories they quarrel and quibble; they Hunt and kill; they rut and mate and fuck. It connects to her ambitions, and you see her plan...it's more lurid and cunning than you would have given her credit for. You release her mind from between your metaphysical teeth and throw her back to the ground where she shudders and quakes, spittle foaming at the corner of her mouth.

It was true that by bringing the Vessel into your Tribe, it would be easier to carefully excise portions of his soul so that you could pour in more of your own grand being. More importantly, a stable goblet for your divinity would draw you closer to the one thing you'd Hunted for countless generations of your descendants' lives but never found - an end to the pain.

It's extremely tempting...you did prefer the graceful path, and her idea resonated with you. You'd seen into the Vessel's heart while you'd piloted his body, exulting in the slaughter, and knew his desires. You consider for as long as the

AGONY

allows before finally reaching down into the flowing silver and hooking one other. You throw him down next to her where he writhes and hisses.

She immediately hovers over him, fussing pointlessly as his flesh regrows over his argent-bleached bones. For a time you simply watch as he howls on delusion before being reduced to shaking and weeping in her arms. He's nearly a mirror image of hers, with the same pale eyes and pretty mouth. A rare moment of lust rises in your loins, and you consider mating them both.

It had been long since you partook in such pleasure and you picture simply commanding them onto their knees to mount them...filling them with your great length, rutting them both full of your burning seed and watching it drip from them, only to plunge in again...your phallus is hard, dripping your white-hot payload to pool on the rock, but you restrain yourself for now. It will be sweeter when you wear the Vessel again.

Yesss...this would work, and when the impure filth had been cleaned away, then could finally begin your Return to the Flesh, your Aposarkosis.

You remember everything.

Every man, every woman whose life disappeared down your gullet that night had a whole list of ambitions; hopes and dreams they'd nurtured whole lifetimes. They all had relationships - family that relied on them, friends who found comfort in their presence, enemies who scorned their every word. All had unfinished business that would remain unattended; who would take up their fallen banners when all could barely clutch their own?

Fernando had been a great friend. When your grandmother - the only person in your family who accepted you, if not understood who you are - had passed, he'd been the one to help you pick up pieces and move past the sorrow. When the Darkness Inside your Soul had overwhelmed you senior year and you almost flunked out, he'd been there to rally your spirit, study through the nights, and help you get your degree. Hell he'd even driven you home when you and Lana had gotten irresponsibly drunk...he didn't need to be your personal taxi service, your therapist, or your friend because you'd never really given anything back.

Now you'd taken it all.

You're on your knees before him, your clothes in tatters. Fernando's fingers dig into your shoulders, his expression wide-eyed and strangely distant in death; his lower half is flung somewhere in the mess of limbs and dead bodies. The blue and purple neon piping along the walls makes it all seem like a nightmare, but with the flavor of your friend's guts in your mouth and screaming approach of sirens in the distance, you know all too well this is real.

Fernando was going to get married in a week. His fiancé's face gutters candlelike through your imagination, Mimi's expression ugly with grief.

It floats in a crimson cloud before you.

What have I done?

A miniscule voice breaks through at the edge of your hearing - ᴬʳʲⁱ - but it's infinitesimal compared to the cacophony in your skull as you look at the bodies amidst the broken glass.

A stripper, her copper curls matted with blood; something

you had dragged

its

your

claws from neck to crotch, spilling her across the floor; she'd crawled a meter before succumbing.

One of Fernando's cousins - was it Ricky? - lay against a wall, his arms pulled off like they were made of balsa wood; they're crumpled before him, holding on to the shattered remains of his cellphone.

A bartender, half thrown over his bar, limbs dangling akimbo and limp. His spinal cord had been partially pulled through his back, curving upward like a scorpion's tail, ready to sting.

What am I?

You turn your had to look in a large piece of shattered mirror - ᴬʳʲⁱ comes the voice again - and stare at yourself...but it's not you as you recall. You've Changed - only part of it is outward, but staring past the caul of your thin epidermis you can see quite clearly that the Arjuna of the past has been devoured by the Monster of the Present and Future.

The color of your eyes is eerie silver, and when the light catches the edge of your irises you see a molten orange...it makes you think of dipping your hand in one of the smelters at Samson's shop. The edges of your face are more defined, whatever gentleness there'd once been scoured to leave something harsh; a grassy field blasted down to the burnished rock beneath ᴬʳʲⁱ - again!

Someone is tugging my arm.

You reconcile a long face...platinum blonde hair...full lips, they're moving, shouting at you through the haze but you can't understand. Her hands cup either side of your face as she shouts meaningless words at you. Like a radio signal cutting through static, you begin to make sense of it. " - have to go

now

dude, come on! Get up! Fernando's done, but the cops are coming, and Carmen might show up - "

You push her roughly out of the way as a tide of vomit washes up from your throat. Freshly chewed meat and gristle, barely digested organs splatter across the floor as you purge yourself, wrung like a rag by the horror of this new truth.

She doesn't even wait for you to finish when she seizes you under the arm and hauls you to your feet to stumble over the broken bodies and to the door.

"Where's Carmen?" you blurt out with a tongue that feels like it's coated in glue, coughing on the last bits of people leaving your belly. You have some memory of her...or rather an acknowledgment of her existence in that transcendent state of bloodlust, that she wasn't the target of your ire. It felt like she'd grabbed you at one point but you'd shoved away and she'd disappeared from your sensory register.

"I don't know, I don't

want

to know so long as she's far away from us." Lana's voice quavers like you've never heard before - understandably so - as she tugs you after her into the alleyway behind the club.

That thing with the disco ball for a head stares at you from the mirror, clapping its many-jointed hands together in appreciation for a fine show.

"When you came out of the bathroom and started tearing people apart, she tried to stop you, like a crazy person...you just kind of threw her to the side, but she smelled all burnt after you touched her and then she

also

became that fucking

thing

inside of - "

You pull her away from the road roughly as a semi-truck hurtles by, honking at you indignantly. Lana's shaking knees give out as the rain comes pounding down around you, gore and filth flowing off your naked body and into the gutter. Her fingers dig into your shoulders and you make eye-contact; lightning crackles across the sky

thrown by the incessant battle waged between two massive avian shapes in the clouds

, illuminating her expression. She fears you...but she hasn't left you.

Do you deserve such loyalty?

She's

still

trying to help you, to pull you from the ground zero of whatever had exploded outward from you...more importantly, the cops in this town were notoriously trigger-happy and would likely gun you down on sight, but where could you go? You're running Northbound on Carrol Street, which would take you toward Valley Forge; the urban density thinned out there, and you instinctively understood that place would be dangerous. You'd be exposed in those wooded hills, even if you were less likely to get mugged in that neighborhood of gentrified businesses and condos.

"Wait. Wait, Lana - " you try but it's like she doesn't hear you, she's just running on autopilot, clenching your rainsoaked wrist. She can barely see where she's going, dodging news stands and light poles when they're only feet away...like she's running from you even as she pulls you behind her. Has that imagery always defined your relationship?

You shake yourself free of her and she stops, putting a hand against the weather-worn edge of a tax firm and looking at you with incredulous terror - her eyes remind you of a panicked horse. "What are you doing?!" she demands. "Carmen might still be out - "

"Fuzzy's place," you cut her off with a chopping motion that she shrinks from; it breaks your already ravaged heart.

"What about Fuzzy?" She glances fearfully over your shoulder and hers;

you can hear her heartbeat, smell the fear hormones coursing through her rich blood.

"Uncle Samir never changed the door code, he still uses it for storage...we'll be safe there." As safe as you can be anyway - once locked doors and four walls had seemed as impregnable as a mountainside, but now...