An Interlude
FYI: I write in a more stream of conscious way, things will be rambling! Beware of spelling mistakes I didn't catch.
A short interlude with the cult. :3
I'm bad with tags, please tell me if you can better define the genre. ;x;
Chapter 4.5 - An Interlude
Chapter 4.5 - An interlude on the face of all
"Here's your new pet, my sweet, enjoy," the masculine voice of the man told him before softly kissing his forehead and exiting the room with a silent click of the door. It was as if he was viewing this from outside of himself, a dreamlike haze suffusing everything he was seeing and doing currently. The masculine voice, if that voice even was masculine, had come and gone in waves and waves in his days, months, years, decades to centuries.
Was he still here? What really defines here?
A cough interrupted his musings.
Sat before him is a slight vampire bat, the flat nose and short muzzle filled with needle sharp teeth meant to scrape and pierce a dead giveaway to what he was seeing before him. A blood drinker, a blood lover, blood of all things spilling upon the streets before him in a hazy rage. The moon shines upon bone white fur, so stark in its ethereal beauty, shining, glowing...
In all things, this is the reality of what he is seeing but is it what the world is experiencing?
He reaches out a careful paw, his claws large and heavy, meant for ripping and tearing, snarling, pulling, blood covering his hands in beautiful streaks of crimson red that reaches into his heart and pulls with hooks to a dark abyss below. Gorgeous.
He wants to paint this bat with loving detail.
The bat before him tilts their head as they observe him. Perhaps he has been lost here before, lost forever, how long as he stood before this beautiful creature, admiring how wonderfully they would look in oils upon a scene of passion. He can see them spread out, so lovely, as he takes them from the front, so gentle and sweet, he would plunge into their depths with a reverence only meant for the One of all, face of it. He would hear their soft gasps and moans of pleasure as he sunk into them, so worshipful, so beautiful, the warmth of their soft heat pulsing around him in ecstasy.
A dream. A rendering. Paints and charcoal, passion made into but a snapshot of time for none to see but all to know of.
The vampire bat appears in his line of vision, their expression one of curiosity and slight worry. A confirmation, then, of the lost and wandering dreamlike state of his musings. The little bone white bat then speaks in a soft voice, tinged with feminine wonder, a song, a dance. To hear is to believe and he sees a future where those notes hit a crescendo upon his mind, singing songs of passionate release.
The bat then looks at him a bit frustrated.
Ah. He was lost again. He shakes his head to clear the pink wool that has settled over his mind, the haze... He has to stay present.
The small bat before him that speaks in such soft feminine tones has taken his paw. The contrast is stark. Their claws are elegant and slight compared to his monstrous heavy ones. Oh, the envy he feels in that moment, for what would life be like if he could travel among the people and not be clocked for the monster he is, the monster that resides within his flesh? To walk the nights among the masses and not be seen for what he is? It must be a wonder.
"What would you have me do?" the bat asks of him and oh, it is a sultry sound but there, hidden beneath those tones, lies the truth.
What he wouldn't have asked of them but yet, there it is, the tinge of something he hates and reviles. The truth of what his beauty is and their duty to the world set out before him. The night's song, shadows tinged.
He takes his paw back with more force than needed and snarls in frustration, "No!" he yells, almost screams it, but his too large fangs get in the way and make it nothing more than a garbled mess. So much mess, so much blood-! Rip and tear and pull and scratch-!
The little bone white beauty pulls away from him in fear.
He stops. No, this little wonder doesn't deserve his ire for the lot that their life was handed over to him. He breathes deeply, to let the putrid anger that lies deep within his monstrously disgusting soul, itself tainted by a gift from The night's song, shadows tinged. He draws his paws back, forces them to relax from their tensed state. Tries to speak in the language of signs that he's sorry, so deeply sorry.
Oh but this beauty is blessed by the One of all, face of it, for they look at him in relief and acceptance. A monster like him to witness such grace by another.
"I am Belladonna, your grace," the little vampire bat introduces themselves to him, "And I am, as you have surmised, a gift from the patriarch of your family."
The vampire bat summons such beautiful magics to their hand, the twitch of oozing blood that sings of death and rot. Oh, but the hymns sing such praise for this little bat before him. Oh, they sing, take her with you and love her so dearly. His ears twitch with the melody, the rising and falling of the sweet prayers on the wind. He reaches out a paw that twitches with anticipation and pierces one of his wretched claws into the ball of unfathomable darkness.
And it is an intensity he has never felt before.
Like a release, a little death so powerful. He gasps in pleasured pain at the sensations that roll through his body. Exquisite. Sumptuous. He feels fully satiated by this joining, a small part of his soul rendered into full detail for the first time in his life.
He pulls his little beauty towards him, holding her with such reverence, as the shocks rock his body from ears to toes, quivering pleasure. So much, so much... He feels her shudder in his arms as she, too, goes through the throes of passion. Wonder... A future...
She pulls him towards her and kisses him so deep, so raw... She leads him onto the floor, pulling him down with such gentleness it could make him weep, her paws of such soft velvet unfit to touch a monster such as himself. But, oh, she does. She divests herself of barriers and lays herself open to him and that invitation is all he needs to plunge his muzzle into her heat.
The musk of her is sinfully mouth watering, a natural smell he could never tire of. He licks and sucks as she sings such sweet tones into the air, all for him. Wet, such wetness but so sweet, he wants... He needs...
He divests himself of his own barriers and carefully pushes himself into wanting wetness that pulls and undulates around him. He listens to the hymns sing around him, the rightness of this, and rejoices for tonight his beauty is all his. Tomorrow she will stand beside him with true intention, not these false pretenses that had her given to him.
He moves and that is more, so much more. The slide, the pressure, the sinful sounds of wet skin forcefully meeting and tandem groans. He looks into the eyes of his bone white beauty and sees blood and death and such gorgeous rot but there's so much more to the hidden depths of that gaze.
A future.
Her partner, the man they call Lane, is an odd one. Loving, gentle and obsessed, certainly, but prone to fits of such intense disassociation that she can't be sure he doesn't ascend to another plane to communicate with the One of all, face of it. He claims in halting paw movements that his soul is darkened and rotted by The night's song, shadows tinged but...
She'll have to politely disagree with that assessment.
Tonight she watches as her partner lovingly details the expressions and genitalia of two masculine figures caught in a shared moment of passion, a snapshot in time of two fictional lovers as they join together in a most intimate way. It is all self-indulgent, these drawings and paintings, for the raw act of sex is much too taboo for the general masses to willingly commission. No, they prefer the veil of anonymity, a go between to ask for such basal works that show one of the aspects many people share. Romance and sex entwined together, desire sitting as a haze upon their minds. She envies those that have not had these two lines cross and can remain impartial in one aspect compared to the other. Or simply forgo them altogether.
Life would certainly be easier.
She wanders and comes across one of the many paintings her love has rendered of them. Or, perhaps, a facsimile of themselves. His avatar is always such a monstrous being when he deigns to put it to paper but here, in these bits of dreamlike fantasies made in oils and charcoal, he is a sweet and gentle man. For, in these, this gentle man is who he wishes he were for her avatar in the painting. A figure he renders so passionately, pouring the emotions of his love behind it and, sometimes, she can even see the way he sees her in the physical world being reflected by these figures.
But, as in all things, these paintings are but facsimile. A simulacrum. Something so far removed from reality that it is but a facade of the real world. Art is a window into the soul, the mind, the figure behind the brush. Personal, so personal, the genuine self behind these paintings and drawings hurts to look at if one isn't prepared.
She lifts a careful claw to hover over the figures in the painting and admires the haze of the dream presented to her.
A monster could not paint such raw love onto canvas.
She pulls away with a bittersweet smile, the metal collar that sits upon her shoulders pulsing with such dark magics that she worries that the darkness will become everything around her and the simulacrum of the figures, two figures in a world that exists only in the oils, will rot away like all things as well.
She feels arms gently curl around her bare waist and smiles up at the face of the man she came to love. His muzzle holds fangs that are too large for it, his speech rendered into nothing more than incomprehensible gibberish. He speaks in the language of signs with claws that are large and heavy. He moves about with a nervous energy, almost innocent and innocuous at times, before the rage takes over and he rips and snarls and gouges deep gashes into those that stand in his way. Through all this, she loves the vampire bat with the grey stripe that bisects his figure and the dark shackles that keep him tethered to this temple.
For all that they may dream and love together, they are both prisoners. Perhaps, that, is why they love one another so hard. Or perhaps they resonate with such intensity, magics made for each other, that their very souls would perish should they separate and be made anew. She may have been bought as a gift, a slave and a toy, but to him, she is so much more. She feels like so much more.
She takes one of the paws that has come to rest over the heat between her legs and brings it up to her lips, to kiss the knuckles that look at home covered in oils as they do the unfathomable dark magics of death and rot. She gives him a smile of lascivious intent and pulls him away from the cluttered room he has jealously guarded as his studio.
Here they exist away and yet, still, they will forever reside. That emotional quality, even as she sits upon his lap and moans at the way he fills her when they are rooms away, that raw feeling he renders into the paintings of their facsimiles that still sings out in all things they do. The avatars are static and unchanging, their scenes and figures forever caught in a singular moment, forever immobile, even as the world and their canvas deteriorate into nothing more than rot beneath their feet.
And this, perhaps, will inspire more scenes to be rendered to canvas at a later date.
The hymns sing of their union and in all this, the Divine right has been fulfilled.
A pact spoken and a pact fulfilled. The clause, however, remains open.
He was observing that which was said to be his domain, that of which he served, that of which he nurtured and fed off of. The Divine called to him, blessing him, commanding him, and so there he kneeled upon the bloody dias that radiates blood tinged magics of unfathomable darkness.
He could feel the power radiating from it, the cold inferno seeping into the very bones and tissues that keep him mobile and alive. It slithered through his very veins, a vascular system singing with clogged and fetid blood frozen in time by the very powers that sustain his existence. Submit, they ask of him, tell him, command him, compel him.
Submit.
And so he does.
He kneels there upon the bloody dias and accepts everything that the Divine sings on the winds, the hymns of the Domain he follows. They croon sweetly of his obeisance, his willingness to be everything that they want of him and nothing more. For why would he want or quest for more when the Divine offers him everything he could ever want? He need only follow their teachings, listen to their hymns in all things he does in life, and keep to the path they have laid before him with loving wings and gentle rotting paws.
It feels like the love of a mother, a father, a grandparent. A lover. It is an all consuming thing that washes over him, drowns him, leaves him sinking further into the dark abyss, the pressure all around him that crushes him into something smaller than he is now. Reforming. Reshaping. Metamorphosing. He is but a part of the dirt upon the surface being subducted below into the magma of the world and forced into something new but not all together removed from what he once was.
Thus, he watches. He watches as the Divine transform his limbs, sloughing off fur, skin, veins and arteries, muscles melting away into nothing more than indistinct piles of rotting blood tinged ichor that stains the dias in more stains. More beautiful shades of reds and pinks than he even his oils could ever hope to capture stain the dias into fractal patterns forever spiralling into the same shapes over and over and over again.
The Divine leaves him as nothing more than a skeleton falling to the bloody dias to die. For death is part of it all. He watches this, forever awake and knowing of what happens but expecting it all the same. Watch, the chorus rises as it hits a crescendo, watch as you become more than what you once were.
And so, he is reborn.
He observes as his body reforms itself, as cells regrow and coalesce around his bloody bones. His bones flit about and reform themselves into a figure only told of in folklore. Feels as new tissues attach themselves, encourage his marrow to produce blood once again, sees how it is fundamentally different but is not so dissimilar to the very formation of all life reproducing life.
He watches as he becomes a wolf of the wilds before he is covered in the downy fleece of the sheep. He watches as his old body forms around this herbivore. He is the wolf in sheep's clothing. He is the sacrificial lamb. He is everything that the Divine says he should be before everything becomes nothing more than the haze that suffuses his every waking thought.
He comes back to his body still kneeling upon that dias new but yet, the same. The hymns tell him nothing about what has transpired, their singing the muted sound that it always is, their quiet hum of approval on the very winds themselves. Chained, as he has always been, but he can feel that something festers inside of him. Something more than he was, he is. A purpose yet unfulfilled.
The hymns sing solemnly. Time, they tell him, is running out.
She runs scared through the manner hallways, making barely a sound on bare feet, the sound of her breathing the only thing that echoes back to her.
They are coming.
She runs into the cluttered studio her love uses and finds him there, observing his latest composition. A commission, if she recalls, one of a stag that overlooks a field filled with hinds before a pine forest. The stag is large and majestic but imposing as he overlooks his domain as the hinds fill their bellies under his watchful eyes. Through the gaps in the forest, there, just by the edges, lies the eyes of the wolves that wait to chase. To kill.
She reaches out for him, startling him from his creative meditation.
"They've found us," she tells him with shaking limbs and quick breaths, "Lane, they've found us."
He looks lost as she tells him this but she knows that he will come to, will make the connections.
And there, in his eyes, the he comes back to himself. He drops his materials and gently, so gently, takes her face in his and kisses her so sweetly. It tastes of death and rot, a beginning and an end. She knows, just as well as he, that she will die here. That he will.
It is as the Divine wills it.
He pulls back, just a moment, and signs with such loving movements.
'I love you, Belladonna,' he tells her, painstakingly spelling out her name instead of using the sign he chose to represent her all those full moons ago. It's that action more than anything that confirms that which is sung on the air around them.
The hymns reach a crescendo, the chorus lost in the throes of passioned words, when the arrow strikes her between her shoulders. She feels it pierce and shred. Tear into her soft and unguarded back. The very magics that keep her alive, that ooze from the metal collar that chains her to this mortal realm, pull upon the arrow and twist it in burning coils until, there, she feels it pierce her very heart.
She watches this all in slow motion, how she is laid on the ground with an animalistic cry of pure grief.
And then from her position facing the ceiling of the studio, she sees a great wolf. It's as large as a draft horse and its sides burn with oozing runes that sing of unfathomable dark magics. Its fur is sandy coloured and its limbs are rotting down to the bones.
Then she is viewing herself from above and watches as the wolf wears the pelt of a ram that oozes death and rot from underneath, coating the great wolf in blood tinged ichor. The wolf rips and tears all that have dared to fire upon her, watches as those that are ripped open by the wolf's jaws begin to rot themselves.
It is as the Divine wills it.
Just so, as the great wolf is chained and brought to its belly. It whimpers and whines, growls and snarls, in a vain attempt to escape.
But, this too, is something that must happen.
The hymns welcome her into their chorus and she ceases to be herself and becomes more.
Life is meaningless without her he has found.
What once used to occupy his time has become little else in the wake of her passing. Painting holds no joy for him, there is little meaning in pleasuring himself, and all colours around him have become nothing more than dull tones suitable only for background elements.
The sound of the hymns offer him no comfort for even though he knows deep within his soul that she is part of the chorus that sings to him, she is not the Belladonna he loves.
She is not herself for she has become one with the Divine.
He stares upon the canvas before him, the commission of the stag overlooking his kingdom before it is sacked by a pack of wolves, and takes careful claws to run over the blood splattered upon its surface. Beautiful blood that sings of a vengeful death met out upon foes that took the most precious thing in the world from him.
The hymns sing to him to not destroy the painting, and oh, does he wish to rip and tear and bite into the canvas. To pull it from its carefully wrapped and stapled wood and ingest it in a rage.
He cannot and so he retracts his paw with shaking hands. Pulls his arms close to himself and wraps the fingers that hold the wing membranes close to his body. It is useless for these are not the arms he wants to feel upon his chest. These are not the claws he wants raking over his shoulders and neck.
Listlessly, he retreats from his cluttered studio and walks the well worn path back to their bedroom. His bedroom. A cavernous empty space filled with whispers and echoes of a life that has been brought to an end by the Divine will. He lays upon covers that do not smell of her anymore, pulls himself under sheets that lack her warmth.
He stares at her side of the bed in a melancholic haze. Her form does not look back at him with patient love. Instead his is met with the indifferent stares of books he has long since forgotten to read and papers of half formed thoughts and figures whenever his idle paws put thought to paper.
The hymns sing that time is close.
He welcomes this news with elation and trepidation.
He is kneeling once more upon the bloody dias. He watches the figure of a bat in pure black, their form hazy and fogged at the edges, preach of the sacrifice his is, the duty he was made to perform, the purpose of his very life. It matters little. He looks at the blood below his knees listlessly. Perhaps he should feel something more than what he does but...
What meaning is there in life if she is not there with him? To him, there is nothing.
He watches impassively as an axe of pure gold gleams in the light of the stained glass windows is swung at his neck. It is but a moment but it feels like ages. He watches from outside himself as his head falls from his neck and falls to the dias below, the last twitches of his heart making the artery in his neck spurt out blood like he is but a geyser in the valley, but it, too, stops before long.
For the longest moment nothing happens and then, his body begins to rot. Thick black ichor oozes around his spine and he watches as his flesh and organs melt as if they were submerged in acid. It is a slow process at first, the ichor oozes and bubbles pop and foam around the slowly spreading wound before it increases in its speed. There, from the depths of rotting flesh and bone, a new being is being born. It slowly stretches his carcass, his bones popping and snapping to accommodate the form, as it emerges out of the oozing wound on his back Slowly, as if emerging from a vaginal canal, a grand stag takes shaky steps from his rotting flesh to stand upon the dias. He watches as the blood falls from its form and dissolves into ash floating about the very air around the room.
It has antlers made of scrub oak, its eyes face forward like a wolf, and its toes number too many.
The grand stag looks at directly him, staring into the last vestiges of his soul clinging to this mortal realm, before it lifts its head in a screeching bugle that sounds like death. It is the last thing he is aware before he, too, joins his lady love into becoming nothing more than the chorus that sings on the winds.