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.
